Captivity led captive, rose to claim

The wreath he won so dearly in our name;
That throned above all height he condescends
To call the few that trust in him his friends;

That in the heaven of heav'ns, that space he

deems

Too scanty for the exertion of his beams,
And shines, as if impatient to bestow
Life and a kingdom upon worms below;
That sight imparts a never-dying flame,

Though feeble in degree, in kind the same,
Like him the soul thus kindled from above
Spreads wide her arms of universal love;
And still enlarged as she receives the grace,
Includes creation in her close embrace.

Behold a Christian!-and without the fires

The founder of that name alone inspires,
Though all accomplishment, all knowledge meet,
To make the shining prodigy complete,
Whoever boasts that name-behold a cheat!

Were love, in these the world's last doting years, As frequent as the want of it appears,

The churches warmed, they would no longer hold Such frozen figures, stiff as they are cold;

Relenting forms would lose their power, or cease;
And even the dipt and sprinkled live in peace:
Each heart would quit its prison in the breast,
And flow in free communion with the rest.

The statesman, skilled in projects dark and deep,
Might burn his useless Machiavel, and sleep;
His budget often filled, yet always poor,
Might swing at ease behind his study door,
No longer prey upon our annual rents,

Or scare the nation with its big contents:,
Disbanded legions freely might depart,

And slaying man would cease to be an art.
No learned disputants would take the field,
Sure not to conquer, and sure not to yield;
Both sides deceived, if rightly understood,
Pelting each other for the public good.

Did charity prevail, the

press would

prove

A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love;

And I might spare myself the pains to show

What few can learn, and all suppose they know. Thus have I sought to grace a serious lay

With many a wild indeed but flowery spray, In hopes to gain, what else I must have lost, The attention pleasure has so much engrossed. But if unhappily deceived I dream,

And

prove too weak for so divine a theme,

Let Charity forgive me a mistake

That zeal, not vanity, has chanced to make,
And spare the poet for his subject's sake.

CONVERSATION.

Nam neque me tantum venientis sibilus austri,
Nec percussa juvant fluctú tam littora, nec quæ
Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles.

VIRG. Ecl. 5.

THOUGH nature weigh our talents, and dispense

To

every man his modicum of sense,

And Conversation in its better part
May be esteemed a gift and not an art,
Yet much depends, as in the tiller's toil,
On culture, and the sowing of the soil.
Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse,
But talking is not always to converse;

Not more distinct from harmony divine,

The constant creaking of a country sign.