O power divine! dispelling all deception, With such new optics now the world surveying, At every turn, ay, every hour, betraying O solemn truths! and I have found them so; And what is life? a fleeting, vain illusion! Brief as the flowers that flourish and decay; Soon sets the sun, that heralds the conclusion E'en of the longest and the brightest day. Another smile, a heartache, an effusion Of tears, and then we sighing pass away. How loved, how honoured once, avails us not; Death deals the blow, regardless of our lot. O melancholy thoughts! to mind recalling On all I loved on earth, my only care, Nature in hope may wait the Spring returning, But oh! by Heaven, can I forget her? Never! Of his dear idol-heaps of gold-to dream, I saw the gangrene daily undermining My vernal hopes, that rose as cedars tall; For months she drooped, and nature fast declining, I saw in sorrow, every wonted call. At length she lay like a young flower reclining, 'Neath incongenial snows, in Spring that fall; Her charms the heart in silence then wept o'er, And felt as if it ne'er had loved before. She was, in fact, a living concentration Of all that heaven could love and earth admire; How lost to virtue and divine sensation, The soul such excellence could not inspire! Her blushing cheeks then mocked the fair carnation; Still fast the fell destroyer seemed progressing, I saw the golden bowl was yet unbroken, Strange must that moment be, our journey ending- When feel we on that hairbreadth footing standing, And the soul struggling hard to wing her way To face her Judge omniscient and unerring, Enthroned in peerless majesty and might, And hear Him from her deeds her doom inferring, 'Mid hosts angelic robed in glory bright, And by his fiat solemn her transferring To realms of bliss, or shades of endless night! What scenes and secrets may she not behold? And who her last sensations can unfold? There is an awful something past revealing, When all that pleased has vanished with a breath: And O that lonely sorrow o'er us stealing! 'Tis then the heart, if ever, values faith, Whose torch divine dispels the deepest gloom, And lights beyond the desert of the tomb. Soon must that king of terrors-thanks to HeavenThe iron sceptre of his power resign. Soon must the marble and the mound be riven; O Grave, thy slumbering treasures are not thine! Of restitution was an earnest given When rose thy Spoiler glorious and divine, Who captive led captivity that hour, Triumphant by His own almighty power. Hence friends shall meet whom Death had long divided, Whose kindred souls again shall be united No more their joys by sorrow shall be blighted; God from their eyes shall wipe off every tear. Hail to that morn when all shall thus transpire! Blessed consummation! my supreme desire. LOVE NOT THE WORLD. OVE not the world! O precept how divine! In which the wisdom from above we trace, Breathed forth in accents glowing and benign, Adapted truly to our state and place: To all how apposite the warning givenThe soul earth-fettered can it enter heaven? Love not the world! Its pleasures and its joys, Love not the world! ah, why in riches trust? To-morrow may your golden heaps, as dust |