And while the mufe now ftoops, or now afcends, 375 380 Correct with fpirit, eloquent with ease, Intent to reason, or polite to please. Oh! while along the ftream of time thy name Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame; Say, fhall my little bark attendant fail, 385 Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale ? When statesmen, heroes, kings, in duft repose, Whose fons shall blush their fathers were thy foes, 390 395 And all our knowledge is, OURSELVES TO KNOW. OTHE Pp 2 THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER*. DEO O PT. MAX ATHER of All! in ev'ry age, FIn ev'ry clime ador'd, By faint, by savage, and by sage, Thou Great Firft Cause, leaft understood : Yet gave me, in this dark eftate, What confcience dictates to be done, For God is paid when man receives, * It may be proper to observe, that some paffages, in the preceding Essay, having been unjustly suspected of a tendency towards Fate and Naturalism, the author composed this Prayer as the sum of all, to fhew that his fyftem was founded in Free-will, and terminated in piety: that the first cause was as well the lord and governor of the universe as the creator of it; and that, by fubmiffion to his will (the great principle enforced throughout the Essay) was not meant the suffering ourselves to be carried along by a blind determination, but the resting in a religious acquiescence, and confidence full of Hope and Immortality. To give all this the greater weight, the poet chofe for his model the LORD'S PRAYER, which, of all others, best deferves the title prefixed to his paraphrase. Yo |