MEDITATION IN A GROVE.

[WATTS.]

SWEET Mufe, defcend and bless the shade,

And bless the ev'ning grove; Bus'nefs and noise and day are fled, And ev'ry care but love.

But hence, ye wanton young and fair,
Mine is a purer flame;

No Phillis fhall infect the air

With her unhallow'd name.

JESUS has all my pow'rs poffeft,

My hopes, my fears, my joys; He, the dear Sov'reign of my breast, Shall ftill command my voice.

Some of the fairest choirs above

Shall flock around my song

With joy, to hear the name they love,
Sound from a mortal tongue.

His charms shall make my numbers flow,
And hold the falling floods,

While filence fits on ev'ry bough.

And bends the lift'ning woods.

I'll carve our paffion on the bark.
And ev'ry wounded tree
Shall drop and bear fome mystic mark
That JESUS dy'd for me.

The fwains fhall wonder when they read
Infcribed on all the grove,

That Heav'n itself came down and bled
To win a mortal's love.

THE HERO'S SCHOOL OF MORALITY.

[WATTS.]

THERON

HERON among

his travels found

A broken ftatue on the ground;

And searching onward as he went,

He trac'd a ruin'd monument.

Mould, mofs, and shades, had overgrown

The sculpture of the crumbling ftone,

Yet ere he pass'd, with much ado
He guess'd and fpell'd out, Sci-pi-o.

"Enough, he cry'd; I'll drudge no more, "In turning the dull Støics o'er : "Let pedants waste their hours of ease “To sweat all night at Socrates; "And feed their boys with notes and rules, "Those tedious Recipes of Schools "To cure ambition: I can learn "With greater ease the great concern "Of mortals; how we may despise "All the gay things below the skies.

"Methinks a mould'ring pyramid "Says all that the old fages faid: << For me, these fhatter'd tombs contain "More morals than the Vatican.

"The duft of heroes cast abroad,

"And kick'd and trampled in the road,

"The relics of a lofty mind,

"That lately wars and crowns defign'd,

"Toft for a jeft from wind to wind,

"Bid me be humble, and forbear "Tall monuments of fame to rear, "They are but castles in the air.

"The tow'ring height and frightful falls,
"The ruin'd heaps and funerals

"Of smoaking kingdoms and their kings,
"Tell me a thousand mournful things
"In melancholy filence.-

"That living could not bear to fee

--He

“An equal, now lies torn and dead,

"Here his pale trunk, and there his head;

"Great Pompey! while I meditate

"With folemn horror thy fad fate,
“Thy carcass scatter'd on the shore
"Without a name, instructs me more
"Than my whole library before.

"Lie ftill, my Plutarch, then, and sleep,
And my good Seneca may keep

"Your volumes clos'd for ever too,

"I have no further ufe for

you:

"For when I feel my virtue fail,
"And my ambitious thoughts prevail;
"I'll take a turn among the tombs,
"And fee whereto all glory comes:
"There the vile foot of ev'ry flave,
"Infults a Charles or a Guftave:
"Beggars with awful afhes fport,
"And tread the Cæfars in the dirt."

H

}

I

Am not concern'd to know

What to-morrow fate will do:

'Tis enough that I can say

I've poffeft myself to-day:
Then if haply midnight death
Seize my flesh and stop my breath,

Yet to-morrow I fhall be

Heir to the best part of me.

Glitt'ring ftones and golden things, Wealth and honours that have wings, Ever flutt'ring to be gone,

I could never call my own:
Riches that the world beftows,
She can take and I can lofe;
But the treasures that are mine,
Lie afar beyond her line.

When I view my spacious foul,