Thou tread'st, with seraphim, the vast abyss:

Whatever happy region is thy place, Cease thy celestial song a little space; Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,

Since heaven's eternal year is thine. Hear then a mortal muse thy praise rehearse,

In no ignoble verse:

But such as thy own voice did practise here,

When thy first fruits of poesy were given, To make thyself a welcome inmate there; While yet a young probationer,

And candidate of heaven.

If by traduction came thy mind, Our wonder is the less to find A soul so charming from a stock so good; Thy father was transfused into thy blood: So wert thou born into a tuneful strain, An early, rich, and inexhausted vein. But if thy pre-existing soul

Was form'd, at first, with myriads

What can we say t' excuse our second fall?

Let this thy vestal, heaven, atone for all: Her Arethusian stream remains unsoil'd, Unmix'd with foreign filth, and undefiled;

Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

Art she had none, yet wanted none;
For nature did that want supply:
So rich in treasures of her own,

She might our boasted stores defy: Such noble vigor did her verse adorn, That it seem'd borrow'd, where 'twas only born.

Her morals too were in her bosom bred, By great examples daily fed.

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound

To raise the nations under ground; When in the valley of Jehoshaphat, The judging God shall close the book of fate;

And there the last assizes keep,

For those who wake, and those who sleep;

When rattling bones together fly,

From the four corners of the sky; When sinews on the skeletons are spread, Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead;

The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,

And foremost from the tomb shall bound,

For they are cover'd with the lightest ground;

And straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing,

Like mounting larks, to the new morning

sing.

grace;

A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay :
A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high

He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide;

Else why should he, with wealth and honors blest,

Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please; Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?

In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.
To compass this the triple bond he broke,1
The pillars of the public safety shook,
And fitted Israel with a foreign yoke;
Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting
fame,

The triple bond is the Triple Alliance of 1667, undone by the alliance concluded with France in 1670, when Shaftesbury was a member of the Cabal.

Usurp'd a patriot's all-atoning name;
So easy still it proves, in factious times,"
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the people's
will!

Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known,

Since in another's guilt they find their

own!

Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge; The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.

In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abbethdin With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,

Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress;

Swift of despatch and easy of access.
Oh! had he been content to serve the

crown

With virtues only proper to give the gown;

Or had the rankness of the soil been freed

From cockle, that oppress'd the noble seed;

David for him his tuneful harp had strung,

And heaven had wanted one immortal

song.

But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand;

And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.

Achitophel, grown weary to possess
A lawful fame, and lazy happiness,
Disdain'd the golden fruit to gather
free,

And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.

Now, manifest of crimes contrived long since,

He stood at bold defiance with his prince;

Held up the buckler of the people's cause Against the crown, and skulk'd behind

the laws.

2 This and the following lines, referring to Shaftesbury's conduct as Lord Chancellor, were inserted in the second edition. The Abbethdin was the Jewish Chief Justice.

VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKING-
HAM, DELINEATED AS ZIMRI.
[From Absalom and Achitophel, Part I.]
A MAN SO various that he seem'd to be
Not one but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing
long;

But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

Blest madman! who could every hour employ

With something new to wish or to enjoy. Railing and praising were his usual themes,

And both, to show his judgment, in extremes.

So over-violent or over-civil,

That every man with him was god or devil.

In squandering wealth was his peculiar art,

Nothing went unrewarded but desert; Beggar'd by fools whom still he found too late;

He had his jest, and they had his estate. He laugh'd himself from court, then had relief,

By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;

For, spite of him, the weight of business fell

On Absalom and wise Achitophel.

TRADITION.

[From Religio Laici; November, 1682.]

MUST all tradition then be set aside? This to affirm were ignorance or pride. Are there not many points, some needful sure

To saving faith, that Scripture leaves obscure,

Which every sect will wrest a several way?

For what one sect interprets, all sects

may.

Thus, first traditions were a proof alone, Could we be certain such they were, so known:

But since some flaws in long descent may be,

They make not truth but probability. Even Arius and Pelagius durst provoke To what the centuries preceding spoke. Such difference is there in an oft-told tale, But truth by its own sinews will prevail. Tradition written, therefore, more commends

Authority than what from voice descends: And this, as perfect as its kind can be, Rolls down to us the sacred history: Which, from the Universal Church received,

Is tried, and after for its self believed.

THE SECTS.

PRIVATE JUDGMENT. [From The Hind and the Panther, Part I.; April, 1687.]

PANTING and pensive now she ranged alone,

And wandered in the kingdoms once her own.

The common hunt, though from their rage restrained

By sovereign power, her company disdained,

Grinned as they passed, and with a glaring eye

Gave gloomy signs of secret enmity. 'Tis true she bounded by and tripped so light,

They had not time to take a steady sight; For truth has such a face and such a mien

As to be loved needs only to be seen.

The bloody Bear an independent beast, Unlicked to form, in groans her hate expressed.

Among the timorous kind the quaking Hare

Professed neutrality, but would not swear. Next her the buffoon Ape, as atheists use, Mimicked all sects and had his own to choose;

Still, when the Lion looked, his knees he bent,

And paid at church a courtier's compliment.

The bristled baptist Boar, impure as he, But whitened with the foam of sanctity, With fat pollutions filled the sacred place And mountains levelled in his furious race;

So first rebellion founded was in grace. But, since the mighty ravage which he made

In German forests1 had his guilt betrayed, With broken tusks and with a borrowed name,

He shunned the vengeance and concealed the shame, So lurked in sects unseen.

With greater

guile False Reynard fed on consecrated spoil; The graceless beast by Athanasius first Was chased from Nice, then by Socinus nursed,

His impious race their blasphemy renewed,

And Nature's King through Nature's optics viewed;

Reversed they viewed him lessened to their eye,

Nor in an infant could a God descry. New swarming sects to this obliquely tend,

Hence they began, and here they all will end.

What weight of ancient witness can prevail,

If private reason hold the public scale? But, gracious God, how well dost Thou provide

For erring judgments an unerring guide! Thy throne of darkness is the abyss of light,

A blaze of glory that forbids the sight. O teach me to believe Thee thus concealed,

And search no farther than Thyself revealed;

But her alone for my director take, Whom Thou hast promised never to forsake!

The allusion is more especially to the Ana baptist doings at Münster.