And for endeavoring to Equalize

The Lord's Omniscience, is quite ruinated;
And hath his Soul in all its Faculties
Strangely Besotted and Infatuated:

For having once rebell'd against his duty,
Opacous Sin soon blasted all his beauty.

Now we have Lost Ability to Climb
The steps of Providence unto God's Throne:
Our Souls (alas) are now too Insublime
To Seat and Settle our Affections on
The Pinnacle of all Perfection,
Whose Vision Satisfys th' Affection.

But through a Poisonous Impetuous Rage,
Our minds we to these Earthly Objects glew:
And tho' we find they can't our Thirst asswage,
The more we're Dis-appointed we pursue.
Thus do we prostitute our vast affection,
To yield to our Inferiours subjection.

But when we sunk under this misery,
And all help failed us on every side;
No Creature could find out a way whereby
Justice Offended might be Satisfy'd;

To do that work our Saviour undertook,
As it was writ i' th' Volumn of the book.

The Love that gave him, oh! 't was Infinite;
The Person suffering was most Excellent;
The Pains he suffered were most Exquisite ;
And Glorious was the blessed Consequent!
With wonderment and Ravishing surprize
The Angels Contemplate these Mysteries.

AND

When I behold th' Heavens' wond'rous frame,
The Sun and Moon shining in Beauty bright,
Which thou hast made to Magnify thy Name,
By thy Almighty power Infinite-

And View the Stars in their celestial ranging,
Not Jostling in all their interchanging:

Oh what is man, that thou shouldest allow
Him to Inherit thy divine compassion?
What is the sinful Son of man, that thou
Should'st grant to him thy Spirit's visitation?
And suffer thine Eternal SON to dye,
To Reconcile thy stubborn Enemy!

MATTHEW X: 28.

And fear not them that can kill the body, but are not able to kill the Soul:
But rather fear Him which is able to destroy both Soul and Body in Hell.
And is our Life a life wherein we borrow

No not the smallest respite from our Sorrow?
Our Profits, are they but some Yellow Dust,
Subject to Loss, to Canker-eat, and Rust?
Whose very Image breedeth ceaseless Cares,
In every Mind where it Dominion bears?
And are our Pleasures mainly in Excess,
Which genders Guilt, and ends in Bitterness?
Are Honours fickle and dependent Stuff,
Oft-times blown furthest from us by a Puff?
Doth pale-faced Envy wait at every Stage,
To bite and wound us in our Pilgrimage?

:

Then him for Happy I will never Praise,
That's fill'd with Honour, Wealth, or length of Days:
But Happy he, though in a Dying Hour,
O're whom the Second Death obtains no power.

PROVERBS XXXI: 10.

Who can find a Vertuous Woman, for her Price is far above Rubies.

Vertue's a Babe, first born in Paradice,

And hath by birth priority of Vice.

Vertue is all that's good we brought from thence

The dear remains of our first Innocence.

Vertue still makes the Vertuous to shine,

Like those that Liv'd in the first week of time.

Vertue hath force the vile to cleanse again,
So being like clear shining after Rain.
A Kind and Constant, Chearful Vertuous Life,
Becomes each Man, and most Adorns a Wife.

But such a Vertue, ah, where shall we find,
That's Bright, especially in Woman Kind?
If such an one had been on Earth, no doubt
Searching King Solomon had found her out.

But stay, my Muse, nor may we thence conclude
There is not One in all their Multitude:
For tho' it be too True, that Solomon
Amongst a Thousand found not such an one;
It follows not at all but such an one

Among an Hundred Thousand may be shown;
Which if she may, her Price beyond Compare
Excels the Price of Rubies very fair.

PSALM LXIV: 6.

The heart is deep.

He that can trace a Ship making her way
Amidst the threatening Surges on the Sea;
Or track a Towering Eagle in the Air,
Or on a Rock find the Impressions there
Made by a Serpent's Footsteps; Who Surveys
The Subtile Intreagues that a Young Man lays
In his Sly Courtship of an harmless Maid,
Whereby his Wanton Amours are Conveyed
Into her Breast; 'Tis he alone that can
Find out the Cursed Policies of Man.

REV AARON CLEVELAND.

[Born 1744. Died 1815.]

Ir will doubtless surprise as it will gratify many of our readers to see the name of Rev. AARON CLEVELAND in this connection. He published but few articles, and these all anonymously. He did not claim for himself the title of a poet-nor has it before been claimed for him. Yet we deem it no more than an act of justice to grant him a place in our volume. Many of his articles are lost. For those now in our possession, as also for the biographical data, we are indebted to his grandson, Rev. ARTHUR CLEVeland Coxe, of Hartford, who has fully inherited the poetical genius of his worthy progenitor.

Mr. CLEVELAND was born in Haddam, on the 3d of February, 1744. He was the son of the Rev. AARON CLEVELAND, who at that time resided at Haddam, as a Congregational minister; but afterward conforming to the Church of England, and receiving Holy Orders from Bishop SHERLOCK, of London, was a missionary of the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel," and for some time officiated at Lewes and Newcastle in Delaware. His talents and accomplishments gave him an honorable place in the literary society of that day, and his death occurred at Philadelphia, in 1757, while he was on a visit to his friend, Dr. FRANKLIN.

The subject of this sketch being thus left an orphan at the early age of thirteen, was returned to his Connecticut friends to be brought up. The estate of a missionary left him but little to depend upon; and he was unable therefore to perfect his education at college, as his father had done with credit to himself, at Harvard University. His poem, "THE PHILOSOPHER AND BOY," written at the early age of nineteen, though here given with some subsequent revision, will show that he was not, however, behind his coevals in literary accomplishments; and (judging from his description of himself as a botanic enthusiast,) not without pretensions to scientific attainment. Being admitted to the ministry of the Congregational Church, he employed himself in his official duties with great faithfulness and noiseless benevolence; being distinguished for peculiar and child-like tenderness of spirit, with great and uncontrollable powers of wit and humor. The latter characteristic, while from his harmless use of its advantages, it gained him much applause, and made his society dear

alike to young and old, was to himself the source of much humiliation and sorrow. This feeling is conspicuous in his lines, entitled "FAMILY BLOOD: A BURLESQUE;" and many affectionate warnings are preserved among his descendants, dissuading them from the employment of this dangerous talent, should it prove an hereditary possession. He regarded its indulgence (but in his own case overscrupulously,) as often doing violence to the dignity of official deportment, not to say to the soberness of Christian character.

Among many anecdotes illustrative of his powers of repartee, one is perhaps worth recording. He was a federalist of the school of JAY and HAMILTON, whom he supported with more than ordinary zeal, and perhaps not without something of the prejudice which ranked all Jeffersonians with French fatalists and infidels. Taking once a horseback ride between Middletown and Durham, he stopped at a little stream which bounds the two towns, to allow his horse to drink at the same moment a young man drove up hastily on the opposite side, and quite unnecessarily disturbing the water, reined his own horse for the same purpose. Good morning, Mr. Minister," said the stranger. "Good morning, Mr. Democrat," said Mr. CLEVELAND. And pray why do you take me for a democrat?" he rejoined. "Pray why did you take me for a minister?" "Oh, that is plain by your dress." "And that you are a democrat, is plain by your address."

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Beside one or two sermons, Mr. CLEVELAND published nothing but a poem on Slavery, which appeared in 1775, and a few fugitive pieces, chiefly satires on democracy, and some events of the last war. The poem on Slavery is in blank verse, but is argumentative, and didactic to so great a degree as to illustrate very little the poetical powers he exhibited in minor productions. His family are justly proud of it, nevertheless, for the ripe and enlightened views it expresses both of the slave trade and of oppression in general, at a time when the world was asleep to its awful enormity. The two specimens of his muse which we here present, are poems heretofore unpublished, which have been kept as family relics, and are now contributed as a hint of the facility which he possessed in verse. It is to be regretted that he himself put no value on them, and left them evidently without the remotest view to publication; as he did also several other productions, which were long preserved memoriter by a relative since deceased, but which, it is supposed, have expired with him.

"THE PHILOSOPHER AND BOY" is, to say the least, a good poem for a boy-philosopher; and evinces a love of nature, a habit of thinking and mental exercise, a tender heart, and lively descriptive powers. It was to control a child-like sensibility, which he retained through life, that he thus represented himself, both in the boy and the man,