Τ Η Ε

BEAUTIES

OF

CO W P E R.

PART I.

PIETY.

a

ARTIST, attend! your brushes and your paint-
Produce them-take a chair-now draw a saint.
O, sorrowful and sad! the streaming tears
Channel her cheeks—a Niobe appears!
Is this a saint? Throw tints and all away-
True piety is cheerful as the day;
Will weep, indeed, and heave a pitying groan,
For others' woes, but smiles upon

NATIONAL

EXPOSTULATION.

STAND now, and judge thyself.--Hast thout

incurr’d His anger, who can waste thee with a word, Who poises and proportions sea and land, Weighing them in the hollow of his hand, And in whose awful sight all nations seem As grasshoppers, as dust, a drop, a dream? Hast thou (a sacrilege his soul abhors) Claim'd all the glory of thy prosp'rous wars? Proud of thy fleets and armies, stoln the gem Of his just praise, to lavish it on them? Hast thou not learn’d, what thou art often told, A truth still sacred, and believ'd of old, That no success attends on spears and swords Unblest, and that the battle is the Lord's ? That courage is his creature, and dismay The post that at his bidding speeds away, Ghastly in feature, and his stamm’ring tongue With doleful humour and sad presage hung,

To quell the valour of the stoutest heart,
And teach the combatant a woman's part?
That he bids thousands fly when none pursue,
Saves as he will, by many or by few,
And claims for ever, as his royal right,
Th' event and sure decision of the fight?

Hast thou, though suckled at fair freedom's breast,
Exported slav'ry to the conquer'd East,
Pulld down the tyrants India serv'd with dread,
And rais'd thyself, a greater, in their stead?
Gone thither arm’d and hungry, return’d full,
Fed from the richest veins of the Mogul,
A despot big with pow'r obtain'd by wealth,
And that obtain'd by rapine and by stealth?
With Asiatic vices stor’d thy mind,
But left their virtucs and thine own behind;
And, having truck'd thy soul, brought home the fee,

the
poor

to sell himself to thee?
Hast thou by statute mov'd from its design
The Saviour's feast, his own blest bread and wine,
And made the symbols of atoning grace,
An office-key, a pick-lock to a place,
That infidels

may

make their title good By air oath dipp'd in sacramental blood ?

To tempt

A blot that will be still a blot, in spite
Of all that grave apologists may write;
And, though a bishop toil to cleanse the stain,
He wipes and scours the silver

сир

in vain. And hast thou sworn, on ev'ry slight pretence, Till perjuries are common as bad pence, While thousands, careless of the damning sin, Kiss the book's outside who ne'er look'd within? Hast thou, when heav'n has cloth'd thee with

disgrace, And, long provok’d, repaid thee-to thy face, (For thou hast known eclipses, and endur'd Dimness and anguish, all thy beams obscur’d, When sin has shed dishonour on thy brow; And never of a sabler hue than now) llast thou, with heart perverse and .conscience

sear'd, Despising all rebuke, still persever'd, And, having chosen evil, scorn’d the voice That cried, Repent!—and gloried in thy choice? Thy fastings, when calamity at last Sugerests th' expedient of a yearly fast, What mean they? Canst thou dream there is a pow'r In lighter diet, at a later hour,