(PRINTED IN THE NORTHAMPTON MERCURY.")
To purify their wine some people bleed
A lamb into the barrel, and succeed;
No nostrum, planters say, is half so good
To make fine sugar as a negro's blood.
Now lambs and negroes both are harmless things,
And thence perhaps this wondrous virtue springs.
'Tis in the blood of innocence alone-
Good cause why planters never try their own.
FOR THE USE OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AT OLNEY.
SUBJOINED TO THE YEARLY BILL OF MORTALITY OF THE PARISH OF
ALL SAINTS, NORTHAMPTON;
Pallida Mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
Regumque turres.-HORACE.
Pale Death with equal foot strikes wide the door
Of royal halls and hovels of the poor.
WHILE thirteen moons saw smoothly run
The Nen's barge-laden wave,
All these, life's rambling journey done,
Have found their home, the grave.
Was man (frail always) made more frail
Than in foregoing years?
Did famine or did plague prevail,
That so much death appears?
No these were vigorous as their sires,
Nor plague nor famine came;
This annual tribute Death requires,
And never waives his claim.
COULD I, from heaven inspired, as sure presage
To whom the rising year shall prove his last,
As I can number in my punctual page,
And item down the victims of the past;
How each would trembling wait the mournful sheet,
On which the press might stamp him next to die;
And reading here his sentence, how replete
With anxious meaning, heavenward turn his eye!
Time then would seem more precious than the joys
In which he sports away the treasure now;
And prayer more seasonable than the noise
Of drunkards, or the music-drawing bow.
Then doubtless many a trifler, on the brink
Of this world's hazardous and headlong shore,
Forced to a pause, would feel it good to think,
Told that his setting sun must rise no more.
Ah, self-deceived! Could I, prophetic, say
Who next is fated, and who next to fall,
The rest might then seem privileged to play ;
But naming none, the Voice now speaks to ALL
Observe the dappled foresters, how light
They bound, and airy, o'er the sunny glade-
One falls-the rest, wide-scattered with affright,
Vanish at once into the darkest shade.
Had we their wisdom, should we, often warned,
Still need repeated warnings, and at last,
A thousand awful admonitions scorned,
Die self-accused of life run all to waste?
Sad waste! for which no after-thrift atones :
The grave admits no cure for guilt or sin;
Dewdrops may deck the turf that hides the bones,
But tears of godly grief ne'er flow within.
Learn then, ye living! by the mouths be taught
Of all these sepulchres, instructors true,
That, soon or late, death also is your lot,
And the next opening grave may yawn for you.
Placidaque ibi demum morte quievit.-VIRGIL.
There calm at length he breathed his soul away.
"O MOST delightful hour by inan
Experienced here below,
The hour that terminates his span,
His folly, and his woe!
"Worlds should not bribe me back to tread
Again life's dreary waste,
To see again my day o'erspread
With all the gloomy past.
"My home henceforth is in the skies-
Earth, seas, and sun adieu !
All heaven unfolded to my eyes,
I have no sight for you.'
So spake Aspasio, firm possessed
Of faith's supporting rod,
Then breathed his soul into its rest,
The bosom of his God.
He was a man among the few Sincere on virtue's side;
And all his strength from Scripture drew,
To hourly use applied.
That rule he prized, by that he feared,
He hated, hoped, and loved;
Nor ever frowned, or sad appeared,
But when his heart had roved.
For he was frail as thou or I,
And evil felt within:
But when he felt it, heaved a sigh,
And loathed the thought of sin.
Such lived Aspasio; and at last,
Galled up from earth to heaven, The gulf of death triumphant passed, By gales of blessing driven.
"His joys be mine," each reader cries, "When my last hour arrives!" "They shall be yours," my Verse replies, "Such only be your lives."
Ne commonentem recta sperne.-BUCHANAN,
Despise not my good counsel.
HE who sits from day to day
Where the prisoned lark is hung,
Heedless of his loudest lay,
Hardly knows that he has sung.
Where the watchman in his round
Nightly lifts his voice on high, None, accustomed to the sound, Wakes the sooner for his cry.
So your verse-man I, and clerk,
Yearly in my song proclaim
Death at hand-yourselves his mark—
And the foe's unerring aim.
Duly at my time I come,
Publishing to all aloud-
Soon the grave must be your home,
And your only suit a shroud.
But the monitory strain,
Oft repeated in your ears,
Seems to sound too much in vain,
Wins no notice, wakes no fears.
Can a truth, by all confessed
Of such magnitude and weight,
Grow, by being oft expressed,
Trivial as a parrot's prate?
Pleasure's call attention wins,
Hear it often as we may;
New as ever seem our sins,
Though committed every day.
Death and Judgment, Heaven and
Hell
These alone, so often heard,
No more move us than the bell
When some stranger is interred.
Oh then, ere the turf or tomb
Cover us from every eye,
Spirit of instruction! come
Make us learn that we must die.
Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!-VIRG.
Happy the mortal who has traced effects
To their first cause, cast fear beneath his feet,
And death, and roaring hell's voracious fires!
THANKLESS for favours from on high,
Man thinks he fades too soon;
Though 'tis his privilege to die,
Would he improve the boon.
But he, not wise enough to scan
His best concerns aright,
Would gladly stretch life's little span
To ages, if he might.
To ages in a world of pain,
To ages, where he goes
Galled by affliction's heavy chain,
And hopeless of repose.
Strange fondness of the human heart,
Enamoured of its harm!
Strange world, that costs it so much
And still has power to charm.
De sacris autem hæc sit una sententia, ut conserventur.-Cic. de Leg.
But let us all concur in this one sentiment, that things sacred be inviolate.
|