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Let not this weak unknowing hand

Presume thy bolts to throw,

And deal damnation round the land

On each I judge thy foe.

If I am right, thy grace impart,

Still in the right to stay;

If I am wrong, O teach

my heart

To find that better way.

Save me alike from foolish pride,

Or impious discontent,

At aught thy wisdom has deny'd,
Or aught thy goodness lent.

Teach me to feel another's woe,

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Mean tho' I am, not wholly so,

Since quicken'd by thy breath :

Oh lead me wheresoe'er I go,

Thro' this day's life or death.

This day, be bread and peace my lot:

All else beneath the sun,

Thou know'st if best bestow'd or not,

And let thy will be done.

To thee, whose temple is all space,
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies!

One chorus let all being raise;

All nature's incense rise!

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VITAL

ITAL spark of heav'nly flame,

Quit, O quit this mortal frame:

Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,

O the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife,

And let me languish into life.

Hark! they whisper; angels say,

Sister spirit, come away.

What is this absorbs me quite?

Steals my senses, shuts

my sight,

Drowns my spirit, draws my breath?
Tell me, my Soul, can this be death?

The world recedes; it disappears!

Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:

Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!

O grave! where is thy victory?

O death! where is thy sting?

NOTES.

ESSAY ON MAN, EP. I.

P. 10. A wild---or garden.] The wild relates to the human passions, productive (as he explains in the second epistle) both of good and evil. The garden, to human reason, so often tempting us to transgress the bounds God has set to it, and wander in fruitless enquiries.

P. 10. Of all who blindly creep, &c.] i. e. Those who only follow the blind guidance of their passions; or those who leave behind them common sense and sober reason, in their high flights through the regions of metaphysics.

P. 10. Laugh where we must, &c.] Intimating that human follies are so strangly absurd, that it is not in the power of the most compassion. ite, on some occasions, to restrain their mirth: and that human crimes are so flagitious, that the most candid have seldom an opportunity, on this subject, to exercise their virtue.

P. 11. The strong connexions, nice dependencies.] The thought is very noble, and expressed with great philosophic beauty and exactness. The system of the universe is a combination of natural and moral fitnesses, as the human system is, of body and spirit. By the strong connexions, therefore, the poet alludes to the natural part, and by the nice dependencies to the moral. For the Essay on Man is not a system of naturalism, but of natural religion. Hence it is, that, where he supposes disorders may tend to some greater good in the natural world,

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