Free and familiar with misfortune grow,
Be us'd to sorrow, and inur'd to woe;
By weakening toil and hoary age o'ercome,
See thy decrease, and hasten to thy tomb;
Leave to thy children tumult, strife, and war,
Portions of toil, and legacies of care;
Send the successive ills through ages down,
And let each weeping father tell his son,
That deeper struck, and more distinctly griev'd,
He must augment the sorrows he receiv'd.
"The child to whose success thy hope is bound, Ere thou art scarce interr'd, or he is crown'd, To lust of arbitrary sway inclin'd,
(That cursed poison to the prince's mind!)
Shall from thy dictates and his duty rove,
And lose his great defence, his people's love;
Ill-counsell'd, vanquish'd, fugitive, disgrac❜d,
Shall mourn the fame of Jacob's strength effac'd;
Shall sigh the king diminish'd, and the crown
With lessen'd rays descending to his son;
Shall see the wreaths, his grandsire knew to reap
By active toil and military sweat,
Pining, incline their sickly leaves, and shed
Their falling honours from his giddy head;
By arms or prayer unable to assuage
Domestic horrour and intestine rage,
Shall from the victor and the vanquish'd fear,
and from Judah's spear;
Shall cast his weary'd limbs on Jordan's flood,
By brother's arms disturb'd, and stain'd with
"Hence labouring years shall weep their destin'd
Charg'd with ill omens, sully'd with disgrace.
Time, by necessity compell'd, shall go
Through scenes of war, and epochas of woe.
The empire, lessen'd in a parted stream,
Shall lose its course-
Indulge thy tears: the Heathen shall blaspheme;
Judah shall fall, oppress'd by grief and shame,
And men shall from her ruins know her fame.
"New Egypts yet and second bonds remain,
A harsher Pharaoh, and a heavier chain.
Again, obedient to a dire command,
Thy captive sons shall leave the promis'd land.
Their name more low, their servitude more vile,
Shall on Euphrates' bank renew the grief of Nile.
"These pointed spires, that wound the ambient
(Inglorious change!) shall in destruction lie
Low, levell'd with the dust; their heights unknown
Or measur'd by their ruin. Yonder throne,
For lasting glory built, design'd the seat
Of kings for ever blest, for ever great,
Remov'd by the invader's barbarous hand,
Shall grace his triumph in a foreign land.
The tyrant shall demand yon sacred load
Of gold, and vessels set apart to God,
Then, by vile hands to common use debas'd,
Shall send them flowing round his drunken feast,
With sacrilegious taunt, and impious jest.
"Twice fourteen ages shall their way complete; Empires by various turns shall rise and set;
While thy abandon'd tribes shall only know
A different master, and a change of woe,
With down-cast eye-lids, and with looks aghast,
Shall dread the future, or bewail the past.
"Afflicted Israel shall sit weeping down,
Fast by the stream where Babel's waters run;
Their harps upon the neighbouring willows hung,
Nor joyous hymn encouraging their tongue,
Nor cheerful dance their feet; with toil oppress'd,
Their weary'd limbs aspiring but to rest.
In the reflective stream the sighing bride,
Viewing her charms impair'd, abash'd, shall hide
Her pensive head; and in her languid face
The bridegroom shall foresee his sickly race,
While ponderous fetters vex their close embrace.
With irksome anguish then your priests shall mourn
Their long-neglected feasts' despair'd return,
And sad oblivion of their solemn days.
Thenceforth their voices they shall only raise,
Louder to weep. By day, your frighted seers
Shall call for fountains to express their tears,
And wish their eyes were floods; by night, from dreams
Of opening gulphs, black storms, and raging flames, Starting amaz'd, shall to the people show
Emblems of heavenly wrath, and mystic types of woe.
"The captives, as their tyrant shall require [lyre, That they should breathe the song, and touch the Shall say: Can Jacob's servile race rejoice, Untun'd the music, and disus'd the voice? What can we plav,' (they shall discourse,) how sing In foreign lands, and to a barbarous king?
We and our fathers, from our childhood bred
To watch the cruel victor's eye, to dread
The arbitrary lash, to bend, to grieve,
(Out-cast of mortal race!) can we conceive
Image of aught delightful, soft, or gay?
Alas! when we have toil'd the longsome day,
The fullest bliss our hearts aspire to know
Is but some interval from active woe,
In broken rest and startling sleep to mourn,
Till morn, the tyrant, and the scourge, return.
Bred up in grief, can pleasure be our theme?
Our endless anguish does not Nature claim!
Reason and sorrow are to us the same.
Alas! with wild amazement we require,
If idle Folly was not Pleasure's fire?
Madness, we fancy, gave an ill-tim❜d birth
To grinning Laughter, and to frantic Mirth.'
"This is the series of perpetual woe,
Which thou, alas! and thine, are born to know.
Illustrious wretch! repine not, nor reply:
View not what Heaven ordains with Reason's eye,
Too bright the object is; the distance is too high.
The man, who would resolve the work of Fate,
May limit number, and make crooked straight:
Stop thy inquiry then, and curb thy sense,
Nor let dust argue with Omnipotence.
'Tis God who must dispose, and man sustain,
Born to endure, forbidden to complain.
Thy sum of life must his decrees fulfil;
What derogates from his command, is ill;
And that alone is good which centres in his will
“Yet, that thy labouring senses may not droop, Lost to delight, and destitute of hope,
Remark what I, GOD's messenger, aver
From him, who neither can deceive nor err.
The land, at length redeem'd, shall cease to mourn, Shall from her sad captivity return.
Sion shall raise her long-dejected head,
And in her courts the law again be read.
Again the glorious temple shall arise,
And with new lustre pierce the neighbouring skies.
The promis'd seat of empire shall again
Cover the mountain, and command the plain;
And, from thy race distinguish'd, one shall spring,
Greater in act than victor, more than king
In dignity and power, sent down from heaven,
To succour Earth. To him, To him, 'tis given,
Passion, and care, and anguish, to destroy.
Through him, soft peace, and plenitude of joy,
Perpetual o'er the world redeem'd shall flow;
No more may man inquire, nor angel know.
"Now, Solomon! remembering who thou art,
Act through thy remnant life the decent part.
Go forth be strong: with patience and with care
Perform, and suffer: to thyself severe,
Gracious to others, thy desires suppress'd,
Diffus'd thy virtues; first of men! be best.
Thy sum of duty let two words contain;
(0 may they graven in thy heart remain !)
Be humble, and be just." The angel said :-
With upward speed his agile wings he spread;
Whilst on the holy ground I prostrate lay,
By various doubts impell'd, or to obey,
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