FROM THE COUNTRY JUSTICE GENERAL MOTIVES FOR LENITY Be this, ye rural Magistrates, your plan: Firm be your justice, but be friends to man. He whom the mighty master of this ball We fondly deem, or farcically call, To own the patriarch's truth however loth, Holds but a mansion crushed before the moth. Frail in his genius, in his heart, too, frail, Born but to err, and erring to bewail; Shalt thou his faults with eye severe explore, And give to life one human weakness more? Still mark if vice or nature prompts the deed; Still mark the strong temptation and the need; On pressing want, on famine's powerful call, At least more lenient let thy justice fall. APOLOGY FOR VAGRANTS For him who, lost to every hope of life, Has long with fortune held unequal strife, Known, to no human love, no human care, The friendless, homeless object of despair; For the poor vagrant, feel while he complains, Nor from sad freedom send to sadder chains. Alike, if folly or misfortune brought Those last of woes his evil days have wrought; Believe with social mercy and with me, Folly's misfortune in the first degree. Perhaps on some inhospitable shore The houseless wretch a widowed parent bore, Who, then no more by golden prospects led, Of the poor Indian begged a leafy bed; Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain, Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery, baptized in tears! * * * * * AUGUSTUS MONTAGU TOPLADY ROCK OF AGES Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee! Let the water and the blood From Thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Cleanse me from its guilt and power. Not the labors of my hands Can fulfil Thy law's demands; Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow, All for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and Thou alone. Nothing in my hand I bring; Simply to Thy cross I cling; Naked, come to Thee for dress; Helpless, look to Thee for grace; Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me, Saviour, or I die! While I draw this fleeting breath, When my eyestrings break in death, When I soar through tracts unknown, See Thee on Thy judgment-throne; Book of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee! * * * * * JOHN SKINNER TULLOCHGORUM Come gie's a sang! Montgomery cried, And lay your disputes all aside; What signifies 't for folk to chide For what's been done before 'em? Let Whig and Tory all agree, Whig and Tory, Whig and Tory, Let Whig and Tory all agree To drop their Whig-mig-morum! Let Whig and Tory all agree To spend the night in mirth and glee, And cheerfu' sing, alang wi' me, The reel o' Tullochgorum!