Wrestling with death, these lines I did indite; No other theme could give my soul delight. Oh that my youth had thus employ'd my pen! 113 Or that I now could write as well as then! But 'tis of grace, if sickness, age, and pain, Are felt as throes, when we are born again; Timely they come to wean us from this earth, As pangs that wait upon a second birth. OF DIVINE POESY. TWO CANTOS. Occasioned upon sight of the 53d chapter of Isaiah turned into verse by Mrs. Wharton CANTO I. Poets we prize, when in their verse we find Some great employment of a worthy mind. Angels have been inquisitive to know The secret which this oracle does show. What was to come, Isaiah did declare, Which she describes as if she had been there; Had seen the wounds, which, to the reader's view, She draws so lively that they bleed anew. As ivy thrives which on the oak takes hold, So, with the prophet's, may her lines grow old! 10 If they should die, who can the world forgive, (Such pious lines!) when wanton Sappho's live? Who with His breath His image did inspire, Expects it should foment a nobler fire; Not love which brutes as well as men may know, But love like His, to whom that breath we owe. Verse so design'd, on that high subject wrote, Is the perfection of an ardent thought; The smoke which we from burning incense raise, 19 When we complete the sacrifice of praise. In boundless verse the fancy soars too high For any object but the Deity. What mortal can with Heaven pretend to share In the superlatives of wise and fair? A meaner subject when with these we grace, A giant's habit on a dwarf we place. Sacred should be the product of our Muse, Like that sweet oil, above all private use, On pain of death forbidden to be made, But when it should be on the altar laid. 30 Verse shows a rich inestimable vein When, dropp'd from heaven, 'tis thither sent again.