What sounds are these! What energy divine, What master-strokes in every precept shine! While from thy lips the warm expression breaks, What heart but melteth as the preacher speaks! Thy voice is nature, and thy diction clear, It strikes like music on the listening ear. —“Vain foolish man to murmur at thy fate, The bounteous hand of heaven still leaves thee great; Still makes thee first of beings here below, Still gives thee more of happiness than woe. To lazy indolence this world may seem A barron wilderness; an idle dream; Thistles and brambles to the slothful eye, But roses to the hand of industry. ’Tis sordid avaries, with her sneaking train, Ambition, who torments herself in vain, Th’ unnumbered lusts that prey upon the mind, Fix the primeval curse on human kind. By their brow’s sweat their bread the labourers earn, But then no passions in their bosoms burn: Soon as the evening shade the day-light close, Unbroken slumbers crown their soft repose; And when the morning dawn salutes their eyes, Anteus-like, with double vigour rise. No stings of conscience! no remorse from sin! They feel the noblest paradise within; Content serene, that sunshine of the soul, With her warm beam invigorates the whole; Her blossom, health! her fruit, untainted joy! Nor pain nor death her relish can destroy; In unpolluted streams her pleasures flow, No weedy passions in her bosom grow.” —Thus faintly have I sketch’d thy glorious plan; Which fills, improves, adorns the inward man. Still urge thy generous task, to cleanse the mind, Till from the dregs of passion ’tis refin’d; To prune each vice, each folly of the age, Each wild excrescence of this earthly stage. Tho’ old in goodness, to the world resign’d, Still want thy heaven to give it to mankind. Religion’s friend! and virtue’s strongest guard! That heaven alone such merit can reward, Its joys approach no tongue but thine can tell; Doubt not to taste what thou describ’st so well.