Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day;

Yet see how all around them wait
The ministers of human fate,

And black misfortune's baleful train. Ah! show them where in ambush stand, To seize their prey, the murderous band, Ah! tell them they are men!

These shall the fury passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful anger, pallid fear,

And shame that skulks behind;
Or pining love shall waste their youth,
Or jealousy with rankling tooth,

That inly gnaws the secret heart;
And envy wan, and faded care,
Grim visaged, comfortless despair,

And sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter scorn a sacrifice,

And grinning infamy.

The stings of falsehood, those shall try, And hard unkindness' altered eye,

That mocks the tear it forced to flow; And keen remorse, with blood defiled, And moody madness laughing wild, Amidst severest wo.

Lo, in the vale of years beneath
A grisly troop are seen,
The painful family of death,
More hideous than their queen:
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every labouring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage;
Lo, poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand;
And slow consuming age.

To each his sufferings; all are men,
Condemned alike to groan:

The tender for another's pain,
The unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies ; Thought would destroy their paradiseNo more ;-where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

HYMN TO ADVERSITY.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain,
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan,
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth,

Virtue, his darling child, designed, To thee he gave the heavenly birth,

And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern rugged nurse; thy rigid lore

With patience many a year she bore ;
What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,

And from her own she learnt to melt at others' woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly

Self-pleasing folly's idle brood,

Wild laughter, noise, and thoughtless joy,
And leave us leisure to be good.

Light they disperse, and with them go,

The summer friend, the flattering foe;
By vain prosperity received,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom in sable garb arrayed,

Immersed in rapturous thought profound, And melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye that loves the ground, Still on thy solemn steps attend: Warm charity, the general friend, With justice, to herself severe, And pity, dropping soft the sadly pleasing tear.

Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand! Not in thy gorgon terrors clad,

Not circled with the vengeful band,

As by the impious thou art seen,

With thundering voice, and threatening mien, With screaming horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell disease, and ghastly poverty.

Thy form benign, O goddess wear,

Thy milder influence impart, Thy philosophic train be there,

To soften, not to wound the heart. The generous spark extinct revive, Teach me to love, and to forgive, Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are, to feel, and know myself a man.

JOHNSON.

FROM "THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES:

ON what foundation stands the warrior's pride,
How just his hopes, let Swedish Charles decide;
A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,
No dangers fright him, and no labours tire;
O'er love, o'er fear, extends his wide domain,
Unconquered lord of pleasure and of pain,
No joys to him pacific sceptres yield,
War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field;
Behold surrounding kings their powers combine,
And one capitulate, and one resign;

Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain ;
“Think nothing gained," he cries, "till nought remain,
On Moscow's walls till Gothic standards fly,
And all be mine beneath the polar sky."
The march begins in military state,
And nations on his eye suspended wait;