FATHER of all! in every age,
In every clime, adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
Thou Great First Cause, least understood,
Who all my sense confined,
To know but this, that thou art good,
And that myself am blind:
Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill;
And, binding nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.
What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,
This teach me more than hell to shun,
That more than heaven pursue.
What blessings thy free bounty gives
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives:
To enjoy is to obey.
Yet not to earth's contracted span
Thy goodness let me bound,
Or think thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round.
Let not this weak unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land
On each I judge thy foe.
If I am right, thy grace impart
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh! teach my heart
To find that better way.
Save me alike from foolish pride,
Or impious discontent,
At aught thy wisdom has denied,
Or aught thy goodness lent.
Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
Mean though I am, not wholly so,
Since quicken'd by thy breath:
O lead me, wheresoe'er I go,
Through this day's life or death!
This day be bread and peace my lot;
All else beneath the sun
Thou know'st if best bestow'd or not,
And let thy will be done.
To Thee, whose temple is all space;
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies;
One chorus let all being raise!
All nature's incense rise!
His saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani
Munere!
ON CHARLES EARL OF DORSET,
In the Church of Withyam, in Sussex.
DORSET, the grace of courts, the muse's pride,
Patron of arts, and judge of nature, died;
The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great,
Of fops in learning, and of knaves in state;
Yet soft his nature, though severe his lay-
His anger moral, and his wisdom gay.
Bless'd satirist! who touch'd the mean so true,
As show'd vice had his hate and pity too.
Bless'd courtier! who could king and country please,
Yet sacred keep his friendships and his ease.
Bless'd peer! his great forefathers' every grace
Reflecting, and reflected in his race;
Where other Buckhursts, other Dorsets, shine,
And patrons still, or poets, deck the line.
ON SIR WILLIAM TRUMBALL,
One of the Principal Secretaries of State to King William III., who, having resigned his place, died in his retirement at Easthamstead, in Berkshire, 1716.
A PLEASING form, a firm yet cautious mind;
Sincere, though prudent-constant, yet resign'd;
Honour unchanged, a principle profess'd-
Fix'd to one side, but moderate to the rest;
An honest courtier, yet a patriot too-
Just to his prince, and to his country true;
Fill'd with the sense of age, the fire of youth-
A scorn of wrangling, yet a zeal for truth;
A generous faith, from superstition free-
A love to peace, and hate of tyranny:
Such this man was, who now from earth removed,
At length enjoys that liberty he loved.
ON THE HON. SIMON HARCOURT,
Only Son of the Lord Chancellor Harcourt, at the Church of Stanton-Harcourt, in Oxfordshire, 1720.
To this sad shrine, whoe'er thou art, draw near;
Here lies the friend most loved, the son most dear;
Who ne'er knew joy but friendship might divide,
Or gave his father grief but when he died.
How vain his reason, eloquence how weak,
If Pope must tell what Harcourt cannot speak!
Oh! let thy once-loved friend inscribe thy stone,
And with a father's sorrows mix his own!
ON JAMES CRAGGS, ESQ.
In Westminster Abbey.
REGI MAGNE BRITANNIE A SECRETIS
ET CONCILIIS SANCTIORIBUS,
PRINCIPIS PARITER AC POPULI AMOR ET
VIXIT, TITULIS ET INVIDIA MAJOR
ANNOS, HEU PAUCOS, xxxv.
OB. FEB. XVI. MDCCXX.
Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honour clear!
Who broke no promise, served no private end;
Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend:
Ennobled by himself, by all approved;
Praised, wept, and honour'd by the muse he loved.
INTENDED FOR MR. ROWE,
In Westminster Abbey.
THY reliques, Rowe! to this fair urn we trust,
And sacred place by Dryden's awful dust:
Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies,
To which thy tomb shall guide inquiring eyes
Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest!
Bless'd in thy genius, in thy love too bless'd!
One grateful woman to thy fame supplies
What a whole thankless land to his denies.
ON MRS. CORBET,
Who died of a Cancer in her Breast.
HERE rests a woman, good without pretence,
Bless'd with plain reason and with sober sense:
No conquest she but o'er herself desired,
No arts essay'd but not to be admired.
Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,
Convinced that virtue only is our own.
So unaffected, so composed a mind,
So firm yet soft, so strong yet so refined,
Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried;
The saint sustain'd it, but the woman died.
ON THE MONUMENT OF THE
HONOURABLE ROBERT DIGBY,
Erected by their Father the Lord Digby, in the Church of Sherborne in Dorsetshire, 1727.
Go! fair example of untainted youth,
Of modest wisdom and pacific truth:
Composed in sufferings, and in joy sedate;
Good without noise, without pretension great:
Just of thy word, in every thought sincere,
Who knew no wish but what the world might hear:
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