YOUNG MEN AND MAIDENS, OLD MEN AND BABES, PRAISE YE THE LORD. Psalm cxlviii. 12. SONS of Adam, bold and young, And wields your active limbs, with hardy sinews [strung; Whence your precarious powers depend; Nor swell as if your lives were all your own, But choose your Maker for your friend; His favour is your life, his arm is your support, His hand can stretch your days, or cut your minutes short. Virgins, who roll your artful eyes, And melts our reason down to sense; That heavenly Bridegroom claims your blooming To please that Everlasting Fair! [hours; His beauties are the sun, and but the shade is yours. Infants, whose different destinies Are wove with threads of different size; But from the same spring-tide of tears, Commence your hopes, and joys, and fears, (A tedious train ;) and date your following years: Break your first silence in his praise Who wrought your wondrous frame : With sounds of tenderest accent raise Young honours to his name; And consecrate your early days To know the Power Supreme. Ye heads of venerable age, Just marching off the mortal stage; Fathers, whose vital threads are spun As long as e'er the glass of life would run; Adore the hand that led your way Through flowery fields a fair long summer's day; Gasp out your soul in praises to the Sovereign Pow'r That set your west so distant from your dawning hour. FLYING FOWL, AND CREEPING THINGS, PRAISE YE THE LORD. Psalm cxlviii. 10. SWEET flocks, whose soft enamel'd wing Whose charming notes address the Spring Lovely minstrels of the field, Who in leafy shadows sit, And your wondrous structures build, Awake your tuneful voices with the dawning light; To Nature's Gov your first devotions pay, Ere you salute the rising day, 'Tis he calls up the sun, and gives him every ray. Serpents, who o'er the meadows slide, Which thousand mingling colours make; In harmless play twist and unfold Insects and mites, of mean degree, Praise him that wears the' ethereal crown, THE COMPARISON AND COMPLAINT. INFINITE power, eternal Lord, How sovereign is thy hand! All nature rose to' obey thy word, With steady course thy shining sun But ah! how wide my spirit flies, The raging fire, and stormy sea, While my wild passions rage within, Shall creatures of a meaner frame Great God! create my soul anew, Seize my whole frame into thy hand; Here all my powers I bring; Manage the wheels by thy command, govern every spring. Then shall my feet no more depart, Then not the sun shall more than I His Maker's law perform, Nor with a zeal so warm. GOD SUPREME AND SELF-SUFFICIENT. WHAT is our God, or what his name, The spacious worlds of heavenly light, He spoke the wondrous word, and lo ! There rests the earth, there roll the spheres, The weight of his own glories up. |