THE

COURSE OF TIME.

BOOK III.

BEHOLD'ST thou yonder, on the crystal sea, Beneath the throne of God, an image fair, And in its hand a mirror large and bright!'Tis truth, immutable, eternal truth,

In figure emblematical expressed.

Before it Virtue stands, and smiling sees, Well pleased, in her reflected soul, no spot. The sons of heaven, archangel, seraph, saint, There daily read their own essential worth; And as they read, take place among the just; Or high, or low, each as his value seems.

There each his certain interest learns, his true

Capacity; and going thence, pursues,

Unerringly thro' all the tracts of thought,
As God ordains, best ends by wisest means.

The Bible held this mirror's place on earth: But, few would read, or, reading, saw themselves. The chase was after shadows, phantoms strange, That in the twilight walked of Time, and mocked The eager hunt, escaping evermore ;

Yet with so many promises and looks

Of gentle sort, that he whose arms returned Empty a thousand times, still stretched them out, And grasping, brought them back again unfilled.

In rapid outline thou hast heard of man ; His death; his offered life; that life by most Despised; the Star of God-the Bible, scorned, That else to happiness and heaven had led, And saved my lyre from narrative of wo.

Hear now more largely of the ways of Time; The fond pursuits and vanities of men.

Love God, love truth, love virtue, and be

happy :

These were the words first uttered in the ear
Of every being rational made, and made
For thought, or word, or deed accountable.
Most men the first forgot, the second none.
Whatever path they took, by hill or vale,
By night or day, the universal wish,

The aim, and sole intent, was happiness :

But, erring from the heaven-appointed path, Strange tracks indeed they took through barren

wastes,

And up the sandy mountain climbing toiled,
Which pining lay beneath the curse of God,

And nought produced: yet did the traveller look,
And point his eye before him greedily,

As if he saw some verdant spot, where grew

The heavenly flower, where sprung the well

of life,

Where undisturbed felicity reposed;

Though Wisdom's eye no vestige could discern, That happiness had ever passed that way.

Wisdom was right: for still the terms remained Unchanged, unchangeable; the terms on which True peace was given to man; unchanged as God, Who, in his own essential nature, binds Eternally to virtue happiness;

Nor lets them part through all his Universe.

Philosophy, as thou shalt hear, when she Shall have her praise-her praise and censure too, Did much, refining and exalting man ;

But could not nurse a single plant that bore True happiness. From age to age she toiled;

Shed from her eyes the mist that dimmed them

still;

Looked forth on man; explored the wild and

tame,

The savage and polite, the sea and land,

And starry heavens; and then retired far back To meditation's silent shady seat;

.And there sat pale, and thoughtfully, and weighed With wary, most exact and scrupulous care, Man's nature, passions, hopes, propensities,

Relations and pursuits, in reason's scale ;

And searched and weighed, and weighed and searched again,

And many a fair and goodly volume wrote,

That seemed well worded too, wherein were found Uncountable receipts, pretending each,

If carefully attended to, to cure

Mankind of folly;-to root out the briers

And thorns, and weeds that choked the growth

of joy ;

And showing too, in plain and decent phrase,

Which sounded much like wisdom's, how to plant,