TO THE REV. MR JOHN HOWE.
Great man, permit the muse to climb,
And seat her at thy feet;
Bid her attempt a thought sublime,
And consecrate her wit.
I feel, I feel the attractive force
Of thy superior soul:
My chariot flies her upward course,
The wheels divinely roll.
Now let me chide the mean affairs
And mighty toil of men:
How they grow gray in trifling cares,
Or waste the motion of the spheres
Upon delights as vain!
A puff of honour fills the mind,
And yellow dust is solid good;
Thus, like the ass of savage kind,
We snuff the breezes of the wind,
Or steal the serpent's food.
Could all the choirs
That charm the poles
But strike one doleful sound,
'Twould be employed to mourn our souls,
Souls that were framed of sprightly fires,
In floods of folly drowned.
Souls made for glory seek a brutal joy;
How they disclaim their heavenly birth,
Melt their bright substance down to drossy earth,
And hate to be refined from that impure alloy.
Oft has thy genius roused us hence
With elevated song,
Bid us renounce this world of sense,
Bid us divide the immortal prize
With the seraphic throng:
'Knowledge and love make spirits blest,
Knowledge their food, and love their rest;'
But flesh, the unmanageable beast,
Resists the pity of thine eyes,
And music of thy tongue.
Then let the worms of grovelling mind
Round the short joys of earthly kind
In restless windings roam;
Howe hath an ample orb of soul,
Where shining worlds of knowledge roll,
Where love, the centre and the pole,
Completes the heaven at home.