Of what it holds could speak, and every grave

Were as a volume, shut, yet capable

Of yielding its contents to eye and ear,

We should recoil, stricken with sorrow and shame,

To see disclosed, by such dread proof, how ill

That which is done accords with what is known

To reason, and by conscience is enjoined;

How idly, how perversely, life's whole course,

To this conclusion, deviates from the line,

Or of the end stops short, proposed to all