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Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;

Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.

Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears
The palm, "That all men are about to live,"
For ever on the brink of being born:
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel, and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise;
At least their own; their future selves applaud;
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead!
Time lodged in their own hands is Folly's vails;
That lodged in Fate's to wisdom they consign;

L

The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone.

'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool,

And scarce in human wisdom to do more.

All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage; when young, indeed,
In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish

As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.

At thirty man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves and re-resolves; then dies the same.

And why? because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal but themselves;
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread:
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close; where past the shaft no trace is found,
As from the wing no scar the sky retains,
The parted wave no furrow from the keel,
So dies in human hearts the thought of death:
E'en with the tender tear which nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.

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HE omnipresent Spirit perceives all but an infinite number of actions taking place together throughout the different regions of His empire. And by the end of the hour which has just begun, a greater number of operations will have been performed, which at this moment have not been performed, than the collective sum of all that has been done in this world since its creation. The hour just now begun may be exactly the period for finishing some great plan, or concluding some great dispensation, which thousands of years or ages have been advancing to its accomplishment. This may be the very hour in which a new world shall originate, or an ancient one sink in ruins. At this hour, such changes and phenomena may be displayed in some parts of the universe, as were never presented to the astonishment of the most ancient created minds. At this very hour the inhabitants of some remote orb may be roused by signs analogous to those which we anticipate to precede the final judgment, and in order to prepare them for such an event. This hour may somewhere begin or conclude mightier contests than Milton was able to imagine, and contests producing a more stupendous result; contests, in comparison of which those which shake Europe are more diminutive than those of the meanest insects. At this very hour thousands of amazing enterprises may be undertaken, and by the end of it a progress made, which to

us would have seemed to require ages. At this hour wise intelligences may terminate long and patient pursuits of knowledge in such discoveries as shall give a new science to their race. At this hour a whole race of improved and virtuous beings may be elevated to a higher station in the great system of beings. At this hour some new mode of Divine operation, some new law of Nature, which was not required before, may be introduced into the first trial of its action. At this hour the most strange suspensions of regular laws may take place at the will of Him that appointed them, for the sake of commanding a solemn attention, and confirming some Divine communication by miracles. At this hour the inhabitants of the creation are most certainly performing more actions than any faculty of mind, less than infinite, can observe or remember. All this, and incomparably more than all this, a philosopher and a Christian would delight to imagine. And all that he can imagine in the widest stretch of thought, is as nothing in comparison with what most certainly takes place in so vast a universe every hour, and will take place this very hour in which these faint conjectures are indulged.

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BE

(Gray.)

ENEATH those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees, the envied kiss to share.

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