MORAL

AND

MISCELLANEOUS SONGS.

I.

VIRTUE.

BY J. OAKMAN.

1

YE virgins and youths of the plain,
So innocent, happy and gay,
I mean not your sports to restrain,
Yet listen awhile to my lay;
'Tis Virtue that lifts up the song,
"Tis she ev'ry joy can improve,
To her all the graces belong,
And all the fond raptures of love.

2

The streamlet, the mead and the bow'r, With all the kind blessings of spring, More charming are made by her power, For sweetness still drops from her wing. 'Tis Virtue that banishes care,

From her you must happiness claim, She your worth to the world will declare, And crown you with honour and fame.

II.

JUSTICE.

BY THOMAS SCOTT.

1

FORBID it, Heav'n, that e'er I eat The bread of craftiness and wrong, A curse would poison all my meat, As fatal as the viper's tongue.

2

I ne'er will raise a poor man's sigh,
His hire shall never swell my store;
I dread the poor man's plaintive cry,
I fear the Father of the Poor.

3

If I in darkness (base misdeed!)

Assassinate my neighbour's fame;

By me if innocency bleed,

Cancel from earth my

4

hated name.

Ah! no; let me with strong delight
To all the tax of duty pay;
Tender of ev'ry social right,

Revering thy all-righteous sway.

Such virtue thou wilt ne'er forget,

In worlds where ev'ry virtue shares High recompence; tho' not of debt, But which thy bounteous grace prepares.

III.

ADVERSITY.

BY THOMAS SCOTT.

1

How high our sanguine hopes we raise!
How hotly our desires pursue
What fancy's magic glass displays
Enlarg'd and tempting to the view!

These mortal objects of our love

Too closely twine about our heart, Seduce our souls from things above, And hardly leave to God a part.

2

O bitter change! when Heav'n's kind hand Snatches the fatal joy away,

Our feeble reason scarce can stand

Firm in affliction's stormy day.

L

We weep, we laugh, in mad extreme;
Here, all delight; all sadness there:
Now on the mount of bliss we seem,
Now in the quagmire of despair.

3

Stoics, who on your strength presume,
Could all your toiling wisdom find
A light to cheer affliction's gloom,
A balsam for the wounded mind?

In vain you hail him good and great,
Whose stedfast soul no ills can move;

Boast him impregnable to fate,

And equal to your mighty Jove.

4

Vain world, whose scenes of bliss and woe Are shifting every fleeting hour;

No longer shall our spirits owe

Their peace, or trouble, to thy pow'r.

Teach us, thou Comforter divine,

Contentment; should our all be

Teach us submission meek as thine,

gone:

"Father, thy will, not mine be done."

IV.

DISAPPOINTMENT.

BY HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

1

Come, Disappointment, come!
Not in thy terrors clad ;

Come in thy meekest, saddest guise;
Thy chastening rod but terrifies

The restless and the bad.

But I recline

Beneath thy shrine,

And round my brow resign'd, thy peaceful cypress twine.

2

Tho' Fancy flies away

Before thy hollow tread,

Yet Meditation in her cell,

Hears, with faint eye, the ling'ring knell,
That tells her hopes are dead;

And tho' the tear

By chance appear,

Yet who can smile and say, my all was not

laid here.