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Lettered inside image: "88 | And sacrilegious our sublimest song: | But since the naked will obtains thy smile, | Beneath this monument of praise unpaid, | And future life symphonious to my strain, | That noblest hymn to heaven! for ever lie | Intomb'd my fear of death! and every fear, | The dread of every evil, but thy frown. | Whom see I yonder, so demurely smile? | Laughter a labour, and might break their rest. | Ye quietists, in homage to the skies! | Serene! of soft address! who mildly made | An unobtrusive tender of your hearts, | Abhorring violence! who halt indeed, | *But for the blessing wrestle not with heaven! | Think you my song too turbulent? too warm? | Are passions then the pagans of the soul? | Reason alone baptized--alone ordain'd | To touch things sacred?--oh for warmer still! | Guilt chills my zeal, and age benumbs my powers; | Oh for an humbler heart, and prouder song! | THOU! my much-injured theme! with that soft eye | Which melted o'er doom'd Salem, deign to look | Compassion to the coldness of my breast; | And pardon to the winter in my strain! | Oh ye cold-hearted, frozen formalists! | On such a theme 'tis impious to be calm; | Passion is reason, transport temper, here. | Shall heaven, which gave us ardour, and has shewn | Her own for man so strongly, not disdain | What smooth emollients in theology,"; center right: "in & s | WB"; lower left: "Pubd. June 1st. 1797, by R. Edwards, No. 142 New Bond Street"; Lettered on facing page: "89 | Recumbent virtue's downy doctors preach, | That prose of piety, a lukewarm praise? | Rise odours sweet from incense uninflamed? | Devotion, when lukewarm, is undevout; | But when it glows, its heat is struck to heaven; | To human hearts her golden harps are strung; | High heaven's orchestra chaunts amen to man. | Hear I, or dream I hear their distant strain, | Sweet to the soul and tasting strong of heaven; | Soft-wafted on celestial pity's plume | Through the vast spaces of the universe, | To cheer me in this melancholy gloom? | Oh when will death, now stingless, like a friend | Admit me of their choir? oh when will death | This mouldering old partition-wall throw down-- | Give beings, one in nature, one abode? | Oh death divine! that givest us to the skies! | Great future! glorious patron of the past | And present! when shall I thy shrine adore? | From nature's continent immensely wide, | Immensely blest; this little isle of life, | This dark incarcerating colony | Divides us: happy day! that breaks our chain; | That manumits, that calls from exile home; | That leads to nature's great metropolis, | And re-admits us, through the guardian hand | Of elder brothers to our father's throne; | Who hears our advocate, and, through his wounds | Beholding man, allows that tender name! | 'Tis this makes christian triumph a command:"