His joys be mine, each Reader cries,

When my last hour arrives:

They shall be yours, my Verse replies,

Such only be your lives.

He who fits from day to day,
Where the prisoned lark is hung,
Heedlefs of his loudeft lay,

Hardly knows that he has fung.

Where the watchman in his round
Nightly lifts his voice on high,
None, accuftomed to the found,
Wakes the fooner for his cry.

BUCHANAN.

So your verfe-man I, and clerk,

Yearly in my fong proclaim

Death at hand-yourselves his mark

And the foe's unerring aim.

Duly at my time I come,

Publishing to all aloud

Soon the grave must be your home,
And your only fuit, a shroud.

But the monitory ftrain,

Oft repeated in your ears,
Seems to found too much in vain,
Wins no notice, wakes no fears.

Can a truth, by all confeffed

Of fuch magnitude and weight, Grow, by being oft expreffed, Trivial as a parrot's prate?

Pleafure's call attention wins,

Hear it often as we may;

New as ever feem our fins,

Though committed every day.

Death and Judgment, Heaven and Hell

These alone, so often heard,

No more move us than the bell

When fome ftranger is interred.

Oh then, ere the turf or tomb
Cover us from every eye,

Spirit of inftruction come,

Make us learn that we muft die.

ON A SIMILAR OCCASION,

FOR THE YEAR 1792.

Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!

VIRG.

Happy the mortal, who has traced effects
To their firft caufe, caft fear beneath his feet,
And Death, and roaring Hell's voracious fires!

THANKLESS for favours from on high,
Man thinks he fades too foon;

Though 'tis his privilege to die,

Would he improve the boon..

But he, not wife enough to fcan
His beft concerns aright,

Would gladly ftretch life's little span
To ages, if he might.

To ages in a world of pain,

To ages, where he goes

Galled by affliction's heavy chain,

And hopeless of repofe.

Strange fondness of the human heart,

Enamoured of its harm!

Strange world, that cofts it so much smart, And ftill has power to charm.

Whence has the world her magic power?

Why deem we death a foe?

Recoil from weary life's beft hour,

And covet longer woe?

The caufe is Confcience-Confcience oft

Her tale of guilt renews:

Her voice is terrible though soft,
And dread of death enfues.

Then anxious to be longer fpared
Man mourns his fleeting breath :
All evils then feem light, compared

With the approach of Death.