are!
Sure spirit and eternity
Far richer glories share;

Let those our hearts impress, on those
Our contemplation dwell;
On those my thoughts how justly thrown,
By what I now shall tell:

When backward with attentive mind
Life's labyrinth I trace,
I find him far myself beyond
Propitious to my peace:

Through all the crooked paths I trod,
My folly he pursued;
My heart astray to quick return
Importunately woo'd;

Due resignation home to press
On my capricious will,
How many rescues did I meet,
Beneath the mask of ill!

How many foes in ambush laid
Beneath my soul's desire!
The deepest penitents are made
By what we most admire.

Have I not sometimes (real good
So little mortals know!)
Mounting the summit of my wish,
Profoundly plung'd in woe?

I rarely plann'd, but cause I found
My plan's defeat to bless:
Oft I lamented an event;
It turn'd to my success.

By sharpen'd appetite to give
To good intense delight,
Through dark and deep perplexities
He led me to the right.

And is not this the gloomy path,
Which you are treading now?
The path most gloomy leads to light,
When our proud passions bow:

When labouring under fancied ill,
My spirits to sustain,
He kindly cur'd with sovereign draughts
Of unimagin'd pain.

Pain'd sense from fancied tyranny
Alone can set us free;
A thousand miseries we feel,
Till sunk in misery.

Cloy'd with a glut of all we wish,
Our wish we relish less;
Success, a sort of suicide,
Is ruin'd by success:

Sometimes he led me near to death,
And, pointing to the grave,
Bid terror whisper kind advice;
And taught the tomb to save:

To raise my thoughts beyond where worlds
As spangles o'er us shine,
One day he gave, and bid the next
My soul's delight resign.

We to ourselves, but through the means
Of mirrors, are unknown;
In this my fate can you descry
No features of your own?

And if you can, let that excuse
These self-recording lines;
A record, modesty forbids,
Or to small bound confines:

In grief why deep ingulf'd? You see
You suffer nothing rare;
Uncommon grief for common fate!
That wisdom cannot bear.

When streams flow backward to their source,
And humbled flames descend,
And mountains wing'd shall fly aloft,
Then human sorrows en