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y, and breathe its vows Again to idols, yet reject Thou not This present offering. Let thy Grace surround My steps as with a muniment of rocks, And guide me in the uneven paths of life, A pilgrim shielded by thy hollow hand. And as the grateful earth sends up all day Her exhalations through the bibulous air To the sun, her monarch; and receives them back Rich, soft, and fertile, in the still small shower, That falls invisible from the morning's womb: So may my fervent heart exhale to Thee Daily, the breathings of its thankful prayer. And praise spontaneous; which thy heavenly grace Shall render back in a perpetual dew Of benedictions, making all the waste Green with cool verdure. Oh! the time hath been, When thy benighted children lost the creed Of thy true worship, and to brutes bowed down, And senseless stones, and, kneeling in sincere But vain devotion, to the creature gave The adoration due to Thee alone, The mighty Maker. Others strove to turn Thine anger from them, by the streaming blood Of human victims; and the reverend priest Stood up, and in the name of people and king, Prayed Thee, or some vain substitute, to bless The holy murder. Even thy chosen, thine own Peculiar nation, did forget that Thou Lov'st the oblation of a grateful heart, A holocaust self-sacrificed to God,[5] And trusted to the blood of bulls and goats, And whole burned offerings. And _still_ mankind Kneel in blind worship. Every heart sets up Its separate Dagon. Fierce Ambition breathes His burning vow, and, to secure his prayer, Makes the dear children of his heart, his own Sweet home's affections and delights, pass through The fire of Moloch: Avarice at the shrine Of greedy Mammon, gluts his eyes with gold: Some to Renown bend low the obsequious knee, Praying to be eternized by a blast From her shrill trumpet: in the glittering halls Of sensual Pleasure some sing songs, and bind Their fair young brows with chaplets steeped in wine; Though soon the chaplets turn to chains, the wines To gall and wormwood, and the festal song To howls and hootings. High above these shrines The great arch-demon and parental Jove Of all the Pantheon, a god unknown But every where adored, omnipotent And omnipresent to the tribes of men, SELF, rears his temple. But the day shall come, When
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