trade--
Necessity is no transgression.
Now for my portion in possession:
My lands and my securities,
They all are right, in every wise.
If justice to myself and heirs
Have done some hardships unawares,--
Left Smith in jail for debt, or sent
The Browns adrift for unpaid rent,--
I've given alms and helped my friends,
What I propose will make amends:
When I am numbered with the dead,
And when my good bequests are read,
Then will be seen and then be known
Benevolence I have not shown."

The angel, present by his side,
Bade him not in such hopes confide:

"What deed have you done worthy praise?
What orphan blesses, widow prays,
To lengthen out your life one year?
If you will now add deeds to prayer--
Your neighbours want, whilst you abound--
Give me a cheque--five hundred pound."

"Where is the haste?" the sick man whines;
"Who knows--who knows what Heaven designs:
That sum, and more, are in my will;
Perhaps I may recover still."

"Fool!" said the angel: "it is plain
That your great happiness was gain;
And after death would fain atone
By giving what is not your own."
"Whilst there is life, there's hope!" he cried;
"Then why such haste?"--he spoke, and died.

FABLE XXVIII.

THE PERSIAN, THE SUN, AND THE CLOUD.

Lives there a bard for genius famed
Whom Envy's tongue hath not declaimed?
Her hissing snakes proclaim her spite;
She summons up the fiends of night;
Hatred and malice by her stand,
And prompt to do what she command.

As prostrate to the orb of day
A Persian, invocating, lay:

"Parent of light, whose rays dispense
The various gifts of Providence,
Accept our praise, accept our prayer,
Smile on our fields, and bless our year."

A cloud passed by--a voice aloud,
Like Envy's, issued from that cloud:

"I can eclipse your gaudy orb,
And every ray you ask absorb.
Pray, then, to me--where praise is due--
And I will grant the rays to you."

The Persian answered in his wrath:
"He raised thee to that airy path;
A passing wind or puff of air
Will hurl thee to thy proper sphere."

The gale arose, the cloud was doomed,
The golden orb his reign resumed.
And as the sun above, so worth
Scatters the clouds of sons of earth.

FABLE XXIX.

T