Many long and elaborate religious poems I have not even mentioned, because I cannot favour extracts, especially in heroic couplets or blank verse.  They would only make my book heavy, and destroy the song-idea.  I must here pass by one of the best of such poems, The Complaint, or Night Thoughts of Dr. Young; nor is there anything else of his I care to quote.

I must give just one poem of Pope, born in 1688, the year of the Revolution.  The flamboyant style of his Messiah is to me detestable:  nothing can be more unlike the simplicity of Christianity.  All such, equally with those by whatever hand that would be religious by being miserable, I reject at once, along with all that are merely commonplace religious exercises.  But this at least is very unlike the rest of Pope’s compositions:  it is as simple in utterance as it is large in scope and practical in bearing.  The name Jove may be unpleasant to some ears:  it is to mine—­not because it is the name given to their deity by men who had had little outward revelation, but because of the associations which the wanton poets, not the good philosophers, have gathered about it.  Here let it stand, as Pope meant it, for one of the names of the Unknown God.

  THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER.

  Father of all! in every age,
    In every clime adored,
  By saint, by savage, and by sage,
    Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

  Thou great First Cause, least understood! 
    Who all my sense confined
  To know but this, that thou art good,
    And that myself am blind

  Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
    To see the good from ill;
  And, binding Nature fast in Fate,
    Left free the human will: 

  What Conscience dictates to be done,
    Or warns me not to do—­
  This, teach me more than hell to shun,
    That, more than heaven pursue.

  What blessings thy free bounty gives,
    Let me not cast away;
  For God is paid when man receives: 
    To enjoy is to obey.

  Yet not to earth’s contracted span
    Thy goodness let me bound,
  Or think thee Lord alone of man,
    When thousand worlds are round.

  Let not this weak, unknowing hand
    Presume thy bolts to throw,
  And deal damnation round the land
    On each I judge thy foe.

  If I am right, thy grace impart
    Still in the right to stay;
  If I am wrong, O teach my heart
    To find that better way.

  Save me alike from foolish pride
    Or impious discontent,
  At aught thy wisdom has denied,
    Or aught thy goodness lent.

  Teach me to feel another’s woe,
    To hide the fault I see: 
  That mercy I to others show,
    That mercy show to me.

  Mean though I am—­not wholly so,
    Since quickened by thy breath:—­
  O lead me wheresoe’er I go,
    Through this day’s life or death.