The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
    How Abram was the friend of God on high;[60]
  Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage 120
    With Amalek’s ungracious progeny;[61]
  Or, how the royal Bard[62] did groaning lie
    Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire;
  Or Job’s pathetic plaint,[63] and wailing cry;
    Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire; 125
  Or other holy Seers that tune the sacred lyre.

  Perhaps the Christian volume[64] is the theme: 
    How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
  How He, who bore in heaven the second name,
    Had not on earth whereon to lay His head; 130
  How His first followers and servants sped;[65]
    The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:[66]
  How he, who lone in Patmos banished,
    Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,
  And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pronounced
       by Heaven’s command.[67] 135

  Then kneeling down to Heaven’s Eternal King,
    The saint, the father, and the husband prays: 
  Hope “springs exulting on triumphant wing,"[68]
    That thus they all shall meet in future days,
  There ever bask in uncreated rays, 140
    No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
  Together hymning their Creator’s praise,
    In such society, yet still more dear;
  While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere.

  Compared with this, how poor Religion’s pride, 145
    In all the pomp of method, and of art;
  When men display to congregations wide
    Devotion’s ev’ry grace, except the heart,
  The Power,[69] incensed, the pageant will desert,
    The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; 150
  But haply,[70] in some cottage far apart,
    May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul,
  And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enroll.

  Then homeward all take off their sev’ral way;
    The youngling cottagers retire to rest:  155
  The parent-pair their secret homage pay,
    And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,
  That He who stills the raven’s clam’rous nest,
    And decks the lily fair in flow’ry pride,
  Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best, 160
    For them and for their little ones provide;
  But, chiefly, in their hearts with Grace Divine preside.

  From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs,
    That makes her loved at home, revered abroad;
  Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,[71] 165
    “An honest man’s the noblest work of God:"[72]
  And certes,[73] in fair Virtue’s heavenly road,
    The cottage leaves the palace far behind;
  What is a lordling’s pomp? a cumbrous load,
    Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, 170
  Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined!