mind,
    Musing, I ask’d, “What basis I could find
    To fix my trust?” An inward voice replied,
    “Trust to the Almighty:  He thy steps shall guide;
    He never fails to hear the faithful prayer,
    But worldly hope must end in dark despair.” 
    Now, what I am, and what I was, I know;
    I see the seasons in procession go
    With still increasing speed; while things to come,
    Unknown, unthought, amid the growing gloom
    Of long futurity, perplex my soul,
    While life is posting to its final goal. 
    Mine is the crime, who ought with clearer light
    To watch the winged years’ incessant flight;
    And not to slumber on in dull delay
    Till circling seasons bring the doomful day. 
    But grace is never slow in that, I trust,
    To wake the mind, before I sink to dust,
    With those strong energies that lift the soul
    To scenes unhoped, unthought, above the pole. 
    While thus I ponder’d, soon my working thought
    Once more that ever-changing picture brought
    Of sublunary things before my view,
    And thus I question’d with myself anew:—­
    “What is the end of this incessant flight
    Of life and death, alternate day and night? 
    When will the motion on these orbs impress’d
    Sink on the bosom of eternal rest?”
    At once, as if obsequious to my will,
    Another prospect shone, unmoved and still;
    Eternal as the heavens that glow’d above,
    A wide resplendent scene of light and love. 
    The wheels of Phoebus from the zodiac turn’d;
    No more the nightly constellations burn’d;
    Green earth and undulating ocean roll’d
    Away, by some resistless power controll’d;
    Immensity conceived, and brought to birth
    A grander firmament, and more luxuriant earth. 
    What wonder seized my soul when first I view’d
    How motionless the restless racer stood,
    Whose flying feet, with winged speed before,
    Still mark’d with sad mutation sea and shore. 
    No more he sway’d the future and the past,
    But on the moveless present fix’d at last;
    As at a goal reposing from his toils,
    Like earth unclothed of all its vernal foils. 
    Unvaried scene! where neither change nor fate,
    Nor care, nor sorrow, can our joys abate;
    Nor finds the light of thought resistance here,
    More than the sunbeams in a crystal sphere. 
    But no material things can match their flight,
    In speed excelling far the race of light. 
    Oh! what a glorious lot shall then be mine
    If Heaven to me these nameless joys assign! 
    For there the sovereign good for ever reigns,
    Nor evil yet to come, nor present pains;
    No baleful birth of time its inmates fear,
    That comes, the burthen of the passing year;
    No solar chariot circles through the signs,
    And now too near, and now