too distant, shines;
    To wretched man and earth’s devoted soil
    Dispensing sad variety of toil. 
    Oh! happy are the blessed souls that sing
    Loud hallelujahs in eternal ring! 
    Thrice happy he, who late, at last shall find
    A lot in the celestial climes assign’d! 
    He, led by grace, the auspicious ford explores,
    Where, cross the plains, the wintry torrent roars;
    That troublous tide, where, with incessant strife,
    Weak mortals struggle through, and call it life. 
    In love with Vanity, oh, doubly blind
    Are they that final consolation find
    In things that fleet on dissolution’s wing,
    Or dance away upon the transient ring
    Of seasons, as they roll.  No sound they hear
    From that still voice that Wisdom’s sons revere;
    No vestment they procure to keep them warm
    Against the menace of the wintry storm;
    But all exposed, in naked nature lie,
    A shivering crowd beneath the inclement sky,
    Of reason void, by every foe subdued,
    Self-ruin’d, self-deprived of sovereign good;
    Reckless of Him, whose universal sway,
    Matter, and all its various forms, obey;
    Whether they mix in elemental strife,
    Or meet in married calm, and foster life. 
    His nature baffles all created mind,
    In earth or heaven, to fathom, or to find. 
    One glimpse of glory on the saints bestow’d,
    With eager longings fills the courts of God
    For deeper views, in that abyss of light,
    While mortals slumber here, content with night: 
    Though nought, we find, below the moon, can fill
    The boundless cravings of the human will. 
    And yet, what fierce desire the fancy wings
    To gain a grasp of perishable things;
    Although one fleeting hour may scatter far
    The fruit of many a year’s corroding care;
    Those spacious regions where our fancies roam,
    Pain’d by the past, expecting ills to come,
    In some dread moment, by the fates assign’d,
    Shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind;
    And Time’s revolving wheels shall lose at last
    The speed that spins the future and the past;
    And, sovereign of an undisputed throne,
    Awful eternity shall reign alone. 
    Then every darksome veil shall fleet away
    That hides the prospects of eternal day: 
    Those cloud-born objects of our hopes and fears,
    Whose air-drawn forms deluded memory bears
    As of substantial things, away so fast
    Shall fleet, that mortals, at their speed aghast,
    Watching the change of all beneath the moon,
    Shall ask, what once they were, and will be soon? 
    The time will come when every change shall cease,
    This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace: 
    No summer then shall glow, nor winter freeze;
    Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past,