One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight, Priests, Tapers, Temples, swim before my fight: In feas of flame my plunging foul is drown'd, While Altars blaze, and Angels tremble round. While proftrate here in humble grief I lie, Kind, virtuous drops just gath'ring in my eye, While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll, And dawning grace is opening on my foul. Come, if thou dar'ft, all charming as thou art! Oppose thy felf to heav'n; difpute my heart; Come, with one glance of those deluding eyes, Blot out each bright Idea of the skies. Take back that grace, thofe forrows, and those tears, Take back my fruitless penitence and pray❜rs, Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode, Affift the Fiends and tear me from my God! No, fly me, fly me! far as Pole from Pole; Rife Alps between us! and whole oceans roll! Ah come not, write not, think not once of me, Nor fhare one pang of all I felt for thee. Thy oaths I quit, thy memory refign, Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine. Fair eyes, and tempting looks (which yet I view!) O grace ferene! oh virtue heav'nly fair! Fresh blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky! Enter each mild, each amicable guest ; See in her Cell fad Eloifa fpread, H Propt in fome tomb, a neighbour of the dead! Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep, For God, not man, abfolves our frailties here. I come, ye ghosts! prepare your rofeate bow'rs, Celestial palms, and ever blooming flow'rs Thither, where finners may have, reft, Ingo, 0 Ligen Where flames refin'd in breasts feraphic glow. Thou, Abelard! the laft fad office pay,cold it And smooth my paffage to the realms of day: See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll, Suck my last breath, and catch the flying foul! Ah no----in facred vestments may't thou stand, The hallow'd taper, trembling in thy hand, Prefent the Crofs before my lifted eye, me Teach me at once, and learn of me to die. It will be then no crime to gaze on me. 27 What duft we doat on, when 'tis man we love. Then too, when fate fhall thy fair frame destroy, (That cause of all my guilt and all my joy) LA In trance extatic may thy pangs be drown'd, May's one kind grave unitercach chaplefs name, * Abelard and Eloifa were interr'd in the fame grave, or in monuments adjoining, in the Monaftery of the Paraclete: He died in the year 1142, fhe in 1163. And fure if fate fome future Bard fhall join The well-fung woes fhall footh my penfive ghoft; |