Thomson and Pollok: containing The seasons, by James Thomson, and The course of time, by Robert Pollok, A. M.

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THE COURSE OF TIME.

To propagate the lie his soul had framed,
His pillow was the peace of families
Destroyed, the sigh of innocence reproached,
Broken friendships, and the strife of brotherhoods;
Yet did he spare his sleep, and hear the clock
Number the midnight watches, on his bed,
Devising mischief more; and early rose,
And made most hellish meals of good men's names.
From door to door you might have seen him speed,
Or placed amidst a group of gaping fools,
And whispering in their ears, with his foul lips.
Peace fled the neighborhood in which he made
His haunts; and, like a moral pestilence,
Before his breath, the healthy shoots and blooms
Of social joy and happiness decayed.
Fools only in his company were seen,
And those forsaken of God, and to themselves
Given up. The prudent shunned him and his house
As one who had a deadly moral plague.
And fain would all have shunned him at the day
Of judgment; but in vain. All who gave ear
With greediness, or wittingly their tongues
Made herald to his lies, around him wailed;
While on his face, thrown back by injured men,
In characters of ever-blushing shame,
Appeared ten thousand slanders, all his own.
Among the accursed, who sought a hiding place
In vain, from fierceness of Jehovah's rage,
And from the hot displeasure of the Lamb,
Most wretched, most contemptible, most vile,Stood the false priest, and in his conscience felt
The fellest gnaw of the Undying Worm.
And so he might, for he had on his hands
The blood of souls, that would not wipe away.