Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/251

To reach the summit, mounts with weary pains,
Winds round and round, and every turn essays,
Where sudden breaks resist the shorter ways.
Yet labour so, that ere faint age arrive,
Thy searching soul possess her rest alive:
To work by twilight were to work too late,
And age is twilight to the night of fate.
To will alone, is but to mean delay,
To work at present is the use of day.
For man's employ much thought and deed remain,
High thoughts the soul, hard deeds the body strain,
And mysteries ask believing, which to view,
Like the fair Sun, are plain, bat dazzling too.
 
Be Truth, so found, with sacred heed possest,
Not kings have power to tear it from thy breast.
By no blank charters harm they where they hate,
Nor are they vicars, but the hands of fate.
Ah! fool and wretch, who lett'st thy soul be tied
To human laws! or must it so be tried?
Or will it boot thee, at the latest day,
When Judgment sits, and Justice asks thy plea,
That Philip that, or Gregory taught thee this,
Or John or Martin? All may teach amiss:
For every contrary in each extreme
This holds alike, and each may plead the same.
 
Wouldst thou to power a proper duty show?
'Tis thy first task the bounds of power to know;
The bounds once pass'd, it holds the same no more,