True wisdom, finds her not; or, by delusion
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,
An empty cloud. However, many books,
Wise men bave said, are wearisome: who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep vers’d in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,
And trifles of choice matters, worth a sponge;
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Or if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace ? All our law and story strew'd
With hymns, our psalms with artful terms inscribid,
Our Hebrew songs and harps in Babylon,
That pleas'd so well our victor's ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts deriv'd;
Ill imitated, while they loudest sing
The vices of their deities, and their own,
In fable, hymn, ør song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame,
Remove their swelling epithets, thick laid
As varnish on a barlot's cheek, the rest,
Thin sown with ought of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is prais'd aright, and godlike men,
The holiest of holies, and his saints ;
Such are from God inspir'd; not such from thee,
Unless where moral virtue is express'd
By light of nature not in all quite lost.
Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those
The top of eloquence; statists indeed,
And lovers of their country, as may seem :
But herein to our prophets-far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government,
to their majestic unaffected style,

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learn’d,
What inakes a nation happy', and keeps it so;.
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat:
These only with our law best form a king."

So spake the Son of God: but Satan now,
Quite at a loss, for all his darts were spent,
Thus to our Saviour with stern brow replied:

" Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts, Kingdom nor empire pleases thee, nor ought By me propos'd in life contemplative Or active, tended on by glory', or by fame, What dost thou in this world ? the wilderness For thee is fittest place: I found thee there, And thither will return thee? Yet remember What I foretell thee; soon thou shalt have cause To wish thou never hadst rejected thus Nicely or cautiously my offer'd aid, Which would have set thee in short time with ease On David's throne, or throne of all the world, Now at full age, fulness of time, thy season, When prophecies of thee are best fulfill'd. Now contrary, if I read ought in heaven, Or heaven write ought of fate, by what the stars. Voluminous, single characters, In their conjunction met, give me to spell, Sorrows, and labours, opposition, hate Attend thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries, Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death : A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom, Real or allegoric, I discern not, Nor, when : eternal sure, as without end, Without beginning; for no date prefix'd Directs me in the starry rubric set.

So saying, he took (for still he knew his power Not yet expir'd), and to the wilderness Brought back the son of God, and left him there, Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose, As day-light sunk, and brought in lowering night, Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both, Privation mere of light and absent day.

:

Our Saviour, meek, and with untroubled mind,
After his airy jaunt, though hurried sore,
Hungry and cold, betook him to his rest,
Wherever, under some concourse of shades,
Whose branching arms thick intertwin'd might shield
From dews and damps of night his shelter'd head;
But shelter'd slept in vain; for at his head
The tempter watch'd, and soon with ugly dreams
Disturb'd his sleep: and either tropic now
'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven; the clouds,
From many a horrid rist, abortive pour'd
Fierce rain with lightning mix’d, water with fire
In ruin reconcil'd: nor slept the winds
Within their stony caves, but rush'd abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vex'd wilderness, whose tallest pines,
Though rooted deep as high and sturdiest oaks,
Bow'd their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer. Ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st
Unshaken! Nor yet stay'd the terror there ;
Infernal ghosts and bellish furies round [shriek’d,
Environ'd thee; some howl'd, some yell’d, some
Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
Sat’st unappall'd in calm and sinless peace.
Thus pass'd the night so foul, till inorning fair
Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray,
Who with her radiant finger still'd the roar
Of thunder, chas'd the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly spectres, which the fiend had rais'd
To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire.
And now the sun with more effectual beams
Had cheer'd the face of earth, and dried the wet
From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds,
Who all things now behold more fresh and green,
After a night of storm so ruinous,
Clear'd up their choicest notes in bush and spray
To gratulate the sweet return of morn:
Nor yet amidst this joy and brightest morn
Was absent, after all bis mischief done,
The Prince of Dark ness; glad would also seeka

Of this fair change, and to our Saviour caine ;
Yet with no new device, they all were spent :
Rather by this bis last affront resolv'd,
Desp'rate of better course, to vent his rage
And mad despite to be so oft repell’d.
Him walking on a sunny hill he found,
Back'd on the north and west by a thick wood :
Out of the wood be starts in wonted shape,
And in a careless inood thus to bim said:

Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of God,
After a dismal night; I heard the wrack
As earth and sky would mingle; but myself
Was distant; and these flaws, though mortals fear them
As dang'rous to the pillar'd frame of heaven,
Or to the earth's dark basis underneath,
Are to the main as inconsiderable
And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze
To man's less universe, and soon are gone;
Yet as being oft times noxious where they light
On man, beast, plant, wasteful and turbulent,
Like turbulencies in th' affairs of men,
Over whose heads they roar, and seem to point,
They oft fore-signify and threaten ill:
This tempest at this desert most was bent;
Of men at thee, for only thou here dwell'st.
Did I not tell thee, if thou didst reject
The perfect season offer'd with my aid
To win thy destin'd seat, but wilt prolong
All to the push of fate, pursue thy way
Of gaining David's throne, no man knows whert,
For both the wben and how is no where told ?
Thou sbalt be what thou art ordaiu'd, no doubt;
For angels have proclaim'd it, but concealing
The time and means : each act is rightliest done,
Not when it must, but when it may be beste
If thou observe not this, be sure to find
What I foretold thee, many
Of dangers, and adversities, and pains,
Ere thou of Israel's sceptre get fast bold;
Whereof this ominous night that clos'd thee round,
So many terrors, voices, prodigies,

hard assay

May warn thee, as a sure foregoing sign."

So talk'd he while the Son of God went on, And stay'd not, but in brief him answer'd thus:

“ Me worse than wet thou find'st not; other harm Those terrors which thou speak’st of did me none; I never fear'd they could, though noising loud, And threat’ning nigb : what they can do as signs Betokening, or ill-boding, I coniemn As false portents, not sent from God, but thee, Who knowing I shall reign past thy preventing, Obtrud'st thy offer'd aid, that I, accepting, At least might seem to bold all power of thee, Ambitious spirit! and wouldst be thought my God, And storm'st refus'd, thinking to terrify Me to thy will! Desist, thou art discern'd And toil'st in vain, nor me in vain molest.”

To whom the fiend, now swoln with rage, replied: “ Then hear, O Son of David, Virgin-born ; For Son of God to me is yet in doubt; Of the Messiah I have heard foretold By all the prophets : of thy birth, at length Announc'd by Gabriel, with the first I knew, And of ih' angelic song in Bethlehem field, On thy birth-night, that sung thee Saviour born. From that time seldom bave I ceas’d to eye Thy infancy, thy childhood, and thy youth, Thy manhood last, though yet in private bred ; Till at the ford of Jordan, wbither all Flock to the Baptist, I among the rest (Though not to be baptiz'd), by voice from heaven Heard thee pronounc'd, the Son of God belov’d. Thenceforth I thought thee worth my nearer view, And narrower scrutiny, that I might learn In what degree of meaning thou art callid The Son of God, which bears no single sense. The son of God I also am, or was; And if I was, I am, relation stands; All men are sons of God: yet thee I thought In some respect far higher so declar'd. Therefore I watch'd thy footsteps from that hour, And follow'd thee still on to this waste wilds