Classic Poem

How high our sanguine hopes we raise!
How hotly our desires pursue
What fancy's magic glass displays
Enlarg'd, and tempting to the view!

These mortal objects of our love
Too closely twine about our heart,
Seduce our souls from things above,
And hardly leave to God a part.

O bitter change! when Heav'n's kind hand
Snatches the fatal joy away,
Our feeble reason scarce can stand
Firm, in affliction's stormy day.

We weep, we laugh, in mad extreme;
Here, all delight; all sadness, there:
Now on the mount of bliss we seem,
Now in the quagmire of despair.

Stoics, who on your strength presume,
Could all your toiling wisdom find
A light to cheer affliction's gloom,
A balsam for the wounded mind?

In vain you hail him good and great,
Whose stedfast soul no ills can move;
Boast him impregnable to fate,
And equal to your mighty Jove.

Jesus, our aking hearts we bring
To learn philosophy from thee.
Thy words can make the mourner sing,
And grief become a jubilee.

Vain world, whose scenes of bliss and woe
Are shifting every fleeting hour;
No longer shall our spirits owe
Their peace, or trouble, to thy pow'r.

Teach us, thou Comforter divine,
Contentment; should our all be gone:
Teach us submission meek as thine,
“Father thy will, not mine, be done.”