God, Who Oft Descends To

He That Can Apprehend And Consider Vice With All Her Baits And Seeming Pleasures, And Yet Abstain, And Yet Distinguish, And Yet Prefer That Which Is Truly Better, He Is The True Wayfaring Christian. I Cannot Praise A Fugitive And Cloistered Virtue, Unexercised And Unbreathed, That Never Sallies Out And Sees Her Adversary, But Slinks Out Of The Race, Where That Immortal Garland Is To Be Run For, Not Without Dust And Heat. Assuredly We Bring Not Innocence Into The World, We Bring Impurity Much Rather: That Which Purifies Us Is Trial, And Trial Is By What Is Contrary.

It Was That Fatal And Perfidious Bark, Built In Th' Eclipse, And Rigg'd With Curses Dark.

Sable-vested Night, Eldest Of Things.

Straight Mine Eye Hath Caught New Pleasures Whilst The Landscape Round It Measures, Russet Lawns And Fallows Grey, Where The Nibbling Flocks Do Stray, Mountains On Whose Barren Breast The Labouring Clouds Do Often Rest; Meadows Trim With Daisies Pied, Shallow Brooks, And Rivers Wide.

Now Came Still Evening On; And Twilight Gray Had In Her Sober Livery All Things Clad: Silence Accompanied; For Beast And Bird, They To They Grassy Couch, These To Their Nests, Were Slunk, All But The Wakeful Nightingale.