My Sentence Is For Open

Wealth And Honours, Which Most Men Pursue, Easily Change Masters; They Desert To The Side Which Excels In Virtue, Industry, And Endurance Of Toil, And They Abandon The Slothful.

If Weakness May Excuse, What Murderer, What Traitor, Parricide, Incestuous, Sacrilegious, But May Plead It? All Wickedness Is Weakness; That Plea, Therefore, With God Or Man Will Gain Thee No Remission.

And Add To These Retired Leisure, That In Trim Gardens Take His Pleasure.

These Evils I Deserve, And More . . . . Justly, Yet Despair Not Of His Final Pardon, Whose Ear Is Ever Open, And His Eye Gracious To Re-admit The Suppliant.

O Visions Ill Foreseen! Better Had I Liv'd Ignorant Of Future, So Had Borne My Part Of Evil Only.