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| MANY 1 are the sayings of the wise, | |
| In ancient and in modern books enrolled | |
| Extolling patience as the truest fortitude; | |
| And to the bearing well of all calamities, | |
| All chances incident to man’s frail life, | 5 |
| Consolatories writ | |
| With studied argument, and much persuasion sought, | |
| Lenient of grief and anxious thought; | |
| But with the afflicted in his pangs their sound | |
| Little prevails, or rather seems a tune | 10 |
| Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint, | |
| Unless he feel within | |
| Some source of consolation from above, | |
| Secret refreshings that repair his strength, | |
| And fainting spirits uphold. | 15 |
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| God of our fathers! what is man | |
| That Thou towards him with hand so various, | |
| Or might I say contrarious, | |
| Temperest Thy Providence through his short course, | |
| Not evenly, as Thou rul’st | 20 |
| The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute, | |
| Irrational and brute? | |
| Nor do I name of men the common rout, | |
| That, wandering loose about, | |
| Grow up and perish, as the summer fly, | 25 |
| Heads without name, no more rememberèd; | |
| But such as Thou hast solemnly elected, | |
| With gifts and graces eminently adorned, | |
| To some great work, Thy glory, | |
| And people’s safety, which in part they effect; | 30 |
| Yet toward these thus dignified, Thou oft | |
| Amidst their highth of noon, | |
| Changest Thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard | |
| Of highest favours past | |
| From Thee on them, or them to Thee of service. | 35 |
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| Not only dost degrade them, or remit | |
| To life obscured, which were a fair dismission, | |
| But throw’st them lower than Thou didst exalt them high; | |
| Unseemly falls in human eye, | |
| Too grievous for the trespass or omission; | 40 |
| Oft leavest them to the hostile sword | |
| Of heathen and profane, their carcases | |
| To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived; | |
| Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times, | |
| And condemnation of th’ ingrateful multitude. | 45 |
| If these they ’scape, perhaps in poverty | |
| With sickness and disease thou bow’st them down, | |
| Painful diseases and deformed, | |
| In crude old age, | |
| Though not disordinate, yet causeless suffering, | 50 |
| The punishment of dissolute days; in fine, | |
| Just or unjust alike seem miserable; | |
| For oft alike both come to evil end. | |
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| Just are the ways of God, | |
| And justifiable to men, | 55 |
| Unless there be who think not God at all. | |
| If any be, they walk obscure; | |
| For of such doctrine never was there school, | |
| But the heart of the fool, | |
| And no man therein doctor but himself. | 60 |
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| All is best, though we oft doubt, | |
| What the unsearchable dispose | |
| Of highest wisdom brings about, | |
| And ever best found in the close. | |
