On Reading "Gibbon's Rome."
By Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
And this man was "an infidel!" Ah, no!
The tale's incredible it was not so.
The untutored savage through the world may plod,
Reckless of Heaven and ignorant of his God;
But that a mind that's culled improvement's flowers
From all her brightest amaranthine bowers,
A mind whose keen and comprehensive glance
Comprised at once a world should worship chance,
Is strangely inconsistent seems to me
The very essence of absurdity;
Who, from the exhaustless granary of Heaven,
Receives the blessings so profusely given,
Looks with a curious eye on Nature's face,
Forever beaming with a new-born grace,
And dares with impious voice aloud proclaim
He knows no Heaven but this no God but Fame.
Lord, in refusing to acknowledge Thee,
Vain man denies his own reality;
But tho' the boon of life he may receive
From God, and still affect to disbelieve,
What are his views at death's resounding knell?
Just Heaven! Sure, man ne'er died an infidel.
Stretched on the agonizing couch of pain,
All human aid inefficacious, vain,
Where shall his tortured spirit rest? Ah, where?
The past, all gloom! the future, all despair!
'Tis then, O Lord, the skeptic turns to Thee,
Then the proud scoffer humbly bends the knee;
Feels in this darksome hour there's much to do
Earth fading fast, Heaven's portals far from view.
Oh, what a hopeless wretch this man must be!
His very soul weeps tears of agony.
Dying he owns there is a God above,
A God of Justice, tho' a Prince of Love.