Poetical fragments heart-employment with God and it selfPoetical fragments heart-imployment with God and it self

1. A Life still near to Death, did me possess With a deep sense of Time's great preciousness. To lose an hour I thought a greater loss, Than much of sordid worldlings golden dross. I thought them mad that cast their time away, Being uncertain of another day. ⟨p. 39⟩That idly prate, and play, and feast, and drink, So near Eternity's most dreadful brink! With filthy, guilty Souls, unjustified; Undone for evermore if thus they died. O! thought I, where is these men's brains and sense, Who care no more whither they go from hence? Pastime I thought worse than a Bedlam word: The Name and Thing my very Soul abhorred.

1. A Life still near to Death, did me possess With a deep sense of Time's great preciousness. To lose an hour I thought a greater loss, Than much of sordid worldlings golden dross. I thought them mad that cast their time away, Being uncertain of another day. ⟨p. 39⟩That idly prate, and play, and feast, and drink, So near Eternity's most dreadful brink! With filthy, guilty Souls, unjustifi'd; Undone for evermore if thus they dy'd. O! thought I, where is these men's brains and sense, Who care no more whither they go from hence? Pastime I thought worse than a Bediam word: The Name and Thing my very Soul abhorr'd.

2. This methodized my Studies to my gain; Shamed the contending, jingling, formal vein: The greatest matters it did first impose: Necessity my Book and Lesson chose: I studied first to save my self and others; What edified my own Soul and my Brothers: Thence to the Branches I in order clime; First Few and Great, next Many, Small, Sublime. I near preferred to Talk, before, to Eat, Words, before Things, the Dish before the Meat: And yet I love and value all the rest: My curious mind would fain have known the least: But knowing Life's too short to reach to all, I left till last the needless things and small.