[Page 125]

TO Dr. Thomas Gibson.

The Life of Souls.

1704.
I.
1 SWIFT as the Sun rolls round the Day
2 We hasten to the Dead,
3 Slaves to the Wind we puff away,
4 And to the Ground we tread.
5 'Tis Air that lends us Life, when first
6 The vital Bellows heave;
[Page 126]
7 Our Flesh We borrow of the Dust,
8 And when a Mothers Care has Nurst
9 The Babe to Manly size, we must
10 With Usury pay the Grave.
11 Juleps still tend the dying Flame,
12 And Roots and Herbs play well their Game
13 To save our sinking Breath,
14 While GIBSON brings his awful Power
15 To rescue the precarious Hour
16 From the Demands of Death.
II.
17 I'de have a Life to call my Own
18 That shall depend on Heaven alone;
19 Nor Air, nor Earth, nor Sea
20 Mix their base Essences with mine,
21 Nor claim Dominion so Divine
22 To give me leave to Be.
III.
23 Sure there's a Mind within, that reigns
24 O're the dull current of my Veins,
25 I feel the Inward Pulse beat high
26 With vigorous Immortality.
[Page 127]
27 Let Earth resume the Flesh it gave,
28 And Breath dissolve amongst the Winds;
29 GIBSON, the things that fear a Grave,
30 That I can loose, or You can save,
31 Are not akin to Minds.
IV.
32 We claim acquaintance with the Skies,
33 Upward our Spirits hourly rise,
34 And there our Thoughts Employ:
35 When Heaven shall sign our Grand Release,
36 We are no Strangers to the Place,
37 The Business, or the Joy.

Text

  • TEI/XML [chunk] (XML - 72K / ZIP - 7.9K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
  • Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 1.3K / ZIP - 914 )

Facsimile (Source Edition)

(Page images digitized from a copy in the Princeton Theological Seminary Library.)

Images

PDF

All Images (PDF - 1.1M)

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): TO Dr. Thomas Gibson.
Author: Isaac Watts
Themes:
Genres: address; ode

Text view / Document view

Source edition

Watts, Isaac, 1674-1748. Horæ lyricæ: Poems, chiefly of the lyric kind. In two books. ... By I. Watts. London: Printed by S. and D. Bridge, for John Lawrence at the Sign of the Angel in the Poultrey. MDCCVI., 1706, pp. 125-127. [20],267,[1]p.; 8⁰. (ESTC T82397; OTA K067329.000) (Page images digitized from a copy in the Princeton Theological Seminary Library.)

Editorial principles

The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.

Other works by Isaac Watts