The Pleasures and other Miscellaneous Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

WHOM SHALL I LOVE?

I asked the earth with all her verdant fields,
Whose fruitful bosom countless blessings yields
Ungrateful Man!
Her voice replied from every mountain height,
Responding vales, and rosy bowers bright,
Love God! love God!
'Tis he, who strews my breast with fruits of gold,
And gave the beauties which your eyes behold.

The Ocean next I ask'd, whose throbbing heart
Pours scaly dainties in the crowded mart
For thankless Man,
His roaring lungs replied in notes so loud,
That his smooth bosom heav'd in billows proud,
Love God! love God!
To bear your ships with foreign riches home,
From shore to shore he makes my waves to roam.

Next, did I ask the ambient atmosphere,
Whose lab'ring womb gives healthy, vig'rous air
To breathing Man.

Forth from her lips the viewless zephyrs ran,
And softly whisper'd, O thou son of Man!
Love God! love God!
Through me he makes the noxious vapors rise,
And then in dew-drops leave the weeping skies.

I ask'd the legions of the azure way,
Whose radiant beams the pow'r of God display
To gazing Man.
Thus spoke the regent of the starry sky,
Thus did the constellations all reply,
Love God, love God.
For he, whose shadow is our robes of light,
Should be to you the source of pure delight,

To hell I turned me next, where all the lost
On flaming billows are for ever tost!
I stood, and heard,
From every burning tongue of damned ghost,
And gnashing fiends, who throng the fiery coast,
Love God, love God!
And Wrath, and black Despair, and Vengeance cried,
And utter Wo and deep Damnation sigh'd
Love God! love God!

The heaven of heavens I ask'd, whose harps resound,
Jehovah's praise through all the regions round,
From all the tongues,

And tuneful lyres of light-rob'd Seraphim,
Of crowned Saints, and star-eyed Cherubim,
The holy strains
Flow'd sweetly, loudly, through the realms of bliss,
In streams of perfect ecstasies,
Love God! love God!