34 BAXTER'S POEMS. Which hath run parallel with all my days; For which I owe thee everlasting praise: Too great for volumes; too high for a verse, And therefore endless life n1ust them rehearse. 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. 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. 0! thought!, where are 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 abhorr'd. 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 myself and othe1:s; What edified my own soul and my brothers· Thence to the branches I in order clime; First few and great, next ma~y, small, sublime. I here preferr'd 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.
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