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Churchill, Charles, 1731-1764

"Poetical Works"

400
The virtuous to those mansions go
Where pleasures unembitter'd flow,
Where, leading up a jocund band,
Vigour and Youth dance hand in hand,
Whilst Zephyr, with harmonious gales,
Pipes softest music through the vales,
And Spring and Flora, gaily crown'd,
With velvet carpet spread the ground;
With livelier blush where roses bloom,
And every shrub expires perfume; 410
Where crystal streams meandering glide,
Where warbling flows the amber tide;
Where other suns dart brighter beams,
And light through purer ether streams.
Far other seats, far different state,
The sons of Wickedness await.
Justice (not that old hag I mean
Who's nightly in the Garden seen[211],
Who lets no spark of mercy rise,
For crimes, by which men lose their eyes; 420
Nor her who, with an equal hand,
Weighs tea and sugar in the Strand;
Nor her who, by the world deem'd wise,
Deaf to the widow's piercing cries,
Steel'd 'gainst the starving orphan's tears,
On pawns her base tribunal rears;
But her who after death presides,
Whom sacred Truth unerring guides;
Who, free from partial influence,
Nor sinks nor raises evidence, 430
Before whom nothing's in the dark,
Who takes no bribe, and keeps no clerk)
Justice, with equal scale below,
In due proportion weighs out woe,
And always with such lucky aim
Knows punishments so fit to frame,
That she augments their grief and pain,
Leaving no reason to complain.


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