Poetic flux « CONNECT/HOOK

Know, what those bosoms wish Heaven must reveal;
And sure no bosom ever wish’d a hell.
But, left sustain’d by underpinning frail,
Our hopes and wits, our proofs and doctrines fail,
Admit a hell; but from its terrors take
Whate’er commands the guilty heart to quake.
Again the purgatorial whim revive,
And bid the soul by stripes and penance live.
And know, with search most deep, and wits most keen,
I’ve learn’d, that hell is but a school for sin;
Which yields, to heaven, the soul from guilt refin’d,
And, tho’ it mars the devils, mends mankind.
And thus the matter stands. When God makes man,
He makes him here religious, if he can;
If he cannot, he bids him farther go,
And try to be religious, down below;
But as his failure is his fault, ordains
His soul to suffer dire repentance’ pains,
Repentance, fearful doom of sinners vile!
The law’s whole curse, and nature’s highest ill!
If there the wretch repent, the work is done;
If not, he plunges to a lower zone,
A lower still, and still a lower, tries,
‘Till with such sinking tir’d, he longs to rise;
And finding there the fashion to repent,
He joins the throng, and strait to heaven is sent.
Heaven now his own he claims; nor can the sky
Preserve its honour, and its claim deny.

Burst, burst, thou charm! wake, trembler wake again,
Nor let thy parent’s dying prayers be vain!
The hour arriv’d, th’ infernal trumpet blew;
Black from its mouth a cloud sulphureous flew;
The caverns groan’d; the startled throng gave way,
And forth the chariot rush’d to gloomy day.
On every side, expressive emblems rose,
The man, the scene, the purpose to disclose.
Here wrinkled dotage, like a fondled boy,
Titter’d, and smirk’d its momentary joy:
His crumbs there avarice grip’d, with lengthen’d nails,
And weigh’d clipp’d half pence in unequal scales.
Trim vanity her praises laugh’d aloud,
And snuff’d for incense from the gaping crowd,
While Age an eye of anguish cast around,
His crown of glory prostrate on the ground.
There C******* sate; aloud his voice declar’d,
Hell is no more, or no more to be fear’d.
What tho’ the Heavens, in words of flaming fire,
Disclose the vengeance of eternal ire,
Bid anguish o’er the unrepenting soul,
In waves succeeding waves, forever roll;
The strongest terms, each language knows, employ
To teach us endless woe, and endless joy:
‘Tis all a specious irony, design’d
A harmless trifling with the human kind:
Or, not to charge the sacred books with lies,
A wile most needful of the ingenious skies,
On this bad earth their kingdom to maintain,
And curb the rebel, man: but all in vain.