The great Creator to revere
Must sure become the creature;
But still the preaching cant forbear,
And ev'n the rigid feature:
Yet ne'er with wits profane to range
Be complaisance extended;An atheist laugh's a poor exchange
For deity offended.
Nature's law, That man was made to mourn. Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn! O Death, the poor man's dearest friend, The kindest and the best!
When Nature her great masterpiece designed,And framed her last, best work, the human mind,Her eye intent on all the wondrous plan,She formed of various stuff the various Man.
God help the teacher, if a man of sensibility and genius, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and insists on lighting up the rays of science in a fellow's head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel.