Each night and morn with voice imploring
This wish I sigh.

'Let me, Oh! Lord! from life retire,
Unknown each guilty worldly fire,
Remorseful throb, or loose desire;
And when I die,
Let me in this belief expire,
''To God I fly''!'

Stranger, if full of youth and riot
As yet no grief has marred thy quiet,
Thou haply throw'st a scornful eye at
The Hermit's prayer:
But if Thou hast a cause to sigh at
Thy fault, or care;

If Thou hast known false Love's vexation,
Or hast been exil'd from thy Nation,
Or guilt affrights thy contemplation,
And makes thee pine,
Oh! how must Thou lament thy station,
And envy mine!

'Were it possible' said the Friar, 'for Man to be so totally
wrapped up in himself as to live in absolute seclusion from human
nature, and could yet feel the contented tranquillity which these
lines express, I allow that the situation would be more
desirable, than to live in a world so pregnant with every vice
and every folly. But this never can be the case. This