Casting thy lot on fair, and southern ground:
When the gay songs of Eartham's friendly grove
Proclaim'd the triumph of thy prosperous love--
Tis sweet to plant a friend in genial land,
And see his branches round the world expand!
I share thy joy, the heart's parental feast
To learn thy filial pilgrim in the East,
Thy youthful Harry, is among the prime,
Whom learning honours in her Indian clime:
Nor less the joy to hear thy eldest-born,
Whom gifts of sacred eloquence adorn,
Has, with Cicestria's liberal applause,
Those gifts exerted in the noblest cause:
Pleas'd to promote the most sublime emprise
That Christian charity could e'er devise;
To blend her votaries of every name
In one harmonious universal aim;
To make the word of God, that truest wealth,
The heart's nutrition, and the spirit's health
As common as the food, by heavenly power
Pour'd from the skies, a life-preserving shower,
On deserts pour'd, in hopeless hunger's track,
When He, who gather'd little, felt no lack.
My friend of many years! we both have found
Darkness and sunshine on the chequer'd ground,
In different paths appointed to our feet:
You in the world--your host in his retreat!
Yet blest be Heaven, that grants us to behold
Wonders of Providence like those of old,
When mortals in the waste, they murmuring trod,