Original - Duke Divinity School

Both will not continue long!
O be kind, my Dear, be kind!
Ode to the Grand Khaibar
1726 138
[1]
To endless Rounds of Hopes and Fears
Our Reason 139 we betray;
And Toils on Toils, and Cares on Cares
Consume our Lives away.
The fond Desire and flatt’ring View
But lead us to Despair;
With Pain we all our Ends pursue,
And all our Ends are Air.
Cho[rus]: Then lose we Care, and balk we Toil,
Our Sorrows well deceiving;
And wisely now, a little while,
Devote we Life to Living.
2
Our better Part, the Human Mind,
(’Tis Reason’s chearful Voice)
Ally’d to Angels, was design’d
Like Them for social Joys:
And to diffuse the Heart in Mirth,
And give the Soul to shine,
Distinguish Man from vulgar Earth,
And speak him half divine. 140
Cho[rus]: ’Tis thus we live, and thus we rise
Above all worldly Measure,
138 From David Lewis (1683?–1760), ed., Miscellaneous Poems by Several Hands (London: J. Watts, 1730),
295–98. This may have been written in response to An Ode to the Grand Khaibar (London: J. Roberts, 1725), which
was a satire on Free Masonry. Wesley published in Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems, 2:205–7; and Arminian
Magazine 11 (1788): 277–78.
139 Change to “Glory” in MSP and AM.
140 Note that Wesley deletes this stanza in the later reprint in Arminian Magazine.
86