Classic Poem

'T WAS not to bathe in Jordan's flood,
Nor touch nor taste precisely pure,
Nor holy waste of brutal blood,
Nor fast severe nor look demure,

That could the God of Israel please;
When Amram's son his precepts taught,
And by such mystic rites as these,
Labour'd to moralize the thought.

At length the son of God appears,
Truth drops her emblematic dress.
A nobler form religion wears,
Adorn'd with simple holiness.

No more let zeal for mode and rite
The name of sanctity assume.
Leave to the solemn hypocrite,
These trappings of adult'rous Rome.

Sacred to God be all within;
From guile, from base affections free:
So his high friendship thou shalt win,
And beatific vision see.