Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SOLOMON ON THE VANITY OF THE WORLD: BOOK 1. KNOWLEDGE, by MATTHEW PRIOR


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SOLOMON ON THE VANITY OF THE WORLD: BOOK 1. KNOWLEDGE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ye sons of men, with just regard attend
Last Line: Which flaming swords and angry cherubs guard.
Subject(s): Curiosities & Wonders; Happiness; Knowledge; Nature; Solomon (10th Century B.c.); Joy; Delight


THE ARGUMENT.

YE sons of men, with just regard attend,
Observe the preacher, and believe the friend,
Whose serious Muse inspires him to explain,
That all we act, and all we think is vain.
That in this pilgrimage of seventy years,
Over rocks of perils, and through vales of tears,
Destined to march, our doubtful steps we tend,
Tired with the toil, yet fearful of its end.
That from the womb we take our fatal shares
Of follies, passions, labours, tumults, cares;
And at approach of death shall only know
The truths, which from these pensive numbers flow,
That we pursue false joy, and suffer real woe.
Happiness, object of that waking dream,
Which we call life, mistaking; fugitive theme
Of my pursuing verse; ideal shade,
Notional good, by fancy only made,
And by tradition nursed; fallacious fire,
Whose dancing beams mislead our fond desire;
Cause of our care, and error of our mind;
Oh! hadst thou ever been by Heaven designed
To Adam, and his mortal race, the boon
Entire had been reserved for Solomon:
On me the partial lot had been bestowed,
And in my cup the golden draught had flowed.
But O! ere yet original man was made,
Ere the foundations of this earth were laid,
It was opponent to our search, ordained,
That joy, still sought, should never be attained;
This sad experience cites me to reveal,
And what I dictate, is from what I feel.
Born as I was, great David's favourite son,
Dear to my people, on the Hebrew throne;
Sublime my court with Ophir's treasures blessed,
My name extended to the farthest east,
My body clothed with every outward grace,
Strength in my limbs, and beauty in my face,
My shining thought with fruitful notions crowned,
Quick my invention, and my judgment sound.
Arise (I communed with myself) arise;
Think, to be happy; to be great, be wise;
Content of spirit must from science flow,
For 'tis a godlike attribute to know.
I said; and sent my edict through the land;
Around my throne the lettered Rabbins stand,
Historic leaves revolve, long volumes spread,
The old discoursing, as the younger read:
Attent I heard, proposed my doubts, and said:
The vegetable world, each plant and tree,
Its seed, its name, its nature, its degree
I am allowed, as Fame reports, to know,
From the fair cedar on the craggy brow
Of Lebanon, nodding supremely tall,
To creeping moss, and hyssop on the wall;
Yet, just and conscious to myself, I find
A thousand doubts oppose the searching mind.
I know not why the beech delights the glade
With boughs extended, and a rounder shade;
Whilst towering firs in conic forms arise,
And with a pointed spear divide the skies.
Nor why again the changing oak should shed
The yearly honour of his stately head;
Whilst the distinguished yew is ever seen,
Unchanged his branch, and permanent his green.
Wanting the sun why does the caltha fade?
Why does the cyprus flourish in the shade?
The fig and date, why love they to remain
In middle station, and an even plain;
While in the lower marsh the gourd is found;
And while the hill with olive shade is crowned?
Why does one climate, and one soil endue
The blushing poppy with a crimson hue;
Yet leave the lily pale, and tinge the violet blue?
Why does the fond carnation love to shoot
A various colour from one parent root;
While the fantastic tulip strives to break
In twofold beauty, and a parted streak?
The twining jasmine, and the blushing rose,
With lavish grace their morning scents disclose;
The smelling tuberose and jonquil declare,
The stronger impulse of an evening air.
Whence has the tree (resolve me) or the flower
A various instinct, or a different power;
Why should one earth, one clime, one stream, one breath
Raise this to strength, and sicken that to death?
Whence does it happen, that the plant which well
We name the sensitive should move and feel;
Whence know her leaves to answer her command,
And with quick horror fly the neighbouring hand?
Along the sunny bank, or watery mead,
Ten thousand stalks their various blossoms spread;
Peaceful and lowly in their native soil,
They neither know to spin, nor care to toil;
Yet with confessed magnificence deride
Our vile attire, and impotence of pride.
The cowslip smiles, in brighter yellow dressed,
Than that which veils the nubile virgin's breast;
A fairer red stands blushing in the rose,
Than that which on the bridegroom's vestment flows.
Take but the humblest lily of the field,
And if our pride will to our reason yield,
It must by sure comparison be shown
That on the regal seat great David's son,
Arrayed in all his robes, and types of power,
Shines with less glory, than that simple flower.
Of fishes next, my friends, I would enquire,
How the mute race engender or respire;
From the small fry that glide on Jordan's stream
Unmarked, a multitude without a name,
To that Leviathan, who o'er the seas
Immense rolls onward his impetuous ways,
And mocks the wind, and in the tempest plays.
How they in warlike bands march greatly forth
From freezing waters, and the colder north,
To southern climes directing their career,
Their station changing with the inverted year.
How all with careful knowledge are endued,
To choose their proper bed, and wave, and food:
To guard their spawn, and educate their brood.
Of birds, how each according to her kind
Proper materials for her nest can find,
And build a frame, which deepest thought in man
Would or amend, or imitate in vain.
How in small flights they know to try their young,
And teach the callow child her parent's song.
Why these frequent the plain, and those the wood,
Why every land has her specific brood;
Where the tall crane, or winding swallow goes,
Fearful of gathering winds and falling snows;
If into rocks, or hollow trees they creep,
In temporary death confined to sleep,
Or conscious of the coming evil, fly
To milder regions, and a southern sky.
Of beasts and creeping insects shall we trace
The wondrous nature, and the various race;
Or wild or tame, or friend to man or foe,
Of us what they, or what of them we know?
Tell me, ye studious, who pretend to see
Far into nature's bosom, whence the bee
Was first informed her venturous flight to steer
Through trackless paths, and an abyss of air.
Whence she avoids the slimy marsh, and knows
The fertile hills, where sweeter herbage grows,
And honey-making flowers their opening buds disclose.
How from the thickened mist, and setting sun,
Finds she the labour of her day is done?
Who taught her against winds and rain to strive,
To bring her burden to the certain hive,
And through the liquid fields again to pass
Duteous, and hearkening to the sounding brass?
And, O thou sluggard, tell me why the ant,
Midst summer's plenty thinks of winter's want;
By constant journeys careful to prepare
Her stores; and bringing home the corny ear,
By what instruction does she bite the grain,
Lest hid in earth, and taking root again,
It might elude the foresight of her care?
Distinct in either insect's deed appear
The marks of thought, contrivance, hope, and fear.
Fix thy corporeal, and internal eye
On the young gnat, or new-engendered fly;
On the vile worm that yesterday began
To crawl; thy fellow-creatures, abject man!
Like thee they breathe, they move, they taste, they see,
They show their passions by their acts, like thee;
Darting their stings, they previously declare
Designed revenge, and fierce intent of war;
Laying their eggs, they evidently prove
The genial power, and full effects of love.
Each then has organs to digest his food,
One to beget, and one receive the brood;
Has limbs and sinews, blood, and heart, and brain,
Life and her proper functions to sustain,
Though the whole fabric smaller than a grain.
What more can our pernicious reason grant
To the large whale, or castled elephant:
To those enormous terrors of the Nile,
The crested snake, and long-tailed crocodile;
Than that all differ but in shape and name,
Each destined to a less or larger frame?
For potent nature loves a various act,
Prone to enlarge, or studious to contract:
Now forms her work too small, now too immense,
And scorns the measures of our feeble sense.
The object spread too far, or raised too high,
Denies its real image to the eye;
Too little it eludes the dazzled sight,
Becomes mixed blackness, or unparted light.
Water and air the varied form confound;
The straight looks crooked, and the square grows round.
Thus while with fruitless hope, and weary pain,
We seek great Nature's power, but seek in vain,
Safe sits the goddess in her dark retreat,
Around her, myriads of ideas wait,
and endless shapes which the mysterious queen
Can take or quit, can alter or retain:
As from our lost pursuit she wills to hide
Her close decrees, and chasten human pride.
Untamed and fierce the tiger still remains;
He tires his life in biting on his chains;
For the kind gift of water and of food,
Ungrateful, and returning ill for good,
He seeks his keeper's flesh, and thirsts his blood:
While the strong camel, and the generous horse,
Restrained and awed by man's inferior force,
Do to the rider's will their rage submit,
And answer to the spur, and own the bit;
Stretch their glad mouths to meet the feeder's hand,
Pleased with his weight, and proud of his command.
Again: the lonely fox roams far abroad,
On secret rapine bent, and midnight fraud;
Now hunts the cliff, now traverses the lawn,
And flies the hated neighbourhood of man;
While the kind spaniel and the faithful hound,
Likest that fox in shape and species found,
Refuses through these cliffs and lawns to roam,
Pursues the noted path, and covets home;
Does with kind joy domestic faces meet,
Takes what the glutted child denies to eat,
And dying licks his long-loved master's feet.
By what immediate cause they are inclined,
In many acts, 'tis hard, I own, to find.
I see in others, or I think I see,
That strict their principles, and ours agree.
Evil like us they shun, and covet good;
abhor the poison, and receive the food.
Like us they love or hate; like us they know,
To joy the friend, or grapple with the foe.
With seeming thought their actions they intend,
And use the means proportioned to the end.
Then vainly the philosopher avers,
That reason guides our deed, and instinct theirs.
How can we justly different causes frame,
When the effects entirely are the same,
Instinct and reason how can we divide,
'Tis the fool's ignorance, and the pedant's pride!
With the same folly sure, man vaunts his sway;
If the brute beast refuses to obey.
For tell me, when the empty boaster's word
Proclaims himself the universal lord,
Does he not tremble, lest the lion's paw
Should join his plea against the fancied law!
Would not the learned coward leave the chair,
If in the schools or porches should appear
The fierce hyaena, or the foaming bear?
The combatant too late the field declines,
When now the sword is girded to his loins.
When the swift vessel flies before the wind,
Too late the sailor views the land behind;
And 'tis too late now back again to bring
Enquiry, raised and towering on the wing;
Forward she strives, averse to be withheld
From nobler objects, and a larger field.
Consider with me this ethereal space,
Yielding to earth and sea the middle place.
Anxious I ask ye, how the pensile ball
Should never strive to rise, nor fear to fall.
When I reflect, how the revolving sun
Does round our globe his crooked journeys run,
I doubt of many lands, if they contain
Or herd of beast, or colony of man;
If any nations pass their destined days
Beneath the neighbouring sun's directer rays;
If any suffer on the polar coast
The rage of Arctos, and eternal frost.
May not the pleasure of Omnipotence
To each of these some secret good dispense;
Those who amidst the torrid regions live,
May they not gales unknown to us receive;
See daily showers rejoice the thirsty earth,
And bless the flowery buds' succeeding birth?
May they not pity us, condemned to bear
The various heaven of an obliquer sphere;
While by fixed laws, and with a just return,
They feel twelve hours that shade, for twelve that burn;
And praise the neighbouring sun, whose constant flame
Enlightens them with seasons still the same?
And may not those, whose distant lot is cast
North beyond Tartary's extended waste;
Where through the plains of one continual day,
Six shining months pursue their even way,
And six succeeding urge their dusky flight,
Obscured in vapours, and o'erwhelmed in night;
May not, I ask, the natives of these climes
(As annals may inform succeeding times)
To our quotidian change of heaven prefer
Their own vicissitude, and equal share
Of day and night, disparted through the year;
May they not scorn our sun's repeated race,
To narrow bounds prescribed, and little space,
Hastening from morn, and headlong driven from noon,
Half of our daily toil yet scarcely done;
May they not justly to our claims upbraid
Shortness of night, and penury of shade;
That, ere our wearied limbs are justly blessed
With wholesome sleep, and necessary rest,
Another sun demands return of care,
The remnant toil of yesterday to bear?
Whilst, when the solar beams salute the sight,
Bold and secure in half a year of light,
Uninterrupted voyages they take
To the remotest wood, and farthest lake;
Manage the fishing, and pursue the course
With more extended nerves, and more continued force?
And when declining day forsakes their sky,
When gathering clouds speak gloomy winter nigh;
With plenty for the coming season blessed,
Six solid months (an age) they live released
From all the labour, process, clamour, woe,
Which our sad scenes of daily action know.
They light the shining lamp, prepare the feast,
And with full mirth receive the welcome guest;
Or tell their tender loves (the only care
Which now they suffer) to the listening fair,
And raised in pleasure, or reposed in ease
(Grateful alternates of substantial peace)
They bless the long nocturnal influence shed
On the crowned goblet, and the genial bed.
In foreign isles which our discoverers find,
Far from this length of continent disjoined,
The rugged bears, or spotted lynx's brood
Frighten the valleys, and infest the wood;
The hungry crocodile, and hissing snake
Lurk in the troubled stream and fenny brake;
And man, untaught and ravenous as the beast,
Does valley, wood, and brake, and stream infest.
Derived these men and animals their birth
From trunk of oak, or pregnant womb of earth?
Whence then the old belief that all began
In Eden's shade, and one created man?
Or, grant, this progeny was wafted o'er
By coasting boats from next adjacent shore;
Would those, from whom we will suppose they spring,
Slaughter to harmless lands, and poison bring;
Would they on board or bears, or lynxes take,
Feed the she-adder, and the brooding snake;
Or could they think the new discovered isle
Pleased to receive a pregnant crocodile?
And, since the savage lineage we must trace
From Noah saved, and his distinguished race;
How should their fathers happen to forget
The arts which Noah taught, the rules he set;
To sow the glebe, to plant the generous vine,
And load with grateful flames the holy shrine?
While the great sire's unhappy sons are found,
Unpressed their vintage, and untilled their ground,
Straggling o'er dale and hill in quest of food,
And rude of arts, of virtue, and of God.
How shall we next o'er earth and seas pursue
The varied forms of everything we view;
That all is changed, though all is still the same,
Fluid the parts, yet durable the frame?
Of those materials which have been confessed
The pristine springs, and parents of the rest,
Each becomes other. Water stopped gives birth
To grass and plants, and thickens in the earth:
Diffused, it rises in a higher sphere,
Dilates its drops, and softens into air.
Those finer parts of air again aspire,
Move into warmth, and brighten into fire;
That fire once more by thicker air o'ercome,
And downward forced, in earth's capacious womb
Alters its particles, is fire no more,
But lies resplendent dust, and shining ore.
Or, running through the mighty mother's veins,
Changes its shape, puts off its old remains;
With watery parts its lessened force divides,
Flows into waves, and rises into tides.
Disparted streams shall from their channels fly,
And deep surcharged by sandy mountains lie,
Obscurely sepulchred. By beating rain,
And furious wind, down to the distant plain
The hill, that hides his head above the skies,
Shall fall; the plain by slow degrees shall rise
Higher than erst had stood the summit hill:
For time must nature's great behests fulfil.
Thus, by a length of years, and change of fate,
All things are light and heavy, small or great;
Thus Jordan's waves shall future clouds appear,
And Egypt's Pyramids refine to air.
Thus later age shall ask for Pison's flood,
And travellers inquire, where Babel stood.
Now where we see these changes often fall,
Sedate we pass them by as natural;
Where to our eye more rarely they appear,
The pompous name of prodigy they bear.
Let active thought these close meanders trace;
Let human wit their dubious boundaries place;
Are all things miracle; or nothing such:
And prove we not too little, or too much!
For that a branch cut off, a withered rod
Should at a word pronounced revive and bud,
Is this more strange, than that the mountain's brow,
Stripped by December's frost, and white with snow,
Should push in spring, ten thousand thousand buds,
And boast returning leaves, and blooming woods?
That each successive night from opening heaven
The food of angels should to man be given;
Is this more strange, than that with common bread
Our fainting bodies every day are fed?
Than that each grain and seed consumed in earth,
Raises its store, and multiplies its birth;
And from the handful which the tiller sows,
The laboured fields rejoice, and future harvest flows?
Then, from whate'er we can to sense produce
Common and plain, or wondrous and abstruse,
From nature's constant or eccentric laws;
The thoughtful soul this general inference draws,
That an effect must presuppose a cause:
And while she does her upward flight sustain,
Touching each link of the continued chain,
At length she is obliged and forced to see
A first, a source, a life, a deity;
What has for ever been, and must for ever be.
This great existence thus by reason found,
Blessed by all power, with all perfection crowned;
How can we bind or limit his decree,
By what our ear has heard, or eyes may see?
Say then, is all in heaps of water lost,
Beyond the islands, and the mid-land coast;
Or has that God who gave the world its birth,
Severed those waters by some other earth,
Countries by future ploughshares to be torn,
And cities raised by nations yet unborn!
Ere the progressive course of restless age
Performs three thousand times its annual stage,
May not our power and learning be suppressed,
And arts and empire learn to travel west?
Where, by the strength of this idea charmed,
Lightened with glory, and with rapture warmed,
Ascends my soul; what sees she white and great
Amidst subjected seas? An isle, the seat
Of power and plenty; her imperial throne,
For justice and for mercy sought and known;
Virtues sublime, great attributes of Heaven,
From thence to this distinguished nation given:
Yet farther west the western isle extends
Her happier fame; her armed fleet she sends
To climates folded yet from human eye;
And lands, which we imagine wave and sky.
From pole to pole she hears her acts resound,
And rules an empire by no ocean bound;
Knows her ships anchored, and her sails unfurled,
In other Indies, and a second world.
Long shall Britannia (that must be her name)
Be first in conquest, and preside in fame;
Long shall her favoured monarchy engage
The teeth of envy, and the force of age:
Revered and happy she shall long remain,
Of human things least changeable, least vain;
Yet all must with the general doom comply,
And this great glorious power, tho' last, must die.
Now let us leave this earth, and lift our eye
To the large convex of yon azure sky;
Behold it like an ample curtain spread,
Now streaked and glowing with the morning red;
Anon at noon in flaming yellow bright,
And choosing sable for the peaceful night.
Ask reason now, whence light and shade were given,
And whence this great variety of Heaven;
Reason, our guide, what can she more reply,
Than that the sun illuminates the sky;
Than that night rises from his absent ray,
And his returning lustre kindles day!
But we expect the morning red in vain;
'Tis hid in vapours, or obscured by rain.
The noon-tide yellow we in vain require;
'Tis black in storm, or red in lightning fire.
Pitchy and dark the night sometimes appears,
Friend to our woe, and parent of our fears;
Our joy and wonder sometimes she excites,
With stars unnumber'd, and eternal lights.
Send forth, ye wise, send forth your labouring thought,
Let it return with empty notions fraught,
Of airy columns every moment broke,
Of circling whirlpools, and of spheres of smoke;
Yet this solution but once more affords
New change of terms, and scaffolding of words;
In other garb my question I receive,
And take the doubt the very same I gave.
Lo! as a giant strong the lusty sun
Multiplied rounds in one great round does run;
Twofold his course, yet constant his career,
Changing the day, and finishing the year.
Again when his descending orb retires,
And earth perceives the absence of his fires,
The moon affords us her alternate ray,
And with kind beams distributes fainter day,
Yet keeps the stages of her monthly race,
Various her beams, and changeable her face.
Each planet shining in its proper sphere,
Does with just speed his radiant voyage steer;
Each sees his lamp with different lustre crowned:
Each knows his course with different periods bound;
And in his passage through the liquid space,
Nor hastens, nor retards his neighbour's race.
Now, shine these planets with substantial rays;
Does innate lustre gild their measured days;
Or do they (as your schemes, I think, have shown)
Dart furtive beams, and glory not their own,
All servants, to that source of light the sun?
Again I see ten thousand thousand stars,
Nor cast in lines, in circles, nor in squares,
(Poor rules, with which our bounded mind is filled,
When we would plant, or cultivate, or build);
But shining with such vast, such various light,
As speaks the hand that formed them, infinite;
How mean the order and perfection sought
In the best product of the human thought,
Compared to the great harmony that reigns
In what the spirit of the world ordains!
Now if the sun to earth transmits his ray,
Yet does not scorch us with too fierce a day;
How small a portion of his power is given
To orbs more distant, and remoter Heaven!
And of those stars, which our imperfect eye
Has doomed, and fixed to one eternal sky,
Each by a native stock of honour great,
May dart strong influence, and diffuse kind heat,
(Itself a sun) and with transmissive light
Enliven worlds denied to human sight.
Around the circles of their ambient skies
New moons may grow or wane, may set or rise;
And other stars may to those suns be earths;
Give their own elements their proper births;
Divide their climes, or elevate their pole;
See their land flourish, and their oceans roll;
Yet these great orbs thus radically bright,
Primitive founts, and origins of light,
May each to other (as their different sphere
Makes or their distance, or their height appear)
Be seen a nobler, or inferior star;
And in that space, which we call air and sky,
Myriads of earths, and moons, and suns may lie
Unmeasured, and unknown to human eye.
In vain we measure this amazing sphere,
And find and fix its centre here or there,
Whilst its circumference scorning to be brought
Even into fancied space, illudes our vanquished thought.
Where then are all the radiant monsters driven,
With which your guesses filled the frightened heaven?
Where will their fictious images remain?
In paper schemes, and the Chaldean's brain.
This problem yet, this offspring of a guess,
Let us for once a child of truth confess;
That these fair stars, these objects of delight
And terror, to our searching dazzled sight,
Are worlds immense, unnumbered, infinite.
But do these worlds display their beams, or guide
Their orbs, to serve thy use, to please thy pride;
Thyself but dust; thy stature but a span,
A moment thy duration; foolish man!
As well may the minutest emmet say,
That Caucasus was raised to pave his way;
The snail, that Lebanon's extended wood
Was destined only for his walk and food;
The vilest cockle gaping on the coast
That rounds the ample seas as well may boast,
The craggy rock projects above the sky,
That he in safety at his foot may lie;
And the whole ocean's confluent waters swell,
Only to quench his thirst, or move and blanch his shell.
A higher flight the venturous goddess tries,
Leaving material worlds, and local skies;
Inquires, what are the beings, where the space,
That formed and held the angels' ancient race?
For rebel Lucifer with Michael fought
(I offer only what tradition taught)
Embattled cherub against cherub rose,
Did shield to shield, and power to power oppose;
Heaven rung with triumph: Hell was filled with woes.
What were those forms of which your volumes tell,
How some fought great, and others recreant fell;
These bound to bear an everlasting load,
Durance of chain, and banishment of God;
By fatal turns their wretched strength to tire;
To swim in sulphurous lakes, or land on solid fire.
Whilst those exalted to primeval light,
Excess of blessing, and supreme delight,
Only perceive some little pause of joys
In those great moments when their God employs
Their ministry, to pour his threatened hate
On the proud king, or the rebellious state;
Or to reverse Jehovah's high command,
And speak the thunder falling from his hand,
When to his duty the proud king returns,
And the rebellious state in ashes mourns.
How can good angels be in Heaven confined,
Or view that presence which no space can bind?
Is God above, beneath, or yon, or here;
He who made all, is he not every where?
Oh how can wicked angels find a night
So dark to hide them from that piercing light,
Which formed the eye, and gave the power of sight?
What mean I now of angel, when I hear
Firm body, spirit pure, or fluid air;
Spirits to actions spiritual confined,
Friends to our thought, and kindred to our mind,
Should only act and prompt us from within,
Nor by external eye be ever seen.
Was it not therefore to our fathers known,
That these had appetite, and limb, and bone?
Else how could Abraham wash their wearied feet,
Or Sarah please their taste with savoury meat?
Whence should they fear? or why did Lot engage
To save their bodies from abusive rage?
And how could Jacob, in a real fight,
Feel or resist the wrestling angel's might?
How could a form its strength with matter try?
Or how a spirit touch a mortal's thigh?
Now are they air condensed, or gathered rays?
How guide they then our prayer, or keep our ways,
By stronger blasts still subject to be tossed,
By tempests scattered, and in whirlwinds lost?
Have they again (as sacred song proclaims)
Substances real, and existing frames;
How comes it since with them we jointly share
The great effect of one Creator's care;
That, whilst our bodies sicken and decay,
Theirs are for ever healthy, young, and gay?
Why, whilst we struggle in this vale beneath,
With want and sorrow, with disease and death,
Do they, more blessed, perpetual life employ
On songs of pleasure, and in scenes of joy?
Now when my mind has all this world surveyed,
And found that nothing by itself was made;
When thought has raised itself by just degrees
From valleys crowned with flowers, and hills with trees;
From smoking minerals, and from rising streams,
From fattening Nilus, or victorious Thames;
From all the living that four-footed move
Along the shore, the meadow, or the grove;
From all that can with fins, or feathers fly,
Through the aerial, or the watery sky;
From the poor reptile with a reasoning soul,
That miserable master of the whole;
From this great object of the body's eye,
This fair half-round, this ample azure sky,
Terribly large, and wonderfully bright,
With stars unnumbered, and unmeasured light;
From essences unseen, celestial names,
Enlightening spirits, and ministerial flames,
Angels, dominions, potentates, and thrones,
All that in each degree the name of creature owns:
Lift we our reason to that sovereign cause,
Who blest the whole with life, and bounded it with laws!
Who forth from nothing called this comely frame,
His will and act, his word and work the same;
To whom a thousand years are but a day;
Who bade the light her genial beams display;
And set the moon, and taught the sun his way.
Who, waking time, his creature, from the source
Primeval, ordered his predestined course;
Himself, as in the hollow of his hand,
Holding, obedient to his high command,
The deep abyss, the long continued store,
Where months, and days, and hours, and minutes pour
Their floating parts, and thenceforth are no more
This Alpha and Omega, first and last,
Who, like a potter in a mould has cast
The world's great frame, commanding it to be
Such as the eyes of sense and reason see;
Yet if he wills, may change or spoil the whole;
May take yon beauteous, mystic, starry roll,
And burn it, like an useless parchment scroll;
May from its basis in one moment pour
This melted earth -----
Like liquid metal, and like burning ore!
Who sole in power, at the beginning said,
Let sea and air, and earth and heaven be made;
And it was so: and when he shall ordain
In other sort, has but to speak again,
And they shall be no more: of this great theme,
This glorious, hallowed, everlasting name,
This God I would discourse. -----
The learned Elders sat appalled, amazed;
And each with mutual look on the other gazed,
Nor speech they meditate, nor answer frame:
(Too plain, alas! their silence spake their shame:)
Till one, in whom an outward mien appeared,
And turn superior to the vulgar herd,
Began; that human learning's furthest reach
Was but to note the doctrines I could teach;
That mine to speak, and theirs was to obey,
For I in knowledge more than power did sway:
And the astonished world in me beheld
Moses eclipsed, and Jesse's son excelled.
Humble a second bowed, and took the word;
Foresaw my name by future age adored;
O live, said he, thou wisest of the wise!
As none has equalled, none shall ever rise
Excelling thee. -----
Parent of wicked, bane of honest deeds,
Pernicious flattery! thy malignant seeds
In an ill hour, and by a fatal hand
Sadly diffused o'er virtue's gleby land,
With rising pride amidst the corn appear,
And choke the hopes and harvest of the year.
And now the whole perplexed ignoble crowd,
Mute to my questions, in my praises loud,
Echoed the word: whence things arose, or how
They thus exist, the aptest nothing know;
What yet is not, but is ordained to be,
All veil of doubt apart, the dullest see.
My prophets, and my sophists finished here
Their civil efforts of the verbal war;
Not so my rabbins, and logicians yield;
Retiring still they combat; from the field
Of open arms unwilling they depart,
And sculk behind the subterfuge of art.
To speak one thing, mixed dialects they join;
Divide the simple, and the plain define;
Fix fancied laws, and form imagined rules,
Terms of their art, and jargon of their schools,
Ill-grounded maxims by false gloss enlarged,
And captious science against reason charged.
Soon their crude notions with each other fought:
The adverse sect denied what this had taught;
And he at length the amplest triumph gained,
Who contradicted what the last maintained.
O wretched impotence of human mind!
We erring still excuse for error find;
And darkling grope, not knowing we are blind.
Vain man! since first the blushing sire essayed
His folly with connected leaves to shade;
How does the crime of thy resembling race
With like attempt that pristine error trace!
Too plain thy nakedness of soul espied,
Why dost thou strive the conscious shame to hide
By marks of eloquence and veils of pride?
With outward smiles their flattery I received;
Owned my sick mind by their discourse relieved;
But bent and inward to myself again
Perplexed, these matters I revolved in vain.
My search still tired, my labour still renewed,
At length I ignorance, and knowledge viewed,
Impartial, both in equal balance laid;
Light flew the knowing scale, the doubtful heavy weighed.
Forced by reflective reason, I confess,
That human science is uncertain guess.
Alas! we grasp at clouds, and beat the air,
Vexing that spirit we intend to clear.
Can thought beyond the bounds of matter climb;
Or who shall tell me what is space or time?
In vain we lift up our presumptuous eyes
To what our Maker to their ken denies:
The searcher follows fast: the object faster flies.
The little which imperfectly we find,
Seduces only the bewildered mind
To fruitless search of something yet behind.
Various discussions tear our heated brain;
Opinions often turn, still doubts remain;
And who indulges thought increases pain.
How narrow limits were to wisdom given!
Earth she surveys; she thence would measure Heaven:
Through mists obscure, now wings her tedious way,
Now wanders dazzled with too bright a day;
And from the summit of a pathless coast,
Sees infinite, and in that sight is lost.
Remember, that the cursed desire to know,
Offspring of Adam! was thy source of woe.
Why wilt thou then renew the vain pursuit,
And rashly catch at the forbidden fruit?
With empty labour and eluded strife
Seeking, by knowledge, to attain to life:
For ever from that fatal tree debarred,
Which flaming swords and angry cherubs guard.





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