Rouse, rouse, Lorenzo, then, and follow me,
Where truth, the most momentous man can hear,
Loud calls my soul, and ardor wings her flight.
I find my inspiration in my theme;
The grandeur of my subject is my Muse.
At midnight, when mankind is wrapt in peace,
And worldly fancy feeds on golden dreams;
To give more dread to man's most dreadful hour,
At midnight, 'tis presum'd this pomp will burst
From tenfold darkness; sudden as the spark
From smitten steel; from nitrous grain, the blaze.
Man, starting from his couch, shall sleep no more!
The day is broke, which never more shall close!
Above, around, beneath, amazement all!
Terror and glory join'd in their extremes!
Our God in grandeur, and our world on fire!
All Nature struggling in the pangs of death!
Dost thou not hear her? Dost thou not deplore
Her strong convulsions, and her final groan?
Where are we now? Ah me! the ground is gone
On which we stood: Lorenzo! while thou may'st,
Provide more firm support, or sink for ever!
Where? how? from whence? Vain hope! it is too late!
Where, where, for shelter, shall the guilty fly,
When consternation turns the good man pale?
Great day! for which all other days were made;
For which Earth rose from chaos, man from Earth;
And an eternity, the date of Gods,
Descended on poor earth-created man!
Great day of dread, decision, and despair!
At thought of thee, each sublunary wish
Lets go its eager grasp, and drops the world;
And catches at each reed of hope in Heaven.
At thought of thee!-and art thou absent then?
Lorenzo! no; 'tis here; it is begun ;-
Already is begun the grand assize,
In thee, in all: deputed conscience scales
The dread tribunal, and forestalls our doom;
Forestalls; and, by forestalling, proves it sure.
Why on himself should man void judgment pass?
Is idle Nature laughing at her sons?
Who conscience sent, her sentence will support,
And God above assert that god in man.
Thrice-happy they! that enter now the court
Heaven opens in their bosoms: but, how rare,
Ah me! that magnanimity, how rare!
What hero, like the man who stands himself;
Who dares to meet his naked heart alone;
Who hears, intrepid, the full charge it brings,
Resolv'd to silence future murmurs there?
The coward flies; and, flying, is undone.
(Art thou a coward? No:) the coward flies;
Thinks, but thinks slightly; asks, but fears to know;
Asks, "What is truth?" with Pilate; and retires;
Dissolves the court, and mingles with the throng;
Asylum sad! from reason, hope, and Heaven!
Shall all, but man, look out with ardent eye,
For that great day, which was ordain'd for man?
O day of consummation! mark supreme
(If men are wise) of human thought! nor least,
Or in the sight of angels, or their King!
Angels, whose radiant circles, height o'er height,
Order o'er order, rising, blaze o'er blaze,
As in a theatre, surround this scene,
Intent on man, and anxious for his fate.
Angels look out for thee; for thee, their Lord,
To vindicate his glory; and for thee,
Creation universal calls aloud,
To dis-involve the moral world, and give
To Nature's renovation brighter charms.
Shall man alone, whose fate, whose final fate,
Hangs on that hour, exclude it from his thought?
I think of nothing else; I see! I feel it!
All Nature, like an earthquake, trembling round
All deities, like summer's swarms, on wing!
All basking in the full meridian blaze!
I see the Judge enthron'd! the flaming guard!
The volume open'd! open'd every heart!
A sunbeam pointing out each secret thought;
No patron! intercessor none! now past
The sweet, the clement, mediatorial hour!
For guilt no plea! to pain, no pause! no bound'
Inexorable, all! and all, extreme!
Nor man alone; the foe of God and man,
From his dark den, blaspheming, drags his chain,
And rears his brazen front, with thunder scarr'd ·
Receives his sentence, and begins his hell.
All vengeance past, now, seems abundant grace.
Like meteors in a stormy sky, how roll
His baleful eyes; he curses whom he dreads;
And deems it the first moment of his fall.
"Tis present to my thought!—and yet where is it
Angels can't tell me; angels cannot guess
The period; from created beings lock'd
In darkness. But the process, and the place,
Are less obscure; for these may man inquire.
Say, thou great close of human hopes and fears!
Great key of hearts! great finisher of fates!
Great end! and great beginning! say, Where art
thou?
Art thou in time, or in eternity?
Nor in eternity, nor time, I find thee.
These, as two monarchs, on their borders meet,
(Monarchs of all elaps'd, or unarriv'd !)
As in debate, how best their powers allied
May swell the grandeur, or discharge the wrath,
Of him, whom both their monarchies obey.
Time, this vast fabric, for him built (and doom 2
With him to fall) now bursting o'er his head;
His lamp, the Sun, extinguish'd; from beneath
The frown of hideous darkness, calls his sons
From their long slumber! from Earth's heaving
womb,
To second birth! contemporary throng!
Rous'd at one call, upstarted from one bed,
Prest in one crowd, appall'd with one amaze,
He turns them o'er, Eternity! to thee.
Then (as a king depos'd disdains to live)
He falls on his own scythe; nor falls alone;
His greatest foe falls with him; Time, and he
Who murder'd all Time's offspring, Death, expire
Time was! Eternity now reigns alone!
Awful eternity! offended queen!
And her resentment to mankind, how just!
With kind intent, soliciting access,
How often has she knock'd at human hearts!
Rich to repay their hospitality,
How often call'd! and with the voice of God!
Yet bore repulse, excluded as a cheat!
A dream! while foulest foes found welcome there!
A dream, a cheat, now, all things, but her smile.
For, lo! her twice ten thousand gates thrown wide
As thrice from Indus to the frozen Pole,
With banners streaming as the comet's blaze,
And clarions, louder than the deep in storms,
Sonorous as immortal breath can blow,
Pour forth their myriads, potentates, and powers,
Of light, of darkness; in a middle field,
Wide, as creation! populous, as wide!
A neutral region! there to mark th' event
Of that great drama, whose preceding scenes
Detain'd them close spectators, through a length
Of ages, ripening to this grand result;
Ages, as yet unnumber'd, but by God;
Who now pronouncing sentence, vindicates
The rights of virtue, and his own renown.
Eternity, the various sentence past,
Assigns the sever'd throng distinct abodes,
Sulphureous, or ambrosial: what ensues?
The deed predominant! the deed of deeds!
Which makes a Hell of Hell, a Heaven of Heaven.
The goddess, with determin'd aspect, turns
Her adamantine key's enormous size
Through destiny's inextricable wards,
Deep driving every bolt, on both their fates.
Then, from the crystal battlements of Heaven,
Down, down, she hurls it through the dark profound,
Ten thousand thousand fathom; there to rust,
And ne'er unlock her resolution more.
But chiefly then, when grief puts in her claim,
Joy from the joyous, frequently betrays,
Oft lives in vanity, and dies in woe.
Joy, amidst ills, corroborates, exalts;
'Tis joy, and conquest; joy, and virtue too.
A noble fortitude in ills, delights
Heaven, Earth, ourselves; 'tis duty, glory, peace.
Affliction is the good man's shining scene;
Prosperity conceals his brightest ray;
As night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.
Heroes in battle, pilots in the storm,
And virtue in calamities, admire ;
The crown of manhood is a winter-joy;
An evergreen, that stands the northern blast,
And blossoms in the rigor of our fate.
"Tis a prime part of happiness, to know
How much unhappiness must prove our lot;
A part which few possess! I'll pay life's tax,
Without one rebel murmur, from this hour,
The deep resounds; and Hell, through all her Nor think it misery to be a man;
Returns, in groans, the melancholy roar.
O how unlike the chorus of the skies!
O how unlike those shouts of joy, that shake
The whole ethereal? How the concave rings!
Nor strange! when deities their voice exalt;
And louder far, than when creation rose.
To see creation's godlike aim, and end,
So well accomplish'd! so divinely clos'd!
To see the mighty dramatist's last act
(As meet) in glory rising o'er the rest.
No fancied god, a god indeed, descends,
To solve all knots; to strike the moral home;
To throw full day on darkest scenes of time;
To clear, commend, exalt, and crown the whole.
Hence, in one peal of loud, eternal praise,
The charm'd spectators thunder their applause!
And the vast void beyond, applause resounds.
What then am I?—
Amidst applauding worlds,
And worlds celestial, is there found on Earth
A peevish, dissonant, rebellious string,
Which jars on the grand chorus, and complains?
Censure on thee, Lorenzo! I suspend,
And turn it on myself; how greatly due!
All, all is right, by God ordain'd or done;
And who, but God, resum'd the friends he gave?
And have I been complaining, then, so long?
Complaining of his favors, pain, and death?
Who, without pain's advice, would e'er be good?
Who, without death, but would be good in vain?
Pain is to save from pain; all punishment,
To make for peace; and death to save from death;
And second death, to guard immortal life;
To rouse the careless, the presumptuous awe,
And turn the tide of souls another way;
By the same tenderness divine ordain'd,
That planted Eden, and high-bloom'd for man
A fairer Eden, endless, in the skies.
Heaven gives us friends to bless the present scene;
Resumes them, to prepare us for the next.
All evils natural are moral goods;
AH discipline, indulgence, on the whole.
None are unhappy: all have cause to smile,
But such as to themselves that cause deny.
Our faults are at the bottom of our pains;
Error, in acts, or judgment, is the source
Of endless sighs: we sin, or we mistake;
And Nature tax, when false opinion stings.
Let impious grief be banish'd, joy indulg'd;
Who thinks it is, shall never be a God.
Some ills we wish for, when we wish to live.
What spoke proud passion?—“ Wish my being
lost?"*
Presumptuous! blasphemous! absurd! and false!
The triumph of my soul is-That I am;
And therefore that I may be-what? Lorenzo!
Look inward, and look deep; and deeper still;
Unfathomably deep our treasure runs
In golden veins, through all eternity!
Ages, and ages, and succeeding still
New ages, where the phantom of an hour,
Which courts, each night, dull slumber, for repair,
Shall wake, and wonder, and exult, and praise,
And fly through infinite, and all unlock;
And (if deserv'd) by Heaven's redundant love,
Made half-adorable itself, adore;
And find, in adoration, endless joy!
Where thou, not master of a moment here,
Frail as the flower, and fleeting as the gale,
May'st boast a whole eternity, enrich'd
With all a kind Omnipotence can pour.
Since Adam fell, no mortal, uninspir'd,
Has ever yet conceiv'd, or ever shall,
How kind is God, how great (if good) is man.
No man too largely from Heaven's love can hope,
If what is hop'd he labors to secure.
Ills-there are none :-All-gracious! none from
thee;
From man full many! numerous is the race
Of blackest ills, and those immortal too,
Begot by madness on fair liberty;
Heaven's daughter, Hell-debauch'd! her hand alone
Unlocks destruction to the sons of men,
First barr'd by thine: high-wall'd with adamant,
Guarded with terrors reaching to this world,
And cover'd with the thunders of thy law;
Whose threats are mercies, whose injunctions, guides,
Assisting, not restraining, reason's choice;
Whose sanctions, unavoidable results
From Nature's course, indulgently reveal'd;
If unreveal'd, more dangerous, nor less sure.
Thus, an indulgent father warns his sons,
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Do this; fly that"-nor always tells the cause;
Pleas'd to reward, as duty to his will,
A conduct needful to their own repose.
Great God of wonders! (if, thy love survey'd,
Aught else the name of wonderful retains)
* Referring to the First Night.
What rocks are these, on which to build our trust!
Thy ways admit no blemish; none I find;
Or this alone" That none is to be found."
Not one, to soften censure's hardy crime;
Not one, to palliate peevish grief's complaint,
Who like a demon, murmuring from the dust,
Dares into judgment call her Judge.-Supreme!
For all I bless thee; most, for the severe;
Her* death-my own at hand-the fiery gulf,
That flaming bound of wrath omnipotent!
It thunders;-but it thunders to preserve;
It strengthens what it strikes; its wholesome dread
Averts the dreaded pain; its hideous groans
Join Heaven's sweet hallelujahs in thy praise,
Great source of good alone! How kind in all!
In vengeance kind! pain, death, gehenna save.
Thus, in thy world material, Mighty Mind!
Not that alone which solaces, and shines,
The rough and gloomy, challenges our praise.
The winter is as needful as the spring;
The thunder, as the Sun; a stagnant mass
Of vapors breeds a pestilential air;
Nor more propitious the Favonian breeze
To Nature's health, than purifying storms;
The dread valcano ministers to good.
Its smother'd flames might undermine the world.
Loud Etnas fulminate in love to man;
Comets good omens are when duly scann'd;
And, in their use, eclipses learn to shine.
Man is responsible for ills receiv'd;
Those we call wretched are a chosen band,
Compell'd to refuge in the right, for peace.
Amid my list of blessings infinite,
Stand this the foremost, "That my heart has bled."
"Tis Heaven's last effort of good-will to man;
When pain can't bless, Heaven quits us in despair.
Who fails to grieve, when just occasion calls,
Or grieves too much, deserves not to be blest;
Inhuman, or effeminate, his heart;
Reason absolves the grief, which reason ends.
May Heaven ne'er trust my friend with happiness,
Till it has taught him how to bear it well,
By previous pain; and made it safe to smile!
Such smiles are mine, and such may they remain ;
Nor hazard their extinctions, from excess.
My change of heart a change of style demands;
The consolation cancels the complaint,
And makes a convert of my guilty song.
And when o'erlabor'd, and inclin'd to breathe,
A panting traveller some rising ground,
Some small ascent, has gain'd, he turns him round,
And measures with his eye the various vales,
The fields, woods, meads, and rivers, he has past;
And, satiate of his journey, thinks of home,
Endear'd by distance, nor affects more toil;
Thus I, though small, indeed, is that ascent
The Muse has gain'd, review the paths she trod;
Various, extensive, beaten but by few;
And, conscious of her prudence in repose,
Pause; and with pleasure meditate an end,
Though still remote; so fruitful is
my theme.
Through many a field of moral, and divine,
The muse has stray'd; and much of sorrow seen
In human ways; and much of false and vain ;
Which none, who travel this bad road, can miss.
O'er friends deceas'd full heartily she wept;
Of love divine the wonders she display'd;
Prov'd man immortal; show'd the source of joy;
The grand tribunal rais'd; assign'd the bounds
Of human grief: in few, to close the whole,
The moral Muse has shadow'd out a sketch,
Though not in form, nor with a Raphael-stroke,
Of most our weakness needs believe, or do,
In this our land of travel and of hope,
For peace on Earth, or prospect of the skies.
What then remains? Much! much! a mighty debt To be discharg'd: these thoughts, O Night! are thine:
From thee they came, like lovers' secret sighs,
| While others slept. So Cynthia (poets feign)
In shadows veil'd, soft sliding from her sphere,
Her shepherd cheer'd; of her enamour'd less,
Than I of thee-And art thou still unsung,
Beneath whose brow, and by whose aid, I sing?
Immortal silence! where shall I begin?
Where end? Or how steal music from the spheres,
To soothe their goddess?
O majestic Night?
Nature's great ancestor? day's elder-born!
And fated to survive the transient Sun!
By mortals, and immortals, seen with awe!
A starry crown thy raven brow adorns,
An azure zone, thy waist; clouds, in Heaven's loom
Wrought through varieties of shape and shade,
In ample folds of drapery divine,
Thy flowing mantle form; and Heaven throughout,
Voluminously pour thy pompous train.
Thy gloomy grandeurs (Nature's most august,
Inspiring aspect!) claim a grateful verse;
And, like a sable curtain starr'd with gold,
Drawn o'er my labors past, shall close the scene.
And what, O man! so worthy to be sung?
What more prepares us for the songs of Heaven?
Creation, of archangels is the theme!
What, to be sung, so needful? What so well
Celestial joys prepare us to sustain ?
The soul of man, his face design'd to see
Who gave these wonders to be seen by man,
Has here a previous scene of objects great,
On which to dwell; to stretch to that expanse
Of thought, to rise to that exalted height
Of admiration, to contract that awe,
And give her whole capacities that strength,
Which best may qualify for final joy.
The more our spirits are enlarg'd on Earth,
The deeper draught shall they receive of Heaven.
Heaven's King! whose face unveil'd consunt
Redundant bliss! which fills that mighty void,
The whole creation leaves in human hearts!
Thou, who didst touch the lip of Jesse's son,
Rapt in sweet contemplation of these fires,
And set his harp in concert with the spheres ;
While of thy works material the supreme
I dare attempt, assist my daring song;
Loose me from Earth's inclosure, from the Sun's
Contracted circle set my heart at large;
Eliminate my spirit, give it range
Through provinces of thought yet unexplor'd ;
Teach me by this stupendous scaffolding,
Creation's golden steps, to climb to thee.
Teach me with art great Nature to control,
And spread a lustre o'er the shades of night.
Feel I thy kind assent? and shall the Sun
Be seen at midnight, rising in my song?
Lorenzo! come, and warm thee: thou, whose heart.
Whose little heart, is moor'd within a nook
Of this obscure terrestrial, anchor weigh.
Another ocean calls, a nobler port;
I am thy pilot, I thy prosperous gale.
Gainful thy voyage through yon azure main;
Main, without tempest, pirate, rock, or shore;
And whence thou may'st import eternal wealth;
And leave to beggar'd minds the pearl and gold.
Thy travels dost thou boast o'er foreign realms ?
Thou stranger to the world! thy tour begin;
Thy tour through Nature's universal orb.
Nature delineates her whole chart at large,
On soaring souls, that sail among the spheres;
And man how purblind, if unknown the whole!
Who circles spacious Earth, then travels here,
Shall own, he never was from home before!
Come, my Prometheus,* from thy pointed rock
Of false ambition if unchain'd, we'll mount;
We'll, innocently, steal celestial fire,
And kindle our devotion at the stars;
A theft, that shall not chain, but set thee free.
Above our atmosphere's intestine wars,
Rain's fountain-head, the magazine of hail;
Above the northern nests of feather'd snows,
The brew of thunders, and the flaming forge
That forms the crooked lightning; above the caves
Where infant tempests wait their growing wings,
And tune their tender voices to that roar,
Which soon, perhaps, shall shake a guilty world;
Above misconstru'd omens of the sky,
Far-travel'd comets' calculated blaze;
Elance thy thought, and think of more than man.
Thy soul, till now, contracted, wither'd, shrunk,
Blighted by blasts of Earth's unwholesome air,
Will blossom here; spread all her faculties
To these bright ardors; every power unfold,
And rise into sublimities of thought.
Stars teach, as well as shine. At Nature's birth,
Thus their commission ran-" Be kind to man."
Where art thou, poor benighted traveller?
The stars will light thee, though the Moon should fail
Where art thou, more benighted! more astray!
In ways immoral? The stars call thee back;
And, if obey'd their counsel, set thee right.
This prospect vast, what is it?-Weigh'd aright,
Tis Nature's system of divinity,
And every student of the night inspires.
"Tis elder Scripture, writ by God's own hand :
Scripture authentic! uncorrupt by man.
Lorenzo! with my radius (the rich gift
Of thought nocturnal!) I'll point out to thee
Its various lessons; some that may surprise
An un-adept in mysteries of night;
Little, perhaps, expected in her school,
Nor thought to grow on planet, or on star.
Bulls, lions, scorpions, monsters, here we feign;
Ourselves more monstrous, not to see what here
Exists indeed;-a lecture to mankind.
What read we here?-Th' existence of a God?
Yes; and of other beings, man above;
Natives of ether! Sons of higher climes!
And, what may move Lorenzo's wonder more,
Eternity is written in the skies.
And whose eternity?-Lorenzo! thine;
Mankind's eternity. Nor faith alone,
Virtue grows here; here springs the sovereign
Of almost every vice; but chiefly thine;
Wrath, pride, ambition, and impure desire.
Lorenzo! thou canst wake at midnight too,
Though not on morals bent: ambition, pleasure!
Those tyrants I for thee so lately* fought,
Afford their harass'd slaves but slender rest.
Thou, to whom midnight is immoral noon,
And the Sun's noontide blaze, prime dawn of day;
Not by thy climate, but capricious crime,
Commencing one of our Antipodes!
In thy nocturnal rove one moment halt,
"Twixt stage and stage, of riot, and cabal;
And lift thine eye (if bold an eye to lift,
If bold to meet the face of injur'd Heaven)
To yonder stars: for other ends they shine,
Than to light revellers from shame to shame,
And, thus, be made accomplices in guilt.
Why from yon arch, that infinite of space,
With infinite of lucid orbs replete,
Which set the living firmament on fire,
At the first glance, in such an overwhelm
Of wonderful, on man's astonish'd sight,
Rushes Omnipotence?-To curb our pride;
Our reason rouse, and lead it to that power,
Whose love lets down these silver chains of light,
To draw up man's ambition to himself,
And bind our chaste affections to his throne.
Thus the three virtues, least alive on Earth,
And welcom'd on Heaven's coast with most ap-
plause,
An humble, pure, and heavenly-minded heart,
Are here inspir'd-And canst thou gaze too long
Nor stands thy wrath, depriv'd of its reproof,
Or un-upbraided by this radiant choir.
The planets of each system represent
Kind neighbors; mutual amity prevails;
Sweet interchange of rays, receiv'd, return'd;
Enlightening, and enlighten'd! All, at once
Attracting, and attracted! Patriot-like,
None sins against the welfare of the whole;
But their reciprocal, unselfish aid,
Affords an emblem of millennial love.
Nothing in Nature, much less conscious being,
Was e'er created solely for itself:
Thus man his sovereign duty learns in this
Material picture of benevolence.
And know, of all our supercilious race,
Thou most inflammable! thou wasp of men!
Man's angry heart, inspected, would be found
As rightly set, as are the starry spheres;
"Tis Nature's structure, broke by stubborn will,
Breeds all that un-celestial discord there.
Wilt thou not feel the bias Nature gave?
Canst thou descend from converse with the skies,
And seize thy brother's throat?-For what-a clod,
An inch of earth? The planets cry, "Forbear!"
They chase our double darkness; Nature's gloom,
And (kinder still!) our intellectual night.
And see, Day's amiable sister sends
Her invitation, in the softest rays
Of mitigated lustre; courts thy sight,
Which suffers from her tyrant-brother's blaze.
Night grants thee the full freedom of the skies,
Nor rudely reprimands thy lifted eye;
With gain, and joy, she bribes thee to be wise.
Night opes the noblest scenes, and sheds an awe,
Which gives those venerable scenes full weight,
cure And deep reception, in th' entender'd heart;
While light peeps through the darkness, like a spy
And darkness shows its grandeur by the light.
Nor is the profit greater than the joy,
If human hearts at glorious objects glow, And admiration can inspire delight.
What speak I more, than I, this moment, feel?
With pleasing stupor first the soul is struck,
(Stupor ordain'd to make her truly wise!)
Then into transport starting from her trance,
With love, and admiration, how she glows!
This gorgeous apparatus! this display!
This ostentation of creative power!
This theatre-what eye can take it in?
By what divine enchantment was it rais'd,
For minds of the first magnitude to launch
In endless speculation, and adore?
One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine:
And light us deep into the Deity;
How boundless in magnificence and might!
O what a confluence of ethereal fires,
From urns unnumber'd, down the steep of Heaven,
Streams to a point, and centres in my sight!
Nor tarries there; I feel it at my heart.
My heart, at once, it humbles, and exalts;
Lays it in dust, and calls it to the skies.
Who sees it unexalted? or unaw'd?
Who sees it, and can stop at what is seen?
Material offspring of Omnipotence!
Inanimate, all-animating birth!
Work worthy him who made it! worthy praise!
All praise! praise more than human! nor denied
Thy praise divine!-But though man, drown'd in
sleep,
Withholds his homage, not alone I wake;
Bright legions swarm unseen, and sing, unheard
By mortal ear, the glorious Architect,
In this his universal temple hung
With lustres, with innumerable lights,
That shed religion on the soul at once,
The temple, and the preacher! O how loud
It calls devotion! genuine growth of night!
Devotion! daughter of astronomy!
An undevout astronomer is mad.
True, all things speak a God; but in the small,
Men trace out him; in great, he seizes man;
Seizes, and elevates, and raps, and fills
With new inquiries, 'mid associates new.
Tell me, ye stars! ye planets! tell me, all
Ye starr'd, and planeted; inhabitants! What is it?
What are these sons of wonder? Say, proud arch,
(Within whose azure palaces they dwell,)
Built with divine ambition! in disdain
Of limit built! built in the taste of Heaven!
Vast concave! ample dome! wast thou design'd
A meet apartment for the Deity?—
Not so that thought alone thy state impairs,
Thy lofty sinks, and shallows thy profound,
And straitens thy diffusive; dwarfs the whole,
And makes an universe an orrery.
But when I drop mine eye, and look on man,
Thy right regain'd, thy grandeur is restor'd,
O Nature! wide flies off the expanding round.
As when whole magazines, at once, are fir'd,
The smitten air is hollow'd by the blow;
The vast displosion dissipates the clouds;
Shock'd ether's billows dash the distant skies;
Thus (but far more) th' expanding round flies off,
And leaves a mighty void, a spacious womb,
Might teem with new creation; re-inflam'd
Thy luminaries triumph, and assume
Divinity themselves. Nor was it strange,
Matter high-wrought to such surprising pomp,
Such godlike glory, stole the style of gods,
From ages dark, obtuse, and steep'd in sense,
For, sure, to sense, they truly are divine;
And half-absolv'd idolatry from guilt;
Nay, turn'd it into virtue. Such it was
In those, who put forth all they had of man
Unlost, to lift their thought, nor mounted higher;
But, weak of wings, on planets perch'd; and thought
What was their highest, must be their ador'd.
But they how weak, who could no higher mount! And are there, then, Lorenzo! those, to whom Unseen, and unexistent, are the same?
And if incomprehensible is join'd,
Who dare pronounce it madness, to believe?
Why has the mighty builder thrown aside
All measure in his work; stretch'd out his line
So far, and spread amazement o'er the whole ?
Then (as he took delight in wide extremes)
Deep in the bosom of his universe,
Dropt down that reasoning mite, that insect, man,
To crawl, and gaze, and wonder at the scene ?—
That man might ne'er presume to plead amazement
For disbelief of wonders in himself.
Shall God be less miraculous, than what
His hand has form'd? Shall mysteries descend
From un-mysterious? Things more elevate,
Be more familiar? Uncreated lie
More obvious than created, to the grasp
Of human thought? The more of wonderful
Is heard in him, the more we should assent.
Could we conceive him, God he could not be ;
Or he not God, or we could not be men.
A God alone can comprehend a God;
Man's distance how immense! On such a theme,
Know this, Lorenzo! (seem it ne'er so strange)
Nothing can satisfy, but what confounds ;
Nothing, but what astonishes, is true.
The scene thou seest, attests the truth I sing,
And every star sheds light upon thy creed.
These stars, this furniture, this cost of Heaven,
If but reported, thou hadst ne'er believ'd;
But thine eye tells thee, the romance is true.
The grand of Nature is th' Almighty's oath,
In reason's court, to silence unbelief.
How my mind, opening at this scene, imbibes
The moral emanations of the skies,
While nought, perhaps, Lorenzo less admires !
Has the Great Sovereign sent ten thousand world
To tell us, he resides above them all,
In glory's unapproachable recess?
And dare Earth's bold inhabitants deny
The sumptuous, the magnific embassy
A moment's audience? Turn we, nor will hear
From whom they come, or what they would impart
For man's emolument; sole cause that stoops
Their grandeur to man's eye? Lorenzo! rouse ;
Let thought, awaken'd, take the lightning's wing,
And glance from east to west, from pole to pole.
Who sees, but is confounded, or convinc'd?
Renounces reason, or a God adores?
Mankind was sent into the world to see :
Sight gives the science needful to their peace;
That obvious science asks small learning's aid.
Wouldst thou on metaphysic pinions soar?
Or wound thy patience amid logic thorns?
Or travel history's enormous round?
Nature no such hard task enjoins: she gave
A make to man directive of his thought;
A make set upright, pointing to the stars,
As who shall say, "Read thy chief lesson there."
Too late to read this manuscript of Heaven,
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