HARD is the task the poet's life to scan,
So different from the common mode of man:
A Proteus he, affuming various shapes,
All but the philofophic fage escapes.
Conducted now by reafon's pureft ray,
Now driven by paffion's unrefifted sway :
A victim now to agonizing woe,
Now raised to raptures fuch as angels know :
Now indolent, now planning fome great work;
Now dull as CROSBY, and now bright as BURKE :
Weak, vigorous, various, unexampled mind;
Thyself a microcosm of human kind!
Yet of these strange effects the latent cause
We may explore, by tracing nature's laws;
Thofe laws confiftent, which to order bind
The feeming freaks of matter, and of mind ;
Which guide the comet darting through the pole,
And rein the fervour of the Poet's foul.
Is not the ball's velocity of course
Juft in proportion to the impelling force?
Is not the river's current swift, or flow,
As watery weight, and flope promote it's flow?
Must not a being, then, by nature wrought,
To show her power in matter, and in thought,
Each light impreffion thrilling through his frame,
Inspired by heaven's most fublimated flame;
Muft not he quit the common mortal sphere,
And take an ardent, and a wide career;
Now æther's heights undauntedly explore,
And wander now on Styx's dreary shore ;
Proftrate his mind, and rapt in bliss, by turns,
As the man flags, or as the angel burns ::
By virtue, now, to groves Athenian led,
Where Plato's genius hovers o'er his head;
A heedlefs victim, now, to low defire;
All nerve his body, and his foul all fire?
Hail, mild Philofophy I the province thine,
To chace the spectres of the dark Divine!
Not to fix errour, but with reafon's art,
To root the stiff old woman from the heart.
"Tis to thy calm investigation given
To reconcile to man the ways of Heaven;
To teach us to fubdue the zealot's fire,
Nor rafhly to deteft, nor to admire
Serenely to reject, and to approve,
Give vice our pity, virtue all our love;
By BETHLEHEM's candid ffar our course to steer,
Benign to others, to ourselves fevere !
The penfive bard, even in his boyish days,
With witlefs hand anticipates the bays,
Unconscious yet of poetry and praise :
Leaves his companions to their trifling play,
In childish pastime to protract the day;
Feels the sweet charm of contemplation's power,
And steals from noife to her fequeftered bower.
Or by more active inftinct urged, he strays
Through nature's devious, and romantic ways.
Impatient feeks the venerable wood,
The rock impending, and the rushing flood:
fa filver Aream
Or woos the mufick of a filver stream
(The murmuring opiate of the poet's dream)
Some stream like Avon's, where young Shakespeare
His foul transported while the mufes taught;
Seizing, even then, the drama's wondrous plan,
The varied character of motley man ;
Now darting down to Pluto's dark abodes,
With bolder flight now mixing with the gods;
Already borne through earth, fea, air, and sky,
All fancy's world expanding to his eye.
Thus the susceptible, and artless maid,
Novice to love, as yet of men afraid,
Warmed by a spark from fome young amorous eye,
To shades from focial haunts is wont to fly;
And there she sighs, and weeps, she knows not why.
|