Why does each animated star

Love the just limits of its proper sphere?
Why does each consenting sign,

With prudent harmony combine

In turns to move, and subsequent appear,
To gird the globe and regulate the year?

VI.

Man does with dang'rous curiosity

These unfathom'd wonders try;

With fancy'd rules and arbitrary laws

Matter and motion he restrains,

And study'd lines and fictious circles draws,
Then with imagin'd sovereignty,

Lord of his new hypothesis he reigns.

He reigns! How long? till some usurper rise!
And he, too, mighty thoughtful, mighty wise,
Studies new lines, and other circles feigns.
From this last toil again what knowledge flows?
Just as much, perhaps, as shows

That all his predecessors' rules

Were empty cant, all jargon of the schools;
That he on th' others' ruin rears his throne,

And shows his friend's mistake, and thence con firms his own.

VII.

On earth, in air, amidst the seas and skies,
Mountainous heaps of wonders rise,
Whose tow'ring strength will ne'er submit
To Reason's batt'ries, or the mines of Wit:
Yet still inquiring, still mistaking man,

Each hour repuls'd, each hour dares onward press, And, levelling at God his wand'ring guess,

(That feeble engine of his reasoning war,

Which guides his doubts and combats his despair)
Laws to his Maker the learn'd wretch can give,
Can bound that nature and prescribe that will
Whose pregnant Word did either ocean fill,
Can tell us whence all beings are, and how they
move and live.

Thro' either ocean, foolish man!

That pregnant Word sent forth again,

Might to a world extend each atom there,
For every drop call forth a sea, a heaven for ev'ry

star.

VIII.

Let cunning earth her fruitful wonders hide,
And only lift thy staggering reason up
To trembling Calvary's astonish'd top;

Then mock thy knowledge and confound thy pride,
Explaining how Perfection suffer'd pain,
Almighty languish'd, and Eternal dy'd;
How by her patient victor Death was slain,
And earth profan'd, yet bless'd with Deicide.
Then down with all thy boasted volumes, down;
Only reserve the sacred one :

Low, reverently low,

Make thy stubborn knowledge bow;

Weep out thy reason's and thy body's eyes ;

Deject thyself, that thou mayst rise :

To look to heav'n, be blind to all below.

IX.

Then Faith for Reason's glimm'ring light shall give

Her immortal perspective,

And Grace's presence Nature's loss retrieve:

Then thy enliven'd soul shall see

That all the volumes of philosophy,

With all their comments never could invent
So politic an instrument

To reach the heav'n of heav'ns, the high abode
Where Moses places his mysterious God,
As was that ladder which old Jacob rear'd,
When light divine had human darkness clear'd,
And his enlarg'd ideas found the road
Which Faith had dictated, and Angels trod.

AN ODE.

I.

WH

HILE blooming youth and gay delight
Sit on thy rosy cheeks confest,
Thou hast, my dear, undoubted right
To triumph o'er this destin'd breast.
My reason bends to what thy eyes ordain,
For I was born to love and thou to reign.

II.

But would you meanly thus rely

On pow'r, you know I must obey? Exert a legal tyranny,

And do an ill because you may?

Still must I thee, as Atheists Heav'n adore,
Nor see thy mercy, and yet dread thy pow'r?

III.

Take heed, my dear, youth flies apace;
As well as Cupid Time is blind;
Soon must those glories of thy face

The fate of vulgar beauty find:

The thousand loves that arm thy potent eye
Must drop their quivers, flag their wings, and die.

IV.

Then wilt thou sigh, when in each frown
A hateful wrinkle more appears,

And putting peevish humours on,

Seems but the sad effect of years. Kindness itself too weak a charm will prove To raise the feeble fires of aged love.

V.

Forc'd compliments and formal bows
Will show thee just above neglect ;
The heat with which thy lover glows
Will settle into cold respect.

A talking, dull Platonic, I shall turn :
Learn to be civil when I cease to burn.

VI.

Then shun the ill, and know, my dear,
Kindness and constancy will prove

The only pillars fit to bear

So vast a weight as that of love.

If thou canst wish to make my flames endure, Thine must be very fierce and very pure.

G

VII.

Haste, Celia, haste, while youth invites,
Obey kind Cupid's present voice;
Fill ev'ry sense with soft delights,

And give thy soul a loose to joys:
Let millions of repeated blisses prove
That thou all kindness art and I all love.

VIII.

Be mine, and only mine; take care

Thy looks, thy thoughts, thy dreams, to guide To me alone; nor come so far

As liking any youth beside:

What men e'er court thee fly 'em, and believe They're serpents all, and thou the tempted Eve.

IX.

So shall I court thy dearest truth,
When beauty ceases to engage;
So thinking on thy charming youth,
I'll love it o'er again in age:

So time itself our raptures shall improve,
While still we wake to joy and live to love.

AN ODE,

I.

WHILE from our looks, fair Nymph, you guess

The secret passions of our mind,
My heavy eyes, you say, confess
A heart to love and grief inclin’d.