Quick, as a darted beam of light, they go,
Through different paths, to different organs flow,
Whence they reflect as swiftly to the brain,
To give it pleasure, or to give it pain.
Thus has the Muse a daring wing display'd,
Through trackless skies ambitious flight essay'd,
To sing the wonders of the human frame;
But, oh! bewails her weak, unequal flame.
Ye skilful masters of Machaon's race,
Who Nature's mazy intricacies trace,
And to sublimer spheres of knowledge rise
By manag'd fire, and late-invented eyes;
Tell, how your search has here cluded been,
How oft amaz'd and ravish'd you have seen
The conduct, prudence, and stupendous art,
And master-strokes in each mechanic part.
Tell, what delightful mysteries remain
Unsung, which my inferior voice disdain.
Who can this field of miracles survey,
And not with Galen all in rapture say,
“Behold a God, adore him, and obey!”
THE introduction, in imitation of king Solomon's ironical concessions to the libertine. The Creator asserted, from the contemplation of animals. Of their sense of hearing, tasting, smelling, and especially of seeing. Of the nobler operations of animals, commonly called instincts. The Creator demonstrated farther, from the contemplation of human understanding, and the perfections of the mind. The vigour and swiftness of thought. Simple perception. Reflection. Of the mind's power of abstracting, uniting, and separating ideas. Of the faculty of reasoning, or deducing one proposition from two others. The power of human understanding, in inventing skilful works, and in other inThe mind's self-determining power, or freedom of choice. Her power of electing an end, and choosing means to attain that end. Of controlling our appetites, rejecting pleasures, and choosing pain, want, and death itself, in hopes of happiness in a distant unknown state of life. The conclusion, being a short recapitulation of the whole; with a hymn
to the Creator of the world.
WHILE rosy youth its perfect bloom maintains,
Thoughtless of age, and ignorant of pains;
While from the heart rich streams with vigour
spring,
[ring;
Bound through their roads, and dance their vital
And spirits, swift as sun-beams through the skies,
Dart through thy nerves, and sparkle in thy eyes;
While Nature with full strength thy sinews arms,
Glows in thy cheeks, and triumphs in her charms;
Indulge thy instincts, and, intent on case,
With ravishing delight thy senses please.
Since no black clouds dishonour now the sky,
No winds, but balmy, genial zephyrs, fly,
Eager embark, and to th' inviting gale
Thy pendants loose, and spread thy silken sail;
Sportive advance, on Pleasure's wanton tide,
Through flowery scenes, diffus'd on either side.
See how the Hours their painted wings display,
And draw, like harness'd doves, the smiling Day!
Shall this glad Spring, when active ferments climb,
These Months, the fairest progeny of Time,
The brightest parts in all Duration's train,
Ask thee to seize thy bliss, and ask in vain ?
To their prevailing smiles thy heart resign,
And wisely make the proffer'd blessings thine.
Near some fair river, on reclining land,
'Midst groves and fountains, let thy palace stand;
Let Parian walls unrivall'd pomp display,
And gilded towers repel augmented day;
Let porphyry pillars in high rows uphold
The azure roof, enrich'd with veins of gold;
And the fair creatures of the sculptor's art
Part grace thy palace, and thy garden part ;
Here let the scentful spoils of opening flowers
Breathe from thy citron walks, and jasmine bowers;
Hesperian blossoms in thy bosom smell;
Let all Arabia in thy garments dwell.
That costly banquets and delicious feasts
May crown thy table, to regale thy guests,
Ransack the hills, and every park and wood,
The lake unpeople, and despoil the flood;
Procure each feather'd luxury, that beats
Its native air, or from its clime retreats,
And by alternate transmigration flies
O'er interposing seas, and changes skies;
Let artful cooks to raise their relish strive,
With all the spicy tastes the Indies give.
While wreaths of roses round thy temples twine,
Enjoy the sparkling blessings of the vine;
Let the warm nectar all thy veins inspire,
Solace thy heart, and raise the vital fire.
Next let the charms of heavenly music cheer
Thy soul with rapture listening in thy ear;
Let tuneful chiefs exert their skill, to show
What artful joys from manag'd sound can flow;
Now hear the melting voice and trembling string;
Let Pepusch touch the lyre, and Margarita sing.
While wanton ferments swell thy glowing veins,
To the warm passion give the slacken'd reins;
Thy gazing eyes with blooming beauty feast,
Receive its dart, and hug it in thy breast;
From fair to fair with gay inconstance rove,
Taste every sweet, and cloy thy soul with love.
But 'midst thy boundless joys, unbridled youth,
Remember still this sad, but certain truth,
That thou at last severely must account;
To what will thy congested guilt amount?
Allow a God; he must our deeds regard;
A righteous Judge must punish and reward:
Yet that he rears no high tribunal here,
Impartial justice to dispense, is clear.
His sword unpunish'd criminals defy,
Nor by his thunder does the tyrant die;
While Heaven's adorers, prest with want and pain,
Their unrewarded innocence maintain,
See his right-hand he unextended keeps,
Tho' long provok'd, th' unactive vengeance sleeps.
Hence we a world succeeding this infer,
Where he his justice will assert; prepare
To stand arraign'd before his awful bar.
Where wilt thou hide thy ignominious head?
Shuddering with horrour, what hast thou to
plead?
Despairing wretch! he'll frown thee from his
And by his wrath will make his being known.
Yet more Religion's empire to support,
To push the foe, and make our last effort;
Let beings with attention be review'd,
Which, not alone with vital power endued,
Can move themselves, can organiz'd perceive
The various strokes, which various objects give.
By laws mechanic can Lucretius tell
How living creatures see, or hear, or smell?
How is the image to the sense convey'd?
On the tun'd organ how the impulse made?
How, and by which more noble part, the brain
Perceives th' idea, can their schools explain?
'Tis clear, in that superior seat alone
The judge of objects has her secret throne;
Since, a limb sever'd by the wounding steel,
We still may pain, as in that member, feel.
Mark how the spirits, watchful in the ear,
Seize undulating sounds, and catch the vocal air.
Observe how others, that the tongue possess,
Which salts of various shape and size impress,
From their affected fibres upward dart,
And different tastes by different strokes impart.
Remark, how those, which in the nostril dwell,
That artful organ, destin'd for the smell,
By vapours inov'd, their passage upward take,
And scents unpleasant or delightful make.
If in the tongue, the nostril, and the ear,
No skill, no wisdom, no design, appear;
Lucretians, next, regard the curious eye;
Can you no art, no prudence, there descry?
By your mechanic principles, in vain
The sense of sight you labour to explain.
You say, "from all the objects of the eye
Thin colour'd shapes uninterrupted fly.
As wandering ghosts (so ancient poets feign)
Skim thro' the air, and sweep th' infernal plain;
So these light figures roam by day and night,
But undiscover'd, till betray'd by light."
But can corporeal forms, with so much case,
Meet in their flight a thousand images,
And yet no conflict, no collisive force,
Break their thin texture, and disturb their course?
What fix'd their parts, and made them so cohere,
That they the picture of the object wear?
What is the shape, that from a body flies?
What moves, what propagates, what multiplies,
And paints one image in a thousand eyes?
When to the eye the crowding figures pass,
How in a point can all possess a place,
And lie distinguish'd in such narrow space?
Since all perception in the brain is made,
(Though where, and how, was never yet dis-
play'd)
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And since so great a distance lies between
The eye-ball, and the seat of sense within;
While in t' eye th' arrested object stays,
Tell, what th' idea to the brain conveys?
You say,
the spirits in the optic nerve,
Mov'd by the intercepted image, scrve
To bear th' impression to the brain, and give
The stroke, by which the object we perceive."
How does the brain, touch'd with a different
stroke,
The whale distinguish from the marble rock?
Pronounce this tree a cedar, that an oak?
Can spirits weak or stronger blows express,
One body greater, and another less?
How do they make us space and distance know!
At once distinct a thousand objects slow?
Lucretians, now proceed; contemplate all
The nobler actions of the animal,
Which instinct some, some lower reason, call.
Say, what contexture did by chance arrive,
Which to brute creatures did that instinct give,
Whence they at sight discern and dread their foe,
Their food distinguish, and their physic know?
By which the lion learns to hunt his prey,
And the weak herd to fear and fly away?
The birds contrive inimitable nests?
And dens are haunted by the forest beasts?
Whence some in subterranean dwellings hide,
These in the rocks, and those in woods abide ?
Whence timorous beasts, through hills and lawns
pursued,
By artful shifts the ravening foe elude?
What various wonders may observers see
In a small insect, the sagacious bee!
Mark, how the little untaught builders square
Their rooins, and in the dark their lodgings rear!
Nature's mechanics, they unwearied strive,
And fill with curious labyrinths the hive.
See, what bright strokes of architecture shine
Thro' the whole frame, what beauty, what design!
Each odoriferous cell, and waxen tower,
The yellow pillage of the rifled flower,
Has twice three sides, the only figure fit
To which the la':ourers may their stores commit,
Without the loss of matter, or of room,
In all the wondrous structure of the comb.
Next view, spectator, with admiring eyes,
In what just order all th' apartments rise!
So regular their equal sides cohere,
Th' adapted angles so each other bear,
That, by mechanic rules refin'd and bold,
They are at once upheld, at once uphold.
Does not this skill ev'n vie with Reason's reach?
Can Euclid more, can more Palladio, teach?
Each verdant hill th' industrious chymists climb,
Extract the riches of the blooming thyme,
And, provident of winter long before,
They stock their caves, and hoard their flowery store;
In peace they rule their state with prudent care,
Wisely defend, or wage offensive war.
Maro, these wonders offer'd to his thought,
Felt his known ardour, and the rapture caught:
Then rais'd his voice, and, in immortal lays,
Did high as Heaven the insect nation raise.
If, Epicurus, this whole artful frame
Does not a wise Creator's hand proclaim,
To view the intellectual world advance;
Is this the creature too of Fate or Chance!
Turn on itself thy godlike Reason's ray,
Thy mind contemplate, and its power survey.
What high perfections grace the human Mind,
In flesh imprison'd, and to Earth confin'd!
What vigour has she! what a piercing sight!
Strong as the winds, and sprightly as the light!
She moves unweary'd as the active fire,
And, like the flame, her flights to Heaven aspire:
By day her thoughts in never-ceasing streams
Flow clear; by night, they strive in troubled
She draws ten thousand landscapes in the brain,
Dresses of airy forms an endless train,
Which all her intellectual scenes prepare,
Enter by turns the stage, and disappear.
To the remoter regions of the sky
Her swift-wing'd thought can in a moment fly;
Climb to the heights of Heaven, to be employ'd
In viewing thence th' interminable void;
Can look beyond the stream of time, to see
The stagnant ocean of eternity.
Thoughts in an instant through the zodiac run,
A year's long journey for the labouring Sun;
Then down they shoot, as swift as darting light,
Nor can opposing clouds retard their flight;
Through subterranean vaults with ease they sweep,
And search the hidden wonders of the deep.
When man with reason dignify'd is born,
No images his naked mind adorn;
No sciences or arts enrich his brain,
Nor Fancy yet displays her pictur'd train:
He no innate ideas can discern,
Of knowledge destitute, though apt to learn.
Our intellectual, like the body's eye,
Whilst in the womb, no object can descry;
Yet is dispos'd to entertain the light,
And judge of things when offer'd to the sight.
When objects through the senses passage gain,
And fill with various imagery the brain,
Th' ideas, which the Mind does thence perceive,
To think and know the first occasion give.
Did she not use the senses' ministry,
Nor ever taste, or smell, or hear, or see,
Could she possest of power perceptive be?
Wretches, who sightless into being came,
Of light or colour no idea frame.
Then grant a man his being did commence,
Deny'd by Nature each external sense,
These ports unopen'd, diffident we guess,
Th' unconscious soul no image could possess;
Though what in such a state the restless train
Of spirits would produce, we ask in vain.
The Mind proceeds, and to reflection goes,
Perceives she does perceive, and knows she knows;
-Reviews her acts, and does from thence conclude
She is with reason and with choice endued.
From individuals of distinguish'd kind,
By her abstracting faculty, the Mind
Precisely general natures can conceive,
And birth to notions universal give;
The various modes of things distinctly shows;
A pure respect, a nice relation knows,
And sees whence each respect and each relation
By her abstracting power in pieces takes
The mix'd and compound whole, which Nature
makes;
On objects of the senses she refines,
Beings, by Nature separated, joins,
And severs qualities, which that combines.
The Mind, from things repugnant, some respects
In which their natures are alike selects,
And can some difference and unlikeness sec
In things which scem entire; to agree;
She does distinguish here, and there unite;
The mark of judgment that, and this of wit.
As she can reckon, separate, and compare,
Conceive what order, rule, proportion, are,
So from one thought she still can more infer;
Maxim from maxim can by force express,
And make discover'd truths associate truths.
confess :
On plain foundations, which our reason lays,
She can stupendous frames of science raise;
Notion on notion built will towering rise,
Till th' intellectual fabrics reach the skies;
The mathematic axioms, which appear
By scientific demonstration clear,
The master-builders on two pillars rear:
From two plain problems by laborious thought
Is all the wondrous superstructure wrought.
The Soul, as mentioned, can herself inspect,
By acts reflex can view her acts direct;
A task too hard for sense; for though the eye
Its own reflected image can descry,
Yet it ne'er saw the sight by which it sees,
Vision can show no colour'd images.
The Mind's tribunal can reports reject
Made by the senses, and their faults correct;
The magnitude of distant stars it knows,
Which erring sense, as twinkling tapers, shows:
Crooked the shape our cheated eye believes,
Which through a double medium it receives;
Superior Mind does a right judgment make,
Declares it straight, and mends the eye's mistake.
Where dwells this sovereign arbitrary Soul,
Which does the human animal control,
Inform each part, and agitate the whole?
O'er ministerial senses does preside,
To all their various provinces divide,
Each member move, and every motion guide,
Which, by her secret uncontested nod,
Her messengers the spirits sends abroad,
Through every nervous pass, and every vital road,
To fetch from every distant part a train
Of outward objects, to enrich the brain?
Where sits this bright intelligence enthron'd,
With numberless ideas pour'd around
Where sciences and arts in order wait,
And truths divine compose her godlike state?
Can the dissecting steel the brain display,
And the august apartinent open lay,
Where this great queen still chooses to reside,
In intellectual pomp, and bright ideal pride?
Or can the eye, assisted by the glass,
Discern the strait, but hospitable place,
In which ten thousand images remain,
Without confusion, and their rank maintain?
How does this wondrous principle of thought
Perceive the object by the senses brought?
What philosophic builder will essay,
By rules mechanic, to unfold the way
How a machine must be dispos'd to think,
Ideas how to frame, and how to link?
Tell us, Lucretius, Epicurus, tell,
And you in wit unrivall'd shall excel;
How through the outward sense the object flics,
How in the Soul her images arise;
What thinking, what perception is, explain;
What all the airy creatures of the brain;
How to the Mind a thought reflected goes,
And how the conscious engine knows it knows.
The Mind a thousand skilful works can frame,
Can form deep projects to procure her aim.
Merchants, for eastern pearl and golden ore
To cross the main, and reach the Indian shore,
Prepare the floating ship, and spread the sail,
To catch the impulse of the breathing gale.
Warriors, in framing schemes, their wisdom show,
To disappoint or circumvent the foe.
Th' ambitious statesman labours dark designs,
Now open force employs, now undermines;
By paths direct his end he now pursues,
By side approaches now, and slanting views.
See, how resistless orators persuade,
Draw out their forces, and the heart invade;
Touch every spring and movement of the soul,
This appetite excite, and that control;
Their powerful voice can flying troops arrest,
Confirm the weak, and melt th' obdurate breast;
Chase from the sad their melancholy air,
Soothe discontent, and solace anxious care.
When threatening tides of rage and anger risc,
Usurp the throne, and Reason's sway despise,
When in the seats of life this tempest reigns,
Beats through the heart, and drives along the
veins;
See, Eloquence, with force persuasive, binds
The restless waves, and charins the warring winds,
Resistless bids tumultuous uproar cease,
Recalls the calm, and gives the bosom peace.
Did not the Mind, on heavenly joy intent,
The various kinds of harmony invent?
She the theorbo, she the viol found,
And all the moving melody of sound;
She gave to breathing tubes a power unknown,
To speak inspir'd with accents not their own;
Taught tuneful sons of music how to sing,
How, by vibrations of th' extended string,
And manag'd impulse on the suffering air,
Textort the rapture, aud delight the ear.
See, how celestial Reason does command
The ready pencil in the painter's hand;
Whose strokes affect with Nature's self to vie,
And with false life amuse the doubtful eye:
Behold the strong emotions of the Minti
Exerted in the eyes, and in the face design'd.
Such is the artist's wondrous power, that we
Ev'n pictur'd souls and colour'd passions see,
Where without words (peculiar eloquence)
The busy figures speak their various sense.
What living face does more distress or woe,
More finish'd shame, confusion, horrour, know,
Than what the masters of the pencil show?
Mean time the chissel with the pencil vies;
The sister arts dispute the doubtful prize.
Are human limbs, ev'n in their vital state,
More just and strong, more free and delicate,
Than Buonorota's curious tools create?
He to the rock can vital instincts give,
Which, thus transform'd, can rage, rejoice, or
His skilful hand does marble veins inspire,
Now with the lover's, now the hero's fire;
So well th' imagin'd actors play their part,
The silent hypocrites such power exert,
That passions, which they feel not, they bestow,
Affright us with their fear, and melt us with their
There Niobe leans weeping on her arm: [woe.
How her sad looks and beauteous sorrow charm!
Sec, here a Venus soft in Parian stone;
A Pallas there, to ancient fables known;
That from the rock arose, not from the main,
This not from Jove's, but from the sculptor's brain.
Admire the carver's fertile energy,
With ravish'd eyes his happy offspring sec.
What beauteous figures, by the unrivall'd art
Of British Gibbons, from the cedar start!
He makes that tree unnative charms assume,
Usurp gay honours, and another's bloom;
The various fruits, which different climates bear,
And all the pride the fields and gardens wear;
While from unjuicy limbs, without a root,
New buds devis'd, and leafy branches, shoot.
As human kind can by an act direct,
Perceive and know, then reason and reflect:
So the self-moving spring has power to choose,
These methods to reject, and those to use;
She can design and prosecute an end,
Exert her vigour, or her act suspend;
Free from the insults of all foreign power,
She does her godlike liberty secure;
Her right and high prerogative maintains,
Impatient of the yoke, and scorns coercive chains;
She can her airy train of forms disband,
And makes new levees at her own commnand;
O'er her ideas sovereign she presides,
At pleasure these unites, and those divides.
The ready phantoms at her nod advance,
And form the busy intellectual dance;
While her fair scenes to vary, or supply,
She singles out fit images, that lie
In Memory's records, which faithful hold
Objects immense, in secret marks enroll'd ;
The sleeping forms at her command awake,
And now return, and now their cells forsake,
On active Fancy's crowded theatre,
As she directs, they rise or disappear.
Objects, which through the senses make their
way,
And just impressions to the Soul convey,
Give her occasion first herself to move,
And to exert her hatred, or her love;
Ideas, which to some impulsive scem,
Act not upon the mind, but that on them.
When she to foreign objects audience gives,
Their strokes and motions in the brain perceives;
As these perceptions, we ideas name,
From her own power and active nature came,
So when discern'd by intellectual light,
Herself her various passions does excite,
To ill her hate, to good her appetite;
To shun the first, the latter to procure,
She chooses means by free elective power;
She can their various babitudes survey,
Debate their fitness, and their merit weigh,
And, while the means suggested she compares,
She to the rivals this or that prefers.
By her superior power the reasoning Soul
Can each reluctant appetite control;
Can every passion rule, and every sense,
Change Nature's course, and with her laws dis
Our breathing to prevent, she can arrest
Th' extension, or contraction, of the breast;
When pain'd with hunger, we can food refuse,
And wholesome abstinence, or famine, choose.
Can the wild beast his instinct disobey,
And from his jaws release the captive prey?
Or hungry herds on verdant pastures lie,
Mindless to eat, and resolute to die?
With heat expiring, can the panting hart,
Patient of thirst, from the cool stream depart?
Can brutes, at will imprison'd, breath detain ?
Torment prefer to ease, and life disdain ?
From all restraint, from all compulsion, free,
Unfore'd, and unnecessitated, we
Ourselves determine, and our freedom prove,
When this we fly, and to that object move.
Had not the Mind a power to will and choose,
One object to embrace, and one refuse;
Could she not act, or not her act suspend,
As it obstructed, or advanc'd, her end;
Virtue and vice were names without a cause,
This would not hate deserve, nor that applause;
Justice in vain has high tribunals rear'd,
Whom can her sentence punish, whom reward?
If impious children should their father kill,
Can they be wicked, when they cannot will;
When only causes, foreign and unseen,
Strike with resistless force the springs within,
Whence in the engine man all motion must
begin?
Are vapours guilty which the vintage blast?
Are storms proscrib'd, which lay the forest waste?
Why lies the wretch then tortur'd on the wheel,
If forc'd to treason, or compell'd to steal?
Why does the warrior, by auspicious Fate,
With laurels crown'd, and clad in robes of state,
In triumph ride amidst the gazing throng,
Deaf with applauses, and the poet's song;
If the victorious, but the brute machine,
Did only wreaths inevitable win,
And no wise choice or vigilance has shown,
Mov'd by a fatal impulse, not his own?
Should trains of atoms human sense impel,
Though not so fierce, so strong, so visible,
As soldiers arm'd, and do not men arrest
With clubs upheld, and daggers at their breast:
Yet means compulsive are not plainer shown,
When ruffians drive, or conquerors drag, us on;
As much we're forc'd, when by an atom's sway
Control'd, as when a tyrant we obey;
And, by whatever cause constrain'd to act,
We merit no reward, no guilt contract.
Our Mind of rulers feels a conscious awe,
Reveres their justice, and regards their law:
She rectitude and deviation knows,
That vice from one, from one that virtue, flows;
Of these she feels unlike effects within,
From virtue pleasure, and remorse from sin;
Hopes of a just reward by that are fed,
By this, of wrath vindictive, secret dread.
The Mind, which thus can rules of duty learn,
Can right from wrong, and good from ill, discern;
Which, the sharp stroke of justice to prevent,
Can shame express, can grieve, reflect, repent;
From Fate or Chance her rise can never draw,
Those causes know not virtue, vice, or law.
She can a life succeeding this conceive,
Of bliss or woe an endless state believe.
Dreading the just and universal doom,
And aw'd by fears of punishment to come,
By hopes excited of a glorious crown,
And certain pleasures in a world unknown:
She can the fond desires of sense restrain,
Renounce delight, and choose distress and pain;
Can rush on danger, can destruction face,
Joyful relinquish life, and death embrace:
She to afflicted virtue can adhere,
And chains and want to prosperous guilt prefer;
Unmov'd, these wild tempestuous steps survey,
And view serene this restless rolling sea.
In vain the monsters, which the coast infest,
Spend all their rage to interrupt her rest;
Her charming song the syren sings in vain,
She can the tuneful hypocrite disdain;
Fix'd and unchang'd the faithless world behold,
Deaf to its threats, and to its favour cold.
Sages, remark, we labour not to show
The will is free, but that the man is so;
For what enlighten'd reasoner can declare
What human will and understanding are?
What science from those objects can we frame
Of which we little know, besides the name?
The learned, who with anatomic art
Dissect the mind, and thinking substance part,
And various powers and faculties assert,
Perhaps by such abstraction of the mind,
Divide the things that are in nature join'd.
What masters of the schools can make it clear
Those faculties, which two to them appear,
Are not residing in the soul the same,
And not distinct, but by a different name?
Thus has the Muse pursu'd her hardy theme,
And sung the wonders of this artful frame.
Ere yet one subterranean arch was made,
One cavern vaulted, or one girder laid;
Ere the high rocks did o'er the shores arise,
Or snowy mountains tower d amidst the skies;
Before the wat'ry troops fil'd off from land,
And lay amidst the rocks entrench'd in sand;
Before the air its bosom did unfold,
Or burnish'd orbs in blue expansion roll'd,
She sung how Nature then in embryo lay,
And did the secrets of her birth display.
When after, at th' Almighty's high command,
Obedient waves divided from the land;
And shades and lazy mists were chas'd away,
While rosy light diffus'd the tender day;
When uproar ceas'd, and wild confusion fled,
And new-born Nature rais'd her beauteous head;
She sung the frame of this terrestrial pile,
The hills, the rocks, the rivers, and the soil:
She view'd the sandy frontiers, which restrain
The noisy insults of th' imprison'd main;
Rang'd o'er the wide diffusion of the waves,
The moist cerulean walks, and search'd the coral
caves.
She then survey'd the fluid fields of air,
And the crude seeds of meteors fashion'd there;
Then with continued flight she sped her way,
Mounted, and bold pursu'd the source of day;
With wonder of celestial motions sung,
How the pois'd orbs are in the vacant hung;
How the bright sluices of ethereal light,
Now shut, defend the empire of the night;
And now, drawn up with wise alternate care,
Let floods of glory out, and spread with day the
air.
Then, with a daring wing, she soar'd sublinie,
From realm to realm, from orb to orb did climb:
Swift through the spacious gulph she urg'd her
At length emerg'd in empyrean day ;
Where far, oh far, beyond what mortals see,
In the void districts of immensity;
The Mind new suns, new planets, can explore,
And yet beyond can still imagine more.
Thus in bold numbers did th' adventurous Muse
To sing the lifeless parts of Nature choose;
And then advanc'd to wonders yet behind,
Survey'd and sung the vegetable kind;
Did lofty woods, and humble brakes review,
Along the valley swept, and o'er the mountain flew.
Then left the Muse the field and waving grove,
And, unfatigu'd with grateful labour, strove
To climb th' amazing heights of sense, and sing
The power perceptive, and the inward spring
Which agitates and guides each living thing.
She next essay'd the embryo's rise to trace
From an unfashion'd, rude, unchannell❜d mass;
Sung how the spirits waken'd in the brain,
Exert their force, and genial toil maintain;
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