But claim superior lineage by my sire,
Who warmed the unthinking clod with heavenly fire;
Essence divine, with lifeless clay allayed,
By double nature, double instinct swayed:
With look erect, I dart my longing eye,
Seem winged to part and gain my native sky :
I strive to mount, but strive, alas! in vain,
Tied to this massy globe with magic chain.
Now with swift thought I range from pole to pole,
View worlds around their flaming centres roll;
What steady powers their endless motions guide
Through the same trackless paths of boundless void!
Around me, lo! the thinking thoughtless crew
(Bewildered each) their different paths pursue :
Of them I ask the way: the first replies
"Thou art a god," and sends me to the skies:
"Down on the turf," the next "thou two-legg'd beast:
There fix thy lot, thy bliss and endless rest;
Between these wide extremes the length is such,
I find I know too little or too much.
CXXII. YOUNG.
I. ON THE BEING OF A GOD.
Retire! The world shut out :-Thy thoughts call home:
Imagination's airy wing repress ;—
Lock
up thy senses;-Let no passion stir :-
Wake all to reason-Let her reign alone;
Then, in thy soul's deep silence, and the depth
Of Nature's silence, midnight, thus inquire;
What am I? and from whence ?-I nothing know,
But that I am; and, since I am, conclude
Something eternal; had there e'er been nought,
Nought still had been: eternal there must be--
But what eternal? Why not human race;
And Adam's ancestors without an end?
That's hard to be conceiv'd; since every link
Of that long chain'd succession is so frail:
Can every part depend, and not the whole?
Yet grant it true; new difficulties rise;
I'm still quite out at sea, nor see the shore.
Whence earth, and these bright orbs ?-Eternal too? -
Grant matter was eternal; still these orbs
Would want some other Father: much design
Is seen in all their motions, all their makes:
Design implies intelligence, and art:
That can't be from themselves or man: that art
Man scarce can comprehend, could man bestow ?
And nothing greater, yet allow'd than man.
Who motion, foreign to the smallest grain,
Shot through vast masses of enormous weight?
Who bid rude matter's restive lumps assume
Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly ?
Has matter innate motion? Then each atom,
Asserting its indisputable right
To dance, would form an universe of dust.
Has matter none? Then whence these glorious forms,
And boundless flights, from shapeless and repos'd?
Has matter more than motion? Has it thought, ·
Judgment, and genius? Is it deeply learned
In mathematics? Has it fram'd such laws,
Which but to guess a Newton made inmortal ?
If art to form, and counsel to conduct,
And that with greater far than human skill,
Resides not in each block,-a Godhead reigns-
And if a God there is, that God how great!
2. ON PROCRASTINATION.
Be wise to day: 'tis madness to defer:
Next day the fatal precedent will plead ;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time:
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears
The palm, "That all men are about to live,”
For ever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They, one day, shall not drivel: and their ride
On this reversion takes up ready praise,
At least, their own; their future selves applauds ;
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead!
Time lodg'd in their own hands is Folly's vails:
That lodg'd in Fate's to Wisdom they consign:
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone.
'Tis not in Folly, not to scorn a fool;
And scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,
And that through every stage. When young, indeed,
In full content, we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan :
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve :
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves then dies the same.
And why? because he thinks himself immortal:
All men think all men mortal but themselves :
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread:
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close; where past the shaft, no trace is found,
As from the wing no scar the sky retains:
The parted wave no furrow from the keel;
So dies in human hearts the thought of death;
E'en with the tender tear which nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.
3. THE HORSE.
Survey the warlike horse! didst thou invest
With thunder his robust distended chest?
No sense of fear his dauntless soul allays;
'Tis dreadful to behold his nostrils blaze:
To paw the vale he proudly takes delight,
And triumphs in the fulness of his might;
High raised, he snuffs the battle from afar,
And burns to plunge amid the raging war:
And mocks at death, and throws his foam around,
And in a storm of fury shakes the ground.
How doth his firm, his rising heart advance,
Full on the brandish'd sword and shaken lance;
While his fix'd eye-balls meet the dazzling shield,
Gaze and return the lightning of the field!
He sinks the sense of pain in generous pride,
Nor feels the shaft that trembles in his side:
But neighs to the shrill trumpet's dreadful blast
Till death and when he groans, he groans his last.
CXXIII. ELIJAH FENTON.
1. ODE IN SPRING.
O'er winter's long inclement sway
At length the lusty spring prevails:
And swift to meet the smiling May,
Is wafted by the western gales.
Around him dance the rosy hours,
And, damasking the ground with flowers,
With ambient sweets perfume the morn;
With shadowy verdure flourished high,
A sudden youth the groves enjoy,
Where Philomel laments forlorn.
By her awaked, the woodland choir
To hail the coming god prepares :
And tempts me to resume the lyre,
Soft warbling to the vernal airs.
Yet once more, oh ye Muses, deign
For me the meanest of your train,
Unblamed to approach your blest retreat:
Where Horace wantons at your spring,
And Pindar sweeps a bolder string,
Whose notes the Aonian hills repeat.
2. VARIETY OF NATURE.
Nature permits her various gifts to fall
On various climes, nor smiles alike on all :
The Latian vales eternal verdure wear,
And flowers spontaneous crown the smiling year;
But who manures a wild Norwegian hill
To raise the jasmine or the coy jonquíl?
Who finds the peach among the savage sloes,
Or in black Scythia seeks the blushing rose?
Here golden grain waves o'er the teeming fields
And there the vine her racy purple yields;
Rich on the cliff the British oak ascends,
Proud to survey the seas her power
defends
Her sovereign title to the flag she proves,
Scornful of softer India's spicy groves.
CXXIV. AARON HILL.
Distrust is poor and a misplaced suspicion
Invites and justifies the falsehood feared.
Monarchs, by forms of pompous misery pressed,
In proud, unsocial misery, unblessed,
Would but for love's soft influence curse their throne And, among crowded millions, live alone.
CXXV. TICKELL.
1. ON THE DEATH OF ADDISON.
Can I forget the dismal night that gave My soul's best part for ever to the grave! How silent did his old companions tread, By midnight lamps, the mansion of the dead; Through breathing statues, then unheeded things, Through rows of warriors, and through walks of kings What awe did the slow solemn knell inspire; The pealing organ and the pausing choir! The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid, And the last words that dust to dust conveyed! While, speechless, o'er thy closing grave we bend, Accept those tears, thou dear departed friend. Oh, gone for ever! take this long adieu, And sleep in peace, next thy loved Montague. To strew fresh laurels, let the task be mine, A frequent pilgrim at thy sacred shrine; Mine, with true sighs, thy absence to bemoan, And grave with faithful epitaphs thy stone.
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