Ir is not from his form, in which we trace
Strength joined with beauty, dignity with grace,
That man, the mafter of this globe, derives
His right of empire over all that lives.
That form indeed, the affociate of a mind
Vaft in its powers, ethereal in its kind,
That form, the labour of almighty skill,
Framed for the service of a free-born will,
Afferts precedence, and bespeaks control,
But borrows all its grandeur from the foul.
Hers is the ftate, the splendour, and the throne
An intellectual kingdom, all her own.
For her the memory fills her ample page
With truths poured down from every diftant age;
For her amaffes an unbounded ftore,
The wisdom of great nations, now no more;
Though laden, not incumbered with her spoil;
Laborious, yet unconscious of her toil;
When copiously supplied, then most enlarged;
Still to be fed, and not to be furcharged.
For her the fancy, roving unconfined,
The prefent muse of every penfive mind,
Works magic wonders, adds a brighter hue
To nature's fcenes than nature ever knew.
At her command winds rife and waters roar,
Again the lays them slumbering on the fhore;
With flower and fruit the wilderness fupplies,
Or bids the rocks in ruder pomp arise.
For her the judgment, umpire in the ftrife
That grace and nature have to wage through life,
Quick-fighted arbiter of good and ill,
Appointed fage preceptor to the will,
Condemns, approves, and with a faithful voice
Guides the decifion of a doubtful choice.
Why did the fiat of a God give birth
To yon fair fun and his attendant earth?
And, when descending he refigns the skies,
Why takes the gentler moon her turn to rife,
Whom ocean feels through all his countless waves,
And owns her power on every shore he laves?
Why do the seasons ftill enrich the year,
Fruitful and young as in their first career?
Spring hangs her infant bloffoms on the trees,
Rocked in the cradle of the western breeze;
Summer in hafte the thriving charge receives
Beneath the shade of her expanded leaves,
Till autumn's fiercer heats and plenteous dews
Dye them at laft in all their glowing hues.
'Twere wild profufion all, and bootless wafte,
Power mifemployed, munificence mifplaced,
Had not its author dignified the plan,
And crowned it with the majefty of man.
Thus formed, thus placed, intelligent, and taught,
Look where he will, the wonders God has wrought,
The wildeft fcorner of his Maker's laws
Finds in a fober moment time to pause,
To prefs the important question on his heart,
"Why formed at all, and wherefore as thou art?"
If man be what he feems, this hour a flave,
The next mere duft and ashes in the grave;
Endued with reafon only to descry
His crimes and follies with an aching eye;
With paffions, juft that he may prove, with pain,
The force he spends against their fury vain ;
And if, foon after having burnt, by turns,
With every luft, with which frail nature burns,
His being end where death diffolves the bond,
The tomb take all, and all be blank beyond;
Then he, of all that nature has brought forth,
Stands felf-impeached the creature of leaft worth,
And useless while he lives, and when he dies,
Brings into doubt the wisdom of the skies.
Truths, that the learned purfue with eager thought, Are not important always as dear-bought,
Proving at laft, though told in pompous strains,
A childish waste of philofophic pains;
But truths, on which depends our main concern,
That 'tis our fhame and mifery not to learn,
Shine by the fide of every path we tread
With fuch a luftre, he that runs may read.
'Tis true that, if to trifle life away
Down to the fun-set of their latest day,
Then perish on futurity's wide shore
Like fleeting exhalations, found no more,
Were all that Heaven required of human kind,
And all the plan their destiny designed,
What none could reverence all might juftly blame, And man would breathe but for his Maker's fhame.
|