Why does the fond carnation love to shoot
A various colour from one parent root;
While the fantastic tulip strives to break
In two-fold beauty and a parted streak!
The twining jasmine and the blushing rose,
With lavish grace, their morning scents disclose;
The smelling tuberose and jonquil declare
The stronger impulse of an evening air.
Whence has the tree (resolve me) or the flower
A various instinct or a different power: [breath,
Why should one earth, one clime, one stream, one
Raise this to strength, and sicken that to death?
'Whence does it happen that the plant which well We name the sensitive, should move and feel? Whence know her leaves to answer her command, And with quick horror fly the neighbouring hand? Along the sunny bank or watery mead,
Ten thousand stalks their various blossoms spread;
Peaceful and lowly, in their native soil,
They neither know to spin nor care to toil,
Yet with confess'd magnificence deride
Our vile attire, and impotence of pride.
The cowslip smiles in brighter yellow dress'd,
Than that which veils the nubile virgin's breast;
A fairer red stands blushing in the rose,
Than that which on the bridegroom's vestment flows.
Take but the humblest lily of the field,
And if our pride will to our reason yield,
It must by sure comparison be shown,
That on the regal seat great David's son,
Array'd in all his robes and types of power,
Shines with less glory than that simple flower.
'Of fishes next, my friends, I would inquire : How the mute race engender or respire,
From the small fry that glide on Jordan's stream Unmark'd, a multitude without a name,
To that leviathan, who o'er the seas
Immense rolls onward his impetuous ways,
And mocks the wind, and in the tempest plays?
How they in warlike bands march greatly forth,
From freezing waters and the colder North,
To southern climes directing their career,
Their station changing with the' inverted year?
How all with careful knowledge are endued,
To choose their proper bed, and wave, and food;
To guard their spawn, and educate their brood?
'Of birds, how each, according to her kind,
Proper materials for her nest can find,
And build a frame which deepest thought in man
Would or amend or imitate in vain ?
How in small flights they know to try their young,
And teach the callow child her parent's song?
Why these frequent the plain, and those the wood
Why every land has her specific brood?
Where the tall crane or winding swallow goes,
Fearful of gathering winds and falling snows ;
If into rocks or hollow trees they creep,
In temporary death confin'd to sleep,
Or, conscious of the coming evil, fly
To milder regions and a southern sky?
'Of beasts and creeping insects shall we trace
The wondrous nature and the various race;
Or wild or tame, or friend to man or foe,
Of us what they, or what of them, we know?
'Tell me, ye studious; who pretend to see
Far into Nature's bosom, whence the bee
Was first inform'd her ventrous flight to steer
Through tractless paths and an abyss of air?
Whence she avoids the slimy marsh, and knows
The fertile hills, where sweeter herbage grows,
And honey-making flowers their opening buds
disclose?
How, from the thicken'd mist and setting sun
Finds she the labour of her day is done?
Who taught her against winds and rains to strive,
To bring her burden to the certain hive;
And through the liquid fields again to pass
Duteous, and harkening to the sounding brass?
‘And, O thou sluggard! tell me why the ant,
Midst summer's plenty thinks of winter's want,
By constant journies careful to prepare
Her stores, and bringing home the corny ear,
By what instruction does she bite the grain,
Lest hid in earth, and taking root again,
It might elude the foresight of her care?
Distinct in either insect's deed appear
The marks of thought, contrivance, hope, and fear. S
'Fix thy corporeal and internal eye
On the young gnat or new-engender'd fly,
Or the vile worm, that yesterday began
To crawl, thy fellow-creatures, abject man!
Like thee they breathe, they move, they taste, they
They show their passions, by their acts, like thee;
Darting their stings, they previously declare
Design'd revenge, and fierce intent of war:
Laying their eggs, they evidently prove
The genial power and full effect of love.
Each, then, has organs to digest his food,
One to beget, and one receive the brood:
Has limbs and sinews, blood, and heart and brain,
Life and her proper functions to sustain,
Through the whole fabric smaller than a grain.
What more can our penurious reason grant
To the large whale or castled elephant ?
To those enormous terrors of the Nile,
The crested snake and long-tail'd crocodile,
Than that all differ but in shape and name,
Each destin'd to a less or larger frame?
'For potent Nature loves a various act,
Prone to enlarge, or studious to contract ;
Now forms her work too small, now too immense,
And scorns the measures of our feeble sense.
The object, spread too far, or rais'd too high,
Denies its real image to the eye;
Too little, it eludes the dazzled sight,
Becomes mix'd blackness or unparted light.
Water and air the varied form confound;
The straight looks crooked, and the square grows round.
Thus while with fruitless hope and weary pain We seek great Nature's power, but seek in vain, Safe sits the goddess in her dark retreat,
Around her myriads of ideas wait,
And endless shapes, which the mysterious queen
Can take or quit, can alter or retain,
As from our lost pursuit she wills to hide
Her close decrees, and chasten human pride.
'Untam❜d and fierce the tiger still remains ;
He tires his life in biting on his chains:
For the kind gifts of water and of food
Ungrateful, and returning ill for good,
He seeks his keeper's flesh, and thirsts his blood:
While the strong camel and the generous horse,
Restrain'd and aw'd by man's inferior force,
Do to the rider's will their rage submit,
And answer to the spur, and own the bit;
Stretch their glad mouths to meet the feeder's hand, Pleas'd with his weight, and proud of his command. 'Again: the lonely fox roams far abroad,
On secret rapine bent and midnight fraud;
Now haunts the cliff, now traverses the lawn,
And flies the hated neighbourhood of man;
While the kind spaniel and the faithful hound,
Likest that fox in shape and species found,
Refuses through these cliffs and lawns to roam,
Pursues the noted path, and covets home;
Does with kind joy domestic faces meet,
Takes what the glutted child denies to eat,
And, dying, licks his long-lov'd master's feet.
'By what immediate cause they are inclin❜d,
In many acts, 'tis hard, I own, to find.
I see in others, or I think I see,
That strict their principles and ours agree.
Evil, like us, they shun, and covet good,
Abhor the poison, and receive the food:
Like us they love or hate; like us they know
To joy the friend, or grapple with the foe.
With seeming thought their action they intend,
And use the means proportion'd to the end.
Then vainly the philosopher avers
That reason guides our deed, and instinct theirs.
How can we justly different causes frame,
When the effects entirely are the same?
Instinct and reason how can we divide ?
'Tis the fool's ignorance and the pedant's pride.
"With the same folly, sure, man vaunts his sway,
If the brute beast refuses to obey.
For, tell me, when the empty boaster's word
Proclaims himself the universal lord,
|