What exquisite vicissitude of fate!
Bless'd absolution of our blackest hour!
LORENZO, these are thoughts that make man, man, The wise illumine, aggrandize the great.
How great (while yet we tread the kindred clod,
And ev'ry moment fear to sink beneath
The clod we tread; soon trodden by our sons,)
How great, in the wild whirl of time's pursuits,
To stop, and pause, involv'd in high presage,
Through the long vista of a thousand years,
To stand contemplating our distant selves,
As in a magnifying mirror seen,
Enlarg'd, ennobled, elevate, divine!
To prophesy our own futurities!
To gaze in thought on what all thought transcends! To talk, with fellow-candidates, of joys
As far beyond conception, as desert,
Ourselves th' astonish'd talkers, and the tale!
LORENZO, swells thy bosom at the thought?
The swell becomes thee: 'tis an honest pride.
Revere thyself; and yet thyself despise.
His nature no man can o'er-rate; and none
Can under-rate his merit. Take good heed,
Nor there be modest, where thou shouldst be proud;
That almost universal error shun.
How just our pride, when we behold those heights,
Not those ambition paints in air, but those
Reason points out, and ardent virtue gains;
And angels emulate; our pride how just!
When mount we? When these shackles cast? When
This cell of the creation? This small nest,
Stuck in a corner of the universe,
Wrap'd up in fleecy cloud, and fine-spun air?
Fine-spun to sense; but gross and feculent
To souls celestial; souls ordain'd to breathe
Ambrosial gales, and drink a purer sky;
Greatly triumphant on time's farther shore,
Where virtue reigns, enrich'd with full arrears;
While pomp imperial begs an alms of peace.
In empire high, or in proud science deep,
Ye born of earth! on what can you confer,
With half the dignity, with half the gain,
The gust, the glow of rational delight,
As on this theme, which angels praise and share?
Man's fates and favours are a theme in Heav'n
What wretched repetition cloys us here!
What periodic potions for the sick!
Distemper'd bodies! and distemper'd minds!
In an eternity, what scenes shall strike!
Adventures thicken! Novelties surprise!
What webs of wonder shall unravel there!
What full day pour on all the paths of Heav'n,
And light th' Almighty's footsteps in the deep!
How shall the blessed day of our discharge
Unwind, at once, the labyrinths of fate,
And straighten its inextricable maze!
If inextinguishable thirst in man
To know; how rich, how full, our banquet there!
There, not the moral world alone unfolds:
The world material lately seen in shades,
And, in those shades, by fragments only seen,
And seen those fragments by the labʼring eye,
Unbroken, then, illustrious and entire,
Its ample sphere, its universal frame,
In full dimensions, swells to the survey;
And enters, at one glance, the ravish'd sight.
From some superior point (where, who can tell?
Suffice it, 'tis the point where gods reside)
How shall the stranger man's illumin'd eye,
In the vast ocean of unbounded space,
Behold an infinite of floating worlds
Divide the crystal waves of ether pure,
In endless voyage, without port! The least
Of these disseminated orbs, how great!
Great as they are, what numbers these surpass,
Huge, as Leviathan, to that small race,
Those twinkling multitudes of little life,
He swallows unperceiv'd! Stupendous these!
Yet what are these stupendous to the whole?
As particles, as atoms ill-perceiv'd;
As circulating globules in our veins ;
So vast the plan! Fecundity divine!
Exub'rant source ! perhaps I wrong thee still.
If admiration is a source of joy,
What transport hence! Yet this the least in Heav'n.
What this to that illustrious robe he wears,
Who toss'd this mass of wonders from his hand,
A specimen, an earnest, of his pow'r ?
'Tis to that glory, whence all glory flows,
As the mead's meanest flow'ret to the sun,
Which gave
it birth. But what, this sun of Heav'n ?
This bliss supreme of the supremely bless'd?
Death, only death, the question can resolve.
By death, cheap-bought th' ideas of our joy;
The bare ideas! solid happiness
So distant from its shadow chas'd below.
And chase we still the phantom through the fire, O'er bog, and brake, and precipice, till death?
And toil we still for sublunary pay?
Defy the dangers of the field and flood,
Or spider-like, spin out our precious all,
Our more than vitals spin (if no regard
To great futurity,) in curious webs
Of subtle thought, and exquisite design;
(Fine net-work of the brain!) to catch a Fly?
The momentary buz of vain renown!
A name! a mortal immortality!
Or (meaner still!) instead of grasping air,
For sordid lucre plunge we in the mire?
Drudge, sweat, through ev'ry shame, for ev'ry gain,
For vile contaminating trash; throw up
Our hope in Heav'n, our dignity with man?
And deify the dirt, matur❜d to gold?
Ambition, av'rice; the two demons these,
Which goad through ev'ry slough our human herd,
Hard-travell'd from the cradle to the grave.
How low the wretches stoop! How steep they climb!
These demons burn mankind; but most possess
LORENZO'S bosom, and turn out the skies,
Is it in time to hide eternity?
And why not in an atom on the shore,
To cover ocean? or a mote, the sun?
Glory and wealth! have they this blinding pow'r?
What if to them I prove LORENZO blind?
Would it surprise thee? be thou then surpris'd;
Thou neither know'st: Their nature learn from me.
Mark well, as foreign as these subjects seem,
What close connection ties them to my theme.
First, what is true ambition? The pursuit
Of glory, nothing less than man can share.
Were they as vain as gaudy-minded man,
As flatulent with fumes of self-applause,
Their arts and conquests, animals might boast,
And claim their laurel crowns, as well as we;
But not celestial. Here we stand alone;
As in our form, distinct, pre-eminent;
If prone in thought, our stature is our shame;
And man should blush, his forehead meets the skies.
The visible and present are for brutes,
A slender portion and a narrow bound!
These, reason, with an energy divine,
O'erleaps; and claims the future and unseen!
The vast unseen! the future fathomless!
When the great soul buoys up to this high point,
Leaving gross Nature's sediments below,
Then, and then only, Adam's offspring quits
The sage and hero of the fields and woods,
Asserts his rank, and rises into man.
This is ambition: This is human fire.
Can parts or place (two bold pretenders!) make
LORENZO great, and pluck him from the throng?
Genius and art, ambition's boasted wings,
Our boast but ill deserve. A feeble aid!
Dedalian engin'ry! If these alone
Assist our flight, fame's flight is glory's fall.
Heart-merit wanting, mount we ne'er so high,
Our height is but the gibbet of our name.
A celebrated wretch when I behold,
When I behold a genius bright, and base,
Of tow'ring talents, and terrestrial aims;
Methinks I see, as thrown from her high sphere,
The glorious fragments of a soul immortal,
With rubbish mix'd, and glitt'ring in the dust.
Struck at the splendid, melancholy sight!
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