Devotion! daughter of Astronomy!
An undevout astronomer is mad.
True; all things speak a God; but in the small,
Men trace out Him; in great, He seizes man;
Seizes, and elevates, and raps, and fills
With new inquiries, mid associates new.
Tell me, ye stars! ye planets! tell me, all
Ye starr'd and planeted inhabitants! what is it?
What are these sons of wonder? Say, proud Arch,
(Within whose azure palaces they dwell)
Built with divine ambition! in disdain
Of limit, built! built in the taste of heaven!
Vast concave! ample dome! wast thou design'd
A meet apartment for the Deity?-
Not so; that thought alone thy state impairs,
Thy lofty sinks, and shallows thy profound,
And strengthens thy diffusive; dwarfs the whole,
And makes a Universe an orrery.
But when I drop mine eye, and look on man,
Thy right regain'd thy grandeur is restored,
O Nature! wide flies off the' expanding round:
As when whole magazines, at once, are fired,
The smitten air is hollow'd by the blow,
The vast displosion dissipates the clouds,
Shock'd ether's billows dash the distant skies;
Thus (but far more) the' expanding round flies off,
And leaves a mighty void, a spacious womb,
Might teem with new creation; reinflamed,
Thy luminaries triumph, and assume
Divinity themselves. Nor was it strange,
Matter high-wrought to such surprising pomp,
Such godlike glory, stole the style of gods,
From ages dark, obtuse, and steep'd in sense :
For sure to sense they truly are divine,
And half absolved idolatry from guilt,
Nay, turn'd it into virtue. Such it was
In those, who put forth all they had of man
Unlost, to lift their thought, nor mounted higher:
But, weak of wing, on planets perch'd, and thought
What was their highest must be their adored.
But they how weak, who could no higher mount ?
And are there, then, Lorenzo! those to whom
Unseen, and unexistent, are the same?
And if incomprehensible is join'd,
Who dare pronounce it madness to believe?
Why has the almighty Builder thrown aside
All measure in his work? stretch'd out his line
So far, and spread amazement o'er the whole?
Then (as he took delight in wide extremes)
Deep in the bosom of his Universe
Dropp'd down that reasoning mite, that insect, man! To crawl, and gaze, and wonder at the scene?— 821 That man might ne'er presume to plead amazement For disbelief of wonders in himself.
Shall God be less miraculous than what
His hand has formed? shall mysteries descend
From unmysterious? things more elevate,
Be more familiar? uncreated lie
More obvious than created, to the grasp
Of human thought? The more of wonderful
Is heard in Him, the more we should assent.
Could we conceive him, God he could not be ;
Or he not God, or we could not be men.
A God alone can comprehend a God:
Man's distance how immense! On such a theme,
Know this, Lorenzo! (seem it ne'er so strange)
Nothing can satisfy, but what confounds ;
Nothing but what astonishes, is true.
The scene thou seest attests the truth I sing,
And every star sheds light upon thy creed.
These stars, this furniture, this cost of heaven,
If but reported, thou hadst ne'er believed;
But thine eye tells thee, the romance is true.
The grand of Nature is the' Almighty's oath,
In Reason's court, to silence Unbelief.
How my mind, opening at this scene, imbibes
The moral emanations of the skies,
While nought, perhaps, Lorenzo less admires!
Has the Great Sovereign sent ten thousand worlds
To tell us, He resides above them all,
In glory's unapproachable recess?
And dare earth's bold inhabitants deny
The sumptuous, the magnific embassy,
A moment's audience? Turn we, nor will hear
From whom they come, or what they would impart
For man's emolument; sole cause that stoops
Their grandeur to man's eye? Lorenzo! rouse;
Let thought, awaken'd, take the lightning's wing,
And glance from east to west, from pole to pole.
Who sees, but is confounded or convinced?
Renounces reason, or a God adores?
Mankind was sent into the world to see:
Sight gives the science needful to their peace;
That obvious science asks small learning's aid.
Wouldst thou on metaphysic pinions soar?
Or wound thy patience amid logic thorns?
Or travel history's enormous round?
Nature no such hard task enjoins: she gave
A make to man directive of his thought;
A make set upright, pointing to the stars,
As who shall say, 'Read thy chief lesson there.'
Too late to read this manuscript of heaven,
When, like a parchment scroll, shrunk up by flames,
It folds Lorenzo's lesson from his sight.
Lesson how various! not the God alone, see his ministers; I see, diffused
m radiant orders, essences sublime, Of various offices, of various plume,
in heavenly liveries distinctly clad,
izure, green, purple, pearl, or downy gold,
Or all commix'd; they stand, with wings outspread
Listening to catch the Master's least command,
And fly through nature ere the moment ends;
Numbers innumerable!--Well conceived
By Pagan and by Christian! O'er each sphere
Presides an angel, to direct its course,
And feed, or fan, its flames; or to discharge
Other high trusts unknown; for who can see
Such pomp of matter, and imagine mind
(For which alone inanimate was made)
More sparingly dispensed? that nobler son,
Far liker the great Sire !--'Tis thus the skies
Inform us of superiors numberless,
As much, in excellence, above mankind,
As above earth, in magnitude, the spheres.
Those, as a cloud of witnesses, hang o'er us:
In a throng'd theatre are all our deeds.
Perhaps a thousand demigods descend
On every beam we see, to walk with men.
Awful reflection! strong restraint from ill!
Yet here, our virtue finds still stronger aid From these ethereal glories sense surveys. Something, like magic, strikes from this blue vault : With just attention is it view'd? we feel A sudden succour, unimplored, unthought. Nature herself does half the work of man. Seas, rivers, mountains, forests, deserts, rocks, The promontory's height, the depth profound Of subterranean excavated grots,
Black-brow'd, and vaulted high, and yawning wide, From Nature's structure, or the scoop of Time ;
If ample of dimension, vast of size,
E'en these an aggrandizing impulse give ;
Of solemn thought enthusiastic neights
E'en these infuse.-But what of vast in these?
Nothing-or we must own the skies forgot.
Much less in art.-Vain Art! thou pigmy power!
How dost thou swell, and strut, with human pride,
To show thy littleness! What childish toys,
Thy watery columns squirted to the clouds!
Thy bason'd rivers and imprison'd seas!
Thy mountains moulded into forms of men!
Thy hundred-gated capitals! or those
Where three days' travel left us much to ride;
Gazing on miracles by mortals wrought,
Arches triumphai, theatres immense,-
Or nodding gardens pendent in mid air!
Or temples proud to meet their gods half-way!
Yet these affect us in no common kind:
What then the force of such superior scenes?
Enter a temple, it will strike an awe :
What awe from this the Deity has built?
A good man seen, though silent, counsel gives:
The touch'd spectator wishes to be wise.
In a bright mirror His own hands have made,
Here we see something like the face of God.
Seems it not then enough to say, Lorenzo,
To man abandon'd, ' Hast thou seen the skies?'
And yet, so thwarted Nature's kind design
By daring man, he makes her sacred awe
(That guard from ill) his shelter, his temptation 940
To more than common guilt, and quite inverts
Celestial Art's intent. The trembling stars
See crimes gigantic, stalking through the gloom
With front ereet, that hide their head by day,
And making night still darker by their deeds.
Slumbering in covert, till the shades descend,
Rapine and Murder, link'd, row prowl for prey.
The miser earths his treasure; and the thief,
Watching the mole, half beggars him ere morn.
Now plots and foul conspiracies awake,
And, muffling up their horrors from the moon,
Havock and devastation they prepare,
And kingdoms tottering in the field of blood.
Now sons of riot in mid-revel rage.
What shall I do?-suppress it? or proclaim?—
Why sleeps the thunder? Now, Lorenzo! now
His best friend's couch the rank adulterer
Ascends secure, and laughs at gods and men.
Preposterous madmen, void of fear or shame,
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