Or from his throne some delegated power,
Who, studious of our peace, dost turn the thought
From vain and vile to solid and sublime!
Unseen thou lead'st me to delicious drauglits
Of inspiration, from a purer stream,
And fuller of the God, than that which burst
From famed Castalia; nor is yet allay'd
My sacred thirst, though long my soul has ranged 110
Through pleasing paths of moral and divine,
By thee sustain'd, and lighted by the stars.
By them best lighted are the paths of thought;
Nights are their days, their most illumined hours.
By day the soul, o'erborne by life's career,
Stunn'd by the din, and giddy with the glare,
Reels far from reason, jostled by the throng.
By day the soul is passive, all her thoughts
Imposed, precarious, broken, ere mature.
By night, from objects free, from passion cool,
Thoughts uncontroll'd and unimpress'd, the births
Of pure election, arbitrary range,
Not to the limits of one world confined;
But from ethereal travels light on earth,
As voyagers drop anchor, for repose.
Let Indians, and the gay, like Indians, fond
Of feather'd fopperies, the Sun adore :
Darkness has more divinity for me;
It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul
To settle on herself, our point supreme!
There lies our theatre; there sits our judge.
Darkness the curtain drops o'er life's dull scene;
"Tis the kind hand of Providence stretch'd out
"Twixt man and vanity; 'tis Reason's reign,
And Virtue's too; these tutelary shades
Are man's asylum from the tainted throng.
Night is the good man's friend, and guardian too;
It no less rescues virtue than inspires.
Virtue, for ever frail as fair below,
Her tender nature suffers in the crowd,
Nor touches on the world without a stain.
The world's infectious; few bring back at eve,
Immaculate, the manners of the morn.
Something we thought, is blotted; we resolved,
Is shaken; we renounced, returns again.
Each salutation may slide in a sin
Unthought before, or fix a former flaw.
Nor is it strange; light, motion, concourse, noise,
All scatter us abroad. Thought, outward-bound,
Neglectful of our home affairs, flies off
In fume and dissipation, quits her charge,
And leaves the breast unguarded to the foe.
Present example gets within our guard,
And acts with double force, by few repell'd.
Ambition fires ambition; love of gain
Strikes, like a pestilence, from breast to breast:
Riot, pride, perfidy, blue vapours breathe;
And inhumanity is caught from man,
From smiling man! A slight, a single glance,
And shot at random, often has brought home
A sudden fever to the throbbing heart
Of envy, rancour, or impure desire.
We see, we hear, with peril; Safety dwells
Remote from multitude. The world 's a school
Of wrong, and what proficients swarm around!
We must or imitate or disapprove ;
Must list as their accomplices or foes:
That stains our innocence, this wounds our peace. From Nature's birth, hence, Wisdom has been smit With sweet recess, and languish'd for the shade. 170 This sacred shade and solitude what is it?
'Tis the felt presence of the Deity!
Few are the faults we flatter when alone;
Vice sinks in her allurements, is unguilt,
And looks, like other objects, black by night.
By night an atheist half believes a God!
Night is fair Virtue's immemorial friend.
The conscious Moon, through every distant age,
Has held a lamp to Wisdom, and let fall,
On Contemplation's eye, her purging ray.
The famed Athenian, he who woo'd from Heaven
Philosophy the fair, to dwell with men,
And form their manners, not inflame their pride.
While o'er his head, as fearful to molest
His labouring mind, the stars in silence slide,
And seem all gazing on their future guest,
See him soliciting his ardent suit
In private audience: all the livelong night,
Rigid in thought, and motionless, he stands;
Nor quits his theme or posture till the Sun
(Rude drunkard! rising resy from the main)
Disturbs his nobler intellectual beam,
And gives him to the tumult of the world.
Hail, precious moments! stolen from the black waste
Of murder'd time! auspicious Midnight, hail!
The world excluded, every passion hush'd,
And open'd a calm intercourse with Heaven,
Here the soul sits in council, ponders past,
Predestines future action; sees, not feels
Tumultuous Life, and reasons with the storm,
All her lies answers, and thinks down her charms.
What awful joy! what mental liberty!
I am not pent in darkness; rather say
(If not too bold) in darkness I'm imbower'd.
Delightful gloom! the clustering thoughts around 205 Spontaneous rise, and blossom in the shade;
But droop by day, and sicken in the Sun;
Thought borrows light elsewhere; from that first fire, Fountain of animation! whence descends
Urania, my celestial guest! who deigns
Nightly to visit me, so mean, now,
Conscious how needful discipline to man,
From pleasing dalliance with the charms of Night,
My wandering thought recals, to what excites
Far other beat of heart, Narcissa's tomb!
Or is it feeble Nature calls me back,
And breaks my spirit into grief again?
Is it a Stygian vapour in my blood?
A cold slow puddle, creeping through my veins?
Or is it thus with all men?-Thus with all.
What are we? how unequal! now we soar,
And now we sink. To be the same transcends
Our present prowess. Dearly pays the soul
For lodging ill; too dearly rents her clay.
Reason, a baffled counsellor but adds
The blush of weakness to the bane of woe.
The noblest spirit, fighting her hard fate
In this damp dusky region, charged with storms,
But feebly flutters, yet untaught to fly;
Or, flying, short her flight, and sure her fall:
Our utmost strength, when down, to rise again;
And not to yield, though beaten, all our praise.
'Tis vain to seek in men for more than man.
Though proud in promise, big in previous thought,
Experience damps our triumph. I, who late,
Emerging from the shadows of the grave,
Where grief detain'd me prisoner, mounting high,
Threw wide the gates of everlasting day,
And call'd mankind to glory, shook of pain,
Mortality shook off, in ether pure,
And struck the stars; now feel my spirits fail;
They drop me from the zenith; down I rush,
Like him whom fable fledged with waxen wings,
In sorrow drown'd-but not in sorrow lost.
How wretched is the man who never mourn'd!
I dive for precious pearl in Sorrow's stream:
Not so the thoughtless man that only grieves,
Takes all the torment, and rejects the gain, ·
(Inestimable gain!) and gives Heaven leave
To make him but more wretched, not more wise. 250
If wisdom is our lesson (and what else
Ennobles man? what else have angels learn'd?)
Grief! more proficients in thy school are made,
Than Genius or proud Learning e'er could boast.
Voracious Learning, often overfed,
Digests not into sense her motley meal.
This bookcase, with dark booty almost burst,
This forager on others' wisdom, leaves
Her native farm, her reason, quite untill'd;
With mix'd manure she surfeits the rank soil,
Dung'd, but not dress'd, and rich to beggary:
A pomp untamable of weeds prevails;
Her servant's wealth encumber'd Wisdom mourns.
And what says Genius? Let the dull be wise!'
Genius, too hard for right, can prove it wrong,
And loves to boast, where blush men less inspired.
It pleads exemption from the laws of Sense,
Considers Reason as a leveller,
And scorns to share a blessing with the crowd.
That wise it could be, thinks an ample claim;
To glory and to pleasure gives the rest.
Crassus but sleeps, Ardelio is undone.
Wisdom less shudders at a fool than wit.
But Wisdom smiles, when humbled mortals weep. When Sorrow wounds the breast, as ploughs the glebe, And hearts obdurate feel her softening shower; Her seed celestial, then, glad Wisdom sows; Her golden harvest triumphs in the soil. Narcissa! welcome my relapse;
I'll raise a tax on my calamity,
And reap rich compensation from my pain.
I'll range the plenteous intellectual field,
And gather every thought of sovereign power
To chase the moral maladies of man;
Thoughts, which may bear transplanting to the skies,
Though natives of this coarse penurious soil;
Nor wholly wither there, where seraphs sing,
Refined, exalted, not annull'd, in Heaven.
Reason, the sun that gives them birth, the same
In either clime, though more illustrious there.
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