That travel earth's deep vale, shall I shake off? 1340
When shall my soul her incarnation quit,
And, readopted to thy bless'd embrace,
Obtain her apotheosis in thee ?—
Dost think, Lorenzo, this is wandering wide? 'tis directly striking at the mark.
To wake thy dead devotion was my point;
And how I bless Night's consecrating shades,
Which to a temple turn a universe;
Fill us with great ideas, full of heaven,
And antidote the pestilential earth!
In every storm, that either frowns or falls,
What an asylum has the soul in prayer!
And what a fane is this, in which to pray!
And what a God must dwell in such a fane!
O what a genius must inform the skies!
And is Lorenzo's salamander heart
Cold, and untouch'd, amid these sacred fires?
O ye nocturnal sparks! ye glowing embers,
On Heaven's broad hearth! Who burn, or burn no more,
Who blaze, or die, as great Jehovah's breath
Or blows you or forbears, assist my song!
Pour your whole influence; exercise his heart,
So long possess'd, and bring him back to man.
And is Lorenzo a demurrer still?
Pride in thy parts provokes thee to contest
Truths which, contested, put thy parts to shame :
Nor shame they more Lorenzo's head than heart,
A faithless heart, how despicably small!
Too straight, aught great or generous to receive !
Fill'd with an atom! fill'd and foul'd with self!
And self-mistaken! self, that lasts an hour!
Instincts and passions of the nobler kind
Lie suffocated there; or they alone,
Reason apart, would wake high hope, and open,
To ravish'd thought, that intellectual sphere,
Where Order, Wisdom, Goodness, Providence,
Their endless miracles of love display,
And promise all the truly great desire.
The mind that would be happy must be great;
Great in its wishes, great in its surveys.
Extended views a narrow mind extend,
Push out its corrugate, expansive make,
Which, ere long, more than planets shall embrace.
A man of compass makes a man of worth:
Divine contemplate, and become divine!
As man was made for glory and for bliss,
All littleness is an approach to woe.
Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide,
And let in manhood; let in happiness;
Admit the boundless theatre of thought
From nothing, up to God; which makes a man.
Take God from Nature, nothing great is left;
Man's mind is in a pit, and nothing sees;
Man's heart is in a jakes, and loves the mire,
Emerge from thy profound; erect thine eye;
See thy distress! how close art thou besieged!
Besieged by Nature, the proud sceptic's foe!
Enclosed by these innumerable worlds,
Sparkling conviction on the darkest mind,
As in a golden net of Providence,
How art thou caught, sure captive of belief:
From this thy bless'd captivity what art,
What blasphemy to reason, sets thee free!
This scene is Heaven's indulgent violence;
Canst thou bear up against this tide of glory?
What is earth, bosom'd in these ambient orbs,
But faith in God imposed, and press'd on man?
Darest thou still litigate thy desperate cause,
Spite of these numerous, awful witnesses,
And doubt the deposition of the skies?
O how laborious is thy way to ruin!
Laborious? 'tis impracticable quite :
To sink beyond a doubt in this debate,
With all his weight of wisdom and of will,
And crime flagitious, I defy a fool.
Some wish they did, but no man disbelieves.
God is a Spirit; spirit cannot strike
These gross material organs; God by man
As much is seen, as man a God can see.
In these astonishing exploits of power,
What order, beauty, motion, distance, size!
Concertion of design, how, exquisite !
How complicate in their divine police!
Apt means! great ends! consent to general good!--Each attribute of these material gods,
So long (and that with specious pleas) adored,
A separate conquest gains o'er rebel thought,
And leads in triumph the whole mind of man.'
Lorenze this may seem harangue to thee;
Such all is apt to seem, that thwarts our will.
And dost thou, then, demand a simple proof
Of this great master-moral of the skies,
Unskill'd, or disinclin'd, to read it there?
Since 'tis the basis, and all drops without it,
Take it in one compact, unbroken chain.
Such proof insists on an attentive ear,
"Twill not make one amid a mob of thoughts,
And for thy notice struggle with the world.
Retire;-the world shut out;-thy thoughts call home;--
Imagination's airy wing repress ;-
Lock up thy senses;--let no passion stir ;-
Wake all to Reason ;-let her reign alone,—
Then in thy soul's deep silence, and the depth
Of Nature s silence, midnight, thus inquire,
As I have done, and shall inquire no more.
In Nature's channel thus the questions run:
'What am I? and from whence ?--I nothing know
But that I am; and since I am, conclude
Something eternal; had there e'er been nought,
Nought still had been: eternal there must be.- 1450
But what eternal? Why not human race?
And Adam's ancestors without an end?-
That's hard to be conceived, since every link
Of that long-chain'd succession is so frail.
Can every part depend, and not the whole?
Yet grant it true, new difficulties rise;
I'm still quite out at sea, nor see the shore.
Whence earth, and these bright orbs ?-Eternal too?:
Grant matter was eternal, still these orbs
Would want some other father ;-much design 1460
Is seen in all their motions, all their makes.
Design implies intelligence and art;
That can't be from themselves-or man: that art
Man scarce can comprehend, could man bestow?
And nothing greater yet allow'd, than man.—
Who motion, foreign to the smallest grain,
Shot through vast masses of enormous weight?
Who bid brute matter's restive lump assume
Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly?
Has matter innate motion? then each atom,
Asserting its indisputable right
To dance, would form a universe of dust:
Has matter none? then whence these glorious forms And boundless flights, from shapeless and reposed? Has matter more than motion? has it thought, 1475 Judgment, and genius? is it deeply learn'd
In mathematics? has it framed such laws,
Which, but to guess, a Newton made immortal?— 80, how each sage atom laughs at me,
Who think a clod inferior to a man!
If art to form, and counsel to conduct,
And that with greater far than human skill,
Resides not in each block,-a Godhead reigns!—
Grant, then, invisible, eternal Mind;
That granted, all is solved :-but granting that, 1485
Draw I not o'er me a still darker cloud?
Grant I not that which I can ne'er conceive?
A being without origin or end !—
Hail, human Liberty! there is no God
Yet why? on either scheme that not subsists;
Subsist it must, in God or human race;
If in the last, how many knots beside,
Indissoluble all ?-why choose it there
Where, chosen, still subsist ten thousand more?
Reject it where, that chosen, all the rest
Dispersed, leave Reason's whole horizon clear?—
This is not Reason's dictate; Reason says,
Close with the side where one grain turns the scale:
What vast preponderance is here! can Reason
With louder voice exclaim-" Believe a God?" 1500
And Reason heard, is the sole mark of man.
What things impossible must man think true,
On any other system! and how strange
To disbelieve, through mere credulity!'
If in this chain Lorenzo finds no flaw,
Let it for ever bind him to belief.
And where the link, in which a flaw he finds?
And if a God there is, that God how great!
How great that Power whose providential care
Through these bright orbs' dark centres darts a ray!
Of Nature universal threads the whole !
And hangs Creation, like a precious gem,
Though little, on the footstool of his throne !
That little gem, how large! A weight let fall
From a fix'd star, in ages can it reach
This distant earth? Say, then, Lorenzo! where,
Where ends this mighty building? where begin
The suburbs of Creation? where the wall
Whose battlements look o'er into the vale
Of nonexistence? Nothing's strange abode !
Say, at what point of space Jehovah dropp'd
His slacken'd line, and laid his balance by ;
Weigh'd worlds, and measured infinite no more?
Where rears his terminating pillar high
Its extramundane head? and says to gods, du 1525 In characters illustrious as the Sun,
'I stand, the plan's proud period; I pronounce The work accomplish'd; the Creation closed: Shout, all ye Gods! nor shout, ye Gods, alone;
|
