My former partners of the peopled scene; With few associates, and not wishing more. Here much I ruminate, as much I may, With other views of men and manners now Than once, and others of a life to come. I see that all are wanderers, gone astray Each in his own delusions; they are lost In chase of fancied happiness, still woo'd And never won. Dream after dream ensues; And still they dream that they shall still succeed, And still are disappointed. Rings the world With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,
And add two thirds of the remaining half,
And find the total of their hopes and fears
Dreams, empty dreams. The million flit as gay As if created only like the fly,
That spreads his motly wings in the eye of noon, To sport their season, and be seen no more. The rest are sober dreamers, grave and wise, And pregnant with discoveries new and rare. Some write a narrative of wars, and feats Of heroes little known; and call the rant An history describe the man, of whom
His own coevals took but little note;
And paint his person, character, and views,
As they had known him from his mother's womb.
They disentangle from the puzzled skein,
In which obscurity has wrapp'd them up, The threads of politic and shrewd design, That ran through all his purposes, and charge His mind with meanings that he never had, Or, having, kept conceal'd. Some drill and bore The solid earth, and from the strata there Extract a register, by which we learn, That he who made it, and reveal'd its date To Moses, was mistaken in its age.
Some, more acute, and more industrious still, Contrive creation; travel nature up To the sharp peak of her sublimest height, And tell us whence the stars; why some are fix'd, And planetary some; what gave them first Rotation, from what fountain flow d their light. Great contest follows, and much learned dust Involves the combatants; each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both. And thus they spend The little wick of life's poor shallow lamp,
In playing tricks with nature, giving laws To distant worlds, and trifling in their own. Is 't not a pity, now, that tickling rheums Should ever tease the lungs and blear the sight Of oracles like these? Great pity too, That, having wielded the elements, and built A thousand systems, each in his own way, They should go out in fume, and be forgot? Ah! what is life thus spent? and what are they, But frantic, who thus spend it? all for smoke- Eternity for bubbles, proves at last
A senseless bargain. When I see such games Play'd by the creatures of a power who swears That he will judge the earth, and call the fool To a sharp reckoning that has liv'd in vain ; And when I weigh this seeming wisdom well, And prove it, in the infallible result, So hollow and so false-I feel my heart Dissolve in pity, and account the learn'd, If this be learning, most of all deceiv'd.
Great crimes alarm the conscience, but it sleeps While thoughtful man is plausibly amus'd.
Defend me, therefore, common sense, say I, From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up!
'Twere well, says one sage erudite, profound,
Terribly arch'd and aquiline his nose,
And overbuilt with most impending brows,
"Twere well, could you permit the world to live
As the world pleases. What's the world to you?
Much. I was born of woman, and drew milk
As sweet as charity, from human breasts.
I think, articulate, I laugh and weep, And exercise all functions of a man.
How then should I and any man that lives Be strangers to each other? Pierce my vein, Take of the crimson stream meandering there, And catechise it well; apply thy glass, Search it, and prove, now, if it be not blood Congenial with thine own: and, if it be, What edge of subtlety canst thou suppose Keen enough, wise and skilful as thou art, To cut the link of brotherhood, by which One common Maker bound me to the kind? $
True; I am no proficient, I confess,
In arts like your's. I cannot call the swift
And perilous lightnings from the angry clouds,
And bid them hide themselves in earth beneath; I cannot analyze the air, nor catch The parallax of yonder luminous point,
That seems half quench'd in the immense abyss;
Such powers I boast not-neither can I rest
A silent witness of the headlong rage
Or headless folly, by which thousands die,
Bone of my bone, and kindred souls to mine.
God never meant that man should scale the heavens
By strides of human wisdom. In his works
Though wonderous, he commands us in his word
To seek him rather, where his mercy shines. The mind indeed, enlighten'd from above, Views him in all; ascribes to the grand cause The grand effect; acknowledges, with joy, His manner, and with rapture tastes his style. But never yet did philosophic tube,
That brings the planets home into the eye Of observation, and discovers, else
Not visible, his family of worlds,
Discover him that rules them; such a veil
Hangs over mortal eyes, blind from the birth, And dark in things divine. Full often, too, Our wayward intellect, the more we learn Of nature, overlooks her author more;
From instrumental causes, proud to draw
Conclusions retrograde, and mad mistake.
But, if his word once teach us, shoot a ray
Through all the heart's dark chambers, and reveal
Truths undiscern'd but by that holy light,
Then all is plain. Philosophy, baptiz'd
In the pure fountain of eternal love,
Has eyes indeed; and, viewing all she sees As meant to indicate a God to man,
Gives him his praise, and forfeits not her own. Learning has born such fruit in other days On all her branches: piety has found
Friends in the friends of science, and true prayer Has flow'd from lips wet with Castalian dews. Such was thy wisdom, Newton, childlike sage! Sagacious reader of the works of God, And in his word sagacious. Such too thine,
Milton, whose genius had angelic wings, And fed on manna! And such thine, in whom Our British Themis gloried with just cause, Immortal Hale! for deep discernment prais'd, And sound integrity, not more than fam'd For sanctity of manners undefil'd.
All flesh is grass, and all its glory fades Like the fair flower dishevell'd in the wind; Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream: The man we celebrate must find a tomb, And we that worship him, ignoble graves. Nothing is proof against the general curse Of vanity, that seizes all below.
The only aramanthine flower on earth Is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.
But what is truth? 'twas Pilate's question, put To Truth itself, that deign'd him no reply. And wherefore? will not God impart his light To them that ask it ?-Freely-'tis his joy, His glory, and his nature, to impart. But to the proud, uncandid, insincere,
Or negligent inquirer, not a spark.
What's that which brings contempt upon a book,
And him who writes it; though the style be neat,
The method clear, and argument exact?
That makes a minister in holy things
The joy of many, and the dread of more,
His name a theme for praise and for reproach ?
That, while it gives us worth in God's account,
Depreciates and undoes us in our own?
What pearl is't that rich men cannot buy, That learning is too proud to gather up; But which the poor, and the despis'd of all, Seek and obtain, and often find unsought? Tell me and I will tell thee what is truth.
O, friendly to the best pursuits of man, Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace, Domestic life in rural leisure pass'd!
Few know thy value, and few taste thy sweets; Though many boast thy favours, and affect To understand and choose thee for their own. But foolish man foregoes his proper bliss, Even as his first progenitor, and quits, Though placed in paradise, (for earth has still
Some traces of her youthful beauty left) Substantial happiness for transient joy. Scenes form'd for contemplation, and to nurse The growing seeds of wisdom; that suggest, By every pleasing image they present, Reflections such as meliorate the heart, Compose the passions, and exalt the mind; Scenes such as these 'tis his supreme delight
To fill with riot, and defile with blood.
Should some contagion, kind to the poor brutes We persecute, annihilate the tribes
That draw the sportsmen over hill and dale, Fearless, and wrapt away from all his cares; Should never game-fowl hatch her eggs again, Nor baited hook deceive the fish's eye; Could pageantry and dance, and feast and song, Be quell'd in all our summer-months' retreats; How many self-deluded nymphs and swains, Who dream they have a taste for fields and groves, Would find them hideous nurseries of the spleen, And crowd the roads, impatient for the town! They love the country, and none else, who seek, For their own sake, its silence and its shade. Delights which who would leave, that has a heart Susceptible of pity, or a mind
Cultur'd and capable of sober thought,
For all the savage din of the swift pack,
And clamours of the field?-Detested sport, That owes its pleasures to another's pain; That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks Of harn less nature, dumb, but yet endu'd With eloquence, that agonies inspire, Of silent tears and heart-distending sighs? Vain tears, alas, and sighs that never find A corresponding tone in jovial souls!
Well-one at least is safe. One shelter'd hare
Has never heard the sanguinary yell
Of cruel man, exulting in her wees. Innocent partner of my peaceful home,
Whom ten long years' experience of my care Has made at last familiar; she has lost Much of her vigilant instinctive dread, Not needful here, beneath a roof like mine..
Yes-thou mayst eat thy bread, and lick the hand That feeds thee; thou mayst frolic on the floor At evening, and at night retire secure
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