| |
| VAST bodies of philosophy | |
| I oft have seen, and read, | |
| But all are bodies dead, | |
| Or bodies by art fashioned; | |
| I never yet the living soul could see, | 5 |
| But in thy books and thee. | |
| ’Tis only God can know | |
| Whether the fair idea thou dost show | |
| Agree entirely with his own or no. | |
| This I dare boldly tell, | 10 |
| ’Tis so like truth ’twill serve our turn as well. | |
| Just, as in nature, thy proportions be, | |
| As full of concord their variety, | |
| As firm the parts upon their centre rest, | |
| And all so solid are that they at least | 15 |
| As much as nature, emptiness detest. | |
| |
| Long did the mighty Stagirite 1 retain | |
| The universal intellectual reign, | |
| Saw his own country’s short-lived leopard slain; 2 | |
| The stronger Roman eagle did out-fly, 3 | 20 |
| Oftener renewed his age, and saw that die. | |
| Mecca 4 itself, in spite of Mahomet, possest, | |
| And, chased by a wild deluge from the east, | |
| His monarchy new planted in the west. | |
| But as in time each great imperial race | 25 |
| Degenerates, and gives some new one place: | |
| So did this noble empire waste, | |
| Sunk by degrees from glories past, | |
| And in the school-men’s hands it perished quite at last. | |
| Then nought but words it grew, | 30 |
| And those all barbarous too. | |
| It perished, and it vanished there, | |
| The life and soul breathed out, became but empty air. | |
| |
| The fields which answer’d well the ancients’ plough, | |
| Spent and outworn return no harvest now, | 35 |
| In barren age wild and unglorious lie, | |
| And boast of past fertility, | |
| The poor relief of present poverty. | |
| Food and fruit we now must want | |
| Unless new lands we plant. | 40 |
| We break up tombs with sacrilegious hands; | |
| Old rubbish we remove; | |
| To walk in ruins, like vain ghosts, we love, | |
| And with fond divining wands 5 | |
| We search among the dead | 45 |
| For treasures burièd, | |
| Whilst still the liberal earth does hold | |
| So many virgin mines of undiscovered gold. | |
| |
| The Baltic, Euxine, and the Caspian, | |
| And slender-limbed Mediterranean, 6 | 50 |
| Seem narrow creeks to thee, and only fit | |
| For the poor wretched fisher-boats of wit. | |
| Thy nobler vessel the vast ocean tries, | |
| And nothing sees but seas and skies, | |
| Till unknown regions it descries, | 55 |
| Thou great Columbus of the golden lands of new philosophies, | |
| Thy task was harder much than his, | |
| For thy learn’d America is | |
| Not only found out first by thee, | |
| And rudely left to future industry; | 60 |
| But thy eloquence and thy wit, | |
| Has planted, peopled, built, and civilis’d it. | |
| |
| I little thought before, | |
| (Nor being my own self so poor | |
| Could comprehend so vast a store) | 65 |
| That all the wardrobe of rich eloquence, | |
| Could have afforded half enough, | |
| Of bright, of new, and lasting stuff, | |
| To clothe the mighty limbs of thy gigantic sense. | |
| Thy solid reason like the shield from heaven | 70 |
| To the Trojan hero given, | |
| Too strong to take a mark from any mortal dart, | |
| Yet shines with gold and gems in every part, | |
| And wonders on it graved by the learn’d hand of art; | |
| A shield that gives delight | 75 |
| Even to the enemies’ sight, | |
| Then, when they’re sure to lose the combat by ’t. | |
| |
| Nor can the snow which now cold age does shed | |
| Upon thy reverend head, | |
| Quench or allay the noble fires within, | 80 |
| But all which thou hast been, | |
| And all that youth can be thou’rt yet, | |
| So fully still dost thou | |
| Enjoy the manhood, and the bloom of wit, | |
| And all the natural heat, but not the fever too. | 85 |
| So contraries on Ætna’s top conspire; | |
| Here hoary frosts, and by them breaks out fire. | |
| A secure peace the faithful neighbours keep, | |
| Th’ emboldened snow next to the flame does sleep. | |
| And if we weigh, like thee, | 90 |
| Nature, and causes, we shall see | |
| That thus it needs must be, | |
| To things immortal time can do no wrong, | |
| And that which never is to die, for ever must be young. | |
