If e'er disbanded ?"-He, whose potent word,
Like the loud trumpet, levied first their powers
In night's inglorious empire, where they slept
In beds of darkness; arm'd them with fierce flames,
Arrang'd, and discliplin'd, and cloth'd in gold;
And call'd them out of chaos to the field,
Where now they war with vice and unbelief.
O let us join this army! joining these,
Will give us hearts intrepid, at that hour,
When brighter flames shall cut a darker night;
When these strong demonstrations of a God
Shall hide their heads, or tumble from their spheres,
And one eternal curtain cover all!

Struck at that thought, as new awak'd, I lift
A more enlighten'd eye, and read the stars
To man still more propitious; and their aid
(Though guiltless of idolatry) implore;
Nor longer rob them of their noblest name.
ye dividers of my time! Ye bright
Accomptants of my days, and months, and years,
In your fair calendar distinctly mark'd!
Since that authentic, radiant register,

Though man inspects it not, stands good against him;
Since you and years roll on, though man stands
still;

Teach me my days to number, and apply
My trembling heart to wisdom; now beyond
All shadow of excuse for fooling on.
Age smoothes our path to prudence! sweeps aside
The snares keen appetite and passion spread
To catch stray souls; and woe to that grey head,
Whose folly would undo what age has done!
Aid then, aid, all ye stars!-Much rather, thou,
Great Artist! thou, whose finger set aright
This exquisite machine, with all its wheels,
Though intervolv'd, exact; and pointing out
Life's rapid and irrevocable flight,
With such an index fair as none can miss,
Who lifts an eye, nor sleeps till it is clos'd;
Open mine eye, dread Deity! to read
The tacit doctrine of thy works; to see
Things as they are, unalter'd through the glass
Of worldly wishes. Time, eternity!
("Tis these, mis-measur'd, ruin all mankind)
Set them before me; let me lay them both
In equal scale, and learn their various weight.
Let time appear a moment, as it is;
And let eternity's full orb, at once,
Turn on my soul, and strike it into Heaven.
When shall I see far more than charms me now?
Gaze on creation's model in thy breast
Unveil'd, nor wonder at the transcript more?
When this vile, foreign dust, which smothers all
That travel Earth's deep vale, shall I shake off?
When shall my soul her incarnation quit,
And, readopted to thy blest embrace,
Obtain her apotheosis in thee?

Dost think, Lorenzo, this is wandering wide?
No, '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 an 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!

* Page 596.

O what a genius must inform the skies!
And is Lorenzo's salamander heart
Cold, and untouch'd, amid the sacred fires?
O ye nocturnal sparks! ye glowing embers,
On Heaven's broad hearth! who burn, or burn m'

more,

Who blaze, or die, as great Jehovah's breath
Or blows you, or forbears: assist my song;
Pour your whole influence; exorcise his heart,
So long possest; 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 strait 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 in 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 besieg'd!
Besieg'd by Nature, the proud sceptic's foe!
Inclos'd 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 blest 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 impos'd, and press'd on man
Dar'st 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;
So 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!
| Conception of design, how exquisite!
How complicate, in their divine police'

Indissoluble all-Why choose

there,

Apt means! great ends! consent to general good! If in the last, how many knots beside,
Each attribute of these material gods,
So long (and that with specious pleas) ador'd,
A separate conquest gains o'er rebel thought;
And leads in triumph the whole mind of man.
Lorenzo! 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.

Where, chosen, still subsist ten thousand more?
Reject it, where, that chosen, all the rest
Dispers'd, 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?'
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,

Retire-the world shut out-thy thoughts call And where the link, in which a flaw he finds?

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.-
But what eternal ?-Why not human race?
And Adam's ancestors without an end?--
That's hard to be conceiv'd, 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.

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 non-existence? 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 measur'd infinite, no more?
Where, rears his terminating pillar high
Its extra mundane head? and says, to gods,
In characters illustrious as the Sun,

"I stand, the plan's proud period; I pronounce

Whence Earth, and these bright orbs ?—Eternal too? The work accomplish'd; the creation clos'd :

Grant matter was eternal; still these orbs
Would want some other father;—much design
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 repos'd?
Has matter more than motion? has it thought,
Judgment, and genius? is it deeply learn'd
In mathematics? Has it fram'd such laws,
Which but to guess, a Newton made immortal?
If so, 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 solv'd.-But, granting that,
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:

Hard are those questions;-answer harder still
Is this the sole exploit, the single birth,
The solitary son of power divine?
Or has th' Almighty Father, with a breath,
Impregnated the womb of distant space?
Has he not bid, in various provinces,
Brother-creations the dark bowels burst
Of night primeval; barren, now, no more?
And he the central sun, transpiercing all
Those giant-generations, which disport,
And dance, as motes, in his meridian ray;
That ray withdrawn, benighted, or absorb'd,
In that abyss of horror, whence they sprung;
While Chaos triumphs, repossest of all
Rival creation ravish'd from his throne?
Chaos! of Nature both the womb, and grave!
Think'st thou my scheme, Lorenzo, spreads too
wide?

Is this extravagant?-No; this is just;
Just in conjecture, though 't were false in fact.
If 'tis an error, 'tis an error sprung
From noble root, high thought of the Most-High
But wherefore error? who can prove it such ?-
He that can set Omnipotence a bound.
Can man conceive beyond what God can do?
Nothing but quite impossible is hard.
He summons into being, with like ease,
A whole creation, and a single grain.

Speaks he the word? a thousand worlds are born!
A thousand worlds! there's space for millions more;
And in what space can his great fiat fail?
Condemn me not, cold critic! but indulge
The warm imagination: why condemn?
Why not indulge such thoughts, as swell our hearts
With fuller admiration of that power,

Who gives our hearts with such high thoughts to
swell?

Why not indulge in his augmented praise?
Darts not his glory a still brighter ray,
The less is left to chaos, and the realms
Of hideous night, where fancy strays aghast;
And, though most talkative, makes no report?
Still seems my thought enormous? Think again;
Experience 'self shall aid thy lame belief.
Glasses (that revelation to the sight!)
Have they not led us in the deep disclose
Of fine-spun Nature, exquisitely small,
And, though demonstrated, still ill-conceiv'd?
If then, on the reverse, the mind would mount
In magnitude, what mind can mount too far,
To keep the balance, and creation poise?
Defect alone can err on such a theme;
What is too great, if we the cause survey?
Stupendous Architect! thou, thou art all!
My soul flies up and down in thoughts of thee,
And finds herself but at the centre still!
I Am thy name! existence all thine own!
Creation's nothing; flatter'd much, if styl'd
"The thin, the fleeting atmosphere of God."

O for the voice-of what? of whom?-What
voice

Can answer to my wants, in such ascent,
As dares to deem one universe too small?
Tell me, Lorenzo! (for now fancy glows,
Fir'd in the vortex of almighty power)
Is not this home-creation, in the map
Of universal Nature, as a speck,
Like fair Britannia in our little ball:
Exceeding fair, and glorious, for its size,

But, elsewhere, far out-measur'd, far out-shone?
In fancy (for the fact beyond us lies)
Canst thou not figure it, an isle, almost
Too small for notice, in the vast of being;
Sever'd by mighty seas of unbuilt space
From other realms; from ample continents
Of higher life, where nobler natives dwell;
Less northern, less remote from Deity,
Glowing beneath the line of the Supreme;
Where souls in excellence make haste, put forth
Luxuriant growths; nor the late autumn wait
Of human worth, but ripen soon to gods?

Yet why drown fancy in such depths as these?
Return, presumptuous rover, and confess
The bounds of man; nor blame them, as too small.
Enjoy we not full scope in what is seen?
Full ample the dominions of the Sun!
Full glorious to behold, how far, how wide
The matchless monarch, from his flaming throne,
Lavish of lustre, throws his beams about him,
Further, and faster, than a thought can fly,
And feeds his plancts with eternal fires!
This Heliopolis, by greater far

Than the proud tyrant of the Nile, was built;
And he alone, who built it, can destroy.
Beyond this city, why strays human thought?
One wonderful! enough for man to know!
One infinite! enough for man to range!
One firmament! enough for man to read!
O what voluminous instruction here!

What page of wisdom is denied him? None;
If learning his chief lesson makes him wise.
Nor is instruction, here, our only gain
There dwells a noble pathos in the skies,
Which warms our passions, proselytes our hearts.
How eloquently shines the glowing Pole!
With what authority it gives its charge,
Demonstrating great truths in style sublime,
Though silent, loud! heard Earth around; above
The planets heard; and not unheard in Hell;
Hell has her wonder, though too proud to praise.
Is Earth, then, more infernal? has she those,
Who neither praise (Lorenzo!) nor admire?
Lorenzo's admiration, pre-engag'd,
Ne'er ask'd the Moon one question; never held
Least correspondence with a single star;
Ne'er rear'd an altar to the queen of Heaven
Walking in brightness; or her train ador'd.
Their sublunary rivals have long since
Engross'd his whole devotion; stars malign,
Which made the fond astronomer run mad,
Darken his intellect, corrupt his heart;
Cause him to sacrifice his fame and peace
To momentary madness, call'd delight.
Idolater, more gross than ever kiss'd
The lifted hand to Luna, or pour'd out
The blood to Jove!-O thou, to whom belongs
All sacrifice! O thou Great Jove unfeign'd;
Divine Instructor! Thy first volume, this,
For man's perusal; all in capitals!
In Moon, and stars (Heaven's golden alphabet?
Emblaz'd to seize the sight; who runs, may read,
Who reads, can understand. "Tis unconfin'd
To Christian land, or Jewry; fairly writ
In language universal, to mankind;
A language, lofty to the learn'd; yet plain
To those that feed the flock, or guide the plow,
Or, from his husk, strike out the bounding grain.
A language, worthy the Great Mind, that speaks
Preface, and comment, to the sacred page!
Which oft refers its reader to the skies,
As presupposing his first lesson there,
And Scripture 'self a fragment, that unread.
Stupendous book of wisdom, to the wise;
Stupendous book! and open'd, Night! by thee.

By thee much open'd, I confess, O Night!
Yet more I wish; but how shall I prevail?
Say, gentle Night! whose modest, maiden beams
Give us a new creation, and present
The world's great picture soften'd to the sight;
Nay, kinder far, far more indulgent still,
Say, thou, whose mild dominion's silver key
Unlocks our hemisphere, and sets to view
Worlds beyond number; worlds conceal'd by day
Behind the proud and envious star of noon!
Canst thou not draw a deeper scene ?-And show
The mighty potentate, to whom belong
These rich regalia pompously display'd
To kindle that high hope? Like him of Uz,

I gaze around; I search on every side

O for a glimpse of him my soul adores!
As the chas'd hart, amid the desert waste,
Pants for the living stream; for him who made her.
So pants the thirsty soul, amid the blank
Of sublunary joys. Say, goddess! where!
Where blazes his bright court? Where burns his

throne?

Thou know'st; for thou art near him; by thee, round
His grand pavilion, sacred fame reports
The sable curtain drawn. If not, can none
Of thy fair daughter-train, so swift of wing,

Who travel far, discover where he dwells?
A star his dwelling pointed out below.

Ye Pleiades! Arcturus! Mazaroth!
And thou, Orion! of still keener eye!
Say ye, who guide the wilder'd in the waves,
And bring them out of tempest into port!
On which hand must I bend my course to find him?
These courtiers keep the secret of their King;
I wake whole nights, in vain, to steal it from them.
I wake; and, waking, climb night's radiant scale,
From sphere to sphere; the steps by Nature set
For man's ascent; at once to tempt and aid;
To tempt his eye, and aid his towering thought;
Till it arrives at the great God of all.

In ardent contemplation's rapid car,
From Earth, as from my barrier, I set out.
How swift I mount! diminish'd Earth recedes;
I pass the Moon; and, from her farther side,
Pierce Heaven's blue curtain; strike into remote ;
Where, with his lifted tube, the subtle sage
His artificial, airy journey takes,
And to celestial lengthens human sight.
I pause at every planet on my road,

And ask for him who gives their orbs to roll,
Their foreheads fair to shine. From Saturn's ring,
In which, of Earths an army might be lost,
With the bold comet take my bolder flight,
Amid those sovereign glories of the skies,
Of independent, native lustre, proud;
The souls of systems! and the lords of life,
Through their wide empires!-What behold I now?
A wilderness of wonder burning round;
Where larger suns inhabit higher spheres;
Perhaps the villas of descending gods;
Nor halt I here; my toil is but begun;
"Tis but the threshold of the Deity;

Or, far beneath it, I am grovelling still.
Nor is it strange; I built on a mistake;

The grandeur of his works, whence folly sought

For aid, to reason sets his glory higher;

But say, what thought? is reason here enthron'd,
And absolute? or sense in arms against her?
Have you two lights? or need you no reveal'd?
Enjoy your happy realms their golden age?
And had your Eden an abstemious Eve?
Our Eve's fair daughters prove their pedigree,
And ask their Adams-Who would not be wise?'
Or, if your mother fell, are you redeem'd?
And if redeem'd-is your Redeemer scorn'd?
Is this your final residence? if not,
Change you your scene, translated? or by death?
And if by death, what death?—Know you disease?
Or horrid war?-With war, this fatal hour,
Europa groans (so call we a small field,

Where kings run mad.) In our world, Death de-
putes

Intemperance to do the work of age;

And hanging up the quiver Nature gave him,
As slow of execution, for dispatch

Sends forth imperial butchers; bids them slay
Their sheep (the silly sheep they fleec'd before)
And toss him twice ten thousand at a meal.
Sit all your executioners on thrones?

With you, can rage for plunder make a god?
And bloodshed wash out every other stain ?—
But you, perhaps, can't bleed: from matter gross
Your spirits clean, are delicately clad
In fine-spun ether, privileg'd to soar,
Unloaded, uninfected; how unlike

The lot of man! How few of human race
By their own mud unmurder'd! How we wage
Self-war eternal! Is your painful day

Of hardy conflict o'er? Or, are you still
Raw candidates at school? And have you those
Who disaffect reversions, as with us?

But what are we? You never heard of man;
Or Earth, the bedlam of the universe!
Where reason (undiseas'd with you) runs mad,
And nurses folly's children as her own;
Fond of the foulest. In the sacred mount

Who built thus high for worms (mere worms to him) Of holiness, where reason is pronounc'd

O where, Lorenzo! must the Builder dwell?

Pause, then, and, for a moment, here aspire

If human thought can keep its station here.

Infallible; and thunders, like a god;

E'en there, by saints, the demons are outdone;
What these think wrong, our saints refine to right;

Where am I?-Where is Earth ?-Nay, where art | And kindly teach dull Hell her own black arts;

thou,

O Sun? Is the Sun turn'd recluse ?-And are
His boasted expeditions short to mine?—
To mine, how short! On Nature's Alps I stand,
And see a thousand firmaments beneath!
A thousand systems! as a thousand grains!
So much a stranger, and so late arriv'd,
How can man's curious spirit not inquire,
What are the natives of this world sublime,
Of this so foreign, up-terrestrial sphere,
Where mortal, untranslated, never stray'd?
"O ye, as distant from my little home,
As swiftest sunbeams in an age can fly!
Far from my native element I roam,
In quest of new, and wonderful, to man.
What province this, of his immense domain,
Whom all obeys? or mortals here, or gods?

Satan, instructed, o'er their morals smiles.-
But this, how strange to you, who know not man!
Has the least rumor of our race arriv'd?
Call'd here Elijah in his flaming car?
Pass'd by you the good Enoch, on his road
To those fair fields, whence Lucifer was hurl'd;
Who brush'd, perhaps, your sphere in his descent,
Stain'd your pure crystal ether, or let fall
A short eclipse from his portentous shade?
O! that the fiend had lodg'd on some broad orb
Athwart his way; nor reach'd his present home,
Then blacken'd Earth with footsteps foul'd in Hell
Nor wash'd in ocean, as from Rome he pass'd
To Britain's isle; too, too, conspicuous there!
But this is all digression: where is he,
That o'er Heaven's battlements the felon hurl'd
To groans, and chains, and darkness? Where is he

Ye borderers on the coasts of bliss! what are you? Who sees creation's summit in the vale?

A colony from Heaven? Or, only rais'd,

He, whom, while man is man, he can't but seek;

By frequent visit from Heaven's neighboring realms, And if he finds, commences more than man?

To secondary gods, and half-divine?—
Whate'er your nature, this is past dispute,
Far other life you live, far other tongue
You talk, far other thought, perhaps, you think,
Than man. How various are the works of God!

O for a telescope his throne to reach!
Tell me, ye learn'd on Earth! or blest above!
Ye searching, ye Newtonian angels! tell,
Where, your great Master's orb? His planets where
Those conscious satellites, those morning-stars,