The sword, that vast Orion draws, Or even the Scorpion's horrid claws. Beyond the Sun's bright orb I fly, And, far beneath my feet, descry Night's dread goddess, seen with awe, Whom her winged dragons draw. Thus, ever wondering at my speed, Augmented still as I proceed, I pass the planetary sphere,
The Milky Way—and now appear Heaven's crystal battlements, her door Of massy pearl, and emerald floor.
The tongue of once a mortal man
In suitable description trace
The pleasures of that happy place;
Suffice it, that those joys divine
Are all, and all for ever,
NATURE UNIMPAIRED BY TIME.
Ан, how the human mind wearies herself With her own wanderings, and, involved in gloom Impenetrable, speculates amiss!
Measuring, in her folly, things divine
By human; laws inscribed on adamant By laws of man's device, and counsels fixt For ever, by the hours that pass and die. How?-shall the face of nature then be plough'd Into deep wrinkles, and shall years at last On the great Parent fix a sterile curse?
Shall even she confess old age, and halt And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows? Shall foul Antiquity with rust and drought, And Famine, vex the radiant worlds above? Shall Time's unsated maw crave and ingulf The very heavens, that regulate his flight? And was the Sire of all able to fence
His works, and to uphold the circling worlds, But, through improvident and heedless haste, Let slip the occasion ?- -so then-all is lost-
And in some future evil hour, yon arch
Shall crumble and come thundering down, the poles Jar in collision, the Olympian king
Fall with his throne, and Pallas, holding forth The terrors of the Gorgon shield in vain, Shall rush to the abyss, like Vulcan hurl'd Down into Lemnos, through the gate of heaven. Thou also, with precipitated wheels, Phoebus! thy own son's fall shalt imitate, With hideous ruin shalt impress the deep Suddenly, and the flood shall reek, and hiss, At the extinction of the lamp of day. Then too shall Hamus, cloven to his base, Be shatter'd, and the huge Ceraunian hills, Once weapons of Tartarean Dis, immersed In Erebus, shall fill himself with fear.
No. The Almighty Father surer laid His deep foundations, and providing well For the event of all, the scales of Fate Suspended in just equipoise, and bade His universal works, from age to age, One tenour hold, perpetual, undisturb'd.
Hence the prime mover wheels itself about Continual, day by day, and with it bears In social measure swift the heavens around. Not tardier now is Saturn than of old,
Nor radiant less the burning casque of Mars. Phoebus, his vigour unimpair'd, still shows The effulgence of his youth, nor needs the god A downward course, that he may warm the vales; But ever rich in influence, runs his road, Sign after sign, through all the heavenly zone. Beautiful, as at first, ascends the star
From odoriferous Ind, whose office is
To gather home betimes the ethereal flock, them o'er the skies again at eve, And to discriminate the night and day. Still Cynthia's changeful horn waxes, and wanes, Alternate, and with arms extended still,
She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams. Nor have the elements deserted yet
Their functions: thunder, with as loud a stroke As erst, smites through the rocks, and scatters them. The east still howls, still the relentless north Invades the shuddering Scythian, still he breathes The winter, and still rolls the storms along. The king of ocean, with his wonted force, Beats on Pelorus; o'er the deep is heard The hoarse alarm of Triton's sounding shell; Nor swim the monsters of the Ægean sea In shallows, or beneath diminish'd waves. Thou too, thy ancient vegetative power Enjoy'st, O Earth! Narcissus still is sweet, And, Phoebus! still thy favourite, and still
Thy favourite, Cytherea! both retain Their beauty; nor the mountains, ore-enrich'd For punishment of man, with purer gold Teem'd ever, or with brighter gems the deep. Thus, in unbroken series, all proceeds; And shall, till wide involving either pole, And the immensity of yonder heaven, The final flames of destiny absorb The world, consumed in one enormous pyre!
AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD BY ARISTOTLE.
YE sister powers, who o'er the sacred groves Preside, and thou, fair mother of them all, Mnemosyne and thou, who in thy grot Immense, reclined at leisure, hast in charge The archives, and the ordinances of Jove, And dost record the festivals of heaven, Eternity!-inform us who is He, That great original by nature chosen To be the archetype of human kind, Unchangeable, immortal, with the poles Themselves coeval, one, yet every where, An image of the god who gave him being? Twin-brother of the goddess born from Jove, He dwells not in his father's mind, but, though Of common nature with ourselves, exists Apart, and occupies a local home.
Whether, companion of the stars, he spend
Eternal ages, roaming at his will
From sphere to sphere the tenfold heavens; or dwell On the moon's side that nearest neighbours earth; Or torpid on the banks of Lethe sit
Among the multitude of souls ordain'd
To flesh and blood, or whether (as may chance) That vast and giant model of our kind In some far distant region of this globe Sequester'd stalk, with lifted head on high O'ertowering Atlas, on whose shoulders rest The stars, terrific even to the gods.
Never the Theban seer, whose blindness proved His best illumination, him beheld
In secret vision; never him the son Of Pleione, amid the noiseless night Descending, to the prophet-choir reveal'd; Him never knew the Assyrian priest, who yet The ancestry of Ninus chronicles,
And Belus, and Osiris, far-renown'd ;
Nor even thrice great Hermes, although skill'd So deep in mystery, to the worshippers Of Isis show'd a prodigy like him.
And thou, who hast immortalized the shades
Of Academus, if the schools received
This monster of the fancy first from thee, Either recall at once the banish'd bards
To thy republic, or thyself evinced A wilder fabulist, go also forth.
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