Fled to their own congenial night,
Never again to blast the sight;
Their rule o'er earth and man was done;
Their midnight sceptre dash'd-
And upward from the earth there flash'd
A blaze of glory never known before!
Darkness, despair, and fear, were gone;
And fancy felt their spell-bound chains no more.
From pagan temple and monastic cell,
Where, thron'd in shadows, they had lov'd to dwell,
From caves of earth, and realms of air,
Whence they had shed abroad despair;
Or flash'd in fire upon the sight,
Phantoms of horror and affright;
Where they had claim'd the lightning's beam,
And call'd the thunder burst their own;
And made the powers of nature seem
But as the guardians of their parent's throne
Before thy gaze, from mortal sight they fled;
While, by thy voice arous'd, man woke as from the dead.
What rich, what countless, blessings hast thou given!
The sun of life, and joy, and light,
Thou hast been, and shalt be;
Unfolding to our raptur'd sight,
What else we ne'er had hop'd to see,
Making this once dark earth a type of heaven.
Where thou alightest in thy majesty,
Purer comforts smile around,
Richer works adorn the ground;
Here majestic temples rise,
Glittering in the golden skies;
Fram'd in vast and towering form,
To triumph in the war with time,
And breast unscath'd the fiery storm,
In whom fair beauty clothes the huge sublime.
There the bridge, in giant stride,
Stretches o'er the rushing tide;
Chains the flood in massive links,
While downward to its bed it sinks;
And rising o'er the waves in grand repose,
Uniting shore to shore, its mountain shadow throws.
And most 'tis thine to pierce the secret ways
Of Nature, where, with magic hand,
She hides her deeds from vulgar gaze;
And, when unveil'd, is seen to stand
The subject of her Author's power and praise.
The means by which she works her spells,
The wisdom that in darkness dwells;
That but for science ne'er had been
By mortal understood nor seen,
Wrapt in the womb of night;
The simply beauteous, and sublime,
Still unreveal'd to sight,
Shut from the eye, as in the olden time:
But now her wonders shine
In power and depth divine,
With matchless foresight, and unerring skill,
Potent each destin'd purpose to fulfil.
Science can soar aloft as far
As earth's aërial mantle spreads;
And when its wrath the tempest sheds,
Surveys the elemental war;
Investigates the meteor-star;
Nor fears to trace the cause of that wild strife,
That, when it smites, arrests the pulse of life:
Nor shrinks from grasping at the beam
Of lightning, midst its fiercest gleam,
And turns it from its course,
To spend innoxious on the ground,
Its else destroying force;
Disarm'd and hurtless in the deep profound.
High on the air upborne she wheels her flight,
While clouds majestic sail below,
Where the sun shines, but yields no glow,
And cities fade from view;
Herself beyond the reach of sight,
Lost in the boundless fields of blue,
Fears not to dare a flight so vent'rous and so new.
Descending from her airy sweep,
She turns to darker scenes her eye;
Within earth's bosom, lone and deep,
She dives to trace the stores that lie,
As in eternal sleep.
Thence by arm of giant might,
She drags the hidden gems and ores;
And piercing to earth's secret stores,
Reveals them to the dazzled sight.
Where strata, ranged on strata, spread,
The grave of many an age gone by;
There, amidst the cavern'd dead,
Petrified in stony bed,
Relicks by her hand unfurl'd,
Seem to speak a former world;
Species never known to breathe,
Tomb'd the solid rock beneath,
In their marble coffins sleep,
Downward fathoms dark and deep:
Where not a token of the lord of earth,
Is found to prove him of coeval birth;
Unless he trod some other plain,
Beyond all record, whelm'd beneath the main.
Buried forests spring to view,
Cemented in their coal-black hue;
And fields of shells by ocean ranged,
Ere the sea her bed had changed:
And granite rocks of elder birth;
Where no organic remnants tell,
That foot of living thing had trod the earth,
Or fish been form'd in watery depths to dwell,
Or wing to cleave the air, when they assumed
Their crystallizing forms, but nought of life entomb'd.
Time was, when on the sea the timid bark,
Scarce dared to bound beyond the ken of land,
But cautious sail'd beside the devious strand,
And fear'd to breast the surge, when Heaven was dark.
The mighty world of waters then,
Roll'd in majestic waves,
Over unfathom'd caves;
Unplow'd by keel, untrack'd by men ;
Fate seem'd to spread a barrier there,
Betwixt earth's distant shores;
The twinkling stars the only guide
To those who stemm'd the midnight tide—
Now led by science, ev'n when ocean roars,
The vessel braves the wrath of sea and air
And by the faithful compass led,
When deepest blackness robes the sky,
She ventures, free from doubt or dread,
Without one guiding star on high,
To earth's remotest verge:
Fearless attempts to reach the Pole,
Firing a Briton's dauntless soul,
Perchance ev'n now has gain'd that goal*,
Long clos'd from mortal eye,
Where icy islands breast the dangerous surge.
* Written during Captain Parry's second voyage.
She dashes into seas unknown,
On frozen or on burning zone,
Where each known star below the wave
Descending, seems to find a grave;
And constellations new arise,
To gem the arch of stranger skies;
As if the seaman's eye beheld
Another earth-another heaven!
By changeless winds his canvass swell'd,
As if from home for ever driven;
Or past the habitable world,
To darkness, death, and ruin hurl'd.
But, see! what means that spectre hulk,
Gliding on in giant bulk;
Not a sail is fluttering there,
Wooing the propelling air;
But against her onward course
Rage the winds with baffled force,
While despite she speeds her way
Through th' opposing waves that play;
Nor courts the breeze, nor asks the surge
Her spell-assisted prow to urge;
But clouds of smoke around her rise,
Spreading blackness o'er the skies;
And strokes like distant thunder sound,
Rumbling o'er the vast profound!
Has she some demon in her breast,
Who speeds her o'er the watery crest,
And spurns the elemental strife;
And laughs to scorn the waves and wind,
And bids her leave the lessening shores behind,
As if she were some giant form of life?
Science! this triumph too is thine; thy hand
Conducts the vessel to the wish'd-for strand;
And Steam impels her on the destin'd track,
Thro' adverse winds and waves that else would beat her back.
Science in her excursive, boundless range,
Traces the forms of all created things;
Their essence, and their properties; and brings
Before our vision the incessant change,
That all endures below:
From Nature's operations lifts the veil;
And dares with vent'rous hand to show,
How all united to one end prevail;
In order beautiful,-though seeming wild;
Where, if the smallest part were lopp'd away,
The whole would be convuls'd, and wreck'd, and pil'd
In ruins blackening on the eye of day.
She, by the test of deep experiment,
Proves every substance to its element,
In all earth, air, or ocean yield,
Finds an unfailing, ample field;
Now speeding over either pole,
She tells why changing seasons roll-
Now shews how Flora paints the flower,
That decorates the summer bower;
Or points our search within to find
Theme for deep thought in every mind;
Or by the couch where fever raves,
Stills the wild pulse, and sooths, and saves;
Or safely walks on ocean's bed,
With worlds of waters o'er her head;
And, analyzing all the boundless stores
Of metals, minerals, earths, and ores,
Brings from each, and all she tries,
Some wondrous truth to view :
See! in her fire the very diamond dies,
Loses its light, and turns to ashy hue!
All that compose the earth we tread,
The air that plays around the head,
Submitted to her search, new light and knowledge shed,
Best, earthly friend of man!
Since first thy reign began,
How has he shaken off his mortal sleep
That torpor of the soul, in which his powers
Lay buried and unknown,
Like tracks of earth unblest by sun or showers-
The spirits frigid zone.
But, taught by thee, how boundless and how deep
The intellectual stores, that Heaven
To gild his path of life has given;
He springs aloft, and spurns the bounds of earth—
Becomes a being of superior birth;
And, by thy wing upheld, surveys
Th' amazing scene, where space displays
The power of an Almighty Hand:
And, taught by thee to wonder and admire,
Amidst the beautiful, the grand,
Catches a spark of that etherial fire,
That makes his bosom glow, his soul expand!
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