Has the Great Sovereign sent ten thousand worlds 850
To tell us, He refides above them All,
In glory's unapproachable recefs?
And dare earth's bold inhabitants deny
The fumptuous, the magnific embassy
A moment's audience? Turn we, nor will hear
From whom they come, or what they would impart
For man's emolument; fole cause that stoops
Their grandeur to man's eye? Lorenzo! roufe;
Let thought, awaken'd, take the lightning's wing,
And glance from east to west, from pole to pole. 860
Who fees, but is confounded, or convinc'd?
Renounces Reafon, or a God adores?
Mankind was fent into the world to fee:
Sight gives the fcience needful to their peace;
That obvious fcience asks small learning's aid.
Wouldst thou on metaphyfic pinions foar ?
Or wound thy patience amid logic thorns?
Or travel hiftory's enormous round?
Nature no fuch hard task injoins: She gave
A make to man directive of his thought;
A make fet upright, pointing to the stars,
As who fhall fay," Read thy chief leffon there."
Too late to read this manufcript of heaven,
Leffon how various! Not the God alone,
I fee His Minifters; I fee, diffus'd
When, like a parchment-fcroll, fhrunk up by flames, It folds Lorenzo's leffon from his fight.
In radiant orders, effences fublime,
Of various offices, of various plume,
In heavenly liveries, distinctly clad,
Azure, green, purple, pearl, or downy gold,
Or all commix'd; they stand, with wings outspread,
Liftening to catch the Master's least command,
And fly through Nature, ere the moment ends;
Numbers innumerable !-Well conceiv'd
By Pagan, and by Chriftian! O'er each sphere
Prefides an angel, to direct its course,
And feed, or fan, its flames; or to discharge Other high trufts unknown. For who can fee of matter, and imagine, Mind,
For which alone Inanimate was made,
More fparingly difpens'd? That nobler fon,
Far liker the great Sire !—'Tis thus the skies
Inform us of fuperiors numberlefs,
As much, in Excellence, above mankind,
As above Earth, in Magnitude, the Spheres.
These, as a cloud of witneffes, hang o'er us;
In a throng'd theatre are all our deeds;
perhaps, a thousand demigods defcend
On every beam we fee, to walk with men.
Aweful reflection! Strong restraint from ill!
Yet, here, our virtue finds ftill ftronger aid
From these ethereal glories Senfe furveys.
Something, like magic, ftrikes from this blue vault;
With juft attention is it view'd? We feel
A fudden fuccour, unimplor'd, unthought;
Nature herself does half the work of Man.
Seas, rivers, mountains, forests, defarts, rocks,
The promontory's height, the depth profound
Of fubterranean, excavated grots,
Black brow'd, and vaulted high, and yawning wide
From Nature's structure, or the fcoop of Time;
If ample of dimension, vast of size,
Ev'n These an aggrandizing impulfe give;
Of folemn thought enthusiastic heights
Ev'n Thefe infufe.-But what of vast in These?
Nothing; or we must own the skies forgot.
Much lefs in Art.-Vain Art! Thou pigmy power!
How doft thou swell and ftrut, with human pride,
To fhew thy littleness! What childish toys,
"Thy watery columns squirted to the clouds !
Thy bafon'd rivers, and imprison'd feas!
"Thy mountains moulded into forms of men!
Thy hundred-gated Capitals! or Thofe
Where three days travel left us much to ride ;
Gazing on miracles by mortals wrought,
Arches triumphal, theatres immense,
Or nodding Gardens pendent in mid-air !
Or Temples proud to meet their Gods half-way!
> Yet Thefe affect us in no common kind. What then the force of fuch fuperior scenes? Enter a temple, it will ftrike an awe :
What awe from This the Deity has built?
A Good Man feen, though filent, counsel gives :
The touch'd fpectator wishes to be wife:
In a bright mirror His own hands have made,
Here we fee fomething like the face of God.
Seems it not then enough, to fay, Lorenzo!
To man abandon'd, "Haft thou feen the fkies ?"
And yet, so thwarted nature's kind defign
By daring man, he makes her facred awe
(That guard from ill) his shelter, his temptation
To more than common guilt, and quite inverts
Celestial art's intent. The trembling stars
See crimes gigantic, stalking through the gloom 945
With front erect, that hide their head by day,
And making night still darker by their deeds.
Slumbering in covert, till the fhades defcend,
Rapine and Murder, link'd, now prowl for prey,
The mifer earths his treafure; and the thief,
Watching the mole, half-beggars him ere morn.
Now Plots, and foul Confpiracies, awake;
And, muffling up their horrors from the moon,
Havock and devaftation they prepare,
And kingdoms tottering in the field of blood.
Now fons of riot in mid-revel rage.
What shall I do?-Supprefs it? or proclaim?
Why fleeps the thunder? Now, Lorenzo! now,
His best friend's couch the rank adulterer
Afcends fecure; and laughs at gods and men.
Prepofterous madmen, void of fear or shame,
Lay their crimes bare to thefe chafte eyes of heaven;
Yet fhrink, and fhudder, at a mortal's fight.
Were moon, and stars, for villains only made ?
To guide, yet fereen them, with tenebrious light? 965
No; they were made to fafnion the fublime
Of human hearts, and wifer make the Wife.
Thofe ends were answer'd once; when mortals liv'd Of stronger wing, of aquiline afcent
In theory fublime. O how unlike
Thofe vermin of the night, this moment fung,
Who crawl on Earth, and on her venom feed!
Those antient fages, Human stars! They met
Their brothers of the Skies, at midnight hour;
Their counfel afk'd; and, what they afk'd, obey'd, 975
The Stagirite, and Plato, He who drank
The poifon'd bowl, and He of Tufculum,
With him of Corduba (immortal names !)
In thefe unbounded, and Elyfian, walks,
An area fit for Gods, and Godlike men,
They took their nightly round, through radiant paths
By Seraphs trod; instructed, chiefly, thus,
To tread in Their bright footsteps here below;
To walk in worth ftill brighter than the skies.
There they contracted their contempt of Earth;
Of hopes eternal kindled, There, the fire;
There, as in near approach, they glow'd, and grew
(Great vifitants !) more intimate with God,
More worth to Men, more joyous to Themselves.
Through various Virtues, they, with ardour, ran 990
The Zodiac of their learn'd, illuftrious lives.
In Chriftian hearts, O for a Pagan zeal!
A needful, but opprobrious prayer! as much
Our Ardour Lefs, as Greater is our Light.
How monftrous This in Morals! Scarce more ftrange 995
'Would this Phænomenon in nature ftrike,
A Sun, that froze her, or a Star, that warm'd.
What taught these heroes of the moral world?
To thefe thou giv'ft thy Praife, give Credit too.
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