Scenes inconceivable, essential, new,
Whelm'd on our soul, and lightning on our view!-
How would the vain disputing wretches shrink,
And shiv'ring wish they could no longer think;
Reject each model, each reforming scheme,
No longer dictate to the Grand Supreme,
But, waking, wonder whence they dar'd to dream!
All is phenomenon, and type on earth,
Replete with sacred and mysterious birth,
Deep from our search, exalted from our soar;
And reason's task is, only to adore.
Who that beholds the summer's glist'ring swarms,
Ten thousand thousand gaily gilded forms,
In volant dance of mix'd rotation play,
Bask in the beam, and beautify the day;
Would think these airy wantons so adorn,
Were late his vile antipathy and scorn,
Prone to the dust, or reptile through the mire,
And ever thence unlikely to aspire?
Or who with transient view, beholding, loathes
Those crawling sects, whom vilest semblance clothes;
Who, with corruption, hold their kindred state,
As by contempt, or negligence of fate;
Could think, that such, revers'd by wondrous doom,
Sublimer powers and brighter forms assume;
From death, their future happier life derive,
And though apparently entomb'd, revive;
Chang'd, through amazing transmigration rise,
And wing the regions of unwonted skies;
So late depress'd, contemptible on Earth,
Now elevate to Heav'n by second birth?
No fictions here to willing fraud invite, Led by the marvellous, absurd delight; No golden ass, no tale Arabians feign; Nor flitting forms of Naso's magic strain, Deucalion's progeny of native stone, Or armies from Cadmean harvests grown; With many a wanton and fantastic dream, The laurel, mulberry, and bashful stream; Arachne shrunk beneath Tritonia's rage; Tithonus chang'd and garrulous with age. Not such mutations deck the chaster song, Adorn'd with nature, and with truth made strong; No debt to fable, or to fancy due,
And only wondrous facts reveal'd to view.
Though numberless these insect tribes of air, Though numberless each tribe and species fair, Who wing the noon, and brighten in the blaze, Innumerous as the sands which bend the seas; These have their organs, arts, and arms, and tools, And functions exercised by various rules;
The saw, ax, auger, trowel, piercer, drill;
The neat alembic, and nectareous still:
Their peaceful hours the loom and distaff know;
But war, the force and fury of the foe,
The spear, the falchion, and the martial mail,
And artful stratagem, where strength may fail.
Each tribe peculiar occupations claim,
Peculiar beauties deck each varying frame;
Attire and food peculiar are assign'd,
And means to propagate their varying kind.
Each, as reflecting on their primal state,
Or fraught with scientific craft innate,
With conscious skill their oval embryon shed,
Where native first their infancy was fed:
Or on some vegetating foliage glu'd;
Or o'er the flood they spread their future brood;
A slender cord the floating jelly binds,
Eludes the wave, and mocks the warring winds;
O'er this their sperm in spiral order lies,
And pearls in living ranges greet our eyes.
In firmest oak they scoop a spacious tomb,
And lay their embryo in the spurious womb:
Some flow'rs, some fruit, some gems, or blossoms
choose,
And confident their darling hopes infuse;
While some their eggs in ranker carnage lay,
And to their young adapt the future prey.
Meantime the Sun his fost'ring warmth bequeaths,
Each tepid air its motive influence breathes,
Mysterious springs the wav'ring life supply,
And quick'ning births unconscious motion try;
Mature, their slender fences they disown,
And break at once into a world unknown.
All by their dam's prophetic care receive
Whate'er peculiar indigence can crave:
Profuse at hand the plenteous table's spread,
And various appetites are aptly fed.
Nor less each organ suits each place of birth,
Finn'd in the flood, or reptile o'er the earth;
Each organ, apt to each precarious state,
As for eternity design'd complete.
Thus nurs'd, these inconsiderate wretches grow,
Take all as due, still thoughtless that they owe.
When lo! strange tidings prompt each secret breast,
And whisper wonders not to be express'd;
Each owns his error in his later cares,
And for the new unthought-of world prepares:
New views, new tastes, new judgments are acquir'd,
And all now loathe delights so late admir'd.
In confidence the solemn shroud they weave,
Or build the tomb, or dig the deadly grave;
Intrepid there resign their parting breath,
And give their former shape the spoils of death;
But reconceiv'd as in a second womb,
Through metamorphoses, new forms assume:
On death their true exalted life depends,
Commencing there, where seemingly it ends.
The fulness now of circling time arrives ;
Each from the long, the mortal sleep revives;
The tombs pour forth their renovated dead,
And, like a dream, all former scenes are fled.
But O! what terms expressive may relate
The change, the splendour of their new-form'd state?
Their texture nor compos'd of filmy skin,
Of cumbrous flesh without, or bone within,
But something than corporeal more refin'd,
And agile as their blithe informing mind.
In ev'ry eye ten thousand brilliants blaze,
And living pearls the vast horizon gaze;
Gemm'd o'er their heads the mines of India gleam,
And Heav'n's own wardrobe has array'd their frame;
Each spangled back bright sprinkling specks adorn,
Each plume imbibes the rosy tinctur❜d morn ;
Spread on each wing the florid seasons glow,
Shaded and verg'd with the celestial bow,
Where colours blend an ever varying dye,
And wanton in their gay exchanges vie.
THIS worthy and poetical quaker was the son of a draper, in London, and was born in the borough of Southwark. His father retired to Amwell, in Hertfordshire, when our poet was only ten years old; and this removal, together with the circumstance of his never having been inoculated for the small-pox, proved an unfortunate impediment to his education. He was put to a day-school, in the neighbouring town of Ware, where not much instruction was to be had; and from that little he was called away, upon the first alarm of infection. Such indeed was his constant apprehension of the disease, that he lived for twenty years within twenty miles of London without visiting it more than once. About the age of seventeen, however, he betook himself to reading. His family, from their cast of opinions and society,
|