Obvious or more remote, with livelier sense, Diffusive painted on the rapid mind.

Tutored by thee, hence Poetry exalts Her voice to ages; and informs the page With music, image, sentiment, and thought, Never to die; the treasure of mankind, Their highest honor, and their truest joy!

Without thee what were unenlightened man? A savage, roaming through the woods and wilds In quest of prey, and with the unfashioned fur Rough-clad; devoid of every finer art, And elegance of life. Nor happiness Domestic, mixed of tenderness and care, Nor moral excellence, nor social bliss, Nor guardian law, were his; nor various skill To turn the furrow, or to guide the tool Mechanic; nor the Heaven-conducted prow Of navigation bold, that fearless braves The burning line or dares the wintry pole, Mother severe of infinite delights! Nothing, save rapine, indolence, and guile, And woes on woes, a still-revolving train, Whose horrid circle had made human life

Than non-existence worse: but, taught by

thee,

Ours are the plans of policy, and peace ;
To live like brothers, and, conjunctive all,
Embellish life. While thus laborious crowds
Ply the tough oar, Philosophy directs
The ruling helm; or, like the liberal breath
Of potent heaven, invisible, the sail

Swells out, and bears the inferior world along.
Nor to this evanescent speck of earth
Poorly confined: the radiant tracts on high
Are her exalted range; intent to gaze
Creation through; and, from that full complex
Of neverending wonders, to conceive

Of the Sole Being right, who spoke the word, And Nature moved complete. With inward view,

Thence on the ideal kingdom swift she turns
Her eye;
and instant, at her powerful glance,
The obedient phantoms vanish or appear,
Compound, divide, and into order shift,
Each to his rank, from plain perception up
To the fair forms of fancy's fleeting train:

To reason then, deducing truth from truth,
And notion quite abstract; where first begins
The world of spirits, action all, and life
Unfettered and unmixt. But here the cloud,
So wills eternal Providence, sits deep.
Enough for us to know that this dark state,
In wayward passions lost and vain pursuits,
This infancy of being, cannot prove

The final issue of the works of God,
By boundless love and perfect wisdom formed,
And ever rising with the rising mind.

Cambridge: Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.