With the vain ftir. I fum up half mankind, And add two-thirds of the remaining half, And find the total of their hopes and fears That spreads his motley wings in th' eye of noon, And paint his perfon, character, and views, As they had known him from his mother's womb. Or Or having, kept conceal'd. Some drill and bore The folid earth, and from the ftrata there That he who made it, and reveal'd its date Some more acute, and more industrious still, To the sharp peak of her fublimeft height, Should ever teaze the lungs and blear the fight That having wielded th' elements, and built A fenfeless bargain. When I fee fuch games So hollow and fo falfe-I feel my heart 2 From reveries fo airy, from the toil of Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up! 'Twere well, fays one fage erudite, profound, Terribly arch'd and aquiline his nofe, And overbuilt with moft impending brows; 'Twere well, could you permit the world to live As the world pleases. What's the world to you Much, I was born of woman, and drew milk, As fweet as charity, from human breasts. I think, articulate, I laugh and weep, And exercife all functions of a man. How then should I and any man that lives Be ftrangers to each other? Pierce my vein, Take of the crimson stream meand'ring there, And catechife it well; apply your glass, Search it, and prove now if it be not blood Congenial with thine own: and if it be, What edge of fubtlety canft thou fuppofe Keen enough, wife and skilful as thou art, To cut the link of brotherhood, by which One common Maker bound me to the kind. In arts like yours. I cannot call the swift And perilous lightnings from the angry clouds, The parallax of yonder luminous point That feems half quench'd in the immenfe abyfs; Or heedlefs folly by which thousands die, God never meant that man should scale the heav'ns By ftrides of human wisdom. In his works, Though wond'rous, he commands us in his word To feek him rather, where his mercy fhines. The mind indeed, enlighten'd from above, Views him in all: afcribes to the grand cause The |