And see, Day's amiable sister sends
Her invitation, in the softest rays
Of mitigated lustre; courts thy sight,
Which suffers from her tyrant-brother's blaze.
Night grants thee the full freedom of the skies,
Nor rudely reprimands thy lifted eye;
With gain, and joy, she bribes thee to be wise.
Night opes the noblest scenes, and sheds an awe,
Which gives those venerable scenes full weight,
And deep reception, in th' intender'd heart;
While light peeps through the darkness, like a spy ;
And darkness shows its grandeur by the light.
Nor is the profit greater than the joy,
If human hearts at glorious objects glow,
And admiration can inspire delight.
What speak I more, than I, this moment, feel?
With pleasing stupor first the soul is struck
(Stupor ordain'd to make her truly wise!)
Then into transport starting from her trance,
With love, and admiration, how she glows!
This gorgeous apparatus! this display !
This ostentation of creative power!
what eye can take it in?
By what divine enchantment was it rais'd,
For minds of the first magnitude to launch
In endless speculation, and adore?
One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine:
And light us deep into the Deity;
How boundless in magnificence and might!
O what a confluence of ethereal fires,
From urns unnumber'd, down the steep of Heaven,
Streams to a point, and centres in my sight!
Nor tarries there; I feel it at my heart.
My heart, at once, it humbles, and exalts;
Lays it in dust, and calls it to the skies.
Who sees it unexalted? or unaw'd?
Who sees it, and can stop at what is seen?
Material offspring of Omnipotence !
Inanimate, all-animating birth!
Work worthy him who made it! worthy praise!
All praise! praise more than human! nor deny'd
Thy praise divine ! But though man, drown'd in
Withholds his homage, not alone I wake;
Bright legions swarm unseen, and sing, unheard
By mortal ear, the glorious Architect,
In this his universal temple hung
With lustres, with innumerable lights,
That shed religion on the soul: at once,
The temple, and the preacher! O how loud
It calls devotion! genuine growth of night!
Devotion! daughter of astronomy!
An undevout astronomer is mad.
True, all things speak a God; but in the small,
Men trace out him; in great, he seizes man;
Seizes, and elevates, and wraps, and fills
With new inquiries, 'mid associates new.
Tell me, ye stars! ye planets! tell me, all
Ye starr'd, and planeted, inhabitants! What is it? What are these sons of wonder? Say, proud arch, (Within whose azure palaces they dwell,)
Built with divine ambition! in disdain
Of limit built! built in the taste of Heaven! Vast concave! ample dome! wast thou design'd
A meet apartment for the Deity?
Not so; that thought alone thy state impairs,
Thy lofty sinks, and shallows thy profound,
And straitens thy diffusive; dwarfs the whole,
And makes an universe an orrery.
But when I drop mine eye, and look on man, Thy right regain'd, thy grandeur is restor❜d, O Nature! wide flies off the expanding round. As when whole magazines, at once, are fir'd, The smitten air is hollow'd by the blow; The vast displosion dissipates the clouds ; Shock'd ether's billows dash the distant skies; Thus (but far more) th' expanding round flies off, And leaves a mighty void, a spacious womb, Might teem with new creation; re-inflam'd Thy luminaries triumph, and assume Divinity themselves. Nor was it strange, Matter high-wrought to such surprising pomp, Such god-like glory, stole the style of gods, From ages dark, obtuse, and steep'd in sense; For, sure, to sense, they truly are divine; And half-absolv'd idolatry from guilt; Nay, turn'd it into virtue. Such it was In those, who put forth all they had of man Unlost, to lift their thought, nor mounted higher; But, weak of wings, on planets perch'd; and thought What was their highest, must be their ador'd.
But they how weak, who could no higher mount! And are there, then, Lorenzo! those, to whom Unseen, and unexistent, are the same? And if incomprehensible is join'd,
Who dare pronounce it madness, to believe?
Why has the mighty builder thrown aside
All measure in his work; stretch'd out his line
So far, and spread amazement o'er the whole ?
Then (as he took delight in wide extremes)
Deep in the bosom of his universe,
Dropt down that reasoning mite, that insect, man,
To crawl, and gaze, and wonder at the scene?
That man might ne'er presume to plead amazement
For disbelief of wonders in himself.
Shall God be less miraculous, than what
His hand has form'd? Shall mysteries descend
From un-mysterious? Things more elevate,
Be more familiar? Uncreated lie
More obvious than created, to the grasp
Of human thought? The more of wonderful
Is heard in him, the more we should assent.
Could we conceive him, God he could not be ;
Or he not God, or we could not be men.
A God alone can comprehend a God;
Man's distance how immense! On such a theme,
Know this, Lorenzo! (seem it ne'er so strange)
Nothing can satisfy, but what confounds;
Nothing, but what astonishes, is true.
The scene thou seest, attests the truth I sing,
And every star sheds light upon thy creed.
These stars, this furniture, this cost of Heaven,
If but reported, thou hadst ne'er believ'd;
But thine eye tells thee, the romance is true.
The grand of Nature is th' Almighty's oath,
In reason's court, to silence unbelief.
How my mind, opening at this scene,
The moral emanations of the skies,
While nought, perhaps, Lorenzo less admires!
Has the Great Sovereign sent ten thousand worlds
To tell us, he resides above them all,
In glory's unapproachable recess?
And dare Earth's bold inhabitants deny
The sumptuous, 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; sole cause that stoops
Their grandeur to man's eye? Lorenzo! rouse ;
Let thought, awaken'd, take the lightning's wing,
And glance from east to west, from pole to pole.
Who sees, but is confounded, or convinc'd?
Renounces reason, or a God adores?
Mankind was sent into the world to see:
Sight gives the science needful to their peace;
That obvious science asks small learning's aid.
Wouldst thou on metaphysic pinions soar?
Or wound thy patience amid logic thorns?
Or travel history's enormous round?
Nature no such hard task enjoins: she gave
A make to man directive of his thought;
A make set upright, pointing to the stars,
As who shall say, "Read thy chief lesson there."
Too late to read this manuscript of Heaven,
When, like a parchment-scroll shrunk up by flames,
It folds Lorenzo's lesson from his sight.
Lesson how various! Not the God alone,
I see his ministers: I see, diffus'd
In radiant orders, essences sublime,
Of various offices, of various plume,
In heavenly liveries distinctly clad,
|