Classic Poem

Fired with the music, Aikin, of thy lays,
To thee the muse a joyful tribute pays —
Transported, dwells on that harmonious line
Where taste and spirit, wit and learning, shine;
Where Fancy's hand her richest colouring lends,
And every shade in just proportion blends.
How fair, how beauteous to our gazing eyes
Thy vivid intellectual paintings rise!
We feel thy feelings, glow with all thy fires,
Adopt thy thoughts, and pant with thy desires!
Proceed bright maid, and may thy polished page
Refine the manners of a trifling age —
Thy sex apprize of Pleasure's treacherous charms,
And woo them from the siren's fatal arms —
Teach them with thee on Fancy's wing to soar,
With thee the paths of science to explore,
With thee the open book of Nature scan,
Yet nobly scorn the little pride of man.
Man, seated high on Learning's awful throne,
Thinks the fair realms of knowledge his alone;
But you, ye fair, his Salic Law disclaim!
Supreme in science shall the tyrant reign
When every talent all-indulgent Heaven
In lavish bounty to your share hath given?
With joy ineffable the muse surveys
The orient beams of more resplendent days:
As on she raptured looks to future years,
What a bright throng to Fancy's view appears!
To them see Genius her best gifts impart,
And science raise a throne in every heart!
One turns the moral, one the historic page,
Another glows with all a Shakespeare's rage!
With matchless Newton now one soars on high,
Lost in the boundless wonders of the sky;
Another now (of curious mind) reveals
What treasures in her bowels Earth conceals —
Nature's minute works attract her eyes,
Their laws, their powers, her deep research descries.
From sense abstracted, some with arduous flight
Explore the realms of intellectual light —
With unremitting study seek to find
How mind on matter, matter acts on mind.
Alike in Nature, arts and manners, read,
In every path of knowledge see them tread —
Whilst men, convinced of female talents, pay
To female worth the tributary lay!