Classic Poem

Proficient whence, the liquid confluence meet,
And thro' the gulph their kindred ocean greet,
Urg'd by the moon, abjure the pearly shore,
And travel whence they sprung — to travel as before.

How the song smiles, should deeming censure chide
As disproportion'd, thro' allusion wide!
What tho' we join this globe's ennumber'd frame,
The deep unfathom'd, and the copious stream,
With all the appendage of incumbent skies,
To match the frame of animalcule size —
Our theme no great (of One exclusive) knows;
No little, when from One , that One , it flows;
This globe an atom to the native space,
Where vortical it wheels its annual race;
Its vortex (by adjacent whirl-pools bound)
A point to worlds that circling blaze around;
Lost in the whole, these vanish in their turn,
And but with relative effulgence burn:
But where finite to Infinite aspires,
Shrunk from its L ORD , the universe retires;
A shade its substance, and a blank its stare,
Where One , and only One , is only Great !
All equidistant, or alike all near,
The reptile minim, or the rolling sphere;
Alike minutely great, or greatly less,
In form finite I NFINITUDE express;
Express the seal of C HARACTER D IVINE ,
And bright, thro' H IS INFORMING R ADIANCE , shine.

Just so as when sublime the fancy soars;
And worlds on worlds illimited explores;
No end of thought, or time, or space is found,
And each immense, are each, in either drown'd:
So when the mind to central beauty tends,
And strict to fix some certain period bends,
In vain its ultimate contraction's sought,
And still delusive, shuns the labouring thought;
While T HAT I MMENSE ! whence every effence came,
Still E NDLESS reigns in each minutest frame.

Attentive then inspect the wondrous scene,
Nor deem our animalcule's texture vain;
Where tuned thro' every corresponding part,
Its system closes in consummate art.
Quick, from the mind's imperial mansion shed,
With lively tension spins the nervous thread,
With flux of animate effluvia stored,
And tubes of nicest perforation bored,
Whose branching maze thro' every organ tends,
And unity of conscious action lends;
While spirits thro' the wandering channels wind,
And wing the message of informing mind;
Or objects to the ideal seat convey;
Or dictate motion with internal sway.

As when, beneath the sultry Lybian ray,
Coop'd in his camp the Julian hero lay,
Full on the ditch the dusk Numidians bound,
And Rome's last hopes recruited rage around;
Serenely still, amid the dread alarms,
See, Caesar sits, the mighty soul of arms!
See, at his nod, the various combat burns,
And the wing'd scout still turns, and still returns!
While he, the war sedately weigh'd informs,
Himself unmoved amid surrounding storms.

Just so supreme, unmated, and alone,
The Soul assumes her intellectual throne;
Around their queen attendant spirits watch,
Each rising thought with prompt observance catch,
The tidings of internal passion spread,
And thro' each part the swift contagion shed.
With motive throes the quickening limbs conceive;
The blood tempestuous, pours a flushing wave;
With raging swell alternate pantings rise;
And terrors rowl within the kindling eyes.
The mind thus speeds her ministry abroad,
And rules obedient matter with a nod;
The obsequious mass beneath her influence yields,
And even her will the unwieldy fabric wields.
Thro' winding paths her sprightly envoys fly,
Or watchful in the frontier senses lie;
Brisk on the tongue the grateful gusto greet,
And thro' the nerves return the ideal sweet;
Or incense from the nostrils gate exhale,
And to their goddess waft the odorous gale;
Or musical to charm the listening soul,
Attentive round the tortuous ear patrole,
There each sonorous undulation wait,
And thrill in rapture to the mental seat;
Or wondrous to the organick vision pass,
And to the mind inflect the magick glass;
Here born elate upon etherial tides,
The blythe illuminated glory glides,
And on the beam the painted image rides;
Those images that still continuous flow,
Effluviated around, above, below,
True to the colour, distance, shape, and size,
That from essential things perpetual rise,
And obvious gratulate our wondering eyes;
Convey the bloom of nature's smiling scene,
The vernal landskip, and the watery main;
The flocks that nibble on the flowery lawn,
The frisking lambkin, and the wanton fawn;