Classic Poem

And endless worlds in seeming atoms hold.
Plant within plant, and seed enfolding seed,
For ever — to end never — still proceed;
In forms complete, essentially retain
The future semen, alimental grain;
And these again, the tree, the trunk, the root,
The plant, the leaf, the blossom, and the fruit;
Again the fruit and flower the seed enclose,
Again the seed perpetuated grows,
And Beauty to perennial ages flows.
Such the S UPREME his wondrous Sata made,
E'er yet their foliage cloath'd the novel glade;
Gave each a texture of peculiar frame,
And nature correspondent to its name;
Gave different powers to propagate their kind,
And varying means to various ends assign'd;
Then o'er the globe the missive treasure strow'd,
And first the E TERNAL H AND earth's spacious bosom sow'd.
Here elemental principles unite,
To give the new consummate birth to light:
The glebe, now pregnant, yields nutritious food;
Lymphatic dews, their mild diluting flood;
The sun affords his rarifying sphere,
And aether breathes its actuating air;
Quatruple, round the temper'd embryon meet,
And its fine tegument fermenting greet;
Whence subtile juices pierce the filmy skin,
Repeating vigorous their attacks within;
Thence thro' the lobes with percolation strain,
And thence infusing thro' their radix drain;
Thence limpid to the plantal root distil,
And each impregnated aperture fill,
With swoln repletion thro' the portals float,
And now unclasp the nice cutaneous coat;
The radicle now obvious they unfold,
And to its infant lips their liquors hold;
The instinctive lips imbibe the gentle tide,
And thro' the veins the milky liquids glide,
Ascending visit the inclusive plume,
(Where Nature wantons in minutest room,
Where folded close, her implicated size
Of trunk, branch, leaf, and future semen lies)
Conspicuous its dilated form display,
And give its texture to apparent day.
Around the plume the guardian lobes arise,
And fence their minor from inclement skies;
With pious dews his early verdure bathe,
Perform their trust with never failing faith;
Till, self-sufficient, they retire to earth,
And leave the stripling to his right of birth.
Now fervid beams the rising sap exhale,
And air ingredient wings the vital gale;
The solids in diluting moisture pass,
And colds condense the vegetating mass.
The labial pores of every various root
Their orifice to varying natures suit,
Admit effluvia of peculiar mode,
And delicate the incongruous parts explode.
Salts, oils, and sulphurs, thro' the entrance tend,
And similar, with proper members blend;
To sight, smell, taste, their several powers dispense,
And aptly ravish each luxuriant sense;
Still graceful, vary in some new delight;
Still obvious, please the involuntary sight.
Our transient optick o'er the surface plays,
And Nature's superficial mien surveys;
But rare with deeper inquisition pryes,
Where Beauty 's wrapt, recluse from vulgar eyes,
Essential, sits on Truth's Eternal Throne,
And universal, reigns o'er worlds unknown;
Displays her sway thro' unimagined scenes,
Elysian tracts, and philosophic plains:
These, these are climes of ever-living joy;
Truth ne'er can satiate, Reason ne'er can cloy.
O worthy! far more worthy to explore,
Than treasured lustre of Peruvian ore;
Or supererogated store, acquired
By pilgrimage, to saintship long expired.
In Nature's realms no wretched levees wait,
No monarchs hold their arbitrary seat;
Far different law her beauteous empire sways,
And O RDER dictates her unerring ways.

Here may we spy, from the S UPREME of things,
How first the originate material springs;
How substituted nature moulds her forms,
What tender love her infant embryo warms,
What tempering skill the boon conception frames;
And trace her maze of complicated schemes,
Where differing parts identity compose,
Yet endless how, from O NE ! each varying essence flows;
Each vegetable set in beds of bliss,
Their sap exhaling from the P RIME A BYSS .
See, bashful why the downward roots retire,
(While up to heaven their kindred trunks aspire)
Obliquely some, and some with steep descent;
Some level, with direct, or tortuous bent;
Some to a root their tethered trunks condemn,
Attracting prone the yet reluctant stem;
While some peep up, to view the gladsome skies;
And some rotund, with bold projected size,