{ "id": "joel-barlow/book-ix", "title": "Book IX", "ordinal": null, "subtitle": null, "poet": "Joel Barlow", "poet_slug": "joel-barlow", "language": "en", "book": "The Columbiad", "book_slug": "the-columbiad", "book_kind": "volume", "sequence": 9, "container": null, "epigraph": null, "first_published": { "year": 1809, "venue": "The Columbiad (1809)", "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.", "uncertain": false, "sources": [ "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8683" ] }, "source": { "kind": "standard-ebooks", "repo": "standardebooks/joel-barlow_the-columbiad", "file": "book-9.xhtml", "upstream": [ "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8683", "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009722549" ], "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)" }, "verification": { "level": "structural-only", "last_checked": "2026-08-20" }, "stats": { "n_lines": 714, "n_stanzas": 51, "n_parts": 0, "longest_line_chars": 58, "max_indent": 0 }, "site_ready": true, "parts": [], "stanzas": [ [ { "text": "But now had Hesper from the Hero’s sight", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Veil’d the vast world with sudden shades of night.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Earth, sea and heaven, where’er he turns his eye,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Arch out immense, like one surrounding sky", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lampt with reverberant fires. The starry train", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Paint their fresh forms beneath the placid main;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Fair Cynthia here her face reflected laves,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Bright Venus gilds again her natal waves,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The Bear redoubling foams with fiery joles,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And two dire Dragons twine two arctic poles.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lights o’er the land, from cities lost in shade,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "New constellations, new galaxies spread,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And each high pharos double flames provides,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "One from its fires, one fainter from the tides.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Centred sublime in this bivaulted sphere,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "On all sides void, unbounded, calm and clear,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Soft o’er the Pair a lambent lustre plays,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their seat still cheering with concentred rays;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To converse grave the soothing shades invite,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And on his guide Columbus fixt his sight:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Kind messenger of heaven, he thus began,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Why this progressive laboring search of man?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "If men by slow degrees have power to reach", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "These opening truths that long dim ages teach,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "If, school’d in woes and tortured on to thought,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Passion absorbing what experience taught,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Still through the devious painful paths they wind", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And to sound wisdom lead at last the mind,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Why did not bounteous nature at their birth", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Give all their science to these sons of earth,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pour on their reasoning powers pellucid day,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their arts, their interests clear as light display?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That error, madness and sectarian strife", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Might find no place to havoc human life.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "To whom the guardian Power: To thee is given", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To hold high converse and inquire of heaven,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To mark untraversed ages and to trace", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Whate’er improves and what impedes thy race.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Know then, progressive are the paths we go", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In worlds above thee, as in thine below.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nature herself (whose grasp of time and place", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Deals out duration and impalms all space)", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Moves in progressive march; but where to tend,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What course to compass, how the march must end,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Her sons decide not; yet her works we greet", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Imperfect in their parts, but in their whole complete.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "When erst her hand the crust of Chaos thirl’d", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And forced from his black breast the bursting world,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "High swell’d the huge existence crude and crass,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A formless dark impermeated mass;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "No light nor heat nor cold nor moist nor dry,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But all concocting in their causes lie.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Millions of periods, such as these her spheres", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Learn since to measure and to call their years,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "She broods the mass; then into motion brings", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And seeks and sorts the principles of things,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pours in the attractive and repulsive force,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Whirls forth her globes in cosmogyral course,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "By myriads and by millions, scaled sublime,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To scoop their skies and curve the rounds of time.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "She groups their systems, lots to each his place,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Strow’d through immensity and drown’d in space,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All yet unseen; till light at last begun,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And every system found a centred sun,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Call’d to his neighbor and exchanged from far", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His infant gleams with every social star;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Rays thwarting rays and skies o’erarching skies", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Robed their dim planets with commingling dyes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Hung o’er each heaven their living lamps serene", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And tinged with blue the frore expanse between:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Then joyous Nature hail’d the golden morn,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Drank the young beam, beheld her empire born.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Lo the majestic movement! there they trace", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their blank infinitudes of time and space,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Vault with careering curves her central goal,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pour forth her day and stud her evening stole,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Heedless of count; their numbers still unknown,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Unmeasured still their progress round her throne;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For none of all her firstborn sons, endow’d", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With heavenly sapience and pretensions proud,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "No seraph bright, whose keen considering eye", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And sunbeam speed ascend from sky to sky,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Has yet explored or counted all their spheres", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Or fixt or found their past record of years.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nor can a ray from her remotest sun,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shot forth when first their splendid morn begun,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Borne straight, continuous through the void of space,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Doubling each thousand years its rapid pace", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And hither posting, yet have reacht this earth,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To bring the tidings of its master’s birth.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "And mark thy native orb! though later born,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Though still unstored with light her silver horn,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As seen from sister planets, who repay", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Far more than she their borrow’d streams of day,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Yet what an age her shell-rock ribs attest!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Her sparry spines, her coal-encumber’d breast!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Millions of generations toil’d and died", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To crust with coral and to salt her tide,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And millions more, ere yet her soil began,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Ere yet she form’d or could have nursed her man.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Then rose the proud phenomenon, the birth", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Most richly wrought, the favorite child of earth;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But frail at first his frame, with nerves ill strung,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Unform’d his footsteps, long untoned his tongue,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Unhappy, unassociate, unrefined,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Unfledged the pinions of his lofty mind,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He wander’d wild, to every beast a prey,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "More prest with wants and feebler far than they;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For countless ages forced from place to place,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Just reproduced but scarce preserved his race.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "At last, a soil more fixt and streams more sweet", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Inform the wretched migrant where to seat;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Euphrates’ flowery banks begin to smile,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Fruits fringe the Ganges, gardens grace the Nile;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nile, ribb’d with dikes, a length of coast creates,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And giant Thebes begins her hundred gates,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Mammoth of human works! her grandeur known", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "These thousand lustres by its wrecks alone;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Wrecks that humiliate still all modern states,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Press the poised earth with their enormous weights,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Refuse to quit their place, dissolve their frame", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And trust, like Ilion, to the bards their fame.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Memphis amass’d her piles, that still o’erclimb", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The clouds of heaven and task the tooth of time;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Belus and Brama tame their vagrant throngs,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And Homer, with his monumental songs,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Builds far more durable his splendid throne", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Than all the Pharaohs with their hills of stone.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "High roll’d the round of years that hung sublime", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "These wondrous beacons in the night of time;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Studs of renown! that to thine eyes attest", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The waste of ages that beyond them rest;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Ages how fill’d with toils! how gloom’d with woes!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Trod with all steps that man’s long march compose,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dim drear disastrous; ere his foot could gain", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A height so brilliant o’er the bestial train.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "In those blank periods, where no man can trace", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The gleams of thought that first illumed his race,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His errors, twined with science, took their birth", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And forged their fetters for this child of earth.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And when, as oft, he dared expand his view", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And work with nature on the line she drew,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Some monster, gender’d in his fears, unmann’d", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His opening soul and marr’d the works he plann’d.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Fear, the first passion of his helpless state,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Redoubles all the woes that round him wait,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Blocks nature’s path and sends him wandering wide,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Without a guardian and without a guide.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Beat by the storm, refresht by gentle rain,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "By sunbeams cheer’d or founder’d in the main,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He bows to every force he can’t control,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Endows them all with intellect and soul,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With passions various, turbulent and strong,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Rewarding virtue and avenging wrong,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Gives heaven and earth to their supernal doom", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And swells their sway beyond the closing tomb.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Hence rose his gods, that mystic monstrous lore", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Of blood-stain’d altars and of priestly power,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Hence blind credulity on all dark things,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "False morals hence and hence the yoke of kings.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Yon starry vault that round him rolls the spheres", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And gives to earth her seasons, days and years,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The source designates and the clue imparts", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Of all his errors and of all his arts.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "There spreads the system that his ardent thought", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "First into emblems, then to spirits wrought;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Spirits that ruled all matter and all mind,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nourisht or famisht, kill’d or cured mankind,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Bade him neglect the soil whereon he fed,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Work with hard hand for that which was not bread,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Erect the temple, darken deep the shrine,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Yield the full hecatomb with awe divine,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Despise this earth, and claim with lifted eyes", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His health and harvest from the meteor’d skies.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Accustom’d thus to bow the suppliant head", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And reverence powers that shake his heart with dread,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His pliant faith extends with easy ken", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From heavenly hosts to heaven-anointed men;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The sword, the tripod join their mutual aids", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To film his eyes with more impervious shades,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Create a sceptred idol and enshrine", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The robber chief in attributes divine,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Arm the new phantom with the nation’s rod,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And hail the dreadful delegate of God.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Two settled slaveries thus the race control,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Engross their labors and debase their soul;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Till creeds and crimes and feuds and fears compose", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The seeds of war and all its kindred woes.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Unfold, thou Memphian dungeon! there began", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The lore of Mystery, the mask of man;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "There fraud with science leagued, in early times,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Plann’d a resplendent course of holy crimes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Stalkt o’er the nations with gigantic pace,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With sacred symbols charm’d the cheated race,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Taught them new grades of ignorance to gain,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And punish truth with more than mortal pain⁠—", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Unfold at last thy cope! that man may see", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The mines of mischief he has drawn from thee.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "—Wide gapes the porch with hieroglyphics hung,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And mimic zodiacs o’er its arches flung;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Close labyrinth’d here the feign’d Omniscient dwells,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dupes from all nations seek the sacred cells;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Inquiring strangers, with astonisht eyes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dive deep to read these subterranean skies,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To taste that holiness which faith bestows", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And fear promulgates through its world of woes.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The bold Initiate takes his awful stand,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A thin pale taper trembling in his hand;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Through hells of howling monsters lies the road,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To season souls and teach the ways of God.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Down the crampt corridor, far sunk from day,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "On hands and bended knees he gropes his way,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Swims roaring streams, through dens of serpents crawls,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Descends deep wells and clambers flaming walls;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Now thwart his lane a lake of sulphur gleams,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With fiery waves and suffocating steams;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He dares not shun the ford; for full in view", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Fierce lions rush behind and force him through.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Long ladders heaved on end, with banded eyes", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He mounts, and mounts, and seems to gain the skies;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Then backward falling, tranced with deadly fright", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Finds his own feet and stands restored to light.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Here all dread sights of torture round him rise;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lasht on a wheel, a whirling felon flies;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A wretch, with members chain’d and liver bare,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Writhes and disturbs the vulture feasting there:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "One strains to roll his rock, recoiling still;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "One, stretcht recumbent o’er a limpid rill,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Burns with devouring thirst; his starting eyes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Swell’d veins and frothy lips and piercing cries", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Accuse the faithless eddies, as they shrink", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And keep him panting still, still bending o’er the brink.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "At last Elysium to his ravisht eyes", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Spreads flowery fields and opens golden skies;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Breathes Orphean music through the dancing groves,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Trains the gay troops of beauties, graces, loves,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lures his delirious sense with sweet decoys,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Fine fancied foretaste of eternal joys,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Fastidious pomp or proud imperial state⁠—", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Illusions all, that pass the Ivory Gate!", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Various and vast the fraudful drama grows,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Feign’d are the pleasures, as unfelt the woes;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where sainted hierophants, with well taught mimes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Play’d first the role for all succeeding times;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Which, vampt and varied as the clime required,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "More trist or splendid, open or retired,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Forms local creeds, with multifarious lore,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Creates the God and bids the world adore.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Lo at the Lama’s feet, as lord of all,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Age following age in dumb devotion fall;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The youthful god, mid suppliant kings enshrined,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dispensing fate and ruling half mankind,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sits with contorted limbs, a silent slave,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "An early victim of a secret grave;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His priests by myriads famish every clime", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And sell salvation in the tones they chime.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "See India’s Triad frame their blood-penn’d codes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Old Ganges change his gardens for his gods,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Ask his own waves from their celestial hands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And choke his channel with their sainted sands.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Mad with the mandates of their scriptured word,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And prompt to snatch from hell her dear dead lord,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The wife, still blooming, decks her sacred urns,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Mounts the gay pyre, and with his body burns.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Shrined in his golden fane the Delphian stands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shakes distant thrones and taxes unknown lands.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Kings, consuls, khans from earth’s whole regions come,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pour in their wealth, and then inquire their doom;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Furious and wild the priestess rends her veil,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sucks through the sacred stool the maddening gale,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Starts, reddens, foams and screams and mutters loud,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Like a fell fiend, her oracles of God.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The dark enigma, by the pontiff scroll’d", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In broken phrase, and close in parchment roll’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From his proud pulpit to the suppliant hurl’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shall rive an empire and distract the world.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "And where the mosque’s dim arches bend on high,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Mecca’s dead prophet mounts the mimic sky;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pilgrims, imbanded strong for mutual aid,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Through dangerous deserts that their faith has made,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Train their long caravans, and famisht come", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To kiss the shrine and trembling touch the tomb,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "By fire and sword the same fell faith extend", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And howl their homilies to earth’s far end.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Phoenician altars reek with human gore,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Gods hiss from caverns or in cages roar,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nile pours from heaven a tutelary flood,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And gardens grow the vegetable god.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Two rival powers the magian faith inspire,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Primeval Darkness and immortal Fire;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Evil and good in these contending rise,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And each by turns the sovereign of the skies.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sun, stars and planets round the earth behold", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their fanes of marble and their shrines of gold;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The sea, the grove, the harvest and the vine", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Spring from their gods and claim a birth divine;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "While heroes, kings and sages of their times,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Those gods on earth, are gods in happier climes;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Minos in judgment sits, and Jove in power,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And Odin’s friends are feasted there with gore.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Man is an infant still; and slow and late", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Must form and fix his adolescent state,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Mature his manhood and at last behold", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His reason ripen and his force unfold.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From that bright eminence he then shall cast", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A look of wonder on his wanderings past,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Congratulate himself, and o’er the earth", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Firm the full reign of peace predestined at his birth.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "So Hesper taught; and farther had pursued", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A theme so grateful as a world renew’d;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But dubious thoughts disturb’d the Hero’s breast,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Who thus with modest mien the Seer addrest:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Say, friend of man, in this unbounded range,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where error vagrates and illusions change,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What hopes to see his baleful blunders cease,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And earth commence that promised age of peace?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Like a loose pendulum his mind is hung,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From wrong to wrong by ponderous passion swung,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "It vibrates wide, and with unceasing flight", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sweeps all extremes and scorns the mean of right.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Though in the times you trace he seems to gain", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A steadier movement and a path more plain,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And though experience will have taught him then", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To mark some dangers, some delusions ken,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Yet who can tell what future shocks may spread", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "New shades of darkness round his lofty head,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Plunge him again in some broad gulf of woes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where long and oft he struggled, wreckt and rose?", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "What strides he took in those gigantic times", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That sow’d with cities all his orient climes!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "When earth’s proud floods he tamed, made many a shore,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And talk’d with heaven from Babel’s glittering tower!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Did not his Babylon exulting say,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I sit a queen, forever stands my sway?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Thebes, Memphis, Nineveh, a countless throng,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Caught the same splendor and return’d the song;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Each boasted, promised o’er the world to rise,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Spouse of the sun, eternal as the skies.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where shall we find them now? the very shore", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where Ninus rear’d his empire is no more:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The dikes decay’d, a putrid marsh regains,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The sunken walls, the tomb-encumber’d plains,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pursues the dwindling nations where they shrink", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And skirts with slime its deleterious brink.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The fox himself has fled his gilded den,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nor holds the heritage he won from men;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lapwing and reptile shun the curst abode,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the foul dragon, now no more a god,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Trails off his train; the sickly raven flies;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A wide strong-stencht Avernus chokes the skies.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "So pride and ignorance fall a certain prey", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To the stanch bloodhound of despotic sway.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Then past a long drear night, with here and there", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A doubtful glimmering from a single star;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse the gleam increase,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Till dawns at last the effulgent morn of Greece.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Here all his Muses meet, all arts combine", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To nerve his genius and his works refine;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Morals and laws and arms, and every grace", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That e’er adorn’d or could exalt the race,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Wrought into science and arranged in rules,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Swell the proud splendor of her cluster’d schools,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Build and sustain the state with loud acclaim", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And work those deathless miracles of fame", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That stand unrivall’d still; for who shall dare", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Another field with Marathon compare?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Who speaks of eloquence or sacred song,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But calls on Greece to modulate his tongue?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And where has man’s fine form so perfect shone", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In tint or mould, in canvass or in stone?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Yet from that splendid height o’erturn’d, once more", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He dasht in dust the living lamp he bore.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dazzled with her own glare, decoy’d and sold", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For homebred faction and barbaric gold,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Greece treads on Greece, subduing and subdued,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "New crimes inventing, all the old renew’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Canton o’er canton climbs; till, crusht and broke,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All yield the sceptre and resume the yoke.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Where shall we trace him next, the migrant man,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To try once more his meliorating plan?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shall not the Macedonian, where he strides", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "O’er Asian worlds and Nile’s neglected tides,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Prepare new seats of glory, to repay", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The transient shadows with perpetual day?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His heirs erect their empires, and expand", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The beams of Greece through each benighted land;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Seleucia spreads o’er ten broad realms her sway", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And turns on eastern climes the western ray;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Palmyra brightens earth’s commercial zone", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And sits an emblem of her god the sun;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "While fond returning to that favorite shore", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where Ammon ruled and Hermes taught of yore,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All arts concentrate, force and grace combine", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To rear and blend the useful with the fine,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Restore the Egyptian glories and retain,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where science dawn’d, her great resurgent reign.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "From Egypt chased again, he seeks his home,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "More firmly fixt in sage considerate Rome.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Here all the virtues long resplendent shone,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All that was Greek, barbarian and her own;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "She school’d him sound and boasted to extend", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Through time’s long course and earth’s remotest end", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His glorious reign of reason; soon to cease", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The clang of arms and rule the world in peace.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Great was the sense he gain’d and well defined", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The various functions of his tutor’d mind;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Could but his sober sense have proved his guide,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And kind experience pruned the shoots of pride.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "A field magnificent before him lay;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Land after land received the spreading ray;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Franchise and friendship travell’d in his train,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Bandits of earth and pirates of the main", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Rose into citizens, their rage resign’d", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And hail’d the great republic of mankind.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "If ever then state slaughter was to pause,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And man from nature learn to frame his laws.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "This was the moment; here the sunbeam rose", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To hush the human storm and let the world repose.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "But drunk with pomp and sickening at the light,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He stagger’d wild on this delirious height;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Forgot the plainest truths he learnt before,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And barter’d moral for material power.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From Calpe’s rock to India’s ardent skies,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "O’er shuddering earth his talon’d Eagle flies,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To justice blind and heedless where she drove,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As when she bore the brandisht bolt of Jove.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Rome loads herself with chains, seals fast her eyes", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And tells the insulted nations when to rise;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And rise they do, tempestuous in their sweep,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Swarm following swarm, o’ershading land and deep,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Roll back her outrage and indignant shed", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The world’s wide vengeance on her sevenfold head.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Then dwindling back to littleness and shade", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Man soon forgets the gorgeous glare he made,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sinks to a savage serf or monkish drone,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Roves in rude hordes or counts his beads alone,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Wars with his arts, obliterates his lore", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And burns the books that rear’d his race before.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Shrouded in deeper darkness now he veers", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The vast gyration of a thousand years,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Strikes out each lamp that would illume his way,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Disputes his food with every beast of prey;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Imbands his force to fence his trist abodes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A wretched robber with his feudal codes.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "At length, it seems, some parsimonious rays", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Collect from each far heaven a feeble blaze,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dance o’er his Europe, and again excite", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His numerous nations to receive the light.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But faint and slow the niggard dawn expands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Diffused o’er various far dissunder’d lands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dreading, as well it may, to prove once more", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The same sad chance so often proved before.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "And why not lapse again? celestial seer,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Forgive my doubts and ah remove my fear!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Man is my brother; strong I feel the ties,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From strong solicitude my doubts arise;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "My heart, while opening with the boundless scope", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That swells before him and expands his hope,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Forebodes another fall; and though at last", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Thy world is planted and with light o’ercast,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Though two broad continents their beams combine", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Round his whole globe to stream his day divine,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Perchance some folly yet uncured may spread", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A storm proportion’d to the lights they shed,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Veil both his continents and leave again", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Between them stretcht the impermeable main;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All science buried, sails and cities lost,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their lands uncultured, as their seas uncrost.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Till on thy coast, some thousand ages hence,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "New pilots rise, bold enterprise commence,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Some new Columbus (happier let him be,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "More wise and great and virtuous far than me)", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Launch on the wave and tow’rd the rising day", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Like a strong eaglet steer his untaught way,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Gird half the globe and to his age unfold", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A strange new world, the world we call the old.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From Finland’s glade to Calpe’s storm-beat head", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He’ll find some tribes of scattering wildmen spread;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But one vast wilderness will shade the soil,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "No wreck of art, no sign of ancient toil", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Tell where a city stood; nor leave one trace", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Of all that honors now and all that shames the race.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "If such the round we run, what hope, my friend,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To see our madness and our miseries end?⁠—", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Here paused the Patriarch: mild the Saint return’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And as he spoke, fresh glories round him burn’d:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "My son, I blame not but applaud thy grief;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Inquiries deep should lead to slow belief.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "So small the portion of the range of man", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His written stories reach or views can span,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That wild confusion seems to clog his march,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the dull progress made eludes thy search.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But broad beyond compare, with steadier hand", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Traced o’er his earth, his present paths expand.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In sober majesty and matron grace", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sage science now conducts her filial race;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And if, while all their arts around them shine,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They culture more the solid than the fine,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "’Tis to correct their fatal faults of old,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "When, caught by tinsel, they forgot the gold;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "When their strong brilliant imitative lines", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Traced nature only in her gay designs,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Rear’d the proud column, toned her chanting lyre,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Warm’d the full senate with her words of fire,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pour’d on the canvas every pulse of life", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And bade the marble rage with human strife.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "These were the arts that nursed unequal sway,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That priests would pamper and that kings would pay,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That spoke to vulgar sense and often stole", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The sense of right and freedom from the soul.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "While, circumscribed in some concentred clime,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They reacht but one small nation at a time,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dazzled that nation, pufft her local pride,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Proclaim’d her hatred to the world beside,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Drew back returning hatred from afar", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And sunk themselves beneath the storms of war.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "As, when the sun moves o’er the flaming zone,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Collecting clouds attend his fervid throne,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Superior splendors, in his morn display’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Prepare for noontide but a heavier shade;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Thus where the brilliant arts alone prevail’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their shining course succeeding storms assail’d;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pride, wrong and insult hemm’d their scanty reign,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A Nile their stream, a Hellespont their main,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Content with Tiber’s narrow shores to wind,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They fledged their Eagle but to fang mankind;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Ere great inventions found a tardy birth,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And with their new creations blest the earth.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Now sober’d man a steadier gait assumes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Broad is the beam that breaks the Gothic glooms.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "At once consenting nations lift their eyes", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And hail the holy dawn that streaks the skies;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Arabian caliphs rear the spires of Spain,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The Lombards keel their Adriatic main,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Great Charles, invading and reviving all,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Plants o’er with schools his numerous states of Gaul;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And Alfred opes the mines whence Albion draws", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The ore of all her wealth⁠—her liberty and laws.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Ausonian cities interchange and spread", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The lights of learning on the wings of trade;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Bologna’s student walls arise to fame,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Germania, thine their rival honors claim;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Halle, Gottinge, Upsal, Kiel and Leyden smile,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Oxonia, Cambridge cheer Britannia’s isle;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where, like her lark, gay Chaucer leads the lay,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The matin carol of his country’s day.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Blind War himself, that erst opposed all good", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And whelm’d meek Science in her votaries’ blood,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Now smooths, by means unseen, her modest way,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Extends her limits and secures her sway.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From Europe’s world his mad crusaders pour", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their banded myriads on the Asian shore;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The mystic Cross, through famine toil and blood,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Leads their long marches to the tomb of God.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Through realms of industry their passage lies,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And labor’d affluence feasts their curious eyes;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Till fields of slaughter whelm the broken host,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their pride appall’d, their warmest zealots lost,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The wise remains to their own shores return,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Transplant all arts that Hagar’s race adorn,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Learn from long intercourse their mutual ties", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And find in commerce where their interest lies.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "From Drave’s long course to Biscay’s bending shores,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where Adria sleeps, to where the Bothnian roars,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In one great Hanse, for earth’s whole trafic known,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Free cities rise and in their golden zone", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Bind all the interior states; nor princes dare", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Infringe their franchise with voracious war.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All shield them safe and joy to share the gain", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That spreads o’er land from each surrounding main,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Makes Indian stuffs, Arabian gums their own,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Plants Persian gems on every Celtic crown,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pours through their opening woodlands milder day", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And gives to genius his expansive play.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "This blessed moment, from the towers of Thorn", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "New splendor rises; there the sage is born!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The sage who starts these planetary spheres,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Deals out their task to wind their own bright years,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Restores his station to the parent sun,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And leads his duteous daughters round his throne.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Each mounts obedient on her wheels of fire,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Whirls round her sisters and salutes the sire,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Guides her new car, her youthful coursers tries,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Curves careful paths along her alter’d skies,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Learns all her mazes through the host of even,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And hails and joins the harmony of heaven.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "—Fear not, Copernicus! let loose the rein,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Launch from their goals and mark the moving train;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Fix at their sun thy calculating eye,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Compare and count their courses round their sky.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Fear no disaster from the slanting force", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That warps them staggering in elliptic course;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Thy sons with steadier ken shall aid the search", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And firm and fashion their majestic march,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Kepler prescribe the laws no stars can shun,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And Newton tie them to the eternal sun.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "His optic tube thy Galileo plies", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And sends new colonies to stock the skies,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Gives Jove his satellites and first adorns", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Effulgent Phosphor with his silver horns.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Herschel ascends himself with venturous wain", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And joins and flanks thy planetary train,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Perceives his distance from their elder spheres", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And guards with numerous moons the lonely round he steers.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Yes, bright Copernicus, thy beams far hurl’d", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shall startle well this intellectual world,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Break the delusive dreams of ancient lore,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "New floods of light on every subject pour,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Through Physic Nature many a winding trace", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And seat the Moral on her sister’s base.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Descartes with force gigantic toils alone,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Unshrines old errors and propounds his own;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Like a blind Samson, gropes their strong abodes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Whelms deep in dust their temples and their gods,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Buries himself with those false codes they drew", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And makes his followers frame and fix the true.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Bacon with every power of genius fraught,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Spreads over worlds his mantling wings of thought,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Draws in firm lines and tells in nervous tone", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All that is yet and all that shall be known,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Withes Proteus Matter in his arms of might", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And drags her tortuous secrets forth to light,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Bids men their unproved systems all forego,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Informs them what to learn, and how to know,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Waves the first flambeau through the night that veils", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Egyptian fables and Phoenician tales,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Strips from all plundering Greece the cloak she wore", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And shows the blunders of her borrow’d lore.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "One vast creation, lately borne abroad,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Cheers the young nations like a nurturing god,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Breathes through them all the same wide searching soul.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Forms, feeds, refines and animates the whole,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Guards every ground they gain and forward brings", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Glad science soaring on cerulean wings,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Instructs all men her golden gifts to prize", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And catch new glories from her beamful eyes⁠—", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "’Tis the prolific Press; whose tablet, fraught", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "By graphic Genius with his painted thought,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Flings forth by millions the prodigious birth", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And in a moment stocks the astonisht earth.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Genius, enamor’d of his fruitful bride,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Assumes new force and elevates his pride.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "No more, recumbent o’er his finger’d style,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He plods whole years each copy to compile,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Leaves to ludibrious winds the priceless page,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Or to chance fires the treasure of an age;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But bold and buoyant, with his sister Fame,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He strides o’er earth, holds high his ardent flame,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Calls up Discovery with her tube and scroll", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And points the trembling magnet to the pole.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Hence the brave Lusitanians stretch the sail,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Scorn guiding stars and tame the midsea gale;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And hence thy prow deprest the boreal wain,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Rear’d adverse heavens, a second earth to gain,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Ran down old Night, her western curtain thirl’d", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And snatcht from swaddling shades an infant world.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Rome, Athens, Memphis, Tyre! had you but known", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "This glorious triad, now familiar grown,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The Press, the Magnet faithful to its pole,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And earth’s own movement round her steadfast goal;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Ne’er had your science, from that splendid height,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sunk in her strength nor seen succeeding night.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Her own utility had forced her sway,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All nations caught the fast extending ray,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Nature through all her kingdoms oped the road,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Resign’d her secrets and her wealth bestow’d;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Her moral codes a like dominion rear’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Freedom been born and folly disappear’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "War and his monsters sunk beneath her ban", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And left the world to reason and to man.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "But now behold him bend his broader way,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lift keener eyes and drink diviner day,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All systems scrutinize, their truths unfold,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Prove well the recent, well revise the old,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Reject all mystery, and define with force", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The point he aims at in his laboring course⁠—", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To know these elements, learn how they wind,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their wondrous webs of matter and of mind,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What springs, what guides organic life requires,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To move, rule, rein its ever-changing gyres,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Improve and utilise each opening birth", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And aid the labors of this nurturing earth.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But chief their moral soul he learns to trace,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That stronger chain which links and leads the race;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Which forms and sanctions every social tie", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And blinds or clears their intellectual eye.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He strips that soul from every filmy shade", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "That schools had caught, that oracles had made,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Relumes her visual nerve, develops strong", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The rules of right, the subtle shifts of wrong;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Of civil power draws clear the sacred line,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Gives to just government its right divine,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Forms, varies, fashions, as his lights increase,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Till earth is fill’d with happiness and peace.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Already taught, thou know’st the fame that waits", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His rising seat in thy confederate states:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "There stands the model, thence he long shall draw", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "His forms of policy, his traits of law;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Each land shall imitate, each nation join", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The well-based brotherhood, the league divine,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Extend its empire with the circling sun,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And band the peopled globe beneath its federal zone.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "As thus he spoke, returning tears of joy", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Suffused the Hero’s cheek and pearl’d his eye:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Unveil, said he, my friend, and stretch once more", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Beneath my view that heaven-illumined shore;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Let me behold her silver beams expand", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To lead all nations, lighten every land,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Instruct the total race and teach at last", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Their toils to lessen and their chains to cast,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Trace and attain the purpose of their birth", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And hold in peace this heritage of earth.", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The Seraph smiled consent; the Hero’s eye", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Watcht for the daybeam round the changing sky.", "indent": 0 } ] ] }