 | The complete works, poetry and prose, of the Rev. Edward Young prefixed, a life of the author, by John Doran ... With eight illustrations on steel, and a portrait. In two volumes |  |
If inextinguishable thirst in man
To know, how rich, how full, our banquet there!
There, not the moral world alone unfolds;
The world material, lately seen in shades,
And in those shades by fragments only seen,
And seen those fragments by the labouring eye,
Unbroken, then, illustrious and entire,
Its ample sphere, its universal frame,
In full dimensions, swells to the survey,
And enters, at one glance, the ravish'd sight.
From some superior point, (where, who can tell?
Suffice it, 'tis a point where gods reside,)
How shall the stranger man's illumined eye,
In the vast ocean of unbounded space,
Behold an infinite of floating worlds
Divide the crystal waves of ether pure,
In endless voyage, without port! The least
Of these disseminated orbs, how great!
Great as they are, what numbers these surpass,
Huge as Leviathan to that small race,
Those twinkling multitudes of little life,
He swallows unperceived! Stupendous these!
Yet what are these stupendous to the whole?
As particles, as atoms ill-perceived;
As circulating globules in our veins;
So vast the plan. Fecundity Divine!
Exuberant Source! perhaps I wrong thee still.
To know, how rich, how full, our banquet there!
There, not the moral world alone unfolds;
The world material, lately seen in shades,
And in those shades by fragments only seen,
And seen those fragments by the labouring eye,
Unbroken, then, illustrious and entire,
Its ample sphere, its universal frame,
In full dimensions, swells to the survey,
And enters, at one glance, the ravish'd sight.
From some superior point, (where, who can tell?
Suffice it, 'tis a point where gods reside,)
How shall the stranger man's illumined eye,
In the vast ocean of unbounded space,
Behold an infinite of floating worlds
Divide the crystal waves of ether pure,
In endless voyage, without port! The least
Of these disseminated orbs, how great!
Great as they are, what numbers these surpass,
Huge as Leviathan to that small race,
99
He swallows unperceived! Stupendous these!
Yet what are these stupendous to the whole?
As particles, as atoms ill-perceived;
As circulating globules in our veins;
So vast the plan. Fecundity Divine!
Exuberant Source! perhaps I wrong thee still.
| The complete works, poetry and prose, of the Rev. Edward Young prefixed, a life of the author, by John Doran ... With eight illustrations on steel, and a portrait. In two volumes | |