 | The works, in verse and prose, of the late Robert Treat Paine, Jun. Esq |  |
ODE.
When the impious turret of Babel was shattered,
Lest the tracks of our race, in the sand-rift of Time,
Should be buried, when Shem, Ham and Japheth were scattered,
Rose the genius of Art,
Man to man to impart,
By a language, that speaks, through the eye, to the heart.
CHORUS.
Yet rude was Invention, when Art she revealed,For a block stamped the page, and a tree ploughed the field.
How dim was the image, her emblem reflected;
When, inspired, father Faust broke her table of wood,
Wrought its parts into shape, and the whole reconnected,
Art with Mind now could rove,
For her symbols could move,
Ever casting new shades, like the leaves of a grove.
CHORUS.
And the colours of Thought in their elements run,As the prismatick glass shows the hues of the Sun.
From the grey eve of regions, by bigotry clouded,
With the dawn woke our Franklin, and, glancing the day,
Turned its beams through the mist, with which Art was enshrouded;
To kindle her shrine,
His Promethean line
Drew a spark from the clouds, and made Printing divine!
CHORUS.
When the fire by his rod was attracted from Heaven,Its flash by the type, his conductor, was given.
Which embalmed the cold forms of its heroes and sages;
But their fame lives alone on the leaf of the reed,
Which has grown through the clefts in the ruins of ages;
Could they rise, they would shed,
Like Cicero's head,
Tears of blood on the spot, where the world they had led.
CHORUS.
Of Pompey and Ceser unknown is the tomb,But the type is their forum, the page is their Rome.
As thy flight leaves behind thee this vexed generation,
Oh! transmit on thy scroll, this bequest from our clime,
The Press can cement, or dismember a nation.
There, like Vesta, enshrined,
Watch and foster the flame, which inspires human kind!
CHORUS.
Preserving all arts, may all arts cherish thee;And thy science and virtue teach man to be free!
In this Ode, the great stages of the art are poetically described in the three first verses; to each of which there is an appropriate chorus. Printing upon blocks with immoveable types was invented by the descendants of Noah, “on the tent-plains of Shinah,” and was nearly coeval with the first rude assays at agriculture. But the art remained in this state of imperfection, till “father Faust broke her tablet of wood,” and invented the moveable type. In succeeding generations the art received various improvements, prior to the era of Franklin, who first united the genius of philosophy to the art of the mechanic.
How would Antiquity “hide her diminished head,” could she “burst her cearments,” and survey the comforts and elegances, which flow from the art and science of modern life! Her heroes and sages would shed
The concluding verse impresses a salutary lesson, and conveys a noble moral. We fervently hope that neither the lesson, nor the moral will pass unregarded by the conductors of literary and political Journals; for they stand at the fountains of publick opinion and direct the course of its torrents.
| The works, in verse and prose, of the late Robert Treat Paine, Jun. Esq | |