The Task and Other Poems [20]
note, And paint his person, character, and views, As they had known him from his mother's womb; They disentangle from the puzzled skein, In which obscurity has wrapped them up, The threads of politic and shrewd design That ran through all his purposes, and charge His mind with meanings that he never had, Or, having, kept concealed. Some drill and bore The solid earth, and from the strata there Extract a register, by which we learn That He who made it and revealed its date To Moses, was mistaken in its age. Some, more acute and more industrious still, Contrive creation; travel nature up To the sharp peak of her sublimest height, And tell us whence the stars; why some are fixt, And planetary some; what gave them first Rotation, from what fountain flowed their light. Great contest follows, and much learned dust Involves the combatants, each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both. And thus they spend The little wick of life's poor shallow lamp In playing tricks with nature, giving laws To distant worlds, and trifling in their own. Is't not a pity now, that tickling rheums Should ever tease the lungs and blear the sight Of oracles like these? Great pity, too, That having wielded the elements, and built A thousand systems, each in his own way, They should go out in fume and be forgot? Ah, what is life thus spent? and what are they But frantic who thus spend it? all for smoke-- Eternity for bubbles proves at last A senseless bargain. When I see such games Played by the creatures of a Power who swears That He will judge the earth, and call the fool To a sharp reckoning that has lived in vain, And when I weigh this seeming wisdom well, And prove it in the infallible result So hollow and so false--I feel my heart Dissolve in pity, and account the learned, If this be learning, most of all deceived. Great crimes alarm the conscience, but it sleeps While thoughtful man is plausibly amused. Defend me, therefore, common sense, say I, From reveries so airy, from the toil Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up!
'Twere well, says one sage erudite, profound, Terribly arched and aquiline his nose, And overbuilt with most impending brows, 'Twere well could you permit the world to live As the world pleases. What's the world to you?-- Much. I was born of woman, and drew milk As sweet as charity from human breasts. I think, articulate, I laugh and weep, And exercise all functions of a man. How then should I and any man that lives Be strangers to each other? Pierce my vein, Take of the crimson stream meandering there, And catechise it well. Apply your glass, Search it, and prove now if it be not blood Congenial with thine own; and if it be, What edge of subtlety canst thou suppose Keen enough, wise and skilful as thou art, To cut the link of brotherhood, by which One common Maker bound me to the kind? True; I am no proficient, I confess, In arts like yours. I cannot call the swift And perilous lightnings from the angry clouds, And bid them hide themselves in the earth beneath; I cannot analyse the air, nor catch The parallax of yonder luminous point That seems half quenched in the immense abyss: Such powers I boast not--neither can I rest A silent witness of the headlong rage, Or heedless folly, by which thousands die, Bone of my bone, and kindred souls to mine.
God never meant that man should scale the heavens By strides of human wisdom. In His works, Though wondrous, He commands us in His Word To seek Him rather where His mercy shines. The mind indeed, enlightened from above, Views Him in all; ascribes to the grand cause The grand effect; acknowledges with joy His manner, and with rapture tastes His style. But never yet did philosophic tube, That brings the planets home into the eye Of observation, and discovers, else Not visible, His family of worlds, Discover Him that rules them; such a veil Hangs over mortal eyes, blind from the birth, And dark in things divine. Full often too Our wayward intellect, the more we learn Of nature, overlooks her Author more; From instrumental causes proud
'Twere well, says one sage erudite, profound, Terribly arched and aquiline his nose, And overbuilt with most impending brows, 'Twere well could you permit the world to live As the world pleases. What's the world to you?-- Much. I was born of woman, and drew milk As sweet as charity from human breasts. I think, articulate, I laugh and weep, And exercise all functions of a man. How then should I and any man that lives Be strangers to each other? Pierce my vein, Take of the crimson stream meandering there, And catechise it well. Apply your glass, Search it, and prove now if it be not blood Congenial with thine own; and if it be, What edge of subtlety canst thou suppose Keen enough, wise and skilful as thou art, To cut the link of brotherhood, by which One common Maker bound me to the kind? True; I am no proficient, I confess, In arts like yours. I cannot call the swift And perilous lightnings from the angry clouds, And bid them hide themselves in the earth beneath; I cannot analyse the air, nor catch The parallax of yonder luminous point That seems half quenched in the immense abyss: Such powers I boast not--neither can I rest A silent witness of the headlong rage, Or heedless folly, by which thousands die, Bone of my bone, and kindred souls to mine.
God never meant that man should scale the heavens By strides of human wisdom. In His works, Though wondrous, He commands us in His Word To seek Him rather where His mercy shines. The mind indeed, enlightened from above, Views Him in all; ascribes to the grand cause The grand effect; acknowledges with joy His manner, and with rapture tastes His style. But never yet did philosophic tube, That brings the planets home into the eye Of observation, and discovers, else Not visible, His family of worlds, Discover Him that rules them; such a veil Hangs over mortal eyes, blind from the birth, And dark in things divine. Full often too Our wayward intellect, the more we learn Of nature, overlooks her Author more; From instrumental causes proud