The Library | Page 4

mischief where to fall.
Yet more her volumes teach,--on these we look?As abstracts drawn from Nature's larger book:?Here, first described, the torpid earth appears,?And next, the vegetable robe it wears;?Where flow'ry tribes, in valleys, fields, and groves,?Nurse the still flame, and feed the silent loves;?Loves where no grief, nor joy, nor bliss, nor pain,?Warm the glad heart or vex the labouring brain;?But as the green blood moves along the blade,?The bed of Flora on the branch is made;?Where, without passion love instinctive lives,?And gives new life, unconscious that it gives.?Advancing still in Nature's maze, we trace,?In dens and burning plains, her savage race?With those tame tribes who on their lord attend,?And find in man a master and a friend;?Man crowns the scene, a world of wonders new,?A moral world, that well demands our view.
This world is here; for, of more lofty kind,?These neighbouring volumes reason on the mind;?They paint the state of man ere yet endued?With knowledge;--man, poor, ignorant, and rude;?Then, as his state improves, their pages swell,?And all its cares, and all its comforts, tell:?Here we behold how inexperience buys,?At little price, the wisdom of the wise;?Without the troubles of an active state,?Without the cares and dangers of the great,?Without the miseries of the poor, we know?What wisdom, wealth, and poverty bestow;?We see how reason calms the raging mind,?And how contending passions urge mankind:?Some, won by virtue, glow with sacred fire;?Some, lured by vice, indulge the low desire;?Whilst others, won by either, now pursue?The guilty chase, now keep the good in view;?For ever wretched, with themselves at strife,?They lead a puzzled, vex'd, uncertain life;?For transient vice bequeaths a lingering pain,?Which transient virtue seeks to cure in vain.
Whilst thus engaged, high views enlarge the soul,?New interests draw, new principles control:?Nor thus the soul alone resigns her grief,?But here the tortured body finds relief;?For see where yonder sage Arachne shapes?Her subtile gin, that not a fly escapes!?There PHYSIC fills the space, and far around,?Pile above pile her learned works abound:?Glorious their aim- to ease the labouring heart;?To war with death, and stop his flying dart;?To trace the source whence the fierce contest grew,?And life's short lease on easier terms renew;?To calm the phrensy of the burning brain;?To heal the tortures of imploring pain;?Or, when more powerful ills all efforts brave,?To ease the victim no device can save,?And smooth the stormy passage to the grave.
But man, who knows no good unmix'd and pure,?Oft finds a poison where he sought a cure;?For grave deceivers lodge their labours here,?And cloud the science they pretend to clear;?Scourges for sin, the solemn tribe are sent;?Like fire and storms, they call us to repent;?But storms subside, and fires forget to rage.?THESE are eternal scourges of the age:?'Tis not enough that each terrific hand?Spreads desolations round a guilty land;?But train'd to ill, and harden'd by its crimes,?Their pen relentless kills through future times.
Say, ye, who search these records of the deadWho?read huge works, to boast what ye have read;?Can all the real knowledge ye possess,?Or those--if such there are--who more than guess,?Atone for each impostor's wild mistakes,?And mend the blunders pride or folly makes ?
What thought so wild, what airy dream so light,?That will not prompt a theorist to write??What art so prevalent, what proof so strong,?That will convince him his attempt is wrong??One in the solids finds each lurking ill,?Nor grants the passive fluids power to kill;?A learned friend some subtler reason brings,?Absolves the channels, but condemns their springs;?The subtile nerves, that shun the doctor's eye,?Escape no more his subtler theory;?The vital heat, that warms the labouring heart,?Lends a fair system to these sons of art;?The vital air, a pure and subtile stream,?Serves a foundation for an airy scheme,?Assists the doctor, and supports his dream.?Some have their favourite ills, and each disease?Is but a younger branch that kills from these;?One to the gout contracts all human pain;?He views it raging in the frantic brain;?Finds it in fevers all his efforts mar,?And sees it lurking in the cold catarrh:?Bilious by some, by others nervous seen,?Rage the fantastic demons of the spleen;?And every symptom of the strange disease?With every system of the sage agrees.
Ye frigid tribe, on whom I wasted long?The tedious hours, and ne'er indulged in song;?Ye first seducers of my easy heart,?Who promised knowledge ye could not impart;?Ye dull deluders, truth's destructive foes;?Ye sons of fiction, clad in stupid prose;?Ye treacherous leaders, who, yourselves in doubt,?Light up false fires, and send us far about;-?Still may yon spider round your pages spin,?Subtile and slow, her emblematic gin!?Buried in dust and lost in silence, dwell,?Most potent, grave, and reverend friends--farewell!
Near these, and where the setting sun displays,?Through the dim window, his departing rays,?And gilds yon columns, there, on either side,?The huge Abridgments of the LAW abide;?Fruitful as vice the dread correctors stand,?And spread their guardian terrors round the land;?Yet, as