The Library | Page 4

the earth, she turns,
And matter, in its
various forms, discerns;
She parts the beamy light with skill profound,

Metes the thin air, and weighs the flying sound;
'Tis hers the
lightning from the clouds to call,
And teach the fiery 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