With daring pride and insolent delight
Your doubts resolv'd you boast, your labours
crown'd;

And "EYPHKA! your god, forsooth is found

Incomprehensible and infinite.

But is he therefore found? vain searcher! no:

Let your imperfect definition show

That nothing you, the weak definer, know.

Say, why should the collected main

Itself within itself contain?

Why to its caverns should it sometimes creep,
And with delighted silence sleep
On the lov'd bosom of its parent deep?

Why should its numerous waters stay

In comely discipline, and fair array,

Till winds and tides exert their high command? Then prompt and ready to obey,

Why do the rising surges spread

Their op'ning ranks o'er earth's submissive head, Marching through different paths to different lands?

Why does the constant sun

With measur'd steps his radiant journeys run?
Why does he order the diurnal hours

To leave earth's other part, and rise on ours?
Why does he wake the correspondent moon,
And fill her willing lamp with liquid light,
Commanding her with delegated powers
To beautify the world, and bless the night?

Why does each animated star

Love the just limits of its proper sphere?
Why does each consenting sign

With prudent harmony combine
In turns to move, and subsequent appear,
To gird the globe, and regulate the year?

Man does with dangerous curiosity
These unfathom'd wonders try:
With fancied rules and arbitrary laws
Matter and motion he restrains;

And studied lines and fictious circles draws:
Then with imagin'd sovereignty

Lord of his new hypothesis he reigns.

He reigns: how long? till some usurper rise; And he too, mighty thoughtful, mighty wise, Studies new lines, and other circles feigns. From this last toil again what knowledge flows? Just as much, perhaps, as shows, That all his predecessor's rules

Were empty cant, all jargon of the schools; That he on t'other's ruin rears his throne; And shows his friend's mistake, and thence confirms his own.

On earth, in air, amidst the seas and skies, Mountainous heaps of wonders rise; Whose towering strength will ne'er submit To Reason's batteries, or the mines of wit: Yet still inquiring, still mistaking man,

Each hour repuls'd, each hour dare onward press: And levelling at God his wandering guess, (That feeble engine of his reasoning war, Which guides his doubts, and combats his despair) Laws to his Maker the learn'd wretch can give: Can bound that nature, and prescribe that will, Whose pregnant word did either ocean fill: Can tell us whence all beings are, and how they move and live.

Through either ocean, foolish man! That pregnant word sent forth again, Might to a world extend each atom there;

For every drop call forth a sea, a heaven for every

star.

Let cunning Earth her fruitful wonders hide ; And only lift thy staggering reason up

To trembling Calvary's astonish'd top; Then mock thy knowledge, and confound thy pride, Explaining how Perfection suffer'd pain, Almighty languish'd, and Eternal died:

How by her patient victor Death was slain; And earth profan'd, yet bless'd with Deicide. Then down with all thy boasted volumes, down; Only reserve the sacred one:

Low, reverently low,

Make thy stubborn knowledge bow; Weep out thy reason's, and thy body's eyes; Deject thyself, that thou may'st rise;

To look to Heaven, be blind to all below.

Then Faith, for Reason's glimmering light, shall give
Her immortal perspective;

And Grace's presence Nature's loss retrieve.
Then thy enliven'd soul shall see,
That all the volumes of philosophy,

With all their comments, never could invent
So politic an instrument,

T: reach the Heaven of Heavens, the high abode,
Where Moses places his mysterious God,

As was that ladder which old Jacob rear'd,
When light divine had human darkness clear'd;
And his enlarg'd ideas found the road,
Which faith had dictated, and Angels trod.

WHAT charms you have, from what high race you

sprung,

Have been the pleasing subjects of my song:

1 Anne, daughter of William Earl of Devonshire, and sister to the first Duke of Devonshire, widow also to Charles Lord Rich, was married to John Cecil Lord Burleigh, afterwards Earl of Exeter; she attended her lord upon all his travels, and was present when he died, August 29, 1700, at a village called Issy, near Paris, and surviving him till the 18th June, 1703, the remains of both were deposited at St. Martin, Stamford, where a magnificent monument, brought among other curious works from Rome, is erected to their memory.

Unskill'd and young, yet something still I writ, Of Ca'ndish' beauty join'd to Cecil's wit.

But when you please to show the lab'ring Muse, What greater theme your music can produce; My babbling praises I repeat no more,

But hear, rejoice, stand silent, and adore.

The Persians thus, first gazing on the sun,

Admir'd how high 'twas plac'd, how bright it shone ; But, as his power was known, their thoughts were

rais'd;

And soon they worshipp'd, what at first they prais❜d.
Eliza's glory lives in Spenser's song;

And Cowley's verse keeps fair Orinda young.
That as in birth, in beauty you excel,

The Muse might dictate, and the Poet tell:
Your art no other art can speak; and you,
To show how well you play, must play anew:
1 Your music's power your music must disclose;
For what light is, 'tis only light that shows.

Strange force of harmony, that thus controls Our thoughts, and turns and sanctifies our souls: While with its utmost art your sex could move Our wonder only, or at best our love :

You far above both these your God did place, That your high power might worldly thoughts destroy;

1 Imitated from Alleyne's Poetical History of Henry VII.

"For nought but light itself, itself can show,

And only kings can write what kings can do.”