h' astonish'd talkers, and the tale!
Lorenzo, swells thy bosom at the thought?
The swell becomes thee: 'tis an honest pride.
Revere thyself;--and yet thyself despise.
His nature no man can o'er-rate; and none
Can under-rate his merit. Take good heed, 130
Nor there be modest, where thou should'st be proud;
That almost universal error shun.
How just our pride, when we behold those heights!
Not those Ambition paints in air, but those
Reason points out, and ardent Virtue gains,
And angels emulate; our pride how just!
When mount we? when these shackles cast? when quit
This cell of the creation? this small nest,
Stuck in a corner of the universe,
Wrapt up in fleecy cloud, and fine-spun air? 140
Fine-spun to sense; but gross and feculent
To souls celestial; souls ordain'd to breathe
Ambrosial gales, and drink a purer sky;
Greatly triumphant on Time's farther shore,
Where Virtue reigns, enrich'd with full arrears;
While Pomp imperial begs an alms of peace.
In empire high, or in proud science deep,
Ye born of earth! on what can you confer,
With half the dignity, with half the gain,
The gust, the glow of rational delight, 150
As on this theme, which angels praise and share?
Man's fates and favours are a theme in heaven.
What wretched repetition cloys us here!
What periodic potions for the sick! 154
Distemper'd bodies! and distemper'd minds!
In an eternity, what scenes shall strike!
Adventures thicken! novelties surprise!
What webs of wonder shall unravel, there!
What full day pour on all the paths of heaven,
And light th' Almighty's footsteps in the deep!
How shall the blessed day of our discharge
Unwind, at once, the labyrinths of fate, 162
And straighten its inextricable maze!
If inextinguishable thirst in man
To know; how rich, how full, our banquet there!
There, not the moral world alone unfolds;
The world material, lately seen in shades,
And, in those shades, by fragments only seen,
And seen those fragments by the labouring eye,
Unbroken, then, illustrious, and entire, 170
Its ample sphere, its universal frame,
In full dimensions, swells to the survey;
And enters, at one glance, the ravish'd sight.
From some superior point (where, who can tell?
Suffice