Night!
Devotion! daughter of Astronomy!
An undevout astronomer is mad.
True; all things speak a God; but in the small,
Men trace out Him; in great, He seizes man;
Seizes, and elevates, and wraps, and fills
With new inquiries, 'mid associates new.
Tell me, ye stars! ye planets! tell me, all
Ye starr'd, and planeted, inhabitants! what is it?
What are these sons of wonder? say, proud arch 780
(Within those azure palaces they dwell),
Built with divine ambition! in disdain
Of limit built! built in the taste of heaven!
Vast concave! ample dome! wast thou design'd
A meet apartment for the Deity?--
Not so; that thought alone thy state impairs,
Thy lofty sinks, and shallows thy profound,
And straitens thy diffusive; dwarfs the whole,
And makes a universe an orrery[60].
But when I drop mine eye, and look on man, 790
Thy right regain'd, thy grandeur is restored,
O Nature! wide flies off th' expanding round.
As when whole magazines, at once, are fired,
The smitten air is hollow'd by the blow;
The vast displosion dissipates the clouds;
Shock'd ether's billows dash the distant skies; 796
Thus (but far more) th' expanding round flies off,
And leaves a mighty void, a spacious womb,
Might teem with new creation; reinflamed
Thy luminaries triumph, and assume
Divinity themselves. Nor was it strange,
Matter high-wrought to such surprising pomp,
Such godlike glory, stole the style of gods, 803
From ages dark, obtuse, and steep'd in sense;
For, sure, to sense, they truly are divine,
And half absolved idolatry from guilt;
Nay, turn'd it into virtue. Such it was
In those, who put forth all they had of man
Unlost, to lift their thought, nor mounted higher;
But, weak of wing, on planets perch'd; and thought 810
What was their highest, must be their adored.
But they how weak, who could no higher mount?
And are there, then, Lorenzo! those, to whom
Unseen, and unexistent, are the same?
And if incomprehensible is join'd,
Who dare pronounce it madness, to believe?
Why has the mighty Builder thrown aside
All measure in His work; stretch'd out His line
So far, and spread amazement o'er the whole?
Then (as he took delight in wide extremes), 820
Deep in the bosom of His universe,
Dropp'd down that reasoning mite, t