Sphered in the world where Thought is ripe and rife, She thrives on Wisdom from the Tree of Life!
Not for the mind's disease is physic given,
And her had wronged had it detained from heaven.
-Yet Power to it belongs, ingenious skill,
And o'er its pains supreme rules pleasure still.
Benevolent and active, versed in woe,
It feels the joys that generous spirits know.
Science exalts and purifies the mind,
By love of letters it is more refined---
Such merits, Physic, to thy sons belong,
Thyself one power with Melody and Song.
In Learning's groves thy votaries hence appear,
A Browne, a Caius, and a Linacre;
Hence princely Mead, with fame and fortune graced,
And moral Pringle, proved the joys of taste;
Hence Armstrong with Hygeia dared explore
"Paths that the muses never trod before;"
And Akenside on wings of rapture soared,
And high in heaven the Eternal Mind adored.
Let not thy sons the human frame assay,
If Genius prompt them not and point their way.
Genius is Nature, and reflects the states
Of Nature quickly, or anticipates.
Art without Genius, Paracelsus said,
Like works deprived of Faith, is merely dead,
And though dark things he wrote, and wildly too,
This precept's clear, but not more clear than true.
To every art hath righteous Heaven assigned
Its proper Genius, its right turn of mind.
This let the parent, let the tutor note,
And e'er to its peculiar end devote;
But shape beside with accident its aim,-
So grew a Harvey and a Sydenham.
For God creates, the son of Sirach writes,
Physicians, and to honour them delights.
From Him comes healing, 'tis to Him we owe
The skill which raises the Physician's brow.
A Huxham's genius, and a Cullen's art,
A Hunter's memory, and a Baillie's heart,
A Jenner's victory over beauty's foe,
From him derive "the uses" they bestow.
Honour awaits on the Physician still,
Man is his study, Man demands his skill.
O what a labour of that Sculptor Wise,
Who scooped out ocean and o'er-arched the skies,
Is his to touch, to question and admire,
To re-create, as if with Heaven's own fire!
May Genius e'er a nobler task employ?
Shame on the man to whom it brings no joy.
A noble fabric for the soul designed,
Communion to maintain with other kind-
See here each sense its proper organ held,
And the fine nerves intelligence impelled.
The limbs with muscles and with tendons strung,
Moved at her will-the bones with cunning bung
In ligaments, with cartilages thin,
And all compact, protected by the skin-
And here the tongue once uttered vocal signs,
And gave expression to what thought combines-
And here the treasure-house of blood, the heart,
And here its channels nourished every part.
---Thus all the secret wonders of the frame
Disclose their structure, and imply their aim.
The "Purple Island," by the Poet sung,
In allegory's now forgotten tongue;
This was the house not made with hands, wherein
Man, child of Heaven, yet the heir of Sin,
Received from Nature homage as her king,
And ruled her spirit in its minist'ring,
And, in the mighty whole could comprehend,
How Being still on Being must depend,
Each all requiring ere itself could be,
And all co-ordinate in harmony,
Each lower nature to the higher given,
Matter with Spirit, linking Earth and Heaven. -Thus o'er the Flower still Psyche flutters free, Herself a Flower, but with Mobility.
But not alone the health of Man demands Protection, Genius! from thy guardian hands; His life, his property, his freedom, cry On thee for aid, from wrong or tyranny And not alone dost thou the cause confide To armed strength and military pride, But to the Laws entrust the social weal, While Eloquence to Justice makes appeal. Nay, Law it was that birth to Valour gave; Thy sons, Lycurgus!-Moses! thine were brave ! Whence sprang the evil that demands redress? Poetic Power! 'tis given to thee to guess. -Mind has a fountain of creative might,
It saith-Let Darkness be; and there is Night-
A principle divine, an energy
Of conscious Will, that bade the Enigma be.
Original, eternal, at its nod
Teemed Nature with the mandate of the god.
Then Sin had being, child of human birth-
Unwrit in stars of heaven, on flowers of earth,
The groves sang not, nor dulcet Nightingale
Tuned, to the hushed Obscure, the deadly tale-
Thy waters, Eden, unpolluted ran,
They told it not to paradisal man!
-But from th' Imagination of the Heart,
As Pallas from the brain of Jove might start,
Forth came the mystic Shade, and 'gan to brood,
An incubus o'er all that erst was good,
Bade Nature minister to her desires,
Art feed her pride, and Genius fan her fires.
Then Law arose, the growing pest to stay,
And teach the wandering soul a better way.
-Hence each relation-Life and Death became,
And Labour their mere elements to tame.
Then Property began, and Nature still
Her errors bowed to a diviner will.
Be Law within the soul of man enthroned,
And Liberty therewith shall be atoned,
But once displaced from that most sacred shrine,
It reigns a tyrant, yet by might divine.
Yes! though by right divine, a tyrant reigns;
For man, become a slave, must yield to chains-
Lo, the Chinese, no wiser, better grown,
Each act of life reflected from the throne,
In improgressive state, with servile awe,
Bows to the yoke of arbitrary law.
How, then, shall man the immortal spirit free,
And Law consist with human Liberty?
Truth, by Religion taught, emancipates
The awakened soul, and triumphs o'er the fates.
Yet let no priest o'er-rule the enquiring mind,
Lest he become blind leader of the blind-
The Arts of life may flourish; nay, the Creed,
With fancy, warm- 'tis but a gorgeous weed!
In vain majestic, it shall fail to save
Whom it deludes, the bondsmen of a slave!
Thus Ind, and thus the watered of the Nile,
Old Egypt, grew in wisdom for a while,
Till knowledge found a sacerdotal shore,
And priest and people wiser grew no more.
Law, of Religion void, is void of life,
And quenches manhood while it quenches strife.
The regal founder of the Cretan state,
Knew both to prophesy and legislate-
And He who led a people through the sea,
United both in one Theocracy.
O'er man Law rules,-not yet enshrined within,
Not yet victorious o'er the Law of Sin:
Free is the Man whose heart the Law obeys,
Free is the Nation over which it sways-
Free art thou, Britain! where it reigns alone,
No higher Power-superior to the Throne!
Ye who have wrestled at the busy bar,
By all life's interests roused to wordy war-
O ye can tell what hopes and fears compose
The joy, the triumph that attend on those-
How each excited energy of mind
Wakes at their call, and strengthens like the wind,
Till the full burst of wild enthusiasm
Rush, like a tempest from a mountain chasm,
And thou, O Genius! through the conscious breast
Art felt how great, and tremblingly confest,
While to his height Demosthenes ascends,
Or Cicero with artful vigour ends.
But I prefer thy graces more retired,
To watch the student pondering, half inspired;
Who, animated with a generous zeal,
Makes Law a Science, can its pleasures feel.
Conceiving more the more he comprehends,
He grasps the world of knowledge, and extends-
He in the legal pile, like Jones, reveres
"The gathered wisdom of a thousand years."
Who studies thus, and loves his country's laws,
May fitly in the senate fight her cause.
The Senate !-at the word my muse awakes,—
Whose wisdom guides the world, whose thunder shakes.
Here may the patriot glow with that delight,
Which only he who feels can know aright.
A Mansfield here, and here a Romilly,
Find scope for genius ample as the sea.
O many were the tears I wept for thee,
Nor inharmonious, generous Romilly!
THERE was a Man! a Spirit upon earth,
Who shamed the boast of power, the pride of birth;
Love led him on in the career of fame,
And cheered his bosom with the purest flame.
Such was his brow, the stamp of man it owned,
And Mind was on its awful arch enthroned;
Such the quick lustre of his ample eye,
It beamed Intelligence and Charity;
The souls of men its mastery did confess,
While that declared his own was masterless;
Firm in the right, unconquerable in truth,
Faithful in years, and dutiful in youth-
Such strength with his sweet eloquence was strung,
Upon his words applauding senates hung,
And o'er her sceptre Justice leaned, and grew
Gentler, dissolved by his lips' honey-dew.
-Thus did he flourish like the laurel-tree,
Upon whose stem the dews descended free,
And the sun shone, exulting through the day,
Over the wonder of his vital ray :-
But soon I looked-and lo, he is no more,
And void each station which he filled before!
O! bosomed in domestic peace alone,
A son's a husband's-father's heart his own-
He was what is he now ?-O, there-alas!
Love sorrowing sighs, she can but say-He was !
The eyes that weep the hearts that bleed-to his
Linked by the eternal chain of Love and Bliss→→→
Recoil astonied, and in terror cry,
Must then the Righteous as the Wicked die?
Exalted but more terribly to fall,
As he who robbed the Orphan of her all?
How little art thou, Man! thou heart of pride!
Whose haughty crest hath Heaven itself defied!
Thou, fledged with vanity, hast earth explored,
"Swept the long tract of day,"..and further soared;
Yea, and to teach thy Maker hast essayed;
How he should rule the creatures he hath made,
Or vaunted in presumption wild and high,
We need no God, save our own Majesty !!..
Behold thy frailty, and boast no more;-
Where is thy greatness now? be humbled, and adore!
Thy genius, Chatham, brightest at the last,
Was fiery, comprehensive, pure, and vast;
Impelled the will by sympathetic force,
And urged the passions o'er the reinless course.
-But Burke expands and elevates the mind,
Informed by science and with song refined,
From him we learn what principles o'errule
The social fabric, great and beautiful.
Pitt might the fancy charm with verbal art,
And Fox amuse the memory or the heart;
Burke taught men how to think, ill-understood,
If they would purpose for the public good.
-O happy they! born in the tide of time
That heaved and tossed to render them sublime,
Making a chaos, that, with might divine,
They might reshape the mass and recombine.
A mighty chaos, whose subsiding storm
Thy genius, Canning, yet had power to form.
The State two master interests engage,
Lull it to calm or lash it into rage.
The body has its wants, its wants the mind,
To Commerce those, to Letters these assigned.
For both the voice of Eloquence be heard,
But to the body be the mind preferred.
Age after age, from rude to more refined,
For that has laboured, never for the mind.
The sons of Trade devolve from heir to heir,
The fruits of Toil, or Fortune less severe;
But they who for the glory of their fame
Earn nothing but the whistling of a name,
Even in the work whereon themselves they spend
Transmit their children nothing in the end;
Who, by a law unjust deprived,.. unawed,
See villains riot in the legal fraud,
And weeping their lost birthright, turn away
Their shamefast brow, and execrate the day,
When an unthinking senate gave them cause,
To doubt its wisdom and to hate the laws,
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