Among the iniscellaneous writings of Dr. Arbuthnot there is a short poem, which, notwithstanding its faults in metre, and occasional harshness," may fairly be ranked as one of the noblest philosophical poems in the language. It is marked by a conciseness and strength in the argument, a grandeur of thought, a force and propriety of language, a fine discrimination, and a vigorous grasp of mind, together with sound principles and pious sentiments, that are not often combined within the same limits." I
What am I? how produced? and for what end?
Whence drew I being? to what period tend?
Am I the abandon'd orphan of blind chance?
Dropt by wild atoms in disorder'd dance?
Or from an endless chain of causes wrought?
And of unthinking substance born with thought:
By motion which began without a cause,
Supremely wise, without design or laws?
Am I but what I seem; mere flesh and blood;
A branching channel, with a mazy flood?
The purple stream that through my vessels glides,
Dull and unconscious flows like common tides:
The pipes through which the circling juices stray,
Are not that thinking I, no more than they:
This frame compacted with transcendent skill,
Of moving joints obedient to my will,
Nursed from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree,
Waxes and wastes; I call it mine, not me:
New matter still the mouldering mass sustains,
The mansion changed, the tenant still remains:
And from the fleeting stream, repair'd by food,
Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood.
What am I then? sure, of a nobler birth.
By parents' right I own, as mother, earth;
But claim superior lineage by my SIRE,
Who warm'd th' unthinking clod with heavenly fire:
Essence divine, with lifeless clay allay'd,
By double nature, double instinct sway'd;
With look erect, I dart my longing eye,
Seem wing'd to part, and gain my native sky;
I strive to mount, but strive, alas! in vain,
Tied to this massy globe with magic chain.
Now with swift thought I range from pole to pole,
View worlds around their flaming centres roll:
What steady powers their endless motions guide,
Through the same trackless paths of Loundless void!
I trace the blazing comet's fiery trail,
And weigh the whirling planets in a scale:
These godlike thoughts, while eager I pursue
Some glittering trifle offer'd to my view,
A gnat, an insect of the meanest kind,
Erase the new-born image from my mind;
Some beastly want, craving, importunate,
Vile as the grinning mastiff at my gate,
Calls off from heavenly truth this reasoning me,
And tells me, I'm a brute as much as he.
If on sublimer wings of love and praise,
My soul above the starry vault I raise,
Lured by some vain conceit, or shameful lust,
I flag, I drop, and flutter in the dust.
The towering lark thus from her lofty strain
Stoops to an emmet, or a barley grain.
By adverse gusts of jarring instincts tost,
I rove to one, now to the other coast;
To bliss unknown my lofty soul aspires,
My lot unequal to my vast desires.
As 'mongst the hinds a child of royal birth
Finds his high pedigree by conscious worth;
So man, amongst his fellow brutes exposed,
Sees he's a king, but 'tis a king deposed:
Pity him, beasts! you, by no law confined,
Are barr'd from devious paths by being blind;
Whilst man, through opening views of various ways
Confounded, by the aid of knowledge strays;
Too weak to choose, yet choosing still in haste,
One moment gives the pleasure and distate;
Bilk'd by past minutes, while the present cloy,
The flattering future still must give the joy.
Not happy, but amused upon the road,
And (like you) thoughtless of his last abode,
Whether next sun his being shall restrain
To endless nothing, happiness, or pain.
Around me, lo, the thinking, thoughtless crew,
(Bewilder'd each) their different paths pursue;
Of them I ask the way; the first replies,
Thou art a god; and sends me to the skies:
Down on the turf (the next) thou two-legg'd beast,
There fix thy lot, thy bliss, and endless rest.
Between these wide extremes the length is such,
I find I know too little or too much.
"Almighty Power, by whose most wise command, Helpless, forlorn, uncertain here I stand; Take this faint glimmering of thyself away, Or break into my soul with perfect day!"
This said, expanded lay the sacred text,
The balm, the light, the guide of souls perplex'd:
Thus the benighted traveller that strays
Through doubtful paths, enjoys the morning rays;
The nightly mist, and thick descending dew,
Parting, unfold the fields, and vaulted bluɛ.
"O Truth divine! enlighten'd by thy ray,
I grope and guess no more, but see my way;
Thou clear dst the secret of my high descent,
And told me what those mystic tokens meant;
Marks of my birth, which I had worn in vain,
Too hard for world sages to explain.
Zeno's were vain, vain Epicurus' schemes,
Their systems false, delusive were their dreams.
Unskill'd my two-fold nature to divide,
One nursed my pleasure, and one nursed my pride:
Those jarring truths which human art beguile,
Thy sacred page thus bids me reconcile."
Offspring of God, no less thy pedigree,
What thou once wert, art now, and still may be,
Thy God alone can tell, alone decree;
Faultless thou dropt from his unerring skill,
With the bare power to sin, since free of will:
Yet charge not with thy guilt his bounteous love,
For who has power to walk, has power to rove:
Who acts by force impell'd, can naught deserve;
And wisdom short of infinite may swerve.
Borne on thy new-imp'd wings, thou took'st thy flight,
Left thy Creator, and the realms of light;
Disdain'd his gentle precept to fulfil;
And thought to grow a god by doing ill:
Though by foul guilt thy heavenly form defaced,
In nature chang'd, from happy mansions chased,
Thou still retain'st some sparks of heavenly fire,
Too faint to mount, yet restless to aspire;
Angel enough to seek thy bliss again,
And brute enough to make thy search in vain.
The creatures now withdraw their kindly use,
Some fly thee, some torment, and some seduce;
Repast ill suited to such different guests,
For what thy sense desires, thy soul distastes;
Thy lust, thy curiosity, thy pride,
Curb'd, or deferr'd, or balk'd, or gratified,
Rage on, and make thee equally unbless'd,
In what thou want'st, and what thou hast possess'a
In vain thou hopest for bliss on this poor clod,
Return, and seek thy Father, and thy God:
Yet think not to regain thy native sky,
Borne on the wings of vain philosophy;
Mysterious passage! hid from human eyes;
Soaring you'll sink, and sinking you will rise
Let humble thoughts thy wary footsteps guide,
Regain by meekness what you lost by pride.
ELIZABETH ROWE. 1674-1737.
ELIZABETH ROWE, distinguished for her piety, literature, and poeticgi talents, was the daughter of Mr. Walter Singer, a clergyman of Ilchester She early evinced a very decided taste for reading and poetry, and in her twenty-second year she published a volume of "Poems on Several Occasions, by Philomela." In 1710 she married Mr. Thomas Rowe, a gentleman of considerable literary attainments, who was some years her junior, bu ́ who, to her great grief, died of consumption but a few years after their marriage, at the early age of twenty-eight. After his death she retired to Frome, in the neighborhood of which she possessed a paternal estate, and there composed her once celebrated work, "Letters from the Dead to the Living."
"The poems of Mrs. Rowe," says Southey, "show much spirit and cultiva. tion, and are chiefly characterized by their devotion. They are at times a ättle more enthusiastic than is allowable even for poetry, and are sometimes distorted by metaphysics, but generally their beauties prevail over their faults"
Oh! lead me to some solitary gloom,
Where no enlivening beams nor cheerful echoes come;
But silent all, and dusky let it be,
Remote, and unfrequented but by me;
Mysterious, close, and sullen as that grief
Which leads me to its covert for relief.
Far from the busy world's detested noise,
Its wretched pleasures, and distracted joys
Far from the jolly fools, who laugh and play,
And dance, and sing, impertinently gay,
Their short, inestimable hours away;
Far from the studious follies of the great,
The tiresome farce of ceremonious state.
There, in a melting, solemn, dying strain,
Let me all day upon my lyre complain.
And wind up all its soft harmonious strings,
To noble, serious, melancholy things.
And let no human foot, but mine, e'er trace
The close recesses of the sacred place:
Nor let a bird of cheerful note come ncar,
To whisper out his airy raptures here.
Only the pensive songstress of the grove,
Let her, by mine, her mournful notes improve:
While drooping winds among the branches sigh,
And sluggish waters heavily roll by.
Here, to my fatal sorrows let me give
The short remaining hours I have to live.
Then, with a sullen, deep-fetch'd groan expire,
And to the grave's dark solitude retire.
In imitation of Canticles, v. 6, 7.
Ye pure inhabitants of light,
Ye virgin minds above,
That feel the sacred violence
And mighty force of love:
By all your boundless joys, by all
Your love to human kind,
I charge you to instruct me where
My absent Lord to find.
I've search'd the pleasant vales and plains.
And climb'd the hills around;
But no glad tidings of my love
Among the swains have found.
I've oft invoked him in the shades,
By every stream and rock;
The rocks, the streams, and echoing shades,
My vain industry mock.
I traced the city's noisy streets,
And told my cares aloud;
But no intelligence could meet
Among the thoughtless crowd.
I search'd the temple round, for there
He oft has blest my sight,
And half unveil'd, of his loved race
Disclosed the heavenly light.
But with these glorious views, no more
I feast my ravish'd eyes,
For veil'd with interposing clouds,
My eager search he flies.
Oh, could I in some desert land
His sacred footsteps trace,
I'd with a glad devotion kneel,
And bless the happy place.
I'd follow him o'er burning sands,
Or where perpetual snow
With horrid aspect clothes the ground,
To find my Lord, I'd go.
Nor stormy seas should stay my course,
Nor unfrequented shore,
Nor craggy Alps, nor desert wastes
Where hungry lions roar.
Through ranks of interposing deaths
To his embrace I'd fly,
And to enjoy his blissful smiles,
Would be content to die.
HENRY GROVE, a "dissenting" clergyman of great literature and piety, wis born at Taunton, Somersetshire, 1683. He was early impressed by his parents with an ardent love for religion and morality, and at school and at the academy' he acquired a taste for the elegant authors of Greece and Rome, which he cultivated through life with unwearied fondness and assiduity, and which gave uncommon grace and beauty to his style. At the age of twentytwo he entered the ministry, for which he was eminently qualified by his piety and learning; and he became a very popular preacher. On the decease of Mr. Warren, the preceptor of the academy at Taunton, Mr. Grove was elected to fill his place, and his first publication was an essay drawn up for the use of his pupils, entitled, "The Regulation of Diversions," lesigned to call off the attention of youth from the too eager pursuit of pleasure, and to infuse into them a thirst for the acquisition of knowledge and virtue. His
1 "Dissenters" had not the privilege of Oxford and Cambridge Universities
"If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be A TASTE FOR READ"NG. I speak of it only as a worldly advantage, and not in the slightest degree as superseding or derogating from the nigher office and surer and stronger panoply of religious principles-but as taste, an instrument, and a mode of pleasurable gratification. Give a man this taste, and the means ≫ gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his
|