Prize Poem at Bath-Easton.
Spirit of man, if thy mysterious fires
Are emanent from that, ETERNAL LIGHT,
In whose comparison the Sun retires,
Eclips’d and pale, can System trace thy flight,
When thou shalt seek, freed from corporeal load,
In dim Futurity a new abode?
Ah no! strange destinies her dreams prepare
For thy undying sense of joys and pains;
How ill the Samian Sage explains
Thy trackless wanderings in yon fields of air!
Inadequate the bonds, by which he tries
To chain thee still to earth, when lost, by guilt, the skies.
And yet, howe’er imperfect, wild, and strange,
His tenets seem; still, as they not discard
A sacred sense, along their erring range,
Of punish’d crime, and virtue’s fair reward,
They soar, though on weak wings, above the sphere
Where broods mad Atheism o’er precepts drear;
Or, with incessant sneer, delights to lead,
By cold Oblivion’s deep and sable waves,
His grovelling crew of sensual slaves,
Inebriate, muttering Epicurus’ creed,
And impious quenching in the sullen stream
The brightning torch of Hope, kindled at Truth’s pure beam.
Our more enlighten’d Sage disdained to fold
In blank Annihilation’s icy shroud,
The Spirit warm, that, from her earthly hold,
Had wings to soar above yon azure cloud;
Yet has he much perplex’d her doubtful way
To Guilt’s dark shores, and Virtue’s realms of day.
But tune thy notes, my lyre, to gayer strains;
Admit the futile system for an hour;
Embrace its creed, invoke its power,
And to its fond illusions give the reins;
Conceive the soaring mind has earthly bounds,
And vegetates, or breathes, through Fate’s eternal rounds.
Then while Revenge meets his congenial lot,
And howls the tiger of the desert plain;
While sensual Love bums in the odious Goat,
And in the Hog the Glutton feasts again;
While selfish Dulness indolently laves,
A cold Torpedo in the stagnant waves;
While Avarice grovels in the sateless Worm,
And baneful Envy, on the Hornet’s wing,
Rises, and darts the barbed sting;
While Vanity assumes a kindred form,
Sports a gay Butterfly in summer’s noon,
And shews her gilded wings, quick glancing to the Sun;
Me, whom nor rage, nor thirst of proud controul,
Nor wish impure, inflames to deeds abhorr’d;
Nor costly viand, nor inebriate bowl
Allures to revel at the Glutton’s board;
I, who can weep for sorrows not my own,
Nor covet gold, nor envy bright renown;
If, for impetuous errors, ill-restrain’d,
For many a frail omission, frequent mourn’d,
For talents wasted, prudence scorn’d,
My struggling spirit must to earth be chain’d,
Ah! gentle be its expiatory doom,
In Brute-Existence dumb, or vegetable gloom!
If sink it must, O grant, ye lenient Powers,
Soft that it fall on LAURA’S Delphic shrine;
Then rise a myrtle in her blooming bowers,
Whose verdant arms may round her altars twine!
There, as the tuneful train, the groves among,
Pour the full cadence of the dulcet song,
While yet around me trill the charming strains,
While gentle Laura bends my glossy spray,
And graceful weaves its garlands gay,
My ardent spirit scarce shall feel its chains;
Scarce shall its silent destiny deplore,
Since yet I form the wreaths, which once with pride I wore.