In a sadly pleasing strain, let the warbling lute complain.
Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee, From Thee to nothing.
See plastic Nature working to this end, The single atoms each to other tend, Attract, attracted to, the next in place Form’d and impell’d its neighbor to embrace.
Give me again my hollow tree A crust of bread, and liberty!
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state.
Fix’d like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate and rot.
Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call, And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight; Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight.
Ah! what avails it me the flocks to keep, Who lost my heart while I preserv’d my sheep.
Is it, in Heav’n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender or too firm a heart, To act a lover’s or a Roman’s part? Is there no bright reversion in the sky For those who greatly think, or bravely die?
Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, And make two lovers happy.
O Love! for Sylvia let me gain the prize, And make my tongue victorious as her eyes.
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
In vain sedate reflections we would make When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.
That virtue only makes our bliss below, And all our knowledge is ourselves to know.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher, Death, and God adore; What future bliss He gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Whatever is, is right.
No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.
All Nature is but art, unknown to thee All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good.