Say, why was _man_ so eminently rais’d Amid the vast creation; why ordain’d Through life and death to dart his piercing eye, With thoughts beyond the limits of his frame; But that the Omnipotent might send him forth In sight of mortal and immortal powers, As on a boundless theatre, to run The great career of justice; to exalt His generous aim to all diviner deeds; To chase each partial purpose from his breast; And through the mists of passion and of sense, And through the tossing tide of chance and pain, To hold his course unfaltering; while the voice Of truth and virtue, up the steep ascent Of nature, calls him to his high reward-- The applauding smile of Heaven? _Akenside._ Traveller, as roaming over vales and steeps, Thou hast, perchance, beheld in foliage fair A willow bending o’er a brook--it weeps, Leaf after leaf, into the stream, till bare Are the best boughs, the lovliest and the brightest, Oh! sigh, for well thou may’st, yet as thou sighest, Think not ’tis o’er imaginary woe; I tell thee, traveller, such is mortal _man_, And so he hangs o’er fancied bliss, and so, While life is verging to its shortest span, Drop one by one his dearest joys away, Till hope is but the ghost of something fair, Till joy is mockery, till life is care, Till he himself is unreflecting clay. _Henry Neele._ Whate’er of earth is formed, to earth returns Dissolved: the various objects we behold-- Plants, animals, this whole material mass-- Are ever changing, ever new. The soul Of _man_ alone, that particle divine, Escapes the wreck of worlds, when all things fail: Hence the great distance ’twixt the beasts that perish, And God’s bright image, _man’s_ immortal race. _Somerville._ Prostration vile, an alienate from God _Man_ is, and shall his fallen nature rise, Her height regain, and fill ethereal thrones? Many a cloud of evil shall be burst, Ere that day come, severe and dread the strife Of sullied nature with the soul of _man_, Whate’er his climate, character, or creed, Temptation, like a spirit, tracks his path. _R. Montgomery._ And what is _man_? In outward guise Let him be prince, or peer, or slave, Or poor and weak, or great and wise-- A mortal, tending to the grave: Such are all _men_--from earth we came, Earth doth her own poor dust reclaim. _H. H. Weld._