Authority, which did a body boast, Though ’twas but air condensed, and stalked about Like some old giant’s more gigantic ghost, To terrify the learnèd rout, With the plain magic of true reason’s light 45 He chased out of our sight, Nor suffered living men to be misled By the vain shadows of the dead: To graves, from whence it rose, the conquered phantom fled. He broke that monstrous god which stood, 50 In midst of the orchard, and the whole did claim, Which with a useless scythe of wood, And something else not worth a name, (Ridiculous and senseless terrors!) made Children and superstitious men afraid. 55 The orchard’s open now, and free: Bacon has broke that scarecrow deity: Come, enter all that will, Behold the ripened fruit, come, gather now your fill! Yet still, methinks, we fain would be 60 Catching at the forbidden tree; We would be like the Deity; When truth and falsehood, good and evil, we Without the senses’ aid within ourselves would see; For ’tis God only who can find 65 All nature in his mind. From words, which are but pictures of the thought (Though we our thoughts from them perversely drew,) To things, the mind’s right object, he it brought; Like foolish birds to painted grapes we flew. 70 He sought and gathered for our use the true; And when on heaps the chosen bunches lay, He pressed them wisely the mechanic way, Till all their juice did in one vessel join, Ferment into a nourishment divine, 75 The thirsty soul’s refreshing wine. Who to the life an exact piece would make, Must not from others’ work a copy take; No, not from Rubens or Vandyck; Much less content himself to make it like 80 The ideas and the images which lie In his own fancy or his memory: No, he before his sight must place The natural and the living face; The real object must command 85 Each judgment of his eye and motion of his hand.