Thus beauty, mimicked in our humbler strains, Illustrious through the world's great poem reigns! The One grows sundry by creative power, Th' eternal's found in each revolving hour; Th' immense appears in every point of space, Th' unchangeable in nature's varying face; Th' invisible conspicuous to our mind, And Deity in every atom shrined. [NATURE SUPERIOR TO CIVILIZATION] O Nature, whom the song aspires to scan! O Beauty, trod by proud insulting man, This boasted tyrant of thy wondrous ball, This mighty, haughty, little lord of all; This king o'er reason, but this slave to sense, Of wisdom careless, but of whim immense; Towards thee incurious, ignorant, profane, But of his own, dear, strange productions vain! Then with this champion let the field be fought, And nature's simplest arts 'gainst human wisdom brought. Let elegance and bounty here unite-- There kings beneficent and courts polite; Here nature's wealth--there chemist's golden dreams; Her texture here--and there the statesman's schemes; Conspicuous here let sacred truth appear-- The courtier's word, and lordling's honour, there; Here native sweets in boon profusion flow-- There smells that scented nothing of a beau; Let justice here unequal combat wage-- Nor poise the judgment of the law-learned sage; Though all-proportioned with exactest skill, Yet gay as woman's wish, and various as her will. O say ye pitied, envied, wretched great, Who veil pernicion with the mask of state! Whence are those domes that reach the mocking skies, And vainly emulous of nature rise? Behold the swain projected o'er the vale! See slumbering peace his rural eyelids seal; Earth's flowery lap supports his vacant head, Beneath his limbs her broidered garments spread; Aloft her elegant pavilion bends, And living shade of vegetation lends, With ever propagated bounty blessed, And hospitably spread for every guest: No tinsel here adorns a tawdry woof, Nor lying wash besmears a varnished roof; With native mode the vivid colours shine, And Heaven's own loom has wrought the weft divine, Where art veils art, and beauties' beauties close, While central grace diffused throughout the system flows. [THE SPLENDOUR OF INSECTS]