Ah, how the Human Mind wearies herself With her own wand'rings, and, involved in gloom Impenetrable, speculates amiss! Measuring, in her folly, things divine By human, laws inscrib'd on adamant By laws of Man's device, and counsels fix'd For ever, by the hours, that pass, and die. How?--shall the face of Nature then be plow'd Into deep wrinkles, and shall years at last On the great Parent fix a sterile curse? 10 Shall even she confess old age, and halt And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows? Shall foul Antiquity with rust and drought And famine vex the radiant worlds above? Shall Time's unsated maw crave and engulf The very heav'ns that regulate his flight? And was the Sire of all able to fence His works, and to uphold the circling worlds, But through improvident and heedless haste Let slip th'occasion?--So then--All is lost-- 20 And in some future evil hour, yon arch Shall crumble and come thund'ring down, the poles Jar in collision, the Olympian King Fall with his throne, and Pallas, holding forth The terrors of her Gorgon shield in vain,1 Shall rush to the abyss, like Vulcan hurl'd Down into Lemnos through the gate of heav'n. Thou also, with precipitated wheels Phoebus! thy own son's fall shalt imitate, With hideous ruin shalt impress the Deep 30 Suddenly, and the flood shall reek and hiss At the extinction of the Lamp of Day. Then too, shall Haemus cloven to his base Be shattered, and the huge Ceraunian hills,2 Once weapons of Tartarean Dis, immersed In Erebus, shall fill Himself with fear. No. The Almighty Father surer lay'd His deep foundations, and providing well For the event of all, the scales of Fate Suspended, in just equipoise, and bade 40 His universal works from age to age One tenour hold, perpetual, undisturb'd. Hence the Prime Mover wheels itself about Continual, day by day, and with it bears In social measure swift the heav'ns around. Not tardier now is Saturn than of old, Nor radiant less the burning casque of Mars. Phoebus, his vigour unimpair'd, still shows Th'effulgence of his youth, nor needs the God A downward course that he may warm the vales; 50 But, ever rich in influence, runs his road, Sign after sign, through all the heav'nly zone. Beautiful as at first ascends the star3 From odorif'rous Ind, whose office is To gather home betimes th'ethereal flock, To pour them o'er the skies again at Eve, And to discriminate the Night and Day. Still Cynthia's changeful horn waxes and wanes Alternate, and with arms extended still She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams. 60 Nor have the elements deserted yet Their functions, thunder with as loud a stroke As erst, smites through the rocks and scatters them, The East still howls, still the relentless North Invades the shudd'ring Scythian, still he breathes The Winter, and still rolls the storms along. The King of Ocean with his wonted force Beats on Pelorus,4 o'er the Deep is heard