Man is proud of his mind, boasting that it giveth him divinity, Yet with all its powers can it originate nothing; For the Great God into all His works hath largely poured out Himself, Saving one special property, the grand prerogative,--Creation. To improve and expand is ours, as well as to limit and defeat; But to create a thought or a thing is hopeless and impossible. Can a man make matter?--and yet this would-be god Thinketh to make mind, and form original idea: The potter must have his clay, and the mason his quarry, And mind must drain ideas from everything around it. Doth the soil generate herbs, or the torrid air breed flies, Or the water frame its monads, or the mist its swarming blight?-- Mediately, through thousand generations, having seed within themselves, All things, rare or gross, own one common Father. Truly spake Wisdom, There is nothing new under the sun: We only arrange and combine the ancient elements of all things. Invention is activity of mind, as fire is air in motion; A sharpening of the spiritual sight, to discern hidden aptitudes: From the basket and acanthus, is modelled the graceful capital; The shadowed profile on the wall helpeth the limner to his likeness; The footmarks, stamped in clay, lead on the thoughts to printing; The strange skin garments cast upon the shore suggest another hemisphere: A falling apple taught the sage pervading gravitation; The Huron is certain of his prey, from tracks upon the grass: And shrewdness, guessing out the hint, followeth on the trail; But the hint must be given, the trail must be there, or the keenest sight is as blindness. [Illustration]