But now had Hesper from the Hero's sight Veil'd the vast world with sudden shades of night. Earth, sea and heaven, where'er he turns his eye, Arch out immense, like one surrounding sky Lamp'd with reverberant fires. The starry train Paint their fresh forms beneath the placid main; Fair Cynthia here her face reflected laves, Bright Venus gilds again her natal waves, The Bear redoubling foams with fiery joles, And two dire dragons twine two arctic poles. Lights o'er the land, from cities lost in shade, New constellations, new galaxies spread, And each high pharos double flames provides, One from its fires, one fainter from the tides. Centred sublime in this bivaulted sphere, On all sides void, unbounded, calm and clear, Soft o'er the Pair a lambent lustre plays, Their seat still cheering with concentred rays; To converse grave the soothing shades invite. And on his Guide Columbus fixt his sight: Kind messenger of heaven, he thus began, Why this progressive laboring search of man? If men by slow degrees have power to reach These opening truths that long dim ages teach, If, school'd in woes and tortured on to thought, Passion absorbing what experience taught, Still thro the devious painful paths they wind, And to sound wisdom lead at last the mind, Why did not bounteous nature, at their birth, Give all their science to these sons of earth, Pour on their reasoning powers pellucid day, Their arts, their interests clear as light display? That error, madness and sectarian strife Might find no place to havock human life. To whom the guardian Power: To thee is given To hold high converse and inquire of heaven, To mark untraversed ages, and to trace Whate'er improves and what impedes thy race. Know then, progressive are the paths we go In worlds above thee, as in thine below Nature herself (whose grasp of time and place Deals out duration and impalms all space) Moves in progressive march; but where to tend, What course to compass, how the march must end, Her sons decide not; yet her works we greet Imperfect in their parts, but in their whole complete. When erst her hand the crust of Chaos thirl'd, And forced from his black breast the bursting world, High swell'd the huge existence crude and crass, A formless dark impermeated mass; No light nor heat nor cold nor moist nor dry, But all concocting in their causes lie. Millions of periods, such as these her spheres Learn since to measure and to call their years, She broods the mass; then into motion brings And seeks and sorts the principles of things, Pours in the attractive and repulsive force, Whirls forth her globes in cosmogyral course, By myriads and by millions, scaled sublime, To scoop their skies, and curve the rounds of time.