Here social man a second birth shall find, And a new range of reason lift his mind, Feed his strong intellect with purer light, A nobler sense of duty and of right, The sense of liberty; whose holy fire His life shall temper and his laws inspire, Purge from all shades the world-embracing scope That prompts his genius and expands his hope. When first his form arose erect on earth, Parturient nature hail'd the wondrous birth, With fairest limbs and finest fibres wrought, And framed for vast and various toils of thought. To aid his promised powers with loftier flight, And stretch his views beyond corporeal sight, Prometheus came, and from the floods of day Sunn'd his clear soul with heaven's internal ray, The expanding spark divine; that round him springs, And leads and lights him thro the immense of things, Probes the dense earth, explores the soundless main, Remoulds their mass thro all its threefold reign, O'er great, o'er small extends his physic laws, Empalms the empyrean or dissects a gaz, Weighs the vast orbs of heaven, bestrides the sky, Walks on the windows of an insect's eye; Turns then to self, more curious still to trace The whirls of passion that involve the race, That cloud with mist the visual lamp of God, And plunge the poniard in fraternal blood. Here fails his light. The proud Titanian ray O'er physic nature sheds indeed its day; Yet leaves the moral in chaotic jars, The spoil of violence, the sport of wars, Presents contrasted parts of one great plan, Earth, heaven subdued, but man at swords with man; His wars, his errors into science grown, And the great cause of all his ills unknown. But when he steps on these regenerate shores, His mind unfolding for superior powers, FREEDOM, his new Prometheus, here shall rise, Light her new torch in my refulgent skies, Touch with a stronger life his opening soul, Of moral systems fix the central goal, Her own resplendent essence. Thence expand The rays of reason that illume the land; Thence equal rights proceed, and equal laws, Thence holy Justice all her reverence draws; Truth with untarnish'd beam descending thence, Strikes every eye, and quickens every sense, Bids bright Instruction spread her ample page, To drive dark dogmas from the inquiring age, Ope the true treasures of the earth and skies, And teach the student where his object lies.