The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius: with some other poemsBeattie, James
General
The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius: with some other poems
Beattie, James
Poetry
XLIV.
'But now let other themes our care engage.
'For lo, with modest, yet majestic grace,
'To curb Imagination's lawless rage,
'And from within the cherished heart to brace,
'Philosophy appears. The gloomy race,
'By Indolence and moping Fancy bred,
'Fear, Discontent, Solicitude give place,
'And Hope and Courage brighten in their stead,
'While on the kindling soul her vital beams are shed.
XLV.
'Then waken from long lethargy to life
'The seeds of happiness, and powers of thought;
'Then jarring appetites forego their strife,
'A strife by ignorance to madness wrought.
'Pleasure by savage man is dearly bought
'With fell revenge, lust that defies controul,
'With gluttony and death. The mind untaught,
'Is a dark waste, where fiends and tempests howl;
'As Phoebus to the world, is Science to the soul.
XLVI.
'And Reason, now, through Number, Time, and Space,
'Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye,
'And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace,
'Whose long progression leads to Deity.
'Can mortal strength presume to soar so high?
'Can mortal sight, so oft bedimmed with tears,
'Such glory bear?--for lo, the shadows fly
'From Nature's face; Confusion disappears,
'And order charms the eyes, and harmony the ears.
XLVII.
'In the deep windings of the grove, no more
'The hag obscene, and grisly phantom dwell;
'Nor in the fall of mountain-stream, or roar
'Of winds, is heard the angry spirit's yell;
'No wizard mutters the tremendous spell,
'Nor sinks convulsive in prophetic swoon;
'Nor bids the noise of drums and trumpets swell,
'To ease of fancied pangs the labouring moon,
'Or chace the shade that blots the blazing orb of noon.
XLVIII.
'Many a long lingering year, in lonely isle,
'Stunned with the eternal turbulence of waves,
'Lo, with dim eyes, that never learned to smile,
'And trembling hands, the famished native craves
'Of Heaven his wretched fare: shivering in caves,
'Or scorched on rocks, he pines from day to day;
'But Science gives the word; and lo, he braves
'The surge and tempest, lighted by her ray,
'And to a happier land wafts merrily away.
XLIX.
'And even where Nature loads the teeming plain
'With the full pomp of vegetable store,
'Her bounty, unimproved, is deadly bane:
'Dark woods and rankling wilds, from shore to shore,
'Stretch their enormous gloom; which, to explore,
'Even Fancy trembles, in her sprightliest mood;
'For there, each eyeball gleams with lust of gore,
'Nestles each murderous and each monstrous brood,
'Plague lurks in every shade, and streams from every flood.
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