Meanwhile the Arts, in second infancy, Rise in some distant clime, and then, perchance, Some bold adventurer, fill'd with golden dreams, Steering his bark through trackless solitudes, Where, to his wandering thoughts, no daring prow Hath ever ploughed before,--espies the cliffs Of fallen Albion.--To the land unknown He journeys joyful; and perhaps descries Some vestige of her ancient stateliness: Then he, with vain conjecture, fills his mind Of the unheard-of race, which had arrived At science in that solitary nook, Far from the civil world; and sagely sighs, And moralizes on the state of man. Still on its march, unnoticed and unfelt, Moves on our being. We do live and breathe, And we are gone. The spoiler heeds us not. We have our springtime and our rottenness; And as we fall, another race succeeds, To perish likewise.--Meanwhile Nature smiles-- The seasons run their round--The Sun fulfils His annual course--and heaven and earth remain Still changing, yet unchanged--still doom'd to feel Endless mutation in perpetual rest. Where are conceal'd the days which have elapsed? Hid in the mighty cavern of the past, They rise upon us only to appall, By indistinct and half-glimpsed images, Misty, gigantic, huge, obscure, remote. Oh, it is fearful, on the midnight couch, When the rude rushing winds forget to rave, And the pale moon, that through the casement high Surveys the sleepless muser, stamps the hour Of utter silence, it is fearful then To steer the mind, in deadly solitude. Up the vague stream of probability; To wind the mighty secrets of the past, And turn the key of time!--Oh! who can strive To comprehend the vast, the awful truth, Of the eternity that hath gone by, And not recoil from the dismaying sense Of human impotence? The life of man Is summ'd in birthdays and in sepulchres; But the Eternal God had no beginning; He hath no end. Time had been with him For everlasting, ere the dredal world Rose from the gulf in loveliness.--Like him It knew no source, like him, 't was uncreate. What is it then? The past Eternity! We comprehend a future without end; We feel it possible that even yon sun May roll for ever: but we shrink amazed-- We stand aghast, when we reflect that time Knew no commencement.--That heap age on age, And million upon million, without end, And we shall never span the void of days That were and are not but in retrospect. The Past is an unfathomable depth, Beyond the span of thought; 'tis an elapse Which hath no mensuration, but hath been For ever and for ever. Change of days To us is sensible; and each revolve Of the recording sun conducts us on Further in life, and nearer to our goal. Not so with Time,--mysterious chronicler, He knoweth not mutation;--centuries Are to his being as a day, and days As centuries.--Time past, and Time to come, Are always equal; when the world began God had existed from eternity. * * * * *