O LOVE! O Glory! what are ye who fly Around us ever, rarely to alight? There's not a meteor in the polar sky Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight. Chill, and chained to cold earth, we lift on high Our eyes in search of either lovely light; A thousand and a thousand colours they Assume, then leave us on our freezing way. II. And such as they are, such my present tale is, A nondescript and ever-varying rhyme, A versified Aurora Borealis, Which flashes o'er a waste and icy clime. When we know what all are, we must bewail us, But ne'ertheless I hope it is no crime To laugh at _all_ things--for I wish to know _What_, after _all_, are _all_ things--but a _show_? III. They accuse me--_Me_--the present writer of The present poem--of--I know not what-- A tendency to under-rate and scoff At human power and virtue, and all that;[365] And this they say in language rather rough. Good God! I wonder what they would be at! I say no more than hath been said in Danté's Verse, and by Solomon and by Cervantes; IV. By Swift, by Machiavel, by Rochefoucault, By Fénélon, by Luther, and by Plato;[hh] By Tillotson, and Wesley, and Rousseau, Who knew this life was not worth a potato. 'T is not their fault, nor mine, if this be so,-- For my part, I pretend not to be Cato, Nor even Diogenes.--We live and die, But which is best, _you_ know no more than I. V. Socrates said, our only knowledge was[366] "To know that nothing could be known;" a pleasant Science enough, which levels to an ass Each man of wisdom, future, past, or present. Newton (that proverb of the mind), alas! Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent, That he himself felt only "like a youth Picking up shells by the great ocean--Truth."[hi][367] VI. Ecclesiastes said, "that all is vanity"-- Most modern preachers say the same, or show it By their examples of true Christianity: In short, all know, or very soon may know it; And in this scene of all-confessed inanity, By Saint, by Sage, by Preacher, and by Poet, Must I restrain me, through the fear of strife, From holding up the nothingness of Life?[hj] VII. Dogs, or men!--for I flatter you[368] in saying That ye are dogs--your betters far--ye may Read, or read not, what I am now essaying To show ye what ye are in every way. As little as the moon stops for the baying Of wolves, will the bright Muse withdraw one ray From out her skies--then howl your idle wrath! While she still silvers o'er your gloomy path. VIII.