And had your Eden an abstemious Eve? 1774 Our Eve's fair daughters prove their pedigree, And ask their Adams--'Who would not be wise?' Or, if your mother fell, are you redeem'd? And if redeem'd--is your Redeemer scorn'd? Is this your final residence? If not, Change you your scene, translated? or by death? And if by death; what death?--Know you disease? Or horrid war?--With war, this fatal hour, 1782 Europa groans (so call we a small field, Where kings run mad). In our world, Death deputes Intemperance to do the work of Age; And hanging up the quiver Nature gave him, As slow of execution, for despatch Sends forth imperial butchers; bids them slay Their sheep (the silly sheep they fleeced before), And toss him twice ten thousand at a meal. 1790 Sit all your executioners on thrones? With you, can rage for plunder make a god? And bloodshed wash out every other stain?-- But you, perhaps, can't bleed: from matter gross Your spirits clean, are delicately clad In fine-spun ether, privileged to soar, Unloaded, uninfected; how unlike The lot of man! how few of human race By their own mud unmurder'd! how we wage Self-war eternal!--Is your painful day 1800 Of hardy conflict o'er? or, are you still Raw candidates at school? and have you those Who disaffect reversions, as with us?-- But what are we? You never heard of man; Or earth, the bedlam of the universe! Where Reason (undiseased with you) runs mad, And nurses Folly's children as her own; Fond of the foulest. In the sacred mount 1808 Of holiness, where Reason is pronounced Infallible; and thunders, like a god; Even there, by saints, the demons are outdone; What these think wrong, our saints refine to right; And kindly teach dull hell her own black arts; Satan, instructed, o'er their morals smiles.-- But this, how strange to you, who know not man! Has the least rumour of our race arrived? Call'd here Elijah in his flaming car? Pass'd by you the good Enoch, on his road To those fair fields, whence Lucifer was hurl'd; Who brush'd, perhaps, your sphere in his descent, 1820 Stain'd your pure crystal ether, or let fall A short eclipse from his portentous shade? O that the fiend had lodged on some broad orb Athwart his way; nor reach'd his present home, Then blacken'd earth with footsteps foul'd in hell, Nor wash'd in ocean, as from Rome he pass'd To Britain's isle; too, too, conspicuous there!" But this is all digression: where is He, That o'er heaven's battlements the felon hurl'd To groans, and chains, and darkness? Where is He, 1830 Who sees creation's summit in a vale? He, whom, while man is man, he can't but seek; And if he finds, commences more than man? O for a telescope His throne to reach!