No mystery--but that of Love Divine, Which lifts us on the seraph's flaming wing, From earth's Aceldama, this field of blood, Of inward anguish, and of outward ill, From darkness, and from dust, to such a scene! Love's element! true joy's illustrious home! From earth's sad contrast (now deplored) more fair! What exquisite vicissitude of fate! Bless'd absolution of our blackest hour! Lorenzo, these are thoughts that make man Man, 110 The wise illumine, aggrandize the great. How great (while yet we tread the kindred clod, And every moment fear to sink beneath The clod we tread; soon trodden by our sons); How great, in the wild whirl of Time's pursuits, To stop, and pause, involved in high presage, Through the long vista of a thousand years, To stand contemplating our distant selves, As in a magnifying mirror seen, Enlarged, ennobled, elevate, divine! 120 To prophesy our own futurities; To gaze in thought on what all thought transcends! To talk, with fellow-candidates, of joys As far beyond conception as desert, Ourselves th' astonish'd talkers, and the tale! Lorenzo, swells thy bosom at the thought? The swell becomes thee: 'tis an honest pride. Revere thyself;--and yet thyself despise. His nature no man can o'er-rate; and none Can under-rate his merit. Take good heed, 130 Nor there be modest, where thou should'st be proud; That almost universal error shun. How just our pride, when we behold those heights! Not those Ambition paints in air, but those Reason points out, and ardent Virtue gains, And angels emulate; our pride how just! When mount we? when these shackles cast? when quit This cell of the creation? this small nest, Stuck in a corner of the universe, Wrapt up in fleecy cloud, and fine-spun air? 140 Fine-spun to sense; but gross and feculent To souls celestial; souls ordain'd to breathe Ambrosial gales, and drink a purer sky; Greatly triumphant on Time's farther shore, Where Virtue reigns, enrich'd with full arrears; While Pomp imperial begs an alms of peace. In empire high, or in proud science deep, Ye born of earth! on what can you confer, With half the dignity, with half the gain, The gust, the glow of rational delight, 150 As on this theme, which angels praise and share? Man's fates and favours are a theme in heaven. What wretched repetition cloys us here! What periodic potions for the sick! 154 Distemper'd bodies! and distemper'd minds! In an eternity, what scenes shall strike! Adventures thicken! novelties surprise! What webs of wonder shall unravel, there! What full day pour on all the paths of heaven, And light th' Almighty's footsteps in the deep! How shall the blessed day of our discharge