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In darkness dwell, with fear and headlong rout;
With blind uncertainty, and error's brood

Of vice in league with folly. These subdued,
No foe remains: Truth's portals wide unfold,

And lo! the Goddess radiant on her throne.

The clouds dissolve, by misty error rolled

Round human thought, and doubt and dread are flown; Truth smiles, well pleased, on Virtue at her side; And bright eyed Beauty, pleasure's rosy bride, Comes, joy-attended, to pale fear unknown.

METAPHYSICS.

I.

"My mind is my kingdom"- then surely 'tis meet
Its wants to examine, its wealth to explore;
To trace up its streams, through each winding retreat,
Its vales for rich pasture, its mountains for ore.

Long time, I laboured in the darksome mine
Of deep enquiry; fruitful oft times found

In error; fruitful more, in thoughts profound
And truths of highest worth; truths at whose shrine
Mind bows in homage, as to power divine.

No narrow range my ardent search could bound ;
Nor toils subdue, nor coward fears debar

My eager quest, through realms of thought afar,

Mid gloom of darkness, o'er entangled ground, With subtle disputants, in wordy war,

So doubt but lead, at last, to doctrines sound. Each rising light I hailed, each wandering star, Thy sons, O Genius! blazing bright around, So bright, alas! they dazzle and confound,

II.

Though hard the soil, and cold the clime may be,
Tis native to the thoughtful and the free;

And rich the products studious toil may gain
From wastes, that frown along that bleak domain.

Hobbes' startling paradox, and power intense
Of compact thought; Locke's free and fearless mind;
Hume's subtle truth and sophistry refined;

The rugged ore of Butler's sterling sense;
Smith's glow of sympathetic eloquence;

Reid's power of patient thought, devoid of art;
The graceful Stewart's polished mind and heart,
Could each, in turn, to me its aids dispense:
My aim, through all, the secret haunts to win

Of human nature, and the world within ;
That master science, whence all others flow,

That central height sublime, where spreading wide, In varied prospect, seen on every side,

Thy realms, O Thought! lie clear and bright below.

ORIGINAL GENIUS.

I.

I will not jump with common spirits,

Nor rank me with the barbarous multitudes.

SHAKSPEARE.

Hobbes' said, nor need we here his speech gainsay,
"If I had read as much as other men,

I should have known as little!" Prone to stray,
Dogmatic, cold, contemptuous, yet his pen

Traced even his own thoughts; no babble vain
Of idle words, or senseless sounds inane,

But clear, precise, with pregnant meaning fraught,
His own, and not another's. He might err,
None more, or wider; but he knew to stir,

In other minds, the germs of living thought;
And this is Genius yet he failed in part,

And that the noblest; reason's power alone, The hard, dry intellect, to him was known, Unconscious, or disdainful of the heart.

II.

Though Wit, in pleasure's laughing bower,
Springs free, mid social mirth,

Tis Contemplation's lonely hour
Gives thoughtful Genius birth.

Genius is nursed in solitude: the mind,

Turned inward on itself, intently draws,

From close observance of thought's inmost laws, The nature, structure, wants of human kind.

Here first wakes Genius, offspring rare, combined

Of head and heart, of thought that overawes,

With deep intensest feeling closely joined.

Hence truths unborrowed, thoughts in words once breathed, That glow with life, to latest time bequeathed.

Drawn from this centre of enduring thought,

Flow streams perennial: hence hath beauty, fraught
With living lustre, round young genius wreathed

Her lasting laurels, wide as land and main,
Monarch unquestioned, over all to reign.

IMITATION.

True to the jingling of our leader's bells. COWPER.

Genius draws truth from nature: her impress,
Stamped on the page, transfers the living mind;
But Imitation still her forms would dress
In mimickry of life; for truth designed,
Yet leaving truth alike and life behind.
How few think for themselves! the common class,
On novelty intent, with nothing new,

Where custom leads, the beaten track pursue,
There only following where all others pass.
What are the books we read, the nameless mass?
Mere show, not substance; forms, in shape and hue
Grotesque, fantastic, seen in folly's glass,

Copies of copies, shadows of a shade,

By each transmission still more worthless made.

MORAL TRUTH.

I.

Wherefore burns

In mortal bosom this unquenched hope,
That breathes, from day to day, sublimer things,
And mocks possession?

AKENSIDE.

In Moral Truths alone man's nature finds

His highest powers' developement: these ask His utmost stretch, to compass their high task, And reach in, virtuous action, all that binds,

In firm yet gentle bonds, the noblest minds;
The sense of duty, honor, moral right,
And virtue's generous aim, the soul's proud flight
Highest to heaven. Yet lured, by folly's train,
From wisdom's paths, to wander mid the night

Of error's maze, man sinks, subdued by pain,
By want, remorse, by sorrow's sudden blight :
Then turns, so disciplined, his thoughts again
To truer knowledge, eager to attain
The living radiance of unborrowed light.

II.

With Meekness of Wisdom. ST. JAMES.

The prophet stood on Horeb; and the force
Of mighty winds swept by him in their course :
God was not in the wind. Ere long their came

A power volcanic, bursting from the source

Of central fires, that shook earth's solid frame : God was not in the earthquake, or the flame. Next fell, on the veiled prophet's awe struck ear, A STILL SMALL VOICE, in accents mild as clear,

And God was there. His ways are still the same; In gentle whispers, to wise hearts that hear,

Truth speaks, else mute; her voice is seldom found
Where noise, and wrath, and turbulence abound.

Inferior powers are boisterous; Truth alone
Victorious without violence is known.

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