OMNISCIENCE OF THE DEITY.

ARISE, divine Urania, with new strains
To hymn thy God! and thou, immortal Fame,
Arise, and blow thy everlasting trump!

All glory to the Omniscient, and praise,
And power, and domination in the height!
And thou, cherubic Gratitude, whose voice
To pious ears sounds silvery, so sweet,
Come with thy precious incense, bring thy gifts,
And with thy choicest stores the altar crown.
Thou too, my heart, whom He, and He alone
Who all things knows, can know, with love replete,
Regenerate, and pure, pour all thyself

A living sacrifice before his throne!

And may the eternal high mysterious tree

That in the centre of the arched heavens

Bears the rich fruit of knowledge, with some branch
Stoop to my humble reach, and bless my toil!
When in my mother's womb concealed I lay,
A senseless embryo, then, my soul, Thou knewest-
Knewest all her future workings, every thought
And every faint idea yet unformed.
When up the imperceptible ascent

Of growing years, led by thy hand, I rose,
Perception's gradual light, that ever dawns
Insensibly to day, Thou didst vouchsafe,
And taught me by that reason Thou inspired'st,
That what of knowledge in my mind was low,
Imperfect, incorrect-in Thee is wondrous,
Uncircumscribed, unsearchably profound,

And estimable solely by itself.

What is that secret power that guides the brutes, Which ignorance calls instinct? 'tis from Thee; It is the operation of thine hands,

Immediate, instantaneous; 'tis thy wisdom,

That glorious shines transparent through thy works.
Who taught the pye, or who forewarned the jay

To shun the deadly nightshade? Though the cherry
Boasts not a glossier hue, nor does the plum
Lure with more seeming sweets the amorous eye,
Yet will not the sagacious birds, decoyed

By fair appearance, touch the nauseous fruit;
They know to taste is fatal; whence alarmed,

Swift on the winnowing winds they work their way.

Go to, proud reasoner, philosophic man,

Hast thou such prudence? thou such knowledge? No!
Full many a race has fallen into the snare
Of meretricious looks, of pleasing surface;
And oft in desert isles the famished pilgrim,
By forms of fruit and luscious taste beguiled,
Like his forefather Adam, eats and dies.
For why? his wisdom, on the leaden feet
Of slow experience, dully, tedious creeps,
And comes, like vengeance, after long delay.
The venerable sage that nightly trims
The learned lamp to investigate the powers
Of plants medicinal, the earth, the air,
And the dark regions of the fossil world,
Grows old in following what he ne'er shall find;
Studious in vain! till haply at the last
He spies a mist, then shapes it into mountains,
And baseless fabrics from conjecture builds :
While the domestic animal, that guards
At midnight hours his threshold, if oppressed
By sudden sickness, at his master's feet
Begs not that aid his services might claim,
But is his own physician, knows the case,
And from the emetic herbage works his cure.
Hark! from afar the feathered matron screams,
And all her brood alarms! The docile crew

Accept the signal one and all; expert

In th' art of nature, and unlearned deceit :
Along the sod in counterfeited death

Mute, motionless they lie: full well apprized
That the rapacious adversary's near.

But who informed her of the approaching danger?
Who taught the curious mother that the hawk
Was hatched her foe, and lived by her destruction?
Her whole prophetic soul is active in her,
And more than human providence her guard.
When Philomela, ere the cold domain

Of crippled winter 'gins to advance, prepares

Her annual flight, and in some poplar shade
Takes her melodious leave, who then's her pilot?
Who points her passage through the pathless void
To realms from us remote, to us unknown?

Her science is the science of her God.

Not the magnetic index to the north

E'er ascertains her course, nor buoy, nor beacon:
She, heaven-taught voyager, that sails in air,
Courts not coy west or east, but instant knows
What Newton, or not sought, or sought in vain.
Illustrious name! irrefragable proof

Of man's vast genius, and the soaring soul!

Yet what wert thou to Him, who knew his works
Before creation formed them, long before

He measured in the hollow of his hand
The exulting ocean, and the highest heavens
He comprehended with a span, and weighed
The mighty mountains in his golden scales;
Who shone supreme, who was Himself the light,
Ere yet refraction learned her skill to paint
And bend athwart the clouds her beauteous bow.'
When knowledge at her Father's dread command
Resigned to Israel's king her golden key,
Oh! to have joined the frequent auditors
In wonder and delight, that whilom heard
Great Solomon descanting on the brutes;
Oh! how sublimely glorious to apply
To God's own honour and good-will to man
That wisdom he alone of men possessed,
In plenitude so rich, and scope so rare!
How did he raise the pampered silken sons

Of bloated ease, by placing to their view
The safe industrious ant, the wisest insect
And best economist of all the field!

Though she presumes not by the solar orb
To measure times and seasons, nor consults
Chaldean calculations for a guide;

Yet conscious that December's on the march,
Pointing with icy hand to want and woe,
She waits his dire approach, and, undismayed,
Receives him as a welcome guest, prepared
Against the churlish winter's fiercest blow.
For when as yet the favourable sun

Gives to the genial earth the enlivening ray,
Not the poor suffering slave that hourly toils
To rive the groaning earth for ill-sought gold,
Endures such trouble, such fatigue as she;
While all her subterraneous avenues,

And stone-proof cells, with management most meet
And unexampled housewifery, she forms:
Then to the field she hies, and on her back,
Burden immense, she bears the cumbrous corn.
Then many a weary step, and many a strain,
And many a grievous groan subdued, at length
Up the huge hill she hardly heaves it home.
Nor rests she here her providence, but nips
With subtle tooth the grain, lest from her garner
In mischievous fertility it steal,

And back to day-light vegetate its way.

Go to the ant, thou sluggard, learn to live,

And by her wary ways reform thine own.
But if thy deadened sense and listless thought
More glaring evidence demand, behold
Where yon pellucid populous hive presents

A yet uncopied model to the world!

There Machiavel in the reflecting glass

May read himself a fool. The chemist there

May with astonishment invidious view

His toils outdone by each plebeian bee,

Who, at the royal mandate, on the wing
From various herbs and from discordant flowers
A perfect harmony of sweets compounds.

Avaunt, conceit! ambition, take thy flight

Back to the prince of vanity and air!

Oh! 'tis a thought of energy most piercing,
Formed to make pride grow humble, formed to force
Its weight on the reluctant mind, and give her

A true but irksome image of herself.

Woful vicissitude, when man, fallen man,

Who first from heaven, from gracious God Himself,
Learnt knowledge of the brutes, must know by brutes
Instructed and reproached, the scale of being

By slow degrees from lowly steps ascend,
And trace Omniscience upwards to its spring.

Yet murmur not, but praise, for though we stand

Of many a god-like privilege amerced,

By Adam's dire transgression; though no more
Is Paradise our home, but o'er the portal

Hangs in terrific pomp the burning blade;
Still with ten thousand thousand blooms the earth,
With pleasures populous, and with riches crowned;
Still is there scope for wonder and for love,
E'en to their last exertion-showers of blessing,
Far more than human virtue can deserve,

Or hope expect, or gratitude return.
Then, O ye people! O ye sons of men!
Whatever be the colour of your lives,
Whatever portion of itself, his wisdom
Shall deign to allow, still patiently abide,

And praise Him more and more; nor cease to chant,

"All glory to th' Omniscient, and praise,

And power, and domination, in the height!"

And thou cherubic Gratitude, whose voice

To pious ears sounds silvery, so sweet,
Come with thy precious incense, bring thy gifts,
And with thy choicest stores the altar crown.