With slender hair leviathan3 command,
And stretch his vastness on the loaded strand,
Will he become thy servant? Will he own
Thy lordly nod, and tremble at thy frown?
Or with his sport amuse thy leisure day,
And, bound in silk, with thy soft maidens play?
Shall pompous banquets swell with such a prize,
And the bowl journey round his ample size?
Or the debating merchant share the prey,
And various limbs to various marts convey?
Through his firm skull what steel its way can win?
What forceful engine can subdue his skin?
Fly far, and live; tempt not his matchless might;
The bravest shrink to cowards in his sight:
The rashest dare not rouse him up: who then
Shall turn on me, among the sons of men?
Am I thy debtor? hast thou ever heard
Whence come the gifts that are on me conferred?
My lavish fruit a thousand valleys fills,
And mine the herds that graze a thousand hills;
Earth, sea, and air,-all nature is my own;
And stars and sun are dust beneath my throne.
And darest thou with the world's great Father vie,
Thou who dost tremble at my creature's eye?
At full my large leviathan shall rise,
Boast all his strength, and spread his wondrous size;
Who, great in arms, e'er stripped his shining mail,
Or crowned his triumph with a single scale?
Whose heart sustains him to draw near? Behold,
Destruction yawns: his spacious jaws unfold,
And marshalled round the wide expanse, disclose
Teeth edged with death, and crowding rows on rows;
What hideous fangs on either side arise;
And what a deep abyss between them lies!
Mete with thy lance, and with thy plummet sound,
The one how long, the other how profound.
His bulk is charged with such a furious soul,
That clouds of smoke from his spread nostrils roll,
As from a furnace; and, when roused his ire,
Fate issues from his jaws in streams of fire.
The rage of tempests, and the roar of seas,
Thy terror this, thy great superior please;
Strength on his ample shoulder sits in state;
His well-joined limbs are dreadfully complete;
leviathan, the crocodile.
His flakes of solid flesh are slow to part;
As steel his nerves, as adamant his heart.
When late awaked, he rears him from the floods,
And stretching forth his stature to the clouds,
Writhes in the sun aloft his scaly height,
And strikes the distant hills with transient light,
Far round are fatal damps of terror spread,
The mighty fear, nor blush to own their dread.
Large is his front; and when his burnished eyes
Lift their broad lids, the morning seems to rise.
In vain may death in various shapes invade,
The swift-winged arrow, the descending blade,
His naked breast their impotence defies;
The dart rebounds, the brittle falchion flies.
Shut in himself, the war without he hears,
Safe in the tempest of their rattling spears;
The cumbered strand their wasted vollies strow;
His sport the rage and labour of the foe.
His pastimes like a caldron boil the flood,
And blacken ocean with the rising mud:
The billows feel him as he works his way;
His hoary footsteps shine along the sea;
The foam, high-wrought with white, divides the green,
And distant sailors point where death has been.
His like earth bears not on her spacious face;
Alone in nature stands his dauntless race,
For utter ignorance of fear renowned,
In wrath he rolls his baleful eye around;
Makes every swoln, disdainful heart subside,
And holds dominion o'er the sons of pride.
GREAT System of perfections! mighty Cause
Of causes mighty! Cause uncaused! sole root
Of Nature, that luxuriant growth of God!
First father of effects! that progeny
Of endless series; where the golden chain's
Last link admits a period, who can tell?
Father of all that is, or heard, or hears!
Father of all that is, or seen, or sees!
Father of all that is, or shall arise!
Father of this immeasurable mass
Of matter multiform; or dense, or rare;
Opaque, or lucid; rapid, or at rest;
Minute, or passing bound! in each extreme
Of like amaze, and mystery, to man.
Father of these bright millions of the night!
Of which the least full godhead had proclaimed,
And thrown the gazer on his knee. Or say,
Is appellation higher still thy choice?
Father of matter's temporary lord!
Father of Spirits! nobler offspring! sparks
Of high paternal glory: rich endowed
With various measures, and with various modes
Of instinct, reason, intuition; beams
More pale, or bright from day divine, to break
The darker matter organized (the ware
Of all created spirit): beams, that rise
Each over other in superior light,
Till the last ripens into lustre strong,
Of next approach to godhead. Father fond
(Far fonder than e'er bore that name on earth)
Of intellectual beings! beings blessed
With powers to please Thee! not of passive ply
To laws they know not; beings lodged in seats
Of well-adapted joys, in different domes
Of this imperial palace for thy sons;
Of this proud, populous, well-policied,
Though boundless habitation, planned by Thee :
Whose several clans, their several climates suit;
And transposition, doubtless, would destroy.
Or, oh! indulge, immortal King, indulge
A title less august indeed, but more
Endearing; ah' how sweet in human ears,
Sweet in our ears and triumph in our hearts!
Father of immortality to man!
And Thou the next! yet equal! Thou, by whom That blessing was conveyed; far more! was bought, Ineffable the price! by whom all worlds
Were made; and one redeemed! illustrious light,
From light illustrious! Thou, whose regal power,
Finite in time, but infinite in space,
On more than adamantine basis fixed,
O'er more, far more, than diadems and thrones,
Inviolably reigns; the dread of gods;
And oh! the friend of man! beneath whose foot,
And by the mandate of whose awful nod,
All regions, revolution, fortunes, fates,
Of high, of low, of mind, and matter, roll
Through the short channels of expiring time,
Or shoreless ocean of eternity,
Calm or tempestuous (as thy spirit breathes),
In absolute subjection! And, O Thou,
The glorious Third! distinct, not separate!
Beaming from both! with both incorporate:
And (strange to tell!) incorporate with dust!
By condescension, as thy glory, great;
Enshrined in man! of human hearts, if pure,
Divine inhabitant! the tie divine
Of heaven with distant earth! by whom I trust,
(If not inspired) uncensured this address
To Thee, to Them,-to whom? mysterious power!
Revealed! yet unrevealed!-darkness in light!
Number in unity! our joy! our dread!
The triple bolt that lays all wrong in ruin!
That animates all right, the triple sun!
Sun of the soul! her never-setting sun!
Triune, unutterable, unconceived,
Absconding, yet demonstrable, great God!
Greater than greatest! better than the best!
Kinder than kindest! with soft pity's eye,
Or (stronger still to speak it) with Thine own,
From Thy bright home, from that high firmament,
Where Thou from all eternity hast dwelt;
Beyond archangels' unassisted ken;
From far above what mortals highest call;
From elevation's pinnacle; look down
Through-what? confounding interval! through all
And more than labouring fancy can conceive';
Through radiant ranks of essences unknown;
Through hierarchies from hierarchies detached,
Round various banners of omnipotence,
With endless change of rapturous duty fired;
Through wondrous beings, interposing swarms,
All clustering at the call, to dwell in Thee;
Through this wide waste of worlds, this vista vast,
All sanded o'er with suns; suns turned to night
Before thy feeblest beam. Look down-down-down,
On a poor breathing particle in dust,
Or, lower, an immortal in his crimes.
His crimes forgive! forgive his virtues, too!
Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.
Nor let me close these eyes, which never more
May see the sun (though night's descending scale
Now weighs up morn), unpitied, and unblest!
In Thy displeasure dwells eternal pain;
Pain, our aversion; pain, which strikes me now;
And, since all pain is terrible to man,
Though transient, terrible; at Thy good hour,
Gently, ah! gently lay me in my bed,
My clay-cold bed! by nature now so near;
By nature near: still nearer by disease;
Till then, be this an emblem of my grave:
Let it outpreach the preacher; every night
Let it outcry the boy at Philip's ear;
That tongue of death! that herald of thy tomb!
And when (the shelter of thy wing implored)
My senses, soothed, shall sink in soft repose,
Oh! sink this truth still deeper in my soul,
Suggested by my pillow, signed by fate,
First, in fate's volume, at the page of man-
Man's sickly soul, though turned and tossed for ever,
From side to side, can rest in nought but Thee
Here, in full trust; hereafter in full joy;
On Thee, the promised, sure, eternal down
Of spirits, toiled in travel through this vale.
Nor of that pillow shall my soul despond;
For, Love almighty! Love almighty! (sing,
Exult, creation!) Love almighty reigns!
That death of death! that cordial of despair!
And loud Eternity's triumphant song!
WILLIAM FALCONER was born at Edinburgh about 1730; he went to sea very young, and is supposed to have described some of his own adventures in the beauiiful poem of The Shipwreck: he was drowned on his way to Bengal, A.D. 1769.
Falconer's poetry is recommended by its perfect truth; his versification is varied and harmonious; and though the incidents in his narrative are commonplace, they are told with great power, and a strict adherence to nature.
DESCRIPTION OF THE FALLEN CONDITION OF GREECE.
ETERNAL powers! what ruins from afar
Mark the fell track of desolating War:
Here Arts and Commerce with auspicious reign
Once breathed sweet influence on the happy plain!
5 Philip, king of Macedon, is said to | to him daily, "Monarch! remember have ordered one of his pages to repeat thou art mortal!"
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