And startled on his watch, in the vast deep,
Chaos's sluggish sentry, and evoked

From the dark void the smiling universe.

Chained to the grovelling frailties of the flesh
Mere mortal man, unpurged from earthly dross,
Cannot survey, with fixed and steady eye,
The dim uncertain gulf, which now the Muse
Adventurous, would explore;-but dizzy grown,
He topples down the abyss.-If he would scan
The fearful chasm, and catch a transient glimpse
Of its unfathomable depths, that so,

His mind may turn with double joy to God,

His only certainty and resting place;

He must put off a while this mortal vest,

And learn to follow, without giddiness,

To heights where all is vision, and surprise,

And vague conjecture.—He must waste by night
The studious taper, far from all resort

Of crowds and folly, in some still retreat;

High on the beetling promontory's crest,

Or in the caves of the vast wilderness,

Where compassed round with nature's wildest shapes,

He may be driven to centre all his thoughts

In the great Architect, who lives confest
In rocks, and seas, and solitary wastes.

So has divine Philosophy, with voice
Mild as the murmurs of the moonlight wave,
Tutored the heart of him, who now awakes,
Touching the cords of solemn minstrelsy,
His faint, neglected song-intent to snatch
Some vagrant blossom from the dangerous steep
Of poesy, a bloom of such an hue,

L