away:
Then melts into the spring: soft spring, with breath
Favonian, from warm chambers of the south,
Recalls the first. All, to re-flourish, fades;
As in a wheel, all sinks, to re-ascend.
Emblems of man, who passes, not expires.
With this minute distinction, emblems just, 690
Nature revolves, but man advances; both
Eternal, that a circle, this a line.
That gravitates, this soars. Th' aspiring soul,
Ardent, and tremulous, like flame, ascends, 694
Zeal and humility her wings, to heaven.
The world of matter, with its various forms,
All dies into new life. Life born from death
Rolls the vast mass, and shall for ever roll.
No single atom, once in being, lost,
With change of counsel charges the Most High.
What hence infers Lorenzo? Can it be?
Matter immortal? And shall Spirit die? 702
Above the nobler, shall less noble rise?
Shall Man alone, for whom all else revives,
No resurrection know? Shall Man alone,
Imperial Man! be sown in barren ground,
Less privileged than grain, on which he feeds?
Is Man, in whom alone is power to prize
The bliss of being, or with previous pain
Deplore its period, by the spleen of fate, 710
Severely doom'd Death's single unredeem'd?
If Nature's revolution speaks aloud,
In her gradation, hear her louder still.
Look nature through, 'tis neat gradation all.
By what minute degrees her scale ascends!
Each middle nature join'd at each extreme,
To that above it join'd, to that beneath.
Parts, into parts reciprocally shot,
Abhor divorce: what love of union reigns!
Here, dormant matter waits a call to life; 720
Half life, half death, join there; here, life and sense;
There, sense from reason steals a glimmering ray;
Reason shines out in man. But how preserved
The chain unbroken upward, to the realms
Of incorporeal life? those realms of bliss,
Where Death hath no dominion? Grant a make
Half mortal, half immortal; earthy, part,
And part ethereal; grant the soul of man 728
Eternal; or in man the series ends.
Wide yawns the gap; connexion is no more;
Check'd Reason halts; her next step wants support;
Striving to climb, she tumbles from her scheme;
A scheme, analogy pronounced so true;
Analogy, man's surest guide below.