You sketch ideas, and portray the mind;
Teach how fine atoms of impinging light
To ceaseless change the visual sense excite; 40
While the bright lens collects the rays, that swerve,
And bends their focus on the moving nerve.
How thoughts to thoughts are link'd with viewless chains,
Tribes leading tribes, and trains pursuing trains;
With shadowy trident how Volition guides, 45
Surge after surge, his intellectual tides;
Or, Queen of Sleep, Imagination roves
With frantic Sorrows, or delirious Loves.
Go on, O FRIEND! explore with eagle-eye;
Where wrapp'd in night retiring Causes lie: 50
Trace their slight bands, their secret haunts betray,
And give new wonders to the beam of day;
Till, link by link with step aspiring trod,
You climb from NATURE to the throne of GOD.
--So saw the Patriarch with admiring eyes 55
From earth to heaven a golden ladder rise;
Involv'd in clouds the mystic scale ascends,
And brutes and angels crowd the distant ends.

TRIN. COL. CAMBRIDGE, _Jan._ 1, 1794.

* * * * *

REFERENCES TO THE WORK.

_Botanic Garden._ Part I.