Classic Poem

Is the dominion of an abstract rule
Restricted to the Geometric School,
To be recognized there, and there alone,
Shall we conclude of sciences unknown


Analogy forbids it. What is true
In an established science, in a new
May be true likewise. Her reply would say,
“Must—absolutely must—not only may—
“But struggle for yourselves, I point the way.”
And what say we? shall our familiar pride
Hear her instructions scoffed at, and denied?
Good old analogy that first supplied
Our infant world with elemental speech!
She, that in daily life descends to teach
With nature at her side, adult, and grown
And wise in an experience of our own,
What nature dictates, and analogy,
Shall we with peremptory pride deny?
Or shall we follow where she points the way,
A path of steep ascent and hard assay,
Yet leading to a summit clear and high,
Of boundless vision, in a cloudless sky,
Where nature's mighty landscape, unsurveyed
By mortal eye, lies open and displayed.


The Ideal ruling law, like words to deeds,
In numbers and geometry, precedes
The Concrete, Thought is then the lord and king,
The sov'reign; the mechanic subject thing
Is substance, practice, and experiment;
And shall we deem, that intellect was lent
To light a single science? Have the rest
Lost their high cast, degraded and deprest
Irrevocably: doomed to labour here
For fame and gain, in an inferior sphere,
Surveyor, architect, or engineer?
Is there no spirit of a loftier strain,
A Kepler or a Newton once again,
With light upon the chaos, to divide,
And fix the mass of knowledge dark and wide,
With a divining hand, to seize the clue,
To keep the known conclusion full in view,
And work the problem till he proves it true?
Must we for ever shrewd and worldly wise,
Confine ourselves to Solomon's advice,
To seek enjoyment, and escape from want,
To take our pattern from the labouring ant,
Where imitative nature emulates
The forms of understanding, and creates
Devoid of intellect, her pigmy states,
A single soul in sundry forms combined,
A patriotic universal mind,
An instrumental nature, ever striving
For a fixt purpose, labouring and contriving,
United, orderly, coherent, still
Without a selfish aim or separate will,
With nothing individual? Which is he,
The legislator master of the tree,
The great preceptor, teaching from his tomb
A living multitude, that shall presume
To place his model for the rule of man,
In parallel with this, the simple plan
Fixed and ordained for an inferior state,
Penultimate of man's penultimate?


With righteous or perverted will to take
Good simply as good—evil for evil's sake;
Mischief in children—bold debauch in men
Exulting and approved—the pimping pen
That seeks to pander for a race unborn,
The unholy league that pours contempt and scorn
On every better purpose, industry
Perverse and servile, that descends to pry
In crevices of forgotten infamy,
With unrewarded toil, to canonize
The rakes and drabs of former centuries,
Their relics and remains.
These and a thousand other signs reveal
The existence of a pure unpurchased zeal,
Zeal in the cause of evil, that divests
The obedient mind of selfish interests,
And ranks them in the legendary list,
The martyrs of the great antagonist.
Enough of Evil—for the law of good
Misconstrued, scandalized, misunderstood,
Denied and hated—still that it exists
I feel and know—Deny it he that lists—
But grant it—contemplate human will
Working in eager chase of good or ill.
These rudiments of an ulterior state
Embarrass and bewilder with debate
Our human hive and ant-hill—as the wings
Unfledged, are cumbrous and contentious things
To callow birds (that struggle in the nest
Naked and crowded) useless at the best.