<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416273" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shall the great soul of Newton quit this earth, <br>To mingle with his stars; and every muse,<br>Astonish'd into silence, shun the weight<br>Of honours due to his illustrious name?<br>But what can man?--Even now the sons of light,<br>In strains high-warbled to seraphic lyre,<br>Hail his arrival on the coast of bliss.<br>Yet am not I deterr'd, though high the theme,<br>And sung to harps of angels, for with you,<br>Ethereal flames! ambitious, I aspire<br>In Nature's general symphony to join. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And what new wonders can ye show your guest!<br>Who, while on this dim spot, where mortals toil<br>Clouded in dust, from motion's simple laws,<br>Could trace the secret hand of Providence,<br>Wide-working through this universal frame. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Have ye not listen'd while he bound the suns<br>And planets to their spheres! th' unequal task<br>Of humankind till then. Oft had they roll'd<br>O'er erring man the year, and oft disgrac'd<br>The pride of schools, before their course was known<br>Full in its causes and effects to him,<br>All-piercing sage! who sat not down and dream'd<br>Romantic schemes, defended by the din<br>Of specious words, and tyranny of names;<br>But, bidding his amazing mind attend,<br>And with heroic patience years on years<br>Deep-searching, saw at last the system dawn,<br>And shine, of all his race, on him alone. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">What were his raptures then! how pure! how strong!<br>And what the triumphs of old Greece and Rome,<br>By his diminish'd, but the pride of boys<br>In some small fray victorious! when instead<br>Of shatter'd parcels of this earth usurp'd<br>By violence unmanly, and sore deeds<br>Of cruelty and blood, Nature herself<br>Stood all subdu'd by him, and open laid<br>Her every latent glory to his view. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">All intellectual eye, our solar-round<br>First gazing through, he by the blended power<br>Of gravitation and projection saw<br>The whole in silent harmony revolve.<br>From unassisted vision hid, the moons<br>To cheer remoter planets numerous pour'd,<br>By him in all their mingled tracts were seen.<br>He also fix'd the wandering Queen of Night,<br>Whether she wanes into a scanty orb,<br>Or, waxing broad, with her pale shadowy light,<br>In a soft deluge overflows the sky.<br>Her every motion clear-discerning, he<br>Adjusted to the mutual main, and taught<br>Why now the mighty mass of water swells<br>Resistless, heaving on the broken rocks,<br>And the full river turning; till again<br>The tide revertive, unattracted, leaves<br>A yellow waste of idle sands behind. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then breaking hence, he took his ardent flight<br>Through the blue infinite; and every star,<br>Which the clear concave of a winter's night<br>Pours on the eye, or astronomic tube,<br>Far-stretching, snatches from the dark abyss,<br>Or such as farther in successive skies<br>To fancy shine alone, at his approach<br>Blaz'd into suns, the living centre each<br>Of an harmonious system: all combin'd,<br>And rul'd unerring by that single power,<br>Which draws the stone projected to the ground. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">O unprofuse magnificence divine!<br>O wisdom truly perfect! thus to call<br>From a few causes such a scheme of things,<br>Effects so various, beautiful, and great,<br>An universe complete! and O belov'd<br>Of Heaven! whose well-purg'd penetrative eye,<br>The mystic veil transpiercing, inly scann'd<br>The rising, moving, wide-establish'd frame. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">He, first of men, with awful wing pursu'd<br>The comet through the long elliptic curve,<br>As round innumerous worlds he wound his way,<br>Till, to the forehead of our evening sky<br>Return'd, the blazing wonder glares anew,<br>And o'er the trembling nations shakes dismay. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The heavens are all his own, from the wild rule<br>Of whirling vortices and circling spheres<br>To their first great simplicity restor'd.<br>The schools astonish'd stood; but found it vain<br>To keep at odds with demonstration strong,<br>And, unawaken'd, dream beneath the blaze<br>Of truth. At once their pleasing visions fled,<br>With the gay shadows of the morning mix'd,<br>When Newton rose, our philosophic sun!<br>Th' aërial flow of sound was known to him,<br>From whence it first in wavy circles breaks,<br>Till the touch'd organ takes the message in.<br>Nor could the darting beam of speed immense<br>Escape his swift pursuit and measuring eye.<br>Ev'n Light itself, which every thing displays,<br>Shone undiscover'd, till his brighter mind<br>Untwisted all the shining robe of day;<br>And, from the whitening undistinguish'd blaze,<br>Collecting every ray into his kind,<br>To the charm'd eye educ'd the gorgeous train<br>Of parent colours. First the flaming red<br>Sprung vivid forth; the tawny orange next;<br>And next delicious yellow; by whose side<br>Fell the kind beams of all-refreshing green.<br>Then the pure blue, that swells autumnal skies<br>Ethereal played; and then, of sadder hue,<br>Emerg'd the deepen'd indigo, as when<br>The heavy-skirted evening droops with frost;<br>While the last gleamings of refracted light<br>Died in the fainting violet away.<br>These, when the clouds distil the rosy shower,<br>Shine out distinct adown the wat'ry bow;<br>While o'er our heads the dewy vision bends<br>Delightful, melting on the fields beneath.<br>Myriads of mingling dyes from these result,<br>And myriads still remain--infinite source<br>Of beauty, ever flushing, ever new. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Did ever poet image aught so fair,<br>Dreaming in whisp'ring groves by the hoarse brook?<br>Or prophet, to whose rapture heaven descends?<br>Ev'n now the setting sun and shifting clouds,<br>Seen, Greenwich, from thy lovely heights, declare<br>How just, how beauteous the refractive law. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The noiseless tide of time, all bearing down<br>To vast eternity's unbounded sea,<br>Where the green islands of the happy shine,<br>He stemm'd alone; and, to the source (involv'd<br>Deep in primeval gloom) ascending, rais'd<br>His lights at equal distances, to guide<br>Historian wilder'd on his darksome way. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But who can number up his labours? who<br>His high discoveries sing? When but a few<br>Of the deep-studying race can stretch their minds<br>To what he knew--in fancy's lighter thought<br>How shall the muse then grasp the mighty theme? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">What wonder thence that his devotion swell'd<br>Responsive to his knowledge? For could he,<br>Whose piercing mental eye diffusive saw<br>The finish'd university of things<br>In all its order, magnitude, and parts,<br>Forbear incessant to adore that Power<br>Who fills, sustains, and actuates the whole? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Say, ye who best can tell, ye happy few,<br>Who saw him in the softest lights of life,<br>All unwithheld, indulging to his friends<br>The vast unborrow'd treasures of his mind,<br>oh, speak the wondrous man! how mild, how calr<br>How greatly humble, how divinely good,<br>How firm establish'd on eternal truth;<br>Fervent in doing well, with every nerve<br>Still pressing on, forgetful of the past,<br>And panting for perfection; far above<br>Those little cares and visionary joys<br>That so perplex the fond impassion'd heart<br>Of ever-cheated, ever-trusting man.<br>This, Conduitt, from thy rural hours we hope;<br>As through the pleasing shade where nature pours<br>Her every sweet in studious ease you walk,<br>The social passions smiling at thy heart<br>That glows with all the recollected sage. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And you, ye hopeless gloomy-minded tribe,<br>You who, unconscious of those nobler flights<br>That reach impatient at immortal life,<br>Against the prime endearing privilege<br>Of being dare contend,--say, can a soul<br>Of such extensive, deep, tremendous powers,<br>Enlarging still, be but a finer breath<br>Of spirits dancing through their tubes awhile,<br>And then for ever lost in vacant air? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But hark! methinks I hear a warning voice,<br>Solemn as when some awful change is come,<br>Sound through the world--&quot; 'Tis done!--the measure's full;<br>And I resign my charge.&quot;--Ye mouldering stones<br>That build the towering pyramid, the proud<br>Triumphal arch, the monument effac'd<br>By ruthless ruin, and whate'er supports<br>The worship'd name of hoar antiquity--<br>Down to the dust! What grandeur can ye boast<br>While Newton lifts his column to the skies,<br>Beyond the waste of time. Let no weak drop<br>Be shed for him. The virgin in her bloom<br>Cut off, the joyous youth, and darling child--<br>These are the tombs that claim the tender tear<br>And elegiac song. But Newton calls<br>For other notes of gratulation high,<br>That now he wanders through those endless worlds<br>He here so well descried, and wondering talks,<br>And hymns their Author with his glad compeers. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Britain's boast! whether with angels thou<br>Sittest in dread discourse, or fellow-blest,<br>Who joy to see the honour of their kind;<br>Or whether, mounted on cherubic wing,<br>Thy swift career is with the whirling orbs,<br>Comparing things with things, in rapture lost,<br>And grateful adoration for that light<br>So plenteous ray'd into thy mind below<br>From Light Himself; oh, look with pity down<br>On humankind, a frail erroneous race!<br>Exalt the spirit of a downward world!<br>O'er thy dejected country chief preside,<br>And be her Genius call'd! her studies raise,<br>Correct her manners, and inspire her youth;<br>For, though deprav'd and sunk, she brought thee forth,<br>And glories in thy name! she points thee out<br>To all her sons, and bids them eye thy star:<br>While, in expectance of the second life,<br>When time shall be no more, thy sacred dust<br>Sleeps with her kings, and dignifies the scene.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=James+Thomson">James Thomson</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=416273" data-title="A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton de James Thomson" data-description="Shall the great soul of Newton quit this earth, To mingle with his stars; and every muse, Astonish'd into silence, shun the weight Of honours due to his illustrious name? But what can man?--Even now the sons of light, In strains high-warbled to s..."></div> </div> </div>

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