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When, Goddess, thou lift'st up thy wakened head
Out of the Morning's purple bed,

Thy choir of birds about thee play,

And all thy joyful world salutes the rising day.

All the world's bravery that delights our eyes,
Is but thy several liveries;

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Thou the rich dye on them bestowest,

Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou goest.

A crimson garment in the rose thou wear'st;

A crown of studded gold thou bear'st;

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The virgin lilies, in their white,

Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light.

The violet, spring's little infant, stands

Girt in thy purple swaddling-bands;

On the fair tulip thou dost dote,

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Thou cloth'st it in a gay and parti-coloured coat.

With flame condensed thou dost thy jewels fix,
And solid colours in it mix:
Flora herself envies to see

Flowers fairer than her own, and durable as she.

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Through the soft ways of heaven and air and sea,

Which open all their pores to thee,

Like a clear river thou dost glide,

And with thy living stream through the close channels slide.

But where firm bodies thy free course oppose,

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Gently thy source the land o’erflows;

Takes there possession, and does make,

Of colours' mingled light, a thick and standing lake:

But the vast ocean of unbounded day

In the empyrean heaven does stay;

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Thy rivers, lakes, and springs below

From thence took first their rise, thither at last must flow.

Abraham Cowley.

CVI

TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

Philosophy! the great and only heir

Of all that human knowledge which has been
Unforfeited by man's rebellious sin,
Though full of years he do appear,
(Philosophy! I say, and call it He,
For whatsoe'er the painter's fancy be,
It a male virtue seems to me)

Has still been kept in nonage till of late,

Nor managed or enjoyed his vast estate.

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Three or four thousand years, one would have thought, 10
To ripeness and perfection might have brought

A science so well bred and nursed,

And of such hopeful parts, too, at the first;

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But oh the guardians and the tutors then, (Some negligent, some ambitious men) Would ne'er consent to set him free,

Or his own natural powers to let him see,

Lest that should put an end to their authority.

That his own business he might quite forget,
They' amused him with the sports of wanton wit;
With the deserts of poetry they fed him,
Instead of solid meats to' increase his force;

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Instead of vigorous exercise they led him

Into the pleasant labyrinths of ever-fresh discourse:
Instead of carrying him to see

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The riches which do hoarded for him lie

In Nature's endless treasury,

They chose his eye to entertain

His curious, but not covetous, eye)

With painted scenes and pageants of the brain.

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Some few exalted spirits this latter age has shown,

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That laboured to assert the liberty

(From guardians who were now usurpers grown)

Of this old minor still, captived Philosophy;

But 'twas rebellion called, to fight

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For such a long-oppressèd right.

Bacon, at last, a mighty man! arose,

Whom a wise King and Nature chose

Lord Chancellor of both their laws,

And boldly undertook the injured pupil's cause.

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Authority, which did a body boast,

Though 'twas but air condensed, and stalked about
Like some old giant's more gigantic ghost,

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To graves, from whence it rose, the conquered phantom fled.

He broke that monstrous god which stood,

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In midst of the orchard, and the whole did claim,

Which with a useless scythe of wood,

And something else not worth a name,

(Ridiculous and senseless terrors!) made Children and superstitious men afraid. The orchard's open now, and free:

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Bacon has broke that scarecrow deity:

Come, enter all that will,

Behold the ripened fruit, come, gather now your fill!

Yet still, methinks, we fain would be

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Catching at the forbidden tree;

We would be like the Deity;

When truth and falsehood, good and evil, we

Without the senses' aid within ourselves would see;

For 'tis God only who can find

All nature in his mind.

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From words, which are but pictures of the thought
(Though we our thoughts from them perversely drew,)
To things, the mind's right object, he it brought;
Like foolish birds to painted grapes we flew.
He sought and gathered for our use the true;
And when on heaps the chosen bunches lay,
He pressed them wisely the mechanic way,
Till all their juice did in one vessel join,
Ferment into a nourishment divine,

The thirsty soul's refreshing wine.

Who to the life an exact piece would make,
Must not from others' work a copy take;

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No, not from Rubens or Vandyck;

Much less content himself to make it like

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The ideas and the images which lie
In his own fancy or his memory:
No, he before his sight must place
The natural and the living face;
The real object must command

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Each judgment of his eye and motion of his hand.

From these, and all long errors of the way,

In which our wandering predecessors went,

And, like the old Hebrews, many years did stray

In deserts, but of small extent,

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Bacon! like Moses, led us forth at last;

The barren wilderness he passed,

Did on the very border stand

Of the blessed Promised Land,

And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit,

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Saw it himself, and showed us it.

But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover worlds, and conquer too;
Nor can so short a line sufficient be

To fathom the vast deeps of Nature's sea:

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The work he did we ought to admire,
And were unjust if we should more require
From his few years, divided 'twixt the excess
Of low affliction and high happiness :
For who on things remote can fix his sight,
That's always in a triumph or a fight?

From you, great champions! we expect to get
These spacious countries but discovered yet;
Countries where yet, instead of Nature, we
Her images and idols worshipped see:
These large and wealthy regions to subdue,

Though Learning has whole armies at command,
Quartered about in every land,

A better troop she ne'er together drew.

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ΠΙΟ

Methinks, like Gideon's little band,

God with design has picked out you,

To do these noble wonders by a few.

When the whole host He saw, they are, said He,

Too many to o'ercome for Me:

And now He chooses out his men,

Much in the way that He did then:
Not those many, whom He found
Idly extended on the ground,

To drink, with their dejected head,

The stream, just so as by their mouths it fled:
No; but those few who took the waters up,
And made of their laborious hands the cup.

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Thus you prepared, and in the glorious fight
Their wondrous pattern too you take:

Their old and empty pitchers first they brake,
And with their hands then lifted up the light.

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Iö! sound too the trumpets here!

Already your victorious lights appear;

New scenes of heaven already we espy,

And crowds of golden worlds on high,

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