A Poem on Sir Isaac Newton.

Despisest all the injuries of time :

Thou never know’st decay when all around,

Antiquity obscures her head. BeholdTli' Egyptian towers, the Babylonian walls,

And Thebes with all her hundred gates of brass,

Behold them scatter’d like the dust abroad.

Whatever now is flourishing and proud,

Whatever shall, must know devouring age.

Euphrates’ stream, and feven-mouthed Nile,

And Danube, thou that from Germania’s foilTo the black Euxine’s far remoted shore,

O’er the wide bounds of mighty nations lweep’stIn thunder loud thy rapid floods along.

Ev’n you shall feel inexorable time ;

To you the fatal day shall come; no moreYour torrents then shall shake the trembling ground,

No longer then to inundations swol’n

Th’ imperious waves the fertile pastures drench,

But shrunk within a narrow channel glide ;

Or through the year’s reiterated course

When time himself grows old, your wond’rous streams

Lost ev’n to memory shall lie unknown

Beneath obscurity, and Chaos whelm’d.

But still thou fun illuminates! all

The azure regions round, thou guide st still

The orbits of the planetary spheres ;

The moon still wanders o’er her changing course,

And still, O Newton, shall thy name survive :

As long as nature’s hand directs the world,

When ev’ry dark obstruction shall retire,

And ev’ry secret yield its hidden store,

Which thee dim-sighted age forbad to seeAge that alone could stay thy rising soul.

And could mankind among the fixed stars,

E’en