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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>An Ode : On Exodus iii. 14</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">On Exodus iii. 14. 'I am that I am.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Man! foolish man!<br>Scarce know'st thou how thyself began, <br>Scarce hadst thou thought enough to prove thou art,<br>Yet, steel'd with studied boldness, thou darest try<br>To send thy doubting Reason's dazzled eye<br>Through the mysterious gulf of vast immensity;<br>Much thou canst there discern, much thence impart.<br>Vain wretch! suppress thy knowing pride,<br>Mortify thy learned lust:<br>Vain are thy thoughts while thou thyself art dust. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Let wit her sails, her oars let wisdom lend,<br>The helm let politic experience guide;<br>Yet cease to hope thy short-lived bark shall ride<br>Down spreading Fate's unnavigable tide. <br>What though still it farther tend? <br>Still 'tis farther from its end,<br>And, in the bosom of that boundless sea,<br>Still finds its error lengthen with its way.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">With daring pride and insolent delight,<br>Your doubts resolved you boast, your labours crown'd,<br>And, EYPHKA your God, forsooth, is found<br>Incomprehensible and infinite.<br>But is he therefore found? vain searcher! no:<br>Let your imperfect definition show<br>That nothing you, the weak definer, know. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Say, why should the collected main<br>Itself within itself contain!<br>Why to its caverns should it sometimes creep,<br>And with delighted silence sleep<br>On the loved bosom of its parent deep.<br>Why should its numerous waters stay<br>In comely discipline and fair array,<br>Till winds and tides exert their high commands!<br>Then, prompt and ready to obey,<br>Why do the rising surges spread<br>Their opening ranks o'er earth's submissive head,<br>Marching through different paths to different lands?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Why does the constant sun<br>With measured steps his radiant journeys run?<br>Why does he order the diurnal hours<br>To leave earth's other part, and rise in ours?<br>Why does he wake the correspondent moon,<br>And fill her willing lamp with liquid light,<br>Commanding her with delegated powers<br>To beautify the world, and bless the night?<br>Why does each animated star<br>Love the just limits of its proper sphere,<br>Why does each consenting sign<br>With prudent harmony combine<br>In turns to move, and subsequent appear,<br>To gird the globe, and regulate the year?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Man does with dangerous curiosity<br>These unfathom'd wonders try:<br>With fancied rules and arbitrary laws<br>Matter and motion he restrains:<br>And studied lines and fictious circles draws:<br>Then with imagined sovereignty<br>Lord of his new hypothesis he reigns.<br>He reigns; how long? till some usurper rise!<br>And he, too, mighty thoughtful, mighty wise,<br>Studies new lines, and other circles feigns.<br>From this last toil again what knowledge flows?<br>Just as much, perhaps, as shows<br>That all his predecessor's rules<br>Were empty cant, all jargon of the schools:<br>That he on t'other's ruin rears his throne, <br>And shows his friend's mistake, and thence confirms his own.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">On earth, in air, amidst the seas and skies,<br>Mountainous heaps of wonders rise, <br>Whose towering strength will ne'er submit<br>To Reason's batteries or the mines of Wit:<br>Yet still inquiring, still mistaking man,<br>Each hour repulsed, each hour dares onward press,<br>And, levelling at God his wandering guess,<br>(That feeble engine of his reasoning war,<br>Which guides his doubts and combats his despair)<br>Laws to his Maker the learn'd wretch can give,<br>Can bound that nature and prescribe that will<br>Whose pregnant Word did either ocean fill,<br>Can tell us whence all beings are, and how they move and live.<br>Through either ocean, foolish man!<br>That pregnant Word sent forth again<br>Might to a world extend each atom there,<br>For every drop call forth a sea, a heaven for every star.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Let cunning earth her fruitful wonders hide,<br>And only lift thy staggering reason up<br>To trembling Calvary's astonish'd top, <br>Then mock thy knowledge and confound thy pride.<br>Explaining how Perfection suffer'd pain, <br>Almighty languish'd, and Eternal died;<br>How by her patient victor Death was slain,<br>And earth profaned, yet bless'd with Deicide.<br>Then down with all thy boasted volumes, down;<br>Only reserve the sacred one:<br>Low, reverently low,<br>Make thy stubborn knowledge bow;<br>Weep out thy reason's and thy body's eyes;<br>Deject thyself that thou may'st rise:<br>To look to heaven, to blind to all below.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=457106" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then Faith for Reason's glimmering light shall give<br>Her immortal perspective,<br>And Grace's presence Nature's loss retrieve;<br>Then thy enliven'd soul shall see <br>That all the volumes of philosophy,<br>With all their comments, never could invent <br>So politic an instrument, <br>To reach the heaven of heavens, the high abode<br>Where Moses places his mysterious God, <br>As was the ladder which old Jacob rear'd,<br>When light divine had human darkness clear'd, <br>And his enlarged ideas found the road<br>Which faith had dictated and angels trod.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Matthew+Prior">Matthew Prior</a></strong></div>