’Then wherefore read? why cram the youthful head
With all the learned lumber of the dead;
Who seeking wisdom followed Nature’s laws,
Nor dar’d effects admit without a cause?’
Why?—­Ask the sophist of our modern school;
To foil the workman we must know the tool;
And, that possess’d, how swiftly is defac’d
The noblest, rarest monument of taste! 
So neatly too, the mutilations stand
Like native errors of the artist’s hand;
Nay, what is more, the very tool betray’d
To seem the product of the work it made.

‘Oh, monstrous slander on the human race!’
Then read conviction in Ortuno’s case. 
By Nature fashion’d in her happiest mood,
With learning, fancy, keenest wit endued;
To what high purpose, what exalted end
These lofty gifts did great Ortuno bend? 
With grateful triumph did Ortuno raise
The mighty trophies to their Author’s praise;
With skill deducing from th’ harmonious whole
Immortal proofs of One Creative soul? 
Ah, no! infatuate with the dazzling light,
In them he saw their own creative might;
Nay, madly deem’d, if such their wond’rous skill,
The phantom of a God ’twas theirs to will.

But granting that he is, he bids you show
By what you prove it, or by what you know. 
Oh, reas’ning worm! who questions thus of Him
That lives in all, and moves in every limb,
Must with himself in very strangeness dwell,
Has never heard the voice of Conscience tell
Of right and wrong, and speak in louder tone
Than tropick thunder of that Holy One,
Whose pure, eternal, justice shall requite
The deed of wrong, and justify the right.

Can such blaspheme and breathe the vital air? 
Let mad philosophy their names declare. 
Yet some there are, less daring in their aim,
With humbler cunning butcher sense for fame;
Who doubting still, with many a fearful pause,
Th’ existence grant of one almighty cause;
But halting there, in bolder tone deny
The life hereafter, when the man shall die,
Nor mark the monstrous folly of their gain—­
That God all-wise should fashion them in vain.

’Twere labour lost in this material age,
When school boys trample on the Inspir’d Page,
When coblers prove by syllogistick pun
The soal they mend, and that of man are one;
‘Twere waste of time to check the Muses’ speed,
For all the whys and wherefores of their creed;
To show how prov’d the juices are the same
That feed the body, and the mental frame.

But who, half sceptic, half afraid of wrong,
Shall walk our streets, and mark the passing throng;
The brawny oaf in mould herculean cast,
The pigmy statesman trembling in his blast,
The cumb’rous citizen of portly paunch,
Unwont to soar beyond the smoaking haunch;
The meagre bard behind the moving tun,
His shadow seeming lengthen’d by the sun;
Who forms scarce visible shall thus descry,
Like flitting clouds athwart the mental sky;
From giant bodies then bare gleams of mind,
Like mountain watch-lights blinking to the wind;
Nor blush to find his unperverted eye
Flash on his heart, and give his tongue the lie.