SONNETS ON METAPHYSICAL SUBJECTS.
BERKELEY, the great, the good, the meek, the wise!
Thou mitred saint, supreme philosopher,
Of mental truth the heaven-illumin'd star,
Revealer of the mind's deep mysteries,-
Its nature, laws, immortal qualities!—
Who, by pure reason's inward light, didst prove, That 't is in God we live, and breathe, and move,Helping weak Faith to see with clearere yes :— Thou matchless champion of the Christian fight! Who putt'st the godless, sceptic crew to flight; Their boasted idol, false philosophy,
On matter rais'd, down dash'd in ruin prone,
Eras'd the very basis of its throne,
And turn'd it into sheer nonentity.
How strange that still, tho' man so wise be
Philosophy, as taught in most the schools,
By logic's art, and all its cumbrous rules,
Should on a mere assumption build its throne,—
A vague substratum,-to the mind unknown,
Void of all proof, or mediate or direct,
Yet moves, 't is said, the reasoning intellect,
Of which no qualities can e'er be shown,—
Extension, magnitude, form, colour, weight;-
Yet are its parts, its whole deem'd infinite !
The sole reality of things that be!
Tho' reason shows 't is mere nonentity :
With what strange laws must matter then be fraught, If nought is ev'ry thing, and ev'ry thing is nought?
THE things of sense are transient,-born to die,
And "perish in the using,"-brief as bright!
The loveliest scene enrobed in radiant light
Is, by the very twinkling of an eye,
Eras'd, resolv'd to mere nonentity;
Yet things so brief vain mortals oft do prize
Above the soul's supreme realities,—
The deathless things of true philosophy,Goodness, and Truth, and Beauty,-forms divine, Primordial forms, man's high and godlike boon, Symbols and types of Deity triune,
Immortal splendours,-destin'd aye to shine,
And light the soul from earth to heaven's abode,--
Her native seat,-and presence of her God.
THO' man possess such godlike faculties,
To compass space and time's immensity,
And knowledge gain of all that in them be;
Albeit endow'd with aptitude to seize
Primordial truths, abstract analogies,
To scale the heights of pure philosophy,
And pluck all truths from Wisdom's deathless tree, To store his mind's all boundless treasuries; Yet, midst such stores of knowledge vast, is he Th' immediate knowledge of himself denied,— His soul's essential being still unknown,— And thus, shut out from self-idolatry,
And aye shut in to consciousness alone,
He learns a truth that lowers his mental pride.
SINCE man doth lack th' immediate proof to know
His soul's essential being, whence hath he
The mediate gain'd? From true philosophy,
That light of heaven and guide of man below,
Which to his reason this great truth doth show,
That from immediate consciousness alone
His sentient soul is mediately made known,
As thought must aye from thinking being flow;
And thence, by clear analogy, we prove
All souls' existence, thence deduce a Cause,
The first and sole,-etern, almighty God,-
Author of nature and of nature's laws,
A God of love, all wise, all pure, all good,
In whom we have our being, live, and move.
THE vast, the grand, the terrible, sublime,
The forms of beauty, loveliness, and grace
Are not extern, instamp'd on nature's face,
But of the mind, of every age and clime,
And aye endure in full perfection's prime :
The mind conceives, and, in conceiving, gives
The varied forms th' external world receives,-
Immortal births, untouch'd by hand of Time ;—
Still, tho' the mind with power divine be fraught,
'Tis but the subject and the seat of thought,
As such, can ne'er itself to action move,
But moves obedient to its Maker's laws,-
He the sole Mover, He the Great First Cause
Of all that moves in earth or heaven above.
THERE is but one Creator, Great First Cause,-
This primal truth, by reason's light, we prove,—
In whom we live, and being have, and move;
And, tho' we will and act by mental laws,
He works within us both to will and do:
What tho' this truth, thro' ignorance or pride,
Should be by some rejected and denied,
Tho' man be false, yet, still let God be true,
Whose word confirms this truth of reason's light,-
Man on his own mind ne'er can operate,
No creature e'er can his own thoughts create :
Let truth be held as reason's sacred right,
Whate'er the moral consequence may be ;
That sin is ours we own, tho' great the mystery.
AH! who can solve the mystery of dreams?
Who paints the scenes that rise, array'd in light,
Unseen before, as vivid, clear, and bright
As tho' the sun pour'd forth its lustrous beams?
Or, when we list to sounds unheard before,
When voice and verse, in concord sweet, combine
In artful fugue, and harmony divine,
Who the composer of the learned score?
Or, when we read, in sleep's mysterious hour,
Some new, unheard of wonder-work sublime,
With genius fraught, and cloth'd in rapturous rhyme,
Who is the author, who the Great Unknown
That o'er the soul exerts such mystic power?
Reason replies, the Great First Cause alone.
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