Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/278

$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$Which from the spacious plains of earth and sea
Could never yet discover'd be,
By sailors' or Chaldeans' watchful eye.
Nature's great works no distance can obscure,
No smallness her near objects can secure;
$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$Y' have taught the curious sight to press
Into the privatest recess
Of her imperceptible littleness!
Y' have learn'd to read her smallest hand,
And well begun her deepest sense to understand!

Mischief and true dishonour fall on those
Who would to laughter or to scorn expose
So virtuous and so noble a design,
So human for its use, for knowledge so divine.
The things which these proud men despise, and call
Impertinent, and vain, and small,
Those smallest things of nature let me know,
Rather than all their greatest actions do!
Whoever would deposed Truth advance
Into the throne usurp'd from it,
Must feel at first the blows of Ignorance,
And the shap points of envious Wit.
So, when, by various turns of the celestial dance,
In many thousand years
A star, so long unknown, appears,
$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$Though heaven itself more beauteous by it grow,
It troubles and alarms the world below;
Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor, show.