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Our Depths who fathoms, or our Shallows finds?
Quick Whirls, and shifting Eddies, of our minds?
Life's Stream for Observation will not stay,
It hurries all too fast to mark their way.
In vain sedate Reflections we would make,
When half our Knowledge we must snatch, not take.
On human Actions reason tho' you can,
It may be Reason, but it is not Man:
His Principle of Action once explore,
That instant 'tis his Principle no more;
Like following Life thro' Creatures you dissect,
You lose it, in the moment you detect.
Oft, in the Passions wild rotation tost,
Our Spring of Action to our selves is lost:
Tir'd, not determin'd, to the last we yield,
And what comes then is master of the field.
As the last Image of that troubled heap,
When sense subsides, and fancy sports in sleep,
(Tho' past the recollection of the thought)
Becomes the stuff of which our Dream is wrought;
Something, as dim to our internal view,
Is thus perhaps the cause of all we do.
Quick Whirls, and shifting Eddies, of our minds?
Life's Stream for Observation will not stay,
It hurries all too fast to mark their way.
In vain sedate Reflections we would make,
When half our Knowledge we must snatch, not take.
On human Actions reason tho' you can,
It may be Reason, but it is not Man:
His Principle of Action once explore,
That instant 'tis his Principle no more;
Like following Life thro' Creatures you dissect,
You lose it, in the moment you detect.
Oft, in the Passions wild rotation tost,
Our Spring of Action to our selves is lost:
Tir'd, not determin'd, to the last we yield,
And what comes then is master of the field.
As the last Image of that troubled heap,
When sense subsides, and fancy sports in sleep,
(Tho' past the recollection of the thought)
Becomes the stuff of which our Dream is wrought;
Something, as dim to our internal view,
Is thus perhaps the cause of all we do.
In
