Page:Nature, Addresses and Lectures.djvu/76

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"The stars have us to bed:

Night draws the curtain; which the sun withdraws.

Music and light attend our head.

All things unto our flesh are kind,

In their descent and being; to our mind,

In their ascent and cause.

"More servants wait on man

Than he'll take notice of. In every path,

He treads down that which doth befriend him

When sickness makes him pale and wan.

Oh mighty love! Man is one world, and hath

Another to attend him."

The perception of this class of truths makes the attraction which draws men to science, but the end is lost sight of in attention to the means. In view of this half-sight of science, we accept the sentence of Plato, that, "poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history." Every surmise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to a certain respect, and we learn to prefer imperfect theories, and sentences, which contain glimpses of truth, to digested systems which have no one valuable suggestion. A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communicating, through hope, new activity to the torpid spirit.

I shall therefore conclude this essay with some traditions of man and nature, which a certain poet sang to me; and which, as they have always been in the world, and perhaps