XII.
His thoughts explored the past—and where were they,
The chiefs of men, the mighty ones gone by?
He turn’d—a boundless void before him lay,
Wrapp’d in the shadows of futurity.
How knew the child of Nature that the flame
He felt within him struggling to ascend,
Should perish not with that terrestrial frame
Doom’d with the earth on which it moved, to blend?
How, when affliction bade his spirit bleed,
If ’twere a Father’s love or Tyrant’s wrath decreed?