Seeking for light, and shadows doom’d to feel,
He ponders, studies, labours to unseal
The secret, and at length finds his advance;
The more he learns, how great his ignorance.
Of matter, form, or motion, or the soul,
Or moments that away incessant roll,
Or the unfathomable sea of space,
Without a sky, without a shore to trace,
Nothing he reaches, nothing comprehends,
Nor finds its origin, nor where it tends;