How vast the height, how grand the scene
That your enraptured eye surveys,
When, towering in your gay machine,
You leave the astonish'd world to gaze,
And, wandering in the ætherial blue,
Our eyes, in vain, your course pursue.
The Orb of Day, how dazzling bright!
In paler radiance gleams the Moon,
And Terra, whence you took your flight,
Appears to you—a meer balloon:
Its noisy crew no longer heard,
Towns, cities, forests, disappear'd.
Yet, travelling through the azure road,
Soar not too high for human ken;
Reflect, our humble safe abode
Is all that Nature meant for men:
Take in your sails before you freeze,
And sink again among the trees.
[117] Published in the Time-Piece and Literary Companion, May 15, 1797, under the title "Stanzas Written Some Years Since on Mr. Blanchard's Forty-fifth Ascension from the Jail-Yard in Philadelphia, January 9, 1793." Text from the 1795 edition.
ON HEARING[118]
A Political Oration, Superficially Composed on an Important Subject
Sound without sense, and words devoid of force,
Through which no art could find a clue,
And mean and shackling was the whole discourse
That kept me, Tully, long from you.
Heads of harangues, to heads less general, split,
Seem'd like small laths, cleft from some heavy log;
I heard the inference, that no object hit—
All congelation, vapor, smoke, or fog.
And what avail'd the argument unsound
That nothing proved, or on the expecting mind
Forced no conviction—just as well might sound
To the deaf ear with sentiments abound.