Yet with all its powers can it originate nothing;
For the Great God into all His works hath largely poured out Himself,
Saving one special property, the grand prerogative,—Creation.
To improve and expand is ours, as well as to limit and defeat;
But to create a thought or a thing is hopeless and impossible.
Can a man make matter?—and yet this would-be god
Thinketh to make mind, and form original idea:
The potter must have his clay, and the mason his quarry,
And mind must drain ideas from everything around it.
Doth the soil generate herbs, or the torrid air breed flies,