To a Student, at the Academy at East-Hampton

To scan with care the scientific page, Where Knowledge does her various stores unfold, Our only inmost wish to improve the age, And form the mind to Virtue's softest mould.

For this, our studious hours to employ; For this, to urge the penetrating thought; Conscious to foster the ingenuous joy, While we peruse the Tomes with learning fraught.

Oh, thou Great Parent! whose unbounded sight At one wide view includes th' Eternal sum Of what e'er has, or ne'er has seen the light! Of all that's past, or present, or to come!

Be thou his guide, where useful Science winds Her hidden paths, and follows Wisdom's lead; Grant him those aims that fir'd coelestial minds, His fondest hopes, and ev'ry wish, succeed:

With deep Humility adorn his soul, And in profound prostration may he lie; For thee, each act perform, 'till years shall roll Round him his date, and call him to the sky.

While you scan o'er the regions of the East, And from the hemisphere of breaking day, Where morning smiles the circling Heav'ns invest, Trace blushing Ganges silent sliding way:

Or wander o'er Arabia's sultry plain, And view the interminable burning sand, Where the rapacious Moor holds his domain, And deals wide terror thro' the distant land:

Or ruminate where Egypt's richer soil Heaves from her breast the aromatic store; Or search, where to the lab'ring miner's toil, Peru unfolds her latent, massy ore:

Or from the caverns, to th' aerial pile, Where pyramidic walls their charge contains, And reliques sleep, for cent'ries, with a smile, Entire, and promulgate the artists pains.

Hence, then, from Nature's wise constructed frame, Your soul ascends to God, the Great First Cause, Whose ev'ry work his glorious skill proclaims, And gave to Nature, Nature's steady laws.

Oh thou! (say you) whose knowledge without bound, Bids man to his own Nothingness retire, Teach me to lie in lowest dust profound— In all my Science, thee alone admire.