On Dr. Young’s Night Thoughts

Surprizing thought! that with Cherubic force

Ascends through trackless paths to Worlds unknown.

O could my thoughts that faintly fluttering try

To raise their feeble wings, then sink to Earth:

O could they on thy soaring pinions mount,

And reach thy theme on all its dazling wonders;

How would my Mind despise the little toys

Which courts its notice here, and look regardless

On this low World and all its busie attoms!

Such Nights as these exceed the brightest Day

Of gay Amusement, more than Stars exceed

The transient beauties of a fading Flower.

Such thoughts as these can gild the darkest Night,

And open on the Mind a rising Day,

A Day of Sacred Science, whose bright Noon

(Unknown to Earth) shines in full radiant Glory,

O’er the fair seats of Immortality.

Above the Skies, those Worlds of endless Bliss,

Where perfect Truth and boundless Knowledge dwell,

To charm, to entertain, to fill the Soul

Through the long ages of Eternity.

]Text: Steele Collection, 3/32, no. 25 Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford; this poem first published in Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, vol. 2 (ed. Julia B. Griffin), p. 109. For a poem on the same subject by Mary Steele Wakeford, click here.