The History of the Royal Society of London

Widely extended on the ground,
To drink with their dejected head
The stream just so as by their mouths it fled:
No, but those few who took the waters up,
And made of their laborious hands the cup.

V I I.

Thus you prepared; and in the glorious fight
Their wondrous pattern too you take:
Their old and empty pitchers first they brake,
And with their hands then lifted up the light.
Iö! Sound too the trumpets here!
Already your victorious lights appear;
New scenes of heaven already we espy,
And crowds of golden worlds on high;
Which from the spacious plains of earth and sea,
Could never yet discovered be
By sailors' or Chaldeans' watchful eye.
Nature's great works no distance can obscure,
No smallness her near objects can secure.
You have taught the curious sight to press
Into the privatest recess
Of her imperceptible littleness.
She with much stranger art than his who put
All the Iliads in a nut,
The numerous work of life does into atoms shut.
You have learned to read her smallest hand,
And well begun her deepest sense to understand.

V I I I.

Mischief and true dishonor fall on those
Who would to laughter or to scorn expose
So virtuous and so noble a design,
So human for its use, for knowledge so divine.
The things which these proud men despise, and call
Impertinent, and vain, and small,