Hail Holy Light, Offspring Of Heav'n Firstborn!

This Horror Will Grow Mild, This Darkness Light; Besides What Hope The Never-ending Flight Of Future Days May Bring, What Chance, What Change Worth Waiting--since Our Present Lot Appears For Happy Though But Ill, For Ill Not Worst, If We Procure Not To Ourselves More Woe.

O Why Did God, Creator Wise, That Peopled Highest Heav'n With Spirits Masculine, Create At Last This Novelty On Earth, This Fair Defect Of Nature, And Not Fill The World At Once With Men As Angels Without Feminine, Or Find Some Other Way To Generate Mankind?

By This Time, Like One Who Had Set Out On His Way By Night, And Travelled Through A Region Of Smooth Or Idle Dreams, Our History Now Arrives On The Confines, Where Daylight And Truth Meet Us With A Clear Dawn, Representing To Our View, Though At A Far Distance, True Colours And Shapes.

And Oft, Though Wisdom Wake, Suspicion Sleeps At Wisdom's Gate, And To Simplicity Resigns Her Charge, While Goodness Thinks No Ill Where No Ill Seems.

To Many A Youth And Many A Maid, Dancing In The Chequer'd Shade.