12 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO i. 



Unbarr'd to pilgrim feet the brazen door, 

 And the sad sage returning smil'd no more. 



SHRIN'D in the midst majestic NATURE stands, 

 Extends o'er earth and sea her hundred hands; 130 

 Tower upon tower her beamy forehead crests, 

 And births unnumber'd milk her hundred breasts; 

 Drawn round her brows a lucid veil depends, 

 O'er her fine waist the purfled woof descends ; 

 Her stately limbs the gather'd folds surround, 

 And spread their golden selvage on the ground. 



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From this first altar fam'd ELEUSIS stole 

 Her secret symbols and her mystic scroll; 



smile, seems to have been designed to warn the contemplative from 

 considering too much the dark side of nature. Thus an ancient 

 poet is said to have written a poem on the miseries of the world, and 

 to have thence become so unhappy as to destroy himself. When we 

 reflect on the perpetual destruction of organic life, we should also 

 recollect, that it is perpetually renewed in other forms by the same 

 materials, and thus the sum total of the happiness of the world con- 

 tinues undiminished; and that a philosopher may thus smile again on 

 turning his eyes from the coffins of nature to her cradles. 



Fam'd Eleusis stole, 1. 1 37. The Eleusinian mysteries Avere invented 



