Behold Now This Vast City

Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint.

Who Reads Incessantly, And To His Reading Brings Not A Spirit And Judgment Equal Or Superior, (and What He Brings What Need He Elsewhere Seek?) Uncertain And Unsettled Still Remains, Deep Versed In Books And Shallow In Himself, Crude Or Intoxicate, Collecting Toys And Trifles For Choice Matters, Worth A Sponge, As Children Gathering Pebbles On The Shore.

Though All The Winds Of Doctrine Were Let Loose To Play Upon The Earth, So Truth Be In The Field, We Do Injuriously By Licensing And Prohibiting To Misdoubt Her Strength. Let Her And Falsehood Grapple; Who Ever Knew Truth Put To The Worse, In A Free And Open Encounter.

Solitude Is Sometimes The Best Society.

So Glistered The Dire Snake , And Into Fraud Led Eve, Our Credulous Mother, To The Tree Of Prohibition, Root Of All Our Woe.