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Henry Brooke (c.1703–1735–1783)
- Cork University Press
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186 unconfined. 1 play heedlessly or extravagantly. 2 the most delightful spot on earth, according to many poets in classical literature. 3 used here in its poetic meaning, ‘a soft or gentle breeze’. 4 learned persons, particularly those skilled in the sciences, in music or in collecting. 5 bounteous. Milton uses the same phrase, ‘nature boon’ in Paradise Lost IV, 242. The 6 couplet means ‘Now bounteous nature breathes forth the morning air [‘stream’] and glows and opens [herself] to the welcome [sun] beam’. HENRY BROOKE (c.1703–1735–1783) Henry Brooke was born in County Cavan, the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and soon became a prolific writer. His daughter Charlotte, famous for her Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789), edited his works for publication and they appeared in four volumes shortly before he died in Dublin in 1783. Universal Beauty is the most significant philosophical poem written by an Irish writer in the eighteenth century. Like Alexander Pope in An Essay on Man, Brooke uses the poem to survey God’s creation in the universe, and to give an account of the forms of knowledge and of the nature of man. In the last of the six books of the poem, he contemplates the beauty of the design of the universe and, in the section printed below, expresses a typicallyAugustan wonder at the social order to be seen among bees. from: Universal Beauty (Book VI) ... Bear, bear my song, ye raptures of the mind! Convey your bard thro’ Nature unconfined, Licentious1 in the search of wisdom range, Plunge in the depth, and wanton2 in the change; Waft me to Tempe,3 and her flowery dale, Born on the wings of every tuneful gale;4 Amid the wild profusions let me stray, And share with Bees the virtues of the day. Soon as the matin glory gilds the skies, Behold the little Virtuosi5 rise! 10 Blithe for the task, they preen their early wing, And forth to each appointed labour spring. Now nature boon6 exhales the morning stream, And glows and opens to the welcome beam; 187 Henry Brooke The vivid tribes amid the fragrance fly, And every art, and every business ply. Each chymist7 now his subtle trunk unsheathes, Where, from the flower, the treasured odour breathes; Here sip the liquid, here select the gum, And o’er the bloom with quivering membrane hum. 20 Still with judicious scrutiny they pry, Where lodg’d the prime essential juices lie; Each luscious vegetation wide explore, Plunder the spring of every vital store: The dainty suckle, and the fragrant thyme, By chymical reduction, they sublime;8 Their sweets with bland attempering9 suction strain, And, curious, thro’ their neat alembicks10 drain; Imbibed recluse, the pure secretions glide, And vital warmth concocts the ambrosial tide.11 30 Inimitable Art! do thou atone The long lost labours of the Latent Stone; Tho’ the Five Principles so oft transpire, Fined, and refined, amid the torturing fire.12 Like issue should the daring chymist see, Vain imitator of the curious Bee, Nor arts improved thro’ ages once produce A single drachm13 of this delicious juice. Your’s then, industrious traders! is the toil, And man’s proud science is alone to spoil ... 40 The bee is seen as a chemist or alchemist (i.e. one able to turn one thing into another). 7 i.e. they turn what they have gathered from the dainty honeysuckle and the fragrant thyme 8 [i.e. nectar] into something higher, more excellent [i.e. honey]. modifying. 9 In these lines, Brooke is describing the transformation of nectar into honey in terms 10 borrowed from alchemy. Alembics were instruments used in distillation. i.e. Imbibed in secret, the pure secretions [from the nectar] glide [through the bees’ 11 bodies] and the living warmth digests them and turns them into liquid ambrosia. ‘Ambrosia’ was not only the food of the gods in classical mythology, but also another name for ‘bee-bread’, the mixture of honey and pollen consumed by the nurse-bees in a beehive. The ‘Latent Stone’ and the ‘Five Principles’ are terms from alchemy. 12 dram, a small measure of liquid. 13 [44.223.42.120] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:36 GMT) 188 Hail happy tribes! illustrious people hail! Whose forms minute such sacred maxims veil; In whose just conduct, framed by wondrous plan, We read revers’d each polity of man. Who first in council form’d your embryon state? Who...