- Leave Europe; there, through all her coyest ways, [625]
- Her secret mazes, nature is pursued:
- But here, with savage loneliness, she reigns
- On yonder peak, whence giddy fancy looks,
- Affrighted, on the labouring main below.
- Heavens! what stupendous, what unnumbered trees, [630]
- “Stage above stage, in various verdure drest,”1
- Unprofitable shag its airy cliffs!
- Heavens! what new shrubs, what herbs with useless bloom,
- Adorn its channel’d sides; and, in its caves
- What sulphurs, ores, what earths and stones abound! [635]
- There let philosphy conduct thy steps,
- “For naught is useless made:”2 With candid search,
- Examine all the properties of things;
- Immense discoveries soon will crown your toil,
- Your time will soon repay. Ah, when will cares, [640]
- The cares of Fortune, less my minutes claim?
- Then, with what joy, what energy of soul,
- Will I not climb yon mountain’s airiest brow!
- The dawn, the burning noon, the setting sun,
- The midnight-hour, shall hear my constant vows [645]
- To Nature; see me prostrate at her shrine!
- And, O, if haply I may aught invent
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Gilmore identifies Pope’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid as the source of the phrase “Stage above stage.” ↩︎
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Gilmore identifies John Philips’s Cyder as the source of this quotation. In these final lines of Book III, Grainger compares the Caribbean to Europe and enjoins scientists and natural philosophers to explore and learn about the New World’s vast natural resources. As he does in his preface to the poem, he suggests that the pursuit of knowledge is a good in its own right and ought to take precedence over the more mundane pursuit of wealth. ↩︎