Some Enlightenment Poems
Found the following in George Bickham's Penmanship Made Easy, a copperplate handwriting book from 1733. (Learning to write, you were to copy out poems and morals as practise.)
In praise of our awesome technology, the printed word:
On the General Advantages of Reading & Writing
'Tis to the press and pen we mortals owe
All we believe, and almost all we know.
All hail! ye great preservers of those arts,
That raise our thoughts, & cultivate our parts.
Had your assistance been to man deny'd,
All wit alas! in oral sounds had dy'd.
You bring past wonders to our present view;
Homer and Virgil live alone in you.
Their tuneful numbers had long since decay'd,
And lost their native charms without your aid.
And here's one that says that art is way better than nature, and nature is only good because we make it so:
Art improves Nature
OR, THE
Force of Education
How fair & sweet the planted Rose,
Beyond the wild in Hedges grows!
For without Art the Noblest Seeds
Of Flow'rs degenerate to Weeds.
How dull & rugged e'er tis ground
And polished, looks a Diamond!
Tho Paradise was e'er so fair,
It was'nt kept so without Care.
The whole World without Art & Dress,
Would be but one great Wilderness;
And Mankind but a Savage Herd,
For all that Nature has confer'd;
She does but rough-hew and design,
Leaves Art to polish and refine.
In praise of our awesome technology, the printed word:
On the General Advantages of Reading & Writing
'Tis to the press and pen we mortals owe
All we believe, and almost all we know.
All hail! ye great preservers of those arts,
That raise our thoughts, & cultivate our parts.
Had your assistance been to man deny'd,
All wit alas! in oral sounds had dy'd.
You bring past wonders to our present view;
Homer and Virgil live alone in you.
Their tuneful numbers had long since decay'd,
And lost their native charms without your aid.
And here's one that says that art is way better than nature, and nature is only good because we make it so:
Art improves Nature
OR, THE
Force of Education
How fair & sweet the planted Rose,
Beyond the wild in Hedges grows!
For without Art the Noblest Seeds
Of Flow'rs degenerate to Weeds.
How dull & rugged e'er tis ground
And polished, looks a Diamond!
Tho Paradise was e'er so fair,
It was'nt kept so without Care.
The whole World without Art & Dress,
Would be but one great Wilderness;
And Mankind but a Savage Herd,
For all that Nature has confer'd;
She does but rough-hew and design,
Leaves Art to polish and refine.