The Fountain of Wisdom. At Wisdom’s sacred Spring, the living Source Whence Learning’s pleasing Streams derive their Course, We drink with Joy in purest Draughts refin’d Knowledge the vital Cordial of the Mind; Food of immortal Souls, (a) Ambrosial Dews Of Heav’n’s eternal Growth, (b) by Heav’n infus’d, When first th’Omnipotent Creator spoke, And Man the Form of living Nature took. No false Ideas thence in Clouds arise, But All is pure, and excellent, and wise. No specious Errors there abuse our Sense, But Heav’n-born Truth, like Native Innocence, Flows uncorrupted thro’ the spotless Soul, And humble Faith obliterates the Fall. See where the lovely Form, Aetherial Maid, Wisdom in Characters of Light array’d, Bestows the hallow’d Draught the Namen gives, The Soul that drinks the Life of Angels lives, Shall all Things and herself divinely know, Be bless’d Above, and great or good Below. Here the first Searchers into Nature’s Laws Drank deep to find the One Eternal Cause; ’Twas these inspiring Streams (a) Hermes first taught, Beyond the narrow Bounds of Human Thought, From Earthy Forms to raise his purer Mind, And teach mysterious Truths of Forms Divine. In this Empyrean Spring ’twas Plato saw The Human Soul by an (e) Eternal Law Immortal in bright Worlds. But what are these, Or what are their imperfect Images Of Things Celestial, to the glorious Train Of Apostolick Saints, and that rich Vein Of Wisdom infinite, which sweetly flow’d From Truth’s eternal Spring, the Mouth of GOD? There dwells all Learning, there the thirsty Soul May drink her Fill, and taste the mighty All Of Knowledge unconfin’d and Love supreme, Divinely flowing in that sacred Stream. There all is pure, thence Nature perfect grown, Can wing new glorious Worlds, and make their Joys her own. — Hermathenæ; or, Moral emblems, and ethnick tales, with explanatory notes, c. 1740 by Tolson, Francis