The Astrologer who Stumbled into a Well

To an astrologer who fell / Plump to the bottom of a well, / 'Poor blockhead! ' cried a passer-by, / 'Not see your feet, and read the sky?'

This upshot of a story will suffice / To give a useful hint to most; / For few there are in this our world so wise / As not to trust in star or ghost, / Or cherish secretly the creed / That men the book of destiny may read. / This book, by Homer and his pupils sung, / What is it, in plain common sense, / But what was chance those ancient folks among, / And with ourselves, God's providence? / Now chance doth bid defiance / To every thing like science; / 'Twere wrong, if not, / To call it hazard, fortune, lot -- / Things palpably uncertain. / But from the purposes divine, / The deep of infinite design, / Who boasts to lift the curtain? / Whom but himself doth God allow / To read his bosom thoughts? and how / Would he imprint upon the stars sublime / The shrouded secrets of the night of time? / And all for what? To exercise the wit / Of those who on astrology have writ? / To help us shun inevitable ills? / To poison for us even pleasure's rills? / The choicest blessings to destroy, / Exhausting, ere they come, their joy? / Such faith is worse than error -- 'tis a crime. / The sky-host moves and marks the course of time; / The sun sheds on our nicely-measured days / The glory of his night-dispelling rays; / And all from this we can divine / Is, that they need to rise and shine, -- / To roll the seasons, ripen fruits, / And cheer the hearts of men and brutes. / How tallies this revolving universe / With human things, eternally diverse? / Ye horoscopers, waning quacks, / Please turn on Europe's courts your backs, / And, taking on your travelling lists / The bellows-blowing alchemists, / Budge off together to the land of mists. / But I've digress'd. Return we now, bethinking / Of our poor star-man, whom we left a drinking. / Besides the folly of his lying trade, / This man the type may well be made / Of those who at chimeras stare / When they should mind the things that are.[1]