The Choir and The Oratory :: :: University of Virginia Library

The human plant has life before its birth
To conscious being. Then, a sentient flower,
Slowly the germ puts forth each vital power.
Not yet the man is formed, till Pain and Mirth
Have waked the soul to all the things of earth,
And Mind of Sense is born. Youth's fervid hour
Is spent, ere Man attains the ample dower
Of Reason. But ah! what is reason worth,
To him who lives in sin and dies in gloom?
Another birth the soul must undergo,
Its noblest style of being to assume;—
Derived from One 'tis endless life to know,
An immortality begun below,
A life Divine, which oversteps the tomb.

248

II.

“Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.” Matt. x. 28.

What is the moral life? Of conscious power
The brute partakes: he thinks, and feels, and knows.
Say, is it mind or matter which thus shews
Like reason? Yet, in common with the flower,
Insect, or worm, the' enjoyment of his hour
Of being is his all, and death its close.
Not so the life that changes as it grows,
Knowledge of good and ill its fearful dower;—
The life of spirit, which is choice and will,
And by its choice self-shaped, becoming what
It loves and seeks,—essential good or ill;
Its character foreshadowing its lot;
A life which foes and tyrants cannot kill,—
Which death, that slays the body, harmeth not.

249

III.

“Glory, and honour, and immortality.”—Rom. ii. 7.

How does the aspirant for earthly fame
Live in a future that shall never be,
(Instinctive pledge of immortality!)
Ascribing conscious being to a name,
Mere shadow thrown by that delusive flame
Which forms his sun; wherein he seems to see
A fairer self, a nobler destiny.
How does this hope sustain and nerve his frame?
No false mirage, no posthumous deceit,
Christian, invites thy onward, upward course.
Thee shall not death of thy reversion cheat,
Nor interrupt that life which has its source
In faith, and not on earth can be complete.
Up, slumberers, and take this heaven by force!

250

IV.

“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”—John vi. 12.

It is the sovereign voice of Nature's King,
Echoed through all His works. The swift decay
Inscribed on earth's magnificent array,
For new perfection marks each fading thing.
All changing forms to second being spring,
By earth embalmed. The hues that pass away
From golden-anthered flowers the soil repay;
Or insect worlds are ever on the wing,
To catch the glorious spoil. All fragments seem,
Transformed, or gathered up, with life to teem.
Man only dies and renders no return.
But nothing may be lost: his mouldering frame
Shall give its fragments up,—ere empires burn,
And triumph o'er the universal flame.