University of Virginia Library

Thus argued Samiasa—and pursued
‘Herein consists man's dignity; hereot
His reason is compact; and he combines
Two worlds within, and in himself includes
The Universe. Empowered hereby is he,
To climb to each remote intelligence;
And send his daring mind on errand strange,
Into the Heaven of heavens, before the throne
Of the Most High, asserting there the right
Of his immortal spirit to converse,
Its heritage, as Son of God—as Man.
Yet overween ye not—nor let the pride
Of man rebel: For God is jealous—God—
(Speaking as man must speak, whose slavish words
Have constant reference to sublunar things,
Whereto degraded man degrades his thought,
Even when its ravished speculations rise
To holiest objects, such as angels love,)—
Is jealous of his Unity, and Name.
—Ay, God is very jealous: and we may,
By that which deifies us, be destroyed;
By our own spirits may we be destroyed,
And they imbruted, falling short, even thus,
In their probation of the Perfect One;
With self-esteem well satisfied, well pleased,
With their own proper excellence content,
No further emulous of good, or great:
Building thereon presumption flatulent,
Until the wind escape, and all be found
Mere emptiness; not from the Spirit of God
Renewed, who, in the beginning, filled the void,
Gloomy, and waste, with light, and life, and form.
—This was the sin of Lucifer—of Man;
The mortal sin, parent of Death, and Woe—
Whence Doubt was born. The soul that left hersource,
And would be as a god unto herself,
Fell backward on the body for support,
(But found it none,) . . and asked of it to bear
Her upward in her far imaginings.
Alas! even as the spider doth within
King's palaces, should she have kept the hold
That she had taken with her hands on heaven:
But she hath let her purchase go; and, now,
The ethereal dome is not within her reach:
And He, who raised her there before, again
Will not, who only can. Unless there be
Hope in the words which doomed the infernal snake;
And wherein I should verily believe,
But for the extreme iniquity of man,
Whence fear seems only just, and dread of doom.
—These are no mysteries to the sons of Seth.
Paradisaical aspirings they
Are conscious of: the high-wrought ecstasies
Of Fancy, which had borne the soul aloft
In Eden; now, within this sensual sty,
Disturb her feathers only, fluttering
Pollution on her wings, till clogged therewith,
Broken, and trammelled to the soil. Alas—
How heavily her breathings come, and go:
Poor bird—struggling with death, till, overcome,
On her an intermittent slumber seize;
And so she dies—a second death:—Or, if
Feeling the will to soar, and having power,
Leaves her nest like the Swallow, but returns
Anon, circling some pool, already tired
With her short flight, and longing for the time
When, on its sedgy banks she shall decline,
And ease her passage to the torpid depth
Upon the pliant reed; so winter's frost
Shall nip her not:—Or, greatly daring, scorns
Eternal barriers; and, within the clouds,
She hangs presumptuous eyrie, and doth
Abominations there; unto herself
Making a brothel universe, which she
Deems co-extensive with eternity,
And space, and time, and reigns imperial in.’