University of Virginia Library

XXI. God the Image.

Impassive, beautiful, and desolate,
Is this the Lord my God, whom I entreat?
Powerless to stay the ravages of fate—
Jove with his right hand palsied, Jove effete,
Fetter'd by frost upon a stony seat—
O dreadful apparition! Can this be?
Yonder He looms, where never a heart doth beat,
In the cold ether of theology.
Come down! come down! O Souls that wander there!
Cold are the snows, chill is the dreadful air—
Come down! come down into the Valleys deep;
Leave the wild Image to the stars, that rise
Around about it with affrighted eyes;
Come to green under-glooms, and sink, and sleep.