University of Virginia Library

'Tween two eternities each hour is born
Of present Being; in the midst, our mind,
(Through some deep sense of undevelop'd power,
Haunted for ever by the Unattain'd)
Fevers, and frets with intellectual thirst
For more of Perfect, Beautiful, or Pure,
For more of Truth, in majesty and might
Than ever rises on the reaching sense,
Or, seems embodied in the shape of Things.
The Infinite we love, and half adore;
Our heaven of feeling seeks a heaven of fact,—
An outward Image, whose responsive mould
May body forth Imagination's dream.
And hence, enthroned in some ethereal calm,
Conceptive Genius from creation draws
Types of vast truth, and symbols of the soul,
To aid Perception, when its shaping power
Would vision out a universe of Love,
And Ideality in life reveal.

But if, beyond what Nature's world supplies
A yearning soul for moral beauty thirsts,
Creative Thought, by combination frames
From all which heroes of the heart have felt,
Or martyrs of the sleepless mind portray'd,
Or dreamt in prison-gloom, or palace-smiles,
A model of true consummated Man!
And, noble is such discontent of soul
Which leads to Virtue's elevating path;
The mind unprisons; or, from chaining Sense,
That coarsely to the common life of things
Would bind us down in drudgery and death,
To freedom and infinitude allures
The man within. And hence, all dreamings high
And holy; hence, imagination's flight;
And aspirations, fetterless and pure.
For, in this orbit of mysterious Life
The central immortality is Man;
And, greater far than all the greatness seen
One viewless Thought of his observing Mind!
Since what the apprehending sense beholds
Forms but a veil, through which are dimly view'd
Deep intimations of diviner Things,
And preludes faint of far profounder Truth
And Beauty, yet by God to be unveil'd.
'Tis thus, the poetry of heart begins,
The painter's longing, and the sculptor's love,
Which purify from sensual dross and guile
Our inner-life, with sacramental force;
Hence, Homer drew; and solemn Milton drank
The inspirations of a deathless song.
In beautiful transcendencies of thought
From earthly matter into heavenly forms
They soar'd, for ever; and, by shaping dreams,
Imaged a life above the life they felt
And breathed the immortality they sung.
'Tis thus, by passion for the Infinite,
And glorious longings for some Perfect Good,
The heart's millennium, in all ages, acts:
Hence Liberty her laurell'd hero frames,
Martyr, and saint, and sage their stamp receive,
Religion half her purity obtains,
And the bright paradise of Morals blooms.

Thus Luther, in his lone and lofty zeal
Impetuous, bold, and ardent as sublime,
With feelings vivid like the soul they fired,
Who led the exodus of man and mind
From the vile Egypt of enslaving Rome
To Canaan's borders, in the world of truth,—
E'en like a prophet, o'er predestined scenes
Above the cold, the actual, and the coarse
Mounted aloft; and sleeplessly pursued
Through tears and torture, outrage, grief, and wrong,
Through storm and cloud, convulsion and contempt,
That great Exemplar which his mind conceived.
Beauty and Brightness their ideal thrones
Erected in him; while their magic spell
Temper'd his heart for each ethereal type.
And so, by Pre-conception's purest charm
Master'd and moulded, his frail being grew;
He lived the Poetry which others thought;
And from that hour when friendly capture threw
A shroud of safety round his perill'd head
Where the lone castle of Altenstein frown'd,
To that famed crisis, when from cell and chain
Heaven's cloister'd Principles came forth to breathe,
Pale from the prison of a thousand years,
His passion for the Perfect and the Pure
Nerved him for wonders! Like that mystic Voice,
Which often to the soul of seers reveal'd
Visions of Godhead, vocal and distinct,
Heaven-ward, for plans archangels might have cheer'd,
Pure Inspiration seem'd to guide him on.
Gigantic efforts, flush'd with sacred zeal,
And high endeavours, honourably vast,
Ardours intense, with flames of moral ire,
A mental freedom, or that tameless force
Which grappled ever with imagined Fiends,—
All were expressions of one master-wish;
The indications of a Soul, inspired
To be the great Apostle of mankind
In deeds of glory, for a cause divine.
The sigh of Nature with herself to blend
And bind, in one fond brotherhood of faith,
The feelings and the family of Man;
A New Jerusalem on earth to hail;
A Church redeem'd to apostolic mould;
A reigning Jesus, a rejoicing World,—
To such bright centres of consummate hope
Did Luther, with ideal passion, tend;
These made the goal to which he onward press'd,
The lofty mark, at which his virtue aim'd;
And from the level of a monk's low range
Lifted on high his ever-loving heart,
And bade him, in a sunless age, to shine
A moral saviour o'er eclipsed mankind.