University of Virginia Library

True liberty, O God! Thy Spirit makes;
For, the vast doctrine of redeeming Love
Holds in itself the majesties of man.
Freedom and faith our twin inspirers are,
The healthful source from which pure greatness springs:
All fine immunities of sense, and soul,
All deeper actings of divinest thought,
All morals, motives, aims, and bold designs,
And aspirations for the Good unseen
In man's free conscience find their perfect root.
For liberty within, forms light without,
And grace the spirit of salvation is.
Whate'er of polity just freedom lauds,
Whate'er of life domestic love reveres,
Whate'er of mind heroic wisdom haunts,
Or, in the temple of essential Truth,
All which our adorations prove divine,
From grace, in principle, directly flow.

The Reformation thus the Mind redeem'd;
The swathing bands which superstition cast
Round the chain'd spirit, were at once dissolved;
And, lo! a mental resurrection smiled:
A golden dawn of intellectual day
Already round the clear horizon glow'd,
And faintly shined on Europe's rising heart.
See Luther, and Melancthon, all inflamed
Ardent as eagles, in their sunward flight,
From truth to truth victoriously advance!
Instead of Masses, mark the Holy Feast,
The mystic Supper of Incarnate Love
Dispensed with beauty, primitive and plain.
The Visible its hallow'd claim advanced,
And Ideality a form assumed;
While the young Church her pristine features wore.
Thus, rites external, for external sense,
And truths internal, for internal soul,
By fitness due the wants of nature met;
Since, mere Abstractions angels may perceive,
But men embodied must by Forms be led,
And rites are reasons, when by God approved.

Still, not o'er temple-rites alone was breathed
That order Principle from Scripture draws;
But through the heart, by reformation clear'd
From papal mist, the common mind was touch'd,
And the pure founts of intellect unseal'd
From lofty plans see Education stoop
To ply the humblest with appropriate skill;
While cloister'd Learning, from her cells escaped,
Comes to the peasant-home, the people's heart;
Till mind is no monopoly for priests,
And classic Thought in sacerdotal rust
No more lies with'ring; but, at Luther's word,
Walks through the world of feeling, and of faith;
And ye, the symbols of our inner sense,
Types of the Beautiful we cannot reach;
Ye adumbrations of diviner Grace
Than ever seen, when most Invention lifts
Her glad Eureka! round enraptured souls,
Ye Arts! which make imagination's heaven,
By shape, or hue, or melody reveal'd,
Soon from the sacred Reformation caught
A new intensity of noblest power.
For Music rose, seraphical, and pure,
And revell'd in a paradise of sound,
To hymn the Prince of glory, and of peace.
And Painting, from Apostles imaged forth
Forms of fair virtue, in sublimest mould:
While Piety and Painting blent their powers,
Taking a cast from Beauty's very soul
In lines of love, and lineaments of heaven.
And She, the charmer of celestial moods,
High Poetry, the heart's young Priestess, came,
And on the altar of melodious hours
Laid the soft incense of devoutest song.