University of Virginia Library

From out the Bosom of paternal bliss
When came the Second of th' almighty Three,
And God, in human image bodied forth,
Alighted on man's world of sin and death
As Prince of peace, and Purchaser of life,
How lived, how spake, this Archetype of all?
E'en like his Person, did His life appear,
Divinely human, with coequal grace:
In Godhead,—never sunk the God beneath;
In Manhood,—never raised the man above;
To each extreme symmetrical and true,
Believer! there, thine own Emmanuel hail.

How awful was He! when the cloud of flesh
Gleam'd with the lustre of indwelling God.
Thy steadfastness, vast Nature! from the sleep
Of twice two thousand years, by Him was moved;
For all those laws, by Science so revered,
Their changeless glory to His changing will
Yielded, like vassals by their king o'erawed.
He look'd—Creation by his glance was thrill'd;
He spake—the Elements each word obey'd;
Earth, Sea, and Air their royal sceptres threw
Down at His feet, and fell before their Lord;
While shrinking, as with conscious dread commoved,
Back from his word the rushing Storm recoil'd,
Soothed its mad roar, and like an infant smiled
Itself to sunshine and soft peace again.
Blindness, at His command, the sun beheld;
And Deafness heard Him when the fiat came;
Disease was Health; and Lameness felt her Limbs
With miracles of energy to move,
While the dead body from the bier uprose
Beneath the resurrection of His word!

And, awful was He! when the curse was borne:
While His bow'd Head was crimson'd o'er with blood,
Then shook the Earth, and shudder'd as the groan
Of Christ appall'd her! while a deep eclipse
Dropt like an eyelid o'er the flaming Sun,
Dreading to gaze on God incarnadined!
But, in that syncopé of mortal hopes,
That pause tremendous in our human fate
When sepulchred Messiah, cold and pale,
Seal'd in the rock a dead Redeemer lay,
While Nature seem'd as if with stern revenge
To triumph o'er Her pallid victor there,—
How awful was He when His grave-clothes stirr'd!
When the rock trembled with an earthquake-pant,
Till the stone, radiant with angelic touch,
Roll'd from His sepulchre; and, rising up
In perfect majesty of might, behold
The Saviour gather'd to a God again,
Martyr at once, and Master of the tomb!

But, gentle was He! with all grace of man
Completely, as with charms of Godhead crown'd;
For He who came, by Love eterne inspired,
From heights celestial, with a pitying stoop
The low horizon of our world to meet,
Not in the costume of corporeal flesh
Alone was found; but, Fellowship with man
The life of Jesus bodied forth, and breathed;
The accent of created love He caught;
The sunshine of created joy He shared;
The sorrow of terrestrial sighs He heaved;
And with the tenderness of mortal tears
Moisten'd his eyelids, when a sister wept.
His form was human, and His feelings, too!
Thus, Manhood there in archetype may see
Each moral beauty which a life presents
When holy; where affections crowd the scene,
And heart and home a mingled Eden make,
While virtue follows where the Saviour went
Through haunts of love, and bowers of social bloom.

And thus religion, like her Master, glides
With touching glory, or with tender grace
O'er duteous walks of Life's diurnal round.
For, while on wing celestial faith can waft
Up to the Throne a meditative soul,
Down to the actual with a graceful love,
Where plain Humanity in humble guise
The man develops, can Religion stoop,
And o'er it cast her consecrating smile.
So, from the gaze of public life retired
'Mong shades domestic, where Affection blooms,
And feeling all its happy foliage sheds,
A Hero now, whom death nor dungeon awed,
Serene and simple as a peasant lives.
No lofty, loveless, and disdainful looks
Around him here, severest judgment finds.
But, frank and free, with apostolic mien,
And full-toned manhood in its perfect type,—
A husband in the great Reformer hail,
Like Martin Luther and like nothing more!
No stern pretension, borne with saintly pomp,
Mere actor made him. In the walks of home
Lord of himself, His individual mind
Free from the fetters of o'ermastering fame
He kept: his life was freedom to the last,
Stamp'd in the mould simplicity admires.
The Man was never in his Name absorb'd,
Chain'd like a captive to his own renown.
Framed in the homeliness of cottage-worth,
A racy humour, and a rough disdain
For mock supremacies for mean effect,
For little greatness and for large pretence,
Were his: and he who held all Rome at bay
And bulwark'd nations by his brave appeals,
Looks he less lofty, to those hearts which love
The sterling and the true, when playful seen
In the mild sunshine of a married state?
There, could he sparkle round the social board,
As romp'd the infant on his rocking knee;
While the glad mother, sat with glowing face
And sunn'd her feelings in the father's smile.

Yes! beautiful, behind the scenes to gaze,
And there no mock attempt, whose aping pride
Would play the Hero in ascetic gloom,
To witness; but that solid worth of sense,
And healthful sanctity, whose fervid power
The christian fulness of o'erflowing heart
Betoken. Lofty in his bosom beat
The pulse of principle, and great design:
But not alone, or frowningly aloof,
A frigid, stern and adamantine Thing
Whose life in passionless contempt retires
From warm reality's most welcome hour,—
Not thus, the avenger of the Bible lived.
In faith a hero, but in heart a man,
With him the simple and the great combined,
And both together made a blended charm
Beyond the drama of affected life
To feel, though play'd with Art's consummate guile.