The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

So weak and yet so wonderful; so frail
In act, and yet so splendidly endow'd
For action, are the race of Men abhorr'd,
That, view them in whatever rank they move,
Through fields of Glory which the warrior treads,
Or in proud realms of wisdom, fame, or power,
An awful distance from their primal State
Th' Inheritors of our scorn'd heaven have stray'd!
No longer now the bright and palmy Sons
Of God, but giants of iniquity,
Or Anakims of intellectual vice,
And helmeted with sin, the rebels stand,
Who fight against the Lord of life and death,
And make their crimes immortal as themselves!

That primal State!—had evil not prevail'd,
A heaven in miniature this world had been.
Her paradise! I see it as it rose
In youthful splendour on my savage eye!
A starry jubilee still rang; the wings
Angelical of many a hovering Shape
Still hung and glitter'd on the virgin air,
Which seem'd one atmosphere of melody!
As yet, no cloud was born; the sunshine fed
The flowers with beauty, till the twilight dew;
Birds exquisite, with dazzling plumage clad,
And butterflies, bright creatures, rich as they,
Like showers of blossoms from a tree upwhirl'd,
On starry wing hung trembling in the breeze,
More glorious yet!—from Eden's mount I gazed,
The emerald bloom of whose untrodden hills
Lay jewell'd o'er with amaranthine flowers,
And saw two Creatures of celestial mould.
Till these were made, companionless the World
Appear'd; and like a heart suspended lay,
All throbbing for the Vision that should dawn!
And they were fashion'd,—breathing shapes of life,
With radiant limbs, whose robes were innocence,
And eyes that spoke the birth-place of the Soul!
Again the star-chimed Hallelujahs rang
With wonder! while a gush of rapture thrill'd
Creation to her centre, till each breeze
Was gladness murmur'd out of Nature's heart!

And thus they rose,—that new-created Pair,
In loveliness complete, with forms of light,
Reflecting glory wheresoe'er they moved.
The one did mark the blue immensity
Above, with a majestic gaze, and eyed
The Sun, as though he felt himself akin
To his pre-eminence, and kingly state:
The other, in her fair perfection seem'd
A Shape apparell'd by her own pure smiles,—
Surpassing beauty, and subduing love!
While ever as she moved, the blush of flowers
O'erveil'd her, and a breezy host of sounds,
Like magic birds, embosom'd in the air
In sweet attendance caroll'd round her path:
Never hath young romance, or shaping dream,
Divined the vision which in Eden lay,—
Each sound was music, and each sight a heaven!

Oh! it was glory, that with blighting rays
Flash'd in fell triumph on these envious eyes,
Thus to behold the darlings bright of heaven,
Created, form'd to fill our Seats above!
Obedient, and they vanquish'd me; my doom
Of darkness would have set, without one gleam
Of vengeance for the living pangs I feel.
I plotted,—tempted,—and the earth-born sunk
From heaven's embrace into the arms of hell,
Henceforward to enclasp a world of souls!
Then, what a withering the Elements
Of life and being felt!—corruption pass'd
Through human into natural Things: the Earth
Was barren-struck; the guilt-abhorring Sun
His beams withdrew; the rivers howl'd with dread,
And deep the blast of desolation blew:
A curse came down, and Eden was no more!

And now, from his primeval state dethroned,
His very form o'ershadow'd by the sin
That, like a breath-stain on a mirror cast,
The beauty of his god-like mien eclipsed—
I look'd on Man, a remnant of despair,
But gloried as I gazed!—for then, the tongue,
That tameless member which o'ermastereth all,
E'en in an atmosphere of God himself
That grand deceit of erring souls began,—
Where guilt is flatter'd, and the heart secure!

Creation shudder'd! for mankind were lost,
Till God the seal of mystery should break
In him foredoom'd to bruise the Serpent's head,
And re-awake the hymns of Paradise.
Meanwhile, the Evil triumph'd o'er the Good:
And, exiled from their Eden-home, begirt
And guarded with an ever-living flame,
Two fallen Creatures on the race of life
In sorrowing loneliness appear'd. Time lash'd
His years along; but evil with them moved,

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Till Death in fratricidal fury came!—
How Life hung shudd'ring o'er his glazing eye
When pale, and dash'd with many a bloody hue,
The prostrate Abel in the gasp of death
Lay stretch'd; while Cain, a maniac child of Hell
With lines of anguish working on his face,
Stood by, and knew himself th' embodied Curse!

Crime revell'd on, the peopled earth sank deep
In ruin, till the great Avenger woke;
Then came a Flood, a desolating tide,
Which deluged sixteen hundred years of sin!
Methinks I hear it now! so fiercely howl'd
The waves and whirlwinds of that dreadful hour.—
Dark prodigies, disasters in the sky,
Announced it; yet these heralds were contemn'd:
Still Blasphemy went hooting at the heavens,
And mock'd the Elements with impious joy.
The sun went down in sorrow; and the moon
Rose pale and icy, as an orb congeal'd;
While, ever and anon, there came a sigh
Of Air, so spiritually deep and sad,
It seem'd to issue from an Angel-heart
That ached to look upon a dying World,
Unconscious of her coming pangs:—thus Hell
Prevail'd, save o'er the sacred few. And one
The wicked counsell'd, glorious, and as good;
A hoary Patriarch, who would haunt the shore,
And hear a prophet speaking in the wind,
And prescient terror in the sound of waves,
Like mystery, mutter'd into Nature's ear;
Then darkly muse on some high-gazing rock,
And shape out Immortality!—But when
The skies were blacken'd to a cloudy sea,
Whose rage came down in cataracts, Despair!
The racking universe was all thine own.

And never were such horrid shadows frown'd
Upon the Waters, as thy victims threw,
When all aghast, in their avenging ire
They heard them ravenously sweep along,
As roaring for their human prey! Such sounds
Of wo, such shrieks of madness never rang,
Such eyes were never to a God upturn'd,
As mark'd this dread, unutterable hour!
A palpitation in the womb of Earth
Began, then upward burst a buried sea,
That whirl'd the mountains on her waves, and heaved
The rocks, and shook the rooted hills abroad,
Till darkness and a deluge cover'd All!—
Save that which in the wilderness of waves
Triumphant o'er a weltering chaos rode,
And bore aloft the burden of the world!

Yes! these were dread catastrophes of old,
Loading with awfulness the tongue of Time;
Unparagon'd as yet: but 'tis decreed,
Another Day of unimagined doom
Shall come, a deluge of devouring fire
That now is redd'ning in the cavern-depths
Which eye hath pierced not, ravenous for the hour
When Earth shall wither into shapeless air!
And I,—no matter! mortal years remain,
And souls for ruin, ere my sun can set!

So fierce the sway of evil, and the power
Of will, o'er reason and religion's voice,
That though a thousand deluges had been,
Still the vile earth my sceptre should command.
The teeming volume of the Past unroll,
And from each page what lesson may be cull'd?
A moral justice sways the course of Things,
Guiding them on to their eternal goal.
From evil, evil, and from good, a good
Is born, each one a payment in itself,
Its own avenger, or its own reward.
I thank thee, Passion! blinded by desire
Thou seest it not through every track which years
Have furrow'd on the travell'd sea of Time.
By tears of torture, wrung from out the soul
Of penitence; by arrows of remorse;
The inward hell in guilty bosoms found;
By retributions in the wrathful shape
Of elements, and dangers wing'd by death;
By frenzied Glory, that will venture on
Till dash'd to ruin by her own renown;
By each and all of such avengers Crime
Hath paid atonement to the Law of Life,
And agonised o'er that which is to come.

E'en Nature, in her elemental round
Of living wonders, a re-action shows,
In semblance to the moral law reveal'd
By human destinies. The poise of worlds
Which make infinity a beauteous thought;
The Ocean, panting as the tide-queen wills,
In ebb and flow of everlasting waves;
And that communion of the earth and sky
By heat exhaling water into clouds,
And clouds returning in the showery rain—
All teach a balance of prevailing power.
But thou, Reviver of departed days!
By whom, as beacon-light for time unborn
The past might well have risen, hast forgot
The law of retribution in thy love
Of fame, and adoration to the dead.

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A War awakes!—what poetry is here
For History to picture into life
And splendour, making infamy sublime!
The armies rally,—vast machines of Mind
Half demonised, with one concent'ring heart
To animate and harmonise the whole;
The clarions ring, the banners chafe the breeze,
Earth trembles to the haughty-footed steeds,
And cannons thunder till the clouds are thrill'd!
Then comes your “Hero” sprinkled with a shower
Of blood,—how gloriously sublime he seems!
Yet Kingdoms mourn, and trodden myriads lie
All dead, and stiff'ning in the moonless air.

But, should re-action for heroic crime,
Or lavish conquest, smite a tyrant soul,
A human vengeance not a Hand Supreme,
Is traced; and retribution reason'd down,
As though life circled on the wheels of Chance!
Thus, when a Despot, weary of renown,
In sorrow to a throneless gloom descends,
How History flutters round his agonies!
And so the living, who the dead recall,
Are written into sympathy with shame;
While they, whose words are wisdom to the pure,
Rise dimly vision'd on th' historic page,
Where infamy in glowing language lives.

Thus may it ever be! let ages gone,
Whence monuments, by sad experience piled,
Might o'er unheedful days a warning frown,
Like buried lumber in oblivion sleep;
Experience is the sternest foe of hell.
And though progression be the native soul
Of all things, human or divine, while Pride
Can hear no prophets breathing through the past,
Progression will be lame, and Nature slow
In her advancement to that heaven-like scene,
Prophetic rapture in its vision hail'd;
While frequently, an earthquake-shock will come,
Forcing the world a century back again
In vice and darkness, sucn as once o'erthrew
The Roman empire and her subject-isles.

Upon the forehead of these fearless times
I know the haughtiness which now exults:
But let the modern in his pride beware!
Corruption is the strongest in the best,
And knowledge wasted, worse than ignorance proved.
A moral, not an intellectual life
Alone, however rich with mental bloom,
God's Image in the human soul reveals:
And so taught He, that co-eternal One
On high, when leaving his Elysian throne,
He templed his bright Nature in the dust
Of dim Mortality, and unbarr'd heaven
Whose gates of glory now expanded shine.
Philosophy, benighted in the gloom
Of Pagan wisdom, fondly charming oft
The shade and silence of Athenian groves,
How failing in her eagle flights!—To clear
The clouded intellect was her prime aim:
The heart, that fountain-source of sacred life,
Rank'd second in the mental scheme for Man;
And thus, her wisdom in a weedy soil
Was sown; and perish'd in its mortal thirst
For feelings, which refresh the growing mind
As spring-dews foster the awaking flowers.

But Christianity, the child of Truth,
With searching light the inward nature clear'd,
And by a conscience, rooted in the soul,
And fears, from which unfading hopes are born,
And faculties of faith, which all possess,
Awoke the mind to wisdom, pure as heaven.
Spirit of Vengeance! would that I could hide
One living God, surpassingly supreme,
Parent of mighty worlds, pervading each,
The First and Last, Immortal, and the True;
The Son of his Eternity, from Heaven
Sent down, embodied in a human mould;
The Same upon the cross hung crucified,
Incarnadined with His redeeming blood
For fallen nature flowing, till the Earth
As in an agony did rock and heave,
While bowing angels worshipp'd in amaze,
And hell grew darker with despair!—a Life
Unending, shared by an existent soul;
A Resurrection, when the dead shall wake;
And, crowning all, the doomsday of the world;
When every eye must see Him in the clouds,
And time be swallow'd in eternity,—
Would that all this infernal hate could hide,
Which Devils own, and tremble to believe!

But thanks to man, man's most inveterate foe,
How oft, perverted, hath Religion proved
That curse she came to cancel and destroy!
By Bigotry, insatiate for the blood
Of martyrs; by the shadows and the clouds
That dream-eyed Innovation form'd and fed,—
The clash of Evil with the growth of Good
Hath half repaid me for the realm I lost,
When dawn'd salvation on the sinking world.

And now there is an animating throb,
An energy, and daringness of thought,
Awaken'd like one mighty pulse through lands
And isles, remotely set in ocean-gloom.

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But if the Heart uncultivated lie
Amid the reign of intellectual power,—
Though, basking in the sunshine of her hope,
Philosophy of perfect minds may dream,
She builds a vision, baseless, proud, and vain,
As ever revell'd on the eye of sleep!
For o'er the heart a vicious mind shall rule,
And poison each aspiring germ of thought,
Till Talent prove but wickedness inspired,
In baneful glory towering o'er mankind:
So be it!—Hell shall blaze a bright applause.

No, not till spirit over sense prevail,
And mortals to the awfulness of life
Advance, shall Earth a brighter visage wear.
And such, methinks, Creation might reveal.—
A Sea, for ever sounding with his voice
Of billows, “Might and majesty are here,
And in eternity my waves have roll'd;”
And Sky of living glory, when the storm
Lies back with fury on a sea of clouds,
Or, arch'd in beauty, shadowless and blue:
With all the wonders, swarming on each spot
Of being—hint they not an awful shade
Of Mystery unreveal'd, yet claiming thoughts
Of solemn hue? And then, while hours depart,
(Myriads of spirits passing to and fro
From life and light, to darkness and the grave,
While feelings, words, and deeds, whatever mind
Betray of good or bad in ceaseless pulse
Of action, register'd above, remains
For judgment,)—bear they not, as on they roll,
A burden, and a meaning most sublime?
Yet who, in nature or in time, reveres
A sense and shadow of diviner Things?

A spectacle to angels and to God
Is Man, while acting on the stage of time,—
Such truth the soul of inspiration breathed:
And what a meaning centred in the thought!
Around, above, beneath, where'er man lives
And moves, unvision'd Natures overhang
His path, and chronicle his history.
But o'er this pomp external, and the life
Of sense, such beautifying veils I throw,
That men become idolaters to sight,
Naming all else the nothingness of dreams:
A wisdom worthy an infernal crown!
Why, if a bead of water in its orb
Of motion hath contain'd a countless host
Of beings, limb'd, and full of perfect life;
If not a leaf which flutters on the tree,
But is empeopled with an insect swarm;
If not a flower by fairy sunrise charm'd,
But in the palace of its dew-drop dwell
Unnumber'd beings, that in gladness live;
Then why not, O ye self-adoring wise,
A world of spirit-natures, though unseen,
In number rivalling what creation yields?
And vacancy, that hueless void of air
Which men unanimated space define,
Be pregnant with aerial Shapes of life?

Yet better is such blindness for the cause
Of Evil; would it might eclipse the race
Entire, of all who have a soul to save!
For some can dare the prison'd mind unbar,
And view Reality behind the veil
Which mantles their mortality. And such
The pale enchantment of a moonlight-hour,
When the soft skies are fleck'd with silky clouds,
In veils of beauty floating on the breath
Of heaven, and stars in pensive light appear
The bright mementos of eternity,—
For high communion with celestial Things
Employ: such spirits never in their clay
Are dungeon'd; but in demi-paradise
Do wander, reaping holiness and love.—
And Guilt too hath her hour, when Spectres come
Array'd in fury, till the air grow dark
With demon-wings, and terror shrieks my name!

But this deep sense of something Unavow'd
Pervading nature, which the purer mind
May in some beauteous trance of holy thought
Perceive, and which the ghastliness of guilt
Oft tortures into life,—o'er few prevails:
In vain have heaven-taught Seers a coming World
Foreshadow'd: visions of unearthly blaze,
And princely Seraphs over empires throned,
And Dreams which were the delegates of God,—
Of such vast wonders deep-voiced Prophets tell.
And now, in riper days, when men have crown'd
Themselves with false perfection, not an hour
But hints a spirit-nature to the soul,
Howe'er unhallow'd! Whence that prescient sense
Of peril doom'd to come? those guiding thoughts
Which helm the fancy with mysterious sway?
The heaven of feeling when a God descends?
Or mystic sorrow, which melodious strains
Wherein the spirits of the dead revive
And home and childhood have a pictured life,

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Oft o'er the heart of lone Bereavement brings?
Or, all which sound and scenery suggest
Of purity and grace?—The scoffer doubts!
And by that sneer his inner-light destroys.
Yet Angels are there, watching o'er mankind
With tenderness and eyes of heavenly love.
The same who, when the World-awakening trump
Is sounded, shall the buried dead untomb
For Judgment, and its awful throne sustain.

These Agencies divine, howe'er men veil
Their viewless presence mid the thrilling cares
Below, are often in their glorious range
Of wisdom, by the plotting Evil-powers
Encounter'd, with defiance and despair!
Visions of sunshine and of music made,
Where the bright soul, entranced with melody,
Communes with Seraph-watchers, are of heaven.
But whence that fancy-roll of billows, heard
In darkness, deluging the wilder'd brain
With hideous murmur? or those formless Things
Which hang and blacken o'er the shudd'ring frame?
Or whence that tongueless blasphemy of mind
Making the heart to shiver, and the eye
To gaze behind, as though a prompting Shape
Of Evil stood there, muttering hell-framed words?
The fire, the fury of appalling dreams,
Whence is it?—rend the veil, and ye would know
Proud victims of an unbelieving heart!
That such are demon-haunters of the earth,
Who horrify the vision'd world of sleep,
And pall its midnight with infernal gloom.

Who wonders, the dark Mysteries of life
And hidden Beings of unearthly power
Are smiled away for superstitious creed,
When He, the Ransomer of lost mankind,
Whose Name a starry herald to the sage
Reveal'd, and at Whose birth the heavens were bowed,
To millions less than many a Hero seems,—
A Myth incarnate priests and fools adore!

A Saviour, Son of the Most High, enthroned
Amid the hallelujahs of the blest,
I saw Him ere the universe began;
When space was worldless, luminously fill'd
With emanations of vast Deity;
I saw Him when immensity His voice
Obey'd, and nothing startled into worlds.
And did I not, be witness, Powers below!
Bear on my brow the lightnings which He wreak'd,
Because I would not to His Godhead bend?
Without Him, and this withered Earth had sunk
To hell, for ever blasted by that word
Of vengeance, which her frowning Maker spoke,
Who cannot His eternal nature change:
Immutable in majesty, in truth,
Or else His Infinite would finite be;
And therefore, by His attributes, the Law
When broken, should to violated heaven
Atonement offer;—where the Sacrifice?
Till God for God, and Man for Man, appear'd
In wondrous union of incarnate power,
Hung on the cross, and saved the guilty world!

I hate Him, and his everlasting cause,
The Church, upon the rock of ages rear'd,
His word, His truth, and heaven-directing sway;
And soul by soul, and heart by heart, through light
And gloom, by land and isle, through life and death,
'Mid all the legions of embattled Powers
Who on His Ministry attend, and war
For holiness—my hate shall dare Him still;
Though Truth may vanquish, and the viewless thrones
Of Darkness tremble with their last despair!

Too deep the vengeance of atoning Blood
On me shall come, for Him to be forgot!
I hate Him, for the ruin'd world he saved:
And yet His glorious pilgrimage confess.
Sublime of Martyrs! in that dread career
What wonders hallow His remember'd way!
The blind awaken'd to the bliss of light,
The deaf and lame, the dying and the dead,
All yielding up infirmity to Him,
And putting on young attributes of life.
Vain mortals, read and tremble! Once the Sea,
That god and glory of the Elements,
Obey'd His fiat, when a tempest rose,
Till the huge waves like living mountains leapt
In the wild majesty of midnight-storm,
Mocking the haggard lightnings as they streak'd
The waters, in the fury of their flash.
Each billow was a tempest; and the ship

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Groan'd like a mariner at his last gasp;
Up rose He in almightiness! and bade
The whirlwinds into silence, and rebuked
The Ocean, calm'd by His resistless Eye!

And then, His Passion!—that tremendous scene
When God incarnate for the guilty bled,
While throbbing earth seem'd echo'd with His pangs
Almighty, and eclipsing horrors veil'd
The sun, which darken'd while its Maker died;
Or else, the midnight over Calv'ry's mount
Incumbent, coward fancy should have seen!
Have heard the cloven rock-piles as they burst,
The tombs unlock, and mark'd the solemn dead
In pallid stillness gliding through the town
As moon-clouds gleam along a midnight sky!

This grand array of miracles, this might
And majesty of preternatural things
Reveal'd in mercy, to arouse the world
To perfect sanctities of word and deed,
Have,—hear it, Demons! with exulting shout,
Fail'd! Long may Nature turn a slighting ear
To that true voice, which since Messiah bled,
By lips Divine and eloquence of life,
When, holiness the Christian heart inspires,
Hath testified that Virtue is the heaven
Begun, and vice the seed of Hell in man.

Delusion is the soul of young desire.
Behold a Vessel which has never braved
A sea: before her gallant bosom swells
A blue extent of ever-bounding waves,
All sunny-crested, glowing like the noon.
No stormy menace in the welkin frowns,
Sea, shore, and sky are in one mingled calm;
Loud, deep, and full the voice of welcome rings,
Away she flies in glory o'er the deep
Exulting in the wind!—And such is Youth,
So bright the promise of life's onward way;
Beneath the sunshine of fond hope awhile
The victim basks; drinks deep of every cup
Enchanted, feasts the faculty of sense,
And hails each hour the herald of new joy;
Thus on! as though unfading bliss were found,
Till weariness awake; the wing of joy
No longer o'er his soul a freshness waves,
And like the moody air he often breathes
A sigh of sullenness around his path.
And now, the verdure of delight no more,
The heart uneasy, and the soul unsaved,
With that dark fever of condemning thought,
Which conscience frets from out the sated mind,
As here the brute, and there the man, prevails,—
Behold your slave of pleasure rot from year
To year; obeying sin, yet feeling guilt;
His present, darkness, and his past, despair!

Of finer mould and far sublimer view,
Whate'er his lot, on Fortune's envied mount
High-throned, or lost in the secluded vales
Of lowliness,—is he whose hopes are built
In heaven; the hateful, but triumphant still!
Not all the pomp and pageantry of worlds
Such glory on the Eye Supreme reflect,
As the meek virtues of one holy man:
For ever doth his Angel from the face
Divine, beatitude and wisdom draw:
And in his prayer, what privilege enjoy'd!
Mounting the heavens, and claiming audience there,—
Yes! there, amid the sempiternal host
Of Seraphs, hymning in eternal choir,
A lip of clay its orisons can send,
In temple or in solitude outbreathed.

I loathe the bright, the beautiful, and good,
By man when mirror'd forth sublimely fair;
Yet how, the hero of the Cross deny
What Hell may hate,—but hating, still admire?
One universal love, the source and end
Of true philosophy, within such heart
Must dwell, and make the atmosphere of mind
All sympathy, wherein a good man breathes:—
A tear for sorrow, and a smile for joy,
Are ever his; and thus existence spans
A wider realm than the self-loving fill,
Who crawl about their own mean world. Not man
Alone, the empire of his heart contains
In its free compass of embracing thought;
E'en gentle nature wins a share of love;
From the frail being of a lonely flower
By earth forgot, in beautiful ascent
Up to the very clouds, which in the shine
Of heaven seem bathing with voluptuous joy,
And here I face the triumph of a soul
In such fine overflow of sympathy,—
However spread, 'tis unpolluted still:
As sunshine in its beaming intercourse
With earth, shines pure upon corrupted clay.

Then, Virtue hath a loveliness, a calm
So fresh and full, a blessing and a hope,
With such elysium of contented thought,—
Rejoice I may, but ever wonder more
To see her so forsaken. Her delights
Endure as rich above the hectic joys
The wicked and the worldly reap, as hues
Of nature on the rose-bright cheek of youth
Outbloom the artificial blush of age,
And blossom in the wintry gloom of life

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Unfadingly sincere.—Another source
Of heaven, there opens on the virtuous mind,
Which daunts me with a deep excess of good,—
Pure sympathy, which makes the Past its own
By following where the great and glorious dead
Traced the true path which terminates in God.
Art, Love, and Wisdom, Nature and her scenes.
Each from association prompting force derives.
When in the coolness of declining day
As o'er autumnal woods brown evening falls,
In haunts where solitude hath breathed a soul,—
By Thought companion'd, oft the wanderer feels
Such sympathy, the while of good and great
He thinks, who loved like him the lonely hour,
Still walks, and dreams, and meditative joy.
And that prime bliss, perfection of delight,
Which is to ear what beauty is to thought,
Sweet melody,—methinks 'tis only framed
To nourish heavenliness, in hallow'd minds;
There, how refreshingly must music flow,
And faint into the soul,—as dewy sleep
Melts o'er the eyelids of a weary man.

These holy yet another triumph crowns.
In woes which blacken o'er the brightest lot
How loftily above the bad they tower!
While those whom faith, nor resignation calms
Become a ruin, haunted by despair;
Save, when gay thoughts from gloomy moments spring,
As bright-leaved flowers that in the sunshine bloom,
From the chill damp of earth and darkness sprung.

And such the life which virtue seems to boast;
With gladness lighted, or by sorrow dimm'd,
Still wearing a contented smile, to meet
The great Approver: like a placid stream
That in its meadowy pilgrimage can wear
The aspect of a pure and gentle thing
Alike where sun-beams laugh, or shadows frown.—
And when the summons to a future State
Is heard, those hell-black phantoms of despair,
Those clouds of horror which the wicked dread,
Melt in the brightness of a better world:
Thus, arm'd with faith in Him who vanquish'd death,
A gentle summons from their Lord to meet
The angels bright and beatific souls
Who erst have battled in the war of life,—
Death comes, and wafts them to the waiting Skies.

And such is truth!—in heaven and hell the same.
And Hate herself in agony avows,
That Virtue is triumphant, and the best:
Her glories are my tortures; but they shine
Upon me, blasting with victorious light
The envy which I bear them, when I scan
The mazes of mortality.—How kind
In men, to aid the darkness which I bring
On fallen nature! lauding what I love,
And hating all which Fiends abhor. Thus vice
In splendour will appear, while virtue droops,
Like a long shadow pining in the sun.
And never shall the good the bad exceed,
While Sin can put enchantment in her smile,
And Passions are the tyrants of the soul!

Thou dread Avenger! ever-living One!
Lone Arbiter! Eternal, Vast, and True;
The Soul and Centre of created things,
In atoms or in worlds; before Whose Throne
The universe recoils; who look'st—and life
Appears; who frown'st—and life hath pass'd away!
Thou God!—I feel Thine everlasting curse,
Yet wither not: the lightnings of Thy wrath
Burn in my spirit, yet it shall endure
Unblasted, that which cannot be extinct!

Thou sole Transcendency, and deep Abyss
From whence the Infinite of Life was drawn!
Unutter'd is Thy nature; to Thyself
Alone the comprehended God Thou art.
Though once the steep of Thine almightiness
My tow'ring spirit would have dared to climb
And reign'd beside Thee, god with God enthroned,
And vanquish'd fell, Thy glories Fiends confess.
Immutable! omnipotence is Thine;
Perfections, Powers, and Attributes unnamed,
Attend Thee; Thou art All, and oh, how great
That Consummation! Worlds to listening worlds
Repeat it; angels and archangels veil
Their wings, and shine more glorious at the sound:
Thus, infinite and fathomless Thou wert,
And art, and wilt be. In Thine awful blaze
Of majesty, amid empyreal pomp
Chief Hierarch, I once irradiant knelt
Thy Throne before, terrifically bright,
And heard the hymning thunders voice thy name,
While bow'd the Heavens, and echoed Deity!

356

Then heaved a dark and dreadless swell of pride
Within me! an ambition, huge and high
Enough to overshadow the Supreme,
In bright magnificence before me tower'd,
And fronted pride against Omnipotence!
Thus rose the anarchy of mystic war
The skies amid; then met embattled Hosts
In unimaginable arms divine:—
But why recount it? Spirits disarray'd
God hurl'd in flaming whirlwinds to the deep
Tartarean, where the Demons wait their doom.

And yet, divided empire have I won.
Behold! the havoc in Thy beauteous world:
And have I not, be witness, space and time!
Thy master-piece, creation's god of clay,
Dethroned from that high excellence he held
When first man walk'd a shadow of Thyself!
Prostration vile, an alienate from Thee
Man is;—and shall his fallen nature rise,
Enter bright heaven, and fill ethereal thrones?
Many a cloud of evil shall be burst
Ere that day come: severe and dread the strife
Of earth-born passion with the soul of man!
Wherever localised, whate'er his creed,
Fiends of temptation shall his soul beset,
Though every pang, by sin produced, increase
The agonised eternity I bear!
The blackest midnight to the brightest day
Is not more opposite, than I to Thee:
Thou art the Glorious, I the Evil one;
Thou reign'st above; my kingdom is below;
On earth, 'tis Thine to succour and adorn
The soul, through sacraments of secret grace,
By thoughts divine, and agencies direct;
To cheer the gentle, and reward the good,
And o'er the many waves and woes of life
To pour the sunshine of almighty love:
'Tis mine to darken, wither, and destroy,
And in destruction see the heaven of hell!

Then roll thee on, thou high and haughty World!
Still be thy sun as bright, thy sea as loud
In her sublimity, thy floods and winds
As potent, and thy lording Elements
As vast in their mysterious range of power,
As each and all have ever been: build thrones
And empires, heap the mountain of thy crimes,
Be mean or mighty, wise or worthless still,—
Yet I am with thee! and my power shall reign
Until the trumpet of thy doom be heard,
Thine ocean vanish'd, and thy heavens no more!
Till Thou be tenantless, a welt'ring mass
Of fire, a dying and dissolving World!
And then, Thy hidden lightnings are unsheath'd,
O God! the thunders of despair shall roll;
Mine hour is come, and I am wreck'd of all—
All save eternity, and that is mine!