Scenes from Scripture with Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, add ye year to year, kill sacrifices. “Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be heaviness and sorrow. “And I will camp against thee round about, and lay siege against thee. “And thou shalt be brought down, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, as of one that hath a familiar spirit. “Thou shalt be visited by the Lord of Hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and with storm and tempest. “Stay yourselves and wonder, cry ye out, they stagger, but not with strong drink. “For the Lord hath poured upon you deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes, the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath He covered.”— Isaiah xxix, 1.

Woe to Ariel, woe to Ariel!
Swift shall come her agony,
Though the songs of Zion swell,
Though on Heaven is fixed the eye,

153

Though the daily Sacrifice
Flames to the insulted skies.

Round her walls shall spread a camp!
Yet no warrior's tread be there,
Like the lion's midnight ramp,
Echoing on the sleepless ear.
What are mortal spear and shield,
When Heaven's armies sweep the field?

Mine shall be the chariot-wheel,
Rolling on the harvest-storm;
Mine the crushing thunder-peal,
Mine the locust and the worm;
Famine to the land shall cling,
Plague its livid heart shall wring!

Then, thy rebel multitude
Misery's last dregs shall drain;
Then, thy soul shall be subdued
To the chain, the more than chain.

154

Who the fetter shall unbind,
When its links are in the mind?

Like a viewless, soundless stream,
Year on year shall linger by;
All thy waking, but a dream;
All thy life, a lethargy;
Till thy haughty voice is low,
Like a Spirit's voice of woe!

Memory shall rack thy brain,
With the glories past away;
Day, diversity of pain;
Night, alone a darker day!
Anguish shall her furrows plough
In thy pale and unhelmed brow.

What to Me is prayer or praise,
When the heart no more is given?
What to Me the Altar's blaze,
But the mockery of Heaven?

155

Vain the clouds of incense rise;
All is Heathen, in mine eyes.

Madness! shall the potter's clay
Proudly on the potter turn!
Shall the creature of a day,
Heaven's eternal wisdom spurn!
Shall the hypocrite's disguise,
Baffle Heaven's eternal eyes!

Then shall fail the Prophet's vision,
Then is filled thy cup of woe;
Thou, the Heathen's fierce derision!
Ruin's last and heaviest blow.
Drunken, but not drunk with wine,
All shall see the blow—divine.

Wake, ere waking be too late!
Till the wisdom of the wise
Shall but force thee to thy fate,
Lies be truth, and truth be lies;
Plunged in impotence of soul,
Faction, Frenzy, Death—the Whole!

Ariel, the Lion of God, the prophetic name of Jerusalem.