The Vision of Prophecy and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The destinies of the world controlled by the Spirit of God, and announced by Him to man directly, or through the Hebrew Prophets (I.)—First announcement of a Redeemer coeval with the Fall (II.)—Clearer revelations made in after-times to the same effect: this the crowning theme, or “spirit of prophecy” (III.-v.)—The fortunes of the Jewish people particularly foretold and verified (VI.-VIII.)—Those also of the descendants of Ishmael (IX.)—Prophecy fulfilled in the overthrow and degradation of ancient empires and cities: Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, and Egypt (X.-XII.)—In the succession of the four empires of the Old World (XIII.)—In the rise of the Antichristian power (XIV.)—Its calls to guilty nations, and threatenings of retribution (XV., XVI.)—The final triumph of a kingdom of righteousness and peace (XVII.)

I.

O'er earth's tumultuous changes
A Spirit rules, and moves the springs of Time;
High vaulted o'er the stars' aërial ranges
A temple towers, and from that height sublime
A voice oracular hath sounded clear;
Of old the wondering nations heard,

In hymns of hope, or chants of fear,
Heaven's challenge to the world's regard
Re-echoed from the Hebrew lyre,—
Majestic tones of seer and priest
Whose lips had trembled with baptismal fire.
That ancient music rings from age to age,
Its sacred virtue hath not ceased:
The prophets are not; but the Holy Page
Is through all time the mystic truth revealing,—
Thè Word is to the World appealing.

II.

Thou, Everlasting Spirit!
Who on the weltering deep didst move, and call
From emptiness this world which we inherit,
Hast watched its course, to order shaping all
The strange confusion of its winding way.
Thou didst forecast its horoscope,
And, in its earliest woes, allay
Its terror with a whispered hope.
When man unlinked the golden chain
By which the earth hung nearer Heaven,
And over Eden saw the glory wane,
Thy voice was heard from out the darkened skies:
A promise to the exile given,
A sudden glimpse of shadowy destinies;—

And Thou didst haste the glimmering hope to waken,
That he was not cast forth forsaken.

III.

Far down the thronging ages
The vision of a better time appears;
It slowly brightens out of dim presages,
And strikes a radiance through the mist of years.
With gladness then the faithful patriarchs saw
A heavenly Presence walk the earth;
In Syrian tents they watched with awe
The unfolding mystery of His birth.
Then Zion's consecrated height
Became an oracle; and there,
In smoking sacrifice, and gorgeous rite,
The great Redemption and its vast design
Were mirrored to the worshipper.
The fire of every altar in the shrine
Lit up His cross, and Sin's dark burden fell,
Through Him, from sorrowing Israel.

IV.

How clear the strains which sounded
From ravishing harps, touched with no earthly skill!
Though then the compass of their notes was bounded,
The unutterable burden lingers still.

Sweet from the holy mountaín, temple-crowned,
The Levite's hymn stole up the sky;
While murmurs of melodious sound,
From cymbal, pipe, and psaltery,
With burst of chanting voices, rung
Through pillared court and porch at even,—
Exulting chorals, such as David sung,
And psalms prophetic of a sinless reign;
Or measures with the cadence given
To rapt Isaiah's rich sonorous strain.
Hark! how the jubilant song swells ever clearer
As earth beholds its Saviour nearer.

V.

He was thy theme of glory,
O Prophecy! He fixed thine eye from far:
His was the name that faltered through thy story,—
His was thy Sceptre,—His thine Eastern Star!
With joy didst thou announce the heavenly Child
In Bethlehem born in lowly guise,
While the meek mother, undefiled,
Drooped over Him her pensive eyes;
Thou didst behold the sorrowing Man,—
Stand by Him in His watch of dread,
When angels stood apart; thine eye outran
The passage of His days, the first to see

The guiltless Sufferer bow His head,
And conquer death by dying on the tree.
Thou, the bright herald of Salvation,
Stood'st pointing to that dread Oblation.

VI.

By thy high sanctions guarded,
The father of the faithful held his hope;
Thy promise well his patient trust rewarded,
What time beneath Heaven's blue unclouded cope,
He stood alone, and in the starry skies,—
The silent, shining multitude
Of worlds,—he saw his destinies,
The countless children of his blood
That should arise, and call him blest.
Thy voice the Hebrew bondsman saved,
And cheered the weary tribes with hope of rest,
Through sultry desert-marches toiling slow,—
Over their tents thy shadow waved;
Thou didst in cloud and fire thy signal show
Before their armies, till, in Canaan's borders,
They settled in their peaceful orders.

VII.

Fair vision! but soon blighted,
When altars rose to Ashtaroth and Baal,

And then thy voice, the voice of Him they slighted,
Was heard in calm rebuke and piercing wail.
Lo! as it rose, their weakened tribes were driven
Before the foes they once had quelled;
Their lock of strength was shorn, and Heaven
The alliance of its stars withheld;
From king to king, from age to age,
A slow corroding influence spread;
And deeper grew thy voice of sad presage,
And darker hung thy thunder-freighted cloud,
Till o'er their bold defiant head
The storm of vengeance burst prolonged and loud;
Their cities fall, and forth their tribes are hurled,—
The homeless vagrants of the world.

VIII.

Far through the nations scattered,
Thy shadow tracks the wandering Hebrew still;
Each, like the fragment of a temple shattered
By levin-fire upon some lofty hill,
Carries upon his front the fated brand.
Behold him, as he walks apart,
A citizen of every land,—
A trafficker in every mart,
Yet severed in the crowd from each.
Their fatherland is his by birth,

He breathes the accents of their household-speech;
Yet from his features never fades the seal
That stamps the orphan-race of earth.
So through a lake a separate stream may steal,
And swiftly onwards to its outlet tend,
But never with its waters blend.

IX.

Thy power in desert places,
Where, by the palm, the Arab plants his lance,
Is felt; it filled them with their straggling races,
Lords of a poor but loved inheritance:
When Sarah's weeping handmaid cast her child
Beneath the sheltering shrub to die,
A voice, announcing fortunes wild
And strange, rung through the empty sky.
Twelve princes from the outcast sprung,
And trained their tribes to ruthless war.
Untameable as eagles, they have flung
From their free necks, each victor's iron chain,
And from behind their rocky bar,
To every summons hurled their proud disdain.
Above their tents, in the brown deserts lying,
Thy voice, O Prophecy! is crying.

X.

On many a mound of ruin
Thy dark-stoled phantom sits, and ever sings
Of guilty glory, and its sure undoing.
Speak, ye who opened Nineveh's Hall of Kings!—
Ye who have passed by Nimroud's mound!
For ye have seen her: ye can tell
How on you, as ye looked around,
The mystery of her presence fell.
Long hath that shadow lingered there;
Upon that night of fear and blood,
When old Euphrates saw his channels bare,
Thou, awful Presence! didst the Persian guide,
Up the moist hollows of the flood,
And blow the threatening trumpet at his side;
A heathen prince fulfilled thy high decree,
And set the captive people free.

XI.

Where Tyre once saw the splendour
Of marble structures mirrored in her bay,
And snow-white temples in the sunshine render
More dazzling radiance to the light of day,
Thy hand is pointing to her broken piles,
Thy voice is wailing in the surge.

When Macedon's far-glittering files
Begirt her ramparts, thou didst urge
Their captain to his dread commission;
He, chosen instrument of God,
Struck higher than the mark of his ambition;—
She falls, revives, decays, till wasting years
Have blown her very dust abroad.
The unconscious fisher on her shell-grown piers
Spreads out his nets; and, from afar beholding,
Men mark thy roll of woes unfolding.

XII.

What memories round thee cluster,
O Egypt! from the vague unfeatured past:
From thy dark temples Science poured its lustre,
Art round thy brow its mystic aureole cast.
Eldest of kingdoms, and the proudest long,
Alas, how sunken art thou now!
Judgment on thee hath laid her strong,
Her iron hand, and brought thee low.
The ancient doom still works in thee,
Fore-uttered in thy day of fame,
“Basest of kingdoms, Egypt, thou shalt be!”
A race of slaves has stolen to Pharaoh's throne,—
Thou art not dead, but living shame
Is worse than death. We sadly look upon

Thy shrivelled features, and thy Pyramids hoary
Are head-stones of a grave of glory.

XIII.

While the crowned Chaldean slumbered,
Thou didst undrape to him thy fateful glass,
Prophetic Spirit! there distinctly numbered,
He saw four sceptred phantoms slowly pass.
No Daniel need come mantled from the dead
To expound the vision now to men,
In Time's fulfilling light we read
The destinies so darkened then.
Four empires in their lust of power
Oppressed the world: the mystic stone,
Hewn from the mountain, smote them in their hour
Of towering pride, and laid their glory low.
From the vast wreck a nobler throne
Emerges; fair beyond all earthly show,
A kingdom rises on its broad foundations,
Whose law of love subdues the nations.

XIV.

Priest of a faith apostate,
A mitred sovereign sits in Cæsar's chair;
He long hath worn the purple, long hath boasted
That favouring Heaven hath crowned, and kept him there;

With saintly blood his scarlet vestments shine;
He holds a sorcerer's cup, and deep
The nations of the enchanted wine
Have drunk, and sunken into sleep.
The souls beneath the altar cry
For vengeance, and the saints oppressed
On earth to the incessant call reply.
Even now impends thy doom, proud Babylon!
Thy vassal kingdoms of the West
Shall rise in wrath, and hurl thee from thy throne.
Soon shall the sceptre of thy state be shivered,—
And Conscience from thy yoke delivered.

XV.

In accents wild and mournful,
Thy voice entreats a fallen world to rise,
O Prophecy! Infatuate and scornful,
It recks not of its awful destinies;
The oppressor under thine uplifted rod
Still waves his reddening scourge of guilt,
Still murmurs in the ear of God
The cry of blood by brothers spilt;
The trampled nations writhe in woe;
With giant stride, Vice walks the earth,
And Evil spreads in darker, deadlier flow,
A deluge more appalling than of old;

And Pleasure revels loud, and Mirth
Entwines her rose-wreath; Avarice, for gold,
Leads forth her pilgrims over seas and mountains,
And Gain still thirsts for fresher fountains.

XVI.

With lurid splendour glowing,
Thy ciphers stand on the world's girdling wall,
But no Belshazzar on the sign is throwing
A fearful eye, or lets the wine cup fall;
Unheeded are the few interpreters
Who, lifting faithful voices loud,
Expound the cryptic characters,
Amid the riot of the crowd;—
But, O ye kings! in time be wise!—
Ye nations! hear the dread command,—
Awake from sensual slumber, ere the skies
Are cloven, and the strong all-shattering blast
Proclaims the reckoning at hand,
And the long day of visitation past.
Unmoved ye hear the summons to repentance,—
Unpitied must ye bide the sentence.

XVII.

Even now thy latest vision,
Thy loveliest, brightens through the mist of Time.

The day-spring breaks,—a purple light Elysian
Through the clear ether gladdens every clime,
The desert laughs with more than Eden's bloom;
The curse is lifted from the world,
War frowns no more in the thunder-gloom,—
Its trump is still,—its banner furled.
Peace girds the white-robed family
Of nations, with her golden zone;
And hark! unnumbered voices, swelling high
And loud, as surges breaking on the shore,
Stream up in adoration to the throne,
Whereon the crownèd Christ sits evermore.
Time's mystery is sealed; the Church is blest,
Creation enters into rest.