 | The Legend of Genevieve |  |
FUTURE PROSPECTS OF THE WORLD.
To mourn thy sorrows, an unending line?
Shall never Wisdom, in her robes of white,
Chase Ignorance afar, and Error's night?
Shall never War recline his leaden ear,
Nor spareless Phrenzy cast aside the spear?
Must it be thine, despairingly to weep
Bloodshed on shore, and Rapine on the deep?
While seasons hold their course, and heaves the main,
Shall Sin light Misery's watch-towers o'er her reign?
Can Mercy send no star of heavenly birth,
To cheer the aspect of this darken'd earth,
And, with a radiance gloriously sublime,
Illume the footsteps of departing Time?
And Man, with Fellow-man, embrace in peace?—
Or, doom d for ever to her scythed car,
Shall fire-eyed Vengeance wield the sword of War;
In ruin mock the lightning and the flood,
And drench her reeking blade in human blood;
Turn, smiling turn, from Life's expiring throe,
And scorn, in mockery wild, the plaint of woe?
And Hope presents to Man a brighter doom;
Far through the shadowy mist of years, I see,
Degraded world, thy glorious jubilee!
See from the fetter'd hands the shackles fall,
And Peace appear at Mercy's pleading call;
See Ignorance and Error take to flight,
And Abdera's new uprise to glad the sight;
“At Abdera, in Thrace, (Andromeda, one of the tragedies of Euripides being played,) the spectators were so much moved with the object, and those pathetical love speeches of Perseus, among the rest, O Cupid, prince of gods and men, &c. that every man, almost, a good while after, spoke pure iambics, and raved still on Perseus' speech, O Cupid, prince of gods and men. As carmen, boyes, and prentises, when a new song is published with us, go singing that new tune still in the streets; they continually acted that tragicall part of Perseus, and in every man's mouth was, O Cupid; in every street, O Cupid; in every house, almost, O Cupid, prince of gods and men.”— Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III. Sect 2.
Much has been said, and justly, concerning the exquisiteness of Sterne's genius; as to its disdain of plagiarism, the reader of the above passage may turn to “Sentimental Journey,” vol. I. Fragment commencing—“The town of Abdera, notwithstanding Democritus lived there;” and to Dr Ferriar's Illustrations, passim.
See Truth present the scene, by Fancy given,
And open'd to Mankind the gates of heaven;
While glorious on the view the prospects rise
Of cloudless Joy, and blooming Paradise!
Hung o'er her recollected charms, and burn'd,
Sorrow'd for frailties past, and fondly swore
To love her memory, and to err no more
Its errors past, to Virtue be restored;
And, as Repentance drops the bitter tears,
Mercy expunge the stains of other years!
The voice of strife is heard, and terrors reign;
Lo! Friendship gazes with prophetic eye,
And, hopeful, reads our future destiny!
To wither all its charms, the scene pervade;
Beneath a chilling breeze, a frowning sky,
Droop all the fragrant summer sweets, and die.
Yes! Sin her upas poison breathes around,
And sink her victims writhing to the ground;
Dark is the wilful destiny of man;
Nature laments her controverted plan:
And where, of yore, emblossom'd Eden smiled,
Peace is o'erthrown, and innocence exiled!
Exceeds in darkness Zembla's midnight sky,
'Mid yon dim cloudy bowers, from which the day
Melts off with baffled and impervient ray,
Have bound the rolling world through all its lands,
To lingering death her captive thousands thrust,
And bow'd the laurell'd conqueror to the dust;
As if in scorn corporeal forms to bind,
She wreathes her mystic fetters on the mind;
Degrades celestial Reason from her throne,
Chains Fancy's feet, and makes all sway her own:
'Twas she, amid Dahomey's groves of blood,
How incredible are the acts of atrocity to which the unbridled passions of man subject him! even Fancy must fail to communicate half the horrors which but too accurate history has supplied us with. Without adverting to the lamented Bowdich's Mission to Ashantee, and other voyages or travels, We refer, as more immediately connected with the text, to Dalzel's History of Dahomey, and the particulars contained therein.
That edged the brand, and loosed the purple flood;
'Twas she, 'mid Brama's wilds of awful gloom,
About the year 1798, twenty-eight Hindoos were reported to have been crushed to death at this very place, Ishera, under the wheels of Juggernaut, impelled by sympathetic religious phrenzy. The fact of their deaths was notorious, and was recorded in the Calcutta papers; but so little impression did it make on the public mind, and so little inquiry was made by individuals into the subject, that it became doubtful at last whether the men perished by accident, or, as usual, by self-devotement; for it was said, that to qualify the enormity of the deed in the view of the English, some of the Hindoos gave out that the men fell under the wheels by accident.—Dr Buchanan's Journal, p. 35, in Christian Researches in Asia.
“At Lahor,” says Bernier, “I saw a very handsome, and a very young woman burnt; I believe she was not above twelve years of age. This poor unhappy creature appeared rather dead than alive when she came near the pile; she shook and wept bitterly. Meanwhile, three or four of these executioners, the Bramins, together with an old hag that held her under the arm, thrust her on, and made her sit down upon the wood; and, lest she should run away, they tied her legs and hands; and so they burnt her alive. I had enough to do to contain myself for indignation.”
Under the delusion of what sophism, such a learned and enlightened man as Colonel Mark Wilks can come to defend such a practice, I know not, but behold it written in Historical Sketches of the South of India, vol. I. p. 499.
That gave the widow'd wretch a living tomb;
'Twas she that o'er the necks of erring love,
The wheels of Juggernaut triumphant drove;
'Twas she that sent the banner'd cross afar,
Whose mandate kindled Palestine to war,
That bow'd the crest of Turkey's haughty lord,
That drench'd in Moslem blood the Christian sword,
Innumerable are the anecdotes of enormity and atrocity ascribed to the Crusaders, by travellers and annalists, as if the misfortune of being Mahometans took from their enemies all title of being treated like men.
“The valour of Richard (Cœur de Lion) struck such terror into his enemies,” says Chateaubriand, “that long after his death, when a horse trembled without a visible cause, the Saracens were accustomed to say that he had seen the ghost of the English monarch.”—Travels, vol. II.
That gave—ah! record of eternal shame!—
A Ridley to the stake, a Cranmer to the flame!
The dreadful power that Pyrrho worshipp'd strays;
Like midnight skiff, without a magnet, tost,
Dubious of wreck, yet certain to be lost;
Gulphs yawn before her—yet no hope is found,
No sign like that, which, pointing Israel's way,
Forbade the weak to sink, the bold to stray:
She looks beneath—there is no prospect, save
A wakeless sleep, and everlasting grave,
Across whose precincts, in unhallow'd bloom,
The nightshade waves its canopy of gloom;
She casts her glance above her, to descry
A chance-created heaven—a godless sky,
And wavering Fancy wanders to explore,
In helmless bark, a sea without a shore;
While Silence, like a guardian, grasps the key
That opes the portals of futurity!
Shatter'd with shot, and tottering to its fall,
Burst shrieks and shouts that pierce the shuddering ear
With wild amazement, and delirious fear;
There, where red Murder walks his hourly round,
Where ashes smoke, and wrecks bestrew the ground,
The mother tends, with fear-dejected eyes,
The couch whereon her slumbering infant lies,
And feels for danger and for death prepared,
So dooms propitious Heaven that it be spared!
Hangs o'er its beauty on her trembling knees,
And pours—alas! 'tis lost in empty air,—
Her choicest blessings, and her warmest prayer;
For scarcely from her tongue the words depart,
Fraught with the holiest feelings of the heart,
Ere bursts the fire-wing'd globe, and spreads a flood
Around her household walls of guiltless blood,
And down she sinks, released from earthly pain,
To wake, and meet her babe in heaven again!—
Thunders reverberate, dire lightnings flash,
Sink down the crumbling towers, the temples crash.
The curses of revenge, the shrieks of pain,
Burst forth from lips that ne'er unclose again;
While, reft of life, the patriot drops his blade,
By foes o'ermaster'd, or by friends betray'd,
And o'er paternal fields, and native plains,
In Power's licentious pride, the tyrant reigns!
Lithe Flattery crouching at Corruption's feet;
Ambition mounting by the neck of Sin;
And Wisdom's small voice drown'd by Folly's din.
Lo! at the beck of Luxury, Wealth awaits;
While haggard Famine, prone before the gates
From the sharp winds, and night's descending storm:
There Industry, his day-long labour vain,
Looks on his half-fed family in pain;
And Beggary, with her orphans at her back,
Climbs slowly on up Virtue's rocky track,
Turns from Temptation's paths, whose sweets invite,
'Mid Nature's craving wants, her longing sight;
Expects not human aid, and to the skies
Trusts only for the help which man denies!
Upon the realms of uncongenial night,
But o'er them, where Elysian prospects lie,
Far to yon glowing summit turn thine eye,
To yon bright tract, where Hope and Fancy roam,
And share the spring of pleasures yet to come;
Cimmerian shadows, that o'erhang the day,
Abide not yonder sun, but melt away,
While nought expands before the ravish'd view,
But scenes of garden bloom, and skies of blue!
Who waves her snowy wings, diffusing light;
Her birth-place is the sky, her name is Truth:
Lo! as she comes, the shadows melt away,
Like night-collected dews at dawn of day;
Around her glows an atmosphere of light,
To which the sun is dim, the noon is night:
Sent from the glorious mansion of her birth,
Onwards she bears, descending to the earth;
To wondering man her brightness shall appear,
And Error vanish on the wings of Fear!
Stretch'd like infinitude, between us lie,
Behold in glory, on yon mountain blue,
Dim though the sight, and indistinct the view,
—Yet how inviting is the goodly scene,
How sweet the landscape looks, and how serene
Sits Peace enthroned! the roses of her cheek
Are bright as morn, but yet as evening meek;
Sedately pure, the azure of her eye
Excels the tints of Autumn's cloudless sky,
And brows of snow seem whiter still beneath
The auburn tresses, and the myrtle wreath:
Her generous hand the horn of plenty bears,
And in her zone the olive leaf she wears:
Love in the front, and Mercy in the rear;
While gloom and grief melt off before her sight,
As flee before the sun the stars of night;
And earth again, as vision'd seers foretold,
Is nether heaven, the paradise of old,
Ere yielding woman, to her duty blind,
Tasted the fruit of sin, and cursed mankind.
With flowery Carmels, and with Bactrian grain;
Its current stainless, and its banks undyed,
Through bloomy vales rolls on the silvery tide;
Perennial music, floating on the air
Of summer noontide, charms away despair;
He who had borne the sword now bears the crook,
The hand that grasp'd the brand the pruning-hook;
No more in thunder through the midnight skies,
To desolate the earth, volcanoes rise;
But rural sounds and sights, ordain'd to blind
The sense of sadness, elevate the mind,
And bring, when sin and sorrow melt away,
A placid calm, and intellectual day!
With doubled bliss returns the age of gold;
Above the embers of extinguish'd woe,
There is no joy like that which owes its birth
To inward purity and conscious worth;
There is no joy in mind's capacious sphere,
That is not brightly won and worshipp'd here:
Untired benevolence, whose bounds extend
Firm and unfeign'd to earth's remotest end;
Celestial gratitude, whose ardent eye
Beams with delight, and fastens on the sky;
Sincerity and Truth, that scorn to move,
And blameless Justice, and unsullied Love,
Rule every heart, and deal that bliss around
The Muses feign, though men have never found!”
Celestial beauty to the shores of care;
With thee thy train of heavenly graces bring,
And shake immortal pleasures from thy wing.
Lo! from thy sight Night's prowling wanderers fly,
And withers sin beneath thy radiant eye;
War breaks his brand, finds not a welcome shore,
But mounts the whirlwind, and is seen no more;
While Science, from her hill, walks forth
When we look back to the discoveries of the last half century, perhaps it is no exaggeration to say, that Science has been making more rapid strides towards perfection, however far distant that may yet be—than in any previous age of the world. Every day introduces some new improvement, whereby the invaluable art of printing is rendered more diffusive in its operation, and consequently more extensively blessed in its effects. Chemistry has established itself as one of the most brilliant and useful of the sciences, and in the hands of a Davy, a Thomson, and a Dalton, who will be bold enough to set a limit to its operation? But, above all, the mighty power of steam, subjecting itself to science, has put into the possession of man an engine, alike applicable to land and ocean, and which may come in time to render the boast of Archimedes scarcely a hyperbolical exaggeration.
And spreads her glorious empire o'er the earth:
Before her wand, as darkness flies from day;
O'er rocks she climbs, and 'neath her tread the ground
Expands in level beauty smiling round;
She bids the tempest fruit and fragrance bring,
And robs the fire-eyed lightning of its sting;
Darts daylight into Error's darkest cave;
Reigns o'er each realm, and stills the stormy wave.
By saints upheld, and seal'd with holiest blood,
From clime to clime thy glorious light expands,
And chases Darkness from rejoicing lands:
Sin's rod is broken; Superstition, long
The only mistress of Earth's erring throng,
Wraps round her mantle, and in wild affright
Flies shrieking downward to congenial night;
No more beneath her knife the victim reels;
No more bedews with blood her chariot wheels;
No more, torn reckless from the light of day,
Pines in the hopeless grave a living prey;
But light all pure, ineffably serene,
Illumes mankind, and brightens every scene;
At the same altar, tribes by every sea
In sacred adoration bend the knee.—
Mid burning sands, where verdure is unknown,
At vesper hour, when all around is mute,
Save sullen sound of camel's wearied foot,
Kneels, by the scanty well, the Arab dun,
And, in the broad light of the setting sun,
Pours out, all glowing as the cloudless west,
The fears, the hopes, the wishes of his breast,
And lifts, in holy dread, his mental eye
To him, his God, who bled on Calvary!
Hard by the icy pole, believers raise:
Though Day upon the waste and wildering scene
Shuts up, and howl afar the billows green;
And the sad night of desolation drear
Glooms o'er their world, and saddens half the year,
Beneath impending storms, and circling snows,
No chilling doubts the fur-clad shiverer knows;
With Faith's unfaltering eye he looks abroad,
Through the wild storm, to mark the works of God;
Beholds the traces of his power afar
In the blue sky, and each revolving star;
Trusts, with a hope that softens, yet sublimes,
For happier seasons, and serener climes,
Is still the Lord, and shall be Judge, of all!
And in the spirit's sunshine walking free,
No more by vice degraded and deprest!
No thought but peace awaking in the breast,
Earth, calm'd to beauty, shall again resume
Primeval bliss, and Eden's forests bloom,
Bright as when Adam, with a holy kiss,
Embraced his chosen in the bowers of bliss!
Love o'er the world shall spread his halcyon sway,
The weak shall own it, and the wise obey;
The summit of the hills shall murmur love,
And echo catch the sound in glen and grove;
Creatures that, far from human face exiled,
Prowl'd the dim forest or unpeopled wild,
Shall leave their dwellings, and, with meekness bland,
Crouch at the feet of man, or lick his hand,
And Nature, all his errors past forgiven,
Proclaim him Lord, and own the loved of Heaven!
From shore to shore, from isle to isle around,
Shall spread of holy peace the welcome sound;
Far on the deep, where nought but wave and sky
Extends, and scarce is heard the sea-bird's cry,
And hail each other in communion sweet;
Brothers in heart, all jealous fears subdued,
Love's sever'd links harmoniously renew'd,
The South shall hail the North, and East with West
Embracing, own one feeling, and be blest!
When Earth shall bow, subservient to thy sway,
To Truth's severe and chasten'd gaze appears
Dim, through the shadows of uncounted years,
Yet Hope, the siren prophetess, whose eye
Darts through the twilight of Futurity,
The first to come, the latest to depart,
Enchains thee, by her anchor, to the heart;
O'er barrier rocks bids Expectation climb,
And sheds a halo round the march of Time!
| The Legend of Genevieve | |