 | Poems |  |
222
THE STARRY SKIES.
Ye flaming watch-towers of the solemn skies—Ye haughty, unabsconding mysteries!
Manifestations beautiful and pure,
—Bearing a dread and awful signature!—
Of mightiest Truths that shall for aye endure!
How gloriously unfolds each world above!
Ministrant of sweet terror, deepest love
And joy, but solemn joy, unto the heart,
Which, 'neath those radiant inquisitions, well may start,
With conscious horror at its load of sin,
From those rich worlds without to worlds within—
Of cloud and gloom, all tremulously turning:
O, that those inner worlds were deeply burning
With fervid purities as richly fraught!
O, that such rays streamed round each wakening thought!
223
Regalia of the universe displayed!
Stars! glorying in your harmony sublime—
Dazzling chronometers of missioned time;
Burning with adoration's dread excess—
Ruffled as by o'erpowering happiness!
Ethereal principalities—crowned powers—
With empire girt—enriched with sovereign dowers!
How ye inflame the conscious mind that feels
The o'erwhelming truths your startling pomp reveals!
Your's is a light that smites, but doth not blind,
Ye gracious Mediators of the Mind!—
Which, taught by ye, may dare at last to raise
To loftier wonders its triumphant gaze—
Wonders—to thunderstrike the soul with dread,
If unprepared and unpremonished!
Ye mighty fountains of unfathomed fire,
That ever blaze, and quicken, and aspire!
Ye unexhausted, unimpoverished mines—
Magnificently glorious thrones and shrines!
224
Girt with sweet powers to brunt all years and blights—
All times—all seasons! Ever pure and high,—
Breathing around your immortality!
How doth the spirit spurn its bonds of clay
Beneath your calm regenerative sway!
How glorious are ye to our soul and sight!
Your lovely strength exerted o'er the night
All unlaboriously—your splendours deep
Showered round, like gleams 'mid phantom-haunted sleep!
Ye paragons of glory undefiled—
Marvels on marvels crowded, heaped, and piled;
Familiarities, miraculously strange—
Imperishable challengers of change!
Ye voiceless champions of eternity—
Great commonwealth of worlds that throng the sky!
Would that your majesty of calm repose
Were glassed upon this world of stormy woes!
Enduring and exulting orbs! proud arks
For soaring spirits—pure electric sparks,
225
The unsounded deep of heaven! the effulgent waste!
Ye shall not faulter in your task, nor fail,
Nor wavering burn, nor languish dim and pale!
Ever persistent intimations ye,
Of bliss and glory and futurity—
Of boundless power—unmeasured might above—
Unfluctuating, unfathomable love!
For love, through all creation's vast expanse,
Breathes out in manifest predominance!
Then shine! like wakeful guardian-seraphs, shine!
The heart to inspire, to exalt, and to refine!
Blaze, then, like quenchless watch-fires, ever blaze.
The soul to awake, to animate, to raise!
Of the most infinite sea, ye gorgeous shells—
Mute monitors—unbreathing oracles,
From our stupendous nature calling out
Rich melodies of hope, unchecked by doubt—
For who can doubt, when truth is writ in light
Ineffably, unutterably bright?
226
The great reality in storms of flame?
And nobly ye proclaim it to the sense
And soul in dizzying magnificence!
Ye! whom no stain, no blight, no shadow mars,
Unborn, undying, immemorial stars!
Calm zealots!—bright incomprehensibles!—
Explicit mysteries!—luminous signs and spells!—
Placid dictators of the solemn skies—
Unboastful, pure infallibilities!
Beauteous predominancies! thrones of light!
Heaven's glorying super-eminencies bright!
Ye are indeed the very prisms and mirrors
Of the endless universe! Ye radiant terrors
Unveiled, but all unfathomable still!
O, weak is science—vain is human skill,
To trace your wonders! In your skyey home,
Far from the enfolding shadows of the tomb,
Perchance our strengthened thought and unsheathed glance
May fathom and transpierce you! There perchance
227
Your mystery, awful and majestical!
But now our minds bewilderingly conceive,
And even in triumph painfully perceive!—
And strenuously, laboriously must learn,
Feebly discover, arduously discern,
That little which may only guide us wrong!
O, wiser, wiser is the seraph's song
Than all the cherubs' dread and awful lore!
'Tis grand to know, 'tis heavenly to adore!
O, let us wing our souls with holy love,
If we indeed would strongly soar above!
Roll on, proud hierarchs of the midnight heaven,
To you a thousand thousand spells are given;
And gazing, pondering on your maze and plan,
Glorious compeers of this dim world of man!
The very soul seems bowed—enthralled—transfixed,
With exultation and despondence mixed!—
Despondence that its home should still be far,
And exultation that beyond each star,
228
That home awaits it, midst the worlds of bliss!
Well may it cherish, e'en thus cooped in clay,
A reverential hope, which not astray
Shall lead the inspired heart! No! on the track
Of deathless truth—on pinions never slack,
It shall ascend e'en eagle-like on high,
To bathe in all the fountains of the sky!
| Poems | |