Sacred Meditations and Moral Themes In Verse :: :: University of Virginia Library

Huge, high, and solemn, sanctified by time,
And gazing skyward in the towery gloom
Of temple majesty, another pile
Behold! in mid-air ponderously reared.—
How dread a power pervadeth things, this mass
Of ancient glory tells. Whereon it stands
The vacant winds did trifle, and the laugh
Of sunshine sported in bright freedom there:
It rose,—and, lo! there is a spirit-awe
Around it dwelling; with suspended heart
'Tis entered; where a cold sepulchral hush,
The holiness of its immensity,
The heaven-like vastness of its vaulted aisles,
The faded banners, and the trophied tombs,
And look of monumental melancholy,—
With aching sadness overcloud the soul
Of mortals, as they walk the rev'rend gloom
Of arch and nave, immersed in dreams of death.

Methinks Ambition might grow humble here:
Though blazoned high the mausoleums rise,

And from stained windows rosy light-shades fall
On armory, and crests of costly hue,
Heraldic glare, and sculptured canopies,
To grace the dust of hero, sage, or king,—
The sense that rankling clay beneath such pomp
Alone remains, humiliates and chills
The passion for proud greatness. But Her eye
More frequent to yon lonely transept turns,
Where the dead heroes of the Heart repose,
And on it gazeth, with a deeper awe
Than ever high-raised tomb of monarchs won:—
No matter; bard or king, the Curse decrees
For all—re-union with their fellow clay!

MUSIC.

The heaven of Music! how it wafts and waves
Itself in all the poetry of sound,
Amid an atmosphere of human heart
Suffused,—so full the homage here outbreathed;
Now, throbbing like a happy Thing of air,
Then, dying a voluptuous death, as lost
In its own luxury; now, alive again
In sweetness, wafted like a vocal cloud
Mellifluously breaking—seems the strain!
And, what a play of magic on each face
Of feeling! Dread and thund'rous when it rolls,
The eyes turn inward with a dream profound;
When festive, such as storms a hero's mind,
A spirit revels in the raptured face!
But when, from faint and feeble ecstasy
Of tune, into a melancholy tone
That pierces, ray-like, through the gloom of years,
The music dies,—then thrills the wakeful blood,
And glitt'ring sadness on each eye-ball spreads,
Like dewy rapture from the soul distilled.

All music is the mystery of Sound,
Whose soul lies sleeping in the air, till roused,—
And, lo! it pulses into melody:
Deep, low, or wild, obedient to the throb
Of instrumental magic; on its wings
Are visions too, of tenderness and love,
Beatitude and joy. Thus, over waves
Of beauty, landscapes in their loveliest glow,
And the warm languish of their summer streams,
A listening Soul is borne; while home renews
Its paradise, beneath the moon-light veil
That mantles o'er the past, till unshed tears
Gleam in the eye of memory. But when
Some harmony of preternat'ral swell
Begins, then wing'd by awe, the spirit soars
Away, and mingles with immensity!

THE CALL OF SAMUEL.

Something divine about an Infant seems
To them, who watch it in that holy light
Of meaning, caught from those celestial words
Of Christ,—“Forbid them not, but let them come!”
Fresh buds of Being! beautiful as frail,
Types of that Kingdom which our Souls profess
To enter! Symbols of that docile love
And meek compliancy of creed and mind
Which Heaven hath canonized, and for its own
Acknowledged,—well may thoughtful Hearts perceive
A mystery, beyond mere nature's law,
Around them girdled like a moral zone.

And who can wonder (if we love to trace
The faint beginning of whatever lives)
That o'er an infant, innocently decked
With charms more delicate than dewy gleams
Dropt on pale flowers,—the serious Mind of man
Can ponder? Or, with presage mildly sad,

The colour of its coming years predict,
When o'er that brow, with sunny whiteness clothed,
Smooth as the cheek of Morning,—Time will stamp
His wrinkling traces; and the purple bloom
Of youth's gay spirit, like stern winter's blight
On the bowed head of hoary Age becomes!

Yes! eloquent, and touching more than tears,
These incarnations of maternal dreams,—
(Infants, by Beauty's plastic finger shaped)
Have ever been: in all their ways and moods
A winning power of unaffected grace
Poetic faith, or pious fancy, views.—
Wild as the chartered waves which leap and laugh,
By sun and breeze rejoicingly inspired,
Till the air gladdens with the glowing life
They shed around them,—who their happy frame
Can mark, or listen to their laughing tones,
Behold their gambols, and the shooting gleams
Of mirth, which sparkle from their restless eyes,
Nor feel his fondness to the centre moved,
Beyond a mere emotion?—But, to watch
The tendrils of the mind come forth,
The buds and petals of the soul expand
Day after day, beneath a fostering care
And love devoted,—this Religion deeply loves!—
How the Great Parent of the Universe

The outward to the inner world hath framed
With finest harmony; and for each sense
An object apt by corresponding law arranged,—
Philosophy may there, with reverence, learn,
As grows the virgin intellect of youth
Familiar with all Forms, Effects, and moods
Of nature's might, or Majesty, of scenes.
And, what a text on Providence we read
In the safe life of shielded infancy!—
For who can count the multitude of babes,
That look more fragile than the silken clouds
Which bask upon the bosom of the air
They brighten,—God's o'ershading Hand secures!
And number, if Arithmetic can reach
The total,—what a host of tiny feet
Totter in safety o'er this troubled world!
Though all around them throng and rage
Destructive Elements, whose faintest shock
Would strike an infant into pulseless clay.—
And, oh! fond mothers! whose mysterious hearts
Are finely strung with such electric chords
Of feeling, that a single touch, a tone
From those ye fondle, some responsive thrill
Awakens,—when at night, a last long look
That almost clings around the Form it eyes,
Ye take of slumbering Infancy, whose cheeks
Lie softly pillowed on the rounded arm,

Rosy, and radiant with their dimpling sleep;—
Well may ye waft upon some wingéd prayer
A grateful anthem to your Lord enthroned,
Who, once an Infant on his mother's knee,
Not in His glory, childhood's life forgets:
For He, while systems, suns, and worlds
Hang on His will, and by His arm perform
Their functions, in all matter, space, and time,—
Can hear the patter of an infant's foot,
List to the beating of a mother's heart,
And seal the eyelid of a babe at rest.

But, like the lustre of a broken dream,
How soon the fairy grace of morning life
Melts from the growing child! Corruptive airs
Breathed from an atmosphere where sin is bred,
Around them their contaminating spell
Exhale; and Custom with its hateful load
Of mean observances, and petty rites,
Bend into dust these instincts of the skies
In the pure heart of genuine childhood seen,
And, so enchanting!—Then comes artful Trick,
With forced Appearance, and a feeling veiled,
When fashion's creed or folly's plea forbids
A free expression. These with blending force
The sweet integrities of youth assail
For ever; mar the delicacy of mind,

And from the power intact of Conscience take
Its holy edge, and soon the child impress
With the coarse features of corrupted man.
And, add to this, how omnipresent sin,
That from the womb of being, to our grave
Infects our nature with a fiendish blight,—
Will act on passion earthly, and desires
Malignant, base or mutinously warp'd
From virtue,—and, alas! how quick we find
The vestal bloom of Innocence depart!
Then, what remains of all that blesséd prime,
That blooming promise, which the fair-brow'd child
Of beauty gave in home's domestic bowers,—
Lisping God's love beside parental knees,
And seeming oft, as if the Saviour's arms
Had compassed them, and left a circling spell
Round his soft being!—Where, ah! where is gone
The unworn freshness of that fairy child?

But, yet on earth from genial heaven there come
Children, who, e'en though infancy enwrap
Its weakness round them,—thoughts beyond their years,
And feelings that in depth surpass the soul
Of elder Age to fathom,—oft possess:
Mournful they are, and soft in shape and mien;
Reserved and shy, as those retreating brooks

Which love to vanish from th' observer's gaze,
And find green shelter in the shading grass
Or waving sedges.—Such, who has not seen,
And round them felt a fascination float,
A nameless spell, subduingly empowered
To make stern Manhood be a child again?
A beaming mildness like the vesper star
Their glance reveals; or, in some pensive gaze,
Soft as blue skies, but far more exquisite,
A depth of sanctity there seems to dwell
Beyond corruption. Strangers lightly pass;
And by the semblance of a tiny form
Misguided,—rarely on the mind immense
Within it tabernacled, can pause to think.—
Yet, underneath yon little frame of flesh,
Something that shall outsoar the seraphim
Hereafter, as the price of Blood Divine,—
May be enshrined! And o'er that placid brow
Shades of high meaning, from the Spirit sent,
E'en as they rise, may well from Age mature
Challenge respect, and bid us wisely know,
Childhood has depth of inner life unseen,
Feelings profound, of purest birth unknown,
And sympathies of most unfathomed sway,—
Though stern Philosophy, or Reason's pride
Can mock, or misbelieve them—Souls they have
So visited with visionary gleams

Of God, and Truth; and by such love sublime
Sent from the glory of a purer world,
Are oft illumined,—Fancy might suspect
Such children were the exiles of the skies,
Prisoned in breathing flesh, awhile ordained
This earth to hallow; but at times, the sense
Of Home Immortal on their being rose,
And bade them with divine emotion thrill,
Though faltering tongue and feeble accent failed
What passed within, to body forth, or tell:
Then, nature only, with a shaded brow
And eye that glowed with melancholy gleams,
Betokened,—what a heaven-born spirit bears
When half remembering its ethereal birth!

Then, look not lightly on a pensive child,
Lest God be in it, gloriously at work!
And our Irreverence touch on truths, and powers
And principles, which round the Throne are dear
As holy.—Never may our hearts forget
That Heaven with infancy redeemed is full,—
Crowded with babes beyond the sunbeams bright
And countless! Forms of life that scarcely breathed
Earth's blighting air, and things of lovely mould
Which, ere they prattled, or with flowers could play,
Or to the lullaby of watching Love
Could hearken—back to God's own world were called;

And myriads, too, who learnt to lisp a prayer,
Bend the soft knee, and heave devotion's sigh,
Or carolled with a birdlike chant the psalms
Of David,—with the Church in Heaven are found:
For He who loved them, and on earth enwreathed
His arms around them, now in Glory wills
To hear their voices, and their souls array
With beauty, bright as elder Spirits wear.

But, oh! Thou Architect of heaven in man,
The Bible's Light, and inspiration's Lord,
Whose secret pulse of vitalizing power
The fitful breathings of the sovereign wind
Denote; Thou Finisher of works divine!
Under whose plastic wing creation took
Each form of grandeur, each affecting grace
That Art can copy, or Religion greet;
Thou in Thy might and mystery of love
A Temple in the soul of infancy
Hast deigned to build; and there, in blessed caim
And sanctity, Thy viewless glory shrined.

Called of the Lord!—'tis here a child begins
Beyond all manhood, when corrupt, to make
Associations bright with more than mortal beam!
For, if religion be imparted God,
And purchased grace, the Trinity applied,

Then, He whose palace fills Infinity,
(That great metropolis of glories all!)
Dwells in the spirit of a child renewed,
Nor scorns the mansion Love erecteth there.—
Here is the paradox which puzzles Sense,
Confounds cold Reason, and from sceptics draws
A sneer derisive. Children, in their forms
Minute, their broken words, their lisped assent,
And little ways of inexperienced life,
Are unto them, but what the senses grasp,
And nothing more!—beyond, 'tis mystic void,
Whence Fancy only can at times report
The wonders an ideal faith enacts.—
They hear them prattle, they behold them play,
And see them, measured by the scale of man's
Attainment,—but like shapes of helpless dust
By sparks of faint intelligence inspired.
Alas, poor infidel! thy pride exceeds
Canute's itself, which bade th' imperial sea
Take law and motion from his tyrant lip;
For thou, The Everlasting in His ways
Wouldst limit! and to boundless grace prescribe
Modes of appeal, and methods of display;
As if the mighty God were only Man
Made infinite, and out of reason formed!—
But while the scoffer of The Spirit's power
In childhood realized, with tongue of scorn

Blasphemes all grace within some infant shrined,—
Devouter students of His wonder-work
Celestial, from a sainted child can learn
Lessons of light; and from infantile lips
Meanings from heaven, mysteriously profound,
Delight to welcome:—for, their meekened souls
Remember Christ himself a cradled babe
On earth was found; and through that tender prime
Passed his Own life, whose consecrating track
Hath left a blessing wheresoe'er it came,
And made frail Childhood holy. Thus, the heart
In this exults, that in those budding minds
Where twice three summers scarce experience bring,
Tokens of God, and teachings most sublime
Are witnessed; while full oft some hoary saint
Whose pilgrimage hath been through pangs, and tears,
And windings dark through many a devious way—
Hangs mute with wonder, as some dying child
Warbles its young hosanna; or by faith sublimed
Beyond experience,—tells, with faltering tongue,
And eye that glistens with seraphic ray,
Of truths momentous; such as Rabbis heard
Astonished, when the Virgin-born revealed
Gleams of The God, beneath His veiling flesh!

And therefore, let maternal bosoms take
Home to bright welcome, what the Bible tells,—

How in the Temple, ere the mystic Lamp
Went out, that Hannah's God-devoted child
Woke from his slumber, by a call from Heaven:—
Oh! mother blest, who from the womb didst vow
The promised child, believing prayer obtained,
Forever to the Lord!—when Eli saw
How the deep spirit of devotion rocked
Thy nature, till thy moving lip betrayed
How worked the heart with more than spoken prayer
Could utter,—little did that old man dream
How near The Throne thy spirit had advanced!—
And, what a lesson are the proud ones taught
When, not for earthly wise, or worldly great,
For prophets, priests, or philosophic minds
The silence of Eternity was broke;
But, to a little child, in slumber bound,
The high revealings of the Heavens were made!
Voiceless the Word, and shut the Vision was
Through years of darkness; when, at last, behold!
Thrice in his ear, the consecrated boy
Felt a deep Voice his pregnant name pronounce,
Solemn, but yet with mortal accent toned;
And thrice to Eli, in sublime alarm,
Ran the woke child, as if himself had called.—
But soon The God, that dim-eyed Priest discerned,
Jehovah in his glowing face he read!
Then, on his lifted brow with reverence gazed;

And while the finger of the child was turned
Upward, from whence the Voice unearthly rolled
Its summons, —in that call The Lord he hailed
Truly, as if in Thunder, Fire, or Blast,
Down to the earth an Inspiration came.

Here may we pause to wonder, muse, and pray
Or cry, with feeling admiration fired,
“Ye mothers! do as noble Hannah did,
And to The Giver, consecrate the child.”
Here in live action doth the Bible show
Embodied, what the after word of Christ,
With soft rebuke to his Apostles spoke,—
How children, in simplicity of soul,
Are types incarnate of the heirs of Light;
And thus the sensual are profoundly taught
That purity beyond proud wisdom soars,
And out of nature lifts a little child
To rank majestic in the scale of Heaven!

An allusion to Copley's beautiful painting.

A BEAUTIFUL SUNSET.

But, lo! the Day declines, and to his couch
The sun is wheeling. What a world of pomp
The heavens put on in homage to his power!
Romance hath never hung a richer sky,—
Or sea of sunshine, o'er whose yellow deep
Triumphal barks of beauteous foam career,
As though the Clouds held festival, to hail
Their God of glory to his western home.
And now the earth is mirror'd on the skies!
While lakes and valleys, drowned in dewy light,
And rich delusions, dazzlingly arrayed,
Form, float, and die, in all their phantom joy.
At length the Sun is throned; but from his face
A flush of beauty o'er creation flows,
Then faints to paleness, for the day hath sunk
Beneath the waters, dashed with ruby dyes,
And Twilight, in her nun-like meekness comes;
The air is fragrant with the soul of flowers,
The breeze comes panting like a child at play,
While birds, day-worn, are couched in leafy rest,
And calm as clouds, the sunken billows sleep;
The dimness of a dream o'er nature steals,

Yet hallows it; a hushed enchantment reigns:
The mountains to a mass of mellowing shade
Are turned, and stand like temples of the night;
While field and forest, fading into gloom,
Depart, and rivers whisper sounds of fear:—
A dying pause, as if th' Almighty moved
In shadow o'er his works, hath solemnized
The world!—

But that hath passed; the herald stars
In timid lustre twinkling into life,
Advance; and, faint as music's rising swell,
The Moon is rounding as she dawns. Fair orb!
(A sentimental child of earth will say,)
The sun glares like a warrior o'er his plain
Of morning sky; but thou, so wan and meek,
Appear'st a maiden of romance, who walks
In placid sorrow, beautifully pale.
Behold thy power! on tree and meadow falls
The loveliness of thine arraying smile.
How silverly the sleeping air is robed
Around me; clouds above, like plats of snow
That linger on the hills, and laugh the sun
Away with their white beauty, yet remain:
And now they vanish, and the soundless heaven
Forms one deep cope of azure, where the stars,
(Bright pilgrims voyáging an unwaved sea,)

Are strewn, and sparkle with incessant rays
Of mystery and meaning. Yet not heaven,
When islanded with all those lustrous worlds,
Nor cradled Ocean with her waves uprolled,
Nor moonlight weaving forth its pallid shroud,
Is so enchanting as that stillness felt,
And living with luxurious spell, through all,—
Silent as though a sound had never been;
Or Angels o'er her slumber spread their wings,
And breathed a sabbath into Nature's soul!
No wonder moonlight made idolaters,
That their Creator in creation merged
As one surpassing whole; for even I,
I who have looked with archangelic love
On all the beauty and the blaze of heaven,
E'en I, the burning of my soul can feel
Allayed, when nature grows so near divine.
And man, when passionless and pure awhile
Amid the trances of unbreathing night,
With adoration in his eye and heart
He walks abroad, and measures at a gaze
The starr'd immensity above, becomes
Sublime; a shade of his primeval soul
Returns upon him; chaste as ere it fell,
He feels the spirit swelling up to heaven,
Beholding angels in their halls of light,
And joining in their chorus round the Throne!

THE EVIL SPIRIT AND THE STORM.

But, lo! the heavens are ominously black
Methinks, as though they frowned a dark response.
Erewhile, and star-troops in their island glow
Around the wan enchantress of the skies
Appeared, while lovingly the azure lay
Between them, softer than the lid of sleep.
But now, all pregnant with portentous ire,
The clouds have muffled up the pomp of night.—
There is a gasping in the heated air,
A wing-like flutter in the tim'rous boughs,
And sigh, and sound, from out the heart of things
Invisible, breathed forth; the Storm awakes!
And tones of thunder thrill the heart of earth;
The lightnings cleave the clouds, and north to south,
And east to west, a tale of darkness tell!—
Hark, as the wearied echoes howl themselves
Away, the clamours of the midnight Sea,
Beneath yon cliff, terrifically rise,—
For she is waved with glory! billows heave
Their blackness in the wind, and, bounding on

In vaulting madness, beat the rocky shore
Incessant, flaking it with plumy foam.
I love this passion of the Elements,
This mimicry of chaos, in their might
Of storm! And here, in my lone awfulness,
While every cloud a thunder-groan repeats,
Earth throbs, and nature in convulsion reels,
Farewell to England! Into other climes
I wing my flight,—but on her leave the spell
I weave for nations, till her doom arrive.
And come it shall! When on this guardian cliff
Again I stand, the whirlwind and the wrath
Of desolation will have swept her throne
Away! A darkness, as of old, will reign,
The woods be standing where her cities tower,
And Ocean wailing for his desert Isle!

A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.

A churchyard!—'tis a homely word, yet full
Of feeling; and a sound that o'er the heart
Might shed religion. In the gloom of graves
I read the curse primeval, and the Voice
That wreak'd it seems to whisper by these tombs
Of village quiet, that around me lie
In green humility:—can Life, the dead
Among be musing, nor to me advance
The spirit of her thought? True, Nature wears
No rustic mourning here; in golden play
Her sprightly grass-flowers wave; the random breeze
Hums in the noon, or with yon froward boughs
A murm'ring quarrel wakes; and yet, how oft
In such a haunt, the insuppressive sigh
Is heard, while feelings that may pilot years
To glory, spring from out a minute's gloom!
Mind overcomes me here: amid the hush
Of stately tombs, of dim sepulchral pomp,
And monumental falsehoods, piled o'er men

Whose only worth is in their epitaphs,—
I fear thee not, thou meditating one!
Infinity may blacken round thy dream
Perchance, and words inaudible thy mind
With dread prediction fill;—but worldly gauds
Entice thee; whispered vanities of thought
Arise, and though Life lose her glare awhile,
Ambition tints the moral of the tomb.
'Tis not so here: th' enchanted eye can dwell
On few distinctions, save of differing age;
The heart is free to ponder, and the soul
To be acquainted with itself alone.
And more development of Man is found
In such calm scene, than in the warring rush
Of life.—I watch him thus, and mark
The swelling pomp of immortality
That lifts the soul, and makes Hereafter plain!
Or darkness, from the unapparent dead
That whelms the spirit with a cold despair.

Nature begins; and in the white-rolled shroud
The ghastly nothingness of death appears;—
And then, a knell, Time's world-awaking tongue,
Rings in the soul, and by a new-turned grave
He paints a mourning vision; sees the tears
Telling of many a day's remembered joy
Down cheeks of anguish dropping; and can hear

The careless mutter of the broken clod
Upon his coffin echo. Then, the dream!
The solemn dream! of where a spirit-home
May be, and what the everlasting world?—
Thou mortal! ask the interminated Sky,
The mystic Wind, the ever-murmuring Deep,
And all that night and day around thee bring:—
Doth nought reply! The elements all dumb?
Then ask thy Soul, and God himself replies!

THE WORLD'S METROPOLIS.

But, hail, thou city-giant of the world!
Thou that dost scorn a canopy of clouds,
But, in the dimness of eternal smoke
For ever rising like an ocean-steam,
Dost mantle thine immensity; how vast
And wide thy wonderful array of domes,
In dusky masses staring at the skies!
Time was, and dreary solitude was here;
When night-black woods, unvisited by man,
In howling conflict wrestled with the winds.
But now, the tempest of perpetual life
Is heard, and like a roaring furnace, fills
With living sound the airy reach of miles.
Thou more than Rome! for never from her heart
Of empire such disturbing passion rolled,
As emanates from thine. The mighty Globe
Is fever'd by thy name; a thousand years,
And Silence hath not known thee!—What a weight
Of awfulness will Doomsday from thy scene
Derive; and when the blasting trumpet smites

All Cities to destruction, who will sink
Sublime, with such a thunder-crash as thou?
Myriads of towers, and temples huge, or high,
And thickly wedded, like the ancient trees
That in unviolated forests frown;
Myriads of streets, whose windings ever flow
With viewless billows of chaotic sound;
Myriads of hearts in full commotion mixed,
From morn to noon, from noon to night again,
Through the wide realm of whirling passion borne,—
And there is London! England's heart and soul:
By the proud flowing of her famous Thames
She circulates through countless lands and isles
Her queenly greatness; gloriously she rules,—
At once the awe and sceptre of the world!

Angels and demons! to your watching eyes
The rounded earth nought so tremendous shows
As this vast City, in whose roar I stand,
Unseen, yet seeing all. The lifeless gloom
Of everlasting hills; the solitudes
Untrod, the deep gaze of thy dazzling orbs
That decorate the purple noon of night,
Oh, Nature! no such majesty supply.
Creation's queen, almightily endowed,
Upon the throne of elements thou sitt'st:

But in the beating of one single heart,
There is that more than rivals thee!—and here
The swellings of unnumber'd hearts abound;
And not a Day but, ere it die, contains
A hist'ry, that unrolled,—will awe the Heavens
To wonder, and the listening Earth with fear!

THE POWER OF PRAYER.

True Adoration, what a voice is thine!
From earth it wanders through the Heaven of Heavens,
There from the Mercy-seat itself evokes
An answer, thrilling the seraphic host
With added glory of celestial song.—
For prayer is man's omnipotence below,
A soul's companionship with Christ and God,
Communion with Eternity begun!

THE RELIGION OF NATURE NOT TO BE COMPARED WITH DIVINE TRUTH.

And thus, a Preacher of eternal might
Sublime in darkness, or superb in light,
In each wild change of glory, gloom, and storm,
The starry magic, and the mountain-form,
Art thou, dread Universe of love and power!—
But higher still the Muse's wing may tower,
And track the mystery of Almighty ways,
Through paths that glitter with the solemn rays
The awful noon of revelation shed
From Calv'ry,—when the God Incarnate bled.

For what is Nature, though religion seems
To lend a tone to all her winds and streams;
To whisper, God! when night and darkness creep
Round the dim trances of creation's sleep;
To teach a prayer when twilight hush descends,
And the mute bough in adoration bends;
Or bid the woods a leafy anthem raise
When the rich verdure shines with em'rald rays:

Or spring, the Angel of the seasons, pours
A tide of beauty round exulting shores:
Say, what is meant?—a soft mysterious glow,
A breath too pure to live on earth below,
An evanescent luxury of thought,
Culled from the feast imagination brought,—
But, frail and feeble, as the charm that dies,
When the dead waken upon Mem'ry's eyes.

When lived the Age, or where the clime so rude,
What island nursed in billowy solitude,
Where dreams of God were never known to shine
Round a dark soul, with imag'ry divine?
The heathen through his cloud of error saw,
A faint reflection of celestial Law;
E'en the grim savage, when his eye commands
A broad extent of green-apparel'd lands,
Or views the Tempest wave his cloudy wing
In sultry darkness o'er the world of spring,

Can hail the image of some dreamt Unknown,—
A sceptred BEING on His boundless throne.
Then boast not thou, whose eye alone can see
In nature's glass reflected Deity;
From whence does moral elevation flow,
What pang is mute, what balm prepared for wo,
Though ocean, mountain, sky, and air impress
Full on the soul—a felt Almightiness?
Can ocean teach magnificence of mind?
Is Truth made vocal by the deep-voiced wind?
Can flowers their bloom of innocence impart,
Or tempt one weed of vileness from the heart?
Can thy benevolence, all-bounteous Sun,
Thou burning shadow of the brightest One!
Array our souls with emulative beam,
Like thine, to glad life's universa stream?
From yon pale stars does purity descend,
And their chaste beauty with our spirit blend?—
Alas! oh, God! if thou alone art found
When most Creation with thy smile is crowned;
Rather in blindness let this outward eye
Be dead to nature, than Thy throne deny,
Raised on the pillars of Redemption's might,
And dazzling angels with too deep a light!

The sum is, that Divine truths are not immediate objects of the understanding; for then we should be able to have a full idea, knowledge, or apprehension of them. But they are mediately so by communication, and what therefore we can have no apprehension or notion of, but as they are communicated or represented to us. It is this gives act to that capacity of the mind, which was only potential before; for as objects are visible to the natural eye, but not without the interposition of light, so neither are heavenly objects to the intellect, but by the intervention of some agent, rvhich can be only God.—(Ellis on Knowledge of Divine Things, p. 130.)

CHRIST APPEARS TO MARY.

Down came The Angel, at the dead of night,
Blazing with glory! From his blasting form
Of fearful brightness back the keepers fell
Shuddering; and speechless as a thought they lay,
And whiter than the moonlight's pallid beam,—
Blanched unto death by that blood-chilling sight
That shook them, as if God himself were come
Close to their senses, to survey their souls!
For, oh, that Apparition like a power
Resistless, with a radiant outburst came.
His face was light'ning: and his eyes a fire,
And dazzlingly his heaven-wove garments shined
Over his Stature, like a sunrise gilding snow;
While underneath him reeled the ground
By earthquake palsied, as the pond'rous stone
Rolled from the grave of Jesus,—with a crash
Like thunder, heard in supernat'ral dreams.
Thus in this dread magnificence, unseen,
Unheard, impalpably our buried Christ
Into the God-Man gathered back again

His Being, and by innate power sustained,
Rose from the tomb, and with him rose the World!

Then Earth and Heaven, and Hell, and Space, and Time,
Angels and Fiends, with Systems, Suns, and Worlds,
When from His cer'ments our Emanuel burst
Lustrous with life, and clad with deathless bloom,—
Around them all a thrilling influence ran!
For thus the triumph of that Great Decree,
The noontide glory of a Plan arranged
In the deep centre of th' Eternal Mind,—
Was witnessed: Death and Sin were overcome,
And round about the risen Saviour beamed
A halo of all Attributes divine
In full consent, magnificently crowned!
For, as in Adam, man's primeval Head,
Our blasted Nature to the tomb went down,
Struck to the root by treason's horrid blight,
Our Second Adam, who is Lord from heaven,
That root hath quickened into life again;
Sending the Sap of His immortal strength
Through all its branches! O, the grace immense!
Big with eternity beyond our mind
Fully to grasp,—that God's Paternal Word
No single Person, but a Nature whole
Assumed; and thus, through tears, and pangs, and toils

Uncounted; and through all that hellish craft
Could summon, or this atheistic Earth
Invent, to force Him from perfection's way,—
That Nature did He, with untiring power
And triumph carry, sinless, and unstained!
E'en when through crucifixion's gory death,
Down to the chamber of the penal grave
Our Nature in its buried Surety went,
Corruption from its back recoiled!—For Death
Was mastered, by a Hand, whose kingly might
Shivered to air those adamantine bonds
Which else had bound it with almighty grasp
For ever; and amid the shout and song
Of bright Adorers, watching from on high
This miracle of wonders,—from the tomb
That Nature into life immortal brought!
There placed it, far above all Heavens and Hosts
Celestial, side by side with God enthroned
Our Prince below, our Paragon above,
And, to infinity, our All in All!

Thus, by a fibre of our Flesh is bound
To Christ the family entire of man:
Faithful, or faithless,—all shall rise
To glory endless, or to penal shame untold.
Yes! when the tenant'ry of tombs concealed,
When vale, or mountain, land, or lonely sea

Where stranded Navies in the storm went down,
Or shrieking mariners at midnight sank,—
When famous battle-fields, and vaulted graves
In vast cathedrals; or, when rustic mounds
In meek retirement far from crowds untrod;
When these shall answer to the trumpet-blast
The four winds carry through Creation's round,
Till death turn life, and clay to flesh resolve,
Bone comes to bone, and not one atom fails
To make Identity and Form complete
In each and all, o'er whom remorseless Death
Shook his pale sceptre,—what will man behold
In the dread scen'ry of this dooming hour,
Save one vast comment, on the word of Him
Who bade the mourner, in Himself believe
The Resurrection and the Life to stand!

Not Life alone, but Resurrection too,
The God Incarnate did for man achieve;
And thus poured light on that,—which, unexplained,
Convulsed philosophy, the classic mind
Perturbed, and all surmising reason hoped
Disorganized, or made mere brilliant guess;—
E'en on this mighty and momentous truth,
That soul and body, into living man
Recalled, replaced, and sensibly perceived,
On the dread platform of the Last Assize

100

Shall stand hereafter! For, though Conscience told
To the deep soul of universal man,
That in him something of immortal growth
Was planted; and, upon this genial stock
Those dreaming rulers of the olden time,
The Poets,—grafted much of fancy vile;
Yet did the grave between them and their creed
A gulf of darkness, not to be o'ercome,
Produce; and on this barren instinct grew
Whatever Priest, or Poet in his dreams,
Chose to engraft from superstition's world;—
For truths when halved, are worse than lies entire,
And may be wielded by a master-Soul
For priests or monarchs, magistrates or slaves,
As time may need, or tyranny demand.

And what, though Giants in the realm of thought
Rose o'er the dwarfs around them; and approached
Truths which project beyond the bounds of time,
Casting their shadows o'er the world to come;
Though Sages spake oracularly wise
Tones of deep wisdom, which do yet entrance
Our wonder; and, some mental heroes dared
Dive into darkness with a noble plunge,
And drew forth sparks of Immortality!—
Unmaster'd lay the mysteries of the tomb
Before them. O, 'twas here they stood amazed,

101

And, in the dream of their unbodied state,
Shuddered, as on th' eternal brink they stood,
Casting afar their melancholy gaze
O'er the dread possible of doom to come!

Reason was mighty, but was reason still,
Though raised, refined, and unto strength advanced:
It suffered darkness when the Will declined
From God, and deified itself for Law.
Then, blind confusion o'er our being crept
In all beyond the palpable, and plain:
Nature's religion was to nature's state
By heaven adjusted, with harmonious skill,
And hopes and fears consistently could wield
Their blending forces:—but, when sin began,
Death was a gap in man's first glory made;
And while in principle, firm conscience grasped
A Life immortal, Death caused blinding doubts
Which staggered argument, when called to prove
How Mind, denuded of its fleshly robe
In which it acted, could for judgment stand,
To hear the verdict of awarding Heaven.—
Here was a doubt beyond Cimmerian night,
In darkness; not a ray the cloud dispersed!
The taking down this Temple of the flesh,
(That fabric where each wall by God is built)
Confounded reason with chaotic gloom:

102

For, not the body, nor the soul, alone
Humanity a moral agent makes;
But, mind incarnate, an embodied soul:
And, when one half was into dust dissolved,
The other, though by Hope immortal dreamt,
Was left in mere conjecture's airy realm
To ply its guess-work,—and to ply in vain!
Then, how the brand of base ingratitude
Cleaves to the heart, which can unmindful beat
Of what the Gospel for the Soul hath done,
By flooding man's eternity with streams
Of splendour, from the tomb of Jesus drawn,—
Which, but for that, seems mercilessly hung
With midnight shadows of enormous sway.
For, when untaught, the panting Mind presumes
The boundless glories of a better state
Oft to predict, the grave eclipses all,
Unless the body out of death arise!
And, Thought may image some heroic sage,
Some brave inquirer, who profoundly mused
In classic grove, or academic shades,
On Matter, God, and man's unsleeping Mind,
When, at the best, Hereafter was to him
The poetry of some persuasive dream
By conscience aided, with authentic light,
And little more!—But now, the lisping child
Who cons his Bible at the Sunday-school,

103

Beyond the soarings of Athenian sage
Mounts, in the hope of his immortal doom.

Yet 'twas a noble, but perturbing mood,
When haply, raised by some ethereal hope
Beyond the level of life's vulgar joy,
Some Priest of mind, ere yet the Gospel woke,—
Wandered to muse beneath a midnight heaven.
There, as he pondered with perusing eye
On star, and planet, while his being drank
The silence and the splendour of the scene
Like inspiration, to its inner depths,—
A dream prophetic oft his spirit warmed
Of high Existence, in some holier form
Than now appeared; and wingéd thoughts began
To flutter in him, and with strange uprise
Out of the body bore his heart away
To Homes elysian, Orbs of perfect bliss!
He felt the infinite he could not prove;
And when, perchance, with all his soul on fire,
And by the vastness of the vision swelled,
Home he returned, and found the face of death
In stern reality before him placed,—
How would the chill of this mysterious change
Come o'er his spirit, like a cloud of awe
Terror and gloom, beyond all whisper'd truths

104

Within to scatter, or the speaking word
Without him, to command, or cheer away!

But, immortality for Man is made
Certain, and clear as God's existence, now;
Both for the Flesh, and for the mind secured
By Him, who soul and body hath redeemed;
And, to His own eternally enlinked
That same Humanity His grace assumed.—
He was the Resurrection which He preached:
And, thine the privilege, (and how august!)
Thou weeping Mary, first in zeal to come,
And last in love beside the tomb to stay,—
When the bright Victor over Death and Sin
Rose from His conquered grave. Majestic thought!
And ampler far than archangelic mind
Can master,—Christ our Resurrection rose!
For, oh, He did not back the heavens unfold,
Nor give Eternity a tongue to speak,
Nor, from the shrine of Deity attract
Down to our sense the Secrets of the sky;
But, to the chamber where tyrannic Death
Prisons his pale tenants with relentless chain,
Went like a Victor, grappled with the Power
Of darkness, burst in twain his direful bands,
And thence ascended, taintless, bright, and free,

105

Master of life, and Monarch of the grave,—
Rolling for ever from the tombs of men
The mist, and doubt, and midnight of despair!
Here is the Truth, for which blind reason groped;
The Truth philosophy in vain desired,
Th'intense Reality by conscience sought,
Yet unobtained,—that our sepulchral dust
Should from the grave arise, the soul conjoin,
And both together in one manhood blent,—
Stand before God, for Hell or Heaven prepared:
This was the Secret, earth's arisen Lord
Beyond all types, did gloriously declare!

Yet, when our mighty and mysterious King
Blooming with immortality, arose,
And left His sepulchre a place of light
Behind Him, as the sun illumes the sea
When brightly coming from his couch of waves,—
The first unveiling of His risen form
Not to apostles, though beloved and blest,
Was made; but, unto that much-loving one
Because forgiven most,—the Magdalene!
Others had fled; yet there, amid the hush
And dreamy silence of the cold gray dawn,
Mary stood weeping; till at length, adown
The vaulted sepulchre her gaze she bent
With timid awe; when, lo! two beaming Shapes,

106

White as the fleecy clouds which throng the Morn
When paleness most ethereal decks Her brow,
Were seated,—where the buried Christ reposed:
And each one, with a melody whose might
Sank o'er the soul like dew o'er parchéd flowers,
Questioned her grief: but, ere the tongue could frame
An answer, back she turned her stooping form
And—there, the living Saviour! But, unknown
Amid her cloud of grief awhile He stood,
Mistaken for another; till with tones,
Where all the music of compassion breathed
Reviving magic over memory's soul,
He called her, Mary!—and that word awoke
Feeling and Faith to instantaneous act,
And laid her trembling at her Master's feet!
Amazed, o'ermastered, half delight, and dread,
Eager to prove with living touch, and clasp
The sacred Person of her risen Lord.

He stood before her, but she could not see
That Holy One: and oh, how often thus,
The sad experience of our stricken mind,
Like Mary, cannot view the Lord it loves,
Though in the mercy of our ev'ry breath,
And in the promise of His perfect Word,
In prayer, and praise, and sacramental life,—
Together with that unbreathed thought which tells

107

Home to the heart acceptance in the skies,
When the free spirit of assuring grace
Glows in our bosom,—though in each and all
Christ to the conscience doth Himself present,
Yet, Mary-like, the soul mistakes Him still!
Some carnal shade, or clouding sin prevents,
And the high faculty of seeing Faith
Grows undiscerning; or, in Nature's eye
The tear of sorrow doth so thickly stand
That through it, God himself grows unbeheld
A moment;—nothing but dark wo is seen!

Yet, never from His Own, the Spirit-born,
Will Christ an over-watching care withdraw;
And often, while defenceless Reason quails,
Chariots of fire, and steeds of flame surround
The trembler; round his head a shielding hand
Is circled; and the Eye that slumbers not,
Bends o'er his being with a Brother's gaze.
He called her, Mary!—that melodious name;
And by the charm of His celestial voice,
Cleared from the eye of her dejected faith
The hiding gloom, and let the Saviour in,
By one bright flash of recognition hailed,—
“Rabboni!” And, how touchingly sublime,
That He, the woman's Seed, to woman's soul
Deigned to descend, thus marvellously bland,

108

Whose Equipage Eternity supplies,
Whose Throne the Attributes divine uphold,—
Yes, even He, was human to the voice!
And touched the weeper by a tone, that ran
Like music o'er the chords of memory.

And thus, entranced amid the dreaming night,
How oft the pilgrim in a far-off clime
The touching echo of some household word,
(In Feeling's ear, immortally alive)
Delights to welcome! So, the rude ship-boy
High on the mast, amid the howling storm;
Or, gasping soldier on the battle-plain
When drop by drop slow bleeding into clay,—
Frequent can hear, within the heart's clear depths,
The haunting murmur of maternal lips
His name pronouncing; till the bosom fills
With aching fondness e'en to overflow,
And the dead feelings at a single word
Wake from the tomb, and melt the mind to tears!

'Twas by her name, the pardoned mourner knew
Her cherished Master, from the grave arrived:
And how can we, except The Spirit shine
Bright on His work, and show His image there,—
By love's experience that Redeemer know?
And what is that, but Heaven's mysterious book

109

By Faith unrolled, in full assurance read,
Where the Great Shepherd hath his sheep enrolled
And registered them, each and all, by name?
Come then, O Christ, and to our souls accede;
Murmur our name, and bid the heart respond
Rabboni!—Life and Light, and Lord and Sire,
And Saviour of a lost eternity,
On earth our Merit, and in Heaven the same!

110

THE PRIVILEGE OF SUFFERING.

We learn by suff'ring, while by faith we live,
And graces brighten as our griefs expand;
But where indeed, between the wo endured
And height of glory in a heaven to come
Of being, is the true connection found,—
Baffles our reason, in this cloud of flesh
Now to unfold. But this at least we learn,
The Head of manhood was a suff'ring Head,
And all his members, by their mystic pangs
But echo back what thy pure bosom felt,
Eternal Archetype of life and faith,
Whom all things emblem! Here alone there dawn
Truths that illumine what might else appear
Darkness infernal, deep, and black, and dense
To suffocation. Here some Aims profound
(Whose roots are in eternity's result)
Arrest the tear, and calm to chastened awe
The sigh'd rebellions of the soul within.—
The good shall suffer; but if goodness be
To nature fallen, but the noble part

111

Of trial, when by sin-consuming grace
Seasoned and hallowed,—not for this repine
The brave adorers of The Crucified!
They glory rather in the racking fires;
The more of grief, the more of God they have,
And do (what Seraphim have never done)
Suffer for Christ!—man's pure distinction this!
His high prerogative, His peerless crown
Appointed. Devils for themselves endure,
And angels, quick as sunbeams, glide and go
At His command, and own Him Liege and Lord;
But Virtue, by the Church's heart revealed,
Mounts to a range sublimer, and excels
Beyond the burning Watchers round His throne:
For she can suffer; and by suff'ring teach
Lessons of Godhead, such as angels prize.

112

THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.

Time is for day, Eternity for night,
When earth recedes, and Heaven's deep glories dawn
On some rapt sleeper, if the soul be chaste
And conscience pillowed on the peace of Christ.
Then, God and Angels, and bright Spirits oft
Whisper to man, when purified by grace,
Orac'lar Secrets full of mystic lore,
Which make the mind prophetic, till the heart
Throbs with high prescience over things to come.

And thus, no incantation which the sense
In the full glow of waking life perceives,
Rivals the magic by mysterious night
Evoked, — when Dreams, like Messengers from heaven,
Rise from eternity, and round the soul
Hover and hang, ineffably sublime;
But mocking language, when it tries to catch
Their fine ethereality of truth, and power.—
Yet, all are dreamers, in the heart or head
Pursuing ever some phantasmal good,

113

Some fairy Eden, where the flowerets bloom
Beyond the winter's blight, or serpent's trail
To waste or wither!—Life itself a dream,
An unreality of wondrous things,
Of change abrupt, or crisis unforecast,—
Often in hours of high-raised fancy grows.

And how religious is the sway of dreams,
Which are the movers of that secret world
Where most we live, and learn, and love,—
Building our being up to moral heights,
Stone after stone, by rising truths advanced
To full experience, and to noble aims!
The tombs of time they open, till the forms,
The faces, and the features of our dead
Lighten with life, and speech, and wonted smiles!
While memory beautifies the Thing it mourns,
And to the dead a deeper charm imparts
Than their gone life in fullest glory had.—
And thus, in visions of the voiceless night,
(Apparelled with that beauty which the mind
Gives to the loved and lovely when no more,)
Rise from their tombs the forms of fleeted days,
Friends of bright youth,—the fascinating dear!
Till back returns life's unpolluted dawn,
And down the garden walk, or cowslip'd field,
(Where once he prattled, full of game and glee,)

114

The man, transfigured back to childhood,—roves
Tender as tears! So, on the wind-bowed mast
The sailor-boy in dreams a mother hails,
And hears her blessing o'er his pathway breathed;
Or, pale and gasping, ere his life-drops ebb
For ever,—how the soldier thus depicts
In the soft dream of some remembered day,
The hands that reared him, or the hearts that heaved
With omens, when the charm of tented fields
Seduced him from the sweets of sainted home
And virtue!—Dreams are thus half-miracles;
All time they master, and all truths embrace,
Which melt the hardest, and our minds affect
With things profounder than our creed asserts.

But when creation with its primal bloom
Was haunted, and the spirit-world appeared
With thrilling nearness on this world of sense
Splendours, and secrets, and mute signs to bring,
Beyond what modern grossness can receive
Or, sanction,—then to patriarchal Mind
In that young period did Jehovah come,
And unto conscience syllable His Name,
By voices deep, in visions most divine:
Or, Apparitions oft at noon of night
Dimly the future to a seer unveiled,—
Woful, or wondrous, or with mercy charged.

115

Such dreams the mystery of slumber made;
Heralds of grace, and harbingers of Heaven,
And prophets of the Infinite To Come,
They were, and ministered high truth to man.
Sleep was religion, for it glowed with God;
And that which daylight could not, dared not see,—
Oft in some trance when Mind o'er matter ruled,
The night uncurtained, and to soul revealed
Grandeurs and glooms, and glories without name.

'Twas thus at Gibeon, to the royal sage
Of David born, Jehovah, at deep night
Descended in the shadow of a Dream;
And bade him, round His large and loving Heart
Wind a petition, vast as prayer involves!
But, how, O king! did thine encouraged soul
Climb the dread height of this accorded boon,
Celestial?—Far as Thought could fly,
Upward and heavenward, thy permitted prayer
Might travel; systems, suns, and worlds,
Yea, nothing save the Essence Uncreate,
From thy request was hindered; all was pledged
And promised: what then was thy spoken will?
Not power—though that is property divine;
Not genius—though it be a dazzling spell
That makes, or mars, or glorifies mankind;
Not wealth—though that be worshipped like a god;

116

Not beauty, fame, nor length of honoured life,
Kingdoms nor thrones, with provinces for slaves,—
No! not for these the destined Son of David asked:
Above all matter, and beyond all mind
Created, did the royal dreamer mount;
For, in his full magnificence of faith,
A gift as boundless as the Giver was
He dared to ask!—and that, was God himself,
In wisdom granted; “Give me,” cried the king,
“Give me, O God, an understanding heart!”

Wise was the prayer, whose comprehension grasped
In one behest, the brightest of all dowers,—
A wisdom pure, that eyesight of the soul,
Which looks through Morals, up to Morals' source,
The Will Almighty!—But the dream departs,
And calmly dies, like some cathedral strain
Solemnly deep, slow melting into Heaven.
Then wakes the king: but though the vision ends,
The promise fails not; for his prayer begins
Already, through the mind's exalted powers,
And in the many-chambered heart,—to prove
How God by wisdom gives Himself to man.
For, lo! at once, oracularly wise,
And all unparagoned by Grecian sage,
Or Roman sire, in proverb, or in speech,

117

The kingly Solomon himself approves!—
Judging the heart, and with such cloudless eye,
As if Omniscience to his gaze had lent
A beam directive—perfect as profound.

Two mothers with their new-born infants slept;
Each to the breast her bud of being clasped,
The young heart beating near the mother's own
In thrills and throbs of answering sympathy.
Alone they slumbered, in one chamber housed,
No eye to watch, save His who watches all—
The Slumberless!—But, lo, at night's dead calm,
The one o'erlaid, and unto death deformed
Her helpless, hapless, unresisting babe,
Who died beneath her, like a roseleaf crushed,
Beneath the pressure of some careless foot
Bended, and broken. Then arose that 'reft
And childless mother, and the living babe
From the warm nook of its maternal heart,
(As there it slumbered, like a tiny lamb
Sheltered at evening by its parent's side
From blast, or peril)—took it gently forth;
Thus for the living left the dead, and laid
In pale cold mockery on the mother's breast
That infant breathless!—Morning oped its lids
At last, and with the rising day awoke
The tending mother, to embrace her child,

118

And pour her life-stream through its little veins!
When—hark! a shriek, a shudder, and a groan
As if the soul were stifled, and all words
Were choked to silence by o'ermastering pain.
All stark and chill th' affrighted mother feels
A pulseless baby on her beating heart!
And yet, last night 'twas loveliness and life,
Radiant with bloom, and like incarnate spring
Beside her:—can it be her own indeed,
With sunken features, and that waxen form?
Not e'en by death could such disguising change
Be acted; therefore on the child who lived
She fixed, she fastened, her most yearning gaze
Of tenderness; and, oh! instinctive Love
The babe and mother eye to eye revealed.
Strange was the sight, and almost awful too,
To mark that parent of her babe bereft,
Living and warm, and with an infant dead,
Born of another, in her arms outlaid;
And then, to look on this—who held a child
With mock affection, miserably like,
But on the lifeless body of her own
Cast a cold gaze, as if her eye were dead,
Or, nature frozen at its very fount!

Here, in this blank, where truth's detecting ray
Is wanting, and no evidence of eye,

119

Or ear, or tongue the misty doubt can break,
And disenchant—where person, plea, and all
That for the sentence of adjudging law
A basis forms, is unapparent found—
How shall a Solomon with all his skill
Truth from the cause, like lightning from the cloud,
Elicit? Torture may not be the test,
Lest falt'ring nerves for guilt should be mista'en;
Nor can those lines of heart, that o'er each face
To him upturned, most eloquently rise,
Crimson, or pale, or livid with despair,—
Assure the monarch which the mother is,
Or, whose yon breathing child. Thus judgment, balked
If mortal only, must be paralyzed, or dumb.
But, now, The understanding Heart behold!
By grace accorded in that Dream of night,
Itself shall manifest, and come abroad
Divinely réal, in full act declared,—
Like melody from some deep chord outdrawn
By master-touch of skill's exacting hand,
That gives it being. Difficult and deep,
And thick as darkness by the night of sin
Begotten, though the ravelled cause appear,—
Yet will the shading mystery of guilt,
The pall of crime, itself at once uplift
And guilt its own abhorred confessor be,—

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Touched by a spell, and summoned by a wand
Resistless,—by a power from heaven derived.

Though passion, pride, nor jealousy, nor tears,
Nor loud acclaim, nor clamour's fierce rebuke,
Nor all the blazonry warm feeling wears
On mien, and manner,—can the secret draw
Forth from its hidings; nature still remains:
And to a sense of motherhood, enshrined
In that safe temple, where th' affections lodge,
Will Solomon a thrilling charge send home.—
For all can tragedy, save mother's love,
By mere emotion parody, and act.
Thus both may weep; and Sorrow might assume
In each keen parent what the childless wear
When Grief pines madly;—but for living babe
No heart like mother's with its tone intense
Could throb, with feeling in each pulse alive,—
Yearning, as if her body's frame refined
And grew all spirit, by excess transformed!

“Now bring the sword, and into halves divide
The child which lives, that each her half may have.”
So spake the king; and bade each parent take
A bleeding portion of the child she claimed
Home to her bosom!—But, ere sword could fall,
To cleave the beauty of th' unconcious babe

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Asunder,—Nature! what a moving scene
Didst thou uncurtain; like a prophet's word
That cites the Future into action by a breath,
The flash of that adjudging sword unveiled
Secrets, that else in safe eclipse had slept
Unvoiced, and unrevealed:—forth shines the truth
At once by instinct summoned from the soul!
“Cleave the live infant,” was the royal cry;
But was there, could there, can there, be
In breast maternal, to such voice of blood
Assenting echo? One with envy pale,
Stern as the rock, and like the murderous steel
That glittered fiercely o'er the infant babe,
Both cold and cruel,—mute and motionless
There was, who looked unthrilled upon the child,
And, like some tigress into woman shaped,
Assented! “Let the babe divided be,
And each her palpitating half receive,
Nor mine, nor thine.”—e'en thus the she-wolf spake:
Nor sighed, nor shook, nor shed one feeling drop
From mercy's fountain; tearless did she stand,
A heartless mother into granite turned!

But she, the parent of a stolen child
With what an outburst did her heart speak out
In that dread pause! Before the throne she fell,
As if the sabre through her grieving form

122

Plunged its fierce way; and there, with lifted eyes
All agony, and hands, whose shudd'ring clasp
With strange convulsion bodied forth a grief
Beyond the tragedy of tears to tell,—
All pale and prostrate, round her babe she twined
Her arms maternal, took one moment's gaze
To feed her mem'ry with a farewell sight,
And then—“Give her, O king! my child;
The dead be mine, the living babe be hers!”
Thus cried Affection; and the truth was there!
There in that motherhood of genuine heart
Apparent. Dear, indeed, yon infant was;
And, like a ray from her own being drawn,—
To lose it from her nursing breast, would be.
But still, at times, perchance, to see it smile;
Or, often in some walk, or meeting-spot
To view the motion of its tiny feet;
Or, hear it lisp some little word, and know
That yet beneath the arch of heaven it lived
And grew, a living, loving, blessed Thing
Of beauty, though from her fond cares removed,
Were better far, than now in weltering gore
To view it mangled!—Therefore back recoiled
Her life-spring, ere the cleaving sword could fall;
And by that instinct, rushing deep, sublime,
Outcame the mother!—like a sudden gem
Full on the soul of Solomon then flashed

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The right decision; and on her breast of love
That living infant was at once re-laid,
Stole by the childless robber of the night,
While she had slumber'd.

Mercy, nature, truth,
Concentred, all in that sweet judgment met,
A coronation of pure Feeling made,
And soft as mother's, grew the monarch's voice,
While the big tear of bright emotion hung
On his long eyelash quiv'ring, when he spake,—
“Sheathe the drawn sword! and spare the doubted child;
Behold the mother in that yearning breast,
And quickly let it rock the babe it bore!”

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NIGHT IN PALESTINE AFTER THE CRUCIFIXION.

A tragedy which made the sun expire,
And earth to throb, is ended! and the Night
O'er Palestine her dewy wings unfolds;
On Calvary the solemn moonbeams lie
All chill and lovely, like the trancéd smiles
Which light the features, when the pangs of death
Have ceased to flutter, and the face is still.
The stars are trooping, and the wintry air
Is mellowed with a soft mysterious glow
Caught from their beauty; not a vapour mars
The stainless welkin, where the moon aloft
One blue immensity of sky commands,—
Save where the fringe of some minutest cloud
Hangs like an eyelid on a brilliant orb,
Then withers, in pervading lustre lost.
Few hours have fleeted, and yon trampled hill
Was shaken with a multitude, who foamed
And raged beneath the agonizing God!
But Nature hath her calm resumed; and Night,
As if to spread oblivion o'er the day
And give Creation a Sabbatic rest,

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In balm and beauty on the world descends!
The crowds have vanished like the waves that die
And leave a shore to quietude again.
Some in their dreams, perchance, the day renew
The darkness, earthquake, and that loud Farewell!
But thou! upon a kingly couch reposed,
The Judge of Jesus, could thy soul conceive
That, long as time's recorded truths endure,
Thy name, united to this awful day,
Would live,—when all the Cæsars are forgot!

The hum and murmur of a distant town,
How faintly on the breeze they roll, and die
In soft confusion!—turn thy gaze, and see,
Encircled with a huge Titanian wall,
Where tower and turret, and Herodian piles,
And battlements of dusky gloom, uprear
Their vastness,—there the Holy City stands!
Augustly beautiful, in moonlight bathed,
Jehovah's palace awes the midnight air
Around it; while her mountain Genii, veiled
With dimmer lustre, far and near preside,
Like guardians planted by almighty hands,
To watch the city, where a million breathe,
From plain and desert, isles and regions called,
Wherever son of Abram was,—they throng'd
To worship, and the rite eternal keep:

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And there, in some unnoticed chamber lurk,
The panic-struck Apostles!—when the gloom
Of earthquake on the hill of Calv'ry hung,
That God was coming from the Cross to take
Messiah; or, that Christ himself would free
And shake the universe, to show the God,
Ambition blindly dreamt;—He could not die,
The Lord of Life, and Potentate of worlds!
A veil was on them; though prophetic Christ
His future resurrection oft declared,
'Twas unremembered, while the sudden pangs
Of terror crucified the faith of all!
But, north of Zion, on a mountain-slope,
The garden where the tomb of Jesus lies
Behold; how solemnly, beneath a haze
Of moonlight, the sepulchral rock appears!
Before it, with a frequent play, the flash
Of steely armour, as the Roman watch
Doth move and change in circular array,
Is seen; yet, save the night's uncertain sound,
The wizard motion of a rambling breeze
That stirs the olive, or the tow'ring palm,
And timid murmur of a garden-brook,—
The scene is voiceless; while on high enthroned,
Yon firmamental orbs are fixed and bright,
As though in wonder, that their glory falls
Upon the grave where buried Godhead lies!

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THE SENSUALITY OF THE AGE.

Oh! for a Luther to inspire us now!
Th'awaking magic of some Mind immense,
To charm the sensual from the Nation's soul;
Our passions dark, our appetites of dust
To brighten, or to banish; till the love
Of whatsoe'er is lofty and divine,
Of whatsoe'er is glorious and august,
The Throne of public taste may re-ascend,
Give life to Genius, and a law to Thought,
And for the Beautiful true homage gain.
Wo to the Land! our days are evil now:
Venality our vulgar glory reigns;
Profit and Loss our sole inspirers are;
The pining Arts prosaically mourn;
Sculpture is dead, and Poetry in tears;
And Science, mostly for the palate reigns;
Utility, our practic god becomes,
And Britain, but as Dives, longs to live
In pomp and purple, and in sumptuous joy;

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The Universe for comfort seems arranged,
The World,—a warehouse for convenience planned!
And that Creation which, to faith sublime,
Or Hearts by poetry made wise, appears
The great encyclopædia of our God,
(Whose alphabet, the mountain-letters make,
Whose golden syllables, are suns and stars,)
Is all denuded of its glory bright;
And made a Temple, where the Senses may
Adore the useful with vile worship now.

Alas for England! thus when Finite rules,
Till nought is true, but what the passions love;
When all of spirit found in tasteful Lore,
Or raised in Effort, or sublime in Aim,—
A mock becomes; while Principle expires,
And base Expediency's polluted breath
Falls, like a mildew, over minds and men.
Romance is faded; Sentiment extinct;
All the fine chivalries of ancient Faith
Are laughed away, as meaningless and vain!
Till Dullness prospers in her leaden smiles,
And Mediocrity, with damping weight
All sacred Principles and sacred Powers
Darkens, at last, to intellectual death,
And leaves to Manhood little but a name!

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Oh, for a spirit of reviving grace,
A resurrection from the tombs of mind!
That soon the harmonies of olden thought,
Like buried music, from the Past may rise
In solemn cadence, and the Soul becalm.
Let Finite in the Infinite be merged;
Let Fancy dream, Imagination dare,
And Effort triumph in heroic forms;
While Art and Genius glorify the world
With beauty, by their sanctities and spells;
And Science, from the haunt of sensual things
Turn to the Soul; and there, with rev'rent gaze
Deep within deep, the springs of Nature trace:—
There, myst'ries dazzle our delighted thought,
There, dust with Deity in contact comes;
There, most the Unapparent Spirit works;
And awful Conscience on Her secret throne
Reigns o'er the movements of rebellious soul;
And, like an oracle, is ever found
Approving virtue, and proclaiming heaven.

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MORAL POWER OF THE PRESS.

But, in this prologue of preparing means
Heaven-moulded, chief and prime of arts immense,
See, Printing rise—that miracle of Powers!
That bids the Past become perpetual Now,
Gives Reason sway, Imagination shape,
To Time a soul, to Thought a substance lends,
And with ubiquity, almost divine,
For living permanence and local power
Each ray of Soul immortally endows.

Thou great Embalmer of departed mind!
Thou dread Magician! by whose mental charm,
A mournful, pale, and solitary man
Who pines unheeded, or who thinks unknown,
Long after dust and darkness hide his grave,
Himself can multiply with magic force
Beyond the reach of language to explore,
And the wide Commonwealth of minds may rule
With sway imperial! Who can image Thee,
Whether to Heaven uplifting mind and man,
Or, Hell-ward both seducing, like a Fiend?

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Boundless in each thine unremembered sway!
Thine was a voice, whose resurrection-blast
Pealed through the catacombs where buried Mind
For centuries lay; and, lo! with living might
The Fathers burst their cerements, and breathed;
Dead Intellect from classic tombs came forth
Quickened, and into active substance changed
By thy vast potency: and then was felt
The pith of thought, the marrow of the mind
Itself transfusing,—like a second life
The old absorbing, as with heat divine.
And since that moment, have not Books become
Our silent Prophets, intellectual Kings,
And Hierarchs of human thought
To vice, or virtue? Are they not like Shrines
For truth?—Cathedrals, where the chastened heart
Can worship, or in tranquil hours retreat
To meet the Spirit of the olden time?
For there the drama of the world abides
Yet in full play, immortally performed.—
Still ride the fleets o'er Actium's foughten waves
Before us; patriots fight and tyrants fall;
Sparta and Corinth, and the famous Isles
That fought for freedom till their blood ran o'er
With brave contention,—yet convene, and clash
Their forces; still the Roman eagle flies
In full-winged triumph o'er the subject world;

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Cæsar and Pompey yet the earth alarm,
Or, drag their chariot with the captive East;
Battles are raging, Kingdoms lost or won,
Yea, all the Genius of gone time is there
In books articulate,—whose breath is mind.

A MOMENT.

A moment is a mighty thing,
Beyond the soul's imagining,
For in it, though we trace it not,
How much there crowds of varied lot!
How much of life, life cannot see,
Darts onward to eternity!
While vacant hours of beauty roll
Their magic o'er some yielded soul,—
Ah! little do the happy guess
The sum of human wretchedness;
Or dream, amid the soft farewell
That Time of them is taking,
How frequent moans the fun'ral knell,
What noble hearts are breaking,
While myriads to their tombs descend
Without a mourner, creed, or friend!

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THE PRODIGAL SON.

Oh, mad Impatience of impetuous youth,
How hast thou havocked with a dismal force
The heart of mothers, or the home of friends,
With all the charities that sweeten life,
Or, temper it for virtue!—Who can tell
What tears have rained from parents' eyes, by hot
Self-will and youth's unfeeling rashness drawn,—
Which, but for this, above some duteous child,
Or, round a daughter's fairy grace had smiled
With holy joy, to see how Heaven had reared
A pious offspring in parental shades.

But whence the fascinating spell, that cheats
The present of proportion; and o'er scenes
Of unreality, by restless Youth admired,
A glare seductive, shining with deceit,—
Contrives to scatter? 'Tis the heart's disease,
Raging as ever!—Hence the fiery youth
From love and order, and domestic powers
Of mild dominion, and parental roof,

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Yearns to escape, and, like a planet loose
Broke from the centre where attraction rules,
To wander reckless in the wilds of space,
Flaming disaster wheresoe'er it sweeps,—
The young man from his central hearth departs,
Fooled with ambition, that his lawless will
May riot freely; and, alas! becomes
Pollution's martyr, such as Passion makes
When the blood fevers, till the heart, on fire,
Burns into madness, sin, or sensual crime.

Yet, must experience, bitter, black, and long,
Teach the wild spirit of ungrateful youth,
How early home, the seat of childhood's joy,
Beneath whose shade th' Affections dwell embowered
In maiden freshness, and in morning bloom,
Mid kind restraints of reason, order, law,—
A blessing hath, beyond that wider sphere
Where the loud world, with all its painted scenes,
Enacts the drama keen Excitement loves.
But Time must teach, and Sorrow darkly learn
This lesson of the soul; and not till years
Perchance, their course have channelled on the brow,
Or Pleasure's cheat, ambition's empty dreams,
Or Passion's fell satiety hath taught,
Each, in sad turn, the prodigal a truth,—
Can early happiness be duly prized.

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Oh! then, how often does that inward eye
Retentive, (in whose gaze the Past exists
Immortally, the mind's perpetual Now,)
The sunshine of a quiet home revive,
Till yearns the bosom for a scene no more!—
Then, will our conscience, by instinctive love
Pay the dear Past a debt of gratitude
Mournful, as mighty.—Then, in truth, we learn
That never music like a mother's voice,
And never sweetness like a father's smile,
And never pleasure like that home-born throng
Circling calm boyhood,—has the World supplied;
Though much it promised, when our fev'rish mind
Lured by its syren tones, a rover turned,
And, grasping shadows,—lost substantial bliss!
Our simpler tastes, our tones of purer thought,
Our love for that which healthful life demands
In rounds of daily care, and duteous forms
Of self-denial,—these exist no more.
But foul desires, the satans of the soul,
And morbid want, and mutinous unrest,
In place have come; and haply too, remorse,
And jaded passion, jealousy, and scorn,
With a fierce sense of wrong that rots the soul
In secret,—in our cankered being dwell.
And then, like paradise to exiled Eve,
The home deserted through our mem'ry smiles!

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Murmur the brooks, and wave the garden-boughs,
And greenly shines the meadow where we played
In sporting boyhood,—till a tearful dew
Melts from the heart, and in the eye dissolves;
And, like the spendthift, soon the Soul decides
Back to lost purity and peace to wend,
Each step, repentance—and each sigh, a prayer.

A child there was, the younger, and how blest!
Dear as the light that in paternal eyes
Was beaming, to his father's loving heart;
But, lawless will and blind impatience lured
The youth, from all that sacredness of love
Which binds affection to a parent's side:
And thus self-exiled, in a reckless hour
He turned his back upon his native hills,
Gathered his store, and in a foreign clime
Lavished in vice what virtuous Age had reaped
From many a field, by sad exertion sown
Through years of labour, such as fathers spend
When love for children masters time and toil.
But, soon the spendthrift drank that bitter cup
Which Retribution for the ingrate fills,
And justly. For, when fortune ceased to gild
His vices, soon the sharers of the sin
By gay debauch, or low carousal—shrank
Far from his blasted lot; and left him lone

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And aidless; in the flush of manhood made
A double bankrupt by disastrous crime,
In purse and principle a beggar'd Thing
Blighted and wo-gone!—while the gnawing worm
Of conscience fed upon his wasted mind,
And bowed him to the lowest dust of shame
Dishonoured, and with deep compunction torn.

Oh! what a change from him, that blithe and brave
Free-hearted one, whose limbs were like the oaks
In graceful vigour; on whose cheeks the hue
Of health, like morning's radiant blush appeared,
Ere sin had shaded, or demeaning vice
His bloom destroyed.—E'en like a gallant bark
Leaving the port in beautiful array,
With all her symmetry of canvass spread,
While sunbeams dance her painted sides around,
The soft winds carol, and the leaping waves
Laugh in bright tumult, as her beauty floats
Through flashing waters, but at night returns
The wreck of whirlwinds, or of storms the prey,
A battered, trembling, melancholy Shape,
Of sails dismantled, and with masts no more:—
Or, like a tree by sudden winter struck
And blasted, till its ripened blossoms fall
Beneath it, while the languid boughs depend,

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Touching the soil, as if with conscious droop
Of melancholy,—that blighted youth became!
A mean, emaciated, sunken Thing,
Scorned by himself, by hollow friends forgot,
Hopeless and aimless, far from God, and Truth,
And home parental;—who was once as gay,
As seems the bark whose beauty decks the wave,
Or looks the tree, whose vernal promise wears
The richest vesture of rudundant spring.

But who can know him in such bleak disguise?—
Shrunk with remorse, and so by feeling bent
As if his form, by famine overtasked
Not to the ground, but to the grave would fall,
At each weak motion!—Trembling thus, in rags
Of wretchedness, and leaning on his staff, he turns
Homeward his way: but, who will greet him there?
And where be they, those Priests of song and soul.
The banquet-friends whose fellowship seemed all
The visions bright of bacchanalian hours
Dreamt, or desired? Alas, poor Prodigal,
He seeks for sympathy, and gets a stone!—
Picture how true of what mere Semblance does
In ev'ry age, to them who build their hope on smiles
Which flatter only while the flattered pays
A sweet return, in favours, feasts, and gold.

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'Tis in reverse the hollowness of man
Unveils its depth, and darkens into view
Bleak, cold, and barren as the very tomb.
Then, the same door that once by magic oped
E'en at the shadow of the rich man's form,
Creaks on a sullen hinge, or, rudely shuts
When knocks the pauper, and for entrance pleads:
The Hand that grasped you with a glowing force
When Fortune's summer round about you blazed,
Frigid as death, when poor disaster frowns
Or need assails you,—is at once become!
Averted eyes, and alienated looks,
With cold apologies in ceaseless flow,
And bows as courtly as Refusal gives,—
Lo, the sad harvest reaped from venal ties;
Proving the world to be a painted husk,
How huge in promise,—but how hollow, too!

In this dread climax, when his pangs had reached
That summit, where despair alone is seen,
Did Mercy to remembrance softly bring
Pictures of home, and portraits of the past;
Scenes of the heart, and those associate charms
By fancy cherished. But, above whate'er
The melting pathos of remembered life
Affected,—was a visioned Form of love,
That reverend, hoary, broken-hearted sire,

140

Upon whose fondness his rebellious pride
Rudely had dashed, as doth the headlong wave
On the high bank that bounds it;—that he saw!
And, so intently seemed the old man's eye
To glisten on him with affecting ray
Of unreproaching love: and with such power
The silver tones of his forgiving lip
Trembled within Imagination's ear,—
That, lo! at length, his indurated breast
Sank into woman's softness; and his eye
Was moistened with such tears as Angels love!

And now, behold him, withered, tattered, bowed;
Pale with long famine, wearily he drags
His homeward track; but, so by suff'ring worn,
That through the village, where his Boyhood dwelt,
Unknown he steals, disguised in haggard wo.
Oh, what a tide of memory there rolls,
And what a gush of agony and grief
Runs through his being, when that hill he gains,
Climbed in calm hours of vanished innocence,
And, underneath him, in the sunset pale
Looks on the landmarks of his father's home!—
Mute with remorse, amid the tranquil scene
Awhile he ponders; till the silent forms
Of Things grow eloquent with meek reproach:
Meadow, and tree, and each familiar nook

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Instinct with meaning, to his mind appeals
With more than language from rebuke's harsh lip.
For Nature yet her old expressions wore,
And each loved haunt remained familiar still;
There, was the olive he had loved to watch,
There, was the vine his infant hand had plucked,
And there, the field-path, where he often paced
As bright in spirit as the joyous beam
Beside him, and with step as gaily swift
As the wild breeze that hurried o'er his head:
Nothing looked altered.—For the fig-tree stood,
And caught the day-gleam in its dying glow
As oft the boy had watched it, when he sat
Under the twilight of its laden boughs
And fondly wove his fancies!—And, how sweet
The lulling cadence of that well-loved stream!
E'en as of old, so wound its waters still
In stainless beauty down their pebbled way:
Nothing has changed, but, oh! how changed is He!

But will that Penitent by none be hailed?
Have all forgot him, who in fiery youth
Brake from the bonds a wise affection threw
Around him, and to lawless Pleasure gave
The fatal sacrifice which youth alone
Can offer,—the unblemished mind of man?
No! there was one, whose eye, by love made keen,

142

Instinctively that wan and wasted form,
And wo-gone countenance,—will read,
And through the cloud of his concealing garb
Worn by pale suffering will directly flash!
For he, who when the rose of infant life
Flushed on his fairy cheek, each dawning trait
Had welcomed; and beside his cradle breathed
Full many a murmuring solitary prayer,
That God might shield him with his sheltering love
From sin and sorrow, and to manhood rear
Those tiny faculties, that now began
To bud and blossom,—he that bleak disguise
Would penetrate, and welcome home his child.

And there, (as often in some yearning hour
When with the past his being overflowed)
The old man takes his meditative stand
On yon green eminence, beside the porch;
Casting his look along the downward path,
Where his mad boy to face the world went forth,
With deep emotion, dim with unshed tears.—
Still on his ear a parting footstep rings,
Still to his eye, a lessening form appears,
E'en as it did, when first the reckless youth
Fled from his shelter.—Oh, that by some thought
Compunctious, softened and subdued at last,
That wanderer might return!—or, if by want

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Compelled, or by chastising sickness forced,
Yet to a heart which beat with prayer for him
The penitent would come!—Such meant the sigh,
In words translated, from yon father's soul
Breathed in dejection.

But, behold! a Form
Feeble and bent, with scarce a robe to shield
His frame that shivers, and with famine pale,
Comes in the distance:—can it be his child,
From strength and symmetry to such a wreck
As that transformed? Is that the fair-browed boy,
Bright as the morning, but more beautiful
In life's young freshness?—Oh, what stirrings deep,
What perturbations through the bosom rise
Of that hoar'd parent! E'en as work the waves
Under a ground-swell, heaves the o'erwrought frame
With strong emotion, terribly intense.
But near, and nearer yet, that haggard shape
Advances,—till a shriek of rapt surprise
Burst from his lips; and forward springs the sire
Nerved with new life, as if to youth restored;
And, while the big tears from his sable orbs
Are gushing, round about the shuddering lad
He spreads the mantle of protecting love;
And folds him in it, with such fond embrace
That their hearts seem like touching flames to melt
Each into each, ecstatically fired!—

144

But, when the current of emotion sank
Awhile, then upward on the aged face
Of his wronged parent, turns the prodigal
The deep repentance of his pleading eye,
And looked his father into more than love,
And to his features all the parent brought
At once responsive to that mute appeal!

And is the past of crime and wasteful sin
Unmentioned? Are ungrateful deeds and words,
Baseness and beggary, and wild debauch,
Savage neglect, and spirit-crushing wrongs—
Are all forgotten? Sounds there no reproach,
And comes there not from those paternal lips
A chiding tone of well-deserved rebuke?
No! not a word, or frown, or accent falls,
To mar the softness of forgiving love.
But, bending o'er him with his white-locked head,
And face by feeling shaded, while the eyes
Half-shut, by melting pathos overpowered,
Drop a slow tear,—'tis thus, beside his boy
In this rapt moment stands the grateful Sire!
True, there was outrage, bitter, base, and long,
And many daggers through his riven soul
A son's ingratitude has fiercely plunged,
But yet,—that Prodigal was still his child!
And in the depths of that relation, all

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The shrouded past was silently entombed
At once; when Pardon and Compassion threw
Oblivion's pall o'er every thing, but love.

And, reader! art thou by such tale commoved?
Or, do these annals through thy spirit melt,
Like balmy dews on summer's heated soil
At twilight?—Then, a teaching shadow view
In the pure image of yon greeting sire
Whose mercy hailed the home-returning boy,—
Of love Almighty, by redemption preached;
Where God in Christ our blotted past forgives,
And on the bosom of Paternal grace
Welcomes to Heaven this Prodigal of worlds!

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NAPOLEON AT MOSCOW.

Lo! where the Tyrant felt a flood of wrath
From Heaven poured down upon his guilty head,—
Where first he knew himself a Man! Yon spires
With golden pinnacles that pierce the clouds,
And river, winding by the pallid walls,
Proclaim where unforgotten Moscow stands:
There raged a scene that ruined angels love
To witness, when the vaunting sons of clay
Grow demon-like, and shudd'ring Time beholds
The fellest misery that man can feel!
As when all-wildly through the unbarred gates,
Like savage war-fiends, his marauders swept,
And saw the city billowed into flames,
Like a far ocean blazing through the storm,—
Then Havoc started with a thrilling shout;
The shriek of violated maids, the curse
Of dying mothers, and despairing sires,
And dash of corpses, torn from royal tombs
And plunged amid devouring flames, were heard
Terrific,—Moscow seemed a maddening hill!

147

But who, when Rapine could not pillage more,
While cannon-thunder chased the daunted winds,
Paused on a desert heath, in speechless ire,
And marked the remnant of a ruined host
Flying, and pale as phantoms of Despair?
Napoleon! in the tempest of thy soul,
The elements were reaping vengeance then;
While Slaughter turned the tide of Victory,
And rolled it back upon thy powerless host
Of famished warriors, freezing as they died!
That hour of agony,—the crushing sense
Of danger and defeat,—the broken spell
That blasted all thy triumphs into shame,
Sublimed thy spirit with so proud a pang,
It longed to swell into a million souls,
And shake the universe to save a throne!

Thy race is o'er; and in the rocky isle
Of Ocean, canopied with willow-shade,
In death's undreaming calm thou restest now;
But all the splendid infamy of War,
The fame of blood and bravery, is thine:—
Thy name hath havoc in its sound! and Time
Shall read it when his ages roll,—'twill live
When Time and Nature are forgotten words!
For, as a noble fame can never die,

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But proudly passeth on from earth to heaven,
There to be hymn'd by angels, and to crown
With bright pre-eminence the gifted mind
That won it gloriously; so evil fame,
A fiery torment to the soul may be
Forever: let Ambition think of this,
Who murders kings, to make her heroes gods.

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WOMAN.

And thou,
The Star of home, who in thy gentleness
On the harsh nature of usurping man
Benign enchantment beautifully shed'st,—
Soft as a dew-fall from the brow of eve,
Or fairy moonlight on the tempest thrown,—
Woman! when love has wrecked thy trusting heart,
What port remains to shelter thee! too fond,
Too delicately true, thy nature is,
Save for the heart's idolatry and dreams;
And then, by manly worship proved and watched,
To virtue's household-path thy love allures:—
It dawns, and with'ring passions die away,
Low raptures fade, pure feelings blossom forth,
And that which wisdom's philosophic beam
Could never from the wintry heart awake,
By love is smiled into celestial birth!—
So Love is wisdom with a sweeter name.

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MARTHA AND MARY.

If Heaven be gratitude forever felt
By souls forgiven, who the most have sinned,
Then, will the Marys, more than seraphs love
The Master at whose feet on earth they sat;
For, how can Angels, like the pardoned, know
How much it cost to buy a sinner's crown
Of glory!—e'en Thy pangs and bloody sweat,
And that last Sigh which shook the universe
With dread emotion, as it died away,
Thou Shield of Earth, and Sun of all our souls!

'Tis thus, that o'er that quiet home of love
Which oft in Bethany Messiah graced,
Religion bends her meditative gaze
Delightedly: for there, may household Faith
Divinely human see the social Christ
In ways of meekness, while His words of love
Steal o'er the conscience with a sacred thrill
Beyond resistance.—Lo! the very scene

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Beneath the painter's past-recalling hues
Rises at once, with fascinating spell,
Before thee!—Seated with her flowing hair
Down the white shoulders exquisitely dropped,
Behold the pensive Mary: on the lip of Christ
Her soul is hanging with a hush of awe;
And as she listens to the tones of truth
Or mercy, like stray music from the skies
Descending, as the parchéd summer plant
Opes its faint leaves to quaff the fresh'ning dews
Of twilight,—so her tender spirit drinks
Into its essence those reviving words
By Jesus uttered; while her lifted gaze
Deepens before him, as those radiant truths
His doctrine darts upon her asking mind,—
Brighter and brighter to her soul descend!
But Martha, like the restless billow, works
Hither and thither with excited mind.
She on the household hath her heart bestowed
By zeal mistaken; and, with chiding mood,
Would fain her sister from the feet of Christ
At once withdraw,—so with herself to share
The duteous labours of their kindred home.
Then, solemnly, and with a brow severe,
And eye that pierced her with omniscient ray,

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The Christ rebuked her, for the sad unrest
That tasked her being with an over-toil
Unwise, as needless; but, on Mary's head
The coronet of sweet approval placed,
As one who wisely chose that better part
Needful, as holy!—Thus, unmoved she sat,
That gentle listener; like a spell-bound Mind
By Jesus magnetized, to him her face
She turns, and feels the strong attraction work
E'en as the loadstone of almighty love,
That now has touched her with ethereal sway!

And has Earth done with this domestic scene?
To serve with Martha,—or like Mary sit
In loving quiet, teachably resigned
Down at the footstool of our guiding Lord,—
Here is the question! and, as long as Time
And Care round home and spirit cast
Their vexing shadows,—will a scene like this
Speak to the heart with purity, or power.

“Careful and cumbered about many things;”
Alas! poor Martha, and, alas, poor World
With thy worn victims,—what description here!
For in those syllables our souls appear
Imaged precisely; there, we seem to live,
Drawn to the life by Inspiration's pen!

153

Around, within, and often over man
This fretting World a vile distraction brings
With such a conquest, that the soul becomes
A wingless nature, which can never soar
Out of base earth, and unto God return,
Its native centre.—Fortune, Fame, or Gold,
(That great Diana of the world's desire!)
Or, friends to gain, or foes to overmatch,
These, with sad appliances, which come
From envy's blight, or disappointment's frost—
How do they canker to its healthful core
The heart within! And hence, uneasy, sad,
Or much perplexed, with all the vernal light
Of hope departed,—myriads plod their way
To sorrow, death, or disappointment's tomb,
Because, too careful of to-morrow's cost!
This vexing dream, this unsubstantial life,
This heartless pageant of a hollow world
With gnawing earnestness they keenly prize,
Pursue, and flatter;—but the end is foiled.

Oh that, like Mary, we did often bend
Low at the feet of that unerring Lord
Who loves us; and the burdened Future leave
Calmly to Him, who counts and knows our wants,
Who feeds the ravens, and the fowls of air,
And clothes the lilies which nor toil nor spin,

154

With peerless beauty. Let us not to man,
But to Jehovah, our to-morrows trust,
For His they are; and, what for them He wills.
Apportions,—wrangle howsoe'er we may;
Mistrusting Him, whom seraphim adore,
And in the hollow of whose Hand revolves
The living Universe, with all its worlds!

But, how anxiety the heart corrodes,
Wasting the moral health of man away,—
We seldom ponder, till too late perceived!
When, under burdens which ourselves inflict,
The intellect of half its glorious life
Is sapped, while conscience turns a crippled thing;
The heart gets agéd ere the head grows old,
And those bright virtues, which might nobly shine
In that clear firmament of thought and power,
Where lofty manhood would exult to act,
Rarely, if ever, into influence dawn.—
For else, the grandeurs, graces, charms,
The smiles of matin, and the shades of night,
Sun, moon, and star, wild mountains and glad seas,
Meadows and woods, and winds, and lulling streams,
With fruits, and flowers like hues of paradise
Amid us scattered,—would so well impress
The moral being, that responsive Mind
Upon the Beautiful would back reflect

155

And answer, most intelligibly pure,
To each appeal of beauty. But the world
Can so infect the myriads of mankind,—
That all those latent harmonies, that link
Nature to man by loveliness and might,
Lie undiscerned: and, though a spirit deep,
A Sentiment of fine significance and truth
In all Creation, cultured souls may find,
How few perceive it! but, on objects gaze
With eye unmoved;—as if by God unmade
Their beauties, and by Him unformed their powers.
Nature to them in all her shrines is mute;
Nor to her mystic oracles, that yield
Such music to Imagination's ear,—
Can the cold worldling condescend to list.

Reader! be thine, at least, the better Part,
Whate'er thy walk, thy weakness, or thy woes.
That good, eternity will not destroy;
But rather, through all ages will expand
By new accessions of ennobling power.—
Yet, while the turmoil of this troubled world
Tries the worn heart, or tempts the wearied mind
To false dependence on the things of sight,
Though perishing,—to Providence alone
Thyself and thine, learn more and more to trust;
For He will keep thee, as His Own beloved,

156

In perfect shelter, and in blesséd peace
Now, and for ever! And, when thus becalmed,
Feelings of far diviner growth than Earth
Can nourish, from thy spirit soon will rise,
And hopes exalt the bosom they inspire:
Till, like the prophets, patriarchs, saints,
And all the Chivalry for Christ, who fought
Faith's battle unto blood!—above this world
With all its pleasures, principles, and powers,
Raised by The Spirit, thou wilt learn to live;
And call, whate'er opposing Flesh may dream,
A God thy portion, and a heaven thy home.

An allusion to the engraving which originally accompanied this poem.

157

THE DYING DAY.

A sunset!—what a host of shapes and hues
In cloudy lustre multiplied and flashed,
And flung their beauty in reflected tints
On dimpling waters, musical and calm,
And then, concentred in one pomp of light,
Like that which girdles an Almighty throne!
But ere the sun behind yon sea withdrew,
A thunder-gloom with silent threat advanced,
And the loud hiss of the exulting rain
Was heard, till universal freshness beamed;
The meadow sparkled, and the Sun retired,
On waves of glory, like an ocean-god:—
From out the billows beamed a rainbow form,
That died in azure o'er the distant hills;
The sea-gull fluttered on his foam-like wing,
And, like some fairy of the minute born,
A wind exulted over trees and flowers.

An hour with nature is an hour with heaven,
When feeling hallows what the fancy views:

158

And thus, O twilight! may the spirit learn
From thy fond stillness what the day denies.
Now mem'ry, too, divinest mourner, makes
The soul's romance, till years of verdant joy
Revive, and bloom around the heart once more.
Bright forms, by greeting childhood so beloved!
Maternal tones, and features, of whose smile
In blissful rivalry our own was born,
And voices, echoed in our dreams of heaven,
Around us throng, until th' inclosing past
Our being enters, and is life again!

Of no false weakness is the inward sigh
Of mem'ry, for the days of spring-warm truth
Departed; beautiful regret is there!
To love the past but makes the present dear;
The mournful wisdom of our discontent
Can then unteach what young Delusion taught
Alone;—for who that lives, and living, thinks,
But adds another to an endless train
Of sad confessors since the world began?—
A life of glory, is a dream fulfilled,
That fades in acting, as a gorgeous cloud,
E'en as it dazzles, is but dying air!

If I too, ere autumnal age my brow
Hath wrinkled, or the twilight of my days

159

Begun, the barrenness of earth perceive,
And feel mortality's most fev'rish wear
Forever on the soul; if all that bloomed
Like Eden once, hath grown a desert now
Of dying hope, and faded joy; if life be lone,
And sad, and bleak, while aspirations droop
Unwatched within me, and delightless earth
More tomb-like grows, as death's absorbing dream
Doth haunt the spirit wheresoe'er it fly
For refuge,—may I not our being mourn?
No! let me fall, and worship at the Fount
Of promise; life is Heaven's surpassing gift,
And what his Maker wills, let man revere!

To cover earth with shades of hell, accuse
The sun of darkness, and the world blaspheme,
Deny all hope, disdain co-equal man,
And mar the heavenliness of human joy,—
Betrays a tempest of unholy thought,
Raised by the demon of our darker hours!
But, nobly true, inexplicably deep,
That mournfulness our better nature feels,
When solitude is silent poetry,
Read by the soul, interpreted within.—
Like a mute pilgrim, on some distant shore
At twilight shaping in the skyey air
The towers and temples of his native land,

160

While on his ear the sounds of home renew
The sweetness of their social melody,—
So oft in solitude, existence feels
As though mortality an exile were,
Saw visions of a former Heaven, and heard
Instinctive voices of the parent clime,
Like a faint language from departed worlds!
And oh! how oft beneath the bluest sky
That summer arches over lake or wood,
When round and round, with antic motion, sport
The insect populace of beams and flowers;
When herb is bright, and breeze is gay, the mind
A mystic shadow of dejection feels.
Sorrow and dimness, shade and mournful fear
Hang round about us, like a haunting spell:
For ever on the solemn verge we seem
Of gloom unknown, or glory unrevealed.
And who shall say, that Life does not preserve
A faint reflection of some vanished state,—
By Earth forgot, as oft the sea retains
A dim resemblance of departed storm?

161

THE MAJESTY OF CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE.

One Truth divine, from deeps of scripture drawn,
And by one Heart with burning zeal espoused,
Then, bodied forth in full heroic life,—
What miracles that single Truth achieves,
Which rock an empire, or a world restore!
And hence, when pale in his monastic gloom,
Alone and pensive, groping after God,
Through clouds of error, black with Romish guile,
At length the tortur'd Monk, with tears of praise
Consummate pardon by the Cross procured
Discovered—then a peerless Truth was found
From whence instructed Empires learn to live.
And in that Hall, where stood the fearless man
Bulwarked with Principle, beyond all powers
By Earth created or by hell contrived,
He grasped a Truth, which Heaven's eternal creed
Hath canonized, and by the Cross explained,—
That Grace is God, by God alone applied:
On this, Religion all her fabric rears,
That else is baseless as the yielding air.

162

Hence flow those energies through man and mind
Which mould our being great, or make it good.
Here by the pardon of perfective Grace,
The anguished memory can alone subdue
That dread Gehenna, which our guilt inflames
Oft in remembrance; and from thence derived,
Pure emanations spring, and feelings act
That feed with moral life the social frame
Of Men and Empires; for the Heart is free,
And guarded Conscience, on the bosom's throne
Reigns in the sanctity which Christ hath won.

'Tis thus, where olden Hearts and Hands had failed,
And ancient Heroes their protesting voice
Lifted in vain, to vindicate The Truth
From all aggression, Luther's prowess smote
The Roman Beast to Ruin—nigh to death,
And that, with principle. 'Twas here he fought,
He grappled with the foe of God and man.
Swift through the dens and dungeons of the mind,
He poured the beam of evangelic Morn;
And where Authority—that mitred Lie!
Bestrode the conscience with infernal sway,
He throned The Gospel, in the light of Grace,
At once the law, and liberty of souls.
But, had he only on a Mob of Saints
Shot his keen arrows of sarcastic truth,

163

Dislodged the Virgin, paralyzed the Pope,
Or laid the Monk's Augéan darkness bare,—
In form regenerate, but with life corrupt,
The Reformation then had toiled and died.
But, glory be to Him whose name we bear!
'Twas grace in principle that Luther taught:
Here is the lever which the World uplifts—
“A Saviour just, for man unjust hath died!”
Here is a Truth, whose trumpet-voice might preach
The Pope's religion into airy nought;
A Truth, which is at once the text of texts,
Making all scripture music to our souls!—
The Bible read, is God himself perused
In pages lettered with Almighty love,
When thus proclaiming what the Conscience craves:
While the rich fountain of Emanuel's Blood,
(Not barricaded round with priestly walls,
Nor blent with superstition's blackening tide
Of “merits,”) all its healing Flood of Grace
Full on the heart, in one vast current pours!

He ended thus, where ancient Minds begun;
'Gainst outward vice those murdered Saints appealed,
And perished; but for Principle Divine,
Bravely alone the Monk of Erfurt fought.
He struck the root,—and then the branches fell;

164

He purged the fountain,—then the stream rolled pure;
The deep foundation down to Hell he shook,
And then—the Roman Superstition reeled:
From centre to circumf'rence, thus the Mind
Of Luther reasoned out its lonely way;
Till, lo! at length, by gospel light revealed,
He saw Impostures, in successive form
Each after each more staringly corrupt,
And in a Pope,—the Antichrist foretold
By dread prediction, since the Church began.

165

THE FINDING OF MOSES.

If classic pilgrims in a far-off clime,
Bend with devotion o'er the tiny brook
From whence some River-infant takes his rise
In solitude, amongst the hills unseen,—
To sweep its course through continents and isles
With navies wafted on its surging tide,
And storm-heaved waters; or, if Hist'ry muse
O'er the rude hut a Roman king first raised,
Where ages after, rose that City-Queen
Who shook the kingdoms with a single word,
Making the world her battle-field for fame!
How can the Christian, on the reedy bank
Where Moses once a weeping infant lay,
Bend his regard,—and no delightful awe
Catch from a scene beyond all praise, sublime?

In wailing innocence, behold, that babe,
The helpless outcast of some Hebrew born,—
And yet, a master-piece of Man lies there
Predestined! In that quiv'ring form is veiled

166

A Soul transcendent, meek, majestic, wise,
By whom came Oracles, and Laws, and Rites
With Signs, and Sacraments, and solemn Truths,
And Miracles, by words predictive worked,
Which have for more than twice two thousand years
Instructed Empires; and a people kept
Singly and sternly from mankind apart,—
With the long passion of eternal love
For Temple, Law, and Thy lamented soil,
Home of our faith,—thou queenly Palestine!

Oh, little could the trembling mother dream
When in her smile the perilled child reposed,
How much of destiny her lap contained,
Soon to evolve, and still evolving! There,
The Guardian and the Guide of Israel slept;
But on his cheek her moistening tear-drop fell
When, frequently that frighted mother thought,
How soon the lord of Egypt's barb'rous throne
Might slay him; and the bloody sword be bathed
In the warm current of his precious veins,
Under her eyes!—and scarce a wail was heard,
But it appalled her; lest a spy should list,
And bring the warrant for a male child's life;
And, not a step of hurried motion caught
Her ear maternal, but her heart was rocked
With tremors, and a swooning paleness clad

167

Her countenance,—as if some Fiend advanced,
To strike the infant from her nursing breast,
And lay him mangled at her very feet.

But, cheer thee, mother! God is full awake,
And slumberless The Eye that watches thee
With Moses; monarchs well might envy him,
Could they foreshadow,—what a fate sublime,
(Bound with his life, and to his being linked,)
Jehovah hath from everlasting willed
Now to commence, and into action bring;
And not a pulse within thy baby's heart
Is beating,—but is audible in heaven,
And throbs connected with the Church to come.

But, oh, fond nature! yearnings deep are thine
Passing the poet's song, the painter's hue,
Yea, all description into words to bring,
When bends a mother o'er a new-born child
In hushed and holy musing! But, to part
With his bright presence, and his aidless form
Leave to the mercy of unfeeling winds
And foodless waters!—like a weed to cast
A portion of herself away from care
And nourishment;—and, thus to let him die
Unwept, unwatched, uncoffined and unknown,
The prey of monsters by the Nile produced!

168

Here was a pang, beneath whose crushing force
Her soul unbent, and nature's feeling chords
Were riven, till the heart grew all untuned
With mad emotion! But at length, when sleep
Had bound his beauty with its blessed trance,
She wrapt him gently in his little robe,
And, on the ark of bulrush laid him down
Mute, pale, and lovely—like a sacrifice
To destiny, and cruel Pharaoh's law.
But, ah! forgive her, if again she fell
In kneeling agony beside that ark,
Lifted awhile her eyes and hands in prayer
Convulsive, then one parting kiss impressed
And dropt a tear upon its placid cheek,
Dimpled with dreams, as if no danger frowned,
Then,—shudd'ring backward, from the scene retired.

And now, behold yon Hebrew mother wends
Sadly and silently, to where the Nile
Winds among flags its fertile waters by.
Ark'd in a bulrush, there th' unconscious babe
Her trembling hand deposits, on the brink:
But to a daughter, as a watch unseen
Placed at a distance,—the forsaken child
Her fainting heart entrusts; and then returns
The mourning Rachel from that river-scene.

169

And now, a syncopé to human sense
This hour appears, in all of God's high plans
The clouded eye of carnal reason views.
Helpless, beyond deserted life to know
In man or woman, 'mid the wildest haunts
And forest-homes by loneliness begirt,—
That infant lies, beside the churlish wave.
The Elements its only nurses make,
While the cold river rocks the tiny ark,
And roving Airs sing lullaby
Over its quiet slumber.—Yet, That Power
Who counts the sparrows, and the raven feeds,
And guides the wild bee to the summer flowers,
And feeds the insect,—yon mysterious babe
Is watching; and its sheltered life is safe
As when, hereafter, ranged the guarding Hosts
Of camping Israel round about his tent
At midnight, while the pilot Cloud of Heaven
Paused in pale fire, above the wilderness.—
But, little could sad Jochebed have dreamed
There in yon reedy couch reposed a child
Sublimely destined for a fearless work
Beyond all wonder:—lo! the Man
Who dared with Deity talk face to face,
And was not blasted by the dreadful beam!
Whose wand the secret thrones of Nature shook
By its almighty shadow; and whose life

170

One miracle of constant virtue made;
Whose death was mystery, and whose mountain-tomb
Is yet a secret, by Jehovah veiled
With darkness, most inscrutably profound.

But chance exists not; 'tis a libel dread
On Providence, which those unblest of mind,
Poets of hell, and Laureates of despair,
Often pronounce,—who into merest fate
The motions of our moral world resolve.
For, God o'er all eternally presides;
And, from the quiver of the bladed grass,
To wheeling Systems hung in starry space,
Enormous as unnumbered,—all occurs
How, when, and where, His guiding will decrees:
And we, who now with backward gaze revolve
The hoary annals of Mosaic time,
Behind the curtain of that outer scene
Where man was acting view His Prompting Hand
At work for ever: History's moving form
Points like an index to that secret God;
E'en as the timepiece which the hour reveals,
The hidden motion of a main-spring shows.

Thus, when the Princess, from her silken bower
To bathe her beauties in the sacred Nile

171

Comes at this moment; and along the brink
Of that tree-shaded river, while the noon
Burns in hot trance, beneath the cooling palms
Walks with her maidens,—who can disbelieve
That, in the counsels of decretal Heaven
Hour, scene, and circumstance were all arranged,
Marshalled, and mustered?—though each agent felt
Freedom of will untouched, and unrestrained.
But, lo! at length the baby's ark is seen
Floating in flags, along the river's edge;
And when, obedient to the royal word,
Attending maidens have the lid removed,—
A sobbing infant greets her gentle eyes!
Celestial beauty on his forehead sat;
But the low wail, so helplessly that comes
From its frail bosom, touches all to tears,
Beyond the language of a pleading lip
To rival!—Instinct made a mother then:
And Pharaoh's daughter, while her feelings gushed
Pure, young, and warm from Nature's hallowed fount
High o'er all prudence, into pity's course,
Shook from her soul that edict of her sire,
That Slaughter should all Hebrew males destroy!
And to the mother, by unconscious love
And Heaven attracted,—took the rescued babe
For life and nurture; and thus home returned
The infant Moses to maternal arms;

172

And, like an angel of compassion, said,—
“Take the sweet child, and nurse it for my own!”

Oh! Providence, how gloriously profound
In this and all things, are thy works and ways!
The Princess wandered, at the wonted hour,
Beside the river, in the Nile to bathe,
But, nothing more: yet, on her step there hinged
And hung, what destinies and deeds of time
Immortal! Then a spring she touched,
And set in motion Principles, and Powers,
While Change, and Consequence, she then involved,—
That round the Churches, at this living hour,
Act the full might of their commingled sway!
But, doth not Life, in its perpetual round,
Often to some familiar scene, or spot,
Link the vast crisis of experience now?
And, who that shuts his door, at primal morn,
The world to visit,—can presume to say,
On the first street he turns, or friend beholds,
How much of man's unutterable weal
Or wo dependeth! Ever on the brink
Of consequence, our perilled nature hangs
And borders, well may thoughtful bosoms feel:
But if, like Enoch, with our God we walk,
Each step we take but unto glory moves;
And all our changes, sudden, stern, or sad,

173

Not accidents of blank confusion born,
To us will come; but rather Faith will find
That life's experience is the Form decreed
Before all ages, where our tested mind
Must mould itself for happiness, and heaven.

But ere we part, from this affecting page
Of God's deep book of providence, to man
Oped in the Bible, most unwise it were
Not to remember, how the rescued child,
Snatched from a grave of waters,—soon became
Profound in science, learning, art, and skill,
In kingly halls, around great Pharaoh's throne,
Adopted like a son. But, Heaven preserved
True to itself his genuine soul, and kept
The fountains of kind nature pure and fresh
Within him welling: so that, blazing rank,
Nor pomp, nor riches could his heart withdraw
From fond alliances, by Feeling bound
Close to his bosom. Here, the Hebrew reigned!
For on the breastplate of his love he placed
His Country and Her cause; and thus defied
The thawing sunshine of a sensual court
The high-souled virtue of his peerless mind
E'er to dissolve. His People and their pangs
Had charms for him, beyond an Empire's dower
Or throne to rival: the reproach of Christ,—

174

Oh, there was grandeur in the grief it brought
And, o'er the shades of drear affliction's night
Rose the rich day-star of that promised heaven,
Where Godhead welcomes with rewarding bliss
All saints, and martyrs, who, like Mary, choose
That part sublime, beyond all worlds secure.

186

THE ARCTIC TRAVELLER.

But, lo! in pale sublimity of forms
The arctic billows glare like frozen storms;
For thus, in terrible array, are seen
Mountains of ice where never man hath been,
Where not a sound or motion dares advance
To violate their everlasting trance;
Save when the riven glaciers downward crush
Themselves to water, with chaotic rush!
Or Silence trembles, like a thing aghast,
When o'er her waste the wolfish echo passed;—
E'en here beneath the wings Almighty roam
The brave sea-warriors from their English home,
And find amid the wilderness of waves
An Eye that watches, and a Hand that saves.

Behold! yon vessel with heroic prow
Through a white realm of ice advancing now,
Her cables stiffened into chains of frost,
And the proud bearing of her beauty lost,—
The prey of ocean, will she not descend,
Tombed in dead ice, with none to mark her end?

187

No! faith and valour, and inviolate hope,
With danger in its deepest midnight cope;
And Home shall listen yet, with pausing breath,
To tales of ruin, the romance of Death;
When frowning o'er her, like a Fiend he stood,
And muttered,—“Sink in ghastly solitude!
And may the corpses of thy crew be seen
To freeze and whiten where thy sails have been.”

Victors of Nature in her dreadest might!
Dauntless as winds that roam with free delight,
When once again the rocks of England rise
In tow'ring welcome on your dazzled eyes;
As round the hearth young household voices ring,
Like the glad melodies of jocund spring,
What records will your laden hearts unroll!
Where is the painter on whose gorgeous soul
Visions of undepicted beauty rose,
Like them that glittered on irradiant snows?
Bright as the palace John of Patmos viewed,
What ice-domes flashed in frozen solitude!
What rocks of ruby glare, when sunset came
Full on their whiteness, like a wingéd flame!
And when the crimson of declining day
Lit the cold fretwork of the crystal spray,

188

How oft a seaman with ecstatic eyes
Drank the rich magic of celestial dies,
Blent like a rainbow's, when the waters heave
And tremble, while the braided colours weave!—
But there was beauty that out-dazzled this,
Making the air one fairy-clime of bliss,
When moonlight flung a robe of silver haze
Athwart the mountains that received its rays,
Till the stained welkin by reflection shone,
Like floating em'rald, or a verdant sun,
So brightly green, so exquisite the glow!
And then, what meteors did pale twilight throw
O'er the chill air, in wild electric play!
Sublimely fierce, or delicately gay,
The borealis like a creature spread
Its length of living glory o'er their head,
And seemed exulting with victorious light,
To mock the darkness with its radiant might.
But, oh, the silence!—dreamlike, chill, and vast,
As though the day of awful doom had passed,
And Earth remained to wither, dead and lone,
A blighted rebel, by her God unknown!
So mute and soundless must that hour have been,
When gazing round on nature's ghastly scene
Of crag and ice, interminably piled,
A frozen chaos, a sepulchral wild,—

189

The seaman pondered till a thought of death
Checked the cold murmur of his faintest breath:
Nature and God alone were reigning now:
And the high meaning of his dauntless brow
Dethroned by awe, dissolved and waned away;
For Silence, like a Spirit, seemed to pray,
Till the blood listened in his breathless frame,
And, small and still, the voice Almighty came!

See Parry's Voyage, and others, to explain some local allusions in this polar sketch.

190

DIVINE LOVE.

Oh, Love creative! earth itself is heaven,
Would man profane it not, by savage tread
And sordid gaze. E'en now, the Sun appears
A king of glory, and the breathing world,
Like some vast instrument of magic sound,
A thousand melodies of life awakes.—
The sky is covered with blue isles of cloud,
That flash or float as sun and wind command,
The air is balm, the breeze is living joy;
My heart is dumb with an exceeding bliss
Of light and beauty, pouring in from day's
Enchantment; while beneath yon vernal hill,
In shadowy sport reflecting cloud and sky,
Poetic murmurs from the distant sea
In lulling falls come faintly on the mind.

But now the conscious Elements prepare
For slumber; modulated breezes swell;
The sky, with ocean-mimicry adorned,
Grows pale and paler; soon will stars advance

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And seem to palpitate, as there they shine,
With trepid beauty: thus will night begin,
And earth lie cradled in a dim repose,
Till the pure heaven comes down upon the soul,
And all is hushed within her holy spell.—
So ends a Sabbath; so may Sabbaths end
Devoutly sacred; till the wings of Time
Be folded, and Eternal Sabbath reigns.
For all Thy ministries begin and end
In Love,—that glorious synonyme of Thee!
Whose palace fills th' interminable Heavens;
From the first tear that rolled down Adam's cheek,
To the last pang of living bosoms now,
In light and darkness,—still our God is Love.—

196

THE SMITTEN ROCK.

Down came The Glory with celestial glide,
Inaudibly majestic; there enshrined
Himself, The Ancient of All Days, unseen:
And from that burning Cloud a voice profound,
Whose accent was with earthly music deep,
Commanded Israel's peerless guide to strike
The rock of Meribah; that, bleak and bare,
And black, from out the then unwatered plain
Of Réphidim, its form upreared.
Around its base behold a parched and pale
Array of mothers, men, and weeping babes,
Dry as the heated dust and dewless soil
On which they languished! Seldom yet had Earth
A mass of suff'ring on her bosom felt,
Direr and deeper, than the withered ground
Did now, in groups of ghastly victims bear
Unsoothed.—There, prostrate sank some hoary man
With beard dishevel'd, down his sun-burnt skin
Long trailing, while his lean and livid face
With upturned agony to Heaven was raised,

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As the choked murmur of his gasping breath
Pleaded for water!—There, some wasted youth
Clenched his hot hands with agonizing clutch
Despondingly, and on his lap sustained
The shudd'ring limbs of his devoted wife,
Parched with a death-pang, while her babe
Pining for food upon its mother's breast,
Drooped in pale death, and like a flower of life
Shrivelled and shrunk,—in fever's thirst expired.

But, see! before the sacramental pile
Stands a veiled Leader of the wayworn Tribes,
Summoned by God beside that towering rock,
To charm it into water, by a word
From Heaven deputed.—But, alas! the tried
And tested heart, not Moses could restrain
Within obedience: storms of anger rise,
And sometimes o'er the gentle rush, and sweep
Feeling and faith beneath their lawless track!
Thus did this man of Heaven, the meek, the wise,
Now in the hour of peril'd faith succumb
Before emotion in its sinful ire,
And gave to temper what to God was due,—
Obedience!—“Hear! ye rebels!” rose the cry:
And in the passion of his pride he reared
That Wand mysterious, at whose magic wave
Earth, Air, and Ocean had their laws resigned,

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Like slaves beneath it; and with smiting wrath
Twice on the Rock he dashed the mystic rod,
In fury; and the rock that blow obeyed!
For, fleet as summoned melodies the hand
That cites them from an instrument of sound,
Elicits,—so from out the rocky depth
Of yon dark granite gushed the waters forth,
Ebullient, fresh, and filled with healing life.
But, at the sound of their outbreaking flow
A thousand lids from sunken eye-balls oped
And sparkled, with the gleam of life restored!
Like rain on fire the rushing stream descends;
And, fevered with protracted thirst unslaked,—
How the parched mouths of that consuming host
Welcome each gush! and bathe their blistered hands
In the soft coolness; and with blending voice
Lift unto Heaven hosannas long and loud,
Which shake the Desert, till its arid leaves
Vibrate beneath that jubilee of souls.

But can we, in this miracle of might
And mercy, nought beyond some parchéd lips
Fired with the fury of a scalding thirst,
But in a moment by the summoned wave
Subdued and softened,—can we nought but this
Behold, and welcome? No! that Rock was Christ,
A mystery of stone, aloft it towered,

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Typing the properties of Him to come,
The Rock of Ages! Christ our Rest is made
And Refuge, in whose riven side is hid
The Church, blood-ransomed: And the ancient Type
With eloquent exactness fits the truth
Of Him, in whom all ritual shadows find,
Their answ'ring substance,—Christ the perfect Lord!

For, e'en as rising to the vaulted sky
The rocky form of Meribah appeared
Both sky and earth conjoining,—so doth Christ
In Godhead, reach the Infinite Supreme,
In Manhood, touch the finite of Mankind,
And both together with almighty bond
Ineffably in one True Person join,
Forever thus. But, when amid the heights
Serene of some calm mountain you ascend,
Casting your eye-glance with delighted gleam
O'er the wide prospect, that around you spreads
Magnificent, and mighty,—know thou, well,
Believer! even thus, with eye unfilmed
Placed on the summits of redeeming Love,
May Faith, a landscape of divinest sweep,
A moral prospect of amazing power
And sacred grandeur, thrillingly survey,
And glory as she gazes!—Yes, the Rock is Christ,

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From whence Religion up to God may look
To read His statutes, in full-orbéd blaze
Together magnified. And Truths which bind
Eternity by their relations, rise
Before thy sainted vision:—Heaven with all
Its splendours, Hell with all its hoarded pangs
And penalties, upon this Rock the Soul
May shadow forth: while Earth, and Man, and Time,
In the clear light of this commanding view
Resolve their paradox, and half unveil
Secrets beyond the philosophic mind
To read, or master.—Providence and Life,
And Death, with That which dwells beyond the tomb,
And Judgment, at whose bar our Thoughts will stand
As well as actions,—these upon this Rock
Of mercy, on the eye of conscience pour
Meanings that strike the memory with awe,
Yea, sometimes make imagination pale
As terror's hue! But, when the destined wand,
Waved by the Leader in this ruffled hour
Of ire and anguish, smote the craggy pile,—
Behold an image of that Legal blow
Hereafter on the perfect Flesh to fall
Of Earth's dread Victim, whose vicarious blood
The wounding stroke of Heaven's avenging Law
Should from His heart's unutterable deep
Of mercy summon. But the Stream that rushed

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From the rent side of that symbolic Rock,—
What was it, but a liquid sacrament
Of grace and gospel, of the Spirit's gift
Purchased by pangs, and the all-priceless death
Of God's own Martyr, for mankind secured?
And, oh! methinks, when Israel's fevered mouth
Black with the burnings of their horrid thirst,
Touched the cool water,—their delighted sense
In the keen rapture of its first relief,
Was to the lip, what pardon is to souls
When conscience, in the blood of Christ baptized,—
At once is softened by that healing balm.
And, e'en as that mysterious water proved
Exhaustless, o'er the arid wilds of Zin
To thousands, in its pilgrimage of life
Freshness and health with ever-flowing tide
Imparting,—hath The Spirit's ceaseless love
Through the vast wilderness of this vain world
The Church companioned, giving endless grace
To all Her family of faithful souls.

Then gaze we with no unaffected glance
On Meribah; but mark with musing eye
The mighty gushings of that God-sent stream,
By Moses summoned from the smitten mount.
For in that Rock a figured rest we find;
And from those Waters, our refreshment flows

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By imaged virtue. Come then, Grace Divine!
And on the fever of this fretted life
Soul-wasting, all thy holy dews respire;
Or, through the channel of our arid minds
And hearts sin-withered, send thy freshening power
To cool them: Life without thee is a thirst
That the parched soul with slakeless fury burns,
Till thou allay it, with that mystic stream
Which Mercy from the Rock of Ages wrung.
Then, all is vigour, peace, and purest joy!
Th' infernal bloodhound who pursues the soul,
Satan himself—the frailest in the flock
Of Christ can baffle: and, by faith transformed,
Afflictions into future glory change,
And weave their iris out of mortal tears.

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POETRY THE HANDMAID OF CIVILIZATION.

Amid the energies that now unfold
Like harmonies from some awaking lyre,
Wilt thou, divinest of all arts divine!
Last in the train of renovating truths,
Proceed, poetical enchantress? Muse,
Who art the angel of the soul, whose voice
The primal loveliness of banished things
Renews;—or haply thou, in pure perfection, art
A Priestess, who behind the veil of sense
Conducts the spirit to the holy shrine
Where Beauty, Love, and Everlasting Light
Are shrouded;—then, a Prophetess, whose lip
Their power interprets with a vocal spell.

Thou beautiful Magician! be thy name
Whate'er thou wilt; Creatress of delight
Expression paints not! though the world affright
Thy radiant visit, still art thou adored;
And the soft wave of thy descending wings

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Is tokened by the pulse's quiv'ring joy:
Beneath the play of thy melodious smiles
The spirit quickens into thrills of heaven,
And Feeling worships at thy faintest sound.—
All hours are thine; all climes and seasons drink
Thine effluence bright, and immaterial power;
Thou with the universe twin-born didst rise,
And thou alone, when tempted Nature fell,
Unfallen wert: and thus thy glorious aim,
Like true Religion's, is to lead us back
From recreant darkness to primeval bliss.

All moods are thine; all maladies of thought
By thee are visited with healing sway.—
Oh! there be moments, when a hideous veil
Of dimness, woven by some demon hand,
Lies on the world; when love itself is cold
And earthy, and the tone affection breathes
Falls fruitless on the mind, as ocean-spray
That dies unheeded on the savage rock;
When Nature is untuned, and all things wear
The coarse reality Derision loves.
And then, how often thine assuasive balm,
Spirit of beauty! intellectual queen!
Is worshipped—melting over heart and brain,
Like dew upon the desert, till the soul
Reviveth, and the world is exorcised.

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And thou canst hallow with ennobling power
Deep impulses, of undiscovered source,
That come like shades of pre-existent Life
Athwart the mind, when superstition reigns.
For is not man mysteriously begirt
By something dread, imagination feels,
Yet fathoms not? Dare human creed deny
That mortal feeling, in its finest mood,
May be some thrill of sympathetic chords
That link our nature to a world unknown?

And since the spirit with the flesh doth war,
And life is oft an agonizing thirst
Which nothing visible can tame, or cool,—
That beauty, which the hues of thought create,
By thee enchanted, slakes the mental fire
That parches us within: and yearning dreams,
And hopes that breathe of immortality,
Thy power sublimeth with mysterious aid.—
Then, long as earth is round us, and the wings
Of fancy by the light of faith ascend,
May Poetry her sibyl language weave,
Enlighten, charm, and elevate the world!

206

THE AGED MINISTER'S FUNERAL.

The Christian never dies; in coffin'd dust
What though he slumber, and the speechless grave
With cold embrace his pallid form receives,
Religion, like the shade of Christ, appears
To heaven-eyed Faith beside the tomb to smile,
And from her lips, seraphically fired,
Rolls the rich strain, “O Death! where now thy sting?
O Grave! thy vict'ry, where?”—extinguished both
And baffled; stingless death, and strengthless law
Together round the cross like trophies hang
Self-vanquished; Death himself in Jesus died!

The Christian never dies; his very death
To him a birthday into glory proves:
For then, emerging fetterless and free
From this dark prison-house of earth and sin,
(All sensual dimness, like a veil withdrawn)
In mystic radiance soars the seraph Mind
To regions high and holy, where the Truth

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Essential, Beauty's uncreated form,
And Wisdom pure, in archetypal state
To souls unearthed their trinal blaze reveal.—
Unchain the eagle, break his iron bars,
And when aloft on wings exultant poised,
Sun-ward he sweeps through clouds of rolling sheen
And makes the blue immensity his home,
Go, mark him, while the flash of freedom breaks
Forth from each eye-ball, in its burning glee,
And there, the imaged rapture of a mounting soul
When prisonless, from out the body pure,
May fancy witness;—far away it flies
And where the Sun of Righteousness enthroned,
Eternal noon-tide round His ransomed pours,
Dwells in the smile of glory and of God!

And thus of thee, the venerably good,
The mild old man with apostolic mien,
Let Mem'ry in her heaven-ward moments think:
Thou art not dead, but from thy bondage free;
Alive, as in the sunbeam basks the mote,
Art thou, encircled with the blaze of heaven
In that assembly where the crowned ones chant,
With robes blood-whitened by the wondrous Lamb.—
Ah! what a sunburst of immortal truth
In keen effulgence on thy spirit broke,
When forth, from out the fett'ring walls of flesh
It soared!—the dull eclipse of death no more,

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The daylight of eternity begun!
Around thy bed, while nature knelt and prayed,
And the mind trembled into tears and sighs,
Thine was the song ecstatically loud
From harping angels, and from hymning saints
In concord, round the throne of Jesus raised.—
And who, when gospel music charmed thine ears,
Or promises, with preciousness divine
Deep-laden, lighted up thine aged eyes
With more than youth's glad lustre—who that heard
Thy holy breathings for the better land,
And did not, from his eyelids dash the tear
Of mourning, when he thought, that thou wert there
In that pure home of perfect light and peace
At length arrived;—to that bright City brought,
Whose silver turrets oft thy faith beheld,
When down the streets Imagination walked,
By angels, and the church's first-born, lined!

Around the tomb where thy cold ashes sleep,
The unbought homage that a good man wins
'Twas mine to witness, when the gathered crowd
Attended with a train of weeping Hearts
Who knew thee best, and therefore, mourn'd thee most.
And well that scene thy pure and placid life
Betokened; feeling decked thy funeral;
The moral blazonry of christian grief
Was there, and touchingly the whole arrayed

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With more than splendour,—with the truth of tears.—
The hoary Minster, eloquently vast,
Lifting its forehead with cathedral grace,
Whose form revered some twice three hundred years
Have girt with grandeur—like a zoning spell
That binds bewitchingly; the tombs antique;
By jagged walls, in sculptured ruin bent;
The graves of myriads like a sea of mounds
In swells of grass on all sides ranked and ranged
In death's confusion,—till their cited dust
Leaps into life beneath the trumpet blast
Of Time's Archangel, striding earth and sea!
The rock-hewn churchyard, with its green uprise
Of monumental landscape, where the grief
Of Nature, and the grace of Sculpture vie
In soft contention, each expressing each,
And hiding death between them, by the spell
That o'er the grimness of the grave is thrown:—
All this, while high in front, severely calm,
The fearless Knox in stony grandeur frowned,—
Together met, a scene of soul combined,
Till one vast sentiment the whole became
Of Sacredness and silence!—Childhood hushed
Its laugh, and Youth the lawless smile forewent,
And the mute crowd a single mourner seemed,
When slowly, to its last long home was borne
Thine earthly portion;—Heaven the better took.

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Within thy tomb, one farewell gaze we had,—
The heart out-speaking with a tongue of tears,
While friend on friend a look of meaning turned,
And said no more! the soul must speak above;
It learns no language in this world of graves
And gloom; for silence makes the spirit's voice,
When faith and feeling by the tomb embrace!
Pure on the bosom of Almighty love
From sin and sorrow thou art resting now;
And who would bring thee, might availing tears
Be answered, back to this cold earth again!—
To peace and glory, to perfections high
Around thee smiling, rather may we mount
On the sure wing of faith that carried thee;
And o'er the tract thy shining virtues traced
Let holy Imitation wend her way,—
Her eye on Him intently fixed and firm,
Our bright Precursor to the cross and crown!

And now, farewell!—if age's hoary charm;
If gentleness with solid worth combined;
If faith and truth by patriarchal grace
Bedecked; if boundless love, that godlike smiles
Serenely over sects and names enthroned;
If these were thine;—with all th' enriching spell
Of temper, cloudless as the crystal noon,
And feelings tuned to every tender call,

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While round about thee hung the glow
Of youth's gay morning, by the eve of age
Subdued, like Spring and Autumn's blended smile,—
Then o'er thy grave recording Truth may bend,
And drop, not undeserved, the simple wreath
Of Memory, the Muse has ventured now.

Farewell! a few more rolling suns and years
Will yon dark Minster from his turret speak
Of time's departure, with his iron voice
Wailing a hollow dirge o'er Life's dead hours,—
And the hush'd earth at every pore will heave
Around thee; myriads from their pulseless clay
In throbbing consciousness shall rise, and bound
Warm into being!—What a mass of life
Under the trumpet's dead-awakning call
Will stand and tremble in the gaze of God!
And thou wilt rise; nor rock, nor mountain seek
To crush thee, from the piercing eye of Him
Arrayed in lightnings of terrific glare,—
Immanuel!—on the Judgment's burning throne
Of glory, wheeling through the heaven of heavens!
And when Creation in her tomb of fire
Shall welter, and the wicked lift a cry
Of loud, last agony, beneath the frown
Of Truth's Avenger, undismayed thine eyes
Will greet Him;—thou shalt look on God and live!

212

JOHN THE BAPTIST.

Slaughter, or Silence!—take thy choice, oh, Truth,
Glory of earth, and champion for thy God!
And yet, afflictions, famine, curses, chains,
With all that coward Vice or cruel Wrong
Around thee in thy peerless work can throw,—
Thy lot have been, since first a Lie began
O'er fallen mind infernally to reign.
No, not a secret from the stars brought down
By Genius; or, a fact by Science based
On the broad platform of inductive law;
Or, Attribute of sea, or soil, or air,
Light, sound, or colour,—hath by man been placed
Under the ray of philosophic eyes,
But, either Bigotry her pagan yell
Hath lifted; or the gibe of heartless men
Hath mocked; or else, the tyrant with his frown
Vindictive, aided by some damning force;
By prison's gloom, or persecution's fire,—
Came with his blast along Discov'ry's track,
And tried to daunt the speculator down

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To silence; and his wingéd mind arrest
In the full strength of its majestic soar.

But if in science, where a Truth acts least
Offensive, binding with no moral sway
Passion, or pride, or mean indulgence,
Martyrs are found, who bled, or burnt, or droop'd
In cells, or chains;—beyond them all are those,
The laurelled Heroes of our language now,
The almost-worshipped by revering Thought
In the hushed temple of the hallowed mind!
These are the prophets of our regal souls,
Who unto nearness God and man have drawn
By principle sublime; or else, by words
Of purity, have so the conscience thrilled,
That Guilt grew mad with miserable rage
To hear them;—but, their guerdon what hath been
Save block and gibbet, dungeon, sword, or stake!
As though the Truth were man's derisive fiend,
And Falsehood found an angel in disguise.

Thus He, that Eremite, whose piercing voice
Pealed like a tocsin to the godless earth,
“Repent ye! for the promised kingdom comes,”—
Herald of grace, and harbinger of Heaven,
Right gloriously among the army ranked
Of Truth's high martyrs,—how severely great

214

Looks his free soul, to all who can revere
Those specimens of Man, God's volume puts
As models, for divine ambition fit.

Girt with his hairy garment, from the plains
Of Judah, where alone the honey wild
Made his chief banquet,—boldly to his work
Behold, the lion-hearted prophet hies,
And, by the terror of his truths alarmed,
Shakes the smooth Pharisee; and from the roll
Of his rebuking thunder, lo! the brood
Of hypocrites, and Sadducéan minds,
Shrink in dismay, like serpents from the sun!

Nor could the pride of Rank, nor awe of Power,
Nor queenly malice, nor tyrannic scowls,
Daunt, for an instant, that all-daring mind
From voicing forth a message from the Skies
To sin, and sinner!—Firm, and free, and brave,
With cheek unblanched, with forehead unabashed,
Lifted the Baptist his indignant words,
Whether a monarch at their smiting force
Must tremble; or, a publican confess
Their power majestic,—Truth and He were one,
Their challenge fearless, as their cause divine.
For what are station, sceptres, crowns, and courts,
The tyrant's purple, or the victor's plume,

215

With whatsoe'er this pomp-admiring World
Produces,—with the blazonry compared
Of Truth, all stern, and simple, and sublimely free?

And, when this hero of th' Almighty dared
Full on the vices of a pampered King
The crushing bolt of his rebuke to cast,
Say, was he not, by that intrepid deed
Raised to nobility, beyond mere blood
To rival?—mid the peerage of pure souls
Exalted, where the patent is by worth
Drawn out, and by divinity confirmed,
And sealed? Elijah was in him revived:
For on him fell the mantle of his mind
In prowess, zeal, and purity august.—
The rapid eagle, in his sun-ward flight
Cleaving the storm-cloud with resistless wing,
The billow's dash, the torrent's daring plunge,
A Thunder's challenge, or some rock erect
Spurning the ocean in its loud assault
Foaming below it,—each may type impart,
Or dim resemblance of that dreadless saint
May to our fancy yield; who feared his God
And therefore, all created things defied
To awe his purpose, or his soul restrain
From teaching monarchs, and from telling courts
What heaven and law and sanctity require.—

216

And, when before him front to front he saw
Death or stern Duty in their contrast, stand,
Then He, who mastered circumstance and time
Fetters and frowns, and fascinating smiles,
Like empty, base, and abrogated things,
Followed the last! and let the other come,
Or not,—as might the God of Martyrs choose.

Thy brave resolve, oh! Eremite inspired,
Yet doth it warm our spirit into zeal;
E'en from the depth of ages does it sound
A summons through the heart; and bid the bold,
Who preach repentance, and with stern rebuke
Before the Great Ones of the earth appear,
To learn defiance from thy dauntless mien,
And send their message to the heart, right home,
Though all the answer be,—our slaughtered clay!
Forward! thou man of God! no dread be thine;
Truth, like her Master, must a martyr be
In flesh, or spirit, till the Devil's chain
Clank in the darkness of his thousand years
Around him, and enthroned Messiah reigns
In pomp millennial o'er this peaceful world.

Courage, methinks, that gory charger breathes
Where lay in death thy consecrated head,
Heroic Baptist!—Though thy lips were mute,

217

And thy shut eyeballs, sealed in bloody close,
No longer on polluted Herod shot,
The lustre of their indignation bright,—
The messenger, but not thy message, ceased
For God to plead: and when thy form returned
Back to the speechless dust, where whelming Death
To humble silence all this talking world
Reduces,—Truth thy pure avenger was.
Revel, nor banquet, harp, nor heathen song,
Nor the gay pastimes of his paramour,
That beautiful Destruction!—could protect
The soul of Herod from thy haunting shape
Oh, murdered Seer! whose blood to Heaven up-cried.
Not day, with all its brilliancy of joy;
Or night, with all its quietude of shade;
Music, nor riot, nor the gauds of state
The Still Small Voice could ever drown, or daunt;
Sleeping, or waking, still his guilt remained
A sightless Fury, that with secret lash
Scourged his pale conscience to the brink of Hell
Forever! On his dreams the Baptist rose,
There on the charger lay the murdered head
Bleeding and ghastly! still, the curse of crime
Fevered the water, ere his lip it cooled,
Poisoned with bitterness the bread He ate,
Took from the skies their glory, from the grass
Its verdure, from the flowers their precious bloom,

218

In music made all melody to cease,
And, often into ghastliness and guilt
Changed the young beauty of Herodias' cheek
Before him!—Life was one long agony,
Felt in the soul, self-crucified by sin.
Thus did Remorse God's truth defend, and guard.
When the brave Herald could no longer lift
His voice for virtue; that no death could reach,
Or stifle; but, in hours of horrid gloom,
Held by a hair above the burning Pit
Of vengeance, did the blood-stained monarch seem
To shudder; and in dreams, as if to drop
Down through its depths, unutterably dark
And deep'ning! Thus, when Christ himself unveil'd
By miracles, which made Creation bow
In motion, matter and eternal mind,
The cow'ring Herod in Messiah dreamt
He saw his victim! such the power of guilt,
And such the homage perjured hearts must pay
To truth, though death and murder intervene.

In conscience, no man makes a Sadducee;
For Memory hath a resurrection there
Solemn, as fearful!—There, the deed long done,
The falsehood spoken, or the friend once wronged,
Yea, the whole past of dead experience starts
To life incessant, by the soul renewed!

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Thus, conduct is immortal; and the Truth
Hath no chronology, as God no change
Can suffer: therefore, may our perilled lives
In guilt no echoes of stained Herod's be;
But, like the Baptist, let us fear our God alone,
And march to duty through the gates of death!
Assured that time is justice to the true,
And no man preaches like a martyr's grave:
Though mute to sense, magnificent to soul,
The best of orators,—a Tomb becomes,
When Faith and Suff'ring this inscription bear,
“Here sleeps the dust by Deity inspired
To fight for noble truth, and scorn to fear
The frown of tyrants, or the face of clay.”

227

THE INSPIRATION OF REMEMBERED HOME.

But shouldst thou waver, when the awful hour
Of pleasure tempteth with a demon's power,
And time and circumstance together seem
To dazzle nature with too bright a dream,—
Let home and virtue, what thou wert and art,
A mother's feeling, and a father's heart,
Full on thy mem'ry rise with blended charm,
And all the serpent in thy soul disarm!
For who shall say, when first temptations win
A yielded mind to some enchanting sin!
With future crime, that once appeared too black
For life to wander o'er its hell-ward track,
May lead the heart to some tremendous doom,
Whose midnight hovers round an early tomb?
Let Home be vision'd, where thy budding days
Their beauty opened on a parent's gaze:
For there, what memories of thee abound!—
Your chamber echoes with its wonted sound;
The flower you reared, a sister's nursing hand
Still fondly guards, and helps each leaf expand;
The page you pondered with delighted brow
Was ever dear,—but, oh! far dearer now;

228

The walk you loved with her sweet smile to share,
She oft repeats, and paints your image there;
And when a glory hath arrayed the sky,
Her fancy revels in your fav'rite dye;
While oft at evening, when domestic bloom
Hath flung a freshness round a social room,
When hearts unfold, and music's wingéd note
Can waft a feeling wheresoe'er it float,
Some chord is touch'd whose melodies awake
The pang of fondness for a brother's sake;
And eyes are conscious, as they gaze around
Where looks are falling, there a son was found!

Let home begird thee like a guardian dream,
And time will wander an unsullied stream,
Whose wildest motion is the rippled play
Of rapid moments as they roll away.—
Meanwhile, delightful studies, deep and strong,
To graduate honours waft thy soul along:
They come at length, and high in listed fame
A college hails, a country reads thy name;
And in that list when first thy name appears,
What triumph sparkles in those happy tears!
In after life, when Oxford's ancient towers
Thy mem'ry visions in creative hours,
Or college friends a college scene restore,
Thy heart will banquet on the bliss of yore!

229

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.

Who hath not pondered, with an awe profound
As wordless, when beside a grave he stood?
And, while his soul dim speculation held
With Truths that touch on Deity, and dust,
In cause, or consequence—himself allied
With dread Eternity, and Doom to come?
Oh! solemn are thy shrines, thou sov'reign Death!
However humble, and wherever raised:
For tombs are Preachers, and with tongueless power
Harangue the Conscience, that, like Felix, shakes
Before the Throne by apprehension reared
Of future Judgment! But this stern appeal
Not from the fanes where mausoléums hold
The wreck of heroes, and time-laurel'd kings,
Alone comes forth; but oft is truly felt
E'en by the brightest slave of earth-born glee,
When some green churchyard, with its rustic mounds
And grassy hillocks on his eye intrudes
A sad memento,—as when mournful Thought
Wanders adown the dim cathedral aisle

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Piled with pale cenotaphs, or sculptured tombs,
Where Silence hath an intellectual tongue
Whose accent by the mind is heard alone.—
But what are poet's dream, the patriot's sigh,
Reason's alarm, or Meditation's gaze,
Around the dark grave gathered,—with that groan
Compared, the grieving Christ of God sent forth,
When by the caverned tomb where Lazarus slept,
He prayed, and pondered!—till the tear of thought
Bathed his pure eyelash with the gracious dew
Of mortal pity, by immortal love
Etherealized.—But, what a sight was there,
Embodied Deity by tears o'ercome!
Surely, if ever from the scene of earth's
Great hist'ry, Heaven a solemn lesson took;
If e'er the pathos of afflicted Time
Thrilled through Eternity with sad appeal;
If e'er those Watchers, who the church protect,
(Learning divinity by loving man,)
Before the Infinite of Grace have bowed
O'erawed, and mute,—'twas when a weeping God
On earth apparent, by a grave appeared,
And, mild as woman, shed Compassion's tear!

But, feel we not unfathomably charmed
When looks Religion on that weeping Lord?
Not when the Angels with descending blaze

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Burst into vision over Bethlehem's plain,
Startling the shepherds, while the speechless air
Vocal with Heaven's bright choristers became;
Nor when the Elements their Master owned,
While Nature's laws in rapt suspension hung
Obedient, on the motions of His will,
Or word imperial,—can Messiah move
The soul, and thrill it into throbs of praise
With such attraction, as with that blest tear
By Martha witnessed, and by Mary felt,
As though it dropt upon her naked heart,
With soothing overflow, from Pity's fount.

“And Jesus wept!”—how soon that period dies!
A breath, the syllables, but all the sense
It holds, Eternity alone can tell.
For if there be in tears of erring man
More of the soul than language ever speaks,
In some high mood, when raised emotion rocks
The heart with myst'ry,—who can say, how deep
The Source, how awful was the Spring
Of that, which from the mind of God-man drew
Those tears that trickled, when the grave He saw,
And groaned aloud beside the cave of Death?

The Saviour “wept;” but what, or whence, The Thought

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Which hung the tear-drop in those eyes divine
Baffles the mind, and balks our mental guess
To explicate.—Perchance, the sight of men
Around him weeping, drew responsive drops
Of pure compassion, proving how He wore
Our tested nature, down to very tears?
Or, did unblotted Eden, with its bowers
Of bloom, with all of man's unfallen state
And grandeur, then before His mem'ry glide?
Or, did he ponder how accursed sin
Had marred the masterpiece of Heaven, and maimed
The mind's proportion, and the spirit's peace
Ruffled for ever? Did he mourn, that Death
Creation to a charnel-house had turned,
Which might have been a paradise of joy
In thornless beauty, without tombs, or tears?
Or, haply over unbelief He wept
Soon to be witnessed, when the startled dead
Woke by His fiat from the rock-hewn grave,
Should rise, and prove a miracle of life,—
Attesting Him, th'Apostle of the Skies,
Missioned by God, for guilty Earth to bleed?

Here let us pause; for Revelation folds
Around such theme an untransparent veil;
And pray before it, though we cannot pierce
The sacred darkness that we long to end.—

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But Nature, kind interpreter for man
Beyond cold reason's analyzing law,
In that fond burst of unaffected truth,
“See! how he loved him!”—the dejected Christ
At once deciphers, and the whole illumes;
And bids us to yon vale of Bethany
Waft the hushed mind on Meditation's wing.

Home of the Christian! where Messiah comes
A scene of Heaven in miniature art thou,
Where all is redolent of charms divine,
Temper renewed, and souls by grace becalmed.
Thy quiet precincts, of a purer world
Breathe to the heart of faith; and, when compared
With what the worldling in his home enjoys,—
E'en like the vexing hum of some large street
Where all is haste and hurry, tramp and strife,
In contrast with the unpolluted calm
Of some cathedral, where a Spirit's hush
Hath brooded—seems that worldling's noisy home.

But not for this, is nought but halcyon rest
Experienced; nor because the hidden life
Of Jesus, sanctifies the soul it saves,
Calamity, Disease, or cruel Death,
Refrain their havoc. No! some cross must be;
The loved in heaven, on earth are lessoned most

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How grief to glory must the way prepare.
The more we image forth Thy suff'ring life,
Immanuel! must the soaring mind ascend
The moral summits Thine example rears
Before us. Oft do such mysterious pangs,
And griefs convulsive round our spirit throng,
As if God's frown, and not his favour, marked
Our pathway—shrinking nature half suspects:
And when perchance those weeping sisters watch'd
O'er the pale visage of the ebbing life
In him by Jesus loved; nor heard the step
Of coming aid in their celestial Friend;
But, day on day, and hour on hour went by,
And still, like colour from a sunset cloud,
Faded their brother from their grieving eyes,—
Oh! how the rebel heart of reason throbbed
With doubts unsaid; or sickened into gloom,
Pining and prayerless; still, no Saviour comes!
For Lazarus the gate of death must pass.
And well may Fancy see that brother die,
Watched by the hearts of those two sisters dear.
But in that moment—in that breathless pause,
Half life, half death, when soul and sense divide
Their empire,—mark! the sign religion loves.
A pallid gleam of his departing soul
Kindles a moment on the sunken cheek,
As if from God's own countenance there came

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A token-smile, ethereally illumed,
And sent athwart the universe to man!

How blest the chamber where a saint expires,
And on the bosom of Almighty Love
Pillows his head, in everlasting peace!
From Time's bleak darkness, from disturbing shades
Of sin and sorrow, into perfect light
At once escaping,—what a thrill intense
Through each fine nerve his new-awakened Soul
Must feel, when first the Everlasting Beams
Flash on his eye from crowned Immanuel's form!
But, when around him rolls the mingled swell
Of raptures high, from loud Salvation's harps,—
Never can angel like a saint redeemed
Sing to the Lord, whose wounds in heaven abide,
“Worthy The Lamb! for He was slain for me!”

But now, that home, where quiet Feeling built
Its temple, for the hearts of household love,
Under the shade of that most awful mount,
From whose mid crest the Son of Mary soared
Back to The Bosom whence His glory came
To be incarnate,—looks a lonesome haunt,
And cold as desolation's darkest chill
Can make it. But awhile, and all was clad
With the calm radiance of their cheerful loves

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Who dwelt there, in a threefold bond of heart,
By blood and fondness fervently allied,
While in the welcome of a brother's smile
Basked the soft feelings of those sisters pure
Who now lament him. Here Messiah came,
Oft when the weariness of this bad world
Hung on His heart; there, found a fost'ring shade,
And to that family of love unveiled
The holy meekness of His stooping mind,
In bland discourse, that richly breathed of heaven.

But, oh! what aching solitude profound
The sisters feel, as out of Mem'ry's tomb
Shades of the past athwart the chamber steal,
While o'er the aspect of familiar scenes
Before them, a funereal sadness lies,
Wearing that hue a mourning fancy bids
To colour all things. Yet, though one in grief,
Distinct the mourners in their traits of mind
By power of shaping circumstance, were seen.
Martha was like the bright and breezy morn,
Elastic motion, and exulting stir,—
Hither and thither with unresting foot
Gliding about, to show a duteous zeal
And urgency, by prompt affection moved,
As hostess to the Lord of life and worlds.
But Mary, in her vestal bloom appeared

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Placid as twilight, on the dewy flowers
Serenely radiant. Mild and thoughtful maid,
She loved the hush of meditative hours,
The shaded walks, the lapse of willow'd streams,
The meek-voiced Evening, or the moonlight trance;
While the soft grandeur of the silent hills
Sank on her heart like music sad and low,
As oft she wandered, 'mid the rocky glens
Round Zion gathered. At the feet of Christ,
While restless Martha at the household plied,
She sat and listened; and with eye upraised
Beaming with prayer, and breath almost absorbed
By power of rev'rence, to His words she clung,
And in the manna of immortal truth
Found the rich banquet hunger'd souls require.

Sweet Mary! privileged indeed wert thou,
Thus in thy peace and purity to choose
That better part, which none can take away.
Needful as breath to corp'ral being is,
So to our souls a Saviour's truth becomes,
If to His own, our nature be attuned;
And such was thine in this devoted hour.
But shall the brother of this blessed twain,
(Sisters in faith, as in affection found,)
Awake no more till Time's dread clarion ring,
Pealing the dead to life beneath its blast?

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Behold thine answer!—There, the Prince of Life,
By whom the pulses of Creation beat
Or pause, according as His will decrees,
Stands by the tomb where Lazarus is laid
In man's long home. But, not by Him unwatched
His breath departed; nor unseen the pangs
He suffered; nor unheard the sighing prayer
Sent from the bosoms of those loving two,
Now at His feet adoringly abased.
For He, whose aid was immaturely sought,
Had from eternity this scene designed.
The hour, the spot, and yon sepulchral cave
That frowned before him, with its gloomy mouth,
Where death and darkness fitting emblem found,
Nought came by chance, but all by Heaven's decree
Was planned, and overruled.—And now, as tides
When near to ocean rush with grander swell,
So Christ, as near to glory's brink arrived,
His miracles to mercy's height uplift,
High as Omnipotence itself can rear
Its arm creative! Now, the dead shall hear
A Voice, whose echo this creation was,
And at whose summons to the judgment-bar
Hereafter, sea, and air, and graves, and vaults,
And whatsoe'er an atom of the dust
Which once was human, doth contain or hide,—
Thrilled by His power, shall into flesh resolve

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Till the vast dead be living forms again!
Each with his eye upon the wounds of Christ
Concentered; while the Soul upon itself
Reverted,—Heaven's own verdict shall approve.
But, lo! The Lord of resurrection lifts
Upward His fixed unfathomable gaze,
And by that look, the Dwelling-place of God
Perchance was moved, throughout its glorious Halls
Of light and beauty! but no sound is heard
Of adoration; though for prayer approved
The Sire divine mysteriously He thanks.
Inaudible as thought, beyond the clouds
Into the region round about The Throne
Celestial, must He then have winged His prayer!
By words to man, by will to God, He spoke,
Who was all echo to His pleading heart.

But now, with mien of most unearthly calm
And hand upraised, before the opened tomb
He stands; and seems dilated with the sense
Of glory, as He gathers up his Form
August:—but, hark! that cry whose loudness moved
The hearts around Him, till they shook with dread
Religious, and the blood with backward flow
Stream'd on its fountain, while their souls were touch'd
With awe, beyond Imagination's eye
To shape a vision:—thus they stood;

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Till the deep thunder of that kingly voice,
“Lazarus, come forth!” awakingly was heard
Throughout th' abode where souls unbodied wait
Th' archangel's trumpet;—and the dead emerged!
Burst from the grave, and into breath revived;
Then, what a spectacle its awe enforced,
On the mute throng, who saw, with grave-clothes girt,
The pallid tenant of the tomb appear!
E'en in a moment, ere the loud command
Of Jesus died upon the list'ning ear,
The pulse of being like faint music woke,
The chill blood warmed, the fallen eyelid moved
And through the wrappings of his shroud were seen
The limbs, with sudden animation stir'd;
Till up he rose, and from the dust stalked forth
Sheeted and silent, from the shades of death,—
Back to this breathing world again recalled
By power creative of resistless Love!

Then what a force of superhuman dread
Fell on the circle, who beheld him rise!
As if Eternity itself impressed
Full on their souls the creed of life to come,
Awhile they trembled, thrilling with a shock
That to the root of consciousness assailed
Their being: rapt the hushed disciples stood,
And e'en the mockers of Messiah shook

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As did the Temanite, when sleep unveiled
A Spirit!—causing his pale flesh to creep
And hair to shudder, as the Undiscerned,
The formless Image, glancing like a dream,
Glided before him. But, prevailing Love!
Not all the bands of darkness, nor of death,
Nor time, nor terror, can thy zeal o'ercome,
Or master: for, with ecstasy inspired,
And with a cry whose very sound was soul
Made audible, and eager as the light,
Forward yon sisters of the wakened dead
Rush to the grave! and when his robes of death
Were loosed, and his unmantled visage met
Their welcome, and those eyes they closed erewhile,
As if no more on this bleak world to gaze
Till time were ended,—once again their own
Saluted, bright with all a brother's love;
And when the accent of this voice was heard
Solemnly tender, and the thrilling touch
Of his embrace their panting bosoms felt,—
Not poesy in its most earthless mood,
Nor sculpture, with its eloquence of stone,
Nor all the soul-expressing power of words
Description borrows, could that scene portray!—
Where God and Nature, Life and Faith, and Love,
Immortal Goodness, and relieved Despair,
Met by a tomb; and round the risen dead

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A picture formed, which from the walls of Heaven
Regarding Angels reverently watched,
And lyres seraphic could alone describe.

But thou, who from the damping gloom of death
Wert cited, once again to bare thy brow,
And breathe the airs of this terrestrial life,—
Living, as though on earth thou ne'er hadst died,
Say, did thy memory the secrets hold
Of what the viewless World beyond the bounds
Of time embosoms? Didst thou in that home,
Where dwell the Bodiless from clay set free,
On Adam gaze, on earth's first Mother look,
Talk with the Patriarchs, with the Prophets muse,
And hold high converse with the sainted host
Of dead Immortals, still in soul alive?
Or, wert thou by permissive God empowered
To read those Secrets, whose unshrouded awe
From man embodied are in mercy kept,
Because too terribly their glory beams
For Flesh to master? Did the moans of Hell
Boom on thine ear? Or, did the harps of Heaven
Float their rapt music o'er thy spirit's chords?

There comes no answer!—speechless as the Grave
From whose chill gloom thy body was recalled,
Scripture on this eternally remains,

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No fact unveiling; but where that is mute,
Be our religion that of silence too:
Enough for man, the mourner of the dead
And soon, death's victim, this gigantic truth
To grasp invincibly, with glorious hold,—
That He, whose summons from unconscious clay
Cited dead Lazarus to second life,
But gave a prelude of that trumpet-peal,
Under whose blast, (by His command awoke,)
Death shall restore whatever Time can take,
From Abel to the last of living men
Crushed by his power, and into dust absorbed!
For every particle that once made Man,
The Resurrection and the Life will bring
Back to our souls; and not a tomb in space,
That will not open when the summons rings
Far as the winds can waft, or waters roll
That cry to human Nature, from the Throne,—
“Come from thy tomb! thou dead Creation, Come!”

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CHRISTIAN HEROISM FALSELY APPRECIATED.

Luther had faults,—but can this feeble Age
When forms heroic, such as olden Life
Admired and moulded, are to faith and fact
No more; when little-hearted Truths prevail;
When Mammon chiefly is the standard used,
And God's own world (where angel-wings yet play
In secret motion o'er the homes of men)
Is made an Engine, whose mechanic force
A mill may work, a manufacture sway;
Oh! can this Age, so derogate and dead,
The mighty Passion and majestic Heart
Of Luther rightly, and with rev'rence, weigh?
Belief hath vanished in the vast Unseen;
And Earth ungodded, to presiding Laws
Is given over with a heartless lie,
Till scarce their unbelief some dare believe!
But Luther's was a lofty Soul, that felt
Beyond the body, life's true Secret lay;
While faith in Goodness, God, and Truth revealed,

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Glow'd in his heart like a celestial fire;
And thus, by quick intensity o'erswayed,
He often stumbled where the colder stand
Securely guarded,—in their frost enshrined.

“Luther had faults!”—but, oh! ye little Minds,
Less in your faith, and lesser still in deeds
Which make the Hero, or the Man unfold
In full-souled daring,—while the outer life
Ye ponder, have ye pierced the core within?
A fool can censure where a Prophet weeps,
When life is only by its faults and falls
Reviewed: but underneath, what noble tears,
What pangs remorseful, penitence, and prayers,
What struggles mute, what passionate regrets!
Deep in the bosom—there begins the Fight;
And there the battle-scene 'tween Flesh and Faith
Unfolds its grandeur. All without appears
The moral echo of that inward din,—
The mere reflection of internal strife
In fitful shadows, thrown on human eyes.
Yet, these are chiefly what adjudging Sense
Accredits; Character from these is drawn:
And so with Luther; bold as blazing fact,
The failings of his outer life advance,
To catch the censure of prosaic Eyes,
And Hearts that never with emotion rocked

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Themselves, or others. But, the secret Fight
Internal, when the wild and wasted Heart
Struggled, and strove, contending with the Fiends
Of darkness, baffled oft, and bleeding faint,—
But yet, right upward through eclipsing gloom,
Through storm and danger, and internal wrong,
From famished boyhood e'en to fearless man,
Advancing, with a most unconquered will,
To heaven and virtue,—who hath laurelled this,
Or wreathed the record with a just renown?
But, true Biography in Heaven is writ,
And every heart-beat throbs a record There!

'Tis therefore, by successive falls they rise
Step after step, through stormy grief and gloom,—
These Benefactors to the boundless mind,
Patrons of soul, and true Philanthropists.
Hail to their Glory!—Let the Sceptic rave;
There's something godlike in the truly great;
They find the lever Archimedes sought,
And fix its fulcrum in the soul of Man,
And nobly lift it to the destined skies.
Like parts and portions of the primal True,
Like Apparitions from a purer world,
Like human Echoes of great Nature's heart,
Whose beat is holy,—fresh from God they come
To season Man for virtue, and expound

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Our vast relations with the Infinite.
Their Words breathe might; oracularly strong,
Direct from deep Reality they roll
Like inspirations: or, with soul arrayed,
Their Meanings fall with cannonading force
Full on the battlements of ancient Crime,
And crush them!—so their mental Tones
Thunder their music in the ear of Mind
Forever; time with them is all attuned.

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A COLLEGIATE NIGHT AT OXFORD.

The Day is earth, but holy Night is heav'n;
To her a solitude of soul is given,
Within whose depth, how beautiful to dream,
And fondly be, what others vainly seem!
Oh, 'tis an hour of consecrated might,
For earth's Immortals have adored the night;
In song or vision yielding up the soul
To the deep magic of her still control.
My own loved hour! there comes no hour like thee,
No world so glorious as thou form'st for me;
The fretful ocean of eventful day,—
To waveless nothing how it ebbs away!
As oft the Chamber, where some haunted page
Renews a poet, or revives a sage
In pensive Athens, or sublimer Rome,
To mental quiet woos the Spirit home.
There stillness reigns, how eloquently deep!
And soundless air, more beautiful than sleep:
Let Winter sway,—her dream-like sounds inspire;
The conscious murmur of a blazing fire;

249

The hail-drop, hissing as it melts away
In twinkling gleams of momentary play;
Or wave-like swell of some retreated wind,
In dying sadness echoed o'er the mind,—
But gently ruffle into varied thought
The calm of feeling blissful night has brought.
How eyes the spirit, with contented gaze,
The chamber mellowed into social haze,
And smiling walls, where, ranked in solemn rows,
The wizard volumes of the mind repose!
Thus, well may hours like fairy waters glide,
Till morning glimmers o'er their reckless tide.
While dreams, beyond the realm of day to view,
Around us hover in seraphic hue;
Till Nature pines for intellectual rest,—
When home awakens, and the heart is blest;
Or from the window reads our wand'ring eye
The starry language of Chaldéan sky;
And gathers in that one vast gaze above,
A bright eternity of awe and love.

So heavenly seems the visionary night,—
But, ah! the danger in its deep delight:—
The Mind, then beautified to fond excess,
Will all things dare to brighten, or to bless:
A world of sense more spiritual is made
Than the stern eye of nature hath surveyed;

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Some false perfection which hath never been,
By fancy woven, lives through every scene;
But Morn awakes,—and lo! the spells unwind,
As daylight melts like darkness o'er the mind;
The worldly coarseness of our common lot
Recalls the shadows which the night forgot,
Each dream of loftiness then dies away,
And heaven-light withers in the frown of Day!
And then, the languor of each parching vein,
And the hot weariness of heart and brain,
That hideous shade of something dread to be,—
Oh, fatal midnight! these are doomed for thee;
Each breeze comes o'er us with tormenting wing,
Each pulse of sound an agony can bring.
Let Chatterton thy deathful charm reveal
And mournful White, who from thy depth would steal
A placid sense of some unvisioned Power,
Around prevailing at thine earthless hour:
And oft, methinks, in loneliness of heart,
As noons of night in dreaming calm depart,
My room is saddened with the mingled gaze
Of those who martyr'd their ambitious days;
The turf-grass o'er their tombs,—I see it wave,
And visions waft me to a kindred grave.

But, lo! the yielding dark hath gently died,
And stars are sprinkled o'er the azure tide

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Of lustrous air, that high and far prevails,
Where now the night-enchanting glory sails.
City of fame! when morn's first wings of light
Have waved in beauty o'er thy mansions bright,
Have I beheld thee; but a moonrise seems,
Like hues that wander from a heaven of dreams,
To hallow thee, as there thy temples stand
Sublimely tender, or serenely grand;
Spire, tower, and pinnacle, a dim array,
Whose wizard shadows in the moonlight sway.
The stony muteness of thy massive piles,
Now silvered o'er by melancholy smiles,
With more than language, spirit-like appeals
To the high sense impassioned nature feels
Of all that gloriously, in earth or sky,
Exacts the worship of her gazing eye.—
There is a magic in the moonlit hour
Which Day hath never in his deepest power
Of light and bloom, when bird and bee resound,
And new-born flowers imparadise the ground.
And ne'er hath city, since a moon began
To hallow nature for the soul of man,
Steeped in the freshness of her fairy light,—
More richly shone, than Oxford shines to-night!
No lines of harshness on her temples frown,
But all by soothing magic melted down,—

252

Sublime and soft, through mellow air they rise,
And seem with vaster swell to awe the skies!
On archéd windows how intensely gleams
The glassy whiteness of reflected beams!
Whose radiant slumber on the marble tomb
Of mitred Founders, in funereal gloom,
Extends; or else in pallid shyness falls
On gothic casements, or collegiate walls.
The groves in silver-leafed array repose;
And, Isis!—how serene thy current flows
With tinted surface by the meadowy way,
Without a ripple, or a breeze at play:
Yet, once again shall summer barks be seen,
And furrowed waters, where their flight has been;
While sounding Rapture, as her heroes speed
From Iffly locks, flies glorying o'er the mead,
Hails from the bank as up the river ride,
In oary swiftness and exulting pride
Her barks triumphal,—let the Flag be reared,
And thousands echo, when the colour's cheered!

Again, upon the wind a wafted swell
Of ebbing sound, proclaims a midnight bell;
Lo! phantom clouds come floating by the moon,
Then melt away, like happiness, too soon!
And as they glide, an onward-moving smile
Of glassy light is mirrored on each pile.

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Farewell the scene! Farewell the fleeting song!
Wherein my spirit hath been borne along
In light and gloom through many a lonely hour,
With nought to gladden but its own weak power.
In morning youth far brighter dreams have played
Around a heart which Hope has oft betrayed,
Than those which hover o'er this dying strain;
But,—faded once, they never form again.
Farewell to Oxford! soon will flying years
The word awaken that is spoke by tears;
When scheming boyhood plann'd my future lot,
No scene arose where Oxford center'd not;
And now, as oft her many-mingled chimes
Swell into birth, like sounds of other times,
Prophetic life a woven myst'ry seems,
Unravelled oft by consummated dreams.

Farewell!—if when I cease to haunt her scene,
Some gentle heart remember I have been,
As Oxford, with her palaces and spires,
The mind ennobles, or the fancy fires,
No vain reward his chosen theme attends,
Howe'er the fate of him who sung it, ends.

Oh, fearful Time, the fathomless of thought,
With what a myst'ry is thy meaning fraught!

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Thy wings are noiseless in their rush sublime
O'er scenes of glory, as o'er years of crime;
Yet comes a moment when thy speed is felt,
Till past and future through our being melt,
And a faint awfulness from Worlds unknown,
In shadowy darkness gathers round her own.
A moment! well may that a moral be,
Whoe'er thou art, 'tis memory to thee:
A tomb it piled, a mother bore to heaven,
Or, like a whirlwind o'er the ocean driven,
Rushed on thy fate with desolating sway,
And flung a desert o'er thy darkened way.—
A moment!—midnight wears her wonted hue,
And orbs of beauty speak yon skyward view;
Deep, hushed, and holy is the world around,
But yet, what energies of Life abound,
Fermenting through the mighty womb of space,
Where Time and Nature multiply their race;
What hearts, whose awful destinies awake,
Till Heav'n and Hell some daring impulse make.
And thou! far universe, to sight unknown,
Radiant with God, and centered by His throne,
Man cannot soar, but dreams would fain expand
Their wingéd powers o'er thine unclouded land,
Where glory circles from the Mystic Three,
Where Life is Love, and Love is Deity!

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STAGE-COACH SCENERY AND ASSOCIATIONS.

And now, while languid mists dissolve away,
And golden sun-tints o'er the landscape play,
Look round!—the unpretending view admire
From shady dingles peeps the taper spire,
And far around yon richly-wooded green,
What still romance o'erveils the rural scene!

But most the pilgrim eye delights to see,
My Country, monarch of th' imperial sea!
Those ancient mansions where thy Gentles dwell,
And grace the Homes their fathers built so well.
Far on the lawn, amid yon leafy shade,
Behold the porch and turret-towers displayed
Hark! round the park, begirt with olden trees,
The sheep-bells shake their echoes on the breeze;
Fleet on his fairy foot, the timid deer
With glancing eye, pursues his wild career;
While browsing cattle crop the stinted food,
And snuff the wind with conscious gratitude.

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And long, fair England! may such Homes be seen,
In stately triumph frowning o'er the green;
Long may the Country Gentleman be found,
The honoured lord of his paternal ground;
Far from suburban toil, and meaner care,
No midnight brawls, no masquerading there,
A bounteous fortune, and a feeling breast,
Loved by the good, and by the humble blest,—
How calm he marks the bloom of life decay,
How breeze-like float the fleeting hours away!

And, ah! forgive the wand'rer doomed to roam
O'er life's autumnal waste, without a home,
If chance an unforbidden wish should swell
For some dear haunt, where love and truth might dwell;
How blithely would he hail the welcome dawn,
And stroll enamoured round his dew-bright lawn.
Or when pale twilight glanced the garden-trees,
And the boughs twinkled in their vesper breeze,
Delighted stray, with heavenward feeling fraught,
And wind the mazes of immortal thought!

But from the road unnumbered scenes transfuse
O'er the quick mind, reflection's moral hues;
Each, as it passes, claims a sigh or tear,
For Want and Wo, and all their offspring here,

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There, the blind beggar, led by faithful Tray,
Bareheaded, moans along his mournful way;
Here, a lean pedlar winds his wintry track,
With wallet strapped upon his weary back;
And far withdrawn on yonder coppice green,
Like wood-born regents of the lonely scene,
The sun-brown gipsies o'er their caldron gaze,
And watch the faggots crackle as they blaze.
But, lo! a livelier scene,—beside the wheel,
Wild urchins whirling round from head to heel;
Around, and round, and still around they turn,
Till lip and eye with bright suffusion burn,
Then mildly beg, with upward-looking face,
Some poor reward to crown their wheel-side race.

And oft to him, whose moral eye hath been
A quaint observer of life's comic scene,
Hath social travel true instruction brought,
That formed a theme for many an after thought;
Abroad, our lines of character appear;
For who would crouch to affectation here,—
Where all are free, unknown, and unrestrained,
And fashion profitless, however feigned?
A rapid meeting, (like the glad surprise
Of nature, when a sun-burst brings the dies
Of verdure, wood, and water into life,
Each with a sudden power of freshness rife,)

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Call traits of mind and tones of feeling forth,
And bold opinion in its native worth.
Within the compass of a hundred miles,
How vast a subject for our frowns, or smiles!
How much that opens like a scenic view
Of Nature's drama, such as Shakspeare drew;
The selfish, vain, the volatile, and proud,
The pert, the spruce, the silent, and the loud,—
All in their turn, some living clue impart
To thread the lab'rinth that conceals the heart.

Meanwhile, our rumbling Coach pursues its way,
Adorned with passengers,—and who are they?
Inside, and warmed with sympathy, recline
A Politician and a plain Divine;
The first can lay the Cabinet quite bare,
And fathom all the well of wisdom there!
A smile of candour clothes his merry cheek,
And his eyes twinkle what his heart would speak:
Genteelly plain in periwig, and best,—
Let buckled shoes and snuff-box speak the rest!

Within a Coach, perchance we oft may find
Some choice companion with a kindred mind;
Here, unsubdued by ceremonious fear,
The sterling traits of character appear;

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And thoughts unmannacled by mean control,
Flash bright and clear, like sparkles from the soul.
Shame on the man! who drones himself away,
When conversation should have turned to play;
A soul so bare, companionless, and cold,
Can scarce be stamped in Nature's kindly mould,
Who bids the social flame to kindle, when
We meet, though strangers, with our fellow-men.

Commend me him, who, with unselfish art,
Can loose his tongue, and let out half his heart;
Above suspicion, conscious of no end,
He turns the stranger to a passing friend,—
Refined or rude, no matter, if the mind
Be meet for converse, and to truth inclined.
With him a journey yields delightful ease,
His wit may gladden, and his wisdom please;
Long miles escape amid colloquial charms,
The temper brightens, and acquaintance warms.

And such is he, whose glowing tongue hath sped
As if a Parliament were in his head;
How well he weaves each patriotic plan,
And, like a minister, selects his man!
Condemns a war, or conquers distant climes,
And paints the leading wonder of the times;

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With fond remembrance turns to scenes of yore,
And mourns that mind will be revived no more,
As when, with eagle glance, great Chatham rose,
And flashed defiance on his country's foes;
As when, enrapt, th'immortal Burke he saw
Astound the House, and give the world a law!—
Meanwhile, the pensive Curate, pleased to learn,
But ventures half an answer in his turn;
Remotely blest, his humble lot has been
To move through life unvalued and unseen,
To watch and weep beside the couch of wo,
And bid the tear of penitence to flow;
To woo immortal Mercy from the Throne,
Protect the poor, and make their griefs his own;—
His heart replete with heavenly love and truth,
The prop of age, and hallowed guide of youth,
His home the bosom-spring of tranquil joy,—
Ah! who would mar him with the world's alloy?

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NATHAN AND DAVID.

“Thou art the man!”—What thunder in that truth
By Nathan to the soul of David sent,
In dread appliance, with resistless power
Internal! Never, by the bolt of Heaven,
In the green summer of his waving strength
Blasted and smitten, fell the kingly Oak
Down to the earth, as sank the tow'ring state
Of Israel's monarch, at these mighty words,
Charged with the lightning of divine reproof!
Back flew the colour from his faded cheek
Pallid with guilt; and wildly throbbed his heart,
As one deep groan his craven spirit heaved
Half-stifled; tremor all his limbs convulsed,
And then, before his sunken eyes appalled,
His hand he raised,—as if the prophet were
Some apparition out of Hades sent,
Rather than man, in living flesh arrayed,
Missioned by God to strike a sinner dumb!

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But who on fallen David can reflect
Without a shudder? Who that calls to mind,
How in his golden prime of purity
Angels had listened, while on earth he sang
Creation's glory, providence, and Christ,
With harp melodious as the mind was pure,—
Stained with pollution, sin, and murd'rous guile,
In the black horrors of detected crime
Arrested,—who can thus a prostrate King
Behold, and feel not, till the heart grows faint
And sickens, o'er the sinfulness of man?

Oh! if the spirit of romance can sigh
Oft as it meditates, where crumbled arch
And stooping column, ivy-tressed with age,
Or, sunken pillars,—yet to thought suggest
How vast in beauty, pomp, and perfect grace
The once high Temple to the skies upreared
Its walls of worship,—will the ruined soul
Prostrate in vice, by brutal passion sunk,
And overrun, no solemn anguish wake
In the deep bosom of God-fearing man?
For, what though in the waste of sin appear
Relics of beauty, wrecks of moral grace,
And remnants exquisite of feeling left
Unwithered, 'mid the havoc,—this but adds
To pain that is, association past,

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Making it keener! E'en as pilgrims gaze
On the worn Parthenon, or Pæstum's walls;
For, yet that miracle of stone retains
Sublimity, which bids the gazer pause
Entranced with wonder; while his resting eye
On the far beauty of Amalfi's hills
Feeds a rapt gaze; or, on the purple sea
Expatiates, and in thought delights to dream
What mute expression of the mighty whole,
Yon temples in their pristine glory breathed,
Whose very ruin a religion makes
In hearts that ponder; and whose beauty proves
Time dreads a sacrilege, and loves to spare
Some trace to tell us where the God hath been!

But, whence the fall, so infinitely sad,
Down to the brink of everlasting wo
This friend of God, this favourite of Heaven
Experienced?—Reader! in that monarch's sin
Corruption may its inmost semblance view.
The root of vice from reasonless self-love
Itself derives; and, since the first man fell,
Between the Heart and Mind a gap was made
Beyond philosophy to hide, or fill:
And thus, while one the light of duty holds,
The other, unaffected and apart
Often remains; not light, but love we need

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Supremely: so, when passions rise, or rage,
Darken reflection, and the mind disease
Through all its powers,—self-knowledge rules no more;
Then, chaste humility, and calm mistrust
To lawless appetite indulgence yield
Their wisdom; and judicial blindness dims
The eye of judgment; sophistries the truth
Assail, and sap the moral life away;
Till principle is undermined at last,
Satan hath entered the surrendered heart,
Conscience goes out,—and all is night within!

'Twas thus with David: in some evil hour,
When through the eye pollution seized the soul,
And beauty poured like poison through his veins
A fatal magic, did a fiendish Lust
Peace, purity, and conscience overcome
In one fell moment!—In the morning rose
That king, with innocence unstained;
By night,—oh! horrible beyond his harp
In strains that trembled with his groan, to tell,
The brand of murder, and adult'ry's blot
Tinged his white spirit with the stain of Hell!

But did he, by that crime of lust and blood
So blotted, soon to penitence and prayer,

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And the full agonies of felt remorse
At once betake him? Did the murdered face
Of dead Uriah, never round the feast
Glide like a spectre, and his soul alarm?
Alas! not so; for ten long months unmoved,
Deaden'd and drugged the torpid Conscience slept;
As if that witnesser for Heaven were slain,
Or silenced;—but for waking grace, perchance,
It ne'er had wakened, till the clanging trump
Of the Last Judgment, sounded through the sleep
Of men, and ages! But, when Nathan plied
The parable, with thrilling force inspired,
Then, like a giant from his sleep aroused,
A sense of justice, with severest ire
Rose from false slumber; then, the poor man's lamb
Was pitied; vengeance for his outraged heart
Fierce restitution e'en to fourfold law
At once decreed:—but, oh! how blind the heart
Becomes; and how reluctant to invert
Back on itself one reprimanding gaze;
While all awake, with microscopic eye
The faintest shadow of another's sin
Clearly we mark, and promptly we condemn;
For, faults in others wear a hue abhorred,
Though in ourselves half lovely they appear!—
Or else, like parasites, our souls applaud
That which in others they can hiss, and hate,

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And outlaw, as high treason to the truths
By heaven recorded, and by earth revered.

Thus did the monarch, when the rich man's crime
Drew from his justice an indignant burst
Of horror; yet himself awhile remained
Lulled by the opiate of a self-deceit!
A mere injustice, by a stranger done
Raised into majesty his sense of right;
While in himself—rank murder no remorse
Awoke, and fell adult'ry drew no tear!

Oh, what a comment on the creature's guilt
Is here embodied! and a proof how vast
That mortal nature at the zenith needs
A grace perpetual, to prevent its fall.
No state, or scene, or privilege, o'erawes
Defection; Angels from their glory fell,
Though in the light and splendour of the Throne
Celestial; man in Paradise rebelled
While Earth lay beaming with her Maker's smile,
And yet the jubilee of choral stars
Hung on the breeze, and hallowed all the winds
Around him; and in Israel's blood-stained king
A warning read, more eloquently preached,—
How much of grace to keep their gifts unsoiled
The wisest in their nature's weakness want!

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For, lo! a Prophet,—he whose full-wing'd strains
Of song and spirit, to the Heaven of Heavens
Bore him, as if the soul a seraph grew,
From the vile fetters of enslaving flesh
By faith delivered,—sunk, at once, to sin
And darkness, by a tempting gaze seduced
From all allegiance to the God he loved!

But, turn we from the criminal and crime;
And in the record see how Heaven has warned
From those antipodes to which they tend,
Our hearts forever: David, though a saint
High as the graces that his God conferred,
Fell into murder,—let not Souls presume!
But yet, by prayer and penitence he rose
A pardoned sinner, though a punished man,
Again to favour,—let no Guilt despair!
But when the hell of accusation burns
Like madness in our bosom; or, the Law
Thunders around it with a damning peal
Resistless, let us think what David was;
And bathe our spirit in that Mystic Blood
That makes the crimson of transgression white.

But who can laurel with befitting wreath
That Volume wondrous, whose unerring page
To sinful nature an instruction yields

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Which meets all want, all weakness, and all wo,
However varied, and however vast?—
Ye Oracles! your praises who can sing?
Your glories, who save God can understand,
Who is at once their origin and end?
Nothing that Minds, Imaginations, Hearts,
Conscience, or Creed, or Character require,—
But ye supply them, with exhaustless store:
Time and eternity your teachings move,
Sinner and saint your living voice instructs,
While Nature, Providence, and Grace derive
Their true significance from you alone.—
Instinct with poetry creation grows
To song and sentiment, we oft perceive;
And, strains of intellectual music seem
Heard by the mind, intelligibly deep,
From order, beauty, and arrangement born:
But, in The Bible, reason's self is taught
How all Creation was a forfeit once,
And on the road to everlasting gloom;
When He, the Second Head of our soiled race,
By purchase grasped it, took the bond away,
And kept it standing, like a mute discourse,
Or mystic parable, Himself to preach.
Typing the truths His written word reveals.—
Such is our earth: by Scripture's key unlocked,
Creation then a mighty sermon proves;

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And all its beauties, into Christ baptized,
Symbols of more than Science dreams, or dares,
Become; and back upon His Throne reflect
The lustre His presiding grace supplies.—
But higher still, by Scripture led, we mount
And learn, how Matter prophesies, through all its forms,
Of scenes beyond our poetry to praise
Or utter,—when the clock of time shall strike
The hour predestined, for the King to reign.
Thus may we feel, amid the scenes and sounds
Our spared creation, though in sin, retains,
Nature is one presentiment of Powers
Yet to evolve, in that millennial day
When Earth, as perfect as her Lord is pure,
Shall bloom, and brighten in her Maker's smile.

But, far beyond this inorganic world
Of matter, doth the light of Scripture throw
Its guiding beam: there, Providence becomes
From fate and blind confusion, chance and wo,
Nobly discharged; and on our falling tears
The iris of The Covenant reflects
Its beauty; hope beyond the present soars,
The cross of nature, with the crown of grace
Connects; and into fellowship with Christ
As suff'ring, Faith her own affliction brings.

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And oh! when agonies of wordless guilt
Heave through the bosom horrible despair;
Or, when by heated passion, tempting blood,
Or blind self-trust, or base desire, seduced,—
Like fallen David into crime we sink
Down the black precipice of sin, and death,
Where reason, pride, nor sage philosophy
Reach the gone soul, nor remedy despair!
Then, is the Bible, like the balm of heaven
In dews of mercy on the soul distilled;
Where God, through pardoned guilt of old, declares
That He is willing thus to pardon now:
So are we taught by others' sins,—our own
To guard; and ponder, with a trembling breast,
How weak the mighty on their “mountain” stand,
When most they seem immortally secure,
And cry to God, as if by Him inspired,
My Patron, and my only Portion,—Thou!

This alludes to the celebrated picture by West.

271

ON CONCLUDING “THE MESSIAH.”

My theme is o'er, the great Messiah sung,
And this attempt, whose vast persuasion filled
My being with a dread delight, concludes.
How often, in some pause of holy fear,
Hath Fancy folded her advent'rous wing,
And my soul bowed with this unuttered thought,—
That He, whose mediatorial love I sang,
Beheld me, fathoming my spirit's depth!
And now, as girt with glory, in the Heaven
Of Heavens, the Son of Man His throne resumes,
A dread comes round me, like a shadow cast
From waning tempest o'er a tranced sea.

Thou Land sublime! of miracles and men,
Where poetry from God on earth came down
In warbled echoes of celestial song;
Where Hebron, Tabor, and Mount Carmel, lift
Their silent vastness in the sultry air,
Divinely haunted; where the Jordan rolls,
Where rock, and cavern, grotto, cell, and cave,
Are mighty; where the curse of Heaven has graved

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Terrific warning on thy blasted trees,
And haggard vales, all fountainless and dry,—
The stately vision of thy mingled scene
Departeth; he whose spirit oft has heard
The thunder-music of thy tempests roll,
Beheld thy sun-blaze, seen thine eagles mount,
And, dream-led, roved beside that mournful lake
Where man's Redeemer, in His days of earth
And anguish wander'd, bids thee now farewell.

Autumnal morning in my chamber gleamed,
When tremblingly, as though th' Almighty's glance
My mind had bared,—I struck the chorded lyre
Of sacred truth, to this surpassing theme.
But ever, as the waves of moving life
From England's capital, with heave and swell
Came surging from afar, my soul partook
A deep communion with the fate of Man,—
Amid a sea of wide existence tossed,
Whose billows only the Redeemer trod
Secure; but left along the stormy wild
A track of glory, for terrestrial feet
To follow, guided by the star of Heaven.

But now, the spirit of mysterious night
Comes forth, and, like a ruined angel, seems
All dimly glorious, and divinely sad;

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While Earth, forgetful of her primal fall,
Lies in the beauty of reflected heaven.—
Oh! night creates the paradise of thought,
Enchanting back whatever time has wronged
Or exiled, touched with that celestial hue
Which faith and fancy on the dead bestow.
Emotions which the tyrant day destroys
Can now awaken, like reviving flowers;
And, oh, the darkest of unheavenly souls
Must feel immortal, as his eye receives
From all its views, a loveliness, that comes
To light the dimness of the spirit's depth.—
As when at morning, oft a sunrise pours
A stream of splendour through the window-panes
Of temple vast, to cheer its barren aisles,
And on the gloom of monumental sleep
To glitter, like a resurrection morn.

Thus, life is charter'd for a nobler fate
Than glory, by the breath of man bestowed:
A living world reflects a living God,—
Morn, noon, and night, with everlasting change!
And who can dim the universe, o'erawe
The elements, unseat the sun, or mar
That mighty Poem which the heavens and earth
Exhibit, written by Eternal hands?—
The sense of beauty, which is so divine,

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Lives in the spirit like a burning spell;
And while the wonders of creation teem,
To love and worship their majestic power,
Lifts the lone spirit into purer light
Than ever canopied the throne of Fame!

And cold the heart, whose Aspirations wing'd
Their flight from thee, my own inviolate Land!
Whom night and beauty have apparelled now.
Thy heaven is glassy as the molten blue
Of ocean, in the noontide's dazzling sleep;
Thy starry multitudes their thrones have set,
And the young moon looks on the quiet sea,
Tranced like a mother, with her doating eye
Intently fixed upon a cradled child:
While, round, and full, and ravishingly bright,
A planet, here and there, the sky adorns.
A path of lustre has o'erlaid the deep
That heaves, and glitters, like a wizard shore
For sea-Enchanters, when they rise and walk
The waves in glory;—voice nor foot profanes
This dreaming silence; but the mellow lisp
Of dying waters on the beach dissolved,
Makes ocean-language for the heart and hour.

Now thought is heaven-like; and our earthly frame
Of purity beyond the Day to bring,

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Is conscious;—from the uncreated fount
Of glory, may not emanations steal,
By night absorbed, and mystically felt?
Or creatures, such as once the mental eye
Of seraph-haunted Milton saw descend,
Like sunbeams darted from a riven cloud
On Eden's mount,—with viewless wing career
Around us, charming with a gaze unseen
Whate'er the beauty of their glances touch?

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FEMALE VIRTUES.

Land of my soul! maternal Isle,
Arrayed by Freedom's holy smile;
Whose throne is founded on the cause
Of native worth and noble laws,—
Oh! long may Private Life be found
The glory of our English ground,
And Woman on her stainless brow
Wear the bright soul we honour now!
For though thy fleets o'erawed the main,
Till every billow felt thy reign,
And captive Empires drew the car
Of victory from triumphant war,
Thy strength is cankered if the core
Of Private life be sound no more.—
Consumption on the cheek can bloom,
When beauty but declares a tomb,
And eyes their brightest meaning shed,
While ev'ry ray foretells the dead;
And thus may fatal glory be
An Empire's garb of infamy,
If once that spring of manly pride,
True gallantry—be stained or dried!
Or, Woman from her high domain
Must dwindle into meaner reign.

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THE FIRST DEATH.

Did the Earth shudder, and the conscience reel
In the frail breast of new-created man,
When God that dooming malediction said,
“Back to thy dust, for dust thou art, return!”
We know not; nor can shaping words express
All which Creation's guilty convict felt
At the pale glory of departing day,
Nearer and nearer as the formless God
Approached him!—while the foul transgressor flew
To hide himself behind the shelt'ring tree;
As if our conscience were a human eye
Baffled by distance, as by darkness bound!
But, next to this, must primal Death have been
In horror; cov'ring with a hideous pall
Reason and nature, and the shrinking mind,
When first that nameless Apparition frowned,
Reeking with blood!—by brutal envy shed
From the fell club of patriarchal Cain.
For if between us and the power of death,
Not all th' experience which our grave-filled earth
Has suffered, e'er can reconcilement plant;

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Whether in battle, mid the deadly shock
Of grappling forces, foot to foot, and hand
To hand contending,—till the life-grasp end;
Or, in the blackness of some midnight sea
When wave and whirlwind lift their yelling cry
Together, where the plunging ship goes down
Like a dark monster diving through the deep;
Or, if Death come amid the household group
Around us, and with lenient slow decay,
While truths celestial, from religion drawn,
Beam on our spirit like the beck'ning smiles
From souls in glory,—calmly we decline:
Come when he may, and howsoe'er by faith
Subdued and softened, yet the Flesh recoils
From his chill presence; and our nature shrinks
From the bare shadow of his ghastly form,
And owns him to be King of terrors, still!

Philosophy in vain her charm applies;
Reason may laugh, and science coldly sneer;
And all the bravery of words may try
Off from the soul this incubus of dread
To shake: but still the clay-cold touch of Death
Thrills through our bones, like supernat'ral ice;
And in the chamber, where his power we find,
How the foot presses on the very floor
As if with rev'rence!—and our breath is held

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In awed suspension; scarcely can our words
Venture abroad; and as we sadly bend
Our speculation o'er the marble face,
In the stern paleness of its dread repose
Beneath us lying,—something not of earth
Comes strangely creeping o'er the harrowed mind;
A hushed sensation, an unspoken chill,
A choking weight that on our bosom sinks
Dismal, as if the horrid grave immured
Our being, while 'tis yet with life inspired.
Eternity doth time and scene and soul
Into itself absorb; and what was once,
A fact believed, grows awful feeling now!

But if to us, in this meridian age,
Death be a myst'ry, hung with deepest shade,
What did the exiles of lost Paradise
Endure and suffer,—when young Abel sank
Into mere clay, beneath a murd'rer's blow!
Then, the vast meaning of Jehovah's curse
Was bodied forth; and—“Dust thou art,” awoke
A fearful echo in their martyred child!
The Mother, with her shriek to Heaven up sent,
Clasping her hands with agonizing hold;
While o'er the body her dishevell'd locks
Float in confusion; and the world's first Sire

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Beside her kneeling, while his manly chest
Heaves with emotion too appalled for lips
To utter,—this Imagination sees,
When darkly pond'ring o'er that early sin
Which pall'd creation with portentous gloom
By one dark act, irrevocably done!

Yes, 'tis a tragedy of early crime
That makes us tremble into tears, and sighs
For man's corruption,—that a brother's hands
Deep in the life-stream of fraternal blood
Should bathe themselves; and smite his victim down.
At once transfigured into breathless clay
Before him!

And from whence, the murd'rous wrong?
Why, from the fury of an envious heart
Tameless as terrible; that loathed to see
Heaven's blazing welcome from the clouds descend
On the slain firstling, which the younger born
Offered Jehovah; while the ripened fruits
Glowing with life, and green with nature's bloom,
Lay on the altar of uprising turf
By God unwelcomed with saluting fire:—
And therefore, did the harsh and haughty Cain
Forego all promptings, which fraternal thoughts
Might kindle; and the cry of conscience drown
Within him, pleading like persuasive God;

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And then beguiled him by familiar talk
Far from his home; and, in some trackless field
Where none were seen to syllable a crime,
E'en in a moment,—as the lightning bolt
Hurled from the darkness of the sky descends,
So did his hand, with fratricidal blow
Dash into death the unresisting form
Of Abel, Eve's beloved and second born!—
Gentle and good, a shepherd of the hills,
Walking with God, as future Enoch did,
Content to live, and yet prepared to die.

The first of martyrs was the friend of Truth;
And there, in gory slumber, stark and pale
Behold him prostrate! Not a step is nigh;
Nature herself, as if with horror tranced,
Deepens her silentness: and who can tell
How Cain the grassy earth hath made to drink
The blood of Abel?—Yet, the murd'rer shrinks
Into himself, with shudd'ring guilt o'erpowered;
And scarcely from his victim dares avert
His eye-glance; lest on some avenging Fiend
'Twould fall; or else the cursed ground would cleave
And gulf him in the darkness of the damned!

“Where is thy brother?” Hark! the mouth of God
Hath spoken; for the cry of blood hath pealed

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High o'er the Heavens, and reached the Throne Eterne,
And rung around it a prevailing voice
For vengeance;—Deity Himself replies!
And on his brow behold yon felon bears
A brand which dies not; 'tis the blasting curse
By Retribution on his forehead graved,
As forth, a vagabond in murd'rous crime,
The wretch is driven; from whose dismal eye
The beauty of the flowers will seem to fade,
The fruit turn ashes, and the hard-tilled earth
Return no produce to his toiling hand;
But, like a living curse his life shall be:
Yet, none shall slay him; for the brand is set
By Heaven upon him, and the curse is—Live!

But underneath this veil of fact there lies
Much for the mind, beyond mere time to change.
For in those brothers, lo! enduring Types,
Who thus impersonate two mental powers,
And two varieties of man,—are found.
In Cain we view, how fallen man abhors
Divine similitude in human form,
Or function; and what fav'ring Heaven bestows
In answer to the soul of simple faith,
Lightens the flame of lurid envy up,
Till quenched by blood, or cooled by black revenge.

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Or, may we rather, in remorseless Cain
A pattern of the primal Deist trace?
For he, from Reason's oracle derived
His worship, and the fruits and flowers preferred
Proudly to offer the rejecting Heavens,—
Who claimed a sacrifice, where vital blood
In the slain creature mystically shed,
Preached a mute sermon on the Lamb to come
In after ages:—while, in Abel's mind,
(To faith subjecting all which reasoning pride
Presumes to dictate for the Will Supreme,)
There seems a model, how the soul must act
In matters, where alone th' Almighty rules,
Alpha of love, and Omega of law,
Himself His reason,—though by us unscanned.

But, in the contrast of that crying blood
Which moved all heaven, and brought th' Eternal down
To curse the fratricide,—how Faith exults!
For, when The Antitype of Abel died
On the dread altar of His Deity,
His Blood far better than slain Abel's spoke:—
For that drew vengeance fram the wrath of Heaven.
But this, draws mercy from the heart of God,
Perfect, and pure, as was the Lamb who died.

This alludes to the engraving of “Abel's Death.”

284

THE MISSIONARY.

Go forth and teach;—and ye have gone, and done
Deeds that will shine, when thou art dark, O Sun!
Heroes! whose crowns with gems of glory shine,
Dug from the depths of heaven's eternal mine:
Oh, what a conquest hath the Cross obtained!
There, where of old a hell of darkness reigned,
And Crime and Havoc, fiend-begotten pair,
In mortal bosoms made their savage lair,
And issued thence, to riot, rage, or kill,
Like incarnations of a demon's will,—
The peace that passeth understanding grows,
And Earth seems born again, without her woes,
So wondrously the spell divine descends,
And Man with Nature in communion blends:
The isles have seen Him! and the deserts raise
Anthems that thrill the halls of heaven with praise;
Crouching and tame the tiger-passions lie,
Hushed by the gaze of God's subduing eye;
Temples and homes of sacred truth abound,
Where Satan once with all his crew was found:

285

And, hark! at sunset while the shady calm
Of forest coolness floats on wings of balm,
As roams the pilgrim in that dying glare,
From a lone hamlet winds the voice of prayer,—
Breath of the soul by Jesus taught to prize
And blend with music heard beyond the skies.
Ecstatic thought! the zenith of our dreams,
Error has died in Truth's victorious beams:
And where the savage round his altar fed
On the warm fragments of the limbless dead,
Cots which an English heart delights to hail
Deck the green wilds of many a foreign dale,
And, turned by Piety's familiar hand,
Religion sees her tear-worn Bibles stand.

Thy kingdom come!—prophetic voices throng
In choral harmony, and chant, “How long,
How long, O beatific King of kings,
Till ransomed earth with gospel music rings?
How long the period ere that Sun arise
Which glittered on Isaiah's holy eyes,
And clad the cedared hills of Palestine
With veils of glory wove from sheen divine?”

Oh! for that day beyond what poets dream,
Decked by Imagination's crystal beam,

286

When vanquished Sin shall leave Messiah's throne
To rise in full transcendency alone:
Hate, War, and Tumult, all the brood of crime,
Shall then be banished from the scene of time
Evil be dead, Corruption breathe no more,
And Peace, the seraph, smile from shore to shore;
While round her Prince sublime hosannas dwell,—
“Thy truth has withered all the thrones of Hell;
Forever and forever live and reign,
Till earth be purified to heaven again!”

290

WHAT MANY HAVE FELT.

Life is still young, but not the world with me;
For where the freshness I was wont to see?
A bloom hath vanished from the face of things;
Nor more the Syren of enchantment sings
In sunny mead, or shady walk, or bower,
Like that which warbled o'er my youthful hour.
Let Reason laugh, or elder Wisdom smile
On the warm phantasies which youth beguile;
There is a pureness in that glorious prime
That mingles not with our maturer time.
All earth is brightened from a sun within,
As yet unshaded by a world of sin.
While mind and nature blendingly array
In light and love, whate'er our dreams survey;—
Though perils darken from the distant years,
They vanish, cloud-like, when a smile appears;
And the light woes that flutter o'er the mind
Are laughed away, as foam upon the wind.
Thou witching Spirit of a younger hour!
Did I not feel thee in thy fullest power?
Attest, ye glories! flashed from clouds and skies
On the deep wonder of adoring eyes,

291

As oft, school-free, I worshipped, lone and still,
The rosy sunset from some haunted hill;
Or oped my lattice, when the moonshine lay
In sleep-like beauty on the brow of day,
To watch the mystery of moving stars
Through ether gliding on melodious cars,
Or musing wandered, ere the hectic morn,
To see how beautiful the sun was born!

A reign of glory from my soul hath past,
And each Elysium proved mere Earth at last;
Yet mourn I not in mock or puling strain,
For joys are left which never beam in vain:—
The voice of friends, the changeless eye of love,
And, oh, that bliss all other bliss above,
To know, if shadow frown, or sunshine fall,
There is One Spirit who pervadeth all!

And is that Fame, for which our feelings pine
With yearning fondness, not indeed divine?
Are lofty impulses of soul and sense,
Forever teaching her omnipotence,
A mimicry of fine emotions, born
From the gay wildness of a youthful morn?
Time, Truth, and Nature speak a nobler tale;
Her pomp may perish, and her brightness fail,
But all that verdure which the spirit laid
O'er the dry wilderness the world displayed,

292

In living freshness shall outbloom the hour,
And scatter earth with many a secret flower.
Oh! 'tis not fame to form the midnight show,
Where vice and vanity alike may go;
It is not fame, to hear the shallow prate
Of busy fondness, or intriguing hate,
To feast on sounds of patronizing pride,
And wring from dullness what the world denied,
A high-souled Nature is its own renown!
Whate'er the jewels that compose the crown.
For 'mid the barrenness of mortal strife,
And daily nothings of uneasy life,
The spirit thirsteth for a purer world;
O'er this the wings of fancy are unfurled;
Hence painter's hue and poet's dreams are brought,
And the rich paradise of blooming thought:
To quench that thirst, let heaven-born feelings flow,
Let genius wake! let inspiration glow!
Why thus we panted for a world like this
May form a knowledge in our future bliss.

There are some exquisite allusions to the philosophy of poetry, in “Schiller's Lectures on Dramatic Poetry;” and Bacon has comprehended in one eloquent paragraph a world of criticism—

e. g. Videtur Poësis hæc humanæ naturæ largire quæ Historia denegat; atque animo umbris rerum utcunque satisfacere ------ Firmum ex Poësi sumitur argumentum, magnitudinem rerum magis illustrem, ordinem magis perfectum, et varietatem magis pulchram animæ humanæ complacere, quam in naturâ ipsâ post lapsum reperire ullô modô possit ------ Adeo ut Poësis ista non solum ad delectationem, sed etiam ad animi magnitudinem et ad mores conferat.—De Aug. Scient, lib. ii. cap. 13.

293

MORAL OMNIPOTENCE OF THE SCRIPTURES.

Transcendent thought!—when changing years have flown,
These Bibles speak to ev'ry clime and zone;
The hut, the hovel, or the cottage wild,
Where Sorrow shudders o'er her weeping child,
Their living voice of holiness and love,
Like angel-tones, shall visit from above.
Omnipotence is there!—a power to be
The God on earth, salvation's deity.
Thou Infidel! in tomb-like darkness laid,
By Heaven deserted, and by earth betrayed;
And thou pale mutt'rer in some midnight cell,
Whose sad to-morrow is a dream of hell;
There is a voice to wake, a word to spread,
Deep as the thunders that arouse the dead;
That sound is heard;—a welcome from the skies!
Despair is vanquish'd, and Dejection flies;
Hope fills a heart where agonies have been,
The dungeon brightens, and a God is seen.

300

Immortal pages! may your spirit pour
Unceasing day, till savage night be o'er
In fiery lands, where roving Ganga reigns,
Eternal pilgrim of a thousand plains,
The tawny Indian, (when the day is done,
And basking waters redden in the sun,
While shadowed branches, in their boundless play
Of leafy wantonness, the earth array,)
Behold him seated, with his babes around,
To fathom myst'ries where a God is found!

The book is oped, a wondrous page began,
Where heaven is offered to forgiven man;
Lo! as he reads, what awe-like wonder steals
On all he fancies, and on all he feels;
Till o'er his mind by mute devotion wrought,
The gleaming twilight of celestial thought
Begins, and heaven-eyed Faith salutes above
The God of glory, and the Lord of love.—
“Thou dread Unknown! Thou unimagined Whole!
The vast Supreme, and Universal Soul,
Oft in the whirlwind have I shaped Thy form,
Or throned in thunder heard Thee sway the storm;
And when the ocean's heaving vastness grew
Black with Thy curse,—my spirit darkened too;
But when the world beneath a sun-gaze smiled,
And not a frown the sleeping air defiled,

301

Then I have loved Thee, Thou parental One,
Thy wrath a tempest, and Thy smile a Sun!
But if there be, as heaven-breathed words relate,
A seraph-home in some hereafter state,
Almighty Power! thy dark-souled Indian see,
And grant the mercy that has bled for me.”

302

THE MAGIC OF THE STARRY HEAVENS.

Ye midnight heavens! in concave glory hung,
In ev'ry age, by ev'ry poet sung,
One parting glance, oh, let my spirit take,
Ere dawn-light on your awful beauty break.
With what intensity the eye reveres
Your starry legions, when their pomp appears!
As though the glances Centuries have given,
Since Dreams first wandered o'er the vast of heaven,
Had left a magic where a mystery shone,
Enchanting more, the more 'tis gazed upon!
Stars, worlds, or wonders!—whatsoe'er ye shine,
The home of angels, or the haunts divine,
Wherein the bodiless, from earth set free,
Shine in the blaze of present Deity,
No eyes behold your ever-beaming ray,
But think, while earthly visions roll away,
In placid immortality ye glow,
Above this chaos of terrestrial wo.

303

INVOCATION TO THE DIVINE SPIRIT.

Mysterious Spirit of the ceaseless mind;
Heart of the church, as Christ the only Head;
Soul of our souls, in supernat'ral light;
Unbounded, deathless and transforming Grace,
And Love, and Wisdom!—Thee I now invoke;
And to Thyself presume to consecrate
Pages, that whatsoe'er of hallowed power
They have, from Thee alone their truth receive
And virtue. Oh! thou Sempiternal Life,
Breathe o'er this effort, and with force array
Whate'er is feeble; and with heavenly touch
And tone their meaning so affect and fill,
That onward to the inner mind of man
Or central being, where high Conscience holds
Her seat august, and faith's dominion acts,—
What truths they carry may be safely borne
Beyond the heartless, and above the vain
To warp or weaken. Here beneath the arch
Of midnight, solemn, deep, intensely calm,
Thy Presence would I realize; and lift

304

Mine awe-struck nature to the heights unseen
Of Essence uncreate,—where Thou art third
In Godhead, where the Fountain-Sire is first,
Second, the Filial Word, and All supreme
In One co-equal, co-eternal Three
The God tripersonal and true, complete.

Descend, pure Spirit! light and life and love
Without Thee, are not: Poetry is Thine,
Reason, and Science, and majestic Arts,
The heaven-born Virtues, intellectual Powers
With all pre-eminence of grace or gifts,—
Are but as glances from Thy glory cast,
And caught by Mind. But who Thy sway can tell?
For at the first, the heavens and all their host,
Moon, star, and planets,—from Thy hand derived
Their radiance, from Thy wisdomlearn'd their paths;
And Earth is thine: her elemental laws,
Her motions, harmonies and living hues
And beauty, are but emanated powers
From Thee, great Beauty's archetypal Seal!
While Man himself, (that miracle of forms)
Into his mould was copied from Thy cast
Ethereal; and the whole of truths inspired,
Prophetic utt'rance, or mirac'lous deed,
Which was, or is, or shall be,—are but rays
Sent from Thine Essence to created mind.

305

Without Thee, more than night Egyptian reigns;
Duty sublime would stern distraction be,
Commanding what our impotence alarms,—
To love that Holy which our hearts abhor
By nature!—But Thy promised aid attends,
Arches our being, like the roof of heaven,
Where'er we wander; and to Will perverse
Such power imparteth, that the precept takes
Thy presence with it in each task assigned.

Thou teachest God; and man himself abides
In fact unfathomed, till thy light reveal
The two eternities of coming truth
Within Him folded,—like a double germ
Soon to expand in heaven or hell complete.
And hence our Nature grows an awful thing;
We thrill eternity in touching Man!
For, from the eyeballs of his living head
Outlooks the Everlasting!—though eclipsed;
While every heart-pulse in the life of faith
Throbs with Thy Spirit, Inspiration's Lord.

306

THE FINAL DOOM.

Oh! say, what Fancy, though endowed sublime,
Can picture truly that tremendous time,
When the last sun shall blaze upon the sea,
And Time be buried in eternity!
A cloudy mantle will enwrap that Sun
Whose face so many Worlds have gazed upon;
The placid moon, beneath whose pensive beam
We all have loved to wander and to dream,
Dyed into blood, shall glare from pole to pole,
And tinge the gloomy tempests as they roll;
And those sweet stars, that, like familiar eyes,
Are wont to smile a welcome from the skies,
No more shall fascinate our human sight,
But quench their beauty in perpetual night.—
And, hark! how wildly on the ruined shore
Expiring Ocean pants in hollow roar,
While earth's abysses echo back the groan,
And startle Nature on Her secret throne!

But ere creation's everlasting pall
Unfold its darkness, and envelop all,

307

The tombs shall burst, the cited dead arise,
And gaze on Godhead with unblasted eyes.

Hark! from the deep of heaven a trumpet-sound
Thunders the dizzy universe around;
From north to south, from east to west it rolls
A blast that summons all created souls;
And swift as ripples form upon the deep
The dead awaken from their dismal sleep;
The Sea has heard it, coiling up with dread,—
Myriads of mortals flash from out her bed,
The graves fly open, and with awful strife
The dust of ages startles into life!

All who have breathed, or moved, or seen, or felt;
All they around whose cradles Kingdoms knelt;
Tyrants and warriors, who were throned in blood;
The great and mean, the glorious and the good,
Are raised from ev'ry isle, and land, and tomb,
To hear the changeless and eternal doom.

But while the universe is wrapt in fire,
Ere yet the splendid ruin shall expire,
Beneath a canopy of flame, behold,
With shining banners at his feet unrolled,
Earth's Judge; around seraphic minstrels throng
And chant o'er golden harps celestial song;—

308

But, let the hush of holy silence now
Brood o'er the heart, and more than words avow,
While the huge fabric of the world gives way,
And shrieking myriads to the mountains pray,
“Descend upon us! Oh, conceal that sight,
The Lamb encompassed with consuming light!”
Behold, a burning Chaos hath begun,
The moon is crimsoned, and how black the sun!
While cloud-flames, welt'ring in confusion dire,
Flash like a firmament of sea on fire;
Yea, all the billows of the main have fled,
And nought appears but ocean's waveless bed,
Whose caverned bosom with tremendous gloom
Yawns on the world like dead Creation's tomb.

But, lo! the breathing harvest of the earth
Reaped from their graves to share a second birth;
Millions of eyes with one deep dreadful stare
Gaze upward through the flaming scene of air,
In pierced Immanuel their own Judge to see,
And hear him sentence man's eternity!
Wing'd like bright angels, warbling hymns of love,
The saints are soaring unto Christ above;
Still as they mount increasing splendours play,
And light the progress of their hallowed way.

309

Yet, hark! what horrid yells beneath him rise
From perished Souls who lift their guilty cries,
And by the brink of sin's awarded Hell
Shriek unto God and man their wild farewell!

But here let silence our religion be,
And prayer become the Muse's poetry;
Nor must the power of meditative song
Grasp the high secrets which to God belong.
Struck with due awe, let Fancy then retire,
And Faith divine the dreaming soul inspire,
Under the shade of that Almighty Throne
From whose dread face the Universe hath flown!

There was no more sea; Rev. xxi. l.

See Revelations.

310

LOST FEELINGS.

Oh! weep not that our beauty wears
Beneath the wings of time;
That age conceals the brow with cares
That once appeared sublime.

Oh! weep not that the clouded eye
No shining thought can speak,
And fresh and fair no longer lie
Joy-tints upon the cheek:

No! weep not that the ruin-trace
Of wasting time is seen,
Around the form, and in the face
Where beauty's lines have been:

But mourn the inward wreck we feel,
As blighted years depart,
And Time's benumbing fingers steal
Young feelings from the heart!

311

Those joyous thoughts that rise and spring,
From out the buoyant mind,
Like summer bees upon the wing,
Or echoes on the wind;

The hopes that sparkle ev'ry hour,
Like blossoms from a soul
Where sorrow sheds no blighting power,
And care has no control,—

With all the rich enchantment thrown
On Life's fair scene around,
As if the world within a zone
Of happiness were bound;

Oh! these endure a mournful doom,
As day by day they die;
Till age becomes a barren tomb
Where buried feelings lie!

THE END.