University of Virginia Library

‘He hath not left us yet . . the Comforter . .
He heareth yet man's prayer, and answereth.
—How like is man unto this altar-tomb.
This fleshly pile is but a sepulchre,
Where the soul sleeps, ere the affectionate will
Bow down, and offer up the human heart,
The heart, and all its faculties to God—
A sacrifice devout. The vital spark,
Then, sends He forth in whom life's issues are,
And kindles man into a holy life,
Whose issues in good words, and works restored,
Human becomes divine—Man walks with God,
As Enoch once on earth, in Eden now.
—And walk ye thus, ye sons of God, and men?
Walk ye as man with man, even? On the soil
Ye trail your slime; and taint, and crush the flowers
That deck the bosom of your mother—Earth.
Ye soar not; ye aspire not: ye trace not
Your lineage from on high; and, strong in soul,
Claim fellowship with angels as your right;
But ask a brotherhood of worms, and call
The grovelling reptile, sister. Ye restrain
Within its fleshly nook the spirit of man,
Tame her ambition down to appetite,
Then quarrel for a sty. Therefore, from you
The insulted angels have gone back to heaven,
To talk with Wisdom, and commune with God.
They hold no converse with corporeal sense:
Of other strain are they; and so is man.
—Behold, I speak a proverb . . dust to dust . .
Of dust ye are, to dust ye do return—
Your souls are ashes; not one ember left,
My breath may kindle. Oh, the breath of God
Is extinct in the life of man. Hear, heaven:
Earth, wonder. There Death bideth—Death-in-Life
Walks, a day spectre, in the sun's broad beams,
Till cold obstruction melt his fetters off,
And rank corruption in God's nostrils reek.
—Bow down the knee: lie prostrate in the dust:
Thou camest out thence; it clipt thee like a womb.
Remit thee to thy native quarry—man.
Thy spirit is gone forth. Bow down, and wait
Till God reanimate thy sluggard clay,
And make thee what thou wert . . a living soul.
—The Sculptour, sembling his own form extern,
Maketh a thing of beauty unto sight;
Yet though he carve a mind upon the brow,
It wants not only life's variety,
But life. The mighty Artist of the sky
Stamped his own image on the soul of man,
Himself a living spirit, bade him live.
Keep ye his image whole? keep ye it in
The beauty of holiness 'twas shadowed from?
No; ye defile it, mutilate, destroy.
Oh, right: oh, truth: oh, peace: oh, liberty.
—Hear me, O Enoch. Waft aside the flames,
That veil thy being from us; and descend,
In glory visible; and call aloud,
That man may hear, and be convinced, and live.
Yet why should man disturb thy holy rest
Thy Sabbath is eternal. Yet thou speakest.
Thou dwellest still with us. Thy Testament
Survives. This Book endures;—rich legacy,
Memorial wake of thy departure hence;
Who wast not; for God took thee to himself.
—Believe, oh, man; and live. The Day—the Day
Cometh—the morning goeth forth: for pride
Hath budded; violence, and evil earth
Do fill. But Judgement cometh, and an End.
The End is come. It watcheth for thee. Lo:
The Day of trouble, and destruction; not
The founding of the hills, but their uprending,
Darkles the jealous heaven, from east to west.
Silence shall brood, at eve, o'er Nature's heart,
An incubus on a forgotten grave:
Repent ye—’

More the man of God had said;
But, then, advanced the Rephaim, giant-twins;
Strong, as the oak; and, as the cedar, tall;
Valiant, as eagles; headlong, as a flood.
Strange brood of discord.—Could essential heaven
Blend with embracement earthly, spawning forth,
As from the slime impregned with summer's sun,
Monsters forbid, whence mind idolatrous
Its gross imaginings might incarnate;
Abortive, and abominable births
Of spirit on sense begot; till spirit become
Degraded unto what it blends withal;
Which its capacious vision might have raised
Unto the High, and Holy One, who doth
Dwell in his own eternal energy,
Yet deign to shrine him in the contrite soul?
—Born in one hour, doubling the labour-pang;
With iron courage them their mother bore,
Stern daughter of the stern, seed of the strong:
With amazonian scorn, the bitterness,
Though as of death, yea, and of death, she 'sdained;
And, when her travail was o'erpast, had joy
More than a mother's—her own dauntless joy,
A victor's or a stoic's over pain.

As she was wandering from the wanderer's land,
On quest of booty, in the robber's trade;
With rival anguish from her iron womb,
'Twas in a cavern wild, they rent their way,
Wherein she refuge sought with savage beasts
Unterrified; for with their nature hers
Held sympathy. Hyæna, there, was lodged,
With Elephant, and Hippopotamus,
And Unicorn; war each with other waged,
And of the conquered still the victor made
His eager meal; no fear yet touched that heart
Incapable of trembling. There she lay,
And the wise Elephant more feeling shewed,
Than she acknowledged. On her state forlorn
The meditative brute compassion took,
Admonished well by nature; shielding her,
And with her sharing his diurnal food,
Till with the giant-twins she travelled forth.

Worthy was she of Cain's intrepid line,
Her ancestor. Of mingled stock derived
Was their bad sire; the unseemly fruit of one
Of Seth's degenerate, and apostate sons
With a fair atheist of the murtherer's race;
Hence, rather in their veins lascivious blood
Than purer stream might revel; purer once,
Now worse pollute, I ween: entire in guilt,
Redemptionless, and lost in loss itself,
Without what natural grace to that might cleave,
Maugre its lapse from God's supernal grace,
Whence Nature's is: lost unto both; abandoned
Unto the powers of evil utterly.
—Fierce they advanced, and seemed as they might claim
Lineage, (if not the origin to be,)
Of whom the old poets fabled; the huge sons
Of Ouranus and Tella, in whose womb
They grew to godhood, and brake prison thence,
Armed for rebellion 'gainst the Ancestral Power.

Urged by the fiend within them, and the hell;
Furious they came, and raised the loud long shout,
At once derision, and defiance: proud
Of strength, and bulk, and confident in bone.
From mere disdain they smote the man of God,
He should more force to reason yield than might,
And deem with words religious to subdue.