The Judgement of the Flood :: :: University of Virginia Library

Antient of Days:—led by thy Spirit, I heard
A voice within the Sepulchre: . . the voice
Of ages in the vaulted vestibule
Of the far Past; in whose profound obscure
The night-bird uttereth her peculiar song,
Of joy or grief uncertain, and to both
Strangely attuned. Deep, sacred mysteries
Possessed those nameless old mythologists;
And, in harmonious poem, they concealed
Falsehood, or truth sublime; or turned to shape,
In gorgeous allegoric weed arrayed.
The sensual fancy . . to external form
Idolatrous . . yet, testifying so
Man's eleutherean essence, still expressed
A consciousness of Spirit, and a faith
In Being elevate. Her better forms
Were transcripts exquisite of human thought,
And hence the human Spirit hallowed them;
The links they were that joined high heaven with earth;
The greses by which man clomb upward still,

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In vision spoken into presence, made
In the hid image of the poet's thought.

Oh, what a fall was theirs; from what height fallen;
Who maddened upon idols, in despite
Of better knowledge; having heard the voice
Of God of old, his attributes beheld.
Thus Israel in his latter days fell down:
Worse than the heathen he, who but adored
Man's virtue shadowed in the symbol so;
But he the wood, and stone, and fed his soul
On ashes, and on carrion. Hence his thigh
The indignant prophet smote, and raised his hand,
And cried aloud, ‘O earth; earth; earth. The Lord
Is the true God—He is the Living God.
Thou at His wrath shalt tremble; and the gods,
That have not made the heavens, and the earth,
Shall perish from the earth, and from beneath
The heavens. He, by His power who made the world,
And by His wisdom stretched the curtain out
Of the cerulean firmament on high,
Hath been from everlasting, and shall be,’

Children of Ardis; so fell ye, and lower,
Because from such height fallen, than they who looked
But with the fleshly eye on imagings
Of unembodied Reason; . . far beneath,
Who shaped them in ecstatic vision forth,
Or worshipped only as emblems. But than all
Fell deeper ye, beneath the lowest deep,
Who vainly in your own creations hoped;
Drunk with your own sweet fancies, as with wine.