University of Virginia Library

I. Samiasa, and Barkayal

—‘Behold my gorgeous temple. Seest thou not
The builder of the comprehensive fane,
For veneration multitudinous
Decreed? Proud of his handy-work is he,
And feels therein exalted, eternized:
I, to whose pride contributed his art,
Humbled alone, see, in its loftiness,
What casts me into shade, shame, and contempt;
And, in its durability and strength,
Odious comparison, which makes me seem
But as an insect most ephemeral,
That buzzes in the noon around some oak,
And dies ere sunset, living, in good sooth,
A sunny life, but brief; and, with much stir,
Attracting little notice, and less fame.
—How to the fading point his eyesight strains:
Think ye, that there whereto it aches, 'tis fixed?
No—through the distance-abrogating lens;
By which the delicate diffusive touch,
Of vision exquisite, to the remote,
And punctual is applied; within the deep
Of air expatiateth he, and finds
Space for free speculation: and, be sure,
That ever and anon his fancy rears
Some magic structure on the baseless wind;
And, in the combinations of the clouds,
Orders of architecture new conceives,
And hopes, ere long, to raise the like on earth.
Hence, in imagination's mere excess,
All he hath done as nothing worth he scorns,
Measured with what he yet hath power to do;
Or might have done, but for dull circumstance,
That thralled the outgoings of the plastic soul.
And, of a truth, within the Spirit of Man
Abides an instinct for the infinite.
Whatever from without the mind imbibes
Of substance, or of quality sublime,
Or beautiful, capricious accident,
Or attribute immutable; howe'er
By fancy realized to intellect,
Or by imagination's power august
Made portion of the intellect: within
The Essence of our Being, in the Soul,
There is a standard, that all things sublime
Compares with a sublimer archetype,
Than human faculty is sentient of,
In nature's grandest works, or art of man—
Sea, sky, or mountain—city, or pyramid;
And all things beauteous, with more beautiful,
Things bright, with brighter. Nay, the Sun himself
Is dim before her; for the Soul of man
Is of Jehovah most expressive Star,
Best Image of his glory. With herself
All things compareth she; and lo, all things
Are dwarfed in her supernal magnitude.
The mightiest is subdued, the loveliest shamed;
And, in the flood of her effulgence, she
Doth merge the glorious, and magnificent.
What then hath Earth to sate her appetite,
Or aught that's visible, even heaven itself?
She sighs for miracles, yet yearneth still,
And is herself the one great miracle.
Therefore is Man not what he is, mere clay,
Because he feels he is so, and compares
Himself with something nobler in himself;
Whence such sublime ability to feel,
After this wonderous fashion; and to endure
Patient the indignation, that would else
Consume this frail, and earthly tenement
To a white wreck of ashes; or smite down
This cunning architecture—(call it such)—
To ruin hoar, the Deity within
Departed long from the neglected shrine.’
Thus argued Samiasa: but knew not
That then Barkayal, from that apex point,
Was looking into heavenly depths, beyond
Unarmèd vision, at a Stranger Star,
Which, from its most remote appearance, he
At first perceived; and now, with horrour filled,
Upon the Cometary Omen gazed,
With vision so intense as, from its orb's
Most inner centre, he, as from its heart,
Would drag its secret mystery forth to day.
Thus argued Samiasa—and pursued
‘Herein consists man's dignity; hereot
His reason is compact; and he combines
Two worlds within, and in himself includes
The Universe. Empowered hereby is he,
To climb to each remote intelligence;
And send his daring mind on errand strange,
Into the Heaven of heavens, before the throne
Of the Most High, asserting there the right
Of his immortal spirit to converse,
Its heritage, as Son of God—as Man.
Yet overween ye not—nor let the pride
Of man rebel: For God is jealous—God—
(Speaking as man must speak, whose slavish words
Have constant reference to sublunar things,
Whereto degraded man degrades his thought,
Even when its ravished speculations rise
To holiest objects, such as angels love,)—
Is jealous of his Unity, and Name.
—Ay, God is very jealous: and we may,
By that which deifies us, be destroyed;
By our own spirits may we be destroyed,
And they imbruted, falling short, even thus,
In their probation of the Perfect One;
With self-esteem well satisfied, well pleased,
With their own proper excellence content,
No further emulous of good, or great:
Building thereon presumption flatulent,
Until the wind escape, and all be found
Mere emptiness; not from the Spirit of God
Renewed, who, in the beginning, filled the void,
Gloomy, and waste, with light, and life, and form.
—This was the sin of Lucifer—of Man;
The mortal sin, parent of Death, and Woe—
Whence Doubt was born. The soul that left hersource,
And would be as a god unto herself,
Fell backward on the body for support,
(But found it none,) . . and asked of it to bear
Her upward in her far imaginings.
Alas! even as the spider doth within
King's palaces, should she have kept the hold
That she had taken with her hands on heaven:
But she hath let her purchase go; and, now,
The ethereal dome is not within her reach:
And He, who raised her there before, again
Will not, who only can. Unless there be
Hope in the words which doomed the infernal snake;
And wherein I should verily believe,
But for the extreme iniquity of man,
Whence fear seems only just, and dread of doom.
—These are no mysteries to the sons of Seth.
Paradisaical aspirings they
Are conscious of: the high-wrought ecstasies
Of Fancy, which had borne the soul aloft
In Eden; now, within this sensual sty,
Disturb her feathers only, fluttering
Pollution on her wings, till clogged therewith,
Broken, and trammelled to the soil. Alas—
How heavily her breathings come, and go:
Poor bird—struggling with death, till, overcome,
On her an intermittent slumber seize;
And so she dies—a second death:—Or, if
Feeling the will to soar, and having power,
Leaves her nest like the Swallow, but returns
Anon, circling some pool, already tired
With her short flight, and longing for the time
When, on its sedgy banks she shall decline,
And ease her passage to the torpid depth
Upon the pliant reed; so winter's frost
Shall nip her not:—Or, greatly daring, scorns
Eternal barriers; and, within the clouds,
She hangs presumptuous eyrie, and doth
Abominations there; unto herself
Making a brothel universe, which she
Deems co-extensive with eternity,
And space, and time, and reigns imperial in.’