University of Virginia Library

“And thus,” methought, “ten thousand suns may lead
The stars to glory in their annual courses;
Moons without number thus may wax and wane,
And winds alternate blow in cross-monsoons,
While here,—through self-beginning rounds, self-ending,
Then self-renew'd, without advance or failure,—
Existence fluctuates only like the tide,
Whose everlasting changes bring no change,
But billow follows billow to the shore,
Recoils, and billow out of billow swells;
An endless whirl of ebbing, flowing foam,
Where every bubble is like every other,
And Ocean's face immutable as Heaven's.
Here is no progress to sublimer life;
Nature stands still,—stands at the very point
Whence from a vantage-ground her bolder steps
Might rise resplendent on the scale of being;
Rank over rank, awakening with her tread,
Inquisitive, intelligent; aspiring
Each above other, all above themselves,
Till every generation should transcend
The former, as the former all the past.

“Such, such alone, were meet inhabitants
For these fair isles, so wonderfully form'd
Amidst the solitude of sea and sky,
On which my wandering spirit first was cast,
And still beyond whose girdle eye nor wing
Can carry me to undiscover'd climes,
Where many a nobler race may dwell; whose waifs
And exiles, toss'd by tempests on the flood,
Hither might drift upon their native trees;
Or, like their own free birds, on fearless pinions,
Make voyages amidst the pathless heaven,
And, lighting, colonise these fertile tracts,
Recover'd from the barrenness of ocean,
Whose wealth might well repay the brave adventure.
—Hath Nature spent her strength? Why stopp'd she here?
Why stopp'd not lower, if to rise no higher?
Can she not summon from more ancient regions,
Beyond the rising or the setting sun,
Creatures as far above the mightiest here
As yonder eagle, flaming at high noon,
Outsoars the bat that flutters through the twilight;
Or as the tender Pelican excels
The anomalous abortion of the rock,
In which plant, fossil, animal, unite?

“But changes here may happen—changes must!
What hinders that new shores should yet ascend
Out of the bosom of the deep, and spread
Till all converge, from one circumference,
Into a solid breadth of table-land,
Bound by the horizon, canopied with heaven,
And ocean in his own abyss absorb'd?”

While these imaginations cross'd the mind,
My thoughts fulfill'd themselves before mine eyes:
The islands moved like circles upon water,
Expanding till they touch'd each other, closed
The interjacent straits, and thus became
A spacious continent which fill'd the sea.
That change was total, like a birth, a death;
—Birth, that from native darkness brings to light
The young inhabitant of this gay world;
Death, that from seen to unseen things removes,
And swallows time up in eternity.
That which had been, for ever ceased to be;
And that which follow'd, was a new creation
Wrought from the disappearance of the old.
So fled that pageant universe away,
With all its isles and waters. So I found
Myself translated to that other world,
By sleight of fancy, like the unconscious act
Of waking from a pleasant dream, with sweet
Relapse into a more transporting vision.

The nursery of brooding Pelicans,
The dormitory of their dead, had vanish'd,
And all the minor spots of rock and verdure,
The abodes of happy millions, were no more;—
But in their place a shadowy landscape lay,
On whose extremest western verge a gleam
Of living silver, to the downward sun
Intensely glittering, mark'd the boundary line,
Which ocean, held by chains invisible,
Fretted and foam'd in vain to overleap.
Woods, mountains, valleys, rivers, glens, and plains
Diversified the scene:—that scene was wild,
Magnificent, deform'd, or beautiful,
As framed expressly for all kinds of life,
With all life's labours, sufferings, and enjoyments,
Untouch'd as yet by any meaner hand
Than His who made it, and pronounced it good.
And good it was;—free as light, air, fire, water,
To every thing that breathed upon its surface,
From the small worm that crept abroad at midnight
To sip cool dews, and feed on sleeping flowers,
Then slunk into its hole, the little vampire!
Through every species which I yet had seen,
To animals of tribes and forms unknown
In the lost islands;—beasts that ranged the forests,
Grazed in the valleys, bounded o'er the hills,
Reposed in rich savannas, from gray rocks
Pick'd the thin herbage sprouting through their fissures;
Or in waste howling deserts found oases,
And fountains pouring sweeter streams than nectar,
And more melodious than the nightingale,
—So to the faint and perishing they seem'd.

I gazed on ruminating herds of kine,
And sheep for ever wandering; goats that swung
Like spiders on the crags, so slight their hold;
Deer playful as their fawns in peace, but fell
As battling bulls in wars of jealousy:
Through flowery champaigns roam'd the fleet gazelles,
Of many a colour, size, and shape,—all graceful;
In every look, step, attitude, prepared,
Even at the shadow of a cloud, to vanish,
And leave a solitude where thousands stood,
With heads declined, and nibbling eagerly,
As locusts when they light on some new soil,
And move no more till they have shorn it bare.
On these, with famine unappeasable,
Lithe, muscular, huge-boned, and limb'd for leaping,
The brindled tyrants of brute nature prey'd:
The weak and timid bow'd before the strong,
The many by the few were hourly slaughter'd,
Where power was right, and violence was law.

Here couch'd the panting tiger, on the watch;
Impatient, but unmoved, his fire-ball eyes
Made horrid twilight in the sunless jungle,
Till on the heedless buffalo he sprang,
Dragg'd the low-bellowing monster to his lair,
Crash'd through the ribs at once into its heart,
Quaff'd the hot blood, and gorged the quivering flesh,
Till drunk he lay as powerless as the carcass.

There to the solitary lion's roar
So many echoes answer'd, that there seem'd
Ten in the field for one;—where'er they turn'd,
The flying animals from cave to cave
Heard his voice issuing, and recoil'd, aghast,
Only to meet it nearer than before,
Or, ere they saw his shadow or his face,
Fall dead beneath his thunder-striking paw.

Calm amidst scenes of havoc, in his own
Huge strength impregnable, the elephant
Offended none, but led his quiet life
Among his old contemporary trees,
Till Nature laid him gently down to rest
Beneath the palm which he was wont to make.
His prop in slumber; there his relics lay
Longer than life itself had dwelt within them.
Bees in the ample hollow of his skull
Piled their wax-citadels, and stored their honey;
Thence sallied forth to forage through the fields,
And swarm'd in emigrating legions thence:
There little burrowing animals threw up
Hillocks beneath the overarching ribs;
While birds, within the spinal labyrinth,
Contrived their nests:—so wandering Arabs pitch
Their tents amidst Palmyra's palaces;
So Greek and Roman peasants build their huts
Beneath the shadow of the Parthenon
Or on the ruins of the Capitol.

But unintelligent creation soon
Fail'd to delight; the novelty departed,
And all look'd desolate; my eye grew weary
Of seeing that which it might see for ever,
Without a new idea or emotion;
The mind within me panted after mind,
The spirit sigh'd to meet a kindred spirit,
And in my human heart there was a void,
Which nothing but humanity could fill.
At length, as though a prison-door were open'd,
Chains had fall'n off, and, by an angel-guide
Conducted, I escaped that desert-bourne;
And instantaneously I travell'd on,
Yet knew not how, for wings nor feet I plied,
But, with a motion like the lapse of thought,
O'er many a vale and mountain I was carried,
Till in the east, above the ocean's brim,
I saw the morning sun, and stay'd my course,
Where vestiges of rude but social life
Arrested and detain'd attention long.

Amidst the crowd of grovelling animals,
A being more majestic stood before me:
I met an eye that look'd into my soul,
And seem'd to penetrate mine inmost thoughts:
Instinctively I turn'd away to hide them,
For shame and quick compunction came upon me,
As though detected on forbidden ground,
Gazing on things unlawful;—but my heart
Relented quickly, and my bosom throbb'd
With such unutterable tenderness,
That every sympathy of human nature
Was by the beating of a pulse enkindled,
And flash'd at once throughout the mind's recesses,
As in a darken'd chamber objects start
All round the walls the moment light breaks in.
The sudden tumult of surprise awoke
My spirit from that trance of vague abstraction,
Wherein I lived through ages, and beheld
Their generations pass so swiftly by me,
That years were moments in their flight, and hours
The scenes of crowded centuries reveal'd;
I sole spectator of the wondrous changes,
Spell-bound as in a dream, and acquiescing
In all that happen'd, though perplex'd with strange
Conceit of something wanting through the whole.
That spell was broken, like the vanish'd film
From eyes born blind, miraculously open'd;—
'Twas gone, and I became myself again,
Restored to memory of all I knew
From books or schools, the world or sage experience;
With all that folly or misfortune taught me,—
Each hath her lessons,—wise are they that learn.
Still the mysterious reverie went on,
And I was still sole witness of its issues,—
But with clear mind and disenchanted sight,
Beholding, judging, comprehending all;
Not passive and bewilder'd as before.

What was the being which I then beheld?
—Man going forth amidst inferior creatures:
Not as he rose in Eden out of dust,
Fresh from the moulding hand of Deity;
Immortal breath upon his lips; the light
Of uncreated glory in his soul;
Lord of the nether universe, and heir
Of all above him,—all above the sky,
The sapphire pavement of his future palace:
Not so;—but rather like that morning-star
Which from the highest empyrean fell
Into the bottomless abyss of darkness;
There flaming only with malignant beams
Among the constellations of his peers,
The third part of heaven's host, with him cast down
To irretrievable perdition,—thence,
Amidst the smoke of unillumined fires,
Issuing like horrid sparks to blast creation:
—Thus, though in dim eclipse, before me stood,
As from a world invisible call'd up,
Man, in the image of his Maker form'd,—
Man, to the image of his tempter fall'n;
Yet still as far above infernal fiends,
As once a little lower than the angels.
I knew him, own'd him, loved him, and exclaim'd,
“Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, my Brother!
Hail in the depth of thy humiliation;
For dear thou art, amidst unconscious ruin,—
Dear to the kindliest feelings of my soul,
As though one womb had borne us, and one mother
At her sweet breasts had nourish'd us as twins.”

I saw him sunk in loathsome degradation,
A naked, fierce, ungovernable savage,
Companion to the brutes, himself more brutal;
Superior only in the craft that made
The serpent subtlest beast of all the field,
Whose guile unparadised the world, and brought
A curse upon the earth which God had bless'd.
That curse was here, without the mitigation
Of healthful toil, that half redeems the ground
Whence man was taken, whither he returns,
And which repays him bread for patient labour,
—Labour, the symbol of his punishment,
—Labour, the secret of his happiness.
The curse was here; for thorns and briars o'erran
The tangled labyrinths,—yet briars bare roses,
And thorns threw out their annual snow of blossoms:
The curse was here; and yet the soil untill'd
Pour'd forth spontaneous and abundant harvests,
Pulse and small berries, maize in strong luxuriance,
And slender rice that grew by many waters;
The forests cast their fruits, in husk or rind,
Yielding sweet kernels or delicious pulp,
Smooth oil, cool milk, and unfermented wine,
In rich and exquisite variety.
On these the indolent inhabitants
Fed without care or forethought, like the swine
That grubb'd the turf, and taught them where to look
For dainty earth-nuts and nutritious roots;
Or the small monkeys, capering on the boughs,
And rioting on nectar and ambrosia,
The produce of that Paradise run wild:—
No,—these were merry, if they were not wise;
While man's untutor'd hordes were sour and sullen,
Like those abhorr'd baboons, whose gluttonous taste
They follow'd safely in their choice of food;
And whose brute semblance of humanity
Made them more hideous than their prototypes,
That bore the genuine image and inscription,
Defaced indeed, but yet indelible.
—From ravening beasts, and fowls that fish'd the ocean,
Men learn'd to prey on meaner animals,
But found a secret out which birds or beasts,
Most cruel, cunning, treacherous, never knew,
—The luxury of devouring one another.

Such were my kindred in their lost estate,
From whose abominations while I turn'd,
As from a pestilence, I mourn'd and wept
With bitter lamentation o'er their ruin;
Sunk as they were in ignorance of all
That raises man above his origin,
And elevates to heaven the spirit within him,
To which the Almighty's breath gave understanding.

Large was their stature, and their frames athletic;
Their skins were dark, their locks like eagles' feathers;
Their features terrible;—when roused to wrath,
All evil passions lighten'd through their eyes,
Convulsed their bosoms like possessing fiends,
And loosed what sets on fire the course of nature,
—The tongue of malice, set on fire of hell,
Which then, in cataracts of horrid sounds,
Raged through their gnashing teeth and foaming lips,
Making the ear to tingle, and the soul
Sicken, with spasms of strange revolting horror,
As if the blood changed colour in the veins,
While hot and cold it ran about the heart,
And red to pale upon the cheek it show'd.
Their visages at rest were winter-clouds,
Fix'd gloom, whence sun nor shower could be foretold:
But in high revelry, when full of prey,
Cannibal prey, tremendous was their laughter;
Their joy, the shock of earthquakes overturning
Mountains, and swamping rivers in their course;
Or subterranean elements embroil'd,—
Wind, fire, and water, till the cleft volcano
Gives to their devastating fury vent:
That joy was lurking hatred in disguise,
And not less fatal in its last excess:
They danced,—like whirlwinds in the Libyan waste
When the dead sand starts up in living pillars,
That mingle, part, and cross, then burst in ruin
On man and beast;—they danced to shouts and screams,
Drums, gongs, and horns, their deafening din inflicting
On nerves and ears enraptured with such clangour;
Till mirth grew madness, and the feast a fray,
That left the field strown with unnatural carnage,
To furnish out a more unnatural feast,
And lay the train to inflame a bloodier fray.

They dwelt in dens and caverns of the earth
Won by the valiant from their brute possessors,
And held in hourly peril of reprisals
From the ferocious brigands of the woods:
The lioness, benighted with her whelps,
There seeking shelter from the drenching storm,
Met with unseen resistance on the threshold,
And perish'd ere she knew by what she fell;
Or, finding all within asleep, surprised
The inmates in their dreams, from which no more
Her deadly vengeance suffer'd them to wake.
—On open plains they framed low narrow huts
Of boughs, the wreck of windfalls or of Time,
Wattled with canes, and thatch'd with reeds and leaves;
There from afflictive noon sought twilight shadow,
Or slumber'd in the smoke of greenwood fires,
To drive away the pestilent musquitos.
—Some built unwieldy nests among the trees,
In which to doze by night, or watch by day
The joyful moment from that ambuscade
To slay the passing antelope, or wound
The jackal chasing it, with sudden arrows
From bows that task'd a giant's strength to bend.
In flight or combat, on the champaign field,
They ran atilt with flinty-headed spears;
Or launch'd the lighter javelin through the air,
Follow'd its motion with a basilisk's eye,
And shriek'd with gladness when a life was spill'd:
They sent the pebble hissing from the sling,
Hot as the curse from lips that would strike dead,
If words were stones; here stones, as swift as words
Can reach the ear, the unwary victim smote.
In closer conflict, breast to breast, when one
Or both must perish on the spot, they fought
With clubs of iron-wood and ponderous force,
Wielded with terrible dexterity,
And, falling down like thunderbolts, which nought
But counter-thunderbolts could meet or parry.
Rude-fashion'd weapons! yet the lion's jaws,
The tiger's grasp, the eagle's beak and talons,
The serpent's fangs, were not more formidable,
More sure to hit, or, hitting, sure to kill.

They knew not shame nor honour, yet knew pride:
—The pride of strength, skill, speed, and subtilty;
The pride of tyranny and violence;—
Not o'er the mighty only, whom their arm
Had crush'd in battle, or had basely slain
By treacherous ambush, or more treacherous smiles,
Embracing while they stabb'd the heart that met
Their specious seeming with unguarded breast;
—The reckless savages display'd their pride
By vile oppression in its vilest forms,—
Oppression of the weak and innocent;
Infancy, womanhood, old age, disease,
The lame, the halt, the blind, were wrong'd, neglected,
Exposed to perish by wild beasts in woods,
Cast to the crocodiles in rivers; murder'd,
Even by their dearest kindred, in cold blood,
To rid themselves of Nature's gracious burdens,
In mercy laid on man to teach him mercy.

But their prime glory was insane debauch,
To inflict and bear excruciating tortures:
The unshrinking victim, while the flesh was rent
From his live limbs, and eaten in his presence,
Still in his death-pangs taunted his tormentors
With tales of cruelty more diabolic,
Wreak'd by himself upon the friends of those
Who now their impotence of vengeance wasted
On him, and drop by drop his life extorted
With thorns and briars of the wilderness,
Or the slow violence of untouching fire.

Vanity, too, pride's mannikin, here play'd
Satanic tricks to ape her master-fiend.
The leopard's beauteous spoils, the lion's mane,
Engirt the loins and waved upon the shoulders
Of those whose wiles or arms had won such trophies:
Rude-punctured figures of all loathsome things,
Toads, scorpions, asps, snakes' eyes and double tongue,
In flagrant colours on their tattoo'd limbs,
Gave proof of intellect, not dead, but sleeping,
And in its trance enacting strange vagaries.
Bracelets of human teeth, fangs of wild beasts,
The jaws of sharks, and beaks of ravenous birds,
Glitter'd and tinkled round their arms and ankles;
While skulls of slaughter'd enemies, in chains
Of natural elf-locks, dangled from the necks
Of those whose own bare skulls and cannibal teeth
Ere long must deck more puissant fiends than they.

On ocean, too, they exercised dominion:—
Of hollow trees composing slight canoes,
They paddled o'er the reefs, cut through the breakers,
And rode the untamed billows far from shore;
Amphibious from their infancy, and fearing
Nought in the deepest waters save the shark;—
Even him, well arm'd, they gloried to encounter,
And when he turn'd to ope those gates of death
That led into the Hades of his gorge,
Smote with such stern decision to his vitals,
And vanish'd through the blood-beclouded waves,
That, blind and desperate in his agony,
Headlong he plunged, and perish'd in the abyss.

Woman was here the powerless slave of man:
Thus fallen Adam tramples fallen Eve,
Through all the generations of his sons,
In whose barbarian veins the old serpent's venom
Turns pure affection into hideous lust,
And wrests the might of his superior arm
(Given to defend and bless his meek companion)
Into the very yoke and scourge of bondage;
Till limbs by beauty moulded, eyes of gladness,
And the full bosom of confiding truth,—
Made to delight and comfort him in toil,
And change Care's den into a halcyon's nest,—
Are broke with drudgery, quench'd with stagnant tears,
Or wrung with lonely unimparted woe.
Man is beside himself, not less than fall'n
Below his dignity, who owns not woman
As nearer to his heart than when she grew
A rib within him,—as his heart's own heart.

He slew the game with his unerring arrow,
But left it in the bush for her to drag
Home, with her feeble hands, already burden'd
With a young infant clinging to her shoulders.
Here she fell down in travail by the way,
Her piteous groans unheard, or, heard, unanswer'd;
There, with her convoy, she—mother, and child,
And slaughter'd deer—became some wild beast's prey;
Though spoils so rich not one could long enjoy,—
Soon the woods echoed with the huge uproar
Of savage throats contending for the bodies,
Till not a bone was left for farther quarrel.
—He chose the spot; she piled the wood, she wove
The supple withes, and bound the thatch that form'd
The ground-built cabin or the tree-swung nest.
—He brain'd the drowsy panther in his den,
At noon o'ercome by heat, and with closed lids
Fearing assaults from none but vexing flies,
Which, with his ring-streak'd tail he switch'd away:
The citadel thus storm'd, the monster slain,
By the dread prowess of his daring arm,
She roll'd the stones, and planted the stockade,
To fortify the garrison for him
Who scornfully look'd on, at ease reclined,
Or only rose to beat her to the task.

Yet, midst the gall and wormwood of her lot,
She tasted joys which none but woman knows,
—The hopes, fears, feelings, raptures of a mother,
Well-nigh compensating for his unkindness,
Whom yet with all her fervent soul she loved.
Dearer to her than all the universe,
The looks, the cries, the embraces of her babes;
In each of whom she lived a separate life,
And felt the fountain, whence their veins were fill'd,
Flow in perpetual union with the streams
That swell'd their pulses, and throbb'd back through hers.
Oh! 'twas benign relief when my vex'd eye
Could turn from man, the sordid, selfish savage,
And gaze on woman in her self-denial,
To him and to their offspring all alive,
Dead only to herself,—save when she won
His unexpected smile; then, then she look'd
A thousand times more beautiful, to meet
A glance of aught like tenderness from him;
And sent the sunshine of her happy heart
So warm into the charnel-house of his,
That Nature's genuine sympathies awoke,
And he almost forgot himself in her.
O man! lost man! amidst the desolation
Of goodness in thy soul there yet remains
One spark of Deity,—that spark is love.