University of Virginia Library

Ages again, with silent revolution,
Brought morn and even, noon and night, with all
The old vicissitudes of Nature's aspect:
Rains in their season fertilised the ground,
Winds sow'd the seeds of every kind of plant
On its peculiar soil; while suns matured
What winds had sown, and rains in season water'd,
Providing nourishment for all that lived:
Man's generations came and went like these,
—The grass and flowers that wither where they spring;
—The brutes that perish wholly where they fall.

Thus while I mused on these in long succession,
And all remain'd as all had been before,
I cried, as I was wont, though none did listen,
—'Tis sweet sometimes to speak and be the hearer;
For he is twice himself who can converse
With his own thoughts, as with a living throng
Of fellow-travellers in solitude;
And mine too long had been my sole companions:
—“What is this mystery of human life?
In rude or civilised society,
Alike, a pilgrim's progress through this world
To that which is to come, by the same stages;
With infinite diversity of fortune
To each distinct adventurer by the way!

“Life is the transmigration of a soul
Through various bodies, various states of being;
New manners, passions, tastes, pursuits, in each;
In nothing, save in consciousness, the same.
Infancy, adolescence, manhood, age,
Are alway moving onward, alway losing
Themselves in one another, lost at length,
Like undulations, on the strand of death.
The sage of threescore years and ten looks back,—
With many a pang of lingering tenderness,
And many a shuddering conscience-fit,—on what
He hath been, is not, cannot be again;
Nor trembles less with fear and hope, to think
What he is now, but cannot long continue,
And what he must be through uncounted ages.
—The Child;—we know no more of happy childhood
Than happy childhood knows of wretched eld;
And all our dreams of its felicity
Are incoherent as its own crude visions:
We but begin to live from that fine point
Which memory dwells on, with the morning-star,
The earliest note we heard the cuckoo sing,
Or the first daisy that we ever pluck'd,
When thoughts themselves were stars, and birds, and flowers,
Pure brilliance, simplest music, wild perfume.
Thenceforward mark the metamorphoses!
—The Boy, the Girl;—when all was joy, hope, promise;
Yet who would be a Boy, a Girl, again,
To bear the yoke, to long for liberty,
And dream of what will never come to pass?
—The Youth, the Maiden;—living but for love,
Yet learning soon that life hath other cares,
And joys less rapturous, but more enduring:
—The Woman;—in her offspring multiplied;
A tree of life, whose glory is her branches,
Beneath whose shadow, she (both root and stem)
Delights to dwell in meek obscurity,
That they may be the pleasure of beholders:
—The Man;—as father of a progeny,
Whose birth requires his death to make them room,
Yet in whose lives he feels his resurrection,
And grows immortal in his children's children:
—Then the gray Elder;—leaning on his staff,
And bow'd beneath a weight of years, that steal
Upon him with the secrecy of sleep,
(No snow falls lighter than the snow of age,
None with such subtilty benumbs the frame,)
Till he forgets sensation, and lies down
Dead in the lap of his primeval mother;
She throws a shroud of turf and flowers around him,
Then calls the worms, and bids them do their office:
—Man giveth up the ghost,—and where is he?”

That startling question broke my lucubration:
I saw those changes realised before me;
Saw them recurring in perpetual line,
The line unbroken, while the thread ran on,
Failing at this extreme, at that renew'd,
—Like buds, leaves, blossoms, fruits on herbs and trees;
Like mites, flies, reptiles; birds, and beasts, and fishes,
Of every length of period here,—all mortal,
And all resolved into those elements
Whence they had emanated, whence they drew
Their sustenance, and which their wrecks recruited,
To generate and foster other forms
As like themselves as were the lights of heaven,
For ever moving in serene succession,
—Not like those lights unquenchable by time,
But ever changing, like the clouds that come,
Who can tell whence? and go, who can tell whither?
Thus the swift series of man's race elapsed,
As for no higher destiny created
Than aught beneath them,—from the elephant
Down to the worm, thence to the zoophyte,
That link which binds Prometheus to his rock,
The living fibre to insensate matter.
They were not, then they were; the unborn, the living!
They were, then were not; they had lived and died;
No trace, no record, of their date remaining,
Save in the memory of kindred beings,
Themselves as surely hastening to oblivion;
Till, where the soil had been renew'd by relics,
And earth, air, water, were one sepulchre,
Earth, air, and water might be search'd in vain,
Atom by atom scrutinised with eyes
Of microscopic power, that could discern
The population of a dew-drop, yet
No particle bertay the buried secret
Of what they had been, or of what they were:
Life thus was swallow'd by mortality,
Mortality thus swallow'd up of life,
And man remain'd the world's unmoved possessor,
Though every moment men appear'd and vanish'd.

Oh! 'twas heart-sickness to behold them thus
Perishing without knowledge;—perishing
As though they were but things of dust and ashes.
They lived unconscious of their noblest powers,
As were the rocks and mountains which they trod
Of gold and jewels hidden in their bowels;
They lived unconscious of what lived within them,
The deathless spirit, as were the stars that shone
Above their heads of their own emanations.
And did it live within them? did there dwell
Fire brought from heaven in forms of miry clay,
Untemper'd as the slime of Babel's builders,
And left unfinish'd like their monstrous work?
To me, alas! they seem'd but living bodies,
With still-born souls which never could be quicken'd,
Till death brought immortality to light,
And from the darkness of their earthly prison
Placed them at once before the bar of God;
Then first to learn, at their eternal peril,
The fact of his existence and their own.
Imagination durst not follow them,
Nor stand one moment at that dread tribunal.
“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’
I trembled while I spake. I could not bear
The doubt, fear, horror, that o'erhung the fate
Of millions, millions, millions,—living, dying,
Without a hope to hang a hope upon,
That of the whole it might not be affirm'd,
—“'Twere better that they never had been born.”
I turn'd away, and look'd for consolation,
Where Nature else had shrunk with loathing back,
Or imprecated curses, in her wrath,
Even on the fallen creatures of my race,
O'er whose mysterious doom my heart was breaking.

I saw an idiot with long haggard visage,
And eye of vacancy, trolling his tongue
From cheek to cheek; then muttering syllables
Which all the learn'd on earth could not interpret;
Yet were they sounds of gladness, tones of pleasure,
Ineffable tranquillity expressing,
Or pure and buoyant animal delight:
For bright the sun shone round him; cool the breeze
Play'd in the floating shadow of the palm,
Where he lay rolling in voluptuous sloth:
And he had fed deliciously on fruit
That fell into his lap, and virgin honey
That melted from the hollow of the rock
Whither the hum and stir of bees had drawn him.
He knew no bliss beside, save sleep when weary,
Or reveries like this, when, broad awake,
Glimpses of thought seem'd flashing through his brain,
Like wild-fires flitting o'er the rank morass,
Snares to the night-bewilder'd traveller!
Gently he raised his head, and peep'd around,
As if he hoped to see some pleasant object,
—The wingless squirrel jet from tree to tree,
—The monkey pilfering a parrot's nest;
But, ere he bore the precious spoil away,
Surprised behind by beaks, and wings, and claws,
That made him scamper gibbering away;
—The sly opossum dangle by her tail,
To snap the silly birds that perch'd too near;
Or, in the thicket, with her young at play,
Start when the rustling grass announced a snake,
And secrete them within her second womb,
Then stand alert to give the intruder battle,
Who rear'd his crest, and hiss'd, and glid away:—
—These with the transport of a child he view'd,
Then laugh'd aloud, and crack'd his fingers, smote
His palms, and clasp'd his knees, convulsed with glee;
A sad, sad spectacle of merriment!
Yet he was happy; happy in this life;
And could I doubt that death to him would bring
Intelligence, which he had ne'er abused,—
A soul, which he had never lost by sin?

I saw a woman, panting from her throes,
Stretch'd in a lonely cabin on the ground,
Pale with the anguish of her bitter hour,
Whose sorrow she forgat not in the joy
Which mothers feel when a man-child is born;
Hers was an infant of her own scorn'd sex:
It lay upon her breast;—she laid it there
By the same instinct which taught it to find
The milky fountain, fill'd to meet its wants
Even at the gate of life,—to drink and live.
Awhile she lay all-passive to the touch
Of those small fingers, and the soft, soft lips
Soliciting the sweet nutrition thence,
While yearning sympathy crept round her heart:
She felt her spirit yielding to the charm
That wakes the parent in the fellest bosom,
And binds her to her little one for ever,
If once completed;—but she broke, she broke it,
For she was brooding o'er her sex's wrongs,
And seem'd to lie amidst a nest of scorpions,
That stung remorse to frenzy:—forth she sprang,
And with collected might a moment stood,
Mercy and misery struggling in her thoughts,
Yet both impelling her to one dire purpose.
There was a little grave already made,
But two spans long, in the turf-floor beside her,
By him who was the father of that child:
Thence he had sallied, when the work was done,
To hunt, to fish, or ramble on the hills,
Till all was peace again within that dwelling,
—His haunt, his den, his anything but home!
Peace?—no, till the new-comer were despatch'd
Whence it should ne'er return to break to the stupor
Of unawaken'd conscience in himself.

She pluck'd the baby from her flowing breast,
And o'er its mouth, yet moist with Nature's beverage,
Bound a thick lotus-leaf to still its cries;
Then laid it down in that untimely grave
As tenderly as though 'twere rock'd to sleep
With songs of love, and she afraid to wake it:
Soon as she felt it touch the ground she started,
Hurried the damp earth over it; then fell
Flat on the heaving heap, and crush'd it down
With the whole burden of her grief; exclaiming,
“O that my mother had done so to me!”
Then in a swoon forgot a little while
Her child, her sex, her tyrant, and herself.

Amazement wither'd up all human feeling;
I wonder'd how I could look on so calmly,
As though I were but animated stone,
And not kneel down upon the spot, and pray
That earth might open to devour that mother,
Or heaven shoot lightning to avenge that daughter:
But horror soon gave way to hope and pity,
—Hope for the dead, and pity for the living.
Thenceforth when I beheld troops of wild children
Frolicking round the tents of wickedness,
Though my heart danced within me to the music
Of their loud voices and unruly mirth,
The blithe exuberance of beginning life!
I could not weep when they went out like sparks,
That glitter, creep, and dwindle out, on tinder.
Happy, thrice happy, were they thus to die,
Rather than grow into such men and women,
—Such fiends incarnate as that felon-sire,
Who dug its grave before his child was born;
Such miserable wretches as that mother,
Whose tender mercies were so deadly cruel!

I saw their infant's spirit rise to heaven,
Caught from its birth up to the throne of God:
There, thousands and ten thousands I beheld
Of innocents like this, that died untimely,
By violence of their unnatural kin,
Or by the mercy of that gracious Power
Who gave them being, taking what He gave
Ere they could sin or suffer like their parents.
I saw them in white raiment, crown'd with flowers,
On the fair banks of that resplendent river
Whose streams make glad the city of our God;
—Water of life, as clear as crystal, welling
Forth from the throne itself, and visiting
Fields of a Paradise that ne'er was lost;
Where yet the tree of life immortal grows,
And bears its monthly fruits, twelve kinds of fruit,
Each in its season, food of saints and angels;
Whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
Beneath the shadow of its blessed boughs,
I mark'd those rescued infants, in their schools,
By spirits of just men made perfect, taught
The glorious lessons of Almighty love,
Which brought them thither by the readiest path
From the world's wilderness of dire temptations,
Securing thus their everlasting weal.

Yea, in the rapture of that hour, though songs
Of cherubim to golden lyres and trumpets,
And the redeem'd upon the sea of glass,
With voices like the sound of many waters,
Came on mine ear, whose secret cells were open'd
To entertain celestial harmonies,
—The small, sweet accents of those little children,
Pouring out all the gladness of their souls
In love, joy, gratitude, and praise to Him,
—Him, who had lov'd and wash'd them in his blood,—
These were to me the most transporting strains
Amidst the hallelujahs of all heaven.
Though lost awhile in that amazing chorus
Around the throne,—at happy intervals,
The shrill hosannas of the infant-choir,
Singing in that eternal temple, brought
Tears to mine eye, which seraphs had been glad
To weep, could they have felt the sympathy
That melted all my soul when I beheld
How condescending Deity thus deign'd
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings here
To perfect his high praise:—the harp of heaven
Had lack'd its least, but not its meanest, string,
Had children not been taught to play upon it,
And sing, from feelings all their own, what men
Nor angels can conceive of creatures born
Under the curse, yet from the curse redeem'd,
And placed at once beyond the power to fall,
—Safety which men nor angels ever knew,
Till ranks of these and all of those had fallen.