The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery

Collected and Revised by the Author

Montgomery, Robert (1807-1855)

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THE OMNIPRESENCE OF THE DEITY.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

LUTHER:

WOMAN: THE LIGHT OF HOME.

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THE OMNIPRESENCE OF THE DEITY.

“Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?—If I
ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even
there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.”
—Psalm cxxxix. 7–10.

“Thou sole Transcendency! and deep Abyss
From whence the universe of life was drawn,
Unutter'd is Thy nature—to Thyself alone
The fathom'd, proved, and comprehended God!”

I. PART I.

ANALYSIS OF PART I.

The Poem opens with an apostrophe to the Deity— He was, ere Time began—Vision of the Creation— We cannot escape the Omnipresent God—He pervades all things—Allusion to His appearance on Mount Sinai—The Red Sea—Nature attests the presence of her Architect—The impossibility of perfectly tracing the Deity's influence: we can only select those scenes which impressively demonstrate it—The thunder—the ocean-tempest—The Presence of the Deity felt in the repose of Nature— The calm which succeeds a storm — Aspirations awakened by a view of the setting sun.

The hand of God is next traced in a rapid view of the Seasons:—Spring—Mountains—Sacred feclings kindled by the sight of an august ruin—The Convalescent—The. Heavens—A moonlight walk—The soul conscious of its celestial origin—Every clime an object of the Deity's care — Condensed view of His providence—Not only nature, but human life, in all its diversified forms, regulated by Him. But there is a far sublimer sense in which a Christian enjoys a Divine Presence in creation, and therefore, this part of the poem is concluded by a consideration of the doctrine which Christianity reveals, by whose light the glory of nature is rendered more glorious, and all the beauty of outward things becomes a symbol of that which is unscen.

Thou Uncreate, Unseen, and Undefined,
Source of all life, and fountain of the mind;
Pervading Spirit, whom no eye can trace,
Felt through all time, and working in all space,
Imagination cannot paint that spot,
Around, above, beneath, where Thou art not!

Before the glad stars hymn'd to new-born earth,
Or young creation revell'd in its birth,
Thy Spirit moved upon the pregnant deep,
Unchain'd the waveless waters from their sleep,
Bade Time's majestic wings to be unfurl'd,
And out of darkness drew the breathing World.

Primeval Power! before Thy thunder rang,
And Nature from eternity outsprang;
Ere matter form'd at Thy creative tone,
Thou wert; Almighty, Endless, and Alone:
In Thine own Essence, all that was to be,—
Sublime, unfathomable Deity:
Thou saidst—and lo! a universe was born,
And Light flash'd from Thee, for her birth-day morn.

The Earth unshrouded all her beauty now;
The kingly mountain bared his awful brow,
Flowers, fruits, and trees felt instantaneous life:—
But, hark, creation trembles with the strife
Of roaring waves in wild commotion hurl'd,—
'Tis Ocean winding round the rocking world!

And next, triumphant o'er the green-clad earth,
The universal Sun burst into birth,
And dash'd from off his altitude sublime
The first dread ray that mark'd commencing time!
Last, came the Moon upon the wings of light,
And sat in glory on the throne of night,
While, young and fresh, a radiant host of stars
Wheel'd round the heavens upon their burning cars.

But all was dismal as a world of dead,
Till the great Deep her living swarms outspread:
Forth from her teeming bosom, sudden came
Uncounted monsters,—mighty, without name;
Then, thick as dews upon a twilight green,
The living creatures rose upon the scene.

Creation's master-piece! a breath of God,
Ray of His glory, quicken'd at His nod,
Immortal Man came next, divinely grand,
Glorious and perfect from his Maker's hand;
Last, softly beautiful as Music's close,
Angelic Woman into being rose.

And now, the gorgeous universe was rife,
Full, fair, and glowing with created life;
And when th' Eternal, from His starry height,
Beheld the young world basking in His light,
And breathing incense of deep gratitude,
He bless'd it,—for His mercy made it good.

And thus, Thou wert, and art, the Fountain Soul,
And countless worlds around Thee live and roll;
In sun and shade, in ocean and in air
Diffused, yet undiminish'd—everywhere:

All life and motion from Thy source began,
From worlds to atoms, Angels down to Man.

Lord of all being! where can Fancy fly,
To what far realms, unmeasur'd by Thine eye?
Where can we hide beneath Thy blazing sun,
Where dwell'st Thou not, the boundless, viewless One?
Shall Guilt couch down within the cavern's gloom,
And quiv'ring, groaning, meditate her doom?
Or scale the mountains, where the whirlwinds rest,
And in the night-blast cool her fiery breast?—
Within the cavern-gloom Thine eye can see,
The sky-clad mountains lift their heads to Thee;
Thy Spirit rides upon the thunder-storms,
Dark'ning the skies into terrific forms!
Beams in the lightning, rocks upon the seas,
Roars in the blast, and whispers in the breeze;
In calm and storm, in Heaven and Earth Thou art,
Trace but Thy works—they bring Thee to the heart!

The fulness of Thy Presence who can see?
Man cannot live, great God! and look on Thee;
Around Thy path the quenchless lightnings glow,—
Thy Voice appals the shudd'ring world below.

Oh, Egypt felt Thee, when, by signs unscared,
To mock Thy might the rebel monarch dared:
Thou look'dst—and Ocean sever'd at the glance!
Undaunted, still the charioteers advance;
Thou look'dst again—she clash'd her howling waves,
And Storms in triumph revell'd o'er their graves!

On Sinai's mountain when Thy glory came
In rolls of thunder, and in clouds of flame;
There, while volcanie smoke Thy throne o'ercast,
And the mount shrunk beneath the trumpet-blast,
How did thy Symbol blind all Israel's eye,
How dreadful were the gleams of Deity!

There is a voiceless eloquence on Earth,
Telling of Him who gave her wonders birth;
And long may I remain th' adoring child
Of Nature's majesty, sublime or wild;
Hill, flood, and forest, mountain, rock, and sea,
All take their terrors, or their charms from Thee,
From Thee, whose hidden but supreme control
Moves through the world—a universal Soul.

But who could trace Thine unrestricted course,
Though fancy followed with immortal force?
There's not a blossom fondled by the breeze,
There's not a fruit that beautifies the trees,
There's not a particle in sea or air
But Nature owns Thy plastic influence there!
With gaze devout still be it mine to see
How all is fill'd and vivified by Thee;
On the vast scene of earth's majestic view,
To paint Thy glories, and to feel them too.

Ye giant Winds! that from your gloomy sleep
Rise in your wrath, and revel on the deep;
Lightnings! which are the mystic gleams of God,
That glanced when on the sacred mount he trod;
And ye, black Thunders! that begird His form,
Pealing your loud hosannahs o'er the storm;
Around me rally in concentred might,
And strike my being with a dread delight;
Sublimely musing, let me pause and see,
And pour my awe-struck soul, O God! to Thee.

A thunder-storm!—the eloquence of heaven,
When the thick clouds, like airy walls are riven,
Who hath not paused beneath its hollow groan,
And felt omnipotence around him thrown?
With what a gloom the ush'ring Scene appears!
The leaves all fluttering with instinctive fears,
The waters curling with a fellow dread,
A breezeless fervour round creation spread,
And, last, the heavy rain's reluctant shower,
With big drops patt'ring on the tree and bower,
While wizard shapes the bowing sky deform,—
All mark the coming of a Thunder-storm.

Oh, now to be alone, on some vast height,
Where heaven's black curtains terrify the sight,
And watch the clouds together meet and clash,
While fierce-wing'd lightnings from their conflict flash;
To see the caverns of the sky disclose
The buried flames that in their wombs repose,
And mark the lurid meteors fall and rise,
In dizzy chase along the rattling skies,—
How quakes the Spirit while the echoes roll,
And God, in thunder, speaks from pole to pole!

And thou, weird Ocean! on whose awful face
Time's iron feet can print no ruin-trace,
By breezes lull'd, or by the storm-blasts driven,
Thy tow'ring waves uplift the mind to heaven.

Tremendous art Thou! in thy tempest-ire,
When the mad surges to the clouds respire,
And like new Apennines from out the sea,
Thy waves march on in mountain-majesty.
Oh! never can the dark-souled Atheist stand,
And watch the breakers boiling on the strand,
Nor feel Religion from the sea arise,
And preach to conscience what his will denies;

His heart is wiser than his head would be,
And awe instinctive tells, O God, of Thee!
He hears Him in the wind-heav'd ocean's roar,
Hurling her billowy crags upon the shore;
He hears Him in the horror of the blast,
And shakes while rush the raving whirlwinds past!

But not alone, when waves and whirlwinds rise,
And wing their voices through the startled skies;
Not in the storm, the thunder, or the sea,
Alone we feel thy dread ubiquity:
In calmer scenes, and the unruffled hour,
Our still'd hearts own Thine omnipresent power.

List! now the cradled winds have hush'd their roar,
And infant waves curl gamb'ling to the shore,
While Nature seems to wake up fresh and clear
As Hope emerging from the gloom of fear,
And the bright dew-bead on the verdure lies,
Like liquid rapture upon beauty's eyes,—
How heavenly 'tis to take our pensive range,
And mark 'tween storm and calm the lovely change!

First comes the sun, unveiling half its face,
Like a coy virgin, with reluctant grace,
While dark clouds skirted with a slanting ray
Roll, one by one, in azure depths away,
Till pearly shapes, like molten billows, lie
Along the tinted bosom of the sky:
Next, breezes murmur with harmonious charm,
Panting and wild, like orphans of the storm;
Now sipping flowers, now making blossoms shake,
Or weaving ripples on the grass-green lake;
And thus, the Tempest dies: and soft, and still,
The rainbow drops upon the distant hill:
But now, while bloom and breeze their charms unite,
And all is glowing with a rich delight,
God! who can tread upon the breathing ground,
Nor feel Thee present, where Thy smiles abound?

When Day hath glided to his rosy bower,
And twilight comes—the Poet's witching hour,
And dream-like language from the soft-toned wind
With pensive cadence charms the list'ning mind,
Then nature's beauty, clothed with dewy light,
Melts on the heart like music through the night.

And not in vain, voluptuous Eventide,
Thy dappled clouds along th'horizon glide;
For oh! while heaven and earth grow dumb with bliss
In homage to an hour divine as this,
How sweet, upon yon mountain's azure brow,
While ruddy sun-beams gild the crags below,
To stand, and mark with meditative view,
Where the far ocean faints in hazy blue,
While on the bosom of the midway deep
The emerald waves in dimpling splendour leap;
Here, as we view the gorgeous Priest of time,
Wrapp'd in a shroud of glory, sink sublime,
Thoughts of ethereal beauty spring to birth,
And waft the soul beyond the dreams of earth.

And who hath gazed upon the bright-wing'd Morn,
Breezy and fresh, from out the ocean born;
Her rich-wove cloud-wreaths, and the rainbow hues
From heaven reflected on creation's views;
Or mark'd the wonders of a day depart,
Nor felt a heaven-caught influence at his heart?
Through all the seasons' varying course of love,
Who hath not traced the Spirit from above?
The howl of Winter in the leafless wood;
The ice-bound torrent, and the whelming flood;
Or Summer's flush, or Autumn, robed in grey,
Whirling the red leaves round her bleak-worn way,—
All tell one tale of Heaven. But thou, young Spring!
Glad as the wild bee on his glossy wing,
Bedeck'd with bloom, and breathing life around,
Within thy breast Elysian charms abound.

The mercy-fountains of Divinity
Now stream through all, with vigour full and free;
As if unloosen'd from their living source,
To carry with them spring's creative force.
The sky is garlanded with waves of blue,
Like ocean dawning on the distant view;
The sun lies mirror'd on the radiant streams,
The sea-waves gambol in his noontide beams,
The boughs hang glitt'ring in their locks of green,
And airy poets carol to the scene;
While sea, and sky, and land, and fragrant Earth
With her rich promise budding into birth,—
Seem, like a heart o'erfill'd with sacred love,
Glowing with gratitude to Him above.

Terrific giants that o'erlook the sea,
Enormous masses of sublimity,
Ye mountain-piles! Earth's monuments to Heaven,
Around whose brows the reeling storms are driven,

Whether in climes where 'bove the ice-chain'd deep
Ye rise in piles magnificently steep,
Or where in living bloom your bosoms swell,
And fierce and far the headlong torrents yell,—
Where snow-drifts whiten, or where sunbeams warm,
Your brows are girdled with almighty charm!

When drops the sun in yonder western deep,
The waves unruffled, and the winds asleep;
And isles of beauty float the brilliant sky,
While Fancy muses with enamour'd eye;
Then comes the hour to fascinate the sight,
Where the wild mountain rears its massy height.
There, as we gaze, mysterious thoughts begin
To stir th' immortal spark that burns within;
Till Wonder starts with a bewild'ring fear,
As if the advent of our God were near!

And where, beneath the stern decree of time,
Columns and temples sink in age sublime;
Where by the ruin'd battlements are heard
The wailing sorrows of some midnight bird,
While low winds mutter through the roofless halls,
And ivy-boughs bend weeping o'er the walls,
Imagination loves to stand and dream,
And mark yon ruin in the moonlight gleam,
Till summon'd Ages startle from their sleep,
And plaintive Mem'ry turns aside to weep!—
Or view, when sunset drinks the forest-breeze,
Where some grey abbey glimmers through the trees,
And on the turrets evening's pallid rays
Gleam like the glory of departed days,
How soon the cloister'd stillness of the spot
Brings heaven around us, till the world's forgot;
While Retrospection draws the moral sigh,
And dreams embodied move before her eye.

Great Architect of worlds! whose forming power
Presided o'er creation's natal hour,
Stamp'd man Thy miniature, and bade him run
A race of glory, till his goal be won;
When wan Disease exhales her withering breath,
And dims his beauty with the damp of death;
At some still hour the holy sigh will swell,
The gushing tear of gratitude will tell
That Thou art by, to temper and to tame
The trembling anguish of the fever'd frame.

But oh! when heal'd by love and heaven, we rise,
With radiant cheek, and re-illumin'd eyes,
Bright as a new-born sun, all nature beams,
And through the spirit darts immortal dreams.
Now for the bracing hills, and healthful plains,
And pensive ramble when the noontide wanes;
Now for the walk beside some haunted wood,
And fancy-music of a distant flood;
While far and wide, the wand'ring eye surveys,
And the heart pants to pour away its praise!

But, turn from earth to yonder glorious sky,
Th' imagin'd dwelling-place of Deity.
Ye quenchless Stars! so eloquently bright,
Ye radiant Watchers of reposing night,
While half the world is lapp'd in blissful dreams
And round the lattice creep your fairy beams,
How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes,
In lambent beauty looking from the skies!

And when, oblivious of the world, we stray
At dead of night along some noiscless way,
How the Heart mingles with a moon-lit hour,
And feels from heaven a sympathetic power!—
See, not a cloud careers yon pathless deep
Of molten azure,—mute as lovely sleep;
Full in her pallid light the Moon presides,
Shrined in a halo, mellowing as she rides;
And far around, the forest and the stream
Wear the rich garment of her silver beam.
The lull'd Winds, too, are sleeping in their caves,
No stormy prelude rolls upon the waves;
Nature is hush'd, as if her works adored
The night-felt presence of creation's Lord.

And now, while through the ocean-mantling haze
A mournful lustre tremulously plays,
And glimm'ring loveliness hath veil'd the land,
Go, stranger, muse thou by the wave-worn strand:
Cent'ries have glided o'er the balanced earth,
Myriads have bless'd, and myriads curs'd their birth;
Still, beauteously yon starry watchers glare,
Unsullied as the God who throned them there!
Though moral earthquakes heave th' astounded world,
And king and kingdom from their pride are hurl'd,

Intensely calm, they hold their bright career,
Unheedful of the storms and changes here:—
We want no hymn to hear, nor pomp to see,
For all around is felt divinity!
The wing'd heart flutters to ascend above
To Him whose nature and whose name are Love.
And if revered ones, from their hallow'd sphere,
May witness warm Affection's faithful tear,
At this deep hour they hear the mourner's sigh,
And waft a blessing from their homes on high.

Stupendous God! how shrinks our bounded sense
To track the triumphs of Omnipotence;
From sky-clad mountain, to the deepest den,
From the mean insects, to immortal men;
Bless'd with Thy brightest smile, dare we confine
Paternal Providence, supreme as thine?
Far as the fancy flies, or life-stream flows,
From Georgia's desert to the Greenland snows,
Where space exists, Thine eyes of mercy see,—
Creation lives, and moves, and breathes in Thee!
Unseen, but felt, Thine interfused Control
Works in each atom, and pervades the whole;
Expands the blossom, and erects the tree,
Conducts each vapour, and commands each sea;
The Laws of Nature Thy decree fulfil,
And all Her powers but realise Thy will.

E'en now, while tragic Midnight walks the land,
And spreads the wings of darkness with her wand,
What scenes are witness'd by Thy watchful eye,
What millions waft to Thee the prayer and sigh!
Some gaily vanish to an unfear'd grave,
Fleet as the sun-flash o'er a summer-wave;
Some wear out life in smiles, and some in tears,
Some dare with hope, while others droop with fears;
The vagrant's roaming in his tatter'd vest,
The babe is sleeping on its mother's breast;
The captive mutt'ring o'er his rust-worn chain,
The widow weeping for her lord again,
While many a Mourner shuts his languid eye,
To dream of heaven, and view it ere he die,—
And yet, no sigh can swell, no tear-drop fall,
But Thou wilt see, and guide, and solace all!

And thus, a Preacher of eternal might,
Sublime in darkness, or array'd in light,
In each wild change of glory, gloom, and storm,
The starry magic, and the mountain-form,
Art thou,—dread Universe of love and power!
But, higher still the Muse's wing may tower,
And track the myst'ry of almighty ways,
Through paths that glitter with the solemn rays
The awful noon of revelation shed
From Calv'ry,—when the God Incarnate bled.

For what is Nature, though religion seems
To lend a tone to all her winds and streams;
To whisper, God! when night and darkness creep
Round the dim trances of Creation's sleep;
To teach a prayer when twilight hush descends,
And the mute bough in adoration bends;
Or bid the woods a leafy anthem raise
When the rich verdure shines with emerald rays:
Or spring, the Angel of the seasons, pours
A tide of beauty round exulting shores:

Say, what is meant?—a soft mysterious glow,
A breath too pure to live on earth below,
An evanescent luxury of thought,
Cull'd from the feast Imagination brought,—
But, frail and feeble, as the charm that dies,
When the dead waken upon mem'ry's eyes.

When lived the Age, or where the clime so rude,
What island nursed in billowy solitude,
Where dreams of God were never known to shine
Round a dark soul, with imagery divine?
The Heathen through his cloud of error saw,
A faint reflection of celestial Law;
E'en the grim savage, when his eye commands
A broad extent of green-apparel'd lands,
Or views the Tempest wave his cloudy wing
In sultry darkness o'er the world of spring,
Can hail the image of some dreamt Unknown,—
A sceptred BEING on his boundless throne.
Then boast not thou, whose spell-bound eye can see
In nature's glass reflected Deity;
From whence does moral elevation flow,
What pang is mute, what balm prepared for wo,
Though ocean, mountain, sky, and air impress
Full on the soul a felt Almightiness?
Can Ocean teach magnificence of mind?
Is truth made vocal by the deep-voiced Wind?
Can flowers their bloom of innocence impart,
Or tempt one weed of vileness from the heart?
Can thy benevolence, all bounteous Sun,
Thou burning Shadow of the brightest One!
Array our souls with emulative beam
Like thine, to glad life's universal stream?
From yon pale stars does purity descend,
And their chaste beauty with our spirit blend?—
Alas, oh, God! if Thou alone art found
When most creation with Thy smile is crown'd;
Rather in blindness let this outward eye
Be dead to nature, than Thy throne deny,
Raised on the pillars of Redemption's might,
And dazzling angels with too deep a light!

There is a Presence spiritually vast
Around Thy Church, arisen Saviour! cast;
A holy Effluence, an unspoken Awe,
A Sanctity which carnal eye ne'er saw,
A pure, impalpable, almighty Sense
Of peace, by reconciled Omnipotence,
Which hallows, haunts, and makes a Christian mind
Rich in all grace, celestially refined:
Mere Nature's worshippers can never feel
The fulness of that high seraphic zeal
Which veileth all things with religious light,
And works unwearied in Jehovah's sight:
Thought, dream, and action,—ev'ry pulse of soul
The awe of Christ will solemnly control;
Girt by The Spirit, wheresoe'er we rove,
True Faith is feeding on His word of love.
Nature is now a more than nature far;
Each miracle of sun, or moon, or star,
Each sight, and sense, and sound of outward things,
Seems haunted by august imaginings;
A dream of Calvary around her floats,
And oft the dew of those delicious notes
By angels once in Bethlehem's valley pour'd
Descends, with all their melody restored,
Till peace on earth! to pardon'd man good will!
With tones of heaven the ear of fancy fill.

II. PART II.

“Of finer mould, and far sublimer view,
Whate'er his lot; on Fortune's envied mount
High-throned, or lost in the secluded vales
Of lowliness, is he whose hopes are built
In Heaven:—
Not all the pomp and pageantry of worlds
Reflects such glory on the Eye Supreme,
As the meek virtue of one holy man!—
For even doth his angel from the face
Divine, beatitude and wisdom draw.”

ANALYSIS OF PART II.

The second part of the Poem is devoted to a consideration of the Presence of the Deity, as influencing Human Life—In our journey through the world, we cannot but admit an overruling Power—The paternal care of the Deity—Consolation thence derived in scenes of woe—Pictures of a street-wanderer and an exiled captive—The hopes imparted to the soldier, by his confidence in the presence of God—The Sailor—Storm and wreck described—His consciousness of Preserving Providence.

As misfortune is observed by God, so, in like manner, the crimes of the wicked cannot escape Him— Picture of a murderer—Darkness; its varied influence depicted—Penitence—The young convict—The maniac boy—The arctic traveller—The missionary.

The Sabbath—Feelings excited by the tones of an organ swelling through a cathedral—The village christening—Rapid survey of the common lot.

As God has been defined “Love,” we may be assured that He eminently favours virtuous affection—The marriage scene—Raptures arising from the retrospections of the virtuous—Picture of a grandsire, sitting by his winter fire, and retracing the scenes of his life—Friendship.

Death — Apostrophe — Picture of a dying old man, attended by his daughter — The Funeral — The Almighty Presence.

Along the barren world as doom'd we roam
By devious paths to one perennial Home,
In tears or smiles we own the o'erruling Hand
That beckons on to that celestial Land,
Where, harbour'd all, life's billows sink away,
And the bright spirits bask in heaven's immortal ray.

And happy thou! through all the change of time,
Whom sorrow cannot burden with a crime;
Whose joyless heart and never-lighten'd care
Can nobly scorn the refuge of despair.

Like ocean's wand'rer guided by his star,
Thy heaven-taught spirit looks to him afar.

Say, ye whose hearts unburden'd can enjoy
The bliss of life, without the world's alloy;
What can illume their melancholy way,
Where Want begins, and Mis'ry crowns the day?
When bow'd by woe, and bleach'd by with'ring age,
Alone Life's orphan treads the world's cold stage;
His fortune wreck'd, his friends beneath the sod,
Where shall he fly, but to the arms of God?
Blest be yon viewless Spirit thron'd on high,
No heart's too wretched to attract His eye;
No lot too lowly to engage His love,
And win the smile of Mercy from above!
He gazes on the sleepless couch of wo,
And bids the dying light of hope to glow,
Unarms the peril, heals the wounded mind,
And charms each feeling home, to fate resign'd.

At wintry eve, when savage night-winds blow,
Pierce his cold cheek, and drift his locks of snow,
As oft the vagrant shivers through the street,
No voice to pity, and no hand to greet,
With many a pause he marks that window-pane,
Whose flick'ring blaze recalls his home again!
The friend and face, the music and the mirth,
And social magic of his evening-hearth,
A waked by mem'ry, warm his widow'd heart,
Till real woes in fancied bliss depart;
And one by one, as happier days appear,
To each he pays the homage of a tear;
Though homeless, still he loves home's joyous glare,
Looks up to heaven, and feels his home is there!

Within a dungeon, mildew'd by the night,
Barr'd from salubrious air and cheering light,
Lo! the pale captive pines in hostile lands,
Chain'd to his doom by adamantine bands.
Oh, how he pants to face the fresh-wing'd breeze,
And hear the voices of the summer trees:
To breathe, and live, and move, and be as free
As Nature is, and Man was made to be!
And when at night, upon his flinty bed,
Silent and sad, he lays his grief-worn head,
There as the dungeon-bell, with dismal sound,
Tolls midnight through the sleeping air around,
Remembrance wafts him to paternal climes,
And frames a fairy world of happier times.
The woodland haunts around his native scene,
The village dance upon the festive green,
His sloping garden where he lov'd to ply,
And smiled as peeping flower-buds hail'd his eye,
His beauteous partner and her blue-eyed boy,
Who prattled, played, and fed his soul with joy,—
By thought created, crowd around his heart,
And force the pangs of fond regret to start;
Each soft delusion claims a genial sigh,
Each dream of happiness bedims his eye;
Till, warm'd by Heaven, his home-wed bosom glows
With hopes that triumph o'er remember'd woes;
And far away the chainless spirit flies,
To vision'd realms of rest beyond the skies.

Spirit of Light and Life! when Battle rears
His fiery brow amid terrific spears;
When deathful cannons to the clouds uproar,
And gasping hosts sleep shrouded in their gore,
E'en then, th' intrepid Heart that nobly glows
To face the fury of invading foes,
May look to Thee for mercy and for power,
To brave the peril of the carnage-hour;
Or, doom'd to fall amid the furious din,
While battle storms without, may find a peace within.

List! war-peals thunder on the battle-field;
And many a hand grasps firm the glitt'ring shield,
As on, with helm and plume, the warriors come,
And the glad hills repeat the stormy drum!

And now are seen the youthful and the grey,
With bosoms burning to partake the fray:
The first, with hearts that consecrate the deed,
All eager rush to vanquish or to bleed;
Like young waves racing in the morning sun,
That rear and leap with reckless fury on!
But, see that scar-worn man, who looks on high
With musing valour mirror'd in his eye;
Not all the bleeding revels of the day
Can fright the vision of his home away;
The home of love, and its attractive smiles,
His wife's endearment, and his baby's wiles:—
Fights he less brave through recollected bliss,
With step retreating, or with sword remiss?
Ah no! remember'd home's the warrior's charm,
Speed to his sword, and vigour to his arm;
For this he supplicates the God afar,
Fronts the steel'd foe, and mingles in the war.

The cannon's hush'd!—nor drum nor clarion sound;
Helmet and hauberk mingle on the ground;
Horseman and horse lie welt'ring in their gore;
Patriots are dead, and heroes dare no more;
While solemnly the moonlight shrouds the plain,
And lights the lurid features of the slain.

And see! where swift the banner'd coursers past,
A battle-steed beneath his rider cast;
Oh! never more he'll rear with fierce delight,
Roll his large eyes, and rally for the fight;
Pale on that bleeding corse a warrior lies,
While from the ruffled lids his white-swell'd eyes
Ghastly and grimly stare upon the skies!

But who, upon the battle-wasted plain,
Shall count the faint, the gasping, and the slain?
Angel of Mercy! ere the blood-fount chill,
And the brave heart be spiritless and still,
Amid the havoc Thou art hov'ring nigh,
To calm each groan, and close each dying eye,
And waft the spirit to that halcyon shore,
Where war's loud thunders lash the winds no more.

And on Thy deep, the girdle of the world,
When the fierce Hurricanoes have unfurl'd
Their thousand wings, to battle and to rave,
Sweep down the rock and scourge the yelling wave;
When skies in tempest-agonies outgroan,
And the mad elements seem left alone,
Lord of the Storm! oh, Thou art present there,
In the loud thunder, and the lightning-glare,
While from the rollings of unfathom'd sea
A mariner's last sigh ascends to Thee.

Lo! to the yellow beach a maiden hies,
Love at her heart, and sorrow in her eyes.
Warm down her cheek impassion'd drops of woe,
Through fearful omens, for her lover flow:
Oh will he, far by faithless ocean borne,
Dream of his lonely maid who lives to mourn?
Will he, whene'er by palmy streams he roams,
Muse on their twilight-walks and woodbine homes,
And that first spring, when in the cowslip dale
She blush'd an answer to his wooing tale?

The beach is won; before her moans a sea,
In all its dim and dread immensity!
Wide o'er the wave a wistful glance she throws,
Till the fond lover smiles away her woes;
Voiceless awhile he clasps his dark-eyed maid,
Then looks the promise love has often said;
But, ere his vessel, in the horizon's blue
Veil'd by the mist, hath vanish'd from her view,
Sweet mourner! heavenward hope uplifts her mind
To Him who wings the storm, and walks the wind.

Thrice has the sun upon his green-wave bed,
'Mid rosy clouds, his vesper radiance shed;
And thrice the moon from out the ocean rose,
Like pale-eyed beauty waking from repose;
While rock'd beneath, the melancholy wave
Sang like a mermaid o'er the scaman's grave.

The morn is up: and in her mellow ray
Millions of youthful billows pant and play;
Greeting the stately vessels as they glide
In sail-wing'd triumph o'er the breezy tide.

But, lo! around the marsh'lling clouds unite,
Like thick battalions halting for the fight;
The sun retires, and rending whirlwinds sweep
Fierce through the air, and flutter on the deep;
Forth from their caverns rush the fatal blasts,
Tear the loose sails, and split the creaking masts,
And the lash'd billows, rolling in a train,
Rear their white heads, and race along the main.

And, see! hurl'd backward from a hidden rock,
A shatter'd vessel reeling with the shock,
Like one appall'd by an unearthly sight,
Who stands, and shivers with convulsive fright:
There, in a den of waves, she heaves awhile,
Till on her deck the howling surges pile;
Then struggling sinks beneath the water's leap,
Like a huge monster wrestling with the deep.

Borne like a sunbeam on the bounding waves,
Behold! a mariner the tempest braves;
Home, life, and love, and near-imagin'd death,
Nerve the stout limb, and lengthen out his breath:
A rock is reach'd, dash'd on a wave-worn peak
Lies the wreck'd sailor, shiv'ring, wan, and weak;
With livid face, and looks of ghastly dread,
And locks, like sea-weeds streaming from his head;
Unmoved the lips, but with his upturn'd eyes,
He shadows forth a Saviour in the skies;
Visions a viewless temple in the air,
Feels God around, and silence is his prayer!

Can Guilt, though hidden from the gaze of earth,
Fly from His view, who gave all being birth?
From her first shadow on the yielding soul,
To the dark hour when all her terrors roll,
His sleepless eye detects each buried plan,
And bares the bosom-secret of the man.
Yes! oft He locks the weapon in his hand,
And makes the murd'rer for his capture stand;
Or, when the flood of years has roll'd away
The darksome horrors of the blood-curs'd day,—
His vengeance frowns upon the felon's sleep,
Forcing his haggard eye to wake, and weep!

Upon the midnight-heath, where fierce winds growl,
Like famish'd wolves careering as they howl,
While cloudy billows darkly swell and rise
As if an ocean brooded in the skies,
Aghast and quaking, see the murd'rer stand,
Shrink from himself, and clench his crimson hand;
Unearthly terrors freeze his shudd'ring frame,
While conscience writhes upon the rack of shame:
Beneath him gasps the victim of his deed,
In that faint struggle ere the spirit's freed;
One piteous gaze—his languid eyelids close,
And life and torture sink to dead repose.

Why stands the murd'rer fetter'd to the spot,
Life, fame, and judgment in his guilt forgot?
Chain'd by his crime, he cannot—dare not fly,
A Spirit seems to grasp him from the sky!
And though no human eye the murder sees,
A curse from heaven comes mutter'd in each breeze.

Though Crime entomb herself within the heart,
And veil her anguish with dissembling art;
Though 'mid the glare of day, and dazzling strife
That flashes o'er the shadowy stream of life,
She move as merry as the morning air,
Unmarr'd by grief, unsorrow'd by a care,—
Darkness shall bear the burden of her sin,
And fan the hell of thought that flames within!

At deep dead night, when not an earthly sound
Jars on the brooding air that sleeps around;
When the coarse raptures of a Christless day,
Touch'd by the wand of Truth, dissolve away,
Unhallow'd Guilt shall in her bosom feel
A rack too fierce for language to reveal;
A sense unutt'rable within the soul
Of Him pervading—living through the whole:
On ev'ry limb shall creeping terror come,
Lock the white lips, and strike cold anguish dumb;
Vengeance shall utter an imagin'd yell,
And Fancy flutter round the gulph of Hell.

Not so comes darkness to the good man's breast,
When Night brings on the lulling hour of rest;
Tired of the day, a pillow laps his head,
While heavenly vigils watch around the bed;
His spirit bosom'd on the God of all,—
Peace to the hour! whate'er the night befal:
Then, pleasing Memory unrolls her chart,
To raise, refine, and regulate the heart;
Exulting Boyhood, and its host of smiles,
Next, busy Manhood battling with its toils,
Delights and dreams that made the heart run o'er,
The love forgotten, and the friends no more—
The panorama of past life appears,
Warms his pure mind, and melts it into tears!
Till, like a shutting flower, the senses close,
And on him lies the beauty of repose.

Yes! in the dark, Imagination seems
Girt with a shadowy brood of awful Dreams,
Which round her in appalling visions fly,
Dread as the phantoms on a thunder-sky;
And Guilt starts back, by gloomy horror driven,
But Virtue braves them with a smile from Heaven.

'Tis night: and sternly comes the mutt'ring wind,
While cloud-battalions slowly march behind;
Alone the way-worn pilgrim winds his track,
His wallet resting on his weary back;
Though dark the path, and dreary grows the night,
And not a heaven-lamp yields its holy light,
Firm o'er the starless wild he moves his way,
For HE pervades the night, who form'd the day!
Thus on he roams beneath the brooding sky,
Till, lo, a lattice twinkles on his eye,
And merrily from out his woodland dome,
His babes bound forth, and hail the wand'rer home.

When Conscience darts her stings into the mind,
And heart-broke Folly turns to look behind,
Then, righteous Heaven, without Thy hopeful ray,
What fell despair would lower on our way!
Where shall we light the burden of our woes?
How should we lull our anguish to repose?—
But, when the rebel Heart has ceas'd to roam,
And yearns o'er visions of forsaken home,
Thy love will hail the chasten'd wand'rer there,
And hush to peace the tempest of despair.

And not more beautiful beneath the ray
Of risen morn, night-shades dissolve away,
And the unmantled world, embathed in light,
Awakes in orient glory, clear and bright,—
Than do the sinful mists that shroud the soul
Melt off beneath religion's mild control,
Till the full impress of our God appears,
Made pure and perfect by repentant tears.
Now, day by day, celestial feelings rise
Fresh from the heart, and reach th' immortal skies:

Now comes the hour, when rambling all unseen,
Except by stars, upon the dusky green;
When winds are voiceless, and the breezes still,
Save truant ones, which rove some wooded hill,
Eternal glories dawn upon the heart,
Till tears ecstatic from the soul-fount start;
And sorrow, bursting from ideal gloom,
Soars after Christ, and triumphs o'er the tomb.

But when the erring heart at Passion's shrine
Hath basely sacrificed each trait divine:
When Guilt hath stain'd it with her deepest dye,
And blood for blood is Nature's dreadful cry,
Angel of Mercy! thy becalming power
Alone can tame the terrors of the hour;
Thine is the charm that bids the heart unbind,
Mount on the wings of Faith, and leave Despair behind;
Thine is the voice that soothes the dying breath,
And breathes a halo round the brow of Death.

And hark! the midnight bars have ceas'd to sound,
The dungeon guard has paced his clanking round,
And all is lone, and dismal as the deep
When weary Storms sink mutt'ring into sleep;
But one there is, in yonder glimm'ring cell,
Whose young heart wept, and wonder'd while it fell;
A wreck of crime upon his stony bed,
With eye wild-rolling and bewilder'd head.
'Tis not the chain that clinks upon his straw,
'Tis not the blow of violated law,—
But racking thoughts which rive his shudd'ring heart,
And make each fibre of the bosom start.
Yes! they have borne him to his native streams,
Where young-eyed Fancy wove her fairy dreams;
To each wild glade where Boyhood loved to roam,
Till twilight came, and call'd the truant home:
And where is she who rock'd him to repose,
And sang, and smiled, to lull his infant woes?
And he who greeted with paternal joy
The dawning virtues of his darling boy?
Afar, beneath the trampled sod they sleep,
He neither heard them sigh, nor saw them weep!—
That wasted eye and palpitating cheek,
Those wringing hands, and that delirious shriek,
Oh, these betray the burning load of pain
Remembrance piles upon his phrensied brain:
Till Faith descend upon her wings of Love,
And show the Mercy-seat unveil'd above;
Then, firm his glance, hush'd every groan and cry,
And hypocrites might shake to view a felon die!

'Tis sad to see the eye forget its ray,
And sorrow sit where smiles were wont to play;
'Tis sad, when youth is fresh, and fair, and warm,
And life is fraught with every sweeter charm,
To see it close the lip, and droop the head,
Wane from this earth, and mingle with the dead;
But, oh! nor death, nor wo, can ever seem
So heart-appalling as that wild'ring dream.
That life in death—a desolated Mind,
Around whose wreck the weeds of madness wind.

Down yon romantic dale, where hamlets few
Arrest the summer pilgrim's frequent view,
The village wonder, and the widow's joy,
Dwells the poor, mindless, pale-faced maniac boy:
He lives, and breathes, and rolls his vacant eye
To greet the glowing fancies of the Sky;
But on his cheek unmeaning shades of wo
Reveal the wither'd thoughts that sleep below.—
A soulless Thing, a haunter of the woods,
He holds wild fellowship with fields and floods;
Sometimes along the woodland's winding glade,
He starts, and smiles upon his pallid shade;
Or scolds with idiot threat the roaming wind,—
But rebel music to that ruin'd mind!
Or on the shell-strewn beach delighted strays,
Playing his fingers in the noontide-rays;
And when the sea-waves swell their hollow roar,
He counts the billows plunging to the shore;
And oft, beneath the glimmer of the moon,
He chaunts some wild and melancholy tune,
Till o'er his soft'ning features seems to play
A flick'ring gleam of mind's recover'd sway.

Thus, like a living Dream, apart from men,
From morn to eve he haunts the wood and glen;
But round him, near him, wheresoe'er he rove,
A shielding Angel tracks him from above;
Nor harm from flood or fen shall e'er destroy
The lonesome wand'rings of that maniac boy.

But lo, in pale sublimity of forms
The arctic billows glare like frozen storms!
For thus, in terrible array, are seen
Mountains of ice where never man hath been,
Where not a sound, nor motion dares advance
To violate their everlasting trance;
Save when the riven glaciers downward crush
Themselves to water, with chaotic rush;
Or Silence trembles, like a thing aghast,
When o'er her waste the wolfish echo pass'd;—

E'en here beneath the wings Almighty roam
The brave sea-warriors from their English home,
And find amid such wilderness of waves
An Eye that watches, and a Hand that saves.

Behold! yon Vessel with heroic prow
Through a white realm of ice advancing now,
Her cables stiffen'd into chains of frost,
And the proud bearing of her beauty lost,—
The prey of ocean, will she not descend,
Tomb'd in dead ice, with none to mark her end?
No! faith and valour, and inviolate hope,
With danger in its deepest midnight cope;
And Home shall listen yet, with pausing breath,
To tales of ruin—the romance of Death,
When frowning o'er her, like a Fiend he stood,
And mutter'd, “Sink in ghastly solitude!
And may the corpses of thy crew be seen
To freeze and whiten where thy sails have been!”

Victors of Nature in her dreadest might!
Dauntless as winds that roam with free delight,
When once again the rocks of England rise
In tow'ring welcome on your dazzled eyes,
As round the hearth young household-voices ring,
Like the glad melodies of jocund spring,
What records with your laden hearts unroll?
Where is the painter, on whose gorgeous soul
Visions of undepicted beauty rose,
Like them that glitter'd on irradiant snows?
Bright as the Palace John of Patmos view'd,
What ice-domes flash'd in frozen solitude!
What rocks of ruby glare, when sunset came
Full on their whiteness, like a wingèd flame!
And while the crimson of declining day
Lit the cold fretwork of the crystal spray,
How oft a seaman with ecstatic eyes
Drank the rich magic of celestial dyes,
Blent like a rainbow's, when the waters heave
And tremble, while the braided colours weave.—
But there was beauty that outdazzled this,
Making the air one fairy-clime of bliss,
When moonlight flung a robe of silver haze
Athwart the mountains that received its rays,
Till the stain'd welkin by reflection shone,
Like floating emerald, or a verdant sun,
So brightly green, so exquisite the glow!—
And then, what meteors did pale twilight throw
O'er the chill air, in wild electric play!
Sublimely fierce, or delicately gay,
The Borealis like a creature spread
Its length of living glory o'er their head,
And seem'd exulting with victorious light,
To mock the darkness with its radiant might.
But, oh, the silence!—dream-like, cold, and vast,
As though the day of awful doom had pass'd,
And Earth remain'd to wither, dead and lone,
A blighted rebel, by her God unknown!
So mute and soundless must that hour have been,
When, gazing round on nature's ghastly scene
Of crag and ice interminably piled,
A frozen chaos, a sepulchral wild,—
The seaman ponder'd till a thought of death
Check'd the cold murmur of his faintest breath:
Nature and God alone were reigning now:
And the high meaning of his dauntless brow
Dethroned by awe, dissolved and waned away,
For Silence, like a spirit, seem'd to pray,
Till the blood listen'd in his breathless frame,
And, small and still, the voice Almighty came!

Exhaustless Mercy! like that pilgrim brook,
That never once the marching hosts forsook,
When through the scorching wastes of Egypt's land,
The cloud-led Israel steer'd by God's command,
Thy stream, along the herbless path of life,
Makes verdure smile, with bloom celestial rife:
But if there be, round whom with holier might
Dwells the deep sense of Heaven's o'erwatching light,
Soldiers of Christ! whose banner faith unrolls,
The true schechinah of protected souls
'Tis theirs to witness, when through clime and zone
Where the grim idol mounts Jehovah's throne,
And Man, degraded as the trampled clod,
Bleeds at the shrine of some barbaric god,
Wild as the torrent in its desperate fall,
Whom blood, nor death, nor agonies appal,
With spirit blighted, and with reason blind,—
Who can rebuild his desolated mind?

“Go forth and teach”—and ye have gone, and done
Deeds that will shine, when thou art dark, O Sun!
Heroes, whose crowns with gems of glory shine,
Dug from the depths of heaven's eternal mine,
Oh, what a conquest hath the Cross obtain'd!
E'en where of old a hell of darkness reign'd,
And Crime and Havoc, fiend-begotten pair,
In mortal bosoms made their savage lair,
And issued thence to riot, rage, or kill,
Like incarnations of a demon's will,
The peace that passeth understanding grows,
And Earth seems born again, without her woes;
So wondrously the spell divine descends,
And man with nature in communion blends:

The isles have seen HIM! and the deserts raise
Anthems that thrill the halls of heaven with praise;
Crouching and tame the tiger Passions lie,
Hush'd by the gaze of God's subduing eye:
Temples and homes of sacred truth abound,
Where Satan once with all his fiends was found:
And, hark! at sunset while the shaded calm
Of forest coolness floats on wings of balm,
As roams the pilgrim in that dying glare,
From a lone hamlet winds the voice of prayer,—
Breath of the soul by Jesu taught to rise
And blend with music heard beyond the skics!
Ecstatic thought! the zenith of our dreams,
Error has died in Truth's victorious beams:
And where the savage round his altar fed
On the warm fragments of the limbless dead,
Cots which an English heart delights to hail
Deck the green wilds of many a foreign dale,
And, turn'd by Piety's familiar hand,
Religion sees her tear-worn Bibles stand.

“Thy kingdom come!” prophetic voices throng
In choral harmony, and chant, “How long,
How long, O beatific King of kings,
Till ransom'd earth with gospel-music rings?
How long a period ere that Sun arise
Which glitter'd on Isaiah's holy eyes,
And clad the cedar'd hills of Palestine
With veils of glory, wove from sheen divine?”

Oh for that day, beyond what poets dream,
Deck'd by Imagination's crystal beam,
When vanquish'd Sin shall leave Messiah's throne
To rise in full transcendancy alone:
Hate, War, and Tumult, all the brood of crime,
Shall then be banish'd from the scene of time;
Evil be dead, Corruption breathe no more,
And Peace, the seraph, smile from shore to shore,
While round her Prince sublime hosannahs swell,—
“Thy truth has wither'd all the thrones of Hell!
For ever and for ever live and reign,
Till earth be purified to heaven again!”

Thou unimagined God! though every hour,
And every day speak Thy mysterious power;
Upon the seventh, creation's work was crown'd:
Upon the seventh, ten thousand worlds wheel'd round!
And ever hallow'd be Thy chosen day,
Till Nature die, and Time shall roll away.

Sweet Sabbath morn! from childhood's dimpled prime
I lov'd to hail thy calm-renewing time;
Soft steal thy bells upon the trancèd mind,
In fairy cadence floating on the wind,
Telling of friends and times long flown away.
And pensive hopes harmonious with the day.

On thy still dawn, while holy music peals,
And far around the ling'ring echo steals,
What Heart communes not with the day's repose,
And, lull'd by angel-dreams, forgets its woes?
Who, in His temple, gives to God a prayer,
Nor feels an image of bright heaven is there?
The pleading stillness of the vaulted pile,
Where gather'd hearts their homage breathe awhile,
The mingled burst of penitential sighs,
The choral anthem pealing to the skies,
Exalt the soul to energies sublime,
And thoughts that reach beyond the realm of time.

Emblem of peace! upon the village plain
Thou dawn'st a blessing to the toil-worn swain:
Soon as thy smiles along the upland play,
His bosom kindles to salute the day;
Humble and happy, to his lot resign'd,
He owns the inward sabbath of the mind.

And when, with low-drawn sighs of love and fear,
His suppliant vows have sought Jehovah's ear,
Serene the thoughts which o'er his bosom steal,
As home he wanders for the sabbath meal:
There shall kind Plenty wear her sweetest smiles;
There shall his ruddy children play their wiles;
While the fond mother, lapp'd in worldless joy,
Fondles with frequent kiss her infant boy.
At noon, a ramble round the burial-ground,
A moral tear on some lamented mound;
Or breezy walk along the green expanse,
Where endless verdure charms the ling'ring glance,—
These are the wonted blessings of the day,
Which all his weekly toils and woes repay.
And when the shroud of night hath veil'd the view,
And star-gleams twinkle on the meadow-dew,
Some elder boy beside his father's knee
Shall stand and read the Eternal History:

Orhousehold-prayer, or chanted hymn shall close
The hour that charms him to a sweet repose.

And Melody,—an echo breathed from heaven!
By her ineffable delight is given;
Whether she melt a passion from the mind,
Or with Æolian languish lull the wind;
Whether she madden in the mingled roar
Of Alpine billows bounding to the shore;
Or on the elfin pinions of a breeze
Float o'er the flowers, and woo the vernal trees,—
Alike divine! But, deeper in the soul
Sinks melody's omnipotent control.
When from the fluted organ, full and deep
Billows of music through the dim aisles sweep!
Ear, eye, and heart, confess the awful spell,
While soul and being with the magic swell,
And as the spiral echoes upward wind,
Die off—and scarcely leave the man behind.

And now, while faintly-ebbing murmurs roll
Entrancing music o'er the prostrate soul,
Religion loves to linger in some aisle,
Where through emblazon'd panes a vesper smile
With pallid radiance quivers in the gloom,
Or crowns, like seraph-light, th' inspiring tomb;
The thrilling echoes of sepulchral ground,
The monumental awe suffused around,
The fretted arch with its gigantic sweep,
The world's great Spirits throned in marble sleep,—
Subdue each earthly passion into fear,
As though the resurrection-hour drew near!

But not alone the vast and vaulted pile,
An echoing cloister, or the pillar'd aisle,
Hallow the mind: for humblest fanes impart
A holy magic to the feeling heart.

And see, down where yon arches shed their gloom,
And mottoes speak from many a time-worn tomb,
There, where the Font uprears its marble brow,
The village sponsors breathe their sacred vow,
While timidly a mother, young and mild,
To Heaven presents her dedicated child:
And oft she gazes on the sleeping boy,
Lock'd to her breast with all a mother's joy;
Fearful and fond, and twining for repose,
Like a young bud around the parent rose.

But who shall paint her meditative eye,
Her look of love and heaven-appealing sigh,
When on the cherub brow, with hope divine,
The holy preacher prints the liquid sign?
Joy, doubt, and fear in mingled passion rise,
Gush through her heart, and glitter in her eyes.

Whene'er I gaze upon a sinless child,
Tossing its merry head of ringlets wild,
Lip, cheek, and eye, all in that lovely glow
Young spirits feel, as yet unchill'd by wo,
A voiceless wonder animates each sense,
To think how Mercy watches innocence!

Survey the scene of life: in yonder room,
Pillow'd in beauty 'mid the cradle gloom,
While o'er its features plays an angel-smile,
A breathing cherub slumbers for a while:
Those budding lips, the faintly-fringèd eye,
That placid cheek, and uncomplaining sigh,
The rounded limbs in soft embrace entwined,
Like flower-leaves folded from the sev'ring wind,—
All by their tender charms her babe endear,
And feed the lux'ry of a mother's fear.

Next, mark her infant raised to childhood's stage,
Bound in the bloom of that delightful age,
With heart as light as wavelets on the deep,
And eye that Wo has scarcely taught to weep:—
The tip-toe gaze, the pertinacious ken,
Each rival attribute of mimick'd men,
The prompt decision, and presuming way,
Now picture forth his yet auspicious day.

Whether at noon he waft his tiny boat
By winding streams, and woody bank remote,
Or climb the meadow-tree, or trail the kite,
And thinks that heaven ne'er match'd that moving sight!
Or roam the haunted wood at dying day,
To list with spell-bound ear the cuckoo's lay,—
A Hand above o'er-rules the vent'rous boy,
And draws the daily circle of his joy.

And thus, when manhood brings its weight of care,
To chain the soul, and curb the giddy air,
The father, friend, the patriot, and the man,
Share in the love of Heaven's parental plan;
Till age o'ersteal his mellow'd form at last,
And wintry locks tell summer youth is past;
Then, like the sun slow-wheeling to the wave,
He sinks in glory to a welcome grave.

Lord of the Universe! enthron'd sublime
In secret glory over Space and Time,
Though oft the red-wing'd lightnings sear the sky,
And mutt'ring thunders mark Thy track on high,
One omnipresent, ever sleepless Love
Pervades what issues from Thy power above:

When from Thy hands primeval earth outsprang,
And starry music o'er the launch'd world rang,
Thine emblem, God, was Love! nor eye can see
Where love is not the master-trait of Thee.

And since that time, when first in Eden's bower
The stainless Adam bent to beauty's power,
Have Souls commingled in affection's flame,
In weal unsever'd, and in wo the same.

Young, chaste, and lovely—pleased, yet half afraid,
Before yon altar droops a plighted maid,
Clad in her bridal robes of taintless white,
Dumb with the scene, and dazzled with delight.
Around her hymeneal guardians stand,
Each with devoted look, and feeling bland;
And oft she turns her soul-expressing eye,
Dimm'd with a tear for happiness gone by!
Then coyly views, in youth's commanding pride,
Her own betroth'd one kneeling by her side:
Like lilies bending from the noon-tide blaze,
Her bashful eyelids droop beneath his gaze;
While love and homage blend their blissful power,
And shed a halo round his marriage-hour.

What though this chance-abounding life ordain
A path of anguish and corrective pain;
By want or wo, where'er compell'd he rove,
A cot's a palace by the light of love!
There beats one heart, which until death will be
A fountain-source of fondest sympathy;
One frownless eye to kindle with his own,
One changeless friend, when other friends are flown:
Oh, sanction Thou the love-united pair,
Author of love! for Thou art present there.

There be some heart-entwining hours of life,
With uncontrollable sensation rife;
When mellow'd thoughts, like music on the ear,
Thrill through the soul, and revel in a tear.
And, such are they, when, tranquil and alone
We sit and ponder on long periods flown;
And, charm'd by Fancy's retrospective gaze,
Live in an atmosphere of other days;
Till friends and faces, flashing on the mind,
Conceal the havoc time has left behind.

Yon aged man,—with what a musing eye
He dreams and lingers o'er the days fled by,
When pensive, sitting by his evening-fire,
To Mem'ry's peaceful glade his thoughts retire,
While cherub grandsons pat his willing knee,
Shake their bright curls, and prattle off their glee.
Now gently fleet back joy-wing'd days of old,
When Hope led forward, and the eye look'd bold:
With holy calm he thinks of place and time,
Beloved when left, unblotted with a crime;
Cold friendship's smiles are re-illumined now,
And gleams of fancy lighten on his brow!
What Hand puissant gave to life each form,
Scatter'd the cloud and piloted the storm?
Guided him onward through his thorny road,
Bestow'd each joy, and brighten'd each abode?
Ah! see the pious tear of mem'ry roll
In welling rapture from his grateful soul,
That trembles like the waking pulse of joy,
To feel, Heaven raised the man, and rear'd the boy!

Chain'd to the car of Time, as on we roll
Through cloud and sunshine to th' Eternal goal,
How favour'd he, whose soul, through Grace refined,
Meets by the way some all-partaking mind,
Some feeling friend, by Nature mark'd our own,
And moulded true to every tender tone!
Let fortune frown, congenial scenes depart,
And “farewell” rive the fetters of the heart,—
'Tis sweet, when roaming by a wave-girt strand,
To weave fond visions of our own far Land;
Or dream, while faintly chimes the convent-bell,
Of distant friends, and each domestic spell,
And feel one Spirit tracks our lone career
And dwells in every heart to Friendship dear.

And if brief absence in our chequer'd life
Wake in fond bosoms sympathetic strife,
How deep the wo when death's terrific hand
Tears a loved victim to a shadowy land!—
Oh Death! thou dreadless Vanquisher of earth,
The elements shrunk blasted at thy birth;
Thine is the conquest of untold mankind,
Victims before, and carnage strewn behind!

And say, when thoughtful on our couch we lie,
And scan the future with uncheated eye,
How fancy dreads to realise the tomb,
Shrinks into awe, and shudders at its doom;
What shapes of horror glide around our bed,
Damp from the ghastly regions of the dead,
While nature hovers o'er that fearful brink,
Where Faith turns wild, and Thought too weak to think;
Trembling and startling, like a shade in sleep,
Or a lone vessel on the surging deep,—
Till Revelation's heaven-directed beam
Melts every doubt in some celestial dream;
Oh, then no more convulsing terrors roll;
Then, then, the hallelujah of the soul!

Wing'd on the hope of heaven, it speeds away
To the bright source of beatific Day.

Lo! on a shaded couch, with pillow'd head,
And pallid limbs in dewy languor spread,
The dying parent, like a wailing breeze,
Moans in the feverish grasp of wan Disease;
While sad and watching, with a sleepless eye,
A lovely daughter sits and muses by:
So Gabriel sat within the Saviour's tomb,
When his pure spirit walk'd th' Eternal gloom.

There, as some ancient abbey's muffled bell
Tolls o'er the drowsing world the day's farewell,
Frequent she glances at his wrinkled brow,
And those dear eyes, so dim and deathful now,
Till all his love and all his care returns,
And memory through her brain and bosom burns!—
That drooping hand, so delicately weak,
How often had it smooth'd her infant cheek;
Or danced her, lightly tripping by his side,
And prattling sweetly with delighted pride;
Or pluck'd the baby flower that charm'd her age,
Or gently oped Instruction's pictured page,
Or pointed to some mild and mournful star,
That throned its beauty in the sky afar.

And see, no more the arrowy throes of pain
Pierce his bound head, or force the plaintive strain;
Slumber hath heal'd them with its holy balm,
And chain'd the senses in oblivion's calm;
Pleased at his quiet mien, with timid breath,
She stirs to see—alas! the sleep of Death;
Pulseless and pale, beneath the taper's glow,
Lies her loved parent, but a lifeless show!

She shook not, shrick'd not, raised no maniac cry,
Nor wrung her hand, nor heaved one heart-deep sigh;
But stood aghast, too awful for relief,
Mute, stiff, and white,—a monument of grief!

To hear a dying lip's last accent speak,
And watch the death-chill on a sunken cheek;
Or see the flaming eye-ball fiercely roll,
As if it wrestled with a parting soul;
Or, hear the last clod crumble on the bed,
And thrill some hollow mansion of the dead,
This, this is wo!—but deeper far the gloom
That haunts us, when we pace the desert room,
And shadow forth an image of our love,
Rapt to Elysian realms of light above;
'Tis now, while low and long the heavy knell
Pours on the breeze a parted soul's farewell,
Despair and anguish curtain round our view,
And all but sorrow seems to be untrue.
How sadly vacant turns the frequent gaze,
To where a mourn'd one smiled in other days!
The eye that glitter'd with each gen'rous thought;
The glowing mind with worth and wisdom fraught;
The twilight walk by some romantic stream,
Where Friendship warm'd, while Fancy wove her dream;
The smile, and wit,—all, all the feeling heart
Delights to trace on mem'ry's faithful chart
Return upon us; Omnipresent Power!
'Tis Thine to lull this agonising hour;
To charm the burden from the soul, and be
A Saviour-God in more than sympathy.

III. PART III.

“In the wild mystery of earth and air,
Sun, moon, and star, and the unslumb'ring sea,—
There is a meaning and a power, commix'd
For thought, and for undying fancy tuned.
And by thy panting for the unattain'd
On earth; by longings which no language speak:
By the dread torture of o'ermast'ring doubt;
By thirst for Beauty, such as eye ne'er saw,
And yet is ever mirror'd on the mind;
By Love in her rich heavenliness array'd;
By Guilt and Conscience,—that terrific pair,
Who make the dead to mutter from their tombs,
And colour nature with the hues of hell!—
By Revelation's everlasting truths,—O Man,
Thou art immortal as thy Maker is!”

ANALYSIS OF PART III.

If there be no God, the former parts of this Poem are moulded from dreams of superstitious fiction;— But can we observe the wonders of Creation, and deem Chance their origin?—The consequences that accrue from this distempered doctrine:—By a natural, but melancholy digression, we are here led to glance at Atheism—as partially influencing the horrors of the French Revolution—Marie Antoinette—Her appearance on the balcony during the tumults at Versailles.

Return to a consideration of Atheism—It is a sorry boast to triumph over a belief of man's immortality —If the soul be not immortal, how are we to account for those aspirations which are never satisfied with the highest attainment of earthly enjoyment? The dismal doctrine of believing all ties of love eternally severed by death:—when we reflect on the master-spirits of gone time, can we imagine them eternally quenched?—Consolations derived from a belief in a future state—Pictures of a deathbed of a Sceptic and a Christian — The Poem concludes with a description of the final Doom.

Now, while the stars in meekest beauty rise,
And gaze on earth, like Heaven's maternal eyes,

Oh, let sublime Imagination soar,
And tread the region Milton trod before,
Ride on the deep, or travel with the sun
Far as creation smiles, or time has run,
So shall her eagle eye divinely see
A universe that glows with Deity,—
In every wave and wind, and fruit and flower,
The glory, truth, and terror of His power.

Who hung yon planet in its airy shrine,
And dash'd the sunbeam from its burning mine?
Who bade the ocean-mountains swell and leap,
And thunder rattle from the skyey deep?
Through hill and dale who twined the healthful stream,
Made rain for nurture, and the fruit to teem?
Who charm'd the clod into a breathing shrine,
And call'd it Man, a miniature divine?—
Lord of Creation, Love, and Life, and Light,
Arise, and vindicate Thine awful right!

And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed
All that the eye perceives, or tongue has named,
The spacious world, and all its wonders, born
Designless, self-created, and forlorn?
That no First Builder plied His plastic force,
Gave to each object form, to motion course?
Then may Religion, Morals, Truth, and Worth,
Perish from out this atheistic earth!
Why should the orphans of the world who roam
O'er earth's bleak waste, without a friend, a home,
With resignation mark their fellow clay
Bask in the sunshine of a better day?
Why should the vagrant shiver at the door,
Nor crush the miser for his treasured ore,
Save Faith's sweet music harmonised the mind,
Whisper'd of Heaven, and bade it be resign'd?

And here let Mem'ry turn her tearful glance
On the grim horrors of tumultuous France;
When blood and blasphemy defiled her land,
And fierce Rebellion raised her savage hand,
While women flung their female hearts away,
Rear'd the red pike, and butcher'd for their pay.

No more the Tocsin for the carnage tolls,
No dead-piled tumbril from the slaughter rolls;
The blood has dried upon each wither'd plain,
And brave La Vendée blooms in peace again;
Still may we paint an image of the times,
And draw a moral from a Nation's crimes.

Ill-fated Land! did godless wisdom pour
The light of liberty from shore to shore?
Ah no, perverted freedom cursed the day
With nameless deeds of horror and dismay;
Virtue was death-struck, Vice alone had power,
And Fiends saw hell on earth, in that black hour!

Let streets of blood, let dungeons choked with dead,
The tortured brave, the royal Hearts who bled;
Let plunder'd cities, and polluted fanes,
The butcher'd thousands piled upon the plains,
Let the foul orgies of stupendous crime
Witness the raging havoc of that time,
When leagued Rebellion march'd to kindle Man,
Fright in her rear, and Murder at her van.

And thou, sweet flower of Austria! slaughter'd queen,
How oft will Hist'ry in thy dreadful scene
Sigh to relate, what once a woman saw,
Whose very look had been a nation's law;
When all high chivalries of heart were fled,
And Treason's dagger pierced the monarch's bed.
But thou wast fearless 'mid the savage yell
When Murder hooted, as the hatchet fell.
Queen to the last! methinks I see thee stand,
With infants clasping thy maternal hand,
And face unmoved the murd'rous throng who came
A deed to do which Earth might shrink to name.

Unmann'd of men! whose thankless eyes can glance
On all around, and deem it born of Chance;
Self-martyr'd victims to appalling doom,
Your life a vision, and your heart a tomb,—
The source and end of Being in the ground,
Where all is silent, and your goal is found!

How charmless time must stream away with you,
To struggle, wish, and weep, and then—Adieu!
Ye cannot stifle Sorrow at her birth,
By hopes prevailing o'er the woes of earth,
Nor soothe the passions which besiege the soul
By immortality's divine control,
Share with the majesty of earth and sky,
Mount on a thought, and talk with Deity!

Boast not of wisdom, if her precepts say
Th' Immortal Essence mingles with the clay;
In polar isles, where wisdom's mellow beam
Ne'er chasten'd beauty's glance, or rapture's dream,
E'en there a Deity pervades the mind,
Speaks in the storm, and travels on the wind.

And shall the Soul, the fount of reason, die,
When dust and darkness round its temple lie?
Did God breathe in it no ethereal fire,
Burning and quenchless, though the breath expire?
Then, why were godlike aspirations given,
That, scorning earth, so often frame a heaven?
Why does the ever-craving wish arise
For better, nobler, than the world supplies?
Ah, no! it cannot be that men were sent
To moulder in ethereal discontent,
That soul was fashion'd for betrayful trust,
To think like God, and perish like the dust!

If Death for ever doom us to the clod,
And earth-born pleasure be our only god,
Remorseless time shall bury all we love,
Nor leave one hope to reunite above;
No more the voice of friendship shall beguile,
No more the mother on her infant smile,
But vanishing, like rain upon the deep,
Nature is,—Nothing, in eternal sleep!

Monarchs of mind! and spirits of the just,
Are ye entomb'd in everlasting dust?
Shall ye, whose names undimm'd by ages shine,
Bright as the flame that mark'd ye for divine,
For ever slumber,—never meet again,
Too pure for sorrow, too sublime for pain?
Ah, no! celestial Fancy loves to fly
With eager pinion, and prophetic eye,
To radiant dwellings of immortal Bliss,
Far from a world so wo-begone as this;
There, as the choral melodies carcer,
And wind and warble through heaven's mystic sphere,
In perfect forms you all again unite,
And worship Godhead on His throne of Light.

When friends have vanish'd to the spirit-home,
And we are left companionless to roam,
Oh, what can cheer our melancholy way,
But hopes of union in the land of Day?
Soul-loved! companions of our greener years,
Warm'd at our joys, and weeping at our tears,
How oft descriptive mem'ry paints each hour,
When friendship triumph'd, and the heart had power!
Yes, hallow'd are those visions of the brain,
When Heaven unveils, and lov'd ones smile again.

And Thou, for ever fond, for ever true,
Beneath whose smile the boy to manhood grew;
To sorrow piteous, and to error mild,
Has Death for ever torn thee from thy child?
Thy voice that counsell'd, charm'd, consol'd, and bless'd,
Thy deep solicitude which found no rest
But in completion of some pure design,
To make my happiness the spring of thine;
Thy boundless love, whose providential gaze
Pour'd light and tenderness round all my ways;
Those myriad fascinations felt and known
Of truth maternal to be borne alone.
(Too coldly prized while we can call them ours,
And feel them gladden the unduteous hours,
But, oh! how worshipp'd, magically dear,
When woke to life by mem'ry's votive tear!)
Though these have perish'd, Love in deathless bloom
Outlives the torpor of the wintry tomb.
There is a clime where sorrow never came,
There is a peace perennially the same;
There rolls a world where sever'd Hearts renew
Bright sympathies, the exquisite and true!
But chasten'd, calm, exalted, and refined
To each pure tone of beatific mind.
There may we meet, departed Spirit! there,
The home of bliss, the paradise of prayer:
A few more pangs, a few more tears to shed,
And I shall mingle with the faded dead;
A few fleet years, and this tried heart must brave
The damp oblivion of the dreamless grave;
When, true as thine, may resignation close
These eyes for glory in their last repose.

And if the Dead on this dull world may gaze
To breathe a blessing round our guarded ways;
If by some ministry, to man unknown,
They still can make a human wish their own,
And wander round, ineffably serene,
That unforgotten home, where life has been,—
Spirit maternal! often gaze on me,
And soothe the pang that so remembers thee!
Hover around me when I mourn, or pray,
Cheer the lone night, and consecrate the day:

When temper kindles, or when passion dares,
Renew thy warning, and recall thy cares,—
Bid thy past love like inspiration rise,
And plead for Virtue with a mother's sighs!

But say! how will the sceptic brave the hour
Of crushing death's inexorable power,
When all this gorgeous world shall glide away,
Like painted dreams before the breath of day?
See, how he shudders at a glance of death;
What doubt and horror hang upon his breath;
The gibb'ring teeth, glazed eye, and marble limb,—
Shades from the tomb stalk out, and stare on him!

Lo, there, in yonder spectre-haunted room,
What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom,
When pale and shiv'ring, and bedew'd with fear,
The dying sceptic felt his hour draw near!
As the last throes of death convuls'd his cheek,
He gnash'd, and scowl'd, and raised a hideous shriek,
Rounded his eyes into a ghastly glare,
Lock'd his white lips—and all was mute despair.

Go, child of Darkness! see a christian die;
No horror pales his lip, or dims his eye;
No fiend-shaped phantoms of destruction start
The hope religion pillows on his heart,
When with a falt'ring hand he waves adieu,
From Hearts as tender as their tears are true;
Meek as an infant to the mother's breast
Turns, fondly longing for its wonted rest,
So to his God the yielding soul retires,
And in one sigh of sainted peace expires.

But what is death or danger, storm or sea,
What are the loudest thunders launch'd by Thee,
Thou dread Jehovah! to a blazing world,—
Creation from its huge foundation hurl'd?
Then, then will reign Thine unimagin'd power,
And Earth in flames expect her funeral hour.

Ages has awful Time been trav'lling on,
And all hìs children to one tomb have gone;
The varied wonders of the peopled earth,
In equal turn, have gloried in their birth;
We live and toil, we triumph and decay,—
Thus age on age rolls unperceived away;
And thus 'twill be, till Heaven's last thunders roar,
And Man and Nature shall exist no more.

Oh! say, what Fancy, though endow'd sublime,
Can picture truly that sepulchral time,
When the last sun shall blaze upon the sea,
And Time be buried in eternity?
A cloudy mantle will enwrap that Sun
Whose face so many worlds have gazed upon;
The placid Moon, beneath whose pensive beam
We all have loved to wander, and to dream,
Dyed into blood, shall glare from pole to pole,
And tinge the gloomy tempests as they roll;
And those sweet Stars, that like familiar eyes,
Are wont to smile a welcome from the skies,
No more shall fascinate our dreaming sight,
But quench their beauty in perpetual night.—
And, hark! how wildly on the ruin'd shore
Expiring Ocean pants in hollow roar,
While earth's abysses echo back the groan,
And startle Nature on her secret throne!

But ere creation's everlasting pall
Unfold its darkness, and envelop all,
The tombs shall burst, the cited dead arise,
And gaze on Godhead with unblasted eyes.

Hark! from the deep of heaven a trumpetsound
Thunders the dizzy universe around;
From north to south, from east to west it rolls
A blast which summons all created souls;
And swift as ripples form upon the deep
The dead awaken from their dismal sleep!
The Sea has heard it; coiling up with dread,—
Myriads of mortals flash from out her bed,
The graves fly open, and with awful strife
The dust of Ages startles into life!

All who have breathed, or moved, or seen, or felt;
All they around whose cradles Kingdoms knelt;
Tyrants and warriors, who were throned in blood;
The great and mean, the glorious and the good,
Are raised from every isle, and land, and tomb,
To hear the changeless, and eternal doom!

But, while the universe is wrapt in fire,
Ere yet the splendid ruin shall expire,
Beneath a canopy of flame behold,
With shining banners at his feet unroll'd,
Earth's Judge! round Whom seraphic minstrels throng,
And chant o'er golden harps celestial song.—
But, let the hush of holy silence now
Brood o'er the heart, and more than words avow,
While the huge fabric of the world gives way,
And shrieking myriads to the mountains pray,
“Descend upon us! Oh, conceal that sight,
The Lamb encompass'd with consuming light!”

Behold a burning Chaos hath begun,
The moon is crimson'd, and how black the sun!

While cloud-flames, welt'ring in confusion dire,
Flash like a firmament of sea on fire;
Yea, all the billows of the main have fled,
And nought appears but ocean's waveless bed,
Whose cavern'd bosom with tremendous gloom
Yawns on the world like dead Creation's tomb!

But lo! the breathing harvest of the earth
Reap'd from their graves to share a second birth;
Millions of eyes with one deep dreadful stare
Gaze upward through the flaming scene of air,
In pierced Immanuel their own Judge to see,
And hear him sentence man's Eternity!
Wing'd like bright angels, warbling hymns of love,
The saints are soaring unto Christ above;
Still as they mount increasing splendours play,
And light the progress of their hallow'd way.
Yet, hark! what horrid yells beneath him rise
From perish'd Souls, who lift their guilty cries,
And by the brink of sin's awarded Hell
Shriek unto God and man their wild farewell!

But here, let silence our religion be,
And prayer become the Muse's poetry;
Nor must the power of meditative song
Grasp the high secrets which to God belong.
Struck with due awe, let Fancy then retire,
And faith divine the dreaming soul inspire,
Under the shade of that almighty Throne
From whose dread face the Universe hath flown!

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

TO THE QUEEN'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY.

THE IDEA OF GOD.

“In the beginning God.”—Gen. i. 1.

Enthroned in vast eternity
How awful, God! to muse on Thee,
Voiceless and viewless, First and Last,
The All in All, without a past!

When thus to Thee our minds would mount,
And trace pure Being to its fount,
O'erawed they shrink abash'd and dim,
Like glory-dazzled Cherubim.

For, once Thou wast the dread Alone,
No universe around Thee thrown,
No choral worlds to chant Thy praise,
No spirits basking in Thy blaze;

But in Thyself, that sacred Three,
Whose name is Love, and Mystery,—
In trinal grandeur thus enshrined,
Unheard, unfelt, and undivined.

Thou didst not, then, the worlds create,
Because Thy glories fail'd to be
Whate'er of infinitely great
Belongs to full-orb'd Deity:

But, from Thine Essence freely came
Creative power, and light, and love,
And all which men or Angels name,
Of bright below, or blest above.

And hence yon worlds, with all they hold
Of perfect, pure, serene, or grand,
The purpose of Thy will unfold,
And fill the hollow of Thy hand.

From Thee our thoughts their grace derive,
Chaste hearts receive celestial glow;
And vainly would the sceptic strive
Without Thee, e'en to think below.

The mind which cannot God discern
Grows day by day more weak, and vile,
Must soon its very self unlearn,—
Absorb'd in sin, and sunk in guile.

Eternal Light! and Law of mind!
If in Thy beams calm angels see
A lustre that would strike them blind
Were they to think they fathom'd Thee;

Let insects like ourselves beware
What majesties to Heaven belong!—
Our science is believing prayer,
And flesh is weak, when faith is strong.

Most glorious God! while thus we scan
Earth, air, and ocean through their bounds,
And yearn to trace the measured plan
Of Wisdom in her mystic rounds;

Be ours the humbling thought, that all
Of form and function, life or sense,
Which men sublime and wondrous call,—
Is nothing to Omnipotence!

It was not once; it would not be,
If Thy dread fiat said, Depart!
For then, the universe would flee,
And leave Thee, Godhead as Thou art.

GOD CREATES.

“God created.”—Gen. i. 1.

There is religion in the common earth,
A creed of beauty in the open sky;
And shower and sunbeam prove a sacred birth,
When fancy views them with a feeling eye.

What men call Nature, is a Thought divine,
The Infinite in forms of finite grace,
Where all conditions, seen in God, combine
To make this earth a consecrated place.

Th' unwritten bible of the woods and fields
By love perused, and ponder'd o'er by prayer,
A second gospel to the poet yields,
Who walks creation, knowing Christ is there.

Nothing is mean, by Power celestial made,
And nought is worthless, by His wisdom plann'd,
Who fashion'd all, that Faith may find display'd
The holy impress of God's master-hand.

Oh, could we hail the Element divine
That circles round whatever lives, or moves,
A mystic radiance would o'er all things shine,
And teach the coldest how the Godhead loves!

One vast cathedral, with its roof of sky,
The earth becomes to reverential souls,
When deepen'd by such felt divinity,
Our heart-breathed hymn of ceaseless worship rolls.

But like a cloud doth sensual dimness hide
The heaven-born glories that around us gleam,
While min'string angels to and fro may glide,
And yet not wake us from our worldly dream.

Alas! for men, when thus creation grows
An orphan'd scene, where God moves undiscern'd;
While for the bliss His gracious hand bestows,
Our thankless hearts, how seldom have they burn'd!

This canker-worm of atheistic sin,
Thrice Holy One! do Thou by grace destroy;
Breathe o'er the deadness of the mind within,
And brighten nature with religious joy.

May the hush'd feeling, Thou art ever nigh,
God in the creatures, Life and Law of all,
Unveil pure Edens to our purgèd eye,
And free the spirit from degrading thrall.

Then will a spell of solemn beauty grace
The humblest object which the senses scan,
A temple rise in every cloister'd place,
And all cry, “Worship!” to believing man.

Mountain or forest, wood, or wild, or shore,
Roam where we choose, whatever scene be trod,
The reign of mindless solitude is o'er,
For now, like Enoch, conscience walks with God.

And, thus companion'd by His love and word,
Each man as brother, faith delights to own;
Peasant and prince, from each alike is heard
“Our Father!” warbled to creation's Throne.

Were but this creed by loving hearts enjoy'd,
And God paternal by the soul embraced,
How much of dark'ning self would be destroy'd,
And beauty live, where now breathes moral waste!

Our common life would seem a holy thing,
The lone creation be with God allied,
And not an hour but would some anthem sing,
To praise the Fountain which our stream supplied.

Around, above, beneath, 'tis all divine,
When faith the grand Original can see,
And, while Sense worships in the outer-shrine,
Know the vast world was once a thought in Thee.

Lord! may Thy Spirit to our spirit lend
A princely heart of innocence and prayer,
Whose unction shall the sacred feeling send,
That proves, at every pulse, our God is there.

Radiant his soul, though dark the sense-bound doom
Terrestrial changes for its home supply,
Who feels, before his dust descend the tomb,
That all is christian to the christian eye.

OUR DUTY IS OUR GLORY.

“Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Cor. x. 31.

Beauteous words! with glory burning,
Guide and guardian of our days,
Let us be for ever learning
Wisdom from their wealth to raise:
In them hides a heavenly power
Which may hallow scene and hour,
Touching all we hear, or see,
With soft rays of Deity!

He who call'd us into being,
Each created for some plan;
And, by prescience all foreseeing,
So equipp'd the soul of man,
That unless the sleepless Mind
Love itself in all mankind,
Whatsoe'er bright scenes present,—
Dark life grows a discontent.

Yet, apart from Revelation,
Wisdom no true motive found,
That with perfect inspiration
Could for all alike abound:
Pleasure, gain, or mental force,
Palms which crown Ambition's course,—
Sages found some lofty name,
Thus to fix the final aim.

But, where exists in heathen story
Bard, or sage, who could descry
Such a path for peaceful glory
While we live, or when we die,
As this text of heaven-breathed truth
Here unfolds for age and youth,—
“Whatsoe'er ye think, or do,
Be your God the goal in view!”

'Twas Thine own celestial motive,
Lord, when Thou on earth didst live;
So, with spirit pure and votive
Let us vow ourselves to give
Back to Thee!—in woe or weal,
Let our lives be one long zeal
Never from Thy Church to roam,
Faith's delight, and Feeling's home!

None can reach a blissful centre
Where the reas'ning mind can rest,
Save by fellowship they enter
On the pathway God hath blest:
Great and glorious as may seem
All which gilds an earth-born dream,
Self can frame no heaven for sin,
But it works a hell within!

Blest is he who thus resigneth
Soul and body unto Him,
From Whose words whoe'er declineth,
Martyr, saint, or seraphim,
Must in darkness, death, and woe,
Downward to perdition go,
Reaping from self-will a curse,
That would fire the universe.

Sons of Heaven! be this your glory,
Christ as motive so to feel,
That life nor death shall set before ye
What can daunt, or dim your zeal:
Rich, or poor, or small, or great,
Nought to you is outward state:
God and grace within you dwell,
And your mercies who can tell?

Happy, happy is the feeling,
Life belongs to Him who died,
By atonement thus revealing
Love incarnate, crucified.
Duty, danger, toil, and time,
Now are touch'd by truth sublime;
All we have to faith appears,
Sacred to His blood and tears.

With such motive deeply glowing,
Sin and self we learn to shun,
So on heaven our hearts bestowing,
That the angel seems begun;
While more purely we can pray,
And our creed of glory say,
“Thou art worthy! Thou alone!
Be our hearts Thy hallow'd throne!”

Needs no rank, nor wealth, nor learning,
When our sainted wills incline
With a passion ever burning
To pursue the path divine:
Humble care and cottage-scene
To the Lord's elect have been
Little Edens, where they found
Angels camping all around!

Though thy station be but lowly,
Christ is there, the soul to bless;
Though thou seem'st forgotten wholly,
Left to toil in loneliness,
Eyes through heaven are peering down,
In thy cross to see thy crown:—
Let thy task in prayer be done,
And thy glories are begun!

Tell me not, in gloom and anguish,
Lone and needy thou art left;
Faith can ne'er for duty languish,
Love and Hope are not bereft,

If thy soul can truly say,
At the close of each calm day,
“Father! do Thy gracious will,
Let my life Thy law fulfil!”

Hast thou cheer'd the broken-hearted
With a look of genial love?
As the dying breath departed
Didst thou point to worlds above?
Hast thou sought the peasant's door,
Soothed the sick, or cheer'd the poor,
Lighted up the widow's eye,
Or relieved an orphan's sigh?

Fameless, then, though Earth deny thee
Wealth and grandeur, power and place,
More than worlds could e'er supply thee
'Tis to love the human race!
Like some instrument of sound
Changing with all airs around,
Hearts of heaven can sympathise
With whate'er a spirit tries.

Read we then in hallow'd story
With a swell of wordless joy,
Duty forms divinest glory,
When our lives for God employ
Feeling, faculty, and power,
Home and heart, and scene and hour,
As one sacrifice of soul,
Due to Him who gave the whole!

THE FIRST MAN.

“Let us make man.”—Gen. i. 26.

Now, Heaven and Earth in finish'd beauty rise,
And Ocean peals her new-born harmonies;
And lo! awaking into life
With stainless glory rich and rife,
Under the breath of God's creative word,
The realms of Being into bliss are stirr'd.

Oh! to have gazed on glorious earth and sea,
When, like the Infant of eternity,
Our breathing World began to smile;
Or, like some list'ning heart awhile,
In mute suspension waited for a Soul
To greet her glories, and command the whole.

For, how could dumb magnificence display,
Or this blank world as reasonless, portray
The higher attributes of God,
Till earth by human feet was trod;
And young creation gain'd some priestly Mind
To offer incense, pure as God design'd?

But, hark! within the deeps of that Recess
Where God enshrines His awful consciousness,
Three Persons speak, Three Minds commune,
A Council holds the dread Triune;
And “Let Us make” him, symbols forth to man
The outward meaning of Their inward Plan.

And thus, obedient to that forming call,
Emerges Man, the blissful lord of all;
Soft lustres o'er his features play,
And brow and bearing both display
That regal air, God's image ought to show
As priest and monarch of His world below.

Hosannah! now ye choral planets sing;
Poetic winds and waters, hail your king!
Wake Sympathies! through earth and air
Your genial motion everywhere;
God's labours now their sabbath-haven reach,
And silence echoes with the charm of speech.

O happy vision! O celestial scene!
What Heaven beheld, what sinless Earth hath been,
When Paradise and perfect bliss
Hallow'd a world sublime as this;
Wing'd angels quiver'd over Eden's bowers,
And Eve look'd fairer than the vestal flowers.

Departed glory!—back to earth it seems
At times recall'd, in those seraphic dreams
When round us steals the witching sense
Of man's unblotted innocence,
And o'er the harp-strings of entrancèd soul
Fragments of forfeit Eden's music roll.

But, never let our joyless gloom repine,
Blest Lord! as though there breathed not hopes divine,
That earth may boast a nobler doom
Than Paradise in perfect bloom;
For Thou hast purchased, by atoning blood,
A world transcending what was once the “good.”

And may the Spirit of Thy grace descend,
Our feelings hallow, and our hearts amend;
Inspire us, O Creative Three,
To image forth the Trinity,
Till man shall witness more than Eden saw,
His heart Thy temple, and Thy truth his law.

MIND OF LITTLE CHILDREN.

“Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child.”—Matt. xviii. 1, 2.

Men call it wisdom, when they grow
Less and less like a child;
But let the harsh and haughty know
Such wisdom is defiled;
The cold perfection of a cautious man,
Who gains by cunning,—what the Serpent can!

He, whose all-meas'ring Soul perceived
The heights and depths of mind,
A nobler creed would have believed
When present with mankind,
Who said, with Infancy beside His knee,
“He that is greatest, like a child must be.”

Heaven to a child comes nearer far
Than in maturer age,
When passion's brunt and blighting war
Their ceaseless battle wage
Against those young simplicities which dwell
Deep in the bosom, like a guardian-spell.

Oh! for a reverential eye
To Childhood which pertains,
That sees religion in the sky,
And poetry in plains;
To whom a rainbow like a rapture glows,
And all is marvel which th' Almighty shows.

Blest age of Wonder! when a flower,
A blossom, fruit, or tree,
Gives a new zest to each new hour
Which gladdens home with glee:
When like a lisping stream life rolls along
In happy murmurs of unconscious song.

It smiles on that, and speaks to this,
As if each object knew
A child exulted in the bliss
Of all that charms its view:
Personified the whole creation seems
Into a heart that mirrors back its dreams.

Life looks a fairy landscape spread
Before the untaught gaze,
As on the infant Soul is led
To meet its vernal days,
Where pure-eyed Innocence may well discern
A deeper beauty than the wise can learn.

Fresh from the hands of God they come
These infants of His grace,
And something of celestial home
Yet lingers in their face;
Strange to the world, no worldliness defiles
The little history of their tears and smiles.

Candid and curious, how they seek
All truth to know and scan;
And, ere the budding mind can speak,
Begin to study Man!
Confiding sweetness colours all they say,
And Angels listen, when they try to pray.

More playful than the birds of spring,
Ingenuous, warm, sincere,
Like meadow-bees upon the wing
They roam without a fear;
And breathe their thoughts on all who round them live,
As Light sheds beams, or flowers their perfume give.

And how the Church o'erawes their sense,
With rite and ritual graced!
Whose creed is loving innocence,
Which time hath not effaced;
And would that those, who Manhood's paths have trod,
Like infants trembled at the name of God!

Mysterious age! the type of heaven,
By Jesu's blessing crown'd,
To thee a purity is given
Grey hairs have never found;
The arms of Christ do yet encircle thee
Like a soft halo which the Heart can see.

Mere knowledge makes us keen and cold,
And cunning dwarfs the mind,
As more and more the heart grows old
With feelings base and blind;
Our light is clearer, but our love is less,
And few the bosoms which our own can bless!

Spirit of Grace! we learn from Thee
This noble truth, at length,—
That wisdom is simplicity,
Simplicity is strength;
A Child-man, could the world a model find,
Would be a living type for human-kind.

SOOTHING CHARM OF TIME.

“No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.”—Heb. xii. 11.

When Time shall lay his lenient hand
On this large grief of ours,
The burden'd Heart will understand
The mystery of past hours;
But now, so thick a tear bedims the moisten'd eye
That earth looks sever'd off from yonder loving sky.

Mere fragment of a mighty Whole,
How little man can see,
While sin contracts the clouded soul,
Of plans becoming Thee,
Who didst by wisdom deep, from Thine all-boundless mind,
In heaven forecast the lot for human souls design'd.

To two eternities relate
The pangs endured on earth;
And all which marks our mortal fate
In sickness, death, or birth,
In awful depths of God before all time was plann'd,
And carries with it more than sin can understand.

Yet, when the cloud of woe hath burst
Upon our hearts and homes,
And Guilt appears by God accursed,
The wistful Spirit roams
From earth to heaven, in hope that some dear light will dart
A ray of guiding truth, to cheer the chasten'd heart!

Then, crowded o'er with sumless graves
This blighted world appears;
O'er each young joy the cypress waves,
The eye seems made for tears;
Calm mercies which remain in darkness now recede,
And boding Fancy dreams, that Life was born to bleed!

Unwise, unholy, and unjust
We mourners then are found,
Who, in bereavement, cannot trust
Those Arms encircled round
All sorrow, time, and change, whate'er the trial be,
To girdle man with strength, if Faith those Arms would see.

Afflictions should be sacred things;
Some drops that overflow
From that great Cup the Saviour brings
Of anguish, grief, or woe,
To each disciple here, who bears his Master's cross,
And, when he calls him, “Lord!” doth count the gainful loss.

How can the sainted child of God
Resemble Christ, unless
His upward path of life be trod
Through shades of stern distress?
The Lord of bleeding love, oh, lived He not alone,
Unecho'd by a heart that understood his groan?

And think, bereaved one! in that hour
When ruin'd hopes lie cold,
While death and darkness overpower
Whate'er thine eyes behold,
Of Him, who had not where to rest His gracious head,
Weeping with stricken heart, when Love “forsook and fled!”

Dejection now may cast
A dimming veil round all
Which brighten'd o'er thy youthful past;
While underneath the pall
That seems to overshroud whate'er we love below,
Thy creedless heart detects no sight but death and woe.—

Still, when the Dove of Peace divine
Shall o'er thy spirit brood,
And with His calm thy love combine,
The soul will say, 'Twas “good;—
Affliction with its flame hath purified the dross,
And deeper in my soul enstamp'd a Saviour's cross.”

And thus, the nerveless Mind will gain
New force, and faith to meet
Each rising swell of future pain,
And lay it at His feet;
As sunk the billows down along their placid sea,
When Christ in calmness walk'd the waves of Galilee.

Eternal Soother of the soul!
True Paraclete for all
Who yield to Thy serene control,
On Thee for aid we call;
Anguish, and gloom, and grave, can make the mourner sigh,
But, ah, we shall not sink,—The Comforter is nigh!

Perfect through suffering!—'tis the plan
Mysterious Love decrees;
And Christ, who was The sinless Man,
From this found no release:
His life was living prayer, with every pang combined,
Where men and angels see a perfect Will resign'd.

We seek not, Lord, a pangless life
In homes and haunts of bliss;
But, only that our mental strife
May ne'er Thy presence miss:—
Not starless is the night, when radiant truths arise,
And point each promise forth that beacons to the skies!

CHRIST THE GRAND REFUGE.

“Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”—John vi. 68.

“There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.”—Acts iv. 12.

Lord, and whither shall we go?
Thou alone hast words of life:
In our stormful griefs below
Who, but Thou, can heal the strife
Sin and sorrow round us bring,
In life's vale, while wandering?

What can mortal Wisdom teach
If o'er graves it cannot soar?
How can rest the conscience reach
If it leaves us as before?
Guilty shades will haunt us yet,
Making life one long regret!

Poet! shall we come to thee,
Harping forth some noble strain,—
Songs of fire, which tell the free
Never to be slaves again,
Till they echo back thy word
As by trumpet-music stirr'd?

Son of Science! shall we soar
Through yon starry worlds, to find
Burning secrets which before
Never glanced on human mind,—
Orbs of myst'ry, as they roll
Preaching God to sense and soul?

Man of Learning! may we dare
From thine oracle to draw
Truths which tell us what we are,
Or, that hush the dreadful Law,
Thund'ring forth from earth and sea,
“Render what thou ow'st to me?”

Can you ease a burden'd soul
From the crushing weight of sin,
When it feels some fierce control
Like a throbbing hell within?
Can you cry to wearied Breast,
“Hither! here is holy rest?”

Have your words a healing skill,
If applied with perfect art,
To renew the rebel Will
Till it take the better part,
Bidding ev'ry wing'd desire
Upward to the heavens aspire?

God and man can ye unite
In such bonds of sacred peace,
That the blood-wash'd heart is white
By Atonement's blest release?
Can ye show a radiant Heaven
Smiling o'er the soul forgiven?

Foolish all false wisdom is,
If to such attempts it rise;
Would we claim a power like this?—
Seek it, then, beyond the skies:
Man at most can human be;
What we want, is Deity!

Blessed Christ! embodied Word!
Thou alone art Life and Light;
Saints who have Thy truth preferr'd
Walk in peace, and worship right;
Thou alone to sin canst say,
“I am Love, the Living Way.”

Sun of Grace! oh, ever shine
Round our paths, where'er they lead;
Midnight feels a ray divine
Breaking through the darkest need,
If we hear, when most dismay'd,
“It is I! be not afraid!”

Pardon, peace, and purity,
Gifts without, and grace within,
Love and light, which set us free
From the curse and chain of sin,—
These, Emanuel! Thou canst give,
While upon Thy words we live.

Not a want, Thou canst not fill;
Not a fear, Thou wilt not tame;
If, indeed, repentance will
Rest upon Thy glorious name,
High o'er every guilt and grave
Shall Redemption's banner wave!

Lord, then whither shall we go,
Save to Thee, our Refuge sure?
Balm to each bereaving woe,—
Who alone the heart canst cure,
Turning sickness into health,
And, to want, becoming wealth.

Well of Comfort! Vital Spring!
Other source we dare not seek;
Broken cisterns only bring
Mocking draughts which make us weak:
If our souls would slake their thirst,
They must die, or seek Thee first!

Saviour! be our Polar Star
Shaded by no sinful night;
Shed upon us from afar
Living beams of holy light:—
When we reach our radiant home,
We shall know the way we come.

POWER OF THE DEAD.

“I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the living which are yet alive.”—Eccles. iv. 2.

“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, from thenceforth ------ They rest from their labours.” —Rev. xiv. 13.

My thoughts are with the dear and dead,
Who wake the inward sigh,
And here an atmosphere have spread
Breathed from the days gone by.

Then do not mock the mental gloom
That o'er my brow is stealing;
For, could I walk this well-known room
Without an ancient feeling?

What genial hours of mirth and glee
Have here those bright friends known,
Who since to hush'd eternity
Like living Dreams have flown!

And think not that a stoic chill
Is o'er my present cast;
But, something more than mem'ry will
Untomb the buried past.

What, though these walls no longer now
Present that houschold grace,—
A pictured father's pensive brow,
A mother's beaming face,

Yet, I can almost hear them speak,
And wake each cheerful tone,
And catch the gladness of her cheek
That lighted up my own.

Oh, here has swell'd the choral song,
And music's charm hath been,
While mellow'd feelings moved along
Like waves in moonlight seen.

And kindly words of love and truth
From lips now cold in death,
Come wafted from the days of youth,
Like resurrection-breath!

So full the present fills the past
With tenderness and tears,
Time seems by some fond Angel cast
Back into buried years.

I think of her whose azure eyes
Were motherly and mild,
Clear as the morn's cerulean skies,
In sweetness when they smiled:

Gentle in tone, and graceful, too,
In motion, mind, and mien,
How warm the social ray she threw
O'er each domestic scene!

As mother, wife, and peerless friend,
In all her ways appear'd
A beauteous Soul, in whom did blend
The graces love revered.

And he whose world-wide fame is wed
To History and to Man,
Though number'd with th' immortal dead,
How high a course he ran!

I see him now, his fervid gaze
Illumined keen with thought,
And glow beneath the flashing rays
From his bright wisdom caught.

With heavenly truth historic lore
His works have nobly blent,
And Time, who keeps our mental store,
Shall make his monument.

Can I forget that hoary sage,
The generous, pure, and good,
Who counsell'd oft my unripe age
As only Virtue could?

And, when I dared to strike the lyre
In loneliness and fear,
Who bade me as the Bard aspire,
And woke my grateful tear!

But, like a vision all are gone
To join the world unseen,
And when these walls I gaze upon,
I ask,—if such have been?

Mysterious Charm! Oh, solemn Past,
How deeply felt art thou!
Beyond the scenes around us cast,
The world exciting now.

The touching thought—no more! no more!
Doth sanctify the room,
Where blending Hearts embraced of yore,
Now pulseless in the tomb.

But, why and whence, we cannot tell,
A living moment fails
To rule us with that inward spell
Which from the past prevails.

The perish'd bloom of boyhood's prime
How beautiful it seems,
When, tinged with melancholy time,
It dawns upon our dreams!

Forth from the heart there went a hue
Which made the world romance;
But ah, how changed and chill the view
As riper years advance!

Rank, wealth, and reputation, all
Must leave the breast a void,
Whene'er our yearning hearts recall
What vanish'd youth enjoy'd.

Eternity familiar reads
To Faith's perusing eye,
As spirit after spirit speeds
To populate the sky.

Each added year that Home commends
Where Souls unbodied dwell,
To all, who feel how parted friends
Retain their living spell:

For while we tread the room they trod
And haunt the scene they chose,
We love to think they dwell in God,
All rapture, and repose!

BODILY SUFFERING.

“Always bearing about in the body, the dying of the Lord Jesus.”—2 Cor. iv. 10.

“I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.”—Gal. vi. 17.

“Christ shall be magnified in my body.”— Phil. i. 20.

“This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.”—John xi. 4.

Who can explain the living dust we bear?
That breathing miracle of pain or bliss,
Incarnate Soul, what science can declare?—
Yet, did we ponder on a truth like this,
Each pulse of being would proclaim our God,
And preach His wisdom wheresoe'er we trod.

But health with such pure harmony of ease
The inward play of wonted life preserves,
That not till flesh be pierced with sharp disease,
Or pang convulsive all the frame unnerves,
Are men awaken'd from their godless dream.
To mark what mercies in the body teem.

Tis now, while throbbing fires of fever burn,
Or the vexed life-blood mantles brow and brain,
And on his couch, with many a wearied turn,
Moans the pale martyr of mysterious pain,—
Oft is the soul by lingering sickness taught,
A deeper love than health-days ever brought.

Oh! how we pine for Nature's freshness now,
For wood and wild, and many-voicèd stream,
And long to feel upon the wasted brow
The quivering gladness of her sun-warm beam,
When pining Languor, with dejected eye,
Through half-veil'd window sees the orient sky.

And blessings, which in hours of heedless calm
Were lightly view'd, or out of God partaken,
Now they have vanish'd, with remember'd balm
Rebuke some thankless Heart they have forsaken;
While forms and faces, which indifferent were,
Throng round the soul, and thrill it into prayer.

The stern seem mild, the harsh attemper'd down
To childhood's softness, or to woman's tear,
And the false gildings of ambition's crown
Grow dimly pale before one righteous fear:
Life drops the mask, and all Earth's painted show
Melts into gloom, and looks one shaded woe.

Soon, conscience wakes; and sin and guilt are seen
In the deep blackness of their dismal truth;
Clear on the soul, though flesh-veils intervene,
Remembrance visions both our age and youth;
And faith sees God's detective eyebeams dart
Their piercing brightness through the naked heart!

O, Thou incarnate Sympathy for all!
On earth a Saviour, and in heaven the same,
Now to the sick those precious truths recal,
Which crown the wonders of Emanuel's name;
Calm the wild conscience with a word of peace,
And in Thy Merit show the soul's release.

For though no malady by Thee was felt,
Nor sickness by Thy sacred flesh endured,
Ne'er did the music of compassion melt
With softer tones, than when some pang was cured;
Anguish and grief in Thy pure breast were known,
And suffering raised Thee to yon glory-Throne!

Then, doubt not, Child of sickness and of woe,
When through sad vigils of the wakeful night
Thy cup of trial seems to overflow,
Till earth be tomb-like to thy weaken'd sight,
That Jesu numbers all dark moments bring
To harrow Flesh with untold suffering.

Heavy, and lone, and long the night-hours wear,
And minutes seem with leaden pace to move,
But o'er thy couch, when riseth low-breathed prayer,
Throbs the pure heart of that almighty Love
In Christ embodied, when for man He died,
By friends deserted, and by foes denied.

Pains are dread mysteries! not from God they came
By pure creation, when man's perfect mould
Of outward beauty to the inward frame
Of innocence did fine proportion hold:—
From sin and self, all pangs and pains begun,
That since the Fall their withering course have run.

But mercies hover o'er a sick man's bed,
Wing'd for descent, on lenient plumes of love,
And virtues oft from frail disease are bred,
Which ripen souls for sainted bliss above:
Health needs a cross, whose Christ-like touch shall thrill
The fainting treason of our palsied will.

And but for sickness, health would rarely be
What by dread contrast Trial lives to know,—
From God direct, a pure gratuity
Sent from His heart and hand, to Whom we owe
Not grace alone our forfeit souls to save,
But all pure mercies which precede the grave.

And, ah! what purity from pain hath sprung,
That in the turbid rush of healthful joys
Seems lost, and leaves wild passion warm and young,
To Earth's delirium, and her base alloys;
For sufferings oft etherealize the heart,
Till false emotions into faith depart.

Silence and solitude a lull beget,
Or tame Life's pulses into hallow'd rest,
Chasten the mind, and calm that secret fret
Man's harsher world-life chafes within the breast,
As rivers, tranced by some Canadian frost,
Have turn'd to lakes, and all defilement lost.

Thus may pale sickness prove a blessed Thing,
And pain achieve, what pleasure never can,—
Teach the gay heart, beneath th' Almighty wing,
To learn the mystery of redemption's plan,—
How faith by suffering must to glory soar,
And drink the cup her Master drank before.

GOD'S IMAGE.

“God created man in His Own image, in the image of God created He him.”—Gen. i. 27.

As Lord of this terrestrial sphere,
Semblance divine did Man appear;
Just moulded by the hand of God,
The soil of virgin earth he trod,
And when through his mysterious frame
In gushes of pure rapture came
Bright feelings born of innocence,
And sanction'd by Omnipotence,
O God! Thine Image was enshrined
In the clear depths of his calm mind.

“Man in Our Image,”—mighty thought!
With more than human meaning fraught;
For, how can sinner's filmèd eye
The glories of that Speech descry?
How can the soil'd and earth-bound soul
Itself release from blind control,
And thus, from passion nobly free,
Hail the crown'd work of Deity,—

Perfection in the dust began,
God's “image” in the soul of man?

Alas! the words beyond us soar;
Dead Paradise revives no more;
For in the soil where thorns abound
God's curse still preaches from the ground,
And Labour, with its sunken brow
Of weariness, fulfils it now;
And in the soul, lo! all is sin;
Darkness and death prevail within,
Where Self is like a Satan throned,
A hell preferr'd, and God disown'd!

God's “image,” is it seen below
In this sad world of blight and woe?
Where can we view its peerless grace,
And look upon that perfect face
Which lightens up with Deity,
Till Angels their own likeness see,
And transcripts of such glory shine,
That they reflect the looks Divine?
In priest, or poet, saint, or sage,
In parted years, or present age?

Go! search mankind from pole to pole,
The archives of the past unroll,
Consult the chart of history,
As read in hoar antiquity,
Select, combine, and concentrate
The models of our good and great,
The paramounts of man and mind,
The lords and lights of human Kind,—
And, then we challenge each and all,
To make God's “image,” since the fall!

In human light a darkness lies;
All human love a hate supplies;
Our human wisdom folly stains;
O'er human strength a weakness reigns;
To human virtue baseness clings;
And Glory mounts on sullied wings;
Love, Truth, and Wisdom, Virtue, all
Our wav'ring creeds perfection call,
What are they, in God's balance weigh'd,
But sin, by gilded self array'd?

Thus, imperfection mars and maims
What Nature for her noblest claims;
The upas-blight, the poisoning breath
Of inward guilt and moral death,
Lurks in the soul of whatsoe'er
Men laurel as the bright and fair.—
“God's image,” then, oh! where on earth
Can Faith behold its beauteous worth?
Where can we sun our hearts awhile
In virtues which no stains defile?

Thou Third in Godhead! Holy Ghost,
The Christian's life, the Church's boast,
Pure Helper of the heart's distress,
And Cheerer of lone weariness,
The inward Sun of heaven-born souls,
Who all their prayer and praise controls,
To Thee, true Paraclete! we owe
The all of God that lives below,—
What broken fragments yet may shine
Of that whole “Image” once Divine.

There is a sacramental birth,
A promise of baptismal worth,
A life from heaven to earth sent down,
A jewel dropt from Jesu's crown,
A power that with celestial art
Can renovate the ruin'd heart;
Unheard, unseen, unscann'd, unknown,
This wonder-work is all Thine own;
The power is felt, 'tis born of Thee,
Yet who, dread Spirit! grace can see?

But, let God's image be restored,
Let guilt be wash'd, and sin deplored,
And saintly virtues, meek and mild,
Will shadow forth God's chosen child;
Without, within, by faith and prayer
Will breathe that reverential air,
That shows the world what Christ hath done,
The trophies which the Cross hath won
In winning back what Adam lost,—
A forfeit Soul, at such a cost!

But oh, blest Lord! if men would see
The perfect type of Deity,
Then, from the Church's child of grace
We turn, to look on Thy sad face,
O Man of Sorrows! Son of God!
As o'er the world Thy way was trod,
Each living impress of Thy love
To man below shows God above,
While in Thy doctrine, death, and tears,
Jehovah in our flesh appears.

THE DYING GIRL.

[INSCRIBED TO PHILIP ROSE, ESQ., THE FOUNDER OF THE HOSPITAL FOR CONSUMPTION.]

“Her sun is gone down while it was yet day.” Jer. xv. 9.

CONSUMPTION.

A beauty clothes the hectic cheek,
A radiance fills the sunken eye,
But when her mellow'd accents speak,
They make the sadden'd hearer sigh;

For, softer sink they in their cadence far
Than Autumn's dying tone, beneath some mournful star.

They bore her to that healthful Isle
Whose rocks of terraced verdure rise
And catch the Morn's celestial smile,
Responsive to the greeting skies;
And vainly prophesied, the island-breeze
Would freshen her white cheek, and waft away disease.

But there she sicken'd, day by day,
In shrinking paleness, like a flower,
Yet from her glance there flash'd a ray
Of almost supernat'ral power;—
So bright the lustre of her eye-beam fell,
It touch'd the tender mind with more than woman's spell.

For mother too, and far-off home,
Her plaintive heart in secret cried;
And backward long'd her soul to roam,—
Since in the churchyard, side by side
Under the green turf, where loved sisters lay,
She hoped her dust might wait the awful Judgment-day.

And, there behold her once again
In her own room with placid brow,—
So pale, you see each azure vein
Meander through her beauty now;
Yet, like a pulse of rosy light at even,
Oft to her faded cheek a crimson flush is given.

Seldom she sighs, but veils within
Much that would grieve fond Love to know,
And when some pensive tears begin,
She tries to check their overflow;
Safe in the arms of Jesu rests her soul,
Nor does the early grave with gloom the mind control.

Not for herself, but for the heart
Of Love maternal, she could weep;
And often in young dreams will start,
As girlish days through mem'ry sweep,
While faintly through her lips there steals a word,—
And, “Oh! my mother dear!” is like low music heard.

She dies,—as Beauty ever dies
When sad consumption finds a tomb;
With brilliance in her deep-set eyes,
And on her face a healthless bloom;
No harsh transition, but a soft decay,
Like dream-born tones of night, which melt by dawn away.

They wheel her round each garden-walk
Where oft her lisping childhood play'd,
And loved to hear the old nurse talk
And soothe her when she seem'd afraid,
While danced her ringlets as she prattled on,
More playful than the birds she loved to gaze upon.

She looks, as they alone, who feel
The last of earth before them lies,
While o'er them soften'd mem'ries steal
Which melt the heart into the eyes,—
For, tree and turret, woods and uplands, all
Back to the dying girl her childish past recall!

Dream-like the hush of twilight floats,
Veiling the lilac-bowers around;
While in the air melodious notes
Of soft dejection sweetly sound:
The Landscape, like a conscious mourner, seems
To lie in brooding shade, and sadden as it dreams.

Now, to her chamber home return'd,
Before the casement there reclined,
Just as the broad horizon burn'd
With the last blush Day left behind,
Her eye reposed upon the dying sun,
Fading like feeble youth, before life's course is run.

Hush'd is the breezeless air, and deep
The awe around each mourner stealing;
Bend o'er her form, but do not weep,—
Death is too grand for outward feeling!
As sinks the sun beneath yon golden sea,
So ebbs her spirit back to God's eternity.

THE HOSPITAL.

She dies, as countless martyrs die
Beneath the blast of that Disease,
Which summons to th' immortal sky
All ages for their blest release:—
Not for the dead, but for the living mourn,
And childless mothers' hearts, and homes bereaved and lorn!

But oh, unlike that beauteous maid
Who died in mercy, truth, and prayer,
Millions expire on damp stones laid
With none to watch them wither there;
Creedless and hopeless, fever'd, sad, and lone,
Their life an anguish seems, their death a muffled groan!

Compassion! 'tis for such we plead;
Open thine hand, protect the poor,
And Christ, who soothed Creation's need,
Shall bless thy basket and thy store;
Counting all mercies to the orphan shown,
As done unto Himself, when Earth beholds His Throne.

And Thou, on Whom disease and health
Alike for stay and hope depend,
A godlike heart bestow on Wealth,
And let the strong the weak defend;
Till charity in perfect type appear,
And leave the glow of heaven on this benighted sphere.

Guard then, O Lord! that sacred pile
Whose walls o'ershade the sick and poor,
For there, Thine own benignant smile
Descends to gild each opening door;
And where the pale ones in consumption lie,
Some gracious beams bestow of Thine o'er-watching eye!

The Saviour in the poor man lives
Reflected through his pain and grief;
And he who to the wretched gives,
To Christ himself imparts relief.
And therefore, Shrine of Hope! we hail thy walls,
Where true compassion works what God on earth recalls.

And faith from out this calm disease
May waft to heaven its holy breath,
Ere the last sigh hath brought release,
And smile away the gloom of death;
For wan consumption lets the spirit pray,
And leaves the mind to act amid serene decay.

When fever-throbs of fiery pain
Beat through the blood with burning start,
How can sublime religion gain
A sainted hold upon the heart?
To human sense, a ruin man appears,
All blacken'd with despair, and blind with hideous fears.

But, Mercy! thou canst cheer the bed
Where gradual weakness gently dies,
As o'er the life past sin hath led
Repentance heaves accepted sighs;
And that which careless Health had never taught,
Some hallow'd Sickness oft to erring souls has brought.

And, Lord, this blissful hope we nurse,
That many a wild and wand'ring Soul
Who reap'd in crime Thy dooming curse,
And heard its coming thunders roll,
Here, in this guardian home of peace and love,
May shed the precious tears glad Angels greet above.

SOCIAL, AND YET ALONE.

“It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”—Gen. ii. 18.

“It is not good for man to be alone,”
Thus spake the Godhead from his viewless Throne;
And yet, if ever Soul might be
In solitude divinely free,
'Twas when emotion through the young earth ran,
As the first sunbeam fell on perfect man.

Though all without was beautiful and bright,
And grace within made intellectual light,
While sinless heart and loyal will
Harmoniously did each fulfil
The law of love, by wisdom round them thrown,—
It seem'd not good that man should be alone.

It is not “good!” for That most awful Three
Whose name is Love, whose shrine, Eternity,
In plural bliss for aye commune;
Their Godhead is a blest Triune,
Eternal One in Three, and Three in One,
Unfathom'd, Infinite, and Unbegun!

But erring, sinful, branded as we are,
How little each another's heart can share!
How much within us, none can know;
What feelings Words might blush to show,
Hid from the fondest eye which ever gazed
Under the shroud confiding friendship raised!

And tones are felt of individual heart
We cannot, if we would, by breath impart,—
So deep, so delicate they glide
Under the soul's mysterious tide;
Blent with those shifting thoughts that form and die,
Too faint for words, too subtle for a sigh.

And who has not, in those ideal hours
When Nature marshals her majestic powers
Which mountain, sky and ocean yield,
Tempests awake, or torrents wield,—
Within him felt, what speech has not convey'd,
And soft tears only to the sense display'd?

Or, when a sun-burst of entrancing good
Gladdens our being into gratitude,
And thoughts emotionally bright
Leap in the heart like waves of light,
How have our quiv'ring lips refused to speak
What flush'd its meaning through our raptured cheek!

And often too, when sorrow's milder gloom
Shades the still bosom into memory's tomb,
When buried friends of boyish days
Deep yearnings in our spirit raise,
How vain the effort to unwind the zone
Which girds the heart, and keeps it all alone!

And thou, Religion!—who can half unfold
The spells divine thy deeper graces hold?
Before mute conscience lies a screen
That hides from human words, I ween,
Those loving secrets and those solemn fears
Which God interprets through our spirits' tears.

And thus, a sense there is, in which alone
We must be,—for the soul cannot be shown;
And hence, all life is loneliness;
Our highest moods are echoless;
Single we live, in solitude we die,
For each heart only can itself descry.

But still, what self-born dangers e'er infest
The man, who cloisters in monastic breast
Feelings and hopes, which God intends
As living cords, to fasten friends
In that sweet bond of amity and love
Form'd by the angels, when they sing above!

Sternly alone, forbid us, Lord! to be;
Warm our chill minds, and centre them on Thee;
Bought by one price, Thy precious Blood!
And in Thy church, a brotherhood,
With God's elected may we ever meet
In mystic oneness at Thy mercy-seat.

For what, though morbid Sentiment may dream
That nought so like a bosom'd heaven can seem,
That man himself from man should hide,
And soul by soul be undescried,—
The heart collapses into coldness, when
We nurse no feeling for our fellow-men.

Social in essence is the christian's God;
Social in life, the scene our Saviour trod;
And selfish chains contract the mind,
That should encircle human kind,
Reflecting Him, who veils His awful throne,
And dwells in Glory that is not alone.

GREAT UNTRUTH.

“Ye shall not surely die.”—Gen. iii. 4.

“Ye shall not surely die,”
Dark speech! that dared defy
The God of Glory, Who created man,
And, save yon mystic tree,
Heaven's garden left him free,
Where rich the streams of primal music ran.

A love was in that law
Beyond what Reason saw,
Whereby obedience would have hallow'd bliss:
It typed a truth divine,—
That man, oh God! was Thine,
And should have learnt it by a law like this.

A ruin'd Angel came;
Yet not on wings of flame,
With lustres wreath'd around his kingly brow;
But, in a serpent-form
Conceal'd his venom'd charm,
And poison'd Man to what we see him now!

Oh! deep as dread the spell
The Arch-fiend wove so well,
Who whisper'd treason unto creatures fair,
Which, pure from guilt and guile,
Beneath God's holy smile
Bright Priest and Priestess of creation were.

Tremendous was their fall!
And dark the fiendish thrall
Which so encompass'd with corrupting power
Both soul and body then,
That on the race of men
Came death,—the penance of that dooming hour!

And doth the Tempter cease?
Hath Earth obtain'd release
From all the blighted Seraph can employ,—
That stains our yielded soul,
And, by undreamt control,
Heaven's inward light may darken or destroy?

The wide world answers, No!
For, still he reigns below,
And syllables in spirit o'er again
The magic of that word
Primeval woman heard;
“Ye shall not die,”—yet sounds that impious strain!

“Ye shall not surely die!”
Men listen to the Lie
That so enchains them to the serpent's doom,
For passion, pride, and will
To God act treason still,
Nor heed what thunders roll beyond the tomb.

O! Virtue, Love, and Truth,
Array'd in vernal youth
With life before ye, like a long romance,
Why not to Grace retreat,
Who from the Mercy-seat
Lifts o'er your perill'd ways her watching glance?

Believe that sin is death,
That poison taints its breath,
Nor ever by the grave-stone thoughtless be;
For sepulchres can preach,
And pallid conscience reach
With sermons on sin-hating Deity.

Unweave that serpent-lie
“Ye shall not surely die,”
Spirit of grace! within these hearts of ours;
And by Truth's cheering ray
Disperse sad doubts away,
And seal with holiness men's ransom'd powers.

And thus, though tombs remain,
And still the loathèd chain
Of sin and sorrow bind us to the earth,
When once the fight is o'er,
Emanuel! we shall soar
To share Thy kingdom of the second birth.

THE WEEPING CHRIST.

“Jesus wept.”—John xi. 35.

There is a mute but mighty voice in tears,—
Words of the eyes, that passionately weep
A liquid eloquence, which Pity hears
Gush from the heart's unfathomable deep.

Whether soft teardrops, like a starry dew,
Bedim the eyeballs of some beauteous child,
Till the soul glistens through their heaven of blue
Mournfully bright, or exquisitely wild;

Or, drawn from depths where burning silence glows,
From passion-fountains, or, from feeling's soul
When like a heart-rain, inward grief o'erflows,
And down pale woman's cheek the rich tears roll;

Or, if in shaded walk, or crowded street,
Some iron visage where cold harshness dwells,
Melted and mild, in tears we chance to meet,—
How are we moved by all sad contrast tells!

Yet Painting, Poetry, nor Pathos can
Touch the pure mind with such majestic pain,
As when from eyelids of the Son of Man
Roll'd human tears, untinged by human stain!

But, with that pain a blissful feeling blends,
Born of this thought,—our Lord beside the grave,
True to our nature, was sublime of Friends,
And sympathized with those He came to save.

Awfully veil'd a God in Flesh appears!
But, Faith is challenged to a deeper awe
When she beholds Him with subduing tears
Hallow the scene delighted Angels saw.

And to that grave-scene, turn thee, mortal, now;
Where Jesu wept, true hearts will often be,—
And while we gaze upon His awful brow
Come, Holy Ghost! and let us learn from Thee

How no immunities divine remove
Incarnate Mercy from our common doom;
Down to our tears descends His mortal love
With eyes which moisten'd to behold a tomb!

And may Suggestion, with a sacred awe,
Dream that He wept the cited dead should come
Forth from those glories which the spirit saw
In the bright region of its boundless home?

If to this lovely creed the heart may cling,
Then, O pale weeper! for the loved and gone,
Ne'er wilt thou yearn once more on earth to bring
Back to life's gloom, some dead, but glorious one.

Emanuel wept!—enough this truth to know;
Lord of our spirit, let Thy tear-drops fall
Full on sad hearts, till faith's responsive glow
Warm the cold breast to cry, “My All in All!”

Religion, Friendship, Feeling, Love, and Truth,
All in Thy tears a consecration find,
To soothe worn age, or sanctify wild youth,
And haunt the temple of each tender mind.

And when bereaved ones o'er the coffin bend
To hear the earth-clod with an echoing heart,
Saviour, who wept for Thine unrisen friend,
Breathe o'er the soul the sympathy Thou art!

VANITY OF ALL CREATED GOOD.

“Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”—Eccles. i. 2.

“The creature was made subject to vanity.”—Rom. viii. 20.

“Arise and depart, for this is not your rest.” —Micah ii. 10.

There is no rest for man below,
Soil'd earth is not our home;
The sigh must heave, the tear must flow,
Howe'er for bliss we roam.

The hollowness of human things,
The wear of fev'rish thought,
Each to the heart a shadow brings
From tombs of mem'ry brought.

A broken cistern ev'rywhere
Proves nature's purest joy;
Though fresh the draught imagined there,
How soon we taste alloy!

Yet still, prophetic youth believes
Bright Edens must abound;
And fairy Hope fond visions weaves,
As o'er enchanted ground.

But soon dark years instruction bring,
And teach the lesson grave,
That over earth's most radiant thing
The cypress-banners wave.

The burden and the mystery
Of Life will soon be felt,
As truths beyond cold Sense to see,
Will through our being melt:

Upon thee, like an inward weight
Eternity will lie,
And conscience bow beneath the freight
Of thoughts which never die.

The poet's wreath, the warrior's plume,
And hero's envied bays,—
They cannot hide the haunting tomb,
Nor lengthen out thy days.

The cankerworm of coming death
Begnaws the core of all
Blithe youth, with its impassion'd breath,
Would fain perfection call.

And yet 'tis hard, when vernal health
Glows brightly on the cheek,
When Learning, Beauty, Wit, and Wealth
Their wonted homage seek;

When life a lovely Poem seems,
Whose ev'ry line appears
Descriptive of those sunny dreams
That dazzle future years,

'Tis hard to think of grave and gloom,
In such glad hour as this,
And pile, in thought, the distant tomb
That shall contain our bliss!

But oh, believer young and bright,
With heart and hope awake,
Come hither! and with soul aright
Truth's sober lesson take.

Were this vast world, with all its joy,
Its glories, crowns, and charms,
Secured from change and sad alloy,
At once within thine arms,

E'en then, thy heart would hunger still,
And oft in secret pine;
The universe would fail to fill
A spirit vast as thine!

Christ, or despair! — behold thy fate
To that sole choice is bound;
And blest are they, who not too late
Their heaven in God have found.

For, such will learn to look on all
Bewilder'd passions love,
As Sin and Satan's blinding thrall
To keep us from above.

And yet, that Book which thus reveals
Life's baseless dream below,
And on the heaven false worldlings feel,
Writes words of death and woe,

Say, is it not the page profound
Which opens realms divine,
And, where no pangs nor pains abound,
Cries, “Christian! they are thine?”

Then, bids thee, eagle-like, to soar
Right upward for the sun,
And not this gilded world deplore
Where peace is never won?

Thy home is yonder pangless clime
Where saints and martyrs meet,
And with this choral-burst sublime
Anthem the mercy-seat,

“Worthy the Lamb! for sinners slain,
Who once the wine-press trod,
Eternity shall be His reign,
Who ransom'd men for God!”

VOICE OF GOD IN THE COOL OF THE DAY.

“They heard the Voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”—Gen. iii. 8.

How soothing, when the noise of day is o'er
And fever'd heart-cares sink, becalm'd and cool,
To wind the bay of some receding shore,
And bathe our spirit in the beautiful!

Creation is no mute unconscious mass
Of pregnant matter, into being plann'd,
For, when behind the outer-veil we pass,
Faith hears it speaking of Emanuel's hand.

The blood-priced earth's a Sacrament of Him
Whose regal glories make man's All in All,
Under Whose throne both saints and seraphim,
Inflamed with burning adoration, fall.

There was a time when Eve and Adam heard
His voice almighty through soft twilight roll,
And, like glad waters by deep music stirr'd,
They felt it echo'd by responsive soul.

But, when dark Treason like a hell-cloud rose
And guilt between them and His glory came,
The full warm current of affection froze,
And Conscience shudder'd at Jehovah's name!

“I heard Thy voice, and hid myself, afraid,
For naked horrors scared the inward eye,
And while my ruin'd soul was thus display'd,
The ground beneath me mutter'd, ‘Thou shalt die!’”

Oh! dread confession of our fallen doom,
That men are exiles from their God, afar,
That souls are pall'd with atheistic gloom,
And, but for grace, would perish as they are.

For like as Adam shrunk behind a tree,
And paled with cowardice to look on God,
Revolting hearts the Holy Presence flee,
And tread the path that first transgressor trod.

But, Lord of heaven! when Thy relenting hand
The ruin'd soul hath reconciled with Blood,
And Thy blest will, by holiness preferr'd,
Becomes at once our glory and our good,

Then, unlike Adam, by dark guilt appall'd,
We shrink no longer from the Voice Divine,
But love to hear it in our hearts recall'd,
And see creation with redemption shine.

The challenge dread, “Where art thou?” booms no more,
But, “Here are we,” anticipates the cry;
For Sinai's thunders hush their penal roar,
And sound as gently as Emanuel's sigh.

Where shall we hie to hear that mystic tone?
To halls of Splendour, or to homes of Sin?
Not there, my brother! can The Voice be known
Whose breath is music heard from God within!

But if thine ear be tender, clear, and true,
And sensual clay no longer clog the mind,
Then may thy soul His hidden glory view,
And hear Christ vocal in the wave and wind.

Whether, if cherub Morn her wings unfold,
And drops of balm each glade and glen array,
Thou lov'st to mark the orient mists uproll'd,
While ope the eyelids of commencing Day.

Or, on the marble sea, at noon entranced,
In breezeless glory rock'd to living rest,
From some lone cliff thy pensive eye has glanced,
Till ocean's calm lay mirror'd on thy breast;

Or, thou hast mused at sunset, sad and pale,
By pebbled shore where plaintive waters meet,
Till gradual Twilight dropt her dewy veil,
And dark the seaweed slumber'd at thy feet,—

Alike in all a saintly mind can hear
Some tone celestial, like a spirit glide,
And breathe to Nature that her God is near,
And all her spell-work by His hand supplied.

And thus, dear Lord! in what we do, or dare,
Be Thy meek virtues our most glorious choice;
From sea and mountain may we lift our prayer,
And hear creation echo'd with Thy Voice.

In the cool evening of life's calm decay
Soft o'er the soul may lulling whispers fall,
And Wisdom teach our filial hearts to pray
“Father in Heaven! for home prepare us all.”

GOD'S CURSE UPON THE GROUND.

“Cursed is the ground for thy sake ------ Thorns, also, and thistles, shall it bring forth to thee.”— Gen. iii. 17, 18.

Though sumless mercies teem around
In ocean, earth, and air,
Mysterious vengeance haunts the ground,—
A curse is cleaving there!
The thorn which mars our blighted fields,
The thistle that appears,
Each to our soul a lesson yields
Becoming thoughtful fears.

And, add to this the weariness
On Manhood's sunken brow,
The burden and the bitterness
Which darken Labour now,
Together with the barren soil
That gives a stern reply,
To hearts that tend and hands which toil
Beneath a threatful sky,—

These unrelenting symbols tell,
O'er this sad World of ours
The frownings of Jehovah fell,
And blighted all her bowers!
Unbeautified and bare they seem
Her landscapes, scenes, and all
Which once surpass'd the Muse's dream,
And men Elysium call.

The curse of sin's avenging God
Hath sear'd the blasted earth,
And glooms of His judicial rod
Hang o'er us from our birth:—
Yet, with the curse Compassion weaved
A mystery of love,
And Angels o'er the past who grieved,
Sang wonder-hymns above

To see while Godhead in His wrath
The gates of Eden closed,
Calm o'er the exiled sinner's path
A ray of Christ reposed!—
Light in our darkness yet remains,
Flowers bloom among our weeds;
And Grace unbinds the loathèd chains
With which tried Nature bleeds.

And Thou art branded, fiendish One!
Who tempted man to sin,
A hell in hell thy crime hath won,
To blast despair within.
And ye! the guilty heirs of dust
Who fain from earth would fly,
Stand, and be doom'd by heaven ye must,—
Can God Himself deny?

But good shall out of evil spring,
And love with judgment blend,
For, round the curse God's ransom'd sing,
“Our Father! and our Friend!”
And though pale mothers here may read
Of birth-pangs, and their woes,
Yet is not Christ the woman's seed,
Whom earth to mother owes?

And if round spousal love there winds
A thorny wreath of care,
Myriads of married Hearts and Minds
Prove wedlock pure and fair:
Men are not tyrants, though they rule,
If christian lords they be;
And women by subjection school
Their love for liberty.

And never be this truth forgot,
That Wedlock is a sign,
The Church endures no widow'd lot,
Her Husband is divine!
And though cold Earth reluctant now
Brings forth her fruits and flowers,
While sweating anguish damps the brow
By work, and wearied hours,

Yet in that toil emotions lurk
To keep the heart awake;—
Where is our wisdom, if no work
Our laggard dreams can break?
And from the soil we plough and turn
With labour's ceaseless hand,
Religion may her Bible learn,
And think of God's command!

Thus, though the sentence, “Dust thou art,”
And low in dust shalt be,
Booms like a knell within the heart
When wrung by memory,
Yet may the trump of Easter sound
O'er each sepulchral sod,
“Awake! thou sleeper, from the ground,
And gaze upon thy God!”

WEEP NOT FOR THE DEAD.

“Weep not for the dead, neither bemoan him.” Jer. xxii. 10.

Oh, weep not for the holy dead
Embosom'd in their God,
But rather that high pathway tread
Their sainted virtues trod:

Their home is now the tearless clime
Where sins nor sorrows reign,
And all the pure they lost in time
True Hearts embrace again.

The Lord who came our souls to save
Dead Laz'rus did not mourn,
But His sublime compassion gave
To sisters left forlorn.

It must be so; for ponder well,
When God's award is given,
Love cannot rescue vice from hell,
Nor pity saints in heaven.

'Tis true, as thoughtful years advance
We muse with sadden'd mind,
When mem'ry throws a tearful glance
On scenes long left behind!

Where have they fled, the brave and dear.
The brightest of the throng,
Who gladden'd home's delighted sphere
With sunshine and with song?

'Twere vain to tell us not to weep,
When Mem'ry opes that tomb
Where buried Joys in darkness sleep,
That fill'd young life with bloom.

For often in some bleak distress
The dead upon us rise,
As though they knew our loneliness,
And echo'd back our sighs.

'Tis then the heart-dew riseth fast,
And moisten'd eye-beams tell
Our Souls are with the solemn past,
And feel its mighty spell!

And will not gentle Bosoms weep,
To think what pangs we gave
To friends above whose dreamless sleep
Funereal banners wave?—

How often might some healing word,
Or tone of kindness spoken,
With love's divinest thrill have stirr'd
A heart that seem'd half broken!

GLORY OF DEPARTED SAINTS.

“Absent from the body—present with the Lord.” 2 Cor. v. 8.

Hail to the bright and blissful Choir
Who wreathe the Saviour's throne!
Eternity hath strung their lyre,
And Glory gives the tone:

We mourn them not, we mourn them not,
Who crowd the halls of Heaven,
For theirs is now the pangless lot,
The smile of saints forgiven.

Through shades of wintry loneliness
While here our pathways wind
As orphans in the soul's distress
We seek some answ'ring mind,

Yet, proves it like some balmy dream
From heaven just floating down,
When round our yearning fancies beam
The lustres of their crown!

On this bad earth, like us, they knew
The with'ring curse of sin;
Or shudder'd o'er some hideous view
Of dawning hell within:

The wingèd thoughts which bravely soar'd
Beyond the realms of time,
Those deepest prayers that once ador'd
The King of Kings sublime,

What were they, in their rapt delight
Outsoaring all we feel,—
But bird-wings broken in their flight,
When storm-blasts round them wheel?

Upward and upward did they rise
From earth's pollution free,
Those Eagles of the Lord, whose eyes
Glow'd with eternity!

But oh, at best, they did but scan
Far off that living Sun,
By whose rich glory rescued Man
From darkness hath been won.

But now, the coil of earth removed,
No sins their conscience stain;
We call them dead,—but Their Beloved
Becomes a deathless gain.

They sun their souls in living rays,
His Form of glory darts,
While swells of superhuman praise
Heave from their burning hearts.

Then, who would call them back to earth
These holy Dead, on high?
No! rather let their peerless worth
Attract us to the sky:

Their task is o'er, their toil is done,
Embower'd in bliss they dwell,
And would we wear the crown they won?—
Then, let us fight as well!

Far better this, than mourn the dead
By selfish grief inspired;
Their path to glory may we tread,
By pure example fired:

So shall we reach our home at last,
Whate'er the wilds we trod,
And find the dead from earth who pass'd
Were still our friends in God.

THE RELIGION OF SOLITUDE.

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not ------ this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”—Gen. xxviii. 16, 17.

Lone nature is no loneliness to me,
Her solitude makes my society,
For there I listen to a Voice that seems
Like heaven-tones heard by prophets in their dreams.

Serenely awful o'er my trancèd soul
I hear the music of th' Almighty roll,
And each deep cadence oft appears to tell,—
“My Hand o'ershades thee, though invisible!”

Thus have I felt, in regions wild and lone
Where Nature loves to rear her rocky throne,
Where nought intrudes to mar the tranquil mind,
And nothing murmurs but the mountain-wind,

Or, happy brooks which down the hillocks play
And sing, like birds in sunbeams far away,
Or, glancing bees that o'er the wood-born flowers
Whirl their gay dance, and hum away the hours.

Yet, perfect solitude there cannot be,
Since all around us acts Divinity;
Like space to body, so is God to soul,
Who all created, and contains the whole.

The hush of Nature may be holy calm
Breathed by blest Angels, when they spread the balm
Of beauteous quiet o'er the heart of things,
And veil the landscape with their viewless wings.

When wearied Jacob, pillow'd on the stone,
Slumber'd at dewy night, he seem'd alone;
What Sense beheld, no sacred token found
That Haran's desert was a haunted ground:

But, when a dream-power purified his glance,
His eye unseal'd, survey'd in wondrous trance
Angels ascending and descending there,
And when he woke—he trembled into prayer!

And so, round us may guardian Spirits move
To ply unseen soft ministries of love,
While we walk careless o'er the greenwood sod,
Nor rev'rence nature as instinct with God.

Then read creation with religious eye,
If God and angels thou wouldst there descry,
To which alone the Patriarch's dream is given,—
A mystic ladder linking earth with heaven.

FIRST EXILES.

“The Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden.”—Gen. iii. 23.

Though earth abounds with choral streams,
And sunny gladness smiles and gleams
O'er forest glade and woodland-flower,
Yet man has lost his fairest bower!

With arching glory bright and blue
Though heaven attract the minstrel's view,
And bird and breeze, upon the wing,
Their lyric strain in concert sing,

Yet may each pure poetic spot
Where grief and guilt are most forgot,
Faint shadows of our exile feel
Around it, like dark memory, steal.

For, there intrudes an aching thought,
A feeling with dejection fraught,
An under-tone of discontent
With our serenest rapture blent.

The whence, and why, we cannot tell,—
But girt we are with such a spell;
A zone mysterious which can bind
And oft enclose the calmest mind.

Who hath not felt such worldless mood
When cloister'd in green solitude,
With nothing near, but earth and sky,
And none to read him, but God's eye!

And oft, too, when we cease to roam
Amid the heaven of virtuous home,
With leisure, books, and wedded love,
And peace and pureness from above,

E'en then, a craving thirst will rise
For more than present bliss supplies;
Soft yearnings through the spirit melt,
And seek what soul hath never felt.

Whence come these moods? we vainly ask:—
“Oh! why is life a wearied task,
Where unreposing trials speak,
The world is sad, and nature weak?”

Is it, because no being can
The inward deeps of deathless man
With such a rich contentment fill,
As leaves the conscience lull'd, and still?

Or, shall we find the felt unrest
That haunts the hour most deeply blest,
In man's indwelling plague of sin,—
The venom'd fire that burns within?

Yea, these, and more than we divine,
May round these perill'd hearts combine,
To darken with unearthly hues
Our radiant hours, and richest views.

And when we know, that Adam's fall
O'er bright creation drew a pall,
And over man and nature cast
The shadow of a ruin'd past,

Behold! the myst'ry half unwinds,
Why sadness dims some holy minds,
And mild dejection inly sighs
For brighter scenes, and bluer skies.

It is because, like exiles we,
When roaming on a foreign sea,
While pilgrim waves approach the strand,
Are dreaming of our own far land;

And thus to realms of gracious thought
Are mystic recollections brought
Of vanish'd Eden, and the bowers,
Where God and innocence were ours.

As exiled ones, a branded race
Whom sin and self alike disgrace,
Say, ought we not, where'er we roam,
By faith to see our forfeit home?

And never, oh! Thou Source of Light,
Let this cold earth become too bright;
Lest, world-enamour'd we may grow,
And root our hearts in bliss below.

Rather on high, ascended Lord!
Lift we our souls on Thy loved word,
And through God's Eden yearn to rove
That blooms and brightens with Thy Love.

MODERATION.

“Give me neither poverty nor riches.”—Prov. xxx. 8.

I will not sigh for vast domains,
For festive halls and homes of pleasure,
Nor do I seek redundant gains
To heap my huge and hoarded treasure;
But this I dare to ask,—a placid mind
In every pulse of thought to heaven resign'd.

There is a wealth in calm desires,
In chaste content and holy feeling,
Beyond their reach whom gold inspires,
But madly from themselves are stealing
That more than jewel'd mines those hearts possess,
Which beat secure in God's almightiness.

Extremes are not what man endures
Unless by heavenly wisdom guided;
And Gain the heart to guilt allures,
When once a soul becomes divided
Between what God and duty only claim
From all baptised into Emanuel's name.

Thus, riches prove a deadly gift
Which oft corrupt each calmer blessing,
And to such height the mind uplift,
That soon it shrinks from e'er confessing
How all we have, and are, or hope to be,
Flows from the fountain-grace of Deity.

'Tis sad to think how gilded clay
Hath tempted man from God, and glory!
And lured him on the broad bad way
Which Christ reveals in warning story;
That path whose breadth doth equal Passion's will,
And widens ever to increase the ill.

But there is wealth for all whose eyes
Can hail true charms around them glowing,
And more than mines in those supplies
Creation's scenes are e'er bestowing,
Would men but love them with congenial mind
And seek pure riches, such as God design'd.

Here is an heritage for all,
A patrimonial bliss unbounded,
The ruin'd orphans of the world may call
Their own, howe'er by want surrounded:—
Of Nature's glories none but Hearts complain
Whose coldness feels their inspiration vain.

Then, bless we God for this bright world,
Its majesty of form and motion,
For all the beams by Light unfurl'd
Which grace the earth, or gild the ocean;
For the mild lisp of each melodious breeze
And word-like whisper of those conscious trees!

Nor be forgot the seasons' change
In rounds of restless life recurring,
Through which the poet's eye can range,
And feel his lyric bosom stirring,
When oft he views in vestal skies afar
The dream-like radiance of some throbbing star.

And are there not, apart from gold
And haughty Grandeur's sumptuous dwelling,
True mercies, which the pure behold
With silent hymns of gladness swelling,—
Health, food, and raiment, and the countless store
Of blessings, that enwreath some cottage door?

Bright homes of bliss, and hearths of joy
With Love's glad face upon us beaming,
And genial friends, whose smiles destroy
Autumnal shades, when doubt lies dreaming;
The infant's prattle, and the mother's tone
Whose wedded heart seems throbbing through our own!

Yes, these are more than gold can gain,
And often fly the haunts of splendour,
Whose pomp excites ambitious pain
And leaves the selfish heart untender,—
Dead to its God, and cold to all who plead,
When doom'd to lie like Lazarus in his need.

And add to this, that Book Divine!—
The God in language manifested,
Where glory streams from each true line
By earth and heaven for aye attested;
Ah! none are poor who call such volume theirs,
And of its promises are heaven-born heirs.

And we have sacraments and rites
The holy Church to all presenteth,
With peaceful hopes and pure delights
To each whose tearful soul repenteth,—
Prayers, hymns, and chants, and hallelujahs deep
Whose choral thunders round the dim aisles sweep.

Nor let us, with unloving mind,
Forget what art and science granteth,
What music yields to ears refined
When harps resound, or Woman chanteth;
True are such pleasures, innocently loved,
By reason sanction'd and by heaven approved.

Then seek we not for vast domains,
For sumptuous halls and homes of pleasure;
He more than royal Crœsus gains
Who finds in God his gold and treasure:—
With Him the destitute have boundless store,
But, oh, without Him, Wealth itself is poor!

Our noblest wealth is heaven-born grace
From out the Spirit's heart descending,
Which leaves in men a living trace
Of holy truth, their hearts amending:
Here are deep riches, fit for realms divine,
Gems of pure gold from God's eternal mine.

INFANCY IN HEAVEN.

“Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”—Matt. xix. 14.

Thou beauteous Morn of sainted rest!
Breathing like balm along the troubled breast,
Now while the sacred chimes are pealing
Floats o'er my soul a soften'd feeling,
That springeth not from earth alone;—
My heaven-gone babe! I think of thee,
Who in thy young eternity
A sabbath first wilt call thine own.

But one week since, and thou wert here
Tender as Morning's crystal tear,
A little flutt'ring shape of life
Too frail to bear the breath of strife,—
We almost fear'd on thee to gaze!
While something like prophetic sighs
Did from parental hearts arise,
When dreaming o'er thine unborn days.

Calm innocent! whose helpless charms
Lay nestled in thy nurse's arms,
We loved to watch each dawning gleam
That from thy soul began to beam,
And half believed it long'd to smile;
And though unlisp'd thy thought expired
Within mysterious depths retired,—
Thy lip seem'd eloquent the while!

'Twas beautiful in sleep to view
The radiance of a rose-like hue
Bloom softly o'er thy rounded cheek,—
As though some Angel did bespeak
Thy spirit with an unvoiced spell;
Since more than beauty then array'd
Thy features, while their flush betray'd
What earth-breathed tones can never tell.

How often, when no eye could see,
I breathed a father's prayer o'er thee!
And where thy little cradle stood
Besought the Source of heavenly good
Thy life to overshade with love;
How did I mark with doating gaze
Thy baby wiles and winsome ways,
And blest for thee my God above!

Such wert thou, ere the Voice Divine,
“The first-born, ere it sin, 'tis mine,”
Roll'd through our hearts its awful cry!
And, softer than aërial sigh,
To heaven return'd thine infant-breath;
Like a dead lily wert thou laid
Ere sin had cast its poison-shade
Around thee, white in lovely death.

We wept, as they can weep alone
Who first a parent's grief have known;
And felt as though a life-chord broke
At spectral dawn, when Day awoke,
And all was breathless in thy room!
Oh, there the hush of graves did brood,
And awful seem'd the solitude
That was to wrap thine early tomb.

One last, and long, and clinging look
Of thy dead face and form I took,
And into memory did receive
An image, that shall never leave
My soul, while time and truth remain!—
Seldom has Death more beauty hid
Under a coffin's tiny lid,
Than thine, within the churchyard lain.

All this thou wast; but what, and where
Thy spirit now, can none declare:
For, born in sin, baptised and seal'd
With grace divine, God bid thee yield
Thine innocence to Him on high;
Back, like a heaven-bird to its home,
Borne by blest Angels, didst thou roam,
And vanish'd to thy genial sky.

Oh, wond'rous change!—the purest word
By mental wisdom breathed, or heard,
The brightest dream that can entrance
A raptured saint, or martyr's glance,
Are all too weak and worthless things
E'er to unfold what thou must feel,
To whom Heaven's glories now reveal
More than the harp of David sings!

A nursling wert thou, wan and weak;
A sigh was all thy soul could speak;

Frailer than new-born lambs which feed
When dropp'd upon the sunny mead,—
We only trembled, while we gazed,
To think that such a cradled form
Could weather out life's wasting storm,
That must around thy lot be raised.

A watch-tick would have been to thee
The height of human mystery;
A tone, a sunbeam, or a flower
Have all surpass'd thy mental power,
And rapt thee in amazement deep;
But now,—beyond what Saints believe
Thy faculties in heaven receive,
And neither sin, nor weep!

Yes, in a moment, vast the change
That must around thy spirit's range
Have circled its divine excess
Of all which can the glorious bless!
While o'er thy manumitted soul,
Transcending all the Church hath known
Since Christ ascended to His throne,—
Voices and visions grandly stole.

Baptismal grace and purity,
Far more than time, befitted thee
For scenes of splendour, which await
Bright Spirits in their perfect state,—
The sacramental Host in heaven:
What lofty minds but half presage,
To thee is now an open page
Beyond the glance in scripture given.

And oh, what bliss, which baffles thought!
To think that upward thou art caught
To some chaste realm of cloudless joy,
Before the touch of earth's alloy
Had stain'd the virgin soul with sin;
Ere passion, or polluted deed
Had caused the harrow'd mind to bleed,—
Heaven oped its doors, and let thee in!

Thus while yon pensive chimes are pealing
Floats o'er my soul a sacred feeling,
Mournful, but mild, and full of prayer,—
A thought beyond what creeds declare,
That thou, sweet babe! art shrined in glory,
'Mid saints and prophets, priests and kings,
A Spirit graced with star-bright wings,
With innocents who died before thee.

Here, in this vale of time and tears
While we fulfil our fated years,
'Twill oft refresh my heart to dream
What living splendours round thee beam,
That issue from The Lamb who died;
While lisping cherubs, like to thee,
Warble before the Deity
Soft anthems to The Crucified.

DIVINE WALK.

“Enoch walked with God.”—Gen. v. 24.

And didst thou choose the narrow path
Which sainted feet have ever trod,
And know the peace high Virtue hath
When pillow'd on the breast of God?

Though all around thee crime and sin
Their moral desert made and threw,
Was thy religion felt within,
And outwardly embodied, too?

Primeval saint! seraphic man!
By ardent grace so fill'd and fired,
Thy blest eternity began
Before the common age expired.

No spectral glooms, no pangs of death,
No hollow cheek, no sunken eye,
Nor pallid swoon, nor panting breath
Betray'd the King of Terrors nigh:

Bright trophy of atoning Blood!
Thy doom escaped them, one and all;
As if thou wert for earth too good
Thy native heaven did thee recall.

At once to glory upward soar'd
Thy being, with unwav'ring flight;
No kindred heart thy death deplored,
No grave inhumed thee out of sight.

Thou wert not!—this seems all we know
Of thine unview'd ascent to bliss;
What more relates to thee below,
Belongs not to a state like this.

In flaming cars with steeds of fire
Rapt in a whirlwind, didst thou rise,
To mingle with that harping Choir
Who worship God with wing-veil'd eyes?

Or, did some mission'd angel-bands
Speed from the bowers of blissful love,
To waft thee with encircling hands
To thy pure home prepared above?

In vain of this and more we dream,
Nor how can sainted fancy tell
Thy soar outwing'd the solar beam,
And vanish'd through the visible!

Yet, could we, like an Enoch walk
And closely with our God commune,
With more than angels men might talk,
And earth itself to heaven attune.

We should not seek for temple-roof
To overarch our heads in prayer,
But find in ev'ry scene a proof
Jehovah was enshrouded there.

The poet's walk through pensive scenes
Companion'd with God's love would be,
When doubt, nor darkness, intervenes
To hide his heart from Deity.

All beauty would more beauteous grow,
All music more melodious sound,
Did moral hues of heaven below
More freshly in our ways abound.

It is because the Cain-like heart
To selfish pride retreats alone,
That God and glory dwell apart
From that cold bliss we call our own.

But when, like Enoch, men can muse,
And with our Maker's smile array
The path of life they rightly choose,
What gleams from heaven adorn their way!

Jehovah's will, Jehovah's word,
Within, without, rules everywhere;
And conscience is obey'd and heard
Till man becomes incarnate prayer.

Abroad, at home, in sun, or shade,
By rocky shore, or mountain-stream,
Divinest thoughts the soul invade,
And nowhere can we orphans seem;

Since Faith applies vast providence
To each peculiar grief and groan,
And grasps believed omnipotence
As though it ruled for Her alone.

Awake, and sing then, christian soul!
If, like yon saint before the flood,
Under the Spirit's true control
A frowning world thou hast withstood.

Enoch was not;—to God he soar'd,
Left a low earth defiled like this,
Sought the bright Parent he adored
And melted in almighty bliss!

Thus, more and more to yonder fount
Of perfect glory thou may'st glide;
And nearer still like Enoch mount
To regions ne'er by sin descried.

As He was not, thou shalt not be
Discern'd by what the world calls sense—
Thy dwelling-place is Deity,
And simple Faith thy sure defence.

STRIVE NOT WITH THE SPIRIT.

“My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” Gen. vi. 3.

Most awful booms that word
Rolling its cadence deep,
Till the roused heart is inly stirr'd
From out its iron sleep,
When God “repents” He e'er created man,
Since like one giant sin, the earth to ruin ran!

Can mortal accent tell
How heaves th' Eternal Mind,
When these divine emotions swell,
Commoved by human kind,—
“With man My Spirit shall not always strive,
For it repents Me now, that such I made alive?”

In this the harvest see
By Adam's sin first sown!
All vices reign, all virtues flee,
And from His watching Throne
When scans the Godhead our apostate race,
No hallow'd feature there can His omniscience trace.

For not one thrill of thought
Which plays within the soul
That is not with rebellion fraught,
Now sin hath seized the whole
Our flesh and spirit, heart and will include,
With utter hate of God, and dread ingratitude!

Evil, and nothing more,
Behold, man's nature now:—
Blest Angels! did ye not deplore,
When Earth her wither'd brow
Lifted beneath you, in yon spheres of light,
And show'd her branded front, of old so pure and bright?

But, lo! the hour of wrath,
Commission'd from above,
Stern vengeance o'er the sinners' path,
With whom the Spirit strove,
Shall roll in ruin; and the godless world
See thunderbolts of death from His fierce anger hurl'd!

Insect, and man, and beast,
Whatever lives and moves,
The lofty sinner, and the least
Who madly crime approves,—
The broken fountains of the deep shall burst,
And sweep them into gloom, like things by God accurst!

And is the record dead,
Which here unveils to man
The ruin early vice had bred,
When lawless will began
Reason and Conscience both at once to sway,
Till, like embosom'd fiends, bad passions had their play?

No! judgment never dies,
But lives as long as sin
The law of love and truth defies,
And renders Man within
A jarring discord, out of tune with heaven,
A wreck of sinful woe, by darkest vices driven.

Go, Rebel! take thy stand
On some steep rock, which frown'd
In fearful gloom above the land
By God's vast deluge drown'd,—
As if thou heard'st the desolating roar
Of billows when they lash'd th' uncoffin'd dead they bore,

And there, let Conscience learn
A lesson for all time,—
That God must aye with anger burn
O'er unrepenting crime:
He cannot, will not, on the sinner look,
Until the weeping Heart hath guilt for grace forsook.

Come, then, celestial Grace!
Like dew of Hermon steal
O'er the dry souls of our sad race,
Until they pray and feel;
That so Thy Spirit, when He plies His love,
May not, by us aggrieved, return to Thee above.

For His deep coming, watch
With list'ning heart of prayer!
And ever lift the inward latch
That yields him entrance there;
So less and less His strivings will be known,
And God's bright Spirit seem commingled with our own.

Then, like a temple built
By some celestial Hand,
No more shall gloom and dreadless guilt
Benignant grace withstand,
But each pure Soul a living shrine will be,
Where Angels view enthroned the awful Trinity.

A BELIEVER'S WISH.

“To depart and to be with Christ—is far better.” Phil. i. 23.

I wish I lived where Jesu reigns
In yonder sinless world above,
Where not a pang the bosom pains
And all is light, for all is love.

There, with rapt Seraphims, how sweet
Anthems of choral bliss to blend,
And thus with white-robed myriads greet,
In Glory's form, the sinner's Friend.

No self will there the soul defile,
No shadows o'er remembrance steal,
But conscience, purged from guilt and guile,
Shall all the heaven of virtue feel.

Those fever-dreams of sense and time
Which now profane our purest bliss,
Shall not infest that hallow'd Clime
With stains which mar a world like this.

Oh! bright excess, beyond all thought,
When saints have reach'd that radiant goal
Where Man, to full perfection brought,
In God shall ark his wearied soul!

For, what can sense-born pleasure give
When most the world itself imparts,
But bribes to let base passions live
Like serpents in our selfish hearts?

The chastest scene, the calmest home
By poet hymn'd, or reason blest,—
Who has not felt his fancy roam,
And image forth a finer rest?

Our dream for some diviner world
Can never pause in realms of time,
When hope's fair wings, by faith unfurl'd,
Would waft us to that pangless clime.

Safe in the shadow of Thy throne,
Reveal'd Almighty! let us dwell,
And in yon circling rainbow own
The hues which our redemption tell.

Thou art, O Christ! the sinner's heaven;
Without Thee, man is death and gloom,
And only with that word, “forgiven,”
Can hearts approach the dismal tomb.

Be Thou the vital sun and shield
To light our path, and guide our souls;
Nor let our tempted bosoms yield
Except to what Thy will controls.

Life of our life! be all our bliss;
Torn from Thy truth, since none are blest;
Without Thee, men and angels miss
That centre where the creatures rest.

And can we doubt, if Godhead find
Complacency in Christ the Lord,
That He excels whate'er the mind
Creates in thought, or calls by word?

Ye heavens! though bright your splendour be,
Emanuel forms your living fount,
And none can rise to Deity
Who do not through His merit mount.

Then, hail the hour! that summons Man
Beyond our sullied earth to soar
To Him, Whose finite heaven began
When first for sin the cross he bore.

HERE WE HAVE NO ABIDING HOME.

“Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.”—Heb. xiii. 14.

“They that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.”—Heb. xi. 14.

Since all we love on earth must die,
And swift as hues of morning fly
The hopes young bosoms store,
Oh, softly let thy feelings twine
Round the rich heart thou callest thine,—
For soon 'twill beat no more!

When first our virgin senses wake
And of fair Earth a prospect take,
Her treasures, homes, and smiles,—
A false eternity arrays
The scene that mocks our dazzled gaze
With its ambitious wiles.

And yet, might reason's colder truth
Unveil dark facts to wayward youth,
Creation doth not hold
A perfect semblance to her past;
But everywhere dim shades are cast
On what she was of old.

The clouds of heaven for ever change;
The tints of earth and ocean range
Through colour's varied gleam;
And all which eyes enamour'd view,
Reflect on man that restless hue
Which hints our life a dream!

The sweetest notes bland music brings
To vibrate o'er those moral strings
Which make the heart a lyre,—
E'en while we listen, lo! they die
In lulls of languish, like the sigh
Some Angel might respire.

And, look upon the face we love!
More eloquent than skies above
When clothed with chastest light,—
Its spell of beauty is the change
Expressions leave, as there they range
And fascinate our sight.

Thus, all we view of scene or sound
With sad instruction doth abound,
And preach,—“Prepare to part!”
For souls can have no resting-place
Where sin hath left a with'ring trace,
And shadow on the heart.

Too many tears our eyelids wet,
Too many graves are open'd yet,
To leave the mind at peace;
And, where the soul, without a thorn
To probe it, till it bleeds forlorn,
And yearns for heaven's release?

And blest are they whom Grace hath brought
To bow content before the thought,—
Earth's dearest ties are frail;
These will not, in the rending hour
When Death unveils his darksome power,
Like unbelievers, quail!

But woe! to wistful hearts that cling
To whatsoe'er wild passions bring
Of fulness, fire, and force,
Till idols mount the bosom-throne,
Where God and grace should rule alone
The soul's most secret course.

And, woe! to young Affection's eye
Which half adores what soon must die,
And melt in mortal clay;
Eternal beauty dwells not here,
And ill becomes that tainted sphere
Where Death demands his prey.

But did we, like the saints of old,
Hereafter through this Now behold,

What pangs our hearts would save!
Eternity our home would seem,
And life become a brilliant dream
Dissolving o'er the grave.

Wild heart of wasteful Youth! begin
At once to cool the thirst of sin
For ever here to bide;
Life, love, and earth can flatter thee,
But cannot thy salvation be,
Nor death, nor judgment hide.

Ah! wert thou touch'd with heavenly love,
Did Christ, thy magnet, far above
Attract thy veering eyes,
How would the wing'd affections mount
And flutter near that blissful Fount
Who all our heaven supplies!

Unwav'ring Souls which pant for bliss,
Will feel their perfect treasure is
Where nothing false is found;
And since in heaven Messiah dwells,
They will not dread those bleak farewells
With which dark years abound.

“Gone to prepare a place for you,”—
Hosannah to that promise true!
It opens heaven for prayer;
If in our souls one pulse there beat
Of Godhead, at the mercy-seat,
They long to worship there!

For heaven is not a desert cold
Which cannot human feelings hold,
Where Christ as Man is seen;
Since they adorn that region bright
From earth redeem'd, array'd in white,
Who once like us have been.

OUR TRUE COMPANION.

“Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.”—Luke xxiv. 29.

Abide with us! sustaining Lord, abide;
Without Thee, vain is all the world beside:
When Thou art vanish'd, nought true Souls can see
But the sad loneliness that sighs for Thee.

The life we bear is oft a burden'd thing
Fill'd with a load of varied suffering,
Though, mask'd with smiles, the forehead seems to say
“My heart is sunshine in its golden play.”

A thousand shadows from the soul arise
Casting a tinge o'er all young natures prize;
E'en from the centre of consummate bliss
We inly murmur, “breathes there truth in this?”

Without, works mystery; within, the same;
And truths, profounder than mere words can name,
Float through the mind, like seraph-whispers sent
From the far glories of God's firmament.

Lofty but low, abased and yet sublime,
With hearts eternal in a home of time,
Sinful, but sainted, doom'd on earth to walk,
And yet with Seraphim in spirit talk,—

Extremes of contrast! such our being rule;
And fever'd Life, with contradiction full,
Can echo the beseeching twain who cried,
“Lord of our souls, for ever with us bide!”

The beautiful and bright, creation yields
From rock and dale, from forest and from fields,
Lacking Thy presence, want that master-grace
Which decks the earth with each diviner trace.

Oft o'er yon heav'ns when strays the poet's eye
While soundless evening steals along the sky,
That Afterward, to which no after comes,
Seems to salute him from ideal homes,

Which pale and pensive, from each pilgrim star
Gleam through the air, and glisten from afar:
And then, dear Lord! amid the vast and lone
Faith can discern Thee on creation's throne.

Thy solemn grandeurs, Thy nocturnal scenes,—
How oft 'tween us and them there intervenes
A troubled shadow, which our guilt must throw
On all which manifests dread power below!

But oh, amid the struggle, toil, and tears,
And blighting anguish of our baffled years,
The hush'd religion of a grief-worn heart
How does it love Thee, Healer as Thou art!

But when life's wearied days are spent and gone,
And calm eternity is coming on,
Ere the wing'd soul shall take its awful flight,
Abide with us! and death will be delight.

OUR MORROWS BELONG TO GOD.

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”— Matt. vi. 34.

Our morrows unto God belong;
This day can be our own,
If on the Stronger than the strong
We lean our hearts alone,
Casting on Christ our grief and care,
By constant power of heaven-breathed prayer.

But, Gentiles with a Christian name
We gravitate to earth,
And by our heathen darkness shame
The glories of our birth;
If sons who God their Father call,—
To Him why trust not all in all?

Oh, could we like the Saviour be,
Whose “meat and drink” it made
Heaven's will alone in life to see
In all He did, or said!
No longer would base Mammon find
A temple in our care-worn mind.

Behold! creation's world of sense
Rebukes the carking race,
Whose creedless hearts of Providence
Discern no living trace,
Though earth and sky and choral sea
Are throbbing with divinity.

The fowls which populate the air,
The lilies of the field,
Fed and adorn'd without a care,
Divine instruction yield;
They teach us what wise Nature can,—
The arms of God environ man.

And vain, too, each prophetic thought
Whereby the fretted soul,
With fever-visions overwrought,
Man's future would control;
Our being's age and body's growth,—
The Lord alone predestines both.

Why, for mere raiment, meat and drink,
Our future so forecast,
As though, like Pagans, we could think
This life were first and last?
Forgetful, that one thought sublime
Outweighs a world of sense and time!

Our little faith,—alas! 'tis less
Than what the least should prove,
Making our scene a wilderness
Which might be one of love:
Like orphan'd souls in solitude,
Denying Him we call The Good.

Gaze upward, soul! on God the true;
Each burden cast on Him,
Believe Jehovah cares for you
Not less than seraphim:
The very hairs of men are number'd,
Why then with woes be overcumber'd?

But still these boding hearts, like Seers
On whom the future lowers,
Project themselves o'er unborn years,
And crowd the coming hours
With destinies that haunt the mind,
Till weaken'd faith grow wan and blind.

Condemn'd be such unhallow'd care,
Which lets to-morrow's weight
O'erburden with a gaunt despair
What cheers our present state;
As if each day on life's dull road
Were harness'd with too light a load!

Sufficient for the Day when born
Is each new pang that sighs;
Let those who will not sink forlorn,
In Jesu's name arise:
Since ye belong to Heaven's control,
Foreseen to-morrows! quit the soul.

Simplicity is wisdom when
Our yielding minds obey
The law which God ordains for men,—
Our duty is to-day!
Our burden too, that cross to bear,
And not forecast imagined care.

And let thy teaching grace, oh Lord,
Such perfect sway impart,
That faith may hear this haunting word
Like music in the heart,—
Sufficient is the moment given,
And thy to-morrow safe in heaven.

SILENT PRAYER.

“Now Hannah, she spake in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard.”—1 Sam. i. 13.

We do not pray, because we move
Our lips in oral speech,
For depths abound of deeper love
Than words can ever reach.

Nor is it prayer, when utter'd thought
With ardent feeling glows,
As though th' excited breast were fraught
With flame that overflows:

For words may flow from fluent powers,
And prove a dubious sign;
'Tis only when the truth is ours,
The heart, oh Lord, is Thine!

The raptured tongue whose tones arise
Like sparks of mental fire,
Not ever breathes those contrite sighs
Deep thoughts of sin inspire.

And oft when o'er moved fancy rolls
Soft melody of speech,
No inward awe the mind controls
With truths words cannot reach.

True prayer is that mysterious breath
The Spirit from above
Breathes through the heart in life, and death,
And is the pulse of Love!

'Tis God within, imparting grace,
'Tis heaven come down to earth,
That man may look in Mercy's face,
And feel his second birth;

A sense of want, of woe, and sin,
A creed that Christ is all,
A faith whose filial voice within
Can God “My Father!” call;

Reliance on atoning Blood,
Convictions true and deep,
Attesting that the Lord is good
Who bids us smile, or weep;

With aspirations pure and high
That souls, like saints, may be
Both while we live, and when we die,
From guilt and Satan free,—

Behold a Prayer! a breath divine,
Whose sacred throb and thrill,
Believer, can that heart of thine
With unvoiced worship fill.

In such high mood of heavenliness,
Upon thy spirit's chords
Devotion feels a magic stress
Beyond translating words:

But He, benign Interpreter!
Who hears an inward groan,
In heaven perceives the voiceless stir
Of souls He calls His own.

Unbreathed, unspoke a prayer may be,
Nor vocal lips proclaim
What God alone can hear and see,
When Love adores His name.

Then, cheer thee! sad but sainted Heart
That pines for spoken prayer;
Be sure, if child of God thou art,
More love than lips declare

Dwells in thy depths of being still,—
Howe'er some baffled word
Break down beneath those thoughts which fill
The soul where God is heard.

And thus when dying voice decays,
And pulse and motion cease,
Heaven marks the speaking eye that prays
For mercy's last release.

True Christians live beyond their speech,
And faith is more sublime
Than syllables of breath can reach,
Framed out of sense and time.

MUSIC AND THE EVIL SPIRIT.

“Seek out a man who is a cunning player on a harp: and it shall come to pass, when the Evil Spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.”—1 Sam. xvi. 16.

Two worlds around us act and move,
Though one alone we hear, or see;
And they whose souls are born above,
Will not repulse that Mystery
Which binds them both by one harmonious law,
Deeper than earth-framed science ever saw.

The world of sense is fair to sight,
Though touch'd all o'er with taints of sin;
Gay morn, and noon, and magic night
Accost the charmèd soul within,
And, like faint beams on Memnon's fabled stone,
Draw from our spirit some responsive tone.

Mountain, and field, and forest wide
With their green coronal of trees,
And Ocean, with his billowy tide
Rolling in wave-born ecstasies,
Cities, and hamlets, and the high-wall'd town,
And sculptured marbles, breathing dead renown,—

In each and all there reigns and lives
Far more than sensual eye beholds;
A Presence which no token gives
Of what the heart of things enfolds,—

Save to deep Souls whose inward eye can see
Symbols that charm the faithful, and the free.

Another and a holier sphere,
A viewless world, unheard, unknown,
More awful than religion's fear,
Around embodied minds is thrown;
And while the earth-bound walk by sense and sight,
That orb engirdles them by day and night!

Angels, and Spirits of the blest,
Stern Attributes, and sacred Powers
Nature and Providence invest,
And circle this vex'd life of ours;—
While voiceless mysteries, whence we cannot tell,
Throb through the flesh, did we but mark them well.

And thou, deep charm of sevenfold grace,
Sweet Music! Thou art more than sound;
For melodies from God's bright place
Within thy blissful spell abound,
Like broken echoes, that have thus o'erran
Angelic lyres, and trembled down to man!

Oh! call not music by a word
Terrestrial minds alone approve,
For in it more than tone is heard,—
A something deep as Spirits love;
Painting, and poetry of sound are there,
Blent with the lulling pause of secret prayer.

Such was the minstrel's art divine
When David struck his chorded lyre,
Where earth and heaven in one combine,
And by commingled sway inspire
Soft airs, before whose superhuman spell
The Fiend shrunk wither'd to his native hell!

And He, the dread and dauntless seer,
Whose word could seal and open skies,
The awe of music did revere,
And bow'd beneath those harmonies
That gush'd around him, soft, serene, or grand,
Like air-chords thrill'd by some celestial hand.

MAKE THEE AN ARK.

“Make thee an Ark ------ Behold! I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth ------ Come thou and all thy house into the Ark.”—Gen. vi. 14, 17; vii. 1.

Though youth's bright world looks fresh and fair,
And proud the pulse of feeling there,
While syren hope sings everywhere
Of promised bliss to come,
Yet signs exist of sternest woe
Which tell young Hearts that all below
May yet the primal ruin show,
And prove earth not our home!

Deep, dark, and cold the cruel grave,
When big and burning tear-drops lave
The cheeks of Love, which mourns the brave
And beautiful who fly!
The bloom and breath of dawning Life
Are each with slow consumption rife,
And mark how soon the parting strife
May close the sunken eye!

Scarce dies a day, but rings the knell
O'er something which we love too well,
Or cherish with so close a spell
That when it droops, we bleed;
While pride and passion round us throng,
And pleasures with voluptuous song
Entice warm souls the way along
Which ends in wrath decreed.

Hence, life is peril; and how blest
The minds that in some ark can rest,
Secured and safe, howe'er distrest,
From final wreck and woe!
The storm may rise, the surges roll,
Rude whirlwinds seem to rend the soul
No mortal wisdom can control,
Yet none that ark o'erthrow!

“Make thee an Ark,” of old was heard;
And, true as echo to the word,
His heart with pure allegiance stirr'd
The hand which Heaven obey'd:
To Noah, God believed was law,
O'erruling all he felt, or saw,
With that serene and soothing awe
Which keeps man undismay'd.

And thus, when sea and sky were blent,
While raged the roaring element
Until each Vial's wrath was spent,
Safe o'er the storm he rode;
Around him cries and corpses were,
And oft was yell'd man's howling praver,
Mix'd with the wild beast's in his lair,
When furious waves o'erflow'd.

And so with saints of Light 'twill be,
When taught, oh God! by grace and Thee,
At once to that retreat they flee
Where shelt'ring mercies bide;
No ark they need to frame, or form,
To shield them from each rushing storm
Round life and death that spreads alarm,—
For that Thy truth supplied.

And dost thou seek, where stands the Ark,
That, when wild tempests, stern and dark,
Engulph and wreck each human bark,
May waft thee safely on?
Behold it, in the Church of grace,
Prepared for each believing race
Who there may find, with contrite face,
The shelter Jesu won.

Here babes, besprent with sacred dew
Ere sin and sorrow yet they rue,
Baptismally a nature new
From God's own Spirit gain;
On their white brows a mystic sign,
Behold it tell this truth divine,—
Yon infant, Christ! is sealed for Thine,
Blood-wash'd from guilty stain.

And onward as progressive life
Encircles man with clashing strife,
Howe'er the world with sin be rife,
And dangers round us roll,
Ark'd in Thy founded Church, O Lord!
Thy promised Grace, Thy precious Word,
If by our prostrate will preferr'd,
Shall keep unwreck'd the soul.

Safe in the Ark by Jesus built,
Beyond the flooding waves of guilt
We float, and, through the blood He spilt
On Calvary's deathful tree,—
Victoriously our spirits ride
Over the sad and surging tide
That welters o'er the world beside,
Unanchor'd, God, in thee.

And blest are they, with minds unskill'd
By rebel pride to plan, or build
An ark no present Christ hath fill'd
With sacramental love;
Who in the Church can sweetly rest,
Till peace divine becalm their breast,
And, howsoe'er by storms distress'd,
A haven reach above.

OH THAT I HAD WINGS!

“I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.”—Ps. lv. 6.

Bird of beauty! upward soaring
On thy plumes of lustre white,
Far beyond the tempest roaring
And the gloom of gath'ring night,
While they watch thee speed away
Where no awful lightnings play,
Many an earth-chain'd Heart will sigh,
“Lend me wings, and let me fly!”

“Dove-like let me, proudly rising
Out of sin, and woe, and crime,
Feel my wingèd soul despising
Fetters wove from earth and time;
And by faith ascend to see
Shrines that glow with Deity,
And in bowers of glory find
Bliss of heart, and calm of mind.”

Men, whose hearts by grace enlighten'd
Once for heaven in concord beat,
Have their taste by truth so heighten'd
That no more in earth's retreat
They contentment can perceive,
But for ever pine to leave
Scenes where passion's fires abound,
And, like fiends, our faith surround.

Not by creedless foe and stranger
Are disciples wrong'd alone,
But apostate friends endanger
Those they once have loved, and known,—
Who amid the morn of youth
Both pursued and pray'd for truth,
And along Time's ancient road,
Calmly sought the house of God.

Keen beyond all pangs distressing
Is the piercing one that finds
Friends of old in faith caressing,
Chill'd in heart, and changed in mind;
Each to each an alien grown,
All fond smiles of welcome flown,—
Heart-breathed wish and household word,
Never more in union heard!

Not again behold them taking
Counsel sweet and sacred talk,
But their holy Church forsaking
For some wild sectarian walk:—
Who can mark such sever'd friends
When their love in loathing ends,
Nor, like David, long to soar
Where the saved are gone before?

He whose heart true light discerneth
In Thy beams, Incarnate Love:
At Thy footstool deeply learneth
Lessons that will last above;
Nor amid such bleak distress,
Sighs he for lone wilderness,
But in prayer true solace finds,
Opening heaven to sainted minds.

Wearied, worn, and oft benighted,
Want and weakness round us reign,
Yet the Dove on Christ who lighted
Thus prolongs that healing strain,—
“Cast thy burden on My breast,
Where the weary drop to rest;
Harass'd pilgrim, hope and pray,
Learn of Me, and love the way!”

THE ARKLESS DOVE.

“The dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark.”—Gen. viii. 9.

The ghastliness and gloom of death
Cover creation like a pall,
Without a pulse, without a breath,—
Sepulchral waters bury all;
Like a huge corse the dead Earth lies
A floating mass beneath the skies!

It must have been a wild'ring sight
Which roll'd his palsied heart-tide back,
When Noah for the raven's flight
Open'd the ark, and in yon track
Where the wild deluge spread its wave
Beheld but one stupendous grave!

But, hark! a mild and gracious breeze
Like a wing'd mercy floats along;
The music of poetic trees
Has never shed so sweet a song;
For where its fresh enchantments play
The floods decrease, and die away.

The fountains of the Deep are closed,
The windows shut of wrathful heaven,
And, safe on Ararat reposed,
The ark of life to Noah given;
Judgment is o'er, and grace seems nigh,
And green earth soon shall hail the sky.

He sends the raven, and on wings
Of fierce delight it hurries forth,
Yet, ah! no olive-branch it brings,
But east, and west, and south, and north,
Flutters about by night and day,
And banquets on vile carrion-prey.

True emblem of those Belial hearts
And canker'd minds, debased and dead,
Who feed on what foul Earth imparts
Of loathsome passion born, and bred;
For, raven-like, they haunt the scene
And revel most where vice hath been.

But thou, sweet dove of radiant white!
Methinks I watch thee in the beam
Wave thy fair wings with free delight,
And glisten in that snowy gleam
Which round about thee glances mild,
Decking thy plumage undefiled.

Hither and thither wing'd the dove,
And sought in vain some verdant tree;
The waves beneath, the sky above
Were all its vestal eyes could see;
So, backward to the ark it flew
And nestled in that shelter true.

And, trace we not a symbol here
Of that unrest the holy feel,
When doom'd to haunt some alien sphere
Where nothing reigns but carnal zeal;
Where all looks selfish, low, and base,
And time and sense our God displace?

Oh! how they yearn for lone retreat,
Some temple where religion dwells,
While, sitting low at Jesu's feet,
Their bosom with his doctrine swells;
For Christ is their celestial Ark
Which lifts them o'er life's ocean dark.

Dovelike, amid the haunts of sin
Howe'er the Saints are forced to roam,
There is a pure unrest within
That pants for some more perfect home;
And that the Saviour's Church hath proved
To God's elect, by angels loved.

And e'en as once the dove brought back
To Noah's hand, at twilight-hour,
The branch of peace, that on its track
Was pluck'd from some diluvian bower,—
The soul of saints on earth may see
Tokens of tender Deity:

And as that bird, when once again
The flooded soil began to rise,
Till green apparel robed the plain
And crystal sunlight clad the skies,
No ark required, but in wide air
Found a pure freedom ev'rywhere,—

So, when this ruin'd earth recedes,
Our perfect spirits will not ask
A local church, where sorrow pleads
For shelter from life's whelming task;
Since heaven will prove one church of praise,
And each true soul a temple raise.

But ye unblest! of men deceived,
Who think this world a good imparts
Beyond what martyr'd saints believed,
And welcomed in their wounded hearts,

Of this be sure,—ye cannot find,
From heaven apart, the peaceful mind!

Go, child of Sin! pursue each path
That opens on thy restless view;
Prove all which gain, or glory, hath,
Admire, enjoy, exhaust them too,
But, still unreach'd is that repose
That sainted virtue only knows!

Ambition, pleasure, pride, or pelf,
What gilded fame, or fortune gives,
Feeds but the gnawing worm of Self
Which on contentment preys and lives;
Remote is that ideal rest
Whose home becomes a hallow'd breast.

Man was not made for finite good,
The Infinite to Him pertains;
Heaven's manna forms his genial food,
Though unbelief from such refrains:
O, that in Mercy's ark of peace
The erring mind would seek release!

Return unto thy rest, return
Thou arkless soul of sinful man!
For, until chaste affections burn
With ardour pure as spirits can,
Thy life will be a discontent,
In fitful dreams of folly spent.

Deep Spirit of divinest calm!
Descend, and soothe unquiet hearts;
Breathe o'er each ruffled mind the balm
Thy perfect nobleness imparts,
And then, oh Lord! Thy saints will be
Sublimely ark'd in heaven and Thee.

THE BOW OF PROMISE.

“The bow shall be in the cloud; I will look upon it that I may remember the everlasting Covenant.” Gen. ix. 16.

Thou liquid bow of beauty and of grace
Arching the rain-cloud with a bended way,
Religion cannot mark thy gleaming trace
And muse not, how the mighty God did say

That when yon sacramental arch should span
The hills beneath, or paint the heavens above,
He would recall His covenant with Man,
And feel the vastness of forgiving love.

Summer, and seed-time, harvest, winter, spring,
Whate'er the seasons in their mercy bear,
Each unto ransom'd Earth should ever bring
Tokens of peace and God's paternal care.

And thus, a symbol art thou, and a sign
Of what no wisdom in the schools could teach;
A sacred emblem, preaching truths divine
More eloquent of Christ than angel-speech.

'Tis not alone that Childhood's greeting eyes
When first thine arching loveliness they see,
Gladden beneath it with entranced surprise
And hail the miracle of hues in thee!

Nor is it, that our Priests of earth and heaven
Who at the altar of the Muses stand,
To whom the glorious privilege is given
To summon beauty when they wave their wand,

The gem-like radiance of thy form admire,
And liquid blending of thy rain-born hues,
Or, oft to hymn thee, strike the hallow'd lyre
And into words thine opal gleams transfuse.

Still less can Science, with her colder gaze,
Suggest what thy prismatic splendours mean,
When dim and delicate with tearful rays
She marks thee outlined in the storm-veil'd scene.

'Tis Faith alone thy full enchantment feels
Mild grace and glory of the firmament!
When o'er the heart remember'd judgment steals,
And grateful love with tender awe is blent.

Since, not a pulse of life in earth, or sea,
That should not in thy graceful symbol find
A token which our God express'd by thee,—
His curse has roll'd away from wreck'd mankind!

Pure arch of triumph! wove through Nature's tears
In fairy gems reflected as they fall,
Bright may thy bow, beyond our mortal fears,
Preach the vast mercy which encloseth all!

And, deeply touching to the soul made wise
Is the great truth primeval words declare,—
That when a rainbow consecrates the skies
Both God and man commingle glances there.

Mercy The One in that soft omen sees,
View'd in the promise which of old He swore,
That earth should witness what His will decrees,
And not be deluged as she was of yore.

And man, the monument of matchless love,
When he beholds yon bow of beauty form,
Saint if he be, recalls the Christ above
Who rescued Nature from her ruin-storm.

But, high o'er heaven's purpureal ether mount
To that sunn'd region where no storms prevail,
And even there, at mercy's crystal fount
The rainbow of our human past we hail!

Round the white Throne where sits the Prince of Light,—
Glory beyond all glories to express!
Lo, the same rainbow gleams like emerald bright,
And girdles Him with awful loveliness.

And oh, believer! does not this declare
That covenants divine abide the same?
How saints of old, as living Christians are,
Were rescued by the one redeeming Name?

Lord of our souls! Thou Saviour ever dear,
Be still our rainbow in the clouds of life;
In Thy chaste sunlight melt each rising tear,
And arch with triumph scenes of darkest strife.

Radiant with mercy, calm the sinking heart,
And beam through sorrow's night and suff'ring's gloom,
A deathless Iris, that will ne'er depart,
But shine immortal o'er our destined tomb!

CHRIST IN COMMUNION WITH THE SOUL.

“Abide with us.”—Luke xxiv. 29.

Abide with us, dear Lord! abide;
No hearts can beat, and be untried
By pangful woe or care;
But, if Thy shielding arm o'ershade
The creature which Thy love hath made
Hell cannot harm a hair.

Around us Powers of evil throng
Who fain would hurry souls along
The wilds of sin and gloom;
And principles within us rage
In vernal youth, or wintry age,
Which haunt us to the tomb.

But Thou, abiding Lord of peace!
Art light, and liberty's release
To all meek sons of faith,
Thy word divine who e'er attend,
And listen to the sinner's Friend
Though dark the truth He saith.

The sinful Earth looks sad and lone,
And guilty hearts around us moan,
And graves, how fast they rise!
As added years their record bring
Of havoc, change, and suffering,—
What sadness loads our sighs!

But should Thy presence be supplied,
What calming powers of truth abide!
Our cross is meekly borne;
Though spent the noon, and night appears
To darken through our spirit's tears,
Life will not be forlorn.

When sickness shades the soul with dread,
And Fever moans with throbbing head
Till wild the pulses play,
Abide with us! blest Lord, and be
A balm beyond all sympathy
To awe the Fiend away.

Or, should it be our lot to keep
Night-watch beside the guarded sleep
Of parent, child, or friend,
There, as we note each ebbing breath
And scan the chill of coming death,
Thy dews of mercy send.

Or, when the churchyard-gloom we pace,
And oft with tearful silence trace
The tombs of friends no more,
Abide with us! that Hope and Prayer
May warble words of glory there,
Which back the dead restore.

But oh, blest Lord! of all the wounds
With which man's wearied life abounds,
Not death, nor sickness, they
Which most disease the mind with pain,
Or bid us view the world as vain,
Where grief and anguish sway;

But, hollow tongues and heartless smiles,
And glozing friends who were but wiles
Of falsehood lightly drest,—
These melt us into more than tears,
And make us feel our martyr'd years
A burden on the breast.

O then, abide with us! and calm
Our spirit with that sacred balm
Pure grace alone imparts;
Thy Presence like a heaven will be,
When all the false ones fade and flee,
And soothe our sunken hearts.

Abide with us!—why pray we so,
As if disciples did not glow
With Thine own promise sure?
“Lo! I am with you, till the chime
Of Ages sounds the last of time,
While earth and man endure.”

Yes, Thou art “with us” in Thy word;
Thy Voice in sacraments is heard,
And prayer and praise reveal
How through the soul Thy blessings glide,
As o'er the heart's most gloomy tide
Thy radiant comforts steal.

Dejection oft, but not despair,
In this tried world of woe and care
It may be ours to face;
Only, be Thou the sleepless guide,
Morn, noon, and night with us abide
Till we complete our race.

We ask not blissful calms to dwell
Around us with unbroken spell,
Nor seek a pangless lot;
But, by the breathing of Thy word
Be our faint bosoms freshly stirr'd,
Nor sigh, as if forgot!

DEPARTED, NOT DEAD.

[C. H. E. M., BORN MAY 4, 1848: DIED JUNE 8, 1848.]

“As one in bitterness for his first-born.”—Zech. xii. 10.

“Redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb.”—Rev. xiv. 4.

Thou art not dead, my vanish'd one!
But living in the light
Of some pure world, beyond the sun,
Where death creates no night,
And sumless babes are smiling now
As bright and beautiful as thou.

When first I saw thy baby-form
With eyes of tearful love,
I little thought a hidden storm
Was looming from above,
So soon to blast my May-born flower
Beneath the blight of deathful power.

The Lord who gives, hath ta'en away,
And blest be His high name!
Oh, that with calm I this could say
And feel God's hallow'd claim:—
Cease, rebel heart! be calm and still,
And bow beneath a Father's will.

Pale relic! now enrobed for death,
Nurseling of hopes and fears,
How did I watch each ebbing breath
And kiss thine infant tears,
When throbs of suff'ring o'er thee came
Thy wordless tongue could never name.

Departed babe! how many a dream
Brighten'd thy father's heart,
When like a vision thou didst seem
In life to take such part,
That o'er his hours there breathed a spell
More exquisite than tones can tell.

With thy soft features round me glowing
Amid the world I went,
And with a heart to heaven o'erflowing
Bless'd thee, bright innocent!
And felt, howe'er my path should roam,
My little star-beam reign'd at home.

Already Hope's prophetic eye
Beheld some future spot,
And underneath life's vernal sky,
Pictured thy maiden lot,
Where truth and grace would be thy guide,
And all thy wants by heaven supplied.

I dream'd, if God thy life should spare,
How blessèd it would be
To hear thy budding lips declare
Young words of Deity;
To watch thy spirit, day by day,
Rise into speech, and learn to pray.

I fancied how my hand would lead
Thy tiny feet along,
By placid shore, or sunny mead
Where brooklets sing their song,
While gay-wing'd breezes round thee flew
And clad thy cheeks with vermeil hue.

And oh! I dared, through Him, to hope,
To Whose baptismal arms
I gave thee,—that thy mind would ope
Each year, with sacred charms;
As more and more The Spirit taught
Thy gentle soul what Jesu wrought.

But thou art pale, a perish'd flower,
A blossom on Life's tree,
Nipp'd in the bud, before the power
Of sin corrupted thee:—
Wash'd in the blood of Jesu white,
Babe, art not thou in glory bright?

Cold, cold, my child! I view thee now
Like Sleep in marble lying,
With paleness on thy placid brow
Which sets my heart a-sighing;
And round thy lips there linger still
Dead smiles that shall remembrance fill.

My first-born! God has call'd thee back,
His gift He doth resume,
But o'er thy father's blighted track
Darkens thine early tomb,—
A haunting shade of more than grief
To which man's world brings no relief.

From room to room I wander on
Where thou hast been of yore,
And all mine eyes can gaze upon
Recalls a child no more;
As though each object would declare
Thy darling glances rested there.

Beloved and beauteous wreck of all
That warm'd this aching breast
With hopes, that when the funeral pall
Should o'er thy parent rest,
There still might be a loving one
To think of him, whose course was run,—

Farewell! farewell! departed child,
Sweet darling of the soul,
Gone to the grave, ere sin defiled
Thy conscience with control;
I mourn, my babe! but not for thee
Becalm'd in Christ's eternity.

Before me lies a perill'd way
Of trial, change, and tears;
If short or long, life's future day,
Rests with the God of years,
Who measures our appointed span,
And deals the thread of time to man.

Yet I shall smile, and act, and speak,
As though thou ne'er hadst been;
And they who scan the brow and cheek
And judge by outward mien,
Can little dream how much we hide
Under the heart's unwitness'd tide!

The purest thoughts lone spirits bear
Are marr'd by being spoken,
And more than deepest words declare
Lives in some heart half-broken;
A transient grief light tongues may tell,
But cloister'd Anguish keeps her cell.

A thousand things must wake the sigh
That shall remember thee,
And raise before the mental eye
Those tombs of memory,
Which o'er the churchyard of the heart
Cast inward shades, which ne'er depart.

The beam, the bud, the blooming grace
Of some infantile flower
Which smiles into a poet's face
In Nature's conscious hour,
Oh! each and all will oft restore,
A mental gleam of her no more.

But melody, beyond all charms,
The buried past regains;
And oft the spoiling tomb disarms
By resurrection-strains,
In whose rapt tones the dead revive,
And untomb'd years appear alive.

Thus will thy sylph-like features float
Before mine inward gaze,
Call'd into life by some sweet note
The harp of feeling plays;
Across my soul thy shape will beam,
And smile like some incarnate dream.

Farewell, my child! but not farewell
For ever;—we shall meet
When sounds creation's dooming knell
Before the judgment-seat;
And I shall know thy little face
Amid the world's assembled race.

Thrice happy babe! thou beauteous Soul
To some bright world ascended,
How glorious that celestial goal
Where thy brief course is ended!—
And most divine that hour will be
That bids me mount, and follow thee.

June 8th, 1848.

PREVAILING INTERCESSION.

“I will speak, yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And He said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake,”(Gen. xviii. 32,)

compared with,

“Ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.”—Jer. xxix. 12.

Thou dost, O God! transcend the All
Creative thought can into vision call,
When most enrapt and raisèd Mind
Darts through the regions of the undefined,

Conceiving there the beautiful and bright
In the deep centre of Ideal light;
Eternal! Thou art perfect good,—
Such glory, who but Thou, hast understood?

And yet, may soul-breathed prayer ascend
And with those anthems of Thy worship blend,
Which round that secret Glory dwell
Where Thou art shrined in shades invisible:
Not dearer to Thine ear of love
The hymns and hallelujahs heard above,
Than is the contrite sinner's cry,
The broken cadence of his burden'd sigh.

O mystery! fathomless to thought,
With truths august how infinitely fraught!
That He, The Essence Uncreate
Throned in the blaze of His almighty state,
Should bend to hear the falt'ring praise
We sinful earth-worms to the Godhead raise,
And so in Christ should condescend
To call the Dust of woman born, His “Friend!”

Hence, prayer becomes a pious wing
By which we soar to where crown'd Angels sing,
Ensphered in realms surmounting time.—
Through the dread vastness of the heavens sublime
Souls cleave their flight, until they see
The mercy-shrine of prayer-moved Deity;
There, entering in behind the veil,
Our suppliant hearts may breathe their sorrowing tale.

And, what a privilege for those
Foundlings of grace, o'erwhelm'd by frequent woes,
Whose faith-wing'd souls with seraph-zeal
Rise to That Heart in heaven, which learn'd to feel
In this rude world where sorrows reign,
The direst throbbing of terrestrial pain!—
Who, though on high He weeps no more,
In bliss remembers what on earth He bore.

Yes! Sympathy beyond the skies
Reigns, feels and acts for souls renew'd, which rise
And with adoring boldness ask
Due strength to aid them in life's weary task:
There Christ, our elder Brother, lives,
And echoes back whate'er the suppliant gives
Of low-breathed sigh, or sorrow's tone,
As though the Church's trial were His own.

Hence meekly wise, the heaven-taught Mind
By prayerless reason grows not base and blind;
For God is honour'd when we pray:
In the rich glories of their guardian sway
His Attributes we then confess,
Alone can blast us, or supremely bless;
A sigh, or look, or breath of prayer
Brings Heaven to earth, and proves God ev'ry where.

Arm'd with the strength true prayer bestows,
How fearless martyrs triumph'd o'er their woes!
The sworded despot, fire and chain,
The dungeon-midnight, and the exile's pain,
With all tyrannic horrors press'd
Through the deep gloom of some o'ertortured breast,—
Melted, like shades, before the sense
That prayer on earth was man's omnipotence.

Devotion guides the soul to God
By the same pathway blest Emmanuel trod;
Its power may range all nature through,
And in the dark of providence can view
Soft tokens of celestial light,
Calm spots of glory, which allay the night;
And grasp, while griefs around them stand,
The feeling guidance of their Father's hand.

Who lives on this lone earth of graves,
Will find bare wisdom nought from ruin saves:
Sorrow and sin encompass all
Which men of flesh their finest rapture call,
Without,—delusive spells abound,
And Fiends unview'd our holiest shrines surround;
Within,—behold the traitor's will!
With some dark lust that dares besiege us still.

In vain will unanointed eyes
Seek for a halcyon bower below the skies:
Gay inexperience soon will find
The ruin'd conscience, and the restless mind,
And marvel, as swift years advance,
How many a tombstone hails its tearful glance;
While busy Homes, once bright with glee,
Th' eclipsing shadow of their dead will see!

More blest are they, whom Christ hath taught
To seek that Home true saints have ever sought,
E'en that pure orb of perfect rest
Where sin nor sorrow clouds the aching breast:—
And, who are these, but men of prayer
Who unto God committed grief and care,
And on the heart of Jesu laid
Each burden down, which lighten'd as they pray'd?

They knew, that saints alone are strong,
Who mourn what weakness must to saints belong,
And to the last corruption feel
Like a slow plague-spot o'er sick nature steal:
Their wisdom was themselves to know,
Whose guiding law was God revered below;
Their lives were liturgies of love,
And Christ the loadstar they obey'd above.

And so with us 'twill ever be,
If true to heaven our hearts beat loyally.
What souls to living bodies are,
To faith heaven-born becomes the pulse of Prayer,—
The spirit's life that throbs within,
And gently masters each embosom'd sin,
Reigning victorious over all
Which back to earth the mounting soul would call.

True prayer is thus Religion's breath,
That hallows life, and haunts her until death;
Without it, holiness expires,
Dark grow our hopes, and sensual our desires;—
Since, not a grace the Gospel gives
But in the power of prayer it moves, and lives,
And Christ His perfect image sees,
When He beholds him on adoring knees.

LIFE IS A FADING LEAF.

“We all do fade as a leaf.”—Isa. lxiv. 6.

Chill o'er yon heath autumnal shadows fall,
The dusky twilight reigns with deeper sway,
While soft dejection seems to mantle all,
Like nature mourning for the death of day.

As hectic hues on pale consumption's form,
Red tints of ruin deck the flower and tree,
And low winds murmur like a wailing storm,
Or dirges o'er the dead entomb'd at sea.

Where is the flush, by vernal radiance clad,
That late o'er all the glowing landscape smiled,
Making the heart of hoary age as glad
As though 'twere backward into youth beguiled?

'Tis gone, that bright and beauteous glow,
Which o'er the teeming breast of nature threw
A charm that bad the bleakest mind o'erflow
With feelings exquisite, and fancies new.

There is a deadness, clothed by wintry awe,
Encircling now what then with bloom was bright;
And where the freshness of young spring we saw,
Floats the chill moisture of the coming blight.

Here as we roam adown yon woodland-dell,
The stricken leaves in yellow showers descend,
And each one seems to sigh a sad farewell,
Like love-tones murmur'd o'er a dying friend.

Meet emblem this of transient life's decay,
How all things perish which we prize below;
Where, like sear'd foliage, youth soon fades away,
And wither'd hopes bestrew the path of woe.

We learn mortality where'er we look,
The dust we tread subserves a moral plan,
And when aright we read creation's book,
Lo! all its pages are address'd to man.

Summer and winter, autumn and mild spring,
May each instruct us by their beauteous lore;
Each to our soul a sacred lesson bring,
And buried warnings into life restore.

In some high mood of melancholy thought
Nature herself doth almost human grow,
And mirror back what Mind to her hath brought,
And leave men wiser than mere sages know.

And well it tempers with a sober hue
The gayest scenes that youthful passions find,
To cast o'er coming death a pensive view,
And breathe the quiet of a prayerful mind.

Dejection makes the autumn of the soul,—
But let autumnal feelings have their sway,
And, shrink not, Christian! from their just control,
But grasp their blessing, ere they glide away.

Yet may not wintry skies, nor leafless bower
Oppress the spirit with too damp a gloom;
For in man's being lurks a vital power,
By Christ obtain'd, victorious o'er the tomb.

Thus, though man wither like an orphan leaf
Which lies forgotten in the lonely dust,
His dead corruption is a moment brief,—
For, hark the trumpet! and arise he must.

'Tis here the parable of nature's death
Fails to adumbrate what our doom shall be;
Life does not perish with corporeal breath,
But live once more to look on Deity!

Earth, air, and ocean, wood and wildest shore,—
Sleep in the dust where mortal embers may,
When rings the trumpet, each shall back restore
The deathless atoms of departed clay.

Creation finds an everlasting grave;
Where fall the dead leaves, they for ever lie,
No resurrection-winds shall o'er them wave,
And show their beauty to a new-born sky:

But, Man shall triumph o'er an endless tomb;
When God's loud clarion wakes his sleeping frame,
A dread eternity must be his doom,
In heaven immortal, or in hell, the same!

A FOUNTAIN IN THE DESERT.

“God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.” Gen. xxii. 19.

Under the burning eye of heaven
Breathless and bright as noon can be,
Mother and child,—behold them driven
O'er the hot wild in agony;
While each heart throbs that fearful prayer,
“Relieve me, Death! from black despair.”

Beersheba's desert, lone and dun,
Around them both lies grimly spread;
No veiling cloud-shade hides the sun,
And underneath, as on they tread,
The fierceness of its flaming heat
Doth blister their unsandall'd feet.

O, for the music of one breeze
To warble through the windless air!
Or, cooling breath from some chance trees
To mitigate the savage glare,
Which reddens like a furnace-glow
O'er sky and herbless soil below.

But still untamed, the eastern noon
Burns round them in a breezeless trance;
And, yellower than the harvest-moon
Yon wither'd heath which meets their glance;
Above, below, where'er they gaze,
'Tis cruel heat, and cloudless blaze!

No bird-wings break the hush intense,
No murmurs fall from leafy bough;
The very insects in suspense
Refrain their tiny descant now:
So dead the stillness reigning round
A man might hear his heart-beat sound.

Yon haggard mother lifts her eyes,
Around the scene they wildly roll,
And who can list the choking sighs
Which heave from out her riven soul,
And not believe, intenser pain
Could never cleave a heart in twain!

Foodless and fainting lags her child,
Its bleeding feet can hardly stand;
Yet, fired with thirst, along the wild
She guides it with a fev'rish hand:—
The water spent, along her frame
The shudderings deep of horror came!

In vain her sunken eyes survey'd
The arid heath and desert bare,
To see if one lone streamlet stray'd
In flow of mercy lingering there;
For neither gushing well, nor brook
Replied to her despairing look.

Oh, sad Egyptian! outcast one,
By Sarah hurl'd from all thy bliss,
Ten thousand deaths have now begun
To mingle in a death like this;
Methinks I mark thee, Hagar wild,
Shudder to view thy sobbing child!

Fainter and fainter moves each limb,
The parchèd mouth no more can speak;
And when thy tears descend on him,
They burn upon his hollow cheek;
The swoon of death is coming fast,—
The child beneath yon shrub is cast.

Parental Love! 'tis now the hour
To testify how deep thou art;
Replete with superhuman power,
Thy fountain is a mother's heart:
Though fathom'd seas their depths unfold,
The deeps of love what tongue hath told?

From God a mother's feelings rise,
A fount divine is their high source,
And, purer than our thoughts surmise,
They stream through life their endless course;
Outlasting all we love to see,—
They blend with soul's eternity!

And this was hers, who could not dare
Behold her gasping child depart,
But laid him down in mute despair,
Then turn'd her eyes, but not her heart
From that dread sight:—behind a tree
She shrunk, and wept, how bitterly!

And as she wail'd, what sobs and sighs
Along her quivering heart-strings came!
While closed her boy his fainting eyes,
And scorching thirst subdued his frame:
She dared not see, but how she felt
His throbs of anguish through her melt!

But God is nigh, oh, mother wild!
Behold a mission'd angel's wings
Arch their rich glory o'er the child,
And, hark! the mercy that he brings,—
“Hagar arise, God hears thy prayer,
Go, drink yon well which warbles there.”

Her eyes were open'd; from the ground
She saw the crystal water rise,
And then, as though from death unbound,
Outburst a mother's ecstasies!—
She gave her child that cooling stream,
And stood entranced, as in a dream.

And God be thank'd! for this deep tale
Where grief and grace so finely blend;
And ne'er may such high story fail
Our own chill'd hearts to warm, and mend;
For much it holds, if right we read,
To soothe us in dejection's need.

Not from the bond-maid are we born,
But children of the Church, and free;
Yet, oft vex'd life appears forlorn
As though forgot by Deity;
Cains of the heart, we rove accurst
Till life becomes one aching thirst.

But in the gloom of this rack'd hour
When all around looks bleak and bare,
Betake thee to yon gracious Power
Who listen'd to the weeping prayer
Lone Hagar lifted in the wild,
And brought down Godhead to her child.

For, have we not a Living Well
Of consolations deep as pure?
Nor are its waves invisible
If love and faith our hearts assure;
Since Christ is our celestial Spring,
Whom prayer to earth can ever bring.

And minor wells from Him may flow
Of comfort, joy, and heaven-like peace,
Which calm the fever'd heart of woe,
And grant the mind a fresh release;
And such are found in His blest Word
When God by faith is seen, and heard.

There crystal wells of grace abound,—
The promises, which man console,
And cool life's arid desert round
With streams that freshen as they roll;
And seraph heart and saintly mind
Can ever such refreshment find.

Thou Light of reason! Lord of grace,
Heaven's Paraclete, by Christ obtain'd,
Descend, and from our souls displace
Whatever throne the world hath gain'd;
Dark eyes unscale, and let them see
Our everlasting Well in Thee!

MEDITATION AT EVENTIDE.

“Isaac went out to meditate in the field at eventide.” Gen. xxiv. 63.

I love the still romance of lonely fields,
When shading twilight like a Spirit-wing
Broods o'er the landscape, and the air-tone yields
To the charm'd mind a pensive murmuring.

There, unbeheld by man's intrusive eye,
Let the lone pilgrim wind some willow'd path,
And in the silence of the years gone by,
Feel the soft bliss a sacred memory hath.

When the rude passion of the roaring winds
Louder and louder swells along the sea,
Their voice is echo'd by tempestuous Minds
Who love reflections of themselves to see:

Or, climb some rock where cloud-born anthems peal
And hymning thunders all around thee roll,
And, throned in darkness, thou may'st learn to feel
The dread foundations of the human soul.

But, wisdom most with tenderness doth dwell;
And silent eve, and solitary spot,
Will clothe remembrance with a lasting spell
When stern magnificence is all forgot.

So have they felt, who roam'd thy realm sublime,
Heroic fatherland of Tell the free!—
Helvetia, while they trod that haunted clime,
And drank the magic which inspireth thee.

There the huge mountains lift their billowy forms,
And glaciers whiten by the gorge's steep,
O'er rocks of icy gloom resound the storms,
And pine-trees rend, as on the whirlwind sweep:

And I have heard the Alpine thunder groan
Blent with the avalanche's crushing roar,
As though the Lord of nature left His throne
For chaos to resume its reign once more.

Darkness, and thunder, crag, ravine, and rock,
And precipice that strikes the pilgrim chill,
Send to the o'erawed mind a secret shock
And with terrific glories mem'ry fill.

But, oh! how often when the stern and wild
Die into sadness, like a tragic dream,
The loved impressions of some landscape mild
In fresh reality still glow, and gleam.

The lyric cadence of each choral breeze
Mix'd with the tinkling cow-bells' pensive tone,
The grazing herd, the chalets bower'd in trees,
And mellow calm upon the mountains thrown,

With deep-valed haunts, whose matchless beauty made
The heart o'erflow with loveliness profound,
While pine-woods round the curving shores display'd
Their forest-grace with leafy grandeur crown'd,—

Say, have not these beyond dread storms impress'd
On pure remembrance what the past hath been,
And left a magic that serenes the breast
Like thy hush'd vale, thou unforgot Orsine?

'Tis thus, the calm of beauty most appeals
To finer moods when sainted feeling reigns,
Which downward to the root of mem'ry steals,
And all the softness of our spirit gains.

And oft when ruder life with stormful grief
Rocks the torn heart, till inward tempests rise,
Ideal landscapes lend a soft relief
And smile upon us, like subduing eyes!

So felt the patriarch, when he wisely chose
The lulling hour of loneliness and shade,
To drink the freshness of that pure repose
A quiet evening round the meadows made.

He went to meditate, to muse, and dream,
Where nought broke stillness but the vesper song
Of some gay insect, bird, or babbling stream
Which feels half conscious as it flows along.

Perchance, he mused on nature, man, and God,
Creation's wreck, and ruin'd innocence,
On fortune's sunshine, or affliction's rod,
And all which Grace and Goodness here dispense.

Floated the hymns of angels on his ear,
As once they warbled over Eden's bower?
Or, did he vision, through a rising tear,
The star maternal of his childish hour?

Time has not told: but yet, like him, we may
Wander at eve to meditate and muse,
Far from the hum of crowds and cities stray,
And nature's quiet o'er the heart suffuse.

They cannot nurse nobility within
Who ne'er the solitudes of nature thread,
And, far removed from man's tumultuous din,
Recall the vanish'd, and revive the dead.

There is a wisdom in the wood and field,
A sacred meaning in the silent flower,
And shrines of loneliness instruction yield,
Did we but haunt them in a genial hour.

Cities of men and mortal baseness preach;
But sylvan dales, like holy things, impart
A healing quiet, which may conscience reach,
And bring God closer to an alien heart.

The open vastness of yon vaulted sky
When o'er our heads we view its arching sweep,—
There should we learn to lift a thoughtful eye,
And muse on mercy, till remembrance weep.

And thus, disciple of that Lonely One!
Who through the night-watch often wept, and pray'd,
Do thou, like Isaac, when the day is done,
With God converse, and seek Him in the shade.

There will Emmanuel to thy soul draw near
And bid thee more for saving glories yearn,
As on “the way” He soothed disciples' fear,
And reason'd with them, till their hearts did burn!

One pensive hour with nature, God, and prayer,
While the dusk Evening wraps her dewy veil,
Cools the hot fever on each brow of care,
And cheers the soul when brighter prospects fail.

There, in that hush of meditation lone,
The still small accents of the Spirit speak
Truths, in the whirl of life how rarely known,
And by dead conscience heard, as dull and weak!

Believer, thus to silence yield the soul,
Be thy calm mind to musing loneness given,
Till secret earth-clouds from thy vision roll
And show thee glimpses of a Saviour's heaven.

MORAL POWER OF HARMONY.

“The rest were chosen to give thanks unto the Lord ------ with musical instruments of God.”—1 Chron. xvi. 41, 42.

I love to hear the wizard tones
Of thunder, storm, and booming sea,
The wave-voiced winds, and tragic groans
Which make creation's minstrelsy,—
When Art and Genius such a triumph gain
That all seem blended in some master-strain.

And Harmony can also bring
What mental visions love to view,
Pictures, beyond what poets sing,
When most they make the world untrue,—
Landscapes of beauty, isles of bloom and balm,
Elysian verdure, and ambrosial calm.

But, Music wields a nobler spell
Than nature can alone impart;
And with far more than tones can tell
She oft inspires the echoing heart:
To her belongs Association's power,
Which haunts remembrance in its purest hour.

Melodious counterparts of mind
How often do some chords impress,
When Genius, with a hand refined,
Creates the sounds we inly bless!—
All passions, hopes, all principles and fears
Melt into music, and entrance our ears.

Thus, harmony to man may seem
A soul in sound, express'd and heard,
Or like an Angel in our dream
Who whispers some celestial word,
Till minds o'erfraught with feeling's warmest glow
Thrill into tears, and softly overflow.

And oh, ye dead! who never die,—
For though removed from outward gaze,
Your resurrection is the sigh
Pure memory unto virtue pays,—
Though unbeheld, how oft in music's strain
Your deep eyes look into our hearts again!

Yes, chords are touch'd, whose tones awake
And strike the soul's electric string,
Which vibrates till it seems to break
With those intense appeals that bring
Youth, home and childhood, fields, and faces dear
Back to the Heart, which bathes them with a tear.

Thus music, like religion, oft
May elevate the heaven-wing'd mind,
By wafting it to worlds aloft
For peace and purity design'd:
'Tis inspiration, though mere sound it seems,
Prompting the good to more than Glory dreams.

We praise Thee, God! for this fine spell
Pervading harmony can wield:
But, teach us to employ it well,
That it may grace and grandeur yield,
Whether by organ-chant, or choral hymn
Which rolls and deepens down cathedrals dim.

And when congenial hearts delight
In homes of quiet bliss to hear
Soft household-strains, which make the night
To memory as to music dear,
Like silver drops of some melodious shower
Heard in the dewy hush of twilight hour,—

Music seems more than common air
Through chorded instrument awaking,
And oft resembles dying prayer,
Or sighs from lonely hearts half-breaking:
Thus none can dream whence harmonies descend,
Or how their spirit with our own can blend.

Hence music proves a sacred thing,
A power no mortal words can tell;
A heaven of sound it seems to bring
On earth awhile to float and dwell,—
A breaking forth of melodies above,
A speech of seraphim, on lips of Love!

And oft, methinks, the tones which die
And soundless grow to mortal ear,
May re-ascend their mystic Sky,
From whence they sank to our low sphere,—
Like that bright Choir who soar'd from Judah's plain,
To chant in heaven what earth ne'er heard again.

THE REDEEMER'S SIGH.

“And looking up to Heaven, He sighed.” Mark vii. 34.

And did The gentle Saviour sigh,
As once He wept a tear,
When sorrow dimm'd His mournful eye
Drawn from a mortal sphere?

Then let the Church this breathing sign
Of Christ's unutter'd thought,
With all that spoken love combine
With which each word was fraught.

For, oh, it proves a symbol deep
Beyond what language tells
When most true Pathos bids us weep
Beneath her moving spells—

How Christ in sorrow, pangs, and tears,
Though social, stood alone,
Since while He wept for others' fears,
He chiefly sigh'd His own.

And in that hour, when doing good,
While making dumbness speak,
Dark meanings fill'd His solitude,
And shaded brow and cheek.

When sinful men a boon bestow,
Bright gladness marks the hour;
They do not sigh, but only glow
To feel their gracious power;

But such the cup of anguish quaff'd
Emmanuel in His gloom,—
He wept and sigh'd, but never laugh'd,
From manger to the tomb!

His life was one celestial pain,
A martyrdom of care;
Denial had its perfect reign
In each perfection there.

Through all some crucifixion ran,
The Cross became His will,
Where God beheld a faultless man,
And cries, “Behold him!” still.

MAN'S HEART, DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart.”—Jer. xvii. 9, 10.

As Christ was God in flesh array'd,
So God in language is that Word
Where man is inwardly portray'd,
As though his copied heart were heard.

For not a single throb of thought
Vibrates within his viewless mind,
That is not to conviction brought
By heaven's dread Book, which reads mankind!

And is not this a crushing tone,
An avalanche of stern rebuke,
A thunder-peal from His high throne
Before whose glance Creation shook,—

That Man becomes incarnate lie,
A living mass of low deceit,
Baffling the search of mortal eye
To scan the guiles which in him meet?

Beyond all creatures, and above
What sin and Satan can unfold,
The venom'd coil around him wove,—
The serpent-depths no tongue has told!

And desperate too, if finite cure
Be all our hopes pretend to find,
Those fell deceits which men allure
And leave the conscience dead and blind.

We grant there are distinctions true
Between degrees of social worth;
For, some are tender, warm, and true,
And others, iced as frozen earth:

And some we hail, whose hearts expand
Like bounding waves beneath the sun;
While these, with shut and selfish hand
A vile career of passion run.

Gradations thus 'tween man and man
When measured by our moral test,
Are undenied; and reason can
Perceive them in the human breast.

But still, if heavenward we ascend,
And by the law of love divine
Discern how far our natures tend,
Apart from Thee, oh God! and Thine,

Then, hear a thunder-peal like this
From out the clouds of Scripture roll,—
“Deceitful and most desperate is
The life of unconverted soul!”

And can we dare this truth deny,
How nature marks her hate with smiles,
And loves the most enamell'd lie
Which polishes her venal wiles?

And if, alas! ourselves we scan,
Deceitful prove we, to the core!
The child doth prophesy the man,
The man repeats the child before:

All, all, in youth, and age alike,
Abroad, at home, for word or thought
The bosom may with anguish strike,
And be with full contrition fraught,

If but an hour we search, and see
What broken vows condemn our ways,
How fairest resolutions flee,
And we are charm'd by cheating praise!

The very sins men weep at morn
And at the mercy-seat confess,
Again before the night, are born,
And stain them with new loathsomeness!

Well may we hang the head, and mourn,
Nor doubt that piercing Word is true
Which saith, no Hearts to heaven return
Except by mercy, born anew.

Faith heeds not how false worldlings smile;
God's truth can ne'er be sneer'd away;
The heart is one abyss of guile
Whose throbs, like Judas, Christ betray.

And in us all by nature lurk
The germs of unimagined crime,
Which often dares the Demon's work
And crimsons o'er the cheek of Time.

Yes, Adam, Cain, and Peter's lie,
Herod and David in their sin,—
Let candour search, and so descry
Their secret prototypes within.

Come, Holy Spirit! mystic Dove,
Thine innocence from heaven impart;
Our hate transform to heavenly love,
And build Thy temple in our heart.

The purest soul pleased Earth admires,
Who to the centre scans it all?
The highest Angel back retires,
And prostrate worlds in silence fall.

Who knows it? Echo answers, “Who?”
Created minds are bow'd and dumb:—
“Jehovah, I can search it through,
And enter where no creatures come.”

Tremendous thought! that God and man
By contrast both should searchless be;
The last too vile for thought to scan,
The First, unfathom'd Deity!

EXPRESSIVE NIGHT.

“Night unto night showeth knowledge.”—Ps. xix. 2.

“Even the night shall be light about me.”—Ps. cxxxix. 11.

Shades of the soft and stealing night!
More eloquent than joyous light
Is your dark magic, deep and still
Descending over bower and hill.

There is a hush, a holy spell
Breathed o'er dim earth by day's farewell;
A calm more chaste than words define,
A feeling that is half divine.

I love to watch the quiv'ring gleams
Of twilight, when they braid the streams,
Or with slant radiance hue the flowers,
Which close their lids in garden-bowers.

Now, cold and mute Creation grows,
As drops her curtain of repose;
The birds are songless, and the air
Seems hallow'd into silent prayer.

Like Music's death, serene and slow,
Pale twilight yields a pensive glow,
And soon will turret, tree, and spire,
All viewless into gloom retire.

Now is the witching time for thought,
Th' elect of heaven have ever sought;
By patriarch, saint, and poet found
With high-breathed instincts to abound.

Angelic choirs may now descend
And with our souls serenely blend,
Hover around where'er we stray,
And thrill, when Thought begins to pray.

Thus, when the fev'rish day was o'er,
Rapt Jesu sought the quiet shore;
Or, on loved Hermon, lone and still,
Breathed, “Oh, my Father! do Thy will.”

So, Christian, while the prayerless throng
Whirl time away in feast and song,
Be thine the pure and placid spell
Which night and nature weave so well.

Creation, providence, and grace,
Let each assume its hallow'd place
In thought serene,—by Heaven bestow'd
On all who trace the narrow road.

Night is the time when buried days
Rise from their tomb, and dim our gaze
With tearful shades, from scenes of yore,
And loving hearts which throb no more.

So rules the Past, that faint and far
As fancy eyes each vestal star,
Young poets dream how there abide
The deathless ones, on earth who died.

Night for the present, too, creates
A charm which oft the mind elates,—
A lone, but still a lofty dream
That men are more than yet they seem.

And on thy future let such hour
Look like a prophet in his power,
Predicting much that God and grace
Reveal to guide our erring race.

Nor be forgot, in heaven Thou art
A Priest, oh Christ! whose boundless heart
Thrills to each cry, which all may dare
To utter forth in fervid prayer.

Now in the hush of holy night
Claim we, blest Lord! the glorious right
Before Thy Throne of grace to bring
All forms of human suffering:—

A Husband to the widow be;
A Sire may orphans find in Thee;
And to Thy sad and stricken poor
Let heaven unfold its waiting door;

And where dejected hearts incline
To question, Lord, the Will divine,
The Blood of sprinkling let it fall,
And while it cleanses, calm them all.

For church, for country, and for child,
A mother dear, or sister mild,
For all true souls and social ties
Now let entreating prayer arise.

And, cradled on maternal breast,
May each sweet babe in slumber rest,
And round pale captives in their cells
Hover dear homes, and native dells.

Morn, noon, and night, O God! are Thine,
In whom their blended charms combine;
Nor is there scene, or spot, or hour
Untouch'd by Thy mysterious power.

Yet, faith and feeling both declare
That hour belongs to Thee and prayer,
When stillness to the soul is given,—
For night, not day, seems nearest heaven.

THE PRAYERLESS.

“Thou restrainest prayer before God.”—Job xv. 4.

“If thou knewest the gift of God ------ thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.”—John iv. 10.

“My heart is cold, I cannot pray,”
Methinks I hear the worldling say;—
But is not this blind nature's sin?
Thou graceless outcast! lift thine eyes
To where man's home of glory lies,
And thou may'st hear the God within.

Did we but fathom more and more
Our inward deeps, we should deplore
Those unborn sins which there abide:
With truthful anguish might we plead
For God to help our sinful need,
And cast us on The Crucified!

Who does not pray, our God unthrones,
His word rejects, His will disowns,
Till life becomes one guilty sigh;
Pure Reason from her shrine is hurl'd,
And earth appears an orphan'd world,
Whose Maker is no more on high.

O, creed of death! and cold despair,
Which thus repels the power of prayer,
By peerless saints and martyrs loved;
Since faith and reason both unite
To vindicate God's awful right,
By prayer to have His throne approved.

The very Power to whom we pray
Is He who prompteth what to say,—
'Tis spirit, more than spoken word;
For thought is speech, and heard on high
The sadness of some low-breathed sigh,
When penitence by love is stirr'd.

Alas! for thee, thou prayerless one,
Thy living hell is now begun
In passion blind, and base desire;
The torment of apostate will
Must ever make thy chosen ill,
And fill thee with perdition's fire.

Could vain men see how vile they are,
Sublime would beat the pulse of prayer
In temple, home, or twilight-field;
Believing thus with loving thought
What strength to Christ Himself it brought,—
Pure bliss would high devotion yield.

But, dost thou mourn thy heart is cold,
And rev'rence truth divinely bold?
Then, undevout one, here it lies,—
Th' unfeeling soul, and faithless mind,
Oh, these are they which render blind
When upward gaze thy restless eyes.

This world is far too closely coil'd
Around a heart by pleasure soil'd,
Where sin, desire, and Satan dwell;
Ambition's guilt and lust of gain
Within thee hold infernal reign,
And triumph with a wizard spell.

But wouldst thou taste the bliss of prayer,
Breathing on earth celestial air?
Then, burst thy Belial chains away!
Each wand'ring thought to God call home,
And ponder on the world to-come
Till conscience prompt thee how to pray.

Go, learn it of that martyr'd host
Who bled for Christ, and pray'd the most
Because they loved Him unto death;
Hark! how their wingèd raptures rise,
And catch the lustre of their eyes
Who praised Him with departing breath.

Or, rather That pure Spirit seek,
Whose love can so uplift the weak
When dull they seem, and dead they grow,
Till oft with mental groans unheard
Their souls by unbreathed prayer are stirr'd,
And with devotion overflow.

Incarnate God! while here we live,
Be this our prayer, “Forgive! forgive!”—
But, who can fathom all we mean?
Eternity itself will prove
A paraphrase of pardoning love,
And teach Heaven what the Cross hath been!

DREAD SACRIFICE.

“Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest, and offer him for a burnt-offering.”— Gen. xxii. 2.

And must a father slay his only child?
Dark thought in which ten thousand deaths abide!
Was ever parent with such blood defiled,
Or such a victim to a God supplied?

And Isaac too! the promised heir of age,
The child of covenant, by heaven bestow'd
To cheer the sire in his sad pilgrimage,
At whose glad birth his full heart overflow'd.—

'Tis thus, whate'er in living depths of love
Haunts the pure heart, parental as profound,
Might well have shudder'd at the Voice above,
“Let Isaac for my human lamb be bound!”

If dies the son, then how shall Abram's seed
Inherit Canaan's heaven-distinguish'd land?
Or, if the child must by the parent bleed,
How can the covenant in Isaac stand?

Reason and conscience, shall they both arise,
And shrinking heart-blood grow with terror pale
When looks the patriarch in loved Sara's eyes,
And on his lip expires the awful tale?

The savage heathen, will they not abhor
A God of blood, and call the deed profane
Beyond the fury of the fiercest war,
That strews a battle-field with tombless slain?

And thus, if nature be the only guide
Of what a patriarch in such hour should be,
Rebellion had the tempting God denied,
And back recoiled from vocal Deity.

But faith the hoary friend of God inspired,
And mortal Will before a Voice divine
Fell like a sacrifice, by love attired
And offer'd freely on Religion's shrine.

Obedience absolute, submission's law,
On this alone the patriarch's eye was bent,
And God was greater than the grief he saw,
Whose Hand recall'd the mercy He had lent.

Perchance, 'twas in the hush of holy night
The dread command to offer Isaac came,
E'en while the father, lull'd with fond delight,
In dreams parental murmur'd Isaac's name.

For, soon as Morning o'er the orient hills
Shook the bright dewdrops from her beaming hair,
Behold, the sire his sacred work fulfils,
Strong with resolve, and sanctified by prayer.

But ah! forgive him, if from Sara's eye
His shrinking heart refused to take farewell;
He could not trust the cadence of a sigh
Which might have hinted, what he dared not tell.

Three days they travell'd on, that son and sire,
And sought together Christ's prophetic hill,
Where this must bleed in sacrificial fire,
And that His own devoted offspring kill.

It was indeed a spectacle profound
And touch'd with majesty, and truth how meek!
When the hoar'd Patriarch on bland Isaac bound
The wood for sacrifice,—and did not speak.

Part II. THE MORAL.

But when at length a signal cloud reposed
On the lone hill, where God would have the deed,
Did not the hand which then a knife enclosed
Tremble, and all the father in him bleed?

And, hark, how piercing, like a thrill of death,
Clave through his soul one simple cry of love,
“My father!”—in the fondness of that breath
How did the patriarch seek for strength above!

“My father!” and he answer'd, “Here I am;”
“The wood behold, and here the needed fire,
But where is found the sacrificial lamb
Which God ordain'd should in the flame expire?”

“God will provide!”—'twas all he dared to speak;
So went the pilgrims to their awful task,
The blood grew paler on the patriarch's cheek,
But no deliv'rance did cold reason ask.

The Lord had spoken! He who cannot err,
His fiat issued, “Slay thy son for Me;”
True to his God,—rebellion shall not stir.
But Faith adore Him on submissive knee.

And ne'er did infant with its clinging form
And tiny limbs of tenderness, embrace
The fondling circle of a mother's arms,
When she enclasps it,—with a blander grace,

Than did calm Isaac to the cordage yield
His frame for havoc on the burning pile;
Not once outcried he at the coming death,
But gazed on Slaughter with religious smile.

His limbs are bound, and on the altar laid
Behold the parent sees an only son!
And now, both hand and heart display'd
A faith unparagon'd, since time begun.

But God is mercy: hark! like thunder mild
From clouds of golden beauty rolls the cry,
“Friend of Jehovah! spare thine offer'd child,
And mark yon victim, in the thicket nigh.”

Believer! Christ was in that angel-voice,
And His atonement typed in all the scene,—
Child of Jehovah's everlasting choice
Who hath the Isaac of salvation been.

But would we in some lower range of truth
Search for the holy spells our hearts require?
Then may we trace them on that sainted youth,
And see them mirror'd in his matchless sire.

By large devotion of our loving will,
Like the meek Isaac's let our spirit bend,
And with unreas'ning faith at once fulfil
Whate'er the fiat of our God may send:

To live, or die, be healthy, sick, or sad,
In wealth to bask, or poverty to bleed,
In gloom to perish, or in peace be glad,—
Let God decide, who understands our need.

And ye, who clasp with such intense desire
Of fond retention in life's vale below,
The breathing Idols whom your souls admire,
Think of the patriarch in some night of woe!

The fondest heart, round which affection twines,
Is most obtain'd when most in God enjoy'd,
And happiness with sacred lustre shines,
When not by shades of selfish will alloy'd.

Disciples must not, like the godless, cleave
To aught created in this world of sense;
Nor round the ruins of the present grieve,
As though the future had no Providence!

The cherish'd Isaacs of our heart and creed
Like a pure holocaust of grace must fall,
And on Love's altar, while we inly bleed,
To heaven and duty Faith must offer all.

The dearest sacrifice is aye the best,
And let us yield it, though severe the rod;
For on this truth may bleeding Anguish rest,—
We lose an idol, but we gain a God.

PERFECT PEACE.

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.”—Isa. xxvi. 3.

Humility doth mark
The child of heaven within salvation's ark:
Through all his hallow'd ways
He harps the hymn of ever-deep'ning praise,
For mercies which surpass
The power of numbers to recount, or class;—
Yet, sins as sumless claim a constant tear,
That God, by prayer invoked, may hush all guilty fear!

But humble though the hearts
Of God's own children, this their creed imparts,—
A boldness to believe
That Christ is near them, when His chosen grieve:
Though each an atom seem
Lost in vast glories which around Him stream,
Each individual heart and lonely mind
In Christ a Brother clasps, and bears its doom resign'd.

No mere Abstractions dead,
By science out of arid reason bred,
And call'd creation's laws,
Which Sense adoreth as presiding Cause,—
A faith divine can own;
But o'er all life perceives the Saviour's throne:
A God tripersonal believers love,
And in Emmanuel's name seek all they find above.

Though moral earthquakes shock
The Systems round us, till they reel and rock;
While mad Opinion rules,
And Satan out of pride begets dark schools
Of sentiment, or sin,
Which scorn without, and stifle Truth within.—
A more than halcyon in his bosom reigns,
Who hath a Heart in heaven which echoes all his pains.

Unstable is weak earth;
And nothing which in space, or time, has birth,
A resting-place can give
To Souls who on this tearful world must live;
Since wayward passions will
Haunt the vex'd world, and never leave it still;—
The gnawing fever of some inward pain
Is all unchristian hearts from their false life obtain.

But, there is peace divine,
A calm unrippled, which, O God! is Thine;
A rest of saintly thought
From out the deeps of heaven by mercy brought;
It droppeth like a dew
The Hermon of the heart distilling through,
And, 'mid the restless change time undergoes,
That peace remains unmarr'd, above convulsive woes.

Salvation rears the walls
Of that truth-keeping race whom Jesu calls;
Under His shielding arms
The burden'd mind escapes from sinful harms;
And while transgressors roam
Abroad unrestful, and the same at home,
No dread concussion in the realms of Time
Can rob believing souls of this their calm sublime.

Descend then, Prince of Peace!
And with thy Spirit bring worn minds release;
When skies and seas depart
Serene eternity of truth Thou art,

Lord of celestial life!
Beyond our sorrows, and above our strife;—
Yet so benignant, that Thine eye can see
Each pulse of loving prayer which throbs the heart to Thee.

STARRY DREAMS.

“Tell the stars if thou be able to number them.”—Gen. xv. 5.

“He telleth the number of the stars: he calleth them all by their names.”—Ps. cxlvii. 4.

“We have seen his Star in the East.”—Matt. ii. 2.

Their names and numbers who can tell,
Yon quiv'ring gems of mystic light!
That throb with such irradiant spell
And fascinate our dreaming sight;

So countless looks their burning throng
No finite thought their sum can hold;
For, like a secret, they belong
To One by numbers uncontroll'd.

How beautiful their lustres are!
Whether on infant-eyes they gleam,
Which often, like some pensive star,
Glance moisten'd with a mournful beam:

Or, when in elder life we gaze
On each faint pulse of throbbing fire,
Till feeling hearts reflect the rays
And mirror back what they inspire.

So fair to each and all they shine,
Stars often seem responsive Eyes
That greet us from their calm divine,
And answer our ascending sighs.

Attracted out of earth and time
The starry vault of air we roam,
And dream the poetry sublime,
Which makes each orb a spirit's home:

A home, perchance, where, bright and blest,
The loved, but not the lost, remain,
Whom there embower'd in blissful rest
Our souls may clasp in heaven again.

Ye dead! whose tombs are loving hearts,
Whose epitaphs, memorial tears,
Whose image from no scene departs,
But shades the colour of our years,

Not seldom, when the noise of day
Beneath the trance of dewy night
Is hush'd, and meekly dies away
The last wan smile of waning light,

Lone martyrs of dejection steal
From the harsh scene of crowd and care,
Religion in the stars to feel
As though enshrined in glory there.

How eloquent that voiceless hour!
Holy, as if creation knelt,—
Or mute before her Maker's power
Thrill'd Earth some adoration felt.

Yet, would that in primeval days
These orbs of speaking light had known
No worship which mere wonder pays,
And orient verse hath often shown;

For oh! their beauty, radiance, power,
Which seem'd oracularly bright,
Such myst'ry wove at midnight hour
That gods they grew to heathen sight.

Yet not by us, in Christ renew'd,
Pure members of His Body made,
Are heaven's bright miracles so view'd,
Though dazzling be their spell display'd.

We love them! for indeed they look
So placid, mournful, pale and mild,
That when we read Night's starry book,
We spell it, like a lisping child.

Like gleaming Apparitions sent,
They beckon man on high, to see
His home enspheres yon firmament,
That shines in starr'd eternity.

And tears will often through the eyes
Distill the heart, and make us seem
As though we sail'd cerulean skies,
Unbodied in some astral dream!

But more than sentiment and song
The host of heaven from hearts excite,
Who feel that to such orbs belong
Deep lustres which excel the light.

For, can we not pure incense bring
To Him, the bright and Morning Star?
Some anthems round His cradle sing,
Surpassing eastern magi far?

Though jewell'd mines we cannot give,
Not ours, but us, Emmanuel claims;
And if on Him by love we live,
His breastplate bears our chosen names.

Be ours the incense of a soul,
Through faith and fellowship divine
Rising beyond where planets roll,—
And richer than Arabia's mine.

True sacrifice is love alone:
And worship from unwav'ring Hearts,
To Him Who wields creation's throne
A throb of finite bliss imparts.

Without it, vile are myrrh and gold,
And vain the swell of soaring word,—
For He who can our thought behold,
A loveless prayer has never heard.

So may the church to Christ present
Our body, spirit, soul, and all,
That truth and grace omnipotent
May us elected children call.

Such worship will be hail'd on high
Where uncreated glories shine,
When heavenward soars the wafted sigh
Which meekly warbles, “Christ is mine.

“In life and death, my Lord, Thou art,
Celestial Prophet, Priest, and King!
True incense is a grateful heart,
And this makes all my love can bring.”

CHRIST OUR PORTION.

“There is none on earth I desire besides thee.”—Ps. lxxiii. 25.

“The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance.”—Ps. xvi. 5.

“Your life is hid with Christ in God.”—Colos. iii. 3.

Whom have I in the heavens but Thee
Adoring faith desires to see,
Divinely pure and perfect fair
Whom all Thy works and words declare?

The heavenliness of heaven art Thou,
Who bor'st the curse upon Thy brow;
And round the Throne no glories shine
Which issue not from Thee, or Thine.

Imbruted Minds, that think, nor pray,
Basking in pleasure's sensual ray,—
No cloud appears to shade their sky,
And nothing tells them Sin must die!

Yet, soon the lying spell recedes,
The worm awakes, and conscience bleeds
When sickness chokes the ebbing breath,
And life is darken'd into death.

Oh, in that hour of shudd'ring prayer
Eternity from God may glare,
And luridly emerge from hell
Secrets, and Shapes, no tongue can tell!

Lord of true bliss, in joy and health
Be Thou our wisdom, hope, and wealth;
Without Thee, vain are creatures all!—
A universe we nothing call

If center'd not in this high creed,
That God alone can help our need;
Christ in the creature is the goal
Of all which should attract the soul.

The Lord our true perfection is,
Both law of Being, and the bliss;
Dark, dead, and cold, creation seems,
If not enrobed with sacred gleams

Caught from the Presence, and the power
Of Christ, who hallows scene and hour,
Matter and mind, and makes them good,
By showing each with heaven imbued.

Friendship and love, though pure and deep,
Can echo not lone cares which sleep
Unsyllabled within the mind,
And shun the gaze of mortal kind.

And shifting hues there play of thought,
And feelings with devotion fraught,
Dejected hours, and voiceless moods
When souls are thinking solitudes,—

Sigh, tear, nor language then reveals
The awful gloom pale conscience feels,
When man's o'erburden'd heart within
Bows with eternity, and sin.

Alone we live, alone we die,
Unfathom'd by no human eye,
But search'd by Him, whose wisdom can
Peruse the depths of inward man.

Thus, orphan'd Souls who cannot see
On earth one source of sympathy,
Whose hearts unecho'd pray and beat,
Are answer'd at the Mercy-Seat,

Where Heaven's incarnate Love replies
To each mysterious heart that sighs,
And while unwitness'd tear-drops fall,
In grace descends, and dries them all.

God in the mind makes glory there,
The spring of thought, the source of prayer;
From Whom adoring saints derive
Stern grace against themselves to strive.

Let God then thy religion be,
And not religion, God to thee:
Without Him, worlds would leave us poor,
And with Him, who can want for more?

ANGELS.

“Of the Angels he saith, Who maketh his Angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.”—Heb. i. 7.

“Some have entertained Angels unawares.”—Heb. xiii. 2.

Ye bright-wing'd Choir! who in the rays
Which beautify yon realm of glory,
Delight to read in rich amaze,
The archives of redemption's story,—
More magical your lustres seem
Than ever crowded poet's dream.

Before the countless stars began
To glisten through the dewy air,
Or Heaven perceived adoring man
Ascend her crystal height with prayer,
Your beaming Shapes, around the Throne,
Ages of wordless joy had known.

Serene, and passionless, and pure,
Unshaded by the hue of sin,
No discord can the will allure
To mar each moral tone within,—
That melody of sainted love,
The pulse of bliss which beats above.

Dread Angels! who excel in strength,
And sung creation's birthday song,
Or, through the world's unmeasured length
In viewless splendour wing'd along,—
When God commands them, glide and go,
With speed that proves the lightning slow!

Stern ministers of sacred wrath,
How often their avenging hands
Emptied God's vials o'er the path
Of guilt, and atheistic lands,
When blood and blasphemy began
To render earth a hell for man.

Yon cities, cinder'd by the burst
Of red destruction's rolling flame;
The myriads by the plague accurst,
Whose ruin darken'd David's name;
And banner'd hosts, which in one night
Were blasted by resistless blight,—

Oh! these reveal how dread and vast
In bodiless and bright array
Such Angels are, who have not cast
Their crowns of innocence away;
But ranged before the Godhead, still,
Brighten as each obeys His will.

And when we turn to that high Word
Where Christ, and church, and christian meet,
Are not emotions deeply stirr'd,
To mark above the Mercy-Seat
How studious Angels bend and strain,
To see what truths its depths contain?

Confirm'd, tho' not redeem'd by Him,
Lord of the radiant hosts above,
Legions of loyal seraphim
In Christ concenter all their love;
Thus saints and angels both combine
To chant the praise of Blood Divine.

And bless'd as beautiful the thought,
That when man's rebel-heart they see
Repent for sin the soul hath wrought,
They arch their wings in ecstasy;
While louder, louder swells the tone
These harpers chant around the Throne!

And is not earth the haunt and home
Of mysteries more than sense descries,
Where viewless Spirits round us roam,
Unvisioned by embodied eyes?—
Hence that which science never saw,
Seems more an angel than a law.

The motions of material things
So wonderful, involved, and vast,
Each hue and harmony that brings
Expression, where our looks are cast,
Serene, or exquisite, or grand,—
Some working angel may have plann'd.

And, when amid the flushing noon
Faith wanders forth in woods, or fields,
Or hearkens to the breezy tune
A choral landscape round her yields,
And thus with calm contentful eye
Drinks the deep spell of earth and sky,—

Then, dream not that impassive laws
Can e'er achieve what mind must do;
If each effect presumes a cause,
Let Nature have her master too;
Till all her work, beneath the sun
Seems duty, by an Angel done.

The meanest object man can view,
A herb, a pebble, or a ray
Which tints the grass with golden hue,
Might prompt poetic mind to pray;
And Faith can nothing coldly see,
If there angelic spell-work be.

And, oh! how solemn grows the scene
When not beheld as dumb and dead,
But one where spirits intervene,
And such a consecration shed,
That, like a temple, common air
Inspires religion every-where!

As features in some lovely face
Express the soul, eye cannot see,
And shadow forth with speaking grace
Each line of sorrow, hope, or glee,—
Moved elements may oft reveal
What angels from cold sense conceal.

Thus, sun and air, and cloud-graced heaven,
The lisping wave, or laughing wind,
With whatsoe'er to earth is given
Attuned to man's accordant mind,
Should make us dream, where'er we stray,
Unvision'd angels throng the way.

The sunbeam in its happy toil,
The breeze that fans an infant flower,
Those dew-falls which refresh the soil
Or beautify a sylvan bower,—
Pure Minds with peaceful wonder fill,
Who trace them to angelic skill.

The motion of mysterious storms
That glance and play with hectic gleam,
May be the flutter of their forms,
The glory which their garments beam,
When, summon'd by their vast control,
The fiery tempests flash and roll!

RELIGION AND THE SEA.

“Fear God, and worship him that made the sea.”—Rev. xiv. 7.

“Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.”—Matt. xiv. 25.

Eternity of waters! there Thou art,
Dear to the eye, and glorious to the heart;
Bounding in brightness as they plunge on shore,
I greet thy waves, and gladden in their roar.

Alone in grandeur, ever-living Sea!
Thou swelling anthem sung to Deity,
When thy deep thunders with a dying fall
Roll like Hosannahs to the Lord of All.

Religion only to thy power replies
And echoes back the solemn harmonies,
Which seem to tell with supernatural tone,—
Here God is reigning on His ocean-throne!

And ever, O thou Element of might!
Hast thou administer'd a dread delight
To all who heard thy loud pulsations beat,
Till shores embay'd seem'd throbbing at their feet.

Before the birth of billow, or of wind,
Thou rolledst through the Everlasting Mind
In waves hereafter destined to expand,
And bathe the shores of many a famous land.

Man rules the earth, but God upon the sea
By vast distinction doth appear to be,
Whose swelling glories baffle change and time,
And awe the conscience, like a creed sublime.

Kindred with man, deep Ocean! movest thou,
Baring to heaven thine ever-dauntless brow;
In all the murmurs of thy mighty heart
A mystic echo of his mind thou art.

Passion intense, and sentiment profound
In thee some answer to such moods resound;
While haunted Sadness, tender, deep, and lone,
Thrills to the pathos of thy pensive tone.

Genius and Glory, both in thee delight,
Heard in gay morn, or through the hush of night,
When, like a psalm, thy billowy tongues proclaim
How nature murmurs with her Maker's name.

And has not Painting from thy myriad views
Of liquid grace, and oceanic hues,
An inspiration for her colours caught,
Making immortal what thy spell has wrought?

The Poet, too, in ev'ry age hath been
A solemn haunter of thy wizard scene;
In breeze, or blast, rich noon, or balmy eve,
To him thy waves cathedral-anthems weave.

He can interpret thine impassion'd mood,
And sympathise with sea-made solitude;
By rock and bay, or sanded beach can roam
And feel immensity his proper home.

Nor need we tell how Commerce hath supplied
An empire's storehouse from the wafting tide,
Since on thy waters, far as winds can flee,
Her boundless treasures are attain'd by Thee.

Still less doth Valour need victorious lyres
To sing how Britain's heart the sea inspires:—
The Isle of Freedom is the friend of waves,
That field of battle where the world she braves!

And will not heroes of the Cross who roam,
Far from the spells which bind the heart to home,
To tell the heathen how the Lord is King,
Chants of true glory to old Ocean bring?—

Majestic, lone, and melancholy Sea!
Sprung from thy God in dread immensity,
For aye art thou to reverential mind
A floating wonder by no words defined.

A vast eternity in endless flow
Thine image wears; and in thy depths below
How sleep the young, the beautiful, and brave,
Till the last trumpet shall unclose their grave!

Farewell! thou symbol of almighty grace,
Whose deeps adumbrate what for our lost race
Mercy provides, when pardon's hush'd abyss
Engulphs the guilt which loads a world like this.

Eternal seem'st thou till th' Archangel rings
A blast that summons all created things;
Then rise the dead from out thy dismal roar,
And Time shall gaze upon the sea no more!

IDOLS IN THE HEART.

“These men set up their idols in their heart.”—Ezek. xiv. 3.

“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”—1 John v. 21.

There was a time, in ages dead,
When temples huge and vile
Their lowering fronts of darkness spread
O'er Albion's sea-wall'd isle.

But Christ by His apostles came
To preach the word divine,
And, lo! before truth's living flame
Dissolved each idol-shrine.

And now, a Church maternal opes
Her arms of christian love,
Embracing with their new-born hopes
Bright children for above.

And by her sacraments and rites,
Her discipline and care,
Calm vigil, fast, and chaste delights,
And pure diurnal prayer,

With whatsoe'er of secret grace
The Lord to her commits,
She strives to rear a heavenly race,
And each for glory fits.

But oh, these hearts we poorly scan
If idols none are seen;
Their temple is that inner man
Where God's own gaze hath been!

Eye cannot pierce, nor ear perceive
What buried thoughts avow;
Yet souls, who dare the Spirit grieve,
Must to some idol bow.

We shudder when Christ's heroes find
Myriads in pagan gloom,
With poison'd heart, and palsied mind,
And conscience like a tomb:

Such tale when holy Mission tells,
Demands the Church's tear;
And who can hear of demon-spells
Nor throb with sacred fear?

But, are not souls baptised a home
For God enshrined within?
Father and Spirit, do they come
To reign o'er self and sin?

Yet, what if our base idol be
Desire, instead of God?
Proud will,—a strong divinity
That rules us with a rod?

Say, are we not, before the eye
Of Him who fathoms thought,
Idolators, whose hearts deny
The God our fathers sought?

We need not by the stumbling-block
Of wood, or stone, or gold,
Discerning reason madly shock
With shapes which men behold;

Idolatry depraves the Will,
Our idols are desires,
When once our breast some passion fills
Which aught, save God, inspires.

It may be, that the crown of praise,
The wreath proud genius wears,
A warrior's plume, or poet's bays
Excite ambition's prayers;

Or, forms of love, whose grace becomes
The bloom and breath of all
We value in these earthly homes,—
May weave our inward thrall;

A husband in the wife may see
A heaven of human charms;
Or, he to her, life's angel be,
A shield from daily harms;

Or infant beauty, like a ray
From her own being sent,
To mother's love, may night and day
Impart too deep content:

Whate'er the guise, or winning name
Our bosom-idols take,
Strange incense with our altar-flame
Is blent, when we forsake

That God who claims the heart alone
For His peculiar shrine:—
A creature must not mount the Throne
Where rules a Love divine.

Heirs of the Spirit, are we not
Anointed sons of grace?
Alas! if our celestial lot
By treason we efface.

To some base darling of desire,
Some earth-made god of sin,
Shall censers hold unhallow'd fire,
By passion breathed within?

Oh, better far that love and life,
With hope, and peace, and joy,
Howe'er with seeming mercy rife,
Some blast from heaven destroy;

Better be friendless, aidless, lone,
With none to weep our woes,
Than let some idol seize that throne
Sworn faith to Jesu owes.

For what is there, on this side hell,
Which so like hell appears?—
A doom of dooms! no tongue can tell,
Thus rolling on our ears,

“Ephraim to idols hath his heart
From God and glory turn'd,—
Let him alone, and be his part
The solitude he earn'd!”

INFANTS AND INFANCY.

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.”—Matt. xxi. 16.

The dew-drop, in whose mirror lies
A miniature of morning skies;
The violet-bud which blooms in spring,
The flower-bee on its fairy wing,
The broken lisp of some shy brook
That babbles in a shady nook,

All that is fragile, coy, and fair,
As types of beauty, may declare
The cherub-loveliness that seems
To mantle those embodied dreams,
Sweet infants! when their baby forms
Come forth to face life's gloomy storms.

Oh! I can watch, and almost weep
To view some angel-child asleep;
To mark the alabaster brow
Where sinless calm is brooding now,
Or see the silken fringe that lies
And covers its innocuous eyes.

So have I stood, and heard each breath
Like music in melodious death,
And soft and slow it swells and heaves,
And at each fall such cadence leaves,
As may to pious fancy seem
A sigh for Glory in its dream.

There is a purity which plays
In the quick gleam of infant's gaze,
That innocence of heaven-born light
Which beams for vulgar sense too bright,—
A lustrous depth whose dazzling spells
Are richer than the blue gazelle's.

'Tis now the budding dawn of mind,
Ere the worn heart grows weak and blind;
The orient blush of radiant thought
Ere life is with those shadows fraught
Experience unto manhood brings,
Or sorrow round cold memory flings!

To see them in glad sunbeams play
As bounding and as bright as they,
Or, like young wavelets laugh and sing,
Or romp like breezes wild of wing
Exulting over fields and flowers,
When May-time leads the lovely hours,—

Oh, this can melt the heart, and make
Maturer life new colours take,
A sentiment of vernal hue,
Which softens down each sterner view

Till Age becomes a child again,
Encircled by some infant train!

But yet, a holier chain there is,
The glory of maternal bliss,
When first the blossom'd mind is heard,
In pretty lisp and prattled word,
While, peering through a curious eye,
It longs to measure earth and sky.

And, beautiful beyond compare
An infant kneeling down to prayer!
When, lifting up its little hands,
The soul beyond the age expands,
And, touch'd by God's baptismal grace,
Adores bright Merey face to face.

And Infancy hath inward speech,
A mental life, man cannot reach;
For, intercourse of grace may be
Between a babe and Deity,
Too rapt and raised for oral sign,
And deeper than our thoughts divine.

There's something holy in a child,
Ere yet by darken'd years defiled,
When lip, and brow, and cheek declare
'Tis fit for Jesu's arms in prayer;
And when to God and glory given,
Though born on earth, it breathes of heaven.

PARADISE OF THE DEAD.

“He is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him.”—Luke xx. 38.

“Absent from the body, present with the Lord.”—2 Cor. v. 8.

“This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.”—Luke xxiii. 43.

“The general assembly of the first-born—the spirits of just men made perfect.”—Heb. xii. 23.

The dead in body are in soul alive;
Distinct locality to them belongs:
No more, like us, with sin and woe they strive,
But in those bowers, where rest the white-robed throng
With garments by atoning Blood made clean,—
Behold! pure Spirits who on earth have been.

In years departed, Superstition dared
That veil to ruffle with irrev'rent hand,
Behind whose folds lie undeclared
Secrets no bodied nature understands;
For there in awful shades, our God alone
Wields His dread sceptre, and holds back His throne!

But we are sense-blind, and too much adore
The painted dreams which time and space befall;
Full seldom do our hearts the dead restore,
Or back their features into life recall;
Their tombs like portals to oblivion were,
That closed upon us, when we laid them there.

Material life the sad horizon makes
Of half a worldling's creed pronounces true;
In soul a Sadducee, his reason takes
No holier vision and no higher view,
Than poor realities, which Flesh discerns,
And earth-sprung feeling into glory turns.

But Minds exist to whom the dead are dear;
Still in warm memory lives th' unburied past:
Their grief is something nobler than the tear
Impassion'd Feeling on their coffin cast;—
The disembodied to the heart and home,
Oft in pale dreams of resurrection come.

Shame on our souls! if narrow earth enclose
Spirits which have eternity to range;
If ne'er beyond the tomb a Christian throws
A thought which images their blest exchange,
Who neither bound, nor barr'd by blinding sense,
Reap in rapt bliss what Light and Love dispense.

A conscious portion of the Church are they
Who speed before us to the realm unknown;
Although no longer in the beams of day
They lift their brow, and call this life their own,
Yet do they all to that One Christ pertain,
Who out of dust shall rear their forms again.

Nor, let the worshipper of sense, who binds
To this base world an eagle-spirit down,
And only in the realm of Epicurus finds
His grandest sceptre and his brightest crown,—
Reflect on Hades, where the dead repose,
As whelm'd with darkness in a land of woes:

'Tis worse than pitiful, when men presume
Our God to limit to this world of crime;
Who call it vacancy beyond the tomb,
And make eternity succumb to time!
Whereas the Spirit, when unearth'd and free,
Is far diviner than this life can be.

Think on the numbers who to Christ have fled,
From babes too beautiful on earth to stay,
To those departing with a hoary head,
Beside whose couch 'twas heaven to watch and pray;—
Myriads which no created mind can count,
Complete the glory of that great amount.

And could we gaze beyond an earth-bound screen,
No barren solitude our eyes would view;
But, all empeopled with a host serene
The world of spirits would emerge as true,
And far more vital, glowing quick with mind,
Than this dull orb the Dead have left behind.

And oh! bethink thee, pilgrim, sad and lone,
Musing through capitals, where Ages dead
Lie sepulchred, and riven arch and stone
Reveal what desolation's curse hath bred,—
That all who throng'd some immemorial street,
Are mingled souls which now in Hades meet.

So, when thou linger'st on some battle-plain
Dyed by red carnage once, where Nations fell,
While banner'd thousands heard the iron rain
Of death-shot round about them roar, and swell,—
The spirits who that crimson light did face,
Are yet alive, and fill their destined place,

And in the churchyard, where some grassy mound
In trampled ruin all unweeded stands,
Or sculptured aisles, where marble tombs abound
And memory ponders while the mind expands,
Till saints and warriors, heroes, martyrs, all
Speak out of stone, and to the living call,—

Forget not, while the vaulted nave is trod,
That each unbodied is a thinking Soul
Under the blessing or the ban of God,
Replete with life, as when their felt control
By sceptred majesty, or moving speech,
The heart of empires and of men did reach.

Thus should we speculate on parted Mind,
And speak with tones of reverential truth,
Whene'er the screening veil of sense behind
Religion enters, and on age and youth
Dreams with pale awe, and hails the sumless host
Who still are loved, and not to faith the lost.

Yes, be our epitaphs of brighter cast,
And take our elegies a purer tone,
Nor speak, as if corporeal life surpass'd
The consciousness a spirit calls its own:—
Mere flesh can moulder, yet the Soul survives,
And in that thought there breathe immortal lives!

SUBLIME OF PRAYER.

“I beseech thee, show me thy glory.” Exod. xxxiii. 18.

Heroic guide of Judah's race
Who saw Jehovah face to face,
Sublime of men!—behold him now,
As there enshrined, within the cloud
Which wraps him like a burning shroud,
He boldly breathes the prayer, “O God, unveil Thy brow.

“Eternal! in the flaming sign
What though I saw dread beams combine,
When Sinai's bush was clothed with fire,
Or on Thy cloudy pillar gazed,—
Yet when the riven mountain blazed
With Thy descending pomp, I dared for more aspire!

And I have fasted, pray'd, and felt
For forty days my being melt
With wand'ring awe, as Thou didst trace
That ‘Pattern’ whose mysterious plan
O'erveil'd the future Christ for man,
And prophesied in types, the hidden truths of grace.

“And I have heard that thunder-tone
Which thrills high angels round the throne,—

The rollings of celestial Voice;
And seen unearthly lightnings play,
Which lit me up that rocky way
When Thy dread law decreed for life, or death, the choice.

“And now, I would no symbol see,
But gaze on full-orb'd Deity;
Thy glory let me witness now:
God of my soul! before I die,
Centre on Thee my thirsting eye,
And let Thy lustres bright through all my being flow!”

So prayed the meek, but yet the bold
Giant of grace, who would behold
The Self Eternal!—God reveal'd
Not in the shadow, nor the sign,
But in deep radiance all-divine,
Where dwells the viewless God, all gloriously conceal'd.

It was, indeed, a prayer sublime
Surpassing all conceived in time,
Or nature,—scaling that dread height
Where Attributes are searchless things,
And Seraphim reverse their wings,
And shrink, and shudder back, before Essential Light.

Yet, God is moved by mighty prayer;
And Moses found his answer there,
When ark'd within the cloven side
Of Horeb's sacramental rock,—
Jehovah “passed” him, while the shock
Of glory shook the soul, till awed Convulsion cried.

But we, who with reverted gaze
Can rend the veil of typic days,
May in the Church a glory view
Outshining far what Moses saw,
When God in thunder gave the law,
And lightnings red and fierce around Mount Tabor flew.

And is not this the prayer intense
Of all, who soar above what sense
And self and sin combine to claim,—
That more and more meek hearts may rise
To vision with prophetic eyes
What hidden splendours haunt Jchovah's hallowed name?

Divine ambition must be ours;
And faith so form the mental powers
Under Emmanuel's teaching grace,
That love in earth, and sea, and air,
May find reflected ev'ry-where
The glories which effulged before great Moses' face.

And how seraphic proves the spell
In those deep hearts, which love to dwell
Within the inner shrine of things!—
Who can all scenes in Christ behold,
And see, as in bright trance unroll'd,
The charms He there unveils, beyond what poet sings.

Standard and type for all who pray,
Be this the liturgy we say
To Him who hears the spirit cry,
“Thy deeper glories, God! unshroud;
Break, I beseech Thee, break the cloud,
And on Thyself unveil'd, oh, let me rest mine eye.”

The highest saint who heavenward soar'd,
Prophet, or priest, who God adored,
In this vast prayer their motto find:
Such Hearts will hunger, Lord of grace!
To look upon Thy perfect face,
And in that light supreme to love all human kind.

REPENTANCE.

“Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matt. iii. 2.

Wake, power divine, awake!
Arm of the Lord! arise,
And from our spirit take
The mist which round it lies;
Each blinding shade of self dispel
That veils the sin we love so well.

Stern Preacher of the wild!
Enrobed with camel-hair,
Convince cold hearts defiled,
And melt them into prayer;
Through conscience be thy thunder sent,—
“Arise! cold sleeper, and repent.”

Bold lightnings of reproof
Through each dead conscience dart,
Till we no more aloof
From heaven shall hide the heart:
E'en as of old, Judéa heard,
Be all our souls with anguish stirr'd.

Lift, brave Elijah, now
That voice of dauntless truth!
Till shame upon each brow
Of weeping age and youth
Shall print the scarlet blush that tells
What pang in deep repentance dwells.

Thine axe, Conviction, lay
Down to the roots of thought,
Until Remorse shall pray
O'er all vile sin hath wrought:
For that which love doth not inspire
Must perish in God's penal fire.

And let repentance prove
Its vigour by the fruit;
That cannot spring from love
Which doth not bud, and shoot,
And by a life of tears and prayers
Attest the change God's will declares.

Thy fan, O Spirit! wield,
And purge the chaff-strewn floor,
Until the garner yield
Of wheat a precious store;
Baptised with fire, so let us be,
And bid our hearts resemble Thee.

“Repent ye!”—'tis the cry
By conscience echoed back;
From earth and vaulted sky
Along our sin-worn track,
We hear its awful cadence roll
Like thunder through our warnèd soul.

Nor let religious pride
On fruitless names repose;
For heaven hath aye denied
A faith of forms and shows,
And, rather than rank falsehood own,
Will raise a seed from out the stone.

“Repent!”—again we hear
That cry of just alarm;
And let it shake the soul with fear,
To rouse the opiate charm
Which lulls the hypocrite to death,
And cheats him to his latest breath.

Repentance!—what is life
But matter fit for tears?
Since, all we are is rife
With worse than what appears:
If tried without, men are but sin;
Yet God discerns the heart within!

Our virtues oft are self
In bland disguise conceal'd;
Our charities to pelf
Some wretched incense yield,
And holy graces are at best
But weakness by religion dress'd.

Repent we then!—yet, where?
Not as Iscariot did;
But by the Cross in prayer
Be our deep anguish hid:
On Jesus gaze we, till the sight
Shall melt our hearts, and make them white.

Repentance stern and true
Exceeds all common woe:
Despair for crime may rue
And scalding tear-drops flow,
But Self in this alone abounds,—
Repentance rests on nobler grounds.

What is it but a change
By Godhead work'd within?
A principle whose range
Subdues the love of sin?
'Tis man renew'd, and heaven resought,
With hate for what our guilt has wrought.

And what can this create?
Not all the powers of earth;
The perfect forms of good and great
In wisdom, truth, or worth;—
Not heaven with glory, hell with pain
Could sinful man for God regain!

The faintest sin defies
A universe to crush
The strength which in it lies;
And so, 'twill madly rush
Downward to face th' infernal deep
Where blasted spirits burn and weep.

But, oh, there is a Power
This granite of the heart
To soften, in that hour
Ere conscience may depart,—
Atoning Love, through guilt forgiven,
The rescued heart can raise to heaven!

Such pure contrition springs
From Mercy's bleeding charm,
Whose soft compulsion wrings
The soul with safe alarm;
And thus, when wrought by Christ above
Repentance works by weeping love.

HEARTS WHICH HAVE NO ECHOES.

“The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy.”— Prov. xiv. 10.

Some hearts lie wither'd in their transient spring
Long ere the yellow leaf of change began;
Seldom to them may human summer bring
A beaming welcome from the soul of man.

Cinctured as by a preternatural spell,
Languid their pulse of low dejection beats;
Yet none who mark their smile-clad face, could tell
How dark the mood which back from man retreats!

And what, though circumstance may seem
To gladden life with fortune's envied glow,
Or on their brow some bright delusion beam,
Hiding the haunted gloom that reigns below,—

They bear a burden language could not speak,
They feel depression too profound for tears,
And blush to fancy a betrayful cheek
Should wear the paleness of their inward fears.

Yet, say not such sad martyrs of the mind
Are fever'd by ambition's vulgar fret;
Nor think they loathe the love of human kind,
Or hate warm hours when echoing souls are met.

But in them dwells the hush'd and voiceless thought,
How all which reigns without, or rules within,
With grave-like hollowness is ever fraught,
Or, canker'd through with selfishness and sin.

And oft the bitterness of secret pride
Rankles beneath the play of baffled will,
While Feeling, wounded by some fate denied,
Bleeds at the root, though all without look still.

And moods they cherish, passionate as deep,
And wing'd desires that eagle-like would soar,
Which never waken from their wordless sleep,
But prey upon the spirit more and more.

And when quick minds, electrically strung
As though each chord of feeling moved on fire,
Some pang would tell,—how oft the fearful tongue
Has felt each accent on the lip expire!

And thus there is a loneliness of heart,
In all deep souls a never-enter'd shrine,
Where neither love nor friendship takes a part,
Which no eyes witness, but, Jehovah! Thine.

But shall we mourn, that each is circled round
With veiling mystery from the ken of man?
That waters deep within the soul abound
No word has fathom'd, and no wisdom can?

No, rather let such merciful disguise
Move the just thinker unto grateful prayer;
For who could live beneath terrestrial eyes,
If such could witness all secreted there!

And if no mantle by our God were thrown
Round fallen souls, to hide man's world within,
How should we hate, what now we love to own,
And cry for darkness to conceal our sin!

None are so chaste, unselfish, and sincere,
As not to feel the taint of Adam's fall;
So, heaven in mercy hides that inmost sphere
Where each dreads each, and all would censure all.

Yet beats One Heart all other hearts above,
Whose sympathy no human errors tire,
E'en Thine, pure Lord of uncreated love,
Incarnate Semblance of The heavenly Sire!

There, may we prove deep tenderness divine,
And yet, so human that it wept and sigh'd;
And when to coldness burden'd hearts incline,
Haste we to Him, who loved us till He died.

There is no self in that almighty Heart,
No changing motion in the casual will,
For Thou, Lord Christ! celestial mercy art,
And though we shun Thee, Thou art gracious still.

O balmy thought! which, like nocturnal dews
Whose silver freshness stars the herbless plain,
When worse than midnight shades our mental views
Recalls Emmanuel to the mind again.

Others may gaze with half-averted eyes,
Coldly may spurn, or scan the woe we feel,
But o'er His heart are breathed our inward sighs,
And through His breast our veil'd emotions steal.

Nor can one shade of sorrow clothe the cheek,
Nor tear-drop from the spirit-fountain roll,
But He interprets what no tongue can speak,
And reads the thinking volume of our soul.

Here boast the saints, what no bright seraph can,—
That they have sympathy upon the Throne;
Christ loves the Angel, but he feels for man,
Whose very nature hath become his Own.

No hearts beat echoless, if they believe
A more than Brother in yon heavens is theirs,
Who loves them most when all alone they grieve,
And with His incense can perfume their prayers.

His love is greater than our heart, and knows
What secret burden loads the inward sigh;
And wordless pangs to Him are open woes,
Clear as the glories which emblaze the sky.

Dear Lord! be ever thus our Friend divine,
Our Anchor sure while rocking tempests roli,
And when departing into hands like Thine,
Relume Thy promise, and receive the Soul.

INSPIRATION OF THE PAST.

“Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live for ever?”—Zech. i. 5.

“God ------ in time past, spake unto the fathers.”—Heb. i. 1.

Our fathers, where are they,
The prophets of the past?—
Like solemn dreams, long flown away,
And with th' eternal class'd!

Those patriarchs of the soul
Of lion heart and mien,
Scorning the world's depraved control,
They hallow'd history's scene;

Heroes of faith and prayer,
They fought salvation's fight,
Ready to do, and boldly dare,
When God reveal'd the right.

Such were those mental sires
Who made our English mind,
Whose page the saintly heart inspires,
Whose words entrance mankind.

Yes! they, indeed, were men
Of loftiness divine;
And not till such shall breathe again,
Will British glory shine.

We want majestic hearts
Like those which burn'd and bled,
When Rome, with her resistless arts,
Denied the Church's Head.

The dungeon, steel, and stake,
A bloody doom, or block,
Not one of these their vow could break,
When summon'd to the shock.

Peaceful as lambs, as lions brave,
The saints of hoary time,—
Still may we hear them from the grave
Preach with a voice sublime.

Their tongues are tipp'd with fire,
Their accent sounds the free,
And into us such men inspire
Their own eternity.

RELIGION OF THE YOUNG.

“Remember now thy Creator, in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not.”—Eccles. xii. 1.

And wilt thou bring a virgin heart,
And lay it on the shrine
Of holy Love, that so the part
Of Mary may be thine?—
Retreat beneath the Saviour's eye,
And to His tones of heaven reply,
While outward breath, or inward sigh
Adores Him as divine.

Then may thy youth securely rest
On more than earth bestows;
Eternity within thy breast
Already throbs, and glows;
Thou hast, ere sin the breast alloy,
That colour of celestial joy
Which brighten'd o'er the sainted boy,
Whose cry, “Speak, Lord!” arose.

He, to the Temple when a child
By his dear mother brought,
Ere manhood's guilt the heart defiled
With years of sinful thought,
Like a young priest his ephod wore;
And on his girdled form he bore
The truth of all meek Hannah swore,
When she the Lord besought.

Thus, in the vernal prime of youth
How blest are they who bring
Their souls a sacrifice for truth,
And round Christ's altar sing!
Ere shades of evil darkness fall,
Like folds of that primeval pall
Which, soon or late, envelops all
On earth now wandering.

Age has not loosed the silver cord,
Nor at the fountain-head
Doth Weariness pronounce the word,
“My pleasant things are fled!”
For still around, hope's morning dews
Fall freshly on thy fairy views,
And Nature wears those lust'rous hues
O'er life by feeling spread.

In youth there breathes a vital bloom,
A buoyancy and glow
Which seem to triumph o'er the tomb
And gladden off dull woe;
Elate as lofty, swells the hope
That longs with dangers firm to cope,
And ever round some daring scope
An eager glance to throw.

When years have cast their blighting frown
And wither'd prospects pine,
While on the head Time's hoary crown
Betrays old age is thine,
Then, sinner! 'tis a rueful sight,
To view thee through thy heart's deep night
In horror seek that saving light
Which flows from truth divine.

It is not, that a dread “too late!”
By mortal dare be sigh'd;
For never to a brother's fate
Be hope of heaven denied:
But, oh! methinks when harrowing fears
Haunt the dark mind, and bitter tears
Like drops of anguish damp the years
Of those who God defied;

When memory's weak, and conscience quails,
And life's gay tone is dead,
While hideous doubts the heart assail
By base experience bred,
'Tis awful on Death's couch to find
Some ruin'd Shape of woe reclined,
Sick of the world, but unresign'd
In dust to lay his head.

Divinest Spirit! truthful Lord,
May youth remember Thee,
And gladly in Thy glorious word
A bright hereafter see:—
There, bloom the Canaans of the young,
There, fields with hallow'd fruitage hung,
Richer than God's own poets sung
Should wave in Galilee.

Thy grace bestow, that vestal hearts
May more and more be given
To Thee and Thine, ere youth departs
From God,—by passion driven
Along that dark and dismal way
Where virtues into vices stray,
Which tempt polluted souls to say
“Earth makes my only heaven!”

SYMPATHY OF CHRIST.

“Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee.”—Ps. lv. 22.

Go, cast thy burden on the Lord,
Thou laden Bosom! dark and lone;
Nor deem thyself by Him unheard
Whose heart beats human on the Throne.

A Man of sorrows and of tears
The Saviour once was like to thee,
And learn'd to face those mortal fears
Which pierced His soul with sympathy.

'Tis thus we mark Him, homeless, sad,
A Pilgrim whose mysterious lot
Was shunn'd by all the gay and glad,
Unfelt, unpitied, and forgot.

Yet learnt He thus from finite woe
What heaven's calm glories could not teach,—
For there, no tides of anguish flow,
And no dark cares that kingdom reach.

And is it not a whelming thought,
That Christ should leave His heavenly throne
To be on earth affliction taught,
And suffer more than flesh hath shown!

Oh, had He in yon realm of bliss
But simply fathom'd what we feel,
Could mortals from their sad abyss
To Him as brother now appeal?

But when we read His matchless life
That wept, and sigh'd, and sorrow'd o'er
The heavy pangs of human strife,
And all which burning conscience bore,

Such life becomes a lovely proof
That into His deep bosom pass'd
Experience, which can ne'er aloof
From pilgrims now on earth be class'd.

Nor deem, that when on high He soar'd
And o'er the radiant heavens retired,
By chanting hosts to be adored
Whose hymns are by His Blood inspired,

What here below as Man He felt,
Is now engulph'd in bliss eterne;—
Still through His heart emotions melt,
And in Him pure affections burn.

His regal crown is all divine,
And glory-flames engird Him now,
But Faith beholds Him still the same,
For human feelings line His brow.

And thus, O weary, wand'ring soul,
By tempest worn, and toss'd, and tried,
Though surging waves around thee roll,
Thine anchor is The Crucified!

Thy sin confess, each sorrow tell,
Bold on His love thy burden cast,
In heaven Who yet remembers well
The storms through which on earth He pass'd.

A mother may her babe forget,
An exile ne'er his home recall,
Nor orphan'd child the hour regret
Which reft him of parental all:

But, oh, whate'er the scene or clime,
Devotion may Emmanuel see,
Whose heart expands o'er man, and time,
Who bled for our eternity!

Yes, sympathies intense and deep
Surpassing all our souls contain,
Still through His breast in glory sweep,
And shall for ever glow and reign.

A sinless Lord, yet touch'd in heart
With all which blighted moments bear,
In heaven, O Priest divine! Thou art
A man-God, with our feelings, there!

By gentleness, by grief, and grace,
By depth of sigh, and tears profound,
Faith views Thee to our fallen race
In links of loving union bound.

Both heaven and earth in Thee combine
In Whom that mystic wound appears,
Which gash'd in death Thy Form divine,
And crimson'd it with gory tears.

Then, lay thy burden on the Lord
Child of dejection! pale and lone;
Thou canst not sigh by Him unheard,
Whose heart throbs human on His throne.

NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED.

“There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” Isa. lvii. 21.

How like a spirit shrieks the startled Wind,
As though the air to agony were torn,
When conscience hears it with a haunted mind,
Waking at midnight, fearful and forlorn!

No peace apart from purity abides,
Deep in the heart some dark unrest will be;
Though calmest azure gild the ocean-tides,
Stern are the currents which no eye can see.

What, if the world, that sees by sense alone,
Seldom below the surface of our smiles
Surveys the secrets which to God are shown,
Believes mock gladness which the truth beguiles;

Resounding bursts of Bacchanalian joy
Oft though they ring from out the Belial mind,—
Be sure there lurks some unbetray'd alloy
Of sad rebuke, yon gilded face behind!

The peace of sinners is the trance of death,
The putrid stillness of a stagnant tomb;
Or like the pause before some parting breath
Which shakes and shudders o'er eternal doom.

But oft this lulling opiate of the heart,
By passion drunk while principle expires,
Fails in some hour to do its deadly part,
When Vengeance lights her agonising fires.

And thus the wicked have no vital peace,
Nothing which reason, truth, or knowledge makes;
The “Blood of Sprinkling” hath not brought release,
Nor calm'd the tempest which dark conscience shakes.

In vain may riches, rank, and power, and pride,
Fawn round the creedless heart and lawless will,
There is no heaven but in bad self denied,
And less than Godhead can no bosom fill.

Man's peace is grounded on majestic truth,
Enlightened conscience, hope, and faith-breathed prayer,
And they who seek it in hoar'd age, or youth,
Yearn for God's Holy One to guide them there.

Cold gnaws the worm which on pale conscience feeds,—
A darksome pang of dreariness within;
And oft in silence sad remembrance bleeds
O'er bosom'd stores of unrepented sin.

The grave! the grave! its horrent gloom appals
The craven souls which no atonement seek,
And from hereafter comes the hell that calls
The blood of gladness from a blooming cheek.

To guilt eternity a dread appears,
And God Himself is vision'd as a foe;
And how the Throne dark retribution rears,
Shades a bright present with prophetic woe!

Martyr in soul! with all thy painted smiles,
Hie thee at once to free salvation's ark,
And shun the snare of those satanic wiles
Which dazzle myriads into regions dark.

Lo, where The Church with mild maternal tone
Thy soul invites to share mysterious peace,
Pure as Emmanuel once proclaim'd His own,—
Born of The Blood which purchased man's release.

Such is the rest, divinely rich and deep,
Beyond tempestuous waves of woe to break;
Soft as the trances of that blissful sleep
Which lull'd the Saviour on the storm-rent lake.

Let but the Spirit of the Lord descend
And o'er our bosom brood with dovelike sway,
Then shall Jehovah be our guardian friend,
Point to glad Zion, and protect the way.

So will that hollow rest poor worldlings love,
No longer o'er the cheated bosom reign;
But Peace, descending from her Prince above,
Becalm our conscience like His breath again.

INFANT DEATH.

“Rachel, weeping for her children.”—Matt. ii. 18.

“Thus saith the Lord, Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears ------ they shall come again from the land of the enemy.”— Jer. xxxi. 16.

Pale mother! art thou weeping
Beside yon cradled form,
Which now reclines unsleeping
In fever's raging storm?
Fair mourner, let me feel for thee,
Engulph'd in such an agony.

Thine eyes are red with sorrow,
And sunken back with woe;
Or ever dawns to-morrow,
Thy heart will overflow,
While tears of burning anguish lave
The victim of an early grave.

Such death seems like the rushing
All sudden, fierce, and strong,
Of chainless whirlwind, crushing
The forest-boughs along;
As onward sweeps that rending blast,
Wild ruins tell its wings have pass'd.

Yet, mother! when caressing
Thy darling in thine arms,
While brooding o'er the blessing
So treasured in its charms,
Did not this dream thy soul appal,—
“Perchance my living flower must fall?”

And often, when surveying
Its mournful depth of eye,
A something seem'd arraying
Those features for the sky,—
A pensive meaning, sad and mild,
Too earthless for an earth-doom'd child.

But since the Soul hath parted,
Above that baby face
Thou bendest, broken-hearted;
For, cold as sculptured grace,
The whiteness of that cherub brow
Maternal tear-drops moisten now!

Yet be not thou repining,
And nurse the pang unmeet,
Because, no longer shining
Thy glow of love to greet,
Infantile charms and elfin ways
Are welcomed by thy doting gaze.

Like cherubim surrounding
The Throne where Jesu reigns,
With more than bliss abounding,
And touch'd by no earth-stains,—
Unbodied infants, in the blaze
Of Godhead, lisp their perfect lays.

Nor dream, because unspoken
In flesh, the word of grace,
Thy darling had no token
Of God's paternal face;
Baptismal wonders oft infold
A germ of Christ no creeds have told.

Think not, that when translated
To realms of hallow'd bliss,
An infant can be rated
By such base world as this:
In heaven transform'd, its mind expands,
And more than scripture understands.

Then, cheer thee! stricken mother,
Let praise ennoble tears;
Thy babe has found a Brother
In yonder heaven-bright spheres;
For God's Elect, the Undefiled,
Was once on earth a cradled Child.

Though now enshrined in glory,
What here below He felt
As read in awful story,
Doth still remembrance melt;
As if the babe His bosom press'd,
For ever thrill'd That gracious Breast.

Though viewless, yet not banish'd,
Thine infant, conscious now,
From this cold world hath vanish'd
In heaven to lift its brow,
Where babes redeem'd, in radiant white
Girdle the Throne, with angels bright.

A PERFECT WILL.

“Then cometh Jesus ------ to be baptized ------ Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.”— Matt. iii. 13, 15.

Thou, who didst rend the heavens to be
The Man, in whom God's eye should see
A human Archetype of all
His wisdom could perfection call,
From Thy sad manger to the tomb
Through shades of grief, and storms of gloom,
Implicitly Thy passive will
Each dictate of the law did lovingly fulfil.

When Peter's rude and reinless zeal
Would fain have bade Thee scorn to feel
The pangs a felon's death must bear,
What did the Prince of Peace declare?—
“Get thee behind me, Satan! thou
Of man, not God, dost savour now;
Disciple if thou dar'st to be,
Martyr thy human will, and meekly follow me!”

The dauntless Eremite who saw
His Lord obey baptismal law,
And meekly as a lamb descend
Beneath a sacrament to bend,
And in God's mystic waters lave
A Form which came the world to save,—
At once recoil'd with holy dread,
And, gazing on the Lord, aloud in wonder said:

“Wilt Thou, by God and angels prized,
Prince of all peace! be thus baptized
By one like me, whose atom worth
Is but a speck of sinful earth?
Rather baptize me with that fire
Of holiness Thou dost respire;
Too abject am I here to stand,
Or on Thy sandall'd feet to lay my soilèd hand.”

So spake th' Elijah of the wild;
But He, of woman born, and mild
As moon-lit water, when a breeze
Tones the soft accent of the seas,

Bent o'er the Baptist His meek brow,
And answer'd, “It becomes us now;”
And lo! at once the laving stream
Shed o'er His awful face its sacramental gleam.

And as He rose from that green bank,
Yon heavens the scene of wonder drank
Into their depths, which saw their King
To God such ritual glory bring!
Obedience then received a crown
Surpassing all sublime renown,
The Law obtains from perfect will
Bodied by angels forth, who all His work fulfil.

But while by yon enraptured Heaven
Peals of divine applause are given,
And downward on His wings of love
Descends the everlasting Dove,
And ere that thunder-voice hath ceased
Proclaiming how The Father's “pleased,”
Let the saved Church a truth discern,
And man's o'er-reas'ning heart a lofty science learn.

Subjection is our love divine;
Believer! let its law be thine:
“All righteousness,” however small
Cold reason may its canons call,
Compliant Faith will yearn to do,
Finding in Christ her model true;
Nor dare to dream men suffer loss
When duty points the way, and God provides the Cross.

And, wouldst thou like thy Master be?
Go, find him near that ancient sea,
Where the awed Baptist on His head
The sacramental water spread;
There, as thou wander'st, seek a will
Which can all rectitude fulfil,
And consecrate thine inmost soul
To that unfathom'd Law no reason can control.

And then may He, whose glory came
On mystic plumes of dovelike flame,
That Spirit, who on Christ did pour
The sevenfold grace His priesthood bore,—
Some drops of saving unction give
By which believing martyrs live;
Till thou, in all thy works and ways,
Shall unto God devote the priesthood of thy days.

CHIEF OF SINNERS.

“Jesus came to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” 1 Tim. i. 15.

Low in the dust, oh! let me lie,
And heavenward lift my asking eye,
Till Christ becalm with lenient gaze
The pang which on my conscience preys.

The more I think, the more I feel
This heart hath proved in woe and weal
A Cain-like rebel to my God,
Whate'er the path experience trod.

My past appears one blended crime,
Extending through all scene and time,
And well may conscience quail to see
How Self dethroned the Deity!

Ay, Self has proved the spring of all
Enamour'd eyes perfection call;
Thought, will and motive, deed and word,
In each vile Self has been preferr'd.

Here is the Upas-blast of sin!
The poison-blight which burns within,
The venom'd source of vicious life,
With treason to the Godhead rife.

'Tis Self by whose defiling breath
The soul deserves eternal death;
A taint whose omnipresent power
Contaminates man's purest hour.

It matters not, what form it takes,
When human will our God forsakes:—
The essence of all sin we find,
Not in the flesh, but in the mind.

When passions nurse their lava-fires,
Or Belial lust the blood inspires,
Or vice, and vulgar riot reign,
There Self reveals its coarser stain.

But may not sin defile that soul
Where bland refinement wields control,
While art, and taste, and beauty dwell,
And Culture charms with graceful spell?

Yes, there while nature's glories rise
To fascinate our partial eyes,
And painting, poetry, and speech,
A throne of regal magic reach,

While private zeal, or public worth
Adorns the land which gives them birth,
Believe not, in this bright display,
That Sin and Self have died away!

Yea, rather may refinement shroud
A godless will beneath a cloud,
And lull the conscience, till it fail
To know if God, or man, prevail.

Thus, “chief of sinners!” forms the cry
Of all who see with inward eye
That self is sin, howe'er disguised,
And by approving falsehood prized.

On these Heaven's perfect law will dart
Those searching beams which bare the heart,
Till each fine chord of feeling there
Thrills into dread, and throbs with prayer.

DIVINE THIRST.

“My soul thirsteth for God.”—Ps. xlii. 20.

As pants the hart for living brooks
So pines my soul for Thee;
Away from this lone earth it looks,
And longs Thy face to see.

Thrice Holy One! athirst I am
From man's false world to fly,
And on the glories of the Lamb
To feast my fasting eye.

'Tis here a bleak and barren land
Where hearts and hopes are vain;
But Faith perceives at Thy right hand,
Supernal wonders reign.

There pleasures bloom which cannot lead
Compliant souls to sin;
And all celestial Love decreed
Victorious martyrs win.

No shades of guilt or sorrow now
Athwart remembrance roll;
Eternity unveils its brow,
And God enshrines the soul.

Those pulses of ethereal bliss
Which here so feebly play,
Shall throb within a realm like this,
Divine beyond decay!

At length we find our purest dreams
Of finite rapture flown,
When saints are basking in the beams
Which glorify Thy Throne.

The Past will not return in sighs,
The Future ne'er appal,
The present charm celestial eyes
With Christ, the All in All.

And dared men like rapt David feel,
Our frigid hearts would be
On fire with archangelic zeal,
That heaven of Heavens to see!

THE HEART'S TREASURE.

“Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven ------ for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”—Matt. vi. 19, 21.

Men of faith's heroic mould!
Who your birthright have not sold,
But the heirship of God's truth
Have preserved to age from youth,
Let the freedom of your soul
No debasement draw from earth,
But the Law of heaven control
What you deem of peerless worth.

“Let not earth your treasure be,
Ne'er from rust and robber free;
But in heaven behold a mine
Where the gold is all divine;
That which mortal love doth measure
As of time the truest spell,
Aye becomes a witching treasure
Where false hearts delight to dwell.”

Miser! with thy golden heap
Glaring through perturbèd sleep,
In thy wealth no wisdom lies;
Yet thy soul doth sacrifice
Heaven and hope, with all the bliss
Which on high the pure await;
Gilded clay thy treasure is,
And how cursed thine envied state!

Worldling! who for earth-prized gain
Creed and conscience both wilt strain;
Fill'd, and fever'd o'er with cares,
Doom'd to be but Sorrow's heirs,
Dwarf'd and mean thy nature grows,
Day by day intensely vile;
Deeper far than virtue knows,
Coils the serpent in thy smile!

Patriot! in whose haughty plan
Looks reveal'd a heaven for man,
Madly dreaming time and sense
All in all for man dispense,

Brain may work, and genius build
Schemes of most colossal name,
But o'er visions unfulfill'd
Thou shalt sing the dirge of shame.

Student! cloister'd in the cell
Haunted with some hoary spell
Books of sages and of seers
Breathe from immemorial years,—
Rich and radiant are the hopes
Round thy soul that beam and play,
But ambition with thee copes,
And of this thou art the prey.

Poet! thou art priest of song;
Heaven and earth to thee belong;
Beauty, grandeur, love and grace
Circle round the bardic race;
Seize thy harp, and sweep the chords
Till they glow with mental fire,
And like oracles, rich words
Roll from thy melodious lyre;

But if gold, or gain intrude
On thy soul in solitude,
If mere passion for renown
Should assail thy minstrel-crown,
Should thy chant, debauch'd and base,
E'er for sordid end be sung,
Angels blush for thy disgrace,—
Would thy harp were never strung!

Lord! and will affections be
Fill'd with dust, and dead to Thee,
If around one heart they twine,
With a passion half divine?
Teach us, then, no creature can
Saint, or seraph-heart enchain,
But it mars the mighty plan,—
God alone as God must reign!

Mother! 'tis a beauteous sight
When thou watchest day and night
Fondly round some elfin creature
Budding with maternal feature,
Oft in cradled slumber rock'd,
Flush'd with fascination's dreams,
While each baby hand enlock'd
Clasp'd in adoration seems;

But if love should Christ betray,
And devotion steal away
From the God of babes, and men,
Wilt thou not be chasten'd then?
Or perchance, when fever'd breath
From thy little one is heaving,
Thou wilt learn by infant's death
That thy soul has God been leaving!

If upon thy sailor-boy,
Star of home and social joy,
Far amid the wild sea-waves
Where his head the tempest braves,
Thou art dreaming, when thy prayer
Heavenward should in faith be swelling,
Canst thou hope thy God is there,
If no grace be in thee dwelling?

Wife, and parent, husband, child,
Let not feeling be defiled
By a worship that withdraws
Love from those celestial Laws
Which in creatures claim the heart;—
There the Lord erects a throne
In whose glories none have part,
Where He reigns, and reigns alone!

Hide our treasure, Lord, in Thee!
And regenerate hearts will be,
Like the ransom'd, more and more
When they scan their radiant store,
Bliss seraphic taught to feel
While around the Lamb they bend,
Chanting with impassion'd zeal,—
“Glory's fount! and sinner's Friend!”

WISDOM OF PRAYER.

“O Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.”—Ps. lxv. 2.

Why should the reas'ning sceptic dare
To stand between the Godhead and our prayer?
A mental antichrist, too oft
Madly presuming mind will soar aloft,
And from Jehovah's nature draw
A reason why we should reject his law,—
That all who would Heaven's pardon claim
Must clasp that mercy in Emmanuel's name.

God is not changed by hearing prayer,
But would be changed, if our petitions were
By Him unheard; Whose page inspired
Hath said, “For this My Throne shall be enquired.”
Thus, end and means together meet
When bows the sinner at Heaven's mercy-seat:
To this God's changeless purpose tends,
And with His glory our salvation blends.

Avaunt! ye hell-breathed doubts, away!
Morn, noon, and night, let true adorers pray;
Precept, and promise, doctrine,—all
To this vast privilege our being call.
No saint in earth, or heaven is found,
Who did not in such glorious work abound;
His prayer, whatever path he trod,
Drew God to man, and lifted man to God.

Prayer conquers scene, and space, and time,
Entreats no temple, and demands no clime,
But, like an omnipresent charm
Can shield the saints from all corrupting harm;
Howe'er remote from genial home
The surging waves of life may bid them roam.
Oft riven Friendships pray afar,
Each thrilling each, beneath some alien star.

Elijah, Moses, Jonah, pray'd;
And how those heroes of The Spirit sway'd
Nature, and Providence, and Man!—
As though the movements of almighty plan,
However fathomless they were,
Hung on the breathings of a human prayer;
Or else, that He whose will is law,
Were sway'd in heaven, by what on earth he saw.

And mark, thou prayerless Thing of dust!
If doubt thy God, and reason be thy trust,
How Abram, that Elect of heaven
To whom the Church's promises were given,
With sixfold intercession bent
Before His wrath, Th' enthroned Omnipotent!
And, when the bolt was almost hurl'd,
By prayer held back His thunders from the world.

But oh! if pure example can
Melt the cold mind of antichristian man,
Behold it, in the Saviour mild,
The God in flesh, the manhood undefiled:
For He, by whom the worlds were made,
In the hush'd midnight on the mountains pray'd,
And wintry stars from their high spheres
Blent their cold radiance with His awful tears!

Here let us pause: His finite will
Before the Infinite of heaven did fall;
Though spotless, Christ was human still,
And ceased not on His Father-God to call.
And what but heartless sin will dare
To doubt that He is moved by mighty prayer?—
My Saviour wept, and watch'd, and pray'd;
Be each unhallow'd thought by that o'ersway'd.

And this, when worlds shall disappear,
Will rock to slumber each tempestuous fear;
All pangs without, all pains within
Yield to its spell; and each tyrannic sin
Is vanquish'd by believing prayer,
Which proves God greater than our greatest care:
And deep will be his hallow'd rest
Who drops his burden on Emmanuel's breast.

CONVICTION, AND CONFESSION.

“He will reprove the world of sin ------ because they believe not on me.”—John xvi. 8, 9.

“O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?”—Rom. vii. 24.

“Wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”—Rev. iii. 17.

There was a time, when earth appear'd
From each cold mist of sorrow clear'd,
A landscape clothed with calm and grace,
Whose flowers conceal'd the serpent's trace.

Then Nature seem'd a fairy world
Where beauty all its wings unfurl'd,
Till soil, and sea, and sun, and sky
Entranced me with their poetry.

Brightness and bloom o'er objects threw
The witchery of that wond'rous hue,
Which makes the very ground to glow
With gladness beaming hearts bestow.

And as with Nature, so with life,—
It seem'd with radiant magic rife,
Where hearts, and homes, and friends, and smiles,
Around me group'd their dearest wiles.

I did not hear the booming knell,
Nor let the tomb its wisdom tell;
Sickness and sorrow, change and grief,
Appear'd too dark for my belief.

And when from Heaven's most awful book
My blinded heart some utt'rance took,
The God I worshipp'd was my own,
Without a sceptre, law, or throne!

And thus, Religion's peerless claim
A sentimental lie became:
It touch'd the fancy—but the heart
From ruling grace beat all apart.

Till He, who bowed the heavens in love,
Beheld me from His shrine above,
And so my sensual trance awoke,
With legal Sinai's lightning-stroke.

Then, dread conviction through me burst,
And I sank down, accurst! accurst!
No more I lived, but seem'd to die
Like those who dare their God defy.

Both heart and brain with horror felt
Vengeance divine my being melt:
The pleasure loved, grew loathsome now,
And stamp'd, like Cain's, my branded brow.

Creation's glories ceased to shine
Upon a heart depress'd as mine;
And round her fairest landscape stole
The blight and blackness of my soul.

Where'er I went, whate'er I saw,
The haunting curse of holy law
Came like my shadow;—dread and deep
It quiver'd o'er my harrow'd sleep.

Matter and mind, and time and space,
Sun, air, and sea, with heaven's bright face,
Whate'er I saw, or felt, or heard,
Echoed The Law's condemning word.

“Oh wretched man!” (thus breathed my groan)
“The body of this death to own;
As though the corpse from out its grave
Were fasten'd to some living slave,

I bear without, and drag within
The clinging weight of woful sin!—
Who can deliver, and my soul
Rescue from this abhorr'd control?”

My virtues, now, to vices turn'd,
As more enlighten'd reason learn'd
The pureness of that perfect Law,
Which sees what Conscience never saw.

Eager with light from God's own eye
It can the shades of sin descry:
Nor could one pulse of feeling play
That throbs not in its searching ray.

And thus, gay sinner! down to dust
Be all thy tow'ring virtues thrust;
The law of God is legal death
By guilt inhaled at every breath.

Go, cultivate a grief divine;
A noble wretchedness be thine;
A heaven-born pang, like Paul's profound,—
The bleeding of the spirit's wound.

Nor fancy, as we Godward rise
And grace soars nearer to the skies,
Our sainted calm will deeper grow,
As if we found true heaven below.

Insatiate conscience, strong and stern
Will evermore this wisdom learn,
That our perfection is to prove
Imperfect reigns man's purest love.

Oh! bless we God, for gracious tears,
For sunken hopes, and shadowy fears;
Those Hearts are not for glory meant
Who feel no glorious discontent:

Enough for souls this truth to gain,—
In Christ alone we live and reign;
And all who would perfection find
Must seek it in the Saviour's mind.

BELIEVER'S DESTINED WORK.

“Ye are the salt of the earth ------ ye are the light of the world ------ let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”—Matt. v. 13, 14, 16.

The World exults to crucify
The truth it loathes to feel;
And thus, all time repeats the Cross,
And Christians must through shame and loss
Maintain a martyr-zeal.

They cannot on this impious earth
Expect a brighter doom
Than that the Prince of Glory bore,
When He rebuked the world of yore,
And gain'd a borrow'd tomb.

But not for this, with craven hearts
And love of selfish ease
Shrink they from conflict, or the crowd,
And in dull cloister bent and bow'd
Enjoy a bad release.

Alas! for their religious mock
Whose creed is Self disguised;
Our sacrament of second birth
Anoints us to contend with earth;—
Have we our unction prized?

The heavenliness of blissful calm
In some poetic shade,
Where nature is the nurse of thought,
And all seems with religion fraught
And for devotion made;

For this indeed, mild spirits yearn,
And long for dove-like wings
Away to flee, and be at rest
With God and angels purely blest
Above terrestrial things.

Hence, most divine to musing hearts
When sick of toil and strife,
Monastic bowers of peace and prayer
Where time intrudes no fev'rish care
To fret the saintly life.

But, where is then the martyr's will?—
That oath by which we vow'd
Under Christ's banner, in His name,
To battle for His crown and claim
Amid earth's warring crowd?

Mistaken victims of themselves!
Who violate their creed
And fly with recreant heart and will,
Instead of facing stern and still
The front of battle's need;

'Tis not by flight or fear we gain
The jewell'd crown of bliss;
But by enduring unto death,
And battling to our latest breath,
We claim reward like this.

The world is dark, the world is dead,
Corruption broods in all;
Those painted splendours which appear
Glitter like spangles on a bier,
And worse than gloom appal.

Hero for heaven, baptised and brave,
The vow is on thee,—fight!
Full at the Fiend, the flesh, and world
Be all thy weapon'd graces hurl'd,
And God shall guard the right.

Or, if thou wilt the mystic words
Of “light” and “salt” translate,—
Then, shine by contrast in the dark,
And by correction probe and mark
The evils of our state.

We live in evil times; and tongues
Against the truth contend;
When Motive, Principle, and Power,
Around us in rebellion tower
And loud their challenge send.

Then, soldier, put thine armour on
And wield thy weapons bright;
With spear and breastplate, sword and shield,
Thus panoplied,—go, take the field
And foremost fall, or fight!

How can we “shine,” unless we face
A world of guilt and gloom?
Or, be like salt's corrective force,
By hallow'd deed, or high discourse,
If life itself entomb?

Earth needs the grace, and wants the beams
Embodied grace imparts,
When worldlings view a valiant band
Maintain with hope and heart and hand
The creed of sainted hearts.

A cloister's gloom, a cowl, and cell
May oft a mind conceal,
Where rancour, pride, and envy reign,
While Passion gnaws a viler chain
Than fettered world-slaves feel.

Lord of the Church! of creeds, and souls,
Thy wisdom make our own,
Not of, but in, this world to be,
And hear the summons, “Follow me,”
From manger to the throne.

Contention with a godless world,—
Here is our law of life:
The salt must spread, the light must shine,
Unless we cross the will divine
And sink from duteous strife.

'Tis easy when the flesh-born will
In solitude retires,
To choose the calm of constant prayer,
And thus avoid the fretting care
A public fate inspires.

But, social is the cause of God;
And Christ demands a creed
That shall not seek monastic shade
Of all but righteous self afraid,—
But front the dreadest need.

True salt and sunlight make us, Lord!
Thy Spirit forms them both;
So may we best Thy word obey,
And rev'rence thus by night and day
Our sacramental oath.

The crowded world Thy Sceptre rules;
And Thou not less art there,
Than in the lull of lone retreat;
And saints may thy pure guidance meet
In duties ev'ry-where.

But while we seek to shine and act,
In all our words and ways
Thy veil, Humility! bestow,
And over us protection throw,
Lest we aspire for praise.

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The work, but not the worker, seen,—
Behold! a heaven-drawn plan
For saints to lead their life in God;
Such path a Saviour's virtue trod
And made it bright for man.

SACREDNESS OF FLOWERS.

“Consider the lilies.”—Matt. vi. 28.

“Glorious beauty is a fading flower.”—Isa. xxviii. 1.

“All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.”—1 Pet. i. 24.

Ye silent poems! which from nature's book
Warble of Eden to our inward ear,
Filling the thoughtful eyes that on ye look
With the soft mystery of a sacred tear,

Not the chaste stars, whose placid eyes salute
The musing gaze of man's poetic mind,
Throned in their skyey radiance,—dare dispute
The spell ye wield o'er every heart refined.

Since God, from Whose ideal wealth of thought
All that is bright, or beautiful, or fair,
By shaping wisdom into form was wrought
And thus committed unto sun and air,

Made the wild flowers like earth-sprung stars to shine
With gleams of almost sacramental power,—
Dull is the heart which hails no tone divine
When these accost him from their vernal bower!

Nor dream, that He who marks a sparrow's flight
Forgets the dew-fed darlings of the Spring;
Angels are not more surely in His sight
Than the soft flowers which breeze and brightness bring.

For such adjustment doth His hand ordain
Amid all forms and faculties to be,
That 'tween the snow-drop and vast earth must reign
Proportions pure as Science loves to see.

Were the huge world one atom more or less
In majesty, from centre to the pole,
The flowers might lose their bending loveliness,
Like living sympathies with nature's Whole.

And in man's world, where sin and woe prevail,
Harshness, and heat, and hurry so abound,
How sweet the hush of some sequester'd dale
Where slaves grow freemen upon nature's ground!

There can we hold communion meek and mild
With flowers, which deck some grove, or vernal wood,
And guard their innocence as undefiled
As when their greeting Maker call'd them “good.”

Orphans of Eden, their parental soil
Has long been wither'd, and by weeds o'errun;
While burden'd Manhood, with a brow of toil,
Endures the desert, and outworks the sun;

But these, like babes whose mother we deplore,
Still do their budding features love to keep
A soft sad trace of paradise no more,
And waken memories that well may weep.

Of old, before the God Incarnate came,
Oft did high song, and sentiment, and art
Borrow from flowers an ever-beauteous fame
Which feeds the mind, and purifies the heart.

But since the hour a lily blush'd, and bow'd
Its head of grace beneath Emmanuel's smile,
Divine and deep associations crowd
The dreaming soul which o'er them bends awhile.

“Behold the lilies of the field, and learn
From their sweet lives, who neither toil, nor spin,”—
Well may such consecrating words return,
And waken truths whose echoes sleep within!

And might we shape one hallow'd dream of Him
Whose life was pure, mysterious, deep, and lone,
Whose glory to the wing-veil'd Seraphim
Beamed from the Cross, more wondrous than His Throne,—

Thought may imagine hours of worldless calm,
When all unwatch'd, Messiah's human soul
Found in far meads a meditative balm,
And in bright flowers some beautiful control.

As God, He made them, and as Man, admired
The blooming product of His lovely power;
And oft may genius, by their grace inspired,
Read silent poems in a sacred flower.

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INGRATITUDE TO ANGELS.

“He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”—Ps. xci. 11.

And must we, now the God-man reigns
In regions where no senses roam,
Refuse to hear angelic strains
Float through the heart, and fill our home?
Have Seraphim quite ceased to walk
Man's world, and with man's spirit talk?

'Tis true indeed, nor eye nor ear
Their shapes discern, nor know their voice;
But still they haunt a human sphere,
To make elected souls their choice;
And round them may bright Angels be,
Though nothing but blind earth they see.

Oh! never till the clouds of time
Are rent by awful death from man,
And he from yonder heaven sublime
Shall look back where dark life began,
Will gather'd saints in glory know
What blessings men to angels owe.

This earth is but a thorny wild,
A tangled maze where griefs abound,
By sorrow vex'd, by sin defiled,
Where foes and fiends our walks surround;
But does not dread Jehovah say,
Angelic guardians line the way?

It is not when gigantic woe,
Or crisis unforeseen assails
Our earthly doom, that most we glow
To feel heroic faith prevails,
When perill'd by the bitter shower
Temptation pours in sorrow's hour.

The precipice men rarely find;
On us no avalanche may fall;
But petty woes distract the mind
And take sweet temper from us all;
As some by thickets are o'erthrown,
Whose feet escaped the crushing stone.

Mean trifles our true dangers make,
Weak'ning the spirit unawares;
And tiny griefs would often break
The heart unbow'd by pond'rous cares,
Did not our guardian angels glide,
And watch, unseen, the naked side.

Some pebble in our daily path,
The little stone we scarce behold
A world of secret ruin hath,
O'er which might trip the brave and bold,—
Should not blest angels' saving arms
Upbear the soul from sudden harms.

And moods are felt no words define,
When earth and heaven appear to meet,
While faith half hears a tone divine
From out yon orbs of Glory greet
Each praying heart, and placid soul
Which echoes to such sweet control.

When gracious beams of holy light
From spheres of radiance seem to play,
And from lone hours of suff'ring night
Melt half their haunted gloom away,—
Our perill'd souls prompt Angels see
And hover by the bended knee.

Sickness and sorrow, too, may have
Ethereal Hosts whom none perceive,
Whose golden wings around us wave
When all alone men seem to grieve;
And while we sigh, or shed the tear,
Their sympathies may flutter near.

Or, by some law to man unknown,
Their spells may o'er us act and steal,
And strengthen Faith upon her throne,
When fury-passions make us feel
How Self and Sin would monarchs be,
And give the law to Deity!

Thus, human Life from them may take
Some moral tinge, or mental hue,
Which not till dust the soul forsake
Elected saints will value true:—
Before God's throne, and only then
These guardians will be thank'd by men.

FOLLOW CHRIST.

“Jesus saith unto them, Follow me; and ------ they followed Him.”—Matt. iv. 18—20.

The sheep who know the shepherd's tone
Delight to hear his voice;
His guiding way becomes their own,
His wish their willing choice:
So is it with regenerate Souls,
Whose love the law of grace controls;
Let but the Shepherd of the Spirit call,—
Like echoes they reply, and leave their noblest all!

So was it in the Church of old
When, walking by the sea,
The Lord of Mercy did behold
The twin elect of Galilee,

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Two fishers there, who cast the net
The produce of the lake to get;
But when that “Follow Me!” from Christ was heard,
The laden ships they left, responsive to His word.

So is it now; if Hearts be true
To Him whose shepherd-cry
Will never cause that soul to rue
Which dares itself deny,
And lives for Christ, where'er it roam;—
Serene abroad, resign'd at home,
By crowded mart, or in resounding street
Where all the mingled tides of sin and struggle meet.

Life need not seek monastic cell,
Nor yearn for cloister'd shades;
Nor sigh for some Arcadian dell,
And green poetic glades
Where blissful Quiet can enjoy
The bower of peace without alloy;
But rather rest where Providence doth say,
“Move in thine orbit here, for Wisdom chose the way.”

They are not meek who fretful ask,
Or pine for distant spheres;
Let heaven be view'd in ev'ry task
And that will soothe our fears!
We should not e'en by thought rebel;
For God works all things wise and well,
And for each being doth unroll the plan
Eternity decreed, before the hills began.

To sigh for some romantic spot
Of solitude and peace,
And clasp in dreams a perfect lot
Where care and sorrow cease,—
To God must breathe of discontent,
Howe'er with sainted feeling blent;
Our proper sphere in providence must be
Where Christ in spirit comes, and utters, “Follow Me!”

Localities alone confine
The gilded mocks of earth;
But they who bear a charm divine
Which seals our second birth,
High o'er the world's bewilder'd sphere
The still small voice of Christ can hear:
And so, when Mammon tempts, or Belial reigns,
Bound at the Master's voice, and burst their venal chains.

Thus to the publican there came
A “Follow Me,” which drew
His heart to hear That holy Name
Which heaven proclaim'd the true;
All circumstance, and scene, and lot,
The den, the dungeon, or the cot,—
Let but the voice of duty call us there,
And Faith may hallow each by watchfulness and prayer.

And hence may those who dwell
Far from the hurried mart,
Where sylvan homes with quiet spell
Attune some thinking heart,
When haply through harsh cities loud
They wind amid the toiling crowd,
Or through damp courts and dusky lanes of woe
See haggard Want and Age, with shrunken features go,—

Oh! let them not presume to say
That there, 'mid vexing strife,
No saintly Minds can muse or pray,
Or consecrate a life
To heaven-born cares, and hopes of bliss
Which lift them o'er a doom like this:—
For though the heart in rustic dreams will roam,
It glories in the truth, that Faith can find a home

Wherever love and prayer abide:
And hence, dear Lord, may we
Remember that calm Voice which cried,
To Levi,—“Follow Me!”
Whate'er the pathway life must tread,
Around us be Thy graces spread,
And thus no time, nor toil, nor space, nor scene
To hide Thy Word from us will ever intervene.

If such Thy will, by wooded streams,
Or vales of blissful calm,
Where the deep hush of holy dreams
Inspires unearthly balm,
Where from green hills the gladden'd eyes
Look speechless hymns beyond the skies,—
If there embower'd, Thou doom'st our lot to be,
Lord of the landscape fair! we glow to “follow” Thee.

Or, if Thy regal Word decide,
That cities throng'd and loud
Which billow with the restless tide
Of life's tumultuous crowd,
Should be our peopled deserts, where
Unechoed hearts conceal each care,—
Still may our souls by meek compliance find,
The ever-present Christ an anchor for the mind.

Love need not quit the humblest call,
But calmly work and wait;
For safety dwells where duties all
Attend our mortal state;—

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Messiah did not die to give
Each heart the choice where faith would live;
But this He grants to all who seek for grace,—
The guidance of His truth, and glory of His face.

Yes, “Follow Me!” be this the word,
The motto of our lives;
Morn, noon, and night, let such be heard,
When Sin or Satan strives;
Should Passion rage, or Pride begin,
Or treason-banners rise within,
In all we feel, or fancy, do or dare,
Let Thy mild “Follow Me,” pursue us every where,

Great Captain of the meek and good!
Whose crimson guilt and stain
Shall never, through Thine awful blood,
Assail their souls again,
In self-denial, grief, or loss,
In all we have of care and cross,
Thy hand of mercy out of heaven bestow,
And let us feel its grasp, where'er our footsteps go.

Thy path was one of pain and grief,
A sacrifice of love;
Nor God, nor angel brought relief
From bowers of bliss above;
We ask not then poetic fields
Where life all bloom and brightness yields;
But this we seek,—a soul from murmurs free,
Whose heaven on earth it proves, in all to follow Thee.

NAME WITHOUT NATURE.

“Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”—Rev. iii. 1.

“Many will say unto me, in that day, Lord! Lord! have we not prophesied in Thy name? ------ Then will I profess unto them, I never knew you.”—Matt. vii. 22, 23.

When plaintive knells peal sadness o'er the wind,
And echoes haunt the mind
With thoughts, whose voiceless depths of awe infold
Meanings which are not told,
Dark fears from hush'd eternity arise
Too deep, except for sighs:
Men dare not speak it, but they ponder this,
Where wings the parted Soul?—to agony, or bliss?

And solemn terrors, blent with truths profound,
In these vast words abound,
Which tell what imitation's power achieves,
When formal man believes
That he in Christ by nature, as by name,
His own can truly claim,—
While far as earth from heaven his spirit lives
On that base food alone, the power of pleasure gives.

And marvel we, such midnight error can
So darken over man,
That he a hollow lie for truth mistakes,
And life for death forsakes?
And thus, while dead in selfishness and sin,
Doth never gaze within
The deeper fountains of his soul to prove,
Whether from earth they rise, or stream from grace above?

The mystery may here its web unwind,—
Self-love deludes the blind;
And in the blindness of bad hearts they see
A shade of miscall'd deity;
And, like their god, a false religion seems
Reflecting back their dreams;
And so, from year to year they live, and die,
Feeling their souls secure as angels in the sky!

Void of all grace, perceptive reason can
So educate the man,
And unto plastic mind and morals give
Those forms, by which men live
In seeming concord with what Heaven requires:
Yet God alone inspires
Life from The Spirit, and that sacred love
Whereby all saints on earth, are yet in soul, above.

Thus can the outworks of religious grace
Impress their lovely trace
On creed and conduct, character, and all
The world-slaves “nature” call;
Reason and Sentiment may both forbear
To doubt what texts declare;
And ritual zeal so mechanise the soul
That much the Church decrees, may wield a due control.

The beauty of unblemish'd morals, too,
May guard its vestal hue,
Nor vulgar passions by their vicious reign
Cast o'er the law a stain;
And thus complete in all mere sense admires,
Who doubts, that faith inspires
So fair a specimen of social truth
Beheld in wintry age, or seen in vernal youth?

104

Love will not criticise a brother-soul;
And when the death-knells roll
Their dirge-like cadence, while the living sigh
To think, how soon we die!
Oh, marvel not, blind Charity conceives
That he who this world leaves
With such a sanctity around him spread,
Hath up to Glory's throne by angel-bands been led.

Still, dare we not Truth's warning tone forget,
For, ah! 'tis needed yet:
“Lord,” on our lips most orthodox may be,
And none our danger see;
And yet not Christ, but our own will preside
O'er passion's inward tide,
O'er thought and feeling, motive and desire
Which from the outer-sense to secret life retire.

Yes, we may prophesy and preach,
And high distinction reach;
O'er our mute dust pale monuments arise,
Or throne us in the skies,
While the loud trumpet of a world-wide fame
Rings through all hearts our name;
And when rapt eyes our sculptured praises read,
They glisten with the thought,—here lies a saint indeed!

And yet our soul's eternity, the while,
Unlit by glory's smile,
Though canonising Praise adorns our tomb,
May be immersed in gloom;
And realms of horror round that darkness burn,
Where hypocrites must learn
How vast a gulf between profession lies
And that celestial life which moulds us for the skies!

But, Lord, while we in self-abasement lie
Beneath Thy searching eye,
Home to the centre bare the soul within
Where hides a bosom-sin,
Which oft amid pure seemliness of life
With secret lust is rife:
Yea, some, professing to uphold Thy throne,
Have cast all devils out, except their spirit's own!

From such delusion, God! our conscience save,
Which to the very grave
And e'en beyond it,—to the Judge on high
Extends the cheating lie!—
That spell of Satan, whence a worldling dreams
He is the all he seems,
And dares not search his own deluded heart,
Till Christ shall rend the veil, by that dread word, “Depart!”

THE HOMELESS ONE.

“The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.” Matt. viii. 20.

Could Fancy, in some dream sublime,
With circumstance have clothed the time
When God incarnate should appear,
To roll the curse from earth's dark sphere,

With what a pomp of heaven-bright rays
Would she have circled round His ways!—
Angel, and harp, and seraphim
Would all have been foretold for Him.

Sun, moon, and star, and sky and sea,
Would each have felt a sympathy:
Some impulse, like a throbbing awe,
Through Earth had thrill'd, when Christ she saw.

But, not in Glory's pall He came;
Nor did an earthquake's throb proclaim
The world's Creator was a child,
Born in our flesh, but undefiled.

No fameless offspring of the poor
On mountain bleak, or barren moor,
Was ever rock'd on mother's breast,
To outward sense, so little blest

As yonder Babe Divine appears,
Baptised by Mary's virgin tears,—
Those pearl-drops of the heart which flow
While mothers o'er a first-born glow.

And as the inns no room afford
To cradle earth's infantine Lord,
But in the manger's welcome cold
The Virgin must her Child enfold,—

In this, prophetic shades we find
Of that dark lot, by heaven design'd
Hereafter to o'ershade The Man,
In working out redemption's plan.

105

Grandeurs, indeed, to Christ belong;
But shine they not in bardic song,
Such as the lyric choirs of earth
Are wont to chant for Hero's worth.

Ne'er did our world such meekness view,
Such self-oblivion, vast and true;
His very majesty was mild,—
The Man of Sorrows never smiled.

The fox his cave, the bird his nest,
But where His glorious head to rest
My Saviour had not!—doom'd to roam
From earth to heaven without a home.

Oh, miracle! which dazzles thought,—
With all the wealth of Godhead fraught
That He, who died the world to save,
Was buried in a borrow'd grave!

And yet, beneath that bland disguise
What glory in suspension lies!—
Jehovah, in our manhood shrined,
Is mock'd by unappall'd mankind.

But He, by whom yon worlds were made,
Whose will their huge foundations laid,
Though matter, motion, time, and sense
Were slaves to His omnipotence,

Repress'd His Godhead; nor allow'd
Full beams to flash from out the cloud;
For at the glance of one dread ray
The Universe had shrunk away!

For Him no monuments arise;
No motto'd pillars seek the skies;
Unlike the earth-gods fame admires,
His awful life no World inspires.

Alone, beyond all loneliness,
Which e'er a burden'd soul could press,
Emmanuel's heart through toil and tears
Went beating on its destined years.

Martyrs are found, whose bosoms bleed,
When by mysterious Heaven decreed
In the hush'd depths of their lone heart
To bear untold some venom'd dart;

But neither saint, nor angel could
Uncurtain that veil'd solitude
Where Christ alone, unstain'd by sin,
Baffled the powers of Hell, within.

And thus, eternity nor time,
Nor sorrowing earth, nor heaven sublime,
Except in Christ,—did ever see
A Soul without a sympathy,

And wilt thou, ere thy course be run,
Betake thee to the Homeless one?
Then, sinner, count the mighty cost!—
To thee the world is blind and lost;

Not rashly bear His awful name;
Nor dream that fortune, bliss, or fame,
Or aught that hero-worship loves,
The Lord of meekness e'er approves.

In fasting, solitude, and fears,
Through buried pangs, and hidden tears,
Unecho'd, and by most, unknown,
Prepare, like Christ, to live alone.

Yet oh, within thee, dark and deep
When thy crush'd thought retires to weep,
And harshly cold, its iron heart
The world presents to all thou art,

Then, think of Him! and back recall
The Homeless, Who was Lord of all;
A God with angels round the throne,
Too poor to call the grave His own.

Pillow in prayer thine aching breast
On Him, who had not where to rest
His head on earth; but Who in heaven
Can feel thy heart, and cry—forgiven!

FIRST SOUL IN HEAVEN.

“By faith Abel ------ obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: he being dead, yet speaketh.”—Heb. xi. 4.

“No man could learn that song but ------ the redeemed.”—Rev. xiv. 3.

In hush'd eternity alone
Before all creatures were,
Jehovah held His awful throne
Unworshipp'd by a prayer.

There was no space, nor scene, nor time,
Nor aught by names we call;
But, center'd in Himself sublime
Was God, the All in All!

106

But through eternity there ran
A thrill of coming change,
And lustrous Shapes of life began
Around His Throne to range.

Radiant with rapture, pure as bright,
Angelic myriads rise,
And glow and glisten in the light
Of God's approving eyes.

In volumed waves of golden sound
Roll from celestial lyres
Those swelling chants, which peal around
From new-created choirs.

But, hark! amid the shining throng
Of Shapes who arch their wings,
A single Voice another song
With mortal cadence sings:

Alone he seems, and chants apart
In unexpected notes
A music, where the grateful heart
In strains of feeling floats:

A beauteous Soul! whose seraph brow
Is bright with glory's hue,—
Lo, Angels pause to hear him now
Their harping praise outdo.

Their choral rapture swell'd as deep
As purity could pour;
But they, who have not learn'd to weep,
May never God adore

With such a burst of whelming love
As Earth's first martyr sang,
When, glory to the Lord above!
The voice of Abel rang.

Angelic harps their key-note found
In God, as great and good:
But Abel's life-pulse beat and bound
As only sinner's could.

“Worthy the Lamb! who shall be slain;
Redemption crowns my song:
Ye seraphim! your notes retain,
But these to me belong.”

Thus might the primal Soul who came
Forth from its bleeding clay,
Kindle the heavens with His bright name,
Who is our Truth, and Way.

And with that blissful song he blent
A humbling depth of tone,
Which to the ransom'd harper lent
A music all its own.

Angels for bliss and being sang
Their ecstasies on high;
But how the heavens with wonder rang
When Man awoke the sky

With that new song, Redemption gave
To Abel's pardon'd soul!
Till angels ceased their wings to wave,
Nor let their chorus roll,

But listen'd with entrancèd ears
To that bright martyr's strain,
Whose notes were born of banish'd fears
And breathed of ended pain.

But from the hour when rescued man
Enter'd within the veil,
And heaven's delighted host began
To list Redemption's tale,

Myriads of blood-wash'd souls have flown
Where the first spirit went
Till he, who once hymn'd Christ alone,
Is now with numbers blent.

Each nation, kindred, home, and clime
Helps to increase the throng,
Making the heavens grow more sublime
With Earth's redemption-song.

Each minute, guardian angels mount
With some new soul on high,
And hear it, close to Glory's fount,
Deepen that endless cry,—

“Salvation! through the bleeding grace
Of God's incarnate Son,
Whose merit for a banded race
A more than Eden won.”

And louder, louder, yet will grow
That song before the Throne,
As added saints set free from woe
Shall make the strain their own.

Lord! grant that we on earth begin
To tune the heart's deep lyre,
And by prophetic notes within
Anticipate the choir,

Who ever round Thee chant, and sing
The song no angels can,—
“Hail! Prophet, Priest, and destined King
Before the world began,

“Prostrate beneath Thy face to fall
And cast our crowns before Thee,
Oh Thou, The Everlasting All,
Be this our brightest glory!”

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GUILTY FEARS.

“O thou of little faith! wherefore didst thou doubt.” Matt. xiv. 31.

Around us moves this magic world
With all appeals of blended power;
And o'er our heads unfurl'd
The heavens, which change each hour.

Above, beneath, where'er we gaze
On sky, or soil, or living sea,
Some chord is touch'd, which plays
And thrills, O God! from Thee.

Divine as deep the eloquence
Through form and fact creation wields,
When through the veil of sense
A solemn vision yields

Stern truths,—which teach the soul to pray,
And ponder them with deepest awe;
Till conscience own the sway
Of heaven's interior law.

For though in calm, the poet sees
Rich Beauty reigning like a queen,
And grace from flowers and trees
Bedecks some fairy scene;

Yet Nature hath her moods of ire,
Deep thunders of prophetic tone,
Lightnings of ghastly fire,
And winds with conscious moan.

Darkness and thunder, wave and wind,—
Amid them let the godless think,
And soon the awe-struck mind
Will in dejection sink.

For, oh, that echo faint and broken
Of God, the holy and the just,
Within us like a token
Awaken will,—and must!

And then, judicial conscience yearns
To know where God and man can meet?
And with this question burns,
“Is there a mercy seat?”

But what can mere creation preach?
Is mercy mirror'd on the sky?
Can all earth's glories reach
The source of one deep sigh?

Is there a grace to heal our sin,
Atonement for the guilt-stain'd hearts?—
Around, above, within,
No answer earth imparts.

In health, and hours of reckless glee,
We mould a god from mortal smiles,
And thus, from judgment free,
Enjoy our transient wiles.

Still conscience is not murder'd quite;
But in some gloom of anguish rolls
Its challenge for God's right
Athwart our echoing souls.

Then, to the root of moral life
Our being rocks with more than fear;
And in that harrowing strife
The Judge seems drawing near!

Hence, like disciples on the deep
When yawning billows o'er them swept,
While lapp'd in lovely sleep
The Lord calm slumber kept,

Our souls are in tempestuous fright,
Our bark of hope is sinking fast,
And death's eternal night
Seems all around us cast.

Then, fear we, Lord! and learn at length
What saints must feel before they die,—
A sinner has no strength
Except to grace he fly.

“Oh, little faith,”—alas, how true!
Our pagan fears in calm and storm
Darken from love's own view
Thy Mercy's present form.

And thus, 'mid promises divine,
And with the wealth of Godhead stored,
Like orphans, Christians pine,
As if they had no Lord!

Shame on our sunken hearts, and base,
That men like creedless orphans live,
Though God redeem'd our race
With all a God could give.

Oh, had we faith, though earth and sky
To second chaos were confounded,
Christ would not hear the cry,—
“By death are we surrounded!”

But, calm, as was the Saviour's brow
Who slept amid the thund'ring wave,
Each soul would prove him now
Mighty to shield and save.

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Rebuke then, Lord! not waves and winds,
But rather raise our blush of shame,
That men with heathen minds
Can bear Thy blessed Name.

Anchor of Souls! in life and death
Though loud the storms of anguish be,
May Love, with latest breath,
Her haven seek in Thee.

JESUS TEMPTED.

“Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil.”—Matt. iv. 1.

And wert Thou by the prompting Spirit led
Through desert lone, to face Satanic power,
Oh second Adam! our anointed Head,—
To balk the demon in his blackest hour?

One moment, by baptismal waves we hear
From opening skies deep melody descend,
And drink that Voice with reverential fear
Which hail'd Thee, Son of God, whom Grace did send:

The next,—and Thou art in yon homeless wild
Fasting and foodless, with no eye to see
How the lost angel tempts Thine undefiled
Manhood, to break the bond of Deity.

'Twas even so: and if when Satan threw
A fiendish shade of subtlety and hate,
By tempting wickedness of words untrue
Into the heart of man's primeval state,

A mystery darkens round the deepest mind
Which ponders o'er that scene with prayerful thought,
How can we dream (unless by sin struck blind)
A tempted Christ, with. less of mystery fraught?

Thus doth our Athanasian symbol teach
A truth sublime which deep in Godhead dwells,
Something beyond a soaring thought to reach,
Surmounting all that wingèd reason tells,—

How in Emmanuel God and Man unite
Both natures true, in properties and powers;
The first retain'd its uncreated light,
The second, sin except, was weak as ours.

In act quiescent, though by Godhead there,
Divinity did not the man withdraw;
And thus obedient down to weeping prayer
The Infinite became, by finite law.

So may we read, with simple hearts and pure,
How thus between the Darkness and the Light
A conflict reign'd; nor let cold science lure
Our souls from faith in that mysterious fight.

No dream it was; no parable, no trance;
Nor mental ecstasy, which rapt the soul
Beyond the bounds where time and space advance
Their true conditions, or their just control:

Close to the record simply may we cleave;
Then, each temptation will to man impart
Wonders that whelm no reason to believe,
And awing wisdom which improves the heart.

Tempted by Satan, lo, the Adam first
Yielded, and fell beneath a boundless lie;
And by his fall condemn'd mankind were curst,
In whose one death all generations die!

But when again the Prince of Evil would
A second Adam likewise have assail'd,—
Based on eternity, our Rock withstood
And humanly o'er sin and hell prevail'd.

Vainly to crush Him thrice the Tempter brought
The magic fulness of infernal skill;
Nothing which sense or inward feeling wrought,
Assail'd the Holy One with shade of ill.

Far o'er the fiercest hunger faith arose;
No pride of life His meekness could o'erwhelm;
And Kingdoms of the world, as painted shows,
His heart rejected from its holy realm.

He came to suffer, long before He reign'd,
And home to God our human will to bring;
Thus, no temptation from the demon stain'd
That perfect Virtue, saints and angels sing.

Hail, Son of Mary! Arch-Elect of heaven,
Victim Divine, whose blood redeem'd our fall,
Conquer'd by grace, to Thee the world is given,—
Wield Thy love-sceptre, and subdue it all!

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VOICE OF THOSE NO MORE.

“He being dead, yet speaketh.”—Heb. xi. 4.

Our Fathers, where be they,
The guides of vernal youth,
Who taught our infant lips to pray,
And vow'd the heart to truth?

The Prophets, who foretold
What life's worn scene would be,
And bade us in our God behold
The hopes which make us free?

All fleeted by, and fled
To orbs of bliss unknown;
Their dust is with the countless dead,
And we,—must walk alone.

But in time's weary track
Of sorrow, change, and care,
How oft their words come rolling back,
And breathe us into prayer!

Oh, little did we think
When their hoar'd wisdom spake,
How soon our lofty hopes would sink,
And life's gay bubble break!

We call'd them gloomy seers,
Too boding, dull, and sad;
And when their eyes were dimm'd with tears,
Our own smiled ever glad.

They warn'd us of the world,
Gave to each rose its thorn,
And when false hopes their wings unfurl'd,
Spake words which seem'd forlorn.

They bade us walk with God,
And, Christ-like, bear the cross,
Learning true wisdom in the rod,
And love from earthly loss.

And have our lives gainsay'd
The warning truth and word
Which once, ere Time these hearts betray'd,
Approving conscience stirr'd?

Ah, no!—in grief and gloom,
Their counsels and their cares
Accost us from their distant tomb,
And show the truth was theirs.

Though mortal was their breath,
Immortal breathes the mind;
For how can That be sunk in death,
Whose wisdom rules mankind?

Dead prophets, then, seem nigh,
And round us dwell and reign;
And all who in the Saviour die,
Shall hear those seers again.

SINFULNESS OF SIN.

“Sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.” Rom. vii. 13.

Sin colours all we do and prize,
And, like our shadow, ne'er departs;
E'en when we sleep, its blackness lies
In spirit brooding o'er our hearts.

The cleansing grace of Blood Divine
Alone can wash the stain away,
“So let it bathe this heart of mine!”—
Believers thus for ever pray.

Sin struck the moral root of Man
And poison'd there the branches too;
From Adam down to us it ran,
And venoms all we think and do.

Still, not in earth, but heaven above
Rebellion first its flag unfurl'd,
When God's bright Angel left his love,
A fiend became, and sought our world.

O mystery! too deep for all
Except for Truth's omniscient eye,
That one in heaven from faith might fall,
Whom nothing from without could try.

Yet refuge in this thought we find,
That sin no perfect substance is;
But mere negation, bad and blind,
Which cankers man and mortal bliss.

Dark paradox of will perverse,
Self-worship forms the secret ground
Where Sin begets that boundless curse,
Hearts without God have ever found.

Self-pref'rence frames a hell within,
Eternity in seed is there;
And death and darkness thence begin
The torment souls undone must share.

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How sin commenced, vain reason tries
To speculate, till thought grows wild;
But modest faith this truth can prize,—
That God is pure, though man defiled.

Sole Teacher of all saving truth!
Divine Convincer of our need,
Guardian of age, and Guide of youth,
Under the Cross we learn our creed:

Sin blasted with primeval blight
Our first estate in Eden's bowers,
Cover'd creation o'er with night,
And crush'd her prospects, and her powers.

And since that most stupendous fall,
Matter and mind, with secret groan
Have ceased not for their God to call,
Like orphans left to sigh alone.

All pangs, and penalties, and pains,
Sickness and sorrow, grief and care,
Where ruin frowns, or anguish reigns,—
The sinfulness of sin is there.

The babe who dies; the tomb which opes
For buried joys, or broken hearts;
Each leaf that falls from wither'd hopes
As friend on friend from earth departs,—

What prove they all, but seal and sign,
How sin hath havock'd earth and man,
And, as the foe of law divine,
Merits an everlasting ban?

But seek we this sad truth to know
How sin by virtual root can be
A deicide, who strikes a blow
Which aims at awful Deity?

Then, look we to supernal Grace,
Almighty Love in flesh unveil'd,
Whose worth restored our sunken race
To heights beyond what thought hath scaled.

Did grateful awe His form attend?
Or, round Him adorations fall,
And with encrowning anthem blend
In one loud burst,—“Hail! Lord of all!”

Alas! the world an atheist proved;
His life became embodied woe,
And He whom God supremely loved
Was hated, worse than fiends below.

Sin nail'd Him to the felon's tree,
Marr'd His meek face, and spear'd His side;
Nor was one sigh of sympathy
Breathed o'er Him, when the Man-God died!

Well might Creation feel affright,
And her dread anguish seem to say
The sun could not endure that sight,
But veil'd its brow, and look'd away.

Yet man, the sinner, does not shake,
Recoil nor shudder, groan nor weep;
And while the very dead awake,
His heart retains its iron sleep!

Lord of the soul! while thus we find
Ourselves in all the Past hath done,
Teach the bad conscience of the blind,
Of spirits all Thou art the Sun.

In Thy pure lustre, sin appears
A contrast fell to man and God;
And makes us tremble at the tears
Which gush'd where bleeding Mercy trod.

Religion thus atonement brings
When faith and fear in one combine;
While purity from pardon springs,
And proves them both indeed divine.

WORLD OF SPIRITS.

“Give place: the maid is not dead, but sleepeth.”—Matt. ix. 24.

“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”—Matt. xxii. 32.

“To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”—Luke xxiii. 43.

Men are not dead because they die,
From outward sense receding,
But where extends no mortal eye
A spirit-life are leading:
In some vast orb, whose unveil'd glories shine,
They wait the pealing of the trump divine.

What, though the slaves of tyrant sense,
Wild Hearts, with sorrow blind,
Dare catechise Omnipotence
As though it mock'd mankind,
And tempt some daring Sadducee to say
“On life unseen can Reason dart her ray?”

Yet, just as reason sense can lift
Into some higher sphere,
So can pure faith, heaven's peerless gift,
O'er reason's known career

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Soar on wing'd thoughts,—and bid rapt feelings roam
In dreams immortal round the Spirit's home.

That spirit-home! that clime of Souls,
The palace of the Blest,
Where neither storm nor shadow rolls
Athwart the halcyon breast,
Oh, there embower'd, unbodied saints repose,
And each pure heart with placid virtue glows.

They are not dead, whose bodies die,
Commingling with cold earth;
For soul is man's eternity
And hath such godlike worth,
That no corruption makes its pulse to pause;
Nor can mere death arrest its mighty laws.

Created once, it lives, and lives
For ever, and for ever!
The God of souls a fiat gives
That flesh from it may sever,
But round itself no trance sepulchral steals,
And when unearth'd, diviner impulse feels.

The life men touch, and see, and taste,
Is but organic show;
And onward as wing'd moments fleet
Our organs weaker grow;
But character enfolds eternal doom,
Bearing a life which breathes beyond the tomb.

And might some parted soul return
Back from the viewless state,
Our yearning minds would meekly learn
What voiceless wonders wait
The flesh-deliver'd, who, from bondage free,
Fly to that Hades God proclaims to be.

Secrets of glory might disclose
Their rich contents to man;
And truths beyond what Learning knows
Or Science ever can,—
Might then illuminate with earthless gleams
Darkness which makes us tremble in our dreams!

But He, who is of life and death
Puissant Lord and King,
And portions out all human breath,
Forbids the Dead to bring
Intelligence from that far world unknown,
To whose veil'd wonders countless souls have flown.

Six thousand years have almost roll'd
Their human waves along,
Since Death, the uncontroll'd,
Hath triumph'd o'er the strong,
The weak and bad, the beautiful and brave,
And made the earth-scene one enormous grave.

And yet, of all our sumless dead
Not one hath back return'd
To soothe some heart which inly bled,
And for this secret burn'd,—
To understand, how Spirits think and act,
And what the glories which the dead attract?

In vain may restless minds intreat,
Or for such knowledge groan;
Silence before the Mercy-seat
Befits the faith we own,
When Hearts bereaved a parted soul pursue,
And seek to learn what martyrs never knew:

Oft in the hush of holy night,
In shades of solemn grief
When bow'd beneath some awful blight,
With none to bring relief,
How have we sigh'd to see that viewless State
Where dead Immortals for their glory wait!

But, ah, the Universe is dumb
To each high-breathèd prayer;
From earth and heaven no answers come,
But echo murmurs “Where?”
When lonesome Thinkers in the churchyard cry,
“Where rest the souls whose bodies round us lie?”

But, calm thee, riven Heart! lie still;
Nor wise beyond The Word
Attempt to prove, lest haughty will
To Christ should be preferr'd;
Enough to know, that all in heaven who trust
God shall awaken from sepulchral dust.

They “are not dead, but sleeping,”—
Bright words of balm and grace!
To Anguish worn, and weeping
Above some marble face,
When placid death has closed the silken lid
And from our hearts the soulless glances hid.

But in that hour of deepest trance
While bend we o'er the dead,
And into realms of thought advance
Where Scripture hath not led,
The calm seraphic each white feature wears
Seems to embody what The Lord declares

When death a transient “sleep” He calls;
And thus from hearts half-breaking
Rolls back the cloud which flesh appals,
And prophesies the waking
Soon to begin!—when Time's last trumpet rolls
The blast that summons bodies back to souls.

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Meanwhile, though “earth to earth”
Be o'er their temples cried,
The souls who shared a second birth
No dust and darkness hide:
Wafted by angels to immertal bowers,
They muse in Paradise, with conscious powers.

Beyond such creed faith dares not go,
Nor speculate on more;
True wisdom loves her sphere to know,
Nor lets the heart run o'er.
In aimless dreams, which cannot love inspire,
But mock the fancy with a lurid fire.

When Laz'rus back to life was brought,
He breathed not what he saw;
As though oblivion's spell had wrought,
Or some celestial law
The lip restrain'd, and lock'd in silence all
The shrouded wonders which the dead befall.

And that young maid of Judah's race
Whom Christ to earth restored,
When life's glad bloom inspired her face,
And she whom Love deplored,
Clasp'd in a mother's arms, again was prest
Heart close to heart, and breast to echoing breast,—

No whisper gave she of the scene
To which her spirit fled;
Nor conscious look'd her soul had been
Communing with the dead,—
Glory and Music might have seen and heard,
For which on earth we find no sign, or word.

O Thou! Whose sceptre life and death
By equal law obey,
The grace to consecrate each breath
To Thee, our Truth and Way,
Be ours to prize; and then, both dooms will be
Soothed with the thought, that each is sway'd by Thee.

GLORY OF THE MOUNTAINS.

“The Lord called to him out of the mountain.”—Exod. xix. 3.

“The glory of the Lord stood on the mountain,”—Ezek. xi. 23.

How glorious are the mountain-Kings! who overawe the soul,
And lift us into fellowship with their sublime control.
An era forms it in the hearts which first beneath them bow'd,
When haughtily some Alpine-peak out-soar'd the highest cloud.

They are not what the dull believe, a mass of speechless earth,
But with embodied eloquence proclaim their regal birth;
Like anthems mute but magical, to inward thought they praise
That Infinite of Architects, Who their foundation lays.

Be glory to the mountains! then,—what poetry they make
When canopied by lucid air, or mirror'd on the lake;
Or when the ravish'd pilgrim cries, from off some wooded brow,
“Three hundred cloven summits lift their ice-bound foreheads now!”

The throned Archangels who in bliss on seats of glory rest,
And through eternity behold the landscapes of the blest,
Can scarce, to our imperfect dream, sublimer views enjoy,
Than what these Alpine monarchs form,—the mountains of Savoy.

The magic of their whiteness seems miraculously pure,
And upward their ascending snows our lifted hearts allure;
And radiant are the icy spells their soaring masses wield,
When seventy leagues cannot o'ershade the dazzling sight they yield.

All glory to the ancient hills! which to the godless preach
Sermons of more stupendous power, than erring man can reach;
Dumb orators to sense they look, but how divinely grand
The deep significance they bear, to hearts that understand!

The stillness of their frozen trance is more than thunder's tone,
Resembling that celestial hush which deepen'd round the Throne
When silence through the heaven of heavens for half an hour there reign'd,
And seraphim before their God eternity sustain'd!

It is not that the clouds array with myriad-tinted hues
Those peaks of alabaster ice which pinnacle our views;

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Nor is it, that our sateless eyes are spell-bound by the scene
Of rocky scalps ten thousand feet above some black ravine:

Nor is it, that the glaciers lift their crags of gleaming snow
And move down in a noiseless march to meet the vale below;
Nor all the dreadful joy that chills the soul of him who braves
Montánvert! from thy summit vast, the ever-frozen waves:

Far more than this do mountain-spells to echoing minds impart
When through the veil of outer sense, they reach the central heart,—
There enter with mysterious power, like purities to reign,
And over all its hidden springs a moral influence gain.

Thus oft amid the crowded street, or some contracted room,
Or in that hour of mystic sway when all things wear a gloom,
The Alpine monarchs lift their peaks, and in remembrance rise,
And elevate our sunken hearts through their bewitching skies!

They cause our very souls to blush, to think how base and weak
Are half the fancied woes we feel, or morbidly would speak;
Until their awful summits seem to lift the rallied mind,
And bid it soar to peerless heights above depress'd mankind.

But what a sacred loftiness do regal mountains claim,
When we connect their giant forms with that undying fame
Which clings and cleaves to each and all celestial archives bring,—
The truths, that martyr'd seers foretell, or sainted harpers sing!

Then, glory to the sacred Hills! which rose in childhood's years,
And by their ever-awing names inspired our faith and fears,—
Moriah's mount, and Amalek, Gilboa and the scene
Of Hermon and of Horeb too, where God of old has been.

How Gilead and Gerizim's forms, with Lebanon, appeal,
And Ebal's, whence the curse roll'd down, to man's religious zeal,
And make us through believing awe invest a mountain's brow
With magic and with deathless might, beyond what lips avow.

And, who but recreant hearts forget, how much sublime event
Hath to the hills of Palestine a solemn beauty lent?
Behold the peaks of Ararat! for there the Ark did ride
And floated o'er a deluged world, which then our God denied.

And were not earth's primeval shrines upon lone mountains built?
Upon them rose the altars green, where offer'd blood was spilt;
There sacrifice from votive hearts, with incense-prayer was given,
And who forgets Moriah's hill, and Abram's crown from heaven!

And did not in deep thunder-tones the Decalogue descend
From Sinai's brow of burning gloom, and with dark conscience blend
Such horrors of unearthly sound, that pallid hosts must cry,
“Oh, let not God directly speak, or we the death must die!”

But neither what dread Moses saw, nor hoary Tishbite heard,
Hath ever man's responsive mind with such emotion stirr'd
As have those hills and heights divine, where Jesu pray'd and trod,
Who by the priesthood of His grace brings pardon'd man to God.

'Twas on some mountain where He met the Demon in that hour
When all the gather'd crafts of Hell combined their gloomy power;
And thus on hills of loneliness, in lofty hush afar
Emmanuel kept His midnight-watch, and pray'd beneath the star.

And when His form transfigured grew, with glory more than bright,
Which dazzled into dim eclipse the powers of mortal sight,

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'Twas Horeb in its soaring grace that witness'd what appear'd,
When God Himself unclosed the Heavens, and pale disciples fear'd.

But ah! of mountains all which speak to ears of list'ning Time
With tones of superhuman truth and eloquence sublime,
Dread mountain of The Crucified! in faith we turn to Thee,
And echo, with revering hearts, the name of “Calvary!”

And next to this eternal Mount, be that where Jesus taught
His sermon on Beatitude, with grace and glory fraught,—
Those lessons which divinely tell how pure that Heart must be,
Which hopes to hymn the Lamb above, and gaze on Deity!

So, when the Lord of light arose from out this world of gloom,
And re-ascended back to God, His splendour to assume,
Thy mountain, Olives! was the spot from whence He upward soar'd,
While underneath a cloudy shrine the prostrate band adored.

Then, glory to the mountain-Kings! they charm the brave and free,
Like monuments to God uprear'd, proclaiming liberty;
Religion, Law, and Grace combine, around their form to cast
A lofty spell of more than earth, while time and being last.

Lord of the Everlasting Hills! Thou life of nature's scene,
Whene'er upon some mountain-brow our musing steps have been,
Not seldom have such heights become, for mental sacrifice,
Like altars which from earth to heaven in lonely grandeur rise:

There in the hush of twilight-hour, oh, teach us how to pray,
And 'mid their sainted calm of scene adore the Truth and Way;
Till what begins in poesy, shall end in deepest prayer,
The Mountains into temples turn, and God be hallow'd there.

OUR PATTERN IN TEMPTATION.

“We have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are.”—Heb. iv. 15.

Come to the desert where sad Jesu went
Lone sinner!—there, as in God's mirror, see
Reflected truths, by gracious wisdom meant
To balk the arch-Fiend when he tempteth thee.

Prophetic actions, typically deep,
Forecasting all the future Church should feel
When blasting trials round her bulwarks sweep,
And fiend and foe combine against her weal

Were those dark trials, when by grace upheld
The fasting Saviour with a Demon fought,
And by His word the powers of darkness fell'd
And back to perfect heaven our Nature brought.

Unknown, the virtue which is never tried;
And principle by keen temptation proves
How much for God and glory is denied
The earth-born will our ruin'd manhood loves.

The triple force of this perverted world
Aims at our heart a threefold blow of sin:
And souls that would not from their faith be hurl'd,
By providence without and prayer within

Defence must find;—from these apart, they fail
The world, the devil, and the flesh to fight;
Darkness and doubt will o'er their creed prevail
And, Cain-like, plunge them in disastrous night.

How did Emmanuel each infernal dart
Repulse, unwounded, from His perfect soul?—
By words divine! those bucklers of the heart,
Temper'd by Heaven against the Fiend's control.

Alas! for souls, if in their perill'd hour
When sin and self, those Satans of the mind,
Besiege our graces with commingled power,
Staid reason prove the only shield we find.

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Nor let the righteous who to Love belong,
Dream that temptation will not dog their path;
When saints are weak, alone they seem the strong,
And self-mistrust a true foundation hath.

E'en in pure ecstasies of prayer and praise
When nearest round the Throne of bliss they move,
Visions from hell may float before their gaze,
And hide the glories of the heaven they love.

Here is our wisdom,—with a wakeful mind
The sense to watch, and pray down each desire
Which tempts the conscience to be base, or blind,
By fanning embers of unhallow'd fire.

And oh, what deeps of consolation ope,
Like heavens of comfort, in this creed divine,—
That not alone with Darkness thou wilt cope,
For in temptation Christ believed is thine.

He left His Throne, The stricken Man to be,
Tempted and tried, by anguish spent and worn,
And drew from earth that boundless sympathy
By which He lives, to succour the forlorn.

Then cheer thee! O thou troubled, toss'd, and tried;
Orphan'd in spirit, dream not of despair,
Open yon heavens, and lo! The Crucified
Echoes thy heart in beating concord, there.

Thy Lord beseech, by all on earth He knew,
Facing the Demon in his dreadest hours;
Whose soul remains as tender and as true
As when it wept o'er Judah's fated towers.

A mother may her new-born child forget,
And exiled hearts their fatherland forego,
But Christ in heaven eternalizes yet
Each tone of Manhood He obtain'd below.

E'en there, behold our sympathising Priest
In feeling human as in form divine;
And seraphs listen, when of saints the least
May boldly cry,—“Incarnate Love is mine!”

REASON AND DEATH.

“The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart ------ none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.”—Isa. lvii. 1.

The noblest wealth our world contains
Is holiness of heart;
All other gold it gets, or gains,
But proves the meanest part.

Most regal is that glorious will
Enslaved to God alone,
Which finds it freedom to fulfil
Each mandate of His throne:

Blest Angels by a law like this
Partake their perfect heaven,
And could not feel consummate bliss
If other law were given.

Obedience is adoring joy,
Rebellion brings despair,
And would the heaven of heavens destroy
If Self-will triumph'd there!

Yet holiness may not avoid
The doom corruption brought;
Since Adam fell, by sin destroy'd,
Hath death his carnage wrought.

The sting, but not the stroke, of death
The Lord from man removed;
And they who draw the briefest breath
Are oft the most beloved,—

Beloved by God, and angels too,
And thus from grief and pain
Rapt far above our sense-bound view,
With Christ in heaven to reign.

But oh! how cold the world becomes
As saint on saint departs,
To brighten in elysian homes
With pure and perfect hearts.

As if from out yon starry choir
Which chant around the sun,
Some choral planet quench'd his fire
Which we were gazing on,

Impov'rish'd seems our orphan'd earth
When good men pass away;
Time cannot spare their solemn worth,
But needs it, day by day.

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But still, for them we dare not grieve
The christian path who trod,
If early call'd this life to leave
For glory, and for God.

To them the gain, to us the loss
High providence assigns;
And so appoints a deeper cross
Than mortal thought divines.

Genius, and worth, and wisdom, all
From God alone arise;
And when He wills the same recall,
They seek their natal skies.

Then hush thee, murm'ring Heart! and let
Profound bereavements teach
Lessons more pure than pale regret
By discontent can reach.

The righteous die, but still they live
A life of soul in bliss;
And what Eternity can give,
Outweighs a world like this!

Men would not marvel, could they see
The lustres round The Throne,
Why saints and martyrs yearn'd to be
Where all the Just have flown.

Sorrow, and sin, and change no more
In heaven their love alloy;
The fever of harsh time is o'er,
And Christ their perfect joy.

We talk and think, as if our world
Were all Jehovah made,
And when from some false mountain hurl'd,
Tremble, as tho' betray'd:

Yet, earth is but a point in space,
Our being, scarce a breath;
And he who will not life disgrace
Must die before his death.

The booming knell, the opening grave,
The vacant room and chair
Should summon us to hopes which save
The mind from meaner care.

Hereafter is the home of soul,
The paradise of thought,
And with its unsubdued control,
Lord! be our bosom fraught.

As friend on friend, revered and wise,
Leave wither'd hearts alone,
Lift our low dreams beyond the skies
Around Thine argent throne!

Weaker and weaker grows the spell
Which binds the soul below,
When more than burning numbers tell
By grace begins to glow

Deep in those hearts, which death has fill'd
With placid grief profound;
Where every pang is lull'd and still'd
By Him who gave the wound.

Thus with the dead the living hold
Communion grave and high;
Their bodies are but pulseless mould,
But spirits claim the sky.

Thy church, O Christ! is unconfined
By what men hear, or see,
Since all who own a saintly mind
Are in eternity

By hope and faith,—from whence they draw
Breathings of praise and prayer;
While He, Whom martyr'd Stephen saw,
Becomes their Magnet, there.

THE POETRY OF SPRING.

“Lo the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come.”—Cant. ii. 11, 12.

“Bless the Lord, O my soul ------ He sendeth the springs into the valleys—watereth the hills from his chambers—causeth the grass to grow—appointeth the moon for seasons ------ O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.”—Ps. civ. passim.

Hark! breezy anthems from the new-born spring,
Like hymning air-birds on exultant wing;
Wide o'er the fields a flushing radiance glows,
And vernal gladness through each woodland flows.

A seeming consciousness inspires the earth
As though the soil were blooming into mirth,
And, like rich blood in some glad creature's veins,
New tides of life are mantling through her plains.

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Music and motion haunt each choral bough,
Like living spirits fill'd with joyance now;
Here, lyric tones, there, wave-like murmurs rise,
And there, the cadence of contented sighs.

Swift o'er the pebbles haste the hill-born streams,
And lisp and laugh, like infants in their dreams;
Or else, make liquid music as they run,
In fairy stanzas warbled to the sun.

The stainless magic of each new-born flower
Mirrors the charm of Heaven's creative power;
Beauty comes forth, like melody from lyres
Swept by some hand which Poesy inspires.

Look where you may, expressive gleams of youth
Dart through the conscience this celestial truth,—
That Christ is working resurrection-life,
Till earth grows radiant and with fulness rife.

The silken azure of yon ruffled sea,
The wing'd emotions of each bird, and bee,
Blent with a chorus of yon festal streams,—
All sway the sense, and beautify our dreams.

And when Morn reddens, until soft and soon,
The golden brightness of unbreathing noon
O'erveils the landscape with a slumb'rous light,
Still shall creation yield intense delight.

Let but the heart be spiritually clear,
Let but our soul this God-made earth revere,
Then will poetic eyes religion greet,
From stars on high, to insects at our feet.

For what is Nature, but a Book divine
Where Godhead dictates each material line,
Where each pure object proves almighty Thought
Forth from its viewless depths to vision brought?

Alas! for Souls, if men baptized can find
Nothing in nature to accost the mind,
Since all around them, did they read it well,
Bears the high meaning of some holy spell.

Sense cannot see them, but bright Angels may
Direct the sunbeams which adorn the Day,
Entone the breeze, and oft at vesper-hour,
Close the bent eyelid of each baby flower.

Cold Science worships philosophic Cause,
And for its God reveres vicarious laws,
Orphans creation of Jehovah's care,
And longs to silence what her scenes declare;

But Thou! by Whom all seasons reign and rule,
Fount of the fresh, the fair, and beautiful!
For ever may Thine angel-spring impart
This glorious symbol to each saintly heart,—

As wintry Earth Her floral garb assumes,
So will the dead, when summon'd from their tombs,
Rise at Thy voice, in resurrection-dress,
And beam with everlasting loveliness.

Beatitudes.

POOR IN SPIRIT.

FIRST BEATITUDE.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”—Matt. v. 3.

With awful gloom when Moses brought
The law of fire and flame,
Eternal Duty then was taught
In dread Jehovah's name.

But radiantly descendeth now
Deep wisdom from above;
For mildness clothes His gracious brow
Whose ev'ry line is love.

It was not thus the Type of old
Imperial Law declared,
When round Him pealing thunders roll'd
And red-wing'd lightnings glared.

The people shudder'd, like a leaf,
Amid their black'ning gloom;
And Conscience saw no just relief
Beyond, or in, the tomb.

But bright the contrast now appears,
When the mild Lord of grace
From you green Mount dispels all fears,
By His benignant face.

The breeze, soft lyrist of the spring,
Was harping o'er the flowers;
And humming bees upon the wing
Enjoy'd their golden hours;

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A vernal radiance threw its gleam
Of gladness o'er the hills;
While, rich as love-tones in a dream,
The gushing of the rills.

And like the season, so the Word
Was mild as mercy's breath;
No curse was in His counsel heard,
Nor doom of legal death.

That Christ, who came the lost to save,
With blessing did begin;
And thus from guilt, and death, and grave
Redeem'd the heart within.

Humility and meekness were
The groundwork Jesu laid;
And He, whose life was living prayer,
Their perfect types display'd.

All mental grace, all moral gift,
Whate'er men seek, or find,
Is blasted,—if it proudly lift
Or bloat the conscious mind.

Contingent, finite, from the dust,
What Nothings are we all!
For in the tomb the proudest must
A worm his brother call.

All pride becomes a fiendish spark
Of hell, within the soul;
And He who dreads that region dark,
Abhors its least control.

The poor in spirit, blest are they
Above the world who live;
Their wisdom is to watch and pray,
And, like their Lord, forgive.

Nor seek they for ambition's wealth,
Or sigh for world-applause;
But, calm in sickness as in health,
To Heaven commit their cause.

True meekness is that master-grace
Which saints and martyrs wore;—
Behold, who led proud Judah's race,
How mild a mien He bore!

We cannot back to God return
From the base depths of sin,
Until bencath the Cross we learn
To form the Christ within.

And was He not, of worlds the Lord,
In meckness all divine,
Who with each high and heavenly word
A lowly grace did twine?

A passion for imperfect good,—
Behold, what fosters pride;
While God Himself is thus withstood
No idols are denied.

But mortal, wouldst thou blessèd be?
From finite good retire;
And in the depths of Deity
Thy soaring thoughts inspire.

In humbleness of mind believe
A true contentment reigns,—
Desires which no compunction leave,
And joys that bring no pains.

Then turn thee, O earth-fever'd Soul!
From broken cisterns fly;
For couldst thou drink their blissful whole
They still would leave thee dry.

The utmost in all creatures fails
An inward lull to bring,
Since, when our purest dream prevails,
Unrest keeps murmuring.

Low as some weanèd child to lie
Before Emmanuel's feet,
And in the guidance of His eye
To find a safe retreat,

Like Him to crucify the will,
As mereiful and meek,
And each just orb of duty fill
Whene'er we act, or speak,—

Be this, disciple of the Cross!
The glory of thine aim;
And though on earth thou reap the loss,
In heaven perceive thy gain.

But, saith He not, that here below
Beatitudes begin,
For all whose hearts by meekness grow
Above the self of sin?

A kingdom of the mind is theirs
While yet on earth they bide;
And heaven seems dawning through the prayers
God's Spirit hath supplied.

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Celestial Dove of grace! descend,
Thy gentleness impart;
Till Faith shall build the “Sinner's friend”
A temple in her heart.

THEY THAT MOURN.

SECOND BEATITUDE.

“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”—Matt. v. 4.

Oh, paradox divine, as deep!—
The blest are those who wail and weep,
And bear that burden which no hearts allay:
With rose-buds though the World be crown'd
While rubied wine-cups circle round,
In fev'rish gloom her false dreams melt away.

The Man of Sorrows, in Whose tear
The Church can type her own career,
The God-man, whose profound extremes combined
Whate'er of glory and of gloom
His awful Person could assume,—
On Mourners stamp'd the name of blest mankind.

But not o'er all sad minds, which mourn
Like orphans in a world forlorn,
Have lips Almighty thus pronounced the “bless'd;”
For grief is oft a selfish chord,
Whose earth-tones can no proof afford
That God and grace have e'er the will imprest.

The mourners who “about the streets”
Of thronging life a stranger meets,
Full often are they but proud Sin in tears;
'Tis worldly sorrow working death
Which now intones their anguish'd breath,
And fetters them with darkness, and with fears.

Spent Minds, like these, none dare believe
Are purely blest, because they grieve,
Or pine that earth no more their heaven supplies;
But blest are they who mourn within
The rankling wound of venom'd sin,
Waking, beyond all woe, their soul-heaved sighs.

For, sin is that stupendous grief
Which out of God finds no relief,—
A tainting curse which cleaves to flesh and soul;
And so abhorr'd around The Throne,
The very heavens appear to groan
And bow dejected at its dread control!

'Tis true, bland Nature's tear-drops flow
To mark cold earth a churchyard grow,
While tombs rise countless as the waves at sea;
Sickness and sorrow, change and care,
And pale-worn features ev'ry where
Reveal the hollowness vain life must be.

But Zion's mourners grieve and pine,
To think that law and love divine
O'er caitiff man can wield such transient sway,—
How all the Trinity of grace
One bosom-sin will oft displace,
And give to passion's dream its boundless play!

Such weepers mourn before The Lamb,
And cry, “Oh! wretched that I am!
Who shall deliver me, and burst my chain?”
Their hearts are crush'd, and inly rent
To find what base alloy is blent
With that “fine gold” where virtue feels no stain.

For this they blush, and burden'd lie,
In self-abhorrence shrink, and sigh;
And when they muse on Jesu's awful groans,
And how the garden soil was wet
And crimson'd with His bloody sweat,—
Their hearts beat prayer, which Godhead hears alone!

'Tis here a grief sublime appears:
And rays of glory light the tears
Of Souls, which mourn for heaven's almighty wrong:
Oh! then descends the Paraclete
And calms them with mild comfort meet,
And turns their sadness to victorious song.

Dejected Minds, who thus are blest
By sealing grace, are more impress'd,
And bland and meek as charity become:
Reflective awe and deep'ning prayer
The growing work of God declare,
And bid them pant for heaven's unclouded Home.

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So, when these days of darkness cease,
And holy death shall bring release
From sorrow's gloom, and sin's intense alloy,
How will they glory in that God
Who said, while earth's bleak wilds they trod,
That they who sow in tears, shall reap in joy!

MEEKNESS.

THIRD BEATITUDE.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”—Matt. v. 5.

Thy ways, O Lord, are unlike ours,
Thy Thoughts surpass our own;
And angels, when they scan their powers,
Fall wing-veil'd round the Throne.

Eternity Thine eyes peruse,
Omniscient is Thy mind;
And whatsoe'er Thy wisdom choose
Is perfect in its kind.

But we, by pride and passion stain'd,
Our good no longer know,
And when we dream the goal is gain'd,
Have reach'd intenser woe.

Ay, Good and Evil, Pain and Bliss
In vain blind heathens thought
To image in a world like this
Those models which they sought.

Our Centre true they could not see
In aught the creatures bring;
But Christ, who show'd us Deity,
Unveils that holy Thing.

But yet a paradox this wears
To men who walk by sense,
Which deep humility declares
The heart's sublime defence.

Resistance seems a noble gift
To reason's haughty view;
And passions that proud self uplift
Re-echo it as true.

But He whose will was crucified
Throughout His sad career;
Whom earth abhorr'd, and man denied
One sympathetic tear,

By bearing outrage, wrong, and hate,
This heaven-born lesson taught,—
That souls are not divinely great
Except with meekness fraught.

Submission tender, mild, and deep,
Not sullen, stern, or sad,
But gentle as when Angels weep
While they o'erwatch the bad,

Such the chaste virtue Christ commends,
Believer! as divine;
And if thy heart its Master bends,
That lovely grace is thine.

And who with such a just appeal
To injured souls could cry,
“Like Me must true disciples feel
If doom'd to live or die?”

In Christ the Lamb and Lion met,
Their graces were combined;
And blest are those who follow yet
The path He left behind.

Whether before the Council placed,
Or girt with savage yell,
Or else, by fiendish mock disgraced
Whose accent came from hell;

Or, nail'd upon the wrenching Cross
In one incarnate pang,
While foes beneath Him rage and toss,
And impious gibings rang,—

However tried, 'tis patience all!
From Him no wrath-tones roll;
To God ascends each dying call
Which rent His yielded soul.

And who can keep a Christlike heart,
Except his moral tone,
When call'd to bear life's bitter part,
Recall the Saviour's own?

Yet deem not that in stoic frost
Warm feelings must be chill'd;
Or that impassion'd minds are lost
When thus by patience still'd.

Perturb'd emotions, strong and keen,
When pure Religion's cause
Demands a Hero for her scene,
Infringe no hallow'd laws:

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But, guard thee well! lest temper stain
And poison glorious zeal,
Till selfish anger's secret reign
Proves all the god we feel.

Meek charity, that master-grace
The peerless type of heaven,
Oh, let it from thy creed displace
What cannot say, “forgiven!”

Nor ever let the sun go down
Upon our inward ire;
They cannot wear a Saviour's crown
Whom love doth not inspire.

Pure Lord of lowliness, and love!
Thus make Thy model dear
To all who live for thrones above,
By bearing crosses here.

Thy meekness hath its own reward,
Calm blessings line its path;
Without, it keeps celestial guard,
Within, true peace it hath!

The proud are poor, 'mid all the gold
Ambition's pride obtains;
The meek are rich, though none behold
The beauty of their gains.

No acres may to them belong,
No scenes of garish pleasure;
But yet they chant a mental song
O'er Truth's divinest treasure.

Then, Lord of Gentleness! be Thou
For ever at our side;
And when we mark Thy wounded brow,
Abhorr'd be human pride!

We are not Thine, unless we bear
Thy yoke upon our souls,
And welcome in each cross and care
The Hand which All controls.

Disciples true the Christ reflect,
And must His shadows be;
And none but craven souls reject
The watchword,—“Follow Me!”

Yes, “follow Thee;” Lord, grant the will,
And Love at once agrees
Their heaven to taste, whose hearts fulfil
What Thy calm word decrees.

In life and death such spirits burn
To hear Thy Voice divine,
And glorify each grace they learn
By using it as Thine.

RIGHTEOUSNESS.

FOURTH BEATITUDE.

“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”—Matt. v. 6.

The hand of Him who framed the earth
Hath fill'd it with harmonious grace,
That men, who boast immortal birth,
In each created thing may trace
How wondrously celestial Art,
From all without which meets the eye,
Appeals to our most inward heart,
And proves two worlds in harmony.

The world we see, and what we are,
Illustrates that accordance due
Which reigns from insect up to star,
And hallows all we feel, or do,—
If thus our hearts delight to prove
How faculties their objects find,
And render Life a hymn of love
To Him who hath both worlds combined.

But still there is a craving force
In appetites to sense allied,
Which nature in its noblest course
Hath never to the brim supplied;
Though charm'd and fed, they are not fill'd,
But fever'd oft with discontent;
The cry for “more!” no joy hath still'd,—
Unrest is with fruition blent.

Though sumless orbs of beauty roll
In burning magic through the sky,
When mortal gaze commands the whole,
For brighter longs the asking eye!
And when we hear the tones which make
The sweetest heaven that sound can bring,
Melodious thirst they do not slake
For some diviner murmuring.

But while both eye and ear demand
What no imperfect Sense enjoys,
Spirits who under grace expand
A bliss partake which never cloys,—
The bliss of hung'ring more and more
That “righteousness” may still dispense
To sainted hearts an added store
Of purer calm, and innocence:

Behold! a hunger, and a thirst
Which God Himself will soothe and slake,—
Ambition by no fever cursed,
A hope no blighting sorrows break;

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For all those wingèd dreams that rise
And flutter round a World divine,
When heaven unveils its hidden prize,
Will find far more than dreams combine.

Perennial glories there surpass
All which seraphic Minds desire,
Whom angels with themselves may class,
With fervid hearts for God on fire;
Of finite good who only drinks,
Such water will be found in vain;
A deeper want than passion thinks,
Will soon enkindle thirst again.

The man who lives by sensual dross,
May banquet on some hollow bliss,
But yet this truth his mind will cross,—
I was not made for food like this!
Hunger and thirst, they make the all
Which carnal wisdom can create,
Whate'er encrowning words may call
The glories which enwreathe the great.

From joy to joy the jaded Sense
Pursues each worn and wearied path;
Though big may be this world's pretence,
The mind eternal hunger hath;
Within, what flaming thirst there burns
Which all polluting draughts excite,
As passion and supply by turns
Fever the day, and fret the night!

But Grace forms those, to whom is given
A glorious passion fix'd on God,
Who breathe on earth the air of heaven,
And tread the ground Emmanuel trod;
Their creed and conduct are combined
In unity of peace and power,
And mirror forth a saintly mind
When darkness clouds the drearest hour.

They must be tranquil, who are made
By God, the guardian of the blest,
Of neither Hell nor Earth afraid,
While panting for elysian rest:
Their hunger is a holy thing,
Their bosom-thirst a painful bliss;
And lauding Seraphs shake their wing
Of rapture o'er unrest like this!

What is it?—but to nobly pine
More Christlike in true love to be,
Or body forth the will divine,
And heaven in all things ever see:
Till rectitude a nature grow,
And holiness the spirit's breath,
And faith alike in weal or woe
Adorn our life, and vanquish death.

But if indeed the hunger'd mind
And thirsting heart for Jesu long,
Then will they not meet nurture find
To nurse and make religion strong?
Incarnate God! such mystic food
Thine own ordaining words supplied,
Which in Thy Body and Thy Blood
A Banquet for the soul provide.

Thy sacred Flesh, oh! let us eat,
And drink the awful Wine-blood there,
Where faith Thy bleeding Form can greet
'Mid swells of sacrificial prayer:
The blasting spells of unbelief
Must sure those famish'd Hearts infect,
Who feel no pang of boundless grief
When they such angel-food neglect.

Soul of our souls! almighty Grace,
A sacramental life impart,
And by some inward power erase
Whatever dulls the deaden'd heart:
For holiness a hunger give,
And yearnings of intenser love
That we on Christ may learn to live,
Like daily Manna from above.

In heaven we need no sacrament;
Nor signs nor symbols there are found,
When glory with its full content
Shall each elected Saint have crown'd;
Adorn'd in robes of radiant white
They neither thirst, nor hunger more,
But bask in beams of pure delight
With all their toils and trials o'er.

Around the Throne in rich array
Perfect and sinless are they now,
And in God's temple night and day
Before the shrine of Glory bow;
The Lamb Himself their food supplies,
And on His fulness they can feed,
Who follow Him with tearless eyes
Where paths to living fountains lead.

BE MERCIFUL.

FIFTH BEATITUDE.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”—Matt. v. 7.

When God to man His awful Image gave
In pure creation's primal bliss,
The Wisdom, Who hereafter came to save
A sinful world so vile as this,

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The brightest feature of the Godhead drew
By deep impression on his soul,
And bade compassion most divinely true
Reign o'er his breast with unsubdued control.

Our mix'd emotions may be good, or vile,
They govern by ambiguous laws;
But mercy is of nobler cast and style,
And rooted in no selfish cause;—
How godlike, let Emmanuel's life declare!
Whose heart with such compassion beat,
That His pure soul to each sad tone and prayer
On earth became an echoing mercy-seat.

Let stoic Schools from other creeds erect
An iron system, cold and dead,
That would from God-created souls reject
Emotions out of pity bred;
Men are half-monsters, if no heart be left
To throb with pathos, and to feel
Like Jesus, when He saw a home bereft,
And down His cheek compassion's tear did steal.

Thus mercy forms the Saviour's darling grace,
And in Him took a shape divine;
In word and deed, behold its beaming trace
Throughout th' Incarnate Myst'ry shine!
His heart replied to each pale Woe that wept,
Or echo'd back man's deeper sigh;
And by the grave, no icy grandeur kept
The tear of Manhood from His sacred eye.

The haughty coldness of inhuman creeds
May scorn Compassion shedding tears,
And blandly pouring over Sorrow's needs
Those genial tones which soften fears;
And Science may to selfishness ascribe
What soft-eyed Pity for the wretched feels;
But, heaven-born Virtue bears the heathen gibe,
Nor checks the tear which from compassion steals.

Of Men the wisest, bravest, and the best,
The lofty-hearted, firm, and free,
On whose proud name an empire's glories rest,
Who guide the land and guard our sea,—
No leaden calm of unimpassion'd mind
Their boast has been, or proved them brave;
But all pure links, connecting kind with kind,
They deem'd them holy, as beyond the grave!

Men are not wise because they cannot weep,
Nor basely soft because they sigh;
For there are fountains in the heart that sleep
Which moisten oft the sternest eye;
The sainted heroes, canonised by time,
And martyr'd hosts, who burn'd or bled,—
The wide earth doth not deem them less sublime
Because they soothed the sad, or mourn'd the dead!

The perfect God, though passionless as pure,
Hath symbolised His awful Name
By deep emotions, which the heart allure,
And bend the will before His claim:
He speaks not only in the whirlwind's tone,
But with the calm of cooling eve:
And oft holds back the thunders of His Throne,
That dreadless Minds may love Him, and believe.

But Thou, blest Archetype of love divine!
In whom the Trinity express
Whate'er by union God and man combine
Of moral grace, and loveliness,
Thy Soul was tender as thy Flesh was true,
And throbb'd with thrills of deepest power;
Unmoved in Godhead, yet a living hue
Of warm emotion tinged Thy farewell-hour.

And art Thou now, embodied Lord of love!
In such deep calm of bliss enthroned
That to the Priesthood of Thy grace above,
Though deep the sigh by anguish groan'd,—
It cannot ripple into feeling there
Thy heart of tenderness, and truth?
Oh, is it echoless to high-breathed prayer,
Utter'd by sin and woe, from age, or youth?

That creed reject! 'tis infidel and wrong;
The Church adores a Priest in heaven
To Whom compassions most intense belong,
By which He feels for man forgiven;
And He is touch'd with sympathies that thrill
Through the rich glories round His Throne;
Since all those splendours leave Messiah still
The weeper's refuge, and the widow's own.

Fountain of mercy! whose melodious word
Peals in the soul like pity's voice,
Be each chaste heart by such compassion stirr'd
As makes Thy love its peerless choice;
For if with mercy for their fallen clay
Men are not melted, nor commoved,
How will they shrink from that awarding Day
When barren creeds by Christ are unapproved!

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Souls cannot love, unless like Him they feel
For human sorrows, hopes, and fears;
And learn to soften with benignant zeal
The bitter gush of orphan tears:
For God is Love; compassions wreathe His name;
And children of pure Grace are we
When, like His echoes, we become the same,
And Love on earth reflects her Deity.

PURE IN HEART.

SIXTH BEATITUDE.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”—Matt. v. 8.

How blessèd are the pure in heart!
And none are blest beside;
For nought of heaven can grace impart
If pureness be denied.

Can sightless eyeballs see the Sun,
Though Earth lie bathed in beams,
And o'er each hill he shines upon
A ray of rapture gleams?

No more can tainted spirits gaze
On glories round the Throne:
Mere darkness would become That blaze
Pure hearts can bear alone.

The Moon cannot her image glass
On restless waves which rise,
For when the storm-winds o'er them pass,
Her broken semblance dies;

And so, where passion's lurid fires
The love of truth erase,
No sight of God the soul inspires,
But all grows blind and base.

By heavenly likeness Hearts discern
The secrets most divine;
Just as we live, so much we learn
Of Thee, O God! and Thine.

Those inward eyes of purity
By which the mind beholds
Ideal truths Sin cannot see,
That God Himself unfolds,—

Unless we have them, vain is all
The science stored within;
Our creed the world may holy call,
But such proud wealth is sin.

And here, behold that peerless Law
Proving the Gospel's worth,
Beyond what sage or poet saw,
When most he soar'd from earth:

That law is purity intense,
A chastity divine,
A sacred glow of innocence,
Which keeps the heart a shrine,—

A shrine of holiness and power
Whence praise and prayer ascend,
To seek what soothes the sternest hour
Which can the Christian bend.

Then, weigh thy heart! disciple, keep
That ceaseless pulse of life;
Which even through innocuous sleep
Can throb with sin, and strife.

Mysterious, ever-active spring
Of central thought, and will!
To which time, sense, and motion bring
Perpetual good, or ill.

By thee we live, and love, and hate,
The inward Man art thou;
Thy nature dooms our final state,
And that is forming now!

Oh! watch we then, with jealous eyes,
That world where God alone
Searches the secret thoughts which rise
Like shades before His Throne.

As local space the body holds,
So God the mind contains;
And who can dare what He enfolds
To mar with sinful stains?

He dwells in us, and we in Him,
The Temple of all souls!
And pure as prostrate seraphim
Be all which He controls.

For if the ground by Moses trod
With sanctity was fill'd,
When erst the flaming bush of God
An o'erawed patriarch still'd,

Sublimer far than thought can trace
Is He, the all-divine,
Who is in Christ our dwelling-place
And Soul-embracing Shrine.

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Eternal Spring of purity!
Descend, propitious Dove;
From heart-corruption make us free,
By turning law to love.

The blessèd are the pure, indeed,
And wretched, the defiled;
In whose dark bosom dwell and breed
Lone passions, fierce and wild.

By likeness only, souls can see
The glories Heaven contains;
But minds which nurse impurity
Would feel them worse than pains.

For purity is heaven below,
And sin the hell of man,
And all eternity will show,
Will be,—what time began.

PEACEMAKERS.

SEVENTH BEATITUDE.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”—Matt. v. 9.

When first rebellion in the Will began
And faith in God to faith in Self was changed,
Wild discord woke within the soul of man,
And headlong impulse o'er his being ranged.

For peace expires where purity is lost,
And purity by love to God begins;
Who calls him “Father!”—let him count the cost
And pluck the right eye from his bosom-sins.

And who, with such a God-beseeming grace,
Could weave heaven's garland round the tranquil mind,
As Christ, who purchased for our forfeit-race
The peace divine which lulls heart-torn mankind?

Lord of our lineage, and of saving calm,
When first from veil'd eternity He came,
A natal anthem o'er night's dewy balm
Sang the rich notes of His melodious name;

And they breath'd, “Peace on earth! to man Goodwill!”
And, ere He soar'd to His primeval splendour,
“Peace” was the word that hung soft music still
Round farewell doctrine, so benignly tender.

The first of blessings, like the last, is found
Thus by our Lord, as deepest and divine;
And ne'er may calm and confidence abound
Till faith and feeling round this truth combine.

Where low'ring envy, wrath, or secret pride,
Ambition, avarice, and revenge are nursed,
Here can no halcyon from the heavens abide,
But all is chaos, with convulsion cursed.

Base passions are the serpents of our soul,
Which bite, and sting to bitterness the heart,
And where they wield their unsubdued control,
Angels and grace from that foul den depart.

But when these hearts atoning Blood makes white,
Soft o'er our spirit broods the mystic Dove;
Like the hush'd band who watch'd their sheep by night,
A “peace on earth,” replies to peace above.

Then like our Lord, magnanimous and meek,
Move where we may, our end is still the same;
Firm to our vow, in all we do or speak
We dare embody our baptismal name.

No longer as the Lord of Hosts, and War,
Doth God the glories of His will unfold;
But radiant as the lull of evening star
As Lord of Peace His pard'ning smile behold.

And saints on earth resemble Him in heaven,
Who help to circulate the calm of love,
And by imparting what to each is given
Prove their high lineage from the Lord above.

Makers of Peace! your task divine complete,
Two sever'd hearts in unity restore;
And bid mild harmonies of friendship meet
To rule in homes where they have reign'd before.

For ah! how mournful, when two friends depart
Wider and wider into distance stern,
While each one holds the arrow at his heart,
And, but for pride, would lovingly return.

And more than beauteous is a god-like word
Breathing soft balm o'er that tempestuous hour,
When some vile Satan of the soul hath stirr'd,
Or maddens nature with demoniac power.

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To stand between like mediating Grace
And make two alienated minds agree,
Sublimes our being, and reveals the trace
Of true adoption into Deity.

And, blest are they who private love promote
In bow'rs domestic, where meek Virtue dwells;
While feelings motherly their aim devote
To people home with tranquillizing spells.

And not unblest are those, who nobly guard
The lofty sacredness of public Weal;
Theirs the rich peace that brings its own reward,
When Empires at the throne of Godhead kneel.

And He, in whom all unities reside,
Celestial Fount from whence communions flow,
Husband of Souls, who took His chosen Bride
And call'd it by the name of Church, below,—

How can we love Him, if we dare to rend
By the rude harshness of sectarian will
That Mystic Body, where all members blend
And by their harmony due office fill?

How can we love Him, if our “Church” we choose
As pride, or reason, and presumption sway?—
Defend us, Grace! from Babylonian views,
And teach us, not to argue, but obey.

Be ours submission, Mary-like and meek,
Who love the path anointed martyrs trod;
Learning to crucify what most we seek
When Self would image a sectarian God.

So shall we have that sabbath peace of mind,
A wealth beyond the golden worlds to buy,—
A boundless heart which beats for all mankind,
As though it throbb'd beneath the Saviour's eye.

True source of harmony, and sacred peace,
Spirit Divine! without Thee all is vain;
Descend, and with Thy lulling power release
The souls which suffer from a selfish chain.

A loving will that leaps at duty's call
Do Thou bestow, whate'er the trial be,
Bearing the cross which heaven provides for all
Whose faith, O Lord, exults to follow Thee.

Unfathom'd peace! my Saviour's final prayer,
Deep in pure Godhead doth thy basis lie;
Reign like a boundless glory everywhere,
And guard us while we live, and when we die.

THE REVILED.

EIGHTH BEATITUDE.

“Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake ------ when men shall revile you ------ and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake: great is your reward in heaven.”—Matt. v. 10—12.

“My years are in the yellow leaf,
Though few their number found,”—
But, God is greater than thy grief
And knows the deepest wound;
Be this thy balm, in some distemper'd mood
When sad Thoughts sing their dirge in mental solitude.

This world becomes a barren scene
To eyes of sunny Youth,
When vices have victorious been,
And falsehood vanquish'd truth,
Where good men weep, and Virtue droops in shade,
And minds of most heroic mould are blighted and betray'd.

Thus to pale martyrs of the Cross,
Distracted earth appears
An orphan'd realm, where pain and loss
Demand perpetual tears;
And were it all that God for man decreed,
Who would not in despair for widow'd Nature bleed?

But soon will dawn a radiant clime
Where sin nor sorrows reign,
Beyond the clouds of changing time
To shadow, or to stain;
A bright eternity of balm and bliss
Where pangless hearts forget a life so false as this.

And let the full-toned anthem rise
In swells of grateful joy,
That Faith beholds with prescient eyes
What time nor tears destroy,—
A perfect life, compensative of all
Impetuous thoughts presume unworthy heaven to call.

It was not thus ere christian light
Arose on heathen gloom,
For then the soul immersed in night
Found life a living tomb;
Confusion reign'd o'er providence denied,
And when of death it thought, the craven bosom sigh'd.

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But now, a beam celestial plays
From out the Page divine;
And round the gloom of grief-worn days
What dawning glories shine!
O'er ruin'd hopes descending to the grave
The banners of the Cross, sublimely do they wave.

And thus what Sense injustice deems,
That saints can suffer wrong,—
No more a fearful problem seems
To souls by faith made strong;
For o'er them, hark! the “blessed” mildly breathed
From Him who round His head the crown of anguish wreathed.

Yea, “blessed” are the souls which bear
For Christ, and His pure laws,
The moral pang and mental wear
Which friend, or foe can cause;
Since all we suffer, if the will be sound,
Hereafter in the Heavens shall to our bliss redound.

And thus when God incarnate taught
Upon the Mount enthroned,
That they should be to glory brought
Whom scorning earth disown'd,
And so enjoy, by His great mercy given,
A crown which shall outshine what seraphs wear in heaven,

A vision then before Him rose
Of all His Church would be,
As doom'd to battle with her woes,
Till death and darkness flee;
And not one heart that since has broke, or sigh'd,
A soothing balm for which He did not then provide.

Hosannah! cry celestial Hearts
Whom persecution brands,
And bear unmoved infernal darts
When hurl'd by godless hands;
'Tis thus the Soldiers of the truth are train'd,—
Those Heroes of the Lord, who heaven's own laurels gain'd.

By love, and patient suffering led,
More Christlike men become;
And meekly while the path we tread
Which leads our spirit home,
Our graces brighten while they vanquish woe,
And saintly virtue springs from soils where trials grow.

And, do we not corruption feel
Our purest dreams assail,
While wounds which grace alone can heal
Make harrow'd conscience pale?
But these are cleansed by consecrated fire,
As persecuted saints more soaringly aspire.

When clothed with age, or clad with youth,
Whate'er life's era be,
Men glorify the force of truth
Who God in anguish see;
And prove what strength His promises impart
Who, high upon His Throne, can hear the fainting heart.

In all things should the Church reflect
Her regal Lord divine;
And ne'er with sin, or change, or sect,
Her vestal charms combine:
To suffer, is the privilege of love,
In which the saints outsoar what angels do above.

Then wonder not, if sighs or tears,
Or contumelious shame,
Inweave the web of perill'd years,
Nor God's deep wisdom blame;
But rather, in earth's malediction see
A shadow of the Cross endured, O Lord, by Thee.

Those peerless graces hearts require
To fit the Saints for heaven,
Are burnish'd by that sacred fire
To martyr'd anguish given;
Love, faith, and valour, are the three which make
The stature of the Soul her full perfection take.

And, thus conform'd to Thee and Thine,
Seraphic Minds ascend,
Till with Thine image, Lord, they shine
And with Thy glories blend;
So proud a bliss heroic saints procure
Who with undaunted hearts their giant pangs endure.

SILENCE OF THE SOUL.

“Joseph could not refrain himself ------ Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren.”—Gen. xlv. 1.

The depths of ocean rest unseen
However loud the storm-blasts ride,
Though where some whirlwind's rage hath been
Foam whitens o'er the flashing tide:

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For underneath in waveless trance
The spirit of stern Water sleeps,
And thunderbolt and lightning-glance
Disturb not its unechoing deeps.

But not like this, majestic Souls
The tempest of the heart betray,
Whom wisdom chastens, or controls
By principles of regal sway:
Unlike the sea, their surface lies
Becalm'd without; all pale and proud,
Where not a ripple meets the eyes
Of those who make the vulgar crowd.

And thus the heaven-born Spartan bears
With mien and manner undisturb'd
Whatever doom his God declares:—
He by divine restraint hath curb'd
Those passion-bursts, which wildly break
From mere excitement's maddening hour,
When stormy pangs the bosom shake
And palsy Reason's noble power.

Who that has heard the gush of woe
From some wild mourner by the grave,
And mark'd the scalding tear-drop's flow
A sunken cheek of sorrow lave,
Or thrill'd beneath those harrowing sighs
Which burst from out a breaking heart,
And felt not, with o'erflooding eyes,
What giant pangs death-scenes impart?

But grief there is far more sublime,
Enacted in this world of gloom,
Which haunts us through memorial time
With shadow deeper than the tomb;—
'Tis when we hear an earth-clod fall
Upon the coffin's lid of death
With clay-cold accents, which appal
And half suspend our choking breath,

With stealthy eye we dare to scan
The face of some bereaved one there.—
And lo! he seems a tearless man,
Whose pang no outward signs declare?
No shudders through his bosom heave,
His features with no anguish move;
And worldlings guess he does not grieve,
And think him all too stern to love!

But, look again! and thou wilt see
That iron Soul which sheds no tear,
A mass of buried agony
Though none to outward sense appear:
His very calm is woe congeal'd,
A pulseless depth of chill despair;
And what no stormful pang reveal'd,
Felt like a frozen tempest there.

Hush'd are high feelings, when their course
Springs from the soul's pure fountain-head;
Though language cannot speak their force,
Yet, far beyond what lips have said,
Down the deep spirit's veil'd recess
They nurse their harrow'd nature true;
And those mankind for stoics guess
Bear hidden wounds, which none can view!

The storm-voice of some open grief
Too often proves a shallow heart;
And there are pangs from earth's relief
Which proud and pure stand all apart;
Like the stern patriarch's, when he felt
Fond yearnings of the brother rise,—
The voiceless heart they inly melt,
And shun the gaze of common eyes.

So dwells there in each virgin mind
Some bashful Grace, that will not bare
Its beauty unto coarse mankind,
But comes to God in secret prayer:
The tumult of religious talk,
Impassion'd tones of Self unveil'd,
With all which crowds life's vulgar walk,—
Heaven has not for her children hail'd.

Thus Nature hides her “secret things;”
Her wonder-works,—what eye can see
The plan whereby Perfection brings
Their essence out of Deity?
All matter, motion, growth, and life
Are myst'ries here, which man defy,
And work with deeper wisdom rife,
Than Science reads below the sky.

And He of hearts the saving Light,
Our living Sun, within Whose rays
A soul can bear the blackest night
That deepens round misfortune's days,
Alone He was; unseen, unheard,
In vigil, fast, and awful fears;
Few pangs He breathed through mortal word,
But spake them by His blood-shed tears!

At midnight, on calm mountains cold
Awed angels might have heard Him pray;
But not disciples could behold
What suff'ring in His silence lay!
And He who seeks a sacred heart,
In solitude must learn to feel;
Nor to the blushless world impart
Those deeper thoughts the wise conceal.

In lofty silence, sad and meek
Thy cross confront, and bear it well;
And if thy soul an echo seek,
To Christ the hidden anguish tell:

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In thy lone chamber kneel, and pray
Where none but God, and thou art nigh;
And He who said,—“Our Father say,”
Shall echo back thy deepest sigh.

SENTIMENT OF FLOWERS.

“As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.” Ps. ciii. 15.

The Lord, who once celestial radiance threw
Round the gay lilies in their regal dress,
Hath long receded from the church's view,
And Earth seems flow'ring in her loneliness:

But still the Saviour's cry, “Behold!” remains
Deep in the ear, and haunts the spring-toned breeze,
Where pilgrim Thought along secluded plains
Roams by the flowers, beneath romantic trees.

Seems it, as though a consecration hung
On the rich bloom of each innocuous flower,
And grace beyond what minstrel Lyres have sung,
Since Christ arrayed them with a teaching power.

And they are beautiful as infant-eyes,
Sparkling, or pale, when pensive, blue, or mild;
Now, softly vocal, while the air-tone sighs,
And then, in breezy motion dancing wild.

And, like fair visions haunting Memory's dream,
So to the serious mind may flowers impart
In pale seclusion by some lisping stream,
A graceful moral to the feeling heart.

For oft like infants nursed on nature's breast
The dawning buds come forth in sun and dew,
Rosy as Childhood in rich beauty drest,
When life enchants it with a fairy hue:

And beaming Girlhood, in its beauteous grace,
Seems like a new-blown flower in bloom to be,
While fancy muses on that vernal face,
And thinks, how soon that spring of heart will flee!

And have not sentiment and soul-breathed song
From flowers a classic inspiration caught?—
Their spells of beauty to the bard belong,
And grace his lines with many a lovely thought.

In hoar'd cathedrals, solemn, huge, and grand,
Where tombs have tongues, and eloquently preach,
Who has not felt the wingèd mind expand
Soaring to realms beyond mere earth to reach?

There has Devotion traced those marble flowers
Which still to fancy wear a stony bloom
That triumphs o'er decay's funereal powers,
On hero's cenotaph, and martyr's tomb.

And since all matter should to mind attest
Deep truths, significant of sacred worth,
Are not the lilies, by their Maker drest,
Types of the pure, unstain'd by sordid earth?

Emblems of those, the gentle and the good,
Plants of the Spirit, who delight to grow,
And in the hush of thinking solitude
Nurse the meek grace His will and word bestow?

There is an air of chastity and calm
Breathed from the pureness of a vestal flower,
Soft as a breath from Eden's bloom and balm
That shames coarse passion in its rudest hour.

And when on couch of languishment there lies
Some pale-worn victim of disease and pain,
Oft can a flower relume the sunken eyes,
As though they gazed on garden-walks again.

Or, when the boy by Circumstance is led
From the green hamlet where young life began,
And 'mid the large loud city round him spread,
For fields and groves, views artificial man,

If some chance-flow'ret near his path should lie,
How does it thrill association's law,
Making the heart for home and country sigh,
And tread the landscape rosy Childhood saw!

So have I mark'd, amid some fever'd court
Crowded with dens where degradations hide,
Where passions vile with poverty resort,
And orphan'd babes have hunger'd, wept, and died,

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Some lonely window, with a sickly flower
Pining as pale, still struggling to endure,
And thrill'd to think how Nature's lovely power
Could thus the heart of wretchedness allure!

Contemn not this: for in bleak haunts of woe
Undying thoughts of sylvan life remain;
And many a poor man, while his tear-drops flow,
Hails a sad violet through a broken pane.

We bless Thee, then, Thou Lord of flowers and trees!
Bought by Whose Blood, the whole creation lives;
Glowing with health, or martyr'd by disease,
Hail, to each beauty Thine atonement gives!

And when affection seeks the solemn grave
To sprinkle flowers upon the guarded mould,
Where in chill darkness sleep the perish'd brave
Whose memories beautify the days of old,

O Thou! the Resurrection and the Life,
Thy viewless presence grant at this deep hour,
And to sad mourners, with dejection rife,
Reverse the emblem of that votive flower.

“Behold the lilies!”—Lord, we would obey;
But still they wither, while their charms delight;
And in the lustre of their rich array
Lurks the cold shadow of a coming blight:

But thou, believer! not, like flowers, wilt fall
Ne'er from the dust in blooming grace to rise;
But when for thee, Earth's citing trump shall call,
Eternal spring shall fascinate thine eyes.

Celestial beauty, undecaying bloom
Clothes the pure flesh with more than lilies wear;
And thou, transplanted from the wintry tomb,
Wilt bud in heaven, and flower with glory there.

RECONCILIATION.

“First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”—Matt. v. 24.

Pure glory of forgiving Love!
Whose archetype exists above
In God the reconciled;
By nine degrees of soaring worth
May our wing'd souls ascend from earth
To Thee, the undefiled.

Bootless are sacramental Forms,
If in our hearts the hectic storms
Of sullen anger dwell;
Angels in mien, but Cains in mind,
Men dare to dream their God too blind
To see their bosom-hell!

No mortal hate with love divine
Can ever in one soul combine,—
Deceit must both deprave;
For love is that seraphic glow
Which cannot chill before a foe,
But tracks him to the grave.

Proud thoughts create a mental war
Nor let us see the truth we are,
But hide from Self our sin;
Aloud men cry o'er wrongs they feel,
But all the wrongs they do, conceal
Like pharisees within.

Could we ourselves as clearly scan
As we unshroud our brother man,
How humbly might we walk!
And never in the maddest hour
When vile self-worship wields its power,
Of our meek virtues talk.

Let Conscience learn, the sharpest word
Our ulcerated pride has heard
Is tender, more than true;
Since all that envious eyes can see,
Is pure to what Divinity
In man's vain heart can view.

Thy temper soothe, thou ireful one!
Nor ever may the west'ring sun
Go down upon thy wrath;
Thy brother seek, each fault confess,
And with sad tones of mild distress
Win all the love he hath.

If by cold word, or thought, or deed
Thy heart has caused his own to bleed,
Promptly that ill repair;
Nor dream that thus to condescend,
Will one dark hue of meanness blend
With aught thou feelest there.

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But if in soul, a sullen thought
With scowling pride of anger fraught
Toward friend or foe remain,
Presume not, where Christ's altar stands
To offer with polluted hands
What Heaven must so disdain.

First to a brother give thy heart;
Let bitterness of soul depart,
And then, that meal partake
Where Love Incarnate bleeds and dies
In His memorial sacrifice,
Presented for thy sake.

Fathom thy deeps of sinful mind,
Keen to thyself, to others blind,—
Be this thy noble plan!
Beneath enamell'd smiles and ways
Let Conscience dart her searching rays,
And thou wilt pity man.

Self-ignorance makes the spirit proud,
And o'er clear error casts a cloud
Of flatt'ry's genial power;
But Self-illumed by heaven's own ray
Can melt that painted mist away,
And humble ev'ry hour.

Vain hypocrites, and worse than vile
If passions dark our soul defile
And fiendish thoughts are nursed,
While outwardly in church and creed
We call ourselves a “holy seed,”
By God we are accursed!

Heaven's lineage must heaven's likeness wear,
And not alone by praise and prayer
Authentic worship prove;
When Faith beholds her God of grace,
The brightest Feature she can trace
Is that which glows with love.

Then, grant us, Lord, a heart like Thine
As deep in mercy, as divine,
Celestial, mild, and true;
And learn we all, the more we live,
The godlike must like God forgive
All daring Wrong can do.

Creation seems instinct with love,
A parable of His above,
Father, and Friend of all;
And not a rain-drop Earth renews
And not a sunbeam lights her hues
Which does not grace recall.

O'er just and unjust, what a shower
Of raining mercies falls each hour,
Bought by atoning Blood!
From Whose vast merit all that is,
Derives each energizing bliss
Which makes our common good.

Two Bibles thus our hearts may teach
A pure sublime of man to reach,
In love for friend and foe,
Since Nature, like the Gospel, pours
O'er “good and evil” all her stores,
That each may Godhead know.

ANGELIC MINISTRY.

“Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” —Heb. i. 14.

“He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”—Ps. xci. 11.

“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.” —Ps. xxxiv. 7.

Say, why do sceptic hearts decline
In nature more than earth to view?
We cannot trace the word divine,
But angel-forms attend us through:
Salvation's heirs they watch and keep
Both when they wake, and while they sleep.

And how could perill'd infants rove
Light as elastic breezes play,
Secure as if in heaven above
They tripp'd along some crystal way,
Unless beloved by angel-powers
Who hover round their fleeting hours?

All Nature feels a lovely awe
Environing the aidless child;
And fancy dreams her iron law
Before it grows relax'd and mild;
E'en the stern brute a babe will spare;
And why?—some angel watches there.

When shepherds on the midnight-plain
Of Judah kept their flocks at night,
Who hymn'd that heaven-reecho'd strain
At which applauding Worlds grow bright,
But angels, whose ethereal tongue
The glorious Incarnation sung?

And when the Fiend of darkness tried
To wrestle down that perfect will,
By which the Prince of Peace defied
His threefold power of lying ill,

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Behold! yon Seraph leaves his throne
To soothe Him when the fiend had flown.

But, turn to dread Gethsemane;
That garden pall'd with spectral gloom
Where, bow'd with wordless agony
Messiah bled, before his doom,
That bloody sweat,—that crimson dew
Which strain'd His tortured spirit through!

E'en then, from yon bright Host above
A sympathetic angel came,
And o'er him warbled tones of love
Which dropt like balm upon His frame;
For, dread to think!—imputed sin
Convulsed His finite soul within.

But when before the radiant morn
The Lord of Resurrection rose,
Winding the grave-clothes Death had worn,
As though just risen from repose,
Two angels watch'd, as guardians meet,
Where lay His awful head and feet.

And like a sunburst from the south
On wings of archangelic sheen,
To roll from that sepulchral mouth
The rocky stone where Christ had been,—
Two Creatures of celestial might
Came speeding down from worlds of light.

So when at length Emmanuel soar'd
And left His loved disciples' view,
While their ascending glance adored
The Lord, who back to heaven withdrew,
What bounding hopes within them burn
When angels say, “He shall return!”

INFANT FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD.

“Hid from the wise and prudent ------ revealed unto babes.”—Matt. xi. 25.

Mysterious infant! on thy fairy brow
A far-off glory seems reflected now,
A pensive, mild, and melancholy ray
Like the last hue of heaven's most lovely day;

Thou living harebell! 'mong the human flowers
Which bud and blossom in domestic bowers,
The liquid azure of thy placid eye
Gleams like the softness of a vernal sky:

Feeble to sense and sight indeed thou art,
But oh! within thee dwells a mighty Heart,
Capacious of eternity, and God,
E'en now, before the travell'd earth is trod.

Fragile the organs that connect thy soul
With those blent world-scenes, which our own control;
But let not creedless Science this declare,—
That God and angels are unvision'd there.

Souls in pure essence are, like grace, unknown;
For all we hear is but the outward tone,
A broken echo of a voice within
Muffled by earth, and jarr'd by jangling sin:

But if The Spirit must a soul renew
Ere glory open on its blissful view,
Then must the babe unbreathed communion hold
And have with Heaven some intercourse untold.

Sinless in fact, untempted babes depart
To where, O Christ, ensphered in bliss Thou art;
And ere time's language to their lips is known,
They learn The Cross before salvation's throne.

And who remembers not some deep-eyed child,
Unearthly, pale, and exquisitely mild,
Purer than chisell'd alabaster shines
Where sculptured poesy hath traced its lines?

But 'tis not beauty, delicate and bright,
Nor limbs elastic as incarnate light,
Nor that seraphic grace of brow and cheek
More eloquent of mind, than words can speak:

'Tis something finer than all beauty far,
Tender as dreams beneath a twilight-star;
A heaven-like stamp of saintliness which glows
O'er each calm feature in its chaste repose.

And who denies, prophetic babes may see
Secrets and Shapes which throng eternity,
Visions of glory, such as elder man
Has never imaged in the course he ran?

A wordless infant in some mystic hour
May have The Spirit in His deeper power,
Converse with angels, and in God behold
Truths which heroic Saints have never told.

The tearful radiance of a baby's eye,
The pleading music of its pensive sigh,
The looks that seem so spiritually deep
Turn'd on beholders, till they almost weep,

May be the symbols of a faded heaven
To infants in angelic slumber given,
Which leaves them, when they face the world again,
In dim remembrance and in dawning pain.

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And none can tell, but hov'ring babes above
To babes on earth may whisper tones of love,
Melodious fragments of cherubic song
On Glory's breeze for ever borne along.

And, childless mother! let a thought like this
Becalm thy bosom with sustaining bliss,—
When thy pale infant heaved the parting sigh
Some Angel bore it to the peopled sky.

Bright from the waters of baptismal life,
Stain'd by no sin, nor touch'd by earth-born strife,
Straight to its God thy sinless babe hath flown
And join'd the myriads which enwreathe His Throne.

THE SINGLE EYE.

“If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”—Matt. vi. 22.

Though ruin'd, deathless man is noble still,
In whom fair lines and lineaments remain
Of all he was,—ere sin by lawless will
Cast on the glorious Soul a guilty stain;
And not with harsh irreverence should we dare
One trace despise, which Heaven has treasured there.

As round a gloomy shrine, in grand decay
Where crumbling arch and ruin'd pillar fall,
Remnants of beauty yet the pile array
And the dead sculpture into life recall,
When sacred fancy with religious eye
Dreams in the ages of a World gone by,—

So, 'mid the sinful waste of man perverse
Faint hues and harmonies of Eden dwell,
Not all remanded by the righteous curse
Which on the forfeit-state of Adam fell:
Round the sad ruin of his fallen soul
Shadows divine of vanish'd Glory roll.

But if by earth-fed passion, lust, or pride,
Greedy of gain, or gorged with self-esteem,
Majestic reason is just power denied,
The central life becomes a ghastly dream,
Where all our faculties and functions blend
In dread confusion, which can never end.

For then, Incarnate Wisdom so declares,
That which by nature should our light become,
And starlike, lead us through the night of cares
Which deepens round us till we reach our home,
Itself is darkness! and the beam that glows
Is that which Falsehood to blind feeling shows:

How great the “darkness,” not e'en Christ hath said!
As though such midnight of the mind surpass'd
Whate'er rebellion of the heart or head
By finite language can be call'd, or class'd:—
“Darkness” that e'en from Him a wonder drew,
To Whom no sight in earth, or hell, was new!

Single the Eye, when jealous conscience guards
Its vestal chastity by prayer and truth,
And not to Reason, but to Grace awards
Those inward laws which hallow age and youth,—
Those godlike principles by which men live,
And the dread Soul to its own Author give.

Resist we, then, the sorceries of sin;
The lust of income and the love of power
Cloud the clear Eye, whose vision acts within
And ought to rule and rectify each hour:
So will our reason, with no jaundiced gaze,
Interpret duty through a blinding haze.

Religious principle and moral code
Diseased by passion, most perversely act;
And Vice, recoiling from heaven's narrow road,
Dares its own decalogue of Self enact:
Our way is hell-ward, though we heed it not,
Sinai renounced, and Calvary forgot.

Oh! better far be reasonless and mad,
Than thus transform the rectifying Guide
Which God ordain'd to govern good and bad,
And legislate on virtue's lovely side;
For, when distorted, conscience proves a curse
Whose cruel wisdom makes condition worse.

As though the needle in its compass were
Reversely guiding o'er a sea of gloom
The storm-heaved ship, while lurid tempests glare,
And ocean blackens like a billowy tomb;—
Her wreck is fated though she proudly rides
In foaming triumph o'er the furious tides!

Nor dream that when by damning vice depraved,
The central light of reas'ning conscience fails
To warn the victim of desires enslaved,
Corrective Wisdom o'er such doom prevails:—
An Archimedes in the world of mind
Who fix'd his lever and hath raised mankind,

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If not with him the single eye and pure
For sacred guardianship of soul remain,—
His teachings prove but spell-words to allure
The hearts which hear them, into vice and pain:
The rays of Genius, when to darkness turn'd,
What fiendish laurels have they found, and earn'd!

Spirit of wisdom! pure and perfect Light,
Come from Thy region of celestial grace,
Through the bad gloom of unbelieving night
Dart the mild beams of Thy majestic face:
By loving Thee, saints learn to grow divine,
And as they live, resemble Thee, and Thine.

That single Eye, which God and glory views,
Whose seeing power by holiness is keen,
And doth o'er all things Christ supremely choose,—
Be this our wisdom in life's perill'd scene;
So shall we vanquish, by enduring, ill,
And find it heaven to do our Father's will.

MY FIRST-BORN.

[C. H. E. M. BORN MAY 4TH, 1848.]

“The Lord spake, Sanctify unto me all the first-born; it is mine.”—Exod. xiii. 2.

My first-born! when I heard thy faint low cry,
Home to the heart was echoing nature stirr'd
With more than man can tell by tear, or sigh,
Or Fondness image through a shaping word;
For Life is deeper than our language far,
And dimly mirrors but the half we are.

The fountains in the inward deep of soul
Seem'd broken up with preternat'ral start,
And onward gush'd with sweetest uncontrol
The new-born raptures of a parent's heart:
Each chord of feeling trembled like a tone
Which haunts the harpstring, when the hand is flown.

How shall I doat upon thy dawning smile
When conscious reason first begins to play!
And watch the beauty of each dimpling wile
Clothing thy cheek with what the lip would say,
Were but the gladness of thy spirit heard
In the lisp'd cadence of some little word.

Holy is childhood! through that lovely age
Incarnate Mercy did not shun to live,
And thereby circled life's commencing stage
With halo pure as innocence could give,—
A charm which consecrates an infant now,
When the first Sacrament bedews its brow.

Nor doubt, the infant Christ at mother's knee
The priceless volume of celestial Love
Conn'd day by day,—that parents hence might see
How lisping babes ascend to truth above;
Nurtur'd for heaven as their young spirits grow,
By wisdom strengthen'd in this world of woe.

Nor let some Cain-like reason coldly ask
How with the mind of some unspeaking child
Regenerate Love can ply its living task,
And to the heart teach lessons undefiled?—
Baptismal grace exceeds what eyes discern,
And more than Science dreams, a babe may learn.

Think how Emmanuel, when man's world He walk'd,
Stoop'd to those little ones, who round Him came;
And when of more than angels knew He talk'd,
Anthem'd with high-toned joy God's mystic name,
Because what hoary Sages oft refuse,
That for some nursling God's free-will doth choose.

So with a sacredness from heaven decreed
My first-born! by the Church environ'd round,
May the blest Spirit help thy dawning need
From hallow'd stores, which in His breast abound,
Who e'en in glory can remember still
How on sad earth He felt each infant thrill.

Lamb of the flock! within thy Saviour's fold
Calm may'st thou roam, by living pastures green
'Mid waters bright,—with footstep never bold,
Follow The Shepherd through life's destined scene;
Thou wilt not want, if He become thy guide.
With rod of love and staff of grace supplied.

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Coil'd in the secret of His purpose vast
Firstling of Hope! thine unread future lies,
But should thy doom for ripening years be cast
And thou be spared to light enamour'd eyes,
How will maternal Fondness round thee twine,
And my heart gladden when it dreams of thine!

To aid thy lip Christ's glorious name to speak,
And hear thy sweet mouth lisp its little prayer;
To watch emotions mirror'd on thy cheek
When first religion is reflected there,
While with lock'd hands of reverential love
Thou kneel'st to ask a blessing from above,—

By soft degrees to view thee conscious grow
Of God and nature, mind, and scene, and man,
Gently to chide each fault, and calm each woe
As only echoing hearts of parents can,—
Delights like these will anxious toil repay,
And sun my spirit with perpetual ray.

And should my darling add to loveliness
A frame responsive to those fine appeals,
Which earth's dumb eloquence doth aye impress
On each who nature's living poem feels,
With sacred rapture shall I watch thee try
To read God's epic, in the glorious sky!

But oh, of joys the brightest, purest, best
Will that be found,—when first thy budding mind
Words of redeeming grace and truth arrest
And glorify thy love for human kind;
Or when thy broken accents would explain
What Childhood feels for God's incarnate pain.

But these are dreams:—and voiceless omens creep
Round my chill'd Spirit, when it looks on thee,
Making the moist eye almost bend and weep
O'er the veil'd depths of hush'd futurity;
For soft dejection in thine infant-gaze,
Like dim prediction, seems to tell thy days.

God shield thee, darling!—like a dewdrop now,
In radiant freshness on the tree of Life
Trembles thy being; but with prescient brow
I darkly ponder, lest disease and strife
Crush thy soft nature, now so fair and frail,
And bid thee into death at once exhale.

Mysterious God! should this deep trial come
And thou, my first-born, find the infant's grave,
Long ere thy sire, shouldst thou be summon'd home
And heaven remand the treasure that it gave,
Oh! teach me, Lord, this awful prayer to say,—
“Blest be His name, who gives, and takes away!”

JUDGE NOT.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”—Matt. vii. 1.

Eye of the Lord! in whose omniscient ray
Our motives play,
Like motes in sunbeams, each distinctly bare,
Can sinners dare
Rash judgment o'er that secret heart to strain,
Where Thou dost reign

Alone,—from Whom no buried thoughts are hid?
Men are forbid
To scan a brother with censorious eye;
Or sternly cry,
“Let me the mote from out thy vision draw,”
As though they saw

With holy clearness of unclouded view
The pure and true:
While in their eye-glance dwells one sinful beam
Men little deem,
How all who virtue love, will strive to be
From sin set free.

A flagging will, a feeble mind
To Glory dead and Wisdom blind;
A neutral cowardice of heart
That shrinks from taking noble part,
When Christ, and Church and Creed demand
The prowess true of heart and hand,—
Lord! not for these Thy words assign
The guerdon Faith believes divine,
When Thou dost bid each duteous mind
Abstain from judging mortal kind.

The truth must e'er the falsehood fight,
While wrong pursues the hated right;
And they are craven to the Cross
Who quail for dread of earthly loss;
Or else, because the coward Will
Recoils from rude oppressive ill,

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Refrain from branding sin and crime;
And so caress the vassal time
That vice and virtue, false and true
Become the heart's chameleon hue!

Avaunt! such antinomian Ease,
Whose gospel is self-will to please.
But, come ye Inspirations given
Fresh from the heart of Christ in heaven!
Mild Charity, and modest Thought,
And Meekness with Devotion fraught;
With radiant Candour, rich in love,
And motherly, as born above,
Which, mindful of Redemption's plan,
Embraces universal man.

The perfect Judge is God alone;
And he usurps His legal Throne
Who rashly dares to pierce and scan
Those spirit-fibres of the man—
Motives! which are of acts the soul,
And subject to Divine Control:
By man unprobed, in all their change
They move within His mental range,
By Whom is mark'd the embryo sin,
Ere yet 'tis born the soul within.

But e'en when action, motive, thought
Are into clear exposure brought,
And all which meets our human gaze
Harrows the soul with stern amaze,
Man must not wield the judge's rod,
Or make himself the bar of God.
Love in that light, oh! let there be
By which our hearts a brother see;
Since, blind and partial are we, when
Hurt feelings try our fellow-men.

Be merciful! for sinners all
Are they, who Christ their glory call;
Such Minds can weep where others frown,
To see how soon we wander down
Those sad descents of worldly sin
Which tempt without, and try within.—
The holy are the humble, too;
Rather in silence will they rue
The faults and failings brethren show,
Nor be the first a stone to throw.

Their sin we view; but not the strife
Or writhings of that inward-life
Where passion, conscience, and desire
In some convulsive mood conspire:
Nor can we measure with just mind
How circumstance with choice combined;
Or mad temptation, swift and wild,
Tore like a fiend the heart defiled;
Or, how resistance unto prayer
Fought with the Crime which conquer'd there.

O God! before Whose perfect eye
Are cloud-stains on the crystal sky,
Were we but judged by those degrees
By which malign Suspicion sees
A brother in his conduct fail,—
E'en martyrs would the Judgment wail.
Rather, through love's kind error, be
Victim of fond credulity,
Than like some cold and cutting blast
Which near the frozen Sea hath past,
Breathe o'er thy brother words that wring
The soul with unvoiced suffering.

Come then, celestial Archetype for all,
To Thee we call;
And ere the bolt of Censure can descend
On foe, or friend,
Oh, introvert the spirit's eye, to scan
Our inward man.

For thus, what boundless error should we see
In us to be!
The arm reversed would then no censure throw
On friend, or foe;
But, as dark evils which deserve a stone,
Would brand our own.

AWFULNESS OF SPEECH.

“By thy words shalt thou be justified.”—Matt. xii. 37.

We ought to dread what Speech can do,
And mortal words have done,
As vain or vile, or false or true,
Since Language first begun:

For speech the soul can so empower,
For fiends', or angels' work,
That Death, or Life, each dawning hour,
Within some tone may lurk.

A speechless thought innocuous seems
To all except the Mind,
Through whose vague depths it acts, or dreams
For self, or for mankind;

But when abroad, by speech, or press,
Our Thoughts their course begin,
Conception cannot dare to guess
What conquest they may win.

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Through regions, empires, heart and home,
A trackless Thing it hies,
And through eternity will roam,—
For Influence never dies.

To counsel, flatter, charm, or cheer,
How potent human speech!
To summon smiles, or mould a tear,
To pray, rebuke, or preach,—

Thus life and death within the spell
Of living words reside,
And blest are they, who wield them well,
Rememb'ring Him who “sighed!”

And why? Because the Saviour knew
That since our primal Fall
No tongues are to their glory true,
Except on God they call.

Eye, Ear, and Speech, each organ may
A ban or blessing prove,
According as we learn to lay
Their service out in love.

Thus did Emmanuel sigh to know,
That when Compassion gave
To dumbness power the mind to show,
From sin it would not save,

But might hereafter frequent tempt
His tongue to many a crime,
That, but for speech, had proved exempt
In silence half sublime.

He mark'd the victim, mute and sad
Who thus before Him stood,
And cried “Be open,” not “Be glad,”
Though speech itself were good.

And so with us: 'twere better far
As dumb and deaf to be,
Unless in spoken life we are
From worded vileness free.

And never may we speak, or write
A word which others know,
Unless 'twill bear His searching light,
From whom all speech doth flow.

Let that deep sigh the God-man drew,
Around us swell and heave,
And when we utter words untrue
That sigh will make us grieve.

LET US PRAY.

“If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”—Matt. vii. 11.

All that of Eden now remains
Lives in the lovely page of God,
Where o'er green earth a beauty reigns
As when by Christ at evening trod;
Oh! were it not for this pure story,
Our hearts might scarce conceive the glory
Which still that paradise of words arrays
With all those hues of heaven, which spellbound Adam's gaze.

The weed, the thistle, and the thorn,
And stooping Labour's moisten'd brow,
Are types and tokens men are born
Under the primal ruin now;
The kingly mind of innocence
Seems crush'd by sin's omnipotence;
And riper passions round our virtues prey,
And with envenom'd tooth begnaw their strength away.

But still beneath man's ruin lives
One feeling, which survived the Fall,—
That which parental fondness gives
To those who hear their children call:
Men are not fiends, but still reply
Like echoes, to each filial cry
A son puts forth in some beseeching hour,
When lisping Childhood yearns for parent's guardian power.

Divine emotion! deep as pure;
Without thee, Scripture breathes a tone
Which could not alien hearts allure
To bend before the Mercy-throne:
But when “Our Father!” thence is heard,
Dead feelings in their tomb are stirr'd;
And like the ladder joining earth and skies,
They form attractive steps, by which to heaven we rise.

And thus hath Christ affections used
When pleading oft with prayerless mind,
And shown that, though by sin abused,
There is a law that wields mankind,
By which parental natures prove
The throbbings of eternal Love,
When Hunger seeks them with dejected cry,—
“Food for thy famish'd child! or he must die.”

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And, Lord, if thus the sin-worn heart
So much of paradise retain,
Why dare we doubt in heaven Thou art
Responsive to each prayer-breathed strain?
Did Faith but ask, and knock, and scek,
What giants would become the weak!
And Conscience realise Thy love as true
As when its death-gasp groan'd, “Forgive them what they do.”

Could men but feel, how constant prayer
Sustains the most heroic Mind,
Their life would be one holy care
A Father-God in heaven to find;
Not as a Judge, with iron brow,
Before Him would they bend and vow;
But from the deeps of man's parental heart
Gather some loving gleams of what, O God! Thou art.

Saviour of souls! our Truth and Way,
Bread for the famish'd hearts which pine,
Instruct us like Thyself to pray
“Father! Thy will be done, not mine.”—
Tender has been the tearful thought
A babe-cry to some mother brought;
But far more tender is The Heart above
Whose echoing depths repeat the name of holy “Love.”

DIVINE FAITHFULNESS.

“The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee.”—Isa. liv. 10.

The mountains shall from earth depart,
The hills may be removed,
But thou of God elected art
And as a “bride” beloved;
Our God as soon might cease to be,
As break His covenant with thee.

Election flows from no high worth
In fallen souls foreseen;
For where is good on this bad earth
Which free grace hath not been?
Did God demand prevenient love,
Heaven would not shrine one soul above.

Thou barren Heart! which hast not borne
The hopes that make thee sing,
Oh, dream not thou art left forlorn
In widow'd suffering:
For like a wife in youth forsaken,
Back to thy Lord shalt thou be taken.

Though toss'd on life's tempestuous sea
Affliction's waves run high,
For one small moment Heaven from thee
Averts its loving eye,—
Yet, soon will mercy's overflow
Around thine anguish brightly glow.

No crisis can our God subdue,
No change His will surprise;
Close to His ancient counsel true
His grace for ever lies;
The “Lord of Hosts” reveals His name
In love eternal, and the same.

He does not find a lovely thing
And love what He discerns;
But His pure love becomes the spring
Of what in martyrs burns
Of holy passion, zeal, and prayer
By God's own Spirit kindled there.

Then, courage! torn and troubled Mind,
The Glorious One appears;
Nor let Dejection leave thee blind
With her impassion'd tears:
Soon shall thy blest Redeemer come
And guide thee safe to Glory's home.

No weapon'd hand its deadly wound
Shall in thy spirit make;
Nor all the raging tongues around
That bond of goodness break
Which God in Christ for thee doth hold,
And His deep heart of grace enfold.

With sapphires thy foundations fair
Shall soon by Him be laid;
Nor shall oppressive Wrong be there,
As though thou wert betray'd:
Terrors themselves shall learn to fear
A kingly saint to Godhead dear.

The Spirit's love, a love divine
Though earth and heaven decay,
Is true, O Lord! to Thee and Thine
Though worlds dissolve away;
Had Souls true faith, they could not dread
The deepest midnight round them spread.

A dying world for dying men
For saints hath Heaven decreed,
And wisely plans the where, and when,
Each burden'd heart must bleed;

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But, Love this truth can understand,—
Each blow is from a Father's hand.

And thus, if fortune, home, and friend,
And social bliss, no more
Around us their rich magic blend
As they were wont of yore,—
Reflected on our falling tears
The iris of God's love appears.

Timeless and changeless is the plan
Before all worlds begun,
From whence that mercy reacheth man
Incarnate Merit won:—
Though toss'd, and by the tempest shaken,
Believer, thou art unforsaken!

REVERE THE DEAD.

“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” Rev. xiv. 13.

Pity the dead!—nay, rather mourn for those
Who battle on through Life's harsh scene of care,
In whose grieved breast the thorn of trial grows,
While in the crowd all echoless they are:
Bearing some poison'd shaft within the heart
They feel, bad World! the hollowness thou art.

Pity the dead!—no, rather weep for them
Who on vex'd earth must suffer, toil, and sin,
And pray, their passion's burning tide to stem
And keep close watch o'er waywardness within;
Who hour by hour repentance must renew,
And mourn how little for their Lord they do.

But oh! the dead, the justified and saved,
Children of glory, wrapt in Jesu's arms,
The darkness of the sepulchre they braved
And there are shielded safe from Earth's alarms;
Pure in the brightness of ethereal bliss,
They would not change it for a scene like this!

The spirits of the Just, made perfect now,
Have each in heaven their beatific calm;
Serenity arrays each kingly Brow,
And through each Heart distils celestial balm;
Their hope as cloudless as the peace divine,—
Seraphic visions round them reign, and shine.

And He is there! the kingdom's Light and Lord,
Who out of time and toil has call'd them home,
And now fulfils each wise and glorious word
True faith believed, when doom'd on earth to roam,—
E'en Christ, who beautifies the Spirit-throngs,
'Mid their deep worship of adoring songs.

But, ah! fond Nature, in thy bosom yearn
Feelings which oft our passive faith o'erflow;
And with such flame intense affections burn
That time, nor truth, can quench their secret glow;
Down the deep heart some unvoiced thoughts remain,
And bid us sigh to see our Dead again.

“My beautiful, my bright, my darling child!
Her smile was eloquent with soul to me;”
Thus the wan mother in her anguish wild
Echoes the regions of eternity,
When round the heart-strings thrills the seeming breath
Of some loved daughter, tomb'd in early death.

“And thou, my dead, my unforgotten boy!
Prop of our home, and pillar of our race,
Genius was thine, and brow of princely joy,
And more than beauty clothed thy classic face;
How did I dote, and for thy future build
Schemes which parental hearts alone have fill'd.”—

So grieves a sire, when Love's ideal hours
Roll their sad cadence o'er his dreaming brain,
When the dead Past resumes a living power
And with such resurrection smiles again,
That hand in hand his child he seems to hold,
And hear the Voice that lull'd him so of old.

And thou, lone sister! who pale watch didst keep
Night after night, around some fairy child,
Marking each dimple which in rosy sleep
Sunn'd the pure face, as though an angel smiled,
When Death withdrew it to th' unseen abode,
Thy heart to madness almost overflow'd.

But, peace! fond mourners: calm your souls to rest,
The Dead you weep are still alive to Him,
Lord of those mansions, where the bright and blest
Are pure and peaceful as the seraphim;

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No sin infects, nor sorrow clouds that scene
Where the saved dead since Adam's death have been.

Here, while we travel through the dust of time
Dark imperfections oft the soul defile;
Whate'er the circumstance, or change, or clime,
Creation's noblest is but vain and vile:
What are our woods and fields, our mountains, glens, and streams,
To God's bright landscape, which in glory beams?

Then, hush thy moan, Affection! curb thy will;
Think of the dead as to perfection brought,
In heart all holy, as the conscience still
Feels the rich calm the “Blood of Sprinkling” wrought:—
No cloud to tinge the colour of their days,
They harp the anthem of redemption's praise.

Dead though their forms in dust sepulchral lie,
Ecstatic faith the spirit loves to view,
And longs to vision with prophetic eye
What awful raptures must pervade it through,
As more and more eternity unfolds
Secrets of Glory, vast as heaven beholds.

POWER OF THE REDEEMER'S EYE.

“The Lord looked ------ and Peter went out and wept bitterly!”—Luke xxii. 61, 62.

Not poet's lyre, nor painter's line
Could e'er express that look of Thine,
Saviour of men! on craven Peter cast:—
Eternity was in Thy gaze,
And through dark conscience darted rays
Which lighten'd into truth his present, and his past.

Deep eloquence was there,
Beyond the lightning-glare
Red with the fierceness of the flaming storm;
Nor might loud hurricanes which sweep
In thund'ring air-tones o'er the deep
Till the rent ocean heaves like agonizing forms,

So terribly the soul appal
As that one gaze in Pilate's hall
Shook to his moral root a recreant man!
Apostate as he there denied
That Lord, to Whom his worship cried,
“Though all desert Thee, Christ! my spirit never can.”

Dungeon, nor death, nor chains,
Nor all which persecution gains,
Should tempt him from The Truth to fly;
Though all betray'd Him, he would stand
Faithful among a faithless band,
And boldly for His Lord exult to bleed, or die!

Resolve then reign'd in ardent power;
And feeling hued that full-toned hour
With the rich colour hearts delight to show,
In some rapt mood when men appear
Sublimed above unhallow'd fear,
And with celestial warmth reflect an angel's glow.

In such high noon of seraph-zeal,
Our breasts an inspiration feel
Lifting us far beyond each low-born aim;
Wing'd thoughts surmount the walls of time,
And waft us to that world sublime
Where Heaven's clear arches ring with Christ's resounded name.

But He, to Whom all hearts lie bared,
In that flush'd moment then declared
How thrice, e'er yet the wakeful bird would crow,
The saint who seem'd so nobly fired
As if by heaven's own warmth inspired,
Vanquish'd by shameful dread,—would all his vows forego!

And more or less than Man were he
Unmoved who in this hour could see
A brave Apostle from His banner fly:
Assaulted by Satanic power
And sifted in that searching hour,
Thrice did his caitiff mouth the Lord of Love deny!

If mortal pain could mar the rest
Which broods within an angel's breast,
Sure might St. Peter's crime have drawn his tear,—
Who swore with ireful oath untrue
He ne'er the blest Redeemer knew,
And sacrificed his vow upon the shrine of fear.

But, while a third denial hung
With impious accent on his tongue,
Behold! the crowing of the cock began;
And back with its reverted gaze
Bedimm'd with more than tearful haze,
Look'd the calm Eye of Christ on that apostate man!

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He “look'd,”—oh, what a look was there
Of pity, love, rebuke, and prayer!
Angelic, human, and divine the spell
Wielded by Christ in that dread gaze
Which then on Peter poured its rays,
Till down his weeping heart before it writhed, and fell!

'Twas but a glance, and yet it cleaved
The veil asunder, which had weaved
A hiding darkness round that trait'rous heart:
It open'd each vile gulf within
Where lurk the powers of latent sin,
And made him from himself to shudder back, and start.

By day, by night, where'er he went,
As o'er his head the firmament,
Thus o'er his heart with holiness and light
That piercing glance of Jesu cast
Celestial power, where'er he pass'd,
And overarch'd his soul with meaning, and with might.

'Twas with him, when he watch'd or wept,
Or fasted, toil'd, or woke, or slept;
Hunger'd and roofless, wearied, rack'd and worn,—
By shore, or sea, abroad, at home,
Where'er his pilgrim zeal could roam,
Here was the guiding Star, that watch'd him, though forlorn.

In prison, and o'er chains, it threw
A glory which that angel knew,
Who saw his features radiant in repose,
When calm as cradled infant's breath
He slept upon the brink of death,
In some fond dream of Christ, forgetful of his woes.

And will not fond Devotion say,
That when his form inverted lay
In bleeding anguish on the cross oppress'd,
That still the gaze from Jesu's eye
Beam'd on his soul, till life's last sigh
Wafted the spirit home to its loved Saviour's breast?

But in this page of man may we,
As in some truthful mirror see
Reflected warnings, which may well o'erawe
The boldest, who believe they stand
Like rocks of faith, in self-command,
As did Saint Peter once, before his heart he saw.

There while he weeps a bitter shower
Of anguish in this rueful hour,
Lord of our spirits! may his teardrops fall
In healthful virtue o'er each heart,
That little dreams how Satan's art
To more than Peter's crime may soon betray us all.

Yea, doth not our baptismal vow
Bend o'er us like a burden now,
And crush pale conscience into sacred tears?
For, leagued with flesh, and fiend, and world,
Oh, have we not to nothing hurl'd
The awful promise made,—that God should have our years?

For gold, or pride, or pomp, and pleasure
As though they form'd divinest treasure,
How basely have we barter'd mind and will!
Betraying our predestined cross,
That we should count our life a loss,
Except for Christ we lived, self-crucified and still.

Sole Healer of the wounded heart!
Who now ensphered in glory art,
When Peter-like, our prostrate vows we break,
Let no red lightnings of Thy wrath
Flash their dread fury o'er our path,
Nor regal thunder-tones Thy terrors o'er us wake,—

But turn Thee with subduing eye,
And from Thy bliss beyond the sky
Look, as Thou didst on Thine apostle's fears:
So melt us into anguish true,
Till Penitence our treason rue
And bathe Thy mercy-seat with love's remorseful tears.

THE GATES OF LIFE.

“Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction ------ strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life.”—Matt. vii. 13, 14.

Grief, more than revelation tells,
Shaded The Lord of Glory's heart,
Where slept within its aching cells
Deep woes no earth-breathed words impart;
Pure is the Bible, and a perfect book,—
But Christ had depths where Language could not look!

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All echoless by worded sign
Some buried pangs there must have been;
And saint, nor angel can divine
What pass'd behind that mental screen
Where in dread myst'ry, voiceless, lone, and deep,
Pale thoughts of Christ did o'er man's future weep.

Tongue cannot speak, nor soul conceive
The gloom which blacken'd o'er His mind,
When thoughts prophetic bade him grieve
O'er sinful wrecks of sad mankind;
Sorrow like this might soften hearts of stone,
But, ah! how infinite His pangs unknown!

For each lost soul the bloody sweat
And crimson tide of anguish flow'd,
And in His righteous spirit met
All penal claims to justice owed,
For sins beyond what mortal numbers count,—
So vast the myriads of their vile amount!

But more He felt, who bled for man,
When from His cross uprear'd on earth
His Prescience saw that sacred plan
By angels deem'd of priceless worth,
Attract but “few,” for whom His Mercy died,
To bear the cross, and love the Crucified.

Of all dark burdens which oppress
And crush warm spirits into woe,
Ingratitude from those we bless
Outweighs the direst hearts can know;
Fiends may abhor, but never can betray
The Souls which trust, and for them toil and pray.

But how did uncreated Love
A sacrifice divine achieve!
When God emerged from light above,
Around His awful head to weave
A thorny crown, this forfeit-world to save,
And roll'd thick darkness from the hideous grave.

Yet, when the unborn Ages rose
Before Him, in His parting breath,
And He beheld what creedless foes
Would still deny His priestly death,
A deeper sadness must have pierced His heart,
Than all which sacrificial pangs impart.

Two paths He saw, two gates appear'd,
Contracted one, the other wide;
Along the last, unfelt, unfear'd,
What myriads rush'd, for whom He died!—
Broad as their wills, and wild as Passion's law
The way of ruin which for them He saw.

But o'er that strict and narrow way
So wisely hemm'd by holy Truth,
He mark'd a sainted number stray,
Faithful as few, to age from youth;
Such are the souls, who count this World no loss
When they have nail'd it to th' atoning cross.

So is it now, to saints who read
The moral scenes of tempted man,
By that pure light blest angels need
Before they learn the mystic plan,
Whereby the wisdom of God's secret Will
Winds its clear way through vice, and virtue still,

Ambition's fretting pride of thought,
The Hero's falsely-worshipp'd fame,
With all that mock Renown hath wrought
To gild the nothing of a name,—
Are baseless dreams, unsanctified and vile,
And only blast the victims they beguile.

Learning, and Art, and lofty Mind,
Unless beneath the Cross they grow,
Prove but mere forms of Self refined,
Whose “broad way” leads to final woe;
Sin changes not, howe'er by spells array'd,
And out of Christ, what are we, but betray'd?

“Broad is the way,”—oh, crushing thought!
Which must have made Emmanuel sigh,
To see the Soul His anguish bought
But live to sin, and love to die,—
Enter the “wide gate” with a maniac glee,
And quench bad mirth in glooms of agony!

“Narrow the path,”—but, yet it leads
To Life's consummate goal of bliss;
And though their self-denial bleeds,
Children of light will enter this;
Though few in number, round their heavenward ways
Hover the glorious Dead of elder days.

O'er such high path decreed by God,
Led by The Spirit, let me roam;
For where my Saviour's feet have trod
Bright footprints point me to His home,—
That City clothed with more than crystal rays,
Her gates salvation, and whose walls are praise.

Patriarch and prophet, priest and saint,
Denial's road to heaven preferr'd;
And when their sunken hearts grew faint,
They listen'd for that living Word
Which warbled round them in the deepest night,
“My yoke is easy, and my burden light!”

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SPIRITUAL DECLINE.

“Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head ------ when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle.”—Job xxix. ii. 2–4.

“Oh! that with me, as in the months of yore,
My heart were basking in the smile of God,
When all I saw the sweet impression bore
His eye o'erwatch'd me through the way I trod.

“Then did the candle of Jehovah beam
With loving radiance o'er my rising hours,
And life roll'd onward like a happy stream
Which carols music to the list'ning flowers.

“Bright with the dews of pure devotion, lay
My spirit open to each breath from heaven;
And all who saw me, in their hearts might say,—
Dead paradise re-blooms in sin forgiven!

“Precious was Christ! beyond angelic speech
In might or melody to e'er reveal;
Nor could the songs of sainted rapture reach
All His incarnate glories made me feel.

“Dear was the temple, and the hour of prayer,
And dear the spirit of that ritual Whole
When all my faculties were hallow'd there,
And heaven seem'd dawning on my inmost soul.

“And when the emblems of embodied Love
Bleeding for man, to my awed sense were brought,
Like Stephen, view'd I in the world above
The Christ, by whom a sacrament is wrought.”—

Thus moans in secret many a voiceless heart
Heavy with gloom, and harrow'd by distress;
Dull, cold, or dead, as grace and gift depart
And leave the sad One to his loneliness.

Yet, dark believer! may such woeful strain
Issue from shades of cowardice and sin;
And what thou dreamest a majestic pain,
May prove the sign of hollowness within!

There is a trinity in mortal time
By past, by present, and by future made;
And, Conscience wields a potency sublime
When each before her stands, in truth array'd.

Then must we feel how time's divisions mould
One character, in which our fate will rest;
Eternity in seed we thus behold
As heaven, or hell, now ripens in the breast!

Oh, then, not idly, with a weak lament
Sigh o'er some privilege, which breathes no more;
Religion scorns a laggard discontent
That feebly sickens in pale dreams of yore.

Not grace from thee, but thou from God hast gone,
By cold illapse declining day by day;
Or from the paths which lead true virtue on
Turn'd into tracks which tempt the soul away.

Cold in thy prayer, in praise reluctant grown,
Seldom at church, the Eucharist forgot,
Thy creed, self-will, no master but thine own,—
Behold! the secret which explains thy lot.

Obedience is religion's breath of life;
Constant and pure denials must we bear;
Each day should be with crucifixion rife,
Each hour be hallowed with the soul of prayer.

Saints learn by loving, and by love they live;
Who walk with God, must from themselves depart;
And Peace descends not from her Prince above,
Except for God faith purify the heart.

Mourners in Zion oft are minds which fail
To hold their Master's cross supreme in view;
Or let some lust o'er discipline prevail
That renders them to church, and creed untrue.

Thus, like a secret rust the world begins
Eating its way, until our hearts corrode;
Pleasure and profit veil their inward sins,
And wide as passion seems the “narrow” road.

From virgin youthfulness the Soul declines
When from both God and grace it dares to roam,
And can no longer through the Word Divine
Shelter the heart, in true affection's home.

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“Oh! that with me as in pure moments past
My God were present,”—vain such cry, indeed,
Unless Repentance thy worn spirit cast
Low at the mercy-seat to lie, and bleed.

Leave sigh and sentiment for Duty's cross,
Haste thee to works of sacrifice and prayer;
Count a gain'd world to be a gloomy loss
And prize hereafter as thy holy care:

So may the smile of Godhead back return
Effulging o'er thee, as in days of old;
Dead in thyself, to live in Jesu learn,
And round His throne God's covenant behold.

Earth, sense, and time will more and more recede,
Conscience be cleansed, and childlike prayer arise;
Eternity will grow thy grandest need,
God be thy goal, and heaven thy genial prize.

GUIDING TENDERNESS OF GOD.

“I will instruct thee ------ I will guide thee with mine eye.”—Ps. xxxii. 8.

By gentleness, O God,
Thou wouldst Thy children lead
O'er perill'd ways, by martyrs trod,
Or through life's verdant mead:
Not the stern rod of discipline to wield
Does Thy pure Grace, apart from sin, incline;
But when reluctant hearts refuse to yield
Some iron law instructs the spirit that is Thine.

Yet were we like a child
Loving, and pliant too,
Thy perfect guidance pure as mild
Would guard Life's opening view;
E'en as a glance by some fond parent turn'd
On her frail little one, who waits to see
Those looks where young affection's lore is learn'd,—
So would one gleam of grace attract our souls to Thee.

Oh, for a watchful heart!
A waiting mind of prayer,
To view Thee, gracious as Thou art,
“Our Father!” everywhere.
Orphan'd in soul, nor friendless, should we seem,
Did but the mind a sacred vigil keep;
For ever would Thy guardian eye-glance beam,—
Star of our troubled life, both when we smile, or weep!

Unless we watch that “Eye,”
Thy Will we cannot read;
For, softer than a vernal sky
It dawns on human need
In gleam and glance, no prayerless hearts discern,
And Love's unwatchful gaze may oft forego:—
Only by looking upward, can we learn
Wisdom divinely bland, to chasten weal and woe.

Bend, pride of Reason! bend,
Become a little child;
And heaven to thee will condescend
In wisdom undefiled;
Oft where the haughty Scribes of learning fail
God to discern in truth's unerring page,
Infants of grace by simple love prevail,
Wing'd by the Spirit's power to heights beyond their age.

Then grant us, gracious Lord!
In Thy blest page to see
The faintest beam a heaven-bright word
Imparts from truth, and Thee;
Mild as the radiance of celestial love,
So will each promise, threat, and precept dart
Glances of truth,—as if God's eye above
Were gazing through them, to inspire the heart.

POETRY OF CLOUDS AND SKIES.

“Number the clouds in wisdom.”—Job. xxxviii. 37.

“God rideth in his excellency on the sky.”—Deut. xxxiii. 26.

“The firmament showeth his handy-work.”—Ps. xix. 1.

A speaking magic in poetic skies
Affects the soul, and fascinates the eyes;
Look where we may, some cloud-born grace we find
To shade the mirror of responsive mind.

And why did God thus beauteously array
Calm noon, chaste eve, and re-commencing day,
But that our echoing minds should inly feel
How heaven and poetry to man appeal?

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Lord of the woods, and waves, and living air!
All lead to Thee when purified by prayer;
Connecting thus with beauty, colour, grace,
The dying mercy which redeem'd our race.

Let but Thy merit through creation shine,
And what was common, now becomes divine;
The beautiful on earth, the bright above,
Are open sacraments which preach Thy love.

How rich the consecrated dome of heaven,
When to some priest at Nature's shrine is given
The power, in all ethereal forms to see
Symbols and signs of present Deity!

The skies have meanings; and emotion seems
Oft to array them with impassion'd gleams,—
Colours intense, as if a conscious hue
Blush'd o'er its birth, and brighten'd at our view.

Painters and poets from the skies have brought
Fancies and feelings, to inspire their thought:
Beauty is there; and sentiment can rise
To noble pathos in the naked skies.

Home of the seasons! and the haunt of storms,
Now fierce with gloom, now fair with opal forms,
Dark in thy strength, or smiling in thy play,
I love thy magic, and revere its sway.

But most I hail thee, golden, calm, and deep,
When isles of radiance on thy bosom sleep;
Or robe-like clouds in rich confusion lie,
As though veil'd angels floated up the sky

Garb'd in the vesture of thy woven sheen,
And left an outline where their veils had been:—
So exquisitely touch'd the tinted air,
Seraphic creatures might be mansion'd there.

And who can tell, since first the heavens have spann'd
Their arching glories over sea and land,
What vast impressions from yon varied skies
Have soothed man's spirit, while it charm'd his eyes?

When to the captive, through his dungeon-bar
Gleams of blue heaven come glancing from afar,
Through fields of childhood Fancy seems to roam
And wind the pathway freedom wound at home.

And think how Sickness, when the pulse renews
Its beat of vigour, hails yon skyey views,
While with new gush of health each glance of love
Seems to be answer'd, when it looks above.

There memory, too, and meditation find
Symbolic hues to mirror forth the mind;
Sky and the soul like sympathies can meet,
Till what our hearts express, the clouds repeat.

And when, pure Lord of loneliness and woe!
We dream Thy pilgrimage of pain below,
Faith may conceive, full oft Thine harass'd eye
Drank the deep quiet of congenial sky.

And as ascending to Thy throne of light
A cloud receiv'd Thee from the spell-bound sight
Of those sad watchers, who beheld Thee soar
Back to the bliss where Thou wert throned before,

So when our hearts the sweep of heaven survey
And solemn fancies o'er its surface play,
Let not religion this true thought disdain,—
A cloud shall waft Thee to our world again.

TWILIGHT OF OUR BEING.

“One day, known to the Lord, not day, nor night.”—Zech. xiv. 7.

“Jesus said, What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.”—John xiii. 7.

“Though what I do ye know not now
Hereafter sainted hearts shall see,”
Saviour! before that will we bow
And learn our cross by loving Thee:
Grant to our souls the grace on God to live,
And clasp the counsel which Thy precepts give.

Such partial light and shade become
The vexèd life our bosoms feel;
For, could we clearly view the home
Which yonder shrines in heaven conceal,
How should we turn with loathing sense away
From those stern duties, which demand each day!

146

All light would make our hearts presume,
All darkness end in black despair;
But God has so arranged the gloom
As best becomes the cross we bear:—
An ampler vision might elate the mind,
And deeper shadows would eclipse mankind.

“We know in part,” and part of this
How weakly can the wisest know!
Our purest heavens of hallow'd bliss
Are tinged with soiling earth below:
Put into language, oft doth wisdom seem
The broken semblance of a baseless dream.

Such clouds and darkness round the path
Of God to man encircled lie,
That he who heavenly science hath
This awful truth will scarce deny,—
That earth seems moist with melancholy tears
Dropt from the eyelids of some thousand Years.

Yet sorrow is the penal bane
Attemper'd to a world of sin;
For where our God hath ceased to reign
Darkness and death must enter in;
And saintly eyes should learn to see by prayer
Truths which transcend what mortal lips declare.

THE BLESSED VIRGIN.

“Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”—Luke i. 28.

Ave Maria! blest o'er women all
Who e'er on earth embodiment have found,
Maiden and mother, both in thee we call
With peerless favour by Jehovah crown'd.

Ave Maria! virgin meek and mild,
Unstain'd by passion's soul-polluting fires,
Faith cannot view thee with thine awful Child,
Nor thrill with more than sentiment inspires.

Ave Maria! since thy sex began,
Woman presents no type to rival thee;
Nor can the feelings of a fallen man
Echo thy thoughts of inward purity.

Ave Maria! o'er the Babe Divine
Bending with awe, maternally entranced,
How must have throbb'd that vestal heart of thine,
On Jesu's forehead when thy fond eyes glanced!

Pure are the fountains of parental love
Whose depths of bliss ineffable remain;
Not the deep ravishment of lyres above
Could e'er attune it with too sweet a strain:

But thou, o'ershadow'd with The Spirit's power,
By heaven's bright herald hail'd supremely blest,
What hallowing mystery clothed that sacred hour
When hung the Child-God on thy virgin breast!

Boundless cternity and breathing time
Blend in communion at thine awful bliss,
And bid us wonder, in a trance sublime,
That earth was hallow'd by a scene like this.

The purest image saintly Thought can see
Of maiden calm, with motherhood combined,
Becomes too earth-born when compared with thee,
Nursing The Babe whose Blood redeem'd mankind.

Well may the poet's harp, and painter's hue,
With all that Sculpture's marble-dreams express,
Become ethcreal, when they bring to view
Outlines which hint thy solemn loveliness.

Yet can chaste minds, beyond all visual show,
By thought create what reverence demands,
Ave Maria! when our hearts o'erflow
To see the God-Babe in thy vestal hands.

Feeling and Faith, with poesy and prayer,
Mingle their charms to make one beauteous spell,
And what no melodies, nor hues declare,
Our hush'd emotions unto Godhead tell.

MARIOLATRY.

“Jesus saith unto her, Woman! what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”—John ii. 4.

“I fell at his feet to worship him: and he said unto me, See thou do it not! I am thy fellow-servant:—worship God.”—Rev. xix. 10.

And yet, forbid it, reason, faith, and love,
Both mortal powers, and Attributes divine,
Ave Maria! that as Queen above,
The worship due to God should ere be thine.

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Honour'd and holy, blest indeed wert thou,—
To be the mother of His mortal frame
Before Whose face the universe shall bow
While rapt eternity resounds His name!

The stain, that tempted Eve on woman brought,
Ave Maria! is by thee reversed,—
Mother of Him whose dying merit wrought
A ransom for the race by Sin accursed.

So to the Church's heart be ever dear,
Anointed Virgin! 'mong all women blest;
High o'er thy sex, we none like thee revere
Within whose womb incarnate God could rest.

But ah! we dare not, from the Lord of Lords
Rob the due glory which to God pertains;
Nor crown a creature with adoring words,
And echo “Queen of Heaven!” with impious strains.

Not sinless wert thou, in the sight of Him
From whose dread gaze the blushing heavens retire,
While round His Throne the o'erawed seraphim
Prostrate their crowns, and cast their quiv'ring lyre.

They tell us, how all deeps of tender grace
Fresh in thy heart abide for evermore;
And when the contrite seek thy pitying face,
Those wells are open'd, and the faint restore;

But, blest Redeemer! what is finite love
Though most ideal in sublime excess,
With that compared, which drew God from above
To agonise for our dark guiltiness?—

Less than a raindrop to the boundless sea,
The vastest love created souls can feel
When rank'd by His, who clothed Divinity
With flesh, and suffer'd all that man could feel!

Ave Maria! were thy vestal glow
Of pity purer than blind error dreams,
Yet unto Christ dost thou thy nature owe,
And all thy goodness from His spirit streams.

But when they dare this awful dream propound,—
That e'en as mother o'er a son prevails,
So at thy plea all grace and gifts abound
And at thy prayer His goodness never fails!

They say the sunbeam can enrich the sun
From whose bright essence its fair beauty flows!—
By such false creed from blinding fancy won,
Which gives to Mary what to Christ she owes.

Ye pious martyrs of a faith untrue,
Who from the fount of God's unfathom'd heart
Turn to broke cisterns, whence dark Ages drew
Deluding errors that will not depart,

Mercy and Grace in Christ embodied live;
Straight from His love let each repenting Soul
Draw the true pardon He alone can give,
Nor dream that woman can a God control!

That creed is sacrilege which dares deny
The sympathies His bleeding Manhood learn'd,
When Christ from glory came to weep and die,
And back to heaven with human heart return'd.

Away with doubt! men want no Virgin's plea,
No angel, saint, nor martyr's prayer to bring,
To gain the mercy which endures in Thee
Thou of all grace the unexhausted Spring!

Ave Maria! maid and mother blest,
High above woman soar'd thy peerless lot;
And with due rev'rence on thy name we rest,
But shrink to credit what thy truth is not.

And oh, in yonder beatific light
Could thy deep calm be ruffled into care,
As creature, thou might'st shudder at the sight
Of sinners, prostrate at thy throne, in prayer!

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Ave Maria! this dread thought o'erpowers
And awes the suppliant, who might worship thee,—
That Jesus is thy Saviour too, and ours,
The same in time, as in eternity.

OUR TRUE CENTRE.

“Return unto me, for I have redeemed thee.” Isa. xliv. 22.

“And ye shall find rest for your souls.” Jer. vi. 16.

Our centre true is God alone,
In whom man's aching breast
Beneath the shadow of His Throne
Can find a perfect rest;
For less than God enjoy'd, would leave within us still
A fev'rish want of soul, the Finite cannot fill.

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Yet ruin'd years must haply roll
In anguish, gloom, or woe
Along the worn and wearied soul,
Before the heart can know
What broken cisterns prove the hollow joys we love,
While hearts forsake The Fount of living bliss above.

This world is wound with fatal spells
Attracting youthful Sense;
And each gay scene some falsehood tells
To mar life's innocence:
Nothing but grace divine can disenchant the Earth
And bid the soul aspire for what becomes its birth.

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A fascinating mist o'erveils
Bewilder'd time, and space,
When passion's demon power prevails,
And lures a sensual race
To dream polluted earth a paradise can be,
And mould imagined heavens apart from Deity.

The bloom of hope, the bliss of health,
The bounding thoughts of joy,
With all that springs from tyrant wealth,
What myriads they decoy!
Till glory, truth, and grace, and bliss by promise given,
From souls recede away, and let this world seem heaven!

But worst of all base spells that blind
The conscience with deceit,
Is that which makes our God mankind,
And bows us at their feet,
Awaiting till they crown by some awarded praise,
The nothing Fashion gilds with her inglorious rays.

Alas! for those who madly think
Immortal Nature can
From lips of transient homage drink
What truly freshens man,
While deep within the soul a thirsting sense abides
For something nobler far than fame's uncertain tides.

Since what is fame, but second-life
In other spirits led?
A feeling with this impulse rife,—
That our creations spread
Ideal worlds of thought, through which we love to roam,
And find in kindled hearts a false, but fancied home?

But thou, believer, think on this,—
God is our only rest;
And he who worships finite bliss
Will live and die unblest:
The infinitely good man's true proportion makes,
And every gift but Christ the trusting heart forsakes.

'Tis true, the subject World is ours;
But only when we wave
Heaven's banner o'er its hostile powers,
And for the Truth are brave;
Thus panoplied by grace, and girt by secret prayer,
We face embattled Fiends, and fight them everywhere.

But never be this creed forgot,
That men are exiles here;
And they who seek a heavenly lot
Must love a heav'nly sphere;
And oft in soaring dreams of purity ascend
To yon celestial Home, where saints and martyrs tend.

The Spirit's love breathes now, or never,
When souls for God are train'd
Till mortal vice and evil sever
From bosoms, where they reign'd:
For by this truth intense all mighty Hearts must live,—
Eternity will rue what time doth not forgive.

Hail, vast Relief of souls who love,
Lord of regenerate hearts!
Faith can discern in Thee above
A glory which imparts
Far more than angel-life, to all who seek for rest
And their hereafter lay, like John, upon Thy breast.

As roll the waters to the wind
A moment lifted high,
So, swelling passion heaves the mind
Upward to meet the sky;
But when the storm declines and waters cease to roar,
The folded waves lie down as level as the shore:

So is it with delirious joy
Where mad excitements reign,
Or, blind emotions man decoy
Some glitt'ring lie to gain;
Raised and enrapt awhile, his heaven seems half begun,
But when the dream resolves, unrest alone is won.

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MOTHER'S GRIEF.

“Weeping for her children because they are not.”— Jer. xxxi. 15.

The placid azure of thy pensive eyes
Oh childless mother! like dejected skies,
With such dim tearfulness is overspread,
It softly tells thou dreamest of the dead.

Bereaved thou art of that unfathom'd bliss,
A first-born infant; and a pang like this
Home to the centre hath thy spirit stirr'd,
Too deep for sighs, too sacred for a word.

Cold the wan beauty of thy sunken cheek;
And tones of pathos, when I hear thee speak,
Ring like a knell which haunts sad Memory's ear,
And melts warm feeling into woman's tear.

Alone I view thee o'er the Bible bend,
Till solitude becomes thy sainted friend;
While, rapt in stillness, oft the dreaming soul
Wings its lone flight to where no earth-clouds roll.

But wilt thou, mother, in this trance of gloom
Hover and dream around thine infant's tomb?
Dark Fancy! dars't thou lift the coffin-lid,
And view in anguish what the grave hath hid?

Those dawning gleams of consciousness and grace,
The chisell'd beauty, and the cherub-face,
How oft doth speculation these recall,
And tell thee thy sweet babe possess'd them all!

And when some cry of infancy is heard,
Like sleeping water by wild music stirr'd,
Thy heart-strings vibrate to each plaintive tone
As if that weeper were indeed thine own.

But, lady, there is balm and blessing left,
And healing words for hearts like thine bereft;
No childless orphan can the Church become,
Though Christ hath vanished to His viewless home!

Yet shall the Comforter on thee descend,
And heaven-breathed solace with thy spirit blend;
The Lord surrounds thee, when thou seest Him not,
And God must change, ere grief can be forgot.

Be Grace thy refuge: calmer thoughts will rise
And rays from heaven illume thine inward eyes;
Till in their brightness loss becomes a gain,
While God is thank'd for this mysterious pain.

And now, bethink thee, to thy babe in heaven
How much of glory hath Redemption given!
Worn by no race, at once it reach'd the goal,
Sinless on earth, and now—a perfect Soul.

Think, what a dignity to thee belongs
Thus to have deepen'd the angelic songs,
Thus to enrich with thy departed Gem
The lustre of Emmanuel's diadem!

And feel'st thou not, when God and glory seem
To awe thy Spirit with a solemn dream,
An Infant makes the skies familiar be,
And helps to humanise the heavens for thee?

Nor let harsh murmurs o'er thy doom arise
As though God wrong'd the Saint His wisdom tries;
Sorrow befits a world where Jesu bled,
And dust was borrow'd to receive Him dead.

In Christ, bereaved one! for profoundest grief
Dwells the pure source of all divine relief;
To minds which echo thee, most dear thou art,
But oh! far dearer to thy Saviour's heart.

That living Flow'ret which thy God hath given
His love transplanted to a bower in heaven;
There, shall each grace to perfect beauty rise,
And bud with glory when it breathes the skies.

DIVINE SECRETS.

“Secret things belong unto God.”—Deut. xxix. 29.

Above, below, mysterious all
The moral facts our souls would scan;
And when some pageant lifts the pall
Which covers vast Creation's plan,
A thinking Titan with his godless mind
To shudd'ring Angels seems a monster blind.

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When David read man's glorious frame
Ecstatic awe o'erpower'd his view;
And, hymning forth Jehovah's name,
He trembled into words, how true!—
“How fearful am I, when by Love survey'd,
Moulded by heaven, and wonderfully made.”

Awake, what mysteries we enclose,
And when we dream, more wondrous far!
'Tween life and death our limbs repose,
And none can tell the truth we are;
Time and eternity then blend and meet,
As they will mingle at the judgment-seat.

But when from earth to Heaven we turn,
Pure faith is taught this truth to know,—
Proud wisdom must itself unlearn
By lisping childlike prayer below;
Content in darkness to adore His ways
With Whom 'tis glory to conceal their rays.

All Eye, all Ear, all Presence, Power,
In contact with creation's whole,
Closing the eyelids of each little flower,
Or bidding worlds around Thee roll,—
Essential Deity, Thou dread Unknown,
Angels would shudder to unveil Thy Throne!

And yet, deep mystery proves the light
From whence our reas'ning darkness gains
A lustre, which restores the sight
When blinded by some mental pains:
God is a Fact, from whose unfathom'd All
Eternity will not remove the pall.

And as our God alone discerns
Himself in Essence, truth, and will,
So faith from revelation learns
To bow before a mystery still;
For God Incarnate is an awful shade
Within whose depths the Church has mused, and pray'd.

And what Thou doest, Lord, in life,
Is dark indeed to those who roam
Anguish'd, and worn by wasting strife,
Creedless in heart, without a home;—
Each grave that opens, and the friend who dies
Some pang of mystery to the soul supplies.

Why virtue droops, and Vice unveils
A blushless front of gain and glee,
Involves a problem which prevails
O'er sceptic Minds, who cannot see
That mortal life our education is,
And builds up final woe, or future bliss.

THE TWO BOOKS.

“You here have an order for prayer, and for the reading of Holy Scripture, much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old Fathers; nothing is ordained to be read but the very pure Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, or that which is agreeable to the same.”—Preface to the Book of Common Prayer.

Two Books we have, all other books above,
Which breathe the wonders of Incarnate love;
Each to Jehovah points the living Way,
And both inspire us to repent, and pray.

Perfect as peerless, pure and most divine,
Where God in language moves through every line,
Where each calm word enrobes celestial Grace
And man and Deity meet face to face,

Is that Shechinah of almighty speech
Where dwells The Spirit, time and souls to teach,
Beneath whatever name 'tis known, or heard,
Scripture, or Bible, or the Sacred Word.

With this, comparison must be profane:
Yet, laud we not in too heroic strain
Britannia's liturgy, for matchless power
To guide the conscience through its perill'd hour.

Calm deep and solemn, chaste, and most sublime,
Breathing eternity, yet full of time,
Pure as seraphic lips in heaven desire,
And fervid as the souls of saints on fire

With rapture,—is the Litany we love:
Sickness and sorrow both its blessing prove;
And oft have mourners in the heart's despair
Found a deep refuge for dejection, there.

A healing softness, and a holy balm
That book pervade, like inspiration's calm,—
Subdued intensity and sacred rest,
Which never fail the lonely and distrest.

For, oh, we need not morbid passion's force,
Nor hurried feeling, in its reinless course,
Nor problems dark, for reasoning pride to scan;
But what we need is,—mercy-tones for man.

The sun-bright Angel, who adores and sings,
Covers his brow with reverential wings;
And perfect Saints, who most their God adore,
Sink low in feeling, ere by faith they soar.

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The past breathes here the poetry of time,
And thrills the present with a tone sublime,
Till buried ages of the Church's youth
Rise, and re-charm the world with ancient truth.

Thou glorious masterpiece of olden Prayer!
Deeper thy wisdom than cold words declare;
Ever opposing some recurrent sin
States act without, or Churches feel within.

Not light men want, but love,—exceeding all
An Age of idols dares devotion call;
A childlike frame of purity and peace,
Where Christ in conscience works divine release.

And who the archives of thy past can see,
Nor recognise the eye of God o'er thee,
Presiding there with providential gaze
To fit thy teaching for these fallen days?

Creedless and proud, high-cultured, full of self,
Greedy of gain, and worshippers of pelf,—
Our wealth grows pagan as the world gets old,
And none seem heroes, but the bad and bold!

Then, bless we God for prayers where men are taught
Low at the Truth to bow rebellious thought;
Each lawless working of the will to chain,
And yield to God the bosom's throne again.

Repentance, bitter, stern, profound, and true,
Obedient hearts, which yearn to dare and do,
Whate'er the doctrines of the Cross command,—
God send the Church, for this apostate land!

Rather as servants, than as sons we bow
Down at the shrine of awful Godhead now;
Though heirs of grace, in Christ our own we claim,—
How have we barter'd our baptismal name!

Hence sad humility and fear become
The sinful Race who leave their Father's home;
Cries of dejection, more than chants of joy,
Returning prodigals may best employ.

Nor be forgot, that England's Prayer Book gives
Pure, full, and plain, The Word by which she lives!
Not dungeon'd in some dead and alien tone,
But where the peasant-boy perceives his own.

There, lisping Childhood, when it longs to learn
Truths for which prophets bled, and martyrs burn,
In such pure liturgy of grace may find
All which can feed the heart, and form the mind.

For common prayer, if catholic and true,
Must not be tinged with individual hue,
But be proportioned to the soul of Man,
In deep accordance with redemption's plan.

Lord of the Church! of sacrament and rite,
In this may all adoring hearts delight,—
“How apostolic is the root of all
Our Church maternal would devotion call!”

The heart of Ages still within them lives,
Takes from the past, and to the present gives
That hoary spell which hallows thought and word,
And wakens feeling in its finest chord,

Since, not from Rome, but ancient Gaul we bring
The choral hymns our Altars chant and sing;
And many a word devotion dwells upon,
Hung on thy lips, thou loved and lone St. John!

Source of the Church! true Paraclete for all,
Long may such prayers on Christ for mercy call;
No deeper grace can Thy pure wisdom give,—
Than what our lips repeat, our hearts may live.

BAPTISM.

“The washing of regeneration.”—Tit. iii. 5.

“Born of water and of the Spirit.”—John iii. 5.

Thou little trembler, robed in white,
Nursling of Heaven! sweet neophyte
Before the font arriving,
The birth-dawn of thy spirit-life
With holy fulness be it rife,
While hearts for thee are striving
With God in prayer; that soon thy shielded charms
May rest secure in Christ's baptismal arms.

A silence breathed from God above,
A halcyon of celestial love

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Now broods with blest control,
Under the Throne of Him who came
In form as weak as thy young frame,—
Thrilling the inmost soul
Of all, whose unfilm'd eye of faith perceives
More than mere water on the forehead leaves.

Bright students of the ways of God!
Who, since Incarnate Mercy trod
The forfeit earth of man,
Bend your adoring eyes to learn
Truths deeper than your thoughts discern,
Shrined in redemption's plan,—
Ye viewless Seraphim! this rite attend,
And your calm watch with Christian worship blend.

Thou innocent! with man compared,
Thee hath eternal Truth declared
A child of wrath and sin;
But here, adopted, seal'd, and sign'd
By Him who hath redeem'd mankind,
For thee will now begin
That second Birth renewing grace imparts
Through this deep sacrament to infant hearts.

Oh, if Emmanuel ne'er had said
“Let children to Mine arms be led,”
Parents might shrink aghast
A creature into life to bring,
Whose soul the curse of God might wring
When time and earth are past!—
But for the promise of baptismal grace,
What sight so fearful as an infant's face?

All that a birth of Flesh can give
What is it,—but a doom to live,
A heritage of woe,
A destiny of guilt and death,
A curse inhaled at every breath
Life breathes from sin below?
By grace uncharm'd, destruction seems to lower
On the sad babe, ere Time can count an hour.

But at the Font where Jesu stands
With greeting heart and gracious hands,
Ready to clasp the child,
Pale infant! there, a breath from heaven
May to thy dawning soul be given
Through Him, the Saviour mild,
Who, while He thunders from His regal Throne,
Loves the sweet age on earth He call'd His Own.

The Root of sacramental grace
Is the new Adam of our race,
The Man Divine who bled;
Hence cometh our celestial birth,
Beyond the parentage of earth,
From our generic Head,—
The Lord from heaven, whose vital Spirit gives
All force by which the mystic Body lives.

More than our first-born parents knew
Before they proved to God untrue,
Works that celestial gift;
Angels, who on their trial stood,
Exceed not this majestic good
Which may thy soul uplift:
A child of God!—can seraphim aspire
To aught sublimer in their sinless choir?

From thee the curse is roll'd away;
Thy soul's new birth begins to-day;
A cov'nant right to all
Immunities and blessings high,
The heart of Jesus can supply
To those who heed His call:
Now to the stillness of thy soul is given,
Like breezeless water, to reflect a heaven.

A City and a Crown are thine
If thou be true to grace divine,
Bearing thy destined Cross;
Lo! on thy forehead lies the seal
Where symbol both and sign reveal
That Life must gain by loss:
Firm to thy vow, beneath God's banner fight,
And keep thy panoply of graces bright.

Christ guard thee now, thou little one!
His glory be thy shield and sun
Whate'er thy lot may be;
Incorp'rate with the Church thou art,
To thee may life and love impart
The truth which maketh free;
New prospects ope, new principles and powers
Rise into play, and rule thine unborn hours.

And, if in secret darkness lie
The seeds of heaven which none descry,
Dormant and cold within,
May God's reviving Breath awake,
Till such dark bond of slumber break,
And grace o'ermaster sin:—

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That latent germ baptismal life bestows
Doth oft in elder hearts its buried power disclose.

How water, word, and grace combine
To work creative spells divine,
In vain let Reason ask;
Children are awful mysteries,
Within whose depth no spirit sees
But His,—who owns the task
Of overcoming, through celestial birth,
That born corruption, which is bred from earth.

Hence! reas'ning sceptic, harsh and cold;
For never will thine eyes behold
Tokens which sense defy:
Nature in secret works her plan,
Her growth escapes the sight of man;
Then, hush thy heartless cry,—
As if the weakness of the water could
Deprive the soul of sacramental good.

True wisdom loves the word “obey,”
And loving hearts but live to pray,
Believing Christ as true;
Safe in His arms, thou mother mild,
With hope baptismal place thy child,
And doubt not He will do
A work mysterious for that infant soul,—
Baptising nature with divine control.

Henceforward, as a Priest and King,
Thy babe becomes a sacred thing,
An heir of grace and glory;
Mother! to whom such charge is given,
Now rear it for that throne in heaven
Scripture unveils before thee;
So discipline the dawning mind and will,
That each some priesthood unto God may fill.

“Our Father!” now thy babe may cry,
Whose Elder Brother rules the sky,—
The Man Divine, who came
By bleeding Merit to atone
For all the guilt sad Earth must own,
And give the child a name,
New as the sacramental Birth, which then
Through water and by Spirit dawns in men.

Blest Privilege! both deep and pure,
Which might our trembling hearts assure
That we are Christ's indeed:
Our Robe baptismal,—keep it white,
And never wilt thou lose the right
Which marks the heavenly Seed
Of all who, grafted into Christ by grace,
Born in the Church, are God's adopted race.

Oh, that on Man's expressive brow
Baptismal pureness beaming now
Maturer life might see!—
How should we bless that rite of heaven
Where grace is felt, and sin forgiven
By mercy, full as free;
And find God's Spirit ne'er that man forsook,
Who kept in age, the vow his childhood took.

But soil'd and stain'd by sin and crime,
Corruption deepens with our time,
And thus our hearts o'erlay
That seed of Heaven, the Spirit granted
When the new Birth was first implanted
On our baptismal day:
Yet not for this, let Souls profanely try
From faith to hide what holy means supply.

Rather, repent we! till the soul
Shall yield to that sublime control
Which heals the broken-hearted,
Who in atoning Blood begin
To bathe the soul, and wash their sin;
Mourning they e'er departed
From that blest Lord, whose interceding love
Reigns on the glory-throne He rules above.

CATECHISM.

“Who gave you this name? My Godfathers and Godmothers in my Baptism.”—The Catechism.

If they who stand beside the source
Of some famed river's mountain-flow,
And ponder on its trackless course
To meet the far-off waves below,
Can feel a pensive influence born,—
Then how, on each Sabbatic morn,
The men of God must inly feel
A musing depth of voiceless zeal,

When at the fountain-head they stand
Of youthful Life's untraced career,
As round them groups an order'd band
Of earnest children, shy and dear,—
Encircled thus, to hear and speak,
With glist'ning eye, and glowing cheek,
Those Truths baptismal, pure and high,
Which link our being with the sky.

“Go, feed My Lambs,” The Saviour cried
To Peter's large and loving heart;
And ever have those words supplied
What cannot from the Church depart,—

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A pastoral right to form and feed
God's nurslings, by His grace decreed
To taste the food of heaven, and live
By all His word and wisdom give.

What, though the catechiser teach
Unfathom'd truths, which far outsoar
All raptured saints and seraphs reach
When most their minds a God adore,
Love brings a light that truth explains
Beyond what science ere attains,
As Heaven by intuitions mild
Gleams on the conscience of a child.

If faltering tongues of bashful youth
The careful Priest by welcome bland
Attune to some almighty truth,
Beyond a child to understand,
Is not the most gigantic Soul
Which awes the world by deep control,
A mental babe with lisping mind,
Compared with angels in its kind?

The Gospel o'er the cradle bends,
And gently leads each growing child,
Nor at the Font its mission ends,
But follows it with accent mild;
And so, by her maternal voice
The Church directs the infant choice,
And loves to dream on each white brow
The mystic Cross is mirror'd now.

God shield each lamb, and little one!
For soon the world before it lies;
And cold were he who looked upon
Those cherub lips, and chasten'd eyes,
Nor felt his heart-pulse throb with prayer
That all the Sponsors did declare,
When first the white-robed babe was given
To Jesu's arms for life and heaven,

Hereafter each in faith may keep.—
Alas, the infant-grace departs;
Enough to make mild angels weep
Already stains some youthful hearts!
Wilder'd by many a temper wild
Wilful and vain becomes the child,
Till robes baptismal wear no more
The whiteness at the Font they wore.

Yet, Shepherd of Thy blood-priced fold!
Since Thou didst stand at mother's knee,
And as a spotless Babe behold
The virgin brow, which bent o'er Thee,—
Thy spirit hung on each high word
An echoing conscience loved and heard,
While patriarch, saint, and prophet brought
Lessons to rear Thy human thought.

Lover divine of children dear!
In Whose fond arms an infant lay,
E'en now the Church believes Thee near
To hear their budding accents pray;
And oh! if child-born mem'ries still
Thy depths of sacred Manhood fill,
Look from Thy Mercy-Throne on high,
Hear children lisp, and mothers sigh.

Nor let the stern and sceptic Mind
'Tween Christ and childhood take its stand,
And, reas'ning here with falsehood blind,
Presume to hold His secret Hand
Who works by love's mysterious law
A grace cold reason never saw;
And by His Spirit, present now,
Recalls the child's baptismal vow

Back to the soul, perchance with fear;—
And opes the spring of thought within,
Until religion's vestal tear
Is dropt o'er some remember'd sin:
New hopes awake, and conscience burns
With hallow'd blush, as more it learns,
Who at the font His welcome gave,
Still longs in heaven the child to save.

Lord of simplicity and truth!
A scene like this the oldest need,
To summon back regretted youth
And bid them with compunction bleed:
A babe-like spirit, born of love,—
What purer gift can Grace above
Grant to the Saint, who lives below,
More childlike for the heavens to grow?

CONFIRMATION.

“Do ye here, in the presence of God, and of this congregation, renew the solemn promise and vow that was made in your name at baptism, ratifying and confirming the same?”—Order of Confirmation.

Lord of the blissful worlds above,
Incarnate Light, celestial Love!
Send from Thy prayer-moved mercy-seat
The grace of grace, Thy Paraclete.—
A touching sight for solemn tears,
Like prophecies of future years,
Under the aisles of hoary fane
Is now enacted: Faith, and Prayer,
O'er each young conscience come and reign,
And, with The Spirit, bless them there!

Round the rail'd altar humbly kneeling,
On each bow'd form, o'erfraught with feeling,
Anointed Hands will soon be laid;
And righteous prayers be duly pray'd;

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Nor doubt we that a Gift divine
Shall with the mitred priest's combine.—
An ancient Rite, replete with glory,
By meek apostles used and loved,
Church of the Lord! is now before thee,
By martyrs blest, and saints approved.

But oh, ere yet that sealing grace
God's death-pang won to bless our race,
In answer to this prayer descend,
“Arise, O Lord! this child defend,
Daily increase that store divine
Of love and light which make him Thine,”—
Member of Christ! thou child of God!
Thy central heart examine now;
The narrow way if thou hast trod
Enquire, and ratify thy vow.

To you baptismal life was given
By virtue of its Source in heaven;
And vow'd ye were, for Christ and Cross
To count the world as painted dross:
The burden now 'tis yours to bear!
And can ye unto Christ declare
That awful vow your spirits bore,
When ye, as helpless babes were brought,
Baptised, and made for evermore
God's own to be, in will and thought?

Thou, of thy feeble Self afraid!
Trembling with truth, a pensive maid,
Through thy fringed lid the tearful gaze
The secret of thy soul betrays;
And through that veil of virgin white
Soft tremors reach thy mother's sight.
Pale candidate! though pure and young,
Thy heart is trepid unto tears,
And with a saintly horror wrung,
Lest sin betray thine unborn years.

“Your promise, can ye here renew?”
That deep reply, “O Lord, we do!”
Oh, is it not an awful word
By God and list'ning Angels heard?
Heaven echoes back the binding vow,
And Fiends abash'd, before it bow;
And writhe in darkness, thus to see
A virgin heart which grace inspires,
So consecrate to Deity
Its faith, its feeling, and its fires.

Yet, at the altar kneel in prayer;
Tremble, but hope, for Christ is there!
He will not fail this burden'd hour
To strengthen thee with loving power;
And when confirming hands are spread
In faith upon thine awe-bow'd head,
Thrill'd into speechless thought, whilst thou
Wilt feel Eternity draw nigh,
The heart of Him who hears thy vow
In heaven responds to every sigh.

He knows thee, loves thee, reads thy soul,
Can circle thee with blest control;
And in return for thy vow'd heart
Himself by gift and grace impart.
But, ah, mistake not; hectic zeal
Is but the flush warm fancies feel:
Of these beware, impassion'd Youth!
Nor heed what thrill'd emotions say;
They only love, who live the truth,
And walk in peace the perfect way.

Poetic thrills may soon depart,
And barren oft, some burning heart;
Emotions in themselves are nought
Except to Christian action brought;
Nor is one glorious promise given
To souls which only sigh for heaven.
High feelings to the sense appear
A creed the world may beauteous call,
But Christ hath made this doctrine clear,—
One daily cross transcends them all!

MARRIAGE.

“An honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church.”— Form of Solemnization of Matrimony.

Although the birthday of this God-made earth
Seraphic harpers rose to sing,
Whose choral ecstasies proclaim'd its worth
And caused Heaven's crystal arch to ring,
All was imperfect, till a Priest was there
Creation's mouth to be, and mind, and prayer.

Vain seem'd the splendour which no eye could see,
The melody that none could hear;
But when God utter'd, “Let Mine Image be,”
Creation thrill'd, as Man drew near;
And what was meaningless, and mute, and dead,
Warm'd into life, and glow'd beneath his tread.

As man for earth, so Woman was required
The crowning grace of man to form;
Alone, not even Adam was inspired
To feel creation's godlike charm:

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And thus, faith hears this fiat from The Throne,
“It is not good for man to be alone.”

So ere the fall, a Priest almighty brought
A bridal Eve to Adam's heart;
A living Echo to the love he sought,
A help-meet never to depart,
A true companion for the soul to be,
Fresh from her God, in faultless purity.

Marriage is holy. May no heathen-fire
Around the Christian altar flame;
Impassion'd souls let saintliness inspire
And hallow hymeneal claim:
Belials in sense are minds by flesh o'erruled,
And love is vice, unless by virtue school'd.

How hush'd and holy is yon bridal scene
Before God's altar!—view'd by one
Who e'er in faith to Cana's home hath been,
That marriage-group to gaze upon,
Where the pale water blush'd itself to wine,
Moved by a miracle of grace divine.

Stainless in vesture, as the lilies white,
With flower-buds in her wreathèd hair,
Fearful and trepid, with o'erawed delight
Lo, the young bride is kneeling there,
Her dropping lids in mild dejection bent,
And young heart with a holy conflict rent.

In that pure breast what garner'd feelings play
Like pulses with mysterious beat!
To think sweet Girlhood now hath wing'd away
And Love must quit a calm retreat,
Sacred to thought, by friends and forms no more,
And truths, which made the reeling heart run o'er!

It is not, that a voiceless dread awakes
Suspicion, lest her choice be wrong;
No blighting vision o'er the future breaks
To which both guilt and grave belong:
Yet, sadness looms around her like a spell,
As oft in marriage-chime there seems a knell!

Our life is mystery; and the brightest joy
That flushes round a feeling heart,
Seems coldly shaded by some dim alloy
Doom'd never from man's world to part:
True mirth with mournfulness is oft allied,
As living babes suggest the babes who died.

And she, yon bridal Star of beauty now,
Oh, marvel not, as there she kneels,
That ere the wife can dawn upon her brow
Back to bright girlhood fancy steals;
Dead joys revive in tombs to fancy dear,
Melt through the heart, and mingle with a tear.

Last eve, at halcyon twilight's dreamful hour
When none but God the soul could see,
She pray'd and ponder'd in her girlish bower,
And sigh'd, young Past! her thoughts o'er thee;
Flower, fruit, and pathways, all instinct with truth,
Seem'd to accost her like the spells of youth.

She mused on what her spousal Life might fold
Within its undevelop'd scene;
On wings of love recall'd the times of old,
And wept o'er all bright hearts had been;
And scarce perceived the pensive moonlight throw
Its calm cold lustre on the lake below.

But, maiden! ere thy sacred ring be worn,
Beyond a mother's purest gift
The Church hath up to Heaven's high portals borne
A prayer, which shall thy soul uplift
To heights of bliss, serene as brides attain,
Whose wedded hearts are thrones where Christ will reign.

Souls are espoused by every hallow'd claim,
If wedlock far diviner prove
Than mere clay-throbs, which boast the common name
Of what Flesh means by mortal “love:”—
Christ and the Church are shadow'd out by this,
And cast heaven's radiance round an earthly bliss.

VISITATION OF THE SICK.

“Bear our heavenly Father's correction; there should be no greater comfort to Christian persons, than to be made like unto Christ, by suffering patiently adversities, troubles, and sicknesses.”—Order for Visitation of the Sick.

Sermons in sickness heaven can preach,
When pangs and penalties may teach
What custom rarely sees,—
That health is mercy next to grace,
And should inspire a sinful race
The God of health to please.

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Strange! if our hearts be so accursed
That nothing, save a gift reversed,
Can make men prize their good:
Blessings look dim which seem to stay,
But brighten, when they wing away
From souls who Christ withstood.

So is it with the fields of youth,
The shrines of tenderness and truth
And all fresh Boyhood proved,—
When we survey the scene no more,
Or dream to life the dead of yore
Whom once we fondly loved,

Oft does the inward blush arise
To think, how calmly we could prize
Redundant mercies, then!
We marvel, why our love was cold,
And boyishly our past behold
Now we are wither'd men!

Parental bowers of peace and home,
And lanes our truant steps did roam,
Make landscapes in our soul;
While votive tear-drops Truth can shed
O'er imaged graves, where sleep the Dead
Whose eyes our hearts control.

Thus longs atoning love in vain
The past should o'er the present reign,
That what was once, might be;
But youth, and all young hours possess'd,
In thine abysmal darkness rest
Thou pall'd eternity!

And thus, in sickness when we lie
With languid pulse, and fever'd eye,
Pining, and pale, and lone;
While throes of secret anguish burn,—
Love through each throb would have us learn
The truths we ought to own.

Remember'd blessings round us throng
We valued not, when health bloom'd strong,
Which challenge holy tears;
And if chance-gleams of skyey blue
Some half-unblinded window through
Confront our pallid fears,—

How does the distant landscape seem
Apparell'd by poetic dream!
Till fancy yearns for fields,
Brooklet and forest, bank and wood,
And each green shrine where solitude
Religious silence yields.

But what transcends the all of this,—
On the sad couch of pain we miss
Christ's hallow'd courts of grace;
Where Litanies divinely call
From blending souls, which prostrate fall,
For God's uplifted Face.

Not seldom hath the sainted chime
Of sabbath-bells become sublime,
Yet mild, and melancholy,
When pensive Languor, far away
Has heard their ebbing dream-tones play,
In sickness, sad and lowly.

Like Zion's harping saint it cries
“To thee, oh Lord! my spirit flies,
And fain before the Shrine
My kneeling heart wonld humbly pour
The chanted praise I hymn'd before,
In courts of grace divine.”

But, sacred Mother, bring release;
Come, lift the latch, and with soft “Peace!”
Enter the sick man's room;
O'er that pale brow Thy cross did seal
Shed the soft dews of balm that heal,
And light each haunted gloom.

Far better thus with Thee to hie
And hear a saintly mourner sigh,
Than run where feastings reign;
Wisdom, beyond the schools to reach,
Thy heaven-breathed words of solace preach
To Hearts subdued by pain.

Counsels divine, in tone serene,
Varied with grave rebukes between,
Thine Office now imparts;
And there beside yon dying bed
The Body and the Blood are spread,
Which feed our famish'd hearts.

Lord Jesus! Thou art present there
Entempled in each awful prayer;
The room our altar is;
Angel and saint we realise,
And vision with prophetic eyes
Scenes of seraphic bliss.

Go, man of pleasure, sensual Thing!
Whose life-boast is to laugh and sing;
Be ours the chamber lone
Where prayer and musing sickness meet,
And find before the Mercy-Seat,
What health has never known.

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Here may authentic priests, O Lord,
Thy grace dispense, and soothing word,
Like almoners for heaven;
And teach oblivious hearts a lore
Thy peerless martyrs taught of yore,
When conscience heard, “forgiven.”

If health have joy, the sick partake
This boon divine,—for Thy dear sake
To suffer, not complain;
And, ere the sun of life go down,
Beyond their cross to see the crown
Of kings, with thee who reign.

BURIAL OF THE DEAD.

(VILLAGE FUNERAL.)

“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”—Order for the Burial of the Dead.

The bells are tolling with a dreamy chime
Which melts and mingles with the air around,
Mourning for her who died in vernal prime,
Queen of the village by her virtues crown'd.

Last week she bounded, full of girlish life,
Fleet o'er the turf, elastic as the breeze,
Radiant as morn, with bloom and beauty rife,
Fresh as the wave which gambols on the seas;

But Christ recall'd her for His home on high
To harp in glory God's Incarnate love,
Ere guilt had waken'd one remorseful sigh,
Or earth untuned her for a heaven above.

Oh! gently lay her where the yew-trees wave
Their verdant darkness o'er some grassy tomb,
Where sunbeams learn the language of the grave,
Tinging their brightness with a temper'd gloom.

There shall the daisy rear its infant head,
And fairy wild-flowers drink the dew of spring,
While o'er the turf that greenly wraps the dead,
Autumnal Winds their plaintive descant sing.

'Tis the same spot her rosy girlhood sought
Where fresh from school, with bright companions gay,
In maiden fancy, free from troubling thought,
She work'd her sampler, or retired to play.—

Dear is the quiet village church to me,
Saxon, and simple, touch'd with tender glooms;
Lifting its widow'd form so gracefully
As though 'twere conscious of encircling tombs.

Whatever shade expressive clouds can throw,
Or hills wood-crested may around it cast,
I love to view it in the vale below
Connect the present with our storied past.

Oft have I paused, when lull'd by pensive bliss,
To hear the curfew mellow'd on the wind,
Waft the farewell of Day to scene like this,
Soft to the ear, as soothing to the mind.

But far excelling all chaste morn bestows,
The hush of twilight, or the harvest-moon,
Or what mere landscape to the minstrel shows
When silent thoughts their sanctity attune

Is felt,—when village-funeral winds its train
Slowly and sadly to some churchyard-gate,
And our deep Service tones its heaven-born strain,
To scatter darkness from bereavement's fate.

Hark! from the woodland floats the forward breeze
A low sweet dirge, yon village-maidens sing,
Whose white robes glisten through the waving trees
As on the dead to her last home they bring.

Nay, sob not, mother! for thy beauteous child,
Though like a tendril from thy heart it grew;
Eternity she felt, ere Time defiled,
Or made her soul untender and untrue.

And thou, hoar'd grandsire! with thy grief-worn face,
Oft did the prattler on thy knee recline,
And hold up features Fancy loved to trace,
Which matrons told thee, in thy youth, were thine;

I see thee now, with tott'ring step advance,
Wan are thy cheeks, and drops of aged woe
Bedew thy visage, and bedim thy glance
As onward to the grave the mourners go.

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But One is present, whom no eye can see,
Except by faith, and that is Christ the Lord!
And “Weep not,” childless mother, comes to thee,
If thy heart open to His gracious word.

Thou blessed Ritual! throbs of Jesu's heart
Still in thy tones of thrilling mercy live;
When yawns the tomb, most wonderful thou art,
By echoing all God's inspirations give.

The “Resurrection and the Life” is near,
By Spirit present, and in love as deep
As when He touch'd the young man's open bier,
And gently bid wild Anguish not to “weep.”

As o'er that grave the “dust to dust” awakes
A dismal echo in the bleeding soul,
How the damp earth-clod on the coffin breaks,
Till the deep tides of inward anguish roll!

Yet o'er the tomb heaven's canopy unfolds,
And hark! these words of soothing magic sound,
While Grief looks upward, and by faith beholds
The Lord of life and resurrection crown'd,—

“Blest are the dead, who in the Lord depart:
Yea, saith the Spirit, for their pangs are o'er;
Serene as heaven Christ keeps the sainted Heart,
Whose works are ended, and who weeps no more.”

CHURCHING OF WOMEN.

“We give thee humble thanks, for that thou hast vouchsafed to deliver this woman thy servant, from the great pain and peril of childbirth.”— English Prayer Book.

In mother's love there hides a spell
Maternal hearts alone can see;
Transcending all that tears may tell,
Or man could be.

Far down within the spirit's deep
Her fountains of affection lie,
Like currents which in darkness sweep,
Nor face the sky.

Tender abyss of peerless love!
To heaven's omniscient eye-glance known,
The Woman-born, Who reigns above,
Thy claims doth own.

A pillow'd Babe on mother's breast,
Beneath Him throbb'd the Virgin's heart,
And, Woman! thou on Him canst rest,
Whoe'er thou art.

Oh! magic force of nature, felt
Far as the sun and sea extend;
Beneath whose law all beings melt,
All spirits bend.

The Indian mother, stern and strong,
Cradles her infant on the tree,
And wildly chants her loud wood-song
For lullaby.

And the stern negress, seeking food,
Fastens the babe upon her back,
To roam each rocky solitude
Or lion's track.

Nor scene, nor change, nor earth nor sky
Enfeeble Love's maternal force;
Distance and time before it die,
Whate'er their course.

A passion this, so pure, so deep,
That while bereavèd fathers moan,
Oft wordless mothers only weep
In heart alone.

But why did God such love create
Unquenchably supreme, and pure?—
Because from mothers Spirits date
Their curse, or cure.

Thus saints and martyrs, heroes, all
Whom wond'ring Time delights to praise,
In heaven itself may still recall
Their infant-days,

When learn'd they from maternal lips
Lessons of holy love and prayer,
No clouds hereafter could eclipse,
Nor soul's despair.

Then, pallid mother! draw thee nigh,
Perill'd by pangs, but saved in birth;
And gently lift thy downcast eye,
To heaven from earth.

The virgin whiteness of that veil
Becomes thine inward purity,
And hides upon thy forehead pale
What angels see

Of blissful worship,—deep and mild,
Which mothers for their first-born pay,
And Love, with conscience undefiled,
Offers to-day.

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Thou art the parent of a Soul,
The mother of a deathless Mind!
And Christ to thee imparts control
For this design'd.

Self-discipline, and prayer-born love,
And persevering wisdom calm
Breathe, Holy Spirit! from above
With soothing balm;

That from Thine altar she may part
In saintly mood, screne and high,
And worship Christ with yearning heart,
Until she die.

Mothers are more than mines of wealth
If God-devoted Souls they be;
And what makes Empires' moral health
And purity

They guard, For, when do Nations sink
Into dark graves of sin and woe?—
When Church and State no longer think
What debt they owe

To christian mothers; unto whom
Both God and nature have consign'd
Existence, from whose dawning bloom
They nurse mankind.

COMMINATION.

“Is much to be wished ------ to the intent that being admonished of the great indignation of God against sinners, ye may the rather be moved to earnest and true repentance.”—Prayer Book.

As Time grows old, the earth from heaven recedes
More distant far;
No Conscience bleeds
To feel the burnings of that inward scar,
Which so discolours o'er with sin
Th' apostate soul we bear within.

A period was, when God and angels came
So near to thought,
The Church's name
With the fine strength of holiness was fraught;
Her frown east midnight where it fell,—
Her blessing wove a guardian spell.

But now, we boast an intellectual blaze
That scatters all,
Cold Reason says
Before the majesty of Mind should fall!
Dazzled with light, but dark in love,
Sin loathes the truth which looks above.

Sensual and proud, a Belial age is ours
Drunken with pride,
And grasping powers
By which the godless will is gratified;
Greedy of gold, athirst for pelf,
And seeking heaven in worshipp'd Self.

Thou fond admirer of a holy time
When earth touch'd heaven!
And thrills sublime
Were to heroic saints and martyrs given
Of something purer than blind Sense
Can to a coarse rude age dispense,—

Marvel no more that Discipline lies dead;
Self-will reigns now;
Laurels, not ashes, crown the creedless head
And wreathe man's brow:
For sackcloth, singing-robes are worn,
And none but saints now seem forlorn!

When God was fear'd, due fasting calm'd the blood;
With naked feet
Then Penance stood
Low at the porch, the pastoral Band to meet,
Sackclothed by shame, with downcast eyes,
Sprinkled with ashes, heaving sighs:

Severely gracious, thus the Church's rod
Wielded o'er sin
The claim of God,
And o'erawed penitents, to weep within,
Driving them forth with scalding tears
To feel the pangs of righteous fears.

So with mount Ebal's menace Zion's song
Was well combined;
And true as strong
The healing power with which it calm'd the mind:
Indulgence then was not in vogue,
Nor framed its pleasing decalogue!

But with Her holiness, the power departs
A Church can wield
O'er chasten'd hearts,
Led by subduing love themselves to yield
To mild Correction's lawful charm,
Which keeps the soul from sinful harm.

Too oft our “church” is self-election now—
Our creed the will;
And few avow
That Christ is throned in christian temples still,
A Presence and a Glory there
Receiving praise, and hearing prayer.

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Awake! awake! thou Arm of God, awake!
Put on thy strength,
Thy fear forsake
Church of our fathers! be Thyself at length;
Bride of The Lord, a Mother kind,
Watchful, but not to error blind.

Spirit divine! in this her trial-hour
Of sinful dread,
Inbreathe a power
That shall to glorious Duty lift her head
Whose panoply is ardent prayer
Which more and more each gift should bear.

And we, as children of our Mother dear,
In evil days
Oh, let us fear;
And in our lentine gloom on Ebal gaze,
And as the tenfold curses roll,
Let each, O God! subdue the soul:

For, art Thou not a sin-consuming Fire,
Awful as pure
In Thy dread ire?
Never may sense our godless mind allure,
To think that hell alone can burn
In fictions, which dark fancies learn.

Mercy, Lord Christ! most infinite Thou art:
But judgment true
Will cleave each Heart
That will not dread Thee in some darker hue,
Before Whom prostrate worlds must fall,
And worship Him who sways them all.

So, when the priestly Comminations roll
In thunders deep,
Till each awed Soul
In the hush'd centre of pale conscience weep,
Our sackcloth let repentance be,
Remorse—the ashes God can see.

So will lost Penance in such hour revive;
Sorrow for sin
In prayer will strive;
Till, wash'd and whiten'd by the Lamb within,
The heart-renew'd God's Word descries
Piercing, and pure as angel-eyes.

Back to the world, in penitence and prayer
Then may we speed:
If wounded there,—
Then look we upward, while our spirits bleed;
For, on The Throne there beats a Heart
In all true grief that takes its part.

PRAYERS AT SEA.

“Glorious Lord God! at whose command the winds blow and lift up the waves of the sea, and who stillest the rage thereof.”—English Prayer Book.

Fond mother, with thy wakeful ear,
Hark, how the storm-blasts through the welkin roll!
Thunder alarms the breast of guilty Fear,
And arrowy lightnings glance from pole to pole.

Louder and louder sweeps the gale!
Fierce, full, and large, the hissing rain-drops fall;
And midnight Terror, with emotion pale,
Begins in secret on her God to call.

Calm as a flower yon nursling lies,
Rock'd into silence on thy cradling breast;
Yet doth thy bosom heave with unheard sighs
Which move the spirit into sad unrest.

But not for thy domestic bower,
Or those who sleep within its guardian-shade,
Art thou awake at this convulsive hour
To hear the crash wild Elements have made.

Yet rides thy heart the rolling deep,
Toss'd on huge billows in tumultuous swell,
And voiceless tremors through thy bosom creep
For thy lone sea-boy, loved at home so well!

But lately, on thy breast he lay
His head in fondness, parting for the sea,
And would not brush the manly tear away
Which flow'd from boyhood, and which fell on thee.

And now, amid the shrouds aloft,
Perchance he grapples with the creaking mast;
Yet can Remembrance hear a blessing soft,
And feel thine arms maternal round him cast.

Mother! The Church confronts the waves;
Her litanies can lull their angry roar;
And He who watcheth o'er the ocean-graves
Can make the sea as tranquil as the shore.

Christ on the waters, forms a Home
For all who trust Him in the tempest wild,
Far as the pilgrims of the deep can roam,
Or billows lullaby a sea-born child.

Safe is thy darling in this hour,
Dearer to Heaven, than mother's heart can know;
Calmly entrust him to that sleepless Power,
Deepen thy prayers, but let not doubts o'erflow.

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Mirthful and bright, thy sea-boy ran
Around thee once, though garden, grove, and field;
But now, emerging into ripen'd man,
Conscience and creed their sainted influence wield.

Precious, yon Bible!—'twas thy boon;
And, mother, where thy parting tear-gush fell,
Oft on the deck, beneath the sacred moon
He reads the warnings thou hast scored so well.

And that high book of hallow'd Prayer
A treasured sister gave, with farewell-kiss,
Oft will he clasp it on the ocean there,
And hail the sabbath as a holy bliss.

God of the winds, and waves, and seas!
Whom all the vassal Elements obey,
Whether by palmy shores the placid breeze
Soft as a seraph-wing, descends to play,

Or tempests heave the mountain-surge,
Flashing with foam beneath some lurid glare
While the drench'd mariners the vessel urge,
We thank Thee for our oceanic prayer!

Or, when the booming death-guns pour
Peal after peal, redoubling as they roll,
Or Victory shouts her patriotic roar
Of loud huzzahs from seaman's gallant soul,

Lord of the Deep! by Thee inspired,
Our Church for each some high-breathed prayer imparts;
That they whom Valour hath for conquest fired,
Should have the Prince of Peace to hush their hearts.

Seldom can inland-worship prove
Toned with such tenderness, divine as deep,
Like God's own halcyon calming from above
The wailing Hearts which o'er some lost one weep,

As when beneath the trancèd air
While moonbeams like a shroud enrobe the wave,
Soft fall the tones of that funereal Prayer
When parts the billow for a seaman's grave.

Tearful the watching comrades stand,
For round a dead One how intense the spell!—
Brushing large tear-drops with a rough-worn hand,
They look, but cannot speak, the word, “farewell.”

Peace to the Dead! he waits his hour
When the last trumpet shall untomb yon sea,
And with such life-blast all the waves o'erpower,
That risen dust shall soar to Deity.

GUNPOWDER TREASON.

“We adore the wisdom and justice of thy Providence, who so timely interposed in our extreme danger, and disappointed all the designs of our enemies.” Prayer Book.

Two Wills alone may cause our world to move,
Finite below, or Infinite above;
And all which reason and religion say
Points to the question,—“which should lead the way?”
Science the first, but Faith her God will call
Alpha of each, and Omega of all.

God is in history! an almighty Soul,
A secret Energy, divine Control,
Will of all wills, yet leaving manhood free,
Binding our time with His eternity:
No chance can reign, till His dread promise dies,
And orphan'd Earth for vanish'd mercy cries.

God rules in history! read by this deep plan
Gone ages harmonise their truths for Man;
While he, unconscious of those secret laws
Which link the second with a Primal Cause,
Obeys each bias, acts his perfect will,
And yet leaves God supreme in purpose still.

So grant us, Lord, a providence to trace
Directing all things for Thy chosen race;
Kingdoms and kings, the palace and the cot,
Insect, or seraph,—none can be forgot;
For in the hollow of Thy hand repose
Atoms, and worlds; o'er each Thy goodness flows.

And well, on this day, doth our Church decree
Anthems of love, which heave our hearts to Thee,
Celestial Watcher! Whose soul-reading eye
Did from yon heavens the miscreant-plot descry,
And, by that wisdom saints exult to own,
Forewarn'd the Empire, and preserved a throne.

Ripe was the plan; each purpose deeply laid,
And Treason gloated o'er a Church betray'd;
A helpless Victim, soon to be destroy'd
Look'd Freedom then, to faction overjoy'd;
Sworn was the oath, the sacrament was taken,—
But England was not by her God forsaken!

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Praise to the Lord! let choral harpers sound;
Praise to the Lord! yet saints repeat around,
The Angel of Whose presence then was nigh
And bared foul Treason to the open sky,
Blasted her guile, and by protective charms
Shielded our Throne, and saved the Church from harms.

And mix'd with praise, let some remorseful prayer
The darksome burden of our guilt declare;
For what but mercies can outnumber sin?—
Whiten our hearts, atoning Blood! within;
Till, hallow'd by celestial truth, we raise
That living hymn where Life becomes a praise.

THE MARTYR-KING.

“Blessed Lord, we magnify thy name for thine abundant grace, bestowed upon our martyred Sovereign.”—Service for King Charles the Martyr.

Oh, burning plague-spot on the brow of Time,
The withering curse of regicidal crime!—
Mock'd and betray'd by treason-bands
And massacred by murd'rous hands,
On this day soar'd to endless fame
Ascending in Emmanuel's name
True to his creed, above man's impious charter,
Charles the revered,—the Church's royal martyr!

Who has not read, till heart and brain were fired
With holy wrath against Self-will inspired,
When Loyalty, inert and cold,
Parley'd before the bad and bold;
When faction, treason, falsehood, all
In one combined on heaven to call,
Baptised religion into Murder's cause,
And sanction'd regicide with sacred laws!

Alas! for country, church, and crown, and creed,
When martyr'd Principle must burn and bleed;
Or else, a regal Conscience die
Into a mean and miscreant lie,
Forswearing all the truths that shine
With radiance drawn from truths Divine,
Because Democracy would dare to sing
Her psalm of blood o'er England's sainted king!

Oh! Thou, from Whom both king and kingdom draw
Their source, their wisdom, and undying law,
Now let our Church's sighs and tears
Soften the Empire into hallow'd fears;
For on her rests the curse of crime,
A sacrilege which burden'd time
And tinged our soil with that horrific stain,—
The blood of Monarchs, when by God they reign!

Who sign'd his warrant with an impious glee
Proved how satanic blinded souls can be:
As christian, monarch, husband, friend,
Can time to us a nobler send?
His failings rose from junctures bad
Which might have turn'd an angel mad:
Passion ran high; and lust for lawless power
Raged like a fiend in that chaotic hour.

Ruler Divine! Whom heaven-born souls obey,
At least Thy Church on this remorseful day
That murder'd Prince may well recall,
Who prized her glories more than all;
For whom his royal spirit strove
With anguish of exceeding love:
True to her martyr-king, this day be kept,
And weep for him, who oft for Her had wept.

Nor be forgot, that Crimes historic teach
Warnings profound which may the wisest reach.
Dead Sins are living preachers now;
And weeping hearts of prayer avow
That, God! except Thy grace prevent,
Men still are on some madness bent:
Wisdom they want, and meekness more, to own
The sceptred lordship of Thy boundless Throne.

RESTORATION OF THE ROYAL FAMILY.

“The Great Rebellion, and all the miseries and oppressions consequent thereupon.”—Prayer Book.

Friend of the friendless! Thou art there
When throbs a soul with silent prayer
In hours of sadness holy;
And viewless Angels hover nigh
With placid brow and pensive eye,
To watch our melancholy.

“Stand still! and your salvation see,”—
Duty and blessing both from Thee,
Lord, here may faith discern;
Submission is that saving power
Which glorifies Earth's darkest hour,
Could Love the secret learn.

The Cup that Jesus bow'd to drink,
Though feeling start, and flesh may shrink,
Disciple! thou must drain;
A suff'ring Head each member thrills;
We conquer, by enduring ills,
And bleed before we reign!

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Thus, when dead Ages we untomb
And wander down their peopled gloom
Beholding what hath been,—
A patient mind and quiet heart
Have ever filled the Hero's part
In history's troubled scene.

Submission, passive, deep, and pure,
Alone has proved a matchless cure
For all the Church has borne;
Her watchword was, “Stand still! and see
The unbared arm of Deity,
Since thou art unforlorn.”

Thus when apostate Creeds began
To blight the erring mind of man,
How meekly bore his wrong
That five-times banish'd Saint, who kept
The truth unstain'd, while ruin swept
In Arian blasts along.

Still breathes a theocratic air
In church and creed, if God be there,
As Faith will ne'er deny;
Unweapon'd, save by inward grace,
Believers move with martyr-pace
Beneath the fiercest sky.

The worst of kings seems nobler far
Than mad Rebellion's impious war,
In havoc, blood, and fire;
The sin of witchcraft,—brand it well,
Its birth-seed is the pride of hell,
By which dark Fiends aspire!

A Nemesis for injured kings
Or soon, or late, atonement brings,—
Dead Empires this declare;
Some thunder-blast of whelming wrath
Will burst upon that Nation's path,
Who robs a kingdom's heirs.

And ever, as this day returns
Oh, Saviour-god! our spirit learns
Where safety true resides;
That not our merit, but Thine arm,
Not foresight, but Thy prescient charm
Our refuge still provides.

In orphanhood the Church may roam,
And crownless monarchs need a home
To exiled anguish lent;
Base faction with Iscariot-breath
May shout for dungeon, rack and death,—
But Faith can be content.

Content to watch, and weep, and wait,
And bear the ban of iron Fate
With uncomplaining heart;
Her patience is a holy strength
Subduing crime with prayer at length,
Which Christ and Grace impart.

Sun of the Church! Thou Saviour bright,
A glory gilds the darkest night
Affliction can endure,
When Thy pure Spirit sheds a ray
On saints who keep the narrow way,
Like angel-paths secure.

THE ACCESSION.

“Our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria as on this day set over us by thy grace and providence, to be our Queen.”—Prayer Book.

This world is like that Creature vast
The royal dreamer had to face;
Whose head from burnish'd gold was cast,
But when you reach'd the talon'd base
Vile metal there commenced its lower sway,
And slowly crumbled into worthless clay.

And who like monarchs this can know,
At whose accession all things wear
The richness of a regal glow,
And triumphs of that festive glare
A coronation and a crown present,
With all the pomps of shouting Welcome blent?

The spangles on the mourning-dress
Worn for some princely head, which lies
Cold in sepulchral nothingness,
Are scarce removed from courtly eyes,—
Ere happy mourners to another king
Their venal chant of vaunted homage sing.

Alas! for Kings, if state and throne,
If splendour and monarchal pride
Were all that royal minds could own,
Or crowns and fawning courts provide:
A fate like this the soul would overpower,
And harrow princes in their calmest hour.

The kingdom of the mind exceeds
Whatever realms and rank impart,
And oft a monarch inly bleeds
To find himself a friendless Heart,—
In crowded loneliness to speak and smile,
And be unechoed in his thoughts the while.

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And hollow dreams must oft surround
The pageantries of royal state;
Deceits and dangers there abound
While secret anguish gnaws the great:
Peasants can weep, but Princes dare not show
The aching centre of their voiceless woe!

Flatter'd by many, loved by few,
Before them group and gather all
Who seek to veil each covert-view,
Their serpent tongues the “country” call;
Too oft fair loyalty is glozing speech
Gilding the cause cold Self desires to reach.

Hence, Thou for whom a realm is kept
O'er which the sunbeams ne'er go down,
Wider than that the eagles swept,
When Rome became a huge renown,—
The Church anoints thee with her unction now,
And drops the crown upon Thy jewell'd brow.

While thrones descend, and empires shake
'Mid loud convulsion fierce and far,
And strife and civil discord make
Pale Europe rock with coming war,
God of our glories! 'tis in Thee we own
The deep foundations of a christian throne.

Lift we our heart-breathed hymn on high
To That incarnate King of kings!
Under Whose providential eye
A coronation-anthem sings
Each patriot soul, who Church and Crown can see
Reposing grandly, when they rest on Thee.

The life-blood of a loyal heart
Flows bravely through our British veins;
Nor shall this hero-truth depart
From cot and palace, shore and plains,—
That Kings on earth a regal shadow throw
Of Him, to Whom all worlds subjection owe.

ORDINATION.

“The congregation shall be desired, secretly in their prayers, to make their humble supplications to God.”—Rubric for the Ordering of Priests.

Saviour of spirits! if the burden'd life
Our ransom'd being into action bears,
Be ever with some wordless mystery rife
Which mocks what Adoration's lip declares,

Oh, is it not, when Truth's devoted hour
To Thine Own altar some young Levite leads,
And the high gift of Thine absolving power
Endows the Priesthood for celestial needs?

Yes, long as awed remembrance can remain
Shall I that everlasting moment feel,
When in the silence of St. Asaph-fane
Heart, soul, and conscience did these words o'ersteal,

“Receive Thou, for Thy priestly work divine,
A promised unction from the Holy One;
Anointed be thou at this hallow'd shrine,
Watchman of Zion! lo, thy work begun!

“Absolve for Christ the sin pure grace forgives,
For Him reserve what He himself retains;
Dispense the Food by which the spirit lives,
The ruling Sacrament wherein He reigns.”

And when a stillness, thrilling, rapt, profound,
Breathed from the depths of each adoring Soul,
Eternity seem'd closing all around
And shaded conscience with divine control.

With seven-fold gifts a Grace did here descend
Hearts to illumine with celestial Love,
And to each priest below some unction send
Perfumed with incense from The Priest above.

Let Faith believe, and ever hope and pray
Lord of the Temple! Thou wert nigh, to bless
Each Shepherd, vow'd to feed thy flock that day,
And fold them safe in life's vast wilderness.

To guard, premonish, and with truth provide
The Saviour's Body here on earth which roams;
Pure unto death, to preach The Crucified,
And beckon pilgrims to their sainted homes,—

Such was the Charge we messengers received,
Such the high call our stewardship obey'd;
Woe be to us! if truths were unbelieved,
Our bosom prayerless and the Church betray'd.

Thus, living Shepherd of immortal Sheep!
If to our pastoral work the soul was given,
Though for sad errors all must wail and weep,
Still, let us hope there breathed a gift from Heaven.

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Years since have roll'd, of trial, change and grief,
But still that Ordination-vow is heard;
And what can soothe us with sublime relief,
“But, “I am with you!” oh, Incarnate Word?

And, blent with awfulness of faith and fear,
For each young watchman then for Christ ordain'd
Prophetic Fancy sketch'd some quiet sphere,
Where souls for Jesu might be sought, and gain'd.

Visions, perchance, of rural cots retired
Hover'd around the priested hearts of those
Who, ne'er by sad ambition inly fired,
Haunt the lone hamlet where the poor repose.

Such was the scene our peerless Herbert loved,
Pictured in quaint and quiet Walton's lines;
Which Hooker sought, and Hammond's taste approved,
In whom the image of a Pastor shines.

Yet, little boots it, what our destined place
In the large vineyard of the Lord may be,
Weave but the spells of Thine ordaining grace,
And Time and Scene are lost, O Lord! in Thee.

Whether in haunts of fever, homes of gloom
Where squalid Woe retreats, and yearns to die,
The toil-worn pastor cheers some tatter'd room,
And calms the anguish of a mourner's sigh;

Or, haply down where greenwood-dales retire
Through hawthorn-lanes he wends his thoughtful way,
What time pale sunset gilds the village-spire,
And seeks the cottage where he comes to pray,

Wherever duty, discipline and care,
Faith, hope, and meekness grace his onward path,
A Shepherd finds his flock, and feeds them there,
And the rich promise of his Master hath.

Spirit of Light, of pastoral love and peace,
Divine Sustainer! send Thine unction now;
And teach the watchman, time gives no release
To light the burden of a priestly vow.

But bear thou up, and bear thou nobly on!
To warn the wicked and the saints to guide,
Till thou be summon'd where the dead have gone,
Who lived for Duty, and for Jesus died.

EUCHARIST.

“The most precious Body and Blood of thy Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.”—Communion Office of the Church of England.

Banquet of bleeding Love, by Christ prepared,
Feast of all feasts! we turn to thee,
Which dying Grace alone declared
Manna of immortality;
For, when the tomb-call must at length arrive,
The Dead shall feel thee in their dust alive.

There, sacrifice and zeal in one combine,
With brotherhood of blissful love;
And faith-born feelings, most divine,
Alighting from their Source above:
Creeds and commands, and penitence and prayer,
With purity and pardon,—mingle there.

And who can celebrate the mystic Rite,
Perfect and pure, predestined Lamb!
Nor feel their glory of delight
Who realise the dread I AM,
And worship Him with tender awe intense
In the deep shade the words “Do this,” dispense?

List, now the pealing organ-swell is o'er
And hymnèd chants dissolve away,
And through yon temple's archèd door
Cold worldlings seek the din of day,
Sublime the hush! as though the Dead drew near
On balanced wing, our beating hearts to bear.

Let the stoled Priests their order'd station take;
The Shrine of sacrifice and prayer
Lord Jesus! Thou wilt not forsake,
But be our felt Atonement there;
Renew'd by faith, and realised in love,
While o'er Thine altar broods the Mystic Dove.

Oh! rapt Communion, which can raise the soul
To the clear heights of sin forgiven,
Scatter the spirit-clouds that roll,
And feed us with the food of heaven,—
Thine is the hour, when dead and living meet
In blended homage at one Mercy-seat!

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Who comes with cold or criticising heart
The outward elements to scan,
In this high Feast can have no part,
Where God comes down to sup with man;
Seeds of Eternity within it lie,
Which bud on earth, to blossom in the sky.

Though bread look bread, and water water seem
To carnal vision dull and cold,
Yet sacraments outsoar the dream
Of those who nought but sense behold:
Faith is the eye by which believers view
Christ in the tokens of His Presence true.

Thou Nourishment for all baptismal souls,
A food high Angels cannot share,
The vastness of thy charm controls
The hearts which palpitate with prayer
Into an awe profound,—but full of grace,
For God incarnate, bleeding for our race.

Incorporate with Emmanuel's Body all
By sacramental union grow,
Who Christ their Resurrection call;
Though sinful dust they seem below,
Faith more than dying Flesh in Man can see,
And in The Lord's our true eternity.

Soul of all Rites! mysteriously sublime,
By whom the fainting Church is fed,
Though veil'd in garbs of sense and time
We know Him, as he breaks the bread!
When Christ dispenses that almighty food,
“Receive my Body and partake my Blood.”

Refreshment, pardon, and renewing grace
God's eucharist to each imparts,
That prints a reverential trace
Of Jesus on their sainted hearts:
And who are they who need no heavenly gift
High o'er the world their sinking hearts to lift?

Humility and hope this Feast inspires,
Chastens the mind, and calms our fear;
And cools the uncontrollèd fires
Of those who fancy heaven is near,
Dreaming they stand on Zion's topmost place
Long ere they learn to wind around the base!

A green oàsis in this herbless life,
This desert lone of dreary hours,
Where Time foregoes each warring strife
And Love renews her languid powers,—
Proves the blest Eucharist, to all who know
The weight of this mysterious life below.

Thy strength'ning Presence, Lord! we pilgrims need,
Sinful, and oft with sadness worn;
For here our bosom'd sorrows bleed
Till even pleasures grow forlorn,
And hues sepulchral robe the world around,
Which looks like Lazarus in his grave-clothes wound.

And what a bulwark for The Church hath been
This feast of sacrificial Love!
For time has no dark error seen,
The Bread and Wine could not remove;
Christ and the creatures, matter, grace, and mind,
In these pure symbols meet, to bless Mankind.

Dove of the Church! Thou Paraclete, descend,
And such anointing grace impart,
That round Thine altar each may bend
With chasten'd will, and contrite heart;
Not with a conscience, such as earth-slaves feel,
But touch'd like Peter, with impassion'd zeal.

Thus we adore Thee, Thou almighty Priest!
Prophet of hope, salvation's King;
Here where the lowest and the least
May learn the song of heaven to sing,
“Worthy The Lamb o'er men and worlds to reign,
Who back to God redeem'd lost souls again!”

GOD SAVE THE CHURCH.

“I speak concerning Christ and the Church.” Eph. v. 32.

God save the Church! and guard Her free,
Whom Christ ordain'd on earth to be
A sacramental guide and friend,
Our creed to mould, and heart amend.

God save the Church! from Christ She came,
And proved Her apostolic name
When Rome's Augustine vainly tried
To get her free-born faith denied.

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For long before the Danish clan,
Or Saxon, o'er rent England ran,
The monks of Bangor move in glory
Through the stern page of British story.

God save the Church! sectarian Mind
In prayerless reason bound and blind,
From Her serene repulse hath met,
Whose crown remains unsullied yet.

Science and learning, art and song,
Around Her name and nature throng;
Hero and sage, and saint and martyr
Have gloried in Her heaven-seal'd charter.

So, when I read th' historic past,
And see how persecution's blast
By rack and dungeon, fire and hate,
In vain besieged her queenly state,

Present and future both appear
Enlink'd with her sublime career;
In whom unchanged by friends or foes
The apostolic life-blood glows.

God save the Church! we challenge all
Who English archives dare recall,
To match her sainted roll of men
Whose lives recall'd St. John again.

Parochial Watchmen, pure and high
Whose worth and wisdom near'd the sky,—
Eternity enshrines their name
Who won their crowns through fire and flame!

Howe'er ungrateful Time forget
On earth to pay the lauding debt,
Delighted Angels watch'd below
Their counterparts in pureness glow.

God save the Church! whose rites control,
Chasten, subdue, and calm the soul;
Something of earth, but more of heaven
To all Her prayer and praise is given.

Time and eternity appear
To melt the sigh, and move the tear,
As oft her liturgy of love
Lifts man below to God above.

Majestic, too, her haunted shrines,
Where sentiment with stone combines:
Chantry and choir, and arch, and nave
Where lie the buried pure and brave,

Breathe mute, but magic eloquence,
And through the eye to soul dispense
A wordless power of inward prayer,
Born of the creed,—that God is there.

Nor be forgot our ivied fanes
Which crest the hills, and dot the plains;
Where gothic roof and graceful tower
Wield o'er the heart a witching power:

So hush'd and heavenlike seems the spot
That time and turmoil are forgot;
And Nature her lone sabbath keeps
Where child, or village patriarch, sleeps.

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God save the Church! for rich and poor
Alike expands Her gracious door,
Who from the cradle to the grave
Watches the Souls Christ died to save.

The peerage of the Church are those
In whom the Saviour's image glows;
And in the poorest, grant, that we
God's noblemen by saintship, see.

There, prince and peasant, man and child,
Learn saving wisdom undefiled;
And nought is hid by Godhead spoken
To conscience bruised, or spirit broken.

But, most because the Word of Heaven
Is purely to the people given
In British language, broad and free,
Church of my Fathers! love I thee.

God save the Church, and save the Queen!
Mitre and Throne have ever been
To weal and woe alike related,
By Truth revered, and Treason hated.

God save the Church! be this our cry
Both while we live, and when we die;
For, rail Her foemen as they will,
The Church is England's glory still!

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LUTHER:

OR, ROME AND THE REFORMATION.

181

CENTRE OF REVEALED TRUTH.

From everlasting was The Christ of God
Veil'd in the purpose of His love divine.
But, God hath no historian; archives none
His past eternity to us presents:
For, who the motions of His voiceless Will
Can number? Saint and seraph here, alike
Are baffled, and the dread I Am adore
With that religion silent prayer begets,
When mind created on Jehovah dwells.
Enough for man this truth august to know,
Redemption was no after-thought, by sin
Awaken'd from thy depths, celestial Love!
When first Humanity the fiend obey'd:
For, in the councils of almighty grace
Thy Priesthood, oh, Incarnate! was design'd
Before creation out of nothing sprang.
But when, at length, the hour predestined came,
Eternity a form of Time assumed,
And from His throne of perfect glory stoop'd
The Second in the Godhead, and Himself
In mortal limbs and lineaments array'd;
Then did Emmanuel, on this blighted earth
Of sin and suff'ring, body forth such grace
As made our orb a wonder-scene of worlds,
By there achieving what the God Triune
Determined, when His master-work was plann'd,—
The vast Atonement blood divine unveils!

Who can express Thee, O Thou great Profound
Of glory, where all miracles in one converge,
And God Himself in concentration shines
For ever? Thee The Father only knows,
And truly fathoms. Thee the Spirit crowns
Sole Prince of Earth, and Paragon of Heaven
In Whom the counsels of salvation reach
Their glorious summit. Thee bright Angels bend
Around, and ever, with enchanted gaze,
Centre and strain their intellectual eyes
Full on Thy wonders,—dazzled, awed, and dim
With Thine excess of all-exceeding love!
Thus, how shall erring man, begirt and bound
With mental darkness, to the heights of grace
Incarnate, like one clear and cloudless view?—
For in the secrets of Thy Cross we find
A principle, where God alone on God
Is acting,—where the Heart almighty beats
With mercy, and the pangs of Calv'ry prove
His attributes, in full pulsation met.

Expression dies before a theme like this,
Completely master'd; but, the heart of Faith
Breaks into language with outbursting love,
And, taught by scripture, thus presumes to cry,
“Thou art, O Christ! our intellectual Sun
Throned in the firmament of deathless mind;
The radiant Centre of almighty love,
The mystic Vine of everlasting life,
While the dread Trinity in Thee is hymn'd
By saints and angels, with commingled praise.”

And, all we have, and are, or hope to be,
Hangs on Messiah, as the holy source;
Who shades with mercy that consuming fire,
Which else creation would at once have smit
To ashes, when the curse for sin was due.
But in the Cross, and by the Cross perused,
How featured with significance sublime
And beautiful, this breathing World becomes!
Creation, by the plastic charm of faith
Transmuted, like a boundless temple stands,
Where all is eloquent of Christ The Lord.
Lo! the broad earth a solemn area seems,
And the arch'd sky a bended ceiling grows
Whose lamps are planets, in their burning shrines;
Wonder is priestess; and the mingled choir,
The organ-music roll'd from waves and winds,—
While, deep with worship, swells th' unconscious voice
Of Nature, when her blent hosannas rise
To bless the Architect and Source of all.

And say, what merit must The Blood express,
That guilt from God in vindication hides?
Oft in the night, when musing thought awakes,
And well remembers all the world has been;
How Sin hath never yet a sabbath kept,
From the first pulse in man's apostate mind
To the last throb in Treason's bosom now,—
Well may the heart, with big emotion charged,
Empty itself in adoration's tears:

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And mind devout, with awed amazement, think
How infinite must Calv'ry's pleadings be
Which soften judgment, and sustain a world!

Thus, every mercy our creation holds,
Born of His merit, bears Emmanuel's name;
And through His rent and riven side descends,
Reaches all hearts, and radiates all homes
With christian brightness. Hence, in Jesu's Cross
We glory; all our creed round That revolves:
For there, to heights of unimagined grace
God's Covenant the wond'ring mind attracts
And welcomes, till the o'erwrought heart succumbs
In mute religion at their mystic base.
And therefore, while in nature God we greet,
And in the wrappings of this outer-world
His garments witness, that from sense infold
A Splendour Infinite, a felt Unseen,—
Yet not o'er these the heart's most epic strain
Lift we of lauding rapture. Though the sun
Burn like a mystery of living beams,
Filling our eyes with reverential light
To watch him; though the moon's poetic brow
Be lovely, arch'd with most celestial grace,
And yonder meek and melancholy stars
Thrill like the pathos of eternity
Our pensive bosom,—not in these we boast,
Though beautiful: nor in the sacred Deep
Who chants his lone and everlasting hymn
Of waters, like the psalmody of waves
In worship; nor in all the wondrous things
Which Nature in her realm of varied life
Concenters, can the God-taught spirit trace
Matter for largest triumph.—Nor can Mind
Such rev'rence claim, as that dread hour demands
When burst thy heart, Emmanuel! into blood
For sin, and back the forfeit-heaven regain'd.

CHRISTIANITY

Thus, “God forbid!” a rapt Apostle cries,
In aught we glory, but the Cross sublime;
Which, planted in this wilderness of worlds,
Hath bloom'd with second paradise to man.
And think, (unless the terror of that thought
Palsy thy mind, or stop the mental pulse
From beating,) think what Man and Earth had been,
If never from Emmanuel's veins had roll'd
The tide of Merit, our atonement drew!
What but a curse, a prison, and a pang
Had reason, life, and apprehension proved?
Amid the howlings of the Law unkept
Encompass'd ever, like incarnate hells
Men would have lived, have wept, blasphemed, and died!
Then, why not, Priests of sentiment and song,
Yourselves baptized, baptize your pages too?
Oh! let the Cross your admiration deck
With solemn beauty, when o'er nature's types,
Her hues and scenes, poetic fervours rise;
For, all creation is with Christ inspired.—
And ye, who through the world of mind delight
In thought to wander, lo! The Christ is there;
Reason is but a ray from Him derived,
That sparkles only with the light He makes.—
Monarchs who rule! remember, lawless will,
But for His pangs, would rank and order crush;
And ye, who legislate for church, or crown,
From the deep science of Salvation draw
Canons of truth, by creed almighty sign'd;
For there, both law and love together form
A perfect Archetype, in Whom they blend.
Or ye, who in domestic bower enjoy
Heaven's fairest miniature, a virtuous home,—
'Tis from the homeless Man of Grief ye draw
Your sweets of gladness, when the hearth-sides glow.
And Christian! what art thou, but Christ in man,
By creed and conduct, character and life
Envolved, and still envolving? Thou in Him,
And He in thee,—thy life but echoes His;
Thy foremost graces are refracted gleams
Directly from His perfect glory cast.
But, all thou art can faith alone depict:
Experience only is description here,
And that, internal:—since the life of truth
Is learn'd by feeling, and by love acquired:
Mere language only is a dead pretence,
Aping the life which love alone can reach,
Or e'er embody. But, if thus the life
Of faith imperfect, far beyond the soar
Of speech, to altitudes of secret awe
Itself exalteth, who, by climbing words
The Lord of Being in His life of faith
Presumes to follow? There all language ends,
As tenses in eternity are lost!
Be this enough for sinful man to know,
In Christ the sum and substance of all truths
Are met, and manifest; in Him, full-orb'd
Religion ev'ry saving virtue finds:
For, there alone the heart of God unveils
Its vast expression: in the Face Divine
Of Him, the arch-Elect, before all worlds
In secresy of Love divine embraced,
In Christ, the counterpart of Godhead, shines
That moral radiance which Himself repeats
By humanised reflection. There alone,
The fallen Spirit, with an eye unfilm'd
By grace, from sin and sensual darkness freed,

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Pardon and peace in God for man can find.
All other media which inventive Pride
Presumes to fashion, are but barren dreams:
Man's deity is only dust refined,
Himself re-cast in some ethereal mould,
A finite into infinite enlarged,
And this dilation for a God mistook!
But Thou, Emmanuel! art the Way we come,
The Truth we know, the endless Life secured,
The all in all of God to us reveal'd,
And us to Him restored.—Creation's book
Lies blotted o'er with sin's perplexing stain,
And no erasure can Thy name detect,
In full divinity of sound and sense
Conspicuous, or complete. And, what can Law,
That dreadful paraphrase of Justice, speak
To lawless Guilt, but condemnation dire?
And, how can Reason in her light resolve
That problem, deep as God, and dark as guilt,
How sin is punish'd and the sinner spared,
When falls the sabre of celestial Wrath,
And in one flash both heaven and hell illumes?
Or say, can conscience, whose rebuking voice
In jealous echoes of the jealous God
Is ever sounding through the soul within,
Can this alarmist, to the shrinking gaze
Of guilt, the trembler, mercy's plan unfold?
Ah! no: in Christ alone we Godhead find;
In Christ alone His character evolves;
On Calv'ry's hill God's attributes were throned,
And reach'd a climax when their Lord expired.

MYSTERY OF SUFFERING.

Throughout the universe of God there reigns
A ruling harmony of love and law;
And thus all worlds, by secret link allied,
Together one melodious system make,
Wherein each orb a fated portion fills
In due relation to the boundless whole.
But here, let Reason stand, where Mary stood,—
Under The Cross; nor catechise the work
The filial Word completed, when in flesh
He suffer'd; and His suffering Body taught
How God on time eternity reflects,
And in the mirror of the church's life
Doth glass the features of a sovereign Will,
Secret, and not to faculties create
In flesh, or spirit, e'er to be reduced.
But still, we rest not; and our reason longs
Madly to question what no finite mind
On earth can answer, when our musing eye
Roves o'er the moral waste the church hath been,
And dares to criticise what God hath done
Or Christ permitted, in this world of ours!
For what, but good and evil, strangely mix'd,
Seems the dark mystery of the church's doom?
Here saint and sinner, grace and nature blend;
Angels and Fiends for blood-earn'd souls combine;
All passions, principles, and powers remote,
(From the high daring of celestial hearts
To the low horrors of consummate guilt,)
All strive with each, and each with all conflicts.
And, who can wind his labyrinthine way
Through shades of providence, like these, profound?
We see in part; but when perfection dawns,
Both part and whole shall then Thy name uplift
Almighty! then, the choir of chanting Worlds
Around salvation, one stupendous tide
Of deepening rapture shall for ever roll,
And God His own great Vindication be.

But here, we lisp the alphabet of grace
Alone, and scarcely that at times pronounce.
Infants of time, we yet have much to learn,
And more to suffer, ere we find resolved
The paradox of wrong the church endures.
If to each pang some purpose we could link,
Patience might sing, where now vexation sighs
For wisdom; but the Vision tarries yet!
Between God's purpose and our pang there lies
An Infinite, where baffled Reason, blind
With gazing, would in vain some landmark see.
But grief, when sanctified, is God to man
Himself imparting, for some end conceal'd
Deep in the core of his eternal plans.
Here may we rest; beyond we cannot rise;
Or, on the infinite Unknown we dash
The mind to madness, and our faith to fears.
Perchance, our World to higher Being proves
A Platform, where the truths of heaven enact
Their natures, and to angels wisdom show.
Or, hearts on earth are moral schools to heaven,
And pangs below are preachers to the skies,
While glory shines around each sainted tear
Which faith, or feeling, in our warfare sheds.

Perfect through suff'ring!—such Emmanuel was;
And can the members of that mystic Head
Refuse to echo what their Master felt?
A suff'ring Image must the church become
If with her archetypal Lord complete
Her oneness prove; and what in pangs the Head
Endured, each member must on earth repeat
By thrilling counterpart in truth, and tone,
Of all He suffer'd. Nor in heaven forgot,
Though there unfelt, Messiah's woes remain;
Still through His splendour point the piercing nails;
There in His glory yet the gash is seen;

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E'en on His throne, a sacramental Lamb
Types to eternity the Manhood slain!—
And, like her Bridegroom, must the Bride elect
From suff'ring deep to endless glory climb.

We see by part, but suffer in the whole;
There lies the myst'ry! there our flesh complains,
Hurt feeling staggers, and the heart recoils.
Meanwhile, in vain would Souls their doom avoid,
Or mould, or master: each, in turn, must weep,
Writhe on some rack, or drink the cup of woe
Down to the dregs, if such their God present.
All have their pangs, their penalties, and pains,
Some thorn to fester in the spirit-life,
Or, fret the mind to feebleness, or fear
Unholy. But, the Comforter abides!
And while to sense the church an orphan seems,
The Father pities, and His children find
A secret pasture in the promise left,
Though all look herbless to the eye of men
Carnal, or clouded. Nor will more be felt
Than Wisdom, for some destined rank above
Apportions; cross and crown related are;
The one is suffer'd, as the other shaped,
Responsively. And as the artist's hand
Plastic with genius, to some picture gives
Line after line, and touch on touch repeats,
Till colours image what his mind contains
Of beauty,—so, in faith, experience feels
Pang after pang, till God at length transcribes
That viewless copy of celestial life
His purpose imaged, ere our souls were born.
Or even, as the skill'd refiner bends
O'er his fused metal, in the furnace laid,
And heaps new fire, till back its molten face
His own returneth, by reflection bright,—
So in the flame of hot affliction, man
By Heaven in myst'ry is a while retain'd;
Till, purged of dross, and purified from sin,
At last the metal of the heart is clear,
And back on Deity by love reflects
The radiant image which His glory casts.

WISDOM COMES FROM WOE.

We learn by suff'ring, while by faith we live,
And graces brighten as our griefs expand:
But, where indeed, between the woe endured
And height of glory in a heaven to come
Of being, is the true connection found,—
Baffles our reason, in this cloud of flesh
Now to unfold. Yet this, at least, we learn,
The Head of manhood was a suff'ring Head,
And all His members, by their mystic pangs
But echo back what Thy pure bosom felt,
Eternal Archetype of life and faith,
Whom all things emblem! Here alone, there dawn
Truths which illumine what might else appear
Darkness infernal, deep, and black, and dense
To suffocation. Here, some aims profound,
Whose roots are in eternity's result,
Arrest the tear, and calm to chasten'd awe
Secret rebellions of the soul within.
The good shall suffer; yet, if goodness be
To nature fall'n, but the noble part
Of trial, when by sin-consuming grace
Pure love is deepen'd,—not for this repine
The brave adorers of The Crucified!
They glory rather in the racking fires;
The more of grief, the more of God they have,
And do (what seraphim have never done)
Suffer for Christ!—man's pure distinction this!
His high prerogative, His peerless crown
Appointed. Devils for themselves endure,
And angels, quick as sunbeams, glide and go
At His command, and own Him Liege, and Lord;
But Virtue, by the church's heart reveal'd,
Mounts to a range sublimer, and excels
Beyond the burning Watchers round His throne:
For, she can suffer; and by suff'ring learn
Lessons transcending what the angels teach.

And more than this th' afflicted church evolves.
From Abel's cry, to Luther's convent-groan,
Self was our ruin; into that, direct
From God, creation's first apostate fell;
And out of that, alone can Flesh arise,
By will surrender'd, crucified, and slain,
And by the sovereignties of Will Supreme
Master'd, and moulded. Thus, the saints are train'd
From strength to strength, by educating woes,
To loathe that vampire of creation—Sin!
With hate celestial, and on God to live;
While in that Book, whose promises, like stars,
Rule in the night, a radiant charm they have,
O'er all the dim perplexities of doom
Beaming mild comfort, through the blackest woe
Which palls the christian, or a church portends.

GRIEF AND GLORY.

Glory to grief! when thus for God endured;
'Tis but the pang a Saviour's bosom felt,
Re-echoed, and by peerless faith prolong'd.
The Man of Sorrows forms no men of smiles;
Our hearts must bathe in His baptismal fire,
Or ne'er be whiten'd; Cross and Crown were His:

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We grant it; but, in order each He took;
The first He suffer'd, ere the last He wore.
And as the Bridegroom, must the Bride be form'd,—
Repeat His Cross, and then reflect His Crown;
That Like on earth, in heaven alike may prove,
In grief below, in glory, one above!
So, in eternal consciousness to come,
Salvation will be sympathy entire
'Tween Head and Members—unity august!
When Christ in each will Self from all absorb.

Meanwhile, to us, Eternal Spirit! grant
The wisdom meek, which lives on truth divine,
However veil'd; a waiting mind impart;
And in our weakness show our strength to dwell.
Like as of old, a pensive Learner sat
Low at His feet, and listened to her Lord,
Absorb'd and self-renouncing, be our soul
Before the Cross in docile rev'rence bent.
For Thou, O Christ! amid the fires hast been;
And o'er the flames, which on Thy church advanced,
The promise, “with you, till the end of time,”
Breathed like the spell of some almighty breeze,
And cool'd them into impotence, or calm.—
No! never hath the murd'rous hoof of Hell
Trampled the heart from out the church of heaven;
Within her, life, when all seem'd lifeless, glow'd;
Within her, grace, when all seem'd graceless, dwelt;
Within her, truth, when all seem'd truthless, reign'd;
While, ever and anon, amid the gloom
Which Priest, or Tyrant, or the Devil made,
Star after star in radiant grandeur rose
To shame the midnight of the soul away.
But, chief o'er all the galaxy of lights
To stud the firmament of christian fame,
Shone Luther forth,—that miracle of men!
A gospel-hero, who with faith sublime
Fulmined the lightnings of God's flaming Word
Full on the towers of Superstition's home,
Till lo! they crumbled; and his with'ring flash
Yet sears the ruin with victorious play.

But thou, who o'er the church a thoughtful mind
Haply in moods of mournful awe hast bent,
Revere the fact, whose deep foundations lie
Far in the Infinite, beyond the wings
Of faith, though plumed with apostolic strength,
To follow:—Christ hath God with man conjoin'd
By union so unutterably close,
Divine, unfathom'd, and for ever firm,
That sun shall wither, all the stars wax pale,
Mountains depart, the heavens to air dissolve,
And the dread universe itself shall die,
But, this Conjunction shall unweaken'd stand
When Time is dead, and Nature drops extinct
Into her grave eternal. Boundless truth!
Which out of Deity all other dwarfs
To less than littleness, beyond compare.
All unions type it; all connections preach;
Nature, and art, and pure affection's ties
Are fill'd with emblems, shadowy, dim, and faint,
Th' exceeding glory of this bond to tell:
Wherein, by unity of mystic power,
Christ and His Church are into One transform'd
Colossal Person, Spirit, Life, and Frame,
And Fellowship, and Feeling. Let that Church
Suffer a pang—the Saviour feels it too!
Touch but a Member, and you thrill the Head
With shock electric, on his Throne perceived;
And therefore, Tyrants! when ye wound a hair
Of God's anointed, up to heaven your wrong
Ascendeth, and the heart of Jesus strikes!
Rays in the sun are not so brightly close,
Trees to their root are not so firmly knit,
And streams to fountains not so close allied,
Body with breath, and both with soul combined
Together, as the Church and Christ cohere.
Hence Earth, nor Heaven, nor Hell that fights with each,
The Bridegroom from his sainted Bride can tear.
Thy Maker is thy Husband, Church elect!
And rich eternity thy radiant dower.
And thus, we lift the shout, and song of faith
Victorious: for the Oneness is so true
Between the members and their living Head,
In vain creation may be tax'd for types
Or teaching shadows, to portray its power,
Since mere analogy in light is lost;
Upward, and heavenward illustration mounts,
Till, near the throned Almighty, overawed,
Faith cannot soar, but folds her duteous wing,
Backward recoils, and trembles into prayer.

HUMAN NEED, AND DIVINE SUPPLY.

E'en like an instrument, whose chorded depth
Enwraps the unheard music, but awaits
A master-touch of some awaking hand
To make it vibrate, did the high-strung world
Of truth and feeling for impulsive souls
In solemn hush abide, beneath whose sway
The moral harmonies of ransom'd mind
In mingling swell of holiness, and love,
Once more should waken.—Luther was that soul

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Predestined! he, by grace divinely arm'd,
From the foul grave of papal sin and gloom
The buried Gospel came to disinter.
And let us laurel his intrepid brow
Who faced alone (by all save Heaven unarm'd)
That priestly Giantess of pamper'd sin,
Whose throne was blasphemy by pride upheld;
That brazen Arbitress, whose sceptre robb'd
The King almighty of the soul's domain,
Even papal Rome! who still her wine-cup drugs
With damning charms, and deadly spells; and dares
Within the heart's pantheon yet to shrine
Dark falsehoods, which redeeming truth bemock,
The soul profane, and parody our God.

Eternal hallelujahs rise! and ring
That Grace around, which call'd the champion forth,
And with heaven's panoply his spirit clad
For combat. With the energies of hell
To grapple, with incarnate fiends to fight,
Behold him summon'd! On that lifted brow
Heroic calm indomitably smiles;
And in that lion heart each pulse which beats
Throbs like an echo to the cheer of heaven.
Behold him! grateful Mem'ry, come and gaze;
See Luther, from eternity decreed,
Rise in the majesty of moral force
From superstition's grave to heave the world,
And bid it look upon the Cross, and live.

And oh! what marvels did that Mind achieve,
Which in itself a Reformation was.
For cent'ries, deep the night of falsehood reign'd,
Mildew'd the Soul, and manacled her powers
With fett'ring darkness; cloister'd Learning pined
In cell monastic; Science grew extinct;
The Bible moulder'd in scholastic rust;
That Fountain, from the Saviour's wounded side
For sin once ope'd, by sealing lies was shut;
And, 'stead of His bright garb which Mercy wove
Of perfect righteousness, by Jesu wrought,
Spangled with graces, rich as God's own smiles,
The filthy rags of ineffectual works
Clad the cold skeleton of naked souls:
While on his throne of sacerdotal lies,
The arch impostor, Satan's rival, sat
Self-deified, and ripen'd earth for hell.
Then, Luther rose; and Liberty and Light
The soul unbarr'd, and let salvation in.
Hark! the dead Scriptures, into life recall'd,
Harangue the conscience; lo, the Gospel lives;
Swift from the Cross infernal darkness flies:
Martyrs and Saints, like baffled mock'ries sink
To nothing, by victorious truth dispersed;
O'er fancied merit free redemption reigns;
And in the temple of a soul illumed
No venal priesthood, with parade of lies,
And sacraments of sin, can enter now:
There, Christ Himself by triple office rules,
King, Priest, and Prophet, on the Spirit's throne.

THE SOLITARY MONK.

The solitary Monk, who shook the World
From pagan slumber, when the gospel-trump
Thunder'd its challenge from his dauntless lip
In peals of truth, round hierarchal Rome,
Till mitred Pomp, and cowl'd Imposture quail'd,
And each false priesthood, like a fiend unmask'd
And stripp'd of light fictitiously assumed,
By some detecting Angel, shrunk dismay'd
And shiver'd, in thy vast exposure seen,—
Thee would I image, thou colossal Mind!
For what, though sad humanity's broad taint
Of weakness, here and there thy soul diseased;
Or, harshly quick, or, too severely loud
Some intonations of thy spirit rose;
Yet, in the greatness of thy glorious work
Right nobly art thou, like a second Paul,
Apparent, graced with apostolic zeal;
Waving that banner, on whose blood-stain'd fold
Thy name, Emmanuel! at each ruffling blast
Of conflict, beams with awful brightness forth.

Thee would I vision, and on Mem'ry's glass
Some traces of thy many-colour'd life
In lines of holy miniature reflect.
For in thy destiny our God we find
Himself expounding, by the truth unveil'd.
Upon thy mind, as some prophetic map,
Almighty love mysteriously engraved
An outline wondrous of the work decreed;
Thy moral Self a Reformation seems;
And in each phasis which thy soul presents,
An imaged counterpart of all we trace
Hereafter, in the world's vast scene evolv'd.
And therefore, Hero of a hundred fights
Celestial! morning star of Jesus! rise,
Rise in full radiance; through the cloud of time
Dart the rich beam of evangelic day,
And cause the Church's heart to glow with thee.

But yet, how low, to Reason's carnal eye
Which measures all things by the scale of sense,
The means appointed for the end pursued!
How strangely small those intermitting ways

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By which, to great results, God's wisdom moves!
Yet, once a manger did th' Almighty hold,
When first Messiah's human life-pulse beat
For our behoof. And were not they, who hurl'd
Philosophy from off her Babel-throne
To speechless ruin, and our rescued souls
To the rich fountain of celestial Blood
Directed,—were not they, the peerless Twelve,
Whose words like arrows pierced the heart of Hell
With fire and fearlessness, the low and weak,
Of man unlearn'd, but learn'd in much of God?
E'en so, from out a shepherd's mountain-hut
Far in the wilds of Alpine bleakness hid,
The Swiss apostle ran his high career;
And he, who, with the sun-like mind compared
That Luther in his flaming boldness show'd,
Soft as the moon in mellow radiance seem'd,
The mild Melancthon!—from a clanging home,
A martial workshop, dates his lowly birth.
And Thou! the Reformation's mental spring,
The Bible's loved redeemer from the cell
Where monkish falsehood barr'd its glory in,
Not from the loins which heraldry admires
Didst thou proceed; of poor, but pious blood
Wert thou; a simple miner call'd thee son.

PROLOGUE AND PREPARATION.

When God to matter gave the fiat,—Be!
E'en like an echo, heaven and earth arose,
The instant product of creative Will,
And Will alone. But when His hand divine
The great Idea, 'fore all ages form'd
Concerning Manhood, would in shape express,
Lo! in The Godhead consultation moves,
The Persons think, the Attributes confer,
And, “Let us make him!” is the awful Speech
Which symbols out to human sense, how vast
And wond'rous was the master-piece of heaven,
Who imaged forth the Trinity, when Man
Rose on the scene, as lord and light of all.

Thus Reason, here, may with Religion cry,
“Oh, what a Fabric eloquently deck'd
With strength and grace, our regal nature is!”
A mental structure, for whose living walls
Eternity and Truth foundations were.
E'en such is Man, when fully bodied forth
By daring energies of mental worth,
And virtue. Hence, when heroes pure and high
Rounded and finish'd into full-orb'd grace,
On earth at length are destined to alight,
E'en like some new apocalypse from heaven,
Truthful and deep, and most divinely touch'd
In faculty of heart, and mind, they show
In each high lineament the stamp of God.

And such was he, who burst the jail of thought,
Shaking each fetter from the dungeon'd soul
Of ages; and to 'nighted Faith restored
That creed almighty which the Cross enacts.
But e'en as Luther was through grace confirm'd,
And shaped in secret, by the truth applied
In the lone temple of his God-taught mind,
By man untutor'd,—so, the creedless world
A Hand eternal and an eye unseen
By gradual prelude did prepare, and guide;
That when the true Regenerator came,
A platform might await him; and his Work
Fit audience find, to welcome its advance.

And means there were, successive, stern and slow,
By which, as organs, Providence achieved
Each consummation that His will forecast.
Time after time, some lone Elijah lifts
His wail august for Liberty, and Man;
Truth had a voice; though much unseen remain'd,
Like pearls of beauty in a shell conceal'd.
Soon Dante's hell of poetry began
Full on the Pope to flame a fierce revenge,
For virtue: Petrarch call'd on kings to rise:
Then Genius, with her tongue of many tones,
Learning, and Art, and philosophic Scorn,
At once inspired, their banded forces hurl'd
On the huge vice the Vatican uprear'd.
And, long ere this, the great Arabian Lie
Had rippled into life the stagnant pool
Of priesthood:—foul and faithless at the core,
It yet the unity of God preserved;
And by the scoff of its sarcastic light,
Lurid, and keen upon the monkish cowl
Reflected,—good and gracious work achieved.
Remedial truth all falsehood underlies;
And thus Mahommed's arch imposture did,
Beyond intent, in this high prologue act
A part momentous. Next, from Alpine-homes
The exiled Gospel sent its mountain-cry,
All Europe thrilling. Then, the Schoolmen rose,
And, wiser than their conscious wisdom knew,
Embalm'd each verity their words o'erlaid
In secret amber,—safe from popish tact.
And thus, (so wonderful the links that bind
Thought into thought, along the chain of time!)
From Lombard's heaven-awaken'd breast was thrown
A burning ember of immortal truth
Pure into Wickliffe's; thence, to noble Huss

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It glow'd along to Jerome's kindred mind,
And he to Luther did that spark convey:
And so that Bible-spark illumines now
The hearts of England with its holy life
And lustre, though seven hundred years have roll'd
Their tide of darkness o'er the Schoolman's head,
Where first 'twas kindled by a ray from heaven.

Here are the signs, predictive as profound,
That all betoken, with precursive truth,
Some Advent mighty, which an empire's heart
Shall welcome. These are like a Baptist-voice
The earth haranguing, with its glorious swell.
But when that crisis of the world arrives,
How doth a Hand almighty o'er the scene
Move unbeheld, and write the coming doom!
See Reuchlin, by his classic lore inspired,
Utter aloud to God's dead language, “live!”
And hark! the Bible, like a Hebrew seer,
Again may preach and prophesy to man:
While e'en Erasmus, cold and cautious thing!
(A craven neuter in the cause of Christ)
Whose head was light, but in whose heart no love
Was kindled, rose beyond himself at times,
With blasting irony to sear and singe
The monk-born vices: thus, that orphan'd youth
To God his genius and his love inscribed,
And voiced the Bible with a Latin tongue.

Nor dare we to progressive mind alone
The conflux strange of tendencies, and truths
Refer, which just before the battle-voice
Of the brave monk around the Popedom hurl'd
Its dreadless challenge, into force arrived,
And action. Mark, at once, a mental blaze
Beyond all precedent, by Heaven illumed.
And first, that fearful Thing which rules the fate
Of battle, thund'ring over field, or deck,
With havoc wing'd on its resistless roar,
Is now compounded; next the Magnet comes,
With true polarity, that ever points,
Like sterling principle, to where it tends;
And marks old ocean, like a map with lines
Of knowledge, till the wave-toss'd pilgrims roam
And coast all seas, all countries, and all climes,
Far as free commerce wafts them. Nor, the least
In rank, nor last in the resulting power
Thy fall, Byzantium! Though the Turkish flag
Moved in fierce triumph o'er thy crumbled walls,
Yet did the Orient with a gush of mind
Burst from its mounds, and through the arid West
Pour the rich blood of intellectual life
And learning. Next, an unimagined World
For ages cover'd with Atlantic gloom,
Secret of waters by stern ocean kept
Inviolable, at length, her silence breaks,
And lo, America on Europe smiled,
Shaking the heart of nations with delight!

Marvel on marvel!—each with vaster range,
Or new excitement, thus to Man appeal'd;
Heighten'd the tone of morals and of mind
Awaken'd, roused the soul from monkish sleep,
And thrill'd the student in Platonic bower
Or cloister'd umbrage, with electric throes
Of more than rapture:—for the social frame,
From east to west, did vibrate with o'erwrought
Emotion. Seem'd it then, as if the Earth
Again were heaving with prophetic throbs,
Sent to precede her soon descending Lord.
So fast did providence itself expand,
Nature evolve, and kindled genius rise
And forward into fields of glory rush.

Yet, in this prologue of adjusted means
Heaven-moulded, chief and prime of arts immense,
See, Printing rise, a universe of powers!
That bids the Past become perpetual Now,
Gives reason sway, imagination shape,
To time a soul, to thought a substance lends,
And with ubiquity, almost divine,
For living permanence and local power
Each ray of soul immortally endows.

MIGHT OF THE PRESS.

Thou great Embalmer of departed mind!
Thou dread Magician! by whose mental charm,
A mournful, pale, and solitary man
Who pines unheeded, or who thinks unknown,
Long after dust and darkness hide his grave,
Himself can multiply, with magic force
Beyond the reach of language to explore,
And the wide commonwealth of minds may rule
With sway imperial! Who can image Thee,
Whether to heaven uplifting mind and man,
Or hell-ward both seducing, like a fiend?
Boundless in each thine unremember'd sway!
Thine was a voice, whose resurrection-blast
Peal'd through the catacombs where buried Soul
For cent'ries lay, and lo! with living might
The Fathers burst their sepulchres, and breathed;
Dead Intellect from classic tombs came forth

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Quicken'd, and into active substance changed
By thy vast potency: and then, was felt
The pith of thought, the marrow of the mind
Itself transfusing, like a second life
The old absorbing, as with heat divine.
And since that moment, have not Books become
Our silent prophets, intellectual kings,
Anointed hierarchs of human thought
To vice, or virtue? Are they not like shrines
For truth? cathedrals, where the chasten'd heart
Can worship, or in tranquil hours retreat
To meet the Spirit of the olden time?
Since there, the drama of the world abides
Yet in full play, immortally perform'd.
Still ride the fleets o'er Actium's foughten waves
Before us; patriots fight, and tyrants fall;
Sparta and Corinth, and the famous Isles
Which fought for freedom, till their blood ran o'er
With brave contention, there convene, and clash
Their forces; still the Roman eagle flies
In full-wing'd triumph o'er the subject world;
Cæsar and Pompey yet the earth alarm,
Or, drag their chariot with the captive East;
Battles are raging; Kingdoms lost or won;
Yea, all the genius of gone time is there
In Books articulate, whose breath is mind.

And, was not Godhead in a work like this,
When the World took a most enormous stride
Forward at once, to freedom, life, and law?
Priesteraft and Falsehood (that terrific pair,
Who murder'd Truth, and made the church become
A dungeon, where imprison'd Thought expired,)
Trembled, as if that dooming blow was struck
Which fell'd them into nothingness, or names
For ever: God indeed was now at work,
Though Man, the organ, was alone reveal'd.

BOOKS AND THE BIBLE.

But, why are Books such half-almighty Things,
Making, or marring, whatsoe'er they touch,
With force internal? Whence their wond'rous spell?
Bethink thee, reader! and the answer comes.
The universe itself was once a Thought,
A thought Divine, in depths creative hid;
And so, whate'er this mortal scene invests
Of human action, is but plastic thought
Itself revealing, in some forms without
Apparent. What is half these eyes behold
Of boundless, beautiful, sublime, or vast,
But thought embodied into outer shape,
Or, answ'ring symbol? Arches, cities, domes
And temples, fleets and armies, trades and towns,
Yea, all the might and moral of mankind
To this significance at length arrives,
And backward into thought may be resolved
By fair reduction. Now, if Books be thought
By printing clothed, and palpably endow'd
For its vocation, whether art, or lore,
Poetic vision, or prosaic truth,
Kingdoms immense, or individual Souls
The aim of its predestined mission be,—
Forth to its work that printed Thought proceeds;
And who shall track it, as it rounds the world?
Who can imagine, when 'tis once abroad,
(However humble was its natal home)
The Work it dares, the wonder it achieves?
Black as a Fiend, or like some Angel bright
That Thought in action, may itself approve;
For printing, like an omnipresence, gives
Its power expansion; far and wide it moves,
Reaches all hearts, a host of minds affects,
And executes what none, save God, controls!
Oh, 'tis enough to harrow breath and blood
With chilling horror, thus to feel, and know,
That when some Thinker, who debauch'd his soul
And put damnation into print for fame,
Is cited to the last and long accompt,
His thought is living! like a demon, still
Haunting the world of passion with its power,
Or poison; breathing a perpetual curse,
And dropping hemlock into sensual hearts
Which love the venom which a lie instils;
And thus, for ever! not perchance to cease,
Till Thought and Thinker shall together stand,
Cursed by their victims, at the bar of God!

So great are Books: and what the Bible, then,
By printing voiced, and through all regions sent
To speak the errand of celestial Love!
Here was the Prologue, in consummate form
Develop'd; here the Prelude looks divine:
That God in words, descending into Man,
And there achieving all its creed affirms
Of goodness, that the Bible thus should have
An Organ ready for its godlike mouth,
Here is the Wisdom which on high o'errules,
Making all hist'ry but her echo'd will!

But now, the world is waiting: prescient Hearts
In mute expectance, big with wonder beat,

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Predicting what these powers commingled mean,
Or, Who from out the heaven of truth shall come
Mankind to marshal, in this pregnant hour?
Shall Prince, or Potentate, or armèd Force
Girt by the squadrons which the world arrays,
March in the van of Liberty, and Light?
“E'en by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts!”
Again that motto to Almighty ways
Becomes embodied, and to life transform'd:
For lo! the Reformation's human spring,
Unknown, unseen, in cloister'd shade retired,
Is framed and fashion'd by the Hand Eterne:
Here, from the depths of convent-gloom, He calls
The Man He loves, the instrument He wields,
And moulds him for the mighty Work decreed.
But Him, who now a beacon o'er mankind
Flames in the lustre of his far renown,
The Spirit summons from no royal scene,
From throne, nor palace, nor ancestral hall;
But chooses, in the wisdom of free will,
A fameless Monk, of poverty and prayer,
And leaves the palace for a miner's home.

GOD'S HEROES.

The Kings of mind, who govern from their graves,
Our thoughts their subjects, and our hearts their homes
Perennial, when they first in light emerge,
Like new expounders of almighty Will,
Forth from the secresy of truth unveil'd
Glad tidings bring they, of a Glory meant
Yet to awaken, and the world invest.
Their utt'rance, large; their meditation, lone;
By passion for the Infinite o'erpower'd,
They dart their glances into Things to come;
Intense, beyond the teachings of the soul
To reach, or satisfy. But, how received,
These new Avatars, sent on missions high,
To herald forth eternity in truth
For all who love them? Are loud welcomes rung?
Greetings of head, and jubilees of heart
Do these salute them with applausive joy?
Alas! too holy the vocation far
Of Truth's high Priests, when first behind the veil
Of outward things themselves presume to pass,
And bid us follow, with responsive track
Through the rent shroud their faith had first undrawn.
Time is their justice. When their tombs are rear'd,
Then, Wonder dares to consecrate their deeds;
Will call them, primates in the church of man,
Great Nature's own episcopate they form,
And rule, like metropolitans of mind.

But, mark the conflict when their voice emerged!
Struggles within, and all without them, rose.
Their great Impression was the God unseen,
But felt, an Infinite through finite glimpsed;
Yet, how they falter'd! of themselves afraid,
When Thoughts in vain articulation sought;
Or giant Apprehensions, dim and deep,
Scarce ventured forth in intellectual shape
And bodied meaning! Oft, expression fail'd
In form to realise what feeling grasp'd:
Language was only a prismatic mean
But half refracting, with imperfect ray,
The truth essential, which they purely saw
Single, and one, within the soul contain'd.
But when the mind could stammer forth its tones,
Profound, original, and preaching high
On God, and Nature, Science, Man, and Soul,
No music breathed they to the world's dull ear.
But, harshly strange, and dissonant they seem'd,
With fruitless paradox, for sense unfit
And reason dang'rous! Such the first salute
Prophetic genius from the world obtains:
And such have earth's regenerators met,
From God-called Moses, to the German monk.

But if to Morals and to Man they bring
Authentic tidings from the Throne of Truth,
Divine, yet most disturbing, scowl and scorn,
Affronting coldness, and condemning fears
Assail them ever, with a shameful wrong,
From all who love the ancient, but the new
Abhor, like treason! Thus the world, self-blind,
Hath greeted oft how many a regal Soul
That rules her now, with legislative awe!
Wisdom itself seems heresy to fools;
And freedom is but license to the slaves
Who love the fetters, which their languors fit.
Their light is darkness, and their being death,
And rotting silence all the soul admires,
Admits, or sanctions, in that dormant calm
By cent'ries gather'd o'er imprison'd mind.
E'en like a temple, where the owls retreat,
And the bats lodge within long-moulder'd shrines,
Ope but a window, let a sun-burst in,
And what a screaming anarchy awakes
Where falls the light, or sounding footstep comes!
So, in the temple of deserted Man

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Where sin for ages unmolested breeds,
Or lying Errors long repose enjoy,
If but a day-beam of immortal truth
The gloom dissever; or, a living Thought,
Divine as heaven, original from God,
Down from the skies should suddenly alight,
And walk his spirit with a kingly tread
Majestic, what a host of wild alarms
The priests of Dulness round the stranger raise,
And call it mad, the dead in mind to wake!

MARTYRDOM.

Here is the doom of Hero, Bard, or King:
The cross of hatred first their hearts endure,
And then, the crown of homage on their heads
Dying, or dead, at last cold Justice puts!
Their crown we witness,—has their cross been weigh'd?
We boast their triumphs,—have we told their tears?
We laud their greatness,—have we felt their gloom,
Their lonesome watchings, and their weepings long,
The fret, the fever, and those wasting pangs
Year after year, which wore the heart of Youth
To sickness, ere the laurell'd moment came
When truth and triumph paid high Merit's due?
Result the many only dare to prize;
But still, the process solemn, stern, and strange,
Through stormful agonies, and griefs, and glooms,
By which a Hero to his great result
Attaineth, why should this no homage win?
Luther was great at threat'ning Worms, we grant;
But, greater still in solitude, and tears,
When first he grappled with his fiery heart
And, in the prison of a papal creed,
Panted, and pray'd for evangelic day.

Heroes are martyrs, if their minds be pure
And highly-temper'd; for, the Truth is strange
To men who only by their bodies live,
And to the pageantries and powers of Sense
External yield their sympathies alone;
Or, never down Themselves presume to gaze
With eye reflective: so, when prophets rise,
And utter oracles from deeps of Life
Hidden, and heavenly, from the Flesh remote,
To them they sound like necromantic tones;
Eye, ear, and taste, compose their All in All;
And though around, within, above them moves
And lives, an energising Power Supreme,
Whose vesture is that Visible they love,
They give no credence save to flesh, and form.
Yet, what is genius, but a mouth for God
To speak Himself to Nature, and to Man,
And from the visible and vain of sense
Attract us unto mysteries divine,
But viewless, by external semblance hid?
There, Faith's reality alone is found!
Since all expression which the Outward bears,
Is but a token of God's inner-truth
And purpose. Thus, beneath a veiling shroud
The Infinite an awful Presence robes,
His thought embodies, or reflects its power.

IMPERFECT AT THE BEST.

Yet, what is life, but imperfection's breath,
And human Being, but incarnate fault
E'en at the best, howe'er by grace refined?
Moses was anger'd; David's honour fell;
Paul felt a thorn, and Peter proved untrue.
Genius hath faults, and Luther's none o'erveil.
A brave restorer of departed truth,
No hollow semblance, and no heartless shade
Came he on earth to manifest, or preach.
Manful, but rugged, to the centre bold,
His heart beat fiercely; and his blood ran fire
When Right divine, or some disastrous Wrong
Challenged his faith, or forced his feeling out
In action; then, the soul's tornado raged,
And shook the spirit to its moral roots!
Stormful, and strong, and gusty in his moods,
Oft the black whirlwind from some ireful cloud
Roused his rent bosom with disturbing rush,
And hurl'd propriety from off its throne
Amazed, and master'd. His was battle-life;
Great-hearted being! with a lion plunge
Full on the foe, with all his living fire
Leapt his free soul, magnanimous as firm,
And,—no surrender! for the Truth must fight,
And Faith prove conflict, if she stand sincere.

Spirits may be, like flowers from heaven that fall,
Deck'd with fine beauty, clad with mental bloom
Most delicate, but soon earth's tainted soil
Bedims them; trodden in the dust they lie,
Forgotten, faded, or defeatured things,
Ere yet they open'd their immortal buds
Of virtue, or their perfect fragrance gave.
Not such was Luther's: like some burly oak
Whose boughs wave battle with the tearing winds
And bend, but never break,—his fighting heart
Contended with all mutinies, which came
From prince, or pope, from circumstance, or creed,
And wrestled with them; or, with Samson force
Subdued them, or himself with glorious fall

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Laid prostrate! Sinful oft, his moody ire
Betray'd him; unadvisèd words he spake;
And sometimes, when the fervid heart grew wild,
Scatter'd both friend and foe with burning force
And tameless fury! Like a soul on fire,
The gentle wonder'd, and the wise condemn'd
To see him thus by evil lightnings rent
And harrow'd: but, how soon the tempest died!
When the broad sunshine of forgiving love
Blazed o'er his spirit, like a summer-noon
Settled and bright. Not always hot and harsh
Did nature find him; playful moods had he;
For oft that smiting earnestness of tone
Which scorn'd the false, and cleaved all fiction through,
Priestly or papal, with a forcing might
That flash'd with fierceness, like a sword's descent,
Melted away; and, like an infant lull'd,
Pathetic Luther all the poet-life
Of purest feeling testified, and taught.
Witness, ye tears! that dropt o'er Tetzel's bed
When reft and dying; and o'er thine which fell,
Beloved, and lost, and beauteous Madaline!
Oft in the granite of a soil unhewn
Full many a flower in secret freshness smiles;
And many a stream, where all looks arid blank,
Lurks in the Horeb of some heart, unknown.
E'en such was Luther, with his rocky front
And jagged features, to the foe display'd:
But sweet affections, sanctified, and soft
As ever water'd human breast with love,
Gush'd into force when Feeling's reign began.

LUTHER, AND THE AGE.

Luther had faults, but can a feeble age
When forms heroic, such as olden life
Admired and moulded, are to faith and fact
No more; when little-hearted Truths prevail;
When Mammon chiefly is the standard used,
And God's own world, where angel-wings yet play
In secret motion o'er the homes of men,
Is made an engine, whose mechanic force
A mill can work, or manufacture sway,
The mighty prowess and majestic heart
Of Luther read, with comprehending love?
Belief hath vanish'd in the vast Unseen;
And earth ungodded, to presiding laws
Is given over with a heartless lie,
Till scarce their unbelief some dare believe!—
But Luther's was a lofty soul, which felt
Beyond the body, life's true secret lay;
While faith in Goodness, God, and Truth reveal'd,
Subdued his being with o'ermastering spell.
And thus, by quick intensity o'ersway'd,
He often stumbled, where the colder stand
Securely guarded, in their frost enshrined.

“Luther had faults!” but, oh, ye little Minds
Less in your faith, and lesser still in deeds
Which make the hero, or the man unfold
In full-soul'd daring, while the outer-life
You ponder, have ye pierced the core within?
A fool can censure where a prophet weeps,
When life is only by its faults and falls
Review'd: but underneath, what noble tears,
What pangs remorseful, penitence, and prayer,
What struggles mute, what passionate regrets!
Deep in the bosom—there begins a fight!
And there the battle-scene 'tween Flesh and Faith
Unfolds its grandeur. All without appears
The moral echo of that inward din,
A mere reflection of internal strife
In fitful shadows thrown on human eyes.
Yet, these are chiefly what adjudging sense
Accredits; character from these is drawn;
And so with Luther: bold as blazing fact,
The failings of his outer-life advance
To catch the censure of prosaic eyes,
And hearts which never with emotion sway'd
Themselves, or others. But, the secret fight
Internal, when his wild and wasted soul
Struggled, and strove, contending with the Fiends
Of darkness, baffled oft, and bleeding faint,
And yet, right up ward, through eclipsing gloom,
Through storm and danger, and internal wrong,
From famish'd boyhood e'en to fearless man
Advancing, with a most unconquer'd will
To God and virtue,—who hath laurell'd this
Or wreath'd the record with a just renown?
But, true biography in heaven is writ,
And every heart-beat throbs a record there.

'Tis therefore, by successive falls they rise
Step after step, through stormy grief and gloom,
These Benefactors to the boundless mind,
Patrons of soul, and true philanthropists.
Hail to their glory! Let the sceptic rave;
There's something godlike in the truly great;
They find the lever Archimedes sought,
And fix its fulcrum in the soul of Man
And nobly lift him to our destined skies.
Like parts and portions of the primal True,
Like apparitions from a purer World,
Like human echoes of great Nature's heart,

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Whose beat is holy,—fresh from God they come,
And summon man to virtue; or, expound
Our vast relations with the Infinite.
Their words breathe might; oracular and strong,
Direct from deep Reality they roll
Like inspirations: or, with soul array'd,
Their meanings fall with fulminating burst
Full on the battlements of ancient Crime,
And crush them!—thus, their mental tones
Are sleepless echoes to the ears of Mind
For ever; time with them is all attuned.

Yet, though these Spirits bear th' almighty stamp,
And challenge far beyond what earth bestows
Of homage, yet the world is all unwont
Voices from out the solemn deeps of Thought,
Divine as theirs, to rev'rence, or regard.
And Luther, like his fellow-heirs in fame,
A great minority, a glorious One
A while stood forth, unaided and uncheer'd.
But here is greatness,—when by truth possess'd,
Earth, Sense, and Time, alone to face and feel.
And where, save in the armoury of heaven,
Found the brave monk a weapon for his fight?
And that was Faith! in God, in Good, and Truth,
In Beauty, Wisdom, and celestial Worth,
Heaven-rooted Morals, in the deathless Mind,
But chief, in Duty!—dread and awful Thing!
Which o'er relations from Th' Eternal drawn,
Reaches on high, to where God's throne is rear'd,
And downward to Perdition's wailing hell
Extendeth.—That which holds our being fast,
And binds together with uniting band
All facts, and feelings, faculties, desires,
All that we suffer, fancy, dream, or do
From life's first pulse of reason to the last,
This power and principle of Duty makes;
To finite deed gives infinite result,
Calls the dead Past to resurrection-life,
Harangues the guilty, and that hour predicts
When mem'ry into one concenter'd whole
Gone life shall grasp, and startled Conscience hear
How the last trumpet can our thoughts restore.

OMNIPOTENCE OF FAITH.

Faith was the weapon! by it Luther fought,
Conquer'd himself, and then, the world subdued.
And what is That, but God by man applied
Above all reason, sense, and earth, and sin,
In things heroic, heavenly, or sublime?
From Abel's worship, e'en to Samuel's word
Faith was a magic which all wonders did;
Whether the pausing sun its cry obey'd
Or, the Moon hearken'd to its holy spell,
Or, Red Sea parted, by its kingly voice
Cloven, and balanced like a billowy wall
On either side, for heaven's anointed Host,
Scatheless the fire, or mute the lion's mouth
Became,—whatever in the kingdoms three
Of nature, providence, or grace, was done,
Faith was the doer, at whose potent cry
Empires and thrones, and alien armies fell,
Weakness grew strength, the mortal, half divine!

And what, without it, seems this fallen world
But Pandemonium, with a purer name?
Clothed in hell-fire, come any Shape of sin,
Take any form, satanic Guile! but this,
The Infidel!—the fellest blight which falls.
No foul elixir of a fiendish lie
So baneful as the cup, which Unbelief
Drains to the bottom with delirious joy.
Oh! 'tis a wasteful, with'ring, black disease
That to the vitals of all virtuous thought
And wisdom, sends a paralysing shock;
The very life-blood of all goodness dies
Before it; like a heart-fiend, lo! it rules;
All forms of excellence and feeling die,
The Beautiful departs, the Brave expires;
Hope hath no heaven, and fear no hell to face:
All high relations are at once relax'd
With God, and duty; self and passion rage
In the hot furnace of a seething heart
Resistless; men are now but fiends, with flesh
Apparell'd; lust becomes a brutal flame,
And all those moral harmonies, which make
Nature a noble, Man a godlike thing,
Have perish'd! Life is then a form of death;
The heart's insolvent; mind a bankrupt too;
Jehovah in eclipse Himself retires,
Till thus, all ghastliness the earth appears,
Orphan'd of God,—a suicidal world!

Here was thy rock, thy fortress, and thy rest,
A faith intense, beyond mutation firm,
Whose solid basis was th' eternal Heart
Open in scripture, by the Spirit read,
But in the life of Jesus heard to beat
With pulse almighty, in its love for man.
Here was thy spell, thy secret, and thy sway,
Thy lock of strength, unsever'd and unshorn.
Luther! in this thine earthly comment lies.
Here is the key, which all thy soul unlocks,
And lets mute Wonder, with exploring gaze
Each hidden region of thy spirit view.
Faith to thy being sun and shield supplied,
Summon'd the soul, and nerved the noble heart
With zeal untamed, to burn, or bleed, or die,
But tremble never!—Thine was spirit-life,
Whose solemn breathings were from scripture drawn,

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And adoration; while, both heart and head
Motives and movements from the world to come
Divinely influenced with inspiring force,
Or sanction. Thus, thy mission was complete,
Thy virtue safe, and thy vocation seal'd.
Whether we mark thee, when that rugged face
Beam'd in bold triumph o'er the flaming Bull;
Or on thy forehead, where intrepid thought
Throned its high meaning in the hall of Worms,
Admiring Hist'ry fix her spell-bound gaze;
Or grateful Fancy, by the gospel led,
Bend o'er thy Bible, when some midnight-lamp
Lighted each feature, as the truths divine
Rose into life, by thy translating touch
Restored, or brighten'd,—still, in all we find
Faith was the secret power, whose shaping charm
Moulded the man, when most he grew sublime.

And, whatsoe'er our rank, degree, or lot,
Giant or dwarf in morals, or in mind,
'Tis faith alone true character can build.
Not as we learn, but as we live, we are;
And as we live, with things divinely pure,
These in their depths, we rightly understand.
Since faith is rooted in eternal life;
And all fair promise in the tree of man
Blossoms from thence, or dies a mocking show
Fruitless, and fragile. Give us faith, O God!
Faith in Thyself, and that will Thee impart;
Chaste will life be, and calm its closing hours,
To them who have Thee, all their hearts and souls
Possessing ever, and by them possess'd.
In Thee, and by Thee,—thus they live, and love,
They think, they suffer, what they act, achieve!
In all things, heaven and holiness abound;
Minutest objects Thine hand-writing prove,
And Life becomes one grateful hymn to Thee.
So, when that trump, whose archangelic peal
Shall sound the tocsin of creation's doom,
Thunders its challenge, Faith shall then arise
And, firm as Jesus on The Judgment throne,
Look on thy face, Eternity! and smile.

THE CHILD PROPHESIES THE MAN.

The hand of Jesus on thy heart, O child!
In love was laid; He watch'd its hidden play,
And heard it throbbing with unspoken prayer.
Thou fair inheritor of mortal flesh,
Typing the kingdom of the unattain'd!
Prophet! with mighty revelations mute;
Thou priest! with sacrifice of soul to come;
Thou king! whose monarchy young feeling rules,
Meanings around thee, full of heaven declare
'Tis like religion, when we look on thee.

A deep heart thrilling with the Unavow'd,
A spirit dark'ning with the Undescribed,
And his whole being rock'd, and urged, or rent
With big emotions, beautiful and strong,
On Mansfield plains, behold, that destined Boy,
All that is great in earth, or sky, adore.
Earnest he is, and most intensely true;
Free-hearted, bold, with open forehead graced,
Rude as the wave that roughens in the wind
Resistless; gifted with a fervid soul,
Mirror'd by eyes, where mental radiance beams,
And yet, withal, by sadness mildly touch'd
At being's centre; meditative, lone,
And quiet often, as the placid cloud
Cradled at twilight in the lulling west.

The vernal freshness of life's dewy morn
Bedecks his nature, like a magic bloom,
And mantles all things. Now, with dreadless play
Opens the heart at feeling's lightest touch;
Time hath not barr'd it with those jealous bolts
By Prudence framed, which bid the stranger wait,
And knock for years, before he enters in
To find a welcome. All is bold, and free,
Unguarded; giving forth a quick response
To each appliance from the passing scene;
Promptly as flowers to breezes yield their scent,
Or boughs their music to the playing winds
That bend them: such is youth's excited frame,
And such, though brief the guiding annals be,
Was Luther's. Genius is a glorious one;
And all her children like impression bear
Of their high parent. This, in after-life,
Back on dim boyhood darts explaining gleams,
And proves the child then prophesied the man.
Luther in germ, may now in heart be seen;
For, what is manhood, but the child drawn out,
By mere expansion of that moral seed
Which buds and blossoms into perfect man,
Whose ripen'd germ is character full-blown?
And now, fair Beauty, Grandeur, Form, and Grace,
Yea, all the felt significance of life
Inner, and deep, begin their blended reign;
And so inspire him, that material earth
Turns one vast mirror to envisage mind.
And with what boundless, sateless, unsubdued
Young appetite, his spirit thus partakes,
At each fine inlet, all this God-made world
Before him, like an inspiration spread!
E'en as a sail to catch the coming breeze,
So boyhood opens its expectant breast,
Panting for beauty, at each conscious pore.
And hence, in all things youth's poetic faith

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Beauty perceives; or, by perception makes
The beautiful, a virgin heart admires.
Thus, flowers are fancies by the Earth produced;
The clouds, emotions of the Tempest born,
The arch of heaven, how eloquently high!
A bright archangel of the burning east
The Sun ariseth, on his wings of light
How watch'd, and welcomed! Then, comes Night august,
A dread magician! with her sybil-stars
Attended; and the twilight Sea is made
Creation's poet, with his billowry lyre
Rolling for ever an unconscious chant,
Or broken swell of oceanic hymns.
Blood, heart, and brain, the beautiful inhale;
Matter and mind a very duel fight
By sweet contention, in some high-wrought mood
Of young entrancement! Forms without, appeal,
And thoughts within, like answ'ring music, play;
Till life itself a lovely poem seems
Tender, but touch'd with most impassion'd tones.
So rapt is youth, and fervidly entranced
When genius fills it with her hallow'd fire,
And all the open Secret of the world
Round a lone heart its earthless magic brings.

Such the boy, Luther; simple, rough, and rude,
A thoughtful earnestness his brow enthrones
Beyond all shrinking. His the cloudless heart;
And men may read it with a ready glance.
Like glass transparent, do his actions show
That hidden wheel-work which the heart involves.

GENIUS, SOLITUDE, AND SYMPATHY.

Genius was thine, thou heaven-commission'd Boy!
But surely, Sorrow was thy guerdon too;
Since ne'er doth greatness in a bosom lodge,
But Sadness thither, like a shade, attends,
Its true companion. In this faded world
Our graves and tears are almost equal, now;
And, e'en at best, light-hearted youth must bear
A burden voiceless, and the pang unbreathed
Of many a dark and undevelop'd mood.
The earth is exile; and for Home we pine
How often! when high visitations come
From whence we know not, and the mind o'erwhelm.
As if some Angel by the flesh immured
Our Spirit were, within whose conscious powers
The sounds and splendours of ethereal life,
In dim remembrance, were at times renew'd.—
And did not he, whose pure vocation was
The Infinite with finite things to join,
Wrestle with thoughts, his yearning boyhood strove
In vain to answer? Felt he oft no thirst,
Like a young Tantalus, by mocking bliss
Encompass'd, melting from the parchèd mind?
And did not Dreams, and Solitude, and Night
Profoundly move him, till prophetic thoughts
Imaged the future? Rapt in speechless awe,
Ponder'd he not on that behind the Veil,
When round him, like a belting zone which binds
All time, all scene, all circumstance, all change,
Divine Eternity in shadow came?

We know not this; but, e'en as eagles soar
And sky-ward through the rending storm-cloud mount
With plumes unbaffled, Luther's wingèd soul
Against the blast of Circumstance did beat,
And struggle upward to a destined sphere.
From want and woe his educated will
The glory of its resolution caught;
E'en from the cradle, tears his teachers made,
And suff'ring, hard as adamant, engraved
Lessons which left throughout all time their trace
Instructive. Thus, amid the true and stern,
And keen realities of testing life,
The Boy was rounded into full-orb'd Man
And fitted for his function. Thus, a Soul
Predestined, for its prophet-work was train'd,
And grew heroic: till at length, the world
In full apocalypse of all its powers
Emerging shall behold it act, and speak.
And like the hammer of a christian Thor
Down on the Curse of christendom and man
Descend, with most annihilating crash,
His tones of thunder and his truths of life!

But, in those powers auxiliar, which expand
The young Reformer, feeling play'd its part;
And that, perchance, beyond all others, pure.
His was a mother, from whose heart of love
Sacred and deep, with fine devotion full,
As from a shrine, his lisping boyhood took
Counsels of grace, oracular and fond.
And who can say, how much that Luther show'd
In his high work of majesty and mind,
Which grateful Empires with their homage crown,
Sprang from a look, a warning, or a word,
A mother wielded, when she taught him God?
And ever thus, from love maternal spring
Feelings and powers, which o'er progressive life

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Reign with a subtile, secret, holy spell:
And deeds, and darings which have moved the world
A cent'ry forward, from a mother's lip
Caught the first glow whence inspiration came.

Yet, bleak the lot his boyish prime endured!
And sad, indeed, and merciless as dark
The shades of circumstance around him fell;
While yet, no precious dawn of grace appear'd
His soul to lighten through domestic gloom.
But, on his cheek a blanching terror came
When He was named, within Whose wreathing arms
Of mercy, once, a folded infant smiled!
Foodless, and friendless, oft the fainting boy
Far from his home, with none, save God, his guide,
In Magdeburgh from house to house was doom'd
A meal to beg; and thus, by Heaven was school'd
To hard experience, when Hereafter came.
“Bread for the love of God!” hark! Luther chants
From door to door, through Eisenach's winding street,
Mix'd with a group, as wan and worn as he
Of students poor. But lo! as once he lay
Beneath the umbrage of a cottage-tree,
Alone and pensive, while the leaf-shades fell
Like soft expressions on his speaking face
Of suff'ring, sad and sweet the hymn he sung;
The very echo of his soul was there,
And, like the fragments of a broken heart,
His shatter'd feelings trembled into song.
But not in vain that plaintive scholar mourn'd;
For on the ear of Ursula they sunk,
Those tones of truth, like tears upon some heart
O'erburden'd, dropt from Friendship's genial eye.
Never again shall that pale youth despond
In Famine's grasp, through days of pining gloom!
At once, both heart and home their shelter ope,
And, like the Shunammite, her all she shares
With him, the homeless boy of sorrow, now.

Blessings be on thee! Cotta's lowly bride,
And praise immortal, for the feeling hand
Which dealt thy substance; and the angel-voice
That, rich as dew-fall on a summer eve
Descending, when the fev'rish earth-sod pines,
Besoothed the world's great benefactor, then!
For here, by want unchill'd, by care unworn,
Bosom'd in calm domestic, Luther builds
By soft degrees, his mental being up.
Science, and Art, and Lore, that lovely trine!
Around him throng, and with their blended smiles
The budding energies of mind attract
Forth into blossoms of expanding force,
And freshness; e'en as sunshine tempts
The hue of flowers, and harmonies of spring
To full expression. Home of halcyon ease!
When the loud roar of his hereafter-life
Deafen'd the heart, how oft did Luther love
That sabbath-haven of the soul to haunt
With mem'ry's eye: and once again recal
The bliss of tranquil being, when the noise
Of man's great world with no disturbing sound
The soul distracted: like the far-off waves
To one who, pensive at his window, dreams,
When twilight o'er the palpitating breast
Of Ocean melts in rosy calm away,—
The soften'd echoes of a distant world
But served to make the hush of home more dear.

And Music, too, her poetry of sound
Evoked: for oft, when Evening's pallid veil
Curtain'd the clouds with beauty; or, the Moon
A mild entrancement from her beam inspired,
Did Luther hymn the golden hours to rest
With deep-toned chants, and melodies divine;
Where voice and lute each other's echo seem'd,
So richly one their combination grew.—
When years had flown, and Europe's grateful hand
Round Luther's name a wreath of glory twined,
And at his feet the heart of Empires bow'd
Admiring, Cotta's home, still unforgot,
Was outlined in his mindful heart of love
Serene as ever; while his voice proclaim'd,
By gallantry and grace at once inspired,
There's nothing sweeter than a woman's soul
When Truth divine erects her temple there!

UNIVERSITY.

“Who prays the most, will study best;” so spake,
In noble answer to official pride,
A young Reformer, when th' unfolding gates
Of Erfurth from his asking eye retired,
As pale he stood, her letter'd walls beside
Intreating entrance there. And now, commenced
The waking myst'ries of his mind within!
Around him, more and more, dread shadows fell,
Which seem'd reflected from Almighty frowns;
While conscience, that pale miniature of God!
In outlines faint, the Holiness Supreme

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Began to image. Morning, noon, and night,
With soul intense, and heart of upward gaze,
How oft did Luther on the wings of hope
Rise out of earth, heaven's tearless home depict,
And on Christ's bosom pillow all his cares!
'Twas then, while sensitive at ev'ry pore,
His soul lay open to the pregnant beams
Of truth eternal, from the heavens derived,
That Mercy-seat of everlasting mind,
The Bible!—first on Luther's spirit breathed.
Yet, little thought he, when the dust-worn shelves
Were traced, some intellectual food to find,
How God in language to the conscience speaks
When faith in scripture hears the Spirit there.
And scarce could Seraph wave his wings of light
With ecstasy of more celestial glow,
Than did the student, with his raptured eyes
To heaven upraised, the heart's rich anthem peal
Of thankful wonder, for this costly boon!
That moment was the Reformation's seed;
That Volume, then, the universe outweigh'd
In mental preciousness and moral power!
For in its pages slept those living germs
Of principle, from out whose depth have sprung
The faith, and freedom of a christian world.

FALLEN NATURE IN RELIGIOUS FORMS.

Say, how can man be justified by God?
Challenged eternity would echo, “how,”
But from The Cross responding grace replies
To this high question: faith in Christ is life,
And love, and righteousness, completely fit
To each vast claim of violated Law.
Thus, conscience finds no compromise involved;
Nor Mercy from the hand of Justice grasps
The sceptre, and her awful head uncrowns;
But there, all Attributes divinely blend
In one rich centre of consummate light,
And God, with most benignant glory, smiles
His goodness forth, o'er ransom'd souls and worlds.

But he, pale thinker! in portentous gloom
Robed by the rags of papal righteousness,
Was shiv'ring yet: around his spirit coil'd
The clankless fetters of condemning law;
And upward, when his heart to gaze presumed
A moment, soon it shrunk, appall'd and dim,
From God's dread eye-glance, flaming with the curse!
Dark wrestler with the pangs of sin untold,
Silence and solitude his haunt became,
Transforming nature, till the soul was typed
In all he witness'd, of the bleak and wild.
Down lonely vales, and paths of soundless gloom,
He loved to meditate, and learn'd to mourn;
But, chief the night-blast, with its hollow yell
Rung from the Tempest's riven heart of sound,
Becharm'd him, when beneath the wat'ry moon
Late roaming. Still, the crisis came at last!—
'Twas summer; and with crimson eye of fire
Full o'er the pine-tree boughs the west'ring Orb
Sunk flaming; like a furnace glow'd the air
In breezeless trance, while not a bird-wing moved;
And forest-leaves, as by some fixing spell
Enchanted, like the lids of slumber, hung
Subdued, and motionless: so deep the hush,
Your very heart-pulse strange and loud appear'd;
When, lo! the blacken'd cope of heaven divides,
And flashes; re-divides, and with one fold
Of sheeted flame the firmament involves.
Hark! peal on peal redoubling, and return'd
With raging echo, till heaven's arches ring
And vibrate; then, in one convulsive burst
The clouds are clash'd to thunder, and descends
Down at his feet, in supernat'ral roar,
A death-bolt!—Harmless as the rain-drop fell
The blasting ruin; Luther, in the shade
Of that great Hand, Whose hollow hides the church
From storming earth and hell, was all secure,
Though death glared round him. What a scene was there!
In kneeling agony, with eyes of awe
To Heaven upturn'd, as if the judgment-pomp
And equipage of heaven's almighty King
Emerged apparent, Luther throbb'd, and pray'd;
And vow'd his after-life to God alone,
If safely rescued from the whelming storm.
So sank a great Apostle, when the blaze
Bright as That form of Glory whence it fell,
Abash'd him into blindness, and he heard
The mournful thunder of Messiah's lip
Rebuke him, till his conscience rock'd and reel'd.

But now, all faithful to his word, sincere
In darkness, to the blinding creed he loved,
Hark! on their hinges grind the massive gates
Of St. Augustine's cold and cloister'd pile,
And in the clang of those reclosing doors,
The knell of Luther's freedom! Darkly bound
By dread theology's remorseless chains
Of monkish falsehood, in the deep of night,
Fresh from the haunt of social youth he comes
Self-exiled, and sincere, in convent-gloom
Amid the graves of unproductive mind,

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Where dead religion putrified to fear
And fear to superstition,—there to lift
His soul to God, and fashion it for heaven!
Yet, mark in this eternal Wisdom's plan.
A dungeon'd martyr, on whose haggard limbs
The rust-worn chain its branding trace hath delved,
When free again beneath the skies to walk,
Inhaling liberty from each loved breeze
Which carols round him, chief o'er all can tell
How priceless to the heart pure freedom is!
And thus did Luther, by whose dreadless hand
Of truth, base fetters from the mind were fell'd,
As captive, first by dark experience learn
How deep that dungeon of the spirit was,
Where Roman witchcraft plunged, and plagued mankind!
Yes, he, the champion of Jehovah's cause,
Whose bold harangues, like Alpine thunder-peals
Hereafter shook the Vatican to shame,
Himself once crouch'd, in martyrdom of zeal,
Beneath the lashes of a monk's stern lip
In silence; wound the clock, and swept the floor,
And begg'd, a charter'd mendicant, from house
To house, the bread of blushless charity!

But, found he there the holiness he sought?
Did peace divine in purity descend
Down on his conscience, like the calming Dove?
Ah! no; in vain the convent's round of rites,
The fastings dull, the macerations dire,
The penance long, the midnight-watchings pale,
All the mean clock work of monastic life,
Wheel within wheel, by superstition turn'd!
From righteous acts no righteous nature flows;
First form the nature, then the acts arise
Spontaneous, free, by fertile love produced,
Not pleading merit, but proclaiming Christ
Within, by transcript of His life without.
For, how in Self can man salvation find,
When self is sin, connat'ral and corrupt?
But, like that Bible, which his sateless eyes
Read oft and oft, with most devouring gaze
Of faith and feeling, Luther wore the chain
Which round the soul rank Superstition binds.
Yet, oft the heavings of his spirit rose
In dark reflection, to his pale-worn face!
While e'en the whisper of that still small Voice
Which cowards all, but christians maketh none,
Beneath the roof of his o'erarching cell
Raged into moral thunder, when stern thoughts
Of God in judgment, tore with tort'ring might
And mystery, the troubled mind within!
Thus, like a spectre, through the cloisters moved
With fruitless sigh, and ineffectual groan,
Day after day, all spirit-crush'd, and worn,
The helpless Luther, till the Cross appear'd:
From holy love then true repentance sprang;
And faith, like Mary, at the feet of Christ
Attending, hung upon His lips, and lived.

REVIVAL.

Celestial love! no self-created sound
In the cold depth of man's corrupted heart,
But rather, a responsive echo, waked
By Love supernal, art Thou, when sincere.
By God's to man, man's love to God begins;
And christianity is Christ received,
The soul possessing, and Himself possess'd.
Then thaws the heart, however iced and dead,
In tears which glow with gratitude divine.
So Luther felt, when Love's almighty voice
Becalm'd him; round the Cross he ever read
The page of heaven, and in that Fountain wash'd
His soul to whiteness, which for sin unclosed
In streaming mercy from our wounded Lord.
Light, peace, and order round his being throng'd
In rich communion; prayer and praise arose,
Like native incense from the soul renew'd;
And holiness, man's paradise regain'd,
No effort now, but second nature seem'd,—
Not labour done, but life itself enjoy'd.
Yet, who can tell, as stern-eyed Law retired
And the mild Gospel o'er his conscience breathed
Like Jesus, when He sigh'd the breath of peace,
How on his heart the Bible's image grew,
Till, like a throbbing counterpart, it beat
In living echo to the truth it loved!
While doctrines now, which once with scowling front
Black as the shades which over Sinai hung,
Appall'd him, soft as Christ's own pity, smiled.
No more the penance vile, with venal aim
To bribe Eternal Justice, was achieved:
In Christ her all-in-all stern Conscience found
And, sprinkled with His blood, her claim withdrew
For ever: penal Law its lightning veil'd;
And when from sickness, pale and purified
The convert of the Cross in health arose,
He clung to Jesus with a clasping soul
Devoted, lifted high o'er legal fears,
And from His wounds saw earth's atonement flow.

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PREACHER AND PULPIT.

“Go! stand the living and the dead between,
Take the rich censer of Messiah's grace
And stop the Plague.” Such looks the Office high
To him appointed, who the tidings glad
Proclaims of Liberty to souls condemn'd
In the black dungeon of the Curse to writhe,
And weep for ever. Well may dread, sublime
As holy, soften'd o'er with human shades
Of feeling, round some youthful Herald steal,
When first the embassy of Pardon rolls
In strains of heart from his excited lip,
Which vibrates, like a chord by music thrill'd,
Master'd by young emotion. What a theme!
God in our Flesh, to save that Flesh, array'd,
The Infinite within the finite lodged,
The form Almighty in a frame all weak,
The dread Creator on the Cross unveil'd
In bleeding glory!—Heaven, and Earth, and Hell,
Eternity and Time, and Sin and Grace,
The choral anthems of the blood-bought Church
Circling the Lamb with coronation-joy;
Or, wild Perdition's cry, in lurid flames
Stretch'd on a rack of self-tormenting ire,—
These are the elements combined to throw
Around a Preacher that commanding spell
Of awe, which makes the earthen Vessel bend,
To think it treasures such a peerless trust!

And, who can dare himself sufficient deem
For work so fearful, where seraphic Minds
May travail in the greatness of their strength,
And yet, not scale its altitude divine?
Oh, Thou! Whose office 'tis the Word to bless
And quicken, till it breathes a living grace,
Thee may we ever prove in presence nigh
As Great Inspirer; Whose anointing power
Alone can tune the “sounding brass” to Heaven's
True note, and bid some “tinkling cymbal” do
In mortal accent, an immortal work!
Whether beneath yon bow'd cathedral roof
Of vastness, while the organ's billowy peals
Roll like a sea of melody and might
Down the dim nave, and long-retreating aisles,
Thy Word is preach'd; or in some Saxon fane,
Where rude simplicities, of ancient mould,
Linger in stone's most exquisite decay;
Wherever on the tide of human breath
Floats a rich argosy of Gospel-truth,
As Christ appointed, may dependence be
The preacher's motto, and the preacher's mode;
Dependence meek on that concurring Grace
Of Him, the Bible's Author, by Whose light
Alone our sermons live, and souls are saved.

FIRST SERMON.

So felt the young Reformer, when he rose
Within thy square, high-fated Wittemberg!
Where the grey walls of St. Augustine's fane
Crumble in low decrepitude, and dust;
And from his pulpit, piled with simple planks,
Blew that loud trumpet of Salvation's truth,
Whose echoes yet the heart of empires stir.
Eye, cheek, and brow, with eloquence array'd
As though pure spirit would incarnate be,
Or mind intense would burn its dazzling way
And be apparent,—like a Saxon Paul
Flaming with truth, the fearless Herald pour'd
Himself in language o'er the list'ning throng
Around him! With a mental torrent ran
The rich discourse; and on that flood of mind
Nearer and nearer to the Lamb's white Throne
The soul was wafted, while for Christ he spake,
And hid himself behind the Cross he raised.

A more than Hercules, to cleanse a church
Where priestly falsehood stabled all its guilt
Through cent'ries dark of domineering crime,
So seem'd he then; and in that sermon gave
A noble prelude of the trumpet-blast
Predestined from his daring lip to roll
Hereafter, when from lethargy and lies
He roused the Autocrat of Romish priests
In cruelty, and curses, till there came
An avalanche of everlasting truths
Down on the Popedom, in those thund'rous words
Which crush'd it, like th' apocalyptic Stone
Hurl'd by God's angel through the blood-red sea.

METROPOLIS OF ANTICHRIST.

To shameless Rome, the capital of sin,
When Crime in canonised pretension smiled,
And Pride and Lust pontifically reign'd,
At length, great Luther comes. The glare of skies
O'er which the mercy of no soothing cloud
Had floated, vainly tried his toil-worn frame;
For still, o'er Alpine crags, by torrents wild,
And hoar ravines, within whose rocky depths
Yell'd the loud streams their everlasting cry,
The Monk of Wittemberg, with eager step
And soul expectant, sought the seven-hill'd Queen
Of cities; till, behold! in glimm'ring haze
Her turrets, towers, and giant temple-spires
At length emerge: and low upon the ground,
In kneeling homage, falls her duteous son,

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To breathe his blessing o'er maternal Rome,
Mother, and Mistress of the churches all!
But when her pillar'd streets of pomp he trod,
And on those ruins, eloquent and vast
Around him in sublime confusion piled,
Gazed with devotion,—what a gushing sense
Of ancient glory through his being swept!
The past in tow'ring resurrection rose
Bright from the tomb of ages; while the air
Which Peter breathed, and Paul himself inhaled,
Play'd round his temples, like a breeze from heaven
New-wafted! Rome and rapture were combined;
And Luther, in one lofty dream of soul
Enchanted stood, and drank the glorious scene;
As if Religion from the very stones
Was preaching where Apostles once had trod,
And over which the martyr's flame of death
Gleam'd in dread radiance, like a glory now.

But, soon the bandage of imposture fell!
And then, e'en like the Arch-fiend's mystic pomp
Summon'd before Emmanuel's heaven-bright gaze,
So fleetly vanish'd into viewless air
Thy pageantries, thou Babylon of guilt,
And scarlet Lady with the costly blood
Of God's elected, drunken and bedew'd!
Since, then reveal'd in all thy hideous truth,
He found thee but a leprous church of lies
By ages putrified, in papal form.

Oh, grace divine, and wonderful as deep,
That Rome and Luther should confronted be!
And there, in Superstition's heart, one text
Almighty, like a thunderbolt of truth
Down from the throne of Revelation cast,
Should raise him, while he crouch'd in dismal faith,
Deluded! Thus, the Champion for his cause
Was train'd; and thus from Rome herself he drew
Weapons of might, whereby her powers would fall.
Hence, swift recoiling from his task abhorr'd,
Uprose the brave Reformer! free and firm
For ever: “By his faith the just shall live!”—
Thus came a Text from Inspiration's lip:
Religion, then, and Luther's mind arose
Erect; upon the rock of faith alone
Together did they face the frowning Hell,
And bid our spirit in the Lord stand free!

INDULGENCES.

“Lo! at yon gate,” the Mercuries of sin
Are crying, “Stands the awful Grace of God!”
And, in one moment, like a moral wave
Heaves far and wide the town's excited heart;
Council, and nuns, and priests, and monks advance,
And motley crowds, from ev'ry lane and street
Are rushing, while the festive town-clock peals
A loud hosannah from its lofty spires,
And tapers flash, and greeting cymbals sound,
To meet the great Procession. See! they come,
In robes how costly! There, in cushion'd pomp
The Bull of grace, whereby the Godhead's hands
Are bound, and His dread thunders must awake
Or sleep, as priestly conjuration bids!
For now, before a wooden cross uprear'd
Bedeck'd with Leo's blazonry of pride,
The loud-voiced Tetzel takes his stand profane:
Prime vender he! beneath whose venal lip
Heaven's attributes, as in a mart exposed,
Are purchased by Indulgence; Christ is sold
In pardons! Sin itself, before conceived,
Or acted, by the Pope's almighty Bull,
Shall not be damning: whatsoe'er Desire
May dream hereafter, through its charm absolved,
Shall be forgiven!—“Down this cross there flows
A grace like that the Saviour's bleeding side
Dispersed; but hark! from deeps of ghastly woe
Where yelling Spirits clang their chains of fire,
Tormented parents, friends, and children, lift
Their tongues uncool'd, and cry for needed alms
To bring them from that red Abyss of wrath,
Where scorch their souls in purgatorial flames!
Let but your money, with its golden clink,
Yon chest descend, and, lo! at once escaped,
Those dungeon'd Spirits, wing'd by papal grace,
Full into heaven's bright welcome flee!”

So cried that dread impostor; and the souls
Of myriads, by anointed lies seduced,
Imperill'd; Christ himself, in blacker shame
Than once the Cross of Calvary o'erhung,
Was openly to mocking Hell exposed;
Eternity a mart of sin became,
Or, papal auction, where that grace was sold
For filthy lucre, which the costly Blood
Which warm'd Emmanuel's veins, alone procured;
And 'gainst the purity of Heaven's high throne
The breath of human blasphemy arose
From Pope, and priesthood. Seal'd the Bible, then!
And sure, if ever down a Seraph's cheek

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Roll'd the rich tear immortal feeling sheds,
It trickled now, when thus religion dared
In words divine God's heart of gracious love
To libel; Christ's own pangs for venal lies
To barter, till the Truth of heaven betray'd,
In priestly suffocation sank, and died.

But, there is mercy in thy myst'ry lodged,
Eternal! Out of darkness cometh light
By Thee evoked; and, while the anarch sin
To mortal judgment, in its clouded gaze,
O'er time and circumstance sole monarch looks
Ascendant, all the waves of human will
In lawless riot though they toss and plunge,
Within the circle of Thy will supreme
Alone are heaving; if they rise, or fall,
'Tis only as Thy secret law ordains.

REFORMATION.

Pale with devotion, wrestling long and lone
With God in prayer, behold! the lion heart
Of Luther beats with supernat'ral pulse,
And throbs for Deity, and great design.
Stung to his very soul with piercing shame
Beneath a lie to see heaven's truth expire,
And trampled Scripture gasping in the dust
Of low venality, and priestly lies,
Upon the door of Wittemberg's dark pile
He fasten'd then, with hand divinely firm,
Ninety and five of those all-fearless truths
Which shook the Popedom, and the World redeem'd
From charms infernal, to the Cross alone.
Faith, hope, and love, upon the Rock of souls
Were founded; Grace in gospel-freedom rose,
From Schools and sophistry at length escaped;
And from the fountain of Emmanuel's Blood
Both peace and pardon in conjunction flow'd,
Free, full, and glorious from the heart of God,—
Giver and gift in amnesty combined!
And yet, what eye save His, before Whose beam
Time, place, and all contingencies retire
As though they were not, in this daring act
Of Luther, heard the Reformation's pulse
Of Life and liberty begin to beat?
Or who, among the crowd that rush'd to read
In tumult wild, upon the church's gate,
Those Words, which dash'd Indulgences to air,
The silent thunder of their strength foretold
Upon thine eve, All-Hallows? Monk and priest
And Pope, and hoary-headed Falsehood, then,
Were death-struck: in those few fine truths
The germs of unexpanded glory slept,
As in the acorn future navies float.
And when at night a lonely cell was sought,
Could the brave Monk his deed of pregnant might
Have measured? In the greatness of the act,
Oh, was he conscious of th' Almighty, there?

JUSTIFYING GRACE.

One truth divine, from deeps of scripture drawn,
And by one heart with burning zeal espoused,
Then, bodied forth in majesty of life,
What miracles that single truth achieves
Which rock an empire, or a world restore!
And hence, when pale in his monastic gloom,
Alone, and pensive, groping after God
Through clouds of error, black with Romish guile,
At length the tortured monk, with tears of praise,
Consummate pardon in the Cross alone
Discover'd, then, a peerless Truth was found
From whence instructed Empires learn to live.
And in that hall, where stood the fearless man
Bulwark'd with principle, beyond all powers
By earth created, or by hell contrived,
He grasp'd a truth which Heaven's eternal creed
Hath canonised, and by the Cross explain'd,—
That Grace is God by God alone applied:
On this, Religion all her fabric rears,
That else, is baseless, as the yielding air.

Hence flow those energies through man and mind,
Which mould our being great, or make it good.
Here, by the pardon of perfective grace,
The anguish'd memory can alone subdue
That dread Gehenna, which our guilt inflames
Oft in remembrance; and, from thence derived,
Pure emanations spring, and feelings act
Which feed with moral life the social frame
Of men, and nations; for the heart is free,
And guarded Conscience on the bosom's throne
Reigns in the sanctity which Christ inspires.

'Tis thus, where dreadless martyrs often fail'd,
And ancient heroes their protesting voice
Lifted in vain, to vindicate The Truth
From all aggression, Luther's prowess smote
The Roman Beast to ruin, nigh to death,—
And that, with principle! 'Twas here he fought,
He grappled with the foe of God, and man.
Swift through the night of man's imprison'd soul

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He pour'd the beam of evangelic day;
And where Authority, in mitred sway,
Fetter'd weak conscience with infernal chains,
He throned The Gospel, in the light of Grace
At once the law, and liberty of souls.
But, had he only on a mob of “saints”
Shot his keen arrows of sarcastic truth,
Or, laid the monk's Augéan darkness bare,
In form regen'rate, but with life corrupt,
The Reformation then had toil'd, and died.
But, glory be to Him whose Name we bear!
'Twas grace in principle which Luther taught:
Here is the lever which the world uplifts,—
“A Saviour just, for man unjust hath died!”
Here is a Truth, whose trumpet-voice might preach
The Pope's religion into airy nought;
A truth, which is at once the text of texts,
Making all scripture music to our souls.
The Bible read, is God Himself perused
In pages letter'd with almighty love,
When thus proclaiming what the conscience craves:
While the rich fountain of Emmanuel's Blood
Not barricaded round with priestly walls,
Nor blent with superstition's blackening tide
Of “merits,” now its healing flood of grace
Full on the heart in one vast current pours!

He ended, thus, where ancient Minds began;
'Gainst outward vice those murder'd Saints appeal'd,
And perish'd: but for Principle Divine,
Bravely alone the monk of Erfurt fought.
He struck the root,—and then, the branches fell;
He purged the fountain,—then, the stream roll'd pure;
The deep foundation down to hell he shook,
And then—the Roman superstition reel'd:
From centre to circumf'rence, did the soul
Of Luther reason out its lonely way;
Till, lo! at length, by Gospel-light reveal'd,
He saw impostures, in successive types
Each after each more canker'd, and corrupt;
And in the Pope that Antichrist discern'd
Whom Daniel vision'd, and St. John unveils.

GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MAN.

I.—Supremacy.

“Son of the living God! The Christ Thou art!”
So spake, by more than mortal wisdom led,
The bold Apostle, when, through flesh and blood
Divinity within the Form august
Of Jesus, shrined in mortal clay, he saw:
And on the “rock” of this confession, high
In Godhead rear'd, and deep in Manhood based,
Emmanuel built His everlasting Church.
But how hath Sin, from out the promise made
To Peter, in apostleship sublime,
But not supreme, beyond his fellows rank'd,
The Keys of power, the Kingdom, and the Laws
Which bind or loose, as papal nods decree,
Derived!—and thus on earth enthroned
A vile dominion, measureless, and vast
As Guile could plan, or cheering Hell applaud.
Admire we then, let gratitude adore
The Power divine, which hurl'd the Popedom down
From that cursed height of blasphemy and crime,
To which, through ages of gigantic skill
By fell gradation, it at length arose;—
Reigning aloft, stern Arbitress of kings
And thrones; dispensing sceptres with a smile,
Or else dissolving Kingdoms by a frown!
For Peter's shadow, and the Roman name
O'er power and policy together ruled:
Then, the high Past a holy magic breathed;
And the rich lustre of a world's regard
Made Rome the palace of Mankind appear,
The true Metropolis of priestly hearts,
A Temple, with apostleship instinct,
The stones all sacred, and Her dust inspired!
Thus magnified, and with mysterious charms
Endow'd, behold, a miracle of pride
Erect! Supremacy, thy Pope survey,
A Breath of sin on Deity's great throne!
Oh, never in the luxury of lies
Hath Self more wanton'd; never in this world
Hath Adulation's most besotted dream
A foul pretence so hideously assumed,
As then, around some ruffian Pope began;
For, palsied Reason to his sceptre bow'd,
And Blasphemy baptised a monster, “God;”
Disgust, be mute! and horror, speechless stand!
'Tis not in language, though each word be fire,
Or, fang'd with truth's most execrating force,
A Pope to paint, when deified by sin.
All right above, beyond all law secured,
In errorless perfection shrined aloft;
Of Peter's royalties sole heir, and king;
Of churches, Judge; of christendom the Lord;
And, such an oracle!—that when his lips
Shall condescend some great response to give,
Virtue is vice, and vice may virtue be,
Or, each be neither, if his nod decide!
Since Truth and Nature are at once transform'd
By him, the world's embodied Fiat, now.
E'en more than this!—to heights of sin beyond
These climbing blasphemies of folly scaled,

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And from the temple of Jehovah took
The crown, and from the Hand Eternal robb'd
The sceptre, till from Godhead's self there seem'd
To pass all glory; and, in pontific shape,
A mock almighty was the Pope adored!

II.—Mystery.

Above, beneath, around, where'er we move
Or live, an atmosphere of myst'ry floats;
For ever baffling with its gloom unpierced
The pride of reason's analytic gaze.
E'en like that Pillar, which, of cloud and fire
Contemper'd, to the pilgrim-church bestow'd
A guidance solemn, through untrodden wilds,
So human knowledge, in this world forlorn
By shade and light alternately prevails,
Too dark for pride, too vivid for despair.
And thus, accordant with our state corrupt,
From truth to truth, the educated soul
Through shades of awe is humbled yet advanced;
While noble ignorance, that knows itself,
Kneels in the shadow of a Mercy-seat
And prays the heart to piety, and love.

Yes! all is myst'ry: from that blaze immense
In which pavilion'd dwells the Vast Unseen,
Down to the insect of minutest frame,
Science is mock'd. Within retreating depths
The Cause uncaused, above all causes throned,
Who can describe? Yet, what religion owns,
Plain reason grants,—that He is perfect One
Pervading all things with His presence whole;
Unfelt, unform'd, unheard and undefined,
All Eye, all Ear, all Spirit, and all Power,
His center, Light, and his circumf'rence, Love:
Yet, what reveals Him, Who all else reveals,—
The Unexplain'd, who yet explaineth all?
What sun to systems, God to truth appears;
But still, apart, impenetrably shrined
In secresy of light, for ever veil'd.

Then turn to nature, eloquently touch'd
With living beauty; and in sight and sound
Teeming with all which holy Truth admires:
There, though a shadow of the primal Curse
Dims the soft radiance of a virgin-world,
Traces of Eden, tracks of angel-feet
Still haunt creation with a hallowing charm:
But myst'ry, still, o'er nature's Secret broods,
Beyond philosophy's most daring ken
To master; lock'd in mute reserve it lies.
Since, what is Essence, how formation acts,
Or life and law reciprocally play,—
Can reason here mount explanation's throne?
Nature herself is thine embodied Will
Almighty! There, at last, the mind has gain'd
An ultimatum which unteaches pride;
While Genius, like a second childhood, stands,
And, rapt in wonder, to Religion turns.

And, does not Providence our life invest
With one horizon of perpetual cloud?
But while to man, his planless life appears
A problem made of paradox, and gloom,
Darkness itself may Deity enshrine
When acting mercy, in deep wisdom, there.

But now, within, profound Logician! gaze;
Down thy deep hell of consciousness descend,
Who o'er Jehovah thus presum'st to wave
The treason-banner of rebellious thought.
Thou, to thyself embodied myst'ry art;
And why? Because unfathomably bad,
And thus, by grace unfathomably heal'd!
“Deceitful, vain, and desperately vile
All things above, the heart of man is found;
And who can know it?—I, the Lord alone!”
Thus chants a prophet; and we seem to hear
Round all the regions of created soul
Ring his dread challenge; mute alike remain
Seraph and Angel, and the star-bright Host
Who, nearest to the fountain-source of Mind,
'Mid radiance intellectual, shine and sing:—
To each and all unsearchable abides,
The heart of Nature in the human breast.

Then, turn to grace,—the Trinity express'd
In threefold glory, yet divinely One.
There, all is myst'ry, hung with moral gloom.
Flight after flight, in vain proud Reason takes,
And seeks and soars, and soars, and seeks again,
And more confounded by the search becomes:
Till, all exhausted, like the arkless dove
Back to the shelter of a simple truth
The soul retreats, and learns by faith to live,
And love the more, the less it understands
Of the Great Secret which salvation hides,—
The how, and why, in all of Godhead, there.

And Him, the Paramount of living grace,
The Truth Incarnate, how can words reveal?
Or who by comprehension yearns to grasp
Emmanuel's Person, in our flesh array'd?—
True greatness is to know how small we are,
Who learn divinity by loving God,
And as we love, alone can understand.

III.—Mystery of Iniquity.

And thus, at length, analogy conducts
Our hearts to Thee, the consummation dire
Of myst'ries all by Antichrist sustain'd!
Around it more than twice six hundred years
Have travail'd, in the pride of priestly art;
And now, a very prodigy of mind

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Depraved, of truth corrupt, and power abused,
It moulds, and masters all whom it beguiles.
Compact, complete, symmetrically form'd
To fit all hearts, whate'er the sensual frame,
Or oscillate to each exacting move,
Mental or moral, varied life presents,—
This myst'ry plays the Proteus with mankind.
From character it draws responsive tones;
From all condition wins a pleased support;
In circumstance, the very crisis wields,
And of weak conscience takes advantage vile:
Virtue and vice alike its charm obey;
And, forging chains that with no clanking fall
The ear arrest, or rouse the dormant soul,
The heart it manacles with fettering guile,
And binds it down, deluded to the last.

“A myst'ry” was this antichristian spell
In wisdom by prophetic Paul foretold;
Nor aught which infidels have dared, or done
The Lord of souls to crucify again,
Like this imposture hath mankind seduced.
There, falsehood in its open vileness reign'd;
Conspicuous, mark'd, and branded as the bad,
The heart may shun it, and securely keep
Both principle and purity awake.
But here, false Darkness, with a face of Light
Deceptively upon its victim smiles;
And, by the aspect of an angel's love,
Ruins the spirit with a demon's guile.
Here lies the danger, lurks the full deceit,—
Pretension, high as heaven's meridian truth,
Performance, low as hell's absorbing lie!
Religion thus, with suicidal hand
Herself destroys; and into death transmutes
A living zeal, which, else, for God and souls
Like inspiration might the world employ:—
Dilates a precept, or a truth contracts,
Can mould a doctrine, or a creed erect;
And round salvation such a dimness cast
That Christ is hidden, and the Church alone
In sacramental mist at length adored.

But yet, how stern, how lofty, how refined,
Thy vast professions, Romanistic creed!
Not Purity itself, is pure as Thou
In strictness, and severity of aim.
From the mix'd world, monastically free,
Our spirit thou would'st fain entice; and cast
Its powers in moulds of superhuman faith;
And thus, from foul entanglements of flesh
The mind deliver, till, to earthless heights
Of dazzling purity at length arrived,
That consummation of the church is reach'd,—
Meekness and martyrdom, in one combined!

The Devil is the parodist of God;
And priestly colours are the paint employ'd
To tinge his counterfeits of Truth divine
With holy semblance; and that flaming zeal
For saintliness, apostate Rome affects,
For Him has wrought satanically well.
Pollution's self on Purity's clear throne
In veil'd enchantment thus hath ruled, and reign'd,
Deceiving others, and itself deceived.
The Roman myst'ry is a mask of lies,
While yet thy countenance, celestial Truth!
It borrows; Mercy is the mild pretence,
Justice her theme, and love for God the law,
And zeal for Christ the Church's ardent soul
That makes Her all that miracle she is!—
Satan himself can thus religious seem,
And poison Virtue with her very smile.

Gospel and Grace in this dread system die,
And Love and Light to cruel darkness turn,
Shade upon shade, impenetrably deep,
Investing Godhead with a vile array
Of terrors, forged by sacerdotal guile,
And summon'd forth as guilt, or gain demands.
Where is The Father, in that fiction dread,
That ghastly Something, for a God believed,
Which Popery to the harrow'd Mind presents?
Or, when the ague of a guilty heart
Rages in secret, what paternal voice
From God in Christ subdues it into tears?
Then, not direct through Son and Spirit looks
A soul repentant, from the pleading eye
Of faith, on God reveal'd; but damning frowns,
Blacker than Sinai's legal night of death
To daunt the sinner, are at once evoked,
Hiding the cross with intercepting gloom:
Infinite Cruelty thus God becomes;
His throne all blackness, and His heart begirt
With stern-eyed Saints, who awe the spirit down
Till first their mediatorship is moved,
And God, persuaded by their prayer, relents!
As if by impulse an Almighty moved,
Nor in Himself His own great motive was.

IV.—Sacramental God.

But, see the climax of corrupted truth,
An Incarnation, parodied by priests!
Robed for a melodrame of mutter'd spells
Lo, where the sacerdotal Juggler stands,
Beneath whose touch the sacramental Host
To Body, Blood, Divinity, and Soul
Itself transforms, created into Christ!
Emmanuel there, consummate and complete,
Again must bleed, in Calvary revived!
Oh, horrible, and heartless mock of all
Of God in glory, or of man in grace,
That He, whose Person is the Sum and Soul

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Of what in time Eternity shall act
High o'er the senses, or mere reason's grasp,—
Is now in sacramental bread contain'd
While the blest wafer turns embodied God.

And Thou, O Spirit! who alone canst rule
The hearts where pantheistic darkness reigns,
Or carnal gods, by dreaming passion shaped,
Debauch the conscience till its light goes out,

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With what an aping Liturgy of lies
Hath Romish parody presumed to mock
The might, and glory of Thy work august!
And dared, for living waters freshly drawn
From the deep fountains of eternity
And truth, Herself to substitute, and lift
Her canons vile to revelation's throne.

When thus the life-blood of religion's drain'd
By this fell vampire, what for man is left
But the mere carcass of a ritual show,
A mindless worship, meaningless as false,
Where man is God, and God to man transform'd?

Thou dread Almighty! may we dare repeat
With deep-toned echo, that mysterious Cry
Apocalyptic martyrs lift above,
And chant, “How long shall Grace Eternal be
By juggling Rome dishonour'd, and traduced?
How long shall falsehood wear the saintly dress
Of truth celestial, while the Cross is veil'd,
And He, whose merit is creation's shield,
The church's light, and providence's law,
High o'er His Throne, behold anointed dust
And sainted villains, canonised and cowl'd,
Ascend beyond Him, in their plea for grace!”
'Tis thus, the laurels from the brow of Christ
Are taken, and around the head enwreathed
Of Antichrist, for twice six hundred years,—
That aping monster, who travesties God
And in the glory of his darkness seems
A mimic Satan, on Messiah's throne!

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V.—Moral Root.

But, whence this power, which paralyses men
To dull machines, for priestly hands to work,
That from the Cross all crucifixion takes,
And shuts the fountain in Emmanuel's side,
Whence gush'd atonement for the World's great sin,
Till Christ with closèd wounds remains,
Shorn of those beams, which round His ransom play,
And form a Merit fit for man to plead,
Ample as Justice, Law, and God require?
Whence the dread magic, which so mocks the world,
Soothing pale conscience with Iscariot's kiss?
Look in thy heart! there, reader! there it lies.
As fits the die within the forming mould
So false religion for thy heart is framed.

Thy fountains, Nature! are the fatal spring
Whence Popery all her canker'd life-blood drains,
And drains for ever—for they ever flow!
A moral cast from our corrupted soul
Designing Rome hath taken; and contrived
A feign'd religion, that, with fitting art,
Infernally for each expression finds
Some flatt'ring counterpart, or creed, or charm.
'Tis Man's religion from the root of sin,

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By passion foster'd, and by pride increased,
Deep-grounded, in the under-soil intense
Where guilty nature feels the goading pang,
As conscience prompts, or keen compunction wakes.
Hence, creeds are moulded; hence, all gods are made;
While reason, bribed to superstition, bows,
As sin and penance take relieving turns;
Till man himself his own atonement dreams,
And draws salvation out of sighs, and tears.

And thus, not Mind, whate'er its lofty range
Along the pathless Infinite of thought,
A shielding bulwark round the man can raise,
Safely to keep one Romish error out.
For oft, religion is but God disguised;
And when its nature from the name is torn
Mere sounds and shades for sense and substance act;
And cheated man a human mock adores.
But God is love, by his Own love inspired,
As seen the sun, by His own ray reveal'd.

Then, vain those pæans which we loudly ring,
As though the great millennium of the mind
Were coming; or, a mental noon began,
Too searching for the Man of Sin to face.
Philosophy the sting of Death renews
And back the vict'ry to the grave restores.
Whatever prospect soaring mind attain
No good it masters, till in God it rest,
Where peace and pardon, law and love combine,
And Christ and conscience can together dwell.
And why? because some creed embrace we must;
From heaven or hell religion must be drawn.
For deep within, prognostications lurk
Of tongueless dread; and boding terrors strike
Their hidden chill; and throbs immortal stir,
Like pulses of eternity, our souls;
While moods are felt, when flames of wrath to come
Prelude damnation, such as Guilt foretells,
Till the grave opens through the banquet's glare
And time's last thunders their rehearsal ring.
Though sin confront it, yet will Conscience speak,
Till sear'd, and branded into senseless nought.
Shrined in the centre of our being, dwells
That voiceless Umpire, on his moral throne
Erect, and pure; whose archetype is God,
In the stern radiance of severest law
Reflected there, for legislative might.
Here, Right and Wrong their true award receive;
And Past and Present for acquittal stand,
Or, condemnation from the bar receive;
Here Man, the ruin, in his ashes keeps
Some righteous embers, which a priest can rake,
Or quench, or quicken, as the crisis needs.

When darkly flatter'd, and when deeply read,
Our hearts become but platforms, where a Priest
Can play the drama of his Church, at will,
And shift the scenes with most consummate guile.
Some charm which echoes our exacting taste,
Some lust respondent to the varied will,
Some lie, to oscillate with pleasing sway
And skill'd vibration, as the mood requires,
Some gulling fiend to take angelic form,
And o'er the pathway which to hell conducts
Weave a rich carpet of seductive woof,—
Let these be organised, or well applied,
And man's religion in their magic proves
How wondrously such adaptation works!
Garb'd in a shroud of theologic guise
Behold the Arch-fiend, with undreaded power
His priesthood guiding; and, with ritual spells
To sooth or sadden, flatter, charm or chain
All which in Man of dust or devil acts,
Gild moral ruin with redemption's smile!
Thus, like a puppet, many-wired and weak,
Our handled nature to each sacred pull
Of Popery moves, with most responsive play.

Art thou a Student, from the pristine wells
Of learning, pleased and proud with classic thirst
To drink rich draughts of undiluted Mind?
Or, is thine ear by intellectual taste
To harmonies of ancient thought attuned?
See! the hoar'd Fathers in their hallow'd shrines,
And pale Philosophy, in pensive state,
Ready to bathe thee in some mental calm,
And soothe thy terrors with ascetic trance.
Or, (to the chariot of the senses chain'd)
Do glare and grandeur, and attractive sheens,
And Pomps, and Festivals, and painted Lies
With false and fatal eloquence, appeal
To the base passion of thine earthly will?
Lo! the drunk Sense with reasonless delight
May find a Ball-room spiritually gay,
A ritual opera, by Rome arranged,
Where the blood dances, where emotion reels
While soft damnation, musical and sweet,
Charms faith to feeling, and each feeling, blind!

VI.—Religious Instinct.

But, most to that religiously-depraved
Self-righteous dream of ever-prompting Pride,—
From earth to heaven to win or work its way,
Adapting Popery, with mimetic art

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Her necromance of ritual pomp applies.
A finite Self to infinite transform'd,
Some Trentine god by moral fiction shaped,
Is all that Passion's creed impure desires;
And lo! in Rome the heart's vile canons meet
Their very echo! grace and sin conjoin'd,
An outward form for inner-life prepared,
A dead religion where no God remains,—
Here is thy Charm, thou sorceress of souls!
Self-gain'd salvation forms thy secret force:
Hence liturgies, to please corruption plann'd;
Hence creeds, to flatter hope, or bribe a fear,
And all the pantomime of bows, and beads.
Thus perfect in pure falsity, Thou seem'st
By the Great Liar of the world inspired,
To set the Adam of the sensual mind
In motion; feeling, so that nothing's felt,
And working, so that nothing's truly wrought
As Law proclaims, or holy love demands.
Yet, nature, pleased with self-atonement, dares
Blindly to merit what mere Grace bestows,
And parts with all things, sin alone except!

And thus, machines, by blind devotion turn'd
For rites external, Rome's deluded slaves
Become; automatons for priestly guile,
Moving, or motionless, as that inspires;
For, each false yearning of self-righteous will
In Popery some pleasing vent can find.
Devout fanatics, passionately wed
To forms, where sense o'er spirit domineers,
May there a sanctimonious refuge gain,
From seeming prayer, to suit a prayerless heart,
Down to the beads dull Superstition counts.
Rome loves the Crucifix, but hates the Cross!
And thus, whatever gull'd Emotion longs
Upon her shrine of selfishness to lay,
Her human gospel cunningly applies;
Cheating the soul with skeletons of truth.
No taste, but here a subtle pleasure finds;
No sentiment, but what some echo meets;
Nor fancy, which no fellowship can find.
There, Painting, with its poetry of hues,
And Music, with its poetry of sound,
And temples, with their poetry of stone,
All, all compose a theologic cheat
That charms the spirit from its saviour-God.

VII.—Sorcery.

But thou! Imagination's martyr'd fool,
Whose faith is fancy, in religion's dress,
Whose shining virtues are but gilded vice
Seen by the Bible's heart-exploring beam,
For thee the cup of Antichrist is drugg'd
With rapt intoxication's master-spells!
Anthems, which seem to roll from Angel-harps,
And silver chants, that Seraphim might sing;
Paintings, where Beauty's virgin grace
Divinely-mortal, exquisitely smiles;
And sights superb, processions' vast array,
Or cloisters pale, where Pensiveness may roam,
Or perfumed incense, with its spiral clouds
Floating to heaven, before the vested priests,
Whose robes with sacramental meaning wave;
All these, with Churches, where religion stamps
The very stones with symbolising force,
And painted windows, by their colours, preach
Sermons which strike imagination dumb,
Or, melt it in soft martyrdom of sighs,—
Here is the weaving of those spells which bind
Millions to darkness, in the chains of Rome!
Whose mock religion The Almighty veils,
And each fine essence out of saving truth
Evaporates, in Forms which stifle faith,
And from the heart its vital heaven exclude:
For, what is holiness but heaven below?
Or heaven itself, but holiness above?

But, in some crisis of mysterious gloom
When frowns almighty round the heart of guilt
Darker than death-shades, dismal as profound,
Hover and hang, the buried past revives
Till dead Hours quicken in their secret graves,
The Infinite a voicely fear becomes,
And all of God to all in man appeals
For vengeance! Horeb is on fire again,
In thunder preaching its horrific curse.
Now, seems a Sinai in the soul of man!
Erected there by that instinctive law
Which Nature's creed must canonize, and own:
And oft, beneath its altitudes of gloom
Pale terrors, and alarm'd compunctions fall,
By strong enforcement, at its awful base;
Till the bow'd spirit trembles into tears,
While thunder-peals of God-proclaiming truth
Preach to our guilt th' uncompromising Law
Which conscience echoes with responsive groan.
Then doubts, which make a Golgotha of mind,
Madden the sinner with a fest'ring sway:
The wind was sown,—the whirlwind hence is reap'd;
The seed was darkness—and the fruit is death!
And where, now pleasure's silken trance is o'er
And fear'd eternity with curses rings,
Shall the torn spirit some true refuge find?
Oh, fell imposture! priestly Fiction comes;
And all its juggl'ry of cheating lies,
Indulgence vain, and penances most vile
Which keep the sinner from the saving Cross,
Again renews; the soul with opium drugs;
Infernal laud'num blinded Conscience drinks,
Till thus, from terror into torpor soothed,
Her sunken witness in stagnation dies;
And the torn Heart, by self-atonement heal'd,
Back to its smiles of sinful peace returns

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To drink from pleasure draughts of death once more,
Like a mad infant to its mother's breast,
Though pale, and poison'd by some murd'rous hand.

Here is thy venom, here thy spring of strength,
Thou master-spell of Satan's master-piece!
With all the finish of a fiend contrived
To soothe the conscience, when a rack begins;
To keep the penance and a priest in play;
To hold the sinner, but let loose the sin,
And by Confession to absorb the Cross.
Thus, papal lies to nature's roots descend;
They fix, they fasten in the moral soil
Their foul adjustment. Man is papal born,
And false religion must be papal too;
And his exacting nature nicely fit
In heart, in conscience, and uncertain will.
For sin, when loved, for punishment, when fear'd,
Consummate Rome hath thus for both prepared
A recipé, that 'tween the two can act:
A sop for Conscience—when it pleads with dread,
And sin for Passion—when that dread is o'er:
And thus, beneath the burning eye of Heaven,
No parody of truth like this, deceives;
No spell, by genius of satanic might
Forged in the secrecy of mystic lies,
No miracle of dread imposture, works
Perdition with so masterly success
As when God's will, travestied and transform'd,
To Man becomes religion; and from heaven
Beguiles him, while it seems to guide him There.

INSPIRATION OF THE IDEAL.

'Tween two eternities each hour is born
Of present Being; in the midst, our mind,
(Through some deep sense of undevelop'd power,
Haunted for ever by the Unattain'd)
Fevers, and frets with intellectual thirst
For more of Perfect, Beautiful, or Pure,
For more of Truth, in majesty and might
Than ever rises on the reaching sense,
Or, seems embodied in the shape of Things.
The Infinite we love, and half adore;
Our heaven of feeling seeks a heaven of fact,—
An outward Image, whose responsive mould
May body forth Imagination's dream.
And hence, enthroned in some ethereal calm,
Conceptive Genius from creation draws
Types of vast truth, and symbols of the soul,
To aid Perception, when its shaping power
Would vision out a universe of Love,
And Ideality in life reveal.

But if, beyond what Nature's world supplies
A yearning soul for moral beauty thirsts,
Creative Thought, by combination frames
From all which heroes of the heart have felt,
Or martyrs of the sleepless mind portray'd,
Or dreamt in prison-gloom, or palace-smiles,
A model of true consummated Man!
And, noble is such discontent of soul
Which leads to Virtue's elevating path;
The mind unprisons; or, from chaining Sense,
That coarsely to the common life of things
Would bind us down in drudgery and death,
To freedom and infinitude allures
The man within. And hence, all dreamings high
And holy; hence, imagination's flight;
And aspirations, fetterless and pure.
For, in this orbit of mysterious Life
The central immortality is Man;
And, greater far than all the greatness seen
One viewless Thought of his observing Mind!
Since what the apprehending sense beholds
Forms but a veil, through which are dimly view'd
Deep intimations of diviner Things,
And preludes faint of far profounder Truth
And Beauty, yet by God to be unveil'd.
'Tis thus, the poetry of heart begins,
The painter's longing, and the sculptor's love,
Which purify from sensual dross and guile
Our inner-life, with sacramental force;
Hence, Homer drew; and solemn Milton drank
The inspirations of a deathless song.
In beautiful transcendencies of thought
From earthly matter into heavenly forms
They soar'd, for ever; and, by shaping dreams,
Imaged a life above the life they felt
And breathed the immortality they sung.
'Tis thus, by passion for the Infinite,
And glorious longings for some Perfect Good,
The heart's millennium, in all ages, acts:
Hence Liberty her laurell'd hero frames,
Martyr, and saint, and sage their stamp receive,
Religion half her purity obtains,
And the bright paradise of Morals blooms.

Thus Luther, in his lone and lofty zeal
Impetuous, bold, and ardent as sublime,
With feelings vivid like the soul they fired,
Who led the exodus of man and mind
From the vile Egypt of enslaving Rome
To Canaan's borders, in the world of truth,—
E'en like a prophet, o'er predestined scenes
Above the cold, the actual, and the coarse
Mounted aloft; and sleeplessly pursued

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Through tears and torture, outrage, grief, and wrong,
Through storm and cloud, convulsion and contempt,
That great Exemplar which his mind conceived.
Beauty and Brightness their ideal thrones
Erected in him; while their magic spell
Temper'd his heart for each ethereal type.
And so, by Pre-conception's purest charm
Master'd and moulded, his frail being grew;
He lived the Poetry which others thought;
And from that hour when friendly capture threw
A shroud of safety round his perill'd head
Where the lone castle of Altenstein frown'd,
To that famed crisis, when from cell and chain
Heaven's cloister'd Principles came forth to breathe,
Pale from the prison of a thousand years,
His passion for the Perfect and the Pure
Nerved him for wonders! Like that mystic Voice,
Which often to the soul of seers reveal'd
Visions of Godhead, vocal and distinct,
Heaven-ward, for plans archangels might have cheer'd,
Pure Inspiration seem'd to guide him on.
Gigantic efforts, flush'd with sacred zeal,
And high endeavours, honourably vast,
Ardours intense, with flames of moral ire,
A mental freedom, or that tameless force
Which grappled ever with imagined Fiends,—
All were expressions of one master-wish;
The indications of a Soul, inspired
To be the great Apostle of mankind
In deeds of glory, for a cause divine.
The sigh of Nature with herself to blend
And bind, in one fond brotherhood of faith,
The feelings and the family of Man;
A New Jerusalem on earth to hail;
A Church redeem'd to apostolic mould;
A reigning Jesus, a rejoicing World,—
To such bright centres of consummate hope
Did Luther, with ideal passion, tend;
These made the goal to which he onward press'd,
The lofty mark, at which his virtue aim'd;
And from the level of a monk's low range
Lifted on high his ever-loving heart,
And bade him, in a sunless age, to shine
A moral saviour o'er eclipsed mankind.

MAMMON AND MATERIALISM.

Oh, for a Luther to inspire us now!
Th' awaking magic of some mind God-taught
To charm the sensual from the Nation's soul;
Our passions dark, our appetites of dust
To brighten, or to banish; till the love
Of whatsoe'er is lefty, and divine,
Of whatsoe'er is glorious, and august,
The throne of public Taste may re-ascend,
Give life to Genius, and a law to thought,
And for the Beautiful true homage gain.
Woe to the Land! whose days are evil now:
Venality in vulgar glory reigns;
Profit and Loss intense inspirers are;
The Arts are pining in neglected gloom,
Sculpture is dead, and Poetry in tears;
And Science mostly for the palate reigns!
Utility, a social god becomes,
And Britain but as Dives, longs to live
In pomp and purple, and in sumptuous joy.
The universe for comfort seems arranged;
The world,—a warehouse for convenience plann'd!
And that Creation, which to faith appears
An outer-court to God's more secret shrine,
Is made a temple, where the Senses may
Adore the Useful, with vile worship now.

Alas! for England when her god is gold,
And nought believed but what coarse passions love;
When all of spirit, found in tasteful lore,
In effort noble, or sublime in aim,
A mock becomes, till principle expires,
And base Expediency's polluted breath
Falls, like a mildew, over minds and men.
Romance is faded; sentiment extinct;
All the fine chivalries of ancient Faith
Are laugh'd away, as meaningless, or vain:
While Dulness prospers in her leaden smiles,
And mediocrity, with damping weight,
Each nobler faculty and sacred power
Darkens, at last, to intellectual death,
And leaves to Manhood little but a name.

Oh, for a spirit of reviving truth,
A resurrection from the grave of Mind!
That soon the harmonies of olden thought,
Like buried music, from the past may rise
In solemn cadence, and our souls becalm.
Let Finite in the Infinite be merged;
Let Fancy dream, Imagination dare,
And Effort triumph in heroic forms
Till Art and Genius glorify the world,
And Science from her dreams of sensual bliss
Turn to the Soul, and there, with rev'rent gaze,
Deep within deep those springs of Nature trace,
Where most the unapparent Spirit works,
And awful Conscience from her secret throne
Each lawless movement of the soul condemns;
Or like an Oracle is ever found
Approving virtue, and proclaiming heaven.

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COVENANT OF HEARTS.

Bound in the links of that ethereal Chain
Which upward, from the insect's tiny pulse
On earth that throbs, to yonder wheeling orbs
Enormous, its unbroken coil extends,
Are all things by the Hand almighty held.
And thus, what chance to vulgar sense appears,
Is veil'd causation, and confirm'd decree.
Nature herself, through each organic change
And form, or function, is but Will supreme,
In might, or beauty, marching to result
Predestined. Not an atom is consumed;
No leaf can vibrate, not a billow laugh,
Nor wild breeze flutter on its fairy wing,
But God o'errules it, with control as nice
As that which belts the planets with a zone
Of harmony, and binds the stars with law.
And though mere chaos, to an eye immersed
In sensual darkness, Life's perturbèd scene
Must ever be, not thus to them who scan
The world's confusion by celestial light
From scripture beaming, does mysterious time
Appear. For then, disorder is but plan
Divinely-working, by arranged degrees
Upward and onward into truth evolved
Through the long maze of labyrinthine wills,
Or human actions. Kings, and slaves, and priests;
Erected monarchies, or crumbled thrones;
The shout of warriors, or an infant's wail;
In life, in faith, in conduct, or in creed
Whate'er be witness'd, God behind the scene
From His high watch-tower of incessant sway
Governs, and guides the blended Whole of man.
Never the Eye omniscient drops its lid,
Or slumbers: whether Virtue's godlike brow
Be laurell'd, and the Church's heart exult;
Or dark temptation, like a Demon come,
Harness the soul, and lash Desire along
To ruin,—in that change, no change exists.
For in the freedom of the foulest will
Venting itself in vanity, or vice;
Or in the soarings of a strong-wing'd faith
That heavenward mounts, and leaves low earth behind,
Around them moves One all-inclusive Will
Which, leaving man responsible and free,
For God retains supremacy and law.

And none, whose souls, by sacred fear made wise,
The lesson of their weakness well have learn'd;
Or rightly weigh'd, how much from ties of love
And charms of social power the moral frame
Impression gathers,—dare to Chance ascribe
A covenant of Hearts, when struck between
Two in the faith, accordant and conjoin'd.
Pure Love our moral gravitation makes;
At once the motion, and the rest of man:
But when, and where, and how electric chains
Are closely fasten'd into Friendship's heart,
Should make us ponder; since for bane, or bliss,
Over man's conscious destiny they cast
A character Eternity will not efface!
Since Love is plastic; and by secret charm
Shapes to resemblance with its moral self
Our yielded bosom; and the yearning heart
Thus takes the likeness of each thing it loves,—
E'en as some insect from the herb derives
A hue responsive to the food it eats.
Hence, only virtue forms a solid base
Rooted, and grounded in the heart of truth,
Where friendship's high and holy structure stands
Bedeck'd, and order'd, by approving Heaven.
Two Finites can no lasting friendship make;
Between them both an Infinite must stand,
And He is God! Without Him, all is mock;
The paint and pageant of a soul's outside
By fancy colour'd, or by feeling tinged;
But, wanting holiness, that All it needs
Which crowns a friendship with undying charm.
Fair Amity! when thus, indeed, the fruit
Of sacred principle, by love inspired,
Thy bloom is fragrant of yon world of bliss
Ethereal, and with fadeless beauty rife.
And such, when Luther and Melancthon's heart
In oneness holy blended their deep powers,
Wert thou; a friendship from the Cross which sprang
In the green fulness of their common faith.
And, in the archives of the past, how few
The feelings, that more lovingly have twined
A wreath of nature round the brow of grace,
Than those, which from the young and verdant breast
Of their twin Manhood, did together rise!

DISTINCT BUT UNDIVIDED.

Distinct in tone, yet undivided, both
Their hearts in melody combined, and met.
But if in nature poesy would find
Their fancied echo, hark! the torrent's fall
In liquid thunder foaming loud and fierce,
From crag to crag precipitous, and bold,—
And there, is Luther; while, along the banks
Tree-shaded, list, yon low and quiet stream,
And mark! the mild Melancthon. Each to each
A grace of contrast, and the charm which glows
Round minds which vary while the hearts embrace,

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Imparted: both in one vast work converged;
And oh! what hours of evangelic peace,
What hymns of soul, what praises blent with prayers,
What feelings high amid the haunted woods
Of Wittemberg, were oft by each enjoy'd!
And in the lassitude of lofty cares
When, crush'd beneath his adamantine wrongs,
The soul of Luther lay in bleeding gloom,
How the calm sunshine of Melancthon's face
Around him shed some heart-restoring smile!
But o'er Thy page, Eternal Wisdom! most
Did their high friendship in communion blend;
As truth on truth, from out the classic grave
Of language, where dead meanings were entomb'd,
Started to life in Luther's noble tongue
Till Fatherland its own free bible hail'd,
And God in German to his country spake.
Thus, day by day, that Book of Heaven became
A sabbath-port from earth's tempestuous cares,
Which raged and roll'd around them: scene and time
And circumstance, those mast'ring three in one
That make, or mar the All mere worldlings dream,
To them were shadows, which the radiant Word
Dazzled to nought, as clouds in sunbeams die.
The monarch's palace, or the monk's low cell,
Or chamber dim, from out whose frescoed walls
In massy framework look'd the pictured Dead
Who live in hues immortal,—'twas alike
To men, who on this world, were in the next,
By faith or feeling ever wafted there.

Then, what are base alliances, miscall'd
By friendship's name, but artificial modes,
Or satires on the sacredness and sense
Of this high virtue?—mere enamell'd lies!
Too often are they but a painted show
Of pleased Hypocrisy, whose silken ties
Are light as gossamer, before the storm
Severe affliction round our lot may bring.
Convenience; lucre; folly, pride, or gain;
A ride, a dinner, or a small request;
Or sad communion in the common sin
By passion cherish'd—there, mock friendships reach
A zenith, and their noblest zeal expires.
But when, alas! unbodied, and unveil'd
Of earth's false trappings, in the world of souls
These gay companions of a feast and song
Meet in stern truth, unmantled to the core,
Hideously naked, to the very heart
Discover'd,—how each mask of Self will drop!
And many a cheek, by radiant kindness clothed,
Blacken with hate, with horror, or revenge
Infernal: friendship now is ruin found;
And soft-mouth'd men, who seem'd, in time, so dear,
Will each to each satanical appear
And loathe, like fiends, their lost eternity!

But, cast your friendship into chaster mould;
Let genius, learning, or congenial taste,
Or fellowship like what the Muses love,
Refined as Lælius felt, or Scipio found;
Or, let Parnassus sing how poets loved,
Whose lives and verses did together run
And softly blend, like interwoven streams,
E'en at the best, such earth-born magic dies
Soon as dark shadows of the grave begin
To pall the Present, and its passing joys.
Then, all their sweetness and their strength depart!
Bred from the world, they, with the world, recede;
Friendship and flesh, together in one tomb
They perish; for, each lack'd that saving life
Which makes immortal what we cherish here.

CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP.

But there is friendship pure as angels love;
Which trust, and truth, and tenderness create
When two fond Hearts with sacred force embrace,
By union deep, unworldly, and divine.
Then friendship, like a school for mind becomes,
Where act to habit may itself mature;
And Self, denied in little things, advance
To show denial, which a world may bless
And all the Churches with due plaudit hail.
Here, faith with friendship can indeed concur;
Beyond mere temper, and accordant tones;
While reign those Principles whose charm outwears
Sickness and sorrow, death, or cold neglect,
With all the jarring dissonance which tries
The force of feeling, in its wisest hour.
But, whence are these, save from th' Almighty drawn,
And, like Himself, unchangeably sublime!
Here is a friendship, perfect, calm, sincere,
Above mutation, as beyond decay;
A friendship, Lord! whose archetype is Thine;
For, when on earth, Thy mortal life assumed
Manhood, with each consummate trait adorn'd;
And human Feeling may exult to view
Laid on thy breast the much beloved St. John!

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Oh! for a Friendship which outlives the sun,
To last, when time hath faded, and when Flesh
With all its burden, is a baseless dream.
It drops a balsam in the wounded breast,
Soothes the torn mind, and soul-dejection heals;
'Tis heart to sympathy and hand to love,
Can charm the wisest, or the feeblest worth
Uphold, and makes the poorest rich indeed.

Man forms the foe, but God alone the friend,
If friend he is, with truthful love endow'd,
And graced with those prerogatives of mind
Religion sanctions. Then, what kindred bliss,
What sweet affinities of thought and taste!
The Janus-temple of a jealous heart
That shuts, or opens, as the door demands,
Is here unwitness'd; all is frank display
Which scorns pretence, and scatters each disguise
By sun-clear verity, whose shining force
Copes with all clouds of accident, or change,
And ever beams on Friendship's cordial brow.
Here is an amity our noblest wants
Delight to welcome, as their true supply:
With active force the intellect it feeds,
The heart enlarges into loftier swell
And, in the counterplay it gives and asks,
Finds equal pleasure, when the echo sounds
Sincere and manly. But affliction most
The high-born friendship of heroic minds
Illustrates: then the sacrifice of Self
Devoted, prompt, impassion'd as sincere,
By sorrow, substance, or by costly life,
How godlike is it! how resembling Him
The soul's Philanthropist, creation's Friend
The world enriching, by Himself made poor!
Friendship like this, the seal of God confirms,
Who cast our nature into social mould
And bade it seek for brotherly response,
Or bosom-counterparts in bliss, or woe:
And thus, whate'er his rank, or high renown,
Man needs an echo, whose responsive charm
Doubles himself, by feeling's prompt reply;
To rich enjoyment adds a height'ning zest
Untold; and when misfortune's east-wind blows
Or cutting blasts of cold ingratitude
Sweep the lorn bosom, by the world betray'd,
Softer than dews from Hermon's sainted height
The tones of Friendship, dropt in feeling's ear
For comfort! Mine be thus some heaven-made friend,
And I will clasp him, with the heart's embrace
For ever! Morning with its radiant blush;
Noon with its glory; Twilight with its trance;
Or balmy Night, with all the stars awake
In beauty walking o'er their midnight-round,
How are they each, when friendship's echoing heart
Throbs near our own, with added charm endow'd!
Yea, all those homilies of love and might
Appealing Nature to the pensive reads
Down winding lanes, or paths of vernal bloom,
Or rustic haunt where rambling Boyhood loves
To stray, and linger,—how some tasteful friend
Can, with ourselves, interpret all their tones
In strains of poetry and inward peace,
When souls are mingled, and Creation greets
The hearts who love her. Nor does faith deny
That, e'en in heaven ethereal friendships bring
Their calm addition to celestial joy:
For Truth is social, in the highest orb
Of her dominion! God Himself is not alone,
But in deep light, Tripersonally throned,
In plural Godhead His perfection holds.

UNION IN THE CROSS.

So Martin Luther and Melancthon felt.
For them, religion was no lifeless creed,
But living virtue: faith and friendship blent
Their pureness, and together nobly grew
In the rich soil of their congenial breasts.
And when we learn what this rare friendship did,
How gratefully will Faith her God adore,
Who so ordain'd, by councils plann'd above,
That Men like these, in place and time should meet,
Blend their brave hearts, and with united hands
The fabric of the Reformation build
In rising glory! Each that structure claim'd:
And as some builder first in mind conceives
The mansion, which external Art reveals,
And models only from a type within,
So, from His pattern of eternal thought,
The Architect supreme His will expressed
In that vast work the Reformation rear'd:
And not a stone to form that fabric rose,
Nor human workman there his building hand
Devoted, but from God directly came
Some guiding impulse. Glory, then, to Him!
Who thus in hallow'd unity combined
Two hearts distinct, as those twin Leaders bore
That ransom'd Israel from Egyptian chains.
Their's was a friendship, more than Nature forms,
Fancy begets, or genial tastes preserve:
The one, like thunder! arm'd by daring soul
Breathing defiance with a lion-voice;
Tempestuous often in that mental storm

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Which heaved his temper by o'erflowing wrath,
With rage unbounded: but the other, mild
And chasten'd, passionless and curb'd;
A halcyon man of holiness and zeal
Whose heart was quiet in its deepest hour.
Or, Nature's imag'ry may thus depict
Their true distinction, in her world of types;
Intensely burning, like a tropic noon,
In one the character of heart appears:
The other, like a placid twilight-scene
Bathed in serenity of softest dews,
With stars down looking on the lovely whole.

But yet, through many a shock unmoved they went,
And stood united, when all else dissolved
Around them. 'Twas The Cross, and that alone,
Which so cemented with abounding grace
Two Hearts, that else were utterly unlike.
Here was a centre; round this changeless point
Of God for glory, and of truth for Man,
They met, they mingled, with harmonious love
In concord perfect: but in tones of taste
Agreed to differ with delightful ease.
Contrast with them, like two magnetic poles,
Their hearts attracted, and by secret love
Each into each with soft concernment drew
The closer; union their distinctness proved.
But more than this, may grateful wonder see;
For each to God's mysterious cause supplied
Some fitting element, or power defined,
Which, wanting, would have left His work unsafe,
Or tott'ring. Thus, Melancthon's classic toils
And tasteful culture nourish'd growing minds
In progress; while, from Luther's boundless zeal
There went a spirit of sublime attack
That shook the Popedom, like a thunder-blast,
Making it tremble down to falsehood's depths
Of darkness. Thus, two Hands distinct they were,
Each for his task appointed, and prepared,
And both by Wisdom wielded from on high.

FRIENDS IN HEAVEN.

Their work is done, their deathless toil complete;
And they are gather'd to that spirit-realm
Where all things tend, as to their final home,
Which are in time and consciousness reveal'd.
But is that friendship, incorrupt and bright,
Effulging from the radiant fount of Love
Celestial, is it in yon heaven absorb'd,
There swallow'd, in some Infinite of bliss
Which now enfolds them? Are those ties of heart,
Broken on earth, no more in heaven renew'd?
If here below our fondest cravings prove
Affections make the vowels of the mind,
And, like a consonant, when left alone,
Man without love seems unpronounced and mute,
Will yearning Manhood in the skies be lone?
Alas! if nothing save what Earth inspires
By us be worshipp'd; then, as time concludes,
And from eternity rise spectral Woes,
And shapeless Horrors worse than guilt forebodes
Hover in view, like flashes in the dark
Our earth-born friendships will at once go out
In blackness; better had they never been!

But when two Hearts, heroic, brave, and pure
Like Luther's and Melancthon's, nobly throb
Through years of trial with responsive beat
Unfalt'ring, can we think the upper-World
Where men redeem'd the nearest circle form
Of radiant worshippers, who round The Lamb
Hymn golden numbers from their lyres of light
For ever, can we think, that Souls like these,
Will ever there in single glory chant
That song, united which on earth they sung?
No! from a heartless creed, for pagans fit,
Our aspirations, dreams, and wingèd hopes
At once recoil, unsocial heaven reject,
And prove it pagan. If below the bonds
Of sacred amity, by grace refined,
'Mid the dark waste of sin-degraded hours
And all th' exacting selfishness which tires
The bosom, yet themselves inviolate keep,
How will such bonds, from imperfection freed,
Gather new strength, and nobler charms enjoy
In that blest Meeting-place of Minds above!
Then shall each excellence, whose winning form
Though varied, held the heart's accorded throne
So firmly, shine with far intenser ray
Than earth experienced. Thus, ascending Thought
May cleave the firmament on wings of faith,
Outsoar the stars, beyond the planets rise
And leave creation far our flight behind,
And there, within the heaven of heavens, behold
Immortal Friends in one immortal home.
From the same Fount of never-failing bliss
Their blending spirits drink responsive joy
Unspeakable: and there in God embower'd,
What once made prayer, is now with praise enjoy'd;

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The past of earth in heaven a present forms
And gives eternal Consciousness a theme
For wonder, worship, and augmenting love.

SUBLIME OF HISTORY.

Nothing is little in this world of ours,
Because, whate'er the dim-eyed sceptic dream,
In nothing rarely can we act alone.
Built like that fabled roof, whose finest parts
Each into each by interwoven skill
So exquisitely play, with poised effect,
That touch but one, and lo! the fabric all
Shakes into movement with recoiling shock,—
So is our world by its Great Builder plann'd.
Thus, the first glance which God's forbidden tree
Drew from the eye of earth's frail Mother, forms
With our last sin a fatal union now!

No fact is isolate, no feeling lone;
Entangled are we by perpetual lines
Of moral net-work, infinite and fine,
With magic influence all around us drawn,
Which makes our conduct endless,—by the thrill
And tone of feeling that it often strikes
On the deep chord of ages, yet to come.
Nothing is little, where a moral lurks:
The last vibration of The Saviour's lip,
Expiring, more of deity involved
Than all the gorgeous universe contains.
Though mean the wood, which then Messiah bore
In bleeding glory, while the planted Cross
Lifted Him up a sacrifice for sin,
That sacramental Type a focus form'd
Where the vast councils of Eternal Love
Concenter'd all their wisdom and their wealth
In action!—though a point in space, The Tree,
From out it, as a salient centre, spring
The hopes immortal of our world redeem'd.
Not might of scene, not magnitude of space,
Nor aught of majesty which Sense admires
Or Time can value by his vulgar hours,
To truth a character, or creed a strength
Can give: for Principle a glory hath
Beyond the limits of defining man;
Enthroned in sempiternal light, it reigns
The Alpha and The Omega of all
In love stupendous, or in law severe.

Thus round that moment, when the Saxon monk,
Bold as some rock which breasts the main alone,
Lifted his brow, and faced his gather'd foes,
What centuries of undevelop'd truth
And change, were secretly encounter'd, then!
To eye of sense, mere Spectacle it look'd
Of men and minds; or, where a rebel stood
Undaunted: but, Another Form there was!
Sightless amid the loud conclave, Who watch'd
Each word that breathed, and master'd all which moved
And thought, but was Himself unseen, unheard,
And unimagined: lo! The Lord was there
Supreme Director of that scene august,
Where Luther triumph'd, and the Bible rear'd
Its signal far above all thrones of earth,
Untorn, untarnish'd, and untouch'd by man,
The badge of faith and banner of our souls
To be, beyond the rage of Earth, or Hell
To baffle, or resist! And we, who gaze
Back from the heights of purer worship now
On that gone period, when th' imperial host
Fierce in the hall of unforgotten Worms
Mutter'd, and raged round Luther's dauntless form,
May well that crisis of the World admire!
And think, how from the crystal walls of heaven
Spirits were gazing; or on balanced wing
Hung o'er the chamber where the host convened,
Viewless; and watch'd each mental shade which cross'd
Thy features, while They drank with blissful ear
Each tone majestic, thine unconquer'd mind
By truth inspired, from scripture then awoke
To perish never,—noble-hearted Monk
Of Wittemberg! Nor let the mocker doubt,
His yes, or no, the wheel of ages turn'd,
And balanced Europe on a single breath;
Since what he felt, the World is feeling still
In heart eternized; Luther is alive
By influence; and each living word of truth
In Worms that sounded an immortal note,
Intones our Churches with some cadence now.

Oh! 'twas a scene, where hist'ry grows sublime
And unsurpass'd; save when the fetter'd Paul
Lifted his eyes of light and brow of truth
Before Agrippa, till that prince of lust,
Under the sway of his resistless voice
And bold denouncement, quiver'd, like a tree
Shook by the night-blast. From the hills of Rome
The Vatican in vain its thunders roll'd;
And thy huge palace, dark-wall'd Pleissenburg!
Witness'd the brave defender, when he fell'd
Those Anakims of intellectual might,
The proud Goliaths of theology.
But, now, at length, the very Man of Sin,

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And crown'd blasphemer who travesties Christ,
Himself upon his Throne of lies shall start
And shiver! “Pile for pile shall kindle now,
Bull, Law, and Canons, and Clementines, all,
Shall in one sacrifice of flame expire!”
So spake the monk undaunted; and the blaze
Redden'd, and rose beside yon eastern gate
Of Wittemberg, above that papal mass
Of fictions mould'ring, and impostures vile;
While by a shout, which should for ever ring
The heart of Europe with responsive tones,
Applauding thousands that bright witness hail'd
Whose keen reflection scorches Popedom, now.

But, there He stands! in superhuman calm
Concenter'd, and sublime. Around Him pomp
And blaze imperial; haughty eyes, and words
Whose tones breathe tyranny, in vain attempt
The heaven-born quiet of his soul to move.
Crown'd with the grace of everlasting truth
A more than monarch among Kings he stood:
And while without, an ever-deep'ning mass
Of murm'ring thousands, on the windows watch'd
The torchlight gleaming through the crimson'd glass
Of that throng'd Hall, where Truth on trial was,
Seldom on earth did ever sun go down,
Or evening mantle o'er a grander scene.
There Priests, and Barons, Counts and Dukes were met,
Landgraves and Margraves, Earls, Electors, Knights,
And Charles the Splendid, in the glowing pride
Of princely youth, with Empires at his feet;
And there—the miner's son, to match them all!
With black robe belted round his manly waist
Before that bar august he stood serene;
By self-dominion reining down his soul.
Melancthon wept; and Spalatinus gazed
With breathless wonder on that wondrous Man!
While mute and motionless, a grim array
Of priests and monks, in combination dire,
On Luther fasten'd their most blood-hound gaze
Of bigotry; but not one rippling thought disturb'd
The calm of heaven on his commanding face!
Meek but majestic, simple and sublime
In aspect, thus he braved the wrath of Rome
With brow unshrinking; and with eyes that burn'd
As if the spirit in each glance were sheath'd:
And then, with voice which seem'd a soul in sound
Made audible, he pled th' Almighty's cause
In words almighty as the cause he pled,
The Bible's! God's religion, not the Priest's
By craft invented and for Lucre preach'd,
For This, life limb and liberty he vow'd
To sacrifice; though earth and hell might rage,
Not Pope, nor Canon, Council nor Decree
Would shake him! From the throne of that resolve
By fiend, nor angel would his heart be hurl'd;
Truth and his Conscience would together fight,
The world 'gainst them—and they against the world!
And then, with eyes which flash'd celestial fire,
Full in the face of that assembly breath'd
The fearless Monk those ever-famous words,
“God help me! Here I stand alone; Amen!”

MORAL RESULTS.

And let all ages that “Amen” repeat,
For it is worthy. Angels might the word
Have welcomed, and th' Eternal arches rung
An echo, as it roll'd from Luther's lip
Solemn and deep, and with celestial might
Impassion'd, since the Truth was then uplift,
The Cross defended, and the Bible crown'd
With vict'ry, when alone the monk of God
Rallied his spirit into high resolve;
And 'gainst the pope, the devil, and The world,
Terror and time, and man's ingratitude,
Fearless like Stephen, when that martyr stood,
Firm as The Rock on which his faith was built.

But not for this, will Persecution's fang
Be blunted. Hark! beneath that vaulted roof
Of Worms' cathedral, rise the chanted hymns
Round the high Altar, while pale incense-clouds
Float their soft fragrance through the aisles immense
Of yon grey temple. There, at Charles's feet,
Haughty, and with imperious rancour stung,
Vile Alexander, on his knee, presents
An Edict, dooming Faith and Luther's soul
Together, under ban and blast to be
Unceasing! “since the Monk was fiendish man,
And all of heresies by heart conceived,
By Satan loved, or damning falsehood dreamt,
Hath Hell epitomised in him, at last!”

Now drops the curtain on the Drama's view;
Strangely and suddenly the scene's o'erveil'd
By myst'ry; human actors are withdrawn:
Inaudibly, along a darken'd stage
Of wonders, moves the lone Almighty now,
Himself evolving what His love decrees
Inscrutable, by boasting man unshared.
And e'en like Philip to Azotus rapt,

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Sightless, or lost, shall Luther for a while
Appear; and safe in castled shade retire,
That God alone may God's true champion be;
Nor finite agency presume to claim
For effort mortal, what the Hand Divine
Shall consummate, in secresy unveil'd.
Yes! Man shall vanish, that the Cause may rest
Ark'd in the wisdom of Jehovah's will,
Shelter'd and safe. But he, the hope of all,
Far in the forest of Thuringa hid,
E'en in that hour when most the dazzled scene
Had hail'd him Hero of all prayer and praise,
At once is banish'd! There shall Luther find
A teaching solitude, where Faith may learn
Meekly to suffer, and with flesh contend;
Or, with some Angel of mysterious gloom
Sternly to wrestle, till the break of day,
The morning-twilight of a better mood
Dawn on his mind, in radiant peace again.
Down his own spirit he shall learn to gaze
Through many a pangful grief, and sorrowing prayer;
And, like his Lord, that mystic Ladder climb,
Whose steps are suff'rings, but whose top in heaven
Through glory reaches! Chasten'd thus, and calm'd,
The Monk may gather up his soul for God
And learn that faith he taught the world to love.

SYMPATHIES OF NATURE.

Thy beauty, Nature, hath a chorded spell
Responsively for tones of feeling tuned,
In moments deep of myst'ry and of mind.
How often when the human world looks harsh
And loveless; when no eye reflects the ray
Of sorrow, beaming mildly from our own;
When, darkly girdled by a zone of thought,
Apart, and voiceless in our souls we move,
Thy scenes of calm, thy solitudes profound,
Like mute interpretations, seem to wear
An outward mirror of the mood we feel!
Then silence to the soul of thought appeals
With more than language; thy maternal hush
Upon the heart's strange fever falls, like dew.
Sublime in thy sublimities we grow,
And lose the littleness of earth and man
Amid the vastness of those speaking Forms
Of grace, and Grandeurs which Thy throne surround.
Soon may the mind, by such entrancement, soar,
And from the vileness of this vexing world
A while set free, imbibe a nobler life,
Holding dim converse with all shapes and hues
Which body forth the Beautiful and Bright
Within, or image forth the mood we feel.
How eloquent the everlasting Hills
Will oft appear! proclaiming with their peaks
Majestic, Him whose fiat bade them stand
Like monuments to Ages long no more:
Or haply, in the heart's deep-thoughted hours
Musing beside an immemorial Sea
On some poetic shore, while wave on wave
In hollow thunder lisps th' Almighty Name,
How strangely does electric nature thrill
Through forms of matter on the feeling mind!
As though the elements, by love inspired,
Interpret what our mental dream enjoys.

And did not He, a beauteous symbol trace
Between the gladness of his free-born soul
And Nature's jubilee of sun and breeze,
Heaven-guarded Luther! on his homeward track
From that proud Diet, where a miner's son
O'erawed the princes in their Hall of pride,
And sent the arrows of resistless truth
From God's own quiver through the heart of Rome?
The crystal radiance of a vernal noon
Around him deepen'd; hark! from forest-boughs
Amid whose branches play'd the truant breeze,
A quiring populace of birds resound
Their tuneful joy; or, jubilant with life,
Hymn wild hosannahs in Creation's ear;
And, high o'er all, th' imperial Lord of day
Eyes, like a parent, the rejoicing earth
Beneath him basking, in a sleep of smiles.
'Twas thus, the countenance of Nature gave
A beaming welcome, bright to Luther's heart.
All elements his counterpart assumed;
Meadow and tree intelligently wore
An aspect, touch'd with some respondent hue
To all within him. In that mood intense,
His rapture was religion, while the mind

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Revell'd in radiance, like a lark which sings
In sunshine, or a bee that hums in bloom.

His joy was God experienced; and himself
In heart, was living scripture, for the glow
And gladness felt, were letters turn'd to life,
In calm almighty through the bosom breathed.
Hence his free soul by cheering grace inspired,
Rose like a sail before the gallant wind;

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Though papal Bloodhounds for his spirit yell'd,
A peace beyond disturbing fiends to mar,
His conscience bosom'd: while the tempest raged,
The swelling purpose of his mind, unmoved,
Daunted each danger; as the perill'd bark
Bounds into harbour through a battling sea
And in calm sunshine dries its dripping sail.

ASSOCIATIONS.

Thus, safe is he, against whose life abhorr'd
The dooming blast of Rome's relentless ire
By fell edict was thunder'd; till at eve,
As dew-drops thicken on Thuringa's boughs,
And bird and breeze, on folded wing retired,
Sit brooding, back to Eis'nach's boyish scene
The Monk is wending. But as near he comes,
His brave heart, softer than a willow bends
Beneath the magic of remember'd days!
For now, that local air again he breathes
Where once, a foodless child of woe, he fought
With iron hardship, and with cruel want,
Bathing the crust reluctant Mercy gave
With drops of anguish, from his harrow'd soul
So often wrung. And now, in dreaming calm,
His true heart echoes what reviving hours
Are back restoring to all scenes, and spots,
What once they took of character or tone,
Of stern, or mild, of melanch'ly or strange;
And so, most gently doth the man subside
Down to the boy. For e'en as infant smiles
Transmute the aged, till their features old
With infantile expression learn to gleam
In softest answer, may experienced mind,
Touch'd by the spirit of life's early scene,
Reply serenely to the haunting charm
Of vernal fancies; or, of vanish'd hours
Which waken round us, when maturer life
Down the green windings of gone youth descends.
Hence, all the poetry of peaceful thought
(For men live poems in their purest hours,
But write them, when the heart-song overflows)
Made holy, lulls him into inward prayer.
Oh, had they seen him in his softer mood
Unmantled what a loving heart was there!
Guileless, as that which throbb'd on Jesu's breast
Those cowl'd automatons of monkish cells
Whose frequent worship was but ritual wires
In heartless, mindless, unimpassion'd play
The man evolving, Luther then had taught
By the fond gushes of this feeling hour,
That true religion was a manful love,
A Godward motion of believing soul
Panting for heaven, but yet with earth at peace,
And not ashamed Life's ruling spell to own.

RETROSPECT.

Thus might we, like the travell'd monk, proceed,
And backward to the home of childhood wend,
How much of elemental heart and mind
Would then return, to whence of old it came,
Helping to fashion the unfolding Man!
For character is combination drawn
From time and scene, from circumstance and spot.
The brooks which prattled in gay Boyhood's ears,
Or on whose wavelets sail'd our tiny boat;
The haunted tree; the path we loved to wind,
The cowslipp'd valley or the hawthorn-bloom;
A widow's cottage, or some thatch'd abode
Where dwelt the vet'ran of our native vale,
Who smoothed our head, or tapp'd our rosy cheeks
With ancient humour,—all, with shaping charm
Secret but sure, that Being help to build
Which Manhood in its moral structure shows.
For, there is nothing which we feel, or see,
Admire, or welcome, but a forming power
From thence proceeds, and moulds the plastic mind.
Sunrise and sea, and solemn-vested night
When mute creation God's cathedral turns
For Nature's worship; with all social things,
The hand you grasp, the hearts your own selects,
The sigh re-echo'd, or the teardrop shed
Responsive,—none wield unavailing sway;
But secretly some inward tone impart,
Hereafter in your complex manhood felt
Or found. And, like as our sepulchral dust
Howe'er transmuted by organic change,
Under the blast of Death's awaking trump
Back to the Person, by attractive law
Shall rally, and a perfect body form,
So, may the structure of our moral frame,
Completely, from such causes manifold,
The after-finish of its Form educe.

But now, from scenes where childhood's dark-wing'd years
Had bleakly wafted his unfriended life
Through many a storm, to Mora's rustic wild,
Onward behold the dauntless trav'ller speed.
In that calm village, where a lowly sire
Drew the first breath, his genial soul partakes
The deep o'erflowings of affection's tide,
Tranquil as tender: placed amid kind hearts
Which beat fond echoes to his faithful own,
What peace he finds! what purified repose!
Not his the bosom cold, or shut, or stern;
Nor mock philanthropy, which makes a World
Its giant fav'rite, while domestic chords

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Are unallow'd to vibrate through the breast,
And distant love proves mere neglect at home!
Fresh on his soul the dews of feeling lay,
Lovely and bright, as youth's unwither'd prime
Had witness'd; in the man remain'd the boy:
And they who wonder'd, when the hall of Worms
Erect and moveless saw the Hero stand,
Might here have seen him with a graceful stoop
Bend to the lowly; and with winning smile
Attractive, clasp the humblest child who came,
And all his glory into shade recall.
Simplicity alone was greatness here;
And, in the hush of this ancestral vale,
High on the wings of meditative bliss,
In psalms, and melodies of hymning joy
Mounted his heart beyond the rising gloom
Beneath him, o'er his earthly future spread.
Like some gay bird, which oft at golden noon
Soaring and singing, to the gates of Light
Wings its loved way in ecstasy and song,
Yet soon as earth's low atmosphere it tries
Drops the glad plume, and songless grows again.

FRIENDLY CAPTURE.

But this calm Eden of domestic hours
Is brief, as blest. Again, his forward course
Through the green twilight of Thuringa's woods
Behold the man of God in peace renew,
Under the balmy flush of May inspired;
Till lo! at length old Glisbach's hoary fane
Glooms on the air; and, girt with feudal walls,
Altenstein glimmers from its castled height
Serene, but stern. But see! in golden calm
The Day is gliding down the gorgeous west,
Where the red Sun his farewell-pomp arrays;
While round about him, as for royal sheen,
Banners of crimson lustre wave, and wind,
Till the far clouds, with sympathetic hues
As in the blush of radiant sleep they lie,
Mirror bright meanings, from his burning face
Reflected. Soon the forest-boughs begin,
In the tranced quiet of a sunset-hour
To hush their waving; then, the languid breeze
Drops its gay motion; and the insect-hum
Low in the grass delights a pensive ear;
While the glad wings of home-returning birds
Flap on the air, with audible advance,
Which bids you track them to their pine-built nest
With eye pursuant. But, amid this peace
Of nature, deep as if with conscious depth,
Hark! tramp on tramp! with ringing hoofs that rend
The air before them, while the riven trees
Tremble, as if a sudden whirlwind tore
Their tangled umbrage, horse and horsemen arm'd
Plunge into view, in panoply complete,
And mask'd: then, swift and silent, ere a thought
Can think protection, Luther, from his steed
Dismounted, by some mailèd horseman grasp'd
And cloak'd, and on a charger rudely thrown,
At once is captured, as by Magic chain'd!
And in a second, hark, the sounding hoofs
Ring the deep forest with their hollow clang;
Then onward through its beechen wilds and woods
Plunge the mask'd riders, with a trackless speed;
And, Luther! where is now thy destined home?
Who can forecast what God, or man, intends?
Or, tell what dungeon, stake, or crushing wrong
Awaits thee, when a day of brightest hope
Ends in the shadow of so strange eclipse!

But Night hath deepen'd; and her shrouding veil
Garments the woods, which now with blacker gloom
The mountain-heights of lone Thuringa fringe;
And yet the Horsemen, with a voiceless flight
Hurry their captive through untrodden paths
Till the Moon rises, and her silv'ring gleam
Pale on the fortress of the Wartburg sleeps,
Which yonder dim and melancholy stands,
Calm as the clear cold heavens which o'er it spread
Their arch of silence. There the Horsemen pause,
Wearied and worn; and, list! the bugle sounds
A waking challenge in the warder's ear;
Drawn are the bolts, and down the drawbridge falls;
On iron hinges, ponderous and slow,
Opens a gateway to the midnight-Troop;
And mask'd and mail'd, around thee in yon court,
High-wall'd and barricaded, there they stand,
For, Luther, lo! thy Patmos greets thee now.

NIGHT IN THE WARTBURG.

Deep trance of Night! a mystic power is thine,
Which sanctifies creation with a charm
Beyond what day-beams in their brightest glow
Can emanate, whatever scene they gild.
But oh! if ever into heart of man

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The Midnight like a mute religion sent
Her spirit, surely, when the captured monk
Down the dim chambers of the Wartburg paced,
Thy genius, then, in solemn glory reign'd!
There, by his window-turret, lofty, bleak
And lone, unharm'd in holy peace he mused,
The past revolved, and o'er his future pray'd.
But moments rise in this unfathom'd life
Of ours, beyond revealing prose, or rhyme
E'er to unveil; so charged with secret might,
They into voiceless sentiment transform
Our being; like a cloud, we seem to float
In formless dreams, with visionary shapes
Confounded; till at length, calm'd nature feels
By truth replenish'd, and distinctive thoughts
Melt from the heart, pathetic, soft, profound,
Like tears of pity in a good man's eye.
Then, all we have been, are, or hope to be,
Blends in wild softness; and the soul o'er-sway'd
Throbs with the spirit of unbreathèd prayer.

All that we have been, yes! the night restores:
Form after Form we loved, or knew, or fear'd,
Moves o'er the platform of a summon'd past;
While dead eyes open, and familiar smiles
Fall on our hearts; or household-voices ring,
Till the soul echoes with remember'd tones
Sweeter than music, in its tranced excess.
And all we are, oh! Night can this expound;
And self to self beyond all preachers show
In truthful plainness, making conscience start,
As sin on sin, which cov'ring daylight hides,
From the dim back-ground of our Being comes
To awe conception. Then, the future's doom!
Oh, how the spirit of a midnight-hush
To That, significance and shape imparts,
As depths of possibility untold
Open beneath Imagination's eye,
Fearful, and fathomless, and full of God!
'Tis then we soar ourselves beyond, and reach
The skirts and shadows of a higher State
Yet to be master'd. Or, may Thought presume
Thus to imagine, that as embryo life
Hath latent inlets ere the breath begins,
And dormant senses undeveloped powers,
So may our Spirit in the flesh perceive,
Faintly and feebly, some prelusive state,
Or, preconceptions of Hereafter feel
Which antedate a nobler life to come?

And did not Luther, at this dreaming hour,
His great heart yield to more than words depict?
Bathed in the ether of divinest calm
As there he mused, and from yon window'd tower
Greeted the heavens, with planets jewell'd bright?
A holy calm adown the harrow'd depths
Of his vex'd bosom, solemnly was breathed;
While feelings, tinged with supernat'ral awe,
But tender, round him cast their mingled spell.
Like starry gleams, in evanescent play,
Glances of truth upon his spirit dart
But vanish, ere perceiving sense could grasp
A bright suggestion for the soul to read.
Worldless the hour, but how intense the scene!
For never, since in Roman prison clank'd
The fetter'd Paul his honourable chain,
And haply, through his grated window watch'd
The arch of midnight, hath a finer Soul
Look'd o'er yon sky, than that which gazeth now!
Mute as a cloud, the time-worn Castle stands
Of Wartburg, through the glassy moonlight rear'd
In outline black, colossal and abrupt;
Beneath him, wrapt in motionless array,
Thuringa's forest spreads a gloomy wild
Soundless; and so becalm'd in dewy sleep
That e'en the leaflet, when some quiv'ring air
Throbs for a moment, like a lip in dreams
It vibrates, but no vocal murmur makes.
Creation, hush'd in her most holy trance,
Sinks on the soul like one vast sentiment;
From the high moon and melancholy stars
Around her, to the stirless grass beneath,
How mute is nature! how intensely fill'd
With life, with meaning, and with sentient awe!
As if the Earth were conscious that her God
Commanded silence, and she felt it rise
Deeper and deeper, from Creation's heart,
And all things binding with religious spell.

But now, the glory of this moonlit-scene
Melts through his being, till each spirit-chord
Thrills to the magic, with responsive tone.
Lo! the large tear-drop on his eyelid hangs
And quivers, like a half-unspoken prayer
Which on the balance of expression moves.
For God, and Truth, and Luther, now commune;
And Midnight hearkens, as the monk adores
The Christ Eternal, in His glory sphered
High o'er yon heavens, beyond conception raised,
And yet by soaring adoration reach'd
Which climbs that region where His radiance dwells,
And thrills the Saviour on His very throne!

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PATMOS.

Sublime of privilege! to be alone,
And hold communion with celestial Grace
In the hush'd temple of a hallow'd mind,
Where thought is worship, and Religion wants
No liturgy, save what the heart inspires.
In pensive solitude our God unveils
Those charms almighty, which a sordid love
Of this vex'd world is all too vain to prize;
Then truth ascends our being's mental throne,
To rule and regulate the life within;
While round us shades of man's Hereafter steal
Till awful conscience, with prophetic eye,
Rehearses what the Judgment-Day will be
To men, and angels. Now, from sense withdrawn,
The pious Soul at length presumes to gaze
Down her own deeps, and there a grandeur finds,
A depth in depth unfathomably retired,
Of consciousness, which makes her more sublime
Than all the gorgeousness of glitt'ring worlds.
A single mind the universe outweighs;
A thought than worlds is more stupendous far;
And yon proud stars, which populate the sky
In dazzling multitudes, are less divine
Than the pale forehead of some pensive man
Beneath them watching, from whose lifted gaze
Outshines divinity; whene'er he thinks!

And this we learn, because in this we live,
When from the perill'd life of passion freed
Within ourselves we dare at last descend:
There, truths unvoiced may thoughtful hearts perceive,
And dread predictions, by no language shaped,
Thrill through our conscience with majestic force
And hint the Being men are doom'd to know.

But, solitude a softer mood enjoys;
The past revives; the tombs of time unlocks,
And in the heart's sad resurrection calls
The dead to life, the dear to love, again!
For when this halcyon o'er the spirit broods,
The chain of life, electrically touch'd,
Link after link unwinds, and leads us back
From manhood, with its false and fretting cares,
To childhood, basking in maternal smiles.
Soothed into softness, now the stern can weep;
And shamed ambition from itself recoils
To think how basely, on the World's false shrine
The hopes and aims, which heaven alone can meet,
Our life hath squander'd, with a fruitless zeal.
Ye dreams of Virtue! oft in vice exhaled;
Ye hopes of Greatness! oft in ruin sunk;
Ye full-wing'd Energies! which cleaved your flight
High o'er the vault of young Ambition's heaven,
Reality, the stubborn, and the true,
To airy nought, hath frown'd ye all away!

Still, may we profitably mourn; and muse,
When Memory o'er tombs of buried time
Bends her pale brow, and placidly recals
The spring-like radiance of exulting youth.
For what, though blasting disappointment sear'd
The buds of promise on our tree of Hope,
And few have actualized the heart's fond dreams,
Yet, contrast is our teacher: and we know
The truth, by trial only as we live;
And man who sins, by suff'ring must be saved,
While God, through disappointment, makes him wise.

Then hush'd for aye, let all rebellions be:
But welcome, Solitude, however drear,
And come, Reflection! with thy charms august,
And Mem'ry! oft our deeper yearnings wake;
Be to the husband, all the wife appear'd
In the chaste beauty of her spousal morn;
Be to the orphan, what the mother was
When by her knee he knelt, a dimpled boy
Lisping his little prayer; or, on her breast
Pillow'd his head, as if the world were peace:
Act all within, that life without has been,
And from the grave, where dead and dear ones lie,
People our homes with forms true hearts revere!

SPIRITUAL LONELINESS.

And not unlike, in moods of thought intense
To this, was that experience, which the soul
Of Luther gather'd, while for ten lone months
By friendly capture in his Patmos hid.
Here did he muse; and watch, or weep, or pray,
Enter himself, and down the mind's abyss
Take many a deep and undescribèd gaze;
Till forms of terror, phantoms of despair,
And dread emotions, meaningless, or vast,
Throng'd into power, and haunted him like hell!

Meet was the spot for high-wrought feeling's hour.
Within were chambers, long, and large, and roof'd

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With fretted stone-work, dimly worn by years,
Where the glad sunbeam caught a pensive tinge
Paler than twilight; and the tread of feet
Fell like a sound, which ought not there to be:
While from their ancient walls the stern-brow'd Dead
Look'd on the living, as with sad rebuke,
Or solemn warning. From a window-niche
The eye might witness hills of forest-wood
In green confusion, stretching far away
Into wild distance; while to Fancy's ear
The pleasing anthem of perpetual birds
Made the huge Forest with their concert thrill.
And here, in myst'ry and in mournfulness,
Shrined in the solitude of his own soul
How much of Deity might Luther learn!
Ascending oft the mountain-peaks of mind,
The Alps of thought, far up the Godhead ranged,
To talk with his Eternity to come.

How like a poem must his life have read,
Where fiction's self by fact had been surpass'd,
When now, by retrospection's quiet gaze
Unroll'd and re-perused! To boyhood's prime
And young experience, when the miner's cot
Roof'd his sad hours of struggle and of sin,
Down the strange past, through all his soul endured,
Dark conscience felt, or prescient fancy dream'd,
Remembrance flew; and now, in castled pomp
Behold him exiled! far from Rome's dread eye
Which glared with hunger for his mangled form.
And well might he, when thus the past renew'd,
The present acted, and the future brought
Prophetic influence into vivid play,
Seem by intensity transform'd, and fired,
Till Unrealities around him throng'd,
And Phantoms, which derision loves to mock,
Fever'd his life with supernat'ral force
Till Matter's self a form of Mind assumed,
And feeling suffer'd all which fancy shaped.

REACTION.

From vast excitement, to the voiceless depths
Of this weird solitude at once transposed,
Who wonders, that reaction like a curse
Besieged him? or, with arid weight o'erhung
The beatings of his brave and free-born heart?
Till, in such blank and barren waste of things,
He sank, and melted into mindless tears;
Or sigh'd, as if the very soul was worn
And weaken'd down to senselessness, and woe.
Oh! there came moments, when a fiendish gloom
A lurid darkness not of earth begot
Enwrapt him, like a shrouding agony;—
A stifled pain, a suffocating pang,
A grief benumbing with torpedo-touch
All the warm currents of his healthful blood,
Till life itself one long compunction grew!
Thus did he suffer: while the brain o'erboil'd
With madness, and his soul was set on fire;
And then, rebukes from some sarcastic Fiend
Would ring around him with disdainful tone,
To mock the little, and to make it less,
Which He and Truth together did, and dared,
When back recoil'd from their combined assault
Popedom and Pope, with all their banded powers!
Nor let the bond-slave of the senses ask,
Why Luther, tempted in such gloom, believed
That ghastly mockers, bodiless and black,
On soundless wing and immaterial tread
Inaudibly around him came; and cursed
And grinn'd, in all the ghastliness of hell,
To shake his spirit from that throne of trust,—
The Word almighty! Yes, when rolling storms
Yell'd in loud rage; or night-wing'd tempests burst,
And howl'd along the wind-rock'd battlements
Of Wartburg, oft did spectral Forms appear
Shading the room with imag'ry of life
And motion; mutt'ring Fiends his couch besieged,
Till Luther shudder'd out his soul in prayer!
But e'en by day, when black depression came
And, like the nightmare of the mind, o'erhung
All faith and reason, in one fell attack,
No flaming death his Flesh could so appal
As this dark anguish did the blood o'erpower;
The pang, without the peace, of death was there!

TOIL AND THOUGHT.

But, like an eagle from his chain unloosed
Darting aloft to his blue home of skies
And sunshine, soon his panting soul escaped
From this dread bondage into purer life.
He pray'd, and open'd Heaven itself by prayer!
Attracting downward some responsive grace,
Or balm, which heal'd him like the hand of God.
Or haply music, as the lyre of old
Tuned into magic by the sweeping touch
Of David, when he charm'd the fiend from Saul,
Besoothed the spirit; till o'er all his frame
A lulling softness exquisitely crept,
And soul was cradled in the charm of sound.

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His exile, now, no barren rock became
Where thought must wither into wintry blight;
But rather, grew a bower of mental peace,
An isle of calm amid the sea of life,
A Patmos, where the harbour'd soul retired
From earth's loud shock, to feel the hush of heaven.
Soon, like a giant from his sleep refresh'd,
Up rose the great Reformer! and awoke
The drooping thousands, whose dejected hearts
Pined for one accent of his cheering lips.
But, how he wrought, and with what noble bursts
And outbreaks high of eloquence, and truth,
He pour'd his spirit over man, and mind,
Omniscience only can on high explain;
For, souls like Luther's multiply and make
More change within, and character without,
Than mere chronology to men unfolds.
Down to the roots of conscience dived his words
With daring energy, and drew to light
Those hidden workings, and that dark unrest
Which haunt our being: or, on guilt and gloom
The thunderbolt of just rebuke he hurl'd,
And through the provinces of mind career'd
On bold excursion's theologic wing,
And wafted light, where'er his wisdom came.

But, in thy castle, Wartburg! chief o'er all
The monuments which mind up-builded there,
Let gratéful Rev'rence long that work admire,
O'er which a Seraph's wings might shake with joy,
By Luther, with colossal power achieved.
There, was the Word Almighty, from the grave
Of buried language, into breathing life
Summon'd, in sainted glory to arise,
And speak to souls, what souls could understand!
Oh! to have seen him, in that toil august,
Lifting to heaven his meditative eyes
Radiant with wonder, as the words of Truth
Eternal gave their hoary secrets up,
While God's own language into Luther's pass'd
With prompt transition; till, behold, the Voice
Of Jesus out of classic fetters came
And, like its Author, to the poor man preach'd.
Noble, beyond nobility to match,
Hero of heaven! was thine achievement here.
To free the Bible, was thy God to throne
Firm on the conscience of adoring man;
And hence, by this supremacy divine
To limit tyrants, should they dare profane
That seat of awe, where none but Godhead rules.

But, intervals there came of lovely calm,
Mild as the languish of a summer-even
Around the poet, by some dream entranced,
When Nature, like a conscious Meaning, acts,
And through cold matter preaches grace to mind.
Then, student of the Spirit! walk with fear
The halls of nature; nor, with pagan eye,
The meanest of Her solitudes and shrines
Inspect thou: ministries of mind are there,
And more than mere philosophy forebodes
Fills the fine atom which a step destroys.
Angels and Spirits may unseen preside,
And nature's beauty be a Seraph's work;
Behind the Veil which meets our sensual view
Myriads of Powers may ply their noiseless hands,
And each live function of this breathing Earth,
Serve but to type a Ministry unknown.

And not ungenial to that high-toned mood
When feeling soars, and poetry is born,
In sun and silence Luther wander'd forth;
Perusing earth, or reading air and sky
As one great manuscript, where God had penn'd
Some letter'd outlines of His secret Name.
For, though creation felt the curse's fang,
And beauty from the beautiful hath fled,
And glory from the glorious,—still, the wreck
Is haunted with magnificence and might,
Making the universe a Temple seem,
Whose priestess is the God-revealing Soul
Of man, and worships Him in earth and sky,
Or in the stars, whose bright pulsations throb
Like thrills of glory trembling through the skies.

And, deep the hour, delicious was the calm
When Luther, in some dream, would oft accost
The speaking loveliness of fruits and flowers
Around him scatter'd, o'er the castled hill.
To him they were with more than beauty touch'd,
And seem'd like orphans of dead Paradise
Which smiled upon him, with a mournful grace.
Thus, hues and harmonies of Eden throng'd,
In sweetest union, round his loneliness,
While faith, by rapt imagination raised,
In prayer for those millennial glories pined,
Which God hath promised, and His poets sung,
When spousal Earth her bridegroom-Lord shall greet
Returning, on Creation's throne to reign,
Till every atom of this world redeem'd
Blooms in His breath, and sparkles by His smile.

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But, Nature hath her sad and silent moods,
Her solemn counterparts to serious man.
And oft at sunset, when pale Autumn sigh'd
Like a lone Spirit, wailing through the woods
Of Wartburg, Luther mourn'd 'mid falling leaves,
And flowers dejected, till the dew-fall 'gan
To glisten round him; and his boding mind
Took from the season types of man within.
And thus, at midnight, when the Moon commenced
The inspiration of her pallid beam
O'er plain and mountain, from his harrow'd sleep
The exile rose; and, through the window-grate
Of his high turret, o'er yon dew-white fields
And cold earth, slumb'ring in the glassy air,
Gazed mournfully, through many a sleepless hour;
Or wander'd o'er the skies in prayer and praise,
Till to his dream-wrapt eye those heavens appeared
A scripture bright, whose oracles are stars
Of promise, beaming with prophetic truth,
And high intelligence for holy man.

DARKNESS IN THE HOUR OF LIGHT.

The saints of thoughts, the seraphim of mind,
The sole archangels of our sinful world
Who make, or magnify the page they fill
With moral prowess, what colossal pangs
Were theirs! and what fierce martyrdom they faced,
In bringing forth those Promethéan fires
Which lighten Centuries with their living ray!
But, never yet hath Truth had monuments,
Whose sculptured immortalities of praise
Could half reveal, what lion Hearts have braved
In the great agony of being great!
For what, though history weave its laureate-words
Around some trophy of consummate toil;
Or chant the glory of those giant thoughts
Which grasp'd all ages, with redeeming force;
Result is praised, but not the process told,
Nor the deep racking of those downcast-hours
When darkness, like a fiendish nightmare, sat
Heavy upon them; till the gasping soul
Grew effortless, as if by doubt struck dumb;
While truths, which once like inspiration nerved
The heart for battle, e'en to blood and flame,
Melt into nought, by spiritless eclipse.
And, when have earth's high Benefactors felt
That martyrdom, beyond all fires to make?
Not when the clash and combat fiercely rang
Around them, and the World its weapons drew
To daunt their progress, or dispel their aims:
For then, that eagle of unstooping mind,
Young Energy! could lift itself for flight,
And mounted bravely through the blackest cloud,
Cleaving all tempest with unbaffled wing.
Danger and death were talismanic sounds,
Which from the heart drew forth a secret fire.
Effort was theirs; and mastery sublime
O'er scene and circumstance their faith evinced,
Till lo! the perill'd cause in safety smiles,
And History for its coronation waits.

But in the gladness, and the glow immense,
When hope's millennium seems at last to bloom;
When the calm jubilee of conscience rings,
And Principle its heaven-toned pæan chants
For peaceful triumph, then, while good men pray,
And great ones, in a hush of wonder, pause;
If, in such hour of golden promise, all
Fades into formless vanity, or vice,
And fell Reverse a sudden ruin frown,—
Alas! the Heroes of the heart are left
Unpraised, unsoothed, unlaurell'd, and unsung,
The rack of racks alone to face, and feel,
When virtue's cause a suicide becomes
And stabs itself to impotence, and shame!

But, such the crisis, that with sudden might
And sweeping darkness round tried Luther's soul
Came, in the very noon of noble hopes,
When the bright future cloudlessly began
To open, and in peace and prayer to reign.
Height after height victoriously was scaled
Of priestly bulwarks, and papistic lies;
The Bible, into living freedom loosed,
From cot to palace circulated truth;
The majesties of buried mind began,
Clothed in the radiance of regen'rate power,
The grave-clothes of the monk to throw away:
While, chief o'er all, that Mammon of the priest,
The aping Mass, where bleeding Love is mock'd,
Was banish'd; and Emmanuel's truth began
As Lord of conscience, from all hearts to hurl
That crown'd Melchisedek, whom Rome anoints
Both head and front of Christendom to be.

When lo, at once the anarchy of change!
And Luther, palsied as by dread alarm,
Around him hears fanatic Madness yell,
And the hot Até of excited hearts

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Through flame and fury to rebellion sweep.
And now, the Pang! the concentrated pang,
Which dire, and dark, expressionless and deep,
Heaved in no sigh, and by no tear pourtray'd,
Sank on his soul with adamantine crush.
For all seem'd ruin, and revulsion here:
While leagued Rebellion, with its brazen throat,
Its blasting eye-glance, and its bloody mien,
And mingled yells for murder raging loud,
From the black forest of Thuringa rush'd;
While He Himself an incarnation seem'd
In principle of all perversion did,
That Madness loved, or Murder long'd to do!
The People cursed him,—for he cursed their cause,
And call'd rebellion but the child of hell.
The Princes cursed him,—for the yoke of Rome
His arm had broken from the nation's mind.
Bereft, in solitude of soul apart,
A ruin among ruins, thus he stood
With heart all bleeding, and with spirit bare,
One living agony of gloom, and tears.
And well might Luther, like his Master, feel
Desertion, in that night of nights profound!
For Heaven's own cause fanatically lay
Trampled, and torn beneath a hoof of lies,
When Munzer, and his host by hell inflamed,
Shouted “The Spirit!” and to blood blasphemed
Both God and Bible, with insanest breath.
Each to himself a Holy Ghost became,
And all his madness to th' Almighty gave!
And He, who was on earth the living Type
Of holy Order, and consummate Law,
Both first of Subjects and the first of Kings,
Upon the banners of Rebellion found
His Cross a symbol of destruction made!
E'en common feeling from the roots was torn;
Till all affections, motherly and mild,
Which form sweet nature's consecrated spring,
Nile of the heart! whose undiscover'd source
Deep in the bosom of the Godhead lies,—
Were parch'd to nothing in that burning waste;
When heroes mad, for demigods mistook,
Mangled their thousands, by a hellish creed,
And christen'd Murder with the name of Christ!

“But fear thou not!” a Voice within him cries;
“Forward! for I am with thee, man of God!
On to the rescue of My truth! and fight
With weapons all resistless, as divine!”
And forward went He; with a burst of zeal
Faith from her cloud of black dejection breaks,
And Luther is himself, in soul, again!
While hope, that rainbow of the weeping mind,
The Iris out of tears by passion wove,
Smiles through the sunshine of prophetic calm,
And his heart palpitates with silent prayer.

MENTAL RESURRECTION.

True liberty, O God! Thy Spirit makes;
For, the vast doctrine of redeeming Love
Holds in itself the majesties of man.
Freedom and faith our twin inspirers are,
The healthful source from which pure greatness springs:
All fine immunities of sense, and soul,
All deeper actings of divinest thought,
All morals, motives, aims, and bold designs,
And aspirations for the Good unseen
In man's free conscience find their perfect root.
For liberty within, forms light without,
And grace the spirit of salvation is.
Whate'er of polity just freedom lauds,
Whate'er of life domestic love reveres,
Whate'er of mind heroic wisdom haunts,
Or, in the temple of essential Truth,
All which our adorations prove divine,
From grace, in principle, directly flow.

The Reformation thus the Mind redeem'd;
The swathing bands which superstition cast
Round the chain'd spirit, were at once dissolved;
And, lo! a mental resurrection smiled:
A golden dawn of intellectual day
Already round the clear horizon glow'd,
And faintly shined on Europe's rising heart.
See Luther, and Melancthon, all inflamed
Ardent as eagles, in their sunward flight,
From truth to truth victoriously advance!
Instead of Masses, mark the Holy Feast,
The mystic Supper of Incarnate Love
Dispensed with beauty, primitive and plain.
The Visible its hallow'd claim advanced,
And Ideality a form assumed;
While the young Church her pristine features wore.
Thus, rites external, for external sense,
And truths internal, for internal soul,
By fitness due the wants of nature met;
Since, mere Abstractions angels may perceive,
But men embodied must by Forms be led,
And rites are reasons, when by God approved.

Still, not o'er temple-rites alone was breathed
That order Principle from Scripture draws;
But through the heart, by reformation clear'd
From papal mist, the common mind was touch'd,

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And the pure founts of intellect unseal'd
From lofty plans see Education stoop
To ply the humblest with appropriate skill;
While cloister'd Learning, from her cells escaped,
Comes to the peasant-home, the people's heart;
Till mind is no monopoly for priests,
And classic Thought in sacerdotal rust
No more lies with'ring; but, at Luther's word,
Walks through the world of feeling, and of faith;
And ye, the symbols of our inner sense,
Types of the Beautiful we cannot reach;
Ye adumbrations of diviner Grace
Than ever seen, when most Invention lifts
Her glad Eureka! round enraptured souls,
Ye Arts! which make imagination's heaven,
By shape, or hue, or melody reveal'd,
Soon from the sacred Reformation caught
A new intensity of noblest power.
For Music rose, seraphical, and pure,
And revell'd in a paradise of sound,
To hymn the Prince of glory, and of peace.
And Painting, from Apostles imaged forth
Forms of fair virtue, in sublimest mould:
While Piety and Painting blent their powers,
Taking a cast from Beauty's very soul
In lines of love, and lineaments of heaven.
And She, the charmer of celestial moods,
High Poetry, the heart's young Priestess, came,
And on the altar of melodious hours
Laid the soft incense of devoutest song.

IDEAL RAPTURES.

And hence, amid the harmony of things,
A while, as on the brink of heaven restored,
Rejoiced the grateful Luther. Who can tell,
The Promised Land of hope's perpetual dream
How greenly-bright before him, then, it smiled!
The passion and the principle of song,
With full intensity his being fired:
'Twas thus, the poetry of peace and joy
Each fine pulsation of his nature thrill'd;
And all without, from life internal, took
Some answ'ring tone of sympathetic love.
Through walks, and woods of Wittemberg he roam'd;
Or gave his spirit to the mountain-breeze;
And in the carol of rejoicing streams,
The leafy warble of the forest-boughs,
Or lyric echoes of the laughing wave,
In sound, or scene, and all which nature show'd,
A charm responsive to himself he found.
Nature and man in fine accordance met:
Their smiles and tones reciprocally play'd;
Her forms of matter to his shaping mind
Embodied meaning; and a moral grace
From all Her symmetries appear'd to flow.
Now was the halcyon of the heart; awhile
Bosom'd in peace, the bright-soul'd Monk was blest.
The past was praise, for all that vict'ry won;
The present prayer, for all which Mercy gives;
And o'er the future his prophetic heart
Glow'd with entrancement, as Isaiah did,
When his lyre trembled with exulting tones
Millennial over crown'd Messiah's reign:
Till oft, in rapt Imagination's dream,
Amid the universe of happy worlds
This earth appear'd creation's loved St. John,—
Safe on the bosom of redemption's Lord
Reclining there in glory, and in rest.

And, like th' apostle of a church reform'd,
Who has not, in the harmony and heaven
Of some high mood of meditative calm,
As opes the flower its scented breast of bloom
To welcome there each beautifying ray,—
Yielded his spirit with expanding joy
To Nature, in her eloquence of scene,
As if to consciousness he then appeal'd?
Till all creation grew personified,
And the touch'd earth, to fancy's tender dream,
His living counterpart of joy became.

As by some harp, when exquisitely strung,
A vulgar breeze to music's voice is turn'd
When o'er its chords the airy tremor floats,
In subtile magic, so, to mind intense,
The coarse realities of sense and time
Change, as they touch the intellectual powers,
To meanings beautiful, and mental types.
The prose of earth to poetry of heaven
Is thus transform'd, for faith's perusal, there;
And oh, ye scenes, ye splendours, and rich sounds,
Like inspirations, lo! at once ye act:
All sacramental charms of earth, and air,
All signs and symbols of redeeming grace
Steal into view, with eloquent surprise!
Till the pure eye of sainted Thought conceives
The dust to overflow with teeming spells,
While all things, into sacredness refined,
Make parables which prove redemption's plan.

Thrice happy they, who thus, by heav'n empower'd,
Can find a gospel in the flowers, and leaves!
Creation's book then fancy's bible forms;
And faith poetic, by the Spirit led,
All nature calls a comment on the Cross.
In this let holy Love our teacher be!

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A love perpetual,—for in that supreme,
The sabbath's God Himself no sabbath keeps.
And then, what great proprietors we are!
E'en on His throne the Uncreate is ours
By covenant, from everlasting made;
And under it entire creation works
All good and glory for the church redeem'd.

Many have much, yet all desire a more;
But less than infinite, to man is nought:
The more must be almighty, or 'tis none!
But who hath Christ, has God by God bestow'd,
And vast Eternity becomes his friend.
Then still, thou Sun! Emmanuel's image be,
And like a shadow of His glory burn;
Thou Moon! His mystic bride on earth, reflect;
Planets! that with prophetic radiance gleam;
Thou paragon of elemental powers,
Myst'ry of waters, never-slumbering Sea!
Impassion'd Orator! with lip sublime,
Whose waves are arguments which prove a God;
Ye Woods! that with tempestuous anthems ring;
Ye Winds! whose allelujahs tongue the storm
With music's deep magnificence of tone;
Ye Mountain-altars! which from earth to heaven
Serenely lift your consecrated steps,
While the soft grandeur of the silent hills
Sinks on the heart like music low, and sad,—
Long in your magic each, and all, abide,
Some teaching mystery of Christ to show:
That hence, in all things, with an eye of praise
And heart of prayer, true Faith may ever find
By nature, as by grace, her God express'd;
And in the temple of creation greet
Perpetual glories which His Name enshrine.

AFFECTIONS MADE FREE.

If ever, since the pulse of feeling play'd
In the quick breast of God-created man,
Companionless, in isolation pure,
The full revealings of his nature might
Themselves in moral harmony have shown,
'Twas when the young creation heard him crown'd
Her living monarch; while the lyric stars
Chanted a birth-day ode, and angels lined
The silver battlements of Heaven above,
To see a masterpiece of human mould
In sinless purity from dust evoked,
And stamp'd with features from the Hand of God.
Then was the hour, if ever such might dawn,
When echoless a mortal heart might throb
And still be happy, in itself complete,
By woman's smile unwelcomed, and unwed.
But, not when paradise within made peace,
And paradise without, responsive joy,
Was human loneliness by Heaven approved:
“It was not good that man should be alone,”
And so, a female counterpart was framed
In oneness sacramentally profound,
From his own being moulded, and educed;
And Woman thus to Adam's bower was brought;
There the first marriage by almighty hands
In stainless Eden was perform'd, and seal'd;
And the first miracle Messiah work'd
To Wedlock gave the glory of its power:
Hence, life monastic came from man alone;
But life domestic is from God derived.

But she, the Murd'ress of emotions pure,
The vile Creatress of mistaken good,
Both law and love in nature contravened;
And dared, with hand of sacrilegious force,
From the young Bosom, where soft feeling dwells,
Expunge all instinct, and the soul uproot,
To plant, and place it in a coarser soil
Blighted and bare, with chills unmanly cursed.
But Nature proved an unmonastic Thing!
And when in light, the monk of God arose
To stay the famine of the soul for truth,
The heart was hung'ring for its food of love.
Pining, and pent, in passionless remorse
It wither'd, by a torturing fetter bound
To vow itself to suicidal gloom.
Yet, few had fester'd in o'er-righteous chains:
Though canons frown'd, and convent-law decreed
Death to each heart, by female hearts enticed!
And thus, in self-revenge, the blood o'erboil'd
In fires of feeling; ruffian passion raged;
And homes, which might have been like heavens of bliss,
Had holy Wedlock lit the vestal flame,
Grew hells impure, unmentionably vile,
Where powers of darkness turn'd to priests of lust
And Satan saw himself in Rome secure.

But he, who brought the buried Scripture forth
From tombs of silence, and monastic death,
The bright Restorer of domestic bliss
At length with dreadless vigour dares to be.
Affections are the food of hearts which feel:
For such pined Luther; and in Ketha met,
Fresh in her maidenhood of life and love,
That feeling sympathy fond nature sought.

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For what, though all around grew black and drear,
And the wild echoes of the peasant-war
Rang loud in Europe's ear; while reek'd the blood
Of thousands, on Thuringa's hoof-worn plain:
Yet did the Word about him cast a shield,
While o'er him hung the canopy of heaven.
The God of marriage was the God of man;
Here, on this rock, the thunder-blasts of Rome
Sank powerless, as the lisp of summer-winds!
Better by far, that flesh and blood should quail,
Or, all creation be annull'd in gloom,
Than One majestic truth of God be harm'd!
In heresy our God Himself we lose;
And the big universe a bubble seems,
Weigh'd in the balance of a single word
Dropt from the lips of His almighty Love!
But that was with him, sealing woman's love
As heavenly-bright, and by the Saviour blest:
And therefore, not by this a Cause sublime
Was perill'd; nor the Reformation's ark
In danger, when the monk of Wittemberg
Rose, in the freedom of a fervid soul,
To rive the fetters of monastic vows
Asunder, from his heaven-instructed mind;
And, lifting his pure conscience in the light
Of scripture, up to majesty and truth,
Look'd on the world, a husband not ashamed!

And round that scene, where his devoted heart
The wedded Luther to his Ketha gave,
Eternal Wisdom cast approving smiles,
And heaven its hymeneal blessings shed.
For then was Private Life from priestly lust
Deliver'd; peace conjugal back restored,
And wedlock in its sainted charm enshrined;
While Rome another and a ruder shock
Experienced, from the soul of Luther sent;
For now, affections, nerved with sudden life,
Together with deep principle combined;
Till both concenter'd, back to Nature gave
A creed which conscience could avow, and act,—
To guide the faith, to guard emotion pure,
And brighten homes with honourable love
Where prison'd Feeling, passionless and pale,
Languish'd alone; or, lewd Corruption came
To look the Angel, with a demon's heart!

And thus, within the haven of a home
Luther, at length, his care-toss'd spirit found
Anchor'd in peace, and matrimonial joy
Secure. And where do Love's fond annals tell
A home of heart, more exquisite than his?
The once cowl'd Monk, who trod the cloisters dim,
And made his melancholy footsteps ring
With cadence long and lone, was now become
A glowing husband, and a gladden'd sire.
And, lovely was it, when his mind, unrobed
Of all its panoply of public state,
Reposed in sunshine, and, at home retired,
Sparkled and play'd around his infant boy;
Or else, in laughing sweetness echo'd back
The tones of glee, and truths of gay delight
Which Ketha from her glowing spirit sent;
Or smiled approval, when his portrait rose
Under the magic of embroid'ring Art
Featured, and form'd. And so, when sombre night
Mantled his dwelling with sabbatic peace,
Seldom have Angels, as they waft their flight
From home to home, on voiceless errands wing'd,
A fairer landscape of domestic love
And life beheld, than Martin Luther made
Around him, with his wife and infant smile.
Nor haply, upon heaven's memorial page
The meek hosannahs of more thankful minds
Have they recorded, than the chants they heard,
When sang the great restorer of the Truth
Hymns of the heart around his household-shrine.

LUTHER MARRIED.

A monk was married! how the priesthood raved!
But God was with him; and His word approved
A deed that shook all Popedom to its base,
The convents oped, the Vatican alarm'd,
And push'd the world by matrimonial law
A century forward into fearless paths
Of light, of liberty, and spousal love.
And Scripture canonised the act: but, powers
In nature also with approval smiled;
For imaged wedlock, in the vital bonds,
The unions pure, the harmonies profound,
The loving sense and sympathy of things,—
His fancy by poetic vision saw.

And let the hard utilitarian smile,
Building religion on a sensual base.
A Faith there is, which, like to Luther's, loves
The adumbrations of a deeper life
Beyond the sense, in Matter's self to trace.
Christ and His Church,—for these the world was framed;
And thus to souls, with sight divine endow'd
The Spirit's Kingdom on this earth to see,
Creation glows with poetry for Christ,
Through forms of matter unto faith reveal'd.
All pangs, all pleasures, faculties, and powers,
The hearts of God's elected race can find,
Or feel, or suffer, may from Nature draw

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Tones of respect, and touches of regard,
Or something which resembles sympathy.

Nor let the worshipper of venal gods
Pronounce this pure Imagination's dream;
Since, haply, thus the myst'ry may unwind,
And what the poet sings a saint admire.—
When this fair World to conscious being rose
With beauty, and with vernal radiance clad,
Why were her forms, her symmetries, and scenes
Touch'd by a spell which can the mind pourtray,
And by such true analogies reveal
An image dim, but exquisite and deep,
Of much the moral universe combines?
Such forms of nature with the facts of grace,
Why do they so responsively apply,
That each with each in harmony coheres?
Or in that region, where the feelings dwell,
Why does our spirit from the sounds and scenes
Of Nature, catch a mute intelligence,
As if with consciousness of man and mind
The speaking magic of her aspect smiled?
The festive jubilee of summer-winds;
Or soothing descant of a far-off sea;
The storm's loud wail; the ocean's sullen roar,
Noon with its sun, and midnight with the stars,
The Spring, with her sweet family of flowers,
Or, widow'd Autumn, with consumptive leaves,
And pale-faced Winter in a frozen vest,
Why do they all intelligibly bring
Hints to the heart, and harmonies for mind?
Is this reply, which all Creation gives
To human feeling, but the fancy's mock?
Or, is not earth a parable divine?
And poets, when their inward eyes discern
Meanings that flow from matter into mind,
Priests of creation, may they not be call'd?
For Thou, O Christ! art universal King:
By Thee, and for Thee, were not all things made?
So, when the Spirit on the mass new-born
Of nature brooded, then, with mystic Seal,
All matter for Thy Glory was impress'd
With types peculiar, with expressive laws,
Thy church to show, Thy symbols to expound,
And thus preach gospel to our very sense;
Till Nature act the orator for Grace,
And all creation one gigantic type
For Christ and Christianity becomes.

And such the creed Imagination holds,
When the vast glories of this earth appear
But shadows from the Saviour's beauty cast.
And seldom hath poetic Sense replied
To Loveliness, with more impassion'd glow
Than Luther's, when ideal moments reign'd,
And his full heart, with purified excess
Of sympathy for life's unbounded range,
O'erflow'd all nature in one gush of love!
Yet, moods of preternatural calm there came,
With might of thought, and majesty of dreams
And a deep awe beyond all words to voice,
Under the mute and melancholy heavens
As oft he worshipp'd, in his window-shade
At starry moonlight. Then, th' unpillar'd vault,
By viewless Energy for aye upheld,
Harangued him like a holy Sign, which spake
How like that arch of glory God sustains
The Church elect, by bleeding merit won.
Or when the moon through some black cloud emerged
In radiant victory from a brief eclipse,
To him a symbol of refulgent grace
It seem'd, of how the Reformation's cause
From the cold darkness of imperial frowns,
At length, would glide to glory and to peace.

POWER OF PRAYER.

Yet, not from nature, solitude, or night,
Nor wedded life, with all its household-sweets,
The sober quiet or the sterling joy,
His force to grapple with infernal Arms,
Wisdom to guard or prudence to restrain
The lawless plunges of impassion'd will,—
The brave Reformer drew: below the skies
No charm was found which could have moulded him:
From One high Source both cause, and courage sprang.
And that, divine!—from spirit-breathing prayer
Hour after hour communing with His God.

He loved the Bible; and he lived it, too;
Till each bright promise to experience turn'd
By faith transmuted, or by love enjoy'd.
The source of Luther was a strength of Prayer
Frequent, and full, and fervidly inspired,
As oft the castled gloom of Coburg heard.
Though loud the Reformation-battle grew
And empires as with moral earthquake heaved,
Throned was his spirit in Elysian calm!
But, where man wonders, faith can all explain.
'Twas God within, made Luther great without;
Whether, against that triple-crown'd Pretence,
The mitred Antichrist of Rome, he hurl'd
His thunders; or, on sacerdotal crimes

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Pour'd the just vengeance of his free-born words,
Prayer was his panoply; the shield and strength
That arm'd him for the fight, and kept him there.
With this, the World, the Arch-fiend and the Flesh
Combined, he nobly fought, and bravely fell'd.
And we inherit what his prayers procured:
For, light in conscience, liberty in creed,
And the pure freedom of our British faith,
How much to blessings drawn by Luther's voice
From the high sanctuary of heaven, they owe!
Yea, half the glory living Empires boast
Springs from that mercy which the monk procured,
When Godhead listen'd to a Luther's prayer!

And round a privilege august as this
Less than inspired no language can entwine
The wreath, how due! of evangelic praise.
Prayer from eternity true riches gains
To make the poverty of time less poor;
Heaven down to earth, and earth to heaven it brings,
While Love with Deity by faith confers:
And mark! through nature, providence, and grace
What miracles hath mighty prayer achieved!
The kingly Elements their thrones have left
To bow before it, and obey, though vast,
Its high dominion: Flood, and Sea, and Fire
Have soften'd their severity of force,
Suspended by it; Sun and Moon have paused
In wonder, on their cars of wheeling flame,
As if arrested by th' Almighty's touch;
And the wild brute, which not a world could bend,
Meek as a lamb, before a Saint has crouch'd
Harmless and mute, when it beheld him pray!
Heroes in heart, in principle, or power,
Hath prayer alone with high perfection crown'd:
While saints, and martyrs, and the men of old,
Giants in grace, who grappled with the Fiend
Or threw him bravely in the spirit's fight,
By valiant prayer their elevation reach'd:
And earth's Emmanuel, in His day of flesh
Outwatch'd the midnight with His mountain-prayer;
And from the deep abyss of Godhead drew
His faith intense, his fortitude divine:
And all, who love the cause eternal, must
Like their pure Master, fight the world with prayer,
And strike for God, by God himself inspired!

DOMESTIC LIFE, AND WEDDED LOVE.

From out the Bosom of paternal bliss
When came the Second of th' almighty Three,
And God, in human image bodied forth,
Alighted on man's world of sin and death
As Prince of peace, and Purchaser of life,
How lived, how spake, this Archetype of all?
E'en like his Person, did His life appear,
Divinely human, with coequal grace:
In Godhead,—never sunk the God beneath;
In Manhood,—never raised the man above;
To each extreme symmetrical and true,
Believer! there, thine own Emmanuel hail.

How awful was He! when the cloud of flesh
Gleam'd with the lustre of indwelling God.
Thy steadfastness, vast Nature! from the sleep
Of twice two thousand years, by Him was moved;
For all those laws, by Science so revered,
Their changeless glory to His changing will
Yielded, like vassals by their king o'erawed.
He look'd—Creation by his glance was thrill'd;
He spake—the Elements each word obey'd;
Earth, Sea, and Air their royal sceptres threw
Down at His feet, and fell before their Lord;
While shrinking, as with conscious dread commoved,
Back from his word the rushing Storm recoil'd,
Soothed its mad roar, and like an infant smiled
Itself to sunshine and soft peace again.
Blindness, at His command, the sun beheld;
And Deafness heard Him when the fiat came;
Disease was Health; and Lameness felt her Limbs
With miracles of energy to move,
While the dead body from the bier uprose
Beneath the resurrection of His word!

And, awful was He! when the curse was borne:
While His bow'd Head was crimson'd o'er with blood,
Then shook the Earth, and shudder'd as the groan
Of Christ appall'd her! while a deep eclipse
Dropt like an eyelid o'er the flaming Sun,
Dreading to gaze on God incarnadined!
But, in that syncopé of mortal hopes,
That pause tremendous in our human fate
When sepulchred Messiah, cold and pale,
Seal'd in the rock a dead Redeemer lay,
While Nature seem'd as if with stern revenge
To triumph o'er Her pallid victor there,—
How awful was He when His grave-clothes stirr'd!

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When the rock trembled with an earthquake-pant,
Till the stone, radiant with angelic touch,
Roll'd from His sepulchre; and, rising up
In perfect majesty of might, behold
The Saviour gather'd to a God again,
Martyr at once, and Master of the tomb!

But, gentle was He! with all grace of man
Completely, as with charms of Godhead crown'd;
For He who came, by Love eterne inspired,
From heights celestial, with a pitying stoop
The low horizon of our world to meet,
Not in the costume of corporeal flesh
Alone was found; but, Fellowship with man
The life of Jesus bodied forth, and breathed;
The accent of created love He caught;
The sunshine of created joy He shared;
The sorrow of terrestrial sighs He heaved;
And with the tenderness of mortal tears
Moisten'd his eyelids, when a sister wept.
His form was human, and His feelings, too!
Thus, Manhood there in archetype may see
Each moral beauty which a life presents
When holy; where affections crowd the scene,
And heart and home a mingled Eden make,
While virtue follows where the Saviour went
Through haunts of love, and bowers of social bloom.

And thus religion, like her Master, glides
With touching glory, or with tender grace
O'er duteous walks of Life's diurnal round.
For, while on wing celestial faith can waft
Up to the Throne a meditative soul,
Down to the actual with a graceful love,
Where plain Humanity in humble guise
The man develops, can Religion stoop,
And o'er it cast her consecrating smile.
So, from the gaze of public life retired
'Mong shades domestic, where Affection blooms,
And feeling all its happy foliage sheds,
A Hero now, whom death nor dungeon awed,
Serene and simple as a peasant lives.
No lofty, loveless, and disdainful looks
Around him here, severest judgment finds.
But, frank and free, with apostolic mien,
And full-toned manhood in its perfect type,—
A husband in the great Reformer hail,
Like Martin Luther and like nothing more!
No stern pretension, borne with saintly pomp,
Mere actor made him. In the walks of home
Lord of himself, His individual mind
Free from the fetters of o'ermastering fame
He kept: his life was freedom to the last,
Stamp'd in the mould simplicity admires.
The Man was never in his Name absorb'd,
Chain'd like a captive to his own renown.
Framed in the homeliness of cottage-worth,
A racy humour, and a rough disdain
For mock supremacies for mean effect,
For little greatness and for large pretence,
Were his: and he who held all Rome at bay
And bulwark'd nations by his brave appeals,
Looks he less lofty, to those hearts which love
The sterling and the true, when playful seen
In the mild sunshine of a married state?
There, could he sparkle round the social board,
As romp'd the infant on his rocking knee;
While the glad mother, sat with glowing face
And sunn'd her feelings in the father's smile.

Yes! beautiful, behind the scenes to gaze,
And there no mock attempt, whose aping pride
Would play the Hero in ascetic gloom,
To witness; but that solid worth of sense,
And healthful sanctity, whose fervid power
The christian fulness of o'erflowing heart
Betoken. Lofty in his bosom beat
The pulse of principle, and great design:
But not alone, or frowningly aloof,
A frigid, stern and adamantine Thing
Whose life in passionless contempt retires
From warm reality's most welcome hour,—
Not thus, the avenger of the Bible lived.
In faith a hero, but in heart a man,
With him the simple and the great combined,
And both together made a blended charm
Beyond the drama of affected life
To feel, though play'd with Art's consummate guile.

COMMUNION WITH NATURE.

And Nature, through her world of types appears
Simplicity in grandeur thus to teach.
Expressive mountains! from whose massive forms
The dread Almighty speaks Himself to man
By eloquence, which hearing mind translates,
How often, underneath their shade august,
Or in the hollows of some green descent,
The tiny flowers in tenderness and bloom
Wave their young beauty! or, infantile plants
Bow to the breeze their unresisting heads,
While the faint lisp of dropping leaves returns
A murmur'd echo to the rippling stream
Which runs beside them, with loquacious play.
And thus, methinks, beneath that mental shade
The tow'ring giants of the mind produce,
Simplicity in loving calm delights
To watch the flowerets of affection bloom;
And see those lilies in the heart arise

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Which make the garden of our spirit green,
Breathing mild fragrance o'er affection's world.

And hence, admire we with revering gaze
True Greatness, when it lays all thunder by,
Till the soft childhood of the heart returns;
And solemn wisdom, sparkling into wit,
Can gild the heights of intellect with smiles.
But chief from music came the master-spell
Which Luther, like a spirit's echo loved!
To him it seem'd a charm divinely framed,
An earthless magic, out of mystery born,
And so with heaven instinct, that Satan fled
When Harmony her spells began to breathe,
Or sank o'er passion, like a healing dew
Pure from the fount of freshness in the skies.

'Twas thus the poetry of private life
Around him, with an unresisted reign,
Gather'd and glow'd. But oh! ye quiet fields,
Where, lost in sunshine, sang the soaring birds
In wing'd delight and ever-warbling song,
How would he listen to your choral joy,
Till the gay summer of his spirit smiled
With loving answer to the scene it loved!
And often, when some fever hot and harsh
From human outrage, wither'd him with pangs
Of weary anguish till the spirit wept,
Didst thou, meek Nature! with maternal smile
Look through his soul and laugh the cloud away.
To him thy shrines, thy solitudes profound,
Thy hues and shades, and harmonies perceived
Brought more than feeling to his heart of faith.
And so, the very flowers seem silent hymns,
And, by their aspect of persuasive bloom,
Remind him oft of Eden long no more;
Or, bid him muse on what the world may be
When second paradise again shall dawn:
Since all which fell by Adam's guilty fall
From outward glory into penal gloom,
And all of kingship which the soul enjoy'd
When man, as Monarch of creation, ruled
And, as anointed Priest of paradise, became
The mouth of Nature and her mute delights,—
To pristine splendour shall once more arise,
Till crownless Manhood wear a crown again;
Or earth redeem'd, Messiah's palace be,
And shine, as round His central throne it rolls,
The loved metropolis of sumless worlds.

PARADISE RESTORED.

And who, amid some holy trance of thought
On destined man, as prophet, priest, and king,
Hath never vision'd how his primal soul
In the bright mould of innocence was stamp'd,
When lord and master of this living world
The Ancestor of human kind was crown'd?
Who hath not ponder'd, or profoundly sigh'd
In the deep hush of some diviner mood,
O'er the dead glories of that regal scene
When all Creation, by his lip baptised,
Look'd in his face as King on nature's throne?
For what is Science, but a shadow cast
From the pure substance of primeval Mind?
A reflex dim, indefinite and deep,
Of light departed in the gloom of sin?
Or, what is Justice, but our priesthood felt,
The moral echo of supreme desire
That God and conscience may in one combine?
Or, what this appetite for boundless sway,
This hunger of the heart to rule, and reign,
But sense of kingship in our soul alive,
A royal longing for a vanish'd crown?

By law of mild association led
From nature's step-stones, to ethereal heights
Of Things that shall be, thus the heart ascends.
A mute theology all nature makes:
The very ground no vain religion breathes,
Where thorn and thistle, blent with fruit and flower,
Both cross and curse by intimation teach.
And, when from feeling unto faith we mount,
What fine accordance doth Redemption show
Between the ruin and the rise of man!
For, in thy Person and thy Spirit, Lord,
A re-production of those Trinal Powers,
Or threefold state of majesty entire
When priesthood, prophecy, and kingship crown'd
The Man consummate, Faith's adoring eye
In dim rehearsal, or in dawning grace
May witness. Hence our Being, at the best,
Is but an embryo of the life to be.
Philosophy a mere precursor looks;
All high attainments but its preludes are;
And science but presentiment appears
Of Power which manhood, when redemption brings
The primal glories of our birthright back,
In full millennium shall at length enjoy.

Behold a Centre! for our yearnings form'd,
That oneness, where all aspirations blend
When o'er the ruin of ourselves we roam;
And not from nature up to nature's God,
But down from nature's God, look nature through.
'Tis here, the meaning of their mystic strife
Passion and Principle alone explain.
The hell we merit, or the heaven we make,

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The poet's Eden and the painter's dream,
With whatsoe'er creative Genius cites
By shaping vision from her scenic world;
Together, with all temples and all shrines
A ritual heart instinctively erects,
These, by their secret unison of aim,
In blind concurrence to one Centre tend,—
E'en to regain what Sin's vast forfeit took
From earth of beauty or from man of bliss.

And what an Eden to prophetic mind
Predestined Earth by sight and sound unveils!
Oh, wise, beyond the learning of all books,
And learn'd, beyond the learning of The Schools,
And rich, beyond creation's gold to give,
The man, who thus by deep communion binds
His heart with Nature's, in maternal bonds.
A great proprietor of glories he!
Monarch of inward happiness at home,
And with the Universe a sharer deep
In all the march and movement of a life
Without embodied, or within inspired.

And what though Age, with shaded brow and cheek,
Or eye made solemn by a sense of death,
No longer, in the wild and wildering glow
Of new-born passion, looks on nature's scene
As once impassion'd Boyhood loved to do,
Gay as the sunbeam gambolling at his side,
Or headlong as the breeze that round him play'd,—
Still, not the less, may life's autumnal dreams
Be touch'd with beauty; and, not seldom, find
Meanings which melt, and mysteries that thrill
The musing heart which Nature's lover owns.
Through earth, and ocean, sky, and breathing air,
The ever-ancient and the ever-young
Creation, by persuasive charm, appeals
To youth and age, when genially inspired;
And by her moveless laws a symbol gives
To fleeting life, of permanence and power;
Till haply, in the hush of higher moods,
We mount aloft on meditation's wing
To Him, the Changeless! in Whose present thought
Both past and present make perpetual now;
While all the ages of unreckon'd time
Are but the pulses of Eternity
Around Him throbbing, on his dateless Throne.

CATECHISM.

Far as Imagination's wing can roam
Or free conception take its daring flight,
We love to image an Almighty power
Unfolding boundlessness of life, and love
For ever. Throned in secrecies of awe,
Unfathomably within Himself retired,
We vision worlds, as creatures of His will
Around Him summon'd: but the stooping grace
Of Love creative, when it moulds a flower,
Or makes an insect happy, thrills the heart
Like tearful music, and attunes within
Anthems of silent wonder. While the great
In Godhead magnifies adoring mind,
In His minuteness how we greet His name!
Since in the circle of an atom's range
Dwell the same Attributes which made and move
A universe, with all its breathing worlds!
If God, in great things, be supremely great,
To feeling, looks He greater still, in small:
For, when the Worker and His work appear
To human sense in harmony combined,
Religion, then, is reason at its height:
And our imagined Infinite is graced
With attributes, where just proportion reigns.
But, when some particle, or pulse, infolds
A Mind which makes eternity its home,
And through the chambers of immensity
Moves to and fro, creatively divine,
Then, dazzled reason into faith absorb'd,
Worships the Mystery; and with wonder glows
To watch the working of our God complete,
In all things center'd—no where circumscribed!
Yes, while He wheels ten thousand worlds along,
In the same instant, lo! He stoops to count
The tiny populace a sunbeam holds,
Time the quick beating of an insect's heart,
Or close the eyelids of a babe for rest:
As if nought else eternal Thought embraced
Each atom feels the concentrated God;
While our protection, by its grandeur, proves
All mercies waft th' Almighty on their wings!

And thus, if bold Analogy may dare
The human with divine to parallel,
With touching grace a moral sight appeals
To saintly Virtue, in the heart enshrined,
When he, who storm'd with supernatural force
Round the vile Popedom, till its pillars shook,
Sank to the level of a simple child,
And won frail childhood to the creed he framed.
The son of thunder, soften'd to a breeze,
Behold him shroud the lightning of his soul
In shading meekness; while the hand which hurl'd
The false Decretals to devouring fire,
Plies o'er some little book, or teaching page
Where infancy may learn the name to lisp
Of Jesus; or its budding mind unfold
In faith and freshness, to the call of heaven.

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His was the heart that glow'd with all the grace
Which pure compassion for the spirit breathes.
One living soul, from sin and hell redeem'd,
He weigh'd it in the balance of that Blood
Whose every drop with Deity was priced!
And thus, behold him, with paternal smile,
And graceful stoop of his gigantic mind
Bow to the task, a creed for youth condense,
In language artless as the lisping mouth
Of Childhood could pronounce, or read, or pray.
While reason's light through fancy's prism falls
In lines of error on the proud man's view,
Luther himself a child with children knew,
That Cross beneath, where nature must again
Be born. He felt, to know he nothing knew,
Was knowledge, passing what the world calls wise:
And so, if mysteries, like the mountains, cast
A shadow deep'ning as their truths advance
Nearer and nearer to the kindred heaven,
He left them, in the glory of their gloom,
Untouch'd by reason with its carnal gaze.

And like him, may we learn to pause, and pray;
Nor argue down the glory we deny.
If Grace hath spoken, 'tis for Guilt to hear
And learn by rev'rence more than mind can reach:
Since God unshrouded, would be God no more;
Remove the mystery, and the Almighty's gone!

HUMILITY WITHOUT FAITH.

There is religion in the reign of night,
When earth entranced, and heaven ethereal grows,
And planets orb'd with palpitating beams,
In radiant eloquence to man reveal
Their sacred beauty; while the loving Stars
Unseal their eyelids, and with vestal gaze
This world salute, till our attracted souls
Responsively their looks of love return.
'Tis then the energies of mind escape
From sordid fetters, and, like eagles, sweep
The dazzling firmament of Thought divine,
Sparkling with truths unnumber'd as unnamed;
Till, earthward dropping on exhausted plume,
Like the awed Psalmist of the night, they feel
A soft religion from the sky descend,
A charm'd humility, which preaches thus:—
“Say, what is Man, when paragon'd with Worlds?
How mean a speck, how miserably small.
Minute, beyond minuteness to pourtray,
The orbit where he walks, and weeps, and dies!
And He, the Architect, Whose fiat call'd
And will'd this universe of worlds abroad,
Where is the Temple that can hold His praise,
Or mind created, which can worship Him
From whose dread glory not one ray would melt,
Were all this bright magnificence to fade?
For if deep Ocean, with her sumless waves,
Not less in majesty of water rolls
If haply some expiring billow sink;
Or forest huge, whose patriarchal trees
Their wild luxuriance to the winds present,
Not less o'erawes us, though some leaflet die,
Then would no countless throng of worlds, though dead,
Or stricken by some everlasting blight,
One shade on His supernal glory cast
Who makes and unmakes, moulds, and masters all,
But in Himself consummate God abides!”

And may not thus our lesson'd being lie
Low at the footstool of this felt Immense,
To learn humility from all it finds?
A contrast wise, comparison profound,
Nocturnal splendours may they not inspire?
When from the fever of his day-worn life
At length escaping, pensive and alone,
Oft may some Mystic of the heart delight
To soothe excitement, in that sainted calm
Breathed from thy presence, oh, ambrosial Night
Of solitude, serenity, and stars!
Thine is the hour for poetry, and prayer;
Searchings how deep, and soarings how divine
Are then experienced! Time and earth depart;
The shadows of exterior life recede
Like cloud-mist from a morning vale uproll'd;
And on the Infinite we seem to gaze.
'Tis thus, beneath the overawing heavens
Man sinks to nothing; and his world becomes
An atom, twinkling in eternity,
And Life,—the scintillation of a soul
Radiant, but restless with its tiny gleam,
That sparkles into suff'ring, and expires!

But here, Perversion, by its with'ring breath,
Would blast humility with chills of doubt,
And Christ from his created world expel
By logic, from our littleness educed
And call'd transcendant: “Can this puny ball
Of Nature, this revolving speck of earth,
Seen like a glow-worm 'mid the gorgeous blaze
Of suns, and systems, be a proper world
For Deity in Flesh to seek, or save?”

And yet, this argument, so base and blind,
Philosophy and faith alike o'erthrow

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With swift prostration. Sceptic! pause awhile,
Nor dream that thus from orphan'd earth recedes
Redemption, since in nature's volume lies
The principle of thy profound rebuke.
Bend to the dust a microscopic gaze,
There God in atoms, e'en as God in worlds,
Witness! and worship with believing awe.
To Him no magnitude as great appears,
And no minuteness, as the small can be;
Gradations all in Godhead are absorb'd
And vanish; languor cannot Him relax,
Nor low, nor lofty, vast nor various, bring
Distraction o'er Him. Hence, we rev'rence God
When the frail wonders of an insect-wing
Or radiant orbits of revolving worlds,
The traces of consummate mind reveal.
Jehovah, while vast Heaven His word upholds,
And life and matter, motion, space and time
Form but the channel where His will evolves,
Can note and number all whom earth contains!
Observe the monad in minutest play,
Robe the soft leaf, the choral winds attune,
Direct a sunbeam to its shining toil,
Or guard frail infancy on tott'ring feet
From death or danger; or, at balmy night,
The silken eyelids of young Sleep bedew
With slumber, watching o'er unconscious breath!

Thus may Philosophy and Faith sincere
Their creed unite; and when on high we view
Yon great epiphany of glorious worlds,
And echo back with thought's devoutest tone
The starry hymns by Fancy heard to roll,
We sink not, by immensity appall'd;
But in the sacred glory of our creed
Can call our Lord, the Master of it all!

Moreover, God-reflecting Mind is ours
Though faint, and feeble; nor can Truth deny,
A single thought more deity involves
Than all the beauty of yon blazing orbs,
If mind be absent. Therefore, while we own
The sad Palmyra of our ruin'd state,
And what a Tadmor in the desert-soul
Humanity on this soil'd earth presents,
Yet hither, from the heavens all heavens above
Descended, by paternal Glory sent,
Divine Emmanuel! Here His feet have trod;
Around His awful head our sun hath shined;
This air His breath of purity inspired,
And here the music of His lips was pour'd
In speech, and doctrine; miracles illumed
His mission; and each element confess'd
The bleeding glory of that Saviour's wounds
Whose heart for sin on Calvary bled and broke!
And thus, not all unfelt, nor all unknown
This orb minute, by God in flesh redeem'd,
In time or in eternity can be.
Rather may reason, when by faith enlarged,
The charter'd empress of all worlds pronounce
An earth so ransom'd, with such Blood restored;
And in the form of God incarnate see
How human Flesh outsoars the Angels far,
And mounts, in Jesus, an almighty throne.

ANGELIC CONTEST.

Hence, wisdom does not back with doubt recoil,
By reason's name made reasonlessly proud,
When told that Man a mystic platform proves
Where clashing angels, for contested souls,
With, or against, the dread Creator fight.
Here, Attributes eterne their cause have staked;
Here, Character divine itself unfolds;
And from it men and angels wisdom learn,
While all untouch'd by accident, or change,
Divinely perfect as their nature is,—
How love and Law in harmony prevail.

Thus from the Bible heaven-taught lore perceives
The true position to our earth assign'd.
For, though embedded in a brilliant mass
Of worlds on worlds beyond all number vast,
Like some mean province, where ephem'ral dust
Shaped into men to nothing hourly dies,
It hardly glimmers,—thinking Angels see
In pardon'd myriads of immortal souls
Glories which render heaven more glorious still!
Since for their adoration Christ reveal'd
A new Apocalypse of God to man.
Thus they who once unwither'd Eden walk'd
With man, a human paradise to share,
Now when the banner of a Fiend has waved
Defiance, yet on our dismantled earth
Of sin and treason cast a yearning gaze;
And watch, and wonder, worship and admire
Unfolded secrets of forgiving Love
Developed here. And when some lurid gleams
Lighted, perchance, the features of the lost
Archangel, with a hope that ruin'd Man
With God unreconciled must ever be,
And all His attributes to crisis brought,
How did their wings ecstatically wave,

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And loud their endless gratulations sweep
The arches of eternity with praise,
God's masterpiece of perfect Grace to hail!
While he, the Anarch of temptation, sank,
To plot in darkness for his own despair.

Thus Fiends against, but Angels for, our souls
Are now contending: on the Cross sublime
Their fix'd and fascinated eyes they bend,
Which glisten o'er its glories; while they cry,
“Depth within depth, O God! how deep art Thou,
Ark'd in Thyself, unvision'd and unshared!”
The councils of divinity they scan
Nor fathom; yet such vast revealings flow
From our Emmanuel, that this world becomes
A focus, where redeeming Wisdom brought
The fulness infinite of Love to bear,
And taught the Seraphim a song, how new!

FALLEN ANGELS.

Yet while angelic bosoms heave with love,
And Watchers bright from heavenly mansions glide
Down to this earth, the prodigal of worlds,
And with the elder love of sinless Truth
Bend o'er our doom, with ever-breathing care
Of pure compassion, are we not beset
By fatal opposites? by fiendish Hosts
Curtain'd in secrecy of hate and hell?
Shapeless, and sightless, round all hearts and hours
Inaudibly they steal: in joy, or gloom,
Present alike to poison or pollute
Man's being. Sin their fascination forms,
And hell in man, for their lost heaven atones:
So deep the horrors of infernal hate!

And what experience have the fiendish band
Who haunt creation with their spells accursed,
From human mind and misery derived,
As, age on age, to murder souls they watch,
And dog them to the very gates of heaven!
Six thousand years of study and of sin
Have deeply, through the labyrinthine heart
Instructed Satan how to wend his way,
Unfelt, unfear'd, deceiving as he goes.

Him Luther imaged, with an awe-struck mind
As God of this world, howsoe'er disguised,
In moments shaded with satanic gloom
And hours of harrowing darkness, when the blood
Ran wildly, aud his heated brain was worn
By fev'rish over-task. And, is the Fiend
A power impersonal, by shapeless awe
Summon'd around us, when the soul is weak?
Not thus did Luther into names abstract
Reduce the Devil; but a Person own
The Archfiend, such as fearless Paul unveil'd,
And, like his pattern, made high reason bow
Before the majesties of truth inspired,
Believing firmly what his Bible spake.
As fact to thought, or law to will is framed,
So scripture to his faith a reason was:
And he who shrunk not from Satanic foes
Mitred, or sceptred, but by zeal inflamed,
High o'er the heavens could wing his dreadless flight
To scorch the angels with a scathing curse,
If other than the gospel-truth they preach'd!—
To fight the devil God's own armour took.
Mail'd with the Spirit's panoply of prayer
Thus was he taught with ghastly fiends to fight,
Weapon'd by grace to lead infernal war.

And was he feeble, while his faith was strong?
Or rather, from his creed heroic might
Derived he not? Simplicity was strength,
In that deep mystery, whose unfathom'd glooms
And paths untrod defy adventurous mind.
Here, God is reason to Himself alone;
To us, mere revelation, and no more,
He deigns to be. Still, o'er forbidden ways
By Him foreclosed, its undisturbéd flight
The pride of Reason in her pagan dreams
Presumes to wing; but drops abash'd, at length,
Down to th' horizon whence conceit arose.
Oh! for a heart as docile, and as deep
In things divine, as that Immortal show'd,
Whose genius round the sun, and mystic stars,
And through the cycles of immensity
The march and movement of eternal Laws
Interpreted; and track'd each orbèd maze,
And, like a Priest o'er planetary worlds
Presiding, taught us how the spheres revolve.
And yet that Solomon in starry lore
Unrivall'd, whose pervading spirit read
Creation's secrets, with untroubled eye,
The Light anatomised to separate hues
By clear dissection, and with steady hand
Felt the tide-heavings of great Ocean's heart
Throbbing for ever with a billowy pulse,—
Sat like a pupil down to Nature's page;
And from her canons all that creed educed
Which makes him seem an oracle of mind
Devout: who, like th' apocalyptic saint
Of Patmos, hath for earthly science shown,
What he for heavenly,—God behind the veil!

And let the worshippers of bright result
Forget not, thus impassion'd Luther won

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The bloodless laurels his brave memory wears,—
E'en by adherence to substantial Faith.
Simple as Newton, who could soar and pray,
Building philosophy on fact alone,
Luther in faith could Luther's self renounce,
And, like the scholar of the Holy Ghost,
Learn hallow'd science from the lips of God.

And, deep the knowledge which his spirit drew
From Heaven's own page, of devils and of men.
A stern arena, where a sightless crowd
Of Fiends and Angels in dread conflict ranged;
Or battle-scene, where strangely-awful Powers
Muster and mingle, and their arms unsheath
For good or evil,—did our world become
To him, who saw it in eternal light.
For, just as when some Empire's outraged heart
Big with emotion, swells with surging zeal,
If but a subject by his slaughter'd life
For Her be fallen, and around his grave
Pours the rich life-blood of Her dearest sons,—
So is our earth, though dismal and depraved,
And darkly mean with vaster worlds compared,
A centre where the Chivalries of heaven
Marshal their forces, and with fiends engage.
The terror of their arms, eye cannot see;
The rushing of their plumes, we do not hear,
Nor view the motions of their mystic flight;
But yet, the contest is for countless Souls,
While for the royalties of heaven they strike!
And who, save those who fetter with the bonds
Of clay all faculties of finer scope,
In some rapt hour when mind is half unearth'd
Like Luther's, have not felt the fight unseen,
And through each dim transparency of sense
Vision'd a battle, which the soul surrounds?

GOD OF THIS WORLD.

So felt the man, whom Superstition fear'd,
And Satan ever with a savage watch
Haunted, and down to his own hell desired
By dark temptation of the soul, to bring.
And hence to him, thus tempted, tried, and torn,
No mere abstraction, impotent as vain;
No vile creation of monastic gloom
The arch-Fiend was; nor, to his hell confined:
But here, on earth, in dark unrest employ'd,
And round the axis of infernal guile
Revolving ceaselessly his cruel plans,
Luther beheld him; such as God asserts,
By will, and intellect, and power endow'd,
In living personality array'd
Of being actual; Lord of souls undone,
Maker of death, and monarch of despair;
Who would the universe to cinders blast,
Undo redemption, all our mercies blight,
And hear a jubilee in Earth's last groan!

And must we, to some lacerating dream
Such agonies as rent th' undreading heart
Of Luther, in our sceptic age refer?
Was it with Phantoms of a brain diseased,
Or Actions, out of gloomy thought evoked
Fanatical and false, that saints of old
Contended? Or, by dismal clouds o'erveil'd,
Did Prophets only with the air contend?
Were brave Apostles, when their spirits bled,
By Satans of the mind alone convulsed?
Or, did the God-man, in His day of flesh
Tempted like men, no thrilling combat face,
But simply, by internal vision tried,
Fight with black Nothing in the form of fiend?
Let dread Gethsemane to this reply!
There, while the bloody sweat from Christ was wrung,
As round Him, in His human weakness, rush'd
With eyes which hunger'd on his pangs to feed
And wings that flutter'd with a fiendish joy,
The Hosts of darkness,—let the sceptic ask
If that be air, which made Emmanuel shake!

They mock the Devil who obey him most:
But hearts made simple by a power divine,
Believe the combat, and partake it too.
The Friend of sinners was the Foe of sin,
And therefore, saints with Satan must contend
As did their Captain for His cross and crown.
Such was the creed our Saxon hero held.
Yes! that brave Spirit, who in public stood
And calmly watch'd the papal furnace heat,
Prepared to battle with its sevenfold fires,—
Prostrate and pale, with agonising tears
Bound in the blackness of temptation's night
Behold him, like a reed of sorrow, now!
And they, whose wisdom faith and fear produce,
Touch'd by no common awe, will come to view
A martyrdom, beyond what fire inflicts
In the torn depths of Luther's tortured breast
When Satan fell'd him; and the shades of Hell
Frown'd on his heart their horrible dismay!

Oh! there seemed moments when th' Almighty frown'd,
When Sinai over Calvary hung its cloud
Till legal thunders struck the Gospel dumb,
And Jesu vanish'd into viewless air!

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Then, pardon'd sin unpardon'd aspect took;
While conscience like a scowling demon lour'd
Full on the past: and e'en the Bible lost
Its music; till the melody of truth
Turn'd to strange discord, where no tones of grace
Or God were found! Then, fiend on fiend began
Between the Saviour and his soul to rush,
In raging darkness; while at times he shook
In fancy o'er the flaming deep of Hell,
And hover'd, as by grasping demons held.

But he, who bled beneath satanic blows,
Hereafter kiss'd the rod his heart endured
And found it gilded with a Father's smile.
For need there was, of educating woes
To pierce him to the centre, till he pray'd,
And the great Luther grew a little child
Safe in the hands of his almighty Sire.
Since much of darkness in his light remain'd;
And much terrene with his celestial mix'd;
And much of Adam with his faith there blent,—
Oh, what but Wisdom, in divinest force,
Knew how to build a perill'd Luther up?
Hence, not a pang his inner being tore
Which was not needed, and by Heaven o'er-ruled
To tame that temper, whose volcanic fires
So often rent him with outbursting rage.
Luther was great, and God would keep him so,
By proving in Himself all greatness lay,
And there alone the Reformation stood.

LIFE A SPIRITUAL CONFLICT.

Reader! the combat rages darkly still
Around thee; though an unrent cloud of flesh
Shut from thy soul their movement and their march,
And the dread soldiery by Hell array'd,
Yet, in the midst of Satan's host art thou
Contending: were thy veiling flesh withdrawn,
Full on thy spirit what a battle-field
Where all the Chivalries of heaven contend,
And the dread Sympathies of darkness fight
For souls immortal—would at once outflame!
But not with garments roll'd in blood, or death;
And not with weapons which our eyes perceive;
But sightless, these unbodied Hosts engage;
And therefore, Satan is the sense's mock,
The sneer of science and the scorn of fools.
But thy revealings, Faith! are ever true
And most tremendous, when the most denied.
A Devil doubted ends in God disown'd,—
Till the first glance a disembodied Mind
Takes of the truth behind the veil disclosed,
Looks on the Fiend, who made himself a lie
To rock the sinner into damning rest.

Reader! believe, the combat rages still;
No pause, and no parenthesis of love
Or pity for our world the Fiend allows.
Darkness his throne, destruction his delight,
Ruin and ravage his dominion make,
And earthquakes seem the echoes of His tramp.
But chief to battle with the sainted host,
Fighting beneath the banner of their King
Crimson'd with blood, and blazon'd by his cross
Redemptive, does the Prince of Hell advance.
Thus Luther felt: and thus shall ever feel,
And like him in the spirit's fight, contend
E'en to the gasp and agony of faith,—
The heirs of Light and heroes of our God.

“The Serpent's head the woman's seed Shall bruise!”
So spake the Lip almighty; and to man
Revolted then the Incarnation preach'd
In promise, which by grasp prophetic spann'd
Ages of conflict in the church to come;
Till time's worn clock his closing hour shall strike,
And this phantasmal scene where Satan fights,
This whited sepulchre of sin and woe,
This prison-house where dungeon'd nature pines,—
A thousand years of hallow'd rest shall have
In one long sabbath of millennial peace!
But not till hurl'd by thunder-blasts divine
Down to his pit, in chaining darkness bound,
The mystic “Dragon” will from earth withdraw:
But fiercely to the last, a fight maintain
Implacable, against all truth array'd.
So from the first imperial Rome he fired
With Pagan fury; when that flame was quench'd
By blood of martyrs, lo! an Arian creed
Flooded the church with desolating tides;
And when they ceased, Platonic visions came
And round the Cross a dazzling falsehood wreathed;
Till papistry in full-blown horror rose,—
The last perfection of satanic guile.

Perpetual motion of a will depraved
He was, and is, and shall for ever be
As Prince of darkness, from his throne of death

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Dispensing ruin. Who his sway can meet,
Or stretch the word to where his sceptre waves
O'er time, and scene, and universal man!
For every wheat, he sows a rival tare
In the vast field where faith and virtue thrive:
Each ward of sin and selfishness he knows,
And so, for each some fitting key he finds
Wherewith to enter, and the heart possess.
And let the mockers of the World unseen
The solemn findings of experienced hearts
In this believe,—that like the Saxon monk's,
A life of faith is one long battle now,
Beyond the passion of excited words
To utter, when the heat of conflict comes!
As conscience preaches, so temptation tries
By Him directed: hence, no mood is safe,
No scenes are shelter'd, and no hours secure
From art Infernal. Ask some thoughtful Mind
How often, when th' inflated world hath shrunk
With all its forms, its follies and its fears
Down to a shade, before the solid truths
And substance of eternity believed,
How often then, when resolution winds
Our being up, by tension most sublime,
To heaven's pursuit and love's majestic toils,
Back to the low and little we are lured!
Fever'd as ever, and with fretting pangs
And noisome cares inexorably mean
Again involved: as if this earth were home,
And immortality below the skies!

No height in grace, no depth in guilt forbids
Our dread assaulter. Attributes divine
How oft he covers with deforming shade,
Darkens for dread, or deepens for despair,
Or softens down to sin's presuming dream
Till God a Sentiment almighty grows,
For weak indulgence! Then, the Law he wields,
Fangs its dread curse with everlasting fire,
And on the gibbet of tormenting doubt
Racks frighten'd conscience in perpetual gloom.
For though in health, when light the blood appears
And all looks bland which in Jehovah dwells,
Sin like a trifle of the past becomes,
Or vacant nothing, with a sounding name;
Yet when the dampness of the tomb bechills
Our nature; when fierce retribution frowns
Black on the spirit, from the bar of God,
Then sin, which once a moral pigmy seem'd
But scarce apparent, like a giant swells
Upward to heaven, and with some horrid shade
Beclouds The Infinite, on Whom it falls.

And more than this, the arch-Deceiver dares!
For He eternity in time contracts
And time to false eternity dilates,
When cheated fancy to his wand replies;
And not one grace The Spirit's hand bestows,
For which no counterpart in passion finds
This dreadful Parodist of God to man!
But, chief that Book, where inspirations breathe
And God in language human guilt accosts,
He yearns to silence, contradict, or change.

Still, praise to God! His heroes do not fight
In this fell combat, by their faith alone.
The Lord The Spirit leads them to the field:
And none can perish, o'er whose shielded heads
Waves His pure banner of protecting grace.
Safely through Him they grapple with the Foe
By brave endurance, till the field be won;
When Angels, with a battle-shout of praise,
Welcome to glory those heroic saints
Who cut their way unwounded to the skies!
And thus, what girded Luther for his fight
Doth each bold Gideon in the cause of heaven
Apparel now,—an armour spirit-proof,
Burnish'd and bright like that our “Captain” wore
When He and Satan for creation fought.

OMNIPRESENCE OF THE SPIRIT.

Omniscient Teacher of regen'rate mind!
Vicar of Christ! who art to men redeem'd
Soul of their souls, and Light of light within,
Vast in Thy sway but viewless in Thy strength,
Thou o'er the chaos of the earth new-born
Didst move, and print it with Thy plastic seal
And inspiration. Beauty hence began,
Order, and shape and symmetry arose;
For Thou of all the Consummator art,
In the green earth, or garnish'd heaven display'd:
Since Nature is Thine organ, and is moved
By secret impulse from Thyself inspired.
Her laws, her lineaments, and loveliness
Are but expressions of Thy shaping will,
The outward index to Thine inward Hand
Creative: beauty is Thy vest Terrene,
Grandeur and grace Thine intimations are,
And second causes form but stepping-stones
By which Thou marchest to Thy works, and ways.

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And o'er those waters of our human world,
The ruder chaos of revolted hearts
Still art Thou brooding, with Thy halcyon calm.
For never, since pollution's blight commenced,
And man apostate to his Maker turn'd,
Hath sigh, or tear, or penitential groan
To heaven ascended and God's welcome sought,
But from Thy grace, pure Spirit! it proceeds.

Then, are we lonely in the war of life
Terrestrial? Strengthless, are we doom'd to strive
With foes of darkness and with fiends of death,
Who round the heart, and in the heart, contend?
Perish the thought! The grace which Luther felt,
Soldier of faith! is prompt to succour thee;
Here is the haven for tempestuous woes
And trials; port of sabbath peace to souls
When the loud billows of temptation rise,
And the heart trembles at their sullen roar.

Oh, for a language, out of sunbeams made,
In syllables of light Thy power to praise,
Helper, and Healer of the heart alone!
Sustainer truly of the sinking mind,
Sole Paraclete to all, for sin who weep!
Descend, and with the dewfall of Thy grace
Our world refresh, a wither'd Church revive,
And the hot fever of man's thirsting heart
With healing balm of blessedness, allay!
Without Thee, creeds become a barren sound,
The Truth is charmless, and the Bible mute
To conscience, though to mental power it speak;
While all in morals, or in motive, gives
But heathen polish with a purer name.

And, where that shrine, the palace, or a throne
From whence Thy secrets and Thy splendours flow!
Where shall our hearts those inspirations seek
Which make all Christians echoes of their Lord?
Wherever man and mind, and scene and space
May act or mingle, there, O Spirit! Thou
With solemn fellowship the soul canst meet.
What, though the herald-stars no longer glide
To light the Magi; though no mystic Bush
Burn with divinity in speaking fire;
And by no miracle made bare, or bright,
An Arm Eternal from the heaven is waved;
Though shut the Vision, and the Witness seal'd,
Nor Voice, nor Thunder out of glory rolls
This earth to waken,—still, Thy love abides;
And the hush'd presence of the Holy One
No bounds can limit, and no laws may bind
From Hearts who seek Him, in their tempted hour.
In cities loud, amid the hum of men
He walketh; or in loved and lonely haunts
Shaded and secret, where Reflection hies;
On mountain-heights, by musing poets traced,
In vales withdrawn, by melancholy shores
Lash'd by the billows in eternal beat,
In each and all God's whisper may be heard,
And still small Voice through listening conscience steal.
Thus, heaven with starry eloquence inspired;
Earth with her scenes of grandeur, or of grace;
Home's gentle magic, infant's guileless laugh
And mother's glowing smile, a charm may prove
Or channel, where His unction can descend
Through soft illapses to our spirit's depths.

But in Christ's temple, there Thy palace is,
Spirit of grace! from Whom our glories come;
Where symbols, signs, and sacramental powers,
Anthems august and hallelujahs deep
Attend Thee, and Thy ministries attest.
And Thine, too, is that living Word which breathes
Of truth celestial, when by prayer perused,
The Bible! there we hail Thee on Thy Throne,
The Urim and the Thummim of Thy power.

Reader! thyself a God is reading now
While thus this question of all questions peals,
Art thou, like Luther, by The Spirit led,
Or, art thou by some hidden Fiend seduced?
Whoe'er thou art, this truth take home, and think!
Two Spirits only for thy soul contend,
The Good, and Bad; but now, alone is Grace
Imparted; soon thy final sands will fall,
And thou in moral nakedness shalt be
To Devil, or to Deity, assign'd
Through endless ages! Oh, that truth immense.
This mortal immortality shall wear!
The pulse of Mind can never cease to play,
But throbs with immortality begun,
Eternal from eternity decreed!
Above the angels, or below the fiends,
To rise in glory or in shame descend
Makind are destined, by resistless doom.
A soul may perish, but it cannot die:
Immortal essence, 'tis from Godhead drawn,
And, like that Source, unquenchable endures.
But thou, calm Spirit of celestial truth!
Thee may we supplicate our soul to save,
And so renew it, till, resembling Thee,
Our heaven commences ere the earth depart.

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PAPAL ROME.

Three hundred years of beatific life
Unbodied, Luther's living soul hath breathed,
Since the last thunder-bolt of truth he hurl'd
With hand, how fearless! at the heart of Rome.
There, in that world where ransom'd minds repose,
Where priests, and prophets, and the kings of faith
Are gather'd into glory, and await
A pealing life-blast which shall rouse the dead,
The monk of Wittemberg his Master sees
And worships, waiting for his destined crown.
But, hath the world from sacerdotal chains
Itself unfetter'd? Is our faith the free
And pure, and prompted by the Spirit's love
And guidance, soul and spring of saving truth,
Light of all churches, and the Bible's Lord?
Alas! we slumber; and a carnal rest
Calmly around us lets the chain of Rome
Wind its dark coil, with most consummate ease
And falsehood. Bloated with our self-esteem,
And panoplied with intellectual might,
At ease in Zion are we; while a Foe
Remorseless, dragon-eyed, and unappeased,
Wakeful as ever, watches for the prey
Apostate weakness for Her fang prepares.

We want a Luther, with a dreadless voice
To front our modern antichrist, and face
The Vatican, with all its veil'd array
Of marshall'd doctrines or of muster'd lies.
So might we bare the heart of blushless Rome,
And rouse brave England's execrating voice
Till back the priesthood to her dens recoil'd;
While pope, and pop'ry, with a palsy smit,
And scared by scripture, would for ever shrink
In coward gloom to convents, and to cells,
Hooted by nature, and by freemen hurl'd
At once from virtue's and from reason's throne.

Oh! that our protest were as brave and pure,
As saints and martyrs sent, in olden time,
From their deep hearts against the Man of Sin.
Oh, that in light from flames where Ridley died,
Or Cranmer suffer'd his immortal death,
The Church of England would her hist'ry read,
And ponder as she read, with eye of prayer;
Till in that light her lethargy awoke
And rising, like a giant from his sleep
Enchanted, back the Romish chain would fall
Dissever'd, from her limbs of glory dash'd
In horror! Then, again that trumpet-cry,
That battle-voice magnanimously bold,
The tocsin of a nation's truthful mind
By heaven excited, would once more be heard
Like moral thunder round the seven-hill'd Seat
Of Antichrist, in peals of dauntless power,—
No peace with Rome, till Rome make peace with God!

But that bold spirit, which in martyrs burn'd
For truth and freedom, and our British name
Laurell'd with ever-blooming praises, sleeps
In dormancy most fatal. Thus the Beast
Apocalyptic, once again his head
Of treason, and his horn of vengeance lifts,
To smite the Nations, and our Church eclipse
With papal midnight. Yet, his outward mien
Is stern no longer; smooth'd by modern hands
To gentleness, his ruffled hairs relax;
No savag'ry his watching eye reveals,
And all his claws of cruelty are cut;
But still, the Beast is changeless! for his heart
Unsoften'd, throbs with blackest hate within
Deadly, and dire as in the days of blood.
Full well the Mother of deception suits
Her face, her features, and exterior form
Chameleon, as the atmosphere requires.
And now, when learning, science and the Mind
From dismal orthodoxy's Bulls of death,
And blasts of excommunicating ire
Shrink with disgust, sly Rome the hint receives!
Till, like the echo of all wants and wills,
Behold her! with the freeman talking free;
With tyrants, she at once can tyrant act;
And for idolaters gives idol-forms
In saint, or Virgin! Whatsoe'er the creed
Political, she finds appropriate tones
And flatters each with some obliging key.
Thus for opinion, passion, low desires,
All tempers, dreams, imaginations, thoughts,
All moods, and morals,—whatsoe'er the man
In learning, commerce, or in life be found,
For each and all can Romanistic craft
A seeming counterpart affect, or frame;
But, deep at centre, antichristian still!
So works the Myst'ry, and the world is won,
And aspect changed for principle reform'd
Is now mistaken. Hence, for time prepared,
Rome meets all pressure from without enforced,
By powers elastically prompt within;
Responsive always to each varied call
From creeds perverse, or crisis which demands
Her weapon'd skill, her wisdom and her guile.

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“And, why hath God, the merciful and great,
Rome's vile burlesque of christian truth allow'd?”
Perchance that Contrast may the earth instruct:
And hence, when man and world have both been taught
Their impotence; when Art, and Lore, and Skill
Their powers have tried, all moral engines used
To lift our nature from the gulf of sin,
And tried in vain; when Reason thus hath learn'd
No remedy from mortal wisdom comes
The plaguing leprosy of sin to heal,
And hearts apostate all their vileness know,
Descending Thunders from the Lord Himself
On Rome will burst, and ruin bury all!

Hence from the first, eternal war prevails
Against “The Woman,” and her seed elect;
And each high plan supernal Wisdom chose
Satan hath mimick'd with his aping guile,
Or art stupendous. But the master-piece,
The dread hyperbolé of daring skill,
That great conception where his glory shines
With blasting lustre, is the Roman mock!
There, falschood in the garb of truth is found;
There, darkness in a dress of light appears;
And all the many-chamber'd mind can hold
Of lies which lull, or sophistries that please,
Is met, and answer'd by some prompt reply.
No! not a tone which Character can sound,
Without an echo from some chord of lies
Play'd by the master-hand of popish Art!
Till, that which blood and havoc could not do,
When heathen Rome, or Arian butchers tried
The Church to mangle and her creed to mar,
This arch defection in canonic guise
By Him erected, hath for cent'ries done!
No partial error, out of reason framed,
Nor falsehood, from licentious will begot,
Hath Satan, in the Man of Sin, achieved;
But one great bondage for essential Mind!—
A ritual net-work, where the soul is caught,
And co-extensive with its ev'ry power.
Thus, all of tendencies, or truths which rise
By man or time develop'd into sway,
These, by a process of absorbing guile,
Rome with herself in soft alliance blends;
Can with her cause incorporate, and mix,
And thus transmute them out of social forms
To fine activities, whose friendly sway
Is won, and wielded for her own at last.

A CHURCH BY INVERSION.

But, whence the model for this curse immense,
This boundless magic of a baseless creed
For ages, like an incubus of hell
O'er human spirit brooding? Whence the power
Bewitching, far beyond destruction's range?
Why, 'tis a counterpart; a church reversed,
A mock of Satan by a man inform'd,
A mimic Show of what in very life
And lustre, form and glory, should the Church
As ground and pillar of the truth, have been.
For, had she constant to her First Love proved,
Binding on earth what God in heaven has bound,
And witness'd boldly for her absent King
A true confession, then would hostile Earth
And Falsehood from her hallow'd mien have shrunk
Self-blasted! and this o'erawed world beheld
The Saviour's Body arm'd with regal powers,
Mitred, and crown'd, in majesty supreme
Anointed Priestess of all grace to man.

But Satan copies, where he cannot change;
And thus a parody in Popes contrived
The Lord forestalling. Hence, the Fiend has framed
A pageant hollow, where his plot can hide
And act Himself beneath the Saviour's name.
For more than haughty Rome assumes to be,
By Heaven empower'd in privilege and grace
Imperial, would the gospel Church have been,
If holiness with apostolic charm
Her shrines, her altars, and memorial rites,
Her ministers, and members, all had crown'd.

And here, (as ever) from the Plan Divine
The lost Archangel hath, with fiendish craft,
Directive elements of wisdom drawn.
His model was Judaic: thence he stole
Those adaptations for the sensuous mind
He view'd there, organised in typic forms;
Myst'ries and rites, or ceremonial laws,
And ritual pomps where Priesthood looks sublime,
He found prevailing: these he studied well,
Then caught the genius of the mighty whole,
And made a copy for the papal Church
Which pope and priest, levitically blind,
Transcribed for ages, and is using now.
Thus, the dead carcass of Mosaic forms
By God deserted when Emmanuel died,
Satan himself hath repossess'd, and fill'd
Or quicken'd. Here, the Roman witchcraft see!
While man travesties what Messiah did,
And writes “unfinish'd!” o'er His perfect Cross.

Nor can our Age, though clad with self-conceit,
And helmeted with intellectual powers,

245

Produce the David whose predestined hand,
With sling of scripture, and with stone of truth
Well-aimed, her brazen forehead might indent,
Blasting her glory, with a righteous blow.
And, where the signs, the symptoms of Her fall?
Whence come the weapons Christian arms can wield,
Wherewith the triple Crown to pluck, and dash
Her high pretensions into baseless dust?
Alas! our locks of strength are almost shorn;
Distracted counsels, or divided aims
Impede fair union; and that mystic Robe
Which all unrent in perfect glory hung
While on His cross the dying Saviour bled,
Is torn to tatters, underneath His throne,
By hands and hearts schismatical, and wild!
Is this an attitude for deeds sublime?
With Masters many, while our Lord is One,
Our cold negations can no Church evince
In act embodying what our creed affirms
Of Union vast, and visible, and true.
How can we thus, with uncompacted force,
And mere abstractions, depthless, dim, or faint,
Battle with Rome, or keep her priests at bay?

Alas! expediency our Moloch was,
And at Her feet our ancient glories fell
Dishonour'd. Mute that mighty Protest, now,
By martyrs thunder'd like a voice from Heaven,
“Come out from her, my people! quickly come:”
Since base concession legalised her guile,
And lo! the Land, whose soil with sainted blood
Is hallow'd, where burnt Hooper's ashes sleep,
And lived the lion-hearted men, whose tongues
Shook the roused Empire with their shout for God,
For faith, and freedom! there, the Papal “Beast”
Is lodged, and in his den of lies secure!

Yet, to and fro, behold! the many “run”
And knowledge, as by Seers foretold, increase.
Still, what though ocean, air, and matter seem
A university for Mind become,
Where Sense can study, Science take degrees,
And Comfort all her sensual dreams enjoy,
Is this protection from the spells of Rome?
Oh! not in culture where no sacred germs
Are planted; not by knowledge, where no peace,
No pardon and no purity abound
For conscience, not by these are empires great,
A people glorious, or their welfare sure.

VICTORY OF FAITH.

Knowledge brings power; but Faith beyond it works,
And out of heaven that promised aid procures
Of mercy, whence alone true wisdom springs;
Till, through the heart's regenerated depths
The mind it reach, and make that holy, too.
To catalogue Creation's works; the tides
To balance; all the stars peruse; or scan
The secrecies unveiling Science loves,
This may enlarge, but not ennoble, Man,
If man be measured by his noblest scale,
By will, by conscience, and by perfect love,
Love that is heavenly and by God begun;—
For so philosophy divine asserts:
We find the lovely, and that thing we love;
But what God loves He thereby lovely makes.

In these alone pre-eminently live
Those elements which make our being great.
But Things to master, abstract names to know,
Their use, their natures, and their powers to wield,
May serve the Body, not the Soul refine
Or chasten. Thus, in vain would mental Power
Self-deified, the world's redemption try.

And how can mind, at best, a bulwark frame
To fence corruption from the inner soul?
In central likeness all men meet, at last;
For there is conscience in the vilest left,
With immortality, in each presumed;
And this stern Guardian on his throne of truth
Wakens at times, to vindicate the Law,
And preaches on eternity and doom
Sermons, which sound like arguments from God,
Prophetic, deep, and terribly divine!
And then religion, forced, or felt, or feign'd,
The heart's convulsion and its craven guilt
Alike demand: and where can earth produce
A Creed so organised with subtle craft,
To soothe the guilty, but retain the guilt,
As the mock creed of pharisaic Rome?
And though at times, pure Reason may rebel,
Shock'd into anguish by imposture's lie,
Reason is bribed, and understanding bought
When Lust is flatter'd, or the conscience freed
From harrowing guilt, from darkness and despair.

THE MAGIC CITY.

And thus, no energies from culture drawn,
No arguments, by mental skill applied,

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The Man of Sin can weaken, or o'erwhelm:
Rome laughs at these, and she has laugh'd before!
And ev'ry realm progressive science haunts
Pre-occupies, or masters at her will.
Hence, what a paradox of wondrous crime,
What miracle of permanence and power
To men and angels, must Her hist'ry be!
For though a slaughter-house for souls she made
The Church for ages, still, without a blush
She lifts Her forehead in the light of Heaven:
And though full often have the pent-up fires
Of wrath around her, fierce with ruin flamed;
And Power hath tried, and Policy assail'd
Her bulwarks; battles and rebellions leagued,
Tyrants and victors have besieged her walls
And daring Intellect opposed Her well
And wisely; Truth and Science both have hurl'd
The thunderbolts of their denouncing ban,
While righteous scorn her hidden cheats unveil'd;
And from the bosom of the soul hath burst,
Time after time, Humanity's appeal
Charged with the wrongs of ages, to condemn
The blackest outrage which can e'er abase
Morals and mind, and all which Man should be—
The mystic Harlot, on her seven-hill'd throne
In pomp and theocratic pride array'd,
Reigns like a Priestess of the spirit still
O'er crouching millions, in their souls struck blind!

And find we not a symbol in the fate
Of Rome the city, how the Romish creed
All time would master, where the Cæsars ruled
In blood, or baseness? Babylon hath sunk
Beneath the blast prophetic, and become
A den of ruin; Nineveh is nought;
The Persian perish'd in his pride of arms;
Assyria's dead, and Macedon no more;
The daughter-islands of the ancient Deep
Once free and faithful, in their noon of fame,
With Tyre and Sidon, and the classic isles
Of Greece and glory, are but sunken things;
And Palestine, th' Almighty's home, remains
E'en like a mother for her children dead,
Wasted, and weeping in mysterious woe;
But Rome is mighty in her magic still,
Like man's eternity by stone express'd
Behold Her! fated for a future doom,
When Deeds by prophets sung, shall there achieve
A destined ruin. Well may pilgrims trace
In wonder, how august She yet remains!
With fountains, baths, and famous aqueducts,
Arches, and catacombs, and hoary shrines;
While all the genius of dead Ages haunts
Her soil with shadows, and her scene with spells
That speak, though silent. Past and Present meet
In high communion, and historic dreams
Her tombs unlock, till colonnaded streets
Move with stern Heroes, whose creative minds
Yet bow the world with intellectual sway,
Reigning like monarchs on each mental throne,
Tyrants at once and teachers of the soul.

THE MAN OF SIN.

And as the City, so the creed endures
Deathless in might, immortally depraved.
Her aspect alters—when her power is weak;
Her plans are soften'd—when her foes are strong;
Her practice gentle—when the Age requires;
But Rome, in principle, is Roman still
The changeless ever! for her creed is one;
And that is, to absorb the blinded world,
And on herself a faith almighty found
As truth infallible, or God divine!

And what a miracle of matchless force
She wielded, when the craven soul had sunk
Down to that level, which her creed demands!
Like to some vision of unearthly gloom
Shaped in the midnight of a dreaming brain,
By horror featured, doth Her sway emerge
From the gone ages, when the Gothic mind
Bow'd at her footstool, as the throne of God!
Two Worlds she claim'd; o'er both presumed to cast
The priestly shadows of Her sceptred power,
Moulding eternity, and mast'ring time!
Till in the glory of Satanic crime
Her mitred autocrat almighty grew
And challenged worship, such as God demands!
Heaven's attributes in libell'd form a Man
Did thus array: and when his frown grew black,
It shaded all things with submissive awe
And silence! On his lip creation hung;
The elements from him their course derived,
And plague, and pestilence, his law obey'd:
His names were natures! and those natures all
Ambition wanted, or his will decreed.
But when his excommunicating arm
Was lifted, Heaven that ireful threat revered!
And Hell, with all its agonies and glooms,
The motion watch'd: but when indeed it fell,

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Empires turn'd pale, and palsied Kings recoil'd,
And sackeloth'd Nations trembled into tears!

Yet had this tyrant but the body cursed,
Made Cities mournful, or a province poor,
Or, tax'd the Passions for an income base,
Mankind were left some virtue, still, to save;
But Nature, in her sacred ark of strength
Where man is man when all besides decays,
The Pope, by impious sacrilege, profaned.
And dreader far than famine, fire, or sword,
Dungeons, and deaths, or all which martyr'd Flesh
Can suffer, is what outraged Conscience feels
When, like a moral suicide, the Man
Himself must abdicate, the will destroy,
And not a Person, but a Thing become!
Then rots the mind in servitude, and shame;
The faculty august of reason fades,
And blinded Nature grows a base machine
By craft inspired, to work a despot's will.

HOPE AND HARP OF PROPHECY.

But, sheathed for ever is th' avenging Sword
Of Godhead? Will it ne'er on Roman crimes
And cruelty with flashing ire descend,
Cleaving her bulwarks to their very base?
Oh, dare we think, that all the mangled host
On Alpine mountains hunted, spiked, or slain
By thousands, or by Marian hell-hounds torn
To bleeding fragments, have in vain their voice
Heroic peal'd along the heaven of heavens,
Startling the angels on their golden thrones
When the last anguish of their dying lips
Came up before them? Fruitless have they lived,
Or preach'd, or felt, or suffer'd, who of old
Gave to the world the glory of their death
By wheel, or gibbet, rack, or fiery stake
In vaulted cells of subterranean gloom
By death-lamps lighted, where the lurid beam
Faintly along some victim's quiv'ring flesh
Glimmer'd, and lit his harrow'd features up?
Far otherwise may thoughtful bosoms feel,
When grateful Hist'ry to their shrines of Death
Resorts, where deathless Inspirations glow.
The living dead ones are they! and their words
Ring round the heart like tones which never die.
Beyond their sermons, preach their sorrows, still!
Their anguish is our glory; for we feel,
Who died for principle, for God yet lives
To perish never! Where they bled, or burn'd,
Corded, or chain'd, or rent by racking fires,
Devils were taught how Man's enduring strength
Can suffer, when by prompting grace inspired.
And therefore, Martyrs! of Britannia's church,
That ancient plant of apostolic growth,
We laud, and love ye with no cold delight,
Who bled for conscience, and to Britain left
A creed untouch'd, like Cranmer's heart, entire!
E'en from your tombs an eloquence proceeds
Which champions Ages to repeat your worth:
And never from our venerating hearts
The deeds ye dared, the majesty ye show'd
In the dread anguish of a godlike hour,
Shall die! All time your holy debtor is:
And long as in our Church's veins endures
The precious life-blood of protesting truth,
Never can England from her mindful soul
Cancel the debt, her glories owe to you!
Your pangs have her inheritance become,
A wealth bestowing more than gold creates.
Ye gave the Bible! which your tortures won;
And shame terrific on our head alight,
If what the blood of martyrdom bequeath'd
In black ingratitude we basely yield.
Ye gave the Bible! and that priceless Book
Our blessings all in germ at once bestow'd.
For, what is Science in her purest flights,
With all those blending harmonies which rise
From social nature, but the man evolved?
But, both the moral and the mental roots
Of human nature, with transmuting sway
The scriptures reach; and thus with latent force
And vigour these the heart of Britain cleansed,
Making her land the paradise of isles.

Then, not in vain, though Rome be blushless still,
And round her creed a Trentine darkness casts
Cruel as ever, have the martyr'd hosts
And hecatombs of peerless saints, who bled
For truth, to God against their murd'ress cried.
Beneath the Altar rise their mystic wails
And enter, not unfelt, the ear of Heaven:
Since ev'ry drop their costly veins effused,
With every pang their burning limbs endured,
Have bright memorial in the Lamb'sown Book,
And shall be answer'd, when avenging Time
Brings the dread hour by Prophecy decreed.
Then shall The Lord in robe of fire descend,
And with the breathing of His mouth shall smite,
And with the brightness of His coming blast,
And into cinders by His curse consume
Earth's second Babel, antichristian Rome!

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Meanwhile, presuming man would fain achieve
What scripture to The dread Eternal gives
In plan and purpose, for His crowning work.
Thus, all are prophets to themselves, at least,
And preach perfection possible below.
But can corruption to itself be cure?
If man be ruin, and rebuilt he rise,
'Tis not by rubbish from himself produced,
But by a means transcendant, as divine.
The creed within forms character without,
And God alone can educate the will;
But, will makes man, in all essential powers,
And therefore must he, by regen'rate grace
Beyond himself through heavenly love ascend,
Or still be changeless, in his moral core.
Thus, to the last, a leper will remain:
The skin may whiten, but the blood is black,
And burns in secret like a plague-spot, still.

ROME SHALL FALL.

And yet, 'tis written with a pen of light
That Rome shall wither, and this Earth rejoice
In the rich beauty of her bridal robes
Apparell'd; and beneath her reigning Lord
Keep the long Sabbath of a thousand years.
And hence, millennial is the heart of man,
As if 'twere haunted by some primal grace
Of vanish'd Eden, when the Earth was young,
Sinless, and bright, without one scalding tear
To wet her eyelids, or the cheek to stain.
Creation groans for her sabbatic peace;
And echoing mind, in every age of thought,
Repeats the longing. This the poet's lyre
Hath warbled, in prophetic strains of song,
Caught from the harp of Scripture; and the creed
Of Aspirations, as they rise, and reach
Their zenith, with this inward faith accords,
That Earth shall bloom with paradise regain'd,
And be unweeded of her thorny woes
And thistles; and our Age itself is big
With expectation of some golden dawn,
Or peaceful glories. But alas! for earth,
If no millennium save what science brings,
Await her! if those moral truths sublime,
That reach the Everlastingness of man's
Dread future, have no room for reigning here:
For, sooner may the hand of Science think
To bale the ocean from its boundless depths,
Than drain corruption from the soul of man!

'Tis here the worshippers of Mind, seduced
By science, in their dreams half pagan grow,
Politely bow apostles to the door,
Or gently hint the Bible may be wrong!
For carnal Knowledge to herself is true
And constant ever!—back from God recoils
Behind the tree, to eat forbidden fruit,
Lurking, like A dam, in a guilty shade.
But oh! Thou Spirit of celestial life
And wisdom, teach them first Thyself to know,
And, knowing Thee, themselves to feel, and find
That man unchristian is embodied sin;
And though embellish'd, and by art subdued,
But veil'd corruptions all his virtues form
Till faith can touch them with a spell divine.

But there are prophets, who for Rome predict
A downfall, not by arms of earthly might,
Nor yet by reason, though its powers expand.
Far humbler they: in things divine as deep,
Jehovah is their reason; and they bow
With faith compliant at that mental Shrine
Where Deity, in human words, unfolds
The future, and Himself to love expounds.
And thus convinced, and by the Spirit taught
That man with man can never right be made,
Till right with Godhead will and worship be,
Our true advancement by preventive grace
Alone they augur. Well their natures know,
That as the sun with his bright rays is view'd
The living God with His own love we love.

Hence in the organ-voice of Prophecy
And chanted hymns by rapt Isaiah pour'd,
They catch the music of Messiah's reign
That in them warbles! But a wail there is,
Or ever thus the gladden'd Earth shall lift
Her choral triumphs, yet from man to rise:
From seers august, from Enoch's olden time
To him of Patmos, all their voice unite
In diapáson terribly distinct;
Denouncing woes, beyond what Time hath seen
Or this world suffer'd, ere apostate Rome
Be ruin'd, or millennial splendours reign.
And though, by ardency of hope inspired,
The distant future in fond dreams we scan,
Enraptured, and those sun-gilt peaks admire,
Deck'd by the radiance of a blissful dawn;
Just as the mountains of our world appear
In the blue distance, lined in lofty range
And harmonised by one unbroken swell,
With no dark gulf beneath them,—so may Hope
Too often on the heights prophetic gaze,
And merge, and melt them in soft unity;
Though black the gloom, and dreadful the abyss
Of wrath and judgment that between them frowns.

A bridge of ages in prophetic time
Our Dispensation is, by heaven decreed:

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Inclusively between those seers 'tis rank'd
Who first Emmanuel in His veiling flesh
Predicted, stricken, cursed and crucified
For our acquittal; then,—the Christ enthroned
Crown'd with the royalties of reigning pomp
Millennial. Thus an intervening gulph
The second Advent from the Church divides.

And stern analogy this view confirms,
When teaching ages of th' historic Past
Instruct the Present, not for heaven to hope,
But rather, that our Gentile sun will sink
A bloody occident in wrath and gloom!

And what a warning, would our ears attend,
Nor deaf as adders from the charming voice
Avert them, do the unforgotten scenes
Where Churches, once which miracles endow'd,
Apostles water'd, and the Spirit's grace
Divinely freshen'd with celestial dews,
Preach to the haughty Age we honour now!
Where have they gone, those Daughters of the sea,
Smyrna and Sardis, and the Sisters five
Whose “Angels” oft the loved disciple taught?
And by the shores, where oriental waves
Chime their lone music to the Afric blast,
How perish'd all Tertullian's page unfolds
When Carthage made his apostolic crown,
And martyr'd Cyprian into glory died!
While Hippo, where sublime Augustine mused,
Hath melted down to miserable nought!

These give dread warning, if we wisely make
The Past a preacher to our Present be.
But, sick at heart, and in the head unsound,
And sleek, and satisfied with all we do,
The mountain of our majesty appears
Immoveable! our age, Augustan call'd,
Our arts advanced, our science most complete,
Our wealth enormous, and our wisdom vast,
On land victorious and by sea the same,
While on our Empire sinks no travell'd sun!—
Bloated with privilege, we thus predict
Perpetual glory for the worshipp'd Isle,
Above destruction, and beyond decay.

SEVENTH VIAL SOUNDED.

A Church elected, not a world renew'd,
Here is the Centre for united aims;
And faithful round it, touch'd by solemn awe
Meekly and firmly may we watch; and wait
Th' unfolding Drama of that hour decreed
For vengeance, when the scarlet “Beast” shall fall;
When He, in whom all types of terror blend
And blacken into one colossal Form,
The dread Fulfiller of prophetic woes
And wailings, shall at last Himself reveal!
The sin of ages into one condensed
Shall thus be acted; then the Church endure
That Fiend in flesh, of whom all Scripute shows
Faint Antichrists, who cast their shades before
The coming substance of infernal Might
By Daniel vision'd, and by David sung
In song terrific. Then, a Day of blood,
Of burning deaths, of blackness and despair,
All Creeds shall test, all living Churches try,
Purging the faithful, till their dross they lose,
And purified from out the flames arise
In radiant beauty, and by love bedeck'd
With bridal vesture to receive their Lord.

And signs abound, and symptoms which escape
All but the souls who see with Scripture's eye,
That dooming hour by prophecy unveil'd,
When Gentile churches shall dissolve, and end
Amid the crash of Kingdoms. Far and wide,
From Thames to Tiber throng the shadows thick
Of terrors, which predict those Latter Times
Ripe for the harvest of almighty wrath,
When God for glory reaps His vengeance due.
Look where he may, a watching Saint discerns
No sackcloth'd Empire on its knees at prayer;
No Kingdom bow'd in penitence, or tears;
But all is headstrong, haughty, and unchanged
As ever. Vainly have revolving Years
Dread sermons preach'd on anarchy and crime
To banded nations, or benighted men:
And though Earth rocks, and Nature's foot-steps reel,
Full on the buckler of Jehovah's wrath
The Age is rushing, 'gainst His bosses dread
To dash its forehead, and endure the death
Of Treason. Soon, perchance, may come
A dark catastrophe, which closeth all
That fearful Drama, which this fallen world
Is now enacting on the stage of Sin.
The ancient Dotard of the triple Crown
Is yet a mocker, and the Bible hoots
Madly as ever; while absorbing Rome
Beneath the banner of her witchcraft draws
All warring opposites in creeds which rise,
To swell her potency and aid her charms.
Discord, and crime, and brutal passions rage;
And Lust, and Rapine, in delirium steep'd,

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Weaken all truths, and let their lies abroad
In lawless havoc over hearts and homes.

And thus there rally, from the regions where
Disturbing elements of mind can mix,
All Powers and Principles, to final war.
And by such phalanx, which a Fiend might lead
To battle, when the world is well prepared,
And leaven'd to the core with lying spells;
When Faith, the bond of all cementing bliss
'Tween man and man, Her social life withdraws;
And no religion to the Throne eterne
Binds with a golden chain this earth below,
Then may that Hour, by Luther's prescient eye
Foreshadow'd, and by tragic Seers foretold,
Come to a head, and Antichrist be scorch'd
To cinders, by the thunder-blast of God!
The Vials six have all been emptied now;
The Trumpets six their peals of woe have blown,
And of the Seals apocalyptic, six
Their fated truths unfolded and fulfill'd:
But when that Vial, for the seventh decreed,
Its curse shall empty; when the closing Trump
Hurtles its thunder through the mystic heaven,
Then may this world an Incarnation see
Infernal: such as never, from the deeps
Of utter Darkness hath permissive God
Allow'd upon our palsied earth to stand.

But whatsoe'er this shape of Hell appears,
As Wicked, Wilful, or the Lawless one,
Myst'ry in flesh, or Man with fiend combined,
Papist, or Heathen, Jew, or Pagan he,
If not in name, by nature he shall prove
Son of Perdition; who himself shall dare
To magnify beyond all worshipp'd gods,
Or Saint, or Angel, on his temple-throne;
And rob the Infinite of glory due
By lying wonders. Come whate'er He may
In form, or fashion, faith in this exults,
That in the wine-press of almighty wrath
Trampled and torn, beneath avenging Christ
The final Antichrist is doom'd to fall!
For when awhile, on Satan's seven-hill'd seat
The nameless Anarch hath his wine-cup drugg'd,
And crush'd his compeers, till beneath his flag
All Shapes of evil shall themselves enlist,
Dilated, darken'd, and by deep excess
Made terrible, beyond what terrors dream;
When thus, fell Antichrist himself proclaims
A new almighty on creation's throne!
Then shall that Fight, whose dismal pomp arrays
Full many a Vision with prophetic awe
And many a promise with its glory fills,
And many a verse with battle-music storms,
Be hasten'd. Lo! the bright Avenger comes
In panoply of dreadful glory sheathed,
And blasting; till the disenchanted Earth
Again shall smile, and with responsive joy
Partake millennium in the Church's peace.

ANTICHRIST.

Yet, who can gaze, with spirit unappall'd,
On the vast outlines of this coming Doom
When all, which now in prophecy looks dead,
Leaps into life and acts the part sublime!
And this great Battle of Almighty God
By visions pictured, lyric poets sung,
And with whose muffled roar the Bible rings,—
Who can presume its awfulness to paint?
Then the Last Head of desolated Rome
Under his banner, with his Kingdoms ten,
And rebel Nations rallied at his cry,
Shall, front to front, the God eternal meet
For battle; and beneath the blast Divine
Down the deep hell of darkness and dismay
Descend for ever to his doom accursed!

Dungeon'd in fetters, for a thousand years
There shall He writhe; and in the racking curse
Of judgment holy, shut and seal'd by wrath
Resistless, magnify the Son of God,
By this endurance of avenging doom.
But yon bright Angels, who did faithful stand
When He, the primest of their Splendours once,
Fell in proud treason, by confirming grace
In heaven to worship and on earth to wait
Are destined; and their golden harps shall ring
In unison with choral saints, who now
Circle The Lamb triumphant and enthroned.

MILLENNIAL VISIONS.

As some pale Bard from fever-dreams awakes,
Haunted by shades and shadows undefined
Yet fearful, making dark imagination shrink,
Once more to look upon a heaven of stars
Through the high lattice beaming, and to bathe
His wearied temples in the fresh-wing'd air
Exulting,—so from these stupendous glooms
And themes of awe, where Reason stands abash'd,
Back to the brightness and the bloom of earth
We hasten. Here, what living glories throng,
Prophetic numbers might indeed rehearse;
And vision scenes o'er which the harping Seers
Enchanted roll'd their richest strains of song;
And in some lulling dream of Latter Days
For this world destined, feel what Luther felt,
On Pisgah-heights of prophecy enrapt
As oft he mused, and hail'd millennial times.

251

But, now, expressionless the heart recoils!—
Under a weight of glory melt all words
To muteness, when that imaged Kingdom comes
On earth to be, what thus the Bible types,
And tells of Purity's celestial reign.
Then shall Redemption's perfect work respond,
And reach to all which revelation sings
In forms of Matter, or in facts of Mind,—
Yet to evolve. Creation's groan shall cease;
And life, and sense, and earth, and air, and sky
The vast enthronement of their Lord reveal,
By the felt magic of His reign inspired
And hallow'd. Glory in the sun will beam
With sevenfold brilliance; and the placid Moon
Glide through the mazes of her moving stars
With lustre deeper than rapt David saw
By midnight harping: not a fruit, or flower
Which bares its beauty to the prying breeze,
That will not in th' o'erflowing love and light
Of Earth's millennial consummation share.

And when Christ reigns, far more than Adam saw
The Earth shall witness in this bridal hour.
But oh! if Matter thus resplendent be,
Who can pourtray inaugurated Mind?
For if e'en now the Church our world instructs,
Though in her weakness,—when with Christ she reigns
Entire creation from That Church may learn
Perfect instruction, in the things profound
Of God. And as her Lord gradations knew,
And to the heights of His predestined rank
Ascended, so may God's elect advance
By faint reflections of His threefold sway,
As Prophets, Priests, and Kings of other worlds
And systems; and this inorganic earth
A palace of material splendours prove,
Where Beauty visible its throne shall set,
And o'er all worlds our own as model shine.

Thus, on the footing of God's Word inspired
Our hope we plant, and there this promise find,
That throned Emmanuel with avenging ire
Proud Antichrist shall blast, and then consume.
The Jew shall yet his bright Jerus'lem see,
And draw salvation from the Sides he pierced
When Christ on Calv'ry bore the bitter Cross;
While hymning Gentiles their hosannahs join
The Lamb around; and resurrection-saints
Call'd from the dust to greet their living Lord,
A thousand years of coronation-bliss
With Christ in glory shall on earth partake.
Till when at length, on sin, and Satan's host
And earth rebellious, final Judgment sets
That Seal tremendous, which for ever shuts
The perish'd in their prison-house of Woe
And wrath unutter'd, earth and heaven shall reach
A beauty endless, in baptismal fires
Recast, and shine with more celestial bloom
Than Sense can dream or Inspiration tells.

Hence all creation will Messiah bring
To full perfection, in its brightest form;
And back restore it to the heart of God
From whence it wander'd. There, his kingdom ends,
And Mediation down its sceptre lays
When nought between us and the Godhead comes.
Then face to face adoring man will view
The infinite; nor means, nor modes be used,
Nor sacraments, nor teaching symbols cast
'Tween God and soul their intervening shade.
In Deity the Church will be enshrined,
His Attributes her perfect temple prove,
Till God in mind the mind of God beget,
And life eternal be Himself enjoy'd.

TIME AND ETERNITY.

Between the living and the dead our life
Throbs like a brief vibration; and how soon
This pendulum of anxious being stops!
E'en in a moment, by some touch or tone
Arrested, lo, the life of sense concludes,
And we are launch'd beyond the tracking eye
To follow; by the Infinite absorb'd,
And in the secret of Eternity!

And yet, as though Reality were here
Alone authentic, how the hollow show
Of things, which eye, or ear, can apprehend
O'ercomes, and with monopolizing charm
Our cheated mind attracts, and blunts the edge
Of fine perception, for the spirit-world
To come! And oh, how rarely hoping Youth
Turns to the future a prophetic gaze,
Beyond this earth of shadows! Tomb on tomb
O'er life's descending pathway throws a shade;
And many a heart-ache to some fever'd brain
Must pay sad homage, ere the mocks of time
Be scatter'd, and our nobler dreams of soul
Their reign commence, and teach the gay to think.

252

Then, throbs the immortality of thought
Within us! then, adown the gulf unknown
Of Life's hereafter prescient fancy looks,
By faith made holy; while we learn to feel
That body forms the prison-house of soul,
And, out of it the dead indeed are free!

And such are round us, in ethereal hours
When earth recedes, and through the rents of Time
Beyond the Visible we dare to gaze,
And gather wisdom from a world unseen,
Though not unshadow'd by foreboding mind.
Thus may all clouds of Sadducéan tinge
Dissolve, and placidly our dreams recall,
And the loved features of our dead, recast!
By lonely shores, by melancholy seas,
At moonlight's trance, or sunset's dreamy close,
Down vaulted aisles or churchyard's cypress-gloom
Slow-pacing; or, beneath pictorial forms
By Art's eternity of hues preserved,
How oft we ponder o'er some face beloved!
Till, by that resurrection which the heart
Rehearseth, we can bid their cherish'd tones
To wake, and hear their wonted footsteps glide.

But, deep the truth omniscient Scripture tells
And sanctions,—not one pulse of conscious Mind
The Will Divine hath ever caused to play
In human being, hath a single rest
Experienced, since the primal throb began!
The spirit-people of God's world Unseen,
Millions on millions though their number be,
Are conscious, more than when by flesh encased,
And clogg'd in action. Not a soul's extinct!
Still A dam thinks; still Alexander feels;
Cæsar hath being; Cleopatra lives;
And those crown'd butchers, whom the world calls brave,
Are feeling more than when they battles fought:
Yes, all who have been, great, or good, or vile,
Patriarchs, prophets, intellectual kings,
Heroes, or warriors, and those laurell'd priests
Of truth, the poets of Eternity,
All are a living, though a sightless, race;
Each in himself a hell, or heaven, become!
For Mind is everlasting; and the Man
Is there in essence, when contingents die.
Thus may the Dead a more than sermon preach
To awe the living, and this truth impress,
That as we die, for ever we endure!
The same in principle the heart abides:
Since Morals in their root continue one
And changeless, though the Soul hath taken wing.

Hence two Worlds claim us, by a sleepless law;
But one moves round us, palpably instinct
With life and passion; and, alas! absorbs
In the wild vortex of its vain delight,
What to the other, though unseen, we owe
Of faith and conscience. Thus, for time we live
As well as in it; thus, our hearts deny
The Infinite that waits behind the Veil;
And when the living from our gaze retire
We talk as though they lived not, and were quite
From Being parted, as to sight no more!
Yet this is madness in the garb of sense;
The blinding mock of necromantic dreams,
Dilating time into eternity
And which eternity to time contract.
For faith and reason in this truth conjoin,
The dead are living, but their life unheard,
Unfelt, unknown, beyond ideal thought
To image, seldom can that man inspire
Who walks by sense, and worships but the same.

PARADISE OF THE DEAD.

Yet, thought has moments, when deep souls exclaim
“Where are the Dead? the Minds who once look'd forth
In light from eyes, in language from kind lips,
And by the daring of immortal deeds
Breathed on our own, like inspirations? Where
Where dwell the Spirits, who once felt, and fear'd,
Who dream'd, desired, or acted, like ourselves?
Where have they fled? In blank absorption, lost?
Merged in the Infinite, engulf'd, or gone?
Melted to nothingness? Is this their doom?”
Oh! wait awhile: for e'en as wintry earth
By the green outburst of some glorious spring
Secrets of heavenly power in Nature's breast
Developes, so may this material Scene
With hidden radiance of celestial life
Be clad hereafter; since the reign of Saints
Shall yet be witness'd, ruling over all
Conspicuous, with a glory undescribed.
The shell of Matter shall at once remove,
Like a strange dream the Visible depart,
And lo! at once the “quick” on earth will stand
By angels circled, and by saints enthrong'd,
And in the midst incarnate God appear!

Meanwhile, the Bodiless in secret live
Till all be rife, for this predestined form
Of sudden, swift, and strange Apocalypse.
Holy of Holies! in thy shrine august

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High o'er all heavens, ethereal, and unreach'd
By man's conception, dwell the Dead redeem'd.
There, the saved myriads of the seal'd First-born
Present with Christ, from Him perchance acquire
Truths which on earth Experience did not gain.
Patriarchs, who dimly on the distant Christ
Gazed in a promise, now with clearness look
On Him they long'd to worship. Prophets, too,
The meaning and the majesty of strains
Mysterious, can by perfect thought expound;
Types are resolved; and shadowy rites unveil'd;
The mystic Lamb, on typing altars laid,
And Gospel, by Aaronic priesthood taught,
Their great Original doth here unfold
And proves Himself sole archetype of all.
While they, who died in dimness or dismay,
Haunted by fears, and harrow'd to the last
By many a tremor, in restoring beams
Of comfort, look upon their Lord, and live.
And there, is Concord! those conflicting notes
Of human dissonance, which now destroy
The solemn harmony of sainted minds,
These can the Lord by melodizing grace
Attune to oneness, till all souls agree.
Hence, may that World where parted Spirits meet,
A school of saintship for the Church elect
Be found: there, The Lord His priesthood act,
And God's magnificence of truth unveil;
Or, more and more the merit of His Blood
Teach the bright Spirits, who around Him throng.
And thrill they not, from Christ Himself to learn
His wounds, how deep! His mercy, how divine!
Till round that Saviour rapt hosannahs rise,
And in the minstrelsy of heaven we hear
“Worthy the Lamb! for He was slain for us,”
Through the deep ages of eternity
Swell like a torrent of melodious praise.

FAREWELL.

And to this world, around whose vision'd scene
Our thoughts have trembled, Luther's wearied soul
Advances; soon will that tried heart repose
In peace, beyond the loudest blast of time
To ruffle. Twice some thirty years have delved
Deep on his open brow their wrinkling trace;
And often hath he died in thought, and pray'd
At home with Jesu in yon heavenly clime
To have his welcome! Hopes, beyond man's world
To wither, far above the earth have borne
His spirit; in the balance of the truth
Its visions and its vanities he weigh'd,
And found them wanting! Warn'd by heaven, he waits
A kind dismissal to his last long home.
For there, how many have before him fled,
And seem to hail him from their thrones of grace
Celestial! 'Tis not, that proud murmurs rise
From out his noble spirit; but the hue
Of Life's pale sunset, whose foreboding charm
O'ershades the present with prophetic gloom.
Youth with the living loves gay converse bright;
Age with the dead can high communion hold,
Nor calls it mournful, when the graves unclose
Their treasures, or departed friendships rise;
While votive Mem'ry drops the tear intense
By Feeling gather'd in some aged eye!

And such, perchance, within the pensive gaze
Of Luther glisten'd, when in hoary eld
That home he enters, where a foodless boy
Through Eisleben from house to house he sang
For bread! and dropt unseen the bitter tear
Which moisten'd it, when cast from churlish hands.
There, at his window, on the wintry heavens
Bleak with the blast, and white with flaking snow,
Dejectedly a thoughtful gaze he fix'd,
While heaved his spirit with a swell of prayer
By man unheard, but audible in heaven,
Where thought is utt'rance. On his frame o'erbow'd
Chill age was falling; and both languid nerves,
And feeble sense, a boding symptom gave
How soon with him the silver cord would loose,
And bowl be broken at the fountain-head!
But not for this repined he: for the Church
He sorrow'd; and her doom with tearful eye,
Foretold, as witness'd in the war of Creeds
Around him raging. Thus, an autumn-tinge
Sadden'd his future with prophetic shades
Of woe and weakness; till, at times, he long'd
Like Simeon, now in solemn peace to part,
And on the bosom of his Lord expire.
His work is done; his warfare is complete;
And from eternity there seem'd to sound

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A bugle-note, that summon'd his retreat
Home to the heaven salvation's Captain won.

And what a world of undeveloped thoughts
That moment of mysterious calm contain'd!
As in the centre of all boyish dreams
And hours departed, there he mused, and pray'd;
Or the long windings of his wondrous life
Haply with tears retraced, with sighs renew'd,
And God in shade and sunshine equal saw,
Guardian, and Guide, and Glory of his days
Perpetual! Like a fated life had been
The vast experience of his varied course,
From lowly nothing to that Alpine height
Of fame and influence, where his manhood climb'd,
And age was resting: scarce had patriarch's dream
Or prophet's vision more of strange and stern
And awful, in the things of God beheld
Or suffer'd, than the Saxon monk endured,
From faithful Enoch down to fearless Paul!
For, when had God His imprimatur put
With brighter proof, than on the boundless Work
Which now o'er kings and kingdoms, Man and Mind,
Breathed of brave Luther, wheresoe'er it came?
Sinful, indeed, before That Eye he felt,
In Whose bright ray the heavens unclean appear;
But faithful to his Lord, and creed, and cause,
Mercy had kept him; and to Him he gave
The crowning merit of the mighty Whole.

'Twas thus a charm of retrospective peace
Besoothed him, when he felt no dread reproach
From craft, or compromise, o'erwhelm'd him now.
Firm had he lived, and faithful would he die,
In life unblemish'd and in death the same!

CHAMBER OF DEATH.

And if the chamber where the humblest yield
The burden of their being up to God,
Down to the roots of tenderness awakes
Affection's nature; if the feeblest Saint
Who hovers on the precipice of time,
When beetling o'er Infinity below
Takes to himself some attributes, which speak
Of awe and grandeur, can we gather round
The bed of glory where a Luther dies,
Nor feel an inspiration? Can we mark
That eagle-spirit, from its chain unbound,
In light and liberty o'er this dim world
Escaping, nor a solemn thrill partake
Speechless, but how expressive! There he lies!
Pale in the swoon of swift-approaching death:
But mind is yet majestic; and his eyes
From the dark lustre of their burning depths
Yet flash with meaning, and the soul express
Conscious, and clear as ever; while the lips
Move with that verse, which on Messiah's once
Quiver'd in peace, when David's words of faith
Wing'd His worn spirit to the Breast of God.

Deeper and deeper now the shades of death
Around him close, while drop the fainting lids
O'er his sunk eyeballs; thickly heave and fall
Those panting breath-gasps, while the ear of Love
Drinks with delight some shatter'd tones, or sighs
Of Bible-promise, or those falter'd notes
Of Faith, which tell the spirit-life within.
The strife is mortal, but the strength divine
That meets it! Death all stingless, and the Law
All dreadless,—neither can from Luther's heart
Hurl the high confidence a christian seats
There on its throne of evangelie truth.
Around him friends, and mourners, each with sob
Half-stifled, and with tears which hang unshed
On the still'd eyelids of revering love,
Are group'd; while bands of waiting Angels watch
That mighty Spirit into glory pass!
Cold is the damp which dews his whit'ning brow,
And pains convulse him with continuous rack;
But underneath that palpitating flesh
Calm lies the soul! in peace celestial bathed,
Though clay and spirit sunder. Hark! again
The last weak cry of ling'ring nature lifts
A dying homage to the Truth Divine,
And then, on yonder kneeling forms and friends
Before him, falls one faint and farewell gaze,
And,—all is over! while his features fix
Their pale expression into placid trance.
No sigh is heard; nor groan, nor shudder comes;
But wordless, and with hands devoutly lock'd,
And mute as monumental Prayer, he lies,
A dead Immortal deep in glory now!

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How hush'd, how holy, how intensely rapt
As though the blood would listen as it flow'd,
Till the brain rocks, and check'd emotion reels,
That moment is, when first mysterious Death
In full development his form unshrouds,
Solemn and stern! And there, yon reft ones bend
Moveless, and pale, like shapes of sculptured Woe
O'er breathless Luther: each, by curb of thought,
The big sensation from outbursting cry
Restraining; not a tone of anguish breaks
The silence; speechless on his brow they gaze;
So still, that breath most audibly intrudes;
And each can hear the living heart-beats play
O'er his beneath them, pulseless, and at peace.

Behind our veiling drapery of Sense
Baffled we are from darting forth one glance
Of mental knowledge; or the heart, methinks,
Might dream, when Luther's disembodied Soul
Pass'd from the flesh to join the spirit-throng,
The inner-world some vast impression felt;
While the high Dead, by heaven-born instinct moved,
Rose from their thrones, to give him welcome due
When first He enter'd their elysian scene.

Tears are the litany of weeping hearts
When heroes vanish to their native heaven;
And let them consecrate an hour like this,
For there th' Elijah of the Gospel lies!
And rarely to the spirit-clime hath fled
From this low earth, a loftier soul than he,
The lion-hearted Luther! Never more
That princely mind with gen'rous pang shall bleed:
He sleeps in Jesus, but he wakes to God
Chanting in heaven the song on earth he sung,
“Worthy the Lamb! for he was slain for me!”
The race is o'er; the goal immortal reach'd;
Servant of Light, and vassal of its Lord,
Him hath the Master with the host above
United, call'd, rewarded, and resumed
Back to the Bosom whence his graces flow'd.

And let the pope and priest their victor scorn,
Each fault reveal, each imperfection scan,
And by some fell anatomy of hate
His life dissect, with satire's keenest edge;
But still may Luther with his mighty heart
Defy their malice, though it breathe of hell.
If soul majestic, and a dauntless mien;
If faith colossal, o'er all fiends and frowns
Erect; if energy, which never slack'd,
With all that galaxy of graces bright
Which stud the firmament of christian mind,
If these be noble, with a zeal conjoin'd
Which made his life one liturgy of love,
Then may the Saxon from his death-couch send
A dreadless answer that refutes all foes,
Who dwarf his merit or his creed revile
With falsehood. Far beyond them soars the Soul
They slander; from his tomb there still comes forth
A challenge, which rebukes them by its power;
And the brave monk who made the Popedom rock
Champions a World to show his equal yet!

“DEAD, YET SPEAKETH.”

Luther is dead! and like the Church's knell
Sounds the sad tale in Europe's startled ear:
Princes are thrill'd with consternation's throe,
And trembles now the Reformation's ark!
But, turn we most to see Melancthon's tear
Sacred as ever dropp'd from friendship's eye.
Nations alone the great Reformer knew,
But he the Man had loved, and mourn'd him thus
As David over Jonathan bemoan'd,
Passing the grief of woman! 'Twas th' eclipse
Of earth's best sunshine, when his Luther died:
For years had tried them with severest test,
And at each close, more fervidly in faith
Had left them: therefore, what but soothing Heaven
The dismal tumult of his harrow'd mind
Can hush, and soften into sacred calm?
Theirs was a friendship, which no earthly soil
Can generate; from heavenly seed it sprang,
And bloom'd unwither'd, 'mid the blight and blast
Of cold earth's changes. Each to each a grace
Imparted, which, apart, they did not wield.
Their light was varied but their love was one;
And the mild discord of commingled souls
In friendship made the harmony more sweet:
While o'er the failings of their mutual hearts
A garment of sweet charity was thrown,

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To hide them. Thus, harsh Luther in some mood
Tempestuous, when a lawless rage ran high,
From mild Melancthon forced no bitter tone;
For soon that tempest of a moment sank
To loving silence; forth the rainbow smiled!
And rich good humour cast its rosy gleam
O'er the brief gloom a frowning word begot.
And thus 'twill ever be, when hearts are true
As tender: frankly bold, and freely plain,
'Tis not in nature when by Christ endow'd,
A smile forgiving from a fault confest
To hide, since love is here our holy creed:
And kindness forms a talismanic key,
Opening the heart well-lock'd to all beside.

Luther is dead, and lone Melancthon weeps;
And, reader! hast thou no responsive tear
With his to mingle? Is thy gone career
Tombless? And over no departed friend
Heaves the green turf? Or is thy present hung
With no sad cypress for a perish'd joy,

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Or faded dear ones, into dust relapsed?
Alas! the heart's Necroplis is filled
With many a tomb by Mem'ry's votive hand:
And, where is he, that prodigy of joy
In age partaking all his childhood had
Of household-blessing, or parental bliss?
Oh! long ere wintry years the head have hoar'd,

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Or thoughts their furrows in the forehead plough'd
Eternity with time at least divides
Our friendships. Heaven has oft the better half
Of hopes which brighten'd, or of hearts that blest
Our Life's fair morning! Soon the world grows strange;
And bleak and barren do our pathways grow
As more and more they wind us to the grave.
And well, if friendship only be the loss
We suffer; oft, our noblest feelings die;
The heart is bankrupt, though the head be rich,
While all those young simplicities of soul

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Which lay on character's expanding buds
Like drops of morning, in their freshness bright,
Exhale, and leave an autumn-waste behind.

Not such were thine, Melancthon! Round thy grief
A radiant hope of sweet re-union there,
In that high world of fearlessness and truth

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Where all of heavenly which on earth we lose
Again shall greet us, and a glory wear
Perfect and bright, beyond our purest mind
Below to witness. There, shall friend with friend
And babe with mother, son with sire, renew
In blest revival, unforgotten love.
Partings below will soon to meetings turn,
And serve, as foils, to set their gladness off
Hereafter, when the soul's embraces blend.
And there are moments, mystical as deep,
When time anticipates eternity,
Making the Easter of our mem'ry bright
Rise on the heart, with resurrection-bloom.
Bodied and bodiless can thus converge
Whene'er to worship at The Throne we bow,
Or sigh, or speak some lonely prayer of love.
Soothed by soft dreams of well-remember'd times,
There round that Centre of our common Lord
The dear and dead ones of the heart revive;
Inhale together a surpassing peace,
And bathe their spirits in one blended joy
Supernal: friendships thus in soul remain,
When tombs have swallow'd all the senses clasp'd.
So can the living with the dead commune,
And rob the grave of half its vict'ry here,
While love in Christ by sainted hearts is proved
On earth the brightest, as in heaven the best.

JESUITS AND JESUITISM.

I.—MIND IS POWER.

Mind is the centre of our human power
And action: 'tis that throne of secret law
Where, like a monarch, reigns the regal Will
Supreme in orbit. As this living world
Of varied substance, through its moulded forms
And functions, hath each primal source of change
Not in the region of created strength,
But rather from the will Almighty takes
Each plastic motion, so that time-bound scene
Where man's embodied agencies unveil
His vice, or virtue, good or evil acts,
Not from brute matter, but from conscious mind
Derives mutation, destinies, and deeds.

II.—SENSUAL DOUBT.

Yet, blind in soul, with sensual chains begirt,
The fettered victims of the senses five
In Matter place reality, alone!
Effect remote, contingent and involved,
Their view confounds, and is for cause mistook:
As though the mind a passive myst'ry were

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By words created, not in things contained.
But 'tis not thus! All motion, power, and change,
Materially in heaven, or earth, or air
Unfolded, seen, or heard, or felt, or scann'd,
Up to the Mind Eternal must be traced
As their last Root, and secret Law alone.

III.—WHENCE CONDUCT SPRINGS.

Thus Mind, not Matter, is that seat and spring
Whence nature, providence and grace evolve
Their vital actions, on our sense impinged
With frequent pressure. Thus in Science, too,
Where through the medium of material acts
Wonder on wonder to her Priests unfolds
Amazing products, and mechanic force
Unbounded, high o'er all a Power presides
In secret; graced with philosophic name,
Men call it law, but what is law but mind
In ruling action? 'Tis the Will Divine
That, self-enforced, invisible as God,
And shapeless as eternity to thought,
Masters all Nature, moulds her myriad forms
Of growth, or grandeur, and the world empowers.
And hence, what Wisdom learns when most her grasp
Into the oneness of a glorious whole
Hath organised all forms, and facts of Life
Material, is to know her ign'rance more.
For, laws in Nature are our modes of thought,
Our vast conceptions of the unreveal'd
In matter, on whose aid all Science rests
And reasons: but no explanation climbs
That altitude where Law in essence dwells.
What God to faith, that Principle to sense
Becomes,—unseen, but actual, vast and true,
And yet, from sense how infinitely hid
In depths unfathomed! like the modes of grace,
Those methods deep, whereby The Spirit wields
His inward spells o'er all the central life of Man.

IV.—REAL AND UNREAL.

Thus, matter is the instrument of mind,
And mind, as monarch, over matter reigns
With secret magic: thoughts are throneless kings,
Yet, thrones must wither, when their potent sway
Becomes imperial! Then, the slaves of sense
Unlearn the lesson brutal science taught
Mere flesh to credit,—that the True
Is what we witness, handle, taste, or hear;
While Unreality to that belongs
Which faith hath canonised, as law and life
Supreme, by reason loved, and conscience own'd.
But this, how baseless! Power to mind pertains:
Reality within the realm of thought
Abides; and (what from sense is far remote)
Those lone Abstractions, which a lofty Soul
Visions before it, ponders o'er and proves,
Are oft the Factors whence our work-day life
Derives expansion, and more blest is made.
And not more truly can some Bard adapt
Poetic language to melodious thought,
Than to the process of those laws mind-born
Within us sanction'd, God this outer-world
Hath framed, and fashioned. Thus, the most abstract
Creator, who from sensuous earth retires,
While from her watch-towers Speculation eyes
In stillness what ideal problems prove,
Is no fanatic: for, resulting products show
That what pure Thought conceived, creation-laws
Hereafter realise; and hence attest
How facts in mind to forms of matter fit
Their truth, and justify what Thought foretold.

V.—THE INNER WORLD.

The Student, thinking in his mental bower,
Pale, and apart from all our blinded World
Calls useful, what a mock such man beseems
To Mammon's host, or Belial's pamper'd slave!
His world is secret, soundless as the soul
Which doth create it; one of perfect mind.
There, Truths in transcendental glory reign
Harmonious, which are yet by words uncloth'd.
Weeks, months, and years, that Devotee of thought
Works like an Angel, with a perfect will
To his pure toil surrender'd. Time and scene
Affect him not; gain and pleasure pass
His heart unheeded; passionately wed
To some high Problem, life unliving seems
From that divorced: 'tis health, and food to him!
Thus the whole man, in body, soul, and strength
A sacrifice to this achievement made,
Now to the world-wise half a maniac grows!
Or dreaming martyr, whom the moon affects
With visions mad, or theories befool'd.
But Genius is a prophet, priestess, queen;
To speak, to sacrifice, and reign
Her glory is, while inspiration bears
Her being up; and so, the world she braves:
And in those solemn agonies of thought
When brain o'crtask'd becomes a thinking fire,

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And flames the blood with fever, still endures
That strong resolve, which makes a Will sublime!
And lo, at length the goal of mind is won,
The problem work'd, the grand result obtain'd;
And deep abstractions, such as Newton seized,
Kepler embraced, or Galileo scann'd
Alone, prophetic Science thus can bring
Down from the heights where speculation soar'd,
To grounds material,—to that homely soil
Where life and commerce, man and income blend,
Or struggle. Now, some calculus is got,
A truth unveil'd, or principle applied
Which moves the World for more than centuries on!
And they, that scornful host of sceptic hearts
Who mock'd the thinker, while creative thought
Was all internal, when 'tis robed with fact,
And 'mid the homes and haunts of life appears
Embodied,—let them now that Lie abjure
Which makes unthinking sense the Lord of soul!
For mind, not matter, is the king of men,
That salient centre whence our human world
All change, and crisis, law and movement takes.

VI.—HISTORY IN MAN.

Coil'd in the secret folds of some vast Mind,
Working unwitness'd, save by God's own eye
Which views a thought as we survey the sun,
The moral Life of ages lies uproll'd.
History unread hath there a virtual root
And fountain: in that comprehensive Soul
Empires, and thrones, and revolutions lie
In principle! there, carnage, crowns and creeds,
Battle and peace, commotions, strife, and change,
Lurk seminally hid, for future sway
Or active function. But, the shallow pause
Oft at the outposts, where material Force
Comes into play, or palpably unfolds
Realities, to earth and space and time
Apparent; yet the secret motive-spring,
The life, the law, the impulse, and the power
Which vivifies what men for History read,
Is viewless thought, a state of will unscann'd.
For years conceal'd, in mental depths contain'd,
Some brooding impulse of the Spirit works,
And thence, as from a pregnant germ, proceed
Gigantic changes which a world upheave
To glory, or in guilt and ruin plunge
Its greatness. History is but man unroll'd,
And man himself, but what the will prefers,
By mental action, or in moral force
Determined. For awhile, 'tis secret all!
Unheard, unknown, the boundless Project forms
And ripens; through ideal worlds of thought
The lone enthusiast, day by day, pursues
His great conception, then departs, and dies.
But, having to some genial few his plan
Discover'd, soon the speculation swells
And strengthens; till, at length, by living force
Develop'd, forth from out the mind's recess
That viewless Energy moves self-revealed
In shape historic; clothes itself with forms
Material; into contact bravely comes
With men and empires; human Life confronts
In all its faculties and myriad spheres
Of influence, such as reach the vital power
Of Nations, creeds, and churches, oft recast;
And now,—the flurried World recoils, and fears!
A sudden palsy over kingdoms falls
Mysterious; truths and principles are touch'd
In essence; baffled Reason looks aghast:
Amid the turbulence and shock of things,
Chaos seems come! And mark! how blinded Sense
Amid the crash of churches, thrones, and states
Around it crumbled, learns at last to see
That by a single Thought, this giant-world
Is moved, as though a moral earthquake shook
Both Past and Present, from their thrones of sway
For ever! Yes, some vast conception lives,
Which once was mind impalpable, and hid.
Results material are but Thoughts array'd
With formal being,—Soul and Will become
Embodied, and for creed and conscience made
Apparent, by the deeds they dare, or do;
But still in essence what they ever were,
As seeds and germs within creative mind
Maturing, where the soul of History dwells.

VII.—LOYOLA.

But, did we crave a specimen, and type
Embodied, how a single Mind can move
Backward or forward, churches, thrones, and creeds,
And on the motion of one mighty will
History depends, when earth and hell are sway'd,
Turn we to him, in whom combine and meet
Passion and principle, which make a Soul
Though single, like omnipotence to act
On men and empires. Turn we unto thee,
Ignatius! with that rich Castilian blood

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Rolling within thy veins its noble tide
Ancestral, dreaming, daring, all on fire
With mad devotion, from whose wondrous spell
The glories of the Reformation's power
Receded. Never to a Cause was chain'd
A devotee, more passionately raised
To heights enrapt of superhuman zeal
Than was that flaming heart, when first it felt
How Law, and Gospel, Heaven, and Earth and Hell,
Sin, grace and time, eternity and truth,
In one abysmal thought, The Church of Rome,
Might be absorbed! And thus, to thee, that church
A Christ impersonal on earth became
A dread abstraction, thine almighty all!

VIII.—BATTLE-SCENE.

Beside the radiant Arga's rolling stream
Rise Pampeluna's walls; around them group
Hills of expressive grandeur, huge and high,
Cleaving the crystal air of old Navarre
With pendant summits, while a wooded vale
Of soft extent beneath their umbrage smiles.
'Twas here, enflamed by chivalrous romance
For deeds and darings, such as storied Gaul
In Amadis for ever laurels, stood
Fronting the beach, amid the clanging shock,
And brunt and carnage of a siege prolong'd,
The bold Ignatius! Ne'er hath poet's god,
Or dream-shaped hero, show'd more daring mien
And desperate valour; fighting in the rush
And roaring tumult of a blood-stain'd host
Firm to the last, this lion of Navarre
Contended, till beneath a gory heap,
Shouting the war-song, fell his wounded form
O'erwhelm'd by numbers:—Pampeluna sank;
Then, Gaul's proud banners o'er the towers high waved,
And red with carnage streets and temples ran.

IX.—RELIGIOUS IDEALISM.

The castled walls of his ancestral sires
Shelter'd the Hero; thus, with nerves o'er-strung
Fever'd by pain, emaciate, worn, and rack'd
Through bone and sinew, on his couch he lay
In long confinement: but the soul unchill'd
Burn'd in his being, with a martyr's fire
Heroical and strong; and here the captive fed
With vision, and with reverie sublime
Caught from the legends of the sainted host,
His heated nature,—till a sacred knight
Sworn to the Cross and to the Virgin vow'd,
Ignatius grew! and then, Romance began,
Blent with disease, to madden and inspire
His soul with more than passion, and “The Cross”
Wielded a spell o'er his ignited heart
Transcending human valour. Hence by faith
Etherialised, from fields where Glory wins
Laurels of earth, to scenes where Heaven rewards
Her heroes of celestial temper, turns he now:
And lo! in battle for the church of God,
Founded on Peter, like a war-machine
Against all heretics whom earth and hell
Concentres, yearns Ignatius soon to fight!
Here was a chivalry, whose new-born spell
Beat like a pulse of preternatural force
Fiercely within him! Visions, vast and bright,
Surpassing all apocalyptic Seers beheld,
Daniel conceived, or Chebar's prophet view'd,
Hover'd and hung around him, night and day
With their entrancing glories! Blood and brain
Were fever'd; with such gorgeous fancies thrill'd.
The very poetry of madness seem'd
To shake stern Reason from her throne,
And conscience to its roots. Then, fast and prayer,
Penance, and vigils of enormous length,
Blent with erratic dreams, together work
E'en to pale death this champion of the church
Devoted;—him to Mary ever vow'd,
Mother of God, and Queen of grace-born Souls!

X.—A DEVOTEE.

While thus impassion'd, Salem's heaven-loved soil
Before him glimmers; to that Land of dreams,
Christ's home on earth, by His incarnate Life
Eternalised, the new crusader hies.
Alone, in all the flush of flame-eyed zeal,
Sandalled by rope, with staff and calabash,
Unarm'd, the wounded Pilgrim drags his way
Till old Manreza's gates, at length, unclose
Before him. Here, again before the throne
Of worshipp'd Mary, fast and penance prove
His knighthood, while he hangs his weapons up
Before the imaged Virgin, and his flesh
Devotes to torment in the monkish cell
Of Dominic, that patron of all pangs
Ascetic, which redeem the will to God
Through shirts of pain, and thongs for bloody scourge!
Never did Penance such a hero boast,
As now was witness'd! Round his wasted loins
Clank'd iron fetters; while some thrice a-day

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Fell on his frame the blood-absorbing lash:
With bitter ashes was some barren crust
Commingled; prayer, not sleep, the night
Engaged; and on the stair of his damp cell
A kneeling trance of seven-hour length unbroke
He often kept, and starved his body down
Till foodless life look'd death itself begun!
Loathsome his garb, beyond what beggars wear;
While underneath his gaberdine there lay
Thorns, which might pierce with laceration slow
The flesh abhorr'd! But still, the deadly work
Of martyrdom in horrid climax fail'd!
For now to cavern'd darkness lo! he flies
A serried anchorite; there fasting, keeps
His awful vigils, till the pallid gleam
Which through some crevice of the rocky cave
Glimmer'd, on his ghastly features play'd
As though it trembled on such face of death
To glisten! But the peace divine he sought,
Was far as ever from his gasping soul.
Then came the conflict! the convulsion dread
Which, like a living earthquake, heaved and rock'd
The moral ground-work of the man within
Till mind was shatter'd, and the will no more!
Voices, which seem'd from out Damnation's gulph
To issue, yell'd around his inward ear;
While visions, black as fiendish Magic forms,
Floated within him, till he gasp'd and groan'd,
Throbbing, as though the arch-fiend wrestled oft
With his spent anguish! In that hour of hell
When madness, guilt, impiety and dread
Raged in the depths of his convulsèd soul,
Dread Suicide beheld him on the brink
Of lost eternity, about to dash
His headlong spirit down the pit of death:
When, lo! The Virgin, veil'd with robes of light,
Floats in the air, before his eyes entranced
Clasping her infant-God: and, thus recall'd
From murder, straight with bare and bleeding feet
To Salem must that wild ascetic come,
Beggar'd, but not subdued, a Grave to seek,
The Sepulchre most holy of The Lord!
But ere he went, our Lady, to reward
Her dreadless champion, back the heavens unroll'd
Above him; more than Paul unbodied saw
Ignatius witness'd,—what no words reveal!
The Trinity to him unclosed its shades
Of awful Wonder, whose mysterious depths
To sight were open'd! Ages next, retired;
And how Creation at God's bidding rose
From nothing, and the motive whence it came,
His awed imagination then beheld!
And more than this the rapt enthusiast seem'd
To image: an apocalypse of soul
Did to his thought that spell of spells unwind,—
How bread and wine are in the Host transform'd,
And changed to Christ, when priested lips command
A sacramental Incarnation there
God to enshrine, and Calvary repeat!

XI.—MISSION.

By vision strengthen'd, and by faith sublimed
To that fierce boldness which all Earth defies,
And time, or torture, to absorb or tame,
Nerved like a martyr, with his crown in view,
Ignatius onward to the tomb of Christ
Fearless of Saracens, advanceth near.
When, Lo! again, a visionary Christ
Hovers on high, above the blest sepulchral stone
Featured with glory; calls him to convert
The Orient, and His word of burning truth
Thrills through the soul of this heroic man
Like magic, out of Heaven's own music breathed.
And now, the work is done; the dreamer ends!
The cavern'd eremite no more exists
Fever'd by fancies dark: all visions die,
While calm Reality his heart ascends
To reign in wisdom, and the world o'erawe.
The giant from imagination's sleep
Awaketh, what a wond'rous race to run!
Yes, from the cloud-land, where confusion form'd
Ideas, like a mental chaos wild,
Down to the cold the actual and the stern
Descends the dreamer, and is Man again!
Before the sepulchre of Christ is born
That future Jesuit, who the earth rechain'd
To Roman falsehood; glorified the Pope
Like God, and push'd the Reformation back
For centuries, as some fallen Angel might
Reverse by giant craft the Good abhorr'd.
Nor ended he, till over ruin'd minds
And reeling empires, through his master-spell,
A vile theocracy of priesthood rose
As if by miracle! where myriads bow'd
Under his sceptre, like single Will
By God struck prostrate through resistless law.

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XII.—THE VOW.

The wings unfold of some three hundred years,
And lo! a vested group of gather'd priests
In mute procession, from beneath the towers
Of Notre Dame there winds its solemn way
On to the capital, which now reposed,
Under the stealing brightness of the dawn
Quiet, in square and street. But, hark! at times
Peels in high cadence with a chanted swell
Their orisons, as o'er the fame-crown'd heights
Of Martre, to that sacred Crypt they move,
Where France believes her first Apostle gain'd
His crown eternal of celestial praise.
Mark, in the front, with war-like mien, and gait
Most kingly, He who leads yon priestly band!
His countenance seems in itself a Church
And Council,—grave, profound, august,
Delved with the lines which deep reflection brings
Upon the brow of Thinkers. From those eyes
That blaze with intellectual fire, there dart
Imperial rays, beneath a godlike front
Which Painting loves to study. None could view
That martial figure, and a King of mind
Imagine not; for, look and step and air
Betray'd his mission. He was born to rule,
And in the world's great heart a crisis form
Of glory, or disaster. Such appear'd
That incarnation of religious guile
Ignatius was, on more than empire bent,
As on to St. Denys' memorial fane
Of martyrdom, he leads his band elect.
And now, when o'er yon sacrificial Bread
The necromantic words of priesthood work
That spell almighty, making God to be!
Are duly mutter'd, hark, the direful Vow!—
A vow, which, had encircling nations been
Around them gather'd, might have palsied kings
And kingdoms! 'Twas an Oath sublime, and stern;
From each of that sworn brotherhood it rose
Significant, and low, and deep as dread,
Rising from man on earth to God in heaven,—
In witness, they in life in limb and thought,
In soul and body, reason, conscience, will,
Prostrate before the Pope, would ever crouch
Slaves of his will, in whom a Christ on earth
Is worshipp'd, as the source of churches all!

XIII.—THE SYSTEM.

Such was the Man! and now, the System view
Reigning victorious, realising all
Its founder imaged, while He watch'd and wept
In cell, or cave, on Tabor's rocky height,
And grew a priest-god, by whose sceptre awed,
Nations and kingdoms, churches, creeds, and states,
All tribes and peoples, passive things became.
Ere twenty years had vanish'd, what a world
Ignatius wielded! more than Pompey dreamt,
Cæsar acquired, or Alexander's heart
Encompass'd, ere he died the Jesuit ruled.
Luther and he were two embodied Types
Of that great Problem, which the earth convulsed
With doubt and danger,—how in one to blend
The rights divine of individual souls
By God created, and by Christ redeem'd,
With that consentient law of common-life
Incorporate, which a perfect Church demands.
Luther for souls, as single, lived and died
In battle; but Ignatius for the Church
Contended, striving to engulph the Man
As unit, in that Body of the whole
Communion, where each separate life expires.

XIV.—PRIESTLY TRIUMPH.

Behold his triumph! In the convent veil'd
By solitude austere, from men remote
Like regal Grandeur, forth his genius sent
A world-wide power, which Empires still obey!
Europe, and Asia, and the far Brazils,
With India's giant realms,—his sceptre touch'd
Them, each and all! Thus, colleges and schools
Rise at his wand, to regulate the homes
And hearts of myriads: cabinets are moved;
Kingdoms admonish'd: councils awed and sway'd:
Battles commenced or sudden peace restored
And strengthen'd,—all betray the master-soul
Of this fam'd Leader. On his royal lip
Law absolute depended; at his word
Obedience rose, and where it will'd, there went
His banded zealots,—brave and lion-hearts
Burning for martyrdom, through East and West

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And North and South, the faith of Christ to plant;
Making the desert with the rose of truth
To blossom, and the wilds of sin to bloom
With those rich graces which his Church admires!
Nor did the magic of his subtle power
Pause at conversion; since, to Him applied
Monarchs for help, while queens for civic aid
Besought Him: thus, by law divine he seem'd
Lord absolute o'er thrones and kings to reign,
Whose crown was genius, and his sceptre, mind.

XV.—SERPENTINE WISDOM.

Behold a system deeper than the thoughts
Of ancient Despots, in their dreams of power,
Fathom'd or framed, which now the world o'ertook.
Luther and Calvin, when Ignatius rose,
Had like a storm-blast heaved the mind and heart
Of Empires; mental life and action spread
With speed miraculous; monkish night dispersed,
Like cowering demons by the gaze of Christ
Daunted, and dazzled. Novelty awoke;
The fountains of the spirit's deep were barr'd
Or broken up; creation was abroad
And active; while in science, creed and art
Inventive genius with irruptive force
Burst into sway:—and now, behold! the plan
Both wise and wondrous, by the Jesuits work'd.
Not to reverse by effort mad they tried
The onward rush of European life;
But through the prowess of exceeding mind
Master'd its move, and led the mighty van
Church-ward to Rome, while yet they seem'd to act
And mingle with it! To suspend, or chain
The giant impulse, had their skill surpass'd
However subtle: so the lead they took,
Absorb'd, embodied, gather'd in the whole,
And guided that which else had govern'd them!

XVI.—SPIRITUAL AGGRESSION.

Thus they resolved a problem, dread and deep;
How with pure faith philosophy can blend,
Reason and science with religion act
Their mental freedom. This they strove to show
When Church and College, as two symbols, rose
Together, and their union thus involved.
Here is the secret of that Jesuit-work,
Which won an awful triumph. Mark it well
Student of man! for History hath no page
More to arrest a Thinker, and his thoughts.
To battle with the Reformation-power
Forth to their work those weapon'd Jesuits came,
And ne'er did such Machines of mental war
And conflict, fight with their unearthly skill!
Aggressively, with Nation Creed and Church
They grappled; Science and mechanic Art,
Language and Commerce, Poetry and Lore,
How did they master each, and model all,
Or shape them down to their dread purpose fit!
Man and his motives, mind and heart they probed
And scann'd, they search'd, anatomised, and knew
Where to begin, progress, and how to pause
In each career they ventured. Thus empowered,
These champions of the Roman church became
Resistless, by their secrecy of strength
In action; back the Reformation quail'd
Before them! city after city bow'd
True Liberties beneath their wizard laws;
Princes and people, by such craft inspired,
Barter'd the conscience, till Germanic minds
Which Luther ransom'd, into bondage sank
Abased as ever! Rome again prevail'd;
Darken'd the soul, and dungeon'd half the world
Of free-born Europe in her creed and chains!

XVII.—UBIQUITY OF GUILE.

It looks romance, but solemn archives show
What miracles were by the Jesuits work'd
O'er man and mind, when first their princes waged
Heroic warfare for the Pontiff's throne.
Never was education so profound
As their adapting genius, form'd, and plann'd,
And carried out. But while such home-born minds
Were foster'd, far and wide their missions spread
From China's wall to Paraguay the wild,
Or, where by Ganga's Stream the black Hindoo
Waited for truth to set his spirit free.
Nor paused they here!—in palaces and courts,
In cabinets and councils were they hid

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And harbour'd; metamorphosed to all shapes,
Ignatius seem'd self-multiplied, and ruled
By their dark subtleties o'er plots and plans
Tremendous, bloody, dismal, deep, and dire
As Rome conceived, or policy preferr'd.
Thus do we find, at infamous Versailles,
The poison'd words of persecuting Hate
Into the ears of Royalty distill'd
With potency infernal, while true Hearts
In Britain's court were basely undermined
Or master'd; everywhere they move,
And everything they touch, pervade and thrill;
All places reach; all powers affect, or change:
No person safe, no principle secure!
From cot to court, from king to subject down,
Their zeal can like an omnipresence act.
Equal for them, to whom the Pope is God,
All powers of State; all governments the same!
Each to his Church is creature, slave, or tool;
Crime is not criminal, when She commands
The deed enormous! treason noble looks,
And murder from the decalogue departs
No more forbidden, should the Church require
A splendid victim for her crown and cause!
“A Jesuit!” well might childish dread conceive
That Name far more than mortal nature clothed!
Satanic wisdom seem'd almost surpass'd
By them who bore it; guile and darkness there
Concenter'd all which intellectual Fiends,
On earth embodied, might for falsehood wield
Were Pandemonium in the mind to reign.

XVIII.—MECHANISM FOR SOULS.

But if the ground-work of that guile intense
And spell, whereby the man unsoul'd becomes
Enslaved to priesthood, we desire to search,
A Book behold, by right “mysterious” call'd;
For here, mechanics for the Mind exist
Which, when by crafty discipline applied
And studied, render man a living corpse
In spirit,—an automaton for Priests
To mechanise, until The Church appears
A thinking substitute, a faith-machine,
And swathes the Will with swaddling bands which bind
Men to obedience, passive, base, and blind
As absolute! And now, de-natured man
Sinks from a Person, and a Thing becomes,
Depress'd and dwarf'd, a mass of featured clay
Whence mental faculty and moral force
Have been absorb'd! Yet, libel not that God
From whom Humanity her birth derives,
When thus impersonal, by calling such
A “Man!” Spontaneous will and thoughts are dead,
Or, sunk and swallow'd in the church of priests;
Conscience expires; the mind can think no more;
A soulless thing, an accident, or show,
A mere Negation for a man mistook
Is all that such mechanics for the mind
Can boast of; but their ruling charm succeeds!
The Formula of hideous falsehood works;
Conversion by mechanical result
In thirty days is certain, ere one moon
Can vanish! Let the “Exercise” be used
Completely; let each posture, gait, and groan
Be duly balanced: let the dismal curse
Of silence, solitude, and darken'd rooms
Be wreak'd, together with an imaged Hell
Shaped from imagination's horrid depths
Of blackness, where the howling Fiends are heard,—
Such let the neophyte of Priests enact,
And lo, conversion! passive as a stick
Wielded by aged pilgrims when they walk,
Or helpless as a shrouded corpse, when moved
By living creatures,—view the Convert now!

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XIX.—PERSONALITY DESTROYED.

What God created thus a Priest destroys,—
Man with a Soul! for now, that Soul reduced
By such absorption, in the Church resolves
Its nature: 'tis no more a choosing Power
Or Person; stifled reason hath expired
In self-renouncement; what is left, the Shape,
But not the Substance, of a man remains.
'Tis but an Organ, made of sigh, and sob, and speech!
Now on bare knees: then, prostrate in the cell
Of anguish; now, for ritual drama garb'd
And spangled; then, engaged in mumbling rounds
Of words, where sense through repetition dies,
Or the tired breath monotonously tones
Ave Marias! till the lip-work dire
Achieves its penance. What a boast is here!
When thus a mechanising Priest can make
Persons turn Things, and Things like corpses lie
Passive and powerless: such the Jesuit seeks
To govern, and despotic Rome demands.

XX.—OBEDIENCE.

Monster of systems is the Jesuit-school!
Police and treason, accusations dire
As dismal, each on each a dragon-watch
Keeping incessant, so that counter-spies
Thus exercised, a bosom-hell create.
Suspicion lowrs on ev'ry guarded brow
Of this dark Band, whose jealous eyes are keen,
Prompt to denounce each alter'd shade of mind
Assumed disloyal. Thus, the living pulse
Of pure Emotion is by terror chill'd
Or death-struck; social life exhales,
And all enacted, is obedience now
Under the yoke of thy cadaverous Rule,
Ignatius! Fiends o'er such a scheme exult;
But Angels, could they our dejection know,
Might shudder, veil their eyes, and weep for Souls!

CONFESSION AND CONFESSIONAL.

XXI.—PRIEST IN OFFICE.

Rome for the spirit a gymnasium proves:
Her Priests are posture-masters for the soul
Deluded, who can twist and turn the mind
And morals, just as Superstition shapes
Her ritual, or Effect on man requires.
Seek we a proof for this satanic aim
Of sacrilege on souls? Behold it, there!
The wooden screen of yon confession-shrine
Behind whose shelter lurks a probing Priest,
Contains it. 'Twere enough to blot the sun
At noon-tide blaze, to horrify the blood,
Or make Humanity to blush and burn
With shame eternal, might plain Truth disclose
All which Confessional has heard, or done,
Or vilely dared within the bosom's depth.—
Laid on the rack of Rome's lascivious tongue
The mental victim of confession sobs
Tones which are torture, while the fiendish words
Pierce their exploring way with foul success
Or skill'd advantage, till the Heart is won
And all the sacredness of soul expires.

XXII.—DEATH OF PURITY.

How the crush'd modesties of Woman bleed
Under the hoof of man's inhuman speech
Down-trampled! Mark that serpent-priest,
Holding his ear, lasciviously inspired
With loathsome appetite for all that should
Be wordless, and in blushing silence sleep,—
Feed on confession with his vampire-taste;
While maid and mother, wife, and sister wring
Their secrets into language, till their souls
Are agonised at every modest pore
Of feeling; wrench'd, as though infernal screws
Tortured their silence to convulsive speech.
Each gasping word seems like an oral pang
Breathed into utterance, with a growing shame
Which burns, and blisters, almost frenzies mind
And reason. Hell itself might cry, enough!
When a foul priesthood thus satanic grows.
E'en as from flesh an Inquisition tore
The limbs asunder, till each artery writhed,
And gush'd the life-stream from the corded veins
In drops of anguish, so Confession tears

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The spirit into torment, on a rack of words
When some strain'd Heart is by the priest outstretch'd.
Oh! how it quivers, till the soul half swoons
With dread; and as the hideous work proceeds,
Well may wring'd conscience tremble, start, and groan!

XXIII.—INWARD MARTYRDOM.

Nature hath no monopolist like man
Unprincipled, to conscientious brute
Transform'd by juggleries of Jesuit-guile.
Through Her foul science for confessing hearts,
Crafty as hell, and cruel as the grave,
A very Sodom for the souls hath Rome
Created; and, with criminal excess
All crime exceeding, hath on Nature laid
An incubus of everlasting wrong.
True personality in mind inheres,
Lives in our thought, and when that thought is gained
The moral Person to the priest belongs
Who holds it. Thus, Confession drains and draws
The secret life-blood of a Spirit out
By science; melts it with persuasive skill
Into the mind of some mechanic priest,
Who to his own assimilates the same
By progress gradual, stealthy, sly and deep.
Thus, mind confess'd is through the mouth transferr'd
Into the Priesthood, which in turn reacts
With fearful magic on that mental wreck,—
Some whisp'ring martyr at his feet, unsoul'd!

XXIV.—WOMAN AND HER DESTROYER.

The shaping genius of a priestly tongue
When so applied, can secretly impress
On the soft wax of Woman's yielded mind
Each vile impression, which a Jesuit loves
Or sanctions. What a rav'ning lust of power
Inhuman, must that papal Church corrode,
Who God would rival, by discerning soul,
And analyse its living essence down
To system! Well may Superstition, mad
As impious, dream the pausing Angels stand
Respectful, when such priest-gods pass or speak:
For, what they cannot, priested tyrants do,—
Master the will, and mechanise a soul!

XXV.—MORAL IMMOLATION.

But ah! with all his power, let Pity weep
For such a Being, by confession train'd.
Fell must the heart, and foul his conscience, be
By such a process! Enervate as vile
His faculties become, who, day by day,
And hour by hour, in study, thought, or scene,
Woman and Hell before him must evoke
For question, and for trial! Not for worlds
With all their glory, ought man to command
So foul a scrutiny, which scans and sees
What yon confessor by a loathsome skill
Must probe, and punish. Hark! 'mid choking sobs
And big slow tears, that with a burning trace
Scald the fair cheeks they moisten; or, with sighs
Heavy as deep, by agony intoned,
The Bride, the Mother, or a Sister kneels
Before her priest-god. Heart, and home, and love,
Secrets of thought and starts of young Desire,
Each throb of Passion, throe of feeling wild
By warm emotion in the blood or brain
Excited,—all must sternly be exposed
In language, by describing speech unveil'd!
Ay, word by word, before that priestly Ear
Be all paraded! When that fiendish work is done,
An immolation of the soul complete
Begins; for, moral suicide is wrought,
And all we reverence in wife or maid
By purity of sex, exists no more.
The Woman dies when modesty is dead;
Her heart is corpse-like, and the Priesthood reigns
Most absolute, a soul within a soul
Transplanted, ruling there with master-spell
For ever: He in her becomes an all!

XXVI.—EXISTING JESUITISM.

Such are the Jesuits, that banded Crew
Whom guile has disciplined, and genius arm'd.
With secresy of power environ'd safe
They war incessant on the souls of men:
Malignant, dark, and merciless as deep
In all their plans, their principles and aims
Mysterious; Egypt's plagues in them appear
Eternalised, by Rome's tremendous charms!
Twice twenty times, although by prince or Pope
Disbanded, such a mischief-power resides
In their black Institutes, while friend and foe

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Repulse them, when some crisis rocks the church
They show their treason in most damning shape
Embodied; and, religiously depraved
As ever, still their plotting Host endures!
No crowns are safe, no kingdoms rest secure
From these marauders; through all Lands they steal,
And nothing touch but what they blast, or blight.
Ubiquities of guile! from whom no spot
Or scene, or time, or principle, or truth
Or creed, or constitution can escape.
Now, at the helpless populace they strike
In secret, grinding down the People's heart
To dust; and now, a King they serve, like God!
All creeds, all changes, and all climes alike
They vanquish: so that Rome can reign,
Earth hell and heaven in their enchantment grow
But names of sounding emptiness, to fear!

The Babylonian Lady of the hills
Who martyrs more hath made, and numbers less
Than churches all, is their celestial Queen
Whose cause they worship, and whose crown appears
Jewell'd by Jesuits as the brightest gems.
And, when the archives of a soul are read
Under the light of Judgment, 'twill be found
That home of heresy, the Devil's heart,
Prompted by which schismatic Angels fell,
Since time began, no hateful brood hath nursed
Of human serpents, more intensely fit
Infernal poison through seduced mankind
To circulate, than this dread crew have been!

XXVII.—ENGLAND'S PROTEST.

Now therefore, Church of Britain's ancient growth
And grandeur, from the Jesuit guard thy creed!
That anti-trinity of scheming hell,
The Beast, the Dragon, and the Prophet,—rise
Around thee; lo! the final conflict draws
Nearer and nearer to that bloody close
Where crime and havoe, heresies and wars
Clash in the fray, and worse than chaos comes,
Till palsied Earth shall palpitate with dread
And downward ruin! Free-born Isle of saints
Heroical, whose dust hath been sublimed
By martyrs! peerless Home of loyal hearts
And high-breathed virtues, God on Thee devolves
A vast prerogative, to utter, No!
When priested blasphemy this lie propounds,—
That Rome's Melchisedec is God's ordain'd
Vicar on earth for Christ in heaven to rule.

Sublime negation! let it never end
My country; far as pulse of man can beat
Utter it forth, unsilenced and unshamed.
Rooted in scripture, let thy Creed remain;
Protesting, therefore catholic and true,
And catholic, because protesting found.

MORAL RETROSPECT.

Nature alone, is universal want;
Yet how to fill it, Man can never find
Till Heaven instruct him. Sin a gap hath made,
Which all the glory that below the skies
Our dreams may image, or some vast desire
Adumbrate, cannot now conceal, or close.
The happy are the holy; none besides!
But, God in man plants holiness complete:
Life from The Spirit, by His Word inbreathed,
Like to a soul within a soul must reign
Or, at the best, Humanity corrupts;
Her lights are cold, her attributes eclipsed,
And all her high prerogatives a cheat.

Still, man himself a moral Crœsus thinks,
And by his power perfected being longs
To frame, or fashion. Hence the World has tried
The hunger of his heart with food to feed,
Drawn from the depths of that presumed supply
By Self created: but the effort fails;
And Time recorded yet repeats the tale
Of mutual wants, by mutual pride befool'd
With false supplies, which took the name of Good,
But never reach'd its nature: till at length
Giants in faith, by God himself equipp'd,
Rise into action and the earth redeem!
And these, like moral incarnations prove
Of all that sighing Ages had invoked,
Or Truth predicted as the master-mould
In which to cast our virtues. What was once
An aimless yearning, or a blind desire
Haunting the heart with perturbation wild,
Is now personified by Form express
And open: Want hath now a Priest obtain'd
Whose genius gives each high abstraction voice,
And bodies forth by energy sublime
Sorrows which pleading Centuries long deplored.

271

And such was Luther, when the clock of Time
Sounded the hour for his decreed approach.
He was the Mouthpiece of oppress'd mankind,
A great Interpreter of tongueless wants
And pains, which lack'd an intellectual Power
Their own profundity to tell, or prove.
Yet, Preludes dawn'd which oft a change foretold
And Heralds of divine relief began
More perfect morals and a purer creed
To sanction, from the deeps of Scripture drawn,
Ere the lone monk from out his convent pour'd
Those thunder-peals of theologic truth,
Which startled Leo from a sensual trance
And shook the Vatican with such a force,
Its chambers vibrate with th' impulsive blow,
They gave them! though three hundred years
Have swept their wings o'er Martin Luther's grave.
There was a ripple in the mental tide
Awaken'd; streams of holier thought began
Heavenward and onward through the heart to roll,
Till lo! at length, a master-Mind proceeds
Forth from the secrecies of convent-life,
In whom the Spirit of the age can find
Its true Embodiment, by grace inspired
The mind to utter and its motion wield.

And we, who now the Reformation scan
Mellow'd by time, and by experience tried,
No random impulse, no erratic move
Aimless and blind, in that achievement hail;
But rather a momentum, pure and deep,
From Deity Himself directly sent
To Nature, that her inmost heart might wake.
Reason and Man were agencies alone;
They acted nought but instrumental parts:
One Great Director did o'er all preside,
But yet, invisible; behind the veil
Of mortal drapery, His guiding hand
Arrested, moved, and modified the work
With sacred watch incessant. Hence the Cause
So often grew mysterious, and appear'd
Curtain'd by gloom infernal, which bemock'd
A timid gazer; but the high result
Proved far beyond what Romish annals feign,—
Mere anarchy from man's revolted mind
Heady and proud, by lawless will inspired.
Nor was it but the negative excess
Of haughty Reason, with disdainful ire
All ritual forms time-hallow'd and revered,
Trampling to dust: for then, the Work had died
E'en in its birth, as imposition blind
As baseless; founded in no faith, or law,
And tinged with nothing but sectarian hues
Petty, and partial. No, The Truth was there!
And from that centre, like a scriptural heart,
Recover'd Grace with throbs of doctrine sent
A gospel life-blood through the generous Whole.
And thus, th' Almighty did Himself inspire
The Reformation: all unheard, unseen
And unimagined, in the midst He moved,
While Luther was the mental Hand, which made
The outward Index of His secret will.
And what makes history, but that Will evolved,
In fact embodied, or in form contain'd!
When thus perused, the page historic glows
With life intelligent, and force divine:
But when apart from heaven's presumed Decree
The glooms or glories of this world we scan,
Our creed must be confusion: then the Church
Matter and mind alone can thus display
To faith, or feeling. History's life is God:
All second causes are the First disguised,
And great results, though Man sole master seem,
Produce mere echoes which His will repeat.

And oh, how thrilling! touch'd with solemn awe,
Or, pregnant with philosophy how deep,
Are Time's events, when, thus divinely read!
Here is the harmony of Things obtain'd,
When from the Cross pure explanations flow,
And one vast Principle itself reveals
That binds with concord, and embraces all,
Which else, looks chaos in the whirl of life.
Yea, such the homage to some Power believed
Empires and nation in His hand to hide,
That pagan Instinct canonised the creed
Ere God in gospel to the earth came down
His heart revealing. Never yet hath man
A wisdom high, or greatness holy sought,
But claim'd he kindred with celestial Law
And by Divinity himself explain'd.
Thus Truth in time shall magnify the Cross,
Until the hearts of God-revering men
Echo on earth, the chant by angels sung
In glory,—“King of Kings! and Lord of Lords!
In Thee and for Thee, do all things consist
In souls, or systems, by the world contain'd.

272

BRITISH CHURCH.

Vine of the Church! whose mystic branches are
The Host elect of sanctified and seal'd
Immortals, long as Christ is own'd supreme,
Our light is safe, our liberty secure.
But when to human from divine we turn
With homage baseless, and to mortal Breath
A blind Religion blinder incense pays,
Our brightest health is but consumption's bloom.
Faithful, or faithless to her Lord, as Head
And true Bestower of all living grace,
E'en thus, as our beleaguer'd Church hath stood,
Sublime in gifts or sunken into shame
The Bride of Jesus hath on earth display'd
Her face, and features. To a threefold spring
Religion must for sacramental life
Betake her: and that triple source all time
Illustrates,—Man, or God, or mortal Priest;
As is each Master, so her fate hath been.
But when the priest his sacerdotal chains,
Forged from the links of apostolic truth
Perverted, round about pale Conscience wove;
When Man, unsceptred of his kingly mind,
A mere automaton for ritual springs
To pull or play, as guile or gain inspired
Their priestly Mover; when to such
The Esaus of the soul their birthright gave
Of faith, and freedom in salvation's gift,
Religion proved the Jailer of mankind,
And bound their spirit in a rotting gloom
Of pagan error. But when God appears
Again refulgent on his Throne of grace,
Revival wakens! and the Truth reform'd
By monk or martyr, is but Christ unveil'd;
Prophet, and Priest, and King of souls redeem'd
The Church adores him. Then, Her powers expand,
Her Symbols preach, her Sacraments revive;
And in the glory of Her greatness seen
As Ground and Pillar of the truth She stands.
Angels admire, and friends cannot withdraw
One ray of beauty from Her righteous crown!
For thus, Ambassadress from heaven to earth,
Glad tidings brings she on her mitred brow,
And gives the full-toned Gospel: then erect
In high pre-eminence o'er heart and head
She holds the Saviour, crucified and crown'd.
Sinner and sin to each her creed presents
Befitting argument, for God and man.
There, one is pardon'd—Mercy be adored!
The other, punish'd,—Justice own the doom!
Thus, in twin glory, Love and Law complete
Their vast expression; hence alike, can Law
The dreadful sanctions of its verdict teach,
While Love o'er all celestial radiance pours,
And pardoning Mercy in meridian shines.

And art Thou not thus venerably graced,
Founded in Christ, and by apostles form'd,
Glory of England! oh, my mother-Church
Hoary with time but all untouch'd in creed?
Firm to thy Master, with as fond a grasp
Of faith, as Luther in his free-born mind
Clung to Emmanuel, doth thy soul remain.
But yet, around thee scowls a fierce array
Of foes and falsehoods, mustering each their powers,
And all prepared, their hallelujahs wild
Or wanton o'er thy fallen towers to lift
Triumphantly. And well may thoughtful Hearts
Heave with foreboding swell, and heavy fears,
To mark how mad Opinion doth infect
Thy children; how thine apostolic claims
And love maternal are regarded now
By creedless Vanity, or careless Vice.
For time there was, when peerless Hooker wrote,
And deep-soul'd Bacon taught the world to think,
When Thou wert paramount, Thy cause sublime!
And in thy life, all polity and powers
The Throne securing, or in law enshrined,
With all Estates our balanced realm contains,
In Thee supreme, a master-virtue own'd
And honour'd. Church and State could then co-work
Like soul and body, in one breathing form
Distinct, but undivided; each with rule
Essential to the Kingdom's healthful frame;
Yet both in unity august and good
Together, under Christ their living Head,
A hallow'd Commonwealth of powers possess'd.

But now, in evil times, sectarian Will
Would split The Body, and to sects reduce
Our sainted Mother of th' imperial Isles,
Which have for ages from Her bosom drank
Those truths immortal life and conscience need.
But never may th' indignities of Hearts
Self-blinded, or the autocratic pride
Of reason, by no hallowing faith subdued,
One lock of glory from Her reverend head
Succeed in tearing! Love and Awe and Truth
Her doctrines preach with apostolic force;
Her creed is Unity, her Head is Christ,

273

Her Forms primeval as her Creed divine,
And Catholic the crowning name she wears,

MATERIALISM AND ITS CREED.

And signs portend still more disastrous gloom,
Frowning destruction over faith and forms
That, once intact, by sanctity begirt,
O'erawed betrayal. For a fitful heave,
A restless panting for the Unattain'd
And Undescribed, both church and world reveal.
Knowledge alone, from Faith's protective law
Divorced, would now sole educatrix be;
While the dread Universe itself is tax'd
For sensual income, through its living range.
Down from yon palace, where the sun-King reigns,
Throng'd by his court of seasons, to the dust
Existence crumbles on her daily rounds,—
All is for Profit! money makes the man,
And man the money. Gold is England's God,
While brute sensation forms the people's Lord;
And men are mechanised to flesh-machines
For grinding incomes out of earth and stones;
Till glorious Nature, once by genius loved
As one vast Temple where creation-rites
Are acted, is a common work-shop now
Polluted and depraved. Thus by sense deceived,
Our Cains in creed, those deicides in mind,
Abhor Religion with a quenchless hate,
Scouting the future as the mock of fears,
A poet's fiction, or a priest-born lie
Venal, as groundless! Thus, can men conceive
Income may do, what creeds have never done;
Till conscience is at length by lust betray'd,
And man,—a moral ruin! base and blind,
Anarchic passion, and bereft despair.
Myriads are such, whom sensual knowledge cheats,
And depthless minds with most satanic guile
Seduce, and govern. But, amid this whirl
Of things, when all by ancient Worth admired
And call'd immortal, waxes dim, and pale;
When law is weak, and legislation blind;
When guess-work dares all principle decry,
And time-hoar'd Verities, by heaven approved
As props and pillars of a nation's weal,
Uprooted lie, by violation's grasp,
And earth-born Self our second bible grows,—
Lo! in the midst of this disastrous change
The Church of England, like a bastion fronts
The warring elements which round Her rise!
Secure, unbroken, unalarm'd, and calm;
And haply, if ordaining Heaven decree,
The Spirit's organ for restoring life
To Virtues dead, and Morals half extinct.

SOURCE AND RELIEF OF UNREST.

If language can articulate the Truth,
What is the spring, the primal and profound,
Of all commotion, strange, or deep, or strong?
What is it, but the hunger of our hearts,
A moral famine of the foodless mind
For Good? or, thirst beyond all worlds to soothe,
And all the cisterns of created joy
To quench? But, in God's Infinite of truth,
There may the intellect its rest attain!
And in God's Infinite of love, the Will
Responsive adequacy alone can find.
Yet save in Christ, creation's true Relief,
Where can unresting hearts repose enjoy?
For here, all aspirations may their echo meet,
Center in calm, and reach consummate bliss.
But if that Christ in England's Church be found,
In pulpit, sacrament and prayer enshrined
(Her Priesthood faithful, and its Power express'd
With order'd grace and discipline revered)
Then, in the hands of her o'erwatching Lord,
Yet may she bring to European hearts
And spirit, that supply of nurt'ring truth
They need, but cannot name. And signs exist
Which stamp her, with significant effect,
Teacher of nations, fated yet to draw
The future round her, as a central ark,
Where Light and Liberty and Law secrete
Their saving essence, to conserve the world.
For in her still, with all their force inspired
Live the vast truths protesting Luther voiced
Like battle-tones, before the ear of kings!
And what, if thus by fav'ring heaven endow'd,
The high deposit of the Faith she guard
Unweaken'd? Trial then may glory prove,
Safety and splendour may her conflicts crown;
And what to our prophetic sense appears
A Future charged with paralysing woe,—
A true arena where our Church may stand
Fighting the battles of primeval faith,
May be, and grateful Empires call her blest!

And lo! e'en now, prelusive shadows throng
Round perill'd nations; signs which preach with power
The sermons deep of providence to man.
See Population, with enormous swell,
Increase a thousand ere the sun decline,
Day after day; while Space and Time depart
Before the miracles by modern speed
Enacted! Elements our vassals make;
And, like a war-steed harness'd and controll'd,
Ruled by proud Science, mark the subject Deep

274

Commerce to all Her thousand ports convey,
Rapid as winds can waft, or waters roll!
Empires with empires thus new contact form,
Powers with fresh powers, and minds with minds embrace,
For vice, or virtue; all in fusion meet
And mingle,—ready to ignite, and blaze
Heavenward or hellward, as the truth prevails,
Or falters: while around this huge ferment,
See Legislation to the lowest brink
Of sad Humanity her code direct;
And Wisdom brood with speculation deep
O'er plans and prospects, where the mind may grow
And learn to build a moral Being up.

These form the portents, which a change predict,
Or solemn crisis; while the dormant East
(That home of apathy and ancient pride)
Wakes from Her torpor, with mysterious life
And motion. What shall then the issue be,
When the World labours with some big event
Radiant with bliss, or dark with dreadful crime?
To God we leave it! this may truth pronounce;
That hell is forming where His grace breathes not;
And let but once thy spark, Rebellion! fall
Down on the mass of unconverted minds
By treason moulded, or by anarchs led
To lawless triumph,—and the World must bear
Suff'rings untold, and horribly intense
Beyond what Hist'ry hath for thought portray'd.
Then Earth a pandemonium would present
Raging with lust, or reeking with revenge,
Till by her blood incarnadined, the World
Would be as godless as the Fiend requires!

ASPIRATIONS.

Yet this, in mercy, may our God forbid!
Nor leave the world a dungeon of despair,
But bid the Church, by gracious heaven revived,
Her apostolic rank in word and deed
Resume, and dignify; and thus uplift
Her mitred forehead, and Her saintly mien
Untarnish'd, unattainted, safe alike
From popish rancour, or schismatic rent.
For in her shrine eternal morals dwell,
And through her sacraments and creeds there flow
Streams of pure life, from fontal Grace derived.
But could the Mammons of our day succeed,
Unchurch the Nation, prayer and praise destroy,
Silence the Pulpit, and all means of grace
Baffle, or blight, soon would Hell on earth
A more than rival in debasement hail!
For soul itself in sin would putrify,
Or wither down to senselessness and shame;
While Manhood, which the eye of faith declares
A true shechinah for indwelling God,
A mere contingency of breath and brain
Becomes,—a paradox in flesh array'd,
A baseless nothing, though baptised a man!

But in thy heart, heroic England! long
May Luther's voice, and Luther's spirit, live
Unsilenced and unshamed. Thou peerless Home
Of liberty and laws, of arts and arms,
Of learning, love, and eloquence divine,
Where Shakspeare dreamt, and sightless Milton soar'd,
Where heroes bled, and martyrs for the truth
Have died the burning death, without a groan,—
Land of the beautiful, the brave, the free!
Never, oh never! round thy yielded soul
May damning popery its rust-worn chain
Of darkness rivet; in the might of heaven
Awake, and back to Rome's vile dungeon hurl
Her shackles base of slavery abhorr'd!
Without the Bible, Britain's life-blood chills
And curdles; in that book, and by that book
Almighty, freedom can alone be kept
From age to age, in unison with heaven.
Without it, life is but a ling'ring death,
A false existence which begets decay,
Or fevers only into restless life
Whose blood is madness, and whose breath despair.
For not Philosophy, with Attic grace
Bedeck'd, and dazzling; nor can Science deep,
Sounding with searchful eye the vast abyss
Of things created; nor politic Weal
Transcending all which earthly patriot dreams
Of pure, and perfect, this vast empire guard:
And though our banners on the four winds waft
Defiance in the face of boundless foes,
Our swords flash vict'ry, and proud Commerce vie
With more than Tyre, upon her throne of waves
Once free and famous, till our country prove
The banking-center of all climes and creeds,—
Reft of her Bible, not a drop remains
Of holy life-blood in the Nation's heart!

275

APOSTROPHÉ TO ENGLAND.

Land of the Lord! my own maternal Isle!
Still in the noontide of celestial love
Basking, beneath the cross of Christ adored,
How bounds the heart with patriotic throb
Devoted, till each pulse a prayer becomes,
When oft upon thy sea-dash'd cliff we stand,
While ships by thousands haunt thy favour'd shores,
And in their bosom half the world discharge
Of riches and of splendour! God is thine,
My country! faithful unto death be thou;
For He has made and magnified thy strength,
E'en like a second Palestine, to prove
The Ark of Scripture, where a creedless world
The truth may find which makes her spirit free!
Thy bulwark is the Bible, in the heart
Of Britain, like a second heart enshrined
For inspiration, purity and power:
And while upon thine ocean-throne erect,
Scepter'd by prowess, Earth reveres thy reign,
O'er public virtue as in private life
May Scripture be sole paramount and test,
The source and standard of majestic faith,
Where morals form, and whence our motives flow.
And thus, brave Empire! if thy Church beloved
Firm to the truths a second Paul restored,
Tenaciously through blood and fire remain,
Then, long as guardian-waves begird
Thy shores, or sunbeams o'er thy cornfields play,
And thy large soul with liberty exults
And brightens, will the Church uninjured stand,
Saintly and solemn, by the wise revered,
By greatness honour'd, as by goodness blest.
And never may the touching sabbath-bells
No echo in thy children's heart awake;
When pealing softly with a pensive chime
Or deep-toned cadence o'er thy hills and dales,
Cities, and towns, and hamlets far away,—
They bid us feel what Luther's victory won,
Giving to myriads God's own Day of rest
Pure as the dawn my page shall vision now.

SABBATH MORN.

And see! from out the radiant east, which blooms
As if with blossoms of carnation'd light,
The rose of Morning blushes into hues
Of purpling splendour, till the arch of heaven
Serenely mantled with one glow immense
Of opal lustre, tells that Day is born,
And that, a sabbath: sacred be the morn!
To all who welcome with accorded rites
Its high mementoes and its claims august.
And oh, how numb'd by earth's torpedo-sway
Their souls who will not, in the saintly prime
Of this rapt morning, feel how God hath framed
The world without intelligibly true
By living concord to the world within.
Now, matter seems a paraphrase on mind:
We pour our spirit into sounds and scenes,
Greeting creation, like an echo'd Self
In forms repeated, for poetic eyes,
Or hearts of high-strain'd purity, to hail.

And now, from secret depths of faith within
Rise thoughts, which in their trepid beauty hang
Faintly and freshly on the virgin soul,
By words unechoed. Sacramental hour,
Hail to thy glories! from the Lord they come,
And all they image but His name reflect:
The very sunbeams their own sabbath keep,
So hush'd and holy is the bright-hair'd Morn,
While balm and beauty through creation's breast
Are now prevailing! Nature's holy type
To sabbath-keeping hearts it thus presents,
Who early at the grave of Jesu watch
Like Mary, to behold their rising Lord.
We call it fancy, but it rules like fact
O'er yielded spirits with seductive power,—
Nature herself sabbatical becomes
And greets that Day, which to the other six
Imparts a pure and consecrating spell.

But, mark the heavens! whose inspirations melt
Through the deep eye which loves to drink their hues
Like draughts of glory, till our flooded gaze
O'erflows with radiance, and grows dim with light.
The larks sing matins; while the humbler birds
Send hallelujahs to the King of morn,
Tiny and broken, but replete with praise;
Who now, uprising from a throne of clouds,
Bares his red forehead to the greeting World.
The viewless finger of the fairy wind
Wanders about, and with a dimpling touch
Ripples a stream; or tunes the air to song,
Till like an anthem by the breezes hymn'd
Fancy admires it: but for this,—all earth
Seems cover'd o'er with meditation's calm,

276

Solemn as in some hoary minster dwells;
And if the trees emotional were not
By air-breaths flutter'd; or the lisping talk
Of flowers, wind-ruffled; or the mellow tones
Of gliding waters in their graceful flow
Broke the blest calm,—'twere all a perfect trance
In sweetest emblem of this hallow'd morn.

But if from rustic solitude we look
To where, through parted hills old Ocean heaves
His breast of waters in the mantling sun,
Thou hast no sabbath, ever-rolling Sea!
Restless with glory: yet methinks, thy waves
Throb like the pulses of a heart enrapt,
When high emotions quiver into praise.

THE TEMPLE OPENED.

But, day advances: hark! from tower and spire
Pointing the soul, like principles, to heaven
And happiness, the many-voicèd bells
Peal their high summons, which invite the world
To meet her Maker, in His temple shrined
Waiting due worship. Oh! ethereal Day
Beyond the grossness of the belial-sense
Rightly to value, what a blighted scene,
Yea, what a prison-vault of petty cares,
Polluted dreams, and soul-degrading joys
Would earth, if sabbathless, at once become!
For since like angels, men should feel and act
By God approved, if glory such desire,
How priceless is the sabbath! when we hail
The soul of six days in the seventh divine.

To let th' eternal o'er the temp'ral cast
A shading awe, which bids this world away;
Low earth to heaven by aspiration's wing
To lift; by symbols and by signs to charm
Cold nature, and imagination feed
With rites which nourish for ennobling growth
Our being; then, by combination due
Of epochs high, traditions pure, and faith
Unblemish'd, from a gospel-fountain drawn,—
Here is the function which a Sabbath fills.
With these conjoin appliances devout
Of praise, confession, penitence, and prayer,
Bathing the conscience in the crimson Blood
Of Christ, and who can such a day blaspheme,
Thus propertied with those divinest powers
That to the secret roots of all which makes
A people holy, or an empire wise,
Send a live influence from Religion's heart?

'Tis chiefly through such institute sublime
Sanction'd by God, and by Himself first kept,
The soul's position in the truth appears
E'en as it is before omniscient Heaven.
Now are we taught by rites, and facts reveal'd,
Or by appeals, whose virtue is Thy pang,
Emmanuel! through a hidden grace applied,
A truth which humbles, yet with holy might
The heart attempers till it loves the law
Celestial; e'en this truth, the base of all
In moral code or creed religious found,—
That God made man, but man himself unmade;
And now is fallen from supernal heights
Of being, into cursed and carnal depths
Apostate, helpless, hopeless, and impure,
And, having nothing but a guilt,—his own!
Oh Verity! beyond our solving minds
To master, but by all things sign'd and seal'd;
Since nature providence and grace combine
Their witness, and authenticate the Fall:
Explaining much, itself is unexplain'd;
Remains a myst'ry, but all myst'ries lights
With radiance, pure as reason's eye approves.
Deny it,—what a libel on the Love
Almighty, does this blasted Earth become!
So much of grandeur in our grief abides,
So much of glory in our gloom appears,
And in the soil of each corrupted soul
So oft the foot-prints of departed God
Leave shining impress of their primal track,
That, if not fallen, but in form of mind
Man in his perfect God-created mould
Be yet apparent,—what a satire, then,
On Power Creative seems our anarch state!
Or rather, by such contradiction judged,
Incarnate angels, base and yet sublime,
Would men be christen'd, if no beam from heaven
Lighten'd the gloom of this chaotic world.

And therefore, glory to this Day benign!
For now, eternity and time will meet,
The heavenly on the earthly state shall dawn,
And Man, who in the mass and multitude
Of work-day powers, and worldly movements, makes
Too often but an item unobserved,
Here in the Temple, where a church becomes
A shrine of morals to regen'rate hearts,
Himself shall realise as full-orb'd Man!
Single and one, within him hiding depths
Of solemn, vast, and individual life
Beyond all utt'rance! life which few discern
Or ponder, yet beyond all speech august,
Since there alone our secresy of strength
And power of unpartaken being dwell.
For what is Action, but the spirit's garb,
The form and pressure of a Life unseen?

277

And that, more awful than the outer-sense
Can shape, or recognise by teaching words.
But life exterior, with its painted shows,
And all its multiplex array of scenes
By conduct acted or experience tried,
Is like the ripple marked on ocean's face,—
Hiding an unregarded deep below
And tempting gazers to discern no more.

Then, lift your heads, ye Everlasting Doors!
And be ye open, O Eternal Gates!
That in the chariot of descending grace
Borne by His Spirit down to hearts which pray,
The King of Glory with His train of truths
Begirt, may come, and find due welcome there.
England! be grateful; for a scene that fills
The soul with thoughts, whose dialect is tears,
Around us opens with expansive range.
Uncounted steeples now to heaven uplift
Their chimes, and swell the wafting air with tones
Which rise and fall, like undulating waves
In volumed cadence heaved upon the shore:
And touching are they!—for the tombs of Time
Open amid them, as they peal, or pause;
While buried hopes, and forms, and feelings dead
Quicken beneath their resurrection-tones
Mysterious. But far more than gazing sense
On earth can witness, will those gather'd souls
Who meet for worship with commingled awe,
The God Incarnate,—to the Angels bright
This morn discover, when the piercing truth
Enters their spirit with irradiant power,
And bares the bosom of the soul to light!
For hearts to them, are like transparent hives,
Whose hidden workings are conspicuous made
And watch'd for ever. Yes, the sabbath gives
Wisdom to Angels, while they bend to see
How nature struggles, as the Spirit acts,
Revives our graces, or a sin rebukes;
Or, drags the guilty to that secret bar,
That stern tribunal where dread conscience reigns,
And self by self is summon'd!—'Tis a day
When such bright Angels watch the soul redeem'd
Who love to think, where infidels would sneer,
And learn divinity by reading man.

DAY OF THE LORD.

But, though some emanated charms exist
Born of the sabbath, which no eye discerns
Profoundly as consummate Angels can,
Haunting our temples with their wings unheard
And eyes unwitness'd,—yet, enough remains
To prove a magic clothes this holy morn
Beyond all others, beautiful and deep.
And now, methinks that potency begins,
Open the heavens, and drop their sacred dews
Distilling balm, and blessedness, and love.
Whether to yon cathedral, with its form
August, and massive elegance of towers
Serenely rising in the radiant air,
Your fancy wander, and awhile enjoy
The wave-like rollings of the organ peals
Bursting, and booming down the archèd aisles
And hollow naves, while choir, and chanted rites,
And vested priesthood in their pure array,
With awful loveliness the scene inspire:
Or rather, if to some arcadian haunt
Where rustic manners in ancestral stamp
Are yet embalm'd, you turn the roving eye
To view the patriarchs of some village-plain
Throng to their minster, with its gothic porch
And ivied windows, 'mid encircling yews
Embosom'd dimly,—yet, in each alike
How much of all the Reformation won
For peace and purity, devotion finds!

E'en where yon palaces of Commerce lift
Their dusky, dim, and many-window'd piles,
'Mid roar of capitals, or cities vast,
How does the day, on which Messiah rose,
Check the loud wheels, and hush the grating jars
And vexing hum of avarice and gain,
That care-worn artizans, with pallid cheeks,
And all the wasted family of Toil,
Each with his little one, awhile may feel
That Men are more than rational machines
For shaping matter, or absorbing food!
And on this day, by Heaven's ordaining law
Rank'd in the rubric of perpetual Grace,
Their sacred brotherhood in God enjoy.
There, as they group beneath the Bible's wing,
And through the centralising love of Christ
The level glory of our nature reach
Together, who can tell what sweet content,
What calm submission to their clouded lot,
And wasting sorrows which their toil-worn lives
Experience ever,—from such moment flows!
Here all are equal by the bond of flesh,
The ties of nature, and in guilt, with God:
Here, crowns, and coronets, and sceptres drop
To nothing; king and subject share alike:
And in thy royalties, redeeming Love!
A prince may falter, where a peasant lifts
His plea; while in the poor man's eye may shine

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A tear of rapture, kingdoms could not raise,
Nor all which earth's diameter contains
Purchase the peace a sainted conscience hath.

Glory! to think that on this morn mankind
Bow at the footstool of their Common Sire
In co-equality of dust, and sin,
To plead for mercy at Salvation's fount.
Ye mighty Hunters in the fields of truth,
Titans of thought! ye giants of renown!
Colossal wonders in the world of mind,
Who with the shadow of a soul immense
Cover creation! though your genius charm
Th' eternal Public of posterity,
Your names are nothing in the balance, now!
Bend the stiff mind, and bow that stubborn heart,
And in the pleadings of your helpless guilt
Go, take your station with yon cottage-girl,
Or, chant a verse with yonder hymning child,
And happy are ye! if like them, ye feel
True wisdom is our ignorance to know.
There, cast your anchors in the cloven Rock
Of Ages! for, behind the Veil it towers
Deep as eternity, and high as God.
Abhorr'd be therefore a satanic wish,—
That e'er by riot, lust, or lawless gain,
Or by some logic false as fiends inspire,
Our sabbaths in due sanctity should fail
Or falter. On two worlds, at once, they touch,
The Lights of this, the Landmarks of the next;
And reft of such, all anarchies commence
To madden: nor can praise itself o'erprize
The order'd notions of a sabbath-day,
When thou, maternal Church! whose head is hoar'd
With ages, but whose heart, like Jesu's, beats
With love for spirits,—art a blessing proved
By forms, by functions, and by ritual chants,
And sacraments of soul-exalting grace.
Thine is a work, beyond seraphic lyres
To celebrate; for now, by Thee allured,
The infant, with its lisping tongue may speak
More truths than prescient Socrates could tell,
Or Plato in his most unearthly dream
Embody. Yes, the Church is Reason's friend!
For, what is Reason but th' informing Word
By grace imparted? and as He begins
Our nature's law to regulate and rule,
So all the circles of our secret life
Concentrical with perfect reason act.
And though alike the humble and the high
In sermons, sacraments, and symbols meet
Depths of divinity they cannot wade,
And meanings never master'd, yet by such
Our mental energies are boldly train'd
With truths to wrestle, as the patriarch did
With God's own Angel, nor to let them go
Without a blessing. But the creed which aims
Both man and faith in horizontal lines
To level, proves a flatt'ring lie, that draws
A force from reason, which it feigns to give;
Like fawning ivy round some oak entwined
Eating the heart its verdure seems to brace.

Again then, be our lauding chants uplift
To Him most holy, to the sabbath's God!
Who when the Planets sang their lays of light
While young Earth from her liquid cradle rose
Rejoicing, from His Throne of love decreed
A sabbath endless, modell'd from his Own,—
A rest whose archetype Himself enjoy'd.
Long may our Church, with her organic powers
And rites ministrant, this pure Day revere:
For sabbaths make the morals of our land;
And by their litanies of sacred love,
By pulpit, priest, and all that past'ral sway
Which makes the meanest village in our land
Some moral hues of soft refinement take,
They form thermometers, whereby to mete
Our true advancement in the noblest weal:
Since, public virtue, monarchy, and law,
And Church with State together are espoused
By league of principle, and power of love.
Hence, if our sabbaths be from sway dethroned
The music of the Commonwealth is gone!
Soon into atoms will dissolve and drop
That Fabric eloquent, whose walls are mind,
And founded deep in immemorial laws
And liberties,—the Constitution falls!
Then guard them well, ye Senators and Priests,
For they are priceless; and to us preserve
All which in heart and home, in Temple, or in State
Is pure of worship, or of lore profound.
And he who robs them of their rightful sway
By pen, or speech, example, creed, or life,
On Heaven itself a sacrilege presumes;
Man's awful being to the center shocks
And plucks the apple from a Nation's eye!

EVENTIDE.

Now ere we part, let meditation look
Once more on nature. Lo! the day is done;
And like the radiance of a lovely dream
Poetic slumber visions, softly melts,
And sweetly mellows into parting hues
The hour of sunset. From the ruby west
A flashing glory o'er the firmament
Deepens along, and over earth reflects

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Beauty, which touches flower, and field, and fruit,
And yellow corn-fields sloping o'er the vale,
With charms more exquisite than garish noon
Inspires. And if on yonder height we stand,
Beneath us what a British Arcady
In lustre qualified with coming shade
Is then unveil'd, by sunny calm serened!
There as we pause, around our temples throng
The fresh-wing'd airs, from waving branches sent;
The breeze makes music; while the cadence low
Of distant sheep-bell dyingly comes on,
Or sinks delightfully on Feeling's ear.
Here Nature thrones enchantment: far-off hills
Crown'd with a coronet of glitt'ring trees,
Paler and paler, to the west retire
'Mid wood and coppice, lane, and hedges green,
With sun-bright cots, and farms of mossy roof;
While here and there some rustic temple shews
That gothic beauty, whose mysterious power
Acts on the eye like poetry in stone
Embodied. These in blent expression woo
The gazer; mix'd with many a fairy gleam
From rivers flashing, as the sun-ray tips
Their current, cheering it with gay surprise.
But now, a mellow shade of mantling hue
Advances; villages and towns retire
Like pictured visions, save where yonder tower
In its tall symmetry with golden tinge
Retains the sunbeam; and as home you wend,
Hark! on the ear of balmy Evening comes
The faint far chime of some cathedral-bell,
Whose pensive cadence to the fancy sounds
A curfew for Creation's sabbath rest.

That hallow'd rest is deep'ning: daylight ebbs;
But yet, or ever sinks yon Priest of light,
Around Him like a burning shrine the heavens
Gather and glow, and with their beams infold
His dying pomp; while colours rich, and deep,
And dazzling, woven from th' Almighty's loom
Of nature, all the occident inlay.
Brighter and brighter His dilated orb
Is now becoming; till, at length, He sinks
In soft decline magnificently calm
Beneath th' horizon, leaving all above
Tinged with his radiance; as true saints derive
From God's own heroes, when their dying beds
In farewell glory give the christian out,—
Flashes of meaning which the face o'erspread
With lustre, and the gazer's cheek impress
With light, whose source is immortality.

Vistas of thought, and avenues of mind
Where Truth may roam in philosophic shade,
Or Fancy by her shaping dreams begirt,
Image beyond what pict'ring words describe,
Open before us; while this pensive lull
And balmy prelude to the twilight's reign
Come o'er the heart, till with sabbatic love
Nature and mind responsively confer.
Oh, how the sacredness of silence steals
O'er all things! just as if a spirit-glide,
Inaudible but felt, through earth and air
Were passing. Mute and motionless, the trees
Stand in the gloom like sentinels entranced;
Not e'en an insect through the stirless air
At times is waking: boughs and birds repose;
While the dark shadows of yon distant hills
Arrest the eye, portentous and profound,
As if with speaking vastness: but the flowers
Breathe double fragrance, now the heated air
Is cooling; and a thousand secret plants
Which in the sun-warm noon their scents retain
Inviolate, a rich aroma yield;
Like hearts whose finer sympathies are shut
When fortune brightens, but when sorrow's night
Blackens around you, let their sweetness forth:
Or, as those promises the Spirit's love
To faith applies, which seldom while the sun
Of joy shines golden, make their treasures known,
But in our glooms, how gloriously they breathe
Their buried meanings into living force
And comfort!—But more hush'd and holy still,
Grows the dim landscape round the muser's tread
Who walks it, till he dreams his very step
Profane intrusion on the soundless air.
And now methinks, Miltonic eyes would view
Angelic Watchers of our mystic world
Patrolling earth, with immaterial garb
And tread unseen; or by their Lord employ'd
The wheels of nature to redress; or guide
The comings-on of Night, who soon begins
To spread Her mantle o'er the sleeping world.

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Now rules the hour, when dormant Conscience wakes
If rack'd, or guilty; when Religion looks
On truths unwitness'd on the garish day,
While awed Imagination lives, and feels
Th' unborn poetry of speechless mind
Within her quicken'd: loud the heart-throbs beat;
And in this syncopé of nature's voice
What mute theology a moment wields
O'er the strain'd fancy! now indeed, we prove
That worded speech to manhood appertains,
But silence the Almighty's language is;
And faith can hear it, by Himself entoned
With inspirations from eternity.

MOONLIT SCENE.

But that is o'er; and from the shrouding awe
That girds thee, with a gentle force awake.
E'en such a night, as now prepares to reign,
The captive Luther from his watch-tower loved
To witness, when by inward prayer becalm'd,
He roll'd his eye-glance round the vaulted heavens
Studded with stars, like Scripture gemm'd with truths;
And gave his spirit to the charm of night
With all a poet's rapture! Such begins
O'er the lull'd twilight to assert its reign
Of trancèd loveliness, and stellar noon.
Lo! one by one, with timid gleam, and slow,
Star after star comes trembling into life
And lustre; radiant, mild, and mournful oft
Like the half-tears in Childhood's pensive eye,
Faintly they shine; while planets, rich and round,
Like burning jewels dug from mines of light
Flash on the forehead of the mellow'd sky
Most brilliantly; or, cluster'd into groups,
The rest commingle their associate beams
Dazzling the concave. Still, the earth obscured
Lies dimly veil'd, with umbrage unrelieved,
Waiting the lamp which lights her beauties up.
And, yonder comes it! lo, her placid brow
O'er the dusk air yon queenly Moon uplifts;
And e'en as music, solemn, deep and slow,
Through the dark chambers of dejected mind
Where all is shapeless, oft to order cites
Thought after thought, successive and serene,
So her wan lustre, as it mildly steals
O'er the mute landscape, tree, and bough, and bank,
Each out of dimness and disorder draws
To shape and aspect; till the dew-drops gleam
Like Nature's diamonds on her night-garb thrown,
In countless sparkles: all the stars grow pale,
Like mortal graces near th' excessive blaze
Of Thine, Emmanuel! save th' undazzled brows
Of those large planets, eloquent with beams
Unrivall'd. What a witching spell the moon
O'er all things by her fairy radiance flings!
Like faith, arising in some nighted heart
And touching nature with redemption's light
Celestial. Wheresoe'er his roving eye
Darts a pleased glance, lo! hill, and brook and hedge,
Rivers and streams, and meadowy range far-off,
Cities and towers, and tall cathedral-spires,
And village-churchyards with their grassy tombs
Attract the gazer; till his glance is charm'd
With loveliness, beyond the moving lip
To mention. But above, how beautiful!
There, solemnly the climbing moon ascends,
And each thin cloud within her silver reach
She clothes with splendour; like a mortal pang
By hope regen'rate into radiant peace
Transmuted. But in this access divine
Of Nature's sabbath, solitude and night,
How like the fortunes of the Saviour's Bride
The Moon's high progress through the heaven appears!
Varied, and full, now crescent and complete,
Shaded, or dim, and then with radiance clad,
So hath the Church along time's clouded scene
Flourish'd, or faded, shined, or suffer'd gloom,
But yet doth travel through her fated round
Upward to glory! Or, may deeper eyes discern
In yon pale symbol of mysterious sky,
The moon-like radiance of imperfect man
By grace made holy, but how changeful too!
E'en to the last by shades of sin o'erhung
And hidden: while th' imperial Lord of day,
By His prerogative of light portrays
That sun-clear righteousness of state complete,
Which all the justified of God arrays
With faultless glory, fair as Jesus wore.

NATURE AND THE CROSS.

But that deep Name, beyond all nature loud,
Peals like the trumpet of Eternity
Through secret chambers of responsive faith,

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Making them echo with the voice of Christ!
Nature was forfeit, when the first man fell
By sin; and whatsoe'er in nature lives,
In reason, morals, or in mind enacts
Dominion, from His vast atonement flows.
Creation once her own Creator saw
In Flesh embodied, when for sin He died!
And now from Him this hour of beauty takes
All that cloud, or star-encircled moon
Is lovely. Here indeed, material sights
Touch'd by the Cross, with sacred meaning glow,
Turning creation to a creed of forms
Significant and glorious. What a truth!
Through Him this orb of sentient being came
From nothing cited; by His ceaseless hand
The wheels of nature, and the wings of time
Circle their way, or waft their soundless flight;
While all those properties those creatures have
Are but the actings of atoning Love
By virtue present. Here is faith heaven-born!
When all the motions which in Nature rule,
Her laws, and lights, her harmonies and hues,
From the faint insect to the flaming sun
Apparent, preach the Saviour's kingly hand,
And to the senses mirror forth His heart
For ever. What the sinful Adam lost,
The Sinless by eternal heirship gain'd;
The curse unsting'd, then took th' attainder off
And back redeem'd th' inheritance of Man.

Oh, tell me not, poetic harps can sing,
That science loves, and sentiment perceives,
And calm philosophy, with musing eye
Beneath the stars enraptured,—all which heaven
And earth of God and goodness testify;
'Tis only when by David's key unlock'd,
The Secrets and the Splendours of the world
Unfold their magic, and by grace reveal'd,
Electrify the soul of answ'ring love.
The merest elegance which Pagan mind
Imparted, upward to creative Power
And goodness, dimly groped its erring way:
But when the Christian His incarnate God
Owns to be Head of all creation is,
All life becomes one vast religion;
And faith and feeling in communion move
Divorceless ever. Then, at once, all laws
And movements, like cathedral-rites appear
By nature's liturgy of Love perform'd
In the vast temple of the universe,
Shrining Emmanuel: then, the Whole applies
To Him the watching, weeping, dying, Lord,
The source of nature and salvation too,
The priceless merit of Whose Blood preserves
The heavens in motion and our earth alive.

So may we learn, at this nocturnal hour,
Morning, or noon, whatever time we walk
The halls of Nature with a holy tread,
All bright and beautiful, all vast and fair,
In Him to love, Who, when creation sinn'd
And crime on earth began like hell to reign,
Personified eternity in time,
And clothed th' Infinite with human Flesh
For our remission!

HUSH OF NIGHT.

But the night is come;
The Moon, with her pale hierarchy girt
Of stars, is gliding to the ocean's brim,
And listen! for the chime of far-off bells
O'er a dead Sabbath tolls their dying tone:
And now, the Day is buried; to thy tomb
Eternity! with all its hopes and fears,
Gather'd and gone. But oh, how thrill'd
The chords mysterious of our secret frame!
As if the stirrings of a life unborn,
Latent but lovely, this rapt hour inspired,
The Dead seem gazing on our hearts again!
Illapses deep, irradiations pure
Glide through our spirit from a source unknown;
Until, by awful loveliness subdued,
Above, the pilgrim lifts his eye of prayer
Expressive: youth, and home, and long-fled days
With soft revival touch him into tears
Unshed; and while yon arch of midnight rings
With the soft echoes of those sunken chimes
Around him, many a thoughtful sigh is heaved
O'er visions gone; and things that once becharm'd
His dazzled fancy, pale and cold appear,—
Weeds of the past on Mem'ry's lonely shore!

And now, amid thy hush, most holy Night!
Here let us stand beneath yon hanging cliff,
Closing our song beside the placid sea
Which now lies breezeless. Who that thus beholds
Her bosom, by the braiding moonlight deck'd,
And heaving only to attraction's orb,
As pant young hearts beneath the eye they love,
Could ere imagine, everlasting Sea!
Thy billows, like the roar of human wrongs,
Clamour on high and cleave the heavens with sound

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So often! Such thy halcyon slumber now,
The stars are mirror'd on thy glassy wave,
With beam unbroken; while the feet which press
The pebbled margin of yon moonlit-wave,
Rudely and loudly on the hush intrude
Their faintest motion.

Here, then, be farewell
To this blent strain of meditative truth,
E'en by thy bulwark, O Britannic Isle!
Whom Ocean ramparts with her wall of waves.
Now in the trance of this untroubled night
While all seems holy, our adoring hearts
To that supernal Power of truth we lift,
Who guardeth Empires, and Who guideth thee,
My country! with a most peculiar love:
That once as out of Zion peal'd the trump
Of ancient Gospel, hence the battle-voice
Of Truth should never cease to challenge Rome;
But waken echoes, bold as Luther's cheer
Might welcome, deep as lofty Cranmer loved,
Or Ridley o'er his pangs of fire prolong'd.

FINAL APOSTROPHÉ.

Mysterious Spirit of the ceaseless mind!
Heart of the Church, as Christ the only Head;
Soul of our souls! in supernat'ral light
Unbounded, deathless and transforming Grace,
And Love, and Wisdom, Thee I now invoke;
And to Thyself presume to consecrate
Pages, that whatsoe'er of hallow'd power
They have, from Thee alone their truth receive
And virtue. Oh! thou Sempiternal Life,
Breathe o'er this effort, and with force array
Whate'er is feeble; and by heavenly touch
And tone their meaning so affect and fill,
That onward to the inner-mind of man,
Or central being, where high Conscience holds
Her seat august, and faith's dominion acts,
What truths they carry may be safely borne
Beyond the heartless, and above the vain
To warp or weaken. Here, beneath the arch
Of midnight, solemn, deep, intensely calm,
Thy Presence would I realise, and lift
Mine awe-struck nature to the heights unseen
Of Essence Uncreate, where Thou art Third
In Godhead, as the Fountain-Sire is first,
Second, the Filial Word, and All supreme
As One co-equal, co-eternal Three.

Descend pure Spirit! light and life and love
Without Thee, are not: poetry is Thine;
Reason and science, and majestic arts,
The heaven-born virtues, intellectual powers,
And all pre-eminence in grace or gift
Are but as glances from Thy glory cast,
And caught by mind. But, who Thy sway can tell?
For at the first, the Heavens and all their host,
Moon, star, and planets, from Thy hand derived
Their radiance, from Thy wisdom learn'd their paths.
And Earth is thine: Her elemental laws,
Her motions, harmonies, and living hues
Are but the efflux of Thy fontal powers;
While Man himself, that miracle of forms!
Into his mould was copied from Thy cast
Ethereal; and the whole of truths inspired,
Prophetic utterance, or miraculous deed,
Which was, or is, or shall be, are but rays
Sent from Thine Essence to created mind.

Without Thee, more than night Egyptian reigns;
Duty sublime would stern distraction be,
Commanding what our impotence alarms,—
To love the Holy, which our hearts abhor
By nature! But Thy promised aid attends,
Arches our being like the roof of heaven
Where'er we wander, and to Will perverse
Such power imparteth, that the precept takes
Thy presence with it, in each task assign'd.

Thou teachest God; and man himself abides
By thought unfathom'd, till Thy light reveal
The two eternities of coming truth
Within him folded, like a double germ
Soon to expand, in heaven or hell complete.
And hence, our Nature grows an awful thing:
We thrill eternity in touching Man;
Since from the deeps of his immortal soul
Outlooks The everlasting, whence he came!

Unerring Judge! to Whose omniscient gaze
All the seal'd fountains of shut motive lie
Unseal'd and open, richly deign to bless
Both church and state, our monarchy and crown;
Teaching the highest, that of Thee bereft
Reason itself irrational becomes,
And virtues vices, with a better name
And brighter seeming: while by Thee becalm'd,
The rudest chaos of corrupted hearts
At once is soften'd, till in love and awe
Embodied harmony the Man appears,
Lives in Thy life, and thus by grace becomes
A radiant Likeness of the Lord he loves.

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And now, O Spirit! at the noon of night,
Under the shade of these expressive skies,
While all around the hush of heaven prevails,
Thee I invoke, a christian song to bless;
From Whom apart, 'tis vanity and voice,
Or mere vexation into language thrown:
But when Thy sanction hath the poet crown'd,
His harp-strings quiver with a breath divine
And all its tones with heaven-born music ring.
They in my soul of aspirations dwell
For truths beyond Philosophy to preach,
Or master; if one thought this perill'd mind
Inspire, where Thou, O God of grace, art seen,
Prevenient Spirit! 'tis from Thee derived.
And oh, if Life, with all its loneliness,
The glow of youth hath still in heart retain'd;
If the stern waste, the fever, and the fret
Of buried pangs beyond the world to know,
From boyhood in its bleakness, e'en till now,
Have not untuned me, but a tone have left
In concord with the beautiful and bright;
If nature thrill me, with as keen a joy
As in the poetry of pensive youth
It ever did; if such for bliss remain,
Blent with far deeper things, by suff'ring taught
And faith transmuted for the life within,
As onward through a bleak and heartless world
My pathway windeth to the waiting tomb,
Spirit of Glory! take my gratitude
And sanctify the closing strain I sing.
Bear with my soul; Thy blessing o'er it breathe
And all who love the Master whom I serve.
Emmanuel! peace within thy Church abide;
Till faith shall in sublime fruition end,
All symbols cease, all sacraments retire,
Our earthly sabbaths into heavenly rise
For men and angels, and the host redeem'd
In the one Temple of pure Godhead keep
The sabbath endless of almighty love.

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WOMAN: THE LIGHT OF HOME.

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CANTO I.

(In reference unto History).

“Without whom,—‘le commencement de la vie est sans secours, le milieu sans plaisir, et la fin sans consolation.’”—Miss Edgeworth.

“The empire of women is not theirs because men have willed it, but because it is the will of nature. Miserable must be the age in which this empire is lost, and in which the judgments of women are counted as nothing by man.”—Rousseau.

ANALYSIS OF CANTO I.

Commencing Apostrophe—Morning Scene at Elsinore —English Fleet passing the Sound—Cronburgh Castle—Queen Matilda a Captive there—Her dejection and dreams—Farewell Scene—Landscape changes—Moral analogy—Time—Ideal associations —Imaginary Sketches—City-portraiture—Human Life—Its trials ameliorated—Woman's Mission— Compared with Man's—Sexual characteristics— Degrading Theories—Moral Beauty—English Females are national glories—Prostituted Genius— Its unavailing Remorse—Design of the Poem— Grateful Retrospections.

Earth, air, and ocean, glorious three!
Inspired with living poesy,
More gladly than a bird regains
The freedom of unbounded plains,
And wanders on ecstatic wing
O'er meadow, lake, or laughing spring,
My spirit from the world retreats;
Again the bright Creation greets,
And learns how Nature's smile can bless
The hearts which love her loneliness.

How eloquent this silent hour!
Surrender'd to its lulling power,
The soul forgets that tears are shed,
That hopes are dim, and pleasures dead:
A hue of heaven on earth descends;
Th' immortal with the mortal blends;
And all we fancy, frame, or see,
Is found in faultless harmony.
Oh! ever thus, while bards can feel,
And celebrate with hymning zeal
The glories which for good combine,
The universe becomes divine:
Behind the veil of sense they dwell
Encinctured with a dazzling spell;
Where'er they tread, enchantment lives,
And Beauty all her magic gives
To hallow with poetic grace
Whatever dreaming eye would trace.
To them, the finished world is fraught
With fine appeals to glowing thought;
And meanings flow from all they view,
Of vast in form, or fair in hue;
And not a ray of sunshine gleams
But there the smile of Godhead seems
In token of paternal love
Reflected from His face above!

His torpid mind I envy not
Though crown and kingdom were his lot,
Who here, amid this morning balm
And conscious Nature's dream-like calm,
With tender sky and tranquil sea
Partook no inborn sympathy.
The canopy of heaven is hung
As blue as poet ever sung;
Though here and there serenely glide
Along the air's cerulean tide
Pale clouds, which seem too delicate
For breeze to touch their fairy state.
Beneath a window, far away
O Stranger, let thy fancy stray,
For seldom can thy dreams expand
Their wings o'er more delightful land:
The warble of yon distant waves,
As lightly oft the billow laves
The greenwood-bank and grassy shore
That bounds the sea of Elsinore;
The mountain's dim and dusky form,
Which, like a dying thunder-storm,
Glooms on the air with awful swell;
The chiming of the castle-bell,
From frowning turret faintly heard;
The fruited boughs by breezes stirred,
With every sound that summer brings
From bird, and bee, and happy things,

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How exquisitely all combine
To make exulting morn divine!

And look, adown yon dimpled sea
As bright as liquid sun could be,
The tiny skiffs of Norway sail
And glitter, cloud-like, in the gale;
While frequent oars with flashing stroke
Appear, as oft the tide is broke
By fleet-wing'd bark, which gaily flies
To where the sand-girt Sweden lies.
In green extent of wood and hill,
With bowery hamlets, bright and still.
To him who loves a haunted scene
Where grief or glory once hath been,
Grey Cronburgh lifts her storied pile
And darkens o'er the Danish Isle:
Whose vaulty depths and caves profound
Have echoed to the wizard sound
Of clanging shield, and shaken lance,
With each grim voice of old Romance.
And there on Fancy's spell-bound eyes
Behold! that royal spectre rise,
By Shakspeare summon'd, when the bell
Of midnight groan'd the hour's farewell.
But, ere thou leave the castled height,
Survey o'er all a patriot sight,
A scene that makes the life-blood start
And pictures England on his heart,
The banners Nelson thrill'd to see
Behold them wave!—how gallantly
They flout the wind with haughty threat,
And show the Deep her victor yet!
When bravely down yon beauteous tide
The monarchs of the ocean ride;
Or, tranced amid the drowsing air,
They whiten in the noontide glare
Those wings that wait the driving breeze
To waft them o'er a hundred seas!
Reflected on the wave is cast
The symmetry of sail and mast;
Or, booming o'er the startled deep,
Loud echoes of their cannon sweep,
Whose thunders in their dauntless tone
Can mock the Tempest on his throne!

Yet not on earth exists a scene
Where shades of sorrow have not been:
The softest verdure mead can spread
Is often paced by Misery's tread;
The magic of the clearest sky
Hath mock'd how many a clouded eye!
And, link'd with all that local grace
The wizard Fancy loves to trace
Wherever Nature weaves a spell
Round wood, or crag, or hoary dell,—
Live recollections sad as deep,
To bid Imagination weep.
And thus in this elysian hour
Oh! who can gaze on Cronburgh tower,
Nor dream of her, the young and gay,
Whose captive spirit pined away
The victim of a royal hate,
In the vile gloom of dungeon-state!
Dejected queen! I view thee now
With pleading eye, and pensive brow
As pale as moonlight and as mild;
Or, watching o'er thy cradled child
While visions of regretted youth
Around thee float in fairy truth,
Till the full past o'ercrowds thy brain,
And thou art in thy home again!
But when at night a thund'ring sound
Of wave on wave, in deep rebound
Rang echoed o'er the castle-wall,
How wildly did that night appal!
How many a terror shook thy form,
As Midnight roused the yelling storm,
And, like the rush of demons, past
The pinions of the northern blast,
And through a grated window broke
The flashes of each lightning-stroke!—
Yet oft arose a sunny mood,
When gladness e'en an exile wooed,
As, gazing from a rampart's height,
Her eye might gather free delight,
While slowly pealed the turret-bell,
And richly over Zealand fell
The flushes of retiring day,
Till earth one mass of glory lay!
Beneath her roam'd the Baltic wave,
Where oft an English banner gave
(While roll'd the gun's saluting roar,)
A dream of that remember'd shore
Her heart was doom'd to hail no more!
There, oft as gradual eve decayed
And glimmer'd o'er the beechen-shade,
How Denmark's bloom her smile would bless,
Laid forth in Eden loveliness,
Of bank and meadow, bush and stream
Like landscape in a painter's dream!
Or where the rocky Sweden lowers
She mark'd Landscrona's faded towers;
Or musing saw in verdant rest
The garden once by Hamlet prest,
When haunted by majestic grief
The princely mourner scorn'd relief,
And dared to nurse in dreaming pain
The might and madness of his brain.

With many a gleam of pensive joy
Her captive-gloom could not destroy,
O'er sad Matilda ling'ring past
The lonely years, by fate o'ercast
With shadows of imputed crime,
Which deadened hope, and darkened time,

293

Till when, at Britain's high behest,
The exile found a foreign rest:
Entranced upon the deck she stood
And, while her straining vision could,
(As o'er the billows' bounding play
Her wafted vessel flew away)—
On Cronburgh's battlemented pile
Array'd by evening's rosy smile,
Matilda fixed her yearning eyes
While heaved her breast with broken sighs,
And on her cheek sat meek despair,
That mourn'd a child deserted there!—
There, in that tower where time had been
A sad, but still maternal scene;
How thrilling was that farewell-hour
Sublim'd by Pity's godlike power!
The mariner subdued his tone,
To make a mother's grief his own;
And souls who mock'd the lightning-flash,
Or dared the billows' wildest dash,
Felt more than milder bosoms fear
And soften'd down to woman's tear!

But, hark! the wind hath changed its tone;
The sun hath veil'd his burning throne;
And o'er the dazzling blue of heaven
Prophetic shades of storm are driven;
And fiercely shoots the slanting rain
On garden-bower, and window-pane,
While leaflets fall from branch and tree,
Like hopes from human vanity;
And like the moan of billows heard
From yon dim ocean, tempest-stirr'd,
With sounds that tell a dreary track
The waves of Life come rolling back,
That awful Life! whose endless roar
Breaks loud upon th' Eternal shore!

As one, when torture long hath tried
And rack'd his eye-lids, sleep-denied,
While bound in slumber's silken chain
And calm in heart and cool in brain,
Awakens on his midnight bed
To ghastly sense or gloomy dread,
And feels again each pang begin
To wrench the writhing soul within;
So wakes a heart that dreams awhile
All earth in sabbath-peace to smile
Around him like this lovely isle,
Till darkness on his dream descends
And in the world his vision ends.

A moment is a mighty Thing
Beyond the soul's imagining;
For in it, though we trace it not,
How much there crowds of varied lot!
How much of life, life cannot see,
Darts onward to eternity!
While vacant hours of beauty roll
Their magic o'er some yielded soul,
Ah! little can the happy guess
The sum of human wretchedness;
Or dream amid the soft farewell
That Time of them is taking,
How frequent moans the funeral knell,
What noble hearts are breaking,
While myriads to their tombs descend
Without a mourner, creed, or friend!

Could Fancy reach some throne of air
What vision would await Her there!
In tumult, agony, and strife,
Rolls the loud sea of human Life!
Before a despot's gilded throne
Hear Kingdoms weep, and Nations groan;
Yet tyrants in their slumber start
To feel the dagger at their heart;
And they can hear the murder'd call,
Can trace the hand upon the wall,
And not a slave who lays him down
Would change a dungeon for their crown!

Lo! yonder gleams a hoof-torn plain
Where moon-light shrouds th' unburied slain,
And bare against the naked sky
A thousand helmless foreheads lie!
On one is seen a parting trace
By torture graven on the face,
As dying Valour swoon'd away,
And blood congeal'd to breathless clay;
While others on their cheeks express
A smile from woman's tenderness,—
A ray of that remember'd scene
Where the bright heaven of home had been!
But, hark! from ocean heaves a cry
Deeper than when the tempests die,
As down men kneel upon the deck,
And listen to the crashing wreck!
A minute—and the murd'rous Storm
Hath mangled that colossal form,
Which floated o'er terrific seas,
Defied the blast, and faced the breeze,
But now, a fragment!—and the wave
Lies howling o'er the seaman's grave.

From these avert thy fear-struck view;
A vision, not so dark in hue,
But awful, with its deep array
Of all we suffer, do, or say,
The throne of Fancy may command,
While picturing with creative hand
The domes and temples, street and bath,
Whate'er a haughty City hath
Of sin and freedom, to decoy
The hearts whose pulse is tuned to joy.
And what a world of secret care
Lies wall'd within that compass there!

294

Where, Thought and Deed for ever toil,
And life is one permitted spoil
As each from cradle to the grave
Is half a tyrant, half a slave;
And shuts his breast, and steels the heart,
While Vice and Virtue act their part
And rarely lets the spirit speak,
But plays the courtier with his cheek;
Whose ready smile, like moon-light, when
It flutters o'er some noisome den,
Can bid the soul's corruption shine
And make its meanness look divine!

Yes! there in yonder city now
O'er which young Morning bends her brow,
On tower and temple smiling bright,
How weeping angels watch'd the night!
A captive tore his chain-worn limb,
And deem'd that God deserted him;
A felon heard the life-blood stream,
And saw the gallows in his dream;
The maniac's eye renew'd its glare
While his lip writhed with mocking pray'r:
The miser mutter'd in his sleep
And counted o'er and o'er his heap,
Then seem'd with restless hand to hold
And taste the touches of his gold!
And while in rooms of Revelry
Pleasure beheld bright moments flee,
A pillow for some dying head
With aching hand and heart was spread;
And who but sleepless Heaven can say
When Earth confronts the Judgment-Day,
The darkness of a thousand deeds
Dread Midnight in her shadow breeds!
For ever in the world there lies
What meets alone immortal Eyes;
While all man dreads that man should see
He dares unveil to Deity,
As though where guilty feet have trod
No power should track them, but his God!
And, pale Ambition! Sad wert thou,
As wanly on thy wasted brow
The feeble watch-light flung its ray,
While ebb'd thy pulse with dying play:—
But when thy filmy eyes uprose
Their glance untomb'd thy buried woes,
And round the room a meaning cast
Which told of time and truth o'ercast,
While fever'd blood and martyr'd frame
Avenged the toils that won a name!

And is it thus dark Life appears
A fountain of unfailing tears,
While to each minute's flight is given
The gloom of hell, or glance of heaven?
Lo! Nature speaks to all who look
And read aright Her glorious book,
How much there dawns to mitigate
The bleakness of our barren state.
Oh! who can hail the breeze-wing'd morn
When beauty in the heavens is born,
Or wander forth in sun or storm,
Nor love Creation's living form!
And life, though oft a wilderness
By passion made and wild distress,
Where like a leaf by autumn blown
The wither'd heart must fade alone,
To spirits nerved by glad desire
And pure from each debasing fire,
How much it yields of great and good
To make existence gratitude!
The wielding of colossal pow'rs
By which all earth is render'd ours;
The Arts that link'd with lovely grace
Form paradise round scene and place;
The pleasures proud as undefined
From fellowship with man and mind—
If bliss like this a world display
How weak to frown that world away!
But, ah! there is a brighter Charm
No shade can dim, no cloud disarm;
A Star enthroned o'er change and time,
Though meek, unmoved; though soft, sublime;
A spell beyond the world to break,
Which when our eyes this orb forsake
Will cling around the parting soul,
And gird it with a fond control,
For man design'd by Heav'n above,
And wafted down in woman's love!

That power without whose added spell,
So vast yet so invisible,
The lustre of our spirit wanes,
And pleasures are but smiling pains
Is holy Love, by hearts enjoy'd,
Unchill'd, unchanged, and unalloy'd!
And will the Stoic deem me wrong,
A martyr of mistaken song?
Without it, what are crowns and kings,
But barren toys and blighted things?
Art, Wit, and Genius, all we glow
To think cold earth contains below,
By woman's voice or woman's name
Have gather'd fortune, might, and fame.
And ask him whom the world hath worn,
Whose brain is rack'd, whose bosom torn
Amid the dust, the heat and strife
Around each day concenter'd,
How exquisite that purer life
At eve, when he hath enter'd
The garden-path where Peace can wind,
And cast the demon Care behind!
The tottering pace of infant feet
That haste a homeward sire to greet;
Each budding thought and broken word
So faintly seen, and softly heard;

295

The tones of air, the tender hues
Affection pours on all it views;
And, sweeter far, the eyes which live
Upon the rays his own can give,
Now kindled into fond excess
Of light that speaks, and looks that bless!—
To him who feels such blended power
They hallow Eve's domestic hour,
The Star of life, where'er he roam,
Is she whose ray attracts him home.

But, godlike is the creature, man!
The Past is glittering where he ran
Triumphantly his onward track,
With prints of glory!—trace them back;
Behold him stamp o'er land and sea
The might of immortality!
To him whom waves nor winds restrain
The Elements resign their reign;
While cowering Earth and Ocean meet
To lay their sceptres at his feet;
Whose hand the rock or mountain fells,
Or strews the globe with miracles
Of form and motion—wondrous Things!
Beyond a bard's imaginings;
And in his mind there dwells a sense
Of Adam's lost pre-eminence,
Which yearns for that ideal more
Than lip can speak, or thought explore.

Yet not because with bolder light
The traits of Manhood court the sight,
And Action with incessant claim
Can summon forth each high-born aim,
The softer tints of woman's soul
Pervade the world with less control.
The Thunder is the king of sound,
But ever may the breeze abound,
And quiver on melodious wing
Where beauty walks, or health can spring:
The forest wears inspiring gloom,
But yet we seek the flow'ret's bloom;
Stern Ocean hath terrific grace
Imprinted on his hoary face,
But oh! how dear some tranquil dream
Which haunts the bank of village stream!
And thus, methinks, doth woman's heart
A gentler, not less glorious part
In Life's dim tragedy fulfil,—
The feeblest, but the fairest still:
And as in nature charms may be
Which all enjoy, though none can see,
The light and love of female power
Have graced how many a graceless hour,
And round the spirit twined a zone
Too delicate for eyes to own!
Let Valour, Strength, and Wisdom, claim
Their summit on the throne of fame;
Yet shrinking heart and mind subdued
Become the charm of Womanhood;
And thoughts that might creation wield,
By man's dominion taught to yield,
Lie mute and dead in lonely rest
And leave the soul but half exprest!
For man, not nature, is the power
That darkens from its natal hour
The mind which decks the softer Race,
And dooms them to a second place.

But even thus, no formal chain
Can frighten, fetter, or restrain
That spirit-burst from time to time,
When, blazing forth with beam sublime,
The mind of Woman proves a spell
To make this truth shine visible—
That Genius of no sex can be,
When radiant with divinity!
And though in life her lovely sway
Fall dew-like o'er the parchèd day,
She rules that noiseless under-tide
Of happy thoughts by home supplied.
But, see! when peril claims her part,
The hero of a woman's heart!
Though weak in hand, and frail in form,
Her spirit strengthens with the storm;
In vain the warning thunders roll,—
They rally, not subdue, her soul!

Yet earth-born Passion soils her worth
With every shade of vulgar earth,
Nor dreams her highest glory can
Ascend beyond—a slave for man!
But vile that soul, however fraught,
If pride of sex be only taught:
The mind has lost its master-grace,
And thoughts demean their lofty race
When female love and virtue claim
No laurel in the wreath of Fame;
While all that Genius should adore
Is laugh'd away to live no more!
Not thus the bright and perfect One,
Whose Blood redeem'd a world undone,
Of woman spake, when Man had flown
And Mary watch'd and wept alone!

Another and a darker race
Whose doctrine might the brute disgrace,
So vilely from the dust of earth
It sprang, to prove its sullied birth!—
Oh, name it not, but let it be
Entomb'd in voiceless infamy!
If he who dares a Shrine deface
Where time has left a holy trace,
Is branded for his impious zeal
By all who ancient glory feel,
What damning tones can language find
For him who would profane the mind,

296

And dare, with sacrilegious smile,
The temple of the soul defile!—
Affection, deep as hearts desire,
Yet fed by intellectual fire;
Those graces felt, but undefined,
In gleams and glances of the mind,
Developed in a myriad ways,
By mien or manner, look or gaze;
The tones in dewy cadence heard
From lips that harmonise each word,
All, all the bright attraction bred,
From each fond smile a soul hath shed,
Oh! these transcend what Passion's might
Can raise to charm her maniac sight.

And when Disease's poison'd breath
Hath tainted life with hues of death;
When time has dimm'd that starry gaze
Whose magic thrill'd our younger days,
There is a love whose light remains
To warm the heart though passion wanes:
For beauty born within the mind
Admits no mean decay;
The Earth may shrink, the Sun grow blind,
Ere that dissolve away!

Alas! how oft since time began
Hath woman been abased by man;
To wisdom's rank denied a claim
Beyond the worst or weakest aim;
Or, doom'd by others, living toys
For brutal dreams, or selfish joys!
But thou, my England! first to be
In heart refined, in spirit free,
For ever may the virgin smile
Of Woman consecrate thine isle!
To guard thee, should fond ocean fail,
Thy banners cease to awe the gale,
Thy throne become a crushing weight
Of tyranny on rank and state,
Thy genius and thy glory fled,
With each high pulse of freedom dead—
E'en then, with female worth to throw
Its heavenliness round want and wo,
Ruled by the heart's unsullied reign
A Kingdom might revive again.
But trample once upon that shrine
Where Love hath sainted as divine
That Beauty which our dreams adore,
Religion, virtue, truth, are o'er!
And sooner shall Gomorrah rise
From out her grave to greet the skies,
Than Empires where no morals bloom
Awaken from their living tomb!

Oh! what a curse for them who can
Etherialise the world of man,
Yet prostitute a poet's line,
To render Woman less divine.
A tyrant, when his wrath is o'er,
Can break the chain, and back restore
The dungeon'd captive into day;
And tears may suffer'd wrong allay;
And scarce a pang the good endure
But some atoning sigh may cure.
But what is written—that is writ!
No soul-wrung tear may cancel it;
Like demons on dark errand sent
From out their fiendish element,
Polluting Thoughts, by passion fired,
Career the world, untamed, untired;
From heart to heart their plague is spread,
From soul to soul corruption bred,
Till myriads by their baneful spell
Are tempted to the brink of hell!

I envy not the unconfess'd
Remorse that gnaws his lonely breast,
Who weeps o'er that perverted mind,
Whose genius should have graced mankind,
Yet bow'd to be the mental slave
Of crimes which curse beyond the grave!
For when at noon of life he sees
His children circled round his knees;
Or triumphs in each dimpling grace
That dawns within a daughter's face,
What pangs with that proud moment cope,
What terror blights each blooming hope!
Perchance within his dying brain
Shall ring some recollected strain,
And gloomily those visions throng,
Corruption loved to shape in song;
And while they darken round his head
Portray the crimes their poison bred,
Till Fancy hears the parting groan
Of souls that shudder'd like his own!

Then, not for that unloving race
Who scorn each intellectual grace;
Or them, whose coarseness would destroy
The vestal-bloom of human joy,—
Be mine the lay. Yet should there be
A heart which loves true heart to see;
A father, who has felt how dear
The woman whom his thoughts revere;
A mother, in whose watchful eye
Affections deep and endless lie;
A maiden, who hath known how sweet
The sister of her soul to greet;
Or lover, who in lofty youth
Hath pleaded with impassion'd truth
To shape of Beauty, by whose light
The universe became so bright,—
If such the poet's page beguile
His guerdon be their grateful smile.

Oh! might he wake the richest tones
The harp of his enchantment owns,

297

For melody to waft along
The spirit of prevailing song,
And summon from the caves of Thought
Whatever shaping Dreams had wrought,—
A bard might think his visions rife
With rays of feelings, caught from life.
For, in such life what bliss he owed
To all that woman's reign bestowed!
The smoothest voice, the softest word
Delighted moments ever heard;
The dearest smile by pity shed
To quench the darkness sorrow bred;
The shadow of an Angel seen,
Where Goodness unobserved had been;
And, more than all, devoted truth
Whose years retain'd undying youth,—
If such a crowd of memory's charms
A poet's lyre too feebly warms,
It is because no words express
The light of Woman's loveliness;
And more than Poetry can speak
Is mirror'd on her brow and cheek;
While feelings oft the most sublime
Refuse to be portray'd in rhyme,
Though brightly round the heart they throng
And seem the archetypes of song:—
If doom like this attend my aim,
The song, but not the subject, blame!

CANTO II.

(In relation unto Sentiment).

“Yours was the nobler birth,
For you from man were made; man but of earth,
The son of dust!”
—Randolph.

ANALYSIS OF CANTO II.

Man in Paradise—His sense of Loneliness—Creation of Woman—Social Instincts—Injustice of History to Female worth—Woman's gradual degradation— Greece and Rome—Their domestic wants—Civilising effects of feminine influence—Chivalry and its sway—Christianity the Social restorer of Woman —Heroism and benevolence of her nature—Blessings of her Empire—Her dominion in Home—Single Misery!—Poets and Poetry—How Woman has inspired both—Dante and Beatrice—Petrarch and Laura—Shakespeare and his Love—Tasso and Leonora—Milton and his affections—His History— Klopstock and Meta—Burns and Highland Mary— His mournful Fate—Byron—Harrow—Retrospective glance.

When first the wings of Light unfurl'd
Their radiance o'er a new-born World,
And choral music, faint and far,
Awoke in each melodious star,
Until the glowing Earth began
To thrill beneath the gaze of man,
Ah, who can paint the primal bliss
That charm'd an hour divine as this!

How beauteous in his dawn of birth
Without a shade of sullied earth,
Without one touch of deadly sin
To mar the perfect soul within,
The lord of Eden must have stood,
When God beheld, and call'd him, good!
Oh! to have heard his lips reveal
The first delight that dust could feel;
Have listen'd to each wild address
He paid to Nature's loveliness;
Or, flashing from his heaven-turn'd eye,
Have mark'd the spirit's majesty,
While round his heart religion stole
And mirror'd Him who made the whole!

A melody from leaf and flower,
Responding to the breeze's power
That warbled with exulting tone;
A blooming light on all things thrown,
On fruit, and foliage, grass, and lake;
The song that in sweet gushes brake
From birds which flew on fearless wing
And taught the very air to sing!—
The mute delight, majestic trance
Of things that shunn'd no mortal glance,
But gazed on man with love or glee
And felt that life was amity;
While stainless as a pall of light
The cope of heaven hung crystal bright,
And pour'd upon each perfect limb
A lustre which apparell'd him;
While ever, as he raised his eye,
A seraph, floating through the sky,
With gleams of glory track'd his way
Or arch'd his wings in beaming play,—
Though all like this composed a scene
To testify where God had been,
A soft disease of soul began
To prey upon the bliss of man:
A yearning which no language spoke
Within his clouded bosom woke;
A loneliness with awful weight
Lay brooding o'er his desert fate,
And darken'd with ideal shade
The countenance which heaven display'd;
Till sadly was each primal word
Upon the placid breezes heard?—
“Some other Form, oh! let there be,
To live, and love, and roam with me
This lone but gorgeous wilderness
Of sights that woo, and sounds that bless!
A Spirit whom my own can meet,
Some hand to hold, some eye to meet;
Creator! if thy wisdom can
Oh, let there be a mate for man!”

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More lovely than a vision brought
From out the fairy realms of Thought;
Serene and silent, with a grace
Divinely breath'd o'er form and face,
In full array of love and light
Which dazzled his adoring sight,
By soul and sense to be revered
The Angel of the world appear'd.
Then, what a starry welcome rang!
Each orb an hymeneal sang;
While Shapes unutterably bright
From heaven gazed down with new delight,
When first the ground a woman trod
Just moulded by the hand of God!
Around her breast, in wreathy play
Her locks like braided sunbeams lay;
And limbs unveil'd a radiance cast
Of purity, as on she pass'd
Amid the bloom and balm of flowers
Which clustered round elysian bowers;
The bird and breeze together blent
Their lulling notes of languishment;
The Sun grew brighter as he shed
His glory round her living head,—
As if no conscious thing were free
From one fine spell of sympathy,
When woman rose upon the scene
Creation's fair and faultless Queen!

When Adam's trancèd eyelids woke,
Thus brightly on his vision broke
A living Shape for whom he pined,
To share his unpartaken mind.
Awhile they gazed in hush'd delight,
Each dazzled with the other's sight;
Then saw within their mutual eyes
Magnetic rays of soul arise,
And heard their lips fond tones repeat,
And heard their hearts in concert beat,
And felt within electric fire
Their spirit, blood, and brain, inspire:
Then Woman was espoused by Man!
The bridal dawn of Love began.
Oh! then was born of breathing truth
A feeling in ambrosial youth,
That soars above the vile decay
Of things which time and sense array,
And when the dying World departs
Still blooms within celestial hearts!

And thus, with all that forms a friend
The finer tints of love to blend;
To soothe the tempest, share the calm,
And pour on grief unfailing balm,
Did woman on the world appear.
And hath she fail'd in life's career?—
The Warrior wins a bright renown,
The Poet wears a peerless crown,
And History with heroic grace
Hath laurell'd their triumphant race;
But where, in what recording book
Can unforgetting Nature look,
To count, since first her ages ran,
What Woman hath endured for Man?
Alas! like dews which night hath felt
Within ungrateful earth to melt,
And freshen into living flowers
The grove that smiles at morning hours,
The virtues born of woman's soul,
(Though time has drunk their mild control
And had by them the heart supplied
With what the ruder sex denied)
In cold oblivion seem to fade,
Unknown, unsung, and undisplay'd!

But, might those Spirits who have been
Calm Watchers of our troubled scene,
Beholding with dejected eye
The throes of human agony,—
To earth repeat the tale of Life
Since first convulsed with gloom and strife,
How much, methinks, would Virtue prize
That never dazzled mortal eyes,
As Angels read the awful story
Of Empires dim, and ages hoary,
And, while they scorn'd a hero's crown
To Woman give the heart's renown!
For pangs endured with secret sway,
For tears by night, and toils by day;
For tortures by the world untraced
When love was wreck'd, and truth defaced:
For fondness in the fiercest hour
Of tyrant wrath, or ruin's power,
For every sad and silent wrong
That weakness suffer'd from the strong,—
For these, and all young Feeling bore
When misery made it love the more!
A chaplet of celestial light
Would Angels weave for Woman's right.
Oh! she is all that soul can be
In deep, undying sympathy!
When life is scarce a moving dream
'Tis like her spirit's native beam,
Which never from its fountain strays
But lives alone within her rays!
And round an infant how divine
The wreath a mother's arm can twine?
And when dark years of manhood bring
Their load of fated suffering,
As true as echo to the sound
Her blessings to his wants abound!
In sickness, ah! how smooth the bed
Her duteous hand alone can spread;
And, when the shades of Death advance,
What paradise within her glance,
Where all the yearning soul appears
Dissolved in sympathetic tears!

299

Yet scarce had Eden pass'd away
And sin begun its blighting sway,
Ere woman lost her mental rank
And in domestic thraldom sank
A Thing to be, whose witching power
Might serve to gild a wanton hour,
To feed a passion, soothe a frown,
Or magnify her lord's renown,
But ever, with unvalued heart,
In life to play the menial part!
And e'en in Greece, that land sublime
Whose glory lit the wings of time,
E'en there, where Beauty's faultless mould
Surpass'd what Sculpture's dreams behold,
In vain would truth a model see,—
Her love breathes no divinity!
From earth it sprung, on earth to live
On every charm mere Sense can give;
But all proud Sentiment could teach
Divine in thought, or pure in speech,
By Greece unfelt, or unadmired,
Hath scarce one classic page inspired.
And Rome, whose wizard banner waved
O'er half the isles far Ocean laved,
By conquest was not taught to school
The passions Heaven alone can rule;
But offer'd up each female Right
On altars of their stern delight,
Where rage might spend its haughty breath
And doom a guiltless heart to death.

But Rome and Greece, eternal two!
Have shown the world what mind can do;
And still from them the streams of mind
With living freshness charm mankind:
Their language in immortal notes
Around our list'ning spirit floats;
Their genius, throned in classic state,
Is haunted by the wise and great;
And high-born is the zeal that pays
True homage to heroic days
When valour woke the lyre of thought,
And poets sang the fields they fought!
Yet when prevail'd in Greece or Rome
The magic of a modern home?
There, lives the light our spirit hails!
There, beats the heart that never fails;
There, smiles beyond a realm to bring
Round calmest hours are clustering!
Where queens of mild affection reign;
The bloom of joy, the balm of pain;
And thus are more, when grey or young,
Than Homer dream'd, or Maro sung.

When first on Rome a tameless horde
From forest-depths their myriads pour'd,
And down to dust her empire broke,
Refinement's moral dawn awoke.
The gloomy brow, the glaring eye,
The breast which never heaved a sigh,
But nurtured in its wild domain
The glory of surmounted pain,—
Amid them all there lived a sense
Of woman's meek pre-eminence;
While Chastity within the heart
Was shrined beyond pollution's art.
Thus, Nature! in thy darkest mood
How much remains of bright and good!
What Learning in her proudest day,
What Genius in her fiery sway,
With blended power might never reach,
These warriors of the wild could teach!
'Tis pleasant in the storm to see
The battle of some glorious tree,
Whose branches with resentful play
Can awe the beaten winds away;
But, beautiful! in calmer hours
To view it wave o'er meadow-flowers,
And hearken to its whisper mild
Like blessing murmur'd o'er a child:—
And thus, methinks, the contrast seen
When beauty reign'd where war had been;
When lion port and eagle eye
Had laid their horrid menace by,
And, resting in some oaken shade,
While round him laughing infants play'd,
The savage of the desert grew
Refined beneath a woman's view!

Next, Chivalry, heroic child,
With brow erect, and features wild,
Placed Love upon his matchless throne,
For Gallantry to guard alone.
Then, Woman! in that reign of heart
How peerless was thy magic part!
A word was more than human breath;
A smile dissolved the gloom of death;
And Beauty, while it awed the brave,
But made the mind a noble slave
To Honour, in the chastest light
That ruled the soul, or charm'd the sight.
And shall we, in a venal age
When love hath grown more coldly sage,
With frigid laugh and frown decry
The bright return of Chivalry?
The trumpet-music of the Past,
In tales of glory doom'd to last,
No longer must one echo stir
The pulse of English character?
Alas! our life is worldly lore;
The reign of heart-romance is o'er;
And all which fired heroic toil
Hath now become a meaner spoil
For time and circumstance to win,
While Self is throned secure within.—
Yet, valour in its fine excess;
A scorn that wither'd littleness;

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Devotion in its grandest shape
And love that sought no mean escape,—
Oh! darkly sunk, and vilely sway'd
The Clime that wills their might decay'd:
But ever prompts each servile art
To flourish in th' unweeded heart,
Till day by day we learn to see
False self is true philosophy!

But far beyond all forming powers
Which made expressive Beauty ours,
In that pure shape by God design'd
To soften, soothe, and sway mankind,—
Religion, voiced from Heaven, began
To rouse the fallen soul of man:
Then spirit, by the sense unbound,
Arose with grace immortal crown'd:
Emotions deep, unstain'd desires,
Serener hopes, and chaster fires,
Came flowing from a Fount above
All freshen'd with ethereal love!
'Twas then that Woman like a star,
Whose beam had flutter'd dim and far
And shed upon the troubled soul
A ray of undiscern'd control,—
Advanced above life's daily sphere,
Disclosed her radiance, full and near;
And kindled for beclouded man
The light a Christian woman can.
Restored to reign, as fair and good
As once in Eden's bower she stood,
Companion of the Soul to be
In love's avowed fidelity,
Religion, when its healing smile
First trembled o'er Britannia's isle,
By her assuasive meekness won
A way to visit hearts undone.
And, did her martyr'd spirit quake
To front the vengeance of the stake?—
E'en there Apostles might have known
A faith whose firmness match'd their own:
Though limb by limb the fire devour'd,
She neither shook, nor shriek'd, nor cower'd,
But gloried in the murd'rous flame
To sing a martyr'd Saviour's name!

And view th' applauded domes which rise
In holy grandeur to the skies,
How much to female hands they owe
Their power to lessen human woe!
But ah! how exquisite must be
Those charities that none can see,
In lovely darkness hid awhile
Surrounded with Jehovah's smile!
Till, stealing into holy light,
They glitter on the pilgrim's sight
When haply in some village-dale
His soul has drunk the secret tale,
How Saintliness a beauty shed
Around the dying mourner's bed:—
Thus oft upon some travell'd plain,
Where Winter holds his bleakest reign,
In sudden bloom young flow'rets rise,
And blush beneath our gazing eyes.
For, leaving oft the splendid home,
Unheeded will Compassion roam,
And where the roofs of Sorrow lie
Give tear for tear, and sigh for sigh;
To Famine deal the daily bread,
For Sickness hold the drooping head,
Be mother to some orphan boy,
Make widow'd hearts to sing for joy,
And should the parting Soul despair,
Points to bright heaven, and Jesu there!

And what were life, if woman's heart
Attemper'd with no guiding art
The household-morals of mankind,
Whereby the world is kept refined,
And each soft hue opinion wears
Its lovely origin declares?
Go, find a Land where female grace
Is honour'd by no gallant race,
And man's dominion deems it vile
To bend beneath a woman's smile,
But tramples with a brute delight
On mental rank and moral right,
How darkly do her people sink!
How meanly act, how basely think!
No loftiness that Clime reveals;
No purity her spirit feels;
Corruption cankers law and throne,
The language breathes a dungeon-tone;
And seldom there hath Virtue smiled;
But, wither'd, weaken'd, and defiled,
It moulders on from age to age
The scorn of hero, bard, and sage,
And seems on glorious Earth to be
A plague-spot, and an infamy!

But vain would Truth reflect in song
What nameless fascinations throng
Around that quiet hearth alone,
Where Tenderness hath rear'd its throne.
Oh! there are feelings rich but faint,
The hues of language cannot paint;
And pleasures, delicate as deep,
Which like the palaces of sleep
Melt into dimness, when the Light
Would look upon their fairy sight;
And there are chords of happiness
Whose spirit-tones our fancy bless,
And make the music of our joy
Complete, without one harsh alloy;
Yet ill can words one note reveal
Of melody which mind can feel!

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But who hath left some calm domain
Where Home was charm'd by woman's reign,
And trifles through some magic wore
An air they never breathed before,
And enter'd where a proud abode
To ruder man its splendour owed,
Nor felt the contrast sternly cold,
Like winter o'er his spirit roll'd?
Still, there may garden, grove, and bower,
Attend on each retiring hour;
There Painting with impassion'd glow
The poetry of colours show,
While volumes rank'd in rich array
The heroes of the mind display:
But like a face when death has chill'd
The light that once each feature fill'd,
Contrasted with its living power
Beheld in some excited hour,
Are homes where single man is seen
With those where woman's spell hath been.

Alas! for them whose toil-worn days
Uncheer'd by Love's adorning rays,
In crawling loneliness depart,
Yet fret the bloom from out the heart.
Though Life, as lord of each desire,
To intellectual thrones aspire;
May win the laurel, wear the crown,
And madden envy with renown,
How much beyond what dreams bestow
Their loveless hours can never know!
With nothing but cold Self to please,
The waters of the spirit freeze;
And years but harden while they chill
A Bosom left unsocial still:
And like a tree by autumn shorn
Of all that summer-boughs had borne,
A leafless, bare, and blighted Thing
Where scarce a breeze will deign to sing,—
Is Man bereft of that control
That emanates from female soul.
For heart with heart was born to beat,
And soul with soul was made to meet,
And sex for sex design'd to be
The dawn of endless sympathy.

But ye! the laurell'd Host who live
A life beyond mere earth to give;
The deities of dazzled Thought,
To whom her incense aye is brought;
Ye Alexanders of the mind
Who conquer, but to charm mankind!
Enchanters! for the spirit's eyes
Remoulding ruin'd paradise;
Interpreters! whose tones declare
The dialogues of Sea and Air;
The priests of Nature taught to praise
And worship her mysterious ways;
Ye intellectual Kings of time!
Triumphant, matchless, and sublime,
How fervently your pages own
In music of transcendant tone,
That Woman in her lovely might
Drew worship, wonder, and delight
From Souls whose inward glance could see
Visions that crowd eternity!

Impassioned Lords of deathless song
To them the lips of Time belong,
As fired with their majestic fame
From age to age they sound their name,
And bid the world enshrine that scene
Where once a worshipp'd Bard hath been;—
For hallow'd seems his natal spot
Where thrones are crush'd, and kings forgot!
And they have earn'd that gorgeous debt
Of praise, that Time is paying yet,
Who taught us, though it bear the curse,
To love the heaven-born universe,
And trace wherever goodness trod
The lustre of a living God!

And glorious is it, when the base
Would frown upon Heaven's fairest race,
To echo into life again
The music of some master-strain;
And prove amid the ranks of fame
How each who won undying name,
In love's applauding eye could see
The ruling star of Poetry.

Then let me from the poet-throng
Who hymned on Earth unearthly song,
Select some all-surpassing few,
And as they rise in proud review
Let him whose spirit ever bow'd
Before the passion it avow'd,
Whose bosom hath been thrill'd or shaken
With dream fulfill'd or hope forsaken,—
Exult to find his soul hath felt
A charm which could the sternest melt;
That lent to genius half its glow,
Or taught eternal song to flow;
For fancy plumed the wing of fire,
And warm'd the soul of every lyre,
Whose language was the light of thought
From Love by consecration wrought!

With paleness on his awful brow
Who riseth like a spectre now
From darkness, where his fancy dared
To wander with an eye unscared,
And gaze on Visions such as roll
Around that blighted Angel's soul,
Who baffles in his dread domain
An immortality of pain
'Tis Dante!—whose terrific flight
Through caverns of Cimmerian night

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Imagination vainly tries
To track with unappallèd eyes!
Severe, august, and sternly great,
The gloom of his remorseless fate
Around him hung a dismal air
Which broodeth o'er intense despair;
Till frenzy half began to raise
A wildness in his fearful gaze,
As, roaming over crag and wood
He battled with bleak solitude!
For sooner might the maniac roar
Of ocean cease to awe the shore
When Starlight comes with fairy gleam,
Than Pity lull his tortured dream!—
Oh! 'tis not in poetic art
To paint the earthquake of his heart,
The storm of feeling's ghastly strife
When she, who form'd his life of life,
Had vanish'd like a twilight-ray
Too delicate on earth to stay.
For Love had heated blood and brain,
A fire in each electric vein,
A passion whose exceeding power
Was heaven or hell to each wild hour!

But from the wreck of ruin'd days
What gorgeous visions did he raise!
Since ne'er was Beauty so divine
Embodied in a breathing shrine,
As thronèd Beatrice on high
In the dark haze of Deity!
Her forehead wreath'd with starry light,
And she herself,—oh! what a sight
On Dante glitter'd, when afar
He listen'd to her mystic car,
As wafted in a cloud of flowers
And guarded by angelic powers
In veil of fire her spirit came,
And warbled his remember'd name!
He bow'd beneath her awful look;
Then gazed until his being shook
Like water, when the winds convulse
And stir it with a quivering pulse.
But when the wing'd enchantress soar'd
To where the Godhead was adored,
Without a shadow, speck, or bound,
Eternity lay imaged round!
There on some mysterious throne
Again he saw her, bright and lone.
Ineffably one look she cast
Angelic features ne'er surpass'd,
On him who knelt entranced awhile
Within the glory of her smile;
Till lo! in deep excess of light
She faded from his yearning sight!

As one who leaves a savage dell
Where day hath bid the sun farewell,
Comes forth to view autumnal beams
On bank, and wood, and dimpled streams,
Is he who turns from Dante's gloom
To see Parnassian flow'rets bloom,
As dreams of beauty dawn and glow
Along the page of Petrarch's wo.
How touching are those mental tears,
Delighted throbs and dazzled fears,—
The penance by his genius paid
Whenever recreant fancy stray'd
Beyond the path of pure desire!
'Twas Laura tuned his pensive lyre:
Madonna-like, and sweetly mild,
And pure as an untempted child,
Amid her white-robed virgin-throng
He saw her beauty glide along,
When lilies deck'd her sun-bright hair
Amid the walls of lone St. Claire.
That hour became a second birth!
Her lustre overveil'd the earth;
And never did a Ghebir kneel
Before his orb with truer zeal
Than Petrarch at that living shrine
Where dwelt the soul he knew divine!
To him she was a spotless Thing
Too bright for earthly lyre to sing;
A miracle of life and love,
A dream embodied from above,
A seraph whose unclouded eyes
Reflected back their native skies!

From her his inspiration came;
Each song enshrined her hidden name;
And not a shadow, tint, or sound
Creation could produce around,
But he beguiled with beauteous art
To typify her taintless heart.
How fervently his homage glows!
Pure from the mind it springs and flows,
Exhausting as his numbers roll
The life-blood of a feeling soul.
For Laura seem'd his spirit's breath,
And ruled it when she sunk in death;
Then, day and darkness, scene and hour
Were haunted with her holy power;
And when her smile illumed it not
The faded world was soon forgot;
Since only to embalm her name
He panted for eternal fame!

Adorner of the human race!
Great Nature's rival, who could trace
Her features with such perfect skill
That Time can but remould them still,
So matchless is that mighty One
Whom Fancy now would gaze upon.
Go, lend the skies a lovelier blue,
Or sunbeams o'er the sunshine strew;

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Bid Horror to the tempest bring
A louder shriek and blacker wing:
Or dare suggest a deeper tone
To Thunder on his midnight-throne;
So powerless seems a poet's line
To sing what Shakspeare's works combine!
All tears and smiles to him belong;
All clouds that round the spirit throng;
All passions, principles, and powers
Which wring the heart, or rule its hours,
In language Nature's lip had taught
By him were into action wrought!
So truly with creative art
He paints the drama of the heart,
That long as tears haunt human eyes,
Or Pleasure laughs, or Sorrow sighs,
Whatever path his genius trod,
We hail him earth's poetic god.

And round him is a dimness thrown?
The colour of his life unknown?
While meaner names are chronicled,
And baseness in false light beheld,
That Masterpiece of mortal clay
Unhonour'd did he pass away?
Yes, like an orb whose affluent rays
Demand of earth no greeting praise,
He scatter'd intellectual light
Immortal in unconscious might;
Sublimely careless of renown
Then lay his awful spirit down,
Nor dreamt that Glory's arm would wave
Her brightest banner o'er his grave!

But yet there come faint shadows cast
From pining years which he had past,
That tell us how the soul could brook
Such pangs as once his bosom shook,
When dark-eyed Beauty rack'd and wrung
A heart round which the world had clung!
Her hair was like the sheen of night
When blackness seems to make it bright;
And melody her touch obey'd
When o'er the chords her fingers stray'd;
But sorrow dash'd her April years
With cold and melancholy tears;
And thus there grew a wild unrest
Within the gloom of Shakspere's breast,
Till he who sung what Romeo felt
Beneath like pangs was doom'd to melt,
And hide within his dreaming brain
The visions of a lover's pain.

And well may Woman proudly think
That he whose spirit thus could drink
Absorbing rays from beauty's eyes,
Hath sphered her sex amid the skies!
And none like him love's essence knew,
From hidden soul the lightning drew,
That subtile, secret, silent flame
For which the heart hath found no name.
There's not a throb that woman feels,
There's not a ray her mind reveals,
And scarce a blush on brow and cheek
When blood would rise and almost speak,—
But Shakspere hath the whole divined,
And held a mirror to the mind
That nature o'er his magic glass
Might view each play of feature pass.
And what a life-breath'd air there seems
To freshen those embodied dreams
Where character and grace arise,
To feast our unforgetting eyes
With all Affection can display,
When most we bow beneath her sway!
Bright, beautiful, and young, and warm,
With tears that melt and tongues that charm,
The creatures whom he call'd to birth
We pine to meet on mortal earth,
And trace by his revealing art
The windings of a woman's heart.

As moonlight weaves a varied spell
O'er rock and mountain, grove and dell,
So Love with his transforming beam
Hath colour'd each romantic dream,
As stern or mild the spirit lay
Beneath the spell-work of his ray.
A sense of beauty,—it was thine,
As deep, as burning, and divine
As ever fed with living fire
The passion of a poet's lyre,
Pale martyr! whom Alphonso's hate
Imprison'd for a madman's fate,
Because ere yet the lips could speak
Emotion had betray'd thy cheek,
To tell him how a bard could dare
To love a princess—and despair!
That love was like a blasting sun,
It sear'd the heart it shined upon!
But oh, how much of Tasso's strain
Was born of his devoted pain,
When feelings in their hopeless strife
Contended with those clouds of life
That 'tween him and his idol grew,
Till Death alone could break them through.

His youth was lonesome; and the light
Of half that won or woo'd the sight,
Enchantment from his spirit shed
Till earth was heaven beneath his tread!
And Nature like a mother smiled
On him her musing foster-child;
To whom her voice from wave or wind
Came with a magic more refined
Than echoes from the human soul:
And where a quiet stream did roll

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While shade and sunshine blent their power,
He charm'd his own creative hour;
Till voiceless aspirations rose,
His bosom lost its young repose,
And round his heart a Syren came
Who murmur'd his immortal name!
Thus fancy set the soul on fire,
Till life itself he found aspire
To beauty, like that spirit bright;
When, tender as the touch of light,
Fair Leonora's vision stood
Before him, fresh in womanhood!
And all the heart's creation drew
At length his living eyes could view.
What heavenliness arrayed her form!
How exquisite the blushing storm
Of love's betray'd emotion rose!
When Tasso read his lyric woes,
And saw her eye's transparent blue
Bedimm'd with soul dissolving through!
Morn after morn, in youth's ripe age,
He read his own melodious page,
While Leonora's lips of love
The garland of his glory wove
In words whose magic seem'd to be
The tones of immortality!

And could they side by side remain
Nor feel the heart's delicious pain?
The might of that magnetic gaze
That each to each would softly raise?
Could Tasso in such perill'd hour
Be dead to passion's dawning power?
Alas for him!—Alphonso came
And bade a dungeon hide his flame!
They tore him to a hideous cell,
(Ferrara hath revered it well)
And left him, for a maniac's doom,
To rot in suffocating gloom!
Yet misery could not then decay
The dream that wore his mind away:
Though frenzy might its faith destroy
Till life became a wretched toy,
Yet Passion round his wreck would smile,
Like Evening o'er a faded pile:
But when his Leonora died
And every bard a wreath supplied
To grace the glory of her bier,
Could Tasso's Muse deny a tear?
Yes! silence was the tomb of pain,
And grief was voiceless, when 'twas vain.
Let fancied wo prepare a sigh
To deck the fate of those who die;
And hypocrites their cheeks array
With gloom to serve a venal day,
The pangs which load a loftier breast
Lie deep, and dark, and unexprest;
Yet sternness in that blank despair
Hath buried more than anguish there!

Another of the wondous see!
Whose spirit talk'd with Deity,
And, blind on earth, beheld in heaven
The glory to archangels given,
When robed in light their garments blaze
And whiten in eternal Rays!
No cavern'd prophet while he felt
A trance almighty round him melt;
Or by some Babylonian stream
From darkness shaped his awful dream
Wherein there glided, vast and dim,
The cloud-apparell'd cherubim,
Hath scarce outsoar'd his epic flight
Who sang of Chaos, Death, and Night!
Had none, methinks, but Milton's song
Pour'd its grand tide the world along;
Had never page but his reveal'd
The miracles in mind conceal'd,
The hope immortal still would rest
Unblighted in our human breast;
For never could some narrow grave
Th' immeasurable soul enslave,
Which compass'd air, and heaven, and hell,
As lord of his creative spell!

With what a melody divine
The river of each noble line
Flows onward!—faint, or loud, or deep,
Accordant to the numbers' sweep.
Go, enter some majestic fane
And listen to the organ-strain,
When melting clouds of music float
Down the dim aisles with blending note;
Now with wild melodious thunder
The vaulted pavement echoes under,
Then, aloft in flights of sound
The winged harmonies abound,
Evanishing like birds that stray
And skyward sing their boundless way!—
E'en thus can Milton's numbers roll
Their cadence o'er a trancèd soul.

And can we deem that he who drew
In lines of love so brightly true
The Mother of our mortal race,
And made the lustre of her face
To dazzle back a Demon's guile,
When Eden laugh'd beneath her smile,
Reflected not through poet's art
The paradise of his pure heart?
The Lady-pilgrim of the wood
In star-like beauty, lone and good,
Was copied from a shape, perchance,
That kindled youth's adoring glance.

There is a tale—and let it live
Such life as fond romance can give,—
That once as slumb'ring Milton lay
In umbrage from the noon-warm day,

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Beneath the twilight of a tree,
That arch'd its waving canopy,
A maiden saw his sleeping face
And, spell-bound with its beauteous grace,
Her wonder in sweet song express'd
And placed it on the poet's breast;—
“If eyes when shut the heart can take,
How bright their vict'ry when awake!”
Oh! who can tell what beauty flow'd
From feelings by such words bestow'd?
The Eve of his enchanted thought
From hues of nature's heaven was wrought,
And she of paradise the queen
Embodied what his soul had seen.

And could that Bard, whose mind was free
And boundless as eternity;
Who seem'd on earth to have the skies
Aye floating o'er his mental eyes;
To the low dust of life descend
And with the base its glory blend?
How nobly hath awarding Time
For Genius shaped the crown sublime,
And silenced in oblivion's shade
The war Opinion's fury made!
Till all the wounds and stabs of strife
Which agonised his bleeding life
Appear but like a mould'ring stain
That lingers on some marble fane,
But ere it rots one tint away
Hath vanish'd in some heavenly ray!

Oh! many are the pangs that wear
A spirit into proud despair;
And many are the tears which flow,
To swell the tide of human wo:
But seldom doth the sicken'd heart
From dreams of false perfection start
With pangs of such convulsive power
As when the great have ceased to tower,
Desert the sky, and fold their wings
To strive with earth's degraded things,
Like eagles when their flight is o'er
That wrangle on some weedy shore!

But one amid the poet-throng
To whom the wreaths of heaven belong,
From pride and coarser impulse free
Stands out, in solemn purity!—
His heart, by woman's power array'd,
The summons of high love obey'd,
And beautiful, beyond the light
Of language to reveal aright,
The passion of a deathless pair,
Who breathed on earth celestial air!
Before the dawn of being came
They dreamt their lot was doom'd the same,
And human love in heaven would be
A wedded immortality!
And when his Meta dying lay
And felt her spirit faint away,
Like music from a falt'ring wave
When sinking to its ocean grave,
Beside her Klopstock meekly stood,
And watch'd the pale and speaking blood
In awful changes come and go!
But never was such loving wo,
When Meta, to his fond request
That round him her bright wings should rest
While o'er the world his fate must rove,—
Responded with a burst of love,
“Who would not share that lot divine,
To be thine angel! thou art mine!”

A gentle stream which glides along
And tones the breeze with lovely song;
And that same stream, when torn at length
And arm'd with desolating strength
As down some rocky steep it pours,
And like a rival ocean roars,
May typify the tranquil soul
When calm'd by virtue's wise control,
And one by passion's whirlwind force
Compell'd to each disastrous course.
'Tis thus, when sad-eyed memory turns
From Klopstock to impassion'd Burns,
Two streams of life at once appear
In mild repose and mad career.

The Shakspeare of the woods and fields,
How wizard-like the sway he wields!
The heart-blood owns his lyric might
And ripples with confess'd delight
When Scottish valour fires the song,
Like clarion-music, stern and strong!
Excitement, that immortal pain,
The demon of a poet's brain,
On him it wreak'd its wildest rage!
And all that poverty could wage
Against a high and haughty mind
His trampled heart was doom'd to find.
Yet, cradled in dark misery's bed,
How nobly was his genius led!
What Man denied, great Nature gave:
His soul, no educated slave,
The Elements and Seasons taught,
Creation magnified his thought;
And when amid the foliage dim
The blackbird piped his vesper-hymn,
Or round him, like a lustrous pall
He felt the Day's bright curtain fall,
As tides th' attractive moon obey,
So throbb'd his pulse to Nature's play.
And Woman by her smile could throw
A sunbeam o'er his blackest wo,—
A ray whose beauty reach'd the soul
And bade his burning numbers roll!

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Yet who can read the bitter fate
So darkly chill and desolate,
That brooded o'er the closing day
Of him who sang as proud a lay
As ever rose from Scottish lyre
On inspiration's breath of fire,
Nor weep to think that starless night
Should blacken round a soul of light!
Or, who can mark his mind's undress,
The agony of lone distress,
The curse of want that crush'd his brain
To frenzy, with a fiercer pain!—
Can hear the groan of anguish'd hours
When Misery rallied all her powers,
And thoughts like hidden scorpions tore
The mind that could no longer soar,
But prostrate in its ruin lay
A blasted wreck and bleeding prey,—
Nor ask for Pity's brightest tear
To tremble on his early bier!
Yet warmly while around him shone
The worship that his genius won,
Prophetic truth beheld afar
The cloud that would conceal his star,
And leave him, long ere life should close,
To wither in degrading woes!
Yes, he whose lines are mottoes now,
Whose genius veils his Country's brow
With glory, when his stirring lays
Are greeted with exalting praise,
Was fated like an outcast thing
To moulder in dark suffering
Down to the grave, with scarce a bed
To pillow his immortal head!

Alas! how little can the great
Feel the dread curse of blighted fate;
Or think that they, whose spirits throw
Around the world a heavenly glow,
Whose bright imaginations seem
The fragments of a Seraph's dream,
Whose words imparadise the hours
And freshen earth with Eden-flowers,—
The martyrs of the mind have been
Or suffer'd more than eye hath seen!
For, while the theme of Glory's tongue,
Their homes were wreck'd, their hearts were wrung;
And songs which flow'd so gaily free
Gush'd from a fount of misery!

A noble Mind in sad decay
When baffled hope hath died away,
And life becomes one long distress
In bleak and barren loneliness,
Methinks 'tis like a ship on shore,
That once defied th' Atlantic roar,
And gallantly through gale and storm
Hath ventured her majestic form;
But now in stranded ruin laid
By winds and dashing seas decay'd,
Forgetful of her ocean-reign,
Must crumble into earth again!

To crown the lyric throng appears
Another, whose poetic tears,
While a bruised spirit toils below
Shall consecrate Affection's wo;
And ever by their passion tell
The power of love's unfading spell,
Which beautified with lone despair
The visions that his lines declare.

The anguish of his riven heart
Hath ceased on earth to play its part,
And o'er his laurel-shaded brow
The damp of death lies coldly now!
The storm, the shadow, and the strife
That made and magnified his life,
Have sunk like winds along the deep
And left him to untroubled sleep:
But few, when Harold died, forget
The fulness of our fond regret,
As England echoed back the knell
Which toll'd from Greece his last farewell!
Oh! nought but some ignoble breast
Where feelings, iced in stony rest,
Can baffle with a stern disdain
The lightnings of each lofty strain,
That did not unto tears admire
The dirges of his gloomy lyre,
And speculate, if years had brought
A blessed store of brighter thought,
How much of all which mars his fame
Had vanish'd in some purer aim.—

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The earthquake that so rock'd his soul
With dread and undefined control,
Beneath some intellectual balm
Had soften'd to melodious calm:
Those feelings which were prompt to stray
Where all the weeds of vileness lay,
And linger with sarcastic stress
Round Nature's erring littleness,
As though in man no trait was true
But that which wore the meanest hue
And Goodness were a dream that dies
When dazzled by a poet's eyes,—
Yes, feelings dark as these, perchance
Had glorified by pure advance
The regions of exalted mind,
And loved the links of human-kind.
The spots upon Creation seen
For sorrow, not for scorn, had been,
And genius, from its darkness free,
Flash'd out in full divinity!

But, 'twas not so; and man must wait
The brightness of a better fate,
To tell him all which Grief would learn,
When back to dust the great return,
E'en in that hour when most they seem
To realise our noblest dream,
And purify the hopes of Earth
With promise of a second birth.

The sanctity of Virtue stands
Above the soil of human hands,
And Genius, though the world it awe,
Must bow to her corrective law:
Yet who, unless his mind can be
Transform'd to perfect Deity,
Can judge how terrible the sway
When Impulse leads the soul astray?
The meanest tongue can brand a sin,
But who can probe the heart within,—
The gloom of agonising strife
When Principle resigns its life,
Till Passion in her fiery reign
Pours madness over blood and brain!
A soul, that like Æolian lyre
Which faintest tones of air inspire,
Was thrill'd by sound, and hue, and scene,
As though its slumber ne'er had been;
A spirit, pining for the good
Till dreams became its daily food;
Or revelling in satiric gloom
Which mock'd at all above the tomb,—
Oh! these unite to arm a spell
That few below have wielded well!
And, blended with a slakeless thirst
To find the spot by crime uncursed,
In Byron lived a haunting dread
From moods of dark inquiry bred,
Of that Unknown beyond the grave
Where fancy's wings delight to wave:
Hence, doubt and scorn, with anguish rife,
Threw blackness on the stream of Life;
Till o'er each maze of erring man
The reckless eye of Satire ran,
Which finding nought but error free,
Call'd vice the sole reality!

But where the grave of Harold lies
May Virtue bend forgiving eyes!
The meek, whose time-worn spirits know
How much that Heart must brave below
When battling with the mystic gloom
Which haunts it from the spectral tomb,
No vengeance on his glory wreak
But softly of each error speak.
For who are they, if life had been,
Like Byron's, one uncurtain'd scene
Where every eye could point a gaze
And level all its envious rays,
Whose splendour would reveal no blot
Which now lies faded and forgot?
While some regard with bitter eyes
The tomb where buried Genius lies,
And bid the gates of Mercy close
On them whom Earth denied repose,—
The hearts that wisdom's humbling power
Has taught to fear the firmest hour,
In tender awe will bend and weep
Where Byron's noble ashes sleep,
Nor love o'er sorrow's wildering track
To trace the foot of Error back;
But thank him with a proud excess
For all the poet's mightiness!
Oh, there he lies! becalm'd in death,
Whose being was a tortured breath;
Whose years in whirlwind bore him on
To the dread gulf where time is gone!
And stirless as the travell'd lake
Whose waters down the mountain break
O'er wood and wild, and ridge and rock,
Convulsed and crash'd with many a shock,
The turbulence of trial now!—
The rest can God alone avow.

And was it nought to melt away
The frost that bound the spirit's play?
To summon into startling view
The deep, the daring, and the true,
Or light the chaos of the soul
And see its hidden waters roll!
Instead of polish'd rhyme, to raise
The stormy breath of wilder lays;
Or make us, in his milder hour,
Dissolve in dreams of beauty's power—
Such beauty as our thoughts create,
But never clad a mortal state!

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There are who call the Poet's bliss
Too airy for a world like this:
Alas, for Wisdom! if her voice
Can teach the heart no glorious choice;
If downward to the dust she try
For aye to fix our slavish eye,
And seldom bid one glance be given
Aloft to mind's unclouded heaven!
The freshness of poetic thought
From out the groves of Fancy brought,
And wafted o'er the soul's domain,
What is it, but a breezy strain
From winds of vanish'd Eden lent
To purify earth's element,
And summon forth those dream-born flowers
That grew in Milton's epic bowers!
'Mid all the waste of worldly arts
Oh! leave him yet some few fine hearts,
That still the Poet's wand may raise
A vision of unfallen days,
And rescue from the fangs of time
Some feelings that are yet sublime!

On Harrow, when the heaven of June
Was garmented with glowing noon
And not a cloud's minutest braid
Along its liquid sapphire stray'd,
I stood beneath that haunted tree,
And heard the leaf-toned melody
Which oft in Boyhood's dreaming years
Had warbled on the pensive ears
Of Byron,—when he loved to muse
Beneath the quiet churchyard-yews.
Oh! who in such an hour could stand
And look adown the sloping land
Where meadow, vale, and roving stream
So often charm'd his chequer'd dream;
And round him feel the fresh-wing'd air
That lifted oft his waving hair,
And press the same sepulchral stone
His pressure loved to make its own,
Nor feel a sense of fame and might
That shook the heart with strange delight?

'Twas here he mused in Fancy's bower;
And in the mind's prophetic hour
Would try with telescopic gaze
To read the brow of unborn Days,
Hail the bright orb of future fame
And glory in a minstrel's name!
Or dared with dreadless eye to see
A map of vision'd misery
In lines of awful length outspread,
Till darkness veil'd him with the dead!

And who with backward gaze can scan
The burning course his genius ran,
Nor feel how Woman's reigning star
With fervid eye he view'd afar,
And felt her beam of beauty cast
A light which heaven alone surpass'd!
His primal love—it never died,
But still within the soul supplied
The waters of affection pure
From fate and freezing time secure.
'Twas thence ideal sorrow drew
The pangs which pierce our nature through,
Till love became the breath of song,
And bore his inward life along.
But had his heart with hers entwined
Whose beauty struck his boyhood blind,
The starlight of whose cloudless eyes
Attracted his immortal sighs,
If happiness could reach the great
How bright had been his alter'd fate!
Instead of darkness, light would be
Around the soul's divinity!
Medora, Kaled, and Gulnare,
Each ruin'd maid and reckless fair,
Were vision'd from the shades of mind
Despair and passion leave behind.
But, once in home's attractive fane
Oh! had he worshipp'd woman's reign,
And seen her, not in mock romance,
Through daily paths of life advance
As angel of domestic hours,
How nobly might those lofty powers
He lavish'd on a Corsair's bride
Have been to purer love supplied!
While, feeling all which fancy drew,
His genius would have brighten'd too,
And Woman in his picture hail'd
A model that had never fail'd,
While love, by genius made divine,
Could sanctify a poet's line.

And such hath been fond Woman's sway
Since angels hymn'd her natal day,
By law of that instinctive love
Whose archetype is God above!
And while yon heaven is o'er us hung
For ever shall the brave and young,
The free, the fervid, fond and true,
Declare what female hearts can do!

And many a name as yet unknown,
Embalm'd in some immortal tone
Of genius, by a thrilling bard,
Shall Time exult to read and guard:
And Beauty, in domestic bowers
Now fameless as secluded flowers,
When buried queens forgotten lie
And royal tombs can raise no sigh,
In melody of deathless might
Shall live to be the World's delight,
While Love and Poetry can claim
To twine a wreath round Woman's name!

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CANTO III.

(In connection with Domestic Life.)

------“The mild majesty of private life.”
Akenside.

------“Show us how divine a thing
A Woman may be made.”
Wordsworth.

ANALYSIS OF CANTO III.

Introduction—Female Charms in all Climes—England paramount—Home-Scenery—Ideal Picture—Rural Landscape at Morning-Hour—Scenes, and Sights, and Sounds—Village-Cottages—Parsonage—The Hamlet-Queen—Her beauty and worth—An Angel of Social Mercy—Her little Sister—How trained and watched—The Brother—How remembered at Home —Village-reverence for the Pastor's Daughter— Dawning Emotions—Virgin Love—Its Depth and Delicacy—Transforming Power of the Affections— Courtship and its Charms—Progressive Love— Hopes and Anticipations—Tremors and Joys— Marriage Bells—Social Preparations—Bridal Room —Wedding-Scene—Departure—Moral Effects—A Domestic Future—Farewell!

Angel of life! whose love hath been
The master-charm of time and scene,
Romance in her Elysian mood
Creating forms of fair and good,
Hath not outsoar'd thy virtue's height,
Nor imaged forth more purely bright
Those lineaments of perfect grace
Which yet adorn thy breathing race;
For Fiction, when her mould was cast,
On truth might gaze, and feel surpass'd.

But where is woman most array'd
With all that mind would see display'd?
O England! round thy chainless isle
How lavishly all blessings smile,
And crowd within thy little spot
A universe of glorious lot!
But never till the wind-rock'd sea
Have borne us far from home and thee,
Thy purer charms we learn to prize
And feel the patriot's glow arise.—
Though Nature with sublimer stress
Hath stamp'd her seal of loveliness
On climes of more colossal mould,
How much that travell'd eyes behold
Would sated wonder throw away
To take one look where England lay!—
To wander down some hawthorn-lane
And drink the lark's delightful strain;
Or floating from a pastured dell
To hear the sheep's romantic bell,
While valeward as the hills retire
Peeps greyly forth the hamlet-spire,
And all around it breathes a sense
Of weal, and worth, and competence.
But, far beyond all other dowers,
Thy daughters seem Earth's human flowers.—
The charm of young Castilian eyes
When lovingly their lashes rise,
And blended into one rich glance
The lightnings of the soul advance,—
Wild hearts may into wonder melt
And make expression's magic felt.
Or, girded by the dreams of old,
In Sappho's Lesbian isle behold
A shadow of primeval grace
Yet floating o'er some classic face:
But where, in what imperial land
Hath Nature with more faultless hand
Embodied all which Beauty shows
Than round us daily lives and glows?
Here, mingled with the featured might
Of charms that coldest gaze invite,
Th' enamel of the mind appears
Undimm'd by wo, unsoil'd by years!
To wedded hearts devoid of strife
Here Home becomes the heaven of life;
And household-virtues spring to birth
Beside the love-frequented hearth,
While feelings soft as angels know
Around them freshly twine and grow.

A landscape of domestic love
Which God's paternal eyes approve,
Reflected from a homely dream,
Shall form my lay's concluding theme:
If there one heart its home can see,
'Twill render more than fame to me!

A vale of beauty!—lo, the Morn
In clouds of crimson radiance born,
Hath risen from the couch of night
And fills the air with fresh delight;
While hues, like harmonies that range
The world of sound with lovely change,
In varied lustre o'er the sky
Awaken, mingle, melt, and die;
Till full-orb'd on his flaming throne
The sun-King is beheld alone!
And blue as Baltic waves asleep
Before him lies a dazzling sweep
Of azure,—in its deep excess
Of morn-created loveliness.

How exquisite this breathing hour!
As though awhile some choral bower
Where Cherubim partake repose,
Its crystal gates did half unclose,
Till fragments of delicious sound
Came wafted on the winds around,
And bloom and balm to nature given
Made earth a momentary heaven!
Hark! to the choir of yonder wood

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Where life exults in solitude;
On each unrifled bough is heard
The lay of some melodious bird,
And young-wing'd breezes as they float
From brook and meadow learn a note;
And streams like tides of gladness, flow
And in the earth there dwells a glow
Of elemental youth and joy
Unchill'd by one corrupt alloy.
How dazzlingly with rosy dyes
The fairies of the field arise!
And flutter on their insect-wings,
As each a song of matin sings;
And where around the glitt'ring blade
A liquid web of dew is laid,
As early peasants' footsteps pass,
How greenly shines the shaken grass!
While many a lark from out the ground
Is startled, like a magic sound
Which ere the sense be half aware
Comes trembling through the lyric air!

And list, from out yon village-dell,
Upon the breeze in broken swell,
The goings-on of life begin
To charm the ear with social din.
The creak of hill-ascending wain,
The shout of some exulting swain,
The watch-dog baying far behind,
The mill-sounds hoarse upon the wind,
With voices from the child or crone,
Are all in gay confusion thrown;
And murmur on the morning-breeze;
With notes whose human echoes please.
From the thatch'd chimney now have broke
The tinted wreaths of cottage smoke,
Ascending delicately bright,
And braided by a golden light,
Like air-wing'd hopes that glide away
Commingling with the boundless day.
And see! amid the straw-roof'd throng
Of homes that to yon dale belong,
As dwelt the patriarch on the plain
Surrounded by his pastoral train,
A mansion smiles; whose neater state
Though unallied to proud or great,
A central grace around it throws
And o'er each cot a charm bestows.
Embower'd in laurels, green and calm,
To view it yields the eye a balm:
But when at eve its garden hath
A lustre on each lilied path;
When bough, and branch, and grape-hung vine
In rays of pensive beauty shine,
While gladsome bee and quiring bird
And leafy song are faintly heard,
There often hath the worldling cast
A longing eye, ere on he past,
And while it wander'd o'er the scene,
Mused, Oh! that such my own had been!

But is it like gay hearts that hide
With sunny brow a bitter tide
Of anguish in their gloom below,
Which they who suffer only know?
Have venom'd passions, fierce or wild,
The pureness of its peace defiled,
While outwardly its walls declare
Life's inner-world most tranquil there?
No: war and famine, blood and crime
Have stain'd the ghastly scroll of time;
And tears, the rain of torture, flow'd,
And conscience borne its burning load
While twenty years o'er earth have roll'd,
The aged die, and youth grown old;
Yet still, in unalloy'd content
Remains yon blissful tenement!
And, save the shadows which o'ersteal
The brightest fate the good can feel,
Around its heaven-protected scene
A summer of the soul hath been!
And like a fount whose waters fling
A freshness with faint murmuring,
Perceived alone by desert-flowers
That bud beneath its nursing powers,
From thence hath Charity's sweet store
Been scatter'd for the sick and poor.
So noiseless were the feet that trod
Those lovely paths which led to God,
That Angels only heard their tread,
And track'd them to some dying bed.

But where the ivied gate expands,
Within it what a vision stands!
More exquisite in brow and limb
Than those aërial cherubim,
Which painting in some starry dress
Reveals on clouds of loveliness!
Around her like a viewless zone
A fascinating might is thrown:
Her brow is pure as thought can be
And whiter than the foam-clad sea,
Expanded with an arch of grace
Like heaven's above a heavenly face;
And on that polish'd cheek, behold
Her ringlets, by the breeze unroll'd,
In gleaming motion dance and shake
Like ripples on a restless lake.
Her years are on the verge of heaven,—
That period when to life is given
The freshness of elastic youth
Yet touch'd with woman's deeper truth,
Again, behold that virgin face!
'Tis beauty in the mould of grace;
Incarnate soul lies sculptured there;
A feeling so divinely fair

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Is dwelling in those dark-fringed eyes,
That when they front congenial skies
Pure spirits well might deem that Earth
Had copied some celestial birth,
Or beauty in the world had grown
All spirit-like, to match their own!

Yet innocence with homely seal
Hath stamp'd the power her looks reveal;
And should her form the rustic meet
Amid some pent and crowded street,
So artlessly each lovely hue
Would dawn on his delighted view,
At once his mental eye would roam
To scenery round a village-home,
Till breeze and brook were heard again
Exulting o'er his native plain.

Companion of the morning hours
To tend her own infantine flowers,
Which grow beneath her guardian eyes,
And let their lids of bloom arise,
The garden-haunt she loves to pace:
And oft is seen, with bending grace,
And hand that scarcely wounds the air,
To nurse each bud unfolding there;
Till Fancy where her touch presides
Might dream the soul of flowers abides,
And wafts abroad their sweetest sigh
To greet her, as she glideth by.
Before her nought is forced to flee:
All undisturb'd, the rifling bee
When hived in bloom, may hum and sip
A banquet off the rose's lip:
The butterflies, bright gems of air!—
Can hover round her silken hair;
And not a bird that quells its song,
Or flutters when she moves along,
But sings as though a sunbeam came
Athwart the boughs with brighter aim.

'Twas here amid this haunt of dreams
Her childhood roved, and still it seems
Alive with voices heard of yore,
And breathes of them who breathe no more!
From out her casement's vine-clad height
She views it, when the veil of night
Lies dimly woven over all,
Or glitters like a dewy pall:
And here, when starry magic reigns
Amid the sky's nocturnal plains,
And moonlight with mysterious power
Hath mantled yonder grey church-tower;
The pensive maiden loves to stand
And let her night-born dreams expand.—
Nor is the scene bereft of charm:
The dusky roof of distant farm,
The meadows in their dim array,
The frowning coppice far away,
And cot that shows its twinkling pane
Adown the lone and green-bough'd lane,
While yonder where the cloven hill
Seems parted by a Tempest's will,
The billows wreathed with moonshine play
And warble forth an occan-lay,—
To hearts that feel the hush of night
Enchanting is their mingled sight!

A daughter, beautiful and good,
On the fair brink of womanhood,
When all the debt of love-watch'd years,
Of buried pangs and bosom'd fears,
By filial worth can be repaid,
Is more than words have yet portray'd.
What links, which time nor death can part,
Have bound her to a parent's heart!
Oh, deep beyond description lies,
Pure as the ray of seraph-eyes,
The love within parental souls!
Whatever tide of anguish rolls,
Whatever wreck the world can make,
Till God himself the good forsake
Affection is the life of life,
A power with more than feeling rife
Above all base dominion free,
A passion for eternity!

O, blest! unutterably blest,
The visions to their fancy prest,
When sire and mother blend a prayer
For thee, young spirit! fond as fair.
Thy being sways their mortal breath,
And shouldst thou die,—'twere more than death:
For in thy tomb their thoughts would dwell,
And darkness be their brightest spell.
To think on all thine artless ways
Since childhood reap'd its golden days;
From year to year delighted trace
The magic dawn of mind and face;
To watch thee in Life's daily round
With every trait of heaven abound;
And when some friend, whom time endears,
Hath warbled in their trancèd ears
Of noble acts in secret done,
And wreaths by silent virtue won,
Oh, then around their hearts to feel
A glow of admiration steal!—
Or haply, with prophetic truth
To picture for thy wedded youth
A Soul that shall be worthy thine,
With feelings from as pure a mine;
And when the church-yard yews shall wave
And darken o'er their cherish'd grave,
To feel, whatever time decree,
One Heaven their final home will be,
A bliss so pure no words unfold,
A joy so deep no eyes behold;

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That language must be taught Above
Whose power reveals a parent's love!

And thou art worthy, on whose brow
The stainless mind lies mirror'd now,
Around their guardian hearts to twine
Those feelings that are so divine!
No wish, or want, or hope, or joy,
No dreams of time thy youth employ,
But blended with their meaning lies
Approval shed from parent eyes.
And as a ray from out the sun
Reveals its birth where'er it run,
Thy virgin thoughts, howe'er they stroll,
Retain the brightness of the soul.
And often in thy sleep is heard
The fragment of some duteous word,
When lips of imaged parents seem
To bless thee in thy girlish dream.
How winning are those myriad ways
By which a child fond homage pays,
Those ministries of heart and hand
Which none but parents understand!
When Morning reigns in dewy power,
To hie and cull the choicest flower;
Or pluck the fruit whose bloom appears
Bedeck'd with Night's refreshing tears;
Or else with magic pencil take
The likeness of some hill or lake,
Some haunted spot, whose beauty hung
Rich praises on her feeling tongue,
And these to place in proud surprise
Before a mother's greeting eyes!—
Affection, let thy voice declare
How tender-sweet such trifles are!
For what is kindness, but the heart
In action, without guile or art,
Imparting by some nameless power
A bloom to each attractive hour?

But when bleak winter bares the earth
And Comfort hails the wonted hearth,
Then, child of beauty! thou art found
The central star of bliss around.
Some book divine, or antique tale,
Or shipwreck, where the savage gale
Swells howling o'er the black-waved sea,
Perchance, the chosen page may be:
Or Bard eterne with visions bright
Shall charm the soul of taste to-night;
Or haply, Music's heaven-born spell
Whose spirit thou canst wake so well,
Shall melt fond memory into tears
Or votive sighs, for vanish'd years:
And then, adown the tides of song
While thou enrapt art borne along,
The throbbing chamber seems to glow
With Melody's rich overflow!
And full before his bick'ring fire,
Delighted sits a dreaming sire;
Nor blame the mother, if her gaze
Be fill'd with more than fondest praise,
And Nature whisper through the heart,
“My child, how exquisite thou art!”

But, 'tis not in the noon of joy
When Life endures no stern alloy,
A daughter from her mind can pour
The fulness of affection's store:
For let but once a pang prevail,
A limb be rack'd, or cheek grow pale;
Let the wild torture of disease
Deny to heart and hand their ease;
Let sorrow once her frown impress
On Earth's uncertain happiness,—
Then, scorner of the sex! advance,
And learn the power of Pity's glance,
The tender might of woman's gaze
Unweaken'd by tormented days.
Through hours of blackness, when the mind
Seems prostrate, wreck'd, and unresign'd,
What pathos in her pleading eye!
How gentle her devoted sigh!
One look speaks more than man could say,
And each word wafts a pang away.

And there are ties whose thrilling truth
Pervade her uncorrupted youth
With energies that breathe and move
In daily acts of duteous love.
Behold yon sister!—fairy thing
Whose forehead, like the brow of spring,
Is ever-bright and ever-young,
And with the glow of gladness hung;
So light in form, a breeze of life
Secure from earth's contagious strife,
Round her own orb of home and glee
On wing'd delight she seems to flee!
Each pulse within her fine-wrought frame
Is tuned to joy's unsleeping claim;
Whether a cloud-isle richly drest
Her wonder-beaming eye arrest,
Or magic from some household-word
Young laughter into life hath stirr'd.
And dear as Nature's dearest tie
She grows beneath a sister-eye,
Who watches with a star-like gaze
Around her pure but perill'd days.
And rather than the air might press
Too bleakly on her loveliness,
Or pain one fleeting pang awake,
Would let the blood her heart forsake,
And drop by drop dissolve away
To win her life one pangless day!

And what, though years now intervene
To veil her own from childhood's scene,

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To robe an infant's face with smiles
And summon forth its mimic wiles,
As playmate she can stoop to be
Transform'd to frolic infancy!
Will echo back the bird-like sound
Of tiny laughs in merry round,
Nor coldly shun the meanest toy
That wings a moment's flight with joy.
And well those cherub-features play
In answer to her sister's sway,
Delighted, calm, or grief-array'd,
According as her words display'd
The tones which govern smiles and tears!
And often when some cloud appears,
By pain, or temper's gloom begot,
To shadow her infantine lot,
That sister can alone restore
The sunshine as it play'd before!
And duly as the car of Night
Returns, she bends with soft delight
Enamour'd o'er the precious sleep
Of lids too beautiful to weep!
No, never is the pillow prest
Before a parting gaze hath blest
That winning face!—so brightly warm,
So tinted with the rosy charm
Of slumber, that its beauty seems
The bloom of amaranthine dreams.

But ah! there is a dearer task
Whose toils a patient wisdom ask;
And who beyond a sister knows
Where best the germ of knowledge grows,
When Infancy begins to look
Abroad o'er Earth's unwritten book,
To read the world with curious eye,
And question truths beyond the Sky!
Fondly to aid the budding mind
When thought springs faint and undefined;
To teach her lips a word to frame
And prattle with some homely name;
Then day by day, as reason wakes
And mental twilight dimly breaks,
A delicate enchantment throw
Round each young truth the heart would know,
Thus nursing with a sweet control
The childhood of a cherish'd soul,—
O none but she can paint the joy
Of such divine and dear employ!
In wing'd delight thus years will speed,
And still in language, look, and deed,
Will sisterly affection be
A power of guardian purity,
And gently thus its magic wind
Around an infant's growing mind.

A brother!—oh, that thrilling name,
It vibrates through thy very frame
Thou queen of Boyhood's cloudless day!
In studious bower though far away,
Thy heart is haunted with a sense
Of all a brother's charms dispense.
His picture on thy bedroom-wall,
How frequently its lines recal
Th' imperial face, the manly brow,
The eyes which dared the soul avow
And smile that knew no mean eclipse
But ever round those graceful lips
In brightest welcome play'd for thee
In moods of unaffected glee!—
What tales of prowess, feats of mind
Around thy memory intertwined,
'Tis pure delight to oft unroll
In tones that touch parental soul!
Beside thee like a felt unseen
The shadow of his shape hath been,
Whene'er along some favour'd walk
Thy spirit dreams him smile and talk;
His voice is woven in the breeze
That carols round the garden-trees;
And fancy, when the moon gleams bright,
Can often on its mirror write
Emotions 'twas divine to share,
When both had fix'd their glances there!
Through weal and wo, through cloud and change,
Whatever clime or shore he range,
Till nature can itself deny
Undimm'd will shine affection's eye,
And stainless those deep waters prove
That well from out a sister's love!

And think'st thou, though thy smile afar
Hath vanish'd like a fairy star,
Companion of her girlish lot!
That thou art in thy home forgot,
Where memories like pulses play
Within the heart of each new day?
So long our early feelings last,
Affection owns no faded past!
For aye the glow of what was dear
Surrounds it like an atmosphere;
Eternal is the youth of thought,
Whatever outward change hath wrought,
And distance, though like death it seems,
Is conquer'd by creative dreams
Of fondness, acting o'er again
The brother in his spirit-reign!
For, all he fancied, felt, or did,
Her memory in fond silence hid,
And nought is trivial, wreck'd, or gone,
He cherish'd, loved, or gazed upon!
Like gems of earth his flowers abide,
With dew and tender rain supplied;
The birds are fed with fostering care,
His dog beneath the wonted chair

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In unalarm'd repose may lie
And fawn to win her playful eye;
The glossy steed, whose bounding limb
O'er hill and mead had toil'd for him,
Beside it she will often stand
With greeting voice and gentle hand;
The page he read grows doubly sweet,
For there communing thoughts can meet:
Each melody whose magic sway
Could best dissolve his soul away,—
Delightful 'tis again to pour
Around the room its richest store
Of melting sounds, which ere they die
Seem blended with a brother's sigh!—
But holier far is memory made,
And deeper is its might display'd
Whene'er the poor he loved to feed,
The hearts he caused no more to bleed,
She welcomes in some rustic cot,
And finds his goodness unforgot!
And ye, whose locks with hoary truth
Betray the flight of faded youth;
Whose hands have rock'd the cradled boy,
Or ere he lisp'd his little joy,
Full proudly may your tongues prevail!
For dear is each domestic tale
The homely past untreasures now
To brighten on a sister's brow!
But when arrives his well-known seal,
What ecstacy young eyes reveal!
Warm on the page her lips impress
A kiss of perfect happiness;
And well in that entrancing hour
When feelings claim prophetic power,
Since all unworn his heart appears,
A sister may outwing the years,
And vision round a brother's head
The rays of future glory spread!

And wouldst thou trace her secret tide
Of goodness to the poor supplied,
Winding unknown its village-course
From charity's divinest source?
Angelic woman! if to be
On earth a child of Deity,
Surpasseth all we deem renown,
How peerless thine immortal crown!
For shipwreck'd hearts, sole haven thou;
With pity on thy pensive brow,
And mercy in thy healing hand,
And voice beyond all music bland,
From cot to cell, oh! thou hast been
Life's angel in its blackest scene,
And often with the dying good
On the bright verge of Heaven hast stood!

And such thou art; and many a dame
Delights to hear thy darling name;
And many a tatter'd widow glows
To bless the hand that heal'd her woes:
While orphan babes in lane and street
With bright'ning face thy welcome meet:
And many a tale of mercy lives
The life which grateful Memory gives,
When Feeling round a cottage-fire
Can pay the debt thy deeds inspire!
And they are such as cannot die
Though honour'd by no human eye;
Unchronicled in rolls of worth,
Ungreeted by applauding earth,
Silent and secret though they be,
Their tablet is eternity!
Where graven by the Hand Divine
The glories of the good will shine.

And thus in virgin solitude,
Unbroken by the waters rude
Of that rough world, whose waves afar
Billow with life's tempestuous war,
Queen of the hamlet! years have flown,
And still thou art unwoo'd and lone:
Yet time with magic unconfess'd
Has moulded feelings in thy breast,
Which now like buried music float
With soft and secret under-note;
So delicate, they scarce appear
To haunt thy spirit's maiden sphere,
But waken'd once,—and they shall be
A soul within a soul to thee!
Emotions, of themselves afraid,
A temple in thy heart have made,
Wherein they flutter, like a bird
That trembles when a voice is heard!
And fancy loves a Being now
Whom shaping words cannot avow;
A Form of fine imaginings
To which attracted nature clings.
At length he comes! that nameless one
The eye of Dreams had gazed upon;
The magic and the mystery
Of life have now begun for thee,
And thou the type of heaven wilt prove
In primal, deep, and deathless love!

Emotion that is most sublime
Of all which hallows earth and time;
That Principle from whence we draw
The light of each celestial law;
Pervading Sense, victorious Power
Whom death nor darkness can devour;
An omnipresent might and spell
Wherein all mind and matter dwell,
Is Love!—by that bright word alone
We vision forth The vast Unknown,
The Ruler of the seraphim,
Whose glory makes the glorious dim!

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And not an element that glows
But breathes the life which love bestows.
So magical its wide command,
The sternest rock, the bleakest strand
Around an exiled wretch hath thrown
A charm that paradise might own!
And who, when form and face depart
Which seldom touch'd his deeper heart,
Or e'en in hours of marring strife
Disturb'd the pure serene of life,
That feels not, while he says, “Farewell!”
A love-born sense within him dwell?
A touch of heart, whose tenderness
Provokes him with a thrilling stress?
And hence the captive, when the light
Of freedom daunts his reeling sight,
With something of a mute regret
His gaze on dungeon-walls hath set,
Though Misery's hand had graven there
The words and weakness of despair!
There is but One who cannot love,
The Anarch of the thrones above;
Apostate, in whose sleepless eyes
A hell of burning hatred lies;
Whose torture is th' undying sense
Of unadored Omnipotence;
A wither'd, dark, defeated Mind,
That curses Heaven, and scorns mankind!

And will the loveless, stern, or grave,
Think human fancies wildly rave,
When young affection's meteors play
In dazzling falsehood round their way?
Oh! take him to some towering mind
Whose Orphic words entrance mankind,
And, when the mask is laid aside,
And backward rolls the blood-warm tide
Of feelings, rich with early truth,
And vital with the flush of youth,
How wither'd, wan, and leafless, grows
The laurel which Renown bestows,
To that bright wreath affection wove
Round the fair brow of youthful love!
That love, whose faintest impulse wrings
The bosom's agonised strings,
And even in its mildest reign
O'erpowers him with a yearning pain,
A feeling that is unforgot,
Which seems the core of life to rot
And deaden it with slow decay,
As water frets the rock away!—
Thus passion forms the bane or bliss
Of being, in a world like this;
The day or night of inward joy,
Which years may dim, but not destroy;
Love reigns but once, yet that will be
Affection's true eternity!
All future love mere echo seems
Of vanish'd hope's melodious dreams;
A dying tone of lost delight,
A fragment of those feelings bright
That once when youth and heart were whole
Excited, charm'd—and crush'd the soul!

But, maiden! in thy vernal bloom,
On thee attends a calmer doom;
No clouds along thy placid heaven
With heraldry of gloom are driven;
No! all is open, bright, and blest:
And hopes may wander unreprest,
Like birds of beauty when they fly
And wanton in their genial sky.
And not for thee are voiceless fears,
The rack of unrelieving tears,
The agonies which coil and wind
In secret round a wasted mind
Like vipers with envenom'd tooth,
To canker all the spirit's youth;
Nor Circumstance, with eye averse,
For thee hath framed a fearful curse!
That long as life's dull waters roll,
With broken heart and blighted soul
Thy feelings, on the rack of fate,
Shall live to mourn thy wedded state!
Serene as thy soft brow appears
The countenance of coming Years;
Consenting parents' blended voice
Hath sanction'd Love's ingenuous choice;
And nought descends from dreams above
More exquisite than woman's love,
When passion in its virgin morn
Within a soul like thine is born!
Thy love by self is undefiled
And foster'd like a spirit-child,
Revered and watch'd with heart and eyes;
To whom each thought would sacrifice,
Each hour devote its deepest care,
Each feeling give its fondest share;
And earth, and time, and joy, and youth
From hence derive their only truth.
Let one deceive, and dead would lie
The living world before thine eye!
And thus, when withered years depart,
They leave no wreck like woman's heart!
The ruin of her mind remains
Haunted by dim and dreary pains;
And pining thoughts each chamber throng
Where once arose the breath of song,
Till Sadness, link'd with cold Despair,
Unites to fix its dwelling there.

With man's compare her feelings fine,
How delicate, how half divine!
Torn by the slightest breeze of life
And shatter'd by each varied strife,
When wrong, or wo, or accident
Perturbs the spirit's element,

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In fragile bloom they seem to be
Like leaves on some majestic tree,
That often when the boughs are still
Regardless of the breeze's will,
Are shaken by a touch or tone,
And perish, ere the blast hath blown!

But thou art loved, and unbetray'd;
And who can paint, enamour'd maid!
The paradise where dream and rove
Those moments dedicate to love?
For One there is, whose eye repays
The fervour of thy fondest gaze,
Whose language with its melting tone
Of tenderness can match thy own;
Whose visions of the beautiful
When most his yielded heart they rule,
Are woven out of thoughts of thee
Like rainbows from a lovely sea!

Has the world changed, more heavenly grown,
And every taint of darkness flown?
That brightness is the sudden birth
Of feelings which ennoble earth,
Of passion in its stainless prime
Just risen on the brink of time!
By these transform'd, creation glows
With each warm tint the mind bestows;
A deeper verdure decks the grass;
The clouds with richer glory pass,
The winds a sweeter welcome chant,
And wheresoe'er her footsteps plant
Their printless beauty, smile and sound
Of new enchantment hover round!
To her 'tis mystery;—but the mind
Grown exquisite and o'er-refined,
Can veil the universe with light
Till all is heaven that meets the sight,
And outward nature wears the dress
Of mind's internal loveliness.

Commingled souls! 'twere vain to tell,
Around them as rich evening fell
And clouds of calmest beauty lay
Like dreams of air along the way
Where wan and far th' horizon wound,
While nought but ocean breathed a sound,
How often on the placid shore
They rambled, till the light was o'er,
What rapture on each radiant cheek,
While softer than the billows speak
Responsive to the pleading wind,
The murmurs of each happy mind!
The waves beneath, the skies above,
All sights and sounds were born of love!
So all unstain'd by earth's alloy
Their very blood grew liquid joy;
So full their hearts, they fain would reel,
And make delight too deep to feel!
Th' aroma of all mortal bliss
Enrich'd an hour so charm'd as this;
Till soul-enrapt, they seem'd to be
Attracted nearer Deity;
While each to each immortal grew,
And saw the spirit beaming through
A glowing face, where Love had given
The features that were form'd for Heaven!

All hours are sweet, when love is there
A loveliness to make and share;
All scenes delight, when eyes adored
The magic of their gaze afford;
No rock is bleak, no desert rude,
When Beauty walks the solitude:
But moonlight charms the outward eye
Like music heard by memory;
And temptingly the moonbeams play
Around young lovers' lonely way,
As though fond Nature glow'd to meet
The pressure of their timing feet.
Belated, like a starry train
When loth to quit the azure plain,
Yon vision'd pair, behold them now
While Dian bares her crested brow,
And clouds of alabaster white
Float on the soundless breath of night.
How beautiful Creation's sleep!
So innocent, so calm, and deep:
The air is rock'd to voiceless rest;
The bird within his woven nest;
The dew upon unshaken leaves
A web of filmy lustre weaves;
And onward as the lovers steal,
You'd deem the fairy ground could feel
Their shadows o'er its silence fall,
So rapt a stillness veileth all!

But they have reach'd a woodland-shore,
Where billows, now the breeze is o'er,
Are blended into one broad mass
Of heaving glory,—like a glass
Reflecting forth with twinkling change
The heaven-lights, in their lofty range.
Magnificent, and mute, and bright,
To feel it, is to worship night!
And there they stand, absorb'd and blest,
In adoration unexprest;
Yet drinking in with eye and soul
Earth's beautiful and boundless whole.
And when that tranced delight is o'er,
They glide along yon glittering shore;
Where tones of whisper'd feeling take
The heart from each! as lips awake
In words which Love design'd to be
The heart's revealing masonry.

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A past, in its undying truth
Still vocal with the vows of youth:
A future, with each promise rife
Of tranquil home and wedded life,
Of these they talk, and plan, and scheme,
Indulging hope's oracular dream:
So soft the hour, the future rolls
Obedient to prophetic souls
By banks of bliss, and meads of flowers,
As though from wishes came the hours!
But night hath deepen'd: now they roam
Enchanted to expecting home;
And see! where downward hills retire,
In dim repose the village-spire!
Around it smiles a yellow moon
Gilding the leafy flush of June.
But home is reach'd, the room is gain'd,
With many a blush the walk explain'd,
Whose length 'twas not for time to meet,
For what can weary lovers' feet!
And smiles on each parental face
Have risen with forgiving grace;
And on the mother's brow is read
A tale which truth might thus have said,
“How often when my age was thine,
Were walks as long and lonely mine!”

And say, can aught but death unbind
Affections round her soul entwined?
Though distance may bereave the eye
And o'er him hang a stranger sky,
The sun that brings her spirit's day
Is born of his illuming sway.
The ground he trod a glory wears;
The twilight-walk his step declares;
No melody so sweetly heard
As fancy's love-repeated word;
His picture on her heart portray'd,
(Soft mem'ry asks no other aid)
Bright o'er her face she oft can feel
His vision'd gaze of fondness steal!
The breathings of his soul begin
To thrill her echoing soul within;
And then, ere mind is half aware,
Her lips address the tongueless air
In words of unregarded tone,
As sunlight on a rock is thrown
Where flower nor herbage, fruit nor stream,
Exult to drink the offer'd beam.
Against him raise a slanderous breath,—
And blooming looks the cheek of Death,
Compared with that appall'd distress
That blights her features' loveliness!
Applaud him, and the heart will rise
Dissolved within her dewy eyes!
Lustrous, and fill'd with tearful light
Like rain-beads when the moon is bright.
Voiceless her tongue, but what a glow
Of spirit's grateful overflow,
In eloquent excess appears
To glitter through those dawning tears!
And ah! forgive, if fondly weak
Too soft of one her soul will speak;
And faintly interweave his name
With hours when love should hide its claim.
For thus chance-words will oft betray
How secret thoughts roam far away;
And hence by soft and sudden tone
The dreamings of the mind are shown,
Like rays of beauty when they dart
From out a cloud's divided heart,
And dazzle into gay surprise
The lids of unexpecting eyes.

Too much of pomp and aim is seen
Where'er the pen of man hath been;
But, lovely one! how sweet for thee
Within thy trellis'd room to be,
And there to language yield thy mind
As bends a flower before the wind!
And, aimless save the soul to show,
What magic will thy words bestow,
As bright they rush with fondest speed
To visit eyes which yearn to read
Each syllable that love can frame,
When hallow'd by so dear a name!
Between its banks as roams the stream
And murmurs like a liquid dream,
Surrender'd to the guiding force
Of nature in its beauteous course,—
So artlessly is woman's mind
To tones of untaught grace resign'd,
And wanders down the fairy tide
Of words whose sweetness love supplied!

Bells on the wind! hark! peal on peal
Comes wafted with melodious zeal,
Making the morn so bright and clear
To thrill like joy's own atmosphere!
A bird-song from each holly flows;
The bee hums loudly in the rose;
And like a soaring dew-drop seems
The butterfly to shed its gleams
Of hue and lustre, in wild play
Of rapture round its wingèd way.—
Creation, like a human soul,
Feels gladness through each fibre roll!

And mark ye, where yon churchyard shows
The tombs' and turfs' sepulchral rows,
And sunbeams o'er the graves advance
To touch them with as bright a glance
As once around each living head
The beauty of their joyance spread,—
A crowd of village forms attends;
Their lip with lip loud welcome blends;

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And homeward by a rose-strewn track
The gay-eyed young are wending back,
To drink around a festive board
Such health as loving hearts afford.

But whence the joy?—behold yon room,
And there in hymeneal bloom
Array'd like clouds of fleecy mould
When round the moon their grace is roll'd,
And bending like a human flower,
With beauty for her matchless dower,—
The bride, the daughter, and the queen
Whose virtues crown our vision'd scene!

Poet and painter, each may bring,
Fresh from the spirit's fountain-spring
Full many a truth and many a tone
Which Nature shall confess her own.
But there, in yon bright room are met
Feelings which ne'er were mirror'd yet,
Save by the features when they start
To life from out the living heart!—
The old, the tried, whose years retain
The light of early friendship's reign,
From childhood holding firm and deep
The faith unworldly bosoms keep;
A sire, upon whose honour'd head
A silvery grace of time is spread,
Beholding like a priest of joy
The smiles which every face employ,
(Though mellow'd is the meeker smile
That slumbers on his own the while)
Again unite:—and she is there,
Whose heart becomes one voiceless prayer,
That life may round a daughter pour
Exhaustless mercy's heavenly store!

And thou! 'mid all the bridal star,
Thy bosom is one tender war
'Tween fond regret for faded hours,
And love whose fulness overpowers!
Deep tears within thy heart arise
Though scarcely yet they dim thine eyes,
Lest shades of grief should haply fall
Upon thy wedding-carnival,
And eyes parental catch from thee
A tear thy soul would shake to see!
But when the sad adieus are sigh'd
Thy spirit to its core is tried,
As garden, ground, and village-mead
From the wing'd chariot fast recede:
One look! so long it seems to cling
Around the spot of Life's dead spring!
One rapid glance at paths of yore,
Where roam'd the Days which breathe no more!
And nature, wrung beyond control,
In tears will then express thy soul!
And let them fall! for tears like thine
Might hang on eyelids half divine;
And love in their excess can see
How soft a woman's soul can be.

And she is gone! the wedded maid
Whose loveliness a home array'd
With lustre caught from every gaze,
Her look, her laugh, her winning ways,
How are they felt as unforgot
In each young scene and household-spot!
Dismal the once glad room appears;
And eyes are charged with coming tears,
When haply to their pensive sight
Some little gift is brought to light,
Some token of departed hours
For memory left, like waning flowers!
The fairy harp her fingers loved
In tomb-like calm stands unremoved;
And o'er her pictured face is sigh'd
A deeper thought than words supplied,
When silent, sad, unwatch'd, and lone,
A mother lets her grief be shown!
Yon garden, too, now reft and lorn,
Methinks its alter'd features mourn,
So droopingly the flowerets bend,
So dyingly their leaves depend,
To what they were, when dew-bright Dawn
Beheld her on the breathing lawn
The goddess of the matin hour,
Arraying each expectant flower
With life and beauty; while the bird
Sang in the laurel-boughs unstirr'd,
And each coy breeze which caught her hair
Enamour'd hung, and nestled there!
Her sister, she whose tiny feet
Were wing'd when one was there to meet,
Now prattles in her dream and walk,
As though the lisping mind could talk
Of nothing, save that dearest one
Her bosom yearns to rest upon!
And many a Home her hand relieved
For one so pure hath pined and grieved;
Whose presence to the cottage grew
Like heaven before a martyr's view,—
So bright the change her blessing made
When sorrow had the soul betray'd.

But what remains for Minstrel-art?
Aught further can his page impart
Of feelings whose domestic sway
Conducts the hours of life away?
Then picture for thy pensive mood
A tranquil home in solitude;
And there, behold! the maid we drew
In Nature's soft but sterling hue.
Those budding traits, when girlhood smiled,
Of heart and mind, which all beguiled,

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Expanded now to full-blown grace,
Have alter'd not with time and place:
Each added year has hail'd the birth
Of some new charm and noble worth;
And, save that on her brow appears
A mellow tinge of matron years,
And in her eye serenely glows
The magic of the mind's repose,
A girl in spirit still is left
Without one ray of youth bereft.

She is a mother! what a bliss
Celestial fills a name like this
With meaning, whose concentred might
Is mock'd by that mean word—delight!
For sooner may cold earth describe
The glories of th' angelic tribe,
Than any save a mother tell
What mysteries in her being dwell.
How spirit-fill'd her loving face!
How beautiful! thereon to trace
The imagery of rising thought
By feeling's hidden sculpture wrought!
When infant-voices round her roll
Like echoes of maternal soul;
And words like shatter'd music rise
Faint on her ear, in fond replies
From lips that quiver lisp and play
Like blossoms on a breezy day.
But, ah! should malady destroy
Each fairy bud of infant joy,
And broken cries but half reveal
The buried pangs dark moments feel,
What wrung Despair in tragic stone,
What Misery in marble shown,
In eloquence of grief can vie
With all that speaks her loving eye!—
When bending o'er a tortured child
By fits 'tis fervent, sad, or wild,
And prompt, if pain might thus be quell'd,
To drink the anguish she beheld
Into her soul, with one deep gaze,
And bear it with immortal praise!

Home of my fancy, fare thee well!
Unbroken be thy guardian spell;
Though not unmarr'd may be thy fate,
Since darkness girds our brightest state,
And Life along each path of hours
With thorns hath intertwined the flowers:
Yet hearts where home and love unite
Share more than bleakest years can blight;
The sky may frown, the tempest fall,
But Woman can o'ercome them all,
While calm within affection's eyes
Endures that beaming paradise,
Where sorrow seeks a bright repose
And basks beyond the reach of woes.

Land of my soul! maternal Isle
Array'd by Freedom's holy smile;
Whose throne is founded on the cause
Of native worth and noble laws;
Oh, long may Private Life be found
The glory of our British ground,
And Woman on her stainless brow
Wear the bright soul we honour now!
For though thy fleets o'erawed the main
Till every billow felt thy reign;
And captive Empires drew the car
Of victory from triumphant war,
Thy strength is canker'd, if the core
Of private life be sound no more.
Consumption on the cheek can bloom,
When Beauty but declares a tomb;
And eyes their brightest meaning shed
While every ray foretells the dead;
And thus may fatal glory be
An Empire's garb of infamy,
If once that spring of manly pride,
True gallantry, be stain'd or dried:
Or Woman from her high domain
Must dwindle into meaner reign.

The touching grace, the tender glow
Of what our fondest moods bestow;
The hopes which keep the heart awake
And self from out the selfish take;
The softness and the spell of all
That bridal dreams elysium call,
Born of her magic, blend their sway
To charm the clouds of time away:
And if there be a home on earth
Where nature most unveils its worth
And earth and heaven can intertwine,
Angel of Life! that home is thine.

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SATAN:

OR, INTELLECT WITHOUT GOD.

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BOOK I.

“Earth's kingdoms and their glory.” Milton.

Awake, ye thunders!—and with gloomy roar
Deepen around me, while a darkness shrouds
The air, as once again this World I greet
Here on the haughty mountain, where of old
The God Incarnate, in the heavens re-throned,
Was tempted and withstood me.

Lo! the powers
Of Nature, by my dread command sublimed,
Mount into rage, and magnify the storm
To elemental grandeur; while as Prince
By whom the spirit-peopled air is bound
In bondage, from my viewless throne I gaze,
Prompting the Tempest; whose convulsive swell
Heaves like the echo of my spirit's war,
The moral earthquake that makes hell within!
Hark! to the crash of riven forest-boughs
In yonder waste, the home of Hurricanes,
That catch the howlings of the cavern'd brutes
And waft them onwards to Arabia's wild,
O'ercanopied with flying waves of sand
Like a dread ocean whirling through the skies.
But Thou alone, eternally sublime,
Thou rolling mystery of might and power!
Rocking the tempest on thy breast of waves
Or, spread in breezy rapture to the sun,
Thou daring Ocean! that couldst deluge worlds
And yet rush on,—I hear thy deep-toned wrath
In ceaseless thunder challenging the Winds
Resoundingly; and from afar behold
Thine armied billows, plunging in the blast,
And the wild sea-foam shiver on the gales!

Exult, ye waves! and, whirlwinds! sweep along
Like the full breathings of almighty ire,
Whose sound is desolation! Where the sail
Of yon lone vessel, like a shatter'd cloud,
Is moving, let the surges mount on high
Their huge magnificence, and lift their heads,
And like Titanic creatures tempest-born,
In life and fury march upon the main!
Rave on, thou Tempest! in thy fiercest roar;
To me thy reckless mood is fearful joy;
A faint memento of that direful scene
When proud rebellion shook the walls of heaven,
Till, girt with thunder, dread Messiah came,
And hurl'd us downward to the deep of hell.

The Tempest dies; the winds have tamed their ire;
The sea-birds hover on enchanted wing;
And save a throb of thunder, faintly heard,
And ebbing knell-like o'er yon western deep
Which now lies panting with a weary swell
Like a worn monster at his giant length
Gasping, with foam upon his troubled mane,—
The sounds of elemental wrath retire.
The Sun is up! look, where He proudly comes
In blazing triumph wheeling o'er the earth,
A victor in full glory! At his gaze
The heavens as with emotion smile, and beam
With many a sailing cloud-isle sprinkled o'er;
While forest-woodlands and enliven'd flowers
The central monarch of the skies salute.
Now hills are gleaming; rich the mountains glow;
The streams run gladness, yellow meads appear,
And palm-woods glitter on Judæan plains;
Beauty and brightness shed their soul abroad:—
Then let me, whom no mortal space can bound,
The Earth survey, and mark her mighty realms.

Why, what a stately Orb is this! how wide
In range! how wonderful in scene! the grace
And crown—the paragon of worlds!
And Thou, for whom all elements exist,
A second nature from thy soul hath sprung,
And made wide earth a new creation seem!

Deserted isles, with oceanic wastes,
Heaving and wild, monotonous and vast;
Terrific mountains, where the fire-floods dwell,
Or snows in iced eternity congeal;
And haggard rocks uplifted, huge, or bare,
The hoary frame-work of a ruin'd world:
And rivers deep, exulting as they glide,

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And forests high, and dales by woods o'erhung,
With meadows greenly bright, and champaigns broad;
And flowers, whose beauty blush'd in Paradise,
By streams that murmur of their mountain-birth;
With high-domed cities, crown'd with misty clouds,
And shadow'd interchange of hamlets lone
Which deck the verdure of retreating vales,—
Before me, like a panorama, spread;
Far as the ice-clad North hath bared its brow,
To where the burning South extends, from East
To West this theatre of man I view.

Jerusalem, forlorn Judæan Queen!
Girt with the grandeur of prophetic hills,
How art thou fallen from thy sacred height
Of splendour and renown! Unhallow'd now,
Save by the tombs and memory of the past;
Hush'd are thy Trumpets, which enrapt the air
With Jubilee, when Freedom burst the chain
Of captives, heart with heart embraced, and eye
To eye beam'd fellowship; while not an ear
But feasted on that soul-awakening sound!
Thy Temple vast, whose architect was God
Himself, when first the giant fabric grew,
That matchless Pile! on which Religion gazed
With haughty glance, where Glory dwelt enshrined;—
Where is it now? Dead as the Roman dust,
That erst, with living valour fired, uncrown'd
Thy queenly pride, and palsied thy vast walls,
Strewing the plains with atoms of thy strength.
And yet, where yonder marbled courts, and mosques
With sun-gilt minarets, like glitt'ring peaks
Of mountain-tops, are seen, a Prophet stood,
And in stern vision saw predestined Time
Advancing, with dark ruin on his wings,
To shatter thee, and sprinkle the wide earth
With orphans of thy race. How scornful rang
Thy laughter, when such vision was unroll'd!
But when thy rocks were echoed with the cry
Of Desolation, moaning her despair,
Many a Demon on the viewless winds
Exulted, shouting, with revengeful joy,
“Thus sink the glories of great Palestine!”

Alas, for human Grandeur! in the pomp
Of Temples, and the stony Wonders, rear'd
In rebel majesty against the might
Of ages, let Ambition learn her doom.
Bagdad, o'er famed Chaldea proudly raised
In tow'ring splendour by the Tigris' banks;
And hoary Smyrna of Mæonic fame,
All beautiful in ruins, where the fruits
And flowers yet flourish o'er deserted Art
And laughing streamlets run with liquid joy;
With Tyre and Sidon, where rich Commerce ruled
Showering her treasures o'er the sunny East;
And gay Damascus, whose delicious plains
Of verdure, striped with water's radiant flow,
Shine green as ever,—in your wrinkled piles
Are lessons for the loftiest eyes to read,
That mark ye now, and dream of vanish'd might
When merchants rivall'd Kings! But far o'er all,
Where yonder mountain mingles with the plain
Of billowy sand, gigantic, dread, and lone,
Great Heliopolis in ruin mourns.
And next, yon ancient desert-Queen behold,
The blasted Genius of the wilderness,
Palmyra! pillar'd yet in temple-pride,
Decayless arches show past glory still;
But wither'd down from her Zenobian pomp
When there the sun-idolatries were seen
And Grandeur call'd the streets her own,—but now,
Let Solomon arise, and read her fate!

But, sadder yet, beyond the Libyan wild
Sepulchral Egypt lies! Come royal heirs
Of Ptolemy, and patriarchal kings,
And see the shadow of your once sublime
And storied Egypt! True, her fostering Nile,
That flowing wand'rer of mysterious birth,
Her annual life-flood generously yields;
But where the soul of Science? where the fount
Of Wisdom, from whose deep and dateless spring
The Greek and Roman drank? Colossal Thebes,
How grimly sleep thy ruins! where of yore,
Like billows trooping at the whirlwind's call
Forth from thy hundred gates the battle-cars
Out-roll'd! Thy tombs and arches, Temples huge
As sculptured mountains, darkling yet remain,
But sadness broods o'er all. And ye august,
In blighted majesty of stone uprear'd,
Stern Pyramids! which point your heads to heaven
As pillars that could prop the spheres, a day
Is coming when ye moulder into dust,
And melt like dew-dops by the wind annull'd!

So sink the monuments of ancient might,
So fade the gauds and splendours of the World.
Her empires brighten, blaze, and pass away,
And trophied Fanes, and adamantine Walls

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Which challenged an eternity, depart
Amid the dying change, or lapse of things:
Enthroned o'er all, bleak Desolation frowns,
Save mind—omnipotent, surpassing Mind!
One scintillation of the soul inspired
Though kindled in an atmosphere of gloom
Or loneliness, will strengthen, glow, and live,
And burn from age to age, till it become
The sun and glory of a thinking world
When thrones are shatter'd, and their kings forgot!

The revolution and the wrath of Time,
Rolling his years with an avenging flow
Alike o'er all, hath been a thread-worn theme
Which tunes the sentiment of many an Age.
And thus, the musing lover of the past,
Romancing idly o'er the name of time,
Untombing empires, and re-crowning kings,
In sighing wonder ends his moral strain!
Thou fool! and martyr to a feeble word;
'Tis Thought and Action, those unslumb'ring two,
Which give to time solemnity and dread;
And he who marks mere havoc, not the war
Of passion, and inclining will, but prates
And lulls his moral in a dream of words.

Let him who muses on the awful wreck
Of Empires, wailing in the dust, and thrones
Reversed, or cities in their ruin vast,
Here History and her inspirations dwell,
Dive deeper, till he stretch a thought to Me!
Ere man was fashion'd from his fellow dust,
I was!—and since the sound of human voice
First trembled on the air, my darksome power
Hath compass'd him in mystery, and in might;
Upon the soul of sage Philosophy
And Wisdom, templed in the shrines of old,
Faint shadows of my Being fell; a sense
Of me thus deepen'd through the onward flood
Of ages, till substantial thought it grew,
A certainty sublime, in that great soul,
The epic-god of ancient song, who down
The infinite abyss could dare to gaze,
And summon forth the imagery of Hell.

And in that Book, where heaven lies half reveal'd,
By words terrific as the herald-flash
That hints the lightning-vengeance of a storm,
Am I not vision'd? as the Prince of Air,
A Spirit that would crush the universe,
And battle with Infinity? Yet Truth,
So unrelenting in her solemn task,
A chilling welcome in the eyes of men
Hath found, denying what they dread to feel.
Kind Infidel! satanic praise accept;
Friend of the guilty, solace of the vile,
And teacher of the vain, mankind instruct
And make one world, my own. Oh, few believe
When condemnation awes the spirit back!
Save hearts, where all simplicities of faith
Abound, and warn each hell-born doubt away
Or men, self-tortured, who at midnight dream
Of oceans foaming with eternal fires,
Or ghastly air-fiends, writhing as they howl,—
Save unto these, and souls of kindred hue,
The Powers of Darkness are a cheat of words,
Framed by a Priest to juggle fools. Alas!
Yet oft they frown upon the mocker's path
And feel they could, did Nature not prevail,
Burst into life, and blast him with a gaze!

`What understanding cannot grasp, belief
Can never claim,”—a wisdom most divine!
Why, all around him, from the race of flowers
That woo his unadmiring gaze, to hosts
Of orbèd wonders which the sky pervade,
Is Mystery, robed in some material pomp;
Then why should mysteries of awe within,
Themselves resolve to charm a sceptic mind?
Religion acts, but unexplain'd abides;—
The beatings of the heart resemble this,
And men may wonder, but it still beats on!

But when the balance of sublunar Things
Is tried, amended, and for ever fix'd,
Belief for unbelief shall then atone
By sad conviction:—then shall it be proved,
The Sin that violated and deform'd
This World, and all true harmonies profaned,
(In dread similitude to mind o'erthrown)
Hath been the evil which my power hath fed,
By dark communion with this mortal Scene.
No! not a havoc Nature's kingdom feels;
No sound of Ocean when her wings rise plumed
With wrath; no frenzy of the tragic winds,
Those viewless pirates whom the pathless seas
Endure,—no terror in the darkest reign
Of Elements that lord it so sublime,
But images that dreadful curse I reap'd
For Nature and for Man! And ye, dead Climes!
Where high of old my bloody Altars blazed,
Where oracles from cave or temple breathed,
And Monsters, vision'd out of monstrous thought,
With stock and stone idolatries, were bred,
My hand was on ye, and your heathen soul!
And now, Ambition trampling out the heart
Of earth; the demi-gods of false renown;
And all the giants of heroic crime,
Are demons of my will; and by their doom
Shall testify the Genius whence they spring!

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Might vanish'd ages be renew'd, and built
Again those daring Empires once renown'd,
From that huge one the haughty Ninus rear'd
And great Cambyses crush'd, to Rome and Greece
Of commonwealths the glory,—what a scene
Would time reveal! Who bow'd them into gloom?
They fear'd me not; but from the primal stone
Which mark'd the birthday of their city-queens
I mingled with them, and beheld them rise:
From dim obscurity my minions watch'd
Their growth to greatness, and imperial sway,
That over-shadow'd the far Isles. The Sea
Beneath them, like a suppliant crouch'd; the Winds
Sang victory! where exulting banners waved;
But now, uplifted to a fearful height,
They courted vilely-enervating Arts,
Unthroned the Virtues, let the Passions loose,
And pour'd corruption through their rank domain:
Then came the Nemesis!—that moral Curse
Whose ruin more than desolation brings.

But see, where Persia's beauteous clime extends,
How gloriously diluvian Ararat
Hath pinnacled his rocky peak in clouds!
Who thrones a winter on his heights untrod,
While summer laughs in roses at his feet!
Time cannot mar his glory: high he swells
As when that Ark was balanced on his brow,
Which saw the raging of the far-off floods
Beneath, and heard the Deluge die away!

But here, as in her day of olden might,
Ascendant Nature proves the God of souls
Who deify mere elements, and dream
Them symbols of their Maker. On the peak
Of mountains, the Chaldean hail'd the Sun
In the rich brightness of its morning-birth,
And bow'd his forehead to the flaming East;
The Night, ennobled with her stars, pour'd love
And worship into hearts, that from the fields
Beheld their throbbing radiance, as the face
Of Prophets, bright with their intelligence:—
And still upon the Gueber's fateful eye
The Fire darts gleaming magic; and his mind
Through nature darkly struggles on to God.

A mightier scene upon the map of earth!—
Forests immense, and pine-wastes fiercely wild,
And ice-rocks, rear'd upon a dead-white sea,
Far to the north where hoary deserts gleam
Dawn on my view in all their Arctic gloom.
But not Siberia, desolate and grand,
Nor Dneiper, thunder'd on by cataracts
That whiten o'er her howling waves, appear
So wondrous, as those battle-hosts that rush
Like rivers swelling from their deep abodes,
Precipitately o'er the regions round.
A King hath spoken! and the trump of War
Hath sounded like a herald through the land,
“Awake! great Peter is alive again.”

A word of Kings, what potency it wields!
These delegates of God, yea, gods themselves,
Upon whose lips the fate of Empire hangs,
Tremendous is their charge: one speaks, and lo!
Up springs infernal War, and stalks abroad,
Unrolls his blood-red banner on the wind,
And in the groan of widow'd Nations hails
The music of his fame! Another speaks,
And Peace, with olive in her radiant hand,
Glides like an angel through the world, and prints
A trace of blessing wheresoe'er she treads.

And who could ponder on this war-doom'd scene,
Nor dream thy shadow swelling into life,
Napoleon! On the island-rock thou sleep'st;
But such a storm thy spirit raised, so full
The swell of feeling born of thee, that Time
Must lend his magic to allay the strife
And tempest of opinion into truth,
Which, taming wonder, stamps thee, as thou wert,
A tyrant! in whose passion for a power,
Above all liberty and law enthroned,
I hail, thee as a Paramount; thy pride
Of domination tow'ring far o'er heights
Of monarchy,—a shadow of mine own,
Which scorn'd an equal though He proved a God!

And therefore did I crown thee, Kingly One!
And those who worship thee, my thanks inspire!
Mean crimes are branded with avenging scorn,
While great ones, that should water earth with tears,
Can dazzle condemnation into praise,
And praise to pity, when false greatness fails!
The throneless, in the heart a throne acquires,
And Admiration in one sigh can drown
The wail of millions, haunting each red field
Of havoc, where some Desolator trod!

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The wish is hated, but the deed caress'd,
Of mad Ambition; “glory” heals all wounds!

Yet, what a cloud on Liberty was thrown!
How deep a gash her dreadless form profaned,
When thine ambition march'd upon the world,
Till Europe quail'd beneath thy scepter'd arm!
Then, crumbled hopes which centuries will not build
Again; then god-like spirits felt a pang
That now, when canonading battles pause,
And Peace sits musing on the tomb of War,
Is felt,—an agony too deep for words
To fathom, too sublime for slaves to feel!

Lo! where the Tyrant felt a flood of wrath
From Heaven pour'd down upon his guilty head,
And first he knew himself a Man!—Yon spires
With golden pinnacles that pierce the clouds,
And river, winding by those pallid walls,
Proclaim where unforgotten Moscow stands:
There raged a scene which ruin'd angels love
To witness, when the vaunting sons of Clay
Grow demon-like, and shudd'ring Time beholds
The fellest misery Despair can feel!
As when, all wildly through the unbarr'd gates
Like savage war-fiends his marauders swept,
And saw the city billow'd into flames,
Like some far ocean blazing through the storm!
Then Havoc started with a thrilling shout;
The shriek of violated maids, the curse
Of dying mothers, and despairing sires,
And dash of corpses, torn from royal tombs
And plunged amid devouring flames, were heard
Till hell in miniature wild Moscow seem'd.

But who, when Rapine could not pillage more,
While cannon-thunder chased the daunted winds,
Paused on a desert-heath, in speechless ire,
And mark'd the remnant of a ruin'd host
Flying, and pale as phantoms of Despair?
Napoleon! in the earthquake of thy soul,
The elements were reaping vengeance then!
While slaughter turn'd the tide of victory
And roll'd it back upon thy powerless host
Of famish'd warriors, freezing as they died!
That hour of agony, the crushing sense
Of danger and defeat, the broken spell
Which blasted all thy triumphs into shame,
Sublimed thy spirit with so proud a pang
It long'd to swell into a million souls,
And shake the universe to save a throne!

Thy race is o'er: and in the rocky isle
Of ocean, canopied with willow-shade,
In death's undreaming calm thou restest now.
But all the splendid infamy of War,
The fame of blood and bravery, is thine:
Thy name hath havoc in its sound! and Time
Shall read it when his ages roll:—'twill live
When time and nature are forgotten words!
For, as a noble fame can never die
But proudly soareth on from earth to heaven,
There to be hymn'd by Angels, and to crown
With bright pre-eminence the gifted mind
That won it gloriously; so evil fame
A fiery torment to the soul shall be
For ever:—let Ambition think of this!
Who murders kings, to make her heroes, gods.

In contrast wilder than the rude-faced globe,
Appear the workings of immortal mind.
Russia, through each great limb of empire, feels
Proud animation play; a panting wish
For high dominion, and sublimer rule
Than Nature's rugged vastness yields. But Thou,—
Of immemorial birth, whose massy wall
Of ages, with her thousand war-towers flank'd,
Majestic winds o'er many a savage hill
And mountain, China! thou art motionless,
Or like the Dead Sea, sullenly reposed
Amid the surging restlessness of Time.
Those burden'd waters, whereon breed and die
Thy generations; fancy-mountains, graced
With temples; or pagodas gaily deck'd,
And artful wonders, by the hand or tongue
Completed,—such are glories form'd for thine
Ascendancy! Thus bulwark'd in with pride
And baseness, virtues, arts, and vices act
From year to year, unchallenged and unchanged.
Antiquity, the childhood of the world,
Broods like a torpid vapour o'er thy clime,
And dulls its vigour into drowsy calm;
So let it sleep! till Revolution wake,
And summon spirits who shall cry,—Reform!

Lo! in the East, enormously uprear'd,
What ice-peak'd mountains point their roseate heads
Amid the richness of an Indian sky,
Soundless and solemn as cathedral-towers
Made dim and spectral by the wintry moon!
Hills of the North! not all your Greenland-pomp
Can more sublimely scale the clouds. And where
Bright Ganga! mountain-born, careers the flood
That matches thee? The vassal rivers mix

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Their spirit with thine own; the rock-hewn caves
Shake as they hear thee sounding through their depths,
Then, upward springing with a glorious swell
And brightness on thy waves, to course green plain
And valley, like a charger in his pride
Let loose to lord it o'er surrounding meads!
Monarch of rivers! thy redeeming flow
Is life and beauty to the sun-brown lands
That border thy rich banks; but on thy stream
How Superstition glasses her dull creed!
Religion!—why, the undiscerning brute
Hath more divinity than vaunting slaves
Who, spirit-darken'd, oft blaspheme Her name:
For sun and shower by him are not unthank'd.
He bathes his forehead in the fresh'ning gale,
And, by enjoyment, pays the gift of life.
But how is reason carnalised and crush'd
When hell-rites are religion!—while it chants
Of mercy in the ways of heaven revealed
Can offer female holocausts to Hell
In burning widows, gasping forth their souls,
Or drowning babes, for sacrifice to God!
Oh, Wisdom! never thou the heart redeem,
Nor cast the cloud from Superstition's eye!

Another gaze, bright Hindostanic clime!
How beautifully wild, with horn-wreath'd heads,
Thy antelopes abound; and, thick as clouds
Paving the pathway of the western heav'n,
On wings enamell'd with a radiant dye
Thy birds expand their plumage to the breeze,
And glitter through air! Primeval woods,
And patriarchal trees, and forest-haunts,
And deserts spotted with their verdant isles,
And fruits, with showers of sunbeams on their heads,
Grow mingled there in magical excess;
The grand and beautiful, their glowing spell
Combine; Creation makes one mighty charm.

But let it pass: again the voice of waves!
Faint as the rush of rapid spirit-wings;
An Ocean, dreadful to the gazing eye
As dark eternity to human thought,—
Atlantic! where the whirlwinds are the scoff
Of billows, rocking with eternal roar,
Thou art a wonder e'en to me, whose eyes
Have fathom'd Chaos!

Thou astounding Main!
Time never felt so awful since his birth,
Angels and demons o'er thy terrors hung,
As when by hope prophetically wise,
On thine immensity Columbus launch'd.
Yet thou wert well avenged! for Storm and Doubt,
Despair and Madness on the billows rode,
And made deep Ocean one dark agony!—
Dismal as thunder-clouds, the fated hours
Toil'd on; a living solitude still howl'd
And heaved, in dread monotony around;
Yet hope was quenchless; and when daylight closed,
The ocean-wanderers, in the placid glow
Of sunset, soothing their despondent brows,
Hymn'd o'er the mellow wave their vesper-song;
Ave Maria! mingling with the choirs
Of billows, and the chant of evening-winds.

But he was destined! and his lightning-glance
Shot o'er the deep, and darted on thy world
America!—Then, lofty, long, and loud
From swelling hearts the hallelujahs rang,
And charm'd to music the Atlantic gales;
While, silent as the Sun above him throned,
Columbus look'd a rapture to the heavens
And gave his glory to the God they serve!

Thou fated Region of the varied globe
Where all the climates dwell, and Seasons rule
In majesty, hereafter when the tides
Of Circumstance have roll'd through changing years,
What Empires may be born of Thee!—thy ships
By thousands, voyaging the isle-strewn deep;
Thy banners waved in every land! E'en now
Defiance flashes from thy fearless eye,
While Nature tells thee greatness is thine own.—
Who on those dreadful giants of the South,
Those Pyramids by man's Creator rear'd,
Thine Andes, girdled with the storms, can gaze;
Or hear Niagara's unearthly flood
Rival the thunder with impassion'd roar,
Nor think the spirit of ambition rules
Thy moral nature. What a grandeur lives
Through each stern scene!—in yon Canadian woods,
Whose stately poplars clothe their heads with clouds,
And dignify creation as they stand;
Or in the rain-floods,—rivers where they fall!
Or hurricanes, which howl themselves along,
Like fierce-wing'd monsters, ravenously wild:—
Sublimity o'er all a soul hath breathed,
And yet my ban is on thee!—'tis the curse
Of havoc, which the violators reap'd
For thy young destiny, when first amid
Thy wilds the cannon pour'd its thund'ring awe,
Shaking the trees which never yet had bow'd,
Save to the storminess of nature's ire.

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Hath Gentleness thy guilt of old redeem'd?
Hath freedom heal'd the wounds of war, and paid
Her ransom to the nameless and unknown,
The unremember'd, but immortal still,
The Dead, whose birthright was sublime as kings'?
Approach, and answer me, dejected One!
Art thou the remnant of a free-born race,
Majestic lords of nature's majesty?
Of them, whose brows were bold as heaven, whose hands
Have tamed the woods, whose feet outfled the winds,
Who faced the lightning with undazzled gaze
And dream'd the thunder language of their god:
The earth and sky, 'twas Freedom's and their own!
But thou—the Sun hath written on thee, Slave!
A branded limb and a degraded mind
The tyrants give thee for infernal toil
And tears; or lash thy labour out in blood.

And some are Saxons, who enslave the free;
Then boast not, England! while a Briton links
The chain of thraldom, glory can be thine.
Vain are thy vows, thy temples, and the rites
Which hallow them, while yet a slave exists
Who curses thee: each curse in Heaven is heard;
'Tis seal'd, and answer'd in the depths Below!

From dungeon and from den there comes a voice
That supplicates for Freedom: from the tomb
Of martyrs her transcendency is told,
And dimm'd she may, but cannot be destroy'd.
Who bends the spirit from its high domain
On God himself a sacrilege commits;
For soul doth share in His supremacy;
To crush it, is to violate the power
And grasp the sceptre an Almighty wields!

For freedom, such as proud ambition call'd
A freedom, a Heaven I lost; and therefore slaves
On earth are victims whom I scorn to see.
No! let them in their liberty be mine;
Or, what if foul Oppression fill the cup
Of crime, that Hell may have a deeper draught?
My kingdom is of evil; and the crowns
Of many an earth-born Despot sparkle there!—
Then let the pangless hearts of Tyrants beat
Unblasted, till from deepest agony
With the proud wrath of ages in Her soul
Freedom arise, and vindicate her name!

BOOK II.

“Porches and theatres, baths, aqueducts,
Statues and trophies, and triumphal arcs,
Gardens and groves, presented to his eyes
Above the height of mountain interposed.”
Paradise Regained.

Sceptres are mighty wands, and few are found
With strength to wield them; yet how many dare!
And kingdoms are the agonies of Thrones,
Yet men will die to face them! thus the Heart
Exceeds itself, nor calls the madness vain.
But, were it mine from kingliness to take
The tyrant witchery, I'd bid some young
Idolater of throne-exalted power,
In the deep midnight when the World lies hush'd
In her humility of sleep, to gaze
Upon a prince's couch. The crimson pomp
And glare of palace-chambers round him lie;
But on his cheek the royal spirit stamps
A weariness which mocks this outward show
Of kings; a prison would have graced it more!
A sad rehearsal of unhonour'd youth
When years went reckless as the rolling waves,
Till passion grew satiety; a proud
Regret for trait'rous hearts; and that keen sense
Untold, which monarchs more than subjects feel,
Of slavery; (for servile is the pomp
Of kings, though gorgeously it dares the eye)
With a dim haunting of the dreary tomb,
That often through the banquet-splendour gapes
Like darkness that defies a sun!—such dream
From out his slumber that calm beauty steals
Which Innocence delights to wear. Then, watch
His features, when some trace of dreadful thought
Endows them with a spirit-eloquence,
That speaks of Judgment, with its thronging host
Of terrors; Monarchs cited, and the vast
Account of sceptred kingdoms render'd up;
Could Envy listen to his waking groan,
How poor, how perilous, the state of kings!

Away with this:—transcendently endow'd
And in her mass of mind concent'ring more
Of awfulness, than nature in its might
Of rock or mountain feels, proud Europe spreads
Her living map before me now! What hearts
And souls commune! what countless tides of thought
And feeling, in electric flow, from breast
To breast, from clime to clime, prevailing here;
Here is the throne of Mind; th' arena vast
Where principles and passions run their course
And pant and struggle with conflicting play,—

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Where men and angels, heav'n and hell are met,
And Life flings shadows o'er eternity!

Region of wonders! who yon scenes can trace,
Or on thy many-featured visage mark
Each motion of thy spirit, in the glow
Of changing impulse, and creative power?
There, is an ocean, darken'd by the wings
Of vessels, leaping like the waves they front,
While thund'ring to and fro their country's wrath
They tell her glory to the list'ning skies!
And there, a river like a liquid sweep
Of light, where Commerce welcomed by the gale,
Sails onward in the sun; but here, a scene
Of battle, crimson'd o'er with clotting blood!
Banners are playing, rich as unroll'd clouds
Hung loose upon mid air; the gleam of arms
Incessant flashes through the misty fray
Fierce as the lightnings when they flutter wild;
While mute and sad, a City waits afar
With Doubt and Anguish in her desert-streets,
Who catch the war-notes from the travell'd wind
And answer them, with living echoes there.
In dream-like contrast, 'mid the hush of noon
How meekly yon romantic village lies
Beneath a canopy of cloudless blue!
With elm-trees twinkling as they wave, the meads
Made golden for their harvest, and yon spire
In peaceful beauty pointing to the heavens.

Sprinkled with mountains, and with cloud-capt hills,
Helvetia swells majestic on my view,
In her primeval glory. Free-soul'd Land!
Summer and Winter for thy smile contend,
Witching thy prospects into fairy pomp
With beautiful abruptness. Verdure-clad
And deck'd with flowers, these undulating vales
Extend, while vines the terraced hills embrace,
And Landscapes, laughing o'er the clouds, may hear
The Tempest-howl in cavern gloom below!—
But Winter hath his triumph; let the rush
And roar of cataracts; the darksome lakes,—
Convulsive rolling in the midnight-storm;
The glaciers, billow'd like a frozen sea
Iced in the plunging madness of the storm;
And, chief o'er all, the silent Alp-king rear'd
Like Grandeur risen from eternity,—
Let these declare thee for a land sublime.
Home of the dauntless! on thy patriot-soil
While sternness of simplicity can breathe
A Roman vigour, and the name of Tell
Haunts like a harrowing spirit every vale
And mountain-hollow, Time shall honour thee,
When many an Empire shall have pass'd away,
And forests wave where Capitals are seen!

Southward of thee, where shining rocks ascend,
Pointing their cannon to the broad blue main
Defyingly, what region of the sun.
Is that, with green-dyed olive groves, and fruits
Whose ripeness glitters on the laden boughs?
'Tis Spain! the glowing clime of Luxury,
Of Chivalry, and dead Romance: her hills
Where aromatic odours scent the skies,
And bright-hued flowers, that in the mountain-breeze
Of wafted freshness dance their beauteous heads;
Her dark-eyed dames, and stately cavaliers
Whose brows are haughty with the dreams of eld;
Her pomp of palaces, her fountain-walks,
And many-templed Capitals,—betray
Her form'd for Pleasure's undisputed reign.
And yet, on History's most heroic page
Hath Andalusia an undying seal,
And Arragon a print of fame:—but deeds
Of blood, and Inquisition's torturing rack,
For vengeance when the world's arraignment sounds,
Will rise; and woe to Tyrants! they shall read
The chronicle stern Justice keeps in hell!

Here, too, the passions are despotic slaves
For me; and prove how features can reveal
The voiceless language of the varied mind.
The languor of luxurious eyes, for Love
Abounds; for Jealousy, the livid gaze
Which looks a murder where its meaning falls!
And for Revenge, an aspect darkly still
Like savage thunder sleeping in a cloud!—
And midnight is the mantle for them all.

Enchanting as thou art, romantic Spain,
The home of beauty and the queen of climes,
Loved Italy, whose oriental heavens
Are rich enough o'er Paradise to hang,
Outdazzles thee in splendour. 'Tis the hour
When noon-shine, dying into sunset-glow,
Suffuses, like a gorgeous wing outspread
In wanton glory, gleams of magic hue.
How radiantly adown those heaven-bright hills
The young streams tremble? Arno, mountain-born
With ling'ring progress writhes along the vale:
And groves and gardens on the cool wind shake
Their fragrance; while around vine-laden meads
Flush with their produce, and the playful breeze
Ruffles the golden corn-fields. Near yon lake
Mark sea-throned Venice in her island-pride,

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Resentful dares the Adriatic-roar!
And o'er the river, where gondolas throng,
'Mid Palaces that frown with haggard Pomp
Out-arches her Rialto:—she hath reign'd
Her day; ducal tyrants are no more,
And blighted fabrics but reveal her fame.

And what is Venice to the wreck of Rome?
That Giantess of empire! blacken'd, bow'd,
And desolated on her seven-hill throne
Behold her seated by worn Tiber's banks!
Colossal ruin, like a noble mind
In desolation thou art haughty still!
Though Time hath conquer'd, can he equal thee?
Thy Temples huge where ages are enshrined;
The trophied porches, theatres august
Which heard the beating of ten thousand hearts;
And Fane sublime, on that Tarpeian rock,
Where Vengeance grasp'd eternity!—when Rome
Could trample kingdoms and o'erawe the world
What grandeur rivall'd these? Their very shades
Are solemn: but around them when the rush
Of life was heard; when chariots, bright as clouds
Which throne the morning sun, victorious came
Amid the tramp of war steeds and the shout
Of millions swelling with their country's fame,—
Thy glory was a terror, and thine arm
Omnipotence to nations! Through all realms
The throbbing of thy faintest anger thrill'd,
And when thou frown'dst, what kingdom dared be free?

Men look on thee, as Seraphs gaze on Light,
With silent rapture solemnised to awe,
Till the dead Past in resurrection-pomp,
Arises, and the Roman lives again!
Heroes and sages start beneath their feet;
Their eyes are dazzled with a starry dream
Of old renown; and, like thy vassal-states,
They deify thy name. And I forgive
The weakness of their worship, when the sun's
Bright mockery plays along thy mould'ring piles;
Or when the moonbeam through some cypress-tree,
Sheds rays of sorrow on thy weed-tress'd walls
And gray-worn monuments; from thy young dawn
Of being, ere thy roofless huts were piled,
To the proud noon of greatness, thou hast proved
A theme of wonder to infernal hosts,
Half demons and half gods thy heroes were;
And Roman teachers,—are they not still felt
And follow'd? deities of mind, whose words
Are wings of knowledge to the daring.—Rome
Is dead; but mental Rome is reigning still
With vaster sway than Pompey's eagles won!

Long may it reign so! that a fiery love
Of fame and battle, which defeatures earth
With scars eternity shall fail to heal,
May live by inspiration fierce as Rome's.
Many a “hero” hath by Her been crazed;
And fancied “Cæsars” yet will come, to chain
The world, or fool it with disastrous fame!
Yea, at this moment, in tyrannic hearts
Ambition hath a mass of burning thought
In secret treasured, like volcanic ire:
Kindle it, Time! and rear thy second Rome.

Few years have fleeted o'er this tomb-like haunt
Of ruin, since a Spirit who appall'd
The world, by giving thoughts a thunder-tone,
And feeling, that terrific lightning-flash,
That show'd the storm-depths of the soul within;
Who pour'd himself in passion o'er mankind
Making each heart to quiver with delight,
Like water thrill'd by an electric sound,—
Amid thy canker'd fanes and crumbling halls
Mused in the deadness of the midnight-hour.

It was a haggard night; when mortals dream
That conscious Nature in dejection pines;
As though the elements were all diseased,
The moon hung rayless, and the few faint stars
Gleam'd pale and glassy as the eye of death.
Alone, the victim of his darkest mood,
In the stern shade of ruin'd Palaces
And pillar'd wrecks of desolated shrines
The wanderer roam'd; and when some sickly break
Of moonlight lit his features into play
With all their lines of passionate excess,
The haunting Genius of the spot he seem'd
Lost in the workings of a wilder'd mind.
He sigh'd, and mused; and then from earth to heav'n
His eye was raised, but moisten'd with a tear
Of tenderness, wherein the pride of years
Had melted out from his rebellious soul,
Most haughty in abasement:— blighted man!
His nature was a whirlpool of desires,
And mighty passions, perilously mix'd,
That with the darkness of the demon-world
Had something of the light of Heaven. He breathed
The sighs that after-ages will repeat,—
The selfish eloquence of tortured thought
In words that glow with agony! Yet far
From him that deeper sadness of the mind
Which, gather'd from the gloom of mortal things
In moments of mysterious sway, o'erclouds
A soul, yet sanctifies those thoughts which feel

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Eternity a spirit's home to be,
And time mere exile, which the man endures.

So worshipp'd, and so sad!—Oh, were not hopes
Destroy'd, the moral landscape Devils love
To witness, idols of this world might win
My pity for their portion. How deceived
And how deceiving, is the race they run!
The King and Hero, Bard and Sage, with all
Who in the storehouse of departed time
Have heap'd such treasure, as great deeds and words
Beget, what bright delusions have they been!

To fancied Edens of poetic bloom
On wings of sentiment can Genius roam,
And meditate on worldless Things, whence comes
A glorious panting for a purer State,
Than Adam saw, when Earth's anointed Priest
In purity, his life was incense breath'd to God.
But, martyrs to unhealthy thought abound,
Who out of earthly elements have sought
A happiness to reap whose soil is heaven,
And, failing, sunk to profitless despair.
Thus Learning, Luxury, and laurell'd Fame,
Vain phantoms, what a worship have they won!
The first, a shallow excellence; the next,
A malady of brutish growth, debased
And most debasing, turning soul to sense
Till nature seems unspirited; the last,
Magnificent betrayer! while afar
Beheld, the crown of heaven itself seems thine;
But when attain'd, how oft a brilliant Lie
Whose lustre was but hollowness conceal'd!
Oh! many an eye that in the glow of youth
Hath brighten'd, as it gazed on pictured worth,
Or linger'd round those everlasting shrines
Where tombs have tongues, and monuments are speech,
Where great inheritors of Glory rest,—
Hath wept the laurels that it once adored!

The atmosphere which circleth gifted minds
Is from a deep intensity derived,—
An element of thought, where feelings shape
Themselves to fancies,—an electric world
Too exquisitely framed for common life,
Which they of coarser metal cannot dream.
And hence, those fascinating powers of soul
That robe the heavens with beauty, and create
Romance which makes reality untrue,
Upon the rack of quick excitement live;
Their joy the essence of an agony,
And that, the throbbing of the fires within!

And thus, while Fame's heart-echoing clarions ring,
The voice and visions of ideal renown
In one vile whisper may be overwhelm'd.
Made mighty by its littleness, a word
Of Envy drowns the thunder which delight
Hath voiced! so oft the phantom of a cloud
In single darkness cowering on the air,
Looks fiercer for the frownless heaven around!
So Fame is murder'd, that the dull may live;
Or, to Herself grows false; then hideous dreams
And tomb-like shadows thicken round the mind,
Till, plunging into dread infinity,
It rides upon the billows which Despair
Hath summon'd from the stormy gloom of thought.
Dark victim! thus so ruinously famed,
What misery haunts thy smile of happiness!
Beneath the mountain of thy vast renown
There lives a mortal, unendow'd by aught
That Learning, Luxury, or Fame can yield,
And yet a Crœsus in his store of joy
With thine compared; the man whom sullied earth
Enslaves not, on whose soul the Truth hath smiled—
Truth which I loathe, but Hell cannot destroy!

A model first, and then the captive made
Of desolating Rome, the classic Isles
Of ancient Greece, beside yon full-waved sea
Laugh in the bright unbreathing air of noon.
Antiquity reigns here; see! on her throne
Of Athos, whence the giant-shadow sweeps,
As new alighted from a cloud she stands,
Waving her wand triumphant o'er her scenes;—
To hoar Parnassus, where the fabled spring
Of Castaly still flows; and time-awed wilds,
And mountain-pass, and Marathonian plain,
To every haunt heroic feet have trod
Her wand is pointed,—till the Past untombs
Her treasure; Athens is revived again;
The slave-isles hurl their shackles o'er the sea,
And Greece awakes to glorify the world!

Surpassing Clime! though man thy charms profane,
Nature bedecks thee with a bridal robe.
When moon-tints tremble on the Adrian-waves,
What sea so beautiful! what sun so bright,
So ravishingly deck'd with golden beams
As thine unequall'd orb!—And still yon skies
Are canopies of crystal; rich-leaf'd flowers
Ope radiant as the fairy wings of birds,
And fruit and tree wave luscious in the wind.

Again, thou upstart World, thy doom behold!
Where Valour with the sword of freedom fell'd
Her myriads down, like grass before the scythe;
Where Art and Science in perfection reign'd,

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And Sculpture miracles of grace achieved;
Where Eloquence her spirit volley'd forth
In words that palsied Empires with their sound,
As shakes a forest in the deep-toned storm!
Where Poetry, by stirring passion bred,
From Feeling's heart responsive numbers drew,
While heavenly Wisdom to the soaring eye
Of sages half reveal'd her perfect form,—
There in that Land, surpassingly endow'd
With all that beauty wealth and art bestow,
Corruption in her darkest spirit dwells.
Then learn, Adorers of Athenian gods,
Learn, at the tomb of Glory laid in dust,
How human passions wither while they sway;
The Curse is living!—think of my revenge!

Northward of Greece, behold illustrious Gaul,
Britannia's rival, gaily doth outspread
Her scenery, and blooming flush of life.
She, too, hath beauty; and her sun-warm hills,
Which bare their bosoms to the mellowing sky,
With vine and fruitage, bountifully glow;
While rivers of romance, by wood and vale,
And bord'ring town, their sparkling waters lead.
Young, fresh, and gay, elastic as the breeze,
All spring and sunshine, her full spirit bounds;
Here vanity is virtue: out of hearts
Which seem to echo but what woman loves
A waking valour, prompt to dare, and proud
To die. And yet, true nobleness of mind
Is faintly seen; sincerity, too harsh
To please, is polish'd into courtly lies,—
The frothy incense of a faithless soul.

Once France and Freedom were a mingled name;
And now, when all their wrathful clouds are roll'd
Away, the shadows which they cast endure,
Clothing the soul of memory with fear.
Her Revolution, who that saw forgets,
Or who that felt, and does not feel?—The storm
Which makes a midnight of affrighted day,
Is weak, to that rebellion of despair
When buried passions, like an earthquake burst
From out an injured Nation's heart. And such
Was thine, afflicted France! the far-off Thrones
Of tyrants stagger'd, distant Empires quail'd
When, like th' embodied spirit of thy wrongs,
Dread Revolution darken'd on the world,
Ringing a peal that echoed Europe round
And died in thunder o'er th' Atlantic deep!
But thou wert too unholy to be free,
Too grasping to be great; and when thy thirst
For havoc brutalised the scene of blood,
As though re-action for all human wrong
Were centred in it for one dire revenge,
A madness fired thee; and thy human fiends
Rivall'd their lord in blasphemy and blood!

Bounding with gladness, by yon castled banks
Roll the green waters of the glorious Rhine
In fullness and in freedom, swelling on
For ever. There, amid some minds which hold
Each hallow'd creed by dreading Hell abhorr'd,
While Men to “Ego” germanise their God
Dark Speculation does my brain-work well
In many a school, where reeling heads grow wild
And godless! Hence, all moral basis fails
Wherein the judgment can alone repose
Secure and solid; while the eye of faith
Is darken'd, sacred conscience half extinct,
And doubts, refracting heaven's unbroken light
From Scripture, make the Man himself untrue,—
In reasoning pride irrationally lost!
Free though they look, my slaves all sceptics are;
Through mental fogs, or pantheistic gloom,
Blindly they grope their miserable way
And make confusion more confounded still:
Then, all is chaos, and the Spirit mine!—
Love, Faith and Law, a trinity of powers
Which shape the will, or sanctify the heart
For heaven, my human miniatures disdain:
Not grace for discipline, but truth for thought
Proud worshippers of Indecision love
Like mental antichrists: till God becomes
Impersonal, a Problem for the soul
To scan—mere Principle, and nothing more!
Hence, German thought a German Christ evokes
From misty depths, to speculation dear
Because unfathom'd. Now, my reign begins:
Let darkness be, where Deity said, light!
Till creedless mind call God an inward Myth
Of man's creation; and thus will sceptics prove
The incarnations of that Lie first-born
In Eden utter'd, when I whisper'd,—doubt,
Renounce Jehovah and thyself believe!

Fronting the wave-environ'd shore of France,
And bulwark'd with her everlasting main
O'er which the guardian-cliffs sublimely lower,
Like palaces of stern defence, behold
The Isle-queen!—every billow sounds her fame!
The Ocean is her proud triumphal car
Whereon she rideth; and the rolling waves
The vassals which secure her victory;
Alone, and matchless in her sceptred might
She dares the world. The spirit of the brave
Burns in her; laws are liberty; and kings
Wear crowns which glitter with a people's love;
And while the magna-charta of their rights
Is guarded, royalty is kept secure;
But let the cause of Liberty be wrong'd,—
The throne is shaken! patriot-voices rise,
And, prompt as billows by the tyrant-gale
Excited, loud and haughty is their roar!

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Heaven-favour'd Land! where fitful climates reign,
And home-life from the ever-clouded skies
A bliss concenter'd more than France enjoys,—
Of mountain-pomp, and poetry of hills,
Though other climates boast, in thee supreme
A pastoral grace and gentleness abound;
Here all which quiet feeling love, or charms
The sweet sobriety of tender thought,
Is thine; a heaven whose beautiful, is change;
Or sunshine tinged by unreposing clouds,
That make bright landscapes when they blush abroad;
The dingle grey, and wooded copse; with hut
And hamlet, nestling in some bosky vale;
And spires brown-peeping o'er the ancient elms,
And steepled cities, faint and far away,
With all that bird and meadow, brook and gale
Impart,—commingle for romantic eyes
Which catch the sentiment thy scenes inspire.

But Ocean is thy glory: and methinks
Some musing wanderer by the shore I see,
Weaving his island-fancies.—Round him rock
And cliff, whose grey trees mutter to the wind,
And streams down-rushing with a torrent ire:
The sky seems craggy, with her cloud-piles hung,
Deep-mass'd, as though avenging thunder lay
And darken'd in its dream of havoc there.
Before him, Ocean, yelling in the blast,
Wild as the death-wail of a drowning host:
The surges,—let them each a tempest roll,
Or lash their fury into living foam,
Yon war-ship shall outbrave them all! her sails
Resent the winds, and their remorseless beat;
And when she ventures the abyss of waves,
Remounts, expands her wings, and then—away!
Proud as an eagle dashing through the clouds.

And well, brave scion of the empress-Isle,
Thy spirit mingles with the mighty scene,
Hailing thy Country on her ocean-throne.
But she hath dread atonements to complete,
And burning tears to shed. Thy lofty dreams
O England! may be humbled yet; behold!
Thy curse is coming;—mark! for in thine own
Great heart the darkness of rebellion breeds,
And frowns of Heaven hang awful o'er thy doom!

And now, the World before my view hath pass'd,
With multitudinous array of pomp
And power, of Kingdom, Plain, and Desert rude,
Of Oceans, garnish'd with their glitt'ring isles,
And the vast heaven which o'er-arches all!
How crime and havoc in dread union leagued
The fortunes of this fated earth have changed!
The present still is echo to the past;
Of both the future will an echo prove;
A rise and fall,—a fall and rise—the doom
Of men and empires thus gone ages tell.

And what of this proud Age, whose wings unfold
In bright expansion? Is she Wisdom's child?
From the dark catalogue of sin and shame
Is aught erased? Are passions more subdued,
The virtues laurell'd, and the vices dead?
The same in spirit doth the earth exist?
If so, then, Time, I hail thee! and the Curse
Shall multiply; new thrones and dynasties
May come, but Desolation shall foredoom
Their fate, though haughty be the aspect worn.
And as among the myriads who have lived
On earth, not many have our thrones regain'd,
So from the myriads yet to be reveal'd
In life and suff'rance, few shall face the heat
Of trial scathless; few shall overcome
The world, or win the crown apostles wear.

But lo! the day declines; and to his couch
The Sun is wheeling. What a world of pomp
The heavens put on in homage to his power!
Romance hath never hung a richer sky,—
Or sea of sunshine, o'er whose yellow deep
Triumphal barks of beauteous foam career,
As though the clouds held festival, to hail
Their god of glory to his western home.
And now the earth seems mirror'd on the skies!
While lakes and valleys, drown'd in dewy light,
And rich delusions, dazzlingly array'd,
Form, float, and die, in all their phantom-joy.
At length the Sun is throned; but from his face
A flush of beauty o'er creation flows,
Then faints to paleness, for the Day hath sunk
Beneath the waters, dash'd with ruby dyes,
And Twilight in her nun-like meekness comes:
The air is fragrant with the soul of flowers,
The breeze comes panting like a child at play,
While birds, day-worn, are couch'd in leafy rest,
And calm as clouds the sunken billows sleep:
The dimness of a dream o'er nature steals,
Yet hallows it; a hush'd enchantment reigns;
The mountains to a mass of mellowing shade
Are turn'd, and stand like temples of the Night:
While field and forest, fading into gloom,

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Depart, and rivers whisper sounds of fear;
A dying pause, as if th' Almighty moved
In shadow o'er His works, hath solemnised
The world!

But that hath ceased; the herald-stars,
In timid lustre twinkling into life,
Advance; and, faint as music's rising swell,
The moon is rounding as she dawns. Fair orb!
The sentimental child of earth will say,
The sun glares like a warrior o'er his plain
Of morning sky; but thou, so wan and meek,
Appear'st a maiden of romance, who walks
In placid sorrow, beautifully pale.
Behold thy power! on tree and meadow falls
The loveliness of thine arraying smile.
How silverly the sleeping air is robed
Around me! Clouds above, like plats of snow
Which linger on the hills, and laugh the sun
Away with their white beauty, yet remain;
And now they vanish, and the soundless heaven
Forms one deep cope of azure, where the stars,
Bright pilgrims voyaging an unwaved sea,
Are strewn, and sparkle with incessant rays
Of mystery and meaning. Yet not heaven,
When islanded with all those lustrous worlds,
Nor cradled Ocean with the waves uproll'd,
Nor moonlight weaving forth its pallid shroud,
Is so enchanting as that stillness felt,
And living with luxurious spell, through all,—
Silent as though a sound had never been;
Or, angels o'er her slumber spread their wings,
And breathed a sabbath into Nature's soul.

No wonder moonlight made idolaters,
That their Creator in creation merged
As one surpassing Whole: for even I,
I who have look'd with archangelic love
On all the beauty and the blaze of heaven,—
E'en I, the burning of my soul can feel
Allay'd, when nature grows so near divine.
And man, when passionless and pure awhile
Amid the trances of unbreathing night
With adoration in his eye and heart,
He walks abroad, and measures at a gaze
The starr'd immensity above, becomes
Sublime; a shade of his primeval Soul
Returns upon him; chaste as e'er it fell
Heaven-ward the prayer-winged heart of faith ascends,
Beholding Angels in excess of light,
And joining in their chorus round The Throne!
Sublime, but impotent, he then appears:
The Fathomless, oh, who shall fathom? Time,
Eternity, and Truth,—those awful Three
That make the mystery God alone resolves.

BOOK III.

“On man, on nature, and on human life,
Musing in solitude.”
Wordsworth.

And such the nature of this noble world!
Magnificence and beauty, pomp and might
Supremely glorify God's earth for man,
The beatings of whose heart are heard in Heaven.
The chant of seas, the jubilee of winds
In forests heard, or playing their free wings
Till the glad air is one abounding swell
Of joy; Mortality's mysterious life
And motion; and the thrilling tones of mind
Which sound so awful on the sleepless ear
Of Angels, watching like pure sentinels
O'er human hearts,—such fearful stir of things
In viewless worlds might well an echo wake.
And may not he, the monarch of the scene,
Be crown'd with glory, when he champions Time,
Proclaiming what a vassal he hath been,
And how great Nature hath his charm obey'd!
The Elements—he made them servile powers,
Or mix'd their spirit with his own; the Rocks
Uprear'd—he scaled them to the clouds;
The Ocean, thunder'd with her dreadful waves,—
He braved them, and they bore him like a god!
Yea, more; in haunts where desolation nursed
The midnight Tempest howling for his prey,
There hath the City piled her myriad domes;
And Life her human scenery unroll'd.

So vast his triumph o'er the varied range
Of elemental being; but the soul
For its omnipotence is most revered;
How darkly-wild, how grandly undefined!
Now sunk in dreams of unethereal bliss,
Now glowing, gasping for infinity!
Of Senses, inlet to unnumber'd joys
And pains, all exquisitely toned and true;
Of Feelings, wrapp'd as life-nerves round the heart
Which throbs obedient to their lightning-call:
And Passions, gods or demons as they rule,—
Humanity may boast beyond decay:
While Thought,—eternity is not too deep
To fathom! she can sweep immensity,
Creating worlds, and soaring on the wings
Of awe, till, drooping like a weary bird,
She drop in wonder to the earth again.

With god-like attributes, ethereal powers
Developed as the living soul directs,
What grand perfections, then, hath Earth produced!
Proud of his being, hear some child of clay:—

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“A Monarch holding empires in his grasp,
Is great; Philosophers who fathom depths
Of mystery, and plunge their minds in gloom,
That ages may grow brighter, are sublime:
And Genius, when by inspiration wing'd,
How gloriously the heaven of thought she mounts,
Fronting Jehovah with undaunted eye
As eagles gaze undazzled on the sun!—
Then, may She not the crowning laurel wear,
The purest of perfections?”—Further yet;
Methinks I'm challenged to admire a man
Adorn'd with meekness, graced by holy love,
And in the noiseless vale of humble life
Content, and charitably good; whose name
Is nobly register'd in realms divine,
Though unrenown'd below,—for men forget
Th' obscure in earth are oft the famed in heav'n.

These proud examples of terrestrial worth
Oft deify man's nature, and exalt
His dignity to such a seeming height
Of inward greatness, that it spurns away
The dimming memory of a primal fall,
And magnifies him to his first estate
Of glory. What am I, then, if this earth
By sin be all unblasted? Not a Shape
Of woe, the prey of agonising fires,
But Seraph, with his raiments roll'd in light
The hierarchal prince of heav'n!—If Man
Be undegraded, Hell is but a sound
Of falsehood, dwelling in the soul of fear.
Yet, judge them by their greatness, what are men?
Of imperfection is true wisdom born,
And vaunting knowledge, ignorance confess'd.
The Unknown, when reveal'd, is not the new;
It was, before his mental vision saw,
And soar'd into a certainty; when seen,
The blindness of the past is proved, and Earth
May wonder, but she might be humble, too.

There are, who feel true glory but a ray
Of triumph over imperfection shed,—
Which looks the darker when the gleam is o'er—
When night hath deepen'd, and the massy earth
Lies cover'd with cathedral-gloom, abroad
Some starry Watcher roams, and 'mid the far
Array of planetary worlds, like Saints
In bright procession marching to the Throne
Of their Creator, spreads his wandering soul,
Till in the contemplated God absorb'd
The Man is nothing, and his wisdom, dust!

Nor dare he boast, as if perfection crown'd
His being, who can most himself unearth;
And from immortal beauty of the mind
Reflect the imagery of heav'n around;—
E'en he, whose gratitude in sunshine hails
The smiles from God's own countenance reveal'd,
Which flutter round his soul like fairy notes
Of music melting into magic there,—
Yes! he is boastless; though he soar sloft
Till Fancy, awe-struck, wait with folded wing
Before the blaze of Deity!—for dark
To him the meanness of this sin-worn earth,
When, breaking from a cloud of holy thought
Wherein he dreamt, and high communion held
With visions of a viewless world,—again
He hears the rolling waves of life, and sees
The gloom and turmoil of created things.

But if beneath the brightness of the soul
A shadow of degraded nature sleep,
To make it humble, then how far removed
From primal virtue are the men whom Vice
Imbrutes with her foul spirit! Well, indeed,
Hath Hell with Heaven divided empire won;
How widely, let the watching Angels speak!
Who frequent shudder with regretful awe
When gazing down the wild abyss within
To view the passion-waves which billow there,
The gloom, the stir, and tempest of the mind!
To such, the blackness of the Past is known!—
Within whose bosom lies entomb'd a mass
Of crime, by sinful myriads heap'd:—the Curse
Lies buried with it, till the trumpet-blast
Be sounded and the sleep of Ages burst
For retribution; then will wrath awake,
And I, the doubted One, shall stand reveal'd!

And what a burden of unheeded sin
Upon the death of each departing hour
Is borne into eternity! the Past
Was roughen'd into storms of savage guilt:
The present, with a milder aspect tempts
The judgment; 'tis a most polluted calm!
Beneath it, in their soul-corrupting power
The fest'ring tides of passion act and live;
And when they burst o'er all prudential banks
To riot in the public view of man,
Then, Evil! thou indeed art god confess'd.
Oh! it is laughter which allays our pangs
To see these clay-born Upstarts, who were framed
To re-erect our fallen Thrones,—amerced
Of favour, all their glory dimm'd and marr'd,
And they, contented at the car of Vice
To follow, fetter'd by the chains of hell!

First in my train of ministers behold
Assuming Pride, who lifts her lofty eye
To Heaven, as though in scorn of its dread height;
And when She bends it to the earth, surveys
All creatures but to dwarf them in a glance
Of stern comparison. But nobler far,

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Appears Ambition, whose prophetic voice
So fired my own proud nature, that it dared
Jehovah's thunders in full roar to face!
In all my tempters there is no such power,
Such mingling of the demon and the god
As that which in Ambition dwells. The soul
Of Virtue, by her hallowing spirit touch'd
May emulate bright seraphs, with a love
Divine, through this dark pilgrimage; but rare
On earth is such sublime ambition found,
Or seldom would she waft a soul to me!
She haunts the lowliness of life; there, shapes
Her phantoms wild, or glittering delights.
But oftener she assumes a warrior-mien
To make a hero; stirs him with the sight
Of banners flouting a defiance; plains
And battle-hills with throbbing echoes rung:
He rides a charger in victorious dreams
And wakes a Hero!—let him gash the World!

Ambition prompts that Genius in the mind,
Which mortals on a throne of Magic seat,
Most heavenly-bright, without a shade of earth,
Her nature a nobility! the great
She magnifies, the mean she can exalt,
Lend virtue majesty, on vice a veil,
The all-adored,—creation for Her charm!
Enrapt, and raised beyond the clouds of sense,
And all which coarse reality perceives,
She wanders forth, and views the budding morn
Freshen the pale sky, like that infantine glow
Which o'er the cheek of waking Beauty steals;
And night,—the paradise of dreams expands
Before her, when that sacred darkness smiles
Unutterably glorious!—not a sound
Abroad; the moon, an isle of loveliness;
The stars hung beautiful, as all new-born
And lavish of their lustre; She can dream
Her spirit roaming some elysian Orb
Deep in the luxury and bloom of heaven.
All sights and sounds bring meanings to Her mind;
The seas are mirrors of Almightiness;
And winds, like terrible magicians reign
And master ocean with a wizard spell.
Whate'er is vision'd, she can make her own,
Shaping the world to an enchanted sphere!

Yet Genius oft is mad ambition's wing
In shining motion flutter'd o'er mankind.
Alone, she cannot conquer Virtue's height,
Nor bask in her Elysium; for the Heart
One single virtue wins a prouder claim
Of eminence, than mighty Genius wears
In deepest glory:—while that peerless race,
Anointed demi-gods whom Fame adores,
Are blinded into self-idolatry,
Some unobtrusive child of Woe, through want
And anguish doom'd to meet his aidless lot,
Hath pour'd his spirit into fervent prayer,
And clung so faithful to the cross of Christ
That he is famous in the rolls of Heav'n,
Where lies a Mansion waiting for his soul;—
A withering, but eternal truth, to me!

Next Avarice and Envy, meaner powers
Of evil, aid me while I weave the chains
Which bind the captives of Corruption down.
The first, a boundless feeling: more or less
A second nature to the human mind
Whose self-love is the life of thought and deed;
But in some bosoms kindling all its fire,
And rendering man a hideous slave of self;
Till the bright universe and all it boasts
Becomes a Nothing, when apart survey'd
From what it ministers to gain and gold!
Mean wretch! the more he gets, the less he gives;
For ever greedy, as the hunger'd shark
Which scents the dead among the waves afar.
Nature is nought to him; the darken'd soul
Hath dimm'd his eye,—it glitters but for gold,
And that will gladden his departing hour!
For what so grateful to the clammy touch
Of dying fingers, as to feel his gold,
While, sighing o'er it with a farewell-gaze
He mourns the nothing of the wealthless tomb!

But though in such abasement I exult,
There is an excellence which daunts my gaze
With blighting glory; such is virtue's ray;
It trembles brightly through the gloom of hell
And though 'tis hated, must be there admired!—
How nobly different lives that Son of earth
Whose heart is large enough to hold the world!
Benevolence is life and breath to him;
He spreads it out like sunshine from the soul,
Itself its own reward. Whate'er he views
Can waken sympathy; the clouds and streams,
The meadows, trees, and family of flowers,
For each and all as livingly endow'd
He feels a beauteous love, but gives to Man
The throbs and throes of sympathy divine.
For buried grief, and those retiring pangs
Which prey unutter'd on the gentle mind,
He hath a healing word; and from the joys
That shoot and sparkle o'er the stream of life
Who fetches out the flash of bliss, like he?
A hoary parent clasping his brave boy,
With eyes all running o'er with ecstasy;
A sweet and fairy-featured Infant, sat
In laughing beauty on its mother's knee,
That rocks it into rapture; or a pair
Of lovers, looking in each other's eyes
As though the lustre of unclouded years
Were in them, beaming with prophetic glow,—

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O'er these, and every sun-burst of delight,
Benevolence can wave her angel-wings
And find in sympathy the soul of joy.

To pay me for such pure excess of good
Why, who art Thou with eye of dead-like gaze
And care-worn aspect, on thy haggard cheek,
The seal of woe, and stamp of agony?—
Fiend of the heart, on man inflicting Hell,
And Envy is thy name! though often crown'd
For Emulation, by thy martyr'd slave;
But she, proud Spirit! walks a nobler sphere:
And when, amid the madness of the storm
When skies are rack'd asunder, and the sea
Lies rolling in the rapture of its strength,
She longs, to be the queen of Elements
Sublimely o'er a thousand tempests throned;
Or views, the starry natures, till her own
Seems panting to be bright and pure as they;
Or, fired by dreams of intellectual fame,
Hath gazed on Glory till her eyes are dim,—
A generous and god-like Thing appears.
But Thou art unredeem'd! a burning mass
Of self-made misery, tortured by the curse
Roll'd back in vengeance on thy horrid Self,
Though breathed for others with malignant scorn.
Merit is misery to envious eyes,
That look themselves to anguish, when they mark
Some high-born quality of soul or mind
They cannot rival;—yet their very hate
Most cruelly a false perfection gives
To that pure excellence they long to crush,
Conceal, or wither: thus the secret worm
Can gnaw the spirit to its vital core!
And hence, that scowling eloquence of eye:
While Beauty, with her fairiness of form,
And looks of light, like those by angels cast;
Or Wisdom, laurell'd with unfading wreath
Well earn'd, and woven round an aching head
Where thoughts have throbb'd like pulses in the brain,
Each beat a torture!—likewise Youth and Joy,
Two smiling phantoms on the wings of time,
Are blasting spectacles to envious hearts.

Thus envy images the pang of hell!
In secret preying with its vulture-tooth,
Or haply easing its infernal rage
In deeds of horror, whose unslumb'ring guilt
Is vengeance:—how it haunts the craven wretch!
By writhing hell-flames o'er his tortured sleep,
And building oft the gallows which he dreads!
What though he shroud his spirit with a veil
Of outward gladness, artificial smiles
Are smiles of agony; and when alone
By some rude shore, where sullen waters roll
Like gloomy fancies through a guilty mind;
Or, doom'd to hear the sobbing of the wind,
The melancholy drip of midnight-rain,
And death-tales, faintly knell'd from far-off towers,
The calm is burst, the buried thoughts arise
With ghastly violence from their fell tomb;
The spirit storms with anguish, and Despair
Feels half the hell it shudders to foresee!

Far wider, and more deadly in his reign,
Is Lust; the malady of souls impure
That fills the senses with lascivious fire,
O'erheats the fancy, and to dalliant thought
Presents all beauty moulded but for shame.
And such is passion, when by truth survey'd,
Anatomised, and seen! Yet lewd-soul'd men
Romantically vile, decoy the hearts
Of virtue, and disease them by a word
Whose smoothness hides the shame its meaning hath.
Foul passion is the poetry of vice
And beautifies corruption. Hence the mind
That would have loath'd its undisguised attempt
Enchanted by delusion, locks its eyes
In fatal slumber, till the veil is torn,
And all the terrors of remorse begin!

Yet Hell cannot deny on earth there glows
A spirit scarcely weaken'd by the fall,—
The soul of feeling, and the sun of life,
Queen of the Passions, all-persuasive Love:—
And could they with the bliss of man commune
Fiends would be charm'd by pure affection's smile!

Ethereal essence, interfused through life,
Is Love. In orbs of Glory spirits live
On such perfection; and on earth it feeds
And quickens all things with a soul-like ray:
The beautiful in its most beauteous sense;
And symbolised by Nature, in her play
Of harmonies,—her forms, her hues, and sounds:
In each, connexion aptitude and grace
Reside. Thus, flow'rs in their infantile bloom
Of sympathy; the bend of trees and boughs;
The chime of waters, and caress of winds,—
Betoken that they all partake a sense
Of that sweet principle which rules the world.
And yet, though Love a human seraph be
When pure and blest, by circumstance deform'd
It turns a Demon, in the heart enthroned,
That drains the life-blood out of Virtue's breast!
For many, gentle as their wishes once,
When Love smiled round them with prophetic ray,
With hearts by disappointment torn and rent

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And spirits blasted with the blight of wrong,
Are driven onward through a wild'ring course,
Untemper'd and untamed. So flows the stream,
Which ever nurseth its delicious calm,
Till wrung by nature into torrent-force
And foaming reckless through the wild!

And Thou,
The Star of home, who in thy gentleness
On the harsh nature of usurping man
Benign enchantment beautifully shedd'st,
Soft as a dew-fall from the brow of eve
Or veiling moonlight on the tempest thrown,—
Woman! when love has wreck'd thy trusting heart,
What port remains to shelter Thee! Too fond
And o'er-intense thy truthful nature is,
Save for the heart's idolatry and dream;
And then, to virtue's path thy love allures:—
It dawns, and withering passions die away;
Low raptures fade, pure feelings blossom forth,
And that which Wisdom's philosophic beam
Could never from the wintry soul awake,
By love is smiled into celestial birth!
So love is wisdom with a sweeter name.

But love attracts not Me!—I cannot love;
For curses are the essence of each thought
As writhes my spirit on a rack of fire.
Oh, Vengeance! ere I heard thy thunders roll,
With what delight I roam'd Heaven's bowers among,
With kindred Angels, and elysian Shapes,
Amid revealings of seraphic love!—
But here, in low-sphered earth, a shadow dwells
Of its divinity. In virgin youth
When feelings are as foster'd buds of joy
And freshness, from the spring of soul within,
While the full gush of tenderness awakes
Like spirit-music in the mind,—the heart
For love is made, and owns its magic true.
And now, earth wears the attributes of heaven!
Two hearts are one, two natures are transform'd
Each into each by sympathy of soul;
What words in looks! what love in every tone!
Moonlight, and azure sleep of cloudless air,
Eve-walks, their mildness and romantic hush,
How beautiful for lovers' placid vows!
Then love, Enthusiast! ere the drossy world
Corrupt thee; soon shall sorrow dash thy lot
With bitterness; the spell shall then unwind,
And Evil woo thee to her envious arms.
Love is the revel of a summer-ray,
The shadow of a heaven-sent dream; once gone,
'Tis gone for ever! darkness shall invade
Thy spirit, and the green delights of youth
Drop witheringly into barren age,
When love remains a memory and a tear.

Next, Jealousy, the curse of tainted love,
Or causeless agony, by selfish thought
Endured, a minister of Evil makes:
Who haunts unseen some haggard spot, to hear
The night-air panting with a rueful swell,
Like sadness from a loaded bosom heaved.
Her victim!—she hath blister'd his fond heart
And through his veins a fiery venom pour'd;
His mind is torture, and that torture, hell!
The world is changed, corrupted, false; and cold
As autumn when the bleakest rain-dews fall,
To his delightless gaze. For damning proof
All shades of accident cohere; he storms
And doubts,—despairs and doubts again,—then tames
His wild suspicion into sullen calm,
Dark as the stillness of a thunder-cloud.

And what of her, so fatally beloved?
Still beautiful and fair; but on each charm
The profanation of some fancied Eye
Hath dwelt, which haunts him like a hideous gaze!
Thus Jealousy the mind gangrenes, till thoughts
Feed on his soul like agonising fire
And wither him to madness!—oh, how oft
He wakes, and watches the suspected One,
When from her soul the light of slumber breaks,
As though it dreamt of sunshine and of flowers!
But dreams it thus for him!—To-morrow comes
And Jealousy renews her rack again.

“This world how fleeting and how vain! Our joys
Are blossoms torn by each tyrannic wind;
Our pleasures, but the painted dreams of air;
Our hopes, they light us onward to the tomb!”
Morality, how musical thy tones
Upon the lip of smooth Hypocrisy!

And such a strain, how sweetly does it lull
The idiot-ears of undiscerning men,
Who see in words a shadow of pure deeds
And think the tongue the heart translates. The world
Is rank with hypocrites!—a coward-race
Of such ignoble vileness, that they shame
Temptation, though they track its hellward path.
Who bravely dares the censure of mankind,
Pays dear for Vice, but reaps her value too,
In full and free enjoyment: but the Slave
Of hidden sin is ever Torture's fool,
Proving his own avenger. Many seem
The mantles which adorn your hypocrite!
Behold him now, a most unruffled man
Smoother than waters sleeping in the sun,

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To common gazers,—now, a courteous Shape
All delicately civil! full of words
Well rounded into gracious compliments;
Or else, benevolently mad, with purse
In hand; Misfortune, dip thy finger there!
Neglected Want! for you it opens wide;
And, oh! ye soft-lipp'd dealers in applause,
Resound the dews of mercy as they fall,
And crown him famous, Charity's own child!
But why?—it pays a penalty for sin
And bribes the Conscience, while it gilds a name.

Then mark yon Hypocrite of pious mould,
For ever putting on unearthly moods
And looking lectures with his awful eyes.
A sun-like centre of religious zeal,
So pure, he would be better than the best!
True virtue is a heavenliness of mind
That, in the mercy of a mild reproof,
Sheds healing sympathy o'er human woe.
But he is cold, uncharitably good;
Dealing the thunder-bolts of sacred Wrath
With apostolic vengeance.—Mighty heaven,
What lip-work are his pharisaic prayers!
And like a sepulchre among the young
Or gay, when, clouded with an envious gloom
While death and judgment threaten from his brow,
He comes where youth and innocence embrace
To talk of Time and Change,—how gaping tombs
Their dead await to sleep in darkness here;
Or sternly paints some portraiture of sin,—
But feels himself the model whence he drew!

There is another and a fearful slave
I love to train—the glory of revenge;
A ruin which develops Me, and prints
The die of evil in its deepest hue
On erring souls,—The Atheist! with his creed
Of darkness, brooding o'er the sunken mind
Till Truth deny her nature; and the man
Live like a bubble dancing on the stream
Of time, which sparkles, and is seen no more,—
A Nothing with a name! But since the soul
Is effluence divine, the inward rays
Of Deity cannot be quench'd: the God
Is clouded, yet an indistinct and dread
Religion, in the cowering spirit dwells.
Since Egypt worshipp'd her material gods
Through all the pantheistic gloom of Greek
And Roman ages, Deity hath reign'd,
Though hid in fabling wisdom. Where the mind
To pure conceptions of a perfect God
Ascended not, on wings of terror raised
To see Him as he is,—the Awful One,
Who wields eternity and portions time,
Commands a deluge, or dissolves a world!—
The Passions shadow'd forth fantastic gods,
As Fear, or Wonder, or the dreaming eye
Of Pagan Luxury sensualised the soul,
And fancied heaven the heaven of each desire!

An Atheist,—he hath never faced an hour,
And not belied the name he bore. His doubt
Is darkness, from the unbelieving Will
Begot, and oft a parasite to sin
Too dear to be deserted;—for the truth
That unveils Heaven and its immortal thrones,
Uncovers Hell and awful duties, too!
Meanwhile, I flatter the surpassing fool,
And hear him challenge God to bare His brow,
Some Orb unsphere, and show Him all sublime.
He challenge Heaven! an atom against Worlds!
Why, angels and archangels, who have bow'd
Within the shadow of His Throne, and felt
The beams of an emitted glory burn
Around them, cannot comprehend His might,
Nor fathom his perfections:—what is Man!

If Nature fail, then Reason may despair.
The universe with God is stamp'd: who sees
Creation, and can no Creator view,—
To him philosophy will preach in vain:
A blinded conscience and a blasted mind
Are his; Eternity shall teach the rest!
Yet who the Summer, that bright season-queen,
Hath hail'd, beheld the march of midnight-worlds,
The Sun in glory, or the realm of Sky
When kingly Thunders in sublime array
Ride the dark chariot of the rolling clouds;
Who that hath seen terrific Ocean frown,
Or moonshine ripple o'er the rocking waves
In smiles of beauty,—all this living might
And motion, grace, and majesty of things,
Nor caught some impulse which believing heart
Might share, and crown it with a creed sublime?
A soul so dark, so miserably vile,
Is form'd to grace a burning throne below,
And teach the Devils atheistic lore!

But there are others of unheavenly hue;
A mass of creatures, by the earth beloved,
Who bear a seemly fame; caress their limbs
And senses; smile on Nature, when they please,
And walk through life, as children by a shore
Who sport, and laugh, and pluck the sandy toys
Which glitter on their path—yet sometimes pause
With thinking eye, to mark the scene august
Of ocean, like a vision, heaving wild:—
Too mean for virtue, too polite for vice,
The happy medium which their spirits keep
Is fitly toned to temporal joys:—they live
As though Hereafter were this life prolong'd,
And drown all instincts of diviner growth

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In plots and plans whereby the hours are wing'd.—
Lo! one is fearful of the traitorous Winds
Wafting a sailing palace o'er the deep;
What fancy-shipwreck overwhelms the soul!
What billows ever rocking in his brain!
Another hath some mountainous ascent
Of Life to vanquish, where a rival stands
And triumphs o'er him with a mocking gaze:
Though Angels whisper to his heart, return!
Still must he onward up to Glory climb.
Then comes your Zealot! weeping Country's wounds;
And yet, with what a yell of pleased delight,
As screams the vulture round his future prey
His fancy revels o'er a ruin'd land!
And thus, protected by his patriot name,
He lives on vileness which his tongue creates.

And such are these, who make the middle class
Of creatures, wedded to the dust they tread,
But doom'd to wrestle with contrasted lots
And Life's predestined woes. There droops a man,—
Poetic sadness in his pensive eye,
As haunting tombs, or scenes beyond the dead!
And here, a victim of tempestuous thought,
Wolf-eyed, and glaring out his wilder'd mind
In glances lit with-torture!—while, to mock
Their meaner anguish, see a soulless Thing
Appear, whose spirit bubbles out in song:
And such is life,—a paradox at best!

Here dwells my power; in living things which grasp
The spirit, or that blind it with a glare
Reflected from bright scenes of earthly pomp
That curtain up eternity. No truths
Divine, no energies which pant for heaven,
In the cold depths of carnal spirit play;
But he who from his soul the sensual chain
Uncoils, and looks into Life's holier things,
Wears attributes beyond the reach of Hell.
Then, Time is no enchanter, though his cup
May sparkle, and with brimming sweets be crown'd:
The shadows of that far mysterious World
Faith images, o'er time and scene prevail,
And gather round him like a guardian-spell.

Not such the earth-adoring million prove.
When this world dies, the next begins to live!
With fearful sternness on the inward eye
It flashes, till the daunted mind start back
Aghast, like Fancy from a hideous dream!
At that deep hour, when dwindling to a blank
Dim Earth departs; and those dear sounds of life
Which once prevail'd so eloquently sweet,
Grow faint and dismal, as the dreary voice
Of waters gurgling round a drowning man,—
The solemn meanings of the past are known.
What prophet spake in every funeral knell!
How oft the hearse-train, stealing through the rush
Of sounding pathways with a spectral glide,
The vision of a dying moment gave!
And he, the victim of unvalued hours
As home he went from halls of festive glare,
The moon, night-weary, and the sallow dawn
In sickly lustre o'er the Orient spread—
How oft the nothingness of life he felt,
And dream'd the tragedy Death suffers now!

But these are moods unwelcomed and unloved,
The sad intrusion of a sober thought,
A cloud pass'd o'er the summer of his mind,
And laugh'd away in lightness, or in joy.—
The dead, the faded and forgotten dead!
The progeny of Ages, who have breathed
That breath of life which all the living breathe,
Have walk'd beneath the same blue sky, and hail'd
The Lord of brightness which illumes their path,
Inherited the same mysterious dust,
And form'd like them a link in nature's chain,—
Have shrunk away, like shadows into gloom,
And who laments them? They, the fair and young,
In the prime bloom of spousal years, who seem'd
Too beautiful to die; and Fame's proud race
Of Heroes, o'er whose bier a Nation wept;
With all that number multiplied can dream
Of mindless creatures dancing round their tombs,
And mocking at eternity!—are plunged
And buried in the unremember'd past,
Yet, few dare meditate their dying hour!
Oh! did the living but the dead recal,
As often as the dead the living do,
The Sun would gaze upon a purer world
Than now;—but let the dead remain the dead!
Thus Pleasure teach thou my philosophy;
Thy truths are sweet, thy curses all conceal'd!

Never may Wisdom's heaven-communing eye
To these, the earthly and the low, reveal
That sounds of Folly pierce the gloom of hell;
That tongues of Torture syllable their names
In regions where inflamèd whirlwinds roar!
Back,—back to this forsaken Orb of life
Fain would a perish'd Father come, to dart
One glance upon an unbelieving child,
To breathe one sigh of warning round his soul!—
May never men of whisp'ring Angels learn
How heaven is brighten'd when the earth adores.

349

BOOK IV.

------“We gather honey from the weed,
And make a Moral of the devil himself.”
Shakespere.

So weak and yet so wonderful; so frail
In act, and yet so splendidly endow'd
For action, are the race of Men abhorr'd,
That, view them in whatever rank they move,
Through fields of Glory which the warrior treads,
Or in proud realms of wisdom, fame, or power,
An awful distance from their primal State
Th' Inheritors of our scorn'd heaven have stray'd!
No longer now the bright and palmy Sons
Of God, but giants of iniquity,
Or Anakims of intellectual vice,
And helmeted with sin, the rebels stand,
Who fight against the Lord of life and death,
And make their crimes immortal as themselves!

That primal State!—had evil not prevail'd,
A heaven in miniature this world had been.
Her paradise! I see it as it rose
In youthful splendour on my savage eye!
A starry jubilee still rang; the wings
Angelical of many a hovering Shape
Still hung and glitter'd on the virgin air,
Which seem'd one atmosphere of melody!
As yet, no cloud was born; the sunshine fed
The flowers with beauty, till the twilight dew;
Birds exquisite, with dazzling plumage clad,
And butterflies, bright creatures, rich as they,
Like showers of blossoms from a tree upwhirl'd,
On starry wing hung trembling in the breeze,
More glorious yet!—from Eden's mount I gazed,
The emerald bloom of whose untrodden hills
Lay jewell'd o'er with amaranthine flowers,
And saw two Creatures of celestial mould.
Till these were made, companionless the World
Appear'd; and like a heart suspended lay,
All throbbing for the Vision that should dawn!
And they were fashion'd,—breathing shapes of life,
With radiant limbs, whose robes were innocence,
And eyes that spoke the birth-place of the Soul!
Again the star-chimed Hallelujahs rang
With wonder! while a gush of rapture thrill'd
Creation to her centre, till each breeze
Was gladness murmur'd out of Nature's heart!

And thus they rose,—that new-created Pair,
In loveliness complete, with forms of light,
Reflecting glory wheresoe'er they moved.
The one did mark the blue immensity
Above, with a majestic gaze, and eyed
The Sun, as though he felt himself akin
To his pre-eminence, and kingly state:
The other, in her fair perfection seem'd
A Shape apparell'd by her own pure smiles,—
Surpassing beauty, and subduing love!
While ever as she moved, the blush of flowers
O'erveil'd her, and a breezy host of sounds,
Like magic birds, embosom'd in the air
In sweet attendance caroll'd round her path:
Never hath young romance, or shaping dream,
Divined the vision which in Eden lay,—
Each sound was music, and each sight a heaven!

Oh! it was glory, that with blighting rays
Flash'd in fell triumph on these envious eyes,
Thus to behold the darlings bright of heaven,
Created, form'd to fill our Seats above!
Obedient, and they vanquish'd me; my doom
Of darkness would have set, without one gleam
Of vengeance for the living pangs I feel.
I plotted,—tempted,—and the earth-born sunk
From heaven's embrace into the arms of hell,
Henceforward to enclasp a world of souls!
Then, what a withering the Elements
Of life and being felt!—corruption pass'd
Through human into natural Things: the Earth
Was barren-struck; the guilt-abhorring Sun
His beams withdrew; the rivers howl'd with dread,
And deep the blast of desolation blew:
A curse came down, and Eden was no more!

And now, from his primeval state dethroned,
His very form o'ershadow'd by the sin
That, like a breath-stain on a mirror cast,
The beauty of his god-like mien eclipsed—
I look'd on Man, a remnant of despair,
But gloried as I gazed!—for then, the tongue,
That tameless member which o'ermastereth all,
E'en in an atmosphere of God himself
That grand deceit of erring souls began,—
Where guilt is flatter'd, and the heart secure!

Creation shudder'd! for mankind were lost,
Till God the seal of mystery should break
In him foredoom'd to bruise the Serpent's head,
And re-awake the hymns of Paradise.
Meanwhile, the Evil triumph'd o'er the Good:
And, exiled from their Eden-home, begirt
And guarded with an ever-living flame,
Two fallen Creatures on the race of life
In sorrowing loneliness appear'd. Time lash'd
His years along; but evil with them moved,

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Till Death in fratricidal fury came!—
How Life hung shudd'ring o'er his glazing eye
When pale, and dash'd with many a bloody hue,
The prostrate Abel in the gasp of death
Lay stretch'd; while Cain, a maniac child of Hell
With lines of anguish working on his face,
Stood by, and knew himself th' embodied Curse!

Crime revell'd on, the peopled earth sank deep
In ruin, till the great Avenger woke;
Then came a Flood, a desolating tide,
Which deluged sixteen hundred years of sin!
Methinks I hear it now! so fiercely howl'd
The waves and whirlwinds of that dreadful hour.—
Dark prodigies, disasters in the sky,
Announced it; yet these heralds were contemn'd:
Still Blasphemy went hooting at the heavens,
And mock'd the Elements with impious joy.
The sun went down in sorrow; and the moon
Rose pale and icy, as an orb congeal'd;
While, ever and anon, there came a sigh
Of Air, so spiritually deep and sad,
It seem'd to issue from an Angel-heart
That ached to look upon a dying World,
Unconscious of her coming pangs:—thus Hell
Prevail'd, save o'er the sacred few. And one
The wicked counsell'd, glorious, and as good;
A hoary Patriarch, who would haunt the shore,
And hear a prophet speaking in the wind,
And prescient terror in the sound of waves,
Like mystery, mutter'd into Nature's ear;
Then darkly muse on some high-gazing rock,
And shape out Immortality!—But when
The skies were blacken'd to a cloudy sea,
Whose rage came down in cataracts, Despair!
The racking universe was all thine own.

And never were such horrid shadows frown'd
Upon the Waters, as thy victims threw,
When all aghast, in their avenging ire
They heard them ravenously sweep along,
As roaring for their human prey! Such sounds
Of wo, such shrieks of madness never rang,
Such eyes were never to a God upturn'd,
As mark'd this dread, unutterable hour!
A palpitation in the womb of Earth
Began, then upward burst a buried sea,
That whirl'd the mountains on her waves, and heaved
The rocks, and shook the rooted hills abroad,
Till darkness and a deluge cover'd All!—
Save that which in the wilderness of waves
Triumphant o'er a weltering chaos rode,
And bore aloft the burden of the world!

Yes! these were dread catastrophes of old,
Loading with awfulness the tongue of Time;
Unparagon'd as yet: but 'tis decreed,
Another Day of unimagined doom
Shall come, a deluge of devouring fire
That now is redd'ning in the cavern-depths
Which eye hath pierced not, ravenous for the hour
When Earth shall wither into shapeless air!
And I,—no matter! mortal years remain,
And souls for ruin, ere my sun can set!

So fierce the sway of evil, and the power
Of will, o'er reason and religion's voice,
That though a thousand deluges had been,
Still the vile earth my sceptre should command.
The teeming volume of the Past unroll,
And from each page what lesson may be cull'd?
A moral justice sways the course of Things,
Guiding them on to their eternal goal.
From evil, evil, and from good, a good
Is born, each one a payment in itself,
Its own avenger, or its own reward.
I thank thee, Passion! blinded by desire
Thou seest it not through every track which years
Have furrow'd on the travell'd sea of Time.
By tears of torture, wrung from out the soul
Of penitence; by arrows of remorse;
The inward hell in guilty bosoms found;
By retributions in the wrathful shape
Of elements, and dangers wing'd by death;
By frenzied Glory, that will venture on
Till dash'd to ruin by her own renown;
By each and all of such avengers Crime
Hath paid atonement to the Law of Life,
And agonised o'er that which is to come.

E'en Nature, in her elemental round
Of living wonders, a re-action shows,
In semblance to the moral law reveal'd
By human destinies. The poise of worlds
Which make infinity a beauteous thought;
The Ocean, panting as the tide-queen wills,
In ebb and flow of everlasting waves;
And that communion of the earth and sky
By heat exhaling water into clouds,
And clouds returning in the showery rain—
All teach a balance of prevailing power.
But thou, Reviver of departed days!
By whom, as beacon-light for time unborn
The past might well have risen, hast forgot
The law of retribution in thy love
Of fame, and adoration to the dead.

351

A War awakes!—what poetry is here
For History to picture into life
And splendour, making infamy sublime!
The armies rally,—vast machines of Mind
Half demonised, with one concent'ring heart
To animate and harmonise the whole;
The clarions ring, the banners chafe the breeze,
Earth trembles to the haughty-footed steeds,
And cannons thunder till the clouds are thrill'd!
Then comes your “Hero” sprinkled with a shower
Of blood,—how gloriously sublime he seems!
Yet Kingdoms mourn, and trodden myriads lie
All dead, and stiff'ning in the moonless air.

But, should re-action for heroic crime,
Or lavish conquest, smite a tyrant soul,
A human vengeance not a Hand Supreme,
Is traced; and retribution reason'd down,
As though life circled on the wheels of Chance!
Thus, when a Despot, weary of renown,
In sorrow to a throneless gloom descends,
How History flutters round his agonies!
And so the living, who the dead recall,
Are written into sympathy with shame;
While they, whose words are wisdom to the pure,
Rise dimly vision'd on th' historic page,
Where infamy in glowing language lives.

Thus may it ever be! let ages gone,
Whence monuments, by sad experience piled,
Might o'er unheedful days a warning frown,
Like buried lumber in oblivion sleep;
Experience is the sternest foe of hell.
And though progression be the native soul
Of all things, human or divine, while Pride
Can hear no prophets breathing through the past,
Progression will be lame, and Nature slow
In her advancement to that heaven-like scene,
Prophetic rapture in its vision hail'd;
While frequently, an earthquake-shock will come,
Forcing the world a century back again
In vice and darkness, sucn as once o'erthrew
The Roman empire and her subject-isles.

Upon the forehead of these fearless times
I know the haughtiness which now exults:
But let the modern in his pride beware!
Corruption is the strongest in the best,
And knowledge wasted, worse than ignorance proved.
A moral, not an intellectual life
Alone, however rich with mental bloom,
God's Image in the human soul reveals:
And so taught He, that co-eternal One
On high, when leaving his Elysian throne,
He templed his bright Nature in the dust
Of dim Mortality, and unbarr'd heaven
Whose gates of glory now expanded shine.
Philosophy, benighted in the gloom
Of Pagan wisdom, fondly charming oft
The shade and silence of Athenian groves,
How failing in her eagle flights!—To clear
The clouded intellect was her prime aim:
The heart, that fountain-source of sacred life,
Rank'd second in the mental scheme for Man;
And thus, her wisdom in a weedy soil
Was sown; and perish'd in its mortal thirst
For feelings, which refresh the growing mind
As spring-dews foster the awaking flowers.

But Christianity, the child of Truth,
With searching light the inward nature clear'd,
And by a conscience, rooted in the soul,
And fears, from which unfading hopes are born,
And faculties of faith, which all possess,
Awoke the mind to wisdom, pure as heaven.
Spirit of Vengeance! would that I could hide
One living God, surpassingly supreme,
Parent of mighty worlds, pervading each,
The First and Last, Immortal, and the True;
The Son of his Eternity, from Heaven
Sent down, embodied in a human mould;
The Same upon the cross hung crucified,
Incarnadined with His redeeming blood
For fallen nature flowing, till the Earth
As in an agony did rock and heave,
While bowing angels worshipp'd in amaze,
And hell grew darker with despair!—a Life
Unending, shared by an existent soul;
A Resurrection, when the dead shall wake;
And, crowning all, the doomsday of the world;
When every eye must see Him in the clouds,
And time be swallow'd in eternity,—
Would that all this infernal hate could hide,
Which Devils own, and tremble to believe!

But thanks to man, man's most inveterate foe,
How oft, perverted, hath Religion proved
That curse she came to cancel and destroy!
By Bigotry, insatiate for the blood
Of martyrs; by the shadows and the clouds
That dream-eyed Innovation form'd and fed,—
The clash of Evil with the growth of Good
Hath half repaid me for the realm I lost,
When dawn'd salvation on the sinking world.

And now there is an animating throb,
An energy, and daringness of thought,
Awaken'd like one mighty pulse through lands
And isles, remotely set in ocean-gloom.

352

But if the Heart uncultivated lie
Amid the reign of intellectual power,—
Though, basking in the sunshine of her hope,
Philosophy of perfect minds may dream,
She builds a vision, baseless, proud, and vain,
As ever revell'd on the eye of sleep!
For o'er the heart a vicious mind shall rule,
And poison each aspiring germ of thought,
Till Talent prove but wickedness inspired,
In baneful glory towering o'er mankind:
So be it!—Hell shall blaze a bright applause.

No, not till spirit over sense prevail,
And mortals to the awfulness of life
Advance, shall Earth a brighter visage wear.
And such, methinks, Creation might reveal.—
A Sea, for ever sounding with his voice
Of billows, “Might and majesty are here,
And in eternity my waves have roll'd;”
And Sky of living glory, when the storm
Lies back with fury on a sea of clouds,
Or, arch'd in beauty, shadowless and blue:
With all the wonders, swarming on each spot
Of being—hint they not an awful shade
Of Mystery unreveal'd, yet claiming thoughts
Of solemn hue? And then, while hours depart,
(Myriads of spirits passing to and fro
From life and light, to darkness and the grave,
While feelings, words, and deeds, whatever mind
Betray of good or bad in ceaseless pulse
Of action, register'd above, remains
For judgment,)—bear they not, as on they roll,
A burden, and a meaning most sublime?
Yet who, in nature or in time, reveres
A sense and shadow of diviner Things?

A spectacle to angels and to God
Is Man, while acting on the stage of time,—
Such truth the soul of inspiration breathed:
And what a meaning centred in the thought!
Around, above, beneath, where'er man lives
And moves, unvision'd Natures overhang
His path, and chronicle his history.
But o'er this pomp external, and the life
Of sense, such beautifying veils I throw,
That men become idolaters to sight,
Naming all else the nothingness of dreams:
A wisdom worthy an infernal crown!
Why, if a bead of water in its orb
Of motion hath contain'd a countless host
Of beings, limb'd, and full of perfect life;
If not a leaf which flutters on the tree,
But is empeopled with an insect swarm;
If not a flower by fairy sunrise charm'd,
But in the palace of its dew-drop dwell
Unnumber'd beings, that in gladness live;
Then why not, O ye self-adoring wise,
A world of spirit-natures, though unseen,
In number rivalling what creation yields?
And vacancy, that hueless void of air
Which men unanimated space define,
Be pregnant with aerial Shapes of life?

Yet better is such blindness for the cause
Of Evil; would it might eclipse the race
Entire, of all who have a soul to save!
For some can dare the prison'd mind unbar,
And view Reality behind the veil
Which mantles their mortality. And such
The pale enchantment of a moonlight-hour,
When the soft skies are fleck'd with silky clouds,
In veils of beauty floating on the breath
Of heaven, and stars in pensive light appear
The bright mementos of eternity,—
For high communion with celestial Things
Employ: such spirits never in their clay
Are dungeon'd; but in demi-paradise
Do wander, reaping holiness and love.—
And Guilt too hath her hour, when Spectres come
Array'd in fury, till the air grow dark
With demon-wings, and terror shrieks my name!

But this deep sense of something Unavow'd
Pervading nature, which the purer mind
May in some beauteous trance of holy thought
Perceive, and which the ghastliness of guilt
Oft tortures into life,—o'er few prevails:
In vain have heaven-taught Seers a coming World
Foreshadow'd: visions of unearthly blaze,
And princely Seraphs over empires throned,
And Dreams which were the delegates of God,—
Of such vast wonders deep-voiced Prophets tell.
And now, in riper days, when men have crown'd
Themselves with false perfection, not an hour
But hints a spirit-nature to the soul,
Howe'er unhallow'd! Whence that prescient sense
Of peril doom'd to come? those guiding thoughts
Which helm the fancy with mysterious sway?
The heaven of feeling when a God descends?
Or mystic sorrow, which melodious strains
Wherein the spirits of the dead revive
And home and childhood have a pictured life,

353

Oft o'er the heart of lone Bereavement brings?
Or, all which sound and scenery suggest
Of purity and grace?—The scoffer doubts!
And by that sneer his inner-light destroys.
Yet Angels are there, watching o'er mankind
With tenderness and eyes of heavenly love.
The same who, when the World-awakening trump
Is sounded, shall the buried dead untomb
For Judgment, and its awful throne sustain.

These Agencies divine, howe'er men veil
Their viewless presence mid the thrilling cares
Below, are often in their glorious range
Of wisdom, by the plotting Evil-powers
Encounter'd, with defiance and despair!
Visions of sunshine and of music made,
Where the bright soul, entranced with melody,
Communes with Seraph-watchers, are of heaven.
But whence that fancy-roll of billows, heard
In darkness, deluging the wilder'd brain
With hideous murmur? or those formless Things
Which hang and blacken o'er the shudd'ring frame?
Or whence that tongueless blasphemy of mind
Making the heart to shiver, and the eye
To gaze behind, as though a prompting Shape
Of Evil stood there, muttering hell-framed words?
The fire, the fury of appalling dreams,
Whence is it?—rend the veil, and ye would know
Proud victims of an unbelieving heart!
That such are demon-haunters of the earth,
Who horrify the vision'd world of sleep,
And pall its midnight with infernal gloom.

Who wonders, the dark Mysteries of life
And hidden Beings of unearthly power
Are smiled away for superstitious creed,
When He, the Ransomer of lost mankind,
Whose Name a starry herald to the sage
Reveal'd, and at Whose birth the heavens were bowed,
To millions less than many a Hero seems,—
A Myth incarnate priests and fools adore!

A Saviour, Son of the Most High, enthroned
Amid the hallelujahs of the blest,
I saw Him ere the universe began;
When space was worldless, luminously fill'd
With emanations of vast Deity;
I saw Him when immensity His voice
Obey'd, and nothing startled into worlds.
And did I not, be witness, Powers below!
Bear on my brow the lightnings which He wreak'd,
Because I would not to His Godhead bend?
Without Him, and this withered Earth had sunk
To hell, for ever blasted by that word
Of vengeance, which her frowning Maker spoke,
Who cannot His eternal nature change:
Immutable in majesty, in truth,
Or else His Infinite would finite be;
And therefore, by His attributes, the Law
When broken, should to violated heaven
Atonement offer;—where the Sacrifice?
Till God for God, and Man for Man, appear'd
In wondrous union of incarnate power,
Hung on the cross, and saved the guilty world!

I hate Him, and his everlasting cause,
The Church, upon the rock of ages rear'd,
His word, His truth, and heaven-directing sway;
And soul by soul, and heart by heart, through light
And gloom, by land and isle, through life and death,
'Mid all the legions of embattled Powers
Who on His Ministry attend, and war
For holiness—my hate shall dare Him still;
Though Truth may vanquish, and the viewless thrones
Of Darkness tremble with their last despair!

Too deep the vengeance of atoning Blood
On me shall come, for Him to be forgot!
I hate Him, for the ruin'd world he saved:
And yet His glorious pilgrimage confess.
Sublime of Martyrs! in that dread career
What wonders hallow His remember'd way!
The blind awaken'd to the bliss of light,
The deaf and lame, the dying and the dead,
All yielding up infirmity to Him,
And putting on young attributes of life.
Vain mortals, read and tremble! Once the Sea,
That god and glory of the Elements,
Obey'd His fiat, when a tempest rose,
Till the huge waves like living mountains leapt
In the wild majesty of midnight-storm,
Mocking the haggard lightnings as they streak'd
The waters, in the fury of their flash.
Each billow was a tempest; and the ship

354

Groan'd like a mariner at his last gasp;
Up rose He in almightiness! and bade
The whirlwinds into silence, and rebuked
The Ocean, calm'd by His resistless Eye!

And then, His Passion!—that tremendous scene
When God incarnate for the guilty bled,
While throbbing earth seem'd echo'd with His pangs
Almighty, and eclipsing horrors veil'd
The sun, which darken'd while its Maker died;
Or else, the midnight over Calv'ry's mount
Incumbent, coward fancy should have seen!
Have heard the cloven rock-piles as they burst,
The tombs unlock, and mark'd the solemn dead
In pallid stillness gliding through the town
As moon-clouds gleam along a midnight sky!

This grand array of miracles, this might
And majesty of preternatural things
Reveal'd in mercy, to arouse the world
To perfect sanctities of word and deed,
Have,—hear it, Demons! with exulting shout,
Fail'd! Long may Nature turn a slighting ear
To that true voice, which since Messiah bled,
By lips Divine and eloquence of life,
When, holiness the Christian heart inspires,
Hath testified that Virtue is the heaven
Begun, and vice the seed of Hell in man.

Delusion is the soul of young desire.
Behold a Vessel which has never braved
A sea: before her gallant bosom swells
A blue extent of ever-bounding waves,
All sunny-crested, glowing like the noon.
No stormy menace in the welkin frowns,
Sea, shore, and sky are in one mingled calm;
Loud, deep, and full the voice of welcome rings,
Away she flies in glory o'er the deep
Exulting in the wind!—And such is Youth,
So bright the promise of life's onward way;
Beneath the sunshine of fond hope awhile
The victim basks; drinks deep of every cup
Enchanted, feasts the faculty of sense,
And hails each hour the herald of new joy;
Thus on! as though unfading bliss were found,
Till weariness awake; the wing of joy
No longer o'er his soul a freshness waves,
And like the moody air he often breathes
A sigh of sullenness around his path.
And now, the verdure of delight no more,
The heart uneasy, and the soul unsaved,
With that dark fever of condemning thought,
Which conscience frets from out the sated mind,
As here the brute, and there the man, prevails,—
Behold your slave of pleasure rot from year
To year; obeying sin, yet feeling guilt;
His present, darkness, and his past, despair!

Of finer mould and far sublimer view,
Whate'er his lot, on Fortune's envied mount
High-throned, or lost in the secluded vales
Of lowliness,—is he whose hopes are built
In heaven; the hateful, but triumphant still!
Not all the pomp and pageantry of worlds
Such glory on the Eye Supreme reflect,
As the meek virtues of one holy man:
For ever doth his Angel from the face
Divine, beatitude and wisdom draw:
And in his prayer, what privilege enjoy'd!
Mounting the heavens, and claiming audience there,—
Yes! there, amid the sempiternal host
Of Seraphs, hymning in eternal choir,
A lip of clay its orisons can send,
In temple or in solitude outbreathed.

I loathe the bright, the beautiful, and good,
By man when mirror'd forth sublimely fair;
Yet how, the hero of the Cross deny
What Hell may hate,—but hating, still admire?
One universal love, the source and end
Of true philosophy, within such heart
Must dwell, and make the atmosphere of mind
All sympathy, wherein a good man breathes:—
A tear for sorrow, and a smile for joy,
Are ever his; and thus existence spans
A wider realm than the self-loving fill,
Who crawl about their own mean world. Not man
Alone, the empire of his heart contains
In its free compass of embracing thought;
E'en gentle nature wins a share of love;
From the frail being of a lonely flower
By earth forgot, in beautiful ascent
Up to the very clouds, which in the shine
Of heaven seem bathing with voluptuous joy,
And here I face the triumph of a soul
In such fine overflow of sympathy,—
However spread, 'tis unpolluted still:
As sunshine in its beaming intercourse
With earth, shines pure upon corrupted clay.

Then, Virtue hath a loveliness, a calm
So fresh and full, a blessing and a hope,
With such elysium of contented thought,—
Rejoice I may, but ever wonder more
To see her so forsaken. Her delights
Endure as rich above the hectic joys
The wicked and the worldly reap, as hues
Of nature on the rose-bright cheek of youth
Outbloom the artificial blush of age,
And blossom in the wintry gloom of life

355

Unfadingly sincere.—Another source
Of heaven, there opens on the virtuous mind,
Which daunts me with a deep excess of good,—
Pure sympathy, which makes the Past its own
By following where the great and glorious dead
Traced the true path which terminates in God.
Art, Love, and Wisdom, Nature and her scenes.
Each from association prompting force derives.
When in the coolness of declining day
As o'er autumnal woods brown evening falls,
In haunts where solitude hath breathed a soul,—
By Thought companion'd, oft the wanderer feels
Such sympathy, the while of good and great
He thinks, who loved like him the lonely hour,
Still walks, and dreams, and meditative joy.
And that prime bliss, perfection of delight,
Which is to ear what beauty is to thought,
Sweet melody,—methinks 'tis only framed
To nourish heavenliness, in hallow'd minds;
There, how refreshingly must music flow,
And faint into the soul,—as dewy sleep
Melts o'er the eyelids of a weary man.

These holy yet another triumph crowns.
In woes which blacken o'er the brightest lot
How loftily above the bad they tower!
While those whom faith, nor resignation calms
Become a ruin, haunted by despair;
Save, when gay thoughts from gloomy moments spring,
As bright-leaved flowers that in the sunshine bloom,
From the chill damp of earth and darkness sprung.

And such the life which virtue seems to boast;
With gladness lighted, or by sorrow dimm'd,
Still wearing a contented smile, to meet
The great Approver: like a placid stream
That in its meadowy pilgrimage can wear
The aspect of a pure and gentle thing
Alike where sun-beams laugh, or shadows frown.—
And when the summons to a future State
Is heard, those hell-black phantoms of despair,
Those clouds of horror which the wicked dread,
Melt in the brightness of a better world:
Thus, arm'd with faith in Him who vanquish'd death,
A gentle summons from their Lord to meet
The angels bright and beatific souls
Who erst have battled in the war of life,—
Death comes, and wafts them to the waiting Skies.

And such is truth!—in heaven and hell the same.
And Hate herself in agony avows,
That Virtue is triumphant, and the best:
Her glories are my tortures; but they shine
Upon me, blasting with victorious light
The envy which I bear them, when I scan
The mazes of mortality.—How kind
In men, to aid the darkness which I bring
On fallen nature! lauding what I love,
And hating all which Fiends abhor. Thus vice
In splendour will appear, while virtue droops,
Like a long shadow pining in the sun.
And never shall the good the bad exceed,
While Sin can put enchantment in her smile,
And Passions are the tyrants of the soul!

Thou dread Avenger! ever-living One!
Lone Arbiter! Eternal, Vast, and True;
The Soul and Centre of created things,
In atoms or in worlds; before Whose Throne
The universe recoils; who look'st—and life
Appears; who frown'st—and life hath pass'd away!
Thou God!—I feel Thine everlasting curse,
Yet wither not: the lightnings of Thy wrath
Burn in my spirit, yet it shall endure
Unblasted, that which cannot be extinct!

Thou sole Transcendency, and deep Abyss
From whence the Infinite of Life was drawn!
Unutter'd is Thy nature; to Thyself
Alone the comprehended God Thou art.
Though once the steep of Thine almightiness
My tow'ring spirit would have dared to climb
And reign'd beside Thee, god with God enthroned,
And vanquish'd fell, Thy glories Fiends confess.
Immutable! omnipotence is Thine;
Perfections, Powers, and Attributes unnamed,
Attend Thee; Thou art All, and oh, how great
That Consummation! Worlds to listening worlds
Repeat it; angels and archangels veil
Their wings, and shine more glorious at the sound:
Thus, infinite and fathomless Thou wert,
And art, and wilt be. In Thine awful blaze
Of majesty, amid empyreal pomp
Chief Hierarch, I once irradiant knelt
Thy Throne before, terrifically bright,
And heard the hymning thunders voice thy name,
While bow'd the Heavens, and echoed Deity!

356

Then heaved a dark and dreadless swell of pride
Within me! an ambition, huge and high
Enough to overshadow the Supreme,
In bright magnificence before me tower'd,
And fronted pride against Omnipotence!
Thus rose the anarchy of mystic war
The skies amid; then met embattled Hosts
In unimaginable arms divine:—
But why recount it? Spirits disarray'd
God hurl'd in flaming whirlwinds to the deep
Tartarean, where the Demons wait their doom.

And yet, divided empire have I won.
Behold! the havoc in Thy beauteous world:
And have I not, be witness, space and time!
Thy master-piece, creation's god of clay,
Dethroned from that high excellence he held
When first man walk'd a shadow of Thyself!
Prostration vile, an alienate from Thee
Man is;—and shall his fallen nature rise,
Enter bright heaven, and fill ethereal thrones?
Many a cloud of evil shall be burst
Ere that day come: severe and dread the strife
Of earth-born passion with the soul of man!
Wherever localised, whate'er his creed,
Fiends of temptation shall his soul beset,
Though every pang, by sin produced, increase
The agonised eternity I bear!
The blackest midnight to the brightest day
Is not more opposite, than I to Thee:
Thou art the Glorious, I the Evil one;
Thou reign'st above; my kingdom is below;
On earth, 'tis Thine to succour and adorn
The soul, through sacraments of secret grace,
By thoughts divine, and agencies direct;
To cheer the gentle, and reward the good,
And o'er the many waves and woes of life
To pour the sunshine of almighty love:
'Tis mine to darken, wither, and destroy,
And in destruction see the heaven of hell!

Then roll thee on, thou high and haughty World!
Still be thy sun as bright, thy sea as loud
In her sublimity, thy floods and winds
As potent, and thy lording Elements
As vast in their mysterious range of power,
As each and all have ever been: build thrones
And empires, heap the mountain of thy crimes,
Be mean or mighty, wise or worthless still,—
Yet I am with thee! and my power shall reign
Until the trumpet of thy doom be heard,
Thine ocean vanish'd, and thy heavens no more!
Till Thou be tenantless, a welt'ring mass
Of fire, a dying and dissolving World!
And then, Thy hidden lightnings are unsheath'd,
O God! the thunders of despair shall roll;
Mine hour is come, and I am wreck'd of all—
All save eternity, and that is mine!

BOOK V.

“This royal throne of Kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars—
England!”

How gloriously the festal chimes resound
Their pealing gladness through the azure night,
And thrill the air with jubilee and joy!—
As though the triumph of ten thousand hearts
In full-voiced chorus shook the starry heaven,
And made it conscious music! Now they swell
Aloft, in one excited wave of sound;
Then, faintly die, like war-notes on the wind,
Rousing the empire with a brave delight.

England hath laid her sceptre on the Deep,
And, with her thunder, chased her ocean-foes
Like leaves before the breathing of a blast!
England hath rear'd her banners on the plain
Of battle; victory waved them; and the world
Again shall echo with her haughty name.
And hence, a stormy rapture shakes the isle;
Hence the loud music of her steepled fanes,
Whether in cities emulously tower'd
Among the skies, or in lone hamlets seen,—
Still pouring out the language of the land;
With all those pageantries, and fiery pomps,
That hang and glitter from her window'd piles
Emblazed with mottoes, and triumphal scenes.

Not one, to whom the name of country sounds
Like heaven-born music, but this hour adores.
The old men feel the sunshine of far youth
Returning, fresh as when the hero glow'd.
The young,—lip, eye, and daring heart, are stirr'd;
Their very blood seems rippled with delight,
So deep the fulness of this warlike joy.
Yea, hollow cheeks of Sadness, and the brows
Of Poverty, and lean-faced Want itself,
Forget their nature in a share of fame!
And yet, most hideous are some human shapes
Which revel near me, by a tow'ring blaze
Of triumph;—as it flings its glaring life
Upon their faces, each one gleams beneath
The mockery, like a ruin'd shrine when noon
In bright derision dances o'er the walls.

Let Fancy to a distance wing her flight,
And learn the glory whence this scene is born.
How Sorrow treads upon the heels of Joy!

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What puts a smile on some great Empire's cheek,
Hath wrung the life-blood from another's heart;
While one is revelling with impassion'd glee
Another moans like misery's bleakest child:
Thus seems the world a round of joy and wo,
Alike divided for the doom of things.

Hither, thou frantic Bacchanal! whose voice
Rings loudest, stand upon the hoof-scared heath,
And say if Heaven on such a scene can smile!
Here, deep as in thine own exulting land,
Night reigns; but not with noon-like azure crown'd,
While sympathetic stars, all gaily bright,
Look down on gladness: but with sullen calm
Where moans the conscious wind, and pensive stars
Seem pale-eyed watchers o'er those trodden dead,
In tombless havoc weltering on the plain.
Each heart now cold, to other hearts was chain'd,
Whose links were out of years of fondness framed;
Each eye now darken'd with eclipsing death
Once beam'd the sun of happiness and home;
Each of the dead hath flung a shade o'er life,
Henceforth to be a living agony.—
Mark! where the moon her icy lustre flings
What dead-romance! what visions of the slain!
One, calmly-brow'd, as though his native trees
Had waved their beauty o'er his dying head;
Another, marr'd with agonising lines
And dreams of home yet lingering in his face.—
Now go, and sing the splendour of the War!
Go, tell the Mother of the brave and free,
How beautiful this patriotic shout
Of Victory, when she counts the new-made dead,
Like Madness reeling with a murd'rous joy;
So shall a war-fame flourish ever-green,
And laurell'd History be trumpet-tongued,
To fire ambition with a bloody thirst,
Which makes the world a slaughter-house for man!

And this is “glory!” such as charms these days
When godly temples every street adorn;
While Tenderness, with its bewailing lip,
At ages of barbaric gloom affects
To wonder:—how the heart its flattery weaves!
Of proud deception, or intense desire,
The victim ever in its wariest mood.
To be the bulwark of a land beloved,
And drive aggression with avenging sword
From her indignant shore, commands renown:
But say, Thou Centre of created life,
Who charter'd man, and bade Thy heavens to mile
When from his eye outlook'd the living God!
What myriads upon myriads heap'd, to fill
The circle of ambitious thought, or please
Some royal dreamer who would dash a throne
To hear his trumpets pealing through the world,—
On hill and plain, and ocean's ravening waves,
The red libation of their hearts have pour'd!
But this is kingly:—so let tyrants dream;
Nor round their pillows may one death-cry ring:
The day, when dust shall give its monarchs back,—
Methinks I see it, and the fiery glance
Of Judgment scathing many a royal soul!

But night departs, the revelry is o'er,
And nature woos me. Through the orient heaven
A dawn advances with a beauteous glow;
And now, array'd in clouds of crimson pomp
The gradual Morn comes gliding o'er the waves
Which freshen under her reflected smiles,
And veils the world with glory. Rocks and hills
Are radiantly bedeck'd; the glimm'ring woods
And plains are mantled with their greenest robe,
And night-tears glisten in her rosy beam.
But in yon valleys, where from ivied cots
Like matin incense, wreathing smoke ascends,
How exquisite the flush of life! The birds
Are wing'd for heaven, and charm the air with song,
While in the gladness of the new-born breeze
The young leaves flutter, and the flow'rets sigh
Their blending odours out. And ye, bright streams,
Like happy pilgrims, how ye rove along
By mead and bank where violets love to dwell
In solitude and stillness: all is fresh,
And gaysome. Now the peasant, with an eye
Glad as the noon-ray sparkling through a shower,
Comes forth, and carols in thy waking beam
Thou sky-god! reigning on thy throne of light.
Sure airy painters have enrich'd thy sphere
With regal pageantry; such cloudy pomps
Adorn the heavens, a poet's eye would dream
His ancient gods had all return'd again
And hung their palaces around the sun!

And this is England, bathed in morning glow:
The isle where Freedom bears a lion-mien,
The Land whose echoes thrill the earth around,
The ocean-throned; the ancient battle-famed,
The Palestine of waters! O'er her realms

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Enchantingly propitious Nature smiles;
Whose frowns and awfulness are seen afar,
Where snow-hills whiten in eternal glare,
Or soundless ocean, lock'd in icy sleep,
Deadens the polar world: but here alone
With summer hymning through the haunted vales,
'Tis beauty, bloom, and brightness all! How rich
The scented luxury of floral meads,
Reposing in the noon; where gentle winds
Exult, and many a choral brooklet sings:
Sure Admiration might be poet here!
Tall mansions, shadow'd by patrician trees,
Romantic farms, grey villages and cots,
With castled relics, and cathedral-piles
Where dreaming Solitude can muse and sigh,
Enchant dead Ages from their tombs, or hear
The dark soliloquy of ancient Time,—
Adorn the landscape and delight the view;
While haggard rocks, and heaven-aspiring hills
The sea o'ergazing, here and there create
A mountain-charm to solemnise the scene.

Or turn from Nature, in her fresh array
Of beauty, to behold the haunts of man,
In high-domed Capitals or cities huge
With varied grandeur round the island spread;
Here towers and temples overshade the streets
Where sound the life-floods in continuous roar,
And Commerce, whom the winds and waves revere,
To him whose veins are proud with English blood,
A scene suggests that bids the patriot glow.
Then Ocean,—listen, how th' intruding waves
With loud resentment trample on the shore,
Like pawing steeds, impatient for the war!

And such the magical array of things
By art and nature o'er this island strewn;
Than which, though envious clouds her sun
Conceal, and vapours curtain oft the sky,
Heaven canopies no lovelier clime. And they,
The children of her Freedom, with an air
Of kingliness they walk thy consecrated soil,
And thoughtful manhood, on their brows enthroned.
Though perfect beauty lost its moral grace
When Sin unmask'd her hideous front, and shades
Of hell rose frowning o'er this human scene,
It reigneth still; as mind though overthrown
And darken'd, yet hath gleams of glorious prime.
And here, methinks, a noble beauty dwells
These islanders among:—the daring eye,
Majestic brow, the gallant bloom of health
And dignity of their regardless mien
A power denote, which beautifies the free:
While they who move in loveliness and light,
Like memories of vanish'd paradise
Around the sternness of ungrateful man,
Have beauty such as perish'd Angels loved!

And yet, of myriads who this matchless isle
From day to day enjoy, from year to year
Environ'd with her fairest smiles, few dream
Or whence, or why, she hath the world surpass'd.
Thus hath it ever been, since time and truth
Have wrestled with that contradiction, Man!
Partaken mercies are forgotten things.
But Expectation hath a grateful heart,
Hailing the smile of promise from afar:
Enjoyment dies into ingratitude,
Till God is hidden by the boundless stores
Himself created; eyeless nature knows
Him not, for mighty Self absorbeth all!

That gulf descend where pristine ages sleep,
And lone, benighted in the savage gloom
Of her untravell'd woods and wilds, no light,
Save that of reason, struggling through a cloud
Intense,—lo! haughty-featured England lies;
An orphan region nursed amid the deep,
A fameless isle, imprison'd by the waves,
A speck upon the vasty globe. Who raised
Her littleness to lofty state? who bade
The daring majesty of Cæsar's mind
O'er her rude wilds a Roman spirit breathe,
Till, in the nursing shadow of his throne
She grew to youthful glory? Who hath been
Through perils, and volcanic bursts of war,
Earth-shaking tumult, and appalling strife
The guardian of her destinies till now,
When Ocean, wreathed around her rocky shore,
Hath lent his champion-billows to defend
Her fame, while storming at her daunted foes,
She spurns them with avenging roar?—Forth steps
The little greatness of a learned man,
And in the rapture of presuming thought
Through the dim valley of departed years
Sends down his spirit, and aloud proclaims,
The prince, the hero, and aspiring hearts
Which breathe omnipotence round mortal power,
Have made, and shall preserve us, as we stand,
The mighty and the free!—A proud response
Of hell-born feeling such as I would nurse;
And that which empires have of old indulged
Till, dizzy with renown, they reel'd away
Amid the havoc and the whirl of time.
For power and greatness are the awful twins

359

Of Destiny, whereby the earth is moved:
The first, a property of God Himself,
Which, when imparted to the soul, becomes
A curse, or blessing, in its moral sway:
The second will be judged by truthful Heaven
Convicted, or absolved. Of England's past,
When Time's dread chronicle shall be unroll'd
What glory then will clear-eyed Truth perceive?

Should I deny thee, angels would declare,
That spirits who enrich eternity
Have deck'd thine island-clay. Immortal kings,
Who sanctified their sceptres, and their thrones;
Patriots sublime, with whom hoar wisdom dwelt,
And tutor'd ages by advancing thought;
With saints and martyrs, heroes of the skies,
Approaching, shed their glory on thy name.
But paramount o'er all thy mental gods
Shakspeare and Milton, see those peerless two!
The one, a mind omnipotently dower'd,
Which multiplied itself through space and time,
Passing like nature through the soul of things!
Aloft, companion of the Sun he soars
Awhile, then travels with the moonless night,
Mounts on the wind, or marches with the sea,
And, god-like, gives the Elements a tone
Of grandeur, when his spirit walks abroad!
But Life! how well he tore thy mask away,—
The great Interpreter of man to man.
So royal are his kings, his maids so pure,
Such perfect heroes, and prudential knaves,
Such feeling smiles and unaffected tears,
So stern or sweet, so melting or sublime,—
Such life-warm substance in the vast array
Of Shapes, who live along his moving Scene,
Men deem the world were in him when he wrote,
And he the sum and soul of all mankind!

The last, who lived on earth, but thought in heaven,
Beyond compare the brightest who have scaled
The empyrean, and whose lyre might charm
The seraphim with its melodious spell,—
That sightless Bard, whose paradise of song
Hallows Britannia's isle, how deep he plunged
Into the infinite sublime of thought,
Flaming with visions of eternal glare!
How high amid the alienated Hosts
Of warring angels he could dare ascend,
Look on the lightnings of almighty wrath,
Array the thunders, and their God reveal!

These deities of earth, thy past sublime;
The birth of an immortal soul proclaim,
And show how far bright inspiration soars:
But thou, brave England! shalt for crimes be judged,
When they in awful resurrection rise
With thine own children, ere the world expires.
My Spirit hath encompass'd thee! Thy hosts
Who in the anarchy and ruffian stir
Of civil war, have won the sanguine wreath;
Thy lewd-soul'd princes, and voluptuous kings
Whose courtly halls were palaces of vice
That sensualised the land; the sins untold
Within thee nursed, and those remorseless deeds
Of vile aggression, haunting thy great name,—
Yet sully thee, and claim atoning tears.

And now reigns England in her noon of might
Secure; the future, with victorious eye
Prophetically dooming; distant Lands
Beneath her sceptre bow, and though her soul
Doth gather wisdom from her own domain,
In proud neglect of equal climes,—there spreads
No empire on the map of earth, where fame
Hath scatter'd not her mind's nobility.
Commerce,—the spirit of this guarded isle
Wherein the attributes supremely dwell
Of all which dignifies or nurtures power,—
Enthrones her on a peerless height, and works
Like inspiration through her mighty heart,
And yet, a poison at the core! To eyes,
Where avarice hath raised a blinding film
That flatters, while it bounds the view, her scenes
Array'd and glowing with commercial pomp,
More costly than the sun-enchanted skies
Appear. Triumphantly outspreads her show
Of trade and traffic round the sumptuous world!
See! from yon ports what merchant-vessels waft,
Daunting the winds, and dancing o'er the waves,
Rich wares and living burden, while the breeze
Toys with the flag, and fills the panting sail.
Others from many a tempest-haunted track
Return'd, in thunder beat their homeward way
And send their spirit wreathing on the gales.
Then hark! amid this wilderness of domes
Dark lanes, and smoke-roof'd streets, what mingled roar,
While Commerce, in her thousand shapes and moods
With eager hand and greedy eye, pursues
Her round of wonders and of gain! All arts,
All natures, and all elements are forced
To such obedience by transforming Power,
That matter quickens into living soul
And works harmonious to the will of man!

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But here, methinks, had not one hideous thirst
For lucre parch'd all pity from the mind,
The hollow cheeks and livid brow of Toil
That, lean, and yellow'd by infectious gloom,
Droops o'er his hateful task—might thrill the heart
Of Selfishness, in her most griping hour.
And here amid the pestilential glow
Of heated chambers, where in sad revenge
Art flourishes o'er fading life, are pent
The infant young, and friendless orphan-poor;
They who should gambol on the golden meads,
While health the limbs, and beauty clad their cheeks,
Thus doom'd to anguish in degenerate toils!
Why, what a hell-slave will this Commerce prove,
When life and feeling perish for her cause!

Already hath an evil spell begun;
Though a proud Empire will not see, her heart
Is fever'd with a fest'ring mass of vice,
And lust of gain which rankles into lies
Deceptive, horrible, and base; while Truth
Integrity and Honour are diseased,
And die away in avaricious dreams
Of Mammon, that vile despot of the soul.
The happy meekness of contented minds
Is fretted with ambition; home and love,
The heart-links, and the brotherhood of joy
In life, and tomb-companionship in death,
Are nothing: money, God of England seems!

There is another and a nobler scene
Of triumph, for dark spirits to survey.
For knowledge,—true nobility of mind
When temper'd with a sanctifying tone,
Without it, but an ornamental curse,—
In full omnipotence is reigning now;
Yet haply, with a spirit and a power
Which breed an earthquake in the boastful heart
Of this free isle. A thunder-charged sky
When clouds float meaningly along the face
Of its dread stillness, not more threat'ning looks
Than England, bloated with ambitious minds
That dream in darkness, and await the hour
That like a storm-burst will the world arouse!
Sooner shall winds be caged, or billows hush'd,
Than pride be rooted from one human soul
By aught which man's corrective wisdom yields.
For dust with deity will dare contend,
The creature with his own Creator war
The most, where meek religion reigns the least.
To vanity a wildering charm, for vice
A weapon, to the fool a powerless gift
Is Learning.—Doth she lift her eyes to heaven,
Or downward gaze to idolise that world
Of promise, which around her seems to smile?

The soul of Intellect is spread abroad,
In whose gay flush men see flatt'ring bloom;
Yet, vain and unimpressive as the dance
Of leaf-shades, figured in the dreaming sun,
Are trivial fancies o'er a Nation's mind
For ever by inglorious spirits thrown.
As pictured Nature in the rich deceit
Of servile art, undignified appears
When with its glorious archetype compared,
So dim the genius of the living day
To that which brighten'd an heroic race
Of warriors, famous in the fields of mind;
High-soul'd and stern, they gave to time unborn
The heirship of their fame; but venal smiles
Which low accordance with the bounded view
Of spirits levell'd to the dust, procures,
Were spurn'd away in their immortal taste
For Truth, and her transcendent cause:—how few
Dare emulate these godlike of the past;
Renown immediate, from the vassal lip
Of smiling Dulness, is the dear reward
For which your intellectual pigmies grasp.
Hence, sickly woes, and sentimental lies
By passion woven to bewilder souls.—
Romantic panders! may your kingdom spread;
Let Beauty, Love, and Gentleness, and Thoughts
Which grasp eternity and heaven unveil,
Expire; but give to crime pathetic grace
And treat the world with new made decalogues!

Creator! what a triumph can we boast
When oracles which fool, or flatter; dull
Expounders of a duller creed,—those mean
Arraigners, shrouded by a saving gloom
Which wraps them in false glory, as far scenes
In darkness magnify the truth of Day;
When such as these, in life and feeling, heart
And creed, and elements of thought, can win
A base surrender from a free-born soul
Cringing, or cowering, as their wands direct!—
Why, Hell may laugh, and liberty's no more.

So awful is the sway of human mind:
For good or evil an enduring charm,
Inweaved with ages, silently it works,
Reaping uncounted spoils from deeds and words,
And thoughts, which spring like blossoms from a ray
Of influence, by some ruling Spirit cast.—
There is a stormy greatness, by the sense

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Of vulgar Apprehension hail'd, yet vain
When match'd against one all-prevailing mind.
A warrior's glory in his banner waves;
And ocean-heroes, when the tempest roars,
Outdare the winds; and echoes of renown
Roll mighty round the living head of each,
Yet ebb away to indistinct applause
By History echoed round memorial graves.

But he, who out of mind a fame erects,
In his eternity of thought will live
And flourish, till the Earth itself decays!
And what a tale would Time have told, had none
Burst through the thraldom of degrading sense,
And bade the spirit eloquently tell
Of Truth, of Beauty, and pervading Love!
The heavens they scale; the elements array
With glory; give the herb a greener hue,
The flower a fresher magic, and the stream
A melody which nature never sang;
Thus bright'ning all without by rays within
From light's great Source proceeding, they create
A second Eden, pure as sinless Adam saw.

The dark enchantment of corrupted mind
Not less prevailing in its secret course
Hath proved. For Havoc may be heal'd; and tears
And wrongs of desolated Kingdoms, cease;
But genius triumphs o'er decaying time
And taints a century with corrupting thought.
Ye prostituted Souls! when mind is judged,
How ghastly from your slumber will ye wake!
At that dread hour Perversion may not plead,
Nor Will deny, what Understanding own'd.
The wretched martyrs!—for a vain renown
From Unbelief, and her heart-blasted crew
Derived, they rouse the idiot-laugh, in clouds
Of falsehood clothe each attribute within,
Lend Infidelity a voice, the vile
Delude with flatteries such as impious ears delight,
And fashion doubts to mystify the world:
So be it! there is loud applause below!

For wealth too gasping, for a wise content
Too madly fever'd by ambitious thirst,
The moral greatness of this mighty Land
Thus charms me with a promise of decay.
Her heart is canker'd: I have roam'd unseen
Around her; lightly do her virtues weigh
Against the burden of her wickedness.—
By fortune moulded, what a countless herd
Who live to fascinate the palling hours
With pleasure, making life one masquerade!
Refinement is their heaven; and thus few crimes
Are nourish'd there; but lesser sins abound;
Revenge and spite, all vanities and hates,
The virgin whiteness of the soul deform:
Concealment is a virtue: virtue oft
Bare policy; religion but a form,
A taste most delicate for things divine!
The truth, convenience; and a lie,—the same.

And what a homage doth the tongue present
To evil! what alertness of delight
Attentive, comes it in whatever shape
The turn of accident assume; in blood,
Disaster, or some grand depravity
Where passions like heart-demons reign'd! But tears
Of charity, that language of the soul!
Some fine denial of a feeling mind,
Some noble act, or heaven-reflecting scene,
Let such be named, and weariness begins:
Nothing so dull as Virtues when admired!
Let Slander, with her false envenom'd lip,
Her aping mood, her sly assassin tone,
Appear,—and eye and ear and heart attend
To feed upon the foulness of her tongue;
Whether on crooked limb, or character
It fall; whether She waste it on a foe
Successful, or a rival far too good;
Or faintly drop it o'er a dying friend,—
Nothing so sweet as slander to the vile!

But deeper in society are bred
The vices ravening on a Nation's weal.
Philosophy! dar'st Thou confront me here?
Descend and look into degenerate life;
See deadly Vice, with brazen front, abroad,
And Murder, stalking through her savage round
Of midnight blood; see Theft her felon-hand
Uprear; and infamies of heart and tongue;
And Guilt, with godless triumph on her brow:
Mark Hell in miniature! wherever crime
Depraves, or poverty allures,—and pause;
Millennium is not come, nor Man reclaim'd!

Thus greedy, worldly, and defiled, how poor
The sum of happiness in England's heart!
Like other climes, her thousand children seek
A Shadow flying from their false embrace,
Still adding to the cheats of mocking time,
And with strange madness making life far worse
Than Adam left it. Earth indeed no more
Retains an Eden, and her richest hour
Yearns with deep longing for more glorious bliss,
Immortal as the mind itself;—yet joy
And hope, serenity without, and calm
Within, e'en here might visit gentle souls,
Who haunt the confines of a better world.
Like food to body, happiness to mind

362

Alone is healthful, when ingredients pure
Are mingled to create the charm they bring.

What numbers, on whose features the false smile
For ever plays; whose eyes, so brightly charged
With happy meaning, quicken envious fire
In other hearts; what wretches gaily-tongued,
And scattering words whence emulations spring,—
Have I beheld, whom Happiness is deem'd
With her full heaven to crown! yet where, oh where
Blind Mortals, is that priceless gem obtain'd
Which many seek, yet few in life have found?

The palace, and the parasitic host
Of minions, with that soft and sneaking race,
Who in the court of princes lie away
Existence, gasping for some golden lot,
I've mark'd:—the happy do not flourish there!
Then look'd I on a mightier Scene, where men
Draw glory from a Nation's heart, and voice
Their spirit round the listening World! How vain
And valueless this haunt of mind has proved
To all who battle for some cause adored!
Oh, England! such as Rome and Athens paid
Their architects of greatness, thou hast giv'n
To many who bequeath thee fame. There live
A host, who in the splendour of thy Great
Live, bask, and breed, like reptiles in the sun;
Who feast on venom, and infect the Land
With malice, and all miserable wounds.

Alas, Ambition! see yon gifted man
A while stand forth, surpassing and sublime:
His brow imperial; in his eye a blaze
Of meaning, pour'd from a majestic soul;
Borne on the whirlwind of triumphant thought
Through the wide universe his genius sweeps!
Thrones, Monarchies, and States,—he summons each
To strict accompt, their victories and kings
Arraigns, and bids Britannia front them all!
The Senate wonders, rapture finds a tongue,
And envy sinks abash'd to praise. But go,
Young Emulation! when this glowing scene
Hath cool'd to common life, and mark him well!
The hero is no hero here! the mean
Have tortured whom a Kingdom could not bend:
Around him, too regardful, scandal flies;
And words, like gnawing vipers, poison life
Away, or rankle in the spirit's core.—

From the proud Senate, to a sunnier realm,
Where Gaiety and her unseemly crew,
Like flowers of fancy in a hot-bed rear'd,
An artificial life enjoy,—I turn'd.
In such a sphere could happiness abide?
Where Fashion, that great harlequin of Life,
For ever plays the comedy of fools;
Where Luxury breathes a pamper'd air; where Love
Is venal; Wealth, a wearisome array;
And time, a curse,—the happy do not dwell.
A false delight, a snatch of feverish joy
And jading rounds of pleasure are supplied;
But oft the heart beats echoless to all
Though Custom wear its contradicting smile.

And the rank vileness of their pleasures vain
'Mid theatres of vice, I frequent view.
Music and Pomp their mingling spirit shed
Around me; Beauties in their cloudlike robes
Shine forth,—a scenic paradise, it glares
Intoxication through the reeling sense
Of flush'd Enjoyment. In the motley host
Three prime gradations may be rank'd; the first,
To mount upon the wings of Shakspeare's mind,
And view the flashes of Promèthean thought,
To smile and weep, to shudder, and admire,—
Attend; the second are a sensual tribe,
Convened to hear romantic harlots sing,
On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze
While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes
Through brain and spirit darts delicious fire:
The last,—a throng most pitiful! who seem
With their corroded figures, rayless glance,
And death-like struggle of decaying age,
Like painted skeletons in charnel-pomp
Set forth, to satirise the human Kind!—
How fine a prospect for demoniac view!
“Creatures, whose souls outbalance worlds, awake!”
Methinks I hear some pitying Angel cry.

Another scene, where happiness is sought!
A festive chamber, with its golden hues,
Its dream-like sounds and languishing delights.—
Since the far hour when England lay begirt
With savage darkness, how divinely raised
Art thou, Society! The polish'd mode,
The princely mien, the acquiescing smile
Of tutor'd lips, with all that beauty, love,
Accomplishment and sumptuous Art, bestow,—
Are thine; but oh, the hollowness within!
One mingled heart society should be
Of glowing words and generous feelings made,
And hallow'd by sincerity; but hark,
The whisper'd venom of invidious tongues!
The shrug of falsehood, or the sly deceit

363

Of changing looks; the drama of the eyes,
And all the pantomime Refinement acts!
From simpering youth to unregarded age
'Tis vapour, vanity, and meanness all!
Where honest nature sickens with disgust;
While school'd hypocrisy, with glozing tongue,
Performs the social serpent of the night.

From Fashion moved I to the loftier scenes
Where hosts by Learning titled, for renown
And rank more elevate than kings bestow
Their inward toil pursue,—and yet how vain!
There is a craving for some higher gift,
A thirst which fame and wisdom fail to quench
Alone; the fountain hath a deeper well.
And what is Fame? When hope, the morning-star
Of life arose, Enthusiast! thou wouldst climb
Her envied rock, to hear the lauding tones
Of grateful myriads round thee, like the glee
Of waters wafted o'er a mountain-head.
Amid the dreams of some poetic shade
Where Fancy prophesies proud years to come;
Or by some gush of beauty, or the glow
Of emulation, or by spells of mind
Perchance her music whisper'd—be thou great!
No matter: midnight-watchings, gloom and tears,
Thy heart a fever, and thy brain on fire,—
The martyrdom of thought hath won the prize;
And midmost thou, among the laurell'd tribe
A Paramount art throned! And dear to thee,
Young hero of the mind, is first renown;
Fresh, warm, and pure, as early love, ere Time
Hath nipt it with a killing blight. Awhile
In paradise thou dream'st and seem'st to hear
The hailing worship of Posterity.
But now, come down from yon celestial height!
Descend, and struggle with the heartless crew
Who out of others' tears extract their joy.
The rocky nature of ignoble minds,
Ambitious Spite, or unrelenting Hate,
'Tis thine to wrestle with; the spell unwinds,
And Glory's hollowness appears at last!

And thou, religion, hell's appalling foe,
Yet least prevailing, on whose seraph-wing
Far, far away from this benighted orb,
A spirit mounts, though many Temples shrine
Thy sanctitude, and many tongues thy charm
Repeat, how few have found thee as Thou art,
The living Saviour of mankind! What hosts
Who boast my attributes, or ape my power,
Yet carry gospels in their saintly looks!
Ye hypocrites! how often have I torn
Your veils away! how often have I seen
A midnight where the world saw only day;
Beheld a Demon, where they dreamt a God!

'Tis not the vileness of hypocrisy
From which alone a hellish harvest springs;
But that contempt which on religion frowns
When hypocrites in unmask'd truth appear:
Then Vice is comforted, and lifts Her voice
Triumphant; pleased to have a broken step
However slippery, where to stand and cry,
Thank God! my soul religion never sway'd!
Delusion vain and exquisitely vile,
How gloriously thy cheating spells can work!
For thus might Painting and her fairy scenes
Be scouted, when a daubing mimic fails;
Or Music have her seraph-voice denied
When a poor screech-owl apes a melody;
As true Religion have her heaven disown'd
Because a false professor fools the world.

Nor dwells that happiness which mortals seek,
With them, fanatically crazed or wild:
Two Orders breathe there of this graceless crew:
The one, on ecstasy profanely soar
Full in the face of Deity, and sing
And shout, with more than archangelic joy!
And yet, so earthly is excessive love,
No heathen to a sensual god e'er raved
With more lip-service of degrading rant
Than dark Fanatics, when their roar is up!
The other, sink as deep as these ascend,
And so exult in self-accusing thought,
That nought's more proud than their humility.

And this is homage for the Dread Supreme!
Who comes—and Mountains from His glory flee;
Who speaketh—and a Universe begins;
Who frowneth—and Creation is no more!
So awful, that the dazzled Angels shrink
In veil'd humility His Throne beneath;
To such these holy maniacs cry, and bid
Him bow the heavens in thunder, and appear!
Or, in the vaunting of devotion's power
Can dare to humanise their Deity;
While others, with a superstitious cloud
Array His attributes, conceal His love,
And level Mercy to their own despair.

Nor let them boast, who in the vile content
Of worldly meanness, sepulchred in Self
And worm-like clinging to their genial clay,
The wisely good and only happy deem
Their narrow lot: to such earth-loving race
The seen and felt make all their paradise;
Should Hell be vision'd,—let it burn away!
If Heaven—bombast is thunder'd in their ears!

364

When yawns the tomb, then comes the hour to pray,
When death appears, the awe of future worlds.
Most glorious! could I wither all men down
And tame them from their true immortal rank
To what these are, how demonised the earth
Would grow! all feeling curdled into self,
All nobleness of thought a dream denounced,
All bright and beautiful sensations mock'd,
The world a vortex for engulphing heart
And soul,—one living curse this Life would prove!
Were I a mortal, with capacious mind
To grasp, and heart to feel, around me strewn
Such glory, pomp, magnificence, and might
In visible array,—I'd rather live
Some free-born creature of the stately woods,
Than with the form of Man a life of brutes
Embody, beathing but of earth and sin!

Glory and Pleasure, Learning, Power, and Fame,
All Idols of deceptive sway,—mankind
Have crown'd them for the master-spells of Life;
And yet, a mocking destiny they bear.
How often dwelleth gladness in the smile
They raise, or rapture in the heaven they dream?
Unknown, unhonour'd, in the noiseless sphere
Of humbleness, one happy man I found.
It was not that the tears or toils of fate
Escaped him; or that no tempestuous grief
The stream-like current of calm life perturb'd.
But in him dwelt that true philosophy
That flings a sunshine o'er the wintriest hour.
The proud he envied not; no splendours craved,
Nor sigh'd to wear the laurels of Renown;
But look'd on Greatness with contented eye,
Then, smilingly to his meek path retired:
Thus o'er the billows of a troublous world,
As o'er the anarchy of waters moves
The seaman's bark, in safety did he ride,
His woes forgot, and left his wants to Heaven.
I wove my spell, but could not once decoy
The eyes of that contented Soul. He look'd,
When Glory woo'd him with a traitorous glare,
On the calm luxuries of humble life;
There was the Image of his own pure mind,
The peaceful sharer of his love and lot:
What beaming fulness in that tender eye,
What a bright overflow of spirit shone!
When by her cradled babe she mused, who lay
In beauty, still and warm as summer-air:
And what could camp, or court, or palace yield,
Of nobler, deeper, more exalted bliss,
Than when, as weary Daylight sunk to rest,
He shut his door upon the noisy world,
And, with no harrowing dream of guilty hue,
To stain the crystal hours of love and home,
Sat by his hearth, and bathed his soul in bliss?

But more convulsive is the life I'd see;
And few shall flourish in this homely sphere!
Excitement is my great enchanter, whence
The wisdom of the worldly fain would reap
That blissful nothing which delusion shapes;
That onward, day by day, from year to year,
Through gloom and glory mocks them to the grave!—
I thank thee, Britain! though religious call'd,
The perfect beauty of her living form
Thou hast not yet adored.—There is a sense,
A selfish, innate law of right and wrong,
Which makes a heathen moral: such is thine.

A loftier air the Christian breathes, who owns
The Alpha and the Omega of all
In life or destiny, is God alone.
Bid colour to enchant the blind; or sounds
Of melody through deafen'd ears to glide,
Or dream of sensibility in stones;
But think not, world-slaves! to imagine all
That boundless yearning for ethereal bliss,
That more than rapture of a heart redeem'd
A Christian nurseth; 'tis the heaven-wove charm
Which Devils hate, but cannot yet destroy.
Divinity is there! Two thousand Years
In glorious witness gather round mankind
Attesting it divine;—to conscience, peace;
To Ignorance, beyond what sages teach,
It gives to poverty that wealth of heaven,—
The inward quiet of a grateful mind.

To such how welcome dawns this hallow'd day,
The Sabbath! Hell perceives her darksome power
Confronted, when its smile salutes the earth;
For, like a freshness out of Eden wing'd,
A sainted influence comes: the toils and woes,
The cankering wear of ever-busy life
In spiritual oblivion smooth'd away,
On such a dawn, celestial hearts by grace
Refined, can mingle in delicious calm
Like many clouds which into one dissolve.

How mildly beautiful this blessed morn!
Thy sky all azure; not a cloud abroad;
A sunny languor in the air; the breeze
Gentle enough to fan an Angel's brow:
And thou, the Lord of beauty and of light
Enthroned, how oriently thy splendours shine
And make a loveliness where'er they fall!

365

Hark! on the stillness of the sabbath-air
From tower and steeple floats the mellow chime
Of matin-bells; and plaintively ascends
That pealing incense! up to heaven it glides,
As though it heralded creation's prayer.

And now, from England's countless homes and streets,
In motley garb, the trooping myriads come,
To kneel in Temples where their fathers knelt.
Among them, there are heaven-toned spirits found,
Hailing a sabbath as the blissful type
Of that which in eternity shall reign:
Others, whom Custom's all-resistless sway
Beguileth, in their pompous robes appear,
And use them for religion; many pine
For action, though a sacred mockery proved:—
While the loud wheels of common Life stand still,
And round it an unwholesome quiet reigns,
The show and music of the temple-pomp
May o'er the heart some fascination fling:
Yet what more weary than to worship God!

But now for Country, and her chaster scenes!
The melody of summer-winds; the wave
Of herbage in a verdant radiance clad;
And chant of trees, which languishingly bend
As gazing on their shadows, meet around
This haunt, where Loneliness and Nature smile.—
How meekly piled, how venerably graced
This hamlet-fane! by mellowing age imbrown'd,
And freckled like a rock of sea-worn hue.
No marble tombs of agonising Pomp
Are here; but turf-graves of unfading green,
Where loved and lowly generations sleep:
And o'er them many a votive sigh is heaved
From hearts which love the sacredness of tombs.

And such is thine, lone muser! by yon grave
Now lingering with a soul-expressive eye
Of sorrow. Corn-fields glowing brown, and bright
With promise, sumptuous in the noon-glare seen;
The meadows speckled with a homeward-tribe
Of village matrons, sons, and holy sires;
The hymning birds, all music as they soar;
And those loud streams so beautifully glad
With life and beauty all the landscape robe,
And yet,—one tomb-shade overclouds it all!

A churchyard! 'tis a homely word, yet full
Of feeling; and a sound which o'er the heart
Might shed religion. In the gloom of graves
I read the Curse primeval; and the Voice
That wreak'd it, seems to whisper by these tombs
Of village quiet, which around me lie,
Unmottoed, and unknown. Can Life the dead
Among be musing, nor to Me advance
The spirit of her thought? True, nature wears
No rustic mourning here: in golden play
Yon sprightly grass-flowers wave; the random breeze
Hums in the noon, or with yon froward boughs
A murmuring quarrel wakes: and yet how oft
In such a haunt the insuppressive sigh
Is heard, while feelings which may hallow years
With virtue, spring from out a minute's gloom!

Mind overcomes me here. Amid the pomp
Of monumental falsehoods, piled o'er men
Whose only worth is in their epitaphs,
I fear thee not, thou meditating One!
Infinity may blacken round thy dream
Perchance, and words inaudible thy soul
With dread prediction fill!—but worldly gauds
Entice thee; whisper'd vanities of thought
Arise, and though Life lose all glare awhile,
Ambition tints the moral of the tomb.—
'Tis not so here: pathetic eyes can dwell
On few distinctions, save of differing age;
The heart is free to ponder, and the mind
To be acquainted with itself alone.
And more development of Man is found
In such calm scene, than in the warring rush
Of life.—I watch him thus, and mark
How creed and conscience lift him up to God;
Or dark imaginings, from tombs derived,
O'erwhelm His spirit with a cold despair.

Nature begins; and in the white-roll'd shroud
The ghastly nothingness of Death appears.—
And then, a knell, Time's world-awaking tongue,
Rings in the soul, and by a new-turn'd grave
He paints a mourning vision; sees the tears
Telling of many a day's remember'd joy
Down cheeks of Anguish dropping; and can hear
The careless mutter of the broken clod
Upon his coffin echo.—Then, a dream!
The solemn dream! of where his spirit-home
May be, and what the everlasting World.
Thou mortal! ask the overarching Heavens,
The mystic wind, the ever-murmuring Deep,
And all which night and day around thee dwells:
Doth nought reply? The elements all dumb?
Then ask thy soul, there God Himself replies!

I thank thee, Man! and all those mocking scenes
Wherein such vassalage of mind abounds,

366

That thoughts of death are exiled from the heart
Of many, till the sepulchre doth yawn.
Thus aid my black deception; and become
The sole omnipotent mere sense obeys!
And ever, when thou hear'st some true divine
Of nature's teaching, a Hereafter tell,
Then, brand Him as the martyr of mistake!
Oh, think not, Worldling!—or thy soul would say
The man who hangs on every smiling hour
A coward proves to questionings of thought;
While he, who dares with an undreading eye
To fathom his own nature, in the grave
Descend, eternity's deep gates unbar,—
Unblasted can the face of God behold
And grow familiar with the World to come.

England is bless'd in all which nature lends:
No fields spread greener magic to the gaze,
No streams of purer freshness flow, no winds
In richer harmony their wings unfold,
Than hers: and though invading grandeur frown
A heartless contrast o'er some ruin'd scenes;
Though petty tyrants and domestic lords
That elevating charm have long eclipsed
Of happy peasantry, with honest hearts
For country glowing, and for God prepared,
And wither'd much by pastoral poets sang,—
Enough for homage, or refreshing thought
Doth consecrate her yet. And thus, methinks,
Sweet Country might imparadise the soul,
Where fine perceptions hold their placid sway.
Grey towers, and streets all surfeited with throngs
Of worldlings, greedy-eyed, and stale of heart,
As the dead air around them,—who should deem
Enchantment, when a lovelier world is free?
From dusky Cities, where forced nature grieves
To wear the meanness of surrounding men,
On wings of gladness might her lovers fly
To haunts divine as these. Lo! how She laughs
In sunshine, tinting with her bright romance
Hill, wood, and valley, rock, and wayward stream;—
What arch'd immensity of bending sky!
What flowery hues, what odorous delight
And, as her gales on wings of freshness come,
What ocean-mockery from th' excited trees
Is heard, in rapture echoing the winds!

Yet well for me, that Town's eventful sphere
Enchants the many more than nature can.
No sound melodious as the roar of streets;
No sky delightful as the smoke-dimm'd air
Above them, like a shrouding death-pall hung;
No joy prevailing as the selfish stir
Whilst interest, craft, or petty wants produce,
And on Life's stream those fleeting bubbles raise,
In bursting which their day-born wisdom lies.
Why, this is taste Corruption should enjoy!
She cannot fancy what she never felt.
There is an outward and an inward Eye,
Reciprocally moved; when that which sees
Within, is dimm'd, the eye of outward sense
Is darken'd too; creation wears a cloud,
And life a veil; when both are bright and free,
The world of nature and the world of man
A garment of celestial glory wear!

Both form and mind a fellow magic steal
Where the free visiting, of nature act:
As the fresh lustres of a cloudless morn
The languor of a dying eve excels,
So doth the beauty of yon country-girl
Surpass the city maiden in her charms;
The rich enamel of the rosy blood
Is painted on her cheek; and her glad eye,—
From the full joy and glory of the meads,
The freedom of the woods and waterfalls,
And the proud spirit of her village hills
Its glances come!—her step is like the breeze;
Her forehead arch'd, to face the skies; her form,
Perfection out of nature's hand; and words,
The native breathings of a happy soul.

Nor less in contrast to the bolder mien
Of city-manner, is thine artless air
Whom now a wanderer in the fields I view,
With sunshine lovingly around thee thrown.
A sweet unwillingness to be observed
Dwells in that maiden-glance; and oft away
From the bright homage of adoring eyes
In delicate timidity thou glid'st;
Like a coy stream which from fond daylight speeds
To hide its beauty in sequester'd dells.

Yet Fashion does, what Feeling would deny;
Making a charm where none is found: thus, hills
And lakes, the mountain-winds, and sea-fresh gales,
The idle from their town-retreats allure,
When fair-brow'd Spring appears. And some there live
Among them, of that undetermined race,
O'er whom the earthly and the heavenly sway
With fitful interchange, mere Epicenes
In mind. Worn by the hot and feverish stir
Of city-life, the many-mansion'd views,
Those pathways bleaching in the glare of noon,
And the fierce clatter of conflicting wheels,—
Some wearied heart romantically sighs
“O for the luxury of living gales,

367

And wafted music of ten thousand trees,
Whose young leaves dance like ringlets on the brow
Of Joy, and glitter gaily to the sun!
O for some deep-valed haunt, where all alone,
Saving the mute companionship of Hills,
My feet may wander, and mine eye exult!”

So wish'd a Worldling; and behold him come,
And roused by new enchantment, thus exclaim:
“Again thine own, my heart, I give to thee
Sweet Nature! once again thy fondling breath
Of music plays around my faded brow,
Pure as a father's blessing o'er a child
Forgiven, gently murmur'd. Let me look
With eyes impassion'd on this glorious scene.
Dilated, as with gladness, glows the blue
O'erhanging sky, untinctured with a cloud:
Around me, hills on hills are greenly piled,
Each crowning each in billowy ascent
And beautiful array: a breeze is up
In bird-like motion winging the bright air;
Or by the flow'rets, giddy with delight,
And dancing gaily o'er the golden meads.
Nor am I lonesome in this hour of bliss:
The grazing flocks which speckle the glad fields;
The larks; and butterflies that tint their path
With beauty, and yon group of laughing babes,
Fit company for sunbeams and for flowers,
So brightly innocent they seem,—partake
The heavenliness of this romantic hour:
And thou, beneath me in thy waveless mood
Luxuriant spread, with ripples twinkling gay
As insect-wings which flutter in the sun,
Calm Ocean! often has thy phantom swell'd
Upon me, in the rush of busy life,
With smile as glorious as thou wearest now.”—
And canst thou, with a mind thus deeply toned
To all which nature for congenial heart
Provides, again be mingled in the mass
Of vulgar spirits, and their vain employ?—
Yes, Worldling! earth is heaven enough for thee.

No marvel, when by moral rust decay'd
In each perception of ethereal growth,
That millions never know a joy sublime,
And call romance the sin of tender souls.—
How little do these menials of the mind
From their blind prison-house of earth perceive
That moods predictive of diviner scenes
Come oft inspired; and though morosely scorn'd,
Form inward foretaste of the Unreveal'd.

But this enchantment of reposing thought,
When solitude falls heaven-like on the soul
Reflective, soars above thine aimless gloom,
Retirement! When in fame or fortune wreck'd,
To make a winter where bright summer reigns
And sadden all things with sarcastic gloom,
The misanthrope to his dull haunt retires
For saturnine felicity; tis vain.
For as the deep, unvisited by wind
And motion, tainted with pollution lies;
So turns the stagnant heart to foul conceits,
Unholy fancies, and unhealthful thoughts;
The world must wake it, as the angel stirr'd
The healing waters into glorious life
And motion,—making them to bless mankind.
Oh! how I scorn false Eremites! these mock
Philosophers, most elegantly sad,
Because outrageously befool'd. The man
Who battles nobly with his lot, and starves
Without a tear, hath more philosophy
In his true nature, than your Sages dream,
Who mope, for want of sterling misery!

But lo! a vision fair as fancy sees.
Beside yon Deep, alive with laughing waves,
An infant stands, and views the billowy range
Of its immensity, with lips apart
Like a cleft rose hung radiant in the sun,—
Hush'd into sweetest wonder. How divine
The innocence of childhood! Could it bloom
Unwither'd through the scorching waste of years,
Men would be angels, and my realm destroy'd:
With eyes whose blueness is a summer heaven;
And cheeks where Cherubim might print a kiss,
And forehead fair as moonlit snow,—thy form
Might be encradled in the rosy clouds
At twilight grouping amid the sun's farewell,
So gentle and so glowing thou appear'st.
And heavenly is it for maternal eyes
In their fond light to mark thee growing day
By day, with a warm atmosphere of Love
Around thee circled with unceasing watch;
While, like a ray from her own spirit shed
The lights of waking thought begin to gleam.
'Tis now the poetry of life to thee!
With fancies young, and innocent as flowers,
And manner sportive as the free-wing'd air,
Thou seest a friend in every smile; thy days
Like singing birds, in gladness speed along,
And not a tear which trembles on thy lids
But shines away, and sparkles into joy!

Yet Time shall envy such a dream as this;
And when I see thee in thine after-years,
As far as Virtue from her primal height
Is fallen, will thy tarnish'd nature be
From that which blasts me with its pureness now.

368

But need I travel into years unborn
To gather misery? Behold it here!
Here, where a childless mother by the tomb
Of her dead offspring, wan and wither'd, sits
In the dull stupor of despairing grief.
Her brow is bent; her visage thin and worn;
Her garments fading like neglected flowers,
And not a glance but speaks an agony.
Oh, Wretch! whose sorrow all thy virtue makes!
For she who perish'd in a timeless grave
Though beautiful as ever sunshine clad,
In love and truth most tenderly endow'd,
When living, was a curse to thee! Thy hate
Pursued her, and thy blighting envy frown'd
Like a dark hell-shade on her youthful path:
Oft in the midnight thou wouldst mutt'ring wake
And bid the grave to open on thy child.
Yet when her dwelling was the loathsome tomb,
And scowling Envy had no charms to dread,—
When that was dust which once an Angel look'd,
The mother's heart return'd again, and grief,
Too late, then rack'd thy being to remorse,
Making thee all which Demons could desire!
For hope, nor faith, one reconciling beam
Imparts, to brighten thy dark woes; unwatch'd,
Unseen, thou visitest the haunt and home
Of Death, and in the muteness of despair
Beneath a pining yew-tree lonely sitt'st,
In deep'ning anguish round a daughter's tomb.

And many, sad as thee, have I beheld
In my dark pilgrimage round Britain's isle.
A tree by lightning blasted to the ground,
And those proud branches which the seasons loved
To beautify, in leafless ruin laid;
A wreck upon the savage waters toss'd
And darkly hinting a terrific tale;
Or grey-wall'd castle, where of old were seen
The banner'd triumph and baronial pomp
But now the prey of melancholy winds,—
For each, how oft a meditative sigh
Or moral tear, awakes; yet what so sad
As creedless anguish in a guilty soul,
And human sorrow by no hope assuaged?
“My God! it is a miserable world,”
May'st thou, the wretched, cry. From faded years
No flower to rescue for remembering love,
Or blissful woe; the Future but a dread
Unknown; the Present all a blacken'd scene;
By friends unloved, or in the tomb, forgot,—
How desolate thy doom must be! Abroad,
The sunshine mocks thee with a cruel glare;
And in the smile of each unthinking crowd
No bright reflection for thy heart is found;
At home—blank weariness of soul awaits
Thee there, and turns it into dismal thought:
Or haply, when the sallow evening shrouds
Yon echoing city, at thy window placed,
With vacant eye thou view'st the yielding glow
Of day; or hear'st the moan of evening-bells,
Like elegies by air-born spirits sung.

But now a sunset, with impassion'd hues
Of splendour, deepens round yon curving bay;
'Tis Inspiration's hour, when heaven descends
In dream-like radiance on the earth becalm'd.
Hither! thou victim of luxurious halls,
The glory of these westering clouds behold
That rich as eastern fancies fleat the skies
Along: and hark!—the revelry of waves;
Now, like the whirling of unnumber'd wheels
In faint approach; then wild as battle-roar
In shatter'd echoes voyaging the wind;
And now, in foaming wildness they advance,
Dissolve, and mark the pebbled beach with foam.

Brief as a fancy, and as brightly vain,
The sky-pomp fades; and in his sumptuous robe
Of cloudy sheen, the great high-Priest of earth
Calmly descends beyond the ocean-bound.
Like weary eyelids, flowers are closing up
Their beauty; faint as rain-falls sound the leaves,
When ruffled by the dying breath of Day;
And twilight, that true hour for placid dreams
Or tender thoughts, now dimly o'er the wave
Its halcyon wing unfolds; in spectral gloom
The cloud-peak'd hills depart; and all the shore
Is lull'd, where nothing mars its deep repose,
Save when the step of yon lone wanderer moves,
Watching the boats in sailless pomp reposed;
Or, mournful listening to the curfew-sound
Of eve-bells, hymning from their distant spires.

And who art thou, of wither'd aspect there,
Whose slow faint footfalls sound of misery?
Consuming want thy lot hath never been:
But thou art one, from out whose bygone days
No memories breathe for retrospective moods
To welcome; the true dignity of life
Thy consecrated powers hath ne'er employ'd;
Thy past is blacker than the sunless tomb;
Reflection murders thy vain peace of mind!—
The moonlight, paving with a glassy shore
Of wrinkled lustre all yon desert-main;
The night's sad umbrage and her mystic hush
O'erwhelmingly becalm thee; thou wouldst fain
Again be flatter'd with the gorgeous Day,
And lose thy sadness in its fawning smile.

So terrible a speechless hour! when Thought
Banish'd by guilt, hath long an exile been
From Nature, dreading down herself to gaze.
In vengeance and convicting truth it comes
With the dread quickness of a lightning-glance,

369

Detecting all the danger of the soul,
Till conscience tremble, and the summon'd past
Is past no more!—but present, with a fire
And force concenter'd for terrific sway;
“I AM,” which voices God's eternity,
Is heard, and fearful sounds the truth therein!

But oh, how bounded would my kingdom be
If what is life in common language deem'd,
Which unreflectively hath flow'd away,
Were all the law of Being did require!
Yet is there life, where no reflection acts?
Was Spirit with divinity endow'd,
Blindly to live by sense alone?—How well
For many, had they brute enjoyers been
Of homely nature; or, as trees and flowers,
Than charter'd with undying mind, to live
Mere breath and blood, without a spirit train'd
To pure advancement, by the hallow'd power
Of truths, which up to heaven and glory lead.
He lives the longest who has thought the most;
And by sublime anticipation felt
That what's immortal must progressive prove,
Or, retrograde in everlasting night!

BOOK VI.

“Divided by a river, of whose banks
On each side an imperial city stood,
With towers and temples proudly elevate.”
Paradise Regained.

But, hail, thou city-Giant of the world!
Thou that dost scorn a canopy of clouds,
But in the dimness of eternal smoke
For ever rising like an ocean-steam
Dost mantle thine immensity; how vast
And wide thy wonderful array of towers
In dusky masses pointing to the skies!
Time was, and dreary solitude was here;
And night-black woods, unvisited by man,
In howling conflict wrestled with the winds,
But now, the tempest of perpetual life
Is heard, and like a roaring furnace fills
With living sound the airy reach of miles.
Thou more than Rome! for never from her heart
Of empire such disturbing passion roll'd,
As emanates from thine. The mighty globe
Is fever'd by thy name; a thousand years
And Silence hath not known thee! What a weight
Of awfulness will Doomsday from thy scene
Derive, and when the blasting Trumpet smites
All Cities to destruction, who will sink
Sublime, with such a thunder-crash as thou?

Myriads of spires, and temples huge or high,
And thickly wedded, like the ancient trees
Which darken forests with primeval gloom;
Myriads of streets, whose windings ever flow
With viewless billows from a sea of life;
Myriads of hearts in full commotion blent,
From morn to noon from noon to night again
Through the wide realm of whirling passion borne,—
And there is London! England's heart and soul:
By the proud flowing of her famous Thames
She circulates through countless lands and isles
Her tides of commerce; gloriously she rules,
At once the awe and sceptre of the world!

Angels and Demons! to your watching eyes
The rounded earth nought so tremendous shows
As this vast City, in whose roar I stand,
Unseen, yet seeing all. The solemn hush
Of everlasting hills; the solitudes
Untrod; the deep gaze of thy dazzling Orbs
Which decorate the purple noon of night
Oh, Nature! no such majesty supply.
Creation's queen, in sceptred grandeur, Thou
Upon the throne of Elements dost reign;
But in the beating of one single heart
There is that more than rivals thee! and here
The swellings of unnumber'd hearts abound;
And not a day but, ere it die, contains
A hist'ry, which unroll'd, will awe the Heavens
To wonder, and the listening Earth with fear!

In Capitals of such gigantic sweep,
And hence, involving for momentous sway
Materials, which by word or deed create
An impulse throbbing through th' excited world,
Spirits of Darkness! how hath vice prevail'd;
Though scornfully, as now your victims mock
The name of Satan with triumphant sneer.
Obliging creatures! did their race abhorr'd,
What blighting sense we have of Virtue's power
And all those living elements of love
And glory, which around them move and dwell
Imagine,—they would learn to guard them more.
But, no! so blindly fool'd and charm'd they seem
With the proud beauty of their own pure souls,
That when most fetter'd, they appear most free:—
How Devils laugh to see such wisdom bound!

Through what a range thy blended passions reach,
Thou second Babylon! The Book of Life
With records that have made the angels weep,
Each moment of thy fated hist'ry fills.
For, whatsoe'er a spirit can reveal

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Of fallen nature, in its varied realm
Of Sin, thy demonstrations body forth.
Here, Fraud and Murder on their thrones erect
Infernal standards, and around them swarm
Such progenies as Vileness, Want, and Woe
Beget, to live, like cannibals, on blood;
Or, move as crawling vipers in the paths
Of infamy, foul lewdness, or despair.
Here, Misery her wildest form betrays,
And sheds her hottest tear. See! as they rush
Thy million sons, along yon clam'rous streets,
Upon them how she turns her haggard gaze,
Lifts her shrunk hand, and with heart-piercing wail
A boon in God's name asks:—but let Her die,
And be her death-couch those remorseless stones!
For when the hungry winter blast shall pause
To soothe the wailing of some lonely tree,
Thy crowds will stop, and pity her despair!
Here Pride, in her most vulgar glory struts;
And Envy all her vip'rous offspring breeds.
But Mammon! thou persuasive friend of Hell,
Sure London is thy ever-royal seat,
Thy chosen capital, thy matchless home!
Where rank idolaters, of every lot
And land, do bow them to the basest dust
Which Falsehood, Flattery, or Cunning treads
From dawn to eve; and serve thee with as true
A love as lauding Angels serve their God!
See! how the hard and greedy worldlings crowd,
With toiling motion, through the foot-worn ways;
The sour and sullen, wretched, rack'd and pale,—
The whole vile circle of uneasy slaves.
Mark one, with features of ferocious hue;
Another, carved by villany's own hand,
A visage wears, and through the trait'rous blood
The spirit works like venom from the soul.

What rush and roar unceasing! and how strange
A mass of objects, as I move along
Invisible, amid these floods of Life
I see;—a chaos of uncounted hearts
Beating and bounding, charged with great design,
And making Fate at every pulse to feel,
Before me acts its mighty tragedy!
Amid them rise those consecrated Shrines
Where ruins eloquent with history are;
Where Truth is worshipp'd, and the belfry-towers
Are frequent mutt'ring how the Hours depart,
With unregarded wisdom; or, with moan
Funereal, wailing for some vanish'd Soul.

But hail, thou monument to hell!—yon pile
Whose massiness a mournful shadow frowns,
Where felon captives, for their crimes, await
The vengeance due to violated Law.
A day restored, and in thy dungeon wept
A victim, whom a darker prison holds
Than ever prescient horror shaped! Had Youth
Beheld him, more than fun'ral sermons teach,
His glance of agony had taught! How oft
When gaily passing, ominously came
A chill of terror from those prison-walls!
And when he enter'd their sepulchral gloom
Like memory that chill return'd.—To die
A malefactor's death; to be the gaze,
The direful, hideous, and detested gaze
Of thousands, glutting their unsated eyes
With morbid wonder, while on tiptoe placed
To see the Spirit gasping from his throat,
And chronicle his agony;—to live
A ballad-hero, in the creaking rhymes
Of vagabonds, and have his felon-name
From lip to lip thus vilely bandied out
For vulgar warning,—oh, ye sinless days
Of childhood! oh, ye hours of love and home,
And summer-dreams by haunted wood or wild,
And blessings nightly murmur'd from the lip
Of parents,—Glory of remember'd days!
Is this your ending, and his ghastly fate
For whom old Age did prophesy renown
And Fondness built her palaces?—A sire,
Who dream'd the heroic grandeur of his race
In him revived, and in the youthful ear
Did oft unrol his ancestry high-born,
To thrill the blood and keep the spirit brave;
A mother made of tenderness, who watch'd
His cradle-slumber, and when manhood came
Still breathed her spirit round his onward way;
Oh! these would shudder in their sacred tombs,
And on his name the kindless world expend
The infamy which to a gallows clings,
If Law should wreak her vengeance. But, one drop
Of poison, and this ignominious doom
Was saved!—a tremor of despair, a tide
Of anguish, burning through his blood and brain,
With the fierce whirling of imagined fires,—
And shrunk and ghastly lay the Suicide!

Huge, high, and solemn, sanctified by time,
And gazing sky-ward in the tow'ry gloom
Of temple-majesty, another Pile
Behold! in mid-air ponderously rear'd.
How dread a power pervadeth Things, this mass
Of ancient glory tells. Whereon it stands
The vacant winds did trifle; and the laugh
Of sunshine sported in bright freedom there:
It rose, and lo! there is a spirit-awe
Around it dwelling; with suspended heart

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'Tis enter'd; where a cold sepulchral hush,
The holiness of its immensity,
The heaven-like vastness of those vaulted aisles,
Banners and trophies and heraldic signs,
And tombs of monumental melancholy,—
All with commingling spell the minds o'ercloud
Of Mortals, as they walk the haunted gloom
Of arch and nave, immersed in dreams of death.

Methinks Ambition might grow humble here:
Though, blazon'd high, the mausoleums rise,
And from stain'd windows rosy light-shades fall
On armory, and crests of costly hue,
Funereal pride, and sculptured canopies
Which grace the dust of hero, sage, or king,—
The sense that rankling clay beneath such pomp
Alone remains, humiliates and chills
The passion for proud greatness. But Her eye
More frequent to yon lonely Transept turns,
Where the dead heroes of the heart repose,
And on it gazeth with a deeper awe
Than ever high-raised tomb of Monarchs won:—
No matter! bard or king, the Curse decrees
For all, re-union with their fellow-clay.

Echoes on echoes roll'd and reproduced!—
As though invisibly with rushing flame
O'erwhelm'd, the music-haunted Temple sounds:
Hark! peal on peal, and burst on burst, sublime
The prelude comes, ascendeth loud and deep,
And then in waves of melody departs:
But ere it died, a thousand faces shone
With ecstasy; as sunshine, in a sweep
Of gladness over hill and meadow shot,
Can summon tints of glory from the scene,—
So drew the music, in its sweeping flow
O'er mortal features, flashes from the soul,
Bright hues and meanings, passionate as true.

The heaven of Music! how it wafts and winds
Itself through all the poetry of sound!
Now, throbbing like a happy Thing of air,
Then, dying a voluptuous death, as lost
In its own lux'ry; now alive again
In sweetness, wafted like a vocal cloud
Mellifluously breaking—seems the strain.
And what a play of magic on each face
Of feeling! when the cadence dismal sounds,
All eyes look darken'd with memorial-dreams;
But when the Organ's deep-toned rapture swells
With harmonies which stir heroic mind,
Bright raptures revel in each glowing face!
Till slow at length, the dying Anthem breathes
A musing tone of melancholy power
And pathos, causing buried years to breathe,
While mem'ry saddens; and in thoughtful eyes
The dewy brightness of emotion dawns.

All music is the Mystery of sound,
Whose soul lies sleeping in the air, till roused,
And lo! it pulses into melody:
Deep, low, or wild, obedient to the throb
Of instrumental magic; on its wings
Are visions too, of tenderness and love,
Beatitude and joy. Thus, over waves
Of beauty, landscapes in their loveliest glow,
And the warm languish of their summer-streams,
A list'ning soul is borne; while Home renews
Its paradise, beneath the moon-light veil
That mantles o'er the past, till unshed tears
Gleam in the eye of memory. But when
Some harmony of preternatural swell
Begins, then, soaring on enchanted plumes,
A soul seems wafted through Eternity!

Such sorcery in music dwells;—if they,
Now doom'd awhile to walk this heaven-roof'd world,
Might hear the melodies which I have heard,
When heaven, complexion'd by almightiness
In glory, sounded with the choral hymn
Of Princedoms high, and Dominations grand,
Of thousand Saints, of thousand Cherubim,
And angel-numbers, who out-million far
Bright worlds, which in the blue and waveless deep
Of night, innumerable hang,—if men
Might hear it, 'twould absorb their souls away!
Yet such I heard; oh! what a sea of sound
Went billowing with ecstatical delight
Through fathomless immensity, when hosts
Divine, their Holy, Holy, Holy, sung,
While loud Hosannahs to the living God
Commingled, making heaven more heavenly glow!

Another triumph of exhaustless mind,
Which Love and Wisdom, Beauty and fair Truth,
Tempt as I may, enchantingly produce.—
Visions of holiness, and lofty dreams
Of lofty Spirits, glorify the walls
Of this vast room; revealings of the soul
Intense, and passions of pictorial spell.
Painters are silent poets; in their hues
A language glows, whose words are magic tints
Of meaning, which both eye and soul perceive.
How wonderful is deathless Art! for Time
Obeys her summons, and the Seasons wait
Her godlike call; while glory, love, and grace,

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And the deep harmonies of human thought
Move at the waving of Her mighty wand!

Then let me look on this ethereal show
Wherein the painter hath a mind transfused,
Turning his thoughts to colours. What a thirst
For beauty in his longing soul must burn
Who vision'd this,—a landscape gods might tread!
The sky hangs glorious; and the yellow smiles
Of summer, on a brightly-wrinkled stream
Are flashing with a restless joy, 'mid trees
Unpruned, and bowing graceful as the wind
In melody its fairy wing expands
Among them: over rocks of cloudy shape
The green enchantment of declining boughs
Is flushing, whence a vein of water flows,
And frolics on in many a shining trail
Of stream-like revelry; till margin-flowers
Beside it bloom, and shadow the young waves.
But there, a beautiful Perfection smiles!
An Eve-like form beside a dimpled lake
Is standing;—in her eye, a heaven of soul,
And o'er her figure an expressive bloom
Of youth, and symmetry, divinely graced.
The moon-like glowing of her loveliness,
Those limbs of light, and that seraphic air,—
Whence sprung it all, but from ideal thirst
For Beauty, purer than mere Sense beholds?

Here is a sunset, in that golden calm
Appearing, when the lustrous King of day
Awhile in bright complacence views the world
Which he hath glorified,—as Wisdom look'd
On infant Nature, when she lay complete
Beneath the full reflection of His smile.
And near, a night is pictured in its dead
Of noon: the canopy of azure pomp
Hung starless,—but the queen of heaven is there
In placid glory, and her slumb'rous veil
Hath shadow'd earth, and on blue ocean lies
In rolls of silver:—by the sallow beach
Two maidens in their girlhood stand, and seem
Enrapt, to watch how delicately bright
The moon's pale fancies tint yon fleeting waves;
Or, listen to the faint sweet undersong
Of dream-like waters, dying on the shore.

But, what is this!—the Deluge which devour'd
A living World! a sunless, moonless waste,
The globe into a chaos of wild sea
Dissolved! Her hour of agony is o'er;
But yet, the fierceness of unnat'ral clouds,
Like dying monsters welt'ring on the deep,
Frowns awful in the gloom.—How dead and mute
Th' enormous ruin! Not a look of life
Dwells there,—the carcase of a guilty World!
Woods, trees and flowers, with all which landscapes wear
In spring-time's young magnificence of bloom
And promise, with the god-like shapes of men,
Have perish'd. By the rocky darkness, crags
And mountain-skeletons by billows wash'd,
The oozy branches, where lank serpents coil,
And in the deadness of two pallid forms
Hurl'd from the deep, and dash'd upon the shore
In solitude, a mortal may be awed,
And dream, until he hear the Deluge roar!

But let it pass: for lo! the dark sublime,
The midnight and immensity of Art
I see; as though his eye had seen the hour
When down in thunder through the yawning skies
A whirlwind of rebellious Angels came,—
The painter hath infernal pomp reveal'd.
A second Milton, whose creative soul
Doth shadow visions to such awful life,
That men behold them with suspended breath,
And grow ethereal at a gaze!—how high
And earthless hath his daring spirit soar'd,
To paint the hell which kindled up the skies,
And wield the lightnings that his Maker hurl'd!

These arts are revelations which unfold
How Mind, disdainful of material bounds,
In spiritual romance delights to dream;
Through heavens of her creation to expand
Her wings, and wanton in celestial light;
As soars the lark from her low nest of dew
To sing and revel in the boundless air.
The fallen Myriads in whose blighted gaze
A beam of ruin'd glory shines, may look
With something of ambitious sympathy
On this proud struggle of the soul with sense,—
This warfare of the Visible with Things
Of viewless Essence, yet prevailing power.
A haughty captive fetter'd in his clay,
Man's Nature, peering through her prison-house,
Doth catch a shadow, and a dim advance
Of Something purer, brighter, yet to be.
And what is genius?—but the glowing mind
Half disembodied, flutt'ring in a realm
Of magic, dreaming, dazzled, and inspired?

How dark a contrast hath a moment made
In this world's promise!—here, the shame of Art
Confronts me; and, might Pity deaden Hate,
My love for ruin should be lessen'd now.—

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In a lone chamber, on a tatter'd couch
A dying Painter lies. His brow seems young
And noble; lines of beauty on his face
Yet linger; in his eye of passion gleams
A soul, and on his cheek a spirit-light
Is playing, with that proud sublimity
Of thought, which yields to death, but gives to time
A Fame that will avenge his wrongs, and write
Their hist'ry in her canonizèd roll
Of martyrs: be it for his epitaph,
He lived for genius, and for genius died!
So sad and lone! wall'd in by misery,
With none to smooth his couch, or shed the tear
Which softens pain, uncheer'd, unwept, unknown,
And famish'd by the want of many days,—
Hither, Ambition! wisdom breathes in woe.

There are, to whom Earth's elemental Frame
Of wonders seemeth but an outward show
To look upon, and form the life of things:
But some in more ethereal mould are cast,
Who from the imagery of nature cull
Fair meanings, and magnificent delights,
Extracting glory from whate'er they view;
Calling the common air a blessing, light
A joy, and hues and harmonies of earth
Enchanting ministers to sense and soul.
And such was he. An orphan of the woods,
With Nature in her ancientness of gloom
And cavern, dark-peak'd hill, and craggy wild
Whose boughs waved midnight in the eye of Day,—
He dwelt; until he hung the wizard sky
With fancies, and with nature one became
By deep communion with her scenes and sounds.
With all her moods, majestic, calm, or wild,
He sympathised. In glory did he hear
Ecstatic thunders antheming the storm!
And when the winds fled by him, he would take
Their dauntless wings, and travel in their roar!
He worshipp'd the great Sea;—when rocking wild,
Making the waters blossom into foam
With her loud wrath; or savagely reposed
Like a dark monster dreaming in his lair.

No wonder, then, by Nature thus sublimed,
With all her forms and features at his soul,
The brain should teem with visions, and his hand
A glorious mimicry of earth and heaven
Perform! till lakes and clouds, and famish'd woods
In wintry loneness, crags and eagle-haunts,
And torrents in their mountain-rapture seen,
All dread, all high, all melancholy Things,—
Full on his canvas started into life
And look'd creation! To the Capital
A parentless and unacquainted youth
He came, while many a prophecy still hung
About his heart, and made his bosom heave
With young expectancy. Romantic fool!
To fancy genius and success were twins
In such a sphere: how soon the dream was o'er!
Here Envy dogg'd him; Avarice trampled down
His worth, and in the gloom of aidless want
His spirit bow'd,—but never was enslaved.
There was that haughtiness of calm despair,
That forward looking to avenging years
Which plucks the thorn from present woe, and charms
Adversity from out her darkest mood,
To cheer him on, and buoy the spirit o'er
The indirection of opinion's tide.
He felt, as all the mighty ever feel,
True Greatness must o'erlook the living hour
And charge the Future with its fame alone!
Thus cherish'd he self-rev'rence; and the heart
Was faithful: from the hand or voice of men
No comfort came; but Nature was his own
As ever! When the jarring city-roar
Woke round him, he could hush it in the calm
Of memory, and natural solitude
Of pensive scenes: the dying thunder-tones
O'er his dark chamber mutter'd, bade him dream
Of deeper grandeur which pervaded night
Afar; and when a pilgrim sunset-ray
Came to his window, like a smile from Home,
He scorn'd the present, and would think, how once
He loved to watch the bright farewell of Day
Reflected o'er the roll of ocean-waves,
Like sea-clouds rising in a gorgeous swell:—
Thus lived the victim of an Art adored,
And perish'd in his passion!—On his name
A veil is hung, and his achievements lie
Forgotten; but a fame awaits them still!
Eternity will take a hue from time,
And life a shade of the immortal doom
Hereafter is. But even this false world
Shall round his honour'd tomb a death-wreath hang,
And on the eyelids of an Age unborn
Shall tears be trembling when his woes are read.—
Thus Merit starves, while pamper'd Folly struts
In mean presumption, with a golden lot
Endow'd, and smiled upon by vassal-eyes
Which hunt for favour. But the lofty Hearts,
Th' unbending pure, within whose natures lodge
All feelings that ennoble man and mind,
Are they by kingly fortune crown'd? Does Worth

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Or Wisdom glorious exaltation win?
Look round the world, and answer! 'Tis the base,
The sly, insinuating, serpent-souls
Who wind about the meanest of mankind;
'Tis they, with lying blandness on the lip,
Whose tuneful flattery, that cloyless sweet!
Allays the gusty tempers of the proud
To fond subjection, and the vain enchant
To patrons blind, yet most benevolent,
Yes! these are they who glitter with the crown
Of fortune, sit upon the World's high thrones;
And on the toiling majesty of Worth
Beneath, look down, and laugh at virtuous Woe.

But there are other miracles of mind
In this Queen-city; whatsoe'er the Hand
Can shape, or pregnant Thought conceive; whate'er
Applying Art can from the soul translate
To sense or vision, for the World's free gaze,
Is here produced. Thus, London is a sun
Of inspiration to the parent-isle;
Within the circle of a minute act
Uncounted minds, of multiplying power
To times and generations.—But a trace
Of Me, humanity! thou dost not lose,
However lofty thy victorious march;
For in this region of the learn'd and wise,
The pettiness and pride of nature dwell.
Then what is Genius, with a heart unsound?
One noble action doth outweigh it all
With more than priceless value. Meek and pure,
Who lives in humble earnestness, partakes
His lot with cheerful eye, and loving heart,
And sees a Brotherhood in all mankind;
Whose Teachers are the Elements, whose lore,
A Bible on the soul impress'd,—that man,
Howe'er undignified his earthly doom
Appear, is far more glorious in the eye
Of Angels, than the spirit-ruling host
Of learning, who have never learnt the way
To virtue, and the heart's true nobleness.—
But this I would not that the earth believed;
Corruption is the rankling seed I sow,
And aye abundant may the harvest bloom!

That mighty lever which has moved the world,
The Press of England, from its dreadless source
Of living action, here begins to shake
The far-off Isles, and awe the utmost Globe!
The magic of its might no tongue can tell!
Dark, deep, and silent oft, but ever felt;
Mix'd with the mind, and feeding with a food
Of thought, the moral being of a Soul.
A trackless Agent, a terrific Power,
It could have half annihilated Hell
And her great Denizens, by glorious sway:
But oft, so false, so abject, and so foul
It grows,—no blasting pestilence e'er shed
Such ruin, as a tainted Press contrives
For thought and feeling, when its poison works:
This wrecks the body,—that can havoc souls;
And who shall heal them? Let thy Temples rise,
Britannia! they are but satiric piles
Of sanctity, while poison from thy Press
Is pour'd, and on its lying magic live
Thy thousand vulgar, who heart-famish'd seem,
When Slander feeds not with a foul excess
Their appetite for infamy. The sun
Not surer where his deadly rage extends
The fierceness of a burning nature proves,
Than pages of pollution, sent from hour
To hour, across an Empire's heart, awake
A tinge of sentiment and hue of thought
In many, till they act the crimes they read.

E'en now mine eye a dismal wretch beholds
By fate or fortune for a villain doom'd;
In whom is center'd all which can profane
The name of Man! ignoble as the dust,
And rocky-hearted as a wretch can be:
And him with what delight a Devil views
Heap lie on lie with such remorseless speed,
And so envenom with his viper-touch
The good and glorious, that all Virtue seems
To wither, and all Wisdom to be dead
Awhile, beneath the blackness of his taint!
Yea! such a Monster do I see destroy
The healthful nature of the noblest mind:
And yet live on his execrable life,
And like a plague-spot spread his soul abroad
Till millions turn as tainted as his own!

How false, and yet how fair, are scenes of man!
Between what is, and that which seems to be,
How dark a gap of untold diff'rence frowns!
There is a hollowness in human things
Of pride or pleasure born, which none confess
Yet all must ever feel. The moments tuned
To highest happiness, have strings which jar
Upon some inward sense; the sweetest cup
Enchanted Ecstasy can drink, will leave
A humbling dreg of bitterness behind.
But this sad vict'ry of unrestful thought,
This cloud-tint on the brightest firmament
Of Joy, this deep abyss of discontent
Beyond a universe to fill!—though felt
Is rarely own'd; for Pride steps in, and puts
A smile upon the cheek, and in the eye
Delusion; making Love, or Wealth, or Fame
The seeming aspect of Perfection wear;
And thus, deceiving each, and each deceived,
Men gild the hour, and call it happiness!

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A proof is here: a chamber long and large,
Of regal air, and with o'erbranching lights,
From the high ceiling pouring down a noon
Of lustre, which doth goldenly bedeck
The costliness around. Amid it, group'd
For converse, meet a host of either sex;
And who are they?—the race Ambition bred,
And madden'd, till they won the envied wreath.
Oh! what a demon-fire, what parching heat
Through blood and spirit, is the lust of Fame!
No tiger-passion tearing at the soul,
So dreadful as the ever-gnawing wish
For reputation! How it burns the heart
Away, and blisters up the health of life!
Yet, such have many in this blended host
Endured; but now, as high and dominant
As Potentates and intellectual Lords
They reign upon their thrones of Mind, and live
The worshipp'd of the Land. But are they blest
With that deep fulness of supreme delight
Which young Imagination's eye portray'd?
Oh, Thou! bewilder'd with the mock of fame,
Come here, and prove what rottenness of heart,
What fev'rous envy, what corrosive sense
Of emulation, in these glorious dwell,
What under-currents in this scene of joy!
Smiles in the surface, but a coward-tide
Of jealousy beneath. Hark to the gibe
O Hate! the tart dissent, the damning sneer;
To such a littleness the mighty fall!
Behold it, Ignorance! thy blush recall,
And take a happier name. But what a feast
Of vengeance doth my gloomy nature find
In this false scene, where they whom Wisdom crowns,
And Praise exalts, whose spirits are abroad
In this great world, and so angelic seem,
Beneath the shadow of Almighty wings
The simple think they mused sublime!—betray
The more than weakness of unworthy man,
When nature's venom quickens at the heart,
Or stern reality some feeling tries.

And thou! just gilded with a public smile,
Thy mind is dancing on a sea of thoughts
Which revel onward with delirious joy:
For now, the hackney'd wonder of the Night
Thou art, and by the music of fair tongues
Enchanted; flatt'rers feed thine ears with praise,
And clog it into deafness. Hear'st thou not
How Envy whispers off thy bloom of fame,
Till Meanness in false robe arrayeth thee!
Thou fool of flatt'ry! this the glorious doom
Ambition sought! Is Greatness only great,
When flatter'd, known, and seen? Canst thou so bend,
And be thus derogate? Wilt thou, whose eye
The stars can read, with heaven and earth commune,
Who feel'st the fibres of Creation's heart
In trembling harmony with thine, descend
To lose thy loftiness in this dull scene?
Back to thy haunts! the Ocean and the Winds
Attend thee; Nature is thy temple; kneel,
And worship in her mighty solitude.
Look up! and learn a lesson of the Sun,
That bright Enchanter of the moving heavens!
Lonely and lofty in his orb sublime,
But acting ever;—such is noble fame.

Some gracious, grand, and most accomplish'd few,
Each with a little kingdom in his brain,
Who club together to recast the world
And love so many that they care for none,—
These have I witness'd, laughing at their realms,
Of airy texture, by ambition wove.
But here is madness, far outfooling this!
For lo! the den whence Oracles proceed
Like exhalations from the noisome earth
That, once inbreathed, are death! This wonderful
Perfection of the vile, surpasseth all
Temptation, in my darkest mood, employs!
Yes, here are Spirits, such as hell-thrones grace,
Convened to disinherit God of souls,
And on the blasphemous attempt of pride
Erect a dynasty of Sense supreme;
Each man a god unto himself, let loose
In all the blinding wantonness of will.
And this is “freedom,” dignified for Man!
When, having fed the agonies of life
By years of being, weary, worn, and sad,
To close existence in the clay he treads,
A soulless, dreamless, unimagined Nought?

Where sleep the thunders of convicting Wrath?
Devils believe, and tremble; men deny
And laugh! How enviably endow'd they are!
We bow'd and blasted by opposeless heaven,
Abhor the Godhead, but his name confess;
But things of earth, infatuated, vile,
Too darken'd to dissect a flower, or tell
The meaning of an atom which they tread,
Would dare annihilate the living God
Above, and mock the pangs of Hell below!
Oh! all, and more than Satan could desire,
Blind Teachers of the blind! could this world dare
To wallow in the darkness that ye breed,
To such, the heathen would be heavenly-wise;

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For they, by revelation unillumed,
Soar'd out of sense, and in the Skies their gods
Enthroned, or heard them on the haunted Deep,
Or in the howling of the homeless Winds.
A cloud was on them; but a Spark within
Yet lived, and saved them from eclipse of soul.
For admiration must be felt, while Power
Existeth; on it man will gaze, and learn
The vast dependence for his lot ordain'd;
Dread Shadows of an omnipresent One
Move round him; in the march of Elements
His steps are traced, and Truth is ever by,
To tread them deep, and track them on to God.

And hence, these murd'rers of the soul are weak
In process; too infernal is the Creed
They fashion; far too poor in its exchange
For that divineness of redeeming Love
They combat; since with freedom they are free,—
As billows toss'd upon the giant main,
As feathers on the travell'd whirlwind borne
Are free!—No, rather some corruptive arts
Of saintly mixture; or the glozing tongue
Of hypocrites, with innovating clouds
Of doctrine—would I at their work behold,
Than the rash vileness of blaspheming fools.
A few they poison, but re-action wakes!
For one they ruin, thousands are sublimed
To holy vengeance, which to hell may prove,
Excess of evil is the source of good.

But lo! again the calm-eyed Evening comes:
The heavens are flaming with a rosy sea
Of splendour, richly-deep; and, floating on,
It reddens round the dying sun, who glares
With fierce redundancy awhile, then sinks
Away, like glory from Ambition's eye.
Behind him, many a dream of old Romance
Will cry, “What rocks, and hills, and waves of light!
Magnificent confusion! such as beam'd
When the rash boy-god charioted the skies
And made a burning chaos of the clouds!”
But this hath ended: and a breathless calm,
As though eternity were closing round
The World, to let it faint in light away,
Creeps o'er the earth, like slumber shed on air.

And well, lone pilgrim, at the shaded hour
Of twilight, when a golden stillness reigns,
Like lustre from a far-off angel-host
Reflected, and the unoffending breeze
Hath music which the day-wind seldom brings,
May sadness oversteal thee; and thy heart
Unspeakably with yearning fancies glow.
Of life, a living Vision; and the hour
Which ends it, like a cloudy dream of Air
That vanisheth to some allotted world;
Of faded youth, and unforgotten friends
Whose tombstones over life a shadow fling
No sunshine can efface; of all which makes
The lone Heart wander to a dream-like home
Of sadness, mortal! thou didst ponder now.

Such will not ever be: thy death-gloom pierced,
And awful on the unimprison'd soul
A sun-burst of revealing Truth will blaze!
Wherein these mysteries of sight and sense
Shall all unravell'd lie.—The tender night
With tragic darkness robed; the lone sweet star,
Oft worshipp'd for a beatific Orb
Where bright Immortals dwell; the moon's romance;
The sun's enchantment, when He wakes to smile
The day abroad, or preach departing life
By his deep setting; with the spirit-tone
Of winds, the Ocean's ever-mutt'ring waves,
And all which thus predominantly awes
Or saddens feeling, shall itself resolve
In spiritual completion. Then, thy tear
Ecstatic, radiant with adoring thought;
Each thrill of rapture, like a viewless chain
From heaven let down and link'd around the soul,—
Shall be translated by unbodied Mind.
Meanwhile, be mine to veil thee with a show
Of outward Things; and sensualise the will,
Whose promptings, more than conscience, men obey.

Now hath dead Midnight hush'd the world: it lies
Suffused with freshness, like a meadow steep'd
In verdant quiet, when the flood hath pass'd.
All deeply pure, impalpably divine
A Something o'er this hour prevails, which men
Call Awe, which doth not in their day-life reign;
For then, a flush'd existence, and a false
Enchantment gathers round the rising Hours
To hue their destiny. But Midnight cools
The spirit into thinking calm; then sounds
Come o'er it with a deeper thrill; and scenes
Which in the day a common gladness wore,
Grow solemn; then the airy leaf-notes mourn:
And boughs, like hearse-plumes, wave their shadowy pomp.
By day the present, but at night the past
Prevails; a moonlight-tenderness o'er things
Departed, flings a fond and dream-like gloom;
And then, Life takes a feeling from the soul,
And in earth's tints of paradise can trace

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A beauty which unkinder hours deny;—
The harp is shatter'd, but the sounds remain!

Yet, 'tis not that the tenderness of tears
Awakes; that Childhood smiles upon the thought
As looks an Angel through the veil of dreams;
It is not that the heart-remember'd rise
From early tombs, to be once more beloved
And featured, till the deadness of the dead
In men'ry's vision-life is half forgot:
`Tis not such charm alone; nor that which frowns
From Temple, sky, or everlasting Hill
Which darkness hath enrobed. But that deep sense
Which he who pierces through the lonesome air
Far o'er the mute immeasurable sky
Where travel worlds, for adoration feels,
Making the midnight holy! Silent Orbs!
On me no mystic awfulness ye shed;
For when unblasted, I beheld ye rise
And glitter into being, bright and pure,
Like radiant echoes of Almighty will!
But mortals, dimly aided by their dreams,
Behold ye, nursing the unutter'd thought,
With pond'ring hope and apprehensive awe.
They wonder, if the unearth'd Spirit dwells
Among ye! where the seraph-mansions blaze,
And who amid them are the bright and blest!

And is there not a spirit-World? The blind
May question, and the mocking idiot laugh;
But in her, round her, wheresoe'er she move,
Mortality might reap immortal faith,
And feel what cannot in the flesh be known.
In the wild Mystery of earth and air,
Sun, moon, and star, and the unslumb'ring sea,
Science might learn far more than Sense adores,
And by thy panting for the unattain'd
On earth; by longings which no language speak;
By the dread torture of o'ermastering Doubt;
By thirst for Beauty, such as eye ne'er saw
And yet is ever mirror'd on the mind;
By Love, in her rich heavenliness array'd;
By Guilt and Conscience, that terrific Pair
Who make the Dead to mutter from their tombs
Or colour Nature with the hues of hell!
By all the fire and frenzy of a soul
Guilty with crime, or agonised by dread,
And by that voice where God the Speaker is,—
Thy doom, oh mortal! whatsoe'er thy wish
In the black deep of thine unfathom'd heart,
Is deathless, as the damnèd Angels are!

Now is mine hour, the hour of conflict, come,
When the dark Future over nature frowns
Like destiny; now spirit is itself
Again, and Thought, within her cell retired,
Doth hold dim converse with Eternal Things.
Many are musing now! and sighs are born,
In slow succession, like unwilling tears
Prophetic and profound. The worldling sees
In darkness, what the day could not reveal,—
Himself! and sorrows at the faithful view.
“Another day eternal made! O Time
And Destiny, how swift ye roll the world
Along, to which such eager myriads cling
In duty, fondness, or despair! Alas!
Too much we make, yet far too little think
Of time: but, oh, at this untroubled hour
How awfully mine inward visions rise!
Infinity is round me; and I feel
A dampness on my spirit, and a dark
Unearthliness of thought; the dead awake,
Unlock their tombs, and tell me I must die!”
What sadness here! and what a wounded soul;
And yet the World shall his physician be!

But, hark! the moaning voice of deep-tongued bells
Herald the midnight o'er the drowsy world.
Now Earth is one day older; time itself
More awful, and the dead to Hades gone.
Earth, Heaven, and Hell, have felt this fleeted day,
That now is chronicled for Judgment! Morn
Hath look'd on many with her radiant eye
Whose brows shall never meet Her beam again!
Another Sun, another System works
Around them; they who dwelt in distant climes,
And diff'rent aspect wore, the friend and foe,
The loveless and the loving, all who once
Through time, or circumstance, estranged and far
Existed,—now are met where nothing more
Is alien, but one Darkness, or one Light,
As vice or virtue doom'd them. Oh! ye sad
And discontented, weary, worn, and grey;
Thou martyr of the melancholy hour
Loving the silence for the dream it gave,
Sick of the world, and sighing for a tomb;
And ye, on whom this Life a burden lay,
Yet often loosed it when the dying bell
Of Midnight, like a warning from the grave
Went in its sadness through the soul,—your gaze
Doth witness what your nature never dreamt;
The Veil is torn, the Mystery unseal'd,
And ye are men no more! Methinks a Voice
From many, would revisit this far world!
But no:—the Dust is faithful to its dead,
And they are silent, till the Trumpet speak!

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And now, my wand'rings dark though this free Isle
Are o'er; through town and village, house and street,
By virtue of my being, have I roam'd,
A sightless Presence, an unshadow'd Power,
An undream'd Watcher moving round the hearts
Of men, and looking into depths of soul
Where none but Hell, and the Immortals gaze.
The sights which none have seen; the voices none
Have heard, with all the agony and glow,
The longings, workings, and unrestful strife
Of passion, mingled in the sleepless mind,
And fever'd into what a life is named,—
These have I witness'd; and on what thou art,
And wert, and might'st have been, heaven-favour'd Land!
Reflected, weighing thee for future worlds.—
For future worlds! each day and hour, thy dead
Are there; each moment is a Hell or Heaven
To many of thy dust. Thou bear'st the awe
Of Destiny; as on the earth thy power
Hath stamp'd its mightiness on every realm,
Printing the roll of Time with many a track
Of gloom and glory, havoc or renown,
So, when the Universe is roll'd away
Beneath the shadow of Almighty frown,
Eternity shall chronicle thy name
For wonder; it will be a sign in heaven!

Then speed thee onward in thy vaunting course
Of empire; let no dream of Judgment shade
Thy soul, or touch thee with a solemn fear:
Plunge in the future! let the past be dead
To thee; for when shall England's sceptre fail?
Thus dare, and do, and perish in thy dream!
Ye buried Empires, which have braved the world,
Rise from your tombs, and speak! for once I mark'd
Your palmy greatness; sea-famed Tyre I saw
When ocean cower'd beneath her vassal-ships;
And hoar Chaldea's hundred-gated Queen
In high-wall'd glory! Tell me, what are they?
And she, earth's ancient tyranness, vast Rome,
The rolling of her battle-cars, the voice
Of Scipio, and the sound of Cæsar's march,
Did I not hear, when Kingdoms were her slaves?
And thou, the fairy-isled, forsaken Greece!
When Sage and Bard, and battle-wreaths, were thine,
When all which centuries glorified could yield
Was consecrated to thy vast renown,
I walk'd thy streets, and prophesied thy doom!
Thus fell the mighty;—shall not Britain fall?

But lo! the heavens are ominously black,
Methinks, as though they frown'd a dark response.
Erewhile, and star-troops in their island-glow
Around the wan Enchantress of the skies
Appear'd, while lovingly the azure lay
Between them, softer than the lid of sleep.
But now, all pregnant with portentous ire,
The clouds have muffled up the pomp of night:
There is a gasping in the heated air,
A wing-like flutter in the tim'rous boughs,
And sigh, and sound, from out the heart of Things
Invisible, breathed forth; the Storm awakes!
And tones of thunder thrill the heart of Earth;
The lightnings cleave the clouds, and north to south,
And east to west, a tale of Darkness tell!
Hark! as the wearied echoes howl themselves
Away, the clamours of the midnight-sea,
Beneath yon cliff in thund'ring chorus rise,
While she is waved with terror! billows heave
Their blackness in the wind, and, bounding on
In vaulting madness, beat the rocky shore
Incessant, till it whitens with their foam.

I love this passion of the Elements,
This mimicry of chaos, in their might
Of storm! And here, in my lone awfulness
While ev'ry cloud a thunder-hymn repeats,
Earth throbs, and Nature in convulsion reels,
Farewell to England! Into other climes
My flight I wing, but round her cast that spell
I weave for Nations till their doom arrive.
And come it shall! When on this guardian-cliff
Again I stand, the whirlwind and the wrath
Of Desolation will have swept all thrones
Away; a darkness, as of old, will reign,
The woods be standing where yon cities tower,
And Ocean wailing for a widow'd Isle!

387

OXFORD:

OR, Alma Mater.

(1830.)

388

TO THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS, AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, This Poem IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, BY THEIR OBEDIENT SERVANT, THE AUTHOR.

389

I. PART I.

ANALYSIS OF PART I.

Intellectual greatness—The homage due to any Establishment tending to promote it—Oxford—Feelings and associations awakened by its first appearance— Its mental quiet — Its literary Past — Studies — Ancient and Modern Learning—Classical Bigots— System of Study and Examination—The necessity of one General Standard—Reason why Men of Genius have often contemned it—Mind independent of Circumstance—The University—Present appearance— View from the Radcliffe—New College Chapel and Service—Biographical Associations—Illustrations of the same in Addison, Steele, Collins, Johnson, Sir Philip Sydney, Ben Jonson, and Locke—Origin of Locke's famous Essay—Intellectual Society—A Contrast—Canning—Davenant— Wesley — Hervey — Denham — Chatham — Thomas Warton—Lisle Bowles—Country Clergymen—Their seclusion, how fondly anticipated—A Scene suggesting such anticipation — Blenheim — Balliol — Ridley and Latimer—Their Martyrdom—Evelyn—

390

Southey—The wisdom of Literary Retirement, contrasted with the rivalries of the Literary World— Female Authorship—A characteristic Sketch—Return to Biographical Associations, which conclude with Heber—His early Life—Collegiate Course— Pastoral Character and Death in India.

Round the vast miracles achieved by Mind
Throng the deep raptures of entranced mankind:
For what though Empires spread their proud control
Far as the winds exult or waters roll;
Though Tyrian merchandise their ports bedeck
And navies thunder at their awful beck,
The pride of Commerce and the awe of Power
Melt into dreams, at desolation's hour:
Then, what remains of Kingdoms which have been?
Lo! deserts wave, where Capitals were seen!
The wild grass quivers o'er each mangled Pile,
And winter moans along the archless aisle;
Where once they flourished ruins grimly tell,
And shade the air with melancholy spell,
While from their wreck a tide of feeling rolls
In awful wisdom through reflective souls.

What then alone majestically reigns
When Empires grovel on deserted plains,
In morning lustre to illume the night
Which Time engenders o'er their vanish'd might?
'Tis Mind! an immortality below
That gilds the past and bids the future glow;
'Tis mind!—heroic, pure, devoted Mind
To God appealing for corrupt mankind,
Reflecting back the image that He gave
Ere sin began, or Earth became a slave!

If then from soaring intellect arise
Perennial triumphs, England's heart may prize,
In towery dimness, gothic, stern, or grand,
Behold her palaces of Learning stand!
When Day was dying into sunset glow
I first beheld them in their beauteous show,
The solemn turrets of each ancient pile,
And thought—How noble is our native Isle!
A silent worship o'er my spirit came,
While feelings far too exquisite for name
Exultingly began their rapt control,
And fluttered, like faint music, in the soul.
Where Greatness trod, is hallow'd ground to me;
There can I lift the heart, and bow the knee,
The past awake to all its living might,
And charm my fancy with unearthly sight,
Restore the features of the famous dead,
Nor take a Kingdom for the tear I shed!

And how poetic is that haunted Spot
Where life is mental, and the world forgot!
A spirit wafted from collegiate bowers
And the dim shadow of her ancient towers
To Alma Mater holy calm impart,
And make her scene harmonious with the heart.
The very air seems eloquently fraught
With the deep fulness of devoted thought;
While all around her, famed as eye desires,
Each mind ennobles or some heart inspires.
And here, how many a youthful Soul began
To sketch the drama of the future man;
How many an Eye o'er coming years hath smiled,
And sparkled, as incessant hope beguiled!
The star-like spirits, whose enduring light
Beams on the World, and turns its darkness bright,
In radiant promise here began to rise,
And glow ambitious for eternal Skies.
Oh! none whose souls have felt a mighty name
Thrill to their centre with its sound of fame;
Whose hearts have warm'd at wisdom, truth, or worth,
And half which makes the heaven we meet on earth,
Can tread the ground by Genius often trod,
Nor feel a nature more akin to God!
Here in their blended magic float along
Pindaric rapture and Virgilian song;
Still Homer charms as when he first prevail'd
And honour'd Greece her idol poet hail'd;
See Athens in her classic bloom revive,
Her sages worshipp'd, and her bards alive;
See Rome triumphant, with her banner furl'd,
Awaken genius to enchant a world!

There are, who see no intellectual rays
Flash from the spirit-light of other Days;
Who deem no Age transcendent as their own,
And high the Present o'er the Past enthrone.
Yet, not in vain the world hath aye adored
The treasured wisdom ages gone afford;
Or loved the freshness of that youthful Time
When Science woke, and Man became sublime!
For then, the Elements of mind were new,
And Fancy from their unworn magic drew;

391

Creation's self was one unrifled theme
To form the Poet, and enchant his dream:
As yet unhaunted by inquiring thought,
Each track of mind with mental bloom was fraught;
The first in nature were the first to feel
Impassion'd wonder and romantic zeal;
Hence matchless vigour nerved their living page,
That won the worship of a future age;—
From ancient Lore see modern Learning rise,
The last we honour, but the first we prize.

Then long enshrined in this august retreat
May Greece and Rome for high communion meet;
Long may their forceful page and free-born style
From year to year enamour'd Youth beguile;
The Judgment form, uncertain Taste direct,
Teach Truth to feel, and Fancy to reflect;
And Learning, hallow'd by immortal fame,
See England glory in her Oxford name!
Yet not forsaken be the proud career
Which circles through the realm of Thought severe;
The studies vast which measure earth and sky,
Or open worlds on the undaunted eye:
Which more offends,—the bigot who can read
No volume from the dust of Ages freed;
Or he who owns no intellectual grace,
But makes a cargo of the human race,
And values man like produce from the ground,—
'Tis hard to say, yet both, alas! are found.
The dark idolater of ancient Time,
And solemn Epicure in prose or rhyme,
The groping Pedant with a gloomy eye,
Who whines an elegy o'er days gone by,—
Oh! still from Oxford be such race removed,
And nobler far her gifted scions proved.

What soul so vacant, so profoundly dull,
What brain so wither'd in a barren skull,
As his who, dungeon'd in the gloom of Eld,
From all the light of living mind withheld,
Can deem it half an intellectual shame
To glow at Milton's worth, or Shakspere's name!

Farewell to Bigots! whatso'er their hue,
Who darken Learning, and disgrace it too;
Another charge let Alma Mater own
By frequent Sages on her wisdom thrown:
Alike one Standard for the great and small
Her Laws decree, by which she judges all;
Hence in one mould must oft confound at once
The daring thinker with the plodding dunce;

392

The soaring Mind must sink into a plan,
Forget her wings, and crawl where Dulness can;
Those bolder traits, original and bright,
Fade into dimness when they lose the light
Of open, free, and self-created day
Where all the tints of Character can play.
Yet, what could Education's art provide
For countless Minds by varying standard tried?

393

For public Weal, not individual Mind
As mental Nurse was Oxford first design'd;
And blindly wrong would be her guardian eye,
To love the great, but pass the lesser by;
From each due toil impassion'd Genius save,
And crown for merit what mere Nature gave.
Not all alike discerning Heaven endows,
Nor equal mind to equal heart allows:
Full oft th' ingenuous pang, the noble tear
Or modest Doubt, the phantom-child of fear,
To humble Worth a consecration lends,
Which proves for lost renown sublime amends;—
Let mind be nursed, though doom'd a narrow sphere,
And what his Maker gives, let man revere!

Allow that Genius feels a curbless soul,
Which chafes in fetters, and defies control;
And, haughty as the mountain eagle-chain'd,
Hath every empire but her own disdain'd:
Though customs old, like ancient roots, are found
With stubborn grasp to cling to native ground,
Fain would her boldness to Herself be rule,
And energy its own majestic school!
But when hath Mind such education lost,
However cabin'd, and however cross'd?
Alike triumphant over college-wall,
The mouldy cellar, and plebeian stall
We mark the Soul of Inspiration rise,
Expand her wings, and revel in the skies!

Then vainly let the powerless sophist frown,
To hide one ray of Oxford's fair renown:
Or quote some verse to vindicate his cause,
Of scornful meaning at her ancient Laws.
Spirits have lived, who could not suffer chains;
The fire which fever'd their electric veins
Burn'd all too restless for obedient thought,
And hence the solace indignation brought.
Yet when was Order known, or due Control,
To quench divinity within the soul?
Oh! little think they, how sublimely pure,
In godlike state above the World secure,
That earthless nature which they Genius call!
In vain the tides of circumstance appal;
Though clouds repress, and darksome woe detain,
The Soul remounts, and is Herself again.
Go, ask of Ages what made dungeons bright,
Vile Sufferance sweet, and Danger a delight?—
'Twas Spirit, independent as sublime,
The King of nature and the Lord of time!

The Sun is up! behold a genial day,
And all things glorious in its glorious ray;
Ascend the Radcliffe's darkly-winding coil

394

Of countless steps, nor murmur at the toil;
For lo! a Scene, when that ascension's o'er,
Which Painters love, when most their feelings soar.
There, from the base of her commanding Dome
O'er many a mile the spell-bound glance may roam,
While music-wing'd, the winds of freshness sound,
Like airy haunters of the region round.
Yon heavens are azured by one cloudless die;
Beneath—romance in stone to charm the eye!
Spire, tower, and steeple, roofs of radiant tile,
The costly Temple, and collegiate Pile,
In sumptuous mass of mingled form and hue,
Await the wonder of thy lingering view.
Far to the west, autumnal meadows wind
Whose fading tints fall tender on the mind;
And near, a hoary Tower with dial'd side,
And nearer still, in many-window'd pride,
All Souls', with central towers superbly grand;
But see! the clouds are rent,—they break,—expand,
And sunshine, welcomed by each ancient pile,
Like Past and Present when they meet to smile,
With tinting magic beautifully falls
On fretted pinnacles, and fresco'd walls,
Till dark St. Mary, with symmetric spire,
Swells into glory as her shades retire;
And Maudlin' trees, which wave o'er Cherwell-stream,
Flash on the view and flutter in the beam:
In yellow faintness, lo! that sun-burst dies,
The vision changes with the change of skies;
Again have Centuries their dominion won,
And shadows triumph o'er the failing Sun.

And every where time-hallow'd Temples rise,
Whose classic pomp corroding age defies.
What solemn beauty by the spirit felt!
While feelings into adoration melt,
As in their depth of Gothic gloom we tread
Amid the hush of Ages which are dead.
I well remember, when a stranger, first,
What stately Vision on my senses burst!
From towering lamps a noon-like radiance shone
O'er pavement mottled with mosaic stone,
And white-robed Choristers in due array,
Whose vestments glitter'd like the sheen of day.
There, silver-voiced, in many a heav'nward note,
I heard rich Music in soft billows float,
Now faintly ebb, then loudly swell again,
And grow resistless as the organ-strain
Came river-like, in one impassion'd roll
From the deep harmony of Handel's soul!

And tell me, thou whose wandering feet have trod
Like his who trembled on the ground of God,
The hallow'd soil where classic glories shine
Back on thy spirit with their beam divine,
Hath Oxford, haunted by her long array
Of Memories which cannot glide away,
No local Magic to entrance thy mind,
And make it prouder of thy Human Kind?
Whate'er of good and glorious, learn'd or grand,
Delighted ages and adorn'd the land,
Was foster'd here:—the Senate, Pulpit, Bar,
The scenes of Ocean, and the storms of War,
Wherever Mind hath high dominion shown
To counsel Kingdoms, or secure a Throne,—
There may Oxonia sons of glory hail,
And see the Spirit which she nursed, prevail!
Forget awhile the fever of the hour,
And give the Past its resurrection-power;
Around thee Bards and Sages muse or stray,
And wind the garden that is walk'd to-day.
The pilgrim-clouds, those time-worn trees which wave
On banks whose beauty constant waters lave,
Their eyes beheld:—do burning thoughts begin?
Then dare to rival what you dream within!

Too vast Her list, might pen achieve it all,
Each form of memory into life to call;
Yet fain would fondness with some imaged few
Partake a moment, and believe it true.
Adown yon path, beside the grassy sweep
Of Maudlin' park, where light deer couch and leap,
And giant elms the haughty Winds delay,
There gentle Addison was wont to stray:
And where the mill-stream turns yon restless wheel,
As writhing on those broken waters steal,
His tree-lined walk of beauteous length began,
For ever hallow'd by that holy man!
In many a whirl hath Autumn's driving blast
From these fond trees their summer-foliage cast,
And leafy showers now mournfully abound,
In sallow redness scatter'd o'er the ground;
But here, full oft, the branches waving green,
And heaven's blue magic smiling in between,
The pensive Rambler dream'd an hour away,
Or wove the music of his Attic lay;
Saw Cato's grandeur on his soul arise,
And Heaven half open to a heathen's eyes:
Or, happier themes, whose ethic pureness glows
With every tint that character bestows,
From ancient Lore his tender heart beguiled,
And lit his features when his fancy smiled,
Nor be forgot, who all his worth could feel,
The friend of Addison, delightful Steele!

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Whose classic morn let Merton's annals claim,
Where first the Drama woo'd him on to fame:
More roughly hewn than his Athenian friend,
And venturing oft where Virtues never tend;
Yet warm of soul, and child-like to a tear,
As when it dropp'd on Love's parental bier;
Now madly sunk in passion's deep excess,
Now high in wisdom which a saint might bless!
A mixture wild of all that man admires,
Whose faults may warn him, while his fame inspires.

Ere Steele began, what Addison pursued,
The path still trod with mental gratitude,
Those day-born graces, whose refinement blends
The charm of Manner with the soul of friends,
La Casa first in Italy awoke,
And sketch'd the Courtier with a master-stroke.
But next, a Gallic Theophrastus threw
His playful archness o'er the scene he drew,
Dissected truth with Satire's keenest knife,
And mirror'd Nature on the glass of life.
Then rose on English ground the gifted pair,
Who taught to either Sex a softer air,
Proved Elegance to Virtue's self allied,
And laugh'd at Dulness, till her follies died!
O'er weeds and thorns which social life beset,
And tease their martyr into vain regret,
Their morning-smile satirically pass'd,
Till fools turn'd wise, and fops were cured at last!
Nor small the debt Society should pay
To him who flaps her buzzing Flies away;
Those noisesome Insects on eternal wing,
That hum at banquets, or in ball-rooms sting,
Which, though they cannot heart and mind o'erpower,
May fret the smoothness of the calmest hour.

Here Collins, too, whose perfect numbers roll
Pathetic music o'er the dreaming soul,
In melancholy loneness pined and thought
'Mid the sad gloom by stricken genius wrought.
E'en now the curse was breeding in his brain,—
A nerveless spirit, and a soul insane;
While moon-born fairies would around him throng,
And genii haunt him in the hush of song:
Ill-fated bard! like Chatterton's thy doom,
To seek for fame, and find it in the tomb!

To Pembroke turn, and what undying charm,
Breathed from the Past, shall there thy spirit warm?
There Johnson dwelt! the dignified and sage,
The noblest Honour of a noble age;
Whose mien and manners, though of graceless kind,
Were all apart from his heroic mind;
They were the bark around some royal tree
Whose branches towering in the heavens we see.
Here lived and mused that unforgotten Man!
Might Language speak, what only Feeling can,
As here I view these venerable walls
And slow as in some fane my footstep falls,
Young hearts would echo to a welcome strain,
And feel, as I do,—Johnson live again!
O'er Time's vast sea a century's waves have roll'd,
And many a knell hath unregarded knoll'd,
Since, fondly wrapt in meditative gloom,
The sage of England sat in this lone room:
Yet, well may Fancy, at yon evening-fire
Behold him seated; and when moods inspire,
(As Sorrow droop'd, or Hope her wings unfurl'd)
His spirit hover through the varied world
Of life and conduct, fortune, truth, or fate,
His future glory, and his present state:
Or, when the noonshine reign'd in golden power
And dimly smiled some melancholy Tower,
Muse at his window with far-wandering eye,
And drink the freshness of the open sky;
Or round the gateway woo admiring Ears
To listen, while he charm'd beyond his years,
By spoken magic, or electric wit
That flash'd severe, yet sparkled where it hit:—
A bright deception! far too often seen
To hide the heart where agony has been.
Oh! hideous mockery the mind endures,
To forge the smile whose merriment allures,
To gild a moment with fictitious ray
Yet feel a viper on the spirit prey!
Departed Soul! how oft when Laughter fed
On the bright frolic which thy fancy bred,
And happy natures, as they saw thee smile,
Seem'd mingling with thy sunny heart awhile,
Back to thy chamber didst thou darkly steal,
And there the blight of thine own bosom feel?

396

Then sink to slumber with a heated brain,
To-morrow wake, and wear that smile again!

I know not why, but since a dream of Fame,
My heart hath gloried in great Johnson's name,
And deeper worship to his Spirit vow'd
Than others have to loftier worth allow'd.
In what a mould was his high nature cast,
Who never ventured, but he all surpass'd!
And reign'd amid the realms of thought alone,
Nor left an equal to ascend his throne.
How truly deep, how tenderly divine;
The lofty meaning, the majestic line!
A moral sweetness, a persuasive flow
Of happy diction, whether joy or wo
Touch'd the deep springs of his devoted mind,
Where'er they muse, delighted myriads find;
And though the bleakness of his spirit threw
Round earth's rare sunshine too severe a hue,
How Life and Character before him stand,
Their mysteries open, and their scenes expand!
And well for wisdom, could the loud pretence
Of puny language with profoundest sense,
Such massy substance in the meaning show,
As that which ages to a Johnson owe!

Descend from learning to the nearer view,
Where Man appears in vital colours true;
And where was Piety more deeply shrined,
Than in the temple of that awful Mind
Whence day and night eternal incense rose
To Him from whom the tide of Being flows!
That self-respect, around whose constant sway
The purest beams of happiness must play,
He ever felt; the same proud dream it gave
To hours that wither'd in the toils of Cave,
And him, in aidless fortune high and free,
Who taught a Lord how mean a Lord could be!
And, mix'd with harshness, irritably loud,
Which came like thunder from the social cloud
Which pride or pertness round the moment threw,
His faith, how firm! his tenderness, how true!
For Goldsmith's worth, or Garrick's lighter grace,
The tears of fondness trembled down his face;
And when did Want or Wo to him appeal,
Nor find a hand to give, a heart to feel?
While Truth he worshipp'd with severest awe,
Of Fame the glory, and to life a law.
So great he lived: yet round the greatest soul
How weakness hovers with its vile control!
As when some organ of the frame appears
In matchless strength beyond the mould of years,
A weakness balancing that strength is found;
So oft in mind where miracles abound,
The lying pettiness of nature seems
Revenged in mocking what perfection dreams.
In Johnson thus: the piety which trod
Each path of life, communing with his God,
In gloomy hours could childish phantoms see,
And give to Penance what was due to tea!
The mind that reason'd on the fate of Man,
And soar'd as high as wingless nature can,
Would oft descend, the petty bigot show,
And roll lip-thunders o'er some prostrate foe!
Or else, in whirlwind fury sweep along,
And risk the right, to prove a victor wrong.
The Soul which spake angelically wise
When Truth and he were throned amid the skies,
In human life his Rasselas forgot
To wear the meanness of our common lot,
By passion bow'd, each prejudice obey'd,
And grew ferocious o'er a smile betray'd!
Yet peace to such! of all by men adored,
Than Johnson, who could better, faults afford?
Let Time exult that such a man hath been,
And England follow where his steps are seen.

To swell the records of collegiate-fame
See Lincoln rise, and claim her Davenant's name;
Within her walls the minstrel-student wove
Poetic dreams of melody and love.
On him, as yet a verse-enchanted child,
The prince of nature, Shakspeare's self, had smiled!
Oh! to have listen'd to that glorious Tongue,
And seen the Man on whom a World has hung,
Till admiration, too intensely wrought,
Becomes a worship, and adores in thought!
And, Wesley! often in thy room I see
A holy Shadow which resembles thee;
Let others laugh at that o'erheated mind
Which never gloried but to bless Mankind;
Be ours the tribute to as pure a soul
As Fame recordeth in her sacred roll.
A kindred line to pious Hervey pay,
Whom Lincoln boasted in his morning-day:
When night begins, and starry wonders teem,
My fancy paints him in some mental dream,
With eye upturn'd to where th' Almighty shone
While vision'd angels warbled round His throne.

From Christ Church, lo! a dazzling Host appears
Whom Time has hallow'd, and the World reveres,

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Of prelates, orators, and statesmen high,
To be forgotten,—when the world shall die!
'Twas here the muse of Tragedy divine
Bade Jonson rise, and picture Catiline;
Immortal Ben! to Selden dear, and fraught
With all that Homer loved, or Plato taught.
A later age, and Locke's eternal mind
Here soar'd to Reason, such as Heaven design'd;
Help'd Understanding to redeem her sway,
And out of night call'd intellectual day.

One evening, when delightful converse glow'd,
As friend on friend his gleam of thought bestow'd,
That spark was struck which set the soul on fire,
Whence sprang the work fond ages shall admire.
Hours worthy Heaven! when cultured spirits meet
Within the chamber of divine retreat;
There Friendship lives; there mental Fondness reigns;
And hearts, oblivious of their lonely pains,
By feeling blended, one communion make,
To keep the brightness of the soul awake.

But who can languish through the leaden hour
When Heart is dead, and only Wine hath power?
That brainless meeting of congenial fools
Whose highest wisdom is to hate the Schools,
Discuss a Tandem, or describe a race,
And curse the Proctor with a solemn face;
Swear Nonsense wit, and Intellect a sin,
Loll o'er the wine, and asininely grin,—
Hard is the doom when awkward chance decoys
A moment's homage to their brutal joys!
What fogs of dulness fill the heated room
Bedimm'd with smoke, and poison'd with perfume!
Where now and then some rattling tongue awakes
In oaths of thunder, till the chamber shakes.
Then Midnight comes, intoxicating maid!
What heroes snore, beneath the table laid!
But, still reserved to upright posture true,
Behold! how stately are yon sterling few:—
Soon o'er their sodden nature wine prevails,
Decanters triumph, and the drunkard fails:
As weary tapers at some wondrous rout
Their strength departed, winkingly go out,
Each spirit flickers till its light is o'er,
And all are darken'd who were drunk before!

Oh! thou, whose eloquence and wit combined
To make their throne the heart of all Mankind;
Whom Memory visions in his wonted place
Where passions lighten'd o'er a speaking face,
And sounds of feeling from the soul were heard,
While music hung on every magic word,—
Regretted Canning! oft has Christ Church seen
Thy glance of lustre sparkle round her scene:
From Eton famed, where dazzling merit shone
In each young theme thy Genius smiled upon,
Her walls received thee; where thy talents grew,
Bright in the welcome of her fostering view,
Till glowing Senates mark'd thy spirit rise,
And England hail'd it with applauding eyes.
Alas! that in thy Manhood's noble bloom,
The shades of death hung grimly o'er thy doom,
Thy frame, too weak, a fiery spirit wore,
Though Mind prevail'd till Life's last pulse was o'er!

Thy funeral knell, oh! when I heard it moan
Like the deep echo of a Nation's groan;
That Sky beheld, where sorrow loves to gaze
When mystery wraps us or the world betrays;
And thought how soon thy glorious sun had set!
I felt a sadness, which inspires me yet:
But had I, demon-like, e'er wing'd the dart
Whose poison fed upon thy feeling heart,
Inflicted pangs where only praise was due,
And vilely thwarted every soaring view,
A more than melancholy for him who died,
Slain by the weapons which Renown supplied,
My soul had borne; and, wrung with inward shame,
Cursed the dark hour that wounded Canning's fame!

The yew-tree'd walk, and wilderness of shade
Where rosily the twilight-hues have play'd,
By Denham haunted, Trinity! revere;
There wander'd he, no step invasive near,
The world forgot, amid Parnassian skill,
And dream'd the melodies of “Cooper's Hill.”
And haughty Chatham, at whose humbling word
Proud Walpole trembled, when its sway was heard;
Who baffled Spain, America, and Gaul,
To throne his England like a Queen o'er all,—
Thy paths have echo'd his immortal feet,
Thy Shades enjoy'd him in sublime retreat.
Here Warton's soul emparadised his hours,
And strew'd Antiquity with classic flowers;

398

Where'er he went, saw dim Cathedrals rise,
Or Gothic windows in their sunset-dyes.

And thou, whose ever-gentle page is fraught
With the sweet lore poetic sadness taught,
Not unremember'd let thy name be found
Where Genius hallows an enchanted ground.
Upon that brow the seal of Time hath set
A mournful grace, but left no dark regret
For wither'd years, whose flowery bloom remains
In the pure freshness of Aonian strains.
Yet oft thy Memory in creative gloom
May fondly sigh o'er many a distant tomb,
Where moulder forms which brighten'd other Days
Whose eyes have glisten'd o'er thy youthful lays!
Thy noontide spent, serener twilight glows
Around thy spirit like a soft repose;
And oft I turn, when fancy wanders free,
Romantic Bowles! to meditate with thee:
Oh! long in Bremhill may the village-chime
Peal solemn anthems o'er departed Time;
And fairy echoes, while they float along,
Awaken visions which were born in song,
Of hope and fame, when first thy feeling Youth
Their beauty painted on a world of truth.

Thy pleasing life, in pastoral quiet spent,
Where heaven and earth comminglingly are blent,
A prayer evokes, that England long may see
In wood-hung vales, from city-murmur free
That landscape-charm in varied shadow drest—
The village-steeple with its towery crest,
When dimly taper'd by romantic height,
Or grayly melted into morning-light.
Not Windsor vast, with battlemented towers,
With charm so deep a pensive gaze o'erpowers
As village-spires, in native valleys seen,
With nature all around them, hush'd and green:
How oft some eye, as o'er the wheel-track'd road
The whirling Coach conducts its motley load,
Hath wistful gazed where neat the parsonage rose,
With Church behind it in revered repose!

Ah! little know they, whom the harsh declaim
Of Folly leads to scorn a Curate's name,
In hamlets lone what lofty minds abound
And spread the smiles of charity around!
It was not that a frowning Chance denied
An early wreath of honourable pride:
In College-rolls triumphantly they shine,
And proudly Alma Mater calls them, “mine!”

399

But heavenlier dreams than ever Fame inspired
Their spirit haunted, as the World retired.
The fameless quiet of parochial care
And sylvan home, their fancy stoop'd to share;
And when arrived, no deeper bliss they sought
Than that which undenying heaven had brought.
On such, perchance, renown may never beam,
Though oft it glitter'd in some College-dream;
But theirs the fame no worldly scenes supply,
Who teach us how to live, and how to die!

In life so calm, unworldly, and refined,
What pictured loveliness allures the mind!
Hast thou forgot that balmy summer-noon
That glow'd so fair, and fled, alas! so soon,
My chosen Friend! in whose fond smile I see
A spirit noble, and a nature free,
When Blenheim woo'd us to that proud domain
Where History smiles, and Marlborough lives again.
And on the way how sweet retirement threw
A shade of promise o'er Life's distant view?
How softly-beautiful the bending sky,
Like heaven reveal'd, burst radiant on the eye!
A Spirit, bosom'd in the winds, appear'd
To chant noon-hymns, where'er a sound career'd;
While ev'ry leaf a living gladness wore
And bird-like flutter'd as the breeze pass'd o'er:
The lark made music in the golden air;
The green earth, yellow'd by a sunny glare,
In twinkling dyes beheld its flowery race
Dance to the wind and bloom with sparkling grace;
Faint, sweet, and far, we heard the sheep-bell sound,

400

While insect-happiness prevail'd around:
And rich varieties of hill and glade,
Where viewless streams, by verdure oft betray'd,
(Like Charity, who walks the world unseen
Yet leaves a light where'er her hand hath been)
By bank and mead roll'd windingly away,—
'Twas ours to witness in adorn'd array.

Noon glided on, till day's declining glow
Beheld us sweeping o'er the verdant flow
Of meadow'd vales, to where the village-hill
In garden bloom we welcomed, bright and still.
That sunny eve in smiling converse fled
Around a banquet generously spread,
Beneath a roof where Elegance combined
The pure in Taste with Fancy the refined:—
The Church antique, whose ivied turret won
The dream-like changes of departing sun
And glanced upon us at our parting hour,
I still remember in its beauteous power.
Then home we sped beside romantic trees
Whose leaf-pomp glitter'd to the starting breeze,
And fondly view'd in symmetry of shade
The mimic branches on the meadows laid.
In wave-like glory burn'd the sunset sky;
Where rosy billows seem'd to swell and lie
Gleaming and vast;—as if that haughty Day
Ere yet th' horizon saw him sink away,
His clouds and colours vassal-like would see
Once more awake, and own their deity!

Where Balliol frowns along yon ancient road,
By Evelyn hallow'd, his endear'd abode
I never pass, nor think of them who died,
Heroic Martyrs, burning side by side!
Upon her walls there hung a crimson glare,
And red fires raven'd on the breezeless air;
But thou, false Bigot! in that murderous hour
To heaven couldst look, and on thy victims lour,
Then feed thy gaze with agonies of fire,
As limb by limb the tortured Saints expire!
In serpent-writhings, lo! the flames awake,
Hiss as they whirl, and riot round the Stake;
While mitred fiends, as they behold them rise,
Glare on the martyrs with their wolfish eyes!
Yet firm they stand: behold! what Glories smile
Above the fury of that burning pile;
Ten thousand harps, ten thousand anthems swell.
And heaven is worshipp'd in a scene of hell!

Here Southey, in the spring-like morn of youth,
His feeling, conduct, and his fancy, truth,
Beheld the orb of Liberty arise
To gild the earth with glory from the skies:
What wonder, then, if his Chaldean gaze
With glowing worship met her morning-rays,
Beheld them bright as freedom's rays should be
And thought they darted from a deity?
Who did not feel, when first her shackles fell,
The truth sublime that France inspired so well,—
There is a freedom in the Soul of man
No Tyrant quenches, and no Torture can!
But when high Virtue from her throne was hurl'd
And Gaul became the dungeon of the World,
No mean deserter was that patriot proved
Whose Manhood censured what his Youth had loved.

In bloom of life he sought domestic shade,
Devoting hours a world had not betray'd
In deep affection to delightful lore,
Which Feeling loves, and Wisdom may adore.
While others linger'd in the restless Town
To wear the thorny wreath of young renown:
Or, spirit-worn, see rivals mount above,
With few to honour, and with none to love,—
Afar to Keswick's mountain-calm he hied,
And found the haven which a Home supplied.
There Nature pure to his pure soul appeals,
With Her he wanders, and with Her he feels,
While earth and sky for poesy unite,
And the hush'd mountains hallow morn and night.
Thus flowingly the fairy hours depart
And each day adds a virtue to the heart.
Ah, blissful Lot! which few have lived to share
Who haunt the world, and seek to find it there?
Forgetful that one day of Life is fraught
With years of meaning for inductive Thought,
In baffled hope the mind exhales away,
Their each to-morrow a renew'd to-day;
Too meanly anxious for some poor applause,
They burn for Glory, but betray her cause.
True fame is genius, in its earthless hour
Sent from the soul with world-subduing power,
From heart to heart electrically known
Till Realms admire, and Ages are its own!

Oh! blest resolve which consecrates a life
To leave for studious calm the noisome strife
Of London's everlasting round of self,
Pursued by Learning, or career'd for Pelf.
In wise seclusion heaven-ward thoughts incline
To form in Man the elements divine;
From day to day their semblance nearer grows,
Till kindred Mind a kindred Maker knows;

401

And then, what beautiful accordance seen
In all that Wisdom taught, or time hath been!
What once was dark becomes divinely clear,
And earth itself a heaven-reflecting sphere.
That living God enthron'd all worlds above
Whose Name and Nature are reveal'd by Love,
Our spirit feels within itself abide,
The Will direct, and o'er each thought preside;
In man or nature, whatso'er befal—
True faith can fathom and interpret all!

Turn from the calm secluded life bestows,
A life which Evelyn loved and Southey knows,
To London; where a world of anxious mind
In one dark fever of excess we find;
Where talent sparkles with incessant rays,
And authors perish—for the want of praise!
Though minds abound, whose magical control,
Like truth from heaven, can elevate the soul,
Too rapidly our soaring authors teem
For each to fill the circle of his dream.
Though high the hope which Energy awakes,
And far the flight a free-wing'd Spirit takes,
A thousand hearts o'er disappointment bleed,
The many venture, but the few succeed.
Hence of all crimes, the last to be forgiven
Eternal barrier to some critic's heaven,
Success is proved;—that hour Her star appears
In daring brightness to outdazzle years,
The fogs of hate, the clouds of dulness rise,
To quench her lustre, and deface her skies;
Hence martial pens in pugilistic rage,
And venom oozing from each vulgar page,
Slander abroad on its exulting wings
To frighten fools, or flap the face of kings,
While faded authors, overcome with bile,
Turn into villains, and lampoon the Isle!

But, hark! to sounds so musically dear,
By Flattery melted into Folly's ear;
Behold a “Lion” who must roar to-night,
And doubt if homage be not man's delight!
Amid the sweet, soft words, which come and go
From lord to lady, and from belle to beau,
There in thyself a night-throned Idol see,
'Tis all thou art, and all a fool should be!
Enamour'd thus, nonsensically dream
Thy mental worth a supernat'ral theme;
Yet, look around thee ere the night be o'er,
Thy heart is free, and thou a fool no more!
Thy mien, thy manners, and thy person tend
To make no charm Politeness could commend;
And, lest they should not quite sufficient see,
The faults of others are bestow'd on thee;
Thus on, till all that once was “glory” thought
From tongue to tongue is whisper'd into nought;
While each is conscious, as thy fame's o'erthrown,
To wound another's, is to heal his own.

Yet oft ambiguous Hate her truth beguiles,
And Envy wriggles into serpent-smiles!
Some cringing, cawing, sycophantic Sneak
With heart as hollow as his head is weak,
In smother'd voice will chance a rival sue
To feed the pages of a starved Review:
“Dear Sir! I think your genius quite divine,”—
To-morrow, turn, and lash it line by line!
And can it be, to such ignoble life
Of ceaseless longing and chicaning strife,
Where fever'd passion frets the hour along,
That woman's gentler soul would fain belong?
Oh! deem not the assuming pride of Man
Would claim a glory which no Woman can;
Nor think to her soft nature is not given
The flame of genius with the form of heaven.
Her tenderness hath made our harshness weep,
And hush'd our passions into child-like sleep;
Her dewy words fall freshly on the soul;
Her numbers sweet as seraph-music roll;
And beautiful the morn-like burst of mind
When first her spirit wakens o'er mankind!
Now painting clouds, now imaging the sea,
Bloom on the flower, and verdure on the tree!
But diff'rent far a genius thus display'd,
From mind corrupted into menial trade,
When reputation is the theme adored,
And pilfer'd learning all its charms afford,
Those hues divine which delicately please,
The smile unfashion'd, and the soul at ease,
All, all that language is too frail to tell
Which forms in woman what we feel so well,

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In public life too often dies away
Like dreams forgotten in the flush of day.
There, taunting Pens dissect her dubious claim,
Or jeering coxcombs jest away her fame:—
Behold the beauty of yon garden-flower
In lovely bloom beside its native bower;
What winning freshness in its healthful dye,
Pure as the spring, and radiant as the sky!
Transplant it thence to some o'erheated room,
Where hands profane it,—and, alas, the bloom!

Let Man his intellectual sceptre wield;
To him have Ages in their march appeal'd
To shape the Elements of mind and power
Through the vast scene of Life's unrestful hour.
But thou, fond Woman! on affection's throne,
Behold a kingdom of the Heart thine own!
Their feelings form the subjects of thy sway,
And all is Eden where thy glances play:
'Tis thine to brighten far from public strife
The daily windings of domestic life,
And by thy grace and gentleness of mien
Adorn and beautify Home's varied scene.

Pleasant is Morning, when her radiant eye
Opes on the world, enchanting all the sky;
And Ev'ning, with her balmy glow of light,
The beauteous herald of romantic night:
And pleasant oft to some poetic Mind
The sound of water, and the sweep of wind,
A friend renew'd in some heart-welcomed place,
With years of fondness rising in his face;
The tear which answers to a tale of woe,
And happy feelings in their heavenward flow:
But sweeter far proves his revengeful lot
Whom Fame hath slighted, or the World forgot,
When printed falsehood gratifies each bent,
And mangles volumes to the heart's content;
Corrupts what style, creates what fault you please,
Laughs o'er the truth, and lies with graceful ease!
Thus Envy lives; and Disappointment heals;
The gangrened wounds a tortured memory feels;
And wither'd hopes delightful vengeance wreak,
While pages witness more than scorn could speak.

And thus with one, whose life I now recal;
When pens were daggers, he endured them all!
Each Reptile started from his snug review
To spit out poison,—as most reptiles do;
Oh, how they feasted on each faulty line,
And generously made their dulness thine!
From page to page they grinn'd a ghastly smile,
Yet seem'd to look so heaven-like all the while:
Then, talk'd of merit to the world unknown,
Ah! who could doubt them, for they meant their own.

Religion, too! what right had Youth to scan
That scheme of Glory which Heaven unveils for man;
Or paint around him, wheresoe'er he trod,
The glowing fulness of eternal God?
Indeed, 'twas hinted,—hoped it was untrue!
His heart had worn an atheistic hue;
And still religion, though its hallow'd name
Imparted freshness to his early fame,
Had not alike both heart and head inspired;
In short, the World was sick, and they were tired;
And then to prove his verse was more than vile
They wrote bad prose with overflowing bile!
But venal Commerce hired a Serpent too
To sound his rattle in the Scotch review;

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And yet, (alas! that such ignoble end
Should baffle those who injured Taste defend!)
Though perfect lies were most profoundly said
A Poet triumph'd and the Public read;
For truth is stronger than the envious know,
And gains new vigour from the vilest blow;
And when abusive falsehoods cease to pay,
Malice grows dumb, and slander dies away.

The faded past my fancy haunts again;
And lo! thine image shadow'd o'er my strain,
Thou lovely Spirit of celestial worth!
Whose saint-like pureness so adorn'd the earth,
And, when it vanish'd, thrill'd a world with woe,
And thoughts, which seldom into language flow,
But silently within the soul retire
And all the sacredness of grief inspire.

Yet, words and tears have minglingly adored,
Deep, warm, and true, as feeling Hearts afford,
Those angel-attributes which good men prize,
Lamented Heber! when they leave the skies,
A while some Spirit pure as thine array,
Smile on the World, and heaven-like pass away.

There is a shadow round the holy Dead:
A mystery, wherein we seem to tread,
As oft their lineaments of Life awake
And sorrowing Thoughts their hallow'd semblance take.

404

What once they dreamt, when mortal nature threw
Phantasmal dimness round each soaring view,
Now, all unearth'd, beatified, and free
From toil and tears,—their unscaled Eyes can see:
No more on them the fitful whirl of things
From joy to gloom, eternal trial brings;
In light array'd, before The Throne they shine,
And learn the mysteries of Love Divine:
Why tears were shed, why pangs of woe prevail'd,
Why Goodness mourn'd, and Virtue often fail'd,
No longer now a with'ring shadow throws
Like that which hovers round the World's repose.

The holy dead! of Earth and Heaven the dear!
Whene'er the darkness of our troubled sphere
'Twixt God and Man will demon-like arise,
The soul deject, and doubt away the skies,
Then Mem'ry points to where their feet have trod,
Redeems our nature, and recals her God.
Creation's debt to discontented Time
They help'd to cancel by a worth sublime,
And wisdom, which enthrones the good and great
High o'er the meanness of our mortal state;
The smile that withers in its cynic play
Each hope of earth when budding into day,
By merit awed, in forceless meaning falls,
Whenever mind exalted mind recals,
Since eras bright of holiness and love
Their spirits promise from a World above!

And such was he, whose toiling virtues won
A tomb of fame beneath a foreign sun.
In childhood, ev'ry dawning sweetness made
A tender magic which no truth betray'd;
While, fond as feeble, blendingly began
Those mental traits that ripen into man.
Romance and fairies, and Crusades inspired
The poesy which deeper Years admired:
Heaven's awful Book he loved to learn and read,
And mourn'd to see the great Redeemer bleed;
In all he did, benevolence prevail'd,
And from his frown no shrinking pauper quail'd;
Nor form of Woe, nor face of Grief, he pass'd,
But pitied all, and pitied to his last!

From Neasden fresh, lo! Oxford hails him now,
And fancies new are bright'ning o'er his brow:
Too warmly toned, too feelingly endow'd,
Companionless to linger in the crowd,
A brother's fame around him lives and blooms,
His mind awakes,—and magic fills his rooms!
Where souls have listen'd as he charm'd the hour,
And young eyes sparkled to confess his power.
Still, unentangled by the social net,
Though smile and banquet oft the heart beset,
Each dawn beheld him at his classic tome,
And pure, as in his unforgotten home.

Scarce enter'd yet, and honours flower'd his way!
And soon the music of a master-lay
From circling thousands woke a thrill divine
While England wept o'er weeping “Palestine!”
There are, that still in this cold world remain,
Whose ears are haunted by that holy strain,
Whose eyes dejected Salem still behold
As scene on scene the vision was unroll'd,
When invocation with her sweetest sound
Woo'd angel-forms, and angels watch'd around!
While grandly swelling into giant view,
“Like some tall palm the noiseless Fabric grew!”
Then Israel harping by her willow'd streams,
And Prophets bright with more than prophet-dreams,
The poet vision'd in his pictured strain
Amid the glory of Millennium's reign:
Then, bade his Thunders tell of time no more,
Till Nature shudder'd at their dooming roar!

Fond eyes were fix'd upon the Minstrel now;
A raptured sire beheld his laurell'd brow;
And blest his boy with all that tears bestow
When Heaven seems by, and human hearts o'erflow:
And where was he? escaped the glowing throng,
In the proud moment of triumphant song
He sought his chamber;—silent and alone
A Mother saw him at his Maker's throne!

That hour hath pass'd: a village-curate made,
How nobly seen amid the pastoral shade!
Parochial cares his cultured mind employ,
Domestic life and intellectual joy.
The old men cry, a blessing on his head!
And Angels meet him at the dying bed;
Let fever rage; disease or famine roll
Tormenting clouds which madden o'er the soul,
Where life exists, there Heber's love is found,
And heaven created by its welcome sound!

None are all blest; without some mental strife
To ripple, not destroy, the calm of life:
That heart for ever open to the poor,
Who weeping came, but smiling left his door,
Was all unapt, when mean annoyments rose
From rustic fools or mercenary foes,
By happy lightness to o'erleap them all,
And melt the clouds which daily life befal.

405

More wisely oft, where common nature guides,
A pliant spirit of the world presides,
Than he, whose loftiness of feeling fails
To stoop or wind, as subtlety prevails.
Nor could that Soul, though high its lot had been,
Forget to paint a more expanded scene,
Or sphere of duty where his mind would sway
The wider realms of intellectual day.
They dawn'd at length! a not unclouded dream,
From golden climes by Ganga's idol-stream.
That Indian soil poetic Fancy knew,—
Her sculptured wrecks, and mountain's roseate view,
Her palmy meads by banks of radiant green,
And dusky cots where cooling plantains lean.
But when he felt a meek-eyed Mother's gaze,
And thought how soon might end her lonely days!
Beheld his child in cradled hush asleep,
Too frail to dare the thunders of the deep;
His books deserted, friendship's riven chain,
And he, a pilgrim on the boundless main,—
That strife of soul might well forbid him roam,
And softly hue the tenderness of home!

Those shading doubts a Providence dispell'd;
Each home-born fear aspiring goodness quell'd:
The parting o'er, behold! the billows sweep
In rushing music as he rides the Deep,
That wafts him onward to his Indian clime,
While mused his heart on future toil sublime,
Whereby Redemption and her God would smile
On heathen Lands, and many a lonely isle,
Where stinted Nature, in degraded gloom
From age to age had wither'd to the tomb!
And haply, too, when rose the twilight-star,
And billows flutter'd in a breezy war,
At that dim hour regretted England came,
Familiar walks, and sounds of early fame,
And village-steeple, with the lowly race,
Whose fondness brighten'd to behold his face!

The Land was reach'd; and oh! too fondly known
How Heber made that sunny Land his own,
Till pagan souls a Christian nature wore,
And feelings sprang which never bloom'd before,
As toil'd he there with apostolic truth,
Redeem'd the Aged, and reform'd her Youth,
For praise to honour with a powerless line
A heart so deep, a spirit so divine!
He lived; he died; in life and death the same,
A Christian martyr! whose majestic fame
In beacon-glory o'er the world shall blaze,
And lighten Empires with celestial rays,
While Virtue throbs, or human hearts admire
A poet's feeling with a prophet's fire,
Or pure Religion hath a shrine to own
Where man can worship at his Maker's throne!

It was in prison that Boëthius composed his excellent work on the “Consolations of Philosophy;” it was in prison that Goldsmith wrote his “Vicar of Wakefield;” it was in prison that Cervantes wrote “Don Quixote,” which laughed chivalry out of Europe; it was in prison that Charles I. composed that excellent work, the “Portraiture of a Christian King;” it was in prison that Grotius wrote his “Commentary on St. Matthew;” it was in prison that Buchanan composed his excellent “Paraphrase on the Psalms of David;” it was in prison that Daniel De Foe wrote his “Robinson Crusoe;” (he offered it to a bookseller for ten pounds, which that liberal encourager of literature declined giving); it was in prison that Sir W. Raleigh wrote his “History of the World;” it was in prison that Voltaire sketched the plan and composed most of the poem of “The Henriade;” it was in prison that Howel wrote most of his “Familiar Letters;” it was in prison that Elizabeth of England and her victim, Mary Queen of Scots, wrote their best poems; it was in prison that Margaret of France (wife of Henry IV.) wrote an “Apology for the Irregularities of her Conduct;” it was in prison that Sir John Pettas wrote the book on metals, called “Fleta Minor;” it was in prison that Tasso wrote some of his most affecting poems. With the fear of a prison how many works have been written!

II. PART II.

“The still air of delightful studies.”—Milton.

“------ To range
Where silver Isis leads the stripling feet;
Pace the long Avenue, or glide adown
The stream-like windings of that glorious street!”
Wordsworth.

ANALYSIS OF PART II.

The proud feelings arising from a Survey of the Past —Commencement of College Life—Entrance into Oxford—First Morning in the University—Chapel Service—A Walk through the Town—The New Clarendon—Circulation of the Scriptures—Sublime Hopes—Picture of the Indian reading his Bible— Return to Oxford Life—The Freshman—Acquaintances —Characters—Difficulty and danger of Selection — Importance of the First Step in College Life—The Pure Associations of Home—Advancement and Triumph—The Reprobate Tutors—Fellowships—Collegiate Retirement considered in reference to Happiness—Reflections on the same—Chime of Evening Bells—The Student—Fascinations of Midnight Study—Mental and Physical Effects—Nigh Scene—Moonlight—Its Splendours—Reflective con clusion—Time—Youth—Retrospections and Anticipations—Thirst for Fame and Struggles for renown —The Evanescent Nature of Human Glory—A Farewell View, and Apostrophe to Heaven.

And thus, o'er visions of thy matchless few
Hath Fancy revell'd in her fleet review;
And, oh my country, glorious, brave, and free,
Heart of the world! what spirits hallow thee!
There is a magic in thy mighty name,
A swell of glory, and a sound of fame;
And myriads feel upon thy hills and plains
The patriot-blood rush warmer to their veins,
As all thou wert, and art, the mind surveys
With glowing wonder and enchanted gaze!

To this proud scene of architect'ral pride,
To all but Her, the ocean-famed, denied,
A parent sends, with many a voiceless fear,
His child, to arm him for the world's career.
Nor deem unawful that remember'd hour
When Fate and Fortune, with seductive power,
To Inexperience urge their blended claim,
And lead to honour, or allure to shame.
At length, young Novice! comes that hush'd farewell
Which words deny, but tears as truly tell;
The distance won, behold! at evening-hour
Thine eye's first wonder fix'd on Maudlin tower;
Then, Gothic Structures, as they swell to view
In steepled vastness, dark with ages' hue;
And on thine ear when first the morn-bells wake
As o'er the wind their wafted echoes break,
Delighted fancy will illume thy brow,
To feel thyself in ancient Oxford now!

406

Collegiate life next opens on thy way,
Begins at morn, and mingles with the day;
The pillar'd-Cloister, in whose twilight gloom
Pale dreams arise, like shadows from the tomb,
Now hears thy step: and well at first I ween,
The stately Chapel, with its sculptured screen;
The windows dim, where Bible-dramas live
For ages in the glow which colours give,
And golden beams of mellow'd radiance pass
Through vested figures on the tinted glass,

407

While Saints and Prophets, Priests and Prelates there,
And mitred Abbots, kneel in blended prayer;
The graven fretwork on the Gothic wall,
And flowery roof, which over-arches all,—

408

These in full action now, combine their charm,
And thrill young feelings, with devotion warm.

409

But, now the walk of wonder through the town
In the stiff foldings of a new-bought Gown!
From cap and robe what awkward shyness steals!
How wild à truth the dazzled Novice feels!
Restless the eye, his voice a nervous sound,
While laughing echoes are evoked around;
Each look he faces seems on him to leer,
And fancied giggles are for ever near!
Through High-street then, the Town's majestic pride,
Array'd with palaces on either side,
He roams: him tradesmen's greedy eyes behold,
Each pocket gaping for a freshman's gold.
The Clarendon may next his look beguile,
Theatric dome, and Ashmoléan pile;
Or Bodley-chambers, where in dusky rows,
The volumed wonders of the Past repose;
Or, some bold thought his wayward fancy rules,
To take a freeze of horror from the Schools,
From lofty benches send a downward gaze,
Hear awful sounds, and dream of future Days!

But lo! in towering pride, with massy gate,
The Clarendon uprears its modern state;
There pause, and think; for then a sense sublime,
How proud a victor over Space and Time
When Mind hath wielded its undaunted power
Is man, both slave and monarch of an hour!—
Comes o'er thy spirit with unutter'd thought,
Life melody with years of feeling fraught.
Yet, not the miracles of England's Press,
(That mighty Oracle to curse or bless!)

410

Alone the worship of high thought demand;
Lo! earth-wide dreams around the soul expand,
As dwells thy gaze on yon enormous piles
Of hallow'd Books, for heathen Lands and Isles;
A godlike present for benighted Man
Far as the soul can read Salvation's plan!

Transcendent thought! when changing Years have flown
Yon Bibles speak to every Clime and Zone!
The hut, the hovel, or the cottage wild
Where Sorrow shudders o'er her weeping child,
Their living words of holiness and love
Like angel-tones, shall warble from Above.
Omnipotence is there!—a power to be
God's voice on earth, inspired with Deity;
Thou Infidel! in tomb-like darkness laid,
By heaven deserted, and by sin betray'd;
And thou, pale mutt'rer in some midnight-cell,
Whose sad to-morrow is a dream of hell;
There is a Voice to wake, a Word to spread
Deep as the thunders which arouse the dead!
That Sound is heard; a Welcome from the skies!
Despair is vanquish'd, and Dejection flies;
Hope fills a heart where agonies have been,
The dungeon brightens, and a God is seen!

Immortal Pages! may your spirit pour
Celestial day, till heathen night be o'er.
In fiery lands, where roving Ganga reigns,
Eternal pilgrim of a thousand plains!
The tawny Indian, (when the Day is done
And basking waters redden in the sun,
Behold him seated, with his babes around,
To fathom mysteries where a God is found!
The Book is oped, some wondrous page began,
Where heaven is offered to forgiven man;
Lo! as he reads, what voiceless wonder steals
On all he fancies, and on all he feels!
Till o'er his mind, by mute devotion wrought,
The gleaming twilight of regen'rate thought
Begins, and heaven-eyed Faith salutes above
The God of glory, and a Lord of love!
“Thou dread Unknown! Thou unimagined Whole!
Thou vast Supreme, and Universal Soul,
Oft in the whirlwind have I shaped Thy form,
Or throned in thunder heard Thee sway the storm!
And when the ocean's heaving vastness grew
Black with Thy curse,—my spirit darken'd too!
But when the world beneath a sun-gaze smiled
And not a cloud the crystal air defiled,
Then I have loved Thee, Thou parental One,
Thy frown a tempest, and Thy smile a sun!
But if there be, as heaven-breathed words relate,
A seraph-home in some hereafter-State,
Almighty Power! thy dark-soul'd Indian see
And grant the Mercy which has bled for me!”

O'er Oxford thus the staring freshman roves
By solemn Temples, or secluded Groves;

411

Then, introduced, the social charms begin
By tongues which flatter, or by hearts that win;
Mien, mind, and manner,—all in varied style
Now woo his fortune, or reflect his smile.
For here, as in the World's unbounded sphere,
The countless traits of character appear.
In some proud youth, of feeling soul, we find
The winning magic of a noble mind;
Truth, taste, and sense whate'er he does pervade,
No virtue lost, no principle betray'd;
Another,—wildness marks his mien and tone!
His hand extends—and honours are his own;
Eternal plaudits in his ear resound;
He rides on wings, while others walk the ground!
A contrast see, whom hearts nor dreams inspire,
The booby offspring of a booby sire,
With leaden visage passionlessly cold
And ev'ry feeling round himself enroll'd.
Then, happy Pertness! how sincerely vain!
And, sour Perfection!—what sublime disdain!
For ever in detraction's art employ'd,
No virtue welcomed, and no look enjoy'd:
Then, pompous Learning! deeply read and skill'd
In pages which profoundest heads have fill'd,
Yet harsh and tasteless, and but rarely fraught
With knowledge sprung from self-excited thought.
But, save me, Heav'n! from what no words can tell,
A human Nothing, made of strut and swell,
Who thinks no University contains
Sufficient wisdom to employ his brains:
Yet, frothy Creature! what a vacant skull!
In all but falsehood villanous and dull;
Big words and oaths in one wild volley roll,
And Nature blushes for so mean a soul!

By these begirt, how oft may heart-warm Youth
Grow blindly fond, and misinterpret Truth,
When feelings in their flush'd dominion lend
To fancied kindness what completes a friend!
Now dawns the moment, doom'd in future years
To waken triumph, or be born in tears;
When Morals sway, Religion lives or dies,
And cited Principles to action rise.
Oh! thou, o'er whom a Mother's eye has wept,
Or round thy cradle frequent vigils kept;
Whose infant-brow a father's love survey'd,
And oft for thee with Heav'n communion made;
Be thine the circle where true Friendship lives
In the pure light exalted spirit gives;
And far from thee the infamous and vile
Who murder feeling with a Stoic smile,
Blaspheme the Innocence of early days,
Make virtue vice, impiety a praise,
Disease the health of unpolluted mind
And call it glory to disgrace mankind!
What though the eye may sparkle o'er the glass,
Or fondling words for fascination pass,
While flowers of friendship oft appear to bloom,
In the false sunshine of a festive room,
A day will come when sterner truths prevail
And friendship dwindles into folly's tale!

But shouldst thou waver, when the awful hour
Of Pleasure tempteth with a demon-power,
And time and circumstance together seem
To dazzle nature with too bright a dream,
Let Home and Virtue, what thou wert and art,
A Mother's feeling, and a Father's heart,
Full on thy mem'ry rise with blended charm
And all the serpent in thy soul disarm!
For who shall say, when first temptations win
A yielded mind to some enchanting sin,
What future crime, that once appear'd too black
For life to wander o'er its hell-ward track,
May lead the heart to that tremendous doom,
Whose midnight hovers round an early tomb?
Let Home be vision'd where thy budding days
Their beauty open'd on parental gaze:
For there, what memories of thee abound!
Your chamber echoes with its wonted sound;

412

The flow'r you reared, a sister's nursing hand
Still fondly guards, and helps each leaf expand;
The page you ponder'd with delighted brow
Was ever dear,—but oh! far dearer now;
The walk you loved with her sweet smile to share
She oft repeats, and paints your image there;
And when bright meanings have adorn'd the sky,
Her fancy revels in your fav'rite dye;
While oft at evening when domestic bloom
Hath flung a freshness round a social room,
When hearts unfold, and Music's wingèd note
Can waft a feeling wheresoe'er it float,
Some chord is touch'd, whose melodies awake
The pang of fondness for a brother's sake;
And Eyes are conscious, as they gaze around,
That looks are falling where a son was found!

Let home begird thee like a guardian dream,
And time will wander an unsullied stream,
Whose wildest motion is the rippled play
Of rapid moments as they roll away!
Meanwhile, delightful studies, deep and strong,
To graduate-honours waft thy soul along;
They come at length! and high in listed fame
A College hails, a Country reads thy name;
And in that List when first thy name appears,
What triumph sparkles in those happy tears!
In after-life, when Oxford's ancient towers
Thy mem'ry visions in creative hours,
Or college-friends a college-scene restore,
Thy heart will banquet on the bliss of yore!

Now mark a contrast, in whose meanness lies
What purer thought should soaringly despise.
From careless boyhood to uncultured man
Indulged to act, ere principle began;
With just enough of spirit for excess,
And heart which nothing save a vice, can bless,
In Oxford see the reprobate appear!
Big with the promise of a mad career.
With cash and consequence to lead the way,
A fool by night, and more than fop by day,
What happy vileness does his lot reveal!
How Folly burns with imitative zeal
Whene'er the shadows of his greatness fall
In festive chamber, or collegiate-Hall!
Romantic lot! to vegetate secure
From all which might to mental paths allure;
To wake each morning with no deeper thought
Than that which yesterday's excess hath brought;
Then, wing'd by impulse, as the day proceeds,
To follow where coxcombic fashion leads.
Hark! Woodstock rattles with eternal wheels,
And hounds are ever barking at his heels,
The Chapel, voted a terrific “bore,”
The “Dons,” head-pieces for the college door!
The Lecture scouted, the Degree reviled,
And Alma Mater all save alma styled!
Thus on; till Night advance, whose reign divine
Is chastely delicate to cards and wine,
Where modest themes amusive tongues excite
And faces redden with the soul's delight;
A Roman banquet! with Athenian flowers
Of festive wit, to charm such graceful hours!

Alas! that Truth must fling a doleful shade
On the bright portrait which her hand hath made:
Few years have fled, and what doth now remain
Of him the haughty, who but smiled disdain

413

On all young Virtue in her meekness dared,
Ambition hoped, or Principle declared?
His friends are dead; his fortune sunk away
In midnight-Hells, where midnight-demons play;
A wither'd Skeleton of sin and shame
With nought but infamy to track his name
The wreck of Fortune, with despairing sighs,
Fades from the world, and like a felon dies!

A nobler Theme! ere yet my strain conclude,—
The learn'd and gifted, dignified and good,
Those tasteful Guides, by whose directing hand
The seeds of learning ripen or expand;

414

And if one task there be the Soul to try,
Whose with'ring toils a due reward defy,
On them it falls whom Merit ranks her own
And Talent seats on Education's throne.
Each mode of mind, the stubborn, wise, or stern,
The headstrong Wit that cannot stoop to learn,
The dunce or drone, the freshman or the fool
'Tis their's to counsel, teach, o'erawe, and rule!
Their daily meed, some execrating word
To blight the hour when first their voice was heard,
From prating coxcombs, whose foul tongues declare
In froth and flippancy, what fools they are!

Yet well may such a doom be nobly faced;
There comes a scene by no dark cloud disgraced,
An hour when Genius, borne aloft to fame,
On Oxford sheds the brightness of her name,
Whence first her wings those eagle-heights explored,
Where now She reigns, adoring and adored!
Then, he who taught her, shares with proud surprise
And dewy gladness of delighted eyes,
That hour triumphant, when a World repays
The toilful dulness of collegiate-days.
Ah! who forgets the Parents of the mind?
What heart so dead, as no deep bliss to find
In thoughts which wander to their school-day scene,
Though years and distance darkly intervene?
The foot-worn mead; the playmate, wood, and walk
So sweetly shared in tenderness and talk;
The feats and pranks of undejected Youth
When Fancy wore the fairy mask of Truth,
Dull, drear, and worldly is the Soul that sees
No smile reflected from such joys as these!

And they who haunt, from year to year content,
That sacred home where studious hours are spent,
Does fancy think their stormless life must be
One still romance of mental liberty?
Yet Mind alone, whate'er the lot or state,
Her true delight must fancy or create;
From her the sunshine and the shadows fall,
Which brighten, tint, and oversway it all.
The daily clockwork of collegiate-life
Where nought is new, but Convocation-strife;
The bigotry which olden Times beget;
A sickly dulness, and a proud regret
For aught which seems of reformation sprung,
To let in light where ancient cobwebs hung,
If such combine, where weaker traits are found,
Who would not mourn that Fellowships abound?
The mighty brothers of the Sun and Moon,
Who tremble, lest a lip should smile too soon;
Nor treat their mouths except with college twang,
Where heavy words in heavy speeches hang;
Who hate the Present, but adore the Past,
And think their world the only one to last,—
How pitiful! should such a race be seen,
Where all the Monarchs of the mind have been.

Retirement, classic love, and studious ease,
A heart which deems it no disgrace to please,

415

With retrospections fond of other Days
When minds were nursed, that now repeat their praise,—
A lot so calm no virtue will destroy,
But season life for solitary joy.
And yet, let shades of accident unite
In happy union for its best delight,
A life of Learning is a life forlorn:—
Be mine the world which social scenes adorn,
Where Woman's heart the central bliss is found,
And happiness, the smile it sheds around!’

But night is throned; and full before me frown
The dusky Steeples which o'ershade the town;
High in the midst, a dark-domed shadow see,—
The Radeliffe, pile of unworn majesty;
Around it, silver'd by some window-ray
Whirls many a smoke-wreath in ascending play:
Beneath, what massy roofs inmingled lie,
Misshaped by fancy, till they awe the eye!
Hush'd are the groves, in leafy dimness veil'd,
The winds unheard, as though they ne'er had rail'd.
But hark! the iron voice of Wolsey's bell
Floats o'er the city like his last farewell,
While answ'ring Temples, with obedient sound,
Peal to the night, and moan sad music round;
But dread o'er all, like thunder heard in dreams,
The warning spirit of that Echo seems!
Now gates are barr'd; and, faithful to his stand,
The crusty Porter, with his key-worn hand.
Yet not with day, the day-born studies end;
Wan cheeks, and weary brows,—I see them bend
O'er haughty pages breathing ancient mind,
For Man and Immortality design'd:
The brain may burn, the martyr'd health may fail,
And sunken eyelids speak a mournful tale
Of days protracted into hideous length,
Till mind is dead, and limbs deny their strength:
Still, Honours woo!—and may they smile on thee,
Prophetic Youth! as bright as visions see;
Hours, days, and years severer far than thine,
In toil, and gloom, and loneliness, are mine.

The Day is earth, but holy Night is heav'n:
To her a solitude of soul is given,
Within whose depth, how beautiful to dream,
And fondly be, what others vainly seem!
Oh! 'tis an hour of consecrated might,
For Earth's Immortals have adored the night;
In song or vision yielding up the soul
To the deep magic of Her still control.
My own loved Hour! there comes no hour like thee,
No world so glorious as thou form'st for me!
The fretful ocean of eventful day
To waveless nothing how it ebbs away!
As oft the chamber, where some haunted Page
Renews a Poet, or revives a Sage
In pensive A thens, or sublimer Rome,
To mental quiet woos the Spirit home.
There Stillness reigns, how eloquently deep!
And soundless air, more beautiful than sleep.
Let Winter sway,—her sounds the scene inspires:
The social murmur of a blazing fire;
The hail-drop, hissing as it melts away
In twinkling gleams of momentary play;
Or wave-like swell of some retreated wind,
In dying sadness echo'd o'er the mind,
But gently ruffle into varied thought
The calm of feeling blissful night has brought.
How eyes the spirit with contented gaze
The chamber mellow'd into social haze,
And smiling walls, where, rank'd in solemn rows,
The wizard Volumes of the Mind repose!
Thus, well may hours like fairy waters glide,
Till morning glimmers o'er their reckless tide;
While dreams, beyond the realm of day to view,
Around us hover in seraphic hue;
Till Nature pines for intellectual rest,
When home awakens, and the heart is blest;
Or, from the window reads our wand'ring eye
The starry language of Chaldèan sky,
And gathers in that one vast gaze above,
A bright eternity of awe and love!

So heav'nly seems the visionary night:
But, ah! the danger in such deep delight.
The Mind, then beautified to fond excess,
With all things dare to brighten, or to bless:
A world of sense more spiritual is made
Than the stern eye of nature hath survey'd;
Some false perfection which hath never been,
By fancy imaged, lives through ev'ry scene;

416

But morn awakes, and lo, the spells unwind,
As daylight melts light darkness o'er the mind!
The worldly coarseness of our common lot
Recals the shadows which the night forgot;
Each dream of loftiness then dies away,
And heav'n-light withers in the frown of Day!
And then, the languor of each parching vein,
And the hot weariness of heart and brain,
That hideous shade of Something dread to be,—
Oh, fatal midnight! these are doom'd for thee.
Each breeze comes o'er us with tormenting wing,
Each pulse of Sound an agony can bring;
Let Chatterton Thy deathful charm reveal,
And mournful White, whose genius loved to steal
A placid sense of some angelic Pow'r
Around prevailing at thine earthless hour.
And oft, methinks, in loneliness of heart
As noons of night in dreaming calm depart,
My room is sadden'd with the mingled gaze
Of Those who martyr'd their ambitious days;
The turf-grass o'er their tombs,—I see it wave
And visions waft me to a kindred grave!

But lo! the yielding Dark hath gently died,
And stars are sprinkled o'er yon azure tide
Of lustrous air, which high and far prevails,
Where now the queen-like moon in glory sails.
City of fame! when Morn's first wings of light
Wave their fresh beauty o'er thy mansions bright,
Have I beheld thee; but a moonrise seems,
Like hues that wander from a heaven of dreams,
To hallow thee, as there thy Temples stand
Sublimely tender, or serenely grand,—
Spire, tower, and pinnacle, a dim array,
Whose spectral features in the moonlight sway:
The stony muteness of thy massive piles
Now silver'd o'er by melancholy smiles,
With more than language, spirit-like appeals
To the high sense impassion'd Nature feels
Of all which gloriously in earth or sky
Exacts the worship of her gazing eye.
There is a magic in the moonlit-hour
Which Day hath never in its deepest pow'r
Of light and bloom, when bird and bee resound,
And new-born flow'rs imparadise the ground!
And ne'er hath City, since a moon began
To hallow nature for the eye of man,
Steep'd in the freshness of her fairy light,
More richly shone, than Oxford shines to-night.
No lines of harshness on her Temples frown,
But all in one soft magic melted down,
Sublimer grown, through mellow air they rise
And seem with vaster swell to awe the skies!
On archèd windows how intensely gleams
The glassy whiteness of reflected beams!
Whose radiant slumber on the marble-tomb
Of mitred Founders, in funereal gloom,
Extends; or else in pallid shyness falls
On Gothic casements, or collegiate-walls.
The groves in silver-leaf'd array repose;
And, Isis! how serene thy current flows
With tinted surface by the meadow'd way,
Without a ripple, or a breeze at play:
Yet, once again shall summer-barks be seen,
And furrow'd waters, where their flight has been;
While sounding Rapture, as her heroes speed
From Iffly locks, flies glorying o'er the mead,
Hails from the bank as up the river ride
In oary swiftness and exulting pride
Her barks triumphal:—let the flag be rear'd,
And thousands echo, when the Colour's cheer'd!

Again upon the wind a wafted swell
Of ebbing sound, proclaims a midnight-bell;
Lo, phantom-clouds come floating by the moon,
Then melt away, like happiness, too soon:
And as they glide, an overshadowing smile
Of moving light is mirror'd on each pile.
Farewell the Scene! Farewell the fleeting song!
Wherein my spirit hath been borne along
In light and gloom through many a lonely hour,
With nought to gladden but its own weak pow'r.
In morning-youth far brighter dreams have play'd
Around a Heart which hope has oft betray'd,
Than those which hover o'er this dying strain;
But, faded once, they never form again?
“Farewell” to Oxford! soon will destined years
That word awaken which is spoke by tears:
When scheming Boyhood plann'd my future lot,
No scene arose by Oxford centred not;
And now, as oft her many-mingled chimes
Swell into birth, like sounds of other times,
Prophetic life a living mystery seems,
Unravell'd oft by consummated dreams!

417

Farewell! if when I cease to haunt her scene
Some gentle heart remember I have been,
As Oxford, with her palaces and spires,
The mind ennobles, or the fancy fires,
No vain reward his chosen theme attends
Howe'er the fate of him who sung it, ends!

Oh! fearful Time, the fathomless of thought,
With what a myst'ry are thine ages fraught!
Whose wings are noiseless in their rush sublime
O'er scenes of glory, as o'er years of crime;
Yet comes a moment when their speed is felt,
Till Past and Future through our being melt,
And boding shadows from a world unknown,
Deepen around us, and bedim our own.

A moment! well may that a moral be,
Whoe'er thou art, 'tis memory to thee:
A tomb it piled, a mother bore to heaven,
Or like a whirlwind o'er the ocean driven
Rush'd on thy fate with desolating sway,
And flung a desert o'er its darken'd way!
A moment!—Midnight wears a wonted hue,
And orbs of beauty speck yon skyward view;
Deep, hush'd, and holy is the world around,
But yet, what energies of Life abound!
In blended action through the realms of space
Where time and nature multiply their race
What crimes enacted, or what hearts awake
Which beat for glory or with anguish break!
And thou, dread spirit-World! to man unknown,
Where reigns Jehovah on His sightless throne,
Sense cannot view, but dreams would fain expand
Their wings ethereal o'er that mystic Land
Where Glory circles from the awful Three,
And Life is Love, and Love is Deity.

Who breathes, in good and ill must bear his part,
And each can tell a history of heart,
How Time hath tinged the moral of his years
Through gloom or glory, triumph, pangs, or tears.
And yet, howe'er Confession prove the right,
To give it voice is deem'd a vain delight;
And far too deeply is my mem'ry fraught
With the cold lesson blighted hours have taught,
To think a life so valueless as mine
With the stern feelings of a world may twine.
But words will rise from out perturbèd mind
As heave the waters to the helmless wind,
In some fond mood, when dreaming thoughts control
Departed years that slumber in the soul!

Life still is young, but not the world, with me;
For where the freshness I was wont to see?
A bloom hath vanish'd from the face of Things;
Nor more the Syren of enchantment sings
In sunny mead, or shady walk, or bower,
Like that which warbled o'er my youthful hour.
Let reason laugh, or elder wisdom smile
On the warm phantasies which youth beguile,
There is a pureness in that glorious prime
Which mingles not with our maturer time.
All earth is brighten'd from a sun within
As yet unshaded by a world of sin,
While mind and nature blendingly array
In light and love, whate'er our dreams survey:
Though perils darken from the distant years
They vanish'd, cloud-like, when a smile appears!
And the light woes that flutter o'er the mind
Are laugh'd away, as foam upon the wind.
Thou witching Spirit of a younger hour!
Did I not feel thee in thy fullest pow'r,
As oft school-free I rambled, lone and still
Through the green twilight of some wooded hill;
Or oped my lattice, when the moonshine lay
In sleep-like beauty on the brow of Day,
To watch the mystery of moving stars
Through ether gliding on melodious cars;
Or musing wander'd, ere the hectic morn,
To see how beautiful the sun was born?

A reign of glory from my soul hath past,
And each Elysium proved mere Earth at last;
Yet mourn I not in mock or puling strain,
For joys are left which never beam in vain:
The voice of friends, the changeless eye of love,
And, oh! that bliss all other bliss above,
To know, if shadow frown, or sunshine fall,
There is One Spirit who pervadeth all!

And has that fame, for which pure feelings pine,
No motive sanction'd by a Creed divine?
To be remember'd,—is the hope for this,
A false ambition for unholy bliss?
Time, Man, and Nature speak a deeper truth
When hope predicts the fancies of our youth!
But, 'tis not fame to form the midnight-show,
Where Vice and Vanity alike may go;

418

It is not fame, to hear the shallow prate
Of busy Fondness, or intriguing Hate,
To feast on sounds of patronising pride
And wring from dulness what the world denied.
A high-soul'd nature is its own renown,
And needs no jewels to begem the crown!
For 'mid the heat, the hurry and the strife,
Or daily nothings of distemper'd life,
Our spirit thirsteth for a purer World:
O'er this the wings of fancy are unfurl'd;
Hence painter's hue and poet's dream are brought,
And the rich paradise of blooming thought:
To quench that thirst, let heaven-born feelings flow,
Let genius wake! let inspiration glow!
Why thus we panted for a world like this
May form a knowledge in our future bliss.

All are not framed alike: Love, Hope, and Truth,
Those three Inspirers which attend on youth,
To various minds a varied tone impart;
What this man freezes,—fires another's heart!
The words that waken melodies of soul,
In tuneless ears monotonously roll;
The Shapes and Shadows which creation forms
And Fancy moulds from seasons and from storms
To living beauty or to lovely hue,
And waves them phantom-like before our view,
Will rouse the life-blood into fresher play
Of him who visions what the words array:
Another, eyeless save to sterner things,
Will frown them back as false Imaginings!
And thus in nature, as her vales reply
To voices wafted where the echoes lie,
Our spirits answer to appeals alone
When tuned accordant with some inward tone.
I've stood entranced beneath as bright a sun
As Poet's dream hath ever gazed upon,
In the warm stillness of that wooing hour
When skies are floating with seraphic power,
The gales expiring in melodious death,
The waters hush'd, the woods without a breath;
But when I look'd where lay immingled forms
Of fairy mountains or refulgent storms,
And cloud-born phantoms, delicately bright,
Laugh'd in the paleness of departing light,
Each fainting into each, a long array,
Like lovely echoes when they glide away,—
Another babbled in that beauteous hour,
Light as the leaf, and mindless as the flower!

Thou young Aspirer! darest thou dream of fame,
And hope another Age will read thy name?
The hidden stirrings of each voiceless pride,
The pangs unutter'd, by the soul supplied,
The ghastly dimness of dejected hope,
By dreams assail'd with which no pride can cope;
Those nameless thoughts of venom'd fierceness, sent
From the dark heavings of our discontent;
And, dreader still,—the clouds of daily life
That welter round us in disease or strife,
And the cold atmosphere of worldly sway
Where Life is self, and Self the life of day,
In mingled power will oft thy soul appal;
Too well I picture, for I felt them all!
Yet bear thou on! and when some breathing page
Of godlike poet, or divinest sage,
And secret energies of soul begin
To feed the passion that is form'd within,
Then let thy Spirit in her power arise
And dare to speak the language of the Skies!
Her voice may fail, in deathlike muteness lost,
Her hopes be visions, and those visions cross'd;
But, pure and noble if thy song began,
And pour'd high meanings through the heart of man,
Not echoless perchance a note hath been
In some lone heart, or unimagined scene.
How many a breeze that wings a noiseless way,
How many a streamlet unbeheld by Day,
How many a sunbeam lights a lonely flower,
Yet works unseen in its creative power!
Then highly soar, whene'er thy spirit feels
The vivid sway impassion'd thought reveals;
Unchill'd by scorn, undarken'd by despair,
So Martyrs lived, and such the Mighty were!

There is a pleasure in a praise denied;
It feeds a folly, or protects a pride,

419

It teaches Dulness what no Wit can say,
“I don't approve, let no one write to-day.”
Thou narrow-minded, petty, pompous Thing!
What lent a feather to the boldest wing
Of soaring Fancy,—but a praise when due?
And wouldst thou hive it for the darling few?
Though Shakspere sang, and Milton's soul aspired,
Must Gray be scorn'd, nor Goldsmith be admired?
As well might Ocean of the Earth demand
To let no river roll, no stream expand;
As well might Mountains which embrace the skies
Entreat the heav'ns to let no hills arise!
Eternal Spirit! while thy day-beams smile
Around my path in many a sunny wile,
Their shining truth, oh, let my gaze deny
Ere merit sickens on mine envious eye:
As ocean kindles to her native sun,
As waters freshen when the wind's begun,
So brightening, quickening—let my spirit feel
Wisdom and genius in their just appeal!

Such dimming shades, thou young Aspirer! wait
On all who seek to glorify their state.

420

But shouldst thou, wafted by a fearless gale,
Ascend a height no vulgar clouds assail;
Should Fame encrown thee, and thy mind suffuse
O'er other minds its vivifying hues;
Wake feeling, passion, and the pow'r sublime
That bids eternity o'ershadow time,
The sunny raptures of renown enjoy,
But deem, oh! deem them not without alloy.
The smile of Nations may illume thy fame,
The good repeat, the glorious love thy name,
Still, tongues of scorn, and words of venom'd pow'r
To be the vipers of a secret hour,
The petty tribute, and unfeeling phrase,
Which nought but iciness of soul betrays,—
Demand forgiveness in thy brightest reign;
On ev'ry pleasure frowns the demon, pain!

But deeper peril is the praise which gives
That very light in which young Genius lives:
A tyrant weakness is the worst to see,
Since men are vain, yet all hate vanity;
When safely felt, most insecurely shown,
For who endures it, save it prove his own?
Yet should that energy, whose quenchless ray
Burns through the blackest and the brightest day,
Intensely pure within thy spirit glow
And colour dreams beyond the world to know;
If, eagle-like, thy Spirit dare to soar
On bolder wing than it had waved before;
If virtue love, and wisdom greet thy strain,
If this be vanity,—then still be vain!

Oh! for a nobler and a deeper sense
Of all which forms our true pre-eminence;
For high-born energies of heav'nly sway,
And flowers of charity to strew the way,
That Sin no longer may the world defile
And Nature glory in a good man's smile,
As on we hasten to that dreamless Shore
Where passion sleeps, and prejudice is o'er.

The days of fever, and the nights of fire
Felt in the blood, till health and hope expire;
An aching slumber, and a spectral tomb
For ever yawning in the spirit's gloom;
And that most agonising waste of soul
Where the deep currents of excitement roll
Morn, noon, and night, in one eternal play,
Are thine, Ambition!—till Thou wear'st away.
And, mix'd with agonies of outward state,
An inward torment which thy dreams create,
Thirsting within for some perfection made
By thought alone, or never yet display'd
Like that pure model which the mind surveys,—
'Tis thine to suffer through uncounted days.
Yet, welcome all! If ever thought of thine
Hath woo'd a spirit into calm divine,
Expanded feelings, purified their flow,
Or shed a sunbeam o'er the hour of wo,
Thy soul may triumph in exhaustless pain
And proudly think it has not lived in vain!

Ye midnight heavens, a Hand celestial hung,
In ev'ry age by ev'ry poet sung,
One parting glance, oh! let my spirit take
Ere dawn-light on your awful beauty break.
With what intensity the eye reveres
Your starry legions, when their pomp appears!
As though the glances Centuries have given
Since dreams first wander'd o'er the vast of heav'n,
Had left a magic where a myst'ry shone,
Enchanting more, the more 'tis gazed upon!
Stars, worlds, or wonders! whatsoe'er ye shine,
The home of Angels, or the haunts divine
Wherein the Bodiless from earth set free
Shine in the blaze of present Deity,
No eyes behold your ever-beaming ray
But think, while earthly visions roll away,
In placid immortality ye glow
Above this chaos of terrestrial wo!

Thy wings, Almighty! let them long o'er-shade
A clime by Thee a matchless empire made;
Here in meek glory may Thy temples stand
While smiles from heav'n fall brightly o'er the land;
And those pure Worlds that have for ages roll'd
O'er Alma Mater, still her towers behold;
Till time be dead, eternity begun,
And darkness blacken round the dying Sun,
The toils of life, the pangs of being o'er,
Our doom completed, and the world no more.

It has been said that Heaven, which gave great qualities only to a small number of its favourites, gave vanity to all, as a full compensation.—Brown's Philosophy.

453

THE MESSIAH.

(1832.)

[_]

TENTH EDITION.

“If I have done well, it is that which I desired; but, if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto.”—2 Maccabees xv. 38.

454

TO QUEEN ADELAIDE, (BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION,) THE FOLLOWING POEM Is most respectfully inscribed, BY HER MAJESTY'S VERY DUTIFUL AND OBLIGED SERVANT, THE AUTHOR.

455

BOOK I.

“Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant,
Sic nos scripturæ depascimur aurea dicta,
Aurea, perpetuâ semper dignissima vitâ!”
Lucret. lib. iii.

“Prophecy is of prodigious extent.—It commenced from the fall of man, and reaches to the consummation of all things.—The declared purpose for which the Messiah, prefigured by so long a train of prophecy, came into the world, corresponds with all the rest of the representation,—it was to deliver a world from ruin, to abolish sin and death, to purify and immortalise human nature. We have no words to denote greater ideas than these; the mind of man cannot elevate itself to nobler conceptions.”—Hurd.

ANALYSIS OF BOOK I.

Apostrophe to the Divine Spirit—Creation, the Off-spring of Almighty Love—Sketch of Man's primal state and fall—The fathomless Mystery of Evil— The Curse, and its attendant awfulness—Necessity of Atonement.—The Majesty of Christ's Redemption —He is the Soul and Centre of all Revelation and Rites—Was present at the delivery of the Law from Sinai—Picture of the Camp of Israel in the Wilderness—The Gloom of Death as it must have appeared to our first Parents—Their Retrospections—Birth of Eve's first Child, and her triumphant Exclamation —Abraham—Isaac—The offering of the latter, a type of that Heavenly Sacrifice hereafter to be offered up for the whole World—Beauty and Simplicity of the Patriarchal State—Balak—Prophecy— Grandeur of the Prophetical Character—The Announcement of Messiah, a leading Characteristic of the Sacred Predictions—Job, the Doctrine derived from his Sufferings—His sublime expression of Faith in a Redeemer—David, his magnificentc haracter as a Poet and Prophet—Prophecies relative to Christ—Isaiah, his Style, and Predictions—Ezekiel, Daniel, and Malachi—Each considered as Prophetical Announcers of Christ and His Kingdom—Reflections on the Saviour, as they may arise to a contemplative Mind in Solitude—The Glory and Felicity of Spirits who worship, love, and obey Him.

456

Of Man's redemption by almighty Blood,
When God incarnate on the earth became
Apparent, and in bleeding glory died,
I sing: O Thou! for Whom the worlds were made,
Instruct me in this high attempt, and theme
August of all-surpassing Love divine;
That with no daring eye or step profane
The Muse may wander where the Saviour trod:
If e'er at morning, noon, or solemn night,
Thy shadow on my soul hath been, or prayer
Or praise before Thy hymnéd Throne prevail'd,
Priest of the Universe! my song inspire.

Ere Matter out of nothingness arose,
Or, Time his destined march of years began,
Himself was All! the unapparent God:
But, Life the symbol of His Love appeared;
He will'd a universe, and lo, it was!

With Nature in her young excess of bloom
Array'd, and with a living sense of joy
Abroad upon the verdant face of things,
How exquisite must earth's primeval state
Have been, how tinted with the hues of heaven!
And when amid it, from unbreathing dust
A living Shape of godlike beauty rose,
Alas! that e'er on such transcendent scene
A shade of guilt could fall! that clouds advanced
In wrath and darkness o'er offending Earth,
No longer bright with angel-steps, but sad
And stricken, trembling at her God!

When Man as monarch of the globe was placed
Where lavish Eden waved and smiled, erect
He stood; but to his Maker homage due
By test of one supreme command was tried.
“Of every tree which in the garden grows
All freely eat, save that, wherein of Good
And Evil the forbidden knowledge lies;
Whereof the day thou eatest,—thou shalt die!”
A Tempter came, the interdicted Fruit
Man dared to eat, and from his high estate
Of sinless glory into darkness fell!

In this black hour when evil Doom prevails,
Shall finite teach the Infinite his ways
Or shape the path Omnipotence shall tread?
Shall man, in dreams of wild presumption, dare
His Maker criticise, or blindly call
Our fate unjust? Shall fancy, in her flight
Insane, beyond the Empyréan soar,
The God unthrone, His attributes affect,
And fashion worlds to prove his wisdom wrong?
Let Nature hope; and while her blessings thrive,
To secret Heaven resign the dark unknown!

A deathless soul, as imaging its God,
In preciousness the jewell'd earth transcends;
And when 'twas darken'd, vast Creation felt
Its value, since the righteous Curse which came
On ruin'd manhood, thrill'd all nature through,
And round the world its dread vibration ran!
Cited for judgment, then the Creature saw
The Face Almighty robed in frowning ire
Bent o'er him; and with sinking brow and frame
While reel'd the ground whereon the trembler trod,
Heard the dread fiat, which all time confirms,—
“Dust since thou wert, to dust return and die!”

Pale in the gloom of that departed Cloud,
Whose shadow, like a lightning-track had scathed
The bowers of Paradise, when Adam stood
With eyes aghast, and view'd the forfeit-world
Wither around him, while his fancy heard
The Curse still rolling on the awe-struck wind,
The dimness and the agony of doubt
How terribly his fallen soul endured!
For what forbade, but in the hour he sinn'd,
By one annihilating word consumed
That earth should perish in the pangs of hell?
Oh! ye, who in the choir of Cherubim
Divinely shaped, upon your sapphire-thrones
Which in the palace of Jehovah blaze,
One anthem of seraphic bliss prolong,
My lyre attune, triumphantly to sing,
Who sun-like dawn'd upon the gloom of death,
Justice and mercy in His cross combined,
And roll'd away God's thunders from the world!

But say, hath ever hymn by Angel sung,
Hath thought divined, or human voice express'd
This miracle of miracles profound,
A world redeem'd, and Christ redemption's Lord?
I've seen the Sun, creation's paramount,
Rise o'er the waves and lead the march of Day;
Alone have mused, when tempest roof'd the heavens
With blackness, and the quiring Ocean heard,
When choral billows, as with conscious swell,
Chanted loud anthems in the hush of night;
The dark sublimity of deepest storms
Hath girdled, and the glories of the sky

457

O'erwhelm'd me: in humbleness and awe
Before the majesty of human Worth
I've bow'd, and felt how lovely Virtue is;
But poor and powerless, dim and undefined,
The adoration born of scenes or hours
Below, to that which o'er the spirit comes,
When silent, Lord! it thinks alone of Thee.

In Christ all Revelation lives. His voice
With man in Eden dread communion held,
To teach him morning-vow, or evening-prayer,
Or sacrifice divine: the shadowy Type,
The mystic Law, and sacramental Powers,
To Him relate: and when thy desert rang
O Sinai! with the battle-hymns of old,
While Judah's banners in victorious play
Flouted the vassal wind, the Lord o'erhung
The travell'd wilderness; a signal-Cloud
By day and night His awful guidance led:
And Horeb heard Him; when, in lightning veil'd,
Her giant form beneath His thunder bow'd,
As high o'er all the dreadful trumpet clang'd
With heaven-toned music, till the Desert shook.

That Wilderness! oh, when hath mind conceived
Magnificence beyond a midnight there,
When Israel paused, and o'er her tented host
The moonlight lay? On yonder palmy mount,
Lo, sleeping myriads in the dewy hush
Of night repose: around, in squared array,
The camps are set; and in the midst, apart,
That curtain'd Shrine where mystically dwells
Jehovah's presence: through the soundless air
A cloudy pillar, robed in burning light,
Appears; concentered as one mighty heart
A million lie, in mutest slumber bound,
Or, panting like the Ocean when a dream
Of storm awakes her. Heaven and Earth are still:
In radiant loveliness the Stars pursue
Their pilgrimage, while moonlight's wizard hand
Throws beauty, like a spectre-light, on all.
At Judah's tent the lion-banner stands
Upfolded, and the pacing sentinels,—
What awe pervades them, when the dusky groves,
The rocks Titanian, by the moonshine made
Unearthly, or yon mountains vast, they view!
But soon as morning bids the sky exult,
As earth from nothing, so that countless host
From slumber and from silence will awake
To mighty being: while the forest-birds
Rush into song, the matin-breezes play,
And streamlets flash where roving sunbeams fall.
Like clouds in lustre, banners will unroll,
The trumpet shout, the warlike tramp resound,
And hymns of valour from the marching Tribes
Ascend, to gratulate the risen Morn.

Though Mercy, when a malediction fell
On Life and Matter from the lips of God,
That Woman's seed should bruise the Serpent's head
Predicted, still, in ghastly vision came
The shadows of thy then unenter'd world
O Death! but time hath half thy gloom unveil'd.
Though yet invisible, no more thy realm
A desert seems where nothing human dwells:
By ages peopled, 'tis the haunt of Dreams
Forsaking earth, to roam and muse awhile
With Shapes of being, who did once imbibe
The vital breath. There, ancient Seers exist,
Whose words were mightier than thunder-tones
When Nature trembles; there, the Good abide,
The glorious, gifted, and immortal are.
And who of death would all oblivious be
When friends are tomb'd, and parents smile no more?
To loved eternity where they repose
The orphan wanders in parental dreams
How often, and the widow calls it, Home!

Yet 'twas not thus, when new-created Earth
From chaos rose, with deepest verdure clad:
Flower, fruit, and tree, in primal beauty waved;
No tint of death, no touch of sad decay
Then marr'd the freshness of the lovely scene.
Hence, the dread fiat, “Perish! dust thou art,
And unto dust shalt thou again return,”
To Adam sounded like Creation's knell!

Upon the wide and voiceless world, alone
The guilty wanderers, whom fair Eden once
Embower'd, in fond remembrance often mourn'd
The bloom of Paradise, and pure estate
For ever lost. The Morning rose, and light
Around them in its warm luxuriance fell;
But ah! it could not through the spirit beam
As once, when Day and Heaven together rose,
While harping angels on the breezes sang:
And Evening, with her tenderness of shade
O'ercame them, like a cloud of solemn grief;
For then, of Paradise and dewy calm
They thought, as there they watch'd the vesper-hues
In beautiful consumption fade and die,
All innocently blest. Thus pass'd the day

458

In wo; and dreams of sworded Cherubim
Glared on their slumber! still, their God was near;
And when the pangs which only mothers feel
Dejected Eve endured, and lo! a child
Was born, th' unclouded spring of hope began.
And who can fathom that deep hour of love
When first an infant on its mother smiled,
And in the bright enchantment of that bliss
Her babe she clasp'd, and to Jehovah cried,
“The promised Seed! Almighty! now 'tis born!”

Thus dimly on the world's primeval state
Messiah dawn'd; till God himself declared
To sainted Abram, as the countless orbs
Of midnight glitter'd over Hebron's plain,
That like yon stars a glorious race should rise
Unnumber'd, till the earth's Deliverer came,
And crown'd all nations blest. Then, Isaac rose,
The child of promise, the Redeemer's type
On the stern altar by his parent laid!
The son, the only son, whom Abram loved
Yet did not spare, when Heaven commanded, “Slay!”

Ere the rich morning on the mountains flung
A robe of beauty; in that vestal hour
When birds are darting from the dewy ground,
And nature, soft as sleeping life, begins
To waken, and the spell of day to wear,
Unseen the patriarch and his cherish'd boy
Uprose, the sacrificial wood prepared,
And thus, companion'd by his household-youths,
They onward journey'd with the laden ass.
Through piny glens, and green acacia-vales
The pilgrims wound their undulating way.
Oft as he went, upon his child beloved
The Sire of nations look'd, and inly pray'd;
And felt the father in his bosom rise,
As bound and bloody, on the altar stretch'd
He vision'd him!—the long-hoped, destined son
Who fond and dutiful had ever been,
And guiltless of a parent's tear. But, faith
Triumphant in the power of mercy proved.
Twice had the Sun around the pilgrims drawn
His evening-veil, when o'er a distant mount,
Upon Moriah's steep and rocky clime
A Vision of the Lord reposed, and shone,—
A cloudy signal, shaped for Abram's eye
Alone to see, and there his altar raise.
The patriarch bow'd; and o'er the mountain-path
Both child and parent took their solemn way,
But each was silent, for they thought of Heaven.
Thus on they went, till at the mount ordain'd
Arriving, with enamour'd gaze they saw
Green heights, and forest-crested hills afar,
And willow'd plains; and drank the balmy air,
And cool'd their foreheads in the breeze, which play'd
Like the soft tremor of an angel-wing;
So hush'd the hour, the spot so calm, that God
Himself seem'd waiting there to welcome man!
Then Isaac, as the stony altar-pile
Beneath the shadow of a mountain-tree
Was reared, and sacramental fire prepared,
In words of unsuspecting sweetness cried,
“My father!”—Abram answer'd, “Here, my son!”
“The wood and fire behold! but where the lamb
Of sacrifice, to crown yon flaming pyre?”
Then heaved his bosom with the love of years
Departed; and a tear paternal rose
As gazed he fondly on that only child,
And far away a childless mother saw
Whose heart had echoed every infant-cry!
But soon the strife, and soon the tear was o'er:
To Heaven he look'd, and thus to Isaac spake:
“My son! in thee a sacrifice the Lord
Hath found, and—thou to God art dedicate!”
He answer'd not; but meekly knelt him down
And on the altar lay, a willing Lamb.
But God descended; and the hand uplift
In glorious faith to sacrifice a child,
Was holden, while angelic tones proclaim'd
“O Abram! spare thy son! thine only spare,
And let him live, for thou art faithful found.”
With thrilling wonder and ecstatic awe
Up look'd the Patriarch, and behold! a ram
Beside him, in a woody thicket caught:
And while it bled, again the Voice sublime
Repeated, like the sound of golden waves,
“In blessing I will bless thee; and thy seed
The sand of ocean shall outnumber far,
And from it spring the Glory of the World!”

But next, on Jacob, in symbolic dream
The Incarnation dawn'd, as lone and sad,
His couch the earth, his canopy the skies,
The exiled patriarch from wild Esau fled.
When night had deepen'd, homeless, pale, and worn,
The wanderer, pillow'd on a stone-built couch,
For slumber stretch'd him on the dreary plain.
Companionless he was, 'mid forests dark
With midnight-umbrage, torn by wolfish winds,
And echoed by the frequent lion-roar
Howl'd from the hills; but God he ever felt;
And round his heart parental blessings twined,
Till sleep came o'er him, like a smile from Heaven.
Rude was the couch, but oh! his angel-dream

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To witness, Saints would now a ruder share!
He dreamt; and lo! a Ladder, based on earth,
And buried in the sky, before him rose;
Adown it Shapes of awful beauty stole,
While others clad with archangelic beams
Did solemnly from step to step ascend:
Above, a formless Apparition shone,
Ineffable! from Whom a voice divine
In accent richer than the full-toned sea,
Proclaim'd, “Thy father's God! and thine, behold!
Wide o'er the world thy destined seed will spread,
And, numberless, empeople lands and isles,
Till One arise, and make all kingdoms blest.”
“How dreadful! 'tis the gate of heaven!” he cried:
'Mid solemn breathings of melodious air
Aloft then moved the hierarchal Pomp;
And ere the lark to hymn the Day began
The exile rose, a rocky pillar raised,
Shed o'er its top the consecrating oil,
And in the hush of morning hied away.

“From Judah's hand the sceptre shall not fall,
Till Shiloh come; to Him shall Empires bow!”
So spake a patriarch from his couch of death;
And thus, through all the realm of holy Writ,
Messiah is the Morning Star of Hope
Who beams for ever on the soul of truth.

But, ere deep Prophecy its organ-strain
Its full magnificence of tone begin,
A vision of that unforgotten prime
The patriarchal age, when Earth was young,
Awhile, oh! let it linger. On the soul
It breaketh, like a lovely burst of spring
On gazing captives, when the open skies
Again are floating over Freedom's head.
Though sin had wither'd with a charnel-breath
Creation's morning-bloom, there still remain'd
Elysian hues of that angelic scene
When the Sun gloried o'er a sinless world,
And with each ray produced a flower. From dells
Untrodden, hark! the breezy carol comes
Upwafted, with the chant of radiant birds;
While meadows, bathed in greenest light, and woods
Gigantic, towering from the skiey hills,
And odorous trees in prodigal array,
With all the elements divinely calm,
Our fancy pictures on the infant globe.
And ah, how godlike, with imperial brow
Benignly grave, yon patriarchal Forms
Tread the free earth, and eye the naked heavens!
In nature's stamp of unassisted grace
Each limb is moulded; simple as the mind
The vest they wear; and not a hand but works,
Or, tills the ground with honourable toil.
By youth revered, their sons around them grow
And flourish; monarch of his pastoral tribe,
A Patriarch's throne is each devoted heart;
And when he slumbers on the tented plain
Beneath the vigil-stars, a living wall
Is round him, in the might of love's defence.
And he is worthy: sacrifice and song
By him are ruled; and oft at shut of flowers
When queenly virgins in the sunset go
Water to carry from the crystal wells,
In beautiful content, beneath a tree
Whose shadows hung o'er many a hallow'd sire,
He sits; recording how Creation rose
From nothing, of the Word almighty born;
How man had fallen, and where Eden-boughs
Had waved their beauty on the breeze of morn;
Or, how the Angels still at twilight love
To visit Earth with errands from the Sky.

But like a river that its course renews,
Again my song to its high Theme returns.
When Balak, frighted by the banner'd hosts
Of Israel, camping on unbounded plains,
For Balaam sent, upon his trancèd eye
Prophetic visions from th' Almighty fell.

There, when the monarch on the mountain stood,
Seven altars, oxen, and seven rams prepared,
And sacrifice of mystic numbers paid,—
The Seer his oracle of light unroll'd.
He look'd, and lo! along that river'd vale
Where Arnon glitter'd, shone the myriad tents
Of Judah, whitening in the lustrous air,
Like clouds which congregate on summer-sky
In ranks of infinite and fresh array:
Then, all the chords of Heaven's predictive lyre
Quiver'd, with more than melody intoned,
And superhuman Poetry began!
His curse was buried in the bliss foretold;
While glory, blessing, and mysterious joy
The tents of Jacob from the prophet drew:
Till Ecstacy this higher strain attuned
In—“I shall see Him, but not now! a Star
From Jacob, and from Israel shall arise
A Sceptre, in whose shadow will depart
Thy race and region, O deserted king!”

Thus Prophecy to man from heaven was breathed
A miracle beyond all utterance deep,
Immeasurably vast; outmarching Time,
Subduing Space, and with colossal might
Erecting Thrones; or crushing city-walls
With curses, like the winds when desert-born,
Terrific, loud, with desolation wing'd!

460

And they, elected to be Mouths for God,
Dread Oracles! whose dooming words have blanch'd
The cheek of Empires in their godless pride
And palsied high-domed Capitals with fear,
August and lonely, sad, yet all sublime
They lived, in sackcloth robed, in deserts housed
Or mountain cavern; fated, and apart
From blinding shadows of terrestrial sway,
They dwelt, communing with almighty Thought.
The gloom, the glory, and the Vision came,
The Future rendered voiceless secrets up,
And then, like phantoms, from eternity,
Dim Ages rose, and answered to their Spell!

And he, whose sorrow was sublimely borne,
Whose grief was glory, for it made the soul
A witness how the Everlasting thinks,—
Behold him! on the ashy ground reclined.
Seven days and nights have o'er his throbbing head
Departed, still, in mutest wo he bows
With three beside him. Oft when darkness rose,
A groan sank dreary on the midnight-air;
But, soon his agony again retired
Back to the gulph of unlamenting gloom!
Nor lip, nor limb his inward strife reveals;
Despair in stone was not more dumb than he!
Prometheus, chain'd on Scythia's burning rock,
When lightning, tempest, and Tartarean ire
With thund'ring earthquake round his martyr'd frame
The tragedy of Nature's wreck begun,
In full sublimity of godlike wo
Was less exalted than the silent Job.

And, what a lesson of undying truth
The torture of the Scene supplies! Array'd
In whirlwind, did the vocal God declare
Secrets of glory, or mysterious depths
Of Essence Infinite to man unshroud?
No! sea and mountain, thunder-storm and cloud,
The glorious miracles of life and form
Which float the waters, or the earth command,
These are but types of Trinitarian power,
Yet, who the mystery of their being knows?
Lost in the march of God's material ways,
If Reason wander, how could thought abstract
His moral Kingdom perfectly conceive?
To question deeply what we darkly know,
Our boding fancies in their raven flight
Cross and re-cross a universe of gloom,
And yet, in this appall'd conviction ends,—
That God is good, and infinite, and wise,
But Man a daring antichrist, who dreams
Himself the measure of Eternal Mind!

When Nature, in her awful doubt, creates
Mystery and madness for the heart and brain,
From all which life endures, let mortals feel
That man, the infant of eternity,
By wo is nursed, and strengthen'd for the skies;
And a brave soul, though Earth and Hell combine
To scatter tempest round its blighted way,
Beholds a God in all things but despair!
In hours of sadness, when Oppression rules,
And each pale sunburst of unwonted joy
Breaks o'er the spirit, like derisive beams
Of summer playing round a wintry realm,
Let Grief remember how the patriarch cried
With voice that travell'd o'er the sea of Time,
“Oh! that the graven rock my words imprest,
And iron stamp'd them with eternal truth!
For though in dust my body be dissolved,
That my Redemer liveth, and shall stand
When time is ended, on this mortal earth,
I surely know: on Him mine eye shall gaze,
And in my flesh shall I The Lord behold!”

God's Incarnation is the focal truth
Where prophecy's converging beams unite.
And Thou! the shepherd-king, of Jesse born,
Of Heaven beloved, similitude express
Of Christ, the Lord of everlasting worlds,
Whether on Zion hill thy holy strain
Be harped, or by the brook of Kedron hymn'd;
Or nightly warbled, when unnumber'd orbs
To thee their origin divine declared,—
Thy words are breathings by the soul attuned;
For aye thou seem'st a Singer from above
Who chants the glory of remember'd skies.

Wouldst thou in meekest adoration bend,
Or mount the heavens, and with bright myriads swell
The chorus of eternity? Does Grief
Around thee blacken in her stormy ire,
Or sad dejection on thy eyelids weigh?
The royal minstrel hath a mood for thee
And in his heart deep echoes for thine own!
But when the frame of this majestic World
The mind o'erawes, then! who like him appeals
To clouds and whirlwinds, with the Thunder talks,
Partakes the tempest, and of Ocean learns
Such mimicry sublime, that Fancy hears
In God's own orchestra of waves and winds
The billows, echoed by his heaven-strung lyre.
But Nature in her gentleness, alike
From David woos a sympathy divine.
The lull of night, the language of the stars,

461

And all that beautiful, serene, or blest
Is deemed, his harp melodiously inspires.

Bard of the Spirit! thine heroic song,
Whose hallelujahs in Engeddi's cave,
Or forest glens, and palmy grove, prevail'd
O'er every pang his exiled bosom felt,—
Attunes Religion's universal voice.
Canadian forests, or the parchèd wilds
Of Afric, ocean-rocks, and cavern-gloom,
Wherever Man to God in prayer ascends,
Thy melodies the yearning heart relieve.
And oh! what blessings have thy hymns evoked
From Heaven's vast treasury of light and love
Since first they sounded on a shepherd's lyre!
For they are all Imagination dreams
Angelic lips might warble:—on the Cross
Of Calvary, ere the Son of Man dismiss'd
His martyr'd spirit, thine was His farewell!

But chief o'er all in David's glorious strain,
The homage wafted to that destined Throne
Whereon would reign a universal King
From him descended:—in his darksome wo
The Martyr and the Maker of our world
Was symbolised, beneath a veiling gloom.
And when exalted, his far-reaching eye
By heaven unscaled, in emblematic light
Foreshadowed Him, the Triumpher o'er death,
And Victor of the grave. Thus, vision-blest,
The prophet-minstrel all divinely sung;
Thus rose from mortal to immortal themes,
Above his nature tower'd, and hail'd on high
Christ from eternity by God decreed
The earth to ransom and mankind restore.

And how he imageth the Lord of souls
Before us, when he mounteth on the wings
Of rapture, soaring through the heaven of heavens!
“From Zion shall He wither in His wrath
Rebellious kings! to me hath He declared,
My Son thou art! this day Jehovah hath
Begotten Thee; the heathen are Thine own,
And vanquish'd worlds beneath Thy sceptre bow!”

But when the starry hush and pomp of night
O'erawed him, and the moon her Maker's hand
Confess'd, the spirit of prophetic Truth
Again was vocal: thus the minstrel sang:
“When I consider how the balanced heavens
Almightiness in moving pomp reveal,
Lord! what is man? yet Him hast thou encrown'd;
Upon the deep his vast dominion walks,
And subject earth beneath his sceptre bows.

“Ever before me lives the Lord of Hosts!
His hand o'ershades me, and my heart exults:
And soaring hope, by inspiration plumed,
Wings o'er the sepulchre its flight,—for there
A Soul shall triumph; and thy Holy One
No dark corruption of the dead shall stain!”

“How beauteous Thou, above the sons of men!
Upon Thy lips what loveliness diffused!
Array Thee in thy glory! gird Thy sword
Upon thy thigh; majestically ride!
Hark! Earth is quaking; her foundations rock,
Thine arrows thicken; terrible Thy sway!
For ever and for ever is Thy Throne,
And righteously Thy boundless sceptre rules,
And over all Thy God anoints Thee great.

“Through dateless ages are Thy years unroll'd;
The earth was founded, and the heavens were arch'd
By Thee; Creation felt Thy forming hand;
But while they perish, Thou shalt aye endure:
When, like a vesture, they are changed and gone
Still, Thou art One, Eternal and the True!”

And thus did Zion's royal minstrel chant,
And through the cloud of unaccomplish'd time
His glance direct, to that transcendent reign
Of Mercy, when the veil would be uproll'd
And brightly dawn th' Incarnate Sun of Worlds.

Next in the train of these immortal Seers
Another of the heaven-directed hail;
Who, like the clarion that shall rouse the dead,
Might quicken dust,—such life his song inspires!
Amid a temple, bright as Syrian noon,
Upon a Throne unutterably high
O'er which the six-wing'd Seraphim appear'd,
The Lord was seated; and the awful cry
Of “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord!”
Melodious came from each seraphic lip:
And in that Vision, as a centre stood
Appall'd Isaiah, seeing, hearing all.

Terrific Bard, and mighty! in thy strain
The passion and the poetry of truth
And deep-toned storms of inspiration roll,
Whether for cities by th' Almighty cursed
Thy wail arose; or, on enormous crimes
Which darken'd heaven with supernatural gloom,
Thy flash of indignation fell, alike
The feelings quiver when thy Voice awakes!
Borne in the whirlwind of a dreadful song
Our spirit travels round the destined globe,

462

While shadows, cast from solemn years to come,
Fall round us, and we feel a God is nigh!

But when a gladness from thy music flows,
Creation brightens; glory decks the sky,
The Sun is mantled with millennial smiles
And green earth temper'd for immortal spring:
The lion smoothes his ruffled mane, the lamb!—
And wolf together feed, and by the den
Of serpents, see the rosy infant play!

There is a Day, the darkness of whose scene
In visitings of dread might well subdue
The world's false brightness, foreordained to come,
When the huge fabric of this stately Globe
Shall bow with terror in the storm of doom.
Then, in that hour of chaos, while the earth
And heaven shall fade like elemental dreams,
High on some rocky eminence enthroned
Methinks Isaiah might his voice awake
In bursts of wo magnificently wild,—
The last that lingers round a dying World!

But, Prince of Prophets! in thy page eterne,
How visibly the Son of God appears!
“Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear
A son; Immanuel shall his name be call'd.”
Again;—“For unto us a Child is born,
To us a Son is given; and his name
Is, Wonderful, the Everlasting Prince
Of Peace! the Counsellor, and mighty God!

“A Voice comes wafted through the Wilderness!
Prepare the way, and be the Desert smooth:
Arise, ye valleys! and ye mountains, sink
Before Him! for the Lord Jehovah comes!

“Despised, rejected, and a Man with grief
Acquainted, surely He our woes hath borne,
And in His bosom all our sorrows ta'en!
Our chastisement is on Him: we are heal'd,
But He is wounded! and on Him alone
The Lord hath laid th' iniquity of all!”

Nor, when captivity by Chebar mourn'd,
And Israel wore the Babylonian chain
Beside the willow-shaded streams, was dumb
The Voice prophetic: but where Belus rose
In her stupendous prodigy of towers,
Ezekiel pour'd his passionate lament;
Or shaped for time the Destinies he saw
From heaven prefigured:—what colossal shades
As though reflected from the scenes immense
Around him, crowd upon his fated world!
But high o'er all the visionary Pomp
To us the Cedar of the Gospel rears
Its allegoric boughs, beneath whose shade
Birds of all clime, and wing, and beauty dwell.

So Daniel, when his midnight-trance began
On the dim bosom of that mystic Sea
Whose waters quiver'd in the tempest-grasp,
Beheld him, coming with the clouds of heaven,—
The Son of Man; then, throned in flaming pomp
With myriads of Angelic Forms begirt,
Perpetual empire to the Son was given
O'er land and language, kingdom, sea, and isle.

And thus, wherever bright prediction beams,
The glories of the Incarnation dawn.
At last, with healing on his wings, arose
The Sun of Righteousness, to him who cried,
“Before the splendour of that dreadful day
A Herald of the Lord, Elijah comes,
To turn thy heart, O guilty world! to me,
Or thou shalt wither in My blast of ire!”

So Prophecy, with time begun, with time
Shall end; and when in some empyreal Sphere
The mind expands with far sublimer reach
Than prescient faith, or fancy can extend,
In proud fulfilment Prophecy will reign.
For, having grasp'd the glory of the world
Redeem'd, and taught us how Millennium smiles,
Beyond the Universe of sense it wings
An awful flight, and in mysterious depths
Of Being unexplored, for man foredooms,
A state unspeakably divine and pure,—
Eternity, O God! and shared with Thee.

Almighty Priest! Thou angel-worshipp'd Lord
In secrecies of uncreated Light
Though now enthron'd, Thy sympathies retain
Their human oneness with Thy People still;
And, for the Church, thy Mystic Body call'd,
Plead and prevail with eloquence divine.
As oft in chamber dim, or lonesome walk
By leafy twilight arch'd, the Mind foreviews
Its own eternity, and dreams Thy Form
To life again,—how wonderful, apart,
By time unsoil'd, by accident, or sin
Immaculate as Love and Law required
Thy Being riseth in irradiant truth,
Before us, purer than the light of light,
Of all Transcendencies the sum and soul!
And when did Earth Thine attribute display,—
One vast Benevolence, which girt a world
Of hearts by catholic embrace of love?
All time and truth, all empires and all powers

463

That were, or would be, in the march of fate,
By Thee were compass'd for Redemption's plan!

When o'er the grandeur of unclouded heaven
Our vision travels with a free delight,
As though the boundless and the pure were made
For speculation, so the towering mind
By inward oracle inspired and taught,
The Lofty and the Excellent in mind reveres;
And thus, the Incarnation of divinest love,
God's perfect Image, humanised for Man,
As Finite loved, as Infinite adored,
Messiah is; and hence to faith presents
A Model for the Universe.—Though God
Be round us, by the shadow of His might
For aye reflected; and with plastic Hand
Prints on the earth the character of Things;
Yet He Himself,—how awfully retired
Depth within depth, unutterably deep!
His Glory brighter than the brightest thought
Can image, holier than our holiest awe
Can worship—utter'd only in, I AM!

But Thou! apparell'd in a robe of true
Mortality; meek Sharer of our low
Estate, in all except compliant sin,
To Thee can sacrificial Awe devote
A living holocaust of sense and soul
By love enkindled. Thou hast lived and breathed;
Our wants and woes partaken; all that charms
Regenerate hearts to Thine unspotted truth
May plead for sanction; Virtue but reflects
Thine image; Wisdom is a voice attuned
To consonance with Thine; and all which yields
To Thought a pureness, or to Life a peace,
From Thee descends; whose spirit-ruling sway,
Invisible as thought, around us brings
A balm almighty for Affliction's hour.
Once felt, in all the fulness of Thy grace
The mystic essence of our moral life
To form,—and heaven by holiness begins!
Which purifies the base, the dark illumes,
And binds our being with that holy spell
Whereby each function, faculty, and thought
Surrenders meekly to the central Guide
Of hope and action, by a God empower'd.

Until the eyelids of the Dead unclose
Though Christ has vanish'd into viewless light,
High o'er the world, beyond heroic state,
To reach or rival, is Man's inner-life
Securely founded on the Rock of faith!
All the wide glories which the eye commands,
Or air and ocean, earth and heaven supply,
Of Him report, whose potency begat
Them all. The ground is hallow'd, for 'twas trod
By Him; all Earth is radiant with a sense
Ethereal, born of His remember'd sway:
Nor pang, nor trial, torture, grief, nor care
Communion high and mystic interchange
With Him destroys; in solitude alike,
As in the roaring capital, a Saint
Embodies into human Form again
That living Saviour, Whom the Past perceived
And worshipp'd, angels gloried to announce,
And Whose perfections so harmonious are
That o'er them God's eternal sabbath smiles.

BOOK II.

“The intellectual Power, through words and things,
Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way.”
Wordsworth.

“Melior origo nos expectat, alius rerum status. Dies iste, quem tanquam extremum reformidas, æterni natalis est.”—Seneca, Epist. 102.

ANALYSIS OF BOOK II.

Having shown that the gradual announcement of an Incarnate Redeemer was the primary object of the Prophetic Scheme, the Second Book is principally devoted to a consideration of the necessity and probability of a Revelation from God, by an argument drawn from the nature of the human mind and the destinies of man.

Natural and Revealed Religion—The total inadequacy of the former is endeavoured to be shown by exhibiting a mind most exquisitely attuned to the glories and harmonies of the Universe, yet averse to the truth and character of Christ's atonement; till, finally convinced, by the utter helplessness of human philosophy, it reposes in the Faith which is from Heaven—The probability of a Revelation from God, induced from the weakness, obscurity, and impotence of ancient systems, and the frequent longing of their founders for some certain Lawgiver from above—The Doctrine of Pagan and Christian Philosophy—Sublime superiority of the latter—Its triumphant effects—This Revelation was gradually made, in analogy with the progressive tendencies of the human mind, and the Divine arrangements from the commencement of the World—Belief by compulsion would violate the freedom of the will, and reduce the character of man to an irresponsible nature—Christ—Revelation extends through all ages—Apostrophe to England as a country gloriously distinguished by the ameliorating influence of Christianity—Her Sabbaths—Prayers for the diffusion of the Gospel—And our Country's efforts in this holy toil—Concluding thoughts, sentiments, and descriptive associations.

There is a God, the Universe exclaims:
There is a God, Man's echoing heart replies,
And round the world that heaven-born answer rolls!
And thus Creation, while the spirit throbs

464

In full response to her sublime appeal,
Hath canonised Imagination's creed,
Till all her splendours to the soul become
The faint reflections of a Vast Unseen!

Yet, vainly beautiful this god of earth
Whom Nature's worship for the soul creates:
Our homage is material; and the mind,
While in the light of elemental pomp
It lives and moves, may still its darkness keep;
Unvisited by that perpetual ray
Of Truth divine, from revelation born,
Where God a Person, not Abstraction is,
And His high Attributes to faith become
That inward Decalogue the will obeys.

There is a haunt whose quietude of scene
Accordeth well with hours of solemn hue,—
A church-yard, bosomed in a beauteous vale
Besprinkled o'er with green and countless graves,
And mossy tombs of unambitious pomp
Decaying into dust again. No step
Of mirth, no laughter of unfeeling life
Amid the calm of death that spot profanes.
The skies o'er-arch it with serenest love;
The winds, when visiting the dark-bough'd elms,
An airy anthem sing; and birds and bees
That in their innocence of summer joy
Exult, and carol with commingling glee,
But add to solitude the lull of sound.
By sea environ'd, yet the choral waves
By noon entranced, in dreaming slumber lie;
And when roused Ocean at the roaring blast
Foams in loud fury, still, the deep-toned storm
Mellow'd by distance, into music dies
Like that which echoes from the world afar,
Or lingers round the path of perish'd Years.

And here, companion'd by his soul alone,
A Being, whose unfathom'd spirit fought
With Loneliness, did wander oft and muse
His hours away; while dream-wove spells entwined
Their mystery round him:—if the Tomb its dead
Surrender'd, well might he arise and prove
How frail the creed which erring Nature moulds
When darkness rushes on the doom of Man!

In vain the witchery of words would tell
How fondly, by impassion'd dreams inspired,
His fancy wed the Universe with love.
The hues and harmonies of blended Things
Were beauty to the magic of his mind;
And all the thousand wheels of moving life
The intellectual melodies, which played
For ever on the mystic harp of Thought.
Such warm imaginings, where'er he came,
A glittering falseness on the true and stern
Suffused; and through the light of feeling shone
The scene of earth, and countenance of heaven.
The young enchantment of angelic Spring
Flow'd in his veins, voluptuously deep;
The budding infancy of flowers was dear
To him, nor would he tread their life away;
Nor wander in the soundless gloom of dell
Or grove, without a sympathetic hush.
And oh! to view him when the balmy night
Breathed o'er this quiet world, and from her throne
The lustrous Moon on tree and temple pour'd
The pallid radiance of her peaceful smile,—
In second paradise he seem'd to muse,
Priested by Sentiment, to worship there!

So lived, so felt he; making all without
Enchantment for responsive thought within;
But that Eternity which girdles time,
Majestic Faith, and everlasting Hope,
Commoved not him: Hereafter drown'd his soul
In seas of darkness, billowing with doubt
And fear!—That this divine, all-beauteous Orb
Whose faintest impulse, sent from breeze or star,
So thrillingly his heart confess'd, was framed,
Upheld, and circled through the void profound
By Power apart, invisibly enthroned,
His innate majesty of mind declared.
But such a god, of dreams and shadows born,
No bended knee, no voice nor vow adored:
He was—a Spirit, or pervading Sense,
A sightless Agent, an almighty Self
Articulated by the tones of Earth
And gloriously by nature's pomp reveal'd,—
So fancy dreamt; and Feeling taught no more.
And hence did Pride and Passion, which imbue
Mortality with taints of sin and wo
And colour all the atmosphere of life
With clouds of awful gloom, work unrestrain'd,
And rule or sanction the decrees of Thought.

At length Affliction, in whose teaching gloom
The keen-eyed jealousy of Guilt beholds
Truths which our mental Cains deny, or dread,
Blighted his home with desolating blast!
And One, the beatings of whose heart were his
Re-echo'd, she who walk'd with angel-step,
Her looks the living sunshine of his soul,
Her tones the music of his memory,
Whose printless foot made consecrated ground,
The hope and heaven of all,—lay still in death!
Then came that worldless, dread, eclipse of mind,
The agony which curdles soul and sense
As though annihilation had begun,
Or man were mouldering into dust again!

465

One beam of heaven had brought salvation now;
But Darkness girt him with its deepest shroud,
Wherein he stood, nor wept, nor spoke, nor sigh'd,
But, mute and stone-like, turn'd to cold despair!

With tender rudeness to his couch they bore
The widow'd martyr; day by day, and hour
By hour, Affection with her heavenly eye
Attended, faintly smooth'd his pallid brow,
Then touch'd his hand, and with a yearning gaze
Woo'd his dumb anguish into speaking life,
Which came at last; and then, alone he nursed
His sorrow;—in the breathless noon of night,
All unperceived, the lovely dead he found;
There stood, and gazed, enamour'd of the grief
That, now unfrozen, from his spirit pour'd
Tears fast and free, in all the storm of wo!
On that cold form, so spiritually pale,
Where the lone night-watch flung a spectral gleam,
He look'd, as though a life were in that look
Absorb'd, and felt that never more would flash
From pulseless clay revealings of the soul!
The mystery of Being was fulfill'd,
The seal of Nature set, the vision gone,
Or vanish'd in some universe of gloom!
And yet, from dreams a Light immortal soothed
The mourner, when from out the grave he saw
An Apparition, bright as golden air,
Ascend, assume her own appealing smile
And point with waving hand to better worlds!

But Life no longer seem'd the living sense
Of mortal nature; but a ghastly dream
Wherein he moved, by Destiny compell'd.
A dismal trance of dull satiety
This lone world grew; a dampness of despair,
The sullen winter of a broken heart
Was all he felt,—was all he wish'd to feel!
A demon-shadow, by his anguish bred,
O'er all things brooded: in the light no light
Appear'd; e'en melody no music brought,
And earth emaciate as an orb of death
To him became; his thoughts alone did live;
And these, like pulses from a tortured brain,
Throbb'd in the spirit with eternal pang!

And now, the poison of dejection work'd;
His cheeks were blighted; o'er his thin-worn hands
The veins meander'd with a dying hue;
The mournful hair that arch'd his manly brow
Droop'd like decaying locks; his bright eye lost
The boldness of expressive fire, and grew
Unearthly, from its depth of lifeless gaze:
And oft did mothers heave maternal sighs,
And children cease their revel, when he pass'd
Unheedful by them, like a Shape from tombs.

At length, the unbeliever sought the Night
To tell him secrets of eternity.
And then, how terrible the spirit-throes
Of doubting agony a Deist felt!
Above him,—the majestic sea of heaven
Where island-orbs of beauty sail'd and shone;
Around him, dimness and the calm of death
By nothing marr'd, but when some moving branch
Of cypress, like a dying billow shed
A faint sound on the feeble wind.—Intense
And deep, and passionate the gaze he sent
Far in the blue infinity of night!
Oh, let some Angel on his wings of love
Be wafted, and the burning doubt which preys
On sorrow with permitted voice subdue!
He listen'd!—on the air a faded leaf
Fell slowly, with a sad and ling'ring sound
Whose tone seem'd not of earth; but soon it still'd:
And then, the midnight of despair return'd,
And in the blackness of his heart he wish'd
Eternal nothingness his tomb to be!

An hour there came from heaven at last, when Faith
Look'd up, and view'd her God.—As evening smiled
On ocean's western brim, where molten waves
A restless glory of rich waters made,
A pensive wanderer, on the pebbled beach
He stood, communing with the conscious Scene.
Where'er his feeling glance reposed, a charm
There glow'd, which told Almightiness had touch'd
The world; and when the folding clouds enwreath'd
The Day-god on his sunset-throne, and cool
And calm the unimpassion'd Twilight rose,
That purity of second childhood came
Whose tenderness is truth.—In such meek hour
When darkness from the soul dissolves away,
With gentle step and gentler mien approach'd
A hoary Sage, by hallow'd wisdom blest.
The balmy light, the beauty and romance
Of scene, well harmonised with heavenly thought.
And hence, the solemn Teacher on his soul
The dews of immortality distill'd:—
Not hiding Mercy in dogmatic gloom,
Or, led by light presumingly inspired,
Outvent'ring on the mystic waves which roll
Between us, and the shore of worlds unseen;
But, meekly firm, of everlasting Love,
Creative power, and providential Truth

466

That Christian spake; and leaf by leaf the Book
Of Man's redemption from primeval wo
Unroll'd, and challenged wide Creation's law
To prove, how Nature visioneth the plan
Which God himself descended to reveal.

With soften'd eye, and brow intently sad,
Such theme of glory did the sceptic hear,
Yet answer'd not; but look'd to heaven, and sigh'd.
Now twilight into solemn gloom retired;
The pomp of clouds was o'er; and ocean lay
In floating darkness round the rock-hewn beach;
But here and there prevailing starlight gleam'd
On some excited billow: deep the hour
And holier the scene, as each, immersed
In contemplation, track'd his homeward way;
Unvoiced their feelings, and their thoughts unknown:
But Heaven had watch'd them; and ere shrouding night
Mantled the earth, an unbeliever pray'd!—
When years had vanish'd, and converted mind
Lived in the light of Deity, and knew
The depths of God's redeeming love, how look'd
The Infidel on what his heart had been?
Go! ask some martyr of a dungeon-gloom,
How fresh the light, how beautiful the airs
Of heaven which visit his reviving frame,
And he shall tell thee, what the mourner felt
When broke the clouds from his benighted soul
And Morn, eternal Morn, began to smile!

So weak is all unaided Nature lends
To educate the restless soul of man,
Or solace wo, or subjugate the will
To Conscience, on whose throne dread Justice reigns.
Became it not, then, that almighty Love
From Whom did emanate this wondrous world,
The silence of eternity to break,
Become apparent, and His Name divulge
That mortals might draw near Him, and adore?
Could He, to whom the universe of life
From wave and wind a hymn of worship sends,
Let Man alone be ignorantly dumb,
Or mock by Superstition's jarring creed
The awful witness of the God within?
And, did not Man himself, of old, secure
By feign'd communion with celestial Pow'rs,
Profound dominion for the sacred rites
That reach us from the past? In wood, or grove,
And cave orac'lar, Legislation knew
From Heaven to find a sanction and a strength
Reveal'd; and long'd for Deity by truth
Declared, and by celestial faith adored.
Thus Plato, in his pure ambition, nursed
A glorious longing for supremer Mind,
The soul to tune, and teach him perfect Law.

The past survey, and what hath Reason done?
Passion and Doubt her waning light withstood:
And stubborn ages, as they swept along,
But mock'd her impotence with blind misrule,
Of creed, or crime begot. Man look'd abroad,
And on his spirit rush'd one vast belief!
From life and matter, from the sun and moon
And the deep waters did a power appeal,
Attesting God, and teaching His domain;
But how to worship, how His law obey,
In vain would philosophic Reason find
In pensive shade, or Academic bower.
The World was deified; terrestrial gods
In all that pantheistic Sense believed,
A mystic reign for adoration held:
Thus, Neptune on his ocean-car appear'd,
Apollo gloried in the realm of light,
And Dian, with her starry nymphs begirt,
The virgin Moon inspired. No wind there breathed,
There waved no grove, no fountain-music play'd,
No River roll'd in liquid joy along,
But Superstition lent a listening ear
To hail her fancied god; each City claim'd
Presiding deities, and built her fanes
For monsters imaged out of monstrous thought,
Where dark Pollution fed her secret fires.
At length, Idolatry the mind subdued;
From tombs evoked the undeserving Dead,
Or, round the statues of her living great
In sycophantic homage knelt, and pray'd.

Religion thus in clouds of error lost,
Morality no saving charm possess'd
To harmonise the wheels of social life.
The world without, to that far mightier world
Within, a secondary station held,
And action was alone the source of law;
While thought and impulse, those creative springs
On which the conduct of our being turns,
In secret wildness kept unholy sway.
Men learn'd to live, but were not taught to die;
Each hour proclaim'd its own peculiar heaven;
The heart might covet what the hand revered;
And in the soul, a thousand years of sin
Lie floating, on a sea of fancy toss'd,
And be unblamed! No inward law prevail'd,
Like that which ever to the Christian speaks;
Prejudging thought, ere yet by deed express'd,
And throning conscience in the heart of man.

467

Thus, who can wonder that a darkness hung
Round heathen ages, by no hand unveil'd?
Magnificent and mighty was the Past,
In learning, prowess, and devoted arts:
Yet ne'er was hero, in his sun-bright car,
With all his panoply of gorgeous hues
And lauding thunders from a nation's lip
To tell his conquest,—so sublimely great
As dying Stephen, when that martyr quench'd
By glorious faith the agonies of death,
The sky beheld, and for his murd'rers pray'd!

Bright as the morning of primeval day
Burst on the waters of chaotic gloom,
Came revelation on the darksome world.
Then error vanish'd in celestial truth;
Hush'd were false Oracles, and quench'd the fires
Which savage bigotry for ages fed:
New light, new order, new existence rose!
The pangs of Wo, the wrongs of patient Worth,
Were now no more, as once their truth had been:
Eternity the debt of Time would pay,
The soul redeem, and justify its God.

Yet was not this transcendent scheme of love
To Earth unfolded, till maturing age
Had nerved the spirit for its high display.
But just as nature, by apparent means
And fine gradations of effective power,
The miracle of life and form achieves,
So Mind, in her advance to heavenly things,
Progressively to full redemption came.
In the calm innocence of youthful Time
When Earth undeluged lay, the vocal Word
By deep communion did Himself impart
To his frail creature, Man: and Spirits bright,
And loving Angels by their Lord empower'd
Brought inward messages from God on high.
When darkly sunk in Amoritish guilt
The patriarchal purity was o'er,
Religion hallow'd with Mosaic law,
And special covenant, and ritual pomp
Of ark and fane and sacrificial blood,
The chosen People; thus in types began
Sublime Theocracy; and when it sunk
To kingly sway, prophetic Bards reveal'd
The One Jehovah, and the promised Seed:
Thus moved the destinies of Earth along
In light and darkness, as career the waves
Through sun and tempest, till Messiah rose.

There are, who deem no revelation true
Which doth not, by divine compulsion, awe
The universal mind to one belief.
But, where the freedom of inviolate will,
If, dazzled into reasonless assent,
Belief is passive, and conviction blind?
The lines of human character are lost,
No principle can act, no feeling sway,
No Passion on the altar of pure Faith
Can nobly die, in sacrifice to Heaven:
As heave the waters to a reinless wind,
So, led by impulse, would the spirit yield
To Fate's high will, without one virtue blest.
For what is virtue, but a vice withstood,
Or sanctity, but daring sin o'ercome?
Life is a warfare, which the soul confronts,
While good and evil, truth and error clash,
Or rally round it in confused array;
And he who conquers, wins the crown of Light
Which Heaven has woven for her warrior-saint.

A God incarnate, with His glory veil'd,
Altar, and priest, and sacrifice combined
In mystic oneness of almighty Love,
Behold Him bleeding! on His awful brow
The mingled sorrows of a world repose:
“'Tis finish'd!”—at those words Creation throbs;
Round Hell's dark universe the echo rolls;
All nature is unthroned; the mountains quake
Like human beings when their death-pang comes;
The sun has wither'd from the frighted air,
And with a tomb-burst, hark! the Dead arise,
And gaze upon the living, as they glide
With soundless motion through the darken'd streets
Most awfully!—the world's Redeemer dies!

That hour of Blood, that scene of Death, is past,
And quench'd the savage eyes that mock'd and smiled
On Calv'ry, when the direful Cross upbore
A martyr'd Saviour: but there comes a mood,
When Fancy wanders to that fated hill,
And from His pleading face, to heaven upturn'd
In godlike pity for the murd'rous Jew,
A look celestial for the soul derives
When faints it oft in penitential gloom.

And thou, my Country! foremost in the van
Of glory found, no Empire which bedecks
The globe, exalted mercies can record
Like those that crown, and still encircle Thee,
Eden of isles! whom ocean loves to guard.
From the foul darkness of engulphing sin
Celestial Mercy bade thy spirit rise
Victorious, and in Christ regen'rate be.

468

And, thus environ'd by elective grace,
E'en like a fortress for the faith art thou:
And though not spotless be thy past career,
Religion from thy thousand Temples calls
Aloud on Deity, and walks unseen
The paths of goodness, musing holy joy.

But ah! that day of spiritual delight
Of old revered, and by our fathers blest,
Thy Sabbath, England! is that halcyon morn
Of holiness, when Heaven remembers thee
With sanctifying love, and sheds abroad
A balm that beautifies the face of things.
Redemption won the boon; and long may sounds
From steeple-towers of venerable gloom
Or Minsters brown which deck the hawthorn-vales,
Of sabbath-music on the breezy wings
Of matin rise, and soft emotions crowd
The soul that listens to their tender chime.
And thus, while unpolluted Altars stand
O'er time secure, and christian ardour keeps
The virtues of our glorious Land alive,
Jehovah! still for us Thine arm will rule;
And Ocean, faithful to her island-born,
Bulwark the clime whose sceptre bows to Thee.

And may the glories of Thy gospel shine
From zone to zone, till earth one Temple prove,
And lauding angels, as they gird the Throne
With choral raptures, hear from saints below
Perpetual anthems which to Christ ascend.
For Thou hast promised, and Thy word shall reign!
Let earth be riven, sun and system die,
Or nature into nothing be recall'd,
Ere this be doubted,—the decree of God!
Oft in the hush of meditative hours
When fancy wanders on mysterious wing
Far into chaos, greets the dawning world,
And down the surging tides of ages floats
E'en to the living hour,—I glow to trace
Omniscient wisdom and perennial love.
E'en now, as here in solitary mood
My spirit warbles in a dream of song,
What destinies are weaving for the race
Of man! what energies of heart and soul
In mingled yet harmonious play, for time
That doom complete Eternity has plann'd?

And, if our wingèd aspirations dare
The hour outfly, and future glory meet,
My brother Man! wherever doom'd thou art,
In dark isles bosom'd on the dusky main
A savage found, magnificently free;
Or, in some icy wilderness of waves,
Soon on thy soul may Revelation dawn
And bid lost nature recognise its God.

That prayer is heard: for with it richly blend
Approving echoes from Britannia's heart.
E'en now, her Genius on some native cliff
Let Fancy view, in speculation rapt.
To rocky isles, and dreadful island-wastes
That spot the billows, her dejected eye
Is turn'd, and what a vision of despair
The savage dwellers on the sea create,
Who round their dying captive dance and howl;
Or, prostrate at some tow'ring idol's car,
In bloody rapture limb and life destroy.
To Heaven she looks, and lo! a sudden burst
Of morning-brightness o'er the midnight-scene;
For woods of horror, laughing corn-fields wave;
For cavern'd homes, and huts of wildest gloom
What sylvan cots and glitt'ring mansions rise,
While sun-clad spires in every woodland gleam!
And ships are riding in securest bays
Of Commerce, where of old untravell'd sea
Lay in grim slumber, or by whirlwinds lash'd.
All things have glided into beauteous change,
And Man, at whose creation God rejoiced,
Not in the gloom and guilt of nature pines,
But beaming with recover'd soul, appears,
A true Schechinah where the Spirit dwells.
The Genius of my Country!—on her brow
What apostolic smiles of love and light
Begin; for her the vision hath unroll'd
Its promise; and to her hath God appeal'd
For Earth, and bade from His divinest source
The spirit of immortal truth proceed
In heavenly conquest, till the knell of Time
Be sounded, and the church in heaven complete.

And here awhile, on this majestic hope
Of brighter ages let the Lyre repose.
But pardon, ye who feel how Nature makes
Her priesthood vocal, if in fond delay
A poet gaze upon the gorgeous eve,
And watch the shadows of a waning sky.

A sunset! what a host of beaming clouds
In mingled lustre multiplied and flash'd,
And flung their beauty in reflected tints
On golden waters, lull'd in gleaming rest,
And then, concenter'd in one pomp of light
Like that which girds th' apocalyptic throne!
But, ere the sun behind yon sea withdrew,
A thunder-gloom in silent threat advanced;
And the loud hiss of unexpected rain
Rang through the air with its rejoicing fall,
The verdure sparkled, and the sun retired
On waves of glory like an ocean god:
From out the billows beam'd a rainbow-form

469

Which died in azure o'er the distant hills;
The sea-gull flutter'd on his foam-like wing,
And, like a seraph in the air conceal'd,
The wind-tone warbled with unearthly joy.

An hour with nature is an hour with heav'n,
When feeling hallows what the fancy views:
And thus, O Twilight! may a soul discern
In thy meek stillness what harsh day obscures.
Now Mem'ry too with mournful love recalls
Some heart-romance, till years of verdant joy
Revive, and bloom within affection's world.
Bright Forms, by greeting childhood so beloved!
Maternal tones, and features, of whose smile
In blissful rivalry our own was born,
And voices, echoed in our dreams of heaven,
Around us throng, until th' unliving past
Our being enters, and seems life again.

In no false weakness heaves the votive sigh
Of fond remembrance o'er man's fleeting youth;
The poetry of pure regret is there!
To love the past but makes the present dear;
The mournful wisdom of our discontent
Can then unteach what young Delusion taught
Alone; since who that lives, and living, thinks,
But adds another to an endless train
Of sad Confessors since the world began?—
A life of glory is a dream fulfill'd,
That fades in acting, as the gorgeous cloud
E'en as it dazzles is but dying air!

If I too, ere autumnal age my brow
Has wrinkled, or the twilight of chill days
Begun, the barrenness of earth perceive,
And feel mortality's most aching wear
Fever and fret the soul; if all which bloom'd
Like Eden once, hath grown a desert now
Of dying hope, and faded joy; if Life be lone,
And sad, and bleak, while aspirations droop
Unwatch'd within me, and delightless earth
More tomb-like grows, as death's absorbing dream
Haunts the worn spirit wheresoe'er it fly
For refuge, may I not existence mourn?
No! let me fall, and worship at the Fount
Of promise; life is Heaven's surpassing gift,
And what his Maker wills, should man revere.

To cover earth with shades of hell; accuse
The sun of darkness, and the world blaspheme;
All hope deny, coequal man disdain,
And mar the heavenliness of human joy,
Betrays a tempest of unholy thought
Raised by the Demon of our darker hours!
But, nobly true, inexplicably deep
That mournfulness by solitude inspired,
When mild dejection ends in musing bliss.
Like a mute pilgrim, on some distant shore
At twilight shaping in the skiey air
The towers and temples of his native land,
While on his ear the sounds of home renew
The sweetness of their social melody,—
Oft may some Dreamer in a spirit-trance
Fancy existence to be exile now;
See visions of departed heaven, and hear
The muffled language of mysterious Worlds.
And oh! how oft beneath the bluest sky
In summer arching over lake or wood,
When round and round, with antic motion sport
The insect-populace of beams and flowers;
When herb is bright, and breeze is gay, the Mind
A mystic shadow of dejection feels,
While voiceless omens and prophetic fears
Haunt the deep heart with their undying spell.
For ever on the solemn verge we seem
Of gloom unknown, or glory unreveal'd;
And who shall say, that life does not preserve
A faint reflection of some vanish'd State
By man forgot, as oft the sea retains
A dim resemblance of departed storm?

'Tis night; the holiness and heaven of time!
And censure me, mild Elements, whose sway
Of loveliness hath now serened the world,
If by your charm my soul is unsubdued
By prayer, while Nature in devotion seems.
Mysterious hour! when most self-knowledge reigns.
And minutes are soft Teachers, whom the heart
Obeys: and, art Thou not more deeply fill'd
With inspiration from thy Maker sent,
O Earth! than in the day's tyrannic roar?
And if there be, as saintly minds allow,
Some god-like moment, when pure Spirits walk
This lower world, where man is doom'd to strive,
Tranquillity enshrines their presence now.
In pale omnipotence of light the moon
Presides, too brilliantly for meeker stars
To venture forth, save one bright watcher, seen
O'er yon lone hill to let his beauty smile:
The clouds are dead; and scarce a breeze profanes
The blissful calm, save when some rebel dares
On fitful wing to wander into life
Awhile, and make unwilling branches wave,
Or moonlight flutter through the boughs, and fall
In broken radiance on the grass beneath.
The earth grows soundless; and yon giant elms
Hush'd into leafy trance their shade project
Before them: Night and Stillness are enthroned.

470

Now may the spirit on religious wing
Expatiate; soaring where no science can,
Yet haply, hover round some truth unknown.
And be this earth all reverently trod,
Since out of it did human Dust proceed!
Let all we look upon religion make
For inmost thought, or meditative love.
On choral winds aye let there float a voice
Of God; and Ocean with his organ-waves
Eternal anthems to Jehovah peal.
And oh! may I, when pangful life is o'er,
In some pure region of almighty bliss
A harping strain from those bright Singers learn,
Who in the orchestra of Glory waft
Divine Emmanuel! to Thy merit due,
From golden lyres an everlasting praise.

BOOK III.

“Prepare the way! a God, a God appears!
A God! a God! the echoing vales reply.”
Pope.

“A venerable and sacred tradition relates, that by the rising of a certain uncommon star was foretold, not diseases or death, but the descent of an adorable God for the salvation of the human race, and the melioration of human affairs; which star, they say, was observed by the Chaldeans, who came to present their offerings to the new-born God.”—From Chalcidius, an ancient Commentator on the Timæus of Plato.

ANALYSIS OF BOOK III.

The fulness of Time—Probable Sympathy of distant and unknown Worlds—Despair of the Evil One— State of the World—Gabriel commanded to Earth— The Annunciation — Mary's holy raptures — Her Visit to her Cousin at Hebron—Her Journey described—The subject naturally suggests an allusion to the hallowed associations which the beauty and scenery of Palestine awake—The Virgin's arrival— Congratulations—Cæsar's Order for a General Census —Birth of the Messiah—Appearance of the Angels to the Shepherds in Bethlehem Vale—Their Hymn —Visit of the Shepherds to the Cradle of Jesus— Reflections on the humility of Christ's entrance into this World—How contrary to the martial ideas of the Jews—Their doubt, rejection of Christ, and consequent dispersion, when compared with their former high estate, kindle our deepest thoughts of fear and faith—Their future Restoration—Return to the order of the Gospel—Day of Circumcision— Presentation of the Divine Babe in the Temple— Simeon's Ecstacy—Return of the Holy Family to the Vale of Nazareth—Arrival of the Magi—The Craft and Cruelty of Herod—Massacre of the Innocents—Childhood of Jesus—His appearance among the Rabbis at twelve years of age in the Temple— Second Return to Nazareth—The Meditations of the Saviour as He contemplated the Redemption of Man, amid the seclusion and silence of his lowly lot—John the Baptist—His Dwelling in the Desert —Obeys the Holy Spirit—Announces the coming of Christ—Preaches Repentance, which is true wisdom. The Book ends with a view of the consolation of the Scriptures, and the beauty of the outward Universe, when enjoyed in connexion with the Divine Creator.

Now was the fulness of predestined time
Complete, when councils of the God Triune
In Christ embodied, should at length evolve;
And not ungreeted did Redemption's hour
Arrive: before the Throne new radiance burn'd;
And emanations of intenser bliss
Than that which kindled o'er creation's birth,
Angelic myriads felt, as peal'd their chants
Of hymning wonder!—yea, in spirit-worlds
From whence no living Shape to earth has come,
Round these, perchance, a sympathetic thrill
Of worship ran, when first Salvation dawn'd.

And thou! the demon-King of darkness throned
In thine eternity of tort'ring fires,
Thou dread Apostate! who didst shake the skies
For vict'ry, vanquish'd, but rebellious still;
On thee the glories of Messiah's reign
Beam'd terrible: within thy dark abyss
When ruin'd angels to the summons throng'd,
With dreadful beauty, like a dying sun
Amid the tempest sinking, each adorn'd,
No triumph on thy thunder-blasted brow,
But deeper vengeance, more despairing wo
Than yet the realms of agony endured,
Was visible; that hour, so long foredoom'd,
Is coming, when a world shall be unbound
From chains infernal, and the Powers of Hell
Disarm'd for ever on their crumbling thrones!

Meanwhile, on earth mute Expectation sat
And listen'd; for a rumour, echoed down
From dateless time, of two surpassing Kings
Predestined on the globe to rule, prevail'd;
Whose powers, though blended in Virgilian song,
Sublimely differ'd. In Augustan peace
The world reposed; and grateful Rome beheld
Her Janus shut, her crimson banners furl'd.
No more Dodona, from the oaken shade,
Or Delphi, from exhaling cavern, sent
Vain oracles in mystic verse enweaved.
The Temples mourn'd; Idolatry was dumb,
Or mutter'd faintly from her glimmering shrines;
While Art and Science, in their palmy state,
Triumphantly advanced. Thus, all matured,
And apt to question with profoundest thought

471

Each creed or doctrine of diviner sway,
The World awaited her Messiah's dawn:
From realm to realm a vast tradition reign'd
Of sibyl-words, which sang the coming God;
While many a heart, prophetically deep,
Mused in the silence of majestic hope,
Or, heaven-inspired, the Earth's Redeemer hail'd.

Thus all below; when Gabriel heard a voice
Of thunder from the Throne proceed, which bade
To Galilee a wingèd flight convey
His presence, where in rocky Naz'reth dwelt
A Maiden pure, to Joseph then betroth'd.
And lo, an Angel brighten'd into view
Before her, like a lovely burst of morn!
And while she trembled, dazzled into dread,
A Salutation of entrancing sound
Fell on her ear:—“Divinely favoured Thou!
Of women blest! The Lord is with thee, hail!
A Son, behold, thy virgin womb shall bear;
Son of the Highest! Jesus let His name
Be called; upon the throne of David fix'd,
O'er Jacob's house for ever shall he reign,
And endless his predestined kingdom prove.”
“But how?” cried Mary, “Since I know not man.”
Again the Angel: “Overshadowing thee
The Holy Spirit will in power descend,
And That thou bearest, Son of God be call'd.”
Then answer'd she, “Behold thy handmaid, Lord!
And be thy word fulfill'd,” as brightly fled
The glowing Angel to his native skies.

Let Silence think, for how can words reveal
Her full devotion of ecstatic thought,
When Mary ponder'd on that promised Child?
Let mothers tell! to whose enchanted ears
Earth brings no music like the helpless cry
Of new-born life, from lips which know not guile.
Oh! Maid elect! with more than gladness wing'd,
In the young beauty of thy spousal bloom
To Hebron didst thou o'er the mountains pass,
And visit one, by Heav'n's bright herald warn'd.

'Mid the faint crimson of a flushing dawn
That Pilgrim started, when the breeze was up,
And, like a wing, invisibly career'd
O'er woods and waters: from the grey ravines
The oak and olive sent a leafy sound,
And with her multitude of orient flow'rs
The blooming Sharon glitter'd from afar;
Or, gazing from some terraced rock or hill,
The herding goats from villages and vales,
And wild onàgras, free as desert-wind,
Her eye discern'd; while veil'd Arabians sought
A distant well, like Midian girls of old;
And others to empurpled vineyards hied,
'Mid the soft radiance of unshrouding morn.

By Heaven secured, o'er lone and lofty heights
She glided on; and trod with eager foot
Each verdant slope, each rocky change of scene,
Where olive waved, or cypress-shadow fell.
But oft she paused, and bless'd the vital breeze
From lake upborne; or, when some hill or plain
Of green magnificence, or glorious view
Of nature's wonders, to her eye appeal'd,—
How beautiful! to hear the Maiden chant
Hymns to Jehovah, while her soul recall'd
Those hallow'd memories which ever cling
To ground immortal as great Palestine!

Oh, tell me not of trophied Greece, and groves
Where Plato wander'd; or poetic streams
That wind through Homer's page, or Pindar's song;
For Palestine by God Himself was loved,
Inhabited, and blest! His Spirit there
Hath walk'd, the shadow of His glory been,
His miracles prevail'd,—the mountains blazed
With His descending lustre! all her vales,
Her fountains, rivers, and delicious plains,
Of patriarchs and prophets speak; beneath the shade
Of her ancestral trees have Angels sat,
And holy Abram smiled: her meanest spot
Is mighty, and her dust a sacred charm,
For in it sleep the World's primeval sires!

Unbounded Fancy! on whose fairy wings
The spirit voyageth o'er realms and isles,
Oh, waft me now to Tabor's solemn height,
Where Barak and his heaven-arm'd thousands hid,
And there the Drama of the world renew!
Let Eden rise, her boughs and branches wave,
And Shapes aerial from the clouds descend,
To view her lovely bowers. The Flood react,—
Earth, sea, and sky in billowy chaos lost!
Revive the Patriarchs; mark their rev'rent forms,
Or hear the Prophets when the people rage.
Or, wouldst thou from the sacred past retire

472

To scenes which live,—from haunted Tabor view
The greenness of a hundred glorious plains!
Lo, vast Esdraelon, like a verdant sea,
By dew-famed Hermon bound; there, Endor lies.
Where dwelt the night-hag in unholy gloom
And Saul seem'd wither'd as the spectre rose,
Wrapp'd in a mantle, out of Hades call'd.
But northward, lock'd in azure calm of noon,
Thy lake, Tiberias! on that blue extent
Of shining waters oft the Saviour look'd;
And near yon mountain, iced with dazzling snow,
The sacred hill whereon He sat, and taught
The wisdom of eternity to man.

But, see! o'er Judah's aromatic clime
The sun is west'ring: long ere twilight rose
With dewy welcome to her second night
Of mountain-pilgrimage, the Virgin stood
Beneath the shelter of a rustic cot,
In Hebron, and her holy cousin hail'd,
Enraptured! What sublime emotion clad
Each feature, what a radiance fill'd her eyes,
And touch'd her form, when that saluting voice
Was heard, as thrilling with celestial truth
Elizabeth on Mary gazed, and cried,
“Of Women blest! divinely blest, art thou!”
While leapt the babe within her womb, for joy.
And thus did Mary in her chant respond,
“My soul the gracious Lord doth magnify!
The proud He scatters, but the meek regards;
For thus to Abram and our fathers spake
The God of Israel; glorious be His name!
For me, his lowly Handmaid, ever-blest
Shall ages deem, and generations call.”

But now, from Cæsar came a high command
For Judah's offspring to enroll their birth.
Then Joseph, by angelic dream forewarn'd
How vestal Mary had from God conceived,
To Bethlehem went; and there the infant Christ
His Virgin-Mother in a manger laid:
All pure and holy, as the promise spake.—
And say! what hour so awefully instinct
With Secrets from eternity ordain'd,
As when th' Incarnate met the placid gaze
Of His unspotted Mother! what enshrined
A scene, where Deity the mortal shape
Of feeble infant took, and, rudely wrapt,
In new-born meekness smiling forth the God,
Deliver'd earth and thrill'd the Heavens with joy!

That night were shepherds at their watches due
Around unfolded sheep, in that soft vale
Whose fountain warbled to the dreaming ear
Of David, when he sought Adullam's cave.
A calm so deep, that silence seem'd a soul,
Pervaded all things; dew-light on the ground
Was glist'ring, and the vigil-shepherds watch'd
Contentedly their breathing charge recline
On pastures, where the morning flock had fed.
No cloud the heaven defiled; but, clear and large,
The planets in their throbbing lustre shone.
'Twas then, while Nature mute as dreaming air
Reposed, a melody in wafted flow
Advanced; and when it reach'd the starry plain,
An earthless Form, seraphically robed,
Evolved, and glitter'd like a noontide-sea.

Awe-smote, and blinded with excessive blaze
Of archangelic lustre, on the ground
Each shepherd sank, nor dared with lifted eye
The Glory face, till words of music came:
“Ye pious watchers; tremble not; behold
The tidings of eternal joy I bring:
This night the Saviour of the World is born!
Within a manger, lo! the Babe is found!”
He said; and as the lull of golden streams
When soft-toned winds melodiously awake,
The radiant quiver of angelic plumes
The air attuned, which trembled into song,
While, robed with brightness, thus the choir began:

“Thou Lord of Lords, and Light of Light!
Who, with empyreal glory bright,
Art seated on th' Eternal Throne
Invisibly, the vast Alone,
Ten thousand worlds around Thee blaze,
Ten thousand harps repeat Thy praise,
Yet hymn, nor harp, nor song divine,
Nor myriad orbs created Thine,
This measureless display of love
To earth below and heaven above
With blending eloquence can tell
That ends the Curse, and conquers Hell;
For lo! the manger where He lies,
A world-redeeming Sacrifice:
Peace on earth, to Man good will,
Let the skies our anthem fill!

“Hail, Virgin-born! transcendent Child
In mortal semblance, undefiled,
By ages vision'd, doom'd to be
The Star of Immortality;
Hail! Prince of Peace, and Lord of Light!
Around thy path the world is bright;
Where'er Thou tread'st an Eden blooms,
And Earth forgets her myriad tombs:

473

Thy voice is heard—and Anguish dies,
The dead awake and greet the skies;
Lo! Blindness melts in healing rays,
And mute Lips ope in hymns of praise;
The famish'd on Thy bounty feed,
While myriads at Thy summons speed
Redeem'd from woe, and sin, and pain
To see the lost restored again:
Peace on earth, to Man good will,
Let the skies our anthem fill!

“Awake, awake, thou ransom'd Earth!
And, blooming with a second birth,
In loveliness awake and shine,
Thy King is come, Salvation thine!
The winds are rock'd in holy rest,
The waves asleep on Ocean's breast,
And beautiful the boundless calm
O'er nature spread, like midnight balm;
For lo! the manger where He lies,
A world-redeeming Sacrifice;
The Promised, since the world began,
To live and die for guilty Man.

“Again, again, the anthem swell!
For Heaven shall burst the gates of Hell!
A vision of uncounted years
Which travel on through toil and tears,
Is all unroll'd in wild extent
Like ocean's surging element:
But soon that darken'd scene hath past
And rules the Lord in light, at last!
The sunbeams of a sabbath-day
Around adoring myriads play:
From north to south, from east to west,
All pangs are hush'd, all hearts at rest:
Pacific homes, Atlantic isles,
Far as the vast creation smiles,
The rudest spot which man can own,
Shall hail Messiah on His throne;
And lauding souls by land and sea,
One Altar build, O God! to Thee;
While men and angels round it throng
To chant the sempiternal song,
Peace on earth, to Man good will,
Let the skies our anthem fill!”

Hush'd the deep chant, the choral Train ascends, And then commingles in one pomp of light,
While all entranced th'adoring she pherds kneel:
But when the bright ascent was o'er, up rose
They all in ravishment; to Bethlehem sped,
And there Messiah wrapp'd in swaddling-clothes
They found, and sang with reverential joy
A hymn of worship to the Babe divine;
While Mary, meekly silent, heard the tale
Of wonder, musing with prophetic soul.

O World! and was it thus thy Saviour came?
Rich as the chorus of Creation's morn
From every region should thy lips have pour'd
A loud hosannah to proclaim the Lord!
The skies have bent, the mountains clapp'd their hands,
The cedars waved from every conscious hill,
And Sun and Moon, and each melodious Star,
And Ocean, with his jubilee of waves
Have thrill'd the universe with natal joy!
But all was silent, unobserved and still;
No Empire sung, when man's Redeemer came;
The peasant-mother in her Alpine cot,
At dreadful midnight, no desertion feels,
Like that rude manger where the Virgin lay,
And scarce a solitary taper shone!

Is this the Wonderful? the Prince of Light,
The King of kings, o'er countless worlds enthroned.
Oh! Language cannot with its brightest words
Adumbrate, or by epithets express
The imagined splendors which proud Judah dreamt
Would crown Messiah, when He came to give
Her ransom'd myriads all Isaiah sung!

Empires have sunk, and waning kingdoms died,
But still, apart, sublime in mis'ry stands
The wreck of Israel! Christ hath come, and bled,
And miracles and ages round the Cross
A holy splendour of undying truth
Preserve; yet still their pining spirit looks
For that unrisen Sun which prophets hail'd!
Where once the Temple, bathed in golden hues,
Immense as glorious, with her matchless spires
On mount Moriah stood, a race exist
In darkness,—still to Zion turn, and weep!
And when I view him in his garb of wo,
A wand'ring outcast, by the world disown'd,
The haggard, lost, and long-oppressèd Jew,
“His blood be on us,” through remembrance rolls
In fearful echo from a nation's lip!

Then widow'd Zion! still for thee awaits
A future, teeming with triumphal sounds
And Shapes of glory; still a remnant lives,
Who once again thy banner shall unroll
And plant it on thine everlasting walls.
The Cities huge which overaw'd the world
Rot in a gloom, irrevocably seal'd,
Of desolation; Time shall never rear
The towers, nor crowd their weed-grown walks again.
But Judah, like some Babylonian wreck

474

Which age nor elemental wrath subdues,
In mournful grandeur that outlives decay
There as it lies on yon deserted plain,—
Shall yet endure, till Restoration's voice
Her orphan'd race to Salem's clime recall.

Exult, O Zion! for thy God is king,
And lift thy banner on the mountain-tops;
From Egypt, Pathros, and Assyria call'd,
From Shinar, Hamath, and the sea-born isles,
From the vast regions of the utmost orb
Returning Israel for dominion comes!
A voice of Weeping, it is heard no more;
The timbrels sound, her glad-eyed maidens dance,
Her young men shout, the aged meekly smile,
Rememb'ring all the pleasant things of old!
The lea of Sharon, and the pastured glen
Of Achre, beautiful in verdure shine;
While planted vincyards with a costly bloom
Wave on her hills, and court the rip'ning sun.
The lamb, the lion, and the infant play
Together; Righteousness thy gate adorns,
And peace divine, by purity bestow'd
From God incarnate, in thy sacred walls,
Recover'd Palestine! for ever dwells.

As when a mother for an absent child
Laments, till beauty on her cheek decays,
Yet haply in declining loveliness
More exquisite than in her glowing prime
Appeareth, so doth thine afflicted Land
Touch the deep spirit with diviner thought.
Now in thy wo, than when a bridal pomp
Bedeck'd thee. For the homeless race afar
Thou yearnest with a soft maternal grief;
To hill and mountain the devouring Curse
Hath clung; and rivers down unpeopled vales
Like mournful pilgrims glide; while fruit nor tree
Bear to the tyrant what thy children took
From thy fond bosom: yet, a latent power
Of life and glory in thy wither'd soil
Is buried, that shall rise when Judah comes;
Like music sleeping in a haughty lyre,
Whose muteness only to the master-touch
Breaks into sound which ravishes a world!

Now, o'er the infant God a day decreed
For circumcision rose, in wonted light,
And “Jesus” (let the heavens and earth revere
That word almighty!) was the name he bore.
And then, each light of due lustration done,
The lowly Virgin to the Temple brings
The young Redeemer; thus had God ordain'd.
No lamb had she; but in her meekness brought
Two turtle-doves of pure and spotless wing,
And solemnly within the outer-court
Awaited, while a Priest the Lord approach'd:
And haply, on the Temple's wondrous mass
Of finish'd beauty and effulgent pomp
Oft gazed, and gloried in her ancient creed
That there the God of Israel loved to dwell!
But when th' oblation of unspotted doves
Was paid, an inner court's wide precincts ope,
And Mary enters with her bosom'd child;
Then silently, with glance of tend'rest love,
For presentation yields the Babe divine.

But who is he, with beard of flowing white,
Who onward moves amid the ritual pomp?
Led by the Spirit, lo! a bending Form
Approaches, kindles as with sudden youth,
Her Babe enclasps, and to his Maker cries,
“In peace, O Lord! now let Thy servant go;
These eyes have seen, these wither'd arms embrace
Thy promised One, a Child of Glory, sent
To lighten Israel, and the world restore!”
Yes, morning, noon, and night, in dream or prayer,
In temple-worship, and mysterious hours,
For this he long'd, to see Messiah born!—
The Saviour came, and Simeon died in joy.

Each rite complete, the Holy Fam'ly sought
In Bethlehem-vale their consecrated home;
There, scarce arrived, when lo! as Magi bow'd
In nightly worship to unnumber'd worlds
Of starry name, an orbèd Meteor shone
With mystic beams oracularly bright!
But well they knew, those star-adoring Seers,
That revelation high, and sped on wings
Of holy speed to Zion's stately haunt;
There wond'ringly around old Salem's walls
Exclaim'd, “The new-born great! Judean King,
His dwelling say, for Him would we adore!”

And souls there lived, which drank, as thirsty ground
A summer-rain absorbs, refreshing hope,
When orient Sages of a mighty birth
For Israel spake: for Judah long had pined,
And on the willows hung her captive harp:
But he, whom Mariamne's murder'd form
For ever haunted like a dream of hell,
The guilty, pamper'd, pale Herodian king!
Heard this, and trembled: yet in bloody calm
His purpose lay, and thus that king address'd
Those eastern Magi: “Swift to Bethlehem, haste!
The infant find, around his cradle kneel,
And tell, where I may come and worship, too?”

475

They went; and lo! yon beauteous Star,
In loveliness beyond all radiant orbs
Which decorate the night, a guidance lent,
Till o'er that roof where lay the Lord of Worlds
It paused, and quiver'd as with conscious beams;
There sped the Magi, earth's Redeemer found
Encradled; and with bending awe they kneel,
His Form adore, and solemn worship pay
With myrrh and frankincense; while Mary stands
In wonder; with her eye to heaven upturn'd,
Her bosom swelling with a silent hymn,
And in her spirit more than mother's joy!

Their homage done, and earth's Messiah seen,
By God forewarn'd, the orient pilgrims wend
Afar from Herod, to their destined home.
That night, in visionary trance, appear'd
The Shape angelic Joseph once beheld:
“Arise! to Egypt with the Virgin speed,
And holy Infant; Him would Herod slay!”
To that high word obedient, ere the blush
Of morning crimson'd Horeb's sainted brow
Or Jordan's waters in the sunshine wound,
By Heaven environ'd, as a viewless guard,
To Egypt went he, till the monarch died:
“For out of Egypt have I call'd my Son!”
So spake the Seer, whose word our God fulfill'd.

Then passion, like a kindled hurricane
Burst from the tyrant with terrific sway,
And cruel havoc, dark as Hell desired;
Oh! then were shrieks maternal, sounds which came
From riven souls, and childless Rachel wept.
In Rama was the voice of mourning heard,
And red with blood the streams of Israel ran,
'Twas Murder's banquet on a thousand babes!—
Sweet flowers of Life, whose fragile beauty made
The living Eden of parental hearts;
Asleep in cradled stillness, with the light
Of infant slumber on their lovely cheeks,
Or prattling gaily at the cottage-door,
Slaughter o'ertook them, and with murderous yell
Mock'd the sad mothers, shrieking for their God!
That cry was answer'd when the monster-king,
By pain corrupted, turn'd a loathsome mass,
And died! Then, heralded by Gabriel's wings,
The infant-Saviour into Nazareth came;
For Archelaus o'er Judah's empire ruled,
And, Herod-like, had bathed his throne in blood.

Mysterious Time! o'er many realms and lands
Thy shadow broods, which man cannot dispel,
Or brighten; but o'er that most hallow'd scene
Where dwelt unknown, in human meekness veil'd,
Incarnate Glory, lies thy thickest gloom.
For ever hidden, by no voice reveal'd,
The holy childhood of the Saviour-God.
Yet, wafted back on no irrev'rent wing,
Imagination oft her eye would fix
On that green vale, where first The Morning-Star
With mildest beauty rose. By earth unfelt,
Celestial watchers! did ye not descend
And hover round, while grew that awful Child
In the pure light of Mary's pensive gaze?
Maiden and mother! whom all ages bless
When lock'd in slumber the Redeemer lay,
How on His features did thine homage dwell!

But years departed; and Messiah grew
Strong in the spirit, wisdom, grace and power;
Then oft at eve, when sultry day was o'er,
The holy Infant, by parental knee,
The Book of Life with tender awe perused,
And question'd; while in love's delightful dream
Each parent mused; recalling oft the Shapes
Angelic, or that vision Bethlehem saw;
Or, sounding all the dim and mighty depths
Of prophecy, where solemn meanings lay.
And ah, how beautiful! in cradled sleep
While slept her Child, to mark the wedded Maid
On His pure brow a gentle kiss implant,
And then to Joseph, with a speaking look
This truth convey—“How wonderful is Heaven,
If there the Hope of fallen Israel lies!”
When twelve years thus the Son of God had spent,
To celebrate a high and solemn feast,
Begun when over Egypt's first-born flew
The direful Angel on his wings of death,
All came; and with excited myriads went
Christ's holy parents up to Salem's walls,
As true adorers. When the seventh day saw
Each rite concluded, back to Nazareth vale
They speed, but where is He, the sacred Boy?
With friends beloved, or in Jerusalem lost?
There hasten'd they, and sorrowingly roam'd
The Virgin-mother, garden, grove, and field;
And as she hurried through becrowded paths
Her eye's fond question moved each passing face
With feeling:—such as thoughts untold betray
When look is language, and that language read
By hearts which sympathise with pangs unknown.
And thus she sought Him with unwearied step,

476

Till tears had gather'd, and her gaze was dim,
Yet found Him not: when hark! a burst of joy
Maternal; in the temple, lo, He stands;
With priest and sage, and vested rabbis mix'd,
The lost One lingers:—on His brow the light
Of Godhead! from His lips a stream of words
Is flowing, fraught with spirit-moving power
That shook all hearts, the ear of Age entranced,
And through dark conscience pour'd celestial rays
Which had not shone before. Each look'd on each,
Astounded; wisdom seem'd a thing unwise
By man announced; Divinity was there!
But, garb'd in lowliness, that peasant-Child
His temple left, a mother's smile renew'd,
And gently her inquiring wonder check'd
With words unfathom'd, yet, in Mary's heart
Embalm'd for ever with revering love!
Then, homeward once again the pilgrims haste
United; musing on the festal pomp,
And crowded worship, such as Salem loved.
And long before the pallid star of Eve
Had heralded the hush of twilight-hour,
A cot was round them, in their quiet vale.

By Nazareth are green and silent dells,
Secluded groves, and rocky shades profound;
And here Messiah dwelt:—those eighteen years
Of fameless calm, wherein the Lord of Light
Reposed, and suffer'd like a human Child,
But sinless, all our burden, toil, and tears,
With what a mystery of voiceless awe
They sink upon the inmost heart of man!
Whether on thee, O Virgin blest! we muse,
Thy soul by reverence and awe subdued
To something holier than mother's love;
Or that all-glorious all-majestic Form
In Whom was center'd man's eternal hope,
Survey, amid the still and solemn vale,—
Our thoughts are thrilling as the tears which rise
When Angels warble round a soul forgiven:
That wondrous Being! in those mountain-dells
As lone He wander'd, did He not forecast
The awful drama of His life to come?
On this He ponder'd; this the mind perceived;
From Cana's miracle to Calv'ry's mount,
The crown and cross, the agony of death
He view'd; nor dash'd the bitter Cup away
The Curse had fill'd, and Man was doom'd to drink
Had Christ not come, and drank the cup, and died!

But now the hour decretive Heaven ordain'd
For Jesus to unfold th' Almighty will,
Approach'd. Tiberius o'er imperial Rome
Was reigning, and in subject Judah ruled
The savage Pilate; when the Word of God
To John amid the wilderness was sent;
For thus the Seer prophetically sang:
“A voice comes wafted through the wilderness!
From Him who crieth, ‘Let the mountains sink,
The valleys rise, and be the deserts smooth!
A God approaches! be His way prepared!’”

That great Precursor, whose proclaiming voice,
“Repent ye!” pierced the wilderness with dread,
Was robed in hairy sackcloth; round his loins
A leathern girdle wound; the mountain-spring,
Which bubbled through the vale, his drink supplied;
His meat was honey and the locust wild.
Alone, but angel-watch'd, that Orphan grew
To manhood; nursed amid the elements,
A son of Nature, where the Desert waved
Her wildest boughs, or flung the blackest gloom
That cavern'd Eremite with God communed,
In storm or stillness, when the thunder voiced
His anger, or a sunshine wore His smile.
One awful loneliness his life became,
In thought and prayer mysteriously it pass'd;
And oft, sublime!—as when at sunset-hour,
A fierce magnificence of crimson hues
Redden'd the mountains, while each rocky crest
Of Judah with volcanic lustre blazed,
And slept the sultry air, the prophet knelt;
And the wild glory of his dreaming eye
To heaven was turn'd, in meditative awe.
The hush of woods, the hymn of waters faint,
And azure prospect of yon midland-sea
Beyond the desert, glimmering and vast,
And dying cadence of some distant bird
Whose song was fading like a silver cloud,—
'Mid sights and sounds, commingled like to these,
Earth had no grander scene, than when the hour
Of Syrian twilight heard the Baptist pray!

Beside the waters of th' unliving Sea
Where buried cities lift their ghastly wreck
In tomb-like waste, the Prophet chanced to muse,
Dreaming of dark Gomorrah, and the loud
Despair of millions, when the thunder knell'd
And rapidly a burning deluge came.
An airy stillness, solitude intense
Was there: no bird upon enchanted wing;
No murmur, but the reedy moan of banks
Of sickly herbage; or the creeping sound
Of Jordan, dragging its sepulchral way;
Sea, sky, and air in one unearthly calm
Reposed! In such a scene of lifeless gloom

477

While mused the Baptist on the guilt of Man,
A mighty impulse, an inbreathing power
Of Inspiration on his spirit came!
He felt the God; and, fill'd with sacred fire,
To Jordan hasten'd; soon that region round
“Repent ye!” heard each hill and vale repeat.
Where ran the holiest of holy Streams
That wind and glitter through green Palestine,
His cry awoke, from whence a warning rung
With tones of terror, till before them fled
The sinful passions of a sensual crowd,
Like waves before the wind! From Judah's realm
To Alexandria's clime, his solemn threat
Was echoed; till around the Baptist throng'd
All sects and nations, to repent, and live
By laving waters of Baptismal power.
There stood the Sadducee! with eye unscaled,
To see the darkness of the grave illumed
By Words immortal; there the glozing tribe
Of Pharisees, with frighted soul appeal'd
For mercy, cowering as the prophet cried,
“Ye vipers! who hath warn'd you from the wrath
To come? Repentance! let thy fruits appear;
The axe is laid, and every fruitless tree
Shall wither! lo, the fire of vengeance falls!”

Divine Repentance! in thy sacred tear
Alone is wisdom for the erring heart.
That infancy of soul, that stainless hour
When the stern chaos of our spirit sleeps
In passionless repose, how oft it woos
Our feelings back to purity and heaven!
Alas! that in our solitude we soar
To perfect goodness, but in life descend
To dust again!—our aspirations quench'd,
Till all which purer moments wisely taught,
And conscience sanction'd, is a dream forgot!

Yet all we ponder, fancy, feel, or view,
Hath something for the soul's mysterious chords
Attuned, to thrill them with religious tones.
But, far above each sight or sound of earth,
Or mind of man, that heaven-revealing Book
In whose dread tones of everlasting truth
The inspirations of Jehovah dwell!
There find we visions of transcendent blaze,
And heralds bright, embassadors divine,
And voices from the Throne and Seat of bliss,
And hallelujahs from angelic choirs,
And God Eternal, with His Thunder girt,
And Radiance, speaking like the ocean vast!
And you, blest Oracles! whose words relate
The story of Redemption, all sublime,
With what a simple rectitude severe
Your page immortal moves from change to change!
Nor turn'd, nor daunted, whatsoe'er the gloom
Or brightness of the awful Scene, it paints:
So rolls a river through a wide domain;
Whate'er the colour which the clouds reflect,
Or bank, or verdure, on its beauty flings,
It travels onward with the stately course
Of sound and motion, to the fated sea.

By these alone, can mortal Life unweave
Her web of mystic lines, and many hues,
And man's eternity before him rise
In dreams of light, or shadows of despair.
At evening once, beside a circling shore
Of sandy wildness, where the billows loved
Their foaming solitude, my fancy stray'd:
Dark crags, and summits, fit for tempest-thrones,
Hung near: but mid-way, on a lofty mount,
By the green splendour of tumultuous grass
Made beautiful, there mused a wither'd Shape
By sorrow featured: on his wasted cheek
Sat wan decline; but still the quenchless eye
Was glorious, — there, undying radiance gleam'd!
A Book, an ancient Book of faded leaves
Was open'd, which, with bended brow, he read
Intently: nearer still my footstep crept,
And by the breeze from his pale lip was brought
Soft under-tones of some almighty speech;
Till, quaking with excess of thought divine,
Down on the herb adoringly he sank
And fix'd his eyes upon the awful heavens,
As though enthroned there God himself appear'd!
And then, while rolling tears ran bright and large,
Exultingly his gasping spirit cried,
“For ever and for ever is Thy Throne
Transcendent, Lord, and everlasting King!”

True Adoration, what a voice is thine!
From earth it wanders through the heaven of heavens,
There from the mercy-seat in light evokes
An answer, thrilling the seraphic Host
With new additions of adoring song!
For prayer is man's omnipotence below,
A soul's companionship with Christ and God,
Communion with eternity begun.

Oh, love celestial! earth can heaven-like grow,
If man profane it not by savage tread
And sordid gaze. E'en now, the sun appears
A king of glory: and this breathing world,
Like some vast instrument of varied sound
The conscious melodies of life awakes:

478

Yon sky is covered with soft isles of cloud,
Which flash or float as sun and wind command;
The air is balm, the breeze a living joy;
My heart is dumb with an exceeding bliss
Of light and beauty, pouring in from Day's
Enchantment; while beneath yon vernal hill
Whose sunny greenness mirrors all the clouds,
Poetic murmurs from a distant sea
In lulling falls come faintly on the mind.

But now, the wearied Elements prepare
For slumber; modulated breezes swell;
The sky, with ocean-mimicry adorn'd,
Grows pale and paler; soon will stars advance
And seem to palpitate, as there they shine,
With throbbing beauty! Thus will night begin
And earth lie cradled in a dim repose,
Till the pure heaven comes down upon the soul
And all is hush'd beneath a holy spell.
So ends a sabbath; so may sabbaths end
Devoutly sacred, till the wings of Time
Be folded, and eternal sabbath reigns.
For all Thy ministries begin and end
In Love, that glorious synonyme of Thee,
Both in the heavens, and in the heart enshrined!
From the first tear which roll'd down Adam's cheek
To the last pang of living bosoms now,
In light and darkness, still our God is Love!

BOOK IV.

“Oh, Goodness Infinite! Goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Than that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness!”
—Paradise Lost, book xii.

ANALYSIS OF BOOK IV.

The glorious manifestation of Truth in the Appeal of the Baptist—Approach of Christ to be Baptised— Jesus led by the Spirit into the Wilderness—The Temptation described—Angels sent to console Him —Thus proved, He commences his Ministry as the Redeemer of the World—Purity and Majesty of His Life and Doctrines—First Miracle—The Marriage in Cana—Jesus goes to Jerusalem—The Modern State of Jerusalem, compared with her Ancient Glories—The Passover described, at the celebration of which Christ arrived—His entrance to the Temple —Miraculous expulsion of its Defilers—Nicodemus, his Character, and Visit to the Saviour by Night— Jesus, on the Death of the Baptist, hastens to Galilee to avoid the Jews—His Journey through Samaria — Scenery — Well of Sychem — Interview with the Woman of Samaria — He travels to Cana—The Nobleman's Son healed by a Word of Christ—His appearance in the Synagogue—Is expelled from thence by his offended Countrymen— Led to the brow of a hill—Delivers Himself from instant destruction.—Capernaum—Lake of Tiberias, described—Miraculous Draught of Fishes—Confession of Peter—Exultation of the Crowd who witnessed the miracle—To this was added an innumerable number of Divine Deeds and Mercies— Doctrine adduced from Miracles—The Power they exhibit cannot be fathomed; but the Principle which they inculcate is to be imitated—for it teaches boundless Love to the whole family of Man.

“Repent ye!” was the dreadless sermon preach'd
In Judah's Desert, by the Baptist now;
And who can measure the exalted might
Of truth, deliver'd by such daring Soul
Till conscience quiver'd, like the world's great sire
At that “Where art thou?” earth's Creator spake!
A brow irradiate with impassion'd zeal,
An eye majestic, and a voice intoned
With vocal energy from heaven inspired,
Were his, who usher'd in th' expected God!
From cot to palace rose his high reproof;
Wherever wander'd in the realm of vice
The heart of man, “Repent ye!” sounded there.

What marvel, then, Messiah's self appear'd
In John embodied, till the people cried,
With loud impatience, “Art thou Christ, the True?”
“With water I indeed baptise and bless;
But One shall come, transcendently sublime
O'er me, the very latchet of Whose shoes
I am not worthy to unbind! with fire,
And with the Holy Ghost shall He baptise;
Behold, the fan is in His fearful hands!
The wheat He gathers, but the wicked chaff
Ungarner'd, burneth with a quenchless flame!”
Thus answer'd he; and shaded Israel's heart
With wonder, dreaming on the dark unknown.

While thus by Jordan's hallow'd wave, the Rite
Of Waters, sanction'd by mysterious sway,
The Baptist to repenting souls perform'd,
The Lord of Life, in human weakness veil'd,
Himself presented. Round His awful head
No glory play'd; nor dread effulgence beam'd
As on He came: yet, sacredly o'erpower'd
By some deep impulse, vast and undefined,
The Crowd stood parted; and a solemn hush,
Like stillness o'er a forest when the winds
Lull'd into soundless trance their wings upfold,
The murm'ring host subdued: but on thy face

479

Great Harbinger! a recognition glow'd,
And spirit-bright thy gladden'd mien became;
For He, whom prescient heaven to earth foretold,
Before Thee stood; Salvation's Prince appear'd!
And this, thy greeting: “Lo! at length He comes;
Behold the Lamb of God! Oh! pure above
All Beings pure, from me this rite forego;
For need I have of Thy baptising grace,
And comest Thou to mine?” “Refuse me not;
Since thus all righteousness must be fulfill'd:”
So speaking, down the bank Messiah moved,
Stood in the waters, there the Rite received,
And thence arose, with voiceless prayer becalm'd.
When lo! the heavens miraculously oped,
The dazzling concave God himself reveal'd
Descending, lustrous with ethereal light:
While dove-like hover'd o'er the Saviour's head
Th' Eternal Spirit, and a Voice declared
Like sea and thunder when their music blends,
“Adore Him! This is My beloved Son!”

But now advanced temptation's demon-power
To crush the Saviour! By the Holy Ghost
Compell'd, within a desert's trackless wild
Alone He wander'd, unperceived by eyes
Of mortal; there to meditate and pray,
And scan the secrets of almighty grace
Himself embodied by redeeming love.
A noontide o'er his contemplation sped
Away, and still the awful Thinker roved
With foot unwearied: sunset, fierce and red,
Succeeded: never hung a savage glare
Upon the wilderness, like that which tinged
This fated hour! the trees and herbless rock
Wore angry lustre, and the dying Sun
Sank downward like a deity of wrath,
Behind him leaving clouds of burning wreck.
And then rose Twilight: not with tender hues,
Or choral breezes, but with shade as dim
And cold, as Death on youthful spirit throws:
Sad grew the air; and soon th' affrighted leaves
And branches from the crouching forest sent
A wizard moaning, till the wild-bird shriek'd,
Or flutter'd, and in dens of deepest gloom
The lion shook, and dreadful monsters glared.

Tremendous are ye, ever-potent Storms
In wild magnificence of sound and scene!
Watch'd on the mountains in convulsive play,
Or from the ocean-margin when the sea
Foams in the fiercest of her billow'd ire.
But when hath Tempest, since a deluge roar'd,
The pale Earth shaken, like that frenzied storm
Which tore the desert, while Messiah mused?
Then God to hands infernal seem'd to trust
The helm of nature, while a chaos drove
The Elements to combat, 'mid the rushing gloom
Of rain and whirlwind, in commingled wrath
Triumphant, while aloft unnat'ral clouds
Hung o'er the sky the imagery of Hell!
Not hence alone tempestuous horror sprung:
To aid the Tempter, shapes of ghastly light,
With Phantoms, grim beyond a maniac's dream,
To thunder darkness and dread midnight gave
A power unearthly:—round Thy sleepless head
Adored Redeemer! did their voices chant,
Or wildly mutter some unhallow'd spell;
Yet all serene Thy godlike virtue stood,
Unshaken, though the universe might fall.

Thus, forty days of dire Temptation leagued
Their might hell-born, with hunger, thirst, and pain.
Meanwhile, in thankless calm the World reposed:
Life went her rounds, and busy hearts maintain'd
Their action: still uprose the parent Orb,
And all the dewy ravishment of flowers
Enkindled; Day and Ocean mingled smiles;
And then, meek Night with starr'd enchantment rose,
While moonlight wander'd o'er the palmy hills
Of terraced Palestine: and thus unmark'd
By aught portentous, save demonian wiles,
His fasting period in the desert-gloom
Messiah braved. At length, by hunger rack'd,
And drooping, deaden'd by the scorching thirst
Of deep exhaustion, round Him nothing stood
But rocky bleakness, mountains dusk and huge,
Or riven crags which seem'd the wreck of worlds.
And there, amid a vale's profoundest calm,
Where hung no leaf, nor lived one cheering tone
Of waters, with an unappallèd soul
The Saviour paused, while arid stillness reign'd,
And the dead air, as if by magic quench'd
Brooded and thicken'd o'er the lifeless dale.
When lo! from out the earth's unfathom'd deep
The semblance of a mighty cloud arose;
From whence a Shape of awful stature moved,—
A vast, a dim, a melancholy Form;
Upon his brow the gloom of thunder sat,
And in the darkness of his dreadful eye
Lay the sheath'd lightnings of immortal ire!
In ruin'd glory thus the Demon faced
Messiah, cent'ring in that one still glance
The hate of Heaven, the agony of Hell,
Defiance and despair!—and then, with voice
Sepulchral, deep as when a tempest dies,

480

Him thus address'd: “If Son of God Thou be,
These stones, command them into living bread!”
“'Tis written,” answer'd the most holy Christ,
“Not bread alone, but every word of God
Is life!” Scarce utter'd that sublime reply,
When each ascended, and on noiseless wings
Invisibly both God and Demon soar'd.
Together, rapid as th' almighty glance
Enspheres infinity, on Herod's towers
From whose dread altitude the very sky
Seems nearer while below a hush'd abyss
Extendeth,—dark with supernatural depth,—
They soon alighted; where with impious wile
Again the Tempter Second Adam tried.
“If Son of God Thou be, Thyself cast down!
'Tis written, ‘Thee protecting Angels watch
For ever, lest a stone Thy feet may dash.’”
“The Lord thy God thou shalt not tempt!” replied
The Saviour: awed by such divine repulse,
The baffled Demon for his last design
Prepared; and swiftly by an airy flight,
To Quarantania's unascended top
That crowns the wilderness with savage pomp,
Messiah next he bore; from thence, a world
In visionary pomp lay all reveal'd,
By airy portraiture of magic drawn
With luring splendour: regions, thrones, and climes
Of bloom and fragrance, meadows, lakes, and groves:
And there seem'd Cities, capp'd with haughty towers,
And Piles, and Palaces of marble sheen,
And Domes colossal, with exulting flags
Of royal conquest on their gilded spires:
And there were Armies, thick as trooping clouds,
On plains assembled,—chariot, smoke, and steed,
The pomp of death, and thunder-gloom of war:
Nor absent, fleets within the silver bay
Reposed, or riding o'er a gallant sea:
All this, the world's Inspirer thus evoked,—
One vast Enchantment, one enormous Scene
Of splendour, deluging the dazzled eye
With mingled radiance till the fancy reel'd!
And then, outstretching with imperial sway
A shadowy hand, Hell's crafty monarch spake,
“This pomp and glory, this surpassing World
Is Thine! if Thou wilt kneel, and worship Me!”
Then bright as Deity, with truth erect,
Victoriously Messiah thus rebuked
That Prince of Hell: “Behind me, Satan, get!
'Tis written, thou shalt worship God alone;”
And thus responding, rays of awful truth
His Eye emitted; from Whose dreaded glance
The Devil shrunk, and wither'd into air!
When, light as breezes, lovely as the morn
Descended, blooming with celestial grace,
Angelic Creatures, in whose hands upborne,
By man unseen, the wafted Jesus sank
To earth again; and there, a squadron bright
Of heaven-born Spirits round Him knelt, and sang.

His trial o'er, by men and angels proved
Consummate Lord; by John again confess'd
Amid the Sanhedrim, as Christ foretold
Since time began, by five disciples found
And follow'd, Jesus on His glorious task
Now enters; fallen Earth shall be restored!

Will Kings array him? Shall the Palace ope
Its gorgeous portals to admit His train?
Alas! the bird his nest, the beast his lair
Inhabits, but the homeless Son of Man
Forsaken, hath not where His head to lay!
And He, Whose fiat was the birth of Things,
Whose frown had made the Universe no more,
The pangs and woes of meanest want endured;
For others wept, and toil'd through tearful gloom,
But stood Himself, unaided and alone,
A God who suffer'd, while the World he saved.

And who can paint him? Oh! the sweetest tone
That ever trembled on the harps of Heaven,
Melt into muteness, or like discord seem
Ere on the summits of celestial love
Incarnate, they can reach the Lord of worlds!
Be mine, with solemn step and reverent gaze
From miracle to miracle to roam,
Through paths of glory, tracks of peaceful light;
And on the way, devout accession cull
Of thought or meaning, from the Book divine
Translated: pleased beyond ambition's joy
If thus, companion'd by consenting mind,
My theme advances, till on Calv'ry's mount
Arriving, Faith behold her Saviour die.

In mercy, miracles from Christ began.
To Cana, peering o'er a woody crest
Of green ascent, beside Capernaum raised,
Messiah with his Virgin-mother went;
And there, by one expressive deed of Love
Sanction'd for ever hymenèal Bliss.
Unknown the bride, or whom the wedding throng
A bridegroom hail'd; but Nature has not seal'd
That fountain up, from whence all feeling flows,—
The Heart, whose current is by time unchanged.
And thus, in garlanded array behold
Two happy creatures, 'mid rejoicing friends
In white apparel gemm'd by nuptial-flowers.

481

What beautiful emotion, born of dreams
Which make the future paradise, abounds!
Yet, in thy gaze a gleam of vanish'd years
Is mirror'd, maiden! round whose virgin brow
A bridal wreath consenting parents wove.
The home of love, the haunts where infant feet
Have roam'd, with mingled and o'ermastering sense
Of truth and tenderness the past awakes,
And on thee like returning childhood come.
A cloud melts o'er thy summer-noon of joy,
Serenely dark, and exquisitely sad:
For haply, on the old familiar walls
And chamber where thy lispèd vows began
Thine eye hath look'd farewell: or down the paths
Of garden-loveliness, where tiny hands
So often labour'd with delightful toil,
How mutely hast thou wander'd!—blessing flowers
Whose fairy magic woo'd thy frequent touch
When dew and sunshine call'd thy fancy forth
To drink their beauty with absorbing gaze;
And that green haunt by fragrant trellis hung,
Yes! there thy soul hath dream'd of days no more
When twilight redden'd o'er thy girlish bowers.

But now the banquet: such as lowly roof
Demanded, and which simple manners claim'd.
O'er milk and honey, rice and kneaded flour,
And water, cool as mountain-well contain'd,
When consecrating prayer arose for Heaven's
High blessing, then the marriage-feast began.
But soon to Jesus, Mary's asking eye
Was turn'd, and meekly for the aidless want
Of friends beloved, a miracle she hoped;
But thus was answer'd: “Woman! unarrived
My dawn of glory; what have I to do
With thee?” Oh! think not from That sinless mouth
A mere denial in cold sternness came:
The pity, not the anger, of rebuke
Was there! Six stony water-pots antique,
For pure lavation, such as holy Rite
Demanded, in the nuptial chamber stood;
And each, obedient to Messiah's voice,
With gushing water to the brim was fill'd;
When lo! the Element, by power subdued,
Blush'd into wine and glow'd beneath its God!
And when the ruler of the rustic feast
Admiring drank this new-created wine,
A miracle stood forth! as shines a star
Clear, round, and large, the only one in heaven:
Each heart beat louder; on the lifted brow
Of mute-struck guests, o'erawed amazement sat;
And from the eyes of new disciples flash'd
That beaming eloquence all speech beyond,
When ecstacy is dumb. And when at night
By torch and timbrel home the vested train
Return'd, amid the hymenèal songs
Of sweetest rapture, while each bridal robe
Like snow in moonlight glitteringly shone,
The holy mildness of thy deep-toned voice
Redeemer! still in hearts its echo rang.
Though vaster miracles Thy Name enthrone,
In this omnipotently-tender shine
The rays of Love; concenter'd, calm, and clear,
They dazzle not, but still Thy power declare.

With fame before Him, now for Judah's feast
Of sacrifice, to Zion's city-queen
The Saviour went.—In moods of high romance
'Tis pleasant down the depths of Ages past,
To venture, re-erect huge Capitals,
And hear the noise of Cities now no more!
But Egypt, with her pyramids august,
Titanian Thebes, or Athens temple-famed,
Or Rome, the once metropolis of earth,
And whatsoe'er historic fancy dreams
In visions of the vast and gone, dissolve
To shadows, when Remembrance pictures thee,
Jerusalem! Alas, thy wailing harps
Have truly mourn'd; a throneless captive thou!
In dust thy robes of beautiful array
Have wither'd; tears are on thy faded cheek,
And nothing, save a deathless past, is thine!
Those Mountains, branded by th' almighty curse,
Ascend, and look down yon sepulchral vales,
Where silence by the tramp of desert steeds
Alone is echo'd: paths of lifeless length,
Dim walls, and dusky fanes, barbaric homes
And Arab-huts,—how eloquently sad
Their ruin, how sublime the tale it tells!
Jerusalem! the clank of heathen chains
In iron wrath hath sounded o'er thy doom
For ages: sword and savage on thy blood
Have feasted; fatal martyrdom was thine
From Roman, Frank, and fiery Mameluke;
E'en now, thy wreck is made an impious prey,
And minarets their flashing spires uplift
Where once the palace of Jehovah blazed!

But round thy desolation lives a dream
Of what thou wert, when Heaven o'ershadow'd thee.
Religion, fame, and glory—all endow'd
With mingled light thy once celestial home.
There, 'tween thy Cherubim, Th' Eternal dwelt!
From out the Cloud His utter'd meanings came;
The hymns of David, and the voice of seers
By vision raptured, through thy streets have roll'd;
And He, who spake as never mortal did,
In temple, home, and synagogue proclaim'd

482

His awful mission:—well might Warriors pause,
The Poet chant, and pure Apostles bend
Before thee, casting down their sacred wreaths,
Queen of the desert! once by angels walk'd,
And still where murmurs of Jehovah's lip
In dreams of melody thy vales entrance!

To such high city came Salvation's Prince,
When all was loud, on that religious eve
That marks a feast, by whose unblemish'd lamb
Was typified the Lamb of God eterne.
But, hark! the clang of trumpets on the wind!
Down hill and mountain, red with lustrous sky
The banner'd Tribes of shouting Israel come:
And how magnificently full and deep
Their choral anthems! reaching from the heart
Through heaven's infinity, where angels list,
And waft their echoes round the throne of God.
Beneath them, beautiful, and bright, and vast,
Jerusalem with all her dazzling towers
Reposing; Zion the beloved is there!
And midmost, pinnacled in golden pomp
O'er all uplift, the gorgeous Temple stands,
And glitters, like the sheen of Alpine snow.
While downward, jubilant with holy glee,
Enamour'd thousands to the city rush:
Each window, roof, and balcony, alive
With gazers, scattering o'er the marching Tribes
A spring of flowers, and wreaths of rosy bloom.

While thus, from every region which the heavens
O'er-canopy, the host of Israel came
In troop and tribe, as though the Archangel's trump
Had sounded, Jesus to the Temple pass'd.
Nine gates enormous, folding back like clouds
Of splendour, when the prince of Morning comes,
Round Herod's temple blazed: without, were Courts;
And one, the Gentiles', circling with a range
Of gleaming columns of colossal height
The rest within; and here alone, the Jew
To proselytes an entrance gave; nor deem'd
That where a Gentile vow'd, Jehovah was!
And thus, with unconcern, and loud contempt
Of holiness, convened a merchant-throng
Of money-changers, in that outer-court,
Whose tongue and tread the House of God defiled.
Then rose He! like a Hierarch array'd
With might celestial; or a fervid seer
In the deep passion of prophetic truth
On realms and vices warring,—the unknown
Redeemer; driving with a wielded scourge
The vile profaners, whom His visage awed
With sudden brightness of appalling power!
“'Tis written,” cried a soul-commanding Voice,
“My House the solemn House of prayer shall be,
But ye profane it like a den of thieves?”
While fled the crowd, a mutt'ring wonder rose,
Till one, perusing with an eye of wrath
The face of Christ, thus haughtily inquired:
“For this high daring, what miraculous sign
Or what omnipotence from Heaven hast Thou?”
“This Temple scatter, and ere three days end,
Command it rise again!”—Then spake the Jew,
While o'er the vastness of Jehovah's pile
His eye-glance roll'd, and thence with flashing pride
On Jesu fell: “Through six-and-forty years
This Temple rose, and widen'd! canst Thou crush
Its Glory, and in three days bid it rise?”
But Christ of His corporeal Temple spake
In resurrection-power. Yet words that rung
A knell of ruin o'er the noblest Fane
Which earth had borne, or gazing awe beheld,
Such fatal warning could not be forgiven
E'en in that hour of agony divine
When shook the World, as pass'd her God away!

Eternity! there is a sound and sense
Of terror, dwelling in thy dim abyss
Of meaning, whether by a Spirit named
When lips are whitening in the gasp of Death,
Or utter'd by the pensive voice of Life.
In vain immunity and calm we seek,
Dark intimations of thy state will rise,
Though time be mock'd, and tombs unheeded stand.—
There was a man whom meditation charm'd
And counsell'd, by the Sanhedrim beloved
For wisdom; hiving in his inmost heart
Prophetic truths, and hopes of regal pride
For Judah destined, when her king appear'd.
All gloomy, lone, and melancholy things
To him were genial: on the face of Death
His eye would fasten a devouring gaze,
For some confession! down unpeopled haunts
At midnight, when the fainting moon retired,
Or planets sicken'd, by sepulchral caves
Where prince and prophet slumber'd,—he would stray
And ponder, dreaming of immortal doom.
No spot or scene, where past Religion shed
A glory, but to him entrancement gave.

483

On Horeb he had mused, and heard the choir
Of Sinai's thunders, heralding their God:
On dewy Hermon, loved by David's lyre,
And Carmel's oaken top, where trembling stood
Elijah, when the cloudy Answer came,
He wander'd; and the eagle-haunted heights
Of cedar'd Lebanon by him were trod,—
That mountain chill'd by everlasting snow,
When all the firmament lies bathed in fire.

For high revealings of immortal truth
His soul was thus attuned; and when the light
Of miracles, by Jesu's hand perform'd,
His heart illumined, as the risen day
Oft suddenly with living splendour cheers
The gloom and hollow of deserted vales,—
A sudden radiance on his darkness stream'd.
Goodness and glory, both in Christ he saw;
But in delusions of terrestrial hope
Still blindly yearn'd a carnal Throne to see,
And scepter'd Judah queen of earth admired!
And thus, by ebbing moods of doubt and faith,
The Pharisee was sway'd, till Mercy came
And led him safely to the Lord, at last.
'Twas on a night of meditative calm,
Devoutly while his musing spirit read
The story of creation, sin and fall,
And second Eden by atoning grace
Procured, that impulses of sacred power
Moved Nicodemus to consult the Lord.
And what an interview that night reveals
'Tween sinful Earth and condescending Heaven!
Go, read it, where Eternal Life is found.
The second birth of renovated souls
Commenced; the Holy Spirit, how He comes
The world to sanctify, unseen departs,
And worketh like an unbeholden wind,
The Lord explain'd; till Nicodemus bow'd
In wonder, doubted, trembled, and believed!
Since light was born, and condemnation found
For deeds of evil, which in darkness lurk
And blacken, hating light that brings a God.
Then ask not, how the doubter home return'd,
Or how his dreams to slumber's Paradise
That night was wafted on melodious wing:
From this deep hour his heaven of faith began.
A Saviour living and a Saviour dead,—
For both he pleaded, when the bravest shook,
And they who loved Him were the first to flee!

When John was prison'd, from those hating Jews
Whom miracles confounded, Jesus fled
To Galilee; that haunt supremely loved!
Where sprung Apostles, where His childhood grew,
And where He hasten'd, when from death unbound.
Through dells of beauty, hushed and shaded haunts,
Or meadows, whiten'd by the olive-boughs
That waved and flashed amid the swelling breeze,
Through each and all, as Nature's fancy tinged
And character'd her glowing realm, He roam'd
Till day advanced; and burning, breathless noon,
When earth was heated to her inmost core,
And light and languishment the brain oppress'd,
At Sichem glitter'd round the Saviour's form.

Alone, beside a patriarchal well
He rested, wearied by the toil intense
Of travel; while his fond disciples sought
The city, bosom'd in Gerizim's vale.
Majestic calm and mournfulness divine
Around Him incommunicably reign'd,
Like stillness breathed from His eternity:
So 'tranced the air, that each minutest sound
By wing, or breeze, or basking insect made,
Was audible, and seem'd profanely loud:
At that deep moment Nature knew her God,
And bade the silent Elements adore!

While thus, immersed in some immortal dream
Of bright salvation, man's Redeemer sat,
There came a woman to that haunted well
Where holy Jacob, in the dawn of time,
Cool'd his hot thirst beneath a zenith sun.
A Jew!—of that abhorrent nation sprung,
Who, ever since on Dan and Bethel stood
Samaria's Idol, bade her miscreant race
Of heaven despair, and scorn'd her rival fane,
How spake He aught to one of Sichem born!
With touching beauty and with tender grace
Messiah answer'd, “Had she known the Gift
Of God, and who he was, that fain would drink,
A living water had divinely flow'd!”
His heaven-like mien, and voice augustly toned
With spirit-searching power, the woman awed;
And nearer still, with eye intently raised,
She wond'ring stole, and mortal-like replied;
That from the well, o'erhung by solemn boughs
Whose shadows oft on patriarchal heads
Had play'd, He had not now wherewith to draw,
And was He greater than their primal Sire?
Alas! the dimness which our being shrouds,
To keep us mortal in immortal hours!
Of Water springing with eternal Life
Whose fountain is the awful soul within,
Th' Incarnate spoke; but when the letter still
And not the spirit of His words prevail'd,
Back from her heart prophetic wisdom roll'd

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Clouds of dark guilt which there concealment spread,
And bare before it laid her life of sin!
Then, Conscience! like a voice from other worlds,
Sudden and piercing, did thy power appeal
To yon frail woman! on her cheek's array
Of paleness, in her eyes' dissolving shame
It witness'd; and her loudly-beating heart
By every throb a pang to memory paid!
Then, pointing to Samaria's mountain-fane,
Whose massy pomp of pinnacles and towers
Rose black and solemn in the cloudless air,
She call'd Him, Prophet! and in meekness ask'd
Where heaven from earth the purest essence hail'd?
From Zion's hill, or where the Fathers knelt,—
Gerizim? whence of old from Joshua's lip
The full-voiced Blessing by a myriad tongues
Was echoed, while from Ebal's blanchèd height
A Curse came down, like thunder from the skies.

Oh, ye who narrow to the dungeon-walls
Of bigotry, the limitless design of Heaven,
Approach and tremble!—God a spirit is!
And they who worship, must in spirit bend
His Throne before! The universal Heart
Of Man by revelation's light redeem'd,
Jehovah! this Thy purest temple forms.
So heard the woman; and a hope confess'd
Of coming Glory, in whose morning-beams
The night of error would dissolve away.
But when Messiah, “I who speak am He!”
Responded, mute, and statue-like, she stood,—
Embodied wonder! till disciples came
And marvell'd, how His purity could speak
To one so branded, that her blood was crime!
But awe withheld them; and on raptured wings
Of speed, to Sychar back the woman rush'd,
And, like a prophetess when new-inspired
To holy madness, gloryingly cried,
Through street and dwelling, “Lo! Messiah comes!
A Man who told me all I ever did,
The Saviour, by yon well of Jacob sits!”
At once, to see the heaven-descended Christ,
Up the green valley troop ecstatic throngs,
Till thick and fast the mingling shadows fell
From young Samaritans, on herbs and flowers,
As on they sprang, like birds to meet the morn!
While slow behind, the hoary-headed forms
Of Age were gliding, pale with wordless joy.
“The harvest, say ye not, four months will bring?
Behold! the meadows are already white,
And he who gathers, reaps immortal fruit!”
Thus spake the Saviour, and His welcome high
The crowd attracted; dumb with deepest awe
They linger'd; not a heart but quaked with bliss
Divine, or dreamt it immortality begun:
Then lovingly that simple-hearted race
The mighty Stranger to their dwellings brought,
And fell before Him, in sublime belief
Exclaiming, “Thou alone art Christ the Lord!”

From Sychar, hence to Cana Christ advanced,
And there again shone forth, incarnate God!
A Nobleman, around whose only child
The shades of death were deepening, at His feet,
With all the father mirror'd in his eyes,
Sank prostrate; and in tones which tore the heart
With dreadful truth, His healing power besought
To soothe the madness of parental wo,
And back to life a dying son recall.
“Thy son is living!” so Emmanuel spake,
And he who trusted found his faith's reward!
And thus for ever His unwearied Arm
Is present, guiding worlds along their paths,
Or waved in mercy round the fate of man.

But His it was, though all divinely meek
Each virtue shone, to drink the bitter Cup!
As in the synagogue when call'd, as won't,
From out th' assembly, to unroll and read
The Haphtoroth, a deaden'd language rose
To life upon His lips! there, all in vain
The saving wisdom of Messiah spoke:
Their eyes were dark, they saw but Joseph's son!
But when of miracles for Gentiles work'd
Alone, while famish'd Israel droop'd in dust,
And on the heavens immitigably seal'd
From dawn to midnight turn'd her mournful gaze,
When such He mention'd, to convict the soul,—
The living frame of that Assembly shook
With passion! not an eye but glared revenge!
And, fell as tigers, savagely they sprung,
And bore Him upward to the rocky hill
Where hung their city, down whose awful depth
To atoms they would hurl the Saviour-God!
But in a moment, by its dizzy brink
Each eye was dazzled, and a Power unknown
Invisibly that human chaos quell'd!
In the full whirlwind of their fiercest ire
They soften'd to a breezelike calm, which died
To utter stillness, when the crowd beheld
Their Victim, passing through the parted throng
Unhurt; as he who faced a fiery death
And walk'd the furnace with the Son of Man.

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To thee, Capernaum! by Messiah bless'd
And haunted, turn we now our solemn gaze.
There, mead and hamlet, mountain, shore, and plain
His presence felt, His mighty works enjoyed;
While Nature to each theme of glory lent
Her own sweet magic, imagery, and power.
And seest thou, girdled in by barren wilds,
Yon blue expanse? Gennesareth is there!
Quiescent now as meditation's hour
Yon lake of beauty in the noontide gleams;
But when a hurricane with Syrian roar
Descends the mountain, and its calm defies,
Then, Chinnereth! thy sleeping might awakes;
And yon deep billows with disastrous swell
In hollow thunder to the winds respond.

By the bright waters, on that lovely beach
Of famed Tiberias, where a wondering crowd
Around Him panted for immortal truth,
Was Jesus standing; while the fisher wash'd
His net, and dried it on the pebbled shore.
Two silent vessels on the lake reposed;
The one He enter'd, and the people taught;
But ere the music of His mighty words
Was still'd, “Launch forth! and let your nets descend,”
The Lord commanded: worn by fruitless toil,
All doubtingly did Peter's hand obey:
But when at once, with its enormous load
The net uprose, till e'en the laden ship
Beneath her living burden sank, and reel'd,
Silence adored! the tongueless air was hush'd,
As though Creation wonder'd! till, a cry
Yon multitude from off the shore awoke,
Which scatter'd silence like a broken dream!
While Peter, quivering with unearthly dread,
Fell in amazement at Messiah's feet
And utter'd, “Leave me, Lord! for I am vile!”
That moment his Apostleship began
For ever: death and darkness, time and wo,
From Faith's high throne he overlook'd them all!
Then James and John at once that Power revered
To Whom the Elements their laws resign'd,
And laid their sceptres down. Of old prevail'd
The Prayer of prophets, for the sick and dead
Arising; but a Word that ruled the waves
And master'd ocean with creative might,
Had ne'er till now a lip on Earth inspired!

To this high deed, an unrecorded mass
Of miracles, in one successive throng
Was added: when the sun's expiring gleam
Paled o'er Capernaum, round Messiah's door
Disease assembled all her ghastly troop
Of martyrs: in an instant, ere a sound
Could perish, Health's untainted blood return'd!
The lame and sightless, palsied, deaf, and dumb
Recover'd, fleet as resurrection's change;
And thus, by deed embodying all Isaiah sung,
Through town and village the Redeemer went
And rested never from His glorious toil;
Except when God th' incarnate Son adored,
As oft He did in melancholy wilds,
Where, all unseen, the Man of Sorrows knelt
And sanctified His human will by prayer.

And must we sink, in lifeless wonder lost
'Mid the pure radiance of such perfect deeds?
The power, but not the principle sublime
Is hidden, whence creation's ruling Lord
Each miracle derived;—and that is Love,
Which link by link connects a thousand worlds,
And chains them all to one Almighty Throne!

For true example, not inactive awe,
Messiah lived; and he who soars to Him
That living Orb of Righteousness beholds,
Whose beams are catholic with boundless grace
And sunlike fall on universal Man.

BOOK V.

------“All the stars
Thou knew'st by name, and all th' ethereal powers,
All secrets of the deep, all Nature's works,
Or works of God in heaven, air, earth, or sea.”
Milton.

ANALYSIS OF BOOK V.

Solitude—How exaltedly employed when devoted to a contemplation of the glorious plan of Redemption —The Sermon on the Mount—Scenery—A Summary of its Doctrines—The measureless good they have effected in the world since first promulgated—Christ at Capernaum—A Leper cleansed—Escapes from the Multitude who would force Him to be their King— Passage over the Lake—Storm—Peril and affright of the Disciples—Jesus rebukes the Elements to perfect calm—The Demoniac—A description of his horrid sufferings—the Demons are expelled, and their Victim cured—How utterly impossible for Human Pen to paint or express the Divine loveliness of the Redeemer's actions and character— The Daughter of Jairus — Her youth, education, sickness, and death—The Father's despair—Arrival of the Saviour—His Miraculous Display of Power in recalling the Spirit to Life—From hence Messiah goes to Galilee, passes a Night in Prayer, and on the morrow elects His Disciples—Then passes in Retrospective View their Triumphs and Toils, as they are recalled by the associations and scenes of Nazareth—Jesus goes to Nain—Calls to life the Widow's Son—Description of the Miracle—Reflections on the tenderness of Christ in his conduct

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to Women—The Magdalene—Christ again at Jerusalem—Cures a Man at the Pool of Siloam — The Jews mock observance of the Sabbath—Observed best by imitation of Christ—Messiah enters the Desert of Bethsaida—Feeds a Multitude — Reflections on this surpassing Miracle—Our strange neglect of the wonderful Love daily exhibited by God to Man—The Disciples embark on the Lake —Storm—Appearance of Christ walking on the Waters—Peter's Faith and Despair—Lesson taught by his presumption—The Transfiguration—Pride still the dominant principle in the Disciples' souls —Christ blesses little Children, and proposes them as examples of what his Followers should be— The Woman taken in Adultery—Her accusers how appalled and subdued by conscience—The Feast of Lights—Raising of Lazarus—Christ's triumphant entry through Jericho to Jerusalem—The Widow's mite—The Saviour's last farewell to the Holy City —His prediction of its terrible fate—A vision of its fall.

How beautiful the soul's religious calm
When thought is heavenward, and the chainless mind
Like soaring Enoch, to our God ascends!
And oh! how glorious, by deep vision led,
Six thousand years to travel back and view
How from the cradle of eternity
The infant-world at God's command arose.
The new-born winds, the ocean's young delight
Heard in a rhapsody of rolling waves;
With every tint and motion, gleam or glance
Of life and matter, from the lyric host
Of Stars, with quiring gratulation loud,
To fairy insect and minutest flower,—
On each and all Imagination dreams,
When Earth lay basking in Jehovah's smile!

But what is this, or all th' amazing stream
Of glories, terrors, and supernal acts
Of truth and judgment, down the mighty page
Devolved, to thine all-wondrous Plan,
Redemption? Vast beyond the vastest dream
That circles round the comprehending soul,
Thy range extendeth! Nature's utmost bounds,
From earth to heaven, from heaven to higher worlds,
And higher still, beyond the furthest reach
Of finite thought to mention or conceive,
Immensity, and all Eternal Power
Created, forms, or may hereafter free,—
Redeemer! over all Thy glories reign!

But lo! the Mount, whereon Messiah sat
And taught; while multitudes with lifted gaze
And soul that listen'd with suspended breath,
Beneath Him swarm'd, to drink eternal Life
Whose fountain issued from the Throne of God.
The Spring was forth: young loveliness and bloom
Her reign attested; trees and meadows flash'd
With verdant lustre, while the shaken flowers
Their scent and beauty to the breeze resign'd
With playful murmur. From its sacred top
A bright extent of ever-changing view
The beatific Mount o'ergazed: from thence,
Gilboa, where amid the chariot-rush
Of Philistines, the dying Saul despair'd,
Was seen to lift her Pyrenèan crags
And cloud-like spires; Gennesareth's azure mass
Of waters, and the snow-clad Hermon's height
Conspicuous beam'd; and all which gave
To hallow'd words an instantaneous glow
Of life and feeling, full before Him lay.
Bethuliah to a thousand eyes appear'd,
When Jesus of the hill-throned City spake;
The lily-flowers, which neither toil nor spin,
Yet, beautiful beyond arrayèd Solomon!
In golden freshness on the meadows waved;
And when on providential Care alone
He bade terrestrial Want repose, and cried,
“Behold the fowls your heavenly Father feeds!”
Their wings exulted on the air around
And nerved the precept with example's force.

Oh, what a scene of heart-affecting power
Was there beheld!—That consecrated Mount
On whose green summit sat the Son of Man;
The words he utter'd; deep and awful tones,
Yet tender in their might, as mellow'd-sounds
From Ocean's lip; with all unclouded spring
Of fresh and fair commandeth; and the crowds
Which hung like bees upon the mountain-side,
As thick and numberless, yet hush'd and chain'd
To utter calm, as though their living mass
Together breathed but one absorbing soul,—
Religion! thou wert throned in godlike pomp
Amid a scene transcendently endow'd
Like this, with attributes of holy might
Beyond the Temple in its costliest hour.

And what a doctrine of almighty depth
Messiah founded, when His truth declared,
In meekness lies the majesty of Man!
At once the Wisdom of the world was dumb,
And Mammon blighted on his throne of bliss.
The ways of pleasantness, the paths of peace
Are dim and narrow, tracks of noiseless gloom
Which Glory flies, and Grandeur seldom walks:
The poor in spirit, and the meek in heart
Who thirst and hunger for Thy righteous Word,
Oh! these are blest, for Thine unerring Voice
Hath call'd them so, and crown'd their lowly Lot,
And sanctified its unrebellious tear.
To them divinely was the blessing given;

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And while in shed or cottage, swamp or wild,
The sacred pangs of Poverty endure,
There Goodness and her Lord may constant meet,
And Charity, with soft and silent foot,
Move like an Angel to a deed of heaven.

And vaster Truths, unspeakably divine,
Which live before the Throne, and light effuse
O'er all who worship their immortal Source,
Did Christ reveal:—of uncomplaining Love,
Forgiving, as it hopes to be forgiven;
Of Sanctity, within the spirit shrined;
Of Passion, rooted from terrestrial ties
And trampled as the soul's unhallow'd weed;
Of alms in secret,—temples in the mind
Where God in dedicated moments comes
To earth unknown, and needs no trumpet-voice
To tell the world a conscious sinner prays;
Of Providence, life's angel, ever nigh,
Who feeds the bird, and robes the meadow-flower;
Of lofty hope, of meditative peace,
And feeling, touch'd with man's infirmity,
O'ercoming wrong with mercy's tender gaze
That looks aside when human error falls,
But loves a virtue in its frailest hours,—
Of these He spake, and taught believing Man
A worship, which eternal Wisdom loves.

E'en Him, whom yonder choir of worlds
Adores, our faltering tongues may Father call!—
Glory of glories! can archangels boast
A voice, or language of mysterious love
Surpassing this, which bids “our Father” sound
From lip of mortals, when a soul renews
Her solemn intercourse with God on high?
Give ear, O Heaven! thou wondering Earth, be still,
For here is love so measureless and deep,
That Feeling staggers, and Expression fails,
Or ventures only, “let Thy will be done!”
Oh! long as man upon creation moves,
In solemn aisles of monumental gloom
Ascending with a loud melodious swell,
In rustic fane, or tranquil home beloved,
By hoary age, or lisping childhood breathed,
From cave or desert, dungeon, rock, or sea,—
That mighty Prayer upon the mountain taught
To Heaven and Jesus may it ever rise,
And win the Mercy it was framed to woo.

His task is o'er, the sacred Teacher gone,
And the last murmur of descending feet
Dies on the hill; where now a breeze awakes
The spring-born flowers, till livingly they stir
And tremble into low sweet song again.
But all the host who heard immortal Truth
Upon the beatific Mount declared
Are vanished, like the dew of yesterday!
And thrones and states and Babylonian piles
Have wither'd; Dust has claim'd its dead
For ever, quenching in sepulchral sleep
The Earth's unquiet generations gone;
Yet, pure as perfect, Christ's majestic Law
High o'er the wreck of Men and Things endures,
And will,—till heaven and earth dissolve away!

What toils and agonies, what glorious tears
And blessed pangs by penitence sublimed,
The earth has known, though unrecorded left!
O History, thou hast done the world a wrong
Immense and mournful; on the alpine heights
Of human Greatness, thine enamour'd gaze
Has linger'd; mindless in that partial mood
Of meek-eyed Virtue, in the vale below!
And robed thy themes of darkness with a veil
Of bright attraction, as the Thunder wraps
His ruin oft in clouds of gorgeous spell.
Yet better far, had thy pervading glance
From earthly pomp to scenes of heavenly truth
Descended; marking how the Saviour's word
Had triumph'd, how it lived in lonely hearts
And aching bosoms, weeded daily life
Of sin and wo, and dried the widow's tear.—
Sublime of Sermons! atheistic tongues
Have bless'd thee, and the worldling's rocky soul
Gush'd into tears beneath thy tender sway:
When life is gladness, or when sorrow flings
A sudden autumn o'er the leaves of joy,
The purest homily of peace and love
Wisdom has utter'd since the world began!

But thou, Capernaum! once again the Arm
Almighty bares itself for thee, and thine
Oh, misbelieving Land! to heaven upraised
And hell cast down.—A grim and ghastly wreck,
Upon his face beneath Messiah's feet
A Leper falls, there, lifts his bloodshot gaze,
And with a voice of choked and dying tone
His help implores:—From Egypt's fiery realm
The dread corruption came, when burning noon
Flamed o'er the limbs of Pharaoh's toil-worn slaves;
And now, a victim of its direst rage
The Son of Man beheld. Each sign accursed
Disease had printed on his mouldering form;
Till fruit had wither'd in the hot embrace
Of each infected hand!—let Fancy shrink,
But still a martyrdom of nature see,
Then, picture how the Lord of Being look'd,
When graciously His godlike hand approach'd,

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The Leper touch'd, and with a word divine
Commanded, “Be thou clean!” and lo! he sprang
To earth again, a free and perfect man
And pure as childhood in its glowing prime!
For, health with instantaneous gush o'erflow'd
His being; like the world's untainted Sire
He stood in glory, eyeing earth and heaven
As though his spirit would encircle all!

And well might gratitude obedience quench;
On wings, that seem'd round every limb to play,
O'er mount and vale th' ecstatic Creature fled,
A living miracle: and cried aloud
“A God! a God! His mighty cure behold!”
Roused into motion, like autumnal leaves
By wind invoked, a rushing Host that cry
Re-echoed: onward with exulting speed
To fall in worship round th' Almighty Priest
They came: but not in Him, the loud uproar
Of shouting numbers, nor the false delight
Of glory flashing over envious eyes,
Nor crown, nor throne upon the dying breath
Of sudden wonder raised,—acceptance found.
The shady desert, and the dark-bough'd wild
Again He haunted; there, amid the calm
Of Nature, hush'd by some instinctive awe,
Alone The Everlasting pray'd, and thought.
But, vain seclusion! through the verdant depth
Of solemn woods the rush of thronging feet
Advanced; and voices, with a sea-like roar
Confused and clashing, round the Saviour roll'd:
'Twas then, escaping from the countless herd,
Upon the Lake His prompt disciples launch'd
Their bark, and bore the great Redeemer on.
Far o'er the blue and rippled waters sail'd
The boat; serene as yonder twilight-cloud
It moved, whose haven was the ruddy west.
In pillow'd slumber on the silent deck
The Son of Man reposed: sublimely calm
His features in the light of evening shone;
And oft entranced, some fond disciples stood
To gaze upon His holy sleep, and draw
Transcendent meanings from that Face Divine!

But ere the Twilight, and her fairy crowd
Of splendours, melted in the dark embrace
Of night, with soul intent the seamen heard
The incantations of a Storm begin!
The air was toned with sadness, like a sigh
Of broken hearts, or moan of guilty dreams
When Midnight is confessor: o'er the Lake
A breezy and a sudden life arose,
Till ripples flash'd, and bubbling foam began
To whiten o'er the waters. In the sky
No mercy dawns; for all is scowling there,
And savage clouds are in funereal march
Benighting heaven with one enormous gloom.
But hark! with ominous array it comes,—
Creation's tyrant! list the Tempest howls;
The South-East sends her hurricane, and back
The Jordan in affrighted motion rolls:
The Lake is heaving with convulsive throes
And billows writhe in agonising play
Loud o'er the surface, till like living Shapes
Of water battling with the Winds they seem
In liquid thunder, wheresoe'er they move!
In that wild hour, while star nor moon reveal'd
A solace, and the only light which gleam'd,
Shone when red lightning with a wizard flash
Call'd the dun mountains into dreary form
And station,—then the pale disciples ran
And cried, “We perish! save us, Lord! arise!”
He heard; He rose; and while the vessel creak'd,
And cordage rattled in the roaring gale
Like wither'd branches in a forest-wind,
Till o'er the deck the climbing billows rush'd
And darken'd round her with devouring yell,
His hand He waved, the rolling storm rebuked,
The Tempest knew her God,—and still'd!
Then o'er Tiberias, calm as cradled sleep,
The Moon uprose; and in her silver hue
Each cloud dissolved, as angry feeling dies
By music overcome; and once again
The doubting crew their wingèd bark beheld,
With stars above, and star-lit waves beneath,
Serenely gliding on to Gadarene:
Oh! then, amid that elemental trance
The meek reproach of their forgiving Lord
Was felt; each gazed on each with holy fear;
The calm of Nature grew a fearful charm;
For Sea and Air with more than language cried
“The waters hear Him, and the Winds obey!”

The shore is reach'd; but what unearthly Shape,
What Thing accurst, in human semblance clothed,
Foaming and wild, with eyeballs sternly fix'd,
Glares on them, like a cavern'd brute aroused
By errant footsteps, when her whelps are nigh?
O Prince of Darkness! and ye Powers of Air
By Heaven permitted, from the fiery doom
Of Hell's abyss, to roam the peopled earth
A while, and enter in the breathing frame
Of mortals, maddening with demonian rage
Both blood and spirit,—there, your victim stands!
Thou dreaded martyr! words and feelings fly
Aghast, or shudder round thy gloomy pangs:
Thy limbs are bare, and down their wither'd length
The blood has track'd the lacerating stone
Tormented Madness from the hills hath wrung
To glut her agony! Among the tombs

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Thy dwelling is; from human face apart,
The dead around thee in sepulchral caves
Of rocky darkness,—there thy spirit moans,
Or mutters, till the very mountains seem
Appall'd to echo with thy blasphemy!
But, dreader far, when night's dominion came
To hear thy howlings! e'en the desert-beast
Hath trembled, when the horrid echoes rang;
While, pillow'd on a sleeping mother's breast,
The infant shook to think thy shadow nigh!

Thus stood the foaming maniac, while there glared
The terror of his demon-haunted eyes
Through each disciple's heart!—but, ere a limb
Could move, that dreadless Voice, which made
The roaring Tempest mute, and never spake
But Heaven was raptured, and profoundest Hell
With agonies of coming doom convulsed
Or shaken,—like omnipotence arose:
“Come forth, defiler!” and the spirit fell
In kneeling torture at Messiah's feet!
There, “By the living God!” dark Legion cried,
“Thou Jesus! Son of the Most High! adjured,
Before our time torment us not! nor plunge
Our spirits in th' Infernal Deep again,
But let us enter in yon mountain-prey.”
When thus permitted, like a gentle dawn
His soul emerged, and spread each vital hue
Of nature o'er the freed demoniac's frame.
And when the crowding Gadarenes advanced
In gazing terror round Messiah's form
No bleeding maniac from the rocky tombs
They witness'd, but a man renew'd and mild,
From Hell deliver'd, at the feet of Christ
Reposing, with his native vesture clad:
And as he sat, how superhuman seem'd
The great Restorer! thanks in wonder died;
But what a language in his lifted eye,
Whose words were tears, the eloquence of joy!

Divine perfection of embodied Love,
Supremely fair, insufferably bright,
By Thee, the Muse is dazzled! all is deep
August, and holy, where Thy presence rules;
The bigot tamed, the hypocrite unmask'd,
The Law illumed, and blinded Israel taught
The darkness of exclusive faith was o'er,
And light celestial, from the depths of God
Would soon irradiate universal Man.
Him, Son of Alpheus! though the luring world
Had long enchain'd thee, thou didst not refuse,
When, “Follow me” fell sudden on thine ear,
And thou wert his, by deathless grace redeem'd.

But what awaits us? Let maternal Hearts
Whose pulse beats love, approach and tell,
Oh life! how beautiful thy maiden-bloom
In that bright morn, when youth's unfolded years
Like rising veils before enchantment spread,
Recede, and down a fairy vista roams
The glancing joy of Expectation's eye!
Then day by day, as some meek violet rear'd
By fondling sunshine, grows the virgin Mind
In home's retreat, till childhood melts away,
And dawning Womanhood her smile begins.
Then all is fair; affection's graceful smile
From out a purity of spirit plays,
And life and motions, inspirations are
Which tone the voice, or teach the step delight;
And frowning Sorrow, though it shade the cheek,
The soul can darken not, whose placid tears
Melt as they rise, like tender dews of wo.
Romance is true, reality a dream,
And cares,—oh! what are they, but minute-clouds
That speck the ether of our calmest life!

And canst thou, Death! congenial dungeons quit
Where thou art woo'd by dark and wretched men,
To come where Youth and Loveliness unite
Their magic, and the breath of life is joy?
Alas! the knells, that with diurnal grief
The wind intone; alas! the frequent pall,
The church-yard tales on tomb and stone rehearsed,
A blinded chamber, or that weeping Home
Where round some coffin drooping parents bend,
Like marble shapes of monumental Wo,
Thy victims tell, thy savage choice reveal!

Then think, if in bereavement's blackest hour,
When flooding agonies the brain o'erwhelm,
And a last gaze seems looking life away,
The parted spirit of the Dead return'd!—
For such the scene, by Revelation drawn.
On Jairus Heaven an only child bestow'd;
A lovely scion, round whose being twined
The clinging fondness of parental fear.
For beautiful as Syria's lonely flowers,
That wave and murmur on the shady top
Of wooded Lebanon, her form had grown
From infancy, till now revealing time
Had written woman on her vestal cheek.

Born in that Land where summer's pregnant beam
Was brightest, where the fruits of Eden hung,
And the rich mulberry spread a snowy bloom,

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While grapes empurpled every terraced hill,
Her shape and spirit magic influence caught
From Syria's clime of glory. Nature's grace
By power of exquisite attraction seem'd
Reflected from it; light and beauty fill'd
Her soul, and flash'd from those irradiate eyes;
And walk'd she not, as Israel's daughter would,
The mighty scenes where patriarchal feet
Had trodden, where the God of Zion spake!
Lake, fount, and river, and those Mountains three
Which camp'd her warriors, and that still o'erlook
Esdraelon's plain, where tented Arabs dwell,
Around whose home, when dewy nightfall comes,
The gamb'ling flocks to reedy murmurs play,—
From each and all pure inspiration sprung,
And told, how beautiful religion look'd
By youth entempled in a spotless heart!

And yet on her, with vestal radiance clad,
Infection breathed, and poison'd blood and brain,
Till the rich bloom of animation died.
Her form was blighted; and her faded cheek
The pallid certainty of coming doom
Betray'd: oh, hear it, Heaven!—a father's prayer
The sky ascends to claim a brighter hope:
Away, with agonising speed he flies,
Nor treads the ground, nor hears the city-roar,
Nor feels the motion of his moving limbs!
Condensed, and darken'd into wild despair
His soul became, till Nature's functions fail'd,
And earth was reeling from his dazzled gaze,
When full amid the pharisaic throng
He rush'd, and prostrate with a burst of wo,
Voiced his dread agony with this deep cry,
“My daughter, Lord! her deathful pangs approach,
But hasten! touch her with Thy healing hand
And yet my child shall live:” ere Jesus came
Her spirit vanish'd, like a lovely sound!

The house of mourning!—hark, the funeral-dirge,
The doleful flutes, and dying melodies
Of instrumental tone, or wailing yells
Of frantic Grief, and mercenary Wo.
But, enter! there in yon sepulchral room,
Alone a childless mother comes to seal
The lids of Death, and on that marble lip
Imprint a long and last—the parting kiss!
And shall the worm of putrefaction feed
On that young form, of Beauty's finest mould?
The light and life of twelve enchanted years,
All sunk and shaded in remorseless dust!
Oh agony! could thawing tears the soul
Dissolve, let suffering Nature shed them now.
While o'er thy cheek, so eloquently pale,
Once full of rosy life, her bending eye
With dreadful speculation broods, beloved
And blessed! all thy winning ways and smiles,
Thy look and laugh, in one sweet throng, return
Upon her, till thy warm and living breath
Again is playing round Affection's heart!
But ah! her martyr'd frame's convulsive heave,
As if in that chaotic gloom of mind
When feeling is our only faith, the soul
Would rive the body and at once be free,—
Betokens thou art death, and she despair!

Believe, and fear not: in the blackest cloud
A sunbeam hides; and from the deepest pang
Some hidden mercy may a God declare.
There as she stood, delirous, rack'd, and wild,
The Saviour enter'd, and his soothing glance
Fell on the mother's torn and troubled heart
As moonlight on the ocean's haggard scene.
The wailing minstrel, and the dirge of death,
He bade them cease; “The maiden is not dead,
But sleepeth!” Then around her vestal couch
The mourning parents, with His chosen Three,
Advanced, and in the midst, divinely calm,
The son of Man! In lifeless beauty laid,
A loveliness and not the gloom of death
The virgin wore; and on her placid cheek
The light of dreams reposed: oh, ne'er could dust
A purer sacrifice from Death receive!
But when He stoop'd, and held her icy hand,
And utter'd, “Maid, arise!” the beating heart
Of wonder, doubt, delight, and awful fear
Was hush'd; for, swift as echo to the voice
Replies, the spirit of the dead awoke
At His high summons! whether from the arm
Of Angels, lock'd in some oblivious trance;
Or from the bloom and breath of Paradise
Amid beatitude to earth recall'd,
To us untold; enough for man to know
That when the Lord of resurrection spake
The soul return'd! And mark its dawning glow;
Soft o'er each deaden'd cheek the rosy light
Of cherub slumber steals; the eyes unfold
And lift their veiny lids, as matin-flowers
When dew and sunshine fascinate their gaze;
In red and smiling play the lips relax,
And, delicate as music's dying fall,
The throb of life begins; she moves! she breathes!

491

The dead hath risen, and a living child
Sinks on the bosom of maternal Love!

From hence, to Galilee the Prince of Life
Again retreated; there His Own beloved
Received Him not, but savagely repell'd
The Nazarene; alas! they little dreamt
Of shrouded glory ark'd in Mary's Son!
But from the vain, whom pomp alone allured,
To multitudes of meek and aidless men
Who, faint and scatter'd, for instruction pined,
And tractable, the mild Redeemer turn'd.
Upon the mountain, when a night of prayer
Had pass'd, and awful Invocation knelt,
The Twelve were chosen, seal'd and heaven-inspired,
And yet, how poor!—a Galilèan tribe
By man untaught, to Science all unknown.
But not as ours, are Thine unfathom'd ways
Jehovah! in the mean Thy might display'd
Its vastness; on the low Thy lofty truth
Descended; out of weakness wisdom sprung,
As light from darkness, worlds from nothing, came!

And these were living Oracles, whose voice
Was power, whose doctrine breathed eternal life!
To them was portion'd this almighty Task,
“Advance! though Hell's dark legions rise, advance!
And preach the kingdom of approaching Heaven.
Nor gold, nor silver, raiment, staff, nor scrip,
Provide, but enter ye the city-gates;
The lame restore, the dead recal, the blind
Illumine, cleanse the leper, heal the sick,
And hurl the Demon from the haunted soul.
Be wise as serpents, innocent as doves;
Beware of all, but flatter none; for Thrones
Shall tremble, and the cheek of Kings
Look blasted, and your words of lightning cleave
The spirits which appal ye, when the lash
Is loudest, and the blood of trial flows.
Advance, and fear not! for your very hairs
Are number'd; viewless, God your Guardian is,
And he who offers to the parchèd lip
A cup of water, him will I repay!”

And did they not, by living grace empower'd,
The Earth evangelise, till idols shook
Before them, and the gates of hell were storm'd?
Its truthful witness let the solemn Past
Uplift, and there, along the boundless scene
Of time departed, shines the glorious track
Of true Apostles! On their heads the curse
Was wreak'd, and fires of persecution rain'd;
Their limbs were torn, around them dungeons gaped,
And yet, they ceased not; still the cry was heard,
“Redemption! on the Cross a Saviour hung;
Repent, believe, and be for ever blest!”

Transcendent martyrs! round your awful brows
Seraphic wreaths are twined, and ye adore,
In throned array, the Co-Eternal Three!
But with your presence, not your power sublime
Departed; still around us in their might,
Recorded mercies miracles and truths
Divine, are breathing: by whose vital sway
Are sanction'd all which daily Life enjoys
Of charity, protection, faith, and peace;
The light of Laws, the Liberty of home,
Content, and all that makes a Country dear.

From what high armory, celestial Band!
Were your bright weapons taken? Was your creed
A pliant courtier, bending to the will
Tyrannic, culling from each varied clime,
Or doctrine, some accordant hue to please
A passion, flatter doubt, or soothe despair?
Or, did ye, by undaunted truth sublimed,
Like second Daniels and Elijahs prove
And brand the vices of corrupted man?
Against the Passions, wheresoe'er they ruled,
Ye march'd, and fought them in their fiercest shape
Of Lust and Pride, and dark Ambition's dreams,
And Hopes which make eternity a lie
By moulding heaven to each infirm desire.

O traveller! far from England's elmy dales
To Syria wafted, in the trance of noon
When thou art seated on some rocky cliff
Of Nazareth, and think'st that there, unknown,
In meek subjection lived the Son of Man,
Till came the hour when like a buried stream
Of glory bursting into sudden day,
That mighty Doctrine which embraced a world
Rose into light, and ran its vast career,—
What visions o'er thy musing spirit roll?
The flood of centuries, in their fancied roar
Thou hears't them sweeping! but amid the tides
Of desolation over king and kingdom pour'd,
The “Rock of Ages,” based on earth indeed
But towering to the skies,—unshaken stands,
Deep as eternity and high as heaven!

But now, from everlasting triumph fresh
And ardent, met the apostolic Band

492

Once more around Him; then to lovely Nain
By Hermon shaded, o'er whose dazzling snow
A mid-noon burn'd, the godlike Jesus went.
Whoe'er thou art, a scene of touching might
And tender beauty waits thy spirit there.
And yet, how simple! such as link mankind
Together by unbroken ties of soul,—
The glories of the Gospel! from the heart
They spring, and to the heart alone appeal
With eloquence divine.

Behold, as noon
Was calming down from its meridian heat,
And Tabor o'er Esdraelon's verdure threw
A longer shade, where cooling Kishon ran
His midway course, the Lord of mercy reach'd
That mountain-dell where Nain of Hermon stands:
But ere He enter'd, came a mournful troop
In dark procession from the city-gates.
The air was rung with anguish; and the dirge
Fell sad and frequent on Messiah's ear:
While midmost, on a mantled bier upborne,
A youth was carried to an early grave,
An only child, the Star of widow'd home
In whose fond ray a mother's spirit smiled!
With what a sense of beautiful delight
Her ear drank in the father's fancied voice,
Still in her son triumphant o'er the tomb!
How tenderly her soul's creative eye
Gazed on the meanings of his manly face
And made each feature all the sire restore
In proud resemblance! while a sacred hope
Survived, that when her widow'd race was done,
His hand would smoothe, his gentle voice attend
Her dying bed; and tears of filial truth
Fall on the flowers which graced a mother's tomb!
But Heaven had frown'd, her living star was set,
In the bright morning of its beauty gone
For ever. Pity! thine are barren tears,
And unrefreshing as the thunder-drops
On burning sands, to wo intense as this!
For life and feeling in the grave descend;
And sounds of comfort, like the clamorous waves
In heedless revel o'er the ocean-dead,
Awake no echoes in her spirit now.

But on they come, the sad funereal crowd,
And deep o'er all the blended tones of grief
A heart-wrung widow's lamentations rise
Distinctive of the Mother! Not a gaze
By feeling unbedewed; the young men weep,
As fancy pictures, on yon cover'd bier
Their pale companion, from whose mirthful brow
So many a gleam of young enjoyment flash'd
Like daily sunshine over kindred hours:
The aged bow their heads, to dreams of death
Surrender'd; parents muse on buried hopes,
Or clasp the living with a fearful joy!
And e'en the children, as the mourning-train
Advances, from unthinking revel cease
And sadden down the innocence of glee.
'Twas then the Lord of Life and Death approach'd
The long procession, and a widow's tear
Was mighty, for it thrill'd Emmanuel's soul!
At once, majestic through the yielding crowd
Beside the corse He came, the bier He touch'd,
Then, moveless as the dead that living host
Stood silent; every throbbing breeze grew loud,
And motions of the human heart were heard
In the deep hush of this portentous hour!
The awful coming of some dread Display
Each soul awaited: then was heard, “Arise!”
The spirit answer'd, and that youth arose;
And to his mother took Messiah's hand
Her only child!

Oh, ask not, what excess
Of rapture, what ecstatic shriek of joy,
What thrilling fires of new affection rose
When heart to heart the beat of life return'd,
As there they stood, unutterably blest,
Each twined round each, affection's holy pair!
The mountain-top, though daring clouds retreat
Below it, oft victorious feet ascend;
And down the ocean have undaunted eyes
Descended; but the height and depth of Love
Maternal, who shall meet its boundless sway?
But, rather witness how one eager gaze
From the vast multitude's concentred awe
Is bent on Jesus! dreadful light enrobes
His Form, divinity His features wear,
And as He moves, in loud hosannahs rise,
“Our God hath visited His people now!”

And thus, whene'er the tears of Woman fall,
Compassion! in the Lord of pity view
Thy godlike Semblance. Never from His lip
The crushing heartlessness of cold rebuke
Descended, when the soul of woman cried!
And was not this example? Ere the tongue
Can utter, or the eye a wo reveal,
Her smile is round us, like a guardian-spell
Which nothing scatters, save the tyrant-gloom
Of death; and then, whose unforsaking glance,
Till the last hue of being fade, from dawn
To midnight keeps angelic watch beside
The ebbing spirit, lighting it to heaven?
'Tis Action makes the world of man; but life
Is feeling, such as gentler woman bears;
The fairy people of her inward world
Are true affections; when the blight hath touch'd

493

Or wrong'd their beauty, darkly cold this earth
Becomes, the elements of being fade,
And silence is the sepulchre of thought
Wherein the anguish of her spirit dwells.

But should there yet some icy soul remain
Which never melted at a woman's tear,
Let such advance, and meet The Saviour's eye!
Behold a chamber; round a simple board,
On circling couches, with unsandal'd feet
Reclined, a pharisaic throng convened;
Amid them, the Redeemer: as He lay,
Behind him crept a penitential form
Of faded beauty; years had fiercely traced,
And chronicled with Time's disastrous pen
The countless agonies of guilty wo
On her pale visage, from whose haggard eyes
The tears gush'd big and bright, while down her neck
In flowing ringlets fell unheeded hair
Of blackest lustre:—in her hand appear'd
An alabaster box of rich perfume.
But when her flood of anguish on the feet
Of Christ intruded, with her flowing hair
The tears she dried, and costly unction pour'd:
Divinely humbled, That mysterious Head
She would not dare profane! but, sin-abash'd,
Upon his feet alone an ointment due
She pour'd, the sad and silent Magdalene!

On her, as some mute parent's pensive gaze
The home-returning child of Error greets,
Messiah look'd; but from the scorner's eye
A scornful flash of indignation broke,
To think a vile corruption, frail as she,
Might touch a Prophet, or communion hold
With mortal Sanctity! Yet, ere contempt
Grew vocal, He whose comprehensive glance
Both heaven and earth and time and space commands,
And from the dungeon of the darkest soul
The craven thought with sudden light expels,
The brooding rancour of self-righteous man
Perceived, and thus the hidden soul unmask'd:
“Two debtors once a creditor forgave;
Five hundred one, the other fifty pence.
Which loved him most?” “The one forgiven most,”
The cowering Pharisee at once replied,
With curling lip, and brow which blacker grew!
“Behold yon woman! she hath loved the most,
And is the most forgiven!” Deadly rage
At those high words, which to Jehovah's lip
Belong'd, and character'd almighty power,
How fiercely did that proud assembly feel!
They spake not; but the blood's resentful ire
Flow'd on each visage with a fiery rush
Of inward passion, while derisive tones
Around the table murmuringly ran,—
That He, a throneless Heir of mortal clay,
The sanction of tremendous God assumed,
And pardon'd one by pharisaic creed
Accursed, whose presence was defiling breath,
Than whom, for their celestial robe to touch
To hug the Pestilence were purer far!
In deep soliloquy of hate and dread
So mutter'd each dark soul; but, mildly firm,
Emmanuel then to weeping Mary cried
“By faith forgiven, in thy peace depart!”

Again Jerusalem's Mosaic feast
Return'd, and Christ within her hoary walls
Hath enter'd, and beside Bethesda's pool
Unknown amid the lazar-crowd appears,
Beneath the porches lying. Round the bath
A pillared shade five towering cloisters threw
Where each with ravenous impatience eyed
The blood-stain'd waters! panting for the hour
Medicinal, when some high Angel stirr'd
That healing Pool: as oft a summer-lake
Convulsively a thrilling breeze attests,
Bethesda rippled into mystic life
Beneath the wave of His unshadow'd wings.

Amid the martyrs, pale o'er all the rest,
And ghastly, bearing on his palsied frame
The loathsome curse of eight-and-thirty years'
Dread malady, an aidless Victim met
Divine compassion, when his Lord approach'd.
“Wilt thou be whole?” the Great Physician cried:
“My limbs are moveless! lo, the crowd advance
Down in the waters ere my weakness come.”
As man to man, that pining creature spake;
But when, “Arise, thy bed uplift, and walk,”
Commanded Jesus, limb and life renew'd
Their freshness! free as Samson in his hour
Of glory, with his couch the man uprose,
While magic blood like streaming rapture ran
From vein to vein, how exquisitely felt!
He walk'd, but not unenvied; savage frowns
Were seen, and stern the loud resentment rose:
“A broken Sabbath! did it not condemn
The cure? That burden, was it not profane!”
The rebel heart of Jewish envy cried.
Thou hypocrite! let days and seasons quench
Thy soul, and narrow down the lofty creed
Of true Religion: vital worth ascends
Beyond them; goodness is a godlike power
And active; it can lead an angel-life,
But keeps a holy calendar in heaven.

Celestial Founder of the Christian faith,
Saviour of spirits! Thy denouncing words
Have been fulfill'd: the race who mock'd Thy deeds

494

And darken'd all Thy bright perfection did
Of good and wond'rous for afflicted Man,
The cup of wrath have drench'd, and are become
The scoff and vileness of our peopled globe!
But have we not Thy sacred Word defiled,
Thy Law profaned, the light of Truth repell'd,
And often crucified Thee o'er again
Lamb of the World! Descend, O Lord! descend
And lighten, as Thou didst the Jews of old,
The dimness of our nature! Still remain
The curse of Sect, the bigotry of hate,
And Doctrines impious whose exclusive lie
Would limit God, and shut the gates of heaven!
The pure and open, the unbounded scheme
Of Earth's redemption, let not man presume
To shape or alter; but submissive faith
The grand relationship of human Souls
Confess; and while external Sense reveres
Each hallow'd Rite, let inward love abound,
And centre all its paradise in Thee:
So will religion spread, and time record
The days of Eden, sabbaths of the mind
When dream and doctrine, hope and faith unite
To make the heart anticipated heaven.

Where Jordan mingled his melodious wave
With the blue waters of that famous Sea
Which often mirror'd the Redeemer's form,
The grassy desert of Bethsaida lay.
To this deep wild the Lord of Glory went
Dejected, for the murder'd Baptist's fate
A veiling sadness o'er His spirit threw.
But such a halo of pure light begirt
His Person; wisdom so surpassing flow'd
From perfect lips, that sooner might the sun
At flaming noontide from the eye recede,
Than Christ in unregarded loneness rest.
And lo! around Him, like a wilder'd flock
Of mountain-sheep, unshepherded and lost,
The poor have gather'd; and their pleading eyes
Were overpower'd, when Incarnate Wisdom spake
Of Time and Nature, man's undying soul,
And Blood mysterious that would cleanse the world:
Till deep entrancement on each spirit came,
Serene as starlight o'er a dusky lake
Of troubled water:—hunger, want, and toil
Were unremember'd in th' absorbing bliss
Of vast instruction; on the Bread of Life
They feasted, mindless of all other food!
But day was dying; and the mellow light
Of evening slanted through the desert-boughs,
Whose leafy motion, like a refluent tide
The pebbles chafing, made a restless sound.
And when Messiah in the pallid gleam
Of western sunlight mark'd the wearied host
Before Him, and a thousand faces turn'd
Full on His gaze, all famish'd, feeble, worn!—
Compassion for their uncomplaining want
Awoke; at once a miracle sublime
His soul conceived, His mighty hand perform'd.

Among the multitude a lad was found;
Five barley loaves and two small fishes made
His poor possession; but that scanty meal
Became abundance to creative Power!
By fifties rank'd, along the verdant ground
The people sat, with expectation dumb,
And trembling with profoundest awe! Then took
The bread, and lifted His majestic Eyes
To heaven, the Saviour; blessing, as He gazed,
The food from whence a miracle would rise
Magnificent, beyond those dreams of love
Celestial, such as sainted Prophets saw.
Oh! when His eye immensity o'ercame
And travell'd through yon infinite expanse
Of worlds on worlds, His own almighty Seat
It witness'd! There, pavilion'd round about
With clouds and waters, in array'd excess
Of unimagined Glory, it beheld
Jehovah!—then the mortal bread He brake,
And bade Disciples to the awe-struck crowd
The food bestow, till that enormous host
Were fill'd; and fragments of abundance lay
Around them scatter'd from the glorious feast!
As though a seed of earth's minutest growth
Rose from the ground, and like a forest spread,
From that mean food miraculously sprung
The glory of a great increase, which grew
And multiplied beneath Messiah's hand,
Till famish'd thousands were profusely fed.

Was ever banquet so sublime as this?
No canopy of regal pomp was there,
But the bright vastness of unclouded heaven;
The turf, a table, and the meanest food
A mountain-peasant knows, the sole supply,—
But God to serve, a Miracle, the meal!
The hour of beauty; Syria's matchless sky
Of floating crimson; like Genesareth stretch'd
In molten slumber, and her distant flash
Of waters gleaming through the forest-boughs,
And the deep moral of the mighty scene,—
What fancy yearns not, to have witness'd all?

But He who fed five thousand, feeds a world
And makes all earth miraculous by love!
Creation's undiminish'd banquet, spread
For ever by the elemental Laws

495

And Seasons ministrant to growth and good,
How mindless we by Whose stupendous gift
It fosters being as a boundless whole!
Enjoyment makes the world's ingratitude;
Above, around, beneath, th' almighty Hand
Itself avows; at morn, conducting forth
The Lord of Brightness; and when day concludes,
And dews descend, the fairies of the night,
Arraying yonder firmamental arch
With moon and planet, and uncounted orbs,
Too beautiful for sullied lips to name!
But, constant good proves mercy unadored;
And while dumb Glories of creation give
Their daily witness, Man alone is mute.

But night commenceth: hark! a shouting cry,
A Multitude's delighted spirit speaks,—
And woods are shaken with exulting sound!
Like mingling torrents, loud and far ascend
Their many voices, blending into one,
That hails him Monarch! who had blest the poor.—
Then Jesus to Bethsaida bade depart
His own Disciples, from the crowd withdrew,
And sought his mountain-solitude again.

Meanwhile, obedient to a high command,
Beloved disciples in their boat embark'd
Upon the lake are rocking: Darkness weaves
Her veil; and, like a tempest-demon yells
The howling wind, and tears the rising sea
To billowy madness, o'er whose heave and surge
Th' affrighted vessel like a weary bird
Advances, hung with flakes of whitest foam.
At starless midnight, on the yawning deep
The mariners with death and gloom contend,
Till in the sound of each remorseless wave
Each Heart has heard a funeral anthem howl'd!
But ere the redness of reviving dawn
Approach'd, when nature wore that spectral hue
In which the shadows of the dead arise,
A living Shape along the billows stalk'd!
God of the Waters, on the waves He moved
Sublimely calm! behind Him, like a cloud
His garments floated on the gloomy air,
And where He trod, the conscious billow sank!
At that dim sight each pale Disciple cower'd
And trembled, holding in the gasping breath,
Yet gazing, till their icy blood congeal'd,
Each limb was marble, and the palsied heart
Throbb'd loud and quick with supernatural play!
A Spectre from the unapparent World
He seem'd; or, Spirit of the tempest born,
Who walk'd the waters terribly divine!
But when in answer to a shriek of dread
Heard o'er the billows in its wildest tone,
Upon the winds in solemn murmur roll'd
“'Tis I!”—the frenzy of affright was calm'd;
And he, whose feeling human faith surpass'd,
Entreated like a God to tread the deep!
“Then come,” the Saviour like a God replied.
And he descended; on the deep he walk'd
O'erawed by dreadful wonder! wave on wave
And wind on wind, in elemental roar
Like chaos, how can mortal faith defy?
His soul hath doubted, and th' Apostle sinks,
Till, “Save me, Lord!” the drowning Peter cries;
And him the affable Redeemer caught
From out the billows, in their fierce array,
Rebuking thus, “O thou of little faith!”
His fond disciple: when the toiling bark
They both had enter'd, on the waves He look'd,—
The Lake was silent, and the Tempest gone!

Appalling grandeur! sea and midnight, God
And Man, angelic Faith and mortal Fear,—
All imaging with allegoric truth
A storm of trial on the world's great Sea!
Thus, Heaven is round us in the dreadest hour.
Her radiant mercies, like the mystic stars
Through darkness glitter on the trembling soul:
And from that shriek, 'mid whelming billows sent
By human frailness, let Presumption learn
How Nature falters when she feels secure!
Oh! could our actions overtake Resolve,
That oft in solitude so highly soars
To perfect regions of primeval Good,
What noble vengeance would the spirit wreak
On baser qualities, which clog the soul!
Alas! perfection is our moral dream,
And error, nature's true reality:
We would be angels, but we must be men!

Yet marvel not, that frail delusion hung
And hover'd o'er his apostolic mind
Who loved the Saviour with impassion'd truth,
But oft out-soar'd himself, when feeling dared
To mount where Faith alone her flight commands.
To him, as all, Messiah's kingdom seem'd
Dominion sceptred with terrestrial might;
The spell of earth was on them, and they rear'd
On words whose meaning look'd this world, beyond
Imperial thrones whereon The Twelve would sit
Holding the keys of heaven! But Jesus tore
That veil of darkness; as rejected Christ
By malefactor's death foredoom'd to die,
Himself described; and when the shrinking mind
Of Peter started with rebellious doubt,

496

How quiver'd it at that august rebuke!
“Avaunt thee, Satan! not the Things of God,
But those of men, thy blinded heart adores.”

And then, at once from out this fading world
To heaven, and heaven's unutterable scene
Whence throned in glory the Redeemer comes,
He led the Conscience, and of Judgment spake,—
A shout of Angels! and a trumpet-Voice,—
Hark! how it thunders round the shaken earth
Till space becomes a universal sound;
The graves are riven, and the Sea aghast
Unsepulchres her dead! then, all is still,
And every eye the Judge of Doom beholds!

Ere the dim shadow of this dreaded hour
Predicted, from the mind has been dispell'd,
His three disciples holy Jesus took
From out the plain, to where the balmy hush
Of aromatic Tabor breathed. And there
While Christ paternal Deity adored,
A languor like a cloud of music wrapt
The yielding Sense, till wearily o'ercome,
Their eyelids closed in slumber's soft eclipse,
And slept the mortal three. While such repose
Entranced them, into awful glory grew
The Form of Jesus! dazzlingly His face
That lustrous Mien which Seraphim behold
With eyes wing-veil'd, assumed; His raiment shone
Like robes that whiten in immortal beams
Emitted from the throned Eternal! Bright
Beyond imagined brightness, He became
Transfigured; God of God, and Light of Light
Apparent, round Him earth's surpassing two,
In type of law and prophecy fulfill'd
By Jesus, Moses and Elias, knelt,
Communing; like the roll of thunder-clouds,
Their melody of voice the air inspired
With deeper magic than expressive sound,
That woke the sleepers, whose awe-stricken eyes
Reel'd in the blaze as though in heaven unclosed!
The Cross, and Resurrection of the Dead
Appallingly distinct they heard reveal'd:
And Peter, burning with sublime dismay,
“Three tabernacles let us rear,” exclaim'd,—
“For Thee, for Moses, and Elias, one!”
But while he spake, an overshadowing Cloud
Descended, such as o'er the golden wings
Of Cherubim the Ark's shechinah made;
And from its depth a vocal Presence cried,
“My Son of Glory! hear His voice! adore!”
Like riven trees th' affrighted mortals fell
Beneath that sound almighty, till, “Arise,”
Messiah utter'd;—they arose, and view'd
Nor Cloud, nor Vision, but the lovely green
Of Tabor; Jesus in His wonted garb
Of meekness; and the soft luxurious sky
With azure canopy o'erarching all.

The passion that confounded heaven, unthroned
Archangels, and the spotless earth defiled,
Not Christ himself could overawe! In vain
Of agony and blood Messiah spake,
To be His direful portion: still prevail'd
In each frail mind Ambition's royal dream
Of Thrones to come; and whose imperial rank
Was most exalted, each with rival hope
Disputed. Fathoming their inmost heart,
Amid them all the mild Redeemer placed
A little child; then, gently with His arm
Encompassing that infant, thus began:
“Except man be converted, and become
As little children, humbled, meek, and pure,
My kingdom he cannot partake, nor feel;
For childlike is the greatest there!”—How quail'd
The pride, how shook the domineering thoughts
Of that Assembly, when they thus beheld
A passive meekness in the Form august
Of Christ embodied; and an artless child
The type of man's eternal glory made?
Thou happy mother! at whose nursing breast
That infant fed; still happier child wert thou,
Whose eyelids fell beneath Emmanuel's gaze,
Whose brow was hung with innocent alarm,
Before that holy Presence!—Fairy Things!
Incarnate poetry of human life,
Oh, teach us, as around ye lisp and play,
Nor heed the clouds, nor hear the muttering wind
Which heralds what to-Morrow's doom may be,
Like you content in uncomplaining hope
To rest resign'd; and innocently wear
The smile which universal Love bestows.

Pride blasted Eden; and the world has crouch'd
Beneath her sceptre, which to break in dust
God bow'd the heavens, and every meekness wore.
Yet, what are we, that our Titanic dreams
Assault the skies with their incessant aim?
Oh, could we read Creation's book aright
Our nothingness by each vast page would be
Convicted! Atoms mock our deepest ken;
The winds invisible as angel-wings
Attend our path, and tell not whence they come;
The Dust derides us! from the floating Orbs
Of night's dim world an overwhelming ray
Of mystery pierces the distracted mind;
And Ocean thunders with resounding scorn
When monarchs dare him, and our fleets like foam

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From wave to wave are darted! Gaze within,
And what is there?—a tempest in repose
Of passions wild, dark energies, and powers
Which storm and madden at the Demon's call!

But evil is eternal war with heaven;
And Pride, how dauntless! E'en that hallow'd fane
Where sacramental Deity is shrined,
She enters, balancing with haughty brow
The merits which opinion, rank, or sect
Assumes, before the Throne of that Supreme
From Whose dread gaze the Universe recoils!—
When Jesus, from the triple-crested mount
Where midnight heard His orison arise,
At morn descended, as the rosy flush
Of daylight slanted over Kedron's vale
And pilgrim-waters, in the Temple throng'd
A pharisaic crowd, whose sleepless ire
With blood-hound fury track'd His glorious way.
Before Him now, as there the people stood
And drank His words like inspiration's breath,
A poor adulteress they rudely dragg'd
For judgment; should He dare condemn
Her frailty, Rome would see rebellion rise,
And dungeon him for slaughter; should He blot
Her guilt, upon His soul her crime devolved!
But Christ their black attempt at once unveil'd
And answer'd not; and, bending to the ground
In mute abstraction, with His finger wrote;
Till once again That awful Soul they tried
For judgment; then with look divinely-stern
He rose, and in a voice of withering tone,
“Let him among you who is sinless, cast
A stone the first,” the Son of Man replied:
Then, Conscience! (Thou that in the deadly night
The soul canst wring, and rack the murderer's sleep,
Or people solitude with shapes of hell,)
The vile accusers Thy terrific power
O'erawed; till one by one, as though unseen
A Hand compell'd their motion, dumb like Death,
And slow, each follow'd each till all were gone!
But on the hush of that deserted room
A sigh, as though some heart had heaved, and broke,
Distinctly fell:—the Saviour's solemn eye
Was lifted, and beheld the guilty shape
Of woman! on whose burning cheek the blood
Confess'd her spirit, and the crime which drew
Those tear-drops, running like a liquid fire
From agony within. Her downcast head was hung
With locks dishevell'd, wild as her despair;
Her lips were moveless; but the buried pang
Which heaved her bosom with convulsive throes,
And frequent shudder of her bending frame,
Were language; all which Penitence employ'd
To tell the damning shame!—“Hath none condemn'd
Thee, woman? Where are thine accusers?” “None,”
She answer'd: “Neither then,” the Saviour cried,
“Do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more?”

The Feast of Lights, when dedicated lamps
Flash o'er the walls of Israel's echoing homes,
December brings: Jerusalem is loud
With chanted song, and melodies from harp
And timbrel, dulcimer and tabret pour'd;
From towering Altars an unwearied blaze
Ascendeth, rolling up with spiral glee
And gladness, crimsoning the sultry air.
The hearths are heap'd, and silver-headed Age
Delightedly to Youth's enamour'd ear
The Festival unfolds; while maidens twine
The holy Dance, or tune the patriot-lyre
To measures, floating like the silky clouds
The west along, so meltingly they die!
The street-ways, dappled with reflected gleams
From many a lattice, like a forest sound
When every leaf is motion.—But apart,
Beneath yon shadow of the Temple-porch
Messiah walk'd, till thence the scowling Jew
Compell'd Him, thirsting for His righteous blood,
To seek a shelter where Baptising John
Had lived, when first by Jordan's laving stream
He heralded Redemption. There He taught
Believing thousands, till from Mary came
A sudden messenger of wo, who said,
That Lazarus, whom Messiah loved, was sick.
But from that sickness sprang a glorious power
The sisters dream'd not! Both did Jesus love;
Yet still He rested, till the night of death
Advanced, and Lazarus in the tomb reclined.
Then slowly went to where in mourning gloom
The fond and brotherless with mingled tears
His presence waited! Ere the olive-trees
Of Bethany o'erhung His meadow'd way,
Rush'd Martha forth, to meet her mighty Lord!
“Hadst Thou been here, my brother had not died,”
Was her sad greeting. “He shall rise again!”
Responded Jesus: “When the dead awake
And time is ended,” sadly she replied.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life!
And whoso liveth, and in Me believes,
Shall never die!” “The Son of God Thou art

498

The Christ to come, the Everlasting Lord!”
In one deep burst of lofty faith she cried,
And then withdrew, to where her sister mourn'd,—
To Mary, who the better Part preferr'd.
At once she rose, the distant meadow sought
And prostrate at the feet of Jesus fell;
“Hadst Thou been here, my brother had not died”
She utter'd; tears alone the rest could tell,
And not a lid was dry! Around He gazed,
Their tears beheld, their voiceless anguish view'd,
Then, meekly bowing His majestic Head,
He sigh'd and groan'd in spirit:—Jesus wept!

A mournful beauty, a sepulchral grace
Doth hallow nature, when the dead are tomb'd
In garden-quiet, 'mid the wave of boughs,
Which often murmur in our living ears
Like tones ancestral by the heart revived.
Beneath the twilight of o'erhanging trees
A cave was hollow'd, in whose rocky depth
Affection to the arms of Earth resign'd
Her dead; in mute companionship, there lay
The babe and mother, sister, son, and sire,
A household, though in dust! A sad delight
More exquisite than loud-tongued pleasure feels,
Serened the spirit of surviving Love
Whene'er it rambled in the pensive gloom
Of such a garden. If the summer-air
Breathed gladness, heaven was flaked with fleecy clouds,
And playsome leaves hung prattling to the wind,
While hue and sound made life immortal seem,—
A shade of sadness mellow'd, not destroy'd
The mirth and beauty of surrounding day.
Oft would the eye of some fond mourner rest
On the green rock, whose cavern'd silence made
The home of Death, where generations slept.
And haply, as the wild flowers meekly grew
From the dim verdure of sepulchral stone,
Delightful thoughts from sad mementos sprung.

'Mid such a scene departed Lazarus lay:
And lo! Messiah by the rock-hewn grave
Arrived: around him with unspeaking awe
Disciples, mourners, and the sisters meek
Collect. “The tomb unbar!”—when thus exclaim'd
The Lord of Resurrection, from the tomb
They roll'd the stone; then Martha's doubting soul
Full solemnly He chided! Time had seen
Four suns upon her brother's grave reflect
Their brightness: on his frame corruption fed
E'en now she deem'd, and buried in her doubt
That faith whose glory soon its God revcal'd.
The stone removed, apart Messiah stood,
To heaven uplifted His appealing gaze;
Divine communion with the Vast Unseen
Awhile He mutely held, and then arose
The intonations of His prayer divine.
But when a soundless answer from the Throne
Descended, more than mortal radiance clothed
Each feature! on His brow mysterious calm
Was mirror'd; like a Deity he stood,
And spake the fiat,—“Lazarus, come forth!”
And Lazarus came! as once Creation did
From darkness, by His forming Word produced.
Bound hand and foot, amid the living breathed
The dead, new risen! But his presence cast
A terror round it, awe without a name!
Entranced, as if another world begun,
Dumb with amaze, the whole assembly stood,
Till Jesus bade the grave's funereal robes
To be unwound, and breathing Lazarus spake.
As though a tree by blasting time destroy'd
Bloom'd into life, and suddenly display'd
The perfect glory of its forest-prime,
So did the freshness of reviving blood
At once the lividness of death dispel;
And Lazarus, pure as Man's primeval form
Appear'd when first creation call'd him, Lord.

Such power immense, in open day reveal'd,
Through town and village, plain and hamlet woke
A grateful wonder. At the school of Seers
The sage consulted; street and dwelling heard
One mingled clamour of admiring tongues;
And in the Synagogues a muttering crowd
Would linger, to peruse each other's face,
And chronicle, as Rumour told its tale,
The words of age, or wisdom. But the blaze
Miraculous, which round the risen dead
Concentred, fell like pestilential fire
Upon the soul of that dark Sect, whose reign
Was clouded, and whose mouldering sceptre shook.
Their fancy gloated on His bleeding form;
Their dreams were haunted with His dying pangs,
And every heart some malediction framed
To mock His agony! Amid the wilds
Of Ephraim, hence the Lord of grace withdrew,
Till came the moment for the final Scene
Of Man's redemption, to unroll its gloom:
Amid the Capital with dreadless foot
Then march'd He forth to meet that blood-red Hour!

To Jericho, along whose plain immense
In greenest lustre rose unnumber'd palms
That waved their beauty on balsamic winds,

499

Amid the breath of roses, flush'd and bright
As clouds of damask when they drink the hues
Of sunset, Jesus and disciples went.
But soon from out her walls, and stately crowd
Of palaces, and domes of marble sheen,
He passed to Bethany, where Lazarus rose,
And shouting hosts with palms had come to meet
The Son of David. From the verdant top
Of Olivet, to where a hamlet smiled
Before them, bosom'd in a mountain-vale,
The two Disciples, at the word divine,
Departed. There, as Christ's prophetic eye
Fore-shadow'd, at the village-gate they found
A colt, which never mortal burden bore,
Then led it to the Lord; devoutly hung
Their garments o'er its sacred back, and placed
The Christ thereon. Thus Zechariah sang,
When Centuries, in their darkest slumber bound,
To him like animated Creatures rose,
And utter'd visions!—Wonderful Thy ways,
Jehovah! in the whirlwind, Thou art there!
The tempest is Thy language; sea, Thy path;
And Glory, but the shadow of Thy shade!
Yet human actions, by completing words
Which drew aside the veil of Time, and roll'd
Their meaning down the depth of Years unborn,
With voice as mighty as creation speaks,
Thy power attest, Thy ruling hand portray.

But oh! what jubilant hosannahs rose
As Him they sung, magnificent, and great,
And good, and glorious, Israel's promised King,
The Prince of Peace! Beneath His path their robes
They strew'd, and round Him waved triumphant palms,
And scatter'd branches; while a choral shout
Deeper and deeper like colossal waves
Of sound ascended! till the Air partook
The rapture, and the sympathetic leaves
As with a breezy joy of summer-noon
Were shaken! Then a sudden silence came
On the loud Host; as when the pausing storm
In elemental muteness dies away,
The clamour ceased; a multitude was dumb.
On vast Jerusalem's devoted towers
The gaze of Christ prophetically fell,
And tears from out His mournful spirit rose
While He beheld them, and their doom pronounced:
“If Thou hadst known, at least in this Thy day,—
But peace hath vanish'd ever from Thine eyes!
Thine hour is coming; round Thee shall a trench
Be cast, and compass Thee on every side,
Till tomb'd in dust Thy towers and children fall,
Nor leave a stone to tell where Thou hast been!
Jerusalem! Jerusalem! whose hand
Hath stoned the prophets, and the holy slain,
How often, as the hen beneath her wings
Her brood protecteth, would My shielding hand
Have shelter'd Thee!—Thy children would not come!
Thine House is desolate, thy Kingdom gone,
And never till the clouds of Judgment waft
His Glory, will thine eyes again behold
The Son of Man. But magnify, O God,
My Father! magnify Thine awful Name:”
The heavens grew vocal, and an angel-voice
Came forth,—“I have, and will,” whose thunder spake.

Thus saying, in the portico He sat,
Where ever and anon, within a chest
Beside the pillars chain'd, an offering fell
From worshippers. Amid the pompous crowd
Of rich adorers, came a humble form,
A widow, meek as Poverty doth make
Her children; with a look of sad content
Her mite within the treasure-heap she cast:
Then, timidly as bashful twilight stole
From out the Temple. But her lowly gift
Was witness'd by an Eye, whose mercy views
In motive all which consecrates a deed
To goodness: so He bless'd the widow's mite,
Beyond the gifts abounding Wealth bestow'd.
Thus is it, Lord! with Thee: the heart is Thine,
And all the world of hidden action there
Works in Thy sight like waves beneath the sun
Conspicuous; and a thousand nameless acts
That lurk in lovely secrecy, and die
Unnoticed like the trodden flowers which fall
Beneath a proud man's foot, to Thee are known,
And written with a sunbeam in that Book
Of Life, where mercy fills the brightest page.

Front of the Temple, whose enormous wall
Outlived the fury of Chaldèan fires,
And while around chaotic ruins fell
Stood, like a master-spirit when the world
Is rocking,—Olivet's green summit rose:
And there Messiah, with his few elect,
Ascended; thence He took a last farewell!
Beneath them, in a wilderness of homes,
The thousand-streeted City lay, and roll'd
The hum and murmur of her myriad sounds
High in the air; while far around her stood
The guardian-mountains, bathed in ruddy hues

500

Of sunlight, while the peaks of countless spires
Flash'd from the midst like pinnacles of flame.
But, lone in glory, pillar'd, proud, and huge,
Colossal as some architectural dream
Embodied, Israel's massy Temple blazed;
And seem'd, in her immensity of shape,
A Shrine that would endure eternally!
When each disciple had around him gazed,
And feasted with magnificent delight
On such a miracle of pomp and scene,
“It all shall wither! not a stone endure”
Messiah cried; and, like a dying knell
That murmur sank upon their listening souls!

That dread prediction! was it not fulfill'd
Beyond Imagination's blackest dream
Of horror, when the hell of earth began,
And men were Demons with a robe of flesh
Enveloped, banqueting on human blood?
Ere forty years had swept the scene of time,
On that same Mount where spake the awful Seer
And drew from darkness the almighty Curse
To come, the fierce-eyed Romans had encamp'd
Their Legions; while the roll of martial drums,
And a loud music from the brazen lips
Of trump and clarion, with a sound of death
Frighted the hills and dales of Palestine.

Distress of nations! Sun and Moon withdrawn
Enshrouded, that their gaze might not behold
The World's disaster. From the howling sea
Hark to the tempest! on the earth are crime
And famine, fear and pestilence combined;
While Havoc, on the wings of fury borne,
Scatters fell ruin like a burning wind
Which hurries round the universal orb
To wither up creation! Far and near,
Whatever Light can face, or Darkness feel,
Is terrible: and list! amid the gloom
Of midnight, like a guilty creature shakes
A giant-City, as the earthquake-pant
With fitful heavings moves her mighty heart!
Jehovah is abroad! the heavens appall'd,
Forget their seasons; cloud-like visions, fill'd
With fiery battle, and a myriad Shapes
Of warriors charioted by burning steeds
That vanish in commotion, throng the air
With omens! Then, a starry Weapon cleaves
The sky, and flashes with descending might
As though 'twere wielded by Eternal Hands!
While day and night, Jerusalem's ghastly eye
Looks up, and sees a blood-red Comet blaze,
Fix'd like a Curse of fire above the scene
To agonise whate'er its flashes meet!
And once at midnight, with appalling burst
The massive portals of God's inner Shrine
Expanded, and the shuddering Fabric heard
A Voice that issued with a dread farewell,
Whose thunder was departing Deity!

The hour of Judgment! lo, at length it comes,
And God is in it with devouring wrath
That deepens, till the stricken Earth despairs.
The Queen of Zion, beautiful and vast,
Glory of nations! who shall paint thee now?
Enwrapp'd with horrors, famish'd, weeping, faint,
And fallen, round thee like a circling flood
Rears a huge wall of Babylonian height,
And thou a captive in the centre art
For martyrdom. But, hark! in whirlwind-rush
A roaring flame around the Temple sweeps!
Moriah like a seething furnace glows
And reddens; as a cloudy palace built
By sunset, there it dwindles, melts, and dies,—
The fabric of Jehovah! Palsied, wild, and pale,
In solemn agony hush'd myriads stand,
Scorch as they gaze, but still yon gorgeous wreck
Beholding, on their ghastly features plays
A light of ruin, ere the Temple falls,
Like funeral glory! then, in tombs of fire,
While the last pillar of expiring flame
Mounts o'er yon wreck, they shriek, despair, and die!

BOOK VI.

“But who is He with tortured brow,
Degraded, bleeding, dying, now;
His Visage marr'd beyond despair?
Thou quaking earth! thy God is there!
The Sun appall'd hath slunk away,
And darkness hides the guilty Day;
Avert, O World! thine impious eyes;
The curse is o'er,—but Jesus dies!”
—MS.

ANALYSIS OF BOOK VI.

The Book commences with an apostrophe connected with the sad and mighty events which the conclusion of the Saviour's Life unrolls; but, previous to detailing them, a retrospective view of His Character, Actions, and Doctrine, is attempted; the order of time is then preserved to the Ascension—The Sanhedrim take council against Christ — Judas agrees to betray Him—The Last Supper—Description of the same—Terror and sadness of the Disciples when Christ announced that He was about to be betrayed—The Rite of Sacrament founded—The Redeemer's Farewell—The Garden of Gethsemane

501

—Jesus in His Agony—Is traduced—The Dawn of the Day of Crucifixion—Jesus brought up for trial— Peter's Denial—Reflections on his Faith and Weakness—Jesus is condemned—Led to Caiaphas—Pronounced guiltless—Pilate makes his final attempt to acquit the Redeemer—Barabbas preferred to Jesus—At last is led forth on the judgment-seat in sight of the multitude—The repentance, horror, and destruction of Iscariot—The Crucifixion and its attendant scenes—The Miracles which attested His Godhead at His Death—The Burial of Christ— Night Scene—Moonlight on the Tomb of Jesus— The Roman watch, &c. &c.—The Resurrection— Affright of the Soldiers—Vision of the Angels— Jesus reveals Himself to Mary—Journey of the two Disciples to Emmaus—Appearance of Christ—Discovered by the breaking of Bread—His Second Appearance to the Eleven—Miraculous Draught of Fishes—Peter thrice questioned—Previous to His Ascension, Christ takes the Eleven with Him to a Mountain—Explains the Scriptures, gives His Final Charge, and ascends to Heaven.

Here, as far as the Life of the Messiah is included, the Poem ends; but the Second Advent is the Hope, Faith, and Glory of a Christian, and could not be omitted. Previously to this, however, some reflections on the subject of the Poem, state of the human mind, the destinies of man, and the spirit of Poetry, viewed in connection with the advancement of Christianity, are offered: these naturally conclude in a contemplation of the immortality which was brought to light through the Redeemer —His Second Advent—Resurrection of the Dead— Last Judgment of Men and Angels—Conclusion.

Prepare, O Earth! with solemn gloom invest
Thy glories; bid the rayless Sun retire,
The Sky be sad, the Winds be tongues of wo,
And deep-toned litanies from Ocean swell:
Let time and nature, scene and conscious man
In one vast fellowship of grief unite;—
An hour is coming, charged with dreadful fate,
Whose darkness palls a Saviour's agony!

But, ere the crisis of creation dawn
And palsied Earth her bleeding God proclaims,
Behold the beauty of His matchless life
In deed and thought connecting earth with heaven!
Cull every virtue which the Mind conceives,
Or view Perfection's archetypal Form
And what can emulate the Prince of Peace?

Where once the Seasons, in luxuriant strife,
Reign'd on the shore of that immortal Lake
Whose wave is purple as the heaven it loves,
In that blest clime where fruit and verdure bathed
Their tinted beauty in the richest sun,
Where all is dreary now—Messiah dwelt,
And bodied forth God's everlasting Will
In life and love, by Incarnation there.
Born in a manger,—yet by guardians bright
And wing'd adorers, heralded and hymn'd;
The Heir of all things—yet possessing none;
Surrender'd now to tears of mortal truth,
Or ministrant at some disciple's feet,
Then,—thunder-greeted by the glorious Sky!
Here from the flower a lovely doctrine flows,
And now,—a Tempest from His frown recoils;
Hung on the cross, a malefactor's doom
He suffer'd,—yet a paradise was there
By Him accorded to the felon-soul!
Though bleeding clay,—incarnate God confess'd
Whose pangs an aching Universe partook;
While from those agonies which man beheld
And mock'd the terror-blighted Sun withdrew!

Man never spake, in words divinely-toned
With tenderness beyond a tear to move,
Like Him, to Whom unutter'd feelings lay
Free as the clouds before a sun, exposed.
The Heart,—He knew it best, and proved it most,
And touch'd the master-chords of human mind.
And oh! what exquisite discernment mark'd
Each high discourse, to creed or sect applied.
Some true analogy in scenes, or sounds,
And palpably by outward sense perceived,
From mead and plough, the summer-task or toil,
From storm and season, fruit and flower,—enlived
Each sacred lesson which Emmanuel taught.
And when hath Poet from his airy world
To shape or action summon'd such express
And touching images of graceful power,
As Parables, where conscience is instinctive judge
And to the mind celestial truth commends?
Pathetic loveliness in all abounds;
And as the eloquent Creation oft
By moonlight more than storm the soul subdues,
When language by severest wrath sustain'd,
No passion quell'd, the parable prevail'd;
Whose soft dominion, like an angel-smile
Moved o'er the heart, and seemed reflected there.

A Being thus surpassingly endow'd,
Whose life was goodness in perpetual act;
By pure magnificence of spirit raised
Above whate'er Platonic vision shaped
Of high and holy, in the perfect Man,
What hymnèd worship should all Earth have paid
To such embodied Glory! Yet a doom
Of torture hover'd o'er His righteous Head:
The Sinless for the sinful World must die!

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E'en now, the plotting Sanhedrim convened;
When suddenly, disorder'd, pale, and rack'd
With guilty terror, which on brow and cheek
Imprinted, villain! lo, the traitor comes,
And thirty pieces for his Lord betray'd
Demandeth: then with unappall'd delight
The Priesthood revels o'er His dying form!

There, as the traitor in the twilight-gloom
Is homeward skulking with a stealthy pace
While every breeze like condemnation sounds,
By Nature mutter'd with mysterious scorn,
A Spirit, dark as demons love, behold!
He, ever when the proffer'd crown approach'd
The head of Christ, in worldly vision hail'd
The sceptred honours of some high domain
About to dawn: but when the Saviour's lip
Blest the meek hands which typically pour'd
Balsamic odours to anoint His head,
Rebuke was felt, and disappointment raged;
Till Satan enter'd with a rush of guilt
The soul of Judas, and the traitor rose
A dark apostate in his dream of blood!

Meanwhile Messiah, whose omniscient word
A room appointed for the paschal Feast,
To eat the Lamb of covenant prepared.
His pangs approach, His agonies begin
To throng around Him! and that hour, foretold,
Prefigured, and so oft in gloom unveil'd
To His mistaken Twelve, is come at last
The Man of Wo to meet! A feast is set
Of wine and water, as Mosaic law
Ordain'd; where each with due thanksgiving drinks
The Cup whose seal and sanction typified
The Blood of Jesus, by symbolic power;
And then, the taintless Lamb, the ritual Herb,
And Bread unleaven'd, psalm and prayer succeed,
Each serving each with ceremonious awe.
But in the midst, again rebellious pride,
Like Satan when he darken'd Paradise
By curst intrusion, mars the lovely scene
And mournful beauty of our Lord's farewell.
But, princes, thrones, and dominations bow,
Lie mute and dead, ye arrogant desires!
Ambition! dooming life one long despair,
Quench the wild fever of thy fire-struck brain,
Heaven stoops to earth, a Deity to dust,
A God is kneeling at the foot of Man!—
Humility which makes the heart to reel,
Our blood to quiver, and the brow of pride
Prostrates beneath the scathing light of shame!
Oh, when was meekness so almighty found,
As when the Saviour dwarfs degree and state
And dims the splendour of all outward things,
Till, like the radiance of a dying eve,
The waning glories of the World depart!

But why hath sadness with a sudden gloom
On each descended? What hath blanch'd the cheek
With terror, in the eye dejection pour'd,
And stirr'd the calm of countenance with lines
Of feeling, working into restless play
Like breeze-moved water? Eye to eye, and brow
To brow, in horrible dismay upturn'd,
Each reads the other with unspoken dread
Of something buried in the soul's abyss,
Which now must be untomb'd, and stand condemn'd
In the full light of God's omniscient gaze!
And yet, though terror-struck, with sad exclaim
Each utters, “Is it I?” Eleven are pure;
Their souls are ramparted with sacred truth,
They tremble deeply, but with guiltless fear.
And one there was, o'er all the rest beloved;
Whose tender mildness and devoted faith
With childlike fervour to the Lord endear'd
A guileless nature,—him whom “Jesus loved,”
The meek St. John! Beyond expressive wo,
The tearful language of his eye reveal'd
A yearning spirit; while his drooping head
Lay fondly pillow'd on the breast of Christ.
By Peter urged, with look of saddest depth
On Christ he gazed, and whisperingly ask'd,
“Who is it, Lord?” Then Jesus, “He who takes
The bread I give, the Son of Man betrays:
But, wo the traitor! well for him, had light
And being never an Iscariot known!”
Betrayer! thou whose spirit coil'd and sunk
Within thee, as a serpent when the day
Shines on the darkness of his den retires
To deeper gloom! upon thy face appears
A pale confession, which thy tongue denies:
Yes! thou art he,—a traitor to thy Lord!
And driven by the whirlwind of despair,
Forth from the chamber of discover'd guilt
Thou speedest; darkness is a heaven to thee;
And thou hast night, sepulchrally array'd,
And starless, fit to cloak a traitor's deed
Or give to earth the gloominess of hell!

As the dim spell-work of some awful dream
Can people slumber with a ghastly host
Of shapes and sounds, till lo! the morning-smile
Dissolves it, so hath this phantasmal scene
Of doubt and dread, of agonising sway,
At once receded; and quiescent joy
Again upon the true disciples came,
When Judas from the paschal-chamber went,

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Convicted traitor! Then, with mien august,
The mild Redeemer took the Bread, and blest
And brake it; and the cup of Wine He took,
And then of both made each disciple take:—
A holy Sacrament, whose typic shade
The great Passover was; but mightier far
The rite of Jesus, whose remembrance speaks
No single nation, but a boundless World
Deliver'd, saved, and free! As bread and wine
The body nourish, so the soul is fed
By faith in this symbolic meal of Love,
Wherein is shadow'd the Redeemer's death.

“Do This, and thou wilt then remember Me!”
Remember Thee! the Way, the Truth, and Life,
On Whose pure eyelids hung our mortal tears;
Who wert so inaccessibly supreme
In the bright plenitude of awe and power,
And yet, so veil'd by condescending love
That Childhood gazed upon Thy glorious smile,
And deem'd it heavenlier than mothers wear;
Refuge and Rest 'mid all the woes of time!
Almighty Anchor for a sin-toss'd world!
Incarnate Saviour, and co-equal God,
Remember Thee!—oh, if some dying words
Of honour'd parent round the memory cling
With aye unweaken'd charm, shall man forget
That dear and solemn, Thy divine command
Beyond all parents'? Till Thy Kingdom come
When the great Banquet of perpetual bliss
With Thee in glory Thine elected sons
Partake, O Saviour! be this Sacrifice
And Sacrament with awful love revered:
For in it pardon and preserving grace
Abound, and by it Earth with Heaven communes;
And when o'erwearied by this anxious world,
Or toss'd in the tempestuous gloom of sin
The soul repenteth, yet in doubt appears
Like Hagar in the wilderness, to weep and die
Forsaken, there in this all-heavenly Feast
Redeemer! Thine incarnate Presence dwells:
And gently as the arkless dove was ta'en
Back to a shelter from the dreary wild
Of waters, welcomed by a meeting smile,
The soul is bosom'd on Thy holy rest.

But listen! for the Lord's farewell begins,
And deeply-solemn, His mysterious tones
Fall on the silence of the sacred room,
Till tears have gather'd in their gazing eyes
From whence He parteth, to ascend and reign
Where man beholds not. Yet, in dreadless faith,
The fervent Peter, with erected brow
And voice triumphant over hell, replied,
“Though all desert Thee, still will Peter stand
A rock unshaken! death nor dungeon frights
His spirit; life itself but lives in Thee!”
“I tell thee, Peter, ere the cock shall crow
This very night wilt thou deny Me thrice!”
Then, more impassion'd with a louder voice
And lip that quiver'd with exulting throb,
“Deny Thee! unto death my soul is fix'd!”
The fond one answer'd, and on Jesus gazed
With mild reproach, like one who feels his wrong,
But pleaded only by a look which spake!

A sadness, deep and holy as the heart
E'er felt, came o'er that mute assembly now,
When the meek Saviour with angelic truth
Began: “Believe in God, in Me believe,
For in My Father's everlasting House
Are many Mansions, and your Lord departs,
That ye may follow to a place prepared.
The Comforter, the Holy Ghost, shall come,
And all I utter'd, memory shall teach,
By Him instructed; peace, immortal Peace!
Beyond the world to give, with you I leave:
Abide in Me, as branches in the Vine
Endure, and ye shall bear celestial Fruit!”
And then, as o'er Him, in its dark array
A vision of their sad desertion swept,
Messiah added, “Do ye now believe?
Behold! it cometh, yea, the hour is come!
When all are scatter'd, and the Son of Man
Is left,—yet not alone, for God is there:
The world is trouble, but in Me a peace
Unfading; let your souls in that confide
Nor tremble; I have overcome the World!”
Then, lifting his omniscient eyes to Heaven,
“My Father, glorify Thy Son!” He cried;
“Thy work is finish'd, and Thy faith is taught,
And Light and Immortality declared;
And now The Glory, Mine before this earth
Was founded, I ascend with Thee to share!”

Thus ended, Lord! thy first and last farewell.
When rose the parting hymn Devotion sang,
And all o'er Kedron to the Olive Mount
Departing, wait upon Thy steps divine.

But, veil thyself, Imagination! veil
And worship; put thy shoes from off thy feet,
Thou mortal Gazer! for on hallow'd ground
More consecrate than he of Horeb saw
When the bush burn'd with sacramental fire,

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Thou tread'st,—the garden of Gethsemane!
The Moon, pale hermitress of heaven, hath found
With no bright fellowship of starry orb
Her midway-sphere; and now with conscious dread
Shrined in a cloudy haze, she disappears,
While motionless yon patriarchal trees
Of towering olive lift their spectral gloom.
But listen! groan on groan, with awful swell
Heaves on the air, as though a God bewail'd
His creatures!—Christ in agony is bow'd,
And prostrate; while from each denuded pore
A litany of Blood to Heaven appeals!
Convulsed within Him, hark, the Human cries,
“My Father! if it can be, let this Cup
Be taken from Me, from this hour removed:
And yet not Mine, but let Thy Will, be done!”

Dark agonies, ineffable as deep
That moment knew, whose merit countervail'd
All which Eternity's remorse could pay,
Wrung from the torment of a punish'd World!
As once on Tabor His transfigured Form
A shadow of celestial Glory threw
On Man's perception, so in this doom'd hour
Gethsemane's most awful Scene declares
The dreadful Infinite of sin, and guilt.
His Manhood suffer'd all that Flesh could feel:—
God unappeased, and Satan unsubdued,
Darkness, and death, and unrepented crimes
Still brooding o'er the world, and He foredoom'd
Upon the Cross of agony to die
That Heaven might open on forgiven man,—
These were combined in one almighty pang!
Exceeding sorrowful His soul became
E'en unto death; till from the Throne His cry
Of anguish brought a soothing Angel down.
But in the passion of this fateful hour,
Oh! where are they, whose eyes so oft beheld
His wonders, in whose hearts His voice had pour'd
The balm and blessing of immortal Truth?
Alas! one hour they could not watch, nor pray;
And they were sleeping, when the Saviour thrice
From prayer arose, and thrice their sleep forgave!

Yet now sleep on; and take unthinking rest;
The Son of Man, Emmanuel is betray'd,
The traitor hath his treason-work fulfill'd!
For, hear ye not the sound of rushing feet
And ruder voices, through the moonless air
Advancing? Stirr'd, as by a tempest-wing,
Around the olive-branches creak and bend,
And light comes flashing with a fierce intent,
Till on the countenance of Christ it falls
And lights His features: marr'd and pale they shone
Beneath it, as He met a midnight-band
With torch and lantern, sword and stave empower'd
Their impious hands on His pure Form to lay.
When “I am He!” was spoken, back they fell
Like life before a sudden blast of death
By miracle emitted!—“I am He”
Again was utter'd, and again they fell
Confounded, till the traitor with a kiss
Betoken'd Jesus; then the troop approach'd
And bound Him. Legions! from your thrones of Light
Descend, and wither that unhallow'd throng!
No: meekly as a lamb to slaughter goes
The Lord hath yielded; fetter'd, silent, sad,
Deserted, and betray'd, alone He meets
The Powers of darkness in their deepest might.

The break of morning with a dim uprise!
Pale as a Prophet, when his eye foresees
Unutter'd woes upon the future throng,
The Sun awaketh from his cloudy sleep
To usher in this all-tremendous Day.
Already in yon judgment-chamber meet
The fell accusers; there, aloft upraised,
Their holy Victim in the upper-hall
His trial waiteth:—not a shade of fear
The innocence of that calm Brow defiles!
In shape a Man, in dignity a God
He seemeth. But around the palace-fire
Beneath Him, from the council-seat apart,
What curses, loud with wrathful meaning, roll?
A damsel, when the Galilean-voice
Of Peter sounded with betrayful tones,
His true discipleship at once declared
Then, he who hail'd Him “Son of living God!”
Adored His Person, saw His glory shine,
And vow'd eternally with changeless love
Through life and death unswerving faith to hold,
The sacred knowledge of his Lord denied!
But when with horrid malediction rang
The fierce denial of his furious lip,
Till his eye glitter'd with a ghastly fire,
And falsehood, cowardice, and guilty fear
All met and mingled with terrific clash
Within, a second time the Cock then crew!
And Jesus,—who shall paint the glance He gave,
Where pity, pardon, and subdued reproach

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Concenter'd in such look of loving power
That Peter shrank, and trembled into tears!

Impassion'd, bold, beyond thy strength sincere,
Sublime apostle but a sinful man,
As in thy faith, so in thy fall we find,
A truth which bids the yearning bosom feel,
E'en as thou wert, how half the world has been!
Forgiven mourner! while with mantled face
In groaning penitence without the porch
Thou weepest, and from unforgotten scenes
A radiant vision of the Past returns
With blighting splendour to condemn thy soul,
Thou art a Moral for mankind to read
And heart to study, long as Earth remains!

While thus in penance sad St. Peter wept,
Amid a council of encircling priests
And scribes and elders, lone Emmanuel stood
For judgment. Witness after witness rose,
Suborn'd and savage; yet a war of words
Where lie to lie and truth to truth opposed
A meaning, all their accusation grew;
But when His doctrine the Archpriest assail'd;
“The temple, synagogue, the open world,
Let these My doctrine testify, and tell,
For nought in secret have I said or done!”
Thus answer'd the Redeemer; then uprose
Accusers, who with dreadless voice declared
“The gorgeous Fabric which our eyes adore,
He thus blasphemed; ‘This temple built with hands,
Will I destroy; in three days shall arise
Another, built by no terrestrial hands!’”
Majestic silence was the sole reply.
Then Caiaphas, with fierce emotion shook
And darken'd; from his council-throne up sprang
And with a voice like far-off thunder cried,
“Now by the living and tremendous God
Thee I adjure! art Thou The Christ?”—“I am!
Hereafter, coming with the clouds of heaven
Girt like Jehovah, see the Son of Man!”
Then, “Let Him die!” throughout th' assembly rung.

The morning comes; and with unfolding day
The tragedy a deeper die assumes.
Again did Pilate, with proclaiming voice
To elder, priest, and multitude pronounce
The Saviour guiltless: “Let Him be released!”
In vain he cried; for hark the savage yell,
“A prisoner! be our wonted right perform'd,
A captive freed!” 'Twas in that stormy hour
The dark confession of a hideous dream
The wife of Pilate in her slumber saw,
Was then reported: but His hour had come!
“Barabbas!” was the universal shout
By thousands echoed, when their judge preferr'd
To free Messiah, “Let Barabbas loose!”
But “Christ, what deadly evil hath he done?”
Again did “Crucify!” in one fell war
Rise on the air so murderous and loud,
That Pilate quiver'd on his judgment-throne.

Then Jesus, by the soldiers dragg'd, endured
The mockery of reed, and robe, and crown
Of platted thorns, upon His temples press'd;
There as He bled, before Him bow the knees
Of scoffing worshippers, who shout and hail
“King of the Jews!” then smite His awful head
And crush the crown upon His aching brows!

Thus bleeding, marr'd and mock'd, the Saviour comes:
Unmoved He stands, insuperably calm.
But wilder grew the clamour; hand, and eye,
And voice were raging with terrific signs
Of vengeance; till the name of “Cæsar” rang
Loud on the soul of Pilate, like the knell
Of his destruction! Cæsar's foe must die;
And Hate shall crucify whom Justice spared.
Then took he water, laved his hands, and cried,
“That I am innocent of blood, behold,
Of this just Person; be it yours to bear.”
“His blood be on us! on our children be!”
In mingled answer from that murderous crowd
Ascended; dreary as the dying swell
Of ocean, up to heaven this awful breath
Of imprecation roll'd, and drew from God
The answer, Judah's myriads suffer now!

Earth never parallel'd a scene like this,
When list'ning Worlds were overawed to hear
A creature his incarnate God condemn!
A paved tribunal by the Palace rose
Of pictured marble, and mosaic sheen,
Whereon was Pilate as in kingly state
Enthroned; before him stood a bleeding Form
Of solemn aspect, in Whose mild regret
A sanctitude beyond expression spake.
Below a raving multitude was seen
Upgazing, all athirst for righteous blood;
And who, with features harrow'd by the strife
And scorn of passion, from their God invoked
Eternal vengeance for eternal Blood!

But where the vile traducer? While the doom
Of death was pass'd, and Jesus like a Lamb
To slaughter by the savage crowd decreed,
Then, Conscience, thy tremendous power began!
The beauty, glory, and sublime display
Of virtues godlike by the sinless Christ

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Embodied, back upon his memory came;
And in the light of that immaculate Lord
From all He did reflected, dark and deep
The perfidy of His betrayer frown'd!
Lash'd by remorse, the council-Chief he sought,
The crime of Innocence by him betray'd
Confess'd; but when in vain his pleading guilt
Repented, in the Temple down he hurl'd
The wages of Iniquity, and fled
On wings of horror!—like a maniac, wild
And blasted into solitude he ran.
The ground grew fire beneath his guilty tread;
The heavens hung o'er him like a vast reproach;
And groans which make the jubilee of hell
Heaved from his soul with terrible excess!
Where rose a precipice, whose rocky gloom
The plunging billows of a torrent fill'd
With mimic thunder in chaotic roar,
At length he stood, and on the black abyss
Stared wildly—then a pace withdrew,
Look'd o'er the heavens his horrible despair!
Till Nature with a ghastly dimness seem'd
Enshrouded; round him the horizon reel'd,
The earth was waning, and with hideous yell
He seized the branches of a rock-grown tree,
Swung from its height, and down the dizzy steep
Sunk into darkness, and was seen no more!

But come, thou Spirit of believing Awe
Whom nothing boundeth, and a scene behold
More wond'rous than eternity conceals,—
A crucified Redeemer! With His cross
To Calvary the lacerated Christ
Is now ascending; famish'd, faint, and pale,
Beneath the burden of a tree accursed
He falters; yet the goading throng
His limbs profane, and trample when He falls
Their silent Martyr! Lest at once He die
And cheat the tortures of intended doom,
To bear it, from Cyrene is compell'd
A pilgrim; and again with murd'rous glee
The rabble round about Him dance and hoot.
Thus, all are merciless, while Mercy bleeds,
Save thou, fond Woman! in thy faithful eyes
Are tears; and from thine unforsaking love
The language of sublimest pity flows.
Yet not for Him, but for yourselves lament;
Ye daughters of Jerusalem! who wail;
The days are coming when the soul will cry
“The wombs how blessèd which have never borne!”
But lo; the hill of Golgotha appears;
The Cross is planted; with convulsive shake
Each limb unloosen'd; and the starting blood
In liquid torment from the flesh distill'd;
In vain, a potion to benumb His pangs
Is proffer'd; dying God, He suffers all.
“Forgive them; for they know not what they do!”

And thus they crucify the Son of Man!
Those Hands are bleeding, which have bless'd a world;
Those Feet are tortured, which have never moved
Except on errands of celestial Love;
Those Brows are throbbing, and those Eyes bedimm'd
Where light and immortality were throned;
And ah! that pure, unspotted, perfect Soul,
Divine as Deity on earth could be,
Doth agonise beneath th' imputed Curse
Whereby a ransom for the World is paid:
And silently He all endures! Around His Cross
The soldiers wrangle for the parted vest;
And when His eye in lifted torment gazed
O'er Calvary, by crowding myriads trod,
How few the faces where compassion dwelt,
Or tears were trickling, did that look behold!
The scowl of Pharisees, the hate of Scribes,
And the fierce glance of hypocrites rebuked,
Were turn'd upon Him, to translate His pangs,
And drink the fulness of a deep revenge!
While others underneath the Cross advanced
To read His title with reviling scorn,
“King of the Jews!”

Two thieves beside Him hung
In kindred torture to increase the shame.
The one did rail, the other's soften'd heart
Repented; sudden faith his soul illumed,
And, “Lord! when in Thy kingdom Thou art throned
Remember me!” the dying creature said;
And lo! a paradise was his reward.

Then look'd Messiah where His mother stood,
The Virgin Mary, with His Own beloved
Disciple; agony could not subdue
His tenderness; compassion fill'd His gaze
With heavenly lustre, while in filial love
He bent on Mary the divinest look
That ever Child on weeping parent cast,
And murmur'd, “Woman! there a Son behold;
Disciple! there a future Mother see.”
O Maiden! purest of all pure, who felt
A love maternal, when thy bosom throbb'd
Beneath the pangs of thine almighty Son,
The sword of anguish, then thy soul it pierced,
As hoary Simeon in the Temple sang.

Thus in the light, 'tween heaven and earth upraised,
Upon the malefactor's cross was nail'd,
Was crucified, the Lord of living Worlds!
Till came the sixth hour, when the noontide-sun

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Waned from his throne; and sudden darkness fell
O'er all Judea, till creation seem'd
By God forsaken, Whose averted face
Bade darkness emblematically type
The gloom internal God in Flesh endured.
Jerusalem, her temples, domes, and towers,
Were shaded; Lebanon and Tabor shrunk
And wither'd; Carmel, Gilead, and the rocks
By ocean towering, shadow cover'd all
With night's terrific semblance. In the gloom
The mutter of a multitude uprose
Like sounds infernal; while their features wore
A fell expression of unearthly hue,—
Each fearing what his impious tongue denied,
As ever and anon some coward took
A shuddering glance, where Man's Redeemer hung,
While the blood quiver'd in his guilty veins
Till blasphemy in hollow murmur died!
Heart cannot dream, imagination dare
By words to image th' almighty pangs
That in His darkness and distress of soul
Th' Ineffable upon the Cross endured!
Who held His spirit as the Prince of Life,
To torment subject, till the Curse was paid.
The ninth hour came; and then, with loud appeal,
From the deep midnight of atoning Blood,
He utter'd, “Why hast Thou forsaken Me!
My God! My God!”—then came an awful hush
In which they deem'd Elias would descend
To save Him: but, a second time, a Voice
More audible the souls of myriads shook:
“'Tis finish'd! Father, to Thy hands divine
My Spirit I commend,” the Saviour cried,
And bow'd His head, and breathed His soul away!

“'Tis finish'd!” let seraphic mind these words
Translate, for immortality is there!
Which heaven re-echoed, while the regions dark
Where Christ descended in a shape of Light
Triumphant over Powers and Thrones of Hell,
Groan'd at the sound which deepen'd their despair!
The Universe a ghastly signal gave,
And Nature, as in agony, confess'd
The Lord of Glory as His Spirit fled.
The earth was palsied; and the mountains rent
Like garments; tomb and sepulchre their dead
Released, and out of dust the saints arose
And look'd upon the living; while the Veil,
As 'mid the Temple of the Holies stood
A robed High Priest, in sacerdotal pomp,
Was riven, from the top to bottom torn;
And full at once the Oracle reveal'd.
Now, in the tremor of created things
While rock and earthquake, tomb and temple, speak
With dread conviction, “'tis a God that dies!”
The pale centurion and the crowd aghast
Lift their wild looks, and smite their breasts, and cry,
With lips that shudder, “'Tis the Son of God!”

A Tragedy which made the sun eclipse
His beams, and sympathising Earth to cast
Her waken'd dead from out their riven tombs,
Is ended! and the oriental Night
O'er Palestine her dewy wings unfolds.
On Calvary the solemn moonbeams lie
All chill and lovely, like those trancèd smiles
Which light the features, when the pangs of death
Have ceased to flutter, and the face is still.
The stars are trooping; and the wintry air
Is mellow'd with a soft mysterious glow
Caught from their beauty; not a vapour mars
The stainless welkin, where the moon aloft
One blue immensity of sky commands,
Save where the fringe of some minutest cloud
Hangs like an eyelid on a brilliant Orb,
Then vanishes, in quenching lustre hid.
Few hours have fleeted, and yon trampled hill
Was shaken with a multitude, who foam'd
And raged beneath their agonising God!
But Nature hath her calm resumed; and night,
As if to spread oblivion o'er the day
And give creation a sabbatic rest,
In balm and beauty on the world descends.
The crowds have disappear'd like waves that melt
And leave a shore to quietude again:
Some in their dreams, perchance, the day renew;
But thou! upon a kingly couch reposed,
The Judge of Jesus, could thy soul conceive
That long as Time's recorded truths endure
Thy name, united to this awful scene,
Would live, when all the Cæsars are forgot?

The hum and murmur of a distant town
How faintly on the breeze they roll, and die
In soft confusion! Turn thy gaze, and see,
Encircled with a huge Titanian wall,
Where tower and turret, and Herodian piles,
And battlements of dusky gloom uprear
Their vastness, there the Holy City stands!
Augustly beautiful, in moonlight bathed,
Jehovah's palace awes the midnight-air
Around it; while her mountain-bulwarks veil'd

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With dimmer lustre, far and near preside
Like guardians planted by almighty hands,
To watch the city, where a million breathe.
From plain and desert, isles and regions call'd,
Wherever son of Abram was, they throng
For worship, and their Paschal Feast enjoy.
And there, in some unnoticed chamber lurk
The panic-struck apostles! When the gloom
Of earthquake on the hill of Calvary hung,
That God was coming from the Cross to take
Messiah, or, that Christ Himself would free
And shake the universe to show the God,—
Ambition blindly dreamt. As Lord of Worlds
Him they conceived too wonderful to die!
A veil was on them; though the truthful Lord
His future resurrection oft declared,
'Twas unremember'd, while the sudden pangs
Of terror crucified the faith of all.

But north of Zion, on a mountain-slope
That garden where the tomb of Jesus lies
Behold! impressively by vestal beams
Of moonlight touch'd, his rocky grave appears;
Before it, with a frequent play, the flash
Of steely armour, as the Roman watch
Changes and moves in circular array,
Is seen; yet, save the night's uncertain sound,
The fitful motion of a rambling breeze
That stirs the olive, or the towering palm,
And timid murmur of a garden-brook,
The scene is voiceless; while on high enthroned
Yon firmamental Orbs are fixed and bright,
As though in wonder, that their glory falls
On the dread tomb where buried Godhead lies!

Still Calvary sleeps; and nothing harsh or wild
The holy slumber of the Night arrests.
The sentries in their panoply are ranged;
Some on the gleaming worlds of air a glance
Upturn, and with inaudible delight
Adore their beauty; some on fairy wings
Of fondness to the haunt of childhood flee
Among the hills of unforgotten Rome;
Or vaguely round yon high-wall'd city view
The shadowy watch-towers on the vineyards raised,
Or mountain dim, or Maccabean pile;
While others, haply, to the tomb devote
A gaze of sorrow, for that righteous Form
They helped to rivet on the Cursed Tree!

But in that syncope, that solemn trance,
When darkness as a fading thought decays
Amid the glimmer of increasing dawn,
Like God in thunder, hark! an earthquake-throb
While the rock quivers as a shaken reed!
In rushing glory down the sky advanced
A giant Angel; from the tomb he roll'd
The barrier-stone, and on it sat, and blazed.
His face was lightning! and as dazzling snow
His vestment glitter'd: with a clang of arms
Prone on the earth affrighted soldiers fell!
And as Eliphaz, when the vision spake,
Upon the Formless turn'd a fearful gaze,
They look'd—were blasted—like the dead they lay!
And then Emmanuel from the grave arose
Invisible; all paramount and pure
The Resurrection and the Life He stood,
Lord of the tomb, victorious and sublime!
Oh, then Captivity was captive led;
Satan unthroned; His domination spoil'd;
Hell-gates were sunder'd, and from earthy sleep
The dead awaking, as they lived and moved
Felt on their brows a beam immortal play!

But He who moved invisible to man,
To guardian woman did Himself reveal.
As weeping Mary by the tomb remain'd
And bow'd within its rocky depth to gaze,
Two angel-watchers, robed in dazzling white,
Were seated, where the vanish'd body lay:
“Why weepest thou?” with gentlest tone they cried:
“Because I know not where my stolen Lord
Be taken;” back she turn'd her eye of tears,
And there stood Jesus! but to her unknown.
“Why weepest thou?” again was mildly heard;
Then Mary, with mistaking love, replied,
“If thou hast borne Him from this garden-tomb,
Oh! tell me where; these hands will take Him thence.”
But Jesus, vocal with His wonted voice,
Responded, “Mary!” and the mourner fell
Down at His feet! Rabboni she adored!
Let one at midnight, when the cradling sea
Hath rock'd his slumber, and a dream of Home
In murmuring faintness to the soul renews
Parental language, till his ocean-sleep
Is harrow'd by that heart-entrancing sound,
Her feeling image! such may faintly tell
When Mary worshipp'd how her spirit thrill'd!

'Twas on the evening of this hallow'd day
That two disciples, down a western vale
To where Emmaus in the sunset show'd
Her whitening cots, with pensive step approach'd.
O dying hour of beautiful delight!
The painter's worship and the poet's song,
How few embrace thee with a purer thought

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Than one, whose dreaming Boyhood loved to form
Romantic visions of the unreveal'd
From thine own hues; when like those fairy clouds
Which float and perish, yearning Fancy shaped
Bright unrealities long roll'd away!
Divinest evening! when thy Syrian glow
On verdurous olive, sycamore, and palm
Descended, not unfelt thy magic woo'd
These holy pilgrims. Homeward flocks and herds
Were wending; while around them richly-soft
The lingering decadence of light began.
But more than Nature on their brows has hung
A solemn meaning! of the Day they talk,
Of Death, and Resurrection; such their theme,
When, silent as the shadow of their forms,
Another came! and mingled word with word,
In deep communion. Then of Christ He spake;
From prophecy to prophecy unroll'd
Each revelation, till the shade of doubt
Fell from their spirit like a film removed
From Blindness, letting in the light of heaven.
But when, abiding to partake their meal,
He sat before them, and the Blessing gave,
That Eye, so eloquent with awe devout,
That voice heaven-toned, that superhuman Mien
Declared Messiah! Now at once He gazed
Upon them, featured like that living Christ
So often follow'd, worshipp'd,—and forsook!
Within them how each wondering heart had burn'd
To hear Him as an Oracle reveal
The Word of Life, God's Everlasting Will!
But like a vision of the soul He fled.
Then back they speeded, to th' Eleven rehearsed
Their tale of wonder: when again behold!
Th' Incarnate Saviour! “Peace be with you! hail!”
Becalming thus with salutation mild
Th' appall'd Assembly, on them all He breathed
His Holy Spirit, and to each bestow'd
O'er sin a power, to pardon or retain.
But Thomas doubted, till his hand could touch
The living Jesus! lo! again He came
Inaudibly, within a chamber barr'd;
So like a Spirit of the shapeless air
He enter'd, that o'erawed disciples quaked!
“Thy finger hither reach, These hands behold,
And thrust thine own within My wounded side,
Not faithless, but believing!” Thus He spoke
To him who answer'd “Saviour, Lord, and God!”

Once more upon the lake Messiah view,
Whose azure waters at His word o'erfill'd
With countless fish the Galilean bark,
Which night had baffled; then was Peter ask'd
That threefold question, threefold wisdom fill'd
With memory of his denial thrice!
And yet, so toned with tenderness divine,
The soul of Peter in his fond reply,
“Thou knowest I love thee!” spake with answering tears.

And now, the Counsel of eternal Love,
Mysterious, vast, omniscient as profound,
Wrapt in the folds of Heaven's decretive Will
Before the universe was shaped or born,
Concludeth! Man's Redemption is complete,
And sanction'd; all the archetypal Plan
Of Deity, for reconciling grace
With justice, by the mediating Blood
Of covenant, in Christ has been fulfill'd.
The Woman's Seed hath bruised the Serpent's Head;
For Man hath lived, for Man hath bled, and died,
Soar'd from the grave, and His true Person shown
Not in the midnight, when the spirit shapes
An earthless phantom; but by living day
Was risen Jesus handled, seen and heard.

But, ere ascending to His seat on high,
Again the apostolic Band He taught
The true Salvation, in its glorious light.
From age to age prophetically sung,
By type and shadow heralded or seen,
Begotten Son of Co-Eternal Sire,
His goings forth from Everlasting were!
Before the works of Old, ere earth began,
When God His compass on the waters set
And gave the sea commandment,—He was there!
The Star; the Prophet, like to Moses raised;
The Priest for ever, on the Right Hand placed
Of glory, while the sun and moon endure,—
Dominion o'er all nations, kings, and isles,
To Him was given, whom the Gentiles sought;
Born of a Virgin; perfect God and Man;
Desire of nations; He whom Daniel saw,
Ancient of Days; by king and kingdoms served;
The Heritor of Heathens and the Throne
Of David: higher than the Heaven of Heavens,
Expressive Semblance of the bright Unseen!
And Morning-Star of Immortality;
The Light of Light, unspotted Lamb of God,
For sin an Offering, and for sinners slain,

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But now arisen from the tomb to soar
Eternal Saviour of forgiven man!—
Thus in the beams of revelation shone
The great Messiah: thus the cloudy veil
Of error from their souls He took, and cried,
“Go forth! repentance and remission teach,
Baptising Nations in the Name triune
Of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Behold
All living Unction from the Spirit's grace
From Me shall clothe you, as the promise spake;
Within the City tarry till they come,
Lo! I am with you to the ended world.”

My soul is shaken with a mighty Dream!
Dominion, Majesty, and Truth proceed
In blended union from the deeps of Heaven.
I hear the gates of second Eden ope,
And balm and freshness on the blighted world
Come flowing forth with universal love
And Earth regenerate with redemption's smile.
And hark! the echoes of a choral strain
Above; a new and Everlasting Song
Is chanted, for the seven-seal'd Book unroll'd
The Lamb hath open'd; and symphonious hymns
Of thousand times ten thousand Saints ascend
The Throne around: “Hosannah to the Lamb!”
For He is worthy! shout, ye Angels! shout
Till Earth re-echoes that unwearied strain!
Let sun, let moon, and each melodious star,
The winds, the rivers, mountains, floods, and hills,
The diapason deepen, and the loud
Eternal hallelujah of the Sea
Wake into sound; while regions, zones, and isles,
The glory of our great Redeemer sing!
And thus with angels and archangels laud
The Lamb Almighty, in the skies adored!

But, lo! upon Mount Olivet appears
With hands uplifted in their last farewell,
The parting Saviour; on His God-like brow
The radiance of eternity begins:
Disciples kneeling for His blessing ask,
And, hark! 'tis given; on their souls He breathes
The breath of sanctity, of love sublime
And endless: then His mighty hand is lift,
But while it blesseth the beloved of earth,
The Air is waiting to upwaft its Lord.
And see, He riseth! solemnly and slow,
Array'd in brightness, such as God invests,
In soaring grandeur from the baffled gaze
Of His adorers, through the pathless air
In the full lustre of unclouded day
He riseth! leaving, like th' Atlantic sun
On ocean when he dies a gorgeous death,
A beaming track magnificently bright
Behind Him; till a radiant star He seems,
And then, is trackless., in celestial depths
Evanish'd, soaring back to God again!

But, oh, if Angels at His birth did sing,
What pæans now through heaven's wide concave roll!
Who welcome there the sempiternal Lord,
The Son incarnate, into glory come,
O'er Sin and Death victorious, with a World
Recover'd, ransom'd, and for ever saved,
To speak his triumph in the state of Man.
The skies are kindled! from the opal walls
And battlements of uncreated Light,
Lo! seraphim and cherubim appear,
With angel and archangel,—rank on rank
In wing'd array of infinite extent
And brightness, to conduct the Lord of heaven.
Now lift your heads, ye Everlasting Doors,
Receive the King of Glory! Hark! the choir
With jubilant Hosannas shout and sing,
“For ever and for ever is Thy Throne,
Thou Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Hosts!
By Thee of old the heaven and earth were framed,
Were founded: but they all shall fade and die
And as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up,
And they shall perish! still art Thou the same
Unchanging, Holy, Holy, Lord of Hosts!
Thy Throne eternal in the heavens resume
Almighty Saviour, and triumphant King!”

My theme is o'er, the great Messiah sung;
And this attempt, whose vast persuasion fill'd
My being with o'erawed delight, concludes.
How often, in some pause of holy fear
Hath Fancy folded her adventurous wing,
And my soul bow'd with this unutter'd thought,
That He, whose mediatorial love I sang,
Beheld me, fathoming my spirit's depth!
And now, as girt with glory, in the Heaven
Of Heavens the Son of Man His Throne resumes,
A dread comes round me, like a shadow cast
From waning tempest o'er a trancèd sea.

Thou Land sublime, of miracles and men,
Where Poetry from God on earth came down
In warbled echoes of celestial song!
Where Hebron, Tabor, and Mount Carmel, lift
Their speaking vastness in the sultry air

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Divinely-haunted; where the Jordan rolls,
Where rock, and cavern, grotto, cell and cave
Are mighty; where the curse of Heaven has graved
Terrific warning on thy blasted trees
And haggard vales, all fountainless and dry,
The stately vision of thy mingled Scene
Departeth! He whose spirit oft has heard
The thunder-music of thy tempest roll,
Beheld thy sun-blaze, seen thine eagles mount
And dream-led roved beside that mournful Lake
Where man's Redeemer in His days of earth
Hath wander'd,—bids thee now a long farewell!

Autumnal morning round my chamber threw
The gleaming wanness of its gentle smile,
When tremblingly, as though omniscient Eyes
Look'd on my soul, I struck the sacred Lyre
And bade it warble this surpassing Theme.
But ever, as the waves of moving life
From England's capital, with heave and swell
Came surging from afar, my soul partook
A deep communion with the fate of Man
Amid a sea of wide Existence toss'd,
Whose billows only the Redeemer trod
Secure; but left along the stormy wild
A track of glory for terrestrial feet
To follow, guided by the star of Heaven.

But now, the Spirit of mysterious Night
Comes forth, and, like a ruin'd Angel, seems
All dimly-glorious, and divinely-sad:
And Earth, forgetful of her primal fall,
Lies in the beauty of reflected heaven.
Oh! night creates the paradise of thought,
Enchanting back whatever Time has wrong'd
Or exiled, touch'd with that celestial hue
Which faith and fancy on the Dead bestow.
Emotions which the tyrant Day destroys
Can now awaken, like reviving flowers;
And e'en the darkness of unheavenly souls
Must feel illumined, as the Eye receives
From all its views, a loveliness which comes
To light the dimness of the spirit's depth.
As when at morning, oft a sunrise pours
A stream of splendour through the window-panes
Of Temple vast, to cheer its barren aisles,
And on the gloom of monumental Sleep
To glisten, like a resurrection-morn.

Thus, life is charter'd for a nobler fate
Than glory, by the breath of man bestow'd:
A living world a living God reflects,
Morn, noon, and night, with everlasting change!
And who can hide the universe; o'erawe
The Elements; the sun unseat; or mar
That mighty Poem which the heavens and earth
Exhibit, written by Eternal Hands?
A sense of beauty, which is so divine,
Haunts human nature with undying spell;
And while the wonders of creation teem,
To love and worship their majestic power,
Can lift the spirit into purer light
Than ever canopied the throne of Fame.

And cold the heart, whose aspirations wing'd
Their flight from thee, my own inviolate Land!
Whom night and beauty have apparell'd now.
Thy heavens are stainless, as the molten blue
Of ocean, in the noontide's dazzling sleep;
Thy starry multitudes their thrones have set;
And the young Moon gazeth on yon quiet sea
Tranced like a mother, with her doating eye
Intently fix'd upon a cradled child.
While, round, and full, and ravishingly bright,
A planet here and there the sky adorns.
A path of lustre has o'erlaid the Deep,
Which heaves and glitters, like a wizard shore
For sea-enchanters, when they rise and walk
The waves in glory: voice nor foot profanes
This dreaming silence; but the mellow lisp
Of dying waters on the beach dissolved,
Makes ocean-language for the heart and hour.

Now thought is heaven-like; and our earthly frame
Of Purity beyond the day to bring,
Is conscious. From the uncreated Fount
Of Glory, may not emanations steal,
By night absorbed, and mystically felt?
Or creatures, such as once the mental eye
Of seraph-haunted Milton saw descend
Like sunbeams darted from a riven cloud
On Eden's mount, with viewless wing career
Around us, charming with a gaze unseen
Whate'er the beauty of their glances touch?

But oh! dark Spirit, whose unquiet shade
Our fancy visions in reflected gloom,
Again thou comest! and thy frown declares
What penal agonies, what groans and pangs,
In this calm hour a bleeding World contains!
E'en now, the curtains of Futurity
Are shaken, by the blasts of coming doom!
For Self has overshadow'd Love divine
With dread oblivion; till our daring thoughts
To helm the Universe, and guide the wheels
Of human Fate, have awfully presumed!

A Mind which glories in the world of Man
And graves, immortal! on the meanest brow,
Oh! how it loves the universe, and longs
To see the spirits whom Redemption won
Annihilate the hopes of Hell! Shall souls,

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So highly destined, that a swell of joy
Heaves o'er the harp of Heaven's resounding choir
When Sin repents, be perfected and lost?
No! let us, as the prince of morning quells
A cloudy tempest with imperial rays,
So learn to vanquish with celestial light
Our Sin and Darkness, till, as demons shrunk
To shapeless nothing at Messiah's look,
Our Vices wither from our Virtues' gaze.

Amid deep Energies which now unfold
Like harmonies from some awaking lyre,
Wilt Thou, divinest of all Arts divine!
Last in the train of renovating Truths
Advance, poetical Enchantress? Muse,
Who art the Angel of the soul, whose voice
The primal loveliness of vanish'd Things
Renews; or haply, thou in pure perfection art
A Priestess, who behind the veil of sense
Conducts the Spirit to the holy shrine
Where Beauty, Love, and Everlasting Light
Are shrouded; or, a Prophetess, whose lip
Their power interprets with a vocal spell.

Thou beautiful Magician! be thy name
Whate'er Thou wilt: Creatress of delight
Expression paints not! though the World affright
Thy radiant visit, still art Thou revered;
And the soft wave of Thy descending wings
Is token'd by the pulse's quivering joy.
Beneath the play of thy melodious smiles
Our spirit quickens into thrills of heaven,
And Feeling worships at thy faintest sound!
All hours are thine; all climes and seasons drink
Thine effluence bright, and immaterial power.
Thou with the Universe twin-born didst rise!
And Thou alone, when tempted Nature fell,
Unfallen wert: and thus Thy glorious aim
Like true religion's, is to lead us back
From recreant darkness to primeval bliss.

All moods are Thine; all maladies of thought
By thee are visited with healing sway.
In those dread moments, when a hideous veil
Of darkness, woven by some demon-hand,
Lies on the world; when Love itself is cold
Or earthly; and the tone Affection breathes
Falls fruitless on the mind, as ocean-spray
Which dies unheeded on the savage rock;
When Nature is untuned, and all things wear
The coarse reality Derision loves,
E'en then, how often thine assuasive balm
Spirit of beauty! intellectual queen!
Descendeth, melting over heart and brain
Like dew upon the desert, till the soul
Revives, and this bad World seems exorcised!
And Thou canst hallow with ennobling power
High impulses, of superhuman sway,
Which come like shades of pre-existent Life
Athwart the mind, when dream-eyed Fancy rules.
For is not Man mysteriously begirt
By something dread, imagination feels,
Yet fathoms not? Dare human Creed deny
That mortal feeling, in its finest mood,
May be some thrill of sympathetic chords
Which link our nature to a world unknown!

And since the spirit with the flesh doth war,
And Life is oft an agonising thirst
Which nothing visible can tame, or cool,
That Beauty, which the hues of thought create,
By thee enchanted, slakes the mental fire
That parches us within: and yearning dreams
And hopes which breathe of immortality
Thy power ennobles with mysterious aid.
Then, long as Earth is round us, and the wings
Of Fancy by the light of faith ascend,
May Poetry her sibyl-language weave,
Enlighten, charm, and elevate the world.

Creation's hope! our universal All!
From Thee alone believing spirits learn
That man is deathless, an immortal heir
Of Being yet to be. Stupendous thought!
Though frail as dew thy fleeting life departs,
The Soul is godlike! world on world may rise
And wither, quench'd in everlasting gloom;
And surging ages into silence roll
Like haughty billows which have heaved and died;
But still unfading, bright with awful bliss,
Or pale with agony, the Soul shall live
And like Jehovah, utter its “I am!”

We shall not sleep, but we shall all arise
For judgment;—with an instantaneous frame
Of being, Dust shall look on God, and live!
An hour is coming when the grave will hear
And answer to a tomb-awakening trump
Which thunders o'er the icy trance of Death:
The waning universe, the earth and heaven
Shall vanish in th' immeasurable Deep;
But Thine own promise shall not pass away.
And though that hour, for resurrection doom'd,
Be hidden, shrouded from angelic mind
A secret buried in Eternal Thought,—

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As certain as the blood of Christ hath flow'd,
Messiah risen, and the heavens received
And throned His Presence, He shall come again!

And then, the funeral of Creation see!
Sun, moon, and star dissolve, and wane, and die;
The earth is riven; with appalling roar
The Sea departeth, as her dead ascend;
And wing'd Archangels on the winds unroll
Their summons; not an atom but is thrill'd
With life or feeling, at that dreadful sound!
And now look up! behold, He cometh! clouds
And splendours, with seraphic armies, throng
Before Him, cleaving the prophetic sky
With vanward glory, to announce The God.
And lo! the semblance of His far-off Throne
Advances; as embodied lustre bright
The Judge of Earth, the Son Almighty, comes!
And all who have been, since creation was,
Moveless and countless, on their features wear
A solemn radiance, from His Form Divine
Reflected; every eye is fix'd and still,
To Him upraised, whose eye discerneth all!

Again the trumpet! and this dread array,
The multitudinous and living mass
At once is sever'd; right and left they stand
Divided, as of old the fated sea.
Was cloven when the wand of Moses waved;
And in each soul there is a judgment-throne
Erected, where eternal Conscience reigns.

But listen!—far behind this breathing host
Of mortals, myriads of colossal Shapes,
Unearthly, wild, and dim with ghastly wo,
Rise in the glare!—the ruin'd Angels come
From darkness, and a clank of chain resounds
Appallingly, above the world distinct!
But One, who, vast above the vastest there
In towering majesty the sky confronts,
As though the fabric of the heavens would shrink
From the dark light of his unfathom'd gaze,
Behold him! how magnificently dread!
From the huge mountain into embers sunk
To the last billow of expiring sea,—
O'er all the terror of his ruin frowns,
Who battled with omnipotence in heaven
And will be fearless in the fires of hell!

Another gaze! e'er Earth and Nature die;
The Spirit of eternity descends,
Seven thunders speak, to heaven his arm He lifts,
And utters, “Time and earth shall be no more:”
Creation withers at that dread command,
And like a shade, the Universe departs!

Oh! in this agony of Nature's death
May he, who dared from erring fancy's gloom
To lift his spirit to the Light of Light,
And shadow forth some lineaments divine
Of God Incarnate, by redemption seen,
Unblasted look upon the Lord he sang:
And in yon world unutterably bright
Where thought is holy as the heaven it breathes,
By Angels taught, around The Throne renew
The song eternal hymning Time began.

MINOR POEMS.

535

WELLINGTON:

OR, THE HERO'S FUNERAL.

TO HER WHO NUMBERS MORE THAN TWENTY RELATIONS THAT HAVE FOUGHT AND SERVED UNDER ARTHUR, DUKE OF WELLINGTON, THE FOLLOWING ATTEMPT IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY HER HUSBAND.

“The mighty Man, and the Man of War,
The Judge and the Prophet, and the Prudent
And the Ancient and the Honourable Man.”
Is. iii. 2, 3.

“The King lifted up his voice and wept at the grave of Abner, and all the people wept. And the King said unto his servants, Know ye not that there is a Prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel.”—2 Sam. iii. 32—38.

“SATIS DIU VIXISSE DICITO.”

I. INTRODUCTION.

Through England's capital no rest tonight!
Where sleepless myriads watch for morning light,
Whose hearts concentre in one vast regret
To feel the fullness of that awful debt
A shielded Empire to her saviour owes,
When grey-hair'd Glory finds its last repose
Under the crypt, where storied banners wave
Their drooping pageant o'er some public grave.

With a fev'rish awe opprest,
And a something in the breast
Neither tones nor tears explain,
Like a mute and mighty pain,
Or a pulse of voiceless grief
Too august for word-relief,
Millions now are slumberless;
And in thinking loneliness
Are brooding o'er the unbreath'd thought,—
To-morrow down to dust is brought
That hoary Chief, whose high career
Will range half Europe round his bier;
Who fifteen battles fought and won
Nor left nor lost a British gun,
But took three thousand cannon from the foe
The thunder of his charge had laid in battle low!

A COMPARISON.

But while the riband, star, and coronet
With mingled radiance in one warrior met,
Austerely simple to the last he stood,
A hero great by being good!
In unity of heart and mind
Thus he and Nelson are combined
For prowess, deeds, and all we prize
When perils round a nation rise:
The first became the Nelson of all lands,
The second proved our Wellington by sea;
And both were weapon'd by Almighty hands
To guard the island-fortress of the free:
Nor when the bomb-shell blazed, and roll'd the culverin
From iron lips of death its thunder and its din,
From Tagus to the Thames
From Sambre to the Seine
Is there a brand that shames
The spot where he hath been!—
The Man was never in the Hero lost
Nor Valour glorified at Virtue's cost.

II. NIGHT-SCENES ON NOVEMBER 17.

November's night is harsh and cold;
Like banners seem the clouds up-roll'd
Sable and dusk, in starless heaven,
And, here and there, by night-gales driven;

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Fiercely and fast the loud-toned rain
Rattles against the window-pane;
But neither wet nor winter's chill
The mingled rush becalm of myriads coming still:—
Through dusky lane, and street, or lighted square
London is moved, and motion ev'rywhere!

MIDNIGHT.

But at last, there seems a lull
Making night more beautiful.
Chariot, steed, and rapid car
With fainter cadence roll afar;
Till a deeper hush is come,
And the wide and wakeful hum
Ebbs and falls, and dies away
Like a dream-tone's melting play.
Through their rent and riven shrouds
Planets beam from yonder clouds;
Pallid stars patrol the sky,
And arrest some musing eye,
While yon weak and wat'ry moon,
Like a soft and silver noon
On the turret gleams awhile
With a pale and placid smile.

Soon o'er the varied City's vast extent
A deep'ning stillness from the night is sent;
And the calmer few who can
Master all the scenes of man,
Keeping down the pulse of life
When it throbs in storm or strife,—
Feel the balm of slumber now
Brooding over cheek and brow;
Those that work, and they who weep,
Woo the mercy of mild sleep;
And in soft innocence of sacred rest
The babe lies pillow'd on maternal breast.

III. DAWN.

But the cloudy dawn is waking
And the day-blush dimly breaking:
Again the fevers of excitement roll
Tides of emotion through that public soul
Which heaves vast London, while 'mid hearts that mourn,
A dead Immortal to his tomb is borne.
A thrilling freshness in the bracing air
Gives sudden token that the wind is fair;
Or the blue forehead of the Sky afar
Glows like a gem of lustre one lone star,
Whose quiv'ring radiance, exquisitely bright,
Throbs through the air, and fascinates the sight.
Relenting Winter hath subdued her rain,
And, lo! the clearing heavens are calm again:—
A beaming change of blessed weather
To welcome hearts convened together,
As though the conscious Atmosphere would pay
Some genial homage to this glorious day.

IV. MORNING.

And now go forth!—a spectacle to see
Eternalized in mind and memory.
Yet, when the Muse of History records
The pomp we celebrate, in deathless words,
She will not pause o'er car and cavalcade,
Or mailéd hosts in banner'd pomp array'd;
But this will be the truth, to tell,—
That Empires loved one Man so well,
A million and a half of mourners came
Whose hearts were motto'd with his cherish'd name!
The People make the pageant then;
His monument is living men;
And never in the past of hero-crowded time
Look'd Hannibal so great, or Pompey so sublime!
And why? because the Chief of Waterloo
Teaches all ages what firm Will can do
When, all intol'rant of the mean and low,
Virtue his friend, and Vice his only foe,
Each baser passion from the bosom hurl'd,—
The vanquisher of Self is victor of the World!
Career and character, where thus combined,
Both make and move the hist'ry of mankind,
When perill'd Crisis and o'erwhelming Power
Need more than strategy to front the hour.

V.

On window, roof, and balcony,
Where foot can stand, or eye can see;
By churchyard-gate, or garden-wall,
Near porch and palace, hut and hall
Crowd human forms, like clust'ring bees
That swarm at noon on summer-trees;
While, clashing with incessant jar,
Rush chariot-wheels and rolling car;
Horse and horsemen then combine,
Clear the way, and close the line:—
Still, the trooping thousands come!
Deeper yet the distant hum;
Ev'ry form and ev'ry face
Apparell'd with emotion's trace;
Each for each, and all on all
For succour in loud chorus call,
Till the whirling air around
Surges like a sea of sound!

VI. THE PROCESSION FORMS.

'Tis eight o'clock by matin-chime;
And signal-guns announce the time,

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While countless numbers, mute with breathless trance,
Seem melted into one, to view the Pomp advance.

With ling'ring preludes, long and low,
Comes marching on, serene and slow,
'Mid symphonies of solemn woe
Yon Cavalcade of Death!
With mourning trump and muffled drum
Behold the vast procession come,
And hold your pausing breath!

Cornet, flute, and clarion pour
Mingled death-wails more and more;
Bannerets and blazonry
With plumes of tow'ring pageantry,
Mingled with the harness'd gun,
Streaming Flag and Gonfalon,
Colours out of carnage won,
Rifles, Horse, and Fusileer,
Dragoon, Marine, and Grenadier,
And scar-worn Pensioners, with sable wands
That faintly quiver'd in their feeble hands,
Steed and soldiers' measured pace,
Wearing each some mourning-trace,
While sob and sigh intensely show
The heavings of the heart below,
All this, with heavy tramp, and hollow tread,
To symbolise they mourn the dead,—
Concentre, if thou can, the harmonising whole,
And treasure it with tears of sympathy and soul!

VII. THE CHARGER.

But yet awaits a tearful Sight,
Though not with martial splendour dight.
As some lone bugle, when the fight is done,
That wails a death-note, while the dying sun
Goes down on carnage-cover'd fields,
O'er sad imagination wields
A spell more potent than the cannon-roar,
So, yon last steed which bears its Chief no more,
Pierces the heart with pathos all its own
And moves each chord with some responsive tone;
Where now, the last to close the cavalcade
That through three miles its winding pomp display'd,
A groom-led Charger riderless
Comes drooping in its loneliness,
As though the meek-eyed Creature felt
Funereal sorrow through it melt.
And, who that saw the boot and spur,
And did not feel his life-blood stir,
When that denuded Steed a type was made to be
That glory is the garb earth puts on vanity!

VIII. MILITARY SCENE.

Hark! again the muffled drum,
While the plumed Battalions come
Timing deep their measured tread
To the March surnamed the Dead,
Six in file, in single rank,
Ringing out a hollow clank:—
Mingle with the martial scene
Mailéd Guard and red Marine,
Foot and Horse-Artillery,
And brigades of Infantry:
For thus, each Regiment sent its type to show
Some fitting token of funereal woe;
And when, to end the vast array,
Hussar and Lancer lined the way,
The wailing Piper, next, a pibroch blew
And coronach that thrill'd the soul of Feeling through!

IX. FUNERAL-CAR.

But lo! with gloomy scutcheons glorious
Each telling of the Past victorious,
Engraved by heraldry of war,
Comes rolling on the laurell'd Car
Under the shade of whose triumphant pall
Imagination dreams the earthly all
Of Arthur, Duke of Wellington!—
The greatest Hero Time has gazed upon.
And never since bereavèd patriots met
In solemn anguish and sublime regret
Round the mourn'd bier of warrior, saint or king,
Could grateful Mem'ry into action bring
Such impulses of thrilling awe
As sanctified the scene I saw,
Drawn by twelve steeds of sable hue
When first the Death-car roll'd in view.

X. A LIVING SPECTACLE.

'Twas not the pomp, the banner, nor the plume,
Nor all which glorifies a Warrior's tomb,
That touch'd with superhuman power
The awful pathos of that deathless hour.
'Twas moral Grandeur! 'twas the true sublime
Of sacred Nature soaring out of time,
And drinking in from worlds which faith can see
The inspirations of eternity.

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And one such moment grasps an age of life,
With more than poetry and passion rife;
Making us feel immortal instincts rise
And claim celestial kinship with the Skies.

XI.

Round that high Car though countless hosts assembled,
And under pawing steeds the pathways trembled,
You might have heard your heart-pulse beat,
So hush'd became the o'eraw'd Street!
And pale, as if with inward prayer,
The living Mass stood gazing there,
With heads uncover'd and with moisten'd eyes,
Whose silence utter'd, “There a Hero lies!
From whom, when call'd to bid the earth farewell,
The truncheons of eight laurell'd Armies fell;
The pillar of our Church and State,
By self-renouncement nobly great;
Who in the storm of public danger stood
Bold as the rock that baffles ocean's flood,
And when the lion-flag of warfare was unfurl'd
Bade Vict'ry rear it high, and wave it round the world!”

XII. EUROPEAN HOMAGE.

Upon his honour'd Bier, attendant,
With nodding plume and waving pendant,
Alone not Britain sent the bearers of his pall;
But, moved by gallant chivalry
That breathed of heart-nobility,
Seven Marshals graced with Heraldry,
From foreign lands, spontaneously from all,
Have come to tell of his career
Whose prowess friend and foe revere,
Each bearing in the crape-bound hand
Some bâton of extinct command
Monarchs or princes had in life bestow'd
On that brave Chief, to whom their Kingdoms owed
A vaster debt than peerless Rank can pay,
Or golden Orders in their gemm'd array.
Belgium and Prussia, Portugal and Spain,
And distant Russia, from her ice-bound plain,
With Hanover, and England too,
Remember'd mighty Waterloo!
But Austria sent no warrior-chief
Her own to blend with British grief;
Coldly apart from those united kings
Who each their homage to a Hero brings,
Preferr'd to stand, and gracelessly forget
The Past she burdens with an unpaid debt,
Because a woman-scourger in his body felt
A Nemesis for that vile blow he dealt;
Alas! that in an hour like this, the pride
Of less than Littleness was gratified!
And caused a Kingdom thus to stand alone,
Nor honour Him who saved her shaken throne.

XIII. VETERANS AND MOURNERS.

But turn we to a nobler theme.
How mournful, then, their martial dream
Who, while around them tramp and stir
The Herald, Troop, and Trumpeter,
Were haunted with a blent array
Of scenes which ne'er dissolve away;
And imaged forth with mind's creative eye
The Man who taught them how to dare, and die,
As, trench'd with many a battle-scar,
The white-hair'd Veterans of war
Gather and group beside yon bier,
And scarce can hide the welling tear!

Past sharers in dread fields of blood
Full oft with him these comrades stood,
When valour beam'd from that victorious brow
Which cold in coffin'd death lay plumeless now!
And could they view those guns, whose dauntless roar
Thunder'd proud Albion's name from shore to shore,
Or on the steed, array'd in boot and spur,
Fix their sad eyes, nor feel the dead Past stir
Within them, like a living thought
With years of resurrection fraught?
On Torres Vedras' bulwark'd lines
Again the flag of England shines!
Vimiera's field, and Salamanca's fight,
And Talavera's, when it roused the night,
Sebastian's siege, and Badajos' return,
And Albuera, with its conflict stern:
Visions of battle and campaign arise
And flash before their unforgetting eyes!—
From the first laurel gain'd at dread Assaye,
To the red carnage on that thrilling day

539

Embalm'd for ever in sublime renown,
When England struck the Gallic Eagle down,
And the War-Fiend, who half a world had won,
Sank wither'd by the blast of Wellington!

Thus, round the coffin of th' heroic Dead
A living atmosphere of love is spread
That glows with hist'ry, till the pluméd bier
Is almost hidden by a warrior's tear.
The shock of Armies, and the battle-shout
Of charging Valour, when it put to rout
Column and cavalry in fierce attack,
Ring through his brain, and bring the dead Years back:
Till fancy hears the loud “Hurrah!”
That Picton raised at Quatre-Bras
Where royal Brunswick closed his eye,
While, bivouack'd beneath the sky,
Some bleeding sentinel who watch'd the night
Heard the last bugle that bewail'd the fight.

XIV. PROCESSION TO THE CATHEDRAL.

Again we listen! for the cornet's wail
Pours on the wind its melancholy tale.
Upward, o'er the troop-lined way
Flank'd in full and firm array,
Still the banner'd Pomp proceedeth,
Horse and horseman onward leadeth;
Mourning hearts with inward chime
To the Dead March beating time;
Near and nearer still they come
To the Hero's burial-home,
Under the arching shade of yon cathedral-dome.

XV. FAREWELL.

Ere between the church-yard gate
Car and cavalcade have enter'd,
Still for thoughtful eyes await
Such a scene and sight concenter'd,
As all the pomps which fascinate the gaze,
The wreaths of conquest, and the palms of praise
Can rival not,
But sink forgot,
When England's sworded Prince appears;
And, marching by him, touch'd with manly tears,
Saluting warriors slowly move,
And shadow forth the signs of love
On face and feature, which betoken
What quiv'ring words could not have spoken,
But now with tearful eloquence they tell,—
The British army bid their Chief farewell!

XVI. ST. PAUL'S.

'Mid radiant masses of reposing light
Yon Temple seems dilated to the sight,
While vast perspectives of cathedral-gloom
Whose drap'ry serves to symbolise the tomb,
Entrance the gazer with absorbing spell
As though some Vision on the spirit fell.
Thoughts of earth and thrills from heaven
Thus to each and all are given,
And accost the inner-sense
With a dumb, deep eloquence,
Such as Faith and Conscience hear
When they bend around the bier.

Now enter there! survey that vaulted Dome
Encircled o'er with beads of golden light,
As though a supernat'ral noon had come
To glorify the realms of night.
Round the curved base a wreath of lustre glances,
High o'er its many-pictured roof advances,
And lights, as if with living play,
Gigantic forms in war-array:
From capital to capital
Through transept and pilaster'd wall
Down nave and aisle the line of lustre streams
O'er circled tiers of dome-ascending seats,
Till the last row some closing pillar meets,
Where soft effulgence tremulously gleams.

But not by picture-words of poetry
Yon mass of concentrated human kind
In hues of language can reflected be,
As e'er to fascinate and fill the mind,
And realise what they beheld,
With voiceless wonder inly quell'd,
Whose spell-bound eyes o'ergazed the mighty Whole,
And caught the magic of the mind and soul

540

Which beam'd from ev'ry face in that funereal throng,
Beyond the painter's hue, above the poet's song!
Throne and Altar, Bench and State,
Brave and wise, and good and great,
All Britain welcomes with revering eye,
Fill'd the hush'd Fane where buried heroes lie,
And ocean's warrior, in his tomb sublime,
Waits the last trump which rings the knell of Time.
Another gaze! while amber'd sunbeams fall
And through the lofty dome-light streaming,
Come slanting downward on the concave wall
With more than earth-born radiance gleaming,—
On tinted robes in tremulous array
Pulses of painted lustre seem to play.
But, hark! before the western-gate
A solemn Dead-March sounds;
And, moving in sepulchral state,
Approaches to its hallow'd bounds
The last Procession; while the booming knell
Blends its deep cadence with the organswell.
Planted by each bearer's hand,
Flag and Guidon take their stand;
Inglitt'ring column, robed with gorgeous vest,
A double file of grouping warriors rest
Around yon hidden burial-place;
While Choir and Clergy up the nave
Marshal and move, and gleam and wave
Their priestly robes, as on they pace.
And mark, along the living mass
Electrical emotions pass!—
Profound, unreason'd, an instinctive awe
Of something deeper than mere Vision saw,
Thrills the mute concourse, till they meekly rise
With all the patriot glist'ning in their eyes;
And feelings not of this world clothe each brow,
As on, with measured tread, advances now
The choir-procession, while the burial-chant
With resurrection-tones so jubilant,
Peals the dead Warrior on his pluméd bier,
'Mid sigh, and sob, and many a martial tear,
Onward to his long, last home
Underneath th' illumined Dome!
But as the wind-bow'd plumes were bending
High o'er his coffin-lid depending,
How life and death together seem'd to be
And awed the gazer like a Mystery!

XVII.

Thus amidst the boom of bells
Tolling their funereal-knells,
The organ-peal, and cannon-roar
Re-echoed round the temple-door,
With all due pomp of heraldry,
With each befitting pageantry,
'Mid waving banners to his tomb is borne
Great Wellington!—and soon shall wailing horn
And cadence of the muffled drum
Tell the awed Soul the last is come!
For, ducal crown and scutcheon'd bier
Will be engulph'd, and disappear;
Down the chasm, dark and deep
Yearning eyes will strain and weep;
Then, the staff of office broken
Will reveal its sign and token;
And the Garter-King proclaim
More than ever earth-wide fame
Gave heroic Man before,
Or the brightest patriot bore.

THE BURIAL.

Like dream-heard music when it melts away
Serenely dying, sad and slow,
Thus from the living air and light of day
Adown the vaulted crypt below
The coffin'd frame of Wellington
Descends,—recedes,—and all is gone!
And o'er it deepens with expressive gloom
The yawning darkness of that open Tomb,
Where Nelson sleeps, but now, where two are laid
In death's cold slumber, side by side;
Of whom hereafter 'twill be nobly said,
Millions were mourners when they died!

And in the Temple, where he lies
Entomb'd with martial obsequies,
Oh! never since that Shrine of prayer
Lifted its cross in sun and air,
Or choral praise with chanted swell
Upon the ears of Godhead fell,
Have quiring voices breathed an anthem-tone,
From sixteen thousand melted into one,
The diapàson of whose deep Amen
To earth seem echo'd back from glory-realms again!

541

XVIII. CONCLUSION.

The booming echoes of the minute-gun
Hark! how they roll from London's castle-towers,
Proclaiming the sepulchral rites are done:
Yet, ere the World resume its wonted powers,
While dying notes from many a distant knell
Sink into silence with a sad farewell,
A moralising gloom on man descends
And not unfitly with the Pageant blends.

NATURE'S ANALOGY.

In red magnificence of evening-dyes,
Oft like a paradise of cloud there lies
A pomp aërial, such as poets love,
When beauty consecrates the heavens above.
There, musing on some breezy height,
Enthroned in loveliness and light,
A lone spectator stands to view
The day-god wear his parting hue,
When gliding down the crimson'd west
He wraps him in his regal vest.—
How exquisite awhile to be
Surrender'd up to Sky and Sea!
As drinking in the splendid whole
He mingles with Creation's soul,
While lisping waves, with pensive lull,
And cadence faintly-beautiful,
Chime with the hour, till earth and air
An elemental magic wear,
And so entrance impassion'd Hearts,
The soul forgets, the Scene departs.—
But while they dream, the cloud-pomp dies
A beauteous death along the skies;
The pallid dews of night descend,
And dimness and dejection end
Those witching spells of sunset-hour
Which give to poesy its power.

XIX. MORAL CONTRAST.

So would it be when this great Day shall close
Which bore the Warrior to his dead repose,
If tinsell'd pageantry or painted scene
Gave the true witness which the day hath been.
But when the blazonry of public Woe
Fades from our vision, like an air-born show,
The deep significance which underlies
All outer-forms is one that never dies,
But melts into the moral life within
And prompts that spirit where those Aims begin
Which soar beyond a passion for renown,
And learn from Duty how to win the crown.
For England's people, from the humblest clan
Of working poor and toil-worn artisan,
From town, from hamlet, and the hawthorn-side
Where the lone cotters in contentment bide,
Have each received within responsive mind
Ennobling thoughts which elevate mankind.
And thus, perchance, when other palms are won,
Time will reveal how much this day hath done
To form the patriot in the public heart;
Or, teach the warrior his predestined part,
And sow, as far as pure Example can,
Those seeds, whose harvest is—heroic Man!

Mere vulgar Heroes of the vicious stamp
Whose names suggest a carnage, or a camp,
Meteors of Crime, the monsters of the past
Who sweep the world with desolating blast,
And when they perish in their dread career
Leave Time to track them by the widow's tear,—
May point the moral of some future page:
But, when the Warrior, Senator, and Sage
Meet in one man, like Him we mourn to-day,
Conscience predicts, what unborn years will say;—
That he had pass'd into the Nation's heart
Of which he grew a principal and part;
And when he died, far more than boundless Grief
Sought in the burial-pomp a fit relief,—
Each for himself put fun'ral raiment on,
And wept a friend in mourning Wellington.

XX. PATRIOTISM.

And Thou, environ'd with thy zone of waves,
Nursling of waters! whom old Ocean laves
As though He loved to hear his billow-roar
Champion the rocks which sentinel thy shore;
Intrepid Isle! whose amaranthine bays
Bloom in the light of Heaven's approving gaze;
Defender of the Faith in Christendom's great heart!
Well may we proudly think on this day what Thou art,
And, pond'ring o'er th' imperishable past,
See Glory's halo round thy hist'ry cast!

Let Patriots boast of thine and thee,
Of Commerce, Arms, and Chivalry,

542

Of princely homes, of palace-halls,
Of Culture, and whate'er recals
How lofty Will can dare, and lion-heart can do,
When Trafalgar became an ocean-Waterloo:
'Tis right to let such feeling reign,
And when dead Ages breathe again,
O'er the harp-string of the soul
Like a lyric rapture roll.

And their proud boast is purer still
If Thou thy mission-work fulfil,
As dauntless champion of the Truth to stand
And brighten Europe like a beacon-land,
By teaching tyrants who would crush the mind,
'Tis sacrilege!—for God is there enshrined.
Thus sacred law and liberty unite
A Prince's sceptre with the People's right,
And in the thunder of a bold-voiced Press
Nations can utter forth their nobleness,
Who find in scripture, when it frees the soul,
A Magna Charta which sublimes the whole!

THE PEOPLE.

Yet bounds the heart with patriotic bliss
Through all excitements of a morn like this,
To think, how nobly have the People proved
They well can honour whom they wisely loved!
For while they paid to peerless Wellington
A homage Alexander never won,
The lofty and the low, our peasants and our peers
Have met and mingled here, unchill'd by frowns or fears,
In this metropolis of varied Man
Where Nature musters every type she can;
And yet, no impious Wrong hath once profaned
The sabbath-peace of sentiment which reign'd;
But all was just, magnanimous, sincere;
And, heralded by many a votive tear,
The sun went down with no recorded crime
And left the British character sublime!

XXI. THE HERO.

With parting homage let these lines conclude,
And consecrate a poet's gratitude
To him, the paragon of English praise,
In whom Posterity's admiring gaze
Will mark a Hero, who adorn'd the Earth
And made the World a debtor to his worth:
Best of the best, and greatest of the great
In all which guards a throne, or guides a state;
The massive grandeur of whose balanced mind
Was so adjusted, that the Will inclined
Where Conscience led, and not where Fortune threw
Her fleeting radiance o'er some distant view.—
His frame was iron; and with sleepless force
Through half a cent'ry traced his hero-course:
Abroad, at home, in Senate-house, or Field,
Friendship and Hate alike to his firm counsels yield,
Whose glance, by mental intuition, ran
Through each dark maze of policy and plan,
And reached conclusions whose results contain
Maxims and morals, which will rule and reign
As long as Treason, Stratagem, and War
Endanger thrones, or threaten from afar.

Just as the Law, inflexible as Truth,
Thus lived great Wellington in age and youth;
And when hoar'd years had bow'd that classic head
With silver-locks so venerably spread,
How did we greet him in the public Square
And rouse the stranger with re-echo'd “There!
“There comes The Duke! whose very shadow throws
A light on England, wheresoe'er he goes;”
While pausing Childhood with entrancéd eye
Beheld him in his glory moving by:
And though the winter of declining age
Touch'd form and feature with a sad presage,
In list'ning reverence how the Senate hung
On the plain Saxon of that pithy tongue!—
The smiting earnestness of honest speech
Which taught more wisdom than mere words can reach.

And hence, the Arbiter of Empires, he
Reign'd on his throne of true simplicity,
And by the firmness of unflinching will
Rallied around him trusting Empires still:—
A Kingly Subject, whose unscepter'd hand
Was more than Armies, when it waved command.
And this, by virtue of that noble Creed
That helm'd each movement in the hour of need,
The master-spell which rein'd emotion down—
That danger must be met by duty to The Crown!

543

XXII. FINAL APOSTROPHÈ.

Since God descends through history to Man
Whose dark vicissitudes but veil His plan,
And mortal Agents, while they do and dare
Are but the Organs of His purpose there,
Oh, Thou! to whom the shields of earth belong,
The everlasting Stronger than the Strong;
Divine Upholder of heroic souls
Whom prowess arms, or purity controls,
Bulwark'd with blessings which reveal Thy Hand
Long may the charter'd State of England stand;
That peerless growth of patriotic mind,
The great, eternal Wonder of mankind!
Lodge in our British hearts true love of Thee
And cause Thine Image on this earth to be,
Whose varied destinies of weal and woe
Preach the vast truth a creedless world should know,—
The life of Nations is a god-like thing
Beyond mere Laureates of the world to sing;
Nursed and ennobled not by wealth and power
Nor all the pageants which bemock the hour,
But ruled by reason, and by faith sublimed
To loftier heights than Glory ever climb'd.

Celestial Lord of uncreated Love!
Waft to our souls pure wisdom from above,
And teach the secret of Thy moral plan,—
The source of freedom is God's will in man,
When sainted hearts have meekly understood
That perfect greatness is a power for good;
Typing the Godhead, Who Himself is great
Not by the thunders of enthronéd state;
Yet in the majesty of boundless might
Wills what is law, but in that law wills right;
That Saints and Seraphim alike may see
Their archetypes in His eternity,
And while they anthem an almighty Throne
Reflect His glories, and increase their own.

547

SHADOWS OF DEATH.

(1829.)

“Darest thou die.”—Shakspeare.

VISION-SCENES.

Throned in a vault where sleep departed kings
Behold the Tyrant of the world! Around
His shadowy head he waves a sceptre, made
Of monumental dust; and as it moves,
Before him glide a visionary throng
Of ministers, that do his deadly will.

First, Murder, with an eye of wolfish glare,
And brow of adamantine sternness, frowns,
His brooding visage blanch'd with guilt, and cold
As dead revenge; then Madness, with her locks
Of graceless beauty, crowding o'er a face
Terrifically wild: her cheeks are shrunk
As wither'd flowers, and in her fixèd eye
A lustre, meaningless yet mournful, dwells;
Like a pale cloud she glides along, and looks
Upon her lean-worn palms, before her spread
As tablets, where her idiot thoughts are traced!

Next Melancholy, with a downward brow,
Slow-paced, and solemn in her aspect, comes;
Behind, Intemperance, with degraded face,
Complexion'd like the redden'd clouds, which clasp
The dying sun; then Anger, with a storm
Of meaning hung upon her blacken'd front,
And Terror, eloquently dumb, appear.

With step as noiseless as the slumbering air,
Who comes, in beautiful decay?—her eyes
Dissolving with a feverish glow of light,
Her pallid nostrils delicately closed,
Her ringlets gathered in a languid wreath,
And on that cheek, once round with health's rich bloom,
A hectic tinge, as if the fairy tip
Of Beauty's finger faintly press'd it there:
Alas! Consumption is her fatal name.
But lo, a contrast! fierce with shining mail,
Sublime in aspect and supreme in gait,
Waving a crimson banner o'er his head,
With giant pace, stalks by terrific War!
His task?—To shatter thrones, and sully kings.

To these sad ministers of Death, succeed
Of Maladies a hideous crew; not least
Appalling, Pestilence, with eyes aghast,
And Famine, withered to a woful form.

Next, Phantoms round the Lord of human dust
In pallid indistinctness rise and move
For mental slaughter fearfully predoom'd!
Despair, with hollow, dim, sepulchral eyes;
And Love, the martyr of his own fix'd stake:
Ambition, with a canker-eaten soul;
And Genius, proud and pale, the self-consumed,
Whose gaze Infinity with spirit-light
Hath kindled, while the pining form decays
Like colour from a fainting cloud of eve!

CONTRASTS.

Such are thy delegates, disastrous Power!
Which make the martyr'd world thy prey, and seize
Their victims when and where they please. Alike
To thee the palace or the hut, the hall
Of Pleasure or the house of Wo.—A king
Mounts his high throne, with starry robes begirt;
Each look commands, and bright that royal brow
Beneath the burden of his jewell'd crown;
Before him princely courtiers bow their heads,
And on their fawning cheeks his smiles reflect,
And hover round him like a human god!
Thy bow is bent, thy dooming arrow shot,
And like a cloud-shade by the sun destroyed
Melts the great monarch from his pride and power!
The pale companion of the speechless earth,
A vault his palace, like his brother clay
Corrupted—bid his Court adore him now!

548

ANTICIPATIONS.

To die!—this gorgeous world of life and love
Forsake, and fleet beyond the bounds of thought;
To feel the death-dews creeping o'er each limb,
Our life-stream curdle, and the heart grow cold;
To be the flesh-worm's feast; to mould away
And blend our being with embracing dust;
All this, together with imagined wails
Of friends, whose tearful eyes attend our bier,—
Calls a chill horror round the name of death,
Which daunts the good, and makes the bad despair.

ANALOGIES.

All that we love and feel in nature's world
Bears dim relations to our common doom.
The clouds that blush, and die an airy death,
Or melt in weeping showers; the pensive streams
Whose tones are dying music; leaves new-born,
Which fade unpitied in the frosty arms
Of Winter, there to mingle with dead flowers,
Are all prophetic of our own decay.
And who, when hung enchanted o'er some page
Where genius flashes from each living line—
Hath never wander'd to the tomb, to see
The hand that penn'd it or the head that thought?

Dark feelings, coloured by the cloud of death,
With grand oppression thus the mind o'erflow,
As when some warm adorer of the dead
Who live, along the dim and banner'd aisle
Of arch'd cathedral, frames a dream sublime,
And learns how eloquent a tomb can be:
Or roams at twilight, where the Deep resounds,
To watch the ever-rolling waves converge
To where faint ocean weds the sky, and think,
Thus roll the restless hours of time along!

ASSOCIATIONS.

In banquet-halls, where queenly pleasures bloom,
And bright-faced Joy and young-eyed Beauty meet,
To them the shadows of the grave extend.
How oft, as unregarded on a throng
Of lovely creatures, in whose liquid eyes
The heart-warm feelings bathe, I've fondly look'd
With all a Poet's passion, and have wish'd
That years might never mar those perfect smiles,—
How often Death, as with a viewless wand
Has touched the scene, and witch'd it to a tomb,
Where beauty dwindled to a ghastly wreck
While moaning spirits of the Future cried,
Thus will it be when Time has work'd revenge!

LIFE A GRADUAL DEATH.

Our Yesterday is dead; our Morrow dies;
This hour is pining, and the breath we draw
So carelessly, our souls may waft—to where?
Our ages are but periodic tombs
Of those that went before: for childhood seems
The death of infancy; and childhood dies
When youth commences, which itself departs
In daring manhood; then old age begins,
Whose wrinkle deepens into manhood's grave:
Thus death is imaged by our very life!
And hope and pleasure, feeling, action, fame,
Have each their sepulchre: our visions melt
To dimness in Reality's chill tomb;
Creation's self a burning death must die,
And in eternity shall Time expire!

STREET FUNERAL.

And o'er the laughing holiday of life
When men are cheerful as the dancing beam
How often death's terrific darkness frowns!
See! where they come, the black-robed funeral train,
Solemn as silent thunder-clouds athwart
The noon-day sky: from heaven a radiance dies
The flowing pall with hues of mocking light;
Around Life moves his mighty throng, and deep
The death-bells wail along the ebbing air:
But one poor week hath vanish'd,—and that form,
Now clay-cold in the narrow coffin stretch'd,
Stalk'd o'er the street which takes him to his tomb!
On with the mourning train!—the crowd divide
Before them with a busy hum, then close
Behind, like billows by a prow dispersed
That sever but to clash and roar again!

ANGEL OF DEATH.

Angel of Darkness! out of hell evoked,
With dread the bosom of Creation thrill'd
When fell thy shadow over Eden's bower,
Whose beauty wither'd like the spirit's bloom
When the rich breath of young affection dies.
Look back! appall'd Imagination! gaze
Thine eye to dimness, o'er the track of time

549

Scathed by his fury! mark the demonwing'd,
'Tis Death! the Uncontrollable! his flight
Begins, whose path wears Desolation's smile!
And how eternity its gate unbars
To let them in, those fleet and countless dead,
While myriads melt and vanish, like the gleams
That flash from fever's eye!—

HIS TRIUMPH.

Thy spell hath work'd,
Thou King of woes! thy wand hath been obey'd;
Destruction saw it, and Her deeds reply!
The sea hath buried in her floating tomb,
The fire devour'd, the blighting pest consumed,
The rocking earthquake into atoms crush'd,
And conflagration, havoc, siege, and war,
And malady which like a fiend-breath acts,
Have martyr'd,—what an unimagined host
Since the first grave for Adam's corpse unclosed!
And, oh, let mother, maid, and orphan tell,
Let parent, friend, whate'er affection clasps
Or sweet relationship of soul implies,—
How tears have rain'd from lids that watch'd and wept
As each beloved one, like a featured Shade
Melted in mute eternity! For Death
Hath cull'd his victims from the choicest bowers
And gardens of Existence: fair as bright
And pure as paradise before the Fall
Have babes departed, ere one smiling look
Hath travers'd earth, or seen the life of things:
And voiceless as the uncomplaining dews
That wither on the dusky cheek of Night,
The silent victims of the heart's decay
Have perish'd! while within the dart was fix'd
And rankling; not a sigh their secret told:
For pure and proud, and delicate as light
Their being faded: 'twas the blight of soul,
The mildew of the mind, that check'd and chill'd
Their health of spirit: friend and parent yearn'd
Around them, wondering where the venom lurk'd
Which thus with cruel stealth defaced and marr'd
That earth-born seraph, Beauty robed for heaven!
But still they faded with a calm decline
Serene as twilight; leaving early death
A lovely secret, by th' Almighty known.

DEATH'S PROGRESS.

What is the Past?—The sepulchre of time
Where lies the dust which once form'd living man.
By thousands oft, or one by one, decay
Hath reap'd mankind for thy dread harvest, Death!
Thus in the forest, where a leafy host
Hangs on the mercy of autumnal winds
In withering tremor, when a howling gust
Havocs the branches, throngs of leaves descend
Countless and quick as human glances fall;
But when the air is tranced, with thrilling tone
A leaflet drops,—how awfully distinct!
To him whose moralising dream surveys
A hue of death on each consumptive bough.

DEATH HAS NO HISTORIAN.

And Thou! pale Chronicler of perish'd years,
Whose page is studded with the dyes of sin
And blood, or brighten'd with deceptive gleams
Of miscall'd glory, what can thy dark book
Of History teach?—but half what Truth has been!
The heat, the struggle, the majestic toils
Of high contention, which colossal Minds
Exhibit on the stage of human dreams,
By thee are traced with emulative glow;
But hadst Thou, by omniscient aid inspired,
The dread instruction from each dying lip
Recorded,—what a page for conscience thine!
A thrilling sermon for the soul to read
Whose text would be, eternity unveil'd!

IDEAL VIEWS.

Around thee, for awhile, the den recal,
The shore, the blood, the battle-wasted fields,
The dungeon, rock, or sickly chamber dim
Where nature gasp'd or groan'd its last farewell!
From death-beds back the curtain draw, and see
How Clay and Spirit to the last contend.
Advance, and view a haughty sinner die!
Behold the brow where thought satanic reign'd,
The glance which threaten'd to appal the tomb,
The hand whose motion made a tempest rise
In hearts and empires!—hark! the voice
That once created valour by its sound,
How fruitless all, how infantile and vain!
He dies, as underneath our foot the dews,

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Gone at a touch of death! Or mark the bed
Where he whose spirit had his God unthroned,
Annihilated Heaven, Hereafter mock'd,
And call'd the world a fatherless Unknown,
Lies wild and restless as the moaning wave:
His guilt hath set eternity on fire
And shuddering, like a shrivell'd leaf,—he dies!

DYING SAINTS.

But Death has often been by faith uncrown'd
And daunted, till dis dim and icy gaze
Forewent its terror; and his summons rang
Like fairy preludes from seraphic lyres
Heaven-wafted, on the parting Spirit's ear.
And if that Volume, where pure Angels keep
A soul's bright history, could unfolded be,
Pilgrims of earth! who seek the better land,
How would ye burn with apostolic love
And in the ashes of the tomb discern
A Spark immortal, kindling for the skies
What adorations, warm as incense-fire,
What bursts of faith, what notes of speechless joy,
What gleams of Christ in glorified array,
What tones and tears of overwhelming love
Around the couch of dying virtue throng'd
Ere rushed the spirit from its house of clay!

Oh! beautiful beyond depicting words
To paint, the hour that wafts to heaven a soul!
The world grows dim; the scenes of time depart;
The hour of peace, the walk of social joy,
The mild companion, and the deep-soul'd friend,
The loved and lovely, see his face no more:
The mingling spell of sun, of sea, and air,
Is broken; voice, and gaze, and smiles which speak,
Must perish; parents take their hush'd adieu;
A wife, a child, a daughter half divine
Or son which never drew a father's tear,
Approach him, and his dying tones receive
In God's own language!—'tis an hour of awe
Yet terrorless, when revelations flow
From faith immortal; view that pale-worn Brow,
It gleams with glory! in his eye there dawns
A dazzling earnest of unutter'd joy:
Each pang subdued, his longing soul respires
The gales of glorified eternity;
And round him, hues ethereal, harps of light,
And lineaments of earthless beauty throng,
As, wing'd on melody, the saint departs
While Heaven in miniature before him shines.

DEATH NEVER PAUSES.

The thought how dread, that not a moment fleets
But with it many a soul hath sunk away
To that untraced Abyss, within whose womb
Six thousand Years have buried all they bore!
Yes, while around unvalued pleasures throng
In the soft atmosphere of human smiles
We play with time, as infants do with toys,
And rarely think, how Death is heaping fast
The new-dug graves; exulting o'er a wreck;
Or counting victims from the corpse-strewn sea,
Or laughing where the thunder-bolt has dash'd
Some lord of earth to nothing! Then the flood
And blast, the conflagration dire, disease
And danger, death-bed horrors, broken hearts,
And exiles in their damp-wall'd dungeons chain'd,—
Oh! each and all would melt a moral tear
If known or felt, from Pleasure's sated eye.

Then come, poetic Spirit! plume thy strength,
Thy wings expand, Imagination, wake!
Traverse the troubled world from shore to shore,
That with a panoramic glance my soul
May vision forth dark tragedies of Death!

STORM.

Listen! for, hear ye not the startled Winds
Invisibly are coming from their caves?
Fierce as avenging fiends from hell evoked,
They march, and madden with a mingled howl;
Creation shudders at the waking Storm,
Or darkens, by prophetic tremors thrill'd.
Again, again, the congregated Winds
Unroll their voices! they have roused the Sea,
And on her back ten thousand thousand waves
Like wings of wrath are swelling as they rise!

Above, the rocky clouds are wildly clash'd,
Till darkness quickens into light! and fierce
And far, as though the universe obey'd,
Monarch of sound, the Thunder's mandate rings
Rattling the heavens with long-repeated roar!
While ever and anon pale lightnings gleam
And flash like armoury of waving fire:

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SHIPWRECK.

Alone upon the leaping billows, lo!
What fearful Image works its way? A ship,
Shapeless and wild, as by the Storm begot;
Her sails dishevell'd, and her massy form
Disfigured, yet tremendously sublime:
Prowless and helmless through the waves she rocks,
And writhes, as if in drowning agony:
Like valour when amid o'erwhelming foes
The vessel combats with the battling waves,
Then fiercely dives below:—the Thunders roll
A requiem, and the Whirlwinds howl for joy.

THE CREW.

And where are they, who from the breezy deck
Beheld the sun in orient glory rise
Like a divinity, and breathed a prayer
O'er the fresh promise of a placid sea?
Float they in lifeless masses through the deep?
Look! where a flash of lightning stripes the sea,
Like straw upon the wind a bark is whirl'd
From wave to wave: within, a pale-faced crew
Sit dumb as phantoms; with their eyes bedimm'd,
Their locks foam-sprinkled, and their lips unclosed;
And when the clouds their fires unsheath, against
The wizard glare their upturn'd faces gleam
In one despairing row! Their doom is seal'd
Above: Death howls in every wolfish blast
And rides on each gigantic wave: the sea
Their sepulchre shall make; their coffins be
Her caves, until the summon'd Ocean hear
The death-trump, and her tombless dead arise.

CALM AND LANDSCAPE.

Wave, wind, and thunder have departed: shrunk
The vision'd ocean from our mental view,
And lo! a landscape, green as Painting loves,
Or sunshine veil'd when Milton's spirit-gaze
Saw Paradise around him wave her flowers
While glorious Adam with his Maker walk'd,
Or Eve her shadow on the lake admired.
On yonder vernal mead, a cherub boy
Is bounding, playful as a breeze new-born,
Light as the beam which dances by his side.
Phantom of Beauty! with his golden locks
Gleaming like water-wreaths,—a flower of Life
To whom the fairy world is fresh, the sky
A glory, and the Earth one huge delight!
His brow makes joy; his eyes are Pleasure's own;
While Innocence, from out the budding lip
Darts her young smiles along his rounded cheek:
Grief hath not dimm'd the brightness of his form;
Love and affection o'er him spread their wings,
And Nature, like a nurse, with sweetest look
Her child attends. The humming bee will bound
From out the flower, nor sting his baby-hand;
The birds address him from the blossom'd trees,
And suppliantly the fierce-eyed mastiff fawn,
Come when he may, to court his playful touch.

INFANCY.

To rise all rosy from the arms of Sleep,
And, like the sky-bird, hail the bright-cheek'd Morn
With trills of song; then o'er the cowslipp'd mead
The blue-wing'd butterfly to chase, or play
With curly streams; or, led by watchful Love,
Admire the chorus of the trooping waves,
When the young breezes laugh them into life;
Or listen to the mimic ocean-roar
That waves have buried in a sea-shell's depth;
From sight and sound to catch intense delight
And frolic meaning from each happy face,—
Make his fond round of infantile romance.
And when at length dejected Evening comes
Joy-worn he nestles in the welcome couch
With kisses warm upon his cheek, of heaven
To dream, till morning wakes him to the world.

THE DEAD INFANT.

Into a curtain'd room the Scene hath changed,
Where a wan semblance of the mournful sun
Lies dreaming on the walls. Dim-eyed and sad,
And dumb with agony, two parents bend
O'er a pale Image in a coffin laid,
More exquisite than Death in marble looks,—
Their infant once, the laughing, leaping boy,
The bud of life, the nursling of their souls!
Pain touch'd him, and the life-glow fled away
Swift as a gay hour's fancy: fresh and cold
As Winter's shadow, with his eyelids seal'd
Like violet lips at eve, he lies enrobed
An offering for the Grave; but, bright and pure
The infant martyr hath to heaven been call'd,

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Lisping soft hallelujahs with the choir
Of sinless babes, imparadised above.

CHURCHYARD.

A glimmering churchyard, heap'd with countless graves
Like hosts of billows couch'd upon the deep,
Dawns into vision now. The dormant air
Is hush'd, and on that rich-leaf'd file of elms,
The choral wind hath sung itself to sleep.

And here, where Meditation loves to dream
While noon a burning stillness breathes around,
From out yon mouldering cells let Fancy cite
A heart-wreck'd Being, whom the savage world
Deserted, and repentance wore to death.

BETRAYED AFFECTION.

In beauty moulded like a shape of love
From the damp earth behold her meekly rise,
As delicate as when the worshipp'd form
Bade Envy stand abash'd, while youth and grace
Round her fair mien a faultless magic threw.
Light of her home, impassion'd forth she came
And where she moved a thousand Hearts were drawn!
But he who won her warm in virgin-truth,
Belied his homage and betray'd her trust;
Then, like a haunted tomb the erring maid
By the cold World was shunn'd, nor found one spot
Of shelter, from th' accusing eye of Scorn:
Till far away, from all her scene of wo
The unlamented mourner came, with griefs
Like thunder-scars upon her soul engraved!

SECLUSION AND DEJECTION.

In a lone hamlet all retired she dwelt
In meekness and remorse: but Sorrow taught
Her kindliness to bloom; and by the Poor
A heaven-born Lady was she rightly deem'd,
Whose smile made every peasant-cottage bright
And took from Poverty the sting of shame.
Among the hermit-walks, and ancient woods
When mantled with the melancholy glow
Of eve, she wander'd oft; and when the wind
Like a stray infant down autumnal dales
Roam'd wailingly, she loved to mourn and muse;
To commune with the lonely orphan-flowers
And through sweet nature's ruin trace her own.

PARTING HOUR.

But through the quiet churchyard's elmy range
Unwatch'd she loved to roam; and there was seen
Like a pale Statue o'er some weed-grown tomb
To bend, and look as if she wept the dead;
And when the day-gleam faded o'er far hills
She gazed with such deep look, as Love would mark
Some parting smile, to treasure it when gone!
But when the yellow moonlight clad the air,
How from the window she the heavens would watch,
Till in her eye an adoration shone:
Sad Lady! then her thoughts in tears arose
And every tear ran burning from her heart!

Thus day by day her unpartaken grief
Was nursed, till sorrow grew a sleepless fire
That parch'd her soul. One evening while she mused,
And from her lattice read that starry lore
Which mourning Fancy half believes, her face
Grew lily-white; a languid murmur came;
Her head hung drooping like a laden flower,
And soft as sound her spirit fled to heaven!

YOUTHFUL GENIUS.

Upon the mountain, with Thy hectic cheek
And soul outlooking from the lifted eye
As if the beauty of some thought were seen,
Why, who art Thou, undaunted by the storm
In rolling anthems round thee gather'd? Clouds
Swell back; and underneath wild Ocean roars
As though her waves were all to whirlpools lash'd:
Yet canopied with thunder, there thou stand'st
Till feeling like a storm of music wakes
And trembles through thy being! Art thou there
A Spirit tempest-born, and on the rock
Enthroned, to parley with the thunder-peals?

INSPIRATIONS.

Thou wert not moulded for the selfish world;
Too lofty and too full of heavenly fire
E'er to be measured by ungifted minds
Whom Glory hath not raised. Ambition rock'd
Thy cradle; Genius all thine infant soul
Etherealised, and in the rich-orb'd eye
The rays of thought and inspiration pour'd:
Before the tongue a budding thought reveal'd

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Imagination dallied with thy mind,
And sent it playing through her airy realms:
But when the man upon thy forehead beam'd,
Impassioned Creature! then thy race began:
Feelings of beauty and of rich delight
Flow'd from the countenance of this fair Earth
Full on thy soul, wherein a second world
Was shrined: for thee inspiring Nature glow'd,
And warm'd thy fancy like a dream from heaven.
Thou lov'st her mightiness, her glorious mien!
Whether she loose her ocean-zone, and let
The waves abroad, or hang the sky with storms,
Or hail thee in her thunders; or at eve
When sunshine like a beauteous memory dies
And the breeze anthems like a bird of air,
Call thee to witness, how in deck'd array
The marshall'd clouds attend th' imperial Sun
Before his throne of waves,—alike divine
She seems. And not alone does Nature charm
Thy senses into wondering awe; but all
Which men admire, by genius or by art
Created, bids thy soul with homage swells;
Rich music, like a warbling seraph, flings
Entrancement round thee, till emotions melt
As yielding darkness when by light subdued;
A living picture, like a passion pours
Delight into thine eye; and Poesy,—
Is stamp'd thy mind, and colours all thy thoughts!

To have thy glory on the chart of Time
Recorded, mapp'd in deep and dazzling lines,
And thus be deathless in the fame the power
And offspring of creative soul; to build
A monument of Mind, on which the good
May gaze, while future Ages round it bend
With homage nobler than a king commands,—
Desire so godlike is for ever warm
And panting in thy breast; and oft, methinks,
When darkness like the death of light begins
Beneath the lone magnificence of heaven,
While planets glow oracularly bright,
Ambition dreams, and Hope the charmer smiles!

PENALTIES AND PAINS.

But, oh! thou Victim of a mental curse,
The fire and fever of the soul are thine
Which burn within, like Desolation's breath!
Body and mind, before they bloom, decay;
And ere upon the rock of high renown
The banner of thy fame exulting waves
Lost in the tomb thy buried hopes will lie
And o'er thy name Oblivion's pall descend!
The path to glory is a path of death
To feeling hearts, all gifted though they be
And martyrs to the Genius they adore:
The wear of passion, and the waste of thought,
The glow of inspiration, and the gloom
That like a night-shade mars the brightest hour,
And that fierce rack on which a faithless World
Will make thee writhe—all these ennerving pangs,
With agonies which mock the might of words,
Thou canst not bear: thy temple is a tomb!

PESTILENCE.

The Scene hath vanish'd! swelling like a mist
From out a marshy vale at morn, behold!
A City, dimly-vision'd: on the view
It grows, till full in vast perfection seen.
There all is mute and motionless; no spires
Hallow the air with heavenly chime; no flags
Or banners shiver in the suppling breeze;
No eager steps sound pattering through the streets;
No life seems in it,—silent as a shade!
Look up! the sickly clouds like corpses lie
Along the heavens; and yonder dark canal
Flags like a monstrous serpent stretch'd in death;
The houses shed a monumental gloom:
The Pestilence is there!

CITY OF THE PLAGUE.

Young Morn beheld
A beauteous City, with the floods of life
Billowing loudly through her million paths:
Her Temples bathed their heads in azure sheen;
Her rivers spread themselves along in joy;
The spirit of the world within her walls
Inspiring walk'd; by noon the sun grew red
And glared his fierceness through the sky, till forth
From out the lurid deeps of heaven, the Plague
Her breath exhaled, that with a viewless spread
Itself suffused through all the living town,
Which, sudden as an ocean chained, grew dumb!

The old man faded like a blasted tree,
And dropp'd into the dust! and he whose cheeks
Were round and fair, with eyes of lustrous youth,
From beauty wither'd to a yellow wreck
Distorted and decay'd, till Madness came,
And shrieking, shuddering, writhed herself to death!

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Along each river crept the Plague; then hush'd
The grinding cables! and the barges lay
Like dead sea-monsters on the ocean stretch'd;
E'en on the mead with emerald verdure clad,
Where the gay urchin drove the whirling ball
Fleet as a bird along the sunny air,
The Pestilence her burning vapour breathed;
Each limb relax'd, upturn'd his darken'd lids,
And from his ghastly eyeballs glared the Pest!

From house to house the hot infection stole;
To gloom all gladness changed, and not a smile
In the whole city lived! Within the fane
Amid the pillar'd aisle, while lowly knelt
In all the holiness of virgin love
The fair-zoned bride of Beauty, came the Pest!
She coil'd, and shiver'd like a wounded dove;
Her form grew wild; and as the bridegroom watch'd
The heaven reflected from her face depart,
Contagion clasp'd him in her fiery arms,
His spirit whirl'd within him, and he fell
And o'er his loved one yelled his life away!

But in the tomb-fill'd churchyard, what a howl
From the parch'd throats of mourners came! for there
The graves were brimm'd with corses; and around
Unburied dead lay blackening in the air,
While Shades of being stagger'd by the heaps
Of friends and relatives together piled:
Such was the revelry of horrid Death;
And when at last by God himself recall'd,
The Sun of health arose, his eye beheld
Yon City hush'd as one enormous tomb!

MOONLIGHT SCENE.

Turn to a vision of contrasted joy:
Ne'er since creation out of chaos roll'd
With the mild bloom of young existence fresh
Around it, hath more glorious night bedecked
The World, than that which beautifies her now.
The stars like ruminating spirits walk
The mellow sky, from whence the queenly moon
With a maternal aspect eyes the earth,
Tranced into dreamy stillness by her smile.
No! not a breeze, nor bird is on the wing;
The shy sweet flowers have shut their dewy lids,
And distant trees, upon the dark-brow'd hills,
Like shadowy sentinels are ranged. And now
The reign of heart-romance! the lulling hour
When aspirations from the mystic heaven
Effused, the high-toned mind awake with thoughts
Which angels love: but see! beneath
Yon hill, down where the wrinkled brooklets flash
In liquid revelry, the silver'd Deep
Lies bare unto the moon; and on her breast,
In swan-like glory, glides a white-wing'd boat
Calm as a cloud along its blue career.

LOVERS.

Within, like Beings from a purer sphere
A youth and his confiding maiden sit,
Her yielding waist environ'd with his arm:
Above them, beautiful the starry dome!
Beneath, the sighing of romantic waves
Woke from their slumber, or melodious heave
Of tide, the panting of the World's great heart—
Breaks on the pleasing calm: oh, lovely pair!
Warm is the gush of young affection; sweet
The overflowing of affianced hearts
Each into each with holy rapture pour'd;
Now is the spring-time of the soul, whose bloom
Is love, but once ne'er felt, and ne'er but once
Enjoy'd! On would ye float for ever thus
O'er moonlight seas, in one immortal bliss—
Silence! the language of delighted hearts.

CONSUMPTION.

And hast thou, Curse of the primeval crime!
On one of these Thy vulture-glances fixed?
Shall knells of death moan heavy on the wind
When marriage peals should merrily resound
In tuneful rapture o'er the village spire?
Alas! for every age Death finds a grave,
And youthful forms as oft as hoary heads
Are pillow'd there. Thou loved and loving One!
From the dark languish of thy liquid eye
So exquisitely rounded, darts a ray
Of truth, prophetic of thine early doom;
And on thy placid cheek there is a flush
Of Death,—the beauty of Consumption there!

Few note that fatal bloom; for bless'd by all
Thou movest through thy noiseless sphere, the life
Of one,—the darling of a myriad hearts!
Yet in thy chamber, o'er some graceful task
When delicately bending, oft unseen
Thy mother looks with telescopic glance
Down the dim world of Time, and sees thee robed
A pallid martyr, shrouded for the tomb!

555

THE LOVED ONE DIES.

A year hath travell'd to eternity;
And now, the shadows of the grave grow dark
Upon the maiden; yet no fruitless wish
Or word abrupt, unlovely thoughts betrays
Of gloom and discontent within; she fades
As gently as the flower declines,—not false
To living claims, and yet for death prepared.
Beautiful resignation, and the hopes
From the rich fountain of her faith derived,
Around her a seraphic air have breathed
Of wither'd loveliness. The gloss of life
And worldly dreams are o'er; but dewy Morn,
And dim-eyed Eve, and all the mental gleams
Of rapture, darted from regretted joys,
Delight her still; and oft when Twilight comes,
She gazes on the damask glow of heaven
With all the truth of happier days, until
A sunny fancy wreathes her faded cheek;
'Tis but a pleasing echo of the Past,
A music rolling from remember'd hours!
The day is come, by Death led gently on;
With pillow'd head all gracefully reclined
And glossy curls in languid clusters wreath'd,
Within a cottage-room she sits to die:
Where from the window, in a western view,
Majestic Ocean rolls. A summer-eve
Veils the calm earth, and all the glowing air
Stirs faintly, like a pulse; against the shore
The waves advance with undulating joy,
While o'er the midway-deep her eye-glance roams,
Where like a sea-god glares the travell'd Sun
O'er troops of billows marching in his beam.
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth her eyes
Are lifted, bright with wonder and with awe,
Till through each vein reanimation rolls!—
'Tis past; and now her filmy glance is fix'd
On the rich heavens, as though her spirit gazed
On that immortal World, to which 'tis bound:
But sunset, like a burning palace fades,
In hues of visionary pomp destroy'd;
And Day and Beauty have together died:
For there like sculptured Death the maiden lies,
More exquisite than Love's embodied dream!

WAR.

The smoke, the thunder, and the din of War!
Loud as an ocean leaping into life
I hear the storm of battle swell. Advance;
And listen to the cloud-ascending peals
Of Cannon, from whose lips a lightning glares!
Hark! how the bugle-echoes beat the air,
And how the deep-roll'd drums their wrath resound,
While on the throbbing Earth the Sun looks down
Like a dread war-fiend, with a fierce delight.
Death! here thou art; and here the flashing swords
Shall reap thy harvest, and devoted souls
By thousands rush into the hands of God!

FIELD OF DEATH.

Noon into eve, and eve to night hath roll'd;
The heavens with starry eyes are set: but, see!
No wafted banners, flapping like the wings
Of eagles in their glorious strength; no steeds
Pawing and prancing with erected manes;
No warriors hand to hand; no sword to sword
Confronted, till from out some bloody gap
Their spirits bound into eternity!—
But heaps of corses, lines of dead laid out,
Unhelmeted, or gash'd and gory; men
Whose morning-beauty shamed the risen sun,
With glassy eyeballs gleaming on the moon!
A living host hath deaden'd into clay:—
No more! away, O Death! and count thy dead.

THE CAPTIVE.

Now from the hoof-worn plains of war, where blood
Makes glory, to a scene of stagnant gloom
Avert thy fancy. Lo, a dungeon, roof'd
By one erected arch of blacken'd stone;
'Tis Freedom's tomb! The all-reviving air
Of heaven those mildew'd walls has never fann'd,
The light hath shed no lustrous beauty there;
But shade, and damp night-breath, and noisome slime
Traced o'er its rocky vault, the clank of chains,
With groans from wasted lungs exhaled, the laugh
Of lean-faced Madness, and the fitful moan
Of iron'd captives,—these have horrified
This den of Darkness. Look! a ray of eve
Hath wander'd to it through a narrow chink,
And stealthily it creeps along the wall
Then quivers, like a smile upon the cheek
Of what has been,—a miniature of God!
A free-born, free-bred spirit, bright and brave,
Who loved the mountains and the sea adored,
And call'd the wind a song of Liberty
As loud it warbled o'er his fearless head!
By Pagans captured, here the chains have gall'd,
And rusted on his limbs; long years roll'd by
And yet he gnash'd in fetters, till the flame
Of anguish burn'd his being up; he died,—
With home and country pictured on his heart!

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That den within he was not tomb'd alone:
For twice ten years another captive wretch
Had withered there; but long ere that, the soul
Was quench'd, and Madness in her mightier wo
Forgot to weep o'er thraldom! Mark them both;
The one like marble on the earth reposed
In rigid silence, coffinless and cold;
The other madly glaring o'er him: see!
How oft he twines the matted locks, and hoots
With idiotic joy, then grinds his teeth
And leers around him with a dumb delight,
And babbles to the corse, till on his face
A ray of pity dawns; then down he kneels
And howls a dirge, till voice within him dies;
His head droops o'er him; dimly rolls the eye,
And the last life-breath gurgles in his throat;
'Tis o'er: and Heaven hath open'd on his soul!

THE METROPOLIS AND DEATH.

The grand arena, where insatiate Death
Drags every day his hundreds to the tomb,
London the huge, earth's capital and queen,
In dim array magnificently spread
Towers into vision now! not sending forth
The hum and clamour of her myriad streets,
Made awful by the roar of life; but stretch'd
In mute immensity beneath a sky
Of midnight, breathless with the summer glow.
And now, within their curtain'd chambers lie
What hosts of beings, of all age and clime!
Some laugh in dreams; and some with laden hearts
Mutter strange secrets; others quake and groan,
And kindle darkness with a torch of hell!
Now steals the murderer from his den; now hies
The robber to his haunt; and from their lanes
And unfrequented walks the haggard Shapes
Of Poverty and Crime come creeping forth
Like Spectres, crawling out of dusky tombs.

The heavens are visor'd; hark! the dreary how!
Of Thunder challenging the Night; or like
An unseen monster, moaning as he prowls:
Awhile 'tis hush'd; then flash the riven clouds
Asunder, and a lake of lightning gleams
Like shining water through the cloven dark,
While rain-drops hiss along the sultry air.

THE DESERTED ONE.

Wo to the houseless wanderer! doom'd to walk
Through the drench'd street barefooted, or bereft
Of life's sweet charities, at such an hour:
And yet, e'en such a martyr Anguish owns!
For down yon lane of gloom, upon the cold
And dripping steps, with garments moistly clung
Round her shrunk form, a lifeless woman lies
With face upturn'd unto the flooding shower.
The chain of life despair hath just unlink'd;
And on her cheek an agonising trace
Of parting spirit, as it work'd and writhed
And with the body wrestled, still remains.
Approach! and with the lamp-beam learn her fate,
In mournful lines upon her visage mapp'd:
A chronicle of sorrow and of sin
And shame whose fountain is a brain of fire;
A heart for ever on the rack of care;
Oppression from without, and pangs within;
Despair, then death, the master-cure of wo,
Survey her features, and you read them all!

Unhappy maiden! round whose days of bloom
A father's prayers their holy influence cast,
And from whose eyes a mother reap'd delight,
Death should have torn thee earlier to the tomb,
And in thy native churchyard heap'd thy grave
Of grassy mould: for once, along the mead
Fleet as the fawn thou boundest; bright and fair
The beauty of the valleys o'er thy form
And features breathed, while in each glance there shone
The magic of an uncorrupted mind:
And this is all that now of thee remains!—
In Heaven's dread book thy sorrow hath a page,
And when 'tis open'd, who shall quail the most,
The man who tempted, or the maid who fell?

THE UNDESCRIBED.

These fearful visions of thy varied power
Appalling Death! with dreader ones compared,
Reflect a shadow of thy murderous sway,—
Thy ceaseless havoc through the realms of Life.
Let others paint thee on the desert-heath
Where, melting into blood, with lukewarm limbs
A gory wretch lies gasping and alone;
Or in the roofless and deserted homes,
Where fires have blacken'd on the blister'd walls;
Or in the Suicide,—lo! where he stands

557

With visage colourless, with look aghast
And spirit shivering through his guilty frame!

DEATH'S UNIVERSAL REIGN.

Yes! far or near, where'er the life-blood flows,
By ruin, violence, or calm decay
Death's ravages are felt: the very dust
That in our daily walks we tread, hath once
Some breathing mould of Beauty been. O earth!
Thou grave, and mother! in thy hollow breast
What faded myriads are entomb'd! Your dead
Give back, departed Ages, and arise
Ye spirits of the Past!—they come, they come!
From mountain and from cave, from vault and tomb
The Dead are darting into life again!
The generations that have been, from Earth's
Young dawn, to moments on their very wing
Behold them! sumless as the ocean sand;
A world of Life walks o'er a world of Death;
Till all are buried in one deep Abyss,
The tomb of passion, prejudice, and time!

WHAT ALL HAVE FELT.

To die, is Nature's universal doom;
The Past hath braved it, and the Future shall;
Though little deem we, as we laugh the hours
Along like echoes dandled by the wind,
How swift our path is verging to the grave.
Terrific Power! how often in the hush
Of midnight, when the thoughtless learn to think,
The gay grow solemn, and the foolish wise,
Visions of thee come floating o'er the mind
Like exhalations from a grave! How oft
We feel an awfulness the soul o'ershade
As if 'twere soaring to the throne of God,
Till in one thought of heaven we bury all
The breathing universe of life and man!

HUMAN FATE.

A death-cloud rises with the star of Life;
And ere upon the world our hearts expand,
Like flower-buds opening to the kiss of Morn,
With gay and guiltless love, the voice of doom
Awakes; this sermon from the grave is preach'd;
We live to die, and die again to live
A spirit-life in unimagined worlds!
First, Infancy, whose days are prattling dreams;
Next, Childhood, crown'd with beauty, health, and joy,—
Those wizard three, which make the mind like spring,
The breath, the bloom and sunshine of the soul;—
Then, Manhood, most majestic; through the heavens
Piercing with haughty eye, and printing earth
With kingly steps; ambition, love, and care,
And energy, in wild and restless play
For ever heaving like a wave of fire;
And then comes passionless and feeble Age
That droops and drops into the silent grave!
Here ends the scene of life; one moment wept,
The next forgotten; let the curtain fall,
Oblivion has our tale,—we lived, and died!

PAST AND FUTURE.

Thousands of years beneath thy sway have groan'd
Unwearied Death! how many more shall bear
The burden of the curse, no human tongue
Can tell, for they are chronicled above;
Though ofttimes number'd by a guilty mind
When thunders, like dread oracles, the world
Awake. Yet, come it will, however late,
That day foretold when Death himself shall die!
And generations, now but dust and worms,
Rise into being with an angel-shout
And on the winds of glory soar to heaven!

PREPARATION.

And yet, though Life enchant, and Death appal,
How gently does the hand of Time unloose
Those many links which chain us to the world!
The passions which inspirit youthful hearts
And spread a lustre o'er the brow of life
And bid the hopes of young Ambition bound,
Decay and cool, as further down the vale
Of twilight-years we wend, till, all resign'd,
The time-worn spirit ponders o'er the tomb
With elevating sadness; and the night
Of death is lit with those immortal stars
By Revelation sphered in heaven.

How pure
The grace, the gentleness, of virtuous Age!
Though solemn, not austere; though wisely dead
To passion, and the wildering dreams of hope,
Not un-alive to tenderness and truth,
The good old Man is honour'd and revered,
And breathes upon the young-limb'd race around
A grey and venerable charm of years.

558

ALLEVIATIONS.

And, glory to the Power which brings the heart
In sympathy with Time! how much remains
In the pure freshness of ideal life,
For him who loves the bloom of Days no more!
A meditative walk by wood or mead,
The lull of streams, and language of the stars
Heard in the heart alone; an inward view
Of all which beautified or graced his youth,
Is yet enjoy'd; and with that bliss are found
The feelings flowing from a better World.

SPIRITUAL TRIUMPH.

Then, melt, ye horrors! which the grave begets,
And turn to glory, by the spell of faith
Transform'd; for Christ hath overcome the tomb.—
What though 'tis awful, when the pulse of Life
Is bounding, and the blood seems liquid joy;
To look Corruption in its ghastly face,
The mind is Man! no sepulchre for souls
Can dust and darkness frame; like God apart
In calm eternity they act and think:
The shroud, the hearse, the life-alarming knell,
The grave's cold silence, and the vision'd friends
Whose dreams will hover round our chill decay,
Harrow our living dust, and give to Death
A sting that dwells not in his own dark power.
We die in body, but in soul we live,
When flesh and spirit sunder; then our chains
Are riven, and celestial freedom dawns!
The fetter'd eagle whom a narrow cage
Imprison'd, where so oft his haughty wings
In wild unrest have beat his hated walls
With blood-stain'd plumage, while his eyeballs glared
Proudly along the blue and boundless sky
Above him,—free and fetterless at last
On plumes of ecstasy can soar away
And mount, and mingle with the heaven he loves!

RETROSPECTIONS.

Of Death I sing; yet soon may darkly sleep
And press the pillow of the dreamless grave
Forgetting and forgot! But twenty years
Have wither'd, since my pilgrimage began,
And I look back upon my boyish days
With mournful joy; as musing wanderers do
With eye reverted from some lofty hill
Upon the bright and peaceful vale below.
Oh! let me live, until the fires which feed
My soul, have work'd themselves away, and then
Eternal Spirit! take me to Thy home:
For when a child, inspiring dreams I shaped,
And nourish'd aspirations that awoke
Beautiful feelings, flowing from the face
Of Nature; from a child I learn'd to reap
A harvest of sweet thoughts for future years.

How oft, be witness, Guardian of our days!
In noons of young delight, while o'er the down
Humming like bees my happy playmates fled,
I loved on high and hoary crag to muse
And thread the landscape with delighted eye:
The sky besprinkled o'er with rainbow-hues,
As if angelic wings had wanton'd there;
The distant City capp'd with hazy towers;
And river, shyly roaming by its banks
Of green repose, together with the play
Of elfin-music on the fresh-wing'd air,—
With these entranced, how often have I glow'd
With thoughts which panted to be eloquent,
Yet only ventured forth in tears!

PARTING THOUGHTS.

And now
Though haply mellow'd by correcting time,
I thank thee, Heaven! that this bereaving World
Hath not diminish'd the undaunted hopes
Of youth, in manhood's more imposing cares.
Nor titled pomp, nor princely mansions swell
The cloud of envy o'er my heart; for these
Are oft delusive, though adored: but when
The Holy and the Beautiful from God
Descend into my being; when I hear
The oracles which from Creation-shrines,
Roll their deep melody round listening hearts;
Or gaze on Virtue, till her glory seems
Emmanuel's shadow by a Saint expressed;
Then feel I envy for immortal words,
And the full pulse of Poetry begins
To waken in me, with exulting throb
No language echoes! then the spirit yearns
To dash my feelings into deathless verse
Which may administer to Time unborn,
And tell some lofty Soul, how I have lived
A worshipper of Nature, and of Thee.

560

A VISION OF HEAVEN.

A FRAGMENT.

—1829.

“The heavens were opened, and I saw visions.” Ezekiel i. 1.

“Juvat, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabula, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernæ vitæ minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes.” —T. Burnet.

One summer-evening, from the molten sky
When radiance came to beautify the world,
By Fancy led, along a noiseless vale
I roam'd, and trod the earth with deep delight,
Felt in the soul, and in the eye reveal'd.
'Twas one of those immortal hours, when man
Unheedful of the jarring world, feels thoughts
Within him too sublime for words; a sense
Of that divinity o'er all which breathes,
Making creation one vast temple seem,
Where shadows of His glory are enshrined.

Thus felt I at this balmy hour: Above
Magnificently hung the dome of heaven;
Along the concave floated fairy isles;
And where the sun stood burning on the brim
Of ocean, the horizon wound its curve
Festoon'd with clouds of beauty, fresh and white
As sea-foam in the sun.

Beneath the span
Of heaven, the Earth lay languishing in light;
Her streamlets with a bee-like murmur ran,
And while the trees, like living creatures waved
Their plumage on the wind, the bird and breeze
Together hymn'd, and harmonised the air.

Pensive, awhile along the placid vale
I roam'd, then sat delighted on a mound
Green-tress'd, and glittering in the dizzy rays
Of eve, and heavenward turn'd my musing eye.
Who ever gazed on heaven, nor dream'd of God,
Of human destiny, and things divine?
Oh that mine eye could pierce yon azure cope!—
Thus stirr'd the daring thought; and while it warm'd
Within, a trance like heavenly music stole
Round my hush'd spirit, weaning earthly sense,
Till in a vision up the airy deep
It darted, as a sky-bird to the clouds!

Thus disembodied, through the air it rose
Till earth beneath me in a glassy depth
Lay twinkling, like a star; but all around
Those burning mysteries which mortals view
With wonder, floating o'er the face of night,
Not gems of fire, but full and perfect orbs
In congregations vast, as glorious,—beam'd.
Aloft! aloft! still soared my spirit on
Through hosts of worlds, self-balanced and secure,
Till the bright atmosphere appear'd to bloom
With rich suffusion, like a topaz-glow;
And here, enchanted by a spell divine
My Spirit paused, became all eye and ear,
And Heaven, the palace of the mighty God,
Expanded into view:—Unbodied soul!
With o'erawed feeling enter where He dwells.

An arch'd immensity of crystal sheen
Rich with the glory of all glories rare
Before me lay: beneath this dazzling vault
Splendour beyond the dreamings of the heart
To vision, round interminably blazed:
I felt, but cannot paint the magic there!

While, with permitted glance, the scene I mark'd,
A thrilling tide of rich-toned music roll'd,
Waking delicious echoes as it wound
From Melody's divinest fount. All Heaven
In glorious fascination heard, and drank
The tones elysian:—Silence breathed again;
And where I gazed, a Throne of awful Fire
Flamed ceaselessly: before it Thunders roll'd
And veiling Darkness round about it hung.
And here alone, in uncreated Bliss
And Glory, reigns The One Eternal Power,

561

Creator, Lord, and Life of All. Again
Stillness ethereal reign'd; and forth appear'd
Ecstatic Creatures, clad in robes of light,
Together flocking from celestial haunts
And mansions of purpureal mould; the Host
Of heaven assembled, to adore with harp
And hymn the First and Last, The Living God:
They knelt,—an immaterial Choir, and glow'd
More beauteous, while they breathed the chant divine;
And Hallelujah! Hallelujah! peal'd,
And thrill'd the concave with harmonious joy.

The melody was hush'd; and I beheld
Cherubic Forms of unimagined grace
And beauty walk o'er amaranthine meads,
And soar on shining pinions: as they rose,
A radiance quiver'd forth, and from each plume
Soft as the breeze and silky as a cloud,
A gleam play'd liquidly around their path.

Of archangelic mien, upon the wing
Two Shapes I watch'd, careering to the bound
Of vision; lighting there, they welcomed in
Three happy Spirits, by The Lamb redeem'd:
And Heaven they enter'd with triumphal shout;
Transfigured, into glory grew, and were
Beatified for ever!

In a bower
Remote, whose em'rald leaves with liquid drops
Of light were gemm'd, two Angels next I mark'd,
In sympathetic converse sat. Amid
Life's wilderness below, they had o'erwatch'd
The errant beings just arrived: through dark
And light, through sin and toil, their guardian power
Presided, until Mercy came to crown
Their doom, and they were saved and seal'd for Heaven.
Seraphic sweetness from their lips exhaled
As, rapt with angel love, th' immortal pair
Their tale of heavenly triumph told. Oh, joy!
Dream'd I, around us viewless Spirits dwell;
Our minds to tune, or consecrate our thoughts,
And guard, relieve, and hallow souls for God.

From these I turn'd, and saw a sumless host
Of Cherubim, and bright pavilions rank'd
In endless files; and then, Remembrance warm'd
Within me; heavenly Intuition woke,
And myriads who on earth erewhile had run
The grand career of Life, were all reveal'd.

I saw the Sages, whose immortal words
Are truthful Oracles to man and mind;
I saw the pure, the patriotic bands:
Of Heroes, whose avenging swords had cut
The fetters from their Land and bade the brave
Be free! the renovated forms I saw
Of Martyrs, robed with glory, on their heads
Inwreathèd crowns of life; and they of old
Whose names more eloquent than thunder sound
On young Ambition's ear,—the good and great
Of every cast and clime, were now reveal'd;
The Past was in the Present born again.

For sainted Bards of earth I look'd; a breath
Of hymnèd music through the mellow air
Came wafted, from beside a crystal fount
That glitter'd like a living gush of light,—
There sat our own Mæonides! Around
A throng of listening Angels stood, and glow'd
Till rapture trembled o'er their sunny wings,
While from his lyre the epic minstrel struck
Pure inspiration,—sounds replete with soul!

Among the myriads of celestial Shapes
Which mused and wander'd by the springs of Life,
I mark'd the humble, the dejected sons
Of Want and Wo, apparell'd bright as morn.
On earth deem'd vile, their trampled hearts had bled
With sorrows, never told; their joyless eyes
With tears had melted dim; at wintry night
They roam'd, and shiver'd in the bleak-wing'd wind,
And often writhed beneath the glance of scorn,
Yet fainted not: and now, unfading joys
Beatitude and thrones in Heaven, were theirs!

Fairest of all fair Visions seen above,
Remember'd Thrones and unforgotten Friends
Were recognised again! Along a mead
Of bright immensity I saw them stray;
Not anguish-worn, nor rack'd with inward fears,
But shining in the beauty of the blest.—
Oh! ye in life so loved, in death so mourn'd,
How oft Affection through the desert-world
Delights to track ye, where your feet have trod,
Through fav'rite walks or fancy-haunted bowers!
Blend your calm voices with the twilight breeze
In fairy music, fraught with infant years?
Are echoes woven from your hymns above?
In solemn days and melancholy hours
Of you we think! Love shrines ye in the stars,
And recreates ye in celestial robes.
But while at eve's poetic hour we watch
The golden isles that glitter from the west,

562

In lovelier climes ye live, and chaster skies;
By choral streams and aromatic walks
Ye roam, rememb'ring heaven-like bowers on earth,
And friends, whose mansions ye survey above.

And such was Fancy's vision-moulded heaven
Around me miniatured. Here God, enthroned
In measureless perfection, truth, and power,
His unimaginable Glory wields:
And thus Eternal Love, from Him the fount
Of Love, enlightens, lives, and flows through All.
No tears, no trials, and no perils known,
No sin-worn hearts, and shatter'd feelings here,
But calm fruition of unfailing bliss:
All which the beauty of creative Thought
Hath pictured to Devotion's eye, is felt
Ineffably more beauteous by the Blest:
Wisdom and Virtue breathe their native air
And Pleasures smiling on their steps attend.

Nor is the vanish'd World forgot; for oft
In bowers of everlasting bloom retired,
The Ransom'd, by the blood of Jesu bought,
Think of the Fight their spirits fought below,
Or sweetly muse o'er some terrestrial hour,
While heart to heart with holy truth responds;
Still Sages feed on ever-fruitful thought;
And Poets sing and raptured Knowledge mounts,
From step to step for ever climbing up
Yet never on the radiant summit throned!
Here, bliss and love Eternity embrace,
And perfect Mind its perfect God adores.

563

A VISION OF HELL.

A FRAGMENT.

—1829.

“Where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end.”
—Milton.

No longer Death and Time remain'd: the doom
Revokeless, by prophetic lips foretold,
Was past; the universe had disappear'd,
And Chaos revell'd o'er demolish'd worlds.

Apart, upon a throne of lurid fire
The Fiend was seated; in his eye there shone
The look that dared Omnipotence; the light
Of sateless vengeance, and sublime despair!
Amid a burning world he sat, and saw
Tormented myriads, whose blaspheming shrieks
Were mingled with the howl of hidden floods
And Acherontine groans; of all the host
The only dauntless he. As o'er the wild
He gazed, the pride of agony endured
Awoke, and writhed through all his giant frame,
That redden'd, and dilated like a sun!

And then, as ever-vanish'd hours awoke
The torment of wild memory, to feed
The cravings of infernal wrath, he bade
The roar of Hell be hush'd,—and Silence came;
He call'd the cursèd, and they flash'd from cave
And cell; from dungeon and from den they rose,
And stood an unimaginable mass
Of Spirits, agonised with burning pangs!
In silence stood they, while the Demon gazed
On all, and ponder'd on dead Earth and Time,
From whence his vengeance such a harvest reap'd.

Before him, what a congregated host
Of perish'd creatures!—sumless as the waves
Lash'd into life from out the wind-swept seas;
Long ages gone, and they were breathing airs
Of heaven, with noble attributes endow'd,
Sharing the beauty of the world, and led
By Mercy through the round of being; bliss
And endless wo before them lay;—the doom
Of guilt they braved, and barter'd Heaven for Hell!

Famed Idols of the earth, around whose paths
The blinding light of admiration blazed;
Despots, who bathed the battle-field in blood,
And many, whose immortal names had fired

564

The page of history with a fearful glow,
Were here, commingled with a nameless host.

And one, among the legions of the lost,
The wonder and the curse of Time! there was;
The vial of almighty wrath, he held
And pour'd it on the world; or, with a frown
O'erclouded nations, while his fearless sword
Flash'd in defiance o'er th' astounded globe!
His word roll'd thunder to the haunted ear
Of Kings; and Empires quail'd, as from afar
The darkness of his coming deeper grew!
Ambition was his God; and to o'ersway
Or chain the world to his triumphal car,
The demon-passion of his soul. Though Man
And Nature wail'd; though Ocean storm'd,
And mountains threaten'd an eternal bar,
Still went he on, and battled with them all!
Nor paused, till on the tower of Conquest waved
The planted banner which proclaim'd him lord.
No wail of widows o'er the tombless dead;
No groan of orphans; nor the hideous cry
Of Havoc, through the vanquish'd city howl'd,
E'er deafen'd him; dominion was his heaven,
Rebellion hail'd him with applausive roar,
And slaughter'd millions swell'd his fame!

Beside
This reprobate, another ruin'd Soul
Stood haughty: one of those surpassing Minds
It takes a century to create! a man
Whom Genius fill'd with her electric fires.—
Oh! genius is a great, but fearful gift,
A double portion of the God within,
A talent not our own; but to entrance
And elevate mankind with lofty thoughts,
To shadow forth the Spirit that surrounds,
Protects, adorns, and glorifies the world.—
And Genius, nursed in Nature's mighty lap,
For him work'd marvels. On his matchless page
The vast creation lived; both when the voice
Of thunder with his music roll'd; or war
Of Ocean, when the deep-toned winds arose
And whirl'd her into storms; or when he bade
The heavens be sprinkled o'er with starry isles,
Or damask'd with the crimson clouds of eve,
His verse array,—magnificent the Muse
Appear'd: around Her glowing form the light
And breath of nature play'd. But, not to Him
The Architect of all, was incense breathed;
An atheistic shade his lines eclipsed:
High o'er each haughty page a spirit moved
More changeful than a cloud; now beaming forth
Bright in the summer beauty of the soul;
Then, veil'd with darkness, and infernal gloom
From whence the luridness of passion glared!

Yet, had he pleased, he might have hallow'd earth
And human nature with immortal lines,
Pure in their radiance, like prophetic gleams
From heaven: but in his breast a storm there was,
An anarchy of impious thoughts: he loved
With minds to play, as whirlwinds do with waves.
No God his genius own'd; and man was deem'd
A chance-begotten shape of dust,—his doom
Annihilation! Principles which nursed
The soul of Ages, he would mine away,
And laugh Religion from her hoary shrine.
Thus sang a prostituted Muse, and taught
The tongue of fools to be profanely wise:
Till lo, a summons from th' Almighty came,
And he was dust!—his Mind the earth appall'd;
And men gazed upward on the burning sweep
His genius circled o'er the heaven of fame,
As though some meteor through the sky had whirl'd,
And summon'd them to trace its dread career!

Another of the lost, who might have lived
In joy's unclouded atmosphere, was he,
The Suicide—the darkest of them all!
The lonely scion of an ancient line,
A princely mansion, when his manhood bloom'd,
Beheld him master. How augustly peer'd
The turrets from the wooded park! how proud
The young fawn bounded o'er the breezy knolls,
And down the vales, where interwinding streams
Ran musical; yet, what to him were trees
With sun-smiles sparkling o'er their boughs, or song
Of birds, and streams, and all the glory shed
By morn and eve his hill-girt home around?
No natal ties he own'd; benignant Heaven
Had bless'd an ingrate; soon the stranger held
His ancient halls,—the City-queen for him!

Full in the prime of youth, to England's Rome
He came, the meteor of his day to shine.
What wonder, Admiration woo'd his eye
Where'er the idol shone? Devoted friends,
Delightful women and officious hearts
Were his; the Capital beneath him crouch'd;
And when the glorious sun of noon beheld
The city roaring like a sea of life,
Who shot through street and square so fiercely swift
As he? How paused the many-headed Crowd,
When, rolling like a distant thunder-car,
His chariot darted through the smoking dust
And shook the glitt'ring windows! In the park
When proudly throned upon his warlike steed

565

What eyes devour'd him with adoring looks!
Thus pass'd the day; then came the midnight Mask
And ball, with every splendid thief of time:
To crown his course, he blighted trusting hearts,
Jeer'd Honour to her face, and out of tears,
The father's curse, and desolated home,
A pleasure, such as Demons fancy, quaff'd.

Soon fled the glories of a fatal year,
And left him an unpitied wreck of pride
And dissipated hours. No more the smile,
Shot from the heart, flash'd o'er his happy face;
No more the soul-dear friend, and sumptuous dome,
Where beauty, or the banquet, witch'd the hour
With languishment and love; the sun of wealth
Had set, and darken'd into joyless gloom!

One hope, the hope of Desperation left,
He sought it, where the secret gamblers met
And madden'd o'er their midnight-game. Amid
The sickly glimmer of a silent room,
Like Spectres, there they sat, and ventured all;
Till Ruin scared them, and some faded cheek
Flinch'd from the gripe of agony within!
Night after night, from this infernal haunt
He came, and felt the voice of Conscience rise
Like hell-words sounding through his guilty soul!
One night, as homeward he return'd, and heard
The death-knell of another buried Day,
While far o'er street and lane the waning moon
A wintry radiance shed, the past arose;
The frowning spectre of his murder'd Hours
Appall'd the conscience! then Despair began,
And in him like a living hell-spark burn'd.
Awhile, in chamber'd solitude he sat,
Where through the riven wall the cold blast whined
And mourn'd, and rioted in rueful dreams;
Till, with a laugh, deliriously he snapp'd
The thread of life! and sent his spirit—where?
Where are they all, who, cowards to themselves,
Rob their Creator, cut existence short,
And hurl their spirits back again to God,
Of life disdainful, by His wisdom lent?

Th' antipodes to this self-murder'd Wretch
Stood by, in fellow-torment: once a man
In face so meek, so honied in his tongue,
A martyr to a sinful world he seem'd!
What holy passion work'd his eye, as oft
With woful voice, and words of heavenly tune,
He sermonised, and shook his head, and sigh'd!
But God unmask'd him; and he stood condemn'd,
A hypocrite,—a saint without a soul!
While others braved the censure of their crimes
And to the world their sinful bosoms bared
And sallied heedlessly to Hell, he plied
His guilty pleasures in the dark, and did
Unknown what millions dare, and die condemn'd:
And yet, a living Sermon he appear'd;
Far nearer heaven than unassuming minds
Where God was templed, and his truth adored.
Such was the hypocrite! and when his tomb
Was piled, his epitaph Devotion read,
And glow'd to think that such a man had been!
By saints anointed,—yet with devils leagued.

And who, among the myriads of the cursed,
Was yon red Shape of unconsuming fire?
A blighted Angel! Never round a soul
Did fairer prospects shine: before her moved
The majesty of birth, the graces breathed
From polish'd mode and princely scenes. And oh!
Who ever look'd upon that lovely face
Where the soul sunn'd itself in smiles, or heard
The prattled music of her tongue, nor dreamt
She was a Seraph, born in heaven to beam!

Time roll'd her years along; but with them came
No saintly thoughts, which beautify the soul
And tune the passions to their heavenly tone.
Ne'er did the voice of pure Instruction charm
Her willing ear; nor meek-eyed Wisdom stoop
With fond attention to each budding word
And sweet demand. Unto the dew-bright stars
Her finger pointed oft; the sun and moon
Were radiant wonders; and the ocean-roar
Like hidden rapture, ran through every vein
Until her being throbb'd with joy!—yet none
Were by, to warm her wonder into praise,
And stamp God's image brighter on the soul;
In prayer none lock'd her little hands, or spoke
Of Angels, who the growing child o'erwatch.

But when, at length, the peerless woman dawn'd,
Never did Mind a lovelier form create:
She was a paragon, a poet's queen!
The starry lustre of her speaking eyes,
Her brow, her hair of fascinating curl,
And neck of swan-like grace,—all seem'd divine,
When with the lightness of a cloud she walk'd
Her chamber, or amid the ball-room shone:
The form was heavenly, but the mind of earth,

566

A shrine for vain-born hopes, and sensual dreams,
Without a thought, a sigh, or wish for Heaven!
E'en to the last, when on her pain-worn cheek
Approach'd the tints of death, no tender lip
The coming hour reveal'd; nor in her heart
Did Faith's sweet music roll: so mildly-good,
In form so fair, and so adored below,
Sure God would take her to his bowers of light!
So dream'd Compassion's unreflecting heart
And form'd a heaven, how beautifully vain!

Not least deserveless of a nobler lot,
Among the legions of assembled Souls
Was he, the self-idolater: who made
His mind a vortex for ingulphing all
That worldly craft and sordid dreams inspire.
To self unlink'd,—and earth a desert seem'd,
A vacancy, where nothing glorious dwelt;
But, to administer to mean-bred pride,
His wealth augment, and lend ambition wings,—
For this mankind were fool'd with base applause!
For such a soul the very Devils long'd,
So loveless, and with selfish dross defiled:
And yet, no law he broke, no crime he dared,
But in his pew devoutly pray'd; and felt
The pulse of reputation, with the pride
Of specious virtue: Yet, tremendous God!
Before Thee, never could that Spirit stand
And live; a worldling could not breathe in Heaven!
When did he look upon the lofty sky
Or round his temples hear the breezes hymn,
And glory in his Being? When did Morn
The world to re-awake arise; or Night
Descend to beautify her brow with stars,
And he admire them? Though the wrathful Deep
Should thunder all her waves to foam; or Plagues,
Like noiseless whirlwinds sweep half earth away,
Still, tomb'd within himself, he would not weep,
Or wonder; what to him were Nature's pranks?
Not Genius, crown'd with her celestial light;
Not glorious Art; nor Beauty darting out
The mental radiance of her meaning eye,
One noble passion in his soul could plant:
No renegade was he! for when the beam
Of life in death was languishing, and hell
Before him sounding like a furnace-blast,
A Thought look'd back, and wept the world behind!

Such were a few of all the dark undone.
Among them, millions who were crowned, when Time
Stalk'd o'er the earth, as demigods of fame,
Were seen: Philosophers, whose rebel doubts
Would, Titan-like, have disenthroned The God
In heaven, were here; and hosts of every shade
Of sin, from visor'd Crime, to daring Vice;
And those, whose coward-virtues only shone
Untried, when happiness around them smiled;
Unlike the truly good, whose virtues were
As stars,—unnoticed in the haughty glare
Of day, but in their full effulgence seen
And felt, when darkness overshrouds the world.
Not least in number were of middle-stamp,
Nor good, nor bad, and yet for heaven too base;
Triflers, who gaily pass'd from life to death
Like full-wing'd vessels o'er a gallant sea!

And did not meek-eyed Mercy stoop to save?—
To Heaven she beckon'd every breathing soul!
By day, by night, she whisper'd to the heart,
“A God! Eternity! A Day of Doom!”
By funeral-knells, and swiftly-dying friends;
In solemn hours, and serious moods; by pangs
Within, and perils from without; by all
The eloquence of love and truth divine
She summon'd man to glory, and be saved.
In vain!—the tides of joy unebbing flow'd,
And lightly tript the fairy Hours along:
Eternity was all a cheat! and Heaven,
Some bright creation of a poet's dream;
And Hell, but burning in a priestly brain!

Men died; and could they have their breath resumed,
With one terrific shrick they would have thrill'd
Creation round,—“There is, there is a Hell!”
But now, for ever dungeon'd must they groan
Where minutes hold eternities of pain!

The crowns in happier realms they might have worn
In mocking dreams now only view'd, which make
Damnation more severe; their wasted hours,
Corrupting pleasures and degraded joys,
The sabbaths broken, and the God blasphemed,—
All, in one blended, burning mass of sin
And mem'ry, round each guilty Soul revolve,
Where self-conviction forms the deepest Hell.

567

UNIVERSAL PRAYER.

Almighty, True, Eternal, and Supreme,
By Person Threefold and in Nature One,
Jehovah dread, adorable I Am!
Through Christ alone accessibly reveal'd,
In whom Thine attributes and counsels meet
Become incarnate and the World redeem,—
Look on our hearts, and lift them up to Thee,
By prayer and praise for due ascension wing'd.
Illume, expand, and purify the Soul
With inward radiance, from Thyself derived;
The springs of mind unlock, and let them gush
Heavenward to Thee in one commingled stream
Of adoration, duteous as divine.

Thou Infinite! since first creation roll'd
Of heaven thy mercy hath a shade reveal'd
To Nature's heart; in ev'ry age or clime,
Heard in the wind, or by the tempest robed,
Or in the parent-sun presumed to shine,
Still has immortal soul been stamp'd with Thee!

Oh, all which thought can span, or eye perceive,
Is but a part, a shadow of Thy Power
Creating, filling, and upholding All!
The arch'd immensity above us spread,
Where mystic worlds their silent march perform,
And Seasons live, and act; the chainless Deep
Belting the earth with majesty and might;
The mountains pinnacled with storms; the floods
And streams, the meadows beautified with flowers,
A God declare! and in the thunder-peals
Rattling from cloud to cloud their voices dire,
Like Sinai, when the awe of sound convulsed
Her cavern'd height,—a Deity is there!
But when dark whirlwinds o'er creation sweep
Like rebel Spirits plunging from the sky,
We dread Thee, wing'd upon each awful blast!

Fountain of Light and Love! while Nature hymns
Thy praise in wave or wind, from shore to shore,
Thy miniature, immortal Man, the grace
And glory of the earth, with brow erect
Was made the world to walk in joy; to share
Thy goodness; and adore the Hand divine.
Then look, Thou Universal One! Whose eye
Alike on all is fix'd, with mercy view
This wide and peopled World; from east to west
From north to south Thy guardian care extend:
In Polar climes, in lands refined or rude,
In isles remote, or deserts grimly vast,
Where beats a heart within a human breast
There be Thou present, and Thy power adored!
And oh, since all one common race are doom'd
To run, and one Eternal Goal to reach,
May Thy prime Attribute each bosom warm
With tender sympathy and truth; may Man
To man be link'd, in fellowship of soul,
Till one vast chain of Love the world embrace.

Unsearchable! before whose boundless gaze
The Past the Present and the Future stand
Submissive, we implore Thee to unshroud
The Sun of truth; His heavenly beam advance
From pole to pole, till on His perfect face
All earth shall gaze, one glorious Altar rise,
And every soul unite to hail thee, God!

And, ah! may those who fight the war of faith
With weapons such as brave Apostles wore,
In climes where Sin and Satan darkly rage
Feel holy valour, from Thy shield derived:
Defend them, Thou! Whose cross their banner decks,
When bleak with ice or burnt with torrid glow
Deserts of gloom and death their eyes appal;
Or when at midnight, round their flapping tent
The hurricane like a demon howls,
Let Hope descend, their falt'ring hearts confirm,
And free as morning let their faith arise
Again for conquest, o'er the host of Hell;
While round them, daily may Redemption see
Idolatry from thrones of darkness fall
For ever, by the sword of Truth destroy'd.

As o'er the treach'rous sea of human life
We wander, till our anchor'd spirits rest

568

In the calm haven of eternity,
Without a heart-deep sense, a wakeful dread
Of Thee, felt in the mind, and by the act
Reveal'd, we perish on the rock of sin:
Lord of the Universe! impress, we pray,
Upon our minds Thy majesty, that breathes
A holy freshness through the heart; and raise
And animate the soul to things sublime;
O'erawe the passions, and each thought arrest
Which on the fiery wing of impulse roams
Unheedful of the Voice within, where dwells
The chronicler of virtue and of crime.
Omnipotent! in every Soul be shrined:
So shall our deeds be echoes of good thoughts,
And at Thy dreadful summons we shall stand
Unharm'd, secure amid the shock of worlds!

And since to Thee the unveil'd heart be known,
Nor voiceless thought, nor wish can rise, but Thou
Record'st it in Thine awful Book of Life,
The tempted mind oh! may we ever watch
And keep it pure from each unhallow'd wish,
From each depraved desire: so shall our days
In beautiful declension fade; and Hope
And Faith triumphant o'er the world exult;
Till back recall'd, the renovated Soul
Shall reap beatitude in realms of light.

On each degree of men, benignant God!
Thy sleepless care we pray Thee to bestow;
Grave it on each adoring mind, that Heaven's
Bright portals are to all unbarr'd, that high
Nor mean, nor rich nor poor with Thee prevail
By aught peculiar, save a perfect heart:
The meanest orphan of the world may win
A wreath in heaven; the humblest wear a crown
Of life. And oh! may those, the gifted few,
Archangels of the earth, before whose thrones
Mortality will bend, and half adore,
Remember what to Thee and Man they owe:
May Genius never stoop to pander vice,
But fix her eye on heaven, and walk the earth
A Spirit conscious of her native sphere.

Prime Source of being! let the richly-dower'd
Forget not Him from whom their riches flow,
And heaven-born Charity exult to be
A bright reflection of Thy glorious Self!
Her office 'tis, sweet Harbinger of love,
To light the burden from oppressed hearts,
To pluck the arrow from Affliction's breast,
Nor leave a pang behind; and where the sad
And unobtrusive Virtues toil, to shed
The balm of joy, and wreathe their cup of wo
With smiles accorded by approving Heaven.

To Thee, to Thee alone, pervading God,
The sum of human agonies is known!
But wheresoe'er the race of sorrow dwell
There may Thy dews of mercy fall; refresh
The wither'd heart, the languid eye of Want
Relume, and bid Misfortune smile again:
And since from Thee the breath of Life began
And on each brow the seal of God is set,
Oh, hear the bitter sighs of Thraldom, breathed
Morn, noon, and night, from out ten thousands hearts
Of agony, to Thee: Awake, arise,
God of the slave and free! and disenthral
The World; bid freedom shine, and like thy sun
Illume and animate Creation round.

And let the young, on whose delighted gaze
In hopeful beauty dawns the dream of life,
In their unspotted bosoms treasure thoughts
Of Thee, to guide them through the cloudy years;
And may the Old, upon whose gray-worn heads
An honourable crown past Time has placed,
When earth grows dim, and worldly joys decay,
Find heaven advancing as the world retires.

Oh! Thou that fathomest the guilty mind
And canst interpret each debasing thought
Untold, the erring soul arouse, by Sin
From Thee withdrawn; the form of Vice unveil,
And bare her hideous aspect to the eye
Of Truth; then, bid return the rebel heart,
And blot its error with repentant tears.

On him, whom Hope and Faith exalt, what dreams,
What joys, and what diviner moods attend!
The world He walks, as Jesus walk'd the waves,
Triumphant and secure. In every scene
A love for Thee prevails; Creation breathes
Of heaven: the vaulted sky with stars bedropt;
The Ocean roll'd to rest, or sending up
Tremendous pæans to her mighty Lord;
The field and flower; whate'er in noontide walk
Is sweet, to Him his wondering heart allure,
The source and spirit of the moving Whole.
All order, beauty, and perfection here
Form but the shadows of more perfect Bliss
Cast from a purer world; he dwells in Thee,

569

And Thou in him; Heaven seems his native home
And Immortality embowers him there.

Not for the fleeting joys of Life alone
We pray, and those by blood or truth allied:
When Life's fierce storms are hush'd, and Death that veil
Undraws, beyond which never human glance
Hath seen, oh, then be present, viewless Power!
And calm the pangs of Nature's closing scene:
Let haunting fears, nor fiery dreams the past
Recall; but may the grave a future bed
Of glory be; around the dying couch
May bands of sympathetic Angels watch,
And waft the wingèd Spirit to its home.

Omnipotent! at Whose creative word
Eternity a shining host sent forth
Of worlds, to balance in the beauteous air,
Still may the Sun upon his dazzling brow
Thy smile of mercy o'er mankind reflect;
Still let abundance crown the year; still roll
The seasons o'er a prosperous land, and breeze
And blast, and all the treasure of the clouds
The pregnant earth enrich, and heap the load
Of human gratitude to gracious heaven!

Incarnate King of kings, and Lord of lords!
Since at thy fiat empires rise and fall
And melt like palaces of painted cloud,
Mantle our cherish'd Country with Thy wings
Of glory: may she prosper in the pride
Of liberty; Her ancient throne around
Let all the kingly virtues throng; and bid
Thy delegate, the Monarch of our Land,
Be graced with wisdom, and his sceptre wield
The majesty of Justice and of Truth;
May he be great and good, and ever find
A loving bulwark in the People's heart!

But with the prayer let boundless praise ascend
On wings that never droop. We praise Thee, God!
For life and limb; we praise Thee, God! for health
And wisdom, hope divine, and deathless truth;
For each vast symbol of Thy power portray'd
By this dread Universe, where Thou art seen,
As ocean mirrors an imperial sun.
In feeble infancy, when on the breast
We hang in slumber, Thy protecting Hand
O'ershades us; on our steps Thine angels wait;
And day by day, Thou shap'st the formless mind,
Teaching the thought to bud, the tongue to speak,
And on the heart reflecting grace and truth,
Which are the flashes that Thyself reveal.
And thus, through all the ravell'd maze of life
With viewless guidance Thou direct'st our feet,
Till, lo! upon that awful Brink we stand
Where shines the light which leads to Heaven the soul.

But Thine infinity of awful love
Oh who can fathom, when th' Incarnate came
And bade the moral resurrection dawn?
He look'd,—and in His glance grew bright the Earth!
Her slavish eye Idolatry unscaled,
While Superstition from her gloom arose
Burst from her bonds, and with an angel-shout
From east to west the Hallelujah rang!

Victor of Death! mysterious God and Man,
Who bore the vial of almighty Wrath
Upon His head outpour'd, the tomb unlock'd,
Trampled on Hell, and oped the gates of Heaven
To banish'd Man, hail Prince of Peace! enthroned
In glory, with Thy co-eternal Sire,
Our prayer accept, the incense of the soul,
And hallow it with Thy perfecting grace.

Thou Light of Light! by ancient seers foretold,
And by prophetic minstrels hymn'd, the sun
And centre of our faith, redeeming Christ!
Look down, and consecrate thy Church below:
Around it rally all thy faithful hearts,
Pillars beyond the power of Hell to shake!
Reluctant time roll on; and spread from land
To land, from isle to isle, the Word of Truth
Till Earth shall seem one universal soul.

But all is fruitless, save Thy Spirit teach,
Console, attract, illumine and adorn
The penitential Mind. Can deaf men feel
How Music wakens her enchanted might;
Or blind ones, when the lids of Morning ope,
Greet the proud radiance of commencing day?
So dull, and eyeless to the words and beams
Of truth heaven-sanction'd, is the rocky heart,
Before an unction of converting grace
Descend, and bid the glorious change begin.
Or, mark the body, when the soul is fled,
How pale and powerless, how corrupt and cold
It lies, and withers like a Dream of clay!
So dead to things transcendently divine
In carnal trance the soul itself abides,
Till comes Thy Spirit with celestial breath,

570

The faded lineaments of God revives
And quickens nature with transforming power:
Then, Thou art all, and all in Thee resides.
Eternity upon the Book of Life
Reflected, how sublime the means of Grace!
In Christ what love immeasurably deep
Embodied! what a glory robes the Cross!
Each word, each promise, each divine appeal
By Thee brought home, how vast redemption grows!
Vile passions sink; and low affections raised,
No longer worm-like creep in dust and gloom,
But, wing'd by faith, beyond the world ascend,
Exulting round The Throne, and hearing oft
Faint echoes of some archangelic hymn
To Jesu chanted; Who, as Lord of deed
And life of thought, o'er all our being reigns;
And oft, by sacred fascination led,
To Calvary our yearning Hearts retire,
Kneel at the Cross, and see the Saviour die!

Be with us, Lord, till years of fadeless bloom
Act the bright wonders which Isaiah sung,
And Eden, lovelier far than Adam saw,
Lit by the Sun of Righteousness, appear!
And when at length Thy gospel-Kingdom comes,
When the last Trumpet wakes the trance of time
And thunders roll creation's knell, Thine eye
Shall beam with mercy; and Thy voice will sound
A welcome to the Skies; while, angel-wing'd,
Myriads ascend to shine immortal there.

London, 1829.

574

THE STAGE COACH.

(1827.)

------Jumenta vocant—eundum est;
Nam mihi commota jam dudum mulio virga
Adnuit.
Juv. Sat. 3.

ANALYSIS.

Sunrise in an obscure Village—Woodland described— Curate's abode—Breakfast scene before the journey —Coach arrives—Its influence on the Villagers, &c. —A respectful apostrophe to the subject—Pleasure of a journey from town on a fine day, or of a visit to a secluded Friend—Schoolboy's love of travel— A Coachman sketched—a farewell at the Parsonage —Journey recommenced—Landscape Scenery— Park Mansions—Country Gentlemen—A homely Man's feelings on surveying their comforts— Moral scenery on the Road—Instruction often derived from a casual acquaintance with Passengers —Characters—Politician—Pleasure of a social Temper—The quiet demeanour of the Curate contrasted with his loquacious Friend—A retrospect of the Author's—A sad but interesting Passenger is next described—then, two Schoolboys, and their pleasant glee—Its effect on a Sailor and an old Soldier, who each relate the story of their Lives— Arrival at a Town where the Coach stops for Dinner—Comforts of an Inn—Scene described— Journey recommenced—Evening Scenery—Delight of revisiting the Place of our Boyish days—Sailor's joy on his return Home after a long absence— Journey concluded—The Passengers part—And the Poem concludes with a moral comparison.

The morn is up; on Woodland's eastern sky
Masses of cloud in rich confusion lie;
Awhile they mingle, then apart they glide
Like painted isles upon a far-off tide:
Till, orb'd with glory, see! the sun appear
To light the world, and lead the Day's career.
Now from yon hamlet's moss-grown chimneys rise
Wreaths of blue smoke which curl along the skies,
And far the stir of village-life resounds
And rings the morning air with merry sounds.

Ask ye of Woodland, site of boyish days?
A village, such as Goldsmith's verse might praise:
The grey church glimm'ring through the dark elm-trees,
Whose pealing chimes oft harmonise the breeze;
A Gothic mansion on the green withdrawn,
With freckled steps and smoothly-levell'd lawn,
Where priest and parish sages oft retire
And bow obsequious to the ruddy squire;
An ocher'd inn behind a bench-girt tree,
Where chatt'ring statesmen kindly disagree,—
These are the noblest piles on Woodland's plain,
To charm the pilgrim, or delight the swain.

Though barren now, not so when summer-bloom
Spreads a bright magic over winter's gloom,
Fair Woodland looks, and every garden greets
The way-worn traveller with exulting sweets.
The gravel winding to the lilac-bower
Where shaded friends beguile their sultry hour;
The guarded hive where humming bees abound,
The well-rope creaking forth its homely sound,
The fairy babble of a road-side stream
Where the brown urchin shapes his infant dream,

575

With many a charm awake the wand'rer's smile,
Tempting his eye to pause, and dream awhile.

But to our scene!—Beside yon beaten road
Behold the village Curate's neat abode;
Time-worn, it stands in unobtrusive state
Behind the circling pales and ivied gate,
With pointed windows based by massy beams,
Where orient Morn delights to shed her gleams:
No fruits, or flower-parterres in spruce array!
The night-beads glisten on the leafless spray,
And, safely housed within his pendent cote,
The plaintiff pigeon coos his winter-note.

But in yon parlor, where a window-blaze
Now flickers redly o'er the white-frost haze,
And the bold robin, fed by infant-zeal,
Pecks from the scatter'd crumbs his morning meal,
How merrily resounds the mingled din
Of social love and life, awake within!
Bright on the pictured wall the fire-beams play;
There the loud tea-urn sings its bubbling lay,
And on the glossy table-cloth are spread
The glitt'ring china and the cottage-bread:
The parting hour, like death itself to meet,
Is come!—the curate from his calm retreat,
Doom'd by domestic care, awhile must roam
And leave the heaven which Virtue forms at home.

Around him now a darling group is met
With faithful looks of fondness and regret;
Yon fair-brow'd child, the gentle, loving, good,
And budding sweetly into womanhood,
Presidingly the breakfast-rite surveys
While a meek sorrow dims her pensive gaze;
One prattling cherub, with infantine grace,
Leaps on his knee, and pats his smiling face,
While elder boys within their hearts receive
The counsel pious fathers care to give.
But, ah! what lovely dews of feeling rise,
Melt from the soul, and glitter in her eyes,
As moves the mother with a placid mien
And fondly hovers round this parting-scene!
Full well yon tender sire perceives the care,
And smiles it off with many a winning air;
Talks of his quick return, the news he'll tell,
And looks, what language could not speak so well!

But, hark! the merry bugle peals a sound
Till the roused echoes ring the hills around!
From doors half open'd peeps out many a face,
The grandam hobbles from her wonted place,
While noisy urchins scour the village through,
To hail the Stage-coach wheeling into view!—
That Thing of glory to a rustic throng
Who shout and gambol as it whirls along;
Or, idly vent'rous, balance at its back
Braving the guard, and whip's repeated smack;
While at the blacksmith's murky door preside,
With solemn eyes, and mouths all gaping wide,
A prying group—that pertinacious class
Who quiz profoundly as the coaches pass!

Triumph of Art! extemporaneous home!
For pain or pleasure unto all who roam;
Compactly fashion'd to a useful form,
To poise the burden, and defy the storm,
Let Life and Commerce, Love and Duty show
What daily blessings to thy speed we owe:
Sure of thy succour, see the Friend depart,
To press the absent to his faithful heart;
Swift as thy speed, behold the Lover fly
On Love's warm breast to breathe his welcome sigh;
The proud and mean, the hapless and the gay,
Thou waft'st them all, along their varied way!

And pleasant 'tis when Winter's flooding rains
Flash on the pools, and beat the rattling panes,
Snug in a Coach's padded nook to lie,
Stretch the free limb, and close the languid eye:
But sweeter far, on some auspicious day
When lovely clouds the crystal sky inlay,
And choral breezes o'er the meadow spring
Like uncaged birds exultant on the wing,
Throned on a coach to leave the smoke-dimm'd town,
And view the vernal mead and sloping down,
The wood-crown'd hills, and laughing streams that glide
While sunbeams gambol on their gurgling tide.
How warms the spirit into young delight
As views romantic greet the gladden'd sight!
While lip and brow partake the fresh-wing'd breeze,
Till fancy echoes to the warbling trees;
'Tis now, as slow and soft some distant bell
Dies on the air with solemnising spell,
That worldly feelings faint off, one by one,
Like ice-drops melted by the noontide sun;
Till, soften'd all, they mix in one soft sigh,
Or bask delighted in the beaming eye!

On morn like this, to quiet hearts how sweet
To leave the noise of life for some retreat,
Where haply dwells in his Arcadian cot
Far from the world and by the world forgot,

576

The friend of virtue, gentle, wise and good,
In mental ease and classic solitude;
There, warm at heart, within his social room
Where fragrant woodbines waft their mild perfume,
At eve's soft hour, behold the vesper-star
And talk of vanish'd scenes and friends afar;
Renew the hours of rapture and of pain,
The past create, and be the boy again!

By moonlight, too, when vale and coppice gleam
Like landscapes pictured in a poet's dream,
How charming from the coach, with half-closed eye
To mark the glimm'ring meadows gliding by:
The spectral valley, or the dark-brow'd hill,
The woods in dewy slumber, dark and still,
Or taper twinkling from some far abode,
Or waggon winding up the lonesome road,
While the meek night-bird's melancholy lay
Melts like a wreath of woven sound away.
Not least the coach's charm let schoolboys tell,
When to their prison-walls they shout, farewell!
Then through the joy-wing'd night glib tongues display
The fairy visions of their homeward way;
And oft the ceaseless tongue would fain relate
What coach-wheels rattle at the school-yard gate!

But who, emburied in his coat's broad fold,
With triple kerchief round his neck enroll'd,
Stalks forth, with brindled waistcoat, full and free,
And glossy boots, braced o'er his giant knee?
Our Coachman! who, with smiling pomp and mien,
Full-blown and square, directs the road-machine.
Alike when winter wraps the world in snow,
Or o'er it summer sheds her sleepy glow;
Not unimportant is his busy post,
Or on the road, or parleying with my Host,
Or when, with merry eye and mottled face,
The whip he twirls, whose ev'ry turn is grace!

Happy the trav'ller who on coachey's throne
May sit, and make the country round his own;
Well pleased to hear him, with official pride,
To asking strangers act the courteous guide;
Point with his whip to each patrician house,
Portray the owner, or depict his spouse;
Or, fraught with whisper'd tales of sly import,
Presume to paint a Baron for his sport!
Then, too, what puns and proverbs quaint he knows!
What ruddy humour on each feature glows,
When, gazing round him with theatric leer,
He tells the freaks of many a by-gone year!

But see, the fond farewells are said and o'er,
And, lo! the Curate, at the coach's door,
Smiles on the red-cloak'd dames and hoary men
Who humbly wish him safe return'd again:
Up roll the steps,—the echoes of the horn
Far on the breeze from hill to hill are borne;
And see, along the road's extended sweep,
Loud as the billows lording o'er the deep,
Again the bick'ring wheels their course renew,
And Woodland fades amid the distant view.

And now, while languid mists dissolve away
And golden sun-tints o'er the landscape play,
Look round! the unpretending view admire;
From shady dingles peeps the taper spire,
While far around yon richly-wooded green
What still romance o'erveils the rural scene.

But most the pilgrim eye delights to see
My Country! monarch of th' imperial Sea!
Those ancient mansions where thy Gentles dwell,
And grace the homes their fathers built so well.
Far on the lawn, amid the leafy shade,
Behold the porch and pillar'd walls display'd:
Hark! round the Park, begirt with olden trees,
The sheep-bells shake their echoes on the breeze;
Fleet on his fairy foot, the timid deer,
With glancing eye pursues his wild career;
While browsing cattle crop the stunted food,
And snuff the wind with conscious gratitude.

And long, fair England! may such homes be seen,
In modest grandeur shadow'd o'er the green;
Long may the country-Gentleman be found
The grateful lord of his paternal ground:
Far from suburban toil, and meaner care,
No midnight-brawls, no masquerading there,
A bounteous fortune, and a feeling breast,
Loved by the good, and by the humble blest,—
How calm he marks the bloom of life decay,
How breeze-like float the fleeting hours away!

And ah! forgive the wand'rer, doom'd to roam
O'er life's autumnal waste, without a home,
If chance an unforbidden wish should swell
For some dear haunt, where Love and Truth might dwell:
How blithely would he hail the welcome dawn
And stroll enamour'd round his dew-bright lawn!

577

Or when pale twilight hued the garden-trees
And the boughs twinkled in their vesper-breeze,
Delighted stray, with heavenward feeling fraught,
And wind the mazes of immortal thought!

But from the road unnumber'd scenes transfuse
O'er the quick mind, reflection's moral hues;
Each, as it passes, claims a sigh or tear
For Want, or Wo, and all their offspring, here.
There, the blind beggar, led by faithful Tray,
Bareheaded moans along his mournful way;
Here, a lean pedlar winds his wintry track
With wallet strapp'd upon his weary back;
And far withdrawn on yonder coppice-green,
Like wood-born regents of the lonely scene,
The sun-brown gipsies o'er their caldron gaze
And watch the faggots crackle as they blaze.
But lo! a livelier scene: beside the wheel,
Wild urchins whirling round from head to heel;
Around and round, and still around they turn,
Till lip and eye with bright suffusion burn,
Then mildly beg, with upward-looking face,
Some poor reward to crown their wheel-side race.
And oft to him, whose moral Eye hath been
A quaint observer of Life's comic scene,
Hath social Travel true instruction brought,
Which form'd a theme for many an after thought.
Abroad, our lines of character appear;
For who would crouch to affectation here,
Where all are free, unknown, and unrestrain'd,
And fashion profitless, however feign'd?
A rapid meeting (like the glad surprise
Of nature, when a sun-burst brings the dyes
Of verdure wood and water into life
Each with a sudden power of freshness rife)
Calls traits of mind and tones of feeling forth
And bold opinion in its native worth!
Within the compass of a hundred miles,
How vast a subject for our frowns, or smiles!
How much that opens like a scenic view
Of Nature's drama, such as Shakspere drew!
The selfish, vain, the volatile, or proud,
The pert, the spruce, the silent, and the loud,
All, in their turn, some living truth impart
Which threads the labyrinth that conceals the heart.

Meanwhile, our rumbling Coach pursues its way,
Adorn'd with passengers—and who are they?
Inside, and warm'd with sympathy, recline
A Politician and a plain Divine;
The first can lay the cabinet quite bare,
And fathom all the well of wisdom there!
A smile of candour clothes his merry cheek,
And his eyes twinkle what his heart would speak:
Genteely plain in periwig and vest,—
Let buckled shoes and snuff-box speak the rest!

Within a coach, perchance we oft may find
Some choice companion with a kindred mind;
Here, unsubdued by ceremonious fear,
The sterling traits of Character appear;
And thoughts unmanacled by mean control
Flash bright and clear, like sparkles from the soul.
Shame on the Man who drones himself away,
When conversation should have turn to play!
A Soul so bare, companionless, and cold,
Can scarce be stamp'd in nature's kindly mould,
Who bids the social flame to kindle, when
We meet, though strangers, with our fellow men.

Commend me him who with colloquial art
His tongue can loose, and let out half the heart;
Above suspicion, conscious of no end,
He turns the stranger to a passing friend,—
Refined or rude, no matter, if the mind
Be meet for converse, and for truth inclined.
With him a journey yields delightful ease,
His wit may gladden, and his wisdom please;
Long miles escape amid such talking charms,
The temper brightens, and acquaintance warms.

And such is he, whose glowing tongue hath sped
As if a parliament were in his head;
How well he weaves each patriotic plan,
And, like a Minister, selects his man!
A war condemns, or conquers distant climes,
And paints the leading wonder of the times;
With fond remembrance turns to scenes of yore,
And mourns that mind will be revived no more,
As when, with eagle-glance, great Chatham rose,
And flash'd defiance to his country's foes;
As when, enrapt, immortal Burke he saw
The House inspire, and give the world a law!

Mean while, the pensive Curate, pleased to learn,
But ventures half an answer in his turn;
Remotely blest, his humble lot has been
Through life to move unvalued and unseen;
To watch and weep beside the couch of Woe
And bid the tear of blest contrition flow;
Or woo immortal mercy from the Throne,
The poor protect, and make their griefs his own:—
His heart replete with heavenly love and truth,
The prop of age, and hallow'd guide of youth,

578

His home the bosom-spring of tranquil joy,—
Ah! who would mar him with the world's alloy?

And here, oh! let one dreaming line renew
That hour when Life's far ocean dawn'd in view,
And, fired by young Ambition's inward flame,
To battle with its stormy scenes I came.
As o'er the winding street our coach-wheels roll'd
And from the Abbey-dome the town-clock toll'd,
How lingeringly my parting glance was cast
On each loved spot that hail'd me as we past!
Till far behind old Bladud's hills were seen,
And glittering uplands clad by forest-green,
And rocky woods enrapt in sunset-glow,
With beechen valleys bathed in light below,
Till dim and faint the city-mansions grew,
Like cloud-shaped temples of aerial hue:
Then all the heart seem'd melting into tears
While fancy hover'd o'er my future years!

That time hath fled; and Truth might well relate
The toiling woes of life's eventful state;
The tinge of circumstance that hued my hours,
Not gently lost in academic bowers,
But roll'd away in energetic toil,
With friends to gather, and with foes to foil:
But these are past; and that Great Power alone
To Whom the history of hearts is known,
Those chronicles of inward-life can tell
Where truth and conscience in communion dwell.

Night roll'd away; and when, with weary eye,
I watch'd the dawn awaken in the sky,
London, the vast, the wonder of mankind,
The mart of Commerce, and the fount of Mind,
Like an immortal Vision rose in view,
Dim vast and distant in the morning-hue!
How did the startled feelings rush and roll
In pleasing tumult o'er my prostrate soul,
When timidly, as on enchanted ground,
I mark'd the peopled desert spread around;
And heard the waves of Life around me roar
Like echoes wafted from a distant shore,
While bands of glorious Spirits that have been
Rose from the dead, and stalk'd the mighty scene!

Still wheels the coach along the hoof-worn road,
Whose windings tell of many a mingled load;
The golden sun pours forth his noontide glare,
And cheeks catch beauty from the bracing air,
While talking glee and social voices sound,
And pleasure quickens as the tongues abound.

Amid the tumult of a crowded street
In pensive walk who has not chanced to meet
Some unregarded wretch who seems alone,
Sad as an exile in a land unknown,—
A form of Woe upon whose mournful face
Compassion loves the line of thought to trace?
And such yon aged man, with haggard mien
Who, all unconscious of the present scene,
His every feature with dejection fraught,
Sits in a shroud of melancholy thought:
Upon that wintry brow and blighted cheek
Departed years their doleful history speak!
For him no welcome by a cheering hearth,
No home of comfort and no song of mirth;
No gentle heart to mingle with his own
Pilgrim of life, he roams the world alone!
On such a wither'd face and dim-worn eye,
The gay might look, and learn for once, to sigh!

Merriest of all whose bounding gladness feels
The flush of joy a laughing eye reveals,
Two schoolboys from the coach's roof resound
Triumphantly, and hail the woods around;
Glad as the sunbeams when the storm is o'er,
That gild the wave, and gambol on the shore.

Oh, could the horses like their wishes speed,
Then short the road, and travelling swift indeed!
And mark yon blue-eyed rogue with daring brow,
Round his young heart what visions revel now!
Restless and wild, all gaze and wonder he;
Sky, coach, and road, he fills them all with glee!
How dark a mystery to his infant mind,—
The wheels advance, the bushes glide behind!
Full oft a school-room dream hath pictured this,
A journey home, the paragon of bliss!
This heal'd up many a birch-awaken'd smart,
Cut short the lesson, and relieved the heart:
It comes at last! adieu to “Propria quæ,”
Long-rooted verbs, and puzzling prosody,
The tame sky-blue, the task-recalling bell,
The stern infliction, and the piteous yell;
A month of joy each parted woe repays
With nights of fun and frolic-loaded days.
Not he who cross'd the Rubicon for Rome,
Plann'd more immensely than these rogues for home;
What feats immortal on the frozen lake!
What tittering mirth around the twelfth-night cake!
Then snugly nestled by the parlour-fire,
Hobgoblin-tales shall Christmas-eve inspire;

579

Or, hand in hand by Love parental led,
They'll see the showman smooth the lion's head!

A glad spectator of these roguish two
Garb'd in a time-worn suit of woollen blue,
A plump-faced Tar sits by, and joys to see
The heart-warm flow of boyish revelry;
His tiny hat of weather-beaten straw,
His twinkling eye, and look so fresh and raw,
The winning bluntness of a seaman's guise,—
Allure the urchins' archly-smiling eyes;
Looks grow to words; and kind, without delay,
With ocean-tales he charms the travell'd way;
Of howling wolves that haunt the ice-bound Cape,
And surges which surpass the mountain-shape,
Or billows thundering by the vessel-side
While mariners in swinging hammocks ride,
Of these he tells; till one, with wonder grave,
His hand uplifts to meet a mountain-wave,
And in dread vision, eyes the shatter'd sail,
And starts and shivers at the seaman's tale!

A veteran Soldier, in his faded lace,
One-legg'd, with plumeless cap, and scar-worn face,
Upon whose sunken features, rough and plain,
Is mapp'd out many a fierce and far campaign!
Smiling, obeys the elder boy's behest,
To read the medal on his martial breast:
Though battle-roar, and moonlit-bivouac,
And mounted breach, and city's dreadful sack,
Return no more, his eye illumes to tell
Of foe and fight he loved to brave so well;
Once more in heart he marches to the sound
Of deep-roll'd drums and clarion's echoing sound;
Front in the rank again he seems to be,
And inly shouts the song of Victory!

And well the eager boy his rapture feels,
To hear of clarion-voice, and cannon peals;
Or how the Battle raged till setting sun,
Retreat and charge, who vanquish'd, and who won;
Till his heart triumphs with a warrior-glow,
Pants for a sword, a charger, and a foe!
But hark! the watchful guard, in champion state,
Twangs his shrill summons to the turnpike-gate:
And promptly coming from his spruce abode,
A grey-beard opes the barrier of the road:
'Tis pass'd; and, lo! beside yon sun-bright down,
The giant-shadows of the distant town;
Till, brightly-towering in the noontide-blaze,
A City flashes on the eager gaze!
Brick walls and temples, domes, and mansions dun,
And steeples whitening in the welcome sun,
And banners shivering in the smoke-dimm'd air,
And lofty house-roofs, slanting, broad, and bare,
With the faint windings of a clear canal
Like a lone pilgrim roaming far from all,—
Majestic spread beneath a cloudless sky
In one full mass arrest the traveller's eye.

Though sweet awhile the noisy world to leave,
Forsake its follies, and forget to grieve,
Pleasant the city-roar renew'd again,
When impulse flags, and solitude is pain!
List to the clamour of the clattering street,
The bickering car, and hoof, and pattering feet;
The rush, the stir, the deafening, struggling din
Of moving life!—but, lo, a stately Inn!

Hail to the timely welcome of an Inn;
Hail to the room where home and cheer begin;
Where all the frost-bound feelings melt away,
And soul-warm sympathies begin to play,
While Independence shows her careless mien,
And unforced traits of human life are seen.
The crackling blaze which dyes the chimney red,
The gracious substance on the table spread,
The glowing wine-cup and the rich ale's foam,—
Partake them all, and dream thyself at home!

As round the festive board our travellers sit
With appetites far sharper than their wit,
What busy knives and gracious meats abound,
What hissing corks and tinkling glasses sound!
Some, fiercely-rapid, sheathe the gleaming blade
In joints that seem for hungry pilgrims made;
Some by the glittering hearth-side sit and gaze
And bathe their features in its welcome blaze;
Nor still the Host, who waddles here and there
Like a live Barrel come to take the air!
The time is past; the feast partaken, o'er;
Again they journey over hill and moor;
Fresh at the rein, behold yon rapid steed
Roll his large eyes, and cleave the wind with speed;
Thus, unimpeded with its plenteous load,
The eager Coach pursues the varying road,
Save when Relays from local barns are led,
And horses tired move steaming to their shed.

Now shadowy eve the fading woods hath crown'd,
And dew and darkness shed their spirit round;

580

Hark! o'er the hills what bugle-echoes play,
And die in many an ebbing note away;
Behold! the Mail in glimmering pomp appears,
And, as it onward speeds, what smiles and tears,
What shades of time, or accident, or scene,
And memories for all which life has been
It brings,—to sadden, sweeten, or beguile
The myriad hearts within our crowded isle!
Perchance the morrow will an orphan hail,
A wife be weeping o'er some funeral-tale,
A friend be doom'd in distant isles to roam,
And music cease in many a happy Home!

Where is the heart unmoved by more than glee,
Where is the eye which kindles not to see
That spot where first our beam of Life began,
And Youth put on the energies of Man?
When far remote from youth's regretted scene,
Imagination sped the way between,
And, hovering round each well-known spot, restored
All which young memory loved, and heart adored!
A Sabbath-bell recall'd the street we trod
Each holy morn, to hymn the name of God;
A ballad-singer in his homely strain
Would thrill the bosom with delicious pain,
As oft beneath the moon's romantic ray
We mused on home and friendship far away:
At length return'd, again we glow to greet
Each favorite spot and unforgotten street;
Once more on haunted wood and stream to gaze,
And clasp the shadow of departed Days.

And lo! upon yon Sailor's swarthy brow
What home-born feeling is enkindled now?
What tear-drops gush from out his happy soul
As up familiar lanes the coach-wheels roll,
Joy flies from lip to brow, through heart and limb,
The very houses seem to welcome him!
Though doom'd awhile a foreign Deep to roam,
Each breeze and blast had wing'd a blessing home;
Where Hope and Memory bade him oft retire
And tell sea-tales around his winter fire.

But list! the Schoolboys' mingled shouts of glee
Round a fond parent dancing merrily!
Such bliss to come, such pain and peril past,
Can their glib tongues unload the heart too fast?
The old man smiles, and mingles with their joy,
Pleased to remember he was once a boy;
And blandly paints the joyous scenes to come
As hand in hand he leads the prattlers home.

Reader! a pensive Moral ere we part
And be its tablet thy persuaded heart;
Our vanish'd day like human Life hath been,
An onward-view of many a varied scene,
A changeful path, where faces come and go,
Friends meet and part,—like all we love below!
Thus on, till Life's eventful journey's o'er,
And meeting Souls embrace, to part no more.

581

SCARBOROUGH.

A DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH.

—1846.

Farewell the scene, but not farewell the charm
Of ancient Scarbro'! Long as mem'ry lives
And for my past a secret mansion builds
Within me, like a sacred Thing I prize,
Her touching beauties shall be unforgot
And treasured there, with no affected love.

The spirit of the olden time's romance
Haunts her loved scenes, where each abiding grace,
By Nature hallow'd, blooms unwither'd still;
And beautiful are all her wooded bays,
Her winding creeks of loveliness and calm
And mounts of woodland-green, as when the Saxon gazed
In dreaming sternness, or with soften'd brow,
At twilight on them, while the rosy tinge
Of vesper-clouds o'erveil'd the ocean-rocks
Before him. History, too, may yet perceive,
Where the helm'd Roman in his banner'd pride
Lifted those eagles which o'erswept the world,
Invincible in valour. Lone and sad,
Wrapt in a shroud of melancholy thought,
With heart unecho'd, and with mind unnerved,
I thank thee, God! that often I have won
From scenes that here are eloquent of Thee,
Feelings divine, and hopes from heaven new-born,
Grandeur and Beauty, with a bliss serene
That o'er my future like a dew will steal
Hereafter, when the feverish world may fret
My soul, and shore and sea lie far away.

Where rise the hills, and rolls the sacred Deep
Her minstrelsy of many-voicèd waves,
There, is the Poet's haunt, and home of song!
If true to Nature, his responsive heart
Replies in music to those myriad calls
Which still accost him from Her shrines august,
Or lone, or lovely; then, the lyre of thought
Is thrill'd with magic, and each pensive chord
Vibrates at once in poetry and praise.
For, aye between the mountains and the mind,
Infinite Soul and God's unfathom'd Sea,
A poetry of pure attraction dwells
For ever. Ye have felt it! who the Lyre
Have struck, by intellectual beauty charm'd,
In answer to a living harp of song
Within you, Poets! that our mystic world
Alone interpret, and to thought create
A richer Paradise than Adam saw,
Ere ruin fell on Eden's forfeit-bowers.
Is it that mountains are our kindred types
And, in their soaring majesty of shape
Between two worlds thus gloriously uplift,
Instruct us, heavenward how the heart ascends
When man with his high Maker most communes?
Does Ocean, in her measureless profound
Deep within deep interminably sunk,
E'en like an echo of the soul's abyss,
With dread eternity appear instinct?
We cannot tell; enough for Truth to feel
That Man and Nature are responsive works,
Shaped into concord by a Hand divine.

Here while I muse, what inspirations throng
Full on my sense, and through the mind o'erflow,
Till fancy kindles, and a fervent rush
Of bright emotions, blent with deeper thoughts,
Pour inwards: like an intellectual flood
From some heart-fountain, suddenly unseal'd
As if by magic, and with radiant speed
Rolling at once through all the spirit-depths!

Look where you can, the Beautiful is there,
Touch'd with that boldness rock-bound waters lend
To each loved region on our island-coast.
Look where you please! some answering grace responds
To your charm'd glance; as if with conscious power
Rich Nature in her prodigal supply
Of blent attractions, tender, green, or wild,
Echo'd the spirit of your wish, and gave
Her all of lovely in one view combined;
That so, elysian fancy might be lull'd
With landscapes Eden-like, and full of God.

582

In azure brightness, lo! that billow'd Sea
Rolling in rapture, and alive with beams
Of sun-made glory, with a living joy
Oh, how it heaves its bounding way along,
Cheer'd by young breezes! like a poet's heart
Panting with visions, which before him rise,
And bear him onward with a swelling pulse
Of passion, dreaming, daring, and sublime!

This cliff below, in green remoteness raised,
I mark the outlines of the curvèd shore
Upward receding with a gradual rise
Of roofs, and mansions, blendingly array'd;
While to the left a grassy mount appears
O'er which, mid benchèd walks, and shaded bowers,
In stream-like windings artificial paths
Ascend, and glitter in the glow of eve.
But, near the brink of yon impending height,
The proud Marine its modern piles erects
On high; and full before its window'd front
The surging vastness of the German sea
For ever rolls, and still for ever charms
How many a land-sick Heart, that often sigh'd
To look once more upon the leaping waves
Of laughing ocean! But, again behold
How the brave skill of architectural man.
Both height and depth can subject and reduce
To his proud service! There, the high-poised Bridge
O'erarches with magnificent effect
The cloven hills, and both in one combines:
Beneath the circle of each ponderous arch
The fascinating blue of ocean breaks
Softly, and sweetly on arrested eyes,
That downward from the cresting hills o'ergaze
The sea-girt landscape. Freshly shines the Main,
Rippled with breezes, and with sun-beams clothed
Which make her waves like liquid diamonds flash,
Dazzling the eye with over-bright excess
Hither and thither, where no shade intrudes.
How gently, o'er the beach the swelling tide
Rolls inward! falling with melodious plunge,
It murmurs to the Town's contiguous walls
And garden trees, which round the shore descend,—
As if the Sea were conscious that her waves
Were loved, or look'd upon with greeting eyes,
And hearts which echo those poetic strains
Each breezy stanza to the billow sings!

Behind me, in their yellow ripeness spread,
The upland cornfields, o'er whose bladed stalks
Bending with produce, play the choral airs
From ocean wafted, till the meadows breathe
A fitful undersong, and wild-flowers laugh
In waving gladness. List! the larks are poised
High in the air, and trill their lyric strains
Above me, in an ecstasy of sound,
And seem to quiver forth their vesper hymns.
But lo, the magic of yon peerless Main!
How graceful in majestic strength she heaves
Her breast of waters, tinged with gorgeous hues
From heaven reflected, while her boundless spread
Of billows gently to the breeze upcurls!
Far as our straining eyes can stretch the view,
Rolls that vast ocean the horizon round
Her volumed waters, till both sea and sky
Look wedded in the distance. Near the shore
Or sanded beach, the gambolling children bathe,
And in the foam and freshness of the wave
Plunge their delighted heads, and disappear
A moment, then, again their dripping frames
Lift into light, all innocently clad.
While many a bark, symmetrical and small,
Opes its white sail, and on the azure calm
Mirrors its beauty; like a bird it moves
Born of the sea, and on the waters bred;
With such a vital grace it seems to glide
O'er the light wavelets, which around it curl
Amid those taller vessels. O'er the strand
Rising within the bay's prolong'd recess,
Bold Scarbro' with her slanting roofs appears,
That redden dimly, now the pallid beam
Of sunset strikes them. Hark! her busy hum
In broken cadence to the ear is brought,
And not unpleasing; while beneath this cliff
Where now I watch, the pulsing billows play
In languid motion, while its pebbled base
They moisten; or, in lulling tones dissolve
Of sea-born music, exquisitely sad.

But stranger! high o'er all the Town behold,
Breathing stern history from its haunted walls
And mangled towers, yon warlike Castle frowns:
Sublime in ruins, like Romance in stone,
Still to the present does it preach the past
With more than language! There, a moral sigh
O'er the gone splendour of heroic times
May well be heaved, when Chivalry prevail'd,
And knightly bosoms with heroic pulse
Were beating nobly, as the brave became!
Now turn from man, for God himself is nigh
Whene'er His Temple to the heart appeals,
Like mute religion!—Thus, St. Mary's shrine,
Dim with dead ages, lifts her hoary pile,
And almost touches into pensive tears
The hearts who view her, bow'd and bent with time:
Conventual mother of Cistercian monks,
Once in the pride and pomp of Romish art

583

Her structure tower'd, and o'er this ancient Burgh
Ruled like a queen; but now, both damp and dust
Feed on her walls, and waste her mouldering form.
And can Wealth look upon a wreck like this,
Nor feel the blush of self-rebuke to burn
Into her conscience? Is the Christ we serve
To Mammon given, while with hoarding grasp
A hideous worship unto heartless Gold
We proffer, gripe our bloated incomes back,
And grudge to God the boon we well might give,
From Faith how due, to feeling how divine!

But in her widowhood St. Mary's pile
Affectingly to pious hearts appeals:
From this far mount I view her churchyard-slopes
With tombstones populous, whose pallid fronts
In the slant brightness of the sunset gleam,
And glisten o'er the humbler graves which lie
Beneath them, nameless as the grass that mourns
Of death unconscious, when the night-airs wake.
Methinks, that in her mournfulness august
E'en like a Mother, does that hallow'd Fane
Gaze on the tombs which round about her seem
To nestle; while to living Souls she pleads,
That once again the pious and the pure
Her ruin'd Shrine may raise, till Gothic arch
And roof majestic o'er rapt thousands bend
Within Her gather'd, full of praise and prayer.

Yet, ere we part from such ideal bliss
This hour of beauty and this heaven of scene
Embosom, yonder local charm survey;
That Light-house, in its guardian pride erect,
Gilded by sunshine, when it haply gleams
Full on its whited column, points afar
Through storm and gale, to mariners at Sea
Rock'd on rude surges; or, at misty night
Becalm'd, when Darkness and the Deep embrace
In black confusion, like a spectral gloom,
To them it beckons with its beacon-ray
For ever welcome to their wave-toss'd view;
And often, when the glassy ocean sleeps,
Projects its shadow with unbroken trace
Of imaged portraiture, the tide along.

There is a nobleness in nature's gifts;
A free enchantment; and a bold delight
Flow from her vital scenes of grace, or power,
Or beauty, did but man his bosom yield
To fine impressions, breathed from sylvan haunts.
Oh! none but hearts sectarian, shut, and cold,
Contracted into smallness, vain as vile,
Which do not in the cheering thought exult,
How catholic entire Creation looks
And glorious! loving all whose souls reply
To grace, or grandeur, clothing hills and dales.
If to loud Cities men contraction owe,
'Tis from the Country minds a largeness gain
Healthful and hallow'd, open as the skies
Above them, nobly breathing freedom's air!
'Tis from her landscapes our loved England takes
A moral freshness, and romantic tinge
That hues her heart with beauty: Commerce dries
The soul of Cities into venal dust,
Or, sanctions false refinement; but from shores
Embay'd in quiet, or from rock-girt waves,
Where on the beach with loud pulsation swells
The billowy heart of God's mysterious sea
For ever, may the town-worn race derive
Emotions, which immortalise their play
In that deep inwardness where feeling dwells.
Thus, let them wander by the sanded beach
O'er rocks, and crags familiar with the clouds
Where the red morning throws her radiant blush,
By meadows, lakes, or lanes of twilight green
Devious and far, to view those rustic charms
Which clothe our hamlets with an English grace
Unrivall'd. Nature is no dull effect,
No dead appearance of an outward show
To sense confined; but, oft in secret wields
A bosom-influence, when the gazer's eye
Hath long departed from the scene it saw.
Many a tone of tenderness and truth
Comes to a heart, in city-prisons pent,
Where joyless Labour plies her feverish task
Incessant,—not from streets of noise, and strife,
But from the stillness of remember'd fields,
From inland-quiet, landscapes hush'd and lone,
Or, from the magic of poetic waves
In breezy chorus, such as now resounds
Time-honour'd Scarbro'! o'er thy sweeping bay.

Ideal landscapes beautify sad minds
Immersed in cities, worn and wasted down
Into a wreck of carking wo, and care
Emaciate; or, amid some crowded mart
Of commerce, where in rooms of airless toil
Britannia's helots drudge, for Mammon's lords,
Through tedious rounds of everlasting toil
Healthless as hopeless, day by day, and year
By year, like work-Machines, unsoul'd for hire!
Hence, may the Country man's remembrance haunt
With freshening beauty, and the fever cool
Of pent-up weariness, and unvoiced woe.

584

And thus will Hearts benignant, wise and meek,
Of Christian tone and temper, e'er rejoice
In the chance-visit, which the o'erlabour'd poor
And pale mechanic to some rustic mead,
Or ocean, pays; and trust they there imbibe
Beautiful thoughts, or spells of inward power
To charm remembrance, when hereafter-toil
Hangs on each life-pulse, like a choking weight
Which burdens health, or blasts it to decay!

With man in sympathy all Nature moves,
And human Destiny: her forms his doom
Embody: featured for his primal good
By Hands celestial, when from God he fell
And glory, Nature felt the awful shock
Of his disaster! and, alike she waits
That hour millennial, when regenerate Earth
From the dark curse deliver'd, shall exult
In beauty, richer far than Eden wore,
And hush the groan which twice three thousand Years
Have ever breathed for purity and heaven!
But lo! the Day has died, and o'er the waves
Shadow and silence like two spirits creep;
Rock, hill, and radiant shore and castled fort
Melt into dimness; while the plaintive chime
Of lone St. Mary's o'er the landscape wafts
A sound of sadness, which the hour beseems.

Here ends my strain, imperfect but sincere;
Such passing tribute from a pilgrim Bard,
Stranger, accept; and with him, gently cry,
Farewell the scene! but not farewell the charm
Of ancient Scarbro': Beauty and Romance
Are thine, thou region of the rock and wave!
And priests of Nature, such as poets are,
May well enshrine thee in their songs, and make
Thy scene immortal to melodious hearts.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

WRITTEN, FOR THE MOST PART, IN EARLY YEARS.

INFANTS AND THEIR GLORY.

(1840.)

“Of such,” the kingdom in the skies prepared.
Alas! how rarely do such words impress
An awe most vital, on the Souls which read
The letter only, but the life forego.
For here Philosophy and Reason stand
Rebuked, and silent; learning, language, art,
The palms of Mind, the laurels of Renown,
The shout of Senates, and the world's applause,
How weak, and worthless, absolutely nought
When rank'd beside the destiny of babes!
And yet, to souls of earth, who measure truth
By sight, organic flesh alone they seem
Scarce by a spark of intellect inspired!
A mother's plaything, or a father's toy,
Incarnate trifles, fit for woman's smile
To gild and welcome, or her lulling voice
To soothe and soften when the temper cries,
Such may they look, to undiscerning mind!
But, since Emmanuel hath the skies unveil'd
And taught Religion to behold them there,
As true inheritors of conscious bliss
In yon bright kingdom,—let our Faith a child
Revere; and look upon its pleading form
With love, by venerating awe subdued;
As well we ponder, how beneath that frame,
Though fragile as the web of dew, there lies
A spirit with eternity instinct!
Nor doubt, that He whose hallow'd unction gave
Prophets their light and brave Apostles zeal,
Through all its faculties can so diffuse
Enlarging grace, that what on earth appear'd
Little beyond a mindless form of clay,
At the first bound which into light it makes
When disembodied,—may at once eclipse
Archangels in their knowledge; and from God
A coronet beyond the Cherubim to match
In splendour, on its infant-brow receive!

But dare we, by some earth-born pride betray'd,
Presume to question, why a sinless babe
In this bleak world of wo and crime, should live?
If but a moment on this earth it breathe,
Untaught, untried, untempted and unskill'd,
Neither by reason proved, nor faith inform'd,
What is it, but a blank of being lost,
In life all mystery, and in death no more?

Yet who are we, but stammering babes of dust,
When upward as to God's untold designs
Fancy attempts to soar on fearless wing?
But thou, fond mother! o'er thy pallid child
In coffin'd beauty for the tomb array'd,
Cold as the flowers which on it calmly lie,
Hush the wild language of thy heart's despair!
For in the twilight of our doom there flash
Gleams of instruction through the cloud of death
By wisdom darted on believing souls.
See, how the Fall when infants die, is proved,
Stung by that fatal sting, which stingeth all!
Mute sermons preach they upon primal Sin
Beyond all pulpits, in their palmiest hour
Of eloquence and truth! O who that feels
The wear and waste of this soul-trying world
Where life is one long martyrdom to most,
However gilded, back would e'er recall
The child of mercy, unto heaven resumed?
The crown it wears, but has not fought the fight,
Reaches the goal, but has not won the race;
Balm to bereavement let this thought inspire!
But with it, may this added comfort blend,—
That as eternity the dead absorbs
Youthful, or aged, our affections seek
That mystic Home with more familiar sway.
'Tis not a solitude which awed Amaze
Dreads to encounter; but a peopled clime
Fill'd with the loved and lost, we long to meet
And once more welcome! And beyond this bright
Assurance may consoled Reflection press
Inquiry: for when shuddering Reason starts
To think on millions of unpitied babes
Mangled, and massacred in heathen climes,
How do those words, so tenderly profound
Of Jesus, light the path of Providence,

588

Which tell us, Heaven the murder'd child receives,
Whose death-pangs lift a stainless heart to God,
Through early martyrdom to glory rapt.

And hence, true mothers! ye, at least, are bound
To Jesus; in His words an echo dwells
To each inquiry, which beyond the grave
Longs to pursue an infant's parted soul.
Love to Emmanuel! let your motto be;
And so on Childhood's brow of beauty gaze,
As that whereon the Sacrament shall print
A sealing import; then, your child devote
Like Anna, early to the Lord of love,
And from the cradle guide it to the Cross!

NOBLENESS OF FAITH.

Deistic Thomas, with his doubting mind,
I envy not that most exacting man
Though eye to eye and face to face he stood
Before Messiah; and, with hand outstretch'd
And daring finger to his wounds applied,
Answer'd his doubt, and silenced unbelief
By evidence, which drew his adoration forth
With over-awed amazement. He to sight
And sense appeal'd; and well were both assured
When the mild Saviour to his eye appear'd,
Thrilling that doubter with resistless proof,—
E'en by the print, and pressure of those wounds
Whence gush'd salvation o'er a guilty world!
But rather let me, with a glance of faith
All time pervade, by Christ Himself inspired;
And in the glass of His describing Word
His life and lineaments of beauty trace.
Child of the Church, and by Her creed sustain'd,
By prayer, and praise, and Her memorial rites,
Doctrines and duties and the hallow'd round
Of fasts and festivals, oh! let me learn
The sense to crucity; and walk by faith
As prophets, patriarchs, and priests have done;
By grace empower'd beyond mere sight to live,
And earth-born feelings, in their finest mood.
For not to Thomas did that blessing come,
Which round the weakest who can now adore
And clasp Emmanuel with the mind's embrace,
Hovers like music,—from the lenient mouth
Of Christ descending on the souls of all
Who though they see not, yet the Lord believe
In risen glory. Thus can Faith exalt
Man out of self, and unto God reduce
His errant nature, as its proper home.

Sense but the shadow, Faith the substance holds;
And while the pageantries of Earth and Time
Like golden clouds which line the glowing west
In airy nothingness have died away,
That glorious Infinite of truth will beam
Brighter and brighter, which pure faith pursues:
Till what in weakness now we dimly scan,
By open vision future heaven shall prove,
And God unveil'd our spirit's glory be.

WORDSWORTH.

A thought the universe in worth outweighs
View'd as dead Matter, meaningless and dumb:
Hence, on some Form where intellect is shrined,
And genius dwells, in purity of power
To God and wisdom dedicate, we gaze
With no cold glance, by common love inspired.
And thus, on Him, that venerable Bard!
A laurell'd Priest of poetry and truth,
August with years, by mournful calm subdued,
With filial reverence my spirit look'd
When first I heard him, in his mountain-home,
My entrance welcome. Boyhood's pensive dawn
Ideal magic from his mental springs
So oft had drunk, that when their breathing Source
Before me stood embodied, all the spells
His numbers wielded seem'd in one combined
And round my soul in high remembrance drawn,
Till like a Seer, or Hierarch of mind
And melody, immortal Wordsworth thrill'd
My heart, and made it vibrate into tears!
For tones there are in his creative verse
By childhood not unecho'd: but when age
Deepens the character, and powers awake
To more majestic strains attuned, his thoughts
The hidden lyre of consciousness within
Electrically move, and mental chords
By him are touch'd, which prove the soul divine.

When thus indebted to his wealth of mind,
How could I gaze on that capacious brow
Open and high, and like an arch of thought

589

O'er eyes of intellectual blandness curved,
Or scan the lines, or view those silver'd locks
Which o'er his countenance a hoary grace
Suffused, and not ennobling homage pay.
What! shall mere Nature's majesty of forms
The eye entrance, where admiration glows,
Because, though mute, those forms to fancy hint
A soul in matter and a speech in things,—
And earth's own laureates be unreverenced
By mind? The human Race their debtor is;
Sea, air, and mountain, lake and lonely shore,
Forests and woods, and fields where freshness blooms
All are immortalised by radiance cast
From their high meanings, who the world transform,
And cast a beauty round the common lot
By making loveliness more lovely still.

A mental prophet and a priest of song
The bard of Rydal is to Souls who see
How heaven-born genius, like a mouth of God,
Opens some new apocalypse of Power
Which faith reveres, and meditation loves.
For have not Nature, Providence, and Man
Of both the centre, from his thoughtful muse
A sympathy of mild and mournful tone
Partaken, till Association's law
Have each invested with a beauteous charm?
Thus, mountain-grandeur and the grace of hills
Like thine, Helvellyn! in their hollow sweep;
Or forked Skiddaw with his famous brow;
Parnassean groves and glades of blissful calm
Where trees their twilight cast,—to him were dear
And with his being half incorporate grew.
The thorn had meanings; and a thistle spoke
Its own stern language; while each meadow-flower
A glow of beauty on creation's brow
In blooming radiance, seem'd by Angels dropt:
Nature to him was one almighty Speech
Significant, and deep, and full of God.
Nothing was lost, but all to love appeal'd,
The linnet's chaunt, a homeless cuckoo-song,
An eagle's majesty, or insect-mirth
To him were welcome, and some feeling touch'd.
All voices, visions, all of sense and sound
Home to his heart a deep impression sent
Which gave him partnership in nature's All,
As though 'twere conscious. Hence the landscapes were
An outward-token of the inward mind,
Loved in his life, and from the Spirit's lyre
Drew melodies of thought, which shall not die
While throbs the heart with poetry or prayer!

Not mere description, pensive, deep or grand,
His verse unfolds: but he the Mind has taught
How nature's sacraments and symbols speak
To mental reverence with a language mute
But mighty; how Her moods and motions are
Responsively to Man's more hidden world
With such accordance shaped, that heaven-born minds
See God and Angels, where a sensuous heart
Is charm'd by nothing but material show.

And human Life, and Providential love
To man reveal'd by Omnipresent acts
Of watching tenderness, from heaven at work,
His numbers prove with philosophic grace
And wisdom most benign. To him the scene
Of dark Existence was divinely touch'd
With sacredness and awe; whence prayer and praise
Were due, and godless Pride should learn to think,
And none seem orphan'd from the Father-God!
For as in nature, nothing is by Heaven
Forgotten, from the vaster forms of Life
And Being, down to each minutest speck,
But in the beam of God's parental eye
Remains for ever,—so that social World
Where Mind and Will their awfulness unfold
And character is moulded, to his gaze
An order'd scene of theocratic Law
Presented, where enthroned, the Godhead reign'd
And all were precious, who His cause maintain,—
Possible Angels, whom The Christ redeem'd.

All Nature thus made spiritually deep
By her significance of conscious life
To Soul responsive, and the moral World,
Where Providence to human will conjoins
Each plan and purpose, being hence enlink'd
With Glories uncreate,—no wonder Man
A true schekinah of transcendant powers
To Wordsworth seem'd; a Soul of priceless cost,
Whose incarnation, in its meanest guise,
Involves more grandeur than the “Worlds” contain!
Earth, space, and time, and all which tinsell'd pride
Amid the pageantries of wealth pursues
Or mere Convention by dull creed exacts
Before it vanish'd!—Individual mind

590

To him became the summit of his song:
And, how he trembled into wordless prayer
And grew religious, when unfathom'd depths
Of man's capacity for bliss or woe
Were open'd, and on Faith's predictive eye
The soul's hereafter like a vision rose
Self-realised, for heaven, or hell prepared!

FORTY LINES ON WELLINGTON.

I

Though shaded by death, yet his glory remains
Like beams on the billow when day-light is set;
And deeper than language the sorrow that pains
The heart of a Nation, enshrining him yet.

II

Oh! his was a greatness the good can admire,
Which Virtue may laurel, and Vice only dread;
And pure as the principles Truth can inspire
The wreath of renown which encircles his head.

III

From peasant to peer, from the cot to the throne
The thrills of dejection pervadingly ran,
When the myriad-wing'd Press to Europe made known
The death of a leader in Liberty's van.

IV

The soar of an eagle when sweeping its flight,
The heart of a lion which throbs o'er his prey,
But weakly can image the worth and the might
Of Wellington marching in battle-array.

V

Resistless in conflict, but simple and stern,
Serene in the tempest, and calm in the shock,
Let the valour of Youth thus patiently learn
When the whirlwind is raving,—to rival the rock!

VI

A Cæsar in battle, and Cato at home,
Protecting our Altars from infidel-hate,
We challenge the records of haughty old Rome
To boast of a Hero so gallant and great.

VII

When the war-hounds of France in horrors of blood
Had raven'd on Freedom, and outraged her laws,
The bulwark of Empires, brave Wellington stood,
And stifled Rebellion by quenching her cause.

VIII

Thus, onward he triumphs in prowess and pride,
A king of all subjects, yet subject to kings;
Till the banners of England wave out far and wide
And Earth o'er her ransom with jubilee rings.

IX

A pillar of Patriots, the foremost and first,
Erect in his grandeur of spirit and zeal
Ambition ne'er saw him, by self-aims accurst,
Pursue the bad triumphs we blush to reveal.

X

Then, deepen for ever the homage and praise
From past and from present, to Wellington due,
And hallow the glory which brightens the bays
He won for Mankind, when he gain'd Waterloo.

“BETTER DAYS.”

“All our pleasant things are laid waste.” Isa. lxiv. 11.

“Remember the days of old.”—Deut. xxxii. 7.

How eloquent the ruin'd shrine
August, or sad, or lowly!
'Tis haunted with a spell divine
Deeper than melancholy:
For still it breathes of poetry and prayer,
And mild dejection woos Religion there.

Temples, and tombs, and cities vast,
The roofless cot, or home
O'er which Destruction's wings have past,
And where pale memories roam,
How are we moved by their mysterious sway
And lulling sadness of severe decay?

Strange though it seem, not royal state,
Nor brilliant pomp and pride
Encircled round the earth-born great
To rank and wealth allied,
Attract the spirit with so true a power
As wreck and ruins in some pensive hour.

591

Engirdled are they by a spell,
A wordless charm of mind,
And something more than tones can tell
Sinks o'er the soul refined,
When the dead glories of departed Years
Moisten the eye with meditation's tears.

But, what are we, but wrecks of man,
A fallen race of sin,
Creatures who marr'd the Almighty plan
And let rebellion in,
Through that pure Will which Heaven created free,
Whose law was Love, and that was Deity.

And thus, perchance, for ruin'd Things
Our moral instinct wakes,
And o'er the heart's electric strings
A breath from Eden breaks,—
A mournful sense of forfeit-bloom and bowers
When Eve was perfect as the vestal flowers.

But if o'er what is dumb and dead,
A palace, shrine, or cot,
The tears of History are shed
And sanctify the spot
Where genius wept, or wisdom thrill'd and thought,
The martyr burn'd, or heroes bled and fought,

Shall not a living wreck of love,
An orphan sad and lone,—
Children whose angels stand above
So near the Glory-throne,
Soften the heart when sounds the touching phrase,
Heard in some homely tale of “Better Days?”

It is, indeed, a moving sight!
A pale and pensive child
Whose brow enthrones no young delight;
As though it ne'er had smiled;
Friendless and homeless, with dejected face
Too early touch'd with sorrow's withering trace.

Around it once fond parents hung
With love's enamour'd eye;
And Age itself again grew young
With that bright creature nigh!
Pangless the heart, the step was like the breeze
In bounding gladness borne above the seas.

Wealth, home and peace were there combined
To make that child secure;
And all which moulded heart and mind
Was radiant, sweet and pure:
Soft Innocence unveil'd her beauteous smile
And childhood flourish'd free from want and guile.

Prophetic dreams must oft have play'd
Around its virgin morn,
Ere baffled circumstance betray'd
A lot now bleak and lorn:
The future seem'd the poesy of life
Read by a heart with golden fancies rife.

But all is wither'd, changed and gone,
Friend, home and fortune o'er!
And hard-eyed worldlings cease to own
The wreck of wealth no more;
That once gay child is now a gloomy Thing
Wan with disease, or worn by suffering.

Blessings divine, then, hallow those
Who sheltering mansions build
To anchor from tempestuous woes
Children, whose hearts are fill'd
By past remembrance, blent with present grief,
Where life seems darkness, waiting death's relief!

Never till Christ unveils His throne
Whose heart beats human there,
And echoes to each plaintive tone
Breathed in the sigh, a prayer,—
Will the vast mercy these Asylums prove
Be understood, except by boundless love.

Long may they flourish! like the shrine,
St. Ann's of regal name;
Where better days, with love combine
To form a noble claim
For pleading orphans, and the helpless poor
In whom Christ owns His lot repeated o'er.

ENGLISH PEASANTRY.

(1826.)

Behold our peasantry! Britannia's pride
While baleful Luxury her boon denied;
The tyrant grasp of Desolation spoils
Each homely shelter for the labourer's toils;
While sad and far the houseless peasant flies
And mansions o'er his ruin'd hamlet rise:
For him no more shall bloom the garden flower,
No sabbath guest shall greet his hazel bower,
No winter's evening bring domestic bliss,
No laughing infants leap to share the kiss.

592

Inhuman Tyrants! whose destructive hand,
To grasp domain would desolate the Land;
Can barren pomp one joyous hour bestow
While Famine fills a thousand hearts with wo?
Can palisadoed lawns of wide extent
Please like the rural homes of calm Content?
Sweeter by far, methinks, were Wealth to pour
Diffusive blessings from her ample door;
And if the sick man pined, to visit there
And with the smile of Mercy, hush despair.
And dear the scene that charm'd the pilgrim's eye
Ere Luxury rose, or Avarice peal'd her cry,
Where cottage-homes, upon the green domain
Gave health and shelter to the toiling swain:
There many a way-worn traveller sighing stay'd,
And ask'd of heaven some equal hamlet-shade
Where humble life flow'd undisturb'd away,
And happiness led on each new-born Day.
The smoke enwreathing with the playful breeze,
A glowing produce ripening on the trees,
The laden bee low-humming in some flower,
Or pigeon cooing from his shaded tower,
With all the nameless charms that nestle round
The cottage-garden and the pasture-ground,—
Made every passing stranger stop awhile
And lit his lingering eye with many a smile!
Here was the home, where toil-worn age, at last
Might rest secure, and muse on labours past;
Here was the welcome round of rustic mirth,
The family-supper, and the blazing hearth,
The happy converse, and the cheerful gaze,
With all that Gratitude to Mercy pays!
Rare now a scene so simply pure as this,—
The quiet plenty and the cottage-bliss!
Oppressive Wealth usurps each lawny spot
Where bloom'd the garden and where rose the cot;
Mansions, and groves, and princely parks abound,
Stretch o'er the plain, and seize each rood of ground,
While Pomp frowns every meaner home away
And leaves the peasant but a scanty pay;
Doom'd through the day to bear the summer-blaze,
Or mend, 'mid ice and snow, the public ways;
Or else, beneath the bleak autumnal-showers,
In damp and pain to pass the tedious hours,
A pittance from the tyrant of the soil
Is all which pays him for his dismal toil:
Then, home he wanders to a cheerless shed
With discontented heart, and aching head:
Here shall no rosy babes, nor smiling wife,
Attend to make the sweetnesses of life;
No social case to keep the mind in tune
And shed delight around life's waning noon;
But starving infants with imploring eyes
Raising their pallid hands and piteous cries,
Till agony distract the parent's brain,
Flame the wild thought, or rack the soul with pain;
Till Want burst every tie of virtue free;
And Crime conducts him to the gallows-tree!

STARLIGHT ON MARATHON.

No vesper-breeze is floating now,
No murmurs shake the air;
A gloom hath veil'd yon mountain-brow
And quietude is there;
While night-beads on the dew-white grass
Drop brilliant as my footsteps pass.

No hum of life disturbs the scene,
The clouds are roll'd to rest;
'Tis like a calm where grief hath been,—
So welcome to the breast!
The warring tones of Day are gone
And starlight gleams on Marathon.

I look around from earth to sky
And gaze from star to star;
Till Grecian hosts seem gliding by
Triumphant from the war:
Like deathless spirits from the dead
Revisiting where once they bled.

What though the mounds which mark'd each name
Beneath the wings of time
Have worn away,—theirs is the fame
Immortal and sublime:
For who can tread on Freedom's plain
Nor wake Her dead to life again!

Oh! to have seen the marching Bands,
And heard the battle-clash,
Have seen their weapon-clenching hands
And eyes' defiant flash,
Their radiant shields and dancing crests
And corslets on their swelling breasts!

Then said the mother to her son
And pointed to his shield,
“Come with it, when the battle's done
Or on it, from the field!”
Then mute she fix'd her dreadless eye
That spoke of ages vanish'd by.

'Twas here they fought: and martial peals
Once thunder'd o'er the ground,
While gash and wound from plunging steels
Bedew'd the battle-mound;
Here Grecians trod the Persian dead,
And Freedom shouted while she bled!

593

But, gone the day of Freedom's sword
And cold the patriot brave,
Whose valour crush'd the servile horde
Like victims for the grave;
While Greece arose sublimely free
And dauntless as her own dark sea!

Yet, starlight sheds a pallid beam
For aye upon the plain;
And musing breasts might fondly dream
The Grecian free again;
For empires fall, and freedom dies,
But changeless beauty robes the skies.

May He whose glory veils yon sky,
God of the slave and free!
Hear every patriot's burning sigh
Hope dedicates to thee;
For thee, sad Greece! and every son
Who braves a Turk on Marathon.

LONDON BY MIDNIGHT.

(1828.)

The fret and fever of the day subside,
And London slumbers; but with murmurs faint
Like Ocean, when she folds her waves to sleep:
'Tis the pure hour for poetry and thought,
When passions sink, and Faith the heaven beholds,
As yearns an exile for his father-land.

O'er all a dim sublimity is spread,—
The garniture of night; amid the air
Darkly and drear yon airy steeples rise,
Like shadows of the past; the houses lie
In dismal clusters, moveless as in sleep;
And, towering far above the rest, yon Dome
Appears, as if self-balanced in the gloom,—
A spectre cowering o'er the dusky piles.

And, see! on ground I stand whose glorious name
Might turn the coward brave; on thy huge bridge
Triumphant Waterloo! Above,—how calm!
There moon and star commingling radiance shed
And bathe the skies in beauty. Smooth and pale
The pearly bosom'd clouds recline, enlink'd
Like wave-festoons upon the furrow'd deep.
Below, the Thames outspread, serene and cold;
And as I gaze, a cooling breath ascends
And melts upon my brow: like the worn heart
When harrowing cares have slept, the river seems
Peaceful and still; save when a wind-sigh wakes
The brooding slumbers of its breast; like dreams
That quiver on the marble face of Sleep.

Along each side the darkling mansions frown
Funereal in their gloom. Afar and faint,
The bridge-lamps glimmer o'er the tranquil stream,
As if enchain'd upon the air; beneath,
Gleams of pale lustre tremble through the gloom;
And, here and there, a tower and shadowy spire
Are imaged on the water; sad and shrunk
Like flower-leaves wither'd by the summer-blaze.

Yonder, in dim magnificence, behold
The many window'd Pile; apart and stern,
In lowering grandeur, like a lofty mind
Unmingling with the baser crowd. One half
Is clothed with moonlight's pallid veil;
Beneath, a darkness broods, whence portals yawn
In cavern-gloom upon the drowsy tide,
Like tombs unbarr'd.

But hark! from yonder Dome
Into Eternity the Day is toll'd:

How hollow, dread, and dismal is the peal
To heaven its vast account now rolling up!
Awhile it undulates, then dies away
In mutter'd echoes, like the ebbing groans
Of drowning men; and see! the lustrous Moon
Veils her white brow, and leaves me in night-shade,
Unseen, but by the sleepless One: O God!
I feel thine eye upon me, I shrink
Awe-smote beneath its gaze, like melting snow
By moon-beams touch'd, when golden radiance smiles.

How noiseless are the streets! A few hours gone,
And all was fierce commotion; car and hoof,
And bickering wheel, and chariot-rush, and crowds
Which rang with revelry and woe, were here,
Immingled with the stir of life; but now
A deadness mantles round the midnight scene;
Time with his awful wand the world has touch'd,
And soothed her myriads into sleep!—'Tis hush'd!
Save when a distant drowsy watch-call breaks
Intrusive on the calm; or rapid cars
That roll them into silence. Beauteous look
The train of houses yellow'd by the moon,
Whose tile-roofs, slanting down amid the light,
Gleam like an azure track of waveless sea!

594

But who was she, that with a fairy step
And lip of wreathing smiles, came floating by
Buoyant as April's breeze? Alas! alas!
Let nights of laughing agony, and crimes
Which burn their torture through the sullied heart,
Let sated passion and the form consumed,
Let these betray the orphan of the night!
As on her guilt-worn face a lamp-beam fell,
Reluctantly methought, her eye reveal'd
That curse of misery—gladness in disguise!

The squares, how haughtily reposed they stand
At this deep hour, with massy piles erect
And stately! where the windows broad and bright,
Like molten water shine; and freckled walls
In light are steep'd, which ripples on the stone;
Beneath, amid the laurel boughs that bend
Responsive to the breeze, the lamp-rays flit
In twinkling playfulness, like infant-eyes.

Once more upon the climbing moon, ere yet
Cloud-shaded she withdraw, a moment glance!
There, as we gaze, what undefinèd awe,
What thoughts ethereal flutter round the heart!
On Her fair brow we seem to write and read
The mind's quick fancies; all the Past awakes
Begirt with sweet creations, till the source
Of sympathy unlocks; and then a tear
Will venture brightly from the manliest eye,—
A precious tear, whose fountain is the soul.

The past,—Oh! who through London-streets can pace,
Nor vision forth the spirits which have been?
An atmosphere of genius quickens here
Remembrance of the dead! The storied nurse,
The ancient mother of the mighty, thou
Unrivall'd London! Sages, poets, kings,
And all the giant-race of glorious fame
Whose world-illuming minds, like quenchless stars
Burn through the night of ages,—triumph'd here,
Or martyrdom of mind endured! And now
Those Kings of mind, by death immortal made,
Forth from their tombs Imagination cites!

And who the midnight-scenes of life shall paint,
In this vast city, mart of human-kind!
In sleep some living wrecks of wo, are lapp'd,
And bless'd in dreams, whose daylight was a curse!
Some, heart-rack'd, on the sleepless couch recline,
And from the heated brain create a hell
Of agonising thoughts or ghastly fears;
While Pleasure's moths amid the golden sheen
Of princely halls, dance off the dull-wing'd hours;
And oh! perchance, in some infectious cell
Far from his home, unaided and unsoothed,
The famish'd wand'rer dies;—no voice to breathe
Mild comfort to his heart; no hand to smooth
His bed of death; no sainted eye to bless
The spirit hovering o'er another world!

But list! a laugh of Pleasure thrills the wind;
'Tis Folly's soulless idols sauntering home,
Faced with a mask of smiles. And One there is,
Upon whose haggard cheek a glance may read
A tale of blighted years and buried woes!
His home is reach'd; and where yon window-gleams
Dart o'er the street a dizzy chain of light
Awhile he gazes on his mirror'd face,
And sighs to mark what havoc Pleasure makes!
Then drops upon his couch, while round him float
In visionary throng, the glowing forms
Which beautified the night; and where are they?—
At home, heart-wearied, wilder'd as their dreams
And glad that Time another day has kill'd!

Turn to a nobler victim of the night:
Where yonder casement sheds a pallid gleam
Upon the breezeless air, aloft and lone
An unregarded wreck of Genius toils,
With throbbing brain and dewy brow. The Day
To rest hath gone: but slumber visits not
His sunken eyes! The gnawing fires of thought
Upon his youthful cheek have fed, and parch'd
His tongue, and from his lip drawn the life-stream;
The lightnings of the soul his form have seared.
But Fame stands beckoning; and he battles on
Through want and wo, until he win the goal,—
A welcome one, though Death should drag him there!

And shall this City-queen, this peerless mass
Of pillar'd fanes, and grey-worn towers sublime,
Be blotted from the world, and forests wave
Where once a second Rome was seen? Oh! say,

595

Shall rude grass cover England's royal streets,
And wild beasts howl where Commerce reign'd supreme?
Alas! her moral glance let Memory dart
Down vanish'd time, till summon'd Ages rise
With ruin'd empires on their wings! Thought weeps
With patriot-truth, to own a funeral day
Heart of the universe! may visit thee,
When round thy wreck some lonely man shall roam,
And, musing, say,—“'Twas here vast London stood!”

But hark! again the heavy bell has peal'd
Its doleful thunder; on their watch the Stars
Grow pale; the Moon seems wearied of her course;
And morn begins to blossom in the east;
Then, let me home; and Heaven my thoughts protect!

PAINS OF GENIUS.

Envy not the Poet's name,
Darken not his dawn of fame;
'Tis the guerdon of a mind
Free from thralls of earthly kind;
'Tis the fascinating Star
Brighter than the brightest far;
It often glitters o'er his doom,
A halo round an early tomb!

The whirling brain and heated brow,
The dreams which torture while they grow
The soaring fancy over-fraught;
The burning agonies of thought;
The sleepless eye and racking head,
The haunting terrors round him spread:
Or freezing smile of Apathy;
Or scowl of green-eyed Jealousy;
Or haggard Want, whose lean hands wave
Unto a cold uncover'd grave!—
Oh! these must win a Poet's name;
Then darken not his dawn of fame.

THE CATARACT.

In slumber, when some dream of daring night
Transcends creation, or out-dazzles earth,
Man's wither'd paradise may seem revived;
And oft when Poesy and young Romance
Imagination's throne together mount,—
What landscapes, fit for Seraphim to walk,
In the green loveliness of Nature's youth
Beneath their fascinating smile have bloom'd!
And yet, no dreaming pomp nor bardic spell
Can rival thee, by God himself array'd
With glory terrible, and beauty wild,
Thou earth-adorning Cataract!—once seen,
And seen for ever: heard by sense for once,
And in the spirit heard for evermore!

When, like some vision of a ruin'd world,
In foaming majesty I saw thee fall
From crag to crag terrifically swift,
My soul was hush'd, in trance of wonder bound;
A word was outrage! mute as thought, I gazed
Upon thee, vanquish'd by the dread sublime:
As in the presence of Almighty spells,
My being trembled: language was extinct!

Aloft, aloft, precipitate and loud,
The plunging torrent like a war-horse leaps
Adown the black ravine! and white with rage
And thunderingly hoarse, the headlong-wave
From rock to rock in froth and foam careers,
In tameless terrible, unwearied ire
For ever raving! Hark! the mountain thrills
And throbs, the leaflets palpitate with awe;
The branches quiver like the limbs of fear
On each grey elm; while, floating like the breath
Of conscious being, lo! the mist ascends
In tremor from yon panting surge below,
Lingers awhile, in airy balance hung,
Then trembles downward with a quavering fall
In rain-drops delicate as tears unshed.

King of stern waterfalls! thine awe pervades
And like the genius of romance creates
A spirit of enchantment round thy home:
The valley, hush'd as Desolation, loves;
The gloom chaotic of thine ancient hills
Torn by the tempest's savage wing, and deck'd
With foliage, touch'd by autumn's pale decay;
And drip of water, from the rocks dissolved
In feeble music, faint as dream-heard sighs,—
All these in one vast sentiment unite
Around thee, making sight and sound appeal
Like poetry, from Nature's heart evoked.

And while, with contemplation's spell-bound eyes,
Amid the spray, the thunder and the din,
Monarch of Waters! upon thee I gazed,
The witchery of deep association rose.—
On myriads, now in earth and darkness mute,
I ponder'd, who, like me, had feasted soul
And sense, and drank emotions rich as mine
From thine enchantment. Here the worldling came

596

And left, perchance, his worldliness behind;
Here Pride, Ambition, Avarice, and Hate,
Those Demons of the mind, their sceptres broke,
And shrunk, like Satan from the Saviour's word,
By thee o'erawed! and here the Poet dreamt
While sentiment and thought his heart o'er-whelm'd
With magic potency, till he became
Sublime in thy sublimity of scene!
And from the centre of his spirit felt
Warm inspiration, like a sunrise, break,
And meanings, full of worldless beauty, flow.

Farewell! thou roaring flood of Scynfa born,
In loud monotony of roaring ire
Rage on for ever! rule all hearts and eyes
Which bow before thee: Teacher of the wild
And wondrous! may thy voice eternal be,
And speak of HIM Whose Shadow is the sun,
Whom torrent, sea, and tempest loudly praise;
Whose Love by every breeze is syllabled
While, seated on Eternity's vast throne,
He wields His sceptre o'er ten thousand worlds!

Farewell! thou glory of a glorious Clime,
Farewell, the sight, but not farewell the sense
Of thee:—since in the core of memory's heart
The true dominion of thy scene will dwell;
And oft amid the dust of daily Life,
Or prose of dry existence, will beget
Sensations high, and feelings nobly-pure:
Or, wafted back on fancy's sun-bright wing,
My soul will visit thee, and hear again
The thundering harmonies of thy dread stream,
Like a huge wave in endless plunge and roar,
And own the Almighty by His work revealed!

VALE OF CLWYD.

Majestic Land of liberty and song,
And bardic fame and soul-exciting tales,
Of feudal glory! clime of old romance,
Whose records make the heart of History bound,
A stranger greets thee with exulting pride,
And grows a Cambrian; while thy woods and waves
Rouse the full voice of unaffected song.—
Poets are Nature's patriots; sea and sky,
Mountain and rock, and wood-hung vales and hills,
Deep glens, or lakes, and thunder-mocking cataracts
Round them appear like Inspiration's home.

Thy tower, St. Asaph! when the noon-bright heaven
With crystal arch o'er-canopied thy walls
And the breeze caroll'd like a bird of air,
I trod; beneath me, Arcady revived
Burst on the wonder of my ravish'd eye!
Painting ne'er form'd, nor poetry conceived
A paradise of more bewitching scene:
Leftward the river'd Vale of Cluid lay
Magnificent, with woods and trees adorn'd;
Where castled halls and princely mansions stood,
And towns remote, and cots, and hamlet-spires,
With white-faced homes in blossom'd trees embower'd,
'Mid meadows greenly-bright, and mountain-forms
Whose wavy outline on the sky was mapp'd,—
All on the gaze a mass of beauty pour'd
Beyond what Pòussin in Italian dreams described!
In calm sublimity of conscious strength
The Hills reposed; but when some cloudy shade
Form'd into life, a floating semblance fell
With dim surprisal on their meadow'd sides,
And chequer'd them with ever-changing hue.
Bright ran the river, with melodious speed
Contented; fit for fairy barks to sail,
Or Infancy beside its banks to roam
And gaily prattle to the new-blown flowers,—
So timidly the modest waters flow'd:
And yet, when rains and mountain-floods descend,
The demon-spirit of the water frowns!
In roaring swiftness o'er the prostrate fields
The exaggerated river foams along,
And ruins as it rolls! like some proud mind
That when unwrong'd in meek retirement dwells,
But, injured,—how the buried fire outbreaks,
And maddens round it withering and fierce!
Upon my right, in ivy-tress'd array,
Sublime in ruin, Rhyddlan Castle frown'd;
And, gazing there, the heart religious grew,
To think how glory, pomp, and all the world adores,
A dream becomes for moralist to scan!
Home of the Warrior! where the banner waved,
And Towers! where Cambrian kings and chieftains reign'd,
Whose halls within, the harp of Cymru rang,
While melodies, from Freedom's soul evoked

597

Pour'd tides of feeling over Princes' hearts,
In thy decay how eloquent thou stand'st!
Gigantic Emblem for the mind to read
How perishing is glory! while the Sea
In loud eternity of water beats
Grandly as ever on thy throbbing shore.

From thee, dread Monument of vanish'd days,
Baronial relic of the fierce and free,
Mine eye retreated; far as sight could roam,
Pictured on clouds, in outlined magic lay
The Peaks of Snowdon; silver-bright they shone,
And seem'd the very walls of Heaven! so fair,
So dazzling-white their towering beauty rose,
Like sculpture out of snow by sunshine carved.

Stranger! if ever pent in cities loud,
For many a month thy yearning eye has dream'd
Of Nature, throned amid the green romance
Of woods and waterfalls, thy heart might beat
In thrilling answer to the strain I sing,
Hadst thou beside me, from the sacred tower
This beauteous Vale beheld:—or ere I left,
One long, enamour'd, and delicious gaze
It bade me fasten on the faultless scene;
The sunshine in its golden lull reposed
On tree and mountain: cot and castle gleam'd,
And field and flower their blending graces show'd;
But when the breeze, in wingèd life arose,
How richly all the stirring Landscape flamed!
'Till the glad meads like emerald-sunshine flash'd,
So lustrously that living verdure play'd!

Soft be the winds that visit thy domain
And fair the flowers which gem thy matchless vale
St. Asaph! long may yon cathedral-tower
A sanctity around thy region shed!
For never, while a pulse of memory beats,
Can I that hour of thrilling awe forget
When first amid the gazing crowd I knelt,
A white-robed Novice; while with trembling lip
And soul that to its centre shook, and pray'd,
I vow'd to feed and watch the fold of Christ!

Vale of calm beauty! peace be ever thine
And plenteousness within thy cottage-homes,
Thy castled halls: when fateful years have fled
And worn the furrow deeper on my brow,
Vision'd by fancy, thou wilt yet remain
And help to form imagination's heaven!

ELLESMERE LAKE.

(1836.)

Calm as the beauty upon childhood's brow
On whose fair arch young tenderness is throned,
The Lake reposes; not a ripple mars
Its cloud-reflecting face; where hues of heaven
In soft variety of liquid smiles
Float o'er the water, in successive play
Of light and motion, exquisitely wild.
Oh! Nature, art thou not a spirit now,
While the rich poetry of silence reigns
Heard by the soul, which feels almost unearth'd
And girded round by inspiration's spell?

Pale Martyr of the feverish thought and care!
Sad Victim of a spirit-crushing world!
And Thou, who, dungeon'd in the gloom of self,
To thine imprison'd view art dwarfing down

598

All grand conceptions, all august desires,
Hither! and while the dreaming water basks
Beneath the play of noon's attemper'd smile,
Lull'd in a trance of thought, the Lake admire.

Above, the curved immensity of heaven
Attracts thee, making eye and heart ascend
To wander in those palaces of cloud,
Or fairy-chambers, by the sunbeams paved.
And ye! vast Hills, that in your towering pomp
Touch the bow'd sky, and belt the horizon round
With guardian might, how lofty and alone,
In stern supremacy of height and shape
Ye stand! And, gazing on your giant-forms,
The charm'd beholder grows exalted too,
Till wing'd emotions waft the mind aloft
And, mountain-like, from earth to heaven he soars!
But, hark! in gushes of unwearied song
From yon green isle the hidden birds outpour
Their ecstasy of voice; and round them flows
An atmosphere of melody and praise;
While here and there, some fairy insect-form
Floats on the air, and fans its playful wing;
Or butterflies, like soaring gems, abound,
And scatter forth their gleams of dazzling joy!

But, see! where Oteley with its terraced pomp
And sun-bright aspect through the foliage smiles
Imposingly serene; Oh! long around
That Home of hospitality and peace
May all the social graces throng and bloom!
And you, that gently on the lake encroach
Or round the shore a verdant twilight cast,
Majestic Trees! by summer-grace bedeck'd,
How lovingly your green array invites
The pausing Eye, while many-coloured leaves
Flash in the sun with fascinating hue.

And list, in undulating cadence rolls
The peal of bells from yonder gothic Shrine
Most venerably grey, as broad and dim
Through the bright air its dusky tower ascends;
While soft vibrations of the sacred chime
Ebb on the breeze;—and tenderly, of days
Now sepulchred in memory's tomb, they speak,
Till the fine chords of quick reflection thrill
And waken to the tones. That fane beneath
The dust of immemorial thousands sleeps,
Who once along the churchyard's haunted ground
Did ramble oft, and hear with soul unmoved
The very hymn that like a funeral dirge
The passing hour bemoans; or saw, perchance,
The sunbeams gambolling round their destined grave!

But now, mild eve advances, and the Lake
More winning tenderness of hue and sound
Begins to gather: beautiful delight
Art Thou, fair Scene of water! in thy calm,
As thus reclining; yet in sterner mood
There are who love thine eloquent harangue
Of tempest-voices, when the black-wing'd Storms
Revel above thee; and in sea-like rage
Thy tossing billows whiten, heave, and roar
Beneath the glances of uncertain light,
That downward in their arrowy fleetness dart
From the torn clouds, which let the sun-flash through.

Adieu, loved scene of meditative joy;
Yet, oh! how lingeringly the eye retires
From beauty fresh as thine! The world forgot,
And all its crowd of pale-faced cares repell'd,
In heavenliness of thought my heart has roam'd
Beside thy magic, drinking in awhile
The balm and freshness of a better world;
While Nature on the throne of feeling sits,
And reigns, accorded queen of heart and soul!

Farewell! to outward gaze a long farewell,
Perchance, for ever: yet the dreaming eye
Of Fancy, when the landscapes of the soul
Are imaged, often o'er thy charms will bend;
And pure sensations into life will flow
Of loveliness and verdure; while the tones
Of rippling water throb on Memory's ear,
Like those that warble round thy grassy shore.

Oh! that the heart of man would more and more
Hold converse with the Beautiful and Bright,
And hear those oracles of truth and love
Which come from Nature's everlasting shrine
To all who seek Her, and with filial awe
Her sanctities admire. And who can tell
How often, while along yon wheel-track'd road
The hard-eyed worldling in some dream of Self
Hath hurried, thou didst breathe a moment's balm
On that dry wilderness,—an earthly heart!
And thus, amid the blank of common things
Thou seemest, in the contrast of thy charm,
A page of sentiment by Nature spread
In the coarse volume of man's daily Life,
The eye to soothe,—or satisfy the heart
Which hungers for imagination's feast!

599

But lo! upon the placid brow of Eve
A star of glory like a gem is set,
And round the air a dreaming quiet broods;
While tree and lake in glimmering beauty lie,
And the rich shadows of a summer's night
Begin to deepen; once again, farewell
Thou ancient Water!—centuries o'er thy face
Have fleeted, and unnumber'd millions sunk
Back into breathless clay, but Thou, unworn,
Unwrinkled, and unchanged, art still preserved
In youthful glory: thus, while men decay
And generations toil, and weep, and die,
Some other bard in moralising dream
Will muse, perchance, along thy lovely shore,
And learn how nature, when the soul responds
To fine appeals, can into song awake
The music of the heart's mysterious lyre.

Ellesmere, June 14th, 1836.

ORGAN BOY.

He hath a spirit bright in its content
And playful in its poverty; the rain
Of English clouds and atmospheric gloom
Of this brave island-clime have not destroy'd
The mirthfulness of his brown cheek; nor quench'd
The lustre of those deeply-laughing eyes
Which sparkle forth the sunbeams of the soul!

Then breathe no pity on the organ-boy;
From his gay Land a stock of sterling bliss
And proud young feelings that can well out-wear
Each frown of Fate, the stripling wanderer brings.
Maternal smiles his heart still brighten round;
A father's blessing, when he climb'd his knee
At night, still sounds upon love's inward ear;
And when the streets are wintry, and the tones
His organ weaves fall fruitless on the air,
He dreams of home deep-bosom'd in bright vales
Of beauty; hill-spread vines, and fairy streams
That trifled sweetly as a sister's voice
Who prattled in her slumber: days will dawn
When he again those glowing vales shall thread,
And tell his travels with unwearied tongue
To fond ones, nestling round his own fireside.

Nor think his errant life too mean to sing:
Albeit no music tuned to courtly ears,
Which seem regardless of those native sounds
That raise sweet echoes in romantic souls,
From him is heard; there are of meeker taste
And simpler mind, who bid the roving boy
A welcome; and enchanted hear the notes
His organ wakes, of tenderness and truth.
As through the City's ever-busy streets
And darkly-winding lanes he roams and plays,
Many an ear drinks musical delight;
Many an eye with beams of vanish'd years
Is brightly charged; and from her window haunt,
Who makes the street to tingle with the sound
Of halfpence, thrown with no ungentle hand,
By some fair listener? Haply he woke dreams
Of childhood; thoughts which cannot breathe in words,
But live and fade in sighs of fond regret!

And round him what a throng of urchins group,
And dream his music sweet as Orpheus made!
The laughter hush'd, the noisy tongue asleep,
The hoop, as weary, on his shoulder hung,
A Schoolboy stands to listen, and admire
Those melodies which dance along his soul
Like ripples fleeting o'er a ruffled stream!

Then let the streets still waken to the sound
Of such boy-minstrels; when afar they roam
Through villages, where Music breathes a spell
Of magic in her meanest tone, may smiles
Of welcome flash along the rough-worn face
Of age, and ruddy offspring of the fields:
May gentle skies and glowing days attend,
And feelings toned to every tuneful hour!

There are who deem a Ballad-singer brings
No music which rewards harmonious ears;
To whom an Organ-boy but grating notes
Of discord scatters on the homeless wind;
Their sympathies are season'd high, and scorn
The gentle: envy not the ungenial souls!
For, hallow'd Nature! thou art ever true;
And he who wanders with an eye of love
And feeling wide among thy many haunts,
Through mountain-walks, or unambitious vales,
Where stream and meadow mingle their romance
Around, in storm and sunshine finds thee still
The same and magical! and so, in Life;
Her sweet humilities have grace and power
Beyond her loftiness and pomp: the Muse
Can never play the courtier; from the halls
And palaces of Kings she flies to glades
Of lowliness, where Faculties are found,
And Will and Action can their sway reveal:
Where beats a heart, there Poetry may breathe
Her spirit round it; beautifying look
And word, extracting all the soul of things,
And veiling Nature with a hue divine.

600

BALLAD-SINGER.

(1829.)

“As if the streets were consecrated ground,
The city one vast temple—dedicate
To mutual respect in thought and deed.”
Wordsworth.

The dewy spirit of a summer-rain
Falls not with fresher magic on the flower
Than flows sweet music through the soul of man:
In melody the heavens were hung; the Sea
Weaves music when she rolls her full-voiced waves:
The cloud-born Thunders sound an organ-peal;
And every breeze hath music in its breath!
What, wonder, then, while Nature hymns around,
That music is a sympathy to souls,
The power of exquisite delight? From lips
Of beauty, like aroma from the mind
Exhaling forth; or in the hoary aisle
Of dim Cathedrals dying slow away;
Or in some dream-built palace of the night,
Where angel-whispers make the spirit glow,
How sweet is Music!—with the Light twin-born.

And thy sad voice, poor Minstrel of the street!
Hath sweetness in its sorrow: wild thine air
And dim the meaning of that mournful eye;
For, blighting Poverty hath made thee droop
And worn the health-bloom of thy once fair cheek:
Pale-lipp'd thou art; and charity may read
Upon thy face the story of thy life;
The damp night-gush, the stony bed, the gripe
Of famine, and that fever of a soul
Whom not a smile hath visited through years
Of deep despair, hast thou not felt them, maid
Of many sorrows! yet so sweetly flows
The tide of music in thy homely song
Of tenderness, that when I hear thee sing,
As in a vision thou art beautified above
Thy lot; and tripping o'er the dew-clad hills
When young birds pipe their anthem to the Morn,
Like some bright Creature whom the wood-gods love
I see thee, in thy youth's elysian prime!

That voice, of misery, oh! was it born;
Or, breathed by Happiness into thy soul
When hand in hand o'er childhood's vanish'd fields
Down hawthorn-lanes, by margins of clear brooks
And laughing streams, she led thee in her love?
With cottage-hymn hast thou not hallow'd oft
The sacred hour of eve, and called the smile
Of holiness upon thy father's cheek,
As flowed his kindled feelings in thy song
Of adoration? Minstrel of the street!
Whate'er has been thy lot, thy ballads breathe
Of summer-days to me; and from each strain
My heart can gather echoes, which have wings
To bear it downward into Years, where lie
The buried Joys that will not bloom again!

London, February 14th, 1829.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

When the hush of Twilight deepens
Wake, music! then;
Or when the star of Hesper glows
And flings a beam of pale repose
Where yonder tide in beauty flows,
Wake, music! then.

When the yearning heart is melted
Wake, music! then;
As oft some dream of perish'd days
Comes floating o'er the spirit's gaze
'Till every pulse of memory plays,
Wake, music! then.

When the cloud of sorrow blackens
Wake, music! then;
Or, like the hymn of moonlight-bird,
Or rain-dew in the desert heard;
Or leaflet by a night-breeze stirr'd,
Wake, music! then.

When the storm of pain arises
Wake, music! then;
Like glory from an angel-eye,
Like pity in a parent-sigh,
In feeling softness tenderly
Wake, music! then.

SUMMER WAVES.

Exulting waters! how ye leap and laugh,
Instinct with rapture; while the restless beams
Of sunlight flash in sympathetic glee
O'er your glad bosom: hark! the hurried tones
Of sea-born music thrill the Air with mirth,
Till all around me, like a viewless swarm
Of bees, the humming atmosphere resounds.

Strand on Green, Kew, Sept. 1834.

601

MARIUS.

(1827.)

Sad on the echoing shore great Màrius mused,
Deserted and alone; his harass'd eye
The crested waves cast sullenly athwart,
Where rode the traitor's bark. How fallen now
Since that proud day when triumph fired his eye,
And Rome beheld her valorous saviour there!
To brighter days his dreams went back. He thought
Of that high morn, when, fronting Scipio's view,
With firm-paced step, and unretreating arm,
The foe he dash'd, and dragg'd him in the dust:
Of Rome's acclaim, when, throned upon his car,
Jugurtha's fetters clanking on his ear,
He moved triumphant, 'mid the banner'd throng
Who hail'd his Afric conquest: prouder still,
His memory hover'd round the laurell'd pile
Heap'd from the spoil'd Ambrones;—torch in hand,
And purple-clad, as veterans round him stood
He waved and whirl'd the blazing light to heaven,
While shields, and clashing spears, rang martial joy.
Of these he thought, and then Despair awoke,
And delved a frown upon his war-worn brow,
That bent with recollections dark and deep.

Thus Marius sat; and mused before the sea;
Till, bursting from his shroud of grief and gloom,
O'er bogs and wilds dejectedly he sought
A shelter from his foes. Unto the fens
With wild and weary step the wanderer came,
And found compassion in a cotter's hut:
Roused thence, he couch'd within a narrow cave,
Beside the river; there was Marius ta'en,
And naked dragg'd unto Minturnæ's walls!

Within a cell, whose dungeon-wall shed round
A dreadful gloom, the imprison'd Warrior lay,
Stern, fierce, and frowning, dubious of his fate
Like a chain'd eagle glaring at the skies!
The door burst open; and with clattering teeth,
And hand which trembled like a dizzy flame,
Stalk'd in a savage Gaul; but, ere he sheath'd
His gleaming dagger in a Roman breast,
From his fierce eyes a living flame there flash'd,
Like lightning from a cloud! Th' assassin shook
And reel'd, and shrunk affrighted from dread eyes
Whose flashes fell like phantom-darts of fire,
On that pale coward's face. Then Marius rose
And, with a voice of thunder, loud and deep,
“Darest thou do the murderous deed!” exclaim'd.

VIVE L'EMPEREUR!

(1827.)

By Wilid's banks the headlong river swept
Like whirlwind for its havoc! white with foam,
And plunging on in many a gurgled roar
Of furious rage! So fiercely flies the steed,
Unmanacled, that with his upshot ears,
And limbs vein-swelling in their wrathful glow,
Undaunted gallops over hill and dale
With name dishevell'd and his eyes on fire.
Each massy bridge was ruin'd; and afar
The giddy wrecks were battling with the flood
Till whirl'd below. 'Twas then Napoleon came
With his embattled hosts. That wondrous Man!
Whose daring spirit, with volcanic rage,
Breathed flame and ruin on the affrighted world.
His eyes the universe could span! His soul
Had fire enough to vanquish all! In vain
Wild Nature barr'd his progress with her crags
O'er-crested by the clouds; in vain the rocks
His path to block, their icy heads uprear'd
Or hurl'd their torrents at him! With a glance
Fierce as the eagle's, when his piercing eye
Gleams through the darkening air, he look'd beyond
Them all: Nature and He were giants twin,
And her impediments but forced the flames
Of genius from his soul; as thunder-clouds
Together clash'd, their lightning-gleams dart forth.

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Upon the howling flood a glance he threw,
Such as the tiger darts, ere on his prey
He springs, to gnash it in his ravening ire;
Then fiercely cried “On! on! my valiant Poles!”
They answered not; but with a clanging stir
Goaded their pawing battle-steeds, and plunged
Amid the torrent's rush. Like loosen'd crags
Down-rushing on the sea, the warriors sank
Emburied in the stream; then buoy'd again,
And panting, cleaved their roaring track. Beneath
Their gallant burdens, bravely paw'd the steeds,
With blowing nostrils and dilated eyes,
And many a furious snort; against their breasts
The cloven waters foam'd, and flash'd behind
Their darting hoofs; and roar'd, and raged around
The dripping foemen, like a startled den
Of lions in the wood:—but vain the rush;
Midway the maddening torrent overwhelm'd
The struggling files; like a tremendous blast
Among autumnal leaves, it scatter'd all!
Rank after rank was buried in the flood,
Their steeds upon; while round their sinking heads
The waters yell'd, as victors o'er their foes:
But in that gasp, while yet their spirits hung
'Tween life and death, as feathers in the air,
Backward they gazed, and with triumphant shrieks
Of valour, fiercely sounded, “Vive l'Empereur!”

He heard their death-cries rolling on the blast;
And, as a lake just rippled into life,
His features flutter'd with terrific throes
Of suffering; then, his grinding teeth he gnash'd,
And dug the nails into his palms; and groan'd
In more than agony, whose deeps were dumb!

DEATH OF CORINNE.

(1828.)

All pale, and pillow'd on a chair she lay,
The beautiful, the passionate Corinne!
The brilliant language of her eyes no more
Darted around such eloquence of soul,
As when, amid the crowd, her feelings flash'd
The bright expression forth; while she herself
Was living poetry! Deep pensiveness,
And looks intense which tell the blighted heart,
Of coming death prophetically spake!

Ere yet her spirit breathed itself to heaven,
She yearn'd, upon the shrouded moon to gaze,
Silvering the mellow skies. Athwart her face
Floated that fatal cloud! the same she saw
When Melville woo'd her by the winding shore:
On him, enamour'd, kneeling at her feet,
She look'd, and in one look condensed
The buried anguish of a broken heart;
Her white lips feebly parted, then reclosed
For ever! Gazing then upon the sky,
She faintly beckon'd to the gleaming moon,
While down her neck her streaming ringlets fell
Like dropping sunbeams on the pallid air.

And now a change came on; back the blood retired
Her radiant cheek beneath; her eyelids moved
Like melting snow-flakes in the noontide-glow,
And all her beauty quite empyreal turn'd,
As if refining, ere to heaven it went;
Her hand fell downward with her farewell sigh,
And with eternity her spirit was!

CÆSAR ON THE BANKS OF THE RUBICON.

(1829.)

Amid the roar of revelry
Within Alesian's home,
He moved with glad but musing eye,
The vanquisher of Rome;
His spirit mingled with the gay,
And smiled the gloom of war away.

He tarried there till darkling Night
Threw round her dewy veil,
And shadows pall'd each Alpine-height
That beetled o'er the dale;
Then Cæsar rose, his bosom fraught
With incommunicable thought!

And swiftly sped the Hero on
Along his shadowy road;
And reach'd where roll'd the Rubicon,
That from the mountain flow'd;
And there,—prophetic thought's control
Becalm'd the dauntless Cæsar's soul!

Before him heaved the river-bound
Between great Rome and Gaul;
If cross'd—what trumpet-clangs would sound!
How many a foeman fall!
The vision'd future wild with woes
Before him, like a Spectre, rose!

603

He mused on battle, war, and blood,
On plunder'd cities' storm;
The impatient daggers of the good
Against a tyrant's form;
On all the mountain-perils thrown
'Tween Rome and triumph,—for his own.

Of what the unborn Times would say
At Rubicon's grand name,
Of Him who track'd with blood his way,
And with it built his fame:
Would he not seem a demon then,
Who ravish'd all the rights of men?

And thus reflecting Cæsar stood
And battled with his mind;
Then, gazed upon the fatal flood,
And dash'd his doubts behind!
Like a bent bow, his pride return'd,
And all the Roman in him burn'd.

“The die is cast! the die is cast!”
With reckless shout he cried;
Then swift the Rubicon was pass'd
And reach'd the Roman side;
Ere day had dawn'd he drew the sword,
And vassal Cities hail'd him lord!

A THOUGHT.

Dreams of our Youth! like birds of beauteous wing
Which haunt the paradise of morn and sing,
How have ye vanish'd into viewless air
And left the mind a Temple for despair!

July, 1833.

MORNING.

(1829.)

The Sun is seated on his ocean-throne,
Attended by a court of clouds. Around
And midway, rosy phantoms form and swell,
Advance, and, like battalions in array,
Mingle their pomp, and make a shining plain
Of crimson on the skies.

Beneath, the waves
In gleaming motion lie, like ruffled scales
Of liquid steel: and, lo! awaking now
With the white dew of slumber on her breast,
The Earth, all fragrant, fresh in living green,
And beautiful, as if this moment sprung
From out her Maker's hand. Athwart the trees
A verdant lustre shines; where matin-beads
With gems of light have jewell'd all the boughs;
While here and there, some gently-vocal stream
Touch'd by a sun-ray, laughs with conscious light.

The Flowers are waking, too, and ope their eyes
To greet the prying sun, while meads and dales
With hoary incense steam: and list! there floats
A buzz of life: myriads of insects now
Creep from their green-wood caves and mossy homes,
And wind their way to glitter in the sun;
While from yon wooded green the sheep-bells send
Their tinkling echoes down the forest-dale.

And is creation's heir, in slumberous calm
Unmindful of the morn? Ah, no: its beams
On the lone cotter's straw-roof'd hut hath smiled,
And call'd him forth. And see! the lattice oped,
Far o'er the landscape's freshen'd view His eye
Expatiates; while the choral breezes wake
Like matins from the harp of Air produced:
And then deep sentiments, by purity evoked,
Thrill the true heart; instructively it owns
The gloriousness of God; while faith ascends
On wings of prayer and praise the Mercy-seat,
And Him adores, Whom day and night reveal.

NOON.

The Sun is burning with his noontide-beams
Inflamed to fierceness. Cooling winds are dead;
The shallow lakes are film'd; and fetid pools
Gleam darkly from the arid ground, while hosts
Of swarming insects on the creviced soil
Basking and buzzing creep. The trees are tranced
In breezeless air; and at their matted trunks
The ploughman lies, his head upon his palms,
Watching between the leaves heaven's cloudless arch
Smile on him beauteously. The flowers decline,
As if they languish'd for a breezy draught;
And e'en the flirting bee, now honey-cloy'd,
Is humming languid on the rose's brim.
The world grows faint; and all is stirless, save
Yon sky-bird travelling to the sun; and hark!
Wing-poised, he peers undazzled at the blaze,
Hymning his heart-full of aërial strains.
Beneath this towering cliff behold the sea

604

Magnificently spread! The billows pant
And revel in the beams, which crest and crown
Their heads with golden brightness; or adorn
The dimpling bosom of the calmer deep,
And gambol to the shore.

But, far beyond,
Behold a rock majestically rear'd;
Upon whose brow the eagle sits at noon,
Rolling his eye-balls at the blazing run;
High on the yellow beach, its hoary side
Is bared unto the ocean, and the breeze
Upwafted, like a tight and stately sail
When whitening in the glow of heaven. And look!
The feathery shapes of far-off sails are seen
Alone upon the billows; and like clouds
Which glance and tremble on the ocean-brim,
Their motion gleams upon the water's breast.

NIGHT.

Another day is added to the mass
Of buried Ages. Lo, the beauteous Moon,
Like a fair shepherdess now comes abroad
With her full flock of stars, which roam around
The azure mead of heaven. And oh, how charm'd
Beneath her loveliness creation looks!
Far-gleaming hills, and light-inweaving streams,
And fragrant boughs with dewy lustre clothed,
And green-hair'd valleys, all in glory dress'd,
The pageantries of Night compose. One glance
Upon old Ocean, where the woven beams
Have braided her dark waves!—Their roar is hush'd;
Her billowy wings are folded up to rest;
Till once again infuriate winds shall yell,
And tear them into strife.

A lone owl's hoot;
The waterfall's faint drip; or insect-stir
Among the emerald leaves; or infant-wind
Rifling the pearly lips of sleeping flowers,—
The stillness of the scene alone disturb:

Spirit of All! as up yon star-hung deep
Of air, the eye and heart together mount,
Man's Immortality within him speaks;
That Thou art all around! Thy Beauty walks
In dream-heard music o'er the midnight heavens;
Thy glory garmenteth the slumbering world.

SPIRIT OF TIME.

1830.

“Horæ quidem cedunt et dies, et menses, et anni: nec præteritum tempus unquam revertitur; nec quid sequatur, sciri potest.”—Cicero.

Another Year, methought a Spirit cried,
Another Year is dead! Still rolls the world
Magnificent as ever; bright the Sun,
And beautiful his native heaven; the Earth
Around looks fresh as on her birth-day morn;
And Man, as gay as if no knell had rung,
No heart been broken, and no tears been shed!
Where, then, the history of the buried Year,
Of weal and woe, of glory and of shame?
Eternal! not a minute fleets away
That to Thy throne a record doth not waft;
Time cannot die; the unapparent Years
Again will rise; and cited Ages come,
And in our human resurrection share.

A Year hath perish'd, who can tell his tale?
Ye Thunders! kings of cloudy wrath sublime,
With herald-lightnings to announce your power,
Say from your sleep shall ye be summon'd forth,
And tell your havoc, in the blaze of noon
And in the night-wing'd tempest darkly made?
Or, shall I bid unbosom'd Ocean yield
Her dead; or let the unfrequented graves
Expand, and show their ghastly inmates, there?

No moral is there loud enough and deep
The laugh of Life to hush above the tomb;
Time, accident, and change,—they melt forgot
Like clouds of feeling: not the dread alarm,
Of Nature can arouse the world to think.—
An earthquake was there in a far-off isle:
The heavens were blacken'd; and the grim waves yell'd,
While Ocean, heaving like a human breast
In agony, groan'd wildly from her depths:
All Earth seem'd fear-struck; on their bowing trees
The leaves hung shuddering; through the heated air
The dull wind mutter'd with a spirit-tone,
And fitfully the island-cities rock'd:
At midnight, came the Earthquake in his ire
And gloom, which made the world's foundations reel!
Temples and towers were shatter'd: shrieks and prayers
Rang in wild tumult through the riven skies;
And, crush'd to dust, a thousand corpses lay

605

Gulph'd in the ground and sepulchred by night!
Cold morning came; each brow a sadness cloak'd;
Yet none of Judgment in their doom could dream,
And in the Earthquake hear the Voice of God!

A Year hath vanish'd, and how many eyes
Are film'd, how many lovely cheeks are cold!
What lips, which let out music from the soul,
Are death-seal'd, now! Bend, human Pride, and see
The desolation and the curse of Time.
Monarch of millions! at whose royal feet
The treasures of the ransack'd earth were laid,
And on whose brow the pride of Ages sat,
Where slumberest Thou? the sleep of death is thine;
And worms will revel on thy pulseless clay
As on the meanest of forgotten dust.

What hast thou lost, unheedful World? Thy great
Have died; Spirits amid whose radiant track
In bright eclipse the common herd are lost:
Thy Kings, thy Warriors, and thy Statesmen too
Have perish'd: hast Thou mourn'd thy mighty dead?
Go, weep for One, the wonder of his day,
A mental Titan of amazing grasp,
A man whom England may exult to hail
Her own; a Patriot, round whose dying lips
Her name of glory like enchantment, clung.
His chief inheritance, a lofty soul,
He battled through the darkness of his lot
And shone aloft,—the brightest of them all
Who wrestled with the tempest of renown!
What genius glow'd that gifted mind within,
What eloquence came flowing from the fount
Of salient fulness there,—of Hearts demand
Which each word felt, like new-born feeling, pour
Warm inspiration round them, when with eye
That kindled with the kindling truth, he stretch'd
His mind o'er Empires; and round captive-isles
Bade Liberty her wings of light expand!

But, when the mighty die, the mean begin
To live; and thus with thee, departed One!
Scarce on the wind thy death-knell ceased to moan,
Ere darkly rose the pestilential breath
Of Slander's venal lip, thy name to blight,
And turn thy soul as tainted as her own.
Yes! they the thunders of thy voice who fear'd
In Retribution's high revenge, arose,
And on thy memory heap'd the hoarded wrath
Of envy;—let them riot in their shame!
What though some error cast a doubtful shade
Upon thy glories, shall we laud them less?
Are skies less beautiful, because the clouds
Sail o'er them? shines the morning sun less bright
Because a passing shade his brow profanes?—
A monument in noble minds thou hast,
That will not moulder; Time shall guard it there!

But not alone the glorious and the great
Hast thou entomb'd, thou unreturning Year!
'Tis in the noiseless sphere of common life,
In placid homes, by quiet evening-hearths
Where once the social hearts were gather'd round,
We trace a fearful havoc in thy flight.
Alas! how many whom the infant Year
Beheld in beauty, looking on through life
As through a vista of eternal Joy,
Have vanish'd, like the bloom of early hope!
What blue-eyed babes, the parent knee beside
Reflecting smile for smile, have flown away
Like birds of Paradise, to their own home!
What Creatures, budding into womanhood,
The silent walk who loved, and made the flowers
Companions of their virgin-thoughts, have gone
To graves, with all a mother's treasured hope!
Go, see the mournful chamber, where of yore
When Winter howl'd his dirge, the gush of song
And heart-warm fellowship of feeling hours
Was heard, now mute, as if the tones of Joy
Had never scatter'd echoes there! Alas!
For him, who in the green young spring had wed
The Heart he echo'd; brightly laugh'd the Sun
Upon that morn of love complete; long days
Of bliss, and all the warm romance of youth
In radiant vision gather'd round his heart,
And now, to him a tomb the world becomes!

And thou, dread Fashion, at thy gilded shrine
What victims have been offer'd up! From haunts
Where all the young Emotions bloom and dwell,
And Nature is the holy nurse of Thought,
What maiden victims have been brought to thee!
And saddening 'twas to see their piteous change
From innocence to each corrupting joy:
At home they wander'd in ancestral woods,
Follow'd the brooks, and felt a kindred ray
Flash from their surface o'er the sunny heart;
Yes, beautiful that magic reign of soul,

606

When air seem'd haunted with the vocal wings
Of spirits, who beatify the winds;
Or when, with looks expanded in delight,
The heavens they mark'd besprinkled o'er with clouds
And beams, and bless'd The Hand which hung them there:
Then life was holy, full of heavenward joy,
And all their thoughts, like sunbeams, where they fell
Shed brightness and a beauty round: oh! ill
Exchanged for gilded rooms and crowded halls,
For heartless pride and unromantic hours!
Then work'd the havoc of the mind within;
The fount of generous feeling frozen up,
The heart-laugh tamed to an obsequious smile,
And young affection slowly wither'd down
To bleak and barren pomp,—they died;
And heavy knells were rung, when marriage-peals
Like merry prophets, should have loudly hail'd
The coming years;—'twas Fashion stopt their course!

E'en thou, pale Genius! whose unearthly tones
The world intrance, within the grave art sunk,
Since her dim gates Eternity unbarr'd
To let the dead Year in. Yet, one there lived
On whom Oblivion's pall should not have dropt
Her gloom; he never heard a great Man's name
Without a thrill, electric as divine;
He never saw a monument to Mind
But Glory came, and sat him on her throne.
The haughty light I saw, which lit his brow,
The emulation from his soul reveal'd
And mantling all his features with the mind,
When first that ever-haunting dream of Youth,
The goal to which ambitious thoughts would run,
The City-queen of England,—met his gaze
Of wonder. Round him flow'd her streams of life;
Temples, and Towers familiar with the clouds,
And Streets gigantic, in their glittering flow
Branching away like rivers in the sun,
Claim'd tributary awe; but soon grew dim:
From ancient times a mental shadow came,
And in it, his enthusiastic eye
Saw Heroes, Lords and Lights of man and mind!

But genius to itself a martyr is;
And that immortal lava of the soul,
That fire he felt for which there is no name,
Consumed him, while it glorified each thought:
One midnight, when, deserted and untrod,
The Capital had lock'd her thousand limbs
In slumber, and a silence shrouded all
With a cathedral-awe, alone he stood
Some mute vast square amid; and deeply watch'd
The heavens, and spread his spirit to the stars,
That seem'd to brighten as his fancy glow'd!
The mystery of Being; and the might
Of Him, whose fiat moulded sumless worlds;
And Life; and Death; the silence of the grave,
That dark Unknown we all are doom'd to know!—
Assail'd him now; 'twas his last hour of dreams;
The orbs of heaven on him ne'er look'd again,
The Morrow saw him shrouded for the grave!

No more of sorrow for the fleeted year:
No tears can cancel, or recal it now:
Hereafter, when before the throne of God
Dead Ages shall revive, all its crimes
And Virtues will be summon'd to their doom.—
Hark! from a host of dimly-vision'd Spires
The midnight-hour is rolling to the skies,
While doubtful echoes undulate the air,
Then glide away, like shadows, into gloom.
A solemn peal, a farewell-voice of Time,
It leaves a lingering tone in many a heart
Where merriment a home had made! The young
Who hear it in the festive chamber, sigh,
And send their thoughts, sad pilgrims to a tomb;
The aged hear it, and the Dead revive!

A Year hath vanish'd, and another Year
Is born; what awful changes will arise,
What dark events lie hidden in the womb
Of Time, imagination cannot dream.
Ye Heavens! upon whose brow a stillness lies,
Deep as the silence of a thinking Heart
In its most holy hour, the world hath changed,
But ye are changeless; and your midnight-race
Of starry Watchers view our glorious isle,—
Beaming, as when amidst her forest-depths
The savage roam'd, and chanted to the moon.

O England! beautiful, and brave, and free,
With Ocean, like a bulwark round thee thrown,
Thoughts of Thy destiny the heart awake
To fearful wonder; from the wildest state
Of darkness, raised and magnified by Heaven!
What though a troubled Spirit walk the earth
And Fancy hear the distant war-drums roll,
Long may thy sceptre proudly awe the waves;
Still o'er the world enthroned as Island-Queen
While each new year adds glory to thy name,
May Time be vanquish'd, ere he conquer Thee.

607

HYMN.

[Thy temple, Lord! creation stands]

Thy temple, Lord! creation stands,
Magnificently vast;
And o'er it Thine adorning hands
A roof of heaven have cast.

And there, all sights and sounds proclaim
The glory of Thy power,
And preach Thine everlasting name
To every conscious hour!

But though Thy temple be all space,
The heaven of heavens Thy throne,
Yet deign with condescending grace
This earthly fane to own.

O here may vocal incense rise,
And songs of Zion sound;
And lowly hearts and lifted eyes
Thy Presence feel around.

Salvation through the Blood of Him
Who conquer'd Death and Hell,
Assist us, O ye seraphim!
In strains like yours to tell.

And may thy living Gospel reign
Till sin and darkness flee,
And ransom'd Earth be pure again
As when it came from thee!

HYMN.

[How sacred is that chosen spot]

How sacred is that chosen spot
Where praise and prayer arise,
And earth and time seem half forgot,
While Faith unveils the skies,
And visions bright in beauty roll
Around the tranced believer's soul!

One hour within Thy Temple, Lord,
When blending hearts can meet,
And banquet on Thy blessed word
Before the Mercy-seat,
The antepast of heaven may prove,
And teach us how Thine angels love.

And ever in this calm abode
May Thy pure Spirit be,
And guide us on the narrow road
That terminates in Thee;
While dews of Thine absolving grace
Descend upon our fallen race.

Before the Cross where Jesu bled
On Calvary's fated hill,
With bended knee, and bowing head,
And soul devoutly still,
May each adoring sinner find
Salvation awe and soothe his mind.

And by Thy Blood, and by Thy Tears,
By all Thy pangs unknown!
Allay, O Lord, our rising fears,
And make these hearts Thine own;
Till each with loud hosannah sings,
Hail! Lord of lords, and King of kings!

A DREAM OF WORLDS.

(1839.)

Those starry Wonders, everlasting Worlds
Of light and loveliness, I saw them all,
As on the magic wings of mystery borne
Methought my unembodied spirit swept
Immensity. Vast multitudes there shone
Of beauteous Orbs, whose brightness was intense,
Beyond the noon in its most sunny reign.
Majestic, o'er a measureless extent
Of azure, moved those high immortal spheres,
Less terrible in beauty, but more shaped
To mortal vision; as they onward roll'd,
Each sounded as instinct with melody.

'Twas but an eye-glance that such pomp reveal'd;
And yet, before it pass'd a heaven-like host
Of Forms, and Phantoms which can never die
While memory lives. Who hath not charm'd the air
To rapturous delusion? Who hath lived
And yet not loved? and loved, and hath not shaped
His angel? Who a paradise not dream'd,
When from within a glorious longing woke
For that which earth and earthliness to none
Supply? Let Nature answer; she will tell
What shapes of beauty throng'd a dream of Worlds.

The Midnight!—how we gaze upon its pomp
Of orbs, and waft ourselves among their host,
As though they were bright Palaces for Souls
When clay doth not corrupt them. Who shall prove,
That such are not bright Eden's of pure bliss
Where myriads reap eternity? On high
The Seer of old mysteriously was rapt

608

To blessedness; aloft Elijah soar'd,
Rapt in dread thunder through the riven skies
'Mid fiery chariots and emblazon'd clouds!
And He, the sanctifying Lord of Life,
Through air ascended to His throne eterne ...
Ever have awe and glory, love and hope
Divine, the gaze of rapture skyward turn'd.
And oh! the cold may laugh, the worldly jeer,
Mocking whate'er their miserable clay
Partakes not of the mind's celestial dream—
Yet are there spells of beautifying power
And passion, which a stern Reality
Can never reach. Go, ask the widow'd heart
Of young Affection, when she walks the night
As in a vision of departed hours,
If all which day-charms yield, her love transforms
To such a blissful heaven of memory,
As that sweet lonely Star, whose angel-gaze
Like Mercy looks upon her lifted eye!
Or, ask a friend, of some bright Soul bereaved,
When stars expressively the sky adorn,
What radiant solace from their beam is caught,
While Fancy sighing thinks, “My friend is there!”

Ye holy Watchers! who this earth have view'd
In darkness rolling on to destiny
Through countless ages, and are glorious still,
With no feign'd worship sing I your romance.
My boyhood was Chaldean; and your beams
Like rays of feeling quiver'd round my heart:
Yes, I remember, when becalm'd and still
My school-companions on their couches slept,
With moonlight on their beautiful young brows
Like holiness arraying them for heaven,—
Unhinder'd, to my casement I would steal,
And muse; and gaze upon the midnight-orbs
Until my spirit seem'd the skies to float.

Such homage for the heavens is not extinct:
For now, when weary of the heartless stir
Around me, and sad nothings which o'erwhelm
The daylight, and our nobler mind disease;
When darken'd by unkindness, or deceived
By finding clouds where sunshine should prevail:
In such dark mood, upon those peaceful worlds
That shame us with their bright sublimity,
I gaze, and woo unheavenly fancy off
By visioning eternity.—Mere time
Too great a burden on our spirit lays;
We bow before our idols, and adore
The glittering falsehood of some fading scene;
Forgetful of yon glorious Sky, where, day
And night, Divinity is marching forth,
In sun or darkness, thunder or in worlds!

We know not what these heaven-illuming orbs
May be; to us—but Mysteries, that roll
And shine. Yet, none upon them ever gazed,
Whose eye could gather beauty which the soul
Can image, nor within him felt a spell
Of admiration, spreading o'er the mind
Till it became a mirror of delight
Reflecting back the glory that it hail'd.
And oft have I some heaven-born influence caught,
When sick of human Festival, where smiles
Are tutor'd till the heart forget to reign,
And eyes are beaming with hypocrisy;
While that soft tongue, whose angel-accents fall
In honey'd accents on the flatter'd ear
Can play the dagger, when the moment comes!—
How often, tired with such delightless pomp,
I've hail'd the homeward solitary way:
Here, once again, the immeasurable sky
Around me, and a starry wilderness
Open and free, for spirit to expand,
With what a worship hath my soul return'd
To night and nature, to itself and heaven!

A FADING SCENE.

A fading scene, a fading scene
Is this false world below;
And not a heart has ever been
Which hath not proved it so.

The clouds are dying while we gaze
Upon them, young and warm;
And sweet flowers in the summer-rays
But perish while they charm.

The trees that woo'd us as we pass'd
With many a leafy strain,
Bow, wither'd by autumnal blast,
When visited again.

The music which the soul doth melt
Like magic from the skies,
Though sweetly-heard, and softly-felt,
In swiftest echo flies.

Our pleasures are but fainting hues
Reflected o'er the waves;
Our glories,—they are phantom-views
Which lure us to our graves!

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And Beauty,—see her 'mid the crowd
A night-queen in her bloom!
To-morrow, in her maiden shroud
A martyr for the tomb!

And Love,—how frequent does it mourn
For some remember'd scene;
Or, doom'd in darkness reft or lorn
To live on what hath been.

And Friends,—alas, how few we find
That consecrate the name,
With glowing heart and generous mind,
To feed their hallow'd flame:

But should there be some blessed one,
However sad or lone,
Whom dearly we can look upon
And feel such friend our own,

The iron wings of Fate unfold
And bear him far away:
Or else, we mourn him dead and cold
Companion of the clay.

Oh, no! there's nothing on this earth
We fashion, or we feel,
But death is mingled with its birth
And sorrow with its weal.

Then, hail the hour of glorious doom!
That wafts my soul away
To regions radiant with the bloom
Of everlasting day.

THE DEPARTED YEAR.

“In silent night the vision of the dead passed by—
I saw our friends all pass,—
And oh! in silent night I saw the open graves—
I saw th' immortal host!”
Klopstock's Odes.

A vision, by eternity unveil'd,
When midnight in a trance of darkness lay,
My soul beheld. Methought that time and earth
Had vanish'd, while the unforgotten Dead
In glory bright and bodiless appear'd.
How deep their gaze! oh, how divine their smile!
A pensive mildness, an immortal grace
Each Semblance wore; the father had not lost
That light paternal which his living eyes
To greet his children, loved to have express'd;
Still on the mother's placid brow was throned
A tenderness, which triumph'd o'er decay;
And perish'd babes, whose beauty dazzled time,
In the young bloom of resurrection rose
Serenely glad, and innocently-bright.

And thus, by dreams of never-dying soul,
The Dead around us, with a voiceless power
Are present, mentally distinct and known;
As though some chain, whose links are unbeheld,
The living and the dead conjoin'd, that love,
E'en in the grave, no gloomy trance might bear,
But throb immortal in the spirit's core!

Thought flies the banquet, to embrace the tomb:
And, oh! if joy-wing'd hours awhile seduce
A faithful mourner from his fond regret;
If the dull prose of daily life contract
And dry his feelings into worldly dust,
Or selfish duty,—how divinely-pure
The calm of intellectual grief again!
Thus can creative fondness from the world
Of parted spirits, all it loved evoke:
And he whose years are chronicles of wo,
From the strange earth, where few companions dwell,
Can wander where the hopes of youth repose,
And make eternity his mighty home.—

A hollow knell heaves mournful on the air,
And my dark song in solemn echo rolls
To that dread music. From this orb of time
Another in the noon of manhood call'd
To lie and fester with unfeeling clay!—
Oh, God! the terror of Thy rising frown
Mantles the universe with more than night:
Each Kingdom, like a childless Rachel, mourns;
A Power of darkness, on the wings of death,
Hath travell'd earth with pestilential speed,
And left but havoc to declare his flight.
How many tombs this Year hath dug! what homes
Are fill'd with desolation's fearful calm!
The chairs are vacant where the Forms we loved
So oft reposed, where still their semblance chains
Our fix'd and fond delusion! In the streets,
Like silent mourners in a talking crowd,
Cold mansions tenantless and still remain,
From whose glad chambers rush'd the household-tones
That made sweet music to a social mind;
And many a garden, whose luxuriant green
And laurell'd bowers the sunbeams loved to grace,
In weedy ruin is decaying now:

610

The hands it welcomed with rewarding bloom,
Are iced by death, and ne'er can tend it more.
'Twas exquisite for him, whose town-worn life
Was fever'd by the hot and fretful day,
When evening, like an angel-wing, could waft
His spirit home, to greet yon tranquil cot
Again, and bid the vexing world depart.
How dear the beauty of each dawning flower,
How rich the melody of choral leaves,
To him, whose wisdom was a feeling mind!

And thou, lone sharer of a widow'd lot!
Where is the language, though a Seraph hymn'd
The poetry of heaven, to picture thee,
Doom'd to remain on Desolation's rock
And look for ever where the Past lies dead!
What is the world to thy benighted soul?
A dungeon! save that there thy children's tones
Can ring with gladness its sepulchral gloom.
Placid, and cold, and spiritually-pale,
Art thou; the lustre of thy youth is dimm'd,
The verdure of thy spirit o'er: in vain
The beaming eloquence of day attracts
Thy heart's communion with Creation's joy;
Like twilight imaged on a bank of snow
The smile that waneth o'er thy marble cheek!

Oh, when shall trial, tears, and torture cease?
Despair, and frenzy, and remorseless gloom,
Defiance, and the Thoughts which crouch before
The bright severity of Virtue's eye,
When shall their mystery lie unweaved, and bare?
When shall the lips of Agony be dumb,
And the dark wail of wounded Nature hush'd?

A Tragedy of twice three thousand years
Hath almost ended; soon perchance, may fall
A Curtain, whose unfolding darkness brings
Oblivion o'er the universe decay'd.
Already looks Earth's final scene begun:
The elements, like human limbs unnerved,
Forego their function; seasons out of tune
Creation's harmony of change destroy;
And in their wildness of unwonted act
Reflective eyes an awful omen read,
By Nature given to prophetic man
Of Time's conclusion. Sea and Air confess
A strange excitement; through the trackless heaven's
Immensity the unheard Comet rolls;
No vision'd eye his path may comprehend,
Nor dread imagination dream, what orbs
May crumble, or what blighted planets shrink
As on the burning Desolator sweeps
And blazes o'er annihilated worlds!

Spoiler of hearts and empires! vanish'd Year,
Ere for eternity thy wings were spread
Alone I listen'd to thy dark farewell.—
The moon was center'd in the cloudless heaven
Pallid as beauty on the brow of death;
And round about her, with attracted beams,
Group'd the mild stars; the anarchy of day
Was hush'd, the turbulence of life becalm'd.
From where I stood, a vast and voiceless plain,
A City garmented with mellow light
Lay visible; and, like romance in stone,
Shone gloriously serene. All sounds were dead:
The dew-drop, stirless as a frozen tear
Gleam'd on the verdure; not an air-tone rang;
The leaves hung trancéd as the lids of Sleep;
Around me Nature in devotion seem'd,
The Elements in adoration knelt,
Till all grew worship,—from the heart of Things
Material, to the conscious soul of man!
'Twas then, sepulchral, hollow, deep, and loud,
The bell of Midnight on the stillness burst
And made the air one atmosphere of awe.

Sublime of hours! I thought on all the grave
Had buried, since the infant Year began:
What dreams, what agonies untold
Dead as the hearts whose depth they once turmoil'd,
Lay motionless, and mute! Of pomp in dust,
Of wither'd pride, of wealth from glory hurl'd,
Of lull'd ambition and appeased despair,—
Of each I dreamt: and then, in sad array,
Pale visions of the Kings of thought arose,
The wise, the wondrous, the adored, whose deaths
Enrich'd eternity with added mind,
Sleep with the Patriarchs now! and one how great!
For whom the costly tears of genius fell;—
The wand is broken, and the Wizard gone!

Many and mighty are the stars of Fame;
But his deep splendour has outdazzled all
Since Shakspeare, that unrivall'd planet! rose,
Whose radiance clad the intellectual heaven.
Yes, he hath vanish'd; but his country wears
A veil of glory that shall garb her clime
For ever. How we hung upon his parting hour!
And when it summon'd the transcendant Mind
From earth to heaven, the souls of myriads felt
O'ershadow'd; Europe bow'd in dim eclipse,
And Kingdoms mourn'd round his imagined tomb.

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Monarchs of time, and ministers of thought,
Felt in the frame of intellectual life
As rolls the blood-tide through our breathing form,
Where is the palace of your spirits now?
In what immensity are ye enshrined,
Imperishably pure? Was quiet earth
In beauty, but an archetype of heaven?
Your dreams, your towering aspirations high,
The far-off shadows of each Truth divine,—
Are all absorb'd in beatific light,
And this world like a rain-drop in the deep
Of time, for ever from the soul dissolved?
Our craving passion for the Unreveal'd
Fain would it know, to what vast height removed,
To what perfection of sublimest powers
Ye are ascended: but, the baffled Wish
Is driven earthward, and cold Nature cries
In tones as thrilling as the touch of Death,
“Back to thy clay, Mortality! and bend
Like Faith, before the infinite Unknown.”

As water copies a portentous cloud
By stern reflection, so the spirit's gloom
Lies darkly-mirror'd on the mimic page.
And if some features of a faded Past
Be thus recall'd, they bring no aimless grief
To deaden song, by female worth inspired.
For seldom, since the groan of earth began,
Hath Woman shone more visibly-divine
Than in the gloom of this remember'd year!
When Forms all spirit, moulded by the touch
Of Nature in her most ethereal power,
Whose beauty, delicate as painted air
At the light breeze seem'd ready to dissolve,
Transform'd by feeling, have at once become
Heroical, for superhuman aid!
Behold that chamber, where a feeble lamp
Is quivering, pulse-like, with a dying flame;
There, by yon couch, a soft-eyed mourner fades
Night after night, with uncomplaining brow:
While a soul flutters in that Form revered
From whence her being,—though her brain should parch
Till the flush'd eyelids hang like drooping flowers
About to wither, still, her watch endures!
The bough may blossom from the tree removed,
Ere young affection, from its parent torn,
Can live and flourish, while one ebbing pulse
Articulates within those precious veins!

And thus, calamity with glory comes:
From out its gloom, as streams from caverns pour,
The tides of human tenderness proceed.
And virtues, which the noon-bright hour of joy
May dazzle, when a cloud of anguish breaks,
Dawn into birth, and decorate the soul
With heaven-born lustre; like the pale-eyed stars
That shut their lids when gaudy daylight rules,
But ope them on the sun-forsaken night.

Then let the scorner, whom the vernal glee
Or laughing wildness of delighted youth
Hath taught, that pleasure would to pain deny
The sacrifice of one exalted tear,
His creed forego: the fount of Woman's heart
Lies deeper than his shallow gaze detects!
For Beauty, that a soulless idol seem'd
Rear'd on the breath of some adoring night,
Oh, let one pang a cherish'd mind convulse,
The mist is scatter'd! and the unblemish'd heart
Free from the world, like day from darkness comes,
And acts at once the ministry of heaven.

Then look at Woman, when by love sublimed:
Misfortune moulds her by a graceful power
To fit the cast of fate; and in her wo
Each mental attribute can bloom as bright
As when the home was costly, and her smile
Fell like a glory on attracted eyes.
As stoops an eagle from his lordly height
Where once he soar'd, companion of the cloud
And storm, so sinks, with a triumphant fall,
Her spirit down to some domestic vale;
There, looks more beauteous in each act and thought
Through the meek round her cottage-virtues run,
Than when it reign'd amid the hall of kings.
A mortal Weakness by the world admired
Let others paint her; and, in Woman find
The uncertain heart by light-wing'd impulse led,
The mind which fruitless admiration feeds,
The tottering purpose, and the tameless will:
There is a passion, that with fine eclipse
O'ershadows all such failing hours present,
When the soul falters,—'tis maternal love!
Unbounded feeling! Space, and Scene and Time
Succumb before thee: infinite in power
As fathomless in depth; no rack affrights,
No dungeon quells, no agony impedes
Thy wondrous action; in the horrid grave
Thou darest to cherish the unconscious Dead,
And heaven admits Thee, when thou soarest there!

Lo, how that feeling with transforming might
Shapes a wild spirit to its tender will!

612

Gay as the breeze and dainty as the flower
To-night behold her, on whose jewell'd head
Fashion hath set an ever-fading crown:
Again regard her!—and the trace of God
Is character'd on that ethereal change
Mien, mind, and manner all have undergone;
As broods a Poet o'er some wordless thought
Affection gazes on her unborn child;
And, ere its being into life expands
Love, like a seraph when the soul departs
For glory, waiting to receive its charge,
Stands on the threshold of commencing Life
Bright with the welcome of a mother's bliss!

Charm of the world! whose light makes human love,
If I apparel with too rich a robe
The fascinations which around thee float,
And on thy beauty let no dimness fall
To mar its radiance, 'tis an error blest,
Though blind: for Thou, in thy transcendent worth,
Art lifted to the highest sphere of Song,
When, like a human providence below,
Thy days are consecrate to deeds of heaven.

Lincoln College, Oxon, 1833.

REFLECTIVE STANZAS.

There is a sadness in my soul,
But whence, and why, I cannot tell;
As though a Spirit's dark control
Had bound it with a deadening spell.

The sun wears not that glorious brow
Poetic morns were wont to bring;
And many a wind which mourneth now,
A song of rapture used to sing.

For all my summer-glow of thought
Hath sadden'd into wintry gloom;
And much that Fancy shaped or sought
Lies buried in oblivion's tomb.

Yet, dream not that I nurse the grief
Which discontented moments bring;
Or sullen gloom, whose sole relief
Comes flowing from a bitter spring.

For human hearts, where'er they breathe,
Have still their human charm for me:
I would not bind a selfish wreath
Without one bud of sympathy!

Then let me not a mournfulness
From clouds of hidden sorrow steal;
Nor wring from thee a vain distress
A bosom soft as thine would feel.

A scene of sunshine and of gloom,
Like human life my page will be;
And, mutter'd o'er our mortal doom,
Will sound a dark Soliloquy!

Thou wilt not deem such verse supplied
By superstition's haggard gaze;
Nor think that Fancy's wing hath tried
To wander in forbidden ways.

Who paints His beauty on the cloud,
Or smileth on the breezy shore,
Or wraps Him in a whirlwind-shroud
Or speaketh in the thunder-roar,

That Power, the visionless and dread,
In words where inspirations dwell,
By His almightiness hath said,
Earth wears a shadow cast from Hell!

The Spirits and the Powers of air
In mystery and in might they roam;
Unseen they act, unknown they dare,
And make the evil heart their home.

And One, their centre and their soul
There is; the demon-god of sin
Who o'er the wicked hath control
And fires the hell we feel within.

And such a Wanderer o'er the earth
The viewless Power I've dared to draw;
And mentally have given birth
To all he felt, and all he saw:

To each avenging throe of thought
That might so dread a Spirit thrill,
With hateful ruin ever fraught,—
Yet blasted and believing still!

Thus Virtues are as Heaven reveal'd,
And Love and Truth eternal shown;
While whatsoe'er the Tempter wield,
Is darkly hued, and stamp'd his own.

Nor marvel thou, if scenery bright
And beautiful by Nature made,
If sight and sound that yield delight,
Are in elysian charm array'd:

For who can bliss or beauty know
Like him, a Rebel from the skies,
Who, though his doom be endless wo,
Hath witness'd all pure Angels prize?

613

And such the matter of my verse
Whate'er its fate or force may be,—
Inwoven with the primal curse,
But, hailing immortality.

An awful maze for human Mind!
And enter'd with a holy fear;
God of my sires! where I am blind,
Descend, and make Thy glory clear.

How darkly-bound this scene of life,
How dread the mysteries of time,
And all our being's passion-strife
With things unholy and sublime,

I ever felt:—and deeply now,
As o'er the page my fancies steal,
My spirit seems in awe to bow
Beneath a Sense the bravest feel.

The wings of Darkness are unfurl'd,
The Earth lies hush'd, as in her grave;
And all the sound that thrills the world
The rocking of yon midnight-wave!

Who hath not own'd such tragic hour,
The sadness, and the dream it brings,
Solemnity and spirit-power
Reflected from Eternal Things?

O'er time and destiny we weave
Our inward-fancies, thick and fast;
And start to see, how moments leave
The present, to begin the past!

And we, my friend, howe'er our doom
Of life and years may varied be,
Must pierce the dampness of the tomb
And mingle with eternity.

And what art Thou?—The dark Unknown
Thy name to mortals bound and blind;
Yet like a faint-heard mystic tone
Thy meaning hovers o'er my mind.

I see Thee in the vigil-star,
I hear Thee in the muttering Deep;
And, like a feeling from afar,
Thy Shadow riseth o'er my sleep:

Thou comest where the witching power
Of festive hearts alone should be,
Till life itself appears an hour
That flutters o'er eternity!

Away with this! and may I feel
Whatever cloud o'erhang my lot
There is a joy Time cannot steal,
There blooms a flower which fadeth not.

And might I doom my future days,
Like thee, I'd seek some calm retreat
Unhaunted by the public gaze,
And only to the pensive sweet.

For nobler far thy noiseless life
Than all the gayer World can give;
Whose best reward's a wretched strife
'Tween fear to die, and hate to live!

I see thee oft, my guardian friend,
Companion of the mead and bower,—
What glories from the hills descend,
What meekness flows from every flower!

To thee, the hymn of winds and brooks,
The waving joy of wood and field,
With all fresh Nature's thousand looks,
A love and holy feeling yield.

And long be thine the unruffled hour
That leaves thee guiltless as thou art;
And never may one evil power
Profane the heaven within thy heart.

Thus, blooming shall thy pleasures last,
And leave thee grateful, calm, and sage;
While Memory, smiling o'er the past,
Shall be the vesper-star of age.

And when mysterious time is o'er
And round my soul are scenes divine,
Oh, may it reach th' Eternal Shore
As placid and as pure as thine!

BEAUTY.

(1827.)

Oh, Beauty is the master charm,
The syren of the soul,
Whose magic zone encompasseth
Creation with control;
The love and light of human Kind,
And foster-flame of ev'ry mind.

'Twas Beauty hung the blue-robed heavens,
She glitters in each star;
Or trippeth on the twilight-breeze
In melody afar;
She danceth on the dimpled stream,
And gambols in the ripple's gleam,

She couches on the coral wave,
And garlandeth the sea;
Or weaves a music in the wind
Which murmurs from the lea;
She paints the clouds, and points the ray,
And basketh in the blush of day.

614

She sits among the blossom'd trees
And streaks the bud and flower;
Becharms the air, and drops the dew
Upon the moonlit-bower:
'Tis she unwreaths the locks of Night,
And freshens nature with delight.

And Woman!—Beauty was the power
That with angelic grace
Breathed love around her glowing form,
And magic in her face;
She twined the tendrils of her hair,
And on that brow—Her throne is there!

Oh! Beauty is the master-charm,
The syren of the soul,
Whose magic zone encompasseth
Creation with control:
The love and light of human Kind,
And foster-flame of ev'ry mind.

A DAUGHTER'S APOSTROPHE TO A DEPARTED MOTHER.

(1827.)

If gentle spirits wing'd away
To some elysian sphere,
Can hear Affection meekly pray,
Or mark a mourner's tear;

Pure Spirit! shrined in realms of love
Beyond this earthly wild,
Oh! breathe calm influence from above
To bless thine orphan-child.

As oft at pensive eve I roam
Thine image visits me;
While Fancy paints the radiant home
Once so adorn'd by thee!

The smile which rambled o'er thy cheek
And shamed the pang of art;
The mellow tones I heard thee speak,
Still linger round my heart.

That glowing welcome of thine eye,
The fondness in thy fear;
The meek borne anguish in thy sigh,
The pity in thy tear;

The mild reluctance in each frown
That won me ere it changed;
The glance which charm'd my spirit down,
When giddily it ranged;

Those lips that lull'd each maiden wo
And bade the smile to play,
Nor left the scalding tears to flow
But kiss'd them all away,

Yes! these, and all the spells of love
That charm'd my childhood's hour,
Oft bear me to yon home above
To thy seraphic bower.

Oh, if thou hear my orphan-prayer
And yearning fondness see,
Thou know'st I sigh to enter there
And be at rest with thee!

STANZAS.

[Oh! rest thee in thy green-turf grave]

(1825.)

Oh! rest thee in thy green-turf grave,
There is no sorrow there;
For tomb'd within, the wretched have
A freedom from despair.

No more shall come the hour of wo,
Nor hope's delusive light;
Untroubled is thy sleep below,
Upon the bed of night.

The dews of anguish damp'd thy brow,
Thine was the wither'd heart;
No stormy woes can scare thee now,
So dreamless as thou art!

Then rest thee in thine early tomb
Beneath the dewy sod,
Till Mercy shall unshroud the gloom
And summon thee to God.

THE CRUCIFIXION.

(1827.)

Rock of the Church, and Rest of wearied souls!
Thou that wert bosom'd in the searchless depths
Of uncreated Light, before the world
Roll'd fresh and glittering from almighty Hands,
The hymning Choristers, who harp on high,
Alone the sorrows of Thy love can sing;
Of love, that snatch'd a universe from hell
And oped for man the starry gates of heaven!

Lo! in yon pillar'd hall, amid the hum
Of fierce-tongued soldiers, God incarnate stands
All quivering from the scourge! around they rave,

615

And tear His lowly dress with tiger-hands,
Then robe Him in an azure vest, and crown
His godlike temples with entwinèd thorns:
At last, as from His pierced and flesh-torn brow
The heavy blood-drops ooze, with impious jeer
Within His hand the sceptre-reed they place,
And kneel, and bow, and smite His awful head,
And spit upon His grief-worn face, and cry,
“Hail, Monarch of the Jews!”

That mockery's o'er;
And now, to crucifixion see Him led
His cross in front by some Cyrenian borne.
Oh, never yet was such an Altar rear'd!
Oh, never yet was such an Offering slain!
His agony is dumb; they scoff, and taunt,
And grind their murderous teeth, but not a throe
Of ire can ripple His Almighty calm!
Forgiveness is His prayer: The undying souls
Of those long swallow'd in the eternal gulph,
And they who are, and they that shall be born
To battle with the Flesh; the Throne of God,
And all the bright-wing'd Choirs, whose harps shall ring
“Salvation!” through the star-roof'd halls of heaven
To welcome back the Heir of Glory,—these
Are imaged round His heart: and deadly pangs
Force no resentful frown.

At Golgotha
The blessed Christ behold! Upon the Cross,
Upon the cross His holy limbs are stretch'd;
And every nerve and vein is rack'd, and wrench'd,
By agonies unspeakable; and look!
How through His palms the hammer'd nails have pierced,
And through His bare and unresisting feet
The red wounds gape, and bleed! Stupendous hour
Of awful pain,—the martyr'd Son of God
On yon dread Tree uprear'd, the World to save!
Approach! and gaze; and wonder till ye weep!
Convulsive lines of torture grave His face,
And flutter o'er His breast; the veins unroll
In loose and languid stretch, and from His brow
The lukewarm life-stream trickles slowly down,
And clots beneath His feet. His head is bent
Blood-matted o'er His shoulder: while His eyes
Dim-grown, and hollow with the rack, look meek
Upon His butchers round the Cross, who scoff,
And o'er His riven garment cast their lots.

And, lo, with eye upturn'd in voiceless wo,
His Virgin-mother! all a mother's pangs
Of pity for her tortured Son upheave
Her bosom, and array her bloodless cheek;
Nor can the deadly riot of His pains
Chill the warm current of celestial love:
Adown, with tender gaze of truth, He looks,
And to the bosom-partner of his toils
Confides the weeping Mary, to a Son!

And sad, but ignominious Sight! two thieves
In bloody fellowship with Christ are hung:
One turns around, with sidelong-glance of scorn,
To rail, and mutters from his parchèd throat
A hideous jeer: the other, meek and faint,
Dejected cries, “Remember me, O Christ!
When Thou art in the palace of Thy love!”
Divine, and glorious answer! “Ere the Day
Shall die, in Paradise with Me thou'lt walk.”

But, see, in clouds the Sun hath sunk away
As if aghast! A pall of darkness shrouds
The land of Palestine; a speechless gloom
More ghastly than Tartarean night. The hills
Grow dim; the Rivers moan as if in dread;
And men, with quailing limbs and ashy lips
Come forth, and stare, tongue-tied, upon the skies!
And hark: from off the Cross, is loudly heard,
In piercing tones of death, “My God! My God!
Oh, why hast Thou forsaken me?”—Again!
“My God! My God! oh, why dost Thou forsake?”
'Tis o'er! the blood-red Eye is film'd, and shut
Within its socket; 'gainst His weary breast
The last heart-pulse hath beat; and now, behold
In death's pale slumber, while His tender lips
Have sweet compassion printed on their curve,
The Christ! a Sacrifice for lost mankind.

Oh, never since the infant beam of Time
Glanced on the new-born world, was such an hour!
To symbol it, the Temple's veil was rent;
The Sun of Israel set; the God-breathed curse
With holy Blood was blotted out; Earth quail'd
As though some impulse out of Hell had come
To heave her huge foundations! Every rock
And mountain throbb'd, while o'er the muttering Deep
The dismal waters coil'd, as if they fear'd!
And last, the graves themselves unlock'd, and Shades
Stalk'd out, and glided through the quaking Town,
And floated by the living, like faint gleams
Of pallid moonlight o'er some haunted Shrine.

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Hell heard; and shudder'd as it heard the wail
And dying words of Christ; while Satan howl'd
And gnash'd his teeth, amid the furnace-glow
Of everlasting Fires, to know his wrath
Should ne'er be glutted on the World; that Heaven
Was won, and to rebellious Man unbarr'd.
Unbarr'd!—oh, if Imagination may
Plume her young wings, and wander faith-born, there,
A peal more joyous than the choral Stars,
Upon the birth-day of created Worlds,
Re-echoed round her crystal domes; while all
The countless Seraphs wreathed their lustrous wings
In awe, before the lightning-shrouded Throne
Of God invisible; then, woke their harps
To melodies divine, and hail'd The Lamb
Triumphant from His martyrdom below!

Two thousand Years have almost floated down
The gulph of time, since on the glorious Cross
Divinest Martyr! Thou wert nail'd: the world
With all its pageantry and pride prevails;
Men smile and struggle, labour, sin, and die
As if Thy Blood had never blotted out
The crimes of earth; as if, at last, Thy might
And majesty should not appear! Still, Thou
Hast prophesied, again the Incarnate God
This earth will visit and her dead restore.—
But, not as homeless orphan of the world,
To wander on in pain and wo, and weep,
And perish on the Tree; but on Thy car
Of lightning, rolling from unfathom'd depths
Of heaven, while seraphs robed in radiant light,
Brandish their glitt'ring banners o'er Thy throne,
And all the clouds like burning billows flash
And bound beneath Thy feet!—The Trump shall peal
That dead-awakening blast, more full and loud
Than thunder in its deepest roar: the Sea
Shall yawn, and all her buried hosts arise;
The graves burst open, and the dust unite
Into a living Form; and then, shall come
The Judgment, and our Everlasting Doom!

STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION.

I.

The pining leaf, the perish'd flower,
The tints of autumn thrown
In pensive ruin o'er some bower
Where gay spring-buds had grown;

The faltering wave, the feeble cloud
Which faints like thought away,
With Nature's warning unavow'd
Predict our own decay.

And who can look down Life's dim vale
Where buried hours repose,
Or listen to the rueful tale
Of man's recurring woes,

Nor feel within the spirit-core
A pang of mute regret,
For feelings that exist no more,
For joys whose sun is set!

Yes, Lady! in this life of dreams
My heart has had its share;
And still around wild fancy beams
The wreck of visions fair;

But hollow laugh, and heartless smile,
And tones of mirth untrue,
Can barely mock the soul awhile
And veil it from thy view.

Another to the countless mass
Of Spirits who have fled,
I add my sigh, as on I pass
To regions of the dead!

II.

Yon sunbeams in their brightest mirth
Are dancing o'er the sea,
And hues and harmonies of earth
Betoken summer's glee.

I watch the clouds with fairy glide
Athwart the blue air gleam,
And view them mirror'd on the tide
Like features in a dream:

The very leaves are toned with joy
And carol to the wind,
Gaily as when, a pangless boy,
They echo'd back my mind:

Gladness and glory blend their sway
Around this ocean scene;
And yet, to me the brightest day
Is dark, to what hath been!

The flowers of hope, the young and fair,
Are dewless, cold, or dead;
The lip may laugh, but where, oh, where
The inward sunshine fled?

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I hear the voice of vanish'd Hours,
And mourn the buried Past;
Oh, why should feeling e'er be ours,
And nought but memory last!

Oystermouth, July, 1833.

THE DREADFUL PRAYER.

(1827.)

No priestly vows avail'd: gaunt Famine stalk'd
Through Cairo's streets by day and night, and suck'd
The life-blood from her hungry thousands there.
From wall to wall, from house to house, were heard
The gasping yells of famish'd men, and wail
Of mothers, with dead infants at their breasts,
Whose bakèd lips, and eyelids curling up
Like wither'd violet-leaves, and fleshless hands,
Were blasted by the pest of Famine's touch!
In agony some gnaw'd their nails; some groan'd
And with a horrid glare their eyeballs work'd,
Rooted their tresses,—and expired! And here
Pale groups, with bony cheek and beamless stare,
Stagger'd abroad, and choked themselves with cries
For death; while others, 'neath funereal-palls
Moved slowly on, like sable thunder-clouds;
Then sat, and howl'd upon the new-dug graves!
So ghastly look'd the bloodless Shapes around,
That Cairo seem'd a charnel-house revived
Whose dregs were crawling into life again!

In vain the Priests with agonising prayer
Storm'd the mute Heavens; no Mercy smiled
An answer to their vows. Still, Famine swept
Her thousands into dust; still, every wind
Wing'd to the skies the howlings of Despair!
At length, unspotted babes, whose milk-white robes
Gleam'd pure as dove-wings on the radiant air,
By Imans led, the Minaret-spires up climb'd
For pestilence to pray, the Famine's cure!
There, on the gilded peaks their hands were raised
In adoration clasp'd, as if with prayer instinct;
And while their cherub-mouths in lisping tones
The plague besought, a pale-eyed Crowd below
Stirr'd like a moaning Wind upon the deep;
Their lean lips moved, and mutter'd, “Let it be!”

That prayer Heaven heard: a Pestilence came down,
And made an atmosphere for death! Men dropp'd
Into corruption, thick as winter blights
Upon the poison'd bushes. Hill and dale,
Hamlet and city, groan'd with ghastly piles
Of green-eyed dead: the houses turn'd to tombs;
And they who roam'd the Desert's dewless wilds
Were plague-smit by the way, and moulder'd there
Like riven branches from a forest-tree:
And thus was Cairo cursed, till by the dead
The Plague, itself corrupted, died away!

INFANCY.

“The smile of childhood on the cheek of age.”

A child beside a mother kneels
With lips of holy love;
And fain would lisp the vow it feels,
To Him enthroned above.

That cherub gaze, that stainless brow
So exquisitely fair!
Who would not be an infant now,
To breathe an infant-prayer?

No crime hath shaded its young heart,
The eye scarce knows a tear;
'Tis bright enough from earth to part
And grace another sphere!

And I was once a happy Thing
Like that which now I see;
No May-bird on ecstatic wing
More beautifully-free:

The cloud which bask'd in noontide-glow,
The flower that danced and shone,
All hues and sounds, above, below
Were joys to feast upon!

Let Wisdom smile, I oft forget
The colder haunts of men,
To hie where infant hearts are met,
And be a child again:

To look into their laughing eyes
And see the wild thoughts play,
While o'er each cheek a thousand dyes
Of mirth and meaning stray:

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O Manhood! could thy spirit kneel
Beside that sunny child,
As fondly pray, and purely feel
With soul as undefiled,

That moment would encircle thee
With light and love divine;
Thy gaze might dwell on Deity
And heaven itself be thine!

BEAUTIFUL INFLUENCES.

“Suppose the singing birds musicians;
The flowers fair ladies; and thy steps no more
Than a delightful measure, or a dance.”
Shakspeare.

(1829.)

Oh for a summer-noon, when light and breeze
Sport on the grass like ripples o'er a lake
Alive with freshness; when the regal Sun,
With God's own smile upon his forehead seen,
Walks in his golden radiance through the path
Cerulean.—Vast and overhanging heaven!
Arching the earth with thy majestic sweep,
At such an hour, with what unsated eye
We look upon thee, till the mind seems lost
In thine immensity, and we appear
O'erwhelm'd by such a vision.

Care-worn man!
Whom Duty chains within the city-walls
Amid the toiling crowd, how grateful plays
The fresh wind o'er thy sickly brow, when free
To tread the elastic turf; and hear the trees
Wave music on the gales; to catch the voice
Of waters, gushing from their fount unseen,
And singing as they wander:—How sublime
Upon a time-blanch'd cliff to muse, and while
The eagle glories in a sea of air,
To mingle with the scene around! survey
The sun-warm heaven, or at the cavern'd base
Of yon wood-crested mount, the ocean view
With radiant billows ruffled by the breeze:
Then, dawns the resurrection of thy youth
In dewy freshness o'er thy wither'd heart!

Nor is the scene, though unbeheld, forgot;
The eye is faithful to a feeling heart:
When torn from some Arcadian haunt, we thread
The crowded city's unromantic streets,
The spot we love refreshing influence yields;
Beneath our feet a fairy pathway flows;
The grass still flutters in the summer-winds,
The dusky wood and distant copse appear,
And that lone stream, upon whose chequer'd face
We mused, when noon-rays made the pebbles gleam
With gem-like dazzle through the wrinkled tide,
Is mirror'd to the mind: though all around
Be rattling hoofs and roaring wheels, the eye
Seems wandering where the heart delights to dwell.

Are there not hours of an immortal birth,
Bright visitations from a purer Sphere,—
A trance of glory, when the Mind to heaven
Attuned, can out of dreams her worlds create?
Oh! none are so absorb'd, as not to feel
Those calming thoughts which harmonise the mind.
When prayer, the purest incense of a soul,
Hath risen to the Throne of heaven, the heart
Is mellow'd; and the shadows which becloud
Our state of darken'd being, glide away;
The heavens are open'd; and the eye of Faith
Looks in, and hath a mystic glance of God!

And, Genius, undisputed gift of heaven,
From Thee what feelings flow! the passions own
Thy sway, and waken at thy quickening power
Like flowers expanding to the breath of morn.
Then bind his temples with a fadeless wreath;
Give him the proudest seat, a princely rank
And all the deeper homage of the mind,
Who like a god among mankind is felt,
And, from the purest sunshine of his soul
Sends forth the rays which glorify the world!

Who hath not felt the might of genius rise,
And stir his spirit to a storm of thought?
Oh! had I kingdoms, I would yield them all
To him, whose thoughts like angel-wings exalt
The fancy, and a thousand springs unlock
Of feeling, that have never gush'd before.
So noble is such joy, that I have blush'd
For all dark thoughts, for all demeaning cares.
In such rapt mood our solitude is fill'd
With bright creations; and clysian scenes
Ope in a vision on the eye of Thought.
Thus charm'd by Genius, hie thee to the haunts
Where Nature shows her blooming face! how bright
The sun, how beautiful the liquid air,—
Like floating music! and the soft-toned wind
Around thee warbling like a conscious joy.
A veil of beauty o'er the world is drawn,
Till thy heart seems to beat for all mankind,
And, full of glorious feeling, thou wouldst fain

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Become an Angel to adore thy God,—
A more than mortal to complete His praise.

And will not Mind a beauteous influence yield?
Oh, glorious 'tis, amid some room antique
To study, all alone, those pictured Shapes
From the soul's Eden call'd! where genius sheds
Spells of entrancement round you; and while the eye
Banquets on beauty, from a painter's soul.
Whether a landscape, whose ethereal lights
Like gleams upon the water, glow o'er tree
And bower, and sky luxuriantly bespread,
Or love-shaped forms, or features angel-bright
Float o'er the enamour'd gaze,—a rich
Excess, a harmony of feeling rules
The fancy, when again the world we greet;
The mind with loveliness is bathed, which yearns
Enchantment over common scenes to throw,
And make dull earth draw nearer heaven, at last!

Who hath not felt the spirit of a Voice,
Its echo haunt him in romantic hours?
From Melody's own lip who hath not heard
Sounds which become a music to his mind?
Music is heaven-born! In the festal home
When throbs a lyre, as if instinct with life,
And some sweet mouth is full of song, how soon
From eye to eye a rapture flows, from heart
To heart! while, floating from the past, the Forms
We love, are re-created; and the smile
Which lights the cheek is mirror'd on the heart.
So beautiful the potency of sound,
There is a magic in the homely chime
Of village-bells; I love to hear them roll
Upon the breeze; like voices from the Dead
They seem to hail us from a viewless World!

And yet, nor music, nor the painter's mind
Upon the canvas breathed, a charm imprints
So deeply-faithful, as the piercing glance
Of young-eyed Beauty. Beauty!—she hath been
The witching tyrant of the universe
Since her young blush in Paradise began;
Her throne Time cannot shake; stern Wisdom bows
Before her; warriors are her slaves; and half
The vassal world hath worshipp'd at her feet!
Her glance is conquest; and the Mind is moved
Like air by music haunted, when her name
Melts on the ear, and makes the heart serene.
Then, cursed be he that with unhallow'd eye
Can look on Beauty; which for heaven is born,
The boast of nature, and the spell of souls!

LOST FEELINGS.

“But yet we stand
In a lone land,
Like tombs to mark the memory
Of hopes and joys which fade and flee
In the light of life's dim morning.”

Oh! weep not, if our beauty wears
Beneath the wings of time;
That age conceals the brow with cares
That once appear'd sublime.

Oh! weep not if the clouded eye
No sunny thought can speak;
And fresh and fair no longer lie
Joy-tints upon the cheek;

And weep not, if the ruin-trace
Of wasting years is seen
Around the form, and in the face
Where youthful lines have been:

But mourn the inward wreck we feel
As blighted hours depart,
And Time's corroding fingers steal
Young feelings from the heart!

Those bounding thoughts which rise and spring
From out the buoyant mind,
Like summer-bees upon the wing
Or echoes on the wind;

The hopes that sparkle every hour,
Like blossoms from a soul
Where sorrow sheds no blighting power,
And care has no control,

With all the rich enchantment thrown
On Life's fair scene around,
As if the world within a zone
Of happiness were bound,—

Oh, these endure a mournful doom
As day by day we die;
Till age becomes a barren tomb
Where perish'd Feelings lie!

March, 1828.

THE TRANCE.

A FRAGMENT.

(1827.)

------One faint and lingering glance I took,
And then, all vanish'd in the sickly light
That swam around the bed; all seem'd to melt,
Shaded by indistinctness, like the shore
From those who wander far on ocean-waves:

620

A dazzling giddiness my brain dissolved;
The eye-balls sunk; and coldly press'd like lead,
While creeping chills my pallid form bedew'd,
That shrank as if it shudder'd at itself,
Or would condense, like water ere it freeze!
My life-fount curdled into clotted blood;
Then, cold and nerveless lay each marble limb,
And moisten'd with the mystic dews of death.

Sightless, and breathless, thus entranced I lay;
Though motionless, with feeling so acute
As if it doubled, to make up for sight:
Thus, like a solitary cloud, I seem'd
Self-balanced in a universe of gloom!

And, oh! how sad it was, to hear and feel
Fond friends around me, dreaming Death had closed
All sense of life; their blood-warm lips to feel
Upon mine ice-cold face, and then to hear
Their heart-swell'd groans, and choking sobs and sighs
While gazing on my hush'd and breathless form!

When midnight-bells had toll'd the World to sleep,
A young, but unforgetting sister, came
To meditate, and sorrow o'er my doom:
Her printless steps I knew, as on they stole
Like twilight o'er the flowers. And, when she took
My pulseless fingers in her pale-worn hand,
And kiss'd the marble brow, and talk'd so sweet,
And lisp'd her mournful love,—how horrible
That Language could not speak my conscious mind!

Two days departed; then, the wonted shroud
Enwrapp'd me, and around my body clung
Like ruffling waters: last, the coffin came,
And well I knew, as with a fear-like touch
Of trembling hands, my dead-cold form they lay
In funeral vest enveloped. But more drear
Than all, was that long, sad, and silent hour
When, one by one, the speechless mourners took
Their last and lingering glance; their sighs I felt,
And tears which burn'd my cheek,—but yet, was still!

And, oh, most horrible!—The nails I heard
Pierce the crush'd wood and seal my coffin-lid;
And then, the rattling hearse, the grave-side prayers,
The thick and careless clods, which patter'd down
Upon my bier, till bedded with the dust;
And then ------

TO * * * *

Oh, Lady! in my boyish hour
Perchance thou seest me gay as young,
The dazzled slave of pleasure's power,
With rapture in the heart and tongue.

Yet, think not thus I ever seem,
As though beyond the world's alloy;
For darkness girds our brightest dream,
And sorrow tones our deepest joy!

I never knew a moment yet
Which did not wear some withering stain,—
An outline of a dim regret,
Or shadow of some coming Pain!

Alone amid the world I move,
With scarce a smile, or tear, for me,
And not a heart to share the love
That springs from bosom-sympathy:

Without it, what can realms bestow
Of all harmonious natures feel?
It is to kindred mind we owe
The magic Time delights to seal.

But, may no winter-shade intrude
Upon the spring-time of thy lot,
And all which mars my gayest mood
In thy young freshness be forgot:

May heaven attend thee, wheresoe'er
The bright-wing'd years may waft thee on;
And nothing cloud that blissful air
All eyes have loved to look upon!

September 4th, 1829.

LONELINESS.

“We are not happy, sweet; our state
Is strange, and full of doubt and fear;
[OMITTED]
Hiding from many a careless eye
The scorned load of agony.”

Lost in the peopled desert of the world,
Cheer'd by no heart which echoes back our own,
How feverish all the pomp and play of Life!
A solitude there is which lifts the mind

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To lofty things,—seclusion from the rush
And stir of that unfeeling Crowd, whose days
Reap scarce a thought to sanctify their flight.
Far from the city-din, may Wisdom haunt
Her veil'd retreats, and yet not live alone;
For, is there not the fellowship of books
Divine, a company of gracious thoughts,
And all which Nature yields a grateful mind?
Such is not loneliness!—Around to look
Life's crowded world, and 'mong its myriad-hearts
No sympathies to find, our own to nurse,
Oh, this makes loneliness! that solitude
Of mind, which bids the world a desert seem.
What is the guerdon of ambition worth,
Of common lips the cold applause, the crown
Of genius, or the envied wreath of Fame,
Graced by no smile from some congenial soul?
For, when the heart is full, an overflow
Of bliss, by being shared, is sweeter still:
The bashful flowers which in the May-breeze shake,
Bloom out together: and belated Stars
Of night walk not yon pathless heavens alone,
But twinkle, though unseen, in blissful play
Of sympathetic beams; all beauteous Things
Hold mystic fellowship; and fine-toned hearts
Without responding hearts,—how bleak and bare!
In sorrow lone, in happiness the same.

A man I knew, in mind and fame supreme
And yet, not happy, though by happiest ones
Admired. A loftiness of feeling sprung
From centuries dead and ancestors unknown,
Together with a soul-born pride, which soar'd
Far o'er the varied scene of vulgar life,
In childhood fill'd him with a thirst of fame.
High fancies, from the hills and mountains caught;
And inspiration born of lovely streams,
And silence-loving woods; and all the rays'
Of beauty which creative mind attracts
From scenes by Contemplation sought,—awoke
His genius into glorious play; the lyre
He struck; a World admired, and wreathed his brow
With the green laurels of a lofty fame;
For him a thousand tongues grew eloquent!
A thousand eyes would sparkle forth his praise;
And, when amid the brilliant throng he sat
A gay-tongued hypocrite, the hour to charm,
And not obstruct the flow of joy, the dreams
Of young Ambition brighten'd at his praise;
Alas, how often his unecho'd mind
Clothed its mute anguish with concealing smiles!
That soul within a secret blank remain'd
Which admiration could not fill. Alone;
No trusting heart, no gentle voice of love,
No happy faces round his evening-hearth
Were his to love; and what was brief renown?
A shade! and he?—a soul in solitude.

Epsom, October, 18th, 1828.

STANZAS.

[The hour is past, the pleasure o'er]

“The flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay,
Tempts and then flies:
What is this world's delight?”

The hour is past, the pleasure o'er,
And dumb the heart of glee;
Young feet no longer trip the floor
Alive with melody.

Those fairy brows, those forms of love
That wake the dreamer's sigh,
Like Shapes who leave their bowers above
To charm a human eye:

All, all are gone! the lights have fled
From yon deserted room;
Dim as a chamber of the dead
And voiceless as the tomb:

And now I am alone again,
With feelings undefined;
A pilgrim in a world of pain,
An unpartaken Mind.

The silent walk, the sickly moon,
And melancholy sky
Unite to make me feel how soon
These hours of beauty fly.

Oh, pleasure! brief as bright thou art,
A momentary ray,
A dream roll'd o'er a vacant heart
To charm, and melt away!

June, 1828.

STANZAS.

[Who hath not watch'd the heaven of eve]

(1825.)

Who hath not watch'd the heaven of eve,
When round the horizon seems to weave
A sea of clouds, whose bosoms heave
In floating beauty, there?

Those lovely phantoms, how they glide,
In all their calm and airy pride,
Moved by the breath of eventide
Along the dew-lipp'd flowers!

622

Some, crimson-wove, voluptuous sail;
Some, girdled with a ruby veil;
And others, beaming brightly-pale
As Beauty's pensive brow.

And thus smiles now this rose-wreathed room,
Where float along in braid and plume
All blushing with their virgin bloom
The maidens of the night.

Lo, yonder trips a blue-eyed troop,
Who bend their glowing heads and droop,
As graceful as a lily-group
All languid with perfume.

And near them glides a gentle pair
That dance their grape-like clustering hair,
As if their very ringlets were
Communing with their joy!

On each fair cheek a life-blush warms,
While, radiant with expressive charms,
The virgins twine their ivory arms
And circle through the dance.

Like moon-gleams shivering on the lake
Their feet with dizzy motion shake,
As down the dance their steps they take
With love-beams in each eye.

Then, why, amid this heaven of joy
Should dreams of darkening woe annoy,
Or thoughts of blighting gloom destroy
The elysium of the hour?

Alas! the scene will swiftly fade;
The music cease; depart the maid,
And cold-eyed Day the room invade,
With uncongenial smile!

Some hearts will pine, and some will weep,
And many in the grave will sleep,
And every eye shall sorrow steep
Ere we unite again!

Yes, many a Shape of love and light
Whose eyes are glittering with delight
Like starry Dreams that visit night,
Shall wither into clay!

A SAD THOUGHT.

I love the present; but the past
Hath such a spell around it cast,
That oft from all I hear or see
I turn, dead Time! to gaze on Thee;
And o'er the grave of buried hours
Bid Memory strew her pallid flowers!

THE TOMB OF GRAY.

(1836.)

The poetry of dreams that spot surrounds
Where Genius ponder'd; when oblivion's pall
In mocking darkness on the tomb of kings
Descendeth, memories bright and deep pervade
The quiet scene where once a Bard has been.
For him the laurel deathless! when the wreath
Dyed by the blood of Victory's crowning hand
Withers to nothing on the warrior's brow,
How many a foot, where pensive Gray hath roved,
Will love to linger! 'Tis the spell of mind
Which consecrates the ground a Poet trod;
With living thoughts the air is eloquent,
And fine impressions of his favour'd muse;
While Inspiration, like a god of song,
Wakes the deep echoes of his deathless lyre.

In the calm glory of declining eve
'Twas mine to wander where the tomb of Gray
In green seclusion stands. Around me smiled
A Landscape, veil'd with sunlight's pallid robe
Of beauty, over tree and landscape drawn.
On such, (by contemplation's dream enticed
Like Isaac, oft at eventide to muse)
The Bard had gazed; and drew from Nature's heart
How many a touch of grace, and tone of song!
While Eton, with her turrets grey, her towers
Antique, in azure distance frown'd;
Or round him, in their rich confusion, throng'd
The sounds that wait on sunset's balmy hour:—
The lay of birds; the sheep-bell's lowly chime;
The chirping insect in the grass conceal'd;
The bough made vocal by the exciting breeze;
Or shout of home-returning shepherd boy,
And city-hum,—all charm'd his dreaming ear.

But, lo, the churchyard! Mark those “rugged elms,”
That “yew-tree shade,” yon “ivy-mantled tower,”
And thread the path where heaves the “mouldering heap;”
Then, Stranger! thou art soulless earth indeed,
If the lone Bard beside thee does not stand
Form'd into life by Fancy's moulding spell!
'Twas here he mused; here Poetry and Thought,
And Silence, their enamour'd Sister, came;
And Taste and Truth their kindred magic blent,

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And proud Attempt, and pure Conception rose,
While Melody each chord of mind attuned;
Till soft Religion, like an Angel, smiled,
And bade his genius make the grave sublime.

Sweet Bard! whose mild and meditative lays,
Or lyric numbers, warm with classic fire,
Heal the torn mind, or thrill young Memory's heart
With deathless pleasure, Time hath not despoil'd
Thy crown poetic of one glorious leaf:
Yet many, since thine eyes in death were veil'd,
Have grasp'd the laurel; harps of witching tone,
And thrilling strains of more impassion'd swell,
Round the rich world of Poesy have flung
Enchantment,—yet thy page is precious still.
And wherefore? 'Tis because the moral heaven
Remains unsullied by thy words, and dreams:
And hence, amid the Babel-voice of song,
In such pre-eminence to thy calm powers
Accorded. Thus, when lays corruptly-sweet,
The flash and fire of o'er-excited verse
And mock intensity, have ceased to charm,
Back to thy page, by purity inspired,
The Heart returns; and finds a magic there
Of thoughts which bloom beyond the earth's decay:
And hence, when Stars of more ambitious light
Shine dimly through the hazy depths of Time,
Bard of the Soul! for ever wilt thou reign
An Orb of beauty in the heaven of song.

Whittington, near Oswestry, Shropshire.

THE MINSTREL'S FUNERAL.

“Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.”—Gen. xv. 15.

“The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.”—Prov. xvi. 31.

“Even to your old age I am He; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you.”—Is. xlvi. 4.

A Christian never dies; in coffin'd dust
What though he slumber, and the speechless grave
With cold embrace his pallid form receives,
Religion, like the shade of Christ, appears
To heaven-eyed Faith beside the tomb to smile;
And from her lips, seraphically fired,
Rolls the rich strain, “O Death! where now thy sting?
O Grave! thy victory, where?”—extinguish'd both,
And baffled; stingless Death, and strengthless Law
Together round the Cross like trophies hung
Self-vanquish'd; Death himself in Jesus died!

The Christian never dies; his dying hour
To him a birth-day into glory proves:
For then, emerging fetterless and free
From this dark prison-house of earth and sin,
(All sensual dimness like a veil withdrawn)
In mystic radiance soars the seraph-mind
To regions high and holy; where the Truth
Essential, Beauty's uncreated form,
And Wisdom pure, in archetypal state
To souls unearth'd their trinal blaze reveal.—
Unchain the eagle, break his iron bars,
And when aloft, on wings exultant poised,
Sunward he sweeps through clouds of rolling sheen
And makes the blue immensity his home,
Go, mark him! while the flash of freedom breaks
Forth from each eye-ball, in its burning glee;
And there, the imaged rapture of a mounting Soul
When prisonless, from out the body pure,
May fancy witness!—far away it flies,
And where the Sun of Righteousness enthroned,
Eternal noon-tide round His ransom'd pours,
Basks in the smile of glory, and of God!

And thus of thee, the venerably-good,
The mild old Man with apostolic mien,
Let memory in some heavenward moment, think;
Thou art not dead, but from thy bondage free!
Alive, as in the sunbeam lives the mote,
Art thou, encinctured with the blaze of heaven
In that Assembly, where the crown'd ones chant,
With robes blood-whiten'd by the wondrous Lamb.
Oh, what a sunburst of immortal truth
In keen effulgence on thy spirit broke
When forth, from out the fettering walls of flesh
It soar'd!—the dull eclipse of death no more,
The daylight of eternity begun!
Thy bed around, while children knelt and pray'd,
And sorrow trembled into tears and sighs,
Thine was the song ecstatically-loud
From harping Angels, and from hymning Saints
In concord, round the throne of Jesu raised!
And who, when gospel-music charm'd thine ear,
Or promises with preciousness divine
Deep-laden, lighted up thine aged eyes

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With more than youth's glad lustre,—who that heard
Thy holy breathings for the better Land,
And did not from his eyelids dash the tear
Of mourning, when he thought, that thou wert there!
In that pure Home of perfect light and peace
At length arrived! to that bright City brought,
Whose silver-turrets oft thy faith beheld,
When down the streets Imagination walk'd,
By angels, and the Church's first-born lined!

Around that tomb, where thy cold ashes sleep,
The unbought homage which a good man wins
'Twas mine to witness, when the gather'd crowd
Attended, with a train of weeping Hearts
Who knew thee best, and therefore mourn'd thee most.
And well that Scene thy pure and placid life
Betoken'd; Feeling deck'd thy funeral;
The moral blazonry of Christian grief
Was there, and touchingly the whole array'd
With more than splendour,—with the truth of tears!

The hoary Minster, eloquent as vast,
Lifting its forehead with cathedral-grace,
Whose form revered some twice three hundred years
Have girt with grandeur, like a zoning spell
That binds bewitchingly; the tombs antique
By jagged walls, in sculptured ruin bent;
The graves of myriads, like a sea of mounds
In swells of grass on all sides rank'd, and ranged
In death's confusion,—till their cited dust
Leaps into life beneath the trumpet blast
Of Time's archangel, striding Earth and Sea!
The rock-hewn church-yard, with its green uprise
Of monumental landscape, where the grief
Of Nature, and the grace of Sculpture vie
In soft contention, each expressing each,
And hiding death between them, by the spell
That o'er the grimness of the grave is thrown;
All this, while high in front, severely-calm,
The fearless Knox in stony grandeur frown'd,—
Together met, a scene of soul combined,
And made one Sentiment the whole become
Of sacredness and silence! Childhood hush'd
Its laugh; and Youth each lawless smile forewent;
And the mute Crowd a single mourner seem'd,
When slowly, to its last long home was borne
Thine earthly portion! Heaven the better took;
Thy tomb within, one farewell-gaze we had,—
The heart out-speaking with a tongue of tears,
While friend on friend a look of meaning turn'd,
And said no more! The soul must speak above;
No language learns it in this world of graves
And gloom; for silence forms a spirit-voice,
When Faith and Feeling by the tomb embrace.

Pure on the bosom of almighty Love
From sin and sorrow thou art resting now:
And who would bring thee, might availing tears
Be answer'd, back to this cold earth again!
To peace and glory, to perfections high
Around thee smiling, rather may we mount
On these sure wings of faith that carried thee;
And o'er the track thy saintly virtues trod
Her way let holy Imitation wend,
Her eye on Him intently fix'd, and firm,—
Our bright Precursor to the Cross and crown!

And now, farewell! If age's hoary charm;
If gentleness, with solid worth combined;
If faith and truth, by patriarchal grace
Bedeck'd; if boundless love, that god-like smiles
Serenely, over Sects and Names enthroned;
If these were thine; with all the enriching spell
Of temper, cloudless as the crystal noon,
And feelings, tuned by every tender call;
While round about thee hung the glow
Of youth's gay morning, by the eve of age
Subdued, like spring and autumn's blended smile,—
Then, o'er thy grave recording Truth may bend;
And drop, not undeserved, the simple wreath
Of memory, a Muse has ventured now.

Farewell! A few more rolling suns and years
Will yon dark Minster from his turret speak
Of Time's departure, with an iron-voice

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Wailing a hollow dirge o'er life's dead Hours,
And the roused Earth at ev'ry pore will heave
Around thee! Myriads from their pulseless clay
In throbbing consciousness shall rise, and bound
Warm into being!—What a mass of life
Under the trumpet's dead-awaking call
Will stand, and tremble in the gaze of God!
And thou wilt rise; nor rock, nor mountain seek
To crush thee, from the piercing eye of Him
Array'd in lightnings of resistless glare,—
Immanuel! on the Judgment's burning throne
Of glory, wheeling through the heaven of heavens.
And when creation in a tomb of fire
Shall welter, and the wicked lift a cry
Of quenchless agony, beneath the frown
Of truth's Avenger, undismay'd thine eyes
Will greet Him; thou shalt look on God, and live!

PROVIDENCE.

Frail king of dust, Man loves to look around,
And think,—“for me the elements abound
With life and motion; shade and sunshine wait
In mixt attendance on my human state;
Light, sea, and air, their glorious spell maintain
That I alone, as Lord of Earth, may reign!”
And yet, what art thou?—but a fleeting breath,
A pulse of life which throbs away in death!
Myriads of creatures round thee move and die,
Minute beyond the ken of mortal eye;
Perfect as thine, their bright existence teems
With beauty, in a paradise of beams;
Or in some crystal-world of water play
A floating populace of insects gay;
And He who bade exalted Man to be
An Image of His own eternity,
Alike to them a form and feature gives,
And not a mote but in His mem'ry lives!

IN MEMORIAM

C. H. E. M.

Vanish'd Infant! years have fled
Since thou wert coffin'd, pale and cold;
Yet, to me thou art not dead,
But still mine inward eyes behold
The fairy brow, and form, and cherub feature
Perfect as when they graced the living creature.

Little dream unloving Hearts
Which never thrill'd with parent-gladness,
Seldom from the soul departs
A shade of unpartaken sadness,
Cast by the death of some sweet babe who died,
As though this World its young soul terrified.

Coil'd within man's secret mind
Mysterious chords of feeling dwell;
But they ne'er their charms unwind
Till something wakes their dormant spell,
When lo! at once with magic life they move
Deeper than passion, but divine as love.

Ever thus, in casual street
A nursling pillow'd on the breast
If alone I chance to meet,
How oft it brings a fond unrest!—
The aching flutter of a wordless thought
With more than mem'ry in full action fraught.

Almost in my hand I feel
The cling and clasp of baby-fingers,
And a life-breath o'er me steal
Which faintly ebbs, and fondly lingers;
Till once again a cradled form I see,
And breathe, dead Flower! a father's prayer for thee.

Like a dove-wing in the sky
Melted and mingled with soft light,
Hast thou faded from an eye
That when it saw thee, grew more bright;
But still, in love's eternity thou art
A living infant to thy father's heart.

DIVINE OMNISCIENCE.

Mere chance exists not; 'tis a libel dread
On Providence, which those unblest of mind,
Poets of Vice, and laureates of Despair,
Often pronounce,—who into merest fate
The motions of our moral world resolve.
For, God o'er all eternally presides;

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And, from the quiver of the bladed grass,
To wheeling Systems, hung in starry space
Enormous as unnumber'd,—all occurs
How, when, and where, His guiding will decrees.
And we, who now with backward-gaze revolve
The hoary annals of Mosaic time,
Behind the curtain of that outer-scene
Where man was acting, view His prompting Hand
At work for ever: Hist'ry's moving form
Points like an index to that secret God;
E'en as the timepiece, which the hour reveals,
The hidden motion of a main-spring shows.

SOVEREIGNTY OF DIVINE GRACE.

Goodness to all may infinitely come,
But pard'ning Grace for sinners only, acts.
And thus, o'er evil triumphs endless good
Beyond all words (save what in Heaven they speak)
Rightly to equal with o'ertaking praise,
Or rapture. Yet, in this a Will Supreme
Itself must glorify, by calling whom
The counsel of the Holy One decreed
To make a monument of grace divine
Ere Time to count his awful hours began.
Yes, though in justice no election acts,
But each award to character applies
With truth unerring; yet, when Mercy smiles,
Prerogative alone the Godhead shows
Unquestion'd, such as men, nor angels, scan,
Nor measure.—Motive God hath none;
For that, from His completeness steals a ray,
And on the orb of true Perfection casts
A veiling shadow: Motive, End, and Aim,
All in Himself eternally abide.
His reasons are His attributes alone;
And each vast grace the Trinity unfolds
In mercy's fulness, acts divinely-free.

THEOLOGY FOR MOTHERS.

And, oh, fond mothers! whose mysterious hearts
Are finely-strung with such electric chords
Of feeling, that a single touch, a tone
From those ye fondle, some responsive thrill
Awakens, when at night, a last long look
Which almost clings around the form it eyes,
Ye take of slumb'ring Infancy, whose cheeks
Lie softly pillow'd on the rounded arm,
Rosy, and radiant with their dimpling sleep,—
Well may ye waft upon some wingèd prayer
A grateful anthem to your Lord enthroned,
Who, once an Infant on His mother's knee,
Not in His glory childhood's life forgets!
For He, while systems, suns, and countless worlds
Hang on His will, and by His arm perform
Their functions, in all matter, space, and time,
Can hear the patter of an infant-foot,
List to the beating of a mother's heart,
Or, seal the eyelid of some babe at rest.

A MOURNFUL TRUTH.

But, like the lustre of a broken dream,
How soon the fairy grace of morning-life
Melts from the growing child! Corruptive airs
Breathed from an atmosphere where sin is bred,
Around them their contaminating spell
Exhale; and Custom, with its hateful load
Of mean observances, and petty rites,
Bends into dust those Instincts of the skies
In the pure heart of genuine Childhood seen,
And, so enchanting! Then, comes artful Trick,
With forced Appearance, and the feeling veil'd,
When Fashion's creed or Folly's plea forbids
A free expression. These, with blending force
The sweet integrities of Youth assail
For ever: mar the delicacy of mind,
And from the power intact of conscience take
Its holy edge; and soon the Child impress
With the coarse features of corrupted Man.
And, add to this, how omnipresent sin,
That from the womb of being to our grave
Infects our nature with a fiendish blight,
Will act on passions earthly, and desires
Malignant, base, or mutinously warp'd
From virtue,—and, alas, how quick we find
The vestal-bloom of Innocence depart!
Then, what remains of all that blessèd prime,
That blooming promise, which the fair-brow'd Child
Of beauty gave in home's domestic bowers?—
Lisping God's love beside parental knees,
And seeming oft, as if the Saviour's arms
Had compass'd them, and left a circling spell
Round his soft being! Where, oh! where is gone
The unworn freshness of that fairy Child?

GOD'S INFANTS.

Yes! eloquent, and touching more than tears,
Those incarnations of maternal dreams,—
Infants, by Beauty's plastic finger shaped,
Have ever been: in all their ways and moods
A winning power of unaffected grace

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Poetic faith, or pious fancy, views.
Wild as the charter'd waves, which leap, and laugh
By sun and breeze rejoicingly inspired,
Till the air gladdens with the glowing life
They shed around them,—who their happy frame
Can mark; or listen to their laughing tones;
Behold their gambols, and the fairy gleams
Of mirth which sparkle from their restless eyes,
Nor feel his fondness to the centre moved
Beyond a mere emotion? But, to watch
The tendrils of the dawning mind come forth,
The buds and petals of the soul expand
Day after day, beneath a fost'ring care
And love devoted,—this Religion deeply loves!
How the Great Parent of the universe
The outward to the inner-world hath framed,
With finest harmony; and for each sense
Some region of appropriate joy secured,
Philosophy may there, with reverence, learn,
As grows the virgin-intellect of youth
Familiar with all forms, effects, and moods
Of Nature, in her majesty or might.
And, what a text on Providence we read
In the safe life of shielded Infancy!
For, who can count the multitude of Babes
That look more fragile than the silken clouds
Which bask upon the bosom of the Air
They brighten,—God's o'ershading Hand secures!
And number, if Arithmetic can reach
The total, what a host of tiny feet
Totter in safety o'er this troubled world!
Though all around them throng, and rage
Destructive Elements, whose faintest shock
Would strike an infant into pulseless clay.

HEAVEN POPULOUS WITH INFANT SOULS.

Then, look not lightly on a pensive child
Lest God be in it, gloriously at work!
And blind Irrev'rence touch on truths, and powers
And principles which round the Throne are dear
As holy. Never may our hearts forget
That Heaven with infancy redeem'd is full;
Crowded with babes, beyond the sunbeams bright
And countless. Forms of life that scarcely breathed
Earth's blighting air, and things of lovely mould
Which, ere they prattled, or with flowers could play,
Or to the lullaby of watching Love
Could hearken, back to God's own world were call'd:
And myriads, too, who learnt a prayer to lisp,
Bend the soft knee, and heave Devotion's sigh,
Or caroll'd with a bird-like chant the psalms
Of David, with the Church in Heaven are found.

THE HEART'S SANCTUARY.

And thus, there is a loneliness of heart,
In all deep souls a never-enter'd shrine;
Where neither love, nor friendship takes a part,
Which no eyes witness, but, Jehovah! Thine.

But, shall we mourn, that each is circled round
With veiling mystery from the ken of man?
That waters deep within the soul abound
No word has fathom'd, and no wisdom can?

No, rather let such merciful disguise
Move the just thinker unto grateful prayer;
For, who could live beneath terrestrial eyes
If such could witness all secreted there!

And if no mantle by our God were thrown
Round fallen souls, to hide man's world within,
How should we hate, what now we love to own,
And cry for darkness to conceal our sin!

“THE HOLY CHILD JESUS.”

How beautiful the brow of Jesus was,
Methinks Imagination's hallow'd dreams
Would fain adumbrate. Virgin-born was He!
Not shaped by sin, but, through o'ershading power
Divinely-perfect, His conception took
Human Reality in flesh and form
Embodied. Never did one taint of earth,
A touch of sensual feeling, or a tone
Of temper, harshly-loud, or rudely-quick,
Assail the soul of that mysterious “Child.”
And therefore, Beauty's most ethereal power
Haply upon His forehead's arching grace
Was throned; and from His eye's divine appeal
Broke a soft radiance, exquisite and deep;
Or, on His lips pure Inspiration sat;
While from the glory of His heaven-born face
There beam'd expression on the gazer's mind,
Awfully mild, and full of melancholy;
And, like the cadence of an Angel's sigh,
Could such be sadden'd, moving more than tears.

628

REASON AND FAITH.

By Unbelief our primal nature fell
From light to darkness; and by Faith it mounts
Back to the glory whence its pureness sank:
But still, that fatal tyranny of Sense,
Which Adam first around the virgin-soul
Allow'd to cast its paralysing chain,
Abides; and needs a disenchanting spell
Beyond mere Reason, in its brightest noon,
To shame or silence.—Yes, the Felt, the Seen,
And Tangible, alone appears the True!
Our touch must regulate the law of truth,
And to the Body must our high-born Soul
Stoop like a slave, before the mind admits
Motives divine, and miracles of grace,
Or myst'ries, where the Infinite Unknown
Enshrines His nature, and His love reveals.
Yet, 'tis the madness of outrageous pride,
The dismal lunacy of self-esteem;
And Reason here a suicide becomes,
When god o'er God it thus presumes to be,
And dwarfs the Everlasting down to Man!
But, faith is reason in its noblest form;
And boasts an evidence most heavenly-bright,
Sublimely-equal to our Spirit's need,
In whatsoe'er submissive Love believes
From Deity derived, our world to save.
For, breathe we not the Church's sainted air
Where all is fragrant of the truths of old?
And ritual Forms, and ceremonial Types,
With each high record of auxiliar sway,
Historic truths, traditionary lore,
And monuments of sacramental Grace,—
These have we not? And, though rejecting pride
Back on the blaze of this commingled orb
Of evidence, a sneer presume to cast,
Yet, have the wise and wondrous to such light
Their hearts submitted, and repose enjoy'd.
And, more than this, a clear-eyed wisdom finds:
For if unrisen were our spirit's King,
Then long ere this the Galiléan Lie
Had vanish'd!—for the Creed its claims involve,
Binds on the world offensive purity
Which flesh endures not: and if Christ were dead,
Tomb'd in the darkness of sepulchral clay,
How could His promise with our souls to be
Present for ever,—still on earth be proved
Infallible, through faith's unbounded world?
A living Christian proves a living Christ
As firmly to the soul, as if the heavens
Were now uncurtain'd, and our eyes entranced
Look'd through the Veil and saw Him shining there
In glory, bright as what the Martyr view'd,
When Stephen mounted from his mangled clay
In bleeding triumph, to his Master's breast.

GOD IN MATERIALISM.

God in creation is a glorious thought;
Making the Matter, which we touch, or see,
Like mute religion on our senses act;
And to all forms and faculties of Things
A power imparting, more than mere delight.
'Tis thus, in nature God alone we hail
The ground of Being, and the grace of all
That in this temple of Creation stands.
No dead Abstraction, no almighty Law
To faith suffices:—Life itself is God
In will, and wisdom, actively employ'd:
It spurns the idol, Second Cause, and springs
On to the Infinite and only First!
Creation a Theocracy becomes,
When thus perceived; intelligibly ruled
By that Great King, Whose hidden sceptre sways
Alike the dew-drop, and the host of worlds.
And, blest is he, who thus through nature walks
Companion'd by its Author! Scenes and sounds
Are unto him as Tokens of His power,
Perpetual Teachers of mysterious love.

Feeling the work, but Faith the worker views
Devoutly: and the pomp of heaven's display,
The floor of ocean, the green face of earth,
And each variety which Objects wear,
With more than language to his mind appeals,
Proclaiming Him, Whose Power no sabbath keeps
But quickens nature with incessant laws.
And how this acts where'er we walk, or muse!
Freshens the grass, and beautifies the flower,
Gives to the canopy of heaven a grace
Beyond the symmetry of clouds to form;
And so with reverence the soul attunes,
The very air-song seems to warble truths
Celestial; syllables by Angels toned,
Haunt the pure breathings of the balmy wind
Around us heard: and when along the shore
Haply we roam, in some reflective dream
When life hangs heavy on the grief-worn heart,
The billows make a litany of sound
Which half interprets what sad Thought suggests.

God in creation!—'tis a Creed sublime
Which makes all nature solemn; and the mind
With such desire for veneration fills,
The universe one vast Shechinah grows
Whence Piety, creation's priestess, draws
Prophetic glimpses, as the tribes of old
Drew from the Breastplate, where the Urim gave
Responsive radiance and unerring law.

629

THE CHURCH IN CANADA.

(INSCRIBED TO THE BISHOP OF TORONTO.)

Records of Grace divinely move
The Church's heart with hymnèd praise,
When the deep thought, how guardian Love
Has camp'd around her peril'd ways,
In some high mood of heaven-born calm
O'er mem'ry breathes a solemn balm;
Till Christ Himself in shadows seems
To rise upon Her ancient dreams.

“For ever with you, I shall be,”—
Here is Faith's charter, strong as heaven!
Framed by incarnate Deity
And to His mystic Body given,
When, for Her mission-work on earth,
The sacrament of second Birth
Her Lord imparted; and the grace
To spread it o'er earth's boundless race.

Though manacled in murd'rous flame,
The martyr'd herald of The Cross
Hath gloried in Messiah's name
And counted life, not death, a loss:—
That Charter, like a living power
Sustain'd him in some tortured hour;
While viewless Angels, hov'ring nigh,
Wafted to heaven his farewell-sigh.

Yes, fire and sword, and dungeon-gloom,
And all which Hell and Hate have done
To bury truth in falsehood's tomb,
And blast the triumphs Faith has won,
The heroes of the Church have braved:
And never left Her cause enslaved,
Since all they suffer'd, fann'd the zeal
Her sacramental Warriors feel.

Thus Canada! thy church and creed
Pure as our own, from England bred,
When Loyalty was doom'd to bleed
And banner'd Treason myriads led,
A sworn allegiance nobly kept
While havoc round thee raged, and swept,—
Ark'd in the promise of thy Lord,
And safe within His shelt'ring Word.

By Lake Ontario's rocky shore
Where creedless pagans once abounded,
And exiles heard the torrent roar
By wood and wilderness surrounded,
Churches arise; and saintly Bands
Have come from far and famous lands;
And apostolic Symbols reign
O'er rescued swamp and ransom'd plain.

But never, till that Day of light
When God shall grief and guilt disclose,
Will thankless myriads learn aright
What to her Church Canadia owes:
For, social worth, and moral grace,
Freedom divine, and all we trace
Of present heaven in heart and home
From Faith, and not from Culture, come.

The churchless, soon, are godless, too!
The unbaptised grow base and blind;
And where no sacraments renew
The sin-worn heart and earth-toned mind,
All virtues die; all vices bloom;
The soul becomes a sensual tomb,
And men the Saviour yearn'd to cherish,
Eternalise their guilt, and perish!

Hence, laurell'd with a wreath of love
Be Stuart's patriarchal name;
While Langhorn, in the Church above
With Addison, of kindred fame,
May oft, perchance, the Past revive,
And view salvation's harvest thrive
From germs divine 'twas theirs to sow
Through scorching years of toil and woe.

THE INSPIRATION OF DREAMS.

No incantation which the outer-sense
In the full glow of waking life perceives,
Rivals the magic by mysterious Night
Evoked, when Dreams, like messengers from heaven
Rise from eternity, and round the soul
Hover and hang, ineffably-sublime;
But mocking language, when it tries to catch
The true expression of their awful power.

And, how religious is the sway of Dreams,
Which are the movers of that secret-world
Where most we suffer, learn, and love,
Building our Being up to moral heights,
Stone after stone, by rising truths advanced
To full experience, and to noble aims.
The tombs of time they open, till the forms,
The faces and the features of our Dead
Lighten with life, and speech, and wonted smiles!

630

While mem'ry beautifies the Thing it mourns,
And to the Dead a deeper charm imparts
Than their gone life in fullest glory had.
And thus, in visions of the voiceless night,
Apparel'd with that beauty which the mind
Gives to the loved and lovely, when no more,
Rise from their tombs the Forms of fleeted days,
Friends of bright Youth, the fascinating-dear!
Till back returns life's unpolluted dawn;
And down the garden-walk, or cowslipp'd field
Where once he prattled, full of game and glee,
The man, transfigured back to childhood, roves
Tender as tears. So, on the wind-bow'd mast
The sailor-boy in dreams a mother hails,
And hears her blessing o'er his pathway breathed;
Or, pale and gasping, ere his life-drops ebb
For ever, how the Soldier thus depicts
In the soft dream of some remember'd day,
The hands which rear'd him; or the hearts that heaved
With omens, when the charm of tented fields
Seduced him from the sweets of sainted home
And virtue. Dreams are thus half-miracles;
All time they master; and all truths embrace
Which melt the hardest, and our minds affect
With things profounder than our Creed asserts.

SACREDNESS OF INFANCY.

A dew-drop, trembling on the stem of Life;
A rose-bud peeping into fairy bloom;
A billow on the Sea's maternal breast
Leaping, amid some jubilee of airs
By glad winds caroll'd; or, a dancing beam
Of sunlight, laughing in its brightest joy;
In truth, whate'er is delicate and soft,
Minute and fragile, innocent or gay,
Oft to the mirror of the mind presents
Types of that beauty which a tender babe
To feeling Manhood's fascinated eye
Affordeth; touch'd at times with solemn hues,
Which Hearts prophetic cannot fail to cast
Round a frail Heritor of life unknown!

But, when o'er Revelation's book we bend,
There do we find, with more than love confirm'd,
Whatever Nature by her mute appeals
Hath prompted: for the Bible e'en to babes
Lends the sweet mercy of its soft regard
And bland protection. Other creeds may scorn
Such aidless Being; and the gibing laugh
Of Science o'er their frailness may uplift
Its godless péan; but in this we boast,—
That Christianity the cradle seeks,
Stoops to a babe with condescending brow;
And while the Pagan, by her creed transform'd
From yearning softness into heartless stone,
Commits her infant to broad Ganga's stream
Foodless to perish, Christ in Spirit comes,
Commands the Priesthood on its forehead plant
The sealing water, and the mystic sign,
And bids it welcome to His Ark of grace.

CHRIST IN THE HEART'S CLOUD.

He stood before her, but she could not see
That Holy One: and oh! how often, thus,
The sad experience of a stricken mind
Like Mary, cannot view the Lord it loves,
Though in the mercy of our ev'ry breath,
And in the promise of His perfect Word,
In prayer, and praise, and sacramental life,
Together with that unbreathed thought which tells
Home to the heart acceptance in the skies,
When the free spirit of assuring grace
Glows in our bosom,—though in each and all
Christ to the conscience doth himself present,
Yet, Mary-like, the soul mistakes Him, still!
Some carnal shade, or clouding sin prevents;
And the high faculty of seeing Faith
Grows undiscerning; or, in nature's eye
The tear of sorrow doth so thickly stand,
That through it, God himself grows unbeheld
A moment: nothing but dark grief is seen!

WORLDLINGS.

How much Anxiety the heart corrodes
Wasting the moral health of man away,—
We seldom ponder, till too late perceived!
When, under burdens, which ourselves inflict,
The Intellect of half its glorious life
Is sapp'd, while conscience turns a crippled thing;
The heart gets agèd ere the head grows old,
And those bright virtues, which might nobly shine
In that clear firmament of thought and power
Where lofty Manhood would exult to act,
Rarely, if ever, into influence dawn.
For else the grandeurs, graces, charms, and scenes,
The smiles of matin, and the shades of night,
Sun, moon, and star, wild mountains and glad seas,
Meadows and woods, and winds and lulling streams,

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With fruits, and flowers like hues of paradise
Amid us scatter'd,—would so well impress
The moral being, that responsive Mind
Upon the Beautiful would back reflect
An answer, most intelligibly pure,
To each appeal of Beauty. But the World
Can so infect the myriads of mankind,
That all those latent harmonies, which link
Nature to man by loveliness and might,
Lie undiscern'd; and though a spirit deep,
A living sentiment of love and truth,
In all Creation cultured souls may find,
How few perceive it! but, on objects gaze
With eye unmoved; as if by God unmade
Their beauties, and by Him unform'd their powers!
Nature to them in all her shrines is mute;
Nor to Her mystic oracles, which yield
Such music to Imagination's ear,
Can the cold worldling condescend to list.

THE PEOPLE AND PRAYER BOOK.

Nor be forgot, that England's Prayer Book gives
Pure, full and plain, The Word by which she lives;
Not dungeon'd in some dead and alien tone,
But where the peasant-boy perceives his own.

There, lisping Childhood, when it longs to learn
Truths for which Prophets bled, and Martyrs burn,
In such pure liturgy of grace may find
All which can feed the heart, and form the mind.

For, Common Prayer, if catholic and true,
Must not be tinged with individual hue,
But be proportion'd to the soul of Man,
In deep accordance with Redemption's plan.

INDIVIDUAL PROVIDENCE.

And, there are moments, when mysterious Life
Is so attended with a train of Facts
Sudden and strange, through which a mercy glares
With such intensity of sacred light
Full on the conscience,—that Paternal care
To us revealing God's elective will,
Runs through the heart with overwhelming proof!
And bids it, like ecstatic Hagar, cry,
By Heaven when mercy-struck to more than prayer.
And He, the Infinite by Form array'd,
Who took our Nature in all sinless truth
Into His Own, as Man embodied loved,
In modes and shapes of individual cast.
For, while in Providence th' unblemish'd Lord
Moved on the lines of Justice and of Truth,
Boundless, beyond respect of single homes
Or spirits; He, in walks of social life
Loved like a Man, and chose the friend He will'd:
And hence, the winning might Emmanuel wields
By His example! for, on Person, Place,
And Time, His pure affections deign'd to shed
Their fullness. He who wept a City's doom,
As if the crashing of its crumbled walls
Rang in his ear, while Roman butchers bathed
Their swords in slaughter, also, by a grave
Wept o'er the dead, most humanly perturb'd,
And to His bosom took the mild St. John!

A PRODIGAL'S RETURN.

And now, behold him, wither'd, tatter'd, bow'd;
Pale with long famine, wearily he drags
His homeward-track; but, so by suff'ring worn,
That through the village, where his boyhood dwelt,
Unknown he steals, disguised in haggard woe.
Oh, what a tide of memory there rolls,
And what a gush of agony and grief
Runs through his being, when that hill he gains,
Climb'd in calm hours of vanish'd innocence,
And underneath him in the sunset pale
Looks on the landmarks of paternal home!
Mute with remorse, amid the tranquil scene
Awhile he ponders; till the silent forms
Of Things grow eloquent with meek reproach:
Meadow, and tree, and each familiar nook
Instinct with meaning, to his mind appeals
With more than language from Rebuke's harsh lip.
For, Nature yet her old expressions wore,
And each loved haunt remain'd familiar still.
There, was the olive he had loved to watch;
There, was the vine his infant hand had pluck'd;
And there, a field-path, where he often paced
As bright in spirit as the joyous beam
Beside him, and with step as gaily-swift
As the wild breeze which hurried o'er his head;
Nothing look'd alter'd:—for, the fig-tree stood,
And caught the day-gleam in its dying glow
As oft his boyhood watch'd it, when he sat

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Under the twilight of its laden boughs
And fondly wove his fancies; and, how sweet
The lulling cadence of yon well-loved stream!
E'en as of old, so wound its waters still
In stainless beauty, down their pebbled way:—
Nothing has changed; but, oh, how changed is He!

MORAL INFLUENCE.

Our moral centre is a point minute:
But our circumference, oh! who can grasp,
In action, suff'ring, or involved Result?
A smile, a glance, a single breath, a tone,
A look of meaning, or a laugh of scorn,
The mere expression of the hectic mind
Clothing our features,—each may, haply, thrill
Some chord which touches by effectual ties
Events unborn; and make th' eternity
We dread, to vibrate with the deed we do!

Oh! for a sense of Duty more sublimed,
In all our ways, our wishes, and our words:
A sense that we are links in that long Chain
Of Consequence, which e'en from Adam's sin
To our last error, its unbroken length
So reaches, that we cannot act alone!
But rather, each with each is so inwove
By past connection, or by future power,
That Conduct grows immortal; and the act
From soul to soul with multiplying power,
Itself repeateth, when the Agent sleeps
In cold oblivion, by the world forgot.
The blemish'd morals and the blotted mind
How often thus our Rev'rence would escape!
And 'stead of reckless pride, religious care
The paths would purify where Virtue walks,
And solemnize existence. Action, then,
Inward, or bodied forth in social form,
Of sacredness in every sphere would breathe;
Till the whole Earth a mystic Temple grew
Hallow'd by God, by angels overwatch'd,
And by Humanity in all its moods
Devoutly-trodden: then would Duty spread
Its canopy above our ways and walks,
E'en as the heaven o'ervaults the varied earth
For ever: Faith would be our Law supreme,
And guarded Life one long religion prove.

THE LAKE OF BEAUTY.

A MORNING SCENE AT VEVAY.

Lake Leman! in the hush of this deep hour
The poetry of waters is thy power;
And o'er my spirit steals that lulling calm
Which bathes the earth in some celestial balm.

Here from my window, with a spell-bound gaze,
I view yon shore beneath a silver-haze
Unshroud its glories; till, with dim uprise
The Alpine summits cleave the sun-lit skies.

Far to the east, those mountain-kings enthrone
Their rocky grandeurs o'er the ice-born Rhone,
Whose foreheads, pure as angel-brows, present
Their dazzling whiteness to the Firmament.

And who can mark thine awful Mountains gleam,
When faintly-hued with morn's seraphic beam;
Or, crimson'd o'er with magical array
Caught from the rosy death of ling'ring day,

Nor feel them, like an infinite Control,—
Embodied hymns, where Silence to the soul
Speaks more of God, than thunder, wave, or wind,
With dark-wing'd Terrors, from the storm combined?

Thus may true Poets from their presence gain
Fresh purities, which o'er the conscience reign;
Till thoughts grow vaster than the lyre can own,
And Man seems lifted to his Maker's throne.

But, Leman! once again to thee I turn,
And from thine everlasting beauty learn
Profounder Wisdom than a sage can teach,
Whose words are bounded by the sense's reach.

While soft, yet stern, though mild, majestic too,
Serenely-bright, and exquisitely-blue,—
Almighty Taste around thy scene hath cast
What makes thy loveliness the unsurpass'd!

For ever varied!—rock, and terrace, field,
Vineyards and turrets, tower and village yield
A concentrated Spell, which thus imparts
A more than landscape to melodious hearts.

And seldom, since the bend of beauteous skies
Enrich'd thy waters with reflected dies,
Hast thou, fair Leman! more ideal bliss
For mind created, than on morns like this.

The grace, the gentleness, and glow of heaven
Now to thy charms are so intensely given,
That on thy waveless sea of fairy sound
The Heart seems floating, as we gaze around.

And hark! the drip of yon descending oar
In wafted grace as glides the boat ashore,
With what a cadence it enchants the ear,
And drops in radiance, like a dazzling tear,

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Down on the waters!—where a breezy strife
Makes Leman palpitate with rippling life,
And liquid glances, as the broken sun
Laughs on the dimpled stream it lights upon.

Earth, air, and sky, and range of rocky pass,
Glaciers, and crags, and sternly-wild morass,
The bird, and foliage, field and distant towers,
Vine-mantled hills, and fancy-haunted bowers,

Blent with the mellow chimes of matin-bell
Heaved o'er the Lake with deep and dying swell,—
Oh! how can words such pictured Whole combine,
Or Leman roll through this imperfect line?

E'en like a Consciousness of sound and scene
Nature doth now her master-spells convene;
And lovingly this hour for man array
As though She treasured what his eyes survey;

While leafy murmurs from yon flutt'ring trees
Quiver abroad like new-born ecstasies,
And gleams come dancing down the golden air,
As though bright angels hover'd everywhere.

Yet, in mine incapacity of speech
This lulling paradise of Lakes to reach,
Still can I feel, that even thus the soul
Bows in its unbreathed thought to that Control

Which God intended, Who to scene imparts
Predestined magic, framed for deathless hearts,
Whose pulse with His eternity shall glow—
When Earth has vanish'd like an air-born show.

A purifying calm of central power
Attunes high feeling to this chasten'd hour;
And from the World's more artificial scene,
Oft shall it woo me to this Lake, I ween.

Meanings divine endow a Morn like this
With magic that outsoars an earth-made bliss;
The very soil grows sanctified and fair,
And deepens poetry to silent prayer.

Beauty is hallow'd, when on mind it leaves
An impress grander than mere Sense conceives;
Till all without, within, below, above,
Becomes transfigured to almighty Love.

And thus, that God from Whom vast nature flows
Inspires religion through the heart's repose;
And so connects it with creation's plan
That heaven seems throbbing through the earth on Man!