These hushed awhile with patient eye serene
Shall watch the mad careering of the storm;
Then o'er the wild and wavy chaos rush
And tame the outrageous mass, with plastic might
Moulding Confusion to such perfect forms,
As erst were wont, bright visions of the day!
To float before them, when, the Summer noon,
Beneath some arched romantic rock reclined
They felt the sea breeze lift their youthful locks;
Or in the month of blossoms, at mild eve,
Wandering with desultory feet inhaled
The wafted perfumes, and the flocks and woods
And many-tinted streams and setting Sun
With all his gorgeous company of clouds
Ecstatic gazed! then homeward as they strayed
Cast the sad eye to earth, and inly mused
Why there was Misery in a world so fair.
Ah far removed from all that glads the sense,
From all that softens or ennobles Man,
The wretched Many! Bent beneath their loads
They gape at pageant Power, nor recognise
Their cots' transmuted plunder! From the tree
Of Knowledge, ere the vernal sap had risen
Rudely disbranched! Blessed Society!
Fitliest depictured by some sun-scorched waste,
Where oft majestic through the tainted noon
The SIMOOM sails, before whose purple pomp
Who falls not prostrate dies! And where, by night,
Fast by each precious fountain on green herbs
The lion couches; or hyæna dips
Deep in the lucid stream his bloody jaws;
Or serpent plants his vast moon glittering bulk,
Caught in whose monstrous twine Behemoth* yells,
His bones loud-crashing!
Whom foul Oppression's ruffian gluttony
Drives from life's plenteous feast! O thou poor Wretch
Who nursed in darkness and made wild by want
Roamest for prey, yea thy unnatural hand
Dost lift to deeds of blood! O pale-eyed Form,
The victim of seduction, doomed to know
Polluted nights and days of blasphemy;
Who in loathed orgies with lewd wassailers
Must gaily laugh, while thy remembered Home
Gnaws like a viper at thy secret heart!
O aged Women! ye who weekly catch
The morsel tossed by law-forced Charity,
* Behemoth, in Hebrew, signifies wild beasts in general. Some believe it is the elephant, some the hippopotamus; some affirm it is the wild bull. Poetically, it designates any large quadruped.
And die so slowly, that none call it murder !
O loathly Suppliants! ye, that unreceived
Totter heart-broken from the closing gates
Of the full Lazar-house; or, gazing, stand
Sick with despair! O ye to Glory's field
Forced or ensnared, who, as ye gasp in death,
Bleed with new wounds beneath the Vulture's beak!
O thou poor Widow, who in dreams dost view
Thy Husband's mangled corse, and from short doze
Start'st with a shriek: or in thy half-thatched cot
Waked by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold,
Cow'rst o'er thy screaming baby! Rest awhile,
Children of Wretchedness! More groans must rise,
More blood must stream, or ere your wrongs be full.
Yet is the day of Retribution nigh:
The Lamb of God hath opened the fifth seal :
And upward rush on swiftest wing of fire
The innumerable multitude of Wrongs
By man on man inflicted! Rest awhile,
Children of Wretchedness! The hour is nigh ;
And lo! the Great, the Rich, the Mighty Men,
The Kings and the Chief Captains of the World,
With all that fixed on high like stars of Heaven
Shot baleful influence, shall be cast to earth,
Vile and down-trodden, as the untimely fruit
Shook from the fig-tree by a sudden storm.
Even now the storm begins:* each gentle name,
Faith and meek Piety, with fearful joy
Tremble far-off-for lo! the Giant FRENZY
Uprooting empires with his whirlwind arm
Mocketh high Heaven; burst hideous from the cell
Where the old Hag, unconquerable, huge,
Creation's eyeless drudge, black RUIN, sits
Nursing the impatient earthquake.
Pure FAITH! meek PIETY! The abhorred Form
Whose scarlet robe was stiff with earthly pomp,
Who drank iniquity in cups of Gold,
Whose names were many and all blasphemous,
Hath met the horrible judgment! Whence that cry?
The mighty army of foul Spirits shrieked
Disherited of earth! For she hath fallen
On whose black front was written MYSTERY;
She that reeled heavily, whose wine was blood;
She that worked whoredom with the DÆMON POWER
And from the dark embrace all evil things
Brought forth and nurtured: mitred ATHEISM;
And patient FOLLY who on bended knee
Gives back the steel that stabbed him; and pale FEAR
Hunted by ghastlier shapings than surround
Moon-blasted Madness when he yells at midnight!
Return pure FAITH! return meek PIETY !
The kingdoms of the world are yours: each heart
Self-governed, the vast family of Love
Raised from the common earth by common toil
Enjoy the equal produce. Such delights
As float to earth, permitted visitants !
When in some hour of solemn jubilee
The massy gates of Paradise are thrown
Wide open, and forth come in fragments wild
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,
And odours snatched from beds of Amaranth,
And they, that from the crystal river of life
Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales!
The favoured good man in his lonely walk
Perceives them, and his silent spirit drinks
Strange bliss which he shall recognise in heaven.
And such delights, such strange beatitude
Seize on my young anticipating heart
When that blest future rushes on my view!
For in his own and in his Father's might
The SAVIOUR comes! While as the THOUSAND YEARS
Lead up their mystic dance, the DESERT shouts !
Old OCEAN claps his hands! The mighty Dead
Rise to new life, whoe'er from earliest time
With conscious zeal had urged Love's wondrous plan,
Coadjutors of God. TO MILTON's trump
The high Groves of the renovated Earth
Unbosom their glad echoes: inly hushed,
Adoring NEWTON his serener eye
Raises to heaven: and he of mortal kind
Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes
Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.
Lo! PRIESTLEY there, Patriot, and Saint, and Sage,
Him, full of years, from his loved native land
Statesmen blood-stained and Priests idolatrous
By dark lies maddening the blind multitude
Drove with vain hate. Calm, pitying he retired,
And mused expectant on these promised years.
O Years! the blest preeminence of Saints !
Ye sweep athwart my gaze, so heavenly-bright,
The wings that veil the adoring Seraph's eyes,
What time he bends before the Jasper Throne †
Reflect no lovelier hues! yet ye depart,
Rev. chap. iv., v. 2, and 3:-And immediately I was in the Spirit and behold, a Throne, was set in Heaven, and one sat on the Throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and sardine stone, &c.
And all beyond is darkness! Heights most strange,
Whence Fancy falls, fluttering her idle wing.
For who of woman born may paint the hour,
When seized in his mid course, the Sun shall wane
Making noon ghastly! Who of woman born
May image in the workings of his thought,
How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend outstretched *
Beneath the unsteady feet of Nature groans,
In feverish slumbers-destined then to wake,
When fiery whirlwinds thunder his dread name
And Angels shout, DESTRUCTION! How his arm
The last great Spirit lifting high in air
Shall swear by Him, the ever-living ONE,
TIME IS NO MORE!
Life is a vision shadowy of Truth;
And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave,
Shapes of a dream! The veiling clouds retire,
And lo! the Throne of the redeeming God
Forth flashing unimaginable day
Wraps in one blaze earth, heaven, and deepest hell.
Contemplant Spirits! ye that hover o'er
With untired gaze the immeasurable fount
Ebullient with creative Deity!
And ye of plastic power, that interfused
Roll through the grosser and material mass
In organizing surge! Holies of God!
(And what if Monads of the infinite mind)
I haply journeying my immortal course
Shall sometime join your mystic choir? Till then
I discipline my young noviciate thought
In ministeries of heart-stirring song,
And aye on Meditation's heavenward wing
Soaring aloft I breathe the empyreal air
Of Love, omnific, omnipresent LOVE,
Whose day-spring rises glorious in my soul
As the great Sun, when he his influence
Sheds on the frost-bound waters-The glad stream
Flows to the ray and warbles as it flows.
*The final Destruction impersonated.
AUSPICIOUS REVERENCE! Hush all meaner song,
Ere we the deep preluding strain have poured
To the GREAT FATHER, only RIGHTFUL KING,
ETERNAL FATHER! KING OMNIPOTENT!
THE WILL, THE WORD, THE BREATH,-THE LIVING GOD.
Such symphony requires best instrument.
Seize, then, my soul! from Freedom's trophied dome
The Harp which hangeth high between the Shields
Of Brutus and Leonidas! With that
Strong music, that soliciting spell, force back
Earth's free and stirring spirit that lies entranced.
For what is Freedom, but the unfettered use
Of all the powers which God for use had given?
But chiefly this, him First, him Last to view
Through meaner powers and secondary things
Effulgent, as through clouds that veil his blaze.
For all that meets the bodily sense I deem
Symbolical, one mighty alphabet
For infant minds; and we in this low world
Placed with our backs to bright Reality,
That we may learn with young unwounded ken
The substance from its shadow.
Whose latence is the plenitude of All,
Thou with retracted Beams, and Self-eclipse
Veiling, revealest thine eternal Sun.
But some there are who deem themselves most free
When they within this gross and visible sphere
Chain down the winged thought, scoffing ascent
Proud in their meanness: and themselves they cheat
With noisy emptiness of learned phrase,
Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences,
Self-working tools, uncaused effects, and all
Those blind Omniscients, those Almighty Slaves,
Untenanting creation of its God.
But properties are God: the naked mass (If mass there be, fantastic Guess or Ghost)
Acts only by its inactivity.
Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier think
That as one body seems the aggregate
Of Atoms numberless, each organized;
So by a strange and dim similitude
Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds
Are one all-conscious Spirit, which informs
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