And wide around the landscape streams with glory!
There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind,
Omnific. His most holy name is Love.
Truth of subliming import! with the which
Who feeds and saturates his constant soul,
He from his small particular orbit flies
With bless'd outstarting! From Himself he flies,
Stands in the Sun, and with no partial gaze
Views all creation; and he loves it all,
And blesses it, and calls it very good!
This is indeed to dwell with the most High!
Cherubs and rapture-trembling Seraphim
Can press no nearer to th' Almighty's Throne.
But that we roam unconscious, or with hearts
Unfeeling of our unive. al Sire.
And that in his vast family no Cain
Injures uninjur'd (in her best-arm'd blow
Victorious Murder a blind Suicide)
Haply for this some younger Augel now
Looks down on Human Nature: and, behold!
A sea of blood bestrew'd with wrecks, where mad
Embattling Interests on each other rush
Our noontide Majesty, to know ourselves
Parts and proportions of one wond'rous whole!
This fraternizes man, this constitutes
Our charities and bearings. But 'tis God
Diffus'd thro' all, that doth make all one whole;
This the worst superstition! him except
Aught to desire, Supreme Reality!
The plenitude and permanence of bliss!
O Fiends of Superstition! not that oft
The erring Priest hath stain'd with Brother's blood Your grisly idols, not for this may
Thunder against you from the Holy One!
But o'er some plain that streameth to the Sun,
Peopled with Death; or where more hideous Trade
Loud-laughing packs his bales of human anguish ;
I will rise up a mourning, O ye Fiends!
And curse your spells, that film the eye of Faith,
Hiding the present God; whose presence lost,
The moral world's cohesion, we become
An Anarchy of Spirits! Toy-bewitch'd,
Made blind by lusts, disherited of soul,
No common centre Man, no common sire
Knoweth! A sordid solitary thing,
Mid countless brerthen with a lonely heart
Thro' courts and cities the smooth Savage roams
Feeling himself, his own low Self the whole;
When he by sacred sympathy might make
The whole one self! self, that no alien knows!
Self, far diffus'd as Fancy's wing can travel!
Self, spreading still! Oblivious of its own,
Yet all of all possessing! This is Faith!
This the Messiah's destin'd victory!
But first offences need must come !
(Black Hell laughs horrible-to hear the scoff!)
Thee to defend, meek Galilean! Thee
And thy mild laws of Love unutterable,
Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands
Of social Peace! and list'ning Treachery lurks
With pious fraud to snare a brother's life;
And childless widows o'er the groaning land
Wail numberless; and orphans weep for bread!
Thee to defend, dear Saviour of Mankind!
Thee, Lamb of God! Thee, blameless Prince of Peace!
From all sides rush the thirsty brood of War;
Austria, and that foul Woman of the North,
The lustful Murd'ress of her wedded Lord!
And he, connatural Mind! whom (in their songs,
So bards of elder time had haply feign'd)
Some Fury fondled in her hate to man,
Bidding her serpent hair in mazy surge
Lick his young face, and at his mouth inbreathe
Horrible sympathy! And leagued with these
Each petty German princeling, nurs'd in gore!
Soul-harden'd barterers of human blood!
Death's prime Slave-merchants! Scorpion-whips of Fate!
Nor least in savagery of holy zeal,
Apt for the yoke, the race degenerate,
Whom Britain erst had blush'd to call her sons!
Thee to defend the Moloch Priest prefers
The prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd
That Deity, accomplice Deity
In the fierce jealousy of waken'd wrath
Will go
forth with our armies and our fleets
To scatter the red ruin on their foes!
O blasphemy! to mingle fiendish deeds
With blessedness!
Lord of unsleeping Love,
From everlasting Thou! We shall not die.
These, even these, in mercy didst thou form,
Teachers of Good thro' Evil, by brief wrong
Making Truth lovely, and her future might
Magnetic o'er the fix'd untrembling heart.
In the primeval age a dateless while
The vacant Shepherd wander'd with his flock
Pitching his tent where'er the green grass wav’d.
But soon Imagination conjur'd up
A host of new desires: with busy aim,
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 nurs'd in darkness and made wild by want
Roamest for prey, yea thy unnatural hand
Doth lift to deeds of blood! O pale-eyed Form,
The victim of seduction, doom'd to know
Polluted nights and days of blasphemy;
Who in loath'd orgies, with lewd wassailers
Must gaily laugh, while thy remember'd Home
Gnaws like a viper at thy secret heart!
O aged Women! ye who weekly catch
The morsel toss'd by law-forc'd Charity,
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
Forc'd or ensnar'd, 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-thatch'd cot
Wak'd by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold,
Cowr'st o'er thy screaming baby! Rest awhile,
Children of Wretchedness! More groans must rise,
✦ 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.
Smiling majestic. Such a phalanx ne'er
Measur'd firm paces to the calming sound
Of Spartan flute! These on the fated day,
When, stung to rage by Pity, eloquent men
Have rous'd with pealing voice th' unnumber'd tribes
That toil and groan and bleed, hungry and blind,
These hush'd awhile with patient eye serene
Shall watch the mad careering of the storm;
Then o'er the wild and wavy chaos rush
And tame th' 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 arch'd romantic rock reclin'd
They felt the sea-breeze lift their youthful locks;
Or in the month of blossoms, at mild eve,
Wandering with desultory feet, inhal'd
The wafted perfumes, and the flocks and woods
And many-tinted streams and setting Sun,
With all his gorgeous company of clouds
Ecstatic gaz'd! then homeward as they stray'd
Cast the sad eye to earth, and inly mus'd
Why there was Misery in a world so fair.
Ah far remov'd 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 recognize
Their cots' transmuted plunder! From the tree
Of Knowledge, ere the vernal sap had risen
Rudely disbranch'd! Blessed Society!
Fitliest depictur'd by some sun-scorch'd waste,
Where oft majestic thro' the tainted noon
The Simoon sails, before whose purple pomp
Who falls not prostrate dies! And where, by night,
Fast by each precious fountain on green herbs
|
