On whose black front was written Mystery ; Power, up The Saviour comes ! While, as the thousand Years Lead 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. * 0 Years! the blest preëminence of saints ! Ye sweep athwart my gaze, so heavenly bright, The wings that veil the adoring Seraphs' eyes, What time they bend before the Jasper Thronet * David Hartley † Rev. chap. iv. verses 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 a sardine stone, &c. Reflect no lovelier hues! Yet ye depart, strange, wane Making noon ghastly! Who of woman born stretched * a Believe thou, O my soul, 1 Wraps in one blaze earth, heaven, and deepest Sinnyson hell. * The final destruction impersonated. 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 and novice thought In ministries of heart-stirring song, And aye on Meditation's heaven-ward 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 DESTINY OF NATIONS. A VISION AUSPICIOUS Reverence! Hush all meaner song, 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 Man'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 |