On whose black front was written Mystery;
She that reeled heavily, whose wine was blood; She that worked whoredom with the Demon 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
Haunted 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 recognize in heaven.
And such delights, such strange beatitudes,
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
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 Seraphs' eyes, What time they bend before the Jasper Thronet
† 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!
And all beyond is darkness! Heights most
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
Making noon ghastly! Who of woman born
May image in the workings of his thought,
How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend out-
stretched *
Beneath the unsteady feet of Nature groans,
In feverous 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!
Believe thou, O my soul,
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
*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.
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.
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!
To the Will Absolute, the One, the Good!
The I AM, the Word, the Life, 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 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
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