(Mid which the May-thorn blends its blossoms white)
Where broad smooth stones jut out in mossy seats,
I rest and now have gain'd the topmost site.
Ah! what a luxury of landscape meets
My gaze! Proud Towers, and Cots more dear to me,
Elm-shadow'd Fields, and prospect-bounding
Deep sighs. my lonely heart I drop the tear:
Enchanting spot! O were my Sara here!
THE stream with languid murmur creeps,
In Lumin's flowery vale:
Beneath the dew the Lily weeps,
IN THE MANNER OF SPENSER.
Rejected Slumber! hither wing thy way;
But leave me with the matin hour, at most!
As night-closed Floweret to the orient ray,
My sad heart will expand, when I the Maid survey."
But Love, who heard the silence of my thought,
Contrived a too successful wile, I ween:
And whisper'd to himself, with malice fraught-
* Too long our Slave the Damsel's smiles hath seen:
To-morrow shall he ken her alter'd mien!"
He spake, and ambush'd lay, till on my bed
The morning shot her dewy glances keen,
When as I 'gan to lift my drowsy head-
* Now, Bard! I'll work thee woe!" the laughing
Slow-waving to the gale.
"Cease, restless gale!" it seems to say, "Nor wake me with thy sighing!
The honors of my vernal day
On rapid wing are flying.
"To-morrow shall the Traveller come
Who late beheld me blooming:
His searching eye shall vainly roam
The dreary vale of Lumin."
With eager gaze and wetted cheek
My wonted haunts along,
Thus, faithful Maiden! thou shalt seek
The Youth of simplest song.
But I along the breeze shall roll
The voice of feeble power;
And dwell, the moon-beam of thy soul,
In Slumber's nightly hour.
THE COMPLAINT OF NINATHOMA
How long will ye round me be swelling,
O ye blue-tumbling waves of the Sea?
Not always in Caves was my dwelling,
Nor beneath the cold blast of the Tree. Through the high-sounding halls of Cathloma In the steps of my beauty I stray'd; The Warriors beheld Ninathoma,
And they blessed the white-bosom'd Maid!
A Ghost! by my cavern it darted!
In moon-beams the Spirit was drestFor lovely appear the departed
When they visit the dreams of my rest! But, disturb'd by the Tempest's commotion, Fleet the shadowy forms of DelightAh cease, thou shrill blast of the Ocean! To howl through my Cavern by Night.
Poor Stumbler on the rocky coast of Woe,
Tutor'd by Pain each source of Pain to know!
Alike the foodful fruit and scorching fire
Awake thy cager grasp and young desire;
Alike the Good, the Ill offend thy sight,
And rouse the stormy sense of shrill affright!
Untaught, yet wise! 'mid all thy brief alarms
Thou closely clingest to thy Mother's arms,
Nestling thy little face in that fond breast
Whose anxious heavings lull thee to thy rest!
Man's breathing Miniature! thou makest me sigh-
A Babe art thou and such a thing am I!
To anger rapid and as soon appeased,
For trifles mourning and by trifles pleased,
Break Friendship's Mirror with a techy blow,
Yet snatch what coals of fire on Pleasure's altar
And from your heart the sighs that steal
Shall make your rising bosom feel
The answering swell of mine!
How oft, my Love! with shapings sweet
I paint the moment we shall meet!
With eager speed I dart-
I seize you in the vacant air,
And fancy, with a Husband's care
I press you to my heart!
"T is said, on Summer's evening hour
Flashes the golden-color'd flower
A fair electric flame:
And so shall flash my love-charged eye
When all the heart's big ecstasy
Shoots rapid through the frame!
TO A FRIEND IN ANSWER TO A MELANCHOLY
LETTER.
AWAY, those cloudy looks, that laboring sigh,
The peevish offspring of a sickly hour!
Nor meanly thus complain of Fortune's power,
When the blind Gamester throws a luckless die.
Yon setting Sun flashes a mournful gleam
Behind those broken clouds, his stormy train:
To-morrow shall the many-color'd main
In brightness roll beneath his orient beam!
Wild, as the autumnal gust, the hand of Time
Flies o'er his mystic lyre: in shadowy dance
The alternate groups of Joy and Grief advance,
Responsive to his varying strains sublime!
Bears on its wing each hour a load of Fate;
Despised Galilæan! For the Great
Invisible (by symbols only seen)
With a peculiar and surpassing light
Shines from the visage of the oppress'd good Man
When heedless of himself the scourged Saint
Mourns for the Oppressor. Fair the vernal Mead
Fair the high Grove, the Sea, the Sun, the Stars,
True impress each of their creating Sire!
Yet nor high Grove, nor many-color'd Mead,
Nor the green Ocean with his thousand Isles,
Nor the starr'd Azure, nor the sovran Sun,
E'er with such majesty of portraiture
Imaged the supreme beauty uncreate,
As thou, meek Savior! at the fearful hour
When thy insulted Anguish wing'd the prayer
Harp'd by Archangels, when they sing of Mercy!
Which when the Almighty heard from forth his
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Lovely was the death
Of Him whose life was love! Holy with power
He on the thought-benighted sceptic beam'd
Manifest Godhead, melting into day
What floating mists of dark Idolatry
Broke and misshaped the Omnipresent Sire:
And first by Fear uncharm'd the drowsed Soul.
Till of its nobler nature it 'gan feel
Dim recollections: and thence soar'd to Hope,
Strong to believe whate'er of mystic good
The Eternal dooms for his immortal Sons.
From Hope and firmer Faith to perfect Love
Attracted and absorb'd: and centred there
God only to behold, and know, and feel,
Till by exclusive Consciousness of God
All self-annihilated it shall make
God its Identity: God all in all!
The swain, who, lull'd by Seine's mild murmurs, led We and our Father one!
His weary oxen to their nightly shed,
To-day may rule a tempest-troubled State.
Nor shall not Fortune with a vengeful smile
Survey the sanguinary Despot's might,
And haply hurl the Pageant from hiş height,
Unwept to wander in some savage isle.
There, shiv'ring sad beneath the tempest's frown,
Round his tir'd limbs to wrap the purple vest;
And mix'd with nails and beads, an equal jest!
Barter, for food, the jewels of his crown.
RELIGIOUS MUSINGS;
A DESULTORY POEM,
WRITTEN ON THE CHRISTMAS EVE OF 1794.
THIS is the time, when most divine to hear,
The voice of Adoration rouses me,
As with a Cherub's trump: and high upborne,
Yea, mingling with the Choir, I seem to view
The vision of the heavenly multitude,
Who bymn'd the song of Peace o'er Bethlehem's
Yet thou more bright than all the Angel blaze,
That harbinger'd thy birth, Thou, Man of Woes!
And bless'd are they,
Who in this fleshly World, the elect of Heaven,
Their strong eye darting through the deeds of Men,
Adore with stedfast unpresuming gaze
Him Nature's Essence, Mind, and Energy!
And gazing, trembling, patiently ascend
Treading beneath their feet all visible things
As steps, that upward to their Father's Throne
Lead gradual else nor glorified nor loved.
They nor Contempt embosom nor Revenge.
For they dare know of what may seem deform
The Supreme Fair sole Operant: in whose sight
All things are pure, his strong controlling Love
Alike from all educing perfect good.
Theirs too celestial courage, inly arm'd-
Dwarfing Earth's giant brood, what time they muse
On their great Father, great beyond compare!
And marching onwards view high o'er their heads
His waving Banners of Omnipotence.
Who the Creator love, created might
Dread not: within their tents no terrors walk.
* Το Νοητον διηρηκασιν εις πολλων
Θεων ιδιοτητας.
DAMAS. de Myst. Ægyjt.
For they are holy things before the Lord,
Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole!
Aye unprofaned, though Earth should league with This fraternizes Man, this constitutes
God's Altar grasping with an eager hand,
Fear, the wild-visaged, pale, eye-starting wretch,
Sure-refuged hears his hot pursuing fiends
Yell at vain distance. Soon refresh'd from Heaven,
He calms the throb and tempest of his heart.
His countenance settles; a soft solemn bliss
Swims in his eye-his swimming eye upraised;
And Faith's whole armor glitters on his limbs!
And thus transfigured with a dreadless awe,
A solemn hush of soul, meek he beholds
Our charities, and bearings. But 't is God
Diffused through 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
All things of terrible seeming: yea, unmoved
Views e'en the immitigable ministers
Your grisly idols, not for this may wrath
Thunder against you from the Holy One!
But o'er some plain that steameth to the sun,
Peopled with Death; or where more hideous Trade
Loud-laughing packs his bales of human anguish:
I will raise up a mourning, O ye Fiends!
That shower down vengeance on these latter days. And curse your spells, that film the eye of Faith,
For kindling with intenser Deity
Hiding the present God; whose presence lost,
From the celestial Mercy-sent they come,
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 brethren with a lonely heart
Through courts and cities the smooth Savage roams,
Feeling himself, his own low Self the whole;
When he by sacred sympathy might make
Thus from the Elect, regenerate through faith,
Pass the dark Passions and what thirsty Cares
Drink up the spirit and the dim regards
Self-centre. Lo they vanish! or acquire
New names, new features-by supernal grace
Enrobed with light, and naturalized in Heaven.
As when a shepherd on a vernal morn
Through some thick fog creeps timorous with slow
Darkling he fixes on the immediate road
His downward eye: all else of fairest kind
Hid or deform'd. But lo! the bursting Sun!
Touch'd by the enchantment of that sudden beam,
Straight the black vapor melteth, and in globes
Of dewy glitter gems each plant and tree;
On every leaf, on every blade it hangs!
Dance glad the new-born intermingling rays,
The whole one Self! Self that no alien knows!
Self, far diffused 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 needs must come! Even now
(Black Hell laughs horrible-to hear the scoff!)
Thee to defend, meek Galilæan! Thee
And thy mild laws of love unutterable,
Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands
Of social Peace; and listening 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;
And wide around the landscape streams with glory! Thee to defend, dear Savior of Mankind!
There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind,
Omnific. His most holy naine is Lové.
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 the Almighty's Throne.
But that we roam unconscious, or with hearts
Unfeeling of our universal Sire,
And that in his vast family no Cain
Injures uninjured (in her best-aim'd blow
Victorious Murder a blind Suicide),
Haply for this some younger Angel now
Looks down on Human Nature: and, behold!
A sea of blood bestrew'd with wrecks, where mad
Embattling Interests on each other rush
'Tis the sublime of man, Our noontide Majesty, to know ourselves
Thee, Lamb of God! Thee, blameless Prince of
From all sides rush the thirsty brood of War!
Austria, and that foul Woman of the North,
The lustful Murderess 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, nursed in gore!
Soul-harden'd barterers of human blood!
*January 21st, 1794, in the debate on the Address to his Majesty, on the speech from the Throne, the Earl of Guildford moved an Amendment to the following effect:-"That the House hoped his Majesty would seize the earliest opportunity to conclude a peace with France," etc. This motion was opposed by the Duke of Portland, who "considered the war to be merely grounded on one principle-the preservatio of the Christian Religion." May 30th, 1794, the Duke o. Bedford moved a number of Resolutions, with a view to the Establishment of a Peace with France. He was opposed (among others) by Lord Abingdon in these remarkable words. "The best road to Peace, my Lords, is War! and War carried on in the same manner in which we are taught to worship our Creator, namely, with all our souls, and with all our minds, and with all our hearts, and with all our strength."
Death's prime Slave-merchants! Scorpion-whips of When, stung to rage by Pity, eloquent men
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
Tha: 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 through 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 waved.
But soon Imagination conjured up
An host of new desires: with busy aim,
Each for himself, Earth's eager children toil'd.
So Property began, two-streaming fount,
Whence Vice and Virtue flow, honey and gall,
Hence the soft couch, and many-color'd robe,
The timbrel, and arch'd dome and costly feast,
With all the inventive arts, that nursed the soul
To forms of beauty, and by sensual wants
Unsensualized the mind, which in the means
Learnt to forget the grossness of the end,
Best pleasured with its own activity.
And hence Disease that withers manhood's arm,
The dagger'd Envy, spirit-quenching Want,
Warriors, and Lords, and Priests all the sore ills
That vex and desolate our mortal life.
Wide-wasting ills! yet each the immediate source
Of mightier good. Their keen necessities
To ceaseless action goading human thought
Have made Earth's reasoning animal her Lord;
And the pale-featured Sage's trembling hand
Strong as an host of armed Deities,
Such as the blind Ionian fabled erst.
From Avarice thus, from Luxury and War
Sprang heavenly Science; and from Science
O'er waken'd realms Philosophers and Bards
Spread in concentric circles: they whose souls,
Conscious of their high dignities from God,
Brook not Wealth's rivalry! and they who long
Enamour'd with the charms of order hate
The unseemly disproportion: and whoe'er
Turn with mild sorrow from the victor's car
And the low puppetry of thrones, to muse
On that blest triumph, when the patriot Sage
Call'd the red lightnings from the o'er-rushing cloud,
And dash'd the beauteous Terrors on the earth
Smiling majestic. Such a phalanx ne'er
Measured firm paces to the calming sound
Of Spartan flute! These on the fated day,
Have roused with pealing voice 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 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 arch'd 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 rocks and woods
And many-tinted streams and setting Sun
With all his gorgeous company of clouds
Ecstatic gazed! then homeward as they stray'd
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 recognize
Their cots' transmuted plunder! From the tree
Of Knowledge, ere the vernal sap had risen
Rudely disbranch'd! Blessed Society!
Fitliest depictured by some sun-scorch'd 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 hyena 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!
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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, doom'd to know
Polluted nights and days of blasphemy;
Who in lothed 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-forced Charity,
And die so slowly, that none call it murder!
O lothely 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-thatch'd cot
Waked by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold,
Cow'rst o'er thy screaming baby! Rest awhile
Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord, mine Holy one? Some believe it is the elephant, some the hippopotamus; some We shall not die. O Lord thou hast ordained them for judg-ffirm it is the wild bull. Poetically, it designates any large ment, etc.-Habakkuk.
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