SUPERSTITION AND REVELATION,
BEINGS of brighter worlds! that rise at times
As phantoms, with ideal beauty fraught,
In those brief visions of celestial climes,
Which pass, like sunbeams, o'er the realms of thought,
Dwell ye around us?-are ye hovering nigh,
Throned on the cloud, or buoyant in the air?
And in deep solitudes, where human eye
Can trace no step, Immortals! are ye there?
Oh! who can tell?—what power, but Death alone Can lift the mystic veil that shades the world unknown?
But Earth hath seen the days, ere yet the flowers
Of Eden wither'd, when reveal'd ye shone,
In all your brightness, 'midst those holy bowers-
Holy, but not unfading, as your own!
While He, the child of that primeval soil,
With you its paths in high communion trode,
His glory yet undimm'd by guilt or toil,
And beaming in the image of his God.
And his pure spirit glowing from the sky,
Exulting in its light, a spark of Deity.
Then, haply, mortal and celestial lays,
Mingling their tones, from Nature's temple rose,
When nought but that majestic song of praise
Broke on the sanctity of night's repose,
With music since unheard: and man might trace,
By stream and vale, in deep embow'ring shade,
Devotion's first and loveliest dwelling-place,
The footsteps of th' Omnipotent, who made
That spot a shrine, where youthful nature cast
Her consecrated wealth, rejoicing as He pass'd.
Short were those days, and soon, O sons of Heaven!
Your aspect changed for man; in that dread hour,
When from his paradise the alien driven,
Beheld your forms in angry splendour tower,
Guarding the clime where he no more might dwell,
With meteor-swords: he saw the living flame,
And his first cry of misery was—“ Farewell!”
His heart's first anguish, exile: he became
A pilgrim on the earth, whose children's lot
Is still for happier lands to pine-and reach them not.
Where now the chosen bowers that once beheld Delight and Love their first bright Sabbath keep? From all its founts the world of waters swell'd, And wrapt them in the mantle of the deep!
For He, to whom the elements are slaves,
In wrath unchain'd the oceans of the cloud,
And heaved the abyss beneath; till waves on waves Folded creation in their mighty shroud,
Then left the earth a solitude, o'erspread
With its own awful wreck-a desert of the dead.
But onward flow'd life's busy course again,
And rolling ages with them bare away-
As to be lost amidst the boundless main,
Rich orient streams their golden sands convey—
The hallow'd lore of old-the guiding light
Left by tradition to the sons of earth,
And the blest memory of each sacred rite,
Known in the region of their father's birth,
When in each breeze around his fair abode
Whisper'd a seraph's voice, or lived the breath of
God,
Who hath not seen, what time the orb of day,
Cinctured with glory, seeks the ocean's breast,
A thousand clouds, all glowing in his ray,
Catching brief splendour from the purple west?
So round thy parting steps, fair Truth! awhile
With borrow'd hues unnumber'd phantoms shone;
And Superstition, from thy lingering smile,
Caught a faint glow of beauty not her own,
Blending her rites with thine-while yet afar
Thine eye's last radiance beam'd, a slow-receding
Yet still one stream was pure-one sever'd shrine
Was fed with holier fire, by chosen hands,
And sounds, and dreams, and impulses divine,
Were in the dwellings of the patriarch bands.
There still the father to his child bequeath'd
The sacred torch of never-dying flame;
There still Devotion's suppliant accents breathed
The One adored and everlasting Name,
And angel guests would linger and repose
Where those primeval tents amid their palm-trees
But far o'er earth the apostate wanderers bore
Their alien rites:—for them, by fount or shade,
Nor voice, nor vision, holy as of yore,
In thrilling whispers to the soul convey'd
High inspiration: yet in every clime,
Those sons of doubt and error fondly sought
With beings, in their essence more sublime,
To hold communion of mysterious thought;
On some dread power in trembling hope to lean,
And hear in every wind the accents of th' Unseen.
Yes! we have need to bid our hopes repose
On some protecting influence; here confined,
Life hath no healing balm for mortal woes,
Earth is too narrow for th' immortal mind.
Our spirits burn to mingle with the day,
As exiles panting for their native coast,
Yet lured by every wild-flower from their way,
And shrinking from the gulf that must be cross'd;
Death hovers round us-in the zephyr's sigh,
As in the storm, he comes-and lo! Eternity!
As one left lonely on the desert sands
Of burning Afric, where, without a guide,
He gazes as the pathless waste expands-
Around, beyond, interminably wide;
While the red haze, presaging the Simoom,
Obscures the fierce resplendence of the sky,
Or suns of blasting light perchance illume
The glistening Serab* which illudes his eye;
Such was the wanderer Man, in ages flown,
Kneeling in doubt and fear before the dread Un-
known.
His thoughts explored the past-and where were they,
The chiefs of men, the mighty ones gone by?
He turn'd-a boundless void before him lay,
Wrapp'd in the shadows of futurity.
How knew the child of Nature that the flame
He felt within him, struggling to ascend,
Should perish not with that terrestrial frame
Doom'd with the earth on which it moved, to blend?
How, when affliction bade his spirit bleed,
If 'twere a Father's love or Tyrant's wrath decreed?
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