You roused each gentler sense As, sighing o'er the Blossom's bloom, Meek Evening wakes its soft perfume With viewless influence. Poor Stumbler on the rocky coast of Woe, 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 sighA 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 tetchy blow, Yet snatch what coals of fire on Pleasure's allar glow! And hark, my Love! The sea-breeze moans In bold ambitious sweep With mimic thunders deep. Dark reddening from the channell'd Isle (Where stands one solitary pile Unslated by the blast) Rude cradled on the mast. O thou that rearest with celestial aim Even there-beneath that light-house tower- Ere Peace with Sara came, And watch the storm-vex'd flame. In Pity's dew divine; 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 With eager speed I dart- heart! Despised Galilæan! For the Great 'T is said, on Summer's evening hour Flashes the golden-colour'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! LINES TO A FRIEND IN ANSWER TO A MELANCHOLY LETTER. Away, those cloudy looks, that labouring sigh, Yon setting Sun flashes a mournful gleam 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 uncharmed the droused Soul." Till of its nobler nature it 'gan feel Dim recollections: and thence soared to Hope, Strong to believe whate'er of mystic good The Eternal dooms for liis 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! We and our Father one! 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; Nor shall not Fortune with a vengeful smile There shiv'ring sad beneath the tempest's frown Round his tired limbs to wrap the purple vest; And mix'd with nails and beads, an equal jest ! Barter for food, the jewels of his crown. 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 100 celestial courage, inly armed — 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. RELIGIOUS MUSINGS ; A DESULTOR Y 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 hymn'd the song of Peace o'er Bethlchem's fields ! Yet thou more bright than all the Angel blaze, That harbinger'd thy birth, Thou, Man of Woes! Who the Creator love, created might 1 Το Νοητον διηρηκασιν εις πολλων Θεων ιδιοτητας. . DAMAS. de Myst. Egypt. For they are holy things before the Lord, Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole! Our charities and bearings. But 't is God This the worst superstition, him except The plenitude and permanence of bliss ! O Fiends of Superstition ! not that oft Swims in his eye-his swimming eye upraised : The erring Priest hath stain'd with brother's blood And Faith's whole armour glitters on his limbs! Your grisly idols, not for this may wrath And thus transfigured with a dreadless awe, Thunder against you from the Holy One! A solemn hush of soul, meek he beholds But o'er some plain that steameth to the sun, All things of terrible seeming: yea, unmoved Peopled with Death ; or where more hideous Trade Views e'en the immitigable ministers Loud-laughing packs his bales of human anguish : That shower down vengeance on these latter days. I will raise up a mourning, O ye Fiends! For kindling with intenser Deity And curse your spells, that film the eye of Faith, From the celestial Mercy-scat they come, Hiding the present God; whose presence lost, And at the renovating Wells of Love The moral world's cohesion, we become Have fill'd their Vials with salutary Wrath, An anarchy of Spirits! Toy-bewitch'd, To sickly Nature more medicinal Made blind by lusts, disherited of soul, Than what soft balm the weeping good man pours No common centre Man, no common sire Into the lone despoiled traveller's wounds! Knoweth! A sordid solitary thing, 'Mid countless brethren with a lonely heart Thus from the Elect, regenerate through faith, Through courts and cities the smooth Savage roams, Pass the dark Passions and what thirsty Cares Feeling himself, his own low Self the whole; Drink up the spirit and the dim regards When he by sacred sympathy might make Self-centre. Lo they vanish! or acquire The whole one self! Self, that no alien knows! Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel! Yet all of all possessing! This is Faith! But first offences needs must come ! Even now! (Black Hell laughs horrible-to hear the scoff!) Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands Of social Peace; and listening Treachery lurks Dance glad the new-born intermingling rays, With pions fraud to snare a brother's life; And wide around the landscape streams with glory! And childless widows o'er the groaning land Wail numberless; and orphans weep for bread; There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind, Thee to defend, dear Saviour of Mankind! Omnific. His most holy name is Love. Thee, Lamb of God! Thee, blameless Prince of Peace! Truth of subliming import! with the which From all sides rush the thirsty brood of War ? Who feeds and saturates his constant soul, Austria, and that foul Woman of the North, He from his small particular orbit flies The lustful Murderess of her wedded Lord ! With bless'd outstarting ! From Hiinself he flies, And he, connatural Mind! whom in their songs Stands in the Sun, and with no partial gaze So bards of elder time had haply feign'd) Views all creation; and he loves it all, Some Fury fondled in her hate to man, And blesses it, and calls it very good! Bidding her serpent hair in mazy surge This is indeed to dwell with the Most High! Lick his young face, and at his mouth inbreathe Cherubs and rapture-trembling Seraphim Horrible sympathy! And leagued with these Can press no nearer to the Almighty's Throne. Each petty German princeling, nursed in gore! But that we roam unconscious, or with hearts Soul-harden'd barterers of human blood! Unfeeling of our universal Sire, January 21st, 1794, in the debate on the Address to his MaAnd that in his vast family no Cain jesty, on the speech from the Throne, the Earl of Guildford moved Injures uninjured (in her best-aim'd blow an Amendment to the following effect :- . That the House boped Victorious Murder a blind Suicide), bis Majesty would seize the earliest opportunity to conclude a peaco Haply for this some younger Angel now with France, etc. This motion was opposed by the Duke of Port land, who considered the war 10 be merely grounded on one prinLooks down on Human Nature : and, behold! ciple--the preservation of the Christian Religion.. May 30th, A sea of blood hestrew'd with wrecks, where mad 1794, ibe Duke of Bedford moved a number of Resolutions, with a Embattling Interests on each other rush view to the Establishment of a Peace witb France. He was opposed With unhelm'd rage! (among others) by Lord Abingdon in these remarkable words : Tbe best road to Peace, my Lorus, is War! and War carried on in the same manner in which we are taught to worship our Creator, name"T is the sublime of man, ly, with all our souls, and with all our minds, and with all our Our noontide Majesty, to know ourselves bearts, and with all our strength. Death's prime Slave-merchants! Scorpion-whips of Fate! When, stung to rage by Pity, eloquent men Have roused with pealing voice unnumber'd tribes Apt for the yoke, the race degenerate, That toil and groan and bleed, hungry and blind. Sball watch the mad careering of the storm; Then o'er the wild and wavy chaos rush That Deity, Accomplice Deity And tame the outrageous mass, with plastic might In the fierce jealousy of waken'd wrath Moulding Confusion to such perfect forms, Will go forth with our armies and our fleets, As erst were wont, bright visions of the day! To scatter the red ruin on their foes? To float before them, when, the Summer noon, O blasphemy! to mingle fiendish deeds Beneath some arch'd romantic rock reclined With blessedness! They felt the sea breeze lift their youthful locks; Or in the month of blossoms, at mild eve, Lord of unsleeping Love,' Wandering with desultory feet inhaled From everlasting Thou! We shall not die. The wafted perfumes, and the rocks and woods These, even these, in mercy didst thou form, And many-tinted streams and setting Sun Teachers of Good through Evil, by brief wrong With all his gorgeous company of clouds Making Truth lovely, and her future might Ecstatic gazed! then homeward as they stray'd Magnetic o'er the fix'd untrembling heart. Cast the sad eye to earth, and inly mused Why there was Misery in a world so fair. In the primeval age a dateless while Ah far removed from all that glads the sense, The vacant Shepherd wander'd with his flock, From all that softens or ennobles Man, Pitching his tent where'er the green grass waved. The wretched Many! Bent beneath their loads But soon Imagination conjured up They gape at pageant Power, nor recognize Their cots' transmuted plunder! From the tree Rudely disbranch’d! Blessed Society! Fitliest depictured by some sun-scorch'd waste, Hence the soft couch, and many-colour'd rohe, Where oft majestic through the tainted noon The timbrel, and arch'd dome and costly feast, The Simoom sails, before whose purple pomp With all the inventive arts, that nursed the soul Who falls not prostrate dies! And where by night, To forms of beauty, and by sensual wants Fast by each precious fountain on green herbs Unsensualized the mind, which in the means The lion couches; or hyrna dips Learnt to forget the grossness of the end, Deep in the lucid stream his bloody jaws; Best pleasured with its own activity. Or serpent plants his vast moon-glittering bulk, His bones loud-crashing ! Oye numberless, Drives from life's plenteous feast! O thou poor wretch, To ceaseless action goading human thought Who nursed in darkness and made wild by want, Have made Earth's reasoning animal her Lord; Roamest for prey, yea thy unnatural hand And the pale-featured Sage's trembling hand Dost lift to deeds of blood ! O pale-eyed form, Strong as an host of arm’d Deities, The victim of seduction, doom'd to know Such as the blind Ionian fabled erst. Polluted nights and days of blasphemy; Who in loathed orgies with lewd wassailers Must gaily laugh, while thy remember'd home O aged Women! ye who weekly catch And die so slowly, that none call it murder! Brook not Wealth's rivalry! and they who long O loathly Suppliants ! ye, that unreceived Enamour'd with the charms of order hate Totter heart-broken from the closing gates The unseemly disproportion: and whoe'er Of the full Lazar-house : or, gazing, stand Turn with mild sorrow from the victor's car Sick with despair! Oye to Glory's field And the low puppetry of thrones, to muse Forced or ensnared, who, as ye gasp in death, On that blest triumph, when the patriot Sage Bleed with new wounds beneath the Vulture's beak! Calld the red lightnings from the o'er-rushing cloud, Othou poor Widow, who in dreams dost view And dash'd the beauteous Terrors on the earth Thy llusband's mangled corse, and from short doze Smiling majestic. Such a phalanx ne'er Start'st with a shriek; or in thy half-thatch'd cot Measured firm paces to the calming sound Waked by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold, Of Spartan flute! These on the fated day, Cow'rst o'er thy screaming baby! Rest awhile Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord, mine Holy One! We Behemoth, in Hebrew, signifies wild beasts in general. Somo shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained them for Judgment, believe it is the elephant, somo the hippopotamus ; some affirm it is etc.-HABAKEUK. the wild bull. Poetically, it designates any large quadruped. Children of Wretchedness ! More groans must rise, With conscious zeal had urged Love's wondrous plan, years, from his loved native land Statesmen blood-stain'd and Priests idolatrous By dark lies maddening the blind multitude Drove with vain hate Calm, pitying be retired, And mused expectant on these promised years. 0 Years! the blest pre-eminence of Saints! 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 hell. O return! Pure Faith! meek Piety! The abhorr'd Form Whose scarlet robe was stiff with earthly pomp, Who drank iniquity in cups of gold, Whose names were many and all blasphemous, Hath met the horrible judgment! Whence that cry? The mighty army of foul Spirits shriek'd Disherited of earth! For shie hath fallen On whose black front was written Mystery; She that reeld heavily, whose wine was blood; She that work'd 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 stabb’d him; and pale Fear Hunted 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 : cach heart, Self-govern'd, 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 snatch'd from beds of Amaranth, And they, that from the crystal river of life Spring up on freshen'd wing, ambrosial gales ! The favour'd 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 beatitude Scize 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 Years 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 Contemplant Spirits ! ye that hover o'er soul ray, and warbles as it flows. * David Hertley. 2 Rev. Chap. iv, v. 2 and 3.-And immediately I was in the Spirit: and behold, a Throne was set in Heaven, and one sat on the Throne. Aod he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and sardine stone, etc. • The final Destruction impersonated. Allading to the French Revolution. |