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
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!

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 cach of their creating Sire!
Yet nor high Grove, nor many-colour'd Mead,
Nor the

green

Ocean with his thousand Isles,
Nor the starred Azure, nor the sovran Sun,
E'er with such majesty of portraiture
Imaged the supreme beauty uncreate,
As thou, meek Saviour! 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 Throne
Diviner light fill'd Heaven with ecstasy!
Heaven's hymnings paused: and Hell her yawning mouth
Closed a brief moment.

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 leis immortal Sons.
From llope 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 sirains sublime!

Bears on its wing each hour a load of Fate;
The swain, who, lull’d by Seine's mild murmurs, led
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 his height,
Unwept to wander in some savage isle.

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 por 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 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.
Tuis 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 Bethlehem'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
Dread not: within their tents no terrors walk.

1 Το Νοητον διηρηκασιν εις πολλων
Θεων ιδιοτητας.

Damas. de Myst. Egypt.

Drink

For they are holy things before the Lord,

Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole!
Aye unprofaned, though Earth should league with Hell; This fraternizes man, this constitutes
God's Altar grasping with an eager hand

Our charities and bearings. But 't is God
Fear, the wild-visaged, pale, eye-starting wretch, Diffused through all, that doth make all one whole ;
Sure-refuged hears his hot pursuing fiends

This the worst superstition, him except
Yell at vain distance. Soon refresh'd from Heaven, Aught to desire, Supreme Reality!
He calms the throb and tempest of his heart.

The plenilude and permanence of bliss !
His countenance settles ; a soft solemn 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 transtigured 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: yca, 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-seat they come,

Hiding the present God; whose presence lost, And at the renovating Wells of Love

The moral world's cohesion, we become Have fillid 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 avd what thirsty Cares

Feeling himself, his own low Self the whole; 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!
New names, new features-by supernal grace

Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel!
Enrobed with light, and naturalized in Heaven. Self, spreading siill! Oblivious of its own,
As when a shepherd on a vernal morn

Yet all of all possessing! This is Faith!
Through some thick fog creeps timorous with slow foot, This the Messiah's destined victory!
Darkling he fixes on the immediate road
His downward eye : all else of fairest kind

But first offences needs must come ! Even now!
Hid or deform'd. But lo! the bursting Sun!

(Black Hell laughs horrible-to hear the scoff!)
Touch'd by the enchantment of that sudden beam Thee to defend, meek Galilean ! Thee
Straight the black vapour melteth, and in globes And thy mild laws of love unutterable,
Of dewy glitter gems cach plant and tree;

Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands
On every leaf, on every blade it hangs!

Of social Peace; and listening Treachery lurks Dance glad the new-born intermingling rays,

With pious 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! Thec, 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,
And that in his vast family no Cain

January 21st, 1794, in the debate on the Address to his Ma

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 :- Tbat the House boped Victorious Murder a blind Suicide),

bis Majesty would seize the earliest opportunity to conclude a peace Haply for this some younger Angel now

with France," etc. This motion was opposed by the Duke of PortLooks down on Human Nature : and, behold!

land, who considered the war to be merely grounded on one prin

ciple--the preservation of the Christian Religion. May 3oth, A sea of blood hestrew'd with wrecks, where mad

1794, the Duke of Bedford moved a number of Resolutions, with a Embattling Interests on each other rush

view to the Establishment of a Peace with France. He was opposed With unhelm'd rage!

(among others) by Lord Abingdon in these remarkable words: Tbe best road to Peace, my Lords, is War! and War carried on in the

1

Death's prime Slave-merchants! Scorpion-whips of Fate! When, stung to rage by Pity, eloquent men
Nor least in savagery of holy zeal,

Have roused with pealing voice unnumber'd tribes Apt for the yoke, the race degenerate,

That toil and groan and bleed, hungry and blind.
Whom Britain erst had blush'd to call her sons ! These hush'd awhile with patient eye serene,
Thee to defend the Moloch Priest prefers

Shall watch the mad careering of the storm;
The prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd

Then o'er the wild and wavy chaos rush That Deity, Accomplice Deity

And came 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 carth, 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
An host of new desires : with busy aim,

Their cots' transmuted plunder! From the tree
Each for himself, Earth's eager children toil'd. Of Knowledge, ere the vernal sap had risen
So Property began, twy-streaming fount,

Rudely disbranch'd! Blessed Society!
Whence Vice and Virtue flow, honey and gall. 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,
And hence Disease that withers manhood's arm, Caught in whose monstrous twine Behemoth yells,
The dagger'd Envy, spirit-quenching Want,

His bones loud-crashing !
Warriors, and Lords, and Priests—all the sore ills
That vex and desolate our mortal life.

Oye numberless,
Wide-wasting ills! yet each the immediate source Whom foul Oppression's ruffian gluttony
Of mightier good. Their keen necessities

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'a 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
From Avarice thus, from Luxury and War

Must gaily laugh, while thy remember'd home
Sprang heavenly Science, and from Science Freedom. Gnaws like a viper at thy secret heart!
O'er waken'd realms Philosophers and Bards

O aged Women! ye who weekly catch
Spread in concentric circles: they whose souls, The morsel toss'd by law-forced Charity,
Conscious of their high dignities from God,

And die so slowly, that none call it murder! Brook not Wealth's rivalry! and they who long O loathly Suppliants! ye, that unreceived Evamour'd with the charms of order hate

Totier 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! O ye 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! Call'd the red lightnings from the o'er-rushing cloud, O thou poor Widow, who in dreams dost view And dash'd the beauteous Terrors on the carth

Thy flusband'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. Some shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained them for Judgment, believe it is the elephant, como the hippopotamus ; some affirm it is etc.-HABAKKUK.

the wild bull. Poetically, it designates any large quadruped.