Whose names were many and all blasphemous, Gives back the steel that stabbed him; and pale Fear The kingdoms of the world are yours: each heart And odours snatched from beds of amaranth, The Saviour comes! While as the Thousand Years Lead up their mystic dance, the Desert shouts ! Raises to Heaven: and he of mortal kind O Years! the blest pre-eminence 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 Throne + Reflect no lovelier hues! Yet ye depart, And all beyond is darkness! Heights most strange 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 wane Making noon ghastly! Who of woman born May image in the workings of his thought, * David Hartley. † 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. How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend outstretched* Shall swear by Him, the ever-living One, Believe thou, O my soul, Life is a vision shadowy of Truth; And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave, Wraps in one blaze earth, heaven, and deepest hell. 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 organising surge! Holies of God! (And what if Monads of the infinite mind) And aye on Meditation's heaven-ward wing The final destruction impersonated. 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. THE DESTINY OF NATIONS. A VISION. AUSPICIOUS Reverence! Hush all meaner song, To the Will Absolute, the One, the Good! 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 Placed with our backs to bright reality, That we may learn with young unwounded ken Infinite Love, Whose latence is the plenitude of all, Thou with retracted beams, and self-eclipse But some there are who deem themselves most free When they within this gross and visible sphere Chain down the winged thought, scoffing ascent, Proud in their meanness: and themselves they cheat With noisy emptiness of learned phrase, Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences, Self-working tools, uncaused effects, and all Those blind omniscients, those almighty slaves, Untenanting creation of its God. But properties are God: the naked mass (If mass there be, fantastic guess or ghost) Acts only by its inactivity. Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier think |