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 THE MYSTIC.
 
 ( ^ / ^ r £frts-z^£&C^' 
 
 THE MYSTIC 
 
 ' I 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 /* 
 
 <P/2^* 
 
 BY 
 
 PHILIP JAMES BAT LEY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "FESTUS" 
 
 SECOND K I) IT I ON 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 CHAPMAN AND HAM,, 193, PICCADILLY. 
 
 186&
 
 f) 
 
 
 THE MYSTIC: 
 
 A POEM. 
 
 Who holds not life more yearful than the hours 
 Since first into this world he wept his way, 
 Erreth much, may he. Called of God, man's soul 
 In patriarchal periods, comctlike, 
 Eanges perchance all spheres successive ; and in each, 
 With nobler powers endowed and senses new, 
 Set season bideth. So with him, it seemed 
 Of whom I Bpeak, the initiate of the light, 
 The adopted of the water and the sun. 
 
 Time's sand-dry Btreamlet through its glassy straits 
 Flowed ceaseless; and he lived a threefold life 
 Through all the ages; yea, seven times his soul 
 Commingling, leavened with its light the world. 
 First in the feasts of life, and the Bun's son, 
 Through all God's homely universe he roamed 
 
 i: 
 
 775423
 
 Lordly, and spake to earth the lore of stars, 
 The mother-tongue of Heaven our Fatherland. 
 Born to instate mankind in veriest truths, 
 By nature symbolled in gem, bloom, and wing ; 
 To give to all the hope of bliss reserved, 
 And ultimate certainty of angelhood, 
 He, like a river which through gulleys, rocks, 
 And deserts runs its purifying race 
 To Ocean's thrice regenerative depths, 
 Chose thorough all probations his own path, 
 And voluntary trode the downward way; 
 For they whose eyen by spirit-fire are purged 
 Move ever up the reascent to light, 
 On a coelestial gradient, paved with wings ; 
 Disrobed him of all privilege, and alone 
 Suffered the dignities yearned for by the mass 
 But that he might ennoble servitude. 
 
 Grounded in Nature's sacred cypher, he 
 
 The myth-insculptured language of the light, 
 
 In templed tome and lay columnar read, 
 
 The masque of gods. But not all spirits can bear, 
 
 Untutored, full and free access of truth. 
 
 The sage, who ken the verities of soul, 
 
 Whose be the preview clear of prophet-bard
 
 To ope the inner spirit by outward keys, 
 Who while unclothing still can screen the truth, 
 That inexpressive wisdom — silence known — 
 Unless in this wise, lip them not aloud. 
 
 Initiate and perfect in mysteries, 
 
 He graduated triumphant. Thrice he set 
 
 His foot upon the mount of light divine 
 
 And eyed the all beneath him. First, ere earth, 
 
 Like the libation of a crowned bowl, 
 
 O'erspilled the depths of the unknown abyss, 
 
 By Nile with honey flowing, that through soil 
 
 Promethean, swift as eagle pouncing, drops 
 
 Oceanwards, sun-beloved and primal land 
 
 Of magic marvels ; giant head of earth 
 
 First looming from the flinty seed of fire 
 
 And prea-ternal darkness — eldest ally 
 
 Of lost Atlantis, lost ere Europe crept 
 
 From Chaos' lap,- long time be wandered; (him 
 
 Jlis mother, child of royal priest, conceived 
 
 Dreaming of Gods in visions of the night, 
 
 Amid conspharate harmonies, and awaked 
 
 Never until she clasped ber dream-born) bent 
 
 To snatch from labyrinthine secrecies, 
 
 Wherein the holy mj taught their rites,
 
 8 
 
 Begenerant Truth ; from hall to hall pursue, 
 
 As though from sphere to sphere the winged soul, 
 
 Through all disguise the aeterual unity; 
 
 Through all terrestrial ill ccelestial good; 
 
 Through triple darkness light ; through matter's 
 
 marble veil 
 The divine spirit, all parent of the sun, 
 Queen of heaven's azure world-hive, celled with 
 
 stars. 
 
 He at his birth the starry stamps received, 
 For every limb held commune, with its god, 
 And planetary gifts plenipotent ; 
 The moon dispensed him riches, and the sun 
 Mind-wealth, that so before his dazed eyne 
 The splendid spectrum of immortal fame 
 Perpetual danced; soul-compulsory power, 
 The god of psychopompous function, round 
 Circling the sun with fourfold force ; love's star 
 The joys that come with beauteous shapes and eyes 
 Dewy and blue ; courage the god-star red ; 
 Supremacy and justice they who held 
 Successive, if usurped sway, o'er the skies. 
 
 Around him lay the great concerted whole;
 
 The moaning winds and cadent waters, fire 
 Aspirant, sea bass-toned and reboant earth ; 
 For only man's crude ear of discord dreams, 
 Jarring the orbed harmonies of heaven. 
 And for the cause that soon as born his lips 
 Dropped music, like to the dew-bright beads of 
 
 honey 
 From fleshy flowerets pendent, nectarous, he 
 The over-dominant movement of all life 
 Knew, and elicited its vital moods. 
 
 The soul of every animal, from the ox, 
 Thunder begotten, to the solar wolf — 
 As he re-rose from Hades, — god of death, 
 Thenceforward to man hallowed — to destroy 
 The spirit of all ill ; and scarab, type 
 Of tlii- greal world-artificer ; from the lord 
 Of golden flocks, lamb-headed, to the goal 
 Sacred to .-in in all rites, he, in turn, 
 
 '!.■', ami each to him the awful word 
 
 I' ed, that makes ope tin' thousand courts of life 
 
 The universal and asternal sign, 
 
 Itself life, death, and immortality, 
 
 Which silenceth yet answeretfa all demands, 
 
 Ami bindctli e\il with an endless chain.
 
 10 
 
 Armed and impowered therewith, no foe he fears 
 Who seeks salvation in the heights of heaven. 
 
 Asp-crowned, gold shod (thus treat the abhorred 
 
 gold 
 Of false esteem) his breast bedight with gems — 
 Home of all virtues and the embrace of Truth — 
 He prayed, he prophesied, divined, and judged. 
 
 In granite graven, and on porphyry hall 
 
 And ceiling, with imperishable touch, 
 
 He wrought the rise of night, and chaos' growth, 
 
 The gross alluvium of time's turbid stream — 
 
 And birth of Love, that venerable babe, 
 
 The recreator he of deathless life ; 
 
 "Wrought in that spirit awe-bound, wherewith, of old, 
 
 The workman chiselled some cherubic shape, 
 
 Nor knew but that the God who doth create, 
 
 And animate the whole— from whom the whole, 
 
 Like essenced, emanateth — might appear 
 
 In manifestive brightness, and array 
 
 His Being in the form the holy artist framed. 
 
 Close dogged by evil he the dateless hills, 
 Mountains of gems, of gold, of silver gained,
 
 11 
 
 "Within whose wombs he wonned ; but chased in 
 
 vain; 
 For the more vanquished he, more pofrer was his. 
 Him, naked ghosts of maddening beauty, lamped 
 By green and glistering gryphons' lidless eyes, 
 Led to alchemic vaults, where sat some seer 
 Great jewels minting, and from the refuse gold, 
 That nought be wasted, rounding royal crowns. 
 The costliest of all treasures, knowledge how 
 Like treasures to produce, he gathered there, 
 Nor cumbered him with perishable proofs. 
 Though by this tempted, and that warned, he took 
 The path of light, instinctive, and was saved. 
 For having fought hirf way through flood and flame, 
 Helped by good daemons, hindered by the bad, 
 And closed the gates of thunder on the gods 
 Where they in their marmoreal heaven abode, 
 Dark as the hourless mansions of the dead, 
 And tested all things ; in the coffin core 
 Of the heaven-wedding pyramid, at last 
 
 He fainted b perfection ; ami discerned 
 
 How sweet was truth, for death in truth was life. 
 
 In that blest death the gods divided him, 
 
 And the Btan claimed the portions erst their own ;
 
 12 
 
 They so adored him. "World beloved was he. 
 The sun his head ; the starry souls his eyes ; 
 His locks redundant asked the watery powers ; 
 The living spirit his temples; his strong hand 
 The lord of fate ; his bent knee worshipful 
 The goddess of divine life ; and his feet 
 The guardian of the destinies of souls. 
 
 Dear to the bearded serpent, spirit supreme, 
 "Whose omnipresent eye approves the world — 
 Eye of the world of life, and nature's soul, 
 Who lapped him in his cold blue coils, and flew 
 Where live the stars : there, mid nocturnal day 
 Where death's grim orb illumes the restless ghosts, 
 And with his scourge on their own hearts incribes 
 The tortures of the evils they have done, 
 He, weighed 'gainst Truth, down-dipped the skiey scale. 
 
 Thence, hawk-like, through the purgatorial air, 
 And many-regioned aether, peaceful, pure 
 Soul-quickening, soared he to the crescent moon, 
 And sailed the sky's abysmal sea of suns 
 In ark crystalline, manned by beamy gods, 
 To drag the deeps of space, and net the stars, 
 Where, in their nebulous shoals, they shore the void,
 
 13 
 
 And, through old night's Typhonian blindness, shine, 
 Then, solarized, he pressed onwards to the sun, 
 Lord of the living, guardian of all good ; 
 And, in the heavenly Hades, hall of God, — 
 "Whose eye begat the sun, whose mind the moon, 
 The goodness and the wisdom of their sire — 
 Had final welcome of the firmament. 
 The true triunal God, thrice-greatest, one, 
 Man, man-god, God, who symbolled, led him through 
 The sky-arched, God-built temple of the world. 
 
 Time's arid rivulet through its glassy gorge 
 
 Lapsed ceaseless; and again, by Gunga's wave, 
 
 (0 ! life and bliss assuring fount of heaven, 
 
 The life flowings divine of Deit\ , 
 
 How mighty, how mysterious is thy name!) 
 
 1 1 <-, of a damsel, sacred to the god 
 
 AVitli fellow-maidens sporting, whom a cloud 
 
 Of sunset glory clasped, ami drcumfused 
 
 AVitli vital brilliance, dropping — next was born. 
 
 Through the star gates of the high Luminous land 
 I me down the immortal aspirant of life. 
 Willi royal abnegation of all power 
 
 Prior, all motion, many a million \eara
 
 14 
 
 He had suffered as a mountain, and to heaven, 
 
 In fiery heartfloods, for a thousand moons 
 
 Without pause, preconfessed his sins, and then 
 
 .(Eternal silence laid her snow-cold hand 
 
 Upon his lips, and they were iced for ever ; 
 
 (After in life, the mount wherein he had been 
 
 Enstoned he recognised, and felt it throb 
 
 Beneath his footsteps, heart-like 'neath a hand). 
 
 A thousand years, an oak, he crowned the hill, 
 
 And navies traced to him their ancestry ; 
 
 In the sea's arms a million suns he passed; 
 
 Among the insect race that wing the air 
 
 Or crawl the dust, the like ; among the birds 
 
 That skim the sky, a myriad ; thrice that term 
 
 Through all four-footed tribes of nature, fierce 
 
 Or bland ; from these, through various grades of men, 
 
 Of divers nations the o'er-topping stems, 
 
 To the high peers of perfect sanctity, 
 
 Native wherein, at length, the hundredth time, 
 
 By pure persistency in sacred rites, 
 
 And stern assimilations of the soul 
 
 To fleshless life, even as the holy live, 
 
 Through seven bright spheres successive, he, his soul, 
 
 Lift upwards, like a mountain by the main, 
 
 That laves his marble feet sea deep, and high
 
 15 
 
 O'er shore, plain, verdure, cloud, snow, vapour, bares 
 
 To the chill sky, his reverent brow ; and he 
 
 This our initial world where all things fixed 
 
 Or free are passed ; the re-existent orb 
 
 Skiey wherein, until time's destined doom, 
 
 All that have lived mindful of sacrifice 
 
 And holy rites sleep calm ; and, as he passed, 
 
 He to the dimly gleaming shadows taught 
 
 A prayer would wring them entrance into bliss, 
 
 Like to the magic horn, in faerie halls, 
 
 Of blast resistless ; thrice blowu, every gate 
 
 Of every palace opens like a flower : 
 
 The odorous home of lightness, coolness, warmth, 
 
 Change pleasing and perpetual, where they bide, 
 
 Imbowered in all delights conceivable, 
 
 Who perfected by God's love to themselves, 
 
 And that pure love to all Ins love requires, 
 
 Upsoar to heaven, immediate, as the soul 
 
 Bursts from its bodily chrysalis ;— the mid-world 
 
 Between celestial and terrestrial spheres, 
 
 Where first the denizens of each commune, 
 
 Without or veil or shadow, toil or mask ; 
 
 There giants and divinities divide 
 
 The tar expanded sphere, and now in peace, 
 
 But oftener far in war; the birth-world whore
 
 16 
 
 The souls of the unhallowed, of all creeds 
 
 i\nd nations, dwell; where lower lives, too, lost 
 
 For sins of man, by general doom of lire, 
 
 Or flood, or sacrifice, are all re-born ; — 
 
 The mansion of the penitent blessed, where saints 
 
 Austere, and sons of the Supreme, self-ruled, 
 
 Reside in infinite freedom, to which sphere 
 
 A silver gate, a golden to the last, 
 
 Gives access ; the abode sublime of truth ; 
 
 By wisdom, duty, verity, only gained, 
 
 Gained, never to be lost; for there is God 
 
 Creator, and Preserver, and Destroyer; 
 
 Initial, and perfection of all Being ; 
 
 The infinite fulness of all spirit ; sum 
 
 And sun of all the souls of all the spheres, 
 
 "Wherein, through every life of man or brute — 
 
 In origin, not end, alike divine — 
 
 He darts his raylets vital and aoterne 
 
 He, the untempled God, above man's thought. 
 
 For lo! time's end, when, on his snowy steed, 
 The great Preserver, blazing like some star, 
 That with dischevelled infinites of light 
 Between the sun's breast and the icy arms 
 Of space eitremest oscillates, sudden draws,
 
 17 
 
 From out its sheathed night, his gleaming glaive 
 
 And robs the age of life ; then, all renewed, 
 
 Peace, innocence, and purity shall bind 
 
 In flowery chains, the bonds of liberty, 
 
 The race divine of man, the fruit of God ; — 
 
 And the whole earth, though now half burning sands 
 
 Or frost-white wilds, bloom into Paradise. 
 
 And after, even this shall cease ; the spirit 
 
 Inured to meditate alone on God, 
 
 Pleasure no more can please, finds scant delight 
 
 In fragrant fields, grows discontent with heaven ; 
 
 Tea, in pure wantonness with terror, tears 
 
 The masque material from Time's phantom face. 
 
 All Being shall then be rc-absorbed in God, 
 
 All minor deities in Ilirn shall merge, 
 
 As water vases, broken in mid sea, 
 
 Unite therewith the element they contained, 
 
 And add their calculable drops to its 
 
 [mmensurable abysses, whence were cast, 
 
 \ '.it of moulds, the mountains of the world; 
 
 For all that shews not God, illusion is. 
 
 Ami a- earth's thousand seas, Btreams, lakelets, pools 
 r i ir separate image of the star <>i' noon 
 Hold, thougb be be but one, so every soul
 
 18 
 
 Its semblance of the One Divine retains 
 Which all illumines, sweetens all ; and his, 
 Allied to God, in massive ease and power 
 Languescent, well might wield the world at will 
 Whose whispered mandates awed the thunder down. 
 
 He, lion-like within the desert, dwelled 
 
 From men apart, and so, intact of soul, 
 
 In heart ascetic, continent in thought, 
 
 The intelligible luxuries of life 
 
 Shunned ; to a boundless level planed his soul ; 
 
 Fasted on fruits ; and out of writhen frond, 
 
 Or flowery chalice, quaffed the fountain free. 
 
 By virtue of which liberated state, 
 
 Lofty and passionless as date-palm's bride, 
 
 High on the upmost summits of his soul — 
 
 Wrought of the elemental light of heaven, 
 
 And pure and plastic flame that soul could shew, 
 
 Whose nature like the perfume of a flower 
 
 Enriched with aromatic sun-dust, charms 
 
 All, and with all ingratiates itself, 
 
 Sat dazzling purity ; for loftiest things, 
 
 Snow-like, are purest. As in mountain morns 
 
 Expectant air the sun-birth, so his soul
 
 19 
 
 Her God into its supra-natural depths 
 
 Accepted brightly and sublimely. Yowed 
 
 To mystic visions of supernal things ; 
 
 Daily endowed with spheres and astral thrones, 
 
 His, by preemptive right, throughout all time ; 
 
 Immerged in his own essence, clarified 
 
 From all those rude propeusities which rule 
 
 Man's heart, a tyrant mob, and, venal, sell 
 
 All virtues, aye the crown of life to what 
 
 Passion soe'er prepotent, worst deludes 
 
 Or deftliest flatters, he, death-calm, beheld, 
 
 As though through glass of some far sighting tube, 
 
 The restful future ; and, consummed in bliss, 
 
 In vital and aetherial thought abstract, 
 
 The depths of Deity and heights of heaven. 
 
 Attached to things divine alone, as seal 
 To chart affixed, he all truth taught and sought, 
 Sweetly retired. As Eden's olive groves, 
 That, in the luminous mysteries of the sun 
 Perfectly ripened, were withdrawn to heaven 
 So pure, and so intaet, [ike diamond gas 
 
 Exhaling 'neath the keen, fire-hearted Iras 
 Lighter than light, imponderable power, 
 His spirit soared, unwavering, up the .-Lies.
 
 20 
 
 He, to the deities, as his nearer blood, 
 
 Willed all his grand domains, in trust, to keep 
 
 Holy and free; and still, to bar all strife, 
 
 His poor and ignorant kin, the kings of earth, 
 
 He piteously remembered ere he passed 
 
 Through deathland, to the ultimate realm of light, 
 
 And shared his orts among them ; they, his gates 
 
 Quitting, scarce grumbled their ungrateful thanks, 
 
 Because that, like the setting sun, he left 
 
 A world of gold behind him, free to all. 
 
 Time's arid streamlet through its glassy gorge 
 Flowed pauseless ; and, by Sida's crystal flood 
 Which, as with sea seven-tided, bathes the base 
 Of the high mount of vision, he was born 
 Again, to teach, to all the nations, life. 
 
 Born of the tree blood-sapped, which, on the steep 
 Of knowledge, thrice, by vital wind, imprcgned, 
 Buds forth her life, the mother of the world, 
 Upon the royal rock four-faced, he dwelled, 
 The tripod mountain, with its jewelled feet 
 Long while ; the orient side of silver pure ; 
 Beryl, the brow which over-awes the sun, 
 When, abdicating Heaven, he calls the stars
 
 21 
 
 To attest his end imperial ; the dead north 
 Of glowing gold, the south of ruby paled. 
 
 Up shining streams and over odorous lakes, 
 In golden boat or silver, pearly oared, 
 Dimpling the wave, he sped; or, dashing high 
 The fragrant foam ; and now his limbs imbathed 
 Amid immortal nymphs, serenely pure, 
 Like living lilies floating on the tide, 
 In love with their own shadows, as they lay 
 Beneath the cooling moon. From sacred trees 
 Ambrosial fruit and gem-wrought raiment, tinct 
 "With the sun's infinite aureole, he culled; 
 And walked resplendent witli his meteor eyes 
 Thrice round the dragon king, world-lii'ed, who saw 
 The first, and will the last of gods surview ; 
 So vast and vile a monster, heaven and earth 
 With thunderous groans and lurid blushes, hid 
 Tlicir starry heads, when (jod, in words of lire, 
 Asked them his generation, — Hell-begot, 
 
 Bell-born, they said, we know no more of him. 
 Yet sought he not illumination thence, 
 But due confession of divinity; 
 
 Por, in the radiance of a framo divine, 
 
 In oataJ and cudestiul light he stood. 
 

 
 >)•) 
 
 Though pure in aspiration, pure as is 
 The pearl-rose halo round a star, so, proof 
 Of the divine within us and the strain 
 Of the ccelestial heavenward, yet he sinned, 
 In virtue of his nature, and sought earth; 
 For sin is nature; and through all life's gates, 
 Like to the perishing flowery arches reared 
 Before some fane, he willed to pass, for he 
 The ultimate sanctity and seternal joy 
 Foreknew that they led up to; and, perchance, 
 By his own consciousness of final bliss, 
 lie might the hearts of millions fortify. 
 
 Now the destruction and re-birth of things 
 
 He saw, and preached, and warned mankind they 
 
 came ; 
 By water first; the gentlest rain distils 
 In the beginning like small dust, until, 
 Enlarging, gradual, every drop descends 
 Huge as a millstone, and all life is drowned; 
 Then rise seven suns, succes.>ivr, and at once 
 Inhabit Heaven, till the whole orb be drained 
 Of ocean, sea, lake, river, moistui'e, damp, 
 Parched to a powder ; last of all, a wind, 
 
 bt as a leaf's breath 'gins to blow, and blows
 
 23 
 
 Stronger and stronger, till the tempestuous blast 
 Uproots the mountains, eddying them about 
 Like feathers in a whirlpool ; all the rocks, 
 Disintegrate, lie loose and level dust, 
 And the vast sphere is scattered o'er the skies, 
 Like sand o'er an arena. Water again 
 Instals the regeneration of the world, 
 Condensing some few atoms which the wind 
 Eounds into raindrops ; and, cohaering thus, 
 Drives languidly together, mass by mass ; 
 The lighter particles rise, and air become; 
 The grosser fall, and cause the element earth ; 
 This, fire solidifies, till, whole at length. 
 The fused orb rehabilitated, rolls 
 As theretofore upon its ccelar path. 
 Thus, thrice made pure, by water, fire, and wind, 
 In essence, earth spreads wide her lap, and heaven 
 (In flowery showers, cropped by the hand of gods, 
 Fruits, riches, and the robes of truth), descends; 
 Wliile censer-clouds condensed of sun-nred fragranci< a 
 Perfecl the sweet lustration of all life. 
 
 I ii saintly destitution, Bacred oe< d, 
 
 Ik, lighl of time, his life-day harmless passed, 
 
 Sparing all life by charity ; and, since
 
 24 
 
 All soul-sin seems a missing of the mark 
 Resultant from imperfect force or aim, 
 Exhorting all to look and work for good, 
 In the supreme hencficence of God. 
 Tor evil is temporal only, nor can be 
 In the divine sternal. From the void, 
 Along with bright creation, as its shade, 
 It rose, and back to vasty void returns. 
 
 Time's arid runnel through its glassy gorge 
 Glode ceaseless ; and, anon, where the huge stream, 
 Son of the sea, bursts through the skiey gates, 
 Born of an angel maid and heaven descended, 
 Who, bathing in its midst, the white-orbed flower, 
 Of root eternal born, eternal bud, 
 Upon its waters floating, tasted and ate ; 
 Till, her within, its golden-dusted stem 
 Branched crosswise into life, and fructified 
 To soul ; the flower-begotten son of heaven, 
 From birth immediate, perfected his steps, 
 \ -mning all divinity; and hailed 
 Himself the incorporate order of the skies. 
 
 Nursed by the starry sea and those twin lakes 
 Named eyes of heaven, and fed on the bright gems
 
 25 
 
 Dropped from dracontian lips, whose virtue gave 
 Sole sustenance to his being, and whereby 
 The living lines, on fiery wivern's back, 
 The secret counsel of the universe 
 Once read, translated all things, he achieved 
 At one enlightening pang and blessed his woe. 
 Eeason supreme him made innately wise, 
 The stars prophetic and the holy moon, 
 Interpreter to time of things aeterne, 
 Euler of rites and sacred festivals. 
 
 And the invisible heavens the giant world 
 
 Through him instructed ; him ! star of earth 
 
 Thou saddest, wisest, eldest of all lights ! 
 
 The formless origin of things, and how, 
 
 Proceeding from itself, the infinite 
 
 Finite becomes; returning thitherward, 
 
 The finite infinite, whereby the parts, 
 
 O'erleaping tlie interstitial net of death, 
 
 Regain that continuity of soul 
 
 Which ones them with the boundless and divine, 
 
 Throned apon [ion bides and dragon skins — 
 Cloud-breathing dragons homed in heights of air, 
 Amid the golden land lii.s mellower years,
 
 2G 
 
 Studious of immortality, lie passed; — 
 
 Now by the moon-enclosing mountain, now 
 
 Scaling the cloud-throne where the immortal fowl 
 
 Of mighty fortune, wafts from his jewelled nest 
 
 The winds of all the world — he gave the youth 
 
 Ubiquitous dominion 'tween his wings ; 
 
 And bore him swift to the cities of the skies 
 
 Gleaming aloft, tranquil, in starry bliss ; — 
 
 Now where the sacred soul-tree scents the breeze, 
 
 Mid marble cities, by the shore of pearl ; 
 
 Or where the fountain, sprung from lightning flash, 
 
 The fire-born water, flows, in whose bright depths 
 
 He consecrates himself; around its source 
 
 The true immortals dwell, of man unseen. 
 
 "Where, on the hill of dreams, the flower of sleep 
 Flings forth its silky leaflets, he, the juice 
 Drank of millennial herb, a thousand years 
 All blight resisting, which to age brings back 
 Electric youth, the glory, this, of earth, 
 And king of flowers. From him the holy learned 
 Eeligion, justice, temperance, wisdom, faith, 
 Outer and inner knowledge, endogenous truth, 
 The five-fold world and elemental lore ; 
 All mysteries hidden and imperfect, all
 
 27 
 
 Public and perfect secrets of the world, 
 
 Of Heaven, earth, lightning, mountains, fire, and 
 
 clouds, 
 Water and wind, and when the end draws nigh. 
 To spirit transcendant of inferior spheres 
 Nature is always ominous ; notes of birds 
 Doomful, and animal movements ; sun-shot gleams, 
 And noon-day apparitions, shades, and pools 
 Wherein the eve-star tricks her tresses bright; 
 And upward arts of fire ; presaging all 
 Immortal destinations that so man, 
 In likeness of divine perfection made, 
 Happy on earth but happier far on high, 
 Might reinstal the primal state of heaven. 
 
 Alms gave he, as an alchemist, whose gold 
 
 Flows inexhausUess, or whose pearly draught, 
 
 Tin! potable perpetuity of lili' 
 
 Vouched to its proud possessor; till at lasi 
 
 \ man, tine errant babe, intent on death, 
 
 In orbital aphelion \\ itli liis sire. 
 
 I5a<l< to the irresistible bosom of love 
 
 Wheels bis precipitous foot, and with a smile, 
 Forseeing bis apotheosis there, 
 Bounds to embrace the beaut) infinite;
 
 28 
 
 So he, divinely rooted in the world, 
 And lifting into life his facial flower, 
 Back to the pre-eternals called of God, 
 Passed, disappearing in the essential heavens. 
 
 Time's sand diy runnel through its glassy strait 
 
 Flowed checkless ; and the immortal seeker now, 
 
 The son of seven bright parents, orbs divine 
 
 In prccreative fire conjunctive ranged, 
 
 Upon the hallowed ground where Phrat still pours 
 
 His Paradeisal wavelets, cave-born, stood, 
 
 Gray -bearded from his birth ; and onward, urged 
 
 By the divine affinities of truth, 
 
 "Which, in the lowest depth, sees but a step 
 
 Back to the pure perfection of the heavens, 
 
 He crept, in stifling darkness, through a cave 
 
 High vaulted, yea a world cave, where, as in Heaven, 
 
 The truth first glimmered on him like a star; 
 
 Shewing where waited him a white winged steed, 
 
 That, fed on fiery adders, slaked his throat 
 
 Prom burning wells. Him mounting, on he sped 
 
 Through lions, wolves, and dragons, men of might, 
 
 Open or secret enemies, sands of fire 
 
 And storms of hail, the world's contempt or hate, 
 
 The spells of wine and gold, luxurious love,
 
 29 
 
 Seductive beldames and adulterous ghouls, 
 Yices that flesh devour, defile the dead, 
 The sun-fowl, spirit of life-consuming time, 
 The daemons that in mental darkness dwell, 
 The brazen fort of royal tyranny, 
 "With sin-black hills engirthed (circumferent six, 
 Central the seventh) all-mastering, though half-spent ; 
 Through threatening files of flamy ghosts and fiends 
 Created from primaeval darknesses ; 
 The horrors of all visionary hells; 
 Huge spectral daemons, figurative of sins; 
 And clueless mazes to the mouldy abyss 
 Where, couched on rottenness, and guarded sole 
 By pitfalls brimmed with crawling, weltering, worms 
 Lo! the white monster which appals the world; 
 Death, but not him. O'er moats of sanguine slime, 
 And towers where glared a green and ghastly light, 
 -And battlemented walls of human bones, 
 Jle sprang triumphant on his shrieking foe; 
 Smote him, and from his heart three blood drops 
 
 black, — 
 
 Black ai the night the Son-God passed in hell, — ■ 
 Wrung; thence ascending by a starry stair, 
 Bach step a bliss, a virtue, he emerged 
 Soldier of God, and conqueror of all fear,
 
 30 
 Therewith to purge the eye of wisest man. 
 
 Sealing on foot the mount of heavenly fire, 
 
 Where throned on triple columns sate the sun, 
 
 He, in the glory of the bridegroom, stood, 
 
 And knelt to hear the luminaries divine, 
 
 The first created witnesses of God, 
 
 Who in His bosom holds the living world 
 
 As shepherd in his arms star-spotted fawn. 
 
 From the moon's hand her starry stole he took, 
 
 And zonelet studded with thrice ten beamy rings, 
 
 Shining with light genetic, either side 
 
 Broidered with signs though breathing, living not. 
 
 Indued, bespake him then the Perfect Light 
 
 In wisdom's signal silence, and unrolled 
 
 Before his eyes the archives of the heavens, 
 
 The original deeds of God's great government, 
 
 Star-writ, the golden-winged tongue of gods, 
 
 Time's charter, and the fire-bound book of love, 
 
 And heaven's all trinal lights. There too he viewed 
 
 Participator of God's general light, 
 
 The infinite circlet filled of Deity, 
 
 The world-wheel through the which he had winged 
 
 in soul 
 Beyond the high and azure plain of truth,
 
 31 
 
 To alight upon the peak of happiness : — 
 
 There converse held with all the eloquent orbs, 
 
 Interpretative stars, and counselling gods, 
 
 "Who thoughts divine, thoughts earthly, interchange. 
 
 Sword, sceptre, key were given him, robe of white, 
 
 And ring of royalty, wherewith he found 
 
 Due worship of the golden-bearded kings, 
 
 Who from the mystic satchel where the lots 
 
 Are cast of destiny, to him brought forth 
 
 The inedible fruit of immortality. 
 
 They in his hands the volumed lightnings laid, 
 
 And bound him by an oath which all things heard, 
 
 In thunderous echo of the unuttered word. 
 
 The balanced hemispheres he held, wherein 
 
 The !_ r o<)(l ;iud evil of all time are weighed, 
 
 With universal justice, whence is shewn, 
 
 ill-solicitous Love and doom divine, 
 Man is, of (Jod, the mean, and God, man's end; 
 
 to tin- true soul all are ends divined. 
 From everlasting, to their ordinal stand. 
 
 Out of 'In' world-bright cup of divination — 
 
 Filled from the .stream of life, that 'math the tliroim 
 
 Of li'-dit rolls ever, where its rhythmic llovi
 
 32 
 
 Breaks into song-fraught wavelets lipped with light, 
 He quaffed, and, mirrored in its rim, beheld 
 All forms of future things ; the magic rose, 
 Of speechless virtue, proof 'gainst all vile charms, 
 That blossomed on the bank he culled and smelled, 
 And, from its fragrance, knowledge of the passed 
 Perfumed his being ; from the whole he knew, 
 Truth of all times and wisdom of all worlds — 
 That all the constellations of the skies 
 Shall lapse into the lamb, within his arms 
 The cross of light upreared, while in her hand 
 The virgin tunes her star-strung, lilied lyre. 
 
 Of the coelestial vine, ten thousand branched, 
 Which stretched o'er the skiey roof of earth, 
 Heaven's holy tree, whereon the luminous fruit • 
 Of soul unborn, in glittering clusters hung, 
 One by one dropping into mortal moulds, 
 A golden shower, he tasted ; and by stealth 
 Plucked from the pomegranates of Paradise, 
 Unknown to crowds, the secret fruit of life, 
 Star-orbed, immortal, ripe with solar seed 
 The single seed, deathful yet mastering death, 
 And knew himself divinified ; for he, 
 With lote and holy honey-suckle crowned,
 
 33 
 
 As well the bruised theangeline, which gives 
 Prophetic sense, as juice of aglaophant, 
 That subjects to the eye the invisible world, 
 And hom sweet herblet of immortal life, 
 Sipped, till transmute he stood, star-headed ; felt 
 His eyes irradiate with an inward light, 
 And recognized his angels where they wheeled, 
 Like mated falcons round their creanced young, 
 Saluting him in rapture, man of men, 
 Sole son of life, the crown and heir of time. 
 
 They with him ranged the lucent orb thoughout 
 In after times man's home to be, wherein 
 I 'lain, perfect, shadowless, like a globe of glass, 
 Men shall be known of separate nations only 
 Because their hauls of different jewels are; 
 The continents of diamond, isles of pearl ; 
 There shall be but two mountains, this of gold, 
 Of silver that; the seas shall all be wine, 
 The lakelets li ydroinel, the rivers milk ; 
 
 And, like some mystic palace, every borne, 
 A star walled city, seven-fold fortified. 
 
 II'- at, their he t (so Heaven's own hook of spheres 
 
 [nsculpt in arrowy light, ordained,) Ins soul
 
 
 In the moon's argent streams did imbaptize, 
 
 I purified his spirit in the sun; 
 \ handful there of astral lire then seized, 
 And hid it in his bosom like a flower; 
 From whence all sacred light was kindled here. 
 
 One with all truth, he held himself divine 
 
 While here he breathed ; a flowering branch of light, 
 
 That by intense devotion shed a bloom 
 
 Of luminous beauty round the blinded mass ; 
 
 A part supreme of the all-whole supreme; 
 
 Perfection in perfection perfected; 
 
 Abstracted from the world and gained to God. 
 
 Whirled in a winged chariot with the skies 
 Down through the planetary gates of light 
 And lunar valves descending, earth again 
 lie raught, and, mingling with its chequered race, 
 On the far fields of fire his God adored. 
 
 Time's arid streamlet through its glassy gorge 
 Slid ceaseless; and the sphere-experienced now, 
 Like to the pine, that, from its own sweet fruit, 
 Springs into crowned perfection, from that crown 
 A gain educing its delicious end,
 
 35 
 
 Fell, with a falling star, into the breast 
 Of a mild nymph, who, by the muse-loved bank 
 Of sweet Ilissus slumbered. Sore amazed 
 She watched the growing wonder of her side, 
 Nor knew the mystery till ten times the moon, 
 "Working like marvellous birth in heaven, and still 
 \- oft recovering crescent purity, 
 [Jshered the throbbing secret into licht. 
 That he his starry ancestry might hail. 
 
 Witting right well what 'twas to fall from Heaven, 
 From the immoveable star-plane to the prime 
 Conceptacle of motion, moonwards, through 
 All spheres in graded order, to the orb 
 Where dwells, in secret cell, tin- hermit Life; 
 Hi* lol Ik- knew, and straightwise calmly went 
 1 1 is beaven-enquiring way, how best he might 
 Win back Hi'' death-lost birthright of the skies. 
 
 Plunged in primeval darkness he began, 
 Prom ili'- first breathings of bhe universe, 
 Hi- god-like quest. By all bhe elements 
 ll«- was advised ami aided. The real sea 
 
 \l' olved liiin of nil <mI of mii ; tin' earth 
 Embraced bim as a child in ber dark breast,
 
 36 
 
 And of her life the active passion taught; 
 Fire lent him torches kindled at the shrine 
 Of some volcano's mighty altar, reared 
 By mightier nature to the almighty sire, 
 That he might light the holy to their end. 
 
 Air gave him access to the gods, and made 
 Her boundless reaches, rich with ore of light, 
 Common to man and all divinities ; 
 The aetherial fields of fire impalpable, 
 "Where the pro-kosmial forms of thought abide, 
 Divine, of God projected, won his soul, 
 With pure ingenerate beauty, to explore 
 Mind's genial mysteries ; theirs true life alone. 
 
 But though all helped him none could satisfy : 
 The course and destiny of that he sought 
 "Was from hini hid in Hades. Many a rite 
 Mysterious, secret, sacred, night and day, 
 "With numbers, with a winnowed few, alone, 
 Tea sole, at last, he pressed through, till to him 
 The sun and moon, the glorious twins of light, 
 God's golden seal, God's silver seal, grew dim 
 To the self luminous truth in Hadean halls 
 Which shining shewed the soul, whose fate he urged,
 
 37 
 
 The bride-queen of the God that sought her love, 
 And dowered her with Elysium's diadem. 
 
 Rapt to the breast of foutal Deity 
 
 Divine embraces there received he, both 
 
 Adoring and adored, by gods themselves 
 
 "Worshipped and men, he moved felicitous ; 
 
 The radiant serpent nestling in his breast 
 
 And twining round his waist, caducean. Thence 
 
 Regenerate, and divergent weal and bale, 
 
 Bound to the sovran sceptre still of power, 
 
 In the necessitous knot of life and love 
 
 Assigning, godlike to the universe, 
 
 Consociate of divinity, he viewed, 
 
 With Btarry and all sympathizing eye, 
 
 The sublunary realms of deathly life; 
 
 Felt the aseimilant influences of heaven 
 
 Flash through his soul with lightning joy, and meet 
 
 Reply in earth-born fulminations made; 
 
 Saw the precontinence of the whole by God 
 
 Within Himself, and ebb of Being's sea. 
 
 Blessed with all visions holy and divine, 
 
 1 minunion holding <m!\ with the wise, 
 
 Silent in lighi (the radiant lizard lo\. 
 
 I)
 
 38 
 
 And lives in light, himself all constellate) 
 
 With Truth lie joyed (aa when the moon, disguised 
 
 Like naked nymph, her limbs of light revealed 
 
 To him, enamoured, on the Latmian hill, 
 
 Whose touch was inspiration, whose embrace 
 
 Deific, seemed absorption into heaven ;) 
 
 Abstinent of all matter, every cause 
 
 Of mental perturbation, base desire, 
 
 Eradicate and razed, the lunar ark 
 
 Of pure regeneration awed he viewed; 
 
 Beheld the asternal husbandman of heaven, 
 
 "Who sowed with star-seed all the wilds of space, 
 
 Scattering the worlds broad-cast upon his way; 
 
 And to that tilth ccclestial set his hand. 
 
 But not descent alone knew he ; from where 
 
 Earth's Atlantean horizon upheaves 
 
 The inconceivable convex, to the sum 
 
 And polar point of light he passed, and thence, 
 
 As at earth's natal movement, downwards struck, 
 
 Through starry strophes and conversire glide 
 
 Of orbs that round the ever festive sun, 
 
 And unformed stars, to heavens immortal gates; 
 
 And as all nature animate on earth 
 
 Began with life amphibious, so fore-starred
 
 30 
 
 By the celestial crab, with whom the world 
 Ita eastward march commenced, — (for truly earth 
 Crept ere she flew upon the breathing winds, 
 Bounding the void inane, — and gradual all 
 Accomplish due perfection,) — he between 
 The asselline starlets and the manger dim 
 AVon, studious of the universal life ; 
 Isis twin godlings, sdence and the light, 
 Shewed him their common immortality; 
 The bull with horns star-nebbed; the ram, disk- 
 crowned ; 
 And fish Euphratean, taught their varied life, 
 Their spheral natures and spiritual hopes ; 
 Por of all these the denizens aspire 
 Towards the invisible and paternal heavens ; 
 By his ©therial side he paused who pours, 
 (On templed tablet traced), from ample urn, 
 Tin- first i li'usion into chasmy space. 
 That starry stream and matter prime of worlds, 
 Kivor of God, on silver wings he swam, 
 By goat-fish, crocodile, or horned whale, 
 The mountain-swallowing deluge embleming, 
 Ami demigod, who voluntary died, 
 A i m i n L, r star-headed arrow winged with light; 
 Wh<» taught him there sidereal truth as once
 
 40 
 
 The Larissican youth Parnassian lore ; 
 
 By scorpion dcath-stinged, or Typhonian snake, 
 
 He boldly hied; and by the assessor stern, 
 
 "With rod and balance poised, saw weighed the 
 
 worlds, 
 And heard the utmost measurement of time ; 
 Beside the maid fruit-bearing be espied 
 Her new-born starlet, the god altar-throned, 
 By all the moons encircled of the year; 
 And lion, hearted with a royal orb, 
 Which nigh his shaggy shoulder bore the sun, 
 Invincible, who, neath his yoke of light, 
 Compels the starry armies of the heavens ; 
 He, thief divine, heaven's starry apples steals, 
 And glories in the feat; in slumber lulls 
 Air's orbed eyes o'erwatchful of the earth ; 
 Unfolds the love of beauty to the gods ; 
 Fills earth with nymphs and heroes and their seed 
 Semi-divine ; usurps the throne of heaven ; 
 From west to east, foot-swiftest of all things, 
 Courses the sky ; withdraws the moon from earth ; 
 Yet mindful of the time when once with eye 
 Extinct, he groped the concave, till the flock, 
 Barn-marshalled, 'scaped the darkness of the sun, 
 And victims, death devote, renewed their life;
 
 41 
 
 And once, by night o'ercome, his locks of light 
 Shorn,— but Time's temple hath not fallen yet; 
 Xor yet the Herculean pillars, east and west, 
 Embracing, hath he hurled to total wreck ; 
 Xor yet the gates of glory gone for aye. 
 
 There resting on that regal sphere of light 
 
 And happiest altitude, he stood and knew 
 
 The a-therial essence of creation ; saw 
 
 The world of mind roll Godwards through all time, 
 
 .And the circuitous course of good in life, 
 
 Till temporal and asternal coalesce; 
 
 For stars are signs of constellated truths 
 
 ^Eternal in the intelligible heavens; 
 
 that to every world, wherever placed, 
 Shine other eagles, serpents, crosses, crowns; 
 That hydra .^ins of foul corruption bred 
 Subdued by grace arc glorified; whose yet 
 Unceasing Bibilation sounds, through life, 
 To arms, the saintly combai of the soul, 
 llim, therefore, the celestial fiend, who breathes 
 
 The breath of (hath and from his mortal mouth 
 1'hnj air; beneath whOBC fatal fangs 
 
 ( 'i-eat ion • ickena and all ev II reigns, 
 
 lie fought, to free from fear the affrighted world;
 
 12 
 
 Until the all holy and regenerant star 
 
 Rise that shall rise, and into light transmute 
 
 The sacred body of the universe ; 
 
 And Truth, triumphant virgin and divine, 
 
 All virtues heavenly and humane fulfilled, 
 
 All suffering, all overcoming, up and rule, 
 
 Sweet saviour of celestials. She his brow 
 
 There sealing with a seven-rayed star, in sign 
 
 Of victory achieved, around his neck 
 
 Olympian, wrapped the mantling skies moon-clasped; 
 
 The solar bowl of blended blood and wine, 
 
 That sparkles in the prototypic skies, 
 
 The chalice handed aye of Nemesis, 
 
 To lips oracular, dreadless he" received, 
 
 And life reviving quaffed ; whence, clear in sight, 
 
 He saw the rise of spirit, in its prime 
 
 And purity sublimely ignorant, long, 
 
 Till after lapse and forfeiture of bliss, 
 
 All earthly suffering, and descent of death, 
 
 Dearer to him and lovelier for her fall, 
 
 Celestial love the soul immortal wed. 
 
 Thence tracing the unseen course, which earth shall 
 
 tread, 
 In a no fabulous future, when the will
 
 43 
 
 Of man, so oft transversive of the truth, 
 With Hod's shall coincide, and all be light — 
 The bright abyss he soared, but left unnamed; 
 Whether in lapse of ages it shall trend 
 Towards the Orphean light — of old there held 
 Tvpe of concordant spheres ; or southern sign, 
 That in the heavenly roodloft starwise beams, 
 Stands untranslated in the book of God. 
 The book of nature He himself hath writ 
 God still delights to read, and star by star 
 Unfolds the volume of the universe 
 Fate-clasped ; in time and order by Him fixed. 
 
 Thus conversant with gods, immortal, he 
 The pure perfection whence he fell regained, 
 Gifts pleni-solar, and pne-astral powers, 
 Prophetic, and mnemonic of all time, 
 With added wisdom of all ill and good. 
 The gates of death he passed and doubly lived, 
 The gates of life, whereby the blest ascend; 
 Then drave bis dragon chariot round the world, 
 Lashing with lightnings till they sweated lire. 
 Gaming with golden <\'-.'-r, he of the Sun 
 
 on thrice his light; <>f oce:m, deep by deep, 
 II- boundless realms; of earth ber countless lands;
 
 44 
 
 But their own bade them take again, while he 
 Ono moment merged in that leviathan womb, 
 And through the starry tabernacles borne, 
 By seven bright maids immortal (gleeful they 
 At the lost brightness refound) from the depths 
 Of heaven's sidereal river drew and drank 
 The lymph divine of light, the dew of life. 
 
 Throughout the vast passivity he passed 
 All active, through the grand ellipse of life, 
 And circular progress of the wind-winged world, 
 Safe from all storms of fate and floods of ill, 
 And dreadless of the gorgon mask of Death. 
 
 All nature gladdened in those rites ; the sea 
 Avouched his safely ; fire would harm him none ; 
 Danced moon and sun around him with tin sir stars ; 
 And the Great leather solemnly rejoiced. 
 
 Hallowed of heaven and consecrate of man 
 
 He in his palm the eye-crowned sceptre swayed, 
 
 And belted sate enthroned and diademed. 
 
 Time's sand-dry streamlet through its glassy strait 
 Killed restless; and the heaven-invested seer,
 
 45 
 
 Of rainbow born and dragon stony-winged, 
 
 "While lineally descended of the sun, 
 
 And cradled in regenerative tomb, 
 
 The orbit of his life renewed. Beside 
 
 The stream lhat through the midst the beauteous isle 
 
 Disparts, tree hid, tree hight, (where haply once 
 
 The tyrant lion of some cavernous land 
 
 To lesser brutes his deathful law dispensed ; 
 
 Or with the jungle monarch, ivory-tusked 
 
 Held thunderous parley by the tidal swamp) 
 
 Or where the wave, prophetic and divine 
 
 From Bala pours ; or on the far off coasts 
 
 Of sacred isle, where lunar mysteries 
 
 Are solemnised, as erst, and consummate; 
 
 Or, 'mid rude dwellings, once the abode of gods 
 
 Of hostile faiths, lie lowly dwelled, and learned 
 
 On liis cold knee, before white-bearded Eld, 
 
 Prom Truth's pale lips her everlasting lay, 
 
 .And deepest, pithiest lore. For thrice nine years, 
 
 Through fits of silence, loneness, fasting, toil, 
 
 I |e foughl I lie foe of spirit ami i ubdued. 
 
 The thrice thinned juices of the all-healing plant, 
 
 With moon-dews mingled and eye-brightening charms 
 
 The unseen I himself ini Lsible ; 
 
 I loii.v, and hen i, n d of I he eerie wood,
 
 4(5 
 
 Oakcorns and apples, roots and wheaten cates, 
 His tare and bever formed for twice an age, 
 With amber flowing mead at mooned feasts. 
 
 He on the circular mount of safety dwelled, 
 Taught by ccelestial serpent of the sun ; 
 And learned his solar syllables of lire, 
 And the moon's mountain alphabet (first conned 
 By them of old, who, in the ark-hive, warred 
 Sole with a world of waters, warred and won ; ) 
 And from the rock, cave-crested, downwards led, 
 Eye-bounden, by the hand of priestess maid, 
 "Who in prophetic solitude abode ; 
 Through the returnless valley, and thick-branched 
 Forest, whose trees sore strived, with audible groans 
 Their steps to intercept, they thrid their way 
 Shorewards, to where the hazy sea of death 
 Broke in black billows, soundless, through their 
 
 wrath, 
 Intangible its waters. Pacing thence 
 Into a skiff of grisly marble, they 
 O'er those mysterious straits quick steering, made 
 The isle of blessed ghosts, with plenar breath 
 That bright witch-virgin, silent but inspired, 
 The filmy sail o'erlilling, and called up
 
 47 
 
 With the spirit of her breath so fierce a storm, 
 That with their madding moil the waves themselves 
 Inflamed ; fire boiled ; and all the waters blaze. 
 
 Conductress ! O enchantress ! lead me back, 
 He cried, among the nations. They, meanwhile 
 Eeturning, she to him like power imparts, 
 Which freely he receives. The o'erilooding stream 
 Whose freshets grieved the villager, he froze 
 With one blast of his breath ; then, from its bed, 
 Like to a glistening snake, the evil tore, 
 And hung it high, stream upwards, on the hill. 
 
 Against a foamy torrent in a skill' 
 
 of glass, he fountwards steered, nor, rock-dashed, 
 
 1 1 rake; 
 Till in the stilly birth-pool, anchored safe 
 Amid translucent shadows, he, beyond 
 All watery bruit a stone-cast, rode Berene. 
 
 I5v living ladder, to the enchanted chair 
 Gigantic, hewn of huge and holy rock, 
 Lifted, he aid all the stars outstared, 
 
 Grazing them down, dog, centanr, eagle, bull; 
 \ii<1 the unmeasured monsters >>\' Heaven's main
 
 48 
 
 Came foaming to his feet and licked his hand. 
 They his heart lighted up ; and he from them 
 Taught wisdom to the serpent ; and to spheres 
 
 Their secret revolution, silent sone:, 
 And sacred circuition of the sun. 
 
 Impowered in turn by these with chariest charms, 
 The sun, from dawn to night-noon, he outeyed 
 From the peaked mountain which commands the 
 
 world, 
 And earth's penumbral pinions, by her side 
 Quivering; with him he leaped in joy of life 
 Immortal proven, hand in hand, through air; 
 In sign whereof on that most holy day, 
 Heaven's globed flower whose perfume is the light, 
 Hose from the polar-north perpend, and not 
 With slow initial motion from the west, 
 As theretofore, in ages lost to time, 
 Ere coal-palm leaved, or pristine pine, now tombed 
 In earth's sepulchral centrals, had put forth 
 The mystic life-cone, fern her feathery stem. 
 
 On many an altar at his beck the sun 
 
 Shot down his shafts of light; the heavens and he 
 
 Spake miracles together, and exchanged
 
 49 
 
 Sojourn of spirits ; for, the heavenly came 
 Earthwards, and heavenwards went the earthlier. 
 
 Between the fires of suu and moon he passed 
 Benefic; and throughout the hallowed land, 
 As at the great rekindling, when the heavens 
 Shall shine vi ith souls in galaxies, as now 
 With st;ii's, beneath the priest creator's hand, — 
 Dealt forth to all the sun-incepted light. 
 
 Upon the pyrameidal mount of law 
 
 lie sat, and soothed the nations at his feet, 
 
 Urging in wavy trihes their yearly right 
 
 Of blessing, and prescriptive gift of fire, 
 
 The dues of doom, the balance and the chain; 
 
 The starry chain which links all souls to God. 
 
 Born from between the triual clifts, age-ripe, 
 In love and wisdom Ik; all power consummed; 
 
 Midst of the luminous circle when; tho one 
 
 The twain o'ertowers, and from the twain the third 
 
 Derives, Ihe whole one trine; and where the sun, 
 
 red city, as I he do e 
 Of the great year con cularly round, 
 
 l» BCends, and Bingfl and dances through the night;
 
 50 
 
 Harping to all around his own high deeds, 
 The grain and fruit ho ripens, and the breasts 
 Of living things he animates anew, 
 In countless generations, times untold ; 
 The many-nationed orbs he fills with joy ; 
 The many-citied lands he roofs with light; 
 The many-ish'd seas he sows with life; 
 While o'er them all his golden robe he easts, 
 Stands the arch mystic, celebrant of Heaven : 
 And as the solar song in silence ends, 
 All gazing on the firmamental eye, 
 Eesponsive to the light, his lyre he lifts, 
 And sings with sphrcral power creation past; — 
 
 God was, alone in unity. He willed 
 The infinite creation; and it was. 
 That the creation might exist, His Son, 
 And that it might return to Him, the Spirit 
 Disclosed themselves within Him; thus triune 
 But as the all-made must of necessity 
 Inferior be to its creator, thus 
 Arose the infinite imperfect, time, 
 The spirit host angelic, heavenly race, 
 Brute life and vegetive, electric light, 
 Matter and fleshly form ; to human souls ■
 
 51 
 
 Nine generations from eternity. 
 
 But God, who is Love, decreed it should return 
 
 By pure regeneration unto God ; 
 
 "Wherefore was need that He from whom came life 
 
 Should taste death, but in tasting swallow up ; 
 
 That commune with all creatures might be made, 
 
 On this hand, and on that, with Deity. 
 
 Thus death and evil expiate ends divine ; 
 
 The Spirit the imperfect hallowing, death 
 
 The Son ; the soul regenerate hies to God ; 
 
 And as in radial union with the point 
 
 Infinite, both in greatness place and power, 
 
 Lives with the maker and the all-made in love. 
 
 In anticlinal order next he hailed, 
 
 And interpcndcnt harmonies of song, 
 
 Gentle and fine as the concurrent curve. 
 
 Perpetual, in the orbits of twin stars, 
 
 The future fates and times divine to be; 
 
 The negative divinity of man; 
 
 The holy and unhappy blent in bliss 
 
 At last; the pa led unburthened of her doom, 
 
 Jiike conscience of her Belf-secretive truth, 
 
 Ckmdemning conduct but assuring life; 
 
 Ami when, in thai past rolume penned of God
 
 52 
 
 "Whose text is earth, whose margin is the main, 
 
 His everlasting service shall hecomo 
 
 One hymn triumphant, jubilant; from all 
 
 Doubt or fear free, remorse or self-reproach; 
 
 Serenely issuing from the soul of man, 
 
 .\ a from the lee of the o'ershadowing moon, 
 
 Suddenly perfect, glides a star occult. 
 
 Ceased he ; and all apart as the altar stone 
 
 Of some Titanic temple, reared in eld, 
 
 The golden and gigantic age of earth, 
 
 By sacred groves, sun-founts and scats of gods 
 
 Enringed, and radial avenues of rocks 
 
 All navelling in the sanctuary divine, 
 
 There at the universal mother's shrine, 
 
 Round whom nine hallowed maidens minister, 
 
 He worships in the granite-winged fane. 
 
 From wisdom's pearl-lipped bowl the draught he drains 
 Of pure oracular rede, which rendereth men 
 As gods wise, and illumed with day-like light: 
 Then with his white wand cleaves the skies, and gives 
 To kings their laws, to states their faith, to both 
 The empire he disdeigns. To all he makes 
 Patent his end, (truth's honey-gilded draught
 
 53 
 
 Boding him this,) and on the central shrine, 
 The great dark stone, symbol of darkness* self 
 All-emanant, and the divine obscurity 
 Of Deity, as on the heart of light, 
 Fanned by the sacred winds, which fail not then 
 Due service to the hight departing soul, 
 Tempests. and clouds the playthings of his power, 
 Serene in will, and willing not to be, 
 Upright he sate, and eyed the sun, and died. 
 
 Initiate, mystic, perfected, epopt, 
 
 Illuminate, adept, transcendent, he 
 
 Ivy-like, lived, and died, and again lived, 
 
 Resuscitant. On high his nest he wove 
 
 In the Btrange tree whereof man first was made, 
 
 Whose roots reach down to hell, whose topmost 
 
 bough 
 Waves its bright Leaflets in the airs of heaven, 
 Ami communed with the universal life, 
 Beloved of lightning for its kindred birth, 
 That vivifies its veins; until possessed 
 
 Of all that could be known, the whole he Knew; 
 
 Cropped where they gre* the flowen of learning, 
 
 ma 
 
 In meadowy beds, and bright with fragrant dew. 
 
 I.
 
 54 
 
 Carving with glyphic art immortal runes, 
 That rule the reluctant spirits of the dead, 
 On living wood, with primal matter oned, 
 "Winch breedeth still betimes celestial fruit, 
 He, arrow-like, launched forth — heaven is a bow 
 The chord whereof is earth — and charmed his way 
 Led by prismatic clue through spheres and skies, 
 Fire, ice, and scalding venom-floods of hell, 
 To prove all sacred truth within, himself; 
 To test all holy virtues ; and to know 
 The sovereign Master of the universe, 
 AVho hallowing, blessed his hemispheral aim. 
 
 To him too came from Preadamic kings 
 The shield of power, graved with seven mystic seals, 
 Transcript of stars that signalized release 
 Jointly, to him, of their domain o'er earth ; 
 Incaved wherein, the book of light he conned 
 And read inscribed the truths which hallow heaven, 
 Tea viewed all mysteries not ineffable 
 And ne'er to be unsealed, denude themselves 
 Into two truths, of God and man, they one; 
 The light enlightened and enlightening light. 
 From scrolls Setlucan and the columned lore 
 Of lands unknown, or which was wisely hid
 
 55 
 
 In pre-diluvian volumes (lost, alas ! 
 
 Neath those ehullient waters which engulfed 
 
 The foulnesses and sins of a naught world; 
 
 Or if conserved, in purity conserved 
 
 Only, within that temple subterrene, 
 
 Gem-pillared and nine-porched, from dust-doomed eye 
 
 Secreted, by one deathless reared, ere yet 
 
 Translated to the bosom of his God) 
 
 The secret orders of the sphere he learned, 
 
 Not yet to be revealed, nor till the end, 
 
 The coming incandescence of the globe ; 
 
 Then let the Heavens astounded, list to Fate. 
 
 By divine science and ccelestial art 
 
 He for the cause of the dear nations toiled, 
 
 And augusted man's heavenly hopes that so, 
 
 Child of the rast and universal man, 
 
 (.Man archetypal, starry and terrene, 
 
 "Who.se head is high above the angelic seven, 
 
 Whose heart the sun) he might, by awful rites 
 
 Hinted in sacro-sanelilies of the wise, 
 
 Prom knowledge of eternal names acquest, 
 
 Dlumined intellect and pure desire, 
 
 Adhesion with Divinity achieve. 
 
 Hi- eyes, from constant converse srith the stars.
 
 56 
 
 Conceived an astral virtue, and his brow, 
 
 Cooled with their fragrant breath, grew bright; his 
 
 soul, 
 One and compatient with the life of time, 
 Rose kosmical with all God's great designs; 
 And so on earth their luminous life enjoyed, 
 The unapparent and essential fates. 
 For God, when first He form'd man, so insphered, 
 And veiled with beauty all compulsive power, 
 (Necessity, when isolate becoming 
 By limited nutations of the will, 
 A self determinate freedom and minute) 
 In the individual soul, that none but they 
 Who extasie divine enjoy, agnize 
 The universal impulse, but so act 
 As though they ordered all things of themselves, 
 And heaven were but the registrar of earth. 
 In nations, creeds and ages, men can trace, 
 Star-writ in night's imperial book of fate, 
 The world's vast destinies ; but void, alas ! 
 Of introvertive vision, not their own. 
 
 To God Boul-bounden, as some sacred orb, 
 Content in its own brightness to outshine, 
 Or be outshined by others, he the whole
 
 57 
 
 Perceived to him pertain and him to all ; 
 And found, by nature's ominous sympathies, 
 Kis private fates proceed, like-paced, with God's, 
 And their fore-fixed purposes concur. 
 
 In temple-like totality he held 
 His heart, hypaethral, open to all heaven; 
 And to all earth her future and her passed, 
 Magician-like, divulges from his charts. 
 
 As when of old some king of men might trail 
 Between two hosts his glittering spear, and mark 
 "War's red meridian, in that dusty score 
 Graving the death of empires and the birth 
 Of new thrones, till in flow of years arise 
 One who erases from the face of earth 
 That sanguine wrinklet, so the universe 
 Contentiously divaricate, he shews 
 Made one in spirit with eternity; 
 For man divine shall reign; shall cede to God 
 All rights, all laws, both priestly and externe, 
 Vulgar and regal. One conclusive claim 
 All passed confirms, and hallows all to come. 
 
 To every mind the meaning it. hath meanl
 
 58 
 
 Though blindly blundering on through clouds of 
 
 speech, 
 And crowds of forms, in surface differing, 
 He, sole interpreter, with holy rod 
 Hermetic, explicates, and proves for peace ; 
 That all divisive theories but denote 
 A secondary standing of the soul, 
 And partial knowledge only of the truth ; 
 "Whose faith is truest into all projects 
 That blessed secret, unitive and divine, 
 The totalizing wisdom of all creeds, 
 The faith seternal and entire, which us 
 Ones with the heavens ; and that in all worlds though, 
 By the imperfect mean it passeth through, 
 (As told in mysteries tauro-serpentine) 
 Good begets evil, evil brings forth good 
 In blest regeneration; and that God, 
 Who all creates, all saves, all sanctifies; 
 Man, in himself, both sacred and profane. 
 
 These are the laws of light, sweetly severe, 
 "Which shew that what disorder seems, gives proof 
 Of order loftier than the mind of man, 
 (Who holds, because his little eyeball's round, 
 The infinites must be all orbicular)
 
 59 
 
 Pews in its petty systems : and these laws 
 He sagest Theocrat, whose church is heaven, 
 "Whose state all earth, whose law the book of God, 
 The sole converter of the universe, 
 Kept in his heart with holy fire; and thus, 
 In changeful perfectness, the wheel of life 
 Trolled underneath his feet, till he beheld 
 Grhn, o'er the funeral hatchment of the world, 
 Death's empty helm yawn; and his toil was done. 
 
 Like Mekkah's milky stone, which wastes away 
 Beneath the kiss of worshippers, so life 
 Darkens and wanes beneath its crowd of cares; 
 While Time's last sands silt up the streams of soul, 
 Less, gradually decreasing, less and less. 
 
 As when in northern marches dies a man 
 Will tinned of men, for virtues, or for birth, 
 Great grows the press of mourners round his grave 
 In ceremonious silence; great the show 
 Of lawny weepen lifted to dim eyes, 
 A slowly slideth the bier downwards ; all 
 Bare-headed, wordless; bo with simplest pomp 
 Of their mere presence, all earth's kindred crei 
 'I his was perfect, he believed in God,
 
 GO 
 
 In (Jod the Spirit, and God-man, the Son) 
 Clung round his heart and sanctified his end. 
 
 All gifts were therefore given him, seals and signs 
 
 Of radiant force and triply perfect power. 
 
 The spirit of earth to him his douhle key, 
 
 Defensive from all ills, all gohlins, gave ; 
 
 "Wisdom her adamantine seal, and Truth 
 
 Her sapphire signet ; Love his ruby ring. 
 
 Spirits and apparitions of pure grace 
 
 Came shadowy round at his interior will ; 
 
 And one in chief, of angel charm, would come, 
 
 (As though within her breast a dawn divine, 
 
 Insensibly were orbing into life,) 
 
 Perfused with roseate radiance, like a star 
 
 Veiled in creative fire-mist, who his eye 
 
 With spiritual clear-sight filling, shewed 
 
 Truths past all search, all height, all depth, all 
 
 bound, 
 Of interspheral orders, and their rise, 
 Action and central end. She in her own 
 Bright virtue him embracing gave his soul 
 In secret, sweet assumption into heaven; 
 And both with filial and parental bliss 
 Imbued, bade wander tlirough the golden plains
 
 61 
 
 "With diamond blooms bestarred ; but ere sbe left, 
 Lest he celestial pleasures might profane, 
 Commingling speech thereof with mundane things, 
 But the thrice sacred kiss of secrecy, 
 An adamantine oath, his lips she sealed. 
 
 The mount of shadow earth each night uprears, 
 
 The sun each morn planes down, he clomb, and held 
 
 Parley with orb and angel as they passed 
 
 Self luminous on their quests ; his nebulous thoughts 
 
 Grouping in firmamental unities. 
 
 At his will-fraught and evocative word, 
 
 The strange star brightened largelier, and poured 
 
 forth 
 Its voice of light, or speechlessly withdrew 
 Into Ltd azure chambers, which the wide 
 Abyss, precipitous, of space, o'erhang. 
 
 The -pirit-world, thus loveably coerced, 
 
 ]Jiil homage, in such service deeming them 
 
 Triumphant; and reciprocal with all, 
 
 All loyally he ruled. Thereat rejoiced, 
 
 All wisdom in one whisper they conveyed, 
 
 All language uttered in one mystic word 
 
 Wrought of iun«heated ore-flame, lir.-t pronounced
 
 62 
 
 Among the angels proximate to the throne; 
 Where cloaked with threefold light the all Divine, 
 The infinite point, the circumfused Supreme 
 Deific dwells, whose thoughts are tinged with heaven, 
 His own asternal and impropriate bliss, 
 As clouds and mountains with the noon-day light. 
 
 For, even as darkness, self impregned, brings forth 
 
 Creative light, and silence, speech; so beams, 
 
 Known through all ages, hope and help of man, 
 
 One God omnific, sole, original, 
 
 "Wise wonder-working wielder of the whole 
 
 Infinite, inconceivable, immense, 
 
 The midst without beginning, and the first 
 
 From the beginning, and of all Being last.
 
 A SPIRITUAL LEGEND, 
 
 There were who spiritual legends feigned, 
 Half lofty, half profound, not nigh half true, 
 Believed, or seemed; whereof one instance hear, 
 As erst by early Gnostic of the Nile 
 Taught ; garnished and enlarged in later years. 
 
 Ere all, in ancientry seterne, was God 
 (Holy and blessed alway be His name) 
 In essence inconceivable. He in space 
 A- Luminous fulness, pure perfection dwelled 
 And in an infinite unity. 
 
 Ooseterne 
 With God (for ever blest and worshipped be 
 1 1 name) and conl rarj to I Eim .-is good 
 
 matter, mother of .-ill evil, end 
 And •■nitre, caused bj Deity nowise.
 
 G4 
 
 Light 
 And darkness are the emblems of these powers, 
 And ensigns. From their opposition comes 
 Of good and evil like necessity ; 
 While death and body, life and soul, compugn. 
 
 From the All Being Father (Love his name, 
 Mercy and Grace) the Spirit first was born, 
 The spirit, thence the Eeason, called the Word; 
 From reason, Providence ; from providence 
 Came Power and Wisdom; wisdom Righteousness 
 Joyful brought forth, and power almighty, Peace. 
 
 God's light through His trine essence self reflected, 
 
 As through an infinite prism, and like the sun, 
 
 Of heaven's great bow the sevenfold hues producing 
 
 These seven blessed spirits, attributes divine 
 
 Which do His essence designate, evolved. 
 
 He, in His own substantial deity, 
 
 The same, to whom the septenary stars 
 
 And days of time be consecrate, conceived, 
 
 Issued and vivified, with Him to live; 
 
 jEonian beings of divinest strain. 
 
 Of these the twain, hight Power and Wisdom, joined
 
 65 
 
 In holy union, forthright generate 
 
 Angela of highest rank and noblest force, 
 
 In nature godlike, and in number such 
 
 As saintly calculations dedicate 
 
 To heavenly orders ; such, on Thracian mount, 
 
 The maiden muses, sacred to the sun, 
 
 Who, hand in hand, with ominous laurel crowned, 
 
 Roses or stars, do hvmn the universe. 
 
 Pure and beneficent these; inferior still 
 
 To their progenitors, as they to those 
 
 From whom they boast their birth. These first 
 
 composed 
 A heaven wherein companionably to dwell, 
 Ainl to delight each other. From them .sprang, 
 Native to thrones and glories uncouceivcd, 
 Angelic generations, rank on rank, 
 And heaven on heaven, innumerably spread 
 Down through the slurry crystalline, in clouds j 
 Each order forming its own coelestial homo; 
 Like numbered with the daily circlets of the year. 
 
 These all the dominance supreme confe 
 
 < >!' the .Kti-rnal, in one in;. -I i<; word 
 Alnv mi many a jasper gem,
 
 6G 
 
 Of talismanic and rcgeneraut force, 
 lusculptured — liailing Him their total lord 
 And Spirit Father. 
 
 They, meanwhile, who dwelled 
 Of the angelic nations, in the last 
 And lowest round of all the heavens which stretched 
 Its confines to the dark material mass, 
 Malignant, uncreate, inert, self-lived, 
 Which lay, a weltering chaos, deep below, 
 Felt, as their glittering pinions oft they poised 
 In level flight above its stormy face, 
 And gulphs of unpierced wonders, vast desire, 
 Heightened by warm debate among themselves, 
 Their neighbouring state to soothe and purify ; 
 And form, leave sought of God, first, and obtained, 
 Since theirs the limits of the angel realm, 
 A race of beings fitted therein to abide, 
 Branch forth and govern other lower lives, 
 To be for their behoof created. 
 
 Fired 
 "With this imperial and divine intent, 
 Through the three hundred three score spheres and 
 five
 
 67 
 
 Of super-imminent hierarchies, flew up 
 A band eclect of the aetherial powers, 
 AVho carried rapture on their snowy wings, 
 Unto the footstool of the omnipotent One. 
 There, breathing low their wishes and desires 
 Made holy by the end, to enlarge God's reign 
 And purify and dignify the mass 
 Of matter, dark and void, with creatures apt 
 For such estate, though lower far than they, 
 God hearkened, granted leave to do their will, 
 And proffered more even then. 
 
 Plenipotent 
 The suppliant ambassage returned ; their brows, 
 As through circumyolant myriads on they passed, 
 Bright with the sense of God's imputed power, 
 Flashing delight. Benevolent they went, 
 Creative they returned; and to their hosts 
 Of fellow immortals all their triumphs tell. 
 
 Grand was the joy throughout those radiant tribes, 
 Lift to the zenith of celestial Miss, 
 And instant impul e urging to begin 
 The wort orbifio; glorying in their plans 
 Of future suzerainty rind wide spread swaj
 
 68 
 
 Among new worlds of creatures yet to be. 
 
 God taking thought, Himself, of sun and star, 
 "With whom to think, indeed, is to create, 
 Those heavenly isles of light, of light profound, 
 Light within light, the bright abodes of bliss ; — 
 Chaos, the rude conglomerate, co-aeterne 
 With all Divinity, they first commenced 
 To soften, free and sever by degrees, 
 From multiform confusion, into fixed 
 And elemental sections. 
 
 Thence appeared, 
 The all genetic waters and clear depths 
 Of air's unseen but palpable flood, wherein 
 The water-mountains melt, in themselves drowned 
 The youthful breeze ; and fierce gigantic storms, 
 Allies of evil and confoederate fiends, 
 "Which the sun's variable heat obey; 
 The virgin fire, inviolably pure ; 
 And earth's all mothering bosom. 
 
 Soon, distinct, 
 Ocean and continent, sea, desert, plain 
 .Mineral and vegetive, concrete, complete,
 
 GO 
 
 By separate hand, each Power a separate type 
 Framing, to grace his will, or prove his force, 
 Of stone, earth, tree, plant, shrub, grass, herb, or 
 
 flower, 
 Mountain, or isle, or river, lake, or well. 
 
 The angels made the solid earth ; its rocks 
 
 Chaotic and amorphous, petrified fire, 
 
 Granitic, oolitic; sand and lime; 
 
 Igneous and aquatic beds of stone 
 
 Upheaving or collapsing, seemed, in turn. 
 
 The awful sport of some Titanian arm, 
 
 Whose elbow, jogged by earthquakes, wryedthe pole. 
 
 The angels wrought the mountains, bulk by bulk, 
 And chain by chain, serrated or escarped, 
 Or coal-red burning from Vulcanian forge; 
 Eekla ami Biouna Boa and Auvergne; 
 Tu\tla; and Tongarari, southwards isled; 
 B beset, who deem \\ lieu dead, 
 
 Their chieftain's eyes translated into stars; 
 Andes ami Himalaya's heavenly heighf 
 Dhawalaghiri's pinnacle supreme, 
 Ami Chuquibamba's cone of roseate Bno 
 
 The lull Utaic named tin 1 almighty god, 
 
 i
 
 70 
 
 By Tchudic fcribelets of bhe age of mounds; 
 Higher than lark can soar, or falcon fly, 
 
 Cloudlet, or visible vapour scud, it stands ; 
 Oural aud Balkan ; Alp and Alp pennine ; 
 The magnet mountain which directeth earth, 
 Brainlike, ensconced beneath her snowy crown ; 
 Lupata's mighty spine ; Lamalmon's pass, 
 O'ertoppling ; Abba Yaret's glittering peak ; 
 Ankobar's, Medra's ranges ; all that ring 
 The desert heart of slave-land, or thence stretch 
 To the Cape of Storms, and lion of the sea ; 
 And Erebus antarctic, fenced with ice. 
 Marmoreal mountains, by their radiant hand 
 Polished to white perfection, so to prove 
 A beauty beyond use, the angels pUed ; 
 Kailasa, and the setherial mount Meru, 
 Dazzling the sun with gems ; Larnassus green ; 
 And Athos, and Montserrat, holy heights, 
 Mountains of monks, and hdls of eremites ; 
 And that Kropakhian. wonder-mountain named, 
 AVithout, within ; whose central fount obeys 
 With an obsequious volume, the moon's wane 
 Or increment ; and that funereal spur 
 Of dark black marble that beglooins the air ; 
 Or, walling earth, the spirit-haunted lilt',
 
 71 
 
 With many a mythic marvel crowned of eld; 
 
 That crystal mount (cloud crested, once it stood 
 
 In western Tucuman) with bright reply 
 
 A aswering the solar messages of light 
 
 Aa equal equal ; deep below its base, 
 
 O'erarched a navigable river runs, 
 
 Rumbling its rock pent breakers, white with wrath ; 
 
 Or where, mid central isthmus (on each hand 
 
 Pacific and Atlantic tides) is built 
 
 Coy Tximaya and the precipitous gat sa 
 
 Of that recondite capital, haply doomed 
 
 To vanish into cloudland ; the idol rock 
 
 Mackinaw vaunts, where red braves, worshipping, 
 
 Prophetic murmurs of oracular shell, 
 
 Shined in its ark, hearkened; and holy Tor 
 
 f ii many B land to deity devote ; 
 
 Divine Alborz, the holy mountain named, 
 
 Where, Bunlike, the Simorgh, all-wise, abode, 
 
 Moon-peaked ; or mounl oracular of the gods, 
 
 Olympus blest; and either sacred lile ; 
 
 Tn that brighl isle where Rama reigned, the peat 
 Whereon the print of Bouddha's foot (esteemed 
 
 The last of or Adam's, Brsl of a, 
 
 Hallows the land to pilgrims of all creeds; 
 
 khrat, pendent once in air,
 
 72 
 
 Now fixed; once soft as heart of man to grasp 
 Prophetic; 'ncath whose saturated roots 
 All fountains rise ; plomb underneath the new- 
 City of God ; upon whose crest shall stand 
 The stern archangel when with judgment trump 
 He hails the generations of our race, 
 Those living, those whom hollow Hades holds : 
 All these and countless more the angels wrought, 
 While dear they were to God and lurid to earth. 
 
 The angels trenched the rivers ; and unsealed 
 The secret wealth of many a fountainous hill ; 
 Where Oby, now, or sunny Kour, for wine, 
 And virgin gold, and hapless virgin slaves, 
 Eenowned, flows ; holy Boug ; or warlike Don ; 
 Or Po, by Goths imprayed with murderous rites; 
 Or that, beneath whose bed the wasteful Hun 
 God's scourge, lies coffined ; (so, shall onetime sleep 
 All evil, 'neath the covering flood of love ;) 
 Where Darro, by the mountain of the sun, 
 Sweeps with steep wave ; or Guadiana dives ; 
 Or where the rivers flow, of life, of death ; 
 Volga, or legendary Ehinc ; or Rhone, 
 Vine-banked ; or Thames, with the world's wealth 
 and that
 
 73 
 
 City of cities, crowned with golden spires, 
 
 The towers of God, enriched ; or Medway curves 
 
 Through meads his flowery way ; Isis, or Cam, 
 
 For love of wisdom famed, and Clutha, sung 
 
 By warrior harps of old days ; there, where now 
 
 Ohio broadens, or gross Missouri dims 
 
 The deepening sire of floods, aye tiding on 
 
 His current deluge to the gulphy breast 
 
 Of central seas ; or, Niagara hurls. 
 
 Precipitant, his thunderous waters down 
 
 Their crescent steep ; or silver river, south, 
 
 Through grass-flowered Pampas pours recoiling wave, 
 
 Prescient of blood fraternal en; the end; 
 
 His face with alive, 
 
 Thick as the savage tribes that tread around ; 
 
 From Boreal ice-floes when' all waters cease, 
 
 To Magellanic straits and land of fire; 
 
 Where pagan Sagbalien iced to bis hod 
 
 ins yearly, Bteals ; or sacred Sinde ; 
 Or Chandra-bagha, holy to the moon; 
 Or Brahmapootra, fling o'er bordering meads 
 Their annual floodlets fruitful; where Hoang-ho 
 Or the blue, gold-sanded rivei of the Lord, 
 Through Eragraol tea fields winds; or where, with palms 
 Embanked, barbarian Quorra; there men trade
 
 74 
 
 In ivory, gold, and blood ; nor far remote, 
 Who the divine child, babe aeterne, adore, 
 Unconscious deity ; or Zenhagal, 
 With gum-woods girt ; or Gambia ; or, rock-brink ed, 
 That by Mataman, townless land, rolls; that 
 Kaffrarian, endless called ; and (only found 
 Late-while) who through the island continent glides, 
 His current dwindling seawards, dark Moray; 
 AVhile Araluen's golden footed nymph, 
 From rocky urn coerulean, teems her tick- j 
 Hydaspes ; branchy Gyndes, fabulous floods ; 
 Orontes, on whose slopes the wine of gold 
 In ripening globules glows, whereof, at eve, 
 Roused from his stony solitude of walls, 
 By turbaned traveller with his camel train, 
 Not seldom sips the hospitable monk, 
 His cup commending to the bearded lip 
 Of smiling stranger, garrulous in signs ; 
 And that sabbatic river, which, to How 
 The seventh day, ceaseth piously ; these all 
 And more, innumerable, brooklet, beck, 
 Kill, runnel, rivulet, the angels made, 
 Administrative of terrestrial wealth, 
 And will coelestial, while at one with God; 
 : rivera subterrene booming through caves
 
 7.-, 
 
 Down to earth's focal fires, still inextiuct, 
 
 And Uaming floods, whence, dashed, they reascend, 
 
 Volcanic vapours, and explode the hills ; 
 
 And linn, and force, and torrent ; Corra's foam ; 
 
 Thy falls unfailing Khaiadwr ; and thine, 
 
 Shoshonee, wreathed with shifting rainbow mists ; 
 
 And those of Dekkan Ghauts, earth's loftiest leap. 
 
 The angels reared the islands ; that of yore 
 
 Neptunian, where the sea-god righteous ruled, 
 
 And his ten sons, now sunken in mid sea ; 
 
 And that Panchaian, where Triphylian Jove 
 
 Judged from his mountain chair the sacred soil ; 
 
 The starry islet wandering with the wind, 
 
 Pure of all death, the birth-place of twin gods; 
 
 For sun and moon prosolar light precedes ; 
 
 Bacchic and Cytherean islet ; those Bpread 
 
 Sporadic or cycladic; Cyprian soil; 
 
 And Khodian, n of the sacred sea; 
 
 Thai isle, the sun's, whose sacred slaughtered kine 
 
 (When the hiil! Led the constellated round 
 
 Ere ! star of storm . ml ic, sum 
 
 1 ed t<i the wise world-wanderer floods of woe; 
 
 The win i ! i land, flying round the \\ »rld, 
 
 Walled high with gold-bright crystal, giant-kinged;
 
 7G 
 
 And fairy Avalon, still where Arthur rules, 
 Sole as the suu iu heaven his shining shrine ; 
 Stern Ilertha's, stained with the sacred blood of 
 
 man ; 
 Elysian islands, all-felicitous, holy, 
 Where dwell the blessed Immortals, years divine, 
 The elemental sequences of suns, 
 And ages everlasting of the heavens ; 
 And Bolotoo, the paradise of gods, 
 Far off in western space, a land of shades ; 
 "Where, to chance wanderer, for the future bound, 
 And searching for some secret lost to earth, 
 Tree, temple, tower, and grove-clad hills present 
 But permeable forms ; through all he stalks, 
 As through a builded vision ; wall and bark, 
 And cliff, close round the path he passeth through 
 Unharmed, as water round a diving gull ; 
 Islands of honey, pearls, and gems, and fire ; 
 The isle auriferous, whose minutest rill 
 Outbids Pactolus ; those which clustering pour 
 Spices, perfumes, oils, incense, and sweet gums, 
 For human delectation or divine; 
 Feejee and Papua, men devouring isles ; 
 Black Hayti, the imperial negro's throne ; 
 Niphon, where, temple-shrined, the golden bull
 
 77 
 
 Butts, first, with fiery horn, the egg mundane; 
 And that Ogygiau, westward, where the sun 
 Utters his final smile, and gleams his last 
 Through groves of worship dedicate to Fate ; 
 And those white isles whose pre-antiquity 
 Transcends all date, the primal seats of gods, 
 Truth, science, song, and all commanding mind : 
 All these, and countless more, the angels made, 
 "While dear they were to God and kind to earth. 
 
 The angels scooped the lesser seas and lakes ; 
 Baltic, and Midland, Boundless; and that womb 
 Of nations, on whose life-devouring shore, 
 Far jutting into the black and boisterous deep, 
 Sebastopolis, key of empire, stands; 
 The pool Mfflotic, worshipped as a god 
 Scythic hordes, and Amazonian dames, 
 
 .Militant, jealous of the dexter breast; 
 
 ,ii. dee]) below whose .silvery wave 
 < Eden hideth, and the hallowed glebe; 
 
 Aral, Van, Baikal, holy lake, most rasi 
 Of mountain mens; and Tahtar Kokonor, 
 Sea 'Tainan i ■ •■ of wandering (ami 
 
 >ga shoal, deep Leman ; ialeted
 
 78 
 
 Aud many an iceless aud unfathomed pool 
 Ou mountain crest, or cowering at the foot ; 
 Lough, 11 yn, and lakelet, mirrors of the moon, 
 And fords where Luna, silvery limped would wade ; 
 Ontario, AViunebago, and the Slave ; 
 Tutah's ; hard by where the polygamous sect 
 (Milled by one self-unctioned, not anoint, 
 Nor golden oil of genius had, nor truth, 
 Who, from the brook the lines of lacquered lead 
 Sham angel forged, dug out ; who, after, fell 
 Shotted with three times Caesar's trickling wounds — 
 Ill-doer he, ill-done by ;) bide their hour, 
 Dreadless ; the great Saline ; and Aztek, boweivd 
 With floating pleasaunces, where sailed the swans 
 Of sway symholic ; Amucu, golden banked ; 
 Or Titicaca, from whose sacred shores, 
 Long ages lapsed, the scions of the sun, 
 Manco Capac and Mama Oello, stepped, 
 Ancestral, to the sceptre of Berou ; 
 Nyassi ; N garni ; Mrima; Zana, and that 
 Lake of the gods, whence Nile, or white or blue ; 
 And wide Nigritian Tschad, still inexplored : 
 All these, and countless more, the angels made, 
 AVhile kind they were to earth, and dear to 
 God.
 
 79 
 
 Desert and steppe they smoothed ; the waterless sea 
 (But haply once where tide tempestuous rolled) 
 Of Aphrie Zahara, where the sand-wave heaves 
 'Neath the simoom, parched, poisoning man and beast ; 
 Kerman's sands Bait-white, swept by flamy wind, 
 Plague-breath'd, which rousing up the desert dust 
 Blinds man's bright eye, and mummifies the frame; 
 There oft, in arid dell the cool Suhrab, 
 Calm mockery of sweet waters, overhung 
 With green and succulent shrubs— you seem to hear 
 The ripple of the waves — delusive lurks ; 
 Chamo and Kobi, and the central wastes 
 Of Austral isle, where range the tameless tribes 
 Who hurl tin' bomerang, and, hunger spent, 
 Do mess on their own blood, dis-seised of sense; 
 And those by Baku, where, through wimbled cane, 
 The holy Same of universal fire 
 .1 ;- from earth's heart, upwards, to join the sun; 
 Baronian down-, and many a misty moor, 
 Where aches the eye with objectless Burvey, 
 \ id lo don moss, they spread prospective; now 
 With i !i crowned, gray cairn, or fairy knoll; 
 
 Or lithic dance of giants 'neath the moon; 
 Hurlers or wrestlers who bare justly earned 
 Thei lation ; or some crew,
 
 80 
 
 Godless, that to the air of fiendly flute 
 
 Footed, contemptuous of sabbatic chimes ; 
 
 Now, days of rest millennial, in their ears, 
 
 And voluntary thunders, drone in vain ; 
 
 And wold and wilderness, where nightly flit 
 
 The grosser sprites that haunt these nether skies; 
 
 Unmarked, in day's broad glare, the moon's moist 
 
 eye 
 Reveals, to those who see, the filmy form ; 
 Drowned lauds and verdurous meadows submarine 
 Where water turtles pasture, wandering free. 
 
 Plains planned the Angels then, and champaigns vast, 
 Savannahs, Pampas, prairies ; deeming earth 
 One garden fit for gods ; and seeded them 
 With grass and herb of every wholesome growth ; 
 Shamrock and trefoil, symbolizing Him, 
 In lowliest form who them, their makers, made ; 
 And pulse-, aud sesamum, and flax, and vetch ; 
 With pearly rice, white wheat, and oats (of old 
 Gold-washed for the imperial Eoman's steed ;) 
 Majestic maize, and metamorphic rye ; 
 Millet and lentil, and a thousand grains, 
 As many and as immixed as Psyche slipped 
 Through her sad fingers, thrall and lost to Love ;
 
 81 
 
 "With homeliest roots of thyme and mint and balm 
 
 The breezes they perfumed and purified ; 
 
 And that heart-soothing herb, not less renowned 
 
 Than lote, nepenthes, moly, or tolu, 
 
 Held to untaint from sin the savage soul; 
 
 "Weed of the west, that oil Virginian plains, 
 
 Or fields of fair llabana. moon-beloved, 
 
 Lifteth its long lush leaflets ; youth and maid, 
 
 (Scion perchance of some Soudanian chief 
 
 liordes of woman-warriors, slain or slaved) 
 Tending with nicest tact, till it become, 
 
 ath the toned and educative hand, 
 A roll of natural inc. use; weed, that wild, 
 Climbs prophet Lebanon; and, fragrant, fumed 
 Through amber'd jasmine, wiles the sultry hours, 
 l< plashing fountain's creamy marbled marge: 
 (To him who sang man's fall, the eve of life 
 This lightened; and his resthT heart assuaged, 
 The pilgrim bard, whose days these closely heel 
 Of ours, who in the aftermath of* time 
 Live; for fame's harvest long ago was got : ) 
 Terrain and magic I ch, which endows 
 
 Thoughl with ubiety, and waking mind 
 
 Clothes with the dread delight of dreams; and Kill', 
 Soul gifting with i e eztasie ;
 
 82 
 
 Madder and plants stellate, and watchet wood, 
 
 By rudest fathers used of the mountain isles, 
 
 Three-peaked, the golden, beautiful, and white, 
 
 Conclusive of the wisdom of the west ; 
 
 Orris and henna, for perfume or dye ; 
 
 Mandrake and onion (hallowed wisely once, 
 
 In nome Bubastean, sacred to the moon) 
 
 Whose coats concentric figured forth the spheres ; 
 
 As though considerate nature, who, betimes, 
 
 Man's facial features casually reveals 
 
 In stony fracture or tree-trunk, refrained 
 
 Jn miniature, that man might ne'er forget, 
 
 The holy image of the sphere-filled air, 
 
 And earth, embraced by heaven, the core of space. 
 
 They with fair fruit-trees earth an orchard made ; 
 With rosy apple, purple fig, sweet pear, 
 Date, honey-pulped, green glowing olive ; peach 
 Orange and citron, with their gilded rind ; 
 Sun-juiced muscat, and all the hallowed vines; 
 Guava and nectarine, mango, plantain, plum ; 
 And that translucent pome, whose cloudy core, 
 Seed-studded, glows detected, as it hangs 
 On its slim branchlet, vibrant in the breeze ; 
 The tree transformed of some unhappy god,
 
 83 
 
 (Tale immemorial told in Tonga's isle) 
 
 Whose fruit is vital bread, man's noblest food; 
 
 And that, lactifluous, from whose flower-tipped stem, 
 
 High towering, the Caraccan Indian drains. 
 
 At day-dawn, creamy draughts, to all his kin 
 
 Dispensing, patriarchal, bowl on bowl ; 
 
 The vast Baobab, like-aged with ocean's tides, 
 
 Within whose cavernous and sepulchral trunk 
 
 Meet village senates, lawing peace and war 
 
 To dusky tribes, or, in its templed bole, 
 
 The idol gods adoring of the land, 
 
 Arboreal fane ; wherewith compared the stock 
 
 That willowy waves above the ruined wrecks 
 
 Of Babylon; or that, nigh Memphian well, 
 
 Rifted yet vital, 'neath whose honoured boughs 
 
 d the Bainted pair who, angel-warned, 
 Bare, in their bosom, o'er the sands of Sin, 
 The infant Saviour, but a sapling seems 
 Of yesterday; fair thorn, as yel unkinged, 
 dnsanctified by woes of brow divine; 
 (We gild the thorns we put upon Him now 
 
 t, all, they pierce!) whose berries, blood-like red 
 Still speak of holiest, still of heavenly ends: 
 While dear they were to God and to earth kind, 
 
 All these, and COUntl >iv the angels made;
 
 M 
 
 More titan infallible engine, for an age, 
 Accomptant pauselessly, or clerk, on slate 
 Or abacus ten-stringed, could sura. 
 
 With woods 
 And treeful tracts tbe provident angels clad 
 What else were lifeless deserts; where now stretch 
 Forest and upland frith, and the wide weald 
 Hercynian, where the demon shadow stalks ; 
 And the Anderidan boscage, by divine 
 Andate, all-victorious goddess, held ; 
 And glades, where, rambling, in long after years, 
 The outlawed archer led his banded bows ; 
 Siberian forestage of spiry pine ; 
 Oaks, which oracular in Dodona spake ; 
 And sea of trees, by Boli's Pontic slope ; 
 The equatorial groves that mat the shores 
 Of Maracaybo, to Maragnon's streams, 
 And falls of Tequendama ; (these were rent 
 Ere yet the moon rode aery ;) the hoar woods 
 Of growth eternal, continental reach, 
 That all enclose, from gold-rocked Labrador, 
 To florid lands that seas Columbian lave ; 
 From ocean's gilded sands, by Kalamath, 
 To silvery Zazaticas and Secklong;
 
 85 
 
 Banyan, and temple cedar ; gopher, planned 
 
 Ark-wise of God to float man o'er the flood ; 
 
 Laden with life, hope of the world to he ; 
 
 "With treasures vaster than that hark, whose freight, 
 
 (Spoils of the sack of Koine — tyrannic queen, 
 
 Of honded nations ravished — the gilded roof 
 
 Of Jove's high capital, the seven starred lamp 
 
 And golden tahle of God's temple, won 
 
 By Vandal, king self-crowned of earth and sea 
 
 And their affiliate isles) storm-sunk, hut served 
 
 With ivory thrones and husts marmoreal, gems, 
 
 And jewelled caskets, armlets, torques, and rings 
 
 And carquanets impearled, and coffered coin 
 
 Of conquered Btates, fco Btartle or adorn 
 
 Sicilian sea-nymphs in their billowy play ; 
 
 Cypress, the leafy mourning nature wears, 
 
 Dear to the dead and to the Held of God, 
 
 Where Lurks, in Bpade-i urned fur d d< ath-so^ q, 
 
 Divine seed, to be harvested in heaven; 
 
 The poplar nai ive to I he Land of Bhadea ; 
 
 "Myrtle and ebony; dragon-blooded tn 
 
 Coeval with the sun-hallowed palm; 
 
 Swe< i - «■ cited landal, spared for 
 
 Walnut and chestnut, beech, and ash, a id elm; 
 
 Wych-hazel, for dn Loing tn used; 
 
 G
 
 86 
 
 And ruddy rowan, proof 'gainst blackest spell, 
 And ghastly charms of witches, air-elate ; 
 And that which, like the skies, tree, sad by day, 
 Buds forth at eve its starry blossoms, bright 
 And odorous, but in sunlight, bloomless mourns ; 
 And that beneficent stem, in islands grown 
 Named Fortunate of old, whose top, with clouds 
 Nightly encompassed, soon as morning beams, 
 From leaf and ramage sheddeth cool bright shower-'. 
 Freshening the fountless soil ; matron and maid, 
 God thanking for his daily gift, with joy, 
 Brim high their globular gourds from every bough ; 
 And that once common to the world, but since, 
 To one main isle confined, wayfarers's tree, 
 Within whose veins condensed the essential dew 
 Flows fontal ; while its flowerets, purely white, 
 Lamplike, allure the wanderer to the wood, 
 "Where he may shade his limbs, and his lips lave; 
 That tree all fruitful, first and best of things, 
 (Such by Damaras deemed ; naked and black 
 Their bodies like to their benighted minds) 
 From whose umbrageous branchery human fruit, 
 Fruit holy, fruit immortal, fruit divine, 
 In sacred ripeness dropped ; or that, mayhap, 
 "Whence chipped by giant woodman, man, brute, bird,
 
 S7 
 
 Fell, flew, or merged in water, swam as fish ; 
 So fable Arctic folk, tribes Bparse and spare, 
 "Whose crooked crones, in glittering huts of ice, 
 (When the vivifie sun, world conqueror he, 
 Closing in peace his serpentine career, 
 Quenches in snow his thunder) to their youth, 
 Sharpening the bone-tipped javelin for the morse, 
 Quaint legends gabble of their primal eld ; 
 .All these the Angels (more than mortal man, 
 Had he as many mouths as Volga's stream, 
 
 1 lived to years Macrobian, could enounce,) 
 With plastic and prolific fingers, made. 
 
 With arborescent canes and ferns they decked 
 Marieh and mead: and Bands and hills, else bare, 
 With shrubs gum-pithed, gum oozing; such were 
 
 myrrh. 
 Camphire, and cassia, spikenard, balsam, clove; 
 (Angels and all good spirits love perfumes;) 
 With many an odorous plant, both hill and \ale; 
 
 \ slica, and honeyed melilol ; 
 Day' and king-cup; fairy foxglove, fern; 
 
 And violet, crown of the sad Lesbian mn 
 ( Irocu . pale purple or golden ; hyacinth, 
 Skirting with azure haz< i hi Pool i da :
 
 88 
 
 Asphodel and narcissus, Hadean blooms; 
 
 And gore-dyed poppy, dedicate to death ; 
 
 Moonwort ; sweet meadow queen ; and silver-weed ; 
 
 Tulipa, dahlia, sunflower, aster, rose 
 
 Damask and white, of holiest silence sign, 
 
 Of love divine, love perfect, love a>terne ; 
 
 The fragrant tuberose scintillating light ; 
 
 Dianthus, flower of God ; and, loved of woods, 
 
 The wind flower, blooming faithful to one day, 
 
 As Damon to his friend ; the iris, eye 
 
 Of heaven ; eyebright ; and winter's flowers of gold ; 
 
 The lotus, emblem of the sacred birth 
 
 Of all from water, pure as spirit seed, 
 
 Snow blanched, or blue ; dew of the sea ; and those, 
 
 The mistress, and the glory of the night; 
 
 The flame flower, glowing like to carbuncle ; 
 
 Kamschatka's scarlet lily, foodful root ; 
 
 Nile born papyr, and serpent creeping flower ; 
 
 Sumatra's floral miracle, the font 
 
 And baptistry of flowers ; the tea rose pale, 
 
 In central flowery realm of brightness born ; 
 
 Magnolia ; and tall Yucca's bell-crowned mast ; 
 
 Bogota's regal lily, whose broad and raftered leaves 
 
 In some calm creek expatiate, wood enzoned ; 
 
 And that night-blooming marvel which, when all
 
 .89 
 
 Its flowery kindred, dew drowned, sleep, spreads forth 
 Its radiant cup, and like a midnight sun, 
 Illumes the green gloom, and perfumes the dark : 
 The watery knot-glass, with the hlood divine 
 Sprinkled, that grew beneath Christ's hallowed rood ; 
 Inuumerous, the bright blooms whose fragrant speech 
 Befitting comeliest love, the orient brides 
 Wreathe into poesies, the angels wrought, 
 While dear to God (ere eyes divine yet shed 
 Immortal tears, as the amber droplets wept 
 By daughters of the sun) and kind to earth. 
 
 The angels then with founts the park mundane 
 (From Athabascan cape, mornwards, to where 
 Miako's gilded god, colossal sits; 
 Prom Anadyrsh to Patagonian point, 
 Graced; cool and tepid; these perennial, those 
 But intermittent; founts that torches fire; 
 Founts, that presagefu] of the tempest, howl; 
 That ebb and H< »w contrarious to the main; 
 Or synchronous; deep springs of bubbling brine 
 Inland; Bweet waters 'math the Bea; and that 
 Far scalding, still If-petrifactive fount, 
 
 Wl parate wavelets bardening, si by si 
 
 v i ield tnansiom to the builders on its banks ;
 
 90 
 
 t 
 Founts scorching, founts petriftc, founts of flame, 
 
 Ice-cold to touch ; founts honey sweet ; the rill 
 
 Which, sanguine, staineth gules the bordering flowers ; 
 
 Fountains of ageless youth and maidenhood; 
 
 Fountains of love and of disdain ; and that 
 
 "Which Kai Khosrou, fore-warned in sleep, beheld, 
 
 (Oracular vision) and far journeying, found 
 
 At last, but, therein bathing, disappeared ; 
 
 The burning springs that o'er the Caspian's face 
 
 Fear-shrunk, afar their fiery furrows drive ; 
 
 The serpent source that hisses as it flows, 
 
 "Whose venemous wave all life instinctive shuns, 
 
 One breed alone, connatural, thence exempt ; 
 
 All these and countless more the heavenly tribes, 
 
 "Whose names are noted in ccelestial tongues, 
 
 Bade forth by the divining wand of will ; 
 
 All wells on earth, save thine, divine Zemzein, 
 
 Through starry strata strained, and musky loam 
 
 Of paradise ; (there moon-browed maids of light, 
 
 Immortal, dwell, and from the lakes of bliss 
 
 Their star-cups fill ;) — thou afterwards wast born. 
 
 Unfathomable caves and moss-green grots, 
 For mysteries or retreat, the angels made ; 
 For vision and prevision ; travelled trance
 
 91 
 
 Of spirit, through ccelestial circles borne 
 Prophetic ; those of Patmos, Paros' isles ; 
 Abdera ; or the Arab's desert cell ; 
 The cave Iberian, where Tubal abode, 
 "Which great Alcides, after, amplified ; 
 For magic rites and secrets darkly famed, 
 Phantoms, and necromantic wonders ; wealth 
 Untold, unhallowed ; death to all who sought ; 
 The vaults Tartarian where the Titans groaned ; 
 And those where still the rebel angels hang, 
 Heel skywards, in hell's ante-chambers, chained; 
 Nyont's JEolian arch whence gush the winds 
 Incessant, sighs chaotic ; and those caves, 
 High pitched, in Erin's isle, or Anglian peak, 
 With floors prismatic, purple crystalled walls, 
 O'cr-roofed with sparkling spires and pendent stars. 
 
 Metal and mineral then the angels wrought, 
 Gold, silver, copper, iron, and all ores: 
 .Marbles; and gems, of virtue- potent signs; 
 
 The en ital, prevalent over gods, and hid 
 Close in the hand, assuring heavenly help; 
 
 The achate, wealth adductive, and (lie mind 
 
 of the immortals gladdening, maiden's love 
 Winning, man's friendship; jasper, to tho gods
 
 92 
 
 Delightsome, and potential bliss to earn 
 
 The topaz, aidant in all holy rites, 
 
 Prayer favouring ; opal, dear to deities, 
 
 Prophetic and heroic ; magnet chaste, 
 
 Of all-persuasive effluence, speechless power; 
 
 The crimsoned coral, emblem of the soul, 
 
 Eeared in life's stormy deeps, the deeps of death, 
 
 Prom mischief fending and hate's fatal glance ; 
 
 Sunstone, which every phantom foul dispels; 
 
 Oracular starstone, warning weal or ill ; 
 
 And selenite, which tongued, fore-knowledge lends ; 
 
 Green bloodstone, symbolling earth, the gate of God's 
 
 yEternal temple, with the life divine 
 
 Sprinkled, prognostic dread ; the diamond, sweet 
 
 And grateful to the gracious spirit throng ; 
 
 The starry sapphire of celestial blue ; 
 
 Ruby and emerald, jacynth, amethyst ; 
 
 The amber, emblem of divinity, 
 
 Which with electric influence soul allures;*. 
 
 The pearl conceived of dew and lightning, type 
 
 Of that pure maid-birth yet to bless the world : 
 
 Tea, cups of pearl, one pure and solid pearl, 
 
 Greater than that in Haleb's slab ingrained, 
 
 "With natural nimbus (so pre-figuring 
 
 The glory round earth's kingliest blood) enringed,
 
 93 
 
 Divinest relic in time's temple niched ; 
 
 And that Bmaragdine mirror (their chief toy 
 
 "Which all the angels wrought, each gifting it 
 
 With some unique perfection) after owned 
 
 By Israel's wisest, who the tongues of bird, 
 
 Brute, angel, men knew ; the king looked therein, 
 
 And eyed the passed, of any wishedfor age, 
 
 Apparent as in life ; event, or fact ; 
 
 And when solicitous of the future, he, 
 
 Steering by somewhat steadier than the stars, 
 
 Had breathed thereon, with the evanishing reek 
 
 from off its disk, he all the coming conned, 
 
 Limned in that talismanic tablet clear ; 
 
 Gtams larger, lovelier these than all now known ; 
 
 Richer than those twin rubies, called Caneques, 
 
 By kings of Auphir, bangs of heaven ami earth 
 
 Self-titled, oil in angry blood-bath dyed ; 
 
 Or those that on the Beveu great i^mIs illume 
 
 Tin- hall of gold in royal Arakhain; 
 
 Whose beads with diamonds, breasts with rubies dame, 
 With sapphires, emeralds, pearls, their limbs and lift, 
 A ml regal rob rigid w it li woven gold ; 
 Brighter than those the eastern soldan's throne 
 Pavonian, Btar; notorious Britain's now; 
 Than those bright armlets, adamantine pair,
 
 94 
 
 The sea of light, and mountain, (now from sea 
 Far severed,) seals and signs suhlime of power 
 O'er west and east ; more tempting to the touch 
 Than all encrusting false Fenella's fruit, 
 "With deadly art contrived; or those by Ehine, 
 Shrined round the heads embalmed of sainted 
 
 kings ; 
 Finer, in fine, than all that now adorn 
 Earth's circular board, (the table once of gods, 
 And whirled by angels through the void inane,) 
 Set deep, or surface strewn, they scattered wide, 
 From Kungria, to Golcond and isles Molucques, 
 And nightwards, to Brasil ; from central Koosh, 
 Kumara, and the emerald mount, by Nile, 
 To Ceylon and Altai; soft, pure gold 
 And silver, from Potosi to Teutaw, 
 The angels sowed the beds of rivers with, 
 And serpentine and granate deep ingrained ; 
 For boon they were to earth, and blessed of God. 
 
 Then, last of all, the animal world they framed, 
 Each life-infusing angel, tribe on tribe, 
 Higher and lower so with mediates linked 
 And interlapped, that all on all might pend 
 In mutual sustentation.
 
 95 
 
 First they filled 
 The seas with fishy natures, which assumed 
 Later, Yishnoo, aud mixed Olinnes claimed 
 And glorified in memory of the first 
 Great form of life, anticipative, perchance, 
 Unconscious, of that newer birth so typed, 
 By signs Phoenician of divinest names; 
 Shark ; dolphin, lover of the lyre, for more 
 Than one sublime adventure starred ; vast whale, 
 The ocean beast, whose jaws, like hell's gates, once- 
 Yawned to ingulph the recreant prophet, cast 
 By crew fore-fated in the ravening deep ; 
 Ketus, ami ork, and kraken ; remora, apt — 
 Blow wind, ilow tide — a ship to check, full sail; 
 Seahorse and seal, old ocean's flocks humane; 
 Sword-fish and saw-fish, sun-fish, ling and ray: 
 All that by coa-1 or firth in endless shoals 
 Or van, or rear, heave shorewards, or the depths 
 Who, lonelier, haunt, ami deathful; all who through 
 Tho weed] streets and gilded chambers glide, 
 Of submerged cities, Bcornfully content, 
 
 Nor wink their cold white eve ; the hells may clang, 
 Still pendulous in those 11 u lei t iiled towers, 
 
 \ though for worship or for victory; th 
 
 Beck not, oor death-peal heed ; through marble grove
 
 96 
 
 And coral copse they fan their wavy way ; 
 Thorn-lin ambitious, that by Indian marsh, 
 To woodland life propense, the wild-fowl's nest 
 Questeth, and birdlike percheth on the palm ; 
 Dorado, shimmering with all brilliant tints ; 
 The winged swimmer of the deeps, and all 
 That flout the whirlpool, down whose swirling maw 
 Voracious of all life, the shrieking ship 
 Plungeth ; (as into a net baited with light, 
 Bats) and dread Maelstrom, navel of the main ; 
 Dace, barbel, pike, and every fluvial fin. 
 
 Terraqueous embouchures with lizards lank, 
 Gluttonous, hide-winged, with horn-lidded eyes 
 And murderous hearts they filled, devouring death ; 
 Monstrous and loathly reptiles, such as him 
 Apollo slew, Kadmus, or iEson's son, 
 Or Jove-born demi-god, or sainted knight, 
 Or Perseus, on the shore by Joppa; not now 
 To man known, save as serpent of the sea, 
 Eldritch, huge, (ocean-churner called in Ind, 
 In Norland, Jormundgandr,) whose hoar mane 
 Autl visage sadly human, reared mast high, 
 Appals the dumb-struck mariner,' as he nears 
 At gloaming the blue headland ; those ashore
 
 97 
 
 Weening they glimpse some Pharos, by its eyes; 
 
 The terror of the weald, with spiky spine ; 
 
 Cayman, and alligator, crocodile, 
 
 Emblem of mystic silence and of God, 
 
 (For ever blessed and worshipped be His name ;) 
 
 The fire-winged drake of Greek and Arab tales ; 
 
 Boa and cobra, dipsas, and the snake 
 
 By red men hallowed in the western wilds, 
 
 WJiich nested nigh the well of waters bright, 
 
 And annual multiplies its rattling rings ; 
 
 Asp, adder, basilisk ; and thoso the Moor 
 
 Wreathes round his limbs, or in his bosom curls ; 
 
 Vipers that charm the song-birds to their death 
 
 By one long glistering glance, transfixed; or those 
 
 That fascinativo seek the tender breasts 
 
 Of wilful maids, ami sing their souls to sleep; 
 
 Or such as him, less rare in years of yore, 
 
 Who, by Bagradas, memorable worm, 
 
 Rome's host braved singly, Binglj Buffered siege, 
 
 Waged war, till, by arblast and catapult, 
 
 And burning darts, self-firing as tln\ Hew, 
 
 Quelled, he at la it capitulates with Death • 
 
 His shining slough to swell tin- conqueror's pomp. 
 
 The air with birda they nocked; oracular dove,
 
 98 
 
 Thrico holy in tradition from the egg, 
 Hid hy Atnrian turtle, and the flood, 
 To Jordan's sacred streamlet ; raven false ; 
 Night's song bird, lover of the moon ; the lark 
 Blithe trilling in the blue, when spring's warm breeze 
 And pearly flowers, and brooklets bubbling clear, 
 And innocent sun, welcome the new-born lamb ; 
 The vulture, all-maternal, typing thus 
 Earth, mountain-crowned, the glory of the sea, 
 And mother of us all ; thee, bright-eyed hawk ! 
 Soul-emblem, sunwards soaring, as to God ; 
 (Adored and honoured ever be His name) 
 The eye-plumed bird, King Taous, who, so starred, 
 God's garden entered, but crawled out, a snake ; 
 By winning lost; wise-sighted owl; and swan 
 (Sire, by the light, of Heaven's twin orbs, mis-told) 
 And sacred stork, thought human soul disguised; 
 Ibis, destroyer of sin's viperous brood ; 
 And flamy heron ; halcyon heavenly blue ; 
 Lone contur, nighest to the star of day 
 Banging, of winged life ; the painful pelican 
 Self-sacriflcial ; cormorant ; doomed dodo ; 
 Giant-paced mooa : ostrich, feathery steed ; 
 Bright humming-bird, of gem-like plumeletage, 
 By western Indians living sun-beam named ;
 
 99 
 
 Macaw ; and gold-green parrot, human-tongued, 
 For craft and wit predictive lamed of yore ; 
 Auk, albatross, and storm-birds of the deep ; 
 And bittern moaning by the lonely mere ; 
 Yea. every flying thing that wings the winds, 
 The rivers of the air, with spirit-like 
 Ubiquity in non-essential space, 
 The heavenly framera shaped and beautiiied, 
 For omen, augury, and song divine ; 
 And paradisal fowl, bright bird of God, 
 Sole life unfiled of earth, or versed in aught 
 Less pure than air. 
 
 Air, too, with the insect race, — 
 Gold-bees that boom in lilied palaces 
 Whose walls breathe odours; sphinges of the eve; 
 .Moths; flutter-llies, all hin-il, like \\ in-vd (lowers, 
 
 (>m violets pasturing, their congenerate food; 
 And flies, which once gare title to that God 
 Alike mysterious in life's least of forms, 
 A ml gn : ami 1 he lamping 1 ribes, 
 
 That light belated wanderer on bis way, — 
 The augela plenished. 
 
 With beasts fourfooted, earth ;
 
 100 
 
 Mammoth and mastodon and deinother, 
 
 (Vast as leviathan or serimnar, 
 
 In vain demolished — on the morrow, whole) ; 
 
 Dreadest of brutes, whose teeth as tombstones 
 
 shewed, 
 Limbed like an oak ; but all swept oft* by heaven, 
 Creation at the flood revising ; huge 
 Aurochs ; and megatherium ; elk enorme, 
 Whose antlers spread like oarsman's oars well plyed ; 
 These, dying, deigned not fall, but bade their tombs 
 Close o'er them, an' they would ; such sepulture 
 (By glacial Lena, or Nerbuddah's banks, 
 Or Mississippian swamps in earth remote) 
 Had they, erect, and osseous monument ; 
 Yak, bison, ounce, and elephant sagest beast ; 
 Camel, and llama, costliest sacrifice 
 Of conquering Araucanian, who the world's 
 Essential spirit worships, and on whose shores 
 The mount of thunder, buoyant o'er the flood, 
 Paused, in its world-wide wanderings ; beaver wise ; 
 Bear honey-tongued, or, prowling round the pole, 
 Lord of the land of snow and towers of ice, 
 Where many a night of months the auroral arch 
 Broods o'er lost graves ; and fox of fabled fame 
 Chaste unicorn, whose generation's known ;
 
 101 
 
 And stag, in saintliest legends sanctified ; 
 
 Fleet-footed horse ; and noble-hearted hound, 
 
 Faithful to man as to the wine-god, he 
 
 Dog of the sun, in tropic travel tried, 
 
 Now basking by the solar hearth; or hers, 
 
 Coelestial huntress, Dian's dogs divine 
 
 Led in their leash of light ; or he who guards 
 
 Orion's spacious steps ; or good Dherreem, 
 
 Sung by Beyaussa, in the mighty war 
 
 Of Kouroo and Pandoo ; four-footed friend 
 
 Of righteous rajah ; he (that kingly kin 
 
 All vanished into bliss, and deified,) 
 
 Left lone at last, shook off the shape canine, 
 
 And shone heaven's primal virtue, peer of gods ; 
 
 (Joat, l'I.kIIv blazoned on Jove's sun-bossed shield, 
 
 Adored as Pan, or Mcndes, but in name 
 
 Ashima highliest honoured; zebra barred; 
 
 Tiger; lithe leopard; puma Leonine; 
 
 Ami be whose tufted horns tree-tops o'erpeep; 
 
 Rhinoceros; river-horse; gbor; agile ape; 
 
 Baboon, t uanlike, hutted in the woods, 
 
 Social, erect, club-armed, bou! wanting Bole; 
 
 Grim-1 m k£d boar, of en il choicesi tj pe 
 
 Wlinrii ancient myths in the heavenly north instarred 
 
 I igning the summer sun to have o'erpowered, 
 
 ii
 
 102 
 
 And urged to death solstitial ; earth, meanwhile, 
 Tho beauty of all beauties, who emerged 
 From water first in shelly car, wept showers 
 And turbid streams till thy joy-hailed return, 
 O light of lights ; and trebly sphered reign. 
 All these and myriads more the angels made, 
 Lords of the desert's savage sands that drink 
 "Warm reeking blood, or browze or graze the mead ; 
 "While yet they loved the earth and wrought for God, 
 (Holy and honoured alway be Ilis name, 
 Sole, aeviternal, universal cause) ; 
 But, ah ! too soon they changed ; and changed was 
 all. 
 
 Thus made that host the world of sentient life, 
 With fittest forms peopling the elements; 
 But eagle and ox and lion, these alone 
 And one still nobler make, cherubic shapes, 
 "Were of Himself devised by heaven's supreme ; 
 Monarchal in their nature o'er all else. 
 
 With one surpassing instance all to sum 
 Resolved the demiurgic host, and sued, 
 Once more to that high end, God's promised aid. 
 The angels therefore by his will made man ;
 
 103 
 
 His upper limbs these framed, his lower those, 
 
 The chain columnal and the vital lijrht, 
 
 Informing nebulous the limbs, which still, 
 
 Death after, lives in ghostliest symmetry, 
 
 Or fills the accustomed place ; others, the flower 
 
 And constellated organs of man's brain, 
 
 "Which do the interior tree of life o'ersphere; 
 
 Its nervous roots and branching arteries; 
 
 Both male and feminine, whose harmonious forms, 
 
 Conceived accordant with divinest mould, 
 
 He hallowed with his eye, and perfected 
 
 With holy approbation ; to the life 
 
 Instinct wherewith they lived and felt and moved, 
 
 And all the twin-born passions of man's heart — 
 
 That ramble orb, now great with love, 
 
 And hope, now murk and mean with slavish fear — 
 
 Iding lli-< gift, a reasonable soul ; 
 Whereby the good from ill they might secern, 
 Ami spiritual from intellectual aims. 
 These souls himself created, \'<n- all time, 
 \ ad in the stars reserved, unl il their day ; 
 To each allot ling its appropriate orb, 
 Bard, warrior, sage, king, merchant, priest or slave 
 
 gifl ami guerdon for their seal, 
 God (ever honoured and revered be His
 
 101 
 
 Name) to tlic formative angels gave the world 
 They had wrought out of darkness, and adorned 
 With every living miracle; and man, 
 As head and end of all its dignities, 
 In delegated royalty to rule. 
 
 Thus earth, embraced of heaven, and core of space, 
 
 Was plenished, furnished, finished; and that nil 
 
 Both reasons and results of things might see 
 
 Of those creative, arbitrative now, 
 
 High in the unconditioned infinite, 
 
 God set the crowned and dominant laws of life, 
 
 In everlasting senate there to wield 
 
 The jurisdiction of the universe ; 
 
 Impersonate yet abstract ; and from the first, 
 
 Fixed in the super-solar skies, to all 
 
 Existence as exemplars ; — being, cause, 
 
 Substance, size, quality, action, passion, mode, 
 
 Form, order, change, and harmony and rest; 
 
 Duration, timeous and seterne, and space : 
 
 Motion, development, vital energy ; 
 
 Will, intellect, perception, various sense ; 
 
 The bounded and the infinite. Progress, there, 
 
 Majestic compensation, royal right, 
 
 Affection, instinct, reason, virtue, bliss ;
 
 105 
 
 Tall-sceptred law, and loin-girt liberty ; 
 
 For as defect is so is freedom ; fate ; 
 
 Perfection pure and death-enduring life ; 
 
 The purgatorial strife, love-closed; the war 
 
 "Whose end is Heaven's inviolable peace ; 
 
 All summed, self-seen and sanctified, in soul, 
 
 Whose union with the unity divine 
 
 Creator and created conciliates, 
 
 Concluding all things in its boundless curve. 
 
 Night, Nature's rule, and great exception, light, 
 
 Prone gravity, and vast inertia grown 
 
 One with her seat ; attraction, with the smile 
 
 Fadeless ; repulse, death-destined ; ill and good, 
 
 Arch-gerents of God's throne, surrounded all. 
 
 "Wliile close below the throne bright Nature, there, 
 
 Perpetual maid, perpetual mother-bride, 
 
 Sits, gladdening in her splendid offspring spread 
 
 Through starry space, indigenous to heaven ; 
 
 Of seed divine, hirst heirs of deity. 
 
 Angels and spirit hosts of human strain. 
 
 Bright levies of the light, in myriads massed, 
 
 AW sate in silent service, till one bouI, 
 
 Tuneful ami liiminnn ■ -\;w. 
 
 Stepped into light, and in the immarbled ear 
 
 ( )f the co] nl infinite, -rue.' of < lod
 
 10G 
 
 Larklike his lone lay. Then a choir the same 
 
 In stately revolution traced truth-taught, 
 
 Of power project through all effluxive spheres, 
 
 To the ccelestial refuse of this orb, 
 
 In a perduring emblem all the heavens 
 
 Still study with their centre-searching eyes. 
 
 For in the great progression of the whole, 
 
 An ever falling fall and rising rise, 
 
 Of men and angels, takes perpetual place, 
 
 Up even unto the pre-seraphic thrones ; 
 
 For the foundations of the abysmal world 
 
 Are laid in imperfection, and the all 
 
 The purifying pain of fire diviue 
 
 Must pass through, in its holy reascent 
 
 To the supreme perfection of pure cause. 
 
 For the time was when God was God alone, 
 
 And nothing but God was. He then withdrew 
 
 A portion of His essence ; in that space, 
 
 Girt by the infinite, the world became ; 
 
 Contrast with its creator, but a point; 
 
 A point ideal child of nothingness. 
 
 These things in vision God the angels shewed ; 
 AVhercat they trembled and were troubled; still, 
 Earthwards rewing'mg, with prospective pride,
 
 107 
 
 They meditated pure delights, and reigned 
 
 In thought triumphant, independent gods. 
 
 The angels, thus, launched each on his own wild 
 
 will, 
 Apportioned all among them, 'stablishing 
 In various countries variant roots of men, 
 Giants and dwarves and .Ethiop manikins, 
 And pygmies ; (these the tall indignant cranes, 
 Angered by broken treaties, drove and drowned 
 In sea-pools ; first of victories marine :) 
 And those in just majestic medium made ; 
 All somewhat diverse ; all assemblant still ; 
 Whence ray th» lines and brotherhoods of man : 
 The sea-born seed, too, earth-born, mountain-born, 
 Titans and Cyclops, Gog and Magog, sons 
 So called of gods, Corineus, Corcoran, 
 And those, Hrymthursar hight, who norwards held 
 Frore Jotunheim, contemning gods and men ; 
 Tin- A riakini and 2Emim of "Id writ, 
 And ( >g tin- king . "i' Talmudio Game ; 
 
 And those in sundry lands anil Legends known, 
 Whom BerakleSj or Rustam, or Antar, 
 The sainted seven, or prince of Frank romance, 
 1'.. Dhami, or Durlindana, deathful brands, 
 
 t of their slaughterous suuls ami burled t<> lull;
 
 108 
 
 Or those who from Icrne through deep sea 
 
 By long basaltic jetty, and pillared pier, 
 
 (Whose columns, capped with crystal, thick as canes 
 
 In Javan jungle, stand,) sought sure access 
 
 To Albyn's kingly clans, and fate-stoned throne ; 
 
 Or those, who in Loegria, or the Llionnese, 
 
 (Inundate now for ever) or on shores 
 
 Armoric, in chivalric volumes sung, 
 
 In towers of brass abode, or burnished steel, 
 
 That all the region round illumed, with throng 
 
 Of damsels dungeoned, and brave knights unhorsed, 
 
 Fire-breathing dragons guardians of their gates ; 
 
 But all, in fine, by some proud paladin 
 
 Of table round, or peer imperial, quelled. 
 
 Especial spots choosing for pristine tribes, 
 
 They sank the sites of cities ; after reared, 
 
 By such portentous architects as built 
 
 Louqsor, Medina Thabou, all that rests 
 
 Of hundred palaced Thebes 5 the columned maze 
 
 Of either Karnak, Gallic, or of Xham ; 
 
 (Twin temples raised by giants to the gods ; 
 
 Of polished rock this, that of crag unwrought ;) 
 
 JJamasek old, old Byblos, or Babel; 
 
 And that once built, men say, in Arab wilds,
 
 109 
 
 By great Shedad, city occult, whose walls 
 
 Towered in alternate tiers of silver and of gold ; 
 
 "Where bright Herat, city of roses, lights 
 
 With dome and minaret the landskip green ; 
 
 Or Tchelminar ; or Baalbek ; or where Balkh 
 
 Mother of cities, morally encrowned, 
 
 Mourns; or Thibetian L'hassa, templed seat 
 
 Of an incarnate Deity, where still 
 
 Mix Shamans and the Lama's lieges; those 
 
 Urging the stars, these, with machine-made prayers 
 
 Their transmigrative god; so shaming earth, 
 
 One of the beaming brotherhood of stars, 
 
 But all alike weak in the /Eternal hand; 
 
 These, by coelestials learned, were they who piled, 
 
 l'i 'i;ressive from the Aleutians to the Basque, 
 
 Oracular Logan ami .Main ambre; these 
 
 Who, twixt the Tales of salt and vulgar gold, 
 
 Not far from Guadalupe's aurifluous si ream, 
 
 her than rubied Oxus, azure-cliffed,) 
 That westward seeks grey ocean's barren brine, 
 M\ domes, in mailed forests hid, 
 
 Builded; and then evanished; elsewhere, tho 
 Who heaped the cross-famed tin -lanes of Palenque, 
 And towers bo high she eagles nest thereon; 
 1 pan and Zapatero mid I ' una] ;
 
 110 
 
 Or vast Cholula's terraced pyramid; 
 
 Or Subtiaba's palaces, the. seats, 
 
 Cities and holds of royalties unknown, 
 
 (More numerous, maybe, than those named in song 
 
 Of proud Fardusi, Paradisal bard ;) 
 
 The unrecorded Dynasts of old days, 
 
 "Who, in some holy and archaic tongue, 
 
 On altars graved high anaglyphs, and gave 
 
 Di\ inest meaning to each natural form ; 
 
 Nachshivan, vinous city, where the sons 
 
 And daughters of the fore-world patriarch foot 
 
 First planted on the fat and flood smirched soil ; 
 
 AVh ere Olybama rose, or Leed, Cain's third, 
 
 Or Syrian QEnosh, home of giant brood 
 
 And crown of earth, which dominated all ; 
 
 And those in following years, auspicious, named 
 
 Cities of kings, of palaces, of peace, 
 
 Of victory, of delight ; and some, half hid 
 
 Seawards, with groves of olive, orange, vine, 
 
 In lite Elysian ; some, oh how unlike ! 
 
 Fulfilling yet due purpose in their day, 
 
 Of black mechanic burgh or iron town, 
 
 (< as-breathing and steam-pulsed inpauseless power, 
 
 Though dark by day, illuminate by night, 
 
 And of its kind, head city of the world ;
 
 Ill 
 
 To star-seer, who, in Mara or Venus, notes, 
 
 "With tube more skilled than ours, earth's planet pale, 
 
 That nickering speck may many a brain-ache cause ; 
 
 Thus did the immortal angels, while of man 
 
 And earth forethoughtful and inspired of God ; 
 
 (Exalted be His name and glorified ;) 
 
 One city, the dark city of the dead, 
 
 Men founded for themselves, and furnished fast 
 
 With skeleton foliage of the tree of life, 
 
 And stony leaves dropped from the book of death. 
 
 But lo! all light must sometime suffer eclipse; 
 If light and darkness freely coexist. 
 All power corrupts the potent, not constrained 
 By special grace prevenient. Tims they ceased. 
 Those once most virtuous angels, step by step, 
 Scarcely perceptible, half unconsciously, 
 From that pure will and primal excellence 
 Wliereto they were connate; Beeking, ai first, 
 Their own names, lo i he tribes each emperor'd, 
 To magnify, and so become their gods; 
 In lieu of teaching man the one supreme 
 To worship, God; whom all alike were hound 
 To honour and adore. Through this they fell; 
 (No longer kind to man, whale', r lo God;)
 
 112 
 
 The angels fell, and drew down earth with them. 
 
 The fall is universal in all spheres, 
 
 Tor finite spirit wherever tasked to keep 
 
 The counsels of divine perfection, fails. 
 
 The starry story of one primal pair, 
 
 Twin pillars to the portals of life's fane, 
 
 Or free-born deities, free as stars are fixed, 
 
 And the coelestial serpent, sun-conceived, 
 
 AVants not, where'er is life ; but whether graved 
 
 On Elohistic columns rent from rocks, 
 
 The missals of millennial patriarchs ; 
 
 On palm-foil writ, or purple pulp of flowers, 
 
 Illumined with all literal loveliness ; 
 
 Or virgin vellum, rose gilded and perfumed, 
 
 Shrined in the bosom of some cloistered saint, 
 
 The same sad tale perpetually commands 
 
 The astral annals of the universe. 
 
 Nymph haunted stream, and river deified, 
 Hallowed in after eld as from their hands, 
 Angelic and creative, risen, vain rites 
 Received ; with lamplete studded, and with wreaths 
 Votive encrowned ; and consecrated flowers ; 
 While mounds of worship, sainted by the sun,
 
 113 
 
 And natural altars, starwise dedicate, 
 Joyed in high names of generative light. 
 Ages of water, alternate with fire; 
 Chaos and aether; the invisible heavens; 
 Earth's SBras, and the periods of pure air, 
 Commemorate were in terms divinely apt ; 
 While over all ranked preexistent speech, 
 Conceptive wisdom and seternal mind. 
 
 But gradually, a separate interest 
 
 I -inmate once betwixt themselves and God, 
 
 Among each other hostile interests sprang, 
 
 And schemes of empire basely politic ; 
 
 One name of God each took, or masculine 
 
 Or feminine, for deity bath both, 
 
 Bcgi'tting and conceiving and self-sprung, 
 
 Some title of divinity, unto which 
 
 Nunc saving God had ri^lit ; that so they might 
 
 ubstituted Lords, the rights receive 
 Due to the alone Sternal ; and His name 
 Blot from the hearts and memories of mankind. 
 
 Such were the Lord of Heaven, Maul Bemim, whom 
 Phoenicia worshipped, and. in sequenl pears, 
 
 u the holj i land of the ff(
 
 114 
 
 As lord of light, of fate, of wealth, of power, 
 
 Of gifts, of glories ; such the father of fire, 
 
 Hephaistos, or Ifestus, whom by Nile 
 
 The wise -Egyptian honoured (he who reigued 
 
 Long ages ere the cometary earth 
 
 The stars disturbed with presages of woe, 
 
 To Heaven's great family, in herself to be 
 
 Concentrate and accomplished to the death, 
 
 As in a fiery whirlpool) first of gods, 
 
 Ere yet gave time one hint of dawn ; the same 
 
 "Whom later Greeks named architect of heaven, 
 
 And in oracular hymns, Orphic and old, 
 
 Dictated by the sun, all-conquering hailed ; 
 
 Such was the lord of waters, league-invoked, 
 
 Whose witness was the everlasting well ; 
 
 Aurmazd or Ilus such, who when he bad made 
 
 Espendermad, fair tutelar of earth, 
 
 Khourdad, and all the rest, her brethren bright, 
 
 The blessed Amschaspands, and lit the stars 
 
 In the actherial hyaline, himself 
 
 ^Eternal sire of light, his strength for that 
 
 One future, final, all composing strife 
 
 Saved 'gainst the lord of evil (he, of Yezd, 
 
 Prudentially still worshipped) from the world 
 
 Eouted to be, and thenceforth rooted out
 
 115 
 
 For evermore, with threefold thunder-fires ; 
 
 Such Zeus, the living one, the saviour, hight ; 
 
 Such ancient Kronos crowned king of time, 
 
 God of the golden age, the heavenly state, 
 
 Monarch of space and all cadestial orbs ; 
 
 And he, who grasping loftier title still, 
 
 Stvled himself Heaven, the fountain of all liirht : 
 
 Astarte such, the star-nymph, who in gloom 
 
 Of groves delighted, sacred where to death 
 
 She might her Hadean lord at full beweep ; 
 
 Whom Asian tribes Shemiram, Mother of Heaven, 
 
 And 'mong their mingled gods the Ansarij hailed 
 
 Lady of light ; she moonlike round the earth 
 
 Errant, picked up a fallen star at Tyre; 
 
 Then o'er the altar stretched her sceptral cross, 
 
 Her pre-millennia] cross, thrice-hallowed sign, 
 
 Vital, and elemental, and divine, 
 
 And consecrated it; — the Dove-queen such, 
 
 W'lyj boated o'er the ocean in the lnooii. 
 
 And silvered every billow as she passed; 
 Such Viricocha, deity of the sea, 
 Adored by kingly [ncas, and the courts 
 of solar rirgins blooming; such 'mill isli 
 
 Hid in Pacific deeps, M i, stretched 
 
 Full length, gigantic shorer up of earth;
 
 116 
 
 High title his, sustainer of the world. 
 
 But soon in angel breasts ill passions bred: 
 
 Oppression followed rivalry, too soon 
 
 Symbols and signs of terror were, in place 
 
 Of love, God's own and holiest title, ta'en ; 
 
 And the divine to finite passion changed; 
 
 Then first the primal lamb, the shepherd's joy ; 
 
 Next, human victims bled ; and passed the babe 
 
 Through baptism of blood and fire, to peace. 
 
 Such pre-atonement naught ; whilst stormiest wars 
 
 Angel with angel waged, and god with god ; 
 
 Each striving most to broaden his domain ; 
 
 Propelling his adorers to invade 
 
 Root out and ruin all of faith opposed. 
 
 The heavens were rent with lightnings and the fields 
 
 Of interjacent space, as the high powers 
 
 Now heated to malignity, oft closed 
 
 In thunderous conflict, till the fire-breathed hiljs 
 
 Grew iced with fear ; and quaking, earth beneath, 
 
 Reeked with the blood of brethren, brethren-slain. 
 
 So heathen against heathen, tribe 'gainst tribe, 
 Streamed onwards in embattled waves of war ; 
 And people against people rose, and wronged
 
 117 
 
 Each one the other ; robbed of laud or life ; 
 With scythed chariots mowed the fields of blood ; 
 Cities of wealth, and states despoiled of peace ; 
 Eed rapine reaped the land, and famine fed ; 
 "While maid and mother, eld and childhood, ate 
 The heart of grief, and drank the tears of woe. 
 
 The angel of the ocean-flowing Nile, 
 And he the heights of Lebanon who held, 
 And he who, where Hidekkel gulfwards darts, 
 Euled with an absolute crown, for ages strove 
 "With changeable success, and interchanged 
 ^li.-hap, but each evolving changeless woe; 
 So too the Persian ang( 1 and the Greek, 
 Contending, lanes and altars were defiled; 
 And myriads of belligerent worshippers, 
 Through vain ambition of immortals, slain. 
 
 • thing was common to all nations; woe. 
 Sin, vice, and luxury, with their flower-wreathed 
 da, 
 oed o'er I hi peel le nations; life on life, 
 Madi . Like that cruel tower In fair Shirauz, 
 ( tf living souls impacted, limed with blood, 
 
 Tune's generations mounts of misery. 
 
 i
 
 118 
 
 What though men build them alabaster domes, 
 Or palaces of glassy marble, these 
 Pleasure, nor grandeur cause of soul ; God's love 
 Eusure not, man's esteem ; nor useful life 
 Secure, nor peaceful death. 
 
 Lo, once Ki-yung ; 
 Those halls of rose-flushed marble, golden veined, 
 Porched with pellucid agate, reared by her 
 Fairest of all her day, of foulest deeds, 
 The demon-queen, kid-footed. She therein 
 Perpetual revel held, by sun, by moon ; 
 Though this delights not the eternals ; nor, 
 Though beauty's orb, the lady of the hour, 
 Euled o'er the royal orgies, wine nor mead, 
 Conserve, nor cates, sherbets, nor candied cane, 
 On ivory salvers, furnish feasts for Heaven ; 
 Nor chaplets, twined of myrtle and of rose, 
 Nor robe perfumed, such grateful incense pour 
 As virtue's aspiration, or the sigh 
 Of penitential grief from soul forgiven ; 
 But there those world enthralling charms, whereon 
 The stars, subservient to her hests, distilled 
 Their dewy light, she forged; and them deceived; 
 Or foiled with fatal skill and sad success;
 
 119 
 
 Parted the elements of the blood of life ; 
 
 Tea into childing nature's mysteries pr} r ed ; 
 
 And the pink silvered pith of infant limbs. 
 
 Pernicious wretch ! Her not all orbs colleagued, 
 
 Nor magic mirrors, in whose jetty sheen 
 
 Spirits do men envisage, might fore-arm ; 
 
 Nor living vipers brayed ; nor gory draught ; 
 
 Nor incantation with Iynges crowned, 
 
 Infallible proclaimed by priestly pride; 
 
 Nor favouring fiends could fend from doom divine ; 
 
 Transpierced she fell by one triumphant spear. 
 
 So vain, so vile the solace that they gave, 
 
 se recreant angels, to man's heart distraught 
 With competitive griefs and rival woes. 
 
 Ails hidden, arts forbidden; by whose help 
 Men desperatelj hoped to vanquish death, 
 i d with the rabid Longings of the hearl 
 Por splendours safe hut in bhe spirit slate: 
 Knowledge commensurate with God's work, ami 
 
 Wealth, sway, ami Inextinguishable life 
 
 Men asked tin- grace of dromons; asked ami had-. 
 
 I'm- t hose imi" i fed at more ami more
 
 120 
 
 From God removed by dint of selfishness, 
 Usurped diviner honours, and inspired 
 With half truths, chrestomathic, those who kneeled 
 Before their shrines. For this the builders built, 
 Till rouud its crest white cloudlets, birdlike, 
 
 winged, 
 Their planetary keep in spiral wise, 
 (Than Graulos' tower Titanic, when new coped 
 By Cyclopean labourer, loftier far) 
 And splueral tiers, for every orb a stage, 
 In blasphemous perfection ; for this end, 
 Till madness, toiled to draw down from the moon 
 Spirits that might impart the spell of life 
 Time could not sate ; for this, self-starved adept 
 The imbronzed turret, on whose aery top 
 A brazen hand gigantic, upwards thrust, 
 The pearly dew of Heaven's pure life conceived, 
 Upraised, to slake the quenchless thirst of kings 
 For pomp imperial and perpetual power; 
 For this, presumptuous, chased the vital sprite 
 To its profoundest cell ; and, failing force, 
 Sought to entice in odorous abodes 
 The secret of existence ; for this planned 
 Bowers of rose, acacia, satin wood, 
 And sainted cedar, type of deathlessness ;
 
 121 
 
 Chambers of camphire and of cinnamon, 
 And musk and myrrh, that all the air around 
 "Was as a fane when silvery censers burn. 
 But all availed not souls mistaught to seek 
 Mid nature's mere effects for source divine ; 
 And among temporal ends the cause seterne, 
 The world-evolving spirit ruling all. 
 
 Not all, nathless, was blank ; nor blight : to man 
 
 One sweet exemption, by God's grace, pertained ; 
 
 One gift diviner than the angels gave, 
 
 By them o'erlooked, not all their mutual wrath 
 
 Could ruin or pervert ; love, nought but love ; 
 
 Parental, filial, conjugal, divine. 
 
 Life's armies were recruited still by love ; 
 
 Fond hearts si ill gre^i affection, as fields corn; 
 
 Still bloomed and fruited with an inner life, 
 
 .And vintage of delight ; still youthful breasts, 
 
 Beciprocally fired, imparted joy, 
 
 Imported rapture; tenderesi converse still, 
 
 I lie w hisperings of imblossomed i rr(\<, 
 Or the low Lispinga of right's silvery seas, 
 Lived on the lips of lovers, then a> now, 
 By fount or mead, or wandering, moon-beguiled, 
 ath tall white cliffs, along shores shadowle
 
 122 
 
 In sooth not all was sorrow ; nor all sin ; 
 
 Labour and leisure both are blessed of God. 
 
 "What time the winds, harmoniously inclined, 
 
 Tinkling the white pagoda's gilded bells, 
 
 By Nanking, courtly seat of Han's high branch, 
 
 Meet music make to favourable Heaven ; 
 
 He, priest imperial, heavenly labourer, sole 
 
 With royal rights and sacerdotal crowned, 
 
 Who, year by year, on the re-birtli of Time, 
 
 Driving his furrow deep in earth, both soil 
 
 And toil doth sanctify, and with the hand 
 
 That curbs a hundred kings, the grain of life 
 
 Scatters ; the steps of that bright tower then scales 
 
 In solemn solitude ; and on its peak, 
 
 Prostrate in prayer, struggles alone with Heaven ; 
 
 Heart-scourged, and with confession, expiates thrice 
 
 Those sins the sun saw in his golden round ; 
 
 Then of the stars inquisitive, by wise 
 
 And perfect intuition of the heavens, 
 
 And social signs, and seasons of the spheres, 
 
 The horoscope of nations, and of all 
 
 J lis diligent lands, he learns ; and so descends 
 
 Vicarious, bringing back with him God's peace. 
 
 Such kingly cares are hallowed ; nor less, his, 
 
 The honest hind, who, issuing with the dawn,
 
 123 
 
 From low-thatched thorpe, walled with primaeval clay, 
 Or wood-nooked cot, by axe or mattock wins, 
 Content, his bread, his hearthfire, and his rest. 
 
 But of all spirits who mortals most misled, 
 
 (0 bold, blasphemous, legendary lie !) 
 
 Head of the angel race, prime demiurge, 
 
 Was lie who o'er the wandering Hebrews swayed, 
 
 (What time from Kmus' wrath and Asshur's land, 
 
 And city — itself a realm — of Nin-Evech, 
 
 And the dannoniac fires of the Chaldees, 
 
 Came forth the father of the faithful flock) 
 
 Pretentious, proud, prohibiting brotherhood. 
 
 For ages this continued ; till, at last, 
 In the divine accomplishment of times, 
 The mind of man, nuked with immortal grief, 
 To which in vain philosophy had hm 
 
 Eer balm Lethean, and tin 1 ignorant hordes, 
 Slaves to obscurest idols hi- impure, 
 Buddhists or heathen of all faiths uncouth, 
 Which cloud earth's fairer half, (from Baltic bay 
 Tideless, and golden gap, where Frank or Lapp 
 With Bfeshech's mighty seed justlj contend, 
 Athwart to hills of heaven, and Bouthmost shoi
 
 124 
 
 Unbroken, of peninsular Malay, 
 Siam, Borneo, and the scattered flock 
 Of islets trending towards the Austral pole) 
 Sought refuge in barbaric apathy : — 
 Men cried aloud to God. 
 
 God pitied man : 
 And in sublime compassion gazed below. 
 The eyes of the ^Eternal, and thine, Christ ! 
 First, highest of all iEons, the Divine 
 Intelligence, met, midmost in the heavens ; 
 And mercy to the semi-angel man, 
 Flowed from the vision. 
 
 Men in secret prayed. 
 JSTot all that Indian sages could educe 
 From their Vedamic founts of knowledge rare, 
 Fourfold, as in the garden of delight ; 
 Nor Konfutse, the sovereign sage who paced 
 From realm to realm with holy doctrine all 
 Enlightening ; yet who knew but, named but God 
 The great one, ere all nature, ere all law, 
 The universal essence, perfect, pure ; 
 His scholars, kings or sages ; nor Meng-tse, 
 "Who doubtless deemed the movements of man's soul,
 
 125 
 
 As water to its level, prone to good, 
 
 Not self-eondeinnecl, by inborn pravity, 
 
 To ever deepening sin till purified 
 
 By light divine ; nor Lao, son of truth, 
 
 Truthless, the unreasonable creed who planned 
 
 Of deathly souls, and pleasure's quest life's end 
 
 He, head of the Immortals, held that God, 
 
 But the high reason which had arched the heavens, 
 
 i whom creation emanates as light 
 Looms from the sun, in death doth reassume 
 J I is everlasting gift, the Life supreme; 
 Nor Gaudma, sou] austere from Buddhist scrolls ; 
 Nor they who Zaradean rites ensued, 
 As after fall and flood comes final fire ; 
 Nor they who in the city of the sun 
 
 fateful words of Trismegiat revered; 
 Nor they who, smit with curious care, would note, 
 Plucking the foliage of that fatal flower, 
 
 ■ onirics Sibj lline, willed of I lod ; 
 Whether Tiresias' daughter, Theban maid, 
 
 ( >r I telphic I )apl or the sun-inspired, 
 
 B divine counsel voiced the heavenly verse; 
 \ ome in after d i; v * irgilian leaves, 
 Homeric tome, or scriptui osancl ; 
 
 Nor who from Delian Bhrine, or Parian fane,
 
 120 
 
 Redo sought of holiest ambiguity, 
 Self-guarded, two-edged, waving either way; 
 Nor the wise seven of Greece; nor Thracian seer, 
 Skilled in all lore ccelestial and arcane, 
 Who pierced the Hadean shades, and his bright bride 
 Though serpent-stung, death seized, had half re- 
 deemed ; 
 (Alas, not half; man's whole redemption lay 
 Sole, and to be, still in the breast of God) 
 Nor he, the white-stoled wanderer of far lands, 
 "Who first the name of wisdom's lover claimed ; 
 Nor he, of Hyperborean fame, who round 
 The world on golden arrow, white winged sped; 
 Nor grove-priest, opening (from the ship of earth, 
 Or manual mound, the judgment seat of kin^s, 
 Of twice ten roods of land the base immense,) 
 The sacred secrets of the earth and skies ; 
 From magic or from mystic orgies, none 
 Could whisper to the world one saving spell 
 That might the house of death illume ; or raise 
 Even in life the soul to hope and peace, 
 Or look for ultimate union with the light. 
 
 * 
 
 Nor priest, nor bard, nor mage from secret source 
 Or patent, Ogham, nor the ghostlier runes ;
 
 127 
 
 Nor rolls of birchen bark with mighty lay 
 
 Of divination, graven in branched signs, 
 
 Ere dim tradition ; nor from tablets rich 
 
 With Auscan god-lore and augurial rites 
 
 Of volant fowl ; from cane nor palm leaf drenched 
 
 With sacred scents, in gilded Pali penned; 
 
 Sungskrit, or arrowy Zend wherein the sun's 
 
 Vicarious rites were taught ; nor Arian, tongue 
 
 Of Asian eld trilingual ; nor, unnamed, 
 
 The foreworld's infant speech, haply entombed, 
 
 With archives of the earth's initial throne, 
 
 Below black Babel's thunder-thwarted pile ; 
 
 Or Arach, arkite city of the moon, 
 
 Whose golden crowned ghosts shall all precede, 
 
 Kingly, at doom, though Persargadae's graves, 
 
 B man and Buss, or Norman's vaulted tomb 
 
 YieM up their dominant Bhadowa to the light; 
 
 Or where in alabastrine lialls. approached 
 
 Through forma cherubic, of omnipresenl wing 
 
 ojik one.', or in K horsabad, 
 On sculptured walls, behold the king, with wine 
 Divining in 1 1 1 * - presence of bis l,'o<1h, 
 Min b and accepts bis fate; 
 
 I p D( ranagari, writs divini ; 
 
 Nor Bimyaritic wisdom (pointed to
 
 128 
 
 Of old by patriarch Ayub ; type of man, 
 His seed entire, death slain, regenerate rise) 
 Rock-scored, whose shadows frown o'er Sheba'a 
 
 sands ; 
 Nor the symbolic meaning wrapped in stones 
 Snake-headed, volumed over leagues of down ; 
 Nor earliest earth-mound, reared before all walls 
 By stalwarth savages, in arts of life 
 Less skilled than feats of death ; and who, where now, 
 Par east and west, resurgent cities stand, 
 Hounded the hills ; some vast and simple faith 
 Rudely divine, more than our chiselled creeds, 
 Embracing, as though fallen ripe from heaven; 
 Nor rifled secrets of palatial tombs 
 Hearted in Lydian barrows ; nor could those 
 Sepulchral hills sodden with blood of steed, 
 Henchman, or immolated slave (far round 
 Earth heaves with tomblets, as the sea with waves) 
 Mid wilds Kathaian ; unprofaned as yet 
 By art or avarice ; nor those mightier mounds 
 "Whereon two days, from sunrise to sundown, 
 The warrior shepherd shall both herd and flock, 
 Content, depasture ; underfoot, the Khan, 
 (God's shadow; brother, maybe, of the moon; 
 Sole refuge of a wretched universe ;)
 
 129 
 
 Sceptred, and swathed within his thin gold shroud, 
 
 Sleeps, doubtless, sound ; though o'er that sacred head 
 
 Shrill sings the boor ; he, striding round the base, 
 
 In meditative measurement, and round, 
 
 Twirls his long lance, contemptuous of the time ; 
 
 Nor astral oracles the wise might find 
 
 On the sun's house, or mansion of the moon 
 
 Inscribed in letters of serenest light ; 
 
 From none of these dead signs came life, came hope, 
 
 To man's expectant spirit, nor relief; 
 
 The spectral mysteries of the a?ternal life 
 
 Were not to be explored nor excavate. 
 
 Nor Rabbin versed in Cabalistic lore, 
 In potent ciphers and in names of might, 
 Aheieh, Mat/pat/.. QEmeth, On, Elhai, 
 Aishi, and Baali, Netzah, Aula, Tzour; 
 Or that which faintly beired the cloud of light, 
 (Whence God of old bj gema spake, and Hi* truth 
 amed from every glance of G 
 echoing daughter of the spirit vo\ 
 In spheral talismans and starry seala 
 The which on vital, \ mental worlds 
 
 Do stamp their influence through the element 
 p who, in Babylonian gloas profound,
 
 130 
 
 Taught the yEdeuic mysteries of man 
 
 And maness ; how in union infinite, 
 
 The fair rcterne, the loveliness supreme, 
 
 The heavenly man, the tree divine of life, 
 
 Whose branches, spread invisibly through space, 
 
 Fruit but in heavenly paradise ; pure cause 
 
 Of all the beauty of the universe, 
 
 And all the vital harmonies wherewith 
 
 The light investured sun is resonant, 
 
 Mates with the queen of heaven, the spouse of light, 
 
 Mistress of mysteries, and bride of life, 
 
 The golden ark of faith, the gate of God, 
 
 And temple of the king ; how in this world, 
 
 Man is the representative of the word, 
 
 And of the spirit maiden ; in the word, 
 
 How woman typeth man, man God ; in art 
 
 Of channel, chariot, fabric, and the twain 
 
 And thrice ten ways of wisdom, and the ports 
 
 Fifty of all intelligence ; though skilled 
 
 To excess, who taught the alphabet of life 
 
 Angelical and sidereal and mundane, 
 
 The holy outbranchings of divinity, 
 
 And virtues of the tenfold veils of God, 
 
 Stretched from the all essential infinite, 
 
 To animastic orders and ourselves,
 
 131 
 
 Earth being last of spheres, of being, man ; 
 Xot such, pride-blind, could recognize the true 
 Divinity to come in lowliest guise ; 
 But for some crowned and sword-girt conqueror, 
 Throne-born, and in a golden cradle rocked, 
 Awaiting, they awaited ; wait they may. 
 
 The angels would not, and man could not save. 
 Ee-track their steps the angels would not; nor 
 From holiest truths eliminate the false, 
 And thus with God's, man's mind re-harmonize ; 
 But as, misplaced of purpose, blent their rites 
 That so from mystery, mystery still might come, 
 And no solution, no salvation, self 
 Sufficing, stand within the lane of day. 
 
 Virtue and vice were preached of without end; 
 
 Miii as in theories of life men grew 
 
 More skilled and perfect, so in practick worse. 
 
 Thai nee is hateful, virtue heavenly, all 
 
 Or most confessed; but knew not whence! nor why. 
 
 Nor how in shun the one, the other win* 
 
 For who of the ecBlestia] Life could tell 
 
 rtained, ;ii tainahle, or Lovebj , 
 To beings of nature mixed and finite powers;
 
 132 
 
 And if to all, or learned or simple, free ? 
 To many, or to few ? 
 
 Not he who deemed 
 Water the origin of things mundane ; 
 Not lie who fire ; who air ; who atoms held ; 
 Nor he who that the All, oeterne, was God ; 
 Not he who first from heaven to earth deduced 
 Philosophy ; and then from earth to heaven 
 Traced the soul's path by immortality ; 
 And, like a god disguised, died as he lived; 
 Nor he, the sometime slave, surnamed divine, 
 Eich in ^Egyptian wisdom and all lore 
 Hellenic, who in Academus taught 
 The teacher of earth's conqueror, and the hearts 
 Of tyrant kings softened by gratitude ; 
 Nor they wdio in the Porch oft dreamed aloud 
 Their passionless figment of humanity ; 
 Nor lie who iu the Garden vainly taught 
 Pure pleasure as man's truest mark and end ; 
 AVI lose words the very hearts corrupted they 
 Aimed but to purify; not he who all things scorned; 
 Not he who doubted all ; not even they, 
 Manly and moderate, honest friends of truth, 
 Who all the tenable points of others chose
 
 133 
 
 And in one system starred. 
 
 Where faith was not 
 In God's all moulding hand, what else could shew ? 
 As when aerial voyager, in car 
 Strung pensile 'neath some huge and gaseous globe, 
 That but by loftier levity attains 
 Life's limit, upwards eyes the infinite, 
 bereal wdds and vacuous solitudes) 
 Formless and vast, resembling Deity 
 Less even than negation ; then, while through 
 His mind (himself a wind-steered atom) pass 
 Inexplicable thoughts and doubts sublime, 
 And troublous forecast of his travel's end, 
 Pores, wistful, downwards on the sea of clouds, 
 Peaked, far below his feet, in billowy bills, 
 
 i over sea, whose vaporous baptism he 
 Musi pass through ; so, between all truth and death, 
 
 be uncertain, philosophic soul, 
 Sustained, according to its inward powers, 
 Through empty wastes, and sets where Fortune li 
 < )r \\ panl decree. 
 
 Nor better land 
 The dubious mind, intent elsewhere <m truth, 
 
 B
 
 184 
 
 With the self-righteous formalist who prized 
 
 The law minutest, if Mosaic, more 
 
 Thau justice or diviuest charities ; 
 
 Or those, who, utter nothing after death 
 
 Argued, against the instinct of mankind ; 
 
 And so besotted, tyrannously denied 
 
 The being of all angels, their's except, 
 
 Michael, Gabriel, Eaphael, and all else ; 
 
 Or such as in ascetic pennance pined 
 
 'Mid rocks, wilds, caves, their useless lives away. 
 
 Law seemed not that man needed ; from the birth 
 
 Historic of all empires to that hour, 
 
 Menes and Micos, Numa and Manou ; 
 
 And wise Zamolxis, legislative slave, 
 
 Who after three years death his life redeemed ; 
 
 Sub-slaving to achieve his country's weal; 
 
 Zaleucus and Lycurgus and Solon, 
 
 The lights of ages, and Eome's tables twelve 
 
 Had done what in them lay, of human force, 
 
 To better negatively man's defaults, 
 
 And social sins and civic crimes decrease ; 
 
 Injustice all forbidding ; but one mean, 
 
 Whereby reunion with Divinity 
 
 (Which failing, law, philosophy, and faith
 
 135 
 
 Echoes of echoes were and shades of shades) 
 Might be accomplished, seemed unknown, unhoped. 
 
 To some in every land, of soul reborn, 
 
 The gifts of wisdom, light and peace pertained ; 
 
 But who should teach the multitudinous mass; 
 
 A truths unfold, and what more fine reserve ; 
 The wisest men were doubtful; and believed 
 The ultimate indifference of all deeds, 
 All thoughts, all motives, all intents ; the best 
 Were erring guides ; the worst were all but all. 
 The world was one SBnigma; life appeared 
 A. brid roans across a stream of tears. 
 
 Again the giant world-sphinx, winged with air, 
 Sun-faced, star-maned, tailed with the rolling Bea, 
 And breasted as beseems the dam of all 
 Who oourisheth men and beasts, her riddle reads; 
 
 I, this time, sin- tin; Knot divine propounds, 
 (Fo] ■ and pries! <■■■ •• n, bol b, i ->l) 
 
 Of how in i_v God with man be reconciled? 
 Who solves earns well the- purple; and thenceforth 
 With ominous and cursewortbj glorj wears 
 I! gold-spiked crown. But ah! his end is woe. 
 He, to his laic divine, uneyes himself in vain;
 
 136 
 
 His tomb is in time's chasm ; and the long 
 
 Oracular thunders further quest forefend. 
 
 In every generation of his kind, 
 
 Hero, or priest, or bard, or sage, or king, 
 
 There lives but one can solve. Now all were dumb. 
 
 Bat now that Messianic times drew nigh, 
 
 In sweet fulfilment of coelestial love, 
 
 Paternal, son-like, spiritual, typed 
 
 In rites Saturnian, golden-tided years ; 
 
 God the most High, compassionating the state 
 
 Of wretched mortals, thus with reason blessed, 
 
 But with material nature cursed, devoid 
 
 Of guide infallible, or standard pure, 
 
 And ground beneath the crashing rivalries 
 
 Of disobedient angels, sent from heaven 
 
 His Christ, our Saviour; that He, being born 
 
 In union consubstantive with the man 
 
 Jesus, true knowledge of the Lord of Gods, 
 
 And faith in Him alone, He might retrieve 
 
 To earth's bewildered nations ; and the reign 
 
 O'erthrow of angel kings who thralled the world 
 
 ■\Vith their most fatal misrule ; and in front, 
 
 The haughty and presumptuous spirit which claimed 
 
 Allegiance from the patriarch's house, who led
 
 137 
 By him, from Goshen, in C'naan abode. 
 
 Comes the Creator of all worlds ; the Lord 
 Of life ; the Liberator of all souls ; 
 The mediative God, the saint of saints, 
 The great Pacificator. 
 
 Was no clash 
 Of sword on shield ? no bruit of brazen trump 
 From armied nations rending air with shouts ? 
 Xo wordless murmurs of expectant joy, 
 Too mighty to be uttered or repressed, 
 From myriads multiplied by myriads, heard ? 
 shewed no revelry? Xo domes, 
 Nor Parian pillars, cl d with flame, 
 
 Nor wreathed lamps respiring odorous oils? 
 halls with Moral rainbows spanned, 
 And bannered .silks with silvery ciphers wrou 
 No gilded • No team of cream-white steeds, 
 
 Whose hou Learned in purple and in pearl ? 
 
 ie forth do mitred pries! His path to chnrm 
 With benedictions, pouring at Bis feet 
 
 [•templed ti of a race ' 
 
 Were ool the mj of the sphi 
 
 In honour of the ad renl of their L<
 
 138 
 
 Figured in sacred dances, games and songs ? 
 
 Seemed there no universal pause from toil ? 
 
 From woe ? From war ? Nor world-wide truce of 
 
 God ? 
 Nor smith nor armourer ceased their trenchant trade ? 
 Glared not the hills with joy-fires ? Made the kings 
 No feast imperial ? Bled not fountains Avine 
 With gush luxurious into marhle meres ? 
 Nor prince, nor kingling largesse gave to churl, 
 Nor freedom to the bond ? But, did not Heaven, 
 (When, masked in manhood, earth He dignified 
 By touching with his feet, as once the wave, 
 While He to faith its golden pathway shewed) 
 Self-interested, from its depths detach 
 Some noon-eclipsing orb, some sun of suns, 
 With meteoric blaze o'erflooding space, 
 With night confounding day ? 
 
 One lonely star, 
 (Like that which on the throned lady's lap, 
 Fresh coined of God, leapt forth for latter worlds) 
 One pure pale starlet, marked of none but three, 
 Streamed slow through air ; and towards a new-born 
 
 babe, 
 One snowy midnight in a manger caved,
 
 139 
 
 Mid lowing oxen and adoring herds, 
 Pointed with ravonnant finger and retired. 
 
 Allied to our mortality came Christ, 
 
 Therefore in godly wise, and humbly great ; 
 
 Foretold by stars ; typed by the winged sun ; 
 
 His life one long perpetual miracle 
 
 Upon the sun-clad earth ; from lip and hand 
 
 Eradiating blessings like the sun. 
 
 J lis words were as a well, profoundly clear, 
 
 And deeplier drawn, the purer, more of life. 
 
 Mankind with inexpressive gladness marked 
 
 J I is daily walk; touched his health-issuing robe, 
 
 And lived renewed; the changing dead his grave 
 
 Quitted at one appeal ; Burners, their Bin 
 
 Mid, were forgiven ; believed, and were in 
 heaven. 
 
 iding the whole defection of his state, 
 
 igel of tin- Eebrews (chosen race 
 they o'erweeningly misdeemed, so taught 
 I'.. their intolerant warden) moved with wrath, 
 And dow inspiring malice in the hearts 
 ( )f thousands, hi- fanatic < I * 
 
 Aze ami .-l.i\ the marvellous man.
 
 140 
 
 Thousands revered and loved him ; one betrayed. 
 
 (Treason most high, most base, most monstrous this, 
 
 To mar the majesty divine of Heaven!) 
 
 Burning with envy and all ill passions, born 
 
 Of man's original corruption, fixed 
 
 In fatal flesh, they bound, mocked, scourged and 
 
 slew 
 Jesus, the glory of earth ; in that dread deed 
 Of human hate, fulfilling love divine ; 
 But Christ, first JEon, the Intelligence, 
 Impassible, immortal, 'scaped their toils 
 (A fiery struggle, fatal to the foe) 
 By virtue of Divinity, and rose 
 Into the highest heavens, where now He sits, 
 The head of all existence, light of God. 
 
 For God deposed the angels ; and consigned 
 
 To purifying penitence ; their seals 
 
 Of sovereignty He all annulled, and they, 
 
 Bidden into black oblivion, cast ; as since, 
 
 In mountain tarn volcanic, throne and crown, 
 
 Sceptre, and all regalia, golden gauds, 
 
 The imperial pagan of the west implunged ; 
 
 In time to come, some needy fisherman, 
 
 At close of day, with his last throw perchance,
 
 141 
 
 Shall joyful net a mass — may burnish yet — 
 "Weed-webbed and foul, a despot's diadem ; 
 But He who did the angels, calm, discrown, 
 Alone can give, again, their primal power. 
 
 But he and his, who held, that in that hour, 
 Of death (hopeful and holy now) thou, Lord ! 
 Thy bodily semblance graftedst on the frame 
 And face of other, to thy cross subject ; 
 O ! he who thus conceived thee, knew thee not, 
 Thy human severing from thy state divine, 
 Son of the living God; sole son; and sire 
 Of the eternity to come, thou first 
 
 ! meekest of all martyrs, Christ ; the crown 
 Of saints, the joy of angels; of all life 
 The glory and the blessing, fount and end; 
 Whose blessed blood hath whitened all the world, 
 And clarified creation, conquered death. 
 
 Thus, saith the spiritual legendist, 
 
 They who in llim believe and do His will, 
 
 Well willing and well doing to all nun, 
 
 Shall after death | in llim, and 
 
 i Leaving their bodies in i 1 
 
 < >r matt* !•. whenc oe)
 
 142 
 
 His Father's face ; the God o'er all supreme. 
 But, on expiry, the rebellious soul 
 Shall other bodies enter, time by time, 
 Till it confess the truth and trust in Christ. 
 
 All things are intermediate ; God (His name 
 
 For aye be praised and magnified) alone 
 
 Is first and last ; creation circling midst. 
 
 The pre-existent life of spirit-spheres 
 
 Is that of preparation ; on the earth 
 
 Probation ; after death, purgation ; all 
 
 Begins, all ends, all mediates sole in God. 
 
 This purgatory everlasting is ; 
 
 The fires {eternal, not the punishment ; 
 
 Age-lasting and life lasting such alone ; 
 
 For so long as a man hath lived in sin, 
 
 So long the spirit suffers for the sense ; 
 
 So long for worst offence he may be pained; 
 
 So long his inward shadow fined with fire ; 
 
 So long remorse, as with a burning wrasp 
 
 In poison steeped, shall bite his quivering heart, 
 
 Till, blanched and purified, sin's pantherine spots 
 
 Vanish in whiteness as the wool of lambs. 
 
 The virtues and all holiest sympathies,
 
 143 
 
 Preponderating upwards, meet in Heaven; 
 
 And in God's bosom centre. And thus love, 
 
 The heart's deep gulf-stream, that, with warmer wave 
 
 Sun-gilded, soothes the abysses of our life, 
 
 And tempers, with its mild divinity, 
 
 The universal breath all, partly, breathe ; 
 
 Hasting to compass its coelestial eud, 
 
 With a serene progression, makes us feel 
 
 In loving God the soul reseeks its source ; 
 
 Being to being answering, name to name. 
 
 And every evil passion which man's soul, 
 
 "With flesh engendering, fostered while in life, 
 
 Becomes, in death, a living fiend ; to scourge 
 
 "With patricidal and Briarean hand, 
 
 guilty parent, shrinking, shrieking, lost: — 
 But vanquished, grows an angel, bleached bj fire, 
 to salvation in the hi 
 
 .v, all the ills men bear are caused by Bins, 
 Their are penalties impost 'I by < ; <.<l ; 
 
 (All hallowed I"- Bis Dame, and aye extolled) 
 And each man sufferetb on his own behalf, 
 What pn I : i ighteous judgemi q1 for off! i 
 
 <»' vainly, vainly from the contrite soul,
 
 144 
 
 Stabbed with the golden dagger of remorse 
 For -siri, pours forth the penitential prayer; 
 Death were too cheap a pain; man's life a fine 
 Too trivial to appease God's proud revenge, 
 But for thine infinite atonement, Christ ! 
 
 And it comports with reason; the less ill 
 Men do, less will they suffer; the more good 
 Men do to men on earth, the more will God 
 Do unto them in heaven ; for He repays 
 Always an hundred, ofttimes, thousand fold. 
 
 "Wherefore should all men purge the soul of sin, 
 
 The conscience of all criminal desire ; 
 
 Concupiscence, ire, envy, hatred, sloth ; 
 
 The mind of all perturhing passion ; heart 
 
 Of all propensity which will not bear 
 
 Heaven's fullest, holiest light ; whereof by Christ, 
 
 Immortal mediator of the world, 
 
 Man may become the blessed recipient; 
 
 And heaven be full of souls, as air of motes 
 
 Prismatic, the vivacious seed of worlds. 
 
 So with the godlike angels too, at last; 
 Atoning, by obedience unto God,
 
 145 
 
 (0 ! doubly blessed and trebly worshipped name, 
 
 Of all in heaven, or earth or under earth,) 
 
 For selfish ianV, inexpiable else, 
 
 And penitent exile from affairs mundane, 
 
 They, their asbestine expurgation passed, 
 
 Exalted by progression infiuite, 
 
 Through conduct, aspiration and intent 
 
 Thrice rec -hall rise ; and round God's throne, 
 
 "Where, o'er the infinite and immaculate skies, 
 
 The rainbow bends its everlasting beams, 
 
 Not drops of water but translucent stars 
 
 Existent solely in the ./Eternal i 
 
 AVlicrein the spirits, glorified, of time 
 
 Coa-qual with tin' universe abide; 
 
 Shall they, bright guardians, stand; like dear to God 
 
 Both man and angel kind. 
 
 .Ami when, i'th' end, 
 lumbered times, duration unbethought, 
 
 -I. shall God (lii- name be ever bl 
 And sanctified) another world causate; 
 Tin- powers of all Bpirits shall aggrandi 
 Make them wi e, happy, humble, good, content: 
 In every thought, design, desire .-hall reign, 
 And glorifv Himself unboundedly ;
 
 146 
 
 Tnto their hands all mortal destinies give, 
 And bid them rule and bless wherever stretch 
 His skies. 
 
 Thus he, the legend spiritual who feigned.
 
 A FAIRY TALE. 
 
 Once in days of yore a little Princess, who had 
 
 summers seen 
 Scarcely seven, and was christened hy the holy 
 
 name Christine, 
 Found herself, at eve, disporting in a fairy ring of 
 
 green. 
 
 She had left the kingly castle; left her sire's and 
 
 mother's Bide, 
 Left the banquet, where her brother feasted with 
 
 his royal bride; 
 And had ramhled to the forest valley, 'neath the 
 
 summer moon, 
 Winn- she crossed the charmed circle, aught thereof 
 
 unknowing. Boon, 
 erwearied there she rested, wishing what might 
 
 come to ]' 
 When by chance her band alighted on a tufl of 
 
 clover-
 
 148 
 
 This she grasped, a tiny handful: — ah! Saint Mary! 
 
 what she saw ! — 
 Mounted on their milk-white palfreys, issuing from 
 
 the shady shawe, 
 Came the Fairies, caracolling gaily as they passed 
 
 along ; 
 Then, dismounting, closed around her in a bright 
 
 and joyous throng; 
 Ladylings and lordlings dancing, piping, harping, 
 
 full of song. 
 Clad in robes of silken silver, golden gossamer a few, 
 Decked with jewels bright as starlets, bright as berries, 
 
 bright as dew ; 
 Some in kirtle, scarf, and doublet, all of verdant 
 
 forest hue. 
 
 Lovers there she saw, arm-twining, in the wild 
 wood's shadowy slade ; 
 
 There, some woful knight was kneeling at the feet 
 of haughty maid ; 
 
 Ilere was feasting, there was music ; many a cun- 
 ning prank was played. 
 
 Suddenly, the stateliest of them, he that most a 
 monarch seemed,
 
 (Cap of crimson his, and mantle like an emerald 
 that beamed) 
 
 "When he spied the gentle maiden, smiliug on the 
 merry scene ; 
 
 Ho! my lords and ladies! cried he, wist ye who 
 with us hath been ? 
 
 Lo ! a mortal stands among us ; fairer than a fairy she ; 
 
 Let us speak with her a moment ; questioning be- 
 longs to me. 
 
 Straight the jocund throng desisted from their pas- 
 
 t i m e and their play ; 
 While the king of all the fairies to the childling thus 
 
 'gan say : — 
 
 Lovely mortal ! wilt thou, wilt thou quit with us thy 
 
 childhood's bowers, 
 -And in our enchanted Eden wander through a world 
 
 of flowers ? 
 -All delights that thou bast dreamed of, gathered 
 
 tin re shall be, and thine ; 
 Mowers thai, fade not, games thai end no; ; .skies 
 
 that alway mildliest shine ; 
 Kneaded C amber honey, and the P08( In, 
 
 dewy wine:
 
 150 
 
 Wreaths of jewels, combs of silver, beads and brace- 
 lets all of gold, 
 
 And a diamond girdle round thee ; mine I give thee 
 now, behold ! 
 
 Bowls of rubies thou shalt sip from, and from crystal 
 tables dine ; 
 
 And, at eve, on lily leaves, and mingled violets re- 
 cline ; 
 
 Wilt thou with me, sweet one, tell me ! King, she 
 answered, I am thine. 
 
 All the fairy court with rapture danced when thus 
 they heard her say ; 
 
 Noble chieftain, child of beauty, let us haste, they 
 cried, away! 
 
 Seal the covenant first, quoth Oberon ; and a magic 
 
 cup of wine 
 Straight was brought him, when the king bethought 
 
 him of the charm divine, 
 Which the eyes of Life had opened, to perceive 
 
 their secret line. 
 Deep within the rosy goblet he the four-fold leaflet 
 
 dipped, 
 Drank thereof, and to the damsel gave it ; daintily 
 
 she sipped.
 
 151 
 
 Then to horse ; the gallant knighthood lift their 
 
 ladies to the sells; 
 Every steed was shod with silver, every bridle hung 
 
 with bells, 
 Like the lilies, of the valley, only all of silver. Swells 
 Soft tbe moonlit air with scrains aforetime never 
 
 heard ; 
 -More sweet than tone of nymph or muse, or god, 
 
 to both preferred. 
 
 •So they ambled on until they reached a green 
 and grove-crowned hill, 
 
 Which, without a gate, they entered, opening at the 
 monarch's will : 
 
 Then the portals closed upon her; woe is me for 
 that ilcar child, 
 
 Mid the insubstantial regi< as of the fairies thus be- 
 guiled. 
 
 Streams of bubbliog gold flowed round her; fountains 
 
 flung t heir diamond spraj ; 
 O'er the fields a pearl-dew glistened; polished load* 
 
 pa\ d ; 
 
 Trees eere leafed with golden florins; daisies chimed 
 
 like silver crowi
 
 152 
 
 Musical and odorous breezes breathed across the 
 
 velvet downs. 
 Soon they neared the regal palace twinkling in the 
 
 aery dyes, 
 Lilac, pearl, and beryl blended, of that country's 
 
 sunless skies ; 
 While the fay-queen and her ladies, with their 
 
 flower-robed damsels fair, 
 Came forthright to greet her crowned spouse, and 
 royal guestling there. 
 
 From the centre of the high dome swung a topaz 
 
 solar bright, 
 Which through all the palace darted gleams of glad 
 
 and glorious light ; 
 Emerald lamplets ranked around it, tempered this 
 
 with cooler ray ; 
 "While, without, the welkin poured one pale and 
 
 ever-dawning day. 
 There the feast was flowing ever ; stream-like music 
 
 ceaseless played ; 
 There the dance was alway weaving ; minstrels 
 
 chanting in the shade;. 
 There for aye the chase was bounding over dale and 
 
 hill and plain,
 
 153 
 
 And fair Christine on hound-high steed the foremost 
 
 of the elfin train. 
 Still she saddened when she minded of the simple 
 
 garlands she 
 Wove of wild rose and of woodbine, with her play- 
 mates on the lea ; 
 And the hazel and brown beech nut which they 
 
 gathered from the tree. 
 "What though clad in jewelled raiment, trilling, 
 
 tripping, day and night, 
 "What though ply'd with queenly dainties, what 
 
 though culling gold-blooms bright, 
 Never in the feast delicious, nor the dance's wilder- 
 
 ing whirl, 
 Nor the wine-cup's merry orbit, could forget that 
 
 lonely girl 
 The ancient hall where dwelled her sire, and when-, 
 
 too, from her mother's side, 
 She, one summer's eve had stolen forth into the 
 
 forest wide. 
 
 Drink the dew, the fairy Fate aid, thai the poppy 
 
 lends repo 
 Ifingled with the fragrant nectar chaliced in the 
 
 -Nidi P0
 
 154 
 
 Then she drank the draught Lethean from the bowl 
 with flowerets crowned, 
 
 Flamy flowers, that all remembrance of her past 
 existence drowned ; 
 
 Thus, with lustres vainly lapsing, to perpetual child- 
 hood bound. 
 
 Never moon there marked the season ; sun ne'er 
 shadowed forth the time ; 
 
 Tears themselves were undistinguished in that soft 
 and listless clime. 
 
 jN t ow where mines of gold and silver branch, in 
 many a gleamy vein; 
 
 Through the bosom of the mountain, 'neath the 
 many leagued plain ; 
 
 Where jasper and cornelian clear and alabaster 
 pure, 
 
 And purple spars and glass-bright rocks the glitter- 
 ing caves immure, 
 
 She roamed; and all the virtues learned of every 
 potent gem 
 
 Or mystic or medicinal; all gifts that unto them 
 
 Pertained of causing love, or hate, or infinite delight, 
 
 Imperial wealth, tyrannic state, long life, and beauty 
 bright ;
 
 155 
 
 These into an armlet stringing, ruby, sapphire, 
 
 emerald, pearl, 
 Threaded on the sunny tendril of one desultory 
 
 curl, 
 As an amulet Titania gave to her, the spell-bound 
 
 girl. 
 
 Through the dwarf king's wondrous regions she 
 with him delighted strayed; 
 
 Kings and charms and magic weapons he for her, 
 love-smitten, made. 
 
 Blvthely oft beneath the seas she roved with mer- 
 maids from their caves, 
 
 Arched with amber, pearl and ivory roofs, whose 
 floors bright coral paves; 
 
 And oft, too, when the fairy court, for pleasure, 
 or for pride, 
 
 Would seek the cooling streams that lave earth's 
 
 plains ami meadows wide, 
 Tin- water spirits, in their arms, the darling maid 
 
 would fold, 
 tad hidden thing! of yearn to i i mj beriou U 
 
 tiny told ; 
 
 There she newed in crystal rases souls of hapli 
 wretches drow oed,
 
 15G 
 
 Which from their pellucid prisons she with holy 
 zeal unbound ; 
 
 Upward sprang the sprites, with joyful some, and 
 some with mournful sound. 
 
 "With the sylphs in air she sported; with the 
 golden-palaced gnome, 
 
 Earth imbosomed ; or the light-elves in their rain- 
 bow-clouded home. 
 
 Oft times with the Elle-King rode she, in his chariot, 
 
 o'er the main, 
 While his martial baud, with sea-conchs, blew the 
 
 war-inspiring strain ; 
 Then upon the headlands landing, counted o'er the 
 
 frosty meads, 
 Boyal r oves of great blue kine, lipping the ice-dew 
 
 of weeds. 
 
 'Gainst the fairies of the fire she with tidal spirits waged 
 War ; and earth, and air, and ocean felt how fierce 
 
 the battle raged. 
 High she shook her shining falchion, pliant as the 
 
 rushen plant, 
 Ealchion her dwarf-lover forged her, hard and bright 
 
 as adamant ;
 
 157 
 
 Fighting by the Elle-Iving's side, there she the 
 
 lord of fireland slew ; 
 All the hosts of fire were routed; crowned her 
 
 queen the conquering crew ; 
 Back to fairyland she hasted ; home her train in 
 
 triumph drew. 
 
 King and spouse majestic welcome gave her, on her 
 glad return ; 
 
 And a thousand tongues besought that her adven- 
 tures they might learn. 
 
 This she grants ; and lo ! a banquet, by unheard 
 command is seen,' 
 
 Instantaneously furnished on the flower-embroidered 
 
 On the east hand of her liege lord sat the bright, 
 
 the brave Christine ; 
 On bis wrest divine Titania, night's incomparable queen ; 
 Then the victress told Sir Oberon all Bhe bad done, 
 
 and where had been : 
 
 Hon from end to end of faerie she had passed, 
 
 below, above, 
 Bcathlew, by the spells the dwarf-king gave her 
 
 in his daj i of love ;
 
 158 
 How bad dealt with Nisses, Noks, and Kobolds, 
 
 l 
 
 Kelpies, Norns, and Trolls; 
 How with Peris fared, and Shadim, Afrits, Ogres, 
 
 Deevs, and Ghouls; 
 She had travelled in the whirlwind ; for no harm 
 
 to her might fall, 
 "Who had talismans and virtues coidd enchant or 
 
 vanquish all; — 
 How the Elle-chief s broad dominions scarred by 
 
 war, sbe, sad, beheld ; 
 How with hosts of fire they fought, and how the 
 
 first of foes she quelled ; 
 How, she said, in God she trusted ; — at that word 
 
 the banquet ceased ; 
 Shrieked and vanished all the faerie, save the king 
 
 who bade the feast. 
 
 Silent sate the maid and monarch many a moment, 
 
 till, quoth he, 
 Knowest thou not, unhappy child, the woe thou hast 
 
 wrought in faerie ? 
 Know'st thou not that by the name which elfin 
 
 tongue hath never passed, 
 AVhenso uttered, we are scattered, dust-like, by the 
 
 tempest's blast?
 
 159 
 
 Know'st thou not that we be spirits, doomed to 
 
 linger here, unchanged, 
 In the sunless laud of Faerie, from the light of 
 
 heaven estranged, 
 Till with promise of salvation, we be blessed by holy 
 
 priest, 
 Or some sinless mortal give us hope to be at last 
 
 released ? 
 Till the universal judgment we, the viewless sons 
 
 of Eve, 
 "Wander in the hollow underworld, unable to believe, 
 Till we hold the great assurance, for the lack whereof 
 
 we grieve. 
 .Still as we of sin were guiltless, save the sin in- 
 
 herited 
 From our mother's firsl I ransgression, ere the floods 
 
 abroad were spread, 
 "•■ ,:i " greal Creator, hid us in the bosom-shades 
 
 of earth, 
 Ami forbade thai in the sunlight ever wo should 
 journey forth. 
 
 B piteous is II". said the maiden, of illimitable grace ; 
 .Nor would lie have hid ye hen ""I he meant 
 
 not to your race.
 
 1G0 
 
 Ah, alas ; then, why dclaycth He his merciful com- 
 mand ? 
 
 Sighed the Fairy ; sooner blossom shall the sceptre 
 in my hand ; 
 
 Saying, — in the mold he wildly struck his white and 
 star-tipped wand. 
 
 Scarce had he the sad word uttered when the peeled 
 
 and polished rod 
 Bourgeoned forth in buds and blossoms, rooted in 
 
 the mossy sod ; 
 Lo ! a miracle, said Christine ; trust ye henceforth, 
 
 too, in God. 
 Eest ye sure his mercy broodeth over all the souls 
 
 He made. 
 
 We are spirits, groaned the Fairy, greatly of our end 
 
 afraid ; 
 Though a flickering hope inspires us with belief that 
 
 we shall be 
 Joined, at last, with Him and heaven, in his 
 
 boundless clemencie. 
 
 Be it, said she ; knew not I, nathless, so saintly 
 your desire;
 
 161 
 
 And if mine your royal sanction to reseek my loving 
 
 sire, 
 He within his halls sustains, for mercy's sake, a 
 
 godly frere, 
 Who to pious aspirations ever lends a piteous 
 
 ear ; 
 And will grant his sacred blessing to your nation : 
 
 doubt it ne'er; 
 He will bless whate'er loves me; for I to him was 
 
 alway dear. 
 
 Speed thee earthwards, said the sovran, speed thee 
 
 dearest child of light ; 
 On the instant, hosts of fairies warbling darted into 
 
 sight. 
 Airs delicious, such as never mortal heard from 
 
 human hands, 
 
 Whispered loud from golden clarions, harped on 
 strings of silver .strands, 
 
 Strains triumphant, thrilled and echoed through 
 
 those dim enchanted land-. 
 
 '■d thee, heart nf love, they faltered, speed thco 
 
 on thy star-taughl way ; 
 
 Bring to Oberonand his people hope of heaven and 
 
 oe for
 
 102 
 
 Ah, farewell, ye good and loyal, said the princess, 
 stepping forth ; 
 
 Ne'er shall I forget your bounties, never see sur- 
 passed your worth ; 
 
 If not pure enough for heaven ye are far too pure 
 for earth. 
 
 Towards the limits far of Faerie quick their anxious 
 
 course they took, 
 And the hill she entered first self-opened like a 
 
 magic book ; 
 Forth she peeped, and backward turning to bestow 
 
 one farewell look, 
 Nothing saw she, nothing heard she, save a low 
 
 and eerie wail 
 With the rustle of the greenwood blending and the 
 
 sunset gale. 
 
 All was changed ; and she, deep sighing, tottered on 
 
 her lonesome way, 
 Till she neared a stunted hamlet; children at their 
 
 twilight play, 
 As she stooped to raise a withering rosebud, by 
 
 the path that lay,
 
 163 
 
 Shyly tittering ; thus she spake them ; laugh ye at 
 
 my fresh pulled roses ? 
 AVe laughed to see an old, old heldame picking up 
 
 our cast-off posies, 
 Said they ; but she understood no word of what the 
 
 bantliugs uttered ; 
 And again they mouthed and mocked at that they 
 
 said the old crone muttered. 
 
 Soon she came where, blind with dotage, propped 
 
 on staff, an old man stood ; 
 All his tresses white with age as with its snows a 
 
 wintry wood. 
 (laffer, said Bhe, where's the castle, that on yonder 
 
 mountain piled 
 Held the prince onpeered in honour? Late I left 
 
 it, foolish child! 
 Mused a moment, recollecting; presently, the old 
 
 man smiled. 
 
 Second childhood then I fancy must at least yuul 
 
 dame, be thine ; 
 I alone in all tin- region mind me of that Lordly line ; 
 I alone lome words remember of the tongue that 
 
 then \\a poke,
 
 164 
 
 By the noble race that here dwelt, ere they felt 
 
 war's iron yoke. 
 King, peer, peasant, all were conquered, all uprooted 
 
 at a blow ; 
 One disastrous battle gave the country to a foreign 
 
 foe; 
 Slain or banished all ; but that's wellnigh a hundred 
 
 years ago. 
 
 Yonder castle's crumbling ruin saw its lord, though 
 
 dauntless, fall ; 
 Dame and daughter he beheld both slain ; in vain 
 
 his vassals all, 
 In vain his son for crown and bride fought ; he 
 
 was left an idiot thrall. 
 On the evening of his bridal, souls of war, those 
 
 sea-kings came, 
 And, ere midnight, tower and town were all en- 
 
 gulphed in gory flame. 
 Save the holy chaplain, none of all that princely 
 
 house remained, 
 And myself, the humblest menial, on the lands where 
 
 once they reigned. 
 He, in rock-hewn hermit's cavern, life, with passion 
 
 undefiled,
 
 165 
 
 Wore away, in trances murmuring blessings on some 
 
 wandered child, 
 ighter of his Lord, 'twas counted, by the cursed 
 
 invading host 
 Killed ; or wiled away by fairies ; howsoe'er, the 
 
 child was lost. 
 Twenty winters since his clay from mine to earth's 
 
 cold arms was given; 
 And so long his blessed spirit has been with the 
 
 saints in Heaven. 
 
 Hold, she cried, I hear a weeping; I no longer 
 
 love the light; 
 Back she started, ami departed straightways through 
 
 the deepening night. 
 In the hill she heard a wailing and a sobbing sad 
 
 ami deep; 
 
 Ami thr crash of thousand barpstringa hands of 
 
 desperation sweep; 
 Then the laid her down, ami. praying, slept the 
 
 Long onmorrowing aleep. 
 
 I III. END.
 
 NOTTINGHAM ! 
 I D Bl I FORliAN, LONG KOW
 
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