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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 As Eden's olive groves, That, in the luminous mysteries of the sun Perfectly ripened, were withdrawn to heaven So pure, and so intaet, [ike diamond gas Exhaling 'neath the keen, fire-hearted Iras Lighter than light, imponderable power, His spirit soared,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. I5af 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 tga 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, \'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 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 < ; <.