Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem. With Notes.

 

                    I

       HOW wonderful is Death,

       Death, and his brother Sleep!

     One, pale as yonder waning moon

       With lips of lurid blue;

       The other, rosy as the morn

     When throned on ocean's wave

           It blushes o'er the world;

     Yet both so passing wonderful!

 

       Hath then the gloomy Power

   Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres                           10

       Seized on her sinless soul?

       Must then that peerless form

   Which love and admiration cannot view

   Without a beating heart, those azure veins

   Which steal like streams along a field of snow,

     That lovely outline which is fair

       As breathing marble, perish?

       Must putrefaction's breath

     Leave nothing of this heavenly sight

       But loathsomeness and ruin?                                    20

     Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,

   On which the lightest heart might moralize?

       Or is it only a sweet slumber

       Stealing o'er sensation,

     Which the breath of roseate morning

           Chaseth into darkness?

           Will Ianthe wake again,

       And give that faithful bosom joy

     Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch

     Light, life and rapture, from her smile?                         30

 

           Yes! she will wake again,

   Although her glowing limbs are motionless,

           And silent those sweet lips,

           Once breathing eloquence

     That might have soothed a tiger's rage

   Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.

           Her dewy eyes are closed,

     And on their lids, whose texture fine

     Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath,

           The baby Sleep is pillowed;                                40

           Her golden tresses shade

           The bosom's stainless pride,

       Curling like tendrils of the parasite

           Around a marble column.

 

       Hark! whence that rushing sound?

           'T is like the wondrous strain

       That round a lonely ruin swells,

       Which, wandering on the echoing shore,

           The enthusiast hears at evening;

       'T is softer than the west wind's sigh;                        50

       'T is wilder than the unmeasured notes

       Of that strange lyre whose strings

       The genii of the breezes sweep;

           Those lines of rainbow light

       Are like the moonbeams when they fall

   Through some cathedral window, but the tints

           Are such as may not find

           Comparison on earth.

 

   Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!

   Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;                         60

   Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,

   And stop obedient to the reins of light;

     These the Queen of Spells drew in;

     She spread a charm around the spot,

   And, leaning graceful from the ethereal car,

     Long did she gaze, and silently,

           Upon the slumbering maid.

 

   Oh! not the visioned poet in his dreams,

   When silvery clouds float through the wildered brain,

   When every sight of lovely, wild and grand                         70

     Astonishes, enraptures, elevates,

       When fancy at a glance combines

       The wondrous and the beautiful,--

     So bright, so fair, so wild a shape

           Hath ever yet beheld,

   As that which reined the coursers of the air

     And poured the magic of her gaze

           Upon the maiden's sleep.

 

       The broad and yellow moon

       Shone dimly through her form--                                 80

     That form of faultless symmetry;

     The pearly and pellucid car

       Moved not the moonlight's line.

       'T was not an earthly pageant.

     Those, who had looked upon the sight

       Passing all human glory,

       Saw not the yellow moon,

       Saw not the mortal scene,

       Heard not the night-wind's rush,

       Heard not an earthly sound,                                    90

       Saw but the fairy pageant,

       Heard but the heavenly strains

       That filled the lonely dwelling.

 

   The Fairy's frame was slight--yon fibrous cloud,

   That catches but the palest tinge of even,

   And which the straining eye can hardly seize

   When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,

   Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star

   That gems the glittering coronet of morn,

   Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,                           100

   As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,

   Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,

       Yet with an undulating motion,

       Swayed to her outline gracefully.

 

       From her celestial car

       The Fairy Queen descended,

       And thrice she waved her wand

     Circled with wreaths of amaranth;

       Her thin and misty form

       Moved with the moving air,                                    110

       And the clear silver tones,

       As thus she spoke, were such

     As are unheard by all but gifted ear.

 

FAIRY

    'Stars! your balmiest influence shed!

     Elements! your wrath suspend!

     Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds

       That circle thy domain!

     Let not a breath be seen to stir

     Around yon grass-grown ruin's height!

       Let even the restless gossamer                                120

       Sleep on the moveless air!

       Soul of Ianthe! thou,

   Judged alone worthy of the envied boon

   That waits the good and the sincere; that waits

   Those who have struggled, and with resolute will

   Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, burst the chains,

   The icy chains of custom, and have shone

   The day-stars of their age;--Soul of

         Ianthe!

           Awake! arise!'

 

           Sudden arose                                              130

       Ianthe's Soul; it stood

     All beautiful in naked purity,

   The perfect semblance of its bodily frame;

   Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace--

         Each stain of earthliness

       Had passed away--it reassumed

       Its native dignity and stood

         Immortal amid ruin.

 

       Upon the couch the body lay,

       Wrapt in the depth of slumber;                                140

   Its features were fixed and meaningless,

       Yet animal life was there,

       And every organ yet performed

       Its natural functions; 'twas a sight

   Of wonder to behold the body and the soul.

       The self-same lineaments, the same

       Marks of identity were there;

   Yet, oh, how different! One aspires to Heaven,

   Pants for its sempiternal heritage,

   And, ever changing, ever rising still,                            150

       Wantons in endless being:

   The other, for a time the unwilling sport

   Of circumstance and passion, struggles on;

   Fleets through its sad duration rapidly;

   Then like an useless and worn-out machine,

       Rots, perishes, and passes.

 

FAIRY

      'Spirit! who hast dived so deep;

       Spirit! who hast soared so high;

       Thou the fearless, thou the mild,

     Accept the boon thy worth hath earned,                          160

       Ascend the car with me!'

 

SPIRIT

      'Do I dream? Is this new feeling

       But a visioned ghost of slumber?

           If indeed I am a soul,

       A free, a disembodied soul,

           Speak again to me.'

 

FAIRY

    'I am the Fairy MAB: to me 'tis given

     The wonders of the human world to keep;

     The secrets of the immeasurable past,

     In the unfailing consciences of men,                            170

     Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find;

     The future, from the causes which arise

     In each event, I gather; not the sting

     Which retributive memory implants

     In the hard bosom of the selfish man,

     Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb

     Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up

     The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,

     Are unforeseen, unregistered by me;

     And it is yet permitted me to rend                              180

     The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit,

     Clothed in its changeless purity, may know

     How soonest to accomplish the great end

     For which it hath its being, and may taste

     That peace which in the end all life will share.

     This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul,

        Ascend the car with me!'

 

     The chains of earth's immurement

       Fell from Ianthe's spirit;

   They shrank and brake like bandages of straw                      190

     Beneath a wakened giant's strength.

       She knew her glorious change,

     And felt in apprehension uncontrolled

       New raptures opening round;

     Each day-dream of her mortal life,

     Each frenzied vision of the slumbers

       That closed each well-spent day,

       Seemed now to meet reality.

     The Fairy and the Soul proceeded;

       The silver clouds disparted;                                  200

     And as the car of magic they ascended,

       Again the speechless music swelled,

       Again the coursers of the air

   Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen,

       Shaking the beamy reins,

       Bade them pursue their way.

 

       The magic car moved on.

     The night was fair, and countless stars

     Studded heaven's dark blue vault;

       Just o'er the eastern wave 210

     Peeped the first faint smile of morn.

       The magic car moved on--

       From the celestial hoofs

     The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew,

       And where the burning wheels

     Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak,

       Was traced a line of lightning.

       Now it flew far above a rock,

       The utmost verge of earth,

     The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow                         220

       Lowered o'er the silver sea.

 

       Far, far below the chariot's path,

         Calm as a slumbering babe,

         Tremendous Ocean lay.

       The mirror of its stillness showed

         The pale and waning stars,

         The chariot's fiery track,

         And the gray light of morn

         Tinging those fleecy clouds

         That canopied the dawn.                                     230

 

     Seemed it that the chariot's way

   Lay through the midst of an immense concave

   Radiant with million constellations, tinged

       With shades of infinite color,

       And semicircled with a belt

       Flashing incessant meteors.

 

       The magic car moved on.

       As they approached their goal,

     The coursers seemed to gather speed;

   The sea no longer was distinguished; earth                        240

     Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere;

       The sun's unclouded orb

       Rolled through the black concave;

       Its rays of rapid light

   Parted around the chariot's swifter course,

     And fell, like ocean's feathery spray

       Dashed from the boiling surge

       Before a vessel's prow.

 

       The magic car moved on.

       Earth's distant orb appeared                                  250

   The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven;

       Whilst round the chariot's way

       Innumerable systems rolled

       And countless spheres diffused

       An ever-varying glory.

     It was a sight of wonder: some

     Were hornèd like the crescent moon;

     Some shed a mild and silver beam

     Like Hesperus o'er the western sea;

     Some dashed athwart with trains of flame,                       260

     Like worlds to death and ruin driven;

   Some shone like suns, and as the chariot passed,

       Eclipsed all other light.

 

           Spirit of Nature! here--

       In this interminable wilderness

       Of worlds, at whose immensity

           Even soaring fancy staggers,

           Here is thy fitting temple!

             Yet not the lightest leaf

         That quivers to the passing breeze                          270

           Is less instinct with thee;

           Yet not the meanest worm

     That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,

       Less shares thy eternal breath!

         Spirit of Nature! thou,

       Imperishable as this scene--

         Here is thy fitting temple!

 

                    II

     If solitude hath ever led thy steps

       To the wild ocean's echoing shore,

       And thou hast lingered there,

       Until the sun's broad orb

     Seemed resting on the burnished wave,

       Thou must have marked the lines

     Of purple gold that motionless

       Hung o'er the sinking sphere;

     Thou must have marked the billowy clouds,

     Edged with intolerable radiancy,                                 10

       Towering like rocks of jet

       Crowned with a diamond wreath;

       And yet there is a moment,

       When the sun's highest point

   Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge,

   When those far clouds of feathery gold,

     Shaded with deepest purple, gleam

     Like islands on a dark blue sea;

   Then has thy fancy soared above the earth

       And furled its wearied wing                                    20

       Within the Fairy's fane.

 

       Yet not the golden islands

       Gleaming in yon flood of light,

           Nor the feathery curtains

       Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch,

       Nor the burnished ocean-waves

           Paving that gorgeous dome,

     So fair, so wonderful a sight

   As Mab's ethereal palace could afford.

   Yet likest evening's vault, that faëry Hall!                  30

   As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread

           Its floors of flashing light,

           Its vast and azure dome,

           Its fertile golden islands

           Floating on a silver sea;

   Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted

   Through clouds of circumambient darkness,

     And pearly battlements around

     Looked o'er the immense of Heaven.

 

     The magic car no longer moved.                                   40

       The Fairy and the Spirit

       Entered the Hall of Spells.

         Those golden clouds

       That rolled in glittering billows

       Beneath the azure canopy,

   With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;

           The light and crimson mists,

   Floating to strains of thrilling melody

       Through that unearthly dwelling,

   Yielded to every movement of the will;                             50

   Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned,

   And, for the varied bliss that pressed around,

     Used not the glorious privilege

       Of virtue and of wisdom.

 

      'Spirit!' the Fairy said,

     And pointed to the gorgeous dome,

      'This is a wondrous sight

       And mocks all human grandeur;

   But, were it virtue's only meed to dwell

   In a celestial palace, all resigned                                60

   To pleasurable impulses, immured

   Within the prison of itself, the will

   Of changeless Nature would be unfulfilled.

   Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come!

   This is thine high reward:--the past shall rise;

   Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach

           The secrets of the future.'

 

           The Fairy and the Spirit

   Approached the overhanging battlement.

       Below lay stretched the universe!                              70

       There, far as the remotest line

       That bounds imagination's flight,

         Countless and unending orbs

       In mazy motion intermingled,

       Yet still fulfilled immutably

           Eternal Nature's law.

           Above, below, around,

           The circling systems formed

           A wilderness of harmony;

       Each with undeviating aim,                                     80

   In eloquent silence, through the depths of space

           Pursued its wondrous way.

 

           There was a little light

   That twinkled in the misty distance.

           None but a spirit's eye

           Might ken that rolling orb.

           None but a spirit's eye,

           And in no other place

   But that celestial dwelling, might behold

   Each action of this earth's inhabitants.                           90

           But matter, space, and time,

   In those aërial mansions cease to act;

   And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps

   The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds

   Those obstacles of which an earthly soul

       Fears to attempt the conquest.

 

       The Fairy pointed to the earth.

       The Spirit's intellectual eye

       Its kindred beings recognized.

   The thronging thousands, to a passing view,                       100

       Seemed like an ant-hill's citizens.

           How wonderful! that even

     The passions, prejudices, interests,

   That sway the meanest being--the weak touch

           That moves the finest nerve

           And in one human brain

   Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link

       In the great chain of Nature!

 

      'Behold,' the Fairy cried,

      'Palmyra's ruined palaces!                                     110

       Behold where grandeur frowned!

       Behold where pleasure smiled!

     What now remains?--the memory

       Of senselessness and shame.

       What is immortal there?

       Nothing--it stands to tell

       A melancholy tale, to give

       An awful warning; soon

     Oblivion will steal silently

       The remnant of its fame.                                      120

       Monarchs and conquerors there

     Proud o'er prostrate millions trod--

     The earthquakes of the human race;

     Like them, forgotten when the ruin

       That marks their shock is past.

 

      'Beside the eternal Nile

       The Pyramids have risen.

     Nile shall pursue his changeless way;

         Those Pyramids shall fall.

     Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell                            130

         The spot whereon they stood;

     Their very site shall be forgotten,

         As is their builder's name!

 

        'Behold yon sterile spot,

     Where now the wandering Arab's tent

         Flaps in the desert blast!

     There once old Salem's haughty fane

   Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes,

     And in the blushing face of day

       Exposed its shameful glory.                                   140

   Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed

   The building of that fane; and many a father,

   Worn out with toil and slavery, implored

   The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth

   And spare his children the detested task

   Of piling stone on stone and poisoning

         The choicest days of life

         To soothe a dotard's vanity.

   There an inhuman and uncultured race

   Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God;                        150

   They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb

   The unborn child--old age and infancy

   Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms

   Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends!

   But what was he who taught them that the God

   Of Nature and benevolence had given

   A special sanction to the trade of blood?

   His name and theirs are fading, and the tales

   Of this barbarian nation, which imposture

   Recites till terror credits, are pursuing                         160

     Itself into forgetfulness.

 

    'Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,

     There is a moral desert now.

     The mean and miserable huts,

     The yet more wretched palaces,

     Contrasted with those ancient fanes

     Now crumbling to oblivion,--

     The long and lonely colonnades

     Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks,--

       Seem like a well-known tune,                                  170

   Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear,

       Remembered now in sadness.

       But, oh! how much more changed,

       How gloomier is the contrast

       Of human nature there!

   Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave,

   A coward and a fool, spreads death around--

       Then, shuddering, meets his own.

     Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,

     A cowled and hypocritical monk                                  180

         Prays, curses and deceives.

 

      'Spirit! ten thousand years

       Have scarcely passed away,

   Since in the waste, where now the savage drinks

   His enemy's blood, and, aping Europe's sons,

       Wakes the unholy song of war,

           Arose a stately city,

   Metropolis of the western continent.

     There, now, the mossy column-stone,

   Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp,                              190

       Which once appeared to brave

       All, save its country's ruin,--

       There the wide forest scene,

   Rude in the uncultivated loveliness

       Of gardens long run wild,--

   Seems, to the unwilling sojourner whose steps

     Chance in that desert has delayed,

   Thus to have stood since earth was what it is.

     Yet once it was the busiest haunt,

   Whither, as to a common centre, flocked                           200

     Strangers, and ships, and merchandise;

       Once peace and freedom blest

       The cultivated plain;

       But wealth, that curse of man,

   Blighted the bud of its prosperity;

   Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,

   Fled, to return not, until man shall know

     That they alone can give the bliss

       Worthy a soul that claims

       Its kindred with eternity.                                    210

 

    'There 's not one atom of yon earth

       But once was living man;

     Nor the minutest drop of rain,

     That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,

       But flowed in human veins;

       And from the burning plains

       Where Libyan monsters yell,

       From the most gloomy glens

       Of Greenland's sunless clime,

       To where the golden fields                                    220

       Of fertile England spread

       Their harvest to the day,

       Thou canst not find one spot

       Whereon no city stood.

 

      'How strange is human pride!

     I tell thee that those living things,

     To whom the fragile blade of grass

       That springeth in the morn

       And perisheth ere noon,

       Is an unbounded world;                                        230

     I tell thee that those viewless beings,

     Whose mansion is the smallest particle

       Of the impassive atmosphere,

       Think, feel and live like man;

     That their affections and antipathies,

       Like his, produce the laws

       Ruling their moral state;

       And the minutest throb

     That through their frame diffuses

       The slightest, faintest motion,                               240

       Is fixed and indispensable

       As the majestic laws

       That rule yon rolling orbs.'

 

       The Fairy paused. The Spirit,

   In ecstasy of admiration, felt

   All knowledge of the past revived; the events

       Of old and wondrous times,

   Which dim tradition interruptedly

   Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded

     In just perspective to the view;                                250

     Yet dim from their infinitude.

       The Spirit seemed to stand

   High on an isolated pinnacle;

   The flood of ages combating below,

   The depth of the unbounded universe

       Above, and all around

     Nature's unchanging harmony.

 

                    III

      'Fairy!' the Spirit said,

       And on the Queen of Spells

       Fixed her ethereal eyes,

      'I thank thee. Thou hast given

   A boon which I will not resign, and taught

   A lesson not to be unlearned. I know

   The past, and thence I will essay to glean

   A warning for the future, so that man

   May profit by his errors and derive

       Experience from his folly;                                     10

   For, when the power of imparting joy

   Is equal to the will, the human soul

       Requires no other heaven.'

 

MAB

      'Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!

       Much yet remains unscanned.

       Thou knowest how great is man,

       Thou knowest his imbecility;

       Yet learn thou what he is;

       Yet learn the lofty destiny

       Which restless Time prepares                                   20

       For every living soul.

 

   'Behold a gorgeous palace that amid

   Yon populous city rears its thousand towers

   And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops

   Of sentinels in stern and silent ranks

   Encompass it around; the dweller there

   Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not

   The curses of the fatherless, the groans

   Of those who have no friend? He passes on--

   The King, the wearer of a gilded chain                             30

   That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool

   Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave

   Even to the basest appetites--that man

   Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles

   At the deep curses which the destitute

   Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy

   Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan

   But for those morsels which his wantonness

   Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save

   All that they love from famine; when he hears                      40

   The tale of horror, to some ready-made face

   Of hypocritical assent he turns,

   Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him,

   Flushes his bloated cheek.

 

                               Now to the meal

   Of silence, grandeur and excess he drags

   His palled unwilling appetite. If gold,

   Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled

   From every clime could force the loathing sense

   To overcome satiety,--if wealth

   The spring it draws from poisons not,--or vice,                    50

   Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not

   Its food to deadliest venom; then that king

   Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils

   His unforced task, when he returns at even

   And by the blazing fagot meets again

   Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,

   Tastes not a sweeter meal.

 

                               Behold him now

   Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain

   Reels dizzily awhile; but ah! too soon

   The slumber of intemperance subsides,                              60

   And conscience, that undying serpent, calls

   Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.

   Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye--

   Oh! mark that deadly visage!'

 

KING

                                  'No cessation!

   Oh! must this last forever! Awful death,

   I wish, yet fear to clasp thee!--Not one moment

   Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessèd Peace,

   Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity

   In penury and dungeons? Wherefore lurkest

   With danger, death, and solitude; yet shun'st                      70

   The palace I have built thee? Sacred Peace!

   Oh, visit me but once,--but pitying shed

   One drop of balm upon my withered soul!'

 

THE FAIRY

   'Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,

   And Peace defileth not her snowy robes

   In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;

   His slumbers are but varied agonies;

   They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.

   There needeth not the hell that bigots frame

   To punish those who err; earth in itself                           80

   Contains at once the evil and the cure;

   And all-sufficing Nature can chastise

   Those who transgress her law; she only knows

   How justly to proportion to the fault

   The punishment it merits.

 

                              Is it strange

   That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe?

   Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug

   The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange

   That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns,

   Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured                              90

   Within a splendid prison whose stern bounds

   Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth,

   His soul asserts not its humanity?

   That man's mild nature rises not in war

   Against a king's employ? No--'tis not strange.

   He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives

   Just as his father did; the unconquered powers

   Of precedent and custom interpose

   Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet,

   To those who know not Nature nor deduce                           100

   The future from the present, it may seem,

   That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes

   Of this unnatural being, not one wretch,

   Whose children famish and whose nuptial bed

   Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm

   To dash him from his throne!

 

                                 Those gilded flies

   That, basking in the sunshine of a court,

   Fatten on its corruption! what are they?--

   The drones of the community; they feed

   On the mechanic's labor; the starved hind                         110

   For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield

   Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,

   Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes

   A sunless life in the unwholesome mine,

   Drags out in labor a protracted death

   To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil

   That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.

 

   Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose?

   Whence that unnatural line of drones who heap

   Toil and unvanquishable penury                                    120

   On those who build their palaces and bring

   Their daily bread?--From vice, black loathsome vice;

   From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;

   From all that genders misery, and makes

   Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,

   Revenge, and murder.--And when reason's voice,

   Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked

   The nations; and mankind perceive that vice

   Is discord, war and misery; that virtue

   Is peace and happiness and harmony;                               130

   When man's maturer nature shall disdain

   The playthings of its childhood;--kingly glare

   Will lose its power to dazzle, its authority

   Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne

   Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,

   Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade

   Shall be as hateful and unprofitable

   As that of truth is now.

 

                             Where is the fame

   Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth

   Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound                          140

   From time's light footfall, the minutest wave

   That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing

   The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! to-day

   Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze

   That flashes desolation, strong the arm

   That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!

   That mandate is a thunder-peal that died

   In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash

   On which the midnight closed; and on that arm

   The worm has made his meal.

 

                                The virtuous man,                    150

   Who, great in his humility as kings

   Are little in their grandeur; he who leads

   Invincibly a life of resolute good

   And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths

   More free and fearless than the trembling judge

   Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove

   To bind the impassive spirit;--when he falls,

   His mild eye beams benevolence no more;

   Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve;

   Sunk reason's simple eloquence that rolled                        160

   But to appall the guilty. Yes! the grave

   Hath quenched that eye and death's relentless frost

   Withered that arm; but the unfading fame

   Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb,

   The deathless memory of that man whom kings

   Call to their minds and tremble, the remembrance

   With which the happy spirit contemplates

   Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth,

   Shall never pass away.

 

   'Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;                         170

   The subject, not the citizen; for kings

   And subjects, mutual foes, forever play

   A losing game into each other's hands,

   Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man

   Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

   Power, like a desolating pestilence,

   Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,

   Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,

   Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame

   A mechanized automaton.

 

                            When Nero                                180

   High over flaming Rome with savage joy

   Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear

   The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld

   The frightful desolation spread, and felt

   A new-created sense within his soul

   Thrill to the sight and vibrate to the sound,--

   Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome

   The force of human kindness? And when Rome

   With one stern blow hurled not the tyrant down,

   Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood,                   190

   Had not submissive abjectness destroyed

   Nature's suggestions?

 

                          Look on yonder earth:

   The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun

   Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees,

   Arise in due succession; all things speak

   Peace, harmony and love. The universe,

   In Nature's silent eloquence, declares

   That all fulfil the works of love and joy,--

   All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates

   The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth                    200

   The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up

   The tyrant whose delight is in his woe,

   Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun,

   Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams,

   Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch

   Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth

   A step-dame to her numerous sons who earn

   Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil;

   A mother only to those puling babes

   Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men                          210

   The playthings of their babyhood and mar

   In self-important childishness that peace

   Which men alone appreciate?

 

      'Spirit of Nature, no!

   The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs

     Alike in every human heart.

       Thou aye erectest there

     Thy throne of power unappealable;

     Thou art the judge beneath whose nod

     Man's brief and frail authority                                 220

       Is powerless as the wind

       That passeth idly by;

     Thine the tribunal which surpasseth

       The show of human justice

       As God surpasses man!

 

      'Spirit of Nature! thou

   Life of interminable multitudes;

     Soul of those mighty spheres

   Whose changeless paths through Heaven's deep silence lie;

     Soul of that smallest being,                                    230

       The dwelling of whose life

     Is one faint April sun-gleam;--

       Man, like these passive things,

   Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth;

     Like theirs, his age of endless peace,

       Which time is fast maturing,

       Will swiftly, surely, come;

   And the unbounded frame which thou pervadest,

       Will be without a flaw

     Marring its perfect symmetry!                                   240

 

                    IV

   'How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,

   Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,

   Were discord to the speaking quietude

   That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,

   Studded with stars unutterably bright,

   Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,

   Seems like a canopy which love had spread

   To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills.

   Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;

   Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend                          10

   So stainless that their white and glittering spires

   Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep

   Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower

   So idly that rapt fancy deemeth it

   A metaphor of peace;--all form a scene

   Where musing solitude might love to lift

   Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;

   Where silence undisturbed might watch alone--

   So cold, so bright, so still.

 

                                  The orb of day

   In southern climes o'er ocean's waveless field                     20

   Sinks sweetly smiling; not the faintest breath

   Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve

   Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day;

   And Vesper's image on the western main

   Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes:

   Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass,

   Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar

   Of distant thunder mutters awfully;

   Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom

   That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend,                30

   With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;

   The torn deep yawns,--the vessel finds a grave

   Beneath its jagged gulf.

 

                             Ah! whence yon glare

   That fires the arch of heaven? that dark red smoke

   Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched

   In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow

   Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round.

   Hark to that roar whose swift and deafening peals

   In countless echoes through the mountains ring,

   Startling pale Midnight on her starry throne!                      40

   Now swells the intermingling din; the jar

   Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb;

   The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,

   The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men

   Inebriate with rage:--loud and more loud

   The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene

   And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws

   His cold and bloody shroud.--Of all the men

   Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there

   In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts                    50

   That beat with anxious life at sunset there;

   How few survive, how few are beating now!

   All is deep silence, like the fearful calm

   That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause;

   Save when the frantic wail of widowed love

   Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan

   With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay

   Wrapt round its struggling powers.

 

                                       The gray morn

   Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke

   Before the icy wind slow rolls away,                               60

   And the bright beams of frosty morning dance

   Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood

   Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,

   And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments

   Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path

   Of the outsallying victors; far behind

   Black ashes note where their proud city stood.

   Within yon forest is a gloomy glen--

   Each tree which guards its darkness from the day,

   Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.

 

                                 I see thee shrink,                   70

   Surpassing Spirit!--wert thou human else?

   I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet

   Across thy stainless features; yet fear not;

   This is no unconnected misery,

   Nor stands uncaused and irretrievable.

   Man's evil nature, that apology

   Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up

   For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood

   Which desolates the discord-wasted land.

   From kings and priests and statesmen war arose,                    80

   Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe,

   Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe

   Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall;

   And where its venomed exhalations spread

   Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay

   Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones

   Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,

   A garden shall arise, in loveliness

   Surpassing fabled Eden.

 

                            Hath Nature's soul,--

   That formed this world so beautiful, that spread                   90

   Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord

   Strung to unchanging unison, that gave

   The happy birds their dwelling in the grove,

   That yielded to the wanderers of the deep

   The lovely silence of the unfathomed main,

   And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust

   With spirit, thought and love,--on Man alone,

   Partial in causeless malice, wantonly

   Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul

   Blasted with withering curses; placed afar                        100

   The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp,

   But serving on the frightful gulf to glare

   Rent wide beneath his footsteps?

 

                                     Nature!--no!

   Kings, priests and statesmen blast the human flower

   Even in its tender bud; their influence darts

   Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins

   Of desolate society. The child,

   Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name,

   Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts

   His baby-sword even in a hero's mood.                             110

   This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge

   Of devastated earth; whilst specious names,

   Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour,

   Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims

   Bright reason's ray and sanctifies the sword

   Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood.

   Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man

   Inherits vice and misery, when force

   And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe,

   Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good.                      120

 

   'Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps

   From its new tenement and looks abroad

   For happiness and sympathy, how stern

   And desolate a tract is this wide world!

   How withered all the buds of natural good!

   No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms

   Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame

   Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe

   Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung

   By morals, law and custom, the pure winds                         130

   Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes,

   May breathe not. The untainting light of day

   May visit not its longings. It is bound

   Ere it has life; yea, all the chains are forged

   Long ere its being; all liberty and love

   And peace is torn from its defencelessness;

   Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed

   To abjectness and bondage!

 

   'Throughout this varied and eternal world

   Soul is the only element, the block                               140

   That for uncounted ages has remained.

   The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight

   Is active living spirit. Every grain

   Is sentient both in unity and part,

   And the minutest atom comprehends

   A world of loves and hatreds; these beget

   Evil and good; hence truth and falsehood spring;

   Hence will and thought and action, all the germs

   Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate,

   That variegate the eternal universe.                              150

   Soul is not more polluted than the beams

   Of heaven's pure orb ere round their rapid lines

   The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.

 

   'Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds

   Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing

   To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn

   The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste

   The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield;

   Or he is formed for abjectness and woe,

   To grovel on the dunghill of his fears,                           160

   To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame

   Of natural love in sensualism, to know

   That hour as blest when on his worthless days

   The frozen hand of death shall set its seal,

   Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease.

   The one is man that shall hereafter be;

   The other, man as vice has made him now.

 

   'War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,

   The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade,

   And to those royal murderers whose mean thrones                   170

   Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,

   The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.

   Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround

   Their palaces, participate the crimes

   That force defends and from a nation's rage

   Secures the crown, which all the curses reach

   That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.

   These are the hired bravos who defend

   The tyrant's throne--the bullies of his fear;

   These are the sinks and channels of worst vice,                   180

   The refuse of society, the dregs

   Of all that is most vile; their cold hearts blend

   Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,

   All that is mean and villainous with rage

   Which hopelessness of good and self-contempt

   Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth,

   Honor and power, then are sent abroad

   To do their work. The pestilence that stalks

   In gloomy triumph through some eastern land

   Is less destroying. They cajole with gold                         190

   And promises of fame the thoughtless youth

   Already crushed with servitude; he knows

   His wretchedness too late, and cherishes

   Repentance for his ruin, when his doom

   Is sealed in gold and blood!

   Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare

   The feet of justice in the toils of law,

   Stand ready to oppress the weaker still,

   And right or wrong will vindicate for gold,

   Sneering at public virtue, which beneath                          200

   Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled where

   Honor sits smiling at the sale of truth.

 

   'Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,

   Without a hope, a passion or a love,

   Who through a life of luxury and lies

   Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,

   Support the system whence their honors flow.

   They have three words--well tyrants know their use,

   Well pay them for the loan with usury

   Torn from a bleeding world!--God, Hell and Heaven:                210

   A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend,

   Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage

   Of tameless tigers hungering for blood;

   Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,

   Where poisonous and undying worms prolong

   Eternal misery to those hapless slaves

   Whose life has been a penance for its crimes;

   And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie

   Their human nature, quake, believe and cringe

   Before the mockeries of earthly power.                            220

 

   'These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,

   Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys,

   Omnipotent in wickedness; the while

   Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does

   His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend

   Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.

   They rise, they fall; one generation comes

   Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe.

   It fades, another blossoms; yet behold!

   Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom,                   230

   Withering and cankering deep its passive prime.

   He has invented lying words and modes,

   Empty and vain as his own coreless heart;

   Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound,

   To lure the heedless victim to the toils

   Spread round the valley of its paradise.

 

   'Look to thyself, priest, conqueror or prince!

   Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts

   Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor,

   With whom thy master was; or thou delight'st                      240

   In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain,

   All misery weighing nothing in the scale

   Against thy short-lived fame; or thou dost load

   With cowardice and crime the groaning land,

   A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self!

   Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er

   Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days

   Days of unsatisfying listlessness?

   Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er,

   "When will the morning come?" Is not thy youth                    250

   A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?

   Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?

   Are not thy views of unregretted death

   Drear, comfortless and horrible? Thy mind,

   Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame,

   Incapable of judgment, hope or love?

   And dost thou wish the errors to survive,

   That bar thee from all sympathies of good,

   After the miserable interest

   Thou hold'st in their protraction? When the grave                 260

   Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself,

   Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth

   To twine its roots around thy coffined clay,

   Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,

   That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die?

 

                    V

   'Thus do the generations of the earth

   Go to the grave and issue from the womb,

   Surviving still the imperishable change

   That renovates the world; even as the leaves

   Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year

   Has scattered on the forest-soil and heaped

   For many seasons there--though long they choke,

   Loading with loathsome rottenness the land,

   All germs of promise, yet when the tall trees

   From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes,                10

   Lie level with the earth to moulder there,

   They fertilize the land they long deformed;

   Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs

   Of youth, integrity and loveliness,

   Like that which gave it life, to spring and die.

   Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights

   The fairest feelings of the opening heart,

   Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil

   Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,

   And judgment cease to wage unnatural war                           20

   With passion's unsubduable array.

   Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness!

   Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all

   The wanton horrors of her bloody play;

   Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,

   Shunning the light, and owning not its name,

   Compelled by its deformity to screen

   With flimsy veil of justice and of right

   Its unattractive lineaments that scare

   All save the brood of ignorance; at once                           30

   The cause and the effect of tyranny;

   Unblushing, hardened, sensual and vile;

   Dead to all love but of its abjectness;

   With heart impassive by more noble powers

   Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;

   Despising its own miserable being,

   Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.

 

   'Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange

   Of all that human art or Nature yield;

   Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand,                 40

   And natural kindness hasten to supply

   From the full fountain of its boundless love,

   Forever stifled, drained and tainted now.

   Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade

   No solitary virtue dares to spring,

   But poverty and wealth with equal hand

   Scatter their withering curses, and unfold

   The doors of premature and violent death

   To pining famine and full-fed disease,

   To all that shares the lot of human life,                          50

   Which, poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the chain

   That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind.

 

   'Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,

   The signet of its all-enslaving power,

   Upon a shining ore, and called it gold;

   Before whose image bow the vulgar great,

   The vainly rich, the miserable proud,

   The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings,

   And with blind feelings reverence the power

   That grinds them to the dust of misery.                            60

   But in the temple of their hireling hearts

   Gold is a living god and rules in scorn

   All earthly things but virtue.

 

   'Since tyrants by the sale of human life

   Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame

   To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,

   Success has sanctioned to a credulous world

   The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.

   His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes

   The despot numbers; from his cabinet                               70

   These puppets of his schemes he moves at will,

   Even as the slaves by force or famine driven,

   Beneath a vulgar master, to perform

   A task of cold and brutal drudgery;--

   Hardened to hope, insensible to fear,

   Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine,

   Mere wheels of work and articles of trade,

   That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!

 

   'The harmony and happiness of man

   Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts                  80

   His nature to the heaven of its pride,

   Is bartered for the poison of his soul;

   The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes,

   Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain,

   Withering all passion but of slavish fear,

   Extinguishing all free and generous love

   Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse

   That fancy kindles in the beating heart

   To mingle with sensation, it destroys,--

   Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self,                        90

   The grovelling hope of interest and gold,

   Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed

   Even by hypocrisy.

 

                       And statesmen boast

   Of wealth! The wordy eloquence that lives

   After the ruin of their hearts, can gild

   The bitter poison of a nation's woe;

   Can turn the worship of the servile mob

   To their corrupt and glaring idol, fame,

   From virtue, trampled by its iron tread,--

   Although its dazzling pedestal be raised                          100

   Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field,

   With desolated dwellings smoking round.

   The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside,

   To deeds of charitable intercourse

   And bare fulfilment of the common laws

   Of decency and prejudice confines

   The struggling nature of his human heart,

   Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds

   A passing tear perchance upon the wreck

   Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door                   110

   The frightful waves are driven,--when his son

   Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion

   Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man

   Whose life is misery, and fear and care;

   Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil;

   Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream;

   Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze

   Forever meets, and the proud rich man's eye

   Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene

   Of thousands like himself;--he little heeds                       120

   The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate

   Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scorn

   The vain and bitter mockery of words,

   Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds,

   And unrestrained but by the arm of power,

   That knows and dreads his enmity.

 

   'The iron rod of penury still compels

   Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth,

   And poison, with unprofitable toil,

   A life too void of solace to confirm                              130

   The very chains that bind him to his doom.

   Nature, impartial in munificence,

   Has gifted man with all-subduing will.

   Matter, with all its transitory shapes,

   Lies subjected and plastic at his feet,

   That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread.

   How many a rustic Milton has passed by,

   Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,

   In unremitting drudgery and care!

   How many a vulgar Cato has compelled                              140

   His energies, no longer tameless then,

   To mould a pin or fabricate a nail!

   How many a Newton, to whose passive ken

   Those mighty spheres that gem infinity

   Were only specks of tinsel fixed in heaven

   To light the midnights of his native town!

 

   'Yet every heart contains perfection's germ.

   The wisest of the sages of the earth,

   That ever from the stores of reason drew

   Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone,                   150

   Were but a weak and inexperienced boy,

   Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued

   With pure desire and universal love,

   Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain,

   Untainted passion, elevated will,

   Which death (who even would linger long in awe

   Within his noble presence and beneath

   His changeless eye-beam) might alone subdue.

   Him, every slave now dragging through the filth

   Of some corrupted city his sad life,                              160

   Pining with famine, swoln with luxury,

   Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense

   With narrow schemings and unworthy cares,

   Or madly rushing through all violent crime

   To move the deep stagnation of his soul,--

   Might imitate and equal.

 

                             But mean lust

   Has bound its chains so tight about the earth

   That all within it but the virtuous man

   Is venal; gold or fame will surely reach

   The price prefixed by Selfishness to all                          170

   But him of resolute and unchanging will;

   Whom nor the plaudits of a servile crowd,

   Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury,

   Can bribe to yield his elevated soul

   To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield

   With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.

 

   'All things are sold: the very light of heaven

   Is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love,

   The smallest and most despicable things

   That lurk in the abysses of the deep,                             180

   All objects of our life, even life itself,

   And the poor pittance which the laws allow

   Of liberty, the fellowship of man,

   Those duties which his heart of human love

   Should urge him to perform instinctively,

   Are bought and sold as in a public mart

   Of undisguising Selfishness, that sets

   On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.

   Even love is sold; the solace of all woe

   Is turned to deadliest agony, old age                             190

   Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,

   And youth's corrupted impulses prepare

   A life of horror from the blighting bane

   Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs

   From unenjoying sensualism, has filled

   All human life with hydra-headed woes.

 

   'Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs

   Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest

   Sets no great value on his hireling faith;

   A little passing pomp, some servile souls,                        200

   Whom cowardice itself might safely chain

   Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe

   To deck the triumph of their languid zeal,

   Can make him minister to tyranny.

   More daring crime requires a loftier meed.

   Without a shudder the slave-soldier lends

   His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart,

   When the dread eloquence of dying men,

   Low mingling on the lonely field of fame,

   Assails that nature whose applause he sells                       210

   For the gross blessings of the patriot mob,

   For the vile gratitude of heartless kings,

   And for a cold world's good word,--viler still!

 

   'There is a nobler glory which survives

   Until our being fades, and, solacing

   All human care, accompanies its change;

   Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom,

   And in the precincts of the palace guides

   Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime;

   Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness,                         220

   Even when from power's avenging hand he takes

   Its sweetest, last and noblest title--death;

   --The consciousness of good, which neither gold,

   Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss,

   Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,

   Unalterable will, quenchless desire

   Of universal happiness, the heart

   That beats with it in unison, the brain

   Whose ever-wakeful wisdom toils to change

   Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal.                        230

 

   'This commerce of sincerest virtue needs

   No meditative signs of selfishness,

   No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,

   No balancings of prudence, cold and long;

   In just and equal measure all is weighed,

   One scale contains the sum of human weal,

   And one, the good man's heart.

 

                                   How vainly seek

   The selfish for that happiness denied

   To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they,

   Who hope for peace amid the storms of care,                       240

   Who covet power they know not how to use,

   And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give,--

   Madly they frustrate still their own designs;

   And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy

   Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul,

   Pining regrets, and vain repentances,

   Disease, disgust and lassitude pervade

   Their valueless and miserable lives.

 

   'But hoary-headed selfishness has felt

   Its death-blow and is tottering to the grave;                     250

   A brighter morn awaits the human day,

   When every transfer of earth's natural gifts

   Shall be a commerce of good words and works;

   When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,

   The fear of infamy, disease and woe,

   War with its million horrors, and fierce hell,

   Shall live but in the memory of time,

   Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,

   Look back, and shudder at his younger years.'

 

                    VI

           All touch, all eye, all ear,

   The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech.

       O'er the thin texture of its frame

   The varying periods painted changing glows,

           As on a summer even,

   When soul-enfolding music floats around,

       The stainless mirror of the lake

       Re-images the eastern gloom,

   Mingling convulsively its purple hues

           With sunset's burnished gold.                              10

           Then thus the Spirit spoke:

   'It is a wild and miserable world!

           Thorny, and full of care,

   Which every fiend can make his prey at will!

       O Fairy! in the lapse of years,

           Is there no hope in store?

           Will yon vast suns roll on

       Interminably, still illuming

       The night of so many wretched souls,

           And see no hope for them?                                  20

   Will not the universal Spirit e'er

   Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?'

 

           The Fairy calmly smiled

   In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope

   Suffused the Spirit's lineaments.

   'Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts

   Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul

   That sees the chains which bind it to its doom.

   Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth,

           Falsehood, mistake and lust;                               30

           But the eternal world

   Contains at once the evil and the cure.

   Some eminent in virtue shall start up,

           Even in perversest time;

   The truths of their pure lips, that never die,

   Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath

           Of ever-living flame,

   Until the monster sting itself to death.

 

     'How sweet a scene will earth become!

   Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place,                           40

   Symphonious with the planetary spheres;

   When man, with changeless Nature coalescing,

   Will undertake regeneration's work,

   When its ungenial poles no longer point

           To the red and baleful sun

           That faintly twinkles there!

 

          'Spirit, on yonder earth,

     Falsehood now triumphs; deadly power

   Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth!

       Madness and misery are there!                                  50

   The happiest is most wretched! Yet confide

   Until pure health-drops from the cup of joy

   Fall like a dew of balm upon the world.

   Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn,

   And read the blood-stained charter of all woe,

   Which Nature soon with recreating hand

   Will blot in mercy from the book of earth.

   How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing,

   How swift the step of reason's firmer tread,

   How calm and sweet the victories of life,                          60

   How terrorless the triumph of the grave!

   How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm,

   Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown!

   How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar!

   The weight of his exterminating curse

   How light! and his affected charity,

   To suit the pressure of the changing times,

   What palpable deceit!--but for thy aid,

   Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,

   Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men,                     70

   And heaven with slaves!

 

   'Thou taintest all thou lookest upon!--the stars,

   Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet,

   Were gods to the distempered playfulness

   Of thy untutored infancy; the trees,

   The grass, the clouds, the mountains and the sea,

   All living things that walk, swim, creep or fly,

   Were gods; the sun had homage, and the moon

   Her worshipper. Then thou becamest, a boy,

   More daring in thy frenzies; every shape,                          80

   Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,

   Which from sensation's relics fancy culls;

   The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,

   The genii of the elements, the powers

   That give a shape to Nature's varied works,

   Had life and place in the corrupt belief

   Of thy blind heart; yet still thy youthful hands

   Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave

   Its strength and ardor to thy frenzied brain;

   Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene,                     90

   Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride;

   Their everlasting and unchanging laws

   Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stood'st

   Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum up

   The elements of all that thou didst know;

   The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign,

   The budding of the heaven-breathing trees,

   The eternal orbs that beautify the night,

   The sunrise, and the setting of the moon,

   Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease,                    100

   And all their causes, to an abstract point

   Converging thou didst bend, and called it God!

   The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,

   The merciful, and the avenging God!

   Who, prototype of human misrule, sits

   High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne,

   Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work,

   Hell, gapes forever for the unhappy slaves

   Of fate, whom he created in his sport

   To triumph in their torments when they fell!                      110

   Earth heard the name; earth trembled as the smoke

   Of his revenge ascended up to heaven,

   Blotting the constellations; and the cries

   Of millions butchered in sweet confidence

   And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds

   Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths

   Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land;

   Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,

   And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek

   Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel                           120

   Felt cold in her torn entrails!

 

   'Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime;

   But age crept on; one God would not suffice

   For senile puerility; thou framedst

   A tale to suit thy dotage and to glut

   Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend

   Thy wickedness had pictured might afford

   A plea for sating the unnatural thirst

   For murder, rapine, violence and crime,

   That still consumed thy being, even when                          130

   Thou heard'st the step of fate; that flames might light

   Thy funeral scene; and the shrill horrent shrieks

   Of parents dying on the pile that burned

   To light their children to thy paths, the roar

   Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries

   Of thine apostles loud commingling there,

         Might sate thine hungry ear

         Even on the bed of death!

 

   'But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;

   Thou art descending to the darksome grave,                        140

   Unhonored and unpitied but by those

   Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds,

   Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun

   Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night

   That long has lowered above the ruined world.

 

   'Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light

   Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused

   A Spirit of activity and life,

   That knows no term, cessation or decay;

   That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,                     150

   Extinguished in the dampness of the grave,

   Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe

   In the dim newness of its being feels

   The impulses of sublunary things,

   And all is wonder to unpractised sense;

   But, active, steadfast and eternal, still

   Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,

   Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,

   Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;

   And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly                      160

   Rolls round the eternal universe and shakes

   Its undecaying battlement, presides,

   Apportioning with irresistible law

   The place each spring of its machine shall fill;

   So that, when waves on waves tumultuous heap

   Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven

   Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords--

   Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner,

   Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,

   All seems unlinked contingency and chance--                       170

   No atom of this turbulence fulfils

   A vague and unnecessitated task

   Or acts but as it must and ought to act.

   Even the minutest molecule of light,

   That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow

   Fulfils its destined though invisible work,

   The universal Spirit guides; nor less

   When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,

   Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field,

   That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves               180

   And call the sad work glory, does it rule

   All passions; not a thought, a will, an act,

   No working of the tyrant's moody mind,

   Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast

   Their servitude to hide the shame they feel,

   Nor the events enchaining every will,

   That from the depths of unrecorded time

   Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass

   Unrecognized or unforeseen by thee,

   Soul of the Universe! eternal spring                              190

   Of life and death, of happiness and woe,

   Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene

   That floats before our eyes in wavering light,

   Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison

       Whose chains and massy walls

       We feel but cannot see.

 

   'Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,

   Necessity! thou mother of the world!

   Unlike the God of human error, thou

   Requirest no prayers or praises; the caprice                      200

   Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee

   Than do the changeful passions of his breast

   To thy unvarying harmony; the slave,

   Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,

   And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride

   His being in the sight of happiness

   That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,

   Beneath whose shade all life is withered up,

   And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords

   A temple where the vows of happy love                             210

   Are registered, are equal in thy sight;

   No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge

   And favoritism, and worst desire of fame

   Thou knowest not; all that the wide world contains

   Are but thy passive instruments, and thou

   Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,

   Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,

     Because thou hast not human sense,

     Because thou art not human mind.

 

    'Yes! when the sweeping storm of time                            220

   Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes

   And broken altars of the almighty fiend,

   Whose name usurps thy honors, and the blood

   Through centuries clotted there has floated down

   The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live

   Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee,

     Which nor the tempest breath of time,

     Nor the interminable flood

     Over earth's slight pageant rolling,

         Availeth to destroy,--                                      230

   The sensitive extension of the world;

     That wondrous and eternal fane,

   Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,

   To do the will of strong necessity,

     And life, in multitudinous shapes,

   Still pressing forward where no term can be,

     Like hungry and unresting flame

   Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.'

 

                    VII

SPIRIT

   'I was an infant when my mother went

   To see an atheist burned. She took me there.

   The dark-robed priests were met around the pile;

   The multitude was gazing silently;

   And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,

   Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,

   Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth;

   The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;

   His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;

   His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob                    10

   Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.

   "Weep not, child!" cried my mother, "for that man

   Has said, There is no God."'

 

FAIRY

                                'There is no God!

   Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed.

   Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race,

   His ceaseless generations, tell their tale;

   Let every part depending on the chain

   That links it to the whole, point to the hand

   That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls

   In silent eloquence unfold its store                               20

   Of argument; infinity within,

   Infinity without, belie creation;

   The exterminable spirit it contains

   Is Nature's only God; but human pride

   Is skilful to invent most serious names

   To hide its ignorance.

                           'The name of God

   Has fenced about all crime with holiness,

   Himself the creature of his worshippers,

   Whose names and attributes and passions change,

   Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord,                          30

   Even with the human dupes who build his shrines,

   Still serving o'er the war-polluted world

   For desolation's watchword; whether hosts

   Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on

   Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise

   A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;

   Or countless partners of his power divide

   His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke

   Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,

   Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,                           40

   Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven

   In honor of his name; or, last and worst,

   Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,

   And priests dare babble of a God of peace,

   Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,

   Murdering the while, uprooting every germ

   Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,

   Making the earth a slaughter-house!

 

          'O Spirit! through the sense

   By which thy inner nature was apprised                             50

     Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,

     And varied reminiscences have waked

           Tablets that never fade;

     All things have been imprinted there,

     The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,

     Even the unshapeliest lineaments

       Of wild and fleeting visions

           Have left a record there

           To testify of earth.

 

   'These are my empire, for to me is given                           60

   The wonders of the human world to keep,

   And fancy's thin creations to endow

   With manner, being and reality;

   Therefore a wondrous phantom from the dreams

   Of human error's dense and purblind faith

   I will evoke, to meet thy questioning.

           Ahasuerus, rise!'

 

           A strange and woe-worn wight

       Arose beside the battlement,

           And stood unmoving there.                                  70

   His inessential figure cast no shade

           Upon the golden floor;

   His port and mien bore mark of many years,

   And chronicles of untold ancientness

   Were legible within his beamless eye;

       Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;

   Freshness and vigor knit his manly frame;

   The wisdom of old age was mingled there

       With youth's primeval dauntlessness;

           And inexpressible woe,                                     80

   Chastened by fearless resignation, gave

   An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.

 

SPIRIT

          'Is there a God?'

 

AHASUERUS

   'Is there a God!--ay, an almighty God,

   And vengeful as almighty! Once his voice

   Was heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound;

   The fiery-visaged firmament expressed

   Abhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned

   To swallow all the dauntless and the good

   That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,                         90

   Girt as it was with power. None but slaves

   Survived,--cold-blooded slaves, who did the work

   Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls

   No honest indignation ever urged

   To elevated daring, to one deed

   Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.

   These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,

   Gorgeous and vast; the costly altars smoked

   With human blood, and hideous pæans rung

   Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard               100

   His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts

   Had raised him to his eminence in power,

   Accomplice of omnipotence in crime

   And confidant of the all-knowing one.

         These were Jehovah's words.

 

   '"From an eternity of idleness

   I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth

   From nothing; rested, and created man;

   I placed him in a paradise, and there

   Planted the tree of evil, so that he                              110

   Might eat and perish, and my soul procure

   Wherewith to sate its malice and to turn,

   Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,

   All misery to my fame. The race of men,

   Chosen to my honor, with impunity

   May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.

   Here I command thee hence to lead them on,

   Until with hardened feet their conquering troops

   Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood,

   And make my name be dreaded through the land.                     120

   Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe

   Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,

   With every soul on this ungrateful earth,

   Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,--even all

   Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge

   (Which you, to men, call justice) of their God."

 

                          'The murderer's brow

   Quivered with horror.

 

                          '"God omnipotent,

   Is there no mercy? must our punishment

   Be endless? will long ages roll away,                             130

   And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast thou made

   In mockery and wrath this evil earth?

   Mercy becomes the powerful--be but just!

   O God! repent and save!"

 

                          '"One way remains:

   I will beget a son and he shall bear

   The sins of all the world; he shall arise

   In an unnoticed corner of the earth,

   And there shall die upon a cross, and purge

   The universal crime; so that the few

   On whom my grace descends, those who are marked                   140

   As vessels to the honor of their God,

   May credit this strange sacrifice and save

   Their souls alive. Millions shall live and die,

   Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,

   But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave,

   Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,

   Such as the nurses frighten babes withal;

   These in a gulf of anguish and of flame

   Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,

   Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,                       150

   Even on their beds of torment where they howl,

   My honor and the justice of their doom.

   What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts

   Of purity, with radiant genius bright

   Or lit with human reason's earthly ray?

   Many are called, but few will I elect.

   Do thou my bidding, Moses!"

 

                         'Even the murderer's cheek

   Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips

   Scarce faintly uttered--"O almighty one,

   I tremble and obey!"                                              160

 

   'O Spirit! centuries have set their seal

   On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,

   Since the Incarnate came; humbly he came,

   Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape

   Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard

   Save by the rabble of his native town,

   Even as a parish demagogue. He led

   The crowd; he taught them justice, truth and peace,

   In semblance; but he lit within their souls

   The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword              170

   He brought on earth to satiate with the blood

   Of truth and freedom his malignant soul

   At length his mortal frame was led to death.

   I stood beside him; on the torturing cross

   No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense;

   And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed

   The massacres and miseries which his name

   Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried,

   "Go! go!" in mockery.

   A smile of godlike malice reillumined                             180

   His fading lineaments. "I go," he cried,

   "But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth

   Eternally." The dampness of the grave

   Bathed my imperishable front. I fell,

   And long lay tranced upon the charmèd soil.

   When I awoke hell burned within my brain

   Which staggered on its seat; for all around

   The mouldering relics of my kindred lay,

   Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them,

   And in their various attitudes of death                           190

   My murdered children's mute and eyeless skulls

   Glared ghastily upon me.

 

                             But my soul,

   From sight and sense of the polluting woe

   Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer

   Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven.

   Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began

   My lonely and unending pilgrimage,

   Resolved to wage unweariable war

   With my almighty tyrant and to hurl

   Defiance at his impotence to harm                                 200

   Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand,

   That barred my passage to the peaceful grave,

   Has crushed the earth to misery, and given

   Its empire to the chosen of his slaves.

   These I have seen, even from the earliest dawn

   Of weak, unstable and precarious power,

   Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;

   So, when they turned but from the massacre

   Of unoffending infidels to quench

   Their thirst for ruin in the very blood                           210

   That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal

   Froze every human feeling as the wife

   Sheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel,

   Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;

   And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood

   Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,

   Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught, waged,

   Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath;

   Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,

   Pointed to victory! When the fray was done,                       220

   No remnant of the exterminated faith

   Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,

   With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,

   That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.

 

   'Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe

   The sword of his revenge, when grace descended,

   Confirming all unnatural impulses,

   To sanctify their desolating deeds;

   And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross

   O'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun                        230

   On showers of gore from the upflashing steel

   Of safe assassination, and all crime

   Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord,

   And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.

 

   'Spirit! no year of my eventful being

   Has passed unstained by crime and misery,

   Which flows from God's own faith. I 've marked his slaves

   With tongues, whose lies are venomous, beguile

   The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red

   With murder, feign to stretch the other out                       240

   For brotherhood and peace; and that they now

   Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds

   Are marked with all the narrowness and crime

   That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise,

   Reason may claim our gratitude, who now,

   Establishing the imperishable throne

   Of truth and stubborn virtue, maketh vain

   The unprevailing malice of my foe,

   Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,

   Adds impotent eternities to pain,                                 250

   Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast

   To see the smiles of peace around them play,

   To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.

 

   'Thus have I stood,--through a wild waste of years

   Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony,

   Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,

   Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curse

   With stubborn and unalterable will,

   Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flame

   Had scathèd in the wilderness, to stand                           260

   A monument of fadeless ruin there;

   Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves

   The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,

     As in the sunlight's calm it spreads

     Its worn and withered arms on high

   To meet the quiet of a summer's noon.'

 

       The Fairy waved her wand;

       Ahasuerus fled

   Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,

   That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove,                       270

       Flee from the morning beam;--

       The matter of which dreams are made

       Not more endowed with actual life

       Than this phantasmal portraiture

       Of wandering human thought.

 

                    VIII

THE FAIRY

   'The present and the past thou hast beheld.

   It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn,

     The secrets of the future.--Time!

   Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,

   Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,

   And from the cradles of eternity,

   Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep

   By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,

   Tear thou that gloomy shroud.--Spirit, behold

       Thy glorious destiny!'                                         10

 

       Joy to the Spirit came.

   Through the wide rent in Time's eternal veil,

   Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear;

       Earth was no longer hell;

       Love, freedom, health had given

   Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime,

       And all its pulses beat

   Symphonious to the planetary spheres;

       Then dulcet music swelled

   Concordant with the life-strings of the soul;                      20

   It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there,

   Catching new life from transitory death;

   Like the vague sighings of a wind at even

   That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea

   And dies on the creation of its breath,

   And sinks and rises, falls and swells by fits,

     Was the pure stream of feeling

     That sprung from these sweet notes,

   And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies

   With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed.                         30

 

       Joy to the Spirit came,--

     Such joy as when a lover sees

   The chosen of his soul in happiness

       And witnesses her peace

   Whose woe to him were bitterer than death;

       Sees her unfaded cheek

   Glow mantling in first luxury of health,

       Thrills with her lovely eyes,

   Which like two stars amid the heaving main

       Sparkle through liquid bliss.                                  40

 

   Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen:

   'I will not call the ghost of ages gone

   To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;

       The present now is past,

   And those events that desolate the earth

   Have faded from the memory of Time,

   Who dares not give reality to that

   Whose being I annul. To me is given

   The wonders of the human world to keep,

   Space, matter, time and mind. Futurity                             50

   Exposes now its treasure; let the sight

   Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.

   O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal

   Where virtue fixes universal peace,

   And, 'midst the ebb and flow of human things,

   Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still,

   A light-house o'er the wild of dreary waves.

 

    'The habitable earth is full of bliss;

   Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled

   By everlasting snow-storms round the poles,                        60

   Where matter dared not vegetate or live,

   But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude

   Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;

   And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles

   Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls

   Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,

   Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet

   To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves

   And melodize with man's blest nature there.

 

   'Those deserts of immeasurable sand,                               70

   Whose age-collected fervors scarce allowed

   A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,

   Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love

   Broke on the sultry silentness alone,

   Now teem with countless rills and shady woods,

   Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;

   And where the startled wilderness beheld

   A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,

   A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs

   The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs,                        80

   Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,--

   Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,

   Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles

   To see a babe before his mother's door,

       Sharing his morning's meal

     With the green and golden basilisk

       That comes to lick his feet.

 

   'Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail

   Has seen above the illimitable plain

   Morning on night and night on morning rise,                        90

   Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread

   Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,

   Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves

   So long have mingled with the gusty wind

   In melancholy loneliness, and swept

   The desert of those ocean solitudes

   But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,

   The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm;

   Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds

   Of kindliest human impulses respond.                              100

   Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,

   With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,

   And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss,

   Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,

   Which like a toil-worn laborer leaps to shore

   To meet the kisses of the flowrets there.

 

   'All things are recreated, and the flame

   Of consentaneous love inspires all life.

   The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck

   To myriads, who still grow beneath her care,                      110

   Rewarding her with their pure perfectness;

   The balmy breathings of the wind inhale

   Her virtues and diffuse them all abroad;

   Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,

   Glows in the fruits and mantles on the stream;

   No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven,

   Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride

   The foliage of the ever-verdant trees;

   But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,

   And autumn proudly bears her matron grace,                        120

   Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring,

   Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit

   Reflects its tint and blushes into love.

 

   'The lion now forgets to thirst for blood;

   There might you see him sporting in the sun

   Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed,

   His teeth are harmless, custom's force has made

   His nature as the nature of a lamb.

   Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane

   Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows;                          130

   All bitterness is past; the cup of joy

   Unmingled mantles to the goblet's brim

   And courts the thirsty lips it fled before.

 

     But chief, ambiguous man, he that can know

   More misery, and dream more joy than all;

   Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast

   To mingle with a loftier instinct there,

   Lending their power to pleasure and to pain,

   Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each;

   Who stands amid the ever-varying world,                           140

   The burden or the glory of the earth;

   He chief perceives the change; his being notes

   The gradual renovation and defines

   Each movement of its progress on his mind.

 

   'Man, where the gloom of the long polar night

   Lowers o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,

   Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost

   Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,

   Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;

   His chilled and narrow energies, his heart                        150

   Insensible to courage, truth or love,

   His stunted stature and imbecile frame,

   Marked him for some abortion of the earth,

   Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around,

   Whose habits and enjoyments were his own;

   His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe,

   Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled,

   Apprised him ever of the joyless length

   Which his short being's wretchedness had reached;

   His death a pang which famine, cold and toil                      160

   Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark

   Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought:

   All was inflicted here that earth's revenge

   Could wreak on the infringers of her law;

   One curse alone was spared--the name of God.

 

   'Nor, where the tropics bound the realms of day

   With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,

   Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere

   Scattered the seeds of pestilence and fed

   Unnatural vegetation, where the land                              170

   Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,

   Was man a nobler being; slavery

   Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust;

   Or he was bartered for the fame of power,

   Which, all internal impulses destroying,

   Makes human will an article of trade;

   Or he was changed with Christians for their gold

   And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound

   Of the flesh-mangling scourge he does the work

   Of all-polluting luxury and wealth,                               180

   Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads

   The long-protracted fulness of their woe;

   Or he was led to legal butchery,

   To turn to worms beneath that burning sun

   Where kings first leagued against the rights of men

   And priests first traded with the name of God.

 

   'Even where the milder zone afforded man

   A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,

   Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,

   Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late                190

   Availed to arrest its progress or create

   That peace which first in bloodless victory waved

   Her snowy standard o'er this favored clime;

   There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,

   The mimic of surrounding misery,

   The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,

   The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.

 

   'Here now the human being stands adorning

   This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;

   Blest from his birth with all bland impulses,                     200

   Which gently in his noble bosom wake

   All kindly passions and all pure desires.

   Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing

   Which from the exhaustless store of human weal

   Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise

   In time-destroying infiniteness gift

   With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks

   The unprevailing hoariness of age;

   And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene

   Swift as an unremembered vision, stands                           210

   Immortal upon earth; no longer now

   He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,

   And horribly devours his mangled flesh,

   Which, still avenging Nature's broken law,

   Kindled all putrid humors in his frame,

   All evil passions and all vain belief,

   Hatred, despair and loathing in his mind,

   The germs of misery, death, disease and crime.

   No longer now the wingèd habitants,

   That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,                    220

   Flee from the form of man; but gather round,

   And prune their sunny feathers on the hands

   Which little children stretch in friendly sport

   Towards these dreadless partners of their play.

   All things are void of terror; man has lost

   His terrible prerogative, and stands

   An equal amidst equals; happiness

   And science dawn, though late, upon the earth;

   Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;

   Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,                        230

   Reason and passion cease to combat there;

   Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extend

   Their all-subduing energies, and wield

   The sceptre of a vast dominion there;

   Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends

   Its force to the omnipotence of mind,

   Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth

   To decorate its paradise of peace.'

 

                    IX

   'O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!

   To which those restless souls that ceaselessly

   Throng through the human universe, aspire!

   Thou consummation of all mortal hope!

   Thou glorious prize of blindly working will,

   Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,

   Verge to one point and blend forever there!

   Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place

   Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,

   Languor, disease and ignorance dare not come!                      10

   O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!

 

   'Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams;

   And dim forebodings of thy loveliness,

   Haunting the human heart, have there entwined

   Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss,

   Where friends and lovers meet to part no more.

   Thou art the end of all desire and will,

   The product of all action; and the souls,

   That by the paths of an aspiring change

   Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace,                         20

   There rest from the eternity of toil

   That framed the fabric of thy perfectness.

 

   'Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear;

   That hoary giant, who in lonely pride

   So long had ruled the world that nations fell

   Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids,

   That for millenniums had withstood the tide

   Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand

   Across that desert where their stones survived

   The name of him whose pride had heaped them there.                 30

   Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,

   Was but the mushroom of a summer day,

   That his light-wingèd footstep pressed to dust;

   Time was the king of earth; all things gave way

   Before him but the fixed and virtuous will,

   The sacred sympathies of soul and sense,

   That mocked his fury and prepared his fall.

 

   'Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love;

   Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene,

   Till from its native heaven they rolled away:                      40

   First, crime triumphant o'er all hope careered

   Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong,

   Whilst falsehood, tricked in virtue's attributes,

   Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe,

   Till, done by her own venomous sting to death,

   She left the moral world without a law,

   No longer fettering passion's fearless wing,

   Nor searing reason with the brand of God.

   Then steadily the happy ferment worked;

   Reason was free; and wild though passion went                      50

   Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads,

   Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers,

   Yet, like the bee returning to her queen,

   She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow,

   Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child,

   No longer trembling at the broken rod.

 

   'Mild was the slow necessity of death.

   The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp,

   Without a groan, almost without a fear,

   Calm as a voyager to some distant land,                            60

   And full of wonder, full of hope as he.

   The deadly germs of languor and disease

   Died in the human frame, and purity

   Blessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers.

   How vigorous then the athletic form of age!

   How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!

   Where neither avarice, cunning, pride or care

   Had stamped the seal of gray deformity

   On all the mingling lineaments of time.

   How lovely the intrepid front of youth,                            70

   Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace;

   Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name,

   And elevated will, that journeyed on

   Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness,

   With virtue, love and pleasure, hand in hand!

 

   'Then, that sweet bondage which is freedom's self,

   And rivets with sensation's softest tie

   The kindred sympathies of human souls,

   Needed no fetters of tyrannic law.

   Those delicate and timid impulses                                  80

   In Nature's primal modesty arose,

   And with undoubting confidence disclosed

   The growing longings of its dawning love,

   Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity,

   That virtue of the cheaply virtuous,

   Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost.

   No longer prostitution's venomed bane

   Poisoned the springs of happiness and life;

   Woman and man, in confidence and love,

   Equal and free and pure together trod                              90

   The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more

   Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet.

 

   'Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride

   The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked

   Famine's faint groan and penury's silent tear,

   A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw

   Year after year their stones upon the field,

   Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves

   Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower

   Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook                        100

   In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower,

   And whispered strange tales in the whirlwind's ear.

 

   'Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles

   The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung.

   It were a sight of awfulness to see

   The works of faith and slavery, so vast,

   So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal,

   Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall!

   A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death

   To-day, the breathing marble glows above                          110

   To decorate its memory, and tongues

   Are busy of its life; to-morrow, worms

   In silence and in darkness seize their prey.

 

   'Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,

   Fearless and free the ruddy children played,

   Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows

   With the green ivy and the red wall-flower

   That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;

   The ponderous chains and gratings of strong iron

   There rusted amid heaps of broken stone                           120

   That mingled slowly with their native earth;

   There the broad beam of day, which feebly once

   Lighted the cheek of lean captivity

   With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone

   On the pure smiles of infant playfulness;

   No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair

   Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes

   Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds

   And merriment were resonant around.

 

   'These ruins soon left not a wreck behind;                        130

   Their elements, wide-scattered o'er the globe,

   To happier shapes were moulded, and became

   Ministrant to all blissful impulses;

   Thus human things were perfected, and earth,

   Even as a child beneath its mother's love,

   Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew

   Fairer and nobler with each passing year.

 

   'Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene

   Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past

   Fades from our charmèd sight. My task is done;                    140

   Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own

   With all the fear and all the hope they bring.

   My spells are passed; the present now recurs.

   Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains

   Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand.

 

   'Yet, human Spirit! bravely hold thy course;

   Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue

   The gradual paths of an aspiring change;

   For birth and life and death, and that strange state

   Before the naked soul has found its home,                         150

   All tend to perfect happiness, and urge

   The restless wheels of being on their way,

   Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,

   Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal;

   For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense

   Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape

   New modes of passion to its frame may lend;

   Life is its state of action, and the store

   Of all events is aggregated there

   That variegate the eternal universe;                              160

   Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,

   That leads to azure isles and beaming skies

   And happy regions of eternal hope.

   Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on.

   Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,

   Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,

   Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth

   To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower,

   That blooms in mossy bank and darksome glens,

   Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile.                      170

 

   'Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand,

   So welcome when the tyrant is awake,

   So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns;

   'T is but the voyage of a darksome hour,

   The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.

   Death is no foe to virtue; earth has seen

   Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,

   Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there,

   And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.

   Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene                 180

   Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?

   Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still,

   When, to the moonlight walk by Henry led,

   Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death?

   And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast,

   Listening supinely to a bigot's creed,

   Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod,

   Whose iron thongs are red with human gore?

   Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will

   Is destined an eternal war to wage                                190

   With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot

   The germs of misery from the human heart.

   Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe

   The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,

   Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,

   Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease;

   Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy

   Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,

   When fenced by power and master of the world.

   Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,                      200

   Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,

   Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.

   Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,

   And therefore art thou worthy of the boon

   Which thou hast now received; virtue shall keep

   Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,

   And many days of beaming hope shall bless

   Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.

   Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy,

     Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch                           210

     Light, life and rapture from thy smile!'

 

     The Fairy waves her wand of charm.

   Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,

     That rolled beside the battlement,

   Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.

     Again the enchanted steeds were yoked;

     Again the burning wheels inflame

   The steep descent of heaven's untrodden way.

     Fast and far the chariot flew;

     The vast and fiery globes that rolled                           220

     Around the Fairy's palace-gate

   Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared

   Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs

   That there attendant on the solar power

   With borrowed light pursued their narrower way.

 

       Earth floated then below;

     The chariot paused a moment there;

       The Spirit then descended;

   The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil,

   Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done,               230

   Unfurled their pinions to the winds of heaven.

 

     The Body and the Soul united then.

   A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame;

   Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;

   Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained.

   She looked around in wonder, and beheld

   Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,

   Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,

       And the bright beaming stars

       That through the casement shone.                              240