Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak
Peace, harmony, and love.
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 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 The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, the 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
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
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.
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 has spread To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; Yon darksome rocks whence icicles depend, 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 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, With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; The torn deep yawns,-the vessel finds a grave Beneath its jagged gulf.
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 ! 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 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 Wrapped round its struggling powers.
Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke Before the icy wind slow rolls away,
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.
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, 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
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread 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 The meteor happiness, that shuns his grasp,
Rent wide beneath his footsteps?
on the frightful gulf to glare,
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,
lisp his mother's sacred name,
Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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