Are unforeseen, unregistered by me : And it is yet permitted me, to rend 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 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; 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 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 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 grey light of morn Tinging those fleecy clouds That canopied the dawn. Seemed it, that the chariot's way
Lay through the midst of an immense concave, Radiant with million constellations, tinged
With shades of infinite colour, 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 Appear'd 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
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 horned 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, 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 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!
Ir 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,
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
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 fairy Hall! 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. 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. 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 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! 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,
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.
But matter, space and time, In those aerial 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.
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.
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; 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 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,
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 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, 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 Strangers, and ships, and merchandize : 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.
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 Lybian monsters yell, From the most gloomy glens Of Greenland's sunless clime, To where the golden fields 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;
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, Is fixed and indispensable As the majestic laws
That rule yon rolling orbs.
The Fairy paused. The Spirit,
In ecstacy 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; 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.
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: For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.
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 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 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 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, 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 faggot meets again Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, Tastes not a sweeter meal.
Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain Reels dizzily awhile: but ah! too soon The slumber of intemperance subsides, 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.
Oh! must this last for ever! Awful death, I wish yet fear to clasp thee! Not one moment Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace! Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity In penury and dungeons! wherefore lurkest With danger, death, and solitude: yet shunn'st The palace I have built thee! Sacred peace! Oh visit me but once, and pitying shed One drop of balm upon my withered soul.
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 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 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 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!
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 labour; the starved hind 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 labour 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
On those who build their palaces, and bring [vice; Their daily bread?-From vice, black loathsome 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; : 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 From time's light foot-fall, the minutest wave That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing The unsubstantial bubble. Aye! 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 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 But to appal the guilty. Yes! the grave [frost Hath quenched that eye, and death's relentless 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 mind 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; The subject, not the citizen: for kings And subjects, mutual foes, for ever 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.
High over flaming Rome, with savage joy Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear The shrieks of agonising 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, 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 Arise in due succession; all things speak [trees, 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 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, 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
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. Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur Seems like a canopy which love has spread [rolls, Yon gentle hills, To curtain her sleeping world.
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.
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 faintlythrough 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
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