“I stand, the plan’s proud period; I pronounceThe work accomplish’d; the creation closed:1530Shout, all ye gods! nor shout ye gods alone;Of all that lives, or, if devoid of life,That rests, or rolls, ye heights, and depths, resound!Resound! resound! ye depths, and heights, resound!”Hard are those questions!—answer harder still.Is this the sole exploit, the single birth,The solitary son of power divine?Or has th’ Almighty Father, with a breath,Impregnated the womb of distant space?1539Has He not bid, in various provinces,Brother-creations the dark bowels burstOf night primeval; barren, now, no more?And He the central sun, transpiercing allThose giant generations, which disportAnd dance, as motes, in his meridian ray;That ray withdrawn, benighted, or absorb’d,In that abyss of horror, whence they sprung;While Chaos triumphs, repossess’d of allRival Creation ravish’d from his throne?Chaos! of Nature both the womb, and grave!1550Think’st thou my scheme, Lorenzo, spreads too wide?Is this extravagant?—No; this is just;Just, in conjecture, though ’twere false in fact.If ’tis an error, ’tis an error sprungFrom noble root, high thought of the Most High.But wherefore error? who can prove it such?—He that can set Omnipotence a bound.Can man conceive beyond what God can do?Nothing, but quite impossible is hard.He summons into being, with like ease,1560A whole creation, and a single grain.Speaks he the word? a thousand worlds are born!A thousand worlds? there’s space for millions more:And in what space can his great fiat fail?Condemn me not, cold critic! but indulgeThe warm imagination: why condemn?Why not indulge such thoughts, as swell our heartsWith fuller admiration of that Power,Who gives our hearts with such high thoughts to swell?Why not indulge in His augmented praise?1570Darts not His glory a still brighter ray,The less is left to Chaos, and the realmsOf hideous Night, where Fancy strays aghast;1573And, though most talkative, makes no report?Still seems my thought enormous? Think again;—Experience’ self shall aid thy lame belief.Glasses (that revelation to the sight!)Have they not led us in the deep discloseOf fine-spun nature, exquisitely small,And, though demonstrated, still ill-conceived?1580If, then, on the reverse, the mind would mountIn magnitude, what mind can mount too far,To keep the balance, and creation poise?Defect alone can err on such a theme;What is too great, if we the cause survey?Stupendous Architect! Thou, Thou art all!My soul flies up and down in thoughts of Thee,And finds herself but at the centre still!I AM, thy name! Existence, all thine own!Creation’s nothing; flatter’d much, if styled1590“The thin, the fleeting atmosphere of God.”O for the voice—of what? of whom?—What voiceCan answer to my wants, in such ascent,As dares to deem one universe too small?Tell me, Lorenzo! (for now fancy glows;Fired in the vortex of almighty power)Is not this home creation, in the mapOf universal nature, as a speck,Like fair Britannia in our little ball;Exceeding fair, and glorious, for its size,1600But, elsewhere, far outmeasured, far outshone?In fancy (for the fact beyond us lies)Canst thou not figure it, an isle, almostToo small for notice, in the vast of being;Sever’d by mighty seas of unbuilt spaceFrom other realms; from ample continentsOf higher life, where nobler natives dwell;1607Less northern, less remote from Deity,Glowing beneath the line of the Supreme;Where souls in excellence make haste, put forthLuxuriant growths; nor the late autumn waitOf human worth, but ripen soon to gods?Yet why drown fancy in such depths as these?Return, presumptuous rover! and confessThe bounds of man; nor blame them, as too small.Enjoy we not full scope in what is seen?Pull ample the dominions of the sun!Full glorious to behold! How far, how wide,The matchless monarch, from his flaming throne,1619Lavish of lustre, throws his beams about him,Farther, and faster, than a thought can fly,And feeds his planets with eternal fires!This Heliopolis,[70]by greater far,Than the proud tyrant of the Nile, was built;And He alone, who built it, can destroy.Beyond this city, why strays human thought?One wonderful, enough for man to know!One infinite! enough for man to range!One firmament, enough for man to read!O what voluminous instruction here!1630What page of wisdom is denied him? None;If learning his chief lesson makes him wise.Nor is instruction, here, our only gain;There dwells a noble pathos in the skies,Which warms our passions, proselytes our hearts.How eloquently shines the glowing pole!With what authority it gives its charge,Remonstrating great truths in style sublime,Though silent, loud! heard earth around; aboveThe planets heard; and not unheard in hell;1640Hell has her wonder, though too proud to praise.Is earth, then, more infernal? Has she those,Who neither praise (Lorenzo!) nor admire?Lorenzo’s admiration, pre-engaged,Ne’er ask’d the moon one question; never heldLeast correspondence with a single star;Ne’er rear’d an altar to the Queen of HeavenWalking in brightness; or her train adored.Their sublunary rivals have long sinceEngross’d his whole devotion; stars malign,1650Which made the fond astronomer run mad;Darken his intellect, corrupt his heart;Cause him to sacrifice his fame and peaceTo momentary madness, call’d delight.Idolater, more gross than ever kiss’dThe lifted hand to Luna, or pour’d outThe blood to Jove!—O Thou, to whom belongsAll sacrifice! O Thou Great Jove unfeign’d!Divine Instructor! Thy first volume, this,For man’s perusal; all in capitals!1660In moon, and stars (heaven’s golden alphabet!)Emblazed to seize the sight; who runs, may read;Who reads, can understand. ’Tis unconfinedTo Christian land, or Jewry; fairly writ,In language universal, to mankind:A language, lofty to the learn’d: yet plainTo those that feed the flock, or guide the plough,Or, from his husk, strike out the bounding grain.A language, worthy the Great Mind, that speaks!Preface, and comment, to the sacred page!1670Which oft refers its reader to the skies,As presupposing his first lesson there,And Scripture self a fragment, that unread.Stupendous book of wisdom, to the wise!1674Stupendous book! and open’d, Night! by thee.By thee much open’d, I confess, O Night!Yet more I wish; but how shall I prevail?Say, gentle Night! whose modest, maiden beamsGive us a new creation, and presentThe world’s great picture soften’d to the sight;Nay, kinder far, far more indulgent still,Say, thou, whose mild dominion’s silver key1682Unlocks our hemisphere, and sets to viewWorlds beyond number; worlds conceal’d by dayBehind the proud and envious star of noon!Canst thou not draw a deeper scene?—and showThe mighty Potentate, to whom belongThese rich regalia pompously display’dTo kindle that high hope? Like him of Uz,[71]I gaze around; I search on every side—1690O for a glimpse of Him my soul adores!As the chased hart, amid the desert waste,Pants for the living stream; for Him who made her,So pants the thirsty soul, amid the blankOf sublunary joys. Say, goddess! where?Where blazes His bright court? where burns His throne?Thou know’st; for thou art near Him; by thee, roundHis grand pavilion, sacred fame reportsThe sable curtain drawn. If not, can noneOf thy fair daughter train, so swift of wing,1700Who travel far, discover where He dwells?A star His dwelling pointed out below.Ye Pleiades! Arcturus! Mazaroth!And thou, Orion! of still keener eye!Say ye, who guide the wilder’d in the waves,And bring them out of tempest into port!1706On which hand must I bend my course to find Him?These courtiers keep the secret of their King;I wake whole nights, in vain, to steal it from them.I wake; and, waking, climb Night’s radiant scale,From sphere to sphere; the steps by nature setFor man’s ascent; at once to tempt and aid;To tempt his eye, and aid his towering thought;1713Till it arrives at the great goal of all.In ardent Contemplation’s rapid car,From earth, as from my barrier, I set out.How swift I mount! Diminish’d earth recedes;I pass the moon; and, from her farther side,Pierce heaven’s blue curtain; strike into remote;Where, with his lifted tube, the subtle sage1720His artificial, airy journey takes,And to celestial lengthens human sight.I pause at every planet on my road,And ask for Him who gives their orbs to roll,Their foreheads fair to shine. From Saturn’s ring,In which, of earths an army might be lost,With the bold comet, take my bolder flight,Amid those sovereign glories of the skies,Of independent, native lustre, proud;The souls of systems! and the lords of life,1730Through their wide empires!—What behold I now?A wilderness of wonder burning round;Where larger suns inhabit higher spheres;Perhaps the villas of descending gods;Nor halt I here; my toil is but begun;’Tis but the threshold of the Deity;Or, far beneath it, I am grovelling still.Nor is it strange; I built on a mistake;The grandeur of his works, whence folly soughtFor aid, to reason sets his glory higher;1740Who built thus high for worms (mere worms to Him),Oh, where, Lorenzo! must the Builder dwell?Pause, then; and, for a moment, here respire—If human thought can keep its station here.Where am I?—Where is earth?—Nay, where art thou,O sun?—Is the sun turn’d recluse?—and areHis boasted expeditions short to mine?—To mine, how short! On nature’s Alps I stand,And see a thousand firmaments beneath!A thousand systems! as a thousand grains!1750So much a stranger, and so late arrived,How can man’s curious spirit not inquire,What are the natives of this world sublime,Of this so foreign, unterrestrial sphere,Where mortal, untranslated, never stray’d?“O ye, as distant from my little home,As swiftest sunbeams in an age can fly!Far from my native element I roam,In quest of new, and wonderful, to man.What province this, of His immense domain,1760Whom all obeys? Or mortals here, or gods?Ye borderers on the coasts of bliss! what are you?A colony from heaven? or, only raised,By frequent visit from heaven’s neighbouring realms,To secondary gods, and half divine?—Whate’er your nature, this is past dispute,Far other life you live, far other tongueYou talk, far other thought, perhaps, you think,Than man. How various are the works of God?But say, what thought? Is Reason here enthroned,1770And absolute? or Sense in arms against her?Have you two lights? Or need you no reveal’d?Enjoy your happy realms their golden age?And had your Eden an abstemious Eve?1774Our Eve’s fair daughters prove their pedigree,And ask their Adams—‘Who would not be wise?’Or, if your mother fell, are you redeem’d?And if redeem’d—is your Redeemer scorn’d?Is this your final residence? If not,Change you your scene, translated? or by death?And if by death; what death?—Know you disease?Or horrid war?—With war, this fatal hour,1782Europa groans (so call we a small field,Where kings run mad). In our world, Death deputesIntemperance to do the work of Age;And hanging up the quiver Nature gave him,As slow of execution, for despatchSends forth imperial butchers; bids them slayTheir sheep (the silly sheep they fleeced before),And toss him twice ten thousand at a meal.1790Sit all your executioners on thrones?With you, can rage for plunder make a god?And bloodshed wash out every other stain?—But you, perhaps, can’t bleed: from matter grossYour spirits clean, are delicately cladIn fine-spun ether, privileged to soar,Unloaded, uninfected; how unlikeThe lot of man! how few of human raceBy their own mud unmurder’d! how we wageSelf-war eternal!—Is your painful day1800Of hardy conflict o’er? or, are you stillRaw candidates at school? and have you thoseWho disaffect reversions, as with us?—But what are we? You never heard of man;Or earth, the bedlam of the universe!Where Reason (undiseased with you) runs mad,And nurses Folly’s children as her own;Fond of the foulest. In the sacred mount1808Of holiness, where Reason is pronouncedInfallible; and thunders, like a god;Even there, by saints, the demons are outdone;What these think wrong, our saints refine to right;And kindly teach dull hell her own black arts;Satan, instructed, o’er their morals smiles.—But this, how strange to you, who know not man!Has the least rumour of our race arrived?Call’d here Elijah in his flaming car?Pass’d by you the good Enoch, on his roadTo those fair fields, whence Lucifer was hurl’d;Who brush’d, perhaps, your sphere in his descent,1820Stain’d your pure crystal ether, or let fallA short eclipse from his portentous shade?O that the fiend had lodged on some broad orbAthwart his way; nor reach’d his present home,Then blacken’d earth with footsteps foul’d in hell,Nor wash’d in ocean, as from Rome he pass’dTo Britain’s isle; too, too, conspicuous there!”But this is all digression: where is He,That o’er heaven’s battlements the felon hurl’dTo groans, and chains, and darkness? Where is He,1830Who sees creation’s summit in a vale?He, whom, while man is man, he can’t but seek;And if he finds, commences more than man?O for a telescope His throne to reach!Tell me, ye learn’d on earth! or blest above!Ye searching, ye Newtonian angels! tell.Where, your Great Master’s orb? His planets, where?Those conscious satellites, those morning stars,First-born of Deity! from central love,By veneration most profound, thrown off;1840By sweet attraction, no less strongly drawn;Awed, and yet raptured; raptured, yet serene;1842Past thought illustrious, but with borrow’d beams;In still approaching circles, still remote,Revolving round the sun’s eternal Sire?Or sent, in lines direct, on embassiesTo nations—in what latitude?—BeyondTerrestrial thought’s horizon!—And on whatHigh errands sent?—Here human effort ends;And leaves me still a stranger to His throne.1850Full well it might! I quite mistook my road.Born in an age more curious than devout;More fond to fix the place of heaven, or hell,Than studious this to shun, or that secure.’Tis not the curious, but the pious path,That leads me to my point: Lorenzo! know,Without or star, or angel, for their guide,Who worship God, shall find him. Humble Love,And not proud Reason, keeps the door of heaven;Love finds admission, where proud Science fails.1860Man’s science is the culture of his heart;And not to lose his plummet in the depthsOf nature, or the more profound of God.Either to know, is an attempt that setsThe wisest on a level with the fool.To fathom nature (ill attempted here!)Past doubt is deep philosophy above;Higher degrees in bliss archangels take,As deeper learn’d; the deepest, learning still.For, what a thunder of omnipotence1870(So might I dare to speak) is seen in all!In man! in earth! in more amazing skies!Teaching this lesson, Pride is loath to learn—“Not deeply to discern, not much to know,Mankind was born to wonder, and adore.”And is there cause for higher wonder still,1876Than that which struck us from our past surveys?Yes; and for deeper adoration too.From my late airy travel unconfined,Have I learn’d nothing?—Yes, Lorenzo! this:Each of these stars is a religious house;I saw their altars smoke, their incense rise;And heard hosannas ring through every sphere,1883A seminary fraught with future gods.Nature all o’er is consecrated ground,Teeming with growths immortal, and divine.The Great Proprietor’s all-bounteous handLeaves nothing waste; but sows these fiery fieldsWith seeds of reason, which to virtues riseBeneath His genial ray; and, if escaped1890The pestilential blasts of stubborn will,When grown mature, are gather’d for the skies.And is devotion thought too much on earth,When beings, so superior, homage boast,And triumph in prostrations to the Throne?But wherefore more of planets, or of stars?Ethereal journeys, and, discover’d there,Ten thousand worlds, ten thousand ways devout,All nature sending incense to the Throne,Except the bold Lorenzos of our sphere?1900Opening the solemn sources of my soul,Since I have pour’d, like feign’d Eridanus,[72]My flowing numbers o’er the flaming skies,Nor see, of fancy, or of fact, what moreInvites the Muse.—Here turn we, and reviewOur past nocturnal landscape wide:—then say,Say, then, Lorenzo! with what burst of heart,The whole, at once, revolving in his thought,Must man exclaim, adoring, and aghast?1909“Oh, what a root! Oh, what a branch, is here!Oh, what a Father! what a family!Worlds! systems! and creations!—and creations,In one agglomerated cluster, hung,Great Vine![73]on Thee, on Thee the cluster hangs;The filial cluster! infinitely spreadIn glowing globes, with various being fraught;And drinks (nectareous draught!) immortal life.Or, shall I say (for who can say enough?)A constellation of ten thousand gems,(And, oh! of what dimension! of what weight!)1920Set in one signet, flames on the right handOf Majesty Divine! The blazing seal,That deeply stamps, on all created mind,Indelible, His sovereign attributes,Omnipotence, and love! that, passing bound:And this, surpassing that. Nor stop we here,For want of power in God, but thought in man.Even this acknowledged, leaves us still in debt:If greater aught, that greater all is Thine,Dread Sire!—Accept this miniature of Thee;1930And pardon an attempt from mortal thought,In which archangels might have fail’d, unblamed.”How such ideas of th’ Almighty’s power,And such ideas of th’ Almighty’s plan(Ideas not absurd), distend the thoughtOf feeble mortals! Nor of them alone!The fulness of the Deity breaks forthIn inconceivables to men, and gods.Think, then, oh, think; nor ever drop the thought;How low must man descend, when gods adore!1940Have I not, then, accomplish’d my proud boast?Did I not tell thee, “We would mount, Lorenzo!1942And kindle our devotion at the stars”?And have I fail’d? and did I flatter thee?And art all adamant? and dost confuteAll urged, with one irrefragable smile?Lorenzo! mirth how miserable here!Swear by the stars, by Him who made them, swear,Thy heart, henceforth, shall be as pure as they:Then thou, like them, shalt shine; like them, shalt riseFrom low to lofty; from obscure to bright;1951By due gradation, Nature’s sacred law.The stars, from whence?—Ask Chaos—he can tell.These bright temptations to idolatry,From darkness, and confusion, took their birth;Sons of deformity! from fluid dregsTartarean, first they rose to masses rude;And then, to spheres opaque; then dimly shone;Then brighten’d; then blazed out in perfect day.Nature delights in progress; in advance1960From worse to better: but, when minds ascend,Progress, in part, depends upon themselves.Heaven aids exertion; greater makes the great;The voluntary little lessens more.Oh, be a man! and thou shalt be a god!And half self-made!—Ambition how divine!O thou, ambitious of disgrace alone!Still undevout? unkindled?—Though high-taught,School’d by the skies, and pupil of the stars;Rank coward to the fashionable world!1970Art thou ashamed to bend thy knee to heaven?Cursed fume of pride, exhaled from deepest hell!Pride in religion is man’s highest praise.Bent on destruction! and in love with death!Not all these luminaries, quench’d at once,Were half so sad, as one benighted mind,1976Which gropes for happiness, and meets despair.How, like a widow in her weeds, the Night,Amid her glimmering tapers, silent sits!How sorrowful, how desolate, she weepsPerpetual dews, and saddens nature’s scene!A scene more sad sin makes the darken’d soul,All comfort kills, nor leaves one spark alive.1983Though blind of heart, still open is thine eye:Why such magnificence in all thou seest?Of matter’s grandeur, know, one end is this,To tell the rational, who gazes on it—“Though that immensely great, still greater He,Whose breast, capacious, can embrace, and lodge,Unburden’d, nature’s universal scheme;1990Can grasp creation with a single thought;Creation grasp; and not exclude its Sire”—To tell him farther—“It behoves him muchTo guard th’ important, yet depending, fateOf being, brighter than a thousand suns:One single ray of thought outshines them all.”—And if man hears obedient, soon he’ll soarSuperior heights, and on his purple wing,His purple wing bedropp’d with eyes of gold,Rising, where thought is now denied to rise,2000Look down triumphant on these dazzling spheres.Why then persist?—No mortal ever livedBut, dying, he pronounced (when words are true)The whole that charms thee, absolutely vain;Vain, and far worse!—Think thou, with dying men;Oh, condescend to think as angels think!Oh, tolerate a chance for happiness!Our nature such, ill choice ensures ill fate;And hell had been, though there had been no God.Dost thou not know, my new astronomer!2010Earth, turning from the sun, brings night to man?Man, turning from his God, brings endless night;Where thou canst read no morals, find no friend,Amend no manners, and expect no peace.How deep the darkness! and the groan, how loud!And far, how far, from lambent are the flames!—Such is Lorenzo’s purchase! such his praise!The proud, the politic, Lorenzo’s praise!Though in his ear, and levell’d at his heart,I’ve half read o’er the volume of the skies.2020For think not thou hast heard all this from me;My song but echoes what great Nature speaks.What has she spoken? Thus the goddess spoke,Thus speaks for ever:—“Place, at nature’s head,A sovereign, which o’er all things rolls his eye,Extends his wing, promulgates his commands,But, above all, diffuses endless good;To whom, for sure redress, the wrong’d may fly;The vile, for mercy; and the pain’d, for peace;By whom, the various tenants of these spheres,2030Diversified in fortunes, place, and powers,Raised in enjoyment, as in worth they rise,Arrive at length (if worthy such approach)At that bless’d fountain-head, from which they stream;Where conflict past redoubles present joy;And present joy looks forward on increase;And that, on more; no period! every stepA double boon! a promise, and a bliss.”How easy sits this scheme on human hearts!It suits their make; it soothes their vast desires;2040Passion is pleased; and Reason asks no more;’Tis rational! ’tis great!—But what is thine?It darkens! shocks! excruciates! and confounds!Leaves us quite naked, both of help, and hope,2044Sinking from bad to worse; few years, the sportOf Fortune; then the morsel of Despair.Say, then, Lorenzo! (for thou know’st it well)What’s vice?—Mere want of compass in our thought.Religion, what?—The proof of common sense.How art thou hooted, where the least prevails!Is it my fault, if these truths call thee fool?And thou shalt never be miscall’d by me.2052Can neither shame, nor terror, stand thy friend;And art thou still an insect in the mire?How, like thy guardian angel, have I flown;Snatch’d thee from earth; escorted thee through allTh’ ethereal armies; walk’d thee, like a god,Through splendours of first magnitude, arrangedOn either hand; clouds thrown beneath thy feet;Close cruised on the bright paradise of God;2060And almost introduced thee to the Throne!And art thou still carousing, for delight,Rank poison; first, fermenting to mere froth,And then subsiding into final gall?To beings of sublime, immortal make,How shocking is all joy, whose end is sure!Such joy, more shocking still, the more it charms!And dost thou choose what ends ere well begun;And infamous, as short? And dost thou choose(Thou, to whose palate glory is so sweet)2070To wade into perdition, through contempt,Not of poor bigots only, but thy own?For I have peep’d into thy cover’d heart,And seen it blush beneath a boastful brow;For, by strong guilt’s most violent assault,Conscience is but disabled, not destroy’d.O thou most awful being, and most vain!Thy will, how frail! how glorious is thy power!2078Though dread eternity has sown her seedsOf bliss, and woe, in thy despotic breast;Though heaven, and hell, depend upon thy choice;A butterfly comes cross, and both are fled.Is this the picture of a rational?This horrid image, shall it be most just?Lorenzo! no: it cannot,—shall not, be,If there is force in reason; or, in soundsChanted beneath the glimpses of the moon,A magic, at this planetary hour,When slumber locks the general lip, and dreamsThrough senseless mazes hunt souls uninspired.2090Attend—the sacred mysteries begin—My solemn night-born adjuration hear;Hear, and I’ll raise thy spirit from the dust;While the stars gaze on this enchantment new;Enchantment, not infernal, but divine!“By silence, Death’s peculiar attribute;By darkness, Guilt’s inevitable doom;By Darkness, and by Silence, sisters dread!That draw the curtain round Night’s ebon throne,And raise ideas, solemn as the scene!2100By Night, and all of awful, Night presentsTo thought, or sense (of awful much, to both,The goddess brings)! By these her trembling fires,Like Vesta’s, ever burning; and, like hers,Sacred to thoughts immaculate, and pure!By these bright orators, that prove, and praise,And press thee to revere, the Deity;Perhaps, too, aid thee, when revered a while,To reach his throne; as stages of the soul,Through which, at different periods, she shall pass,2110Refining gradual, for her final height,And purging off some dross at every sphere!2112By this dark pall thrown o’er the silent world!By the world’s kings, and kingdoms, most renown’d,From short ambition’s zenith set for ever;Sad presage to vain boasters, now in bloom!By the long list of swift mortality,From Adam downward to this evening knell,Which midnight waves in Fancy’s startled eye;And shocks her with an hundred centuries,2120Round Death’s black banner throng’d, in human thought!By thousands, now, resigning their last breath,And calling thee—wert thou so wise to hear!By tombs o’er tombs arising; human earthEjected, to make room for—human earth;The monarch’s terror! and the sexton’s trade!By pompous obsequies that shun the day,The torch funereal, and the nodding plume,Which makes poor man’s humiliation proud;Boast of our ruin! triumph of our dust!2130By the damp vault that weeps o’er royal bones;And the pale lamp that shows the ghastly dead,More ghastly, through the thick incumbent gloom!By visits (if there are) from darker scenes,The gliding spectre! and the groaning grave!By groans, and graves, and miseries that groanFor the grave’s shelter! By desponding men,Senseless to pains of death, from pangs of guilt!By guilt’s last audit! By yon moon in blood,The rocking firmament, the falling stars,2140And thunder’s last discharge, great nature’s knell!By second chaos; and eternal night”—Be wise—nor let Philander blame my charm;But own not ill discharged my double debt,Love to the living; duty to the dead.For know I’m but executor; he left2146This moral legacy; I make it o’erBy his command; Philander hear in me;And Heaven in both.—If deaf to these, oh! hearFlorello’s tender voice; his weal dependsOn thy resolve; it trembles at thy choice;For his sake—love thyself. Example strikesAll human hearts; a bad example more;2153More still a father’s; that ensures his ruin.As parent of his being, would’st thou proveTh’ unnatural parent of his miseries,And make him curse the being which thou gavest?Is this the blessing of so fond a father?If careless of Lorenzo! spare, oh! spareFlorello’s father, and Philander’s friend!2160Florello’s father ruin’d, ruins him;And from Philander’s friend the world expectsA conduct, no dishonour to the dead.Let passion do, what nobler motive should;Let love, and emulation, rise in aidTo reason; and persuade thee to be—blest.This seems not a request to be denied;Yet (such th’ infatuation of mankind!)’Tis the most hopeless, man can make to man.Shall I then rise, in argument, and warmth?2170And urge Philander’s posthumous advice,From topics yet unbroach’d?——But, oh! I faint! my spirits fail!—Nor strange!So long on wing, and in no middle clime!To which my great Creator’s glory call’d:And calls—but, now, in vain. Sleep’s dewy wandHas stroked my drooping lips, and promisesMy long arrear of rest; the downy god(Wont to return with our returning peace)Will pay, ere long, and bless me with repose.2180Haste, haste, sweet stranger! from the peasant’s cot,The shipboy’s hammock, or the soldier’s straw,Whence sorrow never chased thee; with thee bring,Not hideous visions, as of late; but draughtsDelicious of well-tasted, cordial, rest;Man’s rich restorative; his balmy bath,That supples, lubricates, and keeps in playThe various movements of this nice machine,Which asks such frequent periods of repair.When tired with vain rotations of the day,2190Sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn;Fresh we spin on, till sickness clogs our wheels,Or death quite breaks the spring, and motion ends.When will it end with me?——“Thou only know’st,Thou, whose broad eye the future, and the past,Joins to the present; making one of threeTo moral thought! Thou know’st, and Thou alone,All-knowing!—all unknown!—and yet well known!Near, though remote! and, though unfathom’d, felt!2200And, though invisible, for ever seen!And seen in all! the great and the minute:Each globe above, with its gigantic race,Each flower, each leaf, with its small people swarm’d,(Those puny vouchers of Omnipotence!)To the first thought, that asks, ‘From whence?’ declareTheir common source. Thou Fountain, running o’erIn rivers of communicated joy!Who gavest us speech for far, far humbler themes!Say, by what name shall I presume to call2210Him I see burning in these countless suns,As Moses, in the bush? Illustrious Mind!The whole creation, less, far less, to Thee,Than that to the creation’s ample round.2214How shall I name Thee?—How my labouring soulHeaves underneath the thought, too big for birth!“Great System of perfections! Mighty CauseOf causes mighty! Cause uncaused! sole RootOf nature, that luxuriant growth of God!First Father of effects! that progenyOf endless series; where the golden chain’sLast link admits a period, who can tell?2222Father of all that is or heard, or hears!Father of all that is or seen, or sees!Father of all that is, or shall arise!Father of this immeasurable massOf matter multiform; or dense, or rare;Opaque, or lucid; rapid, or at rest;Minute, or passing bound! in each extremeOf like amaze, and mystery, to man.2230Father of these bright millions of the night!Of which the least full godhead had proclaim’d,And thrown the gazer on his knee—or, say,Is appellation higher still, Thy choice?Father of matter’s temporary lords!Father of spirits! nobler offspring! sparksOf high paternal glory; rich endow’dWith various measures, and with various modesOf instinct, reason, intuition; beamsMore pale, or bright from day divine, to break2240The dark of matter organized (the wareOf all created spirit); beams, that riseEach over other in superior light,Till the last ripens into lustre strong,Of next approach to Godhead. Father fond(Far fonder than e’er bore that name on earth)Of intellectual beings! beings bless’dWith powers to please Thee; not of passive ply2248To laws they know not; beings lodged in seatsOf well-adapted joys, in different domesOf this imperial palace for thy sons;Of this proud, populous, well policied,Though boundless habitation, plann’d by Thee:Whose several clans their several climates suit;And transposition, doubtless, would destroy.Or, oh! indulge, immortal King, indulgeA title, less august indeed, but moreEndearing; ah! how sweet in human ears!Sweet in our ears, and triumph in our hearts!Father of immortality to man!2260A theme that lately[74]set my soul on fire.—And Thou the next! yet equal! Thou, by whomThat blessing was convey’d; far more! was bought;Ineffable the price! by whom all worldsWere made; and one redeem’d! illustrious LightFrom Light illustrious! Thou, whose regal power,Finite in time, but infinite in space,On more than adamantine basis fix’d,O’er more, far more, than diadems, and thrones,Inviolably reigns; the dread of gods!2270And oh! the friend of man! beneath whose foot,And by the mandate of whose awful nod,All regions, revolutions, fortunes, fates,Of high, of low, of mind, and matter, rollThrough the short channels of expiring time,Or shoreless ocean of eternity,Calm, or tempestuous (as thy Spirit breathes),In absolute subjection!—And, O ThouThe glorious Third! distinct, not separate!Beaming from both! with both incorporate;2280And (strange to tell!) incorporate with dust!2281By condescension, as Thy glory, great,Enshrined in man! Of human hearts, if pure,Divine inhabitant! The tie divineOf heaven with distant earth! by whom, I trust(If not inspired), uncensured this addressTo Thee, to Them—to whom?—Mysterious Power!Reveal’d—yet unreveal’d! darkness in light;Number in unity! our joy! our dread!The triple bolt that lays all wrong in ruin!2290That animates all right, the triple sun!Sun of the soul! her never-setting sun!Triune, unutterable, unconceived,Absconding, yet demonstrable, Great God!Greater than greatest! better than the best!Kinder than kindest! with soft pity’s eye,Or (stronger still to speak it) with Thine own,From Thy bright home, from that high firmament,Where Thou, from all eternity, hast dwelt;Beyond archangels’ unassisted ken;2300From far above what mortals highest call;From elevation’s pinnacle; look down,Through—what? Confounding interval! through allAnd more than labouring Fancy can conceive;Through radiant ranks of essences unknown;Through hierarchies from hierarchies detach’dRound various banners of Omnipotence,With endless change of rapturous duties fired;Through wondrous being’s interposing swarms,All clustering at the call, to dwell in Thee;2310Through this wide waste of worlds! this vista vast,All sanded o’er with suns; suns turn’d to nightBefore thy feeblest beam—Look down—down—down,On a poor breathing particle in dust,Or, lower, an immortal in his crimes.2315His crimes forgive! forgive his virtues, too!Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.Nor let me close these eyes, which never moreMay see the sun (though night’s descending scaleNow weighs up morn), unpitied, and unblest!In Thy displeasure dwells eternal pain;Pain, our aversion; pain, which strikes me now;And, since all pain is terrible to man,2323Though transient, terrible; at Thy good hour,Gently, ah, gently, lay me in my bed,My clay-cold bed! by nature, now, so near;By nature, near; still nearer by disease!Till then, be this an emblem of my grave:Let it out-preach the preacher; every nightLet it out-cry the boy at Philip’s ear;[75]2330That tongue of death! that herald of the tomb!And when (the shelter of Thy wing implored)My senses, soothed, shall sink in soft repose,Oh, sink this truth still deeper in my soul,Suggested by my pillow, sign’d by fate,First, in Fate’s volume, at the page of man—Man’s sickly soul, though turn’d and toss’d for ever,From side to side, can rest on nought but Thee:Here, in full trust, hereafter, in full joy;On Thee, the promised, sure, eternal down2340Of spirits, toil’d in travel through this vale.Nor of that pillow shall my soul despond;For—Love almighty! Love almighty! (sing,Exult, creation!) Love almighty, reigns!That death of Death! that cordial of despair!And loud Eternity’s triumphant song!“Of whom, no more:—For, O thou Patron-God!Thou God and mortal! thence more God to man!2348Man’s theme eternal! man’s eternal theme!Thou canst not ’scape uninjured from our praise.Uninjured from our praise can He escape,Who, disembosom’d from the Father, bowsThe heaven of heavens, to kiss the distant earth!Breathes out in agonies a sinless soul!Against the cross, Death’s iron sceptre breaks!From famish’d Ruin plucks her human prey!Throws wide the gates celestial to his foes!Their gratitude, for such a boundless debt,Deputes their suffering brothers to receive!And, if deep human guilt in payment fails;2360As deeper guilt prohibits our despair!Enjoins it, as our duty, to rejoice!And (to close all) omnipotently kind,Takes his delights among the sons of men.”[76]What words are these—and did they come from heaven?And were they spoke to man? to guilty man?What are all mysteries to love like this?The songs of angels, all the melodiesOf choral gods, are wafted in the sound;Heal and exhilarate the broken heart;2370Though plunged, before, in horrors dark as night.Rich prelibation of consummate joy!Nor wait we dissolution to be blest.This final effort of the moral Muse,How justly titled![77]Nor for me alone:For all that read; what spirit of support,What heights of Consolation, crown my song!Then, farewell Night! of darkness, now, no more:Joy breaks, shines, triumphs; ’tis eternal day.Shall that which rises out of nought complain2380Of a few evils, paid with endless joys?2381My soul! henceforth, in sweetest union joinThe two supports of human happiness,Which some, erroneous, think can never meet;True taste of life, and constant thought of death!The thought of death, sole victor of its dread!Hope, be thy joy; and probity thy skill;Thy patron He, whose diadem has dropp’dYon gems of heaven; eternity, thy prize:And leave the racers of the world their own,2390Their feather, and their froth, for endless toils:They part with all for that which is not bread;They mortify, they starve, on wealth, fame, power;And laugh to scorn the fools that aim at more.How must a spirit, late escaped from earth,—Suppose Philander’s, Lucia’s, or Narcissa’s,—The truth of things new-blazing in its eye,Look back, astonish’d, on the ways of men,Whose lives’ whole drift is to forget their graves!And when our present privilege is past,2400To scourge us with due sense of its abuse,The same astonishment will seize us all.What then must pain us, would preserve us now.Lorenzo! ’tis not yet too late; Lorenzo!Seize Wisdom, ere ’tis torment to be wise;That is, seize Wisdom, ere she seizes thee.For what, my small philosopher! is hell?’Tis nothing but full knowledge of the truth,When Truth, resisted long, is sworn our foe;And calls Eternity to do her right.2410Thus, darkness aiding intellectual light,And sacred silence whispering truths divine,And truths divine converting pain to peace,My song the midnight raven has outwing’d,And shot, ambitious of unbounded scenes,2415Beyond the flaming limits of the world,Her gloomy flight. But what avails the flightOf fancy, when our hearts remain below?Virtue abounds in flatterers, and foes;’Tis pride, to praise her; penance, to perform.To more than words, to more than worth of tongue,Lorenzo! rise, at this auspicious hour;An hour, when Heaven’s most intimate with man;When, like a fallen star, the ray divineGlides swift into the bosom of the just;2425And just are all, determined to reclaim;Which sets that title high within thy reach.Awake, then; thy Philander calls: awake!Thou, who shalt wake, when the creation sleeps;When, like a taper, all these suns expire;When Time, like him of Gaza[78]in his wrath,Plucking the pillars that support the world,In Nature’s ample ruins lies entomb’d;And Midnight, universal Midnight! reigns.2434
“I stand, the plan’s proud period; I pronounceThe work accomplish’d; the creation closed:1530Shout, all ye gods! nor shout ye gods alone;Of all that lives, or, if devoid of life,That rests, or rolls, ye heights, and depths, resound!Resound! resound! ye depths, and heights, resound!”
“I stand, the plan’s proud period; I pronounce
The work accomplish’d; the creation closed:1530
Shout, all ye gods! nor shout ye gods alone;
Of all that lives, or, if devoid of life,
That rests, or rolls, ye heights, and depths, resound!
Resound! resound! ye depths, and heights, resound!”
Hard are those questions!—answer harder still.Is this the sole exploit, the single birth,The solitary son of power divine?Or has th’ Almighty Father, with a breath,Impregnated the womb of distant space?1539Has He not bid, in various provinces,Brother-creations the dark bowels burstOf night primeval; barren, now, no more?And He the central sun, transpiercing allThose giant generations, which disportAnd dance, as motes, in his meridian ray;That ray withdrawn, benighted, or absorb’d,In that abyss of horror, whence they sprung;While Chaos triumphs, repossess’d of allRival Creation ravish’d from his throne?Chaos! of Nature both the womb, and grave!1550Think’st thou my scheme, Lorenzo, spreads too wide?Is this extravagant?—No; this is just;Just, in conjecture, though ’twere false in fact.If ’tis an error, ’tis an error sprungFrom noble root, high thought of the Most High.But wherefore error? who can prove it such?—He that can set Omnipotence a bound.Can man conceive beyond what God can do?Nothing, but quite impossible is hard.He summons into being, with like ease,1560A whole creation, and a single grain.Speaks he the word? a thousand worlds are born!A thousand worlds? there’s space for millions more:And in what space can his great fiat fail?Condemn me not, cold critic! but indulgeThe warm imagination: why condemn?Why not indulge such thoughts, as swell our heartsWith fuller admiration of that Power,Who gives our hearts with such high thoughts to swell?Why not indulge in His augmented praise?1570Darts not His glory a still brighter ray,The less is left to Chaos, and the realmsOf hideous Night, where Fancy strays aghast;1573And, though most talkative, makes no report?Still seems my thought enormous? Think again;—Experience’ self shall aid thy lame belief.Glasses (that revelation to the sight!)Have they not led us in the deep discloseOf fine-spun nature, exquisitely small,And, though demonstrated, still ill-conceived?1580If, then, on the reverse, the mind would mountIn magnitude, what mind can mount too far,To keep the balance, and creation poise?Defect alone can err on such a theme;What is too great, if we the cause survey?Stupendous Architect! Thou, Thou art all!My soul flies up and down in thoughts of Thee,And finds herself but at the centre still!I AM, thy name! Existence, all thine own!Creation’s nothing; flatter’d much, if styled1590“The thin, the fleeting atmosphere of God.”O for the voice—of what? of whom?—What voiceCan answer to my wants, in such ascent,As dares to deem one universe too small?Tell me, Lorenzo! (for now fancy glows;Fired in the vortex of almighty power)Is not this home creation, in the mapOf universal nature, as a speck,Like fair Britannia in our little ball;Exceeding fair, and glorious, for its size,1600But, elsewhere, far outmeasured, far outshone?In fancy (for the fact beyond us lies)Canst thou not figure it, an isle, almostToo small for notice, in the vast of being;Sever’d by mighty seas of unbuilt spaceFrom other realms; from ample continentsOf higher life, where nobler natives dwell;1607Less northern, less remote from Deity,Glowing beneath the line of the Supreme;Where souls in excellence make haste, put forthLuxuriant growths; nor the late autumn waitOf human worth, but ripen soon to gods?Yet why drown fancy in such depths as these?Return, presumptuous rover! and confessThe bounds of man; nor blame them, as too small.Enjoy we not full scope in what is seen?Pull ample the dominions of the sun!Full glorious to behold! How far, how wide,The matchless monarch, from his flaming throne,1619Lavish of lustre, throws his beams about him,Farther, and faster, than a thought can fly,And feeds his planets with eternal fires!This Heliopolis,[70]by greater far,Than the proud tyrant of the Nile, was built;And He alone, who built it, can destroy.Beyond this city, why strays human thought?One wonderful, enough for man to know!One infinite! enough for man to range!One firmament, enough for man to read!O what voluminous instruction here!1630What page of wisdom is denied him? None;If learning his chief lesson makes him wise.Nor is instruction, here, our only gain;There dwells a noble pathos in the skies,Which warms our passions, proselytes our hearts.How eloquently shines the glowing pole!With what authority it gives its charge,Remonstrating great truths in style sublime,Though silent, loud! heard earth around; aboveThe planets heard; and not unheard in hell;1640Hell has her wonder, though too proud to praise.Is earth, then, more infernal? Has she those,Who neither praise (Lorenzo!) nor admire?Lorenzo’s admiration, pre-engaged,Ne’er ask’d the moon one question; never heldLeast correspondence with a single star;Ne’er rear’d an altar to the Queen of HeavenWalking in brightness; or her train adored.Their sublunary rivals have long sinceEngross’d his whole devotion; stars malign,1650Which made the fond astronomer run mad;Darken his intellect, corrupt his heart;Cause him to sacrifice his fame and peaceTo momentary madness, call’d delight.Idolater, more gross than ever kiss’dThe lifted hand to Luna, or pour’d outThe blood to Jove!—O Thou, to whom belongsAll sacrifice! O Thou Great Jove unfeign’d!Divine Instructor! Thy first volume, this,For man’s perusal; all in capitals!1660In moon, and stars (heaven’s golden alphabet!)Emblazed to seize the sight; who runs, may read;Who reads, can understand. ’Tis unconfinedTo Christian land, or Jewry; fairly writ,In language universal, to mankind:A language, lofty to the learn’d: yet plainTo those that feed the flock, or guide the plough,Or, from his husk, strike out the bounding grain.A language, worthy the Great Mind, that speaks!Preface, and comment, to the sacred page!1670Which oft refers its reader to the skies,As presupposing his first lesson there,And Scripture self a fragment, that unread.Stupendous book of wisdom, to the wise!1674Stupendous book! and open’d, Night! by thee.By thee much open’d, I confess, O Night!Yet more I wish; but how shall I prevail?Say, gentle Night! whose modest, maiden beamsGive us a new creation, and presentThe world’s great picture soften’d to the sight;Nay, kinder far, far more indulgent still,Say, thou, whose mild dominion’s silver key1682Unlocks our hemisphere, and sets to viewWorlds beyond number; worlds conceal’d by dayBehind the proud and envious star of noon!Canst thou not draw a deeper scene?—and showThe mighty Potentate, to whom belongThese rich regalia pompously display’dTo kindle that high hope? Like him of Uz,[71]I gaze around; I search on every side—1690O for a glimpse of Him my soul adores!As the chased hart, amid the desert waste,Pants for the living stream; for Him who made her,So pants the thirsty soul, amid the blankOf sublunary joys. Say, goddess! where?Where blazes His bright court? where burns His throne?Thou know’st; for thou art near Him; by thee, roundHis grand pavilion, sacred fame reportsThe sable curtain drawn. If not, can noneOf thy fair daughter train, so swift of wing,1700Who travel far, discover where He dwells?A star His dwelling pointed out below.Ye Pleiades! Arcturus! Mazaroth!And thou, Orion! of still keener eye!Say ye, who guide the wilder’d in the waves,And bring them out of tempest into port!1706On which hand must I bend my course to find Him?These courtiers keep the secret of their King;I wake whole nights, in vain, to steal it from them.I wake; and, waking, climb Night’s radiant scale,From sphere to sphere; the steps by nature setFor man’s ascent; at once to tempt and aid;To tempt his eye, and aid his towering thought;1713Till it arrives at the great goal of all.In ardent Contemplation’s rapid car,From earth, as from my barrier, I set out.How swift I mount! Diminish’d earth recedes;I pass the moon; and, from her farther side,Pierce heaven’s blue curtain; strike into remote;Where, with his lifted tube, the subtle sage1720His artificial, airy journey takes,And to celestial lengthens human sight.I pause at every planet on my road,And ask for Him who gives their orbs to roll,Their foreheads fair to shine. From Saturn’s ring,In which, of earths an army might be lost,With the bold comet, take my bolder flight,Amid those sovereign glories of the skies,Of independent, native lustre, proud;The souls of systems! and the lords of life,1730Through their wide empires!—What behold I now?A wilderness of wonder burning round;Where larger suns inhabit higher spheres;Perhaps the villas of descending gods;Nor halt I here; my toil is but begun;’Tis but the threshold of the Deity;Or, far beneath it, I am grovelling still.Nor is it strange; I built on a mistake;The grandeur of his works, whence folly soughtFor aid, to reason sets his glory higher;1740Who built thus high for worms (mere worms to Him),Oh, where, Lorenzo! must the Builder dwell?Pause, then; and, for a moment, here respire—If human thought can keep its station here.Where am I?—Where is earth?—Nay, where art thou,O sun?—Is the sun turn’d recluse?—and areHis boasted expeditions short to mine?—To mine, how short! On nature’s Alps I stand,And see a thousand firmaments beneath!A thousand systems! as a thousand grains!1750So much a stranger, and so late arrived,How can man’s curious spirit not inquire,What are the natives of this world sublime,Of this so foreign, unterrestrial sphere,Where mortal, untranslated, never stray’d?“O ye, as distant from my little home,As swiftest sunbeams in an age can fly!Far from my native element I roam,In quest of new, and wonderful, to man.What province this, of His immense domain,1760Whom all obeys? Or mortals here, or gods?Ye borderers on the coasts of bliss! what are you?A colony from heaven? or, only raised,By frequent visit from heaven’s neighbouring realms,To secondary gods, and half divine?—Whate’er your nature, this is past dispute,Far other life you live, far other tongueYou talk, far other thought, perhaps, you think,Than man. How various are the works of God?But say, what thought? Is Reason here enthroned,1770And absolute? or Sense in arms against her?Have you two lights? Or need you no reveal’d?Enjoy your happy realms their golden age?And had your Eden an abstemious Eve?1774Our Eve’s fair daughters prove their pedigree,And ask their Adams—‘Who would not be wise?’Or, if your mother fell, are you redeem’d?And if redeem’d—is your Redeemer scorn’d?Is this your final residence? If not,Change you your scene, translated? or by death?And if by death; what death?—Know you disease?Or horrid war?—With war, this fatal hour,1782Europa groans (so call we a small field,Where kings run mad). In our world, Death deputesIntemperance to do the work of Age;And hanging up the quiver Nature gave him,As slow of execution, for despatchSends forth imperial butchers; bids them slayTheir sheep (the silly sheep they fleeced before),And toss him twice ten thousand at a meal.1790Sit all your executioners on thrones?With you, can rage for plunder make a god?And bloodshed wash out every other stain?—But you, perhaps, can’t bleed: from matter grossYour spirits clean, are delicately cladIn fine-spun ether, privileged to soar,Unloaded, uninfected; how unlikeThe lot of man! how few of human raceBy their own mud unmurder’d! how we wageSelf-war eternal!—Is your painful day1800Of hardy conflict o’er? or, are you stillRaw candidates at school? and have you thoseWho disaffect reversions, as with us?—But what are we? You never heard of man;Or earth, the bedlam of the universe!Where Reason (undiseased with you) runs mad,And nurses Folly’s children as her own;Fond of the foulest. In the sacred mount1808Of holiness, where Reason is pronouncedInfallible; and thunders, like a god;Even there, by saints, the demons are outdone;What these think wrong, our saints refine to right;And kindly teach dull hell her own black arts;Satan, instructed, o’er their morals smiles.—But this, how strange to you, who know not man!Has the least rumour of our race arrived?Call’d here Elijah in his flaming car?Pass’d by you the good Enoch, on his roadTo those fair fields, whence Lucifer was hurl’d;Who brush’d, perhaps, your sphere in his descent,1820Stain’d your pure crystal ether, or let fallA short eclipse from his portentous shade?O that the fiend had lodged on some broad orbAthwart his way; nor reach’d his present home,Then blacken’d earth with footsteps foul’d in hell,Nor wash’d in ocean, as from Rome he pass’dTo Britain’s isle; too, too, conspicuous there!”But this is all digression: where is He,That o’er heaven’s battlements the felon hurl’dTo groans, and chains, and darkness? Where is He,1830Who sees creation’s summit in a vale?He, whom, while man is man, he can’t but seek;And if he finds, commences more than man?O for a telescope His throne to reach!Tell me, ye learn’d on earth! or blest above!Ye searching, ye Newtonian angels! tell.Where, your Great Master’s orb? His planets, where?Those conscious satellites, those morning stars,First-born of Deity! from central love,By veneration most profound, thrown off;1840By sweet attraction, no less strongly drawn;Awed, and yet raptured; raptured, yet serene;1842Past thought illustrious, but with borrow’d beams;In still approaching circles, still remote,Revolving round the sun’s eternal Sire?Or sent, in lines direct, on embassiesTo nations—in what latitude?—BeyondTerrestrial thought’s horizon!—And on whatHigh errands sent?—Here human effort ends;And leaves me still a stranger to His throne.1850Full well it might! I quite mistook my road.Born in an age more curious than devout;More fond to fix the place of heaven, or hell,Than studious this to shun, or that secure.’Tis not the curious, but the pious path,That leads me to my point: Lorenzo! know,Without or star, or angel, for their guide,Who worship God, shall find him. Humble Love,And not proud Reason, keeps the door of heaven;Love finds admission, where proud Science fails.1860Man’s science is the culture of his heart;And not to lose his plummet in the depthsOf nature, or the more profound of God.Either to know, is an attempt that setsThe wisest on a level with the fool.To fathom nature (ill attempted here!)Past doubt is deep philosophy above;Higher degrees in bliss archangels take,As deeper learn’d; the deepest, learning still.For, what a thunder of omnipotence1870(So might I dare to speak) is seen in all!In man! in earth! in more amazing skies!Teaching this lesson, Pride is loath to learn—“Not deeply to discern, not much to know,Mankind was born to wonder, and adore.”And is there cause for higher wonder still,1876Than that which struck us from our past surveys?Yes; and for deeper adoration too.From my late airy travel unconfined,Have I learn’d nothing?—Yes, Lorenzo! this:Each of these stars is a religious house;I saw their altars smoke, their incense rise;And heard hosannas ring through every sphere,1883A seminary fraught with future gods.Nature all o’er is consecrated ground,Teeming with growths immortal, and divine.The Great Proprietor’s all-bounteous handLeaves nothing waste; but sows these fiery fieldsWith seeds of reason, which to virtues riseBeneath His genial ray; and, if escaped1890The pestilential blasts of stubborn will,When grown mature, are gather’d for the skies.And is devotion thought too much on earth,When beings, so superior, homage boast,And triumph in prostrations to the Throne?But wherefore more of planets, or of stars?Ethereal journeys, and, discover’d there,Ten thousand worlds, ten thousand ways devout,All nature sending incense to the Throne,Except the bold Lorenzos of our sphere?1900Opening the solemn sources of my soul,Since I have pour’d, like feign’d Eridanus,[72]My flowing numbers o’er the flaming skies,Nor see, of fancy, or of fact, what moreInvites the Muse.—Here turn we, and reviewOur past nocturnal landscape wide:—then say,Say, then, Lorenzo! with what burst of heart,The whole, at once, revolving in his thought,Must man exclaim, adoring, and aghast?1909“Oh, what a root! Oh, what a branch, is here!Oh, what a Father! what a family!Worlds! systems! and creations!—and creations,In one agglomerated cluster, hung,Great Vine![73]on Thee, on Thee the cluster hangs;The filial cluster! infinitely spreadIn glowing globes, with various being fraught;And drinks (nectareous draught!) immortal life.Or, shall I say (for who can say enough?)A constellation of ten thousand gems,(And, oh! of what dimension! of what weight!)1920Set in one signet, flames on the right handOf Majesty Divine! The blazing seal,That deeply stamps, on all created mind,Indelible, His sovereign attributes,Omnipotence, and love! that, passing bound:And this, surpassing that. Nor stop we here,For want of power in God, but thought in man.Even this acknowledged, leaves us still in debt:If greater aught, that greater all is Thine,Dread Sire!—Accept this miniature of Thee;1930And pardon an attempt from mortal thought,In which archangels might have fail’d, unblamed.”How such ideas of th’ Almighty’s power,And such ideas of th’ Almighty’s plan(Ideas not absurd), distend the thoughtOf feeble mortals! Nor of them alone!The fulness of the Deity breaks forthIn inconceivables to men, and gods.Think, then, oh, think; nor ever drop the thought;How low must man descend, when gods adore!1940Have I not, then, accomplish’d my proud boast?Did I not tell thee, “We would mount, Lorenzo!1942And kindle our devotion at the stars”?And have I fail’d? and did I flatter thee?And art all adamant? and dost confuteAll urged, with one irrefragable smile?Lorenzo! mirth how miserable here!Swear by the stars, by Him who made them, swear,Thy heart, henceforth, shall be as pure as they:Then thou, like them, shalt shine; like them, shalt riseFrom low to lofty; from obscure to bright;1951By due gradation, Nature’s sacred law.The stars, from whence?—Ask Chaos—he can tell.These bright temptations to idolatry,From darkness, and confusion, took their birth;Sons of deformity! from fluid dregsTartarean, first they rose to masses rude;And then, to spheres opaque; then dimly shone;Then brighten’d; then blazed out in perfect day.Nature delights in progress; in advance1960From worse to better: but, when minds ascend,Progress, in part, depends upon themselves.Heaven aids exertion; greater makes the great;The voluntary little lessens more.Oh, be a man! and thou shalt be a god!And half self-made!—Ambition how divine!O thou, ambitious of disgrace alone!Still undevout? unkindled?—Though high-taught,School’d by the skies, and pupil of the stars;Rank coward to the fashionable world!1970Art thou ashamed to bend thy knee to heaven?Cursed fume of pride, exhaled from deepest hell!Pride in religion is man’s highest praise.Bent on destruction! and in love with death!Not all these luminaries, quench’d at once,Were half so sad, as one benighted mind,1976Which gropes for happiness, and meets despair.How, like a widow in her weeds, the Night,Amid her glimmering tapers, silent sits!How sorrowful, how desolate, she weepsPerpetual dews, and saddens nature’s scene!A scene more sad sin makes the darken’d soul,All comfort kills, nor leaves one spark alive.1983Though blind of heart, still open is thine eye:Why such magnificence in all thou seest?Of matter’s grandeur, know, one end is this,To tell the rational, who gazes on it—“Though that immensely great, still greater He,Whose breast, capacious, can embrace, and lodge,Unburden’d, nature’s universal scheme;1990Can grasp creation with a single thought;Creation grasp; and not exclude its Sire”—To tell him farther—“It behoves him muchTo guard th’ important, yet depending, fateOf being, brighter than a thousand suns:One single ray of thought outshines them all.”—And if man hears obedient, soon he’ll soarSuperior heights, and on his purple wing,His purple wing bedropp’d with eyes of gold,Rising, where thought is now denied to rise,2000Look down triumphant on these dazzling spheres.Why then persist?—No mortal ever livedBut, dying, he pronounced (when words are true)The whole that charms thee, absolutely vain;Vain, and far worse!—Think thou, with dying men;Oh, condescend to think as angels think!Oh, tolerate a chance for happiness!Our nature such, ill choice ensures ill fate;And hell had been, though there had been no God.Dost thou not know, my new astronomer!2010Earth, turning from the sun, brings night to man?Man, turning from his God, brings endless night;Where thou canst read no morals, find no friend,Amend no manners, and expect no peace.How deep the darkness! and the groan, how loud!And far, how far, from lambent are the flames!—Such is Lorenzo’s purchase! such his praise!The proud, the politic, Lorenzo’s praise!Though in his ear, and levell’d at his heart,I’ve half read o’er the volume of the skies.2020For think not thou hast heard all this from me;My song but echoes what great Nature speaks.What has she spoken? Thus the goddess spoke,Thus speaks for ever:—“Place, at nature’s head,A sovereign, which o’er all things rolls his eye,Extends his wing, promulgates his commands,But, above all, diffuses endless good;To whom, for sure redress, the wrong’d may fly;The vile, for mercy; and the pain’d, for peace;By whom, the various tenants of these spheres,2030Diversified in fortunes, place, and powers,Raised in enjoyment, as in worth they rise,Arrive at length (if worthy such approach)At that bless’d fountain-head, from which they stream;Where conflict past redoubles present joy;And present joy looks forward on increase;And that, on more; no period! every stepA double boon! a promise, and a bliss.”How easy sits this scheme on human hearts!It suits their make; it soothes their vast desires;2040Passion is pleased; and Reason asks no more;’Tis rational! ’tis great!—But what is thine?It darkens! shocks! excruciates! and confounds!Leaves us quite naked, both of help, and hope,2044Sinking from bad to worse; few years, the sportOf Fortune; then the morsel of Despair.Say, then, Lorenzo! (for thou know’st it well)What’s vice?—Mere want of compass in our thought.Religion, what?—The proof of common sense.How art thou hooted, where the least prevails!Is it my fault, if these truths call thee fool?And thou shalt never be miscall’d by me.2052Can neither shame, nor terror, stand thy friend;And art thou still an insect in the mire?How, like thy guardian angel, have I flown;Snatch’d thee from earth; escorted thee through allTh’ ethereal armies; walk’d thee, like a god,Through splendours of first magnitude, arrangedOn either hand; clouds thrown beneath thy feet;Close cruised on the bright paradise of God;2060And almost introduced thee to the Throne!And art thou still carousing, for delight,Rank poison; first, fermenting to mere froth,And then subsiding into final gall?To beings of sublime, immortal make,How shocking is all joy, whose end is sure!Such joy, more shocking still, the more it charms!And dost thou choose what ends ere well begun;And infamous, as short? And dost thou choose(Thou, to whose palate glory is so sweet)2070To wade into perdition, through contempt,Not of poor bigots only, but thy own?For I have peep’d into thy cover’d heart,And seen it blush beneath a boastful brow;For, by strong guilt’s most violent assault,Conscience is but disabled, not destroy’d.O thou most awful being, and most vain!Thy will, how frail! how glorious is thy power!2078Though dread eternity has sown her seedsOf bliss, and woe, in thy despotic breast;Though heaven, and hell, depend upon thy choice;A butterfly comes cross, and both are fled.Is this the picture of a rational?This horrid image, shall it be most just?Lorenzo! no: it cannot,—shall not, be,If there is force in reason; or, in soundsChanted beneath the glimpses of the moon,A magic, at this planetary hour,When slumber locks the general lip, and dreamsThrough senseless mazes hunt souls uninspired.2090Attend—the sacred mysteries begin—My solemn night-born adjuration hear;Hear, and I’ll raise thy spirit from the dust;While the stars gaze on this enchantment new;Enchantment, not infernal, but divine!“By silence, Death’s peculiar attribute;By darkness, Guilt’s inevitable doom;By Darkness, and by Silence, sisters dread!That draw the curtain round Night’s ebon throne,And raise ideas, solemn as the scene!2100By Night, and all of awful, Night presentsTo thought, or sense (of awful much, to both,The goddess brings)! By these her trembling fires,Like Vesta’s, ever burning; and, like hers,Sacred to thoughts immaculate, and pure!By these bright orators, that prove, and praise,And press thee to revere, the Deity;Perhaps, too, aid thee, when revered a while,To reach his throne; as stages of the soul,Through which, at different periods, she shall pass,2110Refining gradual, for her final height,And purging off some dross at every sphere!2112By this dark pall thrown o’er the silent world!By the world’s kings, and kingdoms, most renown’d,From short ambition’s zenith set for ever;Sad presage to vain boasters, now in bloom!By the long list of swift mortality,From Adam downward to this evening knell,Which midnight waves in Fancy’s startled eye;And shocks her with an hundred centuries,2120Round Death’s black banner throng’d, in human thought!By thousands, now, resigning their last breath,And calling thee—wert thou so wise to hear!By tombs o’er tombs arising; human earthEjected, to make room for—human earth;The monarch’s terror! and the sexton’s trade!By pompous obsequies that shun the day,The torch funereal, and the nodding plume,Which makes poor man’s humiliation proud;Boast of our ruin! triumph of our dust!2130By the damp vault that weeps o’er royal bones;And the pale lamp that shows the ghastly dead,More ghastly, through the thick incumbent gloom!By visits (if there are) from darker scenes,The gliding spectre! and the groaning grave!By groans, and graves, and miseries that groanFor the grave’s shelter! By desponding men,Senseless to pains of death, from pangs of guilt!By guilt’s last audit! By yon moon in blood,The rocking firmament, the falling stars,2140And thunder’s last discharge, great nature’s knell!By second chaos; and eternal night”—Be wise—nor let Philander blame my charm;But own not ill discharged my double debt,Love to the living; duty to the dead.For know I’m but executor; he left2146This moral legacy; I make it o’erBy his command; Philander hear in me;And Heaven in both.—If deaf to these, oh! hearFlorello’s tender voice; his weal dependsOn thy resolve; it trembles at thy choice;For his sake—love thyself. Example strikesAll human hearts; a bad example more;2153More still a father’s; that ensures his ruin.As parent of his being, would’st thou proveTh’ unnatural parent of his miseries,And make him curse the being which thou gavest?Is this the blessing of so fond a father?If careless of Lorenzo! spare, oh! spareFlorello’s father, and Philander’s friend!2160Florello’s father ruin’d, ruins him;And from Philander’s friend the world expectsA conduct, no dishonour to the dead.Let passion do, what nobler motive should;Let love, and emulation, rise in aidTo reason; and persuade thee to be—blest.This seems not a request to be denied;Yet (such th’ infatuation of mankind!)’Tis the most hopeless, man can make to man.Shall I then rise, in argument, and warmth?2170And urge Philander’s posthumous advice,From topics yet unbroach’d?——But, oh! I faint! my spirits fail!—Nor strange!So long on wing, and in no middle clime!To which my great Creator’s glory call’d:And calls—but, now, in vain. Sleep’s dewy wandHas stroked my drooping lips, and promisesMy long arrear of rest; the downy god(Wont to return with our returning peace)Will pay, ere long, and bless me with repose.2180Haste, haste, sweet stranger! from the peasant’s cot,The shipboy’s hammock, or the soldier’s straw,Whence sorrow never chased thee; with thee bring,Not hideous visions, as of late; but draughtsDelicious of well-tasted, cordial, rest;Man’s rich restorative; his balmy bath,That supples, lubricates, and keeps in playThe various movements of this nice machine,Which asks such frequent periods of repair.When tired with vain rotations of the day,2190Sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn;Fresh we spin on, till sickness clogs our wheels,Or death quite breaks the spring, and motion ends.When will it end with me?——“Thou only know’st,Thou, whose broad eye the future, and the past,Joins to the present; making one of threeTo moral thought! Thou know’st, and Thou alone,All-knowing!—all unknown!—and yet well known!Near, though remote! and, though unfathom’d, felt!2200And, though invisible, for ever seen!And seen in all! the great and the minute:Each globe above, with its gigantic race,Each flower, each leaf, with its small people swarm’d,(Those puny vouchers of Omnipotence!)To the first thought, that asks, ‘From whence?’ declareTheir common source. Thou Fountain, running o’erIn rivers of communicated joy!Who gavest us speech for far, far humbler themes!Say, by what name shall I presume to call2210Him I see burning in these countless suns,As Moses, in the bush? Illustrious Mind!The whole creation, less, far less, to Thee,Than that to the creation’s ample round.2214How shall I name Thee?—How my labouring soulHeaves underneath the thought, too big for birth!“Great System of perfections! Mighty CauseOf causes mighty! Cause uncaused! sole RootOf nature, that luxuriant growth of God!First Father of effects! that progenyOf endless series; where the golden chain’sLast link admits a period, who can tell?2222Father of all that is or heard, or hears!Father of all that is or seen, or sees!Father of all that is, or shall arise!Father of this immeasurable massOf matter multiform; or dense, or rare;Opaque, or lucid; rapid, or at rest;Minute, or passing bound! in each extremeOf like amaze, and mystery, to man.2230Father of these bright millions of the night!Of which the least full godhead had proclaim’d,And thrown the gazer on his knee—or, say,Is appellation higher still, Thy choice?Father of matter’s temporary lords!Father of spirits! nobler offspring! sparksOf high paternal glory; rich endow’dWith various measures, and with various modesOf instinct, reason, intuition; beamsMore pale, or bright from day divine, to break2240The dark of matter organized (the wareOf all created spirit); beams, that riseEach over other in superior light,Till the last ripens into lustre strong,Of next approach to Godhead. Father fond(Far fonder than e’er bore that name on earth)Of intellectual beings! beings bless’dWith powers to please Thee; not of passive ply2248To laws they know not; beings lodged in seatsOf well-adapted joys, in different domesOf this imperial palace for thy sons;Of this proud, populous, well policied,Though boundless habitation, plann’d by Thee:Whose several clans their several climates suit;And transposition, doubtless, would destroy.Or, oh! indulge, immortal King, indulgeA title, less august indeed, but moreEndearing; ah! how sweet in human ears!Sweet in our ears, and triumph in our hearts!Father of immortality to man!2260A theme that lately[74]set my soul on fire.—And Thou the next! yet equal! Thou, by whomThat blessing was convey’d; far more! was bought;Ineffable the price! by whom all worldsWere made; and one redeem’d! illustrious LightFrom Light illustrious! Thou, whose regal power,Finite in time, but infinite in space,On more than adamantine basis fix’d,O’er more, far more, than diadems, and thrones,Inviolably reigns; the dread of gods!2270And oh! the friend of man! beneath whose foot,And by the mandate of whose awful nod,All regions, revolutions, fortunes, fates,Of high, of low, of mind, and matter, rollThrough the short channels of expiring time,Or shoreless ocean of eternity,Calm, or tempestuous (as thy Spirit breathes),In absolute subjection!—And, O ThouThe glorious Third! distinct, not separate!Beaming from both! with both incorporate;2280And (strange to tell!) incorporate with dust!2281By condescension, as Thy glory, great,Enshrined in man! Of human hearts, if pure,Divine inhabitant! The tie divineOf heaven with distant earth! by whom, I trust(If not inspired), uncensured this addressTo Thee, to Them—to whom?—Mysterious Power!Reveal’d—yet unreveal’d! darkness in light;Number in unity! our joy! our dread!The triple bolt that lays all wrong in ruin!2290That animates all right, the triple sun!Sun of the soul! her never-setting sun!Triune, unutterable, unconceived,Absconding, yet demonstrable, Great God!Greater than greatest! better than the best!Kinder than kindest! with soft pity’s eye,Or (stronger still to speak it) with Thine own,From Thy bright home, from that high firmament,Where Thou, from all eternity, hast dwelt;Beyond archangels’ unassisted ken;2300From far above what mortals highest call;From elevation’s pinnacle; look down,Through—what? Confounding interval! through allAnd more than labouring Fancy can conceive;Through radiant ranks of essences unknown;Through hierarchies from hierarchies detach’dRound various banners of Omnipotence,With endless change of rapturous duties fired;Through wondrous being’s interposing swarms,All clustering at the call, to dwell in Thee;2310Through this wide waste of worlds! this vista vast,All sanded o’er with suns; suns turn’d to nightBefore thy feeblest beam—Look down—down—down,On a poor breathing particle in dust,Or, lower, an immortal in his crimes.2315His crimes forgive! forgive his virtues, too!Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.Nor let me close these eyes, which never moreMay see the sun (though night’s descending scaleNow weighs up morn), unpitied, and unblest!In Thy displeasure dwells eternal pain;Pain, our aversion; pain, which strikes me now;And, since all pain is terrible to man,2323Though transient, terrible; at Thy good hour,Gently, ah, gently, lay me in my bed,My clay-cold bed! by nature, now, so near;By nature, near; still nearer by disease!Till then, be this an emblem of my grave:Let it out-preach the preacher; every nightLet it out-cry the boy at Philip’s ear;[75]2330That tongue of death! that herald of the tomb!And when (the shelter of Thy wing implored)My senses, soothed, shall sink in soft repose,Oh, sink this truth still deeper in my soul,Suggested by my pillow, sign’d by fate,First, in Fate’s volume, at the page of man—Man’s sickly soul, though turn’d and toss’d for ever,From side to side, can rest on nought but Thee:Here, in full trust, hereafter, in full joy;On Thee, the promised, sure, eternal down2340Of spirits, toil’d in travel through this vale.Nor of that pillow shall my soul despond;For—Love almighty! Love almighty! (sing,Exult, creation!) Love almighty, reigns!That death of Death! that cordial of despair!And loud Eternity’s triumphant song!“Of whom, no more:—For, O thou Patron-God!Thou God and mortal! thence more God to man!2348Man’s theme eternal! man’s eternal theme!Thou canst not ’scape uninjured from our praise.Uninjured from our praise can He escape,Who, disembosom’d from the Father, bowsThe heaven of heavens, to kiss the distant earth!Breathes out in agonies a sinless soul!Against the cross, Death’s iron sceptre breaks!From famish’d Ruin plucks her human prey!Throws wide the gates celestial to his foes!Their gratitude, for such a boundless debt,Deputes their suffering brothers to receive!And, if deep human guilt in payment fails;2360As deeper guilt prohibits our despair!Enjoins it, as our duty, to rejoice!And (to close all) omnipotently kind,Takes his delights among the sons of men.”[76]What words are these—and did they come from heaven?And were they spoke to man? to guilty man?What are all mysteries to love like this?The songs of angels, all the melodiesOf choral gods, are wafted in the sound;Heal and exhilarate the broken heart;2370Though plunged, before, in horrors dark as night.Rich prelibation of consummate joy!Nor wait we dissolution to be blest.This final effort of the moral Muse,How justly titled![77]Nor for me alone:For all that read; what spirit of support,What heights of Consolation, crown my song!Then, farewell Night! of darkness, now, no more:Joy breaks, shines, triumphs; ’tis eternal day.Shall that which rises out of nought complain2380Of a few evils, paid with endless joys?2381My soul! henceforth, in sweetest union joinThe two supports of human happiness,Which some, erroneous, think can never meet;True taste of life, and constant thought of death!The thought of death, sole victor of its dread!Hope, be thy joy; and probity thy skill;Thy patron He, whose diadem has dropp’dYon gems of heaven; eternity, thy prize:And leave the racers of the world their own,2390Their feather, and their froth, for endless toils:They part with all for that which is not bread;They mortify, they starve, on wealth, fame, power;And laugh to scorn the fools that aim at more.How must a spirit, late escaped from earth,—Suppose Philander’s, Lucia’s, or Narcissa’s,—The truth of things new-blazing in its eye,Look back, astonish’d, on the ways of men,Whose lives’ whole drift is to forget their graves!And when our present privilege is past,2400To scourge us with due sense of its abuse,The same astonishment will seize us all.What then must pain us, would preserve us now.Lorenzo! ’tis not yet too late; Lorenzo!Seize Wisdom, ere ’tis torment to be wise;That is, seize Wisdom, ere she seizes thee.For what, my small philosopher! is hell?’Tis nothing but full knowledge of the truth,When Truth, resisted long, is sworn our foe;And calls Eternity to do her right.2410Thus, darkness aiding intellectual light,And sacred silence whispering truths divine,And truths divine converting pain to peace,My song the midnight raven has outwing’d,And shot, ambitious of unbounded scenes,2415Beyond the flaming limits of the world,Her gloomy flight. But what avails the flightOf fancy, when our hearts remain below?Virtue abounds in flatterers, and foes;’Tis pride, to praise her; penance, to perform.To more than words, to more than worth of tongue,Lorenzo! rise, at this auspicious hour;An hour, when Heaven’s most intimate with man;When, like a fallen star, the ray divineGlides swift into the bosom of the just;2425And just are all, determined to reclaim;Which sets that title high within thy reach.Awake, then; thy Philander calls: awake!Thou, who shalt wake, when the creation sleeps;When, like a taper, all these suns expire;When Time, like him of Gaza[78]in his wrath,Plucking the pillars that support the world,In Nature’s ample ruins lies entomb’d;And Midnight, universal Midnight! reigns.2434
Hard are those questions!—answer harder still.
Is this the sole exploit, the single birth,
The solitary son of power divine?
Or has th’ Almighty Father, with a breath,
Impregnated the womb of distant space?1539
Has He not bid, in various provinces,
Brother-creations the dark bowels burst
Of night primeval; barren, now, no more?
And He the central sun, transpiercing all
Those giant generations, which disport
And dance, as motes, in his meridian ray;
That ray withdrawn, benighted, or absorb’d,
In that abyss of horror, whence they sprung;
While Chaos triumphs, repossess’d of all
Rival Creation ravish’d from his throne?
Chaos! of Nature both the womb, and grave!1550
Think’st thou my scheme, Lorenzo, spreads too wide?
Is this extravagant?—No; this is just;
Just, in conjecture, though ’twere false in fact.
If ’tis an error, ’tis an error sprung
From noble root, high thought of the Most High.
But wherefore error? who can prove it such?—
He that can set Omnipotence a bound.
Can man conceive beyond what God can do?
Nothing, but quite impossible is hard.
He summons into being, with like ease,1560
A whole creation, and a single grain.
Speaks he the word? a thousand worlds are born!
A thousand worlds? there’s space for millions more:
And in what space can his great fiat fail?
Condemn me not, cold critic! but indulge
The warm imagination: why condemn?
Why not indulge such thoughts, as swell our hearts
With fuller admiration of that Power,
Who gives our hearts with such high thoughts to swell?
Why not indulge in His augmented praise?1570
Darts not His glory a still brighter ray,
The less is left to Chaos, and the realms
Of hideous Night, where Fancy strays aghast;1573
And, though most talkative, makes no report?
Still seems my thought enormous? Think again;—
Experience’ self shall aid thy lame belief.
Glasses (that revelation to the sight!)
Have they not led us in the deep disclose
Of fine-spun nature, exquisitely small,
And, though demonstrated, still ill-conceived?1580
If, then, on the reverse, the mind would mount
In magnitude, what mind can mount too far,
To keep the balance, and creation poise?
Defect alone can err on such a theme;
What is too great, if we the cause survey?
Stupendous Architect! Thou, Thou art all!
My soul flies up and down in thoughts of Thee,
And finds herself but at the centre still!
I AM, thy name! Existence, all thine own!
Creation’s nothing; flatter’d much, if styled1590
“The thin, the fleeting atmosphere of God.”
O for the voice—of what? of whom?—What voice
Can answer to my wants, in such ascent,
As dares to deem one universe too small?
Tell me, Lorenzo! (for now fancy glows;
Fired in the vortex of almighty power)
Is not this home creation, in the map
Of universal nature, as a speck,
Like fair Britannia in our little ball;
Exceeding fair, and glorious, for its size,1600
But, elsewhere, far outmeasured, far outshone?
In fancy (for the fact beyond us lies)
Canst thou not figure it, an isle, almost
Too small for notice, in the vast of being;
Sever’d by mighty seas of unbuilt space
From other realms; from ample continents
Of higher life, where nobler natives dwell;1607
Less northern, less remote from Deity,
Glowing beneath the line of the Supreme;
Where souls in excellence make haste, put forth
Luxuriant growths; nor the late autumn wait
Of human worth, but ripen soon to gods?
Yet why drown fancy in such depths as these?
Return, presumptuous rover! and confess
The bounds of man; nor blame them, as too small.
Enjoy we not full scope in what is seen?
Pull ample the dominions of the sun!
Full glorious to behold! How far, how wide,
The matchless monarch, from his flaming throne,1619
Lavish of lustre, throws his beams about him,
Farther, and faster, than a thought can fly,
And feeds his planets with eternal fires!
This Heliopolis,[70]by greater far,
Than the proud tyrant of the Nile, was built;
And He alone, who built it, can destroy.
Beyond this city, why strays human thought?
One wonderful, enough for man to know!
One infinite! enough for man to range!
One firmament, enough for man to read!
O what voluminous instruction here!1630
What page of wisdom is denied him? None;
If learning his chief lesson makes him wise.
Nor is instruction, here, our only gain;
There dwells a noble pathos in the skies,
Which warms our passions, proselytes our hearts.
How eloquently shines the glowing pole!
With what authority it gives its charge,
Remonstrating great truths in style sublime,
Though silent, loud! heard earth around; above
The planets heard; and not unheard in hell;1640
Hell has her wonder, though too proud to praise.
Is earth, then, more infernal? Has she those,
Who neither praise (Lorenzo!) nor admire?
Lorenzo’s admiration, pre-engaged,
Ne’er ask’d the moon one question; never held
Least correspondence with a single star;
Ne’er rear’d an altar to the Queen of Heaven
Walking in brightness; or her train adored.
Their sublunary rivals have long since
Engross’d his whole devotion; stars malign,1650
Which made the fond astronomer run mad;
Darken his intellect, corrupt his heart;
Cause him to sacrifice his fame and peace
To momentary madness, call’d delight.
Idolater, more gross than ever kiss’d
The lifted hand to Luna, or pour’d out
The blood to Jove!—O Thou, to whom belongs
All sacrifice! O Thou Great Jove unfeign’d!
Divine Instructor! Thy first volume, this,
For man’s perusal; all in capitals!1660
In moon, and stars (heaven’s golden alphabet!)
Emblazed to seize the sight; who runs, may read;
Who reads, can understand. ’Tis unconfined
To Christian land, or Jewry; fairly writ,
In language universal, to mankind:
A language, lofty to the learn’d: yet plain
To those that feed the flock, or guide the plough,
Or, from his husk, strike out the bounding grain.
A language, worthy the Great Mind, that speaks!
Preface, and comment, to the sacred page!1670
Which oft refers its reader to the skies,
As presupposing his first lesson there,
And Scripture self a fragment, that unread.
Stupendous book of wisdom, to the wise!1674
Stupendous book! and open’d, Night! by thee.
By thee much open’d, I confess, O Night!
Yet more I wish; but how shall I prevail?
Say, gentle Night! whose modest, maiden beams
Give us a new creation, and present
The world’s great picture soften’d to the sight;
Nay, kinder far, far more indulgent still,
Say, thou, whose mild dominion’s silver key1682
Unlocks our hemisphere, and sets to view
Worlds beyond number; worlds conceal’d by day
Behind the proud and envious star of noon!
Canst thou not draw a deeper scene?—and show
The mighty Potentate, to whom belong
These rich regalia pompously display’d
To kindle that high hope? Like him of Uz,[71]
I gaze around; I search on every side—1690
O for a glimpse of Him my soul adores!
As the chased hart, amid the desert waste,
Pants for the living stream; for Him who made her,
So pants the thirsty soul, amid the blank
Of sublunary joys. Say, goddess! where?
Where blazes His bright court? where burns His throne?
Thou know’st; for thou art near Him; by thee, round
His grand pavilion, sacred fame reports
The sable curtain drawn. If not, can none
Of thy fair daughter train, so swift of wing,1700
Who travel far, discover where He dwells?
A star His dwelling pointed out below.
Ye Pleiades! Arcturus! Mazaroth!
And thou, Orion! of still keener eye!
Say ye, who guide the wilder’d in the waves,
And bring them out of tempest into port!1706
On which hand must I bend my course to find Him?
These courtiers keep the secret of their King;
I wake whole nights, in vain, to steal it from them.
I wake; and, waking, climb Night’s radiant scale,
From sphere to sphere; the steps by nature set
For man’s ascent; at once to tempt and aid;
To tempt his eye, and aid his towering thought;1713
Till it arrives at the great goal of all.
In ardent Contemplation’s rapid car,
From earth, as from my barrier, I set out.
How swift I mount! Diminish’d earth recedes;
I pass the moon; and, from her farther side,
Pierce heaven’s blue curtain; strike into remote;
Where, with his lifted tube, the subtle sage1720
His artificial, airy journey takes,
And to celestial lengthens human sight.
I pause at every planet on my road,
And ask for Him who gives their orbs to roll,
Their foreheads fair to shine. From Saturn’s ring,
In which, of earths an army might be lost,
With the bold comet, take my bolder flight,
Amid those sovereign glories of the skies,
Of independent, native lustre, proud;
The souls of systems! and the lords of life,1730
Through their wide empires!—What behold I now?
A wilderness of wonder burning round;
Where larger suns inhabit higher spheres;
Perhaps the villas of descending gods;
Nor halt I here; my toil is but begun;
’Tis but the threshold of the Deity;
Or, far beneath it, I am grovelling still.
Nor is it strange; I built on a mistake;
The grandeur of his works, whence folly sought
For aid, to reason sets his glory higher;1740
Who built thus high for worms (mere worms to Him),
Oh, where, Lorenzo! must the Builder dwell?
Pause, then; and, for a moment, here respire—
If human thought can keep its station here.
Where am I?—Where is earth?—Nay, where art thou,
O sun?—Is the sun turn’d recluse?—and are
His boasted expeditions short to mine?—
To mine, how short! On nature’s Alps I stand,
And see a thousand firmaments beneath!
A thousand systems! as a thousand grains!1750
So much a stranger, and so late arrived,
How can man’s curious spirit not inquire,
What are the natives of this world sublime,
Of this so foreign, unterrestrial sphere,
Where mortal, untranslated, never stray’d?
“O ye, as distant from my little home,
As swiftest sunbeams in an age can fly!
Far from my native element I roam,
In quest of new, and wonderful, to man.
What province this, of His immense domain,1760
Whom all obeys? Or mortals here, or gods?
Ye borderers on the coasts of bliss! what are you?
A colony from heaven? or, only raised,
By frequent visit from heaven’s neighbouring realms,
To secondary gods, and half divine?—
Whate’er your nature, this is past dispute,
Far other life you live, far other tongue
You talk, far other thought, perhaps, you think,
Than man. How various are the works of God?
But say, what thought? Is Reason here enthroned,1770
And absolute? or Sense in arms against her?
Have you two lights? Or need you no reveal’d?
Enjoy your happy realms their golden age?
And had your Eden an abstemious Eve?1774
Our Eve’s fair daughters prove their pedigree,
And ask their Adams—‘Who would not be wise?’
Or, if your mother fell, are you redeem’d?
And if redeem’d—is your Redeemer scorn’d?
Is this your final residence? If not,
Change you your scene, translated? or by death?
And if by death; what death?—Know you disease?
Or horrid war?—With war, this fatal hour,1782
Europa groans (so call we a small field,
Where kings run mad). In our world, Death deputes
Intemperance to do the work of Age;
And hanging up the quiver Nature gave him,
As slow of execution, for despatch
Sends forth imperial butchers; bids them slay
Their sheep (the silly sheep they fleeced before),
And toss him twice ten thousand at a meal.1790
Sit all your executioners on thrones?
With you, can rage for plunder make a god?
And bloodshed wash out every other stain?—
But you, perhaps, can’t bleed: from matter gross
Your spirits clean, are delicately clad
In fine-spun ether, privileged to soar,
Unloaded, uninfected; how unlike
The lot of man! how few of human race
By their own mud unmurder’d! how we wage
Self-war eternal!—Is your painful day1800
Of hardy conflict o’er? or, are you still
Raw candidates at school? and have you those
Who disaffect reversions, as with us?—
But what are we? You never heard of man;
Or earth, the bedlam of the universe!
Where Reason (undiseased with you) runs mad,
And nurses Folly’s children as her own;
Fond of the foulest. In the sacred mount1808
Of holiness, where Reason is pronounced
Infallible; and thunders, like a god;
Even there, by saints, the demons are outdone;
What these think wrong, our saints refine to right;
And kindly teach dull hell her own black arts;
Satan, instructed, o’er their morals smiles.—
But this, how strange to you, who know not man!
Has the least rumour of our race arrived?
Call’d here Elijah in his flaming car?
Pass’d by you the good Enoch, on his road
To those fair fields, whence Lucifer was hurl’d;
Who brush’d, perhaps, your sphere in his descent,1820
Stain’d your pure crystal ether, or let fall
A short eclipse from his portentous shade?
O that the fiend had lodged on some broad orb
Athwart his way; nor reach’d his present home,
Then blacken’d earth with footsteps foul’d in hell,
Nor wash’d in ocean, as from Rome he pass’d
To Britain’s isle; too, too, conspicuous there!”
But this is all digression: where is He,
That o’er heaven’s battlements the felon hurl’d
To groans, and chains, and darkness? Where is He,1830
Who sees creation’s summit in a vale?
He, whom, while man is man, he can’t but seek;
And if he finds, commences more than man?
O for a telescope His throne to reach!
Tell me, ye learn’d on earth! or blest above!
Ye searching, ye Newtonian angels! tell.
Where, your Great Master’s orb? His planets, where?
Those conscious satellites, those morning stars,
First-born of Deity! from central love,
By veneration most profound, thrown off;1840
By sweet attraction, no less strongly drawn;
Awed, and yet raptured; raptured, yet serene;1842
Past thought illustrious, but with borrow’d beams;
In still approaching circles, still remote,
Revolving round the sun’s eternal Sire?
Or sent, in lines direct, on embassies
To nations—in what latitude?—Beyond
Terrestrial thought’s horizon!—And on what
High errands sent?—Here human effort ends;
And leaves me still a stranger to His throne.1850
Full well it might! I quite mistook my road.
Born in an age more curious than devout;
More fond to fix the place of heaven, or hell,
Than studious this to shun, or that secure.
’Tis not the curious, but the pious path,
That leads me to my point: Lorenzo! know,
Without or star, or angel, for their guide,
Who worship God, shall find him. Humble Love,
And not proud Reason, keeps the door of heaven;
Love finds admission, where proud Science fails.1860
Man’s science is the culture of his heart;
And not to lose his plummet in the depths
Of nature, or the more profound of God.
Either to know, is an attempt that sets
The wisest on a level with the fool.
To fathom nature (ill attempted here!)
Past doubt is deep philosophy above;
Higher degrees in bliss archangels take,
As deeper learn’d; the deepest, learning still.
For, what a thunder of omnipotence1870
(So might I dare to speak) is seen in all!
In man! in earth! in more amazing skies!
Teaching this lesson, Pride is loath to learn—
“Not deeply to discern, not much to know,
Mankind was born to wonder, and adore.”
And is there cause for higher wonder still,1876
Than that which struck us from our past surveys?
Yes; and for deeper adoration too.
From my late airy travel unconfined,
Have I learn’d nothing?—Yes, Lorenzo! this:
Each of these stars is a religious house;
I saw their altars smoke, their incense rise;
And heard hosannas ring through every sphere,1883
A seminary fraught with future gods.
Nature all o’er is consecrated ground,
Teeming with growths immortal, and divine.
The Great Proprietor’s all-bounteous hand
Leaves nothing waste; but sows these fiery fields
With seeds of reason, which to virtues rise
Beneath His genial ray; and, if escaped1890
The pestilential blasts of stubborn will,
When grown mature, are gather’d for the skies.
And is devotion thought too much on earth,
When beings, so superior, homage boast,
And triumph in prostrations to the Throne?
But wherefore more of planets, or of stars?
Ethereal journeys, and, discover’d there,
Ten thousand worlds, ten thousand ways devout,
All nature sending incense to the Throne,
Except the bold Lorenzos of our sphere?1900
Opening the solemn sources of my soul,
Since I have pour’d, like feign’d Eridanus,[72]
My flowing numbers o’er the flaming skies,
Nor see, of fancy, or of fact, what more
Invites the Muse.—Here turn we, and review
Our past nocturnal landscape wide:—then say,
Say, then, Lorenzo! with what burst of heart,
The whole, at once, revolving in his thought,
Must man exclaim, adoring, and aghast?1909
“Oh, what a root! Oh, what a branch, is here!
Oh, what a Father! what a family!
Worlds! systems! and creations!—and creations,
In one agglomerated cluster, hung,
Great Vine![73]on Thee, on Thee the cluster hangs;
The filial cluster! infinitely spread
In glowing globes, with various being fraught;
And drinks (nectareous draught!) immortal life.
Or, shall I say (for who can say enough?)
A constellation of ten thousand gems,
(And, oh! of what dimension! of what weight!)1920
Set in one signet, flames on the right hand
Of Majesty Divine! The blazing seal,
That deeply stamps, on all created mind,
Indelible, His sovereign attributes,
Omnipotence, and love! that, passing bound:
And this, surpassing that. Nor stop we here,
For want of power in God, but thought in man.
Even this acknowledged, leaves us still in debt:
If greater aught, that greater all is Thine,
Dread Sire!—Accept this miniature of Thee;1930
And pardon an attempt from mortal thought,
In which archangels might have fail’d, unblamed.”
How such ideas of th’ Almighty’s power,
And such ideas of th’ Almighty’s plan
(Ideas not absurd), distend the thought
Of feeble mortals! Nor of them alone!
The fulness of the Deity breaks forth
In inconceivables to men, and gods.
Think, then, oh, think; nor ever drop the thought;
How low must man descend, when gods adore!1940
Have I not, then, accomplish’d my proud boast?
Did I not tell thee, “We would mount, Lorenzo!1942
And kindle our devotion at the stars”?
And have I fail’d? and did I flatter thee?
And art all adamant? and dost confute
All urged, with one irrefragable smile?
Lorenzo! mirth how miserable here!
Swear by the stars, by Him who made them, swear,
Thy heart, henceforth, shall be as pure as they:
Then thou, like them, shalt shine; like them, shalt rise
From low to lofty; from obscure to bright;1951
By due gradation, Nature’s sacred law.
The stars, from whence?—Ask Chaos—he can tell.
These bright temptations to idolatry,
From darkness, and confusion, took their birth;
Sons of deformity! from fluid dregs
Tartarean, first they rose to masses rude;
And then, to spheres opaque; then dimly shone;
Then brighten’d; then blazed out in perfect day.
Nature delights in progress; in advance1960
From worse to better: but, when minds ascend,
Progress, in part, depends upon themselves.
Heaven aids exertion; greater makes the great;
The voluntary little lessens more.
Oh, be a man! and thou shalt be a god!
And half self-made!—Ambition how divine!
O thou, ambitious of disgrace alone!
Still undevout? unkindled?—Though high-taught,
School’d by the skies, and pupil of the stars;
Rank coward to the fashionable world!1970
Art thou ashamed to bend thy knee to heaven?
Cursed fume of pride, exhaled from deepest hell!
Pride in religion is man’s highest praise.
Bent on destruction! and in love with death!
Not all these luminaries, quench’d at once,
Were half so sad, as one benighted mind,1976
Which gropes for happiness, and meets despair.
How, like a widow in her weeds, the Night,
Amid her glimmering tapers, silent sits!
How sorrowful, how desolate, she weeps
Perpetual dews, and saddens nature’s scene!
A scene more sad sin makes the darken’d soul,
All comfort kills, nor leaves one spark alive.1983
Though blind of heart, still open is thine eye:
Why such magnificence in all thou seest?
Of matter’s grandeur, know, one end is this,
To tell the rational, who gazes on it—
“Though that immensely great, still greater He,
Whose breast, capacious, can embrace, and lodge,
Unburden’d, nature’s universal scheme;1990
Can grasp creation with a single thought;
Creation grasp; and not exclude its Sire”—
To tell him farther—“It behoves him much
To guard th’ important, yet depending, fate
Of being, brighter than a thousand suns:
One single ray of thought outshines them all.”—
And if man hears obedient, soon he’ll soar
Superior heights, and on his purple wing,
His purple wing bedropp’d with eyes of gold,
Rising, where thought is now denied to rise,2000
Look down triumphant on these dazzling spheres.
Why then persist?—No mortal ever lived
But, dying, he pronounced (when words are true)
The whole that charms thee, absolutely vain;
Vain, and far worse!—Think thou, with dying men;
Oh, condescend to think as angels think!
Oh, tolerate a chance for happiness!
Our nature such, ill choice ensures ill fate;
And hell had been, though there had been no God.
Dost thou not know, my new astronomer!2010
Earth, turning from the sun, brings night to man?
Man, turning from his God, brings endless night;
Where thou canst read no morals, find no friend,
Amend no manners, and expect no peace.
How deep the darkness! and the groan, how loud!
And far, how far, from lambent are the flames!—
Such is Lorenzo’s purchase! such his praise!
The proud, the politic, Lorenzo’s praise!
Though in his ear, and levell’d at his heart,
I’ve half read o’er the volume of the skies.2020
For think not thou hast heard all this from me;
My song but echoes what great Nature speaks.
What has she spoken? Thus the goddess spoke,
Thus speaks for ever:—“Place, at nature’s head,
A sovereign, which o’er all things rolls his eye,
Extends his wing, promulgates his commands,
But, above all, diffuses endless good;
To whom, for sure redress, the wrong’d may fly;
The vile, for mercy; and the pain’d, for peace;
By whom, the various tenants of these spheres,2030
Diversified in fortunes, place, and powers,
Raised in enjoyment, as in worth they rise,
Arrive at length (if worthy such approach)
At that bless’d fountain-head, from which they stream;
Where conflict past redoubles present joy;
And present joy looks forward on increase;
And that, on more; no period! every step
A double boon! a promise, and a bliss.”
How easy sits this scheme on human hearts!
It suits their make; it soothes their vast desires;2040
Passion is pleased; and Reason asks no more;
’Tis rational! ’tis great!—But what is thine?
It darkens! shocks! excruciates! and confounds!
Leaves us quite naked, both of help, and hope,2044
Sinking from bad to worse; few years, the sport
Of Fortune; then the morsel of Despair.
Say, then, Lorenzo! (for thou know’st it well)
What’s vice?—Mere want of compass in our thought.
Religion, what?—The proof of common sense.
How art thou hooted, where the least prevails!
Is it my fault, if these truths call thee fool?
And thou shalt never be miscall’d by me.2052
Can neither shame, nor terror, stand thy friend;
And art thou still an insect in the mire?
How, like thy guardian angel, have I flown;
Snatch’d thee from earth; escorted thee through all
Th’ ethereal armies; walk’d thee, like a god,
Through splendours of first magnitude, arranged
On either hand; clouds thrown beneath thy feet;
Close cruised on the bright paradise of God;2060
And almost introduced thee to the Throne!
And art thou still carousing, for delight,
Rank poison; first, fermenting to mere froth,
And then subsiding into final gall?
To beings of sublime, immortal make,
How shocking is all joy, whose end is sure!
Such joy, more shocking still, the more it charms!
And dost thou choose what ends ere well begun;
And infamous, as short? And dost thou choose
(Thou, to whose palate glory is so sweet)2070
To wade into perdition, through contempt,
Not of poor bigots only, but thy own?
For I have peep’d into thy cover’d heart,
And seen it blush beneath a boastful brow;
For, by strong guilt’s most violent assault,
Conscience is but disabled, not destroy’d.
O thou most awful being, and most vain!
Thy will, how frail! how glorious is thy power!2078
Though dread eternity has sown her seeds
Of bliss, and woe, in thy despotic breast;
Though heaven, and hell, depend upon thy choice;
A butterfly comes cross, and both are fled.
Is this the picture of a rational?
This horrid image, shall it be most just?
Lorenzo! no: it cannot,—shall not, be,
If there is force in reason; or, in sounds
Chanted beneath the glimpses of the moon,
A magic, at this planetary hour,
When slumber locks the general lip, and dreams
Through senseless mazes hunt souls uninspired.2090
Attend—the sacred mysteries begin—
My solemn night-born adjuration hear;
Hear, and I’ll raise thy spirit from the dust;
While the stars gaze on this enchantment new;
Enchantment, not infernal, but divine!
“By silence, Death’s peculiar attribute;
By darkness, Guilt’s inevitable doom;
By Darkness, and by Silence, sisters dread!
That draw the curtain round Night’s ebon throne,
And raise ideas, solemn as the scene!2100
By Night, and all of awful, Night presents
To thought, or sense (of awful much, to both,
The goddess brings)! By these her trembling fires,
Like Vesta’s, ever burning; and, like hers,
Sacred to thoughts immaculate, and pure!
By these bright orators, that prove, and praise,
And press thee to revere, the Deity;
Perhaps, too, aid thee, when revered a while,
To reach his throne; as stages of the soul,
Through which, at different periods, she shall pass,2110
Refining gradual, for her final height,
And purging off some dross at every sphere!2112
By this dark pall thrown o’er the silent world!
By the world’s kings, and kingdoms, most renown’d,
From short ambition’s zenith set for ever;
Sad presage to vain boasters, now in bloom!
By the long list of swift mortality,
From Adam downward to this evening knell,
Which midnight waves in Fancy’s startled eye;
And shocks her with an hundred centuries,2120
Round Death’s black banner throng’d, in human thought!
By thousands, now, resigning their last breath,
And calling thee—wert thou so wise to hear!
By tombs o’er tombs arising; human earth
Ejected, to make room for—human earth;
The monarch’s terror! and the sexton’s trade!
By pompous obsequies that shun the day,
The torch funereal, and the nodding plume,
Which makes poor man’s humiliation proud;
Boast of our ruin! triumph of our dust!2130
By the damp vault that weeps o’er royal bones;
And the pale lamp that shows the ghastly dead,
More ghastly, through the thick incumbent gloom!
By visits (if there are) from darker scenes,
The gliding spectre! and the groaning grave!
By groans, and graves, and miseries that groan
For the grave’s shelter! By desponding men,
Senseless to pains of death, from pangs of guilt!
By guilt’s last audit! By yon moon in blood,
The rocking firmament, the falling stars,2140
And thunder’s last discharge, great nature’s knell!
By second chaos; and eternal night”—
Be wise—nor let Philander blame my charm;
But own not ill discharged my double debt,
Love to the living; duty to the dead.
For know I’m but executor; he left2146
This moral legacy; I make it o’er
By his command; Philander hear in me;
And Heaven in both.—If deaf to these, oh! hear
Florello’s tender voice; his weal depends
On thy resolve; it trembles at thy choice;
For his sake—love thyself. Example strikes
All human hearts; a bad example more;2153
More still a father’s; that ensures his ruin.
As parent of his being, would’st thou prove
Th’ unnatural parent of his miseries,
And make him curse the being which thou gavest?
Is this the blessing of so fond a father?
If careless of Lorenzo! spare, oh! spare
Florello’s father, and Philander’s friend!2160
Florello’s father ruin’d, ruins him;
And from Philander’s friend the world expects
A conduct, no dishonour to the dead.
Let passion do, what nobler motive should;
Let love, and emulation, rise in aid
To reason; and persuade thee to be—blest.
This seems not a request to be denied;
Yet (such th’ infatuation of mankind!)
’Tis the most hopeless, man can make to man.
Shall I then rise, in argument, and warmth?2170
And urge Philander’s posthumous advice,
From topics yet unbroach’d?——
But, oh! I faint! my spirits fail!—Nor strange!
So long on wing, and in no middle clime!
To which my great Creator’s glory call’d:
And calls—but, now, in vain. Sleep’s dewy wand
Has stroked my drooping lips, and promises
My long arrear of rest; the downy god
(Wont to return with our returning peace)
Will pay, ere long, and bless me with repose.2180
Haste, haste, sweet stranger! from the peasant’s cot,
The shipboy’s hammock, or the soldier’s straw,
Whence sorrow never chased thee; with thee bring,
Not hideous visions, as of late; but draughts
Delicious of well-tasted, cordial, rest;
Man’s rich restorative; his balmy bath,
That supples, lubricates, and keeps in play
The various movements of this nice machine,
Which asks such frequent periods of repair.
When tired with vain rotations of the day,2190
Sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn;
Fresh we spin on, till sickness clogs our wheels,
Or death quite breaks the spring, and motion ends.
When will it end with me?
——“Thou only know’st,
Thou, whose broad eye the future, and the past,
Joins to the present; making one of three
To moral thought! Thou know’st, and Thou alone,
All-knowing!—all unknown!—and yet well known!
Near, though remote! and, though unfathom’d, felt!2200
And, though invisible, for ever seen!
And seen in all! the great and the minute:
Each globe above, with its gigantic race,
Each flower, each leaf, with its small people swarm’d,
(Those puny vouchers of Omnipotence!)
To the first thought, that asks, ‘From whence?’ declare
Their common source. Thou Fountain, running o’er
In rivers of communicated joy!
Who gavest us speech for far, far humbler themes!
Say, by what name shall I presume to call2210
Him I see burning in these countless suns,
As Moses, in the bush? Illustrious Mind!
The whole creation, less, far less, to Thee,
Than that to the creation’s ample round.2214
How shall I name Thee?—How my labouring soul
Heaves underneath the thought, too big for birth!
“Great System of perfections! Mighty Cause
Of causes mighty! Cause uncaused! sole Root
Of nature, that luxuriant growth of God!
First Father of effects! that progeny
Of endless series; where the golden chain’s
Last link admits a period, who can tell?2222
Father of all that is or heard, or hears!
Father of all that is or seen, or sees!
Father of all that is, or shall arise!
Father of this immeasurable mass
Of matter multiform; or dense, or rare;
Opaque, or lucid; rapid, or at rest;
Minute, or passing bound! in each extreme
Of like amaze, and mystery, to man.2230
Father of these bright millions of the night!
Of which the least full godhead had proclaim’d,
And thrown the gazer on his knee—or, say,
Is appellation higher still, Thy choice?
Father of matter’s temporary lords!
Father of spirits! nobler offspring! sparks
Of high paternal glory; rich endow’d
With various measures, and with various modes
Of instinct, reason, intuition; beams
More pale, or bright from day divine, to break2240
The dark of matter organized (the ware
Of all created spirit); beams, that rise
Each over other in superior light,
Till the last ripens into lustre strong,
Of next approach to Godhead. Father fond
(Far fonder than e’er bore that name on earth)
Of intellectual beings! beings bless’d
With powers to please Thee; not of passive ply2248
To laws they know not; beings lodged in seats
Of well-adapted joys, in different domes
Of this imperial palace for thy sons;
Of this proud, populous, well policied,
Though boundless habitation, plann’d by Thee:
Whose several clans their several climates suit;
And transposition, doubtless, would destroy.
Or, oh! indulge, immortal King, indulge
A title, less august indeed, but more
Endearing; ah! how sweet in human ears!
Sweet in our ears, and triumph in our hearts!
Father of immortality to man!2260
A theme that lately[74]set my soul on fire.—
And Thou the next! yet equal! Thou, by whom
That blessing was convey’d; far more! was bought;
Ineffable the price! by whom all worlds
Were made; and one redeem’d! illustrious Light
From Light illustrious! Thou, whose regal power,
Finite in time, but infinite in space,
On more than adamantine basis fix’d,
O’er more, far more, than diadems, and thrones,
Inviolably reigns; the dread of gods!2270
And oh! the friend of man! beneath whose foot,
And by the mandate of whose awful nod,
All regions, revolutions, fortunes, fates,
Of high, of low, of mind, and matter, roll
Through the short channels of expiring time,
Or shoreless ocean of eternity,
Calm, or tempestuous (as thy Spirit breathes),
In absolute subjection!—And, O Thou
The glorious Third! distinct, not separate!
Beaming from both! with both incorporate;2280
And (strange to tell!) incorporate with dust!2281
By condescension, as Thy glory, great,
Enshrined in man! Of human hearts, if pure,
Divine inhabitant! The tie divine
Of heaven with distant earth! by whom, I trust
(If not inspired), uncensured this address
To Thee, to Them—to whom?—Mysterious Power!
Reveal’d—yet unreveal’d! darkness in light;
Number in unity! our joy! our dread!
The triple bolt that lays all wrong in ruin!2290
That animates all right, the triple sun!
Sun of the soul! her never-setting sun!
Triune, unutterable, unconceived,
Absconding, yet demonstrable, Great God!
Greater than greatest! better than the best!
Kinder than kindest! with soft pity’s eye,
Or (stronger still to speak it) with Thine own,
From Thy bright home, from that high firmament,
Where Thou, from all eternity, hast dwelt;
Beyond archangels’ unassisted ken;2300
From far above what mortals highest call;
From elevation’s pinnacle; look down,
Through—what? Confounding interval! through all
And more than labouring Fancy can conceive;
Through radiant ranks of essences unknown;
Through hierarchies from hierarchies detach’d
Round various banners of Omnipotence,
With endless change of rapturous duties fired;
Through wondrous being’s interposing swarms,
All clustering at the call, to dwell in Thee;2310
Through this wide waste of worlds! this vista vast,
All sanded o’er with suns; suns turn’d to night
Before thy feeblest beam—Look down—down—down,
On a poor breathing particle in dust,
Or, lower, an immortal in his crimes.2315
His crimes forgive! forgive his virtues, too!
Those smaller faults, half converts to the right.
Nor let me close these eyes, which never more
May see the sun (though night’s descending scale
Now weighs up morn), unpitied, and unblest!
In Thy displeasure dwells eternal pain;
Pain, our aversion; pain, which strikes me now;
And, since all pain is terrible to man,2323
Though transient, terrible; at Thy good hour,
Gently, ah, gently, lay me in my bed,
My clay-cold bed! by nature, now, so near;
By nature, near; still nearer by disease!
Till then, be this an emblem of my grave:
Let it out-preach the preacher; every night
Let it out-cry the boy at Philip’s ear;[75]2330
That tongue of death! that herald of the tomb!
And when (the shelter of Thy wing implored)
My senses, soothed, shall sink in soft repose,
Oh, sink this truth still deeper in my soul,
Suggested by my pillow, sign’d by fate,
First, in Fate’s volume, at the page of man—
Man’s sickly soul, though turn’d and toss’d for ever,
From side to side, can rest on nought but Thee:
Here, in full trust, hereafter, in full joy;
On Thee, the promised, sure, eternal down2340
Of spirits, toil’d in travel through this vale.
Nor of that pillow shall my soul despond;
For—Love almighty! Love almighty! (sing,
Exult, creation!) Love almighty, reigns!
That death of Death! that cordial of despair!
And loud Eternity’s triumphant song!
“Of whom, no more:—For, O thou Patron-God!
Thou God and mortal! thence more God to man!2348
Man’s theme eternal! man’s eternal theme!
Thou canst not ’scape uninjured from our praise.
Uninjured from our praise can He escape,
Who, disembosom’d from the Father, bows
The heaven of heavens, to kiss the distant earth!
Breathes out in agonies a sinless soul!
Against the cross, Death’s iron sceptre breaks!
From famish’d Ruin plucks her human prey!
Throws wide the gates celestial to his foes!
Their gratitude, for such a boundless debt,
Deputes their suffering brothers to receive!
And, if deep human guilt in payment fails;2360
As deeper guilt prohibits our despair!
Enjoins it, as our duty, to rejoice!
And (to close all) omnipotently kind,
Takes his delights among the sons of men.”[76]
What words are these—and did they come from heaven?
And were they spoke to man? to guilty man?
What are all mysteries to love like this?
The songs of angels, all the melodies
Of choral gods, are wafted in the sound;
Heal and exhilarate the broken heart;2370
Though plunged, before, in horrors dark as night.
Rich prelibation of consummate joy!
Nor wait we dissolution to be blest.
This final effort of the moral Muse,
How justly titled![77]Nor for me alone:
For all that read; what spirit of support,
What heights of Consolation, crown my song!
Then, farewell Night! of darkness, now, no more:
Joy breaks, shines, triumphs; ’tis eternal day.
Shall that which rises out of nought complain2380
Of a few evils, paid with endless joys?2381
My soul! henceforth, in sweetest union join
The two supports of human happiness,
Which some, erroneous, think can never meet;
True taste of life, and constant thought of death!
The thought of death, sole victor of its dread!
Hope, be thy joy; and probity thy skill;
Thy patron He, whose diadem has dropp’d
Yon gems of heaven; eternity, thy prize:
And leave the racers of the world their own,2390
Their feather, and their froth, for endless toils:
They part with all for that which is not bread;
They mortify, they starve, on wealth, fame, power;
And laugh to scorn the fools that aim at more.
How must a spirit, late escaped from earth,—
Suppose Philander’s, Lucia’s, or Narcissa’s,—
The truth of things new-blazing in its eye,
Look back, astonish’d, on the ways of men,
Whose lives’ whole drift is to forget their graves!
And when our present privilege is past,2400
To scourge us with due sense of its abuse,
The same astonishment will seize us all.
What then must pain us, would preserve us now.
Lorenzo! ’tis not yet too late; Lorenzo!
Seize Wisdom, ere ’tis torment to be wise;
That is, seize Wisdom, ere she seizes thee.
For what, my small philosopher! is hell?
’Tis nothing but full knowledge of the truth,
When Truth, resisted long, is sworn our foe;
And calls Eternity to do her right.2410
Thus, darkness aiding intellectual light,
And sacred silence whispering truths divine,
And truths divine converting pain to peace,
My song the midnight raven has outwing’d,
And shot, ambitious of unbounded scenes,2415
Beyond the flaming limits of the world,
Her gloomy flight. But what avails the flight
Of fancy, when our hearts remain below?
Virtue abounds in flatterers, and foes;
’Tis pride, to praise her; penance, to perform.
To more than words, to more than worth of tongue,
Lorenzo! rise, at this auspicious hour;
An hour, when Heaven’s most intimate with man;
When, like a fallen star, the ray divine
Glides swift into the bosom of the just;2425
And just are all, determined to reclaim;
Which sets that title high within thy reach.
Awake, then; thy Philander calls: awake!
Thou, who shalt wake, when the creation sleeps;
When, like a taper, all these suns expire;
When Time, like him of Gaza[78]in his wrath,
Plucking the pillars that support the world,
In Nature’s ample ruins lies entomb’d;
And Midnight, universal Midnight! reigns.2434