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with slow foot, 95

      Darkling he fixes on the immediate road

      His downward eye: all else of fairest kind

      Hid or deformed. But lo! the bursting Sun!

      Touched by the enchantment of that sudden beam

      Straight the black vapour melteth, and in globes 100

      Of dewy glitter gems each plant and tree;

      On every leaf, on every blade it hangs!

      Dance glad the newborn intermingling rays,

      And wide around the landscape streams with glory!

      There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind, 105

      Omnific. His most holy name is Love.

      Truth of subliming import! with the which

      Who feeds and saturates his constant soul,

      He from his small particular orbit flies

      With blest outstarting! From himself he flies, 110

      Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze

      Views all creation; and he loves it all,

      And blesses it, and calls it very good!

      This is indeed to dwell with the Most High!

      Cherubs and rapture-trembling Seraphim 115

      Can press no nearer to the Almighty’s throne.

      But that we roam unconscious, or with hearts

      Unfeeling of our universal Sire,

      And that in His vast family no Cain

      Injures uninjured (in her best-aimed blow 120

      Victorious Murder a blind Suicide)

      Haply for this some younger Angel now

      Looks down on Human Nature: and, behold!

      A sea of blood bestrewed with wrecks, where mad

      Embattling Interests on each other rush 125

      With unhelmed rage!

      ‘Tis the sublime of man,

      Our noontide Majesty, to know ourselves

      Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole!

      This fraternises man, this constitutes

      Our charities and bearings. But ‘tis God 130

      Diffused through all, that doth make all one whole;

      This the worst superstition, him except

      Aught to desire, Supreme Reality!

      The plenitude and permanence of bliss!

      O Fiends of Superstition! not that oft 135

      The erring Priest hath stained with brother’s blood

      Your grisly idols, not for this may wrath

      Thunder against you from the Holy One!

      But o’er some plain that steameth to the sun,

      Peopled with Death; or where more hideous Trade 140

      Loud-laughing packs his bales of human anguish;

      I will raise up a mourning, O ye Fiends!

      And curse your spells, that film the eye of Faith,

      Hiding the present God; whose presence lost,

      The moral world’s cohesion, we become 145

      An Anarchy of Spirits! Toy-bewitched,

      Made blind by lusts, disherited of soul,

      No common centre Man, no common sire

      Knoweth! A sordid solitary thing,

      Mid countless brethren with a lonely heart 150

      Through courts and cities the smooth savage roams

      Feeling himself, his own low self the whole;

      When he by sacred sympathy might make

      The whole one Self! Self, that no alien knows!

      Self, far diffused as Fancy’s wing can travel! 155

      Self, spreading still! Oblivious of its own,

      Yet all of all possessing! This is Faith!

      This the Messiah’s destined victory!

      But first offences needs must come! Even now

      (Black Hell laughs horrible — to hear the scoff!) 160

      Thee to defend, meek Galilaean! Thee

      And thy mild laws of Love unutterable,

      Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands

      Of social peace: and listening Treachery lurks

      With pious fraud to snare a brother’s life; 165

      And childless widows o’er the groaning land

      Wail numberless; and orphans weep for bread!

      Thee to defend, dear Saviour of Mankind!

      Thee, Lamb of God! Thee, blameless Prince of Peace!

      From all sides rush the thirsty brood of War! — 170

      Austria, and that foul Woman of the North,

      The lustful murderess of her wedded lord!

      And he, connatural Mind! whom (in their songs

      So bards of elder time had haply feigned)

      Some Fury fondled in her hate to man, 175

      Bidding her serpent hair in mazy surge

      Lick his young face, and at his mouth imbreathe

      Horrible sympathy! And leagued with these

      Each petty German princeling, nursed in gore!

      Soul-hardened barterers of human blood! 180

      Death’s prime slave-merchants! Scorpion-whips of Fate!

      Nor least in savagery of holy zeal,

      Apt for the yoke, the race degenerate,

      Whom Britain erst had blushed to call her sons!

      Thee to defend the Moloch Priest prefers 185

      The prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd,

      That Deity, Accomplice Deity

      In the fierce jealousy of wakened wrath

      Will go forth with our armies and our fleets

      To scatter the red ruin on their foes! 190

      O blasphemy! to mingle fiendish deeds

      With blessedness!

      Lord of unsleeping Love,

      From everlasting Thou! We shall not die.

      These, even these, in mercy didst thou form,

      Teachers of Good through Evil, by brief wrong 195

      Making Truth lovely, and her future might

      Magnetic o’er the fixed untrembling heart.

      In the primeval age a dateless while

      The vacant Shepherd wander’d with his flock,

      Pitching his tent where’er the green grass waved. 200

      But soon Imagination conjured up

      An host of new desires: with busy aim,

      Each for himself, Earth’s eager children toiled.

      So Property began, twy-streaming fount,

      Whence Vice and Virtue flow, honey and gall. 205

      Hence the soft couch, and many-coloured robe,

      The timbrel, and arched dome and costly feast,

      With all the inventive arts, that nursed the soul

      To

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