---

Скачать книгу

---

the impatient earthquake.

       O return!

      Pure Faith! meek Piety! The abhorréd Form

      Whose scarlet robe was stiff with earthly pomp,

      Who drank iniquity in cups of gold, 325

      Whose names were many and all blasphemous,

      Hath met the horrible judgment! Whence that cry?

      The mighty army of foul Spirits shrieked

      Disherited of earth! For she hath fallen

      On whose black front was written Mystery; 330

      She that reeled heavily, whose wine was blood;

      She that worked whoredom with the Daemon Power,

      And from the dark embrace all evil things

      Brought forth and nurtured: mitred Atheism!

      And patient Folly who on bended knee 335

      Gives back the steel that stabbed him; and pale Fear

      Haunted by ghastlier shapings than surround

      Moon-blasted Madness when he yells at midnight!

      Return pure Faith! return meek Piety!

      The kingdoms of the world are your’s: each heart 340

      Self-governed, the vast family of Love

      Raised from the common earth by common toil

      Enjoy the equal produce. Such delights

      As float to earth, permitted visitants!

      When in some hour of solemn jubilee 345

      The massy gates of Paradise are thrown

      Wide open, and forth come in fragments wild

      Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,

      And odours snatched from beds of Amaranth,

      And they, that from the crystal river of life 350

      Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales!

      The favoured good man in his lonely walk

      Perceives them, and his silent spirit drinks

      Strange bliss which he shall recognise in heaven.

      And such delights, such strange beatitudes 355

      Seize on my young anticipating heart

      When that blest future rushes on my view!

      For in his own and in his Father’s might

      The Saviour comes! While as the Thousand Years

      Lead up their mystic dance, the Desert shouts! 360

      Old Ocean claps his hands! The mighty Dead

      Rise to new life, whoe’er from earliest time

      With conscious zeal had urged Love’s wondrous plan,

      Coadjutors of God. To Milton’s trump

      The high groves of the renovated Earth 365

      Unbosom their glad echoes: inly hushed,

      Adoring Newton his serener eye

      Raises to heaven: and he of mortal kind

      Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes

      Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain. 370

      Lo! Priestley there, patriot, and saint, and sage,

      Him, full of years, from his loved native land

      Statesmen bloodstained and priests idolatrous

      By dark lies maddening the blind multitude

      Drove with vain hate. Calm, pitying he retired, 375

      And mused expectant on these promised years.

      O Years! the blest preeminence of Saints!

      Ye sweep athwart my gaze, so heavenly bright,

      The wings that veil the adoring Seraphs’ eyes,

      What time they bend before the Jasper Throne 380

      Reflect no lovelier hues! Yet ye depart,

      And all beyond is darkness! Heights most strange,

      Whence Fancy falls, fluttering her idle wing.

      For who of woman born may paint the hour,

      When seized in his mid course, the Sun shall wane 385

      Making noon ghastly! Who of woman born

      May image in the workings of his thought,

      How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend outstretched

      Beneath the unsteady feet of Nature groans,

      In feverous slumbers — destined then to wake, 390

      When fiery whirlwinds thunder his dread name

      And Angels shout, Destruction! How his arm

      The last great Spirit lifting high in air

      Shall swear by Him, the ever-living One,

      Time is no more!

      Believe thou, O my soul, 395

      Life is a vision shadowy of Truth;

      And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave,

      Shapes of a dream! The veiling clouds retire,

      And lo! the Throne of the redeeming God

      Forth flashing unimaginable day 400

      Wraps in one blaze earth, heaven, and deepest hell.

      Contemplant Spirits! ye that hover o’er

      With untired gaze the immeasurable fount

      Ebullient with creative Deity!

      And ye of plastic power, that interfused 405

      Roll through the grosser and material mass

      In organizing surge! Holies of God!

      (And what if Monads of the infinite mind?)

      I haply journeying my immortal course

      Shall sometime join your mystic choir! Till then 410

      I discipline my young and novice thought

      In ministeries of heart-stirring song,

      And aye on Meditation’s heavenward wing

      Soaring aloft I breathe the empyreal air

      Of Love, omnific, omnipresent Love, 415

      Whose dayspring rises glorious in my soul

      As the great Sun, when he his influence

      Sheds on the frost-bound waters — The glad stream

      Flows to the ray and warbles as it flows.

      Title] —— on Christmas Eve. In the year of Our Lord, 1794.

      This is the time, when most divine to hear,

      As with a Cherub’s ‘loud uplifted’ trump

      The voice of Adoration my thrill’d heart

      Rouses! And with the rushing noise of wings

      Transports my spirit to the favor’d fields 5

      Of Bethlehem, there in shepherd’s guise to sit

      Sublime of extacy, and mark entranc’d

      The glory-streaming VISION throng the night.

      Ah not more radiant, nor loud harmonies

      Hymning more unimaginably sweet 10

      With choral songs around th’ ETERNAL MIND,

      The constellated company of WORLDS

      Danc’d jubilant: what time the startling East

      Saw from her dark womb leap her flamy child!

      Glory

---

Скачать книгу