The wonders of the human world to Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls keep. And fancy's thin creations to endow With manner, being, and reality; Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams Of human error's dense and purblind faith, I will cvoke, to meet thy questioning. Ahasuerus, rise! A strange and woe-worn wight Arose beside the battlement, And stood unmoving there. His inessential figure cast no shade Upon the golden floor; His port and mien bore mark of many years, And chronicles of untold ancientness Were legible within his beamless eye : Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth; Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame; The wisdom of old age was mingled there With youth's primeval dauntlessness; And inexpressible woe, Chastened by fearless resignation, gave An awful grace to his all-speaking brow. SPIRIT Is there a God? AHASUERUS Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn, Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth, All misery to my fame. The race of men Chosen to my honour, with impunity May sate the lusts I planted in their heart. Is there a God!-aye, an almighty God, at the sound; The fiery-visaged firmament expressed Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawned To swallow all the dauntless and the good That dared to hurl defiance at his throne, them on, Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood, And make my name be dreaded through the land. Girt as it was with power. None but Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless slaves did the work woe Survived, cold-blooded slaves, who Shall be the doom of their eternal souls, With every soul on this ungrateful earth, Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong, even all Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge Even the murderer's cheek Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips Scarce faintly uttered-"O almighty one, The murderer's brow | O Spirit! centuries have set their seal On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain, Quivered with horror. "God omnipotent, Is there no mercy? must our punishment Be endless? will long ages roll away, And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast thou made In mockery and wrath this evil earth? Mercy becomes the powerful-be but just: O God! repent and save." "One way remains: I will beget a son, and he shall bear Since the Incarnate came: humbly he came, Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape Of man, scorned by the world, his name Save by the rabble of his native town, The sins of all the world; he shall arise In semblance; but he lit within their In an unnoticed corner of the earth, souls And there shall die upon a cross, and The quenchless flames of zeal, and blest purge The universal crime; so that the few On whom my grace descends, those who are marked the sword He brought on earth to satiate with the blood Of truth and freedom his malignant soul. At length his mortal frame was led to death. As vessels to the honour of their God, cross Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense; And yet he groaned. Indignantly I name, summed But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. name cried, tale, Such as the nurses frighten babes withal: Had sanctioned in my country, and I These in a gulph of anguish and of flame Shall curse their reprobation endlessly, Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, Even on their beds of torment, where My honour, and the justice of their doom. their thoughts Of purity, with radiant genius bright, "Go! go!" in mockery. A smile of godlike malice reillumined -The dampness of the grave Bathed my imperishable front. I fell, And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. When I awoke hell burned within my brain, Hell's freedom to the servitude of Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe heaven. Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began The sword of his revenge, when grace That barred my passage to the peaceful grave Has crushed the earth to misery, and given Its empire to the chosen of his slaves. These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn descended, Confirming all unnatural impulses, O'er the unhappy earth: then shone the sun On showers of gore from the upflashing steel Of safe assassination, and all crime Of weak, unstable and precarious power; tise war, So, when they turned but from the massacre Of unoffending infidels, to quench Has passed unstained by crime and misery, Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked his slaves With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red Froze every human feeling, as the wife Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of For brotherhood and peace; and that her love; they now And friends to friends, brothers to Babble of love and mercy, whilst their brothers stood deeds Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and Are marked with all the narrowness and crime war, Scarce satiable by fate's last death. That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise, draught waged, Reason may claim our gratitude, who It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, Earth was no longer hell; Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible Their ripeness to the manhood of its curse Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, VIII THE present and the past thou hast beheld : prime, And all its pulses beat Symphonious to the planetary spheres: Then dulcet music swelled Concordant with the life-strings of the soul; It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there, Catching new life from transitory death, Like the vague sighings of a wind at even, That wakes the wavelets of the slumber- Was the pure stream of feeling notes, And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. Joy to the Spirit came,- Such joy as when a lover sees The chosen of his soul in happiness, ། And witnesses her peace Whose woe to him were bitterer than death, Sees her unfaded cheek Glow mantling in first luxury of health, Thrills with her lovely eyes, Which like two stars amid the heaving main Sparkle through liquid bliss. Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy I will not call the ghost of ages gone And those events that desolate the earth Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, A lighthouse o'er the wild of dreary waves.. The habitable earth is full of bliss; Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled By everlasting snowstorms round the poles, Where matter dared not vegetate or live, To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves And melodise with man's blest nature there. Those deserts of immeasurable sand, Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring, Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love Broke on the sultry silentness alone, Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, Cornfields and pastures and white cottages; And where the startled wilderness beheld A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang, Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn, Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles To see a babe before his mother's door, Sharing his morning's meal With the green and golden basilisk That comes to lick his feet. Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail Has seen above the illimitable plain, Morning on night, and night on morning rise, Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude Its shadowy mountains on the sunBound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed; And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet bright sea, Where the loud roarings of the tempest waves So long have mingled with the gusty wind In melancholy loneliness, and swept |