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D. '■■ '"^^^ I> ^ •''^" ~>> ^^►> >~3 » ' >.>>x r> :> ! 7!2> r> J D ' "2;^ ■ "^ ''-' :^»^> :> ^ 1^ >->>>- '"> ■ D ■_ISl^ ^ ' '3 ' ~2]^ :■>•) > '^^ > 3 > ?-!3^ ^I> ■ "!> ~ ~~^ > .■> " ^^jK^ y ^ z. ^'^'^^^ > '> ■" "^> "^ ■ '■ > TT > y ?)""'gSHi>"'7> '')' ^ ^ ~) ■■'.^> '^y >^ > ^ ^^^^S»^3 ' "> -J> ,», » 3> 3> ._^ _:> . 3 "^ > ^ > 5» > > ^^"^ :ii> -^ J>^ :3i> *:> i'. ^^> -^' 'r* , /"> rT» > 7> ~^> » •.^=" « LIFE. a pnrin. D. PARISH 'bARHYDT. NEW YORK: Wm. HOLDRIDGE, 140 FULTON STREET, 1851. ^<^\ o Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by D. P. BARHYDT, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. R. Craighead, Printer and Stcreotyper, 112 Fulton Street, New York. ST}) J l^onorablf AAPtON HACKLEY, THE FINE QUALITIES OF WHOSE INTELLECT ARE EMBELLISHED BY THE GENEROUS QUALITIES OF HIS HEART, THIS POEM IS INSCRIBED WITH THE AFFECTIONATE ESTEEM OF THE LIFE. Moments there are, when, as the lightning's flash Illumes too brightly for the dazzled eye A cloud-enwrapt and thunder-shaken earth, The flash of Inspiration suddenly Irradiates the unexpectant mind With overpowering brilliancy. A light Illumes eternity ; whose secrets bared — ■ In one electric moment is conceived Ideal excellence ; is opened all The rich aesthetic mine ; and felt the vast Inspiring comprehension of the Might Rules spirit worlds. The mental vision seems To pierce undreamed-of depths ; light calls to light ; Immortal answers to the Infinite ! 'Tis then the fountain is unsealed ; and thence Upbursts a gush of spiritual thought Our feeble words are impotent to paint, 1* 6 LIFE. Should they essay, when there the thirsty soul Returns to drink of Inspiration's flow, 'Twill find no slaking flavor of the deep. Life-ebullition stirred its far-off" depths. The gifts of language had but faintly traced, In faded image scarce discernible, The mysteries a lifted spirit read Though faint, e'en this within the kindred soul Wakes thoughts reflecting inspiration's glow To stir its nature as with magic power. Oft the caged bird with quick, impatient wing Beats hard the prison bars, its eager eye By new caught glimpse of brighter elements Fixed on its proper home. Convulsively At times the yearning spirit yields itself To momentary action, like the flight To come throughout Eternity's wide range. A view prolonged beyond that transient glimpse Were uncongenial with its earthly sphere. Nor sympathetic with the grosser acts Called forth by challenge of the passions hold Divided sway within the mortal bonds. BOOK THE FIRST. Kature. Thy valley, Alia, spreads afar, as some Titanic garden where the skies aye smile Their tribute, sunny 'mid their showery tears. Thy streamlets wind throughout the varying vale. And verdant slopes, by groves of laurel graced. Descend with all the elegance of ease ( Toward the amber of their polished flow. The flying hills from flying hills with clouds Retreat afar, till distance vanishes In dreamy haze, where curves o'erlapping curves, Half veiled in mystery, the quality Divine, are half in beauty. Nature's own. Exposed for pure enchantment of the soul. The brown and golden fields, with the deep green ' Of forest groves, in the rich sunlight catch The shadows of a hundred clouds, to charm As with a laughing Hebe's endless grace. The mist's deep azure on the distant chain Of belting mountains zones her waist with blue. i Thy mountain brooklets, pebbled, talk and sing 8 LIFE. With the rich music of her loving voice ; And thy clear lakelets glow and swim with all The liquid lustre of her bright blue eye. Alluring Alia ! type of Tempean vales ! The heart describes thee, while the hand but fails. 'Twas night. Within the mountains, deeply set, A lakelet lay. They bore it proudly, like A jewel worn on Aphrodite's breast. Where a great tree, a broad-leaved sycamore Of hoary trunk, cast prone to earth, embraced Our common mother with its filial arms, I lay upon the bank. The balmy air, Fraught full of sights and sounds, did wrap me round. Then was my mortal frame, full, tensive with Emotion, lift by the swoln force and power Of soul that throbbed so big within ; until It seemed that soul must 'scape the hold. And thus It was I scarce knew where I lay. It was Not sleep ; and yet it seemed a dream. Then I Did call on God to show himself to me, That I might know and love him, — for a spell Was strong upon me. Mortal as I was. The sight of God were death. Impossible ! Yet God was everywhere ; and would not hide All quality of Him from my bold quest, — Devoutful prayer ; for He is solely good. LIFE. 9 'Twas then the glance of His uplighting eye Shot throughout space. Darkness had ceased to be! And in the sunbeam of His look did float The motes, to me visible in starry worlds On worlds, strewn thick as dust in air. These worlds To me and motes to him. Oh ! they were more Than worlds to me ! In that they were but motes To Him, e'en motes to Him ; were aught to Him, Of Him, to me they were soul-like, and wore The face of life, held immortality ! Dear friends that link us with the fountain-head ! Strange stars ! I never have a thought of God But it doth seem a star ; nor ever see A star but it doth seem a thought of God. Bright mediums of purest sympathy, Entuning dormant hopes to voiceful prayer, I coin your brightness into gems of price Worth more to me than theirs to them who make Barbaric boasting of abundant wealth. The holy Saha, who at first did teach The patriarchal wisdom of the plains. The pure and reverential faith Sabean : — All active with a spiritual life, The precious ministers between the One Unnamed and awe-revered God, and they His undegenerate worshippers. Great stars ! A mighty priesthood, robed in lustrous light. 10 LIFE. They sweep along the blue enamelled aisles Of the cathedral heavens, domed by the Universe, hymning vespers till the morn When matins change the song : as in the first Chaldean's time, in solemn converse, still The intercessors with the Lofty One. The faithful sentinels outposted far To guard the citadel of God. Bright stars ! They pierce me with their pure electric light. And fill my being ; striking into life Hope, faith, and love — the triune All, that spring From beauty, and return to dwell therein. O Night ! that sweepest on with starry train. Majestic consort of imperial Day. O beautiful ! O Night ! that halving time Glideth by, the shadow of imperial Day. Oh ! lovely is the Night ! that ligh.teth up The universe with softer lustre. Kind, Oh ! kindly is the night ! that softeneth, That shadeth for our view infinity ; That shadeth for the weakness of our sight. That pitieth the weakness of our sight. O beautiful ! Night ! that slumbereth, That sleepeth, dreaming, on the lap of God. O beautiful ! O Night ! that bringeth out The starry homes, that weareth heaven on Thy face, that holdeth heaven in the smile That flitteth, floateth in thy dream, along LIFE. 11 The smiling of thy dream. O beautiful, Beloved ! O Night ! • Great trees stood up around me ; but no gro%'e Of Asphodel was there admitting griefs And ills of life ; the spirit that upheld Dominion of wrapt sense knew naught but love And joy. The trunks in many attitudes Described strange forms, varied and beautiful As grace ; abroad their thousand arms were thrown. Whence myriads of slender twigs outspread In graceful ease. Depending thence those leve. Loved leaves for ever pulsing with the breath They breathe unceasingly. Flecked was the sky With varying tracery infinite ; Diverse as every form of leaf and twig. With change of ceaseless motion multiplied. Umbrating light with shadows numberless As sands that bed the sea, these scattered o'er A sky at hand forms limned in beauty, like A starry host brought down to us — a host Breathfull and tremulous with living joy. O trembling leaves of changeful beauty ! I Could watch ye through the courses run by sun And moon and stars, in all their several lights, Forever painting on the concave blue. Whether commingling verdant light with gold In hues beyond imagination's art ; Whether with glint of sunlight, or. the wan 12 Sweet shimmer shed by moon and stars, ye wrap Yourselves in^eauty as a robe ! O wood I O forest well beloved, with matchless forms Of ever varied beauty ! ye trees, Sapfull of life, and leaved full of breath ! Within your bosky dells, where, golden green. The light peeps in and paints the grassy floor A carpet arabesque, 'tis heaven to lie And feel your spirit twining with mine own. And hear it speaking through your leafy tongues. foliated beauties ! ye are all My brothers and my sisters, beings dear ! Aye loving the communion held by us, 1 dwell with ye in heart for evermore ! With any Hamadryad nymph, I still Would every senseless Perebios threat. Who without spur of rank necessity Would lay alow a noble trunk, dear trees, Should labor profitless for evermore. The moon above the rocky pyramids Whose strength majestic crowned the curving sides Of mountains forest-iringed, glowed lustrously. The lakelet, polished, lay one half within The mountain's shadow ebony, and half Without was steel. Ne'er saw I mirror like It. Soon a rippling moved along its face, And every tiny crest that curled was lit LIFE. 13 By Luna's beams. It smiled on me like heaven ! I watched ! Each curling ripple that arose Above the perfect smoothness worn of late, Received a glow-worm's form and light ; and as I watched, they all came creeping on toward ; Though never they advanced ; for they but rose And fell, as infant riplets that may smile Ere yet they gather strength to creep ; and back From their smooth ebon cradle give the smiles Of mother Moon maternal bending o'er Them. Mother ! is thy spirit on the air, Or on»the ether of a purer flood Now floating in the silver radiance Illumes my spirit with celestial light ? The light is all thine own ! As in the days Of helpless innocence, and after years Of growing hopes, it was thy love that walked With me a holy presence, and my heart Nestled in thine, so now before thy robes Of radiant white, beneath thy raven locks Of waving grace, kneeling with clasped hands Within the peaceful light of thy calm smile. Serenely beautiful with light divine, My clinging spirit prays: O Mother, dear And guardian angel in thy holy walk Through earthly and celestial worlds, oh! leave Him not, but evermore as now enfold Thy purer presence round about thy child ! 2 14 Blest moon ! before whose face a lambent flame Was playing as a flame of glory, bright And pure ; glowing a light as of a soul Visible. Round her face another light Concentric held inclosed the soul, and shone The sapphire of the highest heaven supreme ; Such as may dome the seventh where dwells the light Effulgent veiling as a fleecy cloud — So dull were it beside that unseen face — The seventy times seventy, ay more. The infinitely brighter light of God's Annihilating face ! Moon, I love thee ! bright embalmer of the thoughts of bards And all bard-loving ! — ages handing down To ages — all embalming in the pure And sacred quality of beauty ; bright Lustrating type of Nature's harmony ! Thou, too, comest at my call. Then I did cry From out the depths, all fathomless, within My soul : — this, this is Beauty, and of Thee ! In Thee at first, and thence, by thy sole power Creative forth from Thee, to be recalled On thy unerring day ; and all through this Thy quality of Beauty rapt in me : And now am I become with Thee and it One All and all in One. Now take me, God ! — Translate from out the stagnate bonds of this Harsh ligature that binds my soul in cere LIFE. 15 Of mortal mould — lay me upon some marge Like this in any starry world, and let Me fold Thy Beauty round me as a rapt Thought that shall dwell unchangingly On these and Thee ! Oh ! Beauty is a life, A spirit dwelling all abroad, within. Without ; a fair familiar that may fly. May fetch and carry, penetrate the heart And centre of the central orb of all To mine the richest gems whose lustre glows Dazzling to sense and gladding heart of love ; May skim the surface of remotest life. And gild the blackest with effulgence all Divine : sheer through all space on tireless wings It flies and gives a quality, where else 'Twere void : familiar faithful ! that may tell In tongue its own whate'er this soul most craves, Most needs to know, its home is everywhere. Yet at my call it shall obedient Forever minister to me — ay, here And there eternally ! And Love shall give A tongue wherewith some may translate, as fire Shall light the darkness of a brooding air. The swelling Thought and crushing feeling of The universe — pulsations of the heart 16 LIFE. Of God, creator, and creation's soul ! Giving supernal power to beat, as sledge And anvil thunder on the burning bar. The glowing human heart to better form. Though the big bar's unmalleate when cold. Heated by Love, the iron heart will mould. Hail Love and Beauty — Cupid, Psyche ! Soul Of Love and all-pervading Beauty ! call Divine expression from your worshippers ! Beyond the classic art that deftly wove The mythic fiction wedding godlike Love To spiritual Beauty, thence become Immortal ; when the Hours with roses hung High heaven ; the Graces throwing perfumes round ; And to the music of Apollo's lyre. While Venus danced, the Arcadian God attuned His reeds, and all the Muses chorussed joy. Oh ! I will revel in thy beauty, lay My head upon thy bosom. Earth, and live In dalliance with thee, Egeria ! Nay, I will kneel before thy vestal shrine, And wear thy name upon my reverent lips For the divinity that guides my steps To contemplation of the Sovereign Cause. O virgin mother of the common all. What sin can do will ne'er pollute thee. Earth ! II: LIFE. 17 Nor to the eye alone, — came music for the ear. The softer zephyrs and the fresh'ning breeze Were touching myriads of foliate lyres ; And lulling notes of melodies were heard In peaceful recognition of the tones Nature harmoniously hymns. They come, Spelling the spirit with a magic sweet With wish for evermore continuance. In lightest rustlings tremulously breathed At hand by the scarce moving leaflets — those That fairly in all forms of tracery Paint the near sky. Hearken, rapt ear ! From far Tree tops that fringe the mountain's crest, along The hollow of the greeny vale, are borne The swelling tones a mighty forest breathes To heaven and poureth surging over earth. Majestic murmurings to mournful man A higher Power's sympathy impart ; And these do voice our swoln emotions with Such full sublimity of sound as fills The roused immortal worship-full of praise. Ye cloud-rapt forest lords ! Oh ! I would ride Upon your billowy tops, mingling my voice With the near surge and swell of your loud cadence. There was a quiet sound of summer eve, A sound of many sounds, heard often thus. From distant meadows borne toward this heart 2* 18 And centre. There is a calm beatitude Of Nature in her dreamy scenes like this, A melancholy music in her voice, 'Gendering the sadness of a deeper joy. An all-subduing power, with gentle touch. Doth make us feel and hear it, on the ear Of inner self tinkling in harmony. For as the living human face doth wear The sanction of a soul, perceptible In influence, though unperceived itself. So are the things of Nature visible, With influences circumfused that pierce The interspace, and reach us with a touch. As from a spirit of Great Nature's own. Oh ! never can this mind, this heart or soul Forget the lesson of an hour beside Thy speaking face, fair Nature ! Nor can I, Though sightless, earless, with the wavering gait Of a wan confidence approach the Works Divinely wrought surrounding. Ne'er will fade From memory's graven tablet all was there Revealed of placid beauties, a serene And even happiness that were in rare Perfection felt : of an aspiring sense (Or something subtler 'twas than sense for which Imperfect language hath no name) that rose Within me ; not as introduced then first. But lying dormant, and awakened there By angel messengers invisible. 19 Yet visible to that more subtle sense Just waked and teaching with a flow, as sweet And fitly genial as the milky food An infant takes, much knowledge of far worlds And higher orders of existences With fine impairless powers that I should share. — If not a knowledge, unpresuming, would I say a thought : and with it others came Of greatest Power, intensest Light ! that spread Wide flowing volume upon volume, rolled World beyond world, each brighter than the last, Interminably on. Presence Divine ! Seen, known, and felt to be unseen, unknown. The unpremeditated thought of such An hour, awakened by that subtler sense Or mantle of harmonious Nature worn A light concentric round the lustrous soul. At such a time assumed investiture Of volume, then familiarly put on In ample radiance, and seemed at once To grow a soul, if not inaptly such The word for what hath no expression save In the sublime communing of a vision. Not to the eye alone doth minister The fair Familiar, — Filling full the air And ear, from bird and beetle, cicala And tiny locust life came melodies, Trilling and chirping in excess of joy ; 20 LIFE. Until it seemed that every leaf and blade Was tenanted for concert of sweet praise. With deepening night settling to sounder sleep Above the nestling of her gathered brood. The plaining pigeon from her covert called — A solitary cry ! And all the sharded tribes, as paladins In march, with rattling armor struck the air. From far and near came many melodies. Tones high and low, notes shrill and soft from life Whose instinct was to joy in beauty — praise ! Most holy power and purpose, wish and will ! And used beyond the practice men uphold : Used ever, and with every breath a joy, A praise, a prayer of love and faith, a voice All life created to Creator sends : From the invisible Intelligence, whose breath Sways the visible universe as wave The willows pendent in the viewless air. To God All good ! Oh ! life is everywhere, And death is naught ; while life is ever love ! What are the pomps and the puerilities. The powers and passions, sodden greatness dull, And bustling nothings ; the chasing hopes, and fears Fast flying ; what the low ambitions, high Desires, the crawling pride, and vanity Outsoaring clouds, outroaring wind, of earth 1 LIFE. 21 Oh ! what is all that we do gather up With one great sweep of thought and hold con- densed In one mean word — the World ! What are they all To this whose breath is one full hope, a faith, — To such most high communing with these things Of nature ; to the interchange of breath In the deep breathings of His works upheaved From their unsleeping spirit ; to the throb Of pulse oij|.pulse imparting most intense Vitality and rousing like within, Awakening power and deep serene delights, — To Nature's grandeur, aye the only great, Whose order only no confusion racks. Whose beauty only never wearies sense. Upon whose harmonies no discords clash, — To the still life commoving hushedly In silent melodies that fall upon The inner sense with spirit-stilling force. Winged from far mysteries, while the soothed soul Bows low, rejoicing in their influence, — To the full murmurings of the vast Soul That filleth and encompasseth moon, stars. Lake, trees, and insect life, and me, and God ! And is all Beauty, Love, Divine ! Is in All these, of Him, and maketh purified. Observant and absorbing me with Him One indivisible complete for aye. 22 LIFE. Not seldom when the steady force of such Was on me, in the rapter mood that laid The spirit to a quiet rest within The shadow of great Nature's hills, that reach Alway to heaven ; and oft thereafter too In busy moments when her face hath swept Before me like the phases of a dream, A rising thought of the rude world, a sense That broke upon me of antagonism ; A feeling of a crush, a trampling rush Amid a dusty and breath-thickened gloom (Dim lighted lobby crowded with a rush For narrow doors to some theatric show), And a great roar of evil passions where The intermittent lull was only that Design of smoother artifice, not thence Unslacking in the hot pursuit of ends Deadly destructive to a neighboring self Hath sickened me, repugnant, to the soul ! Of more or less duration was the pain, Always endured until a quality, An element of somewhat in itself. That thought or sense ; in open nature read ; Or held in me — an atom of the whole Enlinking man and things of nature chained In one great scheme created — springing up A sense of Man as crowning work disposed And prominent to view, informed my soul Of ends and purposes to serve. And then LIFE. 23 Upon the front of this sore-soothed heart Two words were burned — Labor and Love ! O ample Love ! O infinite ! eterne As human soul. Such taking purest food, With yearnings schooled to loftiest aims, that when Athirst the dew of constant Nature quaff — Fresh Castaly for ardent mind — most fit For love, absorb and yield degree with that Most noble height of God-ward aim attained. Kinds numerous hath Love as Nature's forms : It hath a home among the sunset clouds, In fancy taking all familiar shapes ; A smile, soul-lighted, in the birken sheen ; A music quavering on the aspen leaf ; A modest grace in lowly violets ; A voice that sighs among the lofty pines ; That breathes solemnity in beechen shades ; That moans in sadness through the leafless boughs ; Or flows harmonious with the moving stream ; A throng of memories hath Love that whirl With withered leaves in autumn's eddying blasts ; Phases for each emotion of the soul ; Each form of beauty decking universe. 1/ A soul's capacity for love augments With usage here — and so eternally. Without that happy phase of Charity 24 LIFE. This mystery eludes our vigilance, Unhood us as we may. We think we love And 'tis ourselves alone that's dear to us. We love and know it not, though, wind-like, pulse And Will drive onward under secret power. Without to love, this life is living death, And joys do have no weight with us, but all Are faint as shadows of forgotten dreams. With that to love which loveth in return. The very bale and woe of life opprest Yields grateful comfort, as the balm leaf crushed Emits a fragrance held until e.xprest. With one to share enjoyment of the hour Devote to Nature's beauties, fairer all ; There cherished recollections are upheld In monumental trees that never cease Renewal ; hills that shadow day by day. Handed with Time, the images of Thought, The changeful features of the beating heart. Thought digs a gulf between its votaries And unreflective minds, but Love will throw A bridge, a scimeter's keen edge in width. Whereon the student Nature owns may pass — As favored prophet on Al Sirat's edge — For priestly union ministrant to men. Love is an ever active spirit, dwells Throughout a vasty sea of atoms, matter, all : And it doth sometimes billow, roll and lash LIFE. 25 The universal whole, tempestuous. In swells that rock Eternity upon Its broad foundations of God's soul And being ; and again it whispereth. And, gliding smoothly forward, ripples come. Come plupping liquidly on mortal ears, Kissing the marge with childhood's pulpy lips. And lull the spirit softlier than doth The humming music of the tiny bird. Sweet lakelet ! let me lay my cheek to thiine^, And feel the kisses that entrance mine ears. Dear Alia ! often through the summer hours Are thy soft wavelets talking thus to me, — Two sweetest voices blending into one- — My Child's — my God's ! Father, I am thy child ! And I am father too ! My senses bathed In liquid murmurings, I lave my soul In thine. My Father, child and I, the links Triune of soul ! Thy symbol teaching Truth ! Our children are those better angels that Do lake a form and substa.nce visible. At all times visitants from God to men, And with as many saving lessons charged As swayed by tireless change of active grace. Comes a blue-eyed chubby face, At a tottling toddling pace. With a forehead white and bold, 3 26 LIFE. Waving locks of burnished gold. And a dimple jointed arm, Like a cushion, soft and warm ; Coming toddling, coming on. Little milky breathing one. Like the echo of a rill Rippling down a woodland hill. Sweetly breathes a slender voice — Zephyrs sighing for a choice. Sighing vainly to compete. Having nothing half so sweet — While is floating in the ear : — " Mother — home — father dear." Open ear and bending neck Carefully forbear to check Downy dimpled cushions clinging. Sweet imperfect accents ringing — Clinging yet, ringing yet, Wrapping round it, in it set. Till the heart now warm and swollen, All its secrets quickly stolen. All its treasures w'e can see Opened by that little key. — Key of arm clinging round. Key of so/tly ringing sound. Ringing there, floating yet ; Singing — " father — mother — pet." O the heart is full of music Where the children's voices dwell — LIFE. 27 Voices heard in earnest gushings, Gushing truthful from a well. Visioned now a form and face Pass in beauty and in grace Green and graceful branches waving, Golden sunshine richly laving. — List ! the motion heard unseen, When its mossy sides between Softly glides a streamlet slow. Lending lulling murmurs low. — List ! a tone familiar, mild. Blending — " husband — home — our child." Yea, Love is more than spirit ; it is soul ; ' For it is God's own essence pure : and that It then did glide into my soul, and held Me with its power distent ; far spreading out My being till it touched all time and space. Creation and eternity, I rose — And knelt ; knelt lowly on a rock that lay Firm bedded in the marge. Then turned my fac& Towards the o'erarching face of heaven above. And dipping of the water with my hand, I thrice did east it upward, and did thrice Behold th' outspreading drops — lit with a blaze Of gem-light in the high moon's glance — ascend- In sacrificial fire of Heaven's own gift, — ■ My soul's oblation to the Beautiful ; My worship's sacrifice to God the Soul ! BOOK THE SECOND, And kneeling there, the world unrolled itself Before me as a scroll. And over all A light shone steadily. A light that pierced The heart of earthly things, as sunbeam through A dewdrop. Evil then and Truth I saw- In all. I put strange question to my soul : And ever those twin oracles, the stern Experience that has endured and lives Hopeful, and Love, both blending into truth. Spake prompt reply. And every question and Its answer did resolve into one loud. Strong cry for God. If such be, what is Fame? O tireless toiler up an endless steep ! And struggling striver in a world of strife ! The world is like unto a serpent ; once He hears thy stumbling or triumphant treads 3* 30 LIFE. Then quick, his full envenomed tongue thrust forth Will sting thee, Achilles ! in the heel. This the world's meed of fame thou'lt live to feel. Then, shall the poison circulate with each Swift coursing of thy noble blood ! It rests With thee. Love maketh to itself a home In hearts wherein 'tis born, not drawn from source Extraneous. 'Tis not received, but born Spontaneous, and ever to itself Its life and food. Within the heart wherein It feeds and nestles Love imparteth power, And coloring and essence antidote, To the swift blood ; and the envenomed sting Shall never taint the fount, nor wring it with A pang. 'Tis self-subduing Love that wins The prize — with all its sufferings suffering not Defeat. In Love receiving, giving all. Therein alone thy fame may rest secure. For Love is Charity, Truth, Beauty, Fame ! Where is the anchor of a storm -tossed soul ? I see thee, Hope, bright gleam of God-light ! blest Dispenser of His purest rays that glow A halo round His face of Love. — Bright Power! That, poised upon thy outstretched wings of light Divine, dost bend above the heavy heart And lift the leaden weight that crushes out LIFE. 31 Its blood in the perse clottiiigs of despair ! Leaving the ruby tide to flow the course Of flooding happiness. O faithful friend ! Last to desert the seat of human pain, In whatsoever heart it dwells, thou art The gravitating force that holdeth all The sister powers firm tending toward God. We dream and dream ; we wish, and hope, and doubt ; And then return to Hope. No magnet draws So strong. As needles we but oscillate, And then to point again. Uncertain dip And variation, as the elements Terrestrial let up or draw for earth And hell, alway prevail to mock our charts With self-complacent wisdom drawn for heaven. We oscillate ; we change. — And what is change ? On swift and noiseless wing, the thoughtful hours Approached. A sapphire sky has worn the hue It takes when fading day reveals the full Orbed moon to view. How fair she seems to us ! While from around her vapor- dimmed face Stream forth the wat'ry rays, like the loosed hair Blown out from grieving beauty's orbid brow. Through swift mutations, all the mists dispersed. She beams again irradiate with smiles. As though unused to tears, or wearing grief 32 LIFE. But as the semblance of an envious veil Provoking contrast where reality Outshines itself for more effective end. Roll on your trackless way, ye worlds of thought ! — The Stars ! companionable visitors, And company when greater ones are gone ; Suggestive ever, loved the best ; with whom We hold the sweet and solemn converse felt When spirit gently unto spirit calls ; These silent, yet impressive, speaking stars Have paled before the night orb's brighter glow As she in turn will fade before the glare A burning sun will deluge earth withal. And that great luminary too, whose glance At morn touches the glad earth like the smile Of God upon a garden, will resign The empire where it gloriously reigned. So do events o'ercrest each other on The shore of Time, each driving each far down The measureless abyss of all the past. Each frothing through the measure of its power To lose its strength in bubbles of the air. As circumsrtlnce doth hurry circumstance Along the crankled current of events. Wave chaseth wave, and billow loud outroars Its fellow — all for ever shifting place. LIFE. 33 And dashed in turn by reproducing Time. And this is life ! in ev'ry vain essay For ever seeking, never to attain The ever changing purposes of man. And this his power and triumph, that dissolves In airy bubbles of the yeasty waves. Yet is there more beyond, if we will look again. The wave doth bear a jewel in its breast — The choice concretion of unmeasured seas — By Time, through long uncounted process, wrought To rich transparent amber. Oft it holds Embalmed what else had perished. In the waves That bear the ruddered or unruddered man On the swoln sea of circumstance, exist The richer elements of concrete Truth. The constant working in a ceaseless surge Of these, the purer thoughts and purposes, The reverential hopes and sympathies. Are ever casting up the precious gem. High on the endless shore that bounds the main Of Time the precious amber-droppings fall. Holding embalmed the silent better deeds Of ev'ry billow-beaten mariner. As swift event succeeds event, and in The bosom of the wave that beats the shore 34 LIFE. Of Time a truth is held — while stars go out. Moon sets, and mighty sun sinks out of sight. The thunder roll of systems of the worlds In billows rolling on eternal shores. Doth hold its truth : — mere creatures these — while high The rush tumultuous of crystal globes On crystal globes upheaped, in cresting foam Invades the awful strand, dashing afar The dazzling spray in glowing fragments of The shivered suns — not more than bubbling power Of frothy circumstance, the final end, Nor e'en the cause. — A changeless Cause exists, A Power controls ; this only worship we. What is Power ? It is with song, with word. Or thought, full freighted with the beautiful, To call the soul into a living face. — The face of man or woman ; thine, O Moon ; Thine, mountain hoar that shoulderest the heavens ; Thine, lake that lispeth love so liquidly ; Thine, faithful stars ; thine, changeful trees ; the face Of all supernal, all beloved below. Thus with the wand Imagination call The spirit of near Nature up. There is A tonic in the very exercise LIFE. 35 Of such that sets it up with springs of steel And tunes the mind to unconceived power. To summon soul into the beaming eye ; Behold it gleaming, swelling, rolling ; see It bound and leap like the held courser ripe For the race ; to feel it springing forth from out The half-restraining body to elance Itself into thine own stirred soul : then launch Themselves together on the very vast And surge of an Eternity that rolls. Unceasing and tumultuous, a sea Of souls. There to interpret each to each Its truth : sublimest Nature's active force Infused. And this is joy, eternal joy ! Sole measurement of Time, sole rod and chain, Sole weight and scale may stretch to amplitude Of spirit life, or may disintegrate The atoms that make up Eternity. And this is Poesy, work for the bard To whom Eternity is Soul and Love. How deal the Power ? Who is the Bard ? Of Faith— What is it ? Whither tendeth earth and man 1 The world lay ope before me as a scroll : Of evil then and truth I saw in all — The past and future grew a present one. 36 LIFE. Behold ! the Cycles of past Ages rise From their grim sepulchres — weird sisters, wan And mournful. Folding their grey robes about Them, bowed, they stand expectant. Light de- scends. Filling the air ignite, celestial. See ! Slow moves the train in file, ghast spectres of The unreclaiming Past, with inward rage Enforced ; for the complying Powers admit The tribute sternly claimed by Coming Time. As they march, each putting forth a shaking arm. With her weird finger writes upon the air Dark characters — like serpents numberless Cast on a sunlit sea. Back to their tombs The ghosts of Ages sink, loud shrieking ! Left Behind, their awful signs engross the air. Writhing and bubbling ; omens strange, and dread Ingredients cast in magic cauldron fired For fell intent. Supernal light grows dark Behind the awful fermentation. Lo ! The cauldron contents horrible, self-stirred. Inbreeding hideous life with self, o'erflow All space. Dread wings, grown bat-like, spread throughout. And flout the heavens, impious ; while foetid du-st, Outshaken from their folds, covers all earth And intermediate things with a foul life, As of the creeping dust- life of the grave, Corruption fed. LIFE. 37 Dread shades of buried Past ! Is such your mission 1 Tends thus the time To come '? Behold ! a Star rayed through the storm Struggles to life. The dark mass yawns awide, And a new light supernal beams abroad, New silvered, purer. Earth is glad : as there Upon the yeasty waves, when sombre night Has dropped a thousand veils on ocean's face, And smiting billows dart like forking flames, A struggling bark rolls heavily. Its crew. Without a warning compass to relieve The dread of storm-lashed coasts, feels suddenly The grateful calm of a rude wind at rest ; And then, as when the unseen rocky roof Of a wide cavern by an earthquake's stroke Is rent, and through the fissure darts the light Of heaven, the moon pours down its silvery flood Upon a hundred lifted faces, straight With hope all smiling. Less than they of joy Those merry maidens round the maypole know ; Where eyes of jet are flashing brightly ; eyes Of blue are dancing lightly ; zephyrs gay With tresses play ; breasts of snow, cheeks aglow. And twinkling feet, in circles fleet, with beat And chime keep flying time ; with throbbing breasts 38 LIFE. In swift accord kissing the sward in fresh And loving gladness. Youths come tripping, too, Love-lorn and fancy thralled. The frolic love, The maiden love, the lamblike love, the light And gambol love's aglow. Now two and two, Pair on, pair off, and love is phasing like The wax and wane of Luna with the rise And glare of burning Sol co-rounding light With light, and light for heat. Changeful with skip And loll, or fast, or slow, now to and fro The couplings go. Through dimming paths that crook. For bower and nook with loving song they go. The visions lengthen. Call the nations up ! Thick as the blazoned banners hung in old Ancestral halls, or Chapel of St. George, Hung out by Time, they float before my eyes. Behold the Genius of the Coming Age ! Clothed with the thunder of Niagara, Erect above its wondrous verge he stands And looks along the awful Past. Lo ! where A fangless Serpent, glittering, golden scaled. Uncoils itself in the broad sun to bask. Rearing aloft a head whereon the world Looks long with cries of wonderful, it turns LIFE. 39 And buries deep in earth, its sepulchre By a winged lion tombed. A river- god Breeds Titans from the spawn of crocodile. ' Mountains are lift. Winged globes descend, And, pinion-bound, roll down a pyramid ; Where mighty waves of sand engulph the whole. In the first flush of robust youth, so fair, A Virgin lifts a Phrygian cap upon A javelin, qnd worships. See her next Upstanding proud beside a god, in high Triumphal car loud thundering along A bloody plain. Receiving straight divine Afflatus, she conceives and^ears new gods With higher attributes, peopling therewith The universe. She re-creates an earth And heaven that blend in one ; and her strange power Makes beauty grow a petrifaction. Lo ! A change. The javelin has fallen prone Before a figure, purpled, diademed. An Empress robed in purple stolen from The sun, her foot upon the world's neck plants ; Lifts the tiara from her blood-streaked brow And casts it in a crater. Haught she stands. Loud mutterings announce conceiving throes, — 40 LIFE. The molten birth o'eiflows, — destroying rage Sweeps on, and two white arms wave wildly o'er The flood, that cools, dead Glory to embalm For time. Where, art-enshrined, in fragments, all Immortal of decay, the stelene marble sows The reverent earth. With face of Juno's mould, A Form, in white and crimson robes, against A broken column leaning, dreams of Art And Glory. Dream of false and true ! Dov/d swoops An eagle double-headed, and with black Wings, flapping fiercely, smites her blind ! Be- hold !— Mid dust and ruins gioping, darkness cursed, Bebaddled, impotent, — Immortal Death ! A Queen stands forth ! Her glowing, golden locks Float on a neck of snow. One hand is on A lion's mane with a subduing power. The other grasps a trident ; and the pride Of empire beams from out the skiey blue Of her star-lighted eyes. Her children group Around her, and the restive lion smites Them with his paw. Their blood besprinkles earth. And messengers spring up that far and wide I LIFE. 41 Go forth to sow harsh-husks inclosing tares With seeded kernels sound — the germs of world- Regenerating fruit — and thunder with A double tongue, Freedom and Tyranny ! Lo ! new Hesperian shores ! whereon a bark — As some lone Albatross far flown from haunts Familiar — touches a seaweed-bearded prow. A comely band debark and kneel in prayer : Before them spread an open Book of Life. Bronzed hosts collect beneath the beechen boughs. Wondering — pausing to pass the pipe of peace. Hid by the friendly cloud, a monster comes, Four-footed, hideous in scales, with jaws That yawn awide, he crawls among the band Whispering of land. Then loud a rifle's crack Swift signals slaughter. Whoopings yell return. Where now tlie beechen shade and the dusk forms Were gathered there 1 A woodman's axe rings ckar Reply ! Two watery arms infold an isle Orove-shaded to the shore. A warm white hand Clasps peace around dark fingers stiff with pride. Where honest thrift burghers a fieldy town. Afar from dykes familiar, traffic trod. Where noble sons of art and science dwell .Ajid conscience independent knowledge leads,. 4* 42 LIFE. Content reposes on the ready lap Of Probity, nor dreams to ask of Time — Shall great Manhattan Babylon the world 1 Where the hot sun rides ever high, a small Embrowned crew as centaurs ride. Their hearts- Hug lust of gold with passion's hot embrace. Among a swarthy crowd, gorgeous, arrayed In plumage of gay birds, and on whose lips Is peace,, they charge. One hand is holding high A cross, the other wields a sword. Blows fall Like hail among the feathered crowd. See now,, A mount of bloody corses ! At the top A planted cross mocks Calvary to tears. Hell laughs volcanic throes. The outraged -Son ^ Beside the Father throned on high, looks down And frowns denial. There an Eden land Through centuries lies orderless. And groups Of Ages, struck with consternation dumb. Stand veiled behind the great eclipse of Christ ^ Later in time. His look the circuit sweeps. A land with high, low, moist and dry extends Through arctic, temperate, and torrid clime.. A land felicitously made, where spread Afar those grassy seas, the prairies, flower Enamelled, broadest provinces of mead ! Whose roaming droves of buflfalo are scarce Outnumbered by the stars that sweetly smil^ I LIFE. 43 Bright welcomes to the flowers below. Great land! Whose lakes as seas link after link expand : Forests for ages may resound with cries Of the wild huntsman ; where through all great streams Meander with continuous flow whereon May float the commerce of a world-wide main. Where vasty grandeur every feature marks On Nature's face sublimely borne. There see The worshipped javelin uplift anew, Crowned as of old. With prouder hopes upraised ; Far higher than Olympus raised above A hemisphere where broader ground invites The wide earth's millions to the rite. Held now By yet another Virgin, not less fair. Her iron car, drawn by leviathan With breath of fire, is thundering along A plain begrained. A cornucopia Held lygh pours wealth of all along the way. New fire from heaven she wrests ; and hourly saith To the winged lightnings — go and do my best ! And they obey. And new creations hers, Not less immortal, where great gods of peace And plenty head the train. A Pallas, great And godlier than of old, at every hearth Fulfils her mission, feeding vulgar minds Co-equal with the great. Hope of the world And special care of heaven ! the heart-sick hosts 44 LIFE. Of all the world in panting crowds make haste To touch her robe ; and at the touch made whole, Leap up informed with life anew. See now ! She stands majestic : from her eyes the fire Of inspiration and of matchless might. Far-flashing beacon of wide hopes, streams forth. Rooted upon the everlasting rock, Proudly she looks upon opposing waves, — That lash its base as raged with bloody scourge Bellona round the walls of Troy. Their cry. Destruction ! heard in loud hoarse murmurings, sounds Joyous in despot's ears ; a knell to all Who hope for man. Innoxious strife ! kind heaven With watchful care protects the maid. A wail Of sorrow from high places borne has drowned The uproar, while a broad-winged angel fctfm Comes shouting — " commercial freedom sinew limb To limb !" and straight abashed, the waves are stilled. Yet o'er this land the Genius looks. Lo, where Pacific seas uphold pacific strife With Orient for world dominion ! where, With all concentrate winds the millions rush LIFE. 45 From distant Ind, high Araucania, Frorne Caucasus and burning Afric sands, — Celt, Saxon, Malay, Tartar, Aztec, Gaul: Where greatest Nimrods bleed the quartzy rock. And aureate veins flood deserts. Gain is sun. — Musquito-bred, the rush of cities springs, 'Twixt morn and eve, to life peopling the wastes. Earth through the rounded cycle of a moon Unwatching slumbers, while the yellow blood Sows dragon teeth to flux the prairie where The cicala alone broke silence, — wakes. And rubs its doubting eyes before the hived Hum metropolitan. Eureka ! and An empire springs to life. Art strews her gems Around. Luxury clothes herself in gold. And sinks unsheltered at Privation's feet To moan. Gain laughs and groans. Virtue is sick — Now raging fevered, then collapsed with chill. Law lisps its legend lore in adder ears. Vice shrieks a laugh, and to his leper breast Hugs lust and murder, riotous. Death stalks Among unheeded, while he swings his scythe Reeking with blood and flesh corrupted. Still The hosts unsated throng around Nevada. His gaze drops down. At hand upon a rock O'ertopping hills of foam, a figure swart And tall leans on an unbent bow. His hair. 46 LIFE. Black, floating far, by a lone eagle's plume Enerowned. Lifting his stern, sad eyes, he starts ! And shivering to a fit, falls headlong, — lost In the foana below. The Genius drops a tear, Turns slowly, and his look leaps far beyond. A Lion, fierce and hot, red-eyed with thirst, Laps at the sea. Maddened, he turns, and roars Consuming rage. An eagle, eyried strong. Rock-hemmed and forest-built, beyond the sea Hears the loud cry of Want, bears on his flight. And in the lion's lolling mouth upturned Lets fall the drops beak-borne from his far home. The GAiius waves august command — and lo ! Beside a portal, grim and ghastly War Stands sentinel : winged Glory plumes his helm, Half poised for flight across where Peace erect Co-sentry stands. By thunders and the flash Electric of recorded thought announced. Issues the Age : War starts dismayed, and half Obeisant bends : Peace frowns and grasps Wear's sword : Catching fit element whereon to spread Her wings. Glory receives the Age's breath. Soars high, and circling o'er the head of Peace, Descends to crown her radiant brow. BOOK THE THIRD. While yet I knelt in that swift moving dream ^ Wherein the ages ran their gleaming round Through the mere point of all-contracted time And space, the crystal drop and magic lens Of reflex spiritual, lo, heavenly sight ! The Genius of the Coming Age stood forth Seraphic at my side. Not more erect, Of face so I'airly radiant with grace. Nor clothed in such effulgent panoply Of wings that mantled regally his breast, Or spread as golden suns to brighten earth, And plumes majestic that divinely shed A heavenly fragrance round, that Raphael, sped From God first messenger to earliest man In virgin bowers admonished. Nor his tones. With conscious weight of mighty import held. More fraught with eloquence sublime — in sweet Mellifluous flow or roll of deeper thought Developed — than the voice that filled mine ear. 48 LIFE. " Before Time was that is ; the sought and shunned, The snatcher up of incomplete designs ; Ere Chaos ruled, I lived atomic in The Essence forth from Him divergent — He Almighty, sole Original. With swift Uriel, on a beam of light sent forth To warn the guarding Gabriel of wiles On Eden prey intent, I beamed abroad A co-eternal life. All ages me Subserve. Mine is it to express from past For coming time. Bold questioner of thine Own soul and God ! the Key of Love hath oped To view Hope, Beauty, Fame, and Power. The Past, The buried and the breathing nations came. Rose quickly on thy quest of Power's use. Of Bard, of Faith and Man's determined course, And I would press the knowledge on thy heart." Then eager and enwrapt through force of thaV Already seen and heard, thus I to him : — " O Messenger celestial ! Power divine ! With reason strung, to utmost bias bent Of reverent scholar for his master's lore, And all attent of ear, awaiting I Beseech communing free." LlJ^E. 49 t Then he to me : — *' First came an age when faith was simply pure. Political nor philosophical Dominion held of mind ; the gush of thought Spontaneous in primitive belief Was general consciousness of God. And man Was only man ; content to look above Himself for attributes of deity. To own responsibility to One Divinity high over self. Then from The side where flamed the Cherubim to guard Arboreous way, they looked upon the plain Whereon primeval Enoch rose in Nod : Bearing the name of he through Lamach sire Of Jabal, father of the tented herd Attenders. Then his brother Jubal choired First hallelujahs to the God of all In dulcet symphony of harp and peal Of sounding organ : kin of Tubal Cain,- First of the cunning hand in brass and iron. Once, where the Iroquois with spreading flow Receives fresh seas for laden ocean's brim, The stern Mohegan sacrificed to One Great Spirit bloody trophies of his foe. Created with a soul instinct to feel A God, man worshipped him sublime in truth Till human passions, combating, attained A power corruptive. Then came ages when Men learned from men, and passion deified, 6 50 LIFE. And passion dealt the blow laid low t|jeir gods. Seen through the mists of time, the Deity, And heroes near at hand ; the attributes Of moral force ; and powers of earth and air In action felt, confusedly grew one. From out this ample fund material And incorporeal, confounded strange, Was multiplied, as the occasion called, The families of gods to suit all needs. Men saw the gloom of night, the light of day, And gave to each its proper soul distinct. Then Erebus and Night from Chaos sprang, And Nox and Erebus, great gods, produced Fair Day and Ether, kindred gods of might. Men slept and dreamed, and lo ! two sons of N.0X, Somnus and Morpheus, were deities. The sun's rays warmed, and Mithras rose a god; Upon the barren earth, impersonate In Danae, his descent in golden showers That fertilized begat fertility. Personified in Perseus. He who With golden sword the baleful Gorgon killed That typified the pale unwarming moon Whose power turned soil to sterile stone. And Sol, Called Helios, with his ray-encircled head, Was born of Theia and Hyperion. The fierce tornado strewed with wrecks the shore. LIFE. 51 And men beheld Ocypete the swift, Aello, storm, Celeno the obscure. Three furious Harpies raging swift of wing. Love warmed the heart of man ; and Beauty called Delight, and shed a glow of pleasure, calm In full fruition of supremest joy, Throughout his being. Then greatest Zeus begat Of blooming Dione the goddess fair Of love and beauty, Aphrodite, crowned By the Hours, while Cupids and the Graces hung Attendant on her dove-drawn chariot's way ; And round her waist a zone of mystic power, A love-inspiring zone, imparted grace And beauty. Then the chaste Diana bore The splendors of the crescent moon upon Her silver bow, and loved to sport amid The deeper beauties of the forest wood : Where young Endymion in beauty slept That drew the goddess from her azure way Stooping to print her only kiss of love. " Of greatest deeds, beneficent or strong. The men arose for death to deify. Great Djemschid, he who led nomadic tribes Of Iran old from chill Tartarean wilds. Mount Albora and source of Oxus down To sunny Var : who founded Istakhar, The lost Persepolis entombing race Of royal Acheemenides, from him 52 LIFE. Derived, through hallowing Time to Perses raised — From Perseus sprung — as fabled demi-god, Mithraic oped the Persian soil to use. Brave Theseus who in Epidaurus slew The cruel Periphates, daily couched In ambush for the traveller whose blood Imbued the savage giant's hideous club. And by Megara's side, upon the sea O'erhanging path encountering Sciron, threw Him o'er to meet a fate the savage dealt On those who sought his roof. At Hermione Upon the dread Damastes wrought the pain Procrustean long put upon his guests. Who offered up himself a victim with The tribute yearly fed the Minotaur, Half human and half bull in Cretan cave, And with the guiding thread, enchanting gift Of Ariadne's budding love, achieved The labyrinth, o'ercame the monster dire. And rid his country of a tribute paid In sons and daughters fair and dear to all. The hydra-strangling Hercules, and strong Subduer of the Nemean lion through Whose hide no arrow pierced. The hero who The guarding dragon slew ; and gathered then The golden apples of Hesperides. Who wrested from the grasp of Orcus grim And then to Thessaly's sore grieving king LIFE. 53 Restored the dead Alceste, spouse beloved. And self-destroyed to save his royal life. The unforgiving Danaus, v^^ho bade His fifty daughters bathe their nuptial beds Red with their unsuspecting bridegrooms' blood That fearful night w^hen only one escaped ; And reigned in Argos — ancient city, best Beloved of Juno. Old Egyptus vi'ho First won the Delta from the blacker race ; Both sons of the Phsenician Belus — not The Assyrian of that name, great Bali, known As Baal, oriental god, and held High Assabinus Ethiop lord, one god With Apis on the Nilan shore — but he Of Epaphus descended, sire of that Great Cadmus, founder of Titanic Thebes, Who carried letters to the darksome land. Conquered Illyria and was its king. The Epaphus great lo's son, begot By Jupiter, and founder of the race That over Hellas reigned : as Isis known, The lo sired by Inachus the old, • A flowing stream of Oceanus born. Great heroes all ! of strange heroic times ; Some real men once living, fabled more, Resolving back their parentage within The womb of elements and greater powers Than they, the types of mythic meaning deep And clear, — collected gods and demigods ! 5* 54 " In every grove a Dryad dwelt, and roamed On every mount an Oread, with bow And shaft, a huntress in Diana's train. Beside each font a Naiad sat, and from Her pitcher welled the brooks away to stray Meandering through nymph-haunted mead and dale. In hill and forest, lake and stream, was seen A life, and every life became a deity Endued with forms imagination gave ; While genial blessings and tormenting ills Deific worship won from love or fear. In all this labyrinth of deity. Objective worship, dwelt a quality Of psychical in mythic depths innate ; And born of human nature's craving need To bow itself before divinity. ' The charm of an indwelling beauty hung Around, pervading all this universe Of myth ; Art threw a decorative grace. With pure esthetic element replete. Over ideal^nd material. Transfusing a retentive element ; And thither Poesy on hovering wing From every age hath flown to re-illume Its glow at the imperishable shrine." Then I to him with gendered thought broke forth :— LIFE. 55 " In what a maze had pure simplicity Of earlier time become involved ! How may We thread the labyrinthine maze save with The clue of love 1 Not Ariadne's gift, But His, the Only One, given in his Son, Not held by Theseus alone, but grasped Within the hearts of all the soul-possessed. It is not strange that in the silent lapse Of ages such as those, the busy mind Co-working with the sensuous in man. Too much made heaven with earthly passions filled And circumfused : that soul should sink aghast. And seek, by strong imagination led, A home in hell, while earth grew red and rich. As autumn leaves in gorgeous colors glow. Prepared, sap-left, to drop, shrivelling to dust." And he to me, benignant in reply : — " 'Twas then the interposing Deity Advanced in front of all the heroes, powers Mankind had raised between themselves and him. Full in their view, His own incarnate self !" " Then Love was paramount !" joyous I cried. When he with stern ironic tone resumed : — " Ages there were when death loomed large in sight 56 Of men, the front of God grew corrugate With frowns, and love was curdled into fear! And then the great world's heart, entranced with fear. Dreamed dread damnation ; and o'er heaven Red judgment hung a pall dripping with blood. And all was done in God's name, He of love The soul ; and in his Son's — who loved — they said. How the arch-fiend and enemy of man Enthroned supreme in Hell with loud ha ! has I Shouted derision o'er the glozing words. The very air of heaven benighted earth While giving back in thunder-peals the groans That rolled beneath low leaden roofs among Those Adriatic isles whereto the old Veneti fled from the barbaric Hun ; And rose from dungeon depths beneath a land Where the dead warrior with a monarch's pomp Before his gallant army rode the day When Cid Bivar held conduct of the way. " Thereafter men from books drew sluggish lore, Soul-worship deluged men with deity, And creeds and crudities stirred up the soil ■ That roiled the stream of swift transparent thought ; And seeking to know much the world forgot Itself; rocked baseless, like a sick Banqueter heady with overdraught of wine. And many knitted in the revel who LIFE. 57 In every hero see a Christ ; and with A strong confusion on them tread upon The borders of that 'wildering world of maze, The labyrinth of old. Nor this is strange. Each age the moral universe doth star Its Sirius for periodic rule, And when it rages men go mad unaid Of circumstance, and forth like very dogs. " Through all an ageless thread continuous ran Of those who drew from Nature error and From Nature truth — dreaming the while of God. Originators of the thoughts impregn'd Events are born of, greater they than quick And pigmy actors mingling in the stir Of movements fathers of ideas have sired." Then I to him with ready transport thus : — " Ideas that dive into the soul and stir The molten crater's all-conglobing fires Till through disrupted surface, habit glazed, Shoot up the elements of change. Ideas That rouse us quickly from a heavy sleep Of surfeitage, and send the fumy blood Hot on the bursting brain, to madden us With dreams of doing for a grateful world. The thoughts we put in silken purses, close And draw to con again a hundred times A day, as boys their firstling piece of coin. Ideas that glass our eyes with microscopes 58 To show us gilded worlds on grassy blades, And a whole universe within ourselves. The thoughts that heave our hearts to surface, as New isles from ocean's deep, and build a place For verdure where the waste of waters rolled. Once, through the round of what we call a year. My lot was cast beside the ocean's brim. A grassy plain, a waving prairie sea. Rolled landward from the shining shelly rim That like a white and silken ribbon drew A barrier with Beauty's strength between The seeming sea and Might's reality. There, 'twixt the sounding and the mimic seas. And thence toward th' unbroken sedgy waste Whose plain the azure horizon embraced. Around the margents of some placid pools That gemmed the prairie's livery of brown, The snow and roseate flamingoes arched Their graceful necks, sole sentries of my main. Oft from the doorway of my lonely hut — In memory for aye a cherished home. For that the Ocean was my constant tiurse Whose lullaby was in my drowsy ear Its latest guest, and in the daily dawn Of waking sense first greetings sent, and all Throughout the wider noon of tropic days Her voice was my companion, tireless aye Of question and reply — that doorway forth, The humor prompting, I would cast a stone LIFE. 59 And listen for its plash among the waves, That multitudinous with ceaseless roar Heaved their broad crests along the sandy shore. That voice upheaved in solemn music from The Soul of Things, and finding utterance In Ocean's heaving of a bosom marks The beating of this orbed Earth's great heart Of fire — that voice struck on my conscience with The strong rebuke of some eternal Power, The while I listened for the smothered sound Of petty pebbles that my puny arm Had mocked the sea withal. Even thus before The all-embracing thought marks of the Great Of old have I withdrawn presumptuous arm Outstretched for record of a fainter force." Then he to me, resuming thus, benign :— "In all these courses of suggested aims Continuous ran for man's discreetest use. And yet another stronger thread of those Who, knowing God, saw only Him at hand Unveiled, lived immortality, and dead For time, bequeathed it to eternity. Long-bearded men with reverence written on Their brows, that ceased to age with age, And with uplifted voices held the sun Of all-destroying Time suspense to shine Midway in heaven, above their rimed heads. Chiefest of all ! those greater lights that moved 60 LIFE. In patriarchal pomp from Ur along The plain of Moreh, down to Jordan's tide ; Along Euphrates and Orontes side ; And thence across to Edom's border far. The mighty one who smote the desert rock And water flowed. Another, holy man Of visions, shouting, ' Wonderful ! Behold The Counsellor, Emmanuel !' And he The favored, death's corruption spared, who rose Within a chariot of fire with steeds Of flame, upon a whirlwind borne, to heaven. And many more, a host unparalleled. Great lights who rose from out the bosom of One faithful people, and. for them, though bond Or free, bare constant witness to the One, The living God ! without a country, yet Eternally a people ! scattered through The nations as a sign, triumphant sign Of early truest faith. Unbending scorn Of its fulfilment bringing down a power Of wrath, hurling them forth in sight of men The branded witness to their unbelief. Wrapped in eternal night, the past doth heaven One greater Star whose scintillations fight. Fateful, the present to the coming time. " Commingled all to form the present age, Like to a thrifty husbandman that sows. Sows plentiful, whether for reaping of His own or gain of some to come, not he LIFE. 61 Productless leaves to lie the strong fat soil. Thus comes the Age we live in, born of all. Less swollen with the fully garnered store Of rich and ripe inheritance, than big With the quick life conceived within itself. A life now struggling to its wondrous birth Midwifed by the electric flash — thought's own Fit minister — and mystic agencies. An Age that shall outage all ages past And present. Powers mysterious and force Of spirit and material shall serve This Age. These harnessed to its car, shall bear It on a flight beyond the vision scope Of ages precedent ; and from peaks Of mountain thought uphold th' invaded heavens^ Man speak to man across a chasm new-bridged : Bridged by mysterious agencies ; by rights All freely owned to ; by the powers of air, Earth, water, fire ; the incandescent, strange. And yet scarce dreamed of, woven in a field Of cloth of gold for common ground whereon All men may labor and embrace. Then shall Be closed those low-arched cloisters, mossed with age. Where knowledge rusted in a hoarding vault ; Then shrunk the sway of ancient cowled resource Where those whom fate, or fortune, or the will Inscrutable of Providence had whipt Into a sore despair of worldly worth 6 62 LIFE. Buried their wounds from the eventful world's Mixt intercourse of rough renewal ; then The higher paths betrod by Labor's new Ennobled heel will close old avenues Of egotistic penance brooding o'er Its ills, as broader vistas stretch away, — Highways of Labor's apotheosis. The fields whereon a nobler heroism Draws good from ill amid the daily clash Of lot with lot, — aspiring thus, as toward The highest goal of works, to merge within The infinite humanity, — the great Heart human that cements a brotherhood Of universal tie, no more confined, Self-holden in monastic walls. " 'Twill be Of Christianity, this brotherhood. The clear exponent, when high souls shall shine On every hand with brightening deeds to show That, though the world injustice deals as meed Of worth ; though unrewarding, cancelled not The bond of duty due to man, to self. And God. For them the thorns met here declare The flowers shall wayside bloom in sunnier clime Beyond. To suffer worthily their creed. The soul achieves its own attempering art : Endurance hath its virtue ; action hath No more nor greater than this metal hath. Of steel and gold so intimately wrought, — 63 Making the toughest ward, as in the famed Unbreakable Damascan blade of yore. When bowed beneath the chastisement God's hand Inflicts, crushed spirit shrinks from ministering With soft and slippered care to pampered self. Then quick and firm one strides toward and strikes His hand into the ready hand of one He meets, and shouts — ' Ay, brother ! thou hast felt ! Hast suffered ! therefore, canst thou read in all And understand. Oh ! 'tis your only sage, This one, whose teachings have the wholesome Sting Of Wisdom ! Fitted now for labor we — Our faith the panacea for our griefs.' There is no dimness on their vision, they Within the crystal shrine of Nature sit. And on the organ universe they play A melancholy tale of sinless woe Made joyous — Music grateful in His ear. Fit readers they of Nature and of Christ, Who in the lily of the valley saw A beauty tended by a care divine. Refinement, sensibility, and grace Shall all be theirs. The sure initial point Of wisdom they have learned, — 'tis to respect. Somewhat is gained by intuition, even As animals through instinct, more is theirs. With thoughts and proof the web and woof; thoughts high 64 LIFE. And pure ; acts strong and sure ; all things to serve ; All things deserve ; though nought receiving, still Believing, gathering Love to their embrace. Feeding their souls on its ambrosial sweets They weave the wondrous web of mighty song. Where Truth shall palpitate a living soul. And Beauty deck the Love within. — No, not E'en so were moved the patriarchs of old. They whose recorded themes, in lofty strains O'er arching Sinai's mount, rolled onward in Sublime reverberations along the hills And vales of Judah. — Thus inspired, no more Thereafter can they live for earth alone Than soul can die : their steps have passed within The magic circle of the spirit world. Throughout the whole world's history they read — And it doth gnaw like hunger on their own Wrung vitals — want of Freedom christianized ! So shall he learn to do his work ; and such The field whereon the Bard his cohorts strong Shall marshal to the fight in that great cause , When learning, freed from clutch of few, dwells all Abroad ; with suffering and soothing leagued In ceaseless action through the widest field Of Labor's true domain." With unsealed vision I Again, thus raptured. — " Hope, Faith, Beauty, Love ! LIFE. 65 Great Powers eternal ! Souls of Thought, aids, ends Of purpose ! Now I see ye, greatest Souls ! Sweeping Infinity with steady wing. Ye are, and ever were, will ever be ; And not for nought, this soul doth know. O, Soul! Thy aim is clear ! Soul ! Soul ! faint not ! The broadening vista stretching on afar, Highway of Labor's apotheosis. Invites thy steps. Guard well thy walking ; tread With firm and earnest foot that endless way ! It leadeth through Eternity ! Success Hath crowned thy effort, and the after life Beholds thee landed in a starry sphere Radiant with glory. Thy home the while, 'Tis but a lower terrace of the Way Thou learnedest to foot on earth. Like labor there Of ceaseless effort, as it did on earth. Strengthening, purifying, calls thee on toward An upper terrace of celestial life. Far on, above, and in a godlier sphere It lies ; yet reached, beneath His feet 'tis low As where thy footfall first attacked the Way When earth and things thereon afaint drew forth Thy Labor deeds. Call Hope, Faith, Beauty, Love, And strengthen well thyself with these ; for there They will bestead thee, on the great Highway, With that sufficient aid thou needest on earth. 6* 6Q LIFE. As these shall aid and thou shalt labor here, Accorded there their aid ; and low or high The terrace where thou'lt land upon the Way Whereon to work. Highway beginning with The birth of man, it stretcheth on to God, Such labor be thine own eternal life, Soul ! Hope, Faith, Love, Beauty, aye thy work and thy Reward. Thy self-improvement hath no end." Accordant, then the bright-winged Messenger Celestial thus, the thread of thought assumed, — " Yea, action is eternal, and belongs Not less to after than to earthly life. The soul rests never, and must aye progress Toward or retrograde from Deity. All life is labor, and all labor love. It rests with thee whether the taste of that Forbidden tree that thou inheritest Shall prove a knowledge helpful that exalts Thee to a god, or leaves thee sunk in black Abysm o'er which the darkest ignorance Would be a glowing sun above a night. So ordered that not given to vegetate Vapid in Eden idleness, unsought, Unwrought, unbought thy goodness, growing aye Unconscious as the flower that gladdeth sense With sweets received, unknowing whence acquired, "Tis given to thee to know, and with the gift Responsibility for Labor use." BOOK THE FOURTH Still on the margin of the magic rock — Responsive, I mid thronging Manes thus : " Now like a ray of light that twists and twines Itself a radiant coronal around a brow Of snow, instinctive flashing light divine God-sent to crown angelic purity. Flashes the truth effulgent of the tale. The stranger's tale of dole and high resolve^ That gleamed so like a meteor athwart My vision, now with holy concord strung. " It happed that once upon my way of life I met with one, and soon as e'er his glance Caught mine, he cried — ' I know thee, friend I now list ! I have a tale to tell, and thou canst see its truth !' The deep cut lines of other cause than rimed His head mapped his swart face, and I was glad To listen. • Once,' he said, ' I had a friend — Of him and his philosophy I speak. " ' His face was pale and thought sat on his brow, 68 LIFE. As by a window of the room where oft And late he scanned the mystic page for lore The Youthful Student stood. Around him fell A flood of radiance that seemed to fold Him in a mantle bright, and hold his soul In solemn contemplation wrapt : while o'er His calm and saddened countenance was cast A paler hue, as turned in lixt regard. Upon it fell the beams of night's bright orb. In holy stillness resting there. Both pure And lofty was that student's dream, as thus He gazed ! while 'fore the mirror of his soul Unstained, reflecting each celestial phase. Came visions bright and pure of other worlds Beyond the limit of his upward gaze. Above, illimitable ether spread. So pure, the unobstructed vision seemed To penetrate with ease its azure depths, Far reaching thus along an endless course ; While hung suspended in the vasty-void Were myriads of crystal lamps that all Resplendent glowed with fires empyreal ; Or purest lights that beamed from angels' eyes. The faithful watchers stationed in the stars, With love and kind affection fraught, to light His spirit on its way, as high it soared To worlds beyond in that rapt dream of his. While winging thus its way, a stilly voice, Felt deeply thrilling with mysterious power. LIFE. 69 As 'twere the breathings of a spirit lived Throughout the glorious all, or hung upon The silver flood of Ether's lip, in low- Soliloquy that charmed his ear. — " Behold ! Through countless ages still sublimely gi-eat. Throughout the endless universal whole In living letters of renewed worlds. Each greater than the last, 'tis written — read ! List to the chanted music of the spheres ! Is death or life around thee, soul of man V It heard ; that noble soul ; and instant knew Its lofty immortality. " * He dreamed A prayerful wish. ' Bright living moon, whose mild And beaming face is speaking in those deep And silent tones that magically stir My inmost being, I would be like thee !' He saw her slowly sinking through the void Of ether, trackless and unclouded, pure And calm, unostentatious, yet how grand ! In brilliancy so mild, that, where it fell Scorched not, but shed a lustre beautified And chastened all it touched so silvery. He wished that such a course might be his own ; As calm, as pure, as bright, to move within The sight of men, the object of their mild Unheated admiration and regard. No hot ambition rousing in their souls, 10 LIFE, No haze of passions to obscure the true — Short-sighted self ne'er reaching distant truth — But lofty aspirations, nobly pure. And love of all the beautiful and good. And when he set, that he might leave behind A clear unclouded world, o'erspangled with Its myriads of brilliant stars, like these All vieing in diffusing through mankind A light as pure as he dispensed before. — Though he had passed, his light had not gone out, But shone reflected in the hearts of men. Throughout a host of great and good and wise. " ' Was it a smile that o'er his face then passed 1 Or did an angel's wing its shadow cast ? A soothing calm his spirit circumfused. And he and some divinity did then Together wander through the spirit land. — Enlinked by common tie of part divine, The Immaterial pervading All. His soul was swelling with the theme sublime — The spirit's aspirations, that discourse Of immortality, and are the still And deep felt breathings of Eternal Life ! " ' A second phase his dream of life assumed. The wearing years have held their ceaseless course. Marked with their wonted stains of trust abused. Of outraged honor, hopes betrayed, and now LIFE, 71 The world-worn spirit of the Man recalls. To pass before the magic mirror of His burdened memory, the Student's dream. A change has come upon its images. Obscurely seen along the mirror's face, Now graven o'er with lines of suffering, And tarnished, till it pictures indistinct The nobly fair proportions of his dream. Such griefs were his as lead the soul to life, Undying life, or fiercely thrust it on The black domain of everlasting death. Of what they were it boots not now to tell : Let each recall his harshest grief, and he Made wise by suffering may feel his ills. That he was proud ; aye, as the Morning Star Before he fell (nor fallen my friend), but tipt With ranker poison every baleful shaft. Faithless of good existing, cursing God, He begged for death. Amid a whirlpool's foam In dire confusion raging, passion blind, All lost but prayer, that came in last extreme Of hope to nerve his arm for striking forth Into a calmer sea — where light came down. His life of thirty winters had been strange, With various mutations arabesque. Most strange and varied ! not so much the life Without as the intenser life within, Though he had looked on many lands and known 72 LIFE. The change of many fortunes high and low. The tree full leaved is moved by various airs Of gentle breezes and of rushing winds. When every bough with twig and leaf describes The oft renewed and often varied forms. If we but watch them for a breezy hour In graceful action, numbers fail to note Or eye to see their many movements. So Had flit the phases of his restless mind. Had moved the pulses of his tasked soul : And none had taken note of them : or if Perchance some heedless passers here and there Had caught the gentle swaying of a bough Or marked the hasty flutter of a leaf, They recked not of the viewless air — their dull Perceptions careless of a cause ; for what Was he to them but as another for The axe ? What were the airs that moved his soul? Though doubly they had been the vital breath Of the all-hallowed inner life, nor e'er Could he have told them : in their breathings sole? Self-whispered and to God, their truer form And mystic nature put on utterance. Self-held the power. And other changes dealt With him. The leafless branches often spread And groan in desolation over sad Bereavement: meanwhile Time rough furrows cuts ■'.j^ii.. 'i<. LIFE. fJd Along the glairy bark ; and grows the tree From sapling to a forest lord. The brow Of manhood roughed with care o'ertops the form Where erst was smoother happier youth. " * Agaia He prays : and yet another prayerful wish. ' O mighty Power ! that gave to early youth Those lofty hopes for working lasting good, This sight grows dim before the graven web Whose every line reveals a wrong received Or sinful act against thy righteous laws .; And thus enmeshing memory, so veils From view those bright realities beyond. Until the dim obscurity of doubt Transforms the real of th' aspiring soul To dread unreal of a murdered faith. O Power Divine I -of thine own force impart. That this weak sight may pierce the veil, and see The beauteous good and lofty pure, as in That vision, now dim glimmering in view. This bark is tost on such a raging sea Of troubk, whose dreadful surge, resounding on The shore of fate, stuns every sense but one — The serpent sting of perfidy ! I own Thy justice. Lord ! I would have raised myself. Not Christ my Master, in the view of men. The spirit deep engulphed in suffering's Thrice heated, harsh alembic, may it still. By grace sustained through the refining course 1 74 LIFE. Fits souls for spheres their early dreams had shown, With early trust in living good confirmed, Tempted, for others' sake forbear ; for wrong No wrong return, while gentle kindness wins Wrong-doers to the love of good, to own The law — as ye would have, to others do. With love for that Beneficence gave all Still worship Wisdom maketh gain the fruit Of labor, for to God inaction is Unknown, and non-existent death is not : Death is but change, change life and action stilL As mind with knowledge filling gains a power New beauties to enjoy, each harsher grief Love-weaponed spirit thus shall cleave from life's Encumbered way leaves brighter space for growth Of purer joys, the life of higher spheres. Still hoping on, still working on, Soul ! The triumphs gained in sacrificing self To yield another's good are victories Most nobly noiseless in Life's Battle won. Here ruthless triumphs wrought in war of gross Conditioned self with self draw loud acclaim Triumphant ; there the noiseless victories Alone may claim rejoiceful song — receive Such anthems lofty and such peans loud As roll in praise around the throne of God.' « * A final phase the student's dream assumed. LIFE. *?$• — • The freighted years unstayi la roll along, While such his prayer and such his practised creed. In answer to the chastened spirit's wail. Again it visits him, a higher hope. To shed its light along a clouded way. And then sweet Peace on dovelike wings descends To wrap his spirit in its balmy folds Of downy softness that invite repose Celestial : and at times th' elastic soul Thus in its aspirations soars anew. * Dream spirit, come ! and wave thy magic wand, Thy mighty wand, that dreams may visit me. Bright dreams of seraph land, the loveliest dreams That soar with mind toward the Infinite ! Come, fairest waking dreams ! come, wafted on Pure Poesy's resplendent spreading wings. Refulgent with their empyrean glow. Then image scenes in beauty's brightest dyes — Sing heavenly melodies harmonious. Enkindling man's humanity to man. Here make thy home, O spirit of the Christ ! Interpret thou man's heart and Nature's voice : Thus ushered, come ! beside the crystal founts That murmur sweetest music round the Cross ; Come, voice of Nature ! teacher great and true. And breathe into the spirit lofty truths. Oh ! Love divine ! eternally enthroned In light, endow me with recording power ; Give force to reach the kindred parts of that ^6 LIFE. m — Diviner essence breathing through us all, That they may sound responsive to the touch — Ring forth in ciiimes, whose tones, all musical With beauty and refined subliniity, And deeply fraught with spirit of the pure. Shall find an echo in all after life. Within the presence of the Holiest !' " ' Ho lived with children as a simple child. He made him loves of many things ; the day That shone for him with glory ; night profound With vast of mystery and beauties deep Pervading as a soul — the visible dream Wherein all nature walks the mystic round Of the unknoAvn, the unrcsounding sea And ocean of celestial' space ; heat, cold. Insects, and flowers ; the thoughts of men and' hopes Of maidens. Saw he but the glinting glance Of light upon a loaf, he stood' and jo-yed. Something he found to clasp, heart wearing as Oiv life is clung to. Times and places all Suited his purposes. Upon the mart Whereon the world slides earnest life caught up His strong endeavor. What the moment found Lie nearest, straight his duty acted on. The low mimosa's modesty was his ; Few knew him well, they lowly, as to heaven. Undid for him tl^ockets of their hearts : And unto them his face was oft a chart. Ay more, a fair illumined missal — flowers LIKE. 77 Of heaven and seraph forms illuming — where The holiness within was pictured in The charming guise a child's simplicity Is heir to. Gentleness, affection, too Expressed themselves thereon ineffably, With sweetest power that won a rapturous Heart desperation of devotion's love. And was the battle ended 1 No ! each day Brought causes for renewal of the strife. — Temptation's home is in the heart of man : Life's battle ceases only with the life. Through death he lives, as causes in effects: Albeit names, not acts, are writ on water.' " The swart-browed man had told his tale and wept. Then striking hard his long right hand within My own, he said — ' I shall be with you aye: Good night, my friend !' I ever loved that man." " And well thou mightest " — the bright-winged Messenger Celestial, after patient listening thus Responsive spake — " for he had gained the sum Of all 'tis worth thy studies' care to know. Man knowledge gains through books from other men, But wisdom only through himselF from God. The nearest duty is the greater one, And ever'neath the lifted footing found. *7B LIFE. Whoso forgives gives readily of much ; And who gives freely readily forgives. Self-abnegation flowers upon a tree Whose root is planted in the heart of God. Wait, work, and trust in Him who shapes events. How long, O man ! wilt sow the wind and reap The whirlwind ? Gently pattereth the rain. The undestroying rain, the soothing rain, That fresheneth, that falleth from Thy Life, Oh ! Christ ! to robe the earth in blooming Truth. From Thee, who sheddeth down the kindly rain, That glittereth, that shineth in the Light Divine of Mercy, that mingleth with Thy blood, That gloweth, iris-tinted, with Thy blood, Reflecting Mercy with Thy blood, oh ! Christ ! To span the blooming earth with Hope and Beauty. A second Bow of Promise, visible To Faith, Seal of a broader covenant. Oh ! Thou beloved and infinite in love ! Great captain of the Brotherhood of men ! " Now while a cloud is swift'ningfore the moon, Look ! mortal guesting with immortals — what Dost see 1 what hear you sounding out of space." " I see a figure wearily Pacing a silent shore. And hear it singing drearily A song I knew belbre. LIFE. 79 When I hear that spirit moaning, Moaning on that gloomy shore, Mine doth still its grievous groaning, While with pity running o'er. Heaps of skeletons are there, Strewn along that dreary shore — Wrecks of forms that once were fair. Awful now for ever more. There no smooth-lipped shells are found Voiceful with their mystic roar, But from hollow skulls resound Echoes of the wailing sore. Sadly sounds that lonely wailing Over the clouded sea. On to nameless regions sailing Beyond that sunless sea. Black and white its pinions wearing, .Weeping, pearl and ebony. Over the unknown sea are bearing An argosie of agony. Falls a pearly dropping never Into the skyless sea ; Black and black'ning droppings ever Quickly mingling bitterly. Listening to that woful wailing, Is there a hope for me ? — 1* so LIFE. Living death were naught availing Were this a boundless sea. For this spirit heard rechanting, Chanting on that gloomy shore Airs with which the soul is panting, Is there balm of mine in store 1 Ceases now that solemn singing Sung on that silent shore, While my soul responsive ringing Sings as it sung before. " Gloom of night without its beauty Broodeth ever o'er this sea ; But there is a country yonder Where the stars for ever be. Oft the strange, strange land I visit, Far beyond the soundless sea — Oh ! that land is full of voices. And they are not strange to me. But if that stranger tongue is spoken, Spoken on the nether shore, ' Where is reason V it is whispered. Whispered through the closing door. Presentiments are pure communings Through the mysteries around — LIFE. 81 Finer essences commingling While each sense in flesh is bound. Cease, oh ! cease ! thy wailing sorrow, Wailing o'er this sullen sea ; There are nights that have a morrow, Nights where stars will shine for thee. Sin hath time and times for sinning, But there is another shore ; Thine it may be for the winning, Thine it may be evermore. Grief hath time and times for grieving, But upon another shore Joys do follow on believing. Smiling there for ever more. In that country all is beauty, Where the stars do make a day : On beyond it stretcheth duty, Alway beckoning away : Where the rosy morning breaking Ushers in a golden day. And the stars go out with chiming— Sweet and solemn chime alway. There the bands of little children In the golden light do play. — H2 LIFE. In their hearts the stars are hidden All throughout the golden day. There the bands of little children On their starry lyres do play — * Christ the Soul and Christ the Giver !' All throughout the golden day." My song was ringing on the ambient air, When suddenly recalled — as in the change Of dreams when all seems changed ; and yet the same — Upon the Genius fixt again my look. Admiringly I gazed and rapt, as with Supremest majesty of mien superne He lifted up a look that seemed to read Infinity, and spake, — sounding a voice attuned Less for the charming of my ear, than borne The resonance of an unconscious breath .In inspirations self-communing drawn. " Baal, Osiris, Jove ! where are ye all 1 All fallen with your worshippers around Ye; buried deep mid ruins and in sand. How dense your darkness by the Light revealed Of the unchanging, ever-living God ! Divinest wisdom, providential and Benign, throned on its crest, directs the tide Of each event that plups a riplet at LIFE. 83 The foot of man, or thunders in the roll Of mountain waves o'erflooding all mankind. What makes the faintest impress on the mind, Unconscious, often deepest stamps the soul. Through ages since o'er Bethlehem arose The Star, have signs, deeds, thoughts portentous great Results foretold : each overshadowing The speck was seen of shepherds in that day Of little note. Yet did the mighty Soul Of great Humanity an impress take That in the age to come must mould the world, — - Shaping its Thought to prove its Destiny. " Not then could legions battle o'er a tomb. And Saracen and ousel Christian hurl Crusadan thunder. Meed of Paradise Could win no faith for those whose bloody act Of merit was to die man murdering For barren property in stones ; nor those EntomWig rocks outweigh humanity. The spirit of the One they held in flesh Will shape the faith : — hosts gaining passport death In contests wringing bloody drops from hearts Of Self These, falling on its tomb shall smoke Accepted sacrifice, sole offering Befits the altars of the Age to come. " As the cloud-rack frets the sky, and the wide Winged mountains move their awful fronts through air — 84 LIFE. Sublime in threatening power drive on before The breath of Eurus toward the setting sun — The portents big with deeds of this new age Sweep on before our eyes. St. Peter's rocks Its dome. Unkinging millions, hosts who hold Their bivouac in Tuileries, outroar A deep fierce want to learn, a right to know Their God and duty. Driving on before The Eurus breath of Freedom, moves their power ; And earth may tremble in chaotic storms Ere freshened for the growing age unborn. " This Age to come with Californian wealth Shall dower the world. Confronting heaven 'twill stand A giant, facing westward. His brow, broad, Colossal with great thought, shall shame the World From its own littleness, and greatness grow With good gigantic in its grovelling heart. Spanning the earth at even pace with ligl^ His swift'ning tread resound like the loud clang Of trumpets echoing among mountains : The slow past Ages, roused as with the trump Of ended Time, shall start from their crushed tombs With wild looks, wonder blinded ! From his strong Right hand shall drop iron and gold ; his left Shall scatter printed Thoughts to the world's end ; lilFE. 85 And his loud voice shout Peace ! Peace ! Men shall turn Their eyes with courtly readiness the way , His look directs, and see the portents rise Of work for them to do. Like statues fixed Along a vista'd avenue — great works Of Art directing emulation to Its goal — shall rise those shadows of the things To do along the highway Labor treads. Then Greed of Gain shall feel its pulses quicken, Its eye grow luminous with yellow light ; And Art, grown child of all the sciences, This Art shall stretch itself and put on wings Cleaving all space 'twill wrest its secrets from The mystic void, transmute them into use — Great Nature's forces servient to man — And gather to the lap of Gain the wealth Abundant of the Age. " The printed Thoughts Let fly shall then come winged as angels. These Shall swoop around the ears of Greed, and prompt Purpose to pass grasped gains to their due end. And some as new Minerva's, greater than Athena of the old shall take the hands Of all-conditioned men to lead and teach. Then Greed shall minister unwittingly To what he knew not of ; and mind informed Shall make such end its aim. War's plume shall float B6 -LITE, A pennant masted o''er a merchantman ; His arm a rudder for the steaming ship That»freights the written words of men ihrougb- out — On Huron's lakes and the ^Egean sea. Where Nilus flows and Colorado rolls. And he shall lay his gory head beside A broken falchion where a plaugh o'erturns A furrow. Finer arts shall then be born Of Use's early art : iron and gold Shall grow one metal. " Then shall all the powers That cognate dwell with those in use, ais mind And soul in body, be evolved to might In action. Education be the wings Of Knowledge, while they glow effulged With moral light. All lessons, hand in hand. Together teaching mind and soul, and all Things be in Christ. " Then shall appear a bright Reality. What now beats high a Hope That animates the present Age, and cries From many tongues, full voiced with parent woe ; Were they who govern peoples made to shake With salutary dread till they let fly The white-winged messengers of light and peace They hold pent hard in their relaxless grasp : Were vainest titles tickling vainest foals For other purport all more wisely borne ; LIFE. 87 And general arbiters for peaceful close Of vexed disputes with sword-supplanting wands Wearing the honors of a peaceful sway : Were one-armed tyranny of central power And the Briarean scourge of multitude Innoxious for coercing to their views The independent character, the one Most sacred temple of the inner self, The consciousness whereon improvement leans. Were all the Empires, Powers that bubbling float Upon the noisome vats where human thews And brains lie rotting at the bottom, pricked, And the foul air 'scaped that bloats them : Oh ! were mind Unshackled ; were it, free from goad and sting Of want, let go to glean and gather through The fields of Thought ; were schoolmen sove- reigns, and Were sovereigns scholars, placable, athirst For knowledge of the power that gives, the while It nothing takes but thanks : were bards, like bees. Untiring through innumerable flights. Wing-laden with the honey Truth ; were these Winged messengers of Christ's democracy Hiving their sweets in the celled brain where clots The dull perse blood, made thick in passage through The veins of Ignorance, oppression cramped : Were the voiced earth on men's un-Babeled ears 88 Laying the one great Truth whose elements Escape insensible from every pore, — All things, with Beauty ministrant, are held In Love impact, and Love is in Thee, God,— Then would the dreamy World have roused itself, Like a loud Lion from his lazy lair ; His eyes ablaze with souls of Might and Right, Like suns new-lit would centre each for each And both for one (commingling rays of Truth), The Universe of Mind. Oh ! then would grow Into all-reigning power a mighty Thought, The soul of tangible realities Earth rends Its mighty heart to grasp. Freedom would then Aye animate the full embodied rights And liberties of men. Freedom ! throned high On Alleghany's crest ; o'er-alping Alps ; And stretching forth a rounded snowy arm Circling the seven hills in its embrace. Ay ! one arm holding high the starry flag In sight of men, the other folding all Earth's peoples to her fair and tideful breast For nourishment — would raise her silver tones Outringing clear the thought Rienzi raised. Telling the tale of Tell, and breathing far The spirit of undying Washington ! " / LIFE. 89 3L»Hnbot» And was it even as it seemed — a dream 1 I know not if it were ; for very truth It is that oft there doth possess my soul A Hope, and never is it faint while still Its power is on me ; but, as when I gaze Upon the sun naught else but suns see I Filling the air, some bright and some of black, Then and for time thereafter ; so it is That this doth blind my vision to all else But two eye-filling suns of dark and light— The world as 't is, and as it may become. 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