He loved, but whom he loved, the grave
Hath lost in its unconscious womb :
Oh, she was fair!--but nought could save
Her beauty from the tomb.
He saw-whatever thou hast seen,
Encountered-all that troubles thee;
He was-whatever thou hast been;
He is what thou shalt be.
The rolling seasons, day and night,
Sun, moon, and stars, the earth and main,
Erewhile his portion, life and light,
To him exist in vain.
The clouds and sunbeams, o'er his eye
That once their shades and glory threw,
Have left in yonder silent sky
No vestige where they flew.
The annals of the human race,
Their ruins, since the world began,
Of him afford no other trace
Than this,-THERE LIVED A MAN!
AS SUDDEN lightning dissipates the sight,
And leaves the eye unable to discern
The plainest objects,-living light so flashed
Around me, and involved me in a veil
Of such effulgence, that I ceased to see.
"Thus love which soothes this heaven, all kindly fits
The torch to take his flame! "28-These few brief words
Had scarcely reached mine ear, when I perceived
Power from on high diffuse such virtue through me,
And so rekindle vision, that no flame,
However pure, could 'scape mine eyes.
Light, like a river clear as crystal, flowing
Between two banks, with wondrous spring adorned;
While from the current issued vivid sparks,
That fell among the flowers on either hand,
Glittered like rubies set in gold, and then,
As if intoxicate with sweetest odours,
Re-plunged themselves into the mystic flood,
Whence, as one disappeared, another rose.
"The intense desire that warms and stirs thy thoughts To understand what thou beholdest, yields
More joy to me, the more it urges thee;
But ere such noble thirst can be assuaged,
Behoves thee first to drink of this clear fount."
The sun that lights mine eyes29 thus spake, and added :-
"Yon stream, these jewels flitting to and fro,
And all the joyance of these laughing flowers,
Are shadowy emblems of realities,
Not dark themselves, but the defect is thine,
Who hast not yet obtained due strength of vision."
Ah! then, no infant, startled out of sleep,
Long past his time, springs to the mother's milk
More eagerly than o'er that stream I bowed,
To make more perfect lustres of mine eyes,
Which, when the fringes of their lids had touched it,
Seemed, from a line, collapsed into a round.
As maskers, when they cast their visors off,
Appear new persons, stript of such disguise,
The sparks and flowers assumed sublimer forms,
And both the courts of heaven were opened round me.
O splendour of the Deity! by which
The lofty triumph of thy real reign
I saw give power to paint it as I saw.
There is a light, which renders visible
The Maker to the creature who desires
Felicity in seeing Him alone:
Though but a ray of uncreated glory,
Sent from the fountain-head of life and power,
It forms a circle, whose circumference
Would be too wide a girdle for the sun;
And as a cliff in water, from its foot,
Looks down upon its height in that broad mirror,
And seems therein contemplating its beauty,
What verdure clothes, what flowers its flanks adorn,
So, standing round about the sea of glass,
As many souls as earth hath sent to heaven,
Upon ten thousand thrones and more, beheld
Their happy semblances reflected there.
If round its lowest stem such pomp appear,
What must the full expanded foliage show
Of that celestial rose? and yet my sight,
Through its whole amplitude and elevation,
Gazed unbewildered; yea, at once took in
The measure and the amount of all that joy.
ON THE WALL OF MALMESBURY ABBEY.
On seeing a solitary specimen near the Great Archway, and being told that the plant was not to be found elsewhere in the neighbourhood.
THE hand that gives the angels wings,
And plants the forest by its power,
O'er mountain, vale, and champaign flings
The seed of every herb and flower;
Nor forests stand, nor angels fly,
More at GOD's will, more in His eye,
Than the green blade strikes down its root,
Expands its bloom, and yields its fruit.
Beautiful daughter of a line
Of unrecorded ancestry!
What herald's scroll could vie with thine,
Where monarchs trace their pedigree?
Thy first progenitor had birth
While man was yet unquickened earth,
And thy last progeny may wave
Its flag o'er man's last-opened grave.
How camest thou thither? from what soil,
Where those that went before thee grew,
Exempt from suffering, care, and toil,
Clad by the sunbeams, fed with dew?
Tell me on what strange plot of ground
Thy rock-born kindred yet are found,
And I the carrier-dove will be
To bring them wondrous news of thee.
How, here, by wren or redbreast dropt,
Thy parent germ was left behind,
Or, in its trackless voyage stopt,
While sailing on the autumnal wind,
Not rudely wrecked, but safely thrown
On yonder ledge of quarried stone,
Where the blithe swallow builds and sings,
And the pert sparrow pecks his wings.
Then, by some glimpse of moonshine sped,
Queen Mab, methinks, alighting there,
A span-long handbreadth terrace spread,
A fairy garden hung in air,
Of lichens, moss, and earthy mould,
To rival Babylon's of old,
In which that single seed she nurst
Till forth its embryo wilding burst.
Now, like that solitary star,
Last in the morn's resplendent crown,
Or first emerging, faint and far,
When evening glooms the sky embrown,
Thy beauty shines without defence,
Yet safe from gentle violence,
While infant hands and maiden eyes
Covet in vain the tempting prize.
Yon arch, beneath whose giant span
Thousands of passing feet have trod
Upon the dust that once was man,
Gathered around the house of GOD,
That arch which seems to mock decay,
Fixed as the firmament to-day,
Is fading like the rainbow's form,
Through the slow stress of Time's long storm.
But thou may'st boast perennial prime,The blade, the stem, the bud, the flower; Not ruined, but renewed, by Time,
Beyond the great destroyer's power,
Like day and night, like spring and fall,
Alternate, on the abbey wall,
May come and go, from year to year,
And vanish but to re-appear.
Nay, when in utter wreck are strown
Árch, buttress, all this mighty mass,
Crumbled, and crushed, and overgrown
With thorns and thistles, reeds and grass,
While Nature thus the waste repairs,
Thine offspring, Nature's endless heirs,
Earth's ravaged fields may re-possess,
And plant once more the wilderness.
So be it--but the sun is set,
My song must end, and I depart; Yet thee I never will forget,
But bear thee in my inmost heart, Where this shall thy memorial be,— If GOD so cares for thine and thee, How can I doubt that love divine Which watches over me and mine?
Scene. Bridlington Quay, 1824.
AT nightfall, walking on the cliff-crowned shore,
Where sea and sky were in each other lost,
Dark ships were scudding through the wild uproar,
Whose wrecks ere morn must strew the dreary coast;
I marked one well-moored vessel tempest-tossed,
Sails reefed, helm lashed, a dreadful siege she bore,
Her deck by billow after billow crossed,
While every moment she might be no more:
Yet firmly anchored on the nether sand,
Like a chained Lion ramping at his foes,
Forward and rearward still she plunged and rose,
Till broke her cable;-then she fled to land,
With all the waves in chase: throes following throes;
She 'scaped, she struck,--she stood upon the strand.
The morn was beautiful, the storm gone by;
Three days had passed; I saw the peaceful main,
One molten mirror, one illumined plane,
Clear as the blue, sublime, o'erarching sky;
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