Yet I would press you to my lips once more,
Ye wild, yet withering flowers of poësy;
Yet would I drink the fragrance which ye pour,
Mix'd with decaying odours; for to me
Ye have beguil❜d the hours of infancy,
As in the wood-paths of my native →→→
ONCE more, and yet once more,
I give unto my harp a dark-woven lay;
I heard the waters roar,
I heard the flood of ages pass away.
O thou, stern spirit, who dost dwell
In thine eternal cell,
Noting, grey chronicler! the silent years;
I saw thee rise,-I saw the scroll complete,
Thou spakest, and at thy feet,
The universe gave way.
This poem was begun either during the publication of Clifton Grove or shortly afterwards. Henry never laid aside the intention of completing it, and some of the detached parts were among his latest productions.
GENIUS of musings, who, the midnight hour
Wasting in woods or haunted forests wild,
Dost watch Orion in his arctic tower,
eye fix'd as in some holy trance;
Or, when the volley'd lightenings cleave the air,
And Ruin gaunt bestrides the winged storm,
Sitt'st in some lonely watch-tower-where thy lamp,
Faint-blazing, strikes the fisher's eye from far,
And, 'mid the howl of elements, unmov'd
Dost ponder on the awful scene, and trace
The vast effect to its superior source,
Spirit, attend my lowly benison!
For now I strike to themes of import high
The solitary lyre; and borne by thee
Above this narrow cell, I celebrate
The mysteries of Time!
Was ere these worlds were fashioned,—ere the sun
Sprang from the east, or Lucifer display'd
His glowing cresset in the arch of morn,
Or Vesper guilded the serener eve.
Yea, He had been for an eternity;
Had swept unvarying from eternity
The harp of desolation,-ere his tones,
At God's command, assum'd a milder strain,
And startled on his watch, in the vast deep,
Chaos's sluggish sentry, and evok'd
From the dark void the smiling universe.
Chain'd to the grovelling frailties of the flesh,
Mere mortal man, unpurged from earthly dross,
Cannot survey, with fix'd and steady eye,
The dim uncertain gulph, which now the muse,
Adventurous, would explore;--but dizzy grown,
He topples down the abyss.—If he would scan
The fearful chasm, and catch a transient glimpse
Of its unfathomable depths, that so
His mind may turn with double joy to God,
His only certainty and resting place;
He must put off a while this mortal vest,
And learn to follow, without giddiness,
To heights where all is vision, and surprise,
And vague conjecture:-He must waste by night
The studious taper, far from all resort
Of crouds and folly, in some still retreat;
High on the beetling promontory's crest,
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