{Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail
Has seen above the illimitable plain,
Morning on night, and night on morning rise,
Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread
Its shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea,
Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves
So long have mingled with the gusty wind
In melancholy loneliness, and swept
The desert of those ocean solitudes,
But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,
The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,
Now to the sweet and many mingling sounds
Of kindliest human impulses respond.
Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,
With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,
And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss,
Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,
Which like a toil-worn laborer leaps to shore,
To meet the kisses of the flowerets there.

All things are recreated, and the flame
Of consentaneous love inspires all life:
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck
To myriads, who still grow beneath her care,
Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:
The balmy breathings of the wind inhale
Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,
Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream:
No storms deform the beaming brow of Heaven,
Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride
The foliage of the ever-verdant trees;
But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,
And autumn proudly bears her matron grace,
Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring,
Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit
Reflects its tint and blushes into love.

The lion now forgets to thirst for blood:
There might you see him sporting in the sun
Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed,
His teeth are harmless, custom's force has made
His nature as the nature of a lamb.

Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane
Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows:
All bitterness is past; the cup of joy
Unmingled mantles to the goblet's brim,
And courts the thirsty lips it fled before.

But chief, ambiguous man, he that can know
More misery, and dream more joy than all;
Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast
To mingle with a loftier instinct there,
Lending their power to pleasure and to pain,
Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each;
Who stands amid the ever-varying world,
The burthen or the glory of the earth;

He chief perceives the change, his being notes
The gradual renovation, and defines
Each movement of its progress on his mind.

His chill'd and narrow energies, his heart,
Insensible to courage, truth, or love,
His stunted stature and imbecile frame,
Mark'd him for some abortion of the earth,
Fit compeer of the bears that roam'd around,
Whose habits and enjoyments were his own.
His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe,
Whose meager wants, but scantily fulfill'd,
Apprized him ever of the joyless length
Which his short being's wretchedness had reach'd
His death a pang which famine, cold and toil,
Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark
Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought:
All was inflicted here that earth's revenge
Could wreak on the infringers of her law;
One curse alone was spared-the name of God

Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day
With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,
Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere
Scatter'd the seeds of pestilence, and fed
Unnatural vegetation, where the land

Teem'd with all earthquake, tempest and disease,
Was man a nobler being; slavery

Had crush'd him to his country's blood-stain'd dust;
Or he was barter'd for the fame of power,
Which, all internal impulses destroying,
Makes human will an article of trade;

Or he was changed with Christians for their gold.
And dragg'd to distant isles, where to the sound
Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work
Of all-polluting luxury and wealth,

Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads
The long-protracted fullness of their woe;
Or he was led to legal butchery,

To turn to worms beneath that burning sun,
Where kings first leagued against the rights of men
And priests first traded with the name of God.

Even where the milder zone afforded man
A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,
Blighting his being with unnumber'd ills,
Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late
Avail'd to arrest its progress, or create

That peace which first in bloodless victory waved
Her snowy standard o'er this favor'd clime:
There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,
The mimic of surrounding misery,
The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,
The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.

Here now the human being stands adorning
This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind,
Blest from his birth with all bland impulses,
Which gently in his noble bosom wake
All kindly passions and all pure desires.
Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing,
Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal
Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise
In time-destroying infiniteness, gift

With self-enshrined eternity, (16) that mocks
The unprevailing hoariness of age,
And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene
Swift as an unremember'd vision, stands
Immortal upon earth: no longer now

And horribly devours his mangled flesh,
Which, still avenging nature's broken law,
Kindled all putrid humors in his frame,
All evil passions, and all vain belief,
Hatred, despair, and lothing in his mind,
The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.
No longer, now the winged habitants,
That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,
Flee from the form of man; but gather round,
And prune their sunny feathers on the hands
Which little children stretch in friendly sport
Towards these dreamless partners of their play.
All things are void of terror: man has lost
His terrible prerogative, and stands
An equal amidst equals: happiness

And science dawn, though late, upon the earth;
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,
Reason and passion cease to combat there;
Whilst each unfetter'd o'er the earth extend
Their all-subduing energies, and wield
The sceptre of a vast dominion there;
Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends
Its force to the omnipotence of mind,
Which from its dark raine drags the gem of truth
To decorate its paradise of peace.

IX.

O HAPPY Earth! reality of Heaven!

To which those restless souls that ceaselessly
Throng through the human universe, aspire;
Thou consummation of all mortal hope!
Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will!
Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,
Verge to one point and blend for ever there :
Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!
Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,
Languor, disease, and ignorance, dare not come :
O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!

Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,
And dim forebodings of thy loveliness
Haunting the human heart, have there entwined
Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss,
Where friends and lovers meet to part no more.
Thou art the end of all desire and will,
The product of all action; and the souls
That by the paths of an aspiring change
Have reach'd thy haven of perpetual peace,
There rest from the eternity of toil
That framed the fabric of thy perfectness.

Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear;
That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride,
So long had ruled the world, that nations fell
Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids,
That for millenniums had withstood the tide
Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand
Across that desert where their stones survived
The name of him whose pride had heap'd them there.
Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,
Was but the mushroom of a summer day,
That his light-winged footstep press'd to dust:
Time was the king of earth: all things gave way
Before him, but the fix'd and virtuous will,

The sacred sympathies of soul and sense, That mock'd his fury and prepared his fall.

Yet slow and gradual dawn'd the morn of love,
Long lay the clouds and darkness o'er the scene,
Till from its native heaven they roll'd away:
First, crime triumphant o'er all hope career'd
Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong;
Whilst falsehood, trick'd in virtue's attributes,
Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe.
Till done by her own venomous sting to death,
She left the moral world without a law,
No longer fettering passion's fearless wing,
Nor searing reason with the brand of God.
Then steadily the happy ferment work'd;
Reason was free; and wild though passion went
Through tangled glens and wood-embosom'd meads,
Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers,
Yet like the bee returning to her queen,
She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow,
Who meek and sober kiss'd the sportive child,
No longer trembling at the broken rod.

Mild was the slow necessity of death:
The tranquil Spirit fail'd beneath its grasp,
Without a groan, almost without a fear,
Calm as a voyager to some distant land,
And full of wonder, full of hope as he.
The deadly germs of languor and disease
Died in the human frame, and purity
Blest with all gifts her earthly worshippers
How vigorous then the athletic form of age!
How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!
Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care,
Had stamp'd the seal of gray deformity
On all the mingling lineaments of time.
How lovely the intrepid front of youth!
Which meek-eyed courage deck'd with freshest grace
Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name,
And elevated will, that journey'd on
Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness
With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand.

Then, that sweet bondage which is freedom's self,
And rivets with sensation's softest tie
The kindred sympathies of human souls,
Needed no fetters of tyrannic law:
Those delicate and timid impulses
In nature's primal modesty arose,

And with undoubting confidence disclosed
The growing longings of its dawning love,
Uncheck'd by dull and selfish chastity,
That virtue of the cheaply virtuous,

Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost.
No longer prostitution's venom'd bane
Poison'd the springs of happiness and life;
Woman and man, in confidence and love,
Equal and free and pure, together trod
The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more
Were stain'd with blood from many a pilgrim's feet.

Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride
The palace of the monarch-slave had mock'd
Famine's faint groan, and penury's silent tear,
A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw
Year after year their stones upon the field,

Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves
Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower
Usurp'd the royal ensign's grandeur, shook
In the stern storm that sway'd the topmost tower,
And whisper'd strange tales in the whirlwind's ear.

Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles
The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung:
It were a sight of awfulness to see
The works of faith and slavery, so vast,
So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal!
Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall.
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death
To-day, the breathing marble glows above
To decorate its memory, and tongues
Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms
In silence and in darkness seize their prey.

Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,
Fearless and free the ruddy children play'd,
Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows
With the green ivy and the red wall-flower,
That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;
The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,
There rusted amid heaps of broken stone,
That mingled slowly with their native earth:
There the broad beam of day, which feebly once
Lighted the cheek of lean captivity
With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness:
No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair
Peal'd through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes
Of ivy-finger'd winds and gladsome birds
And merriment were resonant around.

These ruins soon left not a wreck behind : Their elements, wide scatter'd o'er the globe, To happier shapes were moulded, and became Ministrant to all blissful impulses:

Thus human things were perfected, and earth. Even as a child beneath its mother's love, Was strengthen'd in all excellence, and grew Fairer and nobler with each passing year.

Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene
Closes in stedfast darkness, and the past
Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done :
Thy lore is learn'd. Earth's wonders are thine own,
With all the fear and all the hope they bring.
My spells are past: the present now recurs.
Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains
Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand.

Yet, human Spirit! bravely hold thy course,
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue
The gradual paths of an aspiring change:
For birth and life and death, and that strange state
Before the naked soul has found its home,
All tend to perfect happiness, and urge
The restless wheels of being on their way,
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:
For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense
Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape
New modes of passion to its frame may lend;
Life is its state of action, and the store

Of all events is aggregated there
That variegate the eternal universe;
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies,
And happy regions of eternal hope.
Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:
Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk
Though frosts may blight the freshness of its gloom
Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth,
To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower,
That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,
Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile.

Fear not then, Spirit! death's disrobing hand,
So welcome when the tyrant is awake,
So welcome wher, the bigot's hell-torch burns;
"Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,
The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.
Death is no foe to virtue: earth has seen
Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,
Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there,
And presaging the truth of vision'd bliss.

Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene
Of link'd and gradual being has confirm'd?
Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still,
When to the moonlight walk, by Henry led,
Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death?
And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast
Listening supinely to a bigot's creed,

Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod,
Whose iron thongs are red with human gore?
Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will
Is destined an eternal war to wage
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot
The germs of misery from the human heart.
Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,
Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,
Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease:
Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,
When fenced by power and master of the world.
Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,
Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,
Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.
Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee
And therefore art thou worthy of the boon
Which thou hast now received: virtue shall keep
Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,
And many days of beaming hope shall bless
Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.
Go, happy one! and give that bosom joy
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
Light, life and rapture from thy smile.

The fairy waves her wand of charm, Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car, That roll'd beside the battlement, Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.

Again the enchanted steeds were yoked,
Again the burning wheels inflame
The steep descent of heaven's untrodden way
Fast and far the chariot flew:

The vast and fiery globes that roll'd.
Around the Fairy's palace-gate
Lessen'd by slow degrees, and soon arpear'd

Those thrones, high built upon the heaps
Of bones where frenzied Famine sleeps,
Where Slavery wields her scourge of iron
Red with mankind's unheeded gore,
And War's mad fiends the scene environ,
Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar,
There Vice and Falsehood took their stand,
High raised above the unhappy land.

FALSEHOOD.

Brother! arise from the dainty fare

Which thousands have toil'd and bled to bestow,

A finer feast for thy hungry ear

Is the news that I bring of human woe.

VICE.

And, secret one! what hast thou done,
To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me?
I, whose career, through the blasted year,
Has been track'd by despair and agony.
FALSEHOOD.

What have I done!-I have torn the robe
From baby truth's unshelter'd form,
And round the desolated globe
Borne safely the bewildering charm:
My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor
Have bound the fearless innocent,
And streams of fertilizing gore
Flow from her bosom's hideous rent,
Which this unfailing dagger gave....
I dread that blood!--no more—this day
Is ours, though her eternal ray

Must shine upon our grave.

Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given
To thee the robe I stole from heaven,
Thy shape of ugliness and fear
Had never gain'd admission here.

VICE.

And know, that had I disdain'd to toil,
But sate in my lothesome cave the while,
And ne'er to these hateful sons of heaven
GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER, given;
Hadst thou with all thine art essay'd
One of thy games then to have play'd,
With all thine overweening boast,
Falsehood! I tell thee thou hadst lost!-
Yet wherefore this dispute ?-we tend,
Fraternal, to one common end ;

In this cold grave beneath my feet,

Will our hopes, our fears, and our labors, meet.

FALSEHOOD.

I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth:
She smother'd Reason's babes in their birth;
But dreaded their mother's eye severe,-
So the crocodile slunk off slily in fear,
And loosed her bloodhounds from the den....
They started from dreams of slaughter'd men,
And, by the light of her poison eye,
Did her work o'er the wide earth frightfully:
The dreadful stench of her torches' flare,
Fed with human fat, polluted the air:
The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries

Of the many-mingling miseries,
As on she trod, ascended high
And trumpeted my victory!-
Brother, tell what thou hast done.
VICE.

I have extinguish'd the noonday sun,
In the carnage smoke of battles won:
Famine, Murder, Hell, and Power
Were glutted in that glorious hour
Which searchless Fate had stamp'd for me
With the seal of her security....
For the bloated wretch on yonder throne
Commanded the bloody fray to rise.
Like me he joy'd at the stifled moan
Wrung from a nation's miseries;

While the snakes, whose slime even him defiled,
In ecstasies of ralice smiled

They thought 't was theirs,-but mine the deed!
Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed-
Ten thousand victims madly bleed.
They dream that tyrants goad them there
With poisonous war to taint the air:
These tyrants, on their beds of thorn,
Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame,
And with their gains, to lift my name.
Restless they plan from night to morn:
I-I do all; without my aid

Thy daughter, that relentless maid,
Could never o'er a death-bed urge
The fury of her venom'd scourge.
FALSEHOOD.

Brother, well-the world is ours;
And whether thou or I have won,
The pestilence expectant lowers
On all beneath you blasted sun.
Our joys, our toils, our honors, meet
In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet:
A shortlived hope, unceasing care,
Some heartless scraps of godly prayer,
A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep,
Ere gapes the grave's unclosing deep,
A tyrant's dream, a coward's start,
The ice that clings to a priestly heart,
A judge's frown, a courtier's smile,
Make the great whole for which we toil;
And, brother, whether thou or [
Have done the work of misery,

It little boots: thy toil and pain,
Without my aid, were more than vain;
And but for thee I ne'er had sate
The guardian of heaven's palace-gate.
Note 4, page 113, col. 1.
Thus do the generations of the earth

Go to the grave, and issue from the womb. One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south and turneth about unto the north, it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place whence the rivers come, thither shall they return again.Ecclesiastes, chap. i.

Note 5, page 113, col. 1.

Even as the leaves

Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year

Has scatter'd on the forest soil.

Οἷη περ φύλλων γενεή, τοίηδε καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
Φύλλα τὰ μέν τ' ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θ' ύλη
Τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἔαρος δ' ἐπιγίγνεται ὥρη
Ως ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ, ἡ μὲν φύει, ἡδ' απολήγει.
ΙΛΙΑΔ. Ζ, Ι. 146.

Note 6, page 113, col. 1.

The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings.
Suave mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis
E terrâ magnum alterius spectare laborem:
Non quia vexari quemquam 'st jucunda voluptas.
Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave 'st
Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri,
Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli;
Sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere
Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena;
Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre
Errare atque viam palanteis quærere vitæ ;
Certare ingenio; contendere nobilitate;
Nocteis atque dies niti præstante labore
Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri.

O miseras hominum menteis! O pectora cæca!
Luc. lib. ii