WHAT are ye, haggard and all ghastly warnings-
Ye moral wraiths of the contemning soul?
Ye glide away like clouds beneath our scornings,
But heavy, dark, and mournful, back ye roll.
Without a cause the heart beats high and quick,
And the blest breath grows labour-fraught and thick.
What are ye?-Phantoms of the brain?—The crude And half-begot chimæras that arise
From our most earthly members, and intrude
A loathly shadow on our mental eyes?
Wan nightmares of drows'd thought?-the goblin banes That steam and flit from the o'erpamper'd veins ?
What! can these seerlike and unearthly shapes
Of Thought be fathered thus ?—And can a crumb-
An incoct atom, kindle that which apes
A demon's horror-and can strike us dumb-
Appal us to the centre of our clay-
And shake the Spirit on her throne?-Away!
What! to these wretched wants must we fulfil
A slavery so subjected and entire,
Bearing a devil in ourselves-at will
To mock the Angel Thought that would aspire
Out from this nether cell?--to laugh to scorn
The very aims for which all thought was born?
Can we not hold ev'n this most lean and poor
Pittance of sense, but that to every heat
And frailty of the flesh, we must endure
To pare and pawn the dowry? and complete
All degradation by the gibe and guile
Of the worm's prey, which rots the very while?
Nay!-have ye not been prophets in your strange
Revealings, and with no oracular* faith
Betokened wo or weal? and the last change
Of this our state? as if there were in death,
And that which stirs within us, something more
Of speech and commune than our creeds explore!
The hardest and the coldest breasts have thrilled
As ye have passed them on your ghostlike way;
And in the hour ye whispered-have fulfilled
Their doom.-Upon the dial of their clay
Rested the shadowy hand,—and at the chime
Foretold they had no farther note of time!
We boast our growing wisdom!-Know we more
Than he,† the source of Plato's golden stream?
Have we a bolder sense-a steadier lore?
Mix we with science no more shadowy dream?—
Yet he, dread spectres, mocked ye not? but taught
Your credence with a bow'd and reverent thought.
Avaunt-avaunt-what! yield we to your cold
And curdling grasp?-Ye fool us with a power
Which, like the Saga's muttered rhyme of old,
Is built not on your potence, but on our
Weakness. We crown you with grim thoughts, and quake Before the very tyrants that we make.
Our Reason-or whate'er that be-and how
Begotten or inspired-by which we move
Erect upon life's narrow bridge; and know
Our end- our aims—our powers-alone can prove
Our guide. And Faith, the barter of our will,
Contracting Reason is her offspring still.
And if we err, and darkling grope and vain,
"Tis not our Reason's treachery, but our own
Surrender of our Reason, and the chain
By which we bind her to the Titan's stone.
Oracular is here used in the sense of dubious.
294 IF THE POOR MADE LAWS FOR THE RICH.
From ignorance spring earth's errors-raise the powers Of Reason to their height-and Heaven is ours!
Shadows avaunt!-were all the monsters armed
By hell or monkish madness, round the ring
In which lone Reason sits abstract and charmed;
Yea, all pale Priestcraft from her caves could bring,
Or northern Fancy nurture; were the earth's
Soft smile to wither, and unnatural births
Creep from her hollow womb;—were the sweet skies
To lose all love, and murmur from the stars-
"TREMBLE," The Unknown within me should defy
Terror-the arch and real fiend that wars
On God; our God is Love!—and greet the levin
Whose wrath but brighter shows the depths of Heaven!
IF THE POOR MADE LAWS FOR THE RICH.
IF the poor made laws for the rich-the rich,
What a change in our jails would be!
Which would be for the best? and which-oh, which,
Bring the most to the gallows-tree?
They would pass a nobleman vagrant bill,
For the fellows who idly roam;
The Travellers' club would be sent to the Mill,"
And Lord E- -x be passed to-home.
They'd make game laws for the sporting one,
And refuse a squire to bail;
Old B-ks would be shot with a good spring-gun, And Sh-y would rot in jail!
"Most libellous trash," the books that blind
The eyes of the mass they'd call;
Murray's Review would be damnably fined,
And they'd ruin great Captain H—ll.
They'd make it a capital crime to pay
One's self from the public purse;
Our younger sons would be shipped to "the Bay,"
TO WORDSWORTH.
How glorious and how beautiful a life
Must thine have been among the hills and streams! From the far world, and its eternal strife,
But one gray shadow cast upon thy dreams,
Tinging their sacred and nymph-haunted glory
With something of a mournful-mortal hue.
Ah! if the Spirits of the olden story
Yet linger and the Ascræan's verse* be true,
If Unseen Habitants, yet earth-bound, rove
By the still brook, or the melodious grove,
And ever o'er Man's state the while they wander,
With a high thought, but tender memory ponder :-
If the pure ghosts of the Saturnian Race,
Who o'er the sinless pastures led their herds;
Oh! if they yet claim haunt and dwelling-place
Where the air gladdens with the summer-birds;
Methinks to them familiar thy sublime
And undiurnal melody which breathes
A pastoral sweetness from the golden time;
And, as o'er ruin'd fanes the ivy wreathes,
So cling thy fancies in their green embrace
Around a dim and antique holiness;
And, with a loving yet a solemn grace,
At once a freshness and an awe express!
"Musing on Man" amid the mountains lone,
What must have pass'd in thy unfathom❜d breast!
How, on the lyre within, must many a tone,
Solemn and deep, have risen-unconfess'd,
Save to thyself, and the still ear of GOD!
And from the full and silent Heart of Things,
As o'er the hills thy unwatched footsteps trod,
Didst thou not draw the patriarchal springs
*Hesiod, who tells us (Opera et Dies, verse 121, 'AbTap ÉTEL KEV TOUTO, &C.) that the mortals of the golden age became, after death, good spirits wandering over earth, and regarding the acts of men.
Of love for Man and Nature, which the hues
Of thy transparent verse all livingly suffuse?
Higher thy theme than Cæsar's, or the Pomp
Borne o'er the dusty earth in weary gaud;
Ambition's mask, and Glory's brazen tromp,
The embattled Murder, and the ermin'd Fraud!
Sweeter thy theme than aught which thro' the lays
Of the Rose Garden's sons may softly flow!
And earthlier fires before the Rhean blaze
Lit on thine altar-sicken from their glow!
Man in his simple grandeur, which can take
From Power but poor increase; the Truth which lies
Upshining in "the Well of Homely Life;"
The Winds, the Waters, and their Mysteries-
The Morn and moted Noon, the Stars which make
Their mirror in the heart; the Earth all rife
With warnings and with wisdom; the deep lore
Which floateth airlike over lonely places-
These made thy study and thy theme; and o'er
The Beauty of thy Soul no Paphian Graces,
But a religious and a reverent Awe,
Breathed Sanctity and Music-inspiration,
Not from the dark Obscure of priestly law,
But that which burns-the Centre of Creation-
A Love, a Mystery, and a Fear-the unseen
Source of all worship since the world hath been!
How must thy lone and lofty soul have gone
Exulting on its way, beyond the loud
Self-taunting mockery of the scoffers, grown
Tethered and dull'd to Nature, in the crowd!
Earth has no nobler, no more moral sight
Than a Great Poet whom the world disowns,
But stills not, neither angers :-from his height,
As from a star, float forth his spherelike tones;
He wits not whether the vex'd herd may hear
The music wafted to the reverent ear;
And far Man's wrath, or scorn, or heed, above,
Smiles down the calm disdain of his majestic love!
|