Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted Through clouds of circumambient darkness, And pearly battlements around Look'd o'er the immense of Heaven.
The magic car no longer moved. The Fairy and the Spirit Enter'd the Hall of Spells: Those golden clouds
That roll'd in glittering billows Beneath the azure canopy
With the ethereal footsteps, trembled not:
The light and crimson mists,
Floating to strains of thrilling melody
Through that unearthly dwelling, Yielded to every movement of the will. Upon their pensive spell the spirit lean'd, And, for the varied bliss that press'd around, Used not the glorious privilege
Of virtue and of wisdom.
Spirit! the Fairy said,
And pointed to the gorgeous dome, This is a wondrous sight And mocks all human grandeur; But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell In a celestial palace, all resign'd To pleasurable impulses, immured Within the prison of itself, the will
Of changeless nature would be unfulfill'd. Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come! This is thine high reward:-the past shall rise; Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach The secrets of the future.
The Fairy and the Spirit Approach'd the overhanging battlement.- Below lay stretch'd the universe! There, far as the remotest line That bounds imagination's flight,
Countless and unending orbs In mazy motion intermingled, Yet still fulfill'd immutably Eternal nature's law. Above, below, around
The circling systems form'd A wilderness of harmony; Each with undeviating aim,
In eloquent silence, through the depths of space
Pursued its wondrous way.
There was a little light
That twinkled in the misty distance: None but a spirit's eye Might ken that rolling orb; None but a spirit's eye, And in no other place
But that celestial dwelling, might behold Each action of this earth's inhabitants. But matter, space and time,
In those aërial mansions cease to act; And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul Fears to attempt the conquest.
Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed The building of that fane; and many a father, Worn out with toil and slavery, implored The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, And spare his children the detested task Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning The choicest days of life,
To soothe a dotard's vanity.
There an inhuman and uncultured race Howl'd hideous praises to their Demon-God, They rush'd to war, tore from the mother's womb The unborn child,-old age and infancy Promiscuous perish'd; their victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends But what was he who taught them that the God Of nature and benevolence had given A special sanction to the trade of blood? His name and theirs are fading, and the tales
Of this barbarian nation, which imposture Recites till terror credits, are pursuing Itself into forgetfulness.
Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, There is a moral desert now:
The mean and miserable huts, The yet more wretched palaces, Contrasted with those ancient fanes, Now crumbling to oblivion; The long and lonely colonnades, Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks, Seem like a well-known tune,
Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear, Remember'd now in sadness.
But, oh! how much more changed, How gloomier is the contrast
Of human nature there!
Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, A coward and a fool, spreads death around- Then, shuddering, meets his own. Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, A cowl'd and hypocritical monk Prays, curses and deceives.
Spirit! ten thousand years Have scarcely past away,
Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks His enemy's blood, and, aping Europe's sons, Wakes the unholy song of war, Arose a stately city,
Metropolis of the western continent: There, now, the mossy column-stone, Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp, Which once appear'd to brave All, save its country's ruin; There the wide forest scene, Rude in the uncultivated loveliness
Of gardens long run wild,
Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps Chance in that desert has delay'd,
Thus to have stood since earth was what it is. Yet once it was the busiest haunt,
Whither, as to a common centre, flock'd Strangers, and ships, and merchandise: Once peace and freedom blest The cultivated plain :
But wealth, that curse of man, Blighted the bud of its prosperity: Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty, Fled, to return not, until man shall know That they alone can give the bliss Worthy a soul that claims Its kindred with eternity.
There's not one atom of yon earth But once was living man; Nor the minutest drop of rain, That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, But flow'd in human veins : And from the burning plains Where Lybian monsters yell, From the most gloomy glens Of Greenland's sunless clime, To where the golden fields Of fertile England spread
Their harvest to the day, Thou canst not find one spot Whereon no city stood.
How strange is human pride! I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of grass, That springeth in the morn And perisheth ere noon,
Is an unbounded world;
I tell thee that those viewless beings, Whose mansion is the smallest particle Of the impassive atmosphere,
Think, feel and live like man; That their affections and antipathies, Like his, produce the laws Ruling their mortal state; And the minutest throb
That through their frame diffuses The slightest, faintest motion, Is fix'd and indispensable
As the majestic laws That rule yon rolling orbs.
The Fairy paused. The Spirit,
In ecstasy of admiration, felt
All knowledge of the past revived; the events Of old and wondrous times,
Which dim tradition interruptedly
Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded In just perspective to the view; Yet dim from their infinitude.
The Spirit seem'd to stand High on an isolated pinnacle; The flood of ages combating below, The depth of the unbounded universe Above, and all around Nature's unchanging harmony.
FAIRY! the Spirit said, And on the Queen of spells Fix'd her ethereal eyes,
I thank thee. Thou hast given
A boon which I will not resign, and taught A lesson not to be unlearn'd. I know The past, and thence I will essay to glean A warning for the future, so that man May profit by his errors, and derive Experience from his folly: For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.
Turn thee, surpassing Spirit! Much yet remains unscann'd.
Thou knowest how great is man, Thou knowest his imbecility: Yet learn thou what he is; Yet learn the lofty destiny Which restless Time prepares For every living soul.
Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid Yon populous city, rears its thousand towers
And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks, Encompass it around: the dweller there Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not The curses of the fatherless, the groans Of those who have no friend? He passes on: The King, the wearer of a gilded chain That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave Even to the basest appetites-that man Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles At the deep curses which the destitute Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy
Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan But for those morsels which his wantonness Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save
All that they love from famine: when he hears The tale of horror, to some ready-made face Of hypocritical assent he turns,
Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him, Flushes his bloated cheek.
Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags His pall'd, unwilling appetite. If gold, Gleaming around, and numerous viands cull'd From every clime, could force the lothing sense To overcome satiety,-if wealth
The spring it draws from poisons not,―or vice, Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not Its food to deadliest venom; then that king Is happy; and the peasant who fulfills His unforced task, when he returns at even, And by the blazing fagot meets again Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, Tastes not a sweeter meal.
Stretch'd on the gorgeous couch; his fever'd brain Reels dizzily awhile: but ah! too soon The slumber of intemperance subsides, And conscience, that undying serpent, calls Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task. Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye- Oh! mark that deadly visage.
Oh! must this last for ever! Awful death, I wish, yet fear to clasp thee!-Not one moment Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace! Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity In penury and dungeons? wherefore Jurkest With danger, death, and solitude; yet shunn'st The palace I have built thee! Sacred peace! Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed One drop of balm upon my wither'd soul.
Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart, And peace defileth not her snowy robes In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters; His slumbers are but varied agonies, They prey like scorpions on the springs of life. There needeth not the hell that bigots frame To punish those who err: earth in itself Contains at once the evil and the cure; And all-sufficing Nature can chastise
Those who transgress her law,-she only knows How justly to proportion to the fault
The punishment it merits.
That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe? Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, His soul asserts not its humanity?
That man's mild nature rises not in war Against a king's employ? No-'t is not strange. He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives Just as his father did; the unconquer'd powers Of precedent and custom interpose
Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet, To those who know not nature, nor deduce The future from the present, it may seem, That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes Of this unnatural being; not one wretch, Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm To dash him from his throne!
Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose ? Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap Toil and unvanquishable penury
On those who build their palaces, and bring Their daily bread?-From vice, black lothesome vice, From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong; From all that genders misery, and makes Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust, Revenge, and murder.-And when reason's voice, Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked The nations; and mankind perceive that vice Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue Is peace, and happiness, and harmony; When man's maturer nature shall disdain The playthings of its childhood;-kingly glare Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade Shall be as hateful and unprofitable As that of truth is now.
Where is the fame Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound From time's light footfall, the minutest wave
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! to-day Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze That flashes desolation, strong the arm That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes! That mandate is a thunder-peal that died In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash On which the midnight closed, and on that arm The worm has made his meal.
Who, great in his humility, as kings Are little in their grandeur; he who leads Invincibly a life of resolute good,
And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths More free and fearless than the trembling judge, Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove To bind the impassive spirit;-when he falls, His mild eye beams benevolent no more: Wither'd the hand outstretch'd but to relieve; Sunk reason's simple eloquence, that roll'd But to appal the guilty. Yes! the grave
Hath quench'd that eye, and death's relentless frost Wither'd that arm: but the unfading fame Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb; The deathless memory of that man, whom kings Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance With which the happy spirit contemplates Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth, Shall never pass away.
Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen: for kings And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not nor obeys. Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.
High over flaming Rome, with savage joy Lower'd like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld The frightful desolation spread, and felt A new-created sense within his soul Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound; Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome The force of human kindness? and, when Rome, With one stern blow, hurl'd not the tyrant down, Crush'd not the arm red with her dearest blood, Had not submissive abjectness destroy'd Nature's suggestions?
Look on yonder earth: The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak Peace, harmony, and love. The universe, In nature's silent eloquence, declares That all fulfil the works of love and joy,All but the outcast man. He fabricates The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth
The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe, Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams, Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch, Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth A stepdame to her numerous sons, who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil, A mother only to those puling babes Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, that peace Which men alone appreciate?
How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh, Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude
That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls Seems like a canopy which love had spread To curtain her sleeping world, Yon gentle hills, Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, So stainless, that their white and glittering spires Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep, Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of peace;-all form a scene Where musing solitude might love to lift Her soul above this sphere of earthliness; Where silence undisturb'd might watch alone, So cold, so bright, so still.
The orb of day, In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day; And Vesper's image on the western main Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes : Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, Roll o'er the blacken'd waters; the deep roar Of distant thunder mutters awfully; Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; The torn deep yawns,-the vessel finds a grave Beneath its jagged gulf.
Ah! whence yon glare That fires the arch of heaven?—that dark-red smoke Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quench'd In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round! Hark to that roar, whose swift and deaf'ning peals In countless echoes through the mountains ring, Startling pale midnight on her starry throne! Now swells the intermingling din; the jar Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb; The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men Inebriate with rage:-loud, and more loud The discord grows; till pale death shuts the scene, And o'er the conqueror and the conquer'd draws His cold and bloody shroud.-Of all the men Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there, In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts That beat with anxious life at sunset there; How few survive, how few are beating now! All is deep silence, like the fearful calm That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause; Save when the frantic wail of widow'd love Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay Wrapt round its struggling powers.
Dawns on the mournful scene! the sulphurous smoke Before the icy wind slow rolls away, And the bright beams of frosty morning dance Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood Even to the forest's depth, and scatter'd arms, And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path Of the out-sallying victors: far behind, Black ashes note where their proud city stood. Within yon forest is a gloomy glen- Each tree which guards its darkness from the day Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.
I see thee shrink, Surpassing Spirit!-wert thou human else? I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet Across thy stainless features: yet fear not; This is no unconnected misery,
Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. Man's evil nature, that apology
Which desolates the discord-wasted land. From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, Whose safety is man's deep unbetter'd woe, Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the ax Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall; And where its venom'd exhalations spread Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, A garden shall arise, in loveliness Surpassing fabled Eden.
That form'd this world so beautiful, that spread Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord Strung to unchanging unison, that gave The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, That yielded to the wanderers of the deep The lovely silence of the unfathom'd main, And fill'd the meanest worm that crawls in dust With spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone, Partial in causeless malice, wantonly Heap'd ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul Blasted with withering curses; placed afar The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp, But serving on the frightful gulf to glare, Rent wide beneath his footsteps?
Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower Even in its tender bud; their influence darts Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins Of desolate society. The child,
Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name, Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts His baby-sword even in a hero's mood. This infant-arm becomes the bloodiest scourge Of devastated earth: whilst specious names, Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood. Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man Inherits vice and misery, when force And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe, Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good.
Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps From its new tenement, and looks abroad For happiness and sympathy, how stern And desolate a track is this wide world! How wither'd all the buds of natural good! No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame, Poison'd, perchance, by the disease and woe Heap'd on the wretched parent whence it sprung By morals, law, and custom, the pure winds Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes, May breathe not. The untainting light of day May visit not its longings. It is bound Ere it has life yea, all the chains are forged Long ere its being: all liberty and love
Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, And peace is torn from its defencelessness;
Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doom d To abjectness and bondage!
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