Pleas'd with his fuccessful flight,
Th' officious angel posts away
To the bright regions of eternal day,
Departing in a tract of light:
In hafte for news the heavenly people ran,
And joy'd to hear the hopeful ftate of man.
And now that strange prodigious hour, When God must subject be to human pow'r, That hour is come:
Th' unerring clock of fate has ftruck, "Twas heard below down to hell's lowest room, And strait th' infernal pow'rs th' appointed signal took. Open the scene, my mufe and fee Wonders of impudence and villany;
How wicked mercenary hands
Dare to invade him whom they should adore ; With fwords and staves encompass'd round he stands, Who knew no other guards than those of heaven before. Once with his powerful breath he did repell
The rude affaults of hell;
A ray of his divinity
Shot forth with that bold answer, I am he.
They reel and stagger, and fall to the ground,
For God was in the found.
The voice of God was once again
Walking in the garden heard,
And once again was by the guilty hearers fear'd,
Trembling feiz'dev'ry joint, and chilness ev'ry vein.
This little victory he won,
Shew'd what he could have done.
But he to whom as chief was giv'n
The whole militia of heav'n;
That mighty he
Declines all guards for his defence,
But that of his infeparable innocence,
And quietly gives up his liberty.
He's feiz'd on by the military bands,
With cords they bind his facred hands;
But ah how weak! what nothings would they prove,
Were he not held by stronger ones of love!
Once more my wearied mufe thy pinions try,
And reach the top of Calvary,
A fteep afcent! but most to him who bore
The burden of a cross this way before.
(The cross afcends, there's fomething in it fure
That moral is and mystical;
No heights of fortune are from thee fecure,
Afflictions fometimes climb as well as fall.)
Here breathe a while, and view
The doleful'ft picture forrow ever drew,
The Lord of life, heav'n's darling Son,
The great, th' almighty One,
With out-ftretch'd arms nail'd to a curfed tree,
Crown'd with sharp thorns, cover'd with infamy.
He who before
So many miracles had done,
The lives of others to restore,
Does with a greater lose his own.
Full three hours long he did sustain
Moft exquifite and poignant pain:
So long the fympathifing fun his light withdrew,
And wonder'd how the ftars their dying Lord could
This strange defect of light
Does all the fages in aftronomy affright
With fears of an eternal night:
Th' intelligences in their courfes ftray,
And travellers below mistake their way,
Wond'ring to be benighted in the midst of day:
Each mind is feiz'd with horror and despair,
And more o'erfpread with darkness than the air.
Fear on, 'tis wond'rous all and new,
'Tis what past ages never knew,
Fear on, but yet you'll find
The great eclipfe is still behind :
The lufture of the face divine
Does on the mighty fufferer no longer shine
God hides his glories from his fight
With a thick fcreen made of hell's groffeft night;
Close wrought it was, and folid all,
Compacted, and fubftantial,
Impenetrable to th' beatific light;
Without complaint he bore
The tortures he endur'd before;
But now no longer able to contain
Under the great hyperbole of pain,
He mourns, and with a strong pathetic cry,
Laments the fad desertion of the Deity.
Here stop, my mufe, ftop and admire,
The breather of all life does now expire.
His milder Father fummons him away;
His breath obediently he does refign;
Angels to paradife his foul convey,
And calm the relicts of his grief with hymns divine.
On the RESURRECTION. By Mr. Addifon.
HE following lines are esteemed by the best judges to be the fineft sketch of the Refurrection, that any age or language has produced: Nor does their only excellence confift in being an accurate poem; but alfo in being an exact Copy of the painter's original upon the Altar in Magdalen College; but fo much improved with all the ftrongest figures and most lively embellishments of a poetical defcription, that the reader receives a double fatisfaction in feeing the two fifter-arts fo ufeful to each other, in borrowing mutual helps, and mutual advantages.
It is, indeed, wonderful to find in the narrow compafs of fo few pages all the most dreadful circumstances of that laft terrible crifts of time: The poem is a beautiful and fuccinct epitome of all that has or can ever be said on that important fubject.
HE pencil's glowing lines and vaft command,
And mankind rifing from the painter's hand,
The awful Judge array'd in beamy light,
And spectres trembling at the dreadful fight,
To fing, O mufe, the pious bard infpire,
And waken in his breast the facred fire..
The hallow'd field, a bare white wall of late,
Now cloth'd in gaudy colours, fhines in ftate;
And left fome little interval confefs
Its antient fimple form, and homely drefs;
The skilful artist laid o'er every part
The first foundation of his future art:
O'er the wide frame his ductile colours led,
And with strong primings all the wall o'erfpread.
As e'er yon fpangling orbs were hung on high,
Left one great blank should yawn thro' boundless sky,
Thro' the wide heavenly arch and trackless road
In azure volumes the pure ether flow'd;
The fun at length burns out, intensely bright,
And the pale crefcent fheds her borrow'd light.
With thick-fown ftars the radiant pole is crown'd,
Of milky glories a long tract is found,
O'erflows, and whitens all the heav'ns around.
So when the ground-work of the piece was laid,
Nor yet the painter had his art display'd,
With flower hand, and pencil more divine,
He blends each colour, heightens ev'ry line;
Till various forms the breathing picture wears,
And a mute groupe of images appears.
Celestial guards the topmost height attend,
And crouds of angels o'er the wall defcend;
With their big cheeks the deaf'ning clarions wind,
Whose dreadful clangors startle all mankind :
Ev'n the dead hear; the lab'ring graves conceive,
And the fwoln clod in picture feems to heave:
Ten thousand worlds revive to better skies,
And from their tombs the thronging coarses rife.
So when fam'd Cadmus fow'd the fruitful field,
With pregnant throws the quicken'd furrow fwell'd:
From the warm foil sprung up a warlike train,
And human harvests cover'd all the plain.
And now from ev'ry corner of the earth
The scatter'd duft is call'd to second birth;
Whether in mines it form'd the rip'ning mafs,
Or humbly mix'd, and flourish'd in the grafs.
The fever'd body now unites again,
And kindred atoms rally into men:
The various joints resume their antient feats,
And ev'ry limb its former task repeats.
Here an imperfect form returns to light,
Not half renew'd, dishonest to the fight;
Maim'd of his nofe appears his blotted face,
And scarce the image of a man we trace.
Here by degrees infus'd, the vital ray
Gives the first motion to the panting clay:
Slow to new life the thawing fluids creep,
And the stiff joints wake heavily from fleep.
Here on the guilty brow pale horrors glare,
And all the figure labours with despair.
From fcenes like these now turn thy wond'ring fight,
And if thou canft withstand such floods of light,
Look! where thy Saviour fills the middle space,
The Son of God, true image of his face,
Himself eternal God, e'er time began her race.
See! what mild beams their gracious influence shed,
And how the pointed radiance crowns his head!
Around his temples lambent glories fhine,
And on his brow fits majesty divine;
His eye-balls lighten with celeftial fires,
And ev'ry grace to speak the God confpires.
But ah! how chang'd, ah! how unlike the fame
From him, who patient wore the mortal frame;
Who thro' a scene of woes drew painful breath,
And struggled with a fad, flow, long-drawn death:
Who gave on Golgotha the dreadful groan,
Bearer of other's fins, and fuff'rings not his own.
But death and hell fubdu'd, the Deity
Afcends triumphant to his native sky;
And rifing far above th' ethereal height,
The fun and moon diminish to his fight.
And now to view he bare'd his bleeding fide,
And his pierc'd hands and feet, in crimson dy'd ;-
Still did the nails the recent fcars reveal,
And bloody tracks of the transfixing steel.
Hither in crouds the bleffed shape their flight;
And throng the manfions of immortal light;
The menial twelve,* an ever faithful band,
Around their mafter fit on either hand;
*The apoftles, as thus defcribed, are painted on the A'tar, tho' not mentioned in Mr. Addison's Latin poem.
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