Yet is the day of retribution nigh:
The Lamb of God hath opened the fifth seal:
And upward rush on swiftest wing of fire
The innumerable multicude of Wrongs
By man on man inflicted! Rest awhile,
Children of wretchedness! The hour is nigh;
And lo! the great, the rich, the mighty Men,
The Kings and the chief Captains of the World,
With all that fixed on high like stars of Heaven
Shot baleful influence, shall be cast to earth,
Vile and down-trodden, as the untimely fruit
Shook from the fig-tree by a sudden storm.
Even now the storm begins ;* each gentle name
Faith and meek. Piety, with fearful joy
Tremble far-off—for lo! the giant Frenzy
Uprooting empires with his whirlwind arm
Mocketh high heaven; burst hideous from the cell
Where the old Hag, unconquerable, huge,
Creation's eyeless drudge, black Ruin, sits
Nursing the impatient earthquake.
O return! Pure Faith! meek Piety! The abhorred Form Whose scarlet robe was stiff with earthly pomp, Who drank iniquity in cups of gold, Whose names were many and all blasphemous, Hath met the horrible judgment! Whence that cry? The mighty army of foul Spirits shrieked Disherited of earth! For she hath fallen On whose black front was written Mystery ; She that reeled heavily, whose wine was blood; She that worked whoredom with the Demon Power, And from the dark embrace all evil things
* Alluding to the French Revolution.
Brought forth and nurtured : mitred Atheism !
And patient Folly who on bended knee
Gives back the steel that stabbed him: and pale
Fear
Haunted by ghastlier shapings than surrouna
Moon-blasted Madness when he yells at midnight!
Return, pure Faith! return, meek Piety!
The kingdoms of the world are yours : each heart
Self-governed, the vast family of Love
Raised from the common earth by common toil
Enjoy the equal produce. Such delights
As float to earth, permitted visitants !
When in some hour of solemn jubilee
The massy gates of Paradise are thrown
Wide open, and forth come in fragments wild
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,
And odors snatched from beds of amaranth.
And they, that from the crystal river of life
Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales !
The favored good man in his lonely walk
Perceives them, and his silent spirit drinks
Strange bliss which he shall recognise in heaven.
And such delights, such strange beatitudes
Seize on my young anticipating heart
When that blest future rushes on my view!
For in his own and in his father's might
The Saviour comes! While as the Thousand Years
Lead up their mystic dance, the Desert shouts!
Old Ocean claps his hands The mighty Dead
Rise to new life, whoe'er from earliest time
With conscious zeal had urged Love's wondrous plan
Coadjutors of God. To Milton's trump
The high groves of the renovated Earth
Unbosom their glad echoes ; inly hushed,
Adoring Newton his serener eye
Raises to heaven: and he of mortal kind
Wisest, he* first who marked the ideal tribes
Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.
Lo! Priestley there, patriot, and saint, and sage,
Him, full of years, from his loved native land,
Statesmen blood-stained and priests idolatrous
By dark lies maddening the blind multitude,
Drove with vain hate. Calm, pitying he retired,
And mused expectant on these promised years!
0 Years ! the blest pre-eminence of Saints !
Ye sweep athwart my gaze, so heavenly bright,
The wings that veil the adoring Seraphs' eyes,
What time they bend before the Jasper Thronet
Reflect no lovelier hues! Yet ye depart,
And all beyond is darkness! Heights most strange,
Whence Fancy falls, fluttering her idle wing.
For who of woman born may paint the hour,
When seized in his mid course, the Sun shall wane
Making noon ghastly! Who of woman born
May image in the workings of his thought,
How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend outstretched
Beneath the unsteady feet of Nature groans,
In feverous slumbers—destined then to wake,
When fiery whirlwinds thunder his dread name,
And Angels shout, Destruction! How his arm
The last great Spirit lifting high in air
* David Hartley.
# Rev. chap. iv. v. 2 and 3.-And immediately I was in the Spirit; and, behold, a Throne was set in Heaven, and one sat on the Throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone, &c.
# The final destruction inpersonated.
Shall swear by Him, the ever-living One,
Time is no more!
Believe thou, O my soul, Life is a vision shadowy of Truth ; And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave, Shapes of a dream! The veiling clouds retire, And lo! the Throne of the redeeming God Forth flashing unimaginable day, Wraps in one blaze earth, heaven, and deepest hell. Contemplant Spirits ! ye that hover o'er With untired gaze the immeasurable fount Ebullient with creative Deity ! And ye of plastic power, that interfused Roll through the grosser and material mass In organizing surge! Holies of God! (And what if Monads of the infinite mind) I haply journeying my immortal course Shall sometime join your mystic choir. Till then I discipline my young and novice thought In ministeries of heart-stirring song, And aye on Meditation's heaven-ward wing Soaring aloft I breathe the empyreal air Of Love, omnific, omnipresent Love, Whose day-spring rises glorious in my soul As the great Sun, when he his influence Sheds on the frost-bound waters—The glad stream Flows to the ray, and warbles as it flows.
A USPICIOUS Reverence! Hush the meaner
song, Ere we the deep preluding strain have poured To the Great Father, only Rightful King, Eternal Father! King Omnipotent! To the Will Absolute, the One, the Good ! The I AM, the Word, the Life, the Living God! Such symphony requires best instrument. Seize, then, my soul ! from Freedom's trophied dome The harp which hangeth high between the shields Of Brutus and Leonidas! With that Strong music, that soliciting spell, force back Man's free and stirring spirit that lies entranced.
For what is freedom, but the unfetter'd use
Of all the powers which God for use had given ?
But chiefly this, him first, him last to view
Through meaner powers and secondary things
Effulgent, as through clouds that veil his blaze,
For all that meets the bodily sense I deem
Symbolical, one mighty alphabet
For infant minds; and we in this low world
Placed with our backs to bright reality,
That we may learn with young unwounded ken
The substance from its shadow. Infinite Love,
Whose latence is the plenitude of all,
Thou with retracted beams, and self-eclipse
Veiling, revealest thine eternal Sun.
But some there are who deem themselves most free When they within this gross and visible sphere
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