These hoards of truth you can unlock at will: And music waits upon your skilful touch, Sounds which the wandering shepherd from these heights
Hears, and forgets his purpose ;--furnished thus, How can you droop, if willing to be upraised?
A piteous lot it were to flee from Man— Yet not rejoice in Nature. He, whose hours Are by domestic pleasures uncaressed And unenlivened; who exists whole years Apart
from benefits received or done
'Mid the transactions of the bustling crowd; Who neither hears, nor feels a wish to hear, Of the world's interests-such a one hath need Of a quick fancy, and an active heart, That, for the day's consumption, books may yield Food not unwholesome; earth and air correct His morbid humor, with delight supplied Or solace, varying as the seasons change. -Truth has her pleasure-grounds, her haunts of
And easy contemplation; gay parterres, And labyrinthine walks, her sunny glades And shady groves in studied contrast-each, For recreation, leading into each: These may he range, if willing to partake
Their soft indulgences, and in due time May issue thence, recruited for the tasks
And course of service Truth requires from those Who tend her altars, wait upon her throne,
And guard her fortresses. Who thinks, and feels, And recognises ever and anon
The breeze of nature stirring in his soul,
Why need such man go desperately astray, And nurse the dreadful appetite of death?” If tired with systems, each in its degree Substantial, and all crumbling in their turn, Let him build systems of his own, and smile At the fond work, demolished with a touch; If unreligious, let him be at once Among ten thousand innocents, enrolled A pupil in the many-chambered school, Where superstition weaves her airy dreams.
Life's autumn past, I stand on winter's verge; And daily lose what I desire to keep : Yet rather would I instantly decline To the traditionary sympathies Of a most rustic ignorance, and take A fearful apprehension from the owl Or death-watch: and as readily rejoice, If two auspicious magpies crossed my way;- To this would rather bend than see and hear The repetitions wearisome of sense,
Where soul is dead and feeling hath no place; Where knowledge, ill begun in cold remark On outward things, with formal inference ends; Or, if the mind turn inward, she recoils At once-or, not recoiling, is perplexed- Lost in a gloom of uninspired research; Meanwhile, the heart within the heart, the seat Where peace and happy consciousness should dwell, On its own axis restlessly revolving,
Seeks, yet can nowhere find, the light of truth.
Upon the breast of new-created earth
Man walked; and when and wheresoe'er he moved,
Alone or mated, solitude was not.
He heard, borne on the wind, the articulate voice Of God; and Angels to his sight appeared Crowning the glorious hills of paradise;
Or through the groves gliding like morning mist Enkindled by the sun. He sate-and talked With winged Messengers; who daily brought To his small island in the ethereal deep
Tidings of joy and love. From those pure heights (Whether of actual vision, sensible To sight and feeling, or that in this sort Have condescendingly been shadowed forth Communications spiritually maintained, And intuitions moral and divine)
Fell Human-kind-to banishment condemned That flowing years repealed not: and distress And grief spread wide; but Man escaped the doom Of destitution;-solitude was not. -Jehovah-shapeless Power above all Powers, Single and one, the omnipresent God, By vocal utterance, or blaze of light, Or cloud of darkness, localized in heaven; On earth, enshrined within the wandering ark; Or, out of Sion, thundering from his throne Between the Cherubim-on the chosen Race Showered miracles, and ceased not to dispense Judgments, that filled the land from age to age With hope, and love, and gratitude, and fear; And with amazement smote ;-thereby to assert His scorn, or unacknowledged sovereignty. And when the One, ineffable of name,
Of nature indivisible, withdrew
From mortal adoration or regard,
Not then was Deity engulfed; nor Man,
The rational creature, left, to feel the weight Of his own reason, without sense or thought Of higher reason and a purer will,
To benefit and bless, through mightier power:- Whether the Persian-zealous to reject Altar and image, and the inclusive walls And roofs of temples built by human hands- To loftiest heights ascending, from their tops, With myrtle-wreathed tiara on his brow, Presented sacrifice to moon and stars, And to the winds and mother elements, And the whole circle of the heavens, for him A sensitive existence, and a God, With lifted hands invoked, and songs Or, less reluctantly to bonds of sense Yielding his soul, the Babylonian framed For influence undefined a personal shape; And, from the plain, with toil immense, upreared Tower eight times planted on the top of tower, That Belus, nightly to his splendid couch Descending, there might rest; upon that height Pure and serene, diffused-to overlook Winding Euphrates, and the city vast Of his devoted worshippers, far-stretched, With grove and field and garden interspersed; Their town, and foodful region for support Against the pressure of beleaguering war.
Chaldean Shepherds, ranging trackless fields, Beneath the concave of unclouded skies Spread like a sea, in boundless solitude, Looked on the polar star, as on a guide And guardian of their course, that never closed His steadfast eye. The planetary Five
With a submissive reverence they beheld; Watched, from the centre of their sleeping flocks, Those radiant Mercuries, that seemed to move Carrying through ether, in perpetual round, Decrees and resolutions of the Gods; And, by their aspects, signifying works Of dim futurity, to Man revealed. -The imaginative faculty was lord Of observations natural; and, thus
Led on, those shepherds made report of stars In set rotation passing to and fro, Between the orbs of our apparent sphere And its invisible counterpart, adorned With answering constellations, under earth, Removed from all approach of living sight But present to the dead; who, so they deemed, Like those celestial messengers beheld
All accidents, and judges were of all.
The lively Grecian, in a land of hills,
Rivers and fertile plains, and sounding shores,- Under a cope of sky more variable,
Could find commodious place for every God, Promptly received, as prodigally brought, From the surrounding countries, at the choice Of all adventurers. With unrivalled skill, As nicest observation furnished hints For studious fancy, his quick hand bestowed On fluent operations a fixed shape; Metal or stone, idolatrously served.
And yet triumphant o'er this pompous show Of art, this palpable array of sense, On every side encountered; in despite Of the gross fictions chanted in the streets
« ZurückWeiter » |