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 odours snatched from beds of amaranth, And they, that from the crystal river of life Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales ! The favoured 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-stainel 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.
O 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 Throne + 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,
† Rev. chap. iv. verses 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.
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
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 organising 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.
The final destruction impersonated.
AUSPICIOUS Reverence! Hush all 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 unfettered 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 Chain down the winged thought, scoffing ascent, Proud in their meanness and themselves they cheat With noisy emptiness of learned phrase, Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences,
Self-working tools, uncaused effects, and all Those blind omniscients, those almighty slaves, Untenanting creation of its God.
But properties are God: the naked mass (If mass there be, fantastic guess or ghost) Acts only by its inactivity.
Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier think That as one body seems the aggregate Of atoms numberless, each organised; So by a strange and dim similitude Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds Are one all-conscious Spirit, which informs With absolute ubiquity of thought (His one eternal self-affirming act!) All his involved Monads, that yet seem With various province and apt agency Each to pursue his own self-centring end; Some nurse the infant diamond in the mine; Some roll the genial juices through the oak; Some drive the mutinous clouds to clash in air, And rushing on the storm with whirlwind speed, Yoke the red lightnings to their volleying car. Thus these pursue their never-varying course, No eddy in their stream. Others, more wild, With complex interests weaving human fates, Duteous or proud, alike obedient all, Evolve the process of eternal good.
And what if some rebellious o'er dark realms Arrogate power? yet these train up to God, And on the rude eye, unconfirmed for day, Flash meteor-lights better than total gloom. As ere from Lieule-Oaive's vapoury head The Laplander beholds the far-off sun Dart his slant beam on unobeying snows, While yet the stern and solitary night Brooks no alternate sway, the Boreal Morn With mimic lustre substitutes its gleam, Guiding his course or by Niemi lake Or Balda Zhiok,* or the mossy stone Of Solfar-kapper, + while the snowy blast Drifts arrowy by, or eddies round his sledge,
* Balda Zhiok; ie. mons altitudinis, the highest mountain in Lapland. + Solfar-kapper; capitium Solfar, hic locus omnium quotquot veterum Lapponum superstitio sacrificiis religiosoque cultui dedicavit, celebratissimus erat, in parte sinus australis situs semimilliaris spatio a mari dist ns. Ipse locus, quem curiositatis gratia aliquando me invisisse memini, duabus prealtis lapidibus, sibi invicem oppositis, quorum alter musco circumdatus erat, constabat.Leemius de Lapponibus.
Making the poor babe at its mother's back Scream in its scanty cradle: he the while Wins gentle solace as with upward eye He marks the streamy banners of the North, Thinking himself those happy spirits shall join Who there in floating robes of rosy light Dance sportively. For Fancy is the power That first unsensualises the dark mind, Giving it new delights; and bids it swell With wild activity; and peopling air, By obscure fears of beings invisible, Emancipates it from the grosser thrall Of the present impulse, teaching self-control, Till Superstition with unconscious hand
Seat Reason on her throne. Wherefore not vain, Nor yet without permitted power impressed, I deem those legends terrible, with which The polar ancient thrills his uncouth throng; Whether of pitying Spirits that make their moan O'er slaughtered infants, or that giant bird Vuokho, of whose rushing wings the noise Is tempest, when the unutterable + shape Speeds from the mother of Death, and utters once That shriek, which never murderer heard, and lived. Or if the Greenland Wizard in strange trance Pierces the untravelled realms of Ocean's bed Over the abysm, even to that uttermost cave By mis-shaped prodigies beleaguered, such As earth ne'er bred, nor air, nor the upper sea: Where dwells the Fury Form, whose unheard name With eager eye, pale cheek, suspended breath, And lips half-opening with the dread of sound, Unsleeping Silence guards, worn out with fear Lest haply 'scaping on some treacherous blast The fateful word let slip the elements And frenzy Nature. Yet the wizard her,
Armed with Torngarsuck's‡ power, the Spirit of Good,
The Lapland women carry their infants at their back in a piece of excavated wood, which serves them for a cradle. Opposite to the infant's mouth there is a hole for it to breathe through.-Mirandum prorsus est et vix credi bile nisi cui vidisse contigit. Lappones hyeme iter facientes per vastos montes, perque horrida et invia tesqua, eo presertim tempore quo omnia perpetuis nivibus obtecta sunt et nives ventis agitantur et in gyros aguntur, viam ad destinata loca absque errore invenire posse, lactantem autem infantem si quem habeat, ipsa mater in dorso bajulat, in excavato ligno (Gieed'k ipsi vocant) quod pro cunis utuntur: in hoc infans pannis et pellibus convolutus colligatus jacet.-Leemius de Lapponibus. † Jaibme Aibma
They call the Good Spirit Torngarsuck. The other great but malignant spirit is a nameless Female; she dwells under the sea in a great house, where she can detain in captivity all the animals of the ocean by her magic power. When a dearth befalls the Greenlanders, an Angekok or magician must undertake a journey thither. He passes through the kingdom of souls, over a horrible abyss into the Palace of this phantom, and by his enchantments causes the captive creatures to ascend directly to the surface of the ocean-See Crantz's History of Greenland, vol. 1. 206.
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