My light in darkness! and my life in death!
My boast through time! bliss through eternity!
Eternity, too short to speak thy praise,
Or fathom thy profound of love to man!
To man of men the meanest, e'en to me ;
My sacrifice my God!-what things are these! 595
What then art Thou? by what name shall I call thee?
Knew I the name devout archangels use,
Devout archangels should the name enjoy,
By me unrival'd; thousands more sublime,
None half so dear as that which, though unspoke, 600
Still glows at heart. O how Omnipotence
Is lost in love! thou great Philanthropist !
Father of angels! but the friend of man!
Like Jacob, fondest of the younger born!
Thou who didst save him, snatch the smoking brand
From out the flames, and quench it in thy blood! 606
How art thou pleased by bounty to distress!
To make us groan beneath our gratitude,
Too big for birth to favour and confound;
To challenge and to distance all return!
Of lavish love stupendous heights to soar,
And leave Praise panting in the distant vale!
Thy right, too great, defrauds thee of thy due;
And sacrilegious our sublimest song!
But since the naked will obtains thy smile,
Beneath this monument of praise unpaid,
And future life symphonious to my strain,
(That noblest hymn to Heaven!) for ever lie
Entomb'd my fear of death! and every fear,
The dread of every evil, but thy frown.
Whom see I yonder so demurely smile? Laughter a labour, and might break their rest. Ye Quietists! in homage to the skies!
Serene! of soft address! who mildly make
An unobtrusive tender of your hearts,
Abhorring violence! who halt indeed,
But, for the blessing wrestle not with Heaven!
Think you my song too turbulent too warm?
Are passions, then, the pagans of the soul?
Reason alone baptized? alone ordain'd
To touch things sacred? Oh, for warmer still!
Guilt chills my zeal, and age benumbs my powers.
Oh, for an humbler heart and prouder song!
Thou, my much injured Theme! with that soft eye
Which melted o'er doom'd Salem, deign to look
Compassion to the cold..ess of my breast,
And pardon to the winter in my stra..
Oh, ye cold-hearted, frozen Formausts!
On such a theme 'tis impious to be calm :
Passion is reason, transport temper here.
Shall Heaven, which gave is ardour, and has shown
Her own for man so strongly, not disdain
What smooth emollients in theology,
Recumbent Virtue's downy doctors, preach;
That prose of piety, a lukewarm praise?
Rise odours sweet from incense uninflamed?
Devotion when lukewarm is undevout;
But when it glows, its heat is struck to Heaven,
To human hearts her golden harps are strung;
High Heaven's orchestra chants Amen to man.
Hear I, or dream I hear, their distant strain,
Sweet to the soul, and tasting strong of Heaven,
Soft wafted on celestial Pity's plume,
Through the vast spaces of the universe.
To cheer me in this melancholy gloom ?
Oh, when will Death (now stingless) like a friend
Admit me of their choir? Oh, when will Death
This mouldering, old, partition wall throw down?
Give beings, one in nature, one abode ?
Oh, Death divine! that givest us to the skies:
Great future! glorious patron of the past
And present! when shall I thy shrine adore?
From Nature's continent, immensely wide,
Immensely bless'd, this little isle of life,
This dark incarcerating colony
Divides us. Happy day! that breaks our chain;
That manumits; that calls from exile home,
That leads to Nature's great metropolis,
And readmits us, through the guardian hand
Of elder brothers, to our Father's throne;
Who hears our Advocate, and, through his wounds
Beholding man, allows that tender name.
'Tis this makes Christian triumph a command:
'Tis this makes joy a duty to the wise.
'Tis impious in a good man to be sad.
Seest thou, Lorenzo, where hangs all our hope?
Touch'd by the Cross, we live; or, more than die ;
That touch which touch'd not angels; more divine
Than that which touch'd confusion into form.
And darkness into glory: partial touch!
Ineffably preeminent regard!
Sacred to man, and sovereign through the whole
Long golden chain of miracles, which hangs
From Heaven through all duration, and supports,
In one iliustrious and amazing plan,
Thy welfare, Nature! and thy God's renown.
That touch, with charms celestial, heals the soul
Diseased, drives pain from guilt, lights life in death,
Turns earth to Heaven, to heavenly thrones transforms
The ghastly ruins of the mouldering tomb.
Dost ask me when? When He who died returns;
Returns, how changed; where then the man of woe?
In Glory's terrors all the Godhead burns,
And all his courts, exhausted by the tide
Of deities triumphant in his train,
Leave a stupendous solitude in Heaven,
Replenish'd soon, replenish'd with increase
Of pomp and multitude; a radiant band
Of angels new, of angels from the tomb'
Is this by Fancy thrown remote ? and rise
Dark doubts between the promise and event?
I send thee not to volumes for thy cure;
Read Nature: Nature is a friend to truth;
Nature is Christian; preaches to mankind,
And bids dead matter aid us in our creed.
Heaven's mighty cape; and then revisits earth,
From the long travel of a thousand years.
Thus at the destined period shall return.
He, once on earth, who bids the comet blaze,
And with Him all our triumph o'er the tomb.
Nature is dumb on this important point,
Our Hope precarious in low whisper breathes;
Faith speaks aloud, distinct; e'en adders hear,
But turn, and dart into the dark again.
Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death,
To break the shock blind Nature cannot shun,
And lands Thought smoothly on the farther shore
Death's terror is the mountain faith removes,
That mountain barrier between man and peace. 725
'Tis Faith disarms Destruction, and absolves
From every clamorous charge the guiltless tomb.
Why disbelieve? Lorenzo!
All-sacred Reason.'-Hold her sacred still;
Nor shalt thou want a rival in thy flame :
All-sacred Reason! source, and soul, of all
Demanding praise, on earth, or earth above!
My heart is thine: deep in its inmost folds
Live thou with life; live dearer of the two.
Wear I the blessed Cross, by Fortune stamp'd
On passive Nature before Thought was born?
My birth's blind bigot! fired with local zeal!—
No: Reason rebaptized me when adult :
Weigh'd true and false in her impartial scale;
My heart became the convert of my head,
And made that choice which once was but my fate
'On argument alone my faith is built,'
Reason pursued is Faith; and unpursued,
Where proof invites, 'tis reason then no more:
And such our proof, that or our Faith is right,
Or Reason lies, and Heaven designed it wrong.
Absolve we this! what then is blasphemy?—
Fond as we are, and justly fond of Faith,
Reason, we grant, demands our first regard;
The mother honour'd, as the daughter dear.
Reason the root, fair Faith is but the flower :
The fading flower shall die, but Reason lives
Immortal, as her Father in the skies!
When Faith is virtue, Reason makes it so.
Wrong not the Christian; think not Reason yours, 'Tis Reason our great Master holds so dear; 'Tis Reason's injured rights his wrath resents; 'Tis Reason's voice obey'd his glories crown: To give lost Reason life he pour'd his own. Believe, and show the reason of a man; Believe, and taste the pleasure of a god;
Believe, and look with triumph on the tomb.
Through Reason's wounds alone thy Faith can die,
Which dying, tenfold terror gives to Death,
And dips in venom his twice mortal sting.
Learn hence what honours, what loud pæans, due
To those who push our antidote aside;
Those boasted friends to Reason and to man,
Whose fatal love stabs every joy, and leaves
Death's terror heighten'd, gnawing on his heart. 770
These pompous sons of Reason idolized,
And vilified at once; of Reason dead,
Then deified, as monarchs were of old;
What conduct plants proud laurels on their brow? While love of truth through all their camp resound They draw Pride's curtain o'er the noontide ray, 776 Spike up their inch of reason on the point
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