And plenal inspiration ever filled,
Must we not call thy word and mission true,
Since by the mien of thine impressive form,
Wherewith thou dost subdue the heart of man,
By the achievements vast of thy strong hand,
By all thy heart-deep earnestness of voice,
Thou dost declare a parentage divine,
Miraculously born, and taught, and helped!
What if the braggart soul its weakness prove
In falsifying thine illustrious birth,
And making thee th' unlawful child of Chance,
Of Fate or Matter's strong affinities?
I own a God, the Father of us all,
I hail thee, elder brother, from that Sire,
And thus relate myself to Him and thee.
Sweet to my soul has been the task to weave
This chain of verse, and lay it at thy feet;
But now, Magician! with thy jeweled wand,
And many shapes, of every life the type,
My rhapsody of thee at last must end,
As end all raptures to the heart most dear,
In the sad music of the word "Farewell."
Yet ere I go, one lingering strain I sound
Of thy depart from life, like mine from thee,
And then my lengthened strain of thee must end.
Ah! with the death of Time thy roar shall cease; When earth becomes her own funereal pile,
When she shall seem to gazing worlds above
A distant flame, e'en such as she beholds,
When stars athwart her dark meridian shoot,
Or comets sweep the pavement of the sky;
The thirsty flame shall quaff the ocean's cup,
And turn on thee despite thy threatening voice,
On thee, the first and last of Nature's streams,
The outlet of her heart, and drink thee up,
Till Nature, like a voiceless Niobé,
Having no victim left beside herself,
Shall give her life with thee the last to yield! Then shalt thou sing the death-fraught dirge of all Material forms in unison with thine own;
And thus thy wandering notes shall journey through That earless void, that chaos echoless:
"O Parent of the centuries gone by!
Lost in the whirlpool of destructive tides,
And never from their sepulchres all sealed
To find their resurrection into life,
Till angel-fingers break the bond of death,
And bring its forms renewed before God's seat-
Though the rapt Memory shall their image paint
On the soft canvas of the human heart-
Father of years! Birth-giver of the hours!
At last in death thy tears, O childless Time!"
Must mingle now with my life-ceasing tides.
With thee, begotten in the infancy
Of this Creation, from Jehovah's hand,
I joyed to sound the birth-note of the world;
With thee, through eras changing with man's life,
'Mid the wild whirl of nations and their fall,
'Mid the hoarse shouts and devastating strokes
Of deluge-hands, and horror-breeding storms,
'Mid deep convulsions of the writhing earth,
And vast achievements of th' eternal Mind,
I have rolled on with thee, thou aged One!
Filled with the stories of the buried Past;
And now, Destroyer, now, O Teacher stern!
Thou Conqueror of life! with thee I fall!
Ourselves the conquered, and destroyed, and taught !
Aye, taught for lessons long by us unlearned,
Ne'er in the book of our experience writ,
Are now impressed upon our failing hearts!
"I saw the Angel of thy doom descend
From heavenly portals, in bright clouds attired;
Upon his brow a rainbow's circle shone,
His lovely face refulgent as the sun,
His feet, like fiery pillars, measureless,
Moved o'er earth's marl, that smoked along his path,
And shook with trembling fear down to her heart;
The Heavens bowed reverently, as he came down,
And Darkness crouched in terror at his feet;
Upon a cherub-steed he distanced worlds,
And flew on pinions of the uncaught winds;
The midnight spread above a tented roof;
The waters dark and clouded skies were wove
In one by spirit-hands and looms unseen,
To form the wide pavilion for his rest;
While at the brightness pioneering him,
Thick clouds shrunk coward-like to the caves of space;
His hand shot arrowy lightnings out o'er earth,
Till the deep channels of her waters, cleaved
To their far depths, oped widely to his eye,
As erst to Israel's children, journeying through,
Appeared the Red Sea's bed between its waves.
At his great voice the hills and mountains quaked,
And showed the earth's foundations far below;
The book of Time's dread sentence, opened wide,
Was in his hand, and with majestic step
He moved the Messenger of God, and laid
His right foot on the sea, the left on land,
Then cried aloud, as when the lion roars,
While seven deep thunders echoed thus his voice: 82
"By that great One the Infinite o'er all, Whose being is Eternity itself,
Who, with His arm alone, created earth,
And all things that possess existence here,
I swear!-oh hear, thou universe, the oath!
I swear that Time shall live and reign no more!
For soon these suns, these moons, these stars of light, That are the hearts and pulses of his life,
This earth, whose silent revolutions trace
Upon his dial-plate the steps he takes,
These times and seasons, that are but his breath,
Shall Ruin bury in the tomb of space,
And Chaos o'er them roll his Dead Sea's wave!'
"Scarce had he spoke, when lo! the heavens were rent,
And through their portals, opened far above,
A throne of white stood pendent from its height;
Of white, not such as mountain-tops of snow,
Or foaming waves of Ocean's crest display,
But like the daze of molten metals, pale
With glow of heat intense in furnace vast,
And on that throne sat one whose form untraced,
And undistinguished, though still dimly viewed
In the rich hues of jasper and sardine,
Was other none than Deity himself!
Circling his brow a rainbow emerald-like
Crowned him with radiance from celestial suns;
Around the throne, on four and twenty seats,
Thus many elders sat in garments white,
With coronets of gold upon their heads;
Out of that throne swift-lightning glances came,
With thunder-tones of voices cymbal-like;
Before its face lamps seven of fire burned high,
The spirits emanant of Deity!
Below it rolled a crystal sea of glass,
Molten beneath the light reflected thence;
And guardian beasts, with myriad eyes unshut,
That with the elders rest not from their cry,
'O HOLY, HOLY, HOLY LORD, ALMIGHTY GOD.'
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