The earth is full of life: the living Hand
Touched it with life; and all its forms expand
With principles of being made to suit
Man's varied powers, and raise him from the brute.
And shall the earth of higher ends be full?—
Earth which thou tread'st!-and thy poor mind be dull? Thou talk of life, with half thy soul asleep!
Thou "living dead man," let thy spirits leap Forth to the day; and let the fresh air blow
Through thy soul's shut up mansion. Would'st thou know Something of what is life, shake off this death; Have thy soul feel the universal breath
With which all nature's quick! and learn to be Sharer in all that thou dost touch or see.
Break from thy body's grasp thy spirit's trance; Give thy soul air, thy faculties expanse :- Love, joy,-e'en sorrow,-yield thyself to all! They'll make thy freedom, man, and not thy thrall. Knock off the shackles which thy spirit bind To dust and sense, and set at large thy mind. Then move in sympathy with God's great whole, And be, like man at first, A LIVING SOUL !"
Debased by sin, and used to things of sense,
How shall man's spirit rise and travel hence,
Where lie the soul's pure regions, without bounds
Where mind's at large-where passion ne'er confounds
Clear thought—where thought is sight-the far brings nigh,
Calls up the deep, and, now, calls down the high.
Cast off thy slough! Send thy low spirit forth Up to the Infinite; then know thy worth. With Infinite, be infinite with Love, be love; Angel, midst angel throngs that move above; Ay, more than angel: nearer the great CAUSE, Through his redeeming power, now read his laws- Not with thy earthly mind, that half detects Something of outward things by slow effects; Viewing creative causes, learn to know The hidden springs; nor guess, as here below, Laws, purposes, relations, sympathies- In errors vain.-Clear Truth's in yonder skies.
Creature all grandeur, son of truth and light, Up from the dust! the last, great day is bright-
Bright on the holy mountain, round the throne, Bright where in borrowed light the far stars shone.
Look down! the depths are bright! and hear them cry, 'Light! light!"-Look up! 'tis rushing down from high! Regions on regions-far away they shine:
'Tis light ineffable, 'tis light divine!
"Immortal light, and life for evermore!"
Off through the deeps is heard from shore to shore Of rolling worlds-" Man, wake thee from the sod- Wake thee from death-awake!-and live with God!"
To Pneuma.-JAMES WALLIS EASTBurn.
TEMPESTS their furious course may sweep Swiftly o'er the troubled deep, Darkness may lend her gloomy aid, And wrap the groaning world in shade; But man can show a darker hour, And bend beneath a stronger power;- There is a tempest of the soUL, A gloom where wilder billows roll!
The howling wilderness 'may spread Its pathless deserts, parched and dread, Where not a blade of herbage blooms, Nor yields the breeze its soft perfumes; Where silence, death, and horror reign, Unchecked, across the wide domain ;- There is a desert of the MIND More hopeless, dreary, undefined!
There Sorrow, moody Discontent, And gnawing Care, are wildly blent; There Horror hangs her darkest clouds, And the whole scene in gloom enshrouds; A sickly ray is cast around,
Where nought but dreariness is found; A feeling that may not be told, Dark, rending, lonely, drear, and cold.
The wildest ills that darken life Are rapture to the bosom's strife;
The tempest, in its blackest form, Is beauty to the bosom's storm; The ocean, lashed to fury loud,
Its high wave mingling with the cloud, Is peaceful, sweet serenity
To passion's dark and boundless sea.
There sleeps no calm, there smiles no rest, When storms are warring in the breast; There is no moment of repose
In bosoms lashed by hidden woes; The scorpion sting the fury rears, And every trembling fibre tears; The vulture preys with bloody beak Upon the heart that can but break'
To a Star.-LUCRETIA MARIA DAVIDSON. Written in her fifteenth year.
THOU brightly glittering star of even, Thou gem upon the brow of heaven! Oh! were this fluttering spirit free,
How quick 'twould spread its wings to thee!
How calmly, brightly, dost thou shine, Like the pure lamp in virtue's shrine!
Sure the fair world which thou may'st boast Was never ransomed, never lost.
There, beings pure as heaven's own air, Their hopes, their joys, together share; While hovering angels touch the string, And seraphs spread the sheltering wing.
There, cloudless days and brilliant nights, Illumed by heaven's refulgent lights; There, seasons, years, unnoticed roll, And unregretted by the soul.
Thou little sparkling star of even, Thou gem upon an azure heaven! How swiftly will I soar to thee, When this imprisoned soul is free!
To him who, in the love of Nature, holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language. For his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty; and she glides Into his darker musings with a mild And gentle sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart,- Go forth unto the open sky, and list
To nature's teachings, while from all around- Earth and her waters, and the depths of air- Comes a still voice-Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course. Nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
*This poem, so much admired, both in England and America, was first published in 1817, in the North American Review. The following verses were then prefixed to it; they are in themselves beautiful, but more so as An introduction to the solemn grandeur of the piece which they preceded.
"Not that from life, and all its woes, The hand of death shall set me free; Not that this head shall then repose, In the low vale, most peacefully.
Ah, when I touch time's farthest brink, A kinder solace must attend;
It chills my very soul to think
On that dread hour when life must end.
In vain the flattering verse may breathe Of ease from pain, and rest from strife; There is a sacred dread of death, Inwoven with the strings of life.
This bitter cup at first was given,
When angry Justice frowned severe,
And 'tis the eternal doom of Heaven,
That man must view the grave with fear."
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again; And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. Yet not to thy eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone; nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings, The powerful of the earth-the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills, Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales, Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods; rivers that move In majesty; and the complaining brooks,
That make the meadow green; and, poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce; Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings; yet-the dead are there; And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep-the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest; and what if thou shalt fall Unnoticed by the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come, And make their bed with thee. As the long train
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