Truth of subliming import! with the which Who feeds and saturates his constant soul, He from his small particular orbit flies.
With blessed outstarting! From HIMSELF he flies, Stands in the Sun, and with no partial gaze
Views all creation; and he loves it all,
And blesses it, and calls it very good! This is indeed to dwell with the most High! Cherubs and rapture-trembling Seraphim Can press no nearer to the Almighty's Throne. But that we roam unconscious, or with hearts Unfeeling of our universal Sire,
And that in his vast family no Cain Injures uninjured (in her best-aimed blow Victorious MURDER a blind Suicide) Haply for this some younger Angel now Looks down on Human Nature: and, behold! A sea of blood bestrewed with wrecks, where mad Embattling INTERESTS on each other rush With unhelmed Rage!
Our noontide Majesty, to know ourselves
Parts and proportions of one wonderous whole!
This fraternizes man, this constitutes
Our charities and bearings. But 'tis God
Diffused through all, that doth make all one whole; This the worst superstition, him except Aught to desire, SUPREME REALITY!
The plenitude and permanence of bliss! O Fiends of SUPERSTITION! not that oft The erring Priest hath stained with Brother's blood Your grisly idols, not for this may Wrath Thunder against you from the Holy One!
But o'er some plain that steameth to the Sun, Peopled with Death; or where more hideous TRADE Loud-laughing packs his bales of human anguish; I will raise up a mourning, O ye Fiends! And curse your spells, that film the eye of Faith, Hiding the present God; whose presence lost, The moral world's cohesion, we become An Anarchy of Spirits! Toy-bewitched, Made blind by lusts, disherited of soul, No common centre Man, no common sire Knoweth! A sordid solitary thing,
Mid countless brethren with a lonely heart Through courts and cities the smooth Savage roams Feeling himself, his own low Self the whole;
When he by sacred sympathy might make
The whole ONE SELF! SELF, that no alien knows!
SELF, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel! SELF, spreading still! Oblivious of its own, Yet all of all possessing! This is FAITH! This the MESSIAH's destined victory!
But first offences needs must come! Even now* (Black Hell laughs horrible---to hear the scoff!) THEE to defend, meek Galilæan! THEE And thy mild laws of Love unutterable, Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands Of social Peace; and listening Treachery lurks With pious fraud to snare a brother's life;
January 21st. 1794, in the debate on the Address to his Majesty, on the speech from the Throne, the Earl of Guildford moved an Amendment to the following effect; "That the House hoped his Majesty would seize the earliest opportunity to conclude a peace with France &c." This motion was opposed by the Duke of Portland, who, I considered the war to be merely grounded on one principle-the preservation of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION." May 30th, 1794, the Duke of Bedford moved a number of Resolutions, with a view to the Establishment of a Peace with France. He was opposed (among others) by Lord Abingdon in these remarkable words: "The best road to Peace, my Lords, is WAR! and WAR carried on in the same manner in which we are taught to worship our CREATOR, namely, with all our souls, and with all our minds, and with all our hearts, and with all our strength."
And childless widows o'er the groaning land
Wail numberless; and orphans weep for bread!
THEE to defend, dear Saviour of Mankind!
THEE, Lamb of God! THEE, blameless Prince of Peace!
From all sides rush the thirsty brood of War? AUSTRIA, and that foul WOMAN of the NORth, The lustful Murderess of her wedded Lord! And he, connatural Mind! whom (in their songs So bards of elder time had haply feigned) Some Fury fondled in her hate to man, Bidding her serpent hair in mazy surge Lick his young face, and at his mouth inbreathe Horrible sympathy! And leagued with these Each petty German princeling, nursed in gore! Soul-hardened barterers of human blood!
Death's prime Slave-merchants! Scorpion-whips of Fate!
Nor least in savagery of holy zeal,
Apt for the yoke, the race degenerate,
Whom Britain erst had blushed to call her sons! THEE to defend the Moloch Priest prefers
prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd
That Deity, ACCOMPLICE Deity
In the fierce jealousy of wakened wrath
Will go forth with our armies and our fleets To scatter the red ruin on their foes!
O blasphemy! to mingle fiendish deeds With blessedness!
Lord of unsleeping Love,
From everlasting Thou! We shall not die. These, even these, in mercy didst thou form, Teachers of Good through Evil, by brief wrong Making Truth lovely, and her future might Magnetic o'er the fixed untrembling heart.
In the primeval age a dateless while
The vacant Shepherd wandered with his flock Pitching his tent where'er the green grass waved. But soon Imagination conjured up
An host of new desires: with busy aim, Each for himself, Earth's eager children toiled. SO PROPERTY began, twy-streaming fount, Whence Vice and Virtue flow, honey and gall. Hence the soft couch, and many-coloured robe
* Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord, mine Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained them for Judgment, &c. Habakkuk.
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