The Daemon of the World | Page 3

proud Power of Evil?Shall not for ever on this fairest world?Shake pestilence and war, or that his slaves?With blasphemy for prayer, and human blood?For sacrifice, before his shrine for ever?In adoration bend, or Erebus?With all its banded fiends shall not uprise?To overwhelm in envy and revenge?The dauntless and the good, who dare to hurl?Defiance at his throne, girt tho' it be?With Death's omnipotence. Thou hast beheld?His empire, o'er the present and the past;?It was a desolate sight--now gaze on mine,?Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time,?Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,--?And from the cradles of eternity,?Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep?By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,?Tear thou that gloomy shroud.--Spirit, behold?Thy glorious destiny!?The Spirit saw?The vast frame of the renovated world?Smile in the lap of Chaos, and the sense?Of hope thro' her fine texture did suffuse?Such varying glow, as summer evening casts?On undulating clouds and deepening lakes.?Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,?That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea?And dies on the creation of its breath,?And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits,?Was the sweet stream of thought that with wild motion?Flowed o'er the Spirit's human sympathies.?The mighty tide of thought had paused awhile,?Which from the Daemon now like Ocean's stream?Again began to pour.--?To me is given?The wonders of the human world to keepSpace,?matter, time and mind--let the sight?Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.?All things are recreated, and the flame?Of consentaneous love inspires all life:?The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck?To myriads, who still grow beneath her care,?Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:?The balmy breathings of the wind inhale?Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:?Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,?Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream;?No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven,?Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride?The foliage of the undecaying trees;?But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,?And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace,?Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,?Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit?Reflects its tint and blushes into love.
The habitable earth is full of bliss;?Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled?By everlasting snow-storms round the poles,?Where matter dared not vegetate nor live,?But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude?Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;?And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles?Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls?Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,?Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet?To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves?And melodise with man's blest nature there.
The vast tract of the parched and sandy waste?Now teems with countless rills and shady woods,?Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages;?And where the startled wilderness did hear?A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,?Hymmng his victory, or the milder snake?Crushing the bones of some frail antelope?Within his brazen folds--the dewy lawn,?Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles?To see a babe before his mother's door,?Share with the green and golden basilisk?That comes to lick his feet, his morning's meal.
Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail?Has seen, above the illimitable plain,?Morning on night and night on morning rise,?Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread?Its shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea,?Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves?So long have mingled with the gusty wind?In melancholy loneliness, and swept?The desert of those ocean solitudes,?But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,?The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,?Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds?Of kindliest human impulses respond:?Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,?With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,?And fertile valleys resonant with bliss,?Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,?Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,?To meet the kisses of the flowerets there.
Man chief perceives the change, his being notes?The gradual renovation, and defines?Each movement of its progress on his mind.?Man, where the gloom of the long polar night?Lowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,?Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost?Basked in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,?Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;?Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day?With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,?Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere?Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed?Unnatural vegetation, where the land?Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,?Was man a nobler being; slavery?Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust.
Even where the milder zone afforded man?A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,?Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,?Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availed?Till late to arrest its progress, or create?That peace which first in bloodless victory waved?Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime:?There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,?The mimic of surrounding misery,?The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,?The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.
Here now the human being stands adorning?This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;?Blest from his birth with all bland impulses,?Which gently in his noble bosom wake?All kindly passions and all pure desires.?Him, still from hope