The Daemon of the World | Page 4

to hope the bliss pursuing,?Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal?Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise?In time-destroying infiniteness gift?With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks?The unprevailing hoariness of age,?And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene?Swift as an unremembered vision, stands?Immortal upon earth: no longer now?He slays the beast that sports around his dwelling?And horribly devours its mangled flesh,?Or drinks its vital blood, which like a stream?Of poison thro' his fevered veins did flow?Feeding a plague that secretly consumed?His feeble frame, and kindling in his mind?Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief,?The germs of misery, death, disease and crime.?No longer now the winged habitants,?That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,?Flee from the form of man; but gather round,?And prune their sunny feathers on the hands?Which little children stretch in friendly sport?Towards these dreadless partners of their play.?All things are void of terror: man has lost?His desolating privilege, and stands?An equal amidst equals: happiness?And science dawn though late upon the earth;?Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;?Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,?Reason and passion cease to combat there;?Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends?Its all-subduing energies, and wields?The sceptre of a vast dominion there.
Mild is the slow necessity of death:?The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,?Without a groan, almost without a fear,?Resigned in peace to the necessity,?Calm as a voyager to some distant land,?And full of wonder, full of hope as he.?The deadly germs of languor and disease?Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts?With choicest boons her human worshippers.?How vigorous now the athletic form of age!?How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!?Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care,?Had stamped the seal of grey deformity?On all the mingling lineaments of time.?How lovely the intrepid front of youth!?How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.
Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,?Fearless and free the ruddy children play,?Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows?With the green ivy and the red wall-flower,?That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;?The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,?There rust amid the accumulated ruins?Now mingling slowly with their native earth:?There the broad beam of day, which feebly once?Lighted the cheek of lean captivity?With a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines?On the pure smiles of infant playfulness:?No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair?Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes?Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds?And merriment are resonant around.
The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more?The voice that once waked multitudes to war?Thundering thro' all their aisles: but now respond?To the death dirge of the melancholy wind:?It were a sight of awfulness to see?The works of faith and slavery, so vast,?So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing!?Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall.?A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death?To-day, the breathing marble glows above?To decorate its memory, and tongues?Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms?In silence and in darkness seize their prey.?These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind:?Their elements, wide-scattered o'er the globe,?To happier shapes are moulded, and become?Ministrant to all blissful impulses:?Thus human things are perfected, and earth,?Even as a child beneath its mother's love,?Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows?Fairer and nobler with each passing year.
Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene?Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past?Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done:?Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own,?With all the fear and all the hope they bring.?My spells are past: the present now recurs.?Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains?Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand.
Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,?Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue?The gradual paths of an aspiring change:?For birth and life and death, and that strange state?Before the naked powers that thro' the world?Wander like winds have found a human home,?All tend to perfect happiness, and urge?The restless wheels of being on their way,?Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,?Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:?For birth but wakes the universal mind?Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow?Thro' the vast world, to individual sense?Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape?New modes of passion to its frame may lend;?Life is its state of action, and the store?Of all events is aggregated there?That variegate the eternal universe;?Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,?That leads to azure isles and beaming skies?And happy regions of eternal hope.?Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:?Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,?Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,?Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth,?To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,?That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,?Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile.
Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand,?So welcome when the tyrant is awake,?So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch flares;?'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,?The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.?For what thou