The Daemon of the World | Page 3

thee in her passionate dreams,
And dim forebodings
of thy loveliness,
Haunting the human heart, have there entwined

Those rooted hopes, that the 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