WHAT is the world?—A wildering maze, Where Sin hath track'd ten thousand ways,
Her victims to ensnare;
All broad, and winding, and aslope,
All tempting with perfidious hope,
All ending in despair.
Millions of pilgrims throng those roads,
Bearing their baubles, or their loads,
Down to eternal night:
-One humble path, that never bends,
Narrow, and rough, and steep, ascends
From darkness into light.
Is there a Guide to show that path?
The Bible-He alone, who hath
The Bible, need not stray:
Yet he who hath, and will not give
That heavenly Guide to all that live,
Himself shall lose the way.
FROM heaven descend the drops of dew,
From heaven the gracious showers,
Earth's winter-aspect to renew,
And clothe the spring with flowers;
Occasioned by the Sudden Death of the Rev. Thomas Taylor; after having declared, in his last Sermon, on a preceding evening, that he hoped to die as an old soldier of Jesus Christ, with his sword in his hand.
"SERVANT of God! well done;
Rest from thy loved employ;
The battle fought, the victory won,
Enter thy Master's joy."
-The voice at midnight came;
He started up to hear,
A mortal arrow pierced his frame :
He fell, but felt no fear.
Tranquil amidst alarms,
It found him in the field,
A veteran slumbering on his arms,
Beneath his red-cross shield:
His sword was in his hand,
Still warm with recent fight;
Ready that moment, at command,
Through rock and steel to smite.
It was a two-edged blade,
Of heavenly temper keen;
And double were the wounds it made,
Where'er it smote between :
"T was death to sin;-'t was life
To all that mourn'd for sin;
It kindled and it silenced strife,
Made war and peace within.
Oft with its fiery force
His arm had quell'd the foe,
And laid, resistless in his course, The alien-armies low.
Bent on such glorious toils,
The world to him was loss;
No-my soul, in God rejoice;
Through the gloom his light I see,
In the silence hear his voice,
And his hand is over me.
When I slumber in the tomb,
He will guard my resting-place;
Fearless in the day of doom,
May I stand before his face!
Yet all his trophies, all his spoils,
He hung upon the cross.
At midnight came the cry,
"To meet thy God prepare!"
He woke,-and caught his Captain's eye;
Then, strong in faith and prayer,
His spirit, with a bound,
Burst its encumbering clay;
His tent, at sun-rise, on the ground,
A darken'd ruin lay.
The pains of death are past,
Labor and sorrow cease,
And life's long warfare closed at last,
His soul is found in peace.
Soldier of Christ! well done;
Praise be thy new employ;
And, while eternal ages run,
Rest in thy Savior's joy.
ON THE ROYAL INFANT,
STILL-BORN, Nov. 5, 1817.
A THRONE on earth awaited thee;
A nation long'd to see thy face,
Heir to a glorious ancestry,
And father of a mightier race.
Vain hope! that throne thou must not fill;
Thee may that nation ne'er behold;
Thine ancient house is heirless still,
Thy line shall never be unroll'd.
Yet while we mourn thy flight from earth,
Thine was a destiny sublime;
Caught up to Paradise in birth,
Pluck'd by Eternity from Time.
The Mother knew her offspring dead:
Oh! was it grief, or was it love,
That broke her heart?-The spirit fled
To seek her nameless child above.
Led by his natal star, she trod
The path to heaven:-the meeting there, And how they stood before their God, The day of judgment shall declare.
A MIDNIGHT THOUGHT.
IN a land of strange delight,
My transported spirit stray'd,
I awake where all is night,
-Silence, solitude, and shade.
Is the dream of Nature flown?
Is the universe destroy'd,
Man extinct, and I alone
Breathing through the formless void?
A NIGHT IN A STAGE-COACH,
BEING A MEDITATION ON THE WAY BETWEEN LONDON
AND BRISTOL, SEPT. 23, 1815.
I TRAVEL all the irksome night,
By ways to me unknown;
I travel, like a bird in flight,
Onward, and all alone.
In vain I close my weary eyes,
They will not, cannot sleep,
But, like the watchers of the skies,
Their twinkling vigils keep.
My thoughts are wandering wild and far;
From earth to heaven they dart;
Now wing their flight from star to star,
Now dive into my heart.
Backward they roll the tide of time,
And live through vanish'd years;
Or hold their "colloquy sublime"
With future hopes and fears ;-
Then passing joys and present woes
Chase through my troubled mind;
Repose still seeking,-but repose
Not for a moment find.
So yonder lone and lovely moon
Gleams on the clouds gone by,
Illumines those around her noon,
Yet westward points her eye.
Nor wind nor flood her course delay,
Through heaven I see her glide;
She never pauses on her way,
She never turns aside.
With anxious heart and throbbing brain,
Strength, patience, spirits gone,
Pulses of fire in every vein,
Thus, thus I journey on.
But soft-in Nature's failing hour,
Up springs a breeze,-I feel
Its balmy breath, its cordial power,
-A power to soothe and heal.
Lo! grey, and gold, and crimson streaks
The gorgeous east adorn,
While o'er the empurpled mountain breaks
The glory of the morn.
Insensibly the stars retire,
Exhaled like drops of dew;
Now through an arch of living fire,
The sun comes forth to view.
The hills, the vales, the waters burn With his enkindling rays,
No sooner touch'd than they return
A tributary blaze.
His quickening light on me descends,
His cheering warmth I own;
Upward to him my spirit tends,
But worships God alone.
O that on me, with beams benign,
His countenance would turn!
I too should then arise and shine,
-Arise, and shine, and burn.
Slowly I raise my languid head;
Pain and soul-sickness cease,
The phantoms of dismay are fled,
And health returns, and peace.
Where is the beauty of the scene,
Which silent night display'd?
The clouds, the stars, the blue serene,
The moving light and shade?
All gone!-the moon, erewhile so bright,
Veil'd with a dusky shroud,
Seems, in the sun's o'erpowering light,
The fragment of a cloud.
At length, I reach my journey's end;
-Welcome that well-known face!
I meet a brother and a friend;
I find a resting-place.
Just such a pilgrimage is life;
Hurried from stage to stage, Our wishes with our lot at strife,
Through childhood to old age.
The world is seldom what it seems ;-
To man, who dimly sees,
Realities appear as dreams,
And dreams, realities.
The Christian's years, though slow their flight,
When he is call'd away;
Are but the watches of a night,
And death the dawn of day.
THE REIGN OF SPRING.
WHO loves not Spring's voluptuous hours, The carnival of birds and flowers? Yet who would choose, however dear, That Spring should revel all the year? -Who loves not Summer's splendid reign, The bridal of the earth and main? Yet who would choose, however bright, A dog-day noon without a night? -Who loves not Autumn's joyous round, When corn, and wine, and oil abound? Yet who would choose, however gay, A year of unrenew'd decay?
-Who loves not Winter's awful form? The sphere-born music of the storm?
Yet who would choose, how grand soever,
The shortest day to last for ever?
"T was in that age renown'd, remote,
When all was true that Esop wrote;
And in that land of fair Ideal,
Where all that poets dream is real;
Upon a day of annual state,
The Seasons met in high debate.
There blush'd young Spring in maiden-pride,
Blithe Summer look'd a gorgeous bride,
Staid Autumn moved with matron-grace,
And beldame Winter pursed her face.
Dispute grew wild; all talk'd together;
The four at once made wondrous weather;
Nor one (whate'er the rest had shown),
Heard any reason but her own,
While each (for nothing else was clear),
Claim'd the whole circle of the year.
Spring, in possession of the field,
Compell'd her sisters soon to yield;
They part,-resolved elsewhere to try
A twelvemonth's empire of the sky;
And calling off their airy legions,
Alighted in adjacent regions.
Spring o'er the eastern champaign smiled,
Fell Winter ruled the northern wild;
Summer pursued the sun's red car,
But Autumn loved the twilight star.
As Spring parades her new domain,
Love, Beauty, Pleasure, hold her train;
Her footsteps wake the flowers beneath,
That start, and blush, and sweetly breathe;
Her gales on nimble pinions rove,
And shake to foliage every grove;
Her voice, in dell and thicket heard,
Cheers on the nest the mother-bird;
The ice-lock'd streams, as if they felt
Her touch, to liquid diamond melt;
The lambs around her bleat and play;
The serpent flings his slough away,
And shines in orient colors dight,
A flexile ray of living light.
Nature unbinds her wintry shroud,
(As the soft sunshine melts the cloud),
With infant gambols sports along,
Bounds into youth, and soars in song.
The morn impearls her locks with dew;
Noon spreads a sky of boundless blue;
The rainbow spans the evening scene,
The night is silent and serene,
Save when her lonely minstrel wrings
The heart with sweetness, while he sings.
-Who would not wish, unrivall'd here,
That Spring might frolic all the year?
Three months are fled, and still she reigns,
Exulting queen o'er hills and plains;
The birds renew their nuptial vow,
Nestlings themselves are lovers now;
Fresh broods each bending bough receives,
Till feathers far outnumber leaves;
But kites in circles swim the air,
And sadden music to despair.
The stagnant pools, the quaking bogs,
Teem, croak, and crawl with hordes of frogs;
The matted woods, the infected earth,
Are venomous with reptile birth;
Armies of locusts cloud the skies;
With beetles, hornets, gnats with flies,
Interminable warfare wage,
And madden heaven with insect-rage.
The flowers are wither'd-sun nor dew Their fallen glories shall renew; The flowers are wither'd-germ nor seed Ripen in garden, wild, or mead:
The corn-fields shoot ;-their blades, alas!
Run riot in luxuriant grass.
The tainted flocks, the drooping kine,
In famine of abundance pine,
Where vegetation, sour, unsound,
And loathsome, rots and rankles round:
Nature with nature seems at strife;
Nothing can live but monstrous life
By death engender'd ;-food and breath
Are turn'd to elements of death;
And where the soil his victims strew,
Corruption quickens them anew.
But ere the year was half expired,
Spring saw her folly, and retired;
Yoked her light chariot to a breeze,
And mounted to the Pleiades ;
Content with them to rest or play
Along the calm nocturnal way;
Till, heaven's remaining circuit run,
They meet the pale hybernal sun,
And gaily mingling in his blaze,
Hail the true dawn of vernal days.
THE REIGN OF SUMMER.
THE hurricanes are fled; the rains,
That plow'd the mountains, wreck'd the plains,
Have pass'd away before the wind,
And left a wilderness behind,
As if an ocean had been there
Exhaled, and left its channels bare.
But, with a new and sudden birth,
Nature replenishes the earth;
Plants, flowers, and shrubs, o'er all the land,
So promptly rise, so thickly stand,
As if they heard a voice, and came
Each at the calling of its name.
The tree, by tempest stript and rent,
Expands its verdure like a tent,
Beneath whose shade, in weary length,
The enormous lion rests his strength,
For blood, in dreams of hunting, burns,
Or, chased himself, to fight returns;
Growls in his sleep, a dreary sound,
Grinds his wedged teeth, and spurns the ground;
While monkeys, in grotesque amaze,
Down from their bending perches gaze,
But when he lifts his eye of fire,
Quick to the topmost boughs retire.
Loud o'er the mountains bleat the flocks;
The goat is bounding on the rocks;
Far in the valleys range the herds;
The welkin gleams with flitting birds,
Whose plumes such gorgeous tints adorn,
They seem the offspring of the morn.
From nectar'd flowers and groves of spice,
Earth breathes the air of Paradise ;
Her mines their hidden wealth betray,
Treasures of darkness burst to day;
O'er golden sands the rivers glide,
And pearls and amber track the tide.
Of every sensual bliss possest,
Man riots here-but is he blest?
And would he choose, for ever bright,
This Summer-day without a night?
For here hath Summer fix'd her throne,
Intent to reign,-and reign alone.
Daily the sun, in his career,
Hotter and higher, climbs the sphere,
Till from the zenith, in his rays,
Without a cloud or shadow, blaze
The realms beneath him:-in his march,
On the blue key-stone of heaven's arch,
He stands -air, earth, and ocean lie
Within the presence of his eye.
The wheel of Nature seems to rest,
Nor rolls him onward to the west,
Till thrice three days of noon unchanged
That torrid clime have so deranged,
Nine years may not the wrong repair;
But Summer checks the ravage there;
Yet still enjoins the sun to steer
By the stern dog-star round the year,
With dire extremes of day and night,
Tartarean gloom, celestial light.
In vain the gaudy season shines, Her beauty fades, her power declines; Then first her bosom felt a care;
-No healing breeze embalm'd the air,
No mist the mountain-tops bedew'd,
Nor shower the arid vale renew'd;
The herbage shrunk; the plowman's toil
Scatter'd to dust the crumbling soil;
Blossoms were shed; the umbrageous wood,
Laden with sapless foliage, stood;
The streams, impoverish'd day by day,
Lessen'd insensibly away;
Where cattle sought, with piteous moans,
The vanish'd lymph, 'midst burning stones,
And tufts of wither'd reeds, that fill
The wonted channel of the rill;
Till, stung with hornets, mad with thirst,
In sudden rout, away they burst,
Nor rest, till where some channel deep
Gleams in small pools, whose waters sleep;
There with huge draught and eager eye
Drink for existence, drink and die!
But direr evils soon arose,
Hopeless, unmitigable woes;
Man proves the shock; through all his veins,
The frenzy of the season reigns;
With pride, lust, rage, ambition blind,
He burns in every fire of mind,
Which kindles from insane desire,
Or fellest hatred can inspire;
Reckless whatever ill befall,
He dares to do and suffer all
That heart can think, that arm can deal, Or out of hell a fury feel.
There stood in that romantic clime,
A mountain, awfully sublime:
O'er many a league the basement spread,
It tower'd in many an airy head,
Height over height,-now gay, now wild,
The peak with ice eternal piled;
Pure in mid-heaven, that crystal cone
A diadem of glory shone;
Reflecting in the night-fall'n sky
The beams of day's departed eye;
Or holding, ere the dawn begun,
Communion with the unrisen sun.
The cultured sides were clothed with woods,
Vineyards, and fields, or track'd with floods,
Whose glacier-fountains, hid on high,
Sent down their rivers from the sky.
O'er plains, that mark'd its gradual scale,
On sunny slope, in shelter'd vale,
Earth's universal tenant,-He,
Who lives wherever life may be,
Sole, social, fix'd, or free to roam,
Always and everywhere at home,
Man pitch'd his tents, adorn'd his bowers,
Built temples, palaces, and towers,
And made that Alpine world his own,
-The miniature of every zone,
From brown savannas parch'd below
To ridges of cerulean snow.
Those high-lands form'd a last retreat From rabid Summer's fatal heat; Though not unfelt her fervors there, Vernal and cool the middle air; While from the icy pyramid Streams of unfailing freshness slid, That long had slaked the thirsty land, Till avarice, with insatiate hand, Their currents check'd; in sunless caves, And rock-bound dells, ingulf'd the waves, And thence in scanty measures doled, Or turn'd heaven's bounty into gold. Ere long the dwellers on the plain Murmur'd-their murmurs were in vain; Petition'd-but their prayers were spurn'd; Threaten'd,-defiance was return'd. Then rang both regions with alarms; Blood-kindling trumpets blew to arms; The maddening drum and deafening fife Marshall'd the elements of strife: Sternly the mountaineers maintain Their rights against the insurgent plain; The plain's indignant myriads rose To wrest the mountain from their foes, Resolved its blessings to enjoy By dint of valor-or destroy.
The legions met in war-array; The mountaineers brook'd no delay, Aside their missile weapons threw, From holds impregnable withdrew,
And, rashly brave, with sword and shield.
Rush'd headlong to the
open field.
Their foes the auspicious omen took,
And raised a battle-shout, that shook
The champaign-staunch and keen for blood.
Front threatening front, the columns stood,
But, while like thunder-clouds they frown,
In tropic haste the sun went down;
Night o'er both armies stretch'd her tent,
The star-bespangled firmament,
Whose placid host, revolving slow,
Smile on the impatient hordes below,
That chafe and fret the hours away,
Curse the dull gloom, and long for day,
Though destined by their own decree
No other day nor night to see.
-That night is past, that day begun,
Swift as he sunk ascends the sun,
And from the red horizon springs
Upward, as borne on eagle-wings;
Aslant each army's lengthen'd lines,
O'er shields and helms he proudly shines,
While spears, that catch his lightnings keen,
Flash them athwart the space between.
Before the battle-shock, when breath
And pulse are still,-awaiting death:
In that cold pause, which seems to be
The prelude to eternity,
When fear, ere yet a blow is dealt,
Betray'd by none, by all is felt;
While, moved beneath their feet, the tomb
Widens her lap to make them room;
-Till, in the onset of the fray,
Fear, feeling, thought, are cast away,
And foaming, raging, mingling foes,
Like billows dash'd in conflict, close,
Charge, strike, repel, wound, struggle, fly,
Gloriously win, unconquer'd die.
Here, in dread silence, while they stand,
Each with a death-stroke in his hand,
His eye fix'd forward, and his ear
Tingling the signal-blast to hear,
The trumpet sounds;-one note,—no more;
The field, the fight, the war is o'er;
An earthquake rent the void between;
A moment show'd, and shut the scene;
Men, chariots, steeds, of either host,
The flower, the pride, the strength were lost:
A solitude remains;-the dead
Are buried there-the living fled.
Nor yet the reign of Summer closed:
-At night in their own homes reposed
The fugitives, on either side,
Who 'scaped the death their comrades died;
When, lo! with many a giddy shock,
The mountain-cliffs began to rock,
And deep below the hollow ground
Ran a strange mystery of sound.
As if, in chains and torments there,
Spirits were venting their despair.
That sound, those shocks, the sleepers woke;
In trembling consternation, broke
Forth from their dwellings, young and old;
-Nothing abroad their eyes behold
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