Would I could say a long good-night
To halting between wrong and right,
And, like a giant with new force,
Awake prepared to run my course!
But time o'er good and ill sweeps on,
And when few years have come and gone,
The past will be to me as naught,
Whether remembered or forgot.
Yet let me hope one faithful friend
O'er my last couch in tears shall bend;
And, though no day for me was bright,
Shall bid me then a long good-night.
Oн Time and Death! with certain pace, Though still unequal, hurrying on, O'erturning in your awful race,
The cot, the palace, and the throne!
Not always in the storm of war,
Nor by the pestilence that sweeps From the plague-smitten realms afar, Beyond the old and solemn deeps:
In crowds the good and mighty go,
And to those vast dim chambers hie: Where, mingled with the high and low, Dead Cæsars and dead Shakspeares lie!
Dread ministers of God! sometimes
Ye smite at once to do his will,
In all earth's ocean-severed climes, Those whose renown ye cannot kill! D
When all the brightest stars that burn
At once are banished from their spheres,
Men sadly ask, when shall return
Such lustre to the coming years?
For where is he*-who lived so long-
Who raised the modern Titan's ghost,
And showed his fate in powerful song,
Whose soul for learning's sake was lost?
Where he who backward to the birth
Of Time itself, adventurous trod,
And in the mingled mass of earth
Found out the handiwork of God?†
Where he who in the mortal head,‡
Ordained to gaze on heaven, could trace
The soul's vast features, that shall tread
The stars, when earth is nothingness?
Where he who struck old Albyn's lyre,§
Till round the world its echoes roll,
And swept, with all a prophet's fire,
The diapason of the soul?
Where he who read the mystic lore,||
Buried, where buried Pharaohs sleep;
And dared presumptuous to explore
Secrets four thousand years could keep?
Where he who, with a poet's eye¶
Of truth, on lowly nature gazed,
And made even sordid Poverty
Classic, when in His numbers glazed?
Where that old sage so hale and staid,**
The "greatest good" who sought to find,
Who in his garden mused, and made
All forms of rule for all mankind?
Goethe and his Faust. + Cuvier.
Scott. Champollion. Crabbe.
Spurzheim.
** Jeremy Bentham.
And thou-whom millions far removed*
Revered-the hierarch meek and wise,
Thy ashes sleep, adored, beloved,
Near where thy Wesley's coffin lies.
He too—the heir of glory—wheref
Hath great Napoleon's scion fled?
Ah! glory goes not to an heir!
Take him, ye noble, vulgar dead!
But hark! a nation sighs! for he,t
Last of the brave who perilled all
To make an infant empire free,
Obeys the inevitable call!
They go-and with them is a crowd,
For human rights who THOUGHT and DID,
We rear to them no temples proud,
Each hath his mental pyramid.
All earth is now their sepulchre,
The MIND, their monument sublime
Young in eternal fame they are
Such are your triumphs, Death and Time.
DESCENT OF THE JUDGE AND HIS ANGELS.
METHOUGHT I journeyed o'er a boundless plain Unbroke by hill or vale, on all sides stretched, Like circling ocean to the low-browed sky; Save in the midst a verdant mount, whose sides Flowers of all hues and fragrant breath adorned Lightly I trod, as on some joyous quest,
* Adam Clarke.
Charles Carroll.
Beneath the azure vault and early sun;
But while my pleased eyes ranged the circuit green,
New light shone round; a murmur came confused,
Like many voices and the rush of wings.
Upward I gazed, and mid the glittering skies,
Begirt by flying myriads, saw a throne,
Whose thousand splendours blazed upon the earth,
Refulgent as another sun. Through clouds
They came, and vapours coloured by Aurora,
Mingling in swell sublime, voices and harps,
And sounding wings and hallelujahs sweet.
Sudden a Seraph, that before them flew,
Pausing upon his wide-unfolded plumes,
Put to his mouth the likeness of a trump,
And towards the four winds four times fiercely
breathed.
Doubling along the arch, the mighty peal
To Heaven resounded, Hell returned a groan,
And shuddering Earth a moment reeled, confounded,
From her fixed pathway, as the staggering ship,
Stunned by some mountain billow, reels. The isles,
With heaving ocean, rocked: the mountains shook
Their ancient coronets: the avalanche
Thundered silence succeeded through the nations.
Earth never listened to a sound like this.
It struck the general pulse of nature still,
And broke for ever the dull sleep of death.
Now o'er the mount the radiant legions hung,
Like plumy travellers from climes remote
On some sequestered isle about to stoop.
Gently its flowery head received the throne;
Cherubs and Seraphs, by ten thousands, round
Skirted it far and wide, like a bright sea;
Fair forms and faces, crowns, and coronets,
And glistering wings furled white and numberless.
About their Lord were those Seven glorious Spirits
Who in the Almighty's presence stand. Four leaned
On golden wands, with folded wings, and eyes
Fixed on the throne: one bore the dreadful Books,
The arbiters of life: another waved
The blazing ensign terrible, of yore,
To rebel angels in the wars of Heaven:
What seemed a trump the other Spirit grasped,
Of wondrous size, wreathed multiform and strange.
Illustrious stood the Seven, above the rest
Towering, and like a constellation glowing,
What time the sphere-instructed huntsman, taught
By Atlas, his star-studded belt displays
Aloft, bright-glittering, in the winter sky.
ADAM, CESAR, AND ABRAHAM AT THE RESURRECTION.
NEAREST the mount, of that mixed phalanx first,
Our general Parent stood; not as he looked
Wandering at eve amid the shady bowers
And odorous groves of that delicious garden,
Or flowery banks of some soft rolling stream,
Pausing to list its lulling murmur, hand
In hand with peerless Eve, the rose too sweet,
Fatal to Paradise. Fled from his cheek
The bloom of Eden; his hyacinthine locks
Were turned to gray; with years and sorrows bowed
He seemed, but through his ruined form still shone
The majesty of his Creator: round
Upon his sons a grieved and pitying look
He cast, and in his vesture hid his face.
Close at his side appeared a martial form
Of port majestic, clad in massive arms,
Cowering above whose helm, with outspread wings, The Roman eagle flew; around its brim
Was charactered the name at which Earth's Queen Bowed from her sevenfold throne and owned her lord. In his dilated eye amazement stood;
Terror, surprise, and blank astonishment
Blanched his firm cheek, as when of old, close
Within the Capitol, amid the crowd
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