As is a moral or a prophecy,
Is ever warning? Why wast thou accorded
To the great Evil? Is it because thou art
Of all the sun’s bright servants nearest earth?
And shall we then forget that Christ hath said
He is thyself, the light-bringer of Heaven?
Star of the morning! unto us thou art
The presage of a day of power. Like thee
Let us rejoice in life, then, and proclaim
A glory coming greater than our own.
All ages are but stars to that which comes,
Sunlike. Oh! speak, star! Lift thou up thy voice
Out of yon radiant ranks, and I on earth,
As thou in Heaven, will bless the Lord God ever.
Hear, Lucifer, thou star! I answer thee. Sings.
Oh! ask me not to look and love,
But bid me worship thee;
For thou art earthly things above,
As far as angels be:
Then whether in the eve or morn
Thou dost the maiden skies adorn,
Oh! let me worship thee!I am but as this drop of dew;
Oh! let me worship thee!
Thy light, thy strength, is ever new,
Even as the angels’ be:
And as this dew-drop, till it dies,
Bosoms the golden stars and skies,
Oh! let me worship thee!
But, dearest, why that dark look?
Let it not
Cloud thine even with its shadow: but the ground
Of all great thoughts is sadness; and I mused
Upon past happiness. Well—be it past!
Did Lucifer, as I do, gaze on thee,
The flame of woe would flicker in his breast,
And straight die out—the brightness of thy beauty
Quenching it as the sun doth earthly fire.
Nay, look not on me so intensely sad.
Forgive me: it was an agony of bliss.
I love thee, and am full of happiness.
My bosom bounds beneath thy smile as doth
The sea’s unto the moon, his mighty mistress;
Lying and looking up to her, and saying—
Lovely! lovely! lovely! lady of the Heavens!
Oh! when the thoughts of other joyous days—
Perchance, if such may be, of happier times—
Are falling gently on the memory
Like autumn leaves distained with dusky gold,
Yet softly as a snowflake; and the smile
Of kindliness, like thine, is beaming on me—
Oh! pardon, if I lose myself, nor know
Whether I be with Heaven or thee.
Use not
Such ardent phrase, nor mix the claim of aught
On earth with thoughts more than with hopes of Heaven.
Hopes, lady! I have none.
Thou must have. All
Have hopes, however wretched they may be,
Or blest. It is hope which lifts the lark so high—
Hope of a lighter air and bluer sky:
And the poor hack which drops down on the flints—
Upon whose eye the dust is settling—
He hopes to die. No being is which hath
Not love and hope.
Yes—one! The ancient Ill,
Dwelling and damned through all which is; that spirit
Whose heart is hate—who is the foe of God—
The foe of all.
How knowest thou such doth live?
Love is the happy privilege of mind—
Love is the reason of all living things.
A Trinity there seems of principles,
Which represent and rule created life—
The love of self, our fellows, and our God.
In all throughout one common feeling reigns:
Each doth maintain and is maintained by the other;
All are compatible—all needful; one
To life—to virtue one—and one to bliss;
Which thus together make the power, the end,
And the perfection of created Being.
From these three principles doth every deed,
Desire, and will, and reasoning, good or bad, come;
To these they all determine—sum and scheme:
The three are one in centre and in round;
Wrapping the world of life as do the skies
Our world. Hail! air of love by which we live!
How sweet, how fragrant! Spirit, though unseen—
Void of gross sign—is scarce a simple essence,
Immortal, immaterial, though it be.
One only simple essence liveth—God—
Creator, uncreate. The brutes beneath,
The angels high above us, with ourselves,
Are but compounded things of mind and form.
In all things animate is therefore cored
An elemental sameness of existence;
For God, being Love, in love created all,
As He contains the whole, and penetrates.
Seraphs love God, and angels love the good:
We love each other; and these lower lives,
Which walk the earth in thousand diverse shapes,
According to their reason, love us too:
The most intelligent affect us most.
Nay, man’s chief wisdom’s love—the love of God.
The new religion—final perfect, pure—
Was that of Christ and love. His great command—
His all-sufficing precept—was’t not love?
Truly to love ourselves we must love God—
To love God we must all His creatures love—
To love His creatures, both ourselves and Him.
Thus love is all that’s wise, fair, good, and happy.
How knowest thou God doth live? Why did He not,
With that creating hand which sprinkled stars
On space’s bosom, bidding her breathe and wake
From the long death-like trance in which she lay—
With that same hand which scattered o’er the sky,
As this small dust I strew upon the wind,
Yon countless orbs, aye fixing each on Him
Its flaming eye, which winks and blenches oft
Beneath His glance—with the finger of that hand
Which spangled o’er infinity with suns,
And wrapped it round about Him as a robe—
Why did He not write out his own great name
In spheres of fire, that Heaven might alway tell
To every creature, God? If not, then why
Should I believe when I behold around me
Nought scarce, save ill and woe?
God surely lives!
Without God all things are in tunnel darkness.
Let there be God, and all are sun—all God.
And to the just soul, in a future state,
Defect’s dark mist, thick-spreading o’er this vale,
Shall dim the eye no more, nor bound survey;
And evil, now which boweth being down
As dew the grass, shall only fit all life
For fresher growth and for intenser day,
Where God shall dry all tears as the sun dew.
Oh! lady, I am wretched.
Say not so.
With thee I could not deem myself unhappy.
Hark to the sea! It sounds like the near hum
Of a great city.
Say, the city earth;
For such these orbs are in the realms of space.
I dreamed once that the night came down to me;
In figure, oh! too like thine own for truth,
And looked into me with his thousand eyes,
And that made me unhappy; but it passed,
And I half wished it back. Mind hath its earth
And Heaven. The many
