WHAT Wild enthusiast, with adventurous hand,
Rashly shall dare to intonate the lyre ?
What prophet spirit o’er thy fearful strand
Shall breathe, in awful cadences of fire,
Strains which angelic minstrels might inspire ;
And from their embryo nothingness upraise,
With magic hand, the intellectual choir ;
Pour in ‘rapt sounds a kindred flood of praise,
And draw down Heaven to hear the blest melodious lays ?
What limpid wave reflect thy rushing tide,
What gleaming fancy thy vast might pourtray,
Diffuse o’er space her sunshine tissue wide,
Arrest the glories of thy floating spray,
And bid thy fleeting colours live for aye ;
And rein thy coursers in her mimic thrall,
And bid thy eddying car her will obey ?
Smiling in strength, thy ceaseless volumes fall,
And with exulting laugh thou proudly scornest all.
Thy white mist rises, as ascends to heaven
Some holy altar’s pure oblation fire ;
Not as foul steams, whose fœtid tresses riven,
Unveil the vultures of war’s funeral pyre,
Where groaning fathers o’er their sons expire ;
And, wailing loud, of every hope despoiled,
Lovers the blood–locks from their lovers tear ;
And fierce–contending with the jackall wild,
The maddening mother shrieks, and faints upon her child :
But as the clear light of beneficence,
Radiant of peace and redolent of joy ;
Effacing tears and blushes of offence,
And bidding grovelling sadness soar on high,
On rapturous wings of silent ecstasy :
But as that holy dew of holiest earth,
Ere man had stained her with his infamy,
Which, mingling with the angel’s sacred mirth,
Returned imbued with praise, and sanctified her birth.
Still, as I breathless, fixed in rigid trance,
And fascinating terror stand at gaze ;
Volumed on volumed rapids swiftly glance
And die, as time’s vast myriads of days
Blend into undistinguishable haze ;
Save that lone fragments of the world gone by,
Scrolled o’er with crime and bloodshed, yet amaze
The seekers of man’s direful history,
Summed up in rending curse and bitterest agony.
So falls thy flood, so swiftly plunges down
Some gallant vessel caught within thy whirl,
By one rude crash in countless fragments thrown ;
Thy melting eddies o’er the shivers curl,
And far and wide the stranded cordage hurl,
Speaking thy wild tremendous energy ;
As, amid thy kindred deluge, when from the swirl
Re-nascent mountains reared their pinnets high,
And one wide-bosomed calm soft wooed the evening sky :
Glittering, the ripple on the horizon, marked
The whirlwind dipping his ferocious van ;
Harshly around destruction’s hell-hounds barked,
Black yawning chasms through riven mountains ran,
And one shrill shriek burst from ark–shielded man ;
Onward, right onward, as the depths unclosed,
Swept he the vast waste with capacious span,
Hurling huge monsters into eternal snows,
Where no exploring steps e’er break their fixed repose.
Deep as I drink, with never–sated eye,
Thy glorious beauty, stealing melancholy
Palsies my senses ; yet the alluring tie
Snaps not ; but, traversing in agony
Athwart thy headlong current, vacantly
Seeing, I see not, yet still gaze upon
Thy alluring horrors, dim and gloomily ;
As wreck-left on some bleak rock, barren, lone,
Despairing seamen watch the tempest–tokening sun.
Vast world of waters, ever pouring down
And ever still to pour ; vicissitude
Of nature shakes thee not ; thou holdest on
Thy stedfast course, and no similitude
Hast ever found. Sublimest magnitude
Has o’er thy ample bosom wide outspread
His broad dominion ; rough rocks, rent and rude
Grace, but mar not the honours of thy head,
And wearying time on thee has no dishonour shed.
So fearlessly, majestically great,
Marches in meek, dove-eyed benignity,
Unquailed by storm, unbowed by age’s weight,
Kindred in spirit, Christianity ;
And still shall march in calm security ;
Close to her bosom, with unaltered mien,
Though hurtling arrows fall incessantly,
She presses holiest hope, and smiles serene,
As terrors were but breath to wave her sun-locks sheen.
The saffron eye of morn awakening,
Looks from her waving couch of orient gold :
Gaily the blithe bird’s earliest twittering
Bids fairest flowers their faëry cups unfold,
And flaunting tendrils laughingly behold,
Pearl-dropt and prankt with choicest jewellery,
The brilliant leaflets pure from Nature’s mould :
Exult the meads, and pleasure’s iris-eye
Gleams with delight amid the enchanting minstrelsy.
And, bending in the light breeze, bough and stem,
O’erhanging dark the steep-enshadowed tide ;
Honoured in age’s snowy diadem,
Wave in consonancy their tresses wide,
As the fierce dog-star, azure-canopied,
Pouring effulgently his tempered rays,
Sports dalliant on thy bosom : vivified,
Rises in incense thy pellucid haze
And sward, and sky, and flood, their blest Creator praise.
And surges, leaping from thy mountain crest,
Melt in the western red-glare, lovelily
Dying in radiant sweetness. Pure her breast
And cold as pure, the Naiad bashfully
Wells out her snowy vases ; limpidly
As beauty’s tear drops, ever still they flow,
And Dryad sisters, sighing piteously,
View their own fate in each impulsive throe,
And, fascinated, love, the sanctifying woe.
Wide in thy opalescent billows float,
Colours irradiant as the hues of heaven ;
The iridescent glow, the glittering mote,
The broad clear beam, by sunny mist-wreaths riven,
And blending, as, imagination given,
Blend poet-dreams and darkness. Follies flash
O’er man as o’er thy current ; bright and even
They allure him, or, impetuously rash,
Hurl him, and all his hopes, into countless nothings dash.
In thy receding crescent dim light dwells,
While o’er thy wide convexity the sun
Gleams gloriously. Elate thy bosom swells,
And swifter plunge thy gladdening volumes down
As glory urged and bade them hurry on.
Like warriors burning for avenging fight,
Flash the swift floods thy glittering edge upon,
Glare the white surges more intensely bright,
And the quenched eye, subdued, shrinks from the excessive light.
Or, amid thy roaring stillness, peal on peal,
Reverberating thunders rudely crash ;
Heard, yet scarce heard, though on thy pinnacle
The herald lightnings in continuous flash,
Glance on thy heaving wave, or fiercely dash
Into thine inmost womb ; and the waked ear
Listens, and thinks it hears thy rival rash
Groaning, as suffering spirits in despair
Groan in the dark, the drear, the eternal sepulchre.
Or, bursting from the death-trance, answering loud,
As blessed hosts contending who shall sing
Best their Creator ; emulous thy flood,
And the air-angel awfully echoing
In strenuous chorus. Dark o’er – hovering
Black the dense clouds thy wide expanse o’erveil ;
And all, save sound, in slumber deadening,
The rapt ear dwells upon thy rushing gale,
Though pausing Nature seem beneath the storm to quail.
Then, suddenly, the wild glare gleams around,
Pouring its forked, ire-enkindled brand,
As stains the streams, as desolates the ground,
War’s parching breath, thy poor, devoted land,
Once noble Græcia ; yet the scourge beneath
Thou fashionest the weapons of command,
And Heaven shall yield thee yet the conqueror wreath,
And Mahmoud’s blood-stained bones bleach on thy warrior heath.
Thee, vast Niagara, no tyrant curbs,
Though oft the tempest, burning in his might,
Thy mild serenity awhile disturbs,
And dares thee, placid conqueror, to the fight.
Hurling aloft in maniac despite,
Spoils torn from sultry, equinoctial plain,
Hopes he, elate, thy Naiads to affright,
To bind thy spirit in the enfeebling chain,
And o’er thy smiling strand, firm fix his brutal reign,
Once owned, fixed ever. Thou to fear or own
Sublimely scornest. Let the wild hurricane
Chafe thee and tear thee ! be thy rooted throne
Tornado whitened ! let his vengeance rain
As rained Gomorrah’s fire ! in disdain,
As Britain viewed the threat–invading force,
Thou, unsusceptible of age or pain,
Unheeding glidest from thine eternal source,
And still pursuest on, thy steady, fate-like course.
Even Winter, stern and fearless, whose chill throne,
In bleak, fantastic splendour overspreads
The solitary poles, oft trenches on
Thy neighbour forests, thy consanguined meads,
Yet pauses at thy threshold. Freedom shone
For ever there ! for ever shall the sun
Greet the proud, northern child ; and as her eye
Aurora-brightened flashes, every zone
Shall hail the cherub ; shall, like thee, rely
On Heaven, assert her right, and raise her head on high.
Often thy pale blue mist, inspiriting
Shoot lucent rays ; as Heaven’s prophecy,
Man’s dead-blank future fate illumining,
Peoples the dim haunt of obscurity ;
And, as thy booming thunders echo by,
Oft, clinging to some grey branch, whose frail leaves
Shiver within thy wavelet ; eagerly
Seek I thy depth, and as the billow heaves
Blithe fancy, with the spray, her visions interweaves.
And the soft moonbeams mitigate the scene
Of horror : thy dark current dimpling
With evanescent beauties, while between
Each intonating crash, light revelling
In their own music, night birds twittering,
Then bursting in one flood of melody,
Spell the ‘ rapt soul, that on the heaven-ward wing
Of ecstasy swift floating, soars on high,
And hears angelic strains, angelic minstrelsy.
Or, sinking into sadness, loves the light
Upon thy elfin-tresses glittering ;
Or marks, with happy, infantine delight,
The broad orb, from her high sphere, brightening
In thy pure, molten mirror, or chequering
Thy sportive surges, from the dark abyss
Leaping as fire-flies, gently wakening
Earth’s pearl-drops into transient brilliantness,
Then shouting, plunge down deep, in jocund happiness.
Oh, I have stood upon thy trembling verge
As, on the edge of time’s departing scroll
Some holy spirit : on the deepening dirge,
The solemn death-knell, wondrous visions roll
Of angels beckoning the kindred soul :
Islands of bliss, glad glory’s golden gleam,
Realms where pure spirits exercise controul,
Altars and temples of the dread Supreme,
Bathed in one brilliant, blest, clear, crime-unspotted beam.
Yes, —oft I stand, in melancholy bliss,
Shrunken in myself, and sinking into earth
In deep abasement, o’er thy vast abyss,
And daring not to ask, whence drew I birth,
Or, what I am ; or how the shuddering earth
Could bear such reptile wretches ; how the day-
-Ephemerons can rush in anger forth,
O’er the sand-grain a conqueror’s march essay,
And microscopic space, bind in disdainful sway ?
Lords of a moment. —In thy awful view
Who shall be great : who count his ancestry :
Who dare the irrefluent current to pursue,
Trace his continuous line, through regalry,
Up to a source of blood, or villainy ?
Oh, who shall, vauntingly, aloud proclaim
His pomp, his circumstance of heraldry,
O’er thee resound his ancestorial name,
And, to thy stream outspread his muster-roll of fame ?
Low, on thy margin, pride sinks self-abased,
And pert conceit, and pampered vanity,
Into their native nothingness debased,
And conscious of their fond credulity,
Sigh, blushing, at the sad reality ;
And, in thy kingly presence, cowering,
Thee-daunted, chrysomed in humility,
O’ercount, in lowliest tremor murmuring,
And weep, as still they count each empty triumphing.
Weak, worthless, vile, and despicable, all ;
As far beneath man’s truest dignity
As thou above the meanest springlet-fall
In tinkling current glancing merrily.
Thou, in thine own severe simplicity,
Sublimely calm, appallingly serene,
Glidest in lone, tremendous majesty : —
Absorbed, mute wonder, with expressive mien
Lost in abstraction stands, and meditates the scene .