Of Love and basking in the light of God.
The thoughts, that cast him from his palmy state,
The limitless aspirings and desires
Of an immortal nature, once to him
The ambrosia and the diadem of bliss,
Came o'er him like the spectres of the past,
To shriek amid the ruins they had caused,
And pierce like fire-bolts through his maddened brain
He dared, and perished in his power and pride,
Fell from the hallowed throne of cherished hope
And sunk to shame-it was enough to know
And feel as great minds feel their perill'd might
And ruined fame and conscious guilt beyond
The venal casuistry of proud self-love.
He would not be Mezentius to himself
And wed his great ambition to the corse
Of his dead being; nor, Procrustes-like,
Measure departed happiness in heaven
By present misery in Hades' vault.
So back upon himself, with dire resolve,
The voiceless desperation of his doom,
He deeply shrunk, and reck'd not of the Power
Forever paramount, nor punishment
Nor sighs upon the burning air that fell
Like lava on his brain and through his heart
In livid lightnings wandered; but he grasped
His garments of eternal flame and wrapt
Their blazing folds around his giant limbs,
And stood with head upraised and meteor eye
And still lips whose pale, cold and bitter scorn
Smiled at eternity's deep agonies,
The Spirit of Destruction undestroyed!
Remote from all who fought and fell like him,
In the lone depths of vast Gehenna's waste,
And by the lava mountains overhung
That darkened e'en the vaulted vapour's gloom,
He stood in that sick loneliness of soul,
That awful solitude of greatness lost,
The Evil, highly gifted, only know,
When every passion riots on the spoils
Of knowledge, and the fountain springs of life
Burst in a burning flood no time can quench.
But that which agonized his hopeless heart And stung him oft to phrenzy—that, which hung O'er his all-dreading yet all-daring soul Like thousand mountains of perpetual flame, Was earthly innocence. Ere then had flown The fame of man's creation in a sphere
Morn like a seraph in its glory came;
The shadowy valleys, where autumnal airs
Mid pine and firwoods uttered those sweet hymns
That sink into the spirit and become
Oracles of future joy when earth grows dark;
The leafy groves, still'd at the fervid noon
That silence may attend on solemn thought,
The incense rendered on the sun's vast shrine;
The broad and beautiful and glittering streams,
Where Nature, in her soundless solitudes,
Smiled grateful back the eternal smile of Hope.
With the bright hues misfortune gives to joy, The outcast angel, in his dungeon gloom Girdled and counselled by the false and vain, The wicked without aim save love of change, The galley felons of unguerdoned guilt,
Painted the matchless charms of newborn earth;
And, as he imaged forth its blissful scenes,
His burning, riven, desolated heart
Groaned till the caverns of remotest hell
Echoed, and all the envious demons laughed.
For well he knew that while the laws of God
Were as the breath of life to man, no power
Lucu спине ана азону о itss aucum
When mind alone was wanting both to rend
And still renew the anguish ne'er to close.
But soon from Eden, o'er the wide void deep,
Returned the adversary, the master fiend,
Moulder of fiercest passions-queller, too,
Of turbulence and vain ferocity,
Whose serpent wisdom nourished matchless pride,
Whose hope was ruin and whose counsel, death.
In guile without a peer; on holy works
And customary rites attendant e'er
As come their seasons, with a zealot's speech
Prolonged and trumpetted that pours and pours
Like turbid waters by the tempest hurled.
He holds devoted natures with the grasp
Of death, and 'neath the pictured mask of grace
Hides the atrocity and doom of hell.
Opinion, fount of action, falsely held,
Founds and confirms his empire; fallacies,
With master skill and magic, he distorts
And beautifies with the fair robes of faith;
The martyr's sacrifice-the patriot's doom-
The just man's dungeon hours-the 'last despair
Of virtue, and proud honour's agony,
To him are mirth and music; and he feasts,
Of chaos! Crowded round the cloudy throne
Of Pandæmonium all the rebel horde,
And rapidly, with haughty gesture, passed
ABADDON to his place, the loftiest there
Save one, and terribly his glowing eyes
Watched and awaited the descending chief.
As in the prophet's vision by the brink
Of Ulai's orient wave, the victor foe
Touched not the earth in haughtiness of power,
But, ere confronting, conquered in the spoil;
So rushed the giant prince of darkness now
On condor pinions, with hyæna eye,
And broad brow in the storm-cloud deeply wrapt,
In his career exultant that despair
And death from birth to burial should infect
Man's heart pulse, paralyze his spirit's power,
Seal all his human hopes with vanity,
Burden all pleasure with besetting fear,
Wed honour to disgrace and pride to shame,
Bring widowhood in youth, and friendless leave
Unportioned orphanage in evil days,
And change each quickened breath to sobs and sigh
And o'er all scenes of love and rapture cast
|