Till late to arrest its progress, or create

That peace which first in bloodless victory waved
Her snowy standard o'er this favored clime;
There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,
The mimic of surrounding misery,

The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,
The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.

Here now the human being stands adorning This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind; Blest from his birth with all bland impulses, Which gently in his noble bosom wake All kindly passions and all pure desires. Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise

In time-destroying infiniteness gift

With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks

The unprevailing hoariness of age;

And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene
Swift as an unremembered vision, stands

Immortal upon earth; no longer now

He slays the beast that sports around his dwell

ing,

And horribly devours its mangled flesh,

Or drinks its vital blood, which like a stream
Of poison through his fevered veins did flow
Feeding a plague that secretly consumed
His feeble frame, and kindling in his mind
Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief,

of misery, death, disease, and crime.
157 consumed || did eat, MS. cancelled.

No longer now the wingèd habitants,
That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,
Flee from the form of man; but gather round,
And prune their sunny feathers on the hands
Which little children stretch in friendly sport
Towards these dreadless partners of their play.
All things are void of terror; man has lost
His desolating privilege, and stands

An equal amidst equals; happiness

And science dawn though late upon the earth; Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;

Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,

Reason and passion cease to combat there;
Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends

Its all-subduing energies, and wields
The sceptre of a vast dominion there.

Mild is the slow necessity of death.
The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,
Without a groan, almost without a fear,
Resigned in peace to the necessity,
Calm as a voyager to some distant land,
And full of wonder, full of hope as he.
The deadly germs of languor and disease
Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts
With choicest boons her human worshippers.
How vigorous now the athletic form of age!
How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!
Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care,
Had stamped the seal of gray deformity
On all the mingling lineaments of time.
How lovely the intrepid front of youth!
How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.

Within the massy prison's mouldering courts Fearless and free the ruddy children play, Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows With the green ivy and the red wall-flower, That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom; The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,

There rust amid the accumulated ruins

Now mingling slowly with their native earth;
There the broad beam of day, which feebly once
Lighted the cheek of lean captivity

With a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness;

No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair
Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing

notes

Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds

And merriment are resonant around.

The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no

more

The voice that once waked multitudes to war Thundering through all their aisles, but now re

spond

To the death dirge of the melancholy wind.

It were a sight of awfulness to see

The works of faith and slavery, so vast,

So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing,

Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall!
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death
To-day, the breathing marble glows above

209 Temples once stained with falsehood hear no more . . . MS. cancelled.

To decorate its memory, and tongues
Are busy of its life; to-morrow, worms
In silence and in darkness seize their prey.
These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind;
Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe,
To happier shapes are moulded, and become
Ministrant to all blissful impulses ;
Thus human things are perfected, and earth,
Even as a child beneath its mother's love,
Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows
Fairer and nobler with each passing year.

Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past Fades from our charmèd sight. My task is done; Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine

own,

With all the fear and all the hope they bring.
My spells are past; the present now recurs.
Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains
Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand.

Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course. Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue

The gradual paths of an aspiring change.

For birth and life and death, and that strange

state

Before the naked powers, that through the world
Wander like winds, have found a human home,
All tend to perfect happiness, and urge
The restless wheels of being on their way,
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal;

For birth but wakes the universal mind,
Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow
Through the vast world, to individual sense
Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape
New modes of passion to its frame may lend;
Life is its state of action, and the store
Of all events is aggregated there
That variegate the eternal universe;
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies
And happy regions of eternal hope.
Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on.

Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,
Though frosts may blight the freshness of its

bloom,

Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower, That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile.

Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand, So welcome when the tyrant is awake, So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch flares; 'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. For what thou art shall perish utterly, But what is thine may never cease to be; Death is no foe to virtue; earth has seen Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there, And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?