QEHOLD'ST thou yonder, on the crystal sea, Beneath the throne of God, an image fair, And in its hand a mirror large and bright? 'Tis Truth, immutable, eternal Truth, In figure emblematical expressed. Before it Virtue stands, and smiling sees, Well pleased, in her reflected soul, no spot. The sons of heaven, archangel, seraph, saint, There daily read their own essential worth ; And, as they read, take place among the just; Or high, or low, each as his value seems. There each his certain interest learns, his true Capacity; and going thence, pursues, Unerringly, through all the tracts of thought, As God ordains, best ends by wisest means.
The Bible held this mirror's place on earth. But few would read, or, reading, saw themselves: The chase was after shadows, phantoms strange,
That in the twilight walked of Time, and mocked
The eager hunt, escaping evermore:
Yet with so many promises and looks
Of gentle sort, that he whose arms returned
Empty a thousand times, still stretched them out,
And grasping, brought them back again unfilled.
In rapid outline thou hast heard of man,
His death, his offered life, that life by most
Despised; the Star of God, the Bible, scorned,
That else to happiness and heaven had led,
And saved my lyre from narrative of woe.
Hear now more largely of the ways of Time,
The fond pursuits and vanities of men.
"Love God, love truth, love virtue, and be happy;" These were the words first uttered in the ear
Of every being rational made, and made
For thought, or word, or deed accountable.
Most men the first forgot, the second none.
Whatever path they took, by hill or vale,
By night or day, the universal wish,
The aim, and sole intent, was happiness.
But, erring from the heaven-appointed path,
Strange tracks indeed they took through barren wastes,
And up the sandy mountain climbing toiled,
Which pining lay beneath the curse of God,
And nought produced. Yet did the traveller look
And point his eye before him greedily,
As if he saw some verdant spot, where grew
The heavenly flower, where sprang the well of life,
Where undisturbed felicity reposed;
Though Wisdom's eye no vestige could discern,
That Happiness had ever passed that way.
Wisdom was right, for still the terms remained
Unchanged, unchangeable-the terms on which
True peace was given to man, unchanged as God,
Who, in His own essential nature, binds
Eternally to virtue happiness,
Nor lets them part through all His universe.
Philosophy, as thou shalt hear, when she
Shall have her praise, her praise and censure too,
Did much, refining and exalting man;
But could not nurse a single plant that bore
True happiness. From age to age she toiled,
Shed from her eyes the mist that dimmed them still,
Looked forth on man, explored the wild and tame,
The savage and polite, the sea and land,
And starry heavens; and then retired far back
To meditation's silent shady seat;
And there sat pale and thoughtfully, and weighed,
With wary, most exact, and scrupulous care,
Man's nature, passions, hopes, propensities,
Relations, and pursuits, in reason's scale;
And searched and weighed, and weighed and searched
And many a fair and goodly volume wrote,
That seemed well worded too, wherein were found
Uncountable receipts, pretending each,
If carefully attended to, to curə
Mankind of folly, to root out the briers,
And thorns, and weeds, that choked the growth of joy;
And showing, too, in plain and decent phrase,
Which sounded much like Wisdom's, how to plant,
To shelter, water, culture, prune, and rear
The tree of happiness; and oft their plans
Were tried, but still the fruit was green and sour.
Of all the trees that in Earth's vineyard grew,
And with their clusters tempted man to pull
And eat, one tree, one tree alone, the true
Celestial manna bore, which filled the soul—
The Tree of Holiness, of heavenly seed,
A native of the skies; though stunted much
And dwarfed, by Time's cold, damp, ungenial soil,
And chilling winds, yet yielding fruit so pure,
So nourishing and sweet, as on his way
Refreshed the pilgrim, and begot desire
Unquenchable to climb the arduous path
To where her sister plants, in their own clime,
Around the fount, and by the stream of life,
Blooming beneath the Sun that never sets,
Bear fruit of perfect relish, fully ripe.
To plant this tree, uprooted by the fall,
To earth the Son of God descended, shed
His precious blood; and on it evermore,
From off His living wings, the Spirit shook
The dews of heaven, to nurse and hasten its growth.
Nor was this care, this infinite expense,
Not needed to secure the holy plant.
To root it out, and wither it from earth,
Hell strove with all its strength, and blew with all
Its blasts; and Sin, with cold consumptive breath,
Involved it still in clouds of mortal damp.
Yet did it grow, thus kept, protected thus,
And bear the only fruit of true delight,
The only fruit worth plucking under heaven.
But few, alas! the holy plant could see, For heavy mists that Sin around it threw Perpetually and few the sacrifice
Would make by which alone its clusters stooped,
And came within the reach of mortal man.
For this, of him who would approach and eat,
Was rigorously exacted to the full :
To tread and bruise beneath the foot the world
Entire; its prides, ambitions, hopes, desires;
Its gold and all its broidered equipage;
To loose its loves and friendships from the heart,
And cast them off; to shut the ear against
Its praise, and all its flatteries abhor;
And having thus behind him thrown what seemed
So good and fair, then must he lowly kneel
And with sincerity, in which the Eye
That slumbers not nor sleeps, could see no lack,
This prayer pray :
"Lord God! Thy will be done,
Thy holy will, howe'er it cross my own.”
Hard labour this for flesh and blood! too hard
For most it seemed. So turning, they the Tree
Derided as mere bramble, that could bear
No fruit of special taste; and so set out
Upon ten thousand different routes, to seek
What they had left behind—to seek what they
Had lost; for still as something once possessed
And lost, true happiness appeared. All thought
They once were happy; and even while they smoked
And panted in the chase, believed themselves
More miserable to-day than yesterday,
To-morrow than to-day. When youth complained,
The ancient sinner shook his hoary head,
As if he meant to say, Stop till you come
My length, and then you may have cause to sigh.
At twenty, cried the boy, who now had seen
Some blemish in his joys, How happily
Plays yonder child that busks the mimic babe,
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