It was a strange assembly: none, of all
That congregation vast, could recollect
Aught like it in the history of man.
No badge of outward state was seen, no mark
Of age, or rank, or national attire,
Or robe professional, or air of trade.
Untitled, stood the man that once was called
My lord, unserved, unfollowed; and the man
Of tithes, right reverend in the dialect
Of Time addressed, ungowned, unbeneficed,
Uncorpulent; nor now, from him who bore,
With ceremonious gravity of step,

And face of borrowed holiness o'erlaid,

The ponderous book before the awful priest,
And opened and shut the pulpit's sacred gates
In style of wonderful observancy

And reverence excessive, in the beams
Of sacerdotal splendour lost, or if
Observed, comparison ridiculous scarce

Could save the little, pompous, humble man
From laughter of the people,-not from him

Could be distinguished then the priest untithed.

None levees held, those marts where princely smiles Were sold for flattery, and obeisance mean,

Unfit from man to man; none came or went,
None wished to draw attention, none was poor,
None rich, none young, none old, deformed none;
None sought for place or favour, none had aught
To give, none could receive, none ruled, none served
No king, no subject was; unscutcheoned all,
Uncrowned, unplumed, unhelmed, unpedigreed,
Unlaced, uncoroneted, unbestarred.

Nor countryman was seen, nor citizen;
Republican, nor humble advocate
Of monarchy; nor idol worshipper,
Nor beaded papist, nor Mahometan;
Episcopalian none, nor presbyter;
Nor Lutheran, nor Calvinist, nor Jew,

;

Nor Greek, nor sectary of any name.
Nor, of those persons, that loud title bore,
Most high and mighty, most magnificent,
Most potent, most august, most worshipful,
Most eminent, words of great pomp, that pleased
The ear of vanity, and made the worms

Of earth mistake themselves for gods,-could one
Be seen, to claim these phrases obsolete.

It was a congregation vast of men,
Of unappendaged and unvarnished men,
Of plain, unceremonious human beings,
Of all but moral character bereaved.
His vice or virtue, now, to each remained,

Alone. All else, with their grave-clothes, men had
Put off, as badges worn by mortal, not
Immortal man; alloy that could not pass
The scrutiny of Death's refining fires ;
Dust of Time's wheels, by multitudes pursued
of fools that shouted-Gold! fair painted fruit,
At which the ambitious idiot jumped, while men
Of wiser mood immortal harvests reaped ;
Weeds of the human garden, sprung from earth's
Adulterate soil, unfit to be transplanted,
Though by the moral botanist, too oft,

For plants of heavenly seed mistaken and nursed;
Mere chaff, that Virtue, when she rose from earth,
And waved her wings to gain her native heights,
Drove from the verge of being, leaving Vice
No mask to hide her in; base-born of Time,
In which God claimed no property, nor had
Prepared for them a place in heaven or hell.
Yet did these vain distinctions, now forgot,
Bulk largely in the filmy eye of Time,
And were exceeding fair, and lured to death
Immortal souls. But they were passed, for all
Ideal now was passed; reality

Alone remained; and good and bad, redeemed

And unredeemed, distinguished sole the sons
Of men. Each, to his proper self reduced,
And undisguised, was what his seeming showed.

The man of earthly fame, whom common men
Made boast of having seen, who scarce could pass
The ways of Time, for eager crowds that pressed
To do him homage, and pursued his ear
With endless praise, for deeds unpraised above,
And yoked their brutal natures, honoured much
To drag his chariot on,-unnoticed stood,
With none to praise him, none to flatter there.

* Blushing and dumb, that morning, too, was seen
The mighty reasoner, he who deeply searched
The origin of things, and talked of good

And evil, much, of causes and effects,
Of mind and matter, contradicting all

That went before him, and himself, the while,
The laughing-stock of angels diving far
Below his depth, to fetch reluctant proof,
That he himself was mad and wicked too,
When, proud and ignorant man, he meant to prove
That God had made the universe amiss,

And sketched a better plan. Ah! foolish sage !
He could not trust the word of Heaven, nor see
The light which from the Bible blazed,—that lamp
Which God threw from his palace down to earth,
To guide his wandering children home,-yet leaned
His cautious faith on speculations wild,

And visionary theories absurd,

Prodigiously, deliriously absurd,

Compared with which, the most erroneous flight
That poet ever took when warm with wine,
Was moderate conjecturing: he saw,

Weighed in the balance of eternity,

His lore how light, and wished, too late, that he

Had staid at home, and learned to know himself,

And done, what peasants did, disputed less,
And more obeyed. Nor less he grieved his time
Misspent, the man of curious research,

Who travelled far through lands of hostile clime
And dangerous inhabitant, to fix

The bounds of empires passed, and ascertain
The burial-place of heroes, never born;
Despising present things, and future too,
And groping in the dark unsearchable
Of finished years,-by dreary ruins seen,
And dungeons damp, and vaults of ancient waste,
With spade and mattock, delving deep to raise
Old vases and dismembered idols rude;

With matchless perseverance, spelling out

Words without sense. Poor man! he clapped his hands,
Enraptured, when he found a manuscript

That spoke of pagan gods; and yet forgot
The God who made the sea and sky, alas!
Forgot that trifling was a sin; stored much
Of dubious stuff, but laid no treasure up

In heaven; on mouldered columns scratched his name,
But ne'er inscribed it in the book of life.

Unprofitable seemed, and unapproved,
That day, the sullen, self-vindictive life
Of the recluse. With crucifixes hung,
And spells, and rosaries, and wooden saints,
Like one of reason reft, he journeyed forth,
In show of miserable poverty,

And chose to beg,—as if to live on sweat
Of other men, had promised great reward;
On his own flesh inflicted cruel wounds,
With naked foot embraced the ice, by the hour
Said mass,
and did most grievous penance vile;
And then retired to drink the filthy cup

Of secret wickedness, and fabricate

All lying wonders, by the untaught received

For revelations new. Deluded wretch!

Did he not know, that the most Holy One
Required a cheerful life and holy heart?

Most disappointed in that crowd of men,
The man of subtle controversy stood,
The bigot theologian, in minute

Distinctions skilled, and doctrines unreduced
To practice; in debate how loud! how long!
How dexterous! in Christian love how cold!
His vain conceits were orthodox alone.
The immutable and heavenly truth, revealed
By God, was naught to him. He had an art,
A kind of hellish charm, that made the lips
Of truth speak falsehood, to his liking turned
The meaning of the text, made trifles seem
The marrow of salvation; to a word,
A name, a sect, that sounded in the ear,
And to the eye so many letters showed,

But did no more,-gave value infinite;
Proved still his reasoning best, and his belief,

Though propped on fancies wild as madmen's dreams, Most rational, most scriptural, most sound;

With mortal heresy denouncing all

Who in his arguments could see no force.
On points of faith, too fine for human sight,
And never understood in heaven, he placed
His everlasting hope, undoubting placed,
And died; and, when he opened his ear, prepared
To hear, beyond the grave, the minstrelsy

Of bliss, he heard, alas! the wail of wo.

He proved all creeds false but his own, and found,
At last, his own most false-most false, because
He spent his time to prove all others so.

O love-destroying, cursed Bigotry!
Cursed in heaven, but cursed more in hell,
Where millions curse thee, and must ever curse!
Religion's most abhorred! perdition's most