Religion! thou the soul of happiness,
And, groaning Calvary! of thee: there shine
The noblest truths; there strongest motives sting;
There sacred violence assaults the soul;
There nothing but compulsion is forborn.
Can love allure us? or can terrour awe?
He weeps!---the falling drop puts out the sun.
He sighs!--the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes.
If in his love so terrible, what then
His wrath inflam'd? his tenderness on fire ?
Like soft, smooth oil, outblazing other fires?
Can pray'r, can praise, avert it?---Thou, my all!
My theme! my inspiration! and my crown!
My strength in age! my rise in low estate !
My soul's ambition! pleasure! wealth!---my world!
My light in darkness! and my life in death!
My boast thro' time! bliss thro' eternity!
Eternity, too short to speak thy praise,
Or fathom thy profound of love to man!
To man of men the meanest, ev'n to me;
My sacrifice! my God!---what things are these! 595
What then art thou? by what name shall I call thee?
Knew I the name devout archangels use,
Devout archangels should the name enjoy,
By me unrivall'd! thousands more sublime,
None half so dear as that which, tho' unspoke,
Still glows at heart. O how Omnipotence
Is lost in love! thou great Philanthropist !
Father of angels! but the friend of man!
Like Jacob, fondest of the younger born!
Thou who didst save him, snatch the smoaking brand
From out the flames, and quench it in thy blood! 606
How art thou pleas'd by bounty to distress!
To make us groan beneath our gratitude,
Too big for birth! to favour and confound;
To challenge, and to distance all return!
Of lavish love stupendous heights to soar,
And leave praise panting in the distant vale!
Thy right too great defrauds thee of thy due,
And sacrilegious our sublimest song.
But since the naked will obtains thy smile,
Beneath this monument of praise unpaid,
And future life symphonious to my strain,
(That noblest hymn to Heav'n!) for ever lie
Intomb'd my fear of death! and ev'ry fear,
The dread of ev'ry evil, but thy frown.
Whom see I yonder so demurely smile?
Laughter a labour, and might break their rest,
Ye Quietists! in homage to the skies!
Serene! of soft address! who mildly make
An unobtrusive tender of your hearts,
Abhorring violence! who halt indeed,
But, for the blessing, wrestle not with Heav'n!
Think you my song too turbulent? too warm?
Are passions, then, the pagans of the soul?
Reason alone baptiz'd? alone ordain'd・
To touch things sacred? Oh for warmer still!
Guilt chills my zeal, and age benumbs my pow'rs:
Oh for an humbler heart and prouder song!
Thou, my much-injur'd Theme! with that soft eye
Which melted o'er doom'd Salem, deign to look 635
Compassion to the coldness of my breast,
And pardon to the winter in my strain.
Oh ye cold-hearted, frozen, Formalists!
On such a theme 'tis impious to be calm:
Passion is reason, transport temper, here.
Shall Heav'n, which gave us ardour, and has shewn
Her own for man so strongly, not disdain
What smooth emollients in theology,
Recumbent Virtue's downy doctors, preach,
That prose of piety, a lukewarm praise ?
Rise odours sweet from incense uninflam'd?
Devotion when lukewarm is undevout;
But when it glows, its heat is struck to heav'n;
To human hearts her golden harps are strung;
High heav'n's orchestra chaunts amen to man.
Here I, or dream I hear the distant strain,
Sweet to the soul, and tasting strong of heav'n,
Soft-wafted on celestial Pity's plume,
Thro' the vast spaces of the universe,
To cheer me in this melancholy gloom?
Oh when will death (now stingless) like a friend
Admit me of their choir? Oh when will death
This mould'ring, old, partition-wall throw down?
Give beings, one in nature, one abode ?
Oh Death divine! that giv'st us to the skies:
Great future! glorious patron of the past
And present! when shall I thy shrine adore ?
From Nature's continent, immensely wide,
Immensely blest, this little isle of life,
This dark incarcerating colony
Divides us. Happy day that breaks our chain!
That manumits; that calls from exile home;
That leads to Nature's great metropolis,
And re-admits us, thro' the guardian hand
Of elder brothers, to our Father's throne,
Who hears our Advocate, and thro' his wounds
Beholding man, allows that tender name.
'Tis this makes Christian triumph a command;
'Tis this makes joy a duty to the wise.
'Tis impious in a good man to be sad.
Seest thou, Lorenzo, where hangs all our hope? Touch'd by the cross we live, or more than die; That touch which touch'd not angels; more divine Than that which touch'd confusion into form,
And darkness into glory: partial touch!
Ineffably pre-eminent regard!
Sacred to man, and sov reign thro' the whole
Long golden chain of miracles, which hangs
From heav'n thro' all duration, and supports,
In one illustrious and amazing plan,
Thy welfare, Nature! and thy God's renown.
That touch, with charms celestial; heals the soul Diseas'd, drives pain from guilt, lights life in death, Turns earth to heav'n, to heav'nly thrones transforms The ghastly ruins of the mould'ring tomb.
Dost ask me when? When he who dy'd returns;
Returns, how chang'd! where then the man of wo?
In Glory's terrours all the Godhead burns,
And all his courts, exhausted by the tide
Of deities triumphant in his train,
Leave a stupendous solitude in heav'n;
Replenish'd soon, replenish'd with increase
Of pomp and multitude; a radiant band
Of angels new, of angels from the tomb.
Is this by fancy thrown remote? and rise
Dark doubts between the promise and event?
I send thee not to volumes for thy cure;
Read Nature; Nature is a friend to truth;
Nature is Christian; preaches to mankind,
And bids dead matter aid us in our creed.
Hast thou ne'er seen the comet's flaming flight?
Th' illustrious stranger passing, terrour sheds
On gazing nations from his fiery train,
Of length enormous, takes his ample round
Thro' depths of ether; coasts unnumber'd worlds 710
Of more than solar glory; doubles wide
Heav'n's mighty cape; and then revisits earth,
From the long travel of a thousand years,
Thus at the destin'd period shall return
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