Слике страница
PDF
ePub

Starting amazed, shall to the people show
Emblems of heavenly wrath, and mystic types of woe.
"The captives, as their tyrant shall require

That they should breathe the song, and touch the lyre,
Shall say:
'Can Jacob's servile race rejoice,
Untuned the music, and disused the voice?

What can we play?' (they shall discourse,) 'how sing
In foreign lands, and to a barbarous king?
We and our fathers, from our childhood bred
To watch the cruel victor's eye, to dread
The arbitrary lash, to bend, to grieve,
(Outcasts of mortal race!) can we conceive
Image of aught delightful, soft, or gay?
Alas! when we have toil'd the longsome day,
The fullest bliss our hearts aspire to know
Is but some interval from active woe,

In broken rest and startling sleep to mourn,
Till morn, the tyrant, and the scourge return.
Bred up in grief, can pleasure be our theme?
Our endless anguish does not nature claim?
Reason and sorrow are to us the same.
Alas! with wild amazement we require,
If idle Folly was not Pleasure's sire?
Madness, we fancy, gave an ill-timed birth
To grinning Laughter, and to frantic Mirth.'
"This is the series of perpetual woe,

Which thou, alas! and thine, are born to know.
Illustrious wretch! repine not, nor reply:

View not what Heaven ordains with Reason's eye :
Too bright the object is; the distance is too high.
The man who would resolve the work of Fate,
May limit number, and make crooked straight.
Stop thy inquiry, then, and curb thy sense,
Nor let dust argue with Omnipotence.
'Tis GOD who must dispose, and man sustain,
Born to endure, forbidden to complain.
Thy sum of life must His decrees fulfil :
What derogates from His command, is ill;

And that alone is good which centres in His will.

66

Yet, that thy labouring senses may not droop,

Lost to delight, and destitute of hope,

Remark what I, GoD's messenger, aver
From Him, who neither can deceive nor err.

The land, at length redeem'd, shall cease to mourn,
Shall from her sad captivity return.
Sion shall raise her long-dejected head,
And in her courts the law again be read.
Again the glorious temple shall arise,

And with new lustre pierce the neighbouring skies.
The promised seat of empire shall again
Cover the mountain, and command the plain;
And, from thy race distinguish'd, One shall spring,
Greater in act than victor, more than king

In dignity and power, sent down from heaven,
To succour earth. To Him, to Him 't is given,
Passion, and care, and anguish to destroy.
Through Him soft peace, and plenitude of joy,
Perpetual o'er the world redeem'd shall flow;
No more may man inquire, nor angel know.

"Now, Solomon! remembering who thou art,
Act, through thy remnant life, the decent part.
Go forth be strong with patience and with care
Perform, and suffer: to thyself severe,
Gracious to others, thy desires suppress'd,
Diffused thy virtues; first of men, be best!
Thy sum of duty let two words contain :
(O may they graven in thy heart remain !)
BE HUMBLE AND BE JUST.' The angel said:-
With upward speed his agile wings he spread;
Whilst on the holy ground I prostrate lay,
By various doubts impell'd or to obey,
Or to object; at length (my mournful look
Heavenward erect) determined, thus I spoke :-
Supreme, all-wise, eternal Potentate!

66

Sole Author, sole Disposer of our fate!
Enthroned in light and immortality,
Whom no man fully sees, and none can see!
Original of beings! Power Divine !

Since that I live, and that I think, is Thine!
Benign Creator, let Thy plastic hand
Dispose its own effect; let Thy command
Restore, Great Father! Thy instructed son;
And in my act may Thy great will be done!"

141

SELECTIONS FROM PARNELL.

A NIGHT-PIECE ON DEATH.

By the blue taper's trembling light,
No more I waste the wakeful night,
Intent with endless view to pore
The schoolmen and the sages o'er :
Their books from wisdom widely stray,
Or point at best the longest way.
I'll seek a readier path, and go
Where wisdom's surely taught below.
How deep yon azure dyes the sky!
Where orbs of gold unnumber'd lie,
While through their ranks in silver pride
The nether crescent seems to glide.
The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe,
The lake is smooth and clear beneath,
Where once again the spangled show
Descends to meet our eyes below.
The grounds which on the right aspire,
In dimness from the view retire:
The left presents a place of graves,
Whose wall the silent water laves.
That steeple guides thy doubtful sight
Among the livid gleams of night.
There pass with melancholy state
By all the solemn heaps of fate,
And think, as softly-sad you tread
Above the venerable dead,

Time was, like thee, they life possess'd,
And time shall be that thou shalt rest.
Those with bending osier bound,
That nameless heave the crumbled ground,
Quick to the glancing thought disclose
Where toil and poverty repose.

The flat smooth stones that bear a name,

The chisel's slender help to fame,
(Which, ere our set of friends decay,
Their frequent steps may wear away,)
A middle race of mortals own,
Men half ambitious, all unknown.

The marble tombs that rise on high,
Whose dead in vaulted arches lie,
Whose pillars swell with sculptured stones,
Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones,
These, all the poor remains of state,
Adorn the rich, or praise the great;
Who, while on earth in fame they live,
Are senseless of the fame they give.

Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades,
The bursting earth unveils the shades!
All slow, and wan, and wrapp'd with shrouds,
They rise in visionary crowds,

And all with sober accent cry,

66

Think, mortal, what it is to die!"

Now from yon black and funeral yew
That bathes the charnel-house with dew,
Methinks, I hear a voice begin;
(Ye ravens, cease your croaking din!
Ye tolling clocks, no time resound

O'er the long lake and midnight ground!)
It sends a peal of hollow

groans,

Thus speaking from among the bones :-
"When men my scythe and darts supply,
How great a king of fears am I!

They view me like the last of things;
They make, and then they draw, my strings.
Fools! if you less provoked your fears,
No more my spectre-form appears.
Death's but a path that must be trod,
If man would ever pass to God:
A port of calms, a state to ease
From the rough rage of swelling seas."
Why, then, thy flowing sable stoles,
Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles,
Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,
Long palls, drawn hearses, cover'd steeds,
And plumes of black, that, as they tread,
Nod o'er the escutcheons of the dead?
Nor can the parted body know,
Nor wants the soul, these forms of woe;
As men who long in prison dwell,
With lamps that glimmer round the cell,
Whene'er their suffering years are run,
Spring forth to greet the glittering sun:

Such joy, though far transcending sense,
Have pious souls at parting hence.
On earth, and in the body placed,
A few and evil years they waste;
But, when their chains are cast aside,
See the glad scene unfolding wide,
Clap the glad wing, and tower away,
And mingle with the blaze of day.

THE HERMIT.

FAR in a wild, unknown to public view,
From youth to age a reverend hermit grew;
The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell,
His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well:
Remote from men, with God he pass'd his days,
Prayer all his business, all his pleasure praise.

A life so sacred, such serene repose,

Seem'd heaven itself, till one suggestion rose:
That Vice should triumph, Virtue Vice obey,-
This sprung some doubt of Providence's sway:
His hopes no more a certain prospect boast,
And all the tenor of his soul is lost.

So when a smooth expanse receives impress'd
Calm Nature's image on its watery breast,
Down bend the banks, the trees depending grow,
And skies beneath with answering colours glow:
But if a stone the gentle sea divide,

Swift ruffling circles curl on every side,
And glimmering fragments of a broken sun,
Banks, trees, and skies, in thick disorder run.

To clear this doubt, to know the world by sight,
To find if books, or swains, report it right,
(For yet by swains alone the world he knew,
Whose feet came wandering o'er the nightly dew,)
He quits his cell; the pilgrim-staff he bore,
And fix'd the scallop in his hat before;
Then with the sun a rising journey went,
Sedate to think, and watching each event.

The morn was wasted in the pathless grass, And long and lonesome was the wild to pass;

« ПретходнаНастави »