"Yes," said the Wanderer, taking from my lips The strain of transport, "whosoe'er in youth Has, through ambition of his soul, given way To such desires, and grasped at such delight, Shall feel congenial stirrings late and long, In spite of all the weakness that life brings, Its cares and sorrows; he, though taught to own The tranquillizing power of time, shall wake, Wake sometimes to a noble restlessness, Loving the sports which once he gloried in.
"Compatriot, Friend, remote are Garry's hills,
The streams far distant of your native glen;
Yet is their form and image here expressed
With brotherly resemblance. Turn your steps
Wherever fancy leads; by day, by night,
Are various engines working, not the same
As those with which your soul in youth was moved,
But by the great Artificer endowed
With no inferior power. You dwell alone;
You walk, you live, you speculate alone;
Yet doth remembrance, like a sovereign prince,
For you a stately gallery maintain
Of gay or tragic pictures. You have seen,
Have acted, suffered, travelled far, observed
With no incurious eye; and books are yours,
Within whose silent chambers treasure lies
Preserved from age to age; more precious far
Than that accumulated store of gold
And orient gems, which, for a day of need,
The Sultan hides deep in ancestral tombs.
These hoards of truth you can unlock at will:
And music waits upon your skilful touch,
Sounds which the wandering shepherd from these
Hears, and forgets his purpose;
How can you droop, if willing to be upraised?
"A piteous lot it were to flee from Man,
Yet not rejoice in Nature. He, whose hours
Are by domestic pleasures uncaressed
And unenlivened; who exists whole years
Apart from benefits received or done
'Mid the transactions of the bustling crowd;
Who neither hears, nor feels a wish to hear,
Of the world's interests, such a one hath need
Of a quick fancy and an active heart,
That, for the day's consumption, books may yield Food not unwholesome; earth and air correct His morbid humor, with delight supplied.
Or solace, varying as the seasons change.
— Truth has her pleasure-grounds, her haunts of
And easy contemplation; gay parterres,
And labyrinthine walks, her sunny glades
And shady groves in studied contrast,
For recreation, leading into each:
These may he range, if willing to partake
Their soft indulgences, and in due time
May issue thence, recruited for the tasks
course of service Truth requires from those Who tend her altars, wait upon her throne,
And guard her fortresses. Who thinks, and feels, And recognizes ever and anon
The breeze of nature stirring in his soul,
Why need such man go desperately astray,
And nurse the dreadful appetite of death'?
If tired with systems, each in its degree
Substantial, and all crumbling in their turn,
Let him build systems of his own, and smile
At the fond work, demolished with a touch:
If unreligious, let him be at once,
Among ten thousand innocents, enrolled
A pupil in the many-chambered school
Where Superstition weaves her airy dreams.
“Life's autumn past, I stand on winter's verge;
And daily lose what I desire to keep :
Yet rather would I instantly decline
To the traditionary sympathies
Of a most rustic ignorance, and take
A fearful apprehension from the owl
Or death-watch; and as readily rejoice,
If two auspicious magpies crossed my way; -
To this would rather bend, than see and hear
The repetitions wearisome of sense,
Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place;
Where knowledge, ill begun in cold remark
On outward things, with formal inference ends;
Or, if the mind turn inward, she recoils
At once, or, not recoiling, is perplexed,
Lost in a gloom of uninspired research ;
Meanwhile, the heart within the heart, the seat
Where peace and happy consciousness should dwell,
On its own axis restlessly revolving,
Seeks, yet can nowhere find, the light of truth.
Upon the breast of new-created earth
Man walked ; and when and wheresoe'er he moved, Alone or mated, solitude was not.
He heard, borne on the wind, the articulate voice Of God; and Angels to his sight appeared Crowning the glorious hills of paradise ;
Or through the groves gliding like morning mist Enkindled by the sun. He sat,
With winged Messengers; who daily brought
To his small island in the ethereal deep
Tidings of joy and love. From those pure heights (Whether of actual vision, sensible
To sight and feeling, or that in this sort
Have condescendingly been shadowed forth
Communications spiritually maintained,
And intuitions moral and divine)
Fell Human-kind, to banishment condemned
That flowing years repealed not: and distress
And grief spread wide; but Man escaped the doom
Of destitution; solitude was not.
- Jehovah shapeless Power above all powers, Single and one, the omnipresent God. By vocal utterance, or blaze of light.
Or cloud of darkness, localized in heaven;
On earth, enshrined within the wandering ark;
Or, out of Sion, thundering from his throne
Between the Cherubim,
Showered miracles, and ceased not to dispense Judgments, that filled the land from age to age With hope, and love, and gratitude, and fear; And with amazement smote; - thereby to assert His scorned, or unacknowledged, sovereignty.
And when the One, ineffable of name,
Of nature indivisible, withdrew
From mortal adoration or regard,
Not then was Deity ingulfed; nor Man,
The rational creature, left, to feel the weight
Of his own reason, without sense or thought
Of higher reason and a purer will,
To benefit and bless, through mightier power
Whether the Persian, zealous to reject
Altar and image, and the inclusive walls
And roofs of temples built by human hands.
To loftiest heights ascending, from their tops,
With myrtle-wreathed tiara on his brow,
Presented sacrifice to moon and stars,
And to the winds and mother elements,
And the whole circle of the heavens, for him
A sensitive existence, and a God,
With lifted hands invoked, and songs of praise:
Or, less reluctantly to bonds of sense
Yielding his soul, the Babylonian framed
For influence undefined a personal shape;
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