Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 38

VII.

At the round earth's imagined corners blow Your trumpets, angels! and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go, All whom the flood did, and fire shall, overthrow; All whom war, death, age, ague's tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain; and you whose eyes Shall behold G.o.d, and never taste death's woe.

But let them sleep, Lord! and me mourn a s.p.a.ce; For if above all these my sins abound, 'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace When we are there. Here on this holy ground Teach me how to repent, for that's as good As if thou hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.

VIII.

If faithful souls be alike glorified As angels, then my father's soul doth see, And adds this even to full felicity, That valiantly I h.e.l.l's wide mouth o'erstride; But if our minds to these souls be descried By circ.u.mstances and by signs that be Apparent in us not immediately, How shall my mind's white truth by them be tried?

They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn, And style blasphemous conjurors to call On Jesus' name, and pharisaical Dissemblers feign devotion. Then turn, O pensive soul! to G.o.d, for he knows best Thy grief, for he put it into my breast.

IX

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree Whose fruit threw death on (else immortal) us; If lecherous goats, if serpents envious, Cannot be d.a.m.n'd, alas! why should I be?

Why should intent or reason, born in me, Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?

And mercy being easy and glorious To G.o.d, in his stern wrath why threatens he?

But who am I that dare dispute with thee!

O G.o.d! oh, of thine only worthy blood, And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood, And drown in it my sins' black memory: That thou remember them some claim as debt, I think it mercy if thou wilt forget!

X

Death! be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death! nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be, Much pleasure, then, from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness, dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well, And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou, then?

One short sleep past we wake eternally; And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

XI.

Spit in my face, you Jews, and pierce my side, Buffet and scoff, scourge and crucify me, For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he Who could do no iniquity hath died, But by my death cannot be satisfied My sins, which pa.s.s the Jews' impiety: They killed once an inglorious man, but I Crucify him daily, being now glorified.

O let me then his strange love still admire.

Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment; And Jacob came, clothed in vile harsh attire, But to supplant, and with gainful intent: G.o.d clothed himself in vile man's flesh, that so He might be weak enough to surfer woe.

XII.

Why are we by all creatures waited on?

Why do the prodigal elements supply Life and food to me, being more pure than I, Simpler, and further from corruption?

Why brook'st thou, ignorant horse, subjection?

Why do you, bull and boar, so sillily Dissemble weakness, and by one man's stroke die, Whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon?

Weaker I am, woe's me! and worse than you: You have not sinned, nor need be timorous, But wonder at a greater, for to us Created nature doth these things subdue; But their Creator, whom sin nor nature tied, For us, his creatures and his foes, hath died.

XIII.

What if this present were the world's last night?

Mark in my heart, O Soul! where thou dost dwell, The picture of Christ crucified, and tell Whether his countenance can thee affright; Tears in his eyes quench the amazing light; Blood fills his frowns, which from his pierced head fell.

And can that tongue adjudge thee unto h.e.l.l Which prayed forgiveness for his foes' fierce spite?

No, no; but as in my idolatry I said to all my profane mistresses, Beauty of pity, foulness only is A sign of rigour, so I say to thee: To wicked spirits are horrid shapes a.s.signed; This beauteous form a.s.sumes a piteous mind.

XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person'd G.o.d, for you As yet but knock; breathe, s.h.i.+ne, and seek to mend, That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labour to admit you, but oh! to no end: Reason, your viceroy in me, we should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue; Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betrothed unto your enemy.

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again; Take me to you, imprison me; for I, Except you enthral me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

XV.

Wilt thou love G.o.d as he thee? then digest, My Soul! this wholesome meditation, How G.o.d the Spirit, by angels waited on In heaven, doth make his temple in thy breast.

The Father having begot a Son most blest, And still begetting, (for he ne'er begun.) Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption, Co-heir to his glory, and Sabbath's endless rest: And as a robbed man, which by search doth find His stol'n stuff sold, must lose or buy 't again; The Sun of glory came down and was slain, Us, whom he had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.

'Twas much that man was made like G.o.d before, But that G.o.d should be made like man much more.

XVI.

Father, part of his double interest Unto thy kingdom thy Son gives to me; His jointure in the knotty Trinity He keeps, and gives to me his death's conquest.

This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blest, Was from the world's beginning slain, and he Hath made two wills, which, with the legacy Of his and thy kingdom, thy sons invest: Yet such are these laws, that men argue yet Whether a man those statutes can fulfil: None doth; but thy all-healing grace and Spirit Revive again what law and letter kill: Thy law's abridgment and thy last command Is all but love; oh, let this last will stand!

THE PROGRESS OF THE SOUL.

I.

I sing the progress of a deathless Soul, Whom Fate, which G.o.d made, but doth not control, Placed in most shapes. All times, before the law Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing, And the great World to his aged evening, From infant morn through manly noon I draw: What the gold Chaldee or silver Persian saw, Greek bra.s.s, or Roman iron, 'tis in this one, A work to outwear Seth's pillars, brick and stone, And, Holy Writ excepted, made to yield to none.

II

Thee, Eye of Heaven, this great Soul envies not; By thy male force is all we have begot.

In the first east thou now beginn'st to s.h.i.+ne, Suck'st early balm, and island spices there, And wilt anon in thy loose-reined career At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow, dine, And see at night this western land of mine; Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she That before thee one day began to be, And, thy frail light being quench'd, shall long, long outlive thee.

III

Nor holy Ja.n.u.s, in whose sovereign boat The church and all the monarchies did float; That swimming college and free hospital Of all mankind, that cage and vivary Of fowls and beasts, in whose womb Destiny Us and our latest nephews did install, (From thence are all derived that fill this all,) Didst thou in that great stewards.h.i.+p embark So diverse shapes into that floating park, As have been moved and inform'd by this heavenly spark.

IV.

Great Destiny! the commissary of G.o.d!

Thou hast marked out a path and period For everything; who, where we offspring took, Our ways and ends seest at one instant: thou Knot of all causes; thou whose changeless brow Ne'er smiles nor frowns, oh! vouchsafe thou to look, And shew my story in thy eternal book, That (if my prayer be fit) I may understand So much myself as to know with what hand, How scant or liberal, this my life's race is spann'd.

V.

To my six l.u.s.tres, almost now outwore, Except thy book owe me so many more; Except my legend be free from the lets Of steep ambition, sleepy poverty, Spirit-quenching sickness, dull captivity, Distracting business, and from beauty's nets, And all that calls from this and t'other's whets; Oh! let me not launch out, but let me save The expense of brain and spirit, that my grave His right and due, a whole unwasted man, may have.

VI.

But if my days be long and good enough, In vain this sea shall enlarge or enrough Itself; for I will through the wave and foam, And hold, in sad lone ways, a lively sprite, Make my dark heavy poem light, and light: For though through many straits and lands I roam, I launch at Paradise, and sail towards home: The course I there began shall here be stayed; Sails hoisted there struck here, and anchors laid In Thames which were at Tigris and Euphrates weighed.

VII.

For the great Soul which here amongst us now Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow, Which, as the moon the sea, moves us, to hear Whose story with long patience you will long, (For 'tis the crown and last strain of my song;) This Soul, to whom Luther and Mohammed were Prisons of flesh; this Soul,--which oft did tear And mend the wrecks of the empire, and late Rome, And lived when every great change did come, Had first in Paradise a low but fatal room.

VIII.

Yet no low room, nor then the greatest, less If, as devout and sharp men fitly guess, That cross, our joy and grief, (where nails did tie That All, which always was all everywhere, Which could not sin, and yet all sins did bear, Which could not die, yet could not choose but die,) Stood in the self-same room in Calvary Where first grew the forbidden learned tree; For on that tree hung in security This Soul, made by the Maker's will from pulling free.