II.

Not fraught indeed for her the glorious vision
With all the myriad miracles 'tis given
Our tutored sight to marvel at therein—
Thick starred Immensities—to which all fields Elysian,
Soft swarded glooms of Paradise
Fire-streaked with glancing lovelit eyes—
Or that pure Empyrean where the bards divine—
Of Albion or the Florentine,
In world-entrancing ever living dreams,
Saw jacinth-downs and topaz-spurting streams
And uplands opaline;
Champaigns of sheeted pearl with rosy-green
Reflections shot, and mildest rainbow-sheen,
Where snowdrifts of blest Angels spread and swarm
And scatter, on the rolling grand Hosanna-storm
Uplifted—floated—borne away
Or rounded to a snowy world-wide rose
With golden heart where God's own brilliance glows;—
All seem but tinselled stagework—transient—mean
Poor craft of some mere mortal mechanician!
Nor could her fancy science-guided stray
From those bold fires that here and there
Like vanward sentinels low hovering hung,
Rejoicing in some kingly trust,
—Through an immeasurable array
Of evervarying mingling lights
Pausing in multitudinous troops
On still retiring higher heights
As on some vast celestial palace-stair;
Or poured forth infinite in scattering groups
And endlessly-recurring shoal on shoal;
page 180 With luminous depths on all sides leading
To deeper depths that evermore receding
And evermore reopening lose
Themselves in labyrinthine avenues
Of glory unspeakable! a maze
Of vistas intricate that everywhere
Away and upward roll
Into a dimness splendid with a dust
Of Suns—a gleaming haze,
A visible shining cloud,
Of specks invisible—all worlds—and all avowed
Only a handbreadth of the outstanding Whole!
O not for her the eternal flood
Of worlds in bloom and worlds in bud,
The lightning-speeded cataract of Creation
Boundless and bounding on for ever;
Chaotic mass or cosmic—brood on brood
Evolving, intermitting never,
To dash and daze the strongest-winged imagination:—
Full many a sun-thronged Universe that dwindles
To a tiny film of light,
So far off in the Infinite!
Full many a flying Ocean of bright Mist that kindles
At its deep core eddy-curled
And whirls and thickens to a world,
Or at its vasty margin thinning
Drops lagging vapour-belts and luminous rings
That shrink apart, like breaking strings
Of jewels, into moons and satellites,
Fresh-starting on their separate flights,
And on new centres spinning;
—The trailing spawn of Systems vapour-tangled;
And seeded masses of stargrain like roes
page 181 Of fishes, so the congregated clusters close—
Aye, golden ovaries of great globes in myriads—all
By distance inconceivable comprest
Into the semblance of a swarming ball
Of pin's-head spiders in their whitewebbed nest:—
—The swallow-swoop of Comets as they flee
In the wild race of revelry;
Each like some mad enamoured Bayadere
That darts from out the throng to where
Sits in full-diamonded pride
Her mighty Rajah awful eyed,
As if, athirst for his caresses,
To fling herself upon his blazing breast;
But catching as she comes anear
The kingly-chilling glitter of his glance,
Swerves off abashed in full career
Again into the reeling dance!
So, down upon their Sun-God dashing
With sudden shift these couriers swift
Still scour away into Infinitude—off-flashing
With all their hundred million leagues of luminous tresses
Into the fathomless abysses
To make amid the astonished spheres
Their sportive circuit of a thousand years!
Or say, 'twere but the Wake they trace
Lashing to foam-light as they race,
Quiescent force asleep in space—
Still—still they spurn all resting-place!—
—Then all the sensitive Planets as they float,
In their enormous solitudes
Troubled mysteriously—the changeful moods
Reflecting of their kindred most remote;
So delicately alive to and returning
page 182 Each faint and far off sister's finest yearning;
In their elastic orbits wheeling
Eternal rounds of sympathetic feeling.—

Not these—not all the vast sublimities that lurk
Within the visible sphere—the o'erpowering whole
Disclosed by the optic tube that dares to thrust
The flaming portals wide asunder
And shew the great Creator at his secret work
So silent—boundless—beautiful, it strikes the Soul
Into hushed tears of awe and ecstasy and wonder!
Yet fires it with impatient thirst to be
Knit somehow nearer,
In vision clearer,
Communion dearer
With the impenetrable mute Mystery
That flings such glories freely all around us
Not for the sake of such a mite as Man;
Yet as he made them ours,—
Gave us such powers
So wide a portion of his works to scan
And apprehend—not comprehend—a plan—
Ah! not at least to baffle and confound us!—
For shut out from the eyes of wiser Sense
That palpable Omnipotence,
And in the flashing Tare of it descend
To doughtiness of reasoning—where will end
Your task—to what conviction tend?
Will not the oneness of the Law all through
And fitness of our intrllect thereto
Pronounce in spite of metaphysic brawl
One will—one conscious Mind—the cause of all?
Or call it Force, self-causing—if you will—
page 183 Tis Force that infinitely varying, still
Through myriad myriad evolutions ranges;
Into a million simultaneous streams divides;
At once through all without confusion glides;
And keeps their mystic momentary changes
Springing in mutual fitness forth—agreeing
As each the fresh results of alt foreseeing:—
What powers has Mind such Force does not possess—
What knowledge proper to self-consciousness?—
But not for slow deductions—wrong or right—
Those marvels gleam transcendant—but to flood
The Soul with inspiration—but to smite
Into the heart a rapture bright
Of reverence and devotion and delight,
And leave for its ecstatic mood
No outlet, no expression, no relief,
But in one grand conviction in whose blaze
Poor Logic withers with her creeping ways,
And stands confest an attribute
Lower and fitter for the brute,
For things that creep and things that plod—
But in one blinding Truth and chief
Of truths—unprovable—above all proof—the feeling, God!