jubilant: what time the startling East Saw from her dark womb leap her flamy child!
Glory to God in the Highest! PEACE on Earth! 15
Yet thou more bright than all that Angel Blaze,
Despiséd GALILAEAN! Man of Woes!
For chiefly in the oppressed Good Man’s face
The Great Invisible (by symbols seen)
Shines with peculiar and concentred light, 20
When all of Self regardless the scourg’d Saint
Mourns for th’ oppressor. O thou meekest Man! 25
Meek Man and lowliest of the Sons of Men!
Who thee beheld thy imag’d Father saw.
His Power and Wisdom from thy awful eye
Blended their beams, and loftier Love sat there
Musing on human weal, and that dread hour 30
1796.
What mists dim-floating of Idolatry
Split and mishap’d the Omnipresent Sire:
And first by Terror, Mercy’s startling prelude,
Uncharm’d the Spirit spell-bound with earthy lusts.
1796.
They cannot dread created might, who love
God the Creator! fair and lofty thought!
It lifts and swells my heart! and as I muse,
Behold a VISION gathers in my soul,
Voices and shadowy shapes! In human guise
I seem to see the phantom, FEAR, pass by,
Hotly-pursued, and pale! From rock to rock
He bounds with bleeding feet, and thro’ the swamp,
The quicksand and the groaning wilderness,
Struggles with feebler and yet feebler flight.
But lo! an altar in the wilderness,
And eagerly yet feebly lo! he grasps
The altar of the living God! and there
With wan reverted face the trembling wretch
All wildly list’ning to his Hunter-fiends
Stands, till the last faint echo of their yell
Dies in the distance.
1803.
Swims in his eyes: his swimming eyes uprais’d:
And Faith’s whole armour girds his limbs! And thus
Transfigur’d, with a meek and dreadless awe,
A solemn hush of spirit he beholds
1803.
Yea, and there,
Unshudder’d unaghasted, he shall view
E’en the SEVEN SPIRITS, who in the latter day
Will shower hot pestilence on the sons of men,
For he shall know, his heart shall understand,
That kindling with intenser Deity
They from the MERCY-SEAT like rosy flames,
From God’s celestial MERCY-SEAT will flash,
And at the wells of renovating LOVE
Fill their Seven Vials with salutary wrath.
1796.
For even these on wings of healing come,
Yea, kindling with intenser Deity
From the Celestial MERCY SEAT they speed,
And at the renovating &c.
1803.
Darkling with earnest eyes he traces out
Th’ immediate road, all else of fairest kind
1803.
O Fiends of SUPERSTITION! not that oft
Your pitiless rites have floated with man’s blood
The skull-pil’d Temple, not for this shall wrath
Thunder against you from the Holy One!
But (whether ye th’ unclimbing Bigot mock
With secondary Gods, or if more pleas’d
Ye petrify th’ imbrothell’d Atheist’s heart,
The Atheist your worst slave) I o’er some plain
Peopled with Death, and to the silent Sun
Steaming with tyrant-murder’d multitudes;
Or where mid groans and shrieks loud-laughing TRADE
More hideous packs his bales of living anguish
1796.
The wafted perfumes, gazing on the woods
The many tinted streams
1803.
1828, 1829.
Ye whom Oppression’s ruffian gluttony
Drives from the feast of life
1803.
Dost roam for prey — yea thy unnatural hand
Liftest to deeds of blood
1796.
Nights of pollution, days of blasphemy,
Who in thy orgies with loath’d wassailers
1803.
supplicants! that oft Watchman.
Rack’d with disease, from the unopen’d gate
Of the full Lazar-house, heart-broken crawl!
1796, Watchman.
O ye to scepter’d Glory’s gore-drench’d field
Forc’d
