OR is our being's only end and aim To add new glories to our Maker's name, As the poor insect, shrivelling in the blaze, Lends a faint sparkle to its streaming rays? Does earth send upwards to the Eternal's ear The mingled discords of her jarring sphere To swell His anthem, while Creation rings With notes of anguish from its shattered strings? Is it for this the immortal Artist means These conscious, throbbing, agonized machines?
Dark is the soul whose sullen creed can bind
In chains like these the all-embracing mind;
No! two-faced bigot! thou dost ill reprove
The sensual selfish, yet benignant Jove,
And praise a tyrant throned in lonely pride,
Who loves himself, and cares for nought beside;
Who gave thee, summoned from primeval night,
A thousand laws, and not a single right;
A heart to feel and quivering nerves to thrill,
The sense of wrong, the death-defying will;
Who girt thy senses with this goodly frame,
Its earthly glories and its orbs of flame,
Not for thyself, unworthy of a thought,
Poor helpless victim of a life unsought,
But all for him, unchanging and supreme,
The heartless centre of thy frozen scheme!
Trust not the teacher with his lying scroll,
Who tears the charter of thy shuddering soul;
The God of love, who gave the life that warms
All breathing dust in all its varied forms,
Asks not the tribute of a world like this
To fill the measure of His perfect bliss.
Though winged with life through all its radiant shores, Creation flowed with unexhausted stores,
Cherub and seraph had not yet enjoyed!
For this He called thee from the quickening void!
Nor this alone; a larger gift was thine,
A mightier purpose swelled His vast design;
Thought; conscience; will; to make them all thine
He rent a pillar from the eternal throne!
Made in His image, thou must nobly dare
The thorny crown of sovereignty to share;
With eye uplifted it is thine to view
From thine own centre, Heaven's o'erarching blue;
So round thy heart a beaming circle lies
No fiend can blot, no hypocrite disguise,
From all its orbs one cheering voice is heard,
Full to thine ear it bears the Father's word,
Now, as in Eden where His first-born trod :
"Seek thine own welfare, true to man and God!"
Think not too meanly of thy low estate;
Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create!
Remember whose the sacred lips that tell,
Angels approve thee when thy choice is well;
Remember, One, a judge of righteous men,
Swore to spare Sodom if she held but ten!
Use well the freedom which the Master gave,
(Think'st thou that Heaven can tolerate a slave?)
And He who made thee to be just and true
Will bless thee, love thee,
VIRTUE THE SOLE HAPPINESS HERE AND
KNOW then this truth-(enough for man to know!) --
VIRTUE ALONE IS HAPPINESS BELOW.
The only point where human bliss stands still,
And tastes the good without the fall to ill ;
Where only merit constant pay receives,
Is blest in what it takes, and what it gives;
The joy unequalled, if its end it gain,
And if it lose, attended with no pain:
Without satiety, though e'er so blest,
And but more relished as the more distressed :
The broadest mirth unfeeling Folly wears,
Less pleasing far than Virtue's very tears;
Good, from each object, from each place acquired,
Forever exercised, yet never tired ;
Never elated, while one man's oppressed;
Never dejected, while another's blest;
And where no wants, no wishes can remain,
Since but to wish more virtue, is to gain.
See the sole bliss Heaven could on all bestow !
Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know:
Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind,
The bad must miss; the good, untaught, will find;
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature, up to Nature's God,-
Pursues that chain, which links th' immense design,
Joins Heaven and Earth, and mortal and divine, -
Sees that no being any bliss can know,
But touches some above and some below, -
Learns from this union of the rising whole
The first, last purpose of the human soul,
And knows where faith, law, morals, all began,
All end,
in love of God and love of man!
For him alone, Hope leads from goal to goal
And opens still, and opens on his soul:
Till lengthened on to Faith, and unconfined,
It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind.
He sees why Nature plants in man alone
Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown :
(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind
Are given in vain, but what they seek they find ;)
Wise is her present; she connects in this
His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss;
At once his own bright prospect to be blest,
And strongest motive to assist the rest.
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