PRAYER OF THE LONELY STUDENT.
“Soul of our souls! and safeguard of the world!
Sustain—Thou only canst—the sick at heart;
Restore their languid spirits, and recall
Their lost affections unto thee and thine.”—Wordsworth.
Night—holy night—the time
For mind’s free breathings in a purer clime!
Night!—when in happier hour the unveiling sky
Woke all my kindled soul
To meet its revelations, clear and high,
With the strong joy of immortality!
Now hath strange sadness wrapp’d me, strange and deep—
And my thoughts faint, and shadows o’er them roll,
E’en when I deem’d them seraph-plumed, to sweep
Far beyond earth’s control.
Wherefore is this? I see the stars returning,
Fire after fire in heaven’s rich temple burning:
Fast shine they forth—my spirit-friends, my guides,
Bright rulers of my being’s inmost tides;
They shine—but faintly, through a quivering haze:
Oh! is the dimness mine which clouds those rays?
They from whose glance my childhood drank delight!
A joy unquestioning—a love intense—
They that, unfolding to more thoughtful sight
The harmony of their magnificence,
Drew silently the worship of my youth
To the grave sweetness on the brow of truth;
Shall they shower blessing, with their beams divine,
Down to the watcher on the stormy sea,
And to the pilgrim toiling for his shrine
Through some wild pass of rocky Apennine,
And to the wanderer lone
On wastes of Afric thrown,
And not to me?
Am I a thing forsaken?
And is the gladness taken
From the bright-pinion’d nature which hath soar’d
Through realms by royal eagle ne’er explored,
And, bathing there in streams of fiery light,
Found strength to gaze upon the Infinite?
And now an alien! Wherefore must this be?
How shall I rend the chain?
How drink rich life again
From those pure urns of radiance, welling free?
—Father of Spirits! let me turn to thee!
Oh! if too much exulting in her dower,
My soul, not yet to lowly thought subdued,
Hath stood without thee on her hill of power—
A fearful and a dazzling solitude!
And therefore from that haughty summit’s crown
To dim desertion is by thee cast down;
Behold! thy child submissively hath bow’d—
Shine on him through the cloud!
Let the now darken’d earth and curtain’d heaven
Back to his vision with thy face be given!
Bear him on high once more,
But in thy strength to soar,
And wrapt and still’d by that o’ershadowing might,
Forth on the empyreal blaze to look with chasten’d sight.
Or if it be that, like the ark’s lone dove,
My thoughts go forth, and find no resting-place,
No sheltering home of sympathy and love
In the responsive bosoms of my race,
And back return, a darkness and a weight,
Till my unanswer’d heart grows desolate—
Yet, yet sustain me, Holiest!—I am vow’d
To solemn service high;
And shall the spirit, for thy tasks endow’d,
Sink on the threshold of the sanctuary,
Fainting beneath the burden of the day,
Because no human tone
Unto the altar-stone
Of that pure spousal fane inviolate,
Where it should make eternal truth its mate,
May cheer the sacred, solitary way?
Oh! be the whisper of thy voice within
Enough to strengthen! Be the hope to win
A more deep-seeing homage for thy name,
Far, far beyond the burning dream of fame!
Make me thine only!—Let me add but one
To those refulgent steps all undefiled,
Which glorious minds have piled
Through bright self-offering, earnest, childlike, lone,
For mounting to thy throne!
And let my soul, upborne
On wings of inner morn,
Find, in illumined secrecy, the sense
Of that bless’d work, its own high recompense.
The dimness melts away
That on your glory lay,
O ye majestic watchers of the skies!
Through the dissolving veil,
Which made each aspect pale,
Your gladdening fires once more I recognise;
And once again a shower
Of hope, and joy, and power,
Streams on my soul from your immortal eyes.
And if that splendour to my sober’d sight
Come tremulous, with more of pensive light—
Something, though beautiful, yet deeply fraught
With more that pierces through each fold of thought
Than I was wont to trace
On heaven’s unshadow’d face—
Be it e’en so!—be mine, though set apart
Unto a radiant ministry, yet still
A lowly, fearful, self-distrusting heart,
Bow’d before thee, O Mightiest! whose bless’d will
All the pure stars rejoicingly fulfil.[422]
[422] Written after hearing the introductory Lecture on Astronomy delivered in Trinity College, Dublin, by Sir William Hamilton, royal astronomer of Ireland, on the 8th November 1832.