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Hail, bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the poets militant below.
Opposed by our old enemy, adverse chance,
Attacked by envy and by ignorance,
Enchained by beauty, tortured by desires,
Exposed by tyrant love to savage beasts and fires.
Thou from low earth in nobler flames didst rise,
And, like Elijah, mount alive the skies.
Elisha-like (but with a wish much less,
More fit thy greatness and my littleness),
Lo, here I beg (I, whom thou once didst prove
So humble to esteem, so good to love)
Not that thy spirit might on me doubled be—
I ask but half thy mighty spirit for me;
And when my muse soars with so strong a wing,
’Twill learn of things divine, and first of thee, to sing.
HYMN TO THE LIGHT
First-born of chaos, who so fair didst come
From the old Negro’s darksome womb!
Which, when it saw the lovely child,
The melancholy mass put on kind looks and smiled!
Thou tide of glory which no rest dost know,
But ever ebb and ever flow!
Thou golden shower of a true Jove
Who does in thee descend, and Heaven to Earth make love!
Hail, active Nature’s watchful life and health!
Her joy, her ornament, and wealth!
Hail to thy husband, Heat, and thee!
Thou the world’s beauteous Bride, the lusty Bridegroom he.
Say from what golden quivers of the sky
Do all thy winged arrows fly?
Swiftness and power by birth are thine:
From thy great Sire they came, thy Sire the Word Divine.
’Tis, I believe, this archery to show,
That so much cost in colours thou
And skill in painting dost bestow
Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heavenly bow.
Swift as light thoughts their empty career run,
Thy race is finished when begun.
Let a post-angel start with thee,
And thou the goal of earth shalt reach as soon as he.
Thou, in the moon’s bright chariot proud and gay,
Dost thy bright wood of stars survey;
And all the year dost with thee bring
Of thousand flowery lights thine own nocturnal spring.