"And shall we leave, from age to age,
To godless hands the Holy Tomb?
Against thy saints the heathen rage—
Launch forth thy lightnings, and consume!"
Swift, as he spoke, before his sight
A form flash'd, white-robed, from above;
All Heaven was in those looks of light,
But Heaven, whose native air is love.
"Alas!" the solemn Vision said,
"Thy God is of the shield and spear—
To bless the Quick and raise the Dead,
The Saviour-God descended here!
"Ask not the Father to reward
The hearts that seek, through blood, the Son;
O warrior! never by the sword
The Saviour's Holy Land is won!"
FOREBODINGS.
What are ye?—Strangers from the Phantom shore?
Lights that precede Funereal Destinies,
Ev'n as the Spectres of the Sun, before
He rises from the dearth of Arctic seas?
What demon presence haunts the haggard air?
What ice-wind checks the blood and lifts the hair?
What are ye?—"Nightmares known not to the sane,
A sick man's sickly dreams"—the Leech replies,
Then prates he much of viscera, spleen, and brain,
And lays the Ghost with Galen;—"To the wise
All things are matter;" well, we would be taught,
Come, Leech, dissect the brain;—Now show me Thought!
Shame!—to the body, must the soul fulfil
A slavery thus subjected and entire?
Must every crevice into light be still
Choked with the clod? Each dread, and each desire
Of things unknown, be track'd unto its germ
In some crazed fibre rotting to the worm?
Trust we the dry philosophies that sneer
Back every guess into the world of spirit,
And what were left the present to revere?
And where would fade the future we inherit?
Try Heaven and Hell by the physician's test,
And men know neither—while they well digest!