And when at length our page is nearly closed
With all our faults and virtues there impressed,
Let age, its mortal garment—quit composed
By the sweet thought: “Who made us knowest best.”
IMAGINATION.
Swifter than light imagination springs
Unfettered by its tenement of clay;
One moment here, the next on joyous wings
Poised o’er the stars which pave the “Milky Way.”
Oh boundless space! Oh mighty concaved dome!
Graven with tessallated groups of stars;
Imagination hears God’s vibrant loom
As the frail spirit soars beyond its bars.
There jewelled in the blue empyreal height
Gleam glittering Sirius, Deneb and Altair;
Lo, clustering gems of scintillating light,
The brilliant retinue of Crucis fair.
Lost in infinitude, it views with awe
The majesty of rolling spheres around,
Where golden argosies are speeding o’er
The vast celestial seas without a bound.
It is enough! We may not lift the veil
Which shrouds the altar of the Eternal Throne;
The thought doth the imagination quail
As meek it kneels before the Gate alone.
Alone a space, within that vastitude—
Beyond all mundane things of time and sense,
And change and swift vicissitude,
To worship Him for his beneficence—
Imagination’s bounds are limitless,
No star of eve trembling above the sea
Hath wider path, or sheddeth sweeter bliss,
For it, of all God’s gifts, to man is free.