BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR.
[The Hindoo philosopher Gautama, now worshiped under the name of Buddha, lived in the fifth century before Christ. He taught the unity of God and Nature, or rather, that the physical and spiritual worlds are merely different conditions of an eternal Being. In the spiritual state, this Being exists in perfect and blissful rest, whose emanations and over-flowings enter the visible world, first in the lowest forms of nature, but rising through gradual and progressive changes till they reach man, who returns after death to the original rest and beatitude.]
How long, oh! all-pervading Soul of Earth,
Ere Thy last toils on this worn being close,
And trembling with its sudden glory-birth,
Its wings are folded in the lost repose?
Thy doom, resistless, on its travel lies
Through weary wastes of labor and of pain,
Where the soul falters, as its Paradise
In far-off mirage fades and flies again.
From that pure realm of silence and of joy,
The quickening glories of Thy slumber shine,
Kindling to birth the lifeless world's alloy,
Till its dead bosom bears a seed divine.
Through meaner forms the spirit slowly rose,
Which now to meet its near elysium burns;
Through toilsome ages, circling towards repose,
The sphere of Being on its axle turns!
Filled with the conscious essence that shall grow,
Through many-changed existence, up to Man,
The sighing airs of scented Ceylon blow,
And desert whirlwinds whelm the caravan.
On the blue bosom of th' eternal deep
It moves forever in the heaving tide;
And, throned on giant Himalaya's steep,
It hurls the crashing avalanche down his side!
The wing of fire strives upward to the air,
Bursting in thunder rock-bound hills apart,
And the deep globe itself complains to bear
The earthquake beatings of its mighty heart!