THE PLEASURES OF DEVOTION.
(AN UNFINISHED POEM.*)
DEVOTION! holiest offspring of the skies,
Friend of the contrite, of the good, and wise!
Teach me a song unknown to fancy's dream,
Thyself my inspiration and my theme.
Come, prophets, martyrs, and ye banded few,
Sent by your Lord, rise to my raptured view;
Lend your pure fires, and pour the unclouded ray,
To light the Muse on her celestial way.
But, chiefly, Spirit of the Eternal One,
Gift of the Father's love, sent by the Son,
The Guide, the Comforter, the pleading Friend,
By whom, with groans, our inwrought prayers ascend,—
O might thy hallow'd energy Divine
Feed every spring of thought, trace every line,
Stamp the just precepts of the suppliant art,
And bid the song transmit them to the heart!
Primeval Power! when first the sons of light,
Bright morning stars, burn'd on the brow of night,
By thee inspired, their symphony they sung,
And God's high throne with adorations rung.
Full-vision'd with intelligence, they gazed
Each on the glittering host, rapt and amazed,
To know the Almighty One, whom none could trace,
To hear some secrets of his purposed grace,
To view the Source of being in their own,
God in his image, God supreme, alone;
The God without a cause, or bound, or end,
Whom none may judge, whom none can comprehend;
It was my father's intention to divide the subject of this poem into four parts, including the Closet, the Field, the Family Altar, and the Pulpit; and he had formed an outline of the principal points to be introduced. The Introduction, the Closet, and the Episode of the Widow, are the only finished portions.
Essential life, around, beneath, above;
The infinite sublime of power and love;
Wholly in every place-diffused, immense;
Unseen, untouch'd-yet felt; serene, intense;
All truth, all justice, and all holiness,
Unfading centre of true loveliness.
Immutable, unmoved; sole, ceaseless spring
Of force that moves in each created thing;
Veil'd in his own insufferable light,
That shrouds the blazing sun with tenfold night;
Yet manifest, by dazzling proofs, amid
His matchless works, that never can be hid;
Whose wisdom runs through nature's wondrous frame,
And always seeks and finds some glorious aim;
All whose perfections infinite are shown,
And summ'd in ONE-the grandeur of his throne-
GOODNESS-that ceaseless calls them into play,
And lights the glory of their boundless way;
Goodness, still flowering into love, and this
Bursting with fruits of never-fading bliss;
Goodness, the measure of the deep-struck plan,
That saved the world before the world began.
Farewell the Forum, and farewell the strife
That gives to senates all their charm and life.
Farewell the gay parterre, and gorgeous court,
Where beauty beams, and princely peers resort.
I turn me to this lone, ungarnish'd cell,
Where God, and truth, and peace, and rapture dwell:
This my strong fortress in temptation's wars;
My school where truth shines from beyond the stars.
The sainted soul here banquets with her Lord,
From all her guilt to all his love restored.
Nor need I thirst the busy world to see,
For He is more than all that world to me.
Yet, should I wish to mark its vagrant ways,
And, in the light of wisdom's boasted blaze,
To trace its source, and follow its career,
As proud it rivals some celestial sphere;
He bids me dread the hazard of the scene,
Where serpents lurk beneath its loveliest green.
He tells me all-for well he knows-how vain,
How vile is life, how steep'd in mortal pain;
Then calls the visions of a brighter day,
Describes its worlds, and adds,—"I am the way;"
Bids Contemplation spread her pictured views,
Pencill'd in sacred truth's innoxious hues,
Where even the moral storm lives on the page,
Without the dangers of its actual rage.
Secure, in converse with the King of kings,
I mingle with the universe of things:
My little solitude a mountain height,
Where crowding kingdoms press upon the sight.
Thus in the narrow centre of the eye
Are traced the boundless plain, and sea, and sky.
Might Heaven approve, this be my happy choice:-
Some sweet recess, free from tumultuous noise,
And far from scenes that dissipate, or stain
The unwatchful eye, and give the watchful pain.
The casement, deck'd with fragrant flowers, should view
Gardens, or fields, or tombs embrown'd with yew.
Perchance, at distance, starts upon the sight
A mountain peak, or ocean's dancing light,
Or valley such as Cambrian scenes expand,
Or rocks like those that gird our happy land.
From these a spirit breathes, whispering-how meet,
With glowing heart, and strains divinely sweet,
To wake the homage of that matchless Power,
Whom Nature worships in her glorious bower.
To adorn the interior of the sacred place,
Simplicity should lend her sober grace.
The impassion'd statue, and the armour'd wall,
May seem to animate the sounding hall;
The soft settee, the vase, the plumed festoon,
And dazzling glass may deck the gay saloon;
But in the solemn seat of prayer and praise,
The brightest gems would blush and quench their blaze.
Some beauties of the imitative art
Should grace the walls, and mend the ingenuous heart.
Voluptuousness let me forbear to name,
The foul possessor's and the painter's shame ;
Though genius, fled from Heaven's pure school, should bring
Immortal hues to adorn the accursed thing.
Nor should the canvass hold the serious mind
From heaven by visions of terrestrial kind.
No battle-piece, though Wouverman's, should fire
The mimic scene with all a hero's ire;
No Teniers with his brawling boors; no crowd
At Mammon's shrine, to whom the world has bow'd;
No mirth of Hogarth, and no gods of Rome,
Should desecrate this venerable home.
But Raphael's grace and grandeur sweetly shed
A magic power upon the sainted head ;
And Guido's forms, beaming with joy and love,
And breathing ardours kindled from above;
And the bold prints of other days, when heart
And soul rose full beneath the graver's art;
Andrews and Hall, Devotion's darling sons,
Whose style of seraph-thought immortal runs ;
Prelates oft seen sublimed, just come from God,
With smiles lit up in heaven, their loved abode.
And Fletcher, too, the rapture of whose face,
Like day's bright orb, no limner's hand could trace;
His soul a flame fed from celestial fires;
His life consumed by Love's unquench'd desires.
Let these the sacred ornaments supply,
Which, while they charm, lift our low thoughts on high.
These-by the law that kind to kindred brings,
And marshals the affinities of things,
That from the names and pictured forms of men,
Commands, and, lo! the dead revive again ;-
These shadows give the witchery of their power,
While Heaven exalts the meditative hour,
And the devotions of the substance rush
Full on the mind in many a raptured gush;
For all things, to the teachable and wise,
Are conduits of the good which God supplies.
Nor should that sweet seclusion be profaned
By earthly question,-" What is lost or gain'd?"
No visits of the gay from yon proud halls,
No mirth should wake the echo of its walls;
No vain and curious search of science there
Should trench upon the sacredness of prayer.
A friend sometimes should lift the voice of
Cheerful, though full of grace and sweetly sage,
Unfolding, to confirm his faith and mine,
The blissful secrets of the life divine.
Nor on the precincts of this peaceful nook
Should lie that biting sword,-an angry book.
Let jarring teachers, prized for fierce debate,
Gild the proud shelves of literary state;
Volumes that boast, in every bitter page,
Enormous learning, drawn from every age;
Each ever praised the brightest and the best,
And each the confutation of the rest;
The youthful student stands amazed to find,
No truth is true, no forms of faith can bind.
The titles trumpeting the bigot-war,
The dove divine would start and mount afar.
Such arms, that oft-times wound the wearer, lie
More fitly in the stores which war supply.
My wainscot would-well framed, but not for show-
Expand to hail, in many a beauteous row,
The hallow'd relics of the glorious dead;
The plaints they pour'd soft as the tears they shed;
The joys they felt, still sparkling in the page;
The prayers they breathed, intense, yet void of rage;
The hymns they chanted, solemn, sweet, and strong,
The rudiments of an eternal song;
And meditations, wing'd with fire, that fly
Through Truth's bright realms, above yon starry sky.
See History wield her wand with port sublime,
And start to life the deeds of distant time;
Wrapt in the scathless lightnings of the mind,
Science pour healing radiance on the blind,
And bare to view the everlasting springs
That form'd and feed the universe of things.
Power of the beautiful, how wide they reign!
In Nature's absence, Nature's land and main,
With all their volumed magnitudes, proud Art
Creates again upon the graphic chart.
Whence, by the Winter's fire, while storms rage loud,
The Summer beams from skies without a cloud,
Spring smiles, brown Autumn joins the general dance,
And the full group of months shakes off its trance.
A holier joy flows full upon the soul,
From truth Divine; or in its radiant whole,
Or single section, labour'd by the powers
Of some great saint, fruit of his midnight hours:
But sweetest of the sweet-of richer charms—
The records of HIS heart whom worship warms,
Who hears of God with wonder and amaze,
But glows to rapture in the song of praise.
If poor in those, O Heaven! on me bestow
My wealth of these, the wealth I prize below.
The ingenuous saint, glowing with strong desire-
In Faith's pure light, by Love's ennobling firc,
Can bid the obtrusiveness of life depart,
And find a peaceful closet in the heart.
If in the peopled way, and festive hall,
Devotion whisper the inviting call,
He yields to all the sacredness of prayer,
Nor heeds the mingling sounds unceasing there;
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