The Daemon of the World | Page 2

sun's cloudless orb,?Whose rays of rapid light?Parted around the chariot's swifter course,?And fell like ocean's feathery spray?Dashed from the boiling surge?Before a vessel's prow.
The magic car moved on.?Earth's distant orb appeared?The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens,?Whilst round the chariot's way?Innumerable systems widely rolled,?And countless spheres diffused?An ever varying glory.?It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned,?And like the moon's argentine crescent hung?In the dark dome of heaven; some did shed?A clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the sea?Yet glows with fading sunlight; others dashed?Athwart the night with trains of bickering fire,?Like sphered worlds to death and ruin driven;?Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passed?Bedimmed all other light.
Spirit of Nature! here?In this interminable wilderness?Of worlds, at whose involved immensity?Even soaring fancy staggers,?Here is thy fitting temple.?Yet not the lightest leaf?That quivers to the passing breeze?Is less instinct with thee,-?Yet not the meanest worm.?That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,?Less shares thy eternal breath.?Spirit of Nature! thou?Imperishable as this glorious scene,?Here is thy fitting temple.
If solitude hath ever led thy steps?To the shore of the immeasurable sea,?And thou hast lingered there?Until the sun's broad orb?Seemed resting on the fiery line of ocean,?Thou must have marked the braided webs of gold?That without motion hang?Over the sinking sphere:?Thou must have marked the billowy mountain clouds,?Edged with intolerable radiancy,?Towering like rocks of jet?Above the burning deep:?And yet there is a moment?When the sun's highest point?Peers like a star o'er ocean's western edge,?When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam?Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea:?Then has thy rapt imagination soared?Where in the midst of all existing things?The temple of the mightiest Daemon stands.
Yet not the golden islands?That gleam amid yon flood of purple light,?Nor the feathery curtains?That canopy the sun's resplendent couch,?Nor the burnished ocean waves?Paving that gorgeous dome,?So fair, so wonderful a sight?As the eternal temple could afford.?The elements of all that human thought?Can frame of lovely or sublime, did join?To rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught?Of earth may image forth its majesty.?Yet likest evening's vault that faery hall,?As heaven low resting on the wave it spread?Its floors of flashing light,?Its vast and azure dome;?And on the verge of that obscure abyss?Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulf?Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse?Their lustre through its adamantine gates.
The magic car no longer moved;?The Daemon and the Spirit?Entered the eternal gates.?Those clouds of aery gold?That slept in glittering billows?Beneath the azure canopy,?With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;?While slight and odorous mists?Floated to strains of thrilling melody?Through the vast columns and the pearly shrines.
The Daemon and the Spirit?Approached the overhanging battlement,?Below lay stretched the boundless universe!?There, far as the remotest line?That limits swift imagination's flight.?Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion,?Immutably fulfilling?Eternal Nature's law.?Above, below, around,?The circling systems formed?A wilderness of harmony.?Each with undeviating aim?In eloquent silence through the depths of space?Pursued its wondrous way.--
Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.?Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,?Strange things within their belted orbs appear.?Like animated frenzies, dimly moved?Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes,?Thronging round human graves, and o'er the dead?Sculpturing records for each memory?In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,?Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell?Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world:?And they did build vast trophies, instruments?Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold,?Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls?With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,?Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stained?With blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,?The sanguine codes of venerable crime.?The likeness of a throned king came by.?When these had passed, bearing upon his brow?A threefold crown; his countenance was calm.?His eye severe and cold; but his right hand?Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw?By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart?Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes,?A multitudinous throng, around him knelt.?With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks?Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by.?Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,?Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues?Tremble to speak, they did rage horribly,?Breathing in self-contempt fierce blasphemies?Against the Daemon of the World, and high?Hurling their armed hands where the pure Spirit,?Serene and inaccessibly secure,?Stood on an isolated pinnacle.?The flood of ages combating below,?The depth of the unbounded universe?Above, and all around?Necessity's unchanging harmony.
PART 2.
O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!?To which those restless powers that ceaselessly?Throng through the human universe aspire;?Thou consummation of all mortal hope!?Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will!?Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,?Verge to one point and blend for ever there:?Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!?Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,?Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come:?O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!
Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,?And dim forebodings of thy loveliness,?Haunting the human heart, have there entwined?Those rooted hopes, that the proud Power of Evil?Shall