How wonderful that even
The passions, prejudices, interests,
That sway the meanest being, the weak touch That moves the finest nerve,
And in one human brain
Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link In the great chain of nature! "Behold," the Fairy cried, "Palmyra's ruined palaces !- Behold where grandeur frowned Behold where pleasure smiled. What now remains?-the memory Of senselessness and shame. What is immortal there? Nothing. It stands to tell A melancholy tale, to give An awful warning: soon Oblivion will steal silently The remnant of its fame. Monarchs and conquerors there Proud o'er prostrate millions trod- The earthquakes of the human race,— Like them, forgotten when the ruin That marks their shock is past. "Beside the eternal Nile The Pyramids have risen. Nile shall pursue his changeless way; Those Pyramids shall fall; Yea, not a stone shall stand to tell The spot whereon they stood; Their very site shall be forgotten, As is their builder's name.
"Behold yon sterile spot,
Where now the wandering Arab's tent Flaps in the desert-blast.
There once old Salem's haughty fane
Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes, And in the blushing face of day
Exposed its shameful glory.
Oh! many a widow, many an orphan, cursed
The building of that fane; and many a father, Worn out with toil and slavery, implored
The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, And spare his children the detested task Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning The choicest days of life,
To soothe a dotard's vanity.
There an inhuman and uncultured race
Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God.
They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb
The unborn child,-old age and infancy Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms
Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends! But what was he who taught them that the God Of nature and benevolence had given
A special sanction to the trade of blood? His name and theirs are fading; and the tales Of this barbarian nation, which imposture Recites till terror credits, are pursuing Itself into forgetfulness.
"Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, There is a moral desert now.
The mean and miserable huts,
The yet more wretched palaces,
Contrasted with those ancient fanes
Now crumbling to oblivion; The long and lonely colonnades,
Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks; Seem like a well-known tune,
Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear, Remembered now in sadness. But oh! how much more changed, How gloomier is the contrast
Of human nature there!
Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, A coward and a fool, spreads death around— Then, shuddering, meets his own. Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, A cowled and hypocritical monk Prays, curses, and deceives.
"Spirit! ten thousand years Have scarcely passed away
Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks His enemy's blood, and, aping Europe's sons, Wakes the unholy song of war,
Arose a stately city,
Métropolis of the western continent. There now the mossy column-stone, Indented by Time's unrelaxing grasp, Which once appeared to brave All save its country's ruin; There the wide forest scene,
Rude in the uncultivated loveliness Of gardens long run wild,
Seems, to the unwilling sojourner whose steps Chance in that desert has delayed,
Thus to have stood since earth was what it is. Yet once it was the busiest haunt
Whither, as to a common centre, flocked Strangers, and ships, and merchandize :
Once peace and freedom blessed The cultivated plain.
But wealth, that curse of man, Blighted the bud of its prosperity: Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,
Fled, to return not until man shall know That they alone can give the bliss Worthy a soul that claims Its kindred with eternity.
"There's not one atom of yon earth But once was living man; Nor the minutest drop of rain That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, But flowed in human veins : And from the burning plains Where Libyan monsters yell, From the most gloomy glens Of Greenland's sunless clime, To where the golden fields Of fertile England spread Their harvest to the day, Thou canst not find one spot Whereon no city stood.
"How strange is human pride! I tell thee that those living things To whom the fragile blade of grass That springeth in the morn And perisheth ere noon
Is an unbounded world,
I tell thee that those viewless beings Whose mansion is the smallest particle Of the impassive atmosphere,-
Think, feel, and live, like man; That their affections and antipathies, Like his, produce the laws Ruling their moral state; And the minutest throb
That through their frame diffuses
The slightest, faintest motion,
Is fixed and indispensable
As the majestic laws
That rule yon rolling orbs."
The Fairy paused. The Spirit,
In ecstacy of admiration, felt All knowledge of the past revived. Of old and wondrous times,
Which dim tradition interruptedly
Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded In just perspective to the view,
Yet,dim from their infinitude.
The Spirit seemed to stand High on an isolated pinnacle; The flood of ages combating below, The depth of the unbounded universe Above, and all around Nature's unchanging harmony.
3. "FAIRY!" the Spirit said, And on the Queen of Spells Fixed her etherial eyes,
"I thank thee. Thou hast given
A boon which I will not resign, and taught A lesson not to be unlearned. I know The past, and thence I will essay to glean A warning for the future, so that man May profit by his errors, and derive Experience from his folly :
For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.
Fairy. Turn thee, surpassing Spirit! Much yet remains unscanned. Thou know'st how great is man,
Thou know'st his imbecility :—
Yet learn thou what he is;
Yet learn the lofty destiny Which restless Time prepares For every living soul.
Behold a gorgeous palace that amid Yon populous city rears its thousand towers, And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks, Encompass it around. The dweller there Cannot be free and happy; hear'st thou not The curses of the fatherless, the groans Of those who have no friend? He passes on. The King, the wearer of a gilded chain
That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool
Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave Even to the basest appetites-that man
Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles
At the deep curses which the destitute
Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy
Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan
But for those morsels which his wantonness
Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save
All that they love from famine. When he hears The tale of horror, to some ready-made face Of hypocritical assent he turns,
Smothering the glow of shame that, spite of him, Flushes his bloated cheek.
Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags His palled unwilling appetite. If gold Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled From every clime, could force the loathing sense To overcome satiety,-if wealth
The spring it draws from poisons not,- -or vice, Unfeeling stubborn vice, converteth not Its food to deadliest venom; then that king Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils His unforced task, when he returns at even, And by the blazing faggot meets again Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, Tastes not a sweeter meal.
Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain Reels dizzily awhile: but ah! too soon
The slumber of intemperance subsides,
And conscience, that undying serpent, calls Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.
Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye- Oh! mark that deadly visage.
Oh! must this last for ever?
No cessation!
Awful Death,
I wish yet fear to clasp thee! Not one moment Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed Peace! Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity In penury and dungeons? Wherefore lurkest With danger, death, and solitude, yet shunn'st The palace I have built thee? Sacred Peace! Oh visit me but once, and pitying shed One drop of balm upon my withered soul !
Fairy. Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart, And Peace defileth not her snowy robes
In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters ;— His slumbers are but varied agonies;
They prey like scorpions on the springs of life. There needeth not the hell that bigots frame To punish those who err: earth in itself Contains at once the evil and the cure; And all-sufficing Nature can chastise Those who transgress her law, How justly to proportion to the fault The punishment it merits.
That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe, Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug
The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured
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