Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine, Mere wheels of work and articles of trade, That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!
The harmony and happiness of man
Yield to the wealth of nations; that which lifts His nature to the heaven of its pride
Is bartered for the poison of his soul,
The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes; Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain, Withering all passion but of slavish fear, Extinguishing all free and generous love Of enterprise and daring. Even the pulse That fancy kindles in the beating heart To mingle with sensation, it destroys, Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, The grovelling hope of interest and gold, Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed Even by hypocrisy.
And statesmen boast Of wealth! The wordy eloquence, that lives After the ruin of their hearts, can gild The bitter poison of a nation's woe; Can turn the worship of the servile mob To their corrupt and glaring idol, Fame, From Virtue, trampled by its iron tread,- Although its dazzling pedestal be raised Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field, With desolated dwellings smoking round. The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside, To deeds of charitable intercourse, And bare fulfilment of the common laws Of decency and prejudice, confines The struggling nature of his human heart, Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds A passing tear perchance upon the wreck Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door The frightful waves are driven,—when his son Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man, Whose life is misery and fear and care; Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil; Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream; Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze For ever meets, and the proud rich man's eye Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene Of thousands like himself;-he little heeds The rhetoric of tyranny. His hate
Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scorn The vain and bitter mockery of words,
Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds, And unrestrained but by the arm of power, That knows and dreads his enmity.
The iron rod of Penury still compels
Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth, And poison with unprofitable toil
A life too void of solace, to confirm
The very chains that bind him to his doom. Nature, impartial in munificence,
Has gifted man with all-subduing will: Matter, with all its transitory shapes, Lies subjected and plastic at his feet,
That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread. How many a rustic Milton has passed by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies, no longer tameless then, To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail! How many a Newton, to whose passive ken Those mighty spheres that gem infinity Were only specks of tinsel fixed in heaven To light the midnights of his native town! Yet every heart contains perfection's germ: The wisest of the sages of the earth That ever from the stores of reason drew Science, and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone, Were but a weak and inexperienced boy- Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued With pure desire and universal love-
Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain, Untainted passion, elevated will,
Which Death (who even would linger long in awe Within his noble presence, and beneath
His changeless eye-beam) might alone subdue. Him every slave now dragging through the filth Of some corrupted city his sad life, Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense With narrow schemings and unworthy cares, Or madly rushing through all violent crime To move the deep stagnation of his soul, Might imitate and equal.
But mean lust Has bound its chains so tight about the earth That all within it but the virtuous man Is venal. Gold or fame will surely reach The price prefixed by selfishness, to all But him of resolute and unchanging will; Whom nor the plaudits of a servile crowd,
Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury, Can bribe to yield his elevated soul
To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world. All things are sold. The very light of heaven Is venal earth's unsparing gifts of love, The smallest and most despicable things That lurk in the abysses of the deep, All objects of our life, even life itself, And the poor pittance which the laws allow Of liberty, the fellowship of man, Those duties which his heart of human love Should urge him to perform instinctively,— Are bought and sold as in a public mart Of undisguising Selfishness, that sets On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign. Even love is sold. The solace of all woe Is turned to deadliest agony: old age Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms, And youth's corrupted impulses prepare A life of horror, from the blighting bane Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs From unenjoying sensualism has filled All human life with hydra-headed woes. Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest Sets no great value on his hireling faith: A little passing pomp, some servile souls Whom cowardice itself might safely chain, Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe, To deck the triumph of their languid zeal, Can make him minister to tyranny. More daring crime requires a loftier meed : Without a shudder the slave-soldier lends His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart When the dread eloquence of dying men, Low mingling on the lonely field of fame, Assails that nature whose applause he sells For the gross blessings of the patriot mob, For the vile gratitude of heartless kings, And for a cold world's good word,-viler still! There is a nobler glory which survives Until our being fades, and, solacing All human care, accompanies its change; Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom, And, in the precincts of the palace, guides His footsteps through that labyrinth of crime; Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, Even when from power's avenging hand he takes Its sweetest, last, and noblest title-death;
-The consciousness of good, which neither gold, Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss, Can purchase; but a life of resolute good, Unalterable will, quenchless desire Of universal happiness, the heart That beats with it in unison, the brain Whose ever-wakeful wisdom toils to change Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal. This "commerce" of sincerest virtue needs No mediative signs of selfishness,
No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, No balancings of prudence, cold and long :- In just and equal measure all is weighed ; One scale contains the sum of human weal, And one, the good man's heart.
How vainly seek The selfish for that happiness denied To aught but virtue ! Blind and hardened they Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, Who covet power they know not how to use, And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give! Madly they frustrate still their own designs; And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, Pining regrets, and vain repentances, Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade Their valueless and miserable lives. But hoary-headed Selfishness has felt Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave. A brighter morn awaits the human day; When every transfer of earth's natural gifts Shall be a commerce of good words and works; When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame, The fear of infamy, disease and woe,
War with its million horrors, and fierce hell, Shall live but in the memory of Time, Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start, Look back, and shudder at his younger years. 6. ALL touch, all eye, all ear,
The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech. O'er the thin texture of its frame The varying periods painted changing glows; As on a summer even,
When soul-enfolding music floats around, The stainless mirror of the lake Re-images the eastern gloom, Mingling convulsively its purple hues
With sunset's burnished gold.
Then thus the Spirit spoke :
"It is a wild and miserable world,
Thorny, and full of care,
Which every fiend can make his prey at will. O Fairy in the lapse of years Is there no hope in store? Will yon vast suns roll on Interminably, still illuming
The night of so many wretched souls, And see no hope for them?
Will not the Universal Spirit e'er Revivify this withered limb of heaven?"
The Fairy calmly smiled
In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope Suffused the Spirit's lineaments.
"Oh rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts, Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul
That sees the chains which bind it to its doom. Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth, Falsehood, mistake, and lust;
But the eternal world
Contains at once the evil and the cure. Some eminent in virtue shall start up, Even in perversest time :
The truths of their pure lips, that never die, Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath Of ever-living flame,
Until the monster sting itself to death.
"How sweet a scene will earth become- Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place, Symphonious with the planetary spheres- When man, with changeless Nature coalescing, Will undertake regeneration's work! When its ungenial poles no longer point To the red and baleful sun
That faintly twinkles there!
"Spirit, on yonder earth
Falsehood now triumphs; deadly Power Has fixed its seal upon the lip of Truth. Madness and misery are there :
The happiest is most wretched. Yet confide- Until pure health-drops from the cup of joy Fall like a dew of balm upon the world. Now to the scene I show in silence turn, And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, Which Nature soon, with re-creating hand, Will blot in mercy from the book of earth.
How bold the flight of Passion's wandering wing, How swift the step of Reason's firmer tread, How calm and sweet the victories of life, How terrorless the triumph of the grave,-
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