[The seventh sings to the Irish harp.]
Evolving day from night for evermore!
And as yon robe of glorious nightly fire
Pales when the morning beams to noon aspire,
Thus He who rules with law eternal,
Creating order fair diurnal,
Casts down the proud and doth exalt the poor.
[The eighth plays with a viol and bow.]
Casts down the proud and doth
exalt the poor!
And with an equal hand maintains
The boundless worlds which He sustains,
And scatters all our finite sense
At thought of His omnipotence,
Clouded awhile, to be revealed once more.
[The ninth plays upon the rebeck.]
Clouded awhile, to be revealed
once more!
Thus neither doubt nor fear avails;
O’er all the incomparable End prevails,
O’er fair champaign and mountain,
O’er river-brink and fountain,
And o’er the shocks of seas and perils
of the shore.
Translation of Isa Blagden.
OF IMMENSITY
From Frith’s ‘Life of Giordano Bruno’
’Tis thou, O Spirit,
dost within my soul
This weakly
thought with thine own life amend;
Rejoicing,
dost thy rapid pinions lend
Me, and dost wing me
to that lofty goal
Where secret portals
ope and fetters break,
And thou
dost grant me, by thy grace complete,
Fortune to spurn, and
death; O high retreat,
Which few
attain, and fewer yet forsake!
Girdled with gates of
brass in every part,
Prisoned
and bound in vain, ’tis mine to rise
Through
sparkling fields of air to pierce the skies,
Sped and accoutred by
no doubting heart,
Till, raised on clouds
of contemplation vast,
Light, leader, law,
Creator, I attain at last.
LIFE WELL LOST
Winged by desire and
thee, O dear delight!
As still
the vast and succoring air I tread,
So, mounting
still, on swifter pinions sped,
I scorn the world, and
heaven receives my flight.
And if the end of Ikaros
be nigh,
I will submit,
for I shall know no pain:
And falling
dead to earth, shall rise again;
What lowly life with
such high death can vie?
Then speaks my heart
from out the upper air,
“Whither dost
lead me? sorrow and despair
Attend the rash.”
and thus I make reply:—
“Fear
thou no fall, nor lofty ruin sent;
Safely divide
the clouds, and die content,
When such proud death
is dealt thee from on high.”
PARNASSUS WITHIN
O heart, ’tis
you my chief Parnassus are,
Where for
my safety I must ever climb.
My winged
thoughts are Muses, who from far
Bring gifts
of beauty to the court of Time;
And Helicon, that fair
unwasted rill,
Springs
newly in my tears upon the earth,
And by those streams