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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!          295
 

 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,        300
 

 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 305
Those rooted hopes, that the proud Power of Evil
Shall not for ever on this fairest world
Shake pestilence and war, or that his slaves
With blasphemy for prayer, and human blood
For sacrifice, before his shrine for ever 310
In adoration bend, or Erebus
With all its banded fiends shall not uprise
To overwhelm in envy and revenge
The dauntless and the good, who dare to hurl
Defiance at his throne, girt tho’ it be 315
With Death’s omnipotence. Thou hast beheld
His empire, o’er the present and the past;
It was a desolate sight–now gaze on mine,
Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time,
Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,– 320
And from the cradles of eternity,
Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep
By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,
Tear thou that gloomy shroud.–Spirit, behold
Thy glorious destiny!

The Spirit saw 325
The vast frame of the renovated world
Smile in the lap of Chaos, and the sense
Of hope thro’ her fine texture did suffuse
Such varying glow, as summer evening casts
On undulating clouds and deepening lakes. 330
Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,
That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea
And dies on the creation of its breath,
And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits,
Was the sweet stream of thought that with wild motion 335
Flowed o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies.
The mighty tide of thought had paused awhile,
Which from the Daemon now like Ocean’s stream
Again began to pour.–

To me is given
The wonders of the human world to keep- 340
Space, matter, time and mind–let the sight
Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.
All things are recreated, and the flame
Of consentaneous love inspires all life:
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck 345
To myriads, who still grow beneath her care,
Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:
The balmy breathings of the wind inhale
Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, 350
Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream;
No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven,
Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride
The foliage of the undecaying trees;
But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, 355
And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace,
Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,
Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit
Reflects its tint and blushes into love.