Classic Poem

Book 2

This said, he waked the golden harp, and thus,
While on him inspiration breathed, began.
As from yon everlasting hills that gird
Heaven northward, I thy course espied, I judge
Thou from the arctic regions came? Perhaps
Thou noticed on thy way a little orb,
Attended by one moon, her lamp by night,
With her fair sisterhood of planets seven,
Revolving round their central sun; she third
In place, in magnitude the fourth. That orb,
New made, new named, inhabited anew,—
Though whiles we sons of Adam visit still,
Our native place not changed so far out we
Can trace our ancient walks, the scenery
Of childhood, youth, and prime, and hoary age,
But scenery most of suffering and wo,—
That little orb, in days remote of old,
When angels yet were young, was made for man,
And titled Earth, her primal virgin name;—
Created first so lovely, so adorned
With hill, and dale, and lawn, and winding vale.
Woodland, and stream, and lake, and rolling seas,
Green mead, and fruitful tree, and fertile grain,
And herb and flower; so lovely, so adorned
With numerous beasts of every kind, with fowl
Of every wing and every tuneful note,
And with all fish that in the multitude
Of waters swam; so lovely, so adorned,
So fit a dwelling place for man, that, as
She rose, complete, at the creating word,
The morning stars, the sons of God, aloud
Shouted for joy; and God, beholding, saw
The fair design, that from eternity
His mind conceived, accomplished, and, well pleased,
His six days finished work most good pronounced,
And man declared the sovereign prince of all.
All else was prone, irrational, and mute,
And unaccountable, by instinct led.
But man He made of angel form erect,
To hold communion with the heavens above;
And on his soul impressed his image fair.
His own similitude of holiness,
Of virtue, truth, and love; with reason high
To balance right and wrong, and conscience quick
To choose or to reject; with knowledge great,
Prudence and wisdom, vigilance and strength,
To guard all force or guile; and, last of all,
The highest gift of God's abundant grace,
With perfect, free, unbiassed will. Thus man
Was made upright, immortal made, and crowned
The king of all; to eat, to drink, to do
Freely and sovereignly his will entire.
By one command alone restrained, it prove,
As was most just, his filial love sincere,
His loyalty, obedience due, and faith.
And thus the prohibition ran, expressed,
As God is wont, in terms of plainest truth.
Of every tree that in the garden grows
Thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree
That knowledge hath of good and ill, eat not,
Nor touch; for in the day thou eatest, thou
Shalt die. Go, and this one command obey,
Adam, live and be happy, and, with thy Eve,
Fit consort, multiply and fill the earth.
Thus they, the representatives of men,
Were placed in Eden, choicest spot of earth.
With royal honour and with glory crowned,
Adam, the Lord of all, majestic walked,
With godlike countenance sublime, and form
Of lofty towering strength; and by his side
Eve, fair as morning star, with modesty
Arrayed, with virtue, grace, and perfect love:
In holy marriage wed, and eloquent'
Of thought and comely words, to worship God
And sing his praise, the Giver of all good:
Glad, in each other glad, and glad in hope;
Rejoicing in their future happy race.
O lovely, happy, blest, immortal pair!
Pleased with the present, full of glorious hope.
But short, alas, the song that sings their bliss!
Henceforth the history of man grows dark!
Shade after shade of deepening gloom descends;
And Innocence laments her robes defiled.
Who farther sings, must change the pleasant lyre
To heavy notes of wo. Why! dost thou ask,
Surprised? The answer will surprise thee more.
Man sinned; tempted, he ate the guarded tree;—
Tempted of whom thou afterwards shalt hear;—
Audacious, unbelieving, proud, ungrateful,
He ate the interdicted fruit, and fell;
And in his fall, his universal race;
For they in him by delegation were,
In him to stand or fall, to live or die.
Man most ingrate! so full of grace, to sin,
Here interposed the new arrived, so full
Of bliss, to sin against the Gracious One!
The holy, just, and good! the Eternal Love!
Unseen, unheard, unthought of wickedness!
Why slumbered vengeance? No, it slumbered not.
The ever just and righteous God would let
His fury loose, and satisfy his threat.
That had been just, replied the reverend bard,
But done, fair youth, thou ne'er hadst met me here;
I ne'er had seen yon glorious throne in peace.
Thy powers are great, originally great,
And purified even at the fount of light.
Exert them now, call all their vigour out;
Take room, think vastly, meditate intensely,
Reason profoundly; send conjecture forth,
Let fancy fly, stoop down, ascend; all length,
All breadth explore, all moral, all divine;
Ask prudence, justice, mercy ask, and might;
Weigh good with evil, balance right with wrong;
With virtue vice compare, hatred with love;
God's holiness, God's justice, and God's truth,
Deliberately and cautiously compare
With sinful, wicked, vile, rebellious man;
And see if thou canst punish sin, and let
Mankind go free. Thou failst; be not surprised.
I bade thee search in vain. Eternal love,
Harp, lift thy voice on high! eternal love,
Eternal, sovereign love, and sovereign grace.
Wisdom, and power, and mercy infinite,
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God,
Devised the wondrous plan, devised, achieved,
And in achieving made the marvel more.
Attend, ye heavens! ye heaven of heavens! attend,
Attend and wonder, wonder evermore!
When man had fallen, rebelled, insulted God;
Was most polluted, yet most madly proud;
Indebted infinitely, yet most poor;
Captive to sin, yet willing to be bound;
To God's incensed justice and hot wrath
Exposed, due victim of eternal death
And utter wo—Harp, lift thy voice on high!
Ye everlasting hills! ye angels! bow,
Bow, ye redeemed of men!—God was made flesh,
And dwelt with man on earth! the Son of God,
Only begotten and well beloved, between
Men and his Father's justice interposed;
Put human nature on; His wrath sustained;
And in their name suffered, obeyed, and died,
Making his soul an offering for sin;
Just for unjust, and innocence for guilt,
By doing, suffering, dying unconstrained,
Save by omnipotence of boundless grace,
Complete atonement made to God appeased;
Made honourable his insulted law,
Turning the wrath aside from pardoned man.
Thus Truth with Mercy met, and Righteousness,
Stooping from highest heaven, embraced fair Peace,
That walked the earth in fellowship with Love.
O love divine! O mercy infinite!
The audience here in glowing rapture broke,
O love, all height above, all depth below,
Surpassing far all knowledge, all desire,
All thought! The Holy One for sinners dies!
The Lord of life for guilty rebels bleeds,
Quenches eternal fire with blood divine!
Abundant mercy! overflowing grace!
There, whence I came, I something heard of men
Their name had reached us, and report did speak
Of some abominable horrid thing,
Of desperate offence they, had committed.
And something too of wondrous grace we heard.
And oft of our celestial visitants
What man, what God had done, inquired; but they,
Forbid, our asking never met directly,
Exhorting still to persevere upright,
And we should hear in heaven, though greatly blest
Ourselves, new wonders of God's wondrous love.
This hinting, keener appetite to know
Awaked; and as we talked, and much admired
What new we there should learn, we hasted each
To nourish virtue to perfection up,
That we might have our wondering resolved,
And leave of louder praise to greater deeds
Of loving kindness due. Mysterious love:
God was made flesh, and dwelt with men on earth!
Blood holy, blood divine for sinners shed!
My asking ends, but makes my wonder more.
Saviour of men! henceforth be thou my theme;
Redeeming love, my study day and night,
Mankind were lost, all lost, and all redeemed!
Thou errst again, but innocently errst,
Not knowing sin's depravity, nor man's
Sincere and persevering wickedness.
All were redeemed? Not all, or thou hadst heard
No human voice in hell. Many refused,
Although beseeched, refused to be redeemed,
Redeemed from death to life, from wo to bliss:
Canst thou believe my song when thus I sing?
When man had fallen, was ruined, hopeless, lost—
Ye choral harps! ye angels that excel
In strength! and loudest, ye redeemed of men!
To God, to Him that sits upon the throne
On high, and to the Lamb, sing honour, sing
Dominion, glory, blessing sing, and praise!—
When man had fallen, was ruined, hopeless, lost,
Messiah, Prince of Peace, Eternal King,
Died, that the dead might live, the lost be saved.
Wonder, O heavens! and be astonished, earth!
Thou ancient, thou forgotten earth! ye worlds admire!
Admire and be confounded! and thou hell,
Deepen thy eternal groan!—men would not be
Redeemed,—I speak of many, not of all,—
Would not be saved for lost, have life for death!
Mysterious song! the new arrived exclaimed,
Mysterious mercy! most mysterious hate!
To disobey was mad, this madder far,
Incurable insanity of will!
What now but wrath could guilty men expect?
What more could love, what more could mercy do?
No more, resumed the bard, no more they could.
Thou hast seen hell. The wicked there lament!
And why? for love and mercy twice despised.
The husband man, who sluggishly forgot
In spring to plough and sow, would censure none,
Though winter clamoured round his empty barns.
But he who, having thus neglected, did
Refuse, when autumn came, and famine threatened,
To reap the golden field that charity
Bestowed, nay, more obdurate, proud, and blind,
And stupid still, refused, though much beseeched,
And long entreated, even with Mercy's tears,
To eat what to his very lips was held,
Cooked temptingly,—he certainly, at least,
Deserved to die of hunger, unbemoaned.
So did the wicked spurn the grace of God;
And so were punished with the second death.
The first, no doubt, punition less severe
Intended; death, belike, of all entire.
But this incurred, by God discharged, and life
Freely presented, and again despised,
Despised, though bought with Mercy's proper blood,
'Twas this dug hell, and kindled all its bounds
With wrath and inextinguishable fire.
Free was the offer, free to all, of life
And of salvation; but the proud of heart,
Because 'twas free, would not accept; and still
To merit wished; and choosing, thus unshipped,
Uncompassed, unprovisioned, and bestormed,
To swim a sea of breadth immeasurable,
They scorned the goodly bark, whose wings the breath
Of God's eternal Spirit filled for heaven,
That stopped to take them in, and so were lost.
What wonders dost thou tell! To merit, how!
Of creature meriting in sight of God,
As right of service done, I never heard
Till now. We never fell; in virtue stood
Upright, and persevered in holiness;
But stood by grace, by grace we persevered.
Ourselves, our deeds, our holiest, highest deeds
Unworthy aught; grace worthy endless praise.
If we fly swift, obedient to his will,
He gives us wings to fly; if we resist
Temptation, and ne'er fall, it is his shield
Omnipotent that wards it off; if we,
With love unquenchable, before him burn,
'Tis he that lights and keeps alive the flame.
Men surely lost their reason in their fall,
And did not understand the offer made.
They might have understood, the bard replied;
They had the Bible. Hast thou ever heard
Of such a book? The author, God himself;
The subject, God and man, salvation, life
And death—eternal life, eternal death—
Dread words! whose meaning has no end, no bounds—
Most wondrous book! bright candle of the Lord!
Star of eternity! the only star
By which the bark of man could navigate
The sea of life, and gain the coast of bliss
Securely! only star which rose on Time,
And, on its dark and troubled billows, still,
As generation, drifting swiftly by,
Succeeded generation, threw a ray
Of heaven's own light, and to the hills of God,
The eternal hills, pointed the sinner's eye.
By prophets, seers, and priests, and sacred bards,
Evangelists, apostles, men inspired,
And by the Holy Ghost anointed, set
Apart and consecrated to declare
To Earth the counsels of the Eternal One,
This book, this holiest, this sublimest book,
Was sent. Heaven's will, Heaven's code of laws entire,
To man, this book contained; defined the bounds
Of vice and virtue, and of life and death:
And what was shadow, what was substance taught.
Much it revealed; important all; the least
Worth more than what else seemed of highest worth,
But this of plainest, most essential truth;
That God is one, eternal, holy, just,
Omnipotent, omniscient, infinite;
Most wise, most good, most merciful and true;
In all perfection most unchangeable:
That man, that every man of every clime
And hue, of every age and every rank,
Was bad, by nature and by practice bad;
In understanding blind, in will perverse,
In heart corrupt; in every thought, and word,
Imagination, passion, and desire,
Most utterly depraved throughout, and ill,
In sight of Heaven, though less in sight of man;
At enmity with God his maker born,
And by his very life an heir of death:
That man, that every man was, farther, most
Unable to redeem himself, or pay
One mite of his vast debt to God; nay, more,
Was most reluctant and averse to be
Redeemed, and sin's most voluntary slave:
That Jesus, Son of God, of Mary born
In Bethlehem, and by Pilate crucified
On Calvary, for man thus fallen and lost,
Died; and, by death, life and salvation bought,
And perfect righteousness, for all who should
In his great name believe: That He, the third
In the eternal Essence, to the prayer
Sincere should come, should come as soon as asked,
Proceeding from the Father and the Son,
To give faith and repentance, such as God
Accepts; to open the intellectual eyes,
Blinded by sin; to bend the stubborn will,
Perversely to the side of wrong inclined,
To God and his commandments, just and good;
The wild, rebellious passions to subdue,
And bring them back to harmony with heaven;
To purify the conscience, and to lead
The mind into all truth, and to adorn
With every holy ornament of grace,
And sanctify the whole renewed soul,
Which henceforth might no more fall totally,
But persevere, though erring oft, amidst
The mists of Time, in piety to God,
And sacred works of charity to men:
That he who thus believed, and practised thus,
Should have his sins forgiven, however vile;
Should be sustained at mid-day, morn, and even,
By God's omnipotent, eternal grace:
And in the evil hour of sore disease,
Temptation, persecution, war, and death,—
For temporal death, although unstinged, remained,—
Beneath the shadow of the Almighty's wings
Should sit unhurt, and at the judgment-day,
Should share the resurrection of the just,
And reign with Christ in bliss for evermore:
That all, however named, however great,
Who would not thus believe, nor practise thus,
But in their sins impenitent remained,
Should in perpetual fear and terror live;
Should die unpardoned, unredeemed, unsaved;
And, at the hour of doom, should be east out
To utter darkness in the night of hell,
By mercy and by God abandoned, there
To reap the harvests of eternal wo.
This did that book declare in obvious phrase,
In most sincere and honest words, by God
Himself selected and arranged, so clear,
So plain, so perfectly distinct, that none,
Who read with humble wish to understand,
And asked the Spirit, given to all who asked,
Could miss their meaning, blazed in heavenly light.
This book, this holy book, on every line
Marked with the seal of high divinity,
On every leaf bedewed with drops of love
Divine, and with the eternal heraldry
And signature of God Almighty stamped
From first to last, this ray of sacred light,
This lamp from off the everlasting throne,
Mercy took down, and, in the night of Time
Stood, casting on the dark her gracious bow;
And evermore beseeching men, with tears
And earnest sighs, to read, believe, and live.
And many to her voice gave ear, and read,
Believed, obeyed; and now, as the Amen,
True, FaiEnglish