Classic Poem

The world is thrown around us as a veil,
To dim the searching of the spirit's eye
Through all the fair variety that lies,
In undiscovered majesty, beyond
The canopy of light and beauty, rolled,
In pure and awful distance, o'er the throne
On which the Universal Being dwells
Alone amid his wonders. Time goes on
In its eternal orbit, and compels,
As with a boundless torrent, all that move
Nearer its consummation. All things change;
As in the tranquil mirror of a lake,
When Day has closed his portals, and his light,
Softly retiring, throws upon the cloud
Its fairest glances, and in pictured pomp
Unrolls a magic curtain round his seat
Of glory on the mountain-tops, and bends
An iris arch above him;—as that cloud
Sailing before the ministers who bear
The message of the Mighty One abroad
O'er continent and ocean, with a voice
Now melting in a whisper, and now loud
As waves that meet around a mid-sea crag,
And lash it in their fury,—as that cloud
Floats o'er the clear, deep water, till the sky,
That swells within its bosom, seems on fire
With quickly-coming flashes of bright hues
Born of the beam of ether, and unstained
With aught of earthly tincture,—all below
In the calm depths of purity, flit by
Like doves along the north-wind, when they seek
The softness and the sweetness, and the light
And warmth of spring unfading, on the shores
Where ever bloom the orange and the lime,
And fruits are ever hanging wreathed in flowers,
And glancing out intensely from the dark,
Full-tufted verdure, whose unwasting shade
Hath ever spread abroad a sacred gloom
Above the temple of the sylvan powers.

So all things change, and yet are all the same:
And He, whose eye looks forth, and measures all,
As we behold the full moon, when she hangs
Mantled in palest tenderness, and weeps
Tears on the sleeping landscape, till the hills
And plains and meadows catch her tender light,
And softly send it on the musing eye
In infinite reflections,—when we dream
Of oceans rolling on her spotted orb,
And islands crowned in beauty, and of fires
Lit on her volcan summits, till we trace,
On a bright map, a world for spirits, where
Live the light forms that fancy oft at night
Sees floating on the moonbeams, or at sail
High on the fleecy vapor, as it rolls
Its foam above the mountains,—whence they come,
As angels came on messages of peace,
To whisper consolation, or convey
The wishes of a pure and humble heart
Unto the Universal ear, where all
May speak, and feel a kind reply descend
In words of gentleness, as evening dews
Melt on the silent landscape, and it smiles:—
So the All-seeing eye, whose viewless seat
Is shrouded in infinitude, beyond
The flaming walls that gird creation in,—
So the All-seeing eye looks forth, and blends
The world of suns and satellites, that sweep
O'er the broad path of ages, in one orb
Hung in the centre of immensity,
And from the solemn void, wherein he dwells,
Contemplates all existence, as a point
Twinkling amid the glory that enshrouds
His throne, as with a mantle of dim shade,
And from the eye of sense conceals the flame
From whose exhaustless fount all being rose.