Of softened radiance from her dewy locks. The shadows spread apace; while meckened Eve, Of unpierced woods, where wrapt in solid shade Moves forward; and with radiant finger points To yon blue concave swelled by breath divine, Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven Inscribed the mystic tablet, hung on high To public gaze, and said, “Adore, O man! The finger of thy God." From what pure wells Of milky light, what soft o'erflowing urn, Are all these lamps so fill'd? these friendly lamps, For ever streaming o'er the azure deep To point our path, and light us to our home. How soft they slide along their lucid spheres! Their destined courses: Nature's self is hushed, To break the midnight air; though the raised ear, How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise! A tongue in every star, that talks with man, And woos him to be wise? nor woos in vain : At this still hour the self-collected soul Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there Has closed his golden eye, and wrapt in shades Ye citadels of light, and seats of Gods! Perhaps my future home, from whence the soul, With recollected tenderness on all The various busy scenes she left below, Its deep-laid projects and its strange events, As on some fond and doting tale that soothed To tread the hallowed circle of your courts, On Fancy's wild and roving wing I sail, From the green borders of the peopled Earth, And the pale Moon, her duteous fair attendant; From solitary Mars; from the vast orb Of Jupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk Dances in ether like the lightest leaf; To the dim verge, the suburbs of the system, Where cheerless Saturn 'midst his watery moons Girt with a lucid zone, in gloomy pomp, Sits like an exiled monarch: fearless thence I launch into the trackless deeps of space, Of elder beam, which ask no leave to shine Of our terrestrial star, nor borrow light From the proud regent of our scanty day; Sons of the morning, first-born of creation, And only less than Him who marks their track, And guides their fiery wheels. Or is there aught beyond? Here must I stop, What hand unseen Impells me onward through the glowing orbs Of habitable nature, far remote, To the dread confines of eternal night, To solitudes of vast unpeopled space, Have the broad eyelids of the morn beheld thee? Of terror clad; not with those thunders armed |