Volume 8 — Aspirations.

O dread Jehovah! who before the world Had being dwelt eternal and alone, Ere yet our planet on its path was hurled Through space, ere angel or archangel shone, Ere waves had learned to roll or winds to sweep, And darkness brooded on the mighty deep! Thy glance searched through infinity around, And there was none save thee; thy spirit warm Moved over chaos, and its vast profound Heaved up a thousand worlds, dark, without form. "Let there be light!" And, kindled at thy ray, Burst radiant morning teeming with the day. And what am I to thee? A raindrop placed In an o'erteeming cloud? A snowflake drifting o'er the northern waste When winds are loud? An atom or a nothing where sublime Worlds, planets piled, thy praise unceasing chime? Not so; for in thy living image made, Conscious of will, of immortality, In thy tremendous attributes arrayed, Like thee, a Lord, yielding alone to thee— What awful dignity! what power divine! A semblance of infinitude is mine. Yet did thy breath no less Create me; sprung from thy eternal fires, I glow; without thee, I am nothingness; Thy wisdom guides me and thy love inspires. "Give me thy heart"—O strange benignity! What is a mortal's heart, O God! to thee? My bursting heart expands To meet thee, and thy presence weighs me down: He who contains the heavens within his hands, Annihilating systems with his frown, Comes clad in garments of mortality To dwell on this dim, shadowy earth with me. For what shall I exchange thee? For the shine Of worldly pomp and pageantry and power? This spark, within eternal and divine, Spurns the false baubles of a fleeting hour. Thou art all glory, power, infinity— Thou art; what can I want, possessing thee? Thou shalt unchanged behold The starry host, quenched like a firebrand, die; The firmament is as a vesture rolled Around thee—as a vesture 'tis cast by. A thousand years are nothing in thy sight— Or as a watch that passes in the night. And when this earth shall fly To atoms; when the mountains shall be tossed As chaff; when like a scroll rolls back the sky, And Nature and her laws for ever lost; When thou shalt speak in fire the dread command And hurl it from the hollow of thy hand— What hope for me? Thy promises sublime That o'er the wreck of worlds I shall survey, With eye unmoved, beyond the touch of Time, The stars grow dark, the melting heavens decay, And sit arrayed in immortality In peace eternal and supreme with thee. C. E. B.