LIFE AND ITS ILLUSIONS.

“Lean not on Earth—’twill pierce thee to the heart— A broken reed at best, but oft a spear, On whose sharp point Peace bleeds, and Hope expires.” Young.

We are but Shadows! None of all those things, Formless and vague, that flit upon the wings Of wild Imagination round thy couch, When Slumber seals thine eyes, is clothed with such An unreality as Human Life, Cherished and clung to as it is; the fear, The thrilling hope, the agonizing strife, Are not more unavailing there than here. To him who reads what Nature would pourtray, What speaks the night? A comment on the day. Day dies—Night lives—and, as in dumb derision, Mocks the past phantom with her own vain vision! Man shuts the Volume of the Past for aye— A blind slave to the all-absorbing Present, He courts debasement, and from day to day His wheel of toil revolves, revolves incessant; And well may earth-directed zeal be blighted! And well may Time laugh selfish hopes to scorn! He lives in vain whose reckless years have slighted The humbling truth which Penitence and grey Hairs teach the Wise, that such cold hopes are born Only to dupe and to be thus requited! How many such there be!—in whom the thorn Which Disappointment plants festers in vain, Save as the instrument of sleepless pain— Who bear about with them the burning feeling And fire of that intolerable word Which, inly searching, pierceth, like a sword, The breast whose wounds thenceforward know no healing! Behold the overteeming globe! Its millions Bear mournful witness. Cycles, centuries roll, That Man may madly forfeit Heaven’s pavilions, To hug his darling trammels:—Yet the soul, The startled soul, upbounding from the mire Of earthliness, and all alive with fears, Unsmothered by the lethargy of years Whose dates are blanks, at moments will inquire, “And whither tends this wasting struggle? Hath The living universe no loftier path Than that we toil on ever? Must the eye Of Hope but light a desert? Shall the high Spirit of Enterprise be chilled and bowed And grovel in darkness, reft of all its proud Prerogatives? Alas! and must Man barter The Eternal for the Perishing—but to be The world’s applauded and degraded martyr, Unsouled, enthralled, and never to be free?” Ancient of Days! First Cause! Adored! Unknown! Who wert, and art, and art to come! The heart Yearns, in its lucid moods, to Thee alone! Thy name is Love; thy word is Truth; thou art The fount of Happiness—the source of Glory— Eternity is in thy hands, and Power— Oh, from that sphere unrecognised by our Slow souls, look down upon a world which, hoary In Evil and in Error though it be, Retains even yet some trace of that primeval Beauty that bloomed upon its brow ere Evil And Error wiled it from Thy Love and Thee! Look down, and if, while human brows are brightening In godless triumph, angel eyes be weeping, Publish thy will in syllables of lightning And sentences of thunder to the Sleeping! Look down, and renovate the waning name Of Goodness, and relume the waning light Of Truth and Purity!—that all may aim At one imperishable crown—the bright Guerdon which they who by untired and holy Exertion overcome the world, inherit— The Self-denying, the Peaceable, the Lowly, The truly Merciful, the Poor in spirit! So shall the end of thine all-perfect plan At length be realised in erring Man.