Poetical Works of Akenside by Mark Akenside (pdf ebook reader txt) 📕

stolen unmark'd away,
While mute attention hung upon his lips,
As thus the sage his awful tale began:--

''Twas in the windings of an ancient wood,
When spotless youth with solitude resigns
To sweet philosophy the studious day,
What time pale Autumn shades the silent eve, 190
Musing I roved. Of good and evil much,
And much of mortal man my thought revolved;
When starting full on fancy's gushing eye
The mournful image of Parthenia's fate,
That hour, O long beloved and long deplored!
When blooming youth, nor gentlest wisdom's arts,
Nor Hymen's honours gather'd for thy brow,
Nor all thy lover's, all thy father's tears
Avail'd to snatch thee from the cruel grave;
Thy agonising looks, thy last farewell 200
Struck to the inmost feeling of my soul
As with the hand of Death. At once the shade
More horrid nodded o'er me, and the winds
With hoarser murmuring shook the branches. Dark
As midnight storms, the scene of human things
Appear'd before me; deserts, burning sands,
Where the parch'd adder dies; the frozen south,
And desolation blasting all the west
With rapine and with murder: tyrant power
Here sits enthroned with blood; the baleful charms 210
Of superstition there infect the skies,
And turn the sun to horror. Gracious Heaven!
What is the life of man? Or cannot these,
Not these portents thy awful will suffice,
That, propagated thus beyond their scope,
They rise to act their cruelties anew
In my afflicted bosom, thus decreed
The universal sensitive of pain,
The wretched heir of evils not its own?'

Thus I impatient: when, at once effused, 220
A flashing torrent of celestial day
Burst through the shadowy void. With slow descent
A purple cloud came floating through the sky,
And, poised at length within the circling trees,
Hung obvious to my view; till opening wide
Its lucid orb, a more than human form
Emerging lean'd majestic o'er my head,
And instant thunder shook the conscious grove.
Then melted into air the liquid cloud,
And all the shining vision stood reveal'd. 230
A wreath of palm his ample forehead bound,
And o'er his shoulder, mantling to his knee,
Flow'd the transparent robe, around his waist
Collected with a radiant zone of gold
Aethereal: there in mystic signs engraved,
I read his office high and sacred name,
Genius of human kind! Appall'd I gazed
The godlike presence; for athwart his brow
Displeasure, temper'd with a mild concern,
Look'd down reluctant on me, and his words 240
Like distant thunders broke the murmuring air:

'Vain are thy thoughts, O child of mortal birth!
And impotent thy tongue. Is thy short span
Capacious of this universal frame?--
Thy wisdom all-sufficient? Thou, alas!
Dost thou aspire to judge between the Lord
Of Nature and his works--to lift thy voice
Against the sovereign order he decreed,
All good and lovely--to blaspheme the bands
Of tenderness innate and social love, 250
Holiest of things! by which the general orb
Of being, as by adamantine links,
Was drawn to perfect union, and sustain'd
From everlasting? Hast thou felt the pangs
Of softening sorrow, of indignant zeal,
So grievous to the soul, as thence to wish
The ties of Nature broken from thy frame,
That so thy selfish, unrelenting heart
Might cease to mourn its lot, no longer then
The wretched heir of evils not its own? 260
O fair benevolence of generous minds!
O man by Nature form'd for all mankind!'

He spoke; abash'd and silent I remain'd,
As conscious of my tongue's offence, and awed
Before his presence, though my secret soul
Disdain'd the imputation. On the ground
I fix'd my eyes, till from his airy couch
He stoop'd sublime, and touching with his hand
My dazzling forehead, 'Raise thy sight,' he cried,
'And let thy sense convince thy erring tongue.' 270

I look'd, and lo! the former scene was changed;
For verdant alleys and surrounding trees,
A solitary prospect, wide and wild,
Rush'd on my senses. 'Twas a horrid pile
Of hills with many a shaggy forest mix'd,
With many a sable cliff and glittering stream.
Aloft, recumbent o'er the hanging ridge,
The brown woods waved; while ever-trickling springs
Wash'd from the naked roots of oak and pine
The crumbling soil; and still at every fall 280
Down the steep windings of the channel'd rock,
Remurmuring rush'd the congregated floods
With hoarser inundation; till at last
They reach'd a grassy plain, which from the skirts
Of that high desert spread her verdant lap,
And drank the gushing moisture, where confined
In one smooth current, o'er the lilied vale
Clearer than glass it flow'd. Autumnal spoils
Luxuriant spreading to the rays of morn,
Blush'd o'er the cliffs, whose half-encircling mound 290
As in a sylvan theatre enclosed
That flowery level. On the river's brink
I spied a fair pavilion, which diffused
Its floating umbrage 'mid the silver shade
Of osiers. Now the western sun reveal'd
Between two parting cliffs his golden orb,
And pour'd across the shadow of the hills,
On rocks and floods, a yellow stream of light
That cheer'd the solemn scene. My listening powers
Were awed, and every thought in silence hung, 300
And wondering expectation. Then the voice
Of that celestial power, the mystic show
Declaring, thus my deep attention call'd:--

'Inhabitant of earth, [Endnote S] to whom is given
The gracious ways of Providence to learn,
Receive my sayings with a steadfast ear--
Know then, the Sovereign Spirit of the world,
Though, self-collected from eternal time,
Within his own deep essence he beheld
The bounds of true felicity complete, 310
Yet by immense benignity inclined
To spread around him that primeval joy
Which fill'd himself, he raised his plastic arm,
And sounded through the hollow depths of space
The strong, creative mandate. Straight arose
These heavenly orbs, the glad abodes of life,
Effusive kindled by his breath divine
Through endless forms of being. Each inhaled
From him its portion of the vital flame,
In measure such, that, from the wide complex 320
Of coexistent orders, one might rise,
One order, [Endnote T] all-involving and entire.
He too, beholding in the sacred light
Of his essential reason, all the shapes
Of swift contingence, all successive ties
Of action propagated through the sum
Of possible existence, he at once,
Down the long series of eventful time,
So fix'd the dates of being, so disposed,
To every living soul of every kind 330
The field of motion and the hour of rest,
That all conspired to his supreme design,
To universal good: with full accord
Answering the mighty model he had chose,
The best and fairest [Endnote U] of unnumber'd worlds
That lay from everlasting in the store
Of his divine conceptions. Nor content,
By one exertion of creative power
His goodness to reveal; through every age,
Through every moment up the tract of time, 340
His parent hand with ever new increase
Of happiness and virtue has adorn'd
The vast harmonious frame: his parent hand,
From the mute shell-fish gasping on the shore,
To men, to angels, to celestial minds,
For ever leads the generations on
To higher scenes of being; while, supplied
From day to day with his enlivening breath,
Inferior orders in succession rise
To fill the void below. As flame ascends, [Endnote V] 350
As bodies to their proper centre move,
As the poised ocean to the attracting moon
Obedient swells, and every headlong stream
Devolves its winding waters to the main;
So all things which have life aspire to God,
The sun of being, boundless, unimpair'd,
Centre of souls! Nor does the faithful voice
Of Nature cease to prompt their eager steps
Aright; nor is the care of Heaven withheld
From granting to the task proportion'd aid; 360
That in their stations all may persevere
To climb the ascent of being, and approach
For ever nearer to the