Lo! Priestley there, patriot, and saint, and sage, Him, full of years, from his loved native land Statesmen blood-stained and priests idolatrous By dark lies maddening the blind multitude Drove with vain hate. Calm, pitying he retired, 375 And mused expectant on these promised years. O Years! the blest pre-eminence of Saints! Ye sweep athwart my gaze, so heavenly bright, The wings that veil the adoring Seraphs' eyes, What time they bend before the Jasper Throne[123:2] 380 Reflect no lovelier hues! Yet ye depart, And all beyond is darkness! Heights most strange, Whence Fancy falls, fluttering her idle wing. For who of woman born may paint the hour, When seized in his mid course, the Sun shall wane 385 Making noon ghastly! Who of woman born May image in the workings of his thought, How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend outstretched[124:1] Beneath the unsteady feet of Nature groans, In feverous slumbers--destined then to wake, 390 When fiery whirlwinds thunder his dread name And Angels shout, Destruction! How his arm The last great Spirit lifting high in air Shall swear by Him, the ever-living One, Time is no more! Believe thou, O my soul,[124:2] 395 Life is a vision shadowy of Truth; And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave, Shapes of a dream! The veiling clouds retire, And lo! the Throne of the redeeming God Forth flashing unimaginable day 400 Wraps in one blaze earth, heaven, and deepest hell. Contemplant Spirits! ye that hover o'er With untired gaze the immeasurable fount Ebullient with creative Deity! And ye of plastic power, that interfused 405 Roll through the grosser and material mass In organizing surge! Holies of God! (And what if Monads of the infinite mind?) I haply journeying my immortal course Shall sometime join your mystic choir! Till then 410 I discipline my young and novice thought In ministeries of heart-stirring song, And aye on Meditation's heaven-ward wing Soaring aloft I breathe the empyreal air Of Love, omnific, omnipresent Love, 415 Whose day-spring rises glorious in my soul As the great Sun, when he his influence Sheds on the frost-bound waters--The glad stream Flows to the ray and warbles as it flows. 1794-1796. FOOTNOTES: [108:1] First published in 1796: included in 1797, 1803, 1828, 1829, and 1834. Lines 260-357 were published in _The Watchman_, No. II, March 9, 1796, entitled 'The Present State of Society'. In the editions of 1796, 1797, and 1803 the following lines, an adaptation of a passage in the First Book of Akenside's _Pleasures of the Imagination_, were prefixed as a motto:--