Yet still one stream was pure--one sever’d shrine Was fed with holier fire, by chosen hands; And sounds, and dreams, and impulses divine, Were in the dwellings of the patriarch bands. There still the father to his child bequeath’d The sacred torch of never-dying flame; There still Devotion’s suppliant accents breathed The One adored and everlasting Name; And angel guests would linger and repose Where those primeval tents amid their palm-trees rose. IX. But far o’er earth the apostate wanderers bore Their alien rites. For them, by fount or shade, Nor voice, nor vision, holy as of yore, In thrilling whispers to the soul convey’d High inspiration: yet in every clime, Those sons of doubt and error fondly sought With beings, in their essence more sublime, To hold communion of mysterious thought; On some dread power in trembling hope to lean, And hear in every wind the accents of th’ Unseen. X. Yes! we have need to bid our hopes repose On some protecting influence: here confined, Life hath no healing balm for mortal woes, Earth is too narrow for th’ immortal mind. Our spirits burn to mingle with the day, As exiles panting for their native coast, Yet lured by every wild-flower from their way, And shrinking from the gulf that must be cross’d. Death hovers round us: in the zephyr’s sigh, As in the storm, he comes--and lo! Eternity! XI. As one left lonely on the desert sands Of burning Afric, where, without a guide, He gazes as the pathless waste expands-- Around, beyond, interminably wide; While the red haze, presaging the Simoom, Obscures the fierce resplendence of the sky, Or suns of blasting light perchance illume The glistening Serab[145] which illudes his eye: Such was the wanderer Man, in ages flown, Kneeling in doubt and fear before the dread Unknown. XII. His thoughts explored the past--and where were they, The chiefs of men, the mighty ones gone by? He turn’d--a boundless void before him lay, Wrapp’d in the shadows of futurity. How knew the child of Nature that the flame He felt within him struggling to ascend, Should perish not with that terrestrial frame Doom’d with the earth on which it moved, to blend? How, when affliction bade his spirit bleed, If ’twere a Father’s love or Tyrant’s wrath decreed? XIII. Oh! marvel not if then he sought to trace In all sublimities of sight and sound, In rushing winds that wander through all space, Or midst deep woods, with holy gloom embrown’d, The oracles of Fate! or if the train Of floating forms that throng the world of sleep, And sounds that vibrate on the slumberer’s brain, When mortal voices rest in stillness deep, Were deem’d mysterious revelations, sent From viewless powers, the lords of each dread element. XIV.