The holy ground is wet with heavenly dews; Celestial music (such Jessides'1 lyre,
Such Miriam's timbrel would in vain require) Strikes to my thought through my admiring ear, With ecstasy too fine, and pleasure hard to bear: And lo! what sees my ravished eye; what feels My wondering soul; an opening cloud reveals A heavenly form embodied, and arrayed With robes of light. I heard: the angel said, Cease, man of woman born, to hope relief, From daily trouble, and continued grief. Thy hope of joy deliver to the wind; Suppress thy passions, and prepare thy mind. Free and familiar with misfortune grow, Be used to sorrow, and inured to woe. By weakening toil, and hoary age o'ercome, See thy decrease, and hasten to thy tomb. Leave to thy children tumult, strife, and war, Portions of toil, and legacies of care. Send the successive ills through ages down; And let each weeping father tell his son, That, deeper struck, and more distinctly grieved, He must augment the sorrows he received.
The child to whose success thy hope is bound, Ere thou art scarce interred, or he is crowned; To lust of arbitrary sway inclined
(That cursed poison to the prince's mind!) Shall from thy dictate, and his duty rove, And lose his great defence, his people's love. Ill counselled, vanquished, fugitive, disgraced, Shall mourn the fame of Jacob's strength effaced. Shall sigh the king diminished, and the crown With lessened rays descending to his son; Shall see the wreaths, his grandsire knew to reap
1'Jessides: i.e. son of Jesse-David.
By active toil and military sweat,
Pining incline their sickly leaves, and shed Their falling honours from his giddy head. By arms, or prayer unable to assuage Domestic horror, and intestine rage,
Shall from the victor and the vanquished fear, From Israel's arrow, and from Judah's spear; Shall cast his wearied limbs on Jordan's flood,
By brother's arms disturbed, and stained with kindred blood.
Hence labouring years shall weep their destined race, Charged with ill omens, sullied with disgrace.
Time, by necessity compelled, shall go
Through scenes of war, and epochas of woe. The empire lessened in a parted stream, Shall lose its course-
Indulge thy tears; the heathen shall blaspheme; Judah shall fall, oppressed by grief and shame; And men shall from her ruins know her fame. New Egypts yet, and second bonds remain, A harsher Pharaoh, and a heavier chain. Again, obedient to a dire command,
Thy captive sons shall leave the promised land. Their name more low, their servitude more vile, Shall on Euphrates' bank renew the grief of Nile.
These pointed spires that wound the ambient sky, Inglorious change, shall in destruction lie Low, levelled with the dust; their heights unknown, Or measured by their ruin. Yonder throne For lasting glory built, designed the seat Of kings for ever blessed, for ever great, Removed by the invader's barbarous hand, Shall grace his triumph in a foreign land. The tyrant shall demand yon sacred load
Of gold and vessels set apart to God.
Then by vile hands to common use debased, Shall send them flowing round his drunken feast, With sacrilegious taunt, and impious jest.
Twice fourteen ages shall their way complete: Empires by various turns shall rise and set; While thy abandoned tribes shall only know A different master, and a change of woe; With downcast eyelids, and with looks aghast, Shall dread the future, or bewail the past.
Afflicted Israel shall sit weeping down, Fast by the streams, where Babel's waters run; Their harps upon the neighbouring willows hung, Nor joyous hymn encouraging their tongue, Nor cheerful dance their feet; with toil oppressed, Their wearied limbs aspiring but to rest. In the reflective stream the sighing bride, Viewing her charms impaired, abashed shall hide Her pensive head; and in her languid face The bridegroom shall foresee his sickly race; While ponderous fetters vex their close embrace. With irksome anguish then your priests shall mourn 800 Their long neglected feasts' despaired return, And sad oblivion of their solemn days; Thenceforth their voices they shall only raise, Louder to weep. By day your frighted seers Shall call for fountains to express their tears; And wish their eyes were floods. By night from dreams Of opening gulfs, black storms, and raging flames, Starting amazed, shall to the people show Emblems of heavenly wrath, and mystic types of woe. The captives, as their tyrant shall require, That they should breathe the song, and touch the lyre, Shall say can Jacob's servile race rejoice,
Untuned the music, and disused the voice?
What can we play (they shall discourse), how sing In foreign lands, and to a barbarous king! We and our fathers from our childhood bred To watch the cruel victor's eye, to dread The arbitrary lash, to bend, to grieve (Out cast of mortal race), can we conceive Image of aught delightful, soft or gay? Alas! when we have toiled the longsome day; The fullest bliss our hearts aspire to know, Is but some interval from active woe; In broken rest, and startling sleep to mourn, Till morn, the tyrant, and the scourge, return. Bred up in grief, can pleasure be our theme; Our endless anguish does not nature claim; Reason and sorrow are to us the same! Alas! with wild amazement we require, If idle folly was not pleasure's sire; Madness, we fancy, gave an ill-timed birth To grinning laughter, and to frantic mirth. This is the series of perpetual woe,
Which thou, alas! and thine are born to know. Illustrious wretch! repine not, nor reply:
View not, what Heaven ordains, with reason's eye; Too bright the object is: the distance is too high. The man who would resolve the work of fate, May limit number, and make crooked straight; Stop thy inquiry then, and curb thy sense; Nor let dust argue with Omnipotence. 'Tis God who must dispose, and man sustain, Born to endure, forbidden to complain. Thy sum of life must his decrees fulfil; What derogates from his command, is ill;
And that alone is good, which centres in his will.
Yet that thy labouring senses may not droop, 847 Lost to delight, and destitute of hope: Remark what I, God's messenger, aver
From him, who neither can deceive, nor err.
The land at length redeemed, shall cease to mourn; Shall from her sad captivity return.
Sion shall raise her long dejected head; And in her courts the law again be read. Again the glorious temple shall arise,
And with new lustre pierce the neighbouring skies. The promised seat of empire shall again Cover the mountain, and command the plain; And from thy race distinguished, One shall spring, Greater in act than victor, more than king In dignity and power, sent down from Heaven, To succour earth. To Him, to Him, 'tis given, Passion, and care, and anguish to destroy. Through Him soft peace, and plenitude of joy Perpetual o'er the world redeemed shall flow, No more may man enquire, nor angel know! Now, Solomon, remembering who thou art, Act through thy remnant life the decent part. Go forth; be strong; with patience, and with care Perform, and suffer; to thyself severe, Gracious to others, thy desires suppressed, Diffused thy virtues, first of men, be best! Thy sum of duty let two words contain; (O may they graven in thy heart remain!) Be humble, and be just. The angel said:- With upward speed his agile wings he spread; Whilst on the holy ground I prostrate lay, By various doubts impelled, or to obey, Or to object; at length (my mournful look Heavenward erect) determined, thus I spoke:
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