the most elaborate efforts of the pen would rather have injured than improved their structure.
Return pure Faith! return meek Piety!
The kingdoms of the world are yours: each heart
Self-governed, the vast family of Love,
Raised from the common earth by common toil,
Enjoy the equal produce. Such delights
As float to earth, permitted visitants!
When in some hour of solemn jubilee
The massy gates of Paradise are thrown
Wide open, and forth come in fragments wild
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,
And odors snatched from beds of amaranth,
And they, that from the crystal river of life
Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales!
The favored good man in his lonely walk
Perceives them, and his silent spirit drinks
Strange bliss which he shall recognize in heaven.
And such delights, such strange beatitudes
Seize on my young anticipating heart
When that blest future rushes on my view!
For in his own and in his Father's might
The Saviour comes! While as the Thousand Years
Lead up their mystic dance, the Desert shouts!
Old Ocean claps his hands!
O years! the blest preeminence of saints!
Ye
sweep athwart my gaze, so heavenly bright,
The wings that veil the adoring seraph's eye,
What time they bend bofore the jasper Throne,
Reflect no lovelier hues!
Believe thou, O my soul,
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,
Wraps in one blaze, earth, heaven, and deepest hell.