Of Art-of grandeur inexpressible.
Surely, the glorious MANSIONS1 of the blest
Are they not here ?-These islands of pure light!
Where one electric medium ever flows,
Through these interminable realms profound!
No emptiness! Was it not truly said,
"Nature abhors a vacuum"? If so,
Let not sectarian prejudice presume
The sacred truth of scientific lore
To scoff at, and thus impiously deny
To the Great Author of all PERFECT ART
And SCIENCE, his chief attributes; which, not possest,
This glorious creation would be nothing;
Chaos would make all space one dreary blank!
Even as this dark desert, wherein is
No light but from those nebule clouds, too far
To aid us, and yet are so beautiful,
By contrast with the depth of darkness here!
But even here creation is not all
A blank, for our swift motion doth excite
Electric sparkling flashes as we pass,
Leaving a transient train of light behind,
Like a small meteor shooting through the sky.
Lo! the far-wand'ring comets-dimly seen
From hence, as misty vapours dull; and slow
Their progress now-the lonely habitants
(Or passengers) in this etherial, dark,
"In my Father's house are many mansions."-St. John xiv. 2.
And desolated field of endless space,-
What are they? The mysterious visitors!
What is their office-their appointed task-
In the all-wise economy of heav'n?
Byron! thou knowest, if thou mayst reveal
The awful secrets of the prison-house!
May not the desert-wand'ring comet be
The penal dwelling of unhappy souls,
Whose great transgressions in a former state
Have doom'd them to a term of banishment
From light and joyous life? Oh, who shall tell
The sad extremes that erring spirits know,
If thus penn'd up in "outer darkness"1 blind,
And tenfold zero's frozen atmosphere;
To be suspended in the vapourous mass
Of icy spiculæ, far, far apart;
Where (each sad spirit still repelling each)
No social intercourse of mind with mind
Exists, to cheer the dreary scene forlorn!
May we not follow the eccentric flight
Of that strange fugitive, whose awful term
Exceeds three thousands of our earthly years ??
Its first approach, a modest, misty star,
Not yet suspected of its character,
Steals forward quietly. The watchful sun
(Whose constant rays detect the vagrant star),
Repels th' elastic fluid, while the mass,
Obedient to the universal law,
(Attraction) swiftly doth invade the realm Of everlasting glory.
1 St. Matthew, chap. xxii. ver. 13.
2 The great comet of 1811.
E'en to o'erwhelming brightness it approach
Th' imperishable fount; so much the more
The adverse vapour is repell'd, and streams
Through countless leagues, a baneful atmosphere.
Away, away, from the sun's glorious beam,
That, for a time, must light its enemy
With its own lustre; but, with stern rebuke,
Forbids the strange intruder to infuse
One atom of his uncongenial gas
With Heaven's fair light, that, to all else, is free.
Therefore, more swiftly round the heav'nly orb
The comet is now hurl'd (as not endur'd
Within the palace precincts of a sun),
And further streams th' attenuated train
Across our nightly skies, astonishing
The simple rustics, who in terror gaze,
And brood o'er prophecies of fearful times
To come-gaunt famine, pestilence, or fire!
Then, as the dreadful visitor retires
From the blest realm of light and joyous life,
Repelling and repell'd, it speeds again
Tow'rds unknown regions of eternal night.
The lengthen'd train, contracting by degrees,
Again collects around the nucleus,
Growing more dense; and now with slower pace
Travels, and, with more distance, still more slow;
As 't were reluctant to depart, and leave
The bright existences so late beheld—
So long ere they may be beheld again!
But what if the brief summer be so fierce
That spirits must endure the "raging fires,"
Or sublimated multitudes arise
From th' incandescent ball, and float awhile
In cometary atmosphere, far, far above
The boiling surf? and thus, to mortal eyes,
Form the portentous train, so long the dread
Of human superstition-who shall tell?
Thus, through long years or ages, wand'ring slow,
The dreary prison-house moves darkly on
In seeming hopeless track, till spent at last,
E'en motion dies. 'Mid arctic winter's cold
Redoubled, lies the frozen inert mass,
Shrunk from its giant bearing near the sun
To a small dwarf-like insignificance.
A few faint glimmering stars alone proclaim
That light doth still exist, and life, and love;
Though nought of love is here, nor joy, nor smile,
But lonely weariness and black despair!
Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire.
Thither, by harpy-footed Furies hal'd,
At certain revolutions, all the damn'd
Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice
Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immoveable, infix'd, and frozen round,
Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire."
-Milton's Paradise Lost, book ii., ll. 587-603.
Unless the fervid rays of the bright sun
Have so far warm'd the unwelcome visitor
That deep within the uncongenial mass
May be retain❜d enough of vital heat
To counteract the outward intense cold,
From which the late attenuated air,
Contracted now and dense, doth shield its charge,
As with a garment, thick, and warm, and soft.
So, pity would ameliorate the doom
Of erring spirits thus incarcerate.
And even here, the universal laws
Of motion and of nature doth call back
The gloomy wand'rer from his banishment;
Benevolent attraction bids return,
And, though yet slow, the mandate is obey'd
With scrupulous exactness. So the will
Of the Great Ruler guides and governs all.
Now doth the distant day-star, glimmering,
Yield a faint dawn. The bright wing'd pilot, Hope,
Awakens the sad outcast to new day,
Which, opening slowly, the clear solar disc,
Though still far distant, yet is recognis'd;
And the bright omen softens ev'ry soul
To deep remorse and humble penitence,
And utter loathing of its former self.
Then as the new day brightens, whisp'ring Hope
Bids none despair of pardon and release.
Thus far the Bard's imaginative lays
May picture to the sense; but who can know
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