Of Eve o'er Eden founts had bent,

Millenniums ere that second Pair

With dust the hopes of man had blent, And stained the brightness once so fair.

Elect of Creatures! Man in thee

Beholds that primal Beauty yet, Sees all that Man was formed to be,

Sees all that Man can ne'er forget!

IX.

THREE Worlds there are: the first of Sense

That sensuous earth which round us lies;

The next of Faith's Intelligence;

The third of Glory, in the skies.

The first is palpable, but base;

The second heavenly, but obscure;
The third is star-like in the face-
But ah! remote that world as pure!

Yet, glancing through our misty clime,
Some sparkles from that loftier sphere
Make way to earth; then most what time
The annual spring-flowers re-appear.

Amid the coarser needs of earth

All shapes of brightness, what are they But wanderers, exiled from their birth, Or pledges of a happier day?

Yea, what is Beauty, judged aright,

But some surpassing, transient gleam; Some smile from heaven, in waves of light, Rippling o'er life's distempered dream?

Or broken memories of that bliss

Which rushed through first-born Nature's blood

When He who ever was, and is,

Looked down, and saw that all was good?

X.

ALAS! not only loveliest eyes,

And brows with lordliest lustre bright, But Nature's self- her woods and skies. The credulous heart can cheat or blight.

And why? Because the sin of man

"Twixt Fair and Good has made divorce; And stained, since Evil first began, That stream so heavenly at its source.

O perishable vales and groves!

Your master was not made for you; Ye are but creatures: human loves Are to the great Creator due.

And yet, through Nature's symbols dim, There are with keener sight that pierce The outward husk, and reach to Him Whose garment is the universe.

For this to earth the Saviour came

In flesh; in part for this He died; That man might have, in soul and frame, No faculty unsanctified.

That Fancy's self

so prompt to lead Through paths disastrous or defiled Upon the Tree of Life might feed;

And Sense with Soul be reconciled.

Idolatria.

XI.

THE fancy of an age gone by,

When Fancy's self to earth declined,

Still thirsting for Divinity,

Yet still, through sense, to Godhead blind,

Poor mimic of that Truth of old,

The patriarchs' hope a faith revealed Compressed its God in mortal mould, The prisoner of Creation's field.

Nature and Nature's Lord were one!

Then countless gods from cloud and stream Glanced forth; from sea, and moon, and sun: So ran the pantheistic dream.

And thus the All-Holy, thus the All-True,
The One Supreme, the Good, the Just,
Like mist was scattered, lost like dew,
And vanished in the wayside dust.

Mary! through thee the idols fell:

When He the nations longed for *

came

His place or thine removed, ere long
The bards would push the sects aside;
And lifted by the might of song
Olympus stand re-edified.

*"The Desire of the Nations."