LXIX.

In lofty silence, at that solemn hour,

Would pious contemplation wing their mind, On plumes seraphic, to the vernal bower

Of bliss primeval; and the pair destined To people earth, its various climes to sway; To soar from coming night to lasting day.

LXX.

From balmy Eden, and its peaceful reign,
To flaming Horeb meditation turns:
There rapture freshly flows in every vein ;

Here all the bosom with the mountain burns:

By Eden's stream kind angels seem to dwell;
At Horeb's foot rage all the fiends of hell.

LXXI.

There soul-reviving breezes softly blow,

'Mid varied foliage, fruit, and waving wreaths,

Till thickening boughs in solid verdure grow,

And sweet perfume, refined, in silence breathes

Upon the deep repose of bliss divine;

Where man with bliss did innocence combine.

LXXII.

But here the desert twists its briers and thorns;
The tempest hisses wildly with the snake :
No charm the barren frightful waste adorns:
Rich, beauteous Eden, sunk to hell's hot lake,
From smoking Sina seems again to throw,
On guilty souls, accumulating wo.

LXXIII.

Rebellious Israel turns with Adam's eye,
Of his first innocence to weep the loss :
In poignancy of soul with him they vie ;
When venom-tortured they invoke the cross,

With writhing faith the lifeless brass behold,

And curse the day that formed their calf of gold.

LXXIV.

As through the gloom of sin lost Adam saw

A faith refracted ray, like Bethlehem's guiding star,

That slowly moving by some powerful law

Of love divine, brought Magi from afar ;

So through the Hebrews' dark, bewildered night,
To Calvary leading, shines a faithful light.

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LXXV.

Not less by conscience than by reptile driven,

The seed, to whom that promise was renewed, Which hope of rise to fallen man had given,

With steady upward gaze, and cheek bedewed, From Eden's snare, and Horeb's fiery fang,

Contemplate Golgotha, where sin must hang.

LXXVI.

Not otherwise our swains the past review:
To Hormah from Euphrates they can trace
Sin's direful course: from Paradise pursue,

Whence desertward it slowly flowed disgrace;

Till where its growing torrent foully boils,

And from Canaan's high rocks in foam recoils.

LXXVII.

They see in Eden sin submissive yield;

First sullied conscience rises unsubdued:

Lost mind restored, excuse there quits the field: Elastic intellect, when fiends obtrude,

Returns in vengeance on their falling guile,

And throws it off with scornful, cutting smile.

LXXVIII.

His doom confirmed, no murmur Adam makes,

But leaves the abode of happiness divine,

While all his frame with conscious crime still shakes,
Does Paradise for frightful wilds resign:

His guilt the fatal curse to blessing turns,
He takes the desert, and its dangers spurns.

LXXIX.

All Israel thus bow not to heaven's decree;
Canaan invites, remorseless some obey:

O'er ruined thought to arms they quickly flee,
To wrest what injured justice must delay:
Their rank rebellion Eden's Fiend delights;
He leads the hell-bound souls to Hormah's heights.

LXXX.

When long oppressed by fears of twice doomed crime,
Our heavenward energies corrode and die :
Hell's woes, heaven's ecstacies, cannot sublime,

Without the flame that conscience may supply;

Of right and wrong the essence oft and test,
This, sin-bound souls makes either cursed or blest.

LXXXI.

Eternal justice does the Boor revere,

While in the voice that made, unmade our world, Tremendous thunder peals upon the ear,

From Eden, Sina, and the blasts which hurled To hell quick deluged sin; till where it dies On Bethlehem's bright, harmonious, bow-girt skies.

LXXXII.

Before the sceptre which Jehovah wields,

He strikes his breast, and owns himself but dust; Yet still his faith celestial mansions builds;

Nay, dreams of honours in this earth accursed; There Lazarus has, what riches crave in vain ; Here Saul descends, to let a Shepherd reign.

LXXXIII.

He through the volume of the book does find

What on his heart already rests engraved,

That God is ever powerful, just, and kind;

While sin's destroyed, that sinful man is saved;

That wrath divine is but a form of love

To wing man's soul from earth to bliss above.