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EDWARD.
PART I. THE MONK.

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A tale of th' Olden Time, when mighty thoughts,

Struggling in fever-dreams of Liberty,

Awoke to war for right inalienate,

Freedom to worship God: leagured by doubts,

When faith with night grappled fearfully,

And the young dawn, wrapt in dim mists, o'ersate.

When conscience echoed in her inmost caves,

Not with the shrill accusing note she flings,

Startling th' affrighted soul, noon-slumbering,--

But muttered voices, as when a summer eve

Darkens to storm, or ere the welkin rings

With the thunder's laugh, or pales 'neath its wing!

Immured in gloomy cell an old Monk sate,

Pouring with studious eye upon a missal,

With saintly portraiture emblazoned quaint,

Himself a picture, as through the narrow grate

Stole a ray, the niggard offspring of th' espousal

Of light and gloom,--such scene as Rembrandt

Caught by his pencil's wondrous Alchemy,

Had made a gem that crowns might wrangle for;

--Yet other far his studies,--he from youth

To this hoar age, within the boundary

Of Benedictine rule, hath sieved her store

Of legendary rubbish, seeking truth!

Pent stage, whereon th' emasculated soul

Drags through unfruitful years its weary length,

Unsunn'd by sympathy's dear charities,

Yet, even thence, a History will unroll

Of the same soul awaking in its strength,

And, armed with God's most glorious verities,

Warring against Hell's principalities,

Leagued to uphold night's undivided empire

And bar her gates against besieging day,

Fanaticism's fierce realities

Thick mustering, too, her flag, the martyr's pyre

God-owned, and streaming far into the night.

A noble soul it was, though long pent up

In superstition's gordian subtleties,

And life's lamp far gone down in the dubious round

Of unravelling error's skene, ere he could grope

Up to dim twilight of morn-promised skies,

And wade through learned sloughs to vantage ground;

With energies untried--a slumbering mine

Which yet a tiny spark may heave on high

With devastation dire,--his youth wore on:

No sun arose with influence benign

To woo the pregnant seeds to fructify,

And heavenward lure the soul, descending prone;

Cast on an evil age, when the Church saw

Man's God-resemblance to brute-night succumb,

Yet saw uncaring, save to lend a hand

To urge him down the steep; the unwritten law

All voiceless as the dead, and conscience numb,

While the waked passions sway the wide command.

He, all impetuous, blindly flung his dower

Of giant intellect adown the stream,

Gathered its harvest in,--then conscience woke,

And, armed to reassert her slighted power,

Startled him shuddering from his guilty dream

To shelter in despair, against her stroke!

Where shall he flee?--The mercy freely given,

Blood-bought by that Great Shepherd of the sheep,

By papal bull, the Church her own declares,

Self-chartered, sole monopolist of Heaven;

With purpose doubtless to retail it cheap,

And clear the market of the devil's wares!

Nay, more, the incarnate veil, in which he bled

Who bore our sins upon the accursed tree,

And, once for all, God's justice satisfied,

By her communicable grace re-made,

Sells in her shambles for adulterous fee,

A sacrifice to quick and dead applied;

Nor conscience scared, nor seared will she deny

Her ready lance or salve, alike ordained

The thunderbolts to forge, or grace dispense

Fresh stamped from mint of Heaven's treasury,

And furnishing with licenses to vend,

The ghostly lords of God's inheritance!

Lured by her specious phrased emolients,

Heart conscience-struck, yet unregenerate,

He donned the cowl, and fearlessly assailed

With meretricious works, Heaven's battlements,

With fasts and prayers 'gainst wrath importunate,

While penances for purchase fee availed.

Vain strife, for victory already won,

The free redemption of Hell's Conqueror spurned,

And, counting all as an unholy thing

The atoning covenant blood of God's dear Son,

Peace came not,--and despairingly he turned

His search to learning's shrine, close communing

With the immortal dead, whose buried gems,

Like orient pearls, the cloistered walls retain,

The shells that in ignoble vassalage

Hide what should glow on kingly diadems;

For him the galaxy relumes again,

The mighty dead revive,--poet and sage,

Historian, sophist, and philosopher:

Science unfolds her sacred mysteries,

And Art her powers, and Nature's self,--coy maid--

Won by the worship that he offers her,

Her mask withdraws, and to his dazzled eyes

Unveils the primal beauties that it hid;

By her seductive charms, the Alchymist

In error wanders while in search of truth,

Still missing it in chase of higher good,

Life's niggard taper running all to waste,

And glimmering in the socket, nothing loath,

While dreaming of elixir to renew't.

So the old monk, enshrouded in his learning,

Nature's false scantling shutting out her God,

And Truth herself, for airy phantoms slighted,

Down to the grave had passed, all undiscerning--

Till lost--the mazes of the devious road,

And his large, hungering soul all undelighted

By the glad rays commissioned to illume

The murky shallows of eternity,

And light the pass to immortality,

Life's lamp and lantern, in the darkling womb

Of night, alike engulphed, fatuity

Bartering for dreams the great reality!

Life's God-wove mystery held a dream of fate,

A rainbow-tissued brittle firmament

Hung o'er eternity by cords aye loosening,

Until death-shivered and annihilate:

When rose the Sun of Righteousness, and lent

A light that scattered healing from its wing

O'er his wrapt soul. As, all uncared, the vision

Of buried loves re-haunt us in our dreams

As every day familiars,--he had thrown

'Mong theologic rubbish, in derision,

A diamond from him, all its lustrous beams

Hid in the cumbering settings of tradition;

But now soul-fired, its lustre is revealing

Treasures the slave of science never knew;

New birth into the glorious liberty

Of the sons of God; the clouds of error, veiling

The mystery of redemption, in love's dew

Dissolved, in love, the light of Deity!

No field for spiritual knight-errantry,

No meretricious gewgaws, pride's invention;

No garish garniture whence the duplicity

Of the deceitful heart may busk a warrantry

For a half saviour, and self-won redemption,--

But the strong arch of Faith's simplicity;

Faith, all the sinner's righteousness and shield,

Faith, all his armoury against surprise

Of Hell's assaults, his ladder, up to light

Lending the heaven-ward way; till, all revealed,

Hope in her realized realities,

And perfect faith, are swallowed up in sight.

Buried within his studious solitude

The old monk cheated the benevolence

Of his large heart, with blessings his discoveries

Should yet enrich the world with; but, endued

With Mercy's nobler largess to dispense,

He burns to circulate its blessedness,

To share with all the God-bought liberty,

To break Hell's chains, to bid her bondage cease,

And freemen of the Cross to welcome them:

"Drink of life's streams," he cries: "why will ye die

In arms 'gainst mercy welcoming to peace,

And God himself descending to redeem?"

But vain the mission, welcomed by resistance

That spurned God's mercy, laughed at Truth's realities,

Gloried in sin, and armed for its possession

The sensual hive, that droned away existence

In Superstition's stale formalities,

Buzzing all hum and sting against the aggression,

Hurling anathemas 'gainst heresy,

And marshalling the ghostly thunders lent

By Councils, Fathers, with the learned jargon

Invincible, of stolid orthodoxy,

To face the Bible-bannered armament,

Led by their Captain, God's Incarnate Son!

Yet found he list'ners too, and willing sharers,

That owned her power, and bowed in glad submission

To Mercy's welcome terms; but none whose sadness

Yielded to such a joyousness as hers,

The gentle maid, whose sorrow first had won

His sympathy to share with her his gladness.

An orphan was she, to the love entrusted

Of noble relatives,--as some rare flower

Transplanted, drooping for its summer home;

An uncle she had found,--who, rough encrusted

With crabbed whims of age, and wayward, sour,

And petulant by turns, yet gave love's welcome:

A youthful cousin too, and noble hearted,

Who grew up by her, like some lordly oak

Proud in the embraces of the clustering vine.

But, orphan tears twice shedding, as death-parted

From the hoar sire, ere long a crueler stroke

Rent the last home-links that her heart entwine,

And reft her from the unconscious nurturing

Of love's young dream; proudly her heart recoiled

From mercenary minions' disregard

Of her young lover's charge, and, torturing

With the chill touch of charity, till wild

Throbbed the lone heart of Lowden's Orphan Ward.

But now, nor longer proudly spurning them,

Nor sorrowing, she adores his wondrous love,

That, sinless, bowed beneath the sinner's load;

Till, kindling with the Gospel's burning theme,

Her rapt soul, winging to its rest above,

Reposes on the Fatherhood of God.

ARGUMENT. PART II.

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The Chronicler looking back from the scene before him, telleth of others witnessed there, when a youthful pair, the Orphan Maid and her noble cousin, slumbered in the blessedness of unconscious love; but now, after long absence, the maiden waiteth his return,--unchanged in affection, yet in doubt, yearning for sympathy in new-found hopes; she dwelleth on the memories of past love, till startled from their vividness to doubt the reality of reunion, ere she silently yieldeth to its delight. Her lover telleth of knowledge and beauty received into his soul; she listeneth delighted, and, for a time, doubt marreth not her bliss,--she questioneth of highest hopes, and sinketh with the discovery that he returneth no sympathy to that wherein she findeth peace. Yet love surviving disappointment, forbiddeth the banishment of hope. The consciousness of obstacles increaseth its intensity, and she wins his admiration by eloquence that fails to convince. The mysteries of God's providence demand our wondering admiration; he who travelled far in search of Truth, returneth still unsatisfied, while the untravelled maid hath in her loneliness found out God.