Light

From the quicken'd womb of the primal gloom
The sun roll'd black and bare,
Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop breast,
Of the threads of my golden hair;
And when the broad tent of the firmament
Arose on its airy spars,
I -pencill'd the hue of its matchless blue,
And spangled it round with stars.
I painted the flowers of the Eden bowers,
And their leaves of living green,
And mine were the dyes in the sinless eyes
Of Eden's virgin queen;
And when the fiend's art, on her trustful heart,
Had fasten'd its mortal spell,
In the silvery sphere of the first-born tear
To the trembling earth I fell.
When the waves that burst o'er a world accursed
Their work of wrath hath sped,
And the Ark's lone few, the tried and true,
Came forth among the dead;
With the wondrous gleams of my braided beams
I bade their terrors cease;
As I wrote on the roll of the storm's dark scroll
God's covenant of peace.
Like a pall at rest on a pulseless breast,
Night's funeral shadow slept,
Where shepherd swains on the Bethlehem plains
Their lonely vigils kept;
When I flash'd on their sight the heralds bright
Of heaven's redeeming plan,
As they chanted the morn of a Saviour born —
Joy, joy to the outcast man!
Equal favour I show to the lofty and low,
On the just and unjust I descend;
E'en the blind, whose vain spheres roll in darkness and tears,
Feel my smile the best smile of a friend:
Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced,
As the rose in the garden of kings;
As the chrysalis bier of the worm I appear,
And lo! the gay butterfly's wings!
The desolate Morn, like a mourner forlorn,
Conceals all the pride of her charms,
Till I bid the bright Hours chase the Night from her bowers,
And lead the young Day to her arms;
And when the gay rover seeks Eve for his lover,
And sinks to her balmy repose,
I wrap their soft rest by the zephyr-fann'd west,
In curtains of amber and rose.
From my sentinel steep, by the night-brooded deep,
I gaze with unslumbering eye,
When the cynosure star of the mariner
Is blotted from the sky;
And guided by me through the merciless sea,
Though sped by the hurricane's wings,
His compassless bark, lone, weltering, dark,
To the haven-home safely he brings.
I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers,
The birds in their chambers of green,
And mountain and plain glow with beauty again,
As they bask in my matinal sheen.
O, if such the glad worth of my presence to earth
Though fitful and fleeting the while,
What glories must rest on the home of the bless'd,
Ever bright with the Deity's smile!