Charles Heavysege
Magnanimous and Mean
OPEN, my heart, thy ruddy valves;
It is thy master calls;
Let me go down, and curious trace
Thy labyrinthine halls.
Open, O heart, and let me view
The secrets of thy den;
Myself unto myself now show
With introspective ken.
Expose thyself, thou covered nest
Of passions, and be seen;
Stir up thy brood, that in unrest
Are ever piping keen.
Ah! what a motley multitude—
Magnanimous and mean!
Night
’TIS solemn darkness; the sublime of shade;
Night, by no stars nor rising moon relieved;
The awful blank of nothingness arrayed,
O’er which my eyeballs roll in vain, deceived.
Upward, around, and downward I explore,
E’en to the frontiers of the ebon air,
But cannot, though I strive, discover more
Than what seems one huge cavern of despair.
Oh, Night, art thou so grim, when, black and bare
Of moonbeams, and no cloudlets to adorn,
Like a nude Ethiop ’twixt two houris fair,
Thou stand’st between the evening and the morn?
I took thee for an angel, but have wooed
A cacodæmon in mine ignorant mood.
The Coming of the Morn
SEE how the Morn awakes. Along the sky
Proceeds she with her pale, increasing light,
And, from the depths of the dim canopy,
Drives out the shadows of departing night.
Lo, the clouds break, and gradually more wide
Morn openeth her bright, rejoicing gates;
And ever, as the orient valves divide,
A costlier aspect on their breadth awaits.
Lo, the clouds break, and in each opened schism
The coming Phœbus lays huge beams of gold,
And roseate fire and glories that the prism
Would vainly strive before us to unfold;
And, while I gaze, from out the bright abysm
A flaming disc is to the horizon rolled.
The Mystery of Doom
’TWAS on a day, and in high, radiant heaven,
An angel lay beside a lake reclined,
Against whose shores the rolling waves were driven,
And beat the measure to the dancing wind.
There, rapt, he meditated on that story
Of how Jehovah did of yore expel
Heaven’s aborigines from grace and glory,—
Those mighty angels that did dare rebel.
And as he mused upon their dread abode
And endless penance, from his drooping hands
His harp sank down, and scattered all abroad
Its rosy garland on the golden sands;
His soul mute wondering that the All-wise Spirit
Should have allowed the doom of such demerit.