Extract from "Religious Musings"

Extract from "Religious Musings"

There is one mind, one omnipresent mind,
Omnific. His most holy name is Love.
Truth of sublime import! with the which
Who feeds and saturates his constant soul,
He from his small particular orbit flies
With bless'd outstarting! From Himself he flies.
Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze
Views all creation; and he loves it all
And blesses it, and calls it very good!
This is to dwell with the Most High!
Cherubs and rapture-trembling Seraphim
Can press no nearer to the Almighty's throne.
But that we roam unconscious, of with hearts
Unfeeling of our universal Sire,
And that in his vast family no Cain
Injures uninjured, (in her best-aim'd blow
Victorious Murder a blind Suicide,)
Victorious Murder a blind Suicide,)
haply for this some younger Angel now
Looks down on Human Nature: and, behold!
A sea of blood bestrew'd with wrecks, where mad
Embattling Interests on each other rush
With unhelm'd rage!

'Tis the sublime of man,

Our noontide Majesty, to know ourselves
Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole!
This franternizes man, this constitutes
Our charities and bearings. But 'tis god
Diffused through all, that doth make all one whole;
This the worst superstitch, him except
Aught to desire, Supreme Reality!
The plenitude and permanence of bliss!
O fiends of Superstition! not that oft,
The erring Priest hath stain'd with brother's blood
Your grisly idols, not for this may wrath
Thunder against you from the Holy One!
But o'er some plain that steameth to the sun,
Peopled with Death; or where more hideous Trade
Loud-laughing packs his bales of human anguish:
I will raise up a mourning, O ye Fiends!
And curse your spells, that film the eye of Faith,
Hiding the present God; whose presence lost,
The moral world's cohesion we became
An anarchy of Spirits! They bewitch'd,
Made blind by lusts, disherited of Soul,
No common centre man, no common sire
Knoweth! A sorded solitary thing,
'Mid countless brethren with a lonely heart
Through courts and cities the smooth Savage reams,
Feeling himself, his own low Self the whole;
When he by sacred sympathy might make
The whole one Self! Self that no alien knows!
Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel!
Self, spreading still! Oblivious of its own,
Yet all of all possessing! This is Faith!
This the Messiah's destin'd victory!

Coleridge (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

3:36, p. 4

1839.12.07

Extract from "Religious Musings"