Light

Light

From the quickened womb of the primal gloom

The sun rolled 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 pencilled the hue of its matchless blue,

And spangled it round with stars.

I painted the flowers of 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 Friend's art on her trustful heart

Had fastened 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 had 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 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 flashed 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 favor I show to the lofty and low,

On the just and the unjust I descend;

E'en the blind, whose vain spheres roll in darkness and tears

Feel my smile the blest smile of a friend:

Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced,

As the rose in the garden of kings;

At 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-fanned 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 in the home of the blest,

Ever bright with the DEITY'S smile!

Wm. Pitt Palmer, Esq. (William Pitt Palmer)

New Series 1:4, p. 4

1840.03.28

From the Knickerbocker Magazine