Whence is that pow’r, whose awful magic call,
Imperious bids the astonish’d world attend,
Before whose shrine adoring myriads fall,
To whom the hero, age, and monarch bend;
Whose touch has force to chain the rebel mind,
To teach the Critic’s torpid heart to feel,
Silence the snakes round Envy’s brow entwin’d,
And bid the tear from sullen eye-balls steal?
‘Tis Genius, rushing from his native sky,
Lord of his kindling soul, and brightly-beaming eye!
Oh, Genius! who can bear thy solar blaze,
Nor dazzled shrink, by too much splendour blind?
Yet lo! thy wildest, warmest, fiercest rays,
Fling their untemper’d radiance on the mind
Of feeble infancy! thy lightnings play
With mystic lustre round an infant’s brow;
On his clear’d vision breaks unclouded day,
And his rapt soul receives the quick’ning glow;
Throbs his young breast, wild rolls his sparkling eye,
And all his form betrays the inspiring deity!
Lo! where he soars; Experience, far behind,
Astonish’d views the wondrous infant range
The mighty empire of mysterious mind,
Tracing its vast recesses, dark and strange!
And see, the Passions, an infuriate crew,
Rush on his sight! – he smiles to see them rage-
His fancy sports ‘mid visions wild and new,
The great, the sad, the terrible, engage
Each tranced scene! – behold his hand he rears,
Tears Time’s all covering veil, and leaps the mound of years!
And dares an eye, just open’d on the light,
Search the black tablet of the villain’s soul;
With mad ambition climb the dizzy height,
Or headlong down the gulph of danger roll?
And can that ear where childhood’s lullaby
Has scarcely ceas’d to hum its sleepy sound,
List unappall’d to horror’s midnight cry,
When murder bids the death-shriek echo round?
And can the brow youth’s greenest garland binds,
Beam with th’ unutter’d thoughts, that swell a thousand minds!
And may it be, that sounds so widely felt,
Can from the lisping tongue of childhood flow!
Oh! Genius, canst thou bid a nation melt
In anguish o’er an infant’s mimic woe?
See! from his lab’ring breast the expiring pang
Heaves its quick throb! what death-like stillness reigns,
While breathless crowds in mute amazement hang,
The freezing stream scarce moving in their veins!
And ah! he dies! – grief claims the transient pause,
Then yields a people’s voice the thunder of applause!
Children of Genius, on that lasting page
Where ne’er oblivion’s chilling fingers rest,
Your names shall dwell thro’ many an after age,
When long, life’s scene has clos’d upon the breast!
When wealth and pow’r, of short-liv’d honours proud,
Their pageant play’d, obey the general doom,
Mix unrecorded with the mouldering crowd,
And never stranger footstep seeks their tomb,
Borne on the breath of Memory’s warmest sigh
Your name shall float thro’ time to dim futurity!
(Margaret Holford)
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Based on Topics: God Poems, Life Poems, Light Poems, Mind Poems, Sadness Poems, Soul Poems, Sense & Perception Poems, Name Poems, Cry Poems, People Poems, Silence PoemsBased on Keywords: entwin, unappall, untemper, unutter, death-shriek