Th' insulting elements their lord control,
And cast their four-fold fetters round his soul.
Dethron'd, debas'd, without as from within,
Enslav'd by matter, since enslav'd by sin,
Corruption to its kindred mass lays claim,
And, ent'ring, seizes his devoted frame.
Distemper follows, with his gloomy throng,
Bearing pests, stings, and fires, and racks along;
Languor that saps, and rueful throes that grind;
With Death, who shakes the certain dart behind.
Already, o'er the sad subjected wight,
The lordly elements exert their right;

And on his limbs their baneful influence cast,
Parch'd in the beam, or shiv'ring in the blast:
While high o'er head, the gath'ring vapours frown,
And on his anguish look unpitying down;
Then flash in thunders, or in tempest pour,
And on his members dash the pelting show'r.
But worse, far worse within, black storms infest
And shake the sphere of his benighted breast.
Still, round and round, the whirling passions
tend,

And his sad heart with horrid conflict rend;
Impatience, rage, despair, untam'd desire,
And hate, impregnate with infernal fire:
He calls for death, and would have ruin hurl'd
At Heav'n, himself, the tempter, and the world.
But God, THE ONE ETERNAL THIRST TO BLESS,
Ey'd his estate, and pity'd his distress.
"Adam," he said, and look'd unmeasur'd grace,
"Adam, thou 'rt fall'n, and fall'n is all thy race!
Such as the tree is, such will be the fruit;
The branch must bear the flavour of the root.

"Late I was in thee love, and pow'r, and will;
My glory did thy soul and body fill;
But, laps'd from me, thy spirit and thy frame
Sink to the principles from whence they came→
Thy soul to its own helpless fierce desire,
A rueful whirl of dark tormenting fire!
Thy body to the grossness of its birth,
Corruption to corruption, earth to earth!

"If, in thy strength, thou didst not hold thy state,
How shall thy weakness reassume its seat?
How, from thy pit of flesh, so dull and deep,
Cast off the cumbrance. and ascend the steep?
For, by the road thou hast fall'n, as is most just,
Through the same road, O man, return thou must;
To strength through weakness, and to peace through
strife,

To bliss through anguish, and through death to life.
"But this no creature, not the seraph can;
Though once in God so mighty, less can man:
This, therefore, Adam, thou canst never do;
Thou in thy God then must be born anew;
Born a new creature of a seed divine,
Reborn, O Adam, of thy son and mine;
Thou the old father of man's fall'n estate,
He the New Sire who shall regain their seat.

"Foil'd by a devilish foe, thy weakness fell,
Captive to sense, and sin, and death, and Hell;
In weakness, therefore, must his strength prevail,
Though sense, and sin, and death, and Hell assail;
As man, in human flesh and frailty, he
Must conquer all, O man, that conquer'd thee.
"Yes, from my bosom my belov'd I give,
That my lost creatures may return, and live.
He, for your sakes, shall lay his glory by;
For you be born, and suffer, gasp, and die;
The price of guilt my Holy-One shall pay,
And tread, of death and Hell, the bitterest way.

"You, by his fetters, can alone be freed; To wash your stains, the Lamb of Love must bleed; So shall his woe turn all your woe to weal, His bruises medicine, and his woundings heal.

"Hence man, apostate man, so deeply lost,
Shall weigh the curs'd commission, by the cost;
Shall learn, as meet, to hold himself at nought;
Shall feel he 's all a folly, all a fault;
In deep abasement lift his suppliant eyes,
In lowliness alone be taught to rise;
In tears, in anguish, shall his guilt deplore,
Shall call on Christ who can alone restore;
By him supported, shall affirm his ground,
Shall struggle with the chains by which he 's bound;
Disclaim, detest the world, in which he fell;
Oppose his champion'd soul to flesh and Hell;
Wish his old worm, his sin, and self undone,
And catch, and cling to my all-saving Son!
"This in due time.

Jesus, meanwhile, shall steal, like doubtful morn,
Into the breasts of all of woman born;
There shed his dawn of coeternal light,
There struggle with their length and depth of night;
A solid gloom! which he alone can melt,
Which, like Egyptian darkness, may be felt.

"His seed, in flesh, my Holy-One shall sow,
And give it strength to root, and grace to grow;
Man within man, begotten from above,
Bearing the likeness of the Son of Love;
Sons of my son, ordain'd to see my face;
All embryon heirs of glory and of grace;
But not mature to wing their native skies,
Till their new Adam shall from death arise.
"Thus the new offspring shall the old put on,
Making a double manhood, two in one;
Of different principles, of diff'rent sires,
Conceptions, tastes, enjoyments, and desires:
The one, as Earth, crude, grudging, grappling all
To the dark centre of its craving ball;
The other, as the Sun, benign and bright,
A going forth on all in life and light.

"Hence through the course of their sublunar life, Though brother'd, they shall be at truceless strife: What one approves, the other shall reject; What one detests, the other shall affect. So man, at once, shall court what he 'll contemn, Neglect yet rev'rence, do what he 'll condemn; At once transgress, and wish he could fulfil; Be righteous and unrighteous, good and ill; Bearing the witness and the seal, within, Of new and old, the man of grace and sin, The heart-writ story of his rise and fall, The gospel of his freedom and his thrall.

"Thy elder offspring, Adam, grown and strong,
Frequent, shall drag his younger mate along;
Like huge Leviathan, shall trust to play,
And rule at large in his congenial sea:
But mine within his jaws a bard shall place,
And check the headlong monster in his race.
The younger heir, invisibly, within,

Shall oft convict his outward mate of sin;
Reprove with judgment, and reform betimes;
Or, with a whip, call'd conscience, lash his crimes:
So may the bless'd the accursed one subdue,
And the old man, at length, refine into the new!
"Nor grudge I, Adam, those fall'n sons of thine,
Flesh of thy flesh, to share a seat with mine,
By him sublim'd into a nobler sphere;
So they slay not their younger brothers, here.

"But, through much grief, this glory must be won; Flesh, soil'd by sin, by death must be undone; Must drop the world, wherein it felt its force, And, giant-like, rejoic'd to run its course; Must drop each organ of its late delight; Must bid a long adieu to sense and sight, A long adieu to ev'ry darling lust; Must yield its passive members, dust to dust, Within the potter's furnace to be fin'd, And leave its grossness, with its guilt, behind. "Meanspace, those forms of flesh, those sons of sin, Shall serve to hold my priceless pearls within; As golden grain within prolific clay, To shoot and ripen toward a future day.

"Yon maggot, vilest offspring of vile earth, Answers the genial baseness of his birth: Lo, where he rolls and battens, with delight, In filth, to smell offensive, foul to sight! Well pleas'd, he drinks the stench, the dirt devours, And prides him in the puddle of his powers; Careless, unconscious of the beauteous guest, The internal speck committed to his breast. Yet in his breast the internal speck grows warm, And quickens into motion, life, and form; Far other form than that its fosterer bore, High o'er its parent-worm ordain'd to soar: The son, still growing as the sire decays, In radiant plumes his infant shape arrays; Matures, as in a soft and silent womb; Then, opening, peeps from his paternal tomb; Now, struggling, breaks at once into the day, Tries his young limbs, and bids his wings display, Expands his lineaments, erects his face, Rises sublime o'er all the reptile race;

From dew-drop'd blossoms sips the nectar'd stream, And basks within the glory of the beam.

"Thus, to a sensual, to a sinful shrine, The Saviour shall entrust his speck divine; In secret animate his chosen seed,

Fill with his love, and with his substance feed;
Inform it with sensations of his own,
And give it appetites to flesh unknown:
So shall the lusts of man's old worm give place,
His fervour languish, and his force decrease;
Till spoil'd of ev'ry object, gross or vain,
His pride and passions humbl'd, crush'd, and slain;
From a false world to his first kingdom won,
His will, and sin, and sense, and self, undone;
His inward man from death shall break away,
And soar, and mingle with eternal day!"

This (in a word) the Father spoke-and straight
The Son descended from above all height.
Upon the chaos of man's world he came,
And pierc'd the darkness with his living beam;
Then cast a rein on the reluctant will,
And bid the tempest of the soul be still.

The good from evil he did then divide, And set man's darkness from God's light aside: Wide, from the heart, he bids his will be done, And there plac'd conscience as a central Sun; Whence reason, like the Moon, derives, by night, A weak, a borrow'd, and a dubious light. But, down the soul's abyss, a region dire! He caus'd the Stygian horrours to retire; From whence ascends the gloom of many a pest, Dark'ning the beam of Heav'n within the breast;

Atrocious intimations, causeless care,
Distrust, and hate, and rancour, and despair.
As in creation, when the Word gave birth
To ev'ry offspring of the teeming Earth,
He now conceiv'd high fruits of happier use,
And bid the heart and head of man produce:
Then branch'd the pregnant will, and went abroad
In all the sweets of its internal God;
In ev'ry mode of love, a fragrant throng,
Bearing the heart-sent charities along;
Divine effusions of the human breast,
Within the very act of blessing, bless'd;
Desires that press another's weight to bear,
To soothe their anguish, to partake their care;
Pains that can please, and griefs that joys excite;
Bruises that balm, and tears that drop delight.
God saw the seed was precious; and began
To bless his own redeeming work, in man.

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Nor less, the pregnant region of the mind Brought forth conceptions suited to its kind; Faint emblems, yet of virtue to proclaim That parent-spirit, whence our spirits came; Spirits that, like their God, with mimic skill, Produce new forms and images at will; Thoughts that from Earth, with wing'd emotion soar, New tracts expatiate, and new worlds explore; Backward, through space and through duration, run, Passing the bounds of all that e'er begun; Then, as a glance of lightning, forward flee, Straining to reach at all that e'er shall be.

Thus, in the womb of man's abyss are sown Natures, worlds, wonders, to himself unknown. A comprehension, a mysterious plan Of all the almighty works of God, is man; From Hell's dire depth to Heav'n's supremest height, Including good and evil, dark and light. What shall we call this son of grace and sin, This demon, this divinity within, This flame eternal, this foul mould'ring clodA fiend, or seraph-A poor worm, or God? O, the fell conflict, the intestine strife, This clash of good and evil, death and life! What, what are all the wars of sea and wind, Or wreck of matter, to this war of mind? Two minds in one, and each a truceless guest, Rending the sphere of our distracted breast! Who shall deliver, in a fight so fell; Who save from this intestine dog of Hell?

God! thou hast said, that Nature shall decay, And all yon starr'd expansion pass away: That, in thy wrath, pollution shall expire, The Sun himself consume with hotter fire; The melting Earth forsake its form and face, These elements depart, but find no place; Succeeded by a peaceful bless'd serene, New Heav'ns and Earth, wherein the just shall reign. O then, upon the same benignant plan, Sap, crush, consume this mass of ill, in man! Within this transient frame of mould'ring clay, Let death's cerberean demon have his day; Let him tear off this world, the nurse of lust, Grind flesh, and sense, and sin, and self to dustBut O, preserve the principle divine; In mind and matter, save whate'er is thine! O'er time, and pain, and death, to be renew'd; Fill'd with our God, and with our God endu'd!