Tempo:
INTERIOR VISION. 63
glare of the city—in which are the thin, spiry stalks, in whose invisibly minute veins course up the bright-green blood. Whataneglected treasury is this world of ours, in which lie undreamed-of riches for the seeking! Why abandon them all— desireless— to the inviting angels? who stand sentinels upon a Paradise upon which we might enter! Oh, those countless diversities, and forever sumless beauties of nature! Oh —stretching above us —all ye vast fields! Blue as the very ultimate floor of divinity; throbbing with worlds, as through the intensity of an all-exultant, all even violently God-declarant life! Oh, all ye thousand visible wonders, that scatter spells, as of the fruitful magic, through all this most invisibly popnious universe; this universe, whether of man’s mind or of the larger macrocosm! Pronounce, ye that know, whether evil, meanness, or wresting to false purpose —whether aught of bad —should profane a theatre of grandeur so immense? Is not man himself— who ought to be the arch-glory, as the recognition of it —but as he would seem so desirous of making himself—the blot upon this excellence, the lie to all this overpowering sublimity? Is he not, himself (to speak to him the language which he may best understand), the bankrupt in this myriad of banks, whence thought can —and virtue might — draw their inexhaustible supplies?
«Were gold-ribs the very framework of the world, and were they torn out of their mighty sockets; were even the Genius of its Riches shown, | barless and central, throned at the very heart of this so detestably, because so for its material glory, worshipped globe — would the sight (or the possession) match against thine immortal chance? Were the spirit of the material world exposed, in a single revelation, in all his blasting splendors, would — O thou miserably merchandising heart! thou seller of thy seat amidst the star-girt saints! thou wretched contemner of the chance offered thee, for thy salvation, by thy God!—would all this compensate for the averting, for one moment, from thee, of the face of the rulers of thine immortal destinies? Confess, thou mad and besotted man! — avouch, thou less defiant than hypocritical rebel to God’s heavenly care of thee! — would thy very hugest heap of dross match in value with the tiniest flower, into whose thirsty cup the heaven-missioned spirit poured his eternal dew? Christening to immortality!
“ Boastest thou of thy world, and of thy dignity —in thy science — out of it? Art! —what is art to the reticulation of a fungus? What is it to the fine-spun tracery of the meanest moss? Tabor — what is thy labor, that thou shouldst pride thyself upon it — when the whole frame of stars be nightly moved? Pride — why, what a shallow thing is this pride, when to the lily of the field even Solomon, in all his glory, has been declared not equal! What be thy stars and ribbons — thy rings and spots — when, than all, the snake hath more splendid? What be thy braveries, and all thine ingenious adornment, when the summer insect — less than thee the ‘painted child of dirt’—surpasseth thee at them? What be thy money,
glare of the city—in which are the thin, spiry stalks, in whose invisibly minute veins course up the bright-green blood. Whataneglected treasury is this world of ours, in which lie undreamed-of riches for the seeking! Why abandon them all— desireless— to the inviting angels? who stand sentinels upon a Paradise upon which we might enter! Oh, those countless diversities, and forever sumless beauties of nature! Oh —stretching above us —all ye vast fields! Blue as the very ultimate floor of divinity; throbbing with worlds, as through the intensity of an all-exultant, all even violently God-declarant life! Oh, all ye thousand visible wonders, that scatter spells, as of the fruitful magic, through all this most invisibly popnious universe; this universe, whether of man’s mind or of the larger macrocosm! Pronounce, ye that know, whether evil, meanness, or wresting to false purpose —whether aught of bad —should profane a theatre of grandeur so immense? Is not man himself— who ought to be the arch-glory, as the recognition of it —but as he would seem so desirous of making himself—the blot upon this excellence, the lie to all this overpowering sublimity? Is he not, himself (to speak to him the language which he may best understand), the bankrupt in this myriad of banks, whence thought can —and virtue might — draw their inexhaustible supplies?
«Were gold-ribs the very framework of the world, and were they torn out of their mighty sockets; were even the Genius of its Riches shown, | barless and central, throned at the very heart of this so detestably, because so for its material glory, worshipped globe — would the sight (or the possession) match against thine immortal chance? Were the spirit of the material world exposed, in a single revelation, in all his blasting splendors, would — O thou miserably merchandising heart! thou seller of thy seat amidst the star-girt saints! thou wretched contemner of the chance offered thee, for thy salvation, by thy God!—would all this compensate for the averting, for one moment, from thee, of the face of the rulers of thine immortal destinies? Confess, thou mad and besotted man! — avouch, thou less defiant than hypocritical rebel to God’s heavenly care of thee! — would thy very hugest heap of dross match in value with the tiniest flower, into whose thirsty cup the heaven-missioned spirit poured his eternal dew? Christening to immortality!
“ Boastest thou of thy world, and of thy dignity —in thy science — out of it? Art! —what is art to the reticulation of a fungus? What is it to the fine-spun tracery of the meanest moss? Tabor — what is thy labor, that thou shouldst pride thyself upon it — when the whole frame of stars be nightly moved? Pride — why, what a shallow thing is this pride, when to the lily of the field even Solomon, in all his glory, has been declared not equal! What be thy stars and ribbons — thy rings and spots — when, than all, the snake hath more splendid? What be thy braveries, and all thine ingenious adornment, when the summer insect — less than thee the ‘painted child of dirt’—surpasseth thee at them? What be thy money,
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