Hesperus by Charles Sangster (book club suggestions TXT) 📖

God the acknowledged sovereign of all.
Sphere spake with sphere, and love conversed with love,
From the far centre to sublimest height,
And down the deep, unfathomable space,
To the remotest homes of angel-life,
A viewless chain of being circling all,
And linking every spirit to its God.


ANGEL CHORUS.

Spirits that never falter,
Before God's altar
Rehearse their paeans of unceasing praise;
Their theme the boundless love
By which God rules above,
Mysteriously engrafted
On grace divine, and wafted
Into every soul of man that disobeys.

Not till the wondrous being
Of the All-Seeing
Is manifested to finite man,
Can ye understand the love

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By which God rules above,
Evermore extending,
In circles never-ending,
To every atom in the universal plan.


SECOND ANGEL.

Oh, the love beyond computing
Of the high and holy place!
The unseen bond
Circling beyond
The limits of time and space.

Through earth and her world of beauty
The heavenly links extend,
Man feels its presence,
Imbibes its essence,
But cannot yet comprehend.


THIRD ANGEL.

But the days are fast approaching,
When the Father of Love will send
His interpreter
From the highest sphere,
That man fully may comprehend.


III.

Oh, truest Love, because the truest life!
Oh, blest existence, to exist with Love!
Oh, Love, without which all things else must die
The death that knows no waking unto life!
Oh, Jealousy that saps the heart of Love,

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And robs it of its tenderness divine;
And Pride, that tramples with its iron hoof
Upon the flower of love, whose fragrant soul
Exhales itself in sweetness as it dies!
A lofty spirit surfeited with Bliss!
A Prince of Angels cancelling all love,
All due allegiance to his rightful Lord;
Doing dishonour to his high estate;
Turning the truth and wisdom which were his
For ages of supreme felicity,
To thirst for power, and hatred of his God,
Who raised him to such vast preëminence!


SECOND ANGEL CHORUS.

Woe, woe to the ransomed spirit,
Once freed from the stain of sin,
Whose pride increases
Till all love ceases
To nourish it from within!
Its doom is the darkened regions
Where the rebel angel legions
Live their long night of sorrow;
Where no expectant morrow,
No mercy-tempered ray
From the altar of to-day,
Comes down through the gloom to borrow
One drop from their cup of sorrow,
Or lighten their cheerless way.

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FIRST ANGEL.

But blest be the gentle spirit
Whose love is ever increased
From its own pure soul,
The illumined goal
Where Love holds perpetual feast!


IV.

Ingrate Angel, he,
To purchase Hell, and at so vast a price!
'Tis the old story of celestial strife--
Rebellion in the palace-halls of God--
False angels joining the insurgent ranks,
Who suffered dire defeats, and fell at last
From bliss supreme to darkness and despair.
But they, the faithful dwellers in the spheres,
Who kept their souls inviolate, to whom
Heaven's love and truth were truly great rewards:
For these the stars were sown throughout all space,
As fit memorials of their faithfulness.
The wretched lost were banished to the depths
Beneath the lowest spheres. Earth barred the space
Between them and the Faithful. Then the hills
Rose bald and rugged o'er the wild abyss;
The waters found their places; and the sun,
The bright-haired warder of the golden morn,
Parting the curtains of reposing night,
Rung his first challenge to the dismal shades,
That shrunk back, awed, into Cimmerean gloom;
And the young moon glode through the startled void
With quiet beauty and majestic mien.

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SECOND ANGEL.

Slowly rose the daedal Earth,
Through the purple-hued abysm
Glowing like a gorgeous prism,
Heaven exulting o'er its birth,

Still the mighty wonder came,
Through the jasper-coloured sphere,
Ether-winged, and crystal-clear,
Trembling to the loud acclaim,

In a haze of golden rain,
Up the heavens rolled the sun,
Danae-like the earth was won,
Else his love and light were vain.

So the heart and soul of man
Own the light and love of heaven,
Nothing yet in vain was given,
Nature's is a perfect plan.


V.

The glowing Seraph with the brow of light
Was first among the Faithful. When the war
Between heaven's rival armies fiercely waged,
She bore the Will Divine from rank to rank,
The chosen courier of Deity.
Her presence cheered the combatants for Truth,
And Victory stood up where'er she moved.
And now, in gleaming robe of woven pearl,
Emblazoned with devices of the stars,
And legends of their glory yet to come,

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The type of Beauty Intellectual,
The representative of Love and Truth,
She moves first in the innumerable throng
Of angels congregating to behold
The crowning wonder of creative power.


THIRD ANGEL CHORUS,

Oh, joy, that no mortal can fathom,
To rejoice in the smile of God!
To be first in the light
Of His Holy sight,
And freed from His chastening rod.
Faithful, indeed, that soul, to be
The messenger of Deity!


FIRST ANGEL.

This, this is the chosen spirit,
Whose love is ever increased
From its own pare soul,
The illumined goal
Where Love holds perpetual feast.


VI.

With noiseless speed the angel charioteers
In dazzling splendour all triumphant rode;
Through seas of ether painfully serene,
That flashed a golden, phosphorescent spray,
As luminous as the sun's intensest beams,
Athwart the wide, interminable space.
Legion on legion of the sons of God;
Vast phalanxes of graceful cherubim;

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Innumerable multitudes and ranks
Of all the hosts and hierarchs of heaven,
Moved by one universal impulse, urged
Their steeds of swiftness up the arch of light,
From sphere to sphere increasing as they came,
Till world on world was emptied of its race.
Upward, with unimaginable speed,
The myriads, congregating zenith-ward,
Reached the far confines of the utmost sphere,
The home of Truth, the dwelling-place of Love,
Striking celestial symphonies divine
From the resounding sea of melody,
That heaved in swells of soft, mellifluous sound,
To the blest crowds at whose triumphal tread
Its soul of sweetness waked in thrills sublime,
The sun stood poised upon the western verge;
The moon paused, waiting for the march of earth,
That stayed to watch the advent of the stars;
And ocean hushed its very deepest deeps
In grateful expectation.


SECOND ANGEL.

Still through the viewless regions
Of the habitable air,
Through the ether ocean,
In unceasing motion,
Pass the multitudinous legions
Of angels everywhere.

Bearing each new-born spirit
Through the interlucent void

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To its starry dwelling,
Angel anthems telling
Every earthly deed of merit
To each flashing asteroid.


THIRD ANGEL.

Through the realms sidereal,
Clothed with the immaterial,
Far as the fields elysian
In starry bloom extend,
The stretch of angel vision
Can see and comprehend.


VII.

Innumerable as the ocean sands
The angel concourse in due order stood,
In meek anticipation waiting for
The new-created orbs,
Still hidden in the deep
And unseen laboratory, where
Not even angel eyes could penetrate:
A star for each of that angelic host,
Memorials of their faithfulness and love.
The Evening Star, God's bright eternal gift
To the pure Seraph with the brow of light,
And named for her, mild Hesperus,
Came twinkling down the unencumbered blue,
On viewless wings of sweet melodious sound,
Beauty and grace presiding at its birth.
Celestial plaudits sweeping through the skies
Waked resonant paeans, till the concave thrilled

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Through its illimitable bounds.
With a sudden burst
Of light, that lit the universal space
As with a flame of crystal,
Rousing the Soul of Joy
That slumbered in the patient sea,
From every point of heaven the hurrying cars
Conveyed the constellations to their thrones--
The throbbing planets, and the burning suns,
Erratic comets, and the various grades
And magnitudes of palpitating stars.
From the