Classic Poem

THE FIRST ACT.

J ESUS .

O THOU Who govern'st what Thou didst create
With equal sway, Great Arbiter of fate,
The world's Almighty Father; I, Thy Son,
Though born in time, before his course begun;
Thus far my deeds have answer'd Thy commands:
If more remain, My zeal prepared stands
To execute Thy charge; all that I fear,
All that I hate, I shall with patience bear;
No misery refuse, no toil, nor shame.
I know for this into the world I came.
And yet how long shall these extremes endure?
What day or night have known My life secure?
My burthen, by enduring, heavier grows,
And present ills a way to worse disclose.
My Kingdom, Heav'n, I left, to visit earth,
And suffer'd banishment before My birth.
An unknown Infant, in a stable born,
Lodg'd in a manger; little, poor, forlorn,
And miserable: though so vile a thing,
Yet worthy of the envy of a king.
Two years scarce yet complete, too old was thought
By Herod's fears: while I alone was sought,
The bloody sword Ephratian dames deprives
Of their dear babes; through wounds they exhal'd their lives.
Secur'd by flying to a foreign clime,
The tyrant thro' his error lost his crime.
A thousand miracles have made Me known
Through all the world, and My extraction shown.
Envy against Me raves; yet virtue hath
More storms of mischief rais'd than Herod's wrath.
Is it decreed by Thy unchanging Will,
I should be acknowledg'd and rejected still?
Th' inspired Magi from the Orient came,
Preferr'd My star before their Mithra's flame,
And at My infant feet devoutly fell:
But Abraham's seed, the House of Israel,
To Thee sequester'd from eternity,
Degenerate and ingrate! their God deny.
Behold the contumacious Pharisees,
Arm'd with dissembl'd zeal, against Me rise:
The bloody priests to their stern party draw
The doctors of their unobserved law;
And impious Sadducees, to perpetrate
My intended overthrow incense the state.
What rests to quicken faith? Ev'n at My nod
Nature submits, acknowledging her God.
The Galilean youth drink the pure blood
Of generous grapes, drawn from the neighbour flood.
I others' famine cur'd, subdu'd My own,
Life-strengthening food for forty days unknown.
'Twixt the dispensers' hands th' admired bread
Increas'd, great multitudes of people fed,
Yet more than all remain'd. The winds assuage
Their storms; and threat'ning billows calm their rage.
The harden'd waves unsinking feet endure:
And pale diseases, which despise their cure,
My Voice subdues. Long darkness chas'd away,
To Me the blind by birth now owes his day.
He hears who never yet was heard; now speaks,
And in My praises first his silence breaks.
Those damned spirits of infernal night,
Rebels to God, and to the sons of light
Inveterate foes, My Voice buTheard, forsake
The long-possess'd, and struck with terror quake.
Nor was't enough for Christ, such wonders done,
To profit those alone who see the sun:
To vanquish Death My pow'rful Hand invades
His silent regions and inferior shades.
The stars, the earth, the seas, My triumphs know
What rests to conquer but the deeps below?
Thro' op'ning sepulchres, night's gloomy caves,
The violated privilege of graves,
I sent My dread commands: a heat new-born
Re-animates the dead, from funerals torn;
And death's numb cold expuls'd, inforc'd a way
For souls departed to review the day.
The ashes from their ransack'd tombs receive
A second life, and by My bounty breathe.
But Death, his late free empire thus restrain'd,
Not used to restore his spoils, complain'd
That I should thus unweave the web of fate,
Decrease his subjects, and subvert his state:
I, for so many ransomed from death,
Must to his anger sacrifice My breath.
And now that horrid hour is almost come,
When sinful mortals shall their Maker doom:
When I, the world's Great Lord, Who life on all
Mankind bestow'd, must by their fury fall.
That tragic time to My last period hastes;
And night, who now on all her shadows casts,
While with the motion of the heav'ns she flies,
This short delay of My sad life envies.
Fate, be less stern in thy intended course;
Nor drag Him Who will follow without force.
After so many miseries endur'd;
Cold, heat, thirst, famine, eyes to tears inur'd;
The end, yet worst of ills, draws near: their breath,
For whom I suffer, must procure My death.
The Innocent, made guilty by the foul
Defects of others, must His weary soul
Sigh into air; and, though of heav'nly birth,
With His chaste Blood distain th'ungrateful earth.
They traffic for My soul: My death, long sought,
Is by the mitred merchants' faction bought;
And treason finds reward. My travails draw
Near their last end. These practices I saw.
See what this night's confederate shadows hide;
My mind before My body crucified.
Horror shakes all My pow'rs: My entrails beat,
And all My body flows with purple sweat.
O whither is My ancient courage fled,
And God-like strength, by anguish captive led?
O death, how far more cruel in thy kind,
Th' anxiety and torment of the mind!
Then must I be of all at once bereft?
Or is there any hope of safety left?
O might I to My Heav'nly Father pray,
So supple to My tears, to take away
Part of these ills! But His eternal doom
Forbids, and order'd course of things to come.
His purpose, fix'd when yet the world was young,
And oracles, so oft by prophets sung,
Now rushing on their destinated end,
No orisons nor sacrifice can bend.
Why stay I with triumphant feet to tread
Upon th' infernal Serpent's poisonous head,
And break th' old Dragon's jaws? The sin of our
First parents must be cleansed with a show'r
Of blood, rain'd from My wounds: My death appease,
And cure the venom of that dire disease.
All you who live, rejoice: all you who die,
You sacred ashes of the just which lie
In peaceful urns, rejoice in this My fall:
I for the living liv'd, but die for all.
My suff'rings are not lost. To earth I owe
These promis'd ills: bonds, whips, and thorns to grow
About Our bleeding brows; the Cross, the scorn
Of a proud people, to destruction borne.
O let My Father's wrath through singed air
On Me in thunder dart, so Mine it spare.
Lest the world should, I perish; and must bear
The punishments of all that ever were.
You who inhabit where the sun displays
His early light, or near his setting rays;
Who suffer by his perpendicular
Aspect, or freeze beneath the northern star;
Affect this ready sacrifice, Who am
A Greater Off'ring than the Paschal Lamb.
My Precious Blood alone the virtue hath
To purge your sins, and quench My Father's wrath.
Now the full moon succeeds that vernal light
Which equally divides the day and night,
Sacred to feasts. The next sun shall survey
One brighter than himself, and lose his day.
False traitor, through thy guilt so tim'rous grown,
Although thou lead'st an army against One,
Shrouded in night, I am not taken by
Thy guile, but know thy fraud, and haste to die.
But you, My chosen friends, who yet preserve
Your faith entire, nor from your duty swerve,
Your festival, our washings past, rehearse
Your Maker's excellence in sacred verse;
While I to those frequented shades repair
Where the trees answer to the sighing air.
Learn, as we walk along, unto what place
I shortly shall return; whaTheav'nly Grace
Is to descend upon you from above;
What are the laws of charity and love.
While My last pray'rs soliciTheav'n, to sleep
Give no access: this night My vigil keep.

CHORUS OF JEWISH WOMEN.

The rapid motion of the spheres
Old Night from our horizon bears;
And now declining shades give way
To the return of cheerful day.
But Phosphorus, who leads the stars,
And day's illustrious path prepares,
Who last of all the hosts retires,
Not yet withdraws those radiant fires:
Nor have our trumpets summoned
The morning from her dewy bed;
As yeTher roses are unblown,
Nor by her purple mantle known.
All night we in the temple keep,
Not yielding to the charms of sleep,
That so we might with zealous pray'r
Our thoughts and cleansed hearts prepare
To celebrate th' ensuing light,
When Phaebe shall her horns unite.
This annual feast to memory
Is sacred; nor with us must die:
Thus by that dreadful Exul taught,
When God His plagues on Egypt brought,
Those cities these our rites bereave
Of citizens, and widows leave,
Where Jordan from two bubbling heads
His oft-returning waters leads,
Till they their narrow bounds forsake,
And grow a sea-resembling lake.
Those woods of palm, producing dates;
Of fragrant balsamum, which hates
The touch of steel; where once the sound
Of trumpets levell'd with the ground
Unbatter'd walls; that mount which shrouds
His airy head in hanging clouds,
Where death clos'd our lost Prophet's eyes;
Admire to see their colonies
Ascend the hills of Solyma
In celebration of this day.
Cephaeans, whose strong walls withstood
The ruins of the general Flood,
To solemnize this day, forsake
Ador'd Dercetis, and her lake.
Hither the Palestines, from strong
Azotus, both the Jamnes, throng.
Not Lydda could her own restrain;
Nor Caparorsa's walls contain
Her Edomites; Damascus could
NoThers, though she ten nations rul'd;
Nor yet Sebaste, long the nurse
Of impious sons, sprung from our source.
Phaenicians, who did first produce
To mortals letters, with their use,
Where Tyrus, full of luxury,
With mother Sidon, front the sky,
Hither with hasty zeal repair:
Among the Syrians, those who dare
Feed on forbidden fish, nor more
The deity of a dove adore.
From Belus, whose slow waters pass
On glitt'ring sands, which turn to glass:
From Arnon's banks, those borderers,
The subject of our ancient wars,
Who sulphurous bitumen take
From salt Asphaltis' deadly lake.
No tempest on that sea prevails;
No ship upon her bosom sails;
Unmov'd with oars; what over flies,
Struck by her breath, falls down and dies:
Hates all that lives; in her profound
None are receiv'd, but float undrown'd:
No seas, by slimy shores embrac'd,
So pestilent a vapour cast:
This blasts the corn before it bears,
And poisons the declining ears:
Sad autumn's fruits to cinders turn,
And all the fields in ashes mourn:
Lest time should waste the mem'ry
Of those revengeful flames, the sky
On earth in melting sulphur shower'd,
Which that accursed race devour'd;
When she, who did commiserate
With impious grief her city's fate,
Grew, in the moment of her fault,
A statue of congealed salt.
Hither devout Esseans fly,
Who without issue multiply,
And virtue only propagate,
All sensual loves, all lucre hate,
And equal poverty embrace:
Thrice happy, of a noble race,
Who slight your own particular,
Transported with a public care.
He flies a pitch above our woes,
Or crimes, who gladly undergoes
Their toil and want; nor would possess
What others miscall happiness.
What numbers from the sun's uprise,
From where he leaves the morning skies,
Of our dispersed Abrahamites,
This vesper to their homes invites!
Yet we, in yearly triumph, still
A lamb for our deliv'rance kill.
Since liberty our confines fled,
Giv'n with the first unleaven'd bread,
She never would return; though bought
With wounds, and in destruction sought.
Some stray to Lybia's scorched sands,
Where horned Hammon's temple stands:
To Nilus some, where Philip's son,
Who all the rifled Orient won,
Built his proud city: others gone
To their old prison, Babylon:
A part to freezing Taurus fled,
And Tiber, now the ocean's head.
Our ruins all the world have fill'd:
But you, by use in suff'rings skill'd,
Forgetting in remoter climes
Our vanish'd glory; nor those times,
Those happy times, compare with these;
Your burdens may support with ease.
More justly we of Fate complain,
Who servitude at home sustain:
We, to perpetual woes design'd,
In our own country, Egypt find.