The Lifted Ensign[1]
Armed now with knowledge, panoplied with power,
With two-edged sword of God's authority,
Girded by heavenly hands on shepherds twain[2],
The first and second of a gathering flock,
Transcribers of the buried book of gold,
Whose mystic page, unsealed by gift divine, 2360
Save part withheld of mightier mystery,
Now challenges the wise and wondering world;—
Armed and equipt, with staff, and stone in sling,
Strong in the Lord, the God of Israel,
The dauntless David of a later day
Fares forth to meet the Giant of Untruth[3].
Thenceforth a warrior and a wanderer,
A victor hated for his victories;
Targe for the javelin of jealousy;
Hunted and hounded through the wilderness; 2370
Outlawed by all, all save a loyal few,
The patient sharers of his painful lot,
Companions of his mortal pilgrimage,
Recalled with him, their earthly errand o'er,
To grace the courts of High Jerusalem.
But ere a day for that departure dawns,
Unveiled once more the face of mystery.
Speaks from the musty tomb of buried time,
The all-remembering Spirit of the Past:
"Time yet was young[4], but old iniquity, 2380
Outcast of worlds redeemed, on earth was rife,
And, self-enchained, a fallen race lay prone
At feet of Lucifer. And demons laughed,
And hell rejoiced, and all that ribald host
Clapt hand, and danced and jeered derisively;
While gods and angels wept, their pitying tears
Whitening the spectral mountains cold and lone,
Wakening to virile springs a spirit waste.
"And there the sainted commonweal[5] arose,
Haven divine, hill of the sanctified, 2390
Oasis-like 'mid burning sands of sin;
God's people, pure in heart, and one in all,
No poor among them, pride and greed unknown;
Saved by the tidings first to Adam taught,
And next to Enoch's generation told.
"Righteous, they dreamt no evil, feared no ill,
And death, the universal doom, defied.
Earth not their pillow; they shall one day pass
From mortal to immortal painlessly.
"Self's chain was sundered[6]; devils glared aghast, 2400
And gnashed their teeth with disappointed rage,
Trembling in terror lest perdition's pit
Engulf them ere the time. Then gathering power,
As if for Armageddon's conflict[7] dire,
When triumphs Michael o'er the foe unchained,
Hell's molten belch of burning hatred hurled
Upon those hapless sons of earth who scorned
The refuge of the righteous; her bright towers,
Far-beaming with terrestrial radiance[8]—
The promise fair of full celestial change,— 2410
Bidding the vile beware, nor venture near
The awful mountain of God's holiness.
"Waxed foul the world in wickedness, piled high
A hideous monument of shame and crime,
Which, toppling with its own weight, crashing fell,
Whelming in ruin the guilty race of man,
Whose spirits, as fierce seas their dust devoured,
By fiercer fiends to dungeon deeps were driven.
Nor thence redeemed till He who died for all
Soared from the cross to set the captive free[9]. 2420
"The while, on fearless wings of purity,
Cleaving as bird or ransomed soul the air,
The sainted city entered into rest,
Envied of Babel, climbing robber-like[10];
Bride of the Highest, midway hovering,
Till folded in the bosom of the Gods,
Where Zions from unnumbered worlds have fled.
Type temporal of spirit antitype,
A future moral height foreshadowing.
"Foreseen the fatal deluge. Ere the doom 2430
Of all save faithful Noah and his seven,—
Tri-branching tree[11] of race regenerate,
Yielding anew life's fruit and foliage,—
Earth mourned as Rachel, Rizpah, o'er the slain,
The slain of men unborn, who yet must die
Degenerate in the days that were to be.
"Then Enoch wept, and sued in sympathy,
And God gave answer thus:
'Earth yet shall rest,
And, sanctified, shall see her Saviour reign, 2440
Monarch of worlds, His realms as ocean sands.
But it shall be within the latter days,
The days of vengeance and of wickedness,
When men the Sole-begotten crucify,
And He shall go again to judge the world,
Proclaimed by truth, forerun by righteousness,
Gathering the pure-in-heart unto a place—
A holy place my people shall prepare,
There to await my coming, mine and thine.
Then shown the resurrection's shadowing: 2450
Zion above, from all creations past,
Shall meet and blend with Zion from below;
Spirits and bodies of the just shall join,
And in the midst my tabernacle be.
Yea, as I live, so will I forth again,
My oath to thee, my covenant, to fulfill;
And earth shall garb in glory of her God,
And Noah's righteous seed in Me rejoice.'"
These things spake God to Moses, from the mount
Whose name is veiled to ken of humankind; 2460
And thus that prophet, but through unbelief
And cunning craftiness, at war with Light,
The fulness of his message sleeps till now,
When one like unto him[12] and Him he typed,
Brings forth the buried meaning from its grave.
On twain of ocean-parted hemispheres,
Saw noon of time a twofold type[13] of peace,
A pledge, a token, of millennial rest,
An earnest of the Commonweal to come;
But no fulfillment of the promise old, 2470
No ripe fruition of the ancient oath,
To Enoch sworn, through Moses re-affirmed,
By Ephraim's prophet made to live again.
—-
Promise now sought fulfillment[14],—it was time;
For weary earth lay groaning 'neath her load.
"Unclean, unclean," her cry, as leprous sin
With foul intent clasped close her shrinking form,
And baned with foetid breathing all her soul.
Long she had mourned and wept o'er life's decay;
Her waning strength, from age and weariness, 2480
Her mother powers, unholy passion's prey,
Bringing, in lieu of giants, pygmies forth,
To fall untimely on her withered breast.
Dwindling and dwarfed in all save wickedness,
And knowledge, oft made pander unto ill,
With learning gorged, for wisdom famishing,
Man both a glutton and a starveling seemed.
For Self, the sordid, sat once more enthroned,
Binding in servile chains a universe,
Where mightily men strove for place and fame, 2490
Greedy for power, as gluttonous for gold.
And who sought neighbor's weal, save kith and kin
Or petted friendling prest a favored claim?
Disorder reigned, and satire laughed to scorn
Grotesque, invidious inconsistency:
Talent on title waiting, brain on birth!
Genius at oars, and dullards at the helm!
The prancing war-steed fastened to the plow,
The ass unto the chariot—oft with rein,
Curbing the mettled courser's noble rage, 2500
Or goading him with needless cruelty!
Matter was monarch; Spirit stood apart,
Unknown, unseen, or spurned and thrust aside
By thronging myriads, bending supple knee,
And basking in the proud usurper's smile.
Men bowed not down to sun and moon and stars,
To bird, nor beast, nor reptile, as of yore;
But worshipt still at other creature shrines,
Ignoring the Creator's primal claim.
Pride sneered at poverty—if poor of purse, 2510
But gave its hand to beggared intellect,
To bankrupt soul, and greeted them as peers.
Learning, if lowly pillowing its head,
A pauper deemed, and pitied or condemned.
And many, stung by adder glance of scorn,
Shunning a life of noble toil and care,
To Mammon, e'en in marriage, sold themselves,
Offering a lawless fire at passion's shrine,
Or staining hands and heart with sabler sins.
Shameful the serfdom of the earth-bound soul, 2520
Base passion's basest slave and prisoner;
Charmed by no music but the clink of coin;
Cankered and crusted o'er with avarice;
Dupe, dreaming shadow real, and substance show.
Where party more than principle was prized,
Where private gain was labeled "public good,"
And "patriotism" masked hypocrisy,
Science, when sordid, or subservient
To worldly ends, to aims material,
Stood pedestaled and robed in honors rare: 2530
While art fell fainting at the patron's door,
Or starved and froze in cheerless attic den.
For aye the flesh must first be comforted,
And e'en the body's luxuries abound,
Ere mind of man may clothe its nakedness,
Or hungering heart and spirit have their own.
Music, the drama, all art, still divine,
Though oft to ends ignoble basely bent,
In atmospheres miasmic, fever-fraught,
To folly pandering and to lechery; 2540
Or using gifts God-lent for good of all,
Gain's maw to glut, fame's lust to gratify.
Forgot the Giver, and adored the gift,
As in the pagan days of olden time.
And thou, where thou, O sage philosophy,
Heir to a hundred shadows of thy name!
Where thy spent waves on speculation's strand?
Still striving, finite for the infinite,
Man groping for the mystery of God,
A river that would fain engulf the sea! 2550
Religion dead, and poesy so deemed,
Because unwedded to a carnal age,
Unprostituted to its paltry aims,
Or hid beneath vast verbal rubbish heaps,
The dust and debris of the former fires.
Religion dead, but bigotry alive,
And ne'er more active upon earth than now,
When sect 'gainst sect in battle order stood,
And schisms and dissensions multiplied.
Some worshipt nothing, naming it a god; 2560
Some deemed the mortal dust a thing divine;
Religious, irreligious, bigotry,
Each counted victims by the hecatomb.
What wonder, when truth's meanings tortured were,
The living God dethroned, and in His stead,
A monster crouching on the Mercy Seat,
Whose mere caprice, naught else, did save or damn?
Wafting the blood-stained criminal to bliss,
If he but gasped, half hung, the holy Name?
Thrusting the spotless infant into hell, 2570
If un-elect, or unbaptized for sin!
To endless woe or weal forefating all.
What wonder justice, reason, stood aghast,
While faith, revolting, rushed to doubt's extreme?
Critics, high-soaring, sought to clip the wings
Of arrogance in all creeds save their own.
Half-fledged conclusion, findings premature,
Grounded on tale of rock or ruin old,
More credence had, more reverence, from men,
Than sacred lore of heaven-lit centuries. 2580
All miracle was myth, nor aught worth while,
Save, leaded down with learned theories,
It crawled, an earth-worm, wanting will to climb
Above the level of the commonplace.
Fanatics in the state as in the church,
Their prejudices palmed for principle,
Vain vagaries and dreams for doctrine sound;
And woe to him who lisped of liberty,
Or thought aloud one thought unthought before!
Freedom to think and breathe—God-granted boons, 2590
Alike, to savage, serf, and citizen—
Was all that freedom signified to some,
Who, as they doled a gift already given,
Boasted themselves magnanimous and wise.
Freedom to speak and act as conscience bade,
As God commanded, crushed or captive bound,
E'en where men vaunted most of liberty.
And peace was yet a dream unrealized,
For war still sowed and reaped his harvests red;
And Christian guns were mightiest and slew most. 2600
Nor yet stood toil 'gainst capital arrayed,
The starving masses 'gainst the Midases,
As erst arose, 'gainst moss-grown old regimes,
The trampled Terror[15], scrawling with fierce hand
On history's flaming scroll his red revenge,
With that blood-reeking pen, the guillotine;
Nor yet faced frowning mass contemning class[16],
Jeering, oblivious of the lurking doom,
The glooming clouds where groaned the gathering storm.
But murderous craft and oath-bound anarchy, 2610
With secret deeds of darkness, had begun
To sap the life of human government,
And plot against the safety of mankind;
While greeds and lusts and passions manifold,
Preying on frailty and on innocence,
Ran riot 'mid the fairest, brightest, best.
Where, promise, thy fulfillment, pledged of yore?
'Twas time—full time—the far-seen ensign waved,
Hailing the morn on heights of holiness,
Proclaiming peace and freedom to the world. 2620
'Twas time disorder fled, time justice reigned,
And rightfully were held dominion's keys;
Time pure religion's sceptre should return,
By poesy extolled, by art adorned,
With science and with reason reconciled;
Time feeble earth her panacea found,
Time health gave life its old longevity,
Time pride should bend, time lust to love should yield,
And self confess the joy of sacrifice.
'Twas time an Enoch came[17], a Zion rose. 2630
Sound, trump of God! as when old Jordan's wave
Shook with the thunder-tread of Joshua's host,
Shook with the shouting and the trumpet blasts,
Heard the loud roar of crumbling Jericho,
And in mad haste ran shuddering to the sea!
Speak now the doom foreshadowed by that fall—
The mightier doom of Modern Babylon:
Bow down thy head, proud mistress of the world!
Humble thy haughty crest, degenerate queen!
Lift but thine eyes to where God's finger glows 2640
In fiery warning on thy festal wall,
Drowning in dread the voice of revelry,
Thy saturnalia's ribald shout and song.
Ended thine empire, Weighed-and-Wanting-Found!
Down to the dust in all thy worldliness,
Thou thing of brass, of iron, and of clay!
Sound, trumpet, sound! The looked-for signal looms!
The fateful stone upon the image rolls!
"On you, my fellow servants, I confer
The priestly power of Aaron, with the keys 2650
Of angel ministries, of penitence,
Of water-birth that washes free from sin.
And greater things than these shall yet be given—
The holier powers of high Melchizedek,
Which Mightier by three shall minister."
And on each head was laid a holy hand[18];
Time making good the promise plighted there,
Welding another link in wonder's chain,
Writing new chapters of a story strange,
Confounding human learning, fools and wise. 2660
—-
So came once more the panoply of power[19].
So rose the ensign o'er a waiting world.
Armed thus with knowledge and authority,
Armed and equipt, with staff, and stone in sling,
Fares forth a champion for Israel,
To grapple with Philistia and prevail.
Guide unto God, repointer of the path,
Untrodden through a thousand years nigh twained,
The while men roamed, as once o'er trackless wild,
The savage, by the untaught trapper trained; 2670
Blind leading blind through thick and thorny wold.
Light 'mid the darkness, beam from heaven's full blaze,
Driving the mists, that comprehended not
His brightness nor their own obscurity;
Holding him blind who saw as few have seen.
He, blind, forsooth, who more than all beheld!
Sinking deep shafts to mines of mystery,
Shallow and empty to the worldly wise;
Soaring to heights by human lore undreamt,
Yet deemed an earth-mole, groping, groveling. 2680
Aloft, alone, an exile among men,
A wanderer in a solitary way,
Pariah of prejudice and unbelief,
Whose lowering features fiercely on him frowned.
Thought's prisoner and truth's, that maketh free
The spirit, though the body pine in chains,
Albeit the tongue, the pen, in durance be,
Consigned to silence, captive unto light,
And crucified betwixt ideal and real.
But who art thou that lookest forth sublime, 2690
A soul upsoaring as from sepulture,
Body and spirit pure and free from stain,
As gold and silver tried by seven-timed fire?
Speak! Art not thou the Woman Wonderful[20],
Summoned from out the silent wilderness,
Arisen from the grave of centuries,
No more to be despoiled or trodden down?
A symbol of exalted sanctity,
The consecration of the contrite heart;
Of ancient types the modern complement, 2700
Chief splendor of time's sparkling firmament,
Whose silver stars bespoke this sun of gold.
But when did darkness comprehend the day?
When welcomed pleasure thorn-crowned sacrifice,
Whose higher, holier joys than sin can know,
As dust and ashes to the sensual soul?
Jewels to swine, that, turning, rent the hand,
And fain 'neath foot had torn and trampled all.
Such was Truth's fate, alas! in modern time,
'Mid Christian men;—but not her final fate. 2710
For who can stay the sun-like march of Truth?
Who dim with bloody hand her beam divine?
First shall he halt the progress of the stars,
The bright procession of the infinite;
Blot out the day-beam, dull the scythe of time,
Shear morning's wings, roll back eternal night,
Or shake the moveless throne of destiny.
Lifted an ensign never to be furled,
Unsheathed a falchion evermore to flame,
Till earth-born realms, in one wide empire rolled, 2720
Hail conquering Christ as life and light of all.
