Through space revolving every starry ball,
Each atom entering, vivifying all;
Varied by various forms wherewith combined;
Instinct in brutes, and reason in mankind,
Life in the plant, and germin in the clod,
Change, movement, order, cause—and only God!
Whereof some portion all imbibe with breath,
Share while in life, and render back at death,
To mix and merge in God's eternal sum,
As flesh in earth's. Behold the life to come!
Away! Why palter with my heart's despair?
A voice in vain suppress'd is cavilling there,—
All, all is darkness, doubt, and ignorance!
Why search for causes more than change and chance?
'Mid chances infinite and endless change,
Why might not atoms thus themselves arrange?
Why not be ruled by uncreated laws,
And be themselves their self-existing cause?
To own such cause, since after all coerced,
And matter is, own matter such at first!
Is life to come like life before our birth?
I prize but this; I, earthy, love the earth.
Oh! murmuring streams, green valleys, sylvan bowers,
Ye starry nights, ye golden-footed hours,
Spring's roseate morn, sweet summer's evening hue,
Still autumn's noon,—my sisters,—all adieu!
Your suu-clad forms shall ever beam in youth,
Nor know time's hand, nor care's corroding tooth.
And Earth!—whose bosom was my place to dwell,
Whose milk my nurse,—hail, mother, and farewell!
Goddess, o'er thee no evil arm has power;
Lo, rifted rocks with lichens germ and flower!
Fire, frost, and flood reanimate thy face;
Each dissolution teems with life and grace.
But woe thy offspring! woe, whose flesh is grass!
Organic forms they all dissolve and pass.
As fades the plant, so withers man and beast.
All die alike, they look alike diseased,
O'er all alike the worm usurps its range,
And gilded flies attest the irremeable change.'"
The Primate—in one of his addresses—had alluded to her sorceries, and proofs of her witchcraft found below her father's roof—strange forms of wax—drugs potent over hell, monstrous shapes, ban dogs, owls, skeletons of apes, nay, even the skull of a man, and more, a clerk's—as Maud confessed—and now Anne exclaims—
"'Fools! to suppose they served for arts accurst,
And cite Maud's answers when her nails were burst,—
That one did errands to the full-eyed moon,
And one was call'd the Chaplain, one Baboon;
One prey'd upon her like an Incubus,
And, Sabbaths, all took sacrament with us.
Could not her muttering lips, fantastic air,
Garb, gesture, pulse, and glassy eye declare—
Her brain, ere hooded in the beaten drum,
Was madder e'en than mine has since become?
Yet I bethink me, with what mystic doubt
She shunn'd the study still, and pried without;
Till once I chiding drew her through the gate,—
Greet an old friend, and view the future state!
Her palm uniting with the bones of one,
By whose young pressure both had been undone:
The wretch, hands shaken, prick'd her wrist, and laugh'd,
And offer'd bonds of blood—to learn the craft.'"
