The Visions in the Apocalypse.

And though from very brightness they were dark
At times to John himself, and though we still
Revere them as the manna in the ark

Laid up and hid, they must themselves fulfil.

One thing, however, in the scroll is plain,-
Though through the courts and palaces on high,
The cities where victorious athletes reign,
The Edens where the summers never die,

The prophet ranged,-though life of every kind
In worlds yet unexplored was, to his eyes
Clairvoyant, pictured, and upon his mind

Imprinted with the types of paradise,—

He never writes as if the heaven and hell

He saw were figures merely, fancies, tropes, Unreal objects acting like a spell

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And cheating with false shapes fond Christian hopes;

He never speaks as if the saints in white

Were merely spirits having nought to do With space and time, but living lights in light, Incorporate and spiritual too.

XX. THE VISION MATERIALISTIC IN PART.

THE golden girdle and the feet like brass,
Fine brass as in a furnace burning, and
The sound of many waters; seas of glass;
Rivers of crystal watering all the land;

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Armies upon white horses; linen fine

And white and clean, with elders; crowns of gold; Vials of odours full; ambrosial wine,

And palms, and raiment dazzling to behold;

And pipes and dulcet harps of divers tones;
And hymns and jubilee in jasper halls;
And sapphires, amethysts, and precious stones
Of price untold, and lofty twelve-gate walls;

And tents and mountains high, and golden streets,—
Do these not indicate substantial form,

A place no less than state, where virtue meets
Reward in life with breath and colour warm?

XXI. GOD GIVETH IT A BODY AS HE WILL.'

BUT how do spirits weave that texture rare

In which they float upon the ether waves, Glide in and out of our inferior air

And flash at will through darkest dens and caves ?

Go, ask the blossom whence it caught its bloom :
The flower will send you back to ask the seed;
And there alone you find the pregnant womb
From which such beautiful results proceed.

You are yourself the germ, the egg, the plan
Yet undeveloped of your future frame :
You have within you deep a second man,

And you will be another, yet the same.

Occult Faculties.

They tell us that a hidden psychic force—
A fluid atmosphere around the nerves—
Transmits the will along their sinuous course,
And every vital energy subserves.

And there, if we mistake not, is the seat
Of that imponderous growth in which, we trust,
The pulse of our magnetic life will beat

When this frail tenement resolves in dust.

O flower immortal, grow within us, grow

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And ere long put forth stalk and stem and bloom More flame-like than the crocus from the snow, More fragrant than the violet from the tomb!

XXII. OCCULT BODILY FACULTIES.

WHEN Moses down the Sinai mountain came,
And brought th' engraven tables of th' Law,
His countenance so shone with lambent flame
The people shrank with mingled fear and awe.

When Stephen 'full of faith and power' addressed
The council, all who gazed upon his face,
And saw its spiritual light confessed

Him like to one of the angelic race

And when the Lord upon Mount Tabor showed
His glory forth, His face and robes were turned
Into a blaze of majesty, and glowed

With somewhat of the God that in Him burned,

How oft the Spirit of the Lord has caught

The saints of the Old Testament and New, Borne them aloft, and, swift as light, or thought, Transported them far out of human view.

Elias, Philip, and Ezechiel, held

In angel hands, were wafted through the air,
By power supreme, by ardent zeal, impelled,
By faith unwavering and the might of prayer.
The walks in sleep, the fasts of forty days
And more, as annals of our time record,
Magnetic effluence, and prayers that raise

From earth the kneeling suppliants of the Lord,

And trance and vision, second sight and dream,
And flights in air, evasions angel-led,

And natural acts that supernatural seem,
And apparitions of the mindful dead,-

All prove how many latent powers reside
In mortal bodies, and inspire the hope
That ours will be expanded and supplied

With strength to break the bonds with which they cope.

XXIII. 'CLOTHED UPON WITH OUR HABITATION THAT IS FROM HEAVEN.

FOR we who in this tabernacle groan,

'Groan, being burthened,' not that we would throw

Aside our clothing, but be clothed upon

With mantles whiter than sun-smitten snow.

The Chrysalid.

For if our fragile earthen house should fall, Collapsing in the dust from whence it rose, 'We have, we know, a building' over all

The ruin, and our nakedness has clothes.

Can any words make plainer what is meant-
Plainer alike to simple folk and sage?
The Scriptures read with faith intelligent
Reveal the spirit-form in every page.

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XXIV. THE BUTTERFLY.

THE shell is broken-'tis the chrysalid's grave,
The cradle of the butterfly, whose wings
Are soon unfolded and alert to brave

The breeze and dart into all nectared things.

How beautiful with countless tiny scales,

That look like down upon the wings outspread, She ranges o'er the meads, and trips and sails To every saccharine cup of blue and red!

How gorgeous are those dyes no Eastern king
Ablaze with jewels can be half as bright.

A life of sunshine; an unwearied wing;
An everlasting banquet of delight!

O butterfly, sweet symbol of the soul

A Christian emblem due to Grecian artThy meaning is not yet known as a whole,

For purblind men have learnt it but in part.