Page:Poems By Chauncy Hare Townshend.djvu/27

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Jerusalem.
3
O days divine! of you may mortal sing,When God himself was Israel's Guard and King?Will not the eloquence of earthly speechFail from a height, which fancy scarce can reach?To know Creation's Monarch ever nigh,A staff in sorrow, and a friend in joy;To see Heav'n's glories visibly display'd,And all its Seraphim in light array'd;These were thy rights, O Israel, this thy boast,These the high joys, thy disobedience lost.Bear witness, Hermon, thou whose dewy sod.Has felt the footstep of a present God;And, Carmel, thou, whose gales, with incense fraught,The murmurs of a voice divine have caught;What dreams extatic o'er the vot'ry stole,How swell'd the pious transport in his soul;Ev'n now, when o'er your long-forsaken sweetsThe pilgrim lingers, in your lov'd retreats,Steal visionary forms along the vale,And more than music whispers on the gale.O had I pinions,[1] fleet as those, that bearThe dove exulting through the realms of air,Then would I visit every holy shade,Where Saints have knelt, or prophets musing stray'
  1. ↑ Psalm lv. 6.
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