3809. ] Observations on the Columbiad. 521 
Close labyrinth’d here the feign’d Omniscient The youthful God; mid suppliant kings en- 
dwells, shrined, . 
Dupes from all nations seek the sacred cells 5 
Inquiring strangers, with astonish’d eyes, 
Dive deep to read these subterranean skies, 
To taste that holiness which faith bestows, 
And fear promulgates thro’ its world of woes. 
The bold Initiate takes his awful stand, 
A thin pale taper trembling in his hand ; 
Thro’ hells of howling monsters lies the road, 
To season souls and teach the ways of God. 
6* Down the crampt corridor, far sunk 
from day, , 
Cn hands and bended knees he gropes his way, 
Swims roaring streams, thro’ dens of serpents 
crawls, 
Descends deep wells, and clambers flaming 
walls ; 
Wow thwart hisJane a lake of sulphur gleams 
With fiery waves, and suffocating steams 5 
He dares not shun the ford; for full in view 
Fierce lions rush behind, and force him thro’; 
Long ladders heaved on end, with banded 
eyes 
He mounts, and mounts, and seems to gain 
the skies ; 
Then backward falling, tranced with deadly 
fright, 
Finds his own feet, and stands restored to 
light. 
Here all dread sights of terture round him 
rise 5, 
Lash’d ona wheel, a whirliag felon flies ; 
A wretch, with members chain’d and liver 
bare, 
Writhes and disturbs the vulture feasting 
there; 
One strains to ro}l his rock, recoiling still ; 
One, stretch’d recumbent o’er a limpid rill, 
Burns with devouring thirst; his starting 
eyes, 
Swell’d veins and frothy lips and piercing cries; 
Accuse the faithless eddies, as they shrink 
And keep him panting stil, still bending o’er 
the brink. 
‘€ At last Elysium to his ravisht eyes 
Spreads flowery fields, and opens go!den skies; 
Breathes Orphean music thro’ the dancing 
groves, 
Trains the gay troops of Beauties, Graces, 
Loves, 
Lures his delirious sense with sweet decoys, 
Sine fancied foretaste of eternal joys, 
Fastidious pomp or proud imperial state,— 
_ Allusions all, that pass the Ivory Gate! 
«* Various and vast the fraudful drama grows, 
Feign’d are the pleasures, as unfelt the woes 5 
Where sainted hierophants, with well-taught 
» mimes, 
Play'd first the role for all succeeding times ; 
Which, vamp’d and varied as the clime re- 
quired, 
~ More trist or splendid, open or retired, 
Forms local creeds, with multifarious lore, 
’ Creates the God, and bids the world adore. 
€¢ Lo at the Lama’s feet, as lord of all, 
’ Age following age in dumb devotion fall ; 
Dispensing fate, and ruling half mankind, 
Sits with contorted limbs, a silent slave, 
An early victim ofa secret grave 5 
His priests by myriads famish every ¢lime 
Aud sell salvation in the tones they chime. 
‘© See India’s Triad frame their blood-penn’d 
codes, 
Qld Ganges change his gardens for his gods, 
Ask his own waves from their celestiat 
hands, 
And choke his channel with their sainted _ 
sands. 
Mad with the mandates of their scriptured 
word, 
And prompt to snatch from hell her dear dead 
lord, 
The wife, still blooming, decks her sacred 
urns, 
Mounts the gay pyre, and with his body burns. 
“‘Shrined in his golden fane the Delphian 
stands, 
Shakes distant thrones, and taxes unknown 
lands. 
Kings, consuls, khans frem earth’s whole re- 
gions come, 
Pour in their wealth, and then enguire their 
doom ; 
Furious and wild the priestess rends her veil, 
Sucks, thro’ the sacred stool, the maddening 
, gale, 
Starts, reddens, foams, and screams, and mut- 
ters loud, ; 
Like a fell fiend, her oracles of God. ’ 
The dark enigma, by the pontiff scroll'd 
In broken phrase, and close in parchment 
roll’d, 
From his proud pulpit to the suppliant 
hurl’d, at 
Shall rive an empire and distract the world. 
** And where the mosque’s dim arches bend 
on high, 
Mecca’s dead prophet mounts the mimic sky ; 
Pilgrims, imbanded strong for mutual aid, 
Thro’ dangerous deserts that their faith has 
made, 
Train their long caravans, and famish’d come 
To kiss the shrine and trembling touch the 
tomb, 
By fire and sword the same fell faith extend, 
And howl their homilies to earth’s far end. 
¢¢ Phenician altars reek with human gore, 
Gods hiss from caverns, or in cagesroar, 
Nile pours from heaven a tutelary flood, 
And gardens grow the vegetable god. 
Two rival powers the magian faith inspire, 
Primeval darkness and immortal fire 5 
Evil and good in these contending rise, 
And each by turns the sovereign of the skies. 
Sun, stars, and planets, round the earth be- 
hold 
Their fanes of marble, and their shrines of 
gold; ! 
The sea, the grove, the harvest, and the vine 
Spring from their gods, and claim a birth di- 
vine j 
While 
