Angels Poem by Martin Farquhar Tupper

Was it all false,-- that poetical dream
Of Sylphs on the zephyr and Nymphs in the stream,
Dryads and Oreads haunting each glade,
Sisters of sunshine, and brothers of shade?
Was it all folly,-- that fanciful world
Of Fairies in the flowerbells cradled and curl'd,
Elves for the prairie, and gnomes for the pit,
Frolicsome children of wisdom and wit?
Was it all ignorance, colour'd with wrong,
Heathenish myth in idolatrous song,
So to fill Nature with Spirits and Powers
From iceberg and tempest to insects and flowers?--

And yet ;-- it was truly through Angels of old
The Maker of all things Creation unroll'd:
God spake, and His biddings were zealously done;
The labourers were Angels, whose Lord was The Son;
'I said, Ye are Gods, all children of light!'
And so, at His mandate they work'd in His sight:
For, should they stand idle? nor rather rejoice
To praise with their labour, as well as their voice?
Or, must they for ever sing hymns from their thrones,
And waste all their raptures on musical tones?--
No: through Ministrations that work'd out His Mind,
Deep Mercy produced what high Wisdom design'd,
Enjoining that each in his order and sphere
Should model for Him some miracle here;
Commissioning graciously all to fulfil
Their separate fabrics of exquisite skill,
And blessing each gift for His world as it came
With a touch and a spark of His life-giving flame!

Doth God make a watch?-- Its maker he plann'd,
And order'd his mind, and fashion'd his hand:
Did God paint a butterfly's wing? or a rose?
Was His Greatness employ'd on such trifles as those?--
Ordain'd as His craftsmen, the children of bliss
Prepared in their worlds the perfections of this,--
Perfections, though humble; each work in its kind
A triumph of skill and a wonder of mind:
Were all those intelligent myriads to stand
Unfertile of head, and inactive of hand,
Profitless servants, vine-labourers unhired,
Idling by myriads because unrequired,--
When God has commanded all creatures to be
Co-workers with Him in their rank and degree?--

It may be, that patterns of things in The Mount
Were set before Great Ones to render account,
Angels, Archangels, Dominions, and Powers,
Senses and Intellects larger than ours,
Able, and glad -- at His bidding -- to plan
Nature's whole scheme,-- but the masterpiece, Man,--
King of creation, and head of the whole
Through reason, and speech, and the breath of the Soul;
And then, as the birthday of Nature drew near,
They brought forth their tributes in gladness and fear,
Shouting for joy to see the new morn,
When, just before Adam, his Eden was born:
It may be, that each had his task to fulfil,
The test of his zeal, and the proof of his skill;
It may be, that each yet watches in love
That child of his toil in the garden or grove;
It may be, that never was flower or fly
Unpraised in its life, or left coldly to die,--
But each, as it stands in its place, is still found
With its pure happy Angel to minister round;
Rejoicing, that God hath approvingly blest
And quicken'd His artizan's choicest and best;
Rejoicing, when Man, God's poor image here,
Appreciates the work with intelligence clear,
Declaring each blossom, each leaf, and each seed
The prize of some Spirit, his darling indeed,
And tracing far back from Patriarch-Time
Earth's fanciful Sylphs in those Angels sublime!

And what, if some proofs of a reprobate mind,
Some Satanite types of the poisonous kind,
Hideous, repulsive, are found now and then
In this poor trial-world for us, children of men?
On the day when God's Sons unnumbered came near
With their offerings of beauty in filial fear,
Perchance the permitted mysterious few,
Whom Lucifer-pride to perdition down drew,
Brought also some tribute, their cunning bad wares,
Their stings and their stenches, their thorns and their tares,
Their serpents and spiders, their mildew and blight,
Their bats and their toads, and their terrors by night:
Then God, bringing good out of evil, allow'd
Those treasons to mix with His loyalist crowd,--
As foils to their beauty, as bane to their balm,
As notes of wise discord in Harmony's psalm!

And more; are there not on this Lilliput earth
Some snatches of lightness, some symbols of mirth?
Some laughing grotesqueness,-- some change in the plan
Of giving grave lessons in wisdom to man,--
Some touches erratic,-- for which, in His word,
Those 'angels with folly were charged' by their Lord?--
Ay; justly remember, that ere Adam's fall
The taint of creation was fault over all;
Very good in their kind is not utterly best,
To vanity Nature is subject, though blest;
No creature is perfect,-- no spirit secure,
No Being save GODHEAD all-wise and all-pure:
The myriads on myriads who people the stars,
Bright sons of Orion and Saturn and Mars,
Fail of perfection, howe'er they have stood,
And, short of perfection, are debtors to good:
The monsters who roll'd in primordial slime,
And lived in the Chaos that heralded Time,
Cruel and fierce to destroy and devour,
Date evil and death before Eden's last hour:
And Sin crept in there, a serpent in form,
And Sin ravaged earth with the claws of the storm,
And poisoned the nettle, and stank in the fen,
And hedged up with briars the pathways of men,
On every good truth false signature stamp'd,
Beauty defaced, and sublimity cramp'd:
Ay, Sin had infected each exquisite plan
By ancient imperfectness long before man;
Long before man proud Lucifer fell,--
Long before man were Evil and Hell;
But he, through the force of a wicked free will,
Contriving the triumph of dominant ill,
Brought death to his subjects and race, then accurst,--
Though death in Sol's planets had reign'd from the first:
The mystery of mysteries is here, Death and Sin,--
Like the Holy of Holies,-- who dare enter in?
Be humble, and cast down the pride of thy mind;
There is darkness before, and darkness behind,
Clouds and thick darkness, ephemeral breath,
Be dumb to the mystery of Sin and of Death!
Yet,-- if to a guess thou canst duteously come,
In faith and in reason let this be the sum,--
All help'd at Man's world, both evil and good,
The Angels who fell, as the Angels who stood;
But the Father of Heaven pour'd peace on the strife,
By adding all virtues, and pleasures, and life,
By kind compensation for every ill,
And giving their cures to the poisons that kill.

Wo too may have each his particular Star,
With its Angel for viceroy, blazing afar;
That Angel, to cheer us and order our ways
Through duty to glory from life's barren maze,
Ministering help and deliv'rance to those
Who win their salvation through trials and woes;
That Star, whence some 'Amorite' hath been down hurl'd
Out of his heritage, out of his world,
Desolate since, till Men should arise
Redeem'd and renew'd to be kings in the skies
Of thrones that were lost by those Leaders in Sin,
That the Israel of Christ might with joy enter in!

And should not all Sciences each have its Chief,
Its Angel, its Muse -- old classic belief --
Delighting with earnest intelligent love
In scholars and lessons so taught from above?
Hath Music no Spirit? Hath Eloquence none,
Controlling and making the multitude one?
And is there no Essence, no Power, that lurks
Greater than Man's in his words and his works?
The poet, the painter, live out their short lives,
But Art is immortal, and Nature survives;
For each had been help'd in his gift or his skill
By some better Angel that work'd with his will,
Some Clio, Euterpe,-- or other sweet name,
Earth's echo perchance of more heavenly fame.

Yes; Ancient Tradition remembers the day
When God gave each Servant his sphere and his sway,
The gracious reward of some tribute received,
The sweet compensation for labour achieved:
And Spirits were drest as Humanities then,
For Eden saw Christ in the likeness of Men;
And still in their shining apparel were found
Youthful and beautiful, minist'ring round,
Legions of Angels all over this Earth
In that happy morn of its innocent birth:
But soon came the Change; the Sin, and the storm,
All beauty, all good, all grace to deform;
And so, They departed; dismay'd by the Fall,
That frightful explosion to scatter them all:--
Still, some may have linger'd.--
And now does it seem
Half truth, or all fable, that classical dream?