Rapture

“ To have known of all raptures, the rapture supernal, divine,
To have felt the throb of your heart on my heart and the bloom of your lips pressed to mine;
[Pg 14] To have ranked with the gods on Olympus—myths tell us immortal Jove
Cleft with his swan-wings the blue of the sky for boon of a mortal's love....
I have lived, I have loved, I have triumphed! Let Death come, or early or late!
I hurl my challenging gauntlet full in the face of Fate! ”

“ The rapture of yesterday was intensified tenfold to-day, because she felt it throbbing anew in this frail body beside her, in which Nature had imprisoned a soul as full of longings as her own, but not so full of power. ”

“ Now he understood as he had never done before what the poet-philosopher meant by "the celestial rapture falling out of heaven";—for that rapture fell upon him and caught him up in a cloud of glory, with all the suddenness and fervour which must ever attend the true birth of the divine passion in strong and tender natures. The calculating sensualist can never comprehend this swiftly exalted emotion, this immediate radiation of light through all life, which is like the sun breaking through clouds on a dark day. ”

“ It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer, swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and sores! ”

“ While under its spell, you seem to float in the air, to touch the wings of the angels, to be yourself part of the heavenly sphere you aspire to attain. Rapture itself is a mean enough word to define your emotions. And then you come back to earth with a sense of unspeakable deception and surprise. You feel hungry, and loathe yourself for the vulgar need. ”

“ The rapture which arises from even the smallest, sure, and definite step in advance into insight, and which our present state of science yields to so many in such abundance—this rapture is in the meantime not believed in by all those who are in the habit of feeling enraptured only when they leave reality altogether and plunge into the depths of vague appearance—romanticism. ”

“ As the reader may imagine, we all gazed anxiously enough in the direction indicated by the old seaman, and a swell of rapture rose in the breasts of all when something in the form of a headland or bluff could be distinctly seen right ahead, bearing due west, about seven miles distant, standing out from the bank of vapor, or looming like a darker shadow within it. ”

“ Where the singing of birds is a ceaseless chime,
That leap o’ the blood, and the rapture thrill,
That comes to us here, with the first bird’s trill;
And only the eye that has looked on snows
Can see the beauty that lies in a rose. ”

“ The dusk of many a cloudlike age and clime.
No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought,
No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought
That blooms in wisdom, nought that burns in crime,
No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light,
No love more lovely than the snows are white,
No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb,
No song-bird singing from some live soul's height,
But he might hear, interpret, or illume
With sense invasive as the dawn of doom. ”

“ And all night long a passionate music stirs
Without her walls the guardian belt of firs;
Hushed in their waving boughs, the low winds brood,
Murm'ring the sea's song for an interlude.
Within the darkness does my lady wake,
To hear her nightingales their music make,
And musing, Weep and wonder at the pain
That breaks through all the rapture of their strain?
Does the dawn rouse her with its murmurous flight
Of swallows glancing grey against the light,
To dream again of all the joys that lie
Folded within the new day's mystery? ”

“ Now man denotes something composed of soul and body; and rapture differs from death. Seemingly therefore he knew that his soul was not separated from his body by death, which is the more probable seeing that this is the common opinion of the Doctors. ”

“ So I stood while the pool gleamed and sparkled; the streams of light grew more intense and the mist glowed and strengthened. I saw that its shining core had shape—but a shape that my eyes and brain could not define. It was as though a being of another sphere should assume what it might of human semblance, but was not able to conceal that what human eyes saw was but a part of it. It was neither man nor woman; it was unearthly and androgynous. Even as I found its human semblance it changed. And still the mingled rapture and terror held me. ”

“ Rapture's self is three parts sorrow. ”

“ And was it here the fallen angels found their hell?
See! see! the molten tides that sink, and rise, and swell,
And the volcanic bursts that leap frightfully away,
Lighting up the far phantom voids intense as day.
O Time! let’s flee away from this maddening sight,
And by more mildly lighted planets take our flight.
Gliding swift onward over soundless, unknown seas,
What stupendous voids the mind in its terror sees!
O shoreless, frightful, endless, vast infinitude!
And by dread amaze unspeakable pursued;
We flit by the way where ’tis neither night nor day,
Amid a deep eternal silence ”

“ The fall it will be his; and though I strive and strain, One blow will close my eyes, and I shall never waken.
THE SEA-REAPERS When the Four Winds, the Wrestlers, strive with the Sun, When the Sun is slain in the dark; When the stars burn out, and the night cries To the blind sea-reapers, and they rise, And the water-ways are stark— God save us when the reapers reap! When the ships sweep in with the tide to the shore, And the little white boats return no more ”

“ That vapor may become a dense, black smoke, that will obscure the sky. You see the trickling of lava from the crevices in the side of the mountain. That trickling of lava may become a river of fire. You hear that muttering in the bowels of the mountain. That muttering may become a bellowing thunder, the voice of violent convulsion, that may shake half a continent. You know that at your feet is the grave of great cities, for which there is no resurrection, as histories tell us that dynasties and aristocracies have passed away, and their names have been known no more forever. ”

“ And during those not improbable periods when oceans were emptied and dried up, amid the heaving up and burying of rocks and mountains,—when volcanoes reddened the dark midnights of the world, when "the earth was without form, and void,"—what mind can picture aught but His Spirit "moving upon the face of the waters,"—what mortal eye could have looked upon the rocking and reeling of those chaotic ruins when their rude forms first heaved up into the light? ”

“ He describes the order of events as follows:
"I beheld when He had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Rev. 6:12, 13.
In these scriptures four great signs of Christ's approaching advent are listed for our study, as follows:
1. The great earthquake.
2. The darkening of the sun and moon. ”

“ There fell nor lantern-flame nor lightning-gleam,
Nor gleam of moon or meteor; the wind
Withdrawn as in some sighing tomb, declined,
And all the dust was fallen; the waters drear
Lay still as blood of corpses. ”

“ Earthquakes gape and open wide; When a nightmare makes him snore, All the dead volcanoes roar.
In the space between each toe, Kingdoms rise and saviours go; Epochs fall and causes die In the lifting of his eye. ”

“ There toil the demons of fire, who, at intervals, irradiate the nights with a strange spectral illumination for miles and miles around, but unaccompanied by any further demonstration, or else suddenly announce themselves by terrific concussions and the full drama of a volcanic eruption. ”

“ Rising clouds of vapor conceal the exact limits of the invasion, and points of contact, but the coarse rumble, the intermittent gushes of water upward, the far away reverberations of the earth’s opening crust, and the quivering pulsations that shake the table rock on which our spectators are standing, announce the new geological chapter in the world’s making, the last catastrophe before the earth lies quiet and smiling at the feet of men. ”

“ As there are waters under the earth, so Ætna, Vesuvius, and other volcanoes, proclaim to the world that there are subterraneous fires too; and fire often falls from heaven, many desolations are made by lightning; so that, when the time predetermined comes, between these two fires the earth and all the works therein shall be burnt up, as the flood was brought upon the old world out of the fountains of the great deep and through the windows of heaven. ”

“ And then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky, the thunder and lightning wove a garment round the world; all over the earth was such a downpour of rain as men had never before seen, and where the volcanoes flared red against the cloud canopy there descended torrents of mud. ”

“ The crash of the thunderbolt, the bellowing of the volcano, the awful groaning of the earthquake, the roar of the hurricane, the reverberating peals of loudest thunder, any of these, or all combined, are as nothing compared with the tumult raging over every square mile, every square yard, of the surface of each one among the stars. ”

“ There were earthquakes in divers places, shaking down city after city in Asia Minor, and volcanic phenomena, and irruptions of the sea, and rains of meteors as though the stars fell from heaven, and comets, and eclipses, and monstrous births—which all afflicted the guilty conscience of Paganism as signs of the anger of the gods at the degree of wickedness at which it had arrived. ”

“ It grew louder and louder until it seemed the heavens were rent in twain, and the ground reeled and tottered beneath our feet. We fell prostrate to the earth, and held our breath, through fear. A thick cloud of vapor, or hot steam, swept over us, followed by the pattering sound of falling stones hurled from the crater by the power of her convulsive throes, but returning to the earth in obedience to the law of gravity. ”

“ Then the uproar, the thunders, and the earthquake that were heard and felt were such and so vast, as to make it appear as if the whole world were falling to pieces, •while the mass of the building itself, with all its mouths of fire, presented the aspect of a great volcano, or rather of a very hell. ”

“ On alien seraphim that seek with desperate wings,
Flown from their dying orb, the confines of thy heaven;
Yea, still thy whisper moves, and magically stirs
To life the shapeless dust in shattered sepulchers ”

“ A violent earthquake, with eruptions from volcanic mountains, and the sinking of land into the sea, would evidently produce such a scene as this. We know that at one period in the earth's history, such scenes must have been of frequent occurrence. The science of geology demonstrates this fact to us. Local deluges were of frequent occurrence, and that some persons may have been saved on one, or perhaps many, such occasions, by means of a raft or boat, and that they may have sought refuge on an eminence, or mountain, does not seem at all improbable. ”

“ It is a strange exhibition of nature’s power and freakishness, a manifestation of mysterious force, a blending of results precipitated by vomiting volcano and an irresistible flood of waters, the joining of rivers of fire with streams breaking over the barriers of mountains and pouring down upon the plains. ”

“ From this circumstance we judged that the eruption was accompanied by an earthquake of no ordinary character.
Imagine to yourselves a lofty mountain-peak, surrounded by many others of lesser hight and magnitude, piled around, with their clothing of dark and somber trees. Then fancy this central peak to become an instrument for flooding the world with the original fire, and you may have some faint conception of the grandeur of the scene we witnessed. ”

“ The flood, the tornado, the volcano, were all evidences of the displeasure of heaven, and the sinfulness of man. The blight that withered, the frost that blackened, the earthquake that devoured, were the messengers of the Creator. ”

“ Thus, when primeval man first felt, saw or heard such natural phenomena as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, the aurora borealis, thunder, lightning, meteors, and eclipses, it was quite natural for him to people the hidden recesses of the earth and of space with demons, and to imagine that these strange noises and sights were manifestations of some powerful enemy. ”

“ The overflow of a river, the eruption of a volcano or the devastation of a storm arouse admiration even while they inspire terror and awaken awe. But it is the purely human force, with its infinite variety, which charms while it enthralls. ”

“ Their high aerial flight the Cranes suspend,
And to the earth in broken ranks descend.
When the dull fire emits no cheerful rays—
With lustre dimm'd the languid torches blaze,
And the light cobwebs float along the air ”

“ Around this column of vapour the most vivid lightning constantly plays and adds not a little to the grand and awful character of the spectacle of a volcanic eruption, especially when it is viewed by night. ”

“ Millions of years ago this had been a flame-spewing range of volcanoes erupting rocks and lava over the changing face of the young Earth. The world then was semi plastic and undergoing the birth-pangs of a new age. ”