Epic of The Starry Heaven 1855 Thomas Lake Harris

I had tended to ignore this work Until I spent time working through three years of Samuel Byron Brittans Spiritual Telegraph part of 1853 to 1856.

Harris did not just do the trance poetry but he was a thinker and writer on Spiritualism

Here is the intro, there will be flaws cutting from a pdf of an 1855 book to text on this site
PREFACE.
FROM THE LYRICJ
SEVEN great diversities of human genius enter into the composition of
the votary of High Art : the Sacerdotal, the Mathematical, the Synthetic,
the Analytical, the Poetical, the Inductive, and the Intuitive. The production
of artistic chef-d'oeuvres depends upon the happy combination
and seven-fold harmony of these distinctive elements.
There is, at the present time, a grand refining process operative from
the Heaven of Spirits, and quickening as well as purifying the natural
ultimates of human organizations. Organisms, by means of the operation
of this refining process, are being prepared to serve as artistic instruments
through whom the sacerdotal, the mathematical, the poetic, the synthetic,
the analytical, the inductive, and the intuitive revelations, combinations,
and productions of Divine Harmony shall be communicated from the World
of Causes, which is Spiritual, and gloriously made manifest among men in
the World of Effects, which is the Natural or External Earth.
The medium through whom the work of which this is the preface, is
given, though still in an exceedingly feeble condition, is inborn into the
Spirit-World, by means of which birth he is enabled to occupy a mediatorial
position between the world of causes and the world of ultimates. And
because his interiors are of a sacerdotal character, he is permitted to be
impressed from Societies of Hierophants who discharge the priestly function
in the Heaven of Spirits. And because in his interiors he takes delight
in celestial mathematics, he is permitted to receive impressions from
Societies of Spirit Men who meditate deeply upon the science of forms,
number, degrees, and their correlatives, though externally his knowledge
of mathematics is limited. And because of poetic genius of an interior
character, which he has externally cultivated to some degree, relations
are established between his mind and the children of immortal
song, who are known as Lyric Angels.
The work which this statement is designed to preface originated in the
interior. It is given through the agency of a circle of Mediaeval Spirits
who inhabit a classic domain in no ultimate dependency of the Heaven
of Spirits, which corresjMmds in many of its features to lower Italy.
It is their delight, in that serene realm, to weave Epic Poems, which,
while they are divinely true in the internals of thought, are externally
beautified with the embellishments of melody, and thus resemble the
virgin daughters of the sky, whose spiritual forms are garmented with
the robe of light, whose abundant tresses exhale the very fragrance of
Klylium, and whose brows arc crowned with undying flowers.
It waa permitted to a spirit greatly beloved among the inhabitants of
that ethereal abode to induct the medium into rapport with the general
uphere of their society, which sphere is extended into all the lovely regions
visited by the inmost spirit of the medium, and shadowed in the
Poem. Permission being obtained from Superior Authority, the various
forma of wisdom and beauty which the Poem describes were imaged,
from their varied localities, upon the sensorium. by the process of transition
and visitation, and the organ of language quickened an I made use
of for the harmonic reproduction of these forms of truth and loveliness
In the external dialect of earth. This Poem, however, is a production
adapted to the spiritual childhood of the medium : and when his interior
faculties shall have been more highly vitalised and more luminously expanded,
is designed as an instrument for the production of works of a nature more correspondingly exalted
Breathe Gently Reader ; attune thy heart to pure and loving thoughts
while perusing this spiritual utterance, for thus alone the interior life,
which is the living soul, shall find entrance into thine own interior.

PREPARATORY VISION.
THE inspirations of my youth return
Love, Wisdom, Beauty, Joy, and Liberty
The ashes of my life, requickened, burn ;
Gloom, sickness, years depart. My soul is free
The great procession of the Wise Departed,
In solemn vision glorifies my sight.
Though all who live were old and broken-hearted,
Youth, Love, and Hope would change their hoary night
To freshest morn, with sun-illumined brow.
Could they behold and live, as I do now.
Oh, Earth ! oh, Time ! oh, Man and Woman! ye
Shall from your wintry dying freshly rise.
Death's hungry heart, that like the moaning sea
The freight of shipwrecked life with food supplies,
18 PROEM.
Cries from its hhollow depths,
" No more, no more."
Death sits, calm browed, upon the snow-white shore
In love with Immortality, whose breast
Pillows its form to its eternal rest.
Now Death is pillowed on the lap of Life,
And dies in happy dreams. There is no Deep,
Hungry and dark, with agonizing strife,
To swallow up Love's argosy, and sweep
All the great Past into its sunless caves.
God smites the tomb, and saith,
" Ye hollow graves
So still and secret, ope your lips and tell
The Nations that My children do not dwell,
Nor fade, nor crumble in your drear abyss,
But share the vast dominions of My bliss."
God's heavens to earth have spoken. In the glow
Of the New Era's dawning it is sweet
To wake and see dull Night from Nature go.
The cycle of the ages shines complete.
Man came from God ; he goes to Him again.
From Him came down to Him aspires the flame
The friendly Angels ope Love's Eden door ;
Man enters in departs not ever more.
The seers and saints of all the centuries past
Have set their seal unto the sacred page
19
That images sweet peace and promise vast
Heaven's beauty, and the new, delivering Age.
Hark, music sweet ! from yon immortal train ;
They sing
" We hoped, loved, labored, not in vain."
The rocky Patmos where I dwell recedes
The outward fades. Lo, in immortal trance
I spring to light. A mighty Angel reads
My heart, mind, gladness, wonder, at a glance
"
Fulfilled, O Son, thy trial hour," he says.
Upon my soul the immortal light-beam plays.
Into the Heaven of Spirits I am led ;
On mountain summits they are throned apart.
The Empires of the Free are widely spread,
Temple, shrine, palace, angel-peopled mart,
Where glorious thoughts and mighty deeds are made
Sky, landscape, city, music, splendor, shade ;
Where the heart's inner loves, in form outrolled,
Shine amber skies and atmospheres of gold.
All life to love in light and rapture tends ;
All thought on chariot-wheels of glory runs ;
All sorrows, like the rays of setting suns,
Are made celestial splendors. Far extends
The pure domain. Love blends in this bright sphere
Hope's longed Hereafter, with her Now and Here.
Here kindred souls who dwelt on earth apart
20
Blend in the sweet embraces of the heart.
On the calm shore the happy dwellers throng,
Greeting each distant bark with sweetest song ;
Homeward they fly, by the swift life-winds driven,
And furl white sails upon the shores of heaven.
The gradual dawn of day upon the earth
Is wonderful, when from the royal east,
Attired in Tyrian robea, the sun comes forth,
Led by the stars to his Assyrian feast.
My soul is like that day-dawn like that sun
Outrolled into a golden orb of light.
I see heaven's vast ecliptic round me run,
From its own motion made intensely bright,
Encircling, with triune Saturnian zone,
God's inner sphere, perfect, supreme, aloneI had tended to ignore this work Until I spent time working through three years of Samuel Byron Brittans Spiritual Telegraph part of 1853 to 1856.

Harris did not just do the trance poetry but he was a thinker and writer on Spiritualism

Here is the intro, there will be flaws cutting from a pdf of an 1855 book to text on this site
PREFACE.
FROM THE LYRICJ
SEVEN great diversities of human genius enter into the composition of
the votary of High Art : the Sacerdotal, the Mathematical, the Synthetic,
the Analytical, the Poetical, the Inductive, and the Intuitive. The production
of artistic chef-d'oeuvres depends upon the happy combination
and seven-fold harmony of these distinctive elements.
There is, at the present time, a grand refining process operative from
the Heaven of Spirits, and quickening as well as purifying the natural
ultimates of human organizations. Organisms, by means of the operation
of this refining process, are being prepared to serve as artistic instruments
through whom the sacerdotal, the mathematical, the poetic, the synthetic,
the analytical, the inductive, and the intuitive revelations, combinations,
and productions of Divine Harmony shall be communicated from the World
of Causes, which is Spiritual, and gloriously made manifest among men in
the World of Effects, which is the Natural or External Earth.
The medium through whom the work of which this is the preface, is
given, though still in an exceedingly feeble condition, is inborn into the
Spirit-World, by means of which birth he is enabled to occupy a mediatorial
position between the world of causes and the world of ultimates. And
because his interiors are of a sacerdotal character, he is permitted to be
impressed from Societies of Hierophants who discharge the priestly function
in the Heaven of Spirits. And because in his interiors he takes delight
in celestial mathematics, he is permitted to receive impressions from
Societies of Spirit Men who meditate deeply upon the science of forms,
number, degrees, and their correlatives, though externally his knowledge
of mathematics is limited. And because of poetic genius of an interior
character, which he has externally cultivated to some degree, relations
are established between his mind and the children of immortal
song, who are known as Lyric Angels.
The work which this statement is designed to preface originated in the
interior. It is given through the agency of a circle of Mediaeval Spirits
who inhabit a classic domain in no ultimate dependency of the Heaven
of Spirits, which corresjMmds in many of its features to lower Italy.
It is their delight, in that serene realm, to weave Epic Poems, which,
while they are divinely true in the internals of thought, are externally
beautified with the embellishments of melody, and thus resemble the
virgin daughters of the sky, whose spiritual forms are garmented with
the robe of light, whose abundant tresses exhale the very fragrance of
Klylium, and whose brows arc crowned with undying flowers.
It waa permitted to a spirit greatly beloved among the inhabitants of
that ethereal abode to induct the medium into rapport with the general
uphere of their society, which sphere is extended into all the lovely regions
visited by the inmost spirit of the medium, and shadowed in the
Poem. Permission being obtained from Superior Authority, the various
forma of wisdom and beauty which the Poem describes were imaged,
from their varied localities, upon the sensorium. by the process of transition
and visitation, and the organ of language quickened an I made use
of for the harmonic reproduction of these forms of truth and loveliness
In the external dialect of earth. This Poem, however, is a production
adapted to the spiritual childhood of the medium : and when his interior
faculties shall have been more highly vitalised and more luminously expanded,
is designed as an instrument for the production of works of a nature more correspondingly exalted
Breathe Gently Reader ; attune thy heart to pure and loving thoughts
while perusing this spiritual utterance, for thus alone the interior life,
which is the living soul, shall find entrance into thine own interior.

PREPARATORY VISION.
THE inspirations of my youth return
Love, Wisdom, Beauty, Joy, and Liberty
The ashes of my life, requickened, burn ;
Gloom, sickness, years depart. My soul is free
The great procession of the Wise Departed,
In solemn vision glorifies my sight.
Though all who live were old and broken-hearted,
Youth, Love, and Hope would change their hoary night
To freshest morn, with sun-illumined brow.
Could they behold and live, as I do now.
Oh, Earth ! oh, Time ! oh, Man and Woman! ye
Shall from your wintry dying freshly rise.
Death's hungry heart, that like the moaning sea
The freight of shipwrecked life with food supplies,
18 PROEM.
Cries from its hhollow depths,
" No more, no more."
Death sits, calm browed, upon the snow-white shore
In love with Immortality, whose breast
Pillows its form to its eternal rest.
Now Death is pillowed on the lap of Life,
And dies in happy dreams. There is no Deep,
Hungry and dark, with agonizing strife,
To swallow up Love's argosy, and sweep
All the great Past into its sunless caves.
God smites the tomb, and saith,
" Ye hollow graves
So still and secret, ope your lips and tell
The Nations that My children do not dwell,
Nor fade, nor crumble in your drear abyss,
But share the vast dominions of My bliss."
God's heavens to earth have spoken. In the glow
Of the New Era's dawning it is sweet
To wake and see dull Night from Nature go.
The cycle of the ages shines complete.
Man came from God ; he goes to Him again.
From Him came down to Him aspires the flame
The friendly Angels ope Love's Eden door ;
Man enters in departs not ever more.
The seers and saints of all the centuries past
Have set their seal unto the sacred page
19
That images sweet peace and promise vast
Heaven's beauty, and the new, delivering Age.
Hark, music sweet ! from yon immortal train ;
They sing
" We hoped, loved, labored, not in vain."
The rocky Patmos where I dwell recedes
The outward fades. Lo, in immortal trance
I spring to light. A mighty Angel reads
My heart, mind, gladness, wonder, at a glance
"
Fulfilled, O Son, thy trial hour," he says.
Upon my soul the immortal light-beam plays.
Into the Heaven of Spirits I am led ;
On mountain summits they are throned apart.
The Empires of the Free are widely spread,
Temple, shrine, palace, angel-peopled mart,
Where glorious thoughts and mighty deeds are made
Sky, landscape, city, music, splendor, shade ;
Where the heart's inner loves, in form outrolled,
Shine amber skies and atmospheres of gold.
All life to love in light and rapture tends ;
All thought on chariot-wheels of glory runs ;
All sorrows, like the rays of setting suns,
Are made celestial splendors. Far extends
The pure domain. Love blends in this bright sphere
Hope's longed Hereafter, with her Now and Here.
Here kindred souls who dwelt on earth apart
20
Blend in the sweet embraces of the heart.
On the calm shore the happy dwellers throng,
Greeting each distant bark with sweetest song ;
Homeward they fly, by the swift life-winds driven,
And furl white sails upon the shores of heaven.
The gradual dawn of day upon the earth
Is wonderful, when from the royal east,
Attired in Tyrian robea, the sun comes forth,
Led by the stars to his Assyrian feast.
My soul is like that day-dawn like that sun
Outrolled into a golden orb of light.
I see heaven's vast ecliptic round me run,
From its own motion made intensely bright,
Encircling, with triune Saturnian zone,
God's inner sphere, perfect, supreme, aloneHere let me gather thoughts, as heaven for aye
Ingathers all the stars into its day ;
And let me form from out their sphere sublime
A glorious Poem, fragrant, pure, divine
An Epic of the Stars. Be this my theme.
Favor my soul's desire, O, Lord supreme !
Give me to breathe a charm, of love so full,
That Earth shall from it drink the Beautiful,
As angels rapture from Thy infinite
Sweet melody of love and love's delight,
21
And wake to joy, as might a widowed bride,
Who, startling, finds the lost one by her side ;
Immortal life, love, rapture to her eyes
A Bridegroom sun-descended from the skies '

Then the main act, whatever I may think this is an epic piece from the early days.
EPIC OF THE STARRY HEAVEN.
SCENES. Earth; the Seventh Spiritual Sphere of Earth, and the
Electrical Ocean of the Solar System between Earth and Mars
I AM not used to muse upon my ills,
Though often troubles on my spirit lie
Chill as December snows, obscuring all the sky.
A softened splendor fills
My mind in darkest hours, and in my breast
Peace Avhispers,
" Come what may, thy lot is blest
"
Beyond the common fate of man below ;
The tides of Heaven's great purpose in thee flow.
Yet sometimes all my spirit groweth dark,
And cold, and desolate. Upon me fall
Interior pains. My bosom is the mark
Death aims at. Mournful voices to me call
24 ANEPICOFTHE
For strength, love, pity, guidance, and relief,
As the wild winds call to the autumn leaf,
And I, alas ! am poor and weak as they.
Thus it befell me this bleak Autumn day.
Dark seemed my lonely way,
And like the dying year
I saw my life in sorrow disappear.
Like a swift arrow shot toward the sun,
But curving downward from its golden height,
And falling low in ignominious flight,
My upward way seemed closed, my life undone ,
I thought of mighty spirits in their prime
Crushed by mankind into disastrous graves ;
Of gentle goodness trodden down by crime,
And Spiritual Freemen gyved as slaves.
I saw in vision vast,
The moldering tombs of the forgotten past.
Earth seemed a burning wreck.
Rocking upon a serpent-swarming sea,
Despairing nations crowding on her deck,
Between the wo that is and wo that is to be.
" And what," I said,
" is being but a Sorrow
Waxing and waning through an endless night,
Pursuing Joy as night pursues the morrow,
Haunted from heaven by Love's unknown Delight,
8TARRYHEAVEN. 25
Which it, with wearied hope, forever seeks,
And finds not on the heights or in the deeps.
There came a Spirit from the World of Souls,
Like sunrise flashing o'er a wintry sea,
And I looked upward from my agony
As a pale Martyr from the burning coals,
And said,
"
Bright visitant, too late, too late !
Leave me, I pray thee, leave me to my fate."
I wrapped my face and turned mine eyes away.
"
Oh, haunt me not," I cried,
" for why should Day
Mock Night from heaven with calm, triumphant smile,
When the poor Night grows wan and dies the while."
"
I can not leave thee, brother, in thy wo,"
The angel answered ;
" while I lived below
My life, like thine, seemed all a dreary waste ;
The cup I drank was bitter to my taste.
Now I am risen. Wake, aspire, ascend !
Great shadows all great images attend.
Mountains, whose peaks in heavenly sunshine glow,
Cast equal shades upon the plain below.
Within the shadow of thy own high fate
Why sit forlorn ? celestial friends await.
Rise ! clothe thyself with gladness !" As he spoke
A splendor from the zenith o'er me broke.