Before the Curfew | Page 7

climbs the reddening skies,

Thence where the watch-towers of Macistus rise.
The sentries of
Mesapius in their turn
Bid the dry heath in high piled masses burn,

Cithoeron's crag the crimson billows stain,
Far AEgiplanctus joins the

fiery train.
Thus the swift courier through the pathless night
Has
gained at length the Arachnoean height,
Whence the glad tidings,
borne on wings offlame,
"Ilium has fallen!" reach the royal dame.
So ends the day; before the midnight stroke
The lights expiring cloud
the air with smoke;
While these the toil of younger hands employ,

The slumbering Grecian dreams of smouldering Troy.
As to that hour with backward steps I turn,
Midway I pause; behold a
funeral urn!
Ah, sad memorial! known but all too well
The tale
which thus its golden letters tell:
This dust, once breathing, changed its joyous life
For toil and hunger,
wounds and mortal strife;
Love, friendship, learning's all prevailing
charms,
For the cold bivouac and the clash of arms.
The cause of
freedom won, a race enslaved
Called back to manhood, and a nation
saved,
These sons of Harvard, falling ere their prime,
Leave their
proud memory to the coming time.
While in their still retreats our scholars turn
The mildewed pages of
the past, to learn
With endless labor of the sleepless brain
What
once has been and ne'er shall be again,
We reap the harvest of their
ceaseless toil
And find a fragrance in their midnight oil.
But let a
purblind mortal dare the task
The embryo future of itself to ask,

The world reminds him, with a scornful laugh,
That times have
changed since Prospero broke his staff.
Could all the wisdom of the
schools foretell
The dismal hour when Lisbon shook and fell,
Or
name the shuddering night that toppled down
Our sister's pride,
beneath whose mural crown
Scarce had the scowl forgot its angry
lines,
When earth's blind prisoners fired their fatal mines?
New realms, new worlds, exulting Science claims,
Still the dim future
unexplored remains;
Her trembling scales the far-off planet weigh,

Her torturing prisms its elements betray,--
We know what ores the

fires of Sirius melt,
What vaporous metals gild Orion's belt;
Angels,
archangels, may have yet to learn
Those hidden truths our
heaven-taught eyes discern;
Yet vain is Knowledge, with her mystic
wand,
To pierce the cloudy screen and read beyond;
Once to the
silent stars the fates were known,
To us they tell no secrets but their
own.
At Israel's altar still we humbly bow,
But where, oh where, are
Israel's prophets now?
Where is the sibyl with her hoarded leaves?

Where is the charm the weird enchantress weaves?
No croaking raven
turns the auspex pale,
No reeking altars tell the morrow's tale;
The
measured footsteps of the Fates are dumb,
Unseen, unheard,
unheralded, they come,
Prophet and priest and all their following fail.

Who then is left to rend the future's veil?
Who but the poet, he
whose nicer sense
No film can baffle with its slight defence,
Whose
finer vision marks the waves that stray,
Felt, but unseen, beyond the
violet ray?--
Who, while the storm-wind waits its darkening shroud,

Foretells the tempest ere he sees the cloud,--
Stays not for time his
secrets to reveal,
But reads his message ere he breaks the seal.
So
Mantua's bard foretold the coming day
Ere Bethlehem's infant in the
manger lay;
The promise trusted to a mortal tongue
Found listening
ears before the angels sung.
So while his load the creeping pack-horse
galled,
While inch by inch the dull canal-boat crawled,
Darwin
beheld a Titan from "afar
Drag the slow barge or drive the rapid car,"

That panting giant fed by air and flame,
The mightiest forges task
their strength to tame.
Happy the poet! him no tyrant fact
Holds in its clutches to be chained
and racked;
Him shall no mouldy document convict,
No stern
statistics gravely contradict;
No rival sceptre threats his airy throne;


He rules o'er shadows, but he reigns alone.
Shall I the poet's broad
dominion claim
Because you bid me wear his sacred name
For
these few moments? Shall I boldly clash
My flint and steel, and by

the sudden flash
Read the fair vision which my soul descries

Through the wide pupils of its wondering eyes?
List then awhile; the
fifty years have sped;
The third full century's opened scroll is spread,

Blank to all eyes save his who dimly sees
The shadowy future told
in words like these
How strange the prospect to my sight appears,
Changed by the busy
hands of fifty years!
Full well I know our ocean-salted Charles,

Filling and emptying through the sands and marls
That wall his
restless stream on either bank,
Not all unlovely when the sedges rank

Lend their coarse veil the sable ooze to hide
That bares its
blackness with the ebbing tide.
In other shapes to my illumined eyes

Those ragged margins of our stream arise
Through walls of stone
the sparkling waters flow,
In clearer depths the golden sunsets glow,

On purer waves the lamps of midnight gleam,
That silver o'er the
unpolluted stream.
Along his shores what stately temples rise,
What
spires, what turrets, print the shadowed skies!
Our smiling Mother
sees her broad domain
Spread its tall roofs along the western plain;

Those blazoned windows' blushing glories tell
Of grateful hearts that
loved her long and well;
Yon gilded dome that glitters in the sun

Was Dives' gift,--alas, his only one!
These buttressed