Poems | Page 2

the hallowed
flame.
IV.
But oh, despair not of their fate who rise
To dwell upon the earth
when we withdraw!
Lo! the same shaft by which the righteous dies,

Strikes through the wretch that scoffed at mercy's law,
And trode
his brethren down, and felt no awe
Of Him who will avenge them.
Stainless worth,
Such as the sternest age of virtue saw,
Ripens,
meanwhile, till time shall call it forth
From the low modest shade, to
light and bless the earth.
V.
Has Nature, in her calm, majestic march
Faltered with age at last?
does the bright sun
Grow dim in heaven? or, in their far blue arch,

Sparkle the crowd of stars, when day is done,
Less brightly? when the
dew-lipped Spring comes on,
Breathes she with airs less soft, or
scents the sky
With flowers less fair than when her reign begun?

Does prodigal Autumn, to our age, deny
The plenty that once swelled
beneath his sober eye?
VI.
Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth
In her fair page; see,
every season brings
New change, to her, of everlasting youth;
Still
the green soil, with joyous living things,
Swarms, the wide air is full
of joyous wings,
And myriads, still, are happy in the sleep
Of
ocean's azure gulfs, and where he flings
The restless surge. Eternal
Love doth keep
In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep.
VII.

Will then the merciful One, who stamped our race
With his own
image, and who gave them sway
O'er earth, and the glad dwellers on
her face,
Now that our swarming nations far away
Are spread,
where'er the moist earth drinks the day,
Forget the ancient care that
taught and nursed
His latest offspring? will he quench the ray

Infused by his own forming smile at first,
And leave a work so fair all
blighted and accursed?
VIII.
Oh, no! a thousand cheerful omens give
Hope of yet happier days,
whose dawn is nigh.
He who has tamed the elements, shall not live

The slave of his own passions; he whose eye
Unwinds the eternal
dances of the sky,
And in the abyss of brightness dares to span
The
sun's broad circle, rising yet more high,
In God's magnificent works
his will shall scan--
And love and peace shall make their paradise
with man.
IX.
Sit at the feet of history--through the night
Of years the steps of virtue
she shall trace,
And show the earlier ages, where her sight
Can
pierce the eternal shadows o'er their face;--
When, from the genial
cradle of our race,
Went forth the tribes of men, their pleasant lot

To choose, where palm-groves cooled their dwelling-place, Or
freshening rivers ran; and there forgot
The truth of heaven, and
kneeled to gods that heard them not.
X.
Then waited not the murderer for the night,
But smote his brother
down in the bright day,
And he who felt the wrong, and had the might,

His own avenger, girt himself to slay;
Beside the path the unburied
carcass lay;
The shepherd, by the fountains of the glen,
Fled, while
the robber swept his flock away,
And slew his babes. The sick,

untended then,
Languished in the damp shade, and died afar from
men.
XI.
But misery brought in love--in passion's strife
Man gave his heart to
mercy, pleading long,
And sought out gentle deeds to gladden life;

The weak, against the sons of spoil and wrong,
Banded, and watched
their hamlets, and grew strong.
States rose, and, in the shadow of
their might,
The timid rested. To the reverent throng,
Grave and
time-wrinkled men, with locks all white,
Gave laws, and judged their
strifes, and taught the way of right;
XII.
Till bolder spirits seized the rule, and nailed
On men the yoke that
man should never bear,
And drove them forth to battle. Lo! unveiled

The scene of those stern ages! What is there!
A boundless sea of
blood, and the wild air
Moans with the crimson surges that entomb

Cities and bannered armies; forms that wear
The kingly circlet rise,
amid the gloom,
O'er the dark wave, and straight are swallowed in its
womb.
XIII.
Those ages have no memory--but they left
A record in the
desert--columns strown
On the waste sands, and statues fallen and
cleft,
Heaped like a host in battle overthrown;
Vast ruins, where the
mountain's ribs of stone
Were hewn into a city; streets that spread

In the dark earth, where never breath has blown
Of heaven's sweet air,
nor foot of man dares tread
The long and perilous ways--the Cities of
the Dead:
XIV.
And tombs of monarchs to the clouds up-piled--
They perished--but

the eternal tombs remain--
And the black precipice, abrupt and wild,

Pierced by long toil and hollowed to a fane;--
Huge piers and
frowning forms of gods sustain
The everlasting arches, dark and wide,

Like the night-heaven, when clouds are black with rain.
But idly
skill was tasked, and strength was plied,
All was the work of slaves to
swell a despot's pride.
XV.
And Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign
O'er those who cower
to take a tyrant's yoke;
She left the down-trod nations in disdain,

And flew to Greece, when Liberty awoke,
New-born, amid those
glorious vales, and broke
Sceptre and chain with her fair youthful
hands:
As rocks are