Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound From time's light footfall, the minutest wave That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing The unsubstantial bubble. Aye! to-day Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze That flashes desolation, strong the arm That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes! That mandate is a thunder peal that died In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash
On which the midnight closed, and on that arm The worm has made his meal.
Who, great in his humility, as kings Are little in their grandeur; he who leads Invincibly a life of resolute good,
And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths More free and fearless than the trembling judge, Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove To bind the impassive spirit;-when he falls, His mild eye beams benevolence no more; Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve; Sunk reason's simple eloquence that rolled But to appal the guilty. Yes! the grave Hath quenched that eye, and death's relentless frost Withered that arm: but the unfading fame Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb; The deathless memory of that man, whom kings Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance With which the happy spirit contemplates Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth,
Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject not the citizen: for kings And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.
High over flaming Rome, with savage joy Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld The frightful desolation spread, and felt A new created sense within his soul
Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound; Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome The force of human kindness? and, when Rome, With one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down, Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood, Had not submissive abjectness destroyed Nature's suggestions?
Look on yonder earth:
The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun
Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak
Peace, harmony, and love. The universe,
In nature's silent eloquence, declares That all fulfil the works of love and joy,- All but the outcast man. He fabricates The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up The tyrant whose delight is in his woe, Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams, Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch, Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes Who nursed in ease, and luxury, make men The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, that peace Which men alone appreciate?
Spirit of Nature! no.
The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs Alike in every human heart. Thou, aye, erectest there
Thy throne of power unappealable: Thou art the judge beneath whose nod Man's brief and frail authority
Is powerless as the wind That passeth idly by.
Thine the tribunal which surpasseth The shew of human justice, As God surpasses man.
Spirit of Nature! thou
Life of interminable multitudes; Soul of those mighty spheres
Whose changeless paths thro' Heaven's deep silence lie; Soul of that smallest being,
The dwelling of whose life Is one faint April sun-gleam;— Man, like these passive things,
Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth: Like theirs, his age of endless peace, Which time is fast maturing, Will swiftly, surely come;
And the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest,
Will be without a flaw
Marring its perfect symmetry.
How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh, Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude
That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love had spread
To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, So stainless that their white and glittering spires Tinge not the moon's pure beam: yon castled steep Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of peace;-all form a scene Where musing solitude might love to lift Her soul above this sphere of earthline-
Where silence undisturbed might watch alone, So cold, so bright, so still.
In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field Sinks sweetly smiling; not the faintest breath Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day And vesper's image on the western main Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes; Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, Roll'd o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar Of distant thunder mutters awfully;
Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom That shrouds the boiling surge; the pityless fiend, With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey The torn deep yawns,-the vessel finds a grave Beneath its jagged gulf.
Ah! whence yon glare That fires the arch of heaven?-that dark red smoke Blotting the silver moon! The stars are quenched In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow Gleems faintly through the gloom that gathers round! Hark to that roar, whose swift and deaf'ning peals In countless echoes through the mountains ring, Startling pale midnight on her starry throne! Now swells the intermingling din; the jar Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb; The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout The ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men Inebriate with rage:-loud, and more loud The discord grows; till pale death shuts the scene, And o'er the conqueror and conquered draws His cold and bloody shroud. Of all the men Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there, In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts That beat with anxious life at sun-set there: How few survive, how few are beating now! All is deep silence, like the fearful calm That slumbers in the storm's portentuous pause; Save when the frantic wail of widowed love Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay Wrapt round its struggling powers.
Draws on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke Before the icy wind slow rolls away,
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood Even to the forest's depth, and scatter'd arms, And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path Of the outsallying victors; far behind,
Black ashes note where their proud city stood. Within yon forest is a gloomy glen-
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day, Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.
I see thee shrink, Surpassing Spirit!-wert thou human else? I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet Across thy stainless features; yet fear not; This is no unconnected misery,
Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable.
Man's evil nature, that apology
Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood Which desolates the discord-wasted land.
From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe, Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe Strike at the root; the poison-tree will fall; And where its venomed exhalations spread Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lie Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,
A garden shall arise, in loveliness
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord Strung to unchanging unison, that gave The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, That yielded to the wanderers of the deep The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust With spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone,
« PředchozíPokračovat » |