LITMIR.BIZ

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Bowed his dark lashes, wet with burning tears

       His country's sufferings and her children's shame

       Streamed o'er his memory like a forest's flame;

       Each treasured insult, each remembered wrong,

       Rolled through his heart and kindled into song.

       His taper faded; and the morning gales

       Swept through the world the war-song of Marseilles!

      Now, while around the smiles of Peace expand,

       And Plenty's wreaths festoon the laughing land;

       While France ships outward her reluctant ore,

       And half our navy basks upon the shore;

       From ruder themes our meek-eyed Muses turn

       To crown with roses their enamelled urn.

      If e'er again return those awful days

       Whose clouds were crimsoned with the beacon's blaze,

       Whose grass was trampled by the soldier's heel,

       Whose tides were reddened round the rushing keel,

       God grant some lyre may wake a nobler strain

       To rend the silence of our tented plain!

       When Gallia's flag its triple fold displays,

       Her marshalled legions peal the Marseillaise;

       When round the German close the war-clouds dim,

       Far through their shadows floats his battle-hymn;

       When, crowned with joy, the camps' of England ring,

       A thousand voices shout, "God save the King!"

       When victory follows with our eagle's glance,

       Our nation's anthem pipes a country dance!

      Some prouder Muse, when comes the hour at last,

       May shake our hillsides with her bugle-blast;

       Not ours the task; but since the lyric dress

       Relieves the statelier with its sprightliness,

       Hear an old song, which some, perchance, have seen

       In stale gazette or cobwebbed magazine.

       There was an hour when patriots dared profane

       The mast that Britain strove to bow in vain;

       And one, who listened to the tale of shame,

       Whose heart still answered to that sacred name,

       Whose eye still followed o'er his country's tides

       Thy glorious flag, our brave Old Ironsides

       From yon lone attic, on a smiling morn,

       Thus mocked the spoilers with his school-boy scorn.

III.

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      When florid Peace resumed her golden reign,

       And arts revived, and valleys bloomed again,

       While War still panted on his-broken blade,

       Once more the Muse her heavenly wing essayed.

       Rude was the song: some ballad, stern and wild,

       Lulled the light slumbers of the soldier's child;

       Or young romancer, with his threatening glance

       And fearful fables of his bloodless lance,

       Scared the soft fancy of the clinging girls,

       Whose snowy fingers smoothed his raven curls.

       But when long years the stately form had bent,

       And faithless Memory her illusions lent,

       So vast the outlines of Tradition grew

       That History wondered at the shapes she drew,

       And veiled at length their too ambitious hues

       Beneath the pinions of the Epic Muse.

      Far swept her wing; for stormier days had brought

       With darker passions deeper tides of thought.

       The camp's harsh tumult and the conflict's glow,

       The thrill of triumph and the gasp of woe,

       The tender parting and the glad return,

       The festal banquet and the funeral urn,

       And all the drama which at once uprears

       Its spectral shadows through the clash of spears,

       From camp and field to echoing verse transferred,

       Swelled the proud song that listening nations heard.

       Why floats the amaranth in eternal bloom

       O'er Ilium's turrets and Achilles' tomb?

       Why lingers fancy where the sunbeams smile

       On Circe's gardens and Calypso's isle?

       Why follows memory to the gate of Troy

       Her plumed defender and his trembling boy?

       Lo! the blind dreamer, kneeling on the sand

       To trace these records with his doubtful hand;

       In fabled tones his own emotion flows,

       And other lips repeat his silent woes;

       In Hector's infant see the babes that shun

       Those deathlike eyes, unconscious of the sun,

       Or in his hero hear himself implore,

       "Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more!"

      Thus live undying through the lapse of time

       The solemn legends of the warrior's clime;

       Like Egypt's pyramid or Paestum's fane,

       They stand the heralds of the voiceless plain.

       Yet not like them, for Time, by slow degrees,

       Saps the gray stone and wears the embroidered frieze,

       And Isis sleeps beneath her subject Nile,

       And crumbled Neptune strews his Dorian pile;

       But Art's fair fabric, strengthening as it rears

       Its laurelled columns through the mist of years,

       As the blue arches of the bending skies

       Still gird the torrent, following as it flies,

       Spreads, with the surges bearing on mankind,

       Its starred pavilion o'er the tides of mind!

      In vain the patriot asks some lofty lay

       To dress in state our wars of yesterday.

       The classic days, those mothers of romance,

       That roused a nation for a woman's glance;

       The age of mystery, with its hoarded power,

       That girt the tyrant in his storied tower,

       Have passed and faded like a dream of youth,

       And riper eras ask for history's truth.

      On other shores, above their mouldering towns,

       In sullen pomp the tall cathedral frowns,

       Pride in its aisles and paupers at the door,

       Which feeds the beggars whom it fleeced of yore.

       Simple and frail, our lowly temples throw

       Their slender shadows on the paths below;

       Scarce steal the winds, that sweep

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