Ah no! remembered home's the warrior's charm,
Speed to his sword, and vigour to his arm;
For this he supplicates the God afar,
Fronts the steelsed foe, and mingles in the war!
The cannon's hushed!-nor drum nor clarion sound;
Helmet and hauberk gleam upon the ground;
Horseman and horse lie weltering in their gore;
Patriots are dead and heroes dare no more!
While solemnly the moonlight shrouds the plain,
And lights the lurid features of the slain!
And see ! on this rent mound, where daisies sprung,
A battle-steed beneath his rider flung;
Oh! never more he'll rear with fierce delight,
Roll his red eyes, and rally for the fight!
Pale on his blending breast the warrior lies,
While from his ruffled lids, the white swelled eyes
Ghastly and grimly stare upon the skies!
Afar, with bosom bared unto the breeze,
White lips, and glaring eyes, and shivering knees,
A widow o'er her martyred soldier moans,
Loading the night-wind with delirious groans!
Her blue-eyed babe, unconscious orphan he!
So sweetly prattling in his cherub glee,
Leers on his lifeless sire with infant wile,
And plays and plucks him for a parent's smile.
But who, upon the battle-wasted plain,
Shall count the faint, the gasping, and the slain?-
Angel of Mercy, ere the blood-fount chill,
And the brave heart be spiritless and still,
Amid the havoc Thou art hovering nigh,
To calm each groan, and close each dying eye,
And waft the spirit to that halcyon shore,
Where war's loud thunders lash the winds no more.
OH! weep not that our beauty wears
Beneath the wings of Time;
That Age o'erclouds the brow with cares
That once was raised sublime.
Oh! weep not that the beamless eye
No dumb delight can speak;
And fresh and fair no longer lie
Joy-tints upon the cheek.
No! weep not that the ruin-trace
Of wasting Time is seen,
Around the form and in the face
Where Beauty's bloom has been.—
But mourn the INWARD Wreck we feel
As hoary years depart,
And Time's effacing fingers steal
Young feelings from the heart!
Those joyous thoughts that rise and spring
From out the buoyant mind,
Like summer bees upon the wing,
Or echoes on the wind.
The hopes that sparkle every hour,
Like blossoms from a soul
Where Sorrow sheds no blighting power
And care has no control;
With all the rich enchantment thrown
On Life's fair scene around,
As if the world within a zone
Of happiness were bound!
Oh! these endure a mournful doom
As day by day they die :
Till Age becomes a barren tomb
Where withered feelings lie!
BUT hail thou city-giant of the world!
Thou that dost scorn a canopy of clouds,
But in the dimness of eternal smoke,
For ever rising like an ocean-steam,
Dost mantle thine immensity, how vast
And wide thy wonderful array of domes,
In dusky masses staring at the skies!
Time was, and dreary solitude was here;
When night-black woods unvisited by man,
In howling conflict wrestled with the winds.
But now, the storm-roll of immingled life
Is heard, and, like a roaring furnace, fills
With living sound the airy reach of miles!
Thou more than Rome! for never from her heart
Such universe-awaking spirit poured
As emanates from thine. The mighty globe
Is fevered by thy name; a thousand years,
And silence hath not known thee! What a weight
Of awfulness will doomsday from thy scene
Derive! and when the blasting trumpet smites
All cities to destruction, who will sink
Sublime with such a thunder-crash as thou!
Myriads of domes, and temples huge or high,
And thickly wedded like the ancient trees
That in unviolated forests frown;
Myriads of streets, whose river-windings flow
With viewless billows of unwearied sound;
Myriads of hearts, in full commotion mixed,
From morn to noon, from noon to night again,
Through the wide realm of whirling passion borne.—
And there is London! England's heart and soul.
By the proud flowing of her famous Thames
She circulates through countless lands and isles
Her greatness: gloriously she rules,
At once the awe and sceptre of the world!
Thou astounding main, Time never felt so awful since his birth,— Angels and demons o'er thy terrors hung, When, visioning afar his nameless world, On thine immensity Columbus launched. Yet thou wert well avenged! for storm and doubt, Despair and madness, on the billows rode, And made the ocean one dark agony! Dismal as thunder-clouds, the fated hours Toiled on; a living solitude still howled And heaved in dread monotony around!
Yet hope was quenchless! and when daylight closed,
The ocean wanderers, in the wooing glow
Of sunset, gladdening their despondent brows,
Hymned o'er the mellow-wave their vesper song!
Ave Maria! mingling with the choirs
Of billows, and the chant of evening winds.
But he was destined; and his lightning glance
Shot o'er the deep, and darted on thy world,
America!-Then mighty, long, and loud,
From swelling hearts, the Hallelujahs rang
And charmed to music the Atlantic gales;
While silent as the Sun above him throned,
Columbus looked in rapture to the skies,
And gave his glory to the God of heaven!
Thou hugest region of the quartered globe,
Where all the climates dwell, and Nature moves
In majesty,-hereafter, when the tides
Of circumstance have rolled their changing years,
What empires may be born of thee?-Thy ships
By thousands, dancing o'er the isle-strewn deep;
Thy banners waved in every land!
E'en now
Defiance flashes from thy fearless eye,
While Nature tells thee, greatness is thy own.-
Who on those dreadful giants of the South,
Those pyramids by thy Creator reared,
Thine Andes, girdled with the storms, can gaze;
Or hear Niagara's unearthly might
Leap downward in a dash of proud despair,
Mocking the thunder with impassioned sound,
Nor think the Spirit of Ambition wakes
From each free glory? What a grandeur lives
Through each stern scene!-in yon Canadian woods,
Whose stately poplars clothe their heads with clouds,
And dignify Creation as they stand;
Or in the rain-floods-rivers where they fall!
Or hurricanes that howl themselves along,
Life-winged monsters, ravenously wild;
Sublimity o'er all her soul hath breathed,
And yet, a curse is on thee!-tis the curse
Of havoc, which the violators reaped
For thy young destiny, when first amid
Thy wilds the cannon poured its thundering awe,
Shaking the trees that never yet had bowed,
Save to the storminess of Nature's ire.
Hath Gentleness redeemed the guilt of old?
Hath Freedom healed the wounds of War, and paid
Her ransom to the nameless and unknown,
The unremembered, but the soul immortal still,
The dead,-whose birthright was sublime as kings?
Approach, and answer me, dejected one!
Art thou the remnant of a free-born race,
Majestic lords of Nature's majesty?
Of them whose brows were bold as heaven,-whose hands
Oft tamed the woods,—whose feet outfled the winds,
Who faced the lightning with undazzled gaze,
And dreamed the thunder language of their God?
The earth and sky-'twas Freedom's and their own.
But thou-the SUN hath written on thee, SLAVE!
A branded limb and a degraded mind,
The tyrants give thee for eternal toil,
And tears or lash thy labour out in blood!
And some are Britons who enslave the free;
Then boast not, England! while a Briton links
The chain of thraldom, glory can be thine.
Vain are thy vows, thy temples, and thy truths
That hallow them, while yet a slave exists
Who curses thee: each curse in heaven is heard;
'Tis sealed and answered in the depths below!
From dungeon and from den there comes a voice
That supplicates for Freedom; from the tomb
Of martyrs her transcendency is told,
And dimmed she may, but cannot be destroyed.-
Who bends the spirit from its high domain,
On God himself a sacrilege commits;
For soul doth share in his supremacy;
To crush it, is to violate His power,
And grasp the sceptre an Almighty wields!
HYMN OF THE ANGELS AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
THOU Lord of lords, and Light of light!
Who with empyreal glory bright,
Art seated on the eternal throne
Invisibly, the vast Alone!-
Ten thousand worlds around Thee blaze,
Ten thousands harps repeat Thy praise,
Yet hymn, nor harp, nor song divine,
Nor myriad orbs created Thine,
This measureless display of love
To earth below and heaven above,
By Thy immingled power could tell,—
That ends the curse and conquers Hell!
Oh! never, never, since we came
On wing of light and form of flame;
Like mingling harmonies that rise
In glorious swell along the skies,
Have angels known entrancing bliss
Unfathomably deep as this!-
For lo! the manger where He lies
A world-redeeming Sacrifice:
Peace on earth! to man good-will!
Let the skies our anthem fill!
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