Women must weep :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ho! a murmur from the morning,
And a moaning from the west,
While the bride forgets adorning,
And the jewel on her breast;
And the bridegroom stops to hearken
At the terror of the tale,
Till his eyes with trouble darken,
And his knitted brows turn pale;
Yea, the idlers cease to dabble
In their follies as they fly,
And the revellers stay their babble,
For they know the sullen cry.

From the north comes breath of paining,
And a sighing from the south,
And a smother'd grim complaining
Out of every hungry mouth;
With a fierce, uneasy motion,
As of fever's fiery sway,
Which the ruler's magic potion
Has no longer power to lay.
And the things that cringe and sicken
Would their souls for safety sell,
As they stumble blindly, stricken
By that message hot from hell.

189

It's the stirring of the Giant,
From beneath his ponderous chains,
Where he stretches, dim, defiant,
And his rotten limits strains;
As he feels his fetters shaken
By the anarchy of strife,
And begins at length to waken
To his old tempestuous life;
While he chafes at bonds, and mountains
Of abuses heap'd as dust,
And would burst in flaming fountains
From his cracking lava-crust.

Amid clang of trump and tabor,
He has heard the growing fight
Between capital and labour,
Between misery and might;
He has noted rank division
In the helmsmen of the State;
For he thrives on indecision
And the counsels always late;
And behind his iron border
He is gathering like a flood,
Till he rends the bounds of order,
And goes rushing forth in blood.

In the bulwarks of the highway
There is loosening of old cords,
With a plotting in the by-way,
And a sharpening as of swords;
Around hearts that once were trustful,
Doubt has drawn its serpent coil,
And the patient hands, turn'd lustful,
Are refusing now to toil;
With their children's toys they trifle,
And away their fortunes fool,
Or they clutch at steel and rifle,
That so lately held the tool.

190

Ha! the ravens see the token,
The horizon hung in black,
With the breaking ties or broken,
And the wolves are on the track;
There is trembling in the nations,
And profaned is holy ground,
By the earthquake tried foundations
Have been weighed, and wanting found.
For the days of peace are number'd,
And devouring comes the pest,
And the giant, who has slumber'd
Long, is waking from his rest.

In their dovecote wantons flutter,
At the sound of curses deep—
At the menaces that mutter
Through the veil of silken sleep;
There is woe of wither'd features,
As they huddle low and faint,
Where they lie like hunted creatures,
And wax pallid through their paint.
For athwart the venal kisses,
Falls the shadow of the change,
Which in icy whisper hisses
Of a judgment stern and strange.

In the leprous court and alley,
Where the victims vow'd to lust,
Rue the perjurers who dally
With their manhood's sacred trust;
In the brothel, on low stages,
Where the outraged beauty seeks,
The dark work, and damnèd wages
To repair the wasted cheeks;
From the lips, that now no glamour
Have for bosoms turned to frost,
Steals the mournful, muffled clamour
Of the ruin'd and the lost.

191

From the cellar's grimy cavern,
And the loft beneath the tiles;
From the gay and gilded tavern
With the poison wreathed in smiles;
From a thousand ugly corners,
In the prison and the slum,
Where lie skulking fools of scorners,
Rises hatred's stifled hum;
From the mouths of children, trodden
To the gutter in their troth,
With their features old and sodden,
Gurgles up the smother'd oath.

Lo! across the palace portal
Stride the footsteps of the Form
Which is feared by all things mortal,
And which rides upon the storm;
It deflowers the golden cages,
That give up their stolen store,
And undoes the work of ages—
But to build again in gore;
For the Giant comes to shatter
All the ancient laws that bind,
And the bars of men to scatter
Like the stubble in the wind.