 | The vision of Cortes, Cain, and other poems |  |
11
V.
Is this the sole reward of toil—The long tried toil of skill and power,
Arrested, in its march to spoil,
With the short conflict of an hour!
Is there no pride of nation—none
Of all that chivalry, that stood,
Till life was lost, or triumph won,
While all the Guadalate ran blood!
Shall men, who drove the sable Moor,
Forever, from their native shore,
Taught but to conquer or to die,
And in a school so fell and rife,
Forget their creed and backward fly?
That creed, which gives, in holy strife
A future for a present life;
And takes the cloud that dims our even,
To leave to truth, its own bright Heaven,
Unveil'd in its eternal light,
Before the true believer's sight—
Where Houris' smile and raptures stray,
To win the mortal coil away—
Shall men thus taught to die, to dare
The worst of deaths, with hope to share
That heaven of heavens, which ever beams
Upon the enthusiast's life of dreams.
12
When Heaven itself upon them streams—
Lose former fame, and win no more?
| The vision of Cortes, Cain, and other poems | |