Seatonian Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

A midnight, such as ne'er before
Was writ on history's page;
To be proclaimed from shore to shore,
And sung from age to age!
Along each dim historic line
Of giant statues, half divine,
That lead toward the midmost shrine
Of Egypt's sleeping kings,
A fierce, wild gleam is on the air;
The tramp of gathering hosts is there;
The torch glows out with murky glare,

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And over many a forming square
Unearthly radiance flings.
For not with banner, not with shout,
No warrior's pomp nor pride,
At midnight did the Lord go out,
And Egypt's firstborn died!

II.

O past the power of human speech,
Past utterance of the song to teach,—
How those granitic temples rise
And gloom athwart the quiet skies;
The moon, a pale and sickly disk,
Looks down upon each obelisk,
And throws a shadow gaunt and dim
O'er lines of kingly Anakim,
O'er human pomp and human pride,
And human passions deified:
All so unearthly, all so vast,
All breathing of the mighty past.
Here is the chieftain's latest bed
Of old heroic story;

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The monarch, midst the monarch-dead,
Reposes in his glory.

III.

But not with warrior's pomp and boast
They marshal now, the midnight host:
Far as the plots of verdure smile
Down the green valley of the Nile,
No cot, but on the midnight gale
Pours out its grief, lifts up its wail;
None, where the hot tear is not shed
Upon the loved and first-born dead.
In vain, poor mother, dost thou strive
To keep that little spark alive:
The Lord of Life, the Lord of Death
Claims, for no fault of thine, his breath.
It is that Egypt may be bent
Before the King omnipotent:
It is that Pharaoh's chiefs may own
Jehovah God, and Him alone.
In vain to strive, in vain to flee
Thy king's resistless Foe:

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‘I reck not of the Lord,’ saith he,
‘And Israel shall not go:’
The nation quails before the stroke
The monarch's madness dared provoke.

IV.

Oh vainly warned! when Nile's great flood
Rolled—miracle of fear!—with blood:
When league past league, on either shore,
Came ripples, thick with clotted gore,
As if in vengeance on their foes
The murdered innocents arose.
Oh who may paint that fearful sky
When clouds grew dark, and winds grew high,
The day when threatened judgment came
In sheets of mingled hail and flame!
Upon the tender crop it drove,
That sleet of solid ice;
It shattered, in the idol-grove,
The gods of man's device:
All through the cavern's dim profound
Echoed that thunder's mighty sound;

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And pealed and pealed again its roar
Through sepulchre and corridor.
Oh fearful judgment from on high
With unresisted sway!
The Lord is fighting from on high
Against the sons of clay.

V.

Day comes again: but such a morn
From Eastern clouds was never born,
As when, from Afric's torrid sand,
The desert-swarms, a monster band,
Came pouring o'er that cursed land,
That miserable race:
With eyes that sparkled living fire,
Monsters unknown and portents dire,
Came hurrying on apace.
Such visions, in the dead of night,
Crowd o'er the sick man's aching sight,
And, as he longs for morning light,
In feverish dreams have place.

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O God, Whom all things serve alike,
How many ways hast Thou to strike!
How many means to overthrow
And grind to dust Thy strongest foe!

Reference is made to the tradition of the Jews, corroborated by the Book of Wisdom (xvi. 3), that the swarms of Exod. viii. 20 were swarms of beasts, not of flies.

VI.

On Goshen's land the morning broke
In light, and life, and beauty;
And blithely Goshen's sons awoke
To toil in that day's duty:
Upon the ripples of the Nile
The Eastern sunbeams twinkled;
And from the pasture-land the while
The merry sheep-bells tinkled;
In all its glory flowed along
The old majestic river;
And thanks arose in prayer and song
To that day's Lord and Giver:
The voice of children at the tank,—
The shout of honest labour,—
The feet that turned the water-crank
Cheered up by pipe and tabor:

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The work goes on, the sport proceeds
So gaily and so brightly;
No insect skims, o'er water-weeds,
More merrily and lightly.

VII.

Anguish, terror, woe and error,
Over Zoan's people shed:
Desolation fills the nation,
'Tis a city of the dead;
All is fearful, all is lonely;
Darkness, utter darkness only!
Darkness, ink-like, pitchy darkness,
Darkness making hearts to melt;
Awful darkness, outer darkness,
Darkness such as may be felt.
Nature's self seems past and o'er,
Darkness, darkness evermore.

VIII.

O hardened heart, that still provokes
The Great Avenger's ceaseless strokes!

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The terror of nine plagues is past:
And yet remains the worst and last.
One fate on palace and on hall,
On cottage and on shed:
The firstborn stay and hope of all
In one great night lies dead!
Such night as never was before,
Such night as never shall be more.
Now Israel's ransomed tribes may go,
Themselves thrust out in Egypt's woe:
God bids: the mighty East wind blows
The Red sea wave to sever;
—This morn may ye behold your foes,—
But not again for ever!

IX.

I tell not now the glorious night
That saw Jeshurun's victor-flight:
How on each side the sea stood high
A rampart, azure as the sky:
Above,—the light waves rippling hoary,—
Beneath,—that wall's crystalline glory.

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Six hundred thousand chosen men
Entered, at eve, that horrid glen:
The cloudy pillar went before,
The Lord's sure guide from shore to shore:
While frenzied now, but unsubdued,
All Egypt, man and horse, pursued.
Nor tell I how, as on they wind,
At midnight came the cloud behind,
And cast unutterable woe
Of terror on the advancing foe:
And poured a radiance calm and bright
O'er Israel, as on festal night.
The monarch's heart with terror reels,
Shrink back in awe the brave:
The Lord struck off their chariot wheels
That heavily they drave:
Then, echoed by the stone-like sea,
Rose the wild outcry,—‘Let us flee!’
Too late! too late! O man of God,
Stretch out once more the mystic rod!
In vain they bend their backward way,
In vain retreat endeavour;

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Them Israel may behold to-day,
But not again for ever.

X.

The battle hath been fought and won;
The Lord hath dealt the blow:
And gladly towards the rising sun
The ransomed people go:
And many a year and many an age
Sweeps over Zoan's heritage,
And many a chief of fame is hid
Within the awful pyramid;
But still, through circling times, the priests
Serve ancient gods with ancient feasts,
And worship still with honour due
Osiris and his demon crew.
Meanwhile Judæa's prophet-lays
Foretel their fall in coming days;
And Mede and Persian from afar
Cry on the chace and urge the war
With battle-axe and scymetar
'Gainst Egypt's rites divine:

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Down with the giant forms of old,
Monarch and god together rolled:
Nor spoil of gems, nor bribe of gold,
Can save each idol-shrine.
Morning may rise with purple wings;
But never more shall float
The sound which sun-touched Memnon flings,
That sweet mysterious note:
For shrine and temple are defaced
In undistinguishable waste.

XI.

Let those who list it, rather sing
The pride of Egypt's second spring:
When buried learning rose again,
And poets struck the venal strain;
And girt with many a princely quay
Fair Alexandria ruled the sea;
Until her merchant flag was furled
Before the Empress of the world:
And Egypt felt the destined fate
A patriarch's voice had spoke;

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And stooping from her princely state
Received a victor's yoke:
Long had that doom been writ above,
When all the world was lost for love.

XII.

I rather turn from scenes like this
To Him Whose woe hath wrought our bliss:
Who left that high eternal throne
To share our mortal lot:
And when He came amidst His own
His own received Him not.
For not alone in Canaan's land
His blessed Footsteps trod:
But Egpyt's old benighted strand
Received the coming God.
No herald hastened to proclaim
And blaze abroad His mighty name;
No gathering clouds did honour meet,
And bowed them down before His feet;
An Infant snatched from blood and strife
Seeks for the exile's wretched life:

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But never yet did nation bring
Such welcome to a victor king.
He passed the boundary of the Land—
She knew her Sovereign well:
In every shrine from strand to strand
The idol reel'd and fell:
Their reign is o'er, their work is done:
‘From Egypt have I called My Son!’

Allusion is made to the legend that, when our Lord entered the land of Egypt, every idol fell prostrate in its temple.

XIII.

Arm of the Lord that wast mighty of yore,
What! is the day of thy victories o'er?
Egypt and Egypt's innumerous force,
Monarch and warrior, rider and horse,
Dared in the steps of Thy people to tread,—
Sank in the mighty abysses as lead!
Fiercer than Pharaoh the monarch that now
Bids to his idols Thine Israel bow:
Come to their succour, O God, as of old!

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Wilt Thou not fight for the sheep of Thy fold?
Let not him, counting our gain to be loss,
Spurn at the Monarch Who died on the Cross:
God of all victory! rise and lay low
As in the days of past ages, the foe!

The following lines refer to the Tenth Persecution, which raged, perhaps, with greater fury in Egypt, than in any other part of the world.

XIV.

He wills not, as in other days,
Such trophies of His might to raise:
Another war must now be tried,
O follower of the Crucified!
This is the triumph thou must win,
To suffer, rather than to sin.
All pangs to bear, all woes to dare,
To yield thy lingering breath,
And with the Son of God to share
The highest victory, Death!

XV.

Thou canst not, impotent of heart,
Tax as thou wilt thy demon-art,

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So much inflict, as, be thou sure,
A Christian Martyr will endure.
Go! bid the theatre be deck'd
As for a festal day,—
And try thou, if the Lord's elect
Thy mandate will obey:
Go! summon round the Cæsar's Throne
Thy chosen ones to bend;
The God of Hosts is with His own,
And will be to the end.
Command each cursed engine near,—
A woman shews no woman's fear;
The child a sea of pain may stem
For that eternal diadem:
They well may shame and woe despise
Who have a mansion in the skies.

XVI.

The legend was told in the days of old,
How the fifty wise men met;
And in strength divine, Saint Katherine
Was before the tribunal set.

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And she spake of the gods, (if gods they be,
Whom we neither may love nor fear,)
That have eyes indeed, but cannot see,
That have ears, but cannot hear:
And their power and their hate we may well contemn,
Who can neither do good nor ill;
And they that make them are like to them,
In spite of their boasted skill:
How the Cæsar sat on the judgment-seat,
And called for the flame and the steel;
And bade them bind her hands and feet
Upon the tormenting wheel:
But the lightning flashed, and the thunder rolled,
By the God of Vengeance sent,
And the fire descended, as once of old,
And the wheel in pieces rent;
And beautiful angels came down from on high,
As in death she calmly lay,
And bare her corpse to Mount Sinai
In Arabia far away:
And they laid her within the rock-hewn cave,
For the days of her strife were o'er:

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And the church that arose above that grave
Shall be famous evermore!

XVII.

Thus saith the legend that we deem
A lovely and a pious dream;
But this I doubt not—Angels' love
Conveys them from the realm above,
To succour those who nobly die
A sacrifice to God on high:
And doubly glorious, doubly blest
Are they who take the martyr's rest.

XVIII.

Yes: and with many a martyr's fate
Was Egypt's country dedicate.
They fled to many a cave and den,
To many a waste and wild;
They trod in many an unknown glen,
—The mother and her child:

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And then they laid them down to sleep,
The sleep that hath no ending;
And there were none to wail and weep,
Beside their bed attending:
The lip of infants vainly pressed
And marvelled at the clay-cold breast,
Until the soul, so free from stain,
So loving and so tender,
That dear, dear mother joined again
In heaven's eternal splendour.

For the multitude of those who fled into the desert from the Egyptian persecution, and there perished, see Eusebius, H. E. viii. 13.

XIX.

O day of woe! O fearful loss
When to the Crescent bowed the Cross!
When Islam's swarms spread far and wide
Where Athanasius toiled and died;
And bade the foul impostor teach
Where Cyril's lips were wont to preach.
From Europe pour'd, in endless tide,
The followers of the Crucified,
And three times battling, three times foiled,
At length for Zoan's land they toiled.

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They marshall 'neath the saintly king
Who rules his happy France;
It is a glorious gathering
Of pennon and of lance:
So brave and loving is that soul,
So noble in its self-control,
So snowy pure, that it may be
Well emblemed by its fleur-de-lys.
And Islam's sons are gathering fast,
And Islam's shout is on the blast;
And Almoadan's royal brow
With fear and woe is furrowed now:
And either chief his battle sets
In front of Cairo's minarets.

Reference is made to the Crusade of S. Louis, and its admirable description by the Sieur de Joinville.

XX.

The long, long day went wearily;
The long, long night went drearily:
Upon each tent, from the hot sky sent,
The sunbeams fell intensely:

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Above the camp the evening damp
And fever-fog rose densely:
With the stagnant wave the canal was foul
That the Christian army bounded;
And at night the screech of the sad screech-owl
O'er the Christian army sounded:
When the sun went down o'er the waste of brown,
In mingled sand and cloud,
There were forms, men said, of woe and dread,
Of coffin and hearse and shroud:
Then stalked the plague from tent to tent
Throughout the Christian armament:
A plague by fetid marshes sown,
A plague by human skill unknown,
A plague that sapped, by slow decay,
Each power of life and soul away:
And bred, where'er its anguish ran,
Corruption in the living man.

XXI.

O king! the King of kings denies
That Cairo's towers shall be thy prize:

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This be thy triumph,—to endure
Unmoved thy tribulations;
This be thy victory,—to ensure
God's own blest crown of patience:
Unsway'd by proffered rope or sword,
Unless the Prophet be adored;
By threat of torture vainly tried
Except thou spurn the Crucified.
Think not the foe can e'er prevail,
Albeit as victor greeted;
Think not, although thy battles fail,
That thou canst be defeated!

XXII.

In westering clouds the sun is hid;
Eve gathers round the pyramid:
The twilight flings a parting smile
Upon the broad and glorious Nile:
The sunset breezes rise, and shed
Soft music from the palm-tree's head;
And one light boat with sail and oar
Hath crossed the stream and gained the shore.

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—Yes: nowhere else can evening cast
Such great reflections of the past,
As where she glimmered round the path
Of Joseph and of Asenath;
Bade Israel's children cease from toil,
Or saw them rich with Pharaoh's spoil.
—'Tis gone and o'er. I would the strain
That hath call'd up the past again,
And told of that Almighty Hand
So oft stretched out on Zoan's strand,
And tried, too boldly, to relate
Each change and chance of human fate,
Were worthier, land of God! to be
A record of the past and thee!

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Monarch of ages, the First and the Last, Whose measureless vision
Joining the Past and the Future in one, (where as infinite rivers,
Here, in a moment of time, their two eternities mingle,)
This by Thy Saints hast writ, and that by Thy Prophets foretellest;
Oh what a moment of time, what a brief-told span of existence
Thou hast appointed for man! Though he mete out the path of the comet,
Measure the depths of the sea, and number the stars of the heaven,

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Triumph o'er time, and annihilate space! If his years Thou hast shortened
Since their duration at first, 'twas not harshly, O God, nor severely;—
Who in the passage to Life, (for what is this life but a passage
Out of the storm into calm, to our own dear Country from exile,
Into the region of joy from the kingdom of sorrow,) would linger?
There is the goal of our race, the reward and the end of our contest;
There is the happy array of the souls made perfect through suffering:
There is the realm where tempests are not,—where Paradise blossoms,
Where God's Noon is eternal, and God's own Spring everlasting.
Oh how they beckon us on,—those former and earthly companions
Who have put off the corruptible now, and assumed the eternal,—

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Oh how they call us away from this earth's poor lures and enticements,
Perishing when at the brightest, no sooner enjoyed than departed!
This is the voice of their love, as they point to the infinite future,
—“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the First Resurrection!”

Yet would I fain,—(for autumnal repose and the glory of sunset
Call back the years that are gone in thoughts not gloomy but solemn,)
Now that, a monarch in death, the great sun draws to his setting,
Decking the earth with his beauty and kindling the sky with his splendour,
Fain would I turn to the realm of the past; that marvellous kingdom
Where, when the midnight shall come, this day, now dying in beauty,
Shall, in the grave of years, be written for ever and ever.—

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What is the line of monarchs that, far as can history venture,
Looms on th' horizon, a band so ghost-like and shadowy—monarchs
Passing in godlike array athwart the shadows that cradle
Time in his awful departure from out of eternity's bosom?
Mighty indeed that race, and mighty its memories, rising
In the green vale of the Nile, the dead midst the living around them:
Temples august in their granite, and calm great obelisks, soaring
Up from the earth and its din, and statues, huge and majestic,
Statues of deified monarchs, or king-like gods, may I name them?
There is his last long sleep, the Chief and the Priest and the Father,
Heart of the shrine and its worship: himself in cornice and passage,

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Trampling the proud in his wrath, or raising the meek in his mercy:
There in the pillar sublime, the lawgiver seated in judgment
Executes justice for all: there lastly, as earth is departing,
Gently received by the gods as a god, was his earthly entombment.
Spring should come down on the fields, and summer should fade into autumn,
Thousand-fold thousands of times, (so intended the skill of the builder,)
While, in the midst of the shrine, undisturbed, untended, decayless,
Sleeping the infinite sleep, the monarch reposed in his glory.
None should behold those walls, none gaze on the wild decorations,
Sacred to silence and night, till the king should awake from his slumbers,
Then, when the earth and sky should be mingled together in ruin.

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Who hath o'erthrown those temples? Who scattered in measureless fragments
Idol, and pillar, and sphinx into heaps of eternal confusion,
Dashing the statues of kings into grinning deformity, mingling
Granite, and marble, and clay with the fierce wild sweep of a whirlwind?
Tremble, ye idols of Egypt! The mighty avenger approaches:
Tremble, ye priests of the stock and the stone; let them rise, let them save you,
If they have ears for your prayers, if victims and hymns be availing!
Where are the soldiers of yore? Let the long, long lines of the archers
Stand in the front of the war; let them shoot, as they shot at Megiddo,
When to the grave of his youth they hurried the ruler of Sion,

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Him that was faithful alone in a faithless and ill generation.
Vainly they marshal for battle: the shout of the Mede and the Persian
Daunting each spirit, and chilling each sense, grows louder and louder:
Bel boweth down to his fate, and Nebo stoopeth to ruin.
Laden with gold and with jewels the camels are treading the desert,
Weary with those vast loads of capital, cornice, and pillar,
Destined to serve in the victor's abode. Hence, ruin on ruin;
Hence, when the sun sinks low, and the purple and African desert
Glows as the steel on the anvil,—the long slant rays of the sunbeam,
Mournfully gilding the ruin, makes sadder the sad desolation.
Music is hushed in those halls; the voice of the bride and the bridegroom

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Never shall echo again; no light of a candle shall glimmer;
Beasts of the desert are there, and owls in their desolate places.
Marvellous still is the scene, though its youth and its strength have departed:
Man may pass by and his works, but the flow of the stream is eternal:
Cradled in silence, and lapped in obscurity, onward and onward
Winding or forcing its way through dim and impassable mountains,
Peaks unknown and untrodden, mysterious Crophi and Mophi,
Then, in convulsion and jar, with writhing and feverish waters,
Struggling and panting along, where the cataract, wonderful portal,

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Opens its beautiful way thro' the fair green valley of Egypt.
Egypt, unchanged and unchangeable land! since the days of thy glory
Oh what mutation of earth, what rise and extinction of nations!
There where the forest primeval was stretched, with the gnarl of its branches
Shadowing acre on acre, a deep green ocean of verdure,
Commerce hath wedded together the flame and the water, combining
City and city in one; and with more than the speed of the lightning
Darting, o'er mountain and vale, the thought and the word and the action.
There, by the deep sea-shore, where was nought but the wearisome ripple,
Hour after hour, of the wave, and the lonesome scream of the sea-gull,
Now is the clang of the dock, the voice of the mallet and hammer,

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Clamping and clenching the planks that shall ride the queen of the ocean.
Thou wast the same, O land of the past! thy obelisks pointed
Up to the noontide sun,—thy sphinxes, in terrible beauty,
Guarded the shrine and its gate, when Ishmael's merchantmen entered
Bearing their spices and myrrh, and leading the captive and bondman,
Him that was sold from the pit in the distant valley of Dothan.
Strong in the strength of thy God, be faithful amidst the unfaithful;
Bear yet awhile that dungeon! A mightier captive than thou art,
Suffers in type with thee; He is taken from prison and judgment,
Yet in the end to the throne, the eternal throne is exalted!

—Beautiful season of old, when down and valley and hillside

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Yielded a place for his flocks, while the great oak, stretching her branches
Over the greensward round, was the Patriarch's home for a season.
Here was the light tent pitch'd, the earth gave treasure of water:
Here was the altar erected to God: while pastoral princes
Came with their proffer of peace, and knelt at the shrine of El-Bethel.
Now for awhile farewell to the plain of beautiful Canaan:
God hath commanded, Advance! O'er the earth the famine is raging;
Only in Zoan is food: and with visions of peace and of plenty
Happier tidings arrive,—too happy at first for reception,
‘Joseph is yet alive; is alive, and is Lord over Egypt!
Bravely the brave old man goes forth with the tribes of the future:

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Casting his all upon God, Whose word is his light and his waymark
Now, as in years long past: ‘for certainly I will be with thee;
‘I will go down with thy steps, and again will bring thee to Canaan.’
Thus, when an evening of calm, succeeding the day of the tempest,
Pours through the rifts of the clouds the marvellous glory of sunset,
Gilding each hard dark edge, and melting the mist into silver;
Then earth sends to the sky her great oblation of incense;
Sparkles the tree and the flower; the birds chant gladly their Vespers;
Greener the green mead glows, more azure the blue of the æther:—
Thus is the calm fair end of a life so chequered with chances.
Now o'er the waste of the sand he beholds the pyramids gleaming;

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Now is enwrapped in those dear, dear arms: now Goshen the happy,
Goshen the best of the land, the home of the future, is round him.
Year after year rolls on; the little ones bloom into youthood,
Youth into man's ripe strength, and the full ripe vigour of manhood
Melts into eld: while still, the Prince and the Priest of his people,
Jacob awaits his call; and expects the repose of the righteous.

When shall the season draw nigh,—the season foretold? What chieftain
Bursting the dungeon and loosing the chain, shall deliver Jeshurun?
Arm of the Lord! it is time to awake: the bondage is bitter,
Heavy and sore is the yoke wherewith they burden Thy people!
Is not Thine own word pledged, that years four hundred and thirty

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Rolling away, shall redeem Thy flock? O remember Thy promise;
Think of the Saints of the past: of the Saints, O God of the living,
Dwelling with Thee in the peace of Thy home, and deliver their children!

Oh what a night was that, what a night to be ever recorded,
When from the seat of the Lord went forth the Mandate of Judgment!
When the Eternal Word, as a warrior armed for the slaughter,
Leapt from his throne, and stood on the earth, but reached to the heaven!
Death in the courts of the palace, and death in the hut of the bondman:
Everywhere, everywhere, death. The sad low wail of the firstborn
Hangs on the midnight air, while the pitiless angel of sorrow

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Stays not and knows not to spare. No avail in the skill of physician;
Vain is the prayer of devotion, and vain the voice of affection.
But, in the Lord's own land, with the Lord's own people, is gladness,
Where the mysterious blood is sprinkled on lintel and doorpost,
Warding the stroke of death. They eat the mystical supper,
Standing, and sandalled, and hasty of mien, and girt for departure.
(So, when the world and its deeds shall be o'er, when the angel of judgment
Summons the quick and the dead, woe! woe! where the Paschal Oblation
Hath not besprinkled each soul,—thence writ with the reprobate people!)

Now there is forming of lines, and the blast of the trumpet at midnight;
Torches glare out in the streets; they marshal by tribes and by houses:

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Borrow ye jewels of gold, saith the Lord, and jewels of silver;
As she hath spoil'd, so let her be spoil'd: oppress the oppressor:
Gather the double of all, in the hour of her just retribution.
Hurriedly sweeps the array, where the voice of the ruler directs it,
Billow on billow, instinct with life: still onward and onward
Take they the desolate way of the wild, by Succoth and Etham.
Who shall protect them now? The chariots and horses of Egypt
Thunder behind, and the deep is before, and the wail of the trumpet,
Prancing of steeds, and shout of the foe, wax louder and louder.
Then from the Throne of God, that Throne, where the weary have refuge,
Where in the midst of distress there is calm, that mandate was uttered,

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—Mandate not uttered alone that day for the thousands of Judah,—
But to all ages addressed, and to all generations, “Go forward!”
Forward, when all seems lost, when the cause looks utterly hopeless;
Forward, when brave hearts fail, and to yield is the rede of the coward;
Forward, when friends fall off, and enemies gather around thee;
Thou, though alone with thy God, though alone in thy courage, Go forward!
Nothing it is with Him to redeem or by few or by many:
Help, though deferred, shall arrive; ere morn the night is at darkest.

Oh what a wonderful sight, as the wild sea, hither and thither,
Piled itself up, and was raised in a heap! A horror of gladness
Thrilled through the host, as, on this side and that, the obedient water

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Stood like an adamant wall, with a dark, deep valley below it:
Valley, where coralline trees stretched out their branches of beauty.
But on each face of the pile, so glassy and golden together,
Now (for it drew to the eve) were the westering sunbeams reflected.
Yea, in what marvellous tints, through the very abyss of the ocean,
Struck they and pierced they and lingered! What hues of crimson and jasper
Shaded away, or commingling, led onward and onward the vision
Into the far sea depth! what soft and violet pulses
Quivered afar through the mass, instinct with glory and splendour!
Marvels unknown till then: for till then never had Nature
Opened the sea-nymphs' hall, and revealed the palace of ocean.
Tribes of the Lord, advance! the Pillar of Cloud is before you!

169

Go, where your God shall lead!

And night hath come down in her blackness.
Only the deep tramp, tramp of the hosts, and the shout of the captains,
Neighing of steeds, and thunder of car. Now woman and childhood
Wearily, wearily drag their steps; while fiercer and gladder,
Deeming the prey in their clutch, press on those thousands of Egypt.
Woe for the faint and the few! When lo! the pillary vapour,
(Just as the midnight divides the departing day from the morrow,)
Hitherto leading the van, now fearfully swoops to the rearward,
Right between host and host. On Zoan ineffable terror
Poured from that horrible cloud, as its congregate masses of blackness
Swirled through the labouring air: but gladness and glory on Judah,

170

Such as the Presence of God streams down on the Seats of the Blessed.

Glowed in its radiance the host: glowed banner and armour and buckler;
Squadron and line of advance glowed out: on the watery bulwark
Flickered and trembled the broken array and fragments of splendour.
Ah! but the Form! That Form that looked on the army of Egypt
Forth from the pillar of cloud, to distract and to madden and frenzy?
Then fell terror on hearts that till then never had trembled:
Then blanched lips that had never grown pale: the chariots of Memphis
Heavily, heavily, heavily drave: their wheels were shattered;
Blended were horse and foot. ‘Let us flee! let us flee!’ was the outcry:
‘Back, for the Lord is with them and battles against the Egyptian!’

171

Woe, for the word Too late! Ah, bitterly, bitterly uttered,
Then when the harvest is past, and the summer is ended for ever!
One little moment of time, one brief imperceptible second,
Closes the portal of hope: Here, none but the desperate enter!
Back on the wreck of the host rush down those mighty abysses;
Back on the king and the prince; back, back on the horse and the rider:
One wild shriek of despair; and then that silence for ever.

Oh for the vision that once came down by the river of Chebar,
Teaching the Son of Man of past and present and future!
Then with a pencil of light might I picture the course of the ages

172

Such as the pyramids saw!

By the mouth of the River of Egypt
Rises the merchant queen, that had sway o'er the sea of the inland.
Over the tideless waves went forth those vessels of commerce,
Visiting island and port, as far as the Pillars of Atlas;
Yea, with undaunted prow stemming boldly against the Atlantic,
Coasting the shores of the West, till they entered the Bay of Ulysses:
Or, more adventurous still, their carved beak turned to the southward,
Anchored they under Madeira, the sweetest Isle of the Ocean.
Learning awakes from her sleep where the Ptolemy wieldeth the sceptre;
Echo again some few faint strains of the poets of Hellas;

173

Though the sweet source of the song be dried, still harmony lingers,
Oh how poor, how faint, how weak, ere dying for ever!
Now o'er the land of the Nile is the Western Eagle triumphant;
Now is the mart of the earth, and the world's great granary, Roman;
Marvellous change! But a change more marvellous time in its fulness
Hurries along; when the Cross shall o'erthrow the altars of Egypt;
When to the Name and the fame of the Crucified dedicate, temples
Shall in the city lift up their head; in the desolate places
Hallow the soil that was once the domain and abode of Osiris.
Oh what a fight to the death! What glorious conflict of martyrs!
Oh what a struggle of Satan! What rage and despair of the fiend-gods!

174

When to the rack men went, as the victor might go to a triumph,
Hugging each engine of pain as a bride; in the theatre stood they
Waiting the rush and the roar of the beast, that terrible passage
Up to the Vision and Glory of God, the Sight Beatific.
Tier upon tier rose high with the pitiless multitude crowded:
Præfect and Consulars sat where the silken and delicate awning
Shielded the noon-day sun; beneath, in the very arena,
He that is Martyr of martyrs again was crowned in His servant.
Nor with the steel and the torture alone was the battle decided:
Into the wilds they fled, to the desert and cavern and mountain,
Dying of hunger and thirst, the babe and the mother together,

175

Leaving their bones to whiten, a prey to the vulture and jackal;
Till in the day, when the Lord shall descend in His terror to judgment,
They shall obey His voice and be glorious for ever and ever.
—This is the way that they fought, those heroes of Christ and His Kingdom;
This is the way that they conquered, by toil and by patient endurance:
Therefore they now are before His Seat, where the River of Pleasure
Springs from the Throne of the Lamb That was slain, as glassy as crystal;
Where there is no more curse, but on either side of the River
Groweth the Tree of Life with her twelve fruits, each in their season;
Where they shall see His Face, and His Name shall be in their foreheads.

Now is the battle-array that shall crush or the Cross or the demon;

176

Where in the great sea-square of the merchant city of princes,
Rises the idol on high, that ancient idol, Serapis,
Doomed to be struck to the earth,—so saith the command of the Cæsar.
—Who hath the courage to deal that blow? For the prophets of Egypt
Tell, when that image shall fall, how the sky and the ocean shall mingle,
Darkness shall cover the world, and nature return into chaos.
“Give me an axe,” saith a firm brave voice. And the multitude cower,
Trembling and shrinking together, and deem that the end is approaching.
“Strike in the Name of the Lord!” And the idol trembles and totters:
Down with it, down to the ground! It falls, but a marvellous thunder
Echoes within that frame. Great terror is over the people;

177

Till from their ancient abode, in myriad, myriad numbers,
Pours forth a cohort of rats. Then peals of measureless laughter;
‘These be thy gods, O Egypt!’

The landscape of history darkens:
Pour from the tents of the East his hordes, the Impostor of Mecca:
Glows in the front of their van a land like the Garden of Eden:
Blackens behind their rear a howling and terrible desert.
Now is the land of the Nile yet again the servant of servants,
Mighty in thoughts of the past alone: while the fabrics of ages
Sadly and dimly look down on the hopes and the schemes of the future.
Relics of Pharaoh's renown, how strangely they blend and commingle
Into the present, the great highways of peace and of commerce,

178

Where from our country are sent her commands to the world of the Sunrise,
Where from the sea to the sea go forth the telegraph flashes!

Lord of the Past and the Future, Whom history preaches and blesses,
Who by Thy wisdom uphold'st Thine own through the perils of this world!
Still, when a Pharaoh attacks, raise up for Thy people a Moses;
Still let the Red Sea wave be a path of escape for Thy Ransomed;
Still through the desert lead on, still sever the waters of Jordan;
Till they obtain, at the last, their promised inheritance, Canaan!

A further Prize was adjudged to these hexameters.

2 Chron. xxxv. 22, 23.

------ immota labascunt:
Et quæ perpetuo sunt agitata, manent.

Fanus Vitalis.

Herodotus, II. 28. μεταξυ Συηνης τε πολιος κειμενα της Θηβαιδος, δυο ουρεα, και Ελεφαντινης: ουνοματα δε ειναι τοισι ουρεσι, τω μεν, Κρωφι, τω δε, Μωφι.

Gen. xxxv. 7.

Wisdom xviii. 15, 16.

Ezekiel i. 3.

Ulyssipolis, that is, Lisbon.

See the story in Socrates, H. E. V. 16.