 | The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder |  |
CONGRESS: 1878
'T was in the year when mutterings, loud and deep,Were heard in all the dark, distracted land;
And grave men questioned: “Can the State withstand
The shock and strain to come? O, will she keep
Firm her four walls, should the wild creature leap
To ruin and ravish? Will her pillars planned
By the great dead, tremble to either hand?
The dead! would heaven they might awake from sleep!”
Haply (I thought) our Congress still may hold
One voice of power—when lo! upon the blast
A sound like jackals ravening to and fro.
Great God! And has it come to this at last?
Such noise, such shame, where once, not long ago,
The pure and wise their living thoughts outrolled.
| The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder | |