Ephemeron | ||
EPHEMERON.
Its beginning and its goal
Lost in dim unmeasured distance—
Dwells the solitary Soul.
Through the gloom its footsteps bend.
Though a gleam of Day Supernal
On its darkness may descend—
Clouds terrestrial, shades infernal,
Close around it to the end.
Men are like the race of leaves—
Can Geneva or Saint Omer
More assure a soul that grieves
(Still from faith to doubt a roamer)
O'er the little it receives?
That the Earth will have her due—
Bony fingers draw the curtain
When the farce is fairly through.
Through our pulses, wave on wave—
And we are but slowly dying
From the cradle to the grave.
Haunt these fated dwellings now—
Inconceivable Hereafter!
What companionship hast thou?
Thought, shall read thee?—may we deem
Life the sleep, and death the waking
From a long distempered dream?
Must the heart, in self-defence,
Turn, for something that is real,
To the joys of time and sense?
Faith and reason to perplex—
Or, with wise Sardanapalus,
Eat, and drink, and woo the Sex?
Glooms a black and starless sky—
Let a jolly rouse restore us,
Draining flask and flagon dry;
Raise the catch, and roar the chorus,
Fast and fierce while goblets fly—
Long the Night that lies before us—
Let us live until we die!
Impish Care from song must flit,
Mirth is next of kin to gladness—
Will the world outweigh a fit
Of the fine celestial madness,
Worth all wisdom and all wit—
Careless thousands might pass by,
Dull of soul—and e'en in feature
Sovereign Empress of all nature,
From the centre to the sky!
Better still, methinks, the Weed!
Soothing longer, kindled quicker,
Trustier Fere in time of need.
From its ashes spiral-curled,
Born in fire, and lost in vapor,
Floats, an emblem of the World.
All the splendor which thou seest;
What is mightiest in the present,
On the morrow may be least—
Like yon pale imperial Crescent
Waning in the stormy East.
Lurks profound in Power or Fame,
Let us build a lofty Name!
Follow Fortune far and fast—
Eyes agape for rule or treasure,
Nets in troubled waters cast—
Harvest moonshine beyond measure—
But the end must come at last.
Happy in its milder rays—
If the fiery noon-tide crowned us
With the glory of its blaze—
Darker shadows gather round us,
In the evening of our days.
On a march to end like this?
Yet a little, worn and weary,
Every comrade thou shalt miss,
On the pathway, stern and dreary,
Leading to the vast Abyss.
Under dead autumnal skies,
In the Land of Dream and Shadow
Deeper yet the journey lies.
Still to seek the El Dorado
That shall never meet our eyes.
Drearier grows the Blasted Heath—
On we go, with listless meaning,
Feebler footstep, fainter breath—
On a broken staff y-leaning,
Slowly plodding on to death.
Calmly might we close our eyes,
Could ye tell us that a Morning
On our slumber shall arise!
Breathed from too perturbed a breast—
Like a wayward infant's wailing,
When it needs must go to rest.
Hopes, that once were ever nigh?
Think of those who died before thee,
Think of those who yet shall die.
That might whisper words of power—
In the silence of thy chamber,
At the thoughtful midnight hour.
Even in this terrene degree—
Once—how nobly—animating
Dust and ashes! Can it be
Thou in some far world art waiting,
Thou that once wast all to me?
Truth divine—and man might draw
Strength and comfort from the working
Of the ever-constant Law.
Lifted from the plane of strife—
Bathed in the o'erflowing fountains
Of the Universal Life—
Born of Nature grand and free,
Felt the glow of inspiration
Shedding glimpses, e'en to thee,
Of the glory of Creation,
And the Joy that yet shall be?
And the sighing lips are dumb—
At the deep, prophetic murmur
Of the Wondrous Age to come.
Where, in distant thunder, beat
Waves of the advancing Ocean
Soon to lave our very feet.
Thrilling from the Unseen Shore,
Mingle with its endless roar;
And a mighty Day is dawning,
Such as never shone before!
On its threshold trembling stands!
Through the ancient Shadow Curtal,
Yet dividing these our Lands,
They that once, like us, were mortal,
Reach their dear remembered hands.
That are faithful to the end—
Death with Life, and Clay with Spirit,
Shall converse, as friend with friend.
Sat in darkness and dismay,
Shall admire their melancholy—
Seeing every doubt decay
In the Light, serene and holy,
Of the Everlasting Day.
In forgetting what they are!
But, meanwhile, we faint and perish
For the Fount that lies afar.
Saints have dwelt and died below—
Yet the World is still a Prison,
Full of wrong, and full of woe!
In her height of glory, knew—
Lodged in darkness and in fetters,
Toiling for the lordly Few.
Dungeoned from the glimmering day,
Shall each sullen turnkey-ruler
Hold his wretched thralls for aye?
Like the Strong Man from his sleep!
Withe, and cord, and chain are breaking,
Ye had knotted fast and deep—
At the whirlwind ye shall reap!
On thy wall the Hand Unknown!
Tremble, false and cursing priest!
Rule and awe thine ends alone—
Dreams of vague, bewildered deist,
Haply, purer than thine own.
Ever harping on the Word—
But, alas, how little fervent
For the Deed that must accord—
Thou unprofitable servant
In the Garden of thy Lord!
Truth and Right once more must flee.
Throne and Mitre—bravely shaken—
Fixed in bloody triumph, see!
And the world again must waken
From the Dream that man was free.
Twice in anger sent to tell
Earth thy tale of Hope Elysian,
But the slumber to dispel
With a burst of fierce derision
From the lowest fiends of hell!
On this sombre stage behold
The same wretched mimes, rehearsing
Damnéd tragedies of old.
Draw the curtain, shift the scene,
To present the doleful pageant
Every age in turn hath been.
Threading, in her tortuous way,
The interminable shambles
Men call history—shall survey
To the butchery of to-day.
Two vile Shapes, in crown and cowl,
On their ancient craft reliant,
Sharp-eyed pigmies, cheek by jowl,
Drive yon blinded, stumbling Giant
To his labor fierce and foul—
Grieving, groaning, yet compliant—
Luckless, day-bewildered owl.
This your tyrants know too well.
Toil and die, unhappy People!
That some paltry triumph swell—
Every clang from tower and steeple
Sounding Freedom's mortal knell.
To the dead lagoons of Aigue—
From the Dnieper to the Shannon—
From the Pyrenees to Prague—
Ye are come, as food for cannon,
Come, as victual for the Plague.
Let yon Tartar plain be tilled!
Here are fields that want manuring—
Here's a trench that must be filled!
Yours shall be, how long and deep!
Home, and wife, and child, and neighbor,
Haunt no more that dreamless sleep.
Burns the oriental sky
Over old Constantinople—
Spreads a vaster City nigh.
There is rest from Sevastópol—
Rest, and room for all to lie.
The “Peoples,” (the Universal Yankee Nation, of course, always excepted,) have now, for a long time, approved themselves, as it were.
“Darbyshire born, and Darbyshire bred,Strong i' th' yarn, and weak i' th' yead.”
Let it be hoped that, as their heads become clearer, their arms may be found none the less strong.
From each haughty brow is hurled!
Names that, in a nobler quarrel,
Might have stood against the world.
Paced his nightly round in pride,
Since the Lily and the Lion,
'Gainst the Crescent-Moon allied.
On the walls of rescued Zion
Floated proudly, side by side.
Forced at last to join your hands
By a Foe grown daily stronger
On the spoil of injured lands—
Ye, that spared the mighty Wronger,
Draw too late your rusted brands.
Keel and mast and sail supplies,
That shall waft him to the Eden
Of your Indian shores and skies.
Should have cloven shield and helm,
Ere ye saw the Wreck of Poland
Yon Barbarian Tide o'erwhelm.
While those foul Twin-Vultures tore
The bold Magyar's heart, and sated
Beak and talon deep with gore—
Thou unmoved, and thou elated,
When its pulses throbbed no more!
To the savage Cyclops cowered—
Start to find yourselves, like Outis,
But the last to be devoured.
For the wrong of less degree?
Grief and pity from the free.
While a new eclipse she sees?
Shall the Sick Man dread no longer
His Physicians—and their fees?
Hail a rival yoke o'erthrown
From the neck of distant nations,
While your heel is on their own?
Sighs of miserable men,
From Australia's arid shingle—
From the marsh of foul Cayenne.
Tried in turn, perchance in vain—
Ever scenting retribution,
Ye must watch, in sleepless pain,
Lest the hydra, Revolution,
Wake to horrid life again.
Teach the lightning's tongue to lie—
Lest it tell thee, France, too often,
How thy hapless children die.
While distrusting Paris reads—
Great Napoleon's brow of marble
Flushing 'neath the Invalides.
Round that hero-haunted dome,
First unlock those robber fingers
From the gasping throat of Rome!
First avert that threatening eye,
Guarding crowned, anointed Treason
'Gainst the glaive of Italy.
Mocks a captive city's moan—
Where the deep unquenched volcano
Smoulders 'neath a despot's throne—
In their dungeons of the sea—
Lone Procida's caves of anguish,
Dens of old accursed Capri.
Thanks to Mr. Gladstone, the world is tolerably well informed of the atrocities perpetrated by the Neapolitan government. On authority less eminent, one could hardly have believed in the possibility of twenty thousand persons confined for political offences, in the vicinity of a single capital—of the shameless infamy of the chief judge, Navarro—of the horrors of the Vicaria and of Nisida—of the Maschio of Ischia, where men are buried alive, twenty-four feet beneath the level of the sea—of Procida, where a hundred and seventy-five prisoners were massacred by hand-grenades thrown among their crowded masses. These facts, unquestionably, at the time, were fully in possession of the two allied governments, a word from either of which would have been all powerful with the court of Naples—but not a finger was raised in behalf of the noble Poerio or his suffering companions. “If it be confessed, it is not redressed”—and indeed, the vague impertinence of the Neapolitan semi-official reply can be paralleled only by that of Falstaff himself—“You hear all these matters denied—you hear it, gentlemen.”
By the Spectre of the Past
Long estranged from one another—
We were drawing near at last.
Coldly to report malign—
Owning our escutcheon darkened
With a stain as deep as thine.
Kindred grief—and made its moan
O'er the splendid Valor wasted,
And the blood so near our own.
Till thy mien we may forget,
Hand and glove with prosperous Murther—
Courting fouler co-mates yet.
All this bloody harvest reaped—
Never tell your sons the story,
How the heart of England leaped,
O'er a pale majestic Foe,
'Mid an Empire's lamentation,
By the Viewless Hand laid low.
Brave with free unbated breath;
But ye might have paused in silence
At the Majesty of Death.
No respectable American, I am sure, but witnessed with sincere pleasure the final union, after an almost suicidal delay, of the two most civilized nations of Europe. But this pleasure was speedily dampened by the covert insinuation of the French government, and the insolent announcement of the English press, that the affairs of this hemisphere were thenceforth to be regulated by their joint interference.
To dance on the grave of an adversary has ever been accounted a pitiful piece of satisfaction—yet something very like this has Britannia been doing, if the press and the theatre are fair exponents of public feeling. Her demonstrations have been a little too much in the humor of Moliere's police, enraged at the mischievous Polichinelle and his pretended arsenal of weapons—
—“coquin, filou, voleur!Vous osez nous faire peur!”
“The villain! who has dared to alarm us!” (they proceed to beat him.)
Saddest of all is it to see our old friend, Mr. Punch, whom we have always used to regard as a very saint, to venerate as the chiefest pillar in the whole fabric of British liberty, to defer to, in short, as the Fifth Estate of England—to see him, at his time of life, taking office under a government in exposing which nearly the whole of it has been spent—caricaturing (literally) the Corpse of that tremendous Enemy whom England, so little time ago, welcomed as her staunchest friend—and abasing himself, in complimentary verse, before the man whose person and whose deeds he has so perseveringly pilloried and pelted, and whose nose was the only ill feature in the case, which he could by any possibility exaggerate. A constitution torn in tatters, like a writ by a stout criminal—a couple of thousand blouses, scattered about the Boulevards, and dyed in the old approved mixture of blood and “boue de Paris”— are coolly disposed of in the precious couplet,
If precedents can justify, defence is soon to make.”
Look in vain for further help.
Torn and bleeding—England rallies,
Bravely, her “unconquered whelp.”—
Fierce her Ape-and-Tiger allies—
Shrill Sardinia's terrier yelp.
Couched within his sullen cave,
Of the pack that round it rave;
Gather to the Grave of Men—
Soon, with doubt and dread, discerning,
As they near the horrid den,
All the footsteps inward turning—
None reverting forth agen.
By conscription's ruthless call,
Or enlistment's shallow knavery.
Trapped or hunted—one and all,
Come, with blind and brutal bravery,
Dash your heads against a wall!
Waste their lessons. Pelissier!
These are not the Caves of Ouled—
Furze and faggot boot not here.
The curious in vaticination are referred to some remarkable verses of Thomas Campbell, entitled “The Power of Russia.” Prompted by the final supression of Polish nationality, they predict the present conjuncture in terms so clear and eloquent as to afford a fresh illustration of the force of the ancient nomenclature, which applied the single epithet—Vates—alike to the poet and the prophet.
Few readers of these lines can have forgotten one of the most frightful incidents of modern warfare. On the 18th of June, 1846, a tribe of Arabs, pursued by the French, under Colonel Pelissier, took refuge in the intricate caverns of Ouled-Riah. Unable to compel a surrender, the savage commander resolved to burn or stifle them. For many hours, an immense fire, constantly fed with fresh combustibles, roared within the entrance. As it was permitted to subside, the French soldiery, at the hazard of their lives, dashed into the furnace, and drew forth the charred and contorted bodies of nine hundred victims—men, women and children. About two hundred still breathed—but all perished in the course of the day. For this piece of energy, the French commander was censured—and promoted. London journalism, which then foamed at the mouth, and exhausted the vocabulary of horror, is now seen complacently anticipating that he may find “some means equally efficient” for disposing of the defenders of Sevastopol. The Illustrated News (June 23d) suggests the propriety of putting them all to the sword—when the place is taken. Perhaps it would be as well to wait till that event occurs. Meanwhile, General Pelissier might profitably pass his time in conning a little treatise, quaint but sound, entitled “God's Revenge upon Murther.” If he is to be ennobled for his exploits, ancient or recent, a motto appropriate to either, will doubtless be selected—
“E fulgore fumum.”Blind to that ye will not see!
Such a knot is severed only
By the hand unmeshed and free.
How thine Eagles, once unfurled
By the Men of fierce September,
Swept in triumph through the world?
Such the glory of a Name!
Freedom!—'tis a sound of magic.
Though to end in dust and shame.
Shall have died across the deep,
To your aid, in joy and wonder,
Shall a million swords outleap!
Echoed from surrounding lands,
In the clang of countless hammers
Forging fetters into brands.
Let it ring with vengeful force,
Where, in bloody, cold sepulture,
Lies Hungaria's mailéd corse.
From his grave shall start amain.
Of the West, shall lift again!
Long in fetters of the Foe!
That brave arm may yet be trusted
For a noble, trenchant blow.
With the grandeur once thine own—
In exultant earthquake shaken
From Calabria to the Rhone.
To Palermo's shattered wall,
Perjured crown and towered tiara
In resounding wreck shall fall.
Mother of the Mighty Dead!
Let yon grasping Sons of Edom
Tremble at thine arméd tread—
Hurling Hun and Vandal forth,
As of yore, into the regions
Of their savage native North.
See the very extraordinary report of a surgical and military commission, made about a century since, on the subject of Vampyrism in Hungary or some province adjacent—(many of the victims, I remember, were “hey dukes.)” The so-called Vampyres, it would appear, were buried alive, in a state of epidemic trance, and their neighbors complained of being grievously haunted by their appearances. A number of them were exhumed, (some after a burial of many weeks,) and exhibited signs of life, in fresh blood at the lips, and in cries and groans, when their heads were cut off, or when a stake was driven through them, as they revived. The Anglo-French alliance seems desirous of pursuing a similar course of treatment toward any revival of Hungarian nationality. Vide Lord Palmerston's remarks on the subject, and the general attitude of the two governments, and of the presses of their respective capitals.
Yet might join the valiant West,
Join to beat the Birds of Plunder
Back to their polluted Nest.
With a crew, whose hearts the voice
Of an angel would not alter
From their safely selfish choice.
Gales of diplomatic breath
Woo the long-reluctant nations
Still, to join the Dance of Death.
Droning in his drowsy ear,
Fails to rouse the sullen German
From his quiet pipe and beer.
Feeling yet the ancient smart
Of the double scar left yonder
Deep in Copenhagen's heart.
Lest she side against the strong—
Long ere Sweden lift a finger
To avenge an age of wrong.
Plying long his perjured trade,
Still shall keep, from loop-holed Semlin,
Cat-like watch on high Belgrade;
Wearied with their savage play—
Claws of brass and teeth of iron
Broken in the murderous fray—
Sir Fox may bear the prize away!
Still perverted or betrayed—
In the sight of men and angels
Shall this bloody game be played?
'Mid the clear celestial chimes,
Through this ether, dim and fetid
With the breath of countless crimes,
See the same vile farce repeated
O'er and o'er a thousand times?
To the calm eternal Plan—
Far beyond these clouds of error,
Pure Intelligences scan
Worlds undimmed by hate or terror—
But the darkened eye of man
Haunts of Anguish, Fear, and Blame—
Sees the mirk horizon fuming
From the Fires that none may name—
All the Past in horror glooming,
All the Present woe and shame,
And the Future dimly looming
Through a mist of blood and flame.
Ephemeron | ||