Specimens of American poetry :: :: University of Virginia Library

When I am dead, no pageant train
Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain,
Stain it with hypocritic tear;
For I will die as I did live,
Nor take the boon I cannot give.

Ye shall not raise a marble bust
Upon the spot where I repose;
Ye shall not fawn before my dust,
In hollow circumstance of woes:
Nor sculptured clay, with lying breath,
Insult the clay that moulds beneath.

Ye shall not pile, with servile toil,
Your monuments upon my breast,
Nor yet within the common soil
Lay down the wreck of Power to rest;
Where man can boast that he has trod
On him, that was “the scourge of God.”

But ye the mountain stream shall turn,
And lay its secret channel bare,
And hollow, for your sovereign's urn,
A resting-place for ever there:
Then bid its everlasting springs
Flow back upon the King of Kings;
And never be the secret said,
Until the deep give up his dead.

My gold and silver ye shall fling
Back to the clods, that gave them birth;—
The captured crowns of many a king,
The ransom of a conquered earth:
For e'en though dead will I control
The trophies of the capitol.

But when beneath the mountain tide,
Ye 've laid your monarch down to rot,
Ye shall not rear upon its side
Pillar or mound to mark the spot;

For long enough the world has shook
Beneath the terrors of my look;
And now that I have run my race,
The astonish'd realms shall rest a space.

My course was like a river deep,
And from the northern hills I burst,
Across the world in wrath to sweep,
And where I went, the spot was cursed.
Nor blade of grass again was seen
Where Alaric and his hosts had been.

See how their haughty barriers fail
Beneath the terror of the Goth,
Their iron-breasted legions quail
Before my ruthless sabaoth,
And low the queen of empires kneels,
And grovels at my chariot-wheels.

Not for myself did I ascend
In judgment my triumphal car;
'T was God alone on high did send
The avenging Scythian to the war,
To shake abroad, with iron hand,
The appointed scourge of his command

With iron hand that scourge I rear'd
O'er guilty king and guilty realm;
Destruction was the ship I steer'd,
And vengeance sat upon the helm,
When, launch'd in fury on the flood,
I plough'd my ways through seas of blood,
And in the stream their hearts had spilt
Wash'd out the long arrears of guilt.

Across the everlasting Alp
I pour'd the torrent of my powers,
And feeble Cæsars shriek'd for help
In vain within their seven-hill'd towers;
I quench'd in blood the brightest gem
That glitter'd in their diadem,
And struck a darker, deeper die
In the purple of their majesty,
And bade my northern banners shine
Upon the conquer'd Palatine.

My course is run, my errand done:
I go to Him from whence I came,
But never yet shall set the sun
Of glory that adorns my name;
And Roman hearts shall long be sick,
When men shall think of Alaric.

My course is run, my errand done—
But darker ministers of fate,
Impatient, round the eternal throne,
And in the caves of vengeance, wait
And soon mankind shall blench away
Before the name of Attila.