University of Virginia Library

And well may one in Tuscan vales reclined,
To thoughts like these direct a willing mind.
Here from each land where late my steps have trod,
Which slept as yet, nor dreamt it felt the rod,
New tidings, still the same, while rumour brings,
And shakes o'er thrones her venom-dropping wings;
While the gay city of the Seine displays
Her last new trophies of the “Immortal days;”
And guarded well with citizens' bright blades,
Her fresh reared banner greets the barricades;
While some remodel, some support the state,
And this would act, and that deliberate;
And by the stern dark column of the Man ,
His scars of Wagram shows the veteran,
And gazes upward, with a kindling eye,
As if Napoleon's spirit from the sky,
A moment hovered o'er the pedestal
Whence once his image, not his memory, fell:
While booms the cannon through thy squares, Bruxelles,
And Diebitsch leaves unreached the Dardanelles,
To front by Warsaw's serried wall afar,
Storms that may veil his fame's ascending star;
Light of the world, whose love to thee is more
Than all Olympus ever knew before,
(Thy kindred gods, who left their power to thee,
Oblivion quaffing of their deity
In Æthiop's cavern, deep beneath the sea;)
Light of the world and leader! still appear
As there thy strife, its dinted footsteps here,
As there the war, the agony, the grief,
Here the same traces, but with time's relief.

But ye who shrink repugnant from the strife,
The restless winds that plough the seas of life,
And seek but peace, wherein to shape your way
To future mansions of eternal day,
Lo, Vallombrosa rears her grey retreat,
Her solemn walls for contemplation meet;
Her smooth-mown lawns, where studious feet may roam,
And pore at ease o'er many an antique tome;
Above, around, in long fantastic line,
Sweeps with his woods the circling Apennine.
And glad the sights the musing friar sees,
The far smoke rising mid the chestnut trees,
The sparkling ether o'er the distant plain,
Blue as the bosom of the summer main,
The milk-white ox, slow winding up the steep,
The laughing peasant, and his vintage heap;
Till lengthening shadows of the westward sun,
Spread their veil round him as the day glides on.
Then may his steps, untired with the scene,
Seek the trim garden's cypress-covered screen,
And trace at leisure on the virgin page,
The virtuous precept, or example sage:
Or fates of kingdoms, which of yore befell.
'Twas thus grew many a famous chronicle,
With silver clasps, and gilded letters quaint;
The pictured lives of martyr, or of saint,
Or gests of valorous knight, his arms who bore
To smite the Turk, on Jordan's sacred shore.
Perchance with terror riding on his spear,
Flew as the eagle's his unchecked career;
Perchance left singly, scorning yet to yield,
He sunk to rest beneath his broken shield:
Then turned his comrades, maddening at the thought,
And dear the trophy from the field they brought.
High in some old cathedral's gothic aisle
In storied pomp his monument they pile;
Around his tomb the priest may masses sing,
Where banners wave, and odorous censers swing,
And the stained oriel sheds its colours bright,
In uncouth tracery telling of the fight:
But ages roll, and soon before their blast
Must all we see be mingled with the past;
No more that roof its pinnacles shall raise,
A few grey stones, a tale of other days,
That tells of splendour, ere the foemen came,
And smote its shrines, and gave its towers to flame,
And bade destruction in one ruin whelm
The shepherd's rude-carved crook, the warrior's helm;
A few green walls shall rise its site along;
Where now the tomb that should his fame prolong?
Yet shall he live, and still each high emprize
Shall fire the wanderer 'neath those eastern skies;
Though gone their sculptured record, and defaced
The marble pillars of that blackened waste;
Still as the monk's recital opes to view,
Dressed in old phrase, his memory wakes anew;
Each wreath of victory won on field or flood,
By lonely mountain, or enchanted wood,
The oppressor slain, the damsel's fetters rent,
And pagan caitiffs down to Hades sent.
Nor scorn the themes which Ariosto sung,
And ancient Chaucer Woodstock's oaks among,
And hence reflected to our later day,
In Scott's wild page, and Dryden's classic lay.
Yet may he love through evening's silent hours
To woo the Muses from Athenian bowers,
Or problems deep beneath the stars to trace,
Mysterious lore of Afric's swarthy race.
By sacred signs sent down from sire to son,
Where Thebes' wide gates saw ancient Nilus run
Past mirror'd temples, through that mighty clime,
The nurse of realms long yielded since to time;
The awful fount, whence young Achaia drew
Her lore, and fledged her eagle ere it flew;
And shook, while hovered o'er her callow wings
The ancestral grandeur of a thousand kings.
Long time sequestered in the cloistered cell,
War's maddening demons bade such science dwell;
Slow crept the pilot yet, nor dared to brave
The hidden terrors of the pathless wave;
Enough for him his timid course to shape,
From creek to creek, and jutting cape to cape,
And wait with sails in sheltering haven furled,
When the breeze freshened or the billows curled.
But earth has shaken off her widow weeds;
And led by peace, a bolder age succeeds.
Lo, El Dorado opes her countless store—
Can fancy image, avarice pant for more?
Hark to the beach, how varied nations throng,
Waked by the clang of fame's resounding gong;
Wild with desire, their hearts responsive leap;
Hence, cavaliers, your home is o'er the deep!
Each thirsty lance that longs for battle's din,
Each squire that burns his knightly spurs to win,
Each moon-struck bard, of golden realms, that feigns,
Here is the clime where Artemisia reigns.
Each sage with schemes of true perfection warm,
Here last was seen Utopia's fleeting form:
Haste, for the gates of darkness are unbarred,
And show beyond a dusky vision, starred
With wealth and peace, too soon to fade before
Assembled legions on her plundered shore.
Swift as the winds they spurn the Atlantic main,
And fast before night's gloomy shadows wane,
And bright in morning radiance to the old
Spreads the new world her dower of thrones and gold.
No more shall victor shun the billow's roar,
And halt his legions on the curtailed shore,
To shed, or gather, as his bosom swells,
Tears with young Ammon, with the Roman shells.
That clime which his and Bacchus' rule confest,
Must bend before her sister of the west;
And waves and whirlwinds, now a vanished fear,
But serve to waft him to that glorious sphere.