Poems original and translated By John Herman Merivale ... A new and corrected edition with some additional pieces |
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252
CHARADE.
A voice of wailing heard and loud lament
From Sinai's rocks to fruitful Lebanon—
The awful warning of destruction sent
To Nineveh the great, and Babylon—
Ruin, and utter desolation;
Thence to all nations, in the dark eclipse
Floundering and sinking, of religion's sun,
Denounced tremendous by the hallow'd lips
Of him, the inspiréd bard that wrote the Apocalypse—
From Sinai's rocks to fruitful Lebanon—
The awful warning of destruction sent
To Nineveh the great, and Babylon—
Ruin, and utter desolation;
Thence to all nations, in the dark eclipse
Floundering and sinking, of religion's sun,
Denounced tremendous by the hallow'd lips
Of him, the inspiréd bard that wrote the Apocalypse—
Behold my First. My Second lies conceal'd
In words impervious to the noon-tide beam
Where erst the mighty prophet who reveal'd
The monarch of Assyria's mystic dream,
And thence, borne onward by the viewless stream
Of unborn ages, to the searching eye
Of Faith has given its widest, amplest theme,
Was doom'd in youth by tyrant power to lie
A prey to fiercest beasts, who growl'd and pass'd him by.
In words impervious to the noon-tide beam
Where erst the mighty prophet who reveal'd
The monarch of Assyria's mystic dream,
And thence, borne onward by the viewless stream
Of unborn ages, to the searching eye
Of Faith has given its widest, amplest theme,
Was doom'd in youth by tyrant power to lie
A prey to fiercest beasts, who growl'd and pass'd him by.
—Both grandly dark—Behold yet darker frown
Through the thick gloom of ages past away,
Wearing the semblance of a kingly crown,
With streaming beard, and locks of iron gray;
Grim-visaged potentate, whose bloody sway
Crimsons the eternal snows that gird the pole;
Whose name yet lives remember'd in the day
When low in dust repentant bigots roll—
Low, and with ashes soil'd—behold! you have my Whole.
Through the thick gloom of ages past away,
Wearing the semblance of a kingly crown,
With streaming beard, and locks of iron gray;
253
Crimsons the eternal snows that gird the pole;
Whose name yet lives remember'd in the day
When low in dust repentant bigots roll—
Low, and with ashes soil'd—behold! you have my Whole.
| Poems original and translated | |