The Poetical Works of the Rev. George Croly :: :: University of Virginia Library

“The Stygian throng
Bent their aspéct, and whom they wish'd beheld,
Their mighty chief return'd.”
“A greater power
Now ruled him, punish'd in the shape he sinn'd,
According to his doom.”
MILTON.

[_]

NOTE. The former part of this Poem touched on the revolutionary memorials of Paris. The time was supposed to occupy the Morning and the Noon. The present view occupies the Evening, to the verge of Night. Its chief objects are, “The Louvre Gallery,” “The Venetian Horses,” “The Defeat in Russia,” “Napoleon's Exile,” “The Death of Louis XVI.” “George the Third,” &c.

I.

King of the past, proud sitter by the grave
Where nations slumber; pale Antiquity!
What thousand shapes obey thy sceptre's wave!
Chieftains, with all their hosts like clouds, rush by;
Sages whose thrones are bright in yonder sky;
Genius with all her sons, whose thoughts were wings;
Beauty, whose glance bade empires live and die;
Wild hearts that drank of passion's fiery springs,
All from their shadowy world thy mighty sceptre brings.

II.

Prince, warrior, priest—the crown, the helm, the hood,
Ev'n on this spot, rose, sway'd, and sank away.
Above that golden gate! Napoleon stood—
The curse and omen of our evil day;
Gathering, like thunderclouds, his last array,
That went to battle, ne'er to come again;
Their Xerxes shed no tear! they went to slay;
Vengeance awoke at last, and they were slain!
And now—above it waves the Lily's exiled vane!

III.

There stands his Arch of victory, but there
Its idol stands no more.—His day is done!
Close by the pile sits Austria's cuirassier,
Busy and gazing groups are on it strown,
A wain is at its foot, as if for one
Who on that crowded scaffold came to die;
And the quick murmurings there, the engine's groan,
Short, deep, give semblance of a dying cry:
France, on that scaffold ends thy gloomy sovereignty.

IV.

For, thence must stoop the glorious Grecian steeds
That his fierce hand had yoked to Victory's wheel.
Now following where a newer conqueror leads,
To thy blue waters, Venice, bends their heel!
Trophies! how oft has steel thus shiver'd steel,
Since first their wanderings fix'd the doom of war!
But lives not in those fiery fronts a spell?
Were not those orb'd eyes moulded, when the air
Of midnight shook and glowed with the red comet's glare?

V.

Ye stars! bright legions that, before all time,
Camped on yon plain of sapphire, what shall tell
Your burning myriads, but the eye of Him
Who bade through heaven your golden chariots wheel?
Yet who earthborn can see your hosts, nor feel
Immortal impulses—Eternity?
What wonder if the o'erwrought soul should reel
With its own weight of thought, and the wild eye
See fate within your tracks of sleepless glory lie?

VI.

For ye behold the Mightiest! From that steep
What ages have worshipp'd round your King!
Ye heard his trumpet sounded o'er Earth's sleep;
Ye heard the morning angels o'er it sing;
Upon that orb, above me quivering,
Gazed Adam from his bower in paradise.
The wanderers of the Deluge saw it spring
Above the buried world, and hail'd its rise,
Lighting their lonely track with Faith's celestial dyes.

VII.

On Calvary shot down that purple eye,
When, but the soldier and the sacrifice
All were departed.—Mount of Agony!
But Time's broad pinion, ere the giant dies,
Shall cloud your dome.—Ye fruitage of the skies,
Your vineyard shall be shaken!—From your urn,
Censers of Heaven! no more shall glory rise,
Your incense to the Throne!—The heavens shall burn:
For all your pomps are dust, and shall to dust return.

VIII.

Yet, look ye living intellects.—The trine
Of waning planets speaks it not decay?
Does Schedir's staff of diamond wave no sign?
Monarch of midnight, Sirius, shoots thy ray
Undimm'd, when thrones sublunar pass away?
Dreams!—yet if e'er was graved in vigil wan
Your spell on gem or imaged alchemy,
The sign when empire's hour-glass downwards ran,
'Twas on that arch, graved on that brazen talisman.

IX.

Greece! thou wast still a country,—Memory bleeds
To think how early died that glorious name!
Yet still 'twas glorious, while the matchless Steeds
Stood on thy Isthmus gate.—The Roman came,
Red from the fight, his eagle's wing of flame
Waving o'er idol shields, and wolf-crests tall;
Then widow'd Corinth groan'd, in all her shame,
To see the Lictors mount the pedestal.
Then Greece was doom'd to fall; a deadly, final fall.

X.

The glass ran down! The immortal Steeds again
Must set to rise, like empire's fatal star;
Rome, the world's vanquisher, seem'd vanquished then.
The unhelm'd Roman beat his breast afar,
The spoilers march'd in pomp of eastern war.
There loured from elephants the turban'd brow,
There archers gleam'd on camel and on car,
And there, in gold and gem's barbaric glow,
Triumph'd the purpled Greek—the King of Kings below.

XI.

But stronger omens chill the idolater;
Above the standards towers a Cross of red.
Oh, if he knew that sign, no sign of fear!
Rome's crown is rent; now may her Pontiff shed
The ashes on his brow, her Augur spread
His eyes to mark the lightning o'er his shrine.
The hour has come! The mystic steeds have fled,
The Eagle stoops before the Cross divine;
Empire has gone, to dwell with mighty Constantine.

XII.

The glass ran down! Long had the coursers stood,
Of Fate and Empire the unchanged record;
Long had the Eastern Harlot's cup of blood
Made drunk the nations at her midnight board;
Long had the martyr's groan from racks been pour'd;
Their graves cried out, the winds bore up the cry,
And it was heard, and in the West the sword
Was girded on the Christian champion's thigh:
Woe to her turban'd front of pride and blasphemy.

XIII.

A hostile trumpet summon'd.—'Twas a sound
That ne'er before had pierced her jewell'd ear.
On her indignant brow the helm was bound,
With giant grasp she seized the mace and spear.
She look'd upon the sea.—A cross was there,
Red as her own, and with it rush'd a train,
That seem'd like Ocean's lords their barks to steer,
An endless cloud of mast, and sheet, and vane,
Tempest of wrath and woe, with blood for all the rain.

XIV.

I must to other themes, yet thought delays
As o'er a noble grave, above the scene,
Brought by that hour before me;—morning's blaze
Flaming on wall, and shore, and surge of green;
The galleys, like a wood, the capes between,
Then flashing onwards;—on the foremost prow
A warrior who his ninetieth year has seen,
To whom the ring of gold-mail'd princes bow,
As if to War grown old, immortal Dandolo!—

XV.

Constantinople!—then thy shout arose,
And from thy ramparts roll'd the mystic flame
Unquenchable—The ranks of battle close:
The galleys rush'd with catapult and ram,
Like hail the lances from the turrets came,
And decks were fired, and champions downwards flung,
Till wall, and shore, and surge in crimson swam.
'Twas noon, the Grecian trumpet fainter rung;
At eve the Red-cross knights their hymn of triumph sung!

XVI.

Then saw the Hippodrome the Genoese spear,
For the bright Steeds must sail the western sea;
And round the Circus gallop'd in career,
With blazon'd shield, helm barr'd, and lance at knee,
Like towers of steel, the German Chivalry.
The Venice mariner, in cap and plume,
And gold-seam'd gabardine, look'd on with glee;
The Greek stood rapt, as by an opening tomb,
As if his spirit saw the Turk in Sophia's Dome.

XVII.

The glass ran down! and Venice must resign
The talisman of empire to the Gaul.
Her emerald ring no more must wed the brine.
Feebly she falls, yet more than she must fall:
A thousand years had stood her sacred wall,
The Isthmus-guard to lovely Italy;
And now the horn has blown the final call
That bids in chains another Corinth lie,
Another Greece bow down to blood and perfidy.

XVIII.

A throng was in St. Mark's, but 'twas no throng
Like that, which o'er the Adriatic foam
Had borne the Steeds with warrior shout and song,
Then fix'd them for long glory o'er the dome:
She sinn'd, and now the hour of wrath was come;
Though 'twas the robber made the adult'ress bare:
The crowd were fierce-eyed men with pike and drum
And brazen gun, and tri-colour's broad glare;
The pale Venetian stood aloof, in weak despair.

XIX.

Such is the spoil of Time!—Unhallowed thought!
Empires might stand, unshaken as their globe.
But which has worn its ermine without spot?
'Twas Justice, and not Time that tore their robe.
What sent the steel their pamper'd hearts to probe?
'Twas their own blow, no matter by what name,
Conspirator, or conqueror, monarch, mob.
They built their pile, then Judgment sent the flame,
To rid the earth of guilt, the wearied heaven of shame.

XX.

'Tis not in mockery of man that earth
Is strewed with splendid fragments, temple, tower;
That realms, where glory sprang full arm'd to birth,
Are desolate, the snake and tiger's bower;—
They lie the monuments of evil power,
Not freaks of chance, but warnings against crime;
And ancient Nineveh, to earth's last hour,
Had she been pure, might stand as in her prime;
Nay, stand in growing pomp, till God had finish'd time.

XXI.

England! my great, my glorious,—loved with love
That almost makes a portion of the soul;
The hour has come to fix thine eye above.
There lie the thunders thou alone must roll,
And roll upon thyself;—There spreads the scroll,
Where thine own hand must write thy destiny.
None can decide but thou, if wolves shall howl,
And the black viper in thy temples lie.
Be holy, and thou 'rt saved; England, thou must not die!

XXII.

Again the glass runs down! The Steeds must range;
Aye, till the tangled web of Time be spun.
Thou King of Kings, above all chance or change,
When shall this toil and strife of earth be done;
When his Great Year be roll'd by Empire's sun?
Come to our world, thou Triumpher, whose train
Are cherubim, and take thy promised throne.
Come Conqueror of man's misery, death's chain.
Come, first-born from the dead, and reign, for ever reign!

XXIII.

The Louvre halls are fill'd with strange turmoil
Of axe and hammer, steps and voices loud,
For there the victors seize a noble spoil;
'Twas won by England's arm in Soignié's wood.
Yon bayonets still are rusty with the blood
That drench'd its dark ravines. The struggle's o'er,
So may the restless rancour be subdued.
The final lesson's given. The might that tore
That matchless prize from France, proclaimed, “Go sin no more.”

XXIV.

Kingly and broad ascends the Parian stair,
Fit entrance to the regal glories nigh;
And toilsome 'tis to make the passage there,
Through its thick crowd incessant rushing by.
The summit gain'd,—like lightning on the eye,
Bursts the deep vision, from the stately door,
One colour'd splendour, far as glance can fly,
Gold, marble, giant mirror, o'er and o'er,
Flashing in sun-like streams from fretted vault to floor.

XXV.

These were thy spoil, sad Italy: the prey
Of slaves that sent thy glories to the tomb.
Still on thy odour-breathing heaven the day
Awoke on roses, and the evening gloom
Sail'd down the azure on as soft a plume
As ever fann'd the air in Summer's bower;
But the high voice that bade the nations come
To love and worship, parted in that hour.
These were thy crown of stars, thy soul, thy living power!

XXVI.

Yet these are thy revenge.—The spoiler's spoil'd;—
Ev'n on this spot is given the deadliest blow;
Here on the robber's head his crime recoil'd.
Strange scene, of wonderers hasting to and fro,
And soldiers on their posts parading slow,
And the fix'd native with his livid glare,
And woman with her ready burst of woe,
And eager artists scaffolded in air,
Catching its pomps before that dazzling wall is bare.

XXVII.

But man and earth have vanish'd from the eye,
Once on its host of silent beauty roll'd,
Ranged in their tribes, ascending majesty!
Holland's fine touch, the Flanders pencil bold,
Superb Venetian, pearl and purple stoled;
Romantic Lombard, fiery Florentine,
Brightening, as up the Alp the evening's gold
From the deep vineyard to the crown of pine,
Till, on the marble peak, 'tis mix'd with heaven,—divine!

XXVIII.

What are those tablets round me? Living minds—
The mighty soul in form and pressure wrought;—
Unfolded natures,—where the vision winds
Thro' what was dream, deep throb, unutter'd thought.
There breathes Salvator! That red lightning shot
From its dark throne to fire that forest hoar,
That combat in its burnings madly fought,
That lake convulsed beneath the tempest's roar,
All in Salvator's soul toss'd, battled, burn'd, before.

XXIX.

And o'er them, o'er these very hues have hung
The men, whom empires reckon in their fame,
Kings, sages;—Here from morn till midnight clung
Immortal genius, lavishing its flame.
Guido for this flung down his maddening game,
Startling the revellers, who saw his eyes
Flashing with thoughts that like the lightnings came,
And his brow clouding, as the vision'd cries
Of Peter woke his own repentant agonies.

XXX.

Here, Raphael! is reveal'd the mystery,
That fixed the hectic crimson on thy cheek—
Here sank the earnest radiance of thine eye,
Dying beneath th'empassioned thoughts, that wreck
Spirits like thine;—Those eagle flights that seek
And perish in the sun-beams;—glorious fires,
That from their heaven around the mountain break
With crowning splendour, till the storm retires,
Leaving but smoke and dust, of all its marble spires.

XXXI.

Behold the Masterpiece,—as not with hands
Of human weakness wrought! how fiercely cold
That boy, divested of his nature, stands,
Maddening!—his eye in wild possession roll'd!
How shrinks the father from his stony hold!
What sorrow in the kneeling sister's eye
Turns on the group of more than mortal mould,
That o'er him all their words of wonder try,
All vain, all vanquish'd, he must writhe, and waste, and die.

XXXII.

The hope of hopes is there! but to the mount
Scarce dare their holy hands or eye-balls turn.
For on its brow, amid a fiery fount,
He floats, by his instinctive virtue borne,
He, for whose wounds the tribes of earth shall mourn,
Transfigured, in the majesty divine.
Jerusalem! that glory was thy scorn,
Thy king was made a mockery and a sign,
A thousand years!—His blood is still on thee and thine!

XXXIII.

Resplendent Titian! what a host of thoughts,
What memories of stars and midnight moons,
And long hours pass'd beneath the emerald vaults
Of forests, and the sweet eve's thousand tunes,
When the breeze rushes through the vine-festoons,
Show'ring their dew-drops; are concentred here!
And forms of prince and knight in proud saloons,
And dames with dark Italian eyes, that ne'er
Knew sorrow, or but wept the heart's bewitching tear.

XXXIV.

Prometheus of the pencil! life and light
Burst on the canvass from thy mighty hand,
All hues sublime that ever dazzled sight
Where tempests die on heaven; or ever waned
On hills, the evening's azure thrones, or stain'd
Ruby or beryl in their Indian cell,
Or glanced from gem-dropt wing, or blossom vein'd,
Or tinged in ocean-caves the radiant shell,
All, at thy sceptre's wave, from all their fountains swell.

XXXV.

There shines thy trophy! a delicious maze
Of forest paths luxuriant, where the sun
Sinks, like a far-off city in a blaze,
In purple sheathing trunk and umbrage dun.
But there a fearful vengeance has begun!
The sword of wrath is in the victim's brain,
The Bigot's race of blood in blood is run.
He falls—his eye-ball writhes with mortal pain,
Yet flashes fiery pride. He struggles,—faints,—he's slain.

XXXVI.

But lo! the East is deepening; and the shade
Floats in grey softness down the gorgeous Hall,
Veiling the crimson cheek and glossy braid;
And wreathing in its slow and sweeping pall
Mirror, and bust, and Parian capital.
Silence is throned,—in distance dies the tread,—
And in the gloom its kings and champions all,
Sitting with truncheon'd hand and hoary head,
Seem spirits from the grave, a council of the dead!

XXXVII.

But eve still glows on every shaft and plinth,
And painted roof and sculptured architrave
In the rich halls below; that Labyrinth,—
Whose people are the gods of sky and wave,
Idols! that Greece to the world's worship gave,
The madness, dream, delight of sterner days,
Till Greece was but a name—a fetter'd slave.
Here is their shrine;—and the sweet sun delays,
As on their golden domes of old he loved to gaze.

XXXVIII.

Are they but stone?—Ay, many an age the wave
Has beat on beds as precious, and the sheep
Has nibbled the wild vine-shoots round the cave
Where their white beauty slept, and still might sleep,
Had not the master-chisel plunging deep
Awoke the living image from the stone.
Was their Creator born to swell the heap
Of earth's decay,—be measured by a moon?
The soul's supremacy decrees the soul its throne!

XXXIX.

Tombs are deceivers—What a mass of mind
Were church-yards,—if the chambers of the brain
Dungeon'd the spirit! Sceptic, grasp the wind,
Rule the outgoings of the storm, then chain
The fiery thought that neither mount nor main,
Not earth, heaven, time, nor thou, Eternity,
With thy dark-frowning grandeur, can restrain.
There lies the house of bondage, let it lie!
The ransom'd slave's gone forth—his freedom was to die.

XL.

I have descended to the ancient vault,
And held communion with the remnants there.
What saw I then? I saw the velvet rot;
I saw the massive brass, like cobwebs, tear;
Shewing within its rents a shape of fear,
A wreck of man; from which the reptile stole
Scared by the light.—Decaying slumberer,
The thunders on thine ear unheard might roll!
Is this pale ruin the tomb, the temple of the soul!

XLI.

Oh! misery if it were: That gliding worm
Might make its mock of us,—it feeds and then
Is full and happy—and the lordliest form
That ever ruled its fellow-wretches, men—
What were it but the lion in the den,
Biting its fetters, groaning for the sweep
Of its strong sinews?—Better, not have been,
Than desperate gaze on heaven's forbidden steep,
Than feel this world a woe; the next, death, ashes, sleep!

100

XLII.

But the freed spirit's gone;—upon the floods,
The rolling of whose waves is life, 'tis gone!
And it has mingled with the diadem'd crowds
That wing above the light of star or sun,
It lives at last,—its being has begun!
Ay, from the moment that its clouded eye
Closed on the chamber hush'd and taper dun,
It gazed on things unutterable, high
Above all height,—all hope;—on Immortality!

XLIII.

Now, to the world again.—The thought has past!—
It came, and for itself made words, and now
Has gone—as fitful as the summer blast.
Again I see imperial overthrow,
The halls resound with heavy crash and blow,
Engines and trooping feet, and labour's cries;
For there the God of many a realm lies low,
Unthroned, upon the floor's mosaic dyes,
Yet worshipp'd still, the love, the wonder of all eyes.

101

XLIV.

That crowd itself a wonder; half the world
Seem'd to have sent it for some final deed.
There gazed the deep-brow'd Calmuck, that unfurl'd
His flag by China's wall:—In wolfskin weed
The bearded Bashkir with his lance of reed;—
There the bold hunter, nursed beneath thy sky,
Tyrol, his Austrian master's strength and dread;—
There the helm'd Prussian—vengeance in his eye,
Till the last debt is paid to bitter memory.

XLV.

There the green Russian, that across thy wave,
Wild Euxine! shoots his glance of wrath and scorn
On the proud Sultanry, stupendous grave!
Where Power sits throned in shadowy pomp forlorn
Beneath the Crescent's swift-declining horn.
There towers, in gold and scarlet harnessries,
The lordly Briton, by whose lance was borne
The Godless to the earth, no more to rise!
Champion of Man and Heaven—the ransom'd world's his prize.

102

XLVI.

But all is rapture, reverence round one shrine,
Arch'd by the sunset with a burst of rays;
A form seems floating out, a youth divine,
Half throned, half mantled in the amber haze,—
High scorn, instinctive power are in his gaze;
His bow is scarce relax'd, his shaft scarce flown,
His arm uplifted still, his tress still plays;
He bends to catch the Python's dying groan,
Yet bends as if that spot were his Olympian throne.

XLVII.

King of the sun-beams—on the silvery shore
Of Delos stood thy glory, and thy name
Rose solemn from its caves and forests hoar;
And ever on its waves proud pilgrims came
Bearing upon their barks the incense-flame;
Bards, warriors, kings, with laurel-wreath and lyre,
Bound to the Mystic Isle, where life—a dream,
A lovely dream! nor cradle knew nor pyre;
Greece! like thy early heart; its fire, all hallow'd fire!

103

XLVIII.

The Persian millions came.—Thy oracle
In thunder o'er them utter'd Destiny!
From the barbarian's hand down dropped the steel,
Back rush'd their prows, it told they came to die!
Silent as death, the trump, the warrior cry,—
The slave, the satrap on his galley-throne,
The Monarch in his jewell'd canopy!
All prostrate, till afar their hosts were gone,
Girding the waters blue, a golden, sunset zone.

XLIX.

Then, answering thunders from the Olympian hill
Roll'd their deep summons to the yeasty waves,
To come, and of destruction have their fill:
And the ten thousand billows all were graves.
And on his charger through the turban'd slaves
Rode bloody Death from mountain-top to shore;
Calling the wolf and wild-dog from their caves,
And the young lion from his forest hoar,
To glut their burning jaws with kings' and princes' gore.

104

L.

Laocoon! round thy splendid form are flung
Inextricable spires,—twin serpents chain
Thy mighty limbs,—like fire, the forky tongue
Shoots o'er thy brow, that writhes with more than pain;
Their plunging fangs thy patriot life-blood drain,
Their volumes clasp thy sons, and all must die,—
But wrath and wrong are burning in thy brain,
Upon thy boys is fix'd no father's eye;
'Tis cast on Heaven, in bold, accusing agony.

LI.

Beside him sinks a warrior on his shield,
Whose history the heart alone must tell!
Now, dim in eve—he looks, as on the field,
Where when he fell, his country with him fell.
Death sickens all his soul, the blood-drops steal
Slow from his breast, congealing round the wound;
His strong arm shakes, his chest has lost its swell,
'Tis his last breath,—his eye-ball glares profound,
His heavy forehead glooms, bends, plunges, to the ground!

105

LII.

Yet had the bold barbarian joy; if tears
For Roman slaughter could rejoice his soul.
Did he not hear the crashing of the spears?
When like a midnight tide, his warriors stole
Around the slumb'ring legions—till the roll
Of the wild forest-drum awoke the glen;
And every blow let loose a Roman soul.
So let them sting the lion in his den;
Chains and the spear are chaff, when Heaven gives hearts to men!

LIII.

Had not that with'ring lip quaff'd long and deep,
The cup that vengeance for the patriot fills;
When swords instinctive from their scabbards leap,
When the dim forests, and the mighty hills,
And the lone gushings of the mountain rills,
All utter to the soul a cry of shame;
And shame, like drops of molten brass, distils
On the bare head and bosom of the tame,
Till the whole fetter'd man, heart, blood, and brain, is flame.

106

LIV.

Then there were lightnings in that clouded eye,
And sounds of triumph in that heavy ear;
Aye, and that icy limb was bounding nigh,
Tracking the Roman with the bow and spear,
As through the live-long night the death-march drear
Pierced the deep forests o'er the slaughter grown;
Seeking for ancient chief and comrade dear,
Through wolf-torn graves and haggard piles of bone,
Along the rampart ruins, and marshy trenches strown.

LV.

And what they sought they found, in wild-weed robes,
Laid in the sepulchres that thunder ploughs.
They found the circle, where the thronging globes
Of German warriors held the night's carouse,
And groans of death, and Magic's fearful vows
Startled the moon. Around the altars lay
The human hecatomb! in ghastly rows,
The leaders still unmix'd with meaner clay,
Tribune and consul stretch'd in white and wild decay.

107

LVI.

But have I still forgot thee, loveliest far
Of all,—enchanting image of Love's queen?
Or did I linger but till yon blue star,
Thy star, should crown thee with its light serene?
There stands the goddess, by the Grecian seen
In the mind's lonely, deep idolatry;
When twilight o'er Cythera's wave of green,
Drew her rich curtain, and his upturn'd eye
Was burning with the pomps of earth, and sea, and sky.

LVII.

Then came the dreamer's glorious ecstasy;
And from the vale of lilies, and the wood
Blushing with Persian roses, breathed the sigh
Of more than music; and the spell-bound flood
Bore on its waveless breast a living cloud,
Chariots of pearl, and proud sea-horses curb'd,
That with their breasts the green to silver plough'd;
And nymphs and tritons lifting trumpets orb'd,
Young Venus! round thy throne, in its own light absorb'd.

108

LVIII.

The shore is reach'd, and fear, bewitching fear,
Is in her bending form, and glancing eye,
And veiling hand, and timid-turning ear;
She listens,—'twas but Eve's enamour'd sigh!
Yet has it heaved her bosom's ivory—
Yet has it on the shore her footstep spell'd;
'Tis past.—The rustling rose alone is nigh,—
She smiles; and in that smile is all reveal'd
The charm, to which so soon the living world shall yield.

LIX.

There is a vital richness in the air,
That comes in gushes on this fading hour;
And, stately France! though Attic taste might stare
At thy strange garden freaks of fount and bower;
There lives a little soother, where one flower
Springs from its turf, a soother meant for man;
Perhaps to win his heart with silent power
To fields and peaceful thoughts from cities wan,
Where it so oft “disquieteth itself in vain.”

109

LX.

Night's wing is on the east—the clouds repose
Like weary armies of the firmament,
Encamp'd beneath their vanes of pearl and rose;
Till the wind's sudden trumpet through them sent,
Shakes their pavilions, and their pomps are blent
In rich confusion. Now the air is fill'd
With thousand odours, sigh'd by blossoms bent
In closing beauty, where the dew distill'd
From Evening's airy urns their purple lips has chill'd.

LXI.

How subtly Nature mingles in the heart
The past, the future, in this lovely time!
How home and heaven together on us start!
England! 'tis now thy autumn-sky sublime
Reminds us of the parted spirit's clime,
The hamlet clock strikes solemn as a knell;
The sinking breeze that wafts the distant chime,
The heavy harvest-team's returning bell,
The gleaner's homeward call, seem life's sad, sweet farewell.

110

LXII.

But thousands, tens of thousands in thy fields
Are counting every shade that dims this hour,
With frequent sunward look till day-light yields,
And each can turn him to the humble bower,
Where his own hand has planted every flower;
Time out of mind his father's quiet home;
Where waits him one, whose virtue was her dower,
Cheering her infants, as the deepening gloom,
Shed from the poplars, tells, he sure and soon will come.

LXIII.

He comes; the moon has lit him home at last,
And he has thrown his harvest hook away,
And kiss'd the nut-brown babes that round him haste,
Each with the little wonder of its day.
The lowly meal is spread, the moon-beams play
Through panes that bushy rose and wall-flower veil,
And soon to make them music, on her spray,
Her wonted, neighbour spray, the nightingale
Pours on the holy hour her thrilling, endless tale.

111

LXIV.

The breeze has fall'n—but sudden symphonies
Swell from beyond the gate and statued wall;
As if they echoed from the breathless skies,
The wavings of the night's o'ershadowing pall.
I am no weeper, but their rise and fall
Disturbs me,—Is the soul a harp whose strings
Vibrate tumultuous tones at music's call?
A fount, that when her touch unseals its springs
Gushes through all its old, enchanted wanderings?

LXV.

There is a flash of steel through yonder trees,
A wave of standards and a toss of plumes
O'er scarlet ranks, like foam-bursts upon seas
Ruddy with lightnings.—Hark! those well-known drums
Rolling along the shadowy camp, as comes
The night breeze rolling, then with distant wing
Sunk in wild music.—Now along the glooms
Echoes the silver trumpet, cymbals ring,
'Tis England's martial hymn!—there swells, “God save the King.”

112

LXVI.

“God save the King”—a thousand shapes of war,
Of valour, freedom, glorious suffering,
In sudden vision crowd the marble air,
Raised at the sound. Yet fearful memories fling
Their darkness on the spirit.—Here a king
Laid down his sacred head and died!—Oh, crime,
What torrents of black carnage were to spring?
What havoc of the rebel nation's prime?
Before her soul repaid that monarch's death sublime?

LXVII.

Paris! there was no sleep beneath thy roofs
The morn that saw that deed. The dim streets rung,
Long before day, with cannon, trampling hoofs,
And, fearfullest of all, the Tocsin's tongue.
Startling the eye, the passing torches flung
Their flash through many a chamber from beneath,
Then vanish'd with the thick and hurrying throng;
While the heart-sinking listener held his breath,
Catching in every sound the distant roar of death.

113

LXVIII.

But earlier than that dim and early hour
A lonely taper twinkled through the gloom;
'Twas from the casement of the Temple tower;
'Twas from a king's, a martyr's, dungeon-room!
There he subdued his spirit for its doom;
And one old priest, and one pale follower,
Knelt weeping, as beside their master's tomb.
Rude was the altar, but the heart was there,
And peace and solemn hope were in that prison prayer.

LXIX.

But trumpets peal'd, and torches glared below;
And from the tower rose woman's loud lament
And infant cries; and shadows seem'd to go
With tossing arms, and heads in anguish bent,
Backwards and forwards hurrying, then, as spent,
Sink down, and all be silent for a time;
Until the royal victims' souls were rent
With some new yell of cruelty and crime,
Or thunder'd through the dusk the Tocsin's deadly chime.

114

LXX.

The morning came in clouds; the winter's blast
Swept down in stormy gusts, then sank away
In ominous moanings, chilling, as it past,
The thousands posted in their stern array.
There was no opening door, no sound of day,
No song, no cry along the pale Boulevard;
And, save some ghastly banner's distant play,
Some clang, when in the gust the lances jarr'd,
All stretch'd before the eye one endless charnel yard.

LXXI.

And 'twas as wild and still within the square,
This square of luxury ! The morn arose;
An iron harvest bristled through the air,
Bayonet and pike in countless, close-lock'd rows.
Silent as death the crowd,—the grim repose
Before the earthquake;—None from roof or wall
Might look; no hand the casement might unclose.
And in their centre, frowning o'er them all,
Their idol—the sole god before whose name they fall:

115

LXXII.

The Guillotine!—when Hell prepared the feast,
Where guilty France was drunk, but not with wine;
Till madness sat upon her vision'd breast,—
This was the press that crush'd her bloody vine.
To this grim altar came the shuddering line,
Whose worship was,—beneath its knife to lie;
The haggard traitors to the throne and shrine,
By traitors crush'd, that in their turn must die;
Till massacre engulph'd the wreck of Liberty.

LXXIII.

The Guillotine.—It stood in that pale day
Like a huge spectre, just from earth upsprung,
To summon to the tomb the fierce array
That round its feet in desperate homage clung.
But on the wind a sudden trumpet rung.
All eyes were turn'd, and far as eye could stray,
Was caught a light, from moving helmets flung,
A banner tossing in the tempest's sway,
A wain, that through the throng slow toil'd its weary way.

116

LXXIV.

He comes—the monarch on the scaffold stands;
The headsmen grasp him!—Of the thousands there,
That hear his voice, that see his fetter'd hands,
Not one has given a blessing or a tear;
But that old priest who answers him in prayer.
He speaks; his dying thoughts to France are given,
His voice is drown'd; for murder has no ear.
The patient victim to the axe is driven.
Then cried the blood, whose cry is heard from Earth to Heaven!

LXXV.

The grave must tell, when it gives up its dead,
Their after hours who o'er that blood blasphemed;
What myriads perish'd on a bloody bed,
By the pursuing hoof and sabre seam'd;
What haughty heads upon the scaffold stream'd,
What eyes rain'd anguish in the den and chain,
When on their dying hour this moment gleam'd;
What wretches felt it maddening all their pain,
From Moscow funeral fires to Belgium's gory plain.

117

LXXVI.

France was anathema.—Her cup before
Was full, but this o'ertopp'd its burning brim.
And plagues like serpent-teeth her entrails tore;
Crime rush'd to ravage through a land of crime!
In the sack'd sepulchre caroused the mime;
On God's high altar sat Idolatry;
Before the harlot knelt the nation's prime,
And sons dragg'd fathers, fathers sons to die;
'Till Judgment girt the bow on its eternal thigh.

LXXVII.

This was our nature freed from God and king!
This was Rebellion's consummated dream!
Evil unchain'd,—all tortured, torturing;
The light of life, a wildering phantom-gleam,
A vapour of the hot and livid stream
Pour'd from the gory fount of Regicide;
The strife of madness,—fiery hearts, that teem
With shapes of guilt that but that den could hide;
Gnashings, and taunts, and groans, ascending wild and wide.

118

LXXVIII.

And by that place of torment England sate
Like a bright spirit with unsleeping eyes,
Commission'd to keep watch at Hell's dark gate;
Hearing within its voice of agonies,
Seeing its smokes of restless torture rise,
Itself unstain'd; and on that fearful guard,
Still holding high communion with the skies;
Still on its brow the helmet-diadem starr'd,
The splendid plume still pure, the angel cheek unmarr'd.

LXXIX.

France was in dust,—a dying funeral pyre;
But from its embers sprang a sudden throne,
That round the kingdoms shot resistless fire.
In its pavilion sate a fearful one,
Alone in power, in gloomy guilt alone;
Stern, subtle, selfish;—cruelty his sword,
Apostacy upon his brow the crown,
He sat the homicidal empire's lord;
Heaven's instrument of woe, man's fear, ador'd, abhorr'd.

119

LXXX.

His glance look'd o'er the nations as a field
For slaughter,—and his trumpet rang their knell;
For they were stain'd, and Faith's high temper'd shield
Sank from their grasp before the infidel.
Then did his heart with impious boastings swell;
Salmoneus! 'tis thy tale of mockery.
His meanest thought was might and miracle,
His idlest word an omen from on high,
And France, a ready slave, re-echoed all the lie.

LXXXI.

But rushing from its clouds, a viewless grasp
Seized the impostor in his car of flame,
And cleft the crown, and tore the vesture's clasp,
And show'd him as he was!—The nations came
Around in laughter stern, and lofty shame,
To see the tyrant bend his naked brow,
Fawning for abject life,—the tiger tame—
Dragging his chains,—the rabble's vagrant show,
Licking the dust before his first, last, noblest foe.

120

LXXXII.

Was this the work of man? Eternal King,
Thou hearer of the orphan's midnight cry!
What tribute shall the ransom'd empires bring
For that new life of life, for Liberty.
Earth had been one wide dungeon but for thee,
And man had lived in woe, in woe had died.
In vain the mighty hills, the surging sea,
Where could the victim from the oppressor hide,
When all her regions lay beneath one iron stride?

LXXXIII.

The veil is rent above us. 'Twas a word
Omnipotent, which check'd that final hour.
It summon'd not the faithful warrior's sword;
The world stood hush'd at its descending power.
Then follow'd its fierce armies, cloud and shower,
The hail that shot its arrows from on high,
The blast that on the atheist host burn'd frore,
The storm that roll'd like midnight on the sky,
To make the deadly sheet in which their limbs must lie.

121

LXXXIV.

Magnificence of ruin! what has time
In all it ever gazed upon of war,
Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime,
Seen, with that battle's vengeance to compare?
How glorious shone the invader's pomp afar?
Like pamper'd lions from the spoil they came;
The land before them silence and despair,
The land behind them massacre and flame;
Blood will have tenfold blood.—What are they now? a name.

LXXXV.

Homeward by hundred thousands, column deep,
Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood
When mighty torrents from their channels leap,
Rush'd through the land the haughty multitude,
Billow on endless billow; on through wood,
O'er rugged hill, down sunless, marshy vale,
The death-devoted moved, to clangor rude
Of drum and horn and dissonant clash of mail,
Glancing disastrous light before that sun-beam pale.

122

LXXXVI.

Again they reached thee, Borodino! still
Upon the loaded soil the carnage lay,
The human harvest, now stark, stiff and chill,
Friend, foe, stretch'd thick together, clay to clay;
In vain the startled legions burst away;
The land was all one naked sepulchre,
The shrinking eye still glanced on grim decay,
Still did the hoof and wheel their passage tear
Through cloven helms and arms, and corpses mould'ring drear.

LXXXVII.

The field was as they left it; fosse and fort
Steaming with slaughter still, but desolate,—
The cannon flung dismantled by its porte;
Each knew the mound, the black ravine whose strait
Was won and lost, and throng'd with dead, till fate
Had fixed upon the victor—half undone.
There was the hill, from which their eyes elate
Had seen the burst of Moscow's golden zone;
But death was at their heels, they shudder'd and rush'd on.

123

LXXXVIII.

The hour of vengeance strikes. Hark to the gale!
As it bursts hollow through the rolling clouds,
That from the north in sullen grandeur sail
Like floating Alps. Advancing darkness broods
Upon the wild horizon, and the woods,
Now sinking into brambles, echo shrill,
As the gust sweeps them, and those upper floods
Shoot on their leafless boughs the sleet drops chill,
That on the hurrying crowds in freezing showers distil.

LXXXIX.

They reach the Wilderness! The majesty
Of solitude is spread before their gaze,
Stern nakedness,—dark earth, and wrathful sky.
If ruins were there, they long had ceased to blaze;
If blood was shed, the ground no more betrays
Even by a skeleton the crime of man;
Behind them rolls the deep and drenching haze
Wrapping their rear in night, before their van
The struggling day-light shows the unmeasur'd desert wan.

124

XC.

Still on they sweep, as if their hurrying march
Could bear them from the rushing of his wheel
Whose chariot is the whirlwind. Heaven's clear arch
At once is covered with a livid veil,
In mixed and fighting heaps the deep clouds reel,
Upon the dense horizon hangs the sun,
In sanguine light, an orb of burning steel;
The snows wheel down through twilight, thick and dun;
Now tremble men of blood, the Judgment has begun!

XCI.

The trumpet of the northern winds has blown,
And it is answer'd by the dying roar
Of armies on that boundless field o'erthrown:
Now in the awful gusts the desert hoar
Is tempested, a sea without a shore,
Lifting its feathery waves. The legions fly;
Volley on volley, down the hailstones pour;—
Blind, famish'd, frozen, mad, the wanderers die,
And dying, hear the storm but wilder thunder by.

125

XCII.

Such is the hand of heaven! A human blow
Had crush'd them in the fight, or flung the chain,
Round them where Moscow's stately towers were low,
And all be still'd. But Thou! thy battle plain
Was a whole empire; that devoted train
Must war from day to day with storm and gloom,
(Man following, like the wolves, to rend the slain,)
Must lie from night to night as in a tomb,
Must fly, toil, bleed for home; yet never see that home.

XCIII.

The despot 'scaped; for his was yet to show
What mimes may play ambition's haughtiest part,
To show the recreant branded on his brow,
Whose noblest art was but the slaughterer's art;
Lest future villains from the mire should start,
And rave, and slay, and dare to call it fame.
Behold him now, the man without a heart,
Him of the battles,—him the soul of flame,—
Scorn'd, banish'd, chain'd for life; and glad to live in shame.

126

XCIV.

He's gone!—The world in arms pronounced his ban,
His wand is plunged ten thousand fathoms deep:
The sword of wrath has broke his talisman;
And now, to his foul tomb content to creep,
The outcast wanders on the loneliest steep,
That ever whiten'd to the ocean wave;
A monument of blasted guilt, to weep,
If his hard eye can weep, the price he gave,
To meet that spot at last,—his prison and his grave.

XCV.

But he has perish'd, as the broken surge
That at his feet now dies along the shore:
The scourge's work fulfill'd—the gory scourge
Is flung abhorr'd away—his world is o'er.
Fool! see thy emblem; where with rush and roar
The ocean-pillar whirls to meet the sky,
Ploughing with giant speed the waters hoar,
Fear to the distant, ruin to the nigh;
It bursts—it sinks—'tis gone—its very echoes die.

127

XCVI.

Earth shook with that wild empire's overthrow;
And the foundations, that as fate seem'd deep,
Are dust—and England gave the final blow.
France rush'd like lava from the mountain's steep,
But England met it with the ocean's sweep,
And o'er it roll'd in towering majesty,
Leaving its burning mass, a gloomy heap.
Days of our toil and triumph! ye shall die—
But on the self same pile with man, and memory!

XCVII.

Monarch of England! in our trial-hour,
Thy prayer was to thy people shield and sword;
Thy secret spirit was a living power.
Like his who on the mountain's brow adored
When round its base the pagan battle roar'd;
The lifting of thy hands was victory;
A deadlier host around our mountain pour'd.
Now dust and ashes on their standards lie,
Why was that triumph hid from thy paternal eye!

128

XCVIII.

It was in mercy that the veil was spread!
Thou didst not see the blossoms of thy throne,
Mother and infant, on one dying bed.
Thou didst not weep upon the sullen stone
That hid thy queen; thy more than princely son;
High dreams were glowing round thy lonely tower;
Still lived to thee each loved and parted one;
Till on thine eye-ball burst th'immortal hour,
And the dead met thy gaze in angel light and power.

XCIX.

We talk not of the parting rites—the pomp—
Our heart above our Father's grave decays.
Yet all was regal there; the silver tromp,
The proud procession through the Gothic maze,
The silken banner, thousand torches' blaze,
Gilding the painted pane, and imaged stone;
The chapel's deeper glow,—the cresset's rays,
Like diamonds on the wall of velvet strown;
And, flashing from the roof, the helm, and gonfalon.

129

C.

Yet still the thought is hallow'd; and the train
Of solemn memories o'er the mind will come
With long and lofty pleasure, touch'd by pain.
I hear the anthem; now, as in the tomb,
Dying away;—then, through the upper gloom
Roll'd, like the Judgment thunders from the cloud,
Above that deep and gorgeous catacomb,
Where sat the nation's mightiest, pale, and proud,
Throned in their dim alcoves, each fix'd as in his shroud.

CI.

Still lives the vision of the kingly hall,
The noble kneeling in his canopy,
The prelate in his sculptured, shadowy stall,
The knight beneath his falchion glittering high,
All bending on a central pall the eye,
Where melancholy gleams a crown of gold,
An empty crown.—'Tis sinking, silently,
'Tis gone! yet does the living world not hold
A purer heart than now beneath that crown is cold.

130

CII.

And ye ethereal ministrants, whose eyes
Night veils not; splendid watchers of our sphere;
Heard ye not rising to your solemn skies
From the land's widest limits voices drear,
As if in each that moment sank the bier?
From mount and shore roll'd up the mighty peal,
Then died!—and all was death-like on the ear.
But it was gone afar, the ocean's swell
Round the hush'd world had borne its noblest monarch's knell.

CIII.

Raise we his monument! what giant pile
Shall honour him to far posterity?
His monument shall be his ocean-isle,
The voice of his redeeming thunders be
His epitaph upon the silver sea.
And million spirits from whose necks he tore
The fetter, and made soul and body free;
And unborn millions from earth's farthest shore
Shall bless the Christian King, till the last sun is o'er.

THE END.

Place Louis Quinze.