University of Virginia Library

O for some spell-word of transcendent power,
Some magic wand for one, but one brief hour,
That land of dream-like mystery to unveil,
Half seen half hidden through the twilight pale,
Where, tranced in spectral slumbers still and deep,
Earth's wisest, holiest, mightiest, softly sleep,
Perchance of earth forgotten,—partial fame
Caught not the whispered echo of their name;
Blame might not touch, nor Praise with faltering tone
Mar the bright meed their glorious feats had won.
Hid 'neath the vast cathedral's cloistered shade
Rest they unhonoured 'mid the nameless dead,
Where the dark cypress marks their lowly grave,
Or where above them rolls the Ocean wave;—
Sank they what time the fierce Sirocco's blast
Swept o'er the burning desert's trackless waste,
Or sleeps 'mid Alpine winter's changeless sway,
Gulphed in eternal snows their mouldering clay;
What reck they? O how heavenly calm doth seem
The weird repose of their unbodied dream!
But some there are who live from age to age,
Whose blazoned glories throng the historic page,
Whose form the untiring pencil loves to trace,
Whose lofty deeds the minstrel legend grace.
And such wert thou, lord of the Atlantic main,
Fair Genoa's nursling, pride of fallen Spain,
To whose once happy realms thy presence bore
A parting gleam of splendour now no more!
Thou who didst urge the yet untraversed way
Through isles unknown, through Ocean's pathless spray,
Dauntless, unwearied, till thy sails were furled
Before the confines of another world!

How bright the scene! From Hayti's distant shore
Faintly resounds the breakers' lessening roar,
Soft breezes curl with incense-freighted breath
The dark green waves in many a snowy wreath.
The refluent music of the laughing foam
Sounds it to thee a strain of welcome home?
Seems not a type the sun's meridian ray
Of joy that fades not with the fading day?
Seems only;—Hope her sweet delusion flings
Full oft round Childhood's glad imaginings,
Weaving before our fondly credulous sight
A mystic halo of unearthly light,
A glittering maze of visions bright and high—
O how unlike the stern reality!
If sunniest skies can mar their stainless blue,
Why should our waking dreams prove less untrue?
O better far some wild uncertain gleam
From April skies should gild the troubled stream,
E'en if those skies their softest radiance pour
Where loudest booms the torrent's muffled roar.
The kindling brow, the sunbright smile of gladness,
What are they but the harbingers of sadness?

And doubt'st thou still? and seems that sparkling sea,
Whose dancing foam-bells splash so merrily,
Seems it indeed of joy a token true?
Still canst thou trust yon heaven's unsullied hue?
Pause yet a moment, seek yon lowly door,
Gaze through the darkness on that cabin floor;
Say who is he the unfriended, bound in chains?
Scarce thrills the life-blood through his shrivelled veins,
The white hair clustering round his reverend head,
O'er his wan face a death-like paleness spread,
Fast round his limbs the unyielding fetters prest,
Scarce throbs the pulse, scarce heaves the quivering breast.
What though at times a faint half-stifled moan
Declares those chains have torments not their own,
And lightning-like is fired with sudden glow
The quenchless lustre of that lofty brow?
'Tis but a moment—to the sunken eye
Returns its look of fixed despondency,
Whose withering gaze lights up with sickly glare
Strange and unreal those features once so fair.

Alas, Columbus! and can this be he
Whose ardent spirit, panting to be free,
Launched on the Ocean of infinity?
Those fettered hands besprent with clotted gore
Steered they the helm to worlds unknown before?
That brow—is it the same whose very frown
Adoring crowds would kneel to gaze upon?
That wasted form the same whose stately mien
Once moved the reverence of a Spanish queen?
A prisoner thou, who didst exult erewhile
In the full sunshine of a nation's smile?
Alas, too surely hast thou learnt to grieve
O'er blighted hopes that bloom but to deceive,
Like the charmed nurslings of the Dead Sea waste,
Fruit to the sight, but ashes to the taste.

Is there a curse with deadlier power endued,
A bitterer wound than man's ingratitude?
Our warmest words are lifeless to express
That sense of unimagined loneliness,
That icy numbness o'er the spirit flung,
Even Hope a wreck and Reason's self unstrung!
The trustful heart's affection turned to scorn,
The trusted promise of a life forsworn,
Struck by the hand our own so oft caressed,
Doomed by their lips whom ours so fondly blessed,—
It is so keen a thrill of agony,
That some would deem to feel it were to die.

And he has felt it;—he has learned to bow
Beneath the weight of that o'ermastering woe,
A cloud of sorrow ever dark and dim,
But O how doubly terrible to him,
Child of our fallen race, yet treasuring still
God's first, best blessing—ignorance of ill!
A heart so guileless it could ne'er deceive,
A mind so pure it could not disbelieve,
A burning zeal that scorned the worlding's art,
A faith more strong than Reason can impart,
Nature had given; and his the high emprize
To disentrance her hidden sympathies.
Yes, e'en in boyhood's lightest, merriest hour
He felt a restless consciousness of power,
While to his soul most real truth did seem
Imagination's wildest, loftiest dream,
The meteor light which sheds on common things
Its own bright tints and fairy colourings.

Land of the brightest suns, the purest skies,
Mother of nature's heavenliest mysteries,
The poplar grove, the rich luxuriant vine,
The fragrant olive and the stately pine,
These are thy produce;—O what land may vie
With thee in beauty, glorious Italy!
Thy classic shades fair Learning's ancient home,
The spendour thine of old imperial Rome,
The breath of song, the flower of knightly deed,
The amarant wreath to martyr-brows decreed,
Thine the pure ray of Raphael's seraph-fire,
Thine Ariosto's soul-entrancing lyre!
And thou didst nurse in thy most calm recess,
'Mid varying scenes of exquisite loveliness,
'Mid each delicious fatal luxury
That chains the heart or lures the spell-bound eye,
Each witching charm whose “mute omnipotence”
Steals o'er the soul, beguiling every sense,—
'Mid terraced gardens rich with tropic flowers,
Where the soft music floats through orange bowers,
While sparkling eyes to sunbright heavens above
Unconscious tell the secret of their love,—
Thou nursedst one those witcheries failed to please,
Who spurned the thraldom of inglorious ease,
Strong in the faith, whose strange unworldly gleams
Shed brighter radiance on his boyish dreams.
Cipango's gold, the riches of Cathay
In the far realms of boundless Asia,
Some mighty sea o'er which no bark hath sailed,
Some world in mists impenetrably veiled,
Throng on his glowing sight, and he would fain
Waft back their treasures o'er the western main,
And tune the Babel clang of Pagan tongues
To swell the chorus of angelic songs;
Fain would he seek on Syrian shore to quell
The rule unblest of Moslem infidel,
For His dear sake whose agonizing Sweat
Baptized the groves of sainted Olivet,
And mindful of the glory-stains that shone
At dawn around the vainly-guarded stone.
Once more should pilgrims seek the “Mournful Road,”
And Salem's shrine by Christian priest be trod,
Once more the convent-bell's long silent tones
Blend with Ardeni's voiceful orisons.

Visions like these had sealed his longing eyes
To life's absorbing unrealities,
Had bid him seek on earth some nobler aim
Than Pleasure's gilded toys or War's fast-fading fame.
Yes, he must give that young and lovely form
To the wild rushing of the Ocean storm,
That gentle voice must learn to still the war
Of human passions, wilder, stormier far.
Yet wherefore shrink? he owns a secret power
To nerve his spirit for the darkest hour;
(Doubt they who will) at the still midnight given,
Whispered monitions spake the will of Heaven;
He hears it in the fitful blasts that sweep
Nightly across the far Atlantic deep,
In the low prisoned waves' clear undersong,
'Plaining incessantly their sunless caves among
And was it all for this—the stern command
That tore him from that bright voluptuous land,
Which not in vain bade nature's self forswear
All nature holds most sacred and most dear;—
Accents that erst, unbreathed by earthly voice,
Sealed the devotion of his erring choice,—
For this—to see his fondest hopes belied,
His name reviled, his every prayer denied,
Himself an outcast from his new-found home,
His glory's meed a traitor's shameful doom?

So the rapt maiden gazed in visioned trance
On that loved statue's lifeless countenance,
Scanning the form to her divinely bright,
Till in the effort glazed her aching sight.
What though she deemed Apollo's eagle eye
Smiled on her beautiful idolatry,
And heard through lips that only seemed to move
The harp-like breathings of intensest love?
In vain, alas! in vain, and she must die
The martyr of her own wild extasy!

Such are the thoughts, (might skill of mine presume
To read aright that sullen brow of gloom,)
The musings such of anguish and unrest
That vex the captive hero's fevered breast;
Pressed though the lips, though pride enchain the tongue,
Words burn within to speak the spirit's wrong.
“Darkly, oh darkly lowers the coming night,
“From leaden skies fast fades the quivering light,
“Whose faithless dawn but now allured me on
“To glorious deeds which cannot be undone.
“Woe worth my country, since the sons of Spain
“Guerdon Columbus with the felon's chain!
“Woe worth the unequal law that matched in strife
“The rival forces that divide our life,
“Where love and hate alternate, good and ill,
“Control the drift of man's ignoble will!
“And what is man? Vile creature of a day,
“Degenerate mass of animated clay,
“Cursed with a soul that shall not, cannot die,
“Heir of a hopeless immortality?
“Avaunt thee, fiend! Wild pangs my bosom tear,
“Reels my sick brain all maddening with despair,
“No kindly spell the agony to charm,
“In heaven no ray, on earth no soothing balm.
“To thee, blest Maid, I turn! When dark and drear
“Fortune frowned on me, thou wast ever near,
“With smile undimmed, with soft unclouded brow,
“Mother of God! thou wilt not leave me now?
“And one there is , one mild angelic form,
“Seen through the mist-wreaths of the gathering “storm,
“A child of earth, of more than earthly grace,
“More than a queen, though sprung of queenly race;
“Her thought shall woo my angry tongue to bless
“When it would curse men for their heartlessness.”

Dwells there a mystic spell, a power unseen
Shrined in the memory of that saintly queen?
Or deigns the Virgin list her suppliant's prayer,
And lull to sleep the ravings of despair?
Lost in the dream of earlier, happier hours,
He roams once more through Genoa's myrtle bowers;
Again he sports beneath the cypress shade,
Threads the dark grove or high-arched colonnade,
Or rifles Nature's store for each bright gem
That helps to wreathe his flowery diadem,
Or, prescient of the future, loves to guide
His mimic pinnace o'er the flashing tide,
Scanning even then with boyhood's eager glance
The rolling Ocean's infinite expanse,
No minstrel lay, no music, half so dear
As the loud breakers to his listening ear.

Changed is the dream;—across the Atlantic deep
Silent and swift three bounding galleys sweep.
On the red wave, ere eve's dark shadow closes,
Softly the sunset's lingering light reposes!
And yet more lovely, sinking slow to rest,
With dying splendours crown the unpurpled West.
Far o'er the waters, as the heavens grow dim,
Rings the last “Ave” of the Vesper hymn
By manly voices chanted, clear and strong,
Sadness and hope contending in their song;
But other far on notes of triumph borne
The loud “Te Deum” greets the advancing morn,
Hope for assurance changed and toil for rest,
A life's long work with full completion blest.
Bright as the unfolding gates of Paradise
The vision spreads before their longing eyes,
Big with the promise of the years to be—
Tides rolling shorewards from a shoreless sea!

Farewell Columbus! Dream that dream at will,
The historic muse preserves its memory still.
Silent the whispers of the envious tongue,
Cold in the grave the hand that did thee wrong,
Thy glory dies not; long as time shall last,
While live the old traditions of the Past,
Echo shall breathe the music of thy name,
And grateful Europe chronicle thy fame.
Brighter and brighter, as the Orient ray
Grows to the splendour of the full-orbed day;
Purer and purer, as beneath the breeze
The foam-wreaths whiten on the crested seas;
So round thy path the increasing radiance glowed
Brighter each day, through sorrow's gathering cloud.
Never, O never, so divinely great,
As when the victim of unpitying fate,
Spurned by the fickle world's once flattering breath,
Doomed by thy dearest to a traitor's death,
Thy spirit rose mid that unquiet scene,
By fear unquelled, in agony serene,
True to thyself, though all were false to thee,
In grief unconquered, and in bondage free!