The poetical works of William H. C. Hosmer

Hosmer, William H. C. (1814-1877)

VOL. I.

VOL. II.

OCCASIONAL POEMS.

THE IDEAL.

UTILITY OF IMAGINATION.

THEMES OF SONG.

THE PIONEERS OF WESTERN NEW YORK.

THE PROSPECTS OF THE AGE.

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OCCASIONAL POEMS.

THE IDEAL.

INSCRIBED TO MY FRIEND O. H. MARSHALL, OF BUFFALO, N. Y.

“Sweet Phantasy alone is young forever.”—
Schiller.

Vast are thy radiant halls, Imagination!
And through them who loves not, at times, to walk,
While airs are breathed like those at Earth's Creation,
And silvery voices talk.

And it is well that man—awhile retiring
From the dim outward world—in blissful dreams
Walk through those halls, a purer air respiring,
And catch elysian gleams.

There, with his sickle idle and rust-eaten,
Sleeps the pale Mower of our mortal joys;
And amber drops of purest nectar sweeten
A cup that never cloys.

There, with the loved and lost again uniting,
Can we discourse serenely of the past,
Couched upon roses that no worm is blighting,
Or killing northern blast.

There will the child we laid in earth, to meet us
In wild delight stretch forth its little arms—
There will the mother, that we mourned for, greet us—
Renewed her youthful charms.

There will the bride who woke our young affection
Blush as if still she heard the marriage bell;
Ah! nevermore, with look of deep dejection,
To falter out farewell!

Is the poor Bard repaid for years of trial,
And vigils that untimely bow the frame—
For tears in secret shed, and self-denial,
By the green wreath of fame?

Is gold a fitting recompense for sorrow
That fixes ever in his breast a dart,
While hopes that bud, to wither on the morrow,
Leave canker in the heart?

Oh, no! the grudging world can grant no guerdon
Prized like the sunshine of those happy hours,
When fate permits him to throw down his burden,
And pluck unwithering flowers!

Permits him through the gate of dreams to wander,
And look on scenes that painter never drew,
While in his throbbing, yearning soul grows stronger
Love for the good and true;

Permits him to hold glorious communion,
With mighty spirits who have done with time,
Bound by a league, to never know disunion,
In brotherhood sublim

Back! back for him, the past withdraws its curtain,
And round him throng old sovereign-lords of mind,
Not seen like objects through a haze uncertain—
Each figure well defined.

Lo! he beholds some mighty truth enforcing,
Or gracing with rich imagery his theme,
Great Plato walk through fairer groves, discoursing,
Than those of Academe.

That Greek arrests his glance who talked with ocean
Until its awful bass was in his tone,
And sweet-voiced Tully skilled to draw emotion
From hearts, inert like stone.

Paths, paved with pearl and diamond, he may follow,
Through blooming meadows to a temple grand—
Home of a priesthood who have served Apollo
In every age and land.

Through the stained glass darts tempered light, bestowing
A blush on pictured walls and spangled floors—
And rivers of rich melody are flowing
For ever from its doors.

The crowning pride of Hellas, blind and hoary,
Before him rears his tall, majestic form,
Surrounded by inheritors of glory,
And breathes a welcome warm.

Tones of the old, Hellenic spirit tremble
On the proud strings of his heroic lyre,
While o'er him charmed divinities assemble
In chariots of fire.

A crowd of lesser minstrels borrow lustre
From the full splendor of that epic orb,
As snowy clouds that round the day-god cluster,
His blaze in part absorb.

In pauses of the mighty strain he listens
To Doric reed and Lesbian lute forlorn,
Till in his eye, enlarged with wonder, glistens
A tear of rapture born.

The courtly Virgil, model of politeness!
He marks near Flaccus of the rosy face,
While Pindar comes, with eye of eagle brightness,
Fresh from the chariot race.

The naiad watches by her silver fountain—
The dryad in the shade of aged trees,
And, darting through green pines upon the mountain,
The oread he sees.

Milton, divinely beautiful, upraising
His speaking face receives a heavenly glow,
And, grandly stern, the Tuscan downward gazing,
Pierces the depths of woe.

Calm Shakespeare towers with regal wand controlling
Broad seas of thought, wild passion and romance,
As Dian sways the pulse of ocean rolling
With her benignant glance.

And at his feet a youthful form reclining
Wears the pale front of Bristol's wondrous boy;
His face, so mournful when with hunger pining,
Changed into lark-like joy.

Apart the lord of Newstead pours the billows
Of his tremendous song upon the gale,
While star-eyed Shelley, propped by golden pillows,
Bids dream-land lift the veil.

In the great concert Celtic bards are singing,
Drest in the garb that wizard Merlin wore,
And, wild and high, the Cambrian Harp is ringing
Above the torrent's roar.

The Minnesinger's chant, alive with feeling,
Wafts gently by the notes of breeze and bird,
And in rude lays, that Gothic scalds are pealing,
The trampling surf is heard.

Fair shapes from vine-wreathed balconies are leaning
While sweeps the troubadour his lute below,
And silenced not by ages intervening,
Druidic numbers flow.

Through halls, with hangings like the rainbow braided,
A group of famous women glide along;
The mighty spell that keeps their bloom unfaded,
Is the glad work of song.

That Cretan lady, on the beach forsaken
By Athen's lord, is still divinely fair;
No leaflet from her rose of beauty shaken
By woe and black despair.

Aspasia, with a brow by genius lighted,
Flits by with that immortal child of song
Who buried in the sea, by Phaon slighted,
All memory of wrong.

Young Hero, rescued from the caves of ocean,
Walks with her own Leander by her side;
Well-won reward of faith and fond devotion,
Alas! too rudely tried!

Forgetful of the Roman's mad caresses,
Stalks grandly by old Egypt's wanton queen,
With jewels flashing in her night-black tresses,
Full bust and royal mien.

With a strange lustre in her dark eye playing,
Prophetic lip, clasped hands, and hair unbound,
In thought Cassandra, back to Phrygia straying,
Beholds her sire uncrown'd:

And near a radiant and majestic creature,
Whose deadly charms the towers of Troy brought low,
Moves, with a winning grace in every feature,
And mouth like Cupid's bow;

And higher natures, holy hearts enshrining
The noblest deeds by woman done recall;
Pure as the morn on young creation shining
Before the primal fall,

Rose Standish fairer than a star new risen,
Sweet, early martyr of our western wild!
Leads by the hand, escaped from death's chill prison,
Powhatan's dusky child;

And giving sign of more than mortal vigor,
Awoke to breathing life from ashes pale,
The Maid of France appears—a martial figure
In knighthood's glittering mail.

Realm of the vast Ideal ! smiling ever
Is thy unclouded arch of iris-dyes,
And on thy hill-tops, that are darkened never,
Eternal sunshine lies.

The brows of thy inhabitants are wearing
The seal of deep tranquillity and love—
Unknown the falcon that on earth is tearing
With bloody beak the dove.

Streams, over precious sands in music creeping,
Their silvery arms round magic islets fling,
While holy-day the happy elves are keeping
With Oberon their king.

Fairer than Paphos, or those orient arbors
Where jewels light, like stars, the leafy glades,
Stretch thy broad parks where Cytherea harbors,
Attended by her maids.

Grottoes more lovely than Egeria's dwelling
Open their portals of enchanted green,
Filled with the drowsy chime of waters welling,
Purer than Hippocrene.

Enamored birds are in thy garden singing
Where serpent never wound his glittering coil,
And asphodel and amaranth are springing
From its celestial soil.

The toiling scholar is thrice blest who tarries
For a brief season on that haunted shore,
And back to shadowed earth his spirit carries
A might unknown before.

In dreams the grand old Masters wandered thither
A wardrobe for the Beautiful to find,
And sunny wreaths, that would not drop and wither,
Her airy brow to bind.

Thence came those opal tints for ever playing
On the quaint page where Spencer is revealed,
And Una's charm, in fearful places straying,
White innocence her shield.

Thence came the light and shade that lend such graces
To Chaucer's tale, and rhyme of classic Ben—
And that loved scroll made brilliant by the traces
Of gallant Sydney's pen.

From thence the bard derives a rich requital,
Though crowds that pass him by look dark and cold;
The star-emblazoned deed that gives him title
To realms of price untold.

There is a flower of glorious apparel
That opens in the hush of lonely night,
And ere the morning lark begins her carol
Is sadly touched with blight;

The honey of its cup is never tasted
By the swift humming bird—gay sprite of air!
Why, on the solemn darkness, is thus wasted
A loveliness so rare?

Type of that flower was Keats, the young and gifted,
Charming with song a cold and thankless world,
While the black clouds of woe above him drifted,
And Hope her banner furled.

The light of fame, at last through darkness streaming,
Came falling not upon his living head,
But, like some funeral torch, a fitful gleaming
Threw only on the dead.

Not always, while a deathless task achieving,
Did sorrow bring to that high heart eclipse,
Ambrosial drops, though fate his shroud was weaving,
Fell on his fevered lips.

His subtle spirit often was translated
From the weak flesh to that still lovely land
Where Art can point to works before created,
Never by mortal hand:—

And I would fain recall a vision pleasant,
Seen ere the dappled morn of youth was o'er,
In that romantic realm where every peasant
Is rich in minstrel-lore.

In the deep midnight Fancy broke the tether
That makes us bondsmen in our waking hours,
And ranged the land of dark, blue lake and heather,
Culling poetic flowers.

Bewitching moonlight wrapped the hoary mountains,
The rugged birthright of the hardy Gael,
And streams, that glinted forth from sparkling fountains,
Met roaring in the vale.

A sky-roofed glen within its heart received me,
The floor and sides in grassy velvet drest,
And a wild sorrow that too long hath grieved me,
Awhile was lulled to rest.

To look on famous bards I felt a longing,
Nursed in the home of eagles and of storms,
And suddenly there was a glorious thronging
Of proud, and plaided forms.

Unearthly splendor rested on their faces,
As moonlight silvers marble with its glow,
That fair to vision made the many traces
Of want, neglect, and woe.

Awful of mien, his long white hair outstreaming,
Bearing an antique harp of massy frame,
While misty light around his head was beaming,
Majestic Ossian came.

I thought of those proud words in memory cherished
By all who drink at Song's old, haunted springs,
“My voice will not be silent when have perished
Temora's haughty kings.”

The mighty Painter of the middle ages
Towered, staff in hand, above the tuneful throng;
Immortal weaver of enchanted pages—
The Wouvermans of song!

Far, in the distance, clustered bright creations
Evoked from darkness by his spell of might
That chased the gloom from graves of men and nations
With its victorious light,

To right and left the proud assembly parting
Gave place to Burns, in “hodden gray” attired;
His large, black eye, electric flashes darting,
Told of a soul inspired:—

And he was there who sang in life's glad morning
Of Hope, to cheer both hall and cottage hearth,
With a rapt look, as if “Lochiel's Warning”
Was struggling into birth.

Old Allan Ramsay, blythe of mood and pleasant,
Attuned his trembling reed, and woke a lay
That Pan would have provoked, had he been present,
To throw his pipe away.

Mild, musing Thomson wore a mantle splendid,
And on its ground of wintry white were seen
Autumnal gold, and summer crimson blended
With stripes of vernal green:

And he who wrote “Kilmeny,” as if listening
The silver bells of fairy-land to hear,
Stood, with the night-dew on his tartan glistening,
The “Gentle Shepherd” near.

One I beheld whose bay will never wither,
Though bitterly his cup was drugged with ill,
The bard who sang of “Jessie” and “Balquither,”
The mournful Tannahill!

Nigh Ferguson, all chapleted with willow,
Towered Cunningham, in mould gigantic cast,
With harp that mocked the roll of ocean's billow,
And creak of bending mast.

Young Bruce I saw, who pined away uncherished,
Though hallowed, aye, his muse Lochleven made,
And gifted Leyden who untimely perished,
A pale, and piping shade!

I saw impassioned Pollock upward gazing,
The glow of deep devotion on his cheek,
As if he prayed the stars, above him blazing,
Of Heaven's high joy to speak.

Logan, whose “Cuckoo” will sing on forever,
For a brief moment, my attention caught;
And Home, whose tragic wreath will mildew never,
Folded his arms in thought.

Near a famed “Minstrel,” fond of Spencer's measure,
Hawthornden's classic poet took his stand,
And the sweet lute, that cheered his hours of leisure,
Flashed, gem-like, in his hand:—

And Pringle, who had heard the lion waking
Wild Echo, in the desert, with his roar,
On the worn garb that veiled his bosom aching
The dust of travel bore:—

Dark Motherwell, a weird and wild magician!
Leaned with a lowering aspect on his lyre,
While images of some old Norse tradition
Thronged on his soul of fire.

And pious Graham, whose chaste muse selected
The holy “Sabbath” for its quiet theme,
And with the sinless birds his name connected,
Was present in my dream.

Awe to the scene dim, rearward shapes were giving,
Wraiths of a band, without a funeral stone,
Whose songs, like echoes in the glens, were living,
Although their names unknown.

Forgotten minstrels, who had bravely trodden
Red battle-fields, in old baronial times,
Breathing out woe, when came the day of Flodden,
In rude but touching rhymes:—

Lads that, in keeping tryst beneath the cover
Of flowering thorn with snooded maiden, found
Vent for the fluttering transport of the lover
In words of tuneful sound:—

Shepherds, who caught rare gleams of inspiration
While couched their flocks around them on the hill—
Children of toil-ennobling lowly station,
Whose tongues would not be still!

At length an airy whisper, as of warning,
That ran from front to shadowed rear, I heard,
And voiceful pine-boughs, in the breath of morning,
Like martial plumage stirred;

Then wild Æolian melodies diverted,
For a brief space, my wondering regards;—
I looked again—the valley was deserted—
Gone Albyn's plaided bards.

Shooting across the bounds of time and distance,
Can Fancy thus pursue her viewless track—
Cheering the gloom of every day existence,
Bringing rich treasures back.

Thus aliment is furnished that gives vigor
To the rapt student in his chamber lone,
Or sculptor bidding some majestic figure
Leap into life from stone.

And shifting, gorgeous tints are thus transmitted
That on the canvass of the painter blaze,
And Eloquence, to blast corruption, fitted
With one indignant gaze.

Thus from the poet's heart is banished sadness,
And golden radiance on his spirit flung—
His teeming brain possessed of that “fine madness,”
Of which old Drayton sung.

If we were chained forever to the Real,
God's benison would be indeed withdrawn;
Without rich glimpses of the bright Ideal,
In vain would morning dawn.

Upward, on pinions of sublime devotion,
The soul would cleave its native sky no more,
But loathsome grow, a pool devoid of motion,
Foul to its weedy floor.

Perish the thought! that in our bosoms never
Should wake those airy raptures that were ours
Ere fled the freshness of our youth forever—
When Joy was crowned with flowers;

Perish the thought that life in its transitions,
Should cease at last to look this earth beyond—
Ringing the funeral knell of glorious visions
That on our childhood dawned!

Our grosser nature ever strives to win us
From worship of the beautiful and bright,
And deaf are many to the voice within us,
That whispers,—“Seek the light!”

Not they alone work faithfully who labor
On the dull, dusty thoroughfare of life;
The clerkly pen can vanquish, when the sabre
Is useless in the strife.

In cloistered gloom the quiet man of letters
Launching his thoughts, like arrows from the bow,
Oft strikes at Treason, and his base abettors,
Bringing their grandeur low.

Armed with a scroll the birds of evil omen
That curse a country he can scare away,
Or, in the wake of error, marshal foemen
Impatient for the fray.

Scorn not the sons of Song! nor deem them only
Poor, worthless weeds upon the shore of time;
Although they move in walks retired and lonely
They have their tasks sublime.

When tyrants tread the hill-top and the valley,
Calling the birth-right of the brave their own,
Around the tomb of Liberty they rally,
And roll away the stone.

Or roused by some dark peril they have written,
Words that awe Guilt behind his guarded wall,
Or, by the lightning of their numbers smitten,
Beheld the bigot fall.

Though fierce, uncurbed emotions running riot,
Hiss like Medusa's vipers in the breast,
The witchcraft of harmonic sound can quiet
The turmoil into rest.

Who through the chieftain's castle hall is stealing
With the light foot-fall of some beast of prey,
While vengeance hushes every softer feeling,
Nerving his arm to slay?

Where is his home?—to flame its roof was given,
And heavy clouds above the ruin lower,
While the dread foe, by whom his soul was riven,
Unwarned is in his power.

Where are his kinsmen?—ask the fox and raven
That feed upon their corpses, gashed and red;
And will he now turn back a trembling craven,
What, what arrests his tread?

Young Annot Lyle, her Highland clairshach waking,
Trills an old ballad to remembrance dear—
And dagger-hilt his rugged hand forsaking
Brushes away the tear.

Thus can a strain of home, with power disarming,
Cause feudal Hate to lay his weapon down,
To softness change, (the tiger-passions charming,)
His black and baleful frown.

Lo! the proud Norman and his hots are flying,
While in pursuit, with fierce triumphant cheers
That drown the groans of horse and rider dying,
Press on the Saxon spears.

What stays their flight?—the song of Rolla rising
In angry swell above the dreadful roar—
Again they charge!—the bolts of death despising,
And Harold's reign is o'er.

Dread power of Song! whose voice can thus awaken
Notes that consign an empire to the grave;
Or when recoils a host, by panic shaken,
From rout the valiant save.

The fearful mantle that the seer is wearing
Derives from thee its tints of living fire—
And higher mounts Philosophy when sharing
The wealth of thy attire;

And, in the distance, to thy vision brightly
Gleam happy homes beyond this land of graves,
As airy domes and towers, at sunset, lightly
Rise from Sicilian waves.

There, luminous with effluence from Heaven,
The lost are found—the dead again descried;
Their ransomed natures, freed from earthly leaven,
Their tears forever dried.

When History, her task but ill achieving,
Fails some far epoch faintly to illume,
The Muse, her thread like Ariadne weaving,
Conducts us through the gloom.

She fronts the morn—and on the purple ridges
The virgin-future lifts her veil of snow—
Looks westward, and an arch of splendor bridges
The gulf of “Long-Ago.”

She speaks—and lo! Italian sunlight flashes
Over the dark expanse of northern skies;
Death hears her thrilling cry—and cold, gray ashes
Take mortal shape and rise.

When factions vex a state, and new abuses
Bring to her drooping banner-fold disgrace,
And mind, forgetful of its nobler uses,
Grows sensual and base—

When “the gray fathers” of a nation falter,
Muffling their faces for the funeral knell—
A lightning-flash from her poetic altar
The darkness can dispel.

Orion, as an oracle informs us,
In the sun's pathway may regain his sight,
And in the track of song that cheers and warms us,
We bid farewell to night!

Then honored be the Bard! a heavenly mansion
Alone could be the birth-place of an Art
That gives to deathless intellect expansion,
And purifies the heart.

UTILITY OF IMAGINATION.

INSCRIBED TO HON. C. P. AVERY, OWEGO, NEW YORK.

Something besides the judgment in alliance
With memory evolves both heat and light,
When a resistless march is made by science
Against the brood of night.

How circumscribed would be our mortal vision
Without this subtle faculty of mind—
Catching no flowery scent from fields elysian,
Weak, grovelling, and blind!

The will to dare, with this strange power combining,
Derives a force that overcomes mischance;
It warms the breast a noble heart enshrining—
Flames in the poet's glance.

It is the minister that talks divinely
Of things invisible to mortal gaze;
The star that beamed on Milton so benignly
When fallen on evil days.

Though nature grew a blank, and opened sadly
His clouded orbs that found the dawn no more—
While foes rejoiced in his affliction madly,
And blocks were soaked with gore;

All was not dark, for eyes within were planted,
And the great Master looked with reverence still
On grove and fountain by the Muses haunted,
And Zion's heavenly hill.

Those intellects—reverse of the conceptive,
To aught sublime, have never given birth,
Like pictures, without background or perspective,
They are of little worth.

The cestus worn by Venus comprehended
All that could win or charm, the Greeks avow,
But more of beauty with the wreath is blended
That binds a poet's brow.

Ever the graceful and the grand begetting,
Imagination cheers us on our way,
Gives to the gem of truth a golden setting
That makes more rich its ray.

It lends enchantment to our tasks diurnal,
For starry Contemplation builds a tower,
And Love, rejoicing in a youth eternal,
Leads to a deathless bower.

Impatient of all bound, on pinion soaring,
It speeds across wide waste and weltering main,
Or mounts aloft the spirit-world exploring,
That weird and wild domain!

Outshining morn, it gives a purple glory
To mossy rock, herb, flower, and lapsing stream—
Touches the head with time and trouble hoary,
While back comes childhood's dream.

The world of thought could know no worse bereavement
If God who gave should take this power away;
Of the earth, earthy, would man's best achievement
Be from that fatal day.

What moonlight is to holy night, dismissing
The gloom that wrapped both wave and ocean-shore,
Or, as a minstrel truly warbles, “Kissing
Dead things to life” once more,

Is this pure agent to our mental being
Darkness transforming into landscapes fair,
While round to bless and charm our inward seeing
Throng wonders rich and rare.

Although the soil of thought is noble Reason,
Where golden grain by memory is sown,
Our souls would famish—dawn no harvest season,
If fed by these alone.

Imagination is the radiant essence,
The sun maturing fruit on which we feed,
Clothing the soil with rainbow efflorescence,
Quickening the buried seed.

A sense of beauty, grace, and chaste proportion
Flows from its action—otherwise would Art
Nothing produce but shapes of grim distortion
To chill, not warm the heart.

Its agency may ever be detected
When Genius plumes his wing for higher flight,
Or images of grandeur are reflected
From the soul's mirror bright.

Those who decry its influence, and have clamored
Most loudly for the practical and true,
In childhood, of its blossoms were enamored
Pearled with the morning dew.

Poetic raptures in their bosoms springing
Owed to this vital principle their birth,
While music floated round them like the singing
Of angels on the earth.

Of sky and plain it was the rich adorner,
And the full blaze of its enchantment fell
On story books, that to the chimney corner
Bound them as by a spell.

I know that never those ecstatic feelings
That cheered our years of innocence, come back,
That manhood brings its terrible revealings,
Resistance and attack.

But hearts are changed to tombs where wholly perish
Emotions that once made each fibre thrill,
While May-time lingers in the breasts that cherish
Some boyish feeling still.

Of strong Imagination talk not lightly,
It gives the present its progressive start;
To comeliness converting the unsightly
In law, religion, art.

The mind becomes without this throbbing movement
To rouse and thrill, mechanical and cold;
Content to slumber on, without improvement—
Mute slave of custom old!

Deep longings for a nobler life can only
Find home in bosoms glowing with its fire,
Whether they beat in hall or hovel lonely—
Wear mean or rich attire.

To things, without an archetype, is given
Ideal presence, form and color bright,
When by its aid away the mist is driven
That clouded mental sight.

Through its strong action unity essential,
In things that seem to differ we detect;
Hence arguments, conclusive and potential,
Philosophers erect.

It kisses the pale, faded wreath of sorrow
Till back comes fluttering life and vernal green,
And the clear promise of a fairer morrow
Is in the orient seen:

It breathes upon the strings of our existence,
And sweet Æolian melodies arise,
While seraphs wave their white wings in the distance
Called earthward from the skies:

It rears aloft, for man to hold communion
With higher natures, free from mortal leaven,
A golden ladder that produces union
Between dark earth and Heaven:

It blows a silver trumpet when we falter
In upward march, those Alpine heights to gain,
Where gather round an ever-burning altar
A priesthood free from stain

It tolls a solemn curfew, sweetly bringing
To weary Labor balm and soft repose;
And Grief, to hear the deep vibration ringing,
Of rest enamored grows:

Wild lawless Mirth forsakes his work of riot,
The honey-dew of slumber falls on Care—
The lulling sounds have even power to quiet
That Stygian ghost—Despair!

It is the dazzling rainbow overbending
Time's wave, made turbid by a crumbling shore—
Weaver of colors, with the present blending,
And all we loved of yore:

It whispers in the hoary ear of Ocean
And chaunting sirens quit their coral caves,
While sounds are heard that charm to gentler motion
His ever-throbbing waves:

It visits us at night, and we are guided
By singing phantoms to melodious streams,
And walk with lovely shapes that reign divided
Hold in the land of dreams:

It finds the student in his cell despairing,
And drapes the walls with crimson and with gold,
While grandly enter, crown and laurel wearing,
The mighty ones of old:

Deep marks they bear upon their calm proud faces
Of bitter trial borne to win renown;
For all who struggle up to lofty places
Must feel the storm come down.

Call not a fleeting shadow an illusion—
A power that wields such dread and vast control;
That moulds to grace and harmony confusion,
And nerves the drooping soul.

It is the loom that forms a web to cover
With brightness all that sage or bard has wrought—
The “Ακαματον Πυρ” that flashes over
The firmament of thought.

Transmuting spirit! why is Romance grieving
For genii vanished on the “posting air,”
As if the lustrous shapes of thy conceiving
Our mortal doom could share.

Still a response Dodona's oaks are giving,
And naiads haunt Arcadian fount and rill,
In murmuring groves are faun and dryad living,
And Jove is mighty still.

Round Erin's ruined castle lightly sailing,
Where Valor sued for Beauty's hand of yore,
The mystic banshee wakes a note of wailing
For those who come no more.

In merry England nightly to their revel
Mischievous elves and trooping fairies throng,
Waking the silence of her meadows level
With laugh and antique song.

King Arthur, still, with plume and pennon streaming,
To battle hurries from his castle hall,
And famous knights, in dinted armor gleaming,
Obey his trumpet call.

Lithe Ariel, on Prospero that waited,
Twines by the moonlight still her magic wreath,
And the Weird Sisters, by thy wand created,
Dance on the blasted heath.

Imagination is a gift celestial
That Eden's loss to man in part restores;
Starring the twilight of this scene terrestrial
With rays from heavenly shores.

The soul within a breezy tower it stations,
Things high above this rolling orb to note,
As through thin air of lofty elevations
Seems nearer the remote.

Ah! if the spirit never left its prison
Till the pale flag of finite life was furled,
No prophet clothed in terror would have risen
To warn a guilty world.

That preacher follows a mistaken calling
Whose sermon is not living with its flame;
Guilt is not startled from a trance appalling
When utterance is tame.

To common stature would a Webster dwindle,
And spell to charm a Clay no longer own,
Did not this lightning of the mind enkindle
Eye, action, word, and tone.

It waits not for Death's ferryman to row us
O'er the dark waters to a port unknown,
But in our dreams Elysium can show us.
Or Pluto's gloomy throne.

Oh! call not unsubstantial—but a vapor—
That which can stir the heart's unsounded deep,
And prompt Ambition, by his midnight taper,
Long, wasting watch to keep;

Can vivify, exalt, refine, transfigure—
Of true impassioned eloquence the source,
From which cold fact derives a pulse of vigor,
Mere words, victorious force.

Unreal? no! in transport it unites us
To climes of milder sky and purer air,
And with a sweet, persuasive tongue invites us
To taste of nectar there.

Dry learning, force, and logical acumen
Would not hand Plato down from age to age,
Did not this god-like attribute illumine
His philosophic page.

Prose must be pregnant with its spirit burning,
Or in some dusky nook aside be flung,
Even some patient antiquary spurning
The place with cobwebs hung.

Its royal stamp can never be mistaken
On works that bear the searching test of time,
Alike emblazoned on the page of Bacon
And Chaucer's rude old rhyme.

Costly morocco, clasp and gilded cover,
Will not avail a barren book to save,
And black Lethean waters soon close over
Its unrecorded grave.

Ethereal sparks must flash through what is written
To make an author's name a household word
On loving lips, though states with wreck are smitten,
In court and cottage heard.

A pensioned press and critical pretenders
May give the vapid passport for a day,
But when assailed by merit's true defenders
It melts like mist away.

The product must be genuine, or fashion
And shifting taste will prove it worse than vain;
The mocking forms of counterfeited passion
Impress nor heart, nor brain.

A vivid outline must be first engendered,
Forerunner of a ripening into deed;
To mortal work was never homage rendered
That did not thus proceed.

Our inward eye beholds the stately building
Ere corner-stone is laid, or hammer rings,
Hall, winding stair, and chambers rich in gilding,
Base, buttress, tower and wings.

Language provides poor symbols of expression
When roused Imagination, holding reign,
Sends airy forms of grace in vast procession
Across the poet's brain.

An Orphic tongue would be too weak an agent
To tell the tale of inspiration's hour;
To paint an outline of the gorgeous pageant—
A Titian have no power.

The meagre, written record of the closet
Saves but a few, pale glimmering pearls—no more—
When the lashed waves roll inland to deposit
Their wealth along the shore.

Within, a stream of poesy is gushing
That spoken word would freeze in its wild flow,
And lovelier tints the current deep are flushing
Than art will ever know.

The Queen of Beauty and her blushing daughters
In Crathis bathed—that old poetic stream—
And each dark ringlet from the sparkling waters
Imbibed an amber gleam.

Thus thoughts that send and will send on forever,
From the dim plains of long-ago, a light
Caught from Imagination's golden river
Their glow divinely bright.

When done with life, its fever, din and jostle,
How scant and poor a portion after all
Of Nature's Priest and Art's renowned Apostle
Lies hid beneath the pall.

Though grazing herd and hosts with clanging sabres
Their graves forgotten trample rudely o'er,
To tribes and nations, through their crowning labors,
They speak for evermore.

Oh! Genius! dowered with privilege immortal,
Thus from the wastes of time to stretch thy hand,
And, with a touch, unfold the glittering portal
Of an enchanted land!

Death knows thee not, though long ago were blended
Thy bones with indistinguishable clay,
The dead are they whose mission here is ended—
Thy voice is heard to-day.

Heard on the honeyed lip of Juliet melting—
In dreaming Richard's cry of guilty fear;
In shouts that rise above the night-storm pelting
From old distracted Lear.

Heard in the organ-swell of Milton pealing—
In Gray's elegiac sorrow for the past—
In flute-notes from the muse of Spencer stealing,
And Dryden's bugle-blast!

Heard in the matchless works of thy creation,
Speaking from canvass, scroll, and marble lips,
In those deep, awful tones of inspiration
That baffle death's eclipse.

THEMES OF SONG.

INSCRIBED, WITH GRATEFUL RECOLLECTIONS, TO HON. JOHN GREIG, OF CANANDAIGUA.

Where lives the soul of Poetry? It dwells
In the lone desert, where no fountain wells
Speaks in the Kamsin's blast, dread foe of man,
That overthrows the luckless caravan,
And in a tomb, unknown to friendship, hides
The toiling camels and their Arab guides;
Dwells in the boiling mælstrom deep and dark,
That roars a dismal warning to the bark,
And lingers where volcanic mountains throw
A burning deluge on the vale below.

Where lives the soul of Poetry? Dark caves,
Worn by the foamy buffeting of waves;
The blue abysses of the moaning sea,
Where coral insects fashion dome and tree,
And mermaids chant, by mortal eye unseen,
And comb in sparry halls their tresses green;
The broad savannah, where the bison strays,
And come in herds the fallow-deer to graze;
The mossy forest, far from haunts of men,
Where the wild wolf prepares his savage den;
The giant Andes, round whose frosty peaks
The tempest hovers and the condor shrieks;
Cold, cheerless Greenland, where the ice-berg hoar
Strikes with a deafening crash the barren shore,
While roves the white fox, and the polar bear,
In quest of prey, forsakes his icy lair;
Bright tropic bowers, within whose depths of green
The pard and savage tiger lurk unseen;

Where the fierce scales of deadly reptiles shine,
While round the trunks of giant palms they twine;
The spicy groves of Araby, the blest,
In fadeless robes of bloom and verdure drest,
Where birds of gorgeous plumage perch and sing
In varied strains, or wander on the wing;
Romantic Persia, where the dulcet lay
Of the glad Peri never dies away;
While the light pinions of the wooing wind
Fan the young leaves of date and tamarind,
And nightingales, amid the branches throng,
Own the glad presence of the soul of Song.

The rich, warm hues, that flush the western cloud
When yellow twilight weaves her glorious shroud;
The babbling cascade, that descends in foam
And flashing beauty from its rocky home;
The mingling tones of laughing earth and air,
When morn braids purple in her golden hair;
The dance of leaves, the lulling fall of rain,
The river, on its journey to the main;
The quiet lakes, that spread their sheets of blue,
A sweet enchantment lending to the view;
The fierce tornado, parent of dismay,
Uprooting sylvan giants in his way;
The lulling winds of summer, or the blast
That howls a requiem when the leaf is cast;
The pearly moonshine of an autumn night,
When glen and glade are bathed in spectral light,
And lawn of spring, with varied flowers inwrought,
Are the pure nurses of poetic thought.

Go where Parnassus lifts his hoary brow,
Though classic Delphi lies in ruin now,
And the grim robber lurks, with wary eye,
Round the rich fount of storied Castaly;
Stroll where the walks of Tempe, broad and green,
Proud Ossa and Olympus spread between,

While through bright bowers the swift Peneus strays,
And foamy tribute to Ægean pays.
The bearded corsair, chants in foreign tongue,
Where the blind King of epic grandeur sung;
No voice of onset rises from the plain,
Where rapt Tyrteus woke the martial strain;
Thine isle, oh, Sappho! mourning waters gird,
But there no music like thine own is heard;
Where the proud mother hurried to the field
Her only son, and giving him a shield,
Said, with an accent of heroic joy,
“Bring, or be brought upon it back, my boy!”
Now Grecian girls their tinkling rebecks string,
And the soft magic of the blind god sing—
By moonlight gaily link their rosy hands,
And dance the glad Romaika on the sands.
In beauty still the tumbling billows break
On the lone shore of Lerna's reedy lake,
Still the green olive trembles in the breeze,
Though there no Hydra roves—no Hercules;
Pactolus glides, to deathless beauty wed,
But gold no longer flashes in his bed—
Above that sea the sky still looks divine,
Where Delos darted from the cradling brine—
The tide yet sweeps where blushing Venus rose,
But Triton there his horn no longer blows.
Go where the top of old Hymettus towers,
Haunt of the bee, and odorous with flowers,
While far below, the cool Cephissus winds;
A name of kindling fire to classic minds,
Pause, where the streams of wooded Ida flow,
Though guardian naiads fled, long, long ago:
The verdant sides of dewy Latmos climb,
Rich in the precious lore of olden time,
Where star-girt Dian, from her throne of blue,
Came down the young Endymion to woo—

Stand on old hills that overlook the seas,
Though gone their nymphs, the wild Oreades—
In fancy view the dolphin cleave the wave,
And bear the minstrel from a watery grave;
Hear proud Amphion wake his master-tone,
And give life, joy, mobility to stone;
On old Egina fix your kindling glance—
Round Athens linger in poetic trance—
The sacred groves of fallen Greece explore,
Home of the laughing Dryades no more,
And own, although her star of power hath set,
The soul of kingly Song is present yet.

The sun looks fondly on the crumbling dome,
And fallen pile of desecrated Rome,
And the wan moon her horn of silver fills,
To bathe in dazzling light her seven hills—
As rolled his wave when Italy was free,
Still rolls old father Tiber to the sea:
Morn on his breast a red enchantment throws,
His waves still blush when day is near its close,
And floating sweetly through majestic trees,
Come the wild songs of herdsmen on the breeze.
Though creeping ivy veils imperial wrecks,
And the dark brow of victor Ruin decks—
Though nodding weeds of loneliness are high
Where marble triumphs of the chisel lie—
Though the dark bat and solitary toad.
Find in the hall of Cæsar an abode
No longer hung with hostile banners furled—
And trophies wrested from a subject world—
Though wall-flowers grow beside the prostrate shrine,
And mingling piles that cumber Palatine,
A voice of many tones goes up from wave,
Dark ruin, storied haunt, and green old grave.
It whispers of past triumphs, when the street
Was strewn with flowery carpets for the feet;

When wreathy clouds of grateful incense rose
From smoking altars, white as drifted snows:
When horse and foot went by with iron clang;
While the shrill trump and brazen clarion rang—
When came the captive host and spoils of war
Behind the victor in his glittering car,
With golden ball, refulgent on his breast,
In flowing robes of kingly purple drest.

A voice goes up from Numa's sacred mount,
Deserted temple and neglected fount,
From snowy columns piled in fluted heaps,
And the round tomb, where proud Metella sleeps;
From emptied urn, and broken arch of stone
That breathes a saddening tale of glory gone:
That voice, like echo in sepulchral halls,
On the quick ear of musing genius falls,
His spirit pluming for a flight sublime,
While round him rise the wasting wrecks of time.
Where Brutus bared the steel, Childe Harold heard
That voice of mourning, and his soul was stirred,
Swept his proud harp beneath Ausonian skies,
And woke his wildest, sweetest melodies.
When music trembled on the evening breeze,
And moonbeams lighted architrave and frieze,
Within the lofty Coliseum stood,
The Lord of Newstead, in his saddest mood,
On the square block and corridor beheld
The mark of Vandal, and the stain of eld,
While the pale light through broken arches stole,
To deck decay and beautify the whole.
The Pilgrim thought of men ignobly brave,
The purpled master, and submissive slave,
Whose voices wildly mingled in one yell
Of savage pleasure when some victim fell.
Fresh grew his memory of those golden days,
When Flaccus chanted his immortal lays—

Gave point and polish to satiric shaft,
While glad Apollo praised his skill and laughed;
When tuneful Maro, epic monarch, strung
His lyre of deathless harmony and sung:
The daring pinion of his fancy spread,
And fadeless lustre on old Ilium shed:
When graceful Tully in the forum spoke,
Enkindled anger, or amazement woke,
While the fell traitor, pale with terror, heard
The knell of crime in each denouncing word.
Back on his mind came that terrific night
When dreaming thousands woke in wild affright;
When the loud blast of Gothic trumpets fell
On Roman ears of hope the horrid knell,
And through rent gates, with lance and lifted sword,
Came Alaric, the mighty, and his horde.
Oh, dreadful hour! when startled Tiber ran
Red with the light of flames and blood of man,
When blazing domes changed darkness into day;
Enticing Lust to Innocence his prey.
Where was thy matchless race of iron men,
Thy victor Eagle, Queen of Empires, then?
What strange mutation in thy heart was wrought?
Thy children trembled where their fathers fought—
Thy Bird of Conquest, like a timid thing,
With drooping neck and darkly folded wing,
Saw kneeling matrons, red with infant gore,
In vain the wild barbarian implore.

Though Rome is fallen from her high estate,
Her grandeur gone, her palace desolate;
Although her haughty flag no longer flings
On trampled lands the shadow of its wings,
She is the home of memories that stir
With inspiration all who visit her;
The wondrous magnet of thy world, oh, Thought!
By wisdom haunted, and by scholar sought

Where the proud sons of Taste and Science find
Forever spread the festival of mind.
The sibyl of Egeria hath fled—
Where Cato trod assassins boldly tread—
Across her bridge that spans the troubled tide
Pomp moves no longer with colossal stride—
Gone are the genii of her bowers and plains,
But the sweet soul of deathless Song remains.

Land of the Holy Sepulchre! thou art
The noblest theme to rouse poetic heart,
For every rock beneath thy glowing sky
Rang with the awful tones of prophecy:
On the bright mountains of thy clime have trod
The sweet, seraphic messengers of God—
With the pure presence of that Lamb who died
To save a world thy rivers are allied:
Within thy bowers, and groves of beauty rare,
His meek disciples have knelt down in prayer;
The dying martyr, in exulting strains
Hath sung of triumph on thy sacred plains,
And saints have often meekly bent the knee
On the green shore of breezy Galilee.

Through wasted vales, in rich barbaric garb,
The haughty emir guides his flying barb;
Above the sod of apostolic graves
The pallid glory of the crescent waves—
Where the swift Arnon in his channel foams
The dusky reader of the Koran roams;
Where Carmel rises, rich in sacred lore,
Goes up the smoke of sacrifice no more—
The sons of Islam pitch their tents of snow
Where rang the harp and timbrel long ago;
Where the winged angel woke the dreaming wave,
And healing power to cool Bethesda gave.
The cry of “Allah!” on each wind that blows,
Is borne where Sharon gloried in her rose,

Where Hermon shone, with heavenly dew-drops wet,
And beauty made her home on Olivet.
Though on the banks of Jordan now are mute
The notes of sackbut, dulcimer, and lute,
Still the proud cedar lifts his verdant cone,
And makes the top of Lebanon his throne.
Bright robes of glory still invest the place,
Where dwelt the parents of the human race,
Still Horeb towers whereon the Prophet stood
When the mad whirlwind shook the crashing wood,
Heard the loud thunder in the vaulted sky,
And knew Jehovah by his flashing eye.
Oh, words are feeble vehicles of thought
To paint a clime where miracles were wrought,
Unless the tongue that gives them voice can sing
Like rapt Isaiah or the Shepherd-King.

Go where the Nile, to slake the torrid sand,
Leaps from his bed, and overflows the land—
Where the red sun-burst of the morning hour
The harp of Memnon woke with mystic power—
Where lofty Science from her cradle sprung,
And over Greece her burning mantle flung;
Where infant Sculpture made the marble warm,
To wondrous sphinx and hippogrif gave form—
Where Memphis boasted of her wealth untold
Her spacious halls of porphyry and gold:
Where the proud Queen of Victors brightly wove
Round Roman hearts the matchless spell of love,
Lifted the gilded beaker to her lip,
In one proud draught the wealth of kings to sip—
Lay on her blazing couch of queenly rest,
By Cupids fanned, voluptuously drest,
While her swift galley down the Cydnus flew
Rich in its freight, and sail of purple hue,

Spread out by winds that bore the tone of lute,
And the low warblings of the dulcet flute.
O, mourning Mother of lost arts! thy name
Stirs with unwonted sympathy my frame—
Wakes in my heart affection's holiest thrill,
Although thy ruins whiten vale and hill.
I know that Turkish conquest in a day
Thy heaps of letter'd wisdom swept away,
That turbaned pachas wield the scourging rod
Where Ptolemy and proud Sesostris trod,
But still thy fount of lore by learning sought,
Gives sight to blindness, and a glow to thought.

In fancy visit that neglected site
Where Carthage rose in majesty and might,
By Dido founded on old Afric's strand,
With Neptune subject to her dread command.
That chief recall who left his ocean home
To battle for the mastery with Rome—
Across the frosty Alps his legions led,
While kingdoms shook beneath his iron tread—
Recall her peerless ships of old renown
That long ago beneath the wave went down—
Think of her awful destiny, and pour
A wail for grandeur that will live no more
No vestige lingers of her triple walls,
Her flanking-towers, her storm-proof arsenals;
Of her strong bulwarks, sword, and fire, and time,
To charm the gaze, have left no wreck sublime;
The laurel crown is faded on her brow—
Amid her ruins sits no Marius now;
For empire lost, and glory in the grave
There is no mourner, save the chainless wave.

Ye solemn cities of the dead!—bereft
Of brightness, being; ye have something left—
A power to wake the pulses of the soul,
And back the darkling tide of ages roll—

A charm that robs pale silence of his chain,
And fills with light the chambers of the brain;
A talismanic witchery that calls
The shrouded mighty from their charnel halls,
Fills air with regal spectres, while the hand
Of buried magic grasps a broken wand—
Calls the fierce chieftain from forgotten tomb,
With breast-plate, greave, strong helm, and nodding plume,
To wake with trump wan multitudes of slain,
And lead them madly to the field again.
Ye haunts of lofty musing! though the flood
Of wild invasion merged your pomp in blood,
Though column huge and obelisk of taste
Lie darkly buried in the sandy waste,
Though the tall ostrich flaps his stately wings,
And bitterns boom above the dust of kings—
Though in your courts the ministers of death
Breathe on the wind their pestilential breath,
Ye have a mystic potency of spell
That sways the bosom to its inmost cell,
A magic lamp that sheds redeeming day
On desolation, darkness, and decay.

Romantic Spain, for years of glory flown,
Breathes on the wind her melancholy moan;
No more the pennon of her Cid will wave
Its green, triumphant folds above the brave,
But roving fancy, in her olive bowers,
To charm mankind still culls poetic flowers—
Finds tale of wonder on her lonely strand,
And warlike legend in her mountain-land—
Strolls where Granada lifts her verdant hill
On which the tall Alhambra glitters still
Rich in its fret-work, and mosaic floor,
That echoes back the tread of kings no more.
On the fair banks of gentle Rio Verde,

In dreams again the Moorish horn is heard,
While Leon, waking with a battle shout,
Lifts the red lance, and flings her banner out.

Land of the Claymore, and the rugged rock,
Burn, broomy knowe, gray cairn, and stormy loch,
On the proud altar of thy bardic fame
Full brightly burns imperishable flame!
With partial art Apollo tuned thy lyre,
And tone celestial gave each trembling wire;
No brighter stars within his temple shine,
Land of the pibroch and the plaid, than thine!
No more thy Fingal, when the camp is still,
Moves in his armor on the windy hill,
With ghostly Trenmor dialogue to hold,
While awfully roll back the times of old.
No more the sons of woody Morven throng
With shield and helmet to the hall of song,
Call on the bard to weave his mystic spells,
And lend enchantment to the feast of shells;
Borne on the pinions of the hollow blast,
No more dark Loda's spirit journeys past,
But Ossian lives, and in his bardic crown
Gleams the rich germ of thy mature renown.

Thy heart within its greenest cell inurns
The lasting, lofty memory of Burns,
And proudly throbs when seek the pilgrim throng
His lowly cot and scenery of his song—
Stand on the banks of wooded Ayr, or tune
Their harps to praise him in the bowers of Doon.
Thy sad, decaying fabrics of the past,
Gloom on the relics of the mighty cast—
Fair Melrose Abbey holds in solemn trust
The heart of Bruce and Douglas, changed to dust;
The roof of Dryburg bends above the place
Where rest lost scions of a noble race,
And the fresh grave where Scott lies darkly shrined,
The crowning rose in thy proud wreath of mind.

Tweed, Carron, Nith, Sweet Clyde, romantic Dee,
And all thy streams that journey to the sea—
Ben Nevis, Lomond, Cruachan, Cairn-Gorm,
And all thy peaks that battle with the storm—
Thy yawning caves, green shaws, romantic dells,
Where brownies gather, and the warlock dwells,
And lonely moors, with heather overspread,
His muse to immortality hath wed.

Land of the Shamrock! Island of the Brave!
Thy broad, green fields are trodden by the slave,
But my weak hand one flower of song will cast
On the dark tomb that hides thy buried past.
Dim is thy 'scutcheon with obscuring dust,
And dark thy spear with thick, corroding rust;
The sword of Brefni, with its terror gone,
Hangs in its scabbard, blunted and undrawn;
No garland braids thy brow of settled gloom—
Thy red-haired chieftain hath a noteless tomb—
No banner floats from Tara's mouldered walls,
And heard no more is harping in thy halls.
Gone is the child who wept thy waning day,
Woke on thy mournful shore funeral lay,
Flowing so wildly sweet to mortal ear,
That even mailed oppression paused to hear;
The gate of grandeur and the cottage door
Are open flung to welcome him no more—
Thy lonely exile under distant skies,
Starts at the name of Carolan and sighs—
True bard who perished, warbling to life's close
Thy song of sorrow and thy tale of woes.

Oh, Erin! yet a pulse beats in thy soul—
To earth thy hand hath dashed the damning bowl—
One tear is wiped from off thy cheek of woe,
Pledge that thy star another morn will know;
Though bondage, block, foul treason and the sword,
A gory deluge on thy brows have poured,

The flower of genius, watered by thy tears,
Blooms mid the pleading wrecks of former years.
Swept by a Moore, the harp of Innisfail
Gives out complaining murmurs to the gale;
He found the matchless instrument unstrung.
On its cold frame the spider's web-work hung—
Beneath his hand, from chords for ages hushed,
Rich streams of wild, delicious music gushed.
Oh! may the minstrel, ere he looks his last
On thy green fields, revived, behold the past—
Thy Sun-Burst glittering on the gale once more—
The long night ended, and thy heart-ache o'er,
While brave men, wronged, march forth in stern array
To roll from glory's tomb the stone away.

Thy Curran, Grattan, Sheridan, and Flood,
In the bright vanguard of the mighty stood,
And roused to rend thy unrelaxing chain
The thunders of their eloquence in vain.
In bondage thus thou givest birth to sons
Whom earth enrols among her peerless ones;
What will thy children be when they awake,
And every strand in grief's black cable break?
Lamps in the hall of learning to the blind,
Gems of the world—bright polar stars of mind!
Too long have sable vestments wrapped thy form:
Too long howled round thy naked head the storm:
In Freedom's temple, rescued from disgrace,
The Lear of nations yet shall find a place.

The peerless isle that gave our fathers birth,
Hath many spots of consecrated earth;
Though victor time, in his remorseless march,
Hath worn the cloister dim, and Gothic arch—
Left stain of darkness on the tomb of pride,
Where strength and beauty slumber side by side.
Trace back her story to that distant day,
When tuneful Merlin woke the bardic lay,

And the wild Briton, in his savage car,
Met, with bare breast, the Roman shock of war.
No daring son of Cader Idris, now
Sleeps in the cavern, on his rocky brow,
While wizards string his harp with glowing chords,
And give his tongue the gift of burning words;
But the rude pile of Stonehenge still uprears
Colossal fragments dark with cloudy years;
Each rugged rock of Druidism tells—
Shrines red with gore, and wild, unholy spells.
No more the priest, in robe of snowy fold,
Climbs the tall oak with knife of gleaming gold,
And cuts, while chant the mystic throng below,
Balm for all ill, the precious mistletoe.
No more the victim vainly shrieks for aid,
The groves of Mona in the dust are laid,
And the bright Star of Bethlehem sheds light
On the dense vapor of Druidic night.

No more Old England hears, in good greenwood,
The merry bugle of her Robin Hood;
His bow is broken, and entombing mould
Roofs the dark mansion of his outlaws bold;
From her green glens, like misty shapes, have gone
The merry court of monarch Oberon.
No more the gaze of wondering Romance
Beholds her fairy throng prolong the dance,
When mellow star-light gives a lustrous glow
To Cam and gentle Avon as they flow:
No more beholds her knight throw down the glove,
And couch the lance to please his lady-love—
Tilt in the tourney against fearful odds,
While beauty waves her 'kerchief and applauds.
No more her Richard draws the fatal sword,
To smite the fiery Soldan and his horde,
But castled wrecks of feudal grandeur still
Crown with their mossy battlements, her hill,

And airy Fable seeks old haunted springs
To gem with dew her ever-changing wings;
Her gray, monastic ruins, darkly keep
Their lonely vigils on her blooming steep;
Her princely homes, round which the ivy twines,
Tell olden tales of her baronial lines,
When winking mirth on Valor fondly gazed,
Then to his lip the cup of wassail raised—
Or murder bared his deadly knife, and found
Tomb for his prey in dungeons under ground.
On battle plain where now the heifer feeds,
The clang of armor and the rush of steeds,
At midnight startle the belated swain,
And chill the red warm current in his vein.

Oh, Land of Inspiration! where the Nine
Came to uprear an everlasting shrine,
When blood was mingled with Castalian dew,
And dark with cloud the sky of Hellas grew—
Thy queenly name and lion flag are known
From the parched Tropic to the frozen zone.
What true descendant of the Pilgrim stock,
Who shouted “freedom!” on the Plymouth Rock,
Feels not true pride, green jewel of the sea,
To think he drew his parentage from thee?
Well may the children of thy rock-bound coast,
Tell of thy fame to every land, and boast,
“Here Chaucer wrote, and Spencer swept the lyre,
With tuneful ear and necromantic fire;
Here nursing Nature, with caresses fond,
To Shakespeare gave her wonder-working wand;
Smiled, when her idol, with one mighty stroke,
A boundless sea of thought and feeling woke;
Here the bright muse of Milton, spurning earth,
With angels sang, where light and life have birth;
Then flying downward, by an awful spell,
Laid bare the dreadful mysteries of Hell!

Though storied Europe, of the past may boast,
Her heirs of deathless fame, a countless host!
Presiding spirits over mount and vale,
Dark haunt of ghost, and legendary tale—
Tombs of the mighty, and the wrecks of art,
That stir, with mournful memories, the heart,
Our own free land is rich in glorious themes,
And lofty sources of poetic dreams.
Earth, that conceals the dust of patriot sires,
No pompous aid from fading art requires;
Above their bones no pyramid uprears
Its grand proportions mystical with years;
The mounds that mark the places of their rest,
Poetic rapture kindle in the breast;
Instil a love of country that will brave
Despotic wrath on land or rolling wave.
Their blood, by which our liberty was bought,
Hath sanctified the places where they fought;
And when the Muse of History unseals
Her mighty tome, deep, thrilling joy she feels
When pointing out, amid the names that fill
With light her fadeless pages, “Bunker Hill!”

We, too, have dark memorials of the past,
With cloudy robes of doubt around them cast!
And plodding science, to dispel the shade,
In vain calls wild conjecture to her aid.
Our western caves within their wombs of stone
Hide mortal wrecks, to memory unknown;
Bones of the mammoth, that appal the gaze,
Majestic relics of departed days!
And broad, green prairies, in their sweep infold
Vast mounds constructed by the tribes of old.

Where can the children of Apollo find
More lovely haunts to please romantic mind
Than those that grace our own green land of woods,
Fair skies, bright vales, and fertilizing floods?

Clad in the gaudy costume of his race,
Here the fleet red man panted in the chase,
Swept the light paddle, or in thickest shade
For painted foe the deadly ambush laid.
Here the broad boughs of sylvan giants wove
His green cathedral in the mossy grove—
Beneath its roof an altar-stone he raised,
And the Great Spirit of his people praised,
Read his kind mercy in the sun-light warm,
His anger in the whirl-wind and the storm.
Like some proud oak when lightning scathes the rind,
That lives awhile, then falls before the wind,
While fragrant flowers of evanescent dyes,
That loved its shadows, droop and close their eyes—
So when the whites applied the worm of grief
To the dark bosom of the Indian chief,
He fell a ruin, and his tribe in vain
Mourn for the limits of their old domain,
And broken-hearted, follow, one by one,
His path to isles below the setting sun.

Our mossy groves and mighty inland seas,
That bare their broad, blue bosoms to the breeze;
Our lofty hills, that guard the fruitful vale
Rich in tall forests bending to the gale;
Our mighty stretch of coast, from sea to sea,
Where man alone to God inclines the knee;
Where, free from gale, with canvass idly furled,
Might snugly moor the shipping of the world;
Our streams, embracing in their winding arms,
All that enchanted vision chains or charms;
And Niagara, when the storm is loud,
Who drowns the deep roar of the thunder-cloud,
Clad in his bright, magnificent array,
Of rain-bow, storm, white foam, and torrent spray,
Woo genius forth to win a crown of light,
And plume his pinion for an epic flight—

From air invoke divinities to guard
Glen, grot, and mountain, sacred to the bard.

The hand of fame no purer wreath can twine
Round mortal brow, sweet Poesy, than thine!
For blushing carnage and the tear of grief
Dim not the beauty of its fadeless leaf,
And the fresh odors of its bloom impart
Balm to the bitter ailments of the heart.
Who, who would fling thy precious flowers away,
To gird his temples with heroic bay,
Or tread in dust thy garland of renown
To snatch from pomp his regal robe and crown?
Oh, not true bard and holy, in whose breast
The wave of earthly passion is at rest!

When gentle Music, sister art, is mute—
Her viol broken, and unstrung her lute,
When the proud triumphs of the painter fade,
Lose their rich tinting, and grow dark with shade—
While Sculpture mourns her form of breathing stone,
By cruel change and Vandal overthrown,
While Taste beholds her fairest fabrics fall,
And o'er them Nature weave her ivied pall—
While charm the sons of Thespis for a day,
Then melt, like dew-drops of the night, away,
While Conquest moulders in his martial shroud,
A rayless star behind a dusky cloud—
While cities slumber in volcanic graves,
And isles of beauty sink beneath the waves,
The bright creations of the poet live,
And joy to passing generations give—
Borne on the wandering winds of every clime
Assault defying of decay and time.

Where is the Land of Song?—oh, not alone
To famous fields where War his trump hath blown
And Earth's proud places are its bounds confined:
It owns a royal empire in the mind:

Beyond the bright blue curtain of the skies,
Where living verdure fadeth not, it lies—
No clouds obscure the radiant prospect there,
And ever throbs with melody the air:
Oh, there, at last, a harp will minstrel wake
Whose silver chord no rending blast will break,
There, in full tide, will his free numbers flow,
There will his strain no dying cadence know.

Cleopatra.

THE PIONEERS OF WESTERN NEW YORK.

[_]

READ BEFORE THE LITERARY SOCIETIES OF GENEVA COLLEGE, AUGUST 1, 1838.

[_]

[This Poem was most kindly received on its “delivery,” as the phrase is, and a committee, consisting of several distinguished gentlemen, one of whom was my “most loved and honored friend,” the venerable John Greig, so eminent for every social and civic virtue, addressed the author the following request, which was complied with: “Dear Sir-The poem read by you this day, before the Literary Societies of Geneva College, and the numerous assemblage of citizens and strangers who attended the exercises at the College Commencement, was universally admired for its poetical beauties—for its appropriate description of the part of the country in which we reside, and of the perils and privations incident to its early settlement. Some of your friends among the old settlers, and their descendants, will be highly gratified to see the Poem published, and we solicit a copy for publication.”]

Our hardy pioneers, the men who—nursed
Amid the blooming fields of cultured lands—
Forsook the scenes of infancy, and first
With hearts of lofty daring and strong hands
Pierced old primeval groves—by hunter bands
And beasts of carnage tenanted alone—
And lit their camp fires on the lonely strands
Of lakes and seas, to geographer unknown,
Deserve the bard's high lay—the sculptor's proudest stone.

Noblest of human conquerors were they!
For, mighty though the bonds that bound the heart
To home and its endearments, far away
From mourning kindred and the crowded mart,
And earth for funeral uses set apart,
Where lay their honored dead in solemn rest,
They bore the precious seed of useful art
To wild, benighted regions of the West;
Since the creation-day in unpruned beauty dressed.

Let Ruin lift his arm, and crush in dust
The glittering piles and palaces of kings,
And, changing crown and sceptre into rust,
Doom them to sleep among forgotten things—
Let time o'ershadow with his dusky wings
Warriors who guilty eminence have gained,
And drank renown at red, polluted springs—
Sacked peaceful towns—the holy shrine profaned,—
And to their chariot wheels the groaning captive chained:—

But the self-exiled Britons who behind
Left Transatlantic luxuries, and gave
Their parting salutations to the wind,
And, scorning the vile languor of the slave,
Rocked with the little May Flower on the wave,
To immortality have prouder claim.
Let the bright Muse of History engrave
Their names in fadeless characters of flame,
And give their wondrous tale an everlasting fame.

No empty vision of unbounded power—
No dream of wild romance—no thirst for gold
Lured them from merry England's hall and bower—
Her Sabbath chime of bells, her hamlet old;
At home religious bigotry controlled
The struggling wing of thought; a gloomy cloud,
Charged with despotic wrath above them rolled;
And haunts they sought where man might walk unbowed,
And sacred truth might raise her warning voice aloud.

No waving flag, gay plume nor gleaming casque,
Proclaimed them masters of war's bloody trade:
Less daring spirits from the mighty task
In terror would have shrunken. Tender maid,
And daughter gently reared, for God to aid
Their feeble natures, breathed the words of prayer,
And in heaven's panoply their souls arrayed—
Speeding the good work on, though frail and fair,
When sterner manhood felt the faintness of despair.

Old Sparta in exulting tones may boast
Of ancient matrons who could deck the bier
Of sire and husband, slain where host met host,
And, in the flush of pride, forget the tear:
Our pilgrim mothers, too, could conquer fear,
And stifle sorrow; but their hearts enshrined
The soft affections: who loves not to hear
Their praises sung?—their constancy of mind,
Amid thy daughters, Greece, we strive in vain to find!

White lay the snow flakes on the lonely shore,
And winter flung his banner on the blast—
Behind swept angry waters; and before
Spread waving woods, dark, limitless and vast,
When a new continent received at last
Our houseless sires. The red-man, gaunt and grim.
On the strange scene his falcon vision cast;
And nameless terror shook his tawny limb
While, drowning ocean's roar, went up their triumph-hymn;

And when the bold survivors of that band
Reached the decaying autumn-time of life,
And locks were white, and palsied was the hand,
Barbaric swarms, with axe and deadly knife,
And painted, plumed and quivered for the strife,
Rushed from their trackless lairs to burn—despoil—
Butcher the cradled babe, the pleading wife;
Then swept the nodding harvest from the soil,
And scattered on the wind the fruits of patient toil.

The marble of Pentelicus, whereon
Exquisite taste majestically reared
The polished columns of the Parthenon,
By classic recollection is endeared;
But when its grandeur is no more revered—
Its peerless fabric gone,—the storied rock
On which our fathers landed, will be cheered
By grateful voices; and the ruffian-shock
Of billows, white with foam, its iron brow will mock.

The Pilgrim Spirit faded not in night
Like that misguiding lamp of frantic zeal
That led crusaders forth, in banded might,
To propagate christianity with steel,
In distant Palestine, and roll the wheel
Of bloody revolution: but its blaze
Thick clouds of war and storm could not conceal—
Round Lexington it poured undying rays,
And shamed the boasted deeds of old baronial days.

The Pilgrim Spirit! its converting power
And potent sway are felt wherever man
Is battling error in his hoary tower;
And virtue in defiance of the ban
Of popular opinion, leads the van
In purging guilty earth—where freedom dares
Unfurl his banner for the winds to fan;
And his dread sabre for the conflict bares,
Or, from despotic grasp, the rod of bondage tears.

The Pilgrim Spirit on our noble frame
Of government is written; for the road
That broadly leads to honorable fame
Lures humble merit from his rude abode,
Though lowly-born, and fainting with a load
Of wo and want, to struggle for the prize;
And proudly tread where gifted Sherman trode,
Or like great Franklin penetrate the skies,
And strip the blinding veil from nature's mysteries.

When the green, shrouding moss of time o'ercrept
Mounds in the vale and on the mountain side,
Where the stern founders of our empire slept,
Improvement moving with gigantic stride
Still hurried onward: patient labor plied
The ringing axe; and from his old domain
Fled drowsy solitude; while, far and wide,
The scene grew bright with fields of golden grain,
And orchards robed in bloom on hill and sunny plain.

The wand of enterprise to queenly states
Gave wondrous being; rivalling the spell
That reared round Thebes a wall of many gates
When proud Amphion swept his chorded shell,
The tuneful gift of Hermes: pastoral bell,
With tinkling murmurs, woke savannahs green,
And roused wild echoes in the woody dell,
Where late the cougar of terrific mien,
Devoured the fawn, or rocked upon his perch unseen.

With his penates, to the distant shores
Of our broad western streams, Adventure hied,
And pierced the soil for rich metallic ores,
Or with a keen, prophetic vision spied
An unborn mart upon the river-side;
While traffic trimmed her bark to brave the gale,
And met the terrors of a chartless tide—
In nameless havens furled her tattered sail,
Or toward Pacific seas, pursued the red man's trail.

The buskined lords of bow and leathern quiver
Were thy admiring sponsors long ago,
And named thee—“Genesee”—my native river,
For pleasant are thy waters in their flow!
Though on thy sides no bowers of orange grow,
The free and happy in thy valley throng,
O'er which the airs of health delight to blow—
No richer, brighter charms than thine belong
To streams immortal made by proud Homeric song.

Although thy tide that winds through pastures now,
By fleecy flock and lowing kine is drank,
A river of the wilderness wert thou,
When mixed in deadly combat on thy bank,
The yelling savage and impetuous Frank:
Thy wave lifts up no mourning voice to tell
Where the red, bubbling stream of carnage sank,
When rattling gun, loud groan, and fiendish yell,
Thy hollow murmur drowned, and gasping valor fell:

And Nature, in the moss of time attired,
On her green throne of forest sate, when came
The host of Sullivan, with vengeance fired,
To rouse upon thy shore the beast of game,
And wrap the lodges of fierce tribes in flame,
Fresh from unhappy Wyoming, and red
With scalps of hoary age and childless dame:
Gone from thy borders are the oaks that spread
Their yellow autumn palls above the martial dead.

Eastward the soldiers of that campaign bore
Glad tidings of unpruned but pleasant lands,
Washed by thy surges, like those spies of yore
Who brought ripe grapes from Eshcol to the bands
By Moses led across the desert sands.
Regardless of the sons of Anak, soon
Bold men of dauntless hearts, and iron hands
Left home, while life was in its active noon,
To hear the forest-wind thy flood's deep voice attune.

They fled not, like scourged vassals in the night,
From dungeon, rack, and chain, with footstep fleet:
The halls of their nativity were bright,
And fraught with recollections, fond and sweet,
Of childish hours; and hearts that loved them beat
Beneath their pleasant roofs:—forsaking all—
They roused the wood-wolf from his dim retreat,
And boldly reared the gloomy cabin wall
Of rude, misshapen logs, amid the forest tall.

They little thought, while roving near the site
Of thy proud City, deafened by the sound
Of waters tumbling from a fearful height,
And darkened by the wilderness around,
That soon its hollow roaring would be drowned
By the deep murmur of the mighty crowd,
Amid thick domes, with tower and turret crowned;
The din of whirling ears, and clatter loud
Of mills by human art with iron lungs endowed:

Nor did they dream that, in communion grand,
Broad Erie's wave, and Hudson's mighty tide,
Within a channel shaped by mortal hand,
Ere half a century elapsed, would glide:
That soon fair Buffalo, in queenly pride,
Would spring the Carthage of our inland seas,
And wave her sceptre o'er the waters wide—
To shipping change the patriarchal trees,
And launch a thousand barks to battle with the breeze.

The foreign tourist, gazing on thy vale,
By rural seat and stately mansion graced,
Stands mute with wonder when he hears the tale
Of thy redemption from the sylvan waste:
That only fifty years their rounds have traced
Since Phelps, the Cecrops of thy realm, forsook
The peopled haunts of genius, art, and taste;
While doubting friends with apprehension shook,
And love upon his form fixed sad, regretful look.

On the broad, green acclivities that round
The lovely lake of Canandaigua rise,
The groves in deep, majestic grandeur frowned,
Hiding their gloomy secrets from the skies,
And scarred and worn by storms of centuries,
When painted hordes with streaming locks of jet,
Terrific garb, and wildly glancing eyes,
Him and his daring band in treaty met,
Though late with Christian gore the tomahawk was wet.

A magic mirror girt by emerald,
In shade embowered, the diamond waters lay;
While the proud eagle, king-like, fierce, and bald,
Throned on the blasted hemlock, eyed his prey:
Sweet wild-flowers, guarded from the blaze of day,
Delicious odor on the soft air flung;
And birds of varied note and plumage gay
On shrubs and vines, with ripening berries hung,
Folded their glittering wings, and amorously sung.

The water rat—and darting otter swam
Amid the reedy flags that fringed the shore;
And the brown beaver to his rounded dam
With patient toil, the tooth-hewn sapling bore.
The lonely heron, surfeited with gore,
Smoothed on the pebbly beach his plumage dank:
Earth, sky, and wave an air of wildness wore,
And nimbly down the green and sloping bank,
Came stag and timid hind, on silver hoof, and drank.

The pen of voiceful narrative may well,
That solemn congress in the forest call
A thrilling and romantic spectacle:
The trunks of oaken monarchs, huge and tall,
Were the rough columns of their council-hall;
Thick bows were interwoven overhead,
And winds made music with their leafy pall:
Below, a tangled sea of brushwood spread,
Through which, to far-off wild, the beaten war-path led.

Few were the whites in number, and about
The council fire were gathered dusky throngs
From whose dark bosoms time had not washed out
The bitter memory of recent wrongs.
Some longed to wake their ancient battle songs,
And on the reeking spoils of conflict gaze—
Bind the pale captive to the stake with thongs,
And hellish yells of exultation raise,
While shrivelled up his form, and blackened in the blaze.

The compact for a cession of their land
Was nearly ended, when a far-famed chief
Rose with the lofty bearing of command,
Though lip and brow denoted inward grief:
Nought broke the silence save the rustling leaf
And the low murmur of the lulling wave;
He drew his blanket round him, and a brief,
But proud description of his fathers gave,
Then spoke of perished tribes, and glory in the grave.

“And who be ye”—he said, in scornful tones,
And glance of kindling hate—“who offer gold
For hunting grounds made holy by the bones
Of our great seers and sagamores of old?
Men who would leave our hearths and altars cold—
Unstring the bow, and break the hunting spear—
Our pleasant huts with sheeted flame infold,
Then drive our starving, wailing race in fear
Beyond the western hills like broken herds of deer!”

“Wake, On-gue-hon-we! strike the painted post,
And gather quickly for the conflict dire;
Yon Long Knives are forerunners of a host
Thick as the sparks when prairies are on fire:
Let childhood grasp the weapon of his sire—
Arm, arm for deadly struggle, one and all,
While wives and babes to secret haunts retire:
The ghosts of buried fathers on ye call
To guard their ancient tombs from sacrilege, or fall!”

Dark forms rose up, and brows began to lower,
While many a savage eye destruction glared;
But one came forth in that portentous hour
Ere shaft was aimed, or dagger fully bared,
And hushed the storm:—old Honneyawus dared
His voice upraise; and by his friendly aid
The knife was sheathed—the pioneer was spared.
Above that humane warrior of the shade
Let marble tell the tale in lines that cannot fade.

Tribes of the solemn League! from ancient seats
Swept by the whites like autumn leaves away,
Faint are your records of heroic feats,
And few the traces of your former sway;
Loved woodland haunts, deep, shadowy and gray,
No longer wave defiance to the roar
And rush of whirlwinds 'mid their cool retreats;
The wild beast harbors in their depths no more,
And ploughmen turn the glebe they darkly clothed of yore.

Tribes of the mighty! dwindled to a few,
Dejected, trampled children of despair;
And only like their ancestors in hue,
And the wild beauty of their flowing hair;
With laughter rude inquisitors lay bare
The ghastly secrets of your green old graves,
To moulder, peacemeal, in dissolving air;
Forgetful of past glory, when your braves
Surrounding nations made poor, weak, dependant slaves.

Where are your hoary magi—wrinkled seers—
Clad in their dread apparelling, who made
Rude, rocky altars, stained and mossed with years,
And held terrific orgies in the shade?
Where is the pliant oar of slender blade
That urged the birchen vessel on the stream?
Your council halls with cedar bark o'erlaid?
Gone, like the shapes that populate a dream,
Or twinkling dew drank up by morn's effulgent beam.

And where those whooping legions, fierce and free,
Who back the tide of French invasion bore,
Defeating warriors trained beyond the sea,
And bathing guarded Montreal in gore?
Their day of power is ended, and no more
Ring out their pæans louder than the sound
Of booming waters on an iron shore,
While captive hundreds, bleeding, faint, and bound,
Expire in flame, or fall transpierced by many a wound.

Ye were wild Romans of this Western Land
When the far parent of our inland seas
Beheld your bowmen print his barren strand
Flushed with a thousand woodland victories;
And heard the war-shout on his frosty breeze,
While the red monarchs of the bleak domain
Bowed to your fierce supremacy their knees;
And when the scared Neperceneans of Maine
Sought Hudson's icy bay to shun the captive chain.

Where are your thrilling orators, who caught
Their eloquence from nature, and allied
Wild powers of fancy to the glow of thought,
And grace of gesture to ancestral pride?
Their sylvan voices on the wind have died:
And your last master of the honeyed tone,
Commanding port and gesture dignified,
No longer wails an empire overthrown,
And near his couch of dust, Niagara makes moan.

All hail our early settlers! though with storm
Their sky of being was obscured and black,
And Peril, in his most appalling form,
Opposed their rugged march, and warned them back;
They faltered not, nor fainted in the track
That led to empire; but with patience bore
Cold, parching thirst, and fever's dread attack;
While ancient twilight, to return no more,
From far Otsego fled to Erie's rock-bound shore.

They toiled, though Hunger with his wasted mien,
Stalked through their infant settlements, and night
Lured from the gloomy cavern, gaunt and lean,
Droves of disturbing wolves that hated light,
Some wan and trembling mourner to affright
With their dismaying howls, around the place
Where, coldly still, and newly hid from sight,
Earth folded loved ones in her damp embrace,
Without recording tomb, their forest mounds to grace!

From clearing rude, and dismal swamp undrained,
Fumes of decaying vegetation rose;
While the fell Genius of Distemper reigned,
And filled the newly-opening realm with woes;
Brave Manhood smiting—though his lusty blows
Tall ranks of warrior-oaks in dust had bowed,—
And robbing widowed Beauty of her rose,
Or weaving, while the voice of wail was loud,
Round childhood, early-lost, the drapery of the shroud.

On his low couch of suffering, ere death
Cooled the mad fever of his throbbing vein,
And hushed the hoarse, deep rattling of his breath,
In dreams the settler homeward went again;
And absent comrades of his youth, in vain,
While sped the weary hours, invoked to quell
The burning, beating pulses of his brain,
And darkness from his blinded orbs dispel,
In tones too wildly strange for words to picture well.

Born in the lap of plenty and of wealth
Mindless too oft are children of the sire
Who purchased, at the fearful price of health—
And even life, their heritage!—the lyre
Should call forth music from its proudest wire
In praise of men who brave, to bless their kind,
Tempest, the sword, foul pestilence and fire;
Their names in grateful hearts should be enshrined,
When crumbled are their bones—their ashes on the wind:

And those who left the venerated breast,
And soil of proud New England, to reclaim
Our smiling El Dorado of the West
From centuries of gloom, and haunts of game
Change to Arcadian loveliness, and tame
The virgin rudeness of the shaded mould,
Should not be unremembered:—on the same
Eternal page where Fame, in lines of gold,
Hath pilgrim virtue traced, their names should be enrolled.

Their triumphs are around us:—lawn and mead,
Spreading their verdant carpets far away
Whereon the flock and lowing heifer feed,
And the gay yeoman trills his rustic lay,
Were hidden lately from the glance of day,
And ranged by untamed animals of chase;
While yon fair sheet of limpid waters lay,
Known only to a roving hunter race,
A bright, neglected gem within a desert place.

Now, Art leaves shining footprints on the shore,
And, “dancing to their own sweet minstrelsy,”
The waves, like vassals, kiss the flashing oar
That speeds the barge of commerce; while the sky
Bends over domes that lift bright roofs on high,
Raised by a spell than hers more wondrous far
Who woke the seer at Endor—glancing eye
Beholds no child of want, the scene to mar,
And on no fairer spot look down sun, moon and star.

Offspring of worthy sires! while wave and land
To make ye blest their treasuries unlock,
And glory beckons with inviting hand,—
Cherish the graces of the parent stock.
While shoal, entangling reef, and hidden rock
Wreck nations floating on a factious sea,
Too much abased to brave the whelming shock,—
Here the bright wing of lordly thought is free,
And no imbruted serf to pomp inclines the knee.

Be Pioneers of mind! with glowing eye
Pierce wilds of doubt, and streams of darkness ford;
Within the boundless realms of knowledge lie
Neglected gems in cave and grotto stored,
Bright Cyprian Isles, and Edens unexplored!
Those laurelled kings of science, who have won
The highest peaks of wisdom, sloth abhorred:
While birds of night the dazzling noontide shun,
Young eagles flap the cloud, and look upon the sun.

The world unfolds its portals! from the bowers
Of cloistered learning go ye forth, while youth
Wreathes round the brow a coronal of flowers,
And far and wide extend the bounds of truth;
Let not demoniac vice, with venomed tooth,
Destroy ennobling principle, and nurse
The germ of future crime, remorse and ruth;
Bliss is the meed of virtue, but a curse
Falls on the wretch who blights the Moral Universe.

Rochester.

Lake Superior.

Red Jacket.

THE PROSPECTS OF THE AGE.

[_]

READ BEFORE THE LITERARY SOCIETIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT, AUGUST 3, 1841.

While lettered idlers turn the mouldy page
For dreamy records of a Golden Age,
Ere the dark seed of mortal ill was sown,
And crime and want and misery were known—
When ancient Pan attuned his classic reeds,
And faun and dryad danced on flowery meads;
Regret the fate, with aspect cold and sour,
That makes them insects of the present hour,
Born like the leaf or herb to pass away,
Heirs of disease and premature decay,
Ours be the nobler task to scan aright
The prospects opening in this AGE OF LIGHT.

Now is the hallowed time!—from Heaven a voice
Calls on the race of Adam to rejoice;—
Roused by the glad, regenerating sound,
The startled bondsman wakes, and looks around;
While, one by one, the clouds begin to roll
From the long veiled horizon of his soul,
He asks his Lord, with stern, undaunted eye:
“Why chained these limbs, and thine unshackled—why?
Alike the dusty atoms are that form
Our grosser parts, my haughty brother worm!
Alike the laws that govern our career
From the low cradle to the darkened bier:
Great, equal Nature, liberal to all,
Pours the same radiance on the hut and hall,

Decks in the same impartial green the mould
Above the bones of king or beggar old,
Sends the same airs of breathing balm to kiss
The homeless outcast and the child of bliss,
Nor glads the couch of down with dream more bright
Than the coarse straw where poor men rest by night.
Though storm and hardship have imbrowned my skin,
Immortal longings multiply within,
And the bright land that lies beyond the grave,
Distinction knows not between prince and slave.
Whence then thy right to rack my limbs with toil,
And bear away the produce of the soil;
Leave my poor babes in rags the blast to feel,
Wet with hot tears their scant, unwholesome meal,
And earthward, like the beasts that perish, gaze
From springtime to the winter of their days?
Whence, in assuming and insulting tones,
Thy right to ask what God himself disowns?
Lift while you may the scourge of high command,
The fall of Guilt Anointed is at hand—
Robbed millions on thy palace will have traced
Their vow that man no more will be abased!”

Thus mighty thought begins at last to shed
Reviving beams upon the humblest head;
Gives poor abused humanity a tongue,
An eye to pierce the gloom around it flung,
A breast of steel the conflict to abide—
Firm as the granite that beats back the tide.

Though blind oppression marvels at the change
Wrought in the mass, and deems it passing strange—
Friends of the wronged and stricken wonder more
That the good work did not progress before.
What hear we but an outcry for redress
Wrung from the broken heart of wretchedness;
The loud demand of labor why it pines,
And licensed fraud in glittering raiment shines;

Of o'er-tasked sorrow why so dark its lot,
And drunken sloth live on, and suffer not?

Gray Error trembles in his cloudy hold
To mark the banner of reform unrolled,
Dreads, like some hermit-owl, one ray of light
That glimmers through the pall of ancient night,
Retaining still the mummery of sway
While melts the substance of his power away.
Vain his endeavor, in resentment blind,
To crush the growing energies of mind;
As well the reed might try to check the force
Of the loud whirlwind in its rushing course,
Or pattering rain essay to drown the roar
Of ocean breaking on a rocky shore.
Come will a day of jubilee ere long,
When power will cease to legalize a wrong,
When tottering kingcraft, to prolong its reign,
Will point to ancient precedent in vain
And laws enacted in a barbarous time
Will cease to give authority to crime.

Far back in years philosophy may date,
While viewing man improved in his estate,
The fair beginning of this war sublime
Against corrupting usages of time.
Thick clouds and darkness gloomed around our race,
And peace, the dove, could find no resting place;
Uncurbed Ambition gave his life to guilt—
Red Murder boasted of the blood he spilt—
By day fierce Rapine for his booty prowled,
And Hell a note of exultation howled—
Nations and tribes, imbruted and despoiled,
Like driven cattle for their tyrants toiled,
When, lo! a Star of clear, benignant ray
Rolled from the source of everlasting day,
While brighter far than flash of jewel'd crown,
Its full-orbed blaze on Galilee poured down.

Before its golden pathway, like a dream,
Fled the foul mist that rose to quench its beam.
Oh, THEN commenced the long, unended fight
Between the powers of darkness and of light—
Then learned the pauper that his frame of earth
Enshrined a living pearl of priceless worth,
Formed to shine on, when dimmed the ruby red
Worn by the great who gave him stone for bread!
Oh, then more potent than the battle-storm,
The gospel proved an agent of reform:
Refreshed by draughts from its immortal fount
Upward the human soul began to mount,
And shook the dust from its immortal plume.
Emerging from an atmosphere of gloom.
Heaved, like the sea, the bosom of the mass—
Bands from the spirit fell like shivered glass;
Hope, from the house of mourning doomed to roam,
Found in the broken heart once more a home;
Balm in the wound of misery was poured,
Cleansed was the leper, and the lost restored;
Strong grew the weak—the lame arose and walked,
Their sight the blind received, the voiceless talked.

Christ sought nor tower, nor palace-hall, nor throne
To make his high, divine commission known;
An honored vessel, in his cause to aid,
Of meek, neglected lowliness he made,
And chose unlettered champions to confound
Dissembling sophist, and the sage renowned.
While spake his clear, melodious voice THE WORD,
The poor, in deep, respectful silence heard,
Though haughty ruler, pharisee and scribe
Their scorn evinced by taunt and heartless jibe.

Plumed Pomp contemned a teacher and a guide
Who taught our world the nothingness of pride,
Divested him, though magnet of all eyes,
Of florid mask and fanciful disguise,

Then oped the portals of his heart of sin,
And proved though fair without, how foul within!
Rapacious Power could ill a teacher brook
Who heeded not the terror of his look,
Nor prized his rod of regal office more
Than crutch of crippled vagrant at his door;
Whose wondrous love, within no bound confined,
Embraced the high and low of human kind—
Whose doctrines tended to redeem the slave
Lost in the midnight of a moral grave,
And clear his clouded vision to behold
How vile the wretch to whom his flesh was sold!

Though oft in huts where penury abides,
A famished wretch the hunted felon hides,
And fallen manhood, charged with liquid fire,
On injured woman vents his brutal ire,
Or tattered frenzy stalks, of wasted form,
Beneath a roof that ill keeps out the storm;
Oh, seldom there, with dark, despairing eye,
Is found the fiend of infidelity.
Among the poor, degraded, and untaught
Our Savior's grandest miracles were wrought;
Called by his voice, the widowed one of Nain
Beheld her tomb-robed child arise again.
He came in light to cheer the saddest hearth,
And banish inequalities from earth;
No right of primogeniture he knew
Nor wall that hedged the many from the few;
All with their Maker's breathing image stamped,
Upon earth's common battle-ground encamped,
From kingly Saul to Lazarus despised,
Alike by his impartial heart were prized.

Those born beneath a more auspicious star,
Who journey on in fortune's dazzling car,
Too oft by pleasures of the world enslaved,
Frame creeds to suit an appetite depraved.

Awhile their frail mortality forget,
And deem no limit to their glory set.
Another class, with pride of knowledge filled,
On crumbling sand their airy systems build,
And oft, with foolish and derisive smile,
A fiction old, that sacred volume style.

Ye learned in vain! Your eyes on nature turn,
And from her page one truthful lesson learn!
Look on that field of ripe and waving corn,
Swept by the breeze, and colored like the morn—
Behold ye not how proudly from the mould,
Rise the light stalks that bear no ears of gold,
While others, burthened with the precious grain,
Kiss with their tasselled garniture the plain!
Though high your heads in arrogance are raised,
False, fleeting lights, to lure ye on, have blazed—
For ye in vain hath burned the midnight oil,
Chaff is the product of your lettered toil;
With the meek temper of a sinless child,
Again peruse the book ye have reviled,
And see through clouds a SUN that never sets,
While wisdom deep humility begets.

The common people of our world have caught
From HOLY WRIT the quenchless fires of thought:
Learned that terrestrial grandeur is a shade,
And that all things for Cæsar were not made.
Gone are those evil days when tyrants sealed
The lip of woe, and wrong went unrevealed;
When the spurned vassal, cursing in despair
A yoke that nature could no longer bear,
Was gravely charged with treason, foul and black,
And mangled by the headsman or the rack.
The plundered thunder execration now
When robbers gather where they do not plough,
Nor stand in fear of torture or the block
Though rotten thrones to their foundations rock.

“Our bread is taxed”—says one—“by drones we feed!
In war our veins, to pamper villains, bleed!”
Exclaims another—“Up, ye sons of toil,
And sweep the greedy locusts from the soil!
Why looks yon titled fopling down in scorn
On the brown yeoman who is cottage-born,
And envies him his share of sunshine mild—
Was not the Bard of Ayr a peasant's child,
And poor the mother who, delighted, heard
Her infant Shakespeare breathe his earliest word?
While rolls the sluggard in his coach and four,
Shall famine enter honest labor's door?
No! on the wings of mighty winds send forth
The seed of freedom, and enfranchise earth!”

In frozen climes, and under tropic skies,
Up the bruised victims of injustice rise,
To rend the shackles that their fathers wore,
Roused by a voice that thunders—“Sleep no more!”
In lone and far-off islands of the brine
Dull night beholds her ancient sway decline,
Alarmed, forsakes her couch of hoary moss
While christians plant the banner of the Cross.
The fires of human sacrifice are quenched,
Purged are the tribes in carnage lately drenched;
Foul shrines and broken images of stone
Fall while the trump of Calvary is blown;
No more the war-note of the conch is heard
While savage forms for murderous conflict gird;
His dread repast the cannibal abjures
To bathe in bright, atoning blood that cures—
Looks on the star that to a Savior leads,
And with the bread of life his spirit feeds.

Be hushed, ye pale alarmists of the day,
Who look on man, awaking, with dismay,
Then lift your croaking voices, and oppose
Bold hearts who dare to tyranny be foes!

In vain ye toil to fetter pen and speech—
Long since exploded was the creed ye teach,
That human nature is in essence, vile—
Lawless, when free—when trusted, full of guile;
When honored, vicious, and no worse, enslaved—
False when refined; intelligent, depraved,
And only harmless when by fear restrained,
From youth to age in base submission trained.
While ye are struggling with innoxious rage,
To fetter down the spirit of the age,
Think of the lesson taught us by the Dane,
Who breathed his mandate to the bellowing main;
On swept the waters in their sandy track,
Though waved his puny wand to roll them back!

Look on our fair Republic of the West,
And know the question settled, and at rest,
Regarding man's capacity on earth
To rise progressive in the scale of worth!
Who were the fathers of our country?—men
Who bearded the grim Lion in his den,
Nor feared his fang, nor trembled at his roar,
Although his bristling main was steeped in gore.
Corruption in high places they assailed,
And the vile tricks of hollow courts unveiled:—
High Priests of independence, here they found
Hesperian groves where man might walk unbound!
Green Mountain Boys! I know that ye are proud
Of these rude peaks that rise to kiss the cloud,
For on New-England's rocky shrine first blazed
The fiery column by the Pilgrim raised:
With Allen's rifle and the shaft of Tell
Guard through the coming years that beacon well!
Here sons of genius, though in hovels bred,
Bright paths that lead to posts of honor tread:
Fame open flings his temple-gate full wide,
And merit enters unappalled by pride,

Albeit he frowns and turns a “shoulder cold,”
As if his flesh was formed of rarer mould.
Not on light sand-hills of the desert waste
Our fabric of Free Government is based,
But on the rock of public virtue rests,
Its shield a breathing wall of free-born breasts.
Our future, pregnant with sublime events,
Will gladden seas, and isles, and continents,
And realms, at last, will flourish uncontroll'd
By sceptered things whose “gods are blood and gold.”

Unbar the gloomy portals of the past—
How red the shroud round perished Empire cast!
Thick as the bearded grain by Labor mown,
Lie bannered hosts in battle overthrown.
From cottage homes and thronging cities rise
Yells of expiring millions to the skies.
Ambition, pleased, bemocks their horrid groans,
And, shod with iron, treads on crumbling bones.
Tasked is the strength of thousands to upbuild
Colossal tombs with coffined grandeur filled.
The place of beast by manhood is supplied,
Whipped onward, harnessed to the car of Pride—
Foul Priestcraft, mantled in an ebon stole,
Abroad walks forth with blood upon his soul;
Clasps his polluted hands in Godless prayer
While tortures rend the sinews of despair,
Or, with disdain in his relentless eye,
Exacts the little all of misery.
Anointed Folly from his regal seat
Points to proud arch, or labyrinth of Crete,
As monuments to memorize his sway
When kingdom, crown, and court have passed away.
Renowned Apelles prostitutes his art
Esteem to wake within a tyrant's heart—
Wit wildly revels in the joys of sense,
And terror chains the tongue of eloquence.

No voice, inspired, the cause of justice pleads,
Or God invokes to punish evil deeds:
A venal harp the laurelled minstrel strings
To flatter pomp and win applause from kings,
And pensioned learning false deduction draws,
To prove that Nero sanctions wholesome laws.
Here prowls unsparing bigotry at work,
In her ensanguined hand a sheathless dirk.
Her deeds—too dreadful for the lyre to tell—
Her dooming eye—“a glimmering type of Hell.”
There laughs the lord who governs half the globe,
Wrapped in the foldings of his purple robe,
While bounds the famished lion from his den
Matched in unequal strife with naked men,
And corpses cumber, half afloat in gore,
The broad arena's thickly sanded floor.

Another leaf in history is turned—
Another lesson have the nations learned;
Clouds, charged with moral lightning, sternly lower
Above the heartless satellites of Power—
The Mother-land by crime too long defiled,
Is taking healthful counsel from her Child,
And, one by one, from her old bleeding heart
The greedy vultures of misrule depart.
One wild misnomer of the mournful past,
That led our sires astray, is changed at last;
Conquest, enthroned on heaps of slain up piled,
Is rebaptized, and wholesale murder styled.
No common cause now hurries to the field
A Christian soldier, armed with spear and shield
And empires ponder patiently and long,
Before they war for some imagined wrong.
With grave rebuke Philosophy looks down
On that dread phantom, National Renown,
Whose star hath lighted nations to their graves,
And flooded groaning Earth with crimson waves.

Green Erin lifts her head above the deep,
Roused from the torpor of her drunken sleep,
And tunes the harp of Tara to a lay
That breathes of joy, and darkness chased away.
Late through her isle a demon strode unchecked
Who laughed while round him were her children wrecked;
Of human skulls a hideous throne he made,
And woe, disease, and death his call obeyed—
In dungeon, churchyard, and on scaffold grim
Courts, that make manhood blush, were held by him,
And Mars, astonished, flung away his lance,
Eclipsed in horror by Intemperance.
Now, from her fields a triumph cry goes up,
Indignant hands dash down the poisoned cup;
Away dark weed from Emmett's grave she clears,
A radiant smile is beaming through her tears,
And, while the brand of Cain her brow forsakes,
The withe that bound her limb, like Samson, breaks.

Right, reason, and religion have combined
Vice to denounce, and purify mankind.
Not the blind impulse of a mob impels
The public heart that glows, and heaves, and swells,
Engendering acts of outrage and of shame,
With ruin fraught, and terrible to name.
A spirit, by philanthropy approved,
Glides calmly on and multitudes are moved:
It makes no mad appeal to carnal force,
Nor speeds by war companioned in its course,
While follow wolves and ravens to devour
Dismembered fragments of the battle hour;
Plays not the Teian with existence brief,
Pleased with an odorous rose, or myrtle leaf,
While locust-swarms, that sky and air imbrown,
On the green fields of bliss are settling down.

It asks not for political success
That props the strong—gives wealth a gayer dress;

On outward, cold magnificence depends,
And only comfort to the happy sends;
That boasts of steeds, caparisoned and fleet,
Whirling the car of triumph through the street,
Of temple, column, pile, and massive dome,
Though Peace, like Judah, roves without a home;
But that perfection in the social plan
Which throws an ægis o'er degraded man,
Diffusing light throughout the common herd,
While grief's black depths are to the bottom stirred

Love for our dying brotherhood it feels,
To common sense and equity appeals;
Explores each haunt where lust the wine-cup quaffs,
And o'er the corse of ruined beauty laughs;
Tracks human sorrow to its fountain springs—
Ill-gotten gold from hard extortion wrings;
Locks with a touch dark slander's perjured lips,
And thin disguise from base pretension strips;
A lamp of safety fashions for the mine,
And airs the work-shop where Earth's orphans pine
Gives fiery pinions to an iron steed,
A rival of the thunderbolt in speed;
Charters the sun-beam faithfully to trace
A breathing outline of the human face;
Launches strange barks, defying wind and flood,
To make of earthly realms, one neighborhood;
Goes on a quest of mercy to the cell
Where pale remorse anticipates his knell;
Denies the right of ermined law to doom
A felon, even, to an early tomb,
Tall gibbet rear, or scaffold redly drench,
And fires, that God can only kindle, quench.
It scans the future with prophetic gaze,
And whispers promise of millennial days,
When man will tread on flowers, that know not frost,
Perfumed like those that graced his Eden lost;

And wear, unsullied by one leprous stain,
His crown of primal innocence again,
Dashed from his lustrous and majestic brows,
While yet his lip was warm with broken vows.

Truth, beaten down on many a luckless field,
Bears now this stern device upon her shield—
“Away with sleep, while bigot, knave, and fool
Sit throned with high, exclusive right to rule!”
Though black and adverse flags are on the blast,
How can she fail of victory at last!
Cased is her towering form in burnished mail,
Proof against rust, barbed lance, and iron hail—
Timed is her march to battle by the sound
Of golden harps, the throne of God around,
And, tempered with pure lightning from the sky,
Flames the charmed weapon that she lifts on high.

Brothers, a word!—From quiet, classic bowers,
Where long our hands have cropped immortal flowers,
With ears accustomed only to the flow
Of silver, welling waters, forth we go!
Soon will the rushing surge of active life
Greet our approach with roar that tells of strife—
Envenomed monsters, hungering for their prey,
Paths that our feet must follow now, waylay;
Our moral armor we must well inspect,
Nor antedate our ruin by neglect:
Oh! cease we never to guard well the fires
Thas lit the bosoms of our Saxon sires,
And while we rove, by gales of fortune blown,
From the parched tropic to the frozen zone,
Glassed in the wave of memory, clear and deep,
Bright let each heart New-England's image keep!
Her vales forget not, and her mountain peaks
Round which the cloud revolves, the eagle shrieks—
Where Beauty dwells, and intellect conforms,
In strength and grandeur, to her rocks and storms,

And reigns Religion, 'mid a world of woes,
Pure as her streams and spotless as her snows.
On us, in pleading tone, our Alma calls
Never to shame her consecrated halls—
To banish serpent-passion from our hearts,
And, in the cause of right, play noble parts,
While round our steps celestial light is shed,
And sleep in honored sepulchres when dead.

University of Virginia Library

OCCASIONAL POEMS.

THE IDEAL.

UTILITY OF IMAGINATION.

THEMES OF SONG.

THE PIONEERS OF WESTERN NEW YORK.

THE PROSPECTS OF THE AGE.