 | The progress of mind |  |
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III.
1.
Ages advancing change: from the bare northWhat clang, heart-sickening, rings forth?
The jarring of a quiver stored,
The griding of a whetted sword.
Red the sea-foam swells and glances,
Where their galley's beak advances;
On each heavy-laden head
Brazen glory hath been shed.
Gods! the terror of that sound—
That struggle for life that ploughs the ground—
Heaven severs, to its yawning wrack
Odin hails the spirits back.—
The wine-press of the chariot-wheel;
The wine, how plentiful, how high!
The song bursts from them as they reel
Writhing, the song of agony—
Passion, mighty to destroy!
Is this the hushed dell-haunting strain
Wherewith Greece rejoiced to toy,
Gladdening her god-loving vein?
The night-bird of the north
Rattles her stifling wing,
The Moslem sabre of the south
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Ha, ha! the seven-hilled city still
Ever-craving power doth fill—
Ha, ha! the triple-crested king!
2.
Where now Phœnician purple's glow?Where Persia's gold embossed bow?
Where is Egypt, that old wonder?
Hath passion conquered intellect—the hand
Rebelled against the mind's command?
Hath the gothic raven's wings
Darkened wisdom to fledge kings?
No! like an eternal thunder
O'er our late-built cities driven,
The voices of the sages still endure,
Gathering from us new power more pure;
And from the plunder of a ravaged world
Hath liberty arisen, and hurled
Her right arm to the seventh heaven.
3.
Ages advancing change: in the scorner's chairThe doubter sits, his famed scholastic stole
Gathering by silver-seeming clasp of lead:
And as the humbly-mitred head
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His hand, unbaptised, lays it bare.
A scaffold rises—weltering gore
Down the shameless steps doth pour;
That scaffold is a king's last bed,
That blood from an ermined trunk is shed:
Demoniac laughter at his fall
Maddens the Franks' freed capital.
Flame-crested Liberty hath trampled ruth,
And barbed her spear with the tiger's tooth.
The strife now stills, the tide doth rise breast-deep
Where Custom and her blind mate sleep;
And with its far resounding motion
Onward wears heaven-glassing ocean.
| The progress of mind | |