The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth With Sixteen Illustrations. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton |
 |
|
 |
|
THE PILLAR OF PEACE. |
|
 | The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth |  |
287
THE PILLAR OF PEACE.
Within the Palatine of Lancaster,
The peasants from the hills do congregate
To labour in the valleys, and have built
In barren lands such towns of industry,
That they thereby have made themselves a power
Which none who rule in England may despise.
To them is Peace no dream of sentiment,
But of their system an essential part,
And to their welfare a necessity.
Thus when the wars of the French Conqueror
Seemed at an end, and that gigantic spirit,
Like an Arabian afrit bottled up,
And sealed for ever with a talisman,
Had been compressed in Elba by his foes,
It so rejoiced these men, that they combined
To raise a pillar on a mountain-peak;
Not in the exultation his defeat
Might well have caused—but to commemorate
The restoration of their sovereign Peace
Unto her throne, usurped by cruel War.
The peasants from the hills do congregate
To labour in the valleys, and have built
In barren lands such towns of industry,
That they thereby have made themselves a power
Which none who rule in England may despise.
To them is Peace no dream of sentiment,
But of their system an essential part,
And to their welfare a necessity.
Thus when the wars of the French Conqueror
Seemed at an end, and that gigantic spirit,
Like an Arabian afrit bottled up,
And sealed for ever with a talisman,
Had been compressed in Elba by his foes,
It so rejoiced these men, that they combined
To raise a pillar on a mountain-peak;
Not in the exultation his defeat
288
The restoration of their sovereign Peace
Unto her throne, usurped by cruel War.
A mountain lies between me and the peak
Whereon that pillar stood; and in my youth
I often climbed a cliff, whose highest ridge
I knew that I had reached, when in the east,
Above the blue waves of the rounded land,
Rose that strong pillar in the lofty winds.
Its hour had not arrived, and it defied
The storms that raged whilst Europe was at peace:
But when the Czar's ambition burst its bounds,
Pouring armed legions into Turkish lands,
And cruel slaughter on the villagers,
A fissure in its masonry increased,
Until its stair grew perilous.
Whereon that pillar stood; and in my youth
I often climbed a cliff, whose highest ridge
I knew that I had reached, when in the east,
Above the blue waves of the rounded land,
Rose that strong pillar in the lofty winds.
Its hour had not arrived, and it defied
The storms that raged whilst Europe was at peace:
But when the Czar's ambition burst its bounds,
Pouring armed legions into Turkish lands,
And cruel slaughter on the villagers,
A fissure in its masonry increased,
Until its stair grew perilous.
At last,
The very night the Czar's ambassador,
When all our hopes of settlement had failed,
And diplomats exhausted all their arts,
Broke off his old relations with our court,
And, by departing, menaced us with war,—
That very night, beneath the windy sky,
A roar like thunder echoed in the hills,
And startled in their beds the peasantry;
Who on the morrow, when they went to work,
Beheld the sun rise through a cloud of blood
Behind the eastern hill; but his red disk
Shone unobstructed where the sign had been
Of happy peace. The pillar of their hope
Lay like a cairn above the grave of Peace;
And thence they drew an omen of their woes,
And went to labour with dejected hearts
To earn the precious bread of scarcity.
The very night the Czar's ambassador,
When all our hopes of settlement had failed,
And diplomats exhausted all their arts,
Broke off his old relations with our court,
And, by departing, menaced us with war,—
That very night, beneath the windy sky,
A roar like thunder echoed in the hills,
And startled in their beds the peasantry;
Who on the morrow, when they went to work,
Beheld the sun rise through a cloud of blood
289
Shone unobstructed where the sign had been
Of happy peace. The pillar of their hope
Lay like a cairn above the grave of Peace;
And thence they drew an omen of their woes,
And went to labour with dejected hearts
To earn the precious bread of scarcity.
Stoodley Pike was erected by subscription in 1814 to commemorate the General Peace. It was an interesting object from the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, standing as it did on one of the principal eminences in the neighbourhood of Todmorden. On the night of the 8th of February, 1854, (the day on which the Russian Ambassador left London, when our diplomatic relations with the court of St. Petersburg were finally suspended), this monument of Peace fell with a loud noise. The coincidence was certainly a remarkable one.
| The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems of my Youth | |