The Poetical Works of James Gates Percival :: :: University of Virginia Library

Into the gulf of past eternity
Another year, in all its pride, has rolled,
And soon its brightest pageantry shall be
Lost in the long-forgotten days of old;

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Oblivion draws around its darkest fold
To hide the pomp that millions gazed upon
The curfew of departed joys has tolled,
Another circle in our life is run,
And nearer draws the goal, where all of earth is won.

A year has ended,—let the good man pause,
And think, for he can think, of all its crime
And toil and suffering. Nature has her laws,
That will not brook infringement; in all time,
All circumstance, all state, in every clime,
She holds aloft the same avenging sword;
And, sitting on her boundless throne sublime,
The vials of her wrath, with justice stored,
Shall, in her own good hour, on all that's ill be poured.

And kings, who hug themselves in sordid ease,
And revel in their vassals' blood and tears,
Who grasp at all can sense or passion please,
And build their strength on others' wants and fears,—
For them, the heaped-up vengeance of long years,
Poised like a snow-cliff on a mountain's brow,
Wild as the sounding avalanche careers,
Or oceans rushing in their stormy flow,
Shall bury all their power in one wide overthrow.

Revenge may hold her breath awhile, but still
The spirit boils within, and soon will burst,
Like lavas from their vaults;—the long-checked will
Breaks out with deeper fury, fed and nurst
By ever-growing outrage, till the worst
And reddest scourge of tyranny unbinds
The rusted links of cent'ries, which, long cursed
But dreaded, now the vassel rends, and finds
At once his galled limbs free and chainless as the winds.

216

Sovereigns may band in holy leagues, and lock
Their fetters on a continent, which springs
To claim its birthright,—they may coldly mock
The strivings of young Liberty, as things
That are to them but toys to play with;—kings
Have long enough made men their play,—the hour
When wrath shall wake, and triumph clap her wings
Over the broken images of power,
Draws nigh, and they who rear the haught crest soon will cower.

The dawning year beheld a nation rise,
Free in a glorious seeming,—but it fell.
Where was the Roman fire? Italian skies
Shone over them as purely; and the swell
Of that wide gulf, where ancient glories dwell,
Rolled with as bright a tint on Baiæ's coast.
Though Rome's dark ruins frowned, as by a spell,
At once before the German's hireling host
They sunk, and, in one hour, forgot their proudest boast.

They sunk, but yet in nobler souls lives still
A feeling, fetters, swords, can never quell;
Brute force may crush the heart, but cannot kill;
The mind that thinks, no terrors can compel,
But it will speak at length, and boldly tell
The world its weakness and its rights; the night,
Our race so long has groped through, since man fell
From his imagined Eden of delight,
Must, will erelong retire from Truth's fast-dawning light.

For mind has dared assert its native claim,
And bigot rage, and superstitious dread,
And priesthood robed in purple, cannot tame
Its strong uprisings. Power, with hydra head,
On vice and self, as on a Lerne, fed,
Awhile may bind the nations to its car:

217

In thousand hearts a Hercules is bred,
The fearless champion of a coming war,
When Liberty, at last, shall break her dungeon bar,

And, in the vigor of her youth, go forth,
Unshackled and undaunted, and shall call,
With the clear summons of her trump, the North
To send its nerved sons on to scale the wall,
Whereon the Cross and Crescent shadow all,
That cradled glory in the olden time;
And sack the Czar's firm bulwarks, wherein stall
Slavery, and beastly ignorance, and crime,
And sense, that drags its folds in pleasure's foulest slime.

And on the sea, whose bright green waves should roll
Without the stain of innocent blood, nor bear
The burden of rank avarice to the goal
Where toil and stripes await it,—where thieves dare
Their darkest deeds of rapine,—she will there
Ride in her car of vengeance, and proclaim
To every plunderer, be it they who bear
The ocean's lord, or dogs unknown to fame,
That her strong arm shall soon their blood-drunk boasting tame.

Go forth, ye navies, o'er the ocean go,
Where havoc riots on the pirate's deck,
Where steals along the cowering bark of woe,
And bid those dens of torture float a wreck;
And as you first the Invincible did check,
So let him feel the force of Nature's sway.
Would they might rouse, who worship at the beck
Of Europe's would-be lord, and rend away
The veil that hides from Greece the glories of that day,

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Of which all hearts are proud, the brightest hour
In all the round of ages, which will stand
A monument of light, the sacred dower
Of never-dying truth. The tyrant's hand
Awhile may dim the glories of that land,
And doom it to be trampled on, but still
There we shall image out the Spartan band,
There we shall gaze on Freedom's holy hill,
And from her kindling founts the cup that fires us fill.

Where sleeps the fire that erst in Pylæ burned?
Where lurks the spirit of that godlike age?
Shall the bright soul for ever rest inurned?
Is there no hand to check the Tartar's rage?
Shall Turk on light and love and freedom wage
A war, that swept whole nations like a flame?
Shall Europe never in that cause engage,
And wipe from off her shores that blot and shame?—
Her feeblest arm might now the glutted vulture tame.

But shall we mourn because those fanes are low
Where Gods were knelt to, and where lust was right?
There was a gladness in the overthrow
Of temples, where Religion had no light;
And though the Cross still left the land in night,
And bound the spirit in as cold a chain,
Yet we can still exult, and boldly write,
“Idols and idol-worshippers again
On lands where Truth has poured her light shall never reign.”

There is a twilight dawning on the world,
The herald of a full and perfect day,
When Liberty's wide flag shall be unfurled,
And kings shall bow to her superior sway:

219

Already she is on her august way,
And marching upward to her final goal;
Nations the warning of her voice obey,
Away the clouds of fear and error roll,
The chain is broke that bound the thralled and fettered soul.

That chain is off a continent, where man
Begins anew his being,—where a course,
Brighter than ever Greek or Roman ran,
Spreads its wide list before him. From a source
Unstained and deep, with strong, resistless force
The unchecked wave of enterprise rolls on:
Hope gilds it o'er with sunbeams; wild and hoarse
As storm-lashed oceans, till the plain is won,
Then in majestic might its calm, full waters run.

Here Liberty shall build her proudest fane,
Loftier than snow-topped Andes, and its dome
Shall cast a burning brightness o'er the main,
And all who seek a purer, calmer home
Shall steer their bounding barks across the foam,
And furl their sails on Freedom's chosen shore;—
Here all that Law has in her choicest tome,
And all the climes of Greece and Latium bore,
Nature from her full stores around our hearts shall pour.

Here shall the energy of mind be shown,
In all its widest daring,—naught can check
The generous spirit, which away hath thrown
The yoke that galls and curbs, the toys that deck;
Prescription cannot bow him at her beck,
Nor rooted wrong command, nor force control;
He is not of the sordid slaves, who reck
The statesman's gilded bribe and stinted dole;—
In vain corruption woos the high, enlightened soul.

220

We have our sages, who drew down from heaven
The bolt that shivers, and the light that warms;
Who steered the helm of state, when madly driven
It seemed the prey of power and civil storms.
We have our heroes, who have met the swarms
Of hireling butchers,—back the torrent rolled:
Though want and terror took their direst forms,
Proud in their simple freedom, sternly bold,
They stood through trying years, and kept their last strong-hold.

And they were victors, and new light hath risen
From them upon the nations,—here they draw
The energy that breaks their feudal prison;
The light that guides them is our country's law:
Too strong its perfect brightness,—when they saw,
Maddened they rushed upon their lords, and tore
The sceptre from their grasp,—the coward awe
Of crown and mitre crushed their hearts no more,—
They wildly fed the hate, so long they fiercely bore.

They turned upon each other, with an ire
Like that of ravening tigers, till their glut
Of kindred slaughter quenched the maniac fire,
And then again their prison-gate was shut.
They grasped at full and perfect freedom, but
A stronger bar confined them than before;
Fetters of adamantine steel were put
Around their scarce healed limbs; they dragged through gore,
To please a driver's whim, the manacles they wore.

Order alone is freedom. We must bend
Beneath the sanctity of higher power,—
Not transient will, but laws that have no end,
Stamped and enforced in being's earliest hour;

221

Sanctioned by time, they are the holy dower
Of ages, which from darkness rose to light.
Man first was fearless, then he learned to cower,
And groped through superstition's Stygian night;
Till Science rose, and day shone round him warm and bright.

Few are the clear, strong spirits, who can bear
To look on Truth in her unclouded blaze;
Few are the high, heroic souls, who dare
Above the low pursuit of gain to raise
Their firm, unbending purpose; few can gaze
At Virtue, on her pure and awful throne,—
Ah! few can love the ethereal coin she pays,—
But they must love it, for the souls alone
Who master self can claim our birthright as their own.

And Freedom thus, of old, so often fell
Before Ambition, when the herd, that crawls
Within the crowded haunt, the sordid hell
Where luxury and lust have built their walls,
Sunk in each vice that deadens and inthralls,
Bartered their unprized liberty for gold;—
As the pure stream upon the palate palls,
When wine has fired the senses, so they sold
The rights, that prouder hearts than being dearer hold.

There is a twofold liberty in man,
The liberty of knowledge and of power.
This wanders in the desert with the clan,
Or where aloft the Alpine summits tower.
Limbs knit with iron cannot stoop or cower,
Hands hardened by free toiling cannot bear
The burden of a tyrant. He might pour
Whole hosts around them; they would nobly dare
To guard their desert rocks, or die unconquered there.

222

The other hath its dwelling with the sage;—
Where mind is dark, and appetites prevail,
Where grovels lust, and brutal passions rage,
The breathings of her spirit naught avail.
Of cultured states 't is the eternal bale,
That vice will grow with wealth and light, and bow
The strength that reared the fabric; free hearts quail
Before that torrent-wave, whose giant flow
Buries a nation's pride in one deep overthrow.

Cities have been, and vanished; fanes have sunk,
Heaped into shapeless ruin; sands o'erspread
Fields that were Edens; millions too have shrunk
To a few starving hundreds, or have fled
From off the page of being. Now the dead
Are the sole habitants of Babylon;
Kings, at whose bidding nations toiled and bled,
Heroes, who many a field of carnage won,
Their names—their boasted names to utter death are done.

Such is the fate of empire:—Ashur rose,
Where elder thrones and prouder warriors stood;
Before the Memphian priest his precepts chose,
Men reasoned greatly of the highest good;
Before Troy was, or Xanthus rolled in blood,
Armies were ranged in battle's dread array;
They fought,—their glory withered in its bud;
They perished,—with them ceased their tyrant sway;
New wars, new heroes came,—their story passed away.

They had no bard, and they are dead to fame;
But they were brave, were demigods, and yet
The spirit which no threat, no force could tame,
Which burned the brighter when in conflict met,
The sun of ancient valor long has set,
Their deeds are swept from memory's teeming page.

223

How soon the renovated race forget
The chiefs who ground the nations in their rage!—
Some lord must rise to curb and crush in every age.

Napoleon, Frederic, Charles, and Cromwell,—these
Swept the earth with a besom dipped in fire.
They would have kings and nations bend their knees;
Theirs was the untamed thirst of something higher,
An energy of hope, that could not tire,
The love of self to deeds of might sublimed,
Ambition wrought to habitudes of ire,
Force, reckless force, unchecked, unbent, untimed,
An aim to gain a height where power had never climbed.

They sought they knew not what,—they set no bound
To their wide-clenching grasp,—their longing grew,
As grew their empire,—keenly, as the hound
Catches the deer-track in the morning dew,
They snuffed the scent of conquest,—victory threw
Her laurels at their feet,—awhile they gave
Blood to the earth like water,—madly flew
Their gore-fed eagles. But the wildest wave
Breaks and subsides at last;—their end was in the grave.

Now they are dust and ashes; other swarms
People the ground they wasted, other men
Rise to be torn and tossed by other storms.
Ambition sleeps a moment in her den
To gain new breath, and fire, and strength; but then
She blows the embered coals, and they are flame.
So it must be, for it hath ever been:—
Age rolls on age, and heroes are the same,—
The rest, the crowd, the mob, the warlike hunter's game;

224

Food for the sword and cannon, steps to climb
Ambition's ladder, brutes, who walk erect,
Crouching and gloating on the dust and slime,
Where they would creep and wallow, if not checked
By biting wants, that man to man connect,
The strong necessity of care and toil.
Give them their own free scope, and they are wrecked;
For master souls their passions will embroil,
And tyranny at last will twine them in its coil.