 | The select poems of Dr. Thomas Dunn English (exclusive of the "Battle lyrics") |  |
THE STRIFE OF BROTHERS.
Our people and our town do not belong
To a past age in history, art, or song.
There are no relics here for later man
To touch with wonder or with awe to scan;
Here through no gloomy crypt nor trackless street,
The traveller wanders with uncertain feet;
No lizard frolics here on moss-grown stones;
No morning breeze through splintered columns moans;
No crumbling fanes betray where ages past
To fabled gods rich offerings were cast;
No shapeless ruins to the eye appear—
Nor Thebes, nor Tadmore, nor Palmyra here.
Nor is it of that modern outgrowth where,
Packed in close dens, men's breaths pollute the air,
Where moored in safety to the piers and slips,
Rise on the tide and fall a thousand ships;
Within whose harbor, hurrying to and fro,
On tireless wheels a hundred steamers go;
Where in each warehouse, crammed from roof to floor,
The choicest goods of every clime they store;
Within whose streets, vast human rivers those,
A surging current ever ebbs and flows;
Where Wealth and Poverty walk side by side,
And Wrong beards Right, nor strives its face to hide;
But a live city where the workers come
To fill each human hive with buzz and hum;
City where Industry takes highest state,
Where Skill weds Labor, and where both create;
And inland city where, with Honest Gain,
Patience and Enterprise combine to reign;
A noble city of sublime unrest,
Imperial workshop of the busy West,
Whose trust within her industry is placed,
Whose coming greatness on her labor based.
Science shall bridge her rivers: on the land
Modes of swift transit show on every hand;
Her streets shall lengthen and her borders swell,
And countless thousands in her limits dwell;
Here Art its choicest masterpiece create,
Here Toil grow noble and the People great;
Here Piety its votive fanes shall raise
Where even Greed may pause to pray and praise;
No wrong or wretchedness be with us then,
All men be honest—even if Aldermen;
And this through work: the city pauses not
For other methods; eager, fierce, and hot
To win most wealth before that certain hour
When her, like others, Ruin shall devour,
She has no time to spare for sentiment,
Her vision solely on the muck-rake bent,
And not the crown above. And yet, to-day,
Manhood and age as well as children play;
The hammer-clink, the whirring of the mill,
All sounds of labor for the time are still;
Faces around us lose all trace of care,
Flags kiss the breeze and music thrills the air;
Smoothed are the wrinkles on each knitted brow—
Greed for another day, but gladness now.
To a past age in history, art, or song.
There are no relics here for later man
To touch with wonder or with awe to scan;
Here through no gloomy crypt nor trackless street,
The traveller wanders with uncertain feet;
No lizard frolics here on moss-grown stones;
No morning breeze through splintered columns moans;
No crumbling fanes betray where ages past
To fabled gods rich offerings were cast;
No shapeless ruins to the eye appear—
Nor Thebes, nor Tadmore, nor Palmyra here.
687
Packed in close dens, men's breaths pollute the air,
Where moored in safety to the piers and slips,
Rise on the tide and fall a thousand ships;
Within whose harbor, hurrying to and fro,
On tireless wheels a hundred steamers go;
Where in each warehouse, crammed from roof to floor,
The choicest goods of every clime they store;
Within whose streets, vast human rivers those,
A surging current ever ebbs and flows;
Where Wealth and Poverty walk side by side,
And Wrong beards Right, nor strives its face to hide;
But a live city where the workers come
To fill each human hive with buzz and hum;
City where Industry takes highest state,
Where Skill weds Labor, and where both create;
And inland city where, with Honest Gain,
Patience and Enterprise combine to reign;
A noble city of sublime unrest,
Imperial workshop of the busy West,
Whose trust within her industry is placed,
Whose coming greatness on her labor based.
Science shall bridge her rivers: on the land
Modes of swift transit show on every hand;
Her streets shall lengthen and her borders swell,
And countless thousands in her limits dwell;
Here Art its choicest masterpiece create,
Here Toil grow noble and the People great;
Here Piety its votive fanes shall raise
Where even Greed may pause to pray and praise;
No wrong or wretchedness be with us then,
All men be honest—even if Aldermen;
And this through work: the city pauses not
For other methods; eager, fierce, and hot
To win most wealth before that certain hour
688
She has no time to spare for sentiment,
Her vision solely on the muck-rake bent,
And not the crown above. And yet, to-day,
Manhood and age as well as children play;
The hammer-clink, the whirring of the mill,
All sounds of labor for the time are still;
Faces around us lose all trace of care,
Flags kiss the breeze and music thrills the air;
Smoothed are the wrinkles on each knitted brow—
Greed for another day, but gladness now.
Some powerful cause for this beneath must lie;
Listen my story: that shall tell you why.
Listen my story: that shall tell you why.
Once in Argeia, in the olden day,
Four brothers were, whose mystic names, they say,
Born of the musical Hellenic speech,
Clearly conveyed the origin of each.
Arktos had lands and ships, and wealth untold;
Zochos had flocks and herds, and mines of gold;
Notos grew plants whose fibres Eos wove,
And one by growing, one by weaving, throve.
Much the four prospered; wide on either hand
Spread their possessions till they held the land.
Now, whether it were jealousy or greed,
If wives made strife or Zeus had so decreed,
It boots not; little now is known to men
How first the feud was made, or why, or when—
They bickered first, each on each other prest,
Then Notos fiercely warred with all the rest.
Brave as he was, they, too, had come of stock
Whose force was whirlwind and whose firmness rock;
And to their triple power compelled to yield,
Notos, o'ercome, lay prone upon the field.
His brothers raised him where he prostrate lay,
And bound his wounds: but in contemptuous way,
Mingling their taunts with his defiant speech,
Till hatred festered in the heart of each.
Friends would have reconciled the foes; but they
Drove intercessors angrily away,
And by their wrath gave promise to all men
The brothers ne'er would brothers be again.
And yet, even while the world around them said
All old-time fondness of the four was dead,
Astounding change! each tender in his mood,
In all men's sight warm friends the brothers stood;
Kind looks, kind words, and kinder deeds replaced
The savage hate that erst their lives disgraced,
And stronger burned the new rekindled flame
Than that which through their birth and kinship came.
“How came this change about?” the question rose;
“What made you friends to-day who late were foes?”
“The birthday of our mother,” Arktos said,
“To honor that we four were hither led:
And hate expires and angry passions rest
When meet true men who suckled at one breast.
Within our veins the blood she gave us runs;
Her gentle spirit smiles upon her sons;
And, coming thus to fitly honor her,
We feel our hearts with tender memories stir.
Our strife is dead; we urn its ashes here
Upon the birthday of our mother dear;
Whate'er the past, the future shall be free.”
Four brothers were, whose mystic names, they say,
Born of the musical Hellenic speech,
Clearly conveyed the origin of each.
Arktos had lands and ships, and wealth untold;
Zochos had flocks and herds, and mines of gold;
Notos grew plants whose fibres Eos wove,
And one by growing, one by weaving, throve.
Much the four prospered; wide on either hand
Spread their possessions till they held the land.
Now, whether it were jealousy or greed,
If wives made strife or Zeus had so decreed,
It boots not; little now is known to men
How first the feud was made, or why, or when—
They bickered first, each on each other prest,
Then Notos fiercely warred with all the rest.
Brave as he was, they, too, had come of stock
Whose force was whirlwind and whose firmness rock;
And to their triple power compelled to yield,
Notos, o'ercome, lay prone upon the field.
His brothers raised him where he prostrate lay,
And bound his wounds: but in contemptuous way,
689
Till hatred festered in the heart of each.
Friends would have reconciled the foes; but they
Drove intercessors angrily away,
And by their wrath gave promise to all men
The brothers ne'er would brothers be again.
And yet, even while the world around them said
All old-time fondness of the four was dead,
Astounding change! each tender in his mood,
In all men's sight warm friends the brothers stood;
Kind looks, kind words, and kinder deeds replaced
The savage hate that erst their lives disgraced,
And stronger burned the new rekindled flame
Than that which through their birth and kinship came.
“How came this change about?” the question rose;
“What made you friends to-day who late were foes?”
“The birthday of our mother,” Arktos said,
“To honor that we four were hither led:
And hate expires and angry passions rest
When meet true men who suckled at one breast.
Within our veins the blood she gave us runs;
Her gentle spirit smiles upon her sons;
And, coming thus to fitly honor her,
We feel our hearts with tender memories stir.
Our strife is dead; we urn its ashes here
Upon the birthday of our mother dear;
Whate'er the past, the future shall be free.”
As did those Argive brothers, so do we:
Our mother is our country! Whatsoe'er
Has rankled in our hearts from thence we tear,
Bid the dead past bury its dead; true man
Can in the patriot sink the partisan.
Pride, passion, greed, the party spirit strong,
The fancied grievance and the real wrong,
The petty feelings that in man arise—
All these we on the altar sacrifice,
And here, as in a temple, hand in hand,
Heart linked to heart, true friends and kinsfolk stand.
Our mother is our country! Whatsoe'er
Has rankled in our hearts from thence we tear,
Bid the dead past bury its dead; true man
Can in the patriot sink the partisan.
Pride, passion, greed, the party spirit strong,
The fancied grievance and the real wrong,
The petty feelings that in man arise—
690
And here, as in a temple, hand in hand,
Heart linked to heart, true friends and kinsfolk stand.
'Tis honest pride of race bids us rejoice,
For history seeks in no uncertain voice
What part our fathers in the struggle took
When England's empire at our cannon shook.
They scorn our State, or they affect to scorn,
Some few of those beyond our borders born;
Sneer at the unbroken faith our annals show
Kept in our dealing with both friend and foe;
Contemn the thrift and skill that made our sands
Of greater value than their fertile lands;
Decry our justice as too harsh because
On rich or poor impartial fall our laws.
So let them; but even they dare not refuse
Tribute of honor to our Jersey Blues
Who in the past, on every battle-plain
From Maine to Georgia, poured their blood like rain.
They cannot blot the record out that shows
The well-known words round which a halo glows.
There flows Assanpink; yonder, Monmouth's plain
Spreads green before us, fertile with its slain;
There Trenton rises, where our fortune first
Turned to the flood, when at its ebb the worst;
There Princeton, too, whose college folk may see
Where startled Britons took their first degree;
There is the Tory block-house on the ridge,
There Paulus Hoek, Red Bank, and Quinton's Bridge,
And all combine to keep her laurels green
Who did her duty to the old Thirteen,
And who has stood, through sunshine and through storm,
True to the Union that she helped to form.
For history seeks in no uncertain voice
What part our fathers in the struggle took
When England's empire at our cannon shook.
They scorn our State, or they affect to scorn,
Some few of those beyond our borders born;
Sneer at the unbroken faith our annals show
Kept in our dealing with both friend and foe;
Contemn the thrift and skill that made our sands
Of greater value than their fertile lands;
Decry our justice as too harsh because
On rich or poor impartial fall our laws.
So let them; but even they dare not refuse
Tribute of honor to our Jersey Blues
Who in the past, on every battle-plain
From Maine to Georgia, poured their blood like rain.
They cannot blot the record out that shows
The well-known words round which a halo glows.
There flows Assanpink; yonder, Monmouth's plain
Spreads green before us, fertile with its slain;
There Trenton rises, where our fortune first
Turned to the flood, when at its ebb the worst;
There Princeton, too, whose college folk may see
Where startled Britons took their first degree;
There is the Tory block-house on the ridge,
There Paulus Hoek, Red Bank, and Quinton's Bridge,
And all combine to keep her laurels green
Who did her duty to the old Thirteen,
And who has stood, through sunshine and through storm,
True to the Union that she helped to form.
O grand old State! land of our fathers! there
The very skies seem bluer than elsewhere,
The trees far greener, and a tenderer grey
On the mossed rocks where noontide shadows play;
The faults (and those there are) that mark thy race
A thousand virtues balance and efface.
Thou hast kept well the plain and honest way
And homely wisdom of thy early day;
Held evermore thy courts of justice pure;
And, slow in step, yet made thy progress sure.
Less showy than thy neighbors, not less proud,
No wrong in thee with shame thy people bowed;
And while grass grows, and while the water runs,
Where'er their wandering footsteps fall, thy sons,
Living, thy champions true and staunch shall be,
And, dying, turn their fondest thoughts to thee!
The very skies seem bluer than elsewhere,
691
On the mossed rocks where noontide shadows play;
The faults (and those there are) that mark thy race
A thousand virtues balance and efface.
Thou hast kept well the plain and honest way
And homely wisdom of thy early day;
Held evermore thy courts of justice pure;
And, slow in step, yet made thy progress sure.
Less showy than thy neighbors, not less proud,
No wrong in thee with shame thy people bowed;
And while grass grows, and while the water runs,
Where'er their wandering footsteps fall, thy sons,
Living, thy champions true and staunch shall be,
And, dying, turn their fondest thoughts to thee!
| The select poems of Dr. Thomas Dunn English (exclusive of the "Battle lyrics") | |