University of Virginia Library

If I believed the souls august
Of ancestors that long are dust
Beheld me at this hour, 'twould wake
Shame in my own soul, keen of ache!
For their dim ghosts would seem to chide
From shadowy vantages of pride,
Their hollow eyes would seem to hold
Remonstrance and rebuke untold,
Their spectral lips would seem to rain
On my degeneracy disdain.
Yet well I know their sculptured tombs
Enwrap them with eternal glooms,
And if at all their force and fire
In spheres remote achieve, aspire,
No heed nor knowledge irks them there
Of this poor crown I tamely wear—
This crown they caught and clutched for years
Through history's tides of blood and tears.
Even now, perchance (who dares be sure?)
In stars unguessed their days endure,
With memories of their earthly rank
Faded to one forgetful blank,
And all their splendors of renown
Lost in the lots of clod and clown. ...
Nay, ghosts I fear not; many a fear
More fleshly steals to haunt me here.
For how am I, thus girt by thrall
Of quickening freedom, king at all?
My parliaments, whose rafters ring
With statesmen's edicts, ask no king.
My people, in whom obeisance lay
Invulnerable but yesterday,
Are now a throng of myriad throats
Voicing their individual votes,
Dictating laws, ordaining plans—
In all save name republicans.
And they whom my forefathers held
Stanchest auxiliaries of eld,
My nobles, born custodians, each,
Of every verge my sway doth reach,
Are stripped of all their state once meant,
Save empty and idle precedent.
No more about the throne's proud piers
They group its guardian halberdiers,
With loyalty in their least breath
And duty another word for death.
Their sires' tough mail-shirts they forsake
For broadcloth garb of modish make;
In them the rough allegiant oath
Is dainty deference touched with sloth;
The swords bold warriors joyed to hurl
Are canes that smooth hands lightly twirl;
The intrepid charger, wild of breed,
Has grown the equestrian's neat-groomed steed;
The bluff retainers, hot for fray,
As liveried lacqueys cringe to-day.

What wonder I should deem it strange
To rule a realm so swept by change,
Where only in legend now may live
The sovereign's lost prerogative?
What wonder I should long to flee
This hollow and senseless pageantry,
That sets me in mimic schoolboy dread
As its imperial figure-head—
Between a thousand schemes, plots, lies,
Flaunted the incarnate compromise!
No part bear I in civic strife
That pricks conservatisms to life
And makes the wound thus dealt them fill
With liberty's awakening thrill.
Aloof I dwell, by power disowned,
A mere tradition crowned and throned!
I sometimes dream that I can trace
Insidious mockery in the face
Of him who leans most low to kiss
My hand, with courtliest emphasis.
I sometimes fancy I almost feel
Attendants at my side conceal
Thoughts they would tremble to declare,
Yet whose dumb sarcasms freight the air!
At balls of pomp, while flattery floats
Among my beams her myriad motes,
While sycophancy's unctuous phrase
Forgets the false heart it betrays,
While caste from reverent censer swings
The dizzying vapors dear to kings,
While fashion, where my foot hath trod,
Spaniels for one consentient nod—
Oh, then I hear the night-winds wake
Through many a distant dell and brake,
Where moon may brood or planet shine
On lands that are yet are not mine!
Then yearn I for the bounteous balms
Of nature's clamorings or her calms—
The unfevered life, the fretless hope,
The horizon of divulgent scope,
The statecraft of the stealthy seeds,
The wide democracies of weeds,
The birds' patrician claims of class,
The prosperous commonwealths of grass,
The ministries of heat or cold,
The sun's exchequer of lavish gold,
The blithe republics of the bees,
The butterflies' buoyant anarchies,
The oratory of air and cloud,
With leaves for listeners, low or loud,
The church of meadow and copse and hill,
The ritual of the brawling rill!

Two rival natures in my breast
Contend with terrible unrest.
One through dead lines of kings I draw.
And one through life, love, knowledge, law.
One breathes of feudalism that made
My sires the autocrats they staid;
One hates the barriers reared to ban
His individual rights from man.
One, howso'er its chill duress
Enchain me, I know for selfishness;
One stirs me to the inmost soul
As conscience, wisdom, self-control.
One means the past, whose purlieus throng
With every emissary of wrong;
One means to-day, whose daring ken
Bears priceless promises to men! ...
Yet strong though each persuasion speak,
The instinctive bonds of birth grow weak;
Progress, a spectre keen of eye,
Stands at my gate, like Mordecai;
Through many an empty palace-hall
Sad voices of the unsheltered call;
I count my glittering gems, and feel
What human miseries they could heal;
I read the tales deft scribes have wrought
Of how my great forefathers fought,
And lo! their glory of field and flood
Hideous with war's reproachful blood!
I scan the Bible in which their pride
Found slavery's outrage justified—
The murder of little children not
Diabolic—treachery's vilest plot
Against a foe shorn clean of sin—
And from such chronicles I win
Disgust in place of reverence, hate
To accuse, not heart to venerate!
Search as I will through ancient things,
Divinity deserts all kings;
Delve as I will through things that are,
Divinity flies yet more far;
Dream as I dare of things unborn,
Divinity ossifies to scorn!
For centuries while their rulers built
Empire on rapine, greed and guilt,
The people had slept in dreamless trance,
Lulled by their opiate, ignorance.
But slowly at last they woke from sleep;
Their great sigh surged from deep to deep;
The opening of their drowsy eyes
Burned like dawn's flame in cloud-hung skies;
At every stir their roused limbs gave,
Some tyranny tottered to a grave;
And when, erewhile, erect they rose,
The world was rent with earthquake throes.

You people, ah, what resorts have we,
Kings, councillors, when such as ye
Break bonds whose links we forged and set,
To beard us with our unpaid debt!
A little while demur we may,
With this expedient, that delay;
A little while you mark what shade
The dial of destiny has made.
We smile, propitiate, condone,
We parley and quibble and postpone.
But in the end no guile will serve—
You still demand, nor deign to swerve!
O people, I know you where you press
Against my throne's gilt rottenness;
I know your impetus was fed
By despotisms of epochs dead;
I know you dowered with might that comes
From ancestries of martyrdoms.
Inch by stern inch our treasured shrine
Of sovereignty you undermine;
You brook no dexterous feints and tricks,
No parry-and-thrust of politics.
On your rebellions, which are fate's,
Legality idly legislates.
As well dig dungeons to ensnare
The lightning's blade, the thunder's blare;
As well with scourges lash the main
Or discipline the hurricane;
As well rear scaffolds cubits high
To strangle truth's white throat thereby,
Or steal from Time the scythe he bears
To assassinate him unawares—
As well all this, O people in whom
Revolt is degradation's tomb,
As curb you, crush you, towering here,
The immitigable mutineer!