 | Songs of Doubt and Dream (Poems) |  |
274
HISTORY.
He that the record of mankind would trace,
With all its virtues, faults, hopes, passions, fears.
In hardier scripture than a few fleet years
To dull oblivion may at last efface,
Must plunge his look far deeper than of old
Among time's ruinous heaps of dross and gold.
With all its virtues, faults, hopes, passions, fears.
In hardier scripture than a few fleet years
To dull oblivion may at last efface,
Must plunge his look far deeper than of old
Among time's ruinous heaps of dross and gold.
For every potentate, whate'er his pride,
Bows to still mightier forces, dim, remote;
His very tyrannies, like his mercies, float
As wandering foam on the vast human tide
That sleeps or swings in that mysterious flood
Wrought red and bounteous from a nation's blood.
Bows to still mightier forces, dim, remote;
His very tyrannies, like his mercies, float
As wandering foam on the vast human tide
That sleeps or swings in that mysterious flood
Wrought red and bounteous from a nation's blood.
Ye, therefore, whom profounder truth contents
Than babble of light court-lady, prince or page,
Tell how through altering peoples, age by age,
Great causes fructified in great events,
Nor heed mere kings, with splendors frail and brief,—
Frederick the Greedy, Bonaparte the Thief!
Than babble of light court-lady, prince or page,
Tell how through altering peoples, age by age,
Great causes fructified in great events,
Nor heed mere kings, with splendors frail and brief,—
Frederick the Greedy, Bonaparte the Thief!
| Songs of Doubt and Dream (Poems) | |