The Christian Scholar :: :: University of Virginia Library

The feat—the champion—and the prize—
And arts of glorious enterprize—
The glittering steed—the golden car—
The victor's coming, like a star,
When one is in the ethereal tent,
Or one o'er all pre-eminent.
The hopes of years, and every sense
Bent on one moment of suspense,
And every year of after-life
Hung on the turn of one great strife;
Then circled by ten thousand eyes
One thrilling point of glad surprise:
'Mid every tribe of Grecian tongue
Assembled in one massive throng.
Then the triumphant festival,
And heard amid the echoing hall,
While heroes old seem'd listening nigh,
The solemn hymn of victory.

His City bids her bulwark-wall
Before his coming prostrate fall,
The City needs a wall no more
Which owns the Olympian conqueror.

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The Isles re-echoed to their mirth,
While on his own domestic hearth
The centre of his glory burn'd.
Thence he in all himself discern'd,
While every thing that met his eye
Mirror'd to him that victory.
Years by him crown'd with flowery feet
His course advancing came to meet,
That he forgat he had to die,
Wreathed with such immortality;
When all the world rung loud his worth
He seem'd a God upon the earth.

What was it in those Grecian games
Which like a fount of living flames
Kindled the Theban poet's breast,
And all his labouring soul impress'd,
Till every pulse of rapture high
Beat in full glow of minstrelsy?

Deeply within our nature lies
The source of awe and mysteries,—
The knowledge which, like thoughts in sleep,
Unconsciously our souls will steep;
That this our life and mortal stir
Itself is but a theatre;—
A little point in endless space,—
A strife—a battle—and a race;
And therefore such epitome
Of things beyond our sense which lie,

187

Touches with power the secret soul,
Intensely wraps our being whole;
Which thus as darkly in a glass
Beholds itself in shadow pass.
Hence was it that the Olympic hill
With all its sympathetic thrill,
Through heart and head like lightning flew,
For causes deeper than he knew,
And bathed with fire so through and through.

For thus in our own later day
When Spenser caught the kindling ray,
Till all the minstrel buried lies
In feats of by-gone chivalries,
We see what Heaven-ward Instinct meant
In battle—prize—and tournament:
For he 'neath knightly feats in-wrought
Sublimities of moral thought;
With the romance that fill'd his sail,
The knights and ladies of his tale—
With images that please the eye,
Blended the great reality—
The battle-scene of mortal life,
Which is with unseen beings rife;
Each virtue in its tangled course
Winning its way by thought or force;—
Making the philosophic page
Descriptive of man's pilgrimage,

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Beneath the woof of chivalry
Weaving the wisdom from on high.

Yea, doubtless, though he knew not why,
Such was the secret mystery
That made the Theban's soul all fire,
With sparks that kindle from his lyre,
Upon the strife his soul and eye
Bent in deep-stirring sympathy.

His thoughts like bubbles children blow
Catch thousand colours as they go,
Though in themselves but mist and air,
As mere poetic fancies are,
In Christian suns they rise and shine,
And gain a radiance more Divine—
Lustres serene, aerial dews,
Fair floating robes of rainbow hues,
Moulded to Christian faith unrol
Thoughts worthy of the immortal soul.