A Song of Heroes :: :: University of Virginia Library

A Song of Heroes

by John Stuart Blackie

Blackie, John Stuart (1809-1895)

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[dedication]

CANTO I. THE OLD WORLD

II.

CANTO II. THE MIDDLE AGES

III.

CANTO III. THE NEW WORLD

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CANTO I. THE OLD WORLD

ABRAHAM.

I will sing a song of heroes
Crowned with manhood's diadem,
Men that lift us, when we love them,
Into nobler life with them.

I will sing a song of heroes
To their God-sent mission true,
From the ruin of the old times
Grandly forth to shape the new;

Men that, like a strong-winged zephyr,
Come with freshness and with power,
Bracing fearful hearts to grapple
With the problem of the hour;

Men whose prophet-voice of warning
Stirs the dull, and spurs the slow,
Till the big heart of a people
Swells with hopeful overflow.

I will sing the son of Terah,
Abraham in tented state,
With his sheep and goats and asses,
Bearing high behests from Fate;

Journeying from beyond Euphrates,
Where cool Orfa's bubbling well
Lured the Greek, and lured the Roman,
By its verdurous fringe to dwell;

When he left the flaming idols,
Sun by day and Moon by night,
To believe in something deeper
Than the shows that brush the sight,

And, as a traveller wisely trusteth
To a practised guide and true,
So he owned the Voice that called him
From the faithless Heathen crew.

And he travelled from Damascus
Southward where the torrent tide
Of the sons of Ammon mingles
With the Jordan's swelling pride,

To the pleasant land of Shechem,
To the flowered and fragrant ground
'Twixt Mount Ebal and Gerizim,
Where the bubbling wells abound;

To the stony slopes of Bethel,
And to Hebron's greening glade,
Where the grapes with weighty fruitage
Droop beneath the leafy shade.

And he pitched his tent in Mamre,
'Neath an oak-tree tall and broad,

And with pious care an altar
Built there to the one true God.

And the voice of God came near him,
And the angels of the Lord
'Neath the broad and leafy oak-tree
Knew his hospitable board;

And they hailed him with rare blessing
For all peoples richly stored,
Father of the faithful, elect
Friend of God, Almighty Lord.

And he sojourned 'mid the people
With high heart and weighty arm,
Wise to rein their wandering worship,
Strong to shield their homes from harm.

And fat Nile's proud Pharaohs owned him,
As a strong God-favoured man,
Like Osiris, casting broadly
Largess to the human clan.

And he lived long years a witness
To the pure high-thoughted creed,
That in the ripeness of the ages
Grew to serve our mortal need.

Not a priest, and not a churchman,
From all proud pretension free,
Shepherd-chief and shepherd-warrior,
Human-faced like you and me;

Human-faced and human-hearted,
To the pure religion true;
Purer than the gay and sensuous
Grecian, wider than the Jew.

Common sire, whom Jew and Christian,
Turk and Arab, name with praise;
Common as the sun that shines
On East and West with brothered rays.

Edessa, according to a very general Jewish tradition, was the Ur of the Chaldees; but some modern inquirers prefer Mugheir, on the right bank of the Euphrates, in the bitumen district, about 120 miles above the sea.

MOSES.

I will sing high-hearted Moses,
By the Nile's sweet-watered stream,
In a land of strange taskmasters,
Brooding o'er the patriot theme;

Brooding o'er the bright-green valleys
Of his dear-loved Hebrew home,
Whence the eager pinch of Famine
Forced the Patriarch to roam;

Brooding o'er his people's burdens,
Lifting vengeful arm to smite

When he saw the harsh Egyptian
Stint the Hebrew of his right;

Brooding far in lonely places,
Where on holy ground unshod,
He beheld the bush that burned
With unconsuming flame from God.

Saw, and heard, and owned the mission,
With his outstretched prophet-rod
To stir plagues upon the Pharaoh,
Scorner of the most high God;

God who brought His folk triumphant
From the strange taskmaster free,
And merged the Memphians, horse and rider,
In the deep throat of the sea.

Then uprose the song of triumph,
Harp and timbrel, song and dance;
And with firm set will the hero
Led the perilous advance.

And he led them through the desert
As a shepherd leads his flock,
Breaking spears with cursed Amalek,
Striking water from the rock.

And he led them to Mount Sinai's
High-embattled rock; and there,
'Mid thick clouds of smoke and thunder
That like trumpet clave the air,

To the topmost peak he mounted,
And with reverent awe unshod,
As a man with men discourseth,
So he there communed with God.

Not in wild ecstatic plunges,
Not in visions of the night,
Not in flashes of quick fancy,
Darkness sown with gleams of light,

But with calm untroubled survey,
As a builder knows his plan,

Face to face he knew Jehovah
And His wondrous ways with man;

Ways of gentleness and mercy,
Ways of vengeance strong to smite,
Ways of large unchartered giving,
Ever tending to the right.

In the presence of the Glory,
What no mortal sees he saw,
And from hand that no man touches
Brought the tables of the Law,

Law that bound them with observance,
Lest untutored wit might stray,
Each man where his private fancy
Led him in a wanton way,

Law that from the life redeemed them
Of loose Arabs wandering wild,
And to fruitful acres bound them
Where ancestral virtue toiled;

Law that dowered the chosen people
With a creed divinely true,
Which subtle Greek and lordly Roman
Stooped to borrow from the Jew.

DAVID.

I will sing the son of Jesse,
Whom the prophet's voice did call,
Not by haughty-hearted bearing,
Lofty looks, and stature tall;

But by eyes of arrowy brightness,
And by locks of golden hue,
And by limbs of agile lightness,
Fair and comely to the view;

And by earnest, wise demeanour,
And by heart that knew no fear,
And a quick-discerning spirit
When a danger might be near.

Him from watching of the sheepfold,
And from tending of the ewes,
To be ruler of the people,
Samuel's prophet-eye did choose.

From the softly-swelling pasture,
Grassy mead, and rocky scars;
From lone converse with the mild-faced
Moon and silent-marching stars;

From the lion and the she-bear,
When they leapt the wattled pen,
To a fight with worse than lions,
Tiger-hearted, bloody men.

To the struggle for a kingdom,
To confusion of his foes,
To the splendid cares of reigning,
Him the God-sent prophet chose;

Chose, nor waited long. A kingship
Reigned in bosom of the boy,

And his hand with kingly instinct
Leapt to find a king's employ.

And he found it when the giant
Philistine of haughty Gath,
With a boastful, proud defiance,
Mailed in insolence, crossed his path.

Quailed the armies of the people,
Quailed King Saul upon his throne,
Quailed the marshalled heads of battle;
Strength in David lived alone.

And he took nor spear nor harness,
But with calm composèd look,
In his hand he took a sling,
And five smooth pebbles from the brook;

And he prayed the God of battles,
And in 'mid the host alone
Prostrate laid the boastful champion
With a sling and with a stone.

Now his road was paved to greatness:
On the right hand of the throne
High he sate; but mighty monarchs
Love to reign and rule alone.

Saul pursued the people's darling
With keen hatred's heavy stress,
From rock to rock, from cave to cave,
Of the houseless wilderness,

Like a hunted thing. He wandered,
From all bonds of fealty free,
Till the hour to honour David
Came in God's foreknown decree.

Judah claimed him; Israel followed
Judah's trumpet-note; and all,
From Hermon's mount to well of Sheba,
Streamed to royal David's call.

And he stormed the hill of Zion,
Where the rock-perched Jebusite

From his stiff ancestral fastness
Vainly strove to prove his might.

And he smote the men of Moab,
And the fierce Philistian crew,
And o'er the ruddy cliffs of Edom
Passed, and proudly cast his shoe.

From Damascus' gardened beauty
Home he brought the golden spoil,
And Phœnician Hiram sent him
Greeting from his sea-girt isle.

And he brought the ark that shrined
The God-hewn tables of the Law,
Safely on the rock of Zion
To be kept with reverent awe;

Brought it with a pomp of people,
With a sounding march of glee,
Harp and hymn, and shouts of holy
Triumph, billowing like the sea!

Not in mail of forceful warrior,
Not with spear, and not with sword,
With a linen ephod girded,
Danced the king before the Lord;

Danced with lusty beat, not recking,
In the stoutness of his cheer,
How solemn fools and dainty maids
Might curve their lofty lips and jeer.

What remained?—Jehovah honoured,
From all foes a proud release,
What remained to top his fulness?
David now might die in peace.

Only one fair hope was stinted,
To the God of David's line
On the summit of Moriah
High to pile a costly shrine!

Not all things to all are granted;
To his son, the wisest man,

David left with templed state
To crown his life's high-reaching plan,

Then died. No kinglier king was ever
Seated on a kingly seat,
Shepherd, soldier, minstrel, monarch,
In all sorts a man complete.

SOCRATES.

[_]

In the case of a name of such wide significance as Socrates, it were superfluous to encumber the page with any display of learned notes. Suffice it to say that everything in the ballad is strictly historical, and taken directly from the original authorities. The indifference shown by Socrates to the αναγκαι or necessary laws of physical science, as contrasted with the freedom of practical reason in which moral science delights, is distinctly emphasised by Xenophon in the opening chapters of the ‘Memorabilia’; and the argument with the atheist—a little perking, self-sufficing creature, as atheists are wont to be—will be found at full length in the same sensible and judicious writer. It is this argument, commonly called the argument from design, that, passing through the eloquent pages of Cicero in his book ‘De Naturâ Deorum,’ has formed the groundwork of all works on Natural Theology up to the present time; and it is an argument that, however misapplied here and there by shallow thinkers and presumptuous dogmatists, has its roots so deep in the instincts of all healthy humanity, and in the very essence of reason, that, though it may be illustrated indefinitely

by example, it never can have anything either added to its certainty or abstracted from its significance. The early occupation of Socrates as a moulder of statues is mentioned by Pausanias; and the name of Critias is introduced to indicate the offence given by the free-mouthed talk of the great teacher to the leaders of the political parties of his time, which may have had as much to do with his martyrdom as the charge of irreligion that, according to Xenophon, was the main count of the indictment against him. His big round eye, and other features of his personal appearance, are minutely and humorously described by the same author in the ‘Banquet.’

I will sing a Greek, the wisest
Of the land where wisdom grew
Native to the soil, and beauty
Wisely wedded to the true.

Socrates, the general sire
Of that best lore which teaches man
In a reasoned world with reason
Forth to shape his human plan.

Not of fire he spake, or water,
Sun or moon, or any star,

Wheeling their predestined courses,
From all human purpose far.

Booted not to ask what fuel
Feeds the Sun, or how much he
Than the lady Moon is bigger
When she sails up from the sea.

Fool is he whose lust of knowing
Plumbs the deep and metes the skies;
Only one great truth concerns thee,
What is nearest to thine eyes.

Know thyself and thine; cast from thee
Idle dream and barren guess;
This the text of thy wise preaching,
Reason's prophet, Socrates.

Him in school of honest labour
Nature reared with pious pains,
With no blood from boasted fathers
Flowing in his sober veins.

As a workman works, he stoutly
Plied his task from day to day;
For scant silver pennies moulding
Tiny statues from the clay.

But, when thought was ripe, obedient
To the God-sent voice within,
Forth he walked on lofty mission,
Truth to preach and souls to win.

Not the lonely wisdom pleased him,
Brooding o'er some nice conceit;
But where the many-mingling strife
Of man with man made quick the street,

There was he both taught and teacher;
In the market where for gain
Eager salesmen tempt the buyer;
By Athena's pillared fane;

In the Pnyx, where wrangling faction
Thunders from a brazen throat,

And the babbling Demos holds
The scales that tremble on a vote;

In the pleasant Ceramicus,
Where the dead most honoured sleep,
In Piræus, where the merchant
Stores the plunder of the deep.

There was he with big round eye
Looking blithely round; and ever
He was centre of the ring
Where the talk was swift and clever.

There, like bees around a hive
Buzzing in bright summer weather,
Flocked, to hear his glib discourse,
Sophist, sage, and fool together.

Statesmen came, and politicians,
Strong with suasive word to sway;
Alcibiades, bold and brilliant,
Dashing, confident, and gay.

Critias came with tearless stoutness,
Sharp to wield the despot's power;
Aristippus, wise to pluck
The blossom from the fleeting hour.

Came a little man, an atheist,
Said in gods he could believe
If with eyes he might behold them;
What we see we must believe.

Said the son of Sophroniscus,
“Do you see yourself, or me?
You may see my hand, my fingers,
But myself you cannot see.

“When I spread my guests a banquet,
Delicate with dainty fish,
Though unseen, unnamed, unnoted,
'Twas a cook that sauced the dish.

“In the tragic scene, when mountain,
Rock, and river, well combined,

Hold the sense, the show delights thee,
But the showman lurks behind.

“So in all the shifting wonder
Of the star-bespangled pole,
What we see is but the outward
Seeming of the unseen soul.

“Let not shows of sense confound thee,
Nothing works from reason free;
All within, without, around thee,
Holds a god that speaks to thee.”

So he talked and so he reasoned,
Casting seeds of truth abroad,
Seeds that grow with faithful tendance
Up to central truth in God.

But not all might thole his teaching;
Weak eyes shrink when light is nigh,
Many love the dear delusion
That lends glory to a lie.

'Mid the throng of gaping listeners,
Idle danglers in the street,
When from front of vain pretender
Deft he plucked the crude conceit,

Many laughed; but with a sting
Rankling sore in bitter breast,
One departed, and another,
Like a bird with battered crest.

And they brewed strong hate together,
And with many a factious wile
Drugged the people's ear with slander,
Stirred their hearts with sacred bile.

And they gagged his free-mouthed preaching;
At Religion's fretful call
He must answer for his teaching
In the solemn judgment-hall.

And they hired a host of pleaders,
Subtle-tongued like any thong,

To confound weak wits with phrases,
To convert most right to wrong.

And they mewed him in a prison,
And they doomed him there to die,
And he drank the deathful hemlock,
And he died, as wise men die,

With smooth brow, serene, unclouded,
With a bright, unweeping eye,
Marching with firm step to Hades,
When the word came from on high.

ALEXANDER.

I will sing of Alexander,
Macedonia's peerless boy,
In whose veins the blood of heroes
Ran like rivers in their joy.

In his father's camp at Pydna
Up he grew in ruddy grace,
Lithe of limb and tight of sinew,
And with eager forward face.

First to run the race with racers,
First to mount the restive steed,
First to chase the stag fleet-footed
O'er the hills with flying speed.

Nor in feats of muscle merely,
But in tricks of wit excels,
Drinking wisdom at Stagira,
From the master-thinker's wells.

Born a king, the charm of kingship
Went with him; and where he came,
Subtle Greek and rude Triballi
Owned the virtue of his name.

Petty strifes might not detain him;
Great souls long for large expanse;
Europe's age-long feud with Asia
Claimed the service of his lance.

And he passed the stream of Helle,
Where the Sea-nymph's fervid boy
With a thousand-masted navy
Crossed to curb the pride of Troy.

And his eager foot he planted
On that ten years' battle-ground,

And flung his war-gear off, and gaily
Round Pelides' grassy mound

Rode three times; and with his captains
In devout self-dedication
Crowned his tomb with bloom of flowers,
And poured sweet oil of consecration.

Thence with foot that knew no resting,
And a soul that spurned delay,
On to thy steep banks, Granicus,
Where in bristling close array

Stood Darius' high-trained legions
In proud pomp of glittering mail,
And from bend of bows gigantic
Pouring arrows thick as hail,

Vainly; never pride of Susa
Blocked to free-souled Greece the road;
Through surging tide and slippery bank
On the Macedonian strode,

And stood white-plumed a victor. Onward
Where the Sardian gold was stored,
Where the knot of Fate, the Gordian,
Gaped to greet the Grecian sword.

Onward by the steep sea-ladders
Where Pamphylia's tideful wave
Timed its swell to leave free passage
To the footsteps of the brave.

Onward where high-ridged Amanus
Towered o'er Issus' widespread waters,
Where Damascus' leafy gardens
Wove green bowers for Syria's daughters.

Onward where the hold of Hiram,
Sea-girt Tyre, his might defied;
But with heart that never fainted,
O'er its haughty-crested tide

He flung a highway. Tyre submissive
Bowed her neck: stout Gaza yields,

And hoary-centuried Egypt welcomed
To her broad sweet-watered fields,

With people's shout and priestly blessing,
Macedonia's marvellous boy.
He, unresting, through the sandy
Desert, with prophetic joy,

Marched to Libya's green Oasis,
Where, with mystic word and sign,
Hornèd Ammon's priestly spokesman
Stamped his mission for divine.

Memphis now shall bow to Hellas:
In great Alexander's soul
Rose, God-sent, a pregnant fancy,
Where the Coptic waters roll,

By the lake of Mareotis.
By old Pharos' rocky isle,
There to found a mighty city
Where the Greek should rule the Nile,

And he marked it out with omens,
Bravely streeted east and west,
With the name of Alexander
Stamped upon its stony breast.

Mighty city, home of science,
Nurse of Commerce, queen of trade,
Whence Greek wit and Christian saintship
Rayed a glory largely shed;

Where the reasoned faith of Plato,
Calmly measuring forth the true,
Shook hands with the prophet-passion
Of the fiery-hearted Jew,

Both divine. But Alexander
Marched, blind pioneer of God,
With Fate behind and Fate before him,
Eastward on his conquering road;

Eastward, where far-sung Euphrates
Pours his fattening waters wide,

Where from snowy-capped Niphates
Tigris rolls her foamy tide

To the plain of Gaugamela,
Where, in long-drawn tented show,
All the pride of golden Persia
Stood expectant of the foe!

Firmly stood the Persian battle,
Making wise Pausanias quake;
But in soul of Alexander
Swelled a tide no bar could break.

Like a mighty unmoored trireme
Drifting helmless from the blast,
Great Darius with his princes
O'er the Zagrian mountains passed:

There to seek 'mid traitor-Bactrians
Refuge, which more wisely he,
From his generous-hearted victor,
Might have craved on bended knee

At Babylon or royal Susa,
Where the gold is piled in bales,
And Choaspes laves the meadows
Where the fruitful green prevails.

Or 'mid pomp of stately pillars,
Where Persepolis nursed the dream
Of the haughty-hearted Xerxes,
To lay bonds on Helle's stream.

Here the victor paused; but Pause
Made short call on Alexander.
As a foam-faced mountain-torrent,
With a gentle slow meander

Flows a space, then, as impatient
Of inglorious ease, his motion
Spurs, and with exultant billow
Roars at thunder-speed to ocean,

So he took short holiday,
From golden bowls the red wine drinking,

With song and dance and pastime gay,
And every power that strangles thinking.

Then uprose, and mailed his breast,
Helmed his head, and looked around,
Finely pricked with eager joyaunce,
Like a keen unkennelled hound.

On to Oxus, to Jaxartes,
Where great Cyrus set a bound
To the loose unchastened Scythians,
Like a tempest drifting round.

Some drew back: but Alexander
Knew not back; and as on wings,
Up the steep-faced Bactrian fastness
Deftly climbs, and bravely brings

Fair Roxana, blooming daughter
Of the king, to be his bride.
What remained? Paropamisus,
With its mountain-rampart wide,

Signed him onwards. He might never
Rest, till he prevailed to bind
With strong bonds of human kinship
Westmost Greece and Eastmost Ind.

Onward, onward! O'er thy birdless
Steep, Aornos, he prevailed,
Which the stout son of Alcmena
Three times dared, and three times failed.

Him the fort of Dionysus,
Nysa, praised by the Hindoo,
With its wreaths of cooling ivy,
And its groves of laurel, knew.

On the banks of the Hydaspes
Porus stood, high-statured king,
With his elephants and chariots
Bristling wide from wing to wing.

Breast-high marched the Macedonian
Through its flood, nor knew to cease

From the shock of spears, till Porus
Bowed the subject knee to Greece.

Indus with its seven mouths hailed him,
Tideful ocean owned his rule,
And with grateful grace to Neptune
There he sacrificed a bull.

Westward then with work accomplished,
Through a wide unwatered waste,
Through thy burning sands, Gedrosia,
Back his stout-souled march he traced;

Back to Babylon. There the nations,
In the garb of gladness dressed,
Sent their missioned chiefs to greet him
Umpire of the East and West.

But the gods would have him.

This conclusion of such a brilliant career may seem abrupt; but so it was in fact. The fatigues of his Indian and Gedrosian march, along with the heat of the season, not unassisted in all probability by the festive potations in which the Macedonians indulged, ended in a fever, which carried him off in a few days at the early age of thirty-two, b.c. 323. See Arrian, vii. 24-28.

Grandly
What he proudly sought he gained:
Greece had conquered the Barbarian;
Where he throned her, she remained.

CÆSAR.

I have sung the Greek. The Roman
Now stands forth in iron mailed,
Who by patient plan, and manly
Will, and might of hand prevailed;

Who, by clod-subduing labour,
Rose, hard toil and sober cheer,
Stern-faced Law and strict obedience,
Sacred reverence and fear;

Fell, by overgrowth of Fortune,
Fell, by insolence of sway,
When in pride of strength the strong man
Tramped the weak man in the clay;

Fell, by sacred greed of having,
All the trash that gold can buy,
Piles of grandeur, seas of glitter,
Shows that feed the lustful eye;

Acres, gardens, gladiators,
Fish-ponds, towers that flaunt the sky,
Purple pomp and pillowed pleasure,
And a wine-cup seldom dry,

All things; only not a common-
Hearted zeal for common good,
With a fevered lust of getting,
Each man what he nearest could—

Not as brother strives with brother,
But with rage of tigerhood,
Plunging, tearing on to power
Through seas of bribery and blood.

But not all were vile. Some wildly
Fought and foamed like fretted cattle;

Some, with lofty ken far-viewed,
And lofty aim controlled the battle.

Such was Cæsar; neither weakly
Shrinking from a forceful blow,
Nor with insolent triumph trampling
In the mire a fallen foe.

Bred to fearless, firm directness
In the soldier's kingly school,
In an age when only swords
Gave strength to stand or right to rule,

Step by step with measured boldness,
Wise to wait the ripening hour,
Quick to seize the breeze of favour,
Up the strong man clomb to power.

Fluent talkers in the forum
Sway the passion of the hour;
But when Fate will seal her charter,
Then the soldier comes with power.

Cæsar now is Consul: seated
Bravely in his curule chair,
With his rods and with his lictors,
What is Cæsar scheming there?

He hath crushed the Spanish brigands;
With sharp sword and strong decree,
O'er the Lusitanian mountains
Pushed the Empire to the sea.

Now he'll lot the land to tillers,
Strangle violence with law,
Drag to public reprobation
Grasping hand and greedy maw.

Laws for peace: but peaceful glory
Might not slake great Cæsar's thirst;
Where an arm might strike for mastery,
There he panted to be first.

Pompey, with his pictured toga,
Lopped the pride of Mithridates,

Cleared the seas of roving robbers,
Wedded Tiber to Euphrates;

What shall Cæsar do? His boyhood's
Memory nursed the glorious day
When mighty Marius, seven times Consul,
To the fierce Celts blocked the way,

Drifting Romeward like a deluge;
He, like Marius, would go forth,
And with Roman sword and sentence
Tame the rude hordes of the North.

Nevermore shall Teut or Cimber,
Nursed in Hyperborean snows,
Pour their wasteful swarms, like locusts,
Where fair-fielded Padus flows.

Gaul was vexed with fevered faction;
German and Helvetian hordes,
Westward with wild fury ramping,
Call for sweep of Roman swords.

At Bibracte Cæsar smote them,

The modern Autun, capital of the ancient Ædui, between the Saone and the Loire. (Cæsar, B. G., i. 23.)

The “Stout-thewed Nervii”; between the Sambre and the Scheldt in the French department of the North, and in Hainault. Their ferocity and sobriety are specially noted by Cæsar, B. G., ii. 15.

And in fine short-sworded line,
Grappling as a Roman grapples,
Drave the Teuts across the Rhine.

Hardy Belgæ, stout-thewed Nervii,
Sober water-drinking men,
On the banks of Meuse and Sambre
Bowed the neck to Cæsar then.

Suevi, clad with coats of deer-skin,
Match for the immortal gods,
Felt that more than gods were near them,
Where great Cæsar showed his rods.

Not the westmost sailor Bretons,
Flowed about with briny tides,
Can maintain their rocky townships
Where great Cæsar's soul presides.

Utmost Britain, Gaul's last refuge,
Now his foot of venture knows:

Where the sea-mews round the white cliffs
Sweep, where Thames majestic flows,

Victor he stood, and with prophetic
Glance the time not distant saw
When the rude and painted Nomads,
In stern school of Roman law

Trained to manhood, would rejoice
In the grace of fixed abodes,
Roman towns and Roman villas,
Roman camps and Roman roads.

Ten years' toil have born such fruitage;
From Britannia's cloudy home
To blue Rhone, all breathe with safety
'Neath the sheltering wing of Rome.

What reward shall be to Cæsar,
Who hath made his country great?
Shall he march in pomp of triumph,
Crowned with laurel, through the gate?

Shall ten thousand throats salute him
Consul twice with loud acclaim;
Consul, Censor, every title
That can top a Roman name?

Ask the Senate. No; no grateful
Thanks come from patrician breast,
Faction-mongers, plotters, hirelings,
In the robe of statesmen dressed.

Him they fear; and 'fore his kingly
Glance with conscious guilt they cower,
Who with unbribed hand will rudely
Stint their merchandise of power.

Mighty men to fling bravadoes;
But when Cæsar claimed his right
At the gates of Rome, great Pompey
With his minions winged their flight

To the far Brundisian refuge;
Thence across the Adrian foam,

There to head the Asian muster
'Gainst the noblest man in Rome.

Vainly; not who doubts and wavers,
Never sure and ever late,
But who strikes with swift directness
Is the minister of Fate.

Not Pharsalia's plains shall save thee,
Pompey, with thy craven crew;
Prideful greed that grew to rashness,
In God's time shall have its due.

Proud patricians, purple-vested
Foplings in soft luxury born,
Them stout Cæsar's hard-faced veterans
Mowed like swathes of bending corn.

Whither now? Not yet hath Cæsar's
Foot adventurous reached the Nile;
There, from sacred seats, on Pompey
Frowning Fate might learn to smile.

Pompey deemed: but fallen greatness
In a friend oft finds a foe;
On the shores of Nile the headless
Pompey lies in ghastly show.

Mighty Pompey dead; and Cato,
With stiff neck and lofty head,
Holding guard in Honour's temple,
Where the god within had fled.

Stoic Cato 'mid the ruins
Of old Rome the Fate defied,
And proudly on the coast of Afric
With self-planted dagger died.

Now the big round globe is Cæsar's;
What thing now shall Cæsar do,
Through those veins corrupt and fevered
Healthy pulses to renew?

He will be their needful master,
By firm law and not by blood—

Consul, Cæsar, Imperator—
Strangling faction in the bud.

Not the triumph of a party,
But a firm-compacted State,
Where every limb subserves the headship,
Shall make mighty Cæsar great.

Not with Sulla's butcher-vengeance,
At his word red slaughter flows,
But with large and free forgiveness
He repays the hate of foes.

Not from feeble-blooded lordlings,
Hollow hearts in purple dressed,
But from men he made the Senate,
Proved the bravest and the best.

He would prune the flaunting plumage
Of the fine soft-feathered crew,

Borne about by slaves in litters,
Lest the mud should soil their shoe.

But he strove in vain: the outward
Reverent show he might compel,
But their hearts with deadly rancour
And with bitter hatred swell.

He had cast the thing most holy
To the dogs; before the swine
Pearls; and for his noble rashness
Cæsar now must pay the fine.

In the garb of friendship vested,
In petitioner's humble guise,
With the servile smile of falsehood
Gleaming in their traitor eyes.

In the sacred hall of Council,
Seated in his curule chair,

Fearless, trustful, in his own
Uprightness clothed, they stabbed him there.

At the base of Pompey's statue
Fell great Cæsar; but not waned
His star with him. In world-wide Empire
Cæsar's work and name remained.

ST PAUL.

Farewell, Rome. A nobler gospel
Stirs my soul and shapes my song,
March of love divinely fervid,
March of truth divinely strong.

I will sing a mighty marvel,
How the lordly Roman drew
Fountain of new life pure-blooded
From the mean unvalued Jew.

How the Greek, the subtle-thoughted,
With his cunning fence of wit,
At the feet of Hebrew teachers
Learned with greedy ear to sit.

In Jerusalem's holy city,
Where grave judgment loves to dwell,
Wisest of the seventy wise men,
Sate the wise Gamaliel.

Near him sate a youth observant
Of the wise words of the men,
Noting all their sharp decisions
With quick ear and faithful pen,

Saul of Tarsus. Short of stature,

The current authorities for the personal appearance of the great Apostle will be found in Conybeare and Howson, i. ch. vii., end.

Slight of limb, and with an high-
Mounting forehead, and beneath
Well-massed brows a piercing eye.

Quick to learn what statutes Moses
Gave from God, and memoried well

In the best lore of the Talmud,
Taught by wise Gamaliel.

Bold to plan and swift to venture,
Counting danger for a jest,
When strong love, or mighty hatred,
Flowed like spring-tide in his breast.

He had seen unlettered preachers
Bred in Jesus' lowly school,
With a loose unlicensed doctrine
Spurn the high priest's lawful rule.

He had seen its foremost spokesman
With a death of heavy stoning,
For his rude-mouthed contradiction,
Give the Law its due atoning.

And he vowed with words of fiery
Vengeance, and with purpose fell,
In the holy city's cincture
Nevermore such brood shall dwell.

And he chased them as a hunter
Chases with a keen-nosed hound,
To Gerizim, to Mount Tabor,
To Mount Hermon's utmost bound.

And he seized both men and women
Where the hated sect prevailed,
Old and young, and to the prison's
Gloomy den of durance haled.

And he journeyed to Damascus
In the fever of his wrath—
When, behold! a flash from Heaven
Flared across his blinded path.

And he heard a strange voice crying,
“Saul, O Saul! what moveth thee
With hot breath of persecution
Sharply thus to follow me?

“Rise, and get thee to Damascus;
Thou shalt learn there what to do.

Thine old life is dead. My servant
There shall shape thy course anew.”

Paul hath hied him to Damascus,
Where the white-walled splendour gleams
Through the wide-spread green, the dowry
Of the many-branching streams.

He hath entered fair Damascus;
And the servant of the Lord
Touched him there with spirit-piercing
Power of truth and healing word.

And he rose as one that riseth
From long death, into a new
Stretch of blissful life, with warmer
Pulse of love and larger view.

And he went into the desert,
There with searching thought to pray
O'er the purpose of the Lord,
That led him in a wondrous way.

And he looked, and with new eyes
The inner soul of things he saw,
Soul of Right that for its service
Brooketh fleshly forms of Law,

Forms of Law that wisely fetter
Idle eye and wandering foot,
Till the bud grow to the blossom,
Till the blossom grow to fruit.

Meats and drinks, and times and seasons,
Feasts that wait upon the moon,
Prayers with formal iteration
Conned at matin-bell or noon.

Sabbaths, washings, circumcisions,
Sanctities that brush the skin,
Making clean the fleshly cover,
Leaving foul the soul within.

Holy vestments fringed with Scripture,
Hearts unholy big with pride,

And where widows' homes are plundered,
Tithes and taxes multiplied.

All this 'fore his brooding spirit
Passed in penitent review;
And he cast old things behind him,
And he leapt into the new.

In the queenly state of Antioch
By Orontes' winding flood,
Here the new pure faith, firm rooted,
First shot forth a lusty bud.

Thither Paul, divinely missioned,
Came; and holy brethren there
Sent him forth on wings of faith,
The message of God's love to bear

To distant shores. And first to Cyprus,
Where the foam-born Paphian queen
Turned to shame the grace of beauty
With unholy rites obscene.

There the high-souled Hebrew preacher
Swayed the wise proconsul's mind,
But with ban of condemnation
Smote the godless sorcerer blind.

Thence across Cilician waters,
O'er the rough Pisidian ridges,
Over cliffs that knew no pathway,
Over floods that knew no bridges.

By the haunts of thieves and robbers,
'Neath the scowling tempest's frown,
Lashed by scourge of persecution
From unfriendly town to town;

Through a wide unwatered country,
Dreary slope and cheerless meadow,
On to Derbe, on to Lystra,
Where the black mount casts his shadow.

There the rude unlettered people,
Circling round to gaze on Paul,

When they saw a lame man leaping
At the preacher's potent call,

Deemed they saw a god—Mercurius—
Come to earth in mortal guise;
And they came with ox and garlands,
And with smoke of sacrifice

Stood before him. But with lofty-
Souled rebuke he raised his hand,
And named the God that owns all worship,
Lord of sky and sea and land.

Thence he passed on through Galatia,
Where the lewd unchastened priest
Serves the car-drawn mighty mother

Cybele, the Earth, and, as such, drawn by a car of lions; a representation familiar to the student of coins and marbles. The chief site of her worship was Pessinus in Phrygia (Strabo, xii. 567), whence, as identified with the Latin Rhea, her image was transferred to Rome in the time of the Hannibalian war (Livy, xxix. 11). Closely allied to her, perhaps only a local variation, is the many-breasted goddess seen on the coins of Ephesus, whom some Greeks superficially confounded with their own Artemis or Diana; referred to in the text, and familiar to readers of the Bible from the part she plays in Acts Apost., xix.

Of each huge-maned tawny beast;

And they heard his word with gladness,
And their carnal creed denied,
And new spirit-life within them
Sprang from Christ the crucified.

But now Europe claimed the preacher;
Touched by power of truth divine,
O'er the broad Ægean waters
Greece must bow to Palestine.

Macedonia hailed his coming;
On Philippi's storied plains
Many a generous host received him,
Unbound from unworthy chains.

On to Athens. As a soldier
Gladly goes where dangers wait,
So the wisest of the wise men
Paul will front in high debate.

On the hill of Mars he met them,
Where Athena's pillared shrine
Looks serenely o'er the gardened
Wealth of olive and of vine.

There they flocked around him; Stoics
And a looser-girdled crew—

Sophists, rhetors, glib discoursers,
With quick ears for something new.

What a hot-brained fool shall babble
May amuse an hour to hear;
Dreamful Jews are wisely answered,
When a subtle Greek shall sneer.

Paul arose; and “Men and brethren,”—
Thus he spake,—“well known to me
Is your vague and wide-armed worship
Of all idol gods that be.

“As I passed I saw an altar
Scriptured to the god unknown;
God is known in all His doings,
God supreme, and God alone;

“God who looks forth from the heavens,
God whose love makes glad the earth,
God from whom this well-compacted
Cosmos takes its wondrous birth;

“God of whom we are the offspring,
Common-blooded, great and small,
Breathing common breath that pulses
Through the oneness of the All;

“God whom men do vainly shape
As man in silver or in stone,
Broad as day, and wide as space,
And in no human likeness shown.

“Him hath Christ His chosen prophet,
Born of Hebrew seed, declared,
And in fulness of the ages
His eternal counsel bared,

“That no longer with unchastened
Fancy men may forge a lie,
Human gods to touch and handle,
Gods to sell, and gods to buy.

“And now He commandeth all men
With a reasonable faith

To receive as wise disciples
What the God-sent teacher saith;

“Teacher promised long, and visioned
In dim gleamings scantly shed,
Now revealed; and with miraculous
Rising raised up from the dead;

“Raised, and on a throne high-seated,
To be judge of all below,
Greek and Hebrew, bond and freeman,
In the day that He doth know.”

Thus he spake; some jeered, some doubted,
Some denied; a noble few
Nursed the seed of truth that soon
To world-wide green luxuriance grew.

Thence to Corinth. With unwearied
Courier pace that spurns repose,
Where the sickliest sick are pining,
There the good physician goes.

In the busy mart of nations,
Pomp of art and golden splendour,
From the earthly Aphrodite
He redeemed the gross offender.

Thence to Ephesus, where Diana,
In her many-breasted pride,
From her many-pillared temple
Flings her glamour far and wide.

There with still small voice of gospel
Nobly true and simply wise,
He dispersed a drift of babblers
Making merchandise of lies.

Paul has conquered. In Europa,
In rich Asia's fair domains,
Hoary Error feels a tremor
Travelling through her fretful veins.

Priestly fear grim Superstition's
Hasty-marching doom foretells,

Priestly venom in Jerusalem's
Breast with sacred rancour swells.

Fearless, to the priestly city
Paul on pious quest doth go;
There he stands with calm assurance,
As a man that knows his foe.

With an oath of hellish hatred
They have vowed to work his woe;
He hath called for help to Cæsar,
And to Cæsar he shall go.

O'er the treacherous Cretan waters,
O'er the mid-sea's stormy roar,
Bound with fetters, heaped with slander,
To Imperial Latium's shore

They have sent him. He hath trodden
The long Appian Way to Rome,
And beneath the Seven Hills' shelter
Found a prison and a home.

But, as oft hath chanced, the tyrant
Showed more mercy than the priest;
Cæsar's truthful doom the true man
From their net of lies released.

And he sped like an unpinioned
Eagle to the extreme West,
Where Hispania's rocky barrier
Flouts wide Ocean's billowy breast.

Westward, Eastward, never-resting,
Like the rain, now here now there,
Bringing increase to the Churches
Watered by his kindly care.

But the end was nigh. The storm
Lulled a moment, might not pass;
Where he comes, strong hate comes with him,
Snakes are lurking in the grass.

Rome beneath a monster-Cæsar
Groans—brute, madman, devil, fool;

Great men are a mark for murder
Where a Nero bears the rule.

'Neath that hotbed of putrescence,
Where Corruption grossly grew,
With the leaven of the Hebrew
God was making all things new.

But the Old with stout persistence
Revelled wildly in its shame,
And ramped through blood in heathen triumph
O'er the hated Christian name.

Laws were loveless; lies were blushless;
And the lust with feeding grew,
To glut the greed of wolf-nursed Rome
With blood of Christian and of Jew.

Paul was marked for doom. Behold him
On the bristling front of lies,
In the Prætor's hall of justice,
Looking with untroubled eyes,

Hoping nought, and nothing fearing;
Well he knew his hour was nigh,
Bravely schooled in face of foemen
As a Christian dies to die.

Outside of the bloody city,
Close by Caius Cestius' tomb,
On the road that leads to Ostia,
There they marched him to his doom.

Through the streaming of the people
Forth he marched, a motley crew,
Merchants, sailors, usurers, wondering
At the calm front of the Jew.

To a grassy place they led him,
Where three bubbling fountains flow,
O'er the dry growth of the summer
Spreading freshness from below.

There they made a ring around him;
And the headsman with a sword
Headless by the bubbling fountains
Laid the servant of the Lord.

“In Klopstock's ‘Messiah,’ the truths, the glorified facts being connected with more than historic belief, in the minds of men, the fictions came upon me like lies.”—Coleridge, Brandl., p. 364.

This has been my maxim throughout, specially with regard to St Paul.