 | The Battle-Day and Other Poems |  |
110
THE COMING DAY.
The midnight hour is passing—the sunrise is at hand,
The watchers on the mountain tops are looking o'er the land,
The world is all expectant for the first grey streak of light,
Where morning's gentlest breath shall break the mighty walls of night;
Then through that riven rampart's path what glorious rays shall pour,
When all its fiery lances rush in golden torrents o'er!
One little cloud of all that mass need but be forced away,
And night's old palsied hand no more can stem the march of day.
Thus despots over Europe brood, and thus shall freedom rise,
Down-scattering with her mighty hand old mouldering tyrannies.
Needs but one timeworn prejudice be given to the wind,
And soon successive truths will pass the gateway of the mind;
For fallacy is ever placed upon perdition's brink,
And sinks the ground beneath her feet, when men begin to think.
Oh! soon across the darkened earth that glorious morn will rise,
That takes the shadow from the heart, the dew-drop from the eyes;
Then man shall cease for aye to bend before each sceptred clod,
The knee that God made pliant but to bend unto a God;
Then, leading with a father's sway our mighty brotherhood,
By “right divine,” co-equally, the wise shall guide the good,—
And prouder pomps be theirs than swell a vain imperial state,
More safe their open threshold prove, than tyrants' sentried gate.
Who dares assail their power must scale a wall that God has wrought,
A rampart-wall of honest hearts manned by one holy thought.
No need of gun or grenadier to guard them where they dwell,
For 'tis the people's self becomes their glorious citadel.
These are the throneless kings that lead the chainless nations on,
The mighty dynasts who have reigned like Tell and Washington.
Then force, and fraud its demon-twin, together fall and cease,
And tyranny's war-glory dies beneath the feet of Peace,—
While settling down through priestish graves, 'mid mosses grim and gray,
Dim Superstition buries these, and sighs and sinks away.
Then Fear shall aye be banished hence, and Love resume its place,
And Earth become one country vast, and man one household race,
And God, a household God, who dwells in every home and heart,
Not sought alone in piles of stone, encaged by monkish art!
The watchers on the mountain tops are looking o'er the land,
The world is all expectant for the first grey streak of light,
Where morning's gentlest breath shall break the mighty walls of night;
Then through that riven rampart's path what glorious rays shall pour,
When all its fiery lances rush in golden torrents o'er!
One little cloud of all that mass need but be forced away,
And night's old palsied hand no more can stem the march of day.
111
Down-scattering with her mighty hand old mouldering tyrannies.
Needs but one timeworn prejudice be given to the wind,
And soon successive truths will pass the gateway of the mind;
For fallacy is ever placed upon perdition's brink,
And sinks the ground beneath her feet, when men begin to think.
Oh! soon across the darkened earth that glorious morn will rise,
That takes the shadow from the heart, the dew-drop from the eyes;
Then man shall cease for aye to bend before each sceptred clod,
The knee that God made pliant but to bend unto a God;
Then, leading with a father's sway our mighty brotherhood,
By “right divine,” co-equally, the wise shall guide the good,—
112
More safe their open threshold prove, than tyrants' sentried gate.
Who dares assail their power must scale a wall that God has wrought,
A rampart-wall of honest hearts manned by one holy thought.
No need of gun or grenadier to guard them where they dwell,
For 'tis the people's self becomes their glorious citadel.
These are the throneless kings that lead the chainless nations on,
The mighty dynasts who have reigned like Tell and Washington.
Then force, and fraud its demon-twin, together fall and cease,
And tyranny's war-glory dies beneath the feet of Peace,—
113
Dim Superstition buries these, and sighs and sinks away.
Then Fear shall aye be banished hence, and Love resume its place,
And Earth become one country vast, and man one household race,
And God, a household God, who dwells in every home and heart,
Not sought alone in piles of stone, encaged by monkish art!
The watchers on the mountain tops are looking o'er the land,
The midnight hour is passing—the sunrise is at hand.
The midnight hour is passing—the sunrise is at hand.
| The Battle-Day and Other Poems | |