The Battle-Day and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

A child of the hard-hearted world was I,
And a worldling callous of heart,
And eager to play with the thoughtless and gay,
As the lightest and gayest, a part.

With a rich old name and a passionate thought,
The brightest or darkest to span:
But a struggle to fight for my natural right,
Of a place in the homes of man.

My father's house in the lordly square
Was cold in its solemn state,
And the sculptures rare that the old walls bear,
Looked down with a quiet hate.

118

My father's hall was a dark old spot,
With a dark old wood around,
And large quiet streams, like watery dreams,
On the verge of a haunted ground.

And the dwellers were filled in that solemn place,
With the trance of a sullen pride;
For the scutcheoned grace of a titled race
Is the armour the heart to hide!

Oh! the eye sees but half through a blazoned glass
The smile of the sunshiny earth,
And a laugh cannot pass through a marbly mass,
But it loses the pulse of its mirth.

And I thought: there beyond, in the broad, laughing world,
Men are happy in life's holiday!
And I passed one and all, through each old-fashioned hall,
And wandered away and away!

119

The trees, they shrunk back on my venturous track,
Old trees that my childhood had seen;
And the mansion looked dun in the light of the sun,
Like a grave its long grasses between.

But alas! for the change of what might have been fair,
And the gloom of what should have been bright!
The wind weltered by like one great swelling sigh,
And the noonday was darker than night.

For a giant had risen, all grisly and grim,
With his huge limbs loud-clattering and vast!
And he breathed his steam-breath through long channels of death,
Till the soul itself died on the blast.

And fibre and flesh he bound down on a rack,
Flame-girt on a factory-floor;
And the ghastly steel-corse plied its horrible force,
Still tearing the hearts of the poor.

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Like a wine-press for mammon to form a gold-draught,
It squeezed their best blood through its fangs,
And he quaffed at a breath the quick vintage of death,
While it foamed with humanity's pangs.

Oh! then I looked back for my cold, quiet home,
As the hell-bound looks back for the grave:
But I heard my soul cry, Who but cowards can fly,
While a tyrant yet tramples a slave?

Then I bound on my armour to face the rough world,
And I'm going to march with the rest,
Against tyrants to fight—for the sake of the right,
And, if baffled, to fall with the best.