Transcriber’s note: The original text titled this poem here as “Aunt Patty’s Thanksgiving” and in the table of contents as “Aunt Betty’s Thanksgiving.” This discrepancy is intentionally preserved.
Now Cleo, fly round! Father’s going to townWith a load o’ red russets, to meet Captain Brown;The mortgage is due, and it’s got to be paid,And father is troubled to raise it, I’m ’fraid!We’ve had a bad year, with the drouth and the blightThe harvest was short, and the apple crop light;The early hay cutting scarce balanced the cost,And the heft o’ the after-math’s ruined with frost;A gloomy Thanksgiving to-morrow will be—But the ways o’ the Lord are not our ways, ah me!
But His dear will be done! If we jest do our best,And trust Him, I guess He’ll take care o’ the rest;I’d not mind the worry, nor stop to repine,Could I take father’s share o’ the burden with mine!He is grieving, I know, tho’ he says not a word,But, last night, ’twixt the waking and dreaming, I heardThe long, sobbing sighs of a strong man in pain,And I knew he was fretting for Robert again!Our Robert, our first-born: the comfort and stayOf our age, when we two should grow feeble and gray;What a baby he was! with his bright locks, and eyesJust as blue as a bit o’ the midsummer skies!And in youth—why, it made one’s heart lightsome and gladLike a glimpse o’ the sun, just to look at the lad!
But the curse came upon him—the spell of unrest—Like a voice calling out of the infinite West—And Archibald Grace, he was going—and soWe gave Rob our blessing, and jest let him go!
There, Cleo, your father is out at the gate:Be spry as a cricket; he don’t like to wait!Here’s the firkin o’ butter, as yellow as gold—And the eggs, in this basket—ten dozen all told.Tell father be sure and remember the tea—And the spice and the yard o’ green gingham for me;And the sugar for baking:—and ask him to goTo the office—there might be a letter, you know!
May Providence go with your father to town,And soften the heart o’ this rich Captain Brown.He’s the stranger that’s buying the Sunnyside place,We all thought was willed to poor Archibald Grace,Along with the mortgage that’s jest falling due,And that father allowed Archie Grace would renew;And, Cleo, I reckon that father will sellThe Croft, and the little real Alderney, Bel.You raised her, I know; and it’s hard she must go;But father will pay every dollar we owe;It’s his way, to be honest and fair as the day;And he always was dreadfully set in his way.
I try to find comfort in thinking, my dear,That things would be different if Robert was here;I guess he’d a stayed but for Archibald Grace.And helped with the chores and looked after the place;But Archie, he heard from that Eben Carew,And went wild to go off to the gold-diggings, too;And so they must up and meander out West,And now they are murdered—or missing, at best—Surprised by that bloody, marauding “Red Wing,”’Way out in the Yellowstone country, last spring.
No wonder, Cleora, I’m getting so gray!I grieve for my lost darling day after day;And, Cleo, my daughter, don’t mind if it’s true,But I reckon I’ve guessed about Archie and you!And the Lord knows our burdens are grievous to bear,But there’s still a bright edge to my cloud of despair,And somehow I hear, like a tune in my head:“The boys are coming! The boys aren’t dead!”
So to-morrow, for dear father’s sake, we will tryTo make the day seem like Thanksgivings gone by;And tho’ we mayn’t see where Thanksgiving comes in,Things were never so bad yet as things might a-been.But it’s nigh time the kettle was hung on the crane,And somebody’s driving full tilt up the lane—
For the land’s sake! Cleora, you’re dropping that trayO’ blue willow tea-cups! What startled you? Hey?You’re white as a ghost—Why, here’s father from town!And who are those men, daughter, helping him down?Run! open the door! There’s a whirr in my head,And the tune’s getting louder—“The boys aren’t dead!”Cleora! That voice—it is Robert!—O, Lord!I have leaned on Thy promise, and trusted Thy word,And out of the midst of great darkness and nightThy mercy has led me again to the light!
Beneath the solemn stars that lightThe dread infinitudes of night,Mid wintry solitudes that lieWhere lonely Hecla’s toweling pyreReddens an awful space of skyWith Thor’s eternal altar fire!Worn with the fever of unrest,And spent with years of eager quest,Beneath the vaulted heaven they stood,Pale, haggard eyed, of garb uncouth,The seekers of the Hidden Good,The searchers for Eternal Truth!
From fiery Afric’s burning sands,From Asia’s hoary templed lands,From the pale borders of the North,From the far South—the fruitful West,O, long ago each journeyed forth,Led hither by one glorious quest!And each, with pilgrim staff and shoon,Bore on his scrip a mystic rune,Some maxim of his chosen creed,By which, with swerveless rule and line,He shaped his life in word and deedTo ends heroic and divine!
Around their dreary winter worldThe great ice-kraken dimly curledThe white seas of the frozen zone;And like a mighty lifted shieldThe hollow heavens forever shoneOn gleaming fiord and pathless field!Behind them, in the nether deep,The central fires, that never sleep,Grappled and rose, and fell again;And with colossal shock and throeThe shuddering mountain rent in twainHer garments of perpetual snow!
Then Aba Seyd, grave-eyed and grand,Stood forth with lifted brow and hand;Kingly of height, of mien sublime,Like glorious Saul among his peers,With matchless wisdom for all timeGleaned from the treasure house of years;His locks rose like an eagle’s crest,His gray beard stormed on cheek and breast,His silvery voice sonorous rang,As when, exulting in the fray,Where lances hissed and trumpets sang,He held the Bedouin hordes at bay.
“Lo! Here we part: henceforth aloneWe journey to the goal unknown;But whatsoever paths we find,The ties of fellowship shall bindOur constant souls; and soon or late—We laboring still in harmony—The grand results for which we waitShall crown the mighty years to be!Now scoffed at, baffled, and beset,We grope in twilight darkness yet,We who would found the age of gold,Based on the universal good,And forge the links that yet shall holdThe world in common Brotherhood!
“O, comrades of the Mystic Quest!Who seek the Highest and the Best!Where’er the goal for which we strive—Whate’er the knowledge we may win—This truth supreme shall live and thrive,’Tis love that makes the whole world kin!The love sublime and purified,That puts all dross of self asideTo live for others—to upholdBefore our own a brother’s cause:This is the master power shall mouldThe nobler customs, higher laws!
“Then shall all wars, all discords cease,And, rounded to perpetual peace,The bounteous years shall come and goUnvexed; and all humanity,Nursed to a loftier type, shall growLike to that image undefiled,That fair reflex of Deity,Who, first, beneath the morning skiesAnd glowing palms of paradise,A God-like man, awoke and smiled!”* * * * Like some weird strain of music, spentIn one full chord, the sweet voice ceased;A faint white glow smote up the east,Like wings uplifting—and a cryOf winds went forth, as if the nightBeneath the brightening firmamentHad voiced, in hollow prophecy,The affirmation: “By and by!”
The floods were out. Far as the boundOf sight was one stupendous roundOf flat and sluggish crawling water!As, from a slowly drowning rise,She looked abroad with startled eyes,The engineer’s intrepid daughter.Far as her straining eyes could see,The seething, swoolen TombigbeeOutspread his turbulent yellow tide;His angry currents swirled and surgedO’er leagues of fertile lands submerged,And ruined hamlets, far and wide.
Along a swell of higher ground,Still, like a gleaming serpent, woundThe heavy graded iron trail;But, inch by inch, the overflowDragged down the road bed, till the slowBack-water crept across the rail.And where the ghostly trestle spannedA stretch of marshy bottom-land,The stealthy under current gnawedAt sunken pile, and massive pier,And the stout bridge hung airily whereShe sullen dyke lay deep and broad.
Above the hollow, droning soundOf waves that filled the watery round,She heard a distant shout and din—The levees of the upper landHad crumbled like a wall of sand,And the wild floods were pouring in!She saw the straining dyke give way—The quaking trestle reel and sway.Yet hold together, bravely, still!She saw the rushing waters drownThe piers, while ever sucking downThe undermined and treacherous “fill!”
Her strong heart hammered in her breast,As o’er a distant woody crestA dim gray plume of vapor trailed;And nearer, clearer, by and by,Like the faint echo of a cry,A warning whistle shrilled and wailed!Her frightened gelding reared and plunged,As the doomed trestle rocked and lunged—The keen lash scored his silken hide:“Come, Bayard! We must reach the bridgeAnd cross to yonder higher ridge—For thrice an hundred lives we ride!”
She stooped and kissed his tawny mane,Sodden with flecks of froth and rain;Then put him at the surging flood!Girth deep the dauntless gelding sank,The tide hissed round his smoking flank,But straight for life or death she rode!The wide black heavens yawned again,Down came the torrent rushing rain—The icy river clutched her!Shrill in her ears the waters sang,Strange fires from the abysses sprang,The sharp sleet stung like whip and spur!
Her yellow hair, blown wild and wide,Streamed like a meteor o’er the tide;Her set white face yet whiter grew,As lashed by furious flood and rain,Still for the bridge, with might and main,Her gallant horse swam, straight and true!They gained the track, and slowly creptTimber by timber, torrents swept,Across the boiling hell of water—Till past the torn and shuddering bridgeHe bore her to the safer ridge,The engineer’s intrepid daughter!
The night was falling wild and black,The waters blotted out the track;She gave her flying horse free rein,For full a dreadful mile awayThe lonely wayside station lay,And hoarse above his startled neighShe heard the thunder of the train!“What if they meet this side the goal?”She thought with sick and shuddering soul;For well she knew what doom awaitedA fell mischance—a step belated—The grinding wheels, the yawning dyke—Sure death for her—for them—alike!
Like danger-lamps her blue eyes glowed,As thro’ the whirling gloom she rode,Her laboring breath drawn sharply in;Pitted against yon rushing wheelsWere tireless grit and trusty heels,And with God’s favor they might win!And soon along the perilous lineFlamed out the lurid warning sign,While round her staggering horse the crowdSurged with wild cheers and plaudits loud.—And this is how, thro’ flood and rain,Brave Kate McCarthy saved the train!
With leagues of wasteful water ringed about,And wrapped in sheeted foam from base to peak,A sheer, stupendous monolith, wrought outBy the slow, ceaseless labor of the deeps,In awful isolation, old as Time,The gray, forbidding Rock of Skidloe stands—Breasting the wild incursions of the North—The grim antagonist of a thousand waves!
Far to the leeward, faintly drawn againstA dim perspective of perpetual storms,A frowning line of black basaltic cliffsBaffles the savage onset of the surf.But, rolled in cloud and foam, old Skidloe liftsHis dark, defiant head forever midThe shock and thunder of contending tides,And fixed, immovable as fate, hurls backThe rude, eternal protest of the sea!
Colossal waters coil about his feet,Deep rooted in the awful gulfs betweenThe measureless walls of mountain chains submerged;An infinite hoarse murmur wells from allHis dim mysterious crypts and corridors:The inarticulate mutterings that voiceThe ancient secret of the mighty main.
In all the troubled round of sea and air,No glimpse of brightness lends the vivid zestOf life and light to the harsh monotoneOf gray tumultuous flood and spectral sky;Far off the black basaltic crags are heavedAgainst the desolate emptiness of space;But no sweet beam of sunset ever fallsAthwart old Skidloe’s cloudy crest—no softAnd wistful glory of awakened dawnLays on his haggard brows a touch of grace.Sometimes a lonely curlew skims acrossThe seething torment of the dread abyss,And, shrieking, dips into the mist beyond;But, solitary and unchanged for aye,He towers amid the rude revolt of waves,His stony face seamed by a thousand years,And wrinkled with a million furrows, wornBy the slow drip of briny tears, that creepAlong his hollow cheek. His hidden handsDrag down the drowned and tossing wrecks that driveBefore the fury of the Northern gales,And mute, inscrutable as destiny,He keeps his sombre secrets as of yore.
The slow years come and go; the seasons dawnAnd fade, and pass to swell the solemn ranksOf august ages in the march of Time.But changeless still, amid eternal change,Old Skidloe bears the furious brunt of allThe warring elements that grapple midThe mighty insurrections of the sea!Gray desolation, ancient solitude,Brood o’er his wide, unrestful water world,While grim, unmoved, forbidding as of yore,He wraps his kingly altitudes aboutWith the fierce blazon of the thunder cloud;And on his awful and uplifted browsThe red phylactery of the lightning shines;And throned amid eternal wars, he dwells,His dread regality hedged round by allThe weird magnificence of exultant storms!
“O life! O, vailed destiny!”She cried—“within thy hidden handsWhat recompense is waiting meBeyond these naked wintry sands?For lo! The ancient legend saith:‘Take ye a rose at Christmas tide,And pin thereto your loving faith,And cast it to the waters wide;Whate’er the wished-for guerdon be,God’s hand will guide it safe to thee!’
“I pace the river’s icy brink,This dreary Christmas Eve,” she said,“And watch the dying sunset sinkFrom pallid gold to ashen red.My eyes are hot with weary tears,I heed not how the winds may blow,While thinking of the vanished yearsBeyond the stormy heave and throeOf yon far sea-line, dimly curledAround my lonely island-world.
“The winds make melancholy moan;I hear the river flowing by,As, heavy-hearted and alone,Beneath the wild December sky,I take the roses from my breast—White roses of the Holy Rood—And, filled with passionate unrest,I cast them to the darkening flood.O, roses, drifting out to sea,Bring my lost treasures back to me!
“Bring back the joyous hopes of youth!The faith that knew no flaw of doubt!The spotless innocence and truthThat clothed my maiden soul about!Bring back the grace of girlhood gone,The rapturous zest of other days!The dew and freshness of the dawn,That lay on life’s untrodden ways—The glory that will shine no moreFor me on earthly sea or shore!
“Call back the sweet home-joys of oldThat gladdened many a Christmas-tide—The faces hidden in the mould,The dear lost loves that changed or died!O, gentle spirits, gone before,Come, from the undiscovered lands,And bring the precious things of yoreTo aching heart and empty hands;Keep all the wealth of earth and sea,But give my lost ones back to me.
“Vain are my tears, my pleadings vain!O, roses, drifting with the tide,To me shall never come againThe glory of the years that died!Thro’ gloom and night, sweet flowers, drift on—Drift out upon the unknown sea;Into the holy Christmas dawnBear this impassioned prayer for me:O, turn, dear Lord, my heart awayFrom things that are but for a day;Teach me to trust thy loving will,And bear life’s heavy crosses still.”
The following sketch is principally from the Third Volume of Biographical Sketches of Eminent Americans.
“Nathan Covington Brooks, the youngest son of John and Mary Brooks, was born in West Nottingham, Cecil county, Maryland, on the 12th of August, 1809. His education was commenced at the West Nottingham Academy, then under the charge of Rev. James Magraw, D.D., and subsequently he graduated as Master of Arts, at St. John’s College, Annapolis, Md. His thesis was a poem on the World’s Changes. Diligent and persevering in his studies, his rapid progress and high attainments won the regard of his teachers, while his amiable manners endeared him to his classmates. While his principal delight was in the study of the Classics, he devoted much attention to mathematics and other studies. Like many other writers, some of his earliest efforts were in verse. Indeed it may be said of him, as of Pope, that he ‘lisped in rhyme.’
Though we have no Shakespeares, or Miltons, or Byrons, there is no scarcity of literary amateurs who, in their hours of recreation and dalliance with letters, betake themselves to poetry as an amusement for their leisure hours or a solace amid the rude trials of life. High in the rank of these writers of occasional poetry stands Dr. Brooks. Nature, in all her forms, he has made the subject of close observation and profound reflection, and in looking at Nature, he has used his own eyes and not the spectacles of other writers. He has a keen relish for the beautiful, and a deep sympathy with the truthful and the good. His taste, formed on the finest models, has been ripened and chastened by a patient study of the great monuments of antiquity. His thoughts seem to be the natural development of his mind; and his words the unstudied expression of his thoughts. The music of his verse reminds us sometimes of the soft cadences of Hemans, and not unfrequently of the mournful harp of Byron.”
In his eighteenth year he was a contributor of prose and poetry to theMinerva and Emerald, andSaturday Post, of Baltimore; subsequently contributed toThe Wreath,Monument,Athenæum, andProtestant, of the same city. In 1830 he editedThe Amethyst, an annual and soon after became a contributor of prose and poetry toAtkinson’s Casket, andThe Lady’s Book, of which latter he was the first paid contributor; wrote forBurton’s Magazine, andGraham’s,The New York Mirror,The Ladies’ Companion, and theHome Journal; and the following annuals,The Gift,The Christian Keepsake, andThe Religious Souvenir. He contributed also prose and poetry toThe Southern Literary Messenger,The Southern Quarterlyof New Orleans,The London Literary Gazette, andThe London Court Journal.
In 1837 Marshall, of Philadelphia, published a volume of his religious poems, entitled “Scriptural Anthology.” In 1840, Kay Brothers, of Philadelphia, published a volume of his prose and poetry, under the name of “The Literary Amaranth.” Besides these Dr. Brooks has edited a series of Greek and Latin classics, has written four volumes on religious subjects, one on “Holy Week,” just issued from the press, “The History of the Mexican War,” which was translated into German, “Battles of the Revolution,” etc.
In his literary career he has won three prizes that will be cherished as heirlooms in the family, a silver pitcher, for the best prose tale, entitled “The Power of Truth,” and two silver goblets, one a prize for the poem entitled “The Fall of Superstition,” the other a prize for a poem, “The South-sea Islander,” for which fifteen of our leading poets were competitors.
Though in his leisure moments Dr. Brooks has achieved so much in literature, his profession has been that of an educator, in which he has had the mental training of males and females to the number of five or six thousand. In 1824, he was appointed to the village school in Charlestown, Cecil county, in 1826, established a private school in Baltimore city; in 1831 was elected principal of the Franklin Academy, Reistertown, and in 1834 principal of the Brookesville Academy, Montgomery county, both endowed by the State; in 1839, he was unanimously elected over forty-five applicants as principal of the Baltimore City High School which position he held for nine years, until asked by the Trustees of the Baltimore Female College, in 1848, to accept the organization of the institution. The College is chartered and endowed by the State of Maryland, has graduated over three hundred young ladies, and trained and sent forth two hundred teachers. Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, conferred the degree of LL.D., on Professor Brooks in 1859, and in 1863 his name was presented, with others, for the presidency of Girard College. Though Major Smith, a Philadelphian of an influential family, was elected president, Professor Brooks received more votes than any of the other competitors. In 1827, he married Mary Elizabeth, eldest daughter of William Gobright, a lady of great beauty and excellence, and in 1867, married Christiana Octavia, youngest daughter of Dr. William Crump, of Virginia. Of the former union four sons and two daughters are living; of the latter union a son. The following poems are selected as specimens of his style.
The flowers you reared repose in sleepWith folded bells where the night-dews weep,And the passing wind, like a spirit, grievesIn a gentle dirge through the sighing leaves.The sun will kiss the dew from the rose,Its crimson petals again unclose,And the violet ope the soft blue rayOf its modest eye to the gaze of day;But when will the dews and shades that lieSo cold and damp on thy shrouded eye,Be chased from the folded lids, my child,And thy glance break forth so sweetly wild?
The fawn, thy partner in sportive play,Has ceased his gambols at close of day,And his weary limbs are relaxed and freeIn gentle sleep by his favorite tree.He will wake ere long, and the rosy dawnWill call him forth to the dewy lawn,And his sprightly gambols be seen again,Through the parted boughs and upon the plain;But oh! when will slumber cease to holdThe limbs that lie so still and cold?When wilt thou come with thy tiny feetThat bounded my glad embrace to meet?
The birds you tended have ceased to sing,And shaded their eyes with the velvet wing,And, nestled among the leaves of the trees,They are rocked to rest by the cool night breeze.The morn will the chains of sleep unbind,And spread their plumes to the freshening wind;And music from many a warbler’s mouthWill honey the grove, like the breath of the south;But when shall the lips, whose lightest wordWas sweeter far than the warbling bird,Their rich wild strain of melody pour?They are mute! they are cold! they will ope no more!
When heaven’s great bell in a tone sublimeShall sound the knell of departed Time,And its echoes pierce with a voice profoundThrough the liquid sea and the solid ground,Thou wilt wake, my child, from the dreamless sleepWhose oblivious dews thy senses steep,And then will the eye, now dim, grow brightIn the glorious rays of Heaven’s own light,The limbs, that an angel’s semblance bore,Bloom ’neath living trees on the golden shore,And the voice that’s hushed, God’s praises hymn’Mid the bands of the harping seraphim.
The fields have faded, the groves look dead,The summer is gone, its beauty has fled,And there breathes a low and plaintive soundFrom each stream and solemn wood around.In unison with their tone, my breastWith a spirit of kindred gloom is opprest,And the sighs burst forth as I gaze, the while,On the crumbling stone of the reverend pile,And list to the sounds of the moaning windAs it stirs the old ivy-boughs entwined,—Sighs mournful along through chancel and nave,And shakes the loose panel and architrave,While the mouldering branches and withered leavesAre rustling around the moss-grown eaves.
But sadder than these, thou emblem of love,Thy moanings fall, disconsolate dove,In the solemn eve on my pensive ear,As the wailing sounds of a requiem drear,As coming from crumbling altar stoneThey are borne on the winds in a dirge-like tone,Like the plaintive voice of the broken-heartedO’er hopes betrayed and joys departed.
Why dost thou pour thy sad complaintOn the evening winds from a bosom faint?As if thou hadst come from the shoreless mainOf a world submerged to the ark again,With a weary heart to lament and broodO’er the wide and voiceless solitude.Dost thou mourn that the gray and mouldering doorSwings back to the reverent crowd no more?That the tall and waving grass defilesThe well-worn flags of the crowdless aisles?That the wild fox barks, and the owlet screamsWhere the organ and choir pealed out their themes?
Dost thou mourn, that from sacred desk the wordOf life and truth is no longer heard?That the gentle shepherd, who to pasture boreHis flock, has gone, to return no more?Dost thou mourn for the hoary-headed sageWho has sunk to the grave ’neath the weight of age?For the vanquished pride of manhood’s bloom?For the light of youth quenched in the tomb?For the bridegroom’s fall? For the bride’s decay?That pastor and people have passed away,And the tears of night their graves bedewBy the funeral cypress and solemn yew?
Or dost thou mourn that the house of GodHas ceased to be a divine abode?That the Holy Spirit, which erst did broodO’er the Son of Man by Jordan’s flood,In thine own pure form to the eye of sense,From its resting place has departed hence,And twitters the swallow, and wheels the batO’er the mercy-seat where its presence sat?I have marked thy trembling breast, and heardWith a heart responsive thy tones, sweet bird,And have mourned, like thee, of earth’s fairest thingsThe blight and the loss—Oh! had I thy wings,From a world of woe to the realms of the blestI would flee away, and would be at rest.
The star of Bethlehem rose, and truth and lightBurst on the nations that reposed in night,And chased the Stygian shades with rosy smileThat spread from Error’s home, the land of Nile.No more with harp and sistrum Music callsTo wanton rites within Astarte’s halls,The priests forget to mourn their Apis slain,And bear Osiris’ ark with pompous train;Gone is Serapis, and Anubis fled,And Neitha’s unraised vail shrouds Isis’ prostrate head.Where Jove shook heaven when the red bolt was hurled,Neptune the sea—and Phoebus lit the world;Where fair-haired naiads held each silver flood,A fawn each field—a dryad every wood—The myriad gods have fled, and God aloneAbove their ruined fanes has reared his throne.[A]No more the augur stands in snowy shroudTo watch each flitting wing and rolling cloud,Nor Superstition in dim twilight weavesHer wizard song among Dodona’s leaves;Phoebus is dumb, and votaries crowd no moreThe Delphian mountain and the Delian shore,And lone and still the Lybian Ammon stands,His utterance stifled by the desert sands.No more in Cnydian bower, or Cyprian groveThe golden censers flame with gifts to Love;The pale-eyed Vestal bends no more and praysWhere the eternal fire sends up its blaze;Cybele hears no more the cymbal’s sound,The Lares shiver the fireless hearthstone round;And shatter’d shrine and altar lie o’erthrown,Inscriptionless, save where Oblivion loneHas dimly traced his name upon the mouldering stone.Medina’s sceptre is despoiled of might—Once stretched o’er realms that bowed in pale affright;The Moon that rose, as waved the scimetarWhere sunk the Cross amid the storm of war,Now pale and dim, is hastening to its wane,The sword is broke that spread the Koran’s reign,And soon will minaret and swelling domeFall, like the fanes of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.On other lands has dawned immortal day,And Superstition’s clouds have rolled away;O’er Gallia’s mounts and on Iona’s shoreThe Runic altars roll their smoke no more;Fled is the Druid from his ancient oak,His harp is mute—his magic circle broke;And Desolation mopes in Odin’s cellsWhere spirit-voices called to join the feast of shells.O’er Indian plains and ocean-girdled islesWith brow of beauty Truth serenely smiles;The nations bow, as light is shed abroad,And break their idols for the living God.Where purple streams from human victims runAnd votive flesh hangs quivering in the sun,Quenched are the pyres, as shines salvation’s star—Grim Juggernaut is trembling on his carAnd cries less frequent come from Ganges’ wavesWhere infant forms sink into watery graves.Where heathen prayers flamed by the cocoa treeThey supplicate the Christians’ DeityAnd chant in living aisles the vesper hymnWhere giant god-trees rear their temples dim.Still speed thy truth!—still wave thy spirit sword,Till every land acknowledge Thee the Lord,And the broad banner of the Cross, unfurledIn triumph, wave above a subject world.And here O God! where feuds thy church divide—The sectary’s rancor, and the bigot’s pride—Melt every heart, till all our breasts enshrineOne faith, one hope, one love, one zeal divine,And, with one voice, adoring nations callUpon the Father and the God of all.
Footnote A: The Pantheon that was built to all the gods was transformed into a Christian temple.
O sweeter than the breath of southern windWith all its perfumes is the whisper’d prayerFrom infant lips, and gentler than the hind,The feet that bearThe heaven-directed youth in wisdom’s pathway fair.
And thou, the early consecrate, like flowersDidst shed thy incense breath to heaven abroad;And prayer and praise the measure of thy hours,The desert trodCompanionless, alone, save of the mighty God.
As Phosphor leads the kindling glory on,And fades, lost in the day-god’s bright excess,So didst thou in Redemption’s coming dawn,Grow lustreless,The fading herald of the Sun of Righteousness.
But when the book of life shall be unsealed,And stars of glory round the throne divineIn all their light and beauty be revealed,The brightest thineOf all the hosts of earth with heavenly light shall shine.
Ibi tu calentemDebita sparges lacryma favillamVatis amici.—Horace.
Ibi tu calentemDebita sparges lacryma favillamVatis amici.
—Horace.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, an eminent English poet, while sailing in the Mediterranean sea, in 1822, was drowned off the coast of Tuscany in a squall which wrecked the boat in which he had embarked. Two weeks afterwards his body was washed ashore. The Tuscan quarantine regulations at that time required that whatever came ashore from the sea should be burned. Shelley’s body was accordingly placed on a pyre and reduced to ashes, in the presence of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, who are the “brother bards” referred to in the last stanza of the poem.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, an eminent English poet, while sailing in the Mediterranean sea, in 1822, was drowned off the coast of Tuscany in a squall which wrecked the boat in which he had embarked. Two weeks afterwards his body was washed ashore. The Tuscan quarantine regulations at that time required that whatever came ashore from the sea should be burned. Shelley’s body was accordingly placed on a pyre and reduced to ashes, in the presence of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, who are the “brother bards” referred to in the last stanza of the poem.
Beneath the axle of departing dayThe weary waters on the horizon’s vergeBlush’d like the cheek of children tired in play,As bore the surgeThe poet’s wasted form with slow and mournful dirge.
On Via Reggio’s surf-beaten strandThe late-relenting sea, with hollow moanGave back the storm-tossed body to the land,As if in toneOf sorrow it bewailed the deed itself had done.
There laid upon his bed of shells—aroundThe moon and stars their lonely vigils kept;While in their pall-like shades the mountains boundAnd night beweptThe bard of nature as in death’s cold arms he slept.
The tuneful morn arose with locks of light—The ear that drank her music’s call was chill;The eye that shone was sealed in endless night,And cold and stillThe pulses stood that ’neath her gaze were wont to thrill.
With trees e’en like the sleeper’s honors seredAnd prows of galleys, like his bosom riven,The melancholy pile of death was rearedAloft to heaven,And on its pillared height the corpse to torches given.
From his meridian throne the eye of dayBeheld the kindlings of the funeral fire,Where, like a war-worn Roman chieftain, layUpon his pyreThe poet of the broken heart and broken lyre.
On scented wings the sorrowing breezes cameAnd fanned the blaze, until the smoke that rushedIn dusky volumes upward, lit with flameAll redly blushedLike Melancholy’s sombre cheek by weeping flushed.
And brother bards upon that lonely shoreWere standing by, and wept as brightly burnedThe pyre, till all the form they loved before,To ashes turned,With incense, wine, and tears was sprinkled and inurned.
Let the classic pilgrim rove,By Egeria’s fount to stand,Or sit in Vancluse’s grot of love,Afar from his native land;Let him drink of the crystal tidesOf the far-famed Hippocrene,Or list to the waves where Peneus glidesHis storied mounts between:But dearer than aught ’neath a foreign skyIs the fount of my native dell,It has fairer charms for my musing eyeFor my heart a deeper spell.
Dear fount! what memories rushThrough the heart and wildered brain,As beneath the old beech I list to the gushOf thy sparkling waves again;For here in a fairy dreamWith friends, my childhood’s hoursGlided on like the flow of thy beautiful stream,And like it were wreathed with flowers:Here we saw on thy waves, from the shade,The dance of the sunbeams at noon;Or heard, half-afraid, the deep murmurings madeIn thy cavernous depths, ’neath the moon.
I have heard thy waves awayFrom thy scenes, dear fount, apart;And have felt the play, in life’s fevered day,Of thy waters through my heart;But oh! thou art not the same:Youth’s friends are gone—I am lone—Thy beeches are carved with many a nameNow graved on the funeral stone.As I stand and muse, my tearsAre troubling the stream whose wavesThe lullaby sang to their infantile years,And now murmur around their graves.
Within Philistia’s princely hallIs held a glorious festival,And on the fluctuant ether floatsThe music of the timbrel’s notes,While living waves of voices gush,Echoing among the distant hills,Like an impetuous torrent’s rushWhen swollen by a thousand rills.
The stripling and the man of years,Warriors with twice ten thousand spears,Peasants and slaves and husbandmen,—The shepherd from his mountain glen,Vassal, and chief arrayed in goldAnd purple robes—Philistines allAre drawn together to beholdTheir mighty foeman held in thrall.
Loud pealed the accents of the hornUpon the air of the clear morn,And deafening rose the mingled shout,Cleaving the air from that wild rout,As, guarded by a cavalcadeThe illustrious prisoner appearedAnd, ’mid the grove the dense spears made,His forehead like a tall oak reared.
He stood with brawny shoulders bare,And tossed his nervous arms in air—Chains, leathern thongs, and brazen bandsParted like wool within his hands;And giant trunks of gnarled oak,Splintered and into ribbons rent,Or by his iron sinews broke,Increased the people’s wonderment.
The amphitheatre, where stoodSpell-bound the mighty multitude,Rested its long and gilded wallsUpon two pillars’ capitals:His brawny arms, with labor spent,He threw around the pillars there,And to the deep blue firmamentLifted his sightless orbs in prayer.
Anon the columns move—they shake,Totter, and vacillate, and shake,And wrenched by giant force, come downLike a disrupted mountain’s crown,With cornice, frieze, and chapiter,Girder, and spangled dome, and wall,Ceiling of gold, and roof of fir,Crumbled in mighty ruin all.
Down came the structure—on the airUprose in wildest shrieks despair,Rolling in echoes loud and longAscending from the myriad throng:And Samson, with the heaps of deadPriest, vassal, chief, in ruin blent,Piled over his victorious headHis sepulchre and monument.
The day is spent, on the calm evening hours,Like whispered prayer, come nature’s sounds abroad,And with bowed heads the pure and gentle flowersShake from their censers perfume to their God;Thus would I bow the head and bend the knee,And pour my soul’s pure incense, Lord, to Thee.
Creator of my body, I adore,Redeemer of my soul, I worship Thee,Preserver of my being, I imploreThy light and power to guide and shelter me;Be Thou my sun, as life’s dark vale I tread,Be thou my shield to guard my infant head.
And when these eyes in dewy sleep shall close,Uplifted now in love to Thy great throne,In the defenceless hours of my repose,Father and God, oh! leave me not alone,But send thy angel minister’s to keepWith hovering wings their vigils while I sleep.