Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, Let not the land, once proud of him, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, But let its humbled sons, instead, A long lament, as for the dead, Of all we loved and honored, nought A fallen angel's pride of thought, All else is gone; from those great eyes When faith is lost, when honor dies, Then, pay the reverence of old days Walk backward, with averted gaze, THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.12 No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest No schoolmen, turning, in their classic quest, Simple of faith, and bearing in their hearts The love of man and God, THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS. Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient marts, Where the long shadows of the fir and pine And the deep heart of many a Norland mine Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa stands, With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled hands, 101 Where still, through vales of Grecian fable, stray And Beauty smiles, new risen from the spray, Where every tongue in Smyrna's mart resounds; From Malta's temples to the gates of Rome, And where the Alps gird round the Switzer's home Their vast, eternal wall; They paused not by the ruins of old time, They scanned no pictures rare, Nor lingered where the snow-locked mountaing climb The cold abyss of air! But unto prisons, where men lay in chains, To kings and courts forgetful of the pains Scattering sweet words, and quiet deeds of good, Along their way, like flowers, Or, pleading as Christ's freemen only could, Their single aim the purpose to fulfil Yet dream not, hence, the beautiful and old Who in the school of Christ had learned to hold Not less to them the breath of vineyards blown A life of beauty lends to all it sees And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies In sweet accordancy of praise and love, And sunset mountains wear in light above Sure stands the promise-ever to the meek Nor lose they Earth who, single-hearted, seek THE MEN OF OLD. WELL speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast! If, with dry eye, and cold, unloving heart, THE MEN OF OLD. 163 To all the beauty, power, and truth, behind. Not without reverent awe shouldst thou put by The cypress branches and the amaranth blooms Where, with clasped hands of prayer, upon their tombs The effigies of old confessors lie, God's witnesses; the voices of his will, Ileard in the slow march of the centuries still! Such from the terrors of the guilty drew The vassal's freedom and the poor man's due. St. Anselm (may he rest forevermore In Heaven's sweet peace!) forbade, of old, the sale Of men as slaves, and from the sacred pale "MAN IS WORTH MORE THAN TEMPLES!" he replied To such as came his holy work to chide. Most miserable sinners! do ye wish More than your Lord, and grudge his dying poor What your own pride and not his need requires? Souls, than these shining gauds, He values more; Mercy, not sacrifice, his heart desires!" O faithful worthies! resting far behind Much has been done for truth and human kind---- We need, methinks, the prophet-hero still, We need the souls of fire, the hearts of that old time! THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS. STILL in thy streets, oh Paris! doth the stain |