TO THE PAST. WONDROUS and awful are thy silent halls, There all is hushed and breathless, There sits drear Egypt, 'mid beleaguering sands, Half woman and half beast, The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands That once lit all the East; A dotard bleared and hoary, There Asser crouches o'er the blackened brands Still as a city buried 'neath the sea, Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun, Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun, And yet the eternal sorrow In their unmonarched eyes says day is done O realm of silence and of swart eclipse, Make signs to us and move their withered lips Yet all their sound and motion Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of ships And if sometimes a moaning wandereth If some grim shadow of thy living death And scares the world to error, The eternal life sends forth melodious breath Thy mighty clamors, wars, and world-noised deeds Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds Thy forms and creeds have vanished, Whatever of true life there was in thee Wield still thy bent and wrinkled empery, For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets see, Here, 'mid the bleak waves of our strife and care, Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share With all of brave and excellent and fair TO THE FUTURE. O LAND of Promise! from what Pisgah's height Its deeps on deeps of glory, that unfold And blazing precipices, Whence but a scanty leap it seems to heaven, Of thy more gorgeous realm, thy more unstinted blisses. O Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf Of thine exulting vision, Out of its very cares woos charms for peace and slumber. To thee the Earth lifts up her fettered hands Grows young and noble; unto thee the Oppressor Looks, and is dumb with awe; The eternal law, Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser, Its silent-footed steeds toward his palace goading. What promises hast thou for Poets' eyes, It throbs and leaps; The noble 'neath foul rags beholds his long-lost brother. To thee the Martyr looketh, and his fires Unlock their fangs and leave his spirit free; To thee the Poet 'mid his toil aspires, And grief and hunger climb about his knee, Welcome as children; thou upholdest The lone Inventor by his demon haunted; The Prophet cries to thee when hearts are coldest, And, gazing o'er the midnight's bleak abyss, Sees the drowsed soul awaken at thy kiss, And stretch its happy arms and leap up disenchanted. Thou bringest vengeance, but so loving-kindly |