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(Excerpt)
O TIME! whose wing untiring sweeps the world! | |
| Still sounding onward in that stayless flight,— | |
| Unseen, yet mightily, as when first unfurled, | |
| In the young morning of creation’s light,— | |
| How hast thou shaken from thy pinion here, | 5 |
| Over the work of man thy storm of change! | |
| Where a whole people bends in prayer and tear, | |
| O’er memories beyond words,—so deep!—so strange! | |
| Where, as around some hallowed altar-place, | |
| We gather, to call back the glory of our days! | 10 |
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| Years, ye are reckless, as in pomp ye pass, | |
| With your dim company of Death and Woe,— | |
| Bowing a generation as the grass, | |
| Whose ranks scarce blossom ere they meet the blow | |
| That levels them to earth!—How stern ye tread | 15 |
| On your long pilgrimage to that far land, | |
| Where ye, in turn, bow with the shadowy dead,— | |
| Of things that joy us not the voiceless band! | |
| Yet as ye pass, how marked your footsteps fall | |
| On all that circles us,—from cradle to the pall! | 20 |
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| The hovel and the palace,—the loud hall, | |
| Where wealth holds holiday, in feast and song; | |
| And the gray cloister, with its echoes,—all | |
| Sound to thy pinions, as they swoop along, | |
| Insatiate Time!—Alike on mount and vale, | 25 |
| On the low cottage, and the cloudy tower, | |
| Is written still the melancholy tale | |
| Of thy unfaltering progress and thy power!— | |
| That power that owns not mercy or appeal, | |
| Stamping mortality with its eraseless seal. | 30 |
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| And here, where, hadst thou felt one thought of earth, | |
| Thy footsteps had fallen lightly, and thy hand | |
| Had lain with holier touch than marks the mirth | |
| With which it scars the pride of every land,— | |
| Here, where—as round arches of some fane | 35 |
| Virtue has made immortal—dull decay | |
| Has struggled yet with memory in vain, | |
| While lesser things of earth have passed away,— | |
| Here, as o’er temples of some heathen sky, | |
| Hast thou cast wide the shadow of thy revelry! | 40 |
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| Ruin is written on these sacred walls! | |
| It sounds with every footfall, and its tone, | |
| Like melancholy music, through these halls | |
| Echoes to every whisper, low, and lone! | |
| The voice of other years uplifts around, | 45 |
| And to our pilgrim spirit, as we tread, | |
| It comes like some remembered dream of sound | |
| From the unfathomed mansions of the dead! | |
| Ruin!—no other accent meets the ear! | |
| Time! frown no more on earth,—thy empirage is here! | 50 |
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| But thou rememberest while a world forgets,— | |
| Thy seal is stamped upon the hallowed place, | |
| Where, though a light is round that never sets, | |
| And memory lingers, measured by no days, | |
| With Freedom’s children,—hearts that cannot die!— | 55 |
| Yet does a people from its capitol | |
| Look with unstartled pulse on that decay! | |
| Hear the unheeded fragments as they fall, | |
| Nor ask what glory there may be to save | |
| The shrine to which it bows, from darkness and the grave! | 60 |
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| Great Father of thy country!—if ’t is given, | |
| Over its picture with an angel’s eye | |
| To gaze from the broad watch-towers of thy heaven,— | |
| How shall these blackening lines of apathy | |
| Strike on thy vision! Shall ingratitude | 65 |
| To one whose life a people did redeem, | |
| First strike thy spirit? While o’er wrongs they brood, | |
| Like hoarding misers o’er some golden dream, | |
| Sparing that noble justice, which no shame | |
| Can summon to obey,—and give the land to Fame? | 70 |
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| O look not,—look not from thy throne of stars | |
| Upon thy purchased world!—so bravely won! | |
| There is a shadow that its radiance mars, | |
| Deeper than the eclipse that drowns the sun! | |
| Look not upon thy country!—she has bowed | 75 |
| From that great pinnacle of glory down, | |
| Where thou didst place her, and a voice aloud | |
| Proclaims her loftier pride and beauty flown,— | |
| Look not upon thy country! until she | |
| Recalls, with kindling thought, her destiny and thee! | 80 |
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| I stood upon the threshold of that home | |
| Where he was gathered to his dreamless sleep! | |
| Above me rose no tower or sculptured dome, | |
| But a strange quietness that makes you weep | |
| Was round me like an atmosphere. I heard | 85 |
| That mocking of my footsteps through the hall, | |
| And faint returnings of each whispered word, | |
| Which on the listener like a trump will fall, | |
| Though humble be the home and hearth he tread, | |
| O’er which the desolating wings of Time have sped! | 90 |
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| I stood upon that threshold. The far voice | |
| Of the low, chanting winds was in my ear, | |
| And my heart leaped within me, as with joys, | |
| When I bethought me of past glories here, | |
| And seemed to read its story in that sound, | 95 |
| As syllabled by beings of the air, | |
| Who swept unseen on silent wings around, | |
| And held their ceaseless court of memory there! | |
| Spirits that sentinelled that quiet mount, | |
| And lingered as about some lone and magic fount. * * * * * | 100 |
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