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Translated by J. C. Mangan
DAY is exiled from the Land of Twilight; | |
| Leaf and flower are drooping in the wood, | |
| And the stars, as in a dark-stained skylight, | |
| Glass their ancient glory in the flood. | |
| Let me here—where night-winds through the yew sing, | 5 |
| Where the moon is chary of her beams— | |
| Consecrate an hour to mournful musing | |
| Over man and man’s delirious dreams. | |
| Pines and yews! envelop me in deeper, | |
| Dunner shadow, sombre as the grave; | 10 |
| While with moans, as of a troubled sleeper, | |
| Gloomily above my head ye wave. | |
| Let mine eye look down from hence on yonder | |
| Battle-plain, which night in pity dulls; | |
| Let my sad imagination ponder | 15 |
| Over Kunersdorf, that place of skulls! | |
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| Dost thou reillume these wastes, O Summer? | |
| Hast thou raised anew thy trampled bowers? | |
| Will the wild bee come again a hummer | |
| Here, within the houses of thy flowers? | 20 |
| Can thy sunbeams light, thy wild rains water, | |
| This Aceldama, this human soil, | |
| Since that dark day of redundant slaughter, | |
| When the blood of men flowed here like oil? | |
| Ah, yes! Nature, and thou, God of Nature, | 25 |
| Ye are ever bounteous! man alone,— | |
| Man it is whose frenzies desolate your | |
| World, and make it in sad truth his own. | |
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| Here saw Frederick fall his bravest warriors; | |
| Master of thy world, thou wert too great! | 30 |
| Heaven had need to ’stablish curbing-barriers | |
| ’Gainst thine inroads on the world of fate. | |
| O, could all thy coronals of splendor | |
| Dupe thy memory of that ghastly day! | |
| Could the Graces, could the Muses, render | 35 |
| Smooth and bright a corse-o’ercovered way! | |
| No! the accusing blood-beads ever trickle | |
| Down each red leaf of thy chaplet-crown: | |
| Men fell here as corn before the sickle,— | |
| Fell to aggrandize thy false renown! | 40 |
| Here the veteran dropped beside the springald, | |
| Here sank strength, and symmetry in line, | |
| Here crushed hope and gasping valor mingled; | |
| And, destroyer, the wild work was thine! | |
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| Whence is then this destiny funereal? | 45 |
| What this tide of being’s flow and ebb? | |
| Why rends death at will the fine material | |
| Of existence’s divinest web? | |
| Vainly ask me! Dim age calls to dim age! | |
| Answer, save an echo, cometh none: | 50 |
| Here stands man, of life in death an image, | |
| There, invisibly, the Living One! | |
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| Storm-clouds lower and muster in the distance; | |
| Girt with wrecks by sea and wrecks by land, | |
| Time, upon the far shore of existence, | 55 |
| Counts each wave-drop swallowed by the sand. | |
| Generation chases generation, | |
| Down-bowed by the all-worn, unworn yoke: | |
| No cessation, and no explication,— | |
| Birth, life, death!—the silence, flash, and smoke! | 60 |
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| Here, then, Frederick, formidable sovereign! | |
| Here, in presence of these whitened bones, | |
| Live as at length to cherish peace, and govern | |
| So that men may learn to reverence thrones! | |
| O, repudiate blood-bought fame, and hearken | 65 |
| To the myriad witness-voiced dead, | |
| Ere the sternness shall lay down, to darken, | |
| In the silentness, thy crownless head! | |
| Shudder at the dire phantasmagory | |
| Of the slain who perished here through thee; | 70 |
| And abhor all future wreaths of glory | |
| Gathered from the baleful cypress-tree! | |
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| Lofty souls disdain or dread the laurel; | |
| Hero is a mad exchange for man; | |
| Adders lurk in green spots: such the moral | 75 |
| Taught by history since her schools began. | |
| Cæsar slain, the victim of his trophies, | |
| Bajazet expiring in his cage, | |
| All the Cæsars, all the Sabre-Sophies, | |
| Preach the selfsame homily each age. | 80 |
| One drugged wine-cup dealt with Alexander; | |
| And his satraps scarce had shared afresh | |
| Half the empires of the world-commander, | |
| Ere the charnel-worms had shared his flesh! | |
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| Though the rill roll down from life’s green mountain | 85 |
| Bright through festal dells of youthful days, | |
| Soon the water of that glancing fountain | |
| In the vale of years must moult its rays. | |
| There the pilgrim on the bridge that, bounding | |
| Life’s domain, frontiers the wold of death, | 90 |
| Startled for the first time, hears resounding, | |
| From eternity, a voice that saith,— | |
| “All which is not pure shall melt and wither. | |
| Lo! the desolator’s arm is bare, | |
| And where man is, truth shall trace him thither, | 95 |
| Be he curtained round with gloom or glare.” | |
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