| |
| ON the dark heights that overlook the Rhine, | |
| Flinging long shadows on the watery plains, | |
| Crowned with gray towers, and girdled by the vine, | |
| How little of the warlike past remains! | |
| |
| The castle walls are shattered, and wild-flowers | 5 |
| Usurp the crimson banner’s former sign. | |
| Where are the haughty Templars and their powers? | |
| Their forts are perished, but not so their shrine. | |
| |
| Like Memory veiled, Tradition sits and tells | |
| Her twilight histories of the olden time; | 10 |
| How few the records of those craggy dells | |
| But what recall some sorrow or some crime! | |
| |
| Of Europe’s childhood was the feudal age, | |
| When the world’s sceptre was the sword; and power, | |
| Unfit for human weakness, wrong, and rage, | 15 |
| Knew not that curb which waits a wiser hour. | |
| |
| Ill suited empire with a human hand; | |
| Authority needs rule, restraint, and awe; | |
| Order and peace spread gradual through the land, | |
| And force submits to a diviner law. | 20 |
| |
| A few great minds appear, and by their light | |
| The many find their way; truth after truth | |
| Doth starlike rise on depths of moral night, | |
| Though even now is knowledge in its youth. | |
| |
| Still as those ancient heights, which only bore | 25 |
| The iron harvest of the sword and spear, | |
| Are now with purple vineyards covered o’er, | |
| While cornfields fill the fertile valleys near: | |
| |
| Our moral progress has a glorious scope, | |
| Much has the Past by thought and labor done; | 30 |
| Knowledge and Peace pursue the steps of Hope, | |
| Whose noblest victories are yet unwon. | |
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