A dotard bleared and hoary, There Asser crouches o'er the blackened brands

Of Asia's long-quenched glory.

Still as a city buried 'neath the

sea

Thy courts and temples stand; Idle as forms on wind - waved tapestry

Of saints and heroes grand, Thy phantasms grope and shiver, Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently

Into Time's gnawing river.

Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun,

Of their old godhead lorn, Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun,

Which they misdeem for morn; And yet the eternal sorrow In their unmonarched eyes says day is done

Without the hope of morrow.

O realm of silence and of swart eclipse,

The shapes that haunt thy gloom Make signs to us and move their withered lips

Across the gulf of doom; Yet all their sound and motion Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of ships

On the mirage's ocean.

And if sometimes a moaning wandereth

From out thy desolate halls, If some grim shadow of thy living death

Across our sunshine falls And scares the world to error, The eternal life sends forth melodious breath

To chase the misty terror.

Thy mighty clamours, wars, and world-noised deeds,

Are silent now in dust, Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds

Beneath some sudden gust;

Thy forms and creeds have vanished,

Tossed out to wither like unsightly weeds

From the world's garden banished.

Whatever of true life there was in thee

Leaps in our age's veins; Wield still thy bent and wrinkled empery,

And shake thine idle chains;-To thee thy dross is clinging, For us thy martyrs die, thy pro phets see,

Thy poets still are singing.

Here, 'mid the bleak waves of our strife and care,

Float the green Fortunate Isles, Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share

Our martyrdoms and toils; The present moves attended With all of brave and excellent and fair

That made the old time splendid.

TO THE FUTURE.

O LAND of Promise! from what Pisgah's height

Can I behold thy stretch of peaceful bowers,

Thy golden harvests flowing cut of sight,

Thy nestled homes and sun-illu mined towers?

Gazing upon the sunset's highheaped gold,

Its crags of opal and of chrysolite,. Its deeps on deeps of glory, that unfold

Still brightening abysses, And blazing precipices, Whence but a scanty leap it seems to heaven,

Sometimes a glimpse is given Of thy more gorgeous realm, thy more unstinted blisses.

O Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf

Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps;

Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf

And lure out blossoms; to thy bosom leaps,

As to a mother's, the o'erwearied heart,

Hearing far off and dim the toiling

mart,

The hurrying feet, the curses
without number,

And, circled with the glow
Elysian

Of thine exulting vision, Out of its very cares woos charms for peace and slumber.

To thee the earth lifts up her fettered hands

And cries for vengeance; with a pitying smile

Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands,

And her old woe-worn face a

little while

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, Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding,

And he can see the grim-eyed
Doom

From out the trembling gloom Its silent-footed steeds towards his palace goading.

What promises hast thou for Poets' eyes,

Aweary of the turmoil and the wrong!

To all their hopes what overjoyed replies;

What undreamed ecstasies for blissful song!

Thy happy plains no war-trump's brawling clangour

Disturbs, and fools the poor to hate the poor;

The humble glares not on the high

with anger;

Love leaves no grudge at less, no

greed for more;

In vain strives Self the godlike sense to smother;

From the soul's deeps 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

The guilty thinks it pity; taught by thee,

Fierce tyrants drop the scourges wherewith blindly

Their own souls they were scarring; conquerors see

With horror in their hands the accursed spear

That tore the meek One's side on
Calvary,

And from their trophies shrink with ghastly fear;

Thou, too, art the Forgiver, The beauty of man's soul to man revealing;

The arrows from thy quiver Pierce Error's guilty heart, but only pierce for healing.

I SAW the twinkle of white feet, I saw the flash of robes descending;

Before her ran an influence fleet, That bowed my heart like barley bending.

As, in bare fields, the searching bees

Pilot to blooms beyond our finding, It led me on, by sweet degrees Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding.

Those Graces were that seemed grim Fates;

With nearer love the sky leaned o'er me;

The long-sought secret's golden gates

On musical hinges swung before

me.

I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp Thrilling with godhood; like a lover

I sprang the proffered life to clasp ;

The beaker fell; the luck was over.

The earth has drunk the vintage up;

What boots it patch the goblet's splinters?

And I was sure to find Him there:

The temple I forsook,

And to the solitude

Allegiance paid; but Winter came and shook

The crown and purple from my wood;

His snows, like desert sands, with scornful drift,

Besieged the columned aisle and palace gate;

My Thebes, cut deep with many a solemn rift,

But epitaphed her own sepulchred state:

Then I remembered whom I went to seek,

And blessed blunt Winter for his counsel bleak.

Back to the world I turned, For Christ, I said, is King; So the cramped alley and the hut I spurned,

As far beneath His sojourning: 'Mid power and wealth I sought,

But found no trace of Him,

And all the costly offerings I had brought

With sudden rust and mould grew dim:

I found His tomb, indeed, where,

by their laws,

No more I knew the hovel bare and poor,

The gathered chips into a woodpile grew,

The broken morsel swelled to goodly store;

more I seek,

His throne is with the outcast and the weak.

THE PRESENT CRISIS.

WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic,

trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers,

feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime

Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe, When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro;

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognising start, Nation wildly looks at nation,

standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier mau-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill, Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,

And the slave, where'er he cowers,

feels his sympathies with God In hot tear-drops ebbing earth

ward, to be drunk up by the sod, Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;