But scarcely can he cross himself, or on | In Europe now, from sea to sea, The nations bless me as they reap." his good saint call, Before the sacrilegious flood o'erleaped the churchyard wall; And, ere a pater half was said, mid smoke and crackling glare, His island tower scarce juts its head above the wide despair. Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart stood up sublime; His first thought was for God above, his next was for his chime; Then I looked back along his path, The sky with burning towns flared red, Then marked I how each germ of truth I shouted, but he could not hear; Long to my straining ears the blast "I sow again the holy Past, HUNGER AND COLD. SISTERS two, all praise to you, You can speak the keenest word, Let sleek statesmen temporize; Policy you set at naught, In their traps you'll not be caught, Bolt and bar the palace door; You had never yet, I guess, Looking within myself, I note how thin A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate, Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin; In my own heart I find the worst man's mate, And see not dimly the smooth-hingëd gate That opes to those abysses Where ye grope darkly,-ye who never knew On your young hearts love's consecrating dew, Or felt a mother's kisses, Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled; Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue! One band ye cannot break, the force that clips And grasps your circles to the central light; Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse, Self-exiled to the farthest verge of night; Yet strives with you no less that inward might No sin hath e'er imbruted; The god in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes; The Law brooks not to have its solitudes By bigot feet polluted; Yet they who watch your God-compelled return May see your happy perihelion burn Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods. TO THE PAST. WONDROUS and awful are thy silent halls, O kingdom of the past! There lie the bygone ages in their palls, Guarded by shadows vast; There all is hushed and breathless, Save when some image of old error falls Earth worshipped once as deathless. There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguer ing 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 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, 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. |