Thy mighty clamors, 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; 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 wooes charms for peace and slumber. Wield still thy bent and wrinkled em- To thee the earth lifts up her fettered pery, And shake thine idle chains; To thee thy dross is clinging, hands And cries for vengeance; with a pitying smile For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets see, Thou blessest her, and she forgets her 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 out of sight, Thy nestled homes and sun-illumined towers ? Gazing upon the sunset's high-heaped gold, Its crags of opal and of chrysolite, Its deeps on deeps of glory, that un fold 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 |