Let lips of iron and tongues of slaves
Fit welcome give thee;—for her part,
Rome, frowning o'er her new-made graves,
Shall curse thee from her heart |
No wreaths of sad Campagna's flowers
Shall childhood in thy pathway fling;
No garlands from their ravaged bowers
Shall Termi's maidens bring;
But, hateful as that tyrant old,
The mocking witness of his crime,
In thee shall loathing eyes behold
The Nero of our time !
Stand where Rome's blood was freest shed,
Mock Heaven with impious thanks, and call
Its curses on the patriot dead,
Its blessings on the Gaul
Or sit upon thy throne of lies,
A poor, mean idol, blood-besmeared,
Whom even its worshippers despise—
Unhonored, unrevered
Yet, Scandal of the World ! from thee
One needful truth mankind shall learn—
That kings and priests to Liberty
And God are false in turn.
Earth wearies of them; and the long
Meek sufferance of the Heavens doth fail;
Woe for weak tyrants, when the strong
Wake, struggle, and prevail!
Not vainly Roman hearts have bled
To feed the Crozier and the Crown,
If, roused thereby, the world shall tread
The twin-born vampires down
VoI. II. 7
HANDs off! thou tythe-fat plunderer! play
No trick of priestcraft here !
Back, puny lordling ! darest thou lay
A hand on Elliott's bier 2
Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust,
Beneath his feet he trod:
He knew the locust swarm that cursed
The harvest-fields of God.
On these pale lips, the smothered thought
Which England's millions feel,
A fierce and fearful splendor caught,
As from his forge the steel.
Strong-armed as Thor-ashower of fire
His smitten anvil flung;
God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hunger's ire–
He gave them all a tongue !
Then let the poor man's horny hands
Bear up the mighty dead,
And labor's swart and stalwart bands
Behind as mourners tread.
Leave cant and craft their baptized bounds,
Leave rank its minster floor;
Give England's green and daisied grounds
The poet of the poorl
lay down upon his Sheaf’s green verge
at brave old heart of oak,
With fitting dirge from sounding forge,
And pall of furnace smoke
Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds,
And axe and sledge are swung,
And, timing to their stormy sounds,
His stormy lays are sung
There let the peasant's step be heard,
The grinder chant his rhyme;
Nor patron's praise nor dainty word
Befits the man or time.
No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh
For him whose words were bread—
The Runic rhyme and spell whereby
The foodless poor were fed!
Pile up thy tombs of rank and pride,
() England, as thou wilt!
With pomp to nameless worth denied,
Emblazon titled guiltl
No part or lot in these we claim;
But, o'er the sounding wave,
A common right to Elliott's name,
A freehold in his gravel
So fallen so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Revile him not—the Tempter hath
A snare for all;
And #"; tears, not scorn and wrath, efit his fall !
Oh! dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age,
Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven
Let not the land, once proud of him,
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, nought
Save power remains—
A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled :
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead
Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame !
THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS-12
No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest
Goaded from shore to shore;
No schoolmen, turning, in their classic quest,
The leaves of empire o’er.
Simple of faith, and bearing in their hearts
The love of man and God,
Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient marts,
And Scythia's steppes, they trod.
Where the long shadows of the fir and pihe
In the night sun are cast,
And the deep heart of many a Norland mine
Quakes at each riving blast;
Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa stands,
A baptized Scythian queen,
With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled hands,
The North and East between I
Where still, through vales of Grecian fable, stray
The classic forms of yore,
And Beauty smiles, new risen from the spray,
And Dian weeps once more;
Where every tongue in Smyrna's mart resounds;
And Stamboul from the sea
Lifts her tall minarets over burial-grounds
Black with the cypress tree
From Malta's temples to the gates of Rome,
Following the track of Paul,
And where the Alps gird round the Switzer's
home
Their vast, eternal wall;
They paused not by the ruins of old time,
They scanned no pictures rare,
Nor lingered where the snow-locked mountains
climb
The cold abyss of air!
But unto prisons, where men lay in chains,
To haunts where Hunger pined,
To kings and courts forgetful of the pains
And wants of human kind, .
Scattering sweet words, and quiet deeds of
ood,
Alon; their way, like flowers,
|
