Mountain idylls, and Other Poems Part 11

Beside the bed where rests the pallid form, Of loved one stricken with the fever's breath, E'en when the loving hands, no longer warm, Portend the sure and swift approach of Death, Hope holds the spirit in its house of clay, And with that spirit only, soars away.

The guilty wretch, for murder doomed to die, Hoped, in his dungeon as the death watch paced, Hoped, as the death cap veiled his evil eye, Hoped, as the noose around his neck was placed, Hoped, as the chaplain read his final prayer, Hoped, as he struggled in the viewless air.

In the glad sunshine of life's vernal spring, Hope buoys the spirit with expectancy; Hope with her dulcet voice and fluttering wing, Sings of life's goal with siren harmony; When silvered temples tell that life declines, That goal, though yet unreached, still brightly shines.

Yes! As through failure and vicissitude, We sail along with many an adverse wind, Hope plants her beacon in the tempest rude, And leads with generous radiance unconfined; And when the yawning grave receives its prey, Hope speeds the spirit on its astral way.

Metabole.

AN APOSTROPHE TO THE MOON.

O, silvery moon, fair mistress of the night, Thou mellow, ever vaccilating orb, How many eons of unmeasured time Hast thou, observant from thy astral poise, Thy ever-changing station in the skies, Beheld the wastes of earth, of air and s.p.a.ce-- Ruling the waters, and the sombre night?

Pale queen of night, fair coquette of the skies, Thou, who with fickle, sweet inconstancy Receives the smile from the admiring sun, And straight transmits it to the sordid earth,-- How many cycles of the silent past Hast thou beheld the rise and fall of man, His proud ascendency and swift decline; His zenith and his pitiful decay; E'er he emerged from out the dismal cave, His habitation rude and primitive; E'er yet the forest trembled at his stroke, E'er his indenting chisel cleaved the stones And framed the first crude human domicile?

As time rolled on and human skill advanced By almost imperceptible degrees Of slow, experimental tutorage, Along a n.o.bler, more artistic plane, He hewed the stones in form of ornament, Sculptured device of various design, Embellishment of cunning symmetry, Man's first attempt to scale the realms of art.

Thou hast beheld him on his suppliant kneel, Engaged in worship, audible or mute, Invoking thy protection and thy aid, Thy gracious favor and beat.i.tude; With arms outstretched in reverential awe, Propitiating thee, with fervent prayer For the remission of thy baleful stroke.

Thou hast beheld his superst.i.tious fear And heard his curses, and his solemn prayers As thy dark form eclipsed the smiling sun.

Thou hast beheld him fashion and adorn The gorgeous altar and the totem pole; With fervent zeal, and blind simplicity, From base materials of wood or stone, Carve out a G.o.d, then kneel and worship it.

Thou, too, hast heard the slave-whip's poignant crack, The sound of avarice and turpitude, As hands unwilling plied their arduous task, Creating monuments to iron will, Human injustice, greed and servitude.

Thou hast beheld him shape the pyramids, Heap up the mound and build the ma.s.sive wall, Create the castle and the towering spire, The ponderous dome and stately edifice.

From thy observant orbit in the skies, Did'st thou behold that sacrilegious tower, Which reared its ma.s.sive form on Babel's plain, Built by misguided and presumptuous men, In vain and ineffectual attempt To scale the heavens surrept.i.tiously?

E'er the completion of the impious pile, Thou mayest have heard, with silent nonchalance, That strange catastrophe of human speech, That dire confusion of the languages, Confounding all the tongues and dialects To unknown chaos of peculiar sounds.

Changing the conversation of the day To accents strange and unintelligible, Unlike to common and accepted terms; To tones mysterious and unnatural, Conglomerated forms of utterance Which bore no semblance to the human voice.

Some rent the air with unaccustomed words Striving in desperation to converse, With ears which heard, but could not understand.

Some cursed, with oaths unknown to all but them, While some essayed to frame the words of prayer, Or to articulate the stern command, And one, in most supreme authority, Declaimed a ponderous regal ordinance, But heard a sea of unfamiliar sounds, Confused and desultory turbulence, and dissonance of harsh, discordant tones, Instead of due attention and applause; Nor were his words and usual forms of speech Respected by the idle, wondering craft, Which lately comprehended and obeyed.

Workmen addressed each other, but conveyed No sense of meaning in their jargonings; Nor had cognizance from the stammered tones, Answered in turn, in verbal nothingness; The crabbed cynic might no longer rail; Nor those of sober countenance discourse In melancholy and foreboding strains; Nor light and frivolous sons of levity On others perpetrate the humorous jest; Fathers attempted to correct their sons, Who, listening with filial reverence, Heard but unknown and strange garrulity.

Some shrank in terror, as their ears discerned Their own distorted efforts to converse; Some ran in aimless frenzy to and fro, Falling upon the earth with frantic cries; Some stood in gaping wonder, nor perceived The dire calamity, which bound them all In one unbroken chain of misery.

Some beat their b.r.e.a.s.t.s in paroxysmal woe; Some wore the driveling look of idiocy; Some lost their reason and serenely smiled; Some stalked with features imperturbable, Finding no tear nor vent for their distress; Some groaned, some shrieked, some wept in their despair, Relaxing all attempts at vocal speech; Some recognized the face but not the voice Of some familiar friend, and grasped the hand, Spoke with the eyes, when words no longer served.

Did'st thou behold that temple which arose On Mount Moriah's slope, the proud result Of the endeavors of a n.o.ble race, Whose tireless energy and wondrous skill In architecture and the various arts Were famed throughout the world; whose nimble hands Carved out the pillar and the pedestal, The column, polished and cylindrical, The slab and ornamented architrave From Parian marble of unblemished hue; With stately cedars from the sloping sides Of proud but long denuded Lebanon, Erected that superb and marvelous pile Whose wondrous grandeur and imposing form, Correct proportions and true symmetry And perfect uniformity of shape, Beauty of contour and embellishment, Splendor of finish and magnificence, Excelled the proudest edifice of earth-- A fitting tribute to the Deity?

Thou hast beheld the triumphs of his skill Touched by the desolating hand of time, Crumble, disintegrate and pa.s.s away-- Resolved to pristine particles of dust.

His strongest castle, bold and insolent, Of warlike aspect and defiant mien, With wall and rampart una.s.sailable, Impregnable to the a.s.saults of man-- Surrender at the mold's insidious tread.

Thou hast beheld His palace and his most exalted courts Bestrewn with fragments of the Peristyle; The broken column, slab and monolith O'erhung with pendant moss and slimy mold; Its dismal haunts and gloomy apertures Become the habitation of the bat, The hissing serpent and the scorpion, The basking lizard dull and indolent, And forms of reptile, foul and venomous.

The throne where ruled the king with iron sway Is vacant as the empty wastes of air, Is ruled by desolation and decay.

No more the sceptered voice in stern command Rings through its halls, nor can the dazzling flash Of the tiara and the diadem, The ensign and insignia of power, The emblazoned crest and jeweled coat of arms, Or proud escutcheon of ill.u.s.trious name Excite with envy or inspire with fear.

The boisterous carousal and the sound Of wa.s.sail mirth, inebriate and loud, And midnight revelry, is hushed and still.

Time shifts the scenes-- The haughty prince and the most abject slave, Who cowered and trembled 'neath his austere glance, The fawning and ign.o.ble sycophant, The courtier and the basest serf, have met On equal terms beneath the silent dust.

From thy celestial 'minions thou hast seen His proudest temples sink into decay, Grim desolation and desuetude; The silent hush succeed the plaintive hymn, The anthem cease to swell in rhythmic praise, Or vaulted dome re-echo with the sound Of pipe, of organ, harp and dulcimer; The voice of sacerdotal eloquence Become as silent as the unborn thought; The fragrant perfume of the frankincense, The scent of swinging censor and of myrrh, Supplanted by foul odors of decay; The sacred flame extinguished and forgot, Its votaries and congregations fled; The forms who ministered and forms who knelt, The burnished altar and the h.o.a.ry priest, Commingling their atoms in the dust.

Thou, too, hast heard the clash of hostile arms, The blast of trumpet and the martial tread, The neigh of charger anxious for the fray, The din and the confusion of the fight, The noise and turmoil of contending hosts, The crunch of breaking bones and shrieks of pain; The angry challenge and defiant taunt, The cries of rage and curses of despair, The dying groan and gnash of clench-ed teeth, The plea for mercy, with uplifted arms, As through the bosom plunged the ruthless steel; The clank of shackles and the captives groan, As marched the vanquished forth to servitude, To ceaseless toil rewarded by the scourge; To stand within the slave marts and endure The taunts and bear the chains of slavery.

Did'st thou look down with neutral radiance On that incursion from the Scythian plain, A surging mult.i.tude beyond the power Of mental computation and which seemed A seething ma.s.s of spears and shapes of war, A sea of bellicose barbarity, O'erwhelming helpless and ill-fated Tyre With a resistless deluge of the sword?

Or when that vast and uncomputed horde Swept westward from the steppes of Tartary With stern Atilla riding at its head, Leaving in ruthless Mongol truculence, Awake, both red and blackened by the torch; The scourge[F], perhaps of G.o.d, perhaps of h.e.l.l!

Did'st thou not flinch when t'ward the Christian west The fell invasion of the Saracen Headed its course with crimson scimitar; Supplanting the mild precepts of the Cross With those of l.u.s.t, of hate and bigotry?

Did'st thou not weep when proud Atlantis sunk Beneath the surging and engulfing waves, The aftermath of Earth's most tragic shock; Or when the ark, upon that greatest flood, Which from the black and pregnant heavens fell.

For forty days and forty weary nights, Above the ruins of a deluged world, Floated in safety with its living freight?

Did'st Thou look down in idle apathy, When grim Vesuvius, from his dormant rest Awoke, in molten fury, and o'ercame With liquid flood and scoriaceous hail The sleeping cities which beneath him lay; Interring with such fiery burial That neither remnant nor inhabitant Escaped from that both grave and funeral pyre; Nor vestige of their proud magnificence Rose from the scene with charred and blackened form; And rolling centuries, in pa.s.sing, left But dim remembrance in the minds of men?

Did'st thou, in age more ancient and remote, Gaze from thy poise with cold complacency Upon the guilty cities[G] of the plain, Surcharged with l.u.s.t and the extremes of sin, Which Holy Writ avers, when 'neath the shower Of well deserved combustion from the skies, They sunk in conflagration with their vice; And perishing, to ages yet to come Bequeathed a foul and blasted heritage, An infamous and execrated name?

Art thou to human anguish so inured That thou hast neither sentiment of grief Nor sense of pity for terrestrial ills?

Can agonizing and heart-rending scenes Relax thy obdurate and placid face To semblance of emotion? Can man's woes Excite thy tranquil immobility To the pathetic look of tenderness, Or touch thy bosom's calm indifference With profuse throbs of sympathetic ruth?

Can'st thou unmoved behold the widow's tears, Or those of orphaned childish innocence, Or those which wondering infant eyes have shed On unresponsive b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which nevermore Throb with maternal warmth and suckle them?

Can'st thou with cold, unsympathizing light Illuminate the ruined maid's despair Without the echo of a lunar groan?

Hast thou no pang of sorrow or regret For guilty man, nor tear for his distress, Or are the tides within thy moist control The copious weepings of thy mellow lids-- Thy sea of teardrops shed for human woes?

Did'st thou behold, when that most favored star, Transcending in refulgence all the orbs Of boundless and bejewelled firmament, With flash of overwhelming brilliancy Plunged through the wondering heavens, whose pale spheres In contrast dimmed to insignificance, And gliding through the twinkling realms of s.p.a.ce, Burst with such splendor as the envious stars Had never witnessed since the heavens stood; Halting in glory o'er Judea's plain?