And now from each distracting scene
Of passion fiercely nourished,
We know what India might have been
Had Moslem tyrants flourished:
So would have been, and yet would be,
If England shrank from duty.
. . Then watch your harvest wealth with glee;
Rejoice in Nature's beauty,
Making her bounties ministers
Of toil and self-denial,
And Victo'ry's surest harbingers,
After the fiery trial.
COLUMBUS AND THE MAY-FLOWER.*
O LITTLE fleet! that on thy quest divine
Sailedst from Palos one bright autumn morn,
Say, has old Ocean's bosom ever borne
A freight of Faith and Hope to match with thine?
Say, too, has Heaven's high favour given again
Such consummation of desire, as shone
About Columbus, when he rested on
The new-found world and married it to Spain?
Answer-Thou refuge of the Freeman's need,-
Thou for whose destinies no kings looked out,
Nor sages to resolve some mighty doubt,-
Thou simple May-Flower of the salt-sea mead !
* Written as prefatory stanzas to Hunter's collection concerning the Founders of New Plymouth.
When Thou wert wafted to that distant shore
Gay flowers, bright birds, rich odours, met thee not:
Stern Nature hail'd thee to a sterner lot.
God gave free earth and air, and gave no more.
Thus to men cast in that heroic mould
Came Empire such as Spaniard never knew—
Such Empire as beseems the just and true;
And at the last, almost unsought, came Gold.
But He who rules both calm and stormy days
Can guard that people's heart, that nation's health,
Safe on the perilo'us heights of power and wealth,
As in the straitness of the ancient ways.
AN ENVOY TO AN AMERICAN LADY.
BEYOND the vague Atlantic deep,
Far as the farthest prairies sweep,
Where forest-glooms the nerve appal,
Where burns the radiant Western fall,
One duty lies on old and young,—
With filial piety to guard,
As on its greenest native sward,
The glory of the English tongue.
That ample speech! That subtle speech!
Apt for the need of all and each :
Strong to endure, yet prompt to bend
Wherever human feelings tend.
Preserve its force-expand its powers;
And through the maze of civic life,
In Letters, Commerce, even in Strife,
Forget not it is yours and ours.
ENGLAND AND AMERICA, 1863.
WE only know that in the sultry weather,
Men toiled for us as in the steaming room,
And in our minds we hardly set together
The bondman's penance and the freeman's loom.
We never thought the jealous gods would store
For us ill deeds of time-forgotten graves,
Nor heeded that the May-Flower one day bore
A freight of pilgrims, and another slaves.
First on the bold upholders of the wrong,
And last on us, the heavy-laden years
Avenge the cruel triumphs of the strong-
Trampled affections, and derided tears.
Labour, degraded from her high behest,
Cries "Ye shall know I am the living breath,
And not the curse of Man. Ye shall have Rest-
The rest of Famine and the rest of Death."
Oh, happy distant hours! that shall restore
Honour to work, and pleasure to repose,
Hasten your steps, just heard above the war
Of wildering passions and the crash of foes.
ALL nature is stiff in the chill of the air,
The sun looks around with a smile of despair;
'Tis a day of delusion, of glitter and gloom,
As brilliant as glory, as cold as the tomb.
The pageant is passing the multitude sways-
Awaiting, pursuing, the line with its gaze,
With the tramp of battalion, the tremor of drums,
And the grave exultation of trumpets he comes.
It passes! what passes? He comes! who is He?
Is it Joy too profound to be uttered in glee?
Oh, no! it is Death, the Dethroner of old,
Now folded in purple and girded with gold!
It is Death, who enjoys the magnificent car,
It is Death, whom the warriors have brought from afar, It is Death, to whom thousands have knelt on the shore, And sainted the bark and the treasure it bore.
What other than He, in his terrible calm,
Could mingle for myriads the bitter and balm,
Could hush into silence this ocean of men,
And bid the wild passion be still in its den?
What other than He could have placed side by side
The chief and the humblest, that serving him died,
Could the blood of the past to the mourner atone,
And let all bless the name that has orphaned their own?
From the shades of the olive, the palm, and the pine, From the banks of the Moskwa, the Nile, and the Rhine, From the sands and the glaciers, in armament dim, Come they who have perished for France and for Him.
Rejoice, ye sad Mothers, whose desolate years
Have been traced in the desert of earth by their tears,
The Children for whom ye have hearts that still burn,
In this triumph of Death-it is they that return.
And Ye in whose breast dwell the images true
Of parents that loved Him still better than you,
No longer lament o'er a cenotaph urn,
In this triumph of Death—it is they that return.
From legion to legion the watchword is sped-
"Long life to the Emperor-life to the dead!"
The prayer is accomplished-his ashes remain
'Mid the people he loved, on the banks of the Seine.
In dominions of Thought that no traitor can reach,
Through the kingdoms of Fancy, the regions of Speech,
O'er the world of Emotions, Napoleon shall reign
'Mid the people he loved, on the banks of the Seine.
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