Thus on the soil the patriot's knee should bend,
Which holds the dust once living to defend;
Where'er the hireling shrinks before the free,
Each pass becomes " a new Thermopyla"!
Where'er the battles of the brave are won,
There every mountain "looks on Marathon"!
Our fathers live; they guard in glory still The grass-grown bastions of the fortressed hill; Still ring the echoes of the trampled gorge,
With God and Freedom! England and Saint George.
The royal cipher on the captured gun
Mocks the sharp night-dews and the blistering sun!
The red-cross banner shades its captor's bust,
Its folds still loaded with the conflict's dust ;
The drum, suspended by its tattered marge,
Once rolled and rattled to the Hessian's charge;
The stars have floated from Britannia's mast,
The redcoat's trumpets blown the rebel's blast.
Point to the summits where the brave have bled,
Where every village claims its glorious dead;
Say, when their bosoms met the bayonet's shock,
Their only corslet was the rustic frock;
Say, when they mustered to the gathering horn,
The titled chieftain curled his lip in scorn,
Yet, when their leader bade his lines advance,
No musket wavered in the lion's glance;
Say, when they fainted in the forced retreat,
They tracked the snow-drifts with their bleeding feet,
Yet still their banners, tossing in the blast,
Bore Ever Ready," faithful to the last,
Through storm and battle, till they waved again
On Yorktown's hills and Saratoga's plain!
Then, if so fierce the insatiate patriot's flame,
Truth looks too pale, and history seems too tame,
Bid him await some new Columbiad's page,
To gild the tablets of an iron age,
And save his tears, which yet may fall
Some fabled field, some fancied Washington!
But once again, from their Æolian cave,
The winds of Genius wandered on the wave.
Tired of the scenes the timid pencil drew,
Sick of the notes the sounding clarion blew;
Sated with heroes who had worn so long
The shadowy plumage of historic song;
The new-born poet left the beaten course,
To track the passions to their living source.
Then rose the Drama; - and the world admired Her varied page with deeper thought inspired; Bound to no clime, for Passion's throb is one In Greenland's twilight or in India's sun;
for all the thoughts that roll
In the dark vortex of the stormy soul,
Unchained in song, no freezing years can tame;
God
gave them birth, and man is still the same.
So full on life her magic mirror shone,
Her sister Arts paid tribute to her throne;
One reared her temple, one her canvass warmed,
And Music thrilled, while Eloquence informed.
The weary rustic left his stinted task
For smiles and tears, the dagger and the mask;
The sage, turned scholar, half forgot his lore,
To be the woman he despised before;
O'er sense and thought she threw her golden chain,
And Time, the anarch, spares her deathless reign.
Thus lives Medea, in our tamer age,
As when her buskin pressed the Grecian stage;
Not in the cells where frigid learning delves
In Aldine folios mouldering on their shelves;
But breathing, burning in the glittering throng,
Whose thousand bravos roll untired along,
Circling and spreading through the gilded halls,
From London's galleries to San Carlo's walls!
Thus shall he live whose more than mortal name
Mocks with its ray the pallid torch of Fame;
So proudly lifted, that it seems afar
No earthly Pharos, but a heavenly star;
Who, unconfined to Art's diurnal bound,
Girds her whole zodiac in his flaming round,
And leads the passions, like the orb that guides,
From pole to pole, the palpitating tides!
Though round the Muse the robe of song is thrown,
Think not the poet lives in verse alone.
Long ere the chisel of the sculptor taught
The lifeless stone to mock the living thought;
Long ere the painter bade the canvass glow
With every line the forms of beauty know;
Long ere the Iris of the Muses threw
every leaf its own celestial hue;
In fable's dress the breath of genius poured,
And warmed the shapes that later times adored.
Untaught by Science how to forge the keys, That loose the gates of Nature's mysteries; Unschooled by Faith, who, with her angel tread, Leads through the labyrinth with a single thread, His fancy, hovering round her guarded tower, Rained through its bars like Danae's golden shower.
He spoke; the sea-nymph answered from her cave: He called; the naiad left her mountain wave: He dreamed of beauty; lo, amidst his dream, Narcissus mirrored in the breathless stream; And night's chaste empress, in her bridal play, Laughed through the foliage where Endymion lay; And ocean dimpled, as the languid swell
Kissed the red lip of Cytherea's shell:
Bellona swept the crimson field,
And blue-eyed Pallas shook her Gorgon shield;
O'er the hushed waves their mightier monarch drove, And Ida trembled to the tread of Jove!
So every grace, that plastic language knows,
To nameless poets its perfection owes.
The rough-hewn words to simplest thoughts confined,
Were cut and polished in their nicer mind;
Caught on their edge, imagination's ray
Splits into rainbows, shooting far away;·
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