The black earth yawns: the mortal 1 *, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; And in the vast cathedral leave him.' God accept him, Christ receive him. 1852. 270 280 Lord Tennyson. TO THE PAST 1 WONDROUS and awful are thy silent halls, There lie the bygone ages in their palls, There all is hushed and breathless, 7 There sits drear Egypt, mid beleaguering sands, Half woman and half beast, The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands That once lit all the East; A dotard bleared and hoary, There Asser crouches o'er the blackened brands Of Asia's long-quenched glory. Still as a city buried 'neath the sea Thy phantasms grope and shiver, Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun, Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun, In their unmonarched eyes says day is done O realm of silence and of swart eclipse, Make signs to us and move their withered lips Yet all their sound and motion Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of ships On the mirage's ocean. And if sometimes a moaning wandereth If some grim shadow of thy living death 35 14 21 28 And scares the world to error, The eternal life sends forth melodious breath To chase the misty terror. Thy mighty clamors, wars, and world-noised deeds Are silent now in dust, Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds Thy forms and creeds have vanished, From the world's garden banished. Whatever of true life there was in thee Wield still thy bent and wrinkled empery, To thee thy dross is clinging, For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets see, Thy poets still are singing. 42 49 56 Here, mid the bleak waves of our strife and care, Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share The present moves attended With all of brave and excellent and fair 1845 James Russell Lowell. 63 TO THE FUTURE O LAND of Promise! from what Pisgah's height 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 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 And, circled with the glow Elysian, Out of its very cares wooes charms for peace 12 and slumber. 22 To thee the Earth lifts up her fettered hands smile Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands, And her old woe-worn face a little while Grows young and noble; unto thee the Oppressor Looks, and is dumb with awe; The eternal law, Which makes the crime its own blindfold redresser, Shadows his heart with perilous foreboding, And he can see the grim-eyed Doom Its silent-footed steeds towards his palace goading. What promises hast thou for Poet's eyes, Disturbs, and fools the poor to hate the poor; The humble glares not on the high with anger; Love leaves no grudge at less, no greed for more; 34 In vain strives Self the godlike sense to smother; From the soul's deeps It throbs and leaps; The noble 'neath foul rags beholds his long-lost brother. 46 |