Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar Of distant thunder mutters awfully; Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; The torn deep yawns, - the vessel finds a grave Beneath its jagged gulf.
That fires the arch of heaven? that dark red
Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers
Hark to that roar whose swift and deafening peals In countless echoes through the mountains ring, Startling pale Midnight on her starry throne! Now swells the intermingling din; the jar Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb; The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men Inebriate with rage: - loud and more loud
The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws His cold and bloody shroud. Of all the men
Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts That beat with anxious life at sunset there; How few survive, how few are beating now! All is deep silence, like the fearful calm That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause ; Save when the frantic wail of widowed love
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay Wrapt round its struggling powers.
Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous
Before the icy wind slow rolls away,
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms, And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path
Of the outsallying victors; far behind
Black ashes note where their proud city stood. Within yon forest is a gloomy glen
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day, Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.
Surpassing Spirit! - wert thou human else?
I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet Across thy stainless features; yet fear not; This is no unconnected misery,
Nor stands uncaused and irretrievable.
Man's evil nature, that apology
Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch,
For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood Which desolates the discord-wasted land.
From kings and priests and statesmen war arose, Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe,
Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall; And where its venomed exhalations spread Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,
A garden shall arise, in loveliness Surpassing fabled Eden.
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord Strung to unchanging unison, that gave
The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, That yielded to the wanderers of the deep The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust With spirit, thought and love, on Man alone, Partial in causeless malice, wantonly Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul Blasted with withering curses; placed afar The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp, But serving on the frightful gulf to glare Rent wide beneath his footsteps?
Even in its tender bud; their influence darts Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins Of desolate society. The child,
Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name,
Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts
His baby-sword even in a hero's mood. This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge Of devastated earth; whilst specious names, Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims Bright reason's ray and sanctifies the sword Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood. Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man Inherits vice and misery, when force
And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe, Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good.
"Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps From its new tenement and looks abroad For happiness and sympathy, how stern And desolate a tract is this wide world! How withered all the buds of natural good! No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame, Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung By morals, law and custom, the pure winds Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes, May breathe not. The untainting light of day May visit not its longings. It is bound Ere it has life; yea, all the chains are forged Long ere its being; all liberty and love
And peace is torn from its defencelessness;
Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed To abjectness and bondage!
Throughout this varied and eternal world Soul is the only element, the block
115 sanctify, Rossetti conj.
That for uncounted ages has remained. The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight Is active living spirit. Every grain
Is sentient both in unity and part, And the minutest atom comprehends
A world of loves and hatreds; these beget Evil and good; hence truth and falsehood spring ; Hence will and thought and action, all the germs Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate,
That variegate the eternal universe.
Soul is not more polluted than the beams
Of heaven's pure orb ere round their rapid lines The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.
"Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn
The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield; Or he is formed for abjectness and woe, To grovel on the dunghill of his fears, To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame Of natural love in sensualism, to know That hour as blest when on his worthless days The frozen hand of death shall set its seal, Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. The one is man that shall hereafter be ; The other, man as vice has made him now.
"War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade, And to those royal murderers whose mean thrones
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