Part 18 (1/2)

Still speed thy truth!--still wave thy spirit sword, Till every land acknowledge Thee the Lord, And the broad banner of the Cross, unfurled In triumph, wave above a subject world.

And here O G.o.d! where feuds thy church divide-- The sectary's rancor, and the bigot's pride-- Melt every heart, till all our b.r.e.a.s.t.s enshrine One faith, one hope, one love, one zeal divine, And, with one voice, adoring nations call Upon the Father and the G.o.d of all.

[Footnote A: The Pantheon that was built to all the G.o.ds was transformed into a Christian temple.]

THE INFANT ST. JOHN, THE BAPTIST.

O sweeter than the breath of southern wind With all its perfumes is the whisper'd prayer From infant lips, and gentler than the hind, The feet that bear The heaven-directed youth in wisdom's pathway fair.

And thou, the early consecrate, like flowers Didst shed thy incense breath to heaven abroad; And prayer and praise the measure of thy hours, The desert trod Companionless, alone, save of the mighty G.o.d.

As Phosphor leads the kindling glory on, And fades, lost in the day-G.o.d's bright excess, So didst thou in Redemption's coming dawn, Grow l.u.s.treless, The fading herald of the Sun of Righteousness.

But when the book of life shall be unsealed, And stars of glory round the throne divine In all their light and beauty be revealed, The brightest thine Of all the hosts of earth with heavenly light shall s.h.i.+ne.

Sh.e.l.lEY'S OBSEQUIES.

Ibi tu calentem Debita sparges lacryma favillam Vatis amici.

--Horace.

Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley, an eminent English poet, while sailing in the Mediterranean sea, in 1822, was drowned off the coast of Tuscany in a squall which wrecked the boat in which he had embarked. Two weeks afterwards his body was washed ash.o.r.e. The Tuscan quarantine regulations at that time required that whatever came ash.o.r.e from the sea should be burned. Sh.e.l.ley's body was accordingly placed on a pyre and reduced to ashes, in the presence of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, who are the ”brother bards” referred to in the last stanza of the poem.

Beneath the axle of departing day The weary waters on the horizon's verge Blush'd like the cheek of children tired in play, As bore the surge The poet's wasted form with slow and mournful dirge.

On Via Reggio's surf-beaten strand The late-relenting sea, with hollow moan Gave back the storm-tossed body to the land, As if in tone Of sorrow it bewailed the deed itself had done.

There laid upon his bed of sh.e.l.ls--around The moon and stars their lonely vigils kept; While in their pall-like shades the mountains bound And night bewept The bard of nature as in death's cold arms he slept.

The tuneful morn arose with locks of light-- The ear that drank her music's call was chill; The eye that shone was sealed in endless night, And cold and still The pulses stood that 'neath her gaze were wont to thrill.

With trees e'en like the sleeper's honors sered And prows of galleys, like his bosom riven, The melancholy pile of death was reared Aloft to heaven, And on its pillared height the corpse to torches given.

From his meridian throne the eye of day Beheld the kindlings of the funeral fire, Where, like a war-worn Roman chieftain, lay Upon his pyre The poet of the broken heart and broken lyre.

On scented wings the sorrowing breezes came And fanned the blaze, until the smoke that rushed In dusky volumes upward, lit with flame All redly blushed Like Melancholy's sombre cheek by weeping flushed.

And brother bards upon that lonely sh.o.r.e Were standing by, and wept as brightly burned The pyre, till all the form they loved before, To ashes turned, With incense, wine, and tears was sprinkled and inurned.

THE FOUNTAIN REVISITED.

Let the cla.s.sic pilgrim rove, By Egeria's fount to stand, Or sit in Vancluse's grot of love, Afar from his native land; Let him drink of the crystal tides Of the far-famed Hippocrene, Or list to the waves where Peneus glides His storied mounts between: But dearer than aught 'neath a foreign sky Is the fount of my native dell, It has fairer charms for my musing eye For my heart a deeper spell.

Dear fount! what memories rush Through the heart and wildered brain, As beneath the old beech I list to the gush Of thy sparkling waves again; For here in a fairy dream With friends, my childhood's hours Glided on like the flow of thy beautiful stream, And like it were wreathed with flowers: Here we saw on thy waves, from the shade, The dance of the sunbeams at noon; Or heard, half-afraid, the deep murmurings made In thy cavernous depths, 'neath the moon.