Part 20 (1/2)

Alive, as the wind-harp, how lightly soever If wooed by the zephyr, to music will quiver, Is woman to hope and to fear; All, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving, How quiver the chords--how thy bosom is heaving-- How trembles thy glance through the tear!

Man's dominion, war and labor; Might to right the statue gave; Laws are in the Scythian's sabre; Where the Mede reigned--see the slave!

Peace and meekness grimly routing, Prowls the war-l.u.s.t, rude and wild; Eris rages, hoa.r.s.ely shouting, Where the vanished graces smiled.

But woman, the soft one, persuasively prayeth-- Of the life [48] that she charmeth, the sceptre she swayeth; She lulls, as she looks from above, The discord whose bell for its victims is gaping, And blending awhile the forever escaping, Whispers hate to the image of love!

HOPE.

We speak with the lip, and we dream in the soul, Of some better and fairer day; And our days, the meanwhile, to that golden goal Are gliding and sliding away.

Now the world becomes old, now again it is young, But ”The better” 's forever the word on the tongue.

At the threshold of life hope leads us in-- Hope plays round the mirthful boy; Though the best of its charms may with youth begin, Yet for age it reserves its toy.

THE GERMAN ART.

By no kind Augustus reared, To no Medici endeared, German art arose; Fostering glory smiled not on her, Ne'er with kingly smiles to sun her, Did her blooms unclose.

No,--she went by monarchs slighted Went unhonored, unrequited, From high Frederick's throne; Praise and pride be all the greater, That man's genius did create her, From man's worth alone.

Therefore, all from loftier mountains, Purer wells and richer fountains, Streams our poet-art; So no rule to curb its rus.h.i.+ng-- All the fuller flows it gus.h.i.+ng From its deep--the heart!

ODYSSEUS.

Seeking to find his home, Odysseus crosses each water; Through Charybdis so dread; ay, and through Scylla's wild yells, Through the alarms of the raging sea, the alarms of the land too,-- E'en to the kingdom of h.e.l.l leads him his wandering course.

And at length, as he sleeps, to Ithaca's coast fate conducts him; There he awakes, and, with grief, knows not his fatherland now.

CARTHAGE.

Oh thou degenerate child of the great and glorious mother, Who with the Romans' strong might couplest the Tyrians' deceit!

But those ever governed with vigor the earth they had conquered,-- These instructed the world that they with cunning had won.

Say! what renown does history grant thee? Thou, Roman-like, gained'st That with the steel, which with gold, Tyrian-like, then thou didst rule!

THE SOWER.

Sure of the spring that warms them into birth, The golden seeds thou trustest to the earth; And dost thou doubt the eternal spring sublime, For deeds--the seeds which wisdom sows in time.

THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN.

Oh, n.o.bly shone the fearful cross upon your mail afar, When Rhodes and Acre hailed your might, O lions of the war!

When leading many a pilgrim horde, through wastes of Syrian gloom; Or standing with the cherub's sword before the holy tomb.

Yet on your forms the ap.r.o.n seemed a n.o.bler armor far, When by the sick man's bed ye stood, O lions of the war!