O Phoenix, all-too-happy bird,
Who enviless thy fame has heard?
Thou, thine own mother, from the pyre--
Spices mix'd with flickering fire--
Sweetly didst thy breath suspire;
Then rose again, and thy age gone
In a swift resurrection--
Gone! by wondrous mystic skill
Wearing a richer plumage still,
Youth renew'd from feet to bill,--
Thou didst not linger in thine age,
Nor a slow weary struggle wage,
With changing cures and long delay
Searching for life in every way.
No; but a quick fate self-choosing,
All hindering self-ruth refusing,
Thou didst raise thy funeral pyre,
Thou didst hovering i' the fire,
From amidst the perfum'd flame
Spring up, immortal as thy fame.
Thou didst lift thy comely head,
Ev'ry moulting feather shed;
Thou didst raise thy radiant breast
Blazing to the blazing West.
O Phoenix, thou'rt an awful bird;
Who enviless thy fame has heard?
Climbing to thy funeral pyre,
Climbing self-martyr'd to the fire,
Sweetly there to bear thine ire;
Fetching down from the great sun
To piled nest of cinnamon
Rays intense; then upward winging,
Sudden from thine ashes springing;
Victorious by this quaint mewing,
Life strangely out of death renewing;
Now i' the red fire consuming,
Next at the sun thine eyes reluming.
Alas, how different is the fate
In this our later age, ingrate,
Of her, my mother-college, lying
All desolate and slowly dying;
Lifting but a feeble wing,
Though once, as Phoenix of the fire,
Springing immortal from its pyre;
When Apollo and the Graces
Reign'd where Ruin now defaces,
Gave her, when she shone in splendour,
Orator, sage, and poet tender;
Gave her sons, noble and good,
Better than the bluest blood:
O how chang'd, since those days olden
Such as in the ages golden,
I behold her, smitten, lorn,
And by every Fury torn,
Hanging in uncertain strife
As it were 'twixt death and life;
Doubting whether e'en she shall
Have so much as funeral;
Her corpse laid in some quiet bay,
Where the sea-waves softly play;
Willing they should take her bones--
Her time-stain'd, rent, and shatter'd stones;
If only thus but once again
Rebuilded, she might yet attain
To something of her old renown
By such resurrection,
And, phoenix-like, herself out-do
In her best days when she was new.
O ye sons, your mother own
In her desolation;
Own her, though in aging years
She shows few and thin gray hairs,
Where once,--ah--in brave times of old--
Flash'd her proud locks with sheen of gold.
Ah, Peter nam'd, thou art denied,
Thus is thy name verified.
'Tis a spectacle for tears;
'Tis a spectacle for fears;
'Tis a spectacle for wonder;
'Tis a crime deserves the thunder,
That from base to gold-touch'd ceiling
Day by day her halls are reeling;
Mullion'd window torn and rent,
And destruction imminent;
Everywhere such gaping wounds
As a stranger e'en astounds;
And what was in faith begun
Left in desolation;
Stone to stone in mute appealing,
Cold neglect and scorn revealing,
And the font of tears unsealing.
Sons of my Mother-College lying
All in ruins and slow dying,
If ye have aught of piety
Or least touch of charity,
Look on these broken walls, and see
Your mother in her misery;
Holding up, in vain appealing,
Wither'd hands, her woes revealing;
And in the rank growths tangled there
See her dishonoured gray hair.
Woe is me, her genial breast,
Which so many sons has blest,
Each all welcoming that came,
Drawn by her renowned name,
Wither'd, shrunk, can quench no thirst,
Ah, my heart with grief will burst.
To my dim eye there rises clear
The full tide that once roll'd here;
Now shingle, sand, and fest'ring mud
Tell of the far-refluent flood.
O, pity her, ye sons, and vow
Once more to crown your mother's brow;
Once more to rear her crumbling walls;
Once more to gather in her halls
The young, the brave, the true, the good,
The wise, the noble; and the Rood
Over all shall bless and keep;
So in old age ye shall not weep,
Nor ever shall your fair fame sleep. G.