The highway of this world is set with thorns,
O'er which poor pilgrims still must journey on;
There are who walk it shod with iron sense,
That crushes opposition like a vice,
And puts aside the ready points like twigs
Pressed backward in the woodlands by a child.
There are who seem buoyed upward by some power
Above the level of affliction's range,
Until their term be run, and then they fall
Into the bosom of the angel Death.
And there are some whose tender feet are pierced
Evermore deeper by the rugged path,
Whose softness and whose beauty nigh invite
The cruel spoiler to his unarmed prey,
As the swift hawk high poized in the sky,
Swoops when the dove floats past on silv'ry wings.
There is a veil upon the eyes of men,
That makes all things show dimly, but if rent
Would work like resurrection on the mind,
Bringing to life thoughts dead in doubt and error;
Thus, standing on the bridge of Time, which spans
The gulf 'twixt two eternities through which
Flows ever on the tide of human life,
That troubled stream would seem a sea of glass,
And all its thick impurities appear
Clear as the outline of a floating corpse;
Gaze down upon it though it sicken thee.
There cometh one beneath whose ermined pride
Stalks the corruption of a charnel-house,
Where fest'ring flesh lies in its cloth of gold,
E'en yet the wonder of the gaping crowd.
Upon his brow the jewelled circlet rests,
His only title to nobility;
But that, unto the vulgar, symbols still
The orbit of the everlasting sun,
That fills and glorifies a universe--of clay.
Where is the mind that should have overtopp'd,
Saul-like, the level of the multitude?
Where the bold front that in the breach of wrong
Stemm'd the fierce current of insidious foes,
Flashing Truth's falchion in the van of Time?
Shame! it hath rusted in its scabbard, till
The nerveless arm can scarce withdraw it thence.
O Earth! rejoice that at his side there comes
An undimm'd light to beacon on the world;
One who upholds the honour of his line
Unsullied as the glory of the stars;
Whose voice rings clear above the battle strife,
And shakes oppression from his iron throne;
And for the purple, round his heaving breast
Folds like a vesture manly Honesty.
Is it not glorious the light that gilds
The hoary summits of the giant hills,
Spread like the standard of eternal Truth
O'er many phalanxed Ages--blazoning
The stalwart band that barrier'd from the world
The bitter fury of Heaven's huricanes!
Onward there come a thick'ning mass who drown
Defects and vices in a shower of gold;
Who crush report, like Rome the Sabine maid,
Beneath the burden of their molten wealth,
And 'neath their gilding flaunt them in the sun
Brightly as though there were no dross within;
So the eye sees them, but search thou the soul,
And part the sterling from the counterfeit.
Oh! for the sighing of the desolate,
The widow and the orphan in their woe,
Drown'd 'neath the clink of gold wrung from their need,
Like moisture from the crushing of the grape.
Oh! for the fruitless cry of misery,
The Tantalus of stern reality,
That feebly perisheth in Famine's grasp,
Whilst plenty moulders for the lust of pride,
And adds its rottenness to the hot-bed
Of wantonness and subtle infamy.
And yet the worker wears as fair a port
As he whose life is holy Charity,
Setting his footprints on the way of life
Like sunshine rippling o'er the summer sea.
Some wear their little merit on their sleeve,
Which 'neath the friction of Time's troublous waves,
Grows threadbare as the coat of beggary.
Some under rugged lineaments enclose
Treasures of truth and goodness, that like gems
Shine through the fissures of the strong Time-quake,
Showing more perfect as affliction works,
And sorrow rends the earthy covering.
Some are there with the sight turned inwards still,
Beholding but the narrow sphere of self,
And trampling under foot the weak who stand
Betwixt them and the goal of their desire.
Blessed the few who unto fellow men
Turn with the fervent grasp of Brotherhood,
Breasting the surges of tempestuous fate,
With souls fulfilled with kindliness and Faith--
Raising the ensign of prophetic Hope
Like the clear rainbow on the thunder-cloud;
And 'mid the darkness of impending care,
Pouring the cheerful daylight of the soul!
There are sweet spirits mingling with the throng,
Marked out with sunshine, like the pouting waves
When heaven looks down in sun and shadow, hearts
So leaven'd through with grace and purity,
That though sin warp and sift them at its will,
Some hidden sweetness lingers yet to tell
The perfectness of Nature's handy-work.
Are they not as the ministers of heaven,
Liveried with beauty, and deep tenderness,
Missioned in mercy to this fallen sphere
Proclaiming peace and blessedness above;
Threading the ranks of Earth's fierce battle field,
Amid the clangour of death-darting steel,
Raising the wounded from their helplessness,
And bearing life draughts to the sinking soul!
O Mother Earth! thine arms will fondle her
When ingrate man hath drain'd her spirit dry,
Fashioned in weakness, yet in weakness strong
Where honour were the foeman, what is she
Before the onslaught of satanic serfs?--
The mirror of her purity obscured,
Polluted by lust's pestilential breath--
Pluck'd like a flower to while an hour away,
Then cast to wither on the barren ground,
Shattered and bruised beneath base passion's heel,
And all the clinging tendrils of her love
Torn bleeding from the stay round which they clung.
Look thou upon that stream, rough with the whirl
Of crime, and woe, and wretchedness, that float
Like poisoned scum upon the driving flood,
Filling the breath of life with noxious blasts
That smite humanity with pestilence.
And tremble thou, though man discern it not,
Ten thousand times more foul it shows to God;
Then praise him for the twilight of thy sense.
Yet there is much of good and fair in life,
That like the glow upon the eastern sky,
Blazons the glory of approaching day.