ON SEEING CAVALRY PASSING THROUGH A GORGE,
(FROM "BATTLE OF NIAGARA.")
AH, now let us gaze!-what a wonderful sky!
How the robe of the god, in its flame-colored dye, Goes ruddily, flushingly, sweepingly by!....
Nay, speak! did you ever behold such a night?
While the winds blew about, and the waters were bright,
The sun rolling home in an ocean of light!
But hush! there is music away in the sky;
Some creatures of magic are charioting by;
Now it comes-what a sound! 'tis as cheerful and wild
As the echo of caves to the laugh of a child;
Ah yes, they are here! See, away to your left,
Where the sun has gone down, where the mountains are cleft,
A troop of tall horsemen! How fearless they ride!
"Tis a perilous path o'er that steep mountain's side;
Careering they come, like a band of young knights
That the trumpet of morn to the tilting invites ;
With high-nodding plumes, and with sunshiny vests;
With wide-tossing manes, and with mail-covered breasts;
With arching of, necks, and the plunge and the pride
Of their high-mettled steeds, as they galloping ride,
In glitter and pomp; with their housings of gold,
With their scarlet and blue, as their squadrons unfold,
Flashing changeable light, like a banner unrolled!
Now they burst on the eye in their martial array,
And now they have gone, like a vision of day.
In a streaming of splendour they came-but they wheeled ;
And instantly all the bright show was concealed-
As if 'twere a tournament held in the sky,
Betrayed by some light passing suddenly by;
Some band by the flashing of torches revealed,
As it fell o'er the boss of an uplifted shield,
Or banners and blades in the darkness concealed.
ERE rest the great and good-here they repose
After their generous toil. A sacred band,
They take their sleep together, while the year
Comes with its early flowers to deck their graves,
And gathers them again, as Winter frowns.
Theirs is no vulgar sepulchre; green sods
Are all their monument; and yet it tells
A nobler history than pillared piles,
Or the eternal pyramids. They need
No statue nor inscription to reveal
Their greatness. It is round them; and the joy
With which their children tread the hallowed ground
That holds their venerated bones, the peace
That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth
That clothes the land they rescued—these, though mute,
As feeling ever is when deepest-these
Are monuments more lasting than the fanes
Reared to the kings and demigods of old.
Touch not the ancient elms, that bend their shade Over their lowly graves; beneath their boughs
There is a solemn darkness, even at noon,
Suited to such as visit at the shrine
Of serious Liberty. No factious voice
Called them unto the field of generous fame,
But the poor consecrated love of home.
No deeper feeling sways us, when it wakes
In all its greatness. It has told itself
To the astonished gaze of awe-struck kings,
At Marathon, at Bannockburn, and here,
When first our patriots sent the invader back
Broken and cowed. Let these green elms be all
To tell us where they fought, and where they lie.
Their feelings were all nature, and they need
No art to make them known. They live in us,
While we are like them, simple, hardy, bold,
Worshipping nothing but our own pure hearts,
And the one universal LORD. They need
No column, pointing to the heaven they sought,
To tell us of their home. The heart itself,
Left to its own free purpose, hastens there,
And there alone reposes.
TO THE EAGLE.
IRD of the broad and sweeping wing,
Thy home is high in heaven,
Where wide the storms their banners fling,
And the tempest-clouds are driven.
Thy throne is on the mountain-top;
Thy fields, the boundless air;
And hoary peaks, that proudly prop
The skies, thy dwellings are.
Thou sittest like a thing of light,
Amid the noontide blaze:
The midway sun is clear and bright—
It cannot dim thy gaze.
Thy pinions, to the rushing blast,
O'er the bursting billow, spread,
Where the vessel plunges, hurry past,
Like an angel of the dead.
Thou art perched aloft on the beetling crag,
And the waves are white below-
And on, with a haste that cannot lag,
They rush in an endless flow.
Again thou hast plumed thy wing for flight
To lands beyond the sea,
And away, like a spirit wreathed in light,
Thou hurriest, wild and free.
Thou hurriest over the myriad waves,
And thou leavest them all behind;
Thou sweepest that place of unknown graves,
Fleet as the tempest-wind.
When the night-storm gathers dim and dark
With a shrill and boding scream, Thou rushest by the foundering bark,
Quick as a passing dream.
Lord of the boundless realm of air,
In thy imperial name,
The hearts of the bold and ardent dare
The dangerous path of fame. Beneath the shade of thy golden wings, The Roman legions bore,
From the river of Egypt's cloudy springs,
Their pride, to the polar shore.
For thee they fought, for thee they fell,
And their oath was on thee laid;
To thee the clarions raised their swell,
And the dying warrior prayed.
Thou wert, through an age of death and fears,
The image of pride and power,
Till the gathered rage of a thousand years
Burst forth in one awful hour!
And then a deluge of wrath it came,
And the nations shook with dread;
And it swept the earth till its fields were flame,
And piled with the mingled dead!
Kings were rolled in the wasteful flood,
With the low and crouching slave;
And together lay, in a shroud of blood,
The coward and the brave.
And where was then thy fearless flight?
"O'er the dark, mysterious sea,
To the lands that caught the setting light—
The cradle of Liberty.
There, on the silent and lonely shore,
For ages, I watched alone;
And the world, in its darkness, asked no more Where the glorious bird had flown.
"But then came a bold and hardy few, And they breasted the unknown wave; I caught afar the wandering crew,
And I knew they were high and brave.
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