Читать книгу The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell - James Russell Lowell - Страница 207

As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches

Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow,

Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches

In unwarned havoc on the roofs below,

So grew and gathered through the silent years

The madness of a People, wrong by wrong.

There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears,

No strength in suffering; but the Past was strong:

The brute despair of trampled centuries

Leaped up with one hoarse yell and snapped its bands, 10

Groped for its right with horny, callous hands,

And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes.

What wonder if those palms were all too hard

For nice distinctions—if that mænad throng—

They whose thick atmosphere no bard

Had shivered with the lightning of his song,

Brutes with the memories and desires of men,

Whose chronicles were writ with iron pen,

In the crooked shoulder and the forehead low,

Set wrong to balance wrong, 20

And physicked woe with woe?