Читать книгу Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 - Various - Страница 8

I had a vision in that solemn hour,

Last of the year sublime,

Whose wave sweeps downward, with its dying power

Rippling the shores of Time!

On the lone margin of that hoary sea

My spirit stood alone,

Watching the gleams of phantom History

Which through the darkness shone:

Then, when the bell of midnight, ghostly hands

Tolled for the dead year's doom,

I saw the spirits of Earth's ancient lands

Stand up amid the gloom!

The crownéd deities, whose reign began

In the forgotten Past,

When first the glad world gave to sovereign Man

Her empires green and vast!

First queenly Asia, from the fallen thrones

Of twice three thousand years,

Came with the wo a grieving goddess owns

Who longs for mortal tears:

The dust of ruin to her mantle clung,

And dimmed her crown of gold,

While the majestic sorrows of her tongue

From Tyre to Indus rolled:

"Mourn with me, sisters, in my realm of wo,

Whose only glory streams

From its lost childhood, like the artic glow

Which sunless Winter dreams!

In the red desert moulders Babylon,

And the wild serpent's hiss

Echoes in Petra's palaces of stone

And waste Persepolis!

Gone are the deities who ruled enshrined

In Elephanta's caves,

And Brahma's wailings fill the odorous wind

That stirs Amboyna's waves!

The ancient gods amid their temples fall,

And shapes of some near doom,

Trembling and waving on the Future's wall,

More fearful make my gloom!"

Then from her seat, amid the palms embowered

That shade the Lion-land,

Swart Africa in dusky aspect towered —

The fetters on her hand!

Backward she saw, from out her drear eclipse,

The mighty Theban years,

And the deep anguish of her mournful lips

Interpreted her tears.

"Wo for my children, whom your gyves have bound

Through centuries of toil;

The bitter wailings of whose bondage sound

From many a stranger-soil!

Leave me but free, though the eternal sand

Be all my kingdom now —

Though the rude splendors of barbaric land

But mock my crownless brow!"

There was a sound, like sudden trumpets blown,

A ringing, as of arms,

When Europe rose, a stately Amazon,

Stern in her mailéd charms.

She brooded long beneath the weary bars

That chafed her soul of flame,

And like a seer, who reads the awful stars,

Her words prophetic came:

"I hear new sounds along the ancient shore,

Whose dull old monotone

Of tides, that broke on many a system hoar,

Wailed through the ages lone!

I see a gleaming, like the crimson morn

Beneath a stormy sky,

And warning throes, my bosom long has borne,

Proclaim the struggle nigh!

"The spirit of a hundred races mounts

To glorious life in one;

New prophet-wands unseal the hidden founts

That leap to meet the sun!

And thunder-voices, answering Freedom's prayer,

In far-off echoes fail,

As some loud trumpet, startling all the air,

Peals down an Alpine vale!"

O radiant-browed, the latest born of Time!

How waned thy sisters old

Before the splendors of thine eye sublime,

And mien, erect and bold!

Pure, as the winds of thine own forests are,

Thy brow beamed lofty cheer,

And Day's bright oriflamme, the Morning Star,

Flashed on thy lifted spear.

"I bear no weight," so rang thy jubilant tones,

"Of memories weird and vast —

No crushing heritage of iron thrones,

Bequeathed by some dead Past;

But mighty hopes, that learned to tower and soar,

From my own hills of snow —

Whose prophecies in wave and woodland roar,

When the free tempests blow!

"Like spectral lamps, that burn before a tomb,

The ancient lights expire;

I wave a torch, that floods the lessening gloom

With everlasting fire!

Crowned with my constellated stars, I stand

Beside the foaming sea,

And from the Future, with a victor's hand

Claim empire for the Free!"