Classic Poem

LINES ON THE ROYAL MARRIAGE

Faint with the weary way
Of nine long decades travelled since her prime,
The ancient Century grey
Looks backward to survey
Her record on the unfolded scroll of Time.

Such battle-music's beat
Ne'er rang around a new, defenceless birth,
Since sword and shield did meet
Clashing where caves of Crete
Concealed the infant Lord of heaven and earth.

And still, as she did grow,
Loud and more loud the warrior din became.
Red ran Rhine, Danube, Po;
Vast Russia's sheet of snow
Crimsoned with smoking blood and surging flame.

What gush of golden morn
Purges Earth's purple blot and lurid hue?
Meek in the bowing corn,
Glad in the grape reborn,
The dead arise to mantle her anew.

Scornful of shattered yoke,
Swift Commerce speeds where Plenty's way hath lain.
Strength to the hammer's stroke!
Hail to the heart of oak
Charged with the floating treasure of the main!

What new unlooked-for page
Turns sudden in the book of Destiny?
What spell of seer or mage,
Thou wan expiring age,
E'er summoned up a Power like theirs who bend to thee?

Behold yon vapoury sign
Of fire and flood's inimical embrace.
The jarring powers combine,
The fleeing strength confine,
Then laugh at dwindled Time and shrivelled Space.

As yawns the riven hill,
As force elastic whirls the train along,
A swifter Spirit still
Stands waiting on thy will,
And Steam is now man's arm, and Lightning now his tongue.

Hail! Powers divinely lent
As magic mail for mortal denizen;
Not plaything or portent,
But Wisdom's instrument
Wide lands to weld in one, and fashion Man from men.

As in old days divine
Ere all Night's arch to glowing stars was given,
A space was left to shine
For prince and heroine
Exalted at Jove's beck, and planted in his heaven.

So, though some vein that ran
With human life in every floweret smiles.
For westward-wending man
Remains the prairie's span,
And sea's uncounted multitude of isles.

O ye by brains and hearts
Elected shapers of the coming State,
Not mines alone, nor marts,
But let laws, manners, arts,
Approve ye Fortune's friends, and worthy of your fate!

And thou who glidest by
With step unstayed, departing Century;
Lives no divining eye
The issue to descry
Of this great stream whose fount arose in thee?

Not studious lamp, or blaze
Of altar deep Futurity illume;
Nor doth the golden maze
Of winding starry ways
Throb with the secret of the coming doom.

Yet Heaven's allotment dread
Haply may be by gentlest signs foreshown;
As by each herb we tread
Some riddle may be read,
And somewhat of Earth's mystery be known.

Be then the maiden's brow
With scented wreaths of southern blossom crowned,
And let the bridal vow,
Serenely said, and low,
Be heard, though nations' plaudits peal around.

Be homes of men to-night
With glowing globes and flaming cressets gay.
And be men's memories bright
With the auguster light
That streams from fifty years of stainless sway.

Frail though these omens be
As the sea-rainbow flying with the foam;
Yet part in peace and glee
Thou fading Century;
The bow is in the cloud, thou bear'st a promise home.