Classic Poem

LI.

No; robbery legalized, and smooth deceit,
May gather much, and after more aspire;
On lazy couch may loll in silken state,
Sooth'd with the idle chaunting of the lyre.
But surely God will in the end require
The cruel grinding of the helpless poor;
Will judge the smooth deceiver, and in ire,
Even while he laughs beneath the vernal shower,
At once his branches green, and deep struck roots devour.

LII.

Behold that roofless tower adown the vale,
The storm howls hollow in the time-torn walls,
And rushing from the hill with weary wail,
A wizard stream behind it ceaseless brawls.
There learn the hapless fate that pride befals;
Rude time, remorseless, sweeps it all away;
In vain the turrets huge, the sumptuous halls,
Did some designer's mighty mind display —
A Wren, a Jones, perhaps, or Adams of his day.

LIII.

For there Oppression's crouching lion fill'd
His den with ravin, and his holes with prey;
While gorged with fat, in sloth supinely lull'd,
His lioness and strong young lions lay
And there, out-stretching wide with sweepy sway,
Offended at the poor man's humble shed,
His simple life, his children's noisy play,
His ruthless rage, the land a ruin made,
That streams unseen might glide, and sullen forests spread.

LIV.

What seem'd eternal transport shook the hall,
Where fires of grandeur, nightly wont to blaze —
As wanton Folly, in the midnight ball,
Led youth and beauty through her dizzying maze,
And that too, in the dark and dismal days
When meek Religion to the desert fled —
Unoccupy'd were all her public ways,
Butcher'd her sons, in fields, on scaffolds bled,
Or with the bestial tribes, in dens and caves were hid.

LV.

But Vengeance, though she seem'd to slumber long,
With tenfold fury at the last awoke,
And of its gorgeous state, its turrets strong,
The glory wither'd with a single stroke.
And lo! his rod of rude oppression broke,
An outcast vile, the owner roams distress'd,
Happy to court the hospitable look,
Yea, happy to become the humble guest
Of those whom, in his pride, he wantonly oppress'd.

LVI.

And in his palace Desolation brown,
And awful, ever-during silence dwells,
Save when the grey owl to the cloudless moon,
At midnight hour her rueful story tells.
And save the hunter, wandering o'er the fells,
Who o'er its fate will sometimes turn to muse,
And yonder maniac wild — no footstep else
E'er brushes there away the falling dews,
Or on the grass-grown path the faded print renews.

LVII.

Behind it dark the sullen yew tree weeps, —
And shrivell'd in the blast, with branches bare,
One solitary oak its station keeps,
Dimly to point where other oak trees were.
Its silver lake lies a waste puddle, where
Is nightly heard the solitary hern,
And wandering seamaws glean their fishy fare,
Among the broad sedge roots and faded fern,
What time they, dark, afar, the coming storm discern.

LVIII.

The very heavens above it seem to lower;
Mists hide it oft by day, and fires by night,
Terrific on the topmost tottering tower,
Far blazing, shakes the peasant with affright.
And gorgeous oft, 'tis said, array'd in white,
With tearful eye, and sallow aspect lean,
Or terrible, as warlike vizor'd wight,
The troubled spirits of the dead are seen,
To round, with gliding pace, the solitary green.

LIX.

Such felon fate is ever found to lie
In wait for pride, on grandeur's dizzying steep;
And thus, o'er dazzling honour's burning sky,
The dismal shadows of oblivion sweep.
Far happier he whose noiseless pathways creep,
Lone, through the wilds obscure of humble toil,
Whose patient steps integrity doth keep
From envy free, and hatred's dark turmoil,
Bless'd with a conscience pure, a spirit free from guile.

LX.

This poor man, lifting up his death-dimm'd eye,
Of those he lov'd to take a last adieu,
And giving them, by faith, to God on high,
Finds in his soul more satisfaction true,
Than if he saw, with every wind that blew,
Wafted for them, the wealth of Asia's shores;
Than if he left them crowns, or rich Peru
Were opening, vast, her subterranean doors,
For them th' astonish'd world to heap with all her stores.