Classic Poem

T URN the Kaleidoscope, Time!
On a weary journey you long have been,
Shadowy showman, bent and thin —
Showman of Shadows! pause you here,
And set on its legs your queer machine —
Your crystalline, panoramic sphere —
A duplicate, counterfeit creation —
A microcosm, 'tis said, wherein
The shifting events of the rolling world,
Are shaken, reformed, confused and whirled,
In a never ending permutation!

For joys fly upward and grief descends,
In wrecked ambition or flight of friends,
Losses of station and dreams of bliss
That dazzle and cheat us; Life is this! —
Till shaken in faith, and robbed of hope,
The planets themselves, to our mortal scope,
Seem only to topple, and flare, and reel,
Like glints and shards in the mighty wheel
Of God's enormous Kaleidoscope,
Where rains of meteors that affright
The pallid satellites of the night,
And red auroras, flickering far,
Like Scandinavian ghosts at war,
Horrent with lightning javelins seem
Like the weird mirage of a demon's dream,
Till torn asunder by bolts of thunder,
And irresistable whirlwind spasms,
Luridly through cloud-rifted chasms
They flash and fade, while we fear and wonder,
In a dazed, vertiginous, speechless spell
As a soul looks in through the gates of hell!

So turn the Kaleidoscope, Time!
Let us see what you have to reveal!
Tell me first, pray, what are those tinsel things,
To each of which a parasite clings,
And flutters his vain, gilt, gossamer wings,
Up there in the top of the wheel!
" Look again! though they seem as if never to fall,
There are treacherous quicksands under them all!
If I touch them now with the slightest shake,
See how they tremble, and reel and quake!
If I give them one revolution more,
They tumble, behold you! by the score,
And slide on the blood-red, slippery slope
That you see in my World-Kaleidoscope,
Vascillant, tottering, down they go,
As I turn so steady and slow,
Dragging to death those frightened drones;
Would any one guess they were emperors' thrones? "

Turn the Kaleidoscope, Time!
This is curious sport for me!
Steady, good Gaffer, steady and slow;
I have lain so long in an idle trance,
And the world, they say, is so much in advance,
I have missed a step in the century-dance;
And the singular sights are so many, you know,
To be seen in your grand, cosmoramical show,
One wants a good chance to see!

Turn the Kaleidoscope, Time!
What is here? a rain of blood?
" No, rubies! that range of their own accord,
Into one burning, immortal word —
It is Liberty! " That is good!

" Yes, Liberty, equal for all and each,
Liberal thought, unhindered speech,
As far as the reason of man may reach!
For the world is old and drowsy, and needs
Something to lift her out of the weeds
Of cant and custom, and make her free!
New thoughts to kindle and vivify her,
With shocks electric and thunder-fire!
Something to thrill, and shake her, and wake her
Out of her dead, dumb lethargy! "

Turn the Kaleidoscepe, Time!
" Passage of seasons, revolving years,
Rising and setting of rolling spheres,
Waking from death of vernal flowers,
Increscence and waning of circling moons —
Butterflies bursting their shroud-cocoons,
To sail on their silken fans away,
In the light of their resurrection day —
Everything in this world of ours,
Are types of glory yet to be —
Suggestions of immortality;
And whirl in the gyres of God and spin,
To bring the perfect creation in —
The Golden Period, long foretold,
By prophet-poets and seers of old,
Through cycles of progress manifold. "

Turn the Kaleidoscope, Time!
For there flits in your glass the strange display,
And flickering flames of Autos da Fe ,
Mingled with dungeon-rings and gags,
Sanctified masks, rose-watered rags,
And a few brown bones of a saint!
" Souvenirs for a coming day,
When superstition shall pass away,
And no more the bigot's frenzied scream
Shall startle the maiden's peaceful dream,
Nor the innocent mind of the child be crammed
With gibbering spectres of the damned;
But reason released from age-long thrall,
Find the love of Christ sufficient for all.
See, this is a broken crosier, and these
The skull-shaped beads of rosaries, —
Religion at ease! as in Thibet-Land,
Where they turn a windlass and pray by hand!
Pagoda-tinkle of bells o'erhead,
In the porch a heretic lying dead,
But they never do such things now, you know,
For this was in ages long ago! "

Turn the Kaleidoscope, Time!
A forest of dancing plumes
Now in the glittering wheel appears —
Ah me! but these are magnificent hues!
Splendid prismatic dissolving views,
Of broken sabres, red-rusted spears,
Torches, and clasped hands and tears,
With mixture of victories and defeats,
And battered cities and shattered fleets,
And fiery-furrowed glooms!

" Relics of old tyrannical wars,
Fought in eclipse of the morning stars,
But where the right at length prevailed,
Though long confounded and sore assailed,
For man but sees the beginning of things,
Yet to and fro the pendulum swings
Of the mighty chronometer of time,
Through the measureless arc of a sweep sublime;
And ticking the centuries, slowly brings,
In splendors that break o'er eternity's sea,
The perfect ages that are to be —
When shall dawn in my World-Kaleidoscope,
The glory of peace and Christian hope! "