Classic Poem

Creative Pen, destructive Sword — dread powers!
How strongly ye have stirred this world of ours!
By different means, to different ends ye sway,
One with delight, the other with dismay —
Homes, cities, nations, climes, religions, kings,
And all the boundless range of human things.
One, proud of Peace and her great gifts, aspires
To aid progression in its vast desires:
One, prone to waste, disorder, spoil, and pride,
Would turn the course of onward thought aside;
One lifts, enlightens, purifies, and saves;
One smites, degrades, contaminates, enslaves;
One hath a baneful, one a blest employ, —
One labours to create, one leapeth to destroy!
Giant opponents! leagued with peace and strife, —
One blights, one beautifies, the forms of life;
One leads to pleasures, lofty and refined,
One, while it darkens, tortures humankind.
Stupendous twain! great ministers on earth
Of good and ill, of plenitude and dearth, —
One is the storm, the pestilence, the grief,
One the mind's health, calm solace, and relief;
One is the hope, the majesty, the dower
Of man, still striving for a wiser power;
And one — dark game, which false ambition plays!
A fierce, but fading, error of old days.
The world grows weary of this sad unrest,
This nightmare of its myriad-hearted breast, —
This monster, breathing horror in its path,
This hideous thing of recklessness and wrath:
New thoughts, new deeds, more kindred to the skies,
Pregnant with better destinies, arise,
And 'mong the old iniquities of men,
The mighty Sword shall fall before the mightier Pen!
Ye worshippers of Warfare, can ye tell
Where are the right, the beauty, and the spell,
The glory, the morality, the gain,
Of the disastrous system ye maintain?
When ye have paved the battle-ground with bones,
To the sad music of a people's groans;
Wakened the cries of multitudinous woe, —
Done all ye can to slaughter and o'erthrow;
Brought man's and nature's fairest doings down, —
Bold hearts and bloody hands! how holy your renown!
Holy? Dear God! War in his whole career
Is rife with lawless force and hopeless fear;
And, spite of gorgeous garniture and forms,
With inward agonies and outward storms;
Lust, riot, ruin hang upon his breath,
Tumultuous conflict, and dishonoured death!
Let not the youth whose spirit pants to win
By lofty labours, fame unsoiled with sin,
Seek it amid those desolating hordes
That gird Ambition with embattled swords;
Nor desecrate his soul — which God has made
For nobler things — in War's unhallowed trade.
But let him serve his country as he can,
With pen, tongue, action, as becomes a man
Bent upon toils that dignify and grace,
And bring some blessing to the human race.
See the poor soldier — no unworthy name
When wielding moral weapons 'gainst the shame
Born of a thousand social ills and wrongs,
Which dash with bitterness the Poet's songs; —
See the poor soldier, from less guilty life
Coaxed or coerced to tread the fields of strife,
Caught in a tavern; in a barrack bred
To things that blight his heart and cloud his head;
Shut up his sympathies, enslave his soul,
Hold natural impulse in a stern control:
Hoodwink his reason, paralyse his speech,
Uproot his virtues — all that's good unteach, —
Till he becomes, — oh! man thrice brave and blest! —
In war a terror, and in peace a pest!
And if he dare — for manhood sometimes will
Break through its bondage, spite of every ill, —
If he but dare by look, word, act, or flaw,
Mark his impatience of the iron law,
The Lash , laid ready for the needful hour, —
That just and gentle instrument of power,
That man-degrading, man-upbraiding thing,
Bearing at every point a scorpion's sting, —
Tears up the quivering flesh, extorts the groan,
Rouses to vengeance, or subdues to stone,
Making the being it pretends to win
A restless, reckless follower of sin;
Or a machine, now dead to fear and shame,
Whereby the well-born coward climbs to fame!
Fame, did I say? Can that enchanting thing,
For whose great guerdon Genius strains his wing,
Bedim her lustrous records with the tale
Of deeds, whereat the harassed world turns pale?
They write it fame , but Reason, Truth, and Song,
Must find a darker word to designate the wrong!
But, hark! your country calls! up valiant sons!
Gird on your swords, prepare your murderous guns;
Some new aggression, grand in its design,
Strikes the wise rulers of your land and mine: —
Your country calls, and her strong law and voice
Admit no conscience, and allow no choice:
Ye wear War's gaudy badge, ye willing braves, —
Ask not the why and where, go at it, slaves!
Plenty may fail, and Commerce droop the while,
And Peace, for lack of light, refuse to smile;
The Arts may sicken, Science cease his toils,
And a sad people tremble at your broils.
What boots it if a wilderness be won,
Or a pacific nation half undone?
Go forth, nor let the hostile flag be furled
Till ye have cursed and conquered half the world!
But ere ye go, the Servant of the Lord
Must bless the banner, consecrate the sword;
Must pray the God of Battles — impious prayer!
To make your cohorts His especial care;
And, with a mock solemnity of mien, —
Ah! how unworthy of the sacred scene! —
Ask blessings on a bloody crowd that goes
To fetter human wills, and feast on human woes!
Dear Christ! commissioned from the Eternal Throne
To touch our hearts, and claim them for thine own;
Man of humility and patient pain,
Word without error, life without a stain;
Teacher of truths reflected from above, —
Pure type of Peace, and miracle of Love!
It shocks the soul, it makes the spirit sad,
To hear these men, in robes of meekness clad,
Beside the altars hallowed in thy name,
Sanction a giant sin, should brand their cheeks with shame!
It is the day of battle; morn's sweet light
Comes surging o'er the lingering shades of night,
And Nature, fresh as in her newest hour,
Looks up with calm and renovated power;
But hostile hosts, impatient for the day,
Panting like hungry tigers for the fray: —
For slaughter eager, and for conquest keen,
Crowd and encumber the enchanting scene;
Preparing to pollute, with gloom and glare,
What God has made so holy and so fair;
And with the life-blood of each other's veins,
Curse and incarnadine the peaceful plains.
The mournful bugle sings a startling note;
The cannon opes its fulminating throat;
Gleams the quick sword; upstarts the bristling lance, —
A thousand files with deadly strength advance,
And with a wild tornado-shock of strife,
Each bosom burning with delirious life —
Meet midway; and the tumult rising high
Shakes the ensanguined ground, and troubles all the sky.
Fiercer and fiercer, till the noon is past,
Rages the battle's desolating blast;
Closer and closer, with unbated breath,
The martial multitudes contend with death,
Till the insulted sun, adown the skies,
Sinks in an ocean of resplendent dyes,
And pensive twilight, clothed in dewy grey,
Drops her dim curtain o'er the fitful fray;
Till baffled, bleeding, filled with pride and spleen,
Foe shrinks from foe, and darkness steals between.
But not in silence reigns the fearful night,
For muffled sounds denote the hurried flight;
And groans, upheaved from ebbing hearts, ascend
And shriek, and prayer, and malediction blend;
And ruffian violence, and frantic fear,
Strike with abrupt alarm the inquiring ear;
And reckless revel in the camp is heard,
And angry cries at victory deferred, —
And the mixed mockery of laugh and song,
From men that glory in gigantic wrong;
Till a new morning, lovely as before,
Smiles on the field that reeks with human gore, —
Wakes the rough soldier from his haunted sleep,
And gilds a scene " that makes the angels weep! "
For many a day the dread Golgotha lies
Hideous and bare to the upbraiding skies;
The gentle flowers, the yet surviving few,
Droop with the burden of unhallowed dew:
The lark, returning thither, soars and sings
With man's last life-blood on his buoyant wings!
The vagrant butterfly drops down to bear
The stains of slaughter through the summer air:
The quiet cattle startle, as they stray,
At ghastly faces festering into clay;
The stream runs red; the bare and blackened trees
Have ceased to wanton with the wayward breeze;
But the gaunt wolf and hungry vulture, led
By tainted gales that blow athwart the dead,
Hold loathsome banquet; till some friendly hand
Digs a great grave, and clears the cumbered land,
And pleasant winds, and purifying rains,
Sweep out at last the horror of the plains!
Thought sickens o'er the scene: — come back, sweet Muse!
Nor soil thy sunny garments with the hues
Gathered from gory battle-grounds, and graves
Unheaped with warfare's immolated slaves,
Lest gentle bosoms, and disdainful tongues,
Tire of thy truths, and rail against thy songs
Lo! in that quiet and contracted room,
Where the lone lamp just mitigates the gloom,
Sits a pale student, stirred with high desires,
With lofty principles and gifted fires.
From time to time, with calm inquiring looks,
He culls the ore of wisdom from his books;
Clears it, sublimes it, till it flows refined
From his alchymic crucible of mind;
And as the mighty thoughts spring out complete,
How the quill travels o'er the snowy sheet!
Till signs of glorious import crowd the page,
Destined to raise and rectify the age;
For every drop from that soul-guided pen
Shall fall a blessing on the hearts of men, —
Shall rouse the listless to triumphant toils,
Wean the unruly from their sins and broils:
Teach the grown man, and in the growing child
Transfuse a power to keep it undefiled;
Solace the weary, animate the sad,
Restrain the reckless, make the dullest glad,
Sow in the bosoms of our rising youth
The seed of unadulterated truth; —
Uproot the lingering errors of the throng,
Break down the barriers of remorseless Wrong;
Direct mind's onward march, and in the van
Send back electric thought from man to man:
This is the P EN'S high purpose — Can it fail?
Soul! scorn the shameful doubt! press forward and prevail!
Oh! for a day of that triumphant time,
That universal jubilee sublime; —
When Marlboroughs shall be useless, and the name
Of Miltons travel through a wider fame;
When other Nelsons shall be out of place,
While other Newtons pierce the depths of space;
When other Wellingtons! — proud name! — shall yield
To mightier Watts, in a far mightier field!
When other Shakespeares shall direct the mind
To Hero-worship of a purer kind;
When War's red banner shall, for aye, be furled,
And Peace embrace all climes, all children of the world!