Classic Poem

By starlight they rode in their speed and their might,
A warrior host sweeping down through the night,—
An army of spectres, they sped on the wind,
With swords piercing front and plumes streaming behind;
On the highways of air they were led as by Mars,
While their steeds shod with thunder seemed trampling the stars!
Like a fleet in a gale, they careered through the night,
And the path where they passed flashed with phosphorous light.
In the front galloped Brutus, a foe to all peace,
His blade gleaming red with the blood of Lucrece;
And, turning towards Rome, bent his way down the heaven,
Repeating the oath which of old he had given.
“These modern Tarquins must fall!” was his cry;
“By the blade of their own bloody guilt they shall die!”
And, strange though it be, there Mohammed was seen,
His Arab's mane sweeping his mantle of green,
And the watchwords engraved on his drawn scimetar
Were “Allah, il-Allah!” each letter a star.
Gustavus-Adolphus of Sweden was there,
As at Lützen he rode with his battle-blade bare.
And, like their own turbulent torrents let loose
By a storm in the Highlands, sped Wallace and Bruce.
Sobieski, the Pole, gave his charger the rein,
Every stroke of whose hoof broke a fetter in twain.
There was Olaf of Norway, whose mandate and sword
The heathen struck down in the name of the Lord.
There sped fiery Tell with his crossbow and dart,
The barb glowing crimson from Gessler's proud heart.
And close by his side, the beloved of his peers,
Bold Winklereid rode with his arms full of spears;
The same old self-sacrifice lighting his eye,
And “Make way for Liberty!” still was his cry.
There was Luther, no braver e'er rode to the field,
And the word of the Lord was his buckler and shield,
While the weapon he grasped was the same he had sped
In a moment of anger at Lucifer's head.
There was Cromwell, that monarch who never wore crown,
With his Bible and sword and his puritan frown
And with him Charles-Albert, the Piedmontese star,
As he rode ere betrayed on the field of Novarre.
There with garments still red from that last fatal day,
The ghost of Bozzaris sped fierce for the fray;
And close by his side, with an eye full of fire,
Rode Byron, still grasping his sword and his lyre;
And the war-kindling numbers which fell from his tongue
Like the notes of a wild battle-clarion were flung!
And just in advance galloped Körner and Burns
Unsheathing the war-song and falchion by turns!
There, gazing and listening, my spirit entranced
Leaped for joy as these poets for Freedom advanced;
And I felt the warm thought through my bosom descend,
That the bard to be true must be Liberty's friend!

Then came a dim host to my vision unknown,
Like those lights which astronomers number alone;
But their voice still made clear what the eye could not see,
Crying, “Down with the tyrant wherever he be!”

But why swept these phantoms? Whence rode they, and where?
What occasion had summoned these allies of air?
I looked, and beheld the swift spread of the blaze
Which dazzled the stars with the pulse of its rays,
As if through the darkness the lightning had played,
And in midst of its splendour been suddenly stayed:
There I read the great words spread like fiery wings
Where “weighed and found wanting” confronted the kings!
And this army of spectres, led on by that light,
Like a cloud on a hurricane swept through the night;
And this was their cry coming down on the gale,
“The modern Belshazzars are weighed in the scale!”