Classic Poem

Already graced with Bravery's martial crown,
Our young republic pants for fresh renown;
When idle Prowess finds no scene for fame,
Some loftier glory beams, in Virtue's name,
Reposing Valor wantons in a trance
Of calm philosophy or gay romance;
Refinement blooms, and Wisdom claims the wreath
Which silver hairs, not scars, are hid beneath.
In every state, as one heroic age,
One intellectual, stands on history's page.
Now maddening nations quit their tranquil farms
To swell the fight — a universe in arms!
Now Strife, his work beginning to abhor,
Bids tired Augustus close the gates of War;
Hushed is the trump — a milder sway succeeds,
Now peaceful Georgies wake the Mantuan reeds.
Such days beheld the Stoic porch arise,
With Academia — garden of the wise!
Then Epicurus taught his gentle train
The dulcet musings of a doubtful brain,
And Plato — bee-lipped oracle! — beguiled
His loved Lyeeuin, listening like a child.
Thus eras change, and such a change is ours;
Rough Mars gives way to April's promised flowers:
Forth springs the godlike intellect, unchained;
Guard it, good angels! keep it unprofaned;
Guide it, lest, lured by offices or gold,
Its rights be bartered, and its empire sold.
Now books accomplish what the sword began,
Wide spreads the rule of educated man,
No let, no limit, to its march sublime,
In space, but ocean — in duration, Time.
So swift its course, some prophet may contend
Its very progress bodes a speedy end:
No! like Niagara's changeless current driven,
It moves, yet stays, eternal as the heaven:
That mighty torrent, as it flows to-day,
Forever flows, but never flows away;
The waves you gazed at yesterday are gone,
Yet the same restless deluge thunders on.
As crumble Custom's mouldering chains with rust,
Power's gilded idol tumbles to the dust.
Tradition totters from her cloudy throne,
And all the impostures of the past are known.
Hardly can we lend credence to the tale
Of their long woes who first rent error's veil:
What royal spite, what curses from the Church,
Awed the pale scholar in his cloistered search;
How many from themselves their visions hid,
Or wandered exiles, outcast and forbid,
Like Dante, sealing with dejected tread
A tyrant's stairs, to taste his bitter bread!
Think how Columbus toiled, through years of pain,
For leave to try the secret of the main;
Yet the dream dawned, and gave, in spite of Rome,
Spain a new world, and half mankind a home.

Unhappy days! when they who read the stars
Oft only saw them through their dungeon bars:
Our tutored minds less dangerous ways explore, —
The immortal pioneers have gone before.
As the worn bark, no more to storms a sport,
Just makes the headland of her opening port,
New perils then awake the master's dread,
Anxious he walks, and eyes the frequent lead;
But, if the pilot come, he yields the helm,
And stands a subject in his floating realm,
The veteran's nod his mariners obey,
And wind confiding on their shoaly way.
Like them we travel, safely gliding by
Opinion's thousand wrecks that round us lie.

Not thus were you, ye leader spirits! taught
Your pathway, beaconed through the wilds of thought:
For you no Newton yet had poised the world,
No sage La Place heaven's glittering leaves unfurled,
But each suspicion of the truth was born
A dim conjecture, heralding the morn.
Thus from his height bewildered Kepler strayed,
To toy with vain Chaldea's mystic trade,
And sought in yon blue labyrinth to behold
Man's life and fortunes lustrously foretold.
Hence Danish Tycho's heavenly city swarmed
With crude ideas and fantasies deformed.
Yet sparely blame! nor be extreme to mark
Their faulty light, when all was else — how dark!

But now the Mind, from ancient falsehood woke,
Abjures old Superstition's rotten yoke:
No wrathful threat in Nature's thunder fears,
No fate predicted by the falling spheres.
All childish fables, Fancy's fond pretense,
Fade from the cold arithmetic of Sense:
No jocund Fauns through copse or prairie rove,
No dripping Naiads haunt the godless grove;
And had no holier new Religion given
More certain tokens of a purer heaven,
By fount and rock and by the sounding shore,
Nothing were left to dream of and adore.
Now to Truth's courts, a never-faltering throng,
Thy torch, O Science! lights and leads along.
No sluggard sons this age of labor owns,
In earth's great workshop solitary drones,
But every mind the general task must share,
Brave the long toil, and mingle in the care,
In love with Knowledge, that alone can be
Our country's hope — sole safeguard of the free.