Classic Poem

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I N every week, through all this peaceful year,
While plenty smiled, and harvests ripened here,
Your Carrier's hands have laid before your door
Tidings of War — mute echoes of the roar
Of huge artillery on the embattled shore
Where rough barbaric Russ surrounded stands,
In his own lair at bay 'mid hostile bands.
And who can tell what yet the end shall be,
Or say what living eye that end shall see?

St. Arnaud's thread of life spun out not far —
Snapped by the first vibration of the war;
Nicholas, whose ambition laid the train
And fired the explosion dread, now meets his slain
Before that Bar where Serf and Czar are one;
And Raglan, gentle Raglan, too, is gone!
Three chiefs of war: yet none among them all
Fell by the sword, as soldiers love to fall.
Disease stole over them, Death cut them short,
One on the Sea; before the unfallen Fort
Another; and the imperial third, at ease
Reclined within his curtained palaces.

Yet, fall who may, the battle still rolls on,
For ever doing, and yet never done.
I' the foreground, Death, Fire, Blood, breed deadly bale;
Widows and orphans in the distance wail:
Crime and disease instinctive wing their way
To hostile camps, as vultures to their prey:
Till War combines, in one portentous birth,
A compend dire of all the woes of earth.
Yet Science strains its utmost strength and skill,
In forging vaster, deadlier means to kill;
The Arts adorn it with their brightest charms;
Fame sounds her loudest trump for deeds of arms;
Whole empires — shouldering taxes without end —
On troops and fleets their mightiest millions spend:
Till one would think that, by our Maker's plan,
Murder must be the one great end of Man.

But how — 'mid all this bloody butcher's work
Of Christian slaughtering Christian — fares the Turk?
Some dreamers dream that, by the arms of France
And England, Turkish power must now advance;
Mohammed's dying creed revive; and soon
The waning Crescent shine a round full moon.
Fools! frightened at the shadow of a shade!
Find, if you can, how branches may be made
Again to flourish, firm and fair and free,
After once dropping, rotted, from the tree;
Invent some subtle drink, stronger than Doom,
By which an old man, bearing to his tomb
The loathed diseases of a life of crime,
May be restored to youth's all-glowing prime:
Then may ye show us how the Turkish grain,
Mildewed and blighted, may yet spring again,
With vital power, long after it is found
'Twixt upper and the nether mill-stone ground.
France is the upper stone, with restless force
Still rushing onward in her conquering course;
With solid, stolid, all-enduring power,
The might of England answers to the lower:
While Turkey — grateful for the deeds they do —
Is surely ground to powder 'twixt the two.

Sad for the Czar is Sebastopol's fall:
But to the Sultan bodes it worst of all!
Each new success of these his kind Allies
Adds to the friendly weight by which he dies.
Each Allied victory, fatal as the grave,
Strikes at the sovereignty they came to save.
Ripe for its well-earned ruin, it is made
To stand by means that weaken while they aid —
Aid all unneeded, were the sturdy tone
Of independence not already gone.
The Frenchman's shrug, the bullying Briton's frown,
Set Moslem statesmen up, or strike them down.
And well they may: for, from the Great Divan
To the remotest province, every man
Is eager to be bribed. Each post and place,
From Three-tailed Pasha down, is taxed — and pays.
Each great man's favor has its weight in gold;
And, at the market price, is bought and sold.
One law alone rules all their venal tribes:
Justice is blind — to every thing but bribes.
The Sultan's self full well deserves to reign
O'er men with but two passions — lust and gain.
The slave-mart is his court of love. He buys
His numerous wives: then, at the highest price,
He sells his daughters to his rich Pashas.
Yet all their sons and his (save one), for cause
Of deep state policy, are born to die.
In vain the poor slave-mother's piercing cry!
The twisted sash is all the swaddling band
That her doomed sons can find. A servile hand
Flings her loved burden in the silent wave.
One only heir is left, — son of a slave, —
To mount a throne whose steps of solid sin
Are slippery with the blood of all his kin.

Aye! let the Crescent fall! And while it dies,
Paled by the glories of the western skies,
Lo! Christendom looks up, with kindling eyes,
And sees the Eastern Cross in triumph rise!
Already do the Christian Powers erase
Laws branding Christians as a subject race.
Christians now lead the armies of the Porte;
Christians control her Councils and her Court;
Make and unmake her laws; take all she gets;
Live in her palaces; thrive on her debts;
Levy her tribute; seize on all her powers;
Fill Stamboul's mosques with swarms of booted Giours;
And, to absorb the whole, coolly prepare:
While the Old Turk stands glowering by, nor dare
Be aught but grateful; though full well he knows
These hugging friends to be his deadliest foes!
With grim despair he now is made to feel
That the tough race, long spurned beneath his heel —
The race that for four hundred years has borne
His bloody scourge of cruelty and scorn, —
Rapidly rising, may, at any hour,
Snatch from his failing grasp the reins of power,
And sweep him forth, with fierce avenging flame,
Back to the Asian deserts, whence he came.
Yes! year by year, well may a dwindling line
Of Pilgrims seek decaying Mecca's shrine!
Well may Jerusalem exult in throngs
Of gathering sons; change silence into songs;
And, thrilling all her hallowed hills and dells,
Ring with the pealing chimes of Christian bells!

Alas! that, when the Crescent's light shall cease,
The Cross shall bring but Victory, not Peace!
Greek and Armenian still contend with zeal
For faiths both fight for, more than either feel;
The old she-wolf of Rome, with hungry power,
Is seeking, ravenous, whom she may devour:
While — sure that these are tottering to their fall —
Pitiless Protestants make war on all.
But let this war, O Eastern Church, restore
The spirit-weapons that were thine of yore!
Bring out from dusty shelves and language dead,
The Heroes of the Faith thy bosom fed!
Remove the scars and stains that sword and storm
Have left uncomely on thy peerless form!
Armed from thy arsenals of ancient Truth,
Renew the eagle-vigor of thy youth!
With old Chalcedon's trenchant blade, again
Send back the she-wolf howling to her den!
Teach Protestants to yield the private I
To the One Voice of all antiquity!
And thus shalt thou, with renovated powers,
Stand side by side with England's Church and ours,
Firm on the ancient Apostolic ground,
On which alone the whole Church once was found:
On which alone, while God and Truth remain,
All Christendom can ever stand again.