Classic Poem

Tyre of the farther West! be thou too warned,
Whose eagle wings thine own green world overspread
Touching two Oceans: wherefore hast thou scorned
Thy fathers' God, O proud and full of bread?
Why lies the Cross unhonoured on thy ground
While in mid air thy stars and arrows flaunt?
That sheaf of darts, will it not fall unbound,
Except, disrobed of thy vain earthly vaunt,
Thou bring it to be blessed where Saints and Angels haunt?

The holy seed, by Heaven's peculiar grace,
Is rooted here and there in thy dark woods;
But many a rank weed round it grows apace,
And Mammon builds beside thy mighty floods,
O'ertopping Nature, braving Nature's God;
O while thou yet hast room, fair fruitful land,
Ere war and want have stained thy virgin sod,
Mark thee a place on high, a glorious stand,

Whence Truth her sign may make o'er forest, lake, and strand.
Eastward, this hour, perchance thou turn'st thine ear,
Listening if haply with the surging sea,
Blend sounds of Ruin from a land once dear
To thee and Heaven. O trying hour for thee!
Tyre mocked when Salem fell; where now is Tyre?
Heaven was against her. Nations thick as waves,
Burst o'er her walls, to Ocean doomed and fire:
And now the tideless water idly laves
Her towers, and lone sands heap her crowned merchants' graves.