The camp's harsh tumult and the conflict's glow,
The thrill of triumph and the gasp of woe,
The tender parting and the glad return,
The festal banquet and the funeral urn, —
And all the drama which at once uprears
Its spectral shadows through the clash of spears,
From camp and field to echoing verse transferred,
Swelled the proud song that listening nations heard.

Why floats the amaranth in eternal bloom
O'er Ilium's turrets and Achilles' tomb?
Why lingers fancy, where the sunbeams smile
On Circe's gardens and Calypso's isle?
Why follows memory to the gate of Troy
Her plumed defender and his trembling boy?
Lo the blind dreamer, kneeling on the sand,
To trace these records with his doubtful hand;
In fabled tones his own emotion flows,
And other lips repeat his silent woes;
In Hector's infant see the babes that shun
Those deathlike eyes, unconscious of the sun,
Or in his hero hear himself implore,
"Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more!"

Thus live undying through the lapse of time The solemn legends of the warrior's clime; Like Egypt's pyramid, or Pæstum's fane, They stand the heralds of the voiceless plain; Yet not like them, for Time, by slow degrees, Saps the gray stone, and wears the chiselled frieze, And Isis sleeps beneath her subject Nile, And crumbled Neptune strews his Dorian pile; But Art's fair fabric, strengthening as it rears Its laurelled columns through the mist of years,

As the blue arches of the bending skies
Still gird the torrent, following as it flies,
Spreads, with the surges bearing on mankind,
Its starred pavilion o'er the tides of mind!

In vain the patriot asks some lofty lay
To dress in state our wars of yesterday.
The classic days, those mothers of romance,
That roused a nation for a woman's glance;
The age of mystery with its hoarded power,
That girt the tyrant in his storied tower,
Have past and faded like a dream of youth,
And riper eras ask for history's truth.

On other shores, above their mouldering towns, In sullen pomp the tall cathedral frowns, Pride in its aisles, and paupers at the door, Which feeds the beggars whom it fleeced of yore. Simple and frail, our lowly temples throw Their slender shadows on the paths below; Scarce steal the winds, that sweep his woodland tracks, The larch's perfume from the settler's axe, Ere, like a vision of the morning air,

His slight-framed steeple marks the house of prayer; Its planks all reeking, and its paint undried,

Its rafters sprouting on the shady side,

It sheds the raindrops from its shingled eaves, Ere its green brothers once have changed their leaves.

Yet Faith's pure hymn, beneath its shelter rude, Breathes out as sweetly to the tangled wood, As where the rays through blazing oriels pour On marble shaft and tessellated floor;

Heaven asks no surplice round the heart that feels, And all is holy where devotion kneels.

Thus on the soil the patriot's knee should bend, Which holds the dust once living to defend ; Where'er the hireling shrinks before the free, Each pass becomes "a new Thermopyla"! Where'er the battles of the brave are won, There every mountain "looks on Marathon"!

Our fathers live; they guard in glory still
The grass-grown bastions of the fortressed hill;
Still ring the echoes of the trampled gorge,
With God and Freedom! England and Saint George!
The royal cipher on the captured gun

Mocks the sharp night-dews and the blistering sun!
The red-cross banner shades its captor's bust,
Its folds still loaded with the conflict's dust;
The drum, suspended by its tattered marge,
Once rolled and rattled to the Hessian's charge;
The stars have floated from Britannia's mast,
The redcoat's trumpets blown the rebel's blast.

Point to the summits where the brave have bled, Where every village claims its glorious dead; Say, when their bosoms met the bayonet's shock, Their only corselet was the rustic frock; Say, when they mustered to the gathering horn, The titled chieftain curled his lip in scorn, Yet, when their leader bade his lines advance, No musket wavered in the lion's glance; Say, when they fainted in the forced retreat, They tracked the snow-drifts with their bleeding feet,

Yet still their banners, tossing in the blast,
Bore Ever Ready, faithful to the last,
Through storm and battle, till they waved again
On Yorktown's hills and Saratoga's plain!

Then, if so fierce the insatiate patriot's flame,
Truth looks too pale, and history seems too tame,
Bid him await some new Columbiad's page,
To gild the tablets of an iron age,

And save his tears, which yet may fall upon
Some fabled field, some fancied Washington!

IV.

BUT once again, from their Æolian cave,
The winds of Genius wandered on the wave.
Tired of the scenes the timid pencil drew,
Sick of the notes the sounding clarion blew;
Sated with heroes who had worn so long
The shadowy plumage of historic song;
The new-born poet left the beaten course,
To track the passions to their living source.

Then rose the Drama; - and the world admired Her varied page with deeper thought inspired; Bound to no clime, for Passion's throb is one In Greenland's twilight or in India's sun; Born for no age, - for all the thoughts that roll In the dark vortex of the stormy soul, Unchained in song, no freezing years can tame; God gave them birth, and man is still the same.

So full on life her magic mirror shone,
Her sister Arts paid tribute to her throne;

One reared her temple, one her canvas warmed,
And Music thrilled, while Eloquence informed.
The weary rustic left his stinted task

For smiles and tears, the dagger and the mask;
The sage, turned scholar, half forgot his lore,
To be the woman he despised before;

O'er sense and thought she threw her golden chain, And Time, the anarch, spares her deathless reign.

Thus lives Medea, in our tamer age, As when her buskin pressed the Grecian stage; Not in the cells where frigid learning delves In Aldine folios mouldering on their shelves; But breathing, burning in the glittering throng, Whose thousand bravos roll untired along, Circling and spreading through the gilded halls, From London's galleries to San Carlo's walls!

Thus shall he live whose more than mortal name
Mocks with its ray the pallid torch of Fame;
So proudly lifted, that it seems afar

No earthly Pharos, but a heavenly star;
Who, unconfined to Art's diurnal bound,
Girds her whole zodiac in his flaming round,
And leads the passions, like the orb that guides,
From pole to pole, the palpitating tides !