Until at last was handed down Beyond the treasure-trove of Greece, Beyond the strain that Sappho sung And reveries of the Golden Fleece, The art of Titian, Rubens, Thal, And Tintoretto's masterpiece.
Thus, too, as man with curious eye Had noted outline, curve, and form, In toppling surge or lofty crag In woman's bosom beating warm, In cloudy shapes revealed on high Intaglios of the wind and storm,--
He modelled from the plastic loam; On shell and boulder graved a sign; Chiselled the stately obelisks With hieroglyphics, line on line; Colossal wrought his haughty Kings Or metal-traced the clambering vine.
And many an image was his work And many a statuette and bust; Some that remain, but most that lie As shards to outer darkness thrust; These buried under coral sands Those cloaked beneath forgotten dust.
Upon the lonely washes that stretch Where the Egyptian rivers croon, And floats above the Pyramids On tropic nights the lifeless moon, The mightiest waits,--the brooding Sphynx-- Half-lion and half Daemon hewn.
So Sculpture, pierced in mountain sides Or dragged from Mythologic seas, Still holds a sway; and worlds will bow In homage yet to such as these-- The noble bronze by Phidias wrought, The marbles of Praxiteles.
To those who for their country bleed To those who die for freedom's sake, All Hail! for them the Immortal dawns In waves of lilied silver break; For them in dusky-templed night The eternal stars a halo make.
In History's tome their chronicle An ever-living page shall be; The souls who flashed like sabers drawn The men who died to make men free; Their flag in every land has flown Their sails have whitened every sea.
On gallows high they met their doom Or breasted straight the serried spears Of Tyranny; in dungeons damp Scarred on the stones their name appears; For them the flower of Memory Shall blossom, watered by our tears.
But Conquest, Glory, transient Fame, What baubles these to struggle for, When draped in sulphurous films uprise The cannon-throated fiends of War! What childish trumpery cheap as this-- The trophies of a Conqueror?
How many an army marches forth With bugle-note or battle-hymn, To drench the soil in human gore And multiply Golgothas grim; And all for what? a Ruler's pique Religion's call, or Harlot's whim.