For years thrice three, wise Horace said, A poem rare let silence bind; And love may ripen in the shade, Like ours, for nine long seasons laid In crypts and arches of the mind.
That right Falernian friendship old Will we, to grace our feast, call up, And freely pour the juice of gold, That keeps life's pulses warm and bold, Till Death shall break the empty cup.
A race of nobles may die out, A royal line may leave no heir; Wise Nature sets no guards about Her pewter plate and wooden ware.
But they fail not, the kinglier breed, Who starry diadems attain; To dungeon, axe, and stake succeed Heirs of the old heroic strain.
The zeal of Nature never cools, Nor is she thwarted of her ends; When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools, Then she a saint and prophet spends.
Land of the Magyars! though it be The tyrant may relink his chain, Already thine the victory, As the just Future measures gain.
Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won The deathly travail's amplest worth; A nation's duty thou hast done, Giving a hero to our earth.
And he, let come what will of woe, Has saved the land he strove to save; No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow, Can quench the voice shall haunt his grave.
"I Kossuth am: O Future, thou That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile, O'er this small dust in reverence bow, Remembering, what I was erewhile.
"I was the chosen trump wherethrough Our God sent forth awakening breath; Came chains? Came death? The strain He blew Sounds on, outliving chains and death."
I did not praise thee when the crowd, 'Witched with the moment's inspiration, Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud, And stamped their dusty adoration; I but looked upward with the rest, And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best.
They raised thee not, but rose to thee, Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging; So on some marble Phoebus the high sea Might leave his worthless sea-weed clinging, But pious hands, with reverent care, Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare.
Now thou 'rt thy plain, grand self again, Thou art secure from panegyric,-- Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain, And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric: This side the Blessed Isles, no tree Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee.