Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant. Bryant William Cullen

thunder-stroke.

      And lo! in full-grown strength, an empire stands

      Of leagued and rival states, the wonder of the lands.

XVI

      Oh, Greece! thy flourishing cities were a spoil

      Unto each other; thy hard hand oppressed

      And crushed the helpless; thou didst make thy soil

      Drunk with the blood of those that loved thee best;

      And thou didst drive, from thy unnatural breast,

      Thy just and brave to die in distant climes;

      Earth shuddered at thy deeds, and sighed for rest

      From thine abominations; after-times,

      That yet shall read thy tale, will tremble at thy crimes!

XVII

      Yet there was that within thee which has saved

      Thy glory, and redeemed thy blotted name;

      The story of thy better deeds, engraved

      On fame's unmouldering pillar, puts to shame

      Our chiller virtue; the high art to tame

      The whirlwind of the passions was thy own;

      And the pure ray, that from thy bosom came,

      Far over many a land and age has shone,

      And mingles with the light that beams from God's own throne.

XVIII

      And Rome – thy sterner, younger sister, she

      Who awed the world with her imperial frown —

      Rome drew the spirit of her race from thee,

      The rival of thy shame and thy renown.

      Yet her degenerate children sold the crown

      Of earth's wide kingdoms to a line of slaves;

      Guilt reigned, and woe with guilt, and plagues came down,

      Till the North broke its floodgates, and the waves

      Whelmed the degraded race, and weltered o'er their graves.

XIX

      Vainly that ray of brightness from above,

      That shone around the Galilean lake,

      The light of hope, the leading star of love,

      Struggled, the darkness of that day to break;

      Even its own faithless guardians strove to slake,

      In fogs of earth, the pure ethereal flame;

      And priestly hands, for Jesus' blessed sake,

      Were red with blood, and charity became,

      In that stern war of forms, a mockery and a name.

XX

      They triumphed, and less bloody rites were kept

      Within the quiet of the convent-cell;

      The well-fed inmates pattered prayer, and slept,

      And sinned, and liked their easy penance well.

      Where pleasant was the spot for men to dwell,

      Amid its fair broad lands the abbey lay,

      Sheltering dark orgies that were shame to tell,

      And cowled and barefoot beggars swarmed the way,

      All in their convent weeds, of black, and white, and gray.

XXI

      Oh, sweetly the returning muses' strain

      Swelled over that famed stream, whose gentle tide

      In their bright lap the Etrurian vales detain,

      Sweet, as when winter storms have ceased to chide,

      And all the new-leaved woods, resounding wide,

      Send out wild hymns upon the scented air.

      Lo! to the smiling Arno's classic side

      The emulous nations of the West repair,

      And kindle their quenched urns, and drink fresh spirit there.

XXII

      Still, Heaven deferred the hour ordained to rend

      From saintly rottenness the sacred stole;

      And cowl and worshipped shrine could still defend

      The wretch with felon stains upon his soul;

      And crimes were set to sale, and hard his dole

      Who could not bribe a passage to the skies;

      And vice, beneath the mitre's kind control,

      Sinned gayly on, and grew to giant size,

      Shielded by priestly power, and watched by priestly eyes.

XXIII

      At last the earthquake came – the shock, that hurled

      To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown,

      The throne, whose roots were in another world,

      And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own.

      From many a proud monastic pile, o'erthrown,

      Fear-struck, the hooded inmates rushed and fled;

      The web, that for a thousand years had grown

      O'er prostrate Europe, in that day of dread

      Crumbled and fell, as fire dissolves the flaxen thread.

XXIV

      The spirit of that day is still awake,

      And spreads himself, and shall not sleep again;

      But through the idle mesh of power shall break

      Like billows o'er the Asian monarch's chain;

      Till men are filled with him, and feel how vain,

      Instead of the pure heart and innocent hands,

      Are all the proud and pompous modes to gain

      The smile of Heaven; – till a new age expands

      Its white and holy wings above the peaceful lands.

XXV

      For look again on the past years; – behold,

      How like the nightmare's dreams have flown away

      Horrible forms of worship, that, of old,

      Held, o'er the shuddering realms, unquestioned sway:

      See crimes, that feared not once the eye of day,

      Rooted from men, without a name or place:

      See nations blotted out from earth, to pay

      The forfeit of deep guilt; – with glad embrace

      The fair disburdened lands welcome a nobler race.

XXVI

      Thus error's monstrous shapes from earth are driven;

      They fade, they fly – but Truth survives their flight;

      Earth has no shades to quench that beam of heaven;

      Each ray that shone, in early time, to light

      The faltering footstep in the path of right,

      Each gleam of clearer brightness shed to aid

      In man's maturer day his bolder sight,

      All blended, like the rainbow's radiant braid,

      Pour yet, and still shall pour, the blaze that cannot fade.

XXVII

      Late, from this Western shore, that morning chased

      The deep and ancient night, which threw its shroud

      O'er the green land of groves, the beautiful waste,

      Nurse