And I hear the sound of chanting,—mailed men are passing by;
Crumble, walls, and loosen, fetters! I will join them, ere I die!”
So the sleeping thoughts of boyhood oped their eyes and newly stirred,
And my muscles cried for usage, till the man their plainings heard:
While the star that lit me ever in the dark and thorny ways,
Mine by natal consecration, by the choice of after days,—
Seen through all the sorrow thickening round the hopes of younger years,—
Rayless grew, and left me groping in the valley of my tears.
Seaward now the steamer hovered; seaward far her pennons trailed,
Where the blueness of the heavens at the clear horizon paled;