Let no Cesar’s servile minions
Mock the lion thus laid low;
’Twas no foeman’s arm that felled him;
’Twas his own that struck the blow—
His who, pillowed on thy bosom,
Turned aside from glory’s ray—
His who, drunk with thy caresses,
Madly threw a world away.
Should the base plebeian rabble
Dare assail my name at Rome,
Where my noble spouse, Octavia,
Weeps within her widowed home,
Seek her; say the gods bear witness—
Altars, augurs, circling wings—
That her blood with mine commingled,
Yet shall mount the throne of kings.
As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian!
Glorious sorceress of the Nile!
Light the path to Stygian horrors
With the splendors of thy smile.
Give to Cæsar crowns and arches,
Let his brow the laurel twine;
I can scorn the senate’s triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.
I am dying, Egypt, dying;
Hark! the insulting foeman’s cry.
They are coming—quick, my falchion!
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah! no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell;
Isis and Osiris guard thee!
Cleopatra—Rome—farewell!
O, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD?
BY WILLIAM KNOX.
The following poem was a particular favorite with Abraham Lincoln. It was first shown to him when a young man by a friend, and afterwards he cut it from a newspaper and learned it by heart. He said to a friend: “I would give a great deal to know who wrote it, but have never been able to ascertain.” He did afterwards learn the name of the author.
William Knox was a Scottish poet who was born in 1789 at Firth and died in 1825 at Edinburgh. His “Lonely Hearth and Other Poems” was published in 1818, and “The Songs of Israel,” from which “O, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud” is taken, in 1824. Sir Walter Scott was an admirer of Knox’s poems, and befriended the author when his habits brought him into need.
O, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
As the young and the old, the low and the high,
Shall crumble to dust and together shall lie.
The infant a mother attended and loved,
The mother that infant’s affection who proved,
The father that mother and infant who blest—
Each, all, are away to that dwelling of rest.