It seemed like a gala, when Nature, arrayed
In festival robes, with her treasures displayed,
Reflected the smile of her Maker above,
And offered up hymns of her thanksgiving love.
And yet, in the bosom of man there were fires
Fierce, quenchless and fearful—consuming desires
For right unpossessed, and for lawless domain,
That burned to the soul, and that flamed to the brain.
In the streets there was clanging and gleaming of arms;
In the dwellings, resolve, preparation, alarms;
In the eye of the wife, mother, sister, a tear;
In the face of their soldier, no semblance of fear.
The patriot chieftain had marked out his ground,
To hold, or to fall, if his foe passed the bound:
And now was the hero to close in the strife,
For death as a bondman, or freedom with life.
The war-spirit hovered, and frowned on the height,
His eye flashing lightning—his wings shedding night!
From his wide fiery nostrils rolled volumes of smoke,
And the rocks roared afar, as in thunder he spoke.
At his dread shock of nature, the lamb from its play,
The bee and the bird, in affright fled away;
The branch, flower, and grass, felt the crush and the scath,
And the winds passing by, snuffed the heat of his wrath.
With blood, that, in torrents, he poured down like rain,
He drenched the green turf, that he strewed with the slain,
Till the eminence groaned with the carnage it bore,
And its heart heaved and shuddered at drinking the gore.
While the breath of the war-spirit scented the air,
The rivers looked wild in reflecting his glare;
And ocean’s cold bosom was torn, as he gave
The flap of his pinion to trouble its wave.
The village besieged, wrapped in flames from his breath,
Looked up to the hill, where he revelled with death,
And swelled with the essence of life he had shed,
To sweeten their cup, and the banquet to spread.
O War-spirit! War-spirit, when didst thou bring
Such trophies of beauty before the pale king,
Since walking on Gilboa’s height, in thy power,
Of Israel’s valiant to mow down the flower?