Dusk-brown sons of the forest, hunters of deer and of bison,
And the almond-eyed child of the sun met in her busy streets,
With waifs from the banks of the Indus, and the ancient river Pison—
Lands of the date and the palm, and the citron's hoarded sweets.
The surging tide of the prairie rolled its billows of blossom
Against her mighty walls, and beat at her hundred gates;
The riches of all the world were poured into her bosom,
Kings were her mighty men, and lords, and potentates.
She sat in her place by the sea, and the swift-sailing ships
obeyed her.
Full freighted with corn and wheat their purple sails unfurled,
Far-off in the morning land, and the isles beyond the equator;
Out of her heaped-up garners she scattered the bread of the world.
As her pride and her beauty were perfect, so desolation and mourning,
Swift and sudden, and sure her utter destruction came,
The heavens above were dark with the smoke of her awful burning,
And the earth and the sea were lighted with the fierceness
of her flame.
Behold oh, England! oh, Europe! and see is there any sorrow
Like hers who sits in silence among her children slain,
Oh, blackness of woe and ruin! can any future morrow
Bring back to the shrouded city her glory and crown again!
Aye, subtle and wonderful links of human love and pity,
Ye have bridged the sea of ruin, and spanned it with a span!
She shall rise again from her ashes and build a fairer city,
With a larger faith in God, and the Brotherhood of Man,
THE LEGEND OF THE NEW YEAR.
I dreamed, and lo, I saw in my dream a beautiful gateway,
Arched at the top, and crowned with turrets lance-windowed and olden,
And sculptured in arabesque, all knotted and woven and spangled;
A wonderful legend ran, in letters purple and golden
Written in leaves and blossoms, inextricably intertangled,
A legend I could not resolve, crowning the gate so stately.
Like statues carven and niched in the front of some old cathedral,
Four angels stood each in his turret, immovable warders,
The first with reverend locks snow-white, and a silver volume
Of beard that twinkled with frost, and hung to the icicled borders
That fringed his girdle beneath: ancient his look was, and solemn,
Like a wrinkled and bearded saint blessing some worshipping bedral.
As one in a vision wrapped, with his staff he silently pointed
To the golden legend written in glittering star-points under,
Shining in crystal ferns, and translucent berries of holly.
Yet as I pondered the words of ineffable awe and wonder,
A mist of rainbow brightness obscured them, and hid them wholly,
While wrapt in his vision he stood, like a prophet anointed.