Scarce gone the goodly ruler when his realm
Saw fierce rebellion rear its horrent head.
Usurping treason seized the civic helm,
Wrong trampled right, and justice, judgment, fled. 1640
Ages looked on while battling kingdoms bled.
Lifted the warning voice—its pleading vain:
A blood-drowned continent, a sea of dead,
And, of a mighty people, fallen, self-slain,
A prophet and a king, a solitary twain[35].
That prophet saw the coming of the Lord
Unto the Old, the New, Jerusalem;
Saw Israel returning at His word
From wheresoe'er His will had scattered them;
The realm's wide ruin saw, and strove to stem. 1650
That king, sole scion of a perished race,
Casting his blood-stained sword and diadem,
Lived but to see another nation[36] place
Firm foot upon the soil, then vanished from its face.
—-
Wondrous, indeed, that ancient word and wise;
But wiser and more wondrous still the tale—
The after tale[37] of silent centuries,
Tongued by the guardian of the tome of gold:
Again, athwart the wilderness of waves
Surging old East and older West between, 1660
Where the lone sea a flowery southland laves,
And Zarahemla reigns as ocean queen,
Braving the swell, a storm-tossed bark is seen.
From doomed Jerusalem, to Jacob dear,
Albeit a leper[38], groping, blind, unclean,
Goes forth Manasseh's prophet pioneer[39],
Predestined to unveil the hidden hemisphere.
His lot to reap and plant on this rare shore
The promise of his fathers: Joseph's bough[40],
From Jacob's well, the billowy wall runs o'er; 1670
Abides in strength the archer-stricken bow,
Unto the utmost bound prevailing now,
Of Hesper's heaven-upholding hills. Bend, sheaves
Of Israel, as branches bend with snow,
Unto his sheaf grown mightiest! Here, as leaves
For multitude, the son the great sire's glory weaves.
Ere chimes for him the earth-departing hour,
Summoning a weary soul to restful toil
In risen worlds, where life puts on all power,
Lehi his house convenes,—their hearts the while 1680
Aglow beneath the burning words that pile
A pyramid of prophecy whose spire
Empierces heaven,—and lest they soil
The prospect pure, and tempt Jehovah's ire,
Warns them 'gainst ways of pride and paths of dark desire.
He speaks of Joseph's, Judah's, destiny;
Of blighting and of blessings yet to pour;
Proclaims deliverance his own shall see,
When cometh one the wandering to restore;
Forenames a chosen seer[41] (revealed of yore, 1690
When the boy dreamer's star o'er Egypt rose),
Bringing from dust a blest land's buried lore[42].
Seals then his benison, and eyelids close
To wake on worlds divine, whither, past all, he goes.
The favored son[43] of that prophetic sire—
Favored because most faithful and most just—
Hath soared to sacred mysteries still higher,
And tongued to envious ears the heavenly trust.
And serpent self, that demon of the dust,
Hath coiled and clung around rebellious souls, 1700
Ne'er friendly though fraternal, whose distrust
And jealousy breed bitterness that rolls
Rivers of wormwood 'twixt two races and their goals.
Now peoples twain the Promised Land divide:
Northland and Southland see their tribes increase,
From Arctic floe to far Antarctic tide;
From where the Eastern waves their thunders cease,
To where the Western waters are at peace.
White and delightsome, they that worship God;
They that deny Him, dark, degenerate, these, 1710
Doomed the stern wild to penetrate and plod—
Transgression's scourge and school, the Chastener's heavy rod[44].