Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone
In deathless song shall tell,
When many a vanished age hath flown,
The story how ye fell;
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight,
Nor Time's remorseless doom.
Shall dim one ray of glory's light
That gilds your deathless tomb.
THEODORE O'HARA.
* * * * *
THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD.
This is the arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.
Ah! what a sound will rise—how wild and dreary—
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies!
I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus—
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.
On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer;
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song;
And loud amid the universal clamor,
O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.
I hear the Florentine, who from his palace
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din;
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis
Beat the wild war-drums made of serpents' skin;
The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;