Give me the gold that war has cost,
Before this peace-expanding day;
The wasted skill, the labor lost—
The mental treasure thrown away;
And I will buy each rood of soil
In every yet discovered land;
Where hunters roam, where peasants toil,
Where many-peopled cities stand.
I'll clothe each shivering wretch on earth.
In needful; nay, in brave attire;
Vesture befitting banquet mirth,
Which kings might envy and admire.
In every vale, on every plain,
A school shall glad the gazer's sight;
Where every poor man's child may gain
Pure knowledge, free as air and light.
I'll build asylums for the poor,
By age or ailment made forlorn:
And none shall thrust them from the door,
Or sting with looks and words of scorn.
I'll link each alien hemisphere;
Help honest men to conquer wrong;
Art, Science, Labor, nerve and cheer;
Reward the Poet for his song.
In every crowded town shall rise
Halls Academic, amply graced;
Where Ignorance may soon be wise,
And Coarseness learn both art and taste
To every province shall belong
Collegiate structures, and not few—
Fill'd with a truth-exploring throng,
And teachers of the good and true.
In every free and peopled clime
A vast Walhalla hall shall stand;
A marble edifice sublime,
For the illustrious of the land;
A Pantheon for the truly great,
The wise, beneficent, and just;
A place of wide and lofty state
To honor or to hold their dust.
A temple to attract and teach
Shall lift its spire on every hill,
Where pious men shall feel and preach
Peace, mercy, tolerance, good-will;
Music of bells on Sabbath days,
Round the whole earth shall gladly rise;
And one great Christian song of praise
Stream sweetly upward to the skies!
A NIGHT WITH AN EARTHQUAKE.[6]
The sound had not quite died away, when the feet I stood on seemed suddenly seized with the cramp. Cup and coffee-pot dropped as dead from Don Marzio's hand as the ball from St. Francis's palm. There was a rush as if of many waters, and for about ten seconds my head was overwhelmed by awful dizziness, which numbed and paralyzed all sensation. Don Marzio, in form an athlete, in heart a lion, but a man of sudden, sanguine temperament, bustled up and darted out of the room with the ease of a man never burdened with a wife, with kith or kin. Donna Betta, a portly matron, also rose instinctively; but I—I never could account for the odd freak—laid hold of her arm, bidding her stay. The roar of eight hundred houses—or how many more can there be in Aquila?—all reeling and quaking, the yells of ten thousand voices in sudden agony, had wholly subsided ere I allowed the poor woman calmly and majestically to waddle up to her good man in the garden. That, I suppose, was my notion of an orderly retreat. Rosalbina had flown from a window into the lawn, like a bird. Thank God, we found ourselves all in the open air under the broad canopy of heaven. We began to count heads. Yes, there we all stood—cook, laundry-maid, dairy-maids, stable-boys, all as obedient to the awful summons as the best disciplined troops at the first roll of the drum.
It was February, as I have twice observed; and we were in the heart of the highest Apennines. The day was rather fine, but pinching cold; and when the fever of the first terror abated, the lady and young lady began to shiver in every limb. No one dared to break silence; but Don Marzio's eye wandered significantly enough from one to another countenance in that awe-stricken group. There was no mistaking his appeal. Yet, one after another, his menials and laborers returned his gaze with well-acted perplexity. No one so dull of apprehension as those who will not understand. My good friends, I was three-and-twenty. I had had my trials, and could boast of pretty narrow escapes. I may have been reckless, perhaps, in my day. I smiled dimly, nodded to the old gentleman, clapped my hands cheerily, and the next moment was once more where no man in Aquila would at that moment have liked to be for the world—under a roof. I made a huge armful of cloaks and blankets, snapped up every rag with all the haste of a marauding party, and moved toward the door, tottering under the encumbrance. But now the dreadful crisis was at hand.