The Pilgrims of the Rhine Read online

  VI.

  YET ALL HAVE TWO ESCAPES INTO THE IDEAL WORLD; NAMELY, MEMORY AND HOPE.--EXAMPLE OF HOPE IN YOUTH, HOWEVER EXCLUDED FROM ACTION AND DESIRE.--NAPOLEON'S SON.

  Yet whatsoever be our bondage here, All have two portals to the phantom sphere. What hath not glided through those gates that ope Beyond the Hour, to MEMORY or to HOPE! Give Youth the Garden,--still it soars above, Seeks some far glory, some diviner love. Place Age amidst the Golgotha,--its eyes Still quit the graves, to rest upon the skies; And while the dust, unheeded, moulders there, Track some lost angel through cerulean air.

  Lo! where the Austrian binds, with formal chain, The crownless son of earth's last Charlemagne,-- Him, at whose birth laughed all the violet vales (While yet unfallen stood thy sovereign star, O Lucifer of nations). Hark, the gales Swell with the shout from all the hosts, whose war Rended the Alps, and crimsoned Memphian Nile,-- "Way for the coming of the Conqueror's Son: Woe to the Merchant-Carthage of the Isle! Woe to the Scythian ice-world of the Don! O Thunder Lord, thy Lemnian bolts prepare, The Eagle's eyry hath its eagle heir!" Hark, at that shout from north to south, gray Power Quails on its weak, hereditary thrones; And widowed mothers prophesy the hour Of future carnage to their cradled sons. What! shall our race to blood be thus consigned, And Ate claim an heirloom in mankind? Are these red lots unshaken in the urn? Years pass; approach, pale Questioner, and learn Chained to his rock, with brows that vainly frown, The fallen Titan sinks in darkness down! And sadly gazing through his gilded grate, Behold the child whose birth was as a fate! Far from the land in which his life began; Walled from the healthful air of hardy man; Reared by cold hearts, and watched by jealous eyes, His guardians jailers, and his comrades spies. Each trite convention courtly fears inspire To stint experience and to dwarf desire; Narrows the action to a puppet stage, And trains the eaglet to the starling's cage. On the dejected brow and smileless cheek, What weary thought the languid lines bespeak; Till drop by drop, from jaded day to day, The sickly life-streams ooze themselves away. Yet oft in HOPE a boundless realm was thine, That vaguest Infinite,--the Dream of Fame; Son of the sword that first made kings divine, Heir to man's grandest royalty,--a Name! Then didst thou burst upon the startled world, And keep the glorious promise of thy birth; Then were the wings that bear the bolt unfurled, A monarch's voice cried, "Place upon the earth!" A new Philippi gained a second Rome, And the Son's sword avenged the greater Caesar's doom.