uench the plagues of foul stagnation born.

And thus in love, sometimes disguised as wrath,
He sends his hidden blessings in the storm,
Which dashes down in its resistless path
The hoar abuses that defied reform.

When Cyrus ravaged fair Chaldea's plain,
And mocked the strength of Babylon's haughty wall,
The proud Assyrian's guilt had earned the chain,
And man rejoiced to mark the oppressor's fall.

And when, made drunk with power, the Persian lost
The stern and simple virtues of his sires,
His empire's ruin and his slaughtered host
Kindled in Greece her world-illuming fires.

Then Greece, her swift career of glory stayed,
Exhausted by her madman's triumphs lay,
Till Rome's protecting arm the loss repaid
Of Corinth's sack and Pydua's fatal day.

Imperial Rome! though crime succeeded crime
As earth fell prostrate 'neath her giant tread,
Still shall her subjects reap to endless time
The priceless harvests by her wisdom spread.

What though the stern proconsul's grinding rule
Close followed on the legion's merciless sword?
Laws, arts, and culture, in that rigid school,
Evoked a nation from each savage horde.

And when at last her crimes, reacting, wrought
Their curse upon herself, to her, supine
And helpless, the barbarian spoiler brought,
With fire and sword, new life to her decline.

Theodoric, Clovis, Charles, your endless strife,
From Weser's marsh to Naples' laughing bay,
Was but the throe that marked the nascent life
Emerging from the worn-out world's decay.

Ye were, amid that elemental war,
But straws to show its course. Ye toiled, and won,
Or lost; your people bled--yet slow and far
The mighty cause of man pressed ever on.

Long has that travail been. Kings, Kaisers, Popes,
The stern Crusader and the pirate Dane,
Each, centered in his own ambitious hopes,
But helped the cause he labored to restrain.

Hildebrand's voice sets Christendom on fire;
'Neath Frederic's plow sinks Milan's lofty wall;
Unnumbered victims glut De Montfort's ire;
From Ecclin's dungeon shrieks the night appall.

If the tide ebbs, 'tis but to flow again.
Each fierce convulsion gains some vantage ground.
Man's fettered limbs grow stronger, and the chain
Falls link by link at each tumultuous bound.

The timid burgher dons the helm and shield,
The wretched hind reluctant gra