ling
When the hours of thy portion were flown?
Or--wert thou a hero, a leader to glory,
While armies thy truncheon obey'd;
To victory cheering, as thy foemen careering
In flight, left their mountains of dead?
Was thy valiancy laid, or unhilted thy blade,
When came onwards in battle array
The sepulchre-swarms, ensheathed in their arms,
To sack and to rifle their prey?
How they joy in their spoil, as thy body the while
Besieging, the reptile is vain,
And her beetle-mate blind hums his gladness to find
His defence in the lodge of thy brain!
Some dig where the sheen of the ivory has been,
Some, the organ where music repair'd;
In rabble and rout they come in and come out
At the gashes their fangs have bared.

* * * * *

Do I hold in my hand a whole lordship of land,
Represented by nakedness, here?
Perhaps not unkind to the helpless thy mind,
Nor all unimparted thy gear;
Perhaps stern of brow to thy tenantry thou!
To leanness their countenances grew--
'Gainst their crave for respite, when thy clamour for right
Required, to a moment, its due;
While the frown of thy pride to the aged denied
To cover their head from the chill,
And humbly they stand, with their bonnet in hand,
As cold blows the blast of the hill.
Thy serfs may look on, unheeding thy frown,
Thy rents and thy mailings unpaid;
All praise to the stroke their bondage that broke!
While but claims their obeisance the dead.

* * * * *

Or a head do I clutch, whose devices were such,
That death must have lent them his sting--
So daring they were, so reckless of fear,
As heaven had wanted a king?
Did the tongue of the lie, while it couch'd like a spy
In the haunt of thy venomous jaws,
Its slander display, as poisons its prey
The devilish snake in the grass?
That member unchain'd, by strong bands is restrain'd,
The inflexible shackles of death;
And, its emblem, the trail of the worm, shall prevail
Where its slaver once harbour'd beneath.
And oh! if thy scorn went down to thine urn
And expired, with impenitent groan;
To repose where thou art is of peace all thy part,
And then to appear--at the Throne!
Like a frog, from the lake that leapeth,