Burn bright and clear;
Stand firmly in your lot,
Cry ye aloud, doubt not,
Be every fear forgot,
Christ leads us here.
So shall earth's distant lands,
In happy, holy bands,
One brotherhood,
Together rise and sing,
Gifts to one altar bring,
And heaven's eternal King
Pronounce it good.
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 miséréré
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 cuirass rings the Saxon hammer,
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song;
And loud, amid the universal clamour,
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.
The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder;
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder,
The diapason of the cannonade.
Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies ?
Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals nor forts.
The warrior's name would be a name abhorred !
And every nation that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain!
Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter, and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,
I hear, once more, the voice of Christ say "Peace!"
Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! But, beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise.
WHY come not spirits from the realms of glory
To visit earth, as in the days of old,
The times of sacred writ and ancient story?
Is heaven more distant? or has earth grown cold?
Oft have I gazed, when sunset clouds, receding,
Waved like rich banners of a host gone by,
To catch the gleam of some white pinion speeding
Along the confines of the glowing sky;-
And oft, when midnight stars, in distant chillness,
Were calmly burning, listened late and long;
But Nature's pulse beat on in solemn stillness,
Bearing no echo of the seraph's song.
To Bethlehem's air was their last anthem given,
When other stars before the One grew dim?
Was their last presence known in Peter's prison?
Or where exulting martyrs raised their hymn?
And are they all within the veil departed?
There gleams no wing along the empyrean now;
And many a tear from human eyes has started,
Since angel touch has calmed a mortal brow.
No; earth has angels, though their forms are moulded But of such clay as fashions all below;
Though harps are wanting, and bright pinions folded, We know them by the love-light on their brow.
I have seen angels by the sick one's pillow;
Theirs was the soft tone and the soundless tread; Where smitten hearts were drooping like the willow, They stood "between the living and the dead."
And if my sight, by earthly dimness hindered,
Beheld no hovering cherubim in air,
I doubted not,-for spirits know their kindred,—
They smiled upon the wingless watchers there.
There have been angels in the gloomy prison,-
In crowded halls,-by the lone widow's hearth;
And where they passed, the fallen hath uprisen,—
The giddy paused, -the mourner's hope had birth.
I have seen one whose eloquence commanding
Roused the rich echoes of the human breast,
The blandishments of wealth and ease withstanding,
That Hope might reach the suffering and oppressed.
And by his side there moved a form of beauty,
Strewing sweet flowers along his path of life,
And looking up with meek and love-lent duty;-
I call her angel, but he called her wife.
O, many a spirit walks the world unheeded,
That, when its veil of sadness is laid down,
Shall soar aloft with pinions unimpeded,
And wear its glory like a starry crown.
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