From highest heav\'n a gory herald stooped,
And, spreading o’er the world his sable wings,
Sowed in men’s hearts the bitter seed of war;
Then, wheeling through the blood-red upper air,
Careered, and vanished in the heights again.
So steals the eeriness of secret ill,
Unmarked at first, a ghostly scent alone,
As unreality possesses all.
A grim-faced host draws near, in silence armed,
Swift, subtle powers, waking ancient dread;
They overthrow proud cities in their strength,
And hurl the mortal realms to Tart\'rus\' void.
Wide nature darkens, under baleful charm.
The sun goes down on battles numberless,
More than frail flesh and bone can hope to bear;
The ling’ring glow of his departing beams
Falls on death’s dusky train, its harness gone.
Who takes the glory of those fallen hosts?
The splendor of triumphant empires lies
Unremembered, in whirling heat of sand,
By age-worn winds in ever-shifting forms;
They rest, forgotten, by smooth-faced abodes
Of pyramid and tomb, where kings lie mute.
Time stripped those kingdoms bare of wealth and rule,
And drowned their mem’ry in the waste of years.
No heir now claims a dwelling of his own,
But wanders desolate from gate to gate;
Wind laments cities crumbled into dust,
And wails among their time-dismantled stones.
Meanwhile God’s messengers, at His command,
Speak with man’s tongue within the hallowed courts.
The supplicants’ petitions, mixed with tears,
Climb as thin incense-wreaths toward His height;
Yet long-quenched hearths stand ash-cold on the floor,
And clang of arms and dreams of gain dissolve.
Gold, amber, ruby from far Burmese mines,
That once drew forth the brave and rash alike,
Sleep sunken and lost beneath wrathful seas,
Beyond the grasp of avaricious hands.
They sought them, those mad-hearted; none returned.
If treasure crowned them, none is left to tell.
At last the world resumed her rounded hush;
Earth, plain warden of men’s restless desire,
Cast a clay-woven cloak of fertile soil.
The sea, implacable, withheld its dead,
And kept, in blind possession, what it claimed—
Above them both, in slow, still-turning spheres,
Th’ Eternal watched, and measured peace with war.