Page:Some soldier poets.djvu/135

Rh Might in the universal bosom reign,

And from affectionate observance gain

Help, under every change of adverse fate.

Mourn, hills and groves of Attica! and mourn

Illisus, bending o'er thy classic urn!

Mourn, and lament for him whose spirit dreads

Your once sweet memory, studious walks and shades!

For him who to divinity aspired,

Not on the breath of popular applause,

But through dependence on the sacred laws

Framed in the schools where Wisdom dwelt retired,

Intent to trace the ideal path of right

(More fair than heaven's broad causeway paved with stars)

Which Dion learned to measure with delight;—

But he hath overleaped the eternal bars;

And, following guides whose craft holds no consent

With aught that breathes the ethereal element,

Hath stained the robes of civil power with blood,

Unjustly shed, though for the public good.

Whence doubts that came too late, and wishes vain,

Hollow excuses, and triumphant pain;

And oft his cogitations sink as low

As, through the abysses of a joyless heart,

The heaviest plummet of despair can go—

But whence that sudden check? that fearful start!

He hears an uncouth sound—

Anon his lifted eyes

Saw, at a long-drawn gallery's dusky bound,

A shape of more than mortal size

And hideous aspect, stalking round and round!

A woman's garb the Phantom wore,

And fiercely swept the marble floor,—

Like Auster whirling to and fro

His force on Caspian foam to try;

Or Boreas when he scours the snow

That skins the plains of Thessaly,

Or when aloft on Mænalus he stops

His flight, 'mid eddying pine-tree tops!

Rh