“Songs of a Semite.”
I.
Armed soul that ridest through a land of peace,
Her borders filled with finest of the wheat,
Her children reaping, where with weary feet
Sad sowers trod who taste not the increase:
We hear thy trump, whose echo shall not cease,
In hush of night resounding, while we meet
Around unthreatened fires, but pressing fleet
Thou passest, proud, to claim thy kin’s release;
Thy trump, that doth arraign the entombèd Past,
Till shapes that march as if with martyr-psalm
In glow and gloom of kindly hearths we see:
And now to present war a keener blast
Calls loud, and spirits late content and calm
Spring up enforced, and spur to follow thee!
II.
To war? What words are mine, that do thee wrong!
Whose suit is powerful Peace, resplendent-shod,
Fair on the mountains; who wouldst set the rod
Borne as a staff o’er stony ways and long
Yet withered not, to strike new root and strong
Deep in its nursing earth. Oh, there the clod
Were virtue, and the sun the smile of God,
And buds should break to bloom, as maids to song!
Aye, would for thee that,—even as the dove
Whose silver wings have o’er waste places passed,
When in the lonely west the evening burns,
Her unforgetful breast a-throb with love,
To her own pillared porch of flight returns,—
On the old hills might Israel rest at last!