قراءة كتاب The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, November 1, 1851
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, November 1, 1851
class="i0">Most musical with solemn psalms
Sounding beneath the tall and graceful palms.
Who lives aright?
Answer me, all ye pyramids and piles
That look like calmest power in your still might.
Ye also do I ask, O continents and isles!
Blind though with blood ye be,
Your tongues, though torn with pain, I know are free.
Then speak, all ancient masses! speak
From patient obelisk to idle peak!
There is a heaving of the plains,
A trailing of a shroud,
A clash of bolts and chains—
A low, sad voice, that comes upon me like a cloud,
"Oh, misery, oh, misery!"—
Thou poor old Earth! no more, no more
Shall I draw speech from thee,
Nor dare thy crypts of legendary lore:
Let silence learn no tongue; let night fold every shore.
Yet I have something left—the will,
That Mont Blanc of the soul, is towering still.
And I can bear the pain,
The storm, the old heroic chain;
And with a smile
Pluck wisdom from my torture, and give back
A love to Fate from this my mountain-rack.
I do believe the sad alone are wise;
I do believe the wrong'd alone can know
Why lives the world, why spread the burden'd skies,
And so from torture into godship grow.
Plainer and plainer beams this truth, the more
I hear the slow, dull dripping of my gore;
And now, arising from yon deep,
'Tis plain as a white statue on a tall, dark steep.
Oh, suffering bards! oh spirits black
With storm on many a mountain-rack
Our early splendor's gone.
Like stars into a cloud withdrawn—
Like music laid asleep
In dried-up fountains—like a stricken dawn
Where sudden tempests sweep.
I hear the bolts around us falling,
And cloud to cloud forever calling:
Yet WE must nor despair nor weep.
Did WE this evil bring?
Or from our fellows did the torture spring?
Titans! forgive, forgive!
Oh, know ye not 'tis victory but to live?
Therefore I say, rejoice with harp and voice!
I know not what our fate may be:
I only know that he who hath a time
Must also have eternity:
One billow proves and gives a whole wide sea.
On this I build my trust,
And not on mountain-dust,
Or murmuring woods, or starlit clime,
Or ocean with melodious chime,
Or sunset glories in the western sky:
Enough, I am, and shall not choose to die.
No matter what my future fate may be:
To live is in itself a majesty!
Oh! there I may again create
Fair worlds as in my youthful state;
Or Wo may build for me a fiery tomb
Like Farinata's in the nether gloom:
Even then I will not lose the name of man
By idle moan or coward groan,
But say, "It was so written in the mighty plan!"
The next poem is in a vein of lofty contemplation, and the rhetoric is eminently appropriate and well sustained. It is one of the most striking pieces in the book.
THE MOUNDS OF AMERICA.
From deep to deep, sad, venerable, vast,
Graves of gone empires—gone without a sighn,
Like clouds from heaven. They stretch'd from deep to deep
Before the Roman smote his mailéd hand
On the gold portals of the dreaming East;
Before the Pleiad, in white trance of song,
Beyond her choir of stars went wandering.
The great old Trees, rank'd on these hills of death,
Have melancholy hymns about all this;
And when the moon walks her inheritance
With slow, imperial pace, the Trees look up
And chant in solemn cadence. Come and hear.
"Oh patient Moon! go not behind a cloud,
But listen to our words. We, too, are old,
Though not so old as thou. The ancient towns,
The cities throned far apart like queens,
The shadowy domes, the realms majestical,
Slept in thy younger beams. In every leaf
We hold their dust, a king in every trunk.
We, too, are very old: the wind that wails
In our broad branches, from swart Ethiop come
But now, wail'd in our branches long ago,
Then come from darken'd Calvary. The Hills
Lean'd ghastly at the tale that wan Wind told;
The Streams crept shuddering through the tremulous dark;
The Torrent of the North, from morn till eve,
On his steep ledge hung pausing; and o'er all
Such silence fell, we heard the conscious Rills
Drip slowly in the caves of central Earth.
So were the continents by His crownéd grief
Together bound, before that Genoese
Flamed on the dim Atlantic: so have we,
Whose aspect faced the scene, unchallenged right
Of language unto all, while memory holds.
"O patient Moon! go not behind a cloud,
But hear our words. We know that thou didst see
The whole that we could utter—thou that wert
A worship unto realms beyond the flood—
But we are very lonesome on these mounds,
And speech doth make the burden of sad thought
Endurable; while these, the people new,
That take our land, may haply learn from us
What wonder went before them; for no word
E'er came from thee, so beautiful, so lone.
Throned in thy still domain, superbly calm
And