It is
A vain, weak people of faint-heart old men,
That, for three hundred years of dull repose,
Has lain perpetual dreamer, folded in
The ragged purple of its ancestors,
Stretching its limbs wide in its country's sun,
To warm them; drinking the soft airs of autumn
Forgetful, on the fields where its forefathers
Like lions fought! From overflowing hands,
Strew we with hellebore and poppies thick
The way.
But the throngs have passed by, and the poet takes up his theme. Abel
sits before an altar upon the borders of Eden, and looks with an
exile's longing toward the Paradise of his father, where, high above
all the other trees, he beholds,
Lording it proudly in the garden's midst,
The guilty apple with its fatal beauty.
He weeps; and Cain, furiously returning from the unaccepted labor of
the fields, lifts his hand against his brother.
It was at sunset;
The air was severed with a mother's shriek,
And stretched beside the o'erturned altar's foot
Lay the first corse.
Ah! that primal stain
Of blood that made earth hideous, did forebode
To all the nations of mankind to come
The cruel household stripes, and the relentless
Battles of civil wars, the poisoned cup,
The gleam of axes lifted up to strike
The prone necks on the block.
Pages:
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361