Poems (Botta)/Hope

by Anne Lynch Botta

For works with similar titles, see Hope.

Layout 2

 

HOPE.

Maiden! in whose kindling eye,
Burns the fire of prophecy,
On whose brow its glories shine,
Priestess at the hidden shrine;
Tell me what fair visions rise,
As the future greets thine eyes.
Thither where thou still dost turn,
Does a bright Shekinah burn?
Does thy outstretched, beckoning hand,
Point us to a promised land,
Where the rage of War no more
Shall drench the crimsoned earth with gore?
Where no more, with features gaunt,
Shall stalk the haggard form of Want,
Nor Misery’s wail, nor Famine’s cries
Upon the ear of Plenty rise,
When the voice of Liberty
Shall bid the earth’s oppressed go free?
Thou, on whom the Future beams,
Tell me, are these idle dreams?

“As the messenger went forth,
Seeking o’er the deluged earth,
So, my gaze hath wandered wide,
O’er the Future’s troubled tide.
As across the waters dark,
The bird returned to that lone bark,
With the leaf of olive tree,
So return I unto thee.
Not yet do wind and wave subside;
Not yet do land and sea divide;
No verdant earth the vision cheers,
No peak of Ararat appears;
But spanning all that troubled sky,
The Bow of Promise shines on high.”