Maryland, my Maryland, and other poems/Clay
CLAY
Written on the occasion of the unveiling of the Clay Statue, April 12th, 1860
Immortal Mind! thy burning torch
A deathless halo flings
Around the Prophets crucified,
And Sybaritic Kings;
We chaunt, today, a pæan song
To thy divinest flashes—
To our imperishable one,
The Mill Boy of the Slashes!
The fervid breast of Nature poured
Its deluge to his sips,
The bee-winged breezes charmed anew
Hymettus to his lips,
Till, like a cleaving peak, his thoughts
To sunward regions ran,
And god beheld beneath his throne
A mountain hearted Man.
His lispings fell like vesper dews
Upon the alien leaves,
Waking their inspirations through
The palpitating sheaves;
Then from those clarion “wood-notes wild”
Anointed dreams unsprung,
Wedding the lightning of the brain
To the thunder of the tongue!
We—we have seen him in the pride
Of his colossal youth,
We—we have heard his Vestal vows
To the Eternal Truth;
We—we have felt our spirits quail,
Our very beings bow,
When the supernal tempests shook
That monumental brow!
And never yet, since morning stars
Sang over Galilee,
Have nations seen the peer of this
Apostle of the free!
His was the avalanche of wrath
That smites the despot down,
And girds the brows of Justice with
An undisheveled crown.
His trumpet-tones re-echoed like
Evangels to the free,
Where Chimborazo views a world
Mosaic’d in the sea;
And his proud form shall stand erect
In that triumphal car
Which bears to the Valhalla gates
Heroic Bolivar!
He spoke for Greece, and freedom flew
Along her sacred rills,
Waking the mighty soul that slept
On Marathinian hills;
While bold Buzzards launched his flag
Upon the gull of night,
And hurled a living thunderbolt
Against the Ottomite!
The pillars of the Union quaked
Before discordant shocks,
When Heaven had sent its liberal snows
Upon his honored locks;
Though all the Angels beckoned him,
His conquering arm uprose,
And wrenched his country’s flag away
From its rebellious foes.
Then with perennial laurel wreaths,
The matchless mind had wrought,
His ladened bark went drifting on
To find the “Kings of Thought;”
And though the stately vessel long
Hath left its earthly strand,
The helmsman’s voice re-echoes back
From out the Phantom Land.
Live, Patriot, live! while oceans chafe
Their adamantine bars—
While mailed Orion flames his plume
’Mid bright-battalioned stars;
Live, Patriot, live! while glory thrills
The heart-strings of the free,
And Mississippi pours its grand
Libations to the sea!