Page:Zinzendorff and Other Poems.pdf/92

                                                 Bid the throng
Who pour'd thee incense, as Olympian Jove,
And breath'd thy thunders on the battle field,
Return, and rear thy monument. Those forms
O'er the wide vallies of red slaughter spread,
From pole to tropic, and from zone to zone,
Heed not thy clarion call. But should they rise,
As in the vision that the prophet saw,
And each dry bone its sever'd fellow find,
Piling their pillar'd dust, as erst they gave
Their souls for thee, the wondering stars might deem
A second time the puny pride of man
Did creep by stealth upon its Babel stairs,
To dwell with them. But here unwept thou art,
Like a dead lion in his thicket-lair,
With neither living man, nor spirit condemn'd,
To write thine epitaph.
                                     Invoke the climes,
Who serv'd as playthings in thy desperate game
Of mad ambition, or their treasures strew'd
Till meagre famine on their vitals prey'd,
To pay thy reckoning.
                                France! who gave so free
Thy life-stream to his cup of wine, and saw
That purple vintage shed o'er half the earth,
Write the first line, if thou hast blood to spare.
Thou too, whose pride did deck dead Cæsar's tomb,
And chant high requiem o'er the tyrant band
Who had their birth with thee, lend us thine arts
Of sculpture and of classic eloquence
To grace his obsequies, at whose dark frown
Thine ancient spirit quail'd; and to the list