Classic Poem

Long since a gallant youthful company
Went from these learned shades. The hand of Time
Hath scored, upon the perishing works of man,
The years of half a century since that day.
Forth to the world they went in hope, but some
Fell at the threshold, some in mid-career
Sank down, and some who bring their frosty brows,
A living register of change, are here,
And from the spot where once they conned the words
Written by sages of the elder time
Look back on fifty years.
Large space are they
Of man's brief life, those fifty years; they join
Its ruddy morning to the paler light
Of its declining hours. In fifty years
As many generations of earth's flowers
Have sweetened the soft air of spring, and died.
As many harvests have, in turn, made green
The hills, and ripened into gold, and fallen
Before the sickle's edge. The sapling tree
Which then was planted stands a shaggy trunk,
Moss-grown, the centre of a mighty shade,
In fifty years the pasture grounds have oft
Renewed their herds and flocks, and from the stalls
New races of the generous steed have neighed
Or pranced in the smooth roads.
In fifty years
Ancestral crowns have dropped from kingly brows
For clownish heels to crush; new dynasties
Have climbed to empire, and new commonwealths
Have formed and fallen again to wreck, like clouds
Which the wind tears and scatters. Mighty names
Have blazed upon the world and passed away,
Their lustre lessening, like the faded train
Of a receding comet. Fifty years
Have given the mariner to outstrip the wind
With engines churning the black deep to foam,
And tamed the nimble lightnings, sending them
On messages for man, and forced the sun
To limn for man upon the snowy sheet
Whate'er he shines upon, and taught the art
To vex the pale dull clay beneath our feet
With chemic tortures, till the sullen mass
Flows in bright torrents from the furnace-mouth,
A shining metal, to be clay no more.

Oh, were our growth in goodness like our growth
In art, the thousand years of innocence
And peace, foretold by ancient prophecy,
Were here already, and the reign of Sin
Were ended o'er the earth on which we dwell.

In fifty years, the little commonwealth,
Our league of States, that, in its early day,
Skirted the long Atlantic coast, has grown
To a vast empire, filled with populous towns
Beside its midland rivers, and beyond
The snowy peaks that bound its midland plains
To where its rivulets, over sands of gold,
Seek the Pacific—till at length it stood
Great 'mid the greatest of the Powers of Earth,
And they who sat upon Earth's ancient thrones
Beheld its growth in wonder and in awe.
In fifty years, a deadlier foe than they—
The Wrong that scoffs at human brotherhood
And holds the lash o'er millions—has become
So mighty and so insolent in its might
That now it springs to fix on Liberty
The death-gripe, and o'erturn the glorious realm
Her children founded here. Fierce is the strife,
As when of old the sinning angels strove
To whelm, beneath the uprooted hills of heaven,
The warriors of the Lord. Yet now, as then,
God and the Right shall give the victory.

For us, who fifty years ago went forth
Upon the world's great theatre, may we
Yet see the day of triumph, which the hours
On steady wing waft hither from the depths
Of a serener future; may we yet,
Beneath the reign of a new peace, behold
The shaken pillars of our commonwealth
Stand readjusted in their ancient poise,
And the great crime of which our strife was born
Perish with its accursèd progeny.