Classic Poem

Welcome, bright eyes, that make our splendors pale:
Ye reverend heads! you generous hands! all hail!
And thou, proud city! to thy triumphs past
Add this to-night, nor let it be thy last;
Be it thy glory to the coming age
To have transmitted no adulterate stage,
That aftertimes may count this beauteous dome
Dear as the hearthstone of a father's home.

Back, airy beings! people of the brain!
Ye kingly shadows, in your graves remain!
Stay, you weird women! wait the fatal bell!
Thou master of the charm, suspend the spell!
Be not impatient on our scene to burst;
You shall be summoned, but your herald first.

Souls of dead bards! that served our ancient art,
Poets! who largely read the human heart,
Tell us why man, when life serenely glides,
Loves the fierce motion that disturbs the tides!
What god impels him, now his land is free,
To play the hero that he cannot be?
What strong illusion, native in his breast,
Made action charm him in his day of rest?

When arms and arsenals are idle shows,
And navies playthings for the world's repose,
The heart, like Nemi, never known to stir,
Becomes a mirror of the things that were:
Then grows the wish, and then is given the power,
To be and feel beyond Life's little hour.
The soldier Æschylus, at such a time,
From the dark realm of passion and of crime,
Called back those mighty shades to walk the earth,
And made them deathless by a second birth.
When all rapt Athens, in that early day,
Sat in the sunshine, at the solemn play;
When to the music of a single flute
The verse was uttered that for us is mute;
When through the orchestra, with slow advance,
The Dorian measure led the choral dance,—
Cold was that soul—oh! dead as Lethe's fen—
That did not fight at Salamis again.

But long ere this, when Bacchus was divine,
At the mad vintage, where the new-made wine
Fired the rude revellers, the learned say
First rose th' uncouth resemblance of a play;
What time Arion of the Lesbian isle
To the wild chorus gave a graver style.
The years are distant, and the light is dim,
Yet hark! the echo of a tragic hymn:
Lo! the fell Mœnads with their visage smeared,
And men made satyrs by the mask and beard.

Such rites have been where now this temple stands:
The savage dramas of the Indian bands;
Near the blue lake and by the midnight fire,
See the red artist and the naked choir!
When the great Sachem with his Pequod court
After the fray assembled at the sport—
See!—'t was but yesterday—their dance describe
The hunt, the war, the triumph of their tribe:
These too were actors, but their show is done;
Their last spectator was the setting sun.

In Charles's days, when tragedy was mean,
Once the light Muse went slipshod on the scene;
Was Charles alone at fault? historian, tell—
We love the sturdy Puritan too well;
What though the drama drooped beneath his ban,
Spite of the bigot we revere the man;
What though he left polluted arts behind,
He brought his sword, his Bible, and his mind.

Something of that austerity be yours,
Since Folly loves what easy Taste endures;
Let our purged altar and its blameless priest
Honor the three-hilled city of the East!
That to the wise our theatre may seem
A nobler school, a loftier Academe!
And Shakespeare's mind, transplanted to the shore
Whose rocks are gold, whose sands are shining ore,
(Or far as Freedom's onward march may draw
Arts without arms, and without conquest, Law),
A sacred well! from whose o'erflowing brink
Each generation in its turn may drink;
So shall your children thank you, not alone
For wealth of empire grasping every zone,
But write these words on Memory's grateful page,
Sons of the Pilgrims! you redeemed our stage.