The spoils of war: a coat of mail, fixt high
On trophied trunk, in emblemed victory;
A dangling beaver from its helmet cleft;
A chariot's shivered beam; a pendant reft
From boarded galley; and the captive shown
On the triumphal arch in imaged stone;
Behold the sum of grandeur and of bliss.—
Greek, Roman, and Barbarian aim at this.
Hence the hot toil and hair-breadth peril came,
For less the thirst of virtue than of fame.
Who clasps mere naked virtue in his arms?
Strip off the tinsel, she no longer charms!
Yet has the glory of some few great names
Enwrapt our country in destroying flames:
This thirst of praise and chiselled titles, read
On stones that guard the ashes of the dead.
But a wild fig-tree's wayward growth may tear
The rifted tomb, and shake the stones in air:
Since sepulchres a human fate obey,
And vaults that shrine the dead themselves decay.
Try in the balance Hannibal: adjust
The scales: how many pounds weighs this big hero's dust?
This—this is he whom Afric would, in vain,
Coop 'twixt the tepid Nile and Moorish main:
Swart Æthiop tribes his yoke of empire bore,
And towery elephants bowed down before.
Spain crouches as his vassal; at a bound
He high o'erleaps the Pyrenæan mound:
Nature with Alps and snows the pass defends;
Through juice-corroded rocks a way he rends,
And strides on Italy; yet naught is won;
He throws his glance beyond; “yet naught is done;
Till at Rome's gates the Punic soldier beats,
And plants my standard in her very streets.”
Oh! how, in painting, would that form enchant.
That blinking hero on an elephant!
What is his end? oh, Godlike glory! say—
He flies in rout; in exile steals away:
A great and gazed-at suppliant, lo! he takes
His outdoor station, till a monarch wakes.
Nor swords nor stones nor arrows gave the wound,
And crusht the soul that shook the world around;
What mighty means the blood-atonement bring?
Cannæ's avenger lurks within a ring.
Go! madman, scour the Alps, in glory's dream;
A tale for boys and a declaimer's theme.
Lo! Pella's youth was cabined, cribbed, confined
Within one world too narrow for his mind:
Restless he turned in feverous discontent
As if by Gyara's rocks or scant Seriphum pent;
But brick-walled Babylon gave ample room;
Content he stretcht him in a catacomb:
Death, death alone the conscious truth attests
What dwarfish frame this swelling soul invests!
They tell of Athos' mountain sailed with ships;
Those bold historic lies from Grecian lips:
Of ocean bridged across with paving keels,
And hardened waves o'erpast with chariot-wheels:
We pin our faith on rivers deep that shrank
And floods which, at a meal, the Median drank:
And all that marvel-mongering poet sings,
That maudlin swan, who bathed in wine his wings.
Say how from Salamis this Sultan past,
Who lasht the Eastern and the Western blast;
Stripes which they know not in the Æolian cave:
He who with fetters bound the earth-shaking wave,
And, in his mercy only, spared to brand?
What! croucht a god, like Neptune, to his hand?
Then say, how past he back?—behold him now
One bark; through bloody waves, with corse-choked prow:
Such is the glorious fame for which we sigh,
And such Ambition's curse and penalty.
On trophied trunk, in emblemed victory;
A dangling beaver from its helmet cleft;
A chariot's shivered beam; a pendant reft
From boarded galley; and the captive shown
On the triumphal arch in imaged stone;
Behold the sum of grandeur and of bliss.—
Greek, Roman, and Barbarian aim at this.
Hence the hot toil and hair-breadth peril came,
For less the thirst of virtue than of fame.
Who clasps mere naked virtue in his arms?
Strip off the tinsel, she no longer charms!
Yet has the glory of some few great names
Enwrapt our country in destroying flames:
This thirst of praise and chiselled titles, read
On stones that guard the ashes of the dead.
But a wild fig-tree's wayward growth may tear
The rifted tomb, and shake the stones in air:
Since sepulchres a human fate obey,
And vaults that shrine the dead themselves decay.
Try in the balance Hannibal: adjust
The scales: how many pounds weighs this big hero's dust?
This—this is he whom Afric would, in vain,
Coop 'twixt the tepid Nile and Moorish main:
Swart Æthiop tribes his yoke of empire bore,
And towery elephants bowed down before.
Spain crouches as his vassal; at a bound
He high o'erleaps the Pyrenæan mound:
Nature with Alps and snows the pass defends;
Through juice-corroded rocks a way he rends,
And strides on Italy; yet naught is won;
He throws his glance beyond; “yet naught is done;
Till at Rome's gates the Punic soldier beats,
And plants my standard in her very streets.”
Oh! how, in painting, would that form enchant.
That blinking hero on an elephant!
What is his end? oh, Godlike glory! say—
He flies in rout; in exile steals away:
A great and gazed-at suppliant, lo! he takes
His outdoor station, till a monarch wakes.
Nor swords nor stones nor arrows gave the wound,
And crusht the soul that shook the world around;
What mighty means the blood-atonement bring?
Cannæ's avenger lurks within a ring.
Go! madman, scour the Alps, in glory's dream;
A tale for boys and a declaimer's theme.
Lo! Pella's youth was cabined, cribbed, confined
Within one world too narrow for his mind:
Restless he turned in feverous discontent
As if by Gyara's rocks or scant Seriphum pent;
But brick-walled Babylon gave ample room;
Content he stretcht him in a catacomb:
Death, death alone the conscious truth attests
What dwarfish frame this swelling soul invests!
They tell of Athos' mountain sailed with ships;
Those bold historic lies from Grecian lips:
Of ocean bridged across with paving keels,
And hardened waves o'erpast with chariot-wheels:
We pin our faith on rivers deep that shrank
And floods which, at a meal, the Median drank:
And all that marvel-mongering poet sings,
That maudlin swan, who bathed in wine his wings.
Say how from Salamis this Sultan past,
Who lasht the Eastern and the Western blast;
Stripes which they know not in the Æolian cave:
He who with fetters bound the earth-shaking wave,
And, in his mercy only, spared to brand?
What! croucht a god, like Neptune, to his hand?
Then say, how past he back?—behold him now
One bark; through bloody waves, with corse-choked prow:
Such is the glorious fame for which we sigh,
And such Ambition's curse and penalty.