Classic Poem

Tremble no more to hear my voice!
For not in thunders, as of old,
When the far-echoing deadly noise,
That over hill and hollow roll'd,
Was follow'd by the wild death-shriek,—
But harmless as a child, I speak.

Tremble no more! Not charged am I,
As in those days, with iron shot,
And smoke that blacken'd the blue sky,
And made the earth one reeking blot;
My mission ends its mortal lease,
And I would speak before I cease.

For I have play'd a mighty part
In human change, and have, therefore,
A right my burthen to impart,
Ere I become a thing of yore:
A monster in the calendar
And annals of red-written war.

Have I not built imperial thrones,
And batter'd old foundations down?
Old warfare was a strife of crones
Before I rose on field, and town,
And heaving deck,—a creature strange,—
And utter'd the great voice of Change!

A voice that I must hear in turn,
And feel to be a thing of doom;—
A voice that, day by day, I yearn
To hear, as now, with gradual boom,
It rises in acclaiming notes
From myriads of united throats.

The cry is “Peace!” and, at the word,
I feel as though my time were come,—
The time when I shall not be heard;
For I am dead when I am dumb.
The earth may claim a parting roar,
And I shall shake its fields no more.

'Tis well! I came when I was call'd;
I go before a growing good:
May that fair seed be not forestall'd
By Tyranny's last struggling brood,—
A deeper curse—a fiercer ill—
Than war, or perverse human will.

I go. Ambition cannot now
Abuse me or its purpose vile;
Nor Avarice claim the peaceful plough
By my curst aid and light the while.
The crimes of monarchs and of states
Henceforth I leave unto the Fates.

Or do I dream?—who thus so long
Have stood upon this bastion'd height,
Uncall'd to mediate with Wrong,
In its perpetual strife with Right:—
Is it a dream—that I have done,
And see the setting of my sun?