There is no hope for nations!—Search the page

Of many thousand years—the daily scene,

The flow and ebb of each recurring age,

The everlasting to be which hath been,

Hath taught us nought or little: still we lean60

On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear

Our strength away in wrestling with the air;

For't is our nature strikes us down: the beasts

Slaughtered in hourly hecatombs for feasts

Are of as high an order—they must go

Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter.

Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,

What have they given your children in return?

A heritage of servitude and woes,

A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows.70

What! do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn,[239]

O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,

And deem this proof of loyalty the real;

Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,

And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?

All that your Sires have left you, all that Time

Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,

Spring from a different theme!—Ye see and read,

Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed!

Save the few spirits who, despite of all,80

And worse than all, the sudden crimes engendered

By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,

And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tendered,

Gushing from Freedom's fountains—when the crowd,[240]

Maddened with centuries of drought, are loud,

And trample on each other to obtain

The cup which brings oblivion of a chain

Heavy and sore,—in which long yoked they ploughed

The sand,—or if there sprung the yellow grain,

'Twas not for them, their necks were too much bowed,90

And their dead palates chewed the cud of pain:—

Yes! the few spirits—who, despite of deeds

Which they abhor, confound not with the cause

Those momentary starts from Nature's laws,

Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite

But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth

With all her seasons to repair the blight

With a few summers, and again put forth

Cities and generations—fair, when free—

For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee!100