Lex est, non poena, perire.—Martial.

Ye warriors of the past, whose flashing swords
Light up with fitful gleams the misty night
Of half-forgotten eld, in fiery words
Ye teach a truth 'twere well we read aright.
God sends the gentle breeze to woo the flower,
And stir the pulses of the ripening corn;
He, too, lets loose the whirlwind's vengeful power
To quench the plagues of foul stagnation born.
And thus in love, sometimes disguised as wrath,
He sends his hidden blessings in the storm,
Which dashes down in its resistless path
The hoar abuses that defied reform.
When Cyrus ravaged fair Chaldea's plain,
And mocked the strength of Babylon's haughty wall,
The proud Assyrian's guilt had earned the chain,
And man rejoiced to mark the oppressor's fall.
And when, made drunk with power, the Persian lost
The stern and simple virtues of his sires,
His empire's ruin and his slaughtered host
Kindled in Greece her world-illuming fires.
Then Greece, her swift career of glory stayed,
Exhausted by her madman's triumphs lay,
Till Rome's protecting arm the loss repaid
Of Corinth's sack and Pydua's fatal day.
Imperial Rome! though crime succeeded crime
As earth fell prostrate 'neath her giant tread,
Still shall her subjects reap to endless time
The priceless harvests by her wisdom spread.
What though the stern proconsul's grinding rule
Close followed on the legion's merciless sword?
Laws, arts, and culture, in that rigid school,
Evoked a nation from each savage horde.
And when at last her crimes, reacting, wrought
Their curse upon herself, to her, supine
And helpless, the barbarian spoiler brought,
With fire and sword, new life to her decline.
Theodoric, Clovis, Charles, your endless strife,
From Weser's marsh to Naples' laughing bay,
Was but the throe that marked the nascent life
Emerging from the worn-out world's decay.
Ye were, amid that elemental war,
But straws to show its course. Ye toiled, and won,
Or lost; your people bled—yet slow and far
The mighty cause of man pressed ever on.
Long has that travail been. Kings, Kaisers, Popes,
The stern Crusader and the pirate Dane,
Each, centered in his own ambitious hopes,
But helped the cause he labored to restrain.
Hildebrand's voice sets Christendom on fire;
'Neath Frederic's plow sinks Milan's lofty wall;
Unnumbered victims glut De Montfort's ire;
From Ecclin's dungeon shrieks the night appall.
If the tide ebbs, 'tis but to flow again.
Each fierce convulsion gains some vantage ground.
Man's fettered limbs grow stronger, and the chain
Falls link by link at each tumultuous bound.
The timid burgher dons the helm and shield,
The wretched hind reluctant grasps the bow,
To fight their master's quarrels. Courtrai's field
And Sempach's hill that lesson's worth may show.
The restless soul still yearns for things unknown;
It chafes against its bondage, points the way
That leads to freedom, but the sword alone
Makes good the dreams that else would but betray.
See, Luther speaks, and Europe flies to arms:
Her stubborn fight outlasts a hundred years;
A thousand fields her richest life-blood warms,
Yet gain the vanquished more than pays their tears.
If Orange and Gustavus conquering died,
Not Coligny nor Hampden fell in vain,
For one domain escaped the furious tide,
And peace made that one desolate—chivalrous Spain!
So, when the traitorous truth was whispered round,—
Equality for man on earth as heaven,—
It was but speculation's idlest sound,
Till by the sword the time-worn bonds were riven.
Though Moscow, Leipzig, Waterloo, might seem
To roll the tide back, they but marked its flood;
Nor could the Holy Allies' darkest scheme
Restore the wrongs so well effaced in blood.
The end is not yet. God's mysterious way
Evolves its purpose in its destined time.
Vainly we seek its fated march to stay:
All things subserve it—wisdom, folly, crime.
We are his instruments. The past has fled
For us. We suffer for the future dim.
Then sternly face the darkness round us spread,
Do each his duty—leave the rest to Him!