| |
| UPON Earth’s lap there lay a pleasant land, | |
| With mountain, wood, and river beautified, | |
| And city-dotted. For the pleasant land | |
| The icy North and burning South did battle | |
| Whose it should be; and so it lay between them | 5 |
| Unclaimed, unowned, like the shining spoils | |
| Under crossed lances of contending chiefs; | |
| Or liker April days whose morn is sunshine | |
| And evening storm. Its never-failing fields | |
| Strong men and sturdy robed in vest of green, | 10 |
| And when the year was older took their payment | |
| In grain of gold. Its ever-smiling homes | |
| True wives and comely daughters tenanted, | |
| Round the most holy altar of the hearth | |
| Moving like holy ministers. To them | 15 |
| Sorrow and pain, envy and hate, came never; | |
| Only the mild-eyed, kind consoler, Death, | |
| Called them from happy life to happier, | |
| Where eyes are shining that can have no tears, | |
| And brows are beaming that can never frown, | 20 |
| And lips are breathing love that cannot lie. | |
| There went a whisper of their happiness | |
| Over the blue pines of the eastern woods, | |
| Up to the icy crags where Russia’s eagle | |
| Sat lean and famine-withered. So he turned | 25 |
| With the hot hunger flashing in his eye, | |
| And listened: presently upon the rock | |
| He whet his beak, and plumed his ragged feathers, | |
| And rose with terrible and savage clang | |
| Into the frightened air,—nor rose alone, | 30 |
| But at the sound the golden beak of Prussia | |
| And the two-headed bird of Austria | |
| Came swooping up, and o’er the happy land | |
| Held bloody carnival; for each one tore | |
| A bleeding fragment for his proper beak, | 35 |
| As of a kid caught straying and alone. | |
| So there went up a cry from earth to heaven, | |
| And pale-eyed nations asked, “Is there a God?” | |
| But other blood than Polish blood hath dyed | |
| Green Vistula to red, and there hath come | 40 |
| In these last days a dreader Nemesis,— | |
| One who hath spoiled the spoiler, and for blood | |
| Asked blood,—for shattered throne hath shattered thrones, | |
| So that the nations have forgot their fears, | |
| And cry exulting, “Yea, there is a God!” | 45 |
| |
