Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
From The Vision of Nimrod
By Charles de Kay (1848–1935)N
The star of Nimrod, had the zenith won,
When from the waste the roaring of a lion
Boomed like the bursting of a signal gun.
They saw with fright the even dusk of night
Roll to a shape, black on the starlit heaven,
And lo, a Lion of enormous might,
Shadowy, shaggy! From his jaws of ravin
Issued the awful sound
That shook the ground.
It took new form like ocean’s clouds at morn;
The lion changed;—that surely was no error
Which saw a bull shaking his dreadful horn?
But hardly of the new shape were they ’ware
When the brute’s head of him so fiercely charging
Turned human; a grave face with curling hair,
Its ordered locks on breast and back discharging,
Loomed through the dusky night
And stayed their flight.
Upon their eyes, the shape took change and flow,
And lo, a giant on a war-club leaning,
Lifted on high, held the dark plain below.
Purple and golden on his stalwart shoulders
His garments lay, but spotted all and torn,
Like robe that long in royal cavern moulders;
And round his neck upon a chain was worn,
Like a strange cross to see,
An amber key.
Was full of eyes and little crescent moons
And peaches over-ripeness has exploded—
Pomegranates cloven by a score of noons.
The war-club whereupon his left hand rested
Was scaly like a pinecone huge in size;
Against those two his shadowy bulk he breasted
And with his right hand pointed toward the skies.
Then in a voice of dread
Croaking, he said:
I, Nimrod, watched upon a tower’s back,
Marking the planets creep most cunningly
A pinnacle past, which sharply cut their track;
Methought this arm, that was all rigid grown
With following slow their motions wise and stealthy,
Grew boundless large, reached upward to yon sown
Broad field, the sky, with red ripe star-fruits wealthy,
Plucked and consumed them still
At my fair will!
My body stretched, and from my heaving breast
The streams of breath, against the hard sky hurled,
Were turned to clouds that veered at my behest.
Anon the horizon with sharp white was lit
And by that glare the veil of things was riven;
The door to strange new lands was suddenly split,
As if I, earth, had caught a glimpse of heaven.
I saw how great that bliss,
How petty this!
From that strange night I was not merely man:
Where’er I marched crowds must be still attending
Me, the great midpoint of the earthly plan.
Euphrates was the life-blood of my heart;
Tigris a vein that throbbed with ceaseless motion;
In me the firs of Ararat had part
And I was earth, air, fire and boundless ocean!
Folly from that black day
Held me in sway.
And founded empires in the teeming plain;
Lured to revolt ten cities fickle-minded,
And dared the gods that could not save their slain.
I was their god. I was the lord of all,—
Each step a new town or a plundered palace.
I drowned a land with break of water wall;
Repeopled it, when kindness grew from malice.
Who reckoneth all my crimes?
He falls who climbs.
The earth has yet upon its surface known.
Nation I fenced from nation without pity
That all might wend toward Babylon alone.
Tribe might not trade with tribe, nor north with south,
But all must barter at my market centre;
Nor eastman speak with westman mouth to mouth
Unless they first within my limits enter.
Thus grew each tongue and art
Slowly apart.
“But, spite of crimes, spite of my wealth and glory,
Of me what know ye, men of a puny age?
I am a rumor, an uncertain story,
A vanished smoke, a scarce-remembered page!
The angry peoples showed they could be kinder
To my great fame than after-following kings,
For hate still kept a little sour reminder
When every mark of me had taken wings.
Whate’er on brick I traced
My sons effaced.
Melted my statues, overturned my grave,
Hammered from living rock the deep-hewn verses
That from oblivion my vast fame should save.
Thrice was this mass of brickwork, seamed with ravage,
All newly builded by succeeding kings:
What of the rage of desert-dwelling savage?
From sons a treachery far deeper stings!
Every one hundredth year
Some man must hear,
O’er my great crimes, my splendor and my fall,
How messengers from some great godhead yonder
In vain approach, Nimrod from sin to call.
I know not who he is, foretold by many,
For on my mind weighs a thick cloud of doubt,
Like fogs across these barren plains and fenny,
So fertile once, they laughed at want and drought.
List, though you shrink with fear,
Tremble, but hear!”