Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By St. Paul’s Church, Boston

John Everett (1801–1826)

BEAUTIFUL, pure and simple, there thou stand’st,

Fit temple for the pure and only God,

Smiling in cold severity. The heart

That views thee, fills with the bright memory

Of other days; the sunny lands of song,

In their sad, lovely silence of decay,

Rise up to the remembrance in thy sight.

The thoughts of other days, when Plato stood

At Sunium: when the imperial one, herself,

Athena, visited the Parthenon:

Or of the later age, when the proud Roman,

Within the vast Pantheon’s walls, beheld

One stream of purest lustre from above,

Lighting the idol-habited Rotund.

Not unacceptable was their ignorant worship

To him they served in darkness, but to thee

A nobler precept than Colonna heard,

A purer light than the Pantheon saw

Is given. Thy cherub songs, and wreathed flowers,

Incense and sacrifice and gifts devote,

Are prayer and penitence, the tearful eye,

The innocent life, the broken, contrite heart.

Simple in elegance, no mounting spire,

Tower, minaret, nor gaily burnish’d dome

Mars thy severe proportions. No device

Of polish’d moulding, sculptured tracery,

Not e’en the soft acanthine folds are there,

Like the divine magnificence of virtue,

Whose ornament would not obscure its worth.

Now, while yon moonbeam gently steals along

The columns of that simple peristyle,

Silvering the massive shaft and plain volute

Of yon extremest pillar, let me gaze

With calm delight insatiate. There is given

A moral feeling to a beautiful scene

Of glorious art with nature join’d, like this,—

And memory crown’d with moonlight roses, lives

To hover o’er the storied names of old;

Heroes and sages deathless—the pure heart

Of him whose lip with sweetest nectar dew’d,

Breathed the great lesson of his godlike teacher—

Martyr of freedom—him of Syracuse—

The glorious fratricide, the immortal Theban,

And their bright heritors of guiltless suffering,

Intrepid Algernon, and youthful Russell,—

Till the remembrance softens. Not in vain,

Oh! not in vain did the Athenians

Ally the arts to freedom, and invite

Blushing Pictura and her marble sister

Up the stern heights of the Acropolis.

So be it with our country. May she stand

Like thee, modell’d on wisdom of the past,

Yet with the lovely gracefulness of youth.