| |
| OH, that the golden lyre divine | |
| Whence David smote flame-tones were mine! | |
| Oh, that the silent harp which hung | |
| Untuned, unstrung, | |
| Upon the willows by the river, | 5 |
| Would throb beneath my touch and quiver | |
| With the old song-enchanted spell | |
| Of Israel! | |
| |
| Oh, that the large prophetic Voice | |
| Would make my reed-piped throat its choice! | 10 |
| All ears should prick, all hearts should spring | |
| To hear me sing | |
| The burden of the isles, the word | |
| Assyria knew, Damascus heard, | |
| When, like the wind, while cedars shake, | 15 |
| Isaiah spake. | |
| |
| For I would frame a song to-day | |
| Winged like a bird to cleave its way | |
| O’er land and sea that spread between, | |
| To where a Queen | 20 |
| Sits with a triple coronet. | |
| Genius and Sorrow both have set | |
| Their diadems above the gold— | |
| A Queen three-fold! | |
| |
| To her the forest lent its lyre, | 25 |
| Hers are the sylvan dews, the fire | |
| Of Orient suns, the mist-wreathed gleams | |
| Of mountain streams. | |
| She, the imperial Rhine’s own child, | |
| Takes to her heart the wood-nymph wild, | 30 |
| The gipsy Pelech, and the wide | |
| White Danube’s tide. | |
| |
| She who beside an infant’s bier | |
| Long since resigned all hope to hear, | |
| The sacred name of “Mother” bless | 35 |
| Her childlessness, | |
| Now from a people’s sole acclaim | |
| Receives the heart-vibrating name, | |
| And “Mother, Mother, Mother!” fills | |
| The echoing hills. | 40 |
| |
| Yet who is he who pines apart, | |
| Estranged from that maternal heart, | |
| Ungraced, unfriended, and forlorn, | |
| The butt of scorn? | |
| An alien in his land of birth, | 45 |
| An outcast from his brethren’s earth, | |
| Albeit with theirs his blood mixed well | |
| When Plevna fell? | |
| |
| When all Roumania’s chains were riven, | |
| When unto all his sons was given | 50 |
| The hero’s glorious reward, | |
| Reaped by the sword,— | |
| Wherefore was this poor thrall, whose chains | |
| Hung heaviest, within whose veins | |
| The oldest blood of freedom streamed, | 55 |
| Still unredeemed? * * * * | |
| |
