the free Nature's free-born Child!
When the Frantic One fleets,
While no force can withstand,
Through the populous streets
Whirling ghastly the brand;
For the Element hates
What Man's labour creates,
And the work of his hand!
Impartially out from the cloud,
Or the curse or the blessing may fall!
Benignantly out from the cloud
Come the dews, the revivers of all!
Avengingly our from the cloud
Come the levin, the bolt, and the ball!
Hark—a wail from the steeple!—aloud
The bell shrills its voice to the crowd!
Look—look—red as blood
All on high!
It is not the daylight that fills with its flood
The sky!
What a clamour awaking
Roars up through the street,
What a hell-vapour breaking
Rolls on through the street,
And higher and higher
Aloft moves the Column of Fire!
Through the vistas and rows
Like a whirlwind it goes,
And the air like the steam from a furnace glows.
Beams are crackling—posts are shrinking—
Walls are sinking—windows clinking—
Children crying—
Mothers flying—
And the beast (the black ruin yet smouldering under)
Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder!
Hurry and skurry—away—away,
And the face of the night is as clear as day!
As the links in a chain,
Again and again
Flies the bucket from hand to hand;
High in arches up rushing
The engines are gushing,
And the flood, as a beast on the prey that it hounds,
With a road on the breast of the element bounds.
To the grain and the fruits,
Through the rafters and beams,
Through the barns and the garners it crackles and streams!
As if they would rend up the earth from its roots,
Rush the flames to the sky
Giant-high;
And at length,
Wearied out and despairing, man bows to their strength!
With an idle gaze sees their wrath consume,
And submits to his doom!
Desolate
The place, and dread
For storms the barren bed.
In the deserted gaps that casements were,
Looks forth despair;
And, where the roof hath been,
Peer the pale clouds within!
One look
Upon the grave
Of all that Fortune gave
The loiterer took—
Then grasps his staff. Whate'er the fire bereft,
One blessing, sweeter than all else, is left—
The faces that he loves! He counts them o'er—
And, see—not one dear look is missing from that store!
Now clasp'd the bell within the clay—
The mould the mingled metals fill—
Oh, may it, sparkling into day,
Reward the labour and the skill!
Alas! should it fail,
For the mould may be frail—
And still with our hope must be mingled the fear—
And, even now, while we speak, the mishap may be near!
To the dark womb of sacred earth
This labour of our hands is given,
As seeds that wait the second birth,
And turn to blessings watch'd by heaven!
Ah seeds, how dearer far than they
We bury in the dismal tomb,
Where Hope and Sorrow bend to pray
That suns beyond the realm of day
May warm them into bloom!
From the steeple
Tolls the bell,
Deep and heavy,
The death-knell!
Measured and solemn, guiding up the road
A wearied wanderer to the last abode.
It is that worship'd wife—
It is that faithful mother!43
Whom the dark Prince of Shadows leads benighted,
From that dear arm where oft she hung delighted.
Far from those blithe companions, born
Of her, and blooming in their morn;
On whom, when couch'd, her heart above
So often look'd the Mother-Love!
Ah! rent the sweet Home's union-band,
And never, never more to come—
She dwells within the shadowy land,
Who was the Mother of that Home!
How oft they miss that tender guide,
The care—the watch—the face—the MOTHER—
And where she sate the babes beside,
Sits with unloving looks—ANOTHER!
While the mass is cooling now,
Let
The translation adheres to the original, in forsaking the rhyme in these lines and some others.
