The Ascent of Man. Mathilde Blind

      No longer Nature's thrall,

      Man builds the city wall

      That shall withstand her league of levelling storms;

      He builds tremendous tombs

      Where, hid in hoarded glooms,

      His dead defy corruption with her worms:

      High towers he rears and bulks of glowing stone,

      Where the king rules upon a golden throne.

      Creature of hopes and fears,

      Of mirth and many tears,

      He makes himself a thousand costly altars,

      Whence smoke of sacrifice,

      Fragrant with myrrh and spice,

      Ascends to heaven as the flame leaps and falters;

      Where, like a king above the Cloud control,

      God sits enthroned and rules Man's subject soul.

      Yet grievous here below

      And manifold Man's woe;

      Though he can stay the flood and bind the waters,

      His hand he shall not stay

      That bids him sack and slay

      And turn the waving fields to fields of slaughters;

      And, as he reaps War's harvest grim and gory,

      Commits a thousand crimes and calls it glory.

      Vast empires fall and rise,

      As when in sunset skies

      The monumental clouds lift flashing towers

      With turrets, spires, and bars

      Lit by confederate stars

      Till the bright rack dissolves in flying showers:

      Kingdoms on kingdoms have their fleeting day,

      Dazzle the conquered world, and pass away.

      In golden Morning lands

      The blazing crowns change hands,

      From mystic Ind to fleshly Babylon,

      Assyria, Palestine

      Armed with her book divine,

      Dread Persia whose fleet chariots charged and won

      Pale Continents where prostrate monarchs kneel

      Before the flash of her resistless steel.

      As one by one they start

      With proudly beating heart

      Fast in the furious, fierce-contested race,

      Where neck to neck they strain

      Deliriously to gain

      The winning post of power, the meed of praise;

      Some drop behind, fall, or are trampled down

      While the proud victor grasps the laurel crown.

      Not only great campaigns

      Shall glorify their reigns,

      But high-towered cities wondrous to behold,

      With gardens poised in air

      Like bowers of Eden fair,

      With brazen gates and shrines of beaten gold,

      And Palace courts whose constellated lights

      Shine on black slaves and cringing satellites.

      Eclipsing with her fate

      Each power and rival state

      With her unnumbered stretch of generations,

      A sand-surrounded isle

      Fed by the bounteous Nile,

      Egypt confronts Sahara – sphinx of nations;

      Taught by the floods that make or mar her shore,

      She scans the stars and hoards mysterious lore.

      Hers are imperial halls

      With strangely scriptured walls

      And long perspectives of memorial places,

      Where the hushed daylight glows

      On mute colossal rows

      Of clawed wild beasts featured with female faces,

      And realmless kings inane whose stony eyes

      Have watched the hour-glass of the centuries.

      There in the rainless sands

      The toil of captive hands,

      That aye must do as their taskmaster bids,

      Through years of dusty days

      Brick by slow brick shall raise

      The incarnate pride of kings – the Pyramids —

      Linked with some name synonymous with slaughter

      Time has effaced like a name writ in water.

      For ever with fateful shocks,

      Roar as of hurtling rocks,

      Start fresh embattled hosts with flags unfurled,

      To meet on battle-fields

      With clash of spears and shields,

      Widowing the world of men to win the world:

      The hissing air grows dark with iron rain,

      And groans the earth beneath her sheaves of slain.

      Triumphant o'er them all,

      See crowns and sceptres fall

      Before the arms of iron-soldered legions;

      As Capitolian Rome

      Across the salt sea foam

      Orders her Cæsars to remotest regions:

      From silver Spain and Albion's clouded seas

      To the fair shrines and marble mines of Greece.

      Pallas unmatched in war,

      To her triumphal car

      Rome chains fallen despots and discrownèd queens

      With many a rampant beast,

      Birds from the gorgeous East,

      And wool-haired Nubians torn from tropic scenes;

      There huge barbarians from Druidic woods

      Tower ominous o'er the humming multitudes;

      For still untamed and free

      In loathed captivity,

      Their spirits bend not to the conqueror's yoke,

      Though for a Roman sight

      They must in mimic fight

      Give wounds in play and deal Death's mortal stroke,

      While round the arena rings the fierce applause

      Voluptuous, as their bubbling life-blood flows

      In streams of purple rain

      From hecatombs of slain

      Saluting Cæsar still with failing breath,

      But in their dying souls

      Undying hate, which rolls

      From land to land the avalanche of Death,

      That, gathering volume as it sweeps along,

      Pours down the Alps throng on unnumbered throng.

      From northern hills and plains

      Storm-lashed