'?'3t>033 
 
 POESY: 
 
 AN ESSAY IN RHYME 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 #ii0siniait m)i '^\i^\xmm Societies 
 
 COLUMBIAN COLLEGE, 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C, 
 
 8MITH80KIAN INSTITUTION, ON THE EVENI:;G OF THE 28th OF JUNE, 1859. 
 
 i BY 
 
 JOHN R. THOMPSON. 
 
 WASHINGTON : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETIES. 
 1859. 
 
POESY: 
 
 AN ESSAY IN RHYME 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 €ii0siniaii attlt llljilo])l)rcraaH Societies 
 
 COLUMBIAN COLLEGE, 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C, 
 
 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, ON THE EVENING OF THE 28th OF JUNE. 1859. 
 
 ^ 
 
 'b 
 
 JOHN K. THOMPSON. 
 
 
 WASHINGTON : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETIES. 
 1859. 
 

 THOMAS M GILL, 
 JTEAM PEESS PRINTER, 
 
 WASHINQTON, D. C. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 College Hill, D. C, Oct. 8lh, 1859. 
 Dear Sir : I am directed again to call your attention to the resolu- 
 tions of the Enosinian and Philophrenian Societies, passed at a joint meet- 
 ing held on the 29th day of June last, thanking you for the very beautiful 
 Poem recited before them on the evening of June 28th, and earnestly re- 
 questing a copy for publication. Hoping you may now see fit to gratify 
 this, their sincere desire, 
 
 I am, with sentiments of respect. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 WM. L. WILSON. 
 Jno. R. Thompson, Esq. 
 
 Richmond, October 10, 1859. 
 My Dear Sir: With my best thanks for your polite note, requesting for 
 publication a copy of the Poem which I had the honor to recite, in June 
 last, before the Literary Societies of Columbian College, I take pleasure in 
 complying with your wishes. 
 
 Yours, very truly, 
 
 JNO. R. THOMPSON. 
 Wm. L. Wilson, Esq. 
 
POESY. 
 
 In ancient Greece, where Art, we know, was born, 
 
 In the fresh gladness of her early morn ; 
 
 When Learning, laurelled goddess, sweetly smiled 
 
 Above the cradle of her fairest child — 
 
 They kept in Athens sacred festival 
 
 Of eloquence, and song, and wit, and all 
 
 That made of Attica a classic land, 
 
 From lofty Pindus to the shining strand: 
 
 With music's lordly swell, the stately train 
 
 Moved onward to Minerva's glittering fane, 
 
 Where from the fervid lips of genius flowed 
 
 The measured chorus and the sparkling ode, 
 
 Pure as Ilissus, where its waters run 
 
 A stream of flashing silver in the sun ; 
 
 And thousand voices, mingling in the prean. 
 
 Stirred the light wave upon the blue iEgean. 
 
 Two thousand changeful years have passed away 
 
 Of cruel havoc and of fell decay — 
 
 The polished temples, 'neath the brilliant sky 
 
 Of old Athena now in ruin lie ; 
 
 And a deep pathos, a most tender pity 
 
 Subdues the soul within the ancient city : 
 
 The Ereehtheum — how each frag-ment shines ! 
 
POESY : AN ESSAY IN RHYME. 
 
 What desolate beauty in the broken lines ! 
 .The Parthenon — alas, the summer breeze 
 Kisses no more at morn the perfect frieze 
 Which once revealed the glory and the joy, 
 Panathenaic, to the Grecian boy. 
 But the great poems of the bards sublime 
 Remain unwasted by the wreck of Time ; 
 Graceful and calm, in symmetry severe. 
 These wondrous temples of the mind appear ; 
 And light, in richer flood than that which fills 
 The smiling circuit of the'Athenian hills. 
 Streams upon shaft and portico and floor, 
 " The light that never was on sea or shore !" 
 
 Well may we then the lyric mode combine 
 With glowing eloquence, at Learning's shrine. 
 When our Panathensea's rites we hold. 
 Not with the gorgeous pomp and pride of old, 
 Not yielding homage to the gods that reigned 
 On high Olympus, as the mythos feigned, 
 But with ascriptions of perennial praise 
 To the brave singers of immortal lays ; 
 And all who robe the beauteous form of Truth 
 In the bright colors of unfading youth, 
 From ^schylus to Shakspeare, from the trees 
 Where Wisdom early strayed with Socrates, 
 To the lone tower Avhere Newton's tireless eye 
 Read the strange riddle of the midnight sky. 
 Such rites we celebrate when Science calls 
 Her favoured children to a hundred halls. 
 
POESY: AX ESSAY IN RHYME. 
 
 To bless the guerdons, nobly won, whicli prove 
 An Alma Mater's all-abidino; love ! 
 
 You ask for rhymes, 3-ou l)id me idly seek 
 To throw the soft enchantment of the Grreek 
 O'er the rapt sense in a beguiling dream — 
 Vain task ! but still be Poesy my theme : 
 Turn with me then awhile, and learn the spell 
 Its ministers have left on "flood and fell" — 
 Summon the Past, and bid its voice rehearse 
 Man's chequered story since the jirimal curse ; 
 Or take Imagination's widest range 
 O'er ivied battlement and moated arrange. 
 And mark what renders most a people great, 
 And still survives the ruin of the State ; 
 How the long, joyous, pensive, tender strain 
 Of the world's music, cheats the world of pain- 
 How Fancy brightens with her magic rays 
 The shadowy vista of departed days, 
 And casts along the Ages' downward slope 
 The blended hues of Memory and of Hope ! 
 
 Soft 3'ou, my modest muse, nor rashly dare 
 A flight so lofty through the realms of air : 
 With a vague sense of littleness opprest 
 I walk around the Theban eagle's nest, 
 Conscious that could I steal his mighty wings, 
 To me such very unfamiliar things 
 Would be as useless as were Roman sandals 
 To one of Attila's laro-e-footed Vandals — 
 
poesy: an essay in rhyme. 
 
 And here the horrid old Horatian maxim, 
 
 Which the poor rhymer's had so long to tax him, 
 
 The bard remembers, and may fitly quote, 
 
 (Though doubtless many have the line b}^ rote,) 
 
 That neither gods nor men, in their distress, 
 
 Nor yet the columns of the weekly press, 
 
 Can view as other than a dreadful wrong 
 
 The lowlier oiferings of tuneful song — 
 
 A line which means, as certain critics think. 
 
 That smaller poets should not deal in ink. 
 
 And that until the mighty prophets come 
 
 The part of Poesy is to be dumb. 
 
 Dishonoured ever be the narrow rule 
 
 Which claims no reverence in kind Nature's school, 
 
 Which neither Summer's birds nor blooms obey 
 
 In the glad minstrelsy of rising day. 
 
 Your Miltons, Goethes, are an age apart. 
 
 Meanwhile shall no one touch the world's sad heart ? 
 
 The stately aloe's snowy bloom appears 
 
 But once, we know, within a hundred years ; 
 
 Because, forsooth, the aloe is the glory 
 
 Of Chatsworth's notable conservatory. 
 
 Shall not the modest daisy from the sod 
 
 Turn its meek eyes in beauty up to God ? 
 
 In nature's daily prayer, when comes the dawn 
 
 To tell its beads upon the dewy lawn. 
 
 Shall the sweet matins of the rosy hours 
 
 Miss the pure incense of the little flowers ? 
 
 Oh, gentle spirits, wheresoe'er you dwell, 
 
 On breezy upland or in quiet dell, 
 
POESY: AN ESSAY IN RHYME. 
 
 Whether you sing in solitude and shade, 
 
 Or in the sullen, crowded haunts of trade, — 
 
 Whose simple rhyming, in its artless grace, 
 
 Has touched some hidden sorrow of the race, 
 
 Or taught the world one humble lesson more 
 
 Of subtle beauty all unknown before, 
 
 Or soothed one heart, just when its need was sorest, 
 
 With harmonies of ocean and of forest, — 
 
 To you be ever honorable meed, 
 
 In spite of captious Horace and his creed. 
 
 While the great poets soar beyond the ken 
 
 Of the world's toiling, heaving mass of men. 
 
 Like the proud falcon quickly lost to view 
 
 In the wide field of heaven's o'erarchino; blue, — 
 
 You linger round the dwellings of our love, 
 
 As birds that carol in the eaves above. 
 
 And fill forever, as the days increase. 
 
 Our homes with music and .our hearts with Deace. 
 
 The Avorld has changed — there are who gravely doubt 
 
 If the great epics have not long died out — 
 
 No more in grandeur the Homeric line 
 
 Repeats the story of a Troy divine — 
 
 No more the jDealing medieval hymn 
 
 Rolls down the shadowy canto, vast and dim, 
 
 A minster, noblest of cathedral piles, 
 
 Where Spencer rambles through his woodland aisles, — 
 
 No more the high Miltonic verse reveals 
 
 The glooms and glories of the awful seals — 
 
10 poesy: an essay in rhyme. 
 
 In blaze supernal or in dread eclipse — 
 
 Of some new uninspired Apocalypse : 
 
 If these are "with tli' imperishable Past, 
 
 The Epic surely had not sung its last ; 
 
 For never swept across Time's ample stage 
 
 An unimpassioned, unheroic age — 
 
 And countless generations yet to be, 
 
 In later eras of the world, shall see 
 
 A life as worthy of the epic strain 
 
 As that which fired the age of Charlemagne, 
 
 And future masters of the lyre shall raise 
 
 The swelling epos of our modern days. 
 
 But while the amaranth waits for kingly brows, 
 
 Some laurel wreaths our grateful love allows 
 
 To him whose sunny genius lifts to light 
 
 The meanest objects of our daily sight : 
 
 Who seeks to brighten still the links that bind 
 
 In blest communion all of human kind ; 
 
 Or passion's tempest in the breast would calm 
 
 With some sweet, lowly, penitential psalm : 
 
 Such poets sow the seeds of truth and beauty 
 
 To blossom into holy faith and duty — 
 
 And though the tares of selfishness and pride 
 
 Spring up to choke them upon every side", 
 
 And many a tender gfhoot the world erases 
 
 From the hard pavements of its market-places, 
 
 Some fall on friendly soil, warm hearts and true, 
 
 Where watered by affection's kindliest dew. 
 
 They stretch their boughs into the upper air, 
 
 And in due season richer fruitacie bear 
 
poesy: an essay ix rhyme. 
 
 11 
 
 Than fabled branches hung with globes of gold, 
 Some thirty, fifty, some an hundred fold ! 
 
 Would'st knoAV the value of a simple rhyme 
 
 Sent down the widening, deepening stream of time ? 
 
 Let Memory seek, amidst the august scenes 
 
 So recent — scarce a lustrum intervenes, 
 
 The chamber where the dying Webster lay, 
 
 And heard the elegiac melodies of Gray 
 
 Mingling with ocean's everlasting roar 
 
 Borne through the casement from the neighb'ring shore, 
 
 The deathless music of th' immortal mind 
 
 With Nature's grandest symphonies combined. 
 
 Or note the contrast well afforded here 
 
 And let the triumph of the bard appear. 
 
 Two monumental tributes to the brave 
 
 Mark one a famous, one a lonely grave — 
 
 Earth's proudest city, gay with gilded spires 
 
 And domes which kindle in the sunset's fires. 
 
 Guards one, with marble muses looking down 
 
 Where sleeps the dust that wore the Caesar's crown : 
 
 The universal Earth, the common air 
 
 Contain the other — it is everywhere, 
 
 As far as mighty England's form of speech, 
 
 Blown wide upon the wings of fame, can reach, 
 
 Before the mental eye, its shape it rears 
 
 Above a turf bedewed with grateful tears ; 
 
 And when Napoleon's obsequies, with all 
 
 Their gorgeous pageantry of plumes and pall, 
 
12 POESY : AN ESSAY IN RHYME. 
 
 Have faded quite away from man's esteem, 
 
 Like the swift splendours of a passing dream ; 
 
 When the proud chapel shall itself display 
 
 A shattered monument of sad decay — 
 
 And queenly Paris shall have shared the fate 
 
 Of Tadmor overthrown and desolate ; 
 
 That plaintive Monody, whose numbers tell 
 
 Of him that bravely at Corunna fell — 
 
 His silent burial near the midnight camp, 
 
 By the pale moonbeam and the glimmering lamp, 
 
 Shall still the cruel waste of years defy, 
 
 Enduring cenotaph of Poesy I 
 
 WoukVst learn the fire and frenzy that belong 
 
 To the hot verses of the battle-song ? 
 
 Hark ! to the sounds that the exulting breeze 
 
 Brings to our land across the rolling seas 
 
 From distant Gallia's proud ancestral shores, 
 
 Where to the fight the glittering column pours. 
 
 The active Zouave, the gallant, gay Chasseur, 
 
 Feel a new life and impulse in the stir — 
 
 With ribbons decked, with faces bronzed and scarred. 
 
 Move on the serried legions of the Guard, 
 
 Whose steady look of fierce resolve befits 
 
 The veteran chivalry of Austerlitz. 
 
 Listen ! what thrilling words are these that greet 
 
 The excited thousands of that crowded street ? 
 
 Not freedom's flag the imperial line displays. 
 
 But yet they sing, they shout the Marseillaise ! 
 
POESY : AN ESSAY IN RHYME. 13 
 
 In vain the cautious monarch would repress 
 
 That song's impassioned and resistless stress, 
 
 Unchained as lightning, with electric start 
 
 Its sudden thrill is sent from heart to heart : 
 
 And if, oh Italy, devoted land, 
 
 Once more begirt with beauty, thou shalt stand 
 
 Erect among the nations of the earth, 
 
 In all the strength of Freedom's second birth, 
 
 The force that still must drive the avenging steel 
 
 Lives in the lyric of Rouget de Lisle ! 
 
 And yet not long, oh Poesy, not long, 
 
 May War, earth's oldest and its direst Wrong, 
 
 Demand thy paeans — Mercy waits and pleads 
 
 With thee to celebrate her glorious deeds. 
 
 While many a golden-roofed cathedral rings 
 
 With the Te Deums of victorious kings, 
 
 And from the crimsoned field, by combat riven, 
 
 The blood of hecatombs appeals to Heaven, 
 
 Thine is a higher, holier evangel, 
 
 And thine the rustling pinions of the angel 
 
 That comes, with softest sunshine in its face, 
 
 To soothe and bless and elevate the race — 
 
 Celestial visitant, that walked with Burns, 
 
 "Following the plough," or when the poet turns 
 
 To catch the Cotter's evening hymn of praise. 
 
 Sung by the ingle's ever-cheerful blaze ; — 
 
 That dwelt with Rydal's bard, all round the year, 
 
 By the sweet margin of Winandermere ; 
 
14 poesy: an essay in rhyme. 
 
 And flying wide across the dusky downs 
 Into the heart of England's fevered towns, 
 Unseen of other men, serenely stood 
 Beside the form of gentle Thomas Hood, 
 With drooping plumage and dejected eyes, 
 By the dark river of the Bridge of Sighs ! 
 
 The world has changed — there are who much deplore 
 
 That the bright reign of Poesy is o'er — 
 
 Who tell us that as man each year recedes 
 
 From the sweet trustfulness of childhood's creeds. 
 
 And sees these cherished blossoms die within 
 
 The baleful glare of worldliness and sin — 
 
 So, as the planet on its course is rolled. 
 
 As age of iron follows age of gold, 
 
 The dear illusion we would oiot resist 
 
 Fades, like a curtain of dissolving mist, 
 
 Before the glare of science, reaching far 
 
 From wave to mountain, and from star to star. 
 
 And still dethroning, disenchanting fast 
 
 The idols and the idylls of the Past. 
 
 We'll not believe it. Shall the windy ocean 
 
 Stop the careering of its rhythmic motion. 
 
 Or 'neath the moonlight, when the whirlwinds cease, 
 
 No longer woo us to a dream of peace. 
 
 Because a Maury, standing at the helm, 
 
 Drives the proud bark of Science o'er its realm, 
 
 Detects its viewless currents in their courses, 
 
 And brings to measurement its mighty forces ? 
 
poesy: ax essay in rhyme. 
 
 15 
 
 Shall not the sun still seek the Jungfrau's side 
 To deck with diamonds his majestic bride — 
 Shall not the glacier's beryl-tinted caves, 
 Beneath the glittering waste of icy waves, 
 Still shake with hallelujahs, peal on peal, 
 And all Chamouni's templed valley reel. 
 From brawling Arve to pinnacled Aiguille, 
 Because a learned botanist uncloses 
 The scarlet petals of the Alpine roses. 
 And some pale student asks the frozen arch 
 The secret of the glacier's onward march ? 
 Ah, " star-eyed Science !" Fancy claims in thee 
 A loving sister of the World To Be — 
 Admits each worthy, reverent son of thine 
 As priest to worship at her radiant shrine, 
 And comes with tenderest sorrow, in her turn, 
 To place a garland upon Humboldt's urn. 
 
 All, all are poets on whom God confers 
 
 The gift of Nature's true interpreters ; 
 
 While the eternal hills their anthems raise 
 
 And swelling oceans vocalize His praise. 
 
 But not alone from woods, and rocks, and streams, 
 
 Niagaras and Alps, and starry gleams, 
 
 Must the true poet catch his inspirations 
 
 To chant the De Profundis of the nations — 
 
 'Tis his to turn from Nature's outward things 
 
 And trace, with prophet-glance, the hidden springs 
 
 Of human life and action in the soul. 
 
16 POESY :' AN ESSAY IN RHYME. 
 
 Whence the unceasing torrents rage and roll 
 
 With headlong fury to the shoreless main, 
 
 In thunder worthy of his loftiest strain. 
 
 And not from cloud and rainbow must he draw 
 
 The subtle principle of Beauty's Law. 
 
 'Tis his to wander from purpureal skies 
 
 And lovliest landscapes, with a glad surprise, 
 
 And gaze delighted into Woman's eyes — 
 
 And, as the languor-loving Cingalese, 
 
 Whose look is bent on India's opal seas. 
 
 Are ever mindful of the pearls that glow 
 
 With lambent lustre in the deeps below — 
 
 To mark therein the priceless gems that shine 
 
 Of Truth and Purity and Faith Divine : 
 
 And more than all 'tis his in joy to preach 
 
 The glorious gospel of unfettered speech, 
 
 And sing the high divinity of man 
 
 By Freedom far removed from kingly ban ; 
 
 Well may the noble theme inspire his rhyme 
 
 In this our richly-favoured western clime. 
 
 Whose banner streams against the sunset's bars 
 
 And blends its baldric with the dripping stars, 
 
 Where Peace has left her name upon the tide 
 
 And through the Golden Gates the world's great navies ride ! 
 
LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
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