Came he not thither, in his burning force,
The lord, the tamer of dark souls—Remorse!
Yes! as the night calls forth from sea and sky,
From breeze and wood, a solemn harmony,
Lost when the swift triumphant wheels of day
In light and sound are hurrying on their way:
Thus, from the deep recesses of the heart,
The voice which sleeps, but never dies, might start,
Call'd up by solitude, each nerve to thrill
With accents heard not, save when all is still!
The voice, inaudible when havoc's strain
Crush'd the red vintage of devoted Spain;
Mute, when sierras to the war-whoop rung,
And the broad light of conflagration sprung
From the south's marble cities; hush'd midst cries
That told the heavens of mortal agonies;
But gathering silent strength, to wake at last
In concentrated thunders of the past!
And there, perchance, some long-bewilder'd mind,
Torn from its lowly sphere, its path confined
Of village duties, in the Alpine glen,
Where nature cast its lot midst peasant men;
Drawn to that vortex, whose fierce ruler blent
The earthquake power of each wild element,
To lend the tide which bore his throne on high
One impulse more of desperate energy;
Might—when the billow's awful rush was o'er
Which toss'd its wreck upon the storm-beat shore,
Won from its wanderings past, by suffering tried,
Search'd by remorse, by anguish purified—
Have fix'd, at length, its troubled hopes and fears
On the far world, seen brightest through our tears;
And, in that hour of triumph or despair,
Whose secrets all must learn—but none declare,
When, of the things to come, a deeper sense
Fills the dim eye of trembling penitence,
Have turn'd to Him whose bow is in the cloud,
Around life's limits gathering as a shroud—
The fearful mysteries of the heart who knows,
And, by the tempest, calls it to repose!
Who visited that deathbed? Who can tell
Its brief sad tale, on which the soul might dwell,
And learn immortal lessons? Who beheld
The struggling hope, by shame, by doubt repell'd—
The agony of prayer—the bursting tears—
The dark remembrances of guilty years,
Crowding upon the spirit in their might?
He, through the storm who look'd, and there was light!
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