Page:Poems Sigourney 1827.pdf/173

Whose wreathed smoke involves their rushing lines,—
The other but with quiver, and bare breast,
And lion heart.—Ah!—the contending din,
The shock,—the shout,—the revelry of war,—
I cannot sing.—They ask a bolder lay,—
A firmer hand.—There are, who can behold
God's image marr'd,—and call it glorious strife.
And godlike victory.—There are, who love
The trumpet's clangour,—and the hoarse response
Of the death groan.—I cannot strike the lyre
That breathes of war.—It seems to me that death
Doth his own work so mightily, that man
Need aid him not.—
                                 Even in the time of peace,
The dance of pleasure, and the bloom of health,
He smites his victims oft enough, to sooth
The hater of his kind.—The longest lease
Which Earth's frail tenant holds, his fourscore years
Of labour and of sorrow, are brief space
To do the work of an Eternity.—
                       And can it be that I have need to tell
Who were the conquerors,—or whose bodies lay
Strewn thick as autumn leaves upon the soil
That gave them birth?—Dark was the flight of souls
From that stain'd field,—for few would bow to bear
The captive's yoke.—Yet on their haggard brows
Who drank the cup of servitude, it seem'd
Death sate in bitterness, more than on those
Whose mangled forms beneath the courser's heel
Writhed in brief agony.—
                                        But who is she,
Of such majestic port,—whose proud eye seems