THE MIGHT OF SONG.

An extract from a Poem delivered by W. H. C. Hosmer before the Literary Societies of Hamilton College, July, 1848.

If we were chained forever to the Real,

God’s benison would be indeed withdrawn;

Without rich glimpses of the bright Ideal

In vain would morning dawn.

Upward, on pinions of sublime devotion,

The soul would cleave its native sky no more,

But loathsome grow—a pool devoid of motion,

Foul to its weedy floor.

Our grosser nature ever strives to win us

From worship of the beautiful and bright,

And deaf are many to the voice within us

That whispers “seek the light!”

Not they alone work faithfully who labor

On the dull, dusty thoroughfare of life;

The clerkly pen can vanquish when the sabre

Is useless in the strife.

In cloistered gloom the quiet man of letters,

Launching his thoughts like arrows from the bow,

Oft strikes at Treason, and his base abettors,

Bringing their grandeur low.

Armed with a scroll, the birds of evil omen

That curse a country he can scare away,

Or in the wake of Error marshal foemen

Impatient for the fray.

Scorn not the Sons of Song! or deem them only

Poor, worthless weeds upon the shore of Time;

Although they move in walks retired and lonely,

They have their tasks sublime.

When tyrants tread the hill-top and the valley,

Calling the birth-right of the brave their own,

Around the tomb of Liberty they rally,

And roll away the stone: —

Or, roused by some dark peril, they have written

Words that awe Guilt behind his guarded wall,

Or, by the lightning of their numbers smitten,

Beheld the Bigot fall.

Though fierce, unbridled passions, running riot,

Hiss like Medusa’s vipers in the breast,

The witchcraft of harmonic sound can quiet

The turmoil into rest.

Who through the chieftain’s castle-hall is stealing

With the light foot-fall of some beast of prey,

While vengeance hushes every softer feeling,

Nerving his arm to slay?

Where is his home? To flame its roof was given,

And heavy clouds above the ruin lower—

While the dread foe, by whom his soul was riven,

Unwarned, is in his power.

Where are his kinsmen? Ask the fox and raven

That feed upon their corpses gashed and red;

And will he now turn back a trembling craven—

What, what arrests his tread?

Young Annot Lyle, her Highland clairshack waking,

Trills an old ballad to remembrance dear—

And dagger-hilt his rugged hand forsaking

Brushes away the tear.

Lo! the proud Norman and his host are flying,

While in pursuit, with fierce, triumphant cheers,

That drown the groans of horse and rider dying,

Press on the Saxon spears.

What stays their flight? The song of Rolla rising

In angry swell above the dreadful roar —

Again they charge!—the bolts of death despising,

And Harold’s reign is o’er.

Dread Power of Song! whose voice can thus awaken

Notes that consign an empire to the grave;

Or, when recoils a host by panic shaken,

From rout the valiant save.

The fearful mantle that the seer is wearing

Derives from thee its tints of living fire —

And higher mounts Philosophy when sharing

The wealth of thy attire:

And in the distance to thy vision brightly

Gleam happy homes beyond this land of graves,

As airy domes and towers at sunset lightly

Rise from Sicilian waves.

When History, her task but ill-achieving,

Fails some far epoch faintly to illume,

Her thread the muse, like Ariadne weaving,

Conducts us through the gloom.

She fronts the sun—and on the purple ridges

The virgin Future lifts her veil of snow —

Looks westward, and an arch of splendor bridges

The gulf of Long Ago.

She speaks, and, lo! Italian sunlight flashes

Over the dark expanse of northern skies —

Death hears her thrilling cry, and cold, gray ashes

Take mortal shape, and rise.

When factions vex a state, and new abuses

Bring to her drooping banner-fold disgrace,

And Mind, forgetful of its nobler uses,

Grows sensual and base —

When the gray fathers of a nation falter,

Muffling their faces for the funeral knell.

A lightning-flash, from her poetic altar;

The darkness can dispel.

Then honored be the Bard!—a heavenly mansion

Alone could be the birth-place of an Art

That gives to deathless intellect expansion,

And purifies the heart.