The War-Spirit on Bunker's Height

The sun walked the skies in the splendor of June,
O'er earth full of promise, and air full of tune;
The broad azure streams calmly rolled to the deep,
Whose waves on its breast stirred like babes in their sleep.

The turf heaved its green to the white vestured flock,
That fed, or reposed in the shade of the rock;
The birds sang their songs by their nests in the bowers;
And the bee hummed with sweets from the fresh opened flowers.

The humming-bird glittered, and whirred o'er the cell,
Where her nectar was stored, from the hill to the dell;
'Mid the bloom and the perfume, that passed on the breeze,
From the rose, and the vine, and the fruit-bearing trees.

It seemed like a gala, when Nature, arrayed
In festival robes, with her treasures displayed,
Reflected the smile of her Maker above,
And offered up hymns of her thanksgiving love.

And yet, in the bosom of man there were fires
Fierce, quenchless and fearful—consuming desires
For right unpossessed, and for lawless domain,
That burned to the soul, and that flamed to the brain.

In the streets there was clanging and gleaming of arms;
In the dwellings, resolve, preparation, alarms;
In the eye of the wife, mother, sister, a tear;
In the face of their soldier, no semblance of fear.

The patriot chieftain had marked out his ground,
To hold, or to fall, if his foe passed the bound:
And now was the hero to close in the strife,
For death as a bondman, or freedom with life.

The war-spirit hovered, and frowned on the height,
His eye flashing lightning—his wings shedding night!
From his wide fiery nostrils rolled volumes of smoke,
And the rocks roared afar, as in thunder he spoke.

At his dread shock of nature, the lamb from its play,
The bee and the bird, in affright fled away;
The branch, flower, and grass, felt the crush and the scath,
And the winds passing by, snuffed the heat of his wrath.

With blood, that, in torrents, he poured down like rain,
He drenched the green turf, that he strewed with the slain,
Till the eminence groaned with the carnage it bore,
And its heart heaved and shuddered at drinking the gore.

While the breath of the war-spirit scented the air,
The rivers looked wild in reflecting his glare;
And ocean's cold bosom was torn, as he gave
The flap of his pinion to trouble its wave.

The village besieged, wrapped in flames from his breath,
Looked up to the hill, where he revelled with death,
And swelled with the essence of life he had shed,
To sweeten their cup, and the banquet to spread.

O War-spirit! War-spirit, when didst thou bring
Such trophies of beauty before the pale king:
Since walking on Gilboa's height, in thy power,
Of Israel's valiant to mow down the flower?

Mourn, wail, O ye people! and spread wide the pall,
Whose deep sable fringe down the hill-sides shall fall!
Your brethren's warm blood cries aloud from the ground,
That hosts, like Philistia's, in triumph surround.

The lovely, the pleasant have perished! Alas!
Where they fell may there hence be no dew on the grass!
Let a monument there, towards the heavens rear its head,
From a base, that shall cover the spot where they bled!

Ah, War-spirit! War-spirit, deep was the gloom,
Though heaven was unclouded, and earth all in bloom,
When thou, at the onset, that young summer's day,
Didst strike so much valor to darkness away!

And yet, by that thunder, the land is awake:
"Twas the crack of her yoke when beginning to break!
And out of that gloom is her glory to spread;
Her living be franchised, immortal her dead.

For up from that summit an eagle shall rise,
To breast the thick clouds, till he sails the blue skies;
And drop, while he bathes at the fountain of light,
A plume from his pinion their story to write.

It shall fall where they fell, on the still purple sward,
Full and warm with the sunbeams their deeds to record;
And move o'er the scroll in the hand of the free,
While the wing where it grew spans the earth and the sea.