Hear Loxian murmurs in Rhodolphe's caves[23] Meet with sweet answers from the nymph-voiced waves; Sit with the pilot at Phoenicia's helm, And mark the boundries of the Lybian realm; See swarthy Memnon in the grave debate, Dispute with gods, and rule a conqu'ring state, And warmly and kindling dare--yes, _dare_ to hope, A second Empire on the future's scope! And thou, my country, latest born of time! Dearest of all, of all the most sublime! How long shall patriots own, with blush of shame, So foul a blot upon so fair a name? How long thy sons with filial hearts deplore, A Python evil on thy Cyprean shore? What! and wilt thou, the moral Hercules Whose youth eclipsed the dream of Pericles, Whose trunceant bands heroically caught, The Spartan phalanx with the Attic thought, The wizard throne of age-nursed error hurled, Defied a tyrant and transfixed a world! Wilt _thou_ see Afric like old Priam sue, The bones of children as in nature due, And foully craven, ingrate-like forget, Thy life, thy learning's her dishonored debt? Say; wilt not _thou_, whose time-ennobling sons-- Thy Jay's, thy Franklin's and thy Washington's, Caught the bright cestus from fair freedom's God, And bound it as a girdle to thy sod; Ah! wilt not thou with generous mind confess The might of woe, the strength of helplessness? High-Heaven's almoner to a world oppressed, Who in the march of nations led the rest![24] Will there no Gracchus in _thy_ Senate stand And speak the words that millions should command? No Clysthementhe 'neath thy broad arched dome, Predict the fortunes with the crimes of Rome? Shall time yet partial in his cycling course, Bring thee no Fox, no Pitt, no Wilberforce? Still must thou live and corybantic die, A traceless meteor in a clouding sky; Thy name a cheat; thyself, a world-wide lie? No; there will come, prophetic hearts may trust, Some embryo angel of superior dust, With brow of cloud and tongue of livid flame-- Another Moses, but in time and name-- Whose Heaven-appealing voice shall bid thee pass-- On either hand a wall of living glass;-- Ope for the Lybian with convulsive shock His more than Horeb's adamantine rock, And gazing from some second Pisgah, see Thy idol broken and thy people free. [Illustration: (signature) William D. Snow] RICHMOND, Dec. 1st, 1853. FOOTNOTES: [7] "Ye Christian _Bondous_ who of feeling boast!"