And would be all or nothing--nor could wait For the sure grave to level him; few years Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate, On whom we tread: For THIS the conqueror rears The arch of triumph! and for this the tears And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed, An universal deluge, which appears Without an ark for wretched man's abode, And ebbs but to reflow!--Renew thy rainbow, God! XCIII. What from this barren being do we reap? Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale; Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil Mantles the earth with darkness, until right And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale Lest their own judgments should become too bright, And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light. XCIV. And thus they plod in sluggish misery, Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, Bequeathing their hereditary rage To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage War for their chains, and rather than be free, Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage Within the same arena where they see Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree. XCV. I speak not of men's creeds--they rest between Man and his Maker--but of things allowed, Averred, and known,--and daily, hourly seen-- The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed, And the intent of tyranny avowed, The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown The apes of him who humbled once the proud, And shook them from their slumbers on the throne; Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done. XCVI. Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be, And Freedom find no champion and no child Such as Columbia saw arise when she Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled? Or must such minds be nourished in the wild, Deep in the unpruned forest, midst the roar Of cataracts, where nursing nature smiled On infant Washington? Has Earth no more Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore? XCVII. But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime, And fatal have her Saturnalia been To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime; Because the deadly days which we have seen, And vile Ambition, that built up between Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, And the base pageant last upon the scene, Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall Which nips Life's tree, and dooms man's worst--his second fall. XCVIII.