Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream, And all is ice and blackness--and the earth That which it was the moment ere our birth. II There is no hope for nations!--Search the page Of many thousand years--the daily scene, The flow and ebb of each recurring age, The everlasting _to be_ which _hath been_, Hath taught us naught, or little: still we lean On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear Our strength away in wrestling with the air: For 'tis our nature strikes us down; the beasts Slaughtered in hourly hecatombs for feasts Are of as high an order--they must go Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter. Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water, What have they given your children in return? A heritage of servitude and woes, A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. What! do not yet the red-hot plowshares burn, O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal, And deem this proof of loyalty the _real_; Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars, And glorying as you tread the glowing bars? All that your sires have left you, all that Time Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime, Spring from a different theme! Ye see and read, Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed! Save the few spirits who, despite of all, And worse than all--the sudden crimes engendered By the down-thundering of the prison-wall, And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tendered Gushing from Freedom's fountains, when the crowd, Maddened with centuries of drought, are loud, And trample on each other to obtain The cup which brings oblivion of a chain Heavy and sore, in which long yoked they plowed The sand; or if there sprung the yellow grain, 'Twas not for them,--their necks were too much bowed, And their dead palates chewed the cud of pain;-- Yes! the few spirits who, despite of deeds Which they abhor, confound not with the cause Those momentary starts from Nature's laws Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth With all her seasons to repair the blight With a few summers, and again put forth Cities and generations--fair when free-- For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee! III