How many were the peoples? Where the trace Of their lost steps? Where the funereal fields In which they sleep? Go, ask the clouds of heaven How many bolts are hidden in their breasts, And when they shall be launched; and ask the path That they shall keep in the unfurrowed air. The peoples passed. Obscure as destiny, Forever stirred by secret hope, forever Waiting upon the promised mysteries, Unknowing God, that urged them, turning still To some kind star,--they swept o'er the sea-weed In unknown waters, fearless swam the course Of nameless rivers, wrote with flying feet The mountain pass on pathless snows; impatient Of rest, for aye, from Babylon to Memphis, From the Acropolis to Rome, they hurried. And with them passed their guardian household gods, And faithful wisdom of their ancestors, And the seed sown in mother fields, and gathered, A fruitful harvest in their happier years. And, 'companying the order of their steps Upon the way, they sung the choruses And sacred burdens of their country's songs, And, sitting down by hospitable gates, They told the histories of their far-off cities. And sometimes in the lonely darknesses Upon the ambiguous way they found a light,-- The deathless lamp of some great truth, that Heaven Sent in compassionate answer to their prayers. But not to all was given it to endure That ceaseless pilgrimage, and not on all Did the heavens smile perennity of life Revirginate with never-ceasing change; And when it had completed the great work Which God had destined for its race to do, Sometimes a weary people laid them down To rest them, like a weary man, and left Their nude bones in a vale of expiation, And passed away as utterly forever As mist that snows itself into the sea. The poet views this growth of nations from youth to decrepitude, and, coming back at last to himself and to his own laud and time, breaks forth into a lament of grave and touching beauty: Muse of an aged people, in the eve Of fading civilization, I was born Of kindred that have greatly expiated And greatly wept. For me the ambrosial fingers Of Graces never wove the laurel crown, But the Fates shadowed, from my youngest days, My brow with passion-flowers, and I have lived Unknown to my dear land. Oh, fortunate My sisters that in the heroic dawn Of races sung! To them did destiny give The virgin fire and chaste ingenuousness Of their land's speech; and, reverenced, their hands Ran over potent strings. To me, the hopes Turbid with hate; to me, the senile rage; To me, the painted fancies clothed by art Degenerate; to me, the desperate wish, Not in my soul to nurse ungenerous dreams, But to contend, and with the sword of song To fight my battles too.