BLACKEN thy heavens, Jove, With thunder-clouds, And exercise thee, like a boy Who thistles crops, With smiting oaks and mountain-tops! Yet must thou leave me standing My own firm Earth; Must leave my cottage, which thou didst not build, And my warm hearth, Whose cheerful glow Thou enviest me. I know naught more pitiful Under the sun than you, Gods! Ye nourish scantily, With altar-taxes And with cold lip-service, This your majesty; -- Would perish, were not Children and beggars Credulous fools. When I was a child, And knew not whence or whither, I would turn my wildered eye To the sun, as if up yonder were An ear to hear to my complaining, -- A heart, like mine, On the oppressed to feel compassion. Who helped me, When I braved the Titans' insolence? Who rescued me from death, From slavery? Hast thou not all thyself accomplished, Holy-glowing heart? And, glowing young and good, Most ignorantly thanked The slumberer above there? I honor thee? For what? Hast thou the miseries lightened Of the down-trodden? Hast thou the tears ever banished From the afflicted? Have I not to manhood been moulded By omnipotent Time, And by Fate everlasting, -- My lords and thine? Dreamedst thou ever I should grow weary of living, And fly to the desert, Since not all our Pretty dream-buds ripen? Here sit I, fashion men In mine own image, -- A race to be like me, To weep and to suffer, To be happy and to enjoy themselves, -- All careless of thee too, As I! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...REMEMBERED MUSIC; A FRAGMENT by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL ETERNITY by GRACE GRISWOLD BISBY IVAN IVANOVITCH by ROBERT BROWNING PARASOLS, FIFTY-NINE CENTS by MARY BRENNAN CLAPP BLANK MISGIVINGS OF A CREATURE MOVING ABOUT IN WORLDS NOT REALIZED: 1 by ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH |