Darkness and Dawn

     Reading in life’s darker pages
     That have drifted down the ages
We might deem the soul of evil ruled the fate of earth and man;

     Even today the gloomy story
     Fills a volume black and gory
In the nations of the Orient where the dismal tale began.

     Europe joins the frightful chorus
     Murder-shrieks and groans sung tell us,
Ally of the turbaned savage in his thrice infernal work.

     Commerce smiles on human slaughter
     Where to be humane ould thwart her,
And the arms of Christian nations guard the insuperable Turk!

     Thus in horrid fraternizing
     Christ and Mahomet baptizing
In the Christ-blood at an altar which Mammon rules alone

     While Armenia’s man and maiden
     And the very babe, ???-laden
Yield their dying breath deeming Cross and Crescent, in one groan.

     Throneless Zeus in sorrow haunting
     Ida’s peaks and vales each outing.
Wails his empire snatched by Allah from his old Hellenic race.

     O’er his people bending mournful,
     Flow his sad eyes kindle, scornful
Of the new gods, usurpers of his desecrated place!

     O’er the East is throned Bedlama,—
     Baptized Murder’s red Madonna,,—
With her iron blood-hounds round her barking over struggling Greece.

     While the hordes ot Spain to slaughter
     Dedicate her fairest daughter
Whose devoted sons in battle strike for Liberty and peace.

     Now while Europe’s skies are burning
     Leavn’d with the dread returning
Of the reign of wrath and carnage blotting out the hopes of men,

     Scarce ye note the cry of plundered
     Africa, from regions sundered
By the Christian sword and armor to make way for power and gain.

     When, oh when shall dawn the golden
     Age beheld by prophet’s older,
When the leonine and lamb like shall in bonds fraternal dwell?

     And the old dismantled fortress
     With a blooming maid for fortress
Shall resound with childhood’s laughter and the mother’s ritornel?

     Look! Above the refluent surges
     Of the sea of blood emerges
The clear Star on Hope’s horizon, that Eastern Magi saw;

     It shall lead the wise and holy
     To the manger where the lowly
Christ-Child born of Peace the Virgin brings the ever-Living Law!

     Somewhere in the dim hereafter
     Even the war-fiends’s broken laughter
Shall be changed to joyous peans in the commonwealth of love.

     Furrows ploughed by murder’s engines,
     And sown thick with wrath and vengeance,
Shall grow while with Eden lilies haunted by the Lamb and Dove!