TYRE of the farther west! be thou too warn'd, Whose eagle wings thine own green world o'erspread, Touching two oceans: wherefore hast thou scorn'd Thy fathers' God, O proud and full of bread? Why lies the cross unhonour'd on thy ground, While in mid-air thy stars and arrows flaunt? That sheaf of darts, will it not fall unbound, Except, disrobed of thy vain earthly vaunt, Thou bring it to be bless'd where saints and angels haunt? The holy seed, by Heaven's peculiar grace, Is rooted here and there in thy dark woods; But many a rank weed round it grows apace, And Mammon builds beside thy mighty floods, O'ertopping nature, braving nature's God; Oh while thou yet hast room, fair, fruitful land, Ere war and want have stain'd thy virgin sod, Mark thee a place on high, a glorious stand, Whence truth her sign may make o'er forest, lake, and strand. Eastward, this hour, perchance thou turnest thine Listening if haply with the surging sea Blend sounds of ruin from a land once dear ear To thee and Heaven. O trying hour for thee! Tyre mock'd when Salem fell; where now is Tyre? Heaven was against her. Nations thick as waves Burst o'er her walls, to ocean doom'd and fire; And now the tideless water idly laves Her towers, and lone sands heap her crowned merchants' graves. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WHY I LOVE HER by ALEXANDER BROME THE LIVING TEMPLE by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES PEPITA by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH THE ELDER'S WARNING; A LAY OF THE CONVOCATION by WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE AYTOUN WARPED FLOWER by SHEILA BARBOUR NETLEY ABBEY; A LEGEND OF HAMPSHIRE by RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM THE THIRD OF NOVEMBER, 1861 by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT THE WANDERER: 3. IN ENGLAND: 'CARPE DIEM' by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON |