No More Learning

15.
'Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds _1540
Abound, for fearless love, and the pure law
Of mild equality and peace, succeeds
To faiths which long have held the world in awe,
Bloody and false, and cold:--as whirlpools draw
All wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the sway _1545
Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw
This hope, compels all spirits to obey,
Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array.

16.
'For I have been thy passive instrument'--
(As thus the old man spake, his countenance _1550
Gleamed on me like a spirit's)--'thou hast lent
To me, to all, the power to advance
Towards this unforeseen deliverance
From our ancestral chains--ay, thou didst rear
That lamp of hope on high, which time nor chance _1555
Nor change may not extinguish, and my share
Of good, was o'er the world its gathered beams to bear.

17.
'But I, alas! am both unknown and old,
And though the woof of wisdom I know well
To dye in hues of language, I am cold _1560
In seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell,
My manners note that I did long repel;
But Laon's name to the tumultuous throng
Were like the star whose beams the waves compel
And tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue _1565
Were as a lance to quell the mailed crest of wrong.

18.
'Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at length
Wouldst rise, perchance the very slaves would spare
Their brethren and themselves; great is the strength
Of words--for lately did a maiden fair, _1570
Who from her childhood has been taught to bear
The Tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and make
Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear,
And with these quiet words--"for thine own sake
I prithee spare me;"--did with ruth so take _1575

19.
'All hearts, that even the torturer who had bound
Her meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled,
Loosened her, weeping then; nor could be found
One human hand to harm her--unassailed
Therefore she walks through the great City, veiled _1580
In virtue's adamantine eloquence,
'Gainst scorn, and death and pain thus trebly mailed,
And blending, in the smiles of that defence,
The Serpent and the Dove, Wisdom and Innocence.

20.
'The wild-eyed women throng around her path: _1585
From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust
Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor's wrath,
Or the caresses of his sated lust
They congregate:--in her they put their trust;
The tyrants send their armed slaves to quell _1590
Her power;--they, even like a thunder-gust
Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell
Of that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs rebel.

21.
'Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach
To woman, outraged and polluted long; _1595
Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach
For those fair hands now free, while armed wrong
Trembles before her look, though it be strong;
Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright,
And matrons with their babes, a stately throng! _1600
Lovers renew the vows which they did plight
In early faith, and hearts long parted now unite,

22.
'And homeless orphans find a home near her,
And those poor victims of the proud, no less,
Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir, _1605
Thrusts the redemption of its wickedness:--
In squalid huts, and in its palaces
Sits Lust alone, while o'er the land is borne
Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress
All evil, and her foes relenting turn, _1610
And cast the vote of love in hope's abandoned urn.

23.
'So in the populous City, a young maiden
Has baffled Havoc of the prey which he
Marks as his own, whene'er with chains o'erladen
Men make them arms to hurl down tyranny,-- _1615
False arbiter between the bound and free;
And o'er the land, in hamlets and in towns
The multitudes collect tumultuously,
And throng in arms; but tyranny disowns
Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones. _1620

24.
'Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed
The free cannot forbear--the Queen of Slaves,
The hoodwinked Angel of the blind and dead,
Custom, with iron mace points to the graves
Where her own standard desolately waves _1625
Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings.
Many yet stand in her array--"she paves
Her path with human hearts," and o'er it flings
The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.

25.
'There is a plain beneath the City's wall, _1630
Bounded by misty mountains, wide and vast,
Millions there lift at Freedom's thrilling call
Ten thousand standards wide, they load the blast
Which bears one sound of many voices past,
And startles on his throne their sceptred foe: _1635
He sits amid his idle pomp aghast,
And that his power hath passed away, doth know--
Why pause the victor swords to seal his overthrow?

26.
'The tyrant's guards resistance yet maintain:
Fearless, and fierce, and hard as beasts of blood, _1640
They stand a speck amid the peopled plain;
Carnage and ruin have been made their food
From infancy--ill has become their good,
And for its hateful sake their will has wove
The chains which eat their hearts. The multitude _1645
Surrounding them, with words of human love,
Seek from their own decay their stubborn minds to move.

27.
'Over the land is felt a sudden pause,
As night and day those ruthless bands around,
The watch of love is kept:--a trance which awes _1650
The thoughts of men with hope; as when the sound
Of whirlwind, whose fierce blasts the waves and clouds confound,
Dies suddenly, the mariner in fear
Feels silence sink upon his heart--thus bound,
The conquerors pause, and oh! may freemen ne'er _1655
Clasp the relentless knees of Dread, the murderer!

28.
'If blood be shed, 'tis but a change and choice
Of bonds,--from slavery to cowardice
A wretched fall!