The Kalida venture. [volume] (Kalida, Ohio) 1841-1865, 1845-04-04
POETRY.
Choice passages from Byron.

There is no hope for nations!-Search the page
OF many thousand years-the daily scene,
The flow and ebb of ench recurring age,
The everlasting 10 be which hath been,
Hath taught US naught or little: still we lean
On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
Our strength away in wrestling with the air;
For 'tis our nature strikes US down: the beasts
Slaughtered in hourly hecntombs for feass
Are of as high an order-thev must go
Even where their driver goads them, though TO
slaughter.
Ye men, who pour your blood for kings ns water,
What have they given your children in return?
A heritage of servitude and woes.
A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows.
What! do not yet the red hot ploughshares burn,
O'er which you stumble in false ordeal,
And deem this proof of LOYALTY the real;
kissing the hand that guides YOU to your scars,
And gloryng as you tread the glowing bars!
All that your sires have loft YOU, all that Time
Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
Spring from different theme!-Yc see and read,
Admire and sigh, and then succumh and bleed.
Save the few spirits, who, despite of all,
And worse than all, the sudden crimes engrnder'd
BY the down laundering of the prison-wall,
And thirst to swallow the sweet water tender'd,
Gushing from freedoms fountains-when the
crowd,
Madden'd with centuries of drought, are loud,
And trample on each other 10 obtain
The cup which brings oblivion of chain
Heavy and sore,--in which long yoked they
plough'd
The sand or if there sprung the yellow grain.
1T was not for them, their necks were too much
bow'd,
And their dead palates chew'd the cud of puin:-
Yes! the few spirits--who, despite Of deeds
Which they abhor, confound not with the cause
Those momentary starts from Natures laws,
Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite
But for a term, then pass, and leave tho earth
With all her seasons to repair the blight
With few summers, and again put forth
Cities and generaons-fair, when free
For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee!
=
The name of Commonwealth is past and gone
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe; !;
Venice is crushed, and Holland deigns to own
A sceptre, and endurcs the purple robe;
If the free SwitZer yet bestridcs alone
His chainless mountains, tits hut for time,
For tyranny of late is cunning grown,
And in its own good season tramples down
The sparkles of our ashes One great cline,
Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
OF Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and
Bequeath'd-a heritage of heart and hand,
And proud distinction from each other land,
Whose sons must bow them at n monarch's motion,
AS if his senseless sceptre were a wand
Full Of the magic of exploded science
Still ore great cline, in full and free defiance,
Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime,
Above the far Atlantic She has taught
Her Esau-brethren that the naughty flag,
The floating fence.of Albion's feeber crng,
May strike to those whose red right hands have
bought
Rights cheaply eurn'd with blood Still, still, for
ever
Better, though each mans life blood were a river,
That it should flow, and overflow, than creep
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Damm'd like the dull canal with locks and chains,
And moving, as sick man in his sleep,
Three PAGES, and then faltering better be
Where the extinguishcd Sonrtans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopye,
Than stagnate in our marsh, Or DER the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more, America, to thee