Georgetown weekly news., 1854-11-02

Spoken at the Opening of the Theatre,
BY THOMAS W. PARSONS.
Welcome bright eyes! that make our splendors
pale:
Ye reverend heads! you generous hands, all hail.
And thou, proud city! to thy triumphs past
Be it thy glory to the coming age
To have transmitted no adulterate Stage;
That aftertimes may count this beauteOus dome
Dear as the hearthstone of fathers home.
Back, airy beings! people of the brain!
Ye kingly shadows! in your graves remain:
Stay, you weird women! wait the fatal bell:
Thou master of the charm! suspend the spell:
Be not impatient on our scene to burst,
You shall be summoned, but your herald first.
Souls of dead bards! that served our ancient art
Poets! who largely read the human heart.
Tell US why man, when life serenely glides,
Loves the fierce motion that disturbs the tides?
What god impels him. now his land Is free,
To play the hero that he cannot be?
What strong illusions, native in his breast,
Made action charm him in his day of rest?
When arms and arsenals are idle shows,
And navies playthings for the worlds repose.
The heart, like Nemi, never known to stir
Becomes a mirror of the things that were:
Then grows the wish, and then is Civ II the power
To be and feel beyond life's little hour.
The soldier Kschylus, at such time
From the dark realm of passion and of crime
Called back those mighty shades TO walk the
earth,
And made them deathless by a second birth.
When all rapt Athens, in that early day,
Sat in the sunshine, at the solemn play
When to the music of a single flute
The verse was uttered that for Us is mute
When through the orchestra with slow advance
The Dorian measure led the choral dance,
Cold was that soul-oh! dead as Lethes fen
That did not fight at Salamis again.
But long ere this, when Bacchus was divine.
At the mad vintage, where the new-made wine
Fired the rude jewellers, the learned say
First rose tn uncouth resemblance of a play:
What time Arion of the Lesbian isle
To the wild chorus gave graver style:
The years are distant, and the light is dim,
Yet bark! the echo of tragic hymn:
LOi the fell MGnade with their yisage smeared,
And men made Satyrs by the mask and beard
Such rites have been where now this temple
stands:
The savage dramas of the Indian bands:
Near the blue lake and by the midnight fire,
See the red artist and the naked choir
When the great Sachem with his Pequod court
After the fray, assembled at the sport
See!-'twas but yesterday-their dance describe
These too were actors-but their show is done
Their last spectator was the setting sun.
In Charles's days, when tragedy was mean,
Once the light Muse went sipshod on the scene;
Was Charles alone at fault? historian, tell
We love the sturdy Puritan too we'll:
What though the Drama dropped beneath his ban,
Spite of the big0t we revere the man;
What though he left polluted arts behind
He brought his sword, his bible and his mind
Something of that austerity be yours;
Since Folly loves what easy Taste endures:
Let our purged altar and its blameess priest
Honor the three-hlled city of the East!
That to the wise our theatre may seem
A nober school, loftier Academe!
And Shakespeare mind, transplanted to the shore
Whose rocks are gold whose sands are shining ore,
Cor far as Freedoms onward march may draw
Arts, without arms, and without conquest, Law
4 sacred well! from whose oerflowing brink
Each generation in its turn may drink:
So shall your children thank you, not alone
For wealth of empire grasping every zone,
But write these words ON Memorys grateful page
Sons of the Pilgrims! you redeemed our Stage,