The True Glory of America

Italia's vales and fountains,
Though beautiful ye be,
I love my soaring mountains
And forests more than ye;
And though a dreamy greatness rise
From out your cloudy years,
Like hills on distant stormy skies,
Seem dim through Nature's tears,
Still, tell me not of years of old,
Oi ancient heart and clime;
Ours is the land and age of gold,
And ours the hallow'd time!
The jewell'd crown and sceptre
Of Greece have pass'd away;
And none, of all who wept her,
Could bid her splendour stay.
The world has shaken with the tread
Of iron-sandall'd crime —
And, lo! o'ershadowing all the dead,
The conqueror stalks sublime!
Then ask I not for crown and plume
To nod above my land;
The victor's footsteps point to doom,
Graves open round his hand!
Rome! with thy pillar'd palaces,
And sculptured heroes all,
Snatch'd, in their warm, triumphal days,
To Art's high festival;
Rome! with thy giant sons of power,
Whose pathway was on thrones,
Who built their kingdoms of an hour
On yet unburied bones, —
I would not have my land like thee,
So lofty — yet so cold!
Be hers a lowlier majesty,
In yet a nobler mould.
Thy marbles — works of wonder!
In thy victorious days,
Whose lips did seem to sunder
Before the astonish'd gaze;
When statue glared on statue there,
The living on the dead, —
And men as silent pilgrims were
Before some sainted head!
O, not for faultless marbles yet
Would I the light forego
That beams when other lights have set,
And Art herself lies low!
O, ours a holier hope shall be
Than consecrated bust,
Some loftier mean of memory
To snatch us from the dust.
And ours a sterner art than this,
Shall fix our image here, —
The spirit's mould of loveliness—
A nobler Belyidere!
Then let them bind with bloomless flowers
The busts and urns of old, —
A fairer heritage be ours,
A sacrifice less cold!
Give honour to the great and good,
And wreathe the living brow,
Kindling with Virtue's mantling blood,
And pay the tribute now!
So, when the good and great go down,
Their statues shall arise,
To crowd those temples of our own,
Our fadeless memories!
And when the sculptured marble falls,
And Art goes in to die,
Our forms shall live in holier halls,
The Pantheon of the sky!