The Field of Kunnersdorf

DAY is exiled from the Land of Twilight;
Leaf and flower are drooping in the wood,
And the stars, as on a dark-stained skylight,

Glass their ancient glory in the flood.
Let me here, where night-winds through the yew sing,

Where the moon is chary of her beams,
Consecrate an hour to mournful musing

Over Man and Man's delirious dreams.
Pines and yews! envelope me in deeper,

Dunner shadow, sombre as the grave,
While with moans, as of a troubled sleeper,

Gloomily above my head ye wave;
Let mine eye look down from hence on yonder

Battle-plain, which Night in pity dulls;
Let my sad imagination ponder

Over Kunnersdorf, that Place of Sculls!

Dost thou reillume those wastes, O, Summer?

Hast thou raised anew thy trampled bowers?
Will the wild bee come again a hummer

Here, within the houses of thy flowers?
Can thy sunbeams light, thy mild rains water

This Aceldema, this human soil,

Since that dark day of redundant slaughter
When the blood of men flowed here like oil?

Ah, yes! — Nature, and thou, GOD of Nature,
Ye are ever bounteous! Man alone,

Man it is whose frenzies desolate your
World, and make it in sad truth his own.

Here saw Frederick fall his bravest warriors —

Master of thy World, thou wert too great!
Heaven had need to establish curbing-barriers

'Gainst thine inroads on the World of Fate.
Oh, could all thy coronals of splendor

Dupe thy memory of that ghastly day?
Could the Graces, could the Muses render

Smooth and bright a corse-o'ercovered way?
No! the accusing blood-beads ever trickle

Down each red leaf of thy chaplet-crown: —
Men fell here as corn before the sickle,

Fell to aggrandise thy false renown!
Here the veteran dropped beside the springald;

Here sank Strength and Symmetry in line:
Here crushed Hope and gasping Yalor mingled;

And, Destroyer, the wild work was thine I
Whence is then this destiny funereal?

What this tide of Being's flow and ebb?
Why rends Death at will the fine material

Of Existence's divinest web?
Vainly ask we! Dim age calls to dim age;

Answer, save an echo, cometh none:
Sere stands Man, of Life-in-Death an image,
There, invisibly, the LIVING ONE!

Storm-clouds lour and muster in the Distance;

Girt with wrecks by sea and wrecks by land,
Time, upon the far Shore of Existence,

Counts each wave-drop swallowed by the sand.
Generation chases generation,

Down-bowed by the all-worn, unworn yoke:
No cessation and no explication! —

Birth— Life— Death!— the Silence, flask, and
Smoke.

Here, then, Frederick, formidable sovereign!

Here, in presence of these whitened bones,
Swear at length to cherish Peace, and govern

So that men may learn to reverence thrones!
O, repudiate blood-bought fame, and hearken

To the myriad witness-voiced Dead,
Ere the Sternness shall lay down, to darken

In the Silentness, thy crownless head!
Shudder at the dire phantasmagory

Of the slain, who perished here through thee;
And abhor all future wreaths of glory

Gathered from the baleful cypress-tree!

Lofty souls disdain or dread the laurel:
Hero is a mad exchange for Man:

Adders lurk in green spots: such the moral

Taught by History since her schools began.
Csesar slain, the victim of his trophies,

Bajazet expiring in his cage,
All the Caesars, all the sabre-Sophies,

Preach the self-same homily each age.
One drugged wine-cup dealt with Alexander;

And his satraps scarce had shared afresh
Half the empires of the World-commander

Ere the charnel-worms had shared his flesh!

Though the rill roll down from Life's green Mountain,

Bright through festal dells of youthful days,
Soon the water of that glancing fountain

In the vale of years must moult its rays.
There the pilgrim on the bridge that, bounding

Life's domain, frontiers the wold of Death,
Startled, for the first time hears resounding

From Eternity, a voice that saith, —

ALL WHICH IS NOT PURE SHALL MELT AND WITHER.

Lo! THE DESOLATOK'S ABM is BAKE,
AND WHERE MAN is, TRUTH SHALL TRACE HIM THITHER,

BE HE CURTAINED ROUND WITH GLOOM OR GLARE.

1 Sophi, a title of the Khan of Persia.

By this scymitar

That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince,
And won three fields of Sultan Solyman.