What to earth's sons, to wound or quicken,
The fitful change of fate may bring,
Upon its rim metallic stricken,
Shall far a pregnant moral ring.
See! white bubbles now rise thickly!
Good! the mass is fluxing fast.
Stir in the potash thoroughly, quickly,
Then 'twill soon be ripe to cast!
From all scum, too, free,
Must the mixture be;
So may its voice, full, clear, and round,
From the pure metal then resound.
For when a babe some union blesses,
It greets him with a festal strain,
As, lulled by slumber's soft caresses,
His earliest step in life is ta'en.
For him as yet within time's breast
The lots of storm or sunshine rest.
A mother's cares are round him drawn,
From harm to shield his golden dawn.
Years arrowy-swift sweep on amain.
The boy, his girlish playmate spurning,
With fiery heart is bent to roam;
Through distant lands he storms, returning
A stranger to his parents' home.
And now, youth's glorious light arrayed in,
As if from heaven the vision came,
Before him stands the ripened maiden,
Her cheeks with modest blush aflame.
Anon, with nameless yearnings hidden
Deep in his heart, alone he strays;
Tears to his eyes rise up unbidden,
He shuns his rough companions' gaze.
Blushing he haunts her steps, her glance is
A joy to him all joys above,
Fair flowers he culls, whate'er he fancies,
To make sweet posies for his love.
Oh, Hope entrancing, yearning tender,
Our first love's golden time!
Sees all heaven open bathed in splendour,
The heart is lapped in ecstacy.
Ah, would young love's delightsome time
Ne'er lose the freshness of its prime!
How brown the tubes grow, have you noted?
In I dip this wand. If it
Come out, with glaze all over coated,
The time for casting will be fit.
Now, my lads, draw nigh!
Test the mixture! Try!
If soft with hard is blending well,
'Twill then a good result foretell.
For where the stern and gentle, where
The firm and mild are mated, there
Rings music clear, and sweet, and strong.
Prove, then, ere you for life are bound,
If heart in heart its mate have found!
The dream is brief, the penance long.
Through the maiden's tresses stealing,
Gleams the bridal chaplet bright,
When the church bells, blithely pealing,
To the wedding-feast invite.
Ah! when life's sweetest rite is ended,
Life's Maytime glories wane and pale;
In twain the fair illusion's rended
With the girdle, with the veil.
Away passion flies,
Love abides and takes root;
The flower-bloom dies,
To give place to the fruit.
Out the husband must go
Into life, to contend there;
Must toil and must struggle,
Must plant and must spend there,
Must wrestle and juggle,
Be wary and bold,
If he is to get hold
Of gear and of gold.
Then riches stream in with continuous flow.
Things costly and rare fill his storerooms capacious; He adds field to field, his house grows more spacious. And paramount there
Is the housewife, the mother;
Her household she keepeth
Well under command,
Directing, controlling
With motherly hand.
The boys she holds tight,
By day or by night;
Makes by managing skill
Her store greater still;
With treasures fills presses with lavender spread,
And twines round the swift-whirring spindle the thread,
And stores in chests polished and spotlessly bright
The shimmering wool, and the linen snow-white.
And joins what is good with what's comely and fair,
And resteth ne'er.-
And from his home's high roof, with gaze
Of rapture the father around surveys
The good things wherewith he is richly blest,
And tells them over with eager zest.
He sees the huge sheds their shadows throwing,
And the barns that are filled to overflowing,
And the storerooms bending beneath the strain,
And the billowy sweep of the ripening grain,
And says in his heart, with a throb of pride,
"Firm as earth's self, whatever betide,
Stands my house, in its lordly state,
Proof against every assault of fate."
But who with the Powers of Destiny may
A compact weave, that will last for aye?
And very swift is Disaster's stride.
Good! Now the casting may begin,
Clean and sharp is the fracture there;
Yet, or ever we run the metal in,
Send from the heart a fervent prayer !
Now strike out the tap!
God shield from mishap!
Smoking the fiery tide shoots down
The handle's arch, all dusky brown!
The power of fire is a power of good,
When tamed by man, and its force subdued,
And whate'er 'neath his shaping fingers grows
To this celestial power he owes.
Yet dread must this power celestial be,
If she tears herself from all trammels free,
And, tameless daughter of Nature, breaks
Away by the path for herself she makes.
Woe, when she, set loose, o'erbearing
All resistance that she meets,
Hurls her firebrands wildly flaring
Through the people-crowded streets!
For whate'er men's hands create
The forces elemental hate.
From the clouds of heaven
Streams the blessed rain ;
From the clouds of heaven,
For blessing or bane,
Shoots the forkèd levin.
Hark! What sounds from the watch-tower swell!
'Tis the tocsin's knell !
And see, the sky
Is red as blood!
Not there the flood
Of daylight broke !
Along the street
What tumult and roaring!
Volumes of smoke
Shoot up and fleet,
From pillars of flickering fire upsoaring,
The wind-fanned flames through all the length
Of street rush onwards, gathering strength.
Hot as the breath from a furnace flashing
Is the stifling air, beams crackle and blaze,
Pillars are toppling, windows are crashing,
Children whimper and whine, mothers wander a-craze.
Beasts in their stalls
Are lowing beneath the crumbling walls;
All is running and rescuing, dread and dismay,
And night is as light as the broad noon day.
From hand to hand, the line along,
The buckets fly, and, arching high,
Shoot sheets of water in torrents strong.
Anon the blast comes howling by,
It seizes the flames with triumphant roar,
Falls with a crash on the dried-fruit-store,
Through the long range of the granaries spreads,
Grips the dry beams of the stalls and sheds,
And, as if with a fury fierce and frantic
'Twould tear along in headlong flight
The frame of earth, if so it might,
It grows and grows, up, up to a height
Gigantic !
Man to the might of the gods must bow;
Amazed, benumbed, he sees what made
His joy, his pride, in ruin laid.
All round, the ground
Is burnt and bare,
For the raging tempests a rugged lair.
Ghastly and drear
Are the yawning gaps that have windows been,
And the clouds of the welkin peer
Down on the wreck within.
One look upon the grave
Of all was his so late
The father casts behind him, then with brave
Stout heart he grasps his staff, and fronts his fate.
Though the ruthless flames have despoiled him so,
One comfort is left him to sweeten despair,
He counts his beloved ones' heads, and lo!
Not one dear head is awanting there.
Now 'tis lodged within the ground,
The mould is finely filled! Ah, will
The bell come forth complete and sound,
To recompense our toil and skill?
Has the cast gone right?
Has the mould held tight?
Ah, while we still are hopeful, thus
Mischance perhaps has stricken us!
To holy earth's dark womb do we
Intrust the work our hands have made;
The sower intrusts the seed, that he
Hopes forth will shoot in leaf and blade,
So heaven ordain, that this may be.
Sadly a seed more precious still
We hide within earth's darkling womb,
And hope that from the grave it will
Into a brighter being bloom.
From the steeple
Booms the bell,
Dull and slow,
The funeral knell.
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