With victims from the strong
Let dogs from mangled beauty’s cheeks
  The flesh and sinews tear,
And craunch the bones around for weeks,
  And gnaw the skulls till bare
Let vultures gather round the heaps
  Made up of man and beast,
And, while the widowed mother weeps,
  Indulge their horrid feast,
Till, startled by wild piteous groans,
  On dreary wings they rise,
To come again, mid dying moans,
  And tear out glazing eyes
Tho’ widows’ tears, and orphans’ cries,
  When starving round the spot
Where much-loved forms once met their eyes
  Which now are left to rot,
With trumpet-tongue, for vengeance call
  Upon each guilty head
That drowns, mid revelry and brawls,
  Remembrance of the dead.
Tho’ faint from fighting—­wounded—­wan,
  To camp you’ll turn your feet,
And no sweet, smiling, happy home,
  Your saddened hearts will greet: 
No hands of love—­no eyes of light—­
  Will make your wants their care,
Or soothe you thro’ the dreary night,
  Or smooth your clotted hair. 
But crushed by sickness, famine, thirst,
  You’ll strive in vain to sleep,
Mid corpses mangled, blackened, burst,
  And blood and mire deep;
While horrid groans, and fiendish yells,
  And every loathsome stench,
Will kindle images of hell
  You’ll strive in vain to quench. 
Yet on—­press on, in all your might,
  With banners to the field,
And mingle in the glorious fight,
  With Satan for your shield: 
For marble columns, if you die,
  May on them bear your name;
While papers, tho’ they sometimes lie,
  Will praise you, or will blame. 
Yet woe! to those who build a house,
  Or kingdom, not by right,—­
Who in their feebleness propose
  Against the Lord to fight. 
For when the Archangel’s trumpet sounds,
  And all the dead shall hear,
And haste from earth’s remotest bounds
  In judgment to appear,—­
When every work, and word, and thought,
  Well known or hid from sight,
Before the Universe is brought
  To blaze in lines of light,—­
When by the test of perfect law
  Your ‘glorious’ course is tried,
On what resources will you draw?—­
  In what will you confide? 
For know that eyes of awful light
  Burn on you from above,
Where nought but kindness meets the sight,
  And all the air is love. 
When all unused to such employ
  As charms the angelic hands,
How can you hope to share their joy
  Who dwell in heavenly lands?”

Such was the poem of Frederick Alexander Armstrong.  After its rehearsal, a young gentleman read a prose Essay on Education.  It was clever, and indicated a mind of a high order, but was too playful; and the performance was severely criticised.  Here ended the “public declamation.”

LETTER XVIII.