Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb;
The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,
The ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men
Inebriate with rage:—­loud, and more loud 45
The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene,
And o’er the conqueror and the conquered draws
His cold and bloody shroud.—­Of all the men
Whom day’s departing beam saw blooming there,
In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts 50
That beat with anxious life at sunset there;
How few survive, how few are beating now! 
All is deep silence, like the fearful calm
That slumbers in the storm’s portentous pause;
Save when the frantic wail of widowed love 55
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan
With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay
Wrapped round its struggling powers. 
The gray morn
Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke
Before the icy wind slow rolls away, 60
And the bright beams of frosty morning dance
Along the spangling snow.  There tracks of blood
Even to the forest’s depth, and scattered arms,
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments 65
Death’s self could change not, mark the dreadful path
Of the outsallying victors:  far behind,
Black ashes note where their proud city stood. 
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen—­
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day,
Waves o’er a warrior’s tomb. 
I see thee shrink, 70
Surpassing Spirit!—­wert thou human else? 
I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet
Across thy stainless features:  yet fear not;
This is no unconnected misery,
Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. 75
Man’s evil nature, that apology
Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up
For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood
Which desolates the discord-wasted land. 
From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, 80
Whose safety is man’s deep unbettered woe,
Whose grandeur his debasement.  Let the axe
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall;
And where its venomed exhalations spread
Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay 85
Quenching the serpent’s famine, and their bones
Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,
A garden shall arise, in loveliness
Surpassing fabled Eden. 
Hath Nature’s soul,
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread 90
Earth’s lap with plenty, and life’s smallest chord
Strung to unchanging unison, that gave
The happy birds their dwelling in the grove,
That yielded to the wanderers of the deep
The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, 95