THE TRUE GLORY OF AMERICA.

BY GRENVILLE MELLEN.

Italia's vales and fountains !

Though beautiful ye be,
I love my soaring mountains

And forests more than ye;
And though a dreamy greatness rişe

From out your cloudy years,
Like hills on distant stormy skies,

Seen dim through nature's tearsYet more I love the greatness,

Uprising round me here, Untouch'd by nature's lateness,

So sternly proud and clear!

The light that time flings round a land,

A sacred light may be,
But 0 it leads not to command,

Like that which crowns the free!

And holy that unfaded light

That lingers with the deadBut then the beams, how passing bright,

That fire the path we tread! Then tell me not of years of old,

Of ancient heart and clime, Ours is the land and age of gold,

And ours the hallow'd time!

The jewel'd crown and sceptre

Of Greece have past away-
And none of all who wept her,

Could bid her glory stay!
The world has shaken with the tread

Of iron-sandal'd crime;
Yet 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 festivalRome! 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 shrined head-
O not for faultless marbles yet

Would I the light forego,
That beams when other lights have set,

And art herself lies low.!

I ask not for the chisel's boast

A Pantheon's cloud of glory, Bathing in heaven's noon-tide the host

Of those who swell her story; Though those proud works of magic hands

Fame's rolling trump shall fill, The best of all those peerless bands

Is pulseless marble still !

And though no classic madness here,

With quick transforming eye, Bid beauty from the block appear,

Till love stands doubting by;

I care not-for a brighter wreath

Than round the Parian brows Of those whose marbles seem'd to breathe,

Shall wait our holier vows ! And ours a holier hope shall be

Than consecrated bust, Some loftier mean of memory

To snatch us from the dust. And ours, a šterner art than this,

Shall fix our image hereThe spirit's mould of loveliness,

A nobler Belvidere!

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!