Which by a wondrous art—then known, now lost—
  Were hard as flint, and edged to cut a hair
  Or cleave in twain a warrior armor-clad
  And armed with shields adorned by Vulcan's art,
  Wonder of coming times and theme for bards.[1]
  Then science searched through nature's heights and depths.
  Heaven's canopy thick set with stars was mapped,
  The constellations named, and all the laws searched out
  That guide their motions, rolling sphere on sphere.[2]
  Then men by reasonings piled up mountain high
  Thought to scale heaven, and to dethrone heaven's king,
  Whose imitators weak, with quips and quirks
  And ridicule would now destroy all sacred things.
  This age great Homer and old Hesiod sang,
  And gods they made of hero, artist, bard.

  At length this twilight of the ages fades,
  And starless night now sinks upon the world—
  An age of iron, cruel, dark and cold.
  On Asia first this outer darkness fell,
  Once seat of paradise, primordial peace,
  Perennial harmony and perfect love.
  A despot's will was then a nation's law;
  An idol's car crushed out poor human lives,
  And human blood polluted many shrines.
  Then human speculation made of God
  A shoreless ocean, distant, waveless, vast,
  Of truth that sees not and unfeeling love,
  Whence souls as drops were taken back to fall,
  Absorbed and lost, when, countless ages passed,
  They should complete their round as souls of men,
  Of beasts, of birds and of all creeping things.
  And, even worse, the cruel iron castes,
  One caste too holy for another's touch,
  Had every human aspiration crushed,
  The common brotherhood of man destroyed,
  And made all men but Pharisees or slaves.
  And worst of all—and what could e'en be worse?—
  Woman, bone of man's bone, flesh of his flesh,
  The equal partner of a double life,
  Who in the world's best days stood by his side
  To lighten every care, and heighten every joy,
  And in the world's decline still clung to him,
  She only true when all beside were false,
  When all were cruel she alone still kind,
  Light of his hearth and mistress of his home,
  Sole spot where peace and joy could still be found—
  Woman herself cast down, despised was made
  Slave to man's luxury and brutal lust.
  Then war was rapine, havoc, needless blood,
  Infants impaled before their mothers' eyes,
  Women dishonored, mutilated, slain,
  Parents but spared to see their children die.
  Then peace was but a faithless, hollow truce,
  With plots and counter-plots; the dagger's point
  And poisoned cup instead of open war;
  And life a savage, grim conspiracy
  Of mutual murder, treachery and greed.
  O dark and cruel age! O cruel creeds!
  O cruel men! O crushed and bleeding hearts,
  That from the very ground in anguish cry:
  "Is there no light—no hope—no help—no God?"

[1]See Hesiod's description of the shield of Hercules, the St. George of that ancient age of chivalry.

[2]See the celebrated zodiac of Denderah, given in Landseer's "Sabaean Researches," and in Napoleon's "Egypt."

The Dawn and the Day

or

The Buddha and the Christ.

BOOK I.

  Northward from Ganges' stream and India's plains
  An ancient city crowned a lofty hill,
  Whose high embattled walls had often rolled
  The surging, angry tide of battle back.
  Walled on three sides, but on the north a cliff,
  At once the city's quarry and its guard,
  Cut out in galleries, with vaulted roofs[1]
  Upborne upon cyclopean columns vast,
  Chiseled with art, their capitals adorned
  With lions, elephants, and bulls, life size,
  Once dedicate to many monstrous gods
  Before the Aryan race as victors came,
  Then prisons, granaries and magazines,
  Now only known to bandits and wild beasts.
  This cliff, extending at each end, bends north,
  And rises in two mountain-chains that end
  In two vast snow-capped Himalayan peaks,
  Between which runs a glittering glacial stream,
  A mighty moving mass of crystal ice,
  Crushing the rocks in its resistless course;
  From which bursts forth a river that had made
  Of all this valley one great highland lake,
  Which on one side had burst its bounds and cut
  In myriad years a channel through the rock,
  So narrow that a goat might almost leap
  From cliff to cliff—these cliffs so smooth and steep
  The eagles scarce could build upon their sides;
  This yawning chasm so deep one scarce could hear
  The angry waters roaring far below.

  This stream, guided by art, now fed a lake
  Above the city and behind this cliff,
  Which, guided thence in channels through the rock,
  Fed many fountains, sending crystal streams
  Through every street and down the terraced hill,
  And through the plain in little silver streams,
  Spreading the richest verdure far and wide.[2]
  Here was the seat of King Suddhodana,
  His royal park, walled by eternal hills,
  Where trees and shrubs and flowers all native grew;
  For in its bounds all the four seasons met,
  From ever-laughing, ever-blooming spring
  To savage winter with eternal snows.
  Here stately palms, the banyan's many trunks,
  Darkening whole acres with its grateful shade,
  And bamboo groves, with graceful waving plumes,
  The champak, with its fragrant golden flowers,
  Asokas, one bright blaze of brilliant bloom,
  The mohra, yielding food and oil and wine,
  The sacred sandal and the spreading oak,
  The mountain-loving fir and spruce and pine,
  And giant cedars, grandest of them all,
  Planted in ages past, and thinned and pruned
  With that high art that hides all trace of art,[3]
  Were placed to please the eye and show their form
  In groves, in clumps, in jungles and alone.

  Here all a forest seemed; there open groves,
  With vine-clad trees, vines hanging from each limb,
  A pendant chain of bloom, with shaded drives
  And walks, with rustic seats, cool grots and dells,
  With fountains playing and with babbling brooks,
  And stately swans sailing on little lakes,
  While peacocks, rainbow-tinted shrikes, pheasants,
  Glittering like precious stones, parrots, and birds
  Of all rich plumage, fly from tree to tree,
  The whole scene vocal with sweet varied song;
  And here a widespread lawn bedecked with flowers,
  With clumps of brilliant roses grown to trees,
  And fields with dahlias spread,[4] not stiff and prim
  Like the starched ruffle of an ancient dame,
  But growing in luxuriance rich and wild,
  The colors of the evening and the rainbow joined,
  White, scarlet, yellow, crimson, deep maroon,
  Blending all colors in one dazzling blaze;
  There orchards bend beneath their luscious loads;
  Here vineyards climb the hills thick set with grapes;
  There rolling pastures spread, where royal mares,
  High bred, and colts too young for bit or spur,
  Now quiet feed, then, as at trumpet's call,