Fall Of Superstition Poem by Nathan Covington Brooks

A Prize Poem


The star of Bethlehem rose, and truth and light
Burst on the nations that reposed in night,
And chased the Stygian shades with rosy smile
That spread from Error's home, the land of Nile.
No more with harp and sistrum Music calls
To wanton rites within Astarte's halls,
The priests forget to mourn their Apis slain,
And bear Osiris' ark with pompous train;
Gone is Serapis, and Anubis fled,
And Neitha's unraised vail shrouds Isis' prostrate head.
Where Jove shook heaven when the red bolt was hurled,
Neptune the sea-and Phoebus lit the world;
Where fair-haired naiads held each silver flood,
A fawn each field-a dryad every wood-
The myriad gods have fled, and God alone
Above their ruined fanes has reared his throne.[A]
No more the augur stands in snowy shroud
To watch each flitting wing and rolling cloud,
Nor Superstition in dim twilight weaves
Her wizard song among Dodona's leaves;
Phoebus is dumb, and votaries crowd no more
The Delphian mountain and the Delian shore,
And lone and still the Lybian Ammon stands,
His utterance stifled by the desert sands.
No more in Cnydian bower, or Cyprian grove
The golden censers flame with gifts to Love;
The pale-eyed Vestal bends no more and prays
Where the eternal fire sends up its blaze;
Cybele hears no more the cymbal's sound,
The Lares shiver the fireless hearthstone round;
And shatter'd shrine and altar lie o'erthrown,
Inscriptionless, save where Oblivion lone
Has dimly traced his name upon the mouldering stone.
Medina's sceptre is despoiled of might-
Once stretched o'er realms that bowed in pale affright;
The Moon that rose, as waved the scimetar
Where sunk the Cross amid the storm of war,
Now pale and dim, is hastening to its wane,
The sword is broke that spread the Koran's reign,
And soon will minaret and swelling dome
Fall, like the fanes of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
On other lands has dawned immortal day,
And Superstition's clouds have rolled away;
O'er Gallia's mounts and on Iona's shore
The Runic altars roll their smoke no more;
Fled is the Druid from his ancient oak,
His harp is mute-his magic circle broke;
And Desolation mopes in Odin's cells
Where spirit-voices called to join the feast of shells.
O'er Indian plains and ocean-girdled isles
With brow of beauty Truth serenely smiles;
The nations bow, as light is shed abroad,
And break their idols for the living God.
Where purple streams from human victims run
And votive flesh hangs quivering in the sun,
Quenched are the pyres, as shines salvation's star-
Grim Juggernaut is trembling on his car
And cries less frequent come from Ganges' waves
Where infant forms sink into watery graves.
Where heathen prayers flamed by the cocoa tree
They supplicate the Christians' Deity
And chant in living aisles the vesper hymn
Where giant god-trees rear their temples dim.
Still speed thy truth!-still wave thy spirit sword,
Till every land acknowledge Thee the Lord,
And the broad banner of the Cross, unfurled
In triumph, wave above a subject world.
And here O God! where feuds thy church divide-
The sectary's rancor, and the bigot's pride-
Melt every heart, till all our breasts enshrine
One faith, one hope, one love, one zeal divine,
And, with one voice, adoring nations call
Upon the Father and the God of all.