Ode Xix. — To Kings Poem by Karl Wilhelm Ramler

Again is all the world to perish? Pours
A second deluge on the sentenc'd earth,
Thunders of hoarser wrath,
And heavier iron hail?
Must every temple's cloud-dispensing spire,
And every storied trophy's marble side,
Crumble to nameless dust,
And trickle with the shower?
Late from the caves of ruin shall each Art,
Like some dissepulchred half-awaken ghost,
Slow stretch a wither'd hand,
Or cower to endless night?
And all the wisdom of the foreworld, dumb,
Dumb to unlistening robbers, not suffice
To tell our children's sons
How was the plough-share curv'd?
Ye desolaters, than Vesuvius worse,
Than subterranean town-ingorging chasms,
Comrades of Pestilence,
Ghaunt Hunger's ministers,
Ye who on every sea, on every shore,
In thundering water-chariots carry death,
Hiring the ruffian hand
From Tajo's to Oby's bank,
Arming the German 'gainst his brother's breast,
Who at the friend of peace, our Father, scoff;
Slayers of living youth,
Posterity's dire foes,
If to your murderous rage some angel, sent
From heaven's high mercy-seat, should whisper pause,
And to their antient lords
The wasted regions give,
Would ye not feel remorse (alas! Remorse,
From you, by sophists honey-tongu'd entic'd,
Her pictur'd horrors hides,
Her scorpions charms to sleep),
That on the fields where green'd the wheat — ye slew
Millions it should have nourish'd? — To the waves
Back! — and with pilgrim step,
Humanity your guide,
Like Mango Capak, to the wildest shores
Sailing, the rudiments of culture bear,
Taming the fruitless earth
To yield her yearly food,
Teaching the homeless rovers of the wood
To throng obedient round the smoke-tipt cot,
Founding the holy rites
Of wedlock undefil'd,
And to the kneeling savage point yon sun,
Best emblem of the Lord of life and light,
That he should hail its ray,
Religion's earliest pledge.