Passionless, pure, and perfected
In patient pride of wo!
The giddy gazers mock the form
Grief-frozen into snow!

Hush! yet speak on—she will not heed!
Past human sympathy,
The tyrant's tiger will hath brimmed
Her cup of destiny!

Transfixed, transfigured by the bolt—
A virgin Niobe!
Her breaking heart lights purely up
The pale transparency.

Is there no eye to pity thee?
No strong right arm to save?
Not even for thy innocence
The cloister of the grave?

Say not, "there is no soul!"—The form
Hath fallen, as fell the robes
That wrapped it—and I gaze alone
Upon the heart's long throbs—

Still—and so slow!—They melt—they die!
The marble stands again
Passionless as at first it stood—
Past human hope or pain!

Past human wo! but oh, just Heaven!
My country! canst thou look
Upon the type of wo that wrings
Hearts human yet, and brook

The curdling throe on consciousness,
That owns thy emblemed work
Of world-wide shame and scorning, in
The victim of the Turk?

Calm in the "Crystal Hall"^* it stands
To crown a nation's fame;
'Tis well the world should read the type
That tells a nation's shame.

Messenger to her mother-land—
Gem for her gorgeous nave—
What hath the home of Slavery
More fitting than a slave?