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+Project Gutenberg EBook, Personal Poems, by Whittier, V4, Complete
+Volume IV., The Works of Whittier: Personal Poems
+#31 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
+
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
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+Title: Personal Poems, Complete
+       Volume IV., The Works of Whittier: Personal Poems
+       
+
+Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+Release Date: December 2005  [EBook #9586]
+[This file was first posted on October 18, 2003]
+[Last updated on February 9, 2007]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PERSONAL POEMS, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                           VOLUME IV.
+
+
+                         PERSONAL POEMS
+
+                               BY
+
+                     JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PERSONAL POEMS
+     A LAMENT
+     TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS
+     LINES ON THE DEATH OF S. OLIVER TORREY
+     TO ----, WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL
+     LEGGETT'S MONUMENT
+     TO A FRIEND, ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE
+     LUCY HOOPER
+     FOLLEN
+     TO J. P.
+     CHALKLEY HALL
+     GONE
+     TO RONGE
+     CHANNING
+     TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER
+     DANIEL WHEELER
+     TO FREDRIKA BREMER
+     TO AVIS KEENE
+     THE HILL-TOP
+     ELLIOTT
+     ICHABOD
+     THE LOST OCCASION
+     WORDSWORTH
+     TO ---- LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S EXCURSION
+     IN PEACE
+     BENEDICITE
+     KOSSUTH
+     TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER
+     THE CROSS
+     THE HERO
+     RANTOUL
+     WILLIAM FORSTER
+     TO CHARLES SUMNER
+     BURNS
+     TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER
+     TO JAMES T. FIELDS
+     THE MEMORY OF BURNS
+     IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGER
+     BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE
+     NAPLES
+     A MEMORIAL
+     BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY
+     THOMAS STARR KING
+     LINES ON A FLY-LEAF
+     GEORGE L. STEARNS
+     GARIBALDI
+     TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD
+     THE SINGER
+     HOW MARY GREW
+     SUMNER
+     THIERS
+     FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
+     WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT
+     BAYARD TAYLOR
+     OUR AUTOCRAT
+     WITHIN THE GATE
+     IN MEMORY: JAMES T. FIELDS
+     WILSON
+     THE POET AND THE CHILDREN
+     A WELCOME TO LOWELL
+     AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL
+     MULFORD
+     TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER
+     SAMUEL J. TILDEN
+
+OCCASIONAL POEMS.
+     EVA
+     A LAY OF OLD TIME
+     A SONG OF HARVEST
+     KENOZA LAKE
+     FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL
+     THE QUAKER ALUMNI
+     OUR RIVER
+     REVISITED
+     "THE LAURELS"
+     JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC
+     HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP
+     HYMN FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY
+          OF A MOTHER
+     A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION
+     CHICAGO
+     KINSMAN
+     THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD
+     HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA
+     LEXINGTON
+     THE LIBRARY
+     "I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN"
+     CENTENNIAL HYMN
+     AT SCHOOL-CLOSE
+     HYMN OF THE CHILDREN
+     THE LANDMARKS
+     GARDEN
+     A GREETING
+     GODSPEED
+     WINTER ROSES
+     THE REUNION
+     NORUMBEGA HALL
+     THE BARTHOLDI STATUE
+     ONE OF THE SIGNERS
+
+THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
+     PRELUDE
+     THE TENT ON THE BEACH
+     THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH
+     THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE
+     THE BROTHER OF MERCY
+     THE CHANGELING
+     THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH
+     KALLUNDBORG CHURCH
+     THE CABLE HYMN
+     THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL
+     THE PALATINE
+     ABRAHAM DAVENPORT
+     THE WORSHIP OF NATURE
+
+AT SUNDOWN.
+     TO E. C. S.
+     THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888.
+     THE Vow OF WASHINGTON
+     THE CAPTAIN'S WELL
+     AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION
+     R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC
+     BURNING DRIFT-WOOD.
+     O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
+     JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
+     HAVERHILL. 1640-1890
+     To G. G.
+     PRESTON POWERS, INSCRIPTION FOR BASS-RELIEF
+     LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY, INSCRIPTION ON TABLET
+     MILTON, ON MEMORIAL WINDOW
+     THE BIRTHDAY WREATH
+     THE WIND OF MARCH
+     BETWEEN THE GATES
+     THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER
+     TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892
+
+
+
+NOTE. The portrait prefacing this volume is from an engraving on steel
+by J. A. J. WILCOX in 1888, after a photograph taken by Miss ISA E. GRAY
+in July, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+               PERSONAL POEMS
+
+
+A LAMENT
+
+     "The parted spirit,
+     Knoweth it not our sorrow? Answereth not
+     Its blessing to our tears?"
+
+The circle is broken, one seat is forsaken,
+One bud from the tree of our friendship is shaken;
+One heart from among us no longer shall thrill
+With joy in our gladness, or grief in our ill.
+
+Weep! lonely and lowly are slumbering now
+The light of her glances, the pride of her brow;
+Weep! sadly and long shall we listen in vain
+To hear the soft tones of her welcome again.
+
+Give our tears to the dead! For humanity's claim
+From its silence and darkness is ever the same;
+The hope of that world whose existence is bliss
+May not stifle the tears of the mourners of this.
+
+For, oh! if one glance the freed spirit can throw
+On the scene of its troubled probation below,
+Than the pride of the marble, the pomp of the dead,
+To that glance will be dearer the tears which we shed.
+
+Oh, who can forget the mild light of her smile,
+Over lips moved with music and feeling the while,
+The eye's deep enchantment, dark, dream-like, and clear,
+In the glow of its gladness, the shade of its tear.
+
+And the charm of her features, while over the whole
+Played the hues of the heart and the sunshine of soul;
+And the tones of her voice, like the music which seems
+Murmured low in our ears by the Angel of dreams!
+
+But holier and dearer our memories hold
+Those treasures of feeling, more precious than gold,
+The love and the kindness and pity which gave
+Fresh flowers for the bridal, green wreaths for the grave!
+
+The heart ever open to Charity's claim,
+Unmoved from its purpose by censure and blame,
+While vainly alike on her eye and her ear
+Fell the scorn of the heartless, the jesting and jeer.
+
+How true to our hearts was that beautiful sleeper
+With smiles for the joyful, with tears for the weeper,
+Yet, evermore prompt, whether mournful or gay,
+With warnings in love to the passing astray.
+
+For, though spotless herself, she could sorrow for them
+Who sullied with evil the spirit's pure gem;
+And a sigh or a tear could the erring reprove,
+And the sting of reproof was still tempered by love.
+
+As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting in heaven,
+As a star that is lost when the daylight is given,
+As a glad dream of slumber, which wakens in bliss,
+She hath passed to the world of the holy from this.
+1834.
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS,
+
+     Late President of Western Reserve College, who died at his post of
+     duty, overworn by his strenuous labors with tongue and  pen in the
+     cause of Human Freedom.
+
+Thou hast fallen in thine armor,
+Thou martyr of the Lord
+With thy last breath crying "Onward!"
+And thy hand upon the sword.
+The haughty heart derideth,
+And the sinful lip reviles,
+But the blessing of the perishing
+Around thy pillow smiles!
+
+When to our cup of trembling
+The added drop is given,
+And the long-suspended thunder
+Falls terribly from Heaven,--
+When a new and fearful freedom
+Is proffered of the Lord
+To the slow-consuming Famine,
+The Pestilence and Sword!
+
+When the refuges of Falsehood
+Shall be swept away in wrath,
+And the temple shall be shaken,
+With its idol, to the earth,
+Shall not thy words of warning
+Be all remembered then?
+And thy now unheeded message
+Burn in the hearts of men?
+
+Oppression's hand may scatter
+Its nettles on thy tomb,
+And even Christian bosoms
+Deny thy memory room;
+For lying lips shall torture
+Thy mercy into crime,
+And the slanderer shall flourish
+As the bay-tree for a time.
+
+But where the south-wind lingers
+On Carolina's pines,
+Or falls the careless sunbeam
+Down Georgia's golden mines;
+Where now beneath his burthen
+The toiling slave is driven;
+Where now a tyrant's mockery
+Is offered unto Heaven;
+
+Where Mammon hath its altars
+Wet o'er with human blood,
+And pride and lust debases
+The workmanship of God,--
+There shall thy praise be spoken,
+Redeemed from Falsehood's ban,
+When the fetters shall be broken,
+And the slave shall be a man!
+
+Joy to thy spirit, brother!
+A thousand hearts are warm,
+A thousand kindred bosoms
+Are baring to the storm.
+What though red-handed Violence
+With secret Fraud combine?
+The wall of fire is round us,
+Our Present Help was thine.
+
+Lo, the waking up of nations,
+From Slavery's fatal sleep;
+The murmur of a Universe,
+Deep calling unto Deep!
+Joy to thy spirit, brother!
+On every wind of heaven
+The onward cheer and summons
+Of Freedom's voice is given!
+
+Glory to God forever!
+Beyond the despot's will
+The soul of Freedom liveth
+Imperishable still.
+The words which thou hast uttered
+Are of that soul a part,
+And the good seed thou hast scattered
+Is springing from the heart.
+
+In the evil days before us,
+And the trials yet to come,
+In the shadow of the prison,
+Or the cruel martyrdom,--
+We will think of thee, O brother!
+And thy sainted name shall be
+In the blessing of the captive,
+And the anthem of the free.
+1834
+
+
+
+LINES
+
+     ON THE DEATH OF S. OLIVER TORREY, SECRETARY OF THE BOSTON YOUNG
+     MEN'S ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.
+
+Gone before us, O our brother,
+To the spirit-land!
+Vainly look we for another
+In thy place to stand.
+Who shall offer youth and beauty
+On the wasting shrine
+Of a stern and lofty duty,
+With a faith like thine?
+
+Oh, thy gentle smile of greeting
+Who again shall see?
+Who amidst the solemn meeting
+Gaze again on thee?
+Who when peril gathers o'er us,
+Wear so calm a brow?
+Who, with evil men before us,
+So serene as thou?
+
+Early hath the spoiler found thee,
+Brother of our love!
+Autumn's faded earth around thee,
+And its storms above!
+Evermore that turf lie lightly,
+And, with future showers,
+O'er thy slumbers fresh and brightly
+Blow the summer flowers
+
+In the locks thy forehead gracing,
+Not a silvery streak;
+Nor a line of sorrow's tracing
+On thy fair young cheek;
+Eyes of light and lips of roses,
+Such as Hylas wore,--
+Over all that curtain closes,
+Which shall rise no more!
+
+Will the vigil Love is keeping
+Round that grave of thine,
+Mournfully, like Jazer weeping
+Over Sibmah's vine;
+Will the pleasant memories, swelling
+Gentle hearts, of thee,
+In the spirit's distant dwelling
+All unheeded be?
+
+If the spirit ever gazes,
+From its journeyings, back;
+If the immortal ever traces
+O'er its mortal track;
+Wilt thou not, O brother, meet us
+Sometimes on our way,
+And, in hours of sadness, greet us
+As a spirit may?
+
+Peace be with thee, O our brother,
+In the spirit-land
+Vainly look we for another
+In thy place to stand.
+Unto Truth and Freedom giving
+All thy early powers,
+Be thy virtues with the living,
+And thy spirit ours!
+1837.
+
+
+
+TO ------,
+
+     WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL.
+
+     "Get the writings of John Woolman by heart."--Essays of Elia.
+
+Maiden! with the fair brown tresses
+Shading o'er thy dreamy eye,
+Floating on thy thoughtful forehead
+Cloud wreaths of its sky.
+
+Youthful years and maiden beauty,
+Joy with them should still abide,--
+Instinct take the place of Duty,
+Love, not Reason, guide.
+
+Ever in the New rejoicing,
+Kindly beckoning back the Old,
+Turning, with the gift of Midas,
+All things into gold.
+
+And the passing shades of sadness
+Wearing even a welcome guise,
+As, when some bright lake lies open
+To the sunny skies,
+
+Every wing of bird above it,
+Every light cloud floating on,
+Glitters like that flashing mirror
+In the self-same sun.
+
+But upon thy youthful forehead
+Something like a shadow lies;
+And a serious soul is looking
+From thy earnest eyes.
+
+With an early introversion,
+Through the forms of outward things,
+Seeking for the subtle essence,
+And the bidden springs.
+
+Deeper than the gilded surface
+Hath thy wakeful vision seen,
+Farther than the narrow present
+Have thy journeyings been.
+
+Thou hast midst Life's empty noises
+Heard the solemn steps of Time,
+And the low mysterious voices
+Of another clime.
+
+All the mystery of Being
+Hath upon thy spirit pressed,--
+Thoughts which, like the Deluge wanderer,
+Find no place of rest:
+
+That which mystic Plato pondered,
+That which Zeno heard with awe,
+And the star-rapt Zoroaster
+In his night-watch saw.
+
+From the doubt and darkness springing
+Of the dim, uncertain Past,
+Moving to the dark still shadows
+O'er the Future cast,
+
+Early hath Life's mighty question
+Thrilled within thy heart of youth,
+With a deep and strong beseeching
+What and where is Truth?
+
+Hollow creed and ceremonial,
+Whence the ancient life hath fled,
+Idle faith unknown to action,
+Dull and cold and dead.
+
+Oracles, whose wire-worked meanings
+Only wake a quiet scorn,--
+Not from these thy seeking spirit
+Hath its answer drawn.
+
+But, like some tired child at even,
+On thy mother Nature's breast,
+Thou, methinks, art vainly seeking
+Truth, and peace, and rest.
+
+O'er that mother's rugged features
+Thou art throwing Fancy's veil,
+Light and soft as woven moonbeams,
+Beautiful and frail
+
+O'er the rough chart of Existence,
+Rocks of sin and wastes of woe,
+Soft airs breathe, and green leaves tremble,
+And cool fountains flow.
+
+And to thee an answer cometh
+From the earth and from the sky,
+And to thee the hills and waters
+And the stars reply.
+
+But a soul-sufficing answer
+Hath no outward origin;
+More than Nature's many voices
+May be heard within.
+
+Even as the great Augustine
+Questioned earth and sea and sky,
+And the dusty tomes of learning
+And old poesy.
+
+But his earnest spirit needed
+More than outward Nature taught;
+More than blest the poet's vision
+Or the sage's thought.
+
+Only in the gathered silence
+Of a calm and waiting frame,
+Light and wisdom as from Heaven
+To the seeker came.
+
+Not to ease and aimless quiet
+Doth that inward answer tend,
+But to works of love and duty
+As our being's end;
+
+Not to idle dreams and trances,
+Length of face, and solemn tone,
+But to Faith, in daily striving
+And performance shown.
+
+Earnest toil and strong endeavor
+Of a spirit which within
+Wrestles with familiar evil
+And besetting sin;
+
+And without, with tireless vigor,
+Steady heart, and weapon strong,
+In the power of truth assailing
+Every form of wrong.
+
+Guided thus, how passing lovely
+Is the track of Woolman's feet!
+And his brief and simple record
+How serenely sweet!
+
+O'er life's humblest duties throwing
+Light the earthling never knew,
+Freshening all its dark waste places
+As with Hermon's dew.
+
+All which glows in Pascal's pages,
+All which sainted Guion sought,
+Or the blue-eyed German Rahel
+Half-unconscious taught
+
+Beauty, such as Goethe pictured,
+Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed
+Living warmth and starry brightness
+Round that poor man's head.
+
+Not a vain and cold ideal,
+Not a poet's dream alone,
+But a presence warm and real,
+Seen and felt and known.
+
+When the red right-hand of slaughter
+Moulders with the steel it swung,
+When the name of seer and poet
+Dies on Memory's tongue,
+
+All bright thoughts and pure shall gather
+Round that meek and suffering one,--
+Glorious, like the seer-seen angel
+Standing in the sun!
+
+Take the good man's book and ponder
+What its pages say to thee;
+Blessed as the hand of healing
+May its lesson be.
+
+If it only serves to strengthen
+Yearnings for a higher good,
+For the fount of living waters
+And diviner food;
+
+If the pride of human reason
+Feels its meek and still rebuke,
+Quailing like the eye of Peter
+From the Just One's look!
+
+If with readier ear thou heedest
+What the Inward Teacher saith,
+Listening with a willing spirit
+And a childlike faith,--
+
+Thou mayst live to bless the giver,
+Who, himself but frail and weak,
+Would at least the highest welfare
+Of another seek;
+
+And his gift, though poor and lowly
+It may seem to other eyes,
+Yet may prove an angel holy
+In a pilgrim's guise.
+1840.
+
+
+
+LEGGETT'S MONUMENT.
+
+     William Leggett, who died in 1839 at the age of thirty-seven, was
+     the intrepid editor of the New York Evening Post and afterward of
+     The Plain Dealer. His vigorous assault upon the system of slavery
+     brought down upon him the enmity of political defenders of the
+     system.
+
+"Ye build the tombs of the prophets."--Holy Writ.
+
+Yes, pile the marble o'er him! It is well
+That ye who mocked him in his long stern strife,
+And planted in the pathway of his life
+The ploughshares of your hatred hot from hell,
+Who clamored down the bold reformer when
+He pleaded for his captive fellow-men,
+Who spurned him in the market-place, and sought
+Within thy walls, St. Tammany, to bind
+In party chains the free and honest thought,
+The angel utterance of an upright mind,
+Well is it now that o'er his grave ye raise
+The stony tribute of your tardy praise,
+For not alone that pile shall tell to Fame
+Of the brave heart beneath, but of the builders' shame!
+1841.
+
+
+
+TO A FRIEND,
+
+ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE.
+
+How smiled the land of France
+Under thy blue eye's glance,
+Light-hearted rover
+Old walls of chateaux gray,
+Towers of an early day,
+Which the Three Colors play
+Flauntingly over.
+
+Now midst the brilliant train
+Thronging the banks of Seine
+Now midst the splendor
+Of the wild Alpine range,
+Waking with change on change
+Thoughts in thy young heart strange,
+Lovely, and tender.
+
+Vales, soft Elysian,
+Like those in the vision
+Of Mirza, when, dreaming,
+He saw the long hollow dell,
+Touched by the prophet's spell,
+Into an ocean swell
+With its isles teeming.
+
+Cliffs wrapped in snows of years,
+Splintering with icy spears
+Autumn's blue heaven
+Loose rock and frozen slide,
+Hung on the mountain-side,
+Waiting their hour to glide
+Downward, storm-driven!
+
+Rhine-stream, by castle old,
+Baron's and robber's hold,
+Peacefully flowing;
+Sweeping through vineyards green,
+Or where the cliffs are seen
+O'er the broad wave between
+Grim shadows throwing.
+
+Or, where St. Peter's dome
+Swells o'er eternal Rome,
+Vast, dim, and solemn;
+Hymns ever chanting low,
+Censers swung to and fro,
+Sable stoles sweeping slow
+Cornice and column!
+
+Oh, as from each and all
+Will there not voices call
+Evermore back again?
+In the mind's gallery
+Wilt thou not always see
+Dim phantoms beckon thee
+O'er that old track again?
+
+New forms thy presence haunt,
+New voices softly chant,
+New faces greet thee!
+Pilgrims from many a shrine
+Hallowed by poet's line,
+At memory's magic sign,
+Rising to meet thee.
+
+And when such visions come
+Unto thy olden home,
+Will they not waken
+Deep thoughts of Him whose hand
+Led thee o'er sea and land
+Back to the household band
+Whence thou wast taken?
+
+While, at the sunset time,
+Swells the cathedral's chime,
+Yet, in thy dreaming,
+While to thy spirit's eye
+Yet the vast mountains lie
+Piled in the Switzer's sky,
+Icy and gleaming:
+
+Prompter of silent prayer,
+Be the wild picture there
+In the mind's chamber,
+And, through each coming day
+Him who, as staff and stay,
+Watched o'er thy wandering way,
+Freshly remember.
+
+So, when the call shall be
+Soon or late unto thee,
+As to all given,
+Still may that picture live,
+All its fair forms survive,
+And to thy spirit give
+Gladness in Heaven!
+1841
+
+
+
+LUCY HOOPER.
+
+     Lucy Hooper died at Brooklyn, L. I., on the 1st of 8th mo., 1841,
+     aged twenty-four years.
+
+They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead,
+That all of thee we loved and cherished
+Has with thy summer roses perished;
+And left, as its young beauty fled,
+An ashen memory in its stead,
+The twilight of a parted day
+Whose fading light is cold and vain,
+The heart's faint echo of a strain
+Of low, sweet music passed away.
+That true and loving heart, that gift
+Of a mind, earnest, clear, profound,
+Bestowing, with a glad unthrift,
+Its sunny light on all around,
+Affinities which only could
+Cleave to the pure, the true, and good;
+And sympathies which found no rest,
+Save with the loveliest and best.
+Of them--of thee--remains there naught
+But sorrow in the mourner's breast?
+A shadow in the land of thought?
+No! Even my weak and trembling faith
+Can lift for thee the veil which doubt
+And human fear have drawn about
+The all-awaiting scene of death.
+
+Even as thou wast I see thee still;
+And, save the absence of all ill
+And pain and weariness, which here
+Summoned the sigh or wrung the tear,
+The same as when, two summers back,
+Beside our childhood's Merrimac,
+I saw thy dark eye wander o'er
+Stream, sunny upland, rocky shore,
+And heard thy low, soft voice alone
+Midst lapse of waters, and the tone
+Of pine-leaves by the west-wind blown,
+There's not a charm of soul or brow,
+Of all we knew and loved in thee,
+But lives in holier beauty now,
+Baptized in immortality!
+Not mine the sad and freezing dream
+Of souls that, with their earthly mould,
+Cast off the loves and joys of old,
+Unbodied, like a pale moonbeam,
+As pure, as passionless, and cold;
+Nor mine the hope of Indra's son,
+Of slumbering in oblivion's rest,
+Life's myriads blending into one,
+In blank annihilation blest;
+Dust-atoms of the infinite,
+Sparks scattered from the central light,
+And winning back through mortal pain
+Their old unconsciousness again.
+No! I have friends in Spirit Land,
+Not shadows in a shadowy band,
+Not others, but themselves are they.
+And still I think of them the same
+As when the Master's summons came;
+Their change,--the holy morn-light breaking
+Upon the dream-worn sleeper, waking,--
+A change from twilight into day.
+
+They 've laid thee midst the household graves,
+Where father, brother, sister lie;
+Below thee sweep the dark blue waves,
+Above thee bends the summer sky.
+Thy own loved church in sadness read
+Her solemn ritual o'er thy head,
+And blessed and hallowed with her prayer
+The turf laid lightly o'er thee there.
+That church, whose rites and liturgy,
+Sublime and old, were truth to thee,
+Undoubted to thy bosom taken,
+As symbols of a faith unshaken.
+Even I, of simpler views, could feel
+The beauty of thy trust and zeal;
+And, owning not thy creed, could see
+How deep a truth it seemed to thee,
+And how thy fervent heart had thrown
+O'er all, a coloring of its own,
+And kindled up, intense and warm,
+A life in every rite and form,
+As. when on Chebar's banks of old,
+The Hebrew's gorgeous vision rolled,
+A spirit filled the vast machine,
+A life, "within the wheels" was seen.
+
+Farewell! A little time, and we
+Who knew thee well, and loved thee here,
+One after one shall follow thee
+As pilgrims through the gate of fear,
+Which opens on eternity.
+Yet shall we cherish not the less
+All that is left our hearts meanwhile;
+The memory of thy loveliness
+Shall round our weary pathway smile,
+Like moonlight when the sun has set,
+A sweet and tender radiance yet.
+Thoughts of thy clear-eyed sense of duty,
+Thy generous scorn of all things wrong,
+The truth, the strength, the graceful beauty
+Which blended in thy song.
+All lovely things, by thee beloved,
+Shall whisper to our hearts of thee;
+These green hills, where thy childhood roved,
+Yon river winding to the sea,
+The sunset light of autumn eves
+Reflecting on the deep, still floods,
+Cloud, crimson sky, and trembling leaves
+Of rainbow-tinted woods,
+These, in our view, shall henceforth take
+A tenderer meaning for thy sake;
+And all thou lovedst of earth and sky,
+Seem sacred to thy memory.
+1841.
+
+
+
+FOLLEN.
+
+ON READING HIS ESSAY ON THE "FUTURE STATE."
+
+     Charles Follen, one of the noblest contributions of Germany to
+     American citizenship, was at an early age driven from his
+     professorship in the University of Jena, and compelled to seek
+     shelter from official prosecution in Switzerland, on account of his
+     liberal political opinions. He became Professor of Civil Law in the
+     University of Basle. The governments of Prussia, Austria, and
+     Russia united in demanding his delivery as a political offender;
+     and, in consequence, he left Switzerland, and came to the United
+     States. At the time of the formation of the American Anti-Slavery
+     Society he was a Professor in Harvard University, honored for his
+     genius, learning, and estimable character. His love of liberty and
+     hatred of oppression led him to seek an interview with Garrison and
+     express his sympathy with him. Soon after, he attended a meeting of
+     the New England Anti-Slavery Society. An able speech was made by
+     Rev. A. A. Phelps, and a letter of mine addressed to the Secretary
+     of the Society was read. Whereupon he rose and stated that his
+     views were in unison with those of the Society, and that after
+     hearing the speech and the letter, he was ready to join it, and
+     abide the probable consequences of such an unpopular act. He lost
+     by so doing his professorship. He was an able member of the
+     Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He
+     perished in the ill-fated steamer Lexington, which was burned on
+     its passage from New York, January 13, 1840. The few writings left
+     behind him show him to have been a profound thinker of rare
+     spiritual insight.
+
+Friend of my soul! as with moist eye
+I look up from this page of thine,
+Is it a dream that thou art nigh,
+Thy mild face gazing into mine?
+
+That presence seems before me now,
+A placid heaven of sweet moonrise,
+When, dew-like, on the earth below
+Descends the quiet of the skies.
+
+The calm brow through the parted hair,
+The gentle lips which knew no guile,
+Softening the blue eye's thoughtful care
+With the bland beauty of their smile.
+
+Ah me! at times that last dread scene
+Of Frost and Fire and moaning Sea
+Will cast its shade of doubt between
+The failing eyes of Faith and thee.
+
+Yet, lingering o'er thy charmed page,
+Where through the twilight air of earth,
+Alike enthusiast and sage,
+Prophet and bard, thou gazest forth,
+
+Lifting the Future's solemn veil;
+The reaching of a mortal hand
+To put aside the cold and pale
+Cloud-curtains of the Unseen Land;
+
+Shall these poor elements outlive
+The mind whose kingly will, they wrought?
+Their gross unconsciousness survive
+Thy godlike energy of thought?
+
+In thoughts which answer to my own,
+In words which reach my inward ear,
+Like whispers from the void Unknown,
+I feel thy living presence here.
+
+The waves which lull thy body's rest,
+The dust thy pilgrim footsteps trod,
+Unwasted, through each change, attest
+The fixed economy of God.
+
+Thou livest, Follen! not in vain
+Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne
+The burthen of Life's cross of pain,
+And the thorned crown of suffering worn.
+
+Oh, while Life's solemn mystery glooms
+Around us like a dungeon's wall,
+Silent earth's pale and crowded tombs,
+Silent the heaven which bends o'er all!
+
+While day by day our loved ones glide
+In spectral silence, hushed and lone,
+To the cold shadows which divide
+The living from the dread Unknown;
+
+While even on the closing eye,
+And on the lip which moves in vain,
+The seals of that stern mystery
+Their undiscovered trust retain;
+
+And only midst the gloom of death,
+Its mournful doubts and haunting fears,
+Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith,
+Smile dimly on us through their tears;
+
+'T is something to a heart like mine
+To think of thee as living yet;
+To feel that such a light as thine
+Could not in utter darkness set.
+
+Less dreary seems the untried way
+Since thou hast left thy footprints there,
+And beams of mournful beauty play
+Round the sad Angel's sable hair.
+
+Oh! at this hour when half the sky
+Is glorious with its evening light,
+And fair broad fields of summer lie
+Hung o'er with greenness in my sight;
+
+While through these elm-boughs wet with rain
+The sunset's golden walls are seen,
+With clover-bloom and yellow grain
+And wood-draped hill and stream between;
+
+I long to know if scenes like this
+Are hidden from an angel's eyes;
+If earth's familiar loveliness
+Haunts not thy heaven's serener skies.
+
+For sweetly here upon thee grew
+The lesson which that beauty gave,
+The ideal of the pure and true
+In earth and sky and gliding wave.
+
+And it may be that all which lends
+The soul an upward impulse here,
+With a diviner beauty blends,
+And greets us in a holier sphere.
+
+Through groves where blighting never fell
+The humbler flowers of earth may twine;
+And simple draughts-from childhood's well
+Blend with the angel-tasted wine.
+
+But be the prying vision veiled,
+And let the seeking lips be dumb,
+Where even seraph eyes have failed
+Shall mortal blindness seek to come?
+
+We only know that thou hast gone,
+And that the same returnless tide
+Which bore thee from us still glides on,
+And we who mourn thee with it glide.
+
+On all thou lookest we shall look,
+And to our gaze erelong shall turn
+That page of God's mysterious book
+We so much wish yet dread to learn.
+
+With Him, before whose awful power
+Thy spirit bent its trembling knee;
+Who, in the silent greeting flower,
+And forest leaf, looked out on thee,
+
+We leave thee, with a trust serene,
+Which Time, nor Change, nor Death can move,
+While with thy childlike faith we lean
+On Him whose dearest name is Love!
+1842.
+
+
+
+TO J. P.
+
+     John Pierpont, the eloquent preacher and poet of Boston.
+
+Not as a poor requital of the joy
+With which my childhood heard that lay of thine,
+Which, like an echo of the song divine
+At Bethlehem breathed above the Holy Boy,
+Bore to my ear the Airs of Palestine,--
+Not to the poet, but the man I bring
+In friendship's fearless trust my offering
+How much it lacks I feel, and thou wilt see,
+Yet well I know that thou Last deemed with me
+Life all too earnest, and its time too short
+For dreamy ease and Fancy's graceful sport;
+And girded for thy constant strife with wrong,
+Like Nehemiah fighting while he wrought
+The broken walls of Zion, even thy song
+Hath a rude martial tone, a blow in every thought!
+1843.
+
+
+
+CHALKLEY HALL.
+
+     Chalkley Hall, near Frankford, Pa., was the residence of Thomas
+     Chalkley, an eminent minister of the Friends' denomination. He was
+     one of the early settlers of the Colony, and his Journal, which was
+     published in 1749, presents a quaint but beautiful picture of a
+     life of unostentatious and simple goodness. He was the master of a
+     merchant vessel, and, in his visits to the west Indies and Great
+     Britain, omitted no opportunity to labor for the highest interests
+     of his fellow-men. During a temporary residence in Philadelphia, in
+     the summer of 1838, the quiet and beautiful scenery around the
+     ancient village of Frankford frequently attracted me from the heat
+     and bustle of the city. I have referred to my youthful acquaintance
+     with his writings in Snow-Bound.
+
+How bland and sweet the greeting of this breeze
+To him who flies
+From crowded street and red wall's weary gleam,
+Till far behind him like a hideous dream
+The close dark city lies
+Here, while the market murmurs, while men throng
+The marble floor
+Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and din
+Of the world's madness let me gather in
+My better thoughts once more.
+
+Oh, once again revive, while on my ear
+The cry of Gain
+And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away,
+Ye blessed memories of my early day
+Like sere grass wet with rain!
+
+Once more let God's green earth and sunset air
+Old feelings waken;
+Through weary years of toil and strife and ill,
+Oh, let me feel that my good angel still
+Hath not his trust forsaken.
+
+And well do time and place befit my mood
+Beneath the arms
+Of this embracing wood, a good man made
+His home, like Abraham resting in the shade
+Of Mamre's lonely palms.
+
+Here, rich with autumn gifts of countless years,
+The virgin soil
+Turned from the share he guided, and in rain
+And summer sunshine throve the fruits and grain
+Which blessed his honest toil.
+
+Here, from his voyages on the stormy seas,
+Weary and worn,
+He came to meet his children and to bless
+The Giver of all good in thankfulness
+And praise for his return.
+
+And here his neighbors gathered in to greet
+Their friend again,
+Safe from the wave and the destroying gales,
+Which reap untimely green Bermuda's vales,
+And vex the Carib main.
+
+To hear the good man tell of simple truth,
+Sown in an hour
+Of weakness in some far-off Indian isle,
+From the parched bosom of a barren soil,
+Raised up in life and power.
+
+How at those gatherings in Barbadian vales,
+A tendering love
+Came o'er him, like the gentle rain from heaven,
+And words of fitness to his lips were given,
+And strength as from above.
+
+How the sad captive listened to the Word,
+Until his chain
+Grew lighter, and his wounded spirit felt
+The healing balm of consolation melt
+Upon its life-long pain
+
+How the armed warrior sat him down to hear
+Of Peace and Truth,
+And the proud ruler and his Creole dame,
+Jewelled and gorgeous in her beauty came,
+And fair and bright-eyed youth.
+
+Oh, far away beneath New England's sky,
+Even when a boy,
+Following my plough by Merrimac's green shore,
+His simple record I have pondered o'er
+With deep and quiet joy.
+
+And hence this scene, in sunset glory warm,--
+Its woods around,
+Its still stream winding on in light and shade,
+Its soft, green meadows and its upland glade,--
+To me is holy ground.
+
+And dearer far than haunts where Genius keeps
+His vigils still;
+Than that where Avon's son of song is laid,
+Or Vaucluse hallowed by its Petrarch's shade,
+Or Virgil's laurelled hill.
+
+To the gray walls of fallen Paraclete,
+To Juliet's urn,
+Fair Arno and Sorrento's orange-grove,
+Where Tasso sang, let young Romance and Love
+Like brother pilgrims turn.
+
+But here a deeper and serener charm
+To all is given;
+And blessed memories of the faithful dead
+O'er wood and vale and meadow-stream have shed
+The holy hues of Heaven!
+1843.
+
+
+
+GONE
+
+Another hand is beckoning us,
+Another call is given;
+And glows once more with Angel-steps
+The path which reaches Heaven.
+
+Our young and gentle friend, whose smile
+Made brighter summer hours,
+Amid the frosts of autumn time
+Has left us with the flowers.
+
+No paling of the cheek of bloom
+Forewarned us of decay;
+No shadow from the Silent Land
+Fell round our sister's way.
+
+The light of her young life went down,
+As sinks behind the hill
+The glory of a setting star,
+Clear, suddenly, and still.
+
+As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed
+Eternal as the sky;
+And like the brook's low song, her voice,--
+A sound which could not die.
+
+And half we deemed she needed not
+The changing of her sphere,
+To give to Heaven a Shining One,
+Who walked an Angel here.
+
+The blessing of her quiet life
+Fell on us like the dew;
+And good thoughts where her footsteps pressed
+Like fairy blossoms grew.
+
+Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds
+Were in her very look;
+We read her face, as one who reads
+A true and holy book,
+
+The measure of a blessed hymn,
+To which our hearts could move;
+The breathing of an inward psalm,
+A canticle of love.
+
+We miss her in the place of prayer,
+And by the hearth-fire's light;
+We pause beside her door to hear
+Once more her sweet "Good-night!"
+
+There seems a shadow on the day,
+Her smile no longer cheers;
+A dimness on the stars of night,
+Like eyes that look through tears.
+
+Alone unto our Father's will
+One thought hath reconciled;
+That He whose love exceedeth ours
+Hath taken home His child.
+
+Fold her, O Father! in Thine arms,
+And let her henceforth be
+A messenger of love between
+Our human hearts and Thee.
+
+Still let her mild rebuking stand
+Between us and the wrong,
+And her dear memory serve to make
+Our faith in Goodness strong.
+
+And grant that she who, trembling, here
+Distrusted all her powers,
+May welcome to her holier home
+The well-beloved of ours.
+1845.
+
+
+TO RONGE.
+
+     This was written after reading the powerful and manly protest of
+     Johannes Ronge against the "pious fraud" of the Bishop of Treves.
+     The bold movement of the young Catholic priest of Prussian Silesia
+     seemed to me full of promise to the cause of political as well as
+     religious liberty in Europe. That it failed was due partly to the
+     faults of the reformer, but mainly to the disagreement of the
+     Liberals of Germany upon a matter of dogma, which prevented them
+     from unity of action. Rouge was born in Silesia in 1813 and died in
+     October, 1887. His autobiography was translated into English and
+     published in London in 1846.
+
+Strike home, strong-hearted man! Down to the root
+Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel.
+Thy work is to hew down. In God's name then
+Put nerve into thy task. Let other men
+Plant, as they may, that better tree whose fruit
+The wounded bosom of the Church shall heal.
+Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy blows
+Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand,
+On crown or crosier, which shall interpose
+Between thee and the weal of Fatherland.
+Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of all,
+Shake thou all German dream-land with the fall
+Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk
+Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart monk.
+Fight not with ghosts and shadows. Let us hear
+The snap of chain-links. Let our gladdened ear
+Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as the light
+Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell of night.
+Be faithful to both worlds; nor think to feed
+Earth's starving millions with the husks of creed.
+Servant of Him whose mission high and holy
+Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and the lowly,
+Thrust not his Eden promise from our sphere,
+Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's span;
+Like him of Patmos, see it, now and here,
+The New Jerusalem comes down to man
+Be warned by Luther's error. Nor like him,
+When the roused Teuton dashes from his limb
+The rusted chain of ages, help to bind
+His hands for whom thou claim'st the freedom of
+the mind
+1846.
+
+
+
+CHANNING.
+
+     The last time I saw Dr. Channing was in the summer of 1841, when,
+     in company with my English friend, Joseph Sturge, so well known for
+     his philanthropic labors and liberal political opinions, I visited
+     him in his summer residence in Rhode Island. In recalling the
+     impressions of that visit, it can scarcely be necessary to say,
+     that I have no reference to the peculiar religious opinions of a
+     man whose life, beautifully and truly manifested above the
+     atmosphere of sect, is now the world's common legacy.
+
+Not vainly did old poets tell,
+Nor vainly did old genius paint
+God's great and crowning miracle,
+The hero and the saint!
+
+For even in a faithless day
+Can we our sainted ones discern;
+And feel, while with them on the way,
+Our hearts within us burn.
+
+And thus the common tongue and pen
+Which, world-wide, echo Channing's fame,
+As one of Heaven's anointed men,
+Have sanctified his name.
+
+In vain shall Rome her portals bar,
+And shut from him her saintly prize,
+Whom, in the world's great calendar,
+All men shall canonize.
+
+By Narragansett's sunny bay,
+Beneath his green embowering wood,
+To me it seems but yesterday
+Since at his side I stood.
+
+The slopes lay green with summer rains,
+The western wind blew fresh and free,
+And glimmered down the orchard lanes
+The white surf of the sea.
+
+With us was one, who, calm and true,
+Life's highest purpose understood,
+And, like his blessed Master, knew
+The joy of doing good.
+
+Unlearned, unknown to lettered fame,
+Yet on the lips of England's poor
+And toiling millions dwelt his name,
+With blessings evermore.
+
+Unknown to power or place, yet where
+The sun looks o'er the Carib sea,
+It blended with the freeman's prayer
+And song of jubilee.
+
+He told of England's sin and wrong,
+The ills her suffering children know,
+The squalor of the city's throng,
+The green field's want and woe.
+
+O'er Channing's face the tenderness
+Of sympathetic sorrow stole,
+Like a still shadow, passionless,
+The sorrow of the soul.
+
+But when the generous Briton told
+How hearts were answering to his own,
+And Freedom's rising murmur rolled
+Up to the dull-eared throne,
+
+I saw, methought, a glad surprise
+Thrill through that frail and pain-worn frame,
+And, kindling in those deep, calm eyes,
+A still and earnest flame.
+
+His few, brief words were such as move
+The human heart,--the Faith-sown seeds
+Which ripen in the soil of love
+To high heroic deeds.
+
+No bars of sect or clime were felt,
+The Babel strife of tongues had ceased,
+And at one common altar knelt
+The Quaker and the priest.
+
+And not in vain: with strength renewed,
+And zeal refreshed, and hope less dim,
+For that brief meeting, each pursued
+The path allotted him.
+
+How echoes yet each Western hill
+And vale with Channing's dying word!
+How are the hearts of freemen still
+By that great warning stirred.
+
+The stranger treads his native soil,
+And pleads, with zeal unfelt before,
+The honest right of British toil,
+The claim of England's poor.
+
+Before him time-wrought barriers fall,
+Old fears subside, old hatreds melt,
+And, stretching o'er the sea's blue wall,
+The Saxon greets the Celt.
+
+The yeoman on the Scottish lines,
+The Sheffield grinder, worn and grim,
+The delver in the Cornwall mines,
+Look up with hope to him.
+
+Swart smiters of the glowing steel,
+Dark feeders of the forge's flame,
+Pale watchers at the loom and wheel,
+Repeat his honored name.
+
+And thus the influence of that hour
+Of converse on Rhode Island's strand
+Lives in the calm, resistless power
+Which moves our fatherland.
+
+God blesses still the generous thought,
+And still the fitting word He speeds
+And Truth, at His requiring taught,
+He quickens into deeds.
+
+Where is the victory of the grave?
+What dust upon the spirit lies?
+God keeps the sacred life he gave,--
+The prophet never dies!
+1844.
+
+
+
+TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER.
+
+     Sophia Sturge, sister of Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, the
+     President of the British Complete Suffrage Association, died in the
+     6th month, 1845. She was the colleague, counsellor, and ever-ready
+     helpmate of her brother in all his vast designs of beneficence. The
+     Birmingham Pilot says of her: "Never, perhaps, were the active and
+     passive virtues of the human character more harmoniously and
+     beautifully blended than in this excellent woman."
+
+Thine is a grief, the depth of which another
+May never know;
+Yet, o'er the waters, O my stricken brother!
+To thee I go.
+
+I lean my heart unto thee, sadly folding
+Thy hand in mine;
+With even the weakness of my soul upholding
+The strength of thine.
+
+I never knew, like thee, the dear departed;
+I stood not by
+When, in calm trust, the pure and tranquil-hearted
+Lay down to die.
+
+And on thy ears my words of weak condoling
+Must vainly fall
+The funeral bell which in thy heart is tolling,
+Sounds over all!
+
+I will not mock thee with the poor world's common
+And heartless phrase,
+Nor wrong the memory of a sainted woman
+With idle praise.
+
+With silence only as their benediction,
+God's angels come
+Where, in the shadow of a great affliction,
+The soul sits dumb!
+
+Yet, would I say what thy own heart approveth
+Our Father's will,
+Calling to Him the dear one whom He loveth,
+Is mercy still.
+
+Not upon thee or thine the solemn angel
+Hath evil wrought
+Her funeral anthem is a glad evangel,--
+The good die not!
+
+God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly
+What He hath given;
+They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly
+As in His heaven.
+
+And she is with thee; in thy path of trial
+She walketh yet;
+Still with the baptism of thy self-denial
+Her locks are wet.
+
+Up, then, my brother! Lo, the fields of harvest
+Lie white in view
+She lives and loves thee, and the God thou servest
+To both is true.
+
+Thrust in thy sickle! England's toilworn peasants
+Thy call abide;
+And she thou mourn'st, a pure and holy presence,
+Shall glean beside!
+1845.
+
+
+
+DANIEL WHEELER
+
+     Daniel Wheeler, a minister of the Society of Friends, who had
+     labored in the cause of his Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia,
+     and the islands of the Pacific, died in New York in the spring of
+     1840, while on a religious visit to this country.
+
+O Dearly loved!
+And worthy of our love! No more
+Thy aged form shall rise before
+The bushed and waiting worshiper,
+In meek obedience utterance giving
+To words of truth, so fresh and living,
+That, even to the inward sense,
+They bore unquestioned evidence
+Of an anointed Messenger!
+Or, bowing down thy silver hair
+In reverent awfulness of prayer,
+The world, its time and sense, shut out
+The brightness of Faith's holy trance
+Gathered upon thy countenance,
+As if each lingering cloud of doubt,
+The cold, dark shadows resting here
+In Time's unluminous atmosphere,
+Were lifted by an angel's hand,
+And through them on thy spiritual eye
+Shone down the blessedness on high,
+The glory of the Better Land!
+
+The oak has fallen!
+While, meet for no good work, the vine
+May yet its worthless branches twine,
+Who knoweth not that with thee fell
+A great man in our Israel?
+Fallen, while thy loins were girded still,
+Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet,
+And in thy hand retaining yet
+The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell
+Unharmed and safe, where, wild and free,
+Across the Neva's cold morass
+The breezes from the Frozen Sea
+With winter's arrowy keenness pass;
+Or where the unwarning tropic gale
+Smote to the waves thy tattered sail,
+Or where the noon-hour's fervid heat
+Against Tahiti's mountains beat;
+The same mysterious Hand which gave
+Deliverance upon land and wave,
+Tempered for thee the blasts which blew
+Ladaga's frozen surface o'er,
+And blessed for thee the baleful dew
+Of evening upon Eimeo's shore,
+Beneath this sunny heaven of ours,
+Midst our soft airs and opening flowers
+Hath given thee a grave!
+
+His will be done,
+Who seeth not as man, whose way
+Is not as ours! 'T is well with thee!
+Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay
+Disquieted thy closing day,
+But, evermore, thy soul could say,
+"My Father careth still for me!"
+Called from thy hearth and home,--from her,
+The last bud on thy household tree,
+The last dear one to minister
+In duty and in love to thee,
+From all which nature holdeth dear,
+Feeble with years and worn with pain,
+To seek our distant land again,
+Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing
+The things which should befall thee here,
+Whether for labor or for death,
+In childlike trust serenely going
+To that last trial of thy faith!
+Oh, far away,
+Where never shines our Northern star
+On that dark waste which Balboa saw
+From Darien's mountains stretching far,
+So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that there,
+With forehead to its damp wind bare,
+He bent his mailed knee in awe;
+In many an isle whose coral feet
+The surges of that ocean beat,
+In thy palm shadows, Oahu,
+And Honolulu's silver bay,
+Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue,
+And taro-plains of Tooboonai,
+Are gentle hearts, which long shall be
+Sad as our own at thought of thee,
+Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed,
+Whose souls in weariness and need
+Were strengthened and refreshed by thine.
+For blessed by our Father's hand
+Was thy deep love and tender care,
+Thy ministry and fervent prayer,--
+Grateful as Eshcol's clustered vine
+To Israel in a weary land.
+
+And they who drew
+By thousands round thee, in the hour
+Of prayerful waiting, hushed and deep,
+That He who bade the islands keep
+Silence before Him, might renew
+Their strength with His unslumbering power,
+They too shall mourn that thou art gone,
+That nevermore thy aged lip
+Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn,
+Of those who first, rejoicing, heard
+Through thee the Gospel's glorious word,--
+Seals of thy true apostleship.
+And, if the brightest diadem,
+Whose gems of glory purely burn
+Around the ransomed ones in bliss,
+Be evermore reserved for them
+Who here, through toil and sorrow, turn
+Many to righteousness,
+May we not think of thee as wearing
+That star-like crown of light, and bearing,
+Amidst Heaven's white and blissful band,
+Th' unfading palm-branch in thy hand;
+And joining with a seraph's tongue
+In that new song the elders sung,
+Ascribing to its blessed Giver
+Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever!
+
+Farewell!
+And though the ways of Zion mourn
+When her strong ones are called away,
+Who like thyself have calmly borne
+The heat and burden of the day,
+Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth
+His ancient watch around us keepeth;
+Still, sent from His creating hand,
+New witnesses for Truth shall stand,
+New instruments to sound abroad
+The Gospel of a risen Lord;
+To gather to the fold once more
+The desolate and gone astray,
+The scattered of a cloudy day,
+And Zion's broken walls restore;
+And, through the travail and the toil
+Of true obedience, minister
+Beauty for ashes, and the oil
+Of joy for mourning, unto her!
+So shall her holy bounds increase
+With walls of praise and gates of peace
+So shall the Vine, which martyr tears
+And blood sustained in other years,
+With fresher life be clothed upon;
+And to the world in beauty show
+Like the rose-plant of Jericho,
+And glorious as Lebanon!
+1847
+
+
+
+TO FREDRIKA BREMER.
+
+     It is proper to say that these lines are the joint impromptus of my
+     sister and myself. They are inserted here as an expression of our
+     admiration of the gifted stranger whom we have since learned to
+     love as a friend.
+
+Seeress of the misty Norland,
+Daughter of the Vikings bold,
+Welcome to the sunny Vineland,
+Which thy fathers sought of old!
+
+Soft as flow of Siija's waters,
+When the moon of summer shines,
+Strong as Winter from his mountains
+Roaring through the sleeted pines.
+
+Heart and ear, we long have listened
+To thy saga, rune, and song;
+As a household joy and presence
+We have known and loved thee long.
+
+By the mansion's marble mantel,
+Round the log-walled cabin's hearth,
+Thy sweet thoughts and northern fancies
+Meet and mingle with our mirth.
+
+And o'er weary spirits keeping
+Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill,
+Shine they like thy sun of summer
+Over midnight vale and hill.
+
+We alone to thee are strangers,
+Thou our friend and teacher art;
+Come, and know us as we know thee;
+Let us meet thee heart to heart!
+
+To our homes and household altars
+We, in turn, thy steps would lead,
+As thy loving hand has led us
+O'er the threshold of the Swede.
+1849.
+
+
+
+TO AVIS KEENE
+
+ON RECEIVING A BASKET OF SEA-MOSSES.
+
+Thanks for thy gift
+Of ocean flowers,
+Born where the golden drift
+Of the slant sunshine falls
+Down the green, tremulous walls
+Of water, to the cool, still coral bowers,
+Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers,
+God's gardens of the deep
+His patient angels keep;
+Gladdening the dim, strange solitude
+With fairest forms and hues, and thus
+Forever teaching us
+The lesson which the many-colored skies,
+The flowers, and leaves, and painted butterflies,
+The deer's branched antlers, the gay bird that flings
+The tropic sunshine from its golden wings,
+The brightness of the human countenance,
+Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance,
+Forevermore repeat,
+In varied tones and sweet,
+That beauty, in and of itself, is good.
+
+O kind and generous friend, o'er whom
+The sunset hues of Time are cast,
+Painting, upon the overpast
+And scattered clouds of noonday sorrow
+The promise of a fairer morrow,
+An earnest of the better life to come;
+The binding of the spirit broken,
+The warning to the erring spoken,
+The comfort of the sad,
+The eye to see, the hand to cull
+Of common things the beautiful,
+The absent heart made glad
+By simple gift or graceful token
+Of love it needs as daily food,
+All own one Source, and all are good
+Hence, tracking sunny cove and reach,
+Where spent waves glimmer up the beach,
+And toss their gifts of weed and shell
+From foamy curve and combing swell,
+No unbefitting task was thine
+To weave these flowers so soft and fair
+In unison with His design
+Who loveth beauty everywhere;
+And makes in every zone and clime,
+In ocean and in upper air,
+All things beautiful in their time.
+
+For not alone in tones of awe and power
+He speaks to Inan;
+The cloudy horror of the thunder-shower
+His rainbows span;
+And where the caravan
+Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air
+The crane-flock leaves, no trace of passage there,
+He gives the weary eye
+The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon hours,
+And on its branches dry
+Calls out the acacia's flowers;
+And where the dark shaft pierces down
+Beneath the mountain roots,
+Seen by the miner's lamp alone,
+The star-like crystal shoots;
+So, where, the winds and waves below,
+The coral-branched gardens grow,
+His climbing weeds and mosses show,
+Like foliage, on each stony bough,
+Of varied hues more strangely gay
+Than forest leaves in autumn's day;--
+Thus evermore,
+On sky, and wave, and shore,
+An all-pervading beauty seems to say
+God's love and power are one; and they,
+Who, like the thunder of a sultry day,
+Smite to restore,
+And they, who, like the gentle wind, uplift
+The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and drift
+Their perfume on the air,
+Alike may serve Him, each, with their own gift,
+Making their lives a prayer!
+1850
+
+
+
+THE HILL-TOP
+
+The burly driver at my side,
+We slowly climbed the hill,
+Whose summit, in the hot noontide,
+Seemed rising, rising still.
+At last, our short noon-shadows bid
+The top-stone, bare and brown,
+From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid,
+The rough mass slanted down.
+
+I felt the cool breath of the North;
+Between me and the sun,
+O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth,
+I saw the cloud-shades run.
+Before me, stretched for glistening miles,
+Lay mountain-girdled Squam;
+Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles
+Upon its bosom swam.
+
+And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm,
+Far as the eye could roam,
+Dark billows of an earthquake storm
+Beflecked with clouds like foam,
+Their vales in misty shadow deep,
+Their rugged peaks in shine,
+I saw the mountain ranges sweep
+The horizon's northern line.
+
+There towered Chocorua's peak; and west,
+Moosehillock's woods were seem,
+With many a nameless slide-scarred crest
+And pine-dark gorge between.
+Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud,
+The great Notch mountains shone,
+Watched over by the solemn-browed
+And awful face of stone!
+
+"A good look-off!" the driver spake;
+"About this time, last year,
+I drove a party to the Lake,
+And stopped, at evening, here.
+'T was duskish down below; but all
+These hills stood in the sun,
+Till, dipped behind yon purple wall,
+He left them, one by one.
+
+"A lady, who, from Thornton hill,
+Had held her place outside,
+And, as a pleasant woman will,
+Had cheered the long, dull ride,
+Besought me, with so sweet a smile,
+That--though I hate delays--
+I could not choose but rest awhile,--
+(These women have such ways!)
+
+"On yonder mossy ledge she sat,
+Her sketch upon her knees,
+A stray brown lock beneath her hat
+Unrolling in the breeze;
+Her sweet face, in the sunset light
+Upraised and glorified,--
+I never saw a prettier sight
+In all my mountain ride.
+
+"As good as fair; it seemed her joy
+To comfort and to give;
+My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy,
+Will bless her while they live!"
+The tremor in the driver's tone
+His manhood did not shame
+"I dare say, sir, you may have known"--
+He named a well-known name.
+
+Then sank the pyramidal mounds,
+The blue lake fled away;
+For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds,
+A lighted hearth for day!
+From lonely years and weary miles
+The shadows fell apart;
+Kind voices cheered, sweet human smiles
+Shone warm into my heart.
+
+We journeyed on; but earth and sky
+Had power to charm no more;
+Still dreamed my inward-turning eye
+The dream of memory o'er.
+Ah! human kindness, human love,--
+To few who seek denied;
+Too late we learn to prize above
+The whole round world beside!
+1850
+
+
+
+ELLIOTT.
+
+     Ebenezer Elliott was to the artisans of England what Burns was to
+     the peasantry of Scotland. His Corn-law Rhymes contributed not a
+     little to that overwhelming tide of popular opinion and feeling
+     which resulted in the repeal of the tax on bread. Well has the
+     eloquent author of The Reforms and Reformers of Great Britain said
+     of him, "Not corn-law repealers alone, but all Britons who moisten
+     their scanty bread with the sweat of the brow, are largely indebted
+     to his inspiring lay, for the mighty bound which the laboring mind
+     of England has taken in our day."
+
+Hands off! thou tithe-fat plunderer! play
+No trick of priestcraft here!
+Back, puny lordling! darest thou lay
+A hand on Elliott's bier?
+Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust,
+Beneath his feet he trod.
+
+He knew the locust swarm that cursed
+The harvest-fields of God.
+On these pale lips, the smothered thought
+Which England's millions feel,
+A fierce and fearful splendor caught,
+As from his forge the steel.
+Strong-armed as Thor, a shower of fire
+His smitten anvil flung;
+God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hunger's ire,
+He gave them all a tongue!
+
+Then let the poor man's horny hands
+Bear up the mighty dead,
+And labor's swart and stalwart bands
+Behind as mourners tread.
+Leave cant and craft their baptized bounds,
+Leave rank its minster floor;
+Give England's green and daisied grounds
+The poet of the poor!
+
+Lay down upon his Sheaf's green verge
+That brave old heart of oak,
+With fitting dirge from sounding forge,
+And pall of furnace smoke!
+Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds,
+And axe and sledge are swung,
+And, timing to their stormy sounds,
+His stormy lays are sung.
+
+There let the peasant's step be heard,
+The grinder chant his rhyme,
+Nor patron's praise nor dainty word
+Befits the man or time.
+No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh
+For him whose words were bread;
+The Runic rhyme and spell whereby
+The foodless poor were fed!
+
+Pile up the tombs of rank and pride,
+O England, as thou wilt!
+With pomp to nameless worth denied,
+Emblazon titled guilt!
+No part or lot in these we claim;
+But, o'er the sounding wave,
+A common right to Elliott's name,
+A freehold in his grave!
+1850
+
+
+
+ICHABOD
+
+     This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of
+     evil consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March
+     speech of Daniel Webster in support of the "compromise," and the
+     Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On
+     the contrary my admiration of the splendid personality and
+     intellectual power of the great Senator was never stronger than
+     when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the saddest moments of
+     my life, penned my protest. I saw, as I wrote, with painful
+     clearness its sure results,--the Slave Power arrogant and defiant,
+     strengthened and encouraged to carry out its scheme for the
+     extension of its baleful system, or the dissolution of the Union,
+     the guaranties of personal liberty in the free States broken down,
+     and the whole country made the hunting-ground of slave-catchers. In
+     the horror of such a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, if one
+     spoke at all, he could only speak in tones of stern and sorrowful
+     rebuke. But death softens all resentments, and the consciousness of
+     a common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity
+     of judgment. Years after, in _The Lost Occasion_ I gave utterance
+     to an almost universal regret that the great statesman did not live
+     to see the flag which he loved trampled under the feet of Slavery,
+     and, in view of this desecration, make his last days glorious in
+     defence of "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable."
+
+So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
+Which once he wore!
+The glory from his gray hairs gone
+Forevermore!
+
+Revile him not, the Tempter hath
+A snare for all;
+And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
+Befit his fall!
+
+Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
+When he who might
+Have lighted up and led his age,
+Falls back in night.
+
+Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
+A bright soul driven,
+Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
+From hope and heaven!
+
+Let not the land once proud of him
+Insult him now,
+Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
+Dishonored brow.
+
+But let its humbled sons, instead,
+From sea to lake,
+A long lament, as for the dead,
+In sadness make.
+
+Of all we loved and honored, naught
+Save power remains;
+A fallen angel's pride of thought,
+Still strong in chains.
+
+All else is gone; from those great eyes
+The soul has fled
+When faith is lost, when honor dies,
+The man is dead!
+
+Then, pay the reverence of old days
+To his dead fame;
+Walk backward, with averted gaze,
+And hide the shame!
+1850
+
+
+
+THE LOST OCCASION.
+
+Some die too late and some too soon,
+At early morning, heat of noon,
+Or the chill evening twilight. Thou,
+Whom the rich heavens did so endow
+With eyes of power and Jove's own brow,
+With all the massive strength that fills
+Thy home-horizon's granite hills,
+With rarest gifts of heart and head
+From manliest stock inherited,
+New England's stateliest type of man,
+In port and speech Olympian;
+
+Whom no one met, at first, but took
+A second awed and wondering look
+(As turned, perchance, the eyes of Greece
+On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece);
+Whose words in simplest homespun clad,
+The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had,
+With power reserved at need to reach
+The Roman forum's loftiest speech,
+Sweet with persuasion, eloquent
+In passion, cool in argument,
+Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes
+As fell the Norse god's hammer blows,
+Crushing as if with Talus' flail
+Through Error's logic-woven mail,
+And failing only when they tried
+The adamant of the righteous side,--
+Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved
+Of old friends, by the new deceived,
+Too soon for us, too soon for thee,
+Beside thy lonely Northern sea,
+Where long and low the marsh-lands spread,
+Laid wearily down thy August head.
+
+Thou shouldst have lived to feel below
+Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow;
+The late-sprung mine that underlaid
+Thy sad concessions vainly made.
+Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's wall
+The star-flag of the Union fall,
+And armed rebellion pressing on
+The broken lines of Washington!
+No stronger voice than thine had then
+Called out the utmost might of men,
+To make the Union's charter free
+And strengthen law by liberty.
+How had that stern arbitrament
+To thy gray age youth's vigor lent,
+Shaming ambition's paltry prize
+Before thy disillusioned eyes;
+Breaking the spell about thee wound
+Like the green withes that Samson bound;
+Redeeming in one effort grand,
+Thyself and thy imperilled land!
+Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee,
+O sleeper by the Northern sea,
+The gates of opportunity!
+God fills the gaps of human need,
+Each crisis brings its word and deed.
+Wise men and strong we did not lack;
+But still, with memory turning back,
+In the dark hours we thought of thee,
+And thy lone grave beside the sea.
+
+Above that grave the east winds blow,
+And from the marsh-lands drifting slow
+The sea-fog comes, with evermore
+The wave-wash of a lonely shore,
+And sea-bird's melancholy cry,
+As Nature fain would typify
+The sadness of a closing scene,
+The loss of that which should have been.
+But, where thy native mountains bare
+Their foreheads to diviner air,
+Fit emblem of enduring fame,
+One lofty summit keeps thy name.
+For thee the cosmic forces did
+The rearing of that pyramid,
+The prescient ages shaping with
+Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith.
+Sunrise and sunset lay thereon
+With hands of light their benison,
+The stars of midnight pause to set
+Their jewels in its coronet.
+And evermore that mountain mass
+Seems climbing from the shadowy pass
+To light, as if to manifest
+Thy nobler self, thy life at best!
+1880
+
+
+
+WORDSWORTH
+
+WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS MEMOIRS.
+
+Dear friends, who read the world aright,
+And in its common forms discern
+A beauty and a harmony
+The many never learn!
+
+Kindred in soul of him who found
+In simple flower and leaf and stone
+The impulse of the sweetest lays
+Our Saxon tongue has known,--
+
+Accept this record of a life
+As sweet and pure, as calm and good,
+As a long day of blandest June
+In green field and in wood.
+
+How welcome to our ears, long pained
+By strife of sect and party noise,
+The brook-like murmur of his song
+Of nature's simple joys!
+
+The violet' by its mossy stone,
+The primrose by the river's brim,
+And chance-sown daffodil, have found
+Immortal life through him.
+
+The sunrise on his breezy lake,
+The rosy tints his sunset brought,
+World-seen, are gladdening all the vales
+And mountain-peaks of thought.
+
+Art builds on sand; the works of pride
+And human passion change and fall;
+But that which shares the life of God
+With Him surviveth all.
+1851.
+
+
+
+TO ------
+
+LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S EXCURSION.
+
+Fair Nature's priestesses! to whom,
+In hieroglyph of bud and bloom,
+Her mysteries are told;
+Who, wise in lore of wood and mead,
+The seasons' pictured scrolls can read,
+In lessons manifold!
+
+Thanks for the courtesy, and gay
+Good-humor, which on Washing Day
+Our ill-timed visit bore;
+Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke
+The morning dreams of Artichoke,
+Along his wooded shore!
+
+Varied as varying Nature's ways,
+Sprites of the river, woodland fays,
+Or mountain nymphs, ye seem;
+Free-limbed Dianas on the green,
+Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine,
+Upon your favorite stream.
+
+The forms of which the poets told,
+The fair benignities of old,
+Were doubtless such as you;
+What more than Artichoke the rill
+Of Helicon? Than Pipe-stave hill
+Arcadia's mountain-view?
+
+No sweeter bowers the bee delayed,
+In wild Hymettus' scented shade,
+Than those you dwell among;
+Snow-flowered azaleas, intertwined
+With roses, over banks inclined
+With trembling harebells hung!
+
+A charmed life unknown to death,
+Immortal freshness Nature hath;
+Her fabled fount and glen
+Are now and here: Dodona's shrine
+Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine,--
+All is that e'er hath been.
+
+The Beauty which old Greece or Rome
+Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home;
+We need but eye and ear
+In all our daily walks to trace
+The outlines of incarnate grace,
+The hymns of gods to hear!
+1851
+
+
+
+IN PEACE.
+
+A track of moonlight on a quiet lake,
+Whose small waves on a silver-sanded shore
+Whisper of peace, and with the low winds make
+Such harmonies as keep the woods awake,
+And listening all night long for their sweet sake
+A green-waved slope of meadow, hovered o'er
+By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light
+On viewless stems, with folded wings of white;
+A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far seen
+Where the low westering day, with gold and green,
+Purple and amber, softly blended, fills
+The wooded vales, and melts among the hills;
+A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest
+On the calm bosom of a stormless sea,
+Bearing alike upon its placid breast,
+With earthly flowers and heavenly' stars impressed,
+The hues of time and of eternity
+Such are the pictures which the thought of thee,
+O friend, awakeneth,--charming the keen pain
+Of thy departure, and our sense of loss
+Requiting with the fullness of thy gain.
+Lo! on the quiet grave thy life-borne cross,
+Dropped only at its side, methinks doth shine,
+Of thy beatitude the radiant sign!
+No sob of grief, no wild lament be there,
+To break the Sabbath of the holy air;
+But, in their stead, the silent-breathing prayer
+Of hearts still waiting for a rest like thine.
+O spirit redeemed! Forgive us, if henceforth,
+With sweet and pure similitudes of earth,
+We keep thy pleasant memory freshly green,
+Of love's inheritance a priceless part,
+Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is seen
+To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art,
+With pencil dipped alone in colors of the heart.
+1851.
+
+
+
+BENEDICITE.
+
+God's love and peace be with thee, where
+Soe'er this soft autumnal air
+Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair.
+
+Whether through city casements comes
+Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms,
+Or, out among the woodland blooms,
+
+It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face,
+Imparting, in its glad embrace,
+Beauty to beauty, grace to grace!
+
+Fair Nature's book together read,
+The old wood-paths that knew our tread,
+The maple shadows overhead,--
+
+The hills we climbed, the river seen
+By gleams along its deep ravine,--
+All keep thy memory fresh and green.
+
+Where'er I look, where'er I stray,
+Thy thought goes with me on my way,
+And hence the prayer I breathe to-day;
+
+O'er lapse of time and change of scene,
+The weary waste which lies between
+Thyself and me, my heart I lean.
+
+Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, nor
+The half-unconscious power to draw
+All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law.
+
+With these good gifts of God is cast
+Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast
+To hold the blessed angels fast.
+
+If, then, a fervent wish for thee
+The gracious heavens will heed from me,
+What should, dear heart, its burden be?
+
+The sighing of a shaken reed,--
+What can I more than meekly plead
+The greatness of our common need?
+
+God's love,--unchanging, pure, and true,--
+The Paraclete white-shining through
+His peace,--the fall of Hermon's dew!
+
+With such a prayer, on this sweet day,
+As thou mayst hear and I may say,
+I greet thee, dearest, far away!
+1851.
+
+
+
+KOSSUTH
+
+     It can scarcely be necessary to say that there are elements in the
+     character and passages in the history of the great Hungarian
+     statesman and orator, which necessarily command the admiration of
+     those, even, who believe that no political revolution was ever
+     worth the price of human blood.
+
+Type of two mighty continents!--combining
+The strength of Europe with the warmth and glow
+Of Asian song and prophecy,--the shining
+Of Orient splendors over Northern snow!
+Who shall receive him? Who, unblushing, speak
+Welcome to him, who, while he strove to break
+The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks, smote off
+At the same blow the fetters of the serf,
+Rearing the altar of his Fatherland
+On the firm base of freedom, and thereby
+Lifting to Heaven a patriot's stainless hand,
+Mocked not the God of Justice with a lie!
+Who shall be Freedom's mouthpiece? Who shall give
+Her welcoming cheer to the great fugitive?
+Not he who, all her sacred trusts betraying,
+Is scourging back to slavery's hell of pain
+The swarthy Kossuths of our land again!
+Not he whose utterance now from lips designed
+The bugle-march of Liberty to wind,
+And call her hosts beneath the breaking light,
+The keen reveille of her morn of fight,
+Is but the hoarse note of the blood-hound's baying,
+The wolf's long howl behind the bondman's flight!
+Oh for the tongue of him who lies at rest
+In Quincy's shade of patrimonial trees,
+Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best,
+To lend a voice to Freedom's sympathies,
+And hail the coming of the noblest guest
+The Old World's wrong has given the New World of the West!
+1851.
+
+
+
+TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER.
+
+AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER OF HORACE
+
+     These lines were addressed to my worthy friend Joshua Coffin,
+     teacher, historian, and antiquarian. He was one of the twelve
+     persons who with William Lloyd Garrison formed the first
+     anti-slavery society in New England.
+
+Old friend, kind friend! lightly down
+Drop time's snow-flakes on thy crown!
+Never be thy shadow less,
+Never fail thy cheerfulness;
+Care, that kills the cat, may, plough
+Wrinkles in the miser's brow,
+Deepen envy's spiteful frown,
+Draw the mouths of bigots down,
+Plague ambition's dream, and sit
+Heavy on the hypocrite,
+Haunt the rich man's door, and ride
+In the gilded coach of pride;--
+Let the fiend pass!--what can he
+Find to do with such as thee?
+Seldom comes that evil guest
+Where the conscience lies at rest,
+And brown health and quiet wit
+Smiling on the threshold sit.
+
+I, the urchin unto whom,
+In that smoked and dingy room,
+Where the district gave thee rule
+O'er its ragged winter school,
+Thou didst teach the mysteries
+Of those weary A B C's,--
+Where, to fill the every pause
+Of thy wise and learned saws,
+Through the cracked and crazy wall
+Came the cradle-rock and squall,
+And the goodman's voice, at strife
+With his shrill and tipsy wife,
+Luring us by stories old,
+With a comic unction told,
+More than by the eloquence
+Of terse birchen arguments
+(Doubtful gain, I fear), to look
+With complacence on a book!--
+Where the genial pedagogue
+Half forgot his rogues to flog,
+Citing tale or apologue,
+Wise and merry in its drift
+As was Phaedrus' twofold gift,
+Had the little rebels known it,
+Risum et prudentiam monet!
+I,--the man of middle years,
+In whose sable locks appears
+Many a warning fleck of gray,--
+Looking back to that far day,
+And thy primal lessons, feel
+Grateful smiles my lips unseal,
+As, remembering thee, I blend
+Olden teacher, present friend,
+Wise with antiquarian search,
+In the scrolls of State and Church
+Named on history's title-page,
+Parish-clerk and justice sage;
+For the ferule's wholesome awe
+Wielding now the sword of law.
+
+Threshing Time's neglected sheaves,
+Gathering up the scattered leaves
+Which the wrinkled sibyl cast
+Careless from her as she passed,--
+Twofold citizen art thou,
+Freeman of the past and now.
+He who bore thy name of old
+Midway in the heavens did hold
+Over Gibeon moon and sun;
+Thou hast bidden them backward run;
+Of to-day the present ray
+Flinging over yesterday!
+
+Let the busy ones deride
+What I deem of right thy pride
+Let the fools their treadmills grind,
+Look not forward nor behind,
+Shuffle in and wriggle out,
+Veer with every breeze about,
+Turning like a windmill sail,
+Or a dog that seeks his tail;
+Let them laugh to see thee fast
+Tabernacled in the Past,
+Working out with eye and lip,
+Riddles of old penmanship,
+Patient as Belzoni there
+Sorting out, with loving care,
+Mummies of dead questions stripped
+From their sevenfold manuscript.
+
+Dabbling, in their noisy way,
+In the puddles of to-day,
+Little know they of that vast
+Solemn ocean of the past,
+On whose margin, wreck-bespread,
+Thou art walking with the dead,
+Questioning the stranded years,
+Waking smiles, by turns, and tears,
+As thou callest up again
+Shapes the dust has long o'erlain,--
+Fair-haired woman, bearded man,
+Cavalier and Puritan;
+In an age whose eager view
+Seeks but present things, and new,
+Mad for party, sect and gold,
+Teaching reverence for the old.
+
+On that shore, with fowler's tact,
+Coolly bagging fact on fact,
+Naught amiss to thee can float,
+Tale, or song, or anecdote;
+Village gossip, centuries old,
+Scandals by our grandams told,
+What the pilgrim's table spread,
+Where he lived, and whom he wed,
+Long-drawn bill of wine and beer
+For his ordination cheer,
+Or the flip that wellnigh made
+Glad his funeral cavalcade;
+Weary prose, and poet's lines,
+Flavored by their age, like wines,
+Eulogistic of some quaint,
+Doubtful, puritanic saint;
+Lays that quickened husking jigs,
+Jests that shook grave periwigs,
+When the parson had his jokes
+And his glass, like other folks;
+Sermons that, for mortal hours,
+Taxed our fathers' vital powers,
+As the long nineteenthlies poured
+Downward from the sounding-board,
+And, for fire of Pentecost,
+Touched their beards December's frost.
+
+Time is hastening on, and we
+What our fathers are shall be,--
+Shadow-shapes of memory!
+Joined to that vast multitude
+Where the great are but the good,
+And the mind of strength shall prove
+Weaker than the heart of love;
+Pride of graybeard wisdom less
+Than the infant's guilelessness,
+And his song of sorrow more
+Than the crown the Psalmist wore
+Who shall then, with pious zeal,
+At our moss-grown thresholds kneel,
+From a stained and stony page
+Reading to a careless age,
+With a patient eye like thine,
+Prosing tale and limping line,
+Names and words the hoary rime
+Of the Past has made sublime?
+Who shall work for us as well
+The antiquarian's miracle?
+Who to seeming life recall
+Teacher grave and pupil small?
+Who shall give to thee and me
+Freeholds in futurity?
+
+Well, whatever lot be mine,
+Long and happy days be thine,
+Ere thy full and honored age
+Dates of time its latest page!
+Squire for master, State for school,
+Wisely lenient, live and rule;
+Over grown-up knave and rogue
+Play the watchful pedagogue;
+Or, while pleasure smiles on duty,
+At the call of youth and beauty,
+Speak for them the spell of law
+Which shall bar and bolt withdraw,
+And the flaming sword remove
+From the Paradise of Love.
+Still, with undimmed eyesight, pore
+Ancient tome and record o'er;
+Still thy week-day lyrics croon,
+Pitch in church the Sunday tune,
+Showing something, in thy part,
+Of the old Puritanic art,
+Singer after Sternhold's heart
+In thy pew, for many a year,
+Homilies from Oldbug hear,
+Who to wit like that of South,
+And the Syrian's golden mouth,
+Doth the homely pathos add
+Which the pilgrim preachers had;
+Breaking, like a child at play,
+Gilded idols of the day,
+Cant of knave and pomp of fool
+Tossing with his ridicule,
+Yet, in earnest or in jest,
+Ever keeping truth abreast.
+And, when thou art called, at last,
+To thy townsmen of the past,
+Not as stranger shalt thou come;
+Thou shalt find thyself at home
+With the little and the big,
+Woollen cap and periwig,
+Madam in her high-laced ruff,
+Goody in her home-made stuff,--
+Wise and simple, rich and poor,
+Thou hast known them all before!
+1851
+
+
+
+THE CROSS.
+
+     Richard Dillingham, a young member of the Society of Friends, died
+     in the Nashville penitentiary, where he was confined for the act of
+     aiding the escape of fugitive slaves.
+
+"The cross, if rightly borne, shall be
+No burden, but support to thee;"
+So, moved of old time for our sake,
+The holy monk of Kempen spake.
+
+Thou brave and true one! upon whom
+Was laid the cross of martyrdom,
+How didst thou, in thy generous youth,
+Bear witness to this blessed truth!
+
+Thy cross of suffering and of shame
+A staff within thy hands became,
+In paths where faith alone could see
+The Master's steps supporting thee.
+
+Thine was the seed-time; God alone
+Beholds the end of what is sown;
+Beyond our vision, weak and dim,
+The harvest-time is hid with Him.
+
+Yet, unforgotten where it lies,
+That seed of generous sacrifice,
+Though seeming on the desert cast,
+Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last.
+1852.
+
+
+
+THE HERO.
+
+The hero of the incident related in this poem was Dr. Samuel Gridley
+Howe, the well-known philanthropist, who when a young man volunteered
+his aid in the Greek struggle for independence.
+
+"Oh for a knight like Bayard,
+Without reproach or fear;
+My light glove on his casque of steel,
+My love-knot on his spear!
+
+"Oh for the white plume floating
+Sad Zutphen's field above,--
+The lion heart in battle,
+The woman's heart in love!
+
+"Oh that man once more were manly,
+Woman's pride, and not her scorn:
+That once more the pale young mother
+Dared to boast `a man is born'!
+
+"But, now life's slumberous current
+No sun-bowed cascade wakes;
+No tall, heroic manhood
+The level dulness breaks.
+
+"Oh for a knight like Bayard,
+Without reproach or fear!
+My light glove on his casque of steel,
+My love-knot on his spear!"
+
+Then I said, my own heart throbbing
+To the time her proud pulse beat,
+"Life hath its regal natures yet,
+True, tender, brave, and sweet!
+
+"Smile not, fair unbeliever!
+One man, at least, I know,
+Who might wear the crest of Bayard
+Or Sidney's plume of snow.
+
+"Once, when over purple mountains
+Died away the Grecian sun,
+And the far Cyllenian ranges
+Paled and darkened, one by one,--
+
+"Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder,
+Cleaving all the quiet sky,
+And against his sharp steel lightnings
+Stood the Suliote but to die.
+
+"Woe for the weak and halting!
+The crescent blazed behind
+A curving line of sabres,
+Like fire before the wind!
+
+"Last to fly, and first to rally,
+Rode he of whom I speak,
+When, groaning in his bridle-path,
+Sank down a wounded Greek.
+
+"With the rich Albanian costume
+Wet with many a ghastly stain,
+Gazing on earth and sky as one
+Who might not gaze again.
+
+"He looked forward to the mountains,
+Back on foes that never spare,
+Then flung him from his saddle,
+And placed the stranger there.
+
+"'Allah! hu!' Through flashing sabres,
+Through a stormy hail of lead,
+The good Thessalian charger
+Up the slopes of olives sped.
+
+"Hot spurred the turbaned riders;
+He almost felt their breath,
+Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down
+Between the hills and death.
+
+"One brave and manful struggle,--
+He gained the solid land,
+And the cover of the mountains,
+And the carbines of his band!"
+
+"It was very great and noble,"
+Said the moist-eyed listener then,
+"But one brave deed makes no hero;
+Tell me what he since hath been!"
+
+"Still a brave and generous manhood,
+Still an honor without stain,
+In the prison of the Kaiser,
+By the barricades of Seine.
+
+"But dream not helm and harness
+The sign of valor true;
+Peace hath higher tests of manhood
+Than battle ever knew.
+
+"Wouldst know him now? Behold him,
+The Cadmus of the blind,
+Giving the dumb lip language,
+The idiot-clay a mind.
+
+"Walking his round of duty
+Serenely day by day,
+With the strong man's hand of labor
+And childhood's heart of play.
+
+"True as the knights of story,
+Sir Lancelot and his peers,
+Brave in his calm endurance
+As they in tilt of spears.
+
+"As waves in stillest waters,
+As stars in noonday skies,
+All that wakes to noble action
+In his noon of calmness lies.
+
+"Wherever outraged Nature
+Asks word or action brave,
+Wherever struggles labor,
+Wherever groans a slave,--
+
+"Wherever rise the peoples,
+Wherever sinks a throne,
+The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
+An answer in his own.
+
+"Knight of a better era,
+Without reproach or fear!
+Said I not well that Bayards
+And Sidneys still are here?"
+1853.
+
+
+
+RANTOUL.
+
+     No more fitting inscription could be placed on the tombstone of
+     Robert Rantoul than this: "He died at his post in Congress, and his
+     last words were a protest in the name of Democracy against the
+     Fugitive-Slave Law."
+
+One day, along the electric wire
+His manly word for Freedom sped;
+We came next morn: that tongue of fire
+Said only, "He who spake is dead!"
+
+Dead! while his voice was living yet,
+In echoes round the pillared dome!
+Dead! while his blotted page lay wet
+With themes of state and loves of home!
+
+Dead! in that crowning grace of time,
+That triumph of life's zenith hour!
+Dead! while we watched his manhood's prime
+Break from the slow bud into flower!
+
+Dead! he so great, and strong, and wise,
+While the mean thousands yet drew breath;
+How deepened, through that dread surprise,
+The mystery and the awe of death!
+
+From the high place whereon our votes
+Had borne him, clear, calm, earnest, fell
+His first words, like the prelude notes
+Of some great anthem yet to swell.
+
+We seemed to see our flag unfurled,
+Our champion waiting in his place
+For the last battle of the world,
+The Armageddon of the race.
+
+Through him we hoped to speak the word
+Which wins the freedom of a land;
+And lift, for human right, the sword
+Which dropped from Hampden's dying hand.
+
+For he had sat at Sidney's feet,
+And walked with Pym and Vane apart;
+And, through the centuries, felt the beat
+Of Freedom's march in Cromwell's heart.
+
+He knew the paths the worthies held,
+Where England's best and wisest trod;
+And, lingering, drank the springs that welled
+Beneath the touch of Milton's rod.
+
+No wild enthusiast of the right,
+Self-poised and clear, he showed alway
+The coolness of his northern night,
+The ripe repose of autumn's day.
+
+His steps were slow, yet forward still
+He pressed where others paused or failed;
+The calm star clomb with constant will,
+The restless meteor flashed and paled.
+
+Skilled in its subtlest wile, he knew
+And owned the higher ends of Law;
+Still rose majestic on his view
+The awful Shape the schoolman saw.
+
+Her home the heart of God; her voice
+The choral harmonies whereby
+The stars, through all their spheres, rejoice,
+The rhythmic rule of earth and sky.
+
+We saw his great powers misapplied
+To poor ambitions; yet, through all,
+We saw him take the weaker side,
+And right the wronged, and free the thrall.
+
+Now, looking o'er the frozen North,
+For one like him in word and act,
+To call her old, free spirit forth,
+And give her faith the life of fact,--
+
+To break her party bonds of shame,
+And labor with the zeal of him
+To make the Democratic name
+Of Liberty the synonyme,--
+
+We sweep the land from hill to strand,
+We seek the strong, the wise, the brave,
+And, sad of heart, return to stand
+In silence by a new-made grave!
+
+There, where his breezy hills of home
+Look out upon his sail-white seas,
+The sounds of winds and waters come,
+And shape themselves to words like these.
+
+"Why, murmuring, mourn that he, whose power
+Was lent to Party over-long,
+Heard the still whisper at the hour
+He set his foot on Party wrong?
+
+"The human life that closed so well
+No lapse of folly now can stain
+The lips whence Freedom's protest fell
+No meaner thought can now profane.
+
+"Mightier than living voice his grave
+That lofty protest utters o'er;
+Through roaring wind and smiting wave
+It speaks his hate of wrong once more.
+
+"Men of the North! your weak regret
+Is wasted here; arise and pay
+To freedom and to him your debt,
+By following where he led the way!"
+1853.
+
+
+
+WILLIAM FORSTER.
+
+     William Forster, of Norwich, England, died in East Tennessee, in
+     the 1st month, 1854, while engaged in presenting to the governors
+     of the States of this Union the address of his religious society on
+     the evils of slavery. He was the relative and coadjutor of the
+     Buxtons, Gurneys, and Frys; and his whole life, extending al-most
+     to threescore and ten years, was a pore and beautiful example of
+     Christian benevolence. He had travelled over Europe, and visited
+     most of its sovereigns, to plead against the slave-trade and
+     slavery; and had twice before made visits to this country, under
+     impressions of religious duty. He was the father of the Right Hon.
+     William Edward Forster. He visited my father's house in Haverhill
+     during his first tour in the United States.
+
+The years are many since his hand
+Was laid upon my head,
+Too weak and young to understand
+The serious words he said.
+
+Yet often now the good man's look
+Before me seems to swim,
+As if some inward feeling took
+The outward guise of him.
+
+As if, in passion's heated war,
+Or near temptation's charm,
+Through him the low-voiced monitor
+Forewarned me of the harm.
+
+Stranger and pilgrim! from that day
+Of meeting, first and last,
+Wherever Duty's pathway lay,
+His reverent steps have passed.
+
+The poor to feed, the lost to seek,
+To proffer life to death,
+Hope to the erring,--to the weak
+The strength of his own faith.
+
+To plead the captive's right; remove
+The sting of hate from Law;
+And soften in the fire of love
+The hardened steel of War.
+
+He walked the dark world, in the mild,
+Still guidance of the Light;
+In tearful tenderness a child,
+A strong man in the right.
+
+From what great perils, on his way,
+He found, in prayer, release;
+Through what abysmal shadows lay
+His pathway unto peace,
+
+God knoweth: we could only see
+The tranquil strength he gained;
+The bondage lost in liberty,
+The fear in love unfeigned.
+
+And I,--my youthful fancies grown
+The habit of the man,
+Whose field of life by angels sown
+The wilding vines o'erran,--
+
+Low bowed in silent gratitude,
+My manhood's heart enjoys
+That reverence for the pure and good
+Which blessed the dreaming boy's.
+
+Still shines the light of holy lives
+Like star-beams over doubt;
+Each sainted memory, Christlike, drives
+Some dark possession out.
+
+O friend! O brother I not in vain
+Thy life so calm and true,
+The silver dropping of the rain,
+The fall of summer dew!
+
+How many burdened hearts have prayed
+Their lives like thine might be
+But more shall pray henceforth for aid
+To lay them down like thee.
+
+With weary hand, yet steadfast will,
+In old age as in youth,
+Thy Master found thee sowing still
+The good seed of His truth.
+
+As on thy task-field closed the day
+In golden-skied decline,
+His angel met thee on the way,
+And lent his arm to thine.
+
+Thy latest care for man,--thy last
+Of earthly thought a prayer,--
+Oh, who thy mantle, backward cast,
+Is worthy now to wear?
+
+Methinks the mound which marks thy bed
+Might bless our land and save,
+As rose, of old, to life the dead
+Who touched the prophet's grave
+1854.
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES SUMNER.
+
+If I have seemed more prompt to censure wrong
+Than praise the right; if seldom to thine ear
+My voice hath mingled with the exultant cheer
+Borne upon all our Northern winds along;
+If I have failed to join the fickle throng
+In wide-eyed wonder, that thou standest strong
+In victory, surprised in thee to find
+Brougham's scathing power with Canning's grace combined;
+That he, for whom the ninefold Muses sang,
+From their twined arms a giant athlete sprang,
+Barbing the arrows of his native tongue
+With the spent shafts Latona's archer flung,
+To smite the Python of our land and time,
+Fell as the monster born of Crissa's slime,
+Like the blind bard who in Castalian springs
+Tempered the steel that clove the crest of kings,
+And on the shrine of England's freedom laid
+The gifts of Cumve and of Delphi's' shade,--
+Small need hast thou of words of praise from me.
+Thou knowest my heart, dear friend, and well canst guess
+That, even though silent, I have not the less
+Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree
+With the large future which I shaped for thee,
+When, years ago, beside the summer sea,
+White in the moon, we saw the long waves fall
+Baffled and broken from the rocky wall,
+That, to the menace of the brawling flood,
+Opposed alone its massive quietude,
+Calm as a fate; with not a leaf nor vine
+Nor birch-spray trembling in the still moonshine,
+Crowning it like God's peace. I sometimes think
+That night-scene by the sea prophetical,
+(For Nature speaks in symbols and in signs,
+And through her pictures human fate divines),
+That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows sink
+In murmuring rout, uprising clear and tall
+In the white light of heaven, the type of one
+Who, momently by Error's host assailed,
+Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of granite mailed;
+And, tranquil-fronted, listening over all
+The tumult, hears the angels say, Well done!
+1854.
+
+
+
+BURNS
+
+ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM.
+
+No more these simple flowers belong
+To Scottish maid and lover;
+Sown in the common soil of song,
+They bloom the wide world over.
+
+In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
+The minstrel and the heather,
+The deathless singer and the flowers
+He sang of live together.
+
+Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns
+The moorland flower and peasant!
+How, at their mention, memory turns
+Her pages old and pleasant!
+
+The gray sky wears again its gold
+And purple of adorning,
+And manhood's noonday shadows hold
+The dews of boyhood's morning.
+
+The dews that washed the dust and soil
+From off the wings of pleasure,
+The sky, that flecked the ground of toil
+With golden threads of leisure.
+
+I call to mind the summer day,
+The early harvest mowing,
+The sky with sun and clouds at play,
+And flowers with breezes blowing.
+
+I hear the blackbird in the corn,
+The locust in the haying;
+And, like the fabled hunter's horn,
+Old tunes my heart is playing.
+
+How oft that day, with fond delay,
+I sought the maple's shadow,
+And sang with Burns the hours away,
+Forgetful of the meadow.
+
+Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead
+I heard the squirrels leaping,
+The good dog listened while I read,
+And wagged his tail in keeping.
+
+I watched him while in sportive mood
+I read "_The Twa Dogs_" story,
+And half believed he understood
+The poet's allegory.
+
+Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours
+Grew brighter for that singing,
+From brook and bird and meadow flowers
+A dearer welcome bringing.
+
+New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
+New glory over Woman;
+And daily life and duty seemed
+No longer poor and common.
+
+I woke to find the simple truth
+Of fact and feeling better
+Than all the dreams that held my youth
+A still repining debtor,
+
+That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
+The themes of sweet discoursing;
+The tender idyls of the heart
+In every tongue rehearsing.
+
+Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
+Of loving knight and lady,
+When farmer boy and barefoot girl
+Were wandering there already?
+
+I saw through all familiar things
+The romance underlying;
+The joys and griefs that plume the wings
+Of Fancy skyward flying.
+
+I saw the same blithe day return,
+The same sweet fall of even,
+That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
+And sank on crystal Devon.
+
+I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
+The sweetbrier and the clover;
+With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
+Their wood-hymns chanting over.
+
+O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
+I saw the Man uprising;
+No longer common or unclean,
+The child of God's baptizing!
+
+With clearer eyes I saw the worth
+Of life among the lowly;
+The Bible at his Cotter's hearth
+Had made my own more holy.
+
+And if at times an evil strain,
+To lawless love appealing,
+Broke in upon the sweet refrain
+Of pure and healthful feeling,
+
+It died upon the eye and ear,
+No inward answer gaining;
+No heart had I to see or hear
+The discord and the staining.
+
+Let those who never erred forget
+His worth, in vain bewailings;
+Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt
+Uncancelled by his failings!
+
+Lament who will the ribald line
+Which tells his lapse from duty,
+How kissed the maddening lips of wine
+Or wanton ones of beauty;
+
+But think, while falls that shade between
+The erring one and Heaven,
+That he who loved like Magdalen,
+Like her may be forgiven.
+
+Not his the song whose thunderous chime
+Eternal echoes render;
+The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
+And Milton's starry splendor!
+
+But who his human heart has laid
+To Nature's bosom nearer?
+Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
+To love a tribute dearer?
+
+Through all his tuneful art, how strong
+The human feeling gushes
+The very moonlight of his song
+Is warm with smiles and blushes!
+
+Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
+So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;
+Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
+But spare his Highland Mary!
+1854.
+
+
+
+TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER
+
+So spake Esaias: so, in words of flame,
+Tekoa's prophet-herdsman smote with blame
+The traffickers in men, and put to shame,
+All earth and heaven before,
+The sacerdotal robbers of the poor.
+
+All the dread Scripture lives for thee again,
+To smite like lightning on the hands profane
+Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the chain.
+Once more the old Hebrew tongue
+Bends with the shafts of God a bow new-strung!
+
+Take up the mantle which the prophets wore;
+Warn with their warnings, show the Christ once more
+Bound, scourged, and crucified in His blameless poor;
+And shake above our land
+The unquenched bolts that blazed in Hosea's hand!
+
+Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our years
+The solemn burdens of the Orient seers,
+And smite with truth a guilty nation's ears.
+Mightier was Luther's word
+Than Seckingen's mailed arm or Hutton's sword!
+1858.
+
+
+
+TO JAMES T. FIELDS
+
+ON A BLANK LEAF OF "POEMS PRINTED, NOT PUBLISHED."
+
+Well thought! who would not rather hear
+The songs to Love and Friendship sung
+Than those which move the stranger's tongue,
+And feed his unselected ear?
+
+Our social joys are more than fame;
+Life withers in the public look.
+Why mount the pillory of a book,
+Or barter comfort for a name?
+
+Who in a house of glass would dwell,
+With curious eyes at every pane?
+To ring him in and out again,
+Who wants the public crier's bell?
+
+To see the angel in one's way,
+Who wants to play the ass's part,--
+Bear on his back the wizard Art,
+And in his service speak or bray?
+
+And who his manly locks would shave,
+And quench the eyes of common sense,
+To share the noisy recompense
+That mocked the shorn and blinded slave?
+
+The heart has needs beyond the head,
+And, starving in the plenitude
+Of strange gifts, craves its common food,--
+Our human nature's daily bread.
+
+We are but men: no gods are we,
+To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak,
+Each separate, on his painful peak,
+Thin-cloaked in self-complacency.
+
+Better his lot whose axe is swung
+In Wartburg woods, or that poor girl's
+Who by the him her spindle whirls
+And sings the songs that Luther sung,
+
+Than his who, old, and cold, and vain,
+At Weimar sat, a demigod,
+And bowed with Jove's imperial nod
+His votaries in and out again!
+
+Ply, Vanity, thy winged feet!
+Ambition, hew thy rocky stair!
+Who envies him who feeds on air
+The icy splendor of his seat?
+
+I see your Alps, above me, cut
+The dark, cold sky; and dim and lone
+I see ye sitting,--stone on stone,--
+With human senses dulled and shut.
+
+I could not reach you, if I would,
+Nor sit among your cloudy shapes;
+And (spare the fable of the grapes
+And fox) I would not if I could.
+
+Keep to your lofty pedestals!
+The safer plain below I choose
+Who never wins can rarely lose,
+Who never climbs as rarely falls.
+
+Let such as love the eagle's scream
+Divide with him his home of ice
+For me shall gentler notes suffice,--
+The valley-song of bird and stream;
+
+The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees,
+The flail-beat chiming far away,
+The cattle-low, at shut of day,
+The voice of God in leaf and breeze;
+
+Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend,
+And help me to the vales below,
+(In truth, I have not far to go,)
+Where sweet with flowers the fields extend.
+1858.
+
+
+
+THE MEMORY OF BURNS.
+
+     Read at the Boston celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the
+     birth of Robert Burns, 25th 1st mo., 1859. In my absence these
+     lines were read by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
+
+How sweetly come the holy psalms
+From saints and martyrs down,
+The waving of triumphal palms
+Above the thorny crown
+The choral praise, the chanted prayers
+From harps by angels strung,
+The hunted Cameron's mountain airs,
+The hymns that Luther sung!
+
+Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes,
+The sounds of earth are heard,
+As through the open minster floats
+The song of breeze and bird
+Not less the wonder of the sky
+That daisies bloom below;
+The brook sings on, though loud and high
+The cloudy organs blow!
+
+And, if the tender ear be jarred
+That, haply, hears by turns
+The saintly harp of Olney's bard,
+The pastoral pipe of Burns,
+No discord mars His perfect plan
+Who gave them both a tongue;
+For he who sings the love of man
+The love of God hath sung!
+
+To-day be every fault forgiven
+Of him in whom we joy
+We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven
+And leave the earth's alloy.
+Be ours his music as of spring,
+His sweetness as of flowers,
+The songs the bard himself might sing
+In holier ears than ours.
+
+Sweet airs of love and home, the hum
+Of household melodies,
+Come singing, as the robins come
+To sing in door-yard trees.
+And, heart to heart, two nations lean,
+No rival wreaths to twine,
+But blending in eternal green
+The holly and the pine!
+
+
+
+IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE.
+
+In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's mountains,
+Across the charmed bay
+Whose blue waves keep with Capri's silver fountains
+Perpetual holiday,
+
+A king lies dead, his wafer duly eaten,
+His gold-bought masses given;
+And Rome's great altar smokes with gums to sweeten
+Her foulest gift to Heaven.
+
+And while all Naples thrills with mute thanksgiving,
+The court of England's queen
+For the dead monster so abhorred while living
+In mourning garb is seen.
+
+With a true sorrow God rebukes that feigning;
+By lone Edgbaston's side
+Stands a great city in the sky's sad raining,
+Bareheaded and wet-eyed!
+
+Silent for once the restless hive of labor,
+Save the low funeral tread,
+Or voice of craftsman whispering to his neighbor
+The good deeds of the dead.
+
+For him no minster's chant of the immortals
+Rose from the lips of sin;
+No mitred priest swung back the heavenly portals
+To let the white soul in.
+
+But Age and Sickness framed their tearful faces
+In the low hovel's door,
+And prayers went up from all the dark by-places
+And Ghettos of the poor.
+
+The pallid toiler and the negro chattel,
+The vagrant of the street,
+The human dice wherewith in games of battle
+The lords of earth compete,
+
+Touched with a grief that needs no outward draping,
+All swelled the long lament,
+Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping
+His viewless monument!
+
+For never yet, with ritual pomp and splendor,
+In the long heretofore,
+A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and tender,
+Has England's turf closed o'er.
+
+And if there fell from out her grand old steeples
+No crash of brazen wail,
+The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and peoples
+Swept in on every gale.
+
+It came from Holstein's birchen-belted meadows,
+And from the tropic calms
+Of Indian islands in the sunlit shadows
+Of Occidental palms;
+
+From the locked roadsteads of the Bothniaii peasants,
+And harbors of the Finn,
+Where war's worn victims saw his gentle presence
+Come sailing, Christ-like, in,
+
+To seek the lost, to build the old waste places,
+To link the hostile shores
+Of severing seas, and sow with England's daisies
+The moss of Finland's moors.
+
+Thanks for the good man's beautiful example,
+Who in the vilest saw
+Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple
+Still vocal with God's law;
+
+And heard with tender ear the spirit sighing
+As from its prison cell,
+Praying for pity, like the mournful crying
+Of Jonah out of hell.
+
+Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion,
+But a fine sense of right,
+And Truth's directness, meeting each occasion
+Straight as a line of light.
+
+His faith and works, like streams that intermingle,
+In the same channel ran
+The crystal clearness of an eye kept single
+Shamed all the frauds of man.
+
+The very gentlest of all human natures
+He joined to courage strong,
+And love outreaching unto all God's creatures
+With sturdy hate of wrong.
+
+Tender as woman, manliness and meekness
+In him were so allied
+That they who judged him by his strength or weakness
+Saw but a single side.
+
+Men failed, betrayed him, but his zeal seemed nourished
+By failure and by fall;
+Still a large faith in human-kind he cherished,
+And in God's love for all.
+
+And now he rests: his greatness and his sweetness
+No more shall seem at strife,
+And death has moulded into calm completeness
+The statue of his life.
+
+Where the dews glisten and the songbirds warble,
+His dust to dust is laid,
+In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of marble
+To shame his modest shade.
+
+The forges glow, the hammers all are ringing;
+Beneath its smoky vale,
+Hard by, the city of his love is swinging
+Its clamorous iron flail.
+
+
+But round his grave are quietude and beauty,
+And the sweet heaven above,--
+The fitting symbols of a life of duty
+Transfigured into love!
+1859.
+
+
+
+BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE
+
+John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying day:
+"I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery's pay.
+But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free,
+With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!"
+
+John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die;
+And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh.
+Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face grew mild,
+As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro's child.
+
+The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart;
+And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the loving heart.
+That kiss from all its guilty means redeemed the good intent,
+And round the grisly fighter's hair the martyr's aureole bent!
+
+Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good
+Long live the generous purpose unstained with human blood!
+Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought which underlies;
+Not the borderer's pride of daring, but the Christian's sacrifice.
+
+Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the Northern rifle hear,
+Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on the negro's spear.
+But let the free-winged angel Truth their guarded passes scale,
+To teach that right is more than might, and justice more than mail!
+
+So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in array;
+In vain her trampling squadrons knead the winter snow with clay.
+She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she dares not harm the dove;
+And every gate she bars to Hate shall open wide to Love!
+1859.
+
+
+
+NAPLES
+
+INSCRIBED TO ROBERT C. WATERSTON, OF BOSTON.
+
+     Helen Waterston died at Naples in her eighteenth year, and lies
+     buried in the Protestant cemetery there. The stone over her grave
+     bears the lines,
+
+               Fold her, O Father, in Thine arms,
+               And let her henceforth be
+               A messenger of love between
+               Our human hearts and Thee.
+
+I give thee joy!--I know to thee
+The dearest spot on earth must be
+Where sleeps thy loved one by the summer sea;
+
+
+Where, near her sweetest poet's tomb,
+The land of Virgil gave thee room
+To lay thy flower with her perpetual bloom.
+
+I know that when the sky shut down
+Behind thee on the gleaming town,
+On Baiae's baths and Posilippo's crown;
+
+And, through thy tears, the mocking day
+Burned Ischia's mountain lines away,
+And Capri melted in its sunny bay;
+
+Through thy great farewell sorrow shot
+The sharp pang of a bitter thought
+That slaves must tread around that holy spot.
+
+Thou knewest not the land was blest
+In giving thy beloved rest,
+Holding the fond hope closer to her breast,
+
+That every sweet and saintly grave
+Was freedom's prophecy, and gave
+The pledge of Heaven to sanctify and save.
+
+That pledge is answered. To thy ear
+The unchained city sends its cheer,
+And, tuned to joy, the muffled bells of fear
+
+Ring Victor in. The land sits free
+And happy by the summer sea,
+And Bourbon Naples now is Italy!
+
+She smiles above her broken chain
+The languid smile that follows pain,
+Stretching her cramped limbs to the sun again.
+
+Oh, joy for all, who hear her call
+From gray Camaldoli's convent-wall
+And Elmo's towers to freedom's carnival!
+
+A new life breathes among her vines
+And olives, like the breath of pines
+Blown downward from the breezy Apennines.
+
+Lean, O my friend, to meet that breath,
+Rejoice as one who witnesseth
+Beauty from ashes rise, and life from death!
+
+Thy sorrow shall no more be pain,
+Its tears shall fall in sunlit rain,
+Writing the grave with flowers: "Arisen again!"
+1860.
+
+
+
+A MEMORIAL
+
+     Moses Austin Cartland, a dear friend and relation, who led a
+     faithful life as a teacher and died in the summer of 1863.
+
+Oh, thicker, deeper, darker growing,
+The solemn vista to the tomb
+Must know henceforth another shadow,
+And give another cypress room.
+
+In love surpassing that of brothers,
+We walked, O friend, from childhood's day;
+And, looking back o'er fifty summers,
+Our footprints track a common way.
+
+One in our faith, and one our longing
+To make the world within our reach
+Somewhat the better for our living,
+And gladder for our human speech.
+
+Thou heard'st with me the far-off voices,
+The old beguiling song of fame,
+But life to thee was warm and present,
+And love was better than a name.
+
+To homely joys and loves and friendships
+Thy genial nature fondly clung;
+And so the shadow on the dial
+Ran back and left thee always young.
+
+And who could blame the generous weakness
+Which, only to thyself unjust,
+So overprized the worth of others,
+And dwarfed thy own with self-distrust?
+
+All hearts grew warmer in the presence
+Of one who, seeking not his own,
+Gave freely for the love of giving,
+Nor reaped for self the harvest sown.
+
+Thy greeting smile was pledge and prelude
+Of generous deeds and kindly words;
+In thy large heart were fair guest-chambers,
+Open to sunrise and the birds;
+
+The task was thine to mould and fashion
+Life's plastic newness into grace
+To make the boyish heart heroic,
+And light with thought the maiden's face.
+
+O'er all the land, in town and prairie,
+With bended heads of mourning, stand
+The living forms that owe their beauty
+And fitness to thy shaping hand.
+
+Thy call has come in ripened manhood,
+The noonday calm of heart and mind,
+While I, who dreamed of thy remaining
+To mourn me, linger still behind,
+
+Live on, to own, with self-upbraiding,
+A debt of love still due from me,--
+The vain remembrance of occasions,
+Forever lost, of serving thee.
+
+It was not mine among thy kindred
+To join the silent funeral prayers,
+But all that long sad day of summer
+My tears of mourning dropped with theirs.
+
+All day the sea-waves sobbed with sorrow,
+The birds forgot their merry trills
+All day I heard the pines lamenting
+With thine upon thy homestead hills.
+
+Green be those hillside pines forever,
+And green the meadowy lowlands be,
+And green the old memorial beeches,
+Name-carven in the woods of Lee.
+
+Still let them greet thy life companions
+Who thither turn their pilgrim feet,
+In every mossy line recalling
+A tender memory sadly sweet.
+
+O friend! if thought and sense avail not
+To know thee henceforth as thou art,
+That all is well with thee forever
+I trust the instincts of my heart.
+
+Thine be the quiet habitations,
+Thine the green pastures, blossom-sown,
+And smiles of saintly recognition,
+As sweet and tender as thy own.
+
+Thou com'st not from the hush and shadow
+To meet us, but to thee we come,
+With thee we never can be strangers,
+And where thou art must still be home.
+1863.
+
+
+
+BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY
+
+     Mr. Bryant's seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, was celebrated
+     by a festival to which these verses were sent.
+
+We praise not now the poet's art,
+The rounded beauty of his song;
+Who weighs him from his life apart
+Must do his nobler nature wrong.
+
+Not for the eye, familiar grown
+With charms to common sight denied,
+The marvellous gift he shares alone
+With him who walked on Rydal-side;
+
+Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay,
+Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears;
+We speak his praise who wears to-day
+The glory of his seventy years.
+
+When Peace brings Freedom in her train,
+Let happy lips his songs rehearse;
+His life is now his noblest strain,
+His manhood better than his verse!
+
+Thank God! his hand on Nature's keys
+Its cunning keeps at life's full span;
+But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these,
+The poet seems beside the man!
+
+So be it! let the garlands die,
+The singer's wreath, the painter's meed,
+Let our names perish, if thereby
+Our country may be saved and freed!
+1864.
+
+
+
+THOMAS STARR KING
+
+     Published originally as a prelude to the posthumous volume of
+     selections edited by Richard Frothingham.
+
+
+The great work laid upon his twoscore years
+Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears,
+Who loved him as few men were ever loved,
+We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan
+With him whose life stands rounded and approved
+In the full growth and stature of a man.
+Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope,
+With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope!
+Wave cheerily still, O banner, half-way down,
+From thousand-masted bay and steepled town!
+Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell
+Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell
+That the brave sower saw his ripened grain.
+O East and West! O morn and sunset twain
+No more forever!--has he lived in vain
+Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told
+Your bridal service from his lips of gold?
+1864.
+
+
+
+LINES ON A FLY-LEAF.
+
+I need not ask thee, for my sake,
+To read a book which well may make
+Its way by native force of wit
+Without my manual sign to it.
+Its piquant writer needs from me
+No gravely masculine guaranty,
+And well might laugh her merriest laugh
+At broken spears in her behalf;
+Yet, spite of all the critics tell,
+I frankly own I like her well.
+It may be that she wields a pen
+Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned men,
+That her keen arrows search and try
+The armor joints of dignity,
+And, though alone for error meant,
+Sing through the air irreverent.
+I blame her not, the young athlete
+Who plants her woman's tiny feet,
+And dares the chances of debate
+Where bearded men might hesitate,
+Who, deeply earnest, seeing well
+The ludicrous and laughable,
+Mingling in eloquent excess
+Her anger and her tenderness,
+And, chiding with a half-caress,
+Strives, less for her own sex than ours,
+With principalities and powers,
+And points us upward to the clear
+Sunned heights of her new atmosphere.
+
+Heaven mend her faults!--I will not pause
+To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws,
+Or waste my pity when some fool
+Provokes her measureless ridicule.
+Strong-minded is she? Better so
+Than dulness set for sale or show,
+A household folly, capped and belled
+In fashion's dance of puppets held,
+Or poor pretence of womanhood,
+Whose formal, flavorless platitude
+Is warranted from all offence
+Of robust meaning's violence.
+Give me the wine of thought whose head
+Sparkles along the page I read,--
+Electric words in which I find
+The tonic of the northwest wind;
+The wisdom which itself allies
+To sweet and pure humanities,
+Where scorn of meanness, hate of wrong,
+Are underlaid by love as strong;
+The genial play of mirth that lights
+Grave themes of thought, as when, on nights
+Of summer-time, the harmless blaze
+Of thunderless heat-lightning plays,
+And tree and hill-top resting dim
+And doubtful on the sky's vague rim,
+Touched by that soft and lambent gleam,
+Start sharply outlined from their dream.
+
+Talk not to me of woman's sphere,
+Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer,
+Nor wrong the manliest saint of all
+By doubt, if he were here, that Paul
+Would own the heroines who have lent
+Grace to truth's stern arbitrament,
+Foregone the praise to woman sweet,
+And cast their crowns at Duty's feet;
+Like her, who by her strong Appeal
+Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel,
+Who, earliest summoned to withstand
+The color-madness of the land,
+Counted her life-long losses gain,
+And made her own her sisters' pain;
+Or her who, in her greenwood shade,
+Heard the sharp call that Freedom made,
+And, answering, struck from Sappho's lyre
+Of love the Tyrtman carmen's fire
+Or that young girl,--Domremy's maid
+Revived a nobler cause to aid,--
+Shaking from warning finger-tips
+The doom of her apocalypse;
+Or her, who world-wide entrance gave
+To the log-cabin of the slave,
+Made all his want and sorrow known,
+And all earth's languages his own.
+1866.
+
+
+
+GEORGE L. STEARNS
+
+     No man rendered greater service to the cause of freedom than Major
+     Stearns in the great struggle between invading slave-holders and
+     the free settlers of Kansas.
+
+He has done the work of a true man,--
+Crown him, honor him, love him.
+Weep, over him, tears of woman,
+Stoop manliest brows above him!
+
+O dusky mothers and daughters,
+Vigils of mourning keep for him!
+Up in the mountains, and down by the waters,
+Lift up your voices and weep for him,
+
+For the warmest of hearts is frozen,
+The freest of hands is still;
+And the gap in our picked and chosen
+The long years may not fill.
+
+No duty could overtask him,
+No need his will outrun;
+Or ever our lips could ask him,
+His hands the work had done.
+
+He forgot his own soul for others,
+Himself to his neighbor lending;
+He found the Lord in his suffering brothers,
+And not in the clouds descending.
+
+So the bed was sweet to die on,
+Whence he saw the doors wide swung
+Against whose bolted iron
+The strength of his life was flung.
+
+And he saw ere his eye was darkened
+The sheaves of the harvest-bringing,
+And knew while his ear yet hearkened
+The voice of the reapers singing.
+
+Ah, well! The world is discreet;
+There are plenty to pause and wait;
+But here was a man who set his feet
+Sometimes in advance of fate;
+
+Plucked off the old bark when the inner
+Was slow to renew it,
+And put to the Lord's work the sinner
+When saints failed to do it.
+
+Never rode to the wrong's redressing
+A worthier paladin.
+Shall he not hear the blessing,
+"Good and faithful, enter in!"
+1867
+
+
+
+GARIBALDI
+
+In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw
+The casting down of thrones. Thou, watching lone
+The hot Sardinian coast-line, hazy-hilled,
+Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky zone
+With foam, the slow waves gather and withdraw,
+Behold'st the vision of the seer fulfilled,
+And hear'st the sea-winds burdened with a sound
+Of falling chains, as, one by one, unbound,
+The nations lift their right hands up and swear
+Their oath of freedom. From the chalk-white wall
+Of England, from the black Carpathian range,
+Along the Danube and the Theiss, through all
+The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees,
+And from the Seine's thronged banks, a murmur strange
+And glad floats to thee o'er thy summer seas
+On the salt wind that stirs thy whitening hair,--
+The song of freedom's bloodless victories!
+Rejoice, O Garibaldi! Though thy sword
+Failed at Rome's gates, and blood seemed vainly poured
+Where, in Christ's name, the crowned infidel
+Of France wrought murder with the arms of hell
+On that sad mountain slope whose ghostly dead,
+Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban,
+Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vatican,
+And draw the curtains of Napoleon's bed!
+God's providence is not blind, but, full of eyes,
+It searches all the refuges of lies;
+And in His time and way, the accursed things
+Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage
+Has clashed defiance from hot youth to age
+Shall perish. All men shall be priests and kings,
+One royal brotherhood, one church made free
+By love, which is the law of liberty
+1869.
+
+
+
+TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD,
+
+ON READING HER POEM IN "THE STANDARD."
+
+     Mrs. Child wrote her lines, beginning, "Again the trees are clothed
+     in vernal green," May 24, 1859, on the first anniversary of Ellis
+     Gray Loring's death, but did not publish them for some years
+     afterward, when I first read them, or I could not have made the
+     reference which I did to the extinction of slavery.
+
+The sweet spring day is glad with music,
+But through it sounds a sadder strain;
+The worthiest of our narrowing circle
+Sings Loring's dirges o'er again.
+
+O woman greatly loved! I join thee
+In tender memories of our friend;
+With thee across the awful spaces
+The greeting of a soul I send!
+
+What cheer hath he? How is it with him?
+Where lingers he this weary while?
+Over what pleasant fields of Heaven
+Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile?
+
+Does he not know our feet are treading
+The earth hard down on Slavery's grave?
+That, in our crowning exultations,
+We miss the charm his presence gave?
+
+Why on this spring air comes no whisper
+From him to tell us all is well?
+Why to our flower-time comes no token
+Of lily and of asphodel?
+
+I feel the unutterable longing,
+Thy hunger of the heart is mine;
+I reach and grope for hands in darkness,
+My ear grows sharp for voice or sign.
+
+Still on the lips of all we question
+The finger of God's silence lies;
+Will the lost hands in ours be folded?
+Will the shut eyelids ever rise?
+
+O friend! no proof beyond this yearning,
+This outreach of our hearts, we need;
+God will not mock the hope He giveth,
+No love He prompts shall vainly plead.
+
+Then let us stretch our hands in darkness,
+And call our loved ones o'er and o'er;
+Some day their arms shall close about us,
+And the old voices speak once more.
+
+No dreary splendors wait our coming
+Where rapt ghost sits from ghost apart;
+Homeward we go to Heaven's thanksgiving,
+The harvest-gathering of the heart.
+1870.
+
+
+THE SINGER.
+
+     This poem was written on the death of Alice Cary. Her sister
+     Phoebe, heart-broken by her loss, followed soon after. Noble and
+     richly gifted, lovely in person and character, they left behind
+     them only friends and admirers.
+
+Years since (but names to me before),
+Two sisters sought at eve my door;
+Two song-birds wandering from their nest,
+A gray old farm-house in the West.
+
+How fresh of life the younger one,
+Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun!
+Her gravest mood could scarce displace
+The dimples of her nut-brown face.
+
+Wit sparkled on her lips not less
+For quick and tremulous tenderness;
+And, following close her merriest glance,
+Dreamed through her eyes the heart's romance.
+
+Timid and still, the elder had
+Even then a smile too sweetly sad;
+The crown of pain that all must wear
+Too early pressed her midnight hair.
+
+Yet ere the summer eve grew long,
+Her modest lips were sweet with song;
+A memory haunted all her words
+Of clover-fields and singing birds.
+
+Her dark, dilating eyes expressed
+The broad horizons of the west;
+Her speech dropped prairie flowers; the gold
+Of harvest wheat about her rolled.
+
+Fore-doomed to song she seemed to me
+I queried not with destiny
+I knew the trial and the need,
+Yet, all the more, I said, God speed?
+
+What could I other than I did?
+Could I a singing-bird forbid?
+Deny the wind-stirred leaf? Rebuke
+The music of the forest brook?
+
+She went with morning from my door,
+But left me richer than before;
+Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer,
+The welcome of her partial ear.
+
+Years passed: through all the land her name
+A pleasant household word became
+All felt behind the singer stood
+A sweet and gracious womanhood.
+
+Her life was earnest work, not play;
+Her tired feet climbed a weary way;
+And even through her lightest strain
+We heard an undertone of pain.
+
+Unseen of her her fair fame grew,
+The good she did she rarely knew,
+Unguessed of her in life the love
+That rained its tears her grave above.
+
+When last I saw her, full of peace,
+She waited for her great release;
+And that old friend so sage and bland,
+Our later Franklin, held her hand.
+
+For all that patriot bosoms stirs
+Had moved that woman's heart of hers,
+And men who toiled in storm and sun
+Found her their meet companion.
+
+Our converse, from her suffering bed
+To healthful themes of life she led
+The out-door world of bud and bloom
+And light and sweetness filled her room.
+
+Yet evermore an underthought
+Of loss to come within us wrought,
+And all the while we felt the strain
+Of the strong will that conquered pain.
+
+God giveth quietness at last!
+The common way that all have passed
+She went, with mortal yearnings fond,
+To fuller life and love beyond.
+
+Fold the rapt soul in your embrace,
+My dear ones! Give the singer place
+To you, to her,--I know not where,--
+I lift the silence of a prayer.
+
+For only thus our own we find;
+The gone before, the left behind,
+All mortal voices die between;
+The unheard reaches the unseen.
+
+Again the blackbirds sing; the streams
+Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams,
+And tremble in the April showers
+The tassels of the maple flowers.
+
+But not for her has spring renewed
+The sweet surprises of the wood;
+And bird and flower are lost to her
+Who was their best interpreter.
+
+What to shut eyes has God revealed?
+What hear the ears that death has sealed?
+What undreamed beauty passing show
+Requites the loss of all we know?
+
+O silent land, to which we move,
+Enough if there alone be love,
+And mortal need can ne'er outgrow
+What it is waiting to bestow!
+
+O white soul! from that far-off shore
+Float some sweet song the waters o'er.
+Our faith confirm, our fears dispel,
+With the old voice we loved so well!
+1871.
+
+
+
+HOW MARY GREW.
+
+     These lines were in answer to an invitation to hear a lecture of
+     Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, before the Boston Radical Club. The
+     reference in the last stanza is to an essay on Sappho by T. W.
+     Higginson, read at the club the preceding month.
+
+With wisdom far beyond her years,
+And graver than her wondering peers,
+So strong, so mild, combining still
+The tender heart and queenly will,
+To conscience and to duty true,
+So, up from childhood, Mary Grew!
+
+Then in her gracious womanhood
+She gave her days to doing good.
+She dared the scornful laugh of men,
+The hounding mob, the slanderer's pen.
+She did the work she found to do,--
+A Christian heroine, Mary Grew!
+
+The freed slave thanks her; blessing comes
+To her from women's weary homes;
+The wronged and erring find in her
+Their censor mild and comforter.
+The world were safe if but a few
+Could grow in grace as Mary Grew!
+
+So, New Year's Eve, I sit and say,
+By this low wood-fire, ashen gray;
+Just wishing, as the night shuts down,
+That I could hear in Boston town,
+In pleasant Chestnut Avenue,
+From her own lips, how Mary Grew!
+
+And hear her graceful hostess tell
+The silver-voiced oracle
+Who lately through her parlors spoke
+As through Dodona's sacred oak,
+A wiser truth than any told
+By Sappho's lips of ruddy gold,--
+The way to make the world anew,
+Is just to grow--as Mary Grew
+1871.
+
+
+
+SUMNER
+
+     "I am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of
+     conduct, or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave; but,
+     by the grace of God, I have kept my life unsullied."
+     --MILTON'S _Defence of the People of England_.
+
+O Mother State! the winds of March
+Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of God,
+Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch
+Of sky, thy mourning children trod.
+
+And now, with all thy woods in leaf,
+Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead
+Thou sittest, in thy robes of grief,
+A Rachel yet uncomforted!
+
+And once again the organ swells,
+Once more the flag is half-way hung,
+And yet again the mournful bells
+In all thy steeple-towers are rung.
+
+And I, obedient to thy will,
+Have come a simple wreath to lay,
+Superfluous, on a grave that still
+Is sweet with all the flowers of May.
+
+I take, with awe, the task assigned;
+It may be that my friend might miss,
+In his new sphere of heart and mind,
+Some token from my band in this.
+
+By many a tender memory moved,
+Along the past my thought I send;
+The record of the cause he loved
+Is the best record of its friend.
+
+No trumpet sounded in his ear,
+He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame,
+But never yet to Hebrew seer
+A clearer voice of duty came.
+
+God said: "Break thou these yokes; undo
+These heavy burdens. I ordain
+A work to last thy whole life through,
+A ministry of strife and pain.
+
+"Forego thy dreams of lettered ease,
+Put thou the scholar's promise by,
+The rights of man are more than these."
+He heard, and answered: "Here am I!"
+
+He set his face against the blast,
+His feet against the flinty shard,
+Till the hard service grew, at last,
+Its own exceeding great reward.
+
+Lifted like Saul's above the crowd,
+Upon his kingly forehead fell
+The first sharp bolt of Slavery's cloud,
+Launched at the truth he urged so well.
+
+Ah! never yet, at rack or stake,
+Was sorer loss made Freedom's gain,
+Than his, who suffered for her sake
+The beak-torn Titan's lingering pain!
+
+The fixed star of his faith, through all
+Loss, doubt, and peril, shone the same;
+As through a night of storm, some tall,
+Strong lighthouse lifts its steady flame.
+
+Beyond the dust and smoke he saw
+The sheaves of Freedom's large increase,
+The holy fanes of equal law,
+The New Jerusalem of peace.
+
+The weak might fear, the worldling mock,
+The faint and blind of heart regret;
+All knew at last th' eternal rock
+On which his forward feet were set.
+
+The subtlest scheme of compromise
+Was folly to his purpose bold;
+The strongest mesh of party lies
+Weak to the simplest truth he told.
+
+One language held his heart and lip,
+Straight onward to his goal he trod,
+And proved the highest statesmanship
+Obedience to the voice of God.
+
+No wail was in his voice,--none heard,
+When treason's storm-cloud blackest grew,
+The weakness of a doubtful word;
+His duty, and the end, he knew.
+
+The first to smite, the first to spare;
+When once the hostile ensigns fell,
+He stretched out hands of generous care
+To lift the foe he fought so well.
+
+For there was nothing base or small
+Or craven in his soul's broad plan;
+Forgiving all things personal,
+He hated only wrong to man.
+
+The old traditions of his State,
+The memories of her great and good,
+Took from his life a fresher date,
+And in himself embodied stood.
+
+How felt the greed of gold and place,
+The venal crew that schemed and planned,
+The fine scorn of that haughty face,
+The spurning of that bribeless hand!
+
+If than Rome's tribunes statelier
+He wore his senatorial robe,
+His lofty port was all for her,
+The one dear spot on all the globe.
+
+If to the master's plea he gave
+The vast contempt his manhood felt,
+He saw a brother in the slave,--
+With man as equal man he dealt.
+
+Proud was he? If his presence kept
+Its grandeur wheresoe'er he trod,
+As if from Plutarch's gallery stepped
+The hero and the demigod,
+
+None failed, at least, to reach his ear,
+Nor want nor woe appealed in vain;
+The homesick soldier knew his cheer,
+And blessed him from his ward of pain.
+
+Safely his dearest friends may own
+The slight defects he never hid,
+The surface-blemish in the stone
+Of the tall, stately pyramid.
+
+Suffice it that he never brought
+His conscience to the public mart;
+But lived himself the truth he taught,
+White-souled, clean-handed, pure of heart.
+
+What if he felt the natural pride
+Of power in noble use, too true
+With thin humilities to hide
+The work he did, the lore he knew?
+
+Was he not just? Was any wronged
+By that assured self-estimate?
+He took but what to him belonged,
+Unenvious of another's state.
+
+Well might he heed the words he spake,
+And scan with care the written page
+Through which he still shall warm and wake
+The hearts of men from age to age.
+
+Ah! who shall blame him now because
+He solaced thus his hours of pain!
+Should not the o'erworn thresher pause,
+And hold to light his golden grain?
+
+No sense of humor dropped its oil
+On the hard ways his purpose went;
+Small play of fancy lightened toil;
+He spake alone the thing he meant.
+
+He loved his books, the Art that hints
+A beauty veiled behind its own,
+The graver's line, the pencil's tints,
+The chisel's shape evoked from stone.
+
+He cherished, void of selfish ends,
+The social courtesies that bless
+And sweeten life, and loved his friends
+With most unworldly tenderness.
+
+But still his tired eyes rarely learned
+The glad relief by Nature brought;
+Her mountain ranges never turned
+His current of persistent thought.
+
+The sea rolled chorus to his speech
+Three-banked like Latium's' tall trireme,
+With laboring oars; the grove and beach
+Were Forum and the Academe.
+
+The sensuous joy from all things fair
+His strenuous bent of soul repressed,
+And left from youth to silvered hair
+Few hours for pleasure, none for rest.
+
+For all his life was poor without,
+O Nature, make the last amends
+Train all thy flowers his grave about,
+And make thy singing-birds his friends!
+
+Revive again, thou summer rain,
+The broken turf upon his bed
+Breathe, summer wind, thy tenderest strain
+Of low, sweet music overhead!
+
+With calm and beauty symbolize
+The peace which follows long annoy,
+And lend our earth-bent, mourning eyes,
+Some hint of his diviner joy.
+
+For safe with right and truth he is,
+As God lives he must live alway;
+There is no end for souls like his,
+No night for children of the day!
+
+Nor cant nor poor solicitudes
+Made weak his life's great argument;
+Small leisure his for frames and moods
+Who followed Duty where she went.
+
+The broad, fair fields of God he saw
+Beyond the bigot's narrow bound;
+The truths he moulded into law
+In Christ's beatitudes he found.
+
+His state-craft was the Golden Rule,
+His right of vote a sacred trust;
+Clear, over threat and ridicule,
+All heard his challenge: "Is it just?"
+
+And when the hour supreme had come,
+Not for himself a thought he gave;
+In that last pang of martyrdom,
+His care was for the half-freed slave.
+
+Not vainly dusky hands upbore,
+In prayer, the passing soul to heaven
+Whose mercy to His suffering poor
+Was service to the Master given.
+
+Long shall the good State's annals tell,
+Her children's children long be taught,
+How, praised or blamed, he guarded well
+The trust he neither shunned nor sought.
+
+If for one moment turned thy face,
+O Mother, from thy son, not long
+He waited calmly in his place
+The sure remorse which follows wrong.
+
+Forgiven be the State he loved
+The one brief lapse, the single blot;
+Forgotten be the stain removed,
+Her righted record shows it not!
+
+The lifted sword above her shield
+With jealous care shall guard his fame;
+The pine-tree on her ancient field
+To all the winds shall speak his name.
+
+The marble image of her son
+Her loving hands shall yearly crown,
+And from her pictured Pantheon
+His grand, majestic face look down.
+
+O State so passing rich before,
+Who now shall doubt thy highest claim?
+The world that counts thy jewels o'er
+Shall longest pause at Sumner's name!
+1874.
+
+
+
+THEIRS
+
+I.
+Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act
+A history stranger than his written fact,
+Him who portrayed the splendor and the gloom
+Of that great hour when throne and altar fell
+With long death-groan which still is audible.
+He, when around the walls of Paris rung
+The Prussian bugle like the blast of doom,
+And every ill which follows unblest war
+Maddened all France from Finistere to Var,
+The weight of fourscore from his shoulders flung,
+And guided Freedom in the path he saw
+Lead out of chaos into light and law,
+Peace, not imperial, but republican,
+And order pledged to all the Rights of Man.
+
+II.
+Death called him from a need as imminent
+As that from which the Silent William went
+When powers of evil, like the smiting seas
+On Holland's dikes, assailed her liberties.
+Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance hung
+The weal and woe of France, the bells were rung
+For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will,
+Above his bier the hearts of men stood still.
+Then, as if set to his dead lips, the horn
+Of Roland wound once more to rouse and warn,
+The old voice filled the air! His last brave word
+Not vainly France to all her boundaries stirred.
+Strong as in life, he still for Freedom wrought,
+As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought.
+1877.
+
+
+
+FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.
+
+AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS STATUE.
+
+Among their graven shapes to whom
+Thy civic wreaths belong,
+O city of his love, make room
+For one whose gift was song.
+
+Not his the soldier's sword to wield,
+Nor his the helm of state,
+Nor glory of the stricken field,
+Nor triumph of debate.
+
+In common ways, with common men,
+He served his race and time
+As well as if his clerkly pen
+Had never danced to rhyme.
+
+If, in the thronged and noisy mart,
+The Muses found their son,
+Could any say his tuneful art
+A duty left undone?
+
+He toiled and sang; and year by year
+Men found their homes more sweet,
+And through a tenderer atmosphere
+Looked down the brick-walled street.
+
+The Greek's wild onset gall Street knew;
+The Red King walked Broadway;
+And Alnwick Castle's roses blew
+From Palisades to Bay.
+
+Fair City by the Sea! upraise
+His veil with reverent hands;
+And mingle with thy own the praise
+And pride of other lands.
+
+Let Greece his fiery lyric breathe
+Above her hero-urns;
+And Scotland, with her holly, wreathe
+The flower he culled for Burns.
+
+Oh, stately stand thy palace walls,
+Thy tall ships ride the seas;
+To-day thy poet's name recalls
+A prouder thought than these.
+
+Not less thy pulse of trade shall beat,
+Nor less thy tall fleets swim,
+That shaded square and dusty street
+Are classic ground through him.
+
+Alive, he loved, like all who sing,
+The echoes of his song;
+Too late the tardy meed we bring,
+The praise delayed so long.
+
+Too late, alas! Of all who knew
+The living man, to-day
+Before his unveiled face, how few
+Make bare their locks of gray!
+
+Our lips of praise must soon be dumb,
+Our grateful eyes be dim;
+O brothers of the days to come,
+Take tender charge of him!
+
+New hands the wires of song may sweep,
+New voices challenge fame;
+But let no moss of years o'ercreep
+The lines of Halleck's name.
+1877.
+
+
+
+WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT.
+
+Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn
+Beside her sea-blown shore;
+Her well beloved, her noblest born,
+Is hers in life no more!
+
+No lapse of years can render less
+Her memory's sacred claim;
+No fountain of forgetfulness
+Can wet the lips of Fame.
+
+A grief alike to wound and heal,
+A thought to soothe and pain,
+The sad, sweet pride that mothers feel
+To her must still remain.
+
+Good men and true she has not lacked,
+And brave men yet shall be;
+The perfect flower, the crowning fact,
+Of all her years was he!
+
+As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage,
+What worthier knight was found
+To grace in Arthur's golden age
+The fabled Table Round?
+
+A voice, the battle's trumpet-note,
+To welcome and restore;
+A hand, that all unwilling smote,
+To heal and build once more;
+
+A soul of fire, a tender heart
+Too warm for hate, he knew
+The generous victor's graceful part
+To sheathe the sword he drew.
+
+When Earth, as if on evil dreams,
+Looks back upon her wars,
+And the white light of Christ outstreams
+From the red disk of Mars,
+
+His fame who led the stormy van
+Of battle well may cease,
+But never that which crowns the man
+Whose victory was Peace.
+
+Mourn, Essex, on thy sea-blown shore
+Thy beautiful and brave,
+Whose failing hand the olive bore,
+Whose dying lips forgave!
+
+Let age lament the youthful chief,
+And tender eyes be dim;
+The tears are more of joy than grief
+That fall for one like him!
+1878.
+
+
+
+BAYARD TAYLOR.
+
+I.
+"And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend?"
+My sister asked our guest one winter's day.
+Smiling he answered in the Friends' sweet way
+Common to both: "Wherever thou shall send!
+What wouldst thou have me see for thee?" She laughed,
+Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire's glow
+"Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low,
+Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing-craft."
+"All these and more I soon shall see for thee!"
+He answered cheerily: and he kept his pledge
+On Lapland snows, the North Cape's windy wedge,
+And Tromso freezing in its winter sea.
+He went and came. But no man knows the  track
+Of his last journey, and he comes not back!
+
+II.
+He brought us wonders of the new and old;
+We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent
+To him its story-telling secret lent.
+And, pleased, we listened to the tales he told.
+His task, beguiled with songs that shall endure,
+In manly, honest thoroughness he wrought;
+From humble home-lays to the heights of thought
+Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure.
+How, with the generous pride that friendship hath,
+We, who so loved him, saw at last the crown
+Of civic honor on his brows pressed down,
+Rejoiced, and knew not that the gift was death.
+And now for him, whose praise in deafened ears
+Two nations speak, we answer but with tears!
+
+III.
+O Vale of Chester! trod by him so oft,
+Green as thy June turf keep his memory. Let
+Nor wood, nor dell, nor storied stream forget,
+Nor winds that blow round lonely Cedarcroft;
+Let the home voices greet him in the far,
+Strange land that holds him; let the messages
+Of love pursue him o'er the chartless seas
+And unmapped vastness of his unknown star
+Love's language, heard beyond the loud discourse
+Of perishable fame, in every sphere
+Itself interprets; and its utterance here
+Somewhere in God's unfolding universe
+Shall reach our traveller, softening the surprise
+Of his rapt gaze on unfamiliar skies!
+1879.
+
+
+
+OUR AUTOCRAT.
+
+     Read at the breakfast given in honor of Dr. Holmes by the
+     publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, December 3, 1879.
+
+His laurels fresh from song and lay,
+Romance, art, science, rich in all,
+And young of heart, how dare we say
+We keep his seventieth festival?
+
+No sense is here of loss or lack;
+Before his sweetness and his light
+The dial holds its shadow back,
+The charmed hours delay their flight.
+
+His still the keen analysis
+Of men and moods, electric wit,
+Free play of mirth, and tenderness
+To heal the slightest wound from it.
+
+And his the pathos touching all
+Life's sins and sorrows and regrets,
+Its hopes and fears, its final call
+And rest beneath the violets.
+
+His sparkling surface scarce betrays
+The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled,
+The wisdom of the latter days,
+And tender memories of the old.
+
+What shapes and fancies, grave or gay,
+Before us at his bidding come
+The Treadmill tramp, the One-Horse Shay,
+The dumb despair of Elsie's doom!
+
+The tale of Avis and the Maid,
+The plea for lips that cannot speak,
+The holy kiss that Iris laid
+On Little Boston's pallid cheek!
+
+Long may he live to sing for us
+His sweetest songs at evening time,
+And, like his Chambered Nautilus,
+To holier heights of beauty climb,
+
+Though now unnumbered guests surround
+The table that he rules at will,
+Its Autocrat, however crowned,
+Is but our friend and comrade still.
+
+The world may keep his honored name,
+The wealth of all his varied powers;
+A stronger claim has love than fame,
+And he himself is only ours!
+
+
+
+WITHIN THE GATE.
+
+L. M. C.
+
+     I have more fully expressed my admiration and regard for Lydia
+     Maria Child in the biographical introduction which I wrote for the
+     volume of Letters, published after her death.
+
+We sat together, last May-day, and talked
+Of the dear friends who walked
+Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears
+Of five and forty years,
+
+Since first we met in Freedom's hope forlorn,
+And heard her battle-horn
+Sound through the valleys of the sleeping North,
+Calling her children forth,
+
+And youth pressed forward with hope-lighted eyes,
+And age, with forecast wise
+Of the long strife before the triumph won,
+Girded his armor on.
+
+Sadly, ass name by name we called the roll,
+We heard the dead-bells toll
+For the unanswering many, and we knew
+The living were the few.
+
+And we, who waited our own call before
+The inevitable door,
+Listened and looked, as all have done, to win
+Some token from within.
+
+No sign we saw, we heard no voices call;
+The impenetrable wall
+Cast down its shadow, like an awful doubt,
+On all who sat without.
+
+Of many a hint of life beyond the veil,
+And many a ghostly tale
+Wherewith the ages spanned the gulf between
+The seen and the unseen,
+
+Seeking from omen, trance, and dream to gain
+Solace to doubtful pain,
+And touch, with groping hands, the garment hem
+Of truth sufficing them,
+
+We talked; and, turning from the sore unrest
+Of an all-baffling quest,
+We thought of holy lives that from us passed
+Hopeful unto the last,
+
+As if they saw beyond the river of death,
+Like Him of Nazareth,
+The many mansions of the Eternal days
+Lift up their gates of praise.
+
+And, hushed to silence by a reverent awe,
+Methought, O friend, I saw
+In thy true life of word, and work, and thought
+The proof of all we sought.
+
+Did we not witness in the life of thee
+Immortal prophecy?
+And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps trod
+An everlasting road?
+
+Not for brief days thy generous sympathies,
+Thy scorn of selfish ease;
+Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal
+Thy strong uplift of soul.
+
+Than thine was never turned a fonder heart
+To nature and to art
+In fair-formed Hellas in her golden prime,
+Thy Philothea's time.
+
+Yet, loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by,
+And for the poor deny
+Thyself, and see thy fresh, sweet flower of fame
+Wither in blight and blame.
+
+Sharing His love who holds in His embrace
+The lowliest of our race,
+Sure the Divine economy must be
+Conservative of thee!
+
+For truth must live with truth, self-sacrifice
+Seek out its great allies;
+Good must find good by gravitation sure,
+And love with love endure.
+
+And so, since thou hast passed within the gate
+Whereby awhile I wait,
+I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie
+Thou hast not lived to die!
+1881.
+
+
+
+IN MEMORY.
+
+JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+As a guest who may not stay
+Long and sad farewells to say
+Glides with smiling face away,
+
+Of the sweetness and the zest
+Of thy happy life possessed
+Thou hast left us at thy best.
+
+Warm of heart and clear of brain,
+Of thy sun-bright spirit's wane
+Thou hast spared us all the pain.
+
+Now that thou hast gone away,
+What is left of one to say
+Who was open as the day?
+
+What is there to gloss or shun?
+Save with kindly voices none
+Speak thy name beneath the sun.
+
+Safe thou art on every side,
+Friendship nothing finds to hide,
+Love's demand is satisfied.
+
+Over manly strength and worth,
+At thy desk of toil, or hearth,
+Played the lambent light of mirth,--
+
+Mirth that lit, but never burned;
+All thy blame to pity turned;
+Hatred thou hadst never learned.
+
+Every harsh and vexing thing
+At thy home-fire lost its sting;
+Where thou wast was always spring.
+
+And thy perfect trust in good,
+Faith in man and womanhood,
+Chance and change and time, withstood.
+
+Small respect for cant and whine,
+Bigot's zeal and hate malign,
+Had that sunny soul of thine.
+
+But to thee was duty's claim
+Sacred, and thy lips became
+Reverent with one holy Name.
+
+Therefore, on thy unknown way,
+Go in God's peace! We who stay
+But a little while delay.
+
+Keep for us, O friend, where'er
+Thou art waiting, all that here
+Made thy earthly presence dear;
+
+Something of thy pleasant past
+On a ground of wonder cast,
+In the stiller waters glassed!
+
+Keep the human heart of thee;
+Let the mortal only be
+Clothed in immortality.
+
+And when fall our feet as fell
+Thine upon the asphodel,
+Let thy old smile greet us well;
+
+Proving in a world of bliss
+What we fondly dream in this,--
+Love is one with holiness!
+1881.
+
+
+
+WILSON
+
+     Read at the Massachusetts Club on the seventieth anniversary the
+     birthday of Vice-President Wilson, February 16, 1882.
+
+The lowliest born of all the land,
+He wrung from Fate's reluctant hand
+The gifts which happier boyhood claims;
+And, tasting on a thankless soil
+The bitter bread of unpaid toil,
+He fed his soul with noble aims.
+
+And Nature, kindly provident,
+To him the future's promise lent;
+The powers that shape man's destinies,
+Patience and faith and toil, he knew,
+The close horizon round him grew,
+Broad with great possibilities.
+
+By the low hearth-fire's fitful blaze
+He read of old heroic days,
+The sage's thought, the patriot's speech;
+Unhelped, alone, himself he taught,
+His school the craft at which he wrought,
+His lore the book within his, reach.
+
+He felt his country's need; he knew
+The work her children had to do;
+And when, at last, he heard the call
+In her behalf to serve and dare,
+Beside his senatorial chair
+He stood the unquestioned peer of all.
+
+Beyond the accident of birth
+He proved his simple manhood's worth;
+Ancestral pride and classic grace
+Confessed the large-brained artisan,
+So clear of sight, so wise in plan
+And counsel, equal to his place.
+
+With glance intuitive he saw
+Through all disguise of form and law,
+And read men like an open book;
+Fearless and firm, he never quailed
+Nor turned aside for threats, nor failed
+To do the thing he undertook.
+
+How wise, how brave, he was, how well
+He bore himself, let history tell
+While waves our flag o'er land and sea,
+No black thread in its warp or weft;
+He found dissevered States, he left
+A grateful Nation, strong and free!
+
+
+
+THE POET AND THE CHILDREN.
+
+LONGFELLOW.
+
+WITH a glory of winter sunshine
+Over his locks of gray,
+In the old historic mansion
+He sat on his last birthday;
+
+With his books and his pleasant pictures,
+And his household and his kin,
+While a sound as of myriads singing
+From far and near stole in.
+
+It came from his own fair city,
+From the prairie's boundless plain,
+From the Golden Gate of sunset,
+And the cedarn woods of Maine.
+
+And his heart grew warm within him,
+And his moistening eyes grew dim,
+For he knew that his country's children
+Were singing the songs of him,
+
+The lays of his life's glad morning,
+The psalms of his evening time,
+Whose echoes shall float forever
+On the winds of every clime.
+
+All their beautiful consolations,
+Sent forth like birds of cheer,
+Came flocking back to his windows,
+And sang in the Poet's ear.
+
+Grateful, but solemn and tender,
+The music rose and fell
+With a joy akin to sadness
+And a greeting like farewell.
+
+With a sense of awe he listened
+To the voices sweet and young;
+The last of earth and the first of heaven
+Seemed in the songs they sung.
+
+And waiting a little longer
+For the wonderful change to come,
+He heard the Summoning Angel,
+Who calls God's children home!
+
+And to him in a holier welcome
+Was the mystical meaning given
+Of the words of the blessed Master
+"Of such is the kingdom of heaven!"
+1882
+
+
+
+A WELCOME TO LOWELL
+
+Take our hands, James Russell Lowell,
+Our hearts are all thy own;
+To-day we bid thee welcome
+Not for ourselves alone.
+
+In the long years of thy absence
+Some of us have grown old,
+And some have passed the portals
+Of the Mystery untold;
+
+For the hands that cannot clasp thee,
+For the voices that are dumb,
+For each and all I bid thee
+A grateful welcome home!
+
+For Cedarcroft's sweet singer
+To the nine-fold Muses dear;
+For the Seer the winding Concord
+Paused by his door to hear;
+
+For him, our guide and Nestor,
+Who the march of song began,
+The white locks of his ninety years
+Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann!
+
+For him who, to the music
+Her pines and hemlocks played,
+Set the old and tender story
+Of the lorn Acadian maid;
+
+For him, whose voice for freedom
+Swayed friend and foe at will,
+Hushed is the tongue of silver,
+The golden lips are still!
+
+For her whose life of duty
+At scoff and menace smiled,
+Brave as the wife of Roland,
+Yet gentle as a Child.
+
+And for him the three-hilled city
+Shall hold in memory long,
+Those name is the hint and token
+Of the pleasant Fields of Song!
+
+For the old friends unforgotten,
+For the young thou hast not known,
+I speak their heart-warm greeting;
+Come back and take thy own!
+
+From England's royal farewells,
+And honors fitly paid,
+Come back, dear Russell Lowell,
+To Elmwood's waiting shade!
+
+Come home with all the garlands
+That crown of right thy head.
+I speak for comrades living,
+I speak for comrades dead!
+AMESBURY, 6th mo., 1885.
+
+
+
+AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL.
+
+GEORGE FULLER
+
+Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth
+Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve! How passing fair
+Her shapes took color in thy homestead air!
+How on thy canvas even her dreams were truth!
+Magician! who from commonest elements
+Called up divine ideals, clothed upon
+By mystic lights soft blending into one
+Womanly grace and child-like innocence.
+Teacher I thy lesson was not given in vain.
+Beauty is goodness; ugliness is sin;
+Art's place is sacred: nothing foul therein
+May crawl or tread with bestial feet profane.
+If rightly choosing is the painter's test,
+Thy choice, O master, ever was the best.
+1885.
+
+
+
+MULFORD.
+
+Author of The Nation and The Republic of God.
+
+Unnoted as the setting of a star
+He passed; and sect and party scarcely knew
+When from their midst a sage and seer withdrew
+To fitter audience, where the great dead are
+In God's republic of the heart and mind,
+Leaving no purer, nobler soul behind.
+1886.
+
+
+
+TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER
+
+Luck to the craft that bears this name of mine,
+Good fortune follow with her golden spoon
+The glazed hat and tarry pantaloon;
+And wheresoe'er her keel shall cut the brine,
+Cod, hake and haddock quarrel for her line.
+Shipped with her crew, whatever wind may blow,
+Or tides delay, my wish with her shall go,
+Fishing by proxy. Would that it might show
+At need her course, in lack of sun and star,
+Where icebergs threaten, and the sharp reefs are;
+Lift the blind fog on Anticosti's lee
+And Avalon's rock; make populous the sea
+Round Grand Manan with eager finny swarms,
+Break the long calms, and charm away the storms.
+OAK KNOLL, 23 3rd mo., 1886.
+
+
+
+SAMUEL J. TILDEN.
+
+GREYSTONE, AUG. 4, 1886.
+
+Once more, O all-adjusting Death!
+The nation's Pantheon opens wide;
+Once more a common sorrow saith
+A strong, wise man has died.
+
+Faults doubtless had he. Had we not
+Our own, to question and asperse
+The worth we doubted or forgot
+Until beside his hearse?
+
+Ambitious, cautious, yet the man
+To strike down fraud with resolute hand;
+A patriot, if a partisan,
+He loved his native land.
+
+So let the mourning bells be rung,
+The banner droop its folds half way,
+And while the public pen and tongue
+Their fitting tribute pay,
+
+Shall we not vow above his bier
+To set our feet on party lies,
+And wound no more a living ear
+With words that Death denies?
+1886
+
+
+
+
+
+                             OCCASIONAL POEMS
+
+EVA
+
+     Suggested by Mrs. Stowe's tale of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and written
+     when the characters in the tale were realities by the fireside of
+     countless American homes.
+
+Dry the tears for holy Eva,
+With the blessed angels leave her;
+Of the form so soft and fair
+Give to earth the tender care.
+
+For the golden locks of Eva
+Let the sunny south-land give her
+Flowery pillow of repose,
+Orange-bloom and budding rose.
+
+In the better home of Eva
+Let the shining ones receive her,
+With the welcome-voiced psalm,
+Harp of gold and waving palm,
+
+All is light and peace with Eva;
+There the darkness cometh never;
+Tears are wiped, and fetters fall.
+And the Lord is all in all.
+
+Weep no more for happy Eva,
+Wrong and sin no more shall grieve her;
+Care and pain and weariness
+Lost in love so measureless.
+
+Gentle Eva, loving Eva,
+Child confessor, true believer,
+Listener at the Master's knee,
+"Suffer such to come to me."
+
+Oh, for faith like thine, sweet Eva,
+Lighting all the solemn river,
+And the blessings of the poor
+Wafting to the heavenly shore!
+1852
+
+
+
+A LAY OF OLD TIME.
+
+     Written for the Essex County Agricultural Fair, and sung at the
+     banquet at Newburyport, October 2, 1856.
+
+One morning of the first sad Fall,
+Poor Adam and his bride
+Sat in the shade of Eden's wall--
+But on the outer side.
+
+She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit
+For the chaste garb of old;
+He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit
+For Eden's drupes of gold.
+
+Behind them, smiling in the morn,
+Their forfeit garden lay,
+Before them, wild with rock and thorn,
+The desert stretched away.
+
+They heard the air above them fanned,
+A light step on the sward,
+And lo! they saw before them stand
+The angel of the Lord!
+
+"Arise," he said, "why look behind,
+When hope is all before,
+And patient hand and willing mind,
+Your loss may yet restore?
+
+"I leave with you a spell whose power
+Can make the desert glad,
+And call around you fruit and flower
+As fair as Eden had.
+
+"I clothe your hands with power to lift
+The curse from off your soil;
+Your very doom shall seem a gift,
+Your loss a gain through Toil.
+
+"Go, cheerful as yon humming-bees,
+To labor as to play."
+White glimmering over Eden's trees
+The angel passed away.
+
+The pilgrims of the world went forth
+Obedient to the word,
+And found where'er they tilled the earth
+A garden of the Lord!
+
+The thorn-tree cast its evil fruit
+And blushed with plum and pear,
+And seeded grass and trodden root
+Grew sweet beneath their care.
+
+We share our primal parents' fate,
+And, in our turn and day,
+Look back on Eden's sworded gate
+As sad and lost as they.
+
+But still for us his native skies
+The pitying Angel leaves,
+And leads through Toil to Paradise
+New Adams and new Eves!
+
+
+
+A SONG OF HARVEST
+
+     For the Agricultural and Horticultural Exhibition at Amesbury and
+     Salisbury, September 28, 1858.
+
+This day, two hundred years ago,
+The wild grape by the river's side,
+And tasteless groundnut trailing low,
+The table of the woods supplied.
+
+Unknown the apple's red and gold,
+The blushing tint of peach and pear;
+The mirror of the Powow told
+No tale of orchards ripe and rare.
+
+Wild as the fruits he scorned to till,
+These vales the idle Indian trod;
+Nor knew the glad, creative skill,
+The joy of him who toils with God.
+
+O Painter of the fruits and flowers!
+We thank Thee for thy wise design
+Whereby these human hands of ours
+In Nature's garden work with Thine.
+
+And thanks that from our daily need
+The joy of simple faith is born;
+That he who smites the summer weed,
+May trust Thee for the autumn corn.
+
+Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
+Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall;
+Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
+Or plants a tree, is more than all.
+
+For he who blesses most is blest;
+And God and man shall own his worth
+Who toils to leave as his bequest
+An added beauty to the earth.
+
+And, soon or late, to all that sow,
+The time of harvest shall be given;
+The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow,
+If not on earth, at last in heaven.
+
+
+
+KENOZA LAKE.
+
+     This beautiful lake in East Haverhill was the "Great Pond" the
+     writer's boyhood. In 1859 a movement was made for improving its
+     shores as a public park. At the opening of the park, August 31,
+     1859, the poem which gave it the name of Kenoza (in Indian language
+     signifying Pickerel) was read.
+
+As Adam did in Paradise,
+To-day the primal right we claim
+Fair mirror of the woods and skies,
+We give to thee a name.
+
+Lake of the pickerel!--let no more
+The echoes answer back, "Great Pond,"
+But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore
+And watching hills beyond,
+
+Let Indian ghosts, if such there be
+Who ply unseen their shadowy lines,
+Call back the ancient name to thee,
+As with the voice of pines.
+
+The shores we trod as barefoot boys,
+The nutted woods we wandered through,
+To friendship, love, and social joys
+We consecrate anew.
+
+Here shall the tender song be sung,
+And memory's dirges soft and low,
+And wit shall sparkle on the tongue,
+And mirth shall overflow,
+
+Harmless as summer lightning plays
+From a low, hidden cloud by night,
+A light to set the hills ablaze,
+But not a bolt to smite.
+
+In sunny South and prairied West
+Are exiled hearts remembering still,
+As bees their hive, as birds their nest,
+The homes of Haverhill.
+
+They join us in our rites to-day;
+And, listening, we may hear, erelong,
+From inland lake and ocean bay,
+The echoes of our song.
+
+Kenoza! o'er no sweeter lake
+Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail,--
+No fairer face than thine shall take
+The sunset's golden veil.
+
+Long be it ere the tide of trade
+Shall break with harsh-resounding din
+The quiet of thy banks of shade,
+And hills that fold thee in.
+
+Still let thy woodlands hide the hare,
+The shy loon sound his trumpet-note,
+Wing-weary from his fields of air,
+The wild-goose on thee float.
+
+Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir,
+Thy beauty our deforming strife;
+Thy woods and waters minister
+The healing of their life.
+
+And sinless Mirth, from care released,
+Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky,
+Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast
+The Master's loving eye.
+
+And when the summer day grows dim,
+And light mists walk thy mimic sea,
+Revive in us the thought of Him
+Who walked on Galilee!
+
+
+
+FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL
+
+The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine
+Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more;
+The woven wreaths of oak and pine
+Are dust along the Isthmian shore.
+
+But beauty hath its homage still,
+And nature holds us still in debt;
+And woman's grace and household skill,
+And manhood's toil, are honored yet.
+
+And we, to-day, amidst our flowers
+And fruits, have come to own again
+The blessings of the summer hours,
+The early and the latter rain;
+
+To see our Father's hand once more
+Reverse for us the plenteous horn
+Of autumn, filled and running o'er
+With fruit, and flower, and golden corn!
+
+Once more the liberal year laughs out
+O'er richer stores than gems or gold;
+Once more with harvest-song and shout
+Is Nature's bloodless triumph told.
+
+Our common mother rests and sings,
+Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves;
+Her lap is full of goodly things,
+Her brow is bright with autumn leaves.
+
+Oh, favors every year made new!
+Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine sent
+The bounty overruns our due,
+The fulness shames our discontent.
+
+We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on;
+We murmur, but the corn-ears fill,
+We choose the shadow, but the sun
+That casts it shines behind us still.
+
+God gives us with our rugged soil
+The power to make it Eden-fair,
+And richer fruits to crown our toil
+Than summer-wedded islands bear.
+
+Who murmurs at his lot to-day?
+Who scorns his native fruit and bloom?
+Or sighs for dainties far away,
+Beside the bounteous board of home?
+
+Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom's arm
+Can change a rocky soil to gold,--
+That brave and generous lives can warm
+A clime with northern ices cold.
+
+And let these altars, wreathed with flowers
+And piled with fruits, awake again
+Thanksgivings for the golden hours,
+The early and the latter rain!
+1859
+
+
+
+THE QUAKER ALUMNI.
+
+     Read at the Friends' School Anniversary, Providence, R. I.,
+     6th mo., 1860.
+
+From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs of Maine,
+Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again;
+And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more cool,
+Play over the old game of going to school.
+
+All your strifes and vexations, your whims and complaints,
+(You were not saints yourselves, if the children of saints!)
+All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done,
+Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts beat as one!
+
+How widely soe'er you have strayed from the fold,
+Though your "thee" has grown "you," and your drab blue and gold,
+To the old friendly speech and the garb's sober form,
+Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you warm.
+
+But, the first greetings over, you glance round the hall;
+Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all
+Through the turf green above them the dead cannot hear;
+Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as a tear!
+
+In love, let us trust, they were summoned so soon
+rom the morning of life, while we toil through its noon;
+They were frail like ourselves, they had needs like our own,
+And they rest as we rest in God's mercy alone.
+
+Unchanged by our changes of spirit and frame,
+Past, now, and henceforward the Lord is the same;
+Though we sink in the darkness, His arms break our fall,
+And in death as in life, He is Father of all!
+
+We are older: our footsteps, so light in the play
+Of the far-away school-time, move slower to-day;--
+Here a beard touched with frost, there a bald, shining crown,
+And beneath the cap's border gray mingles with brown.
+
+But faith should be cheerful, and trust should be glad,
+And our follies and sins, not our years, make us sad.
+Should the heart closer shut as the bonnet grows prim,
+And the face grow in length as the hat grows in brim?
+
+Life is brief, duty grave; but, with rain-folded wings,
+Of yesterday's sunshine the grateful heart sings;
+And we, of all others, have reason to pay
+The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on our way;
+
+For the counsels that turned from the follies of youth;
+For the beauty of patience, the whiteness of truth;
+For the wounds of rebuke, when love tempered its edge;
+For the household's restraint, and the discipline's hedge;
+
+For the lessons of kindness vouchsafed to the least
+Of the creatures of God, whether human or beast,
+Bringing hope to the poor, lending strength to the frail,
+In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, and jail;
+
+For a womanhood higher and holier, by all
+Her knowledge of good, than was Eve ere her fall,--
+Whose task-work of duty moves lightly as play,
+Serene as the moonlight and warm as the day;
+
+And, yet more, for the faith which embraces the whole,
+Of the creeds of the ages the life and the soul,
+Wherein letter and spirit the same channel run,
+And man has not severed what God has made one!
+
+For a sense of the Goodness revealed everywhere,
+As sunshine impartial, and free as the air;
+For a trust in humanity, Heathen or Jew,
+And a hope for all darkness the Light shineth through.
+
+Who scoffs at our birthright?--the words of the seers,
+And the songs of the bards in the twilight of years,
+All the foregleams of wisdom in santon and sage,
+In prophet and priest, are our true heritage.
+
+The Word which the reason of Plato discerned;
+The truth, as whose symbol the Mithra-fire burned;
+The soul of the world which the Stoic but guessed,
+In the Light Universal the Quaker confessed!
+
+No honors of war to our worthies belong;
+Their plain stem of life never flowered into song;
+But the fountains they opened still gush by the way,
+And the world for their healing is better to-day.
+
+He who lies where the minster's groined arches curve down
+To the tomb-crowded transept of England's renown,
+The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned,
+Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all owned,--
+
+Who through the world's pantheon walked in his pride,
+Setting new statues up, thrusting old ones aside,
+And in fiction the pencils of history dipped,
+To gild o'er or blacken each saint in his crypt,--
+
+How vainly he labored to sully with blame
+The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his fame!
+Self-will is self-wounding, perversity blind
+On himself fell the stain for the Quaker designed!
+
+For the sake of his true-hearted father before him;
+For the sake of the dear Quaker mother that bore him;
+For the sake of his gifts, and the works that outlive him,
+And his brave words for freedom, we freely forgive him!
+
+There are those who take note that our numbers are small,--
+New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall;
+But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of His own,
+And the world shall yet reap what our sowers have sown.
+
+The last of the sect to his fathers may go,
+Leaving only his coat for some Barnum to show;
+But the truth will outlive him, and broaden with years,
+Till the false dies away, and the wrong disappears.
+
+Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight sinks the stone,
+In the deep sea of time, but the circles sweep on,
+Till the low-rippled murmurs along the shores run,
+And the dark and dead waters leap glad in the sun.
+
+Meanwhile shall we learn, in our ease, to forget
+To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom our debt?--
+Hide their words out of sight, like the garb that they wore,
+And for Barclay's Apology offer one more?
+
+Shall we fawn round the priestcraft that glutted the shears,
+And festooned the stocks with our grandfathers' ears?
+Talk of Woolman's unsoundness? count Penn heterodox?
+And take Cotton Mather in place of George Fox?
+
+Make our preachers war-chaplains? quote Scripture to take
+The hunted slave back, for Onesimus' sake?
+Go to burning church-candles, and chanting in choir,
+And on the old meeting-house stick up a spire?
+
+No! the old paths we'll keep until better are shown,
+Credit good where we find it, abroad or our own;
+And while "Lo here" and "Lo there" the multitude call,
+Be true to ourselves, and do justice to all.
+
+The good round about us we need not refuse,
+Nor talk of our Zion as if we were Jews;
+But why shirk the badge which our fathers have worn,
+Or beg the world's pardon for having been born?
+
+We need not pray over the Pharisee's prayer,
+Nor claim that our wisdom is Benjamin's share;
+Truth to us and to others is equal and one
+Shall we bottle the free air, or hoard up the sun?
+
+Well know we our birthright may serve but to show
+How the meanest of weeds in the richest soil grow;
+But we need not disparage the good which we hold;
+Though the vessels be earthen, the treasure is gold!
+
+Enough and too much of the sect and the name.
+What matters our label, so truth be our aim?
+The creed may be wrong, but the life may be true,
+And hearts beat the same under drab coats or blue.
+
+So the man be a man, let him worship, at will,
+In Jerusalem's courts, or on Gerizim's hill.
+When she makes up her jewels, what cares yon good town
+For the Baptist of Wayland, the Quaker of Brown?
+
+And this green, favored island, so fresh and seablown,
+When she counts up the worthies her annals have known,
+Never waits for the pitiful gaugers of sect
+To measure her love, and mete out her respect.
+
+Three shades at this moment seem walking her strand,
+Each with head halo-crowned, and with palms in his hand,--
+Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smiling serene
+On prelate and puritan, Channing is seen.
+
+One holy name bearing, no longer they need
+Credentials of party, and pass-words of creed
+The new song they sing hath a threefold accord,
+And they own one baptism, one faith, and one Lord!
+
+But the golden sands run out: occasions like these
+Glide swift into shadow, like sails on the seas
+While we sport with the mosses and pebbles ashore,
+They lessen and fade, and we see them no more.
+
+Forgive me, dear friends, if my vagrant thoughts seem
+Like a school-boy's who idles and plays with his theme.
+Forgive the light measure whose changes display
+The sunshine and rain of our brief April day.
+
+There are moments in life when the lip and the eye
+Try the question of whether to smile or to cry;
+And scenes and reunions that prompt like our own
+The tender in feeling, the playful in tone.
+
+I, who never sat down with the boys and the girls
+At the feet of your Slocums, and Cartlands, and Earles,--
+By courtesy only permitted to lay
+On your festival's altar my poor gift, to-day,--
+
+I would joy in your joy: let me have a friend's part
+In the warmth of your welcome of hand and of heart,--
+On your play-ground of boyhood unbend the brow's care,
+And shift the old burdens our shoulders must bear.
+
+Long live the good School! giving out year by year
+Recruits to true manhood and womanhood dear
+Brave boys, modest maidens, in beauty sent forth,
+The living epistles and proof of its worth!
+
+In and out let the young life as steadily flow
+As in broad Narragansett the tides come and go;
+And its sons and its daughters in prairie and town
+Remember its honor, and guard its renown.
+
+Not vainly the gift of its founder was made;
+Not prayerless the stones of its corner were laid
+The blessing of Him whom in secret they sought
+Has owned the good work which the fathers have wrought.
+
+To Him be the glory forever! We bear
+To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat with the tare.
+What we lack in our work may He find in our will,
+And winnow in mercy our good from the ill!
+
+
+
+OUR RIVER.
+
+FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT "THE LAURELS" ON THE MERRIMAC.
+
+     Jean Pierre Brissot, the famous leader of the Girondist party in
+     the French Revolution, when a young man travelled extensively in
+     the United States. He visited the valley of the Merrimac, and
+     speaks in terms of admiration of the view from Moulton's hill
+     opposite Amesbury. The "Laurel Party" so called, as composed of
+     ladies and gentlemen in the lower valley of the Merrimac, and
+     invited friends and guests in other sections of the country. Its
+     thoroughly enjoyable annual festivals were held in the early summer
+     on the pine-shaded, laurel-blossomed slopes of the Newbury side of
+     the river opposite Pleasant Valley in Amesbury. The several poems
+     called out by these gatherings are here printed in sequence.
+
+Once more on yonder laurelled height
+The summer flowers have budded;
+Once more with summer's golden light
+The vales of home are flooded;
+And once more, by the grace of Him
+Of every good the Giver,
+We sing upon its wooded rim
+The praises of our river,
+
+Its pines above, its waves below,
+The west-wind down it blowing,
+As fair as when the young Brissot
+Beheld it seaward flowing,--
+And bore its memory o'er the deep,
+To soothe a martyr's sadness,
+And fresco, hi his troubled sleep,
+His prison-walls with gladness.
+
+We know the world is rich with streams
+Renowned in song and story,
+Whose music murmurs through our dreams
+Of human love and glory
+We know that Arno's banks are fair,
+And Rhine has castled shadows,
+And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr
+Go singing down their meadows.
+
+But while, unpictured and unsung
+By painter or by poet,
+Our river waits the tuneful tongue
+And cunning hand to show it,--
+We only know the fond skies lean
+Above it, warm with blessing,
+And the sweet soul of our Undine
+Awakes to our caressing.
+
+No fickle sun-god holds the flocks
+That graze its shores in keeping;
+No icy kiss of Dian mocks
+The youth beside it sleeping
+Our Christian river loveth most
+The beautiful and human;
+The heathen streams of Naiads boast,
+But ours of man and woman.
+
+The miner in his cabin hears
+The ripple we are hearing;
+It whispers soft to homesick ears
+Around the settler's clearing
+In Sacramento's vales of corn,
+Or Santee's bloom of cotton,
+Our river by its valley-born
+Was never yet forgotten.
+
+The drum rolls loud, the bugle fills
+The summer air with clangor;
+The war-storm shakes the solid hills
+Beneath its tread of anger;
+Young eyes that last year smiled in ours
+Now point the rifle's barrel,
+And hands then stained with fruits and flowers
+Bear redder stains of quarrel.
+
+But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom on,
+And rivers still keep flowing,
+The dear God still his rain and sun
+On good and ill bestowing.
+His pine-trees whisper, "Trust and wait!"
+His flowers are prophesying
+That all we dread of change or fate
+His live is underlying.
+
+And thou, O Mountain-born!--no more
+We ask the wise Allotter
+Than for the firmness of thy shore,
+The calmness of thy water,
+The cheerful lights that overlay,
+Thy rugged slopes with beauty,
+To match our spirits to our day
+And make a joy of duty.
+1861.
+
+
+
+REVISITED.
+
+Read at "The Laurels," on the Merrimac, 6th month, 1865.
+
+The roll of drums and the bugle's wailing
+Vex the air of our vales-no more;
+The spear is beaten to hooks of pruning,
+The share is the sword the soldier wore!
+
+Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river,
+Under thy banks of laurel bloom;
+Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth,
+Sing us the songs of peace and home.
+
+Let all the tenderer voices of nature
+Temper the triumph and chasten mirth,
+Full of the infinite love and pity
+For fallen martyr and darkened hearth.
+
+But to Him who gives us beauty for ashes,
+And the oil of joy for mourning long,
+Let thy hills give thanks, and all thy waters
+Break into jubilant waves of song!
+
+Bring us the airs of hills and forests,
+The sweet aroma of birch and pine,
+Give us a waft of the north-wind laden
+With sweethrier odors and breath of kine!
+
+Bring us the purple of mountain sunsets,
+Shadows of clouds that rake the hills,
+The green repose of thy Plymouth meadows,
+The gleam and ripple of Campton rills.
+
+Lead us away in shadow and sunshine,
+Slaves of fancy, through all thy miles,
+The winding ways of Pemigewasset,
+And Winnipesaukee's hundred isles.
+
+Shatter in sunshine over thy ledges,
+Laugh in thy plunges from fall to fall;
+Play with thy fringes of elms, and darken
+Under the shade of the mountain wall.
+
+The cradle-song of thy hillside fountains
+Here in thy glory and strength repeat;
+Give us a taste of thy upland music,
+Show us the dance of thy silver feet.
+
+Into thy dutiful life of uses
+Pour the music and weave the flowers;
+With the song of birds and bloom of meadows
+Lighten and gladden thy heart and ours.
+
+Sing on! bring down, O lowland river,
+The joy of the hills to the waiting sea;
+The wealth of the vales, the pomp of mountains,
+The breath of the woodlands, bear with thee.
+
+Here, in the calm of thy seaward, valley,
+Mirth and labor shall hold their truce;
+Dance of water and mill of grinding,
+Both are beauty and both are use.
+
+Type of the Northland's strength and glory,
+Pride and hope of our home and race,--
+Freedom lending to rugged labor
+Tints of beauty and lines of grace.
+
+Once again, O beautiful river,
+Hear our greetings and take our thanks;
+Hither we come, as Eastern pilgrims
+Throng to the Jordan's sacred banks.
+
+For though by the Master's feet untrodden,
+Though never His word has stilled thy waves,
+Well for us may thy shores be holy,
+With Christian altars and saintly graves.
+
+And well may we own thy hint and token
+Of fairer valleys and streams than these,
+Where the rivers of God are full of water,
+And full of sap are His healing trees!
+
+
+
+"THE LAURELS"
+
+At the twentieth and last anniversary.
+
+FROM these wild rocks I look to-day
+O'er leagues of dancing waves, and see
+The far, low coast-line stretch away
+To where our river meets the sea.
+
+The light wind blowing off the land
+Is burdened with old voices; through
+Shut eyes I see how lip and hand
+The greeting of old days renew.
+
+O friends whose hearts still keep their prime,
+Whose bright example warms and cheers,
+Ye teach us how to smile at Time,
+And set to music all his years!
+
+I thank you for sweet summer days,
+For pleasant memories lingering long,
+For joyful meetings, fond delays,
+And ties of friendship woven strong.
+
+As for the last time, side by side,
+You tread the paths familiar grown,
+I reach across the severing tide,
+And blend my farewells with your own.
+
+Make room, O river of our home!
+For other feet in place of ours,
+And in the summers yet to come,
+Make glad another Feast of Flowers!
+
+Hold in thy mirror, calm and deep,
+The pleasant pictures thou hast seen;
+Forget thy lovers not, but keep
+Our memory like thy laurels green.
+ISLES of SHOALS, 7th mo., 1870.
+
+
+
+JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC.
+
+O dwellers in the stately towns,
+What come ye out to see?
+This common earth, this common sky,
+This water flowing free?
+
+As gayly as these kalmia flowers
+Your door-yard blossoms spring;
+As sweetly as these wild-wood birds
+Your caged minstrels sing.
+
+You find but common bloom and green,
+The rippling river's rune,
+The beauty which is everywhere
+Beneath the skies of June;
+
+The Hawkswood oaks, the storm-torn plumes
+Of old pine-forest kings,
+Beneath whose century-woven shade
+Deer Island's mistress sings.
+
+And here are pictured Artichoke,
+And Curson's bowery mill;
+And Pleasant Valley smiles between
+The river and the hill.
+
+You know full well these banks of bloom,
+The upland's wavy line,
+And how the sunshine tips with fire
+The needles of the pine.
+
+Yet, like some old remembered psalm,
+Or sweet, familiar face,
+Not less because of commonness
+You love the day and place.
+
+And not in vain in this soft air
+Shall hard-strung nerves relax,
+Not all in vain the o'erworn brain
+Forego its daily tax.
+
+The lust of power, the greed of gain
+Have all the year their own;
+The haunting demons well may let
+Our one bright day alone.
+
+Unheeded let the newsboy call,
+Aside the ledger lay
+The world will keep its treadmill step
+Though we fall out to-day.
+
+The truants of life's weary school,
+Without excuse from thrift
+We change for once the gains of toil
+For God's unpurchased gift.
+
+From ceiled rooms, from silent books,
+From crowded car and town,
+Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap,
+We lay our tired heads down.
+
+Cool, summer wind, our heated brows;
+Blue river, through the green
+Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes
+Which all too much have seen.
+
+For us these pleasant woodland ways
+Are thronged with memories old,
+Have felt the grasp of friendly hands
+And heard love's story told.
+
+A sacred presence overbroods
+The earth whereon we meet;
+These winding forest-paths are trod
+By more than mortal feet.
+
+Old friends called from us by the voice
+Which they alone could hear,
+From mystery to mystery,
+From life to life, draw near.
+
+More closely for the sake of them
+Each other's hands we press;
+Our voices take from them a tone
+Of deeper tenderness.
+
+Our joy is theirs, their trust is ours,
+Alike below, above,
+Or here or there, about us fold
+The arms of one great love!
+
+We ask to-day no countersign,
+No party names we own;
+Unlabelled, individual,
+We bring ourselves alone.
+
+What cares the unconventioned wood
+For pass-words of the town?
+The sound of fashion's shibboleth
+The laughing waters drown.
+
+Here cant forgets his dreary tone,
+And care his face forlorn;
+The liberal air and sunshine laugh
+The bigot's zeal to scorn.
+
+From manhood's weary shoulder falls
+His load of selfish cares;
+And woman takes her rights as flowers
+And brooks and birds take theirs.
+
+The license of the happy woods,
+The brook's release are ours;
+The freedom of the unshamed wind
+Among the glad-eyed flowers.
+
+Yet here no evil thought finds place,
+Nor foot profane comes in;
+Our grove, like that of Samothrace,
+Is set apart from sin.
+
+We walk on holy ground; above
+A sky more holy smiles;
+The chant of the beatitudes
+Swells down these leafy aisles.
+
+Thanks to the gracious Providence
+That brings us here once more;
+For memories of the good behind
+And hopes of good before.
+
+And if, unknown to us, sweet days
+Of June like this must come,
+Unseen of us these laurels clothe
+The river-banks with bloom;
+
+And these green paths must soon be trod
+By other feet than ours,
+Full long may annual pilgrims come
+To keep the Feast of Flowers;
+
+The matron be a girl once more,
+The bearded man a boy,
+And we, in heaven's eternal June,
+Be glad for earthly joy!
+1876.
+
+
+
+HYMN
+
+FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP, 1864.
+
+     The poetic and patriotic preacher, who had won fame in the East,
+     went to California in 1860 and became a power on the Pacific coast.
+     It was not long after the opening of the house of worship built for
+     him that he died.
+
+Amidst these glorious works of Thine,
+The solemn minarets of the pine,
+And awful Shasta's icy shrine,--
+
+Where swell Thy hymns from wave and gale,
+And organ-thunders never fail,
+Behind the cataract's silver veil,
+
+Our puny walls to Thee we raise,
+Our poor reed-music sounds Thy praise:
+Forgive, O Lord, our childish ways!
+
+For, kneeling on these altar-stairs,
+We urge Thee not with selfish prayers,
+Nor murmur at our daily cares.
+
+Before Thee, in an evil day,
+Our country's bleeding heart we lay,
+And dare not ask Thy hand to stay;
+
+But, through the war-cloud, pray to Thee
+For union, but a union free,
+With peace that comes of purity!
+
+That Thou wilt bare Thy arm to, save
+And, smiting through this Red Sea wave,
+Make broad a pathway for the slave!
+
+For us, confessing all our need,
+We trust nor rite nor word nor deed,
+Nor yet the broken staff of creed.
+
+Assured alone that Thou art good
+To each, as to the multitude,
+Eternal Love and Fatherhood,--
+
+Weak, sinful, blind, to Thee we kneel,
+Stretch dumbly forth our hands, and feel
+Our weakness is our strong appeal.
+
+So, by these Western gates of Even
+We wait to see with Thy forgiven
+The opening Golden Gate of Heaven!
+
+Suffice it now. In time to be
+Shall holier altars rise to Thee,--
+Thy Church our broad humanity
+
+White flowers of love its walls shall climb,
+Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime,
+Its days shall all be holy time.
+
+A sweeter song shall then be heard,--
+The music of the world's accord
+Confessing Christ, the Inward Word!
+
+That song shall swell from shore to shore,
+One hope, one faith, one love, restore
+The seamless robe that Jesus wore.
+
+
+
+HYMN
+
+FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN,
+ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A MOTHER.
+
+     The giver of the house was the late George Peabody,
+     of London.
+
+Thou dwellest not, O Lord of all
+In temples which thy children raise;
+Our work to thine is mean and small,
+And brief to thy eternal days.
+
+Forgive the weakness and the pride,
+If marred thereby our gift may be,
+For love, at least, has sanctified
+The altar that we rear to thee.
+
+The heart and not the hand has wrought
+From sunken base to tower above
+The image of a tender thought,
+The memory of a deathless love!
+
+And though should never sound of speech
+Or organ echo from its wall,
+Its stones would pious lessons teach,
+Its shade in benedictions fall.
+
+Here should the dove of peace be found,
+And blessings and not curses given;
+Nor strife profane, nor hatred wound,
+The mingled loves of earth and heaven.
+
+Thou, who didst soothe with dying breath
+The dear one watching by Thy cross,
+Forgetful of the pains of death
+In sorrow for her mighty loss,
+
+In memory of that tender claim,
+O Mother-born, the offering take,
+And make it worthy of Thy name,
+And bless it for a mother's sake!
+1868.
+
+
+
+A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION.
+
+Read at the President's Levee, Brown University,
+29th 6th month, 1870.
+
+To-day the plant by Williams set
+Its summer bloom discloses;
+The wilding sweethrier of his prayers
+Is crowned with cultured roses.
+
+Once more the Island State repeats
+The lesson that he taught her,
+And binds his pearl of charity
+Upon her brown-locked daughter.
+
+Is 't fancy that he watches still
+His Providence plantations?
+That still the careful Founder takes
+A part on these occasions.
+
+Methinks I see that reverend form,
+Which all of us so well know
+He rises up to speak; he jogs
+The presidential elbow.
+
+"Good friends," he says, "you reap a field
+I sowed in self-denial,
+For toleration had its griefs
+And charity its trial.
+
+"Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More,
+To him must needs be given
+Who heareth heresy and leaves
+The heretic to Heaven!
+
+"I hear again the snuffled tones,
+I see in dreary vision
+Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores,
+And prophets with a mission.
+
+"Each zealot thrust before my eyes
+His Scripture-garbled label;
+All creeds were shouted in my ears
+As with the tongues of Babel.
+
+"Scourged at one cart-tail, each denied
+The hope of every other;
+Each martyr shook his branded fist
+At the conscience of his brother!
+
+"How cleft the dreary drone of man.
+The shriller pipe of woman,
+As Gorton led his saints elect,
+Who held all things in common!
+
+"Their gay robes trailed in ditch and swamp,
+And torn by thorn and thicket,
+The dancing-girls of Merry Mount
+Came dragging to my wicket.
+
+"Shrill Anabaptists, shorn of ears;
+Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly;
+And Antinomians, free of law,
+Whose very sins were holy.
+
+"Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Monarchists,
+Of stripes and bondage braggarts,
+Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics snatched
+From Puritanic fagots.
+
+"And last, not least, the Quakers came,
+With tongues still sore from burning,
+The Bay State's dust from off their feet
+Before my threshold spurning;
+
+"A motley host, the Lord's debris,
+Faith's odds and ends together;
+Well might I shrink from guests with lungs
+Tough as their breeches leather
+
+"If, when the hangman at their heels
+Came, rope in hand to catch them,
+I took the hunted outcasts in,
+I never sent to fetch them.
+
+"I fed, but spared them not a whit;
+I gave to all who walked in,
+Not clams and succotash alone,
+But stronger meat of doctrine.
+
+"I proved the prophets false, I pricked
+The bubble of perfection,
+And clapped upon their inner light
+The snuffers of election.
+
+"And looking backward on my times,
+This credit I am taking;
+I kept each sectary's dish apart,
+No spiritual chowder making.
+
+"Where now the blending signs of sect
+Would puzzle their assorter,
+The dry-shod Quaker kept the land,
+The Baptist held the water.
+
+"A common coat now serves for both,
+The hat's no more a fixture;
+And which was wet and which was dry,
+Who knows in such a mixture?
+
+"Well! He who fashioned Peter's dream
+To bless them all is able;
+And bird and beast and creeping thing
+Make clean upon His table!
+
+"I walked by my own light; but when
+The ways of faith divided,
+Was I to force unwilling feet
+To tread the path that I did?
+
+"I touched the garment-hem of truth,
+Yet saw not all its splendor;
+I knew enough of doubt to feel
+For every conscience tender.
+
+"God left men free of choice, as when
+His Eden-trees were planted;
+Because they chose amiss, should I
+Deny the gift He granted?
+
+"So, with a common sense of need,
+Our common weakness feeling,
+I left them with myself to God
+And His all-gracious dealing!
+
+"I kept His plan whose rain and sun
+To tare and wheat are given;
+And if the ways to hell were free,
+I left then free to heaven!"
+
+Take heart with us, O man of old,
+Soul-freedom's brave confessor,
+So love of God and man wax strong,
+Let sect and creed be lesser.
+
+The jarring discords of thy day
+In ours one hymn are swelling;
+The wandering feet, the severed paths,
+All seek our Father's dwelling.
+
+And slowly learns the world the truth
+That makes us all thy debtor,--
+That holy life is more than rite,
+And spirit more than letter;
+
+That they who differ pole-wide serve
+Perchance the common Master,
+And other sheep He hath than they
+Who graze one narrow pasture!
+
+For truth's worst foe is he who claims
+To act as God's avenger,
+And deems, beyond his sentry-beat,
+The crystal walls in danger!
+
+Who sets for heresy his traps
+Of verbal quirk and quibble,
+And weeds the garden of the Lord
+With Satan's borrowed dibble.
+
+To-day our hearts like organ keys
+One Master's touch are feeling;
+The branches of a common Vine
+Have only leaves of healing.
+
+Co-workers, yet from varied fields,
+We share this restful nooning;
+The Quaker with the Baptist here
+Believes in close communing.
+
+Forgive, dear saint, the playful tone,
+Too light for thy deserving;
+Thanks for thy generous faith in man,
+Thy trust in God unswerving.
+
+Still echo in the hearts of men
+The words that thou hast spoken;
+No forge of hell can weld again
+The fetters thou hast broken.
+
+The pilgrim needs a pass no more
+From Roman or Genevan;
+Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps
+Henceforth the road to Heaven!
+
+
+
+CHICAGO
+
+The great fire at Chicago was on 8-10 October, 1871.
+
+Men said at vespers: "All is well!"
+In one wild night the city fell;
+Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain
+Before the fiery hurricane.
+
+On threescore spires had sunset shone,
+Where ghastly sunrise looked on none.
+Men clasped each other's hands, and said
+"The City of the West is dead!"
+
+Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat,
+The fiends of fire from street to street,
+Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare,
+The dumb defiance of despair.
+
+A sudden impulse thrilled each wire
+That signalled round that sea of fire;
+Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs came;
+In tears of pity died the flame!
+
+From East, from West, from South and North,
+The messages of hope shot forth,
+And, underneath the severing wave,
+The world, full-handed, reached to save.
+
+Fair seemed the old; but fairer still
+The new, the dreary void shall fill
+With dearer homes than those o'erthrown,
+For love shall lay each corner-stone.
+
+Rise, stricken city! from thee throw
+The ashen sackcloth of thy woe;
+And build, as to Amphion's strain,
+To songs of cheer thy walls again!
+
+How shrivelled in thy hot distress
+The primal sin of selfishness!
+How instant rose, to take thy part,
+The angel in the human heart!
+
+Ah! not in vain the flames that tossed
+Above thy dreadful holocaust;
+The Christ again has preached through thee
+The Gospel of Humanity!
+
+Then lift once more thy towers on high,
+And fret with spires the western sky,
+To tell that God is yet with us,
+And love is still miraculous!
+1871.
+
+
+
+KINSMAN.
+
+     Died at the Island of Panay (Philippine group),
+     aged nineteen years.
+
+Where ceaseless Spring her garland twines,
+As sweetly shall the loved one rest,
+As if beneath the whispering pines
+And maple shadows of the West.
+
+Ye mourn, O hearts of home! for him,
+But, haply, mourn ye not alone;
+For him shall far-off eyes be dim,
+And pity speak in tongues unknown.
+
+There needs no graven line to give
+The story of his blameless youth;
+All hearts shall throb intuitive,
+And nature guess the simple truth.
+
+The very meaning of his name
+Shall many a tender tribute win;
+The stranger own his sacred claim,
+And all the world shall be his kin.
+
+And there, as here, on main and isle,
+The dews of holy peace shall fall,
+The same sweet heavens above him smile,
+And God's dear love be over all
+1874.
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD.
+
+     Longwood, not far from Bayard Taylor's birthplace in Kennett
+
+     Square, Pennsylvania, was the home of my esteemed friends John
+     and Hannah Cox, whose golden wedding was celebrated in 1874.
+
+With fifty years between you and your well-kept wedding vow,
+The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not a fable now.
+
+And, sweet as has life's vintage been through all your pleasant past,
+Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best wine is the last!
+
+Again before me, with your names, fair Chester's landscape comes,
+Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded homes.
+
+The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage green and soft,
+Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft.
+
+And lo! from all the country-side come neighbors, kith and kin;
+From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the wedding guests come in.
+
+And they who, without scrip or purse, mob-hunted, travel-worn,
+In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as victors now return.
+
+Older and slower, yet the same, files in the long array,
+And hearts are light and eyes are glad, though heads are badger-gray.
+
+The fire-tried men of Thirty-eight who saw with me the fall,
+Midst roaring flames and shouting mob, of Pennsylvania Hall;
+
+And they of Lancaster who turned the cheeks of tyrants pale,
+Singing of freedom through the grates of Moyamensing jail!
+
+And haply with them, all unseen, old comrades, gone before,
+Pass, silently as shadows pass, within your open door,--
+
+The eagle face of Lindley Coates, brave Garrett's daring zeal,
+Christian grace of Pennock, the steadfast heart of Neal.
+
+Ah me! beyond all power to name, the worthies tried and true,
+Grave men, fair women, youth and maid, pass by in hushed review.
+
+Of varying faiths, a common cause fused all their hearts in one.
+God give them now, whate'er their names, the peace of duty done!
+
+How gladly would I tread again the old-remembered places,
+Sit down beside your hearth once more and look in the dear old faces!
+
+And thank you for the lessons your fifty years are teaching,
+For honest lives that louder speak than half our noisy preaching;
+
+For your steady faith and courage in that dark and evil time,
+When the Golden Rule was treason, and to feed the hungry, crime;
+
+For the poor slave's house of refuge when the hounds were on his track,
+And saint and sinner, church and state, joined hands to send him back.
+
+Blessings upon you!--What you did for each sad, suffering one,
+So homeless, faint, and naked, unto our Lord was done!
+
+Fair fall on Kennett's pleasant vales and Longwood's bowery ways
+The mellow sunset of your lives, friends of my early days.
+
+May many more of quiet years be added to your sum,
+And, late at last, in tenderest love, the beckoning angel come.
+
+Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are there, alike below, above;
+Our friends are now in either world, and love is sure of love.
+1874.
+
+
+
+HYMN
+
+FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA.
+
+All things are Thine: no gift have we,
+Lord of all gifts, to offer Thee;
+And hence with grateful hearts to-day,
+Thy own before Thy feet we lay.
+
+Thy will was in the builders' thought;
+Thy hand unseen amidst us wrought;
+Through mortal motive, scheme and plan,
+Thy wise eternal purpose ran.
+
+No lack Thy perfect fulness knew;
+For human needs and longings grew
+This house of prayer, this home of rest,
+In the fair garden of the West.
+
+In weakness and in want we call
+On Thee for whom the heavens are small;
+Thy glory is Thy children's good,
+Thy joy Thy tender Fatherhood.
+
+O Father! deign these walls to bless,
+Fill with Thy love their emptiness,
+And let their door a gateway be
+To lead us from ourselves to Thee!
+1872.
+
+
+
+LEXINGTON
+
+1775.
+
+No Berserk thirst of blood had they,
+No battle-joy was theirs, who set
+Against the alien bayonet
+Their homespun breasts in that old day.
+
+Their feet had trodden peaceful, ways;
+They loved not strife, they dreaded pain;
+They saw not, what to us is plain,
+That God would make man's wrath his praise.
+
+No seers were they, but simple men;
+Its vast results the future hid
+The meaning of the work they did
+Was strange and dark and doubtful then.
+
+Swift as their summons came they left
+The plough mid-furrow standing still,
+The half-ground corn grist in the mill,
+The spade in earth, the axe in cleft.
+
+They went where duty seemed to call,
+They scarcely asked the reason why;
+They only knew they could but die,
+And death was not the worst of all!
+
+Of man for man the sacrifice,
+All that was theirs to give, they gave.
+The flowers that blossomed from their grave
+Have sown themselves beneath all skies.
+
+Their death-shot shook the feudal tower,
+And shattered slavery's chain as well;
+On the sky's dome, as on a bell,
+Its echo struck the world's great hour.
+
+That fateful echo is not dumb
+The nations listening to its sound
+Wait, from a century's vantage-ground,
+The holier triumphs yet to come,--
+
+The bridal time of Law and Love,
+The gladness of the world's release,
+When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace
+The hawk shall nestle with the dove!--
+
+The golden age of brotherhood
+Unknown to other rivalries
+Than of the mild humanities,
+And gracious interchange of good,
+
+When closer strand shall lean to strand,
+Till meet, beneath saluting flags,
+The eagle of our mountain-crags,
+The lion of our Motherland!
+1875.
+
+
+
+THE LIBRARY.
+
+Sung at the opening of the Haverhill Library, November 11, 1875.
+
+"Let there be light!" God spake of old,
+And over chaos dark and cold,
+And through the dead and formless frame
+Of nature, life and order came.
+
+Faint was the light at first that shone
+On giant fern and mastodon,
+On half-formed plant and beast of prey,
+And man as rude and wild as they.
+
+Age after age, like waves, o'erran
+The earth, uplifting brute and man;
+And mind, at length, in symbols dark
+Its meanings traced on stone and bark.
+
+On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll,
+On plastic clay and leathern scroll,
+Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed,
+And to! the Press was found at last!
+
+Then dead souls woke; the thoughts of men
+Whose bones were dust revived again;
+The cloister's silence found a tongue,
+Old prophets spake, old poets sung.
+
+And here, to-day, the dead look down,
+The kings of mind again we crown;
+We hear the voices lost so long,
+The sage's word, the sibyl's song.
+
+Here Greek and Roman find themselves
+Alive along these crowded shelves;
+And Shakespeare treads again his stage,
+And Chaucer paints anew his age.
+
+As if some Pantheon's marbles broke
+Their stony trance, and lived and spoke,
+Life thrills along the alcoved hall,
+The lords of thought await our call!
+
+
+
+"I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN."
+
+An incident in St. Augustine, Florida.
+
+'Neath skies that winter never knew
+The air was full of light and balm,
+And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew
+Through orange bloom and groves of palm.
+
+A stranger from the frozen North,
+Who sought the fount of health in vain,
+Sank homeless on the alien earth,
+And breathed the languid air with pain.
+
+God's angel came! The tender shade
+Of pity made her blue eye dim;
+Against her woman's breast she laid
+The drooping, fainting head of him.
+
+She bore him to a pleasant room,
+Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air,
+And watched beside his bed, for whom
+His far-off sisters might not care.
+
+She fanned his feverish brow and smoothed
+Its lines of pain with tenderest touch.
+With holy hymn and prayer she soothed
+The trembling soul that feared so much.
+
+Through her the peace that passeth sight
+Came to him, as he lapsed away
+As one whose troubled dreams of night
+Slide slowly into tranquil day.
+
+The sweetness of the Land of Flowers
+Upon his lonely grave she laid
+The jasmine dropped its golden showers,
+The orange lent its bloom and shade.
+
+And something whispered in her thought,
+More sweet than mortal voices be
+"The service thou for him hast wrought
+O daughter! hath been done for me."
+1875.
+
+
+
+CENTENNIAL HYMN.
+
+     Written for the opening of the International Exhibition,
+     Philadelphia, May 10, 1876. The music for the hymn was written by
+     John K. Paine, and may be found in The Atlantic Monthly for
+     June, 1876.
+
+I.
+Our fathers' God! from out whose hand
+The centuries fall like grains of sand,
+We meet to-day, united, free,
+And loyal to our land and Thee,
+To thank Thee for the era done,
+And trust Thee for the opening one.
+
+II.
+Here, where of old, by Thy design,
+The fathers spake that word of Thine
+Whose echo is the glad refrain
+Of rended bolt and falling chain,
+To grace our festal time, from all
+The zones of earth our guests we call.
+
+III.
+Be with us while the New World greets
+The Old World thronging all its streets,
+Unveiling all the triumphs won
+By art or toil beneath the sun;
+And unto common good ordain
+This rivalship of hand and brain.
+
+IV.
+Thou, who hast here in concord furled
+The war flags of a gathered world,
+Beneath our Western skies fulfil
+The Orient's mission of good-will,
+And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
+Send back its Argonauts of peace.
+
+V.
+For art and labor met in truce,
+For beauty made the bride of use,
+We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave
+The austere virtues strong to save,
+The honor proof to place or gold,
+The manhood never bought nor sold.
+
+VI.
+Oh make Thou us, through centuries long,
+In peace secure, in justice strong;
+Around our gift of freedom draw
+The safeguards of Thy righteous law
+And, cast in some diviner mould,
+Let the new cycle shame the old!
+
+
+
+AT SCHOOL-CLOSE.
+
+BOWDOIN STREET, BOSTON, 1877.
+
+The end has come, as come it must
+To all things; in these sweet June days
+The teacher and the scholar trust
+Their parting feet to separate ways.
+
+They part: but in the years to be
+Shall pleasant memories cling to each,
+As shells bear inland from the sea
+The murmur of the rhythmic beach.
+
+One knew the joy the sculptor knows
+When, plastic to his lightest touch,
+His clay-wrought model slowly grows
+To that fine grace desired so much.
+
+So daily grew before her eyes
+The living shapes whereon she wrought,
+Strong, tender, innocently wise,
+The child's heart with the woman's thought.
+
+And one shall never quite forget
+The voice that called from dream and play,
+The firm but kindly hand that set
+Her feet in learning's pleasant way,--
+
+The joy of Undine soul-possessed,
+The wakening sense, the strange delight
+That swelled the fabled statue's breast
+And filled its clouded eyes with sight.
+
+O Youth and Beauty, loved of all!
+Ye pass from girlhood's gate of dreams;
+In broader ways your footsteps fall,
+Ye test the truth of all that seams.
+
+Her little realm the teacher leaves,
+She breaks her wand of power apart,
+While, for your love and trust, she gives
+The warm thanks of a grateful heart.
+
+Hers is the sober summer noon
+Contrasted with your morn of spring,
+The waning with the waxing moon,
+The folded with the outspread wing.
+
+Across the distance of the years
+She sends her God-speed back to you;
+She has no thought of doubts or fears
+Be but yourselves, be pure, be true,
+
+And prompt in duty; heed the deep,
+Low voice of conscience; through the ill
+And discord round about you, keep
+Your faith in human nature still.
+
+Be gentle: unto griefs and needs,
+Be pitiful as woman should,
+And, spite of all the lies of creeds,
+Hold fast the truth that God is good.
+
+Give and receive; go forth and bless
+The world that needs the hand and heart
+Of Martha's helpful carefulness
+No less than Mary's better part.
+
+So shall the stream of time flow by
+And leave each year a richer good,
+And matron loveliness outvie
+The nameless charm of maidenhood.
+
+And, when the world shall link your names
+With gracious lives and manners fine,
+The teacher shall assert her claims,
+And proudly whisper, "These were mine!"
+
+
+
+HYMN OF THE CHILDREN.
+
+Sung at the anniversary of the Children's Mission, Boston, 1878.
+
+Thine are all the gifts, O God!
+Thine the broken bread;
+Let the naked feet be shod,
+And the starving fed.
+
+Let Thy children, by Thy grace,
+Give as they abound,
+Till the poor have breathing-space,
+And the lost are found.
+
+Wiser than the miser's hoards
+Is the giver's choice;
+Sweeter than the song of birds
+Is the thankful voice.
+
+Welcome smiles on faces sad
+As the flowers of spring;
+Let the tender hearts be glad
+With the joy they bring.
+
+Happier for their pity's sake
+Make their sports and plays,
+And from lips of childhood take
+Thy perfected praise!
+
+
+
+THE LANDMARKS.
+
+     This poem was read at a meeting of citizens of Boston having for
+     its object the preservation of the Old South Church famous in
+     Colonial and Revolutionary history.
+
+I.
+THROUGH the streets of Marblehead
+Fast the red-winged terror sped;
+
+Blasting, withering, on it came,
+With its hundred tongues of flame,
+
+Where St. Michael's on its way
+Stood like chained Andromeda,
+
+Waiting on the rock, like her,
+Swift doom or deliverer!
+
+Church that, after sea-moss grew
+Over walls no longer new,
+
+Counted generations five,
+Four entombed and one alive;
+
+Heard the martial thousand tread
+Battleward from Marblehead;
+
+Saw within the rock-walled bay
+Treville's liked pennons play,
+
+And the fisher's dory met
+By the barge of Lafayette,
+
+Telling good news in advance
+Of the coming fleet of France!
+
+Church to reverend memories, dear,
+Quaint in desk and chandelier;
+
+Bell, whose century-rusted tongue
+Burials tolled and bridals rung;
+
+Loft, whose tiny organ kept
+Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept;
+
+Altar, o'er whose tablet old
+Sinai's law its thunders rolled!
+
+Suddenly the sharp cry came
+"Look! St. Michael's is aflame!"
+
+Round the low tower wall the fire
+Snake-like wound its coil of ire.
+
+Sacred in its gray respect
+From the jealousies of sect,
+
+"Save it," seemed the thought of all,
+"Save it, though our roof-trees fall!"
+
+Up the tower the young men sprung;
+One, the bravest, outward swung
+
+By the rope, whose kindling strands
+Smoked beneath the holder's hands,
+
+Smiting down with strokes of power
+Burning fragments from the tower.
+
+Then the gazing crowd beneath
+Broke the painful pause of breath;
+
+Brave men cheered from street to street,
+With home's ashes at their feet;
+
+Houseless women kerchiefs waved:
+"Thank the Lord! St. Michael's saved!"
+
+II.
+In the heart of Boston town
+Stands the church of old renown,
+
+From whose walls the impulse went
+Which set free a continent;
+
+From whose pulpit's oracle
+Prophecies of freedom fell;
+
+And whose steeple-rocking din
+Rang the nation's birth-day in!
+
+Standing at this very hour
+Perilled like St. Michael's tower,
+
+Held not in the clasp of flame,
+But by mammon's grasping claim.
+
+Shall it be of Boston said
+She is shamed by Marblehead?
+
+City of our pride! as there,
+Hast thou none to do and dare?
+
+Life was risked for Michael's shrine;
+Shall not wealth be staked for thine?
+
+Woe to thee, when men shall search
+Vainly for the Old South Church;
+
+When from Neck to Boston Stone,
+All thy pride of place is gone;
+
+When from Bay and railroad car,
+Stretched before them wide and far,
+
+Men shall only see a great
+Wilderness of brick and slate,
+
+Every holy spot o'erlaid
+By the commonplace of trade!
+
+City of our love': to thee
+Duty is but destiny.
+
+True to all thy record saith,
+Keep with thy traditions faith;
+
+Ere occasion's overpast,
+Hold its flowing forelock fast;
+
+Honor still the precedents
+Of a grand munificence;
+
+In thy old historic way
+Give, as thou didst yesterday
+
+At the South-land's call, or on
+Need's demand from fired St. John.
+
+Set thy Church's muffled bell
+Free the generous deed to tell.
+
+Let thy loyal hearts rejoice
+In the glad, sonorous voice,
+
+Ringing from the brazen mouth
+Of the bell of the Old South,--
+
+Ringing clearly, with a will,
+"What she was is Boston still!"
+1879
+
+
+GARDEN
+
+The American Horticultural Society, 1882.
+
+O painter of the fruits and flowers,
+We own wise design,
+Where these human hands of ours
+May share work of Thine!
+
+Apart from Thee we plant in vain
+The root and sow the seed;
+Thy early and Thy later rain,
+Thy sun and dew we need.
+
+Our toil is sweet with thankfulness,
+Our burden is our boon;
+The curse of Earth's gray morning is
+The blessing of its noon.
+
+Why search the wide world everywhere
+For Eden's unknown ground?
+That garden of the primal pair
+May nevermore be found.
+
+But, blest by Thee, our patient toil
+May right the ancient wrong,
+And give to every clime and soil
+The beauty lost so long.
+
+Our homestead flowers and fruited trees
+May Eden's orchard shame;
+We taste the tempting sweets of these
+Like Eve, without her blame.
+
+And, North and South and East and West,
+The pride of every zone,
+The fairest, rarest, and the best
+May all be made our own.
+
+Its earliest shrines the young world sought
+In hill-groves and in bowers,
+The fittest offerings thither brought
+Were Thy own fruits and flowers.
+
+And still with reverent hands we cull
+Thy gifts each year renewed;
+The good is always beautiful,
+The beautiful is good.
+
+
+
+A GREETING
+
+     Read at Harriet Beecher Stowe's seventieth anniversary, June 14,
+     1882, at a garden party at ex-Governor Claflin's in Newtonville,
+     Mass.
+
+Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers
+And golden-fruited orange bowers
+To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!
+To her who, in our evil time,
+Dragged into light the nation's crime
+With strength beyond the strength of men,
+And, mightier than their swords, her pen!
+To her who world-wide entrance gave
+To the log-cabin of the slave;
+Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,
+And all earth's languages his own,--
+North, South, and East and West, made all
+The common air electrical,
+Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven
+Blazed down, and every chain was riven!
+
+Welcome from each and all to her
+Whose Wooing of the Minister
+Revealed the warm heart of the man
+Beneath the creed-bound Puritan,
+And taught the kinship of the love
+Of man below and God above;
+To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes
+Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks;
+Whose fireside stories, grave or gay,
+In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way,
+With old New England's flavor rife,
+Waifs from her rude idyllic life,
+Are racy as the legends old
+By Chaucer or Boccaccio told;
+To her who keeps, through change of place
+And time, her native strength and grace,
+Alike where warm Sorrento smiles,
+Or where, by birchen-shaded isles,
+Whose summer winds have shivered o'er
+The icy drift of Labrador,
+She lifts to light the priceless Pearl
+Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl!
+To her at threescore years and ten
+Be tributes of the tongue and pen;
+Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given,
+The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven!
+
+Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs
+The air to-day, our love is hers!
+She needs no guaranty of fame
+Whose own is linked with Freedom's name.
+Long ages after ours shall keep
+Her memory living while we sleep;
+The waves that wash our gray coast lines,
+The winds that rock the Southern pines,
+Shall sing of her; the unending years
+Shall tell her tale in unborn ears.
+And when, with sins and follies past,
+Are numbered color-hate and caste,
+White, black, and red shall own as one
+The noblest work by woman done.
+
+
+GODSPEED
+
+     Written on the occasion of a voyage made by my friends
+     Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett.
+
+Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one
+Whose prayer availeth much, my wish should be
+Your favoring trade-wind and consenting sea.
+By sail or steed was never love outrun,
+And, here or there, love follows her in whom
+All graces and sweet charities unite,
+The old Greek beauty set in holier light;
+And her for whom New England's byways bloom,
+Who walks among us welcome as the Spring,
+Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray.
+God keep you both, make beautiful your way,
+Comfort, console, and bless; and safely bring,
+Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea
+The unreturning voyage, my friends to me.
+1882.
+
+
+
+WINTER ROSES.
+
+     In reply to a flower gift from Mrs. Putnam's school at
+     Jamaica Plain.
+
+My garden roses long ago
+Have perished from the leaf-strewn walks;
+Their pale, fair sisters smile no more
+Upon the sweet-brier stalks.
+
+Gone with the flower-time of my life,
+Spring's violets, summer's blooming pride,
+And Nature's winter and my own
+Stand, flowerless, side by side.
+
+So might I yesterday have sung;
+To-day, in bleak December's noon,
+Come sweetest fragrance, shapes, and hues,
+The rosy wealth of June!
+
+Bless the young bands that culled the gift,
+And bless the hearts that prompted it;
+If undeserved it comes, at least
+It seems not all unfit.
+
+Of old my Quaker ancestors
+Had gifts of forty stripes save one;
+To-day as many roses crown
+The gray head of their son.
+
+And with them, to my fancy's eye,
+The fresh-faced givers smiling come,
+And nine and thirty happy girls
+Make glad a lonely room.
+
+They bring the atmosphere of youth;
+The light and warmth of long ago
+Are in my heart, and on my cheek
+The airs of morning blow.
+
+O buds of girlhood, yet unblown,
+And fairer than the gift ye chose,
+For you may years like leaves unfold
+The heart of Sharon's rose
+1883.
+
+
+
+THE REUNION
+
+     Read September 10, 1885, to the surviving students of Haverhill
+     Academy in 1827-1830.
+
+The gulf of seven and fifty years
+We stretch our welcoming hands across;
+The distance but a pebble's toss
+Between us and our youth appears.
+
+For in life's school we linger on
+The remnant of a once full list;
+Conning our lessons, undismissed,
+With faces to the setting sun.
+
+And some have gone the unknown way,
+And some await the call to rest;
+Who knoweth whether it is best
+For those who went or those who stay?
+
+And yet despite of loss and ill,
+If faith and love and hope remain,
+Our length of days is not in vain,
+And life is well worth living still.
+
+Still to a gracious Providence
+The thanks of grateful hearts are due,
+For blessings when our lives were new,
+For all the good vouchsafed us since.
+
+The pain that spared us sorer hurt,
+The wish denied, the purpose crossed,
+And pleasure's fond occasions lost,
+Were mercies to our small desert.
+
+'T is something that we wander back,
+Gray pilgrims, to our ancient ways,
+And tender memories of old days
+Walk with us by the Merrimac;
+
+That even in life's afternoon
+A sense of youth comes back again,
+As through this cool September rain
+The still green woodlands dream of June.
+
+The eyes grown dim to present things
+Have keener sight for bygone years,
+And sweet and clear, in deafening ears,
+The bird that sang at morning sings.
+
+Dear comrades, scattered wide and far,
+Send from their homes their kindly word,
+And dearer ones, unseen, unheard,
+Smile on us from some heavenly star.
+
+For life and death with God are one,
+Unchanged by seeming change His care
+And love are round us here and there;
+He breaks no thread His hand has spun.
+
+Soul touches soul, the muster roll
+Of life eternal has no gaps;
+And after half a century's lapse
+Our school-day ranks are closed and whole.
+
+Hail and farewell! We go our way;
+Where shadows end, we trust in light;
+The star that ushers in the night
+Is herald also of the day!
+
+
+
+NORUMBEGA HALL.
+
+     Norumbega Hall at Wellesley College, named in honor of Eben Norton
+     Horsford, who has been one of the most munificent patrons of that
+     noble institution, and who had just published an essay claiming the
+     discovery of the site of the somewhat mythical city of Norumbega,
+     was opened with appropriate ceremonies, in April, 1886. The
+     following sonnet was written for the occasion, and was read by
+     President Alice E. Freeman, to whom it was addressed.
+
+Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires
+Of the sought City rose, nor yet beside
+The winding Charles, nor where the daily tide
+Of Naumkeag's haven rises and retires,
+The vision tarried; but somewhere we knew
+The beautiful gates must open to our quest,
+Somewhere that marvellous City of the West
+Would lift its towers and palace domes in view,
+And, to! at last its mystery is made known--
+Its only dwellers maidens fair and young,
+Its Princess such as England's Laureate sung;
+And safe from capture, save by love alone,
+It lends its beauty to the lake's green shore,
+And Norumbega is a myth no more.
+
+
+
+THE BARTHOLDI STATUE
+
+1886
+
+The land, that, from the rule of kings,
+In freeing us, itself made free,
+Our Old World Sister, to us brings
+Her sculptured Dream of Liberty,
+
+Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sands
+Uplifted by the toil-worn slave,
+On Freedom's soil with freemen's hands
+We rear the symbol free hands gave.
+
+O France, the beautiful! to thee
+Once more a debt of love we owe
+In peace beneath thy Colors Three,
+We hail a later Rochambeau!
+
+Rise, stately Symbol! holding forth
+Thy light and hope to all who sit
+In chains and darkness! Belt the earth
+With watch-fires from thy torch uplit!
+
+Reveal the primal mandate still
+Which Chaos heard and ceased to be,
+Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will
+In signs of fire: "Let man be free!"
+
+Shine far, shine free, a guiding light
+To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim,
+A lightning-flash the wretch to smite
+Who shields his license with thy name!
+
+
+
+ONE OF THE SIGNERS.
+
+     Written for the unveiling of the statue of Josiah Bartlett at
+     Amesbury, Mass., July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was a native
+     of the town, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
+     Amesbury or Ambresbury, so called from the "anointed stones" of the
+     great Druidical temple near it, was the seat of one of the earliest
+     religious houses in Britain. The tradition that the guilty wife of
+     King Arthur fled thither for protection forms one of the finest
+     passages in Tennyson's Idyls of the King.
+
+O storied vale of Merrimac
+Rejoice through all thy shade and shine,
+And from his century's sleep call back
+A brave and honored son of thine.
+
+Unveil his effigy between
+The living and the dead to-day;
+The fathers of the Old Thirteen
+Shall witness bear as spirits may.
+
+Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers
+The shades of Lee and Jefferson,
+Wise Franklin reverend with his years
+And Carroll, lord of Carrollton!
+
+Be thine henceforth a pride of place
+Beyond thy namesake's over-sea,
+Where scarce a stone is left to trace
+The Holy House of Amesbury.
+
+A prouder memory lingers round
+The birthplace of thy true man here
+Than that which haunts the refuge found
+By Arthur's mythic Guinevere.
+
+The plain deal table where he sat
+And signed a nation's title-deed
+Is dearer now to fame than that
+Which bore the scroll of Runnymede.
+
+Long as, on Freedom's natal morn,
+Shall ring the Independence bells,
+Give to thy dwellers yet unborn
+The lesson which his image tells.
+
+For in that hour of Destiny,
+Which tried the men of bravest stock,
+He knew the end alone must be
+A free land or a traitor's block.
+
+Among those picked and chosen men
+Than his, who here first drew his breath,
+No firmer fingers held the pen
+Which wrote for liberty or death.
+
+Not for their hearths and homes alone,
+But for the world their work was done;
+On all the winds their thought has flown
+Through all the circuit of the sun.
+
+We trace its flight by broken chains,
+By songs of grateful Labor still;
+To-day, in all her holy fanes,
+It rings the bells of freed Brazil.
+
+O hills that watched his boyhood's home,
+O earth and air that nursed him, give,
+In this memorial semblance, room
+To him who shall its bronze outlive!
+
+And thou, O Land he loved, rejoice
+That in the countless years to come,
+Whenever Freedom needs a voice,
+These sculptured lips shall not be dumb!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          THE TENT ON THE BEACH
+
+     It can scarcely be necessary to name as the two companions whom I
+     reckoned with myself in this poetical picnic, Fields the lettered
+     magnate, and Taylor the free cosmopolite. The long line of sandy
+     beach which defines almost the whole of the New Hampshire sea-coast
+     is especially marked near its southern extremity, by the
+     salt-meadows of Hampton. The Hampton River winds through these
+     meadows, and the reader may, if he choose, imagine my tent pitched
+     near its mouth, where also was the scene of the _Wreck of
+     Rivermouth_. The green bluff to the northward is Great Boar's Head;
+     southward is the Merrimac, with Newburyport lifting its steeples
+     above brown roofs and green trees on banks.
+
+I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,--
+Too light perhaps for serious years, though born
+Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,--
+Against the pure ideal which has drawn
+My feet to follow its far-shining gleam.
+A simple plot is mine: legends and runes
+Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain
+Silent, from boyhood taking voice again,
+Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes
+That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,
+Thawed into sound:--a winter fireside dream
+Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea,
+Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng
+Of voyagers from that vaster mystery
+Of which it is an emblem;--and the dear
+Memory of one who might have tuned my song
+To sweeter music by her delicate ear.
+
+
+When heats as of a tropic clime
+Burned all our inland valleys through,
+Three friends, the guests of summer time,
+Pitched their white tent where sea-winds blew.
+Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed
+With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed,
+Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms
+Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland farms.
+
+At full of tide their bolder shore
+Of sun-bleached sand the waters beat;
+At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor
+They touched with light, receding feet.
+Northward a 'green bluff broke the chain
+Of sand-hills; southward stretched a plain
+Of salt grass, with a river winding down,
+Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of the town,
+
+Whence sometimes, when the wind was light
+And dull the thunder of the beach,
+They heard the bells of morn and night
+Swing, miles away, their silver speech.
+Above low scarp and turf-grown wall
+They saw the fort-flag rise and fall;
+And, the first star to signal twilight's hour,
+The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall light-house tower.
+
+They rested there, escaped awhile
+From cares that wear the life away,
+To eat the lotus of the Nile
+And drink the poppies of Cathay,--
+To fling their loads of custom down,
+Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown,
+And in the sea waves drown the restless pack
+Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.
+
+One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore
+A ready credence in his looks,
+A lettered magnate, lording o'er
+An ever-widening realm of books.
+In him brain-currents, near and far,
+Converged as in a Leyden jar;
+The old, dead authors thronged him round about,
+And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out.
+
+He knew each living pundit well,
+Could weigh the gifts of him or her,
+And well the market value tell
+Of poet and philosopher.
+But if he lost, the scenes behind,
+Somewhat of reverence vague and blind,
+Finding the actors human at the best,
+No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.
+
+His boyhood fancies not outgrown,
+He loved himself the singer's art;
+Tenderly, gently, by his own
+He knew and judged an author's heart.
+No Rhadamanthine brow of doom
+Bowed the dazed pedant from his room;
+And bards, whose name is legion, if denied,
+Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride.
+
+Pleasant it was to roam about
+The lettered world as he had, done,
+And see the lords of song without
+Their singing robes and garlands on.
+With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere,
+Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer,
+And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore,
+Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more.
+
+And one there was, a dreamer born,
+Who, with a mission to fulfil,
+Had left the Muses' haunts to turn
+The crank of an opinion-mill,
+Making his rustic reed of song
+A weapon in the war with wrong,
+Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough
+That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow.
+
+Too quiet seemed the man to ride
+The winged Hippogriff Reform;
+Was his a voice from side to side
+To pierce the tumult of the storm?
+A silent, shy, peace-loving man,
+He seemed no fiery partisan
+To hold his way against the public frown,
+The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down.
+
+For while he wrought with strenuous will
+The work his hands had found to do,
+He heard the fitful music still
+Of winds that out of dream-land blew.
+The din about him could not drown
+What the strange voices whispered down;
+Along his task-field weird processions swept,
+The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped:
+
+The common air was thick with dreams,--
+He told them to the toiling crowd;
+Such music as the woods and streams
+Sang in his ear he sang aloud;
+In still, shut bays, on windy capes,
+He heard the call of beckoning shapes,
+And, as the gray old shadows prompted him,
+To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends grim.
+
+He rested now his weary hands,
+And lightly moralized and laughed,
+As, tracing on the shifting sands
+A burlesque of his paper-craft,
+He saw the careless waves o'errun
+His words, as time before had done,
+Each day's tide-water washing clean away,
+Like letters from the sand, the work of yesterday.
+
+And one, whose Arab face was tanned
+By tropic sun and boreal frost,
+So travelled there was scarce a land
+Or people left him to exhaust,
+In idling mood had from him hurled
+The poor squeezed orange of the world,
+And in the tent-shade, as beneath a palm,
+Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental calm.
+
+The very waves that washed the sand
+Below him, he had seen before
+Whitening the Scandinavian strand
+And sultry Mauritanian shore.
+From ice-rimmed isles, from summer seas
+Palm-fringed, they bore him messages;
+He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again,
+And mule-bells tinkling down the mountain-paths of Spain.
+
+His memory round the ransacked earth
+On Puck's long girdle slid at ease;
+And, instant, to the valley's girth
+Of mountains, spice isles of the seas,
+Faith flowered in minster stones, Art's guess
+At truth and beauty, found access;
+Yet loved the while, that free cosmopolite,
+Old friends, old ways, and kept his boyhood's dreams in sight.
+
+Untouched as yet by wealth and pride,
+That virgin innocence of beach
+No shingly monster, hundred-eyed,
+Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach;
+Unhoused, save where, at intervals,
+The white tents showed their canvas walls,
+Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air,
+Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care.
+
+Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand
+A one-horse wagon slowly crawled,
+Deep laden with a youthful band,
+Whose look some homestead old recalled;
+Brother perchance, and sisters twain,
+And one whose blue eyes told, more plain
+Than the free language of her rosy lip,
+Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship.
+
+With cheeks of russet-orchard tint,
+The light laugh of their native rills,
+The perfume of their garden's mint,
+The breezy freedom of the hills,
+They bore, in unrestrained delight,
+The motto of the Garter's knight,
+Careless as if from every gazing thing
+Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring.
+
+The clanging sea-fowl came and went,
+The hunter's gun in the marshes rang;
+At nightfall from a neighboring tent
+A flute-voiced woman sweetly sang.
+Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in-hand,
+Young girls went tripping down the sand;
+And youths and maidens, sitting in the moon,
+Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from which we wake too soon.
+
+At times their fishing-lines they plied,
+With an old Triton at the oar,
+Salt as the sea-wind, tough and dried
+As a lean cusk from Labrador.
+Strange tales he told of wreck and storm,--
+Had seen the sea-snake's awful form,
+And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle complain,
+Speak him off shore, and beg a passage to old Spain!
+
+And there, on breezy morns, they saw
+The fishing-schooners outward run,
+Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw
+Turned white or dark to shade and sun.
+Sometimes, in calms of closing day,
+They watched the spectral mirage play,
+Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh,
+And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky.
+
+Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black,
+Stooped low upon the darkening main,
+Piercing the waves along its track
+With the slant javelins of rain.
+And when west-wind and sunshine warm
+Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm,
+They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers
+Where the green buds of waves burst into white froth flowers.
+
+And when along the line of shore
+The mists crept upward chill and damp,
+Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor
+Beneath the flaring lantern lamp,
+They talked of all things old and new,
+Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do;
+And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent,
+Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease unbent.
+
+Once, when the sunset splendors died,
+And, trampling up the sloping sand,
+In lines outreaching far and wide,
+The white-waned billows swept to land,
+Dim seen across the gathering shade,
+A vast and ghostly cavalcade,
+They sat around their lighted kerosene,
+Hearing the deep bass roar their every pause between.
+
+Then, urged thereto, the Editor
+Within his full portfolio dipped,
+Feigning excuse while seaching for
+(With secret pride) his manuscript.
+His pale face flushed from eye to beard,
+With nervous cough his throat he cleared,
+And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayed
+The anxious fondness of an author's heart, he read:
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH
+
+     The Goody Cole who figures in this poem and The Changeling as
+     Eunice Cole, who for a quarter of a century or more was feared,
+     persecuted, and hated as the witch of Hampton. She lived alone in a
+     hovel a little distant from the spot where the Hampton Academy now
+     stands, and there she died, unattended. When her death was
+     discovered, she was hastily covered up in the earth near by, and a
+     stake driven through her body, to exorcise the evil spirit. Rev.
+     Stephen Bachiler or Batchelder was one of the ablest of the early
+     New England preachers. His marriage late in life to a woman
+     regarded by his church as disreputable induced him to return to
+     England, where he enjoyed the esteem and favor of Oliver Cromwell
+     during the Protectorate.
+
+Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,
+By dawn or sunset shone across,
+When the ebb of the sea has left them free,
+To dry their fringes of gold-green moss
+For there the river comes winding down,
+From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,
+And waves on the outer rocks afoam
+Shout to its waters, "Welcome home!"
+
+And fair are the sunny isles in view
+East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
+And Agamenticus lifts its blue
+Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er;
+And southerly, when the tide is down,
+'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
+The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
+Over a floor of burnished steel.
+
+Once, in the old Colonial days,
+Two hundred years ago and more,
+A boat sailed down through the winding ways
+Of Hampton River to that low shore,
+Full of a goodly company
+Sailing out on the summer sea,
+Veering to catch the land-breeze light,
+With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right.
+
+In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid
+Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass,
+"Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!"
+A young man sighed, who saw them pass.
+Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand
+Whetting his scythe with a listless hand,
+Hearing a voice in a far-off song,
+Watching a white hand beckoning long.
+
+"Fie on the witch!" cried a merry girl,
+As they rounded the point where Goody Cole
+Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl,
+A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul.
+"Oho!" she muttered, "ye 're brave to-day!
+But I hear the little waves laugh and say,
+'The broth will be cold that waits at home;
+For it 's one to go, but another to come!'"
+
+"She's cursed," said the skipper; "speak her fair:
+I'm scary always to see her shake
+Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair,
+And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake."
+But merrily still, with laugh and shout,
+From Hampton River the boat sailed out,
+Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh,
+And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye.
+
+They dropped their lines in the lazy tide,
+Drawing up haddock and mottled cod;
+They saw not the Shadow that walked beside,
+They heard not the feet with silence shod.
+But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew,
+Shot by the lightnings through and through;
+And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast,
+Ran along the sky from west to east.
+
+Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea
+Up to the dimmed and wading sun;
+But he spake like a brave man cheerily,
+"Yet there is time for our homeward run."
+Veering and tacking, they backward wore;
+And just as a breath-from the woods ashore
+Blew out to whisper of danger past,
+The wrath of the storm came down at last!
+
+The skipper hauled at the heavy sail
+"God be our help!" he only cried,
+As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail,
+Smote the boat on its starboard side.
+The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone
+Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown,
+Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare,
+The strife and torment of sea and air.
+
+Goody Cole looked out from her door
+The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone,
+Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar
+Toss the foam from tusks of stone.
+She clasped her hands with a grip of pain,
+The tear on her cheek was not of rain
+"They are lost," she muttered, "boat and crew!
+Lord, forgive me! my words were true!"
+
+Suddenly seaward swept the squall;
+The low sun smote through cloudy rack;
+The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all
+The trend of the coast lay hard and black.
+But far and wide as eye could reach,
+No life was seen upon wave or beach;
+The boat that went out at morning never
+Sailed back again into Hampton River.
+
+O mower, lean on thy bended snath,
+Look from the meadows green and low
+The wind of the sea is a waft of death,
+The waves are singing a song of woe!
+By silent river, by moaning sea,
+Long and vain shall thy watching be
+Never again shall the sweet voice call,
+Never the white hand rise and fall!
+
+O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight
+Ye saw in the light of breaking day
+Dead faces looking up cold and white
+From sand and seaweed where they lay.
+The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept,
+And cursed the tide as it backward crept
+"Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake
+Leave your dead for the hearts that break!"
+
+Solemn it was in that old day
+In Hampton town and its log-built church,
+Where side by side the coffins lay
+And the mourners stood in aisle and porch.
+In the singing-seats young eyes were dim,
+The voices faltered that raised the hymn,
+And Father Dalton, grave and stern,
+Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn.
+
+But his ancient colleague did not pray;
+Under the weight of his fourscore years
+He stood apart with the iron-gray
+Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears;
+And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame,
+Linking her own with his honored name,
+Subtle as sin, at his side withstood
+The felt reproach of her neighborhood.
+
+Apart with them, like them forbid,
+Old Goody Cole looked drearily round,
+As, two by two, with their faces hid,
+The mourners walked to the burying-ground.
+She let the staff from her clasped hands fall
+"Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!"
+And the voice of the old man answered her
+"Amen!" said Father Bachiler.
+
+So, as I sat upon Appledore
+In the calm of a closing summer day,
+And the broken lines of Hampton shore
+In purple mist of cloudland lay,
+The Rivermouth Rocks their story told;
+And waves aglow with sunset gold,
+Rising and breaking in steady chime,
+Beat the rhythm and kept the time.
+
+And the sunset paled, and warmed once more
+With a softer, tenderer after-glow;
+In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore
+And sails in the distance drifting slow.
+The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar,
+The White Isle kindled its great red star;
+And life and death in my old-time lay
+Mingled in peace like the night and day!
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+"Well!" said the Man of Books, "your story
+Is really not ill told in verse.
+As the Celt said of purgatory,
+One might go farther and fare worse."
+The Reader smiled; and once again
+With steadier voice took up his strain,
+While the fair singer from the neighboring tent
+Drew near, and at his side a graceful listener bent.
+1864.
+
+
+THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE
+
+     At the mouth of the Melvin River, which empties into Moulton-Bay in
+     Lake Winnipesaukee, is a great mound. The Ossipee Indians had their
+     home in the neighborhood of the bay, which is plentifully stocked
+     with fish, and many relics of their occupation have been found.
+
+
+Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles
+Dimple round its hundred isles,
+And the mountain's granite ledge
+Cleaves the water like a wedge,
+Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,
+Rest the giant's mighty bones.
+
+Close beside, in shade and gleam,
+Laughs and ripples Melvin stream;
+Melvin water, mountain-born,
+All fair flowers its banks adorn;
+All the woodland's voices meet,
+Mingling with its murmurs sweet.
+
+Over lowlands forest-grown,
+Over waters island-strown,
+Over silver-sanded beach,
+Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,
+Melvin stream and burial-heap,
+Watch and ward the mountains keep.
+
+Who that Titan cromlech fills?
+Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills?
+Knight who on the birchen tree
+Carved his savage heraldry?
+Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim,
+Prophet, sage, or wizard grim?
+
+Rugged type of primal man,
+Grim utilitarian,
+Loving woods for hunt and prowl,
+Lake and hill for fish and fowl,
+As the brown bear blind and dull
+To the grand and beautiful:
+
+Not for him the lesson drawn
+From the mountains smit with dawn,
+Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May,
+Sunset's purple bloom of day,--
+Took his life no hue from thence,
+Poor amid such affluence?
+
+Haply unto hill and tree
+All too near akin was he
+Unto him who stands afar
+Nature's marvels greatest are;
+Who the mountain purple seeks
+Must not climb the higher peaks.
+
+Yet who knows in winter tramp,
+Or the midnight of the camp,
+What revealings faint and far,
+Stealing down from moon and star,
+Kindled in that human clod
+Thought of destiny and God?
+
+Stateliest forest patriarch,
+Grand in robes of skin and bark,
+What sepulchral mysteries,
+What weird funeral-rites, were his?
+What sharp wail, what drear lament,
+Back scared wolf and eagle sent?
+
+Now, whate'er he may have been,
+Low he lies as other men;
+On his mound the partridge drums,
+There the noisy blue-jay comes;
+Rank nor name nor pomp has he
+In the grave's democracy.
+
+Part thy blue lips, Northern lake!
+Moss-grown rocks, your silence break!
+Tell the tale, thou ancient tree!
+Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee!
+Speak, and tell us how and when
+Lived and died this king of men!
+
+Wordless moans the ancient pine;
+Lake and mountain give no sign;
+Vain to trace this ring of stones;
+Vain the search of crumbling bones
+Deepest of all mysteries,
+And the saddest, silence is.
+
+Nameless, noteless, clay with clay
+Mingles slowly day by day;
+But somewhere, for good or ill,
+That dark soul is living still;
+Somewhere yet that atom's force
+Moves the light-poised universe.
+
+Strange that on his burial-sod
+Harebells bloom, and golden-rod,
+While the soul's dark horoscope
+Holds no starry sign of hope!
+Is the Unseen with sight at odds?
+Nature's pity more than God's?
+
+Thus I mused by Melvin's side,
+While the summer eventide
+Made the woods and inland sea
+And the mountains mystery;
+And the hush of earth and air
+Seemed the pause before a prayer,--
+
+Prayer for him, for all who rest,
+Mother Earth, upon thy breast,--
+Lapped on Christian turf, or hid
+In rock-cave or pyramid
+All who sleep, as all who live,
+Well may need the prayer, "Forgive!"
+
+Desert-smothered caravan,
+Knee-deep dust that once was man,
+Battle-trenches ghastly piled,
+Ocean-floors with white bones tiled,
+Crowded tomb and mounded sod,
+Dumbly crave that prayer to God.
+
+Oh, the generations old
+Over whom no church-bells tolled,
+Christless, lifting up blind eyes
+To the silence of the skies!
+For the innumerable dead
+Is my soul disquieted.
+
+Where be now these silent hosts?
+Where the camping-ground of ghosts?
+Where the spectral conscripts led
+To the white tents of the dead?
+What strange shore or chartless sea
+Holds the awful mystery?
+
+Then the warm sky stooped to make
+Double sunset in the lake;
+While above I saw with it,
+Range on range, the mountains lit;
+And the calm and splendor stole
+Like an answer to my soul.
+
+Hear'st thou, O of little faith,
+What to thee the mountain saith,
+What is whispered by the trees?
+Cast on God thy care for these;
+Trust Him, if thy sight be dim
+Doubt for them is doubt of Him.
+
+"Blind must be their close-shut eyes
+Where like night the sunshine lies,
+Fiery-linked the self-forged chain
+Binding ever sin to pain,
+Strong their prison-house of will,
+But without He waiteth still.
+
+"Not with hatred's undertow
+Doth the Love Eternal flow;
+Every chain that spirits wear
+Crumbles in the breath of prayer;
+And the penitent's desire
+Opens every gate of fire.
+
+"Still Thy love, O Christ arisen,
+Yearns to reach these souls in prison!
+Through all depths of sin and loss
+Drops the plummet of Thy cross!
+Never yet abyss was found
+Deeper than that cross could sound!"
+
+Therefore well may Nature keep
+Equal faith with all who sleep,
+Set her watch of hills around
+Christian grave and heathen mound,
+And to cairn and kirkyard send
+Summer's flowery dividend.
+
+Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream,
+Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam
+On the Indian's grassy tomb
+Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom!
+Deep below, as high above,
+Sweeps the circle of God's love.
+1865
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+He paused and questioned with his eye
+The hearers' verdict on his song.
+A low voice asked: Is 't well to pry
+Into the secrets which belong
+Only to God?--The life to be
+Is still the unguessed mystery
+Unsealed, unpierced the cloudy walls remain,
+We beat with dream and wish the soundless doors in vain.
+
+"But faith beyond our sight may go."
+He said: "The gracious Fatherhood
+Can only know above, below,
+Eternal purposes of good.
+From our free heritage of will,
+The bitter springs of pain and ill
+Flow only in all worlds. The perfect day
+Of God is shadowless, and love is love alway."
+
+"I know," she said, "the letter kills;
+That on our arid fields of strife
+And heat of clashing texts distils
+The clew of spirit and of life.
+But, searching still the written Word,
+I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord,
+A voucher for the hope I also feel
+That sin can give no wound beyond love's power to heal."
+
+"Pray," said the Man of Books, "give o'er
+A theme too vast for time and place.
+Go on, Sir Poet, ride once more
+Your hobby at his old free pace.
+But let him keep, with step discreet,
+The solid earth beneath his feet.
+In the great mystery which around us lies,
+The wisest is a fool, the fool Heaven-helped is wise."
+
+The Traveller said: "If songs have creeds,
+Their choice of them let singers make;
+But Art no other sanction needs
+Than beauty for its own fair sake.
+It grinds not in the mill of use,
+Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse;
+It makes the flexile laws it deigns to own,
+And gives its atmosphere its color and its tone.
+
+"Confess, old friend, your austere school
+Has left your fancy little chance;
+You square to reason's rigid rule
+The flowing outlines of romance.
+With conscience keen from exercise,
+And chronic fear of compromise,
+You check the free play of your rhymes, to clap
+A moral underneath, and spring it like a trap."
+
+The sweet voice answered: "Better so
+Than bolder flights that know no check;
+Better to use the bit, than throw
+The reins all loose on fancy's neck.
+The liberal range of Art should be
+The breadth of Christian liberty,
+Restrained alone by challenge and alarm
+Where its charmed footsteps tread the border land of harm.
+
+"Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives
+The eternal epic of the man.
+He wisest is who only gives,
+True to himself, the best he can;
+Who, drifting in the winds of praise,
+The inward monitor obeys;
+And, with the boldness that confesses fear,
+Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience steer.
+
+"Thanks for the fitting word he speaks,
+Nor less for doubtful word unspoken;
+For the false model that he breaks,
+As for the moulded grace unbroken;
+For what is missed and what remains,
+For losses which are truest gains,
+For reverence conscious of the Eternal eye,
+And truth too fair to need the garnish of a lie."
+
+Laughing, the Critic bowed. "I yield
+The point without another word;
+Who ever yet a case appealed
+Where beauty's judgment had been heard?
+And you, my good friend, owe to me
+Your warmest thanks for such a plea,
+As true withal as sweet. For my offence
+Of cavil, let her words be ample recompense."
+
+Across the sea one lighthouse star,
+With crimson ray that came and went,
+Revolving on its tower afar,
+Looked through the doorway of the tent.
+While outward, over sand-slopes wet,
+The lamp flashed down its yellow jet
+On the long wash of waves, with red and green
+Tangles of weltering weed through the white foam-wreaths seen.
+
+"Sing while we may,--another day
+May bring enough of sorrow;'--thus
+Our Traveller in his own sweet lay,
+His Crimean camp-song, hints to us,"
+The lady said. "So let it be;
+Sing us a song," exclaimed all three.
+She smiled: "I can but marvel at your choice
+To hear our poet's words through my poor borrowed voice."
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+Her window opens to the bay,
+On glistening light or misty gray,
+And there at dawn and set of day
+In prayer she kneels.
+
+"Dear Lord!" she saith, "to many a borne
+From wind and wave the wanderers come;
+I only see the tossing foam
+Of stranger keels.
+
+"Blown out and in by summer gales,
+The stately ships, with crowded sails,
+And sailors leaning o'er their rails,
+Before me glide;
+They come, they go, but nevermore,
+Spice-laden from the Indian shore,
+I see his swift-winged Isidore
+The waves divide.
+
+"O Thou! with whom the night is day
+And one the near and far away,
+Look out on yon gray waste, and say
+Where lingers he.
+Alive, perchance, on some lone beach
+Or thirsty isle beyond the reach
+Of man, he hears the mocking speech
+Of wind and sea.
+
+"O dread and cruel deep, reveal
+The secret which thy waves conceal,
+And, ye wild sea-birds, hither wheel
+And tell your tale.
+Let winds that tossed his raven hair
+A message from my lost one bear,--
+Some thought of me, a last fond prayer
+Or dying wail!
+
+"Come, with your dreariest truth shut out
+The fears that haunt me round about;
+O God! I cannot bear this doubt
+That stifles breath.
+The worst is better than the dread;
+Give me but leave to mourn my dead
+Asleep in trust and hope, instead
+Of life in death!"
+
+It might have been the evening breeze
+That whispered in the garden trees,
+It might have been the sound of seas
+That rose and fell;
+But, with her heart, if not her ear,
+The old loved voice she seemed to hear
+"I wait to meet thee: be of cheer,
+For all is well!"
+1865
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+The sweet voice into silence went,
+A silence which was almost pain
+As through it rolled the long lament,
+The cadence of the mournful main.
+Glancing his written pages o'er,
+The Reader tried his part once more;
+Leaving the land of hackmatack and pine
+For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and with vine.
+
+
+THE BROTHER OF MERCY.
+
+Piero Luca, known of all the town
+As the gray porter by the Pitti wall
+Where the noon shadows of the gardens fall,
+Sick and in dolor, waited to lay down
+His last sad burden, and beside his mat
+The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat.
+
+Unseen, in square and blossoming garden drifted,
+Soft sunset lights through green Val d'Arno sifted;
+Unheard, below the living shuttles shifted
+Backward and forth, and wove, in love or strife,
+In mirth or pain, the mottled web of life
+But when at last came upward from the street
+Tinkle of bell and tread of measured feet,
+The sick man started, strove to rise in vain,
+Sinking back heavily with a moan of pain.
+And the monk said, "'T is but the Brotherhood
+Of Mercy going on some errand good
+Their black masks by the palace-wall I see."
+Piero answered faintly, "Woe is me!
+This day for the first time in forty years
+In vain the bell hath sounded in my ears,
+Calling me with my brethren of the mask,
+Beggar and prince alike, to some new task
+Of love or pity,--haply from the street
+To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or, with feet
+Hushed to the quickened ear and feverish brain,
+To tread the crowded lazaretto's floors,
+Down the long twilight of the corridors,
+Midst tossing arms and faces full of pain.
+I loved the work: it was its own reward.
+I never counted on it to offset
+My sins, which are many, or make less my debt
+To the free grace and mercy of our Lord;
+But somehow, father, it has come to be
+In these long years so much a part of me,
+I should not know myself, if lacking it,
+But with the work the worker too would die,
+And in my place some other self would sit
+Joyful or sad,--what matters, if not I?
+And now all's over. Woe is me!"--"My son,"
+The monk said soothingly, "thy work is done;
+And no more as a servant, but the guest
+Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest.
+No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the lost,
+Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt sit down
+Clad in white robes, and wear a golden crown
+Forever and forever."--Piero tossed
+On his sick-pillow: "Miserable me!
+I am too poor for such grand company;
+The crown would be too heavy for this gray
+Old head; and God forgive me if I say
+It would be hard to sit there night and day,
+Like an image in the Tribune, doing naught
+With these hard hands, that all my life have wrought,
+Not for bread only, but for pity's sake.
+I'm dull at prayers: I could not keep awake,
+Counting my beads. Mine's but a crazy head,
+Scarce worth the saving, if all else be dead.
+And if one goes to heaven without a heart,
+God knows he leaves behind his better part.
+I love my fellow-men: the worst I know
+I would do good to. Will death change me so
+That I shall sit among the lazy saints,
+Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints
+Of souls that suffer? Why, I never yet
+Left a poor dog in the strada hard beset,
+Or ass o'erladen! Must I rate man less
+Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness?
+Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be sin!)
+The world of pain were better, if therein
+One's heart might still be human, and desires
+Of natural pity drop upon its fires
+Some cooling tears."
+
+Thereat the pale monk crossed
+His brow, and, muttering, "Madman! thou art lost!"
+Took up his pyx and fled; and, left alone,
+The sick man closed his eyes with a great groan
+That sank into a prayer, "Thy will be done!"
+Then was he made aware, by soul or ear,
+Of somewhat pure and holy bending o'er him,
+And of a voice like that of her who bore him,
+Tender and most compassionate: "Never fear!
+For heaven is love, as God himself is love;
+Thy work below shall be thy work above."
+And when he looked, lo! in the stern monk's place
+He saw the shining of an angel's face!
+1864.
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+The Traveller broke the pause. "I've seen
+The Brothers down the long street steal,
+Black, silent, masked, the crowd between,
+And felt to doff my hat and kneel
+With heart, if not with knee, in prayer,
+For blessings on their pious care."
+
+Reader wiped his glasses: "Friends of mine,
+I'll try our home-brewed next, instead of foreign wine."
+
+
+
+THE CHANGELING.
+
+For the fairest maid in Hampton
+They needed not to search,
+Who saw young Anna Favor
+Come walking into church,
+
+Or bringing from the meadows,
+At set of harvest-day,
+The frolic of the blackbirds,
+The sweetness of the hay.
+
+Now the weariest of all mothers,
+The saddest two-years bride,
+She scowls in the face of her husband,
+And spurns her child aside.
+
+"Rake out the red coals, goodman,--
+For there the child shall lie,
+Till the black witch comes to fetch her
+And both up chimney fly.
+
+"It's never my own little daughter,
+It's never my own," she said;
+"The witches have stolen my Anna,
+And left me an imp instead.
+
+"Oh, fair and sweet was my baby,
+Blue eyes, and hair of gold;
+But this is ugly and wrinkled,
+Cross, and cunning, and old.
+
+"I hate the touch of her fingers,
+I hate the feel of her skin;
+It's not the milk from my bosom,
+But my blood, that she sucks in.
+
+"My face grows sharp with the torment;
+Look! my arms are skin and bone!
+Rake open the red coals, goodman,
+And the witch shall have her own.
+
+"She 'll come when she hears it crying,
+In the shape of an owl or bat,
+And she'll bring us our darling Anna
+In place of her screeching brat."
+
+Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton,
+Laid his hand upon her head
+"Thy sorrow is great, O woman!
+I sorrow with thee," he said.
+
+"The paths to trouble are many,
+And never but one sure way
+Leads out to the light beyond it
+My poor wife, let us pray."
+
+Then he said to the great All-Father,
+"Thy daughter is weak and blind;
+Let her sight come back, and clothe her
+Once more in her right mind.
+
+"Lead her out of this evil shadow,
+Out of these fancies wild;
+Let the holy love of the mother
+Turn again to her child.
+
+"Make her lips like the lips of Mary
+Kissing her blessed Son;
+Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus,
+Rest on her little one.
+
+"Comfort the soul of thy handmaid,
+Open her prison-door,
+And thine shall be all the glory
+And praise forevermore."
+
+Then into the face of its mother
+The baby looked up and smiled;
+And the cloud of her soul was lifted,
+And she knew her little child.
+
+A beam of the slant west sunshine
+Made the wan face almost fair,
+Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder,
+And the rings of pale gold hair.
+
+She kissed it on lip and forehead,
+She kissed it on cheek and chin,
+And she bared her snow-white bosom
+To the lips so pale and thin.
+
+Oh, fair on her bridal morning
+Was the maid who blushed and smiled,
+But fairer to Ezra Dalton
+Looked the mother of his child.
+
+With more than a lover's fondness
+He stooped to her worn young face,
+And the nursing child and the mother
+He folded in one embrace.
+
+"Blessed be God!" he murmured.
+"Blessed be God!" she said;
+"For I see, who once was blinded,--
+I live, who once was dead.
+
+"Now mount and ride, my goodman,
+As thou lovest thy own soul
+Woe's me, if my wicked fancies
+Be the death of Goody Cole!"
+
+His horse he saddled and bridled,
+And into the night rode he,
+Now through the great black woodland,
+Now by the white-beached sea.
+
+He rode through the silent clearings,
+He came to the ferry wide,
+And thrice he called to the boatman
+Asleep on the other side.
+
+He set his horse to the river,
+He swam to Newbury town,
+And he called up Justice Sewall
+In his nightcap and his gown.
+
+And the grave and worshipful justice
+(Upon whose soul be peace!)
+Set his name to the jailer's warrant
+For Goodwife Cole's release.
+
+Then through the night the hoof-beats
+Went sounding like a flail;
+And Goody Cole at cockcrow
+Came forth from Ipswich jail.
+1865
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+"Here is a rhyme: I hardly dare
+To venture on its theme worn out;
+What seems so sweet by Doon and Ayr
+Sounds simply silly hereabout;
+And pipes by lips Arcadian blown
+Are only tin horns at our own.
+Yet still the muse of pastoral walks with us,
+While Hosea Biglow sings, our new Theocritus."
+
+
+
+THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH.
+
+     Attitash, an Indian word signifying "huckleberry," is the name of a
+     large and beautiful lake in the northern part of Amesbury.
+
+In sky and wave the white clouds swam,
+And the blue hills of Nottingham
+Through gaps of leafy green
+Across the lake were seen,
+
+When, in the shadow of the ash
+That dreams its dream in Attitash,
+In the warm summer weather,
+Two maidens sat together.
+
+They sat and watched in idle mood
+The gleam and shade of lake and wood;
+The beach the keen light smote,
+The white sail of a boat;
+
+Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying,
+In sweetness, not in music, dying;
+Hardback, and virgin's-bower,
+And white-spiked clethra-flower.
+
+With careless ears they heard the plash
+And breezy wash of Attitash,
+The wood-bird's plaintive cry,
+The locust's sharp reply.
+
+And teased the while, with playful band,
+The shaggy dog of Newfoundland,
+Whose uncouth frolic spilled
+Their baskets berry-filled.
+
+Then one, the beauty of whose eyes
+Was evermore a great surprise,
+Tossed back her queenly head,
+And, lightly laughing, said:
+
+"No bridegroom's hand be mine to hold
+That is not lined with yellow gold;
+I tread no cottage-floor;
+I own no lover poor.
+
+"My love must come on silken wings,
+With bridal lights of diamond rings,
+Not foul with kitchen smirch,
+With tallow-dip for torch."
+
+The other, on whose modest head
+Was lesser dower of beauty shed,
+With look for home-hearths meet,
+And voice exceeding sweet,
+
+Answered, "We will not rivals be;
+Take thou the gold, leave love to me;
+Mine be the cottage small,
+And thine the rich man's hall.
+
+"I know, indeed, that wealth is good;
+But lowly roof and simple food,
+With love that hath no doubt,
+Are more than gold without."
+
+Hard by a farmer hale and young
+His cradle in the rye-field swung,
+Tracking the yellow plain
+With windrows of ripe grain.
+
+And still, whene'er he paused to whet
+His scythe, the sidelong glance he met
+Of large dark eyes, where strove
+False pride and secret love.
+
+Be strong, young mower of the-grain;
+That love shall overmatch disdain,
+Its instincts soon or late
+The heart shall vindicate.
+
+In blouse of gray, with fishing-rod,
+Half screened by leaves, a stranger trod
+The margin of the pond,
+Watching the group beyond.
+
+The supreme hours unnoted come;
+Unfelt the turning tides of doom;
+And so the maids laughed on,
+Nor dreamed what Fate had done,--
+
+Nor knew the step was Destiny's
+That rustled in the birchen trees,
+As, with their lives forecast,
+Fisher and mower passed.
+
+Erelong by lake and rivulet side
+The summer roses paled and died,
+And Autumn's fingers shed
+The maple's leaves of red.
+
+Through the long gold-hazed afternoon,
+Alone, but for the diving loon,
+The partridge in the brake,
+The black duck on the lake,
+
+Beneath the shadow of the ash
+Sat man and maid by Attitash;
+And earth and air made room
+For human hearts to bloom.
+
+Soft spread the carpets of the sod,
+And scarlet-oak and golden-rod
+With blushes and with smiles
+Lit up the forest aisles.
+
+The mellow light the lake aslant,
+The pebbled margin's ripple-chant
+Attempered and low-toned,
+The tender mystery owned.
+
+And through the dream the lovers dreamed
+Sweet sounds stole in and soft lights streamed;
+The sunshine seemed to bless,
+The air was a caress.
+
+Not she who lightly laughed is there,
+With scornful toss of midnight hair,
+Her dark, disdainful eyes,
+And proud lip worldly-wise.
+
+Her haughty vow is still unsaid,
+But all she dreamed and coveted
+Wears, half to her surprise,
+The youthful farmer's guise!
+
+With more than all her old-time pride
+She walks the rye-field at his side,
+Careless of cot or hall,
+Since love transfigures all.
+
+Rich beyond dreams, the vantage-ground
+Of life is gained; her hands have found
+The talisman of old
+That changes all to gold.
+
+While she who could for love dispense
+With all its glittering accidents,
+And trust her heart alone,
+Finds love and gold her own.
+
+What wealth can buy or art can build
+Awaits her; but her cup is filled
+Even now unto the brim;
+Her world is love and him!
+1866.
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+The while he heard, the Book-man drew
+A length of make-believing face,
+With smothered mischief laughing through
+"Why, you shall sit in Ramsay's place,
+And, with his Gentle Shepherd, keep
+On Yankee hills immortal sheep,
+While love-lorn swains and maids the seas beyond
+Hold dreamy tryst around your huckleberry-pond."
+
+The Traveller laughed: "Sir Galahad
+Singing of love the Trouvere's lay!
+How should he know the blindfold lad
+From one of Vulcan's forge-boys?"--"Nay,
+He better sees who stands outside
+Than they who in procession ride,"
+The Reader answered: "selectmen and squire
+Miss, while they make, the show that wayside folks admire.
+
+"Here is a wild tale of the North,
+Our travelled friend will own as one
+Fit for a Norland Christmas hearth
+And lips of Christian Andersen.
+They tell it in the valleys green
+Of the fair island he has seen,
+Low lying off the pleasant Swedish shore,
+Washed by the Baltic Sea, and watched by Elsinore."
+
+
+KALLUNDBORG CHURCH
+
+               "Tie stille, barn min
+               Imorgen kommer Fin,
+               Fa'er din,
+Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares nine og hjerte at lege med!"
+                                        Zealand Rhyme.
+
+"Build at Kallundborg by the sea
+A church as stately as church may be,
+And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair,"
+Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare.
+
+And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said,
+"Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed!"
+And off he strode, in his pride of will,
+To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill.
+
+"Build, O Troll, a church for me
+At Kallundborg by the mighty sea;
+Build it stately, and build it fair,
+Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare.
+
+But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is wrought
+By Trolls of the Hills, O man, for naught.
+What wilt thou give for thy church so fair?"
+"Set thy own price," quoth Esbern Snare.
+
+"When Kallundborg church is builded well,
+Than must the name of its builder tell,
+Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my boon."
+"Build," said Esbern, "and build it soon."
+
+By night and by day the Troll wrought on;
+He hewed the timbers, he piled the stone;
+But day by day, as the walls rose fair,
+Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare.
+
+He listened by night, he watched by day,
+He sought and thought, but he dared not pray;
+In vain he called on the Elle-maids shy,
+And the Neck and the Nis gave no reply.
+
+Of his evil bargain far and wide
+A rumor ran through the country-side;
+And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair,
+Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare.
+
+And now the church was wellnigh done;
+One pillar it lacked, and one alone;
+And the grim Troll muttered, "Fool thou art
+To-morrow gives me thy eyes and heart!"
+
+By Kallundborg in black despair,
+Through wood and meadow, walked Esbern Snare,
+Till, worn and weary, the strong man sank
+Under the birches on Ulshoi bank.
+
+At, his last day's work he heard the Troll
+Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole;
+Before him the church stood large and fair
+"I have builded my tomb," said Esbern Snare.
+
+And he closed his eyes the sight to hide,
+When he heard a light step at his side
+"O Esbern Snare!" a sweet voice said,
+"Would I might die now in thy stead!"
+
+With a grasp by love and by fear made strong,
+He held her fast, and he held her long;
+With the beating heart of a bird afeard,
+She hid her face in his flame-red beard.
+
+"O love!" he cried, "let me look to-day
+In thine eyes ere mine are plucked away;
+Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy heart
+Ere mine by the Troll is torn apart!
+
+"I sinned, O Helva, for love of thee!
+Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me!"
+But fast as she prayed, and faster still,
+Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill.
+
+He knew, as he wrought, that a loving heart
+Was somehow baffling his evil art;
+For more than spell of Elf or Troll
+Is a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul.
+
+And Esbern listened, and caught the sound
+Of a Troll-wife singing underground
+"To-morrow comes Fine, father thine
+Lie still and hush thee, baby mine!
+
+"Lie still, my darling! next sunrise
+Thou'lt play with Esbern Snare's heart and eyes!"
+"Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that your game?
+Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his name!"
+
+The Troll he heard him, and hurried on
+To Kallundborg church with the lacking stone.
+"Too late, Gaffer Fine!" cried Esbern Snare;
+And Troll and pillar vanished in air!
+
+That night the harvesters heard the sound
+Of a woman sobbing underground,
+And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud with blame
+Of the careless singer who told his name.
+
+Of the Troll of the Church they sing the rune
+By the Northern Sea in the harvest moon;
+And the fishers of Zealand hear him still
+Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill.
+
+And seaward over its groves of birch
+Still looks the tower of Kallundborg church,
+Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair,
+Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare!
+1865.
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+"What," asked the Traveller, "would our sires,
+The old Norse story-tellers, say
+Of sun-graved pictures, ocean wires,
+And smoking steamboats of to-day?
+And this, O lady, by your leave,
+Recalls your song of yester eve:
+Pray, let us have that Cable-hymn once more."
+"Hear, hear!" the Book-man cried, "the lady has the floor.
+
+"These noisy waves below perhaps
+To such a strain will lend their ear,
+With softer voice and lighter lapse
+Come stealing up the sands to hear,
+And what they once refused to do
+For old King Knut accord to you.
+Nay, even the fishes shall your listeners be,
+As once, the legend runs, they heard St. Anthony."
+
+
+THE CABLE HYMN.
+
+O lonely bay of Trinity,
+O dreary shores, give ear!
+Lean down unto the white-lipped sea
+The voice of God to hear!
+
+From world to world His couriers fly,
+Thought-winged and shod with fire;
+The angel of His stormy sky
+Rides down the sunken wire.
+
+What saith the herald of the Lord?
+"The world's long strife is done;
+Close wedded by that mystic cord,
+Its continents are one.
+
+"And one in heart, as one in blood,
+Shall all her peoples be;
+The hands of human brotherhood
+Are clasped beneath the sea.
+
+"Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain
+And Asian mountains borne,
+The vigor of the Northern brain
+Shall nerve the world outworn.
+
+"From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
+Shall thrill the magic thread;
+The new Prometheus steals once more
+The fire that wakes the dead."
+
+Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
+From answering beach to beach;
+Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
+And melt the chains of each!
+
+Wild terror of the sky above,
+Glide tamed and dumb below!
+Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove,
+Thy errands to and fro.
+
+Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
+Beneath the deep so far,
+The bridal robe of earth's accord,
+The funeral shroud of war!
+
+For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall
+Space mocked and time outrun;
+And round the world the thought of all
+Is as the thought of one!
+
+The poles unite, the zones agree,
+The tongues of striving cease;
+As on the Sea of Galilee
+The Christ is whispering, Peace!
+1858.
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+"Glad prophecy! to this at last,"
+The Reader said, "shall all things come.
+Forgotten be the bugle's blast,
+And battle-music of the drum.
+
+"A little while the world may run
+Its old mad way, with needle-gun
+And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall reign
+The cradle-song of Christ was never sung in vain!"
+
+Shifting his scattered papers, "Here,"
+He said, as died the faint applause,
+"Is something that I found last year
+Down on the island known as Orr's.
+I had it from a fair-haired girl
+Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl,
+(As if by some droll freak of circumstance,)
+Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet Stowe's romance."
+
+
+THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.
+
+What flecks the outer gray beyond
+The sundown's golden trail?
+The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,
+Or gleam of slanting sail?
+Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,
+And sea-worn elders pray,--
+The ghost of what was once a ship
+Is sailing up the bay.
+
+From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
+From peril and from pain,
+The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
+O hundred-harbored Maine!
+But many a keel shall seaward turn,
+And many a sail outstand,
+When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms
+Against the dusk of land.
+
+She rounds the headland's bristling pines;
+She threads the isle-set bay;
+No spur of breeze can speed her on,
+Nor ebb of tide delay.
+Old men still walk the Isle of Orr
+Who tell her date and name,
+Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards
+Who hewed her oaken frame.
+
+What weary doom of baffled quest,
+Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?
+What makes thee in the haunts of home
+A wonder and a sign?
+No foot is on thy silent deck,
+Upon thy helm no hand;
+No ripple hath the soundless wind
+That smites thee from the land!
+
+For never comes the ship to port,
+Howe'er the breeze may be;
+Just when she nears the waiting shore
+She drifts again to sea.
+No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,
+Nor sheer of veering side;
+Stern-fore she drives to sea and night,
+Against the wind and tide.
+
+In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star
+Of evening guides her in;
+In vain for her the lamps are lit
+Within thy tower, Seguin!
+In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,
+In vain the pilot call;
+No hand shall reef her spectral sail,
+Or let her anchor fall.
+
+Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy,
+Your gray-head hints of ill;
+And, over sick-beds whispering low,
+Your prophecies fulfil.
+Some home amid yon birchen trees
+Shall drape its door with woe;
+And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,
+The burial boat shall row!
+
+From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point,
+From island and from main,
+From sheltered cove and tided creek,
+Shall glide the funeral train.
+The dead-boat with the bearers four,
+The mourners at her stern,--
+And one shall go the silent way
+Who shall no more return!
+
+And men shall sigh, and women weep,
+Whose dear ones pale and pine,
+And sadly over sunset seas
+Await the ghostly sign.
+They know not that its sails are filled
+By pity's tender breath,
+Nor see the Angel at the helm
+Who steers the Ship of Death!
+1866.
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+"Chill as a down-east breeze should be,"
+The Book-man said. "A ghostly touch
+The legend has. I'm glad to see
+Your flying Yankee beat the Dutch."
+"Well, here is something of the sort
+Which one midsummer day I caught
+In Narragansett Bay, for lack of fish."
+"We wait," the Traveller said;
+"serve hot or cold your dish."
+
+
+THE PALATINE.
+
+     Block Island in Long Island Sound, called by the Indians Manisees,
+     the isle of the little god, was the scene of a tragic incident a
+     hundred years or more ago, when _The Palatine_, an emigrant ship
+     bound for Philadelphia, driven off its course, came upon the coast
+     at this point. A mutiny on board, followed by an inhuman desertion
+     on the part of the crew, had brought the unhappy passengers to the
+     verge of starvation and madness. Tradition says that wreckers on
+     shore, after rescuing all but one of the survivors, set fire to the
+     vessel, which was driven out to sea before a gale which had sprung
+     up. Every twelvemonth, according to the same tradition, the
+     spectacle of a ship on fire is visible to the inhabitants of the
+     island.
+
+Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk,
+Point Judith watches with eye of hawk;
+Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk!
+
+Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken,
+With never a tree for Spring to waken,
+For tryst of lovers or farewells taken,
+
+Circled by waters that never freeze,
+Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
+Lieth the island of Manisees,
+
+Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold
+The coast lights up on its turret old,
+Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.
+
+Dreary the land when gust and sleet
+At its doors and windows howl and beat,
+And Winter laughs at its fires of peat!
+
+But in summer time, when pool and pond,
+Held in the laps of valleys fond,
+Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond;
+
+When the hills are sweet with the brier-rose,
+And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose
+Flowers the mainland rarely knows;
+
+When boats to their morning fishing go,
+And, held to the wind and slanting low,
+Whitening and darkening the small sails show,--
+
+Then is that lonely island fair;
+And the pale health-seeker findeth there
+The wine of life in its pleasant air.
+
+No greener valleys the sun invite,
+On smoother beaches no sea-birds light,
+No blue waves shatter to foam more white!
+
+There, circling ever their narrow range,
+Quaint tradition and legend strange
+Live on unchallenged, and know no change.
+
+Old wives spinning their webs of tow,
+Or rocking weirdly to and fro
+In and out of the peat's dull glow,
+
+And old men mending their nets of twine,
+Talk together of dream and sign,
+Talk of the lost ship Palatine,--
+
+The ship that, a hundred years before,
+Freighted deep with its goodly store,
+In the gales of the equinox went ashore.
+
+The eager islanders one by one
+Counted the shots of her signal gun,
+And heard the crash when she drove right on!
+
+Into the teeth of death she sped
+(May God forgive the hands that fed
+The false lights over the rocky Head!)
+
+O men and brothers! what sights were there!
+White upturned faces, hands stretched in prayer!
+Where waves had pity, could ye not spare?
+
+Down swooped the wreckers, like birds of prey
+Tearing the heart of the ship away,
+And the dead had never a word to say.
+
+And then, with ghastly shimmer and shine
+Over the rocks and the seething brine,
+They burned the wreck of the Palatine.
+
+In their cruel hearts, as they homeward sped,
+"The sea and the rocks are dumb," they said
+"There 'll be no reckoning with the dead."
+
+But the year went round, and when once more
+Along their foam-white curves of shore
+They heard the line-storm rave and roar,
+
+Behold! again, with shimmer and shine,
+Over the rocks and the seething brine,
+The flaming wreck of the Palatine!
+
+So, haply in fitter words than these,
+Mending their nets on their patient knees
+They tell the legend of Manisees.
+
+Nor looks nor tones a doubt betray;
+"It is known to us all," they quietly say;
+"We too have seen it in our day."
+
+Is there, then, no death for a word once spoken?
+Was never a deed but left its token
+Written on tables never broken?
+
+Do the elements subtle reflections give?
+Do pictures of all the ages live
+On Nature's infinite negative,
+
+Which, half in sport, in malice half,
+She shows at times, with shudder or laugh,
+Phantom and shadow in photograph?
+
+For still, on many a moonless night,
+From Kingston Head and from Montauk light
+The spectre kindles and burns in sight.
+
+Now low and dim, now clear and higher,
+Leaps up the terrible Ghost of Fire,
+Then, slowly sinking, the flames expire.
+
+And the wise Sound skippers, though skies be fine,
+Reef their sails when they see the sign
+Of the blazing wreck of the Palatine!
+1867.
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+"A fitter tale to scream than sing,"
+The Book-man said. "Well, fancy, then,"
+The Reader answered, "on the wing
+The sea-birds shriek it, not for men,
+But in the ear of wave and breeze!"
+The Traveller mused: "Your Manisees
+Is fairy-land: off Narragansett shore
+Who ever saw the isle or heard its name before?
+
+"'T is some strange land of Flyaway,
+Whose dreamy shore the ship beguiles,
+St. Brandan's in its sea-mist gray,
+Or sunset loom of Fortunate Isles!"
+"No ghost, but solid turf and rock
+Is the good island known as Block,"
+The Reader said. "For beauty and for ease
+I chose its Indian name, soft-flowing Manisees!
+
+"But let it pass; here is a bit
+Of unrhymed story, with a hint
+Of the old preaching mood in it,
+The sort of sidelong moral squint
+Our friend objects to, which has grown,
+I fear, a habit of my own.
+'Twas written when the Asian plague drew near,
+And the land held its breath and paled with sudden fear."
+
+
+ABRAHAM DAVENPORT
+
+     The famous Dark Day of New England, May 19, 1780, was a physical
+     puzzle for many years to our ancestors, but its occurrence brought
+     something more than philosophical speculation into the winds of
+     those who passed through it. The incident of Colonel Abraham
+     Davenport's sturdy protest is a matter of history.
+
+In the old days (a custom laid aside
+With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent
+Their wisest men to make the public laws.
+And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound
+Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas,
+Waved over by the woods of Rippowams,
+And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths,
+Stamford sent up to the councils of the State
+Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport.
+
+'T was on a May-day of the far old year
+Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell
+Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring,
+Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,
+A horror of great darkness, like the night
+In day of which the Norland sagas tell,--
+
+The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky
+Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim
+Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs
+The crater's sides from the red hell below.
+Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls
+Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars
+Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings
+Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died;
+Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp
+To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter
+The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ
+Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked
+A loving guest at Bethany, but stern
+As Justice and inexorable Law.
+
+Meanwhile in the old State House, dim as ghosts,
+Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut,
+Trembling beneath their legislative robes.
+"It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn,"
+Some said; and then, as if with one accord,
+All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport.
+He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice
+The intolerable hush. "This well may be
+The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;
+But be it so or not, I only know
+My present duty, and my Lord's command
+To occupy till He come. So at the post
+Where He hath set me in His providence,
+I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face,--
+No faithless servant frightened from my task,
+But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;
+And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,
+Let God do His work, we will see to ours.
+Bring in the candles." And they brought them in.
+
+Then by the flaring lights the Speaker read,
+Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands,
+An act to amend an act to regulate
+The shad and alewive fisheries. Whereupon
+Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport,
+Straight to the question, with no figures of speech
+Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without
+The shrewd dry humor natural to the man
+His awe-struck colleagues listening all the while,
+Between the pauses of his argument,
+To hear the thunder of the wrath of God
+Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud.
+
+And there he stands in memory to this day,
+Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen
+Against the background of unnatural dark,
+A witness to the ages as they pass,
+That simple duty hath no place for fear.
+1866.
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+He ceased: just then the ocean seemed
+To lift a half-faced moon in sight;
+And, shore-ward, o'er the waters gleamed,
+From crest to crest, a line of light,
+Such as of old, with solemn awe,
+The fishers by Gennesaret saw,
+When dry-shod o'er it walked the Son of God,
+Tracking the waves with light where'er his sandals trod.
+
+Silently for a space each eye
+Upon that sudden glory turned
+Cool from the land the breeze blew by,
+The tent-ropes flapped, the long beach churned
+Its waves to foam; on either hand
+Stretched, far as sight, the hills of sand;
+With bays of marsh, and capes of bush and tree,
+The wood's black shore-line loomed beyond the meadowy sea.
+
+The lady rose to leave. "One song,
+Or hymn," they urged, "before we part."
+And she, with lips to which belong
+Sweet intuitions of all art,
+Gave to the winds of night a strain
+Which they who heard would hear again;
+And to her voice the solemn ocean lent,
+Touching its harp of sand, a deep accompaniment.
+
+
+THE WORSHIP OF NATURE.
+
+The harp at Nature's advent strung
+Has never ceased to play;
+The song the stars of morning sung
+Has never died away.
+
+And prayer is made, and praise is given,
+By all things near and far;
+The ocean looketh up to heaven,
+And mirrors every star.
+
+Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
+As kneels the human knee,
+Their white locks bowing to the sand,
+The priesthood of the sea'
+
+They pour their glittering treasures forth,
+Their gifts of pearl they bring,
+And all the listening hills of earth
+Take up the song they sing.
+
+The green earth sends her incense up
+From many a mountain shrine;
+From folded leaf and dewy cup
+She pours her sacred wine.
+
+The mists above the morning rills
+Rise white as wings of prayer;
+The altar-curtains of the hills
+Are sunset's purple air.
+
+The winds with hymns of praise are loud,
+Or low with sobs of pain,--
+The thunder-organ of the cloud,
+The dropping tears of rain.
+
+With drooping head and branches crossed
+The twilight forest grieves,
+Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost
+From all its sunlit leaves.
+
+The blue sky is the temple's arch,
+Its transept earth and air,
+The music of its starry march
+The chorus of a prayer.
+
+So Nature keeps the reverent frame
+With which her years began,
+And all her signs and voices shame
+The prayerless heart of man.
+
+       .     .     .     .     .
+
+The singer ceased. The moon's white rays
+Fell on the rapt, still face of her.
+"_Allah il Allah_! He hath praise
+From all things," said the Traveller.
+"Oft from the desert's silent nights,
+And mountain hymns of sunset lights,
+My heart has felt rebuke, as in his tent
+The Moslem's prayer has shamed my Christian knee unbent."
+
+He paused, and lo! far, faint, and slow
+The bells in Newbury's steeples tolled
+The twelve dead hours; the lamp burned low;
+The singer sought her canvas fold.
+One sadly said, "At break of day
+We strike our tent and go our way."
+But one made answer cheerily, "Never fear,
+We'll pitch this tent of ours in type another year."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                AT SUNDOWN
+
+TO  E. C. S.
+
+Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass
+Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass,
+Let this slight token of the debt I owe
+Outlive for thee December's frozen day,
+And, like the arbutus budding under snow,
+Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May
+When he who gives it shall have gone the way
+Where faith shall see and reverent trust shall know.
+
+
+THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888.
+
+Low in the east, against a white, cold dawn,
+The black-lined silhouette of the woods was drawn,
+And on a wintry waste
+Of frosted streams and hillsides bare and brown,
+Through thin cloud-films, a pallid ghost looked down,
+The waning moon half-faced!
+
+In that pale sky and sere, snow-waiting earth,
+What sign was there of the immortal birth?
+What herald of the One?
+Lo! swift as thought the heavenly radiance came,
+A rose-red splendor swept the sky like flame,
+Up rolled the round, bright sun!
+
+And all was changed. From a transfigured world
+The moon's ghost fled, the smoke of home-hearths curled
+Up the still air unblown.
+In Orient warmth and brightness, did that morn
+O'er Nain and Nazareth, when the Christ was born,
+Break fairer than our own?
+
+The morning's promise noon and eve fulfilled
+In warm, soft sky and landscape hazy-hilled
+And sunset fair as they;
+A sweet reminder of His holiest time,
+A summer-miracle in our winter clime,
+God gave a perfect day.
+
+The near was blended with the old and far,
+And Bethlehem's hillside and the Magi's star
+Seemed here, as there and then,--
+Our homestead pine-tree was the Syrian palm,
+Our heart's desire the angels' midnight psalm,
+Peace, and good-will to men!
+
+
+
+THE VOW OF WASHINGTON.
+
+     Read in New York, April 30, 1889, at the Centennial Celebration of
+     the Inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the
+     United States.
+
+The sword was sheathed: in April's sun
+Lay green the fields by Freedom won;
+And severed sections, weary of debates,
+Joined hands at last and were United States.
+
+O City sitting by the Sea
+How proud the day that dawned on thee,
+When the new era, long desired, began,
+And, in its need, the hour had found the man!
+
+One thought the cannon salvos spoke,
+The resonant bell-tower's vibrant stroke,
+The voiceful streets, the plaudit-echoing halls,
+And prayer and hymn borne heavenward from St. Paul's!
+
+How felt the land in every part
+The strong throb of a nation's heart,
+As its great leader gave, with reverent awe,
+His pledge to Union, Liberty, and Law.
+
+That pledge the heavens above him heard,
+That vow the sleep of centuries stirred;
+In world-wide wonder listening peoples bent
+Their gaze on Freedom's great experiment.
+
+Could it succeed? Of honor sold
+And hopes deceived all history told.
+Above the wrecks that strewed the mournful past,
+Was the long dream of ages true at last?
+
+Thank God! the people's choice was just,
+The one man equal to his trust,
+Wise beyond lore, and without weakness good,
+Calm in the strength of flawless rectitude.
+
+His rule of justice, order, peace,
+Made possible the world's release;
+Taught prince and serf that power is but a trust,
+And rule, alone, which serves the ruled, is just;
+
+That Freedom generous is, but strong
+In hate of fraud and selfish wrong,
+Pretence that turns her holy truths to lies,
+And lawless license masking in her guise.
+
+Land of his love! with one glad voice
+Let thy great sisterhood rejoice;
+A century's suns o'er thee have risen and set,
+And, God be praised, we are one nation yet.
+
+And still we trust the years to be
+Shall prove his hope was destiny,
+Leaving our flag, with all its added stars,
+Unrent by faction and unstained by wars.
+
+Lo! where with patient toil he nursed
+And trained the new-set plant at first,
+The widening branches of a stately tree
+Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea.
+
+And in its broad and sheltering shade,
+Sitting with none to make afraid,
+Were we now silent, through each mighty limb,
+The winds of heaven would sing the praise of him.
+
+Our first and best!--his ashes lie
+Beneath his own Virginian sky.
+Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave,
+The storm that swept above thy sacred grave.
+
+For, ever in the awful strife
+And dark hours of the nation's life,
+Through the fierce tumult pierced his warning word,
+Their father's voice his erring children heard.
+
+The change for which he prayed and sought
+In that sharp agony was wrought;
+No partial interest draws its alien line
+'Twixt North and South, the cypress and the pine!
+
+One people now, all doubt beyond,
+His name shall be our Union-bond;
+We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and now.
+Take on our lips the old Centennial vow.
+
+For rule and trust must needs be ours;
+Chooser and chosen both are powers
+Equal in service as in rights; the claim
+Of Duty rests on each and all the same.
+
+Then let the sovereign millions, where
+Our banner floats in sun and air,
+From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's cold,
+Repeat with us the pledge a century old?
+
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S WELL.
+
+     The story of the shipwreck of Captain Valentine Bagley, on the
+     coast of Arabia, and his sufferings in the desert, has been
+     familiar from my childhood. It has been partially told in the
+     singularly beautiful lines of my friend, Harriet Prescott Spofford,
+     an the occasion of a public celebration at the Newburyport Library.
+     To the charm and felicity of her verse, as far as it goes, nothing
+     can be added; but in the following ballad I have endeavored to give
+     a fuller detail of the touching incident upon which it is founded.
+
+From pain and peril, by land and main,
+The shipwrecked sailor came back again;
+
+And like one from the dead, the threshold cross'd
+Of his wondering home, that had mourned him lost.
+
+Where he sat once more with his kith and kin,
+And welcomed his neighbors thronging in.
+
+But when morning came he called for his spade.
+"I must pay my debt to the Lord," he said.
+
+"Why dig you here?" asked the passer-by;
+"Is there gold or silver the road so nigh?"
+
+"No, friend," he answered: "but under this sod
+Is the blessed water, the wine of God."
+
+"Water! the Powow is at your back,
+And right before you the Merrimac,
+
+"And look you up, or look you down,
+There 's a well-sweep at every door in town."
+
+"True," he said, "we have wells of our own;
+But this I dig for the Lord alone."
+
+Said the other: "This soil is dry, you know.
+I doubt if a spring can be found below;
+
+"You had better consult, before you dig,
+Some water-witch, with a hazel twig."
+
+"No, wet or dry, I will dig it here,
+Shallow or deep, if it takes a year.
+
+"In the Arab desert, where shade is none,
+The waterless land of sand and sun,
+
+"Under the pitiless, brazen sky
+My burning throat as the sand was dry;
+
+"My crazed brain listened in fever dreams
+For plash of buckets and ripple of streams;
+
+"And opening my eyes to the blinding glare,
+And my lips to the breath of the blistering air,
+
+"Tortured alike by the heavens and earth,
+I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth.
+
+"Then something tender, and sad, and mild
+As a mother's voice to her wandering child,
+
+"Rebuked my frenzy; and bowing my head,
+I prayed as I never before had prayed:
+
+"Pity me, God! for I die of thirst;
+Take me out of this land accurst;
+
+"And if ever I reach my home again,
+Where earth has springs, and the sky has rain,
+
+"I will dig a well for the passers-by,
+And none shall suffer from thirst as I.
+
+"I saw, as I prayed, my home once more,
+The house, the barn, the elms by the door,
+
+"The grass-lined road, that riverward wound,
+The tall slate stones of the burying-ground,
+
+"The belfry and steeple on meeting-house hill,
+The brook with its dam, and gray grist mill,
+
+"And I knew in that vision beyond the sea,
+The very place where my well must be.
+
+"God heard my prayer in that evil day;
+He led my feet in their homeward way,
+
+"From false mirage and dried-up well,
+And the hot sand storms of a land of hell,
+
+"Till I saw at last through the coast-hill's gap,
+A city held in its stony lap,
+
+"The mosques and the domes of scorched Muscat,
+And my heart leaped up with joy thereat;
+
+"For there was a ship at anchor lying,
+A Christian flag at its mast-head flying,
+
+"And sweetest of sounds to my homesick ear
+Was my native tongue in the sailor's cheer.
+
+"Now the Lord be thanked, I am back again,
+Where earth has springs, and the skies have rain,
+
+"And the well I promised by Oman's Sea,
+I am digging for him in Amesbury."
+
+His kindred wept, and his neighbors said
+"The poor old captain is out of his head."
+
+But from morn to noon, and from noon to night,
+He toiled at his task with main and might;
+
+And when at last, from the loosened earth,
+Under his spade the stream gushed forth,
+
+And fast as he climbed to his deep well's brim,
+The water he dug for followed him,
+
+He shouted for joy: "I have kept my word,
+And here is the well I promised the Lord!"
+
+The long years came and the long years went,
+And he sat by his roadside well content;
+
+He watched the travellers, heat-oppressed,
+Pause by the way to drink and rest,
+
+And the sweltering horses dip, as they drank,
+Their nostrils deep in the cool, sweet tank,
+
+And grateful at heart, his memory went
+Back to that waterless Orient,
+
+And the blessed answer of prayer, which came
+To the earth of iron and sky of flame.
+
+And when a wayfarer weary and hot,
+Kept to the mid road, pausing not
+
+For the well's refreshing, he shook his head;
+"He don't know the value of water," he said;
+
+"Had he prayed for a drop, as I have done,
+In the desert circle of sand and sun,
+
+"He would drink and rest, and go home to tell
+That God's best gift is the wayside well!"
+
+
+
+AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION.
+
+     The substance of these lines, hastily pencilled several years ago,
+     I find among such of my unprinted scraps as have escaped the
+     waste-basket and the fire. In transcribing it I have made some
+     changes, additions, and omissions.
+
+On these green banks, where falls too soon
+The shade of Autumn's afternoon,
+The south wind blowing soft and sweet,
+The water gliding at nay feet,
+The distant northern range uplit
+By the slant sunshine over it,
+With changes of the mountain mist
+From tender blush to amethyst,
+The valley's stretch of shade and gleam
+Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream,
+With glad young faces smiling near
+And merry voices in my ear,
+I sit, methinks, as Hafiz might
+In Iran's Garden of Delight.
+For Persian roses blushing red,
+Aster and gentian bloom instead;
+For Shiraz wine, this mountain air;
+For feast, the blueberries which I share
+With one who proffers with stained hands
+Her gleanings from yon pasture lands,
+Wild fruit that art and culture spoil,
+The harvest of an untilled soil;
+And with her one whose tender eyes
+Reflect the change of April skies,
+Midway 'twixt child and maiden yet,
+Fresh as Spring's earliest violet;
+And one whose look and voice and ways
+Make where she goes idyllic days;
+And one whose sweet, still countenance
+Seems dreamful of a child's romance;
+And others, welcome as are these,
+Like and unlike, varieties
+Of pearls on nature's chaplet strung,
+And all are fair, for all are young.
+Gathered from seaside cities old,
+From midland prairie, lake, and wold,
+From the great wheat-fields, which might feed
+The hunger of a world at need,
+In healthful change of rest and play
+Their school-vacations glide away.
+
+No critics these: they only see
+An old and kindly friend in me,
+In whose amused, indulgent look
+Their innocent mirth has no rebuke.
+They scarce can know my rugged rhymes,
+The harsher songs of evil times,
+Nor graver themes in minor keys
+Of life's and death's solemnities;
+But haply, as they bear in mind
+Some verse of lighter, happier kind,--
+Hints of the boyhood of the man,
+Youth viewed from life's meridian,
+Half seriously and half in play
+My pleasant interviewers pay
+Their visit, with no fell intent
+Of taking notes and punishment.
+
+As yonder solitary pine
+Is ringed below with flower and vine,
+More favored than that lonely tree,
+The bloom of girlhood circles me.
+In such an atmosphere of youth
+I half forget my age's truth;
+The shadow of my life's long date
+Runs backward on the dial-plate,
+Until it seems a step might span
+The gulf between the boy and man.
+
+My young friends smile, as if some jay
+On bleak December's leafless spray
+Essayed to sing the songs of May.
+Well, let them smile, and live to know,
+When their brown locks are flecked with snow,
+'T is tedious to be always sage
+And pose the dignity of age,
+While so much of our early lives
+On memory's playground still survives,
+And owns, as at the present hour,
+The spell of youth's magnetic power.
+
+But though I feel, with Solomon,
+'T is pleasant to behold the sun,
+I would not if I could repeat
+A life which still is good and sweet;
+I keep in age, as in my prime,
+A not uncheerful step with time,
+And, grateful for all blessings sent,
+I go the common way, content
+To make no new experiment.
+On easy terms with law and fate,
+For what must be I calmly wait,
+And trust the path I cannot see,--
+That God is good sufficeth me.
+And when at last on life's strange play
+The curtain falls, I only pray
+That hope may lose itself in truth,
+And age in Heaven's immortal youth,
+And all our loves and longing prove
+The foretaste of diviner love.
+
+The day is done. Its afterglow
+Along the west is burning low.
+My visitors, like birds, have flown;
+I hear their voices, fainter grown,
+And dimly through the dusk I see
+Their 'kerchiefs wave good-night to me,--
+Light hearts of girlhood, knowing nought
+Of all the cheer their coming brought;
+And, in their going, unaware
+Of silent-following feet of prayer
+Heaven make their budding promise good
+With flowers of gracious womanhood!
+
+
+
+R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC.
+
+Make, for he loved thee well, our Merrimac,
+From wave and shore a low and long lament
+For him, whose last look sought thee, as he went
+The unknown way from which no step comes back.
+And ye, O ancient pine-trees, at whose feet
+He watched in life the sunset's reddening glow,
+Let the soft south wind through your needles blow
+A fitting requiem tenderly and sweet!
+No fonder lover of all lovely things
+Shall walk where once he walked, no smile more glad
+Greet friends than his who friends in all men had,
+Whose pleasant memory, to that Island clings,
+Where a dear mourner in the home he left
+Of love's sweet solace cannot be bereft.
+
+
+
+BURNING DRIFT-WOOD
+
+Before my drift-wood fire I sit,
+And see, with every waif I burn,
+Old dreams and fancies coloring it,
+And folly's unlaid ghosts return.
+
+O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft
+The enchanted sea on which they sailed,
+Are these poor fragments only left
+Of vain desires and hopes that failed?
+
+Did I not watch from them the light
+Of sunset on my towers in Spain,
+And see, far off, uploom in sight
+The Fortunate Isles I might not gain?
+
+Did sudden lift of fog reveal
+Arcadia's vales of song and spring,
+And did I pass, with grazing keel,
+The rocks whereon the sirens sing?
+
+Have I not drifted hard upon
+The unmapped regions lost to man,
+The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John,
+The palace domes of Kubla Khan?
+
+Did land winds blow from jasmine flowers,
+Where Youth the ageless Fountain fills?
+Did Love make sign from rose blown bowers,
+And gold from Eldorado's hills?
+
+Alas! the gallant ships, that sailed
+On blind Adventure's errand sent,
+Howe'er they laid their courses, failed
+To reach the haven of Content.
+
+And of my ventures, those alone
+Which Love had freighted, safely sped,
+Seeking a good beyond my own,
+By clear-eyed Duty piloted.
+
+O mariners, hoping still to meet
+The luck Arabian voyagers met,
+And find in Bagdad's moonlit street,
+Haroun al Raschid walking yet,
+
+Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams,
+The fair, fond fancies dear to youth.
+I turn from all that only seems,
+And seek the sober grounds of truth.
+
+What matter that it is not May,
+That birds have flown, and trees are bare,
+That darker grows the shortening day,
+And colder blows the wintry air!
+
+The wrecks of passion and desire,
+The castles I no more rebuild,
+May fitly feed my drift-wood fire,
+And warm the hands that age has chilled.
+
+Whatever perished with my ships,
+I only know the best remains;
+A song of praise is on my lips
+For losses which are now my gains.
+
+Heap high my hearth! No worth is lost;
+No wisdom with the folly dies.
+Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust
+Shall be my evening sacrifice.
+
+Far more than all I dared to dream,
+Unsought before my door I see;
+On wings of fire and steeds of steam
+The world's great wonders come to me,
+
+And holier signs, unmarked before,
+Of Love to seek and Power to save,--
+The righting of the wronged and poor,
+The man evolving from the slave;
+
+And life, no longer chance or fate,
+Safe in the gracious Fatherhood.
+I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait,
+In full assurance of the good.
+
+And well the waiting time must be,
+Though brief or long its granted days,
+If Faith and Hope and Charity
+Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze.
+
+And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared,
+Whose love my heart has comforted,
+And, sharing all my joys, has shared
+My tender memories of the dead,--
+
+Dear souls who left us lonely here,
+Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom
+We, day by day, are drawing near,
+Where every bark has sailing room!
+
+I know the solemn monotone
+Of waters calling unto me
+I know from whence the airs have blown
+That whisper of the Eternal Sea.
+
+As low my fires of drift-wood burn,
+I hear that sea's deep sounds increase,
+And, fair in sunset light, discern
+Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.
+
+
+
+O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTH-DAY.
+
+Climbing a path which leads back never more
+We heard behind his footsteps and his cheer;
+Now, face to face, we greet him standing here
+Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore
+Welcome to us, o'er whom the lengthened day
+Is closing and the shadows colder grow,
+His genial presence, like an afterglow,
+Following the one just vanishing away.
+Long be it ere the table shall be set
+For the last breakfast of the Autocrat,
+And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat
+His own sweet songs that time shall not forget.
+Waiting with us the call to come up higher,
+Life is not less, the heavens are only higher!
+
+
+
+JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+From purest wells of English undefiled
+None deeper drank than he, the New World's child,
+Who in the language of their farm-fields spoke
+The wit and wisdom of New England folk,
+Shaming a monstrous wrong. The world-wide laugh
+Provoked thereby might well have shaken half
+The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the ball
+And mine of battle overthrew them all.
+
+
+
+HAVERHILL.
+
+1640-1890.
+
+     Read at the Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary
+     of the City, July 2, 1890.
+
+O river winding to the sea!
+We call the old time back to thee;
+From forest paths and water-ways
+The century-woven veil we raise.
+
+The voices of to-day are dumb,
+Unheard its sounds that go and come;
+We listen, through long-lapsing years,
+To footsteps of the pioneers.
+
+Gone steepled town and cultured plain,
+The wilderness returns again,
+The drear, untrodden solitude,
+The gloom and mystery of the wood!
+
+Once more the bear and panther prowl,
+The wolf repeats his hungry howl,
+And, peering through his leafy screen,
+The Indian's copper face is seen.
+
+We see, their rude-built huts beside,
+Grave men and women anxious-eyed,
+And wistful youth remembering still
+Dear homes in England's Haverhill.
+
+We summon forth to mortal view
+Dark Passaquo and Saggahew,--
+Wild chiefs, who owned the mighty sway
+Of wizard Passaconaway.
+
+Weird memories of the border town,
+By old tradition handed down,
+In chance and change before us pass
+Like pictures in a magic glass,--
+
+The terrors of the midnight raid,
+The-death-concealing ambuscade,
+The winter march, through deserts wild,
+Of captive mother, wife, and child.
+
+Ah! bleeding hands alone subdued
+And tamed the savage habitude
+Of forests hiding beasts of prey,
+And human shapes as fierce as they.
+
+Slow from the plough the woods withdrew,
+Slowly each year the corn-lands grew;
+Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill
+The Saxon energy of will.
+
+And never in the hamlet's bound
+Was lack of sturdy manhood found,
+And never failed the kindred good
+Of brave and helpful womanhood.
+
+That hamlet now a city is,
+Its log-built huts are palaces;
+The wood-path of the settler's cow
+Is Traffic's crowded highway now.
+
+And far and wide it stretches still,
+Along its southward sloping hill,
+And overlooks on either hand
+A rich and many-watered land.
+
+And, gladdening all the landscape, fair
+As Pison was to Eden's pair,
+Our river to its valley brings
+The blessing of its mountain springs.
+
+And Nature holds with narrowing space,
+From mart and crowd, her old-time grace,
+And guards with fondly jealous arms
+The wild growths of outlying farms.
+
+Her sunsets on Kenoza fall,
+Her autumn leaves by Saltonstall;
+No lavished gold can richer make
+Her opulence of hill and lake.
+
+Wise was the choice which led out sires
+To kindle here their household fires,
+And share the large content of all
+Whose lines in pleasant places fall.
+
+More dear, as years on years advance,
+We prize the old inheritance,
+And feel, as far and wide we roam,
+That all we seek we leave at home.
+
+Our palms are pines, our oranges
+Are apples on our orchard trees;
+Our thrushes are our nightingales,
+Our larks the blackbirds of our vales.
+
+No incense which the Orient burns
+Is sweeter than our hillside ferns;
+What tropic splendor can outvie
+Our autumn woods, our sunset sky?
+
+If, where the slow years came and went,
+And left not affluence, but content,
+Now flashes in our dazzled eyes
+The electric light of enterprise;
+
+And if the old idyllic ease
+Seems lost in keen activities,
+And crowded workshops now replace
+The hearth's and farm-field's rustic grace;
+
+
+No dull, mechanic round of toil
+Life's morning charm can quite despoil;
+And youth and beauty, hand in hand,
+Will always find enchanted land.
+
+No task is ill where hand and brain
+And skill and strength have equal gain,
+And each shall each in honor hold,
+And simple manhood outweigh gold.
+
+Earth shall be near to Heaven when all
+That severs man from man shall fall,
+For, here or there, salvation's plan
+Alone is love of God and man.
+
+O dwellers by the Merrimac,
+The heirs of centuries at your back,
+Still reaping where you have not sown,
+A broader field is now your own.
+
+Hold fast your Puritan heritage,
+But let the free thought of the age
+Its light and hope and sweetness add
+To the stern faith the fathers had.
+
+Adrift on Time's returnless tide,
+As waves that follow waves, we glide.
+God grant we leave upon the shore
+Some waif of good it lacked before;
+
+Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth,
+Some added beauty to the earth;
+Some larger hope, some thought to make
+The sad world happier for its sake.
+
+As tenants of uncertain stay,
+So may we live our little day
+That only grateful hearts shall fill
+The homes we leave in Haverhill.
+
+The singer of a farewell rhyme,
+Upon whose outmost verge of time
+The shades of night are falling down,
+I pray, God bless the good old town!
+
+
+
+TO G. G.
+
+AN AUTOGRAPH.
+
+     The daughter of Daniel Gurteen, Esq., delegate from Haverhill,
+     England, to the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration of
+     Haverhill, Massachusetts. The Rev. John Ward of the former place
+     and many of his old parishioners were the pioneer settlers of the
+     new town on the Merrimac.
+
+Graceful in name and in thyself, our river
+None fairer saw in John Ward's pilgrim flock,
+Proof that upon their century-rooted stock
+The English roses bloom as fresh as ever.
+
+Take the warm welcome of new friends with thee,
+And listening to thy home's familiar chime
+Dream that thou hearest, with it keeping time,
+The bells on Merrimac sound across the sea.
+
+Think of our thrushes, when the lark sings clear,
+Of our sweet Mayflowers when the daisies bloom;
+And bear to our and thy ancestral home
+The kindly greeting of its children here.
+
+Say that our love survives the severing strain;
+That the New England, with the Old, holds fast
+The proud, fond memories of a common past;
+Unbroken still the ties of blood remain!
+
+
+
+INSCRIPTION
+
+     For the bass-relief by Preston Powers, carved upon the huge boulder
+     in Denver Park, Col., and representing the Last Indian and the Last
+     Bison.
+
+The eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown peaks,
+For the wild hunter and the bison seeks,
+In the changed world below; and finds alone
+Their graven semblance in the eternal stone.
+
+
+
+LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.
+
+Inscription on her Memorial Tablet in Christ Church at Hartford, Conn.
+
+She sang alone, ere womanhood had known
+The gift of song which fills the air to-day
+Tender and sweet, a music all her own
+May fitly linger where she knelt to pray.
+
+
+
+MILTON
+
+Inscription on the Memorial Window in St. Margaret's Church,
+Westminster, the gift of George W. Childs, of America.
+
+The new world honors him whose lofty plea
+For England's freedom made her own more sure,
+Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be
+Their common freehold while both worlds endure.
+
+
+
+THE BIRTHDAY WREATH
+
+December 17, 1891.
+
+Blossom and greenness, making all
+The winter birthday tropical,
+And the plain Quaker parlors gay,
+Have gone from bracket, stand, and wall;
+We saw them fade, and droop, and fall,
+And laid them tenderly away.
+
+White virgin lilies, mignonette,
+Blown rose, and pink, and violet,
+A breath of fragrance passing by;
+Visions of beauty and decay,
+Colors and shapes that could not stay,
+The fairest, sweetest, first to die.
+
+But still this rustic wreath of mine,
+Of acorned oak and needled pine,
+And lighter growths of forest lands,
+Woven and wound with careful pains,
+And tender thoughts, and prayers, remains,
+As when it dropped from love's dear hands.
+
+And not unfitly garlanded,
+Is he, who, country-born and bred,
+Welcomes the sylvan ring which gives
+A feeling of old summer days,
+The wild delight of woodland ways,
+The glory of the autumn leaves.
+
+And, if the flowery meed of song
+To other bards may well belong,
+Be his, who from the farm-field spoke
+A word for Freedom when her need
+Was not of dulcimer and reed.
+This Isthmian wreath of pine and oak.
+
+
+
+THE WIND OF MARCH.
+
+Up from the sea, the wild north wind is blowing
+Under the sky's gray arch;
+Smiling, I watch the shaken elm-boughs, knowing
+It is the wind of March.
+
+Between the passing and the coming season,
+This stormy interlude
+Gives to our winter-wearied hearts a reason
+For trustful gratitude.
+
+Welcome to waiting ears its harsh forewarning
+Of light and warmth to come,
+The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter morning,
+The earth arisen in bloom.
+
+In the loud tumult winter's strength is breaking;
+I listen to the sound,
+As to a voice of resurrection, waking
+To life the dead, cold ground.
+
+Between these gusts, to the soft lapse I hearken
+Of rivulets on their way;
+I see these tossed and naked tree-tops darken
+With the fresh leaves of May.
+
+This roar of storm, this sky so gray and lowering
+Invite the airs of Spring,
+A warmer sunshine over fields of flowering,
+The bluebird's song and wing.
+
+Closely behind, the Gulf's warm breezes follow
+This northern hurricane,
+And, borne thereon, the bobolink and swallow
+Shall visit us again.
+
+And, in green wood-paths, in the kine-fed pasture
+And by the whispering rills,
+Shall flowers repeat the lesson of the Master,
+Taught on his Syrian hills.
+
+Blow, then, wild wind! thy roar shall end in singing,
+Thy chill in blossoming;
+Come, like Bethesda's troubling angel, bringing
+The healing of the Spring.
+
+
+
+BETWEEN THE GATES.
+
+Between the gates of birth and death
+An old and saintly pilgrim passed,
+With look of one who witnesseth
+The long-sought goal at last.
+
+O thou whose reverent feet have found
+The Master's footprints in thy way,
+And walked thereon as holy ground,
+A boon of thee I pray.
+
+"My lack would borrow thy excess,
+My feeble faith the strength of thine;
+I need thy soul's white saintliness
+To hide the stains of mine.
+
+"The grace and favor else denied
+May well be granted for thy sake."
+So, tempted, doubting, sorely tried,
+A younger pilgrim spake.
+
+"Thy prayer, my son, transcends my gift;
+No power is mine," the sage replied,
+"The burden of a soul to lift
+Or stain of sin to hide.
+
+"Howe'er the outward life may seem,
+For pardoning grace we all must pray;
+No man his brother can redeem
+Or a soul's ransom pay.
+
+"Not always age is growth of good;
+Its years have losses with their gain;
+Against some evil youth withstood
+Weak hands may strive in vain.
+
+"With deeper voice than any speech
+Of mortal lips from man to man,
+What earth's unwisdom may not teach
+The Spirit only can.
+
+"Make thou that holy guide thine own,
+And following where it leads the way,
+The known shall lapse in the unknown
+As twilight into day.
+
+"The best of earth shall still remain,
+And heaven's eternal years shall prove
+That life and death, and joy and pain,
+Are ministers of Love."
+
+
+
+THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER.
+
+Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines
+Through yon columnar pines,
+And on the deepening shadows of the lawn
+Its golden lines are drawn.
+
+Dreaming of long gone summer days like this,
+Feeling the wind's soft kiss,
+Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight
+Have still their old delight,
+
+I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet day
+Lapse tenderly away;
+And, wistful, with a feeling of forecast,
+I ask, "Is this the last?
+
+"Will nevermore for me the seasons run
+Their round, and will the sun
+Of ardent summers yet to come forget
+For me to rise and set?"
+
+Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with thee
+Wherever thou mayst be,
+Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of speech
+Each answering unto each.
+
+For this still hour, this sense of mystery far
+Beyond the evening star,
+No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll:
+The soul would fain with soul
+
+Wait, while these few swift-passing days fulfil
+The wise-disposing Will,
+And, in the evening as at morning, trust
+The All-Merciful and Just.
+
+The solemn joy that soul-communion feels
+Immortal life reveals;
+And human love, its prophecy and sign,
+Interprets love divine.
+
+Come then, in thought, if that alone may be,
+O friend! and bring with thee
+Thy calm assurance of transcendent Spheres
+And the Eternal Years!
+August 31, 1890.
+
+
+
+TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
+8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892.
+
+This, the last of Mr. Whittier's poems, was written but a few weeks
+before his death.
+
+Among the thousands who with hail and cheer
+Will welcome thy new year,
+How few of all have passed, as thou and I,
+So many milestones by!
+
+We have grown old together; we have seen,
+Our youth and age between,
+Two generations leave us, and to-day
+We with the third hold way,
+
+Loving and loved. If thought must backward run
+To those who, one by one,
+In the great silence and the dark beyond
+Vanished with farewells fond,
+
+Unseen, not lost; our grateful memories still
+Their vacant places fill,
+And with the full-voiced greeting of new friends
+A tenderer whisper blends.
+
+Linked close in a pathetic brotherhood
+Of mingled ill and good,
+Of joy and grief, of grandeur and of shame,
+For pity more than blame,--
+
+The gift is thine the weary world to make
+More cheerful for thy sake,
+Soothing the ears its Miserere pains,
+With the old Hellenic strains,
+
+Lighting the sullen face of discontent
+With smiles for blessings sent.
+Enough of selfish wailing has been had,
+Thank God! for notes more glad.
+
+Life is indeed no holiday; therein
+Are want, and woe, and sin,
+Death and its nameless fears, and over all
+Our pitying tears must fall.
+
+Sorrow is real; but the counterfeit
+Which folly brings to it,
+We need thy wit and wisdom to resist,
+O rarest Optimist!
+
+Thy hand, old friend! the service of our days,
+In differing moods and ways,
+May prove to those who follow in our train
+Not valueless nor vain.
+
+Far off, and faint as echoes of a dream,
+The songs of boyhood seem,
+Yet on our autumn boughs, unflown with spring,
+The evening thrushes sing.
+
+The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late,
+When at the Eternal Gate
+We leave the words and works we call our own,
+And lift void hands alone
+
+For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul
+Brings to that Gate no toll;
+Giftless we come to Him, who all things gives,
+And live because He lives.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PERSONAL POEMS, COMPLETE ***
+By John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+******* This file should be named wit2710.txt or wit2710.zip *******
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