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.