God bless you, Gentlemen! Learn to give Money to colleges while you live. Don't be silly and think you'll try To bother the colleges, when you die, With codicil this, and codicil that, That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat; For there never was pitcher that wouldn't spill, And there's always a flaw in a donkey's will!



ODE FOR A SOCIAL MEETING

WITH SLIGHT ALTERATIONS BY A TEETOTALER—(...)

COME! fill a fresh bumper, for why should we go While the nectar (logwood) still reddens our cups as they flow? Pour out the rich juices (decoction) still bright with the sun, Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubies (dye-stuff) shall run.

The purple-globed clusters (half-ripened apples) their life-dews have bled; How sweet is the breath (taste) of the fragrance they shed!(sugar of lead) For summer's last roses (rank poisons) lie hid in the wines (wines!!!) That were garnered by maidens who laughed through the vines (stable-boys smoking long-nines)

Then a smile (scowl) and a glass (howl) and a toast (scoff) and a cheer (sneer); For all the good wine, and we 've some of it here! (strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer!) In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all! (Down, down with the tyrant that masters us all!)



POEMS FROM THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE

1858-1859

UNDER THE VIOLETS

HER hands are cold; her face is white; No more her pulses come and go; Her eyes are shut to life and light;— Fold the white vesture, snow on snow, And lay her where the violets blow.

But not beneath a graven stone, To plead for tears with alien eyes; A slender cross of wood alone Shall say, that here a maiden lies In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

And gray old trees of hugest limb Shall wheel their circling shadows round To make the scorching sunlight dim That drinks the greenness from the ground, And drop their dead leaves on her mound.

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, And through their leaves the robins call, And, ripening in the autumn sun, The acorns and the chestnuts fall, Doubt not that she will heed them all.

For her the morning choir shall sing Its matins from the branches high, And every minstrel-voice of Spring, That trills beneath the April sky, Shall greet her with its earliest cry.

When, turning round their dial-track, Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, Her little mourners, clad in black, The crickets, sliding through the grass, Shall pipe for her an evening mass.

At last the rootlets of the trees Shall find the prison where she lies, And bear the buried dust they seize In leaves and blossoms to the skies. So may the soul that warmed it rise!

If any, born of kindlier blood, Should ask, What maiden lies below? Say only this: A tender bud, That tried to blossom in the snow, Lies withered where the violets blow.



HYMN OF TRUST

O Love Divine, that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, On Thee we cast each earth-born care, We smile at pain while Thou art near!

Though long the weary way we tread, And sorrow crown each lingering year, No path we shun, no darkness dread, Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near!

When drooping pleasure turns to grief, And trembling faith is changed to fear, The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf, Shall softly tell us, Thou art near!

On Thee we fling our burdening woe, O Love Divine, forever dear, Content to suffer while we know, Living and dying, Thou art near!



A SUN-DAY HYMN

LORD of all being! throned afar, Thy glory flames from sun and star; Centre and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving heart how near!

Sun of our life, thy quickening ray Sheds on our path the glow of day; Star of our hope, thy softened light Cheers the long watches of the night.

Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn; Our noontide is thy gracious dawn; Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign; All, save the clouds of sin, are thin!

Lord of all life, below, above, Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love, Before thy ever-blazing throne We ask no lustre of our own.

Grant us thy truth to make us free, And kindling hearts that burn for thee, Till all thy living altars claim One holy light, one heavenly flame!



THE CROOKED FOOTPATH

AH, here it is! the sliding rail That marks the old remembered spot,— The gap that struck our school-boy trail,— The crooked path across the lot.

It left the road by school and church, A pencilled shadow, nothing more, That parted from the silver-birch And ended at the farm-house door.

No line or compass traced its plan; With frequent bends to left or right, In aimless, wayward curves it ran, But always kept the door in sight.

The gabled porch, with woodbine green,— The broken millstone at the sill,— Though many a rood might stretch between, The truant child could see them still.

No rocks across the pathway lie,— No fallen trunk is o'er it thrown,— And yet it winds, we know not why, And turns as if for tree or stone.

Perhaps some lover trod the way With shaking knees and leaping heart,— And so it often runs astray With sinuous sweep or sudden start.

Or one, perchance, with clouded brain From some unholy banquet reeled,— And since, our devious steps maintain His track across the trodden field.

Nay, deem not thus,—no earthborn will Could ever trace a faultless line; Our truest steps are human still,— To walk unswerving were divine!

Truants from love, we dream of wrath; Oh, rather let us trust the more! Through all the wanderings of the path, We still can see our Father's door!



IRIS, HER BOOK

I PRAY thee by the soul of her that bore thee, By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee, Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!

For Iris had no mother to infold her, Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder, Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.

She had not learned the mystery of awaking Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching, Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.

Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken, Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?

She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,— Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances, And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.

Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing: Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring, Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.

Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her? What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her? Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.

And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven, Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven, Save me! Oh, save me! Shall I die forgiven?

And then—Ah, God! But nay, it little matters: Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters, The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!

If she had—Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore. Had the world nothing she might live to care for? No second self to say her evening prayer for?

She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming, Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.

Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher. What if a lonely and unsistered creature Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,

Saying, unsaddened,—This shall soon be faded, And double-hued the shining tresses braided, And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?

This her poor book is full of saddest follies, Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies, With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.

In the strange crossing of uncertain chances, Somewhere, beneath some maiden's tear-dimmed glances May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.

Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee, Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee, Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.

Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping, Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping. No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.



ROBINSON OF LEYDEN

HE sleeps not here; in hope and prayer His wandering flock had gone before, But he, the shepherd, might not share Their sorrows on the wintry shore.

Before the Speedwell's anchor swung, Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread, While round his feet the Pilgrims clung, The pastor spake, and thus he said:—

"Men, brethren, sisters, children dear! God calls you hence from over sea; Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer, Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee.

"Ye go to bear the saving word To tribes unnamed and shores untrod; Heed well the lessons ye have heard From those old teachers taught of God.

"Yet think not unto them was lent All light for all the coming days, And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent In making straight the ancient ways;

"The living fountain overflows For every flock, for every lamb, Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam."

He spake; with lingering, long embrace, With tears of love and partings fond, They floated down the creeping Maas, Along the isle of Ysselmond.

They passed the frowning towers of Briel, The "Hook of Holland's" shelf of sand, And grated soon with lifting keel The sullen shores of Fatherland.

No home for these!—too well they knew The mitred king behind the throne;— The sails were set, the pennons flew, And westward ho! for worlds unknown.

And these were they who gave us birth, The Pilgrims of the sunset wave, Who won for us this virgin earth, And freedom with the soil they gave.

The pastor slumbers by the Rhine,— In alien earth the exiles lie,— Their nameless graves our holiest shrine, His words our noblest battle-cry!

Still cry them, and the world shall hear, Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea! Ye have not built by Haerlem Meer, Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee!



ST. ANTHONY THE REFORMER

HIS TEMPTATION

No fear lest praise should make us proud! We know how cheaply that is won; The idle homage of the crowd Is proof of tasks as idly done.

A surface-smile may pay the toil That follows still the conquering Right, With soft, white hands to dress the spoil That sun-browned valor clutched in fight.

Sing the sweet song of other days, Serenely placid, safely true, And o'er the present's parching ways The verse distils like evening dew.

But speak in words of living power,— They fall like drops of scalding rain That plashed before the burning shower Swept o' er the cities of the plain!

Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale,— Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring, And, smitten through their leprous mail, Strike right and left in hope to sting.

If thou, unmoved by poisoning wrath, Thy feet on earth, thy heart above, Canst walk in peace thy kingly path, Unchanged in trust, unchilled in love,—

Too kind for bitter words to grieve, Too firm for clamor to dismay, When Faith forbids thee to believe, And Meekness calls to disobey,—

Ah, then beware of mortal pride! The smiling pride that calmly scorns Those foolish fingers, crimson dyed In laboring on thy crown of thorns!



THE OPENING OF THE PIANO

IN the little southern parlor of the house you may have seen With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking westward to the green, At the side toward the sunset, with the window on its right, Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night!

Ah me I how I remember the evening when it came! What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame, When the wondrous box was opened that had come from over seas, With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ivory keys!

Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness of joy, For the boy would push his sister, and the sister crowd the boy, Till the father asked for quiet in his grave paternal way, But the mother hushed the tumult with the words, "Now, Mary, play."

For the dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign balm; She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm, In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills, Or carolling to her spinet with its thin metallic thrills.

So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please, Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys. Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim, As, floating from lip and finger, arose the "Vesper Hymn."

Catharine, child of a neighbor, curly and rosy-red, (Wedded since, and a widow,—something like ten years dead,) Hearing a gush of music such as none before, Steals from her mother's chamber and peeps at the open door.

Just as the "Jubilate" in threaded whisper dies, "Open it! open it, lady!" the little maiden cries, (For she thought 't was a singing creature caged in a box she heard,) "Open it! open it, lady! and let me see the bird!"



MIDSUMMER

HERE! sweep these foolish leaves away, I will not crush my brains to-day! Look! are the southern curtains drawn? Fetch me a fan, and so begone!

Not that,—the palm-tree's rustling leaf Brought from a parching coral-reef Its breath is heated;—I would swing The broad gray plumes,—the eagle's wing.

I hate these roses' feverish blood! Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud, A long-stemmed lily from the lake, Cold as a coiling water-snake.

Rain me sweet odors on the air, And wheel me up my Indian chair, And spread some book not overwise Flat out before my sleepy eyes.

Who knows it not,—this dead recoil Of weary fibres stretched with toil,— The pulse that flutters faint and low When Summer's seething breezes blow!

O Nature! bare thy loving breast, And give thy child one hour of rest,— One little hour to lie unseen Beneath thy scarf of leafy green!

So, curtained by a singing pine, Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine, Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay In sweeter music dies away.



DE SAUTY

AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE

The first messages received through the submarine cable were sent by an electrical expert, a mysterious personage who signed himself De Sauty.

Professor Blue-Nose

PROFESSOR TELL me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal! Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you, Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder, Holding talk with nations?

Is there a De Sauty ambulant on Tellus, Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in nightcap, Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature Three times daily patent?

Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal? Or is he a mythus,—ancient word for "humbug"— Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed Romulus and Remus?

Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty? Or a living product of galvanic action, Like the acarus bred in Crosse's flint-solution? Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal!

BLUE-NOSE Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger, Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster! Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me, Thou shall hear them answered.

When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable, At the polar focus of the wire electric Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us Called himself "DE SAUTY."

As the small opossum held in pouch maternal Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia, So the unknown stranger held the wire electric, Sucking in the current.

When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger,— Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy,— And from time to time, in sharp articulation, Said, "All right! DE SAUTY."

From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples, Till the land was filled with loud reverberations Of "All right DE SAUTY."

When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger,— Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker,— Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odor Of disintegration.

Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead, Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence, Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended, There was no De Sauty.

Nothing but a cloud of elements organic, C. O. H. N. Ferrum, Chlor. Flu. Sil. Potassa, Cale. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang. (?) Alumin. (?) Cuprum, (?) Such as man is made of.

Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished! There is no De Sauty now there is no current! Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him Cry, "All right! DE SAUTY."



POEMS FROM THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE

1871-1872

HOMESICK IN HEAVEN

THE DIVINE VOICE Go seek thine earth-born sisters,—thus the Voice That all obey,—the sad and silent three; These only, while the hosts of Heaven rejoice, Smile never; ask them what their sorrows be;

And when the secret of their griefs they tell, Look on them with thy mild, half-human eyes; Say what thou wast on earth; thou knowest well; So shall they cease from unavailing sighs.

THE ANGEL Why thus, apart,—the swift-winged herald spake,— Sit ye with silent lips and unstrung lyres While the trisagion's blending chords awake In shouts of joy from all the heavenly choirs?

FIRST SPIRIT Chide not thy sisters,—thus the answer came;— Children of earth, our half-weaned nature clings To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name Untunes our quivering lips, our saddened strings;

For there we loved, and where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts, Though o'er us shine the jasper-lighted dome:— The chain may lengthen, but it never parts!

Sometimes a sunlit sphere comes rolling by, And then we softly whisper,—can it be? And leaning toward the silvery orb, we try To hear the music of its murmuring sea;

To catch, perchance, some flashing glimpse of green, Or breathe some wild-wood fragrance, wafted through The opening gates of pearl, that fold between The blinding splendors and the changeless blue.

THE ANGEL Nay, sister, nay! a single healing leaf Plucked from the bough of yon twelve-fruited tree Would soothe such anguish,—deeper stabbing grief Has pierced thy throbbing heart—

THE FIRST SPIRIT Ah, woe is me! I from my clinging babe was rudely torn; His tender lips a loveless bosom pressed; Can I forget him in my life new born? Oh that my darling lay upon my breast!

THE ANGEL And thou?—

THE SECOND SPIRIT I was a fair and youthful bride, The kiss of love still burns upon my cheek, He whom I worshipped, ever at my side,— Him through the spirit realm in vain I seek.

Sweet faces turn their beaming eyes on mine; Ah! not in these the wished-for look I read; Still for that one dear human smile I pine; Thou and none other!—is the lover's creed.

THE ANGEL And whence thy sadness in a world of bliss Where never parting comes, nor mourner's tear? Art thou, too, dreaming of a mortal's kiss Amid the seraphs of the heavenly sphere?

THE THIRD SPIRIT Nay, tax not me with passion's wasting fire; When the swift message set my spirit free, Blind, helpless, lone, I left my gray-haired sire; My friends were many, he had none save me.

I left him, orphaned, in the starless night; Alas, for him no cheerful morning's dawn I wear the ransomed spirit's robe of white, Yet still I hear him moaning, She is gone!

THE ANGEL Ye know me not, sweet sisters?—All in vain Ye seek your lost ones in the shapes they wore; The flower once opened may not bud again, The fruit once fallen finds the stem no more.

Child, lover, sire,—yea, all things loved below,— Fair pictures damasked on a vapor's fold,— Fade like the roseate flush, the golden glow, When the bright curtain of the day is rolled.

I was the babe that slumbered on thy breast. And, sister, mine the lips that called thee bride. Mine were the silvered locks thy hand caressed, That faithful hand, my faltering footstep's guide!

Each changing form, frail vesture of decay, The soul unclad forgets it once hath worn, Stained with the travel of the weary day, And shamed with rents from every wayside thorn.

To lie, an infant, in thy fond embrace,— To come with love's warm kisses back to thee,— To show thine eyes thy gray-haired father's face, Not Heaven itself could grant; this may not be!

Then spread your folded wings, and leave to earth The dust once breathing ye have mourned so long, Till Love, new risen, owns his heavenly birth, And sorrow's discords sweeten into song!



FANTASIA

THE YOUNG GIRL'S POEM

KISS mine eyelids, beauteous Morn, Blushing into life new-born! Lend me violets for my hair, And thy russet robe to wear, And thy ring of rosiest hue Set in drops of diamond dew!

Kiss my cheek, thou noontide ray, From my Love so far away Let thy splendor streaming down Turn its pallid lilies brown, Till its darkening shades reveal Where his passion pressed its seal!

Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light, Kiss my lips a soft good-night! Westward sinks thy golden car; Leave me but the evening star, And my solace that shall be, Borrowing all its light from thee!



AUNT TABITHA

THE YOUNG GIRL'S POEM

WHATEVER I do, and whatever I say, Aunt Tabitha tells me that is n't the way; When she was a girl (forty summers ago) Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so.

Dear aunt! If I only would take her advice! But I like my own way, and I find it so nice And besides, I forget half the things I am told; But they all will come back to me—when I am old.

If a youth passes by, it may happen, no doubt, He may chance to look in as I chance to look out; She would never endure an impertinent stare,— It is horrid, she says, and I must n't sit there.

A walk in the moonlight has pleasures, I own, But it is n't quite safe to be walking alone; So I take a lad's arm,—just for safety, you know,— But Aunt Tabitha tells me they did n't do so.

How wicked we are, and how good they were then! They kept at arm's length those detestable men; What an era of virtue she lived in!—But stay— Were the men all such rogues in Aunt Tabitha's day?

If the men were so wicked, I 'll ask my papa How he dared to propose to my darling mamma; Was he like the rest of them? Goodness! Who knows? And what shall I say, if a wretch should propose?

I am thinking if Aunt knew so little of sin, What a wonder Aunt Tabitha's aunt must have been! And her grand-aunt—it scares me—how shockingly sad That we girls of to-day are so frightfully bad!

A martyr will save us, and nothing else can; Let me perish—to rescue some wretched young man! Though when to the altar a victim I go, Aunt Tabitha 'll tell me she never did so.



WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS

FROM THE YOUNG ASTRONOMER'S POEM

I.

AMBITION

ANOTHER clouded night; the stars are hid, The orb that waits my search is hid with them. Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year, To plant my ladder and to gain the round That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame, Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won? Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust; But the fair garland whose undying green Not time can change, nor wrath of gods or men!

With quickened heart-beats I shall hear tongues That speak my praise; but better far the sense That in the unshaped ages, buried deep In the dark mines of unaccomplished time Yet to be stamped with morning's royal die And coined in golden days,—in those dim years I shall be reckoned with the undying dead, My name emblazoned on the fiery arch, Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade. Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds, Sages of race unborn in accents new Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old, Whose glories kindle through the midnight sky Here glows the God of Battles; this recalls The Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphere The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name To the dim planet with the wondrous rings; Here flames the Queen of Beauty's silver lamp, And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove; But this, unseen through all earth's ions past, A youth who watched beneath the western star Sought in the darkness, found, and shewed to men; Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore So shall that name be syllabled anew In all the tongues of all the tribes of men: I that have been through immemorial years Dust in the dust of my forgotten time Shall live in accents shaped of blood-warm breath, Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly born In shining stone, in undecaying bronze, And stand on high, and look serenely down On the new race that calls the earth its own.

Is this a cloud, that, blown athwart my soul, Wears a false seeming of the pearly stain Where worlds beyond the world their mingling rays Blend in soft white,—a cloud that, born of earth, Would cheat the soul that looks for light from heaven? Must every coral-insect leave his sign On each poor grain he lent to build the reef, As Babel's builders stamped their sunburnt clay, Or deem his patient service all in vain? What if another sit beneath the shade Of the broad elm I planted by the way,— What if another heed the beacon light I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel,— Have I not done my task and served my kind? Nay, rather act thy part, unnamed, unknown, And let Fame blow her trumpet through the world With noisy wind to swell a fool's renown, Joined with some truth he stumbled blindly o'er, Or coupled with some single shining deed That in the great account of all his days Will stand alone upon the bankrupt sheet His pitying angel shows the clerk of Heaven. The noblest service comes from nameless hands, And the best servant does his work unseen. Who found the seeds of fire and made them shoot, Fed by his breath, in buds and flowers of flame? Who forged in roaring flames the ponderous stone, And shaped the moulded metal to his need? Who gave the dragging car its rolling wheel, And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round? All these have left their work and not their names,— Why should I murmur at a fate like theirs? This is the heavenly light; the pearly stain Was but a wind-cloud drifting o'er the stars!



II.

REGRETS

BRIEF glimpses of the bright celestial spheres, False lights, false shadows, vague, uncertain gleams, Pale vaporous mists, wan streaks of lurid flame, The climbing of the upward-sailing cloud, The sinking of the downward-falling star,— All these are pictures of the changing moods Borne through the midnight stillness of my soul.

Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock, Prey to the vulture of a vast desire That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands And steal a moment's freedom from the beak, The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes; Then comes the false enchantress, with her song;

"Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee, Unchanging as the belt Orion wears, Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown, The spangled stream of Berenice's hair!" And so she twines the fetters with the flowers Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird Stoops to his quarry,—then to feed his rage Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek, And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes. All for a line in some unheeded scroll; All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns, "Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clod Where squats the jealous nightmare men call Fame!"

I marvel not at him who scorns his kind And thinks not sadly of the time foretold When the old hulk we tread shall be a wreck, A slag, a cinder drifting through the sky Without its crew of fools! We live too long, And even so are not content to die, But load the mould that covers up our bones With stones that stand like beggars by the road And show death's grievous wound and ask for tears; Write our great books to teach men who we are, Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray For alms of memory with the after time, Those few swift seasons while the earth shall wear Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold And the moist life of all that breathes shall die; Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, Would have us deem, before its growing mass, Pelted with star-dust, stoned with meteor-balls, Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb Shines a new sun for earths that shall be born.

I am as old as Egypt to myself, Brother to them that squared the pyramids By the same stars I watch. I read the page Where every letter is a glittering world, With them who looked from Shinar's clay-built towers, Ere yet the wanderer of the Midland sea Had missed the fallen sister of the seven. I dwell in spaces vague, remote, unknown, Save to the silent few, who, leaving earth, Quit all communion with their living time. I lose myself in that ethereal void, Till I have tired my wings and long to fill My breast with denser air, to stand, to walk With eyes not raised above my fellow-men. Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm, I ask to change the myriad lifeless worlds I visit as mine own for one poor patch Of this dull spheroid and a little breath To shape in word or deed to serve my kind. Was ever giant's dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, As he whose willing victim is himself, Digs, forges, mingles, for his captive soul?



III.

SYMPATHIES

THE snows that glittered on the disk of Mars Have melted, and the planet's fiery orb Rolls in the crimson summer of its year; But what to me the summer or the snow Of worlds that throb with life in forms unknown, If life indeed be theirs; I heed not these. My heart is simply human; all my care For them whose dust is fashioned like mine own; These ache with cold and hunger, live in pain, And shake with fear of worlds more full of woe; There may be others worthier of my love, But such I know not save through these I know.

There are two veils of language, hid beneath Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves; And not that other self which nods and smiles And babbles in our name; the one is Prayer, Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven; The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web Around our naked speech and makes it bold. I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb In the great temple where I nightly serve Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim The poet's franchise, though I may not hope To wear his garland; hear me while I tell My story in such form as poets use, But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again.

Thou Vision, floating in the breathless air Between me and the fairest of the stars, I tell my lonely thoughts as unto thee. Look not for marvels of the scholar's pen In my rude measure; I can only show A slender-margined, unillumined page, And trust its meaning to the flattering eye That reads it in the gracious light of love. Ah, wouldst thou clothe thyself in breathing shape And nestle at my side, my voice should lend Whate'er my verse may lack of tender rhythm To make thee listen.

I have stood entranced When, with her fingers wandering o'er the keys, The white enchantress with the golden hair Breathed all her soul through some unvalued rhyme; Some flower of song that long had lost its bloom; Lo! its dead summer kindled as she sang! The sweet contralto, like the ringdove's coo, Thrilled it with brooding, fond, caressing tones, And the pale minstrel's passion lived again, Tearful and trembling as a dewy rose The wind has shaken till it fills the air With light and fragrance. Such the wondrous charm A song can borrow when the bosom throbs That lends it breath.

So from the poet's lips His verse sounds doubly sweet, for none like him Feels every cadence of its wave-like flow; He lives the passion over, while he reads, That shook him as he sang his lofty strain, And pours his life through each resounding line, As ocean, when the stormy winds are hushed, Still rolls and thunders through his billowy caves.

IV.

MASTER AND SCHOLAR

LET me retrace the record of the years That made me what I am. A man most wise, But overworn with toil and bent with age, Sought me to be his scholar,-me, run wild From books and teachers,-kindled in my soul The love of knowledge; led me to his tower, Showed me the wonders of the midnight realm His hollow sceptre ruled, or seemed to rule, Taught me the mighty secrets of the spheres, Trained me to find the glimmering specks of light Beyond the unaided sense, and on my chart To string them one by one, in order due, As on a rosary a saint his beads. I was his only scholar; I became The echo to his thought; whate'er he knew Was mine for asking; so from year to year W e wrought together, till there came a time When I, the learner, was the master half Of the twinned being in the dome-crowned tower.

Minds roll in paths like planets; they revolve, This in a larger, that a narrower ring, But round they come at last to that same phase, That selfsame light and shade they showed before. I learned his annual and his monthly tale, His weekly axiom and his daily phrase, I felt them coming in the laden air, And watched them laboring up to vocal breath, Even as the first-born at his father's board Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest Is on its way, by some mysterious sign Forewarned, the click before the striking bell.

He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves, Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care; He lived for me in what he once had been, But I for him, a shadow, a defence, The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff, Leaned on so long he fell if left alone. I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand, Love was my spur and longing after fame, But his the goading thorn of sleepless age That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades, That clutches what it may with eager grasp, And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands. All this he dreamed not. He would sit him down Thinking to work his problems as of old, And find the star he thought so plain a blur, The columned figures labyrinthine wilds Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive And struggle for a while, and then his eye Would lose its light, and over all his mind The cold gray mist would settle; and erelong The darkness fell, and I was left alone.

V.

ALONE

ALONE! no climber of an Alpine cliff, No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea, Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky. Alone! And as the shepherd leaves his flock To feed upon the hillside, he meanwhile Finds converse in the warblings of the pipe Himself has fashioned for his vacant hour, So have I grown companion to myself, And to the wandering spirits of the air That smile and whisper round us in our dreams. Thus have I learned to search if I may know The whence and why of all beneath the stars And all beyond them, and to weigh my life As in a balance,—poising good and ill Against each other,—asking of the Power That flung me forth among the whirling worlds, If I am heir to any inborn right, Or only as an atom of the dust That every wind may blow where'er it will.

VI.

QUESTIONING

I AM not humble; I was shown my place, Clad in such robes as Nature had at hand; Took what she gave, not chose; I know no shame, No fear for being simply what I am. I am not proud, I hold my every breath At Nature's mercy. I am as a babe Borne in a giant's arms, he knows not where; Each several heart-beat, counted like the coin A miser reckons, is a special gift As from an unseen hand; if that withhold Its bounty for a moment, I am left A clod upon the earth to which I fall.

Something I find in me that well might claim The love of beings in a sphere above This doubtful twilight world of right and wrong; Something that shows me of the self-same clay That creeps or swims or flies in humblest form. Had I been asked, before I left my bed Of shapeless dust, what clothing I would wear, I would have said, More angel and less worm; But for their sake who are even such as I, Of the same mingled blood, I would not choose To hate that meaner portion of myself Which makes me brother to the least of men.

I dare not be a coward with my lips Who dare to question all things in my soul; Some men may find their wisdom on their knees, Some prone and grovelling in the dust like slaves; Let the meek glowworm glisten in the dew; I ask to lift my taper to the sky As they who hold their lamps above their heads, Trusting the larger currents up aloft, Rather than crossing eddies round their breast, Threatening with every puff the flickering blaze.

My life shall be a challenge, not a truce! This is my homage to the mightier powers, To ask my boldest question, undismayed By muttered threats that some hysteric sense Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err, They all must err who have to feel their way As bats that fly at noon; for what are we But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps Spell out their paths in syllables of pain?

Thou wilt not hold in scorn the child who dares Look up to Thee, the Father,—dares to ask More than thy wisdom answers. From thy hand The worlds were cast; yet every leaflet claims From that same hand its little shining sphere Of star-lit dew; thine image, the great sun, Girt with his mantle of tempestuous flame, Glares in mid-heaven; but to his noon-tide blaze The slender violet lifts its lidless eye, And from his splendor steals its fairest hue, Its sweetest perfume from his scorching fire.

VII.

WORSHIP

FROM my lone turret as I look around O'er the green meadows to the ring of blue, From slope, from summit, and from half-hid vale The sky is stabbed with dagger-pointed spires, Their gilded symbols whirling in the wind, Their brazen tongues proclaiming to the world, "Here truth is sold, the only genuine ware; See that it has our trade-mark! You will buy Poison instead of food across the way, The lies of ——-" this or that, each several name The standard's blazon and the battle-cry Of some true-gospel faction, and again The token of the Beast to all beside. And grouped round each I see a huddling crowd Alike in all things save the words they use; In love, in longing, hate and fear the same.

Whom do we trust and serve? We speak of one And bow to many; Athens still would find The shrines of all she worshipped safe within Our tall barbarian temples, and the thrones That crowned Olympus mighty as of old. The god of music rules the Sabbath choir; The lyric muse must leave the sacred nine To help us please the dilettante's ear; Plutus limps homeward with us, as we leave The portals of the temple where we knelt And listened while the god of eloquence (Hermes of ancient days, but now disguised In sable vestments) with that other god Somnus, the son of Erebus and Nox, Fights in unequal contest for our souls; The dreadful sovereign of the under world Still shakes his sceptre at us, and we hear The baying of the triple-throated hound; Eros is young as ever, and as fair The lovely Goddess born of ocean's foam.

These be thy gods, O Israel! Who is he, The one ye name and tell us that ye serve, Whom ye would call me from my lonely tower To worship with the many-headed throng? Is it the God that walked in Eden's grove In the cool hour to seek our guilty sire? The God who dealt with Abraham as the sons Of that old patriarch deal with other men? The jealous God of Moses, one who feels An image as an insult, and is wroth With him who made it and his child unborn? The God who plagued his people for the sin Of their adulterous king, beloved of him,— The same who offers to a chosen few The right to praise him in eternal song While a vast shrieking world of endless woe Blends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn? Is this the God ye mean, or is it he Who heeds the sparrow's fall, whose loving heart Is as the pitying father's to his child, Whose lesson to his children is "Forgive," Whose plea for all, "They know not what they do"?

VIII.

MANHOOD

I CLAIM the right of knowing whom I serve, Else is my service idle; He that asks My homage asks it from a reasoning soul. To crawl is not to worship; we have learned A drill of eyelids, bended neck and knee, Hanging our prayers on hinges, till we ape The flexures of the many-jointed worm. Asia has taught her Allahs and salaams To the world's children,-we have grown to men! We who have rolled the sphere beneath our feet To find a virgin forest, as we lay The beams of our rude temple, first of all Must frame its doorway high enough for man To pass unstooping; knowing as we do That He who shaped us last of living forms Has long enough been served by creeping things, Reptiles that left their footprints in the sand Of old sea-margins that have turned to stone, And men who learned their ritual; we demand To know Him first, then trust Him and then love When we have found Him worthy of our love, Tried by our own poor hearts and not before; He must be truer than the truest friend, He must be tenderer than a woman's love, A father better than the best of sires; Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin Oftener than did the brother we are told We—poor ill-tempered mortals—must forgive, Though seven times sinning threescore times and ten.

This is the new world's gospel: Be ye men! Try well the legends of the children's time; Ye are the chosen people, God has led Your steps across the desert of the deep As now across the desert of the shore; Mountains are cleft before you as the sea Before the wandering tribe of Israel's sons; Still onward rolls the thunderous caravan, Its coming printed on the western sky, A cloud by day, by night a pillared flame; Your prophets are a hundred unto one Of them of old who cried, "Thus saith the Lord;" They told of cities that should fall in heaps, But yours of mightier cities that shall rise Where yet the lonely fishers spread their nets, Where hides the fox and hoots the midnight owl; The tree of knowledge in your garden grows Not single, but at every humble door; Its branches lend you their immortal food, That fills you with the sense of what ye are, No servants of an altar hewed and carved From senseless stone by craft of human hands, Rabbi, or dervish, brahmin, bishop, bonze, But masters of the charm with which they work To keep your hands from that forbidden tree!

Ye that have tasted that divinest fruit, Look on this world of yours with opened eyes! Y e are as gods! Nay, makers of your gods,— Each day ye break an image in your shrine And plant a fairer image where it stood Where is the Moloch of your fathers' creed, Whose fires of torment burned for span—long babes? Fit object for a tender mother's love! Why not? It was a bargain duly made For these same infants through the surety's act Intrusted with their all for earth and heaven, By Him who chose their guardian, knowing well His fitness for the task,—this, even this, Was the true doctrine only yesterday As thoughts are reckoned,—and to—day you hear In words that sound as if from human tongues Those monstrous, uncouth horrors of the past That blot the blue of heaven and shame the earth As would the saurians of the age of slime, Awaking from their stony sepulchres And wallowing hateful in the eye of day!

IX.

RIGHTS

WHAT am I but the creature Thou hast made? What have I save the blessings Thou hast lent? What hope I but thy mercy and thy love? Who but myself shall cloud my soul with fear? Whose hand protect me from myself but thine? I claim the rights of weakness, I, the babe, Call on my sire to shield me from the ills That still beset my path, not trying me With snares beyond my wisdom or my strength, He knowing I shall use them to my harm, And find a tenfold misery in the sense That in my childlike folly I have sprung The trap upon myself as vermin use, Drawn by the cunning bait to certain doom. Who wrought the wondrous charm that leads us on To sweet perdition, but the selfsame power That set the fearful engine to destroy His wretched offspring (as the Rabbis tell), And hid its yawning jaws and treacherous springs In such a show of innocent sweet flowers It lured the sinless angels and they fell? Ah! He who prayed the prayer of all mankind Summed in those few brief words the mightiest plea For erring souls before the courts of heaven,— Save us from being tempted,—lest we fall!

If we are only as the potter's clay Made to be fashioned as the artist wills, And broken into shards if we offend The eye of Him who made us, it is well; Such love as the insensate lump of clay That spins upon the swift-revolving wheel Bears to the hand that shapes its growing form,— Such love, no more, will be our hearts' return To the great Master-workman for his care,— Or would be, save that this, our breathing clay, Is intertwined with fine innumerous threads That make it conscious in its framer's hand; And this He must remember who has filled These vessels with the deadly draught of life,— Life, that means death to all it claims. Our love Must kindle in the ray that streams from heaven, A faint reflection of the light divine; The sun must warm the earth before the rose Can show her inmost heart-leaves to the sun.

He yields some fraction of the Maker's right Who gives the quivering nerve its sense of pain; Is there not something in the pleading eye Of the poor brute that suffers, which arraigns The law that bids it suffer? Has it not A claim for some remembrance in the book That fills its pages with the idle words Spoken of men? Or is it only clay, Bleeding and aching in the potter's hand, Yet all his own to treat it as He will And when He will to cast it at his feet, Shattered, dishonored, lost forevermore? My dog loves me, but could he look beyond His earthly master, would his love extend To Him who—Hush! I will not doubt that He Is better than our fears, and will not wrong The least, the meanest of created things!

He would not trust me with the smallest orb That circles through the sky; He would not give A meteor to my guidance; would not leave The coloring of a cloudlet to my hand; He locks my beating heart beneath its bars And keeps the key himself; He measures out The draughts of vital breath that warm my blood, Winds up the springs of instinct which uncoil, Each in its season; ties me to my home, My race, my time, my nation, and my creed So closely that if I but slip my wrist Out of the band that cuts it to the bone, Men say, "He hath a devil;" He has lent All that I hold in trust, as unto one By reason of his weakness and his years Not fit to hold the smallest shred in fee Of those most common things he calls his own,— And yet—my Rabbi tells me—He has left The care of that to which a million worlds Filled with unconscious life were less than naught, Has left that mighty universe, the Soul, To the weak guidance of our baby hands, Let the foul fiends have access at their will, Taking the shape of angels, to our hearts,— Our hearts already poisoned through and through With the fierce virus of ancestral sin; Turned us adrift with our immortal charge, To wreck ourselves in gulfs of endless woe.

If what my Rabbi tells me is the truth Why did the choir of angels sing for joy? Heaven must be compassed in a narrow space, And offer more than room enough for all That pass its portals; but the under-world, The godless realm, the place where demons forge Their fiery darts and adamantine chains, Must swarm with ghosts that for a little while Had worn the garb of flesh, and being heirs Of all the dulness of their stolid sires, And all the erring instincts of their tribe, Nature's own teaching, rudiments of "sin," Fell headlong in the snare that could not fail To trap the wretched creatures shaped of clay And cursed with sense enough to lose their souls!

Brother, thy heart is troubled at my word; Sister, I see the cloud is on thy brow. He will not blame me, He who sends not peace, But sends a sword, and bids us strike amain At Error's gilded crest, where in the van Of earth's great army, mingling with the best And bravest of its leaders, shouting loud The battle-cries that yesterday have led The host of Truth to victory, but to-day Are watchwords of the laggard and the slave, He leads his dazzled cohorts. God has made This world a strife of atoms and of spheres; With every breath I sigh myself away And take my tribute from the wandering wind To fan the flame of life's consuming fire; So, while my thought has life, it needs must burn, And, burning, set the stubble-fields ablaze, Where all the harvest long ago was reaped And safely garnered in the ancient barns. But still the gleaners, groping for their food, Go blindly feeling through the close-shorn straw, While the young reapers flash, their glittering steel Where later suns have ripened nobler grain!

X.

TRUTHS

THE time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth newborn Looks a misshapen and untimely growth, The terror of the household and its shame, A monster coiling in its nurse's lap That some would strangle, some would only starve; But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand, And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts, Comes slowly to its stature and its form, Calms the rough ridges of its dragon-scales, Changes to shining locks its snaky hair, And moves transfigured into angel guise, Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth, And folded in the same encircling arms That cast it like a serpent from their hold!

If thou wouldst live in honor, die in peace, Have the fine words the marble-workers learn To carve so well, upon thy funeral-stone, And earn a fair obituary, dressed In all the many-colored robes of praise, Be deafer than the adder to the cry Of that same foundling truth, until it grows To seemly favor, and at length has won The smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-lipped dames; Then snatch it from its meagre nurse's breast, Fold it in silk and give it food from gold; So shalt thou share its glory when at last It drops its mortal vesture, and, revealed In all the splendor of its heavenly form, Spreads on the startled air its mighty wings!

Alas! how much that seemed immortal truth That heroes fought for, martyrs died to save, Reveals its earth-born lineage, growing old And limping in its march, its wings unplumed, Its heavenly semblance faded like a dream! Here in this painted casket, just unsealed, Lies what was once a breathing shape like thine, Once loved as thou art loved; there beamed the eyes That looked on Memphis in its hour of pride, That saw the walls of hundred-gated Thebes, And all the mirrored glories of the Nile. See how they toiled that all-consuming time Might leave the frame immortal in its tomb; Filled it with fragrant balms and odorous gums That still diffuse their sweetness through the air, And wound and wound with patient fold on fold The flaxen bands thy hand has rudely torn! Perchance thou yet canst see the faded stain Of the sad mourner's tear.

XI.

IDOLS

BUT what is this? The sacred beetle, bound upon the breast Of the blind heathen! Snatch the curious prize, Give it a place among thy treasured spoils, Fossil and relic,—corals, encrinites, The fly in amber and the fish in stone, The twisted circlet of Etruscan gold, Medal, intaglio, poniard, poison-ring,— Place for the Memphian beetle with thine hoard!

AM longer than thy creed has blest the world This toy, thus ravished from thy brother's breast, Was to the heart of Mizraim as divine, As holy, as the symbol that we lay On the still bosom of our white-robed dead, And raise above their dust that all may know Here sleeps an heir of glory. Loving friends, With tears of trembling faith and choking sobs, And prayers to those who judge of mortal deeds, Wrapped this poor image in the cerement's fold That Isis and Osiris, friends of man, Might know their own and claim the ransomed soul.

An idol? Man was born to worship such! An idol is an image of his thought; Sometimes he carves it out of gleaming stone, And sometimes moulds it out of glittering gold, Or rounds it in a mighty frescoed dome, Or lifts it heavenward in a lofty spire, Or shapes it in a cunning frame of words, Or pays his priest to make it day by day; For sense must have its god as well as soul; A new-born Dian calls for silver shrines, And Egypt's holiest symbol is our own, The sign we worship as did they of old When Isis and Osiris ruled the world.

Let us be true to our most subtle selves, We long to have our idols like the rest. Think! when the men of Israel had their God Encamped among them, talking with their chief, Leading them in the pillar of the cloud And watching o'er them in the shaft of fire, They still must have an image; still they longed For somewhat of substantial, solid form Whereon to hang their garlands, and to fix Their wandering thoughts and gain a stronger hold For their uncertain faith, not yet assured If those same meteors of the day and night Were not mere exhalations of the soil. Are we less earthly than the chosen race? Are we more neighbors of the living God Than they who gathered manna every morn, Reaping where none had sown, and heard the voice Of him who met the Highest in the mount, And brought them tables, graven with His hand? Yet these must have their idol, brought their gold, That star-browed Apis might be god again; Yea, from their ears the women brake the rings That lent such splendors to the gypsy brown Of sunburnt cheeks,—what more could woman do To show her pious zeal? They went astray, But nature led them as it leads us all. We too, who mock at Israel's golden calf And scoff at Egypt's sacred scarabee, Would have our amulets to clasp and kiss, And flood with rapturous tears, and bear with us To be our dear companions in the dust; Such magic works an image in our souls.

Man is an embryo; see at twenty years His bones, the columns that uphold his frame Not yet cemented, shaft and capital, Mere fragments of the temple incomplete. At twoscore, threescore, is he then full grown? Nay, still a child, and as the little maids Dress and undress their puppets, so he tries To dress a lifeless creed, as if it lived, And change its raiment when the world cries shame!

We smile to see our little ones at play So grave, so thoughtful, with maternal care Nursing the wisps of rags they call their babes;— Does He not smile who sees us with the toys We call by sacred names, and idly feign To be what we have called them? He is still The Father of this helpless nursery-brood, Whose second childhood joins so close its first, That in the crowding, hurrying years between We scarce have trained our senses to their task Before the gathering mist has dimmed our eyes, And with our hollowed palm we help our ear, And trace with trembling hand our wrinkled names, And then begin to tell our stories o'er, And see—not hear—the whispering lips that say, "You know? Your father knew him.—This is he, Tottering and leaning on the hireling's arm,"— And so, at length, disrobed of all that clad The simple life we share with weed and worm, Go to our cradles, naked as we came.

XII.

LOVE

WHAT if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved While yet on earth and was beloved in turn, And still remembered every look and tone Of that dear earthly sister who was left Among the unwise virgins at the gate,— Itself admitted with the bridegroom's train,— What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host Of chanting angels, in some transient lull Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour Some wilder pulse of nature led astray And left an outcast in a world of fire, Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends, Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill To wring the maddest ecstasies of pain From worn-out souls that only ask to die,— Would it not long to leave the bliss of heaven,— Bearing a little water in its hand To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain With Him we call our Father? Or is all So changed in such as taste celestial joy They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe; The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed Her cradle slumbers; she who once had held A babe upon her bosom from its voice Hoarse with its cry of anguish, yet the same?

No! not in ages when the Dreadful Bird Stamped his huge footprints, and the Fearful Beast Strode with the flesh about those fossil bones We build to mimic life with pygmy hands,— Not in those earliest days when men ran wild And gashed each other with their knives of stone, When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows And their flat hands were callous in the palm With walking in the fashion of their sires, Grope as they might to find a cruel god To work their will on such as human wrath Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left With rage unsated, white and stark and cold, Could hate have shaped a demon more malign Than him the dead men mummied in their creed And taught their trembling children to adore!

Made in his image! Sweet and gracious souls Dear to my heart by nature's fondest names, Is not your memory still the precious mould That lends its form to Him who hears my prayer? Thus only I behold Him, like to them, Long-suffering, gentle, ever slow to wrath, If wrath it be that only wounds to heal, Ready to meet the wanderer ere he reach The door he seeks, forgetful of his sin, Longing to clasp him in a father's arms, And seal his pardon with a pitying tear!

Four gospels tell their story to mankind, And none so full of soft, caressing words That bring the Maid of Bethlehem and her Babe Before our tear-dimmed eyes, as his who learned In the meek service of his gracious art The tones which, like the medicinal balms That calm the sufferer's anguish, soothe our souls. Oh that the loving woman, she who sat So long a listener at her Master's feet, Had left us Mary's Gospel,—all she heard Too sweet, too subtle for the ear of man! Mark how the tender-hearted mothers read The messages of love between the lines Of the same page that loads the bitter tongue Of him who deals in terror as his trade With threatening words of wrath that scorch like flame They tell of angels whispering round the bed Of the sweet infant smiling in its dream, Of lambs enfolded in the Shepherd's arms, Of Him who blessed the children; of the land Where crystal rivers feed unfading flowers, Of cities golden-paved with streets of pearl, Of the white robes the winged creatures wear, The crowns and harps from whose melodious strings One long, sweet anthem flows forevermore! We too had human mothers, even as Thou, Whom we have learned to worship as remote From mortal kindred, wast a cradled babe. The milk of woman filled our branching veins, She lulled us with her tender nursery-song, And folded round us her untiring arms, While the first unremembered twilight yeas Shaped us to conscious being; still we feel Her pulses in our own,—too faintly feel; Would that the heart of woman warmed our creeds!

Not from the sad-eyed hermit's lonely cell, Not from the conclave where the holy men Glare on each other, as with angry eyes They battle for God's glory and their own, Till, sick of wordy strife, a show of hands Fixes the faith of ages yet unborn,— Ah, not from these the listening soul can hear The Father's voice that speaks itself divine! Love must be still our Master; till we learn What he can teach us of a woman's heart, We know not His whose love embraces all.



EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES AUTOCRAT-PROFESSOR-POET

AT A BOOKSTORE

Anno Domini 1972

A CRAZY bookcase, placed before A low-price dealer's open door; Therein arrayed in broken rows A ragged crew of rhyme and prose, The homeless vagrants, waifs, and strays Whose low estate this line betrays (Set forth the lesser birds to lime) YOUR CHOICE AMONG THESE BOORS 1 DIME!

Ho! dealer; for its motto's sake This scarecrow from the shelf I take; Three starveling volumes bound in one, Its covers warping in the sun. Methinks it hath a musty smell, I like its flavor none too well, But Yorick's brain was far from dull, Though Hamlet pah!'d, and dropped his skull.

Why, here comes rain! The sky grows dark,— Was that the roll of thunder? Hark! The shop affords a safe retreat, A chair extends its welcome seat, The tradesman has a civil look (I 've paid, impromptu, for my book), The clouds portend a sudden shower,— I 'll read my purchase for an hour.

What have I rescued from the shelf? A Boswell, writing out himself! For though he changes dress and name, The man beneath is still the same, Laughing or sad, by fits and starts, One actor in a dozen parts, And whatsoe'er the mask may be, The voice assures us, This is he.

I say not this to cry him down; I find my Shakespeare in his clown, His rogues the selfsame parent own; Nay! Satan talks in Milton's tone! Where'er the ocean inlet strays, The salt sea wave its source betrays; Where'er the queen of summer blows, She tells the zephyr, "I'm the rose!"

And his is not the playwright's page; His table does not ape the stage; What matter if the figures seen Are only shadows on a screen, He finds in them his lurking thought, And on their lips the words he sought, Like one who sits before the keys And plays a tune himself to please.

And was he noted in his day? Read, flattered, honored? Who shall say? Poor wreck of time the wave has cast To find a peaceful shore at last, Once glorying in thy gilded name And freighted deep with hopes of fame, Thy leaf is moistened with a tear, The first for many a long, long year.

For be it more or less of art That veils the lowliest human heart Where passion throbs, where friendship glows, Where pity's tender tribute flows, Where love has lit its fragrant fire, And sorrow quenched its vain desire, For me the altar is divine, Its flame, its ashes,—all are mine!

And thou, my brother, as I look And see thee pictured in thy book, Thy years on every page confessed In shadows lengthening from the west, Thy glance that wanders, as it sought Some freshly opening flower of thought, Thy hopeful nature, light and free, I start to find myself in thee!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Come, vagrant, outcast, wretch forlorn In leather jerkin stained and torn, Whose talk has filled my idle hour And made me half forget the shower, I'll do at least as much for you, Your coat I'll patch, your gilt renew, Read you—perhaps—some other time. Not bad, my bargain! Price one dime!



SONGS OF MANY SEASONS

1862-1874

OPENING THE WINDOW

THUS I lift the sash, so long Shut against the flight of song; All too late for vain excuse,— Lo, my captive rhymes are loose.

Rhymes that, flitting through my brain, Beat against my window-pane, Some with gayly colored wings, Some, alas! with venomed stings.

Shall they bask in sunny rays? Shall they feed on sugared praise? Shall they stick with tangled feet On the critic's poisoned sheet?

Are the outside winds too rough? Is the world not wide enough? Go, my winged verse, and try,— Go, like Uncle Toby's fly!



PROGRAMME

READER—gentle—if so be Such still live, and live for me, Will it please you to be told What my tenscore pages hold?

Here are verses that in spite Of myself I needs must write, Like the wine that oozes first When the unsqueezed grapes have burst.

Here are angry lines, "too hard!" Says the soldier, battle-scarred. Could I smile his scars away I would blot the bitter lay,

Written with a knitted brow, Read with placid wonder now. Throbbed such passion in my heart? Did his wounds once really smart?

Here are varied strains that sing All the changes life can bring, Songs when joyous friends have met, Songs the mourner's tears have wet.

See the banquet's dead bouquet, Fair and fragrant in its day; Do they read the selfsame lines,— He that fasts and he that dines?

Year by year, like milestones placed, Mark the record Friendship traced. Prisoned in the walls of time Life has notched itself in rhyme.

As its seasons slid along, Every year a notch of song, From the June of long ago, When the rose was full in blow,

Till the scarlet sage has come And the cold chrysanthemum. Read, but not to praise or blame; Are not all our hearts the same?

For the rest, they take their chance,— Some may pay a passing glance; Others,-well, they served a turn,— Wherefore written, would you learn?

Not for glory, not for pelf, Not, be sure, to please myself, Not for any meaner ends,— Always "by request of friends."

Here's the cousin of a king,— Would I do the civil thing? Here 's the first-born of a queen; Here 's a slant-eyed Mandarin.

Would I polish off Japan? Would I greet this famous man, Prince or Prelate, Sheik or Shah?— Figaro gi and Figaro la!

Would I just this once comply?— So they teased and teased till I (Be the truth at once confessed) Wavered—yielded—did my best.

Turn my pages,—never mind If you like not all you find; Think not all the grains are gold Sacramento's sand-banks hold.

Every kernel has its shell, Every chime its harshest bell, Every face its weariest look, Every shelf its emptiest book,

Every field its leanest sheaf, Every book its dullest leaf, Every leaf its weakest line,— Shall it not be so with mine?

Best for worst shall make amends, Find us, keep us, leave us friends Till, perchance, we meet again. Benedicite.—Amen!

October 7, 1874.



IN THE QUIET DAYS

AN OLD-YEAR SONG

As through the forest, disarrayed By chill November, late I strayed, A lonely minstrel of the wood Was singing to the solitude I loved thy music, thus I said, When o'er thy perch the leaves were spread Sweet was thy song, but sweeter now Thy carol on the leafless bough. Sing, little bird! thy note shall cheer The sadness of the dying year.

When violets pranked the turf with blue And morning filled their cups with dew, Thy slender voice with rippling trill The budding April bowers would fill, Nor passed its joyous tones away When April rounded into May: Thy life shall hail no second dawn,— Sing, little bird! the spring is gone.

And I remember—well-a-day!— Thy full-blown summer roundelay, As when behind a broidered screen Some holy maiden sings unseen With answering notes the woodland rung, And every tree-top found a tongue. How deep the shade! the groves how fair! Sing, little bird! the woods are bare.

The summer's throbbing chant is done And mute the choral antiphon; The birds have left the shivering pines To flit among the trellised vines, Or fan the air with scented plumes Amid the love-sick orange-blooms, And thou art here alone,—alone,— Sing, little bird! the rest have flown.

The snow has capped yon distant hill, At morn the running brook was still, From driven herds the clouds that rise Are like the smoke of sacrifice; Erelong the frozen sod shall mock The ploughshare, changed to stubborn rock, The brawling streams shall soon be dumb,— Sing, little bird! the frosts have come.

Fast, fast the lengthening shadows creep, The songless fowls are half asleep, The air grows chill, the setting sun May leave thee ere thy song is done, The pulse that warms thy breast grow cold, Thy secret die with thee, untold The lingering sunset still is bright,— Sing, little bird! 't will soon be night.

1874.



DOROTHY Q.

A FAMILY PORTRAIT

I cannot tell the story of Dorothy Q. more simply in prose than I have told it in verse, but I can add something to it. Dorothy was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the niece of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot and orator who died just before the American Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent and effective promoters. The son of the latter, Josiah Quincy, the first mayor of Boston bearing that name, lived to a great age, one of the most useful and honored citizens of his time. The canvas of the painting was so much decayed that it had to be replaced by a new one, in doing which the rapier thrust was of course filled up.

GRANDMOTHER'S mother: her age, I guess, Thirteen summers, or something less; Girlish bust, but womanly air; Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair; Lips that lover has never kissed; Taper fingers and slender wrist; Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; So they painted the little maid.

On her hand a parrot green Sits unmoving and broods serene. Hold up the canvas full in view,— Look! there's a rent the light shines through, Dark with a century's fringe of dust,— That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust! Such is the tale the lady old, Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told.

Who the painter was none may tell,— One whose best was not over well; Hard and dry, it must be confessed, Flat as a rose that has long been pressed; Yet in her cheek the hues are bright, Dainty colors of red and white, And in her slender shape are seen Hint and promise of stately mien.

Look not on her with eyes of scorn,— Dorothy Q. was a lady born! Ay! since the galloping Normans came, England's annals have known her name; And still to the three-billed rebel town Dear is that ancient name's renown, For many a civic wreath they won, The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.

O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.! Strange is the gift that I owe to you; Such a gift as never a king Save to daughter or son might bring,— All my tenure of heart and hand, All my title to house and land; Mother and sister and child and wife And joy and sorrow and death and life!

What if a hundred years ago Those close-shut lips had answered No, When forth the tremulous question came That cost the maiden her Norman name, And under the folds that look so still The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill? Should I be I, or would it be One tenth another, to nine tenths me?

Soft is the breath of a maiden's YES Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then You may hear to-day in a hundred men.

O lady and lover, how faint and far Your images hover,—and here we are, Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,— Edward's and Dorothy's—all their own,— A goodly record for Time to show Of a syllable spoken so long ago!— Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive For the tender whisper that bade me live?

It shall be a blessing, my little maid! I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade, And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame, And gild with a rhyme your household name; So you shall smile on us brave and bright As first you greeted the morning's light, And live untroubled by woes and fears Through a second youth of a hundred years.

1871.



THE ORGAN-BLOWER

DEVOUTEST of My Sunday friends, The patient Organ-blower bends; I see his figure sink and rise, (Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!) A moment lost, the next half seen, His head above the scanty screen, Still measuring out his deep salaams Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.

No priest that prays in gilded stole, To save a rich man's mortgaged soul; No sister, fresh from holy vows, So humbly stoops, so meekly bows; His large obeisance puts to shame The proudest genuflecting dame, Whose Easter bonnet low descends With all the grace devotion lends.

O brother with the supple spine, How much we owe those bows of thine Without thine arm to lend the breeze, How vain the finger on the keys! Though all unmatched the player's skill, Those thousand throats were dumb and still: Another's art may shape the tone, The breath that fills it is thine own.

Six days the silent Memnon waits Behind his temple's folded gates; But when the seventh day's sunshine falls Through rainbowed windows on the walls, He breathes, he sings, he shouts, he fills The quivering air with rapturous thrills; The roof resounds, the pillars shake, And all the slumbering echoes wake!

The Preacher from the Bible-text With weary words my soul has vexed (Some stranger, fumbling far astray To find the lesson for the day); He tells us truths too plainly true, And reads the service all askew,— Why, why the—mischief—can't he look Beforehand in the service-book?

But thou, with decent mien and face, Art always ready in thy place; Thy strenuous blast, whate'er the tune, As steady as the strong monsoon; Thy only dread a leathery creak, Or small residual extra squeak, To send along the shadowy aisles A sunlit wave of dimpled smiles.

Not all the preaching, O my friend, Comes from the church's pulpit end! Not all that bend the knee and bow Yield service half so true as thou! One simple task performed aright, With slender skill, but all thy might, Where honest labor does its best, And leaves the player all the rest.

This many-diapasoned maze, Through which the breath of being strays, Whose music makes our earth divine, Has work for mortal hands like mine. My duty lies before me. Lo, The lever there! Take hold and blow And He whose hand is on the keys Will play the tune as He shall please.

1812.



AT THE PANTOMIME

THE house was crammed from roof to floor, Heads piled on heads at every door; Half dead with August's seething heat I crowded on and found my seat, My patience slightly out of joint, My temper short of boiling-point, Not quite at Hate mankind as such, Nor yet at Love them overmuch.

Amidst the throng the pageant drew Were gathered Hebrews not a few, Black-bearded, swarthy,—at their side Dark, jewelled women, orient-eyed: If scarce a Christian hopes for grace Who crowds one in his narrow place, What will the savage victim do Whose ribs are kneaded by a Jew?

Next on my left a breathing form Wedged up against me, close and warm; The beak that crowned the bistred face Betrayed the mould of Abraham's race,— That coal-black hair, that smoke-brown hue,— Ah, cursed, unbelieving Jew I started, shuddering, to the right, And squeezed—a second Israelite.

Then woke the evil brood of rage That slumber, tongueless, in their cage; I stabbed in turn with silent oaths The hook-nosed kite of carrion clothes, The snaky usurer, him that crawls And cheats beneath the golden balls, Moses and Levi, all the horde, Spawn of the race that slew its Lord.

Up came their murderous deeds of old, The grisly story Chaucer told, And many an ugly tale beside Of children caught and crucified; I heard the ducat-sweating thieves Beneath the Ghetto's slouching eaves, And, thrust beyond the tented green, The lepers cry, "Unclean! Unclean!"

The show went on, but, ill at ease, My sullen eye it could not please, In vain my conscience whispered, "Shame! Who but their Maker is to blame?" I thought of Judas and his bribe, And steeled my soul against their tribe My neighbors stirred; I looked again Full on the younger of the twain.

A fresh young cheek whose olive hue The mantling blood shows faintly through; Locks dark as midnight, that divide And shade the neck on either side; Soft, gentle, loving eyes that gleam Clear as a starlit mountain stream;— So looked that other child of Shem, The Maiden's Boy of Bethlehem!

And thou couldst scorn the peerless blood That flows immingled from the Flood,— Thy scutcheon spotted with the stains Of Norman thieves and pirate Danes! The New World's foundling, in thy pride Scowl on the Hebrew at thy side, And lo! the very semblance there The Lord of Glory deigned to wear!

I see that radiant image rise, The flowing hair, the pitying eyes, The faintly crimsoned cheek that shows The blush of Sharon's opening rose,— Thy hands would clasp his hallowed feet Whose brethren soil thy Christian seat, Thy lips would press his garment's hem That curl in wrathful scorn for them!

A sudden mist, a watery screen, Dropped like a veil before the scene; The shadow floated from my soul, And to my lips a whisper stole,— "Thy prophets caught the Spirit's flame, From thee the Son of Mary came, With thee the Father deigned to dwell,— Peace be upon thee, Israel!"

18—. Rewritten 1874.



AFTER THE FIRE

WHILE far along the eastern sky I saw the flags of Havoc fly, As if his forces would assault The sovereign of the starry vault And hurl Him back the burning rain That seared the cities of the plain, I read as on a crimson page The words of Israel's sceptred sage:—

For riches make them wings, and they Do as an eagle fly away.

O vision of that sleepless night, What hue shall paint the mocking light That burned and stained the orient skies Where peaceful morning loves to rise, As if the sun had lost his way And dawned to make a second day,— Above how red with fiery glow, How dark to those it woke below!

On roof and wall, on dome and spire, Flashed the false jewels of the fire; Girt with her belt of glittering panes, And crowned with starry-gleaming vanes, Our northern queen in glory shone With new-born splendors not her own, And stood, transfigured in our eyes, A victim decked for sacrifice!

The cloud still hovers overhead, And still the midnight sky is red; As the lost wanderer strays alone To seek the place he called his own, His devious footprints sadly tell How changed the pathways known so well; The scene, how new! The tale, how old Ere yet the ashes have grown cold!

Again I read the words that came Writ in the rubric of the flame Howe'r we trust to mortal things, Each hath its pair of folded wings; Though long their terrors rest unspread Their fatal plumes are never shed; At last, at last they spread in flight, And blot the day and blast then night!

Hope, only Hope, of all that clings Around us, never spreads her wings; Love, though he break his earthly chain, Still whispers he will come again; But Faith that soars to seek the sky Shall teach our half-fledged souls to fly, And find, beyond the smoke and flame, The cloudless azure whence they came!

1872.



A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY

Read at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

No! never such a draught was poured Since Hebe served with nectar The bright Olympians and their Lord, Her over-kind protector,— Since Father Noah squeezed the grape And took to such behaving As would have shamed our grandsire ape Before the days of shaving,— No! ne'er was mingled such a draught In palace, hall, or arbor, As freemen brewed and tyrants quaffed That night in Boston Harbor! The Western war-cloud's crimson stained The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon; Full many a six-foot grenadier The flattened grass had measured, And many a mother many a year Her tearful memories treasured; Fast spread the tempest's darkening pall, The mighty realms were troubled, The storm broke loose, but first of all The Boston teapot bubbled!

An evening party,—only that, No formal invitation, No gold-laced coat, no stiff cravat, No feast in contemplation, No silk-robed dames, no fiddling band, No flowers, no songs, no dancing,— A tribe of red men, axe in hand,— Behold the guests advancing! How fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and workshop gathered! The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; The smith has flung his hammer down, The horseshoe still is glowing; The truant tapster at the Crown Has left a beer-cask flowing; The cooper's boys have dropped the adze, And trot behind their master; Up run the tarry ship-yard lads,— The crowd is hurrying faster,— Out from the Millpond's purlieus gush The streams of white-faced millers, And down their slippery alleys rush The lusty young Fort-Hillers— The ropewalk lends its 'prentice crew,— The tories seize the omen: "Ay, boys, you'll soon have work to do For England's rebel foemen, 'King Hancock,' Adams, and their gang, That fire the mob with treason,— When these we shoot and those we hang The town will come to reason."

On—on to where the tea-ships ride! And now their ranks are forming,— A rush, and up the Dartmouth's side The Mohawk band is swarming! See the fierce natives! What a glimpse Of paint and fur and feather, As all at once the full-grown imps Light on the deck together! A scarf the pigtail's secret keeps, A blanket hides the breeches,— And out the cursed cargo leaps, And overboard it pitches!

O woman, at the evening board So gracious, sweet, and purring, So happy while the tea is poured, So blest while spoons are stirring, What martyr can compare with thee, The mother, wife, or daughter, That night, instead of best Bohea, Condemned to milk and water!

Ah, little dreams the quiet dame Who plies with' rock and spindle The patient flax, how great a flame Yon little spark shall kindle! The lurid morning shall reveal A fire no king can smother Where British flint and Boston steel Have clashed against each other! Old charters shrivel in its track, His Worship's bench has crumbled,

It climbs and clasps the union-jack, Its blazoned pomp is humbled, The flags go down on land and sea Like corn before the reapers; So burned the fire that brewed the tea That Boston served her keepers!

The waves that wrought a century's wreck Have rolled o'er whig and tory; The Mohawks on the Dartmouth's deck Still live in song and story; The waters in the rebel bay Have kept the tea-leaf savor; Our old North-Enders in their spray Still taste a Hyson flavor; And Freedom's teacup still o'erflows With ever fresh libations, To cheat of slumber all her foes And cheer the wakening nations.

1874.



NEARING THE SNOW-LINE

SLOW toiling upward from' the misty vale, I leave the bright enamelled zones below; No more for me their beauteous bloom shall glow, Their lingering sweetness load the morning gale; Few are the slender flowerets, scentless, pale, That on their ice-clad stems all trembling blow Along the margin of unmelting snow; Yet with unsaddened voice thy verge I hail, White realm of peace above the flowering line; Welcome thy frozen domes, thy rocky spires! O'er thee undimmed the moon-girt planets shine, On thy majestic altars fade the fires That filled the air with smoke of vain desires, And all the unclouded blue of heaven is thine!

1870.



IN WARTIME

TO CANAAN

A PURITAN WAR SONG

This poem, published anonymously in the Boston Evening Transcript, was claimed by several persons, three, if I remember correctly, whose names I have or have had, but never thought it worth while to publish.

WHERE are you going, soldiers, With banner, gun, and sword? We 're marching South to Canaan To battle for the Lord What Captain leads your armies Along the rebel coasts? The Mighty One of Israel, His name is Lord of Hosts! To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To blow before the heathen walls The trumpets of the North!

What flag is this you carry Along the sea and shore? The same our grandsires lifted up,— The same our fathers bore In many a battle's tempest It shed the crimson rain,— What God has woven in his loom Let no man rend in twain! To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To plant upon the rebel towers The banners of the North!

What troop is this that follows, All armed with picks and spades? These are the swarthy bondsmen,— The iron-skin brigades! They'll pile up Freedom's breastwork, They 'LL scoop out rebels' graves; Who then will be their owner And march them off for slaves? To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To strike upon the captive's chain The hammers of the North!

What song is this you're singing? The same that Israel sung When Moses led the mighty choir, And Miriam's timbrel rung! To Canaan! To Canaan! The priests and maidens cried: To Canaan! To Canaan! The people's voice replied. To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To thunder through its adder dens The anthems of the North.

When Canaan's hosts are scattered, And all her walls lie flat, What follows next in order? The Lord will see to that We'll break the tyrant's sceptre,— We 'll build the people's throne,— When half the world is Freedom's, Then all the world's our own To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To sweep the rebel threshing-floors, A whirlwind from the North.

August 12, 1862.



"THUS SAITH THE LORD, I OFFER THEE THREE THINGS."

IN poisonous dens, where traitors hide Like bats that fear the day, While all the land our charters claim Is sweating blood and breathing flame, Dead to their country's woe and shame, The recreants whisper STAY!

In peaceful homes, where patriot fires On Love's own altars glow, The mother hides her trembling fear, The wife, the sister, checks a tear, To breathe the parting word of cheer, Soldier of Freedom, Go!

In halls where Luxury lies at ease, And Mammon keeps his state, Where flatterers fawn and menials crouch, The dreamer, startled from his couch, Wrings a few counters from his pouch, And murmurs faintly WAIT!

In weary camps, on trampled plains That ring with fife and drum, The battling host, whose harness gleams Along the crimson-flowing streams, Calls, like a warning voice in dreams, We want you, Brother! COME!

Choose ye whose bidding ye will do,— To go, to wait, to stay! Sons of the Freedom-loving town, Heirs of the Fathers' old renown, The servile yoke, the civic crown, Await your choice To-DAY!

The stake is laid! O gallant youth With yet unsilvered brow, If Heaven should lose and Hell should win, On whom shall lie the mortal sin, That cries aloud, It might have been? God calls you—answer NOW.

1862.



NEVER OR NOW

AN APPEAL

LISTEN, young heroes! your country is calling! Time strikes the hour for the brave and the true! Now, while the foremost are fighting and falling, Fill up the ranks that have opened for you!

You whom the fathers made free and defended, Stain not the scroll that emblazons their fame You whose fair heritage spotless descended, Leave not your children a birthright of shame!

Stay not for questions while Freedom stands gasping! Wait not till Honor lies wrapped in his pall! Brief the lips' meeting be, swift the hands' clasping,— "Off for the wars!" is enough for them all!

Break from the arms that would fondly caress you! Hark! 't is the bugle-blast, sabres are drawn! Mothers shall pray for you, fathers shall bless you, Maidens shall weep for you when you are gone!

Never or now! cries the blood of a nation, Poured on the turf where the red rose should bloom; Now is the day and the hour of salvation,— Never or now! peals the trumpet of doom!

Never or now! roars the hoarse-throated cannon Through the black canopy blotting the skies; Never or now! flaps the shell-blasted pennon O'er the deep ooze where the Cumberland lies!

From the foul dens where our brothers are dying, Aliens and foes in the land of their birth,— From the rank swamps where our martyrs are lying Pleading in vain for a handful of earth,—

From the hot plains where they perish outnumbered, Furrowed and ridged by the battle-field's plough, Comes the loud summons; too long you have slumbered, Hear the last Angel-trump,—Never or Now!

1862.



ONE COUNTRY

ONE country! Treason's writhing asp Struck madly at her girdle's clasp, And Hatred wrenched with might and main To rend its welded links in twain, While Mammon hugged his golden calf Content to take one broken half, While thankless churls stood idly by And heard unmoved a nation's cry!

One country! "Nay,"—the tyrant crew Shrieked from their dens,—"it shall be two! Ill bodes to us this monstrous birth, That scowls on all the thrones of earth, Too broad yon starry cluster shines, Too proudly tower the New-World pines, Tear down the 'banner of the free,' And cleave their land from sea to sea!"

One country still, though foe and "friend" Our seamless empire strove to rend; Safe! safe' though all the fiends of hell Join the red murderers' battle-yell! What though the lifted sabres gleam, The cannons frown by shore and stream,— The sabres clash, the cannons thrill, In wild accord, One country still!

One country! in her stress and strain We heard the breaking of a chain! Look where the conquering Nation swings Her iron flail,—its shivered rings! Forged by the rebels' crimson hand, That bolt of wrath shall scourge the land Till Peace proclaims on sea and shore One Country now and evermore!

1865.



GOD SAVE THE FLAG

WASHED in the blood of the brave and the blooming, Snatched from the altars of insolent foes, Burning with star-fires, but never consuming, Flash its broad ribbons of lily and rose.

Vainly the prophets of Baal would rend it, Vainly his worshippers pray for its fall; Thousands have died for it, millions defend it, Emblem of justice and mercy to all:

Justice that reddens the sky with her terrors, Mercy that comes with her white-handed train, Soothing all passions, redeeming all errors, 'Sheathing the sabre and breaking the chain.

Borne on the deluge of old usurpations, Drifted our Ark o'er the desolate seas, Bearing the rainbow of hope to the nations, Torn from the storm-cloud and flung to the breeze!

God bless the Flag and its loyal defenders, While its broad folds o'er the battle-field wave, Till the dim star-wreath rekindle its splendors, Washed from its stains in the blood of the brave!

1865.



HYMN AFTER THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

GIVER of all that crowns our days, With grateful hearts we sing thy praise; Through deep and desert led by Thee, Our promised land at last we see.

Ruler of Nations, judge our cause! If we have kept thy holy laws, The sons of Belial curse in vain The day that rends the captive's chain.

Thou God of vengeance! Israel's Lord! Break in their grasp the shield and sword, And make thy righteous judgments known Till all thy foes are overthrown!

Then, Father, lay thy healing hand In mercy on our stricken land; Lead all its wanderers to the fold, And be their Shepherd as of old.

So shall one Nation's song ascend To Thee, our Ruler, Father, Friend, While Heaven's wide arch resounds again With Peace on earth, good-will to men!

1865.



HYMN FOR THE FAIR AT CHICAGO

O GOD! in danger's darkest hour, In battle's deadliest field, Thy name has been our Nation's tower, Thy truth her help and shield.

Our lips should fill the air with praise, Nor pay the debt we owe, So high above the songs we raise The floods of mercy flow.

Yet Thou wilt hear the prayer we speak, The song of praise we sing,— Thy children, who thine altar seek Their grateful gifts to bring.

Thine altar is the sufferer's bed, The home of woe and pain, The soldier's turfy pillow, red With battle's crimson rain.

No smoke of burning stains the air, No incense-clouds arise; Thy peaceful servants, Lord, prepare A bloodless sacrifice.

Lo! for our wounded brothers' need, We bear the wine and oil; For us they faint, for us they bleed, For them our gracious toil!

O Father, bless the gifts we bring! Cause Thou thy face to shine, Till every nation owns her King, And all the earth is thine.

1865.



UNDER THE WASHINGTON ELM, CAMBRIDGE

APRIL 27,1861

EIGHTY years have passed, and more, Since under the brave old tree Our fathers gathered in arms, and swore They would follow the sign their banners bore, And fight till the land was free.

Half of their work was done, Half is left to do,— Cambridge, and Concord, and Lexington! When the battle is fought and won, What shall be told of you?

Hark!—'t is the south-wind moans,— Who are the martyrs down? Ah, the marrow was true in your children's bones That sprinkled with blood the cursed stones Of the murder-haunted town!

What if the storm-clouds blow? What if the green leaves fall? Better the crashing tempest's throe Than the army of worms that gnawed below; Trample them one and all!

Then, when the battle is won, And the land from traitors free, Our children shall tell of the strife begun When Liberty's second April sun Was bright on our brave old tree!



FREEDOM, OUR QUEEN

LAND where the banners wave last in the sun, Blazoned with star-clusters, many in one, Floating o'er prairie and mountain and sea; Hark! 't is the voice of thy children to thee!

Here at thine altar our vows we renew Still in thy cause to be loyal and true,— True to thy flag on the field and the wave, Living to honor it, dying to save!

Mother of heroes! if perfidy's blight Fall on a star in thy garland of light, Sound but one bugle-blast! Lo! at the sign Armies all panoplied wheel into line!

Hope of the world! thou'hast broken its chains,— Wear thy bright arms while a tyrant remains, Stand for the right till the nations shall own Freedom their sovereign, with Law for her throne!

Freedom! sweet Freedom! our voices resound, Queen by God's blessing, unsceptred, uncrowned! Freedom, sweet Freedom, our pulses repeat, Warm with her life-blood, as long as they beat!

Fold the broad banner-stripes over her breast,— Crown her with star-jewels Queen of the West! Earth for her heritage, God for her friend, She shall reign over us, world without end!



ARMY HYMN

"OLD HUNDRED"

O LORD of Hosts! Almighty King! Behold the sacrifice we bring To every arm thy strength impart, Thy spirit shed through every heart!

Wake in our breasts the living fires, The holy faith that warmed our sires; Thy hand hath made our Nation free; To die for her is serving Thee.

Be Thou a pillared flame to show The midnight snare, the silent foe; And when the battle thunders loud, Still guide us in its moving cloud.

God of all Nations! Sovereign Lord In thy dread name we draw the sword, We lift the starry flag on high That fills with light our stormy sky.

From treason's rent, from murder's stain, Guard Thou its folds till Peace shall reign,— Till fort and field, till shore and sea, Join our loud anthem, PRAISE TO THEE!