Part 3

And o'er weary spirits keeping Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill, Shine they like thy sun of summer Over midnight vale and hill.

We alone to thee are strangers, Thou our friend and teacher art; Come, and know us as we know thee; Let us meet thee heart to heart!

To our homes and household altars We, in turn, thy steps would lead, As thy loving hand has led us O'er the threshold of the Swede. 1849.

TO AVIS KEENE

ON RECEIVING A BASKET OF SEA-MOSSES.

Thanks for thy gift Of ocean flowers, Born where the golden drift Of the slant sunshine falls Down the green, tremulous walls Of water, to the cool, still coral bowers, Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers, God's gardens of the deep His patient angels keep; Gladdening the dim, strange solitude With fairest forms and hues, and thus Forever teaching us The lesson which the many-colored skies, The flowers, and leaves, and painted butterflies, The deer's branched antlers, the gay bird that flings The tropic sunshine from its golden wings, The brightness of the human countenance, Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance, Forevermore repeat, In varied tones and sweet, That beauty, in and of itself, is good.

O kind and generous friend, o'er whom The sunset hues of Time are cast, Painting, upon the overpast And scattered clouds of noonday sorrow The promise of a fairer morrow, An earnest of the better life to come; The binding of the spirit broken, The warning to the erring spoken, The comfort of the sad, The eye to see, the hand to cull Of common things the beautiful, The absent heart made glad By simple gift or graceful token Of love it needs as daily food, All own one Source, and all are good Hence, tracking sunny cove and reach, Where spent waves glimmer up the beach, And toss their gifts of weed and shell From foamy curve and combing swell, No unbefitting task was thine To weave these flowers so soft and fair In unison with His design Who loveth beauty everywhere; And makes in every zone and clime, In ocean and in upper air, All things beautiful in their time.

For not alone in tones of awe and power He speaks to Inan; The cloudy horror of the thunder-shower His rainbows span; And where the caravan Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air The crane-flock leaves, no trace of passage there, He gives the weary eye The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon hours, And on its branches dry Calls out the acacia's flowers; And where the dark shaft pierces down Beneath the mountain roots, Seen by the miner's lamp alone, The star-like crystal shoots; So, where, the winds and waves below, The coral-branched gardens grow, His climbing weeds and mosses show, Like foliage, on each stony bough, Of varied hues more strangely gay Than forest leaves in autumn's day;-- Thus evermore, On sky, and wave, and shore, An all-pervading beauty seems to say God's love and power are one; and they, Who, like the thunder of a sultry day, Smite to restore, And they, who, like the gentle wind, uplift The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and drift Their perfume on the air, Alike may serve Him, each, with their own gift, Making their lives a prayer! 1850

THE HILL-TOP

The burly driver at my side, We slowly climbed the hill, Whose summit, in the hot noontide, Seemed rising, rising still. At last, our short noon-shadows bid The top-stone, bare and brown, From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid, The rough mass slanted down.

I felt the cool breath of the North; Between me and the sun, O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth, I saw the cloud-shades run. Before me, stretched for glistening miles, Lay mountain-girdled Squam; Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles Upon its bosom swam.

And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm, Far as the eye could roam, Dark billows of an earthquake storm Beflecked with clouds like foam, Their vales in misty shadow deep, Their rugged peaks in shine, I saw the mountain ranges sweep The horizon's northern line.

There towered Chocorua's peak; and west, Moosehillock's woods were seem, With many a nameless slide-scarred crest And pine-dark gorge between. Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud, The great Notch mountains shone, Watched over by the solemn-browed And awful face of stone!

"A good look-off!" the driver spake; "About this time, last year, I drove a party to the Lake, And stopped, at evening, here. 'T was duskish down below; but all These hills stood in the sun, Till, dipped behind yon purple wall, He left them, one by one.

"A lady, who, from Thornton hill, Had held her place outside, And, as a pleasant woman will, Had cheered the long, dull ride, Besought me, with so sweet a smile, That--though I hate delays-- I could not choose but rest awhile,-- (These women have such ways!)

"On yonder mossy ledge she sat, Her sketch upon her knees, A stray brown lock beneath her hat Unrolling in the breeze; Her sweet face, in the sunset light Upraised and glorified,-- I never saw a prettier sight In all my mountain ride.

"As good as fair; it seemed her joy To comfort and to give; My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy, Will bless her while they live!" The tremor in the driver's tone His manhood did not shame "I dare say, sir, you may have known"-- He named a well-known name.

Then sank the pyramidal mounds, The blue lake fled away; For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds, A lighted hearth for day! From lonely years and weary miles The shadows fell apart; Kind voices cheered, sweet human smiles Shone warm into my heart.

We journeyed on; but earth and sky Had power to charm no more; Still dreamed my inward-turning eye The dream of memory o'er. Ah! human kindness, human love,-- To few who seek denied; Too late we learn to prize above The whole round world beside! 1850

ELLIOTT.

Ebenezer Elliott was to the artisans of England what Burns was to the peasantry of Scotland. His Corn-law Rhymes contributed not a little to that overwhelming tide of popular opinion and feeling which resulted in the repeal of the tax on bread. Well has the eloquent author of The Reforms and Reformers of Great Britain said of him, "Not corn-law repealers alone, but all Britons who moisten their scanty bread with the sweat of the brow, are largely indebted to his inspiring lay, for the mighty bound which the laboring mind of England has taken in our day."

Hands off! thou tithe-fat plunderer! play No trick of priestcraft here! Back, puny lordling! darest thou lay A hand on Elliott's bier? Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust, Beneath his feet he trod.

He knew the locust swarm that cursed The harvest-fields of God. On these pale lips, the smothered thought Which England's millions feel, A fierce and fearful splendor caught, As from his forge the steel. Strong-armed as Thor, a shower of fire His smitten anvil flung; God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hunger's ire, He gave them all a tongue!

Then let the poor man's horny hands Bear up the mighty dead, And labor's swart and stalwart bands Behind as mourners tread. Leave cant and craft their baptized bounds, Leave rank its minster floor; Give England's green and daisied grounds The poet of the poor!

Lay down upon his Sheaf's green verge That brave old heart of oak, With fitting dirge from sounding forge, And pall of furnace smoke! Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds, And axe and sledge are swung, And, timing to their stormy sounds, His stormy lays are sung.

There let the peasant's step be heard, The grinder chant his rhyme, Nor patron's praise nor dainty word Befits the man or time. No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh For him whose words were bread; The Runic rhyme and spell whereby The foodless poor were fed!

Pile up the tombs of rank and pride, O England, as thou wilt! With pomp to nameless worth denied, Emblazon titled guilt! No part or lot in these we claim; But, o'er the sounding wave, A common right to Elliott's name, A freehold in his grave! 1850

ICHABOD

This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of evil consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster in support of the "compromise," and the Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On the contrary my admiration of the splendid personality and intellectual power of the great Senator was never stronger than when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the saddest moments of my life, penned my protest. I saw, as I wrote, with painful clearness its sure results,--the Slave Power arrogant and defiant, strengthened and encouraged to carry out its scheme for the extension of its baleful system, or the dissolution of the Union, the guaranties of personal liberty in the free States broken down, and the whole country made the hunting-ground of slave-catchers. In the horror of such a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, if one spoke at all, he could only speak in tones of stern and sorrowful rebuke. But death softens all resentments, and the consciousness of a common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity of judgment. Years after, in _The Lost Occasion_ I gave utterance to an almost universal regret that the great statesman did not live to see the flag which he loved trampled under the feet of Slavery, and, in view of this desecration, make his last days glorious in defence of "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable."

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore!

Revile him not, the Tempter hath A snare for all; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit his fall!

Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might Have lighted up and led his age, Falls back in night.

Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven!

Let not the land once proud of him Insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, Dishonored brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make.

Of all we loved and honored, naught Save power remains; A fallen angel's pride of thought, Still strong in chains.

All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead!

Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame! 1850

THE LOST OCCASION.

Some die too late and some too soon, At early morning, heat of noon, Or the chill evening twilight. Thou, Whom the rich heavens did so endow With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, With all the massive strength that fills Thy home-horizon's granite hills, With rarest gifts of heart and head From manliest stock inherited, New England's stateliest type of man, In port and speech Olympian;

Whom no one met, at first, but took A second awed and wondering look (As turned, perchance, the eyes of Greece On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece); Whose words in simplest homespun clad, The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had, With power reserved at need to reach The Roman forum's loftiest speech, Sweet with persuasion, eloquent In passion, cool in argument, Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes As fell the Norse god's hammer blows, Crushing as if with Talus' flail Through Error's logic-woven mail, And failing only when they tried The adamant of the righteous side,-- Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved Of old friends, by the new deceived, Too soon for us, too soon for thee, Beside thy lonely Northern sea, Where long and low the marsh-lands spread, Laid wearily down thy August head.

Thou shouldst have lived to feel below Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow; The late-sprung mine that underlaid Thy sad concessions vainly made. Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's wall The star-flag of the Union fall, And armed rebellion pressing on The broken lines of Washington! No stronger voice than thine had then Called out the utmost might of men, To make the Union's charter free And strengthen law by liberty. How had that stern arbitrament To thy gray age youth's vigor lent, Shaming ambition's paltry prize Before thy disillusioned eyes; Breaking the spell about thee wound Like the green withes that Samson bound; Redeeming in one effort grand, Thyself and thy imperilled land! Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, O sleeper by the Northern sea, The gates of opportunity! God fills the gaps of human need, Each crisis brings its word and deed. Wise men and strong we did not lack; But still, with memory turning back, In the dark hours we thought of thee, And thy lone grave beside the sea.

Above that grave the east winds blow, And from the marsh-lands drifting slow The sea-fog comes, with evermore The wave-wash of a lonely shore, And sea-bird's melancholy cry, As Nature fain would typify The sadness of a closing scene, The loss of that which should have been. But, where thy native mountains bare Their foreheads to diviner air, Fit emblem of enduring fame, One lofty summit keeps thy name. For thee the cosmic forces did The rearing of that pyramid, The prescient ages shaping with Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith. Sunrise and sunset lay thereon With hands of light their benison, The stars of midnight pause to set Their jewels in its coronet. And evermore that mountain mass Seems climbing from the shadowy pass To light, as if to manifest Thy nobler self, thy life at best! 1880

WORDSWORTH

WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS MEMOIRS.

Dear friends, who read the world aright, And in its common forms discern A beauty and a harmony The many never learn!

Kindred in soul of him who found In simple flower and leaf and stone The impulse of the sweetest lays Our Saxon tongue has known,--

Accept this record of a life As sweet and pure, as calm and good, As a long day of blandest June In green field and in wood.

How welcome to our ears, long pained By strife of sect and party noise, The brook-like murmur of his song Of nature's simple joys!

The violet' by its mossy stone, The primrose by the river's brim, And chance-sown daffodil, have found Immortal life through him.

The sunrise on his breezy lake, The rosy tints his sunset brought, World-seen, are gladdening all the vales And mountain-peaks of thought.

Art builds on sand; the works of pride And human passion change and fall; But that which shares the life of God With Him surviveth all. 1851.

TO ------

LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S EXCURSION.

Fair Nature's priestesses! to whom, In hieroglyph of bud and bloom, Her mysteries are told; Who, wise in lore of wood and mead, The seasons' pictured scrolls can read, In lessons manifold!

Thanks for the courtesy, and gay Good-humor, which on Washing Day Our ill-timed visit bore; Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke The morning dreams of Artichoke, Along his wooded shore!

Varied as varying Nature's ways, Sprites of the river, woodland fays, Or mountain nymphs, ye seem; Free-limbed Dianas on the green, Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine, Upon your favorite stream.

The forms of which the poets told, The fair benignities of old, Were doubtless such as you; What more than Artichoke the rill Of Helicon? Than Pipe-stave hill Arcadia's mountain-view?

No sweeter bowers the bee delayed, In wild Hymettus' scented shade, Than those you dwell among; Snow-flowered azaleas, intertwined With roses, over banks inclined With trembling harebells hung!

A charmed life unknown to death, Immortal freshness Nature hath; Her fabled fount and glen Are now and here: Dodona's shrine Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine,-- All is that e'er hath been.

The Beauty which old Greece or Rome Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home; We need but eye and ear In all our daily walks to trace The outlines of incarnate grace, The hymns of gods to hear! 1851

IN PEACE.

A track of moonlight on a quiet lake, Whose small waves on a silver-sanded shore Whisper of peace, and with the low winds make Such harmonies as keep the woods awake, And listening all night long for their sweet sake A green-waved slope of meadow, hovered o'er By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light On viewless stems, with folded wings of white; A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far seen Where the low westering day, with gold and green, Purple and amber, softly blended, fills The wooded vales, and melts among the hills; A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest On the calm bosom of a stormless sea, Bearing alike upon its placid breast, With earthly flowers and heavenly' stars impressed, The hues of time and of eternity Such are the pictures which the thought of thee, O friend, awakeneth,--charming the keen pain Of thy departure, and our sense of loss Requiting with the fullness of thy gain. Lo! on the quiet grave thy life-borne cross, Dropped only at its side, methinks doth shine, Of thy beatitude the radiant sign! No sob of grief, no wild lament be there, To break the Sabbath of the holy air; But, in their stead, the silent-breathing prayer Of hearts still waiting for a rest like thine. O spirit redeemed! Forgive us, if henceforth, With sweet and pure similitudes of earth, We keep thy pleasant memory freshly green, Of love's inheritance a priceless part, Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is seen To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art, With pencil dipped alone in colors of the heart. 1851.

BENEDICITE.

God's love and peace be with thee, where Soe'er this soft autumnal air Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair.

Whether through city casements comes Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms, Or, out among the woodland blooms,

It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face, Imparting, in its glad embrace, Beauty to beauty, grace to grace!

Fair Nature's book together read, The old wood-paths that knew our tread, The maple shadows overhead,--

The hills we climbed, the river seen By gleams along its deep ravine,-- All keep thy memory fresh and green.

Where'er I look, where'er I stray, Thy thought goes with me on my way, And hence the prayer I breathe to-day;

O'er lapse of time and change of scene, The weary waste which lies between Thyself and me, my heart I lean.

Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, nor The half-unconscious power to draw All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law.

With these good gifts of God is cast Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast To hold the blessed angels fast.

If, then, a fervent wish for thee The gracious heavens will heed from me, What should, dear heart, its burden be?

The sighing of a shaken reed,-- What can I more than meekly plead The greatness of our common need?

God's love,--unchanging, pure, and true,-- The Paraclete white-shining through His peace,--the fall of Hermon's dew!

With such a prayer, on this sweet day, As thou mayst hear and I may say, I greet thee, dearest, far away! 1851.

KOSSUTH

It can scarcely be necessary to say that there are elements in the character and passages in the history of the great Hungarian statesman and orator, which necessarily command the admiration of those, even, who believe that no political revolution was ever worth the price of human blood.

Type of two mighty continents!--combining The strength of Europe with the warmth and glow Of Asian song and prophecy,--the shining Of Orient splendors over Northern snow! Who shall receive him? Who, unblushing, speak Welcome to him, who, while he strove to break The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks, smote off At the same blow the fetters of the serf, Rearing the altar of his Fatherland On the firm base of freedom, and thereby Lifting to Heaven a patriot's stainless hand, Mocked not the God of Justice with a lie! Who shall be Freedom's mouthpiece? Who shall give Her welcoming cheer to the great fugitive? Not he who, all her sacred trusts betraying, Is scourging back to slavery's hell of pain The swarthy Kossuths of our land again! Not he whose utterance now from lips designed The bugle-march of Liberty to wind, And call her hosts beneath the breaking light, The keen reveille of her morn of fight, Is but the hoarse note of the blood-hound's baying, The wolf's long howl behind the bondman's flight! Oh for the tongue of him who lies at rest In Quincy's shade of patrimonial trees, Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best, To lend a voice to Freedom's sympathies, And hail the coming of the noblest guest The Old World's wrong has given the New World of the West! 1851.

TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER.

AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER OF HORACE

These lines were addressed to my worthy friend Joshua Coffin, teacher, historian, and antiquarian. He was one of the twelve persons who with William Lloyd Garrison formed the first anti-slavery society in New England.

Old friend, kind friend! lightly down Drop time's snow-flakes on thy crown! Never be thy shadow less, Never fail thy cheerfulness; Care, that kills the cat, may, plough Wrinkles in the miser's brow, Deepen envy's spiteful frown, Draw the mouths of bigots down, Plague ambition's dream, and sit Heavy on the hypocrite, Haunt the rich man's door, and ride In the gilded coach of pride;-- Let the fiend pass!--what can he Find to do with such as thee? Seldom comes that evil guest Where the conscience lies at rest, And brown health and quiet wit Smiling on the threshold sit.

I, the urchin unto whom, In that smoked and dingy room, Where the district gave thee rule O'er its ragged winter school, Thou didst teach the mysteries Of those weary A B C's,-- Where, to fill the every pause Of thy wise and learned saws, Through the cracked and crazy wall Came the cradle-rock and squall, And the goodman's voice, at strife With his shrill and tipsy wife, Luring us by stories old, With a comic unction told, More than by the eloquence Of terse birchen arguments (Doubtful gain, I fear), to look With complacence on a book!-- Where the genial pedagogue Half forgot his rogues to flog, Citing tale or apologue, Wise and merry in its drift As was Phaedrus' twofold gift, Had the little rebels known it, Risum et prudentiam monet! I,--the man of middle years, In whose sable locks appears Many a warning fleck of gray,-- Looking back to that far day, And thy primal lessons, feel Grateful smiles my lips unseal, As, remembering thee, I blend Olden teacher, present friend, Wise with antiquarian search, In the scrolls of State and Church Named on history's title-page, Parish-clerk and justice sage; For the ferule's wholesome awe Wielding now the sword of law.

Threshing Time's neglected sheaves, Gathering up the scattered leaves Which the wrinkled sibyl cast Careless from her as she passed,-- Twofold citizen art thou, Freeman of the past and now. He who bore thy name of old Midway in the heavens did hold Over Gibeon moon and sun; Thou hast bidden them backward run; Of to-day the present ray Flinging over yesterday!

Let the busy ones deride What I deem of right thy pride Let the fools their treadmills grind, Look not forward nor behind, Shuffle in and wriggle out, Veer with every breeze about, Turning like a windmill sail, Or a dog that seeks his tail; Let them laugh to see thee fast Tabernacled in the Past, Working out with eye and lip, Riddles of old penmanship, Patient as Belzoni there Sorting out, with loving care, Mummies of dead questions stripped From their sevenfold manuscript.

Dabbling, in their noisy way, In the puddles of to-day, Little know they of that vast Solemn ocean of the past, On whose margin, wreck-bespread, Thou art walking with the dead, Questioning the stranded years, Waking smiles, by turns, and tears, As thou callest up again Shapes the dust has long o'erlain,-- Fair-haired woman, bearded man, Cavalier and Puritan; In an age whose eager view Seeks but present things, and new, Mad for party, sect and gold, Teaching reverence for the old.