Chapter 4

The lordly roofs of traffic rise Amid the smoke of household fires; High o'er them in the peaceful skies Faith points to heaven her clustering spires.

Can Freedom breathe if ignorance reign? Shall Commerce thrive where anarchs rule? Will Faith her half-fledged brood retain If darkening counsels cloud the school?

Let in the light! from every age Some gleams of garnered wisdom pour, And, fixed on thought's electric page, Wait all their radiance to restore.

Let in the light! in diamond mines Their gems invite the hand that delves; So learning's treasured jewels shine Ranged on the alcove's ordered shelves.

From history's scroll the splendor streams, From science leaps the living ray; Flashed from the poet's glowing dreams The opal fires of fancy play.

Let in the light! these windowed walls Shall brook no shadowing colonnades, But day shall flood the silent halls Till o'er yon hills the sunset fades.

Behind the ever open gate No pikes shall fence a crumbling throne, No lackeys cringe, no courtiers wait, This palace is the people's own!

Heirs of our narrow-girdled past, How fair the prospect we survey, Where howled unheard the wintry blast, And rolled unchecked the storm-swept bay!

These chosen precincts, set apart For learned toil and holy shrines, Yield willing homes to every art That trains, or strengthens, or refines.

Here shall the sceptred mistress reign Who heeds her meanest subject's call, Sovereign of all their vast domain, The queen, the handmaid of them all!

November 26, 1888.

FOR THE WINDOW IN ST. MARGARET'S IN MEMORY OF A SON OF ARCHDEACON FARRAR

AFAR he sleeps whose name is graven here, Where loving hearts his early doom deplore; Youth, promise, virtue, all that made him dear Heaven lent, earth borrowed, sorrowing to restore.

BOSTON, April 12, 1891.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

1819-1891

THOU shouldst have sung the swan-song for the choir That filled our groves with music till the day Lit the last hilltop with its reddening fire, And evening listened for thy lingering lay.

But thou hast found thy voice in realms afar Where strains celestial blend their notes with thine; Some cloudless sphere beneath a happier star Welcomes the bright-winged spirit we resign.

How Nature mourns thee in the still retreat Where passed in peace thy love-enchanted hours! Where shall she find an eye like thine to greet Spring's earliest footprints on her opening flowers?

Have the pale wayside weeds no fond regret For him who read the secrets they enfold? Shall the proud spangles of the field forget The verse that lent new glory to their gold?

And ye whose carols wooed his infant ear, Whose chants with answering woodnotes he repaid, Have ye no song his spirit still may hear From Elmwood's vaults of overarching shade?

Friends of his studious hours, who thronged to teach The deep-read scholar all your varied lore, Shall he no longer seek your shelves to reach The treasure missing from his world-wide store?

This singer whom we long have held so dear Was Nature's darling, shapely, strong, and fair; Of keenest wit, of judgment crystal-clear, Easy of converse, courteous, debonair,

Fit for the loftiest or the lowliest lot, Self-poised, imperial, yet of simplest ways; At home alike in castle or in cot, True to his aim, let others blame or praise.

Freedom he found an heirloom from his sires; Song, letters, statecraft, shared his years in turn; All went to feed the nation's altar-fires Whose mourning children wreathe his funeral urn.

He loved New England,--people, language, soil, Unweaned by exile from her arid breast. Farewell awhile, white-handed son of toil, Go with her brown-armed laborers to thy rest.

Peace to thy slumber in the forest shade! Poet and patriot, every gift was thine; Thy name shall live while summers bloom and fade, And grateful Memory guard thy leafy shrine!