THEY pass me by like shadows, crowds on crowds,

Dim ghosts of men, that hover to and fro,

Hugging their bodies round them like thin shrouds

Wherein their souls were buried long ago:

They trampled on their youth, and faith, and love,

They cast their hope of humankind away,

With Heaven's clear messages they madly strove,

And conquered, and their spirits turned to clay:

Lo! how they wander round the world, their grave, Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed,

A right to plead against the lifelong

woes

Which are the Negro's glimpse of Freedom's skies:

Fear nothing and hope all things, as the Right

Alone may do securely; every hour The thrones of Ignorance and ancient Night

Lose somewhat of their longusurped power,

And Freedom's lightest word can make them shiver

With a base dread that clings to them for ever.

XXVII.

I THOUGHT our love at full, but I did err;

Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not see

That sorrow in our happy world must be

Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter:

But, as a mother feels her child first stir

Under her heart, so felt I instantly Deep in my soul another bond to thee

Thrill with that life we saw depart from her;

O mother of our angel child! twice dear!

Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis,

Her tender radiance shall infold us here,

Even as the light, borne up by in

ward bliss,

Threads the void glooms of space

without a fear,

To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss.

L'ENVOI.

WHETHER my heart hath wiser grown or not,

In these three years, since I to thee inscribed,

Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my muse,—

Poor windfalls of unripe experi

ence,

Mind;

And all, that God is open-eyed and just,

The happy centre and calm heart of all.

Are, then, our woods, our mountains, and our streams Needful to teach our poets how to sing?

O maiden rare! far other thoughts

were ours,

When we have sat by ocean's foaming marge,

And watched the waves leap roar ing on the rocks,

Than young Leander and his Hero had,

Gazing from Sestos to the other shore.

The moon looks down and ocean worships her,

Stars rise and set, and seasons come and go,

Even as they did in Homer's elder time,

But we behold them not with Grecian eyes:

Then they were types of beauty and of strength,

But now of Freedom, unconfined and pure,

Subject alone to Order's higher law.

What cares the Russian serf or Southern slave

Though we should speak as man spake never yet

Of gleaming Hudson's broad magnificence,

Or green Niagara's never-ending roar?

Our country hath a gospel of her

These are realities, which make the shows

Of outward Nature, be they ne'er so grand,

Seem small, and worthless, and contemptible.

These are the mountain-summits for our bards,

Which stretch far upward into heaven itself,

And give such wide-spread and exulting view

Of hope, and faith, and onward destiny,

That shrunk Parnassus to a molehill dwindles.

Our new Atlantis, like a morning star,

Silvers the murk face of slow-yielding Night,

The herald of a fuller truth than yet

Hath gleamed upon the upraised face of Man

Since the earth glittered in her stainless prime,

Of a more glorious sunrise than of old

Drew wondrous melodies from Memnon huge,

Yea, draws them still, though now he sit waist-deep

In the engulfing flood of whirling sand,

And looks across the wastes of end

From that which I believe, and feel, and know,

Thou wilt forgive, not with a

sorrowing heart,

But with a strengthened hope of better things;

Knowing that I, though often blind and false

To those I love, and oh, more false than all

Unto myself, have been most true to thee,

And that whoso in one thing hath been true

Can be as true in all. Therefore thy hope

May yet not prove unfruitful, and thy love

Meet, day by day, with less unworthy thanks,

Whether, as now, we journey hand in hand,

Or, parted in the body, yet are one In spirit and the love of holy things.