O della propria o dell' altrui vergogna
Pur sentirà la tua parola brusca."
If I let fall a word of bitter mirth
When public shames more shameful pardon won,
Some have misjudged me, and my service done,
If small, yet faithful, deemed of little worth:
Through veins that drew their life from Western earth
Two hundred years and more my blood hath run
In no polluted course from sire to son;
And thus was I predestined ere my birth
To love the soil wherewith my fibres own
Instinctive sympathies; yet love it so
As honour would, nor lightly to dethrone
Judgment, the stamp of manhood, nor forego
The son's right to a mother dearer grown
With growing knowledge and more chaste than snow.
IN CORDIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS EMINENT SERVICE
IN HEIGHTENING AND PURIFYING THE TONE
OF OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT,
This Volume
IS DEDICATED.
*** Readers, it is hoped, will remember that, by his Ode at the Har vard Commemoration, the author had precluded himself from many of the natural outlets of thought and feeling common to such occasions as are celebrated in this little volume.
She cometh, cometh to-day :
Hark! hear ye not her tread,
Sending a thrill through your clay
Under the sod there, ye dead,
Her nurslings and champions?
Do ye not hear, as she comes,
The bay of the deep-mouthed guns,
The gathering buzz of the drums?
The bells that called ye to prayer,
How wildly they clamour on her,
Crying, "She cometh! prepare
Her to praise and her to honour,
That a hundred years ago
Scattered here in blood and tears
Potent seeds wherefrom should
grow
Gladness for a hundred years!"
For true hearts to long and cry for, Manly hearts to live and die for? What hath she that others want? Brows that all endearments haunt, Eyes that make it sweet to dare, Smiles that glad untimely death, Looks that fortify despair,
Tones more brave than trumpet's breath;
Tell me, maidens, have
Household charm more sweetly rare,
ye known
Grace of woman ampler blown,
Modesty more debonair,
Younger heart with wit full grown?
Oh for an hour of my prime,
The pulse of my hotter years,
That I might praise her in rhyme
Would tingle your eyelids to tears,
Our sweetness, our strength, and
our star,
Our hope, our joy, and our trust,
Who lifted us out of the dust,
And made us whatever we are!
Whiter than moonshine upon snow
Her raiment is, but round the hem
Crimson stained; and, as to and fro
Her sandals flash, we see on them,
And on her instep veined with blue,
Flecks of crimson, on those fair feet,
High-arched, Diana-like, and fleet,
Fit for no grosser stain than dew:
Oh, call them rather chrisms than
stains,
Sacred and from heroic veins !
For, in the glory-guarded pass,
Her haughty and far-shining head
She bowed to shrive Leonidas
With his imperishable dead;
Her, too, Morgarten saw,
Where the Swiss lion fleshed his icy
She followed Cromwell's quenchless star
Where the grim Puritan tread
Tell me, young men, have ye seen, Shook Marston, Naseby, and DunCreature of diviner mien
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