TO J. F. H. NINE years have slipped like hour-glass sand I held the keepsake which you gave, The old worn world of hurry and heat, Come back our ancient walks to tread, Old haunts of lost or scattered friends, Where song, and smoke, and laughter sped Our old familiars are not laid, Though snapped our wands and sunk our books, They beckon, not to be gainsaid, Where, round broad meads which mowers wade, Smooth Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks; Where, as the cloudbergs eastward blow, Its lakes of rye that surge and flow, Its snowy white-weed's summer drifts. Or let us to Nantasket, there Or whether, under skies clear-blown, For years thrice three, wise Horace said, That right Falernian friendship old MEMORIAL VERSES. KOSSUTH. A RACE of nobles may die out, But they fail not, the kinglier breed, The zeal of Nature never cools, Nor is she thwarted of her ends; When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools, Then she a saint and prophet spends. Land of the Magyars! though it be The tyrant may relink his chain, Already thine the victory, As the just Future measures gain. Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won And he, let come what will of woe, "I Kossuth am: O Future, thou That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile, "I was the chosen trump wherethrough Came chains? Came death? The strain He blew Sounds on, outliving chains and death." TO LAMARTINE. 1848. I DID not praise thee when the crowd, Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging; So on some marble Phoebus the high sea Might leave his worthless sea-weed clinging, But pious hands, with reverent care, Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare. Now thou'rt thy plain, grand self again, Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee. Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow From swinish foot-prints takes no staining, But, leaving the gross soils of earth below, Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining, And unresenting falls again, To beautify the world with dews and rain. The highest duty to mere man vouchsafed When the roused popular ocean foamed and chafed, And show that only order is release. To carve thy fullest thought, what though Time was not granted? Aye in history, Like that Dawn's face which baffled Angelo, Left shapeless, grander for its mystery, Thy great Design shall stand, and day Flood its blind front from Orients far away. Who says thy day is o'er? Control, My heart, that bitter first emotion; While men shall reverence the steadfast soul, Thou 'lt need no prop of marble, Lamartine. If France reject thee, 't is not thine, No fitting metewand hath To-day For measuring spirits of thy stature, Only the Future can reach up to lay The laurel on that lofty nature, — Bard, who with some diviner art Has touched the bard's true lyre, a nation's heart. Swept by thy hand, the gladdened chords, Crashed now in discords fierce by others, Gave forth one note beyond all skill of words, O poem unsurpassed! it ran All round the world, unlocking man to man. France is too poor to pay alone The service of that ample spirit; TO JOHN G. PALFREY. THERE are who triumph in a losing cause, Safe from the blasting demagogue's applause; And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell stood, Fearfully watering with his realm's best blood Cromwell's quenched bolts, that erst had cracked and flamed, Scaring, through all their depths of courtier mud, Still rise o'er last year's mark, to mine away Dutter degradation! Freedom turned |