trace

A dead soul's epitaph in every face!

them shiver

With a base dread that clings to them forever.

XXVII.

world,

peaks,

Its sealike lakes and mighty cataracts, Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide,

And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes

extinct.

But Poesy springs not from rocks and woods;

Her womb and cradle are the human heart,

And she can find a nobler theme for song In the most loathsome man that blasts the sight

Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore

Between the frozen deserts of the poles. All nations have their message from on high,

Each the messiah of some central thought, For the fulfilment and delight of Man: One has to teach that labor is divine; Another Freedom; and another Mind; And all, that God is open-eyed and just, The happy centre and calm heart of all.

hood,

Which to pay nobly, as a freeman should, Gains the sole wealth that will not fly away,

And the soul's fealty to none but God. 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

dumb,

Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing day!

Never had poets such high call before, Never can poets hope for higher one, And, if they be but faithful to their trust, Earth will remember them with love and joy,

And O, far better, God will not forget. For he who settles Freedom's principles Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny; Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart,

And his mere word makes despots tremble

more

Than ever Brutus with his dagger could. Wait for no hints from waterfalls or woods,

Nor dream that tales of red men, brute and fierce,

Repay the finding of this Western World, Or needed half the globe to give them birth:

Spirit supreme of Freedom! not for this Did great Columbus tame his eagle soul To jostle with the daws that perch in courts;

Not for this, friendless, on an unknown

sea,

Coping with mad waves and more mutinous spirits,

Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart

Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt,

The hermit of that loneliest solitude, The silent desert of a great New Thought;

Yet would this cataract of boiling life Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps,

And utter thunder till the world shall cease,

A thunder worthy of the poet's song, And which alone can fill it with true life. The high evangel to our country granted Could make apostles, yea, with tongues of fire,

Of hearts half-darkened back again to clay !

'T is the soul only that is national, And he who pays true loyalty to that Alone can claim the wreath of patriotism.

Beloved! if I wander far and oft

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 O, 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.