They fought as suits the English breed; They came three thousand miles, and died, To keep the Past upon its throne; The turf that covers them no thrill But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs, Or Seth, as ebbed the life away, run World-wide from that short April fray? What then? With heart and hand they wrought, According to their village light; Their graves have voices; if they threw Dice charged with fates beyond their ken, Yet to their instincts they were true, When all our good seems bound in sheaves, And we stand reaped and bare. Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go; At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow. But each day brings less summer cheer, As less the olden glow abides, And less the chillier heart aspires, With drift-wood beached in past springtides We light our sullen fires. By the pinched rushlight's starving beam We cower and strain our wasted sight, To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by seam, In the long arctic night. It was not so we once were youngWhen Spring, to womanly Summer turning, Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung, In the red sunrise burning. We trusted then, aspired, believed That earth could be remade to-mor row ; Ah, why be ever undeceived? O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted once, is past retrieving; Experience is a dumb, dead thing; To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day? Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew, That with thy idol-volume's covers two Wouldst make a jail to coop the living God? Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-tones By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught, Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought, Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire, Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire To weld anew the spirit's broken chains. God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilder ness KOSSUTH. A RACE of nobles may die out, But they fail not, the kinglier breed, The zeal of Nature never cools, 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 The deathly travail's amplest worth; A nation's duty thou hast done, Giving a hero to our earth. And he, let come what will of woe, Has saved the land he strove to save; No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow, Can quench the voice shall haunt his grave. "I Kossuth am: O Future, thou That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile, O'er this small dust in reverence bow, Remembering what I was erewhile. "I was the chosen trump wherethrough Our God sent forth awakening breath; Came chains? Came death? The strain He blew Sounds on, outliving chains and death." TO LAMARTINE. I DID not praise thee when the crowd, And stamped their dusty adoration; I but looked upward with the rest, And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best. They raised thee not, but rose to thee, Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging; So on some marble Phoebus the high sea Might leave his worthless seaweed clinging, But pious hands, with reverent care, Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare. Now thou 'rt thy plain, grand self again, Thou art secure from panegyric,Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain, And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric; This side the Blessed Isles, no tree Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee. Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow From swinish footprints 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 vouch Who says thy day is o'er? Control, My heart, that bitter first emotion; While men shall reverence the steadfast soul, The heart in silent self-devotion Breaking, the mild, heroic mien, Thou 'lt need no prop of marble, Lamartine. If France reject thee, 't is not thine, But her own, exile that she utters; Ideal France, the deathless, the divine, Will be where thy white pennon flutters, As once the nobler Athens went With Aristides into banishment. 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, 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, And chimed together, We ar brothers. O poem-unsurpassed! it ran All round the world, unlocking man t. man. France is too poor to pay alone The service of that ample spirit: Paltry seem low dictatorship and throne, If balanced with thy simple merit. They had to thee been rust and loss; Thy aim was higher, -thou hast climbed a Cross. TO JOHN G. PALFREY. THERE are who triumph in a losing cause, Who can put on defeat, as 't were a wreath |