I know not how others saw her, And as many changes took, To what can I liken her smiling Upon me, her kneeling lover, How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids, And dimpled her wholly over, Sending sun through her veins to me ! She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, And it hardly seemed a day, But they left in her stead a changeling, That seems like her bud in full blossom, Alone 'neath the awful sky. As weak, yet as trustful also; For the whole year long I see All the wonders of faithful Nature Still worked for the love of me; Winds wander, and dews drip earthward, Rain falls, suns rise and set, Earth whirls, and all but to prosper A poor little violet. This child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, I cannot lift it up fatherly And bliss it upon my breast: Yet it lies in my little one's cradle And the light of the heaven she's gone to What wonder if those palms were all too They noted down their fetters, link by hard link; Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and red the ink; Rude was their score, as suits unlettered 'T was close beside him there, Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man. V O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit? A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed ! And if it be a dream, If the great Future be the little Past 'Neath a new mask, which drops and shows at last The same weird, mocking face to balk and blast, Yet, Muse, a gladder measure suits the theme, And the Tyrtæan harp Loves notes more resolute and sharp, Throbbing, as throbs the bosom, hot and fast: Such visions are of morning, Theirs is no vague forewarning, The dreams which nations dream come true, And shape the world anew; If this be a sleep, Make it long, make it deep, O Father, who sendest the harvests men reap! His thoughts in the dawn; Rain, lark-like, her fancies, Mid heart's-ease and pansies; For firm land of the Past!" God shield us all then, IX Since first I heard our North-wind blow, Since first I saw Atlantic throw On our grim rocks his thunderous snow, I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy The rattle of thy shield at Marathon Did with a Grecian joy Through all my pulses run; But I have learned to love thee now Without the helm upon thy gleaming brow, A maiden mild and undefiled As their gods were, so their laws were; Thor the strong could reave and steal, So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's eager keel; But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless, as before, Like her who bore the world's redeeming Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our child; lives and faiths to Thor. Law is holy: ay, but what law? Is there nothing more divine Than the patched-up broils of Congress, venal, full of meat and wine? Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcends Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends? Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit to them a plan, Ere he filled with loves, hopes, longings, this aspiring heart of man? For their edict does the soul wait, ere it swing round to the pole Of the true, the free, the God-willed, all that makes it be a soul? |