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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

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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

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Beauty and Truth, and all that these

contain,

Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet;

We climb to them through years of sweat and pain;

Without long struggle, none did e er attain

The downward look from Quiet's blissful seat:

Though present loss may be the hero's part,

Yet none can rob him of the victor heart

Whereby the broad-realmed future is subdued,

And Wrong, which now insults from triumph's car,

Sending her vulture hope to raven far, Is made unwilling tributary of Good.

O Mother State, how quenched thy Sinai fires!

Is there none left of thy stanch Mayflower breed?

No spark among the ashes of thy sires, Of Virtue's altar-flame the kindling

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The hand of God sows not in vain ; Long sleeps the darkling seed below, The seasons come, and change, and go, And all the fields are deep with grain.

Although our brother lie asleep, Man's heart still struggles, still aspires;

His grave shall quiver yet, while deep Through the brave Bay State's pulses leap

Her ancient energies and fires.

When hours like this the senses' gush

Have stilled, and left the spirit room, It hears amid the eternal hush The swooping pinions' dreadful rush, That bring the vengeance and the doom;

Not man's brute vengeance, such as rends

What rivets man to man apart,― God doth not so bring round his ends, But waits the ripened time, and sends His mercy to the oppressor's heart.

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING.

I Do not come to weep above thy pall, And mourn the dying-out of noble

powers;

The poet's clearer eye should see, in all Earth's seeming woe, the seed of Heaven's flowers.

Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep

Of everlasting Soul her strength abides,

From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap,

Through Nature's veins her strength, undying, tides.

Peace is more strong than war, and gentleness,

Where force were vain, makes con

quest o'er the wave;

And love lives on and hath a power to bless,

When they who loved are hidden in the grave.

The sculptured marble brags of deathstrewn fields,

And Glory's epitaph is writ in blood; But Alexander now to Plato yields, Clarkson will stand where Wellington hath stood.

I watch the circle of the eternal years, And read forever in the storied page One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears,

One onward step of Truth from age

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Therefore I cannot think thee wholly gone;

The better part of thee is with us stil! ;

Thy soul its hampering clay aside hath thrown,

And only freer wrestles with the Ill. Thou livest in the life of all good things; What words thou spak'st for Freedom shall not die; Thou sleepest not, for now thy Love hath wings

To soar where hence thy Hope could hardly fly.

And often, from that other world, on this

Some gleams from great souls gone before may shine,

To shed on struggling hearts a clearer

bliss,

And clothe the Right with lustre more divine.

Thou art not idle: in thy higher sphere Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks, And strength, to perfect what it dreamed of here

Is all the crown and glory that it asks.

For sure, in Heaven's wide chambers, there is room

For love and pity, and for helpful deeds;

Else were our summons thither but a

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The prodigal soul from want and sorrow home,

And Eden ope her gates to Adam's seed.

Farewell! good man, good angel now! this hand

Soon, like thine own, shall lose its cunning too;

Soon shall this soul, like thine, bewildered stand,

Then leap to thread the free, unfathomed blue:

When that day comes, O, may this hand grow cold,

Busy, like thine, for Freedom and the Right;

O, may this soul, like thine, be ever bold

To face dark Slavery's encroaching blight!

This laurel-leaf I cast upon thy bier;

Let worthier hands than these thy

wreath intwine;

Upon thy hearse I shed no useless tear,

For us weep rather thou in calm divine !

1842.

TO THE MEMORY OF HOOD. ANOTHER Star 'neath Time's horizon dropped,

To gleam o'er unknown lands and

seas;

Another heart that beat for freedom stopped,

What mournful words are these!

O Love Divine, that claspest our tired earth,

And lullest it upon thy heart, Thou knowest how much a gentle soul is worth

To teach men what thou art!

His was a spirit that to all thy poor Was kind as slumber after pain: Why ope so soon thy heaven-deep Quiet's door

And call him home again?

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