If I let fall a word of bitter mirth When public shames more shameful pardon won, With growing knowledge and more chaste than snow. THREE MEMORIAL POEMS. ΤΟ E. L. GODKIN, IN CORDIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS EMINENT SERVICE OF OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT, This Volume IS DEDICATED. Readers, it is hoped, will remember that, by his Ode at the Harvard Commemoration, the author had precluded himself from many of the natural outlets of thought and feeling common to such occasions as are celebrated in this little volume. ODE READ AT THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIGHT AT CONCORD BRIDGE. 19TH APRIL, 1875. I. WHO Cometh over the hills, he daughters of Time and Thought! II. She cometh, cometh to-day: III. Tell me, young men, have ye seen, Creature of diviner mien For true hearts to long and cry for, Maiden half mortal, half divine, We triumphed in thy coming to the brinks Our hearts were filled with pride's m multuous wine, Better to-day who rather feels than thinks. Yet will some graver thoughts intrude, Where discrowned empires o'er their ruins brood, And many a thwarted hope wrings its weak hands and weeps, I hear the voice as of a mighty wind From all heaven's caverns rushing unconfined, "I, Freedom, dwell with Knowledge: I abide With men whom dust of faction cannot blind To the slow tracings of the Eternal for Who bitter duty to sweet lusts prefer, Manly hearts to live and die for? Tell me, maidens, have ye known Younger heart with wit full grown? star, Our hope, our joy, and our trust, Who lifted us out of the dust, And made us whatever we are! IV. Whiter than moonshine upon snow She followed Cromwell's quenchless star Where the grim Puritan tread Shook Marston, Naseby, and Dunbar : V. Our fathers found her in the woods Where Nature meditates and broods, The seeds of unexampled things Which Time to consummation brings Through life and death and man's unstable moods; They met her here, not recognized, She taught them to endue The past with other functions than it knew, And turn in channels strange the uncertain stream of Fate; Better than all, she fenced them in their need With iron-handed Duty's sternest creed, 'Gainst Self's lean wolf that ravens word and deed. VI. Why cometh she hither to-day Why cometh she? She was not far away. Since the soul touched it, not in vain, With pathos of immortal gain, "T is here her fondest memories stay. She loves yon pine-bemurmured ridge Where now our broad-browed poet sleeps, Dear to both Englands; near him he Who wore the ring of Canace; But most her heart to rapture leaps Where stood that era-parting bridge, O'er which, with footfall still as dew, The Old Time passed into the New; Where, as your stealthy river creeps, He whispers to his listening weeds Tales of sublimest homespun deeds. Here English law and English thought 'Gainst the self-will of England fought; And here were men (coequal with their fate), Who did great things, unconscious they were great. They dreamed not what a die was cast With that first answering shot; what then? There was their duty; they were men Schooled the soul's inward gospel to obey, |