In fame, and born beneath a milder star),

That to Earth's orphans, far as curves the dome,

Of death-deaf sky, the bounteous West means home,

With dear precedency of natural ties That stretch from roof to roof and make men gently wise?

And if the nobler passions wane, Distorted to base use, if the near goal Of insubstantial gain

Tempt from the proper race-course of the soul

That crowns their patient breath Whose feet, song-pinioned, are too fleet for Death,

Yet may she claim one privilege urbane And haply first upon the civic roll, That none can breathe her air nor grow humane.

POETS, as their heads grow gray,
Look from too far behind the eyes,
Too long-experienced to be wise
In guileless youth's diviner way;
Life sings not now, but prophesies;
Time's shadows they no more behold,
But, under them, the riddle old
That mocks, bewilders, and defies:
In childhood's face the seed of shame,
In the green tree an ambushed flame,
In Phosphor a vaunt-guard of Night,
They, though against their will, divine,
And dread the care-dispelling wine
Stored from the Muse's vintage bright,
By age imbued with second-sight.
From Faith's own eyelids there peeps

out,

Even as they look, the leer of doubt; The festal wreath their fancy loads With care that whispers and forebodes: Nor this our triumph-day can blunt Megæra's goads.

2.

Murmur of many voices in the air Denounces us degenerate,

Unfaithful guardians of a noble fate, And prompts indifference or despair: Is this the country that we dreamed in youth,

Where wisdom and not numbers should have weight,

Seed-field of simpler manners, braver truth,

Where shams should cease to dominate
In household, church, and state?
Is this Atlantis? This the unpoisoned
soil,

Sea-whelmed for ages and recovered late,

Where parasitic greed no more should coil

Round Freedom's stem to bend awry and blight

What grew so fair, sole plant of love and light?

Who sit where once in crowned seclusion sate

The long-proved athletes of debate Trained from their youth, as none thinks needful now?

Is this debating-club where boys dispute,

And wrangle o'er their stolen fruit, The Senate, erewhile cloister of the few,

Where Clay once flashed and Webster's cloudy brow

Brooded those bolts of thought that all the horizon knew?

The penalty be ours, not hers!

The present still seems vulgar, seen too nigh;

The golden age is still the age that's past:

I ask no drowsy opiate

To dull my vision of that only state Founded on faith in man, and therefore sure to last.

For, O, my country, touched by thee,
The gray hairs gather back their gold;
Thy thought sets all my pulses free;
The heart refuses to be old;
The love is all that I can see.
Not to thy natal-day belong
Time's prudent doubt or age's wrong,
But gifts of gratitude and song:
Unsummoned crowd the thankful words,
As sap in spring-time floods the tree,
Foreboding the return of birds,

For all that thou hast been to me!

IV.

I.

FLAWLESS his heart and tempered to

the core

Who, beckoned by the forward-leaning

wave,

First left behind him the firm-footed shore,

And, urged by every nerve of sail and

oar,

Steered for the Unknown which gods to mortals gave,

Of thought and action the mysterious door,

Bugbear of fools, a summons to the brave:

Strength found he in the unsympathizing sun,

And strange stars from beneath the horizon won,

And the dumb ocean pitilessly grave:
High-hearted surely he;

But bolder they who first off-cast
Their moorings from the habitable Past
And ventured chartless on the sea
Of storm-engendering Liberty:
For all earth's width of waters is a span,
And their convulsed existence mere re-

Secure against his own mistakes,
Content with what life gives or takes,
And acting still on some fore-ordered
plan,

A cog of iron in an iron wheel,
Too nicely poised to think or feel,
Dumb motor in a clock-like common-
weal.

They wasted not their brain in schemes Of what man might be in some bubblesphere,

As if he must be other than he seems Because he was not what he should be here, Postponing Time's slow proof to petulant dreams :

Yet herein they were great

Beyond the incredulous lawgivers of

3.

God of our fathers, Thou who wast, Art, and shalt be when those eye-wise who flout

Thy secret presence shall be lost

In the great light that dazzles them to. doubt,

We, sprung from loins of stalwart

men

Whose strength was in their trust

That Thou wouldst make thy dwelling in their dust

And walk with them a fellow-citizen
Who build a city of the just,
We, who believe Life's bases rest
Beyond the probe of chemic test,
Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near,
Sure that, while lasts the immutable
decree,

The land to Human Nature dear
Shall not be unbeloved of Thee.