The songs of maidens pressing with white | But universal Nature watches theirs: Such strength is won by love of human kind. feet The vintage on thine altars poured no more, The murmurous bliss of lovers, underneath Dim grapevine bowers, whose rosy bunches press Not half so closely their warm cheeks, unpaled By thoughts of thy brute lust, hive-like hum Of peaceful commonwealths, where burnt Toil Not that I feel that hunger after fame, Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with; But that the memory of noble deeds Cries shame upon the idle and the vile, And keeps the heart of Man forever up the To the heroic level of old time. To be forgot at first is little pain sun-To a heart conscious of such high intent As must be deathless on the lips of men ; | But, having been a name, to sink and be A something which the world can do without, Reaps for itself the rich earth made its Own By its own labor, lightened with glad To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts vast sea, Even the spirit of free love and peace, Duty's sure recompense through life and death, Which, having been or not, would never change The lightest pulse of fate, this is indeed A cup of bitterness the worst to taste, Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus, That I should brave thee, miserable god! A god among my brethren weak and Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing That awes the swart Barbarian; but I Thou and all strength shall crumble, | Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the except Love, truth While from my peak of suffering I look down, Beholding with a far-spread gush of hope The sunrise of that Beauty, in whose face, Shone all around with love, no man shall look But straightway like a god he is uplift Unto the throne long empty for his sake, And clearly oft foreshadowed in wide dreams By his free inward nature, which nor thou, Nor any anarch after thee, can bind From working its great doom, — now, now set free This essence, not to die, but to become Part of that awful Presence which doth | Loneliest, save me, of all created things, For wisdom is meek sorrow's patient child, And empire over self, and all the deep Strong charities that make men seem like gods; And love, that makes them be gods, from her breasts Sucks in the milk that makes mankind one blood. Good never comes unmixed, or so it seems, Having two faces, as some images Are carved, of foolish gods; one face is ill; But one heart lies beneath, and that is good, As are all hearts, when we explore their depths. Therefore, great heart, bear up! thou art but type Of what all lofty spirits endure, that fain Would win men back to strength and peace through love: Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart Envy, or scorn, or hatred, tears lifelong With vulture beak; yet the high soul is left; Then King Admetus, one who had Pure taste by right divine, And so, well pleased with being soothed Three times his kingly beard he smoothed, And made him viceroy o'er his sheep. His words were simple words enough, And yet he used them so, Men called him but a shiftless youth, They knew not how he learned at all, Earth seemed more sweet More full of love, because And day by day more holy Each spot where he had t Till after-poets only knew Their first-born brother as a go THE TOKEN. Ir is a mere wild rosebud, Quite sallow now, and dry, Lips must fade and roses wither, Stay with us no more: Thou hast given me many roses, With such a deep, wild bliss; Earth's stablest things are shadows, He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, Haply some chance-saved trifle Or mused upon a common flower. It seemed the loveliness of things He found a healing power profuse. and Men granted that his speech was wise, Yet after he was dead and gone, And e'en his memory dim, May tell of this old home: As now sometimes we seem to find, God scatters love on every side There is no wind but soweth seeds God wills, man hopes: in common souls Hope is but vague and undefined, Which burst, unlooked for, into high- Till from the poet's tongue the message souled deeds, With wayside beauty rife. We find within these souls of ours Some wild germs of a higher birth, Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers Whose fragrance fills the earth. Within the hearts of all men lie Which blossom into hopes that cannot die, In sunny hours like this. All that hath been majestical And thus, among the untaught poor, Great deeds and feelings find a home, That cast in shadow all the golden lore Of classic Greece and Rome. O, mighty brother-soul of man, rolls |