To change nd change is life, to move and never rest The wild, free woods make no man halt or blind; Each man is some man's servant; every soul Is by some other's presence quite discrowned; Each owes the next through all the imperfect round, Yet not with mutual help; each man is his own goal, And the whole earth must stop to pay his toll. Here, life the undiminished man demands; New faculties stretch out to meet new wants, Here man is lord, not drudge, of eyes and feet and hands, Come out, then, from the old thoughts and old ways, Before you harden to a crystal cold Which the new life can shatter, but not mould; Freedom for you still waits, still, looking backward, stays, But widens still the irretrievable space. LONGING. Of all the myriad moods of mind That through the soul come thronging, So beautiful as Longing? The thing we long for, that we are Can make its sneering comment. Helps make the soul immortal. Longing is God's fresh heavenward will But, would we learn that heart's full scope Ah! let us hope that to our praise The moments when we tread His ways, That some slight good is also wrought When we are simply good in thought, ODE TO FRANCE. FEBRUARY 1848. I As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow, Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches And the blind havoc leaps unwarned below, So grew and gathered through the silent years The madness of a People, wrong by wrong. There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears― No strength in suffering;-but the Past was strong: The brute despair of trampled centuries Leaped up with one hoarse yell and snapped its bands In the crooked shoulder and the forehead low- And physicked woe with woe? II They did as they were taught; not theirs the blame, O, Freedom! Freedom! is thy morning-dew III What wrongs the Oppressor suffered, these we know ; Hardening a people's heart to senseless stone, IV With eye averted and an anguished frown, Loathingly glides the Muse through scenes of strife, Where, like the heart of Vengeance up and down, Throbs in its framework the blood-muffled knife; Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feet Turn never backward: hers no bloody glare; Not first on palace and cathedral spire While these stand black against her morning skies, Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of man, O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit? K Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed! And thou become a fugitive and scoff: Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of gold, And weakest of all fences one of steel; Go and keep school again like him of old, The Syracusan tyrant ;-thou mayest feel Royal amid a birch-swayed commonweal! Not long can he be ruler who allows His time to run before him; thou wast naught Soon as the strip of gold about thy brows Was no more emblem of the People's thought: Vain were thy bayonets against the foe Thou hadst to cope with; thou didst wage War not with Frenchmen merely ;-no, The invisible Spirit whose first breath divine And, like poor last year's leaves, whirled thee and thine VII Is here no triumph? Nay, what though The yellow blood of Trade meanwhile should pour And the idle canvas droop around the shore? Nor keep it great; I think God made The earth for man, not trade; And where each humblest human creature To heaven and earth knit with harmonious ties,- Of manhood glowing in those eyes That had been dark for ages, Or only lit with bestial loves and rages— There I behold a Nation : The France which lies Between the Pyrenees and Rhine Is the least part of France; I see her rather in the soul whose shine Burns through the craftsman's grimy countenance, In the new energy divine Of Toil's enfranchised glance. VIII 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, Make it long, make it deep, O Father, who sendest the harvests men reap! His sorrow is gone, No longer he weepeth, His thoughts in the dawn; He heareth Hope yonder His dreaming hands wander Shrieks Mammon aghast; Will chase it at last; Ye are mad, ye have taken For firm land of the Past!' Ah! if he awaken, God shield us all then, If this dream rudely shaken IX Since first I heard our North wind blow, Since first I saw Atlantic throw On our fierce rocks his thunderous snow, The rattle of thy shield at Marathon Did with a Grecian joy Through all my pulses run |