It gleans the straws that thatch its humble

bower:
We can but say we found it in the heart,
Spring of all sweetest thoughts, arch foe of

blame,
Sower of flowers in the dusty mart,
Pure vestal of the poet's holy flame,
This is enough, and we have done our part
If we but keep it spotless as it came.

As loath to fall out of those happy skies;
Yet sure, my love, thou art most like to

May,
That comes with steady sun when April

dies.

XXIII

XXI

OUR love is not a fading, earthly flower:
Its wingëd seed dropped down from Para-

dise,
And, nursed by day and night, by sun and

shower,
Doth momently to fresher beauty rise:
To us the leafless autumn is not bare,
Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty

green.
Our summer hearts make summer's ful-

WENDELL PHILLIPS
He stood upon the world's broad thresh-

old; wide
The din of battle and of slaughter rose;
He saw God stand upon the weaker side,
That sank in seeming loss before its foes:
Many there were who made great haste

and sold
Unto the cunning enemy their swords,
He scorned their gifts of fame, and power,

and gold, And, underneath their soft and flowery

words, Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he

went
And humbly joined him to the weaker

part,
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content
So he could be the nearer to God's heart,
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood
Through all the widespread veins of end-

less good.

ness, where

No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen:
For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie,
Love, whose forgetfulness is beauty's

death,
Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I
Into the infinite freedom openeth,
And makes the body's dark and narrow

grate
The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's own

palace-gate.

XXIV

THE STREET

XXII

IN ABSENCE

They pass me by like shadows, crowds on

crowds, THESE rugged, wintry days I scarce could Dim ghosts of men, that hover to and fro, bear,

Hugging their bodies round them like thin Did I not know that, in the early spring,

shronds When wild March winds upon their er- Wherein their souls were buried long ago: rands sing,

They trampled on their youth, and faith, Thou wouldst return, bursting on this still

and love, air,

They cast their hope of human-kind away, Like those same winds, when, startled from With Heaven's clear messages they madly their lair,

strove, They hunt up violets, and free swift brooks And conquered, — and their spirits turned From icy cares, even as thy clear looks

to clay: Bid my heart bloom, and sing, and break Lo! how they wander round the world,

all care: When drops with welcome rain the April | Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed, day,

Gibbering at living men, and idly rave, My flowers shall find their April in thine “We only truly live, but ye are dead.” eyes,

Alas! poor fools, the anointed eye may Save there the rain in dreamy clouds doth

trace stay,

A dead soul's epitaph in every face !

their grave,

XXV

ness.

XXVI

That sorrow in our happy world must be

Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter: I GRIEVE not that ripe Knowledge takes But, as a mother feels her child first stir away

Under her heart, so felt I instantly The charm that Nature to my childhood Deep in my soul another bond to thee wore,

Thrill with that life we saw depart from For, with that insight, cometh, day by day, her; A greater bliss than wonder was before; O mother of our angel child ! twice dear ! The real doth not clip the poet's wings, Death knits as well as parts, and still, I To win the secret of a weed's plain heart

wis, Reveals some clue to spiritual things, Her tender radiance sball infold us here, And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss, art:

Threads the void glooms of space without Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's

a fear, eyes,

To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss. Their beauty thrills him by an inward

sense; He knows that outward seemings are but

L'ENVOI lies, Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, WHETHER my heart hath wiser grown or whence

not, The soul that looks within for truth may In these three years, since I to thee inguess

scribed, The presence of some wondrous heavenli- Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my

muse,
Poor windfalls of unripe experience,

Young buds plucked hastily by childish
TO J. R. GIDDINGS

hands GIDDINGS, far rougher names than thine Not patient to await more full-blown flow

ers, Smoother than honey on the lips of men; At least it hath seen more of life and men, And thou shalt aye be honorably known, And pondered more, and grown a shade As one who bravely used his tongue and pen, more sad; As best befits a freeman,

- even for those Yet with no loss of hope or settled trust To whom our Law's unblushing front de- In the benignness of that Providence nies

Which shapes from out our elements awry A right to plead against the lifelong woes The grace and order that we wonder at, Which are the Negro's glimpse of Free- The mystic harmony of right and wrong, dom's skies:

Both working out His wisdom and our Fear nothing, and hope all things, as the good: Right

A trust, Beloved, chiefly learned of thee, Alone may do securely; every bour

Who hast that gift of patient tenderness, The thrones of Ignorance and ancient The instinctive wisdom of a woman's heart.

Night Lose somewhat of their long- usurpëd They tell us that our land was made for power,

song, And Freedom's lightest word can make With its huge rivers and sky-piercing them shiver

peaks, With a base dread that clings to them for- Its sealike lakes and mighty cataracts,

Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide,

And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes XXVII

extinct. I THOUGHT our love at full, but I did err; But Poesy springs not from rocks and Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I woods; could not see

Her womb and cradle are the human heart,

have grown

a

ever.

a

Than young

And she can find a nobler theme for song Which stretch far upward into heaven itIn the most loathsome man that blasts the

self, sight

And give such widespread and exulting Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore

view Between the frozen deserts of the poles. Of hope, and faith, and onward destiny, All nations have their message from on

That shrunk Parnassus to a molebill high,

dwindles. Each the messiah of some central thought, Our new Atlautis, like a morning-star, For the fulilment and delight of Man: Silvers the mirk face of slow-yielding One has to teach that labor is diviue;

Night, Another Freedom; and another Mind; The herald of a fuller truth than yet And all, that God is open-eyed and just, Hath gleamed upon the upraised face of The happy centre and calm heart of all.

Man

Since the earth glittered in her stainless Are, then, our woods, our mountains, and

prime, our streams,

Of a more glorious sunrise than of old Needful to teach our poets how to sing ? Drew wondrous melodies from Memnon O maiden rare, far other thonghts were ours,

huge, When we have sat by oceau's foaming Yea, draws them still, though now be sit marge,

waist-deep And watched the waves leap roaring on the In the ingulfing flood of whirling sand, rocks,

And look across the wastes of endless gray, Leander and his Hero bad, Sole wreck, where once his hundred-gated Gazing from Sestos to the other shore.

Thebes The moon looks down and ocean worships Pained with her mighty hum the calm, her,

blue heaven: Stars rise and set, and seasons come and go Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons, Even as they did in Homer's elder time, And we till noonday bar the splendor ont, But we behold them not with Grecian eyes: Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard Then they were types of beauty and of

hearts, strength,

Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice, But now of freedom, unconfined and pure, And be content, though clad with angelSubject alone to Order's higher law.

wings, What cares the Russian serf or Southern Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to slave

perch, Though we should speak as man spake In paltry cages of dead men's dead never yet

thoughts? Of gleaming Hudson's broad magnificence, Oh, rather, like the skylark, soar and sing, Or green Niagara's never-ending roar ? And let our gushing songs befit the dawn Our country hath a gospel of her own And sunrise, and the yet unshaken dew To preach and practise before all the Brimming the chalice of each full-blown world,

hope, The freedom and divinity of man,

Whose blithe front turns to greet the The glorious claims of human brother- growing day!

Never had poets such high call before, Which to pay nobly, as a freeman should, Never can poets hope for higher one, Gains the sole wealth that will not fly And, if they be but faithful to their trust, away,

Earth will remember them with love and joy, And the soul's fealty to none but God. And oh, far better, God will not forget. These are realities, which make the shows For be who settles Freedom's principles Of outward Nature, be they ne'er so grand, Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny; Seem small, and worthless, and contempti- Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to ble.

the heart, These are the mountain-summits for our And his mere word makes despots tremble

hood,

bards,

Than ever Brutus with his dagger could. Could make apostles, yea, with tongues of Wait for no hints from waterfalls or

fire, woods,

Of hearts half-darkened back again to Nor dream that tales of red men, brute

clay! and fierce,

'T is the soul only that is national, Repay the finding of this Western World, And he who pays true loyalty to that Or needed half the globe to give them Alone can claim the wreath of patriotism.

birth: Spirit supreme of Freedom ! not for this Beloved ! if I wander far and oft Did great Columbus tame his eagle soul From that which I believe, and feel, and To jostle with the daws that perch in

know, courts;

Thou wilt forgive, not with a sorrowing Not for this, friendless, on an unknown sea,

heart, Coping with mad waves and more mutin- But with a strengthened hope of better ous spirits,

things; Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart Knowing that I, though often blind and Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of

false doubt,

To those I love, and oh, more false than The hermit of that loneliest solitude,

all The silent desert of a great New Thought; Unto myself, have been most true to thee, Though loud Niagara were to-day struck And that whoso in one thing hath been dumb,

true Yet would this cataract of boiling life Can be as true in all. Therefore thy hope Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps, May yet not prove unfruitful, and thy love And utter thunder till the world shall Meet, day by day, witbless unwortly cease,

thanks, A thunder worthy of the poet's song, Whether, as now, we journey hand in hand, And which alone can fill it with true life. Or, parted in the body, yet are one The high evangel to our country granted In spirit and the love of holy things.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

WHEN Lowell published his second volume, tain oracle of the verdict of Posterity, - the Poems, in 1843, he opened it with A Legend of unerring tribunal where Genius is at last alBrittany, and dedicated it in the following let- lowed the right of trial by its peers, and to ter to the painter, William Page :

which none but sincere and real Greatness can

appeal with an unwavering heart. There the MY DEAR FRIEND,

false witnesses of to-day will be unable to apThe love between us, which can now look pear, being fled to some hospitable Texas in back upon happy years of still enlarging con- the realms of Limbo, beyond the sphere of its fidence, and forward, with a sure trust in its jurisdiction and the summons of its apparıtors. own prophecy of yet deeper and tenderer sym- I have never seen the works of the Great pathies, as long as life shall remain to us, Masters of your Art, but I have studied their stands in no need, I am well aware, of so poor lives, and sure I am that no nobler, gentler, or a voucher as an Epistle Dedicatory. True, it purer spirit than yours was ever anointed by is one of Love's chiefest charms, that it must the Eternal Beauty to bear that part of her still take special pains to be superfluous in divine message which it belongs to the Great seeking out ways to declare itself, - but for Painter to reveal. The sympathy of sister these it demands no publicity, and wishes no pursuits, of an agreeing artistic faith, and, vet acknowledgment. But the admiration which more, of a common hope for the final destiny one soul feels for another loses half its worth, of man, has not been wanting to us, and now if it let slip any opportunity of making itself you will forgive the pride I feel in having this heard and felt by that strange Abbot of Un- advantage over you, namely, of telling that adreason which we call the World. For the miration in public which I have never stinted humblest man's true admiration is no uncer- to utter in private. You will believe, that, as