Yet still the Tempter murmurs in his ear | No sleepless listener of the starlight The maddening taunt he cannot choose but hear: hears? In vain the sweeping equatorial pries "Meanest of slaves, by gods and men Through every world-sown corner of the accurst, He who is second when he might be first! most round, skies, To the far orb that so remotely strays Our midnight darkness is its noonday blaze; Or chain thy creeping footsteps to the In vain the climbing soul of creeping Illustrious Dupe! Have those majes- Metes out the heavenly concave with a Lost their proud fire for such a vulgar Tracks into space the long-lost meteor's That party-hirelings hate a look like And Science lifts her still unanswered thine? Shake from thy sense the wild delusive dream! cry: "Are all these worlds, that speed their circling flight, Without the purple, art thou not su- Dumb, vacant, soulless, - bawbles of the night? preme? And soothed by love unbought, thy Warmed with God's smile and wafted heart shall own by his breath, A nation's homage nobler than its throne! To weave in ceaseless round the dance The book of types against the book of The heavens still bow in darkness at thy One awful word beneath the future's seal; | Than the old watch-fires, like, but not What thou shalt tell us, grant us strength to bear; What thou withholdest is thy single care. Not for ourselves; the present clings too fast, Moored to the mighty anchors of the past; But when, with angry snap, some cable parts, The sound re-echoing in our startled hearts, When, through the wall that clasps the harbor round, And shuts the raving ocean from its bound, the same! Vies with the image shaped in viewless air; Shattered and rent by sacrilegious hands, The first mad billow leaps upon the And thought unfettered grows through sands, speech to deeds, Then to the Future's awful page we As the broad forest marches in its seeds. turn, And what we question hardly dare to What though we perish ere the day is learn. won? Still let us hope! for while we seem Enough to see its glorious work begun! to tread The thistle falls before a trampling The time-worn pathway of the nations dead, Though Sparta laughs at all our warlike deeds, And buried Athens claims our stolen creeds, Though Rome, a spectre on her broken Beholds our eagle and recalls her own, the breeze clown, But who can chain the flying thistledown? Wait while the fiery seeds of freedom fly, The prairie blazes when the grass is dry! What arms might ravish, leave to peaceful arts, Wisdom and love shall win the roughest hearts; And reign before us Mistress of the So shall the angel who has closed for While calm-eyed History tracks us cir- The blissful garden since his woes be Fate's iron pillar where they all were Swing wide the golden portals of the She sees new beacons crowned with And Eden's secret stand at length conbrighter flame fessed! ANGEL of Death! extend thy silent reign! Its coral stems and milk-white flowers No marble gleams to bid his memory live The pear's long necklace strung with In the brief lines that hurrying Time can give; Yet, O Destroyer! from thy shrouded throne Look on our gift; this realm is all thine own! golden drops, Arched, like the banian, o'er its pillared props; Here crept the growths that paid the laborer's care With the cheap luxuries wealth consents to spare; could not save Fair is the scene; its sweetness oft be- Here sprang the healing herbs which guiled From their dim paths the children of The hand that reared them from the the wild; The dark-haired maiden loved its grassy dells, neighboring grave. Yet all its varied charms, forever free The feathered warrior claimed its wooded From task and tribute, Labor yields to Still on its slopes the ploughman's ridges No more, when April sheds her fitful The pointed flints that left his fatal bow, The sower's hand shall cast its flying Chipped with rough art and slow bar Last of his wrecks that strews the alien soil! Here spread the fields that heaped their ripened store grain ; No more, when Autumn strews the flaming leaves, The reaper's band shall gird its yellow sheaves; For thee alike the circling seasons flow Till the brown arms of Labor held no Till the first blossoms heave the latest The scythe's broad meadow with its In the stiff clod below the whirling dusky blush; drifts, The sickle's harvest with its velvet flush; In the loose soil the springing herbage The green-haired maize, her silken tresses laid, In soft luxuriance, on her harsh brocade; lifts, In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds, I Life's withering flower shall drop its | Their softened gaze shall reach our disshrivelled seeds; tant plain; Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing There, while the mourner turns his aching eyes sleep Till what thou sowest mightier angels On the blue mounds that print the bluer reap! Spirit of Beauty! let thy graces blend With loveliest Nature all that Art can lend. Come from the bowers where Summer's life-blood flows Through the red lips of June's half-open rose, skies, Nature shall whisper that the fading view Of mightiest grief may wear a heavenly hue. Cherub of Wisdom! let thy marble page Leave its sad lesson, new to every age; Teach us to live, not grudging every breath Dressed in bright hues, the loving sun- To the chill winds that waft us on to shine's dower; death, For tranquil Nature owns no mourning But ruling calmly every pulse it warms, And tempering gently every word it flower. Come from the forest where the beech's Through the wide waste of ether, not in FATHER of all! in Death's relentless vain, claim TO GOVERNOR SWAIN. 125 We read thy mercy by its sterner name; | Their sleepless light around the slum. In the bright flower that decks the sol emn bier, We see thy glory in its narrowed sphere; In the long sigh that sets our spirits free, Through the hushed street, along the silent plain, bering dead! Take them, O Father, in immortal Ashes to ashes, dust to kindred dust, TO GOVERNOR SWAIN. DEAR GOVERNOR, if my skiff might brave The spectral future leads its mourning The winds that lift the ocean wave, train, Dark with the shadows of uncounted bands, Where man's white lips and woman's wringing hands The mountain stream that loops and swerves Through my broad meadow's channelled curves Should waft me on from bound to bound Track the still burden, rolling slow be- To where the River weds the Sound, Shuts its meek eyes and drops its little The sun has set on fair Naushon life; Long ere my western blaze is gone; The drooping child who prays in vain to The ocean disk is rolling dark live, In shadows round your swinging bark, And pleads for help its parent cannot While yet the yellow sunset fills Age in its weakness, bowed by toil and Your mists are soaring in the blue care, Traced in sad lines beneath its silvered hair. While mine are sparks of glittering dew. It may not be; O would it might, The sun shall set, and heaven's re- What golden hours would come to life, What goodly feats of peaceful strife, splendent spheres Gild the smooth turf unhallowed yet by Such jests, that, drained of every joke, The very bank of language broke, tears, But ah! how soon the evening stars will Such deeds, that Laughter nearly died With stitches in his belted side; shed |