A royal line may leave no heir; Wise Nature sets no guards about Her pewter plate and wooden ware.

But they fail not, the kinglier breed, Who starry diadems attain;

To dungeon, axe, and stake succeed Heirs of the old heroic strain.

The zeal of Nature never cools,
Nor is she thwarted of her ends;

When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools, Then she a saint and prophet spends.

Land of the Magyars! though it be
The tyrant may relink his chain,
Already thine the victory,

As the just Future measures gain.

Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won
The deathly travail's amplest worth;
A nation's duty thou hast done,
Giving a hero to our earth.

And he, let come what will of woe,

Has saved the land he strove to save ;

No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow,

Can quench the voice shall haunt his grave.

"I Kossuth am: O Future, thou

That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile,
O'er this small dust in reverence bow,
Remembering what I was erewhile.

"I was the chosen trump wherethrough

Our God sent forth awakening breath;

Came chains? Came death? The strain He blew

Sounds on, outliving chains and death.”

TO LAMARTINE.

I DID not praise thee when the crowd,

"Witched with the moment's inspiration, Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud, And stamped their dusty adoration;

I but looked upward with the rest, And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best.

They raised thee not, but rose to thee,

Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging;

So on some marble Phœbus the high sea

Might leave his worthless sea-weed clinging,

But pious hands, with reverent care,

Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare.

Now thou 'rt thy plain, grand self again,

Thou art secure from panegyric, —

Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain,

And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric;

This side the Blessed Isles, no tree
Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee.

Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow

From swinish foot-prints takes no staining,

But, leaving the gross soils of earth below,
Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining,
And unresenting falls again,

To beautify the world with dews and rain.

The highest duty to mere man vouchsafed

Was laid on thee, — out of wild chaos,

When the roused popular ocean foamed and chafed, And vulture War from his Imaus

Snuffed blood, to summon homely Peace,

And show that only order is release.

To carve thy fullest thought, what though
Time was not granted? Aye in history,