O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit?

A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed

Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed !

Could eighteen years strike down no deeper root?

But now thy vulture eye was turned on Spain,

A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off,

Thy race has ceased to reign,

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 mayst feel

Royal amid a birch-swayed commonweal !

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,

And shape the world anew ;
If this be a sleep,

Make it long, make it deep,

O Father, who sendest the harvests men reap!

While Labor so sleepeth
His sorrow is gone,
No longer he weepeth,
But smileth and steepeth

His thoughts in the dawn;
He heareth Hope yonder
Rain, lark-like, her fancies,
His dreaming hands wander

'Mid heart's-ease and pansies;
""T is a dream! 'Tis a vision !"
Shrieks Mammon aghast ;
"The day's broad derision
Will chase it at last ;
Ye are mad, ye have taken
A slumbering kraken

For firm land of the Past!"
Ah! if he awaken,

God shield us all then,
If this dream rudely shaken
Shall cheat him again!

IX.

Since first I heard our North wind blow,

Since first I saw Atlantic throw
On our fierce rocks his thunderous

snow,

I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy The rattle of thy shield at Marathon Did with a Grecian joy

Through all my pulses run; But I have learned to love thee now Without the helm upon thy gleaming brow,

A maiden mild and undefiled Like her who bore the world's redeem. ing child;

And surely never did thy altars glance With purer fires than now in France; While, in their bright white flashes,

Wrong's shadow, backward cast, Waves cowering o'er the ashes

Of the dead, blaspheming Past,

O'er the shapes of fallen giants,

His own unburied brood,

Whose dead hands clench defiance
At the overpowering Good :
And down the happy future runs a flood
Of prophesying light ;

It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood,

Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud

Of Brotherhood and Right.

ANTI-APIS.

PRAISEST Law, friend? We, too, love it much as they that love it best ; 'Tis the deep, august foundation, whereon Peace and Justice rest; On the rock primeval, hidden in the Past its bases be,

Block by block the endeavoring Ages built it up to what we see.

But dig down: the Old unbury; thou

shalt find on every stone That each Age hath carved the symbol of what god to them was known. Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the fairest that they knew ; If their sight were dim and earthward, yet their hope and aim were true.

Surely as the unconscious needle feels the far-off loadstar draw,

So strives every gracious nature to at-one itself with law; And the elder Saints and Sages laid their pious framework right By a theocratic instinct covered from the people's sight.

As their gods were, so their laws were ; Thor the strong could reave and steal,

So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's eager keel; But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless, as before, Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our lives and faiths to Thor.

Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcends

Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends?

Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit to them a plan,

Ere he filled with loves, hopes, longings, this aspiring heart of man?` For their edict does the soul wait, ere it swing round to the pole

Of the true, the free, the God-willed, all that makes it be a soul?

Law is holy; but not your law, ye who keep the tablets whole

While ye dash the Law to pieces, shatter it in life and soul;

Bearing up the Ark is lightsome, golden Apis hid within,

While we Levites share the offerings, richer by the people's sin.

Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar's? yes, but tell me, if you can,

Is this superscription Cæsar's here our brother man?

upon

Is not here some other's image, dark and sullied though it be, In this fellow-soul that worships, struggles Godward even as we?

It was not to such a future that the Mayflower's prow was turned; Not to such a faith the martyrs clung, exulting as they burned; Not by such laws are men fashioned, earnest, simple, valiant, great In the household virtues whereon rests the unconquerable state.

Ah! there is a higher gospel, overhead the God-roof springs,

And each glad, obedient planet like a golden shuttle sings

Through the web which Time is weav

ing in his never-resting loom, — Weaving seasons many-colored, bringing prophecy to doom.

And in palace-chambers lofty and rare They lodged him, and served him with kingly fare.

Great organs surged through arches dim Their jubilant floods in praise of him; And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall,

He saw his image high over all.

But still, wherever his steps they led, The Lord in sorrow bent down his head, And from under the heavy foundationstones,

The son of Mary heard bitter groans.

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall,

He marked great fissures that rent the wall,

And opened wider and yet more wide As the living foundation heaved and sighed.

"Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then,

On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure, Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?

"With gates of silver and bars of gold Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold;

I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven these eighteen hundred years."

"O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, We build but as our fathers built; Behold thine images, how they stand, Sovereign and sole, through all our land.

'Our task is hard, - with sword and flame

To hold thy earth forever the same, And with sharp crooks of steel to keep Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep.

Then Christ sought out an artisan,
A low-browed, stunted, haggard inan,
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin
Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

My name is Water: I have sped Through strange, dark ways, untried before,

By pure desire of friendship led,
Cochituate's ambassador;
He sends four royal gifts by me:
Long life, health, peace, and purity.

I'm Ceres' cup-bearer; I pour,

For flowers and fruits and all their kin, Her crystal vintage, from of yore

Stored in old Earth's selectest bin, Flora's Falernian ripe, since God The wine-press of the deluge trod.

In that far isle whence, iron-willed, The New World's sires their bark unmoored,

The fairies' acorn-cups I filled

Upon the toadstool's silver board, And, 'neath Herne's oak, for Shakespeare's sight,

Strewed moss and grass with diamonds bright.

No fairies in the Mayflower came,

And, lightsome as I sparkle here, For Mother Bay State, busy dame, I've toiled and drudged this many a year,

Throbbed in her engines' iron veins, Twirled myriad spindles for her gains.

i, too, can weave; the warp I set Through which the sun his shuttle throws,

And, bright as Noah saw it, yet

For you the arching rainbow glows,

7

A sight in Paradise denied
To unfallen Adam and his bride.

When Winter held me in his grip,
You seized and sent me o'er the wave,
Ungrateful! in a prison-ship;

But I forgive, not long a slave,
For, soon as summer south-winds blew,
Homeward I fled, disguised as dew.

For countless services I 'm fit,

Of use, of pleasure, and of gain, But lightly from all bonds I flit,

Nor lose my mirth, nor feel a stain; From mill and wash-tub I escape, And take in heaven my proper shape.

So, free myself, to-day, elate

I come from far o'er hill and mead, And here, Cochituate's envoy, wait

To be your blithesome Ganymede, And brim your cups with nectar true That never will make slaves of you.

LINES

SUGGESTED BY THE GRAVES OF TWO ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD

BATTLE-GROUND.

THE same good blood that now refills The dotard Orient's shrunken veins, The same whose vigor westward thrills, Bursting Nevada's silver chains, Poured here upon the April grass, Freckled with red the herbage new; On reeled the battle's trampling mass, Back to the ash the bluebird flew.

Poured here in vain;-that sturdy blood Was meant to make the earth more green,

But in a higher, gentler mood
Than broke this April noon serene;
Two graves are here: to mark the place,
At head and foot, an unhewn stone,
O'er which the herald lichens trace
The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed; What brought them here they never knew,