musing with our faces toward the Past, While petty cares, and crawling interests, twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul, and mind? Freedom is recreated year by year, In minds that sway the future like a tide. No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; She chooses men for her august abodes, Building them fair and fronting to the dawn; Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few Light footprints, leading morn-ward through the dew: Before the day had risen, she was gone. And we must follow: swiftly runs she on, And, if our steps should slacken in de spair, 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, Like that Dawn's face which baffled Angelo Left shapeless, grander for its mystery, Thy great Design shall stand, and day Flood its blind front from Orients far away. Who says thy day is o'er? Control, My heart, that bitter first emotion; While men shall reverence the steadfast soul, The heart in silent self-devotion Breaking, the mild, heroic mien, Thou 'It need no prop of marble, Lamartine. If France reject thee, 't is not thine, But her own, exile that she utters ; Ideal France, the deathless, the divine, Will be where thy white pennon flutters, As once the nobler Athens went With Aristides into banishment. No fitting metewand hath To-day ure; Only the Future can reach up to lay The laurel on that lofty nature, Bard, who with some diviner art Hast touched the bard's true lyre, a nation's heart. Swept by thy hand, the gladdened chords, Crashed now in discords fierce by others, Gave forth one note beyond all skill of words, And chimed together, We are broth ers. O poem unsurpassed! it ran France is too poor to pay alone The service of that ample spirit; Paltry seem low dictatorship and throne, Weighed with thy self-renouncing merit; They had to thee been rust and loss; Thy aim was higher, thou hast climbed a Cross! TO JOHN G. PALFREY. THERE are who triumph in a losing cause, Who can put on defeat, as 't were a wreath Unwithering in the adverse popular breath, Safe from the blasting demagogue's applause; "T is they who stand for Freedom and God's laws. And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell stood, Loyal to Truth dethroned, nor could be wooed To trust the playful tiger's velvet paws: And if the second Charles brought in decay Of ancient virtue, if it well might wring Souls that had broadened 'neath a nobler day, To see a losel, marketable king Fearfully watering with his realm's best blood Cromwell's quenched bolts, that erst had cracked and flamed, Scaring, through all their depths of courtier mud, Europe's crowned bloodsuckers, — how more ashamed Ought we to be, who see Corruption's flood Still rise o'er last year's mark, to mine away Our brazen idol's feet of treacherous clay ! O utter degradation! Freedom turned Slavery's vile bawd, to cozen and betray All round the world, unlocking man to If man. |