and their woe,

Their grinding centuries, what Muse had those?

Though hall and palace had nor eyes

With eye averted, and an anguished frown,

Loathingly glides the Muse through scenes of strife,

Where, like the heart of Vengeance up and down,

Throbs in its framework the bloodmuffled knife;

Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feet

Turn never backward: hers no bloody glare;

Her light is calm, and innocent, and sweet,

And where it enters there is no despair:

Not first on palace and cathedral spire Quivers and gleams that unconsuming fire;

While these stand black against her morning skies,

The peasant sees it leap from peak to peak

Along his hills; the craftsman's burn

futile snare,

War not with Frenchmen merely ; —no, Thy strife was with the Spirit of the Age,

The invisible Spirit whose first breath divine

And,

Scattered thy frail endeavor, like poor last year's leaves, whirled thee and thine

Into the Dark forever!

yellow blood of Trade meanwhile should pour

Rain, lark-like, her fancies, His dreaming hands wander Mid heart's-ease and pansies; "T is a dream! 'T is 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,

The rattle of thy shield at Marathon
I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy
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 redeeming child;

And surely never did thine 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 It shows an Earth no longer stained Of prophesying light; 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;

'T is the deep, august foundation, whereon Peace and Justice rest;

Him who alone is mighty and great."

With carpets of gold the ground they spread

Wherever the Son of Man should tread, 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?

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,

speare'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, 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.