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The din of battle and of slaughter Gibbering at living men, and idly

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I GRIEVE not that ripe Knowledge takes away

The charm that Nature to my childhood wore,

For, with that insight, cometh, day by day,

A greater bliss than wonder was before;

The real doth not clip the poet's wings,

To win the secret of a weed's plain heart

Reveals some clue to spiritual things,

And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art:

Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes,

Their beauty thrills him by an inward sense;

He knows that outward seemings are but lies,

Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence

soul that looks within for truth may guess

The

The

presence of some wondrous heavenliness.

XXVI

TO J. R. GIDDINGS

GIDDINGS, far rougher names than thine have grown

And conquered, and their spirits Smoother than honey on the lips

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As best befits a freeman,- even

for those

L'ENVOI

To whom our Law's unblushing WHETHER my heart hath wiser front denies

grown or not,

A right to plead against the lifelong In these three years, since I to thee inscribed,

woes Which are the Negro's glimpse of Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my muse,

Freedom's skies:

Fear nothing, and hope all things, Poor windfalls of unripe experience,

as the Right Alone may do securely; every Young buds plucked hastily by hour childish hands The thrones of Ignorance and Not patient to await more fullancient Night blown flowers,

Lose somewhat of their long- At least it hath seen more of life

usurped power,

And Freedom's lightest word can

make them shiver

and men,

And pondered more, and grown a shade more sad;

With a base dread that clings to Yet with no loss of hope or settled

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Thrill with that life we saw depart They tell us that our land was made for song,

from her;

O mother of our angel child! twice With its huge rivers and sky-pier. cing peaks,

dear!

Death knits as well as parts, and Its sealike lakes and mighty cata

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Even as the light, borne up by in- And mounds that tell of wondrous

ward bliss,

tribes extinct.

Threads the void glooms of space But Poesy springs not from rocks and woods;

without a fear,

To print on farthest stars her pity. Her womb and cradle are the ing kiss. human heart,

And she can find a nobler theme What cares the Russian serf or

for song 50 In the most loathsome man that Though we should speak as man

blasts the sight

Than in the broad expanse of sea

and shore

Southern slave

spake never yet

Of gleaming Hudson's broad mag

nificence,

roar?

Between the frozen deserts of the Or green Niagara's never-ending poles. All nations have their message Our country hath a gospel of her

30

own

from on high, Each the messiah of some central To preach and practise before all thought, the world, For the fulfilment and delight of The freedom and divinity of man, The glorious claims of human brotherhood,

Man:

One has to teach that labor is

divine;

Another Freedom; and another

Mind;

And all, that God is open-eyed and just,

The happy centre and calm heart of all.

Are, then, our woods, our mountains, and our streams,

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Needful to teach our poets how to Seem small, and worthless, and

sing?

O maiden rare, were ours,

contemptible.

far other thoughts These are the mountain-summits

for our bards,

When we have sat by ocean's Which stretch far upward into

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Than young Leander and his Hero Of hope, and faith, and onward had, Gazing from Sestos to the other That shrunk Parnassus to a moleshore. hill dwindles. The moon looks down and ocean Our new Atlantis, like a morning. worships her, star,

ing Night,

yet

Stars rise and set, and seasons Silvers the mirk face of slow-yieldcome and go 70 Even as they did in Homer's elder The herald of a fuller truth than time, But we behold them not with Hath gleamed upon the upraised Grecian eyes: Then they were types of beauty Since the earth glittered in her and of strength, stainless prime,

face of Man

But now of freedom, unconfined Of a more glorious sunrise than of

and pure,

old

Subject alone to Order's higher Drew wondrous melodies from

law,

Memnon huge,

And his mere word makes despots tremble more

Yea, draws them still, though now he sit waist-deep

could.

In the ingulfing flood of whirling Than ever Brutus with his dagger sand, And look across the wastes of end- Wait for no hints from waterfalls or woods,

less gray, Sole wreck, where once his hun- Nor dream that tales of red men, dred-gated Thebes brute and fierce, Pained with her mighty hum the Repay the finding of this Western calm, blue heaven: World,

80

Shall the dull stone pay grateful Or needed half the globe to give them birth:

orisons,

And we till noonday bar the splen- Spirit supreme of Freedom! not

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Warm-nestled in the down of Pre- To jostle with the daws that perch judice, in courts;

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And be content, though clad with Not for this, friendless, on an unangel-wings, known sea, Close-clipped, to hop about from Coping with mad waves and more perch to perch, mutinous spirits,

In paltry cages of dead men's dead Battled he with the dreadful ache

thoughts?

Oh, rather, like the skylark, soar and sing,

And let our gushing songs befit

the dawn

at heart

Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt,

The hermit of that loneliest solitude,

And sunrise, and the yet unshaken The silent desert of a great New

90

dew Brimming the chalice of each fullblown hope,

Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing day!

Thought;

Though loud Niagara were to-day struck dumb,

Yet would this cataract of boiling life

less deeps,

Never had poets such high call be- Rush plunging on and on to end. fore, Never can poets hope for higher And utter thunder till the world

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Earth will remember them with And which alone can fill it with

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And oh, far better, God will not The high evangel to our country

granted

forget. For he who settles Freedom's prin- Could make apostles, yea, with ciples Writes the death-warrant of all Of hearts half-darkened back again tyranny;

tongues of fire,

to clay!

Who speaks the truth stabs False-'T is the soul only that is nation.

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And he who pays true loyalty to Unto myself, have been most true that to thee, Alone can claim the wreath of pa- | And that whoso in one thing hath

triotism.

Beloved! if I wander far and oft From that which I believe, and

feel, and know,

been true

Can be as true in all. Therefore thy hope

May yet not prove unfruitful, and thy love

Thou wilt forgive, not with a sor- Meet, day by day, with less un

rowing heart,

better things;

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But with a strengthened hope of Whether, as now, we journey hand in hand,

Knowing that I, though often blind | Or, parted in the body, yet are

and false

one

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To those I love, and oh, more false In spirit and the love of holy than all things.

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Though like a natural golden coro- She dwelt forever in a region

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Mocking the sunshine, that would Where naught could come but vi

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So kind, so dewy, and so deep Her spirit wandered by itself, and

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But, while he strives, the choicest A golden edge from some unset

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