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Bugbear of fools, a summons to the | Secure against his own mistakes,

brave.

Strength found he in the unsympathizing sun,

And strange stars from beneath the
horizon won,

And the dumb ocean pitilessly grave:
High-hearted surely he;

But bolder they who first off-cast
Their moorings from the habitable Past
And ventured chartless on the sea
Of storm-engendering Liberty :
For all earth's width of waters is a
span,

And their convulsed existence mere re-
pose,

Matched with the unstable heart of man,
Shoreless in wants, mist-girt in all it
knows,

Open to every wind of sect or clan,
And sudden-passionate in ebbs and flows.

2.

They steered by stars the elder shipmen knew,

And laid their courses where the currents draw

Of ancient wisdom channelled deep in law,

The undaunted few

Who changed the Old World for the
New,

And more devoutly prized

Than all perfection theorized

The more imperfect that had roots and
grew.

They founded deep and well,
Those danger-chosen chiefs of men
Who still believed in Heaven and Hell,
Nor hoped to find a spell,

In some fine flourish of a pen,

To make a better man

Content with what life gives or takes,
And acting still on some fore-ordered
plan,

A cog of iron in an iron wheel,
Too nicely poised to think or feel,
Dumb motor in a clock-like commonweal.
They wasted not their brain in schemes
Of what man might be in some bubble-
sphere,

As if he must be other than he seems
Because he was not what he should be
here,

Postponing Time's slow proof to petu-
lant dreams:

Yet herein they were great
Beyond the incredulous lawgivers of yore,
And wiser than the wisdom of the shelf,
That they conceived a deeper-rooted
state,

Of hardier growth, alive from rind to

core,

By making man sole sponsor of himself.

3.

God of our fathers, Thou who wast,
Art, and shalt be when those eye-wise
who flout

Thy secret presence shall be lost
In the great light that dazzles them to
doubt,

We, sprung from loins of stalwart men
Whose strength was in their trust
That Thou wouldst make thy dwelling
in their dust

And walk with them a fellow-citizen
Who build a city of the just,
We, who believe Life's bases rest
Beyond the probe of chemic test,
Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near,
Sure that, while lasts the immutable
decree,

Than long-considering Nature will or The land to Human Nature dear

can,

Shall not be unbeloved of Thee.

HEARTSEASE AND RUE.

Along the wayside where we pass bloom few
Gay plants of heartsease, more of saddening rue;
So life is mingled; so should poems be

That speak a conscious word to you and me.

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3.

Uprooted is our mountain oak, That promised long security of shade And brooding-place for many a winged thought;

Not by Time's softly warning stroke With pauses of relenting pity stayed, But ere a root seemed sapt, a bough decayed,

From sudden ambush by the whirlwind caught

And in his broad maturity betrayed!

Well might I, as of old, appeal to you,

O mountains woods and streams, To help us mourn him, for ye loved him too;

But simpler moods befit our modern themes,

And no less perfect birth of nature can, Though they yearn tow'rd him, sympathize with man,

Save as dumb fellow-prisoners through a wall;

Answer ye rather to my call, Strong poets of a more unconscious day, When Nature spake nor sought nice reasons why,

Too much for softer arts forgotten since That teach our forthright tongue to lisp and mince,

And drown in music the heart's bitter cry!

Lead me some steps in your directer way,

Teach me those words that strike a solid root

Within the ears of men; Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed Ben,

For he was masculine from head to heel.
Nay, let himself stand undiminished by
With those clear parts of him that will
not die.

Himself from out the recent dark I claim
To hear, and, if I flatter him, to blame;
To show himself, as still I seem to see,
A mortal, built upon the antique plan,
Brimful of lusty blood as ever ran,
And taking life as simply as a tree!
To claim my foiled good-bye let him ap-
pear,

Large-limbed and human as I saw him

near,

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In some the genius is a thing apart,
A pillared hermit of the brain,
Hoarding with incommunicable art

Its intellectual gain;

Man's web of circumstance and fate They from their perch of self observe,

Indifferent as the figures on a slate

Are to the planet's sun-swung curve Whose bright returns they calculate; Their nice adjustment, part to part, Were shaken from its serviceable mood By unpremeditated stirs of heart

Or jar of human neighborhood: Some find their natural selves, and only then,

In furloughs of divine escape from men, And when, by that brief ecstasy left bare,

Driven by some instinct of desire, They wander worldward, 't is to blink and stare,

Like wild things of the wood about a fire,

Dazed by the social glow they cannot share;

His nature brooked no lonely lair, But basked and bourgeoned in copart

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