And stamped their dusty adoration; I but looked upward with the rest, And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best. They raised thee not, but rose to thee, Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging; So on some marble Phoebus the high sea Might leave his worthless seaweed clinging, But pious hands, with reverent care, Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare. Now thou 'rt thy plain, grand self again, Thou art secure from panegyric, Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain, And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric; This side the Blessed Isles, no tree Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee. Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow From swinish footprints takes no staining, But, leaving the gross soils of earth below, Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining, And unresenting falls again, To beautify the world with dews and rain. The highest duty to mere man vouch safed Was laid on thee, -out of wild chaos, 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. When all that makes the heart sublime, The glorious throbs that conquer time, Are traitors to our cruel laws! He strove among God's suffering poor O Mother State! when this was done, And now thou givest to thy son Must it be thus forever? No! The hand of God sows not in vain ; Long sleeps the darkling seed below, The seasons come, and change, and go, And all the fields are deep with grain. Although our brother lie asleep, Man's heart still struggles, still aspires; His grave shall quiver yet, while deep Through the brave Bay State's pulses leap Her ancient energies and fires. When hours like this the senses' gush Have stilled, and left the spirit room, It hears amid the eternal hush The swooping pinions' dreadful rush, That bring the vengeance and the doom; Not man's brute vengeance, such as rends What rivets man to man apart,God doth not so bring round his ends, But waits the ripened time, and sends His mercy to the oppressor's heart. ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING. I Do not come to weep above thy pall, And mourn the dying-out of noble powers; The poet's clearer eye should see, in all Earth's seeming woe, the seed of Heaven's flowers. Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep Of everlasting Soul her strength abides, From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap, Through Nature's veins her strength, undying, tides. Peace is more strong than war, and gentleness, Where force were vain, makes con quest o'er the wave; And love lives on and hath a power to bless, When they who loved are hidden in the grave. The sculptured marble brags of deathstrewn fields, And Glory's epitaph is writ in blood; But Alexander now to Plato yields,, Clarkson will stand where Wellington hath stood. I watch the circle of the eternal years, And read forever in the storied page One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears, One onward step of Truth from age Therefore I cannot think thee wholly gone; The better part of thee is with us stil! ; Thy soul its hampering clay aside hath thrown, And only freer wrestles with the Ill. Thou livest in the life of all good things; What words thou spak'st for Freedom shall not die ; Thou sleepest not, for now thy Love hath wings To scar where hence thy Hope could hardly fly. And often, from that other world, on this Some gleams from great souls gone before may shine, To shed on struggling hearts a clearer bliss, And clothe the Right with lustre more divine. The prodigal soul from want and sorrow home, And Eden ope her gates to Adam's seed. Farewell! good man, good angel now! this hand Soon, like thine own, shall lose its cunning too; Soon shall this soul, like thine, bewildered stand, Then leap to thread the free, unfathomed blue: When that day comes, O, may this hand grow cold, Busy, like thine, for Freedom and the Right; O, may this soul, like thine, be ever bold To face dark Slavery's encroaching blight! This laurel-leaf I cast upon thy bier; Let worthier hands than these thy wreath intwine; Upon thy hearse I shed no useless |