Though leading to the lion's den.
They felt the habit-hallowed world give

way

Beneath their lives, and on went they,
Unhappy who was last.

When Buttrick gave the word,
That awful idol of the unchallenged
Past,

Strong in their love, and in their lineage strong,

Fell crashing: if they heard it not,
Yet the earth heard,

Nor ever hath forgot,

As on from startled throne to throne, Where Superstition sate or conscious Wrong,

A shudder ran of some dread birth unknown.

Thrice venerable spot !

River more fateful than the Rubicon ! O'er those red planks, to snatch her diadem,

Man's Hope, star-girdled, sprang with them,

And over ways untried the feet of Doom strode on.

VII.

Think you these felt no charms In their gray homesteads and embowered farms?

In household faces waiting at the door Their evening step should lighten up no more?

In fields their boyish feet had known? In trees their fathers' hands had set, And which with them had grown, Widening each year their leafy coronet? Felt they no pang of passionate regret For those unsolid goods that seem so much our own?

These things are dear to every man that lives,

And life prized more for what it lends than gives.

Yea, many a tie, by iteration sweet,
Strove to detain their fatal feet;
And yet the enduring half they chose,
Whose choice decides a man life's slave
or king,

The invisible things of God before the seen and known:

Therefore their memory inspiration

blows

Maiden half mortal, half divine, We triumphed in thy coming; to the brinks

Our hearts were filled with pride's tumultuous wine;

Better to-day who rather feels than thinks.

Yet will some graver thoughts intrude,
And cares of sterner mood;
They won thee: who shall keep thee?
From the deeps

Where discrowned empires o'er their ruins brood,

And many a thwarted hope wrings its weak hands and weeps,

I hear the voice as of a mighty wind From all heaven's caverus rushing unconfined,

"I, Freedom, dwell with Knowledge: I abide

With men whom dust of faction cannot blind

To the slow tracings of the Eternal Mind;

With men by culture trained an for.

tified,

Who bitter duty to sweet lusts prefer,

With the new coming of spring!
Dance in your jollity, bells;
Shout, cannon; cease not, ye drums;
Answer, ye hillside and dells;
Bow, all ye people! She comes,
Radiant, calm-fronted, as when
She hallowed that April day.
Stay with us! Yes, thou shalt stay,
Softener and strengthener of men,
Freedom, not won by the vain,
Not to be courted in play,
Not to be kept without pain.
Stay with us! Yes, thou wilt stay,
Handmaid and mistress of all,
Kindler of deed and of thought,
Thou that to hut and to hall
Equal deliverance brought !
Souls of her martyrs, draw near,
Touch our dull lips with your fire,
That we may praise without fear
Her our delight, our desire,
Our faith's inextinguishable star,
Our hope, our remembrance, our trust,
Our present, our past, our to be,
Who will mingle her life with our dust
And makes us deserve to be free!