Why for his power benign seek an impurer source?

His was the true enthusiasm that burns long,

Domestically bright,

Fed from itself and shy of human sight, The hidden force that makes a lifetime strong,

And not the short-lived fuel of a song. Passionless, say you? What is passion for

But to sublime our natures and control To front heroic toils with late return, Or none, or such as shames the conqueror?

That fire was fed with substance of the soul

And not with holiday stubble, that could burn,

Unpraised of men who after bonfires

As in the dear old unestranged days Before the inevitable wrong began? Mother of States and undiminished men,

Thou gavest us a country, giving him, And we owe alway what we owed thee then :

The boon thou wouldst have snatched from us agen

Shines as before with no abatement dim. A great man's memory is the only thing With influence to outlast the present whim

And bind us as when here he knit our golden ring.

All of him that was subject to the hours Lies in thy soil and makes it part of

ours:

Across more recent graves,

Where unresentful Nature waves Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod,

Proclaiming the sweet Truce of God, We from this consecrated plain stretch

out

Our hands as free from afterthought or doubt

As here the united North

Poured her embrowned manhood forth In welcome of our savior and thy son. Through battle we have better learned thy worth,

The long-breathed valor and undaunted will,

Which, like his own, the day's disaster done,

Could, safe in manhood, suffer and be

still.

Both thine and ours the victory hardly

won;

If ever with distempered voice or pen We have misdeemed thee, here we take

it back,

And for the dead of both don common

black.

Be to us evermore as thou wast then, As we forget thou hast not always been, Mother of States and unpolluted men, Virginia, fitly named from England's manly queen!

AN ODE

FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1876.

I.

I.

ENTRANCED I saw a vision in the cloud That loitered dreaming in yon sunset sky,

Full of fair shapes, half creatures of the eye,

Half chance-evoked by the wind's fantasy

In golden mist, an ever-shifting crowd: There, mid unreal forms that came and went

In robes air-spun, of evanescent dye, A woman's semblance shone pre-eminent;

Not armed like Pallas, not like Hera proud,

But, as on household diligence intent, Beside her visionary wheel she bent Like Arete or Bertha, nor than they Less queenly in her port: about her knee

Glad children clustered confident in play:

Placid her pose, the calm of energy; And over her broad brow in many a round

(That loosened would have gilt her garment's hem),

Succinct, as toil prescribes, the hair was wound

In lustrous coils, a natural diadem. The cloud changed shape, obsequious to the whim

Of some transmuting influence felt in me,

And, looking now, a wolf I seemed to

see

Limned in that vapor, gaunt and hunger-bold,

Threatening her charge: resolve in every limb,

Erect she flamed in mail of sun-wove gold,

Penthesilea's self for battle dight;
One arm uplifted braced a flickering

spear,

And one her adamantine shield made

light;

Crash of navies and wave-borne thun. der;

Then drifted the cloud-rack a-lee,
And new stars were seen, a world's
wonder;

Each by her sisters made bright,
All binding all to their stations,
Cluster of manifold light
Startling the old constellations:
Men looked up and grew pale :
Was it a comet or star,
Omen of blessing or bale,
Hung o'er the ocean afar?

4.

Stormy the day of her birth:
Was she not born of the strong,
She, the last ripeness of earth,
Beautiful, prophesied long?
Stormy the days of her prime :
Hers are the pulses that beat
Higher for perils sublime,
Making them fawn at her feet.
Was she not born of the strong?
Was she not born of the wise?
Daring and counsel belong
Of right to her confident eyes:
Human and motherly they,
Careless of station or race:
Hearken! her children to-day
Shout for the joy of her face.