It lights the poet's heart up like a

star;

Ah! while the tyrant deemed it still

afar,

And twined with golden threads his futile snare,

That swift, convicting glow all round him ran;

'T was close beside him there, Sunrise whose Memnon is the soul of

man.

V.

O Broker-King, is this thy wisdom's fruit?

A dynasty plucked out as 't were a weed

Grown rankly in a night, that leaves no seed I

Could eighteen years strike down no deeper root?

But now thy vulture eye was turned on Spain,

A shout from Paris, and thy crown falls off,

Thy race has ceased to reign, And thou become a fugitive and scoff: Slippery the feet that mount by stairs of gold,

And weakest of all fences one of steel;

Go and keep school again like him of old,

The Syracusan tyrant; thou mayst

feel

Throbbing, as throbs the bosom, hot

and fast:

Such visions are of morning, Theirs is no vague forewarning, The dreams which nations dream core true,

And shape the world anew;
If this be a sleep,

Make it long, make it deep, O Father, who sendest the harvests men reap!

While Labor so sleepeth
His sorrow is gone,
No longer he weepeth,
But smileth and steepeth

His thoughts in the dawn;
He heareth Hope yonder

Rain, lark-like, her fancies,
His dreaming hands wander

'Mid heart's-ease and pansies;
"T is a dream! 'Tis a vision !"
Shrieks Mammon aghast ;
"The day's broad derision
Will chase it at last;
Ye are mad, ye have taken
A slumbering kraken

For firm land of the Past!"
Ah! if he awaken,

God shield us all then,
If this dream rudely shaken
Shall cheat him again!

O'er the shapes of fallen giants,

His own unburied brood,

Whose dead hands clench defiance
At the overpowering Good :
And down the happy future runs a flood
Of prophesying light;

It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood,

Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud

Of Brotherhood and Right.

ANTI-APIS.

PRAISEST Law, friend? We, too, love

it much as they that love it best ; 'Tis the deep, august foundation, whereon Peace and Justice rest; On the rock primeval, hidden in the Past its bases be,

Block by block the endeavoring Ages built it up to what we see.

But dig down: the Old unbury; thou

shalt find on every stone That each Age hath carved the symbol of what god to them was known. Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the fairest that they knew; If their sight were dim and earthward, yet their hope and aim were true.

Surely as the unconscious needle feels the far-off loadstar draw,

So strives every gracious nature to at-one itself with law; And the elder Saints and Sages laid their pious framework right By a theocratic instinct covered from the people's sight.

As their gods were, so their laws were ; Thor the strong could reave and steal,

So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's eager keel; But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless, as before, Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our lives and faiths to Thor.

Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcends

Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends?

Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit to them a plan,

Ere he filled with loves, hopes, longings, this aspiring heart of man? For their edict does the soul wait, ere it swing round to the pole

Of the true, the free, the God-willed, all that makes it be a soul?

Law is holy; but not your law, ye who keep the tablets whole

While ye dash the Law to pieces, shatter it in life and soul;

Bearing up the Ark is lightsome, golden Apis hid within,

While we Levites share the offerings, richer by the people's sin.

Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar's? yes, but tell me, if you can,

Is this superscription Cæsar's here upon our brother man?

Is not here some other's image, dark and sullied though it be, In this fellow-soul that worships, struggles Godward even as we ?

It was not to such a future that the Mayflower's prow was turned; Not to such a faith the martyrs clung, exulting as they burned;

Not by such laws are men fashioned, earnest, simple, valiant, great In the household virtues whereon rests the unconquerable state.

Ah! there is a higher gospel, overhead the God-roof springs,

And each glad, obedient planet like a golden shuttle sings

Through the web which Time is weaving in his never-resting loom, — Weaving seasons many-colored, bringing prophecy to doom.

Think you Truth a farthing rushlight,

to be pinched out when you will With your deft official fingers, and your politicians' skill?

Is your God a wooden fetish, to be hidden out of sight

That his block eyes may not see you do the thing that is not right?

But the Destinies think not so; to their judgment-chamber lone

Comes no noise of popular clamor, there Fame's trumpet is not blown ; Your majorities they reck not; - that you grant, but then you say That you differ with them somewhat, which is stronger, you or they?

Patient are they as the insects that

build islands in the deep; They hurl not the bolted thunder, but

their silent way they keep; Where they have been that we know; where empires towered that were not just;

Lo! the skulking wild fox scratches in a little heap of dust.

1851.

A PARABLE.

SAID Christ our Lord, "I will go and

see

How the men, my brethren, believe in

me.

He passed not again through the gate of birth,

But made himself known to the children of earth.

Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings,

"Behold, now, the Giver of all good things;

Go to, let us welcome with pomp and

state

Him who alone is mighty and great."

With carpets of gold the ground they spread

Wherever the Son of Man should tread,

And in palace-chambers lofty and ar They lodged him, and served him with kingly fare.

Great organs surged through arches dim Their jubilant floods in praise of him; And in church, and palace, and judg ment-hall,

He saw his image high over all.

But still, wherever his steps they led, The Lord in sorrow bent down his head, And from under the heavy foundationstones,

The son of Mary heard bitter groans.

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall,

He marked great fissures that rent the wall,

And opened wider and yet more wide As the living foundation heaved and sighed.

"Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then,

On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure, Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?

"With gates of silver and bars of gold Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold;

I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven these eighteen hundred years.'

"O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, We build but as our fathers built; Behold thine images, how they stand, Sovereign and sole, through all our land.