Across more recent graves, Where unresentful Nature waves Our hands as free from afterthought or doubt As here the united North 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 AN ODE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1876. I. 1. 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 air-spun robes, of evanescent dye, A woman's semblance shone pre-emineut; Not armed like Pallas, not like Hera proud, But, as on household diligence intent, Beside her visionary wheel she bent Like Aretë 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 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; Her face, helm-shadowed, grew a thing to fear, And her fierce eyes, by danger challenged, took Her trident-sceptred mother's dauntless look. "I know thee now, O goddess-born!" I cried, Seven years long was the bow Each by her sisters made bright, 4. Stormy the day of her birth : Rise lost in heaven, the household's Of Rome, fair quarry where those eagles silent prayer; What architect hath bettered these? With softened eye the westward traveller crowd Murmur of many voices in the air Where wisdom and not numbers should Where shams should cease to dominate In household, church, and state? Is this Atlantis? This the unpoisoned soil, Sea-whelmed for ages and recovered late, Where parasitic greed no more should coil Round Freedom's stem to bend awry and blight What grew so fair, sole plant of love and light? Who sit where once in crowned seclu sion sate The long-proved athletes of debate Trained from their youth, as none thinks needful now? Is this debating-club where boys dispute, And wrangle o'er their stolen fruit, The Senate, erewhile cloister of the few, Where Clay once flashed and Webster's cloudy brow Brooded those bolts of thought that all the horizon knew? Bugbear of fools, a summons to the | Secure against his own mistakes, brave : Strength found he in the unsympathiz ing sun, And strange stars from beneath the And the dumb ocean pitilessly grave: But bolder they who first off-cast For all earth's width of waters is a And their convulsed existence mere repose, Matched with the unstable heart of man, Open to every wind of sect or clan, 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 And more devoutly prized Than all perfection theorized The more imperfect that had roots and They founded deep and well, In some fine flourish of a pen, Content with what life gives or takes, A cog of iron in an iron wheel, As if he must be other than he seems Postponing Time's slow proof to petu- Yet herein they were great Of hardier growth, alive from rind to God of our fathers, Thou who wast, Thy secret presence shall be lost We, sprung from loins of stalwart men And walk with them a fellow-citizen Than long-considering Nature will or The land to Human Nature dear can, Shall not be unbeloved of Thee. |