We are not free: doth Freedom, then,

consist

In musing with our faces toward the Past,

While petty cares, and crawling interests, twist

Their spider-threads about us, which at last

Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind

In formal narrowness heart, soul, and mind?

Freedom is recreated year by year,
In hearts wide open on the Godward side,
In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling
sphere,

In minds that sway the future like a tide. No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes;

She chooses men for her august abodes, Building them fair and fronting to the dawn;

Yet, when we seek her, we but find a few

Light footprints, leading

morn-ward

through the dew: Before the day had risen, she was gone.

And we must follow: swiftly runs she on, And, if our steps should slacken in de

spair,

Half turns her face, half smiles through golden hair,

Forever yielding, never wholly won: That is not love which pauses in the race Two close-linked names on fleeting sand to trace;

Freedom gained yesterday is no more

Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends,

Intent on manna still and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone;

Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it,

Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,

While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud,

Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.

BEAVER BROOK.

HUSHED with broad sunlight lies the hill,

And, minuting the long day's loss,
The cedar's shadow, slow and still,
Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss.

Warm noon brims full the valley's cup,
The aspen's leaves are scarce astir;
Only the little mill sends up
Its busy, never-ceasing burr.

Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems
The road along the mill-pond's brink,
From 'neath the arching barberry-stems,
My footstep scares the shy chewink.

Beneath a bony buttonwood
The mill's red door lets forth the din;
The whitened miller, dust-imbued,
Flits past the square of dark within.

No mountain torrent's strength is here;
Sweet Beaver, child of forest still,
Heaps its small pitcher to the ear,
And gently waits the miller's will.

Swift slips Undine along the race
Unheard, and then, with flashing bound,
Floods the dull wheel with light and

grace,

And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round.

The miller dreams not at what cost
The quivering millstones hum and
whirl,

Nor how for every turn are tost
Armfuls of diamond and of pearl.

But Summer cleared my happier eyes
With drops of some celestial juice,
To see how Beauty underlies,
Forevermore each form of use.

And more; methought I saw that flood, Which now so dull and darkling steals, Thick, here and there, with human

blood,

To turn the world's laborious wheels.

And he, let come what will of woe,
Hath saved the land he strove to save;
No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow,
Can quench the voice shall haunt his
grave.

"I Kossuth am: O Future, thou
That clear'st the just and blott'st the
vile,

O'er this small dust in reverence bow,
Remembering what I was erewhile.

"I was the chosen trump wherethrough
Our God sent forth awakening breath;
Came chains? Came death? The strain
He blew

Sounds on, outliving chains and death."

TO LAMARTINE. 1848.

I DID not praise thee when the crowd, 'Witched with the moment's inspiration,

Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud, 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 swol'n 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 unresentful falls again, To beautify the world with dews and rain.

The highest duty to mere man vouchsafed

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