pet's call,

The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much.

guess,

Piling its thunder-heads and muttering

66 Cease!"

Yet drew not back his hand, but gravely chose

The seeming-desperate task whence our new nation rose.

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;

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
Of battle bent, and the heightening
Storm-heaps convulsed with the throe
Of their uncontainable lightening ;
Seven years long heard the sea
Crash of navies and wave-borne thunder;
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.

In guileless youth's diviner way;
Life sings not now, but prophesies;
Time's shadows they no more behold,
But, under them, the riddle old
That mocks, bewilders, and defies:
In childhood's face the seed of shame,
In the green tree an ambushed flame,
In Phosphor a vaunt-guard of Night,
They, though against their will, di-
vine,

And dread the care-dispelling wine
Stored from the Muse's vintage bright,
By age imbued with second-sight.
From Faith's own eyelids there peeps

out,

Even as they look, the leer of doubt; The festal wreath their fancy loads With care that whispers and forebodes : Nor this our triumph-day can blunt Megæra's goads.

2.

Murmur of many voices in the air
Denounces us degenerate,

Unfaithful guardians of a noble fate,
And prompts indifference or despair:
Is this the country that we dreamed in
youth,

Where wisdom and not numbers should have weight,

3.

O, as this pensive moonlight blurs my pines,

Here as I sit and meditate these lines, To gray-green dreams of what they are by day,

So would some light, not reason's sharpedged ray,

Trance me in moonshine as before the flight

Of years had won me this unwelcome right

To see things as they are, or shall be soon,

In the frank prose of undissembling

noon !

4.

Back to my breast, ungrateful sigh!
Whoever fails, whoever errs,
The penalty be ours, not hers!
The present still seems vulgar, seen too
nigh;

The golden age is still the age that's past:

I ask no drowsy opiate

To dull my vision of that only state Founded on faith in man, and therefore sure to last.

For, O, my country, touched by thee,

Thy thought sets all my pulses free ;
The heart refuses to be old;
The love is all that I can see.
Not to thy natal-day belong
Time's prudent doubt or age's wrong,
But gifts of gratitude and song:
Unsummoned crowd the thankful words,
As sap in spring-time floods the tree,
Foreboding the return of birds,
For all that thou hast been to me!