Duganne's Poetical Works :: :: University of Virginia Library

How fair the earth, and life how sweet—
When Pleasure leads our dancing feet;
When birds attune the rosy morn,
And sunshine crowns the golden corn;
When fragrant odors lull the sense,
And music charms the soul's suspense;
When friends are true, and Love is fond:—
But—there's a Better World beyond!

How dark the earth, and Life how sone,
When Pleasure leads the dance no more;
When sorrow saps, and pain consumes,
And sunshine fades, and twilight glooms;
When o'er our joys the willow waves,
And gardens we forsake, for graves;
When Love and Friendship break their bond:—
But—there's a Happier World beyond!

A. J. H. Duganne

The Mission of Intellect.

To Those Who Labor INTELLECTUALLY AND MORALLY For the Good of Humanity, THIS POEM IS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED.

1. PART FIRST.

THE VISION.

I was a student in the schools of earth—
I was a wrestler in the strife for gain—
Until a Voice, which was not of myself,
Out-led my soul from life. My refluent thought,
Upon the electric wires of wondrous sleep,
Had compassed the immeasurable Past,
And journeyed with the Ages! I had trod
The ice-tesselated temples whose dread shrines
Are the upthrown vitals of extinct volcanoes;
Whose columns are gnarléd clouds,—whose awful arch
Springs through the mazy stars—its architraves
The garnered winds—its visionless capitals
The footstools of that unseen deity
Whom men call Science—
And my soul had sunk—
Even from those wildering deserts it had sunk,
Sounding a measureless deepness, through the sweep
Of whirlpools that ingulf the Northern seas,
Down to the interminable caves of Ocean!

I trod the unfathomed waters,—where the forms
Of vasty snakes like islands lie entombed—
I passed the innumerable host of Dead,
Marshaled like armies, where attraction wanes,
And bodies have no weight. I climbed the hills
Of long-forgotten treasures—heaps of gold,
And piles of gorgeous merchandry, that years
And ages have collected, in the marts
Of that dead empire Ocean—whence again
No caravan shall bear them—whence not one
Of all the uncounted fleets that in the ports
Of sunless silence ride in endless lines,
Shall voyage forth—beneath the flag of Mammon.

Cold Science—throned upon her awful snows!
And Mammon—reigning o'er the withered wrecks
Of a dead ocean!—these my soul surveyed,
Like one who lifts the mantle of his fate,
And seeth perdition.—These had been my quest!
Science I wooed—to freeze in her embrace;
And Mammon conquered—to be Mammon's slave.
Too late I learned it, as in agony
My spirit moaned aloud.—“Behold!” I cried—
“The Heritage of Science cannot bless—
The Power of Mammon cannot save mankind!
Tell me, O angel of my dreams! reveal
The glorious talisman which shall illume
Mine Intellect and glorify my Life!

Then answered me the Voice of Dreams, and said
Strange words which were of my own life long past;
As though my whole existence had been glassed
Within some wizard disc, whereon I read
All that I was or might have been—the vast
Minutiæ of all deeds, from first to last,
Of my unnoted being—each small thread
Of that strange woof which from my very birth had led.

As on a panorama I did look,
Wherein depicted were my thought and deed;
Not as I erst had reckoned them, but freed
From gloss and mist of earth—or like a book,
In which, beneath the context, I might read
The marginals by which the sense was keyed.
Fain had I now been blind—for scarce could brook
Mine eyes to thus behold what shades my being took.

For in that scroll of knowledge, which nor veil
Nor coloring had, I did Myself behold,
And saw each secret of my life unrolled;
Like some degraded knight, whose trenchant mail,
Albeit of proven steel or studded gold,
Is hacked from off his body, fold by fold;
Until quite naked, shivering, and pale,
He stands all stripped and weak, at every wind to quail.

Therein I saw the virtues which I prized
As mine own honor, were but dust and dross;
Therein I found each fancied gain but loss;
And saw black deeds in shining garb disguised;
And marked how evil thoughts bore holy gloss—
Like a dark atheist who wears a cross.
Each sin I knew, and felt like one despised,
Who, seeking Jordan's wave, in Dead Sea is baptized.

Like one arouséd from a dreamsome state
By rattling thunders in continuous clash,
The while beneath him rolls an earthquake's crash;
Who, fleeing wildly from his toppling gate,
Beholdeth by the fitful lightning's flash,
A lurid lake pursue, with sullen plash,
Wherein the goodly mansions, his so late,
Devoured by scoriac waves, sink darkly to their fate.

Thus on the sum of all that I had lost
My fearful memory dwelt—the wasted hours
In which I danced unknowing o'er crush'd flowers;
And jewels to the wind like ashes tost;
And builded what had seemed defiant towers,
That now were mist—and planted rosy bowers
That now were arid sands,—O God! the COST
Of these, which was a LIFE-TIME, now my vision cross'd.

Then did this Voice of Truth, with whispers low,
Like drip of hidden waters, fill mine ears
With knowledge of myself, until with tears,
That rained out of each heart-throb faint and slow,
I bowed me down, oppressed with chilling fears;
As some great criminal his sentence hears,
And while his blood hath half forgot to flow,
Attempts to grasp in thought the vastness of his wo.

Nathless the Voice spake not to wound or pain,
Save as 'twas meet that it severely should,
E'en for my soul's behoof and endless good;
Like as the reverend leech must ope a vein,
Or probe a wound, albeit with cautery rude.
So, as the leech, with soothing power imbued,
Was this low Voice of Dreams, whose gentle strain
Was healing while it hurt my heavy heart and brain.

And I uprose, when that the Voice had ceased,
Like paralytic from Bethesda's pool;
Or, as arose Naaman, fresh and cool,
From Jordan's waters,—with a life new leased,
It seemed, from God's own hand—and with a rule
Of life to guide me; as from Heaven's school
A teacher in my breast—a blesséd priest
Of the Most High—to give my soul a holy feast.

The Voice went out before me, as a wind,
And drew my weeping soul! Night followed night,
And days fled swiftly on the rolling wheels
Of golden suns; and seasons, like swift steeds,
Burdened with wealth, and driven by ancient Time,
Rushed past my sight, and vanished. On, and on—
My soul moved, trembling, through the deeps of space:
Cherubim brushed it with their snowy wings,
And radiant angels of the mercy-seat
Breathed Eden's odors, as they earthward passed,
Drying my tears with their celestial smiles.
On, through the deeps of space—a million worlds,
Dazzling in hazy glory, crossed my sight;
Myriads of stars stretched gleaming from my gaze,
And countless suns in bright effulgence burned.

Then fell my soul into a wildering trance
Of mystic silence. Solitude seemed bowed
By the awful weight of an eternal hush:
There was no atmosphere—no pulse, to thrill
With subtlest whisper:—vision was no more,
For light was absent. All was darksome void,
Where matter and its attributes were not—
Where Chaos yet was viewless!—
And there pressed
A weight upon my brain, as if a cloud
Of madness were approaching—and I cried,
That this was Death—and that there was no God!

Then answered me the Voice of Truth: “Behold!
Thus is Life dead—thus Godless is the world—
When Intellect bows down at Mammon's feet.”

Then suddenly, as with electric flame,
A light fell all around me, and a sound,
As of a thousand pinions, rocked my soul!
The immensity of visible space revealed
Itself before me,—and the stars fled back,
And systems melted into mist—and suns
Dissolved in ambient radiance,—until space
All space—was peopled by my soul alone!—

My vision swept the untenanted universe,
And from the dimness of Infinity
I heard the whisper of the Uncreate,
And bowed my listening spirit. Then arose,
Slowly, and like a phantom shape, from out
The invisible Beyond, a shadowy globe;—
And my soul knew it was—the Earth!
An atmosphere of congelated tears
Covered her brow as with a hoary frost,
And the deep stirred around her—as with sighs.

Once more the awful accents of that Voice
Controlled my heart. “Now shalt thou mark the earth!
And, from the Universe of thy Intellect,
Behold Humanity even as it is!”

Then, with a measureless reach, as if one blind
Should strain for sight, my soul looked trembling down,
And saw where, stretched athwart the boreal snows,
An old man, tossed with a tempestuous grief,
Lay writhing—while above, in midway light,
Rose, like a sorrowing god before mine eyes,
The Angel of the Wretched. He was crowned
With thorns, that gleamed amid the light like gems;
His brow was rigid, as with conquered grief,
And his bright eyes glittered with unwept tears!
I trembled as his sorrowing glance met mine,
And my soul bowed like Mary at the tomb,
When the angel talked with her.

And then I knew,
That the old man, wrestling with his mighty grief,
Like Jacob with the Evangel of the Lord,
Was the great mass of crushed Humanity—
The bound Prometheus of a suffering world—
Chained to the earth with shackles, which the kings
And great ones of all time have forged from swords
And spears, in the dread furnace of red War—
Whose fires are fanned by mortals' dying breaths,
And fed by slavery's hecatombs of lives!

Then, like the waters of the deep, updrawn
By the pale moon, my tears gushed thickly forth
Beneath the angel's glance; and stretching out

Mine arms, the while my bosom heaved and tossed
Like a stirred sea,—I lifted up my voice,
As Samuel 'mid the Holies: “Here am I—
Speak: Lord! thy servant heareth!”

And that Voice
Which had out-led me from the world, and showed
The desert throne of Science, and the dead,
Unsentient realm of Mammon,—now spake low,
In a strange whisper, as if all the waves
Of space were breathing lips; and the wide sound,
Circling infinitude with a subtile reach,
Thrilled through my swaying soul—“Arise, and work—
While the day lasteth—for, behold! the Night
Cometh, when no man worketh.”

Lo! that Voice
Troubled the waters of mine unbelief,
And healed mine ignorance!—“Behold!” I cried—
“Behold Humanity is crushed to earth—
Mankind is cursed through toil.” Then answered me
A sound as of the tread of marching orbs,
Rending the heavens!—and it said once more,
“Arise, and work!” I trembled, and obeyed.
Even from those infinite heights I sank to Earth,
And stood beside Humanity!

APOSTROPHE.

O, Earth! O beautiful and wondrous earth!
Jewelled with souls, and warm with generous hearts!
The morning stars sang gladly at thy birth!
And all God's sons, through Heaven's unmeasured girth,
Shouted with joy! Lo! when thy life departs,
All things created shall surcease, and thou—
Girt with great Nature's wrecks—shalt proudly bow,
And with the crumbling stars bedeck thy dying brow.

O bounteous earth! Thy fresh and teeming breast
Hath nourishment for all the tribes of men!
God is still with thee, and thy womb is blest!
Still with abundant good thou travailest!
And thy dead Ages fructify again,
With a new increase! Yet, O Earth! behold—
Millions are perishing with pangs untold!
Thy children faint, O Earth, for bread reluctant doled!

Mysterious Earth! Thou hast within thy deeps
The boundless stores of science! The immense
Arcanum of all glorious knowledge sleeps
Within thine arms, and awful Nature keeps
Watch o'er the treasuries of Omnipotence!
O mother Earth! why are thy golden plains
Made fields of torture, and thine iron veins
O'er-wrought for weary war, and forged to cruel chains?

PILGRIMAGE.

Thus murmured I, as in the lonely night
I wandered from the city's sights and sounds—
Where passion's variant moods, in endless rounds,
Were racing with the hours—where false delight,
And hollow joy, and folly without bounds,
And reckless riot which the soul astounds,
Were but the usual objects of my sight,
And grown so thick with life as seldom to affright.

I left behind the crowded thoroughfares,
Where streams of laughing folly dashed along!
I passed the theatres, where sin and song
Were mingled—turned me from the brilliant squares—
And reached the darksome avenues, among
The bleak abodes of poverty and wrong;
Where wretched outcasts crouch within their lairs,
And God's fair workmanship a demon's impress bears?

And, as with hurried feet I nearer drew
To narrow streets, where Wo and Shame and Want
Were task-masters, and Hunger, grim and gaunt,
Wolf-like clutched human throats, and overthrew
The souls of men,—there came, in garment scant,
A woman to my side, whose gait aslant,
And swaying steps, seemed of her sin the clue—
That most unhappy sin which all the good must rue!

With tangled hair, and bloodshot, stormy eyes,
And hands clenched nervously across her breast,
As to her heart some treasure she had prest;
With swinging motion, and strange, gasping cries,
As if of some lost thing she was in quest—
Like a wild bird when foes have robbed its nest,—
This woman came to me, and with low sighs
Sank prostrate at my feet, and gasped like one who dies.

And over her I bent, and raised her brow
Beneath the yellow moonbeams, and beheld
How all its blood was from her face dispelled;
And how the furrows deep which sorrows plough,
Were graven on cheek and brow in many a weld;
But Grief, and not Intemperance, had quelled
Her hapless brain, and she, in truth, was now
A maniac woman, doomed to gibber and to mow.

And this poor being fixed on me the glare
Of her glassed eyes, while on her lips the froth
Of a wild spasm gathered—and, as loth,
Even in her madness, stranger looks to bear,
Struggled within my grasp, and waxing wroth,
Rent with her nervous hand the tattered cloth
That hid, but shielded not, her breast, and there—
Slumbering in peace, I saw—an infant wondrous fair!

There is nought holier than an infant's sleep!
For the sanctification of its innocence
Enshrines its soul—a shelter and defence;
Like crystal wave, unfathomably deep,
That guards some blessed island, and prevents
The unhallowed entrance of all dark intents:
Or like the viewless cherubim that keep
Watch over Eden's gates, lest sin within should creep.

And cherubim there are—though visionless—
Who fold the infant with their heavenly wings,
And soothe its slumber with soft whisperings
Of the eternal Love and Holiness
Of God! O, radiant beautiful things—
Glimpses of glory! bright imaginings
Of Eden—must they be, which oft impress
An infant's lips with smiles whose meaning none may guess.

And this fair child, which now in slumber lay
Upon its mother's bosom, like a rose
That on a lightning-blasted cedar grows;
This child—which seemed a cherubic Estray—
Awoke not from that innocent repose,
Though its frame shook with the convulsive throes
Which rent the mother, as, with maniac sway,
She struggled to her feet, and flung my grasp away.

Unscared the infant slumbered, while below
Its roseate cheek throbbed that wild woman's heart,
As from its seat it would in madness start;
Even as fair Virtue on the breast of Wo
Calmly reclines, with life and soul apart
From all the raging thoughts that fiercly dart
Their arrowy flames beneath it, to and fro!
The child slept on, nor guilt nor madness could it know.

But yearnings in my heart, that seemed to plead
For the mad woman's babe, forbade my feet
To turn, till, haply, I might soothe the heat
Of its wild mother's passion, and outlead
The frenzy from her mind, that throbbed and beat
Like smothered flame within the burning seat
Of her poor brain;—for madness, like a reed,
Is swayed as ye may will—if ye its humors heed.

So I no longer wrestled with the rage
That swelled her heart—but fixed on her my gaze;
Like one who tenderly some grief surveys,
Which he with gentle act would fain assuage;
And as she marked, with wonder scarce concealed,
The unusual pity which my looks revealed—
Pity that words in vain might strive to speak—
I bent once more my head—and kissed her baby's cheek.

Behold! at once the darksome street grew bright
With golden beams, whose lustre pure and mild
Fell o'er the mother's form, and wrapped the child!
I turned—and, clad in robes of clustering light,
Dazzling as those in heavenly courts that beam,
I saw the radiant Angel of my Dream;
And heard the Voice—but now with sweeter sound—
“O Intellect! thou hast thy Mission found!

ORDINATION.

“Go forth, and find amid the world thy field:
And such as THESE shall teach thee how to live!
Go forth, and mark the sorrows of thy race,
And soothe the madness of their ignorance!
Go forth, and preach that earth is cursed by toil,
Because that toil is linked with want and wo!
Be this thy Mission—to exalt the doom,
By patient virtue and by watchful love!
Be thine to teach that man is kin to man!—
That stars may glimmer through the darkest night,
And flowerets bloom amid the rankest weeds;
That in God's plan there is no evil thing
Which may not yet take hold on purity!”

Silent the Voice: but I, with quivering lips,
Implored the Angel's name.—Then answered me
Those flutelike tones, o'erswaying all my heart,
And said, “Behold—I am thy Comforter!

By me the rocky fountains of hard hearts
Are touched, as with the prophet's wand, and gush
In holiest streams; by me the stone of grief
Is rolled from off the mourner's sepulchre,
And Christ ariseth 'mid its gloom; by me
Are souls made free from error's leprosy,
As Naaman in Jordan; at my touch
The bolts and shackles of misfortune's prison
Fall, as fell Peter's, when the angel came!
I am the calmer of life's raging waves!
To me men cry, when sinking—Help! we perish!
Blesséd are they who have my power confessed—
And they who love me—they are truly blest!”

Thy name! I cried—as bent my trembling knee—
Thy Name! The Angel answered, “Charity!”
The Vision passed—but I remained enwrapt,
Like him of Tarsus, when the awful light
Shone round about him. But my soul had learned
Its mission among mankind, and it burned
To speak the exalted truth to kindred mind—
That Intellect is steward for mankind!
That mental life is more than mental dreaming,
That earth is still no sham—and heaven no seeming;
That untaught souls will find an untrue God:
For ignorance will worship still its clod!
That sacred fire may flame on various shrines;
For Love is bound by no sectarian lines!

2. PART SECOND.

EXORDIUM.

Men of mind! O, men of mind!
Ye who wield the mighty Pen,
Scanning souls with angel-ken!
Ye who mould our human-kind
In the matrix of your thought,—
Why have ye for ages wrought—
(Moral miracle and wonder!)—
Still asunder—still asunder?

Men of mind! O, men of mind!
Could the electric fire of Soul
Fuse ye in one glowing whole,—
Could the immortal flame, enshrined
In each stranger heart and brain,
Flash from one tremendous fane!—
Then might all the world awaken—
Then would Earth with joy be shaken!

Men of mind! O, men of mind!
Ye are stewards of your Lord—
Ye are treasurers of his word!
Whatsoe'er on earth ye bind,
Lo! it shall be bound in heaven!
What by you on earth is riven
Shall in heaven be loosed and broken—
Lo! the Eternal Voice hath spoken!

Men of mind! O, men of mind!
Flash your million souls in one—
Let the stars become the sun!
Be ye as your God designed!
Then shall Error withering fall—
Then shall perish Wrong and Thrall!
Then shall Freedom's Anthem rise—
Earth's eternal Sacrifice!

INVOCATION.

I.

Hearts of love and souls of daring, in the world's high field of action—
Ye who cherish God's commandments, bending not to rank or faction:
Ye whose lives in slothful pleasure never sink nor idly stagnate—
Ye who wield the scales of Justice, weighing peasant-man with magnate,—
Lo! the Voice of Benediction falls upon you from on High:
Ye are chosen—ye are missioned—ye are watched by Heaven's Eye!

II.

Ye have voices, thoughts and feelings—they were given by God to bless you:
Pour them forth, till Wrong shall hear you—till it fear you, and redress you!
Ye have friends in all God's servants—friends in Heaven, with power supernal—
Friends in all who worship justice, all who fear the great Eternal:
Raise your voices from the Forum—challenge Wrong upon its throne—
Let your avalanchine warnings sweep the earth from zone to zone!

III.

Speak ye boldly! pause not—fear not! God is reigning still above you:
Pour the truth, like light, o'er mankind, if they hate or if they love you!
Like the Swiss, like Arnold Winkelried

Arnold Winkelried, of Unterwalden, one of the Swiss Cantons, fell at the battle of Sempach, A. D. 1386. Throwing himself amid the Austrian ranks, he cried to his countrymen—“I make a path for liberty.” They followed, and won the day.

—his valorous watchword crying—
Ye may “make a path for liberty!”—though in it ye lie dying!
Like old Decius, white-robed warrior—priest and victim

Decius was a Roman consul, who, in a battle with the Sabines, (558 B. C.) arrayed himself in priestly vestments, and, devoting his life to the gods Manes, rode unarmed into the ranks of the enemy, invoking victory to his troops as a recompense for the sacrifice.

—ride ye on:
Matters not if ye shall perish, so the glorious Cause be won!

IV.

Though ye bleed as John the Baptist—though ye suffer as St. Stephen—
Pause not! fear not! hurl your warnings o'er the earth like gleaming levin!
Lo! your fall shall raise up witnesses, your death shall prove your mission,
And your murderers will bedew your dust with tears of sad contrition:
Cry aloud amid life's desert—'mid the wilderness of earth—
And “prepare the way!” like him who first announced the Saviour's birth!

V.

Trust in heaven, though ye be lowly! weak and lowly were those preachers,
Who, from fishermen of Galilee, became Creation's teachers:
Pause ye not, though musty learning hath not doled its scanty morsels—
For the flaming tongues of knowledge filled with fire the Twelve Apostles!
Truth will shame the crafty schoolmen—fill the hoary scribes with awe—
Like the youthful Christ, expounding at Jerusalem the law!

VI.

Intellect hath Voice forever! Let that Voice be firm, unquavering—
As the dauntless Three of Israel, in the furnace still unwavering!
Lift your prayers like ancient Daniel—praising God amid the lions:
Smite the priests of cruel Dagons—crush the shrines of gilded Dians—
Preach ye now like him of Tarsus, when the hill of Mars he trod:
Words of virtues long forgotten—tidings of the Unknown God!

“For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar, with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” Paul to the Athenians.

VII.

Speak ye boldly! from your temple-tops, Muezzin-like, give warning!

No church-bells are used in Mohammedan countries, but, instead, the muezzin, or priest, ascends to the minarets of a mosque, and, in a loud voice, cries out, “Allah Acbar,” which means “God is great;” on hearing which every good Mussulman immediately prostrates himself, turning his face toward Mecca, the city of the Prophet.

Bid your brother's eyes turn sun-ward—bid him hail the Future's morning.
Point where Truth hath reared her Kaaba

The kaaba, a holy stone of Mecca, is an object of great devotion to all Mohammedan pilgrims, as having been pressed by their prophet's feet just before he was taken up into heaven.

—point the Mecca of salvation—
Till, like Moslems at the minaret-call, shall sink in prayer each nation!—
Pause not, shrink not in your Mission!—Flash the sunlight of your thought,
Like the blaze of God's first mandate, that revealed what He had wrought!

“And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.”—

Genesis.

VIII.

Speak to kings, as Paul to Festus—till they own the truths ye teach them—
Speak to men like Christ to Lazarus—till the breath of life shall reach them—
Though ye lie in chains, like Peter—angel hands shall ope your prison:
Though ye die, as died the Prophets—trust ye still your prayers have risen!
Shrink not—pause not in your Mission!—ye must lead the Future's van:
For Jehovah gives to Intellect the stewardship of Man!

ASPIRATION.

I am looking from my heart through cloudy skies and stormy years,
While the dim, uncertain Present vails me in a mist of tears;
And a low, mysterious murmuring my sinking spirit hears:

Like the sad and solemn shivering of the trembling forest leaves,
When the muttered breath of thunder through the rocking darkness heaves,
Ere the bolt of fiery levin 'mid the crashing heaven cleaves.

And a mighty Thought, like sultriness, o'ersways me, as a wing—
Even as blended wings of cherubim, while fearfully I sing,
And most fearfully, like Samuel, to the altar-foot I cling;—

To the foot of that great Darkness, lifting high its awful head—
While the clouds, in rolling billows, over its bosom widely spread—
Like the darkness round the Stygian shores—the darkness of the Dead.

At the foot of this dread Altar kneel I now with claspéd hands,
And my bosom smites the Darkness, as a billow beats the sands—
When the Ocean, all behind it, drives it madly on the strands.

Thus the Ocean of my longings forces on my surging heart—
Till the Darkness seems to crumble—crumble heavily apart;
And beyond it—as from Chaos—golden paradises start.

Lo! the mountain Thought falls from me—falls from off my heaving soul—
As if Earth from Titan Atlas should with silent motion roll:
And, behold! it belts the heavens, in a wondrous, flaming scroll,—

Af if all the hurrying thunderbolts, in viewless fingers held,
Whilst they burned upon the azure, were to mortal language quelled—
Straightway now all human Error from my spirit is dispelled!

And I know that towering Altar is Jehovah's Throne on Earth—
And the billowy clouds around it hide the Future's mighty birth—
This I read amid the flaming Thought, that spans the heaven's girth.

Lo! that Thought is Man's Redemption—Man's enfranchisement from wrong—
When the Earth to all God's children shall in brotherhood belong—
And the Weak shall rest securely on the bosom of the Strong.

When the ploughshare's peaceful furrows shall efface the battle scar,
And the golden sheaves of Harvest in battalia shine afar,
And the children gather roses to enchain the hand of War.

Like an endless fire, consumeless, burns that Thought before mine eyes:
And my soul's electric flashes would eternally uprise—
Rise and mingle with the Prophecy that belts the Future's skies!

MDCCCXLVIII.
The Year of the People.

TO The Heroes of '48 and the Martyrs of '49, THESE LYRICS OF LIBERTY: In Memoriam.

INVOCATION.

Men of noble souls, whose vision

An Ancient Harper, mournfully beholding the servile Estate of Europe, at the Close of the Year 1847, awaketh to the Sound of Freedom's Trumpet at the Opening of 1848—The Year of the People. He seizeth his forgotten Harp, and summoneth the Nations.

Pierceth through the Future's curtain;
Ye who scorn the world's derision—
Ye whose trust hath still been certain:
Look aloft! your hope is sunward—
Look abroad! your course is onward!

Lo! now comes your toil's fruition—
Labors now the pregnant crisis:
Man renews his faith to Isis—

Isis, in the Egyptian Mythology, is the type of Nature.

Chronos

Chronos—the Greek God of Time.

fills his glorious mission:
Look aloft! your hope is sunward—
Look abroad! your course in onward!

In the long-enslavéd nations
Throbs with joy each freeman's bosom;
Ye who waited long with patience,
Now behold your hopes in blossom:
Look aloft! your hope is sunward—
Look abroad! your course is onward!

In each old Sclavonic forest—
In each fair Italian valley—
Bide the time when ye may rally,
Ye who long have suffered sorest:
Look aloft! your hope is sunward—
Look abroad! your course is onward!

Polander and iron German—
Serfs of Austria and Hungaria—
Slaves of knout, ukase, or firman—
Trodden Jew, and outcast Pariah—
Look aloft! your hope is sunward—
Look abroad! your course is onward!

Patriots! scattered o'er creation!
Souls of thought, and hearts of daring!—
Be ye now no more despairing:
Soon shall end your long probation.
Look aloft! your hope is sunward—
Look abroad! your course is onward!

I.
THANKSGIVING HYMN FOR 1848.

Thank God, that through the world

The Ancient Harper breaketh forth in a Song of Thanksgiving at the Advent of the People's Triumph.

The electric thoughts of glorious souls are gleaming!
Thank God, that now, through Christendom unfurled,
The banners of Man's Cause are proudly streaming!

Thank God, that Earth hath still
Some lofty sons, whose deeds shall gild her story—
With flame from Heaven those noble souls shall fill,
Like old Prometheus, this world with glory.

Old Rome hath now, thank God!
The keys that shall unlock her gates of heaven—

In allusion to the accession of Pius IX. to the pontifical chair and his subsequent reforms, which inspired the friends of liberty throughout the world with hopes too soon to be blasted.

And necks shall rise that have to earth been trod,
And chains that yoked the soul shall now be riven!

And Man—thank God for that—
O'er all the earth asserts his natal franchise,
And boldly now, at King and Autocrat,
His words of fiery hope the vassal launches!

Thank God that Right is Might—
That souls are deathless and that wrong is mortal—
That Darkness is the handmaid of the Light,
And Death is but of Life the clouded portal!

II.
THE GIANT.

There was a weary Giant

The Ancient Bard describeth the Rule of Kingcraft in France under the Type of a Vulture brooding over a slumbering Giant.

Stretched by the solemn Rhine!
And his huge limbs, all slack and pliant,
Heavily did recline;
And his hands made no sign:
Though in the air above, with cloudy wing,
Brooded a horrible Thing—
A Vulture, with the face of crownéd King!

And there were serpents, bred from the miasma
Of that crown'd Vulture's breath,
Gleaming, as on they crept, like strange phantasma:
These wound, in chains beneath,
While, wrapp'd in sleep like death,
The Giant, which was France, nor moved nor stirred,
Till, with a rush unheard,
Swooped down, like Night, the shadowy, unclean bird.

And the bright serpents, round the Giant wreathing,
Wove their encumbering chain;
While the blood-sucking Vulture, softly breathing
Into his heart and brain,
Deadened the sense of pain:
Back and forth glided still those serpent bands,
Like Délilah's soft hands
Binding shorn Samson, at his foes' commands!

But, God in Heaven be praised! the slumbering Giant
Out of his trance awakes!
Flings his broad arms aloft, and shouts defiant;
Like as 't were flax, he breaks
The chain of wreathing snakes;
And, in the exuberance of his strength, tears down
The royal Vulture's crown!
And the crushed serpents vanish at his frown!

III.
REGENERATION.

I heard a Voice of millions singing!

The Old Harper exulteth in the Triumph of the French People.

I saw a forest of waving arms,
And a world of flashing eyes!
I heard the sounding psalms
Of freemen—glorious freemen—loudly ringing
To the skies.

And I said within my heart, O this is France!
It is France!
From their slavery her millions now advance!
She hath spoken,
And her sceptres now are broken,
And her fetters lie in rust,
And her diadems are trampled in the dust!

Who hath done it?
What hath won it?
What hath won this boon of freedom for our France?
Tell me, citizen and neighbor,
Was it cannon—was it sabre?
Did the guillotine achieve it—or the lance?

Not the cannon nor the sabre—
Not the guillotine nor lance:
It was LABOR—glorious LABOR—
That emancipated France!

Through the pilgrimage of years,
Ever weeping bloody tears—
By their masters' fetters bound,
With their eyes upon the ground;
While their voices dared not utter
What their woful hearts would mutter,—
Thus, in despotism's trance,
Were the Workingmen of France!

But those hearts were bended bows,
And their agonizing throes
Were as arrows to be hurl'd among their foes!
And behold!—
Like the Nazarite of old,

Samson.

In the glory of their liberty the Workingmen arose.

Ye saw when Orleans fell!
When the crown and throne were shivered:
Tell me, neighbors, was it well
That our France was thus delivered?
If ye sanctify the deed,
Give ye then its glorious meed—

Not to cannon—not to sabre—
Not to guillotine nor lance!
But to LABOR—glorious LABOR—
That emancipated France!

No Rollin nor Cavaignac—
And no Lamartine we trust—
No Napoleon shall drag us back
To Empire's bloody dust.
Lo! ye traffickers in blood,
And ye worshippers of gold,
We, whose necks ye long have trod—
We—the People—bid ye hold!
For no longer will the Workingmen be sold!
But their rights they will maintain
With the heart and with the brain,
Until Liberty—Equality—Fraternity—they gain:
Crown and chain
Alike are vain—
Power and gold
Shall be controlled,
And no longer shall the Workingmen be sold!

For the iron hath been driven
To the very soul of Man!
Now he rises, and—by Heaven!
Let them stay his course who can.
Lo! his manacles are riven,
And in Freedom's battle van,
With his hand upon his charter,
And his foot upon the sod,
He will stand—or die, a martyr,
For his children and his God!

IV.
FRANCE TO IRELAND.

The Provisional Government of the French Republic gave strong assurances of sympathy to the Irish Deputations.

Ireland! Ireland! wake—advance!

The Bard portrayeth France as calling unto Erin to cast off the Saxon Yoke.

We are calling you from France:
We are free, O suffering sister!
And we cry aloud to thee,
In the name of God! BE FREE!
Wake! arise!—the bloody chalice
Ye have drained in silent wo,
Once again shall overflow:
Ye shall fill that cup afresh,
With the Eucharist of Freedom,
Holy Freedom's blood and flesh!

Lo! we once were slaves in Gaul—
Slaves and dupes to royal thrall:
Herod-like, the kings of earth
Sought to crush our Freedom's birth—

Sought to slay the soul of Freedom,
Born, like Christ, among the poor!
Ay! they crucified our Freedom—
Thus to make their triumph sure.
But, like Christ from out his tomb—
From a new sepulchral womb,
With a quaking, rending spasm,
Leapt our Freedom from its plasm—
'Neath the blow of rugged LABOR
Leapt, like Pallas, arméd Right!

Vulcan, according to the myth, gave birth to panoplied Minerva, by cleaving with his sledge the laboring brow of Jove.

From the dust, where, long quiescent,
Human hearts lay dead, petrescent,
Rise they now, with fire renascent—
Rise, with Phœnix glories bright!
Each true soul is God's own Æon—
And the world a grand Panthéon,
Where we battle with the Titans,

The Æons or Demi-gods, assisted the Immortals in their great battle against the Titans.

And o'ercome their giant might;
With the diadem'd marauders,
With the purple-robed defrauders—
With the tyrants who would impiously
Escale the throne of Light!
Men of Ireland! Rise! be free!
Hurl your bosoms like a sea—
Like a tempest-freighted sea—
Over sceptre, crown, and chain;
As your stormy Irish Ocean
Rolls its thunders to the Main.

Ireland! Ireland! wake—arise!
Make a whirlwind of your sighs—
That shall blast your chains to weapons,
In the furnace of your wrath:
Let the blows your tyrants dealt you
Roll an earthquake in their path!
By the blood of Drogheda—
And by Wexford's fatal fray!

These two places are celebrated as the scenes of massacre and defeat of Irish Insurgents.

By your woes, your shames, your sufferings!
By your thousand patriot offerings!
By the rack, the axe, the scaffold,
Which have oft your freedom baffled!
By the martyrdom of Emmett,
And the glory of Boiroimh!

Brian Boiroimh, (pronounced Boru,) King of Munster in 1027, celebrated for his bravery. He fell in the battle of Cluantarf.

Rise, and strike the Saxon from you—
Rise! and to your blood be true!
Wake! arise! as France has risen,
From the grave-mould of her prison!
Brand each Irishman with treason
Who shall brook a stranger's thongs:
Raise your emerald banners o'er you!
Let your wild harp crash before you!—
If they DARE deny you Freedom,
Which, of right, to man belongs—
Rise ye, then, and grapple vengeance:
Claim ye RACK-RENT

Rack-rent is the technical term for arrears claimed by landlords and middlemen from the Irish peasantry.

for your wrongs!

V.
PRAYER OF ERIN.

With spirit burning,

Erin, in answer to the Call of France, invoketh her Sons to free her.

For action yearning,
The noble summons of France we hear!
While woes and curses
Each heart rehearses,
And weeps forever the bloody tear:
Our brave men dying,
Our maidens sighing,
Our orphans crying, great God! to Thee!
While foes insulting,
O'er all exulting,
In shackles bind us who once were free!

O Power Supernal
Whose heart eternal
Inclines from heaven when the ravens cry;
Whose arm protects us,
Whose word directs us—
O God of Justice! look from on High!
Behold a Nation
In tribulation:
In supplication we bend the knee—
In the name of Jesus,
O God! release us!
From cruel tyrants, O set us free!

O Christian brothers!
If ye have mothers—
If ye have sisters or children dear,
Should Famine blight them,
Should Plague affright them—
Would ye not call on the world to hear?
O would ye falter
At Freedom's altar,
When axe and halter your eyes might see—
Or cast behind you
The chains that bind you,
And swear, by Heaven—that ye would be free?

Ye men of Ireland,
Behold your sireland!
Arise! arise! from your bloody dust:
No longer single,
Let freemen mingle—
Let Green and Orange in union trust!
With hands upraising,
With bosoms blazing,
Jehovah praising for Liberty—
Once more in grandeur,
Through death and danger,
Your glorious Island arise and free!

VI.
FREEDOM BAFFLED.

Worse than vain to pray for freedom,

The Bard angrily rebuketh the Cowardice of Erin's Children.

When to bigots ye would preach;
Worse than vain, with bold exhortings,
Slavish minds ye seek to reach.
Ireland wants nor arms nor armor—
Needs no strength her rights to win;
But her bitterest foes are TRAITORS,
And her slavery is WITHIN!

Would ye rescue hapless Ireland—
Would ye lift her drooping head?
Would ye clothe her naked multitudes,
And give her paupers bread?
O waste not words in sympathy,
Nor shed your useless tears,
But arouse her from her slavishness
Of twice two hundred years.

Give her not your pikes and rifles—
They'll be forged to galling bands;
For a coward priesthood rules her,
Curbs her heart, and checks her hands.
Give her not your golden harvests,
Though for bread she shall implore—
If ye do, she'll kneel for ages,
Like a beggar, at your door.

But if ye would rescue Ireland,
Give her spades, and give her plows!
Let the sweat of honest labor
Gild her happy farmers' brows!
Let her patriots drain her marshes—
Let them hurl their iron blows
On the fastnesses of fevers—
Worse than even British foes.

If ye'd raise in Ireland armies,
Make them warriors of Toil!
Let their weapons strike her meadows.
Let them cleanse her teeming soil.
Give her WORK, ye sympathizers,
And for work bestow REWARD!
Work is better far than charity,
And stronger than the sword!

Pauper minds are worse than traitors,
Bigots shrink from Freedom's goal:
Would ye break the body's fetters,
First must ye unlock the soul.
Ireland wants nor arms nor armor,
Lacks no strength her rights to win;
But her bitterest foe is Priestcraft—
Ignorance her deadliest sin.

VII.
STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLE.

Europe was Bondage! where, in stupor sunken,
Labored sad Israel, by her Pharaohs crushed!

The Ancient Harper rehearseth the Struggle of the Nations.

Shackled her limbs, her spirit weak and shrunken,
Dumb was her voice—her harp, despairing, hushed.

Europe was Exodus! From shame emerging,
Lo! how the Slave became at once the Man!
While o'er his tyrants Freedom's ocean, surging
High as man's hopes, in billowy glory ran.

Europe is Sinai! and her dread confusions
Are but the workings of the Eternal's might!
Lo! from the Burning Bush of Revolutions
Cometh the Decalogue of Human Right!

VIII.
AVATAR AND FLIGHT.

Out of deep sleep where visions moved before me,
Rises my 'wildered soul:

The Bard likeneth the Birth of Freedom to the Avatar of Our Lord.

Starless and dark the heavens are frowning o'er me;
And underneath me roll
The billows of an Unknown Sea, whose surge
Is as an endless dirge.
Lo! in my dreams I saw the Arisen Man—
The unbound Prometheus, grand with conquered pain,

Trampling his shattered chain!
Then, with a mighty joy that overran
The utterance of my heart, I clasp'd my lyre,
And sang aloud with prophet-ire,
Sang with exuberant voice—
“O Earth! rejoice! rejoice!”

I saw young Freedom born—a Saviour-child—
And sages came from far,
Led by the radiant star
That o'er his manger gloriously smiled;
And I stood with shepherds who watched by night,
Till mine eyes were bathed with a wondrous light,
Till I heard the song of an angel throng,
With manifold love and with peace o'erfraught,
Swaying my listening thought.

But Herod the murderer heard—
Herod the Tyrant of Nations:
There swept by his palace a mystical word,
And the heart of the people with wonderment stirred,
In the dust of its desolations.
A star in the midnight sky—
A gleam of the Orient morn:
Behold! that word swept flashing by—
The Name of the Child new-born!
Over the broad world flashing high—
The Name of the Child new-born!

The Sword, O nations of the earth! ye saw
Your trembling tyrants draw.
The Hand, O nations! ye beheld, that slew
The Innocent and True!
But Freedom LIVES!
The Almighty hath the Child outled—
Egypt her shelter gives!
With strength and wisdom shall his youth be fed,
Till in man's stature, 'mid his fellow-men,
Freedom—the Saviour!—shall return again!

The Lord God mightily reigneth—
And in the breath of his nostrils thrones dissolve,
Like glittering vapor, and no trace remaineth!
Light out of darkness shall His word evolve—
Order from chaos—and from the womb of might
The Eternal Soul of Right!

IX.
HUNGARY.

Behold! when first before my vision whirled

The Ancient Bard addresseth Kossuth, prophesying of the People.

The exulting pageantry of nations freed:
When, from their crumbling thrones in terror hurled,
Monarchs, with white lips, read the People's creed;
While rose that People, in their blood and sweat,
Moved by the might of Freedom's new revealing;
And thou, Kossuth, amid thy people set—
High on Hungaria's glorious Gilboa kneeling—

Lifted thine arms in agony to heaven;
Then—by the breath of Hope within me, driven—
Behold! I named thee Moses of the World!

What, though ALONE
Thou battledst for the common Rights of Man!
What, though no kindred hand upheld thine own—
No nation followed in Hungaria's track,
When for the world her genius led the van:
Though slavish Gaul held back—
Though Albion faltered, and tho' (shame of shames!)
Columbia tamely looked upon her fate—
Yet, by the memory of our fathers' names,
Kossuth!—despair not yet!

By German Steuben and De Kalb! despair not!
By Erin's slain Montgomery! despair not!
By Poland's child, Pulaski! still despair not!—
By Lafayette! by Washington!—despair not!

Kossuth! behold!—
Thy People journey through the desert still—
Even through the desert Zin:
While round them press the Spoilers as of old,—
But by our Lord Jehovah's power and will
The Promised Land they yet shall enter in.
And though, like Moses, thou mayst bless thine eyes
With but a glimpse of freedom's heritage

Still shall the Nations rise—
The enfranchised Nations of a future age—
And bless their Moses who on Gilboa's height
Prayed to the Lord through Freedom's darkest night!

X.
ROME.

O Rome! I sing to thee!

The Bard singeth to Rome as to the central Abiding-place of Freedom's hopes.

I cry aloud to thee! BE FREE! BE FREE!
Behold! my heart rose up
Like a rous'd ocean when upon mine ear
Broke thy high summoning trumpet, loud and clear,
Calling dead Freedom from her shameful bier!—
O Rome! the deadly cup
Of all thy woes, which tyrants filled for thee,
And Holy Fathers bless'd in Papal Palace—
Calling the death-bowl Heaven's anointed chalice:
This cup thou didst dash boldly from thy lips—
Dash'd it to earth!—Thus may God crush the malice
Which would with shameful lies thy valiant deed eclipse!

Rome the Republic! From thy Seven Hills
Flash'd the red beacon-fires of Liberty.
Lo! how the blaze, wide-spreading, flaming, fills
The o'er-arching Past with glory! Thou wert free!
Rome of Rienzi! Rome of Decius! ROME!
The name—the Name of Rome—shall hallow thee
As Freedom's Home!

O, my heart never could believe that men
Born in the Coliseum's shadow—nursed
Amid the tombs of earth's tremendous giants—
Could even sleep so long! Thank God! again
Ye awoke, and stood erect, and burst
Your shackles, and hurled back, in proud defiance,
The gauntlet of your faith at slavery's brow!
It were a lifetime worth to be a Roman NOW!

Fear ye yon crown'd Usurper, who hath flung
The cap of Liberty from Gallia's brow,
And the fool's bells around her temples hung?
What though your walls beneath his cannon bow,
And his armed robbers march your shrines among,—
Rome is still FREE! Her buried soul revives!
Her children, that were dead, have now up-sprung,
And Freedom's EUCHARIST gives them countless lives.

Poor Imbecile of France! Lo! he would guide
The Phœbus-chariot of a nation's will,

In allusion to the foolish daring through which Phæton lost his life, by attempting to control the steeds of his father, Phœbus.

And rein the steeds of Freedom! In his pride
He would o'erleap his nature, and deride
The elements that raised him, and that still
Are surging round him in an angry tide!
He cresting them, as floats some glittering toy
Upon the bosom of an ocean wide!
Laugh, O my soul! This proud, assumptious boy

Would with our goddess Freedom dalliance hold,
Tempting her love with his betraying gold!
Laugh, O my soul! laugh loud in new-born joy—
“The gods first madden whom they would destroy!”

I sang in joy when France,
With the brown hand of Labor, cast her chains
And sceptres in the path of barricades:
I sang as I beheld her sons advance,
Grasping their unstained blades,
That bore the lightning of their hearts and brains!—
I sang aloud the anthem of the free,
And on my bending knee
Prayed for the glorious cause of Liberty!

But France hath stooped to shame,
Selling her birthright for a tyrant's name,
And Rome must now do battle for the world—
Rome, the great Heart of Nations, by whose throes
The tide of Freedom's life-blood must be hurled
Through Europe's arteried corpse, until it glows
With life to feel and to avenge its woes!

Once, with the wondering patriots of all earth—
Hailing your Freedom's birth—
Ye bless'd the Pope of Rome!
Ye bless'd him, that, with vision free and earnest,
He had looked forward to the coming light;

Ye hailed him as the holiest and sternest
Of all man's champions battling for the Right—
Battling against old Europe's kingly might.

But soon ye tore from off his brow its screening,
And saw the monarch in your worship'd Pope!
His human words ye found with royal meaning—
Truth to the ear but falsehood to the hope!
Then, with the strength that had been crush'd so long,
Ye rose and smote your wrong!

Men of old Rome! still be your souls undaunted!
Still to the world fling out your proud example!
Lo! the eternal seed which ye have planted,
Banyan-like shall arise, and top the skies,
And in its awful pride, shall arch with branches wide,
The desert earth—that kings now madly trample.

XI.
THE TRANCE.

I sleep on the bosom of Night,

The Minstrel, sinking into a Trance, becometh a Seer of new Wars, and speaketh soothly of Things to come.

But mantle my couch with her stars!
For, blazing in red, like a flame overhead,
Still swingeth the wild planet Mars!
I hear an awakening sound,
That sweeps through the vasty profound;
I see a dread Angel—a glorious Angel—
With beauty enrobed and with righteousness crowned!

A Voice through Creation is hurled;
The breath of Elohim is rocking the world!
And the spirit of God o'er the face of the waters
Is brooding in wonderful glory—
In dark and mysterious glory!
Arise ye, my sons! O awake ye, my daughters!
Behold!—on the wings of the morning behold!—
How the Angel of Prophecy flieth from Heaven,
With power from Elohim, the Mighty One, given,
The Future of Earth to unfold!

There are curses and sore tribulations,
That crouch in the lap of the Past:
There is blood-guiltiness on the skirts of the nations;
And shadows from heaven are cast—
Yea, shadows unearthly and vast,—
Brooding over mankind,
Who are blind—who are blind—
Who have plucked out the eyes of their mind!

It comes—oh! it comes!—I hear it again!
I hear it afar:
That murderous tread o'er the living and dead—
The march of old merciless war!
It comes—oh! it comes—
The whirlwind of men!—
The Princes and Leaders,
With banners and trumpets and drums.
They tower like old Lebanon's cedars,

But bow to the breath of the storm—
Yea, bend to the hurricane's breath!
They rush to the Valley of Death!
Yet they swarm!
Like black battle-vultures they swarm and they cluster—
In countless and terrible muster,
In crimson and murderous lustre.
They come—oh! they come!
And my spirit is dumb—
The armies of men! they are swarming again:
They are swarming once more,
On sea and on shore—
The food and the fuel of horrible war!

From Muscovy—Mother of Slaves!—
To their graves:
To their graves on the banks of the Rhine,—
The serfs of the Autocrat pour;
And their blood shall new-nurture the vine!
From Danube's red shore—
From Dneiper and Don—
Shall gather the barbaric hordes;
The Tartar and Hun,
Whose laws are their swords;
From desert and border
Each thirsty marauder
Shall haste to the land of the vine,
To mingle his blood with its wine!

From Britain—from Britain—
The flame shall arise
To the pitiless skies!
'Tis written—'tis written—
'Tis plain to mine eyes.
And her merchants, afar off, lamenting and yearning,
Shall witness the smoke of her burning!

Even so!
She must taste of the wo:
In hut and in palace, she'll drink of the chalice,
And pour out her heart in libation—
To wash out her mighty transgression.
For, lo!
The blood of the innocent cries—
The blood of the martyrs whom Britain hath slain,
Shall fall on her forehead in terrible rain!

And Gaul shall be drunken with blood,
Drunk with the blood of the North:
Drunk with the blood of the Islands and Main—
Drunk with the suicide flood,
That once and again
From her own cloven heart shall gush forth;
Ere the riddle of Samson lies open to earth—
And, from Royal Brutes slaughtered, the Hive shall have birth.

It rolls—oh! it rolls—
The voice of the thunder that striketh men's souls:
It bends—it descends—
The bolt that old earth from her centre up-rends—
'Tis the battle's wild roar—'tis the bolt of red war—
The sea it upheaveth—it rocketh the shore;
It shaketh the zones!—And monarchs and thrones
Shall wrestle with Freedom—but conquer no more!

XII.
UNCONQUERED.

I am near to you, ye suffering men,

At the last, the Ancient Harper biddeth the People to be of good Faith.

Wherever on earth ye dwell:
My heart's best tongue is mine iron pen—
Mine iron thoughts to tell!
O would to God that the living fire
Which glows within that heart,
Might reach ye, through my flashing lyre,
And all its flame impart!

Jehovah spake, in the olden time,
Through Israel's glorious seers,
Till the haughty spirit of royal crime
Was bent with craven fears:
And Jehovah speaketh, in this our day,
Wherever, on land or sea;
A brave, true heart shall sing or pray,
That its brethren may be free!

I tell you, brothers of every clime!
Ye children of every soil!
That the Saviors of Freedom, throughout all time,
Have sprung from the ranks of toil!
I charge ye all, who suffer and wait,
Who live by sweat of brow,
That ye keep good watch at your city's gate—
For the Master cometh now!

Ay, NOW,—when the foot of royal might
Is trampling the olden world—
When the radiant banners of human right
In darkness have been furled—
Ay, NOW,—when kings in their festal hall
Deride the human soul,
Ye shall mark a HAND, as it scores the wall
With Freedom's judgment-scroll

There is never a Night for the People's cause
That is not yet thick with stars,
And Freedom's sleep is but breathing-pause
For strength to burst her bars!
For the Day alone hath come the Ill—
For the Day it hath sufficed:
And the gloom that closed o'er Calvary's hill,
Shall break—with the Risen Christ!

The Gospel of Labor.

TO The True Laborer, (WHETHER HE WIELD THE PEN OR THE SLEDGE,) THESE “Good Tidings” ARE DELIVERED.

PRELUDE.

Brothers! be ye whom ye may—
Sons of men, I bid you—PRAY:
Pray unceasing—pray with might:
Pray in darkness—pray in light!
Life hath still no hours to spare,—
Life is toil—and Toil is Prayer!

Life is toil! and all that lives
Sacrifice of Labor gives.
Water, fire, and air, and earth
Rest not, pause not, from their birth.
Seed, within the fruitful ground,
Insects, in the seas profound,
Bird and bee, and tree and flower,
Each hath Labor for its dower—
Each the mark of toil must wear,—
Toil ye, then!—for work is prayer!

Student! in thy searching mind
Lo! the key of heaven thou'lt find:
Trim thy lamp, and burn thine oil—
Through the midnight watches toil—
Lay the soul's great secrets bare,—
Labor! labor! work is prayer!

Patriot! toiling for thy kind,
Thou shalt break the chains that bind!
Shape thy thought and mould thy plan:
Toil for freedom! toil for man!
Sagely think, and boldly dare,—
Labor! labor!—work is prayer!

Christian! round thee brothers stand—
Pledge thy truth, and give thy hand:
Raise the downcast—nerve the weak!
Toil for good—for virtue speak!
Let thy brethren be thy care,—
Labor! labor! work is prayer!

Pray ye all!—the night draws near.
Toil, while yet the sky is clear;
Toil, while evil round ye springs;
Toil, while wrong its shadow flings;
Pray in hope, and ne'er despair,—
Toil ye! toil ye!—work is prayer!

THE CURSE AND THE BLESSING.

Oh! dark the day!—oh! desolate the hour,
When, driven from Eden's desecrated bower,
The stricken Pair in sadness wandered forth,
Alone—amid the wilderness of earth!
Before them gloomed the Future, cold and dim,—
Behind them flamed the swords of cherubim.
Oh! sad the earth!—oh! desolate its guise!
Yet there, in sooth, remained their Paradise!
Oh, bosomed there, beneath the darksome mould,
Were nestling Eden's flowers of blue and gold:
There clustered Eden's amber fruits, and there,
In wondrous sunlight, through the branches fair,
Dear Eden's wingéd songs made musical the air.

But viewless Nature's glories—mute her tones—
To him the lord of all those boundless zones!
In vain her beckoning fingers wooed his glance
Where gentle meadows rolled their calm expanse;
Where sunny waters slept in silvery sheen,
And shadows darkened through the woodland green.
In vain with luring love the landscape greets:
A beauteous maze—a wilderness of sweets;
In vain with Eden joys the world is fraught,—
'Tis Adam's curse—that he beholds them not!

Though king of earth, unconscious of his throne;
Though owning all, regardless of his own,—
He only gazes back—with oft-complaining moan.

Oh! blind the sense that Hope has ne'er illumed,
And dead the heart to Unbelieving doomed!
The soft wind wantons with the trembling trees:
Despairing Adam trembles as he sees;
The streamlet murmurs in the vale profound:
And fearful Adam pauses at the sound.
The Future threat'ning, while the Past appalls,
Prone to the earth his glance incurious falls.
Not his the faith that rules to blesséd calm,
Nor sorrowing love that lends the spirit balm;
Not his the holy joy with suffering blent,
Nor sacred strength to mortal trials lent
Unused to earthly light his Eden eyes,
Through tears alone must shine their Paradise;
Through tears alone—such tears as mortals shed
O'er cradled living and o'er coffin'd dead;
Such tears as from the bosom's fountains flow,
When Love's soft fingers press the brow of wo.

THE MYSTERY.

“By sweat of brow shalt thou eat bread!” The Doom
Went forth, and clothed the Future with its gloom:
The earth was shrouded unto Adam's gaze—
Each step a pitfall and each path a maze.

For him no flowers—for him no verdant soil;
All, all were blasted by the Curse of Toil.
Oh! blinded sense!—oh! doubting heart of Man:
In love conceived, behold the Eternal plan!—
Foretaste of earth, the Eden-dream was given
That man might note the blameless life of heaven:
In Eden's bower his soul could haply learn
The heaven which he through mortal toil might earn.
Then from its gate the Father led him forth,
To win that heaven from the unknown earth.

The Curse of Toil! Oh! rather the ovation
Of Man's true soul, whose life must be creation.
The Curse? Oh! Blessing—in mysterious guise!
Without it, Man were cursed in Paradise!
Where Sloth exposed him to the Tempter's art,
And Pleasure enervated brain and heart.
Man lived not, till he crossed fair Eden's portal:
The doom of death first made his soul immortal.
The death of ease was but the birth of power;
He lost the Past—but gained the Future's dower.
Behind him scarce had closed the flaming gate,
When Man—the creature—godlike, could create!
He smote the rocks, and crystal waves outstreamed;
He struck the plains—the plains with harvest teemed;
He clove the mines—the mines their treasures gave;
He grasped the sea—the sea became his slave!

Oh! when did Eden's golden sunshine fade?
Ah! when were Eden's bowers to dust decayed?
It was—when Man his sacred birthright gave
For pottage, and became his brother's slave!
It was—when, thriftless of the blessing Toil,
He sold his title to the teeming soil!
It was—when, paralyzed and servile grown,
He knelt and sued for that which was his own;
That which was given and ne'er reclaimed by God,—
The inalienable birthright—of the sod!

THE HOPE.

Freedom and Labor are forever one!
In man's true life their course is jointly run.
Behold they have descended
Through ages and through centuries,
Since Moses 'mid the sundered seas
Out-led his ransomed Israelites,
And taught the Tribes, in one great nation blended,
The Decalogue of Human Rights!
Through weary pilgrimage of Forty Years—
The Cloud by day—the Pillared Fire by night—
Still beaconing their sight,—
On, to the goal of all their hopes and fears—
On, to their Eden bright—the Promised Land—
In faith and wonder walked that chosen band.

The Land—the Earth!—O this the glorious goal,
Which gleamed upon each soul!
The Land that God had given them for their own,
Which they through toil should win,—
This was the mighty heritage that alone
Led them through desert Zin.
Those Hebrew multitudes were led
Through cloven waters—they were fed
With heaven's unstinted bread:
And not for one, but ALL, the loving feast was spread:
Priest—Levite—yea! or Publican—
It mattered not—'Twas bread for MAN.

THE PARABLE.

That pilgrimage is parable for the world!
Let tyrants read it, when from empire hurled!—
Let slaves behold the Sinai flame of God—
And tread the dust in which they once were trod!
That pilgrimage is gospel for the poor:
Teaching heaven's holiest mandate—to endure;—
Proving God's promise infinitely sure.
That pilgrimage is prophecy for all time!
Thus, through all ages, and in every clime,
The People have been wandering, toiling on;—
But, ah! not yet the Promised Land is won!
Not yet—and not till light hath conquered night;
Shall Canaan's borders bless the People's sight!

TYRANNY THE CURSE.

A vision of the Past hath been with me,
Like a weird Presence. Over time's dark sea,
Upon whose crumbling shores the sullen waves
Break o'er their countless landmarks—human graves;
My disembodied soul, upon the wings
Of Thought, glides forth among long-perished things.

The awful spell of History exhumes
The tribes of men from their centennial tombs:
The mouldered dust of cycles and of ages,
Garbed in the forms of warriors, priests, and sages.
I hear a solemn murmur, like the low,
Sad cadence of a world's despairing wo;—
As of a myriad brains with madness throbbing—
As of a myriad hearts through fetters sobbing—
As of a myriad dead and buried men,
Striving to burst their shrouds and live again.

Those brains and hearts—those dead men half-reviving,
And with their awful shackles vainly striving—
Striving through all the past and striving yet,—
Are they who eat bread in their forehead's sweat;—
Whose life is labor—whose reward, a crust.
Their works immortal, and their memory—dust!

THE BOOK OF RUINS.

Lo! when Truth's hand reverses History's urn,
And Ruin's monumental leaves we turn,—
Behold, on cloven shrine and shivered column,
How iron Toil hath graven its legends solemn!
Behold the eloquent lesson of Decay:
If ye preserve not MAN, man's WORK will pass away!

How the cold ruins mock us as we tread,
With trembling steps, each city of the dead—
How in their marble scorn do they deride,
The poor, short-sighted compass of our pride;
That pride which rears the temple and the shaft,
As glorious tokens of man's handicraft;
And then, in suicide madness, sacrifices
The life of MAN, which all earth's life comprises.

Lo! where the wise Chaldean's chariot wide
Rolled o'er Euphrates' bridged and conquered tide;
Lo! Babylon, where, on the Assyrian's soul,
Flashed the red language of his judgment-scroll,—
Where are they now!
Behold yon rolling cloud
Of simoom sand—it is Assyria's shroud.
Behold yon smoke from Kurdish wigwams rise—
There the Chaldean's gaze explored the skies!—
Where deserts stretch and wild marauders wander,
Ye may behold Time's giant wrecks—and ponder!

Fearfully do we tread
The Alpine masonry of Pyramids;
And shudderingly our feet are led
Thro' Egypt's populous tombs—the echoless Catacombs,
Beneath whose rocky lids
Slumber a nation's dead!—
With awe we mark the pillars overthrown
Of what was once the Athenian's Parthenon—
With fear we scan the crumbling stone
Of Rome's dread Coliseum: her pride—her mausoleum!
We dream not that those wrecks of old
A pregnant lesson may unfold:
Our blinded thoughts have never spanned
What Ruin's damp and mildewed hand
Hath writ upon each mouldering wall:—
A lesson like the scroll in doomed Belshazzar's hall!

THE LESSON.

Ye! piles! whose very ruin overwhelms
Our senses with your vastness—whose dread forms,
Clad in the hoar of centuries, shake the storms
Like dew-drops from your mailéd breasts! Ye realms
Of shadow! where Decay hath fixed her throne,
And thence foredooms the Present with the fate
Of all the Past!—Ye tongues of Toil! make known
The dread significance of your fallen state!—
Why live ye even in dust, and why for dust were ye create?

Those ruins answer us! They speak amid
The shadowy years, like Samuel unto Saul:
Each stone hath voice—as if within the wall
A multitude of prisoned souls were hid;
Behold! they cry—behold! these crumbling piles
Are Tomb-stones of the Living! of the slaves—
The PEOPLE! by whose sweat and bloody toils
All were upreared—walls, bases, architraves!—
These are the monuments of those who have no graves!

Those ruins teach us! Kings have writ their names
Upon the crushed entablatures, and deemed
Their memory deathless as each column seemed;
Why is it that nor king nor vassal claims
The homage which their awful works inspire?—
Why is it that we gaze—perchance admire—
Yet reck not of the long-forgotten builder,
Whose handiwork, even in ruins, can bewilder?

It is because the soul which was in him
Who built, was crushed into his work.—It is
Because the immortal life, which had been his,
Was trodden out by kings from soul and limb,—
That with it they might build these monuments
To their own glory.—Human soul and sense
Were sacrificed to matter—and STONES became,
Instead of MEN, the altars of a nation's fame.

Myriads of lives were moulded into brass
For Rhodes' Colossus—millions crushed to clay,
That Thebes might dazzle thro' her short-lived day.
Oh! had these hecatombs of souls—this mass
Of living Labor—been together welded!—
Had one great mental monument been builded,—
Then had that rescued and united Whole
Templed Creation—with a deathless Human Soul.

THE FATE OF DESPOTISM.

Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome! how vain
The trophies which of all your power remain!
How shadowy is the fame ye sought to span,
By piling stones upon the soul of man!
Your gold corrodes—your adamant is rotten:
Art hath no name when Nature is forgotten;
It lives thro' toil and dies with toil's subjection—
Only through Man redeemed comes Art's true resurrection!

Did Egypt build the pyramids, and baptize
Their walls with half a nation's sacrifice?—
Behold! self-immolated, Egypt dies!
Was Greece thro' Helot toil made half-divine?
Lo! the Necropolis is her last sad shrine.
Did Rome o'er trampled men aspire to power?
Her life departed in her triumph hour.

No work—no nation—can exist, which rears
Its sinful fame on servile toil and tears.
If Labor's sinewy frame be shackled down
By law or custom—fetter, scourge, or frown,—
If it be not, as God's great laws decree,
And Nature teaches,—if it be not FREE—
Then is ALL toil a doom—a plague—a curse—
Than which the human soul can dream no worse!

THE GOSPEL REVEALED.

Spurn not, O Priest! these tidings unto Toil!
Turn thee, O King! no more thy race despoil!
Claim ye, O Slaves! your birthright to the soil!
For this great Gospel, through which men are free,
Burned upon laborers' lips, in Galilee,
And flash'd above the Mount of Calvary!
Toil was evangelized by the glorious thought
Of Joseph's Son, who with his father wrought.
Labor was deified, when, through jibes and scorn,
The ponderous Cross was by its Victim borne:
The Gospel of the Poor was sent from Him
Whose ministers are the tireless cherubim!

Behold we trace it in the changing skies—
And from the laboring earth its teachings rise;
We hear it in the ocean—and its form
Is mirrored in the drapery of the storm.

THE MYSTERY OF CREATION.

My soul hath sought this Gospel, and upsoared
Through wondrous space, until its glance explored
The wilderness of worlds, that, ever in motion,
Gleam through the starry sky, like Phosphor's light in ocean!

Light rayed itself from out my heart, like wings,
Bearing me upward; and the mist, which clings
Around all human knowledge, was dispelled:
The works of God I saw—the Universe beheld!

Each atom—of that illimitable Thought,
Which men call Universe; where God hath wrought
The eternal fabric of which Lives are shreds;
And woven the mystic woof of which our Souls are threads.

O, ye may measure stars—ye may engirth,
With your wise subtleties, this mortal earth!—
Ye may compute the breadth of zones, and number
The cycles man shall live, ere yet the earth he cumber.

But can ye bound Infinitude? or term
Eternity?—Our trembling sense infirm
Faints with the awful idea of that Being,
Alpha and Omega—Omnipotent! All-seeing!

And—throned upon Infinity—God creates:
Never—through all Eternity—abates
The working of His brain; and ceaseless rolls
Out from His boundless heart the ocean of men's souls!

And, in each soul-created, God renews
The likeness of Himself, and re-imbues
Unsentient matter with the eternal sense:
Thus is He multiplied through Nature's elements!

And Man, through all his being, duplicates
The life which God hath given him—he CREATES
In every thought, word, action of his life!
All are immortal—all with good or evil rife.

Thought is the soul of mind—words intermingle
A thousand souls, which once in mind were single;—
But DEEDS are rivets, on the mighty chain
Of God with Man, or blows, which sunder it in twain.

Create, O Man! thy heaven! The Eternal Maker
Invites thee still with Him to be partaker.
Fore-measuring all things, all things He ordains—
And yet no thought, no deed, of thine restrains.

Free actor, thou, O, Man! The Almighty Cause
Projected Nature, and confirmed Her laws:
Thee, then, he called, and, faithful to his Plan,
Made Nature's self subservient unto Man!

All elements are thine—all agents render
Their skill to thee—to thee their forces tender.
The Earth thou tread'st,—thy curb is on the Sea:
The Air is chained—the Fire is yoked—for thee!

And thou, O Man!—free-souled, free-acting still—
Thy Maker formed thee—yields thee to thy will:
O'er-watchful, then, He marks thy changing fate,
But leaves thee, still, ITS CHANGES to create!

The True Republic.

TO YOUNG AMERICA, “Garde Mobile” OF Liberty's Temple, THIS POEM IS DEDICATED.

Not mine to rule the poet's realms of light—
Not mine to sway the golden tides of song;
Nor may my fingers sweep the chords
That once their stormy music flung,
When Homer trod the Chian strand;
Or rained celestial strains, when sung
Another sightless one in Albion's land.
Oh! not for me the deep, melodious words
That only to those raptured bards belong,
Who, blind to earth, saw heaven with saintly sight,
And spake its language with seraphic tongue.
I may not strike immortal Dante's lyre,
Nor dare the organ-swell of Avon's choir,
Nor thrill with Harold's grand and gloomy fire!

Yet, haply I, with reach of high desire,
May lift my song to greet the orient breaks
Of freedom—as old Memnon hailed the sun;

And fling my numbers to the aspiring wind
That swells exultant with the voice of man,
Singing the birth-song of his dawning hopes;—
Even I, out-looking from my yearning soul,
May chant with answering joy the sounding strain
That mounts impetuous from each patriot's heart—
Crying to all the world, that Freedom lives!

Oh! when can Freedom die? When summer suns
No longer glow upon man's lifted brow,
Nor warm his grateful breast; when Ocean's wave
No more shall roll beneath the changing stars,
But stagnant lie—in desolate repose;
When winds forget their solemn symphonies,
And thunders break not from the gathered clouds;
When Nature shall grow weary of her life,
And thriftless of her stores—and dull Decay
O'erbrood the dying earth,—then, only then,
May human souls despair of Liberty!

Be thou, O Washington! the witness—thou
Whose memory, moonlike, sits amid our stars,
And rules their brightness with its steadier light!
Whose spirit fills the temple of our love,
And from its portals moves through all the earth;
Whose life is patriotism's chart—whose name
A Pharos burns, o'er all the future's gloom,

To guide the world to its enfranchisement.
Thee! Washington! I now invoke! Thee, Sire
And Savior of my own—my native land!

Shall it not come?—shall not the hallowed strife,
Of living Man with the dead nightmare shape
Of kingly craft, soon shake the orient world?
Shall not that cruel Moloch, at whose shrine
(Girt with the tyrants of all time) the Earth
Too long hath bowed, and offered up her best
And bravest children in sad hecatombs,—
Oh! shall not this false idol, Royalty,
Be hurled forever from its bloody seat,
And Man, the Patriot, own but God—the Sire?

Command it, Heaven! assert it, Earth! O pray,
Ye suffering millions! that the Hope, so long
Nourished in secret—wildly uttered forth—
Wounded too oft in vainly-daring strife,
But never wholly crushed,—may yet find tongue,
And arm, and soul, to gauge its awful strength,
And clothe it grandly in immortal Deeds!

But thou, my country! land of birth and love!
Delphos of Nations! at whose gate
Their countless multitudes await
The oracle that, thundering from above,
Interprets Freedom's fate!—

Mecca of Ages! at whose shrine
The pilgrim centuries recline,
And look to thee—to THEE!
For that great sequel to their noblest deeds;
For that broad harvest of their scattered seeds;
For that dear bounty to their sorest needs,—
The PROOF of liberty!

The old world throbs with turbulent unrest!
Her nations crowd to war—
And, hark! with dreadful jar
The temple-gates of Janus they unbar!
Her monarchs mad with empire's quest—
Her peoples sore opprest—
Await the strife of Sultan and of Czar!
But, throned serenely in the West—
Where struggling Man beholds his freedom-star—
One Great Republic watches from afar!

One Great Republic!—great in generous souls!
Supremely great—that she herself controls,
Nor yokes her power to Havoc's car,
To swell the Orient war!
Great in her storied Past!
Whose mighty deeds are mankind's Runnymedes—
Whereby its freedom-charter, broad and vast,
Each yearning nation reads!

Great in her Present, while her flag, unfurled,
In neutral calmness challenges the world!—
But yet more gloriously great
That she can cast her awful power
In Virtue's shining van:
That she may all the future dower
With blessings unto Man!

No armies fright her vales!
No battle-din assails!
No hireling guards around her portal stand!
But when a stranger nation, starving, cries
For succor at her hand;
O then, in marshalled lines,
Each ripening harvest shines,
And glittering sheaves of golden corn arise—
To conquer and o'er-run the foreign land!

One Great Republic! lo! she towers sublime!
The Hope of Nations, and the Goal of Time!
The van of empire and the throne of mind!
Like that dread Angel who at last shall stand,
With foot upon the sea and land,—
With power from God to loose and bind
The myriads of mankind!

O, Memories of the Past! ye come
With trumpet blast and roll of drum:
Around me like a bannered host ye are!
I hear the awful signal gun
From Bunkers' Height and Lexington,
And Moultrie's cannon thundering from afar!
On every hill—through every glen—
From every mountain-gorge—
I hear the tread of Minute-Men!
I hear their mingling battle-cries
From Trenton's glorious field arise,
And sink in Valley Forge;
But still a clarion voice goes forth
And cries, amid the wintry snows:
No East—no West—no South—no North
The Revolution knows!

O ye immortal and heroic souls,
Whose visioned glory rolls
Triumphant through the wondrous Past—Ye men
Of Seventy-six! who wielded sword and pen!
Ye twins of eloquence, whose burning will
First drew the electric flame of freedom forth—
The Southern Henry—Adams of the North!—
Ye martyred twain,
The Northern Warren and the Southern Hayne!
Oh! ye are with us still!

Your awful phantoms walk the viewless air!
On every wind ye glide!
And cry aloud—“Not here—not there:
“On EVERY plain your fathers died—
“Their battle-field the Union wide;—
“No border claims a separate share!
“And palsied be the patricide
“Who would your heritage divide!”

In History is God—no state may rise—
No nation flourishes—no empire dies—
But hath its lesson writ by Him whose Will
Evoked the Universe, and rules it still.
Not Israel's tribes alone beheld His hand:
In Fire and Cloud He leads through every land!
His Sinai altar flames on every shore;
And nations move but when HE moves before!

Land of my birth! O land of Washington!
For thee, the Past its mightiest work hath done!
For thee, God's finger shines o'er History's page—
For thee, in solemn words Age answers Age!
Land of each freeman's heart and home and love!
High-throned among the nations! Oh! by thee
May God out-lead the world and free
The expectant tribes of men! Even now, above
The surging waters of their troublous life,
Thou sittest calm, unmingling in the strife!—

Yet, evermore, as heaves the billowy sea
Of Europe's revolutions—evermore,
As freedom's surges break from shore to shore,—
Behold! each struggling patriot, from the crest
Of some huge wave, looks, yearning, to the West,
And, dying, smiles with but a glimpse of thee!

O proud America! exalted clime!
Thy soil enriched with heroes' blood:
And every vale, and every crag,
And every field and flood
With freedom beautiful—with strength sublime!
Whilst, over all, thy Flag
Streams from its towering battle-tent,
With heaven's own shimmering ensigns blent,
And marks, where'er the foot of freedom falls,
One beacon more upon the Future's walls—
One other star in Glory's firmament!

The True Republic! Wouldst thou, then, enroll
Thy name—the noblest upon Empire's scroll?
Be still thy soil the refuge of th' oppressed!—
Be still thy navies first in danger's quest!
Be still thy succoring hand the first to save!—
Be still thy power the shelter of the brave!
But, evermore, upon thy starlit gate,
His words inscribe who taught thee to be great—

Who—first in peace, in war, in patriot hearts—
One peril saw—THE CURSE OF FOREIGN ARTS!

Where threats the danger? lo! in yonder SCHOOL;
Where bigot zeal usurps a separate rule:
In yonder CHURCH, where Labor's scanty mite
Uprears cathedral domes—to shame the light,
Whilst ermined Priestcraft sweeps the marble floors,
And—pauper thousands grovel at the doors!
In yonder CROWD, with jesuit listener nigh;
In yonder HOME—where lurks a foreign spy!
In crafty shepherd and in slavish flocks—
In Freedom's councils, and—her BALLOT-BOX.
'Tis Superstition! child of deepest night,—
We fear—and Ignorance! its kindred blight.
'Tis these we combat—these we would repel
Back from our Temple, to their native hell!
O, marvel not that, when our sorrowing eyes
Behold the storm-portending clouds arise,
We cry aloud, with Monticello's sire:
“O that the Atlantic were a WALL OF FIRE!”

A Wall of Fire! 'Tis ours to thus engirth
This land of refuge for the tribes of earth.
A Wall of Fire—the tyrant's power to brave!
A Sea of Flame—to purify the slave!—
To purge his ignorance—his servile shame—
And make him worthy of a Patriot's name!

Who would be free must suffer and aspire:
Our LAWS should make for us this Wall of Fire!

Nations are built of MEN—the mighty frame
Of that huge skeleton—a state—
Govern we it with priest or potentate,
Is evermore the same:
Bones, sinews, flesh and blood of human kind:
Moulded together, and made one,
By that tremendous charm—the mind!
And ruled (if ruin it would shun)
By one great bond of Brotherhood,
Swayed for one object—Human Good!

But if the Mind be perished—if the Heart
Of Brotherhood, from which alone
All the life-blood of Liberty must start,—
If this be trampled down,—
Then sinks a nation, from its living state,
Back to the mouldering skeleton!
Such has been—such will be its fate
As Israel's prophet looked upon:
A Valley filled with Human Bones—
Dry, senseless, soulless, as the stones!

Only the breath of true-born Liberty
Can bid such crumbling bones arise—
Only the voice which through all nature cries:
“Man is by birthright free!”

Only the spirit which ennobles Toil,
And makes the Anvil equal to the Sword;
And makes the peasant, while he delves the soil,
A compeer with the lord,—
So long as mind shall dignify his brain,
And love for human kind within his heart remain.

This, then, the True Republic!—where true souls
Shall write their actions on its deathless scrolls!
Where Labor with his burden proudly smiles,
And Men are reared, instead of marble piles!
Where willing toils embrace the yielding sod,
And millions kneel in prayer—but pray alone to God!

Shall this be our Republic? Ay! though guile
And wrong may lift their threat'ning front a while;
Though leaders falter, and defenders fail;
Though statesmen may betray, and champions quail,—
Be sure, (though leprous spots have scarred it o'er,)
The People's Heart is sound within its core!
Above the din of battling Politics
The People's Heart still throbs—with Seventy-six!

God bless the Heart of the People! It meaneth
Eternally well—and it hateth all wrong:
And ever to goodness and nobleness leaneth;
And hopeth in heaven, though long
It hath suffered from shackle and thong.

100

'Tis the Heart of the People first throbbeth indignant,
When despots would rivet their fetters accurst:
And fronts with bold bosom the tyrant malignant—
And swells, till with glorious burst,
Out gushes the flame it hath nursed.

'Tis the Heart of the People—in mighty ovation—
Flings chaplets of fame in the patriot's path:
Or grapples with fraud on his mountainous station,
And showeth what terrors it hath,
When wrong shall awaken its wrath!

'Tis the Heart of the People that lovingly weepeth,
When famishing nations cry wildly for bread;
And forth from that Heart, how its sympathy leapeth,
Till banquets for hunger are spread;
And the living arise from the dead!

Then, God bless the Heart of the People! and arm it
With boldness, and goodness, and vigor and light;
Till Force shall not frighten, till Fraud shall not charm it;
And, shaken by sinews of Right,
Shall crumble the idols of Might!

Oh! then shall the Heart of the People—an ocean
Of rivers, commingling, each spirit a wave—
Roll on in one choral, harmonic devotion,
The Throne of the Father to lave:
One Heaven, one Hope—as one Grave.

101

The Iron Harp.

102

TO The Beloved Ones.

O, ye who round the Cross of Suffering cluster!
Fair souls, whose inward love rays out in light,—
Lo! in my heart hath fallen that holy lustre,
Chasing the shadows of my starless night:
Ye have revealed Heaven's brightness to my sight.

Valiant and high-souled Man and glorious Woman!
Such as once walked with God in Paradise;
Such as have loved with hearts all soft and human;
Such as have loved like saints in mortal guise,—
These, such as these, before my soul arise.

Ye are around me, like bright angels, ever;
Breathing sweet prayers, like music, in mine ears:
Prompting each valorous thought—each high endeavor;
Soothing my heart when mocked by phantom fears,—
And with warm love-looks drying all my tears.

Ye who have lived and loved 'mid earthly suffering—
Ye who now chant in Heaven's eternal choir!
Lo! I would crown your tombs with this, mine offering:
Thoughts I have moulded in my bosom's fire—
Voices of Hope, within mine Iron Lyre.

103

THE SONG OF TOIL.

Let him who will, rehearse the song
Of gentle love and bright Romance!
Let him who will, with tripping tongue,
Lead gleaming thoughts to Fancy's dance;
But let ME strike mine Iron Harp,—
As Northern harps were struck of old!
And let its music, clear and sharp,
Arouse the free and bold!

My hands that Iron Harp shall sweep,
Till from each stroke new strains recoil;
And forth the sounding echoes leap,
To join the arousing Song of Toil:
Till men of mind their thoughts outspeak,
And thoughts awake in kindred mind;
And stirring words shall nerve the weak,
And fetters cease to bind!

104

And, crashing soon o'er soul and sense,
That glorious harp, whose iron strings
Are Labor's mighty instruments,
Shall shake the thrones of mortal kings:
And ring of axe—and anvil-note;
And rush of plough through yielding soil;
And laboring engine's vocal throat,—
Shall swell the Song of Toil!

THE POET'S TASK.

WHAT is the Poet's task?
To tear the grave-clothes from the buried ages—
To lift the mighty curtain of the Past!—
And, 'mid the war that old Opinion wages,
Deal out his warnings like a trumpet-blast:—
This is the Poet's task!

Thank God for Light!
Praised be the Source of mortal might and being,
That he hath stripped the veil from off our eyes!
Now, in the blessed consciousness of seeing,
Man may gaze upward, to the glorious skies,
With a strong sight!

105

Labor hath raised its voice!

Are not the “Crystal Palaces” and “Industrial Exhibitions” of the present era to be regarded as the mute assertions of Labor's claim to consideration?

The strong right arm—the mighty limbs of iron—
The hand embrowned by grappling with its toil:
The eyes which, on the perils that environ,
Gaze from the honest soul that wears no soil;—
These are its silent voice!—

Silent—but, oh! how deep!—
Rousing the world to wrestle with its curses—
Speaking the hope of Freedom to the earth:
Vulcan-like stand again those iron nurses,
To give the panoplied Minerva birth,
From her long, death-like sleep!

Read me, ye schoolmen, now—
Read me the riddle which our Samson showeth:
Out of the Strong comes Sweetness

And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.—

Judges xiv. 14.

once again!
Lo! from the brute how strength'ning honey floweth—
Meat for the suffering souls of famished men!
'Tis the world's riddle now!

Forth shall the nations start
Labor is calling on the heart and spirit—
Labor is casting all its gyves away,—
Labor the garland and the sheaf shall merit;—
Break thou upon my sight, O glorious day!
Bless thou the Poet's heart!

106

THE POET AND THE PEOPLE.

SPOKE well the Grecian, when he said that poems
Were the high laws that swayed a nation's mind—
Voices that live on echoes—
Brief and prophetic proems,
Opening the great heart-book of human kind!

Songs are a nation's pulses, which discover
If the great body be as nature willed;
Songs are the spasms of soul,
Telling us when men suffer:
Dead is the nation's heart whose songs are stilled.

Lo! the firm poet is the Truth's dispenser—
Standing, like Heaven's high-priest, before its shrine;
And his high thoughts, like incense,
From his soul's golden censer,
Rise to God's throne—a sacrifice divine!

Stands he like Samuel, darkly prophesying—
Threats he, like Nathan, humbling Judah's king—
Comes he as John the Baptist,
'Mid the wild desert crying,—
Still from his soul the impatient voice must spring.

107

Speaks he to senseless tyrants, who with scourges
Would curb the ocean of the human heart!—
Over their whips and fetters,
Rush his bold songs, like surges:
Forth from the caverns of deep thought they start.

Still for the People—still for Man and Freedom—
Boldly his Titan words the bard must speak;
Till his too long-lost birthright
Shall be regained by Edom

And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.—

Genesis xxv. 30, 31.

—
Till, to restore that right, Jacob shall Esau seek!

THE POET TO THE PEOPLE.

LIST! ye stern, hard-handed toilers!
Ye who suffer—ye who strive!
Time has been when your despoilers
Gave ye lash, and task, and gyve:
Time has been when each low murmur
Brought the scourge upon your flesh;
When each struggle fixed ye firmer
In your tyrants' cunning mesh!

Ye were then the bond and vassal,
And your master's will obeyed—
Though ye built his lordly castle,
And his arms and armor made:

108

Even the chains with which he galled you,
Your own fingers did create;
And the very power which thralled you,
From yourselves was delegate!

Thus ye suffered—still unknowing;
Still in doubt and darkness toiled;
Still your sweat and blood were flowing—
Still your tyrants wronged and spoiled!
For ye thought that ye were minions,
And that lords were nobler things—
And your faith was old Opinion's,
And the holy right of kings.

But one bold and firm endeavor
Broke your chains like threads of flax—
And a shield was raised forever
'Gainst the Wronger's fell attacks!
Now ye feel that glorious labors
Stain not man's immortal soul:
Iron ploughs must rule the sabres,
Sledges must the crowns control.

Still ye raise the shaft to heaven—
Still ye force each mighty toil:
Still by you the waves are riven—
Still by you is rent the soil;—

109

But ye feel that ye no longer
Are the slaves which once ye were;
Feel that ye are purer—stronger;
Feel that ye can wait—and bear!

THE CHAMPIONS OF MANKIND.

HOW gloriously, from out the gloom of Ages,
Flash the true beacon-lights of lofty souls:
Gleaming still brighter, as Life's tempest rages—
Gilding the tide that to Oblivion rolls!

Gracchus! first martyr

Tib. Semp. Gracchus, a noble Roman, stimulated by the abject condition of the lower classes of Roman citizens, attempted to revive a modification of the Licinian law, in total contempt of which the patricians and men of opulence had, by a series of usurpations, appropriated to themselves all the public lands. This excited the bitter resentment of the patrician party, by a faction of whom he was finally assassinated.—

Plutarch Vit. Gracch.

to the cause of reason—
Still shall thy thought each patriot's heart inflame;
Valiant Wat Tyler!—if thine acts were treason,
Then may such treason gild each freeman's name!

Cromwell, thou tyrant-queller! slaves may hate thee;
Courtiers may all thy lofty traits deny:
Courtiers and slaves did not, could not, create thee!
Thou wert of Mankind's Cause—which shall not die.

Lo! there are Gracchi even now among us—
Tylers, and Cromwells, in the People's van:
Lo! there are beacons, which the Past has flung us,
Flaming upon the throbbing heart of man!

110

We have beheld an awful Hand, inscribing
Jehovah's sentence on the walls of Wrong!
Passed is the hour for mirth, and scorn, and gibing—
Heaven's balance weighs the Just against the Strong.

THE ARTISAN.

LIFT up thine iron hand—
Thou of the stalwart arm and fearless eye!
Lift proudly, now, thine iron hand on high—
Firm and undaunted stand!

No need hast thou of gems,
To deck the temple of thy glorious thought:
Thou hast the jewels which thy mind enwrought—
Richer than diadems!

Thou art our God's high-priest!
Standing before great Nature's mighty shrine;
For the whole world the glorious task is thine,
To spread the eternal feast.

Even like the Hebrew chief,
Strikest thou on the rock, and, from its deep,
Mysterious heart—the living waters leap,
To give the earth relief.

111

Mighty among thy kind,
Standest thou, man of iron toil! midway
Between the earth and heaven, all things to sway
By thy high-working mind!

Thou canst delve in the earth,
And from its mighty caves bring forth pure gold;
Thou canst unwrap the clouds in heaven rolled,
And give the lightnings birth.

Thou hast the stormy sea
Chained to thy chariot-wheels, and the wild winds
Obey the o'er-ruling intellect that binds
Their rushing wings to thee.

Thou canst bid Thought go forth
Upon the electric pinions of the air,
And through the opposeless ether thou canst bear
Thy words from South to North.

Thou canst new lands create,
Where the wild-rolling wave no mastery owns;
And the vast distance of opposing zones
Canst thou annihilate!

Thou know'st heaven's ordinances—
And their dominion in the earth thou seest!
And the floods hear thee, in their shrouds of mist,
And bring their fruitfulness!

112

Lift, then, thy hand to heaven!
Spread thy toil-sceptre o'er the sea and land:
Thou hast the world intrusted to thy hand—
Earth to thy charge is given!

MEN OF THOUGHT.

MEN who ponder, list to me!
In the depths of all your hearts,
Something lives and something starts:
It would mount—it would be free—
Chain it not, I counsel ye!

Men who in the furrow tread,
Sowing seed within the earth—
Trusting in its future birth,—
Lo! within your HEARTS lies dead
Seed that may be future bread!

Men whose lives with toil are fraught—
Ye who o'er the anvil bow,—
In your SOULS, O gaze ye now:
There abides the anvil, THOUGHT—
There may mighty deeds be wrought!

113

Acorns blossom to the oak—
Drops of rain to oceans swell:
Dare not ye your thoughts to quell!
Never yet was truth outspoke,
That hath not an echo woke!

Dare not ye your thoughts to hide!
On the waters cast your bread:
Prophets were by ravens fed.
If to speak it hath not tried,
Then is Thought a suicide!

Speak ye, men of thought! speak out—
Trust ye still response to find!
Thoughts will wake in kindred mind;
Even as the arousing shout
Starts reply from caverns deep.
Echoes, till ye speak, will sleep.

Patch not ancient lies with new!
Moths will seek their old abode:
Build on sand a marble road,
And 'twill sink its basis through.
Rivets in a rotten shield
Will but make it sooner yield.

114

What though ye be weak and few?
What though never a sunbeam smiles?
Insects build the coral isles—
Insects pierce the ocean through:
Ye are MEN—and will ye quail,
When the insect did not fail?

Clothed with nightshade thrive the oaks:
Truth, though bound in shackles, thrives;
Error forgeth her own gyves,
As itself the nightshade chokes.
Stars, and flowers, and all things bright,
Work through darkness into light.

Speak ye, then, to echoing souls,
Till the eternal concave sound—
Till around Creation roll
Voices from the vast profound:
Even like the glorious shouts that rang,
When morning stars together sang.

WORDS OF HOPE.

DREAMERS! wake ye from your revery—
Sleepers! rouse ye from your sleep!
Wrong and vice, in virtue's livery,
Round ye like the serpents creep

115

Men are drops, and God the ocean:
Lives are streams that flow to heaven:
Ye must act in mingling motion,
Else to vapors ye are driven!

Fix your glances on futurity:
Lo! where beams the day-spring bright!
Ye may yet know joy and purity—
Darkness may be changed to light!

God sleeps not, though sleeps humanity;
Still he moves in fire and cloud:
Heaven is not a vast inanity—
Earth is more than mankind's shroud!

Good is in our race, though hidden—
Peace is mightier far than strife:
Earth may yet be made an Eden,
Heaven be reached in mortal life!

There is naught so high and holy,
As the hope which conquers pain:
In yourselves, ye crushed and lowly,
Lives the power to rise again!

Trust not that which startles reason—
Good can ne'er be gained by ill;
All that chains, or clouds, is treason—
Naught is powerful, but “I WILL!”

116

Would ye read the Eternal's mystery?
Like blind Bartiméus pray!
Eyes that best discern God's history,
Were anointed first with clay.

Gaze from well-deeps into heaven,
And ye see the stars at noon;
Thus to lowly sense is given
Reason's best and richest boon!

Not one grain of earth's material
Ever was or shall be lost:—
And shall Man's great soul ethereal
Be to dark oblivion tost?

Boldly speak—reluctant lisper!
Truth's appeal will mount on high:
Each brave word—each feeble whisper—
Once breathed out, can never die!

LIFE'S ODYSSEY.

BROTHERS mine! we are on life's ocean—
Stout our bark and the wind astern;
Hearts wound up to a brave devotion:
We shall suffer—we shall learn!

117

Brothers mine! now the blue wave kisses,
Greets our prow with its lips of foam:
We are bound, like the bold Ulysses,
Onward, onward—wandering home.

Helmsman! grasp the obedient tiller!
Yonder swells the arising deep;
Here's Charybdis, and there is Scylla—
Storm and wreck between them sleep.

List ye not to the Sirens' wooing—
Speed ye on o'er the mystic wave:
Slothful rest is the soul's undoing—
Pleasure's couch is Virtue's grave.

Brothers mine! to the struggle bend you—
Ply your oars with an earnest strength!
Labor on till the gods befriend you:
Home shall bless your hearts at length.

PAST—PRESENT—FUTURE.

GHOST of the buried Past!
Lo! we invoke thee from the shroud of Ages—
Even from the awful shroud of withered Time!
Come, with the lore of prophets and of sages!
Come, with thy mystic truths, and thoughts sublime,
Like raiment round thee cast!

118

Clad in his iron mail,
Yet trembling in the shadowy light uncertain,
Standeth the Present, like the monarch Saul;
To lift the darksome Future's mighty curtain,
Calling dead Samuel from his mystic pall—
Dead Samuel, cold and pale!

A weak and frail old man,
And bowed beneath the weight of thy foretelling,
Art thou, O phantom of the buried years!
Lo! as we bend, like Saul, with bosoms swelling,
Scarce (through the cloudy mantle of thy tears)
May we thy features scan.

Even like that twain of old,
To speak and hear the solemn words of warning,—
Prophet and King, the Past and Present stand:
This, as a corpse—no gems nor crown adorning—
And this, with crested brow and sceptred hand,
A monarch stern and bold!

List we the Prophet's cry—
The Past, the Present, and the Future's story:
Samuel, and Saul, and David, live once more;
Soon shall the new-born light beam forth in glory—
Soon shall the darkness of our world be o'er:
The Future draweth nigh!

119

Read we the parable—
No more the living dead our earth shall cumber!
The mighty strife of human hearts shall cease!
The dying Present with the Past shall slumber—
And Man awake to hail the Future's peace!
Read we the lesson well!

THE LAMENT OF PAN.

LISTEN to the heart of old Pan

Pan—the principle of universal nature, as imbodied in the Greek and Roman mythology.

—how it sobbeth
For Man: how it swelleth with sorrow, and throbbeth
With horror, and river-like poureth its tears—
And with agony scoreth the column of years!

Listen to the wail of old Pan—how he groaneth
For Man—how he striveth in terror, and moaneth,
While Error her serpents would throw on his life—
Like the old Laocóön in terrible strife!

Listen to the prayer of old Pan—while he bleedeth
For Man! how, beneath each dread curse, he yet pleadeth
For mercy—for saviors, to free us from blight—
For some new Promethéus to bring heaven's light!

120

Listen to the story of Pan—how he speaketh
For Man: how, with holy endeavor, he seeketh
Forever on Man to bestow a fair fame—
And, like Shem with old Noah, concealeth his shame.

Listen to the hope of old Pan—how prophetic
For Man: how, though darkly he gropeth, ecstatic
He hopeth for succor from Heaven at length;
When that time shall have given the Nazarite strength.

Listen to the words of old Pan—and be ruthful
To Man: blessed Psyche, be loving and truthful;
And, proving forever thy mission on earth,
Let thy holy contrition give happiness birth!

LIVE THEM DOWN.

BROTHER! art thou poor and lowly,
Toiling, drudging day by day,
Journeying painfully and slowly,
On thy dark and desert way?
Pause not—though the proud ones frown!
Sink not, fear not!—Live them down!

Though to Vice thou shalt not pander,
Though to Virtue thou mayst kneel,

121

Yet thou shalt escape not slander;
Jibe and lie thy soul must feel;
Jest of witling—curse of clown:
Heed not either!—Live them down!

Hate may wield her scourges horrid;
Malice may thy woes deride;
Scorn may bind with thorns thy forehead;
Envy's spear may pierce thy side!
Lo! through Cross shall come the Crown!
Fear not foemen!—Live them down!

THE ANGELS.

ANGEL OF HOPE:

I HEAR thy wings, my sister,
Though the night is dark around thee—
Oh, those wings are drooping heavily,
As if the tempest bound thee.
Tell me, sister—whither now?
Whence and wherefore journeyest thou?

ANGEL OF SUFFERING:

I come—Oh, I come,
From the hapless realms,
Where souls are dumb,
Where wrong o'erwhelms;

122

From the land where the Famine hath been—
Hath been and will be again;
And wring the hearts of desperate men
With slow, consuming pain,—
Till souls that once were free from sin
Are black as the soul of Cain!
Famishing mothers, and famishing sires,
And sons with hearts of hate;
Lighting their terrible signal-fires,
Piling their hovels in funeral pyres—
Lying in wait,
With hearts of hate,
At the cruel tyrant's gate!
Earth is mighty, and earth hath room
For millions of souls unborn;
Harvests smile, and orchards bloom,
And fields are heavy with corn!
And yet there cometh the Famine's doom,
And the livid Plague's despairing gloom,
O'er Erin's land forlorn!

ANGEL OF HOPE:

Heaven helpeth—Heaven helpeth—
Though the clouds may darkly frown:
Heaven lifts the poor and wretched—
Heaven brings the haughty down!
Trust in heaven, suffering Angel:—
Sorrow seals the true evangel!

123

ANGEL OF SUFFERING:

I have been to the darksome mine,
Where Albion's infant slaves
In wretchedness toil—in hopelessness pine,
From birth to earth;—
Nor joy nor mirth
From cradles unto graves!
Children with withered hearts,
And maidens with never a maiden's shame,—
Toiling and toiling till life departs,
Living and dying without a name;
Living forever to labor and labor,
Cursing their lords,
With horrible words,—
Wrestling with brother, and struggling with neighbor.

ANGEL OF HOPE:

Heaven is mighty! and God is good!
Little of love is understood!
Yet cometh the hour
Of Beauty and Power—
Cometh the glorious day—
When Right shall be Might,
And Darkness Light,
And Wrong be swept away.

124

THE WORLD'S LIE.

I LOOKED from out the grating
Of my spirit's dungeon-cell—
And I saw the Life-tide rolling,
With a sullen, angry swell;
And the battle-ships were riding
Like leviathans in pride—
While their cannon-shot were raining
On the stormy human tide.
Then my soul in anguish wept,
Sending forth a wailing cry:
Said the World, “This comes from heaven!”
Said my soul, “It is a LIE!”

I looked from out the grating
Of my spirit's dungeon-cell—
And a sound of mortal moaning
On my reeling senses fell;
And I heard the fall of lashes,
And the clank of iron chains,
And I saw where Men were writhing
Under Slavery's cruel pains.
Then my soul looked up to God,
With a wo-beclouded eye:
Said the World, “This comes from heaven!”
Said my soul, “It is a LIE!”

125

I looked from out the grating
Of my spirit's dungeon-cell—
And I heard the solemn tolling
Of a malefactor's knell;
And I saw the frowning gallows
Reared aloft in awful gloom,
While a thousand eyes were gloating
O'er a felon's horrid doom.
And a shout of heartless mirth
On the wind was rushing by:
Said the World, “This comes from heaven!”
Said my soul, “It is a LIE!”

I looked from out the grating
Of my spirit's dungeon-cell—
Where the harvest-wealth was blooming
Over smiling plain and dell;
And I saw a million paupers
With their foreheads in the dust—
And I saw a million workers
Slay each other for a crust!
And I cried, “O God above!
Shall thy People always die?”
Said the World, “This comes from heaven!”
Said my soul, “It is a LIE!”

126

MEN OF MY COUNTRY.

MEN of my country! Earth is wide—
And souls are kindred still!
Tyrants with hate men's hearts divide—
Freedom with love will thrill!
Oh! not enough—oh! not enough,
That ye nor rob nor kill;
Your brethren ye must nerve and guide
With your own glorious will.

Men of my country! lo! your keels
Are ploughing every sea:
Still, wheresoe'er the bright sun wheels,
There in your might are ye!
Yet not enough—oh! not enough,
That ye yourselves are free—
Still wheresoe'er a patriot kneels
There must your mission be!

Men of my country! lo! our God
Your destiny hath planned:
Where'er a tyrant lifts his rod,
There must ye stay his hand!
Oh! not enough—oh! not enough,
That heaven hath blessed our land—
Where'er the soul of man is trod,
There must ye make your stand.

127

HOPE YE ALWAY.

YOUNG hearts! hope ever!
There's no time for repining while work is undone—
There's no harvesting time save when shineth the sun.
O repine ye, then, never!

True heart! sink never!
Though darkly the clouds overshadow thy sky,
Yet the sun will beam forth, when the shadows roll by;
Darkness lasteth not ever!

Fond heart! faint never!
Though Eros may journey full many a mile,
There's an Anteros

Anteros is the god of mutual love and tenderness —whom Eros is continually seeking. When Venus complained that her son Cupid always seemed a child, she was told that if he had a brother, he would grow up in a short space of time. As soon as Anteros was born, Cupid felt his strength increase and his wings enlarge, but if ever his brother was away from him, he found himself reduced to his ancient shape. From this circumstance it is seen that return of passion gives vigor to love.—

Cic. de Nat.

somewhere, with welcoming smile:
Love endureth forever!

THE SMITHY.

THE night is dark—the road is blind—
The traveller's heart is dreary:
Fogs rise before, rain falls behind;
Both man and steed are weary.

The floods pour fast on either side,
The ground beneath half crumbles;
The panting horse, with nostrils wide,
Neighs, starts, and wildly stumbles.

128

But hark! kling, klang! a hammer-sound—
Stout hammer-blows on iron;
And now a bright blaze gleams around
The shadows that environ.

“Now, God be praised!” the traveller cries—
“The road no more is dreary!
“For there the smith his anvil plies—
“There burns his forge so cheery.

“Kling, klang! the music glads mine ear—
“The blaze my path enlightens;
“There shines it brightly far and near:
“Stream, road, and hill it brightens.”

The traveller spurred his steed once more—
The steed pressed onward lightly;
Till soon before the smithy door
Was drawn his bridle tightly.

Thus said the traveller to the smith—
“Strike on, strike on, my master!
“Our God is still thy labors with:
“Strike on, then, fast and faster!

“And let thy forge-blaze brighter gleam—
“Thy hammer-strokes ring louder:
“Kling-klang thy blows! for well I deem
“No task than thine is prouder!

129

“For Labor's blows shall wake mankind
“With strokes of toil Titanic—
“And forge-like shine the Toiler's mind!—
“Strike on, then, brave Mechanic!”

THE PAUPER'S PLACE.

WHY art thou sad, O father? why is thy brow o'ercast?
Thus I spake a sorrowing man
Whom I oft passed:

Sitting alone by the wayside, begging his daily bread—
Blind he was, and snows of age
Whitened his head.

“Grieving I am,” he answered—“grieving I well may be;
“There's no place in burial ground
For such as me.”

Truly, (I said,) my father—buried thou'lt be, I ween:
Charity will bestow thee place
In churchyard green.

Answered to me that old man, sorrowful answered he:
“Poor-house bed and surgeon's board
Are place for me!”

130

THE POOR.

THE storm is out upon the air—
I hear its hollow sound,
As, seated in my elbow-chair,
In silent thought profound,
I listen to the dropping rain,
That patters on each pane.

Now, shrieking through the stormy night,
The wind is rushing wild;
And far above in heaven's height
The murky clouds are piled:
And not a single star looks down
To smile away the frown.

The signs are creaking in the street,
The vanes are whirling fast;
And drearily the driving sleet
Is borne upon the blast;
And gusty rain, and icy hail,
The close-barred doors assail!

The watchman shrinketh in his box,
As fast the chill rain falls,
And with the clanging city clocks
His solemn warning calls—

131

Or, closer in his mantle wound,
Reluctant stalks his round!

But wandering up and down the streets,
Amid the chilly mist,
Oh! many hapless ones he meets
Upon his round, I wist;
The child of shame, of want, of wo,
Who wanders to and fro.

Ah me! how many houseless ones
Are sinking on the ground—
The outcast, whom the proud one shuns—
Who pity never found,—
The friendless and the orphan child,
Amid the storm so wild.

Creeping away through alleys old,
Before the tempest drear;
With hunger cramped—benumbed with cold,
And shivering with fear,—
The sad one bendeth down his form,
Before the midnight storm.

Oh! there are LITTLE CHILDREN there,
With lean and shrunken limbs,
Within whose eye the tear of care
The light of childhood dims—

132

Pale lips they have, and cheeks so white—
Oh! 'tis a fearful sight!

Hear ye the wind that whistles by—
O thoughtless sons of pride?
On it was borne their broken sigh
Who in the streets abide.
Ye on your beds of down will sleep—
They on the stones must weep.

Feel ye the glowing flame that warms
Your luxury-lapp'd couch?—
Oh! could ye mark the wasted forms
Along the streets that crouch,—
Ye might perchance a moment feel
Your blood, like theirs, congeal!

O! that I had what ye in mirth,
Or worse than mirth, expend!—
I'd buy the noblest name on earth—
“The wretched outcast's friend!”
And treasure up—as incense pure—
The blessings of the Poor.

133

THE POET.

LIKE the wandering camp of Israel, in the wilderness of Zin,
Is the mighty world we dwell in, with its turmoil and its din;
And the Poet, like old Moses, when his thoughts to God aspire,
Holdeth commune with high Heaven, on his spirit's Mount of Fire.

From the camp of old opinions, and the strife of earthly things,
To the Sinai of his spirit, lo! the trusting Poet springs:
And the glorious words of Genius, by Jehovah's fingers wrought,
Like the tablets of high teachings, are engraven on his thought.

Then, with ardent hopes and longings, to the camp of men he turns,
While the reflex of God's splendor on his lofty forehead burns:
Lo! they kneel before an idol—lo! they worship senseless gold,
Like the wilderness idolaters, before the calf of old!

134

Can ye blame the lofty Poet that he turns in scorn away
From the grovelling souls around him that are moulded in the clay?
Can ye blame him, if, despairing, he shall dash his thoughts to earth:—
Break the tablets of his genius, that in God have had their birth?

HOPE ON.

HOPE on!
Even when thy heaven is clouded,
Seest thou not,
Where the dark night is shrouded,
Stars look out?
Though they are hidden, still they shine—
Soon shalt thou see their light divine!

Hope on!
Often the dark shadow falleth
Over thy soul:
O'er thee the storm that appalleth
Often must roll:
Yet but remember, light must be,
Else were the shadow unseen by thee!

135

THE TOILER'S HOPE.

ON this old and glorious earth,
Toiling all their lifetime through,
Millions live who from their birth
Still have bowed them to the few:
They have bent, and groaned, and striven,
By the lash of misery driven,—
What hath God to these men given?

Toiling, toiling, still they bear—
Still to toil the master urges;
If a murmuring word they dare,
Straight 'tis hushed by tyrant scourges.
Yet these men have deathless spirits;
Life from God each heart inherits,—
Tell me, then, if death it merits!

Gold hath made these mortals slaves;
Gold hath bowed their suppliant hands;
From their birthdays to their graves,
Chained are they with cruel bands:
They have suffered—they have waited—
They have been as outcasts rated:
Say—were they by God thus fated?

136

God will give these bondmen friends—
Friends of thought, and friends of action:
Thoughts that shape out glorious ends—
Acts that are not ruled by faction.
And these friends, in truth and reason,
(Holding noble deeds no treason,)
Soon will crush the bondman's prison.

EARTH-SHARING.

LISTEN, workers! listen!
Ye who all your lives are toiling,
In the field and workshop moiling,—
Lo! your serpent-wrongs are coiling
Closer round you. Listen!

Ponder, workers! ponder!
While ye poise your iron sledges,
While ye fix your rending wedges,—
Lo! your strength and skill are pledges
Of your manhood. Ponder!

Listen, workers! listen!
Sledges may crush else than matter:
Wedges may your curses scatter,—
Toilers once again may batter
Moral Bastiles. Listen!

137

Ponder, workers! ponder!
God gave equal earth to mortals,
Ere they crossed fair Eden's portals:—
Where's the ancient law that foretells
Mortal slavery? Ponder!

Answer, workers! answer!
Have the woes which ye are bearing,
Have the chains your limbs are wearing,
Palsied all the hope and daring
Of your spirits? Answer!

Listen, workers! listen!
Earth is yours—the broad, wide guerdon
Given to man with life's first burden;—
God hath set his seal and word on
Man's true title. Listen!

Ponder, workers! ponder!
Hold this truth within your keeping,
Till the harvest you are reaping:—
God is landlord, and unsleeping
Watches o'er you. Ponder!

138

HEART AND SOUL.

O HUMAN heart! by weary sorrow withered—
O soul! in darkness to oblivion groping;—
Why are ye now no longer bravely hoping?
Why is the mighty will so chained and tethered?
Answer me, Heart and Soul.

Alas! we dare not with our curses wrestle,
Each abject thought in willing slavery crouches:
Alas! men sleep while woes among them nestle—
Nestle, like snakes, within their very couches.

O human heart! these woes are not forever—
O human soul! gird on thy holy armor:
Ye may dissolve the spell and foil the charmer;
Ye may at once each rusted shackle sever.
Why weep, then, Heart and Soul?

'Tis that the sons of men in crime are suckled—
Infants in years are dotards in deceiving:
Sorrows, like leeches, to men's hearts are cleaving—
Want, like a slave-chain, on the soul is buckled.

O human heart! to thee hath Hope been given;
O human soul! thy purpose ne'er should falter:
Trust that the flame of Love shall fall from Heaven—
Fall and illume Truth's long-benighted altar!
Hope ye still, Heart and Soul!

139

TRUST IN GOD.

FATHER in heaven! my spirit knew Thee not!
But when the fearful storm, that wrecked my heart,
Beat round the fortress of my life, and wrought
My brain to madness—and the poisoned dart
Of hopeless grief (uncured, unreached by art)
Was rusting in my soul,—my maddened thought,
Concentrate, burst its bonds, and its Creator sought.

Thee, God! I saw. My spirit-eyes looked out,
And (through the cloud-veil of the world) beheld
The throned and radiant Conqueror of Doubt:
The mists of human passion were dispelled—
My soul shook off the terror that had quelled
The life within it, and, in joy devout,
Echoed the seraph-song, and swelled the triumph-shout.

Mysterious God! my spirit looked on Thee!
Thee—the Eternal! High! Unchangeable!
Back, through the vista of eternity.—
All that the soul's imaginings might tell
I saw, and leaped, rejoicing, from the spell
That bound me in my mortal destiny.—
My soul forsook its chains, in its Creator free!

140

GOD AND MAN.

LET nature judge! Are all things right?
Or is the Present wrong?
Why are there wo, and shame, and blight,
To paralyze my song?

My soul would wind itself in love
Around all human things!—
For struggling man to mount above,
My songs should be as wings!

Why do the outcast crowd my path,
And fasten on my heart?
Why do the vicious wake my wrath,
Or cause my tears to start?

It is not right! I ask ye all,—
As God is just and wise,—
Why vice still holds mankind in thrall?
Why virtue, struggling, dies?

Man on his brother's heart hath trod—
Man is man's mortal foe;
Man is antagonist to God!—
This only do I know.

God help us! we have threescore years
And ten, at most, to live—
And yet we scatter griefs and tears!—
We pray—yet ne'er forgive!

141

OUR MOTHER EARTH.

WHENCE arise the springs that nourish
All Creation from its birth?
Whence spring up the oaks, and flourish?—
From the Earth—our mother Earth!
Where are gems and crystals hidden?
Where are ores of wondrous worth?
Whence are fire and heat upbidden?—
From the Earth—our mother Earth!

Whence arise the green oases,
In the desert's sandy dearth?
What is life's support and basis?
'Tis the Earth—our mother Earth!
Bread, and fire, and crystal water—
All within our being's girth:
Gold and gems, to those who sought her,—
Hath she given—mother Earth!

She is Mankind's nurse and servant—
Still our mother and our slave:
Still the same, in labor fervent,
From our birth-day to our grave!
Never yet hath God ordained her
To be trodden by the few!
Grasping lords have but profaned her;
And their crime they yet shall rue!

142

Like the seed within her bosom,
Sleeps a future, yet, of Right!—
Man shall see his hopes in blossom!
Man shall yet reveal his might!
Then, no one, above another,
Shall assert his nobler birth;
But each man shall share his mother—
Share his glorious mother—Earth!

THE UNSOLD LANDS.

A BILLION of acres of unsold land

“The United States claim more than 1,000,000,000 acres of unsettled lands.”—

Senate Document, 416. XXIXth Congress, (last session.)

Are lying in grievous dearth;
And millions of men in the image of God
Are starving—all over the earth!
Oh! tell me, ye sons of America!
How much men's lives are worth!

Ten hundred millions of acres good,
That never knew spade nor plough;—
And a million of souls, in our goodly land,
Are pining in want, I trow:
And orphans are crying for bread this day,
And widows in misery bow!

143

To whom do these acres of land belong?
And why do they thriftless lie?
And why is the widow's lament unheard—
And stifled the orphan's cry?
And why are the poor-house and jail so full—
And the gallows-tree built high?

Those millions of acres belong to Man!
And his claim is—that he NEEDS!
And his title is sealed by the hand of God—
Our God! who the raven feeds:
And the starving soul of each famished man
At the throne of justice pleads!

Ye may not heed it, ye haughty men,
Whose hearts as rocks are cold!—
But the time will come when the fiat of God
In thunder shall be told!
For the voice of the great I AM hath said,
That “the land shall not be sold!”

EPIGRAM.

“God help me!” cried the Poor Man:
And the Rich Man said, “Amen!”
And the Poor Man died at the Rich Man's door:—
God helped the Poor Man then!

144

THE LANDLESS.

THE landless! the landless!
The wrestlers for a crust—
Behold to outer darkness
These wretched men are thrust.
I hear their sullen moanings;
Their curses low and deep;
And I see their bodies writhing
Like a maniac in his sleep!
Will no lightning rend their fetters?
Will no sunbeam pierce their eyes?—
In the name of truth and manhood,
Will they never—never rise?

The landless! the landless!
They have no household gods:
Their father's graves are trampled—
For strangers own the sods.
They have no home nor country—
No roof nor household hearth,—
Though all around them blossometh
The beautiful glad earth!
They fight a stranger's battles,
And they build a stranger's dome—
But the landless!—the landless!
God help them!—have no home!

145

HOMES FOR THE HOMELESS.

HOMES for the homeless!
Our prayers still rise:
Justice is faithful—
And Truth never dies.
Roses for nettles,
And plenty for dearth;
Homes for the homeless,
On God's free earth.

Homes for the orphan—
The widow forlorn;
Homes for the exile—
Where'er he was born.
Give us, O country!
Our right to the soil:—
Earth shall be gladsome
With generous toil.

Homes for the homeless—
Who famish for bread—
Earth for the living,
And earth for the dead.
Give us our birthright,
O tyrannous gold!
The land is our CHARTER—
It shall not be sold!

146

THE ACRES AND THE HANDS.

“THE earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof,”
Said God's most holy word:—
The water hath fish, and the land hath flesh,
And the air hath many a bird;
And the soil is teeming o'er all the earth,
And the earth has numberless lands;
Yet millions of hands want acres—
While millions of acres want hands!

Sunlight, and breezes, and gladsome flowers,
Are over the earth spread wide;
And the good God gave these gifts to men—
To men who on earth abide:
Yet thousands are toiling in poisonous gloom,
And shackled with iron bands,—
While millions of hands want acres—
And millions of acres want hands!

Never a foot hath the poor man here,
To plant with a grain of corn;
And never a plot where his child may cull
Fresh flowers in the dewy morn.
The soil lies fallow—the woods grow rank;
Yet idle the poor man stands!
Oh! millions of hands want acres—
And millions of acres want hands!

147

'Tis writ, that “ye shall not muzzle the ox
That treadeth out the corn!”
But behold! ye shackle the poor man's hands,
That have all earth's burdens borne!
The LAND is the gift of a bounteous God—
And TO LABOR his word commands,—
Yet millions of hands want acres—
And millions of acres want hands!

Who hath ordained that the Few should hoard
Their millions of useless gold?—
And rob the earth of its fruits and flowers,
While profitless soil they hold?
Who hath ordained that a parchment scroll
Shall fence round miles of lands,—
When millions of hands want acres—
And millions of acres want hands!

'Tis a glaring LIE on the face of day—
This robbery of men's rights!
'Tis a lie, that the word of the Lord disowns—
'Tis a curse that burns and blights!
And 'twill burn and blight till the people rise,
And swear, while they break their bands—
That the hands shall henceforth have acres,
And the acres henceforth have hands!

148

KEEP IT BEFORE THE PEOPLE.

KEEP IT BEFORE THE PEOPLE—
That the earth was made for man!
That flowers were strown,
And fruits were grown,
To bless and never to ban;
That sun and rain,
And corn and grain,
Are yours and mine, my brother!—
Free gifts from heaven,
And freely given,
To one as well as another!

Keep it before the people—
That man is the image of God!
His limbs or soul
Ye may not control
With shackle, or shame, or rod!
We may not be sold,
For silver or gold:
Neither you nor I, my brother!
For Freedom was given,
By God from heaven,
To one as well as another!

149

Keep it before the people—
That famine, and crime, and wo,
Forever abide,
Still side by side,
With luxury's dazzling show;
That Lazarus crawls
From Dives' halls,
And starves at his gate, my brother!—
Yet Life was given,
By God from heaven,
To one as well as another!

Keep it before the people—
That the laborer claims his meed:
The right of Soil,
And the right to toil,
From spur and bridle freed;
The right to bear,
And the right to share,
With you and me, my brother!—
Whatever is given,
By God from heaven,
To one as well as another!

150

THE POOR MAN'S FATHERLAND.

WHERE is the Poor Man's Fatherland?
Is 't where his sire was wed?
Is 't where his mother, with gentle hand,
His infant footsteps led?
Not so, not so! he knoweth well
That strangers now in that old home dwell.

Where is the poor man's Fatherland?
Is 't where his childhood passed?
Is 't where, like river o'er golden sand,
His gladsome youth fled fast?
Not so, not so! wo worth the day!
He wanders far from those scenes away.

Where is the poor man's Fatherland?
Is 't where he toils and strives?
Is 't where he heareth a lord's command,
Or weareth pauper gyves?
Not so, not so! his master's will
May cast him forth—as a wanderer still.

151

Truly he hath no Fatherland!
On all this wide, wide earth;
In life he dwelleth by penury banned,
An alien from his birth;
And dead, he hath no rood of ground—
Not even the space of a churchyard mound!

Truly, O Lord! why tarriest thou?
Thy children, suffering, wait:
Their bread is eaten by sweat of brow,
Within the stranger's gate.
Yet hope they still—those alien Poor;
Thy Word for them is a Promise sure.

Surely thou seest a sparrow fall,
And hearest the raven's cry!
And all the millions who dwell in thrall,
Beneath thy mercies lie.
With brow erect they soon shall stand,
And all the earth be their Fatherland!

152

WHO OWNETH AMERICA'S SOIL.

WHO owneth America's soil?
Is it he who graspeth the hard red gold;
Whose glittering gains are by millions told;
Who bindeth his slaves to the woof and loom,
And chaineth their souls in a living tomb,—
The tomb of hopeless toil?
Not he, not he—by Heaven!

Who shieldeth America's land?
Is it he who counteth his ships by scores;
Who plucketh his gains from a thousand shores;
Who buyeth and selleth, and worketh not,
And holdeth in pride what by fraud he got—
With hard and griping hand?
Not he, not he—by Heaven!

Who guardeth America's right?
Is it he who eateth the orphan's bread,
And crusheth the poor with his grinding tread;
Who flingeth his bank-note lies abroad,
And buildeth to worship a golden god,
A shrine to Mammon's might?
Not he, not he—by Heaven!

153

Not these, not these—by Heaven!
But to those who labor for God and Man;
Who work their part in the world's great plan,—
Who plant good seed in the desert's dearth,
And bring forth treasures from brave old Earth;
To these the soil is given—
To these, to these—by Heaven!

To these must the soil belong:
To the men of all climes whose souls are true—
Or Pagan, or Christian, or Turk, or Jew;
To the men who will hallow our glorious soil—
The millions who hope, and the millions who toil
For the Right against the Wrong:
To these shall the soil be given—
To these, to these—by Heaven

154

EPODE.

NOW Heaven's eternal stars, like fires,
Gleam through the wintry sky!
I lift mine Iron Harp on high—
I strike the last stroke on these wires,
While sad winds hurry by.

My task is not yet done,—but Night
Gloometh around my brow:
I struggle with my fate, yet bow!
I murmur not—for, high and bright,
Those stars shine on me now!

Those stars are signs that still on earth,
Flashing amid our shames,
And shining forth like altar-flames,
Are loving hearts and souls of worth,
With high and glorious names.

Still golden harpings heavenward float—
Wing-like to lift his soul—
From HIM whose brook-like feelings stole
Through music, like a dove's low note,
Where Harvard's waters roll.

155

Still Lowell clasps, like cherub strong,
Lovingly clasps his lyre;
And flashes forth his heart of fire,
And rolls the river of his song
In fountains from each wire.

Still Whittier, with high purpose fraught,
Toileth in Freedom's war:
His harp-strings are the chains he tore
From slaves, where rings his iron thought,
Like hammer-strokes of Thor.

Too long the Poet's falchion bright
Sheathéd in gold had slept!
The Iron Blade hath fitly leapt;
And now for Human Ruth and Right
All Harps shall soon be swept.

157

Parnassus in Pillory.

“Lend me your EARS.
Shakspeare.

158

TO His Friend, James Lesley, Jr. OF PHILADELPHIA, AS AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF APPRECIATION, This Satire IS DEDICATED BY MOTLEY MANNERS, Esq.

159

O thou who whilome, with unsparing jibe
And scorching satire, lashed the scribbling tribe;
Thou, who on Roman pimp and parasite
Didst pour the vials of thy righteous spite;—
Imperial Horace! let thy task be mine—
Let truth and justice sanctify my line!

And thou! relentless Draco of the schools,
Whose laws were scored upon the backs of fools!—
Thou bi-tongued genius, from whose magic lips
Poison for knaves, for good men honey, drips!
Thou Poet-Lacon, withering with a verb,
And reining folly with a figure's curb,—
Thou of the Dunciad! animate my strain;
For vain my task if 'tis not in thy vein!

160

As in some butcher's barricaded stall,
A thousand prisoned rats gnaw, squeak, and crawl,
While at the entrance, held by stalwart hands,
A panting terrier strives to burst his bands;—
With eyes inflamed and glittering teeth displayed,
Half turns to bite the hand by which he's stayed;—
So writhes and pants my terrier muse to chase
The rats of letters from creation's face.

Far scurvier vermin these, my biped game:
Rats gnaw but books—these gnaw the author's fame;
Holding Parnassus as a mammoth cheese,
Which, climbing not, they nibble as they please;
And plying tooth and claw so fast and well,
That the whole mount is like a hollow shell.
Pharaoh was plagued with locusts for his crimes—
Happy was Pharaoh to escape our times:
When myriad insects, plumed with pens of steel,
Buzz like some thrifty housewife's ceaseless wheel—
Buzz, but beyond the buzz all likeness dwindles,
Save that their brains be warps, their legs be spindles.

Down, terrier, down! we'll drop the canine form,
And incarnate the buzzing insect-swarm.
Let us invoke the Bards—as once, in Wales,
King Edward did—from mountains, swamps, and vales;

161

Convened them all, then broke each harp and head:

The coup d' état of Edward I. (so effectual that the Cambrian muse has remained tongue-tied ever since) might be imitated once a century with good results in every country. Though unmerciful, it would certainly be (poetically) just.

(Would that our bards had such a wise King Ned!)
Let us invoke them—and, as up they spring,
Shoot them, as boys shoot crows upon the wing:
Then shall their death-songs poetize the blast,
Like dying swan-notes—sweet, because the last.

Ah! vain to strive—inglorious to succeed—
To scotch the snake, yet not destroy its breed;
Small is the gain when for each foe that falls,
A foe more mischievous mine eyes appals;
Thus when the hydra's heads were struck to earth,
The dust that formed them gave them fresher birth.
Ah, gentle muse! if e'er, with ardent fire,
Thou seek'st to gild our cis-atlantic lyre,
How must thy lips with heavenly satire smile,
To note the hands which now that harp defile!
How must thy gaze, as o'er our glorious landscape
It roves, (from Florida's far reef to Ann's cape,)—
How must it blink, to mark the frenzied eyes
Of myriad bards clairvoyant through the skies!
Oh, hapless land of mine! whose country-presses
Labor with poets and with poetesses;
Where Helicon is quaffed like beer at table,
And Pegasus is “hitched” in every stable;
Where each smart dunce presumes to print a journal,
And every journalist is dubbed a “colonel;”

162

Where lovesick girls on chalk and charcoal thrive,
And prove (by singing) they're unfit to wive;
Where Gray might Miltons by the score compute—
“Inglorious” all, but, ah! by no means “mute.”

And whom to pounce on first—O vengeful muse?
Faith! they're so near alike, 'tis hard to choose.
A stereotyped and ancient form they bear—
Like sheepskin smallclothes of a century's wear.
Jack Ketch, when felons are about to die,
Divides their garments—but so will not I:
Though rainbow-hued, like Joseph's coat, their dress
(Should all exchange) could scarce fit each one less:
Each eyes his fellow's garb with crafty glare—
Some well-known patch he recognises there:
Some button, stolen where he stole his own—
Some diamond brooch, with ostentation shown,
Which he will swear is paste, and, in a trice,
Prove that he bought one like it, at half-price.
Motley and mean in truth these bipeds be—
A scurvier set ne'er marched through Coventry.
And, what inflames mine anger as I gaze,
His stolen shreds each knave with pride displays:
This one wears breeches that might make his shroud—
This in a child's caul his huge head would crowd;
This dabbles daintily with French fabrique—
This wears a helmet o'er his visage sleek:

163

All stolen—all misused, and brought to waste!
Gods! if they must thieve, why not thieve with taste?

But, hold! are these in truth Columbia's bards?—
Do such assume the muse's high regards?
Are there no souls where loud Niagara roars?—
No hearts on Mississippi's sounding shores?
Are there no ears where tempests rend the skies?—
No eyes where forests gleam with myriad dyes?
No harps where every air is melody?—
Are there no songs where every voice is free?

List, O my muse! amid the jargon dire
Of screeching voice and worse than tuneless lyre;
'Mid all the din which racks our addled brains,
I hear the rippling rivers of sweet strains:
I hear where, trembling through the leafy glen,
The poet's soul talks melody with men:
I feel when Bryant—in his dreamy youth—
Anoints my heart with loveliness and truth:
I thrill with Halleck's ancient clasp of fire,
And bow my heart to “Harvard's” earlier lyre;

The reputation of Longfellow (to whom allusion is here made) will rest more upon the merits of his early and less pretending lyrics, than upon the “Golden Legend,” or even “Evangeline.”

While clarion sounds that swing beneath the stars,
And crashing thoughts, like battling scimitars,
Roll round me from the mighty harps of those
Whose songs are victories over Freedom's foes.

Well, well! it may be that, amid the masses
Who in our journals write themselves down asses:

164

It may be there exist some score or better
Of bards as well in spirit as in letter.
With these I've naught to do—or, if I scan them,
To prove they've brains, it needs be I trepan them.
I come here as a CRITIC—as a SATIRIST—
And if I argue right or wrong, whose matter is't?
“Norfolk! we must have knocks!”—so, who's not equal
To the encounter, may regret the sequel!

Poetry has its “amateurs”—who wile
Their listless leisure with the muse's smile;
Who simper sweetly in a Milton's tongue,
And lisp the lofty themes that Homer sung:
Merely for pastime—really but in sport—
To “try the hand”—or “keep it in”—in short,
To show that if their own fame they had built on,
Homer had superseded been, and Milton.

Our country swarms with bards who've “crossed the water,”
And think their native land earth's meanest quarter.
Bards who have heard the gondoliers sing Tasso,
Seen Arabs eat, and Indians throw the lasso;
Bards who have travelled, and of course must know
All sorts of flowers that on Parnassus grow.
Your “graceful poets” these—your “versifiers,”
Whose garlands are all roses and no briers;

165

Who steam to Havre—take the Rhone or Rhine;
Ascend Mont Blanc half-way—then stop and dine;
Muse (just like Byron) on the Bridge of Sighs;
Quote Rogers freely; prate of golden skies;
Eat maccaroni; ask where “Peter's keys” are;

It is currently reported that a question like this was propounded by a well-known travelling “litterateur,” after having been shown through the Vatican.

Find out what's meant by “dead as Julius Cæsar;”
Take notes (on railroads) of the towns they ride through,
(Until they get the “Traveller's Pocket Guide” through,)—
Then home return, and (may the gods forgive them!)
Print books whose leather shall at least outlive them.

These good men are not dangerous—no! far from it,
Though each esteems himself a star or comet.
And, faith, their muse describes eccentric orbits,
As if her Pegasus had need of jawbits;
With foreign airs their sales are best inflated;
Puffs are they sure of who with wind are freighted;
Truly your travelled bard is fortune's favorite—
He sees the world, and makes the public pay for it.

The Public—huge, half-reasoning, like an elephant,
Of its own good is half the time irrelevant;
It takes on trust a book that Griswold

Rufus Wilmot Griswold, D.D. LL.D. The world is indebted to this distinguished bibliopole for the celebrated compendium of classic verse known as “Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America.” The work is, I am told, still extant.

edits,
And quarterly reviews like gospel credits;
It hath an ostrich maw, and can digest
Sticks, stocks, and stones, and all with equal zest;

166

It seeks like mad the “trial” of some bishop;
For Harper's pictured “Bible,” throngs it his shop;
Swallows “John Donkey's” sad attempts at humor,
And thinks Frost's books as wise as those of Numa.

But revenons à nos moutons—that's sheep—
Return we to our—bards—who've crossed the deep:
Our travel-poets—whom we well may call so,
For he who reads their travels, travails also;
Our cognoscenti, whom we all should follow,
As cousins-german to the real Apollo;
Whose muse, in corkscrew curls and boddice waist,
Waltzes or polks, by finger-tips embraced;
While, with her nose retroussée and most haughty,
She lisps—“Now, Mister Writer, don't be naughty!”

What time Nat. Willis, in the daily papers,
Published receipts of shoemakers and drapers;

Nathaniel Parker Willis will occupy no small space in the literary and social history of his time. He calls himself “the best abused man in the country,” and has managed to figure extensively in poetry, gossip, libel and divorce suits-at-law, journalism and—snobism. The printing (en masse) of his tradesmen's bills, (when accused of non-payment of them,) was a stroke of advertising which certainly merited a receipt in full. Beau Brummel could have run another score on the strength of it—but genius is sometimes unequal.

What time, in sooth, his “Mirror” flashed its rays,
Like Barnum's “Drummond” on the Broadway gaze;
When lisping misses, fresh from seminaries,
Worshipped “mi-boy” and “brigadier”

Willis published a daily paper, called, “The Mirror,” (in a street near Barnum's Museum and Drummond Light,) in which himself and partner (G. P. Morris) were affectedly distinguished as “mi-boy” and “brigadier.” The “Mirror” is still printed—but is now little read, and less esteemed.

as lares;
When youngsters mad—(scribendi cacoëthes)
Found that Castalia's stream was drugged like Lethe's:
Then Bayard Taylor

J. Bayard Taylor is a noted traveller, poet, lecturer, and one of the editors of the N. Y. Tribune. His infant muse was dry-nursed by Willis, and cradled in “The Mirror,” after which he accomplished a pedestrian tour over Europe, and wrote a book called “Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff,” (rather singular mediums of vision.) George Washington Dixon, the literary-musical-pedestrian, has walked more miles than Taylor, but not with such profit to himself. Since printing his last batch of “Travels,” Taylor has subsided into a lecturer, retailing his dollar books in two-shilling readings—a plan shrewdly beneficial to public and author. As a lecturer, Bayard is as good as Greeley, and Greeley is the worst in the country.

—(protegé of Natty)
Dixon-like, “walked” into the “literati;”
And first to proper use his genius put,
Like ballet-girls, by showing “Views a-Foot.”

167

Taylor's a pushing and industrious youth,
And so deserves—that I should tell the truth;
I wish him well, and own that I'm not sorry at
His premium hit, as Barnum's poet-laureate;

Taylor was the winner of a prize of $200 offered by the noted P. T. Barnum (showman) for “the best” song to be sung by Jenny Lind.

(I wish all bards might win reward so aureate)—
If the high station suits his muse, why let it—
And for the prize—I'm glad that he did get it!
Taylor's a youth of promise and good sense,
But for his genius—“it's no consequence!”
He'll do to oscillate (when the air quite still is,)
'Twixt Horace-Greeley and Mæcenas-Willis.
His “knapsack” yarn, however, is worth unravelling,
By all who'd learn the cheapest modes of travelling:
'Tis snug, as down the glorious Rhine one floats,
To know one's passage only costs ten groats;
'Tis nice, while viewing St. Peter's, to be told I
Can get good buttered buns for just two soldi;
So Taylor's muse presents a physiognomy
Invaluable—to lovers of economy.

Here's Tuckerman

Of Mr. Henry T. Tuckerman little is known save that he has travelled, and is a critic in matters of “awt.”

—calm, sentimental, placid—
A Roman punch without the strength or acid.
While Taylor cheapens fares and prices lava,
Tuckerman at “La Scala” murmurs “brava!”
A delicate muse is his—genteel, exclusive—
Marvelling, no doubt, why critics are abusive;
'Tis vulgar (as Lord Chesterfield admonished)
To let folks see us startled or astonished;

168

And T., (a well-bred, gentlemanly poet,)
If he has feeling, never lets us know it.
He sees Niagara, and says—“I declare!”
Applauds a thunder-storm, with—“Pretty fair!”
Reads Milton listlessly, with half-closed lids,
(And wonders if the devil wore white kids:)
Likes us to know that he has been to Italy—
Thinks that Vesuvius does eruptions prettily;
Whistles “Il Figaro”—quotes scraps of Dante—
A Yankee transcript of the dilettante.

We have our ballad-poets—(Lord preserve us!)
Song-mongers, sonneteers, and minstrels “nervous.”
When “woodman” Morris wished to “spare that tree,”
Surely no seer's prophetic eyes had he;
Else had he known that blockheads without number
Would from his luckless stock the country lumber;
Smooth, unctuous Morris

Brig. Gen. N. Y. State Militia, Resident-Editor “Home Journal,” Author of “Woodman! Spare that Tree.” Demi-civil and demi-martial, he blends delicately the strength of Catullus with the fire of Wordsworth.

—bard and brigadier—
(Alas! that Morris can't be Moore is clear;)
A household poet, whose domestic muse
Is soft as milk, and sage as Mother Goose;
Whose lyrics (sought for with a kind of rabies,)
Like “Sherman's Drops,” are cried for by the babies.
Ah! luckless bard! why did his hydra-blood
Raise from our soil so fierce a ballad-brood?
Why are the hapless men of music-stores

Our American music-publishers are noted for printing the veriest trash in the shape of verse. They “never mind the words,” so that the requisite jingle be preserved—and the requisite economy; for more penurious fellows than are some of these might seldom be met. Many a dollar do they realize by the sale of poetry for which the poor author never received a penny. Let them “adapt” this verse, which is furnished gratis:

O Walker, Hall, and Fiot,
O music-selling trio,
For ballads furnished free, O
Sing jubilate deo!

Dogged by a race of Yankee troubadours?

169

Why is the yardstick slighted for the lyre—
The pestle melted by poetic fire?
Our watchmen's sleep disturbed by vocal woes,
Guitar'd, catarrh'd, by red-haired Romeos?
Why, but because each whining snob has learned
How feet are measured and how tunes are turned;
Cipher with tropes his master's ledger spoils—
Snip puts to press his sonnets as he moils;
Crispin with thread poetic waxeth strong,
And Chip, who chiseled wood, now chisels song;
And all because—(forgive, O dread Apollo!)
Where Morris leads, Tom, Dick, and Hal must follow;
Aping his strain, with throats all cracked and wheezy,
“If Morris sings,” cry they—“sure, singing's easy!”

'Tis said that to another pen belongs
The authorship of Morris's best songs;
But sure am I, no charity's in this—
For, if he's not the author, some one is;
Matters it little who incurs the name—
Poor human nature suffers still the same!
Some one first led (to set our rhymesters crazy)
This dance—(or morris-dance, or not, is hazy;)
Some one cried “Besom!” and, behold! the word
A thousand watery fiends from slumber stirred;
Till now, alas! (as in the German fable,)
To stop the flood no human power is able.

170

We have our Dramatists—but oh!—since “Brutus,”

“Brutus, or The Fall of Tarquin” by John Howard Payne, the author of “Home, sweet Home,” is one of the very few plays by Americans that have become stock-pieces through their own merit. “Spartacus,” “Metamora,” and “Jack Cade” all owe their popularity to Edwin Forrest, the actor, for whom they were written.

Though hard the wretched tribe have striven to suit us—
Though “Spartacus” shall split the groundlings' ears;
Though “Metamora” scowl at crowded tiers;
And Kentish Aylmere win the plaudit long—
There's naught to brag of in our tragic song.
Though Boker bores with well-intentioned plays,
And Mathews tries to please five hundred ways;
Though Sargent, Willis, and the martial Reid,
(And Lord knows how many of lesser breed,)
Have socked and buskined through the five-act folly,
Their jokes are wept—and jeered their melancholy.

I trust in Uncle Sam—believe in dollars—
Believe in mad dogs and phonetic scholars:
Believe in Sheba—she of David's bath, whose
Lord was slain—believe in Corny Mathews,

Cornelius Mathews, nicknamed “Puffer Hopkins,” (from a novel with that title, of which he was the unhappy author,) wrote two plays, “Jacob Leisler” and “Witchcraft,” both produced by Murdoch, the tragedian, and both played with equal success, i. e. none at all. But Mathews has always shown himself a staunch advocate of the necessity of an “International Copyright Law,” and for this (if for no other merit,) deserves the good will of American authors.

And more than this, believe that he called “Puffer,”
Than those who laugh at him is ten times tougher.
Though Murdoch, rash, but doubtless patriotic,
Damn'd native plays in preference to exotic:
Though “Witchcraft” saved not hapless Puffer's name,
And “Jacob” built no ladder for his fame;
Though adverse fates foredoom his best intents,
And even his hits are chalked as accidents,—
Yet I'll maintain, with all my heart and will,
That Mathews means well to his country still;

171

Mayhap booksellers are his worst revilers,
Mayhap he's barked at by those curs, “compilers;”
Mayhap the hate of critic hacks he bears,
Because his egotism beats even theirs;
Yet for their hate, I hate thee not, Cornelius,—
(Faith, for these things I like thee—tanto melius)—
I like thee, spite of all thy damnéd plays,
Thy “weak inventions”—(as King Richard says)—
For truly many a dog who'd bite thy heel,
Has had good cause its honest weight to feel;
I like thee for that thou hast richly flayed,
With good goose-quill, the thin-skins of “the trade;”
And dared amid the yelping pack to stand
For “Author's Rights!”—so, “Puffer!” here's my hand!

Whilome where Schuylkill runs and Delaware,
(And Franklin's statue points to State-House square,)
A bard did write and publish, (hapless doom!)
And chose “Poor Scholar” for his nomme de plume.
He wrote a play—albeit for cash or barter—

It is told of a certain Philadelphia lessee, that he was used to offer to authors, for their plays, “half cash—half truck;” the latter euphonious word signifying merchandize, or “orders” for seats. Certes, one noted manager, who was engaged in the “patent-medicine line,” was in the habit of underlining his bills of the day with quack advertisements, (e.g.)

“Mr. BRUTUS KEAN COOKE, Tragedian, from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, will appear on Thursday Evening.

Mdlle Rosaletta, the Celebrated Danseuse, on Wednesday Night.

N. B.—A new American Play in rehearsal.

N. B.—The celebrated Hydro-Telestic Pills and Vermifuge Balm, can be had at the Box Office by the dozen, single box, or package.”

And christened it (prophetic name!) “Love's Martyr.”
'Twas played—half-damn'd—and then, in desperation,
The author sealed its doom—by publication;
A thing unwise—all men of sense must say so:
I've had a dozen damn'd—and let them stay so.

Alas! “Love's Martyr!”—long ago departed!
Ne'er lived a healthy man so “broken-hearted:”

172

A six-foot “blighted being,” long he wore
His braided frock-coat buttoned down before.
“One morn they missed him” on the Chestnut pave—
The next his trusting barber 'gan to rave;
The next—but let our Mexic annals tell
How fiercely fought the bard, how long and well;
Till home returned, with modest voice he claimed
To be—of all the brave—the bravest named:
Which being denied, for London straight he started,
Where “Punch” perhaps may print his “Broken-Hearted.”

Mr. Mayne Reid was much addicted to printing a poem called “The Broken-Hearted” in every unfortunate newspaper to which he had access. At last he flung his lost hopes (“Love's Martyr” included) into the Mexican War, from which he returned unharmed, and (perhaps to establish his reputation for boldness) applied for a sword bequeathed by General Jackson to the “bravest soldier of the next war.”

Who's next upon the mimic scene? Ah, truly,
'Twere well, my muse, you come to English duly.
Griswold, whose voice in poetry's oracular,
Whose awful fiat stamps each bard's vernacular,—
Griswold opines that Tom, ycleped “The Rhymer,”
On steep Parnassus yet may be a climber;
And proves, by one most nautical “Ben Bolt,”
That “Donkey John” 's of Pegasus a colt.

Dr. Thomas Dunn English (whom Poe so mercilessly noticed as “Dunn Brown”) is a most incongruous author; has written some of the best and worst things in the language. His touching ballad of “Ben Bolt” is a house-hold song. He was at one time principal writer for a “funny” periodical printed in Philadelphia, called “John Donkey”—the best attempt at a “Punch” that our dyspeptic jokers ever perpetrated.

I'll not deny—for they may read who run—
That by Dunn English is the English done;
His “Bolt” may bar Griswoldian criticism,
But I must scan him through a satire's prism;
So without gloves, this surly Tom I'll handle,
And hope, at least, “the sport is worth the candle.”

173

Our “Rhymer's” critic-lash, in sooth they tell us,
Cuts like a knout—(i' faith my muse grows jealous;)
Surnamed “The Bitter” he—his threatening growl
Greeting young Orpheus like a Cerberus-howl—
(Young Orpheus fresh from college or the counter,
With harp in hand to catch a muse and mount her:)
A critic he, whose “cut-and-slash” is mighty;
A bard, whose flights it must be owned are flighty;
A dramatist, whose tragic muse has flitted
Proud o'er the pit—but only to be pitied!

I pr'ythee, Tom, what mill supplies thy paper?
What gas-house furnishes thy “midnight taper?”
Hast thou Briareus' arms, or, with antennæ,
Dost grasp a thousand pens, to turn a penny!
I heard a speech to-day—'twas English wrote it,
The journal's leader—they from English quote it;
I bought a book—Dunn English on the cover;
I sung a song—lo! English as a lover!
Lawyer, and doctor, farmer, bard, and playwright,
O, motley Tom! in one thing, pr'ythee, stay right!
Waste not thyself pursuing shadowy vapors;
Cut not thy real work—but cut thy capers!
Shape for thy Future's years some work whose might
Shall mock the tasks which now thy powers invite;
Strike the brave harp for man—or break its strings;
For Heaven hears only when a full heart sings.

174

Here's Byron-Boker, with a “sweet mustache:”

Mr. Geo. H. Boker, (prænominated “Byron” by his friend Willis,) author of “Calaynos,” “Anne Boleyn,” “The Betrothal,” etc. “Calaynos” was acted at Sadler's Wells, a third-rate London playhouse, whereat our critics (as in duty bound) acknowledged its merits. Boker has genius, but inclines to the American “lake school” of Tennysonian imitators. Like Bayard Taylor, he cultivates liberally a delicate hirsute attraction—a high recommendation; for it is reported that when the last-mentioned “walking-gentleman” lectured at Kalamazoo, (Mich.,) a lady was asked her opinion of the performance; to which she replied naïvely, “Oh! it was excellent! he has such a sweet mustache!”

Be careful, pen! attempt no combat rash!
Else, with a rage that shall o'erwhelm e'en yours,
Boker may, Byron-like, review reviewers.
Yet, in good sooth, perhaps for Boker's sake,
'Twere well to rouse the lion with a shake;
Byron, when flogged, eschewed his schoolboy trash;
Who knows but Boker—faith! I'll try the lash.

Now, 'pon my sacred word—'tis with a sigh
I lift the flagellating rods on high;
Like the stern Trappist strike I—though afresh
At every blow, bleed my own tender flesh;
Chastening whom much we love, we can't be mild,
Lest, whilst we “spare the rod,” we “spoil the child.”
Boker's a young man still—he wrote Calaynos,
For a young man 'twas not a crime too heinous:
There's a rich vein of bloodshed running through it—
(The pit at “Sadler's Wells” took kindly to it;)
Next he exhumed—I mean, he took from Hume,
A headless tale of bride and Bluebeard groom;
And last, to show the Public how he braved it,
Brought “The Betrothal” out—and barely saved it.
His verse is well enough—smooth, classic, measured—
(Addison's style is one that should be treasured;)
True, there's no life where art the subject warps,
But, as the crones say, “'Tis a handsome corpse!”

175

Boker of bards is not the first or last:
He's growing—haply, though he grows too fast;
If poets seek the muse's bright empyrean,
They'll first do well to reach the heart's criterion:
Lay their foundation on good rocks—not water;
Then build like Cheops—if they've bricks and mortar;
So Boker—if he'll mind me to the letter,
(I can advise, because I write much better,)
Will tear to shreds his bookish rules, and write,
As Corny Mathews does—with all his might;
Then, if he charm not all the public noddles,
We'll know it is his own fault, not his model's.

Boker's in Philadelphia—Mathew Carey
Sold books in that “Emporium Literary;”
Big newspapers and Ladies' Magazines
Are published there; the markets furnish greens
Much earlier than those of northern cities;
There flourish puffs poetic, and love ditties.
Yet true it is, and that 'tis true 'tis pity,
The pen is penury in Penn's great city;
Songs make a man sans all things—nay, what worse is,
Verse, in an adverse ratio, brings reverses.
Would the poor author live by books, perchance he
Will find that Grub-street is no thing of fancy;
Does he serve Graham? “Graham bread” he shares;
Toils he for Godey? many a goad he bears;

176

Would he the editorial tripod court?
Newspaper columns will no roof support.
Ah! luckless scribbler! wouldst escape a hovel,
Eschew thy muse, and write a “blood-red novel;
Let plot be absent, and let sense run mad—
Let grammar be most villainously bad—
Let Satan's self dictate the moral in't,—
It matters not—some publisher will print.
Stoop from the sunlight, and essay the sty:
Huckster thy genius, and the herd will buy.
Each peddling bookster then will call thee “Nepos,”
And chant thy name in—“Literary Depots.”

Amid the Babel tongues of Philadelphia
There's one young man who always gains himself ear:
By dint of facial brass and mental lead,
(Both mixed with real gold, it must be said,)
He holds his weight among the rhyming race,
Nor yields to many a classic bard his place.
A sporting Zincalo, with boat and beagle;
A rhyming Zincalo, with practice legal,—
One day, as “Harry Harkaway,” he'll shoot you
As many quails or reedbirds as may suit you;
The next, discourse upon the arts or music,
Until he prattles both himself and you sick;
Or till he proves, in every subject pitched on,
That earth boasts one more “admirable Crichton.”

177

“Endymion!” may his pipe still keep its tune!
Endymion-Hirst, who sleeps beneath the moon;
With “Blackstone” pillowing his majestic head,

Henry B. Hirst is a lawyer in decent practice,—so his literary vagaries may not be seriously detrimental to his purse; he is counted a “dead shot” in the sporting line, is a bird-fancier, amateur florist, and might be famous as a politician; dabbles in metaphysics, sometimes spoils canvas, and has modelled some exquisite lay-figures in poetry; thinks himself remarkably like Shakspeare, and is—for aught I know to the contrary. If I style him “Zincalo,” my sense is “Pickwickian,” and not personal.

That head which, all unlike his works, is red!

Time was when, dormant in the stripling's breast,
Trochee was silent—mute was anapæst;
Time was, ere luckless Helicon he drank,
When all his verses, like his briefs, were blank;
His thoughts unnumbered, noteless still his time,
And dull-set as his voice his dulcet rhyme;
But chance, or circumstance, or whimsic fate,
By curious accidents makes mortals great;
And thus it chanced, or came to pass, in sooth,
That Sully painted “Shakspeare in his Youth;”
With “hyacinth hair” and beard of amber hue,
Expansive brow, and eyes half-brown, half-blue.
Hirst was an amateur in painting then,
And Sully's picture met his critic ken;
The young man murmurs, starts, and rubs his eyes:
Egad! the portrait takes him by surprise;
The brow he marks—the amber beard he sees:
“Shakspeare and me”

A grammatic expression peculiar to the author of “Endymion.” As one illustration out of many, see a Poem of Mr. Hirst's entitled “Valley of Repose,” in which occurs the following line:

“My bride and me shall kneel and humbly pray.”

(he cries) “are like as peas!”
In truth, “'twas passing strange,” the stripling thought,
Such “counterfeit presentment” here was wrought:
Endymion's embryo—Avon's mighty bard—
Which sat to Sully, faith, to tell was hard.

178

Pregnant, no doubt, of some tremendous fame,
One's hair was red—and t'other's much the same;
That lofty brow—that nose—“By all the Nine!”
Cries Hirst, “His locks are hyacinth—so are mine!
If thus kind Nature marks her duplicate,
Egad! I'll take to poems, and be great:
I'll write till none shall know which bard is which,
Shakspeare may die—but there's a vacant niche;
And—” Lo! Parnassus heard the dread resolve:
Hirst lives!—the Future will his fame evolve!

This satirizing's tedious—though I force not
The reader to endure it—Oh! of course not!
I'm satisfied they'll read it whom I quiz,
And those not named will read to see who is:
Be glad, then, friends, whose genius is not known—
Be glad my work's not still-born like your own;
Since through my potent pen you'll gain, in verity,
Mention at least in most remote posterity.

Posterity! the race of fools and dummies,
Who'll crowd the Future with the Present's mummies;
Who'll read my books, and hundreds worse than mine,
And swear each mouldering author was divine;
While in their very midst—unknown or spurned—
Dwell mightier minds than all the Past inurned.
Posterity—I count your praise and blame,
For all the good they'll do me, much the same.

179

You'll give ten dollars for my autograph;
(Which now in Wall street will not bring the half;)
Yet even this tribute should not make me vain—
Great Barnum's signature may twenty gain!
Oh, golden goal! Oh, prize to fire the soul—
Posterity may all the Smiths enrol!

Prophetic line! Alexander (the Great) Smith has since loomed upon the world.

Now will plump Platitude, with pitying smile,
Point me to history's teeming minster-aisle—
Show me the tombs and effigies of men
Who wrought their memories with the glorious pen:
With magpie glibness prate each deathless name,
And cry—“Behold! Posterity and Fame!”
Oh! bitter jest, that marks with marble lie
The lowly earth where genius sank to die;
Oh! mocking sympathy, which shrines the dead,
Yet spurns the living with unheeding tread.

Great Heaven! could Intellect its wrongs disclose,
Vain, vain the gauge that measures mortal woes!
All sighs, all tears, were powerless to declare
The almighty griefs which one poor soul may bear.
Behold! the Athenian sage his hemlock drains,
And, mark! the Roman opes his withered veins;
Lo! from the Pisan's breast how torture chokes
The lie, which straight his stouter soul revokes!
Look, where Geneva mocks a martyr's cries,

If Servetus, Seneca, or any of the martyrs to an idea, could have been consoled by the certainty that their thoughts would survive them, the bed of torture might have seemed a couch of roses. While Hope sustains Genius, she is invulnerable: Despair is her agony and death-travail.

Or Smithfield's flames in lurid horror rise!

180

Behold!—yet vainly, by the gleaming axe,
By galling chains, by dungeons, fagots, racks,—
Vainly ye strive to measure or reveal
A passing shade of what the soul can feel.
'Tis not the drug that tortures Socrates—
His faith o'erthrown, his teachings lost, he sees!
Weak are the chains on Galileo's frame,
To those which sink his honest soul in shame!
Monarchs may lose their thrones, yet life retain:
Genius dethroned ne'er lifts her brow again.

O Mind! immortal in thy suffering!—Heart!
Which of all agony true kindred art!
How would my feeble pen drop bloody tears,
Could it but chronicle the Soul's sad years!
Could it but marshal from their nameless graves,
The helot-host of intellectual slaves;
The unnumbered martyrs to the Titan's fate,
Which dooms to suffering him who would create.
Through the world's desert backward as we turn,
How much of power—of impotence—we learn!
What glorious love is mingled with what lust—
What awful monuments we meet—what dust!
Souls that held heaven within their cherub clasp,
Dragged downwards by an earthly demon's grasp;
And seraph minds, that read the Eternal's throne,
Like shivered stars o'er brooding chaos strown.

181

But hold! I'm far too serious, and must bring
My Phœbus-team demurely to the ring:
The ring where each one treads the other's track,
And Truth, poor Clown, is jeered by all the pack;
Satire, plain satire, is my avocation:
Points are my periods—puns my peroration.

The British critics—be it to their glory—
When they abuse us, do it con amore:
There's no half-way about your bull-dog pure,
And there's no nonsense with your “Scotch reviewer.”
Heaven knows how often we've been whipped like curs,
By those to whom we've knelt as worshippers;
Heaven only knows how oft, like froward chitlings,
Our authors have been snubbed by British witlings;
Our mountains ranked as molehills—our immense
And awful forests styled “Virginny fence;”
Our virtues all but damned, with faintest praise,
And our faults blazoned to the widest gaze!
I find no fault with them—they praise us rarely;
As for abuse—we're open to it fairly;
But faith, it galls me, and I'll not deny it,
To mark our own most deferential quiet:
To note the whining, deprecative air
With which we beg for praise or censure bear;
Shrink back in terror if our gifts they spurn,
And if they smite one cheek, the other turn,—

182

Begging that they'll excuse a patient dunce,
Who, if he could, would offer both at once.

There's no use in denying it—the Yankee
(Though, in the way of business, cute and cranky;
Though true as steel, and quick as any rocket,)
Is seldom keenly touched, save through his pocket.
One war more bloody, even, than dishonest,
We'd scaped, had “Montezuma's Halls” been non est;—
Our Indian raids had ne'er brought shame or glory,
Had not old Plutus whispered, “territory.”
And many a wrong, I'll wager, would be righted;
And many a right would have its wrongs requited;
And many a truth from error's cloud would flash,—
Could we be sure such things would “pay,” in “cash.”
But, as regards our books, and those who make them,
For all our country cares, the de'il may take them;
Matters it little to our sapient statesmen,
What power annihilates, or what creates men;
So that with “congress prog” you duly ply 'em—
“Gin gratis—and eight dollars each per diem.”

This is a portion of a lampoon which some Michael Steno, who had not the fear of greatness before his eyes, wrote on the doors of the Senate-chamber, at Washington, on a certain occasion when Congress had adjourned to attend the races.

Now, by my troth!—if these same legislators
Were called, point blank, a set of heartless traitors;
Willing to sell their country's fame for fat hire,—
They'd doubtless cry, “You lie!”

An expletive unfortunately too familiar in congressional debate.

to this, my satire.
Yet, if they sleep and snore, whilst, unawares,
The enemy in our goodly field sows tares;

183

If watch nor ward they keep upon our borders,—
Pray, can they well be called efficient warders?

How, then, if broadcast, o'er our land reprinted,
Books of all climes are strown with hand unstinted;
Books such as sap our freedom's dearest life,
Books with the cant of kings and Jesuits rife;
Books such as virtuous wives would blush to name,
Books that destroy a maiden's sense of shame!
How, then, if on the plastic mind of youth,
Falsehood is grafted in the place of truth;
False taste infused—false views of right and wrong,
False love, false law, false sermons, and false song!

Far be it from me to say that all these ills
Flow from the poisoned points of foreign quills;
Far be it from me to shield, from righteous scorn,
The race of blackguard authors native-born;
Wretches, who, ghoul-like, feed on carrion clay,
And scent a crime as vultures scent their prey;
Whose leprous minds can track a felon's course,
Or trace a harlot's vices to their source;—
Scarce can these men demand my reprobation:
Thank heaven! their labors are their own damnation.

I say, not, then, that foreign pens alone
Inflict the moral wrongs 'neath which we groan;
But, tell me, ye who do our thinking for us,

184

(Whom ballot-boxes kindly station o'er us;)
Tell me if evils, such as represented,
Might not, by timely laws, have been prevented;—
Tell me if Paul de Kock, or Sue, or Sand,
Would e'er have gained a foothold in our land,—
If ribald wit, or senseless atheism,
Could e'er have charmed us with delusive prism;
Had our good Yankee “publishers at sight”
Been forced to buy “the author's copyright!”

Why has our yellow-covered literature
Poured o'er the land its influence impure?
Why, but because 'twas “cheap”—its profits sure!
Why was the infamous De Kock translated,
And cast abroad with rankest poison freighted?
Why, but because our booksters “speculated!”
On what? On manners, morals, virtue, sense!
Souls might be lost—but booksters turned their pence!

Oh, Justice! why are still thine altars rotten?—
Could Intellect protected be, like cotton,—
Could Mind beget per cent., like capital,—
Then might we be what else we never shall;
Then would our heaven-appointed “men of letters”
Be freed from iron Want's degrading fetters;
Then might the thoughts of noble souls illume
The poor man's hut, the rich man's drawing-room;

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While, from the light its filth could ne'er endure,
Would shrink our “yellow-covered literature!”
But, ah! while Bulwer, Dickens, James, or Jerrold,
Costs scarcely more than Bennett's “double Herald;”
How can we hope our country's mind to nourish,
Or look for Yankee literature to flourish?

Oh, “Yankee literature!” Oh, tripe! Oh, treacle!
What can I say our publishers to tickle?
How shall I make my humblest, prettiest bow,
To deprecate their rage, and 'scape a row?
O, Harper! mayor! temperance-man! church-member!
Our household-prop! our hearth-stone's brightest ember!
What could we do without thy mammoth presses?—
Thy Grub—no! Cliff-street's hasty-pudding messes!

'Tis not his fault—(I clear friend Harper of it,)
That foreign books are cheap, and pay a profit;
He did not hire Dumas, or Paul de Kock,
To jest at truth—at decency to mock;
A publisher who'd mend his country's morals,
With his own bread and butter madly quarrels.
He's not to know what books work ill or well—
The question he must ask, is—“will they sell?”
And if to-day he prints a moral libel,
To-morrow squares the account—he prints a bible!

186

And here, O Virtue! which art daily shamed—
O Honesty! which scarcely now art named,
O Truth! which art the veil of direst wrong,—
Give me to plead your cause in this my song!
Shall Foster prostitute a graceful pen,
To “slice up” outcast hags, and outlawed men?
Shall “Buntline” rave, and Wilkes his “pigeons” lure,
And Ann-street's presses swell the common-sewer?
Shall ribald sheets their pandering pimps engage,
While Mose and Jakey prop a crumbling stage;
Shall “these things be,” and yet nor voice nor pen,
Scourge as with snakes the morals and the men?
No! though I loathe the quarry—let me speed
One shaft, at least, against the scorpion breed!

Upas! thy deadly venom hath but the art
To chill the warmth of some poor human heart!
Plague! thou canst blister flesh and torture limb,
'Till the pulse slackens and the eye grows dim;
Simoom! thy blast, swift-scouring o'er the plain,
May fire the blood and scorch the withering brain!
But ye are bounded in your fearful power—
Your field the limits of life's little hour;
Trembles your empire on each fleeting breath:
Your pangs, your perils, have their term in death!

Not so the Upas of a venal Press!
The Plague—the Simoom—of licentiousness;

187

Weak is the death to mortal sense confined—
That only kills which kills the immortal mind!
Poison and Pest can but the clay control—
An impure Press hath power to slay the soul!

O matron! kneeling by thy slumbering child,
Dare not to hope his mind is undefiled!
List! in his restless dreams his thoughts betray
What books he reads, by stealth, from day to day;
Hush! is it “Crusoe” from his lips that falls?
No! “Ellen Jewett”

The “Life” of this wretched woman is one of the least objectionable of the class of books alluded to; the life of a courtezan murdered by a libertine. A sad comment upon public taste, that such works should command extensive sale!

his sleeping sense recalls.
O, maiden! speak! why now that volume crush
Beneath thy pillow?—why that conscious blush?
Fearest thou the book may shame a mother's eye?
God help thee, maiden! there is danger nigh!

And ye who pander—ye, whose reeking souls
No love refines—no law nor shame controls;
Ye on whose tongues the words of virtue dwell,
While in your hearts distil the dews of hell!
Ye moral scavengers—who drag each sink
For food—whose hearts are blacker than your ink;—
Tremble! the crimes which ye to strength have nursed,
Shall, through your children, make you doubly cursed!

Avaunt the theme! O Pegasus the skittish!
Return we to our critic friends—the British;
The British, whom our universal nation
Whips each July-the-Fourth, in loud oration:

188

The British, whose worm-eaten statutes rule us,
Whose precedents decide—whose models school us;
Whose nod we bow to—whose award we fight for;
Whose stamp our actors seek—our authors write for.
True, we have beaten Bull in many a battle—
But then Bull beats us in his Durham cattle;
True, we have plucked from him old Neptune's trident,
But then his “Punch” can give our ribs a sly dint;
So, though we could with greatest ease outstrip her,
His lugger makes a tender of our clipper!

I'm far from wishing, fellow-bards! to plague you,
But, faith! 'tis fun to note your Anglo-ague;
To see you march, manœuvre, crawl, or leap,—
Dance or lie down, sing, curse, pray, laugh, or weep;
Just as the wires, which rule your changes antic,
Are pulled by merry-andrews transatlantic.
I must not laugh—no! I'll espouse your quarrel!
(Heaven knows ye can't afford to lose one laurel!)
They say, (a wicked libel this of course is,)
They say ye steal, O bards! from British sources.

'Tis monstrous! what! shall British critics prate
Of plagiaries—and say we imitate?
Who dares assert that Keats was read by Hirst,
Or “Tibia” by his Mother well was nursed?
Who so fool-hardy as to hint that Moore
Wrote Huffman's

Charles Fenno Hoffman, the “Echo” poet.—

melodies ten years before?

189

Who says that Sargent

Epes Sargent, the “Transcript” poet.—

strips Corneille's poor “Cid?”
That Benjamin

Park Benjamin, the sonnetteer.

in Camoens once was hid?
That Emerson,

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Sage.—

like Coleridge, reads the Germans,
And Dawes's

Rufus Dawes, the Clergyman.—

poems sound like Taylor's sermons?
Who says Lunt's

George Lunt, author of “The Age of Gold.”—

lead with Byron's gold was soldered?—
That Wordsworth dribbles through meandering Stoddard

R. H. Stoddard, youngest of the American Lake School.

Or who affirms that Harvard grants its benison

The Cambridge poets, and their imitators, are ineffably Tennysonian.

To those alone who canonize Saint—Tennyson?

I've mentioned Read:—his song is very sweet—
Poetic milk for those who baulk at meat.
I've heard his puns full oft use common sense ill,
And had my likeness taken by his pencil;
Soft “T. B. R.”—the “Tibia” of our wits—

The initials of Read's name, “T. B. R.” have been laid hold of by classic wags, and the joke contributes not a little to the poet's reputation.

Whose delicate muse on fairy footsteps flits;
The “Doric” Read, who in his paint-shop woos,
With dainty food, his sentimental muse;
Tempts her with titbits from a thousand “marts,”

I have distinguished this last word by quotation-marks, inasmuch as it has been so often used by Read, in his poems, that I conceive he has earned a pre-emption right to it.

The tongues of nightingales and cuckoos' hearts;
Trembles, and faints, and dies, in every line,
And draws the web of fancy—superfine;
Paints a new blush upon the damask rose,
And o'er its leaves some rare patchouly throws;
Tears off the G string from his pretty harp,
And strikes the flat notes rather than the sharp:

190

Fearful of falls, his wings he would control,
And doffs the Spartan for the Sybarite soul.

If the Sybarite was incommoded by a rose-leaf placed under his couch, I fear my young friend “Tibia” will hardly relish the levity with which the satirist alludes to his mimosa-like genius.

God made the Poet for his instrument:
His harp, his heart, are never given—but lent;
And all that heaven requires, for rental-fee,
Is to give harp and heart their natural key.
Tibia! thy song is like thy body—little:
They fame, I fear me, like thy genius—brittle:
Wouldst thou be honored? drop thy quibbling quill,
Eschew thy love, dove, dart, and daffodil;
Fling 'mid the stars thy songs, if bard thou art,
Or sink them in the wondrous human heart:
Then mayst thou soar among the immortal few—
In spite of satires—or the “Whig Review.”

The “American Review” criticised Read with great acrimony—and injustice.

Speaking of stars, attend, O muse most pliant!
To our acknowledged loadstar—Mister Bryant!
Whose light I've viewed with reverential deference,
As far as earliest school-boy dates have reference;
Whose flights I've marked as most etherial things,
Sure that he used no Cretan's waxen wings;
Whose shrine I've knelt at, in true orthodoxy,
Certain the bard was Dan Apollo's proxy.
My fingers tremble, and my pulse grows faint;
Awful the task of noonday sun to paint!
Fain would I praise this laureate of our nation,
Were not all praise but supererogation;

191

He is so fixed a fact—so constellated,
Like bankrupts' debts, he can't be overrated:
His name's a sad sponsorial misnomer—
Had nature spoken, he'd been christened—Homer.

What time our presidential politics
Count game much less by honors than by tricks;
When Rynders wields, like Hercules, his “club,”

The “Empire Club,” a political organization of New York, was long swayed by a notorious bar-room politician, called Captain Rynders.

And social Greeley peeps from cynic tub,—
Then Bryant—poet-laureate—nature's boast—
Treads the old party-lines, from Post to Post;

William Cullen Bryant, the poet of nature, is likewise editor of the “New York Evening Post,” a staunch partizan journal, devoted to the democratic side of politics.

New-nibs his pen to brand new truth as schism,
And damns all isms, but safe conservatism.

Now, by my modesty! I like friend Bryant:
But as a man I like him—not a giant!
I like his landscapes—mountains, woods, and copses,
And freely own, he's “death on” Thanatopsis;
But, with due deference, I can see no justice
In making him a classical Procrustes;

The coolness with which the old robber lopped or stretched his hapless guests, to proportion them to the dimensions of his iron-bedstead, was not a bad ante-type of that modern sang-froid which would reduce all orders of genius to a standard medium. When will the world come to Mrs. Malaprop's conclusion respecting “comparisons?”

And lopping hapless bards of heel and head,
To fit them for his gas-inflated bed.
I thank him kindly for his blankest verse;
(I've seen much better—but I've seen still worse;)
I bless him for his homœopathic stanzas—
His apophthegma, clear as Sancho Panza's;
I'll own, in fact, he's Brobdignagian—but,
Just so was Gulliver—in Lilliput!

192

Yet will I grant that he a new Antæus is—

The classic giant's name affords me a good rhyme.

But, “gracious! Max!”—no apotheosis!

In the old time—the time that never tarries—
We owned a bard who sang of Mark Bozzaris:
Bozzaris is no more—and dead is Astor—
I wish the last had ne'er been Halleck's master.

Fitz Greene Halleck, a fine lyrist, and a satirist, of some pretensions, (as his poem entitled “Fanny” evinces,) was during twenty years a confidential clerk of the millionaire, J. J. Astor, who, at his death, bequeathed the poet an annuity. For some unexplained reason, Halleck long ago abandoned the harp which he often struck with true bardic fury.

Trade, like Medusa, turns the heart to stone,
And jarring sounds destroy the harp's sweet tone.
Figures our bard still hath, but tropes I doubt,
Invoices plenty, but no voice comes out.
Bozzaris died by steel, but gold could slay
The man through whom Bozzaris lives for aye;
Astor was mightier than the dreaming “Turk”—
Requiescat in pace—Astor's clerk!

Where is Park Benjamin? In sooth, 'tis wondrous!
He sings not—yet the stones are silent under us!
Where is that bard whose madrigals, in Gotham,
Took root so deep that still the newsboys know them?
Where are his sonnets, and his songs rhapsodical,
That whilome graced each infant periodical?
Once (when a hero none presumed to doubt him)
He failed with journals—now they fail without him;
Once (as a sort of editorial Warwick)
He built up paper thrones—“alas! poor Yorick!”
Where is he now? I'll give—my word upon it—
This book (when finished) for his “last, best sonnet.”

193

Room for our “Lakers!”—O! sweet Windermere!
Surely the winds do waft thine essence here.
List the Home Journal—Fashion's weekly creditor!
We must make room for Stoddard! cries its editor.
Stoddard! we will: if Nat be thine example,
Thou'lt need, in truth, an area most ample:
Room where the banyan-growth of self-conceit
May twine its downward branches round thy feet:
Room where the ghosts of time and talent slain,
Like afreets damn'd,

Afreets (according to Eastern superstition) are evil spirits haunting desert places; once angels, but condemned to suffer for their neglect of high duties.

shall haunt thy desert brain.
If Nat's high patronage thy muse would try,
Room thou wilt have—like Uncle Toby's fly;
But if (in bold reliance on thyself)
Thou layest thy maudlin seniors on the shelf,
If, with the Orphean lute thou fingerest well,
Thou'lt dare the flames of even a critic's hell,—

R. H. Stoddard, like many a young author, has allowed himself to be “coddled” too much, by the literary old women who delight in poetic bantlings. He may yet, however, have nerve enough to follow my advice; though I doubt if Orpheus himself ever attempted so deep or so infernal a descent as the gulf of American criticism; but our young poet is said to be writing a Plutonian epic, and may possibly acclimate himself to caloric before that is finished.

Reckless of Duyckinck

The brothers Duyckinck (two young men of classic attainments) edited for several years a journal called the “Literary World,” a sort of Areopagus, which determined on the claims of sophomoric and blue-stocking authors.

—braving Griswold's doom—
Then may the world award thy genius “room!”

What time some British critic lost his dinner,
Charles Fenno Hoffman was reviewed, (poor sinner!)
To whom he may this peril of his neck owe
I know not—only that they called him “Echo;”

An article, charging Hoffman with plagiarism, imitation of Moore, &c., appeared in an English magazine, whereupon our author printed a collection of his poems, calling it “The Echo”; decidedly a too suggestive title, as it turned out.

And he (to prove such cruel critics wrong)
Published anew a budget of his song.
Ah, luckless man! Had he but burnt—not printed,
He might those wags have nicely circumvented.

194

Alas, poor Hoffman! Griswold thinks his lyrics
Equal to Waller's “richest” songs, or Herrick's!

An “opinion as is an opinion,” by the author of “Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America.” See art. “Hoffman.”

If this be true, O Rufe! which thou assurest,
I hope I'll see of neither bard his poorest.
Ah, Doctor Griswold! I've a shrewd suspicion,
That Hoffman owes to friendship his position:
That some past service may have earned for wages
Your bed-procrustean of some fourteen pages;
In short, that some old friendly claim may owe its
Cancelment to the influence of your “Poets;”
And so our Hoffman, thro' his friendly “Doctor,”
Stands among freshman bards a sort of “proctor.”

A “proctor” is a college officer. I make this explanation, that no malicious reader may seek to discover any sinister allusion to the bard of that name. Hoffman is at least not Barry Cornwall's “Echo”—and never will be.

“Sparkling and bright” is Hoffman's soul, they say,
Where kindly fancies rule with gentle sway;
But that he be, as Griswold's book declares,
A bard with whom no Yankee bard compares:
That, in his puling love-songs, he can thrill
One heart where English sways a score at will;
That all the sparkling fire-flies of his lyre
Can glow like Taylor's “Bison-track” of fire;
That even with Morris (could I say much worse?)
His muse can measure, in domestic verse,—
If in denying these things I'm outvoted,
I leave the matter to—the authors quoted.

“Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb”
The “Giant's Causeway” of Gothamic rhyme?

195

Once Percival,

James G. Percival gave promise of much greatness; but his muse was evidently too classic for our work-a-day world, and so subsided into common-place.

in classic numbers, swept
The harp which since so sluggishly has slept:
His “Genius waking” first our bosoms stirred,
To mock each after year with “hope deferred;”
And now, “forgetful of his once bright fame,”
He grasps, content, the shadow of a name!
Who shall his mute and stringless harp attune?
Not even thrice-classic Fosdick—or Bethune!

Why these names are juxta-posed is immaterial. W. W. Fosdick is a humorous, pathetic, and bathotic Western writer, who strings his harp with pearls and onions, and mixes metaphysics and metaphor, science and seiolism, into divers palatable dishes of rhyme. George W. Bethune is a clever clergyman, with a talent at making verses.

When Parson Pierpont, in Bostonian pulpit,
Fought like a matador in Spanish bull-pit;
And heedless all of fire-bolts round his steeple,

John Pierpont is extensively known as a prose and poetic champion of cold water. He was at one time engaged in a fierce controversy with his parishioners, many of whom, being interested in the very profitable business of distilling, naturally took umbrage at their pastor's zeal in the cause of temperance. Many futile efforts were made to oust the reverend poet from his pulpit, which I think he held by a life-tenure. I forget how the matter ended, but recollect the steeple of Pierpont's church was twice struck by lightning during the division of his flock.

Bolted cold water at his graceless people,—
Then, rivalling Pierpont, broken hearts to solace,
The charms of “Adam's Ale” were sung by Wallace:

A volume of Cold Water Melodies, written by William Ross Wallace, was printed at Boston in 1840, or earlier. It is a pity that the poet did not continue in the faith of cold water; but, alas! in years past, Gotham has beheld many fine geniuses go down to the grave, victims to their self-indulgence, in spite of every effort put forth to save them.

Sung with most fearful lungs and nerves unshaken,
Till Priessnitz soon for Orpheus was mistaken;
Till cisterns seemed the Muses' penetralia,
And aqueducts the only true Castalia.

O Wallace! “man of ‘Ross!’” not now, as then,
Thy tyro-fingers grasp a feeble pen:
Not now, with lisping love-lays on thy tongue,
Needst thou repeat what haply scores have sung;
Nor studied phrase nor measured strain should bind
The upward soaring of thy natural mind;
No senseless arrogance nor weak distrust
Should cramp thy powers with egoistic rust.

196

Wouldst grasp success? then deem it shame to doubt!
Genius hast thou?—like murder, it “will out.”
If heavenly Phœbus yields to thee his team,
Or if thy muse, like Cutter's, goes by “steam;”

In allusion to a stirring lyric, written by Geo. W. Cutter, a Western poet.

If, fierce as Neal's,

John Neal. of Portland, Me., a bard of acknowledged genius, and much eccentricity.

thy red-hot language glows,
Or softly drips, like milk-and-water Coe's;

Coe is not selected personally as an aqualacteal specimen, but rises to the dignity of a type of his class; i. e. the tuneful choir who contribute to the classic pages of Peterson's and Godey's magazines, and occasionally minister to the necessities of needy printers, by publishing “collections” of their “poems.”

If Griswold shrine thee, or if Graham scorn,

Time was when Graham, of magazine memory, was quite a Mæcenas of youthful scribblers; but, alas! his glory has departed. The triangular duel between himself and Griswold, and the ghost of poor Poe, was the last exploit of Graham.

Be sure that Jove o'ersees the poet-born!
Assert thy claims, though all the critics carp,
Take “heart of grace,” and strike the sounding harp:
If the world laughs, why let the world go hang,—
It laughed and sneered, when glorious Dante sang!

I almost passed by Willis—“ah, miboy!
“Foine morning! da-da!” Faith! I wish him joy!
He's half a century old—in good condition;
And, positively, he has gained—“position.”
'Gad! what a polish “upper-ten-dom” gives
This executioner of adjectives;
This man who chokes the English, worse than Thuggists,

We doubt if any Thuggist, expert though he might be, could ever have strangled an English nabob with more adroitness than Willis exhibits in his constant attacks on the English language.

And turns “the trade” to trunk-makers or druggists;
Labors on tragic plays, that draw no tiers—
Writes under bridges, and tells tales of peers;

Was it “Jottings down in London,” or some other of Willis's gossip, that rehearsed the dinner-talk of English nobility!

His subjects whey—his language sugar'd curds:
Gods! what a dose!—had he to “eat his words.”
His “Sacred Poems,” (like a rogue's confessions,)
Gain him indulgence for his worst transgressions:

197

His “fugitive” attempts will doubtless live—
Oh! that more works of his were—fugitive!
Fate to his fame a ticklish place has given,
Like Mah'met's coffin,

The prophet's coffin is said to be suspended by powerful loadstones at some height from the earth.

'twixt the earth and heaven:
But be it as it will—let come what may—
Nat is a star: his works—the milky way!

“Why so severe on Willis?” Julia cries,
(Who reads De Trobriand in an English guise;)

De Trobriand was a Frenchman, who conducted with much ability the “Revue du Nouveau Monde”—rendered into copious English through the Home Journal; in spite of which it—deceased.

Why so severe? Because my muse must make
Example stern, for injured Poesy's sake.
Not that Nat Willis curls his yellow hair—
Not that his sense can breathe but perfumed air—
Not that he plays the ape or ass, I mourn,—
For ape and ass are worth not e'en my scorn;—
But that, with mind, and soul, and (haply) heart,
He yet hath stooped to act the fopling's part;
Trifled with all he might have been, to choose
The post of—cicisbeo to the muse!
Flung off the chaplet which his boyhood won,
To wear the fool's cap of a “man of ton!”
Not Willis only lash I for the crime—
Through him I strike the bastard tribe of rhyme;
The race o'er whom, in his own native power,
Jove-like 'mid satyrs, might this Willis tower!
O, Art! whose angel presence we have felt;
Whose genial smiles our raptured senses melt:

198

Ah! when thy glorious heart is big with love,
Why do thy chosen children recreant prove?—
Fly from the arms which might sustain their souls,
And plunge from heaven, to grub the earth like moles?
O awful Nature! thou, whose generous blood,
Like the strange pelican's, revives her brood!
Whose life through death still fructifies again,
Moulding from dragons' teeth its arméd men!

I admire the beauty of this classic myth. It is a blessed thing that Nature works out her own beautiful results, through the most unshapely means. Who knows but that the spectacle of a talented man, making a show of himself, may be ordained on the principle which led the ancient Lacedemonians to exhibit an inebriated slave to their children—to disgust them with the sin of drunkenness.

How is thy truth profaned and brought to shame,
When gewgaw fashion props an author's fame;
When mincing phrase usurps the place of wit,
And reason yields to prancing rhyme the bit!

Pause, honest pen! thy fervor makes thee stray:
Pause—ere injustice desecrate thy lay;
Though all Pandora's ills be Poesy's lot,
Hope lingers still—upheld by Freeman Scott!

For the benefit of the ignorant reader, I will state that Mr. Freeman Scott is a poetic Curtius, who threw himself into the gulf of nullification, and (in a Pickwickian sense) saved the country. He wrote a “Song for the Union,” and offered a prize of $50 for appropriate music, to which it was in fact sung, at the great Union meeting of 15,000 unterrified patriots in the Chinese Museum, Philadelphia. He deserves immortality—and shall have it.

O patriot Scott! thy eagle flights I sing,
That top Parnassus, with untiring wing.
No more shall Hopkinson Columbia hail—
Freneau and Paine henceforth are voted stale;
Even Emmons “pales his ineffectual fires,”
For Freeman Scott hath struck the sounding wires.
The “Union saved” his monument shall be—
And all posterity exist—“Scott free!”

Nature's a jealous mistress, and who wooes
Her smiles, must grant her passion all its dues;

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She hates coquettish airs, but yields her zone
Freely to him who clasps it to his own.
Though Pike

Albert Pike is one of the Western poets who has some claim to merit, though not to the extent claimed by a few of his admirers.

shall bawl for her (unequal odds!)
His most ungodly “Hymns to all the Gods;”
Though Lunt, like Jove with Danäe of old,
Woo her with showerings from his “Age of Gold;”
Though Simms,

William Gilmore Simms has written some passable novels, but is not a poet, and his epic of “Florida” will not live as long as Paradise Lost. However, as very little is known of the work, (which is the case with most lengthy American poems,) perhaps Ponce de Leon's draught may be mixed up with it: so I shall not be positively negative concerning Simms's prospect of immortality.

with Ponce de Leon's madness rife,
Swear that in “Florida” lies endless life;
Though light-horse Street,

Alfred B. Street: who writes up Indian loves and sorrows into metrical tales.

with Indian lasso slack,
Should seek to bind her pillioned at his back;
Though Hosmer,

W. H. Hosmer—ditto

ambushed in some tangled glen,
Like awkward Pan, would pipe her to his den;
She flies—or, laughing at the daring elf,
Bids Echo answer—while she hides herself!

Yet, haply, Nature gives not all the slip:
Hoyt pilfers kisses from her glowing lip—
Hoyt, who, with wooings so demure and meek,
Secures the fame he scarcely seems to seek;
With quiet curb constrains his champing thought,
Nor gives the bridle even when he ought.
Fearing, like Raleigh, danger if he climb,

Sir Walter's celebrated couplet, and Queen Elizabeth's rejoinder, are so well known that their repetition here is hardly worth the space occupied—nevertheless, it may be as well to say that, on one occasion, the maiden queen observed young Raleigh write with a diamond upon a pane of glass—

“Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall;” whereupon, (when he had departed,) she wrote beneath—

“If thy heart fail thee, do not climb at all.”

He spoils his native tune by serving time!
'Tis wrong, friend Hoyt! no poet passive lives!
Blows he may bear—but blows he likewise gives.
Thy “Blacksmith” forged true armor for thy breast:

The “Blacksmith's Night,” is one of Hoyt's best poems.

Rise now, and cast thy trenchant lance in rest!

200

Of stalwart hearts the cause of man hath need;
'Twere shame to follow, Ralph! if thou canst lead!

But, lo! a bard of supra-mundane light!
From heaven he hails, and Harris is he hight.

Rev. Thos. L. Harris: quite a noted “medium” among the Spiritualists, who asserts that spirits of departed poets speak through him, (while entranced.) He has already produced two epics, and, as they sell rapidly, I doubt not the afflatus will continue. As fanciful improvisations, Harris's poems might be curious; but as emanations from Dante, Tasso, Milton, (and others of equal pretensions,) they are unworthy of criticism.

Whilome a parson, erst a spirit-seer,
And now prime-laureate of each upper sphere.
No vulgar rhyming-lexicon needs he—
No syntax dull, no tedious prosody;
He shuts his eyes—he opes his mouth—and, lo!
Ten thousand glittering words like water flow:
With planes and spheres, with mystic “threes” and “sevens,”
He chants an “Epic of the Starry Heavens;”—
Or, rather—Dryden, Byron, Alfieri,
(From some transparent lunar luminary,)
With Shakspeare, Dante, Milton, Pope, and Petrarch,
(Each of some solar world the poet-tetrarch,)
Descend—and (as the victims of Phaláris

Phalaris was a Grecian tyrant, who caused a bull to be made of hollow brass, into which he thrust a victim, and then heated red-hot, till the sufferer's groans made the bull seem to roar.

Roared thro' a brazen bull) so sing thro' Harris;
Until the shining lines of Heaven's topography

Harris gives elaborate descriptions of all the appearances of the planets—their mountains, valleys, etc.

(Including manners, customs, and geography)
Are made so plain that we would not a cubit err
In mapping all, from Mercury to Jupiter.

Ah! Thomas! vainly seekest thou to palm
Thy puerile fancies for some seraph psalm;
Thy wild conceits for inspiration calm!

201

Not thine the hand to sweep immortal lyres—
Not thine the song for Love's eternal choirs:
The Spirit's heaven is higher than thy dream—
The Heart's deep plummet sounds a deeper theme.
Thy bungling worship pleases not the Muse,
For hyperborean homage she eschews.
Of human kin, she likes not beings stellar—
In sooth she'd rather kiss plain Tam MacKellar.

Mackellar is a poet of modest pretensions but of much real merit, residing in Philadelphia.

Ho! Lyon! cynosure of fortune's cornea,
And Poet-Laureate of—California!
Bard of “Eureka” and of “Lyonsdale”

“Caleb Lyon of Lyonsdale” is a modern troubadour; penning at San Francisco a lyric for the “Eureka State”—chanting semi-Spanish ballads through South America—apostrophizing Jenny Lind in Gotham, and “stumping” himself into Congress by poetic speech-making in general.

—
Most “learnéd Theban!” I do bid thee hail!
O Caleb! thou, the brightness of whose star,
Even Bayard Taylor's radiance could not mar;
Whose genius, burning for a deathless fame,
Linked the Pacific with thine own great name,

Among Lyon's achievements must not be forgotten the design of the California State Seal—for which he received $1000 and a place in the “golden archives.” This is even better than being “sung in all the churches,” like General George P. Morris.

What boots it, Caleb! if thy rivals sore
Malign thy “bear,” by calling it a bore?

A “grizzly bear” formed part of the seal-design mentioned above. The Mexicans in California were first defeated by the Americans, under a flag with this device.

What recks thy muse if jealous witlings say
She's mongrel-bred—in Persia and Cathay!

The bard of Lyonsdale is noted for his translations from Hafiz, the Persian, and Souchong-Bohea, (if we quote right,) the Shanghai bard.

They laugh who win, and thou canst sing as well,
And, faith! I think thy prancing rhymes will sell
For just as much (and bring thee thrice the pity)
As if they'd passed, like Taylor's, through banditti.

In his “travels,” while traversing Mexico, Taylor was tied to a tree, and robbed by Mexican footpads. We cannot think that our young Bayard emulated the chevalier “sans peur et sans reproche,” in his Mexican adventure. But all our poets are not expected to be Kœrners; or, perhaps, Taylor's fame (unlike that of Ariosto) had not preceded him among the “moon's minions.”

Speaking of China, or Cathay the old,
(Where each man duplicates his neighbor's mould,)

202

Brings to my mind (a natural transition!)
That town of most Confucian erudition,
That gives “One Hundred Orators” their glory,
And owns that polymathic wonder, Story!

The son of Judge Story; (said to be a miracle of Boston learning.)

China 's the world—her sons are all celestial:
Outside barbarians are no more than bestial;
So Boston, like the ancient land of hyson,
Counts all barbarian beyond her horizon!
Her Whipples out-Macaulay Mac himself—
Her Emersons assign Carlyle the shelf;
Her Everetts, her Brownsons, and her Channings,
Are worth a score of Foxes, Pitts, and Cannings;
In short, her Lowells, Longfellows, and Tappans,
Are good celestials as Chinese or Japans.

No lead can fathom Boston's mental deep;
No alien thought can scale her learning's steep;
No fancy strains to that she does not reach,
And none may learn save haply she shall teach;
Of Fame's broad temple Boston keeps the portal,
And Boston bards alone are dubbed immortal:
Even though her dingy bookstores, it is said,
Are one great sepulchre of “sheeted dead.”
Behold! “Mat. Lee,” the pirate, killed a horse:
The horse came back again—a “spirit-corse;”
And so does Dana,

A new edition of Richard Dana's poems has lately appeared, including “The Buccaneer,” with its “spirit corse,” familiar as of old.

who, for many a year,
On Wiley's book-shelves found a quiet bier.

203

If thus in Boston mummied books are prized,
Great Jove! even Sprague

Charles Sprague, a Boston banker, who, many years ago, wrote a poem, called “Curiosity,” and has ever since been one of Boston's poetic fossils.

may yet be galvanized;
Who knows what prodigies may yet be noted,
Where Peter Parley sings,

Sam. G. Goodrich, the worthy concoctor of children's books, is also addicted to rhyme.

and Fields is quoted;

James G. Fields is one of the partners in the publishing house of Ticknor, Reed and Fields, at Boston. Fields is piquant, quite lakish, and passably clever.

Fields, with his whistle piping forth the throngs
Of bards who wait his judgment on their songs,
As hungry travellers wait for dinner-gongs.

When hawks to melody attune their throats,
Tremble we may for Philomela's notes;
So, when “the trade” essay the Poet's powers,
Well may we fear for this poor trade of ours.
The hapless muse her hard-won myrtle yields,
When bookmen brave her in their barren fields;
When Grub-street practises the gentle art,
And Ticknor claims Apollo's counter-part.
Ah, Jimmy Fields! thy verse I'll not berate,—
Bostonia's Helicon is—Cochituate!

The Cochituate water (as any Bostonian will assure you) is a perfectly innocent beverage.

Why should we mourn, in these teetotal times,
That water-level is the gauge of rhymes?
Rich are thy covers—ink and paper good:
So we'll forgive the inside platitude;
Thy verses sell—else had they not been printed,
Thy brass transmutes to gold as good as minted.
Bookmen in sooth should make the best of bards,
(As faro-bankers hold the winning cards;)
Write, Jimmy! write—for then (I smile to say it)
The bard will get per cent.—the bookster pay it.

204

O Doctor Holmes!

O. W. Holmes has written some very humorous poetry, and is a genial and versatile writer; but he makes execrable puns.

O funny Doctor Holmes!
Out of thy mouth Cochituate fairly foams!
Most glittering froth—until the gas is freed—
But then, alas! a “venerable bead.”
Doctor! I like thee, and admire the zest
With which the world believes that thou canst jest;
Thy puns, like hares, still double as they run,
And track themselves by scenting their own fun;
Till earthed, at last, the jokes o'er which we sorrowed,
The burrowed rabbits seem but rarebits borrowed;
Yet still, remorseless, you our patience try,
And sell your ink to prove our incubi.

For the perpetration of these enormities, I plead in excuse my desire to present the reader with a sample of the doctor's own assortment.

Dear Doctor! take a fool's advice, and make
No more bad puns for shabby Harvard's sake;
And, Doctor—(here a timely hint I'll drop)—
Talk no more science—i. e. “sink the shop!”
Epsom with Attic salt I hate to find;
True wit, 's no drug—so, pr'ythee, scour thy mind!
Leave ganglions to Bell—and pills to Buchan,
And, as Saxe wrote a satire, try if you can.
Do this—do something, or I'm much impressed,
Your “Last Leaf”

Holmes's “Last Leaf” is a poem of decided merit.

will be thought by all your best!

Saxe wrote a satire

John G. Saxe, editor of a paper in Burlington, Vt., has acquired quite a reputation for humour, but is inferior to Holmes as a poet.

—so did Master Lowell,
And so did—others, whom the public know well;
And Saxe is droll, (I say it not at random,)
For Saxe did print—quod erat demonstrandum—

205

(No droller thing in all experience lyrical!)
Yea, Saxe did print his poems as satirical!
O Funny Man! wouldst thou to greatness climb?
Twist proper names, and learn to mangle rhyme!
Wouldst thou be famous? make each pun a puff;
Wouldst quoted be?—the path is plain enough:
Be broad as Burton,

W. E. Burton, a theatrical manager and comedian; a graceful writer, but exceedingly coarse in much of his dramatic delineation.

and as Barnum bold—
Make brass your base, but galvanize with gold;
Make friends of editors—to stop their cark,—
Then prig in peace—like Knickerbocker Clark!

Oh! Clark! prince-pauper of the rhyming crew!

Gaylord Clark, of the Knickerbocker Magazine, (though doubtless a very good fellow,) is a most unmitigated eleemosynary object in the way of gratis-contributions, out of which, and Joe Miller, he serves up a monthly olla-podrida of pathos and bathos. He has lately published a volume called the “Knickerbocker Gallery,” made up of articles furnished by authors ambitious of having their interesting faces exhibited to the public in a sort of Valhalla of American genius.

Who lives on “tickle me—I'll tickle you.”
Too light my blade, perchance, at him to lunge,
Whose monthly “Table” is a monthly sponge,
Absorbing authors dead and authors quick—
A Ghoul of letters—living by “Old Knick!”
While genius struggles at starvation's gate,
Smart talent dwells in comfortable state;
While genuine merit scarce a dog attends,
Clark shows a “Gallery” of obsequious friends!
So true, that self-complacent mediocrities
Are more esteemed than Seneca or Socrates.

Does Putnam foster native worth?

Geo. P. Putnam, I verily believe, has endeavoured to act manfully by native authors, and deserves their good-will. Though in speaking well of Putnam, (the man,) I am far from endorsing the vapidity of some later issues of the “Monthly,” since it lost its original editor. As for Harper and his coadjutors, they will, it is to be hoped, find their level before long.

—'tis weakness;
He'll ne'er attain to Knickerbocker sleekness.
Would he get rich?—behold a bright example—
See brazen Harper o'er all justice trample:

206

Behold him cheer his literary hacks on,
To steal from authors, Gallic, Scotch, and Saxon!
O Putnam! gladly does the muse attest
Thy wishes faithful to her high behest!
While mouthing Carey

This is Henry C. Carey, a New Jersey gentleman, who seems to be afflicted with the scribbling Quixotism to a degree which makes him hazard a literary tilt at every sort of windmill.

voids his rheumy spite,
And frothy Raymond

Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times, and Lieutenant-Governor of that State; an uneasy little man, who is continually getting into hot-water. His opposition to copyright is, however, very explicable and excusable, as his partner in the “Times” is one of the “Harpers.”

barks, but dare not bite;
While traitor's stab, and cowards skulk behind—
'Tis thine to battle for thy country's Mind!
Time settles all—and Time will make amends;
For “Authors' Rights” may yet be Putnam's friends;—
When Harper's trade (that's literary theft!)
By righteous laws shall be of shelter 'reft;
And ancient “Knick” remain, (if Heaven chooses,)
A “Lying-in-Retreat” for naughty muses.

Cantab Longfellow!—poet and professor!
Of “Washington's Head-Quarters” sole possessor:
Beloved by booksellers, adored of “sophs”—
Lo! at thy name my muse her bonnet doffs;
Yet, in the mighty name of law, I venture
For debt thou owest the world to make debenture.

Not for the debts thou owest a score or less
Of foreign bards,

Longfellow owes much to his familiarity with European literature—vide his translations and the general tone of his original matter.

who now wear Yankee dress;
Not for thy clippings of old rusty coins—
(Thy head enriches what thy hand purloins;)
Not for thy thought-webs cribbed from monkish looms;
They're better in thy tomes than in their tombs;

207

Thy alchemy has made much gold from lead,
So, “let the dead past bury” all “its dead;”
For ancient wounds let silence be the suture—
I ask a debt thou owest the awful future!

Art and position, Hal! make thee a poet:
If Nature lends her signet, pray, let's know it;
Haply thy Harvard fame immortal seems,
Haply thy name and verse be synonyms;
Yet, if thou wouldst thy proper glory reach,
I say to thee, as Lear says,—“mend thy speech!”
Cast off thy dressing-gown, and gird thy loins—
And learn what Deity on song enjoins;
Thou hast portrayed ideal wrongs and woes:
Now, by my harp! canst real wrongs disclose?
Thou hast drawn tears for miseries long forgotten:
Canst thou find nothing in our time that's rotten?
Oh! that the churchyard Past were ransacked less!
These ghouls, the poets, then might mankind bless:
If the old catacombs were left to moulder,
Gold-mines of thought we'd find ere Pan grew older.

Behold young Lowell.

James Russell Lowell has given more absolute promise, and less fulfilment, than any young bard of our country. A man of genius should be ever on the march, and Lowell loiters too much by the way-side. He should take a few hints from his own “Fable for Critics.”

in whose soul there lies
(Fathoms below where his own vision pries)
A grand new world, of power, of love, of light,
Which yet may flame—a star athwart our sight;
If the dull shocks of life's chaotic wave
Wash not away the orb which now they lave.

208

O Lowell! now sententious—now most wordy—
Thy harp Cremona half—half hurdy-gurdy;
Wouldst thou arise and climb the steeps of heaven?
Sandals and staff are for thy journey given;
Wouldst thou embrace the poet-preacher's lot
Nor purse nor scrip will lift thy steps a jot!
Forth on the highways of the general mind,
Thy soul must walk, in oneness with mankind.
Thou hast done well, but thou canst yet do better,
And, winning credit, make the world thy debtor.
Pour out thy heart—albeit with flaws and fractures:
Give us thyself—not “Lowell manufactures;”
Then shall thy music vibrate through our pulse,
And all thy songs be milestones of results.
But if, in thy true eagle-like aspirings,
The “mousing-owl” of Harvard choke thy choirings;
If, haply, drugged with Tennysonian theme,
Thy genius stoop to dally and to dream;
If—worse than all—fanaticism clods
The song which is Humanity's—and God's,—
Then may no satire of thy being tell!
Then, Lowell! to thy fame “a long farewell!”

Hark! Whittier's sledge

John G. Whittier, despite the sameness of his muse, has won a reputation for strength and boldness which is noticeable enough in this age of puerility. He possesses great vigor of expression, but is often very prolix.

upon the hearts of men
Beats in continual music—“ten-pound-ten!”
Sworn foe of “institutions patriarchal,”
Black ground, he finds, gives gems a brighter sparkle.

209

Lo! how he comes, with earnest heart and loyal,
Flanked by his ordnance for a battle royal;
Swinging a club, might stagger Hercules,
To dash the mites from off a mouldering cheese;
Roaring like Stentor from his brazen throat,
To drown some snappish spaniel's yelping note;
Ah, Whittier! Fighting Friend! I like thy verse—
Thy wholesale blessing and thy wholesale curse;
I prize the spirit which exalts thy strain,
And joy when truth impels thy blows amain;
But really, friend! I cannot help suspecting,
Though writing's good, there's merit in correcting!
Hahnemann likes best “the thirtieth dilution,”

The “thirtieth dilution” is said to be the best proportion in homœopathy.

But poetry scarce bears so much diffusion;
The homœopathic thought (though truth sublime)
Dies, through materia medica of rhyme;
So, Whittier! give less lexicon, and more
Good thought—of which, no doubt, thou hast a store.
Give us, if thou wouldst sing a flying slave,
Just as few bars as he or she would crave;
And if on “Ichabod” thou launchest malison,

“Ichabod” was the caption of a poem which, in no half-way strain, arraigned a celebrated statesman for his reputed backslidings. I regretted this, because, while I hold poetry to be a fitting medium for the promulgation of great truth, defence of humanity, liberty, etc., I hardly esteem it the proper vehicle of equivocal personalities or abusive strictures. The true poet is of no ism nor creed, per se. Whittier is a true poet—but it is not in his negrophilism that this fact is most apparent. James Russell Lowell—ditto.

Make it no longer than two books of Alison.
And further, Whittier! “an thou lovest me,”
Let thy chief subject for a while go free;—
Or else, (how frail “Othello's occupation!”)
When slavery falls, will fall thine avocation!
Living the black man's friend, i'faith, thou'lt die so:
A paraphrase of Wilmot's great proviso!

A political measure, brought before Congress, by a worthy Pennsylvanian named David Wilmot, who was at one time threatened with unpremeditated immortality, but is now totally out of danger.

210

Whittier, adieu! my blows I would not spare,
For when I strike, I strike who best can bear;
Oft in this rhyme of mine I lash full hard
The man whom most I love, as friend and bard;
Even as the leech, inspired by science pure,
Albeit he probe and cauterize—must cure!

Trimountain! long hast thou the Mecca been
Of rhyming hadgees garbed in natural green!
Trimountain! Kaaba—reverently kissed
By Yankee bards—their “blarney-stone” I wist.

Blackstone was the founder of the “Modern Athens.” The Kaaba is a “black stone” at Mecca, held in high veneration by all true Moslems, on whom a pilgrimage to Mecca confers the title of “hadgee,” and the distinction of wearing a green turban. The “blarney-stone” is familiar to the authors who deal much with publishers.

To thee came Peabody

Peabody, a poor poet.—

—to thee came Doane;

Doane, a bishop, and ditto.—

M'Lellan,

McLellan, ibid.—

Pike, and Sprague, were all thine own:
Pierpont and Everett

Everett, very classic, poet of Harvard, Secretary of State under Fillmore, and a poor poet; famous for a nauseous rhyme, viz:—

“For Roman hearts shall long be sick,
When men shall think of Alaric!”

sang for thee their strains;
And savage Snelling

William J. Snelling, author of a pungent satire, entitled “Truth, a Gift for Scribblers,” in which the rhymers were handled without gloves.

flogged them for their pains.
Ah, me! if once thou hadst such magnet skill,
Our bards to sway—I pray thee, use it still!
Wake as of old the three-stringed Yankee lyres,
And sound the pitchpipe of New England choirs;
Ask if John Neal no longer feels the flame
With which he lit of yore the bonfire, fame?
Or heads no more his charging lines, to ride
Booted and spurred through all the country wide?
Time was, when, vocal as his “fierce gray bird,”
In parish schools his shrieking lays were heard;
And embryo poets felt their quickening life,
When “Pierpont's Readers”

“Pierpont's Readers” were school-books much in vogue in New England, and many an urchin have they assisted to his “nine parts of speech.”

woke the classic strife!

211

Mellifluous Pierpont! whose Horatian odes
Were counted heaviest among urchins' loads;
When parsing thee, they saw their trials past,
Nor valued gems so painfully amassed.
Ah! many a gem indeed hath been encased
By Pierpont's industry and Pierpont's taste;—
And many a gem in quiet beauty glows,
(Which Griswold ne'er would venture to disclose,)
Where Burleigh's songs, attuned with placid love,
Rose from his lips to blend with those above;
Where Dawes'

Dawes is now a Swedenborgian clergyman at Washington, D. C.

melodious childhood passed away,
And Woodworth's

Samuel Woodworth was the author of “The Old Oaken Bucket.”

genius framed its virgin lay.

'Tis a coincidence worth special credit,
That Sargent should the “Boston Transcript”

This is a long-established Boston sheet, and, doubtless, well-conducted by the poet, who, however, has been sometimes accused of venial plagiarisms. Sargent is the author of “Velasco,” a tragedy, and at one time edited “The Standard Drama,” a catch-penny republication of English plays.

edit;
Strange the “poetic justice” does not strike him,
(I throw the hint out, as I rather like him,
Because my favorite bards his muse rehearses,)
Of putting “Boston Transcript” on his verses.
Poor man! I mourn his euphuistic grammar,
I mourn “Velasco,” and the “Standard Drama;”
I mourn—but, no! I wish him fame sincerely:
“Athens the modern” dubs her poets yearly;
Perhaps at “Annual Odes” he'll distance Sprague;
Or baffle Emerson with problems vague;—
Perchance, like Pierpont, prove 'tis wrong to tipple;
Or ape Macaulay, like sententious Whipple!

Edwin P. Whipple is a young man, who, by dint of industry and tolerable imitative powers, has become a sort of Boston Macaulay; writes essays, and lectures.

212

O, Emerson! some transatlantic Solon
(As a discoverer, sure, he rivals Colon,)
Has found that in thy brain (commodious quarters!)
Lives all the poesy this side of the waters.

It was asserted by a British Review that Emerson was the only true American poet.

Ah, me! methinks this critic spiritual
Has proved thy favorite creed—that man is dual.
Would that his wisdom might reveal the fact
Of thy Poetic Essence—all intact!
Would that the Heart-Beat of the Awful Whole
Could pulse distinct and gauge thy Breadth of Soul!
Till Sense Incarnate, robed in Suns like Ammon,
Might permeate, and throb through Space—and—gammon.

Speaking of gammon—I destroyed, last night,
(In several vain attempts to strike a light,)
Destroyed, ye gods! a work that would have burst
Like sunlight o'er the world! out-rhyming Hirst—
Out-mouthing Lunt—out-agonizing Emerson—
Out—hold! the idea brings increasing tremors on.
It was a poem upon the softer gender—
Sublime, unique, expressive, touching, tender!
Such adjectives! such nouns! such punctuation!—
Such awful strength! and such alliteration!
In it sweet Edith May, with true abandon,
Was placed some twenty pegs above poor Landon;
Sigourney plucked from Hemans' brow the myrtle,
And Hale was Sappho—with a longer kirtle;—

213

Greenwood was Norton and De Stael united,
And Blessington for Mistress Neal was slighted.
To some nine more I gave the Muses' names,
As Pierson, Swisshelm, and kindred dames.
Alas! that such a poem—on bards so gentle—
Was lost—by conflagration accidental;
Griswold alone, in some bright spirit-flashes,
Can raise this Yankee-phœnix from its ashes.

But, apropos—when poetry's “the fashion,”
Women and men alike must feel the passion:
Verse-writing 's very nice on gilt-edged vellum,
Crow-quilled by some young literary Pelham.
Let women write—their will 'tis useless baulking:
They do less harm by writing than by talking!
Write—write! but oh! I charge each rhyming daughter,
Let not the men purloin your milk and water!

Ho! for the West! the boundless, buoyant West!
'Tis monstrous dull, when poetry's the quest.
Where Mississippi's awful grandeurs roll,
Like an eternal anthem through the soul;
Where tombs of empires rise in endless wo,
Colossal epics of the tribes below;—
Where leaped the Mammoth, with a bound terrific,
From Rocky Mountains to the far Pacific;

For a succinct account of this marvellous leap, vide Hirst's “Coming of the Mammoth.”

Where border-frays, that beat old Scottish forays,
Impromptu duels, and red Indian soirées,—

214

And all that makes the human hair most vertical,
As common-place transactions are assert-ical;

A Willis-ian license.

Sure, in a clime so stirring and romantic,
The muse and Pegasus must both grow frantic.

Frantic! ah, no! the West, with sage reflection,
Confines her muse to pinafore subjection;
And save when Prentice,

George D. Prentice, editor of the Louisville Journal, has written some fine fragmentary poems, which, as “specimen bricks,” make us mourn for the symmetric temple—to which they are not the index.

after hock and soda,
Invokes his song as Fingal conjured Loda;—
Wielding the falchion of his classic wit
To oust the phantoms that around him flit;
Unconscious all, that while, with accents loud,
He wooes his muse, his muse is but a cloud:
And save when Gallagher,

W. D. Gallagher is a Washington clerk now; when an editor, he wrote tolerable poetry.

with trenchant stroke,
Cleaves out a verse as woodmen rend an oak,
And, haply, rising from the flat inane,
Pipes on the airs of heaven a golden strain:—
Save and except, at times, some bulbul notes,
Fresh from a few sequestered maidens' throats,
That sometimes please and sometimes strangely jar,—
I know not where our western poets are.
Not Orton soars to strike the highest chord:
Not Pike nor Patten—nor Legaré nor Lord!
Not even Chivers,

Thos. H. Chivers, M. D., of Georgia, has written some good rhymes, but is haunted by dead poets, and passes his life in an insane attempt to prove that Poe gained his reputation by plagiarizing from Chivers. Let the doctor leave logic, and try to write poetry, which is more his forte than criticism.

from whose virgin muse
The graceless Poe stole all that she could lose,
Unhappy Chivers, whose transcendent lays
Are out of place in these degenerate days,

215

And yet for whom, were half his verses burned,
A poet's fame the other half had earned,—
Ah! not from these, or such as these, shall rise
Immortal song to occidental skies.
When the great Iliad of the sunset land
Is writ, it must be by a Homer's hand:
'Till then, low-brooding through its busy life,
The Western Poem shall be Manhood's Strife!
Loud as the thunders of thy surging woods,
Broad and majestic as thine awful floods,
Deep as thy soundless caves, O mighty West!
Thus be thy song—an ocean in thy breast!

Rest thee, mine Harp! my wearied hand I fling,
With scarce an impulse, o'er each quivering string!
My thankless task hath reached its natural term—
Wisdom its fruit—though Folly was its germ.
Not mine to scathe with bitter jest the heart,
Or reckless launch the slanderer's jealous dart;—
Not mine to prostitute the gift of song,
To wreak revenge for real or fancied wrong;—
Behind my jest no covert malice slept—
From out my praise no inuendo crept:
An honest Anglo-Saxon round of blows
I've dealt alike upon my friends and foes;
And, if I struck full oft within the guard—
Be sure, I might have struck ten times as hard!

223

Manifest Destiny. A WAR ECLOGUE

224

To the Manes of the Dead Who in Mexic battles bled, And to all the hapless Living, Suffering still, and still forgiving, Sacred be What here is said: As a memory of the Past, To the Unknown Future cast, Grant, O God! Its meanings last.

225

“Our Country—right or wrong!”—
Decatur.

I.
TRUMPET-SONG.

Mark! 'tis the battle peal!
The foe hath crossed our borders:
The dogs who wait at our country's gate
Would slay its valiant warders.
Brave hearts, prepare you!
The foes who dare you
Are bold and strong!

But, war to the proud oppressor!—
War to the rude aggressor!
Our Country! may she ne'er be wrong!—
And while she's right, God bless her!

226

Chant ye, in battle's hour,
The Alamo's bloody story,
Of Goliad's day, and Bexar's fray,
And wild Jacinto's glory!
Their souls shall lead you
Whose blood has freed you—
A glorious throng!
Then war to the proud oppressor!
War to the rude aggressor!
Our Country! may she ne'er be wrong!—
And while she's right, God bless her!

II.
THE RUBICON.

It were a glorious strife to guard
The ramparts of our land—
And at her portals stand,
Hurling back the invading hordes;
But to stain our patriot swords
With the blood of those who never
Raised the hostile hand,
Save in Freedom's bold endeavor,
Foreign foemen to withstand,—
Is but lust, and wrong, and crime—
Branding us to endless time.

227

And they are mad who counsel now
The fetters and the steel,
Our triumph dark to seal:
Better far the olive-wreath
Offer now, than flames and death.
Pause, ye rash, unthinking zealots!
Ere ye rivet chains!
Freedom brooks nor kings nor helots—
Crowns and whips alike disdains.
Better now in glory pause,
Than to break great Freedom's laws!

Christian men! who lift your hearts
To Heaven, this day, in prayer—
And lay your conscience bare,—
Know YE not, that War and Wrong
Can never make your temples strong?
Know ye not that blood and battles
Are not from the Lord?
Serve ye God's great laws, or Vattel's?
Bear ye gospels, or the sword?
Lo! on high the record stands—
Ye, like Pilate, wash your hands!

228

III.
TRIUMPH.

Destiny! Destiny!
Warder! look forth! sound now the warning cry—
Give the alarum-word!
Lo! the Destroyer of the Free draws nigh:
Swings the dread balance midway from on high—
The wall with fire is scored:
Ambition whets his sword!

War! war! war!
What says this Christian nation to the world?
Earth with our threats is rife:
Heaven hath beheld our crimson flag unfurled—
In flaming wrath our armies have been hurled
Against a nation's life!
War to the bloody knife!

Raise ye your pæan loud
For the man-slayers! Crown the crimson brows
Of your wild hero crowd
With mural diadems! Arouse—arouse!
Come from your wheels, your altars, and your ploughs;
Come ye whom toil has bowed—
Hail ye those warriors proud!

Hail ye those hearts of flame!
And twine your flow'rs, and weave your garlands bright,
And peal each warrior's name:

229

They have held Christian throats in murderous fight;
They have spread fire, and pestilence, and blight;
They have sown death and shame:
Rear ye the arch of Fame!

Slaves of the South—arise!
Clang ye your gyves, to swell the cymbals' sound—
Lift your exulting eyes!
Lo! your white masters have new victims found—
Comrades ye have—in war's red bondage bound:
Ye shall hear answering cries,
Swelling your gasping sighs.

White slaves of Northern gold!
Build ye a Teocalli—where the foes
Of our ambition bold
May writhe beneath our Anglo-Saxon blows,
And shriek their curses in expiring throes—
Curses that shall be told
Till Eternity is old!

Destiny! Destiny!
Lo! 'tis our mission to pour out the tide
Of our heart-blood, and die,
With foeman's corse stretched ghastly by our side;
Or live and trample him in vengeful pride:
This is our mission high—
Gospel of Liberty!

230

We preach great Freedom's creed?
We? with our heels upon the writhing necks
Of millions yet unfreed,
Whose gasping prayers the soul of Justice vex?
We! who upon a crumbling nation's wrecks
Would build a pyramid
Where millions more might bleed?

Sparta-like, would we found
A Helotage?—Rome-like, usurp the sway
Of a world in slavery bound?
Lo! in their might those wrongs were swept away!
What shall be our palladium from decay,
When Rome, with triumph crown'd,
Fell, crumbling, to the ground?

Destiny! Destiny!
Hark! the slain Prophets warn us from above—
The Past uplifts its cry!
Tame ye the Eagle! send ye forth the Dove!
Land of my heart, my life, my home, my love!
Cast not God's warning by—
Preach thou TRUE liberty!

231

IV.
IO PŒAN.

Ho! ye who lit your triumph fires,
And waved your thousand banners—
When brothers, husbands, sons, and sires,
Met on the south savannas!—
When human blood like water ran,
And men sank down like cattle,
From Palo Alto's bloody van
To Churubusco's battle!

Ho! ye who hailed each victory
With cannon salutations,
And dazzled mountain, plain, and sea,
With grand illuminations,—
Lo! Mexico hath bent the knee—
Her grief and pain she stifles:
Ye 've manifested Destiny—
With Anglo-Saxon rifles!

Peace is proclaimed! Hurrah! hurrah!
Our valorous Yankee nation
Has whipped the Mexic mongrel, far
Beyond all calculation.
Two hundred millions dollars lost—
A thousand score of fighters;
A bloody page in history's crost,
With bloody men for writers.

232

Hurrah! hurrah! at least ye've laid
In dust the Mexic forces—
Orphans and widows ye have made,
And sixty thousand corses!
And Mexico's partitioned, too—
Her highland from her lowland
Oh! brave REPUBLICANS are you—
As Russians were—in Poland!

O, ye who in our pulpits praised
The Lord for battle's glories,—
And ye who swore that peace disgraced,
And peace-men were but tories,—
Light tapers now!—illuminate!
Let trump and cannon mingle!—
Till every heart shall palpitate,
And ever ear shall tingle.

Ye've conquered Mexico! 'Twas bold!
The war will surely cease now—
In part by blood, in part by gold,
Ye've gained (we thank you) peace now.
IO TRIUMPHE! Homeward come
Those who in camp were quartered;
Save—twenty thousand dead and dumb,
By ball and fever slaughtered.

233

IO—O—IO! Sound the trump!
The Mexic war is ended:—
Moloch has gulped a heavy lump,
And gold the gap has mended.
A five-act tragedy, fair sirs,
We've had for us enacted!
May God forgive the managers,
Who for this PLAY contracted!

V.
INDEMNITY.

I wandered forth, a dreamer lone,
While wintry winds around me whistled;
And from the boughs where once they nestled,
Bird and bee were flown.
And to my side there crept a child,
With azure eyes and features mild,
And sunny Saxon hair—
But tangled was that hair, and wild,
As if it knew no mother's care—
That desolate young child!

I stooped me down, and gently drew
The trembler to my melting bosom;
And wondered where so fair a blossom
In life's sad desert grew.

234

But though with accents soft and low,
And tears that spite of me would flow,
I questioned of his home—
He only murmured “Let me go!
“For Pa-pa's killed in Mexico,
“And ma-ma's dead at home!”

I clasped his little hand, and tried
To win the heart so wildly heaving,
And soothe the passion of his grieving;
But still he wept and sighed.
And though his eyes of mystic blue,
Like sunny rain, upon me threw
A radiancy of gloom,—
He only murmured—“Let me go!
“For Pa-pa's killed in Mexico,
“And Ma-ma's dead at home!”

235

The Maiden of the Shield.

236

TO The Gentle Eva: (IN WHOSE PLEASANT COMPANY IT WAS WRIT,) This Ballad IS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED.

237

1. PART FIRST.

Night hung darkly over the mountain, over the forest and the dale;
Dim and ghostly from the heavens look'd the moon so thin and pale—
Like the white face of a mourner from her thick and sable veil.

On the gray and misty mountain-brow a cloudy mantle hung,
Over the storm-king's giant shoulders, as he rose from slumber, flung;
And its fringe of gloom descended all the shrouded vales among.

238

There was sound of mirth and revel in the Maxwell's castle-hall:
Mirth of warriors met for wassail, whilst without, upon the wall,
Watch and ward kept ancient Donald Bane, the stalwart seneschal.

Stout and trusty man was Donald Bane;—at Naseby had he bled,
And at Wor'ster, where, with Scottish blood, the Saxon soil grew red;
Sturdily strode he now the ramparts, with a measured martial tread.

Through the gleaming turret casements Donald looked with longing peer,
Whence the sound of harp and pibroch broke by times upon his ear:
Clink of goblet, clash of trencher, could the sturdy yeoman hear.

Gloomily round the frowning turrets, and within the shattered fosse,
Giant shadows oft like phantoms would the soldier's vision cross—
Shapes that angrily toward Heaven seemed their cloudy arms to toss.

239

Slowly strode the stalwart seneschal, with gauntlet on his sword;
Whilst within, in joyous revel, sat the castle's noble lord;
And a score of valiant chieftains clinked their goblets at his board.

There was wild Sir Duncan Carisbrooke, with matted elfin hair;
Stout Athlone, and winsome Umfraville, and reckless Ranaldmair;
And Lord Clavers, false and cruel, with a face like angel fair.

Many a shield, with dinted bosses, hung within that banquet-hall;
Drooped full many a lordly banner from the lofty turret wall:
But the shield and flag of Clavers hung the highest of them all.

For with fire and steel from Stirling gates had Clavers ridden forth,
With his lips compressed, his forehead dark, his haughty spirit wroth;
And he swore to mark with foot of flame his pathway to the north.

240

Not like Scotia's sons of olden time, to quell the boasting Dane,
Or to drive the daring Southron far from Berwick's castled plain;
For this man had bared his broadsword, Scotia's noblest blood to drain.

Noblest blood for aye, and priceless, that which fires the patriot's veins,
Be he prince or be he peasant, who the truth of God maintains:
Seed-like falls the blood of martyrs—harvesting the Future's plains!

Breathing vengeance rode Lord Clavers, with his soul as dark as night;
And beside him Jamie Turner—red with many a gory fight;
And the fierce and frantic Dallzell, with his beard of silver white.

Rode they forth with lance and banner, rode they forth with steel and brand,
And they swore to make a desert of the pleasant Scottish land,
And to slay, at hearth and altar, all the Covenanters' band.

241

2. PART SECOND.

When the clouds were darkest, dreariest, over castle wall and tower—
When the goblet clink grew loudest, at the solemn midnight hour—
Then arose fair Annie Maxwell: hied she, trembling, from her bower.

Through the postern stole the maiden; shrill and fiercer moaned the blast;
Hied she forth amid the tempest, and the shadows dark and vast;
Donald paced the castle ramparts, but he wist not who had passed.

Like a phantom through the midnight fled the Maxwell's daughter fair;
Loosely streamed the silken fillet that entwined her cloudy hair;
Backward waved her plaid and tresses, fluttering wildly on the air.

242

Whither flies fair Annie Maxwell, 'mid the tempest fierce and wild?
Wherefore seeks she now the mountain, where the stormy clouds are piled?
Wherefore thus, through mist and darkness, flees the castle's winsome child?

She hath heard the oath of Clavers, at her father's festal board;
She hath heard his fiery troopers clash their sabres at the word;
And she knows that through high Ben Venú they ride with fire and sword.

And fair Annie hath a true love—brave and loyal youth is he—
Who hath sworn to guard the Covenant as long as life shall be;
And who roams the hills an outlaw—praising God that he is free!

'Tis to save the brave young Ronald—'tis to warn him of his foes,
That the castle's winsome daughter from her maiden couch uprose.
Brave and loving Annie Maxwell! purer than the Highland snows!

243

Up the mountain-path, with weary feet, the gentle maiden pressed,
With her white hand fluttering dovelike on her wildly-heaving breast;—
Far above frowned Ben Venú, with storm and cloud upon his crest.

'Gainst the darkness pressed her forehead, as the mountain-path she clomb;
And the whiteness of that forehead seemed a snow-wreath on the gloom;
While her hair rolled darkly backward, like a billow from its foam.

Heaven smiles on high endeavor! Lo! the tempest sank away,
And a star looked from the darkness, with a sweet and placid ray:
On the turf, amid the shadows, knelt the maiden down to pray.

Rose the clouds, like lifted curtains, over mountain, glen, and glade—
While the moonlight gushed adown the rocks—an echoless cascade;
And within it, like a peri, dripping silver, stood the maid.

244

Over her boddice gleamed the raindops, in a net of jewelrie;
And a lustre hemmed her garments, as they floated light and free;
And her midnight hair grew golden, like a glory on the sea.

Glanced her white feet in the moonbeam, as with silver sandals dight,
While the dewdrops glittered from them, in a spray of diamonds bright;
And a mist clung round her garments, as on angel-wings the light.

Like an angel, kneeling, praying, on that silent mountain-height,
With the moonbeams gushing o'er her, in a flood of liquid light:
Sure no fairer, holier presence ever greeted mortal sight!

For her heart was lifted upward, and through all its wondrous cells
Floated strange, mysterious melody, in cadences and swells,
As if all the air were tinkling with the thrill of crystal bells.

245

Smiled the moonbeams from the heavens, and the earth, with fragrant thanks,
Lifted up her perfumed offerings from a thousand flowery banks,
Where the dripping blades of heather softly bowed their glittering ranks;—

From the beds of mountain-violets, from bowers of clustering vines,
Where the honeysuckle's crimson cup the jessamine entwines;
And where Scotia's drooping bluebell in its modest glory shines.

Then the maiden's pulses fainted, as if spelled by witching art,
While the perfume, soft as lover's breathing, kissed her lips apart,
And the zephyr's fairy fingers touched the key-notes of her heart.

Thus she prayed amid the loneliness of forest, mount, and stream—
And the shadows melted round her, like the darkness of a dream.
Oh! in truth, fair Annie Maxwell did a blesséd angel seem!

246

For ye might have marked the dawning of her softly-glowing face,
As a roseleaf through a lily made transparent we should trace—
Or an inner light outbreaking from an alabaster vase.

Thus she prayed amid the moonlight, and she murmured, “Ronald, dear!”
But she heard not from the mountain-path a lightsome foot draw near—
Till a voice, in well-known music, whispered, “Annie, I am here!”

3. PART THIRD.

Morning breaks in blue o'er Ben Venú—the morning of our Lord;
And a hundred plaided warriors kneel in prayer upon the sward,
And the songs of outlawed Christians rise in beautiful accord.

247

Songs of loud and vehement triumph—rolling round the cavernous hills;
Higher and higher the hymn sonorous through each echoing chasm thrills:
High and higher the resonant chorus all the arching heaven fills.

Here no pomp of man's cathedrals, pillared shrine nor sounding aisle—
Here no frescoed roof, no sculptured stone, no gold-emblazoned pile,—
But a towering cliff the altar, and the church a dim defile.

Columned from the rocks basaltic—towering higher than man might climb—
Base, and capital, and architrave, existent from all time;
And the blue of heaven o'erarching in a canopy sublime.

And with flowers the aisles were tesselate—with flowers and shining grass;
And the vines, festooned and draperied, drooped in many a twining mass;
And the gateway of this temple was a narrow mountain-pass.

248

Cleft and hollowed from the rocky walls that circled half the scene—
Steep and perilously descending, whilst a chasm yawned between:
Fearful passway for the invader seemed this dangerous ravine.

For a score of men might battle here against a countless host,
Scattering foes as waves are shivered on Lochcarron's rocky coast;—
Such a wild Thermopylæ this as only Scotia's land may boast.

Loud and bold, and echoing grandly, swell the Covenanters' songs—
Far and near each vale resoundingly the rolling strain prolongs;
And the vaulted caverns tremble as with clang of martial gongs.

Rolling, deepening, sinking, muttering—faint and fainter falls the sound,
Till the last thin note dissolveth in the valley-deeps profound:
Then a silence, as of midnight, suddenly creepeth all around.

249

Silence, deep and hush'd as midnight, broken only by the clamp,
As of coursers' hoofs descending o'er the rocks with sullen tramp,
And the hollow mountain-echoes, answering each resounding stamp.

Brief and low the benediction—while the warrior-preacher's ken
Swept afar the mountain-passes and the openings of the glen:
Then a clash of targe and claymore rudely spake the stern “Amen!”

Vanished from the rocks and gorges who but now had knelt in prayer—
Sire and child, and youth and maiden—gone, as if enwrapped in air;
Gone and vanished from the temple—stalwart men and women fair.

Yet nor flying they nor fearsome. Lo! around that temple wide—
Hidden within the cloven caverns and the beds of torrents dried—
Still they kneel, and mutely worship, in the craggy mountain's side.

250

4. PART FOURTH.

Out of the heavens, bright and beautiful, the showering sunlight falls—
As with golden garments robing cliff, and rock, and craggy walls;
Building piles of hazy glory, glittering towers and shining halls.

Calm and beautiful is the landscape, with the sunlight smiling o'er;—
All is silent, save the turbulence of some cataract's angry roar,
As it surges dull and heavily on Loch Achray's cloudy shore.

And amid the blesséd calmness, and beneath the sunbeam mild—
While around, in awful loneliness, the mountain walls are piled—
Kneels the Covenanter Ronald, with the Maxwell's bonnie child.

251

Yawning fearfully before them, glooms a wide and darksome chasm,
Whence the rocks were riven, ages since, by some tremendous spasm;
Silent kneel the youth and maiden, hushed with high enthusiasm.

Over the chasm, dizzily spanning, poised upon the perilous clifts,
Lo! a bridge of sycamores springing, high its gnarléd form uplifts—
Fearful causeway, heavily swinging, o'er the terrible mountain rifts.

Long and wearily through the night had Ronald marked the changing skies—
Long and wearily watching, listening, lest the foemen might surprise:
Sentinel'd here, the bridge before him—bridge and chasm before his eyes.

Long and wearily 'mid the tempest, through the awful gloom of night,
Watch had Ronald held unfaltering, on that lonely mountain height,
'Till the stars and Annie Maxwell shone at once upon his sight.

252

Now the night and storm were vanished—and the scent of flowrets fair,
Like the breath of heaven's dear angels, floated sweetly through the air;—
Hand in hand, and heart to heart, the lovers breathed their morning prayer.

Very soft was Annie's orison—like a brooklet's liquid tones—
Like a low and musical brooklet, trickling o'er its crystal stones;
Yet it reached her Infinite Father, bending from His throne of thrones.

Far above the kneeling lovers—swelling forth in golden thrills,
Rolling grandly down the passes—echoed sweetly through the hills,
Hark! the hymn of Martin Luther all the raptured mountain fills!

Hymn of prayer and praise triumphant! hymn for soldier-saints to sing!
List! o'er Ben Venú it broodeth, like a glorious angel's wing;
And beneath its voiceful music trembleth every living thing.

253

Then, another sound comes downward—rushing through the mountain caves,
Like the roar of angry water, as in chasm and tarn it raves,
When the storm is gathering mightily o'er Loch Katrine's yesty waves.

Upward suddenly rose young Ronald, flinging back his clustering locks,
Whilst, with gaze of eagle range, his eyes explored the sundered rocks,
Whence the sound of iron hoof-beats echoed loud in measured shocks.

Swooping down the mountain passes rode a hundred horsemen bold:
Swaying plumes and flashing corselets—gallant troopers to behold;
And the foremost man was Clavers, with his locks of waving gold.

Downward thundering, while the sun-light sheathed each iron form in flame:
Faint and fearsome grew fair Annie, as the horsemen rushing came;
Well she marked her sire, Lord Maxwell, riding foremost with the Græme.

254

Loudly roared the sunken cataracts—but the troopers' yell rose higher;
Downward rode they, swift and heavily, every hoof-print flecked with fire,
Downward swooping toward the sycamore bridge, still downward, nigher and nigher.

Yet, nor faint nor fearsome Ronald:—swelled and throbb'd his bosom proud—
Resolute rose he, like an oak athwart the tempest-laden cloud—
While the lily, Annie Maxwell, on the cliff beneath him bowed.

Towering mightily on the precipice, with its beetling crags o'erhung—
And the yawning chasm before him, with the sycamores o'er it flung—
Lo! a ponderous Scottish battle-axe around his head he swung.

Flashed that war-axe in the sun-light—raised in terrible strength toward heaven—
Circling fearfully, swift descending—like a thunderbolt downward driven:—
Reel'd the bridge, and rock'd the precipice, as by lightning fiercely riven.

255

Once again—a terrible engine—surging, shivering, as it fell:
Echoed the sound from wood and mountain—hoarsely sank through cave and dell;
Then from Clavers' vengeful troopers rose a loud, discordant yell.

Suddenly check'd, with choking bridle, back the Maxwell's courser reared—
Wildly gasping, widely staring, down that pass the Maxwell peered;—
Was it the phantom of his daughter? was it wraith or vision weird?

Bright and beautiful, like a seraph—as if scarce of earth a part—
Mute and motionless, kneeling—moulded it might seem by sculptor's art,—
And a shield of iron upholding, covering Ronald's valiant heart.

Sturdily fell the blows of Ronald, while the maid beside him kneeled—
Never a jot their true hearts faltered—never a jot their spirits reeled;
Still the maid beside her lover knelt, and raised the ponderous shield.

256

Then from arquebuse and matchlock, hurtling on that shield amain—
Over the sycamores fiercely crashing, sped the troopers' leaden rain,—
Hurtling fierce upon that iron shield—still fiercer, but in vain.

For the war-axe still fell heavily—fell with wide-resounding clang;
And the echoing caverns answered, where the Covenanters sang—
And the rocks in diapason like a mighty organ rang.

Darkly frowned the fair Lord Clavers—cast he back his yellow hair;
Thrice he grasped a trooper's pistol—thrice his bullet clove the air;—
Ronald answered with a sturdier blow—the maiden with a prayer.

Madly swore the baffled Clavers—and the Maxwell, raving wild,
Raised his mailéd hands to heaven, with impious curses on his child;
But fair Annie raised the buckler over her lover—and sweetly smiled.

257

And the troopers, wildly cursing, saw the cliff's unstable ridge
Break and crumble downward heavily, 'neath the yielding timbers' edge;—
Well they knew that mortal footsteps nevermore might tread the bridge.

Mightily fell the blows of Ronald—fell the last, the giant stroke—
Like a cross-bolt, over the precipice, down the crashing timbers broke—
And a roar like mingled thunders from the mountain's womb awoke.

Dust and smoke and dry leaves whirling, half obscured the frowning height,
Backward reeled the steeds of Clavers, rearing, plunging, in affright;
Only once again fair Annie met her stormy father's sight.

Once and only—as in brightness to her lover's breast she clung,
While young Ronald toward the mountain-caves with lightsome foot upsprung,
With the iron shield and battle-axe athwart his shoulders flung.

258

But adown the mountain gorges, and around the sounding hills,
Once again the hymn sonorous of the warrior-Christians thrills—
Once again the resonant chorus all the arching heaven fills.

Many a maid in bonnie Scotland, on the mountain-sward hath kneeled—
Many a brave and loyal soldier fought on Freedom's glorious field;
But no nobler souls than Ronald and the Maiden of the Shield.

University of Virginia Library

A world beyond.

The Mission of Intellect.

1. PART FIRST.

THE VISION.

APOSTROPHE.

PILGRIMAGE.

ORDINATION.

2. PART SECOND.

EXORDIUM.

INVOCATION.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

ASPIRATION.

MDCCCXLVIII. The Year of the People.

INVOCATION.

I. THANKSGIVING HYMN FOR 1848.

II. THE GIANT.

III. REGENERATION.

IV. FRANCE TO IRELAND. The Provisional Government of the French Republic gave strong assurances of sympathy to the Irish Deputations.

V. PRAYER OF ERIN.

VI. FREEDOM BAFFLED.

VII. STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLE.

VIII. AVATAR AND FLIGHT.

IX. HUNGARY.

X. ROME.

XI. THE TRANCE.

XII. UNCONQUERED.

The Gospel of Labor.

PRELUDE.

THE CURSE AND THE BLESSING.

THE MYSTERY.

THE HOPE.

THE PARABLE.

TYRANNY THE CURSE.

THE BOOK OF RUINS.

THE LESSON.

THE FATE OF DESPOTISM.

THE GOSPEL REVEALED.

THE MYSTERY OF CREATION.

The True Republic.

The Iron Harp.

TO The Beloved Ones.

THE SONG OF TOIL.

THE POET'S TASK.

THE POET AND THE PEOPLE.

THE POET TO THE PEOPLE.

THE CHAMPIONS OF MANKIND.

THE ARTISAN.

MEN OF THOUGHT.

WORDS OF HOPE.

LIFE'S ODYSSEY.

PAST—PRESENT—FUTURE.

THE LAMENT OF PAN.

LIVE THEM DOWN.

THE ANGELS.

ANGEL OF HOPE:

ANGEL OF SUFFERING:

ANGEL OF HOPE:

ANGEL OF SUFFERING:

ANGEL OF HOPE:

THE WORLD'S LIE.

MEN OF MY COUNTRY.

HOPE YE ALWAY.

THE SMITHY.

THE PAUPER'S PLACE.

THE POOR.

THE POET.

HOPE ON.

THE TOILER'S HOPE.

EARTH-SHARING.

HEART AND SOUL.

TRUST IN GOD.

GOD AND MAN.

MDCCCXLVIII.
The Year of the People.

I.
THANKSGIVING HYMN FOR 1848.

II.
THE GIANT.

III.
REGENERATION.

IV.
FRANCE TO IRELAND.

The Provisional Government of the French Republic gave strong assurances of sympathy to the Irish Deputations.

V.
PRAYER OF ERIN.

VI.
FREEDOM BAFFLED.

VII.
STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLE.

VIII.
AVATAR AND FLIGHT.

IX.
HUNGARY.

X.
ROME.

XI.
THE TRANCE.

XII.
UNCONQUERED.

I.
TRUMPET-SONG.

II.
THE RUBICON.

III.
TRIUMPH.

IV.
IO PŒAN.

V.
INDEMNITY.