To heaven and earth knit with harmonious ties,—
Where I behold the exultation
Of manhood glowing in those eyes
That had been dark for ages,—
Or only lit with bestial loves and rages—
There I behold a Nation :
The France which lies Between the Pyrenees and Rhine Is the least part of France;
see her rather in the soul whose shine Burns through the craftsman's grimy countenance, In the new energy divine Of Toil's enfranchised glance.
And if it be a dream,
If the great Future be the little Past
'Neath a new mask, which drops and shows at
The same weird, mocking face to balk and blast,
Yet, Muse, a gladder measure suits the theme,
And the Tyrtæan harp
Loves notes more resolute and sharp,
Throbbing, as throbs the bosom, hot and fast:
Such visions are of morning,
no vague forewarning,
The dreams which nations dream come true,
And shape the world anew;
If this be a sleep,
Make it long, make it deep,
O Father, who sendest the harvests men reap!
While Labor so sleepeth
His sorrow is gone,
No longer he weepeth,
But smileth and steepeth
His thoughts in the dawn;
He heareth Hope yonder
Rain, lark-like, her fancies,
His dreaming hands wander
'Mid heart's-ease and pansies;
"'Tis a dream! 'Tis a vision !"
Shrieks Mammon aghast;
"The day's broad derision
Will chase it at last;
Ye are mad, ye have taken
A slumbering kraken
For firm land of the Past!"
Ah! if he awaken,
God shield us all then,
If this dream rudely shaken
Shall cheat him again!
Since first I heard our North wind blow,
Since first I saw Atlantic throw
On our fierce rocks his thunderous snow,
I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy
The rattle of thy shield at Marathon
Did with a Grecian joy
Through all my pulses run
But I have learned to love thee now
Without the helm upon thy gleaming brow,
A maiden mild and undefiled
Like her who bore the world's redeeming child;
And surely never did thy altars glance
With purer fires than now in France;
While, in their bright white flashes,
Wrong's shadow, backward cast,
Waves cowering o'er the ashes
Of the dead, blaspheming Past,
O'er the shapes of fallen giants,
His own unburied brood,
Whose dead hands clench defiance
At the overpowering Good:
And down the happy future runs a flood
Of prophesying light;
It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood,
Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud Of Brotherhood and Right.
SAID Christ our Lord, "I will go and see
How the men, my brethren, believe in me.
He passed not again through the gate of birth,
But made himself known to the children of earth.
Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings,
"Behold, now, the Giver of all good things;
Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state
Him who alone is mighty and great."
With carpets of gold the ground they spread
Wherever the Son of Man should tread,
And in palace-chambers lofty and rare
They lodged him, and served him with kingly fare.
Great organs surged through arches dim
Their jubilant floods in praise of him,
And in church and palace, and judgment-hall,
He saw his image high over all.
But still, wherever his steps they led,
The Lord in sorrow bent down his head,
And from under the heavy foundation-stones,
The son of Mary heard bitter groans.
And in church and palace, and judgment-hall,
He marked great fissures that rent the wall,
And opened wider and yet more wide
As the living foundation heaved and sighed.
your thrones and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men?
And think ye that building shall endure,
Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?
"With gates of silver and bars of gold,
Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold:
I have heard the dropping of their tears
In heaven, these eighteen hundred years."
“O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,
We build but as our fathers built;
Behold thine images, how they stand,
Sovereign and sole, through all our land.
"Our task is hard,-with sword and flame
To hold thy earth forever the same,
And with sharp crooks of steel to keep
Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep."
Then Christ sought out an artisan,
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin
Pushed from her faintly want and sin.
These set he in the midst of them,
And as they drew back their garment-hem,
For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said he,
“The images ye have made of me!”
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