HUSHED with broad sunlight lies the hill,
And, minuting the long day's loss,
The cedar's shadow, slow and still,
Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss.
Warm noon brims full the valley's cup,
The aspen's leaves are scarce astir,
Only the little mill sends up
Its busy, never-ceasing burr.
Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems
The road along the mill-pond's brink,
From 'neath the arching barberry-stems,
My footstep scares the shy chewink.
Beneath a bony buttonwood
The mill's red door lets forth the din;
The whitened miller, dust-imbued,
Flits past the square of dark within.
No mountain torrent's strength is here;
Sweet Beaver, child of forest still,
Heaps its small pitcher to the ear,
And gently waits the miller's will.
Swift slips Undine along the race
Unheard, and then, with flashing bound,
Floods the dull wheel with light and grace,
And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round.
The miller dreams not at what cost
The quivering mill-stones hum and whirl,
Nor how for every turn, are tost
Armfuls of diamond and of pearl.
But Summer cleared my happier eyes
With drops of some celestial juice,
To see how Beauty underlies
For evermore each form of Use.
And more: methought I saw that flood,
Which now so dull and darkling steals,
Thick, here and there, with human blood,
To turn the world's laborious wheels.
No more than doth the miller there,
Shut in our several cells, do we
Know with what waste of beauty rare
Moves every day's machinery.
Surely the wiser time shall come
When this fine overplus of might,
No longer sullen, slow, and dumb,
Shall leap to music and to light.
In that new childhood of the Earth
Life of itself shall dance and play,
Fresh blood in 'Time's shrunk veins make mirth, And labor meet delight half-way.
A RACE of nobles may die out,
A royal line may leave no heir;
Wise Nature sets no guards about
Her pewter plate and wooden ware.
But they fail not, the kinglier breed,
Who starry diadems attain ;
To dungeon, axe, and stake succeed
Heirs of the old heroic strain.
The zeal of Nature never cools,
Nor is she thwarted of her ends;
When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools,
Then she a saint and prophet spends.
Land of the Magyars! though it be
The tyrant may relink his chain,
Already thine the victory,
As the just Future measures gain.
Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won
The deathly travail's amplest worth;
A nation's duty thou hast done,
Giving a hero to our earth.
And he, let come what will of woe,
Has saved the land he strove to save;
No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow,
Can quench the voice shall haunt his grave.
"I Kossuth am: O Future, thou
That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile,
O'er this small dust in reverence bow,
Remembering, what I was erewhile.
"I was the chosen trump wherethrough
Our God sent forth awakening breath;
Came chains? Came death? The strain He blew
Sounds on, outliving chains and death."
I DID not praise thee when the crowd,
'Witched with the moment's inspiration,
Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud,
And stamped their dusty adoration ;
I but looked upward with the rest,
And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best.
They raised thee not, but rose to thee,
Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging; So on some marble Phoebus the high sea
Might leave his worthless sea-weed clinging, But pious hands, with reverent care,
Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare.
Now thou'rt thy plain, grand self again,
Thou art secure from panegyric,-
Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain,
And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric;
This side the Blessed Isles, no tree
Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee.
Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow
From swinish foot-prints takes no staining,
But, leaving the gross soils of earth below,
Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining,
And unresenting falls again,
To beautify the world with dews and rain.
The highest duty to mere man vouchsafed
Was laid on thee,-out of wild chaos,
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