KOSSUTH. A RACE of nobles may die out, But they fail not, the kinglier breed, The zeal of Nature never cools, 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. VERSES. 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. TO LAMARTINE. 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 seaweed clinging, But pious hands, with reverent care, Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare. Now thou 'rt thy plain, grand self again, Thou art secure from panegyric, Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain, And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric; This side the Blessed Isles, no tree Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee. Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow. From swinish footprints takes no staining, But, leaving the gross soils of earth below, Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining, And unresenting falls again, To beautify the world with dews and Who says thy day is o'er? Control My heart, that bitter first emotior; While men shall reverence the steadfast soul, The heart in silent self-devotion Breaking, the mild, heroic mien, Thou 'lt need no prop of marble, Lamartine. If France reject thee, 't is not thine, But her own, exile that she utters; Ideal France, the deathless, the divine, Will be where thy white pennon flutters, As once the nobler Athens went With Aristides into banishment. No fitting metewand hath To-day For measuring spirits of thy stature, Only the Future can reach up to lay The laurel on that lofty nature, Bard, who with some diviner art Has touched the bard's true lyre, nation's heart. Beauty and Truth, and all that these contain, Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet; We climb to them through years of sweat and pain; Without long struggle, none did e er attain The downward look from Quiet's blissful seat: Though present loss may be the hero's part, Yet none can rob him of the victor heart Whereby the broad-realmed future is subdued, And Wrong, which now insults from triumph's car, Sending her vulture hope to raven far, Is made unwilling tributary of Good. O Mother State, how quenched thy Sinai fires! Is there none left of thy stanch Mayflower breed? No spark among the ashes of thy sires, Of Virtue's altar-flame the kindling seed? Are these thy great men, these that cringe and creep, And writhe through slimy ways to place and power? How long, O Lord, before thy wrath shall reap Our frail-stemmed summer prosperings in their flower? O for one hour of that undaunted stock That went with Vane and Sydney to the block! When all that makes the heart sublime, The glorious throbs that conquer time, Are traitors to our cruel laws! He strove among God's suffering poor O Mother State! when this was done, No pitying throe thy bosom gave; Silent thou saw'st the death-shroud spun, And now thou givest to thy son The stranger's charity, - a grave. Must it be thus forever? No! The hand of God sows not in vain ; Long sleeps the darkling seed below, The seasons come, and change, and go, And all the fields are deep with grain. Although our brother lie asleep, Man's heart still struggles, still aspires; His grave shall quiver yet, while deep Through the brave Bay State's pulses leap Her ancient energies and fires. When hours like this the senses' gush Have stilled, and left the spirit room, It hears amid the eternal hush The swooping pinions' dreadful rush, That bring the vengeance and the doom; Not man's brute vengeance, such as rends What rivets man to man apart,God doth not so bring round his ends, But waits the ripened time, and sends His mercy to the oppressor's heart. ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING. I Do not come to weep above thy pall, And mourn the dying-out of noble powers; The poet's clearer eye should see, in all Earth's seeming woe, the seed of Heaven's flowers. Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep Of everlasting Soul her strength abides, From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap, Through Nature's veins her strength, undying, tides. Peace is more strong than war, and gentleness, Where force were vain, makes con quest o'er the wave; And love lives on and hath a power to bless, When they who loved are hidden in the grave. The sculptured marble brags of deathstrewn fields, And Glory's epitaph is writ in blood; But Alexander now to Plato yields, Clarkson will stand where Wellington hath stood. I watch the circle of the eternal years, And read forever in the storied page One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears, One onward step of Truth from age |