With the more potent music of our swords?

Think'st thou that score of men beyond the sea

Claim more God's care than all of England here?

No: when he moves His arm, it is to aid

Whole peoples, heedless if a few be

crushed,

As some are ever, when the destiny Of man takes one stride onward nearer home.

Believe it, 'tis the mass of men He loves;

And, where there is most sorrow and most want,

Where the high heart of man is trodden down

The most, 't is not because He hides his face

From them in wrath, as purblind teachers prate:

Not so there most is He, for there is He

Most needed. Men who seek for Fate abroad

Are not so near His heart as they who dare

Frankly to face her where she faces them,

On their own threshold, where their souls are strong

To grapple with and throw her; as I

Like fragile bubbles yonder in the stream,

Than in a cycle of New England sloth,
Broke only by some petty Indian war,
Or quarrel for a letter more or less
In some hard word, which, spelt in
either way,

Not their most learned clerks can understand.

New times demand new measures and new men;

The world advances, and in time outgrows

The laws that in our fathers' day were best;

And, doubtless, after us, some purer scheme

Will be shaped out by wiser men than we,

Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.

We cannot bring Utopia by force:
But better, almost, be at work in sin,
Than in a brute inaction browse and
sleep.

No man is born into the world, whose work

Is not born with him; there is always work,

And tools to work withal, for those who will;

And blessed are the horny hands of toil! The busy world shoves angrily aside The man who stands with arms akimbo set,

Until occasion tells him what to do; And he who waits to have his task marked out

Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.

Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds:

Reason and Government, like two broad seas, Yearn for each other with outstretched

arms

Across this narrow isthmus of the throne, And roll their white surf higher every day.

One age moves onward, and the next builds up

Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood The rude log huts of those who tamed the wild,

Rearing from out the forests they nad felled

The goodly framework of a fairer state: The builder's trowel and the settler's axe Are seldom wielded by the selfsame hand;

Ours is the harder task, yet not the less Shall we receive the blessing for our toil From the choice spirits of the aftertime. My soul is not a palace of the past, Where outworn creeds, like Rome's gray senate, quake,

Hearing afar the Vandal's trumpet hoarse,

That shakes old systems with a thunderfit.

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change;

Then let it come: I have no dread of

O stars, ye saw our meeting, Two beings and one soul, Two hearts so madly beating To mingle and be whole!

O happy night, deliver
Her kisses back to me,
Or keep them all, and give her
A blissful dream of me!

1842.

A CHIPPEWA LEGEND.*

ἀλγεινὰ μέν μοι καὶ λέγειν ἐστὶν τάδε ἄλγος δὲ σιγᾶν.

Æschylus, Prom. Vinct. 197.

THE old Chief, feeling now wellnigh his end,

Called his two eldest children to his side,

And gave them, in few words, his parting charge!

'My son and daughter, me ye see no

more;

The happy hunting-grounds await me, green

With change of spring and summer through the year:

But, for remembrance, after I am gone, Be kind to little Sheemah for my sake: Weakling he is and young, and knows not yet

To set the trap, or draw the seasoned bow;

Therefore of both your loves he hath more need,

And he, who needeth love, to love hath right;

It is not like our furs and stores of corn, Whereto we claim sole title by our toil, But the Great Spirit plants it in our hearts,

And waters it, and gives it sun, to be The common stock and heritage of all: Therefore be kind to Sheemah, that yourselves

May not be left deserted in your need."

For the leading incidents in this tale, I am indebted to the very valuable "Algic Researches" of Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq.