And in palace-chambers lofty and are 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 judg ment-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 foundationstones,

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.

"Have ye founded 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.

These set he in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garmenthem,

For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said he,

"The images ye have made of me!"

ODE

WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE INTRODUCTION OF THE COCHITUATE WATER INTO THE CITY OF BOSTON.

My name is Water: I have sped Through strange, dark ways, untried before,

By pure desire of friendship led,
Cochituate's ambassador;
He sends four royal gifts by me:
Long life, health, peace, and purity.

I'm Ceres' cup-bearer; I pour,

For flowers and fruits and all their kin, Her crystal vintage, from of yore

Stored in old Earth's selectest bin, Flora's Falernian ripe, since God The wine-press of the deluge trod.

In that far isle whence, iron-willed, The New World's sires their bark unmoored,

The fairies' acorn-cups I filled

Upon the toadstool's silver board, And, 'neath Herne's oak, for Shakespeare's sight,

Strewed moss and grass with diamonds bright.

A sight in Paradise denied
To unfallen Adam and his bride.

When Winter held me in his grip,
You seized and sent me o'er the wave,
Ungrateful! in a prison-ship;

But I forgive, not long a slave,
For, soon as summer south-winds blew,
Homeward I fled, disguised as dew.

For countless services I 'm fit,

Of use, of pleasure, and of gain, But lightly from all bonds I flit,

Nor lose my mirth, nor feel a stain; From mill and wash-tub I escape, And take in heaven my proper shape.

So, free myself, to-day, elate

I come from far o'er hill and mead, And here, Cochituate's envoy, wait

To be your blithesome Ganymede, And brim your cups with nectar true That never will make slaves of you.

LINES

SUGGESTED BY THE GRAVES OF TWO ENGLISH SOLDIERS ON CONCORD

BATTLE-GROUND.

THE same good blood that now refills The dotard Orient's shrunken veins, The same whose vigor westward thrills, Bursting Nevada's silver chains, Poured here upon the April grass, Freckled with red the herbage new ; On reeled the battle's trampling mass, Back to the ash the bluebird fiew.

Poured here in vain;-that sturdy blood Was meant to make the earth more green,

But in a higher, gentler mood

Than broke this April noon serene; Twograves are here: to mark the place, At head and foot, an unhewn stone, O'er which the herald lichens trace The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true To the hired soldier's bull-dog creed; What brought them here they never knew,

When all our good sees bond in sheaves,

And we stand reaped and bare.

Our seasons have no fixed returns,
Without our will they come and go;
At noon our sudden summer burns,
Ere sunset all is snow.

But each day brings less summer cheer
Crimps more our ineffectual spring,
And something earlier every year
Our singing birds take wing.

As less the olden glow abides,

And less the chillier heart aspires, With drift-wood beached in past springtides

We light our sullen fires.

By the pinched rushlight's starving beam

We cower and strain our wasted sight, To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by

seam,

In the long arctic night.

It was not so we once were youngWhen Spring, to womanly Summer turning,

Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung,

In the red sunrise burning.

We trusted then, aspired, believed That earth could be remade to-mor

row:

Ah, why be ever undeceived?
Why give up faith for sorrow?

O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted once, is past retriev ing;

Experience is a dumb, dead thing;
The victory's in believing.

WE, too, have autumns, when our leaves Drop loosely through the dampened alr,

FREEDOM.

ARE we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest

Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea,

Who on our rocks thy wreaths of free

dom flingest,

As on an altar, -can it be that ye Have wasted inspiration on dead ears, Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains?

The people's heart is like a harp for years

Hung where some petrifying torrent rains

Its slow-incrusting spray: the stiffened chords

Faint and more faint make answer to the tears

That drip upon them: idle are all words: Only a silver plectrum wakes the tone Deep buried 'neath that ever-thickening stone.

We are not free: Freedom doth not consist

In musing with our faces toward the Past,

While petty cares, and crawling interests, twist

Their spider-threads about us, which at

Forever yielding, never wholly won : Thatis not love which pauses in the race Two close-linked names on fleeting sand to trace ;

Freedom gained yesterday is no more

ours;

Men gather but dry seeds of last year's flowers;

Still there's a charm ungranted, still a grace,

Still rosy Hope, the free, the unattained, Makes us Possession's languid hand let fall;

'T is but a fragment of ourselves is gained,

The Future brings us more, but never all.

And, as the finder of some unknown realm,

Mounting a summit whence he thinks to see

On either side of him the imprisoning

sea,