HIGH hopes that burned like stars sublime
Go down the heavens of Freedom,
And true hearts perish in the time
We bitterliest need them!
But never sit we down, and say
There's nothing left but sorrow;
We walk the wilderness to-day,
The promised land to-morrow.
Our birds of song are silent now,
There are no flowers blooming;
Yet life beats in the frozen bough,
And Freedom's spring is coming! And Freedom's tide comes up alway, Though we may stand in sorrow; And our good bark aground to-day Shall float again to-morrow.
Through all the long, dark nights of years
The people's cry ascendeth,
And earth is wet with blood and tears;
But our meek sufferance endeth!
The few shall not forever sway,
The many toil in sorrow;
The powers of earth are strong to-day,
But Heaven shall rule to-morrow.
Though hearts brood o'er the past, our eyes
With smiling features glisten!
For lo! our day bursts up the skies:
Lean out your souls and listen!
The world rolls Freedom's radiant way
And ripens with her sorrow;
Keep heart! who bear the cross to-day
Shall wear the crown to-morrow.
O Youth! flame earnest, still aspire,
With energies immortal!
To many a heaven of desire
Our yearning opes a portal:
And though age wearies by the way,
And hearts break in the furrow,
We'll sow the golden grain to-day,
And harvest comes to-morrow.
Build up heroic lives, and all
Be like a sheathen sabre, Ready to flash out at God's call, O chivalry of labor !
Triumph and toil are twins; and aye,
Joy suns the cloud of sorrow; And 't is the martyrdom to-day Brings victory to-morrow.
THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE.
WHERE the Great Lake's sunny smiles
Dimple round its hundred isles,
And the mountain's granite ledge
Cleaves the water like a wedge,
Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,
Rest the giant's mighty bones.
Close beside, in shade and gleam,
Laughs and ripples Melvin stream;
Melvin water, mountain-born,
All fair flowers its banks adorn;
All the woodland's voices meet,
Mingling with its murmurs sweet.
Over lowlands forest-grown,
Over waters island-strown,
Over silver-sanded beach,
Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,
Melvin stream and burial-heap,
Watch and ward the mountains keep.
Who that Titan cromlech fills?
Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills?
Knight who on the birchen tree
Carved his savage heraldry?
Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim,
Prophet, sage, or wizard grim?
Rugged type of primal man,
Grim utilitarian,
Loving woods for hunt and prowl,
Lake and hill for fish and fowl,
As the brown bear blind and dull
To the grand and beautiful:
Not for him the lesson drawn
From the mountains smit with dawn.
Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May,
Sunset's purple bloom of day, —
Took his life no hue from thence,
Poor amid such affluence?
Haply unto hill and tree All too near akin was he: