"Coscienza fusca della propria o dell' altrui vergogna Fur sentirà la tua parola brusca." If I let fall a word of bitter mirth When public shames more shameful pardon won, If small, yet faithful, deemed of little worth: In no polluted course from sire to son; With growing knowledge and more chaste than snow. THREE MEMORIAL POEMS. TO E. L. GODKIN, IN CORDIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS EMINENT SERVICE OF OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT, These Three Poems ARE DEDICATED. Readers, it is hoped, will remember that, by his Ode at the Harvard Commemoration, the author had precluded himself from many of the natural outlets of thought and feeling common to such occasions as are celebrated in these poems. ODE READ AT THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIGHT AT CONCORD BRIDGE. 19TH APRIL, 1875. I. WHO Cometh over the hills, The daughters of Time and Thought! II. She cometh, cometh to-day: Tell me, young men, have ye seen. For true hearts to long and cry for, Tones more brave than trumpet's breath, Younger heart with wit full grown? Our hope, our joy, and our trust, Who lifted us out of the dust, And made us whatever we are! IV. Whiter than moonshine upon snow Shook Marston, Naseby, and Dunbar : eyes. V. Our fathers found her in the woods They met her here, not recognized, The past with other functions than it knew, And turn in channels strange the uncertain stream of Fate; Better than all, she fenced them in their need With iron-handed Duty's sternest creed, 'Gainst Self's lean wolf that ravens word and deed. Why cometh she? She was not far away. Who did great things, unconscious they were great. They dreamed not what a die was cast With that first answering shot; what then? There was their duty; they were men When Buttrick gave the word, Fell crashing: if they heard it not, As on from startled throne to throne, A shudder ran of some dread birth unknown. Thrice venerable spot! Man's Hope, star-girdled, sprang with them, And over ways untried the feet of Doom strode on. VII. Think you these felt no charms In their gray homesteads and embowered farms? In household faces waiting at the door Their evening step should lighten up no | Where discrowned empires o'er their more? In fields their boyish feet had known? In trees their fathers' hands had set, And which with them had grown, Widening each year their leafy coronet? Felt they no pang of passionate regret For those unsolid goods that seem so much our own? These things are dear to every man that lives, And life prized more for what it lends than gives. Yea, many a tie, through iteration sweet, The invisible things of God before the seen and known: Therefore their memory inspiration blows With echoes gathering on from zone to ruins brood, And many a thwarted hope wrings its weak hands and weeps, I hear the voice as of a mighty wind From all heaven's caverns rushing unconfined, "I, Freedom, dwell with Knowledge: I abide With men whom dust of faction cannot blind To the slow tracings of the Eternal Mind; With men by culture trained and for tified, Who bitter duty to sweet lusts prefer, Not to be drawn in passion or in play, Your firm-pulsed sires, my martyrs and my saints, Offshoots of that one stock whose patient Yet pardon if I tremble while I boast; For I have loved as those who pardon most. X. Away, ungrateful doubt, away! At least she is our own to-day. Break into rapture, my song, Verses, leap forth in the sun, Bearing the joyance along Like a train of fire as ye run! Pause not for choosing of words, Let them but blossom and sing Blithe as the orchards and birds With the new coming of spring! Dance in your jollity, bells; Shout, cannon; cease not, ye drums; Answer, ye hillside and dells; Bow, all ye people! She comes, Radiant, calm-fronted, as when She hallowed that April day. Stay with us! Yes, thou shalt stay, Softener and strengthener of men, Freedom, not won by the vain, Not to be courted in play, Not to be kept without pain. Stay with us! Yes, thou wilt stay, Handmaid and mistress of all, Kindler of deed and of thought, Thou that to hut and to hall Equal deliverance brought ! Souls of her martyrs, draw near, Touch our dull lips with your fire, That we may praise without fear Her our delight, our desire, Our faith's inextinguishable star, Our hope, our remembrance, our trust, Our present, our past, our to be, Who will mingle her life with our dust And makes us deserve to be free! UNDER THE OLD ELM. POEM READ AT CAMBRIDGE ON THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF WASHINGTON'S TAKING COMMAND OF THE AMERICAN ARMY, 3D SULY, 1775. I. 1. WORDS pass as wind, but where great deeds were done A power abides transfused from sire to son: The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his ear. |