Your Eagles took their lordly ease
On folded wing,

After disporting with the braggart Breeze,
And Thunder watching by his cloudy spring
Whose cool stream tumbled to the thirsty seas.
The birds went all asleep on their high rocks
Nor ruffled a feather in the rude fire-shocks.
Millions a lesson ye can learn from these.
And see the great woods slumber, and the lake
No longer is awake

Beneath the stars, that nod and start with sleep
In their white-clouded deep:

Fitfully the moon goes nodding through
The vallies of the vapory blue,

And dreams, forgetting all her queenly ills,
Of angels sleeping on Elysium's hills:
The drowsy lake,

So sweet is slumber, would not yet awake;
But, like an infant two years old,

Before whose closed eyes

Dreamily move the boys of Paradise
A-singing little psalms

Under the stately palms

It stirreth softly lest rough motion might
Shake rudely and put out each heavenly light.

So rest! and Rest shall slay your many woes;
Motion is god-like-god-like is repose,
A mountain-stillness, of majestic might,
Whose peaks are glorious with the quiet light
Of suns when Day is at his solemn close.
Nor deem that slumber must ignoble be.
Jove labored lustily once in airy fields;
And over the cloudy lea

He planted many a budding shoot
Whose liberal nature daily, nightly yields
A store of starry fruit :

His labor done, the weary god went back

Up the new mountain-track

To his great house; there he did while away

With lightest thought a well-won holiday;

For all the Powers crooned softly an old tune

Wishing their Sire might sleep.

Through all the sultry noon

And cold blue night;

And very soon

They heard the awful Thunderer breathing low and deep. And in the hush that dropped adown the spheres,

And in the quiet of the awe-struck space,

The worlds learned worship at the birth of years:
They looked upon their Lord's calm, kingly face,
And bade Religion come and kiss each starry place.

Then, Millions! pause and keep a Sabbath-time!
Your work is partly done!

And lo! a setting sun

Which tells that the o'er-labored frame

In sweet repose may find a fresher flame.

Angels may visit ye;

And surely all will better be,

A-listening to a well-tuned chime

Will ye not also lend your souls to Song?
Ye! of the land where Nature's noblest rhyme,
Niagara, sounds the solemn myth of Time;
And where the Mississippi darkly goes
Amid the trembling woods,

Gloomily murmuring legends of the floods

That troubled space before the worlds arose.

Give for a time your souls to song

Song of the dædal birth,

The earth's first language, wooing heaven to earth,

Whose glens were filled with many a heavenly throng:

Sweet song, that cheers the mariner on the seas

When fitfully blows the home-returning breeze

Over a wide, long deep;

That lulls at eve the little child asleep

Upon its mother's knees;

That lights a flame within the maiden's eyes

Where all was cold before;

That gives a southern glow to northern skies,
And roses to a frozen shore !

Song with her bright hands crashing on her lyre
Which bids the sleeping patriot start,

Song! that has winged with an avenging fire
The shaft he hurried to the tyrant's heart:
Proud Song! that tops the Poet's airy brow
With true Nobility's enduring crown,
Before whose blaze enraptured nations bow,

And boasted heraldries are melted down:
Weird song, which is the pallid prophet's speech,
Whose shivering harmonies the nations teach
Of wo or bliss, and through the ETERNAL reach :
Dear song that musically lifts above,

That teaches love, and only love,

Showing the Universe a single throne

Where towers the Immortal LORD of changeless love alone.

III.

Or sleep? why lose its wondrous world?
Look on its valleys, on its mountains look,
And cloudy streams;

Behold the arabesque Land of Dreams!
The very mists are lazily curled;
And see in yonder glen,

Beside a little brook

Mid sleeping flocks some sleeping men :
And One who tries to watch, for danger's sake,
Nods and winks,

And vainly hums a tune to keep awake;

And now beside his brethren slowly sinks.

Yes, sleep! why lose its lovely world?
The garish banners of the day are furled
And safely put away;

See what a languid glory binds

The long dim chambers of the darkling West,

While far below yon azure river winds

Like a blue vein on sleeping Beauty's breast.
Ioné sleepeth in her bower,

Whose leaves are glittering with the dewy shower

Which softly falls by turns

From Dian's vase and Vesta's starry urns.

She sleeps her rosy lips somewhat apart,

Showing the curvéd line of pearl;

She smiles! a dream of pure young love
Is sitting like a brooding dove
Upon the innocent heart

Of the delighted girl :

The passionate vision of her lover stands
Before her with imploring hands;

And now he seems reposing by her side,

And with her brow upon his breast

The manly bridegroom and his beauteous bride
Like Parian statues lie and take their lovely rest.

Millions will ye not rest or dream with me?
Let not the STRUGGLE thus forever be !
Not from the gold that wounded Earth reveals:
Not from the shouting of your fiery wheels

That shake the mountains with their thunder-peals;
Not from the oceans pallid with your wings;
Not from the power which only labor brings-
The enduring grandeur of a nation springs.
The wealth may perish as a fleeting breath-
The bannered armament may find a death
Deep in the hungry waters-and the crown
Of empire from your tall brows topple down:
But that which rains true glory o'er

The low or lofty, and the rich or poor,
Shall never die-

Daughter of Truth and Ideality,

Large VIRTUE towering on the throne of Will!
The nations drink the Heroic from her eye

And march triumphing over every ill.
Therefore with Silence sometimes sit apart
From rude Turmoil, and dignify the Heart

With thoughts that brood like stars in a dark sky-
Showing that Heaven may still be hovering nigh.

IV.

Rest, Nation! rest! and in that blissful hour,
All Hates shall be forgotten, and sweet Love
Shall gently win us like a mild-eyed dove
That shames the storm to silence; and a power,
Unknown before shall lap us in delight,

As troubled waves are soothed by starry night.
Then Manhood shall forget the vengeful thought
Fiercely in Action's hot volcano wrought:
The poor old man shall bow his snow-white head
To bless the Past, forgiving all his wrongs;
And feel the breathing of his childhood's songs
Once more around him shed.

The weary slave shall rest upon the chain,
And woo to his shut eyes

The ardent aspect of his native skies-
The forms of wife and children once again,
Watching for his return along the palmy plain.

So Battle then will lean on his red blade,

And sorrowfully look

On all the direful wo which he hath made

In all the bleeding lands;

Then bending over a crystal brook

Will wash his crimson hands.

The altar of Humanity shall tower

Without a victim, mid the waste of tombs:

And incense shall be tossed and curled,

At last, around a tearless world,

From all its silver fires and bloodless soft perfumes.

Nor in REPOSE a tentless desert fear,

The gardenless wide waste of a blank heart:
Full many a cool Oasis then shall start

Between horizons to illume and cheer:

Time's misty Nile shall wander slowly through

The slumberous plain that never knoweth storms;
Eternity's calm pyramidal forms

Shall meet our dreamy view,

Duskily towering mid the hazy blue,

And freezing contemplation in the giddy air.

Then all the weary myriads resting there

Quiet beneath the hollow sky

As shapes that in a pictured landscape lie

Shall know that bliss, that perfect, heavenly bliss,

Which falls as moonlight-music on a moveless scene like this. New York, United States Hotel.

HAS THE STATE A RELIGION?