And he, let come what will of woe,
Has saved the land he strove to save;
No Cossack hordes, no traitor's blow,

Can quench the voice shall haunt his grave.

"I Kossuth am: O Future, thou

That clear'st the just and blott'st the vile,
O'er this small dust in reverence bow,
Remembering, what I was erewhile.

66

was the chosen trump wherethrough Our God sent forth awakening breath;

Came chains? Came death? The strain He blew Sounds on, outliving chains and death."

TO LAMARTINE.

1848.

I DID not praise thee when the crowd,
'Witched with the moment's inspiration,
Vexed thy still ether with hosannas loud,
And stamped their dusty adoration;
I but looked upward with the rest,
And, when they shouted Greatest, whispered Best.

They raised thee not, but rose to thee,

Their fickle wreaths about thee flinging; So on some marble Phoebus the high sea

Might leave his worthless sea-weed clinging, But pious hands, with reverent care, Make the pure limbs once more sublimely bare.

Now thou'rt thy plain, grand self again,
Thou art secure from panegyric,—
Thou who gav'st politics an epic strain,

And actedst Freedom's noblest lyric;
This side the Blessed Isles, no tree
Grows green enough to make a wreath for thee.

Nor can blame cling to thee; the snow

From swinish foot-prints takes no staining,
But, leaving the gross soils of earth below,
Its spirit mounts, the skies regaining,
And unresenting falls again,

To beautify the world with dews and rain.

The highest duty to mere man vouchsafed

Was laid on thee,-out of wild chaos,

When the roused popular ocean foamed and

chafed,

And vulture War from his Imaus Snuffed blood, to summon homely Peace, And show that only order is release.

To carve thy fullest thought, what though

Time was not granted? Aye in history, Like that Dawn's face which baffled Angelo, Left shapeless, grander for its mystery, Thy great Design shall stand, and day Flood its blind front from Orients far away.

Who says thy day is o'er? Control,

My heart, that bitter first emotion;
While men shall reverence the steadfast soul,
The heart in silent self-devotion
Breaking, the mild, heroic mien,
Thou'lt need no prop of marble, Lamartine.

If France reject thee, 'tis not thine,
But her own, exile that she utters;
Ideal France, the deathless, the divine,
Will be where thy white pennon flutters,
As once the nobler Athens went
With Aristides into banishment.

No fitting metewand hath To-day

For measuring spirits of thy stature,— Only the Future can reach up to lay

The laurel on that lofty nature,—

Bard, who with some diviner art

Has touched the bard's true lyre, a nation's heart.

Swept by thy hand, the gladdened chords,

Crashed now in discords fierce by others, Gave forth one note beyond all skill of words.

And chimed together, We are brothers. O poem unsurpassed! it ran

All round the world, unlocking man to man.

France is too poor to pay alone

The service of that ample spirit; Paltry seem low dictatorship and throne, If balanced with thy simple merit. They had to thee been rust and loss;

Thy aim was higher,-thou hast climbed a Cross.

TO JOHN G. PALFREY.

THERE are who triumph in a losing cause, Who can put on defeat, as 'twere a wreath Unwithering in the adverse popular breath, Safe from the blasting demagogue's applause; 'Tis they who stand for Freedom and God's laws.

And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell stood,
Loyal to Truth dethroned, nor could be wooed
To trust the playful tiger's velvet paws:
And if the second Charles brought in decay
Of ancient virtue, if it well might wring
Souls that had broadened 'neath a nobler day,
To see a losel, marketable king

Fearfully watering with his realm's best blood Cromwell's quenched bolts, that erst had cracked and flamed,

Scaring, through all their depths of courtier mud, Europe's crowned bloodsuckers,-how more ashamed

Ought we to be, who see Corruption's flood
Still rise o'er last year's mark, to mine away
Our brazen idols' feet of treacherous clay!

O utter degradation! Freedom turned

Slavery's vile bawd, to cozen and betray
To the old lecher's clutch a maiden prey,
If so a loathsome pander's fee be earned!

And we are silent, we who daily tread
A soil sublime, at least, with heroes' graves!-