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If I let fall a word of bitter mirth

When public shames more shameful pardon won,
Some have misjudged me, and my service done,
If small, yet faithful, deemed of little worth:
Through veins that drew their life from Western earth
Two hundred years and more my blood hath run
In no polluted course from sire to son;
And thus was I predestined ere my birth
To love the soil wherewith my fibres own
Instinctive sympathies; yet love it so
As honor would, nor lightly to dethrone
Judgment, the stamp of manhood, nor forego
The son's right to a mother dearer grown

With growing knowledge and more chaste than snow.

THREE MEMORIAL POEMS.

ΤΟ

E. L. GODKIN,

IN CORDIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS EMINENT SERVICE
IN HEIGHTENING AND PURIFYING THE TONE

OF OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT,

This Volume

IS 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 this little volunie.

ODE

READ AT THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIGHT AT CONCORD BRIDGE.

19TH APRIL, 1875.

I.

WHO Cometh over the hills,
Her garments with morning sweet,
The dance of a thousand rills
Making music before her feet?
Her presence freshens the air;
Sunshine steals light from her face;
The leaden footstep of Care
Leaps to the tune of her pace,
Fairness of all that is fair,
Grace at the heart of all grace,
Sweetener of hut and of hall,
Bringer of life out of naught,
Freedom, O, fairest of all

The daughters of Time and Thought!

II.

She cometh, cometh to-day:
Hark! hear ye not her tread,
Sending a thrill through your clay,
Under the sod there, ye dead,
Her nurslings and champions?
Do ye not hear, as she comes,
The bay of the deep-mouthed guns,
The gathering buzz of the drums?
The bells that called ye to prayer,
How wildly they clamor on her,
Crying, "She cometh! prepare
Her to praise and her to honor,
That a hundred years ago
Scattered here in blood and tears
Potent seeds wherefrom should grow
Gladness for a hundred years!

III.

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Tell me, young men, have ye seen, Creature of diviner mien

For true hearts to long and cry for,

Manly hearts to live and die for?
What hath she that others want?
Brows that all endearments haunt,
Eyes that make it sweet to dare,
Smiles that glad untimely death,
Looks that fortify despair,
Tones more brave than trumpet's
breath;

Tell me, maidens, have ye known
Household charm more sweetly rare,
Grace of woman ampler blown,
Modesty more debonair,
Younger heart with wit full grown?
O for an hour of my prime,
The pulse of my hotter years,
That I might praise her in rhyme
Would tingle your eyelids to tears,
Our sweetness, our strength, and our

star,

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 snów
Her raiment is, but round the hem
Crimson stained; and, as to and fro
Her sandals flash, we see on them,
And on her instep veined with blue,
Flecks of crimson, on those fair feet,
High-arched, Diana-like, and fleet,
Fit for no grosser stain than dew:
O, call them rather chrisms than stains,
Sacred and from heroic veins !
For, in the glory-guarded pass,
Her haughty and far-shining head
She bowed to shrive Leonidas
With his imperishable dead;
Her, too, Morgarten saw,
Where the Swiss lion fleshed his icy

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Through life and death and man's unstable moods;

They met her here, not recognized,
A sylvan huntress clothed in furs,
To whose chaste wants her bow sufficed,
Nor dreamed what destinies were hers:
She taught them bee-like to create
Their simpler forms of Church and
State;

She taught them to endue

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.

VI.

Why cometh she hither to-day
To this low village of the plain
Far from the Present's loud highway,
From Trade's cool heart and seething
brain?

Why cometh she? She was not far away.

Since the soul touched it, not in vain, With pathos of immortal gain,

'T is here her fondest memories stay. She loves yon pine bemurmured ridge Where now our broad-browed poet sleeps,

Dear to both Englands; near him he Who wore the ring of Canace;

But most her heart to rapture leaps Where stood that era-parting bridge, O'er which, with footfall still as dew, The Old Time passed into the New; Where, as your stealthy river creeps, He whispers to his listening weeds Tales of sublimest homespun deeds. Here English law and English thought 'Gainst the self-will of England fought; And here were men (coequal with their fate),

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 Schooled the soul's inward gospel to obey,

Though leading to the lion's den.
They felt the habit-hallowed world give

way

Beneath their lives, and on went they,
Unhappy who was last.

When Buttrick gave the word,
That awful idol of the unchallenged
Past,

Strong in their love, and in their lineage strong,

Fell crashing: if they heard it not,
Yet the earth heard,

Nor ever hath forgot,

As on from startled throne to throne, Where Superstition sate or conscious Wrong,

A shudder ran of some dread birth unknown.

Thrice venerable spot!

River more fateful than the Rubicon ! O'er those red planks, to snatch her diadem,

Man's Hope, star-girdled, sprang with them,

And over ways untried the feet of Doom strode on.

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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, by iteration sweet,
Strove to detain their fatal feet;
And yet the enduring half they chose,
Whose choice decides a man life's slave

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IX.

Maiden half mortal, half divine, We triumphed in thy coming; to the brinks

Our hearts were filled with pride's tumultuous wine;

Better to-day who rather feels than thinks

Yet will some graver thoughts intrude, And cares of sterner mood;

They won thee: who shall keep thee? From the deeps

Where discrowned empires o'er their 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

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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 JULY, 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,

That tingling through his pulse life-long shall run,

With sure impulsion to keep honor clear,

When, pointing down, his father whispers, "Here,

Here, where we stand, stood he, the purely Great,

Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere,

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