Whither leads the path

To ampler fates that leads?

Not down through flowery meads,

To reap an aftermath

Of youth's vainglorious weeds,

But up the steep, amid the wrath

And shock of deadly-hostile creeds.

Where the world's best hope and stay
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,
And every turf the fierce foot clings-to bleeds.
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,

Ere yet the sharp, decisive word

Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword
Dreams in its easeful sheath;

But some day the live coal behind the thought,
Whether from Baäl's stone obscene,

Or from the shrine serene

Of God's pure altar brought,

Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen

Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men :
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,

And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise,
And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,
The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"
Life may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So bountiful is Fate;

But then to stand beside her,

When craven churls deride her,

To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God's plan
And measure of a stalwart man,

Limbed like the old heroic breeds,

Who stand self-poised on manhood's solid earth,

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,

Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,

Whom late the Nation he had led,

With ashes on her head,

Wept with the passion of an angry grief:
Forgive me, if from present things I turn

To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.
Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man

Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast

Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true,
How beautiful to see

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
Not lured by any cheat of birth,

But by his clear-grained human worth,
And brave old wisdom of sincerity!

They knew that outward grace is dust;

They could not choose but trust

In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,
And supple-tempered will

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.
Nothing of Europe here,

Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,

Ere any names of Serf and Peer
Could Nature's equal scheme deface;
Here was a type of the true elder race,

And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

I praise him not; it were too late;

And some innative weakness there must be

In him who condescends to victory

Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,
Safe in himself as in a fate.

So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,

And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.

Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,

But at last silence comes;

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American.

A PARABLE.

Said Christ our Lord, "I will go and see
How the men, my brethren, believe in me."
He passed not again through the gate of birth,
But made himself known to the children of earth.

Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings, "Behold, now, the Giver of all good things;

Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state
Him who alone is mighty and great."

With carpets of gold the ground they spread
Wherever the Son of Man should tread,

And in palace-chambers lofty and rare

They lodged him, and served him with kingly fare.

Great organs surged through arches dim

Their jubilant floods in praise of him ;

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall,

He saw his image high over all.

66

But still, wherever his steps they led,
The Lord in sorrow bent down his head,
And from under the heavy foundation-stones,
The son of Mary heard bitter groans.

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall,
He marked great fissures that rent the wall,
And opened wider and yet more wide

As the living foundation heaved and sighed.

Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then,

On the bodies and souls of living men?

And think ye that building shall endure,
Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?

"With gates of silver and bars of gold

Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold;

I have heard the dropping of their tears
In heaven these eighteen hundred years."

“O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,
We build but as our fathers built;
Behold thine images, how they stand,
Sovereign and sole, through all our land.

"Our task is hard,-with sword and flame
To hold thy earth forever the same,
And with sharp crooks of steel to keep
Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep."

Then Christ sought out an artisan,
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin
Pushed from her faintly want and sin.