FREEDOM, TRUTH AND BEAUTY

My life is in deep darkness; still, I cry,

With joy to my Creator, "It is well!"

Were worlds my words, what firmaments would tell

My transport at the consciousness that I

Who was not, Am! To be—oh, that is why

The awful convex dark in which I dwell

Is tongued with joy, and chimes a temple bell.

Antiphonally to the choirs on high!

Chime cheerily, dark bell! for were no more

Than consciousness my gift, this were to know

The Giver Good—which sums up all the lore

Eternity can possibly bestow.

Chime! for thy metal is the molten ore

Of the great stars, and marks no wreck below.

My darling, spell the words out. You may creep

Across the syllables on hands and knees,

And stumble often, yet pass me with ease

And reach the spring upon the summit steep.

Oh, I could lay me down, dear child, and weep

These charr'd orbs out, but that you then might cease

Your upward effort, and with inquiries

Stoop down and probe my heart too deep, too deep!

[9]

I thirst for Knowledge. Oh, for an endless drink

Your goblet leaks the whole way from the spring—

No matter, to its rim a few drops cling,

And these refresh me with the joy to think

That you, my darling, have the morning's wing

To cross the mountain at whose base I sink.

From town and village to a wood, stript bare,

As they of their possessions, see them throng.

Above them grows a cloud; it moves along,

As flee they from the circling wolf pack's glare.

Is it their Brocken-Shadow of despair,

The looming of their life of cruel wrong

For countless ages? No; their faith is strong

In their Jehovah; that huge cloud is prayer.

A flash of light, and black the despot lies.

What thunder round the world! 'Tis transport's strain

Proclaiming loud: "No righteous prayer is vain

No God-imploring tears are lost; they rise

Into a cloud, and in the sky remain

Till they draw lightening from Jehovah's eyes."

"Into the common speech of daily life

The country's loftiest ideals—"

"As they contribute to its character

As leader of the nations unto Right

By thought or deed, in service for mankind."

"'Tis intelligence

Aloof from harm and hamper, grandly circling

Its native sun-lit peaks, the highest hopes

Heaved from the heart of man upon the earth,

In ranges long as time and soul endure."

"and urge it on

To the development of its own powers,

The culmination of its own ideals,

The star seed sown by God,—the only means

By which a tribe can thrive to its perfection."

"—that, on having brought

This world from out the chaos dark

Of waters and of woody wilderness,

And shaped it into hills of hope for man,

Must providence its beautiful creation

With altruistic love and tenderness;

So that all tribes of man, what'er their hue,

Have each a hill where it can touch the star

That it has followed with its mental growth."

"It is a foolish, futile thing

To try to shape society by codes,

Vetoed by Nature. Nature trumpets forth

No edict, through the instinct of a race,

Proclaiming certain territory hers

And warning all encroaching powers therefrom,

Without the ordering out of her reserves

To see to it the edict is enforced.

Let politics keep off forbidden shores."

"To teach the barbarous tribes throughout the globe,

Christian or Turk, that all humanity

Is territory sheltered by our flag;

That butchery must cease throughout the world;

That, having ended human slavery,

Old glory has a mission from on high

To stop the slaughter of the smiling babe,

The pale, crazed mother, weak, defenseless sire,

All places on the habitable globe."

"To get the races by degrees together

To talk their grievance over, in a voice

As gentle as a woman's....

There is no education in the world

Like human contact for mankind's advance;

All differences, then, adjust themselves;

But when two races are estranged by hate,

They grow so deaf to one another's rights,

That it soon comes to pass that either has

To use the trumpet of artillery

In order to be heard at all."

"Vault Godward, Poet. What though few may climb

The mountain and the star on trail of thee?

Thy wing-flash beams toward man, and if it be

True inspiration—whether thought sublime,

Or fervor for the truth, or liberty—

Thy light will reach the earth in goodly time."

"It bodes ill for the black Cowled company

To make a visit to a festive house.

'Tis like death looking in and whispering 'Next.'

Fool, call the servants. Bid them fetch the wine—

A cask of it—the best varnaccio!

Here come my friends to help me drown the Plague."

What lineage so noble as from Sires,

Laureled by Freedom? For, who, but the brave

Have glory to transmit? The Hero's grave

Blooms ever. It is there the spring retires

To dream to flowers, her heart and soul desires,

When winter's whitening wind, like wash of wave,

Sweeps mauseleums of the skulk and knave

From mounts of glare off to Oblivion's mires.

The bloom, for which mere wealth lacks length of arm,

And fainting Time takes for reviving scent,

Fame, with bright eyes from heart and soul content,

Forms wreaths for Valor's Daughters—crowns that charm

Not with death-smells from Human welfare rent

But breath of Country's rescue from dire harm.

Those crowns, not cold from death sweat on the brow,

At sight of apparitions with fixed stare,

But warm with summer, conjuring beauties rare—

Wilt not. They are dewed daily by your vow,

Daughters of sires who, to no thrall, would bow!

Which, at the alter with raised hands, ye swear,

Cheering the blessed spirits, gathered there,

That, like their Mothers, are their daughters now.

True women—and therefore, craft foilers clever—

With sons for your hearts utterance, ye sue

Not, but like Barry to the British crew,

Ye cry out: "What! we strike our colors? Never!

Fie, shot! fie, Gold! these colors, since they drew

Their first star-breath, are God's, and God's forever."

Ye know the Leopard changes not his spots.

The Prince of Peace, who spake eternal truth,

Confirmed this fact of Nature. He, with ruth

Omniscient, saw afar, the scarlet clots

Of English nature, in profidious plots

For conquest, mangling not alone brave youth

With teeth set, but old age without a tooth,

And Mothers, clutching up their bleeding tots.

Oh, yea, this beast makes his own desert, still;

And Ireland, India and Egypt show

His spots so spread, he is one ghastly glow;

Aye, as your sires saw him from Bunker Hill.

Oh, vain, gold rubs the skin and press shouts, "Lo!

It has not now one spot of threatening ill."

O Daughters of the brave, well ye abjure

The fiend and all his works. Ye know his smiles

Are fire-fly flare at gloaming, lighting miles

Of snake-boughed forests down to swamps, impure

From mind and soul decay; hence are heart-sure

That creed and racial hatreds are his wiles,

For God is Love, and Love draws, reconsiles,

And is the strength that makes our land endure.

O Mothers, as you lift your babes and gaze

Into their eyes, your love runs through their vains

In crimson flushes—oh, your love that pains

At any of God's creatures hurt! that stays;

The heavens may pass away, but that remains,

Being of Christ, who walks earth Mother-ways.

Oh, like your sires, you, too, know Freedom's worth

To Human Spirit. For its liberation,

A God unrealmed himself by tribulation,

And was an out-cast on a scornful earth.

Christ is no myth and, since with Human birth

He forms new Heavens for blissful habitation—

There unto is the Freedom of the Nation;

All other trend is down to dark and dearth.

When from the darkness rainbowed birth comes pouring,

Your virtue heeds the voice, Eternity—

Re-echos: "Let them come." 'Tis Nature's plea

For broadening progress; Nay, 'tis God imploring

The Human to take strength for Liberty,

Truth, Honor, to catch up to the stars, a-soaring.

O Daughters of brave sires, what is true glory?

No marsh-ward falling star, however bright.

'Tis inspirational; its upward flight

Lifts generations—such your Father's story,

And also yours, for is not that, too, gory?

You pour out your hearts blood in sons to fight

For honor, and cease not till every right

Has been set down in Triumph's inventory.

Oh, into daughters, too, old noble Mothers!

You pour out your hearts blood that, in your place,

They may fill up the ranks and, as in case

Of Molly Pitcher, man guns for their brothers,

And hearten firm, the trembling human race

To know, though brave men fall, there still comes others.

If Christ's foreshadowing in Juda's haze

Was of his grief, 'tis of His triumph, here,

For, is not His celestrial glory clear

In Freedom for all men? First, gaseous rays

In Maryland, then rounded firm full blaze

In the Republic, it draws every sphere

Of Human welfare, whether far or near,

From depths occult to nights with dawns and days.

The Freedom of the Generation's longing

Reflects Lord Christ in glory, hour by hour,

With more distinctness, as you, with His power,

Free heart and brain from every brother-wronging,

And give your offspring, these, as flesh and dower,

To live and lead the millions, hither thronging.

Oh, ever Mothers—shaping robust youth

No less than infant, and as perfectly!

There's life blood to their veins from when on knee

To when thy battle, from your broadening ruth

For Human kind and fervent love of truth.

If, like their fathers, they have come to be

The wonder of the world, for liberty,

Your virtue, 'tis, that in their valor greweth.

Oh, as the Roman Mother, when she showed

For jewels, her two sons, saw each of them

In Time's Tiara, glittering there a gem;

So, see your offspring shine. The light, bestowed

Your Fathers, in your sons is diamond flame,

Encircling Freedom's ocean-walled abode.

Is it Apocalyptic Vision, when

White-winged Columbus swoops from Spain's palmed shore

And, from dark depths, lifts at San Salvador,

A continent, adrip with streams which, then,

Become the fountain of the Psalmist's ken,

Where Right the heart, from hoof to horn foam-hoar

From craggy speed, slakes thirst, and, evermore,

Comes Hope's whole clattering herd?—you chant, "Amen."

Aye, for your sires made earth this new creation

Where, from San Salvadore and Plymouth Reef

To Westward Mission Trails, ascends belief

In God and, therefore, in the Soul's Salvation

Through Freedom, in white, spiral spray which grief

Sees, spite earth-mists, or solar obscuration.

Soar thou aloft, though thou ascend alone,

O Human Spirit! Thou canst not be lost.

What though yon stars, the azure's nightly frost

Melt dark, or mount round thee an arctic zone!

Thou hast sun-warmth and star-source of thine own.

If thou mount not, how bitter is the cost!

What anguish, when whirled down, or tempest tossed,

To know how high toward God thou mightst have flown!

Vault Godward, Poet. What though few may climb

The mountain and the star on trail of thee?

Thy wing-flash beams toward Man, and, if it be

True inspiration—whether thought sublime,

Or fervor for the Truth, or Liberty—

Thy light will reach the earth in goodly time.

Forming the great Atlantic, see God take

The mist from woe's white mountain, spring and stream,

The breath of man in frost, the spiral lean

From roof-cracked caves where, though the heart may break,

The soul will not lie torpid, like the snake,—

And battle smoke. On them He breathes with dream

And, Lo! an Angel with a sword agleam

'Twix the Old World and New for Justice's sake.

What sea so broad, as that from Human weeping?

Or Sun so flaming, as the Angel's sword

Of Human and Devine Wills in accord?

There, with sword-flash of myriad waves, joy-leaping,

Shall loom forever, Freedom's watch and ward,

With the New World in his Seraphic keeping.

This is thy glory, Man, that thou art free.

'Tis in thy freedom, thy resemblance lies

To thy Creator. Nature, which, tide-wise,

Is flood and ebb, bounds not sky flight for thee.

Lo! as the sun arises from the sea,

Startling all beauty God-ward, thou dost rise

With mind to God in heaven, from finite ties,

And there, in freedom, thou art great as He.

Meeting thy God with mind, 'tis thine to choose,

Wheather to follow him with love and soar,

Or dream Him myth and, rather than adore,

Plunge headlong into Nature's whirl and ooze.

Thine is full freedom. Ah! could God do more

To liken thee to Him, and love, infuse?

God loves the stars; else why star-shape the dew

For the unbreathing, shy, heart-hiding rose?

And when earth darkens, and the North wind blows,

Why into stars, flake every cloud's black brew?

What fitter forms for longings high and true,

Man's hopes, ideals, than bright orbs like those

Asbine from Nature's dawn to Nature's close,

In clusters, prisming every dazzling hue?

Nor is the Sun with harvests in its heat,

And that, sky-hidden, makes the moon at night,

An earth-ward cascade for its leaps of light,

More real, or a world force more complete,

Than Faith and Hope, that brake through clouds with sight

Of evil's foil and ultimate defeat.

O Freedom! Born amid resplendent spheres,

And, with God-like creative power, endowed,

Hast thou, to human life's blue depths, not vowed

A splendor, not alone like that which 'pears

At present, where the upper asure clears,

But that the Nebulae will yet unshroud?

I hear thy far off cry where thou art lone,

A John the Baptist: "Lo! one greater nears."

What is this Greater—this which is to meet

The planets and ascend high, high and higher?

The right of human spirit to aspire

And mount, unhampered—and by act, complete

Creations harmony, as by desire,

Proclaimed by brain with throb, by heart with beat.

In thy descent through azures, all aglow

With circling spheres, the beauty of each blaze,

And grandeur, then, of all, entrance thy gaze.

Thou thinkest, why not thus all life below?

Perceiving, then that all the breezes blow

Upward and onward, in the skyey maze,

Thou wouldst go back and start with them, to raise

A new creation from chaotic throe.

Thou seest plainly that without that breeze,

The breath of God, all that thou couldst create,

Were lifeless, save to turn on thee with hate,

And chase an age with grim atrocities;

But with that breath, thou couldst raise life to mate

The Planet's splendor, in the azures Peace.

O Freedom! as thy sister spirit, Spring,

Pausing above the earth, sees every hue

Of her prismatic crown, reflected true

In forests and in fields, and fledgling's wing,

So thou dost see thy spirit glorying

With faith, that man is more than Nature's spew—

In human spirit that, from beauty drew

First breath to know that soul is more than thing.

O Freedom! fain we follow thee in flight

From chaos to God's glory round and round,

Aloft! how like an elk pursued by hound,

To brinks thou springest toward the distant height

And, on bent knees, then speedest without sound,

Like Faith through Death, till, lo! thou dost alight.

"Ye Wreaches, who would lay proud England's head

Upon the block, and raise her features, then,

Bloodless and ghastly, for the scorn of men!

Begone forever. Go where terrors spread

Their sea and forest mouths to crush you dead.

Oh, how the clouds shall crimson from each glen,

A roar with blaze, and flame search out each fen,

If back to us, yea e'er are vomited."

To this Parental blessing and God-speed,

The Pilgrim Fathers gladly made reply:

"These waves are Conscience's wings along the sky;

They carry us to God, whose call we heed.

The further from thy coast of hate and lie,

The nearer God. On! On!—that is our creed."

O Sun and Stars! bear ye Earth's thanks to God;

For Oh! what waters, slaking every thirst

Of heart, mind, spirit, in long cascades burst

From Plymouth Rock, when struck by Freedom's rod!

No wanderer in the burning sand, unshod,

Plods man with lolling tongue, dog-like, as erst;

For lo! this fountain, deepening from the first,

Floods Earth's old wells and greens Life's sand to sod.

Oh, more those waters than the Font of Youth,

For which, through field and swamp, the Spaniard ran!

For they are clear with God's eternal truth

Of fatherhood, hence brotherhood of man,

And are no dream. They quench all human drouth

And cleanse man's desert dust of sect and clan.

Of Expeditions in the Arctic Past,

All honor to the one that reached the pole

And formed a settlement where every soul

Enjoyed full freedom. There above the blast,

How musical the bell, by Justice cast!

It welcomed all to come. It ceased to toll

After a while, but why? Those, welcomed, stole

And dragged it where the ice formed thick and fast.

Of Arctic Expeditions there is none

So profitable to the human race

As that toward Freedom's pole, and hence men face

All storms to reach it. If they fail, the sun

Has but one joy—to thaw out wrecks, and trace

Man's progress where alone it can be done.

Say, what is Ma-jest-y without externals?

Is Burke's analysis not right—"A Jest"?

Ah, but a jest, at which the poor, oft pressed

To their last heart-drop, laugh not, like court journals.

The King needs coin, and, where he sowed no kernels,

Wants the whole forest for his hawks to nest

And breed in, and became an annual pest;

In this the farmers show that they discern ills.

Hark! blares the tyrant's horn and, in a thrice,

The Tories gather. Eagerly they band,

For is the King not greater than the land?

And rows with royalty, a rabble's vice?

Besides, what creeping tribes at his command,

And Spies and Hessians at a ferret's price!

To Arms! shouts Freedom to her sons. Behold!

How, like Job's war-horse, they gulp down the ground

To battle! What care they how foes surround?

Oh, joy to Celts, nigh half the true and bold!

There, with the roar of all their wrongs uprolled

From ancient depths, they dash with billow-bound

Up rock and summit, and through cave and mound,

Spurning both Tyrants' steel and Treason's gold.

No tide are they to ebb in heart and spirit.

If dashed back, they return with all the force

Of six dark sea's momentum on its course

For vengeance on the vile, who disinherit

The human-being—shut off every source

Of happiness, or let but Serf's draw near it!

The wounded Sidney, who despite his thirst,

Gave water to his comrade, shines, a lamp

In the Cimerian dark of Britain's camp.

Even the Raleigh, who so finely versed,

Preferred to such a light, the flame accursed

Of sword and torch, to please a royal vamp.

Is British triumph in its world-wide tramp

The Hell, still "lower than lowest"—Milton's worst?

Lord Christ! is British soldiery the swine,

In whose gross forms the fiends, exercised, flew?

Oh! watch them through the ages, they pursue

The noble and devour all things Divine.

Look! they illustrate horrors, which prove true

The Hell, which Milton's glimpse could not outline.

Look! Freedom glares and pallid as a ghost,

Except for gashes on her brow and breast,

And faint from hunger, sits awhile to rest.

Amphibious Barry, bold on sea or coast,

Mounts and spurs darkness to the Tory Host,

And, like an Indian rider with head prest

Down to his steed's hot neck in prowess test,

Plucks from the ground, a prize he well may boast.

Oh, as the sun's smile passing through the rain,

Shines forth a double arch, so, Barry's deed,

Refleshing Freedom's bones made gaunt by need,

Shines through the Ages; aye, and shines forth twain—

Both for America, from Britain Freed,

And Erin, still choked black in Britain's chain!

With France and Erin heartening Washington,

Prone Freedom rose, with head above the cloud.

Beholding her transfigured, Thrall is cowed.

His minions are bewildered. How they run!

Some follow him against the rising sun;

Others plod north. The Torries' vaster crowd

Hide in dark places, and like Satan, proud,

They hate the glory, that the true have won.

O Milton! Thou beheldest them. Thine ear

Caught their defiance and thy lightening pen,

In shattering the dark in evil's den,

Caught hope amphibious from leer to leer

Of those grim shadows, plotting to regain

Lost Paradise, or bane its atmosphere.

Who loosed our land from Britain's numbing hold?

"They who had naught to loose," the Tories say;

That is—not menials in the King's sure pay,

Nor mongrels, chained to guard their master's gold.

They were True Men. Their spirit, young and bold,

With dreams played follow-master, climbing day

From deepest night, to catch the Sun and stay

His glory for the World, then whiteing cold.

Though darkness be far vaster than the lamp,

It is the beams that lead to progress, count.

"To manhood, with the virtues to surmount

Such darknesses as Valley Forge's camp,

And seas, deep hell's sky-reaching, broadening fount,

Honor!" The ages shout on Triumph's tramp.

When hurled from heaven, 'tis thought, the fiends of pride

Caught Earth to brake their fall. The regions gave

And sank with all the hosts beneath the wave!

'Tis in those sunken regions which divide

The new world of the resolute and brave,

From the old world of king and abject slave,

Where Torries, counterfeiting Satan, hide.

Clinging, like lava, to a lifeless limb,

They think the phosphorescence of the bark

Is morning, which the long-belated lark

Is hastening to welcome with his hymn;

Else, they form poisons and breathe from the dark,

Miasma mist to make the sun-rise dim.

Old Guard of Boston! Halt; Right Face; Attention!

Order One: quell the weeds in rankest riot

Where lies Elisha Brown, in conscience, quiet.

This Brown was John's precursor. Ye, on pension

For ancient glory, now do duty. Mention

Elisha's name for countersign—and why, it?

Because with him, wrong, seen, was to defy it,

And act, else, was beyond his comprehension.

Against his home's invasion this man held

A red-coat regiment for seventeen days,

Which was a spark to help start freedom's blaze

And, therefore, Order Two: the weeds all quelled,

Stand sentries till a statue takes your place

And throngs shout, "Bravo, Brown!" as 'tis unveiled!

What is it that today we celebrate

With school recital, banquet and parade

Of our achievements, pageanting each trade?

The ousting of the English—train and trait—

And posting, then, sharp-eyed, eternal hate

To watch with Josuah's son above his head,

That night come not to help them re-invade,

However wide, we swing our ocean gate.

If not un-Englishing America in mind

And heart forever, vain the shrieks

Of Freedom, eagling back to dawn's first streaks.

Oh, yea, the sun stands, and the night afar

Holds Thrall, whose craft would swamp our noblest peaks

And leave but bubbling mud show where they are!

Manhatta! Glory flings his arms round thee

And proudly holds thee in his high caress.

What charms him, Mother, is thy nobleness

Of spirit. How his features beam to see

Thy scorn dash in the bay the tyrant's tea,

And hear thee call to Boston: "Do no less;

Else on sunlight, heart, soul—all we possess—

Will tyrant's next exact their deadly fee."

In thee I glory. Can the world else boast

A harbor, like thy heart, for every sail

In flight from sea-toss, white with horror's gale,

Or icebergs from despondence Polar coast?

Oh, fleets whose throngs, glad Freedom well may hail;

For, landing, they became her staunchest host.

With what wild glee, the British set on fire

Yon Capital, beholding in its flames,

America, robed in her deeds and fames,

In death throes at the stake of England's ire?

Though that was long ago and, then no pyre,

The stake still stands; 'tis Anglo-Saxon claims,

And Arnolds, bearing infamy's last names,

Tilt schools to raise the stake flames high and higher.

Oh, sight to strike the coming ages dead,

My country, were a cloud, thy mocking crown,

And schools, ignited by Truth's lamps hurled down,

To feed that cloud, like craters, inly red!

What! mock with cloud, Thy land and sea renown

And Washington, God's Holy Spirit—known

By the unerring World Light, that it shed?

Behold Ye Here the Happy Hunting Grounds,

Where the Great Spirit, called Democracy,

Sets every heart and soul forever free,

An Equity, not royal grant, sets bounds.

No Phaeton attempting Phoebus rounds

And burning up earth's grass and forestry,

Is lust for power; 'tis love for liberty,

With bloom and birds for wheel-sparks, here resounds.

It is the land of Spirit. "Ye who enter,

Abandon first all fratricidal hate,"

Proclaims the edict, blazoned o'er each gate.

There see all tribes chase truth to joy—the center

Convexing broad and broader, as more great

Their numbers from where prejudice is mentor.

Hark, 'tis the sea! How leonine its roar!

But, oh, how more the lion on a height,

As there he glares and listens for the night,

Having devoured day's clouds from shore to shore!

Now grows his mane of billows, high and hoar.

What scents he? Potencies escaping sight,

Till, like the cold, they icily alight

Upon a land where all was spring before.

The sun darts under earth and east again,

What sees he? First the lion at earth's brink

With head down to the stream of stars to drink;

And then, arising to his zenith ken,

Sees that which makes his high, warm spirit sink—

The blight to spring, blown here from England's fen.

What is the blight to spring that kills the seed

And raises spectres, so that stars cry "See!"

Aghast at forests, white or shadowy?

The scorn of human rights, that can but lead

The world from doom to doom! and for what mead?

A bronze for rain and rust, or effigy

For nibbling minutes—ah, not hours!—these flee

To life's progression—truth and kindly deed.

Look! How this scorn holds freemen in the dark,

Except for a flare at will that, then, the throng,

Reduced to dust, may rise and whirl along

The lift and drop of glitter, without spark

To set the spring a-crackling with bird song,

Till bud and angel both come out to hark!

O Country of the Sun's warm plenteous hand

To every germ of virtue, how below

Thy progress, mope Gold Mongers to and fro,

Who think they're vaulting from sunlight so grand,

It forms thy chiefest glory. Closely scanned,

They are gross worms, each with the thought to grow

"The Conqueror," as staged by Edgar Poe

For darking planets and a world, Last Manned.

Those worms that, moving, think they move the earth,

Or, under Growth's equestrian statue, think

They hold the horse and hero from the brink,

Are pitifully not a glance's worth,

As of thy glory; they but foul the chink,

If not of thee in warming Good to birth.

How weird a whisper! 'tis from Wallabout.

'Tis glory hoarse with calling: "Raise those hulks

Where writhe my faithful." See! the tory skulks

Behind the sun who, stooping to fill out

Their throats with his god-breath, to swell the shout

Of a free people, finds the brave in bulks,

Strewn and held fast where Darkness, beaten, sulks

That thrall has been forever put to rout.

Those mangled thousands are not dead; they live,

Refashioned men by freedom. Is the tory

Behind the sun, to mock me, who am Glory,

Being the lifted life those martyrs give?

He creeps beneath the sun and, ghastly gory,

Crys out: "Thou yet shall be the fugitive".

Oh, weirder grows the whisper into word,

As sharp as lightening, and as broad of reach,

As seas, flung down by God to every beach

Where thirsts a sparrow, or a bleating herd!

There is no soul through out the land, not stirred;

For, oh, to glory God gives his own speech

When darkness, raised by Gold, declares that each,

Hulk-held, is good but for the wolf and bird.

Is Gold grown conscious, now the Country's King

That, at his beck, the blood for Freedom spilt

Shall be accursed, and I, then, for the guilt

Of dropping not with thud, as he with ring

At Darkness' feet, be shut in mud and silt

Forever and with stars, cease, beaconing?

Oh, as the earth in discord and in dark,

When struck by Love on high with will for mace,

Keeps rattling till each mote finds its true place,

And mountain, fledged with groves, vies with the lark

To reach the sunrise; so the madness stark

Of gold, dethroning blood as God's best grace,

When struck by Glory's voice drops Nadir-base,

And blood for Freedom spilt, forms heaven's blue arc.

The shouts of millions shake Oblivion's mire

And raise Thrall's Hulks. Look! Justice's stooping sun,

Seeing in agony's each, a Washington,

Breaths life in them, and, over Brooklyn's spire

And New York's Babel Tower, they, one by one,

Hold Liberty's broading Torch of quenchless fire.

Hate thou not any man, for at the worst,

He still is brother. Will a glance not find

Whole peoples alchemied from heart and mind

To steal projectiles by a craft, accursed

By Human Nature? Aye, for, as they burst

At dusk, or midnight, slamming Heaven behind

And crashing Hell wide open, 'tis mankind

Is shattered and quick-gulping grave slake thirst.

Hate thou no man, but scorn all crafts, that smelt

The heart and mind for huge projectiles, shattered

When bursting grandly that some pride be flattered.

Nature beholds not Saxon, Slav, nor Celt;

She only sees the Human fragments scattered,

And, covering them, her eyes to rivers melt.

O Freedom! Have I ever been untrue?

When, to thy moan of hunger anywhere,

Have I been deaf? Was I not quick to share

My little, nay, give all! for oh! I knew

Thy beauty, and my love such passion grew

At thy distresses,—What would I not dare!

So, though the bellow, like a grizzly bear,

Reared up before me, on to thee I flew.

O Freedom! Is thy beauty without heart,

Or sense of justice? Unto whom art thou

Indebted for thine arm, encircling now

The world, sun-like, more than to me? My part

I glory in, for I have kept my vow.

I hold thee now to thine, if true thou art.

Speak Freedom! When a haggard fugitive,

Thy dwelling was a swamp, who first to trace

Thy crimson footprints to thy hiding place?

With signs thou hadst not many days to live,

I found thee. Had the sun more heart to give

To warm thee, than I gave? Ah, then and there

Thy heart said to my heart; "Ill would I fare

Without thee. I give love for love, believe".

Thy silence, when in glory, troubles me.

Oh! warm blood dashed back cold, chills to the bone!

What do I ask for? Only Erin's own,

That which God gave her, and, if true it be,

Thou art the minister of justice grown,

Thy gratitude should thunder God's decree.

What! Why bemoan one island in the sea,

When I can range like mountains, or, the sun,

Above all clouds, and, rosy from my run

To God, like morn, chant praise, since flesh of thee?

Oh, yea, my pride and transport, verily,

Is, thou and I eternally are one;

And this god-passion which no power can stun,

I owe to her, who gave her soul to me.

Oh, when I see her golden hair, adrift

On sorrow's sea, like weeds rent from their reef,

And know she breathes with her sublime belief,

It crazes me that thou, when thou mightst lift

Her saintly features, and dry them of grief,

Wads't not, but waitest for the tide to shift.

America! 'Tis not thy mines of gold,

Nor streams from mounts to meadows, like God's hand

From out the heavens, a-flash across the land

In long, deep sweeps to quicken winter's mould

To reaps of ripeness,—that mine eyes behold,

Invoking thee; for these are mere shore-sand

To the broad ocean of thy spirit grand,

Forming for man a new world for the old.

'Tis Liberty, to whose most blessed birth

The stars all lead, rejoicing, which souls thee

With God's compassion for humanity,—

That I invoke; and, now, when all the earth

Bears palms and chants hosannas—what! shall she,

The most devout, be shut from Freedom's mirth?

All English glory is in "Kipling's Boots."

O English People! read that poem true,

And answer,—are those maddening men not you?

Oh, not yea few, who gather all the loots,

But yea vast legions, lured to be recruits

To march, march, march and march with naught in view

But boots, boots, boots with blood and mud soaked through,—

And, after ages, with out rest, or fruits!

"Boots, boots, boots, and no discharge from war,"—

That is the Empire's anthem. Brass it out,

Ye Orchestras! But oh, leave not in doubt

Its import, Kipling,—that 'tis maelstrom roar—

'Tis England's streams of home-life, world about

And down a gulf, for Greed and Pride on shore!

If deaf to Shelley's loudest sky-lark strain,

His rage at tyrants, and to Byron's thong,

Nerve-proof, how wake the English to the wrong

Done their true selves, no less than to the slain,

When willing weapons for Ambition's gain?

Aye, weapons only; for, to whom belong

The minds of England, and treed fields of song—

Nay, all but grave-ground, grudged by hill and plain?

O English People, whom the crafty class

Has huddled into graves from sight and sound

Of what God hands you, and, with pence, or pound,

Lids down your wild dead stare,—wake! why so crass?

See in the Celts spring-burst from underground,

The Human Resurrection come to pass.

Oh, what are England's lines of lords and kings,

Shakespeare, to thine, a-throb with thought and feeling?

In thine, imagination shines, revealing

The soul's convictions, swift on dawn-ward wings

From beastly life and such Hell-smelling things,

As wealth and pomp from church and abbey stealing,—

And hearts in hopes high Belfries, Heavenward pealing,

As Time, his Sun and Starry censor, swings.

Would thou wert England's Nature, Bard Supreme,

To fashion kings and lordlings fit to rule;

They would be flesh and blood, not fiend and ghoul;

And would thou wert her Sun, that every beam

Might not, for tally, show a youth's blood-pool,

Choking blithe Spring, as, now, to earth's extreme.

The righteousness of England! "Tis to kneel

Full weight on weaker nations, and entone

Hosannas louder than the victims groan;

Then, stooping, drink their blood with gulps of zeal."

What right have wounds, though wide, to throb, or feel?

'Tis blasphemy to England's crimson throne.

Knee-deep in Erin's blood, she mocks Christ's moan:

Forgive them, Lord! they know not their true weal.

"Whose is the fault? Tis not my arrogance,

But candor, Lord, that puts the blame on Thee.

What right hadst Thou to make these people free

And let all nature prompt them to advance?—

Oh, no such blunder, Lord, hadst Thou called me,

Instead of Wisdom, to approve Thy plans!"

The Bard's curse: "Ruin seize thee Ruthless King,"

Took bat-like form for hollow echo-flight.

Though stoned and lanced at, when, at fall of night,

It darted forth with ghastly—spreading wing,

It found in fresh, wide, royal ravishing,

New hollows, dark with horror and sad plight,

To dash in and live on. Oh, to my sight,

How grows its grimness, while eternaling!

Deep are the minds of Wales, but far more deep

The horror, gulfed out by McCreedy, firing

On men defenseless and, through want, expiring.

Oh, from that gulf the Bard's curse makes a sweep

Up to the Sun and, from its long desiring,

Grown eagle, shrieks to heaven from steep to step!

"A dirty work," said Dyer, rebuked for spilling

Hundreds of lives to irrigate new lands.

A dirty work, but not for British hands,

Dabbling in blood to earn each day their shilling.

Hark! Mohawk Valley and Wyoming, chilling

With thought of Tarleton's King-serving bands,

And Canada red-clayed, though high snow stands,

Cry: Work for which the British are too willing!

Invaded lands need terror irrigation

To make them fruitful. Better flood the field,

Then let the native bloom become the yield;

And, so, this Dyer submerged a small whole nation

With crimson death, that England might, deep-keeled,

Have for display, new seas of desolation.

The ocean, holding pure the azure's blue,

Laughs at the tempests, with one empire's dust

After an other, to round out Earth's crust.

Ah, so does Human Nature hold the hue

It takes from heaven, its conscience, and laughs, too,

At madness, wrecking life and with its gust

Forming new islands, where Pride, Greed, or Lust,

Welcomes the crater's glare, in sun-light's lieu.

Look in the sea and deep, what scattered rock,

The islands which at dusk, the tempest piled!

Ere rose a star, they sank with crews, beguiled.

O Tempests that with world formations, mock

The good Creator, how, as ye grow wild,

Earth quakes and no live thing survives the shock.

Our country is not rock and wood and stream,

But soul transfusing them. What is the soul?

The substance, born of God, above control

And, when one, with God's love, called "Will," supreme;

And Freedom is the soul in thought, and dream

That Nature's beauty and harmonious whole—

God's foot-steps—followed, life attains its Goal;

And soul is purpose to achieve God's scheme.

The soul, then,—our true country,—is the brave

Who fought and bled for Freedom, or will fight

To their last pulse, last breath, for Human Right.——

Great soul! oh, how like bubbles in the wave,

Are the Sierras in cerulean flight,

To thy true grandeur, letting nought enslave!

O thou art Character—art only those

Who formed the good and great by thought, or deed.

All others are not worth a moment's heed,—

Mere prairie dogs, who raise gold hills in rows—

When gazing at thy glory; for that grows

With Freedom from all foul untruths; with lead

In art for weal; with science for all woes;

With hate of thrall and help for all unfreed.

No mere foot-shadow, on time's wall, art thou,

Without eye-sparkle, swing of arm, warm flow

From heart to vain, and cheeks with health of glow.

Oh, 'tis eternal heights reflect thy brow

And shoulders, that avert man's overthrow,

Threatened all times, and never more than now.

Oh, what if lone and long thy lofty flight,

My country? Is thy vision not as clear

As that of Vesper, dauntless pioneer

On Twilight's altitude? As from that height,

He sees plain through the thick black walls of night,

The stars all massing; so dost thou, his peer,

Behold all peoples gathering, year by year,

To scale the clouds to thy White Range of Right.

How thy lone loftness, aloof from wrong,

Refracting man-ward, God's enrapturing smile

Of fruitful fields, leads legions! On they file

And phalanx, and the vision makes thee strong:

What, though God's searchlight flares the sky the while?

It nears not thee, ear-close to heaven's high song.

From out a desert where the trails run red,

Judah and Erin speed their camel pace,

Sighting green palms. The flush on either face

Is from the fissure where each wedged her head

From sandstorms, that hurled heavens down, as they sped;

It is no blush for thought, or conduct, base

To the high trust to bring the Human Race,

Truths, without which Time's offspring are born dead.

In spirit, they are sisters; for, beyond

The desert, where the vision, like a dove,

Soars round the palace of Almighty Love,

God hails them as "My Daughters, true and fond,

Who show man, through Noon blaze, my star above,

And to my will, fail never to respond."

Who, in descent from Heaven's ecstatic throng,

Was twin to light, and ranged from source to sea,

And shore to peak, and God, drew up to thee

The generations happy, pure and strong?

Freedom, as Erin's was, ere ruthless wrong

Caught, scourged and hanged it on the out-law's tree;

And is; for lo! it proves Divinity,

Transfiguring from anguish, ages long.

True, they have strangled Freedom on the cross

Of every Right's suppression—nay, have barred

His body's tomb, and placed a host on guard!

Still, He is risen; His faithful mourn no loss.

He shines forth in their midst. No bolts retard

His entrance, where grand aims for life engross.

The fight in Ireland is 'twixt Man and Brute.

A lion with the sea-surge for his mane,

Is there hurled back by Man with proud disdain,

Although heart-drained with gash from head to foot.

Oh, in that Eden of Forbidden Fruit,

How Satan, searching for a snake in vain,

Fumed forth a monster from his heart and brain—

The Lion—as the serpent's substitute!

Oh, all ye peoples of the World draw nigh!

Stand on the bodies of eight centuries,

Struck dead with horror; for, raised thus, one sees

In Erin, torn, a soul that cannot die,

And that its struggle is Humanity's

Against the fiend, who would give God the lie.

How help take pride in thee, whose golden hair

Of culture trailed the earth for centuries;

Whose throne was freedom and whose realm was peace;

And, in strange lands, whose joy and only care

Were to spread light, and who, not anywhere

Thy charm made headway, planting liberties,

Didst, then, by stealthy step, or creep on knees,

Sow with the lilies, faster-growing tare!

How help love thee, whose hand, raised to the sun,

Glows rosy, and not red with murder's stain?

The angels kiss it. Force can forge no chain

To drag thee false-ward. Like a holy Nun,

Stigmated, how thy faith grows with thy pain—

Aye, till thy Cross, like Constantine's has won.

In rapt, roused Erin, who does not behold

A Venus, rising from the sea of tears,

Up to her native, Earth-illuming spheres?

Her hair, long matted, is a flow of gold

Which even the Sun might wear and feel not cold;

And, oh, her heavenly smile at doubts and fears,

As when she, at all depths, raised to her ears,

Shells of her Glory, murmuring, "Be bold!"

Lo! where the green and orange morn unfurls,

See Erin rise. How shine her golden tresses!

They form her crown, for trailing rocks down whirls,

And reaching all the under-sea recesses,

They draw about her brow, the rarest pearls—

Love for what frees and hate for what oppresses!

All hail to those who, through the stormy night,

Make Liberty the light on Erin's coast;

Who, ceaseless, send up sparks; who hold their post

On each and every ledge of Human Right,

Forming a beacon blaze from base to height

Where Erin's hope may steer and land its host.

Look, Human Nature! Where else canst thou boast

To the eternal stars, so grand a sight?

Look! How men there ennoble human kind

By making Liberty the light to Peace!

All other lights are false. Oh! who but sees

In the unconquerable Celtic mind

That, even in Time, there are Eternities—

Love, true to Right, and Will no wrong can bind!

Why play with words? There never can be peace

Till Ireland is set free. One might as well

Expect the great Arch-angel rest in Hell

And genuflect to Satan's blasphemies,

As Erin's spirit that, for centuries,

Has been aloft with God in virtue, sell,

Like Esaw, her birthright, and not rebel,

But to her home's invaders, bend her knees.

Her spirit is no norbury Banshee—

To wail and, then, to vanish. She will stand

With lifted flambeau, lighted by the hand

That lights the stars, till she again is free,

Inspiring normal man in every land

With love of Freedom, by her scorn of thee.

Look! British fury that, barraging, lights

Up Irish skies, like pathways down to hell,

Doubles its fire to reach our land as well,

Where Freedom's Wardens cry from justice' heights:

"'Tis Deicide to murder Human Rights.

Stop foul God-slaughter where to not rebel,

In order to develop and excel,

Were God in man, succumbed to age-longed blights."

Where Heavenward rose the God in man of old,

Staunch stand these Wardens. Sleepless, they behold

Each turn of England's Evil Eye. They call,

When she would form the fulminate of gold,

A thumb and finger-pinch of which, let fall,

Might blast Columbia's peaks to slit of thrall.

Of all the fulminates, gold is the worst,

Which England, aeroplaning, now, lets drop

By day and night, in bank, press, church and shop,

Timed to the minute that it is to burst.

List to Demosthenes, if not to Hearst,

Sublime Republic! Lest thy great heart stop,

Shocked by the blast of Freedom's every prop,

And bats and owls in dwellings, Human's erst.

"Watch Macedon. She drops her gold, in creeping

Beneath free Athens' sky-ascending stair.

Watch her with glance of sword. Oh, watch, for where

She sows her gold, she comes with scythes for reaping!

Is Athens in ascent with sun-light flare,

To come down ashes, not worth history's keeping?"

In only Wallace and Paul Jones and Burns,

Does Caledonia, child of Erin, show

His mother's features, lit by soul to know

The Right Divine of freedom, when it yearns

For what exalts the human, or, it spurns

What bars its flight to truth—all stars aglow,

That form God's trail to joy for man below?—

Sole trail, as time, who peers through grief, discerns.

O Caledonia, by thy Burn's brave song,

And deeds of Wallace and Paul Jones for Right,

Thy mother knows thee in the dark of night,

And claps thee heart-close. She cries out: "Be strong,

Soul of my soul! though not a Boswell quite,

Still, be whole man! remember Glencoe's wrong."

Wake, Caledonia! though Macauley, Whigging,

Would ward the flames from scarring William's face,

So that, then, Cain might shriek,—here, take my place,

A fugitive and outcast, with no digging

To hide in, nor a rest for my fatiguing;

The mark on me, is but God's finger trace;

On you, 'tis God's whole hand!—Still, there's the blaze!

There's England's soul of merciless intriguing!

List! 'tis the bagpipes welcoming the guest.

See the assembly, dance and feast. Oh, watch

The open heart and flow of good old Scotch;

The English come, as friends, must have the best.

There, hospitality is at top notch,—

And so is treachery in Britain's breast.

The cock crows.—Is he dreaming? 'Tis dark still.

He crows again and now, from farm to farm,

His fellows echo far his dazed alarm

And flap of wings on fences. He is shrill

Because it is not dawn above the hill,

That wakes him, but the English, as they arm,

And murder sleep, that has no dream of harm,

In couch and crib,—to further England's will.

O Caledonia! with such lamp in hand

As Glencoe's horror, thou hast England true.

Why let Froude fiction haze thy vivid view?

Put not thy light out for sound sleep, but stand

And answer, when the mother, whom thou drew

Thy soul from, cries "Glencoe"! when Black and Taned.

O Canada, Long red with cottage flame

From Britain's torch! thy blasts milk not the cloud

To nourish hope; instead, they spread the shroud

On Human Spirit answering Freedom's claim.

Whence comes the cold which icicles with shame,

Thy heart's Niagara, that should thunder loud

Unto thy far off soul in sorrow, bowed

O'er Papineau, whom Thraldom could not tame?

Now following the Friends, who grandly led

The slave through tunnels to the Northern Star,

To find, in freedom, richer bloomage far,

Than the Magnolia o'er the cattle shed,—

I reach thy soul,—where now the Crawfords are,

And learn the cold is not from manhood dead.

Whence comes this cold to Freedom's claim? we know

Only too well,—from creatures of the King,

Who had dragged Hell of every poisonous thing

And, through our country, had spread waste and woe.

Beaten at last, they flocked like carion crow,

On the dead body of their will to sting,

Which drifting Northward, and enlargening,

Loomed Dante's Nimrod, 'mid the Arctic snow.

There, with the reptile's hate of Man Upright,

As God created him, and reptiles veins,

Aflow with deaths cold blood—for that sustains

The life of tyrant and of parasite—

This monster, though half sunk in Hell, remains

High, still, above the Arctic's shuddering night.

The monster's inhalations empty Hell

Of all deterents to Life's flow and flower;

Then, its outbreathings icily devour

The cataract in flight and, down the dell,

The streamlets to delight, and buds, as well,

Of virtue, forming bloom for Freedom's bower;—

Nay, its out breathings,—through Creed hatred's power—

Grow Boreus and face where freeman dwell.

Lo! with Sun-warmth for Truth and Human Right,

Is Boreus met. Who hurles him down the deep?

Look close;—'tis Gladden who, on Freedom's steep,

Is as inspiring, as, on Andes' height,

The great Christ Statue, bidding Rancor sleep

And Life's diverging rays in love, beam Light.

The cataracts wild leap, turned glittering ice

In shame's suspension, and crow souls afeeding

Upon a huge dead body and fast breeding,—

Is, as a scene, not worth the railroad's price;

But, oh, if, with "Excelsior" for device,

Thou climb thy Alpine way, each day exceeding

The other's height, what throngs would watch thy speeding

And, for the thrill thou woulds't give them, come twice!

O Canada! why all this sleigh-bell rhyming?

'Tis on the reindeer, hope, in speed with me

To the grand morning, when thou shalt breathe free

Upon the apex of thine Alpine climbing,

From foulsome, choaking smells of tyranny,

Thick from the Great Sea Serpent's inland sliming.

God said to Wrong: "No further shalt thou go."

This, Monroe heard and held, then, in his heart.

It was this he repeated, when on chart

He made his markings, checking Freedom's foe.

God never grants to Wrong the right to grow;

Because He sets its bounds, does not impart

His blessing on its growth, more than its start;

His blessing goes to Right, to overthrow.

Oh, let thine eyes for migratory flight

Speed southward! Passing Prejudice's Lake,

Green-crusted with stagnation which some take

For verdure, they will see from Andes' height,

How Freedom's battle forms the red day-break,

And tides are swells from thrall, hurled deep from sight.

Thine eyes returning from the Southern Cross,

Will, when like Perry, they have reached the Pole,

Search under it to find thy banished soul,

O Canada, and tell it of thy loss

In letting a foul dead body, which the moss

Of the deep sea should hide, loom as thy whole

And rule, as dead things rule, with death for toll,

As pierced by Papineau through Glamor's gloss.

From South to North, no sky is black but thine.

Thy fecund brain, the Borealis, shows

A swaying disc with shades of dark for glows,

With but a faint salt smell of Color's brine,

The pent-up billows in the disc's dark close,

Which might flood midnight with rare, world-wide shine.

We seek no annexation, but of Mind,

Heart, Spirit. True, thy clear, sonorous voice

At Freedom's class-call, would make us rejoice,

For, then, close-coasting thrall would fail to find

In the new world, one truant to mankind,

Swimming out to the foreigners' decoys,

Or fast asleep amid his infant toys,

Instead of at the task, which God assigned.

Oh, let thy spirit come, but it must be

Along the star-way to the rising sun—

The way of love; not down creed hates that run,

Like broken stone-steps, to a roaring sea—

The way thou oft, hast come. Rise, and be one

On the new world's Star-top of Liberty.

"The Angels come in dreams," says Holy Writ;

And Science says, "No sleep so deep, but dreams."

Devine appearances with brightening gleams

Toward Paradise up from the demon's pit,

Ever rouse virtue; aye, for God redeems

His fire, wherever hid; the tempest teems,

But still his sparks fly, quick as flint is hit.

Wake, Canada! and let thy Papineaus

Be dreams remembered; yea, let them inspire

Thy life to follow Freedom high and higher

Through Rights' whole range of summits, crowned with snows

Sparkling from star-moulds of the Soul's desire,

On earth from Heaven where, clouds from flames, they rose.

O Freedom! whose pure soul and heart embrace

Translates me into heaven, I draw for breath

The joy of angels who have not known death.

Child-like, I look up in thy loving face,

Else gaze around and point, and curious place

My hand on Mottoes, hung on high. One saith:

"Beware, for he not with me scatterith."

Its meaning comes to me with growth, like grace.

Ah, as a youngster, on its mother's arm,

Seeing a hideous thing approaching night,

Will not lay down its head and shut its eye,

But will with look and lung express alarm—

My mind cries out in dread—when sea and sky

Show dragons, tendencies that work thee harm.

O Freedom! Up to whose raised hand the seas

Leap, playful lions, or with head and main

Across their paws lie couchant—it is pain

To see thee whose heart beats are God's decrees,

And vital breathings are infinities,

Now check thy heart and hold thy breath to gain

The smile and plaudit of a depths with bane

In finger tips, while fawning on their knees.

What! Think the tyrant, whose great soul is trade,

Whose history, a crater, belching black

And lurid, keeps glad Easter morning back

From half the world—loves thee save to invade,

As blackward planned? loves thee, along whose track

March Human rights up to the stars parade?

There where the Tyrant long has loomed, wreck-crowned,

Are young and old hurled to the coast and blast.

Frail are their ships; still, Sun, why glare aghast,

Watching the billows monstering around?

The soul of man was not born to be drowned.

It mounts and mounts, till, at God's throne, at last,

And freedom welcomes it with arms, sky-vast,

As down it comes to meet Thrall and confound.

O, deathless spirit, born of hosts sea-hurled,

Who hast out soared night's stars with agony's cry

For justice! Thou hast come down from the sky,

Heralding doom to Thrall, whose flag unfurled

By steel, or craft, shows, as 'tis hoisted high,

The blood of man and ruin of the world.

What is the Truth? The thought, the act, or cry,

Recasting the Supreme Intelligence;

All else is false. Look! where are stars so dense,

That each has not the freedom of the sky?

And, still, what peace, what glory, reigns on high!

What! with the wisdom of the heavens, dispense?

The Peace, for which our longings grow intense,

Comes through the stars to earth, and but thereby.

What splits dark mid-night and gives earth a thrill?

All stars merged into one—our Country's aim.

It is a lightening, formed by God, to flame

Across the ages and flash bolts to kill

The stranglers, who the heart or spirit, main,

Or choke black in the face, a People's Will.

Who is to rise and hurl God's flame world-wide,

As Lincoln hurled it, setting free a race

From Sphinx-shaped wrong—a beast with human face?

That shattered, how our land rose glorified

And, from the stars last laggard, soared, their guide!

Oh, who can take Promethean Lincoln's place,

To bring light where-so-ever he can trace

A Human, with his rights to soul denied?

He must be one, not only to illume

All ages, and not leave one region dim,

But at no height, allow his senses swim,

Or let mirages lure him with false bloom.

Lo! Here one comes with all the virtues prim

To hurl God's fire and end all human gloom.

'Tis Wilson takes God's flame from Lincoln's hand.

This Princeton man,—who has outgrown the prince,

A hundred years, and, in the ocean since,

Seen with delight, Eternity expand

And loom in glory from the despot's strand,—

Shapes fourteen dazzling bolts without a wince.

He pauses. Why not hurl them and convince

The world that, hence-forth, not one thrall shall stand?

What! Wilson's arm lacks strength to hurl the flame,

God gave to Lincoln for the Human race?

Look! Look! it falls. What! Gone? Quenched by dark space?

No; it describes an orbit there, the same

As comets, and regains its heavenly place

For one to hurl it true, and doom Earth's Shame.

In Wilson we beheld and proudly hailed

The World's Deliverer. In him, we saw

A luminous being rise from earth and draw

All lands above the clouds. We were regaled

With justice cascades flow, long ice impaled

Upon high mountains. Was not Nature's thaw

From his heart heat for truth, Eternal Law?

His was the heat of all the stars, he scaled.

Though his ascension was like Christ's, sublime

With lift of continents and every isle,

He, less than Christ, succumbed to Demon Guile.

Oh, God, that he should drop his mountain climb

Below sea-level, and let earth the while,

Fall back and settle in Primeval Slime!

Judging from Wilson's virile virtue-voice,

Whose whisper hushed Earth's Hum, were we not proud

To have him cross the sea to speak aloud

And, with a finger raised, hush battle noise,

And lift all lands to Justice's equipoise?

Oh, such his truth to God,—so oft avowed,—

A spirit thund'red from a luminous cloud:

"This man crowns Lincoln's work. All Men! Rejoice."

Oh, had he read his bible where St. Paul,

Grown man, put off child things—or, had not smiled,

When told, strong Ego oft, is man grown child!

Look! Who sees not an Epoch's Angel Fall

From hope for earth, in Wilson's truth, beguiled

By second childhood's toys to play with thrall?

Our Country still is in the womb, dark Time.

It shows life by its brisk and robust turns,

Which thrill the Mother, Liberty, who yearns

To see her man-child born. Oh, how sublime

With genius, not of one, but every climb

Where art forms beauty, or the spirit spurns

The foul and spurious,—her desire, that burns

Prenatally in him, to form him prime!

Oh People, all—Italian, Spanish, French,

Dutch, English, Irish, German, Jew, and Greek—

What see you, as you climb the Future's Peak?

Oh! no illusion. What looms there, shall wrench

From life, all monsters out from Hell, to seek

Dead consciences and plague earth with their stench.

Ascend, O Land of every Creed and Race!

Not thy full image, in New England's brook,

Nor in the South's lagoon; though there, a look

Delights us with thy chubby, infant face.

'Tis seas of joy, that shorelessly replace

The Ocean which, in time of old, forsook

The prairies for the cloud, or spring in nook,—

That show thee, Grown, through God's abundant grace.

From East to West, how joy's high seas expand,

Reflecting, not a foolish, mundane pride

That, thinking it does all, sets God aside—

But Virtue which, with heart and head and hand,

Works out God's purpose, with dear Christ for guide,

And holy spirits Light to understand!

All Virtues from the longing of the soul;

From wisdom, gained by sorrow through long ages;

From inspiration of the bards, in rages

That inter-marrying maniacs control

A people's life, and drain its sea to shoal,

And from the vision of sky-topping sages,

Gasping for breath from rot in all its stages,—

Aye, these and new-born Genius loom there Whole.

Look, People! Little less than God's own size,

Your virtues merge and, with speed God-ward, burn,

An unconsuming sun, that at no turn

In spiral flight, for still a grander rise,

Lets night advance where human Rights still yearn,

Except with great, new stars and dawning skys!

Behold two fleets, the one with woe for trail,

The other, rapture. As they sight the strait,

Through which but one can pass, Greed, urged by Hate,

Drives Thraldom's crafts with help of steam and gale.

They feel their way. The guns, with which they hale,

Raise jets, that look tall elms from Hope, the gate,

To Peace, the Palace; then, their speed is great,

Manoeuvering fast to head off, or assail.

Drawing the sea up for his driving steam,

Greed breaks all mirrors in his grand state room,

That show him dark inevitable doom,

Close hovering, and exults: "I am Supreme.

When seas lack water for my funnel fume,

I bid life send its every crimson stream."

What! in the darkness lowers boat after boat

From Freedom's fleet, and each with lightening oars?

Treasons to God and country are the rowers.

They are the Gold and Hireling Brain, that gloat

On conscience body with face down, afloat.

Why hail they Greed, to run on menial chores

From deck to deck, or to and from all shores?

Why? To ensure the payment of a note.

Meanwhile, brisk Freedom's fleets with justice manned,

And cosmic full momentum for their speed,

Confront the crafts, fired up by fiendish Greed.

A clash and—lo! they pass the strait and land,

Leaving in smoldering heaps, like autumn's weed,

The hulks of thrall along time's vultured strand.

Are lust for Gold and Power not hideous spawn

Of prehistoric reptiles, that had wings?

Where e'er those crawled, they chawed all greening things

And, when they mounted, how their lengths, full drawn,

Basked barren in the sun before the dawn,

Absorbing all its rays from budding Springs?

These drain life's dawn and by impoverishings,

Draw and reduce to pulp, frail Consciences.

Oh, yea, bewinged with legislative crime,

They bask in sunlight e'er the east sky greys,

And drag the soul of man from God's embrace

Of rights and freedom. Oh, how long a time

Shall reptiles, deadly to the Human race,

Be let grow wings and heavenward trail their slime?

The outlaws in our country are the wretches,

Who wreck the legislatures with their gold,

And with the ruins, form a high stronghold

To sally from, to what good nature fetches

From God to man. What though fine graphic sketches

In magazines show them with shoulders bold

Against the nights flood-gates of dark and cold?

All effort is but life in death-throw stretches.

They are the outlaws, who stop Nature's train

And take its corn and coal for selfish use;

Then, put their shoulders to Night's gate, to loose

Its hinges for a forty-day dark rain,

To drown all life, that they, like Noah, may cruise

Through thick drifts of the dead in heart and brain.

O heart and brain, who see the father load

His train with food, not for the few, but all,

And hear train-whistlings in March winds, jay call

And ground-hog sniffs! Haste out, for from the road

That leads to every Industry's abode,

The trust that, bat-eyed, comes out at night-fall,

Now moves the tracks inside his private wall,

Claiming all trains from God a debt long owed.

O heart and brain, it rest with you, how long

The legislative wreckers shall prevail.

Ye have the power to balk them. Why then, fail?

Regain your legislatures. Man them strong

And drive thence all sleek hounds, trust-trained to trail

Safe outlaws' paths to fastnesses of wrong.

Was ever such unblushing harlotry,

Such sale of virtue in the Market place,

As by the Press? The red paint on her face

Is Degradation's mark. Alas, that she,

Born to bring forth the truth, still, is so base,

She kills her child and, then, to hide all trace,

Cracks bone by bone to dust, too fine to see.

O Press, poor harlot of the tyrant, Gold,

What freedom, but from truth, hast thou to boast?

Hark, who now speaks is murdered Truth's pale ghost:

"Conceiving life—oh, bring it forth! aye, hold

Thy child on high with love, as priest, the Host!

Crush not its bones, with smile and eyes set cold."

What is the truth? The focus of all rays

Passing through Nature and the soul and mind.

It is the Sun of Suns, around which wind

The Heavens and all the worlds. Such is its blaze,

That had it not, at intervals, a haze,

Grading both Angel and the Human-kind,

The bright Arch-angel would be stricken blind,

To grope in Heaven, a Homer, sighing lays.

What less could fitly crown Omnipotence

Than Truth, the focus of all rays in Good?

Lo! there it shines upon the Holy Rood,

Breaking through clouds, a-massing dark and dense

From countless ages, Cains to Brotherhood—

With rays of pardon for the World's offense.

"Forgive them, Sire! They know not what they do."—

Ah, Christ! how at that face to face God-plea,

The Demon and his legions, mocking thee

With every generation, brought to view,

Flashed with dismay, and, boltless lightening through

The ages, thunder down Eternity,

'Till faint as the sound in shells, far from the sea;

For that thy prayer would be vouchsafed, they knew.

All grandeurs, gathered as a dazzling crown

For thee, in barter for thy knee's least bend,

The Demon dashed to fragments to Time's end.

There, born anew in spirit, we look down

And, in the ocean of thy prayer, Amen'd,

See but earth's monsters, with the demons drown.

Thought is truth's echo—not her glorious eyes

Beholding God, nor her white arms of light,

Lifted in worship. Following truth, our flight

At highest range is where our echo dies.

Oh all your power and beauty, earth and skys!

And, Soul and Mind! your Beauty and your Might—

Truth gathers in one flash and, catching sight

Of God, lifts high in love's full sacrifice.

Twixt Truth and Thought, what Truth is oft is space

Wherein, with intuition for her wing,

The soul mounts. It is there I hear her sing:

"Lo, Truth, so swift aloft, Thought dies in chase,

Turns earthward, and the gifts her white arms bring,

Are outshone by God's glory in her face!"

Ah, what is Heaven? Such Glory that Sun-light

Seems darkness, and Mass Music, shell-shut sound.

What we call senses here, there so abound,

The soul appears a broadening heaven in flight,

Feathered and downed with all the stars, whose white

Is all hues mingled. Oh, the awe profound!

For every moment there, new Heavens astound

The myriad senses, with God's Love and Might.

If "Holy, Holy, Holy, Evermore?"

Be the one chant of angel and of Saint

Before the Throne, it is their gaspings faint

Between their transports to high Heavens from lower;

For, what is love's eternal Firmament

But Heaven on Heaven, that we may ceaseless soar?

Was not humility the Earthward stair

From highest Heaven, by which God came to men,

To show the way aloft to human ken?

Ah, by what other pass, are men to fare

Through mist and cloud, except the path, aflare

With his blest steps from Heaven, and up again?

Steps, not from star to star, but fen to fen,

That all might follow and not one despair!

Oh, steps of Love! Could we reach with our eyes

Their fulgence, we would shrink back with dismay;

For, though 'tis through the world's contempt move they—

Hark! How the hidden choirs of countless skies

Chant at all heights: "Lo, God comes by this way,

And makes world-wide, His stair to Paradise!"

A cataract of stars, which, with each fall

Broadens and brightens, rapturing the sight

Of angel hosts, that view it from the height

Of knowledge of God's love for one and all

His creatures—and not darkness to appal

The spirit by the quench of every light,

For which God grants it vision—is the night

Of Life's strange mysteries, both great and small.

Oh cataracts, beyond the angels' count,

Pause and shine pendant over every deep

Of heart, mind, spirit! Lo! how down they sweep

To basic Good where, massing, they remount,

Till, mid God's "Many Mansions," high they leap,

Forming forever, joy's most splendent fount!

When, at God's fiat, Light flashed forth, the beam

Evolved a million pigments, as it sped

To every nature. Now, of all its spread,

What shaft so glorious as the poet's dream

Which, mote and mass, reflects the Will Supreme

That life is progress, and by flight, or tread,

It circles God-ward up, till perfected!

For, harboring meaner thought were to blaspheme.

What, if the world be chaos where it sins,

Race feuds, Creed hatreds, falsehoods gross, deceit,

Intrigue and greed, form swirling, blinding sleet?

Honor and Truth, though buried to their chins,

Look up and smile; for, though the storms still beat,

The poets show 'tis Spring, not Winter, wins.

Not mine the night that creeps beneath Life's sea,

Or lurks within Hope's ruins, sunk below

The desert, or the stagnant pool—oh, no!

But night that mounts the heavens, till it is free

Where stars, prefiguring all things that be

Obscure on earth, catch sight of God and glow,

And golden shadows large and larger grow,

Cast by Gift-bearers to Humanity.

Oh, once the cold of all the unsunn'd space

Was in my reptile life of soul, wing-bound;

But now, soul-free, what warmth from stars all round!

'Tis not by strength of mine, Lord, but thy grace,

My soul soars from the depths of sea, or ground,

Till, at star-heights, it meets Thee, face to face!

What but the spirit's ladder to God's throne

Is beauty? Oh, from rung to rung to climb,

Till faint becomes the azure's anthem chime

Of planets, multitudinous, or lone,

And Inspiration, drunk with fragrance, blown

From God's rare, inmost garden, wall'd from Time,

Sets free the Sonnet with is wings of rhyme

To carry down the transport, upward known!

Mine is no swaying ladder, like he sea's,

Whose rounds of rollers, raised above Sun-rise,

Lean not on Heaven, hence shattered lie at noon;

For 'tis set firmly on the verities,

Which form God's throne. Ah, there, what joy, my prize!

Would that I had a dove for every boon!

The Sun is God's great joy to Human sight.

Oh, up and off in chariots, Sea! and ride,

All generations, up, till mountain-eyed,

To welcome earth-ward, God's Supreme delight.

Imagination swirls in swallow flight,

Giddy with Beauty, deepening—Oh, how glide

From star to star, to the haloes, season-dyed

And countless! Its wings shrivel up like night.

Oh, yea, the Sun in one subliming rise

From Wisdom's infinite mind! This Reason knows.

It has no set. There, Sense, with weals or woes

For beads, or fingers, count our shuts of eyes,

Excluding Knowledge. What! God's joy to close

And all its goodness break and drift cloud-wise?

There are two darknesses; one where the Lord

Hides beauty—that by which men know His face.

All, in that darkness, feel His fingers trace

Their features gently, and their hearts record

The feeling, as of one, whose eyes, restored,

Would see, but for the Father's close embrace.

The other is the outer dark—a place

Where hate turns black the light upon it poured.

O God! the only darkness that I dread,

Is where Thou art not—that where Hate's black fire

Surmounts the heavens, to burst with thunder dire

And, in its fall forever, drag the dead

Of heart and spirit—those whom Thy desire

Would fain have made the halo round Thy head.

A spirit passed the Sun, the Moon and Star,

And dwelled and dreamed in darkness all its own.

The music of the spheres, though thither blown,

As faint as fragrance from a flower afar,

Disturbed this spirit's ear, attuned to jar

Of orb with orb; for hate of light, truth known,

Fashions hot worlds which, cooled to clay and stone,

Clash, rising toward calm Heaven, which they would mar.

Ah, if where love was not, he smiled elate,

His smile at God returned, a lightening flash

That shattered him. He saw his planets clash,

Burst and, then, by the downward law of hate,

Sink and leave not a single spark, nor ash,

For the new firmament he would create.

There are two Gods—one, Good, the other, Ill.

They clash in Nature—so the Persian taught,

And long a sect in Europe spread the thought.

Why there is evil is a problem still

To many, who see not in Human Will,

A being that with beauty could have caught

Up to his Maker, had he gladly wrought

With light and warmth, instead of dark and chill.

God said, "Let there be Light," and light was made.

God made not darkness—that is light's exclusion,

Forming a region where, in wild confusion,

Men, Nations, each a ferret, blood-eyed shade,

Worry each other, till, with disillusion

For lamp, comes conscience, crying, "God Betrayed!"

Ah, in the angel-fall from Heaven, is hope?

The wing-whir discord of the legion's fall

From God forever, mocks my heart's loud call.

Empty of beauty from its base to cope,

The Earth is hollow. Where, then, can I grope

And not be met by echoes that appal?

What! shouts my mind, in wonder that I crawl

And, having skyey wings, in hollows mope.

Does scent from bloom, or warble from the wood,

Not atmosphere the un-aerial void

Twixt thee and beauty, which thy youth enjoyed?

Fly back to earth, by memory renewed;

She fills the hollow, echoing hosts destroyed,—

With Spring, reflecting Heaven's Triumphant Good.

O beauty! in the dimple of thy cheek,

My love could live forever and be blest.

There, with the sun, a rose-bud on thy breast,

How thou rejoicest, hastening to speak

To thy fond Father! Oh, how vain to seek

A sweeter refuge for the Spirit's rest,

Than mid thy blushes, when thou marvelest

At His great love, for, oh! thy heart is meek.

Oh beauty! in thy Father's arms, thou art.

Enclose me in thy dimple; for, though this

Were but a bud, or molded seed, what bliss

To watch bloom gather scent, or new life start,

And hear our Father, bending for a kiss,

Whisper to thee, the secrets of His heart!

Beauty is love and, hence is heightening fire,

Consuming Nature. All the dark can bring

To quench it, feeds it. Look! how everything

Is caught in the blaze, which mounts up high and higher!

Oh! truly, 'tis a vision to inspire

The soul with transport, more than joy can sing;

For, if not for the blaze, what cold would sting

Poor mortals, who crowd round it, nigh and nigher!

Is beauty not the camp-fire, which one host

Leaves burning for another, close behind?

Yea, yea, the Powers Divine, O Human Kind!

Have left their camp-fire burning on the coast,

Where they embarked from glimpse of Human mind,

To give you warmth and light to hold your post.

All beings, legioning celestial light,

Moved in procession toward a vacant throne.

Their chant was faith and hope, as, now, our own.

At last, it came to pass, their faith grew sight.

They saw One Star in night's down-fall, stay white

And, by the Holy Spirit brighter blown,

Ascend in Heaven, till there, as high and lone,

As over Nature's marveling zenith height.

Reaching the throne, its queen, this star became.

Awed by the Triune's Honor as her crown,

The legions, circling, soared with eyes cast down;

But, when their wonder heard the strange, new name

In Heaven, from Christ's lips, "Mother," how they shone,

Reflecting Christ's child-eyes, with love aflame!

Lo! God lets drop blue doves which ground the mind

Like clover; then, with drawing to the skies,

His pleasure is to watch the flocks arise.

Here, there, they mount; they show no cloud, no wind,

Can hinder homing; and the angels find

No transport, like the sight, for, to their eyes,

'Tis more souls for the joy, which glorifies

The Father, traced to love by pigeon-kind.

Oh, to his love, how great our spirit's worth!

Each is as all. In heaven, no heart still heaves.

The sun sinks with its last of lingering eves,

And, then, if dearest doves of azure birth,

Wife, parent, child, be missed, off mercy leaves

With stars for eyes, to search the darks of earth.

This temple is soul-startling. 'Tis to me

A thunder storm in stone, with Sinai flare

Across the Ages. 'Tis the Fiend's despair

And the Arch-angel's Triumph. It sets free

The mind and soul with certitude, Christ's key

Which, like the Sun, opes Heaven—the Good and Fair.

Still, oft, what darkness drowns the sun's noon glare

Within the Temple! 'Tis from Calvary.

Oh, 'tis from Calvary's grief. 'Tis Christ's emotion,

On from the Cross, that from His glory known,

The German should have fled and, frantic, thrown

Away his soul to Strauss or Kant's vague notion,

Unhumaning, till, in the Kaiser, grown

A Neitche whirl-wind in a crimson ocean.

With heart pain and with quiver of the lip,

I bid my boy "good bye," with words of cheer.

I hug him to my heart to hide a tear,

And hold him close so long, that no tongue-slip

Could more betray my bodings for his ship,

Or troop, when landed. It is when I hear

My daughters' voices, that I shame off fear

And take my boy's both hands with firmest grip.

Go, son, and, though with thy young life 'tis blown,

Blare thou the Bugle, rousing man to sweep

The monsters back to Hell's profoundest deep,

Where, mocking Spring and Sun-rise, they have grown

On longings for the sea, the world must weep

When, from its heart, the hope of Peace has flown.

Dost thou, mad Kaiser, for historic name,

Set fire to Europe? Is it joy to gaze

At blacker smoke than Etna's, and a blaze

That wakes up Chaos, wild to come and claim

The World, since Light, God-bidden though it came,

Has failed to dawn upon our human ways?

O Twin of Chaos! peer thou through the haze!

'Tis Human Beings feed the crackling flame.

Beware, the smoke, like Etna's, is the curse

Of widows on thy people-dooming throne,

And in no country, more than in thine own,

Cry out all mothers: "Wherefore bear and nurse?

To feed war with our sons, our flesh and bone,

That chaos may reclaim the Universe?"

The German mother has too long been what

A Chancellor once called the "Kingdom's Cow."

Ah, as she bears the droves for slaughter, how

Her dumb-beast eyes crave pity for her lot!

See, there she smiles, like loving God forgot—

All His supernal patience on her brow.

How long must her grand arch of brain, as now,

Bear up a universe "of what should not"?

There, lies she, crushed by troops in hot pursuit

Of mocking shadows; for be Gain complete,

What is it but twin brother to defeat?

Stand up the dead on any bloody route.

Stoop for no kiss from orphans, at thy feet,

O Triumph! for ash-cord is all thy fruit.

O fair, full moon! I look close at thy face.

Thou must be happy, being in the skys;

And, yet, thy flush grows pallor to mine eyes.

Thou art as one, who breathless after chase,

Would rest, but dreads to check her onward pace.

O fugitive from where no fledgling flies,

No bee finds bud, and where red billows rise,

Engulfing down dark years, the Human Race!

O thou pale moon, who hast companioned Man

Through every darkness since the night's first fall!

Hast thou, along thy foot-worn, azure wall,

Ever seen seas so hard for hope to span,

As this red surge, that in a spring so small,

A bird could beak it up, its flood began?

How glares the tiger in his desert lair—

Now half the world! Beholding with dismay

That Human Freedom is the tiger's prey,

A giant, down whose shoulders, broad and bare,

The long, thick, crimson flow is Sampson's hair,

Makes haste to clutch the beast.

Oh, how the clay beneath their struggle, reddens, night and day,

Till lies the beast, a shapeless carcass there!

Oh! never from the long, thick crimson flow

A down thy shoulders from thy noble brow,

America, came such God's-strength as now,

Comes to thine arm against the world's grim foe—

The beast that, sighting man, devours him, how

The world may end, a wilderness of woe.

Where flies our flag is Freedom's holy ground;

There, it unfurls all benisons to Man.

The twin of Spring, its spread unfolds God's plan

Of human happiness, by setting bound

To greed, lust, powers,—all colds,—that Right be crowned.

Lo! where it leads, ye youth form valor's van,

Mirrored and echoed by the azure's span

For ages, for Man's gain in yours is wound.

Oh, justice's Hot Gulf Stream are ye, who open

The sea, which fiendish craft has frozen hard!

Oh, may your warmth for righteousness transform

The tyrant's artic region, with no hope in,

To Freedom's Temperate Zone, which they, who guard

The planets, save from wreck by quake or storm.

Now and in life—not Virgil—breaks a storm

Of Harpies, harsh to ear and foul to smell.

It sweeps War's lengthening coast, where each sea-swell

Is Humans, gasping. Hope drags each cold form

From hearth to hearth, to find no ember warm;

Then, their eyes glitter frost, who hear hope yell

As up she climbs the rocks and falls pell-mell

Back from small herbs, where monsters swoop and swarm.

Oh, could the bestial birds, in Virgil's verse,

See Hope's hands redden, as she rends her hair,

They would grow human—would not glut, but share;

Nor, then, shed human semblance for man's curse—

As ye do, who from want, hold warmth and fair,

And gorge your bulks to sleep, as want writhes worse!

Hark! 'tis the laughter of the stars at Earth,

And Nature's, too, with every pitch of voice.

Earth's carnival of sheer grotesque and noise,

Where, gagged and manacled, walk Peace and Mirth,

Shows Britain now, a beast of broadening girth,

Set out to crush World Freedom. He destroys,

And thinks his bear-like rearing, planet poise

That is to influence the world's new birth.

The stars are kind, as all the ages know;

The sense of humor twinkles in their eyes,

At Earth's strange follies; but this beast would try

To thrust aside the planets, and make woe,

The fortune of World Freedom! That is why

The stars laugh, and all nature jeers the show.

Lord, not Thy work, the World's calamities,

But Man's. If Human Will revolt from Thine,

It flees Thy region, where the stars all shine

With longing to let down the Azure's Peace—

To dash its hosts from summits into seas,

Where Empires are the breakers. There the brine

Is anguish, and there Triumph leaves no sign,

Save wreck on rock, and Plague, adrift on breeze.

When Nations turn from Light, in thought, or life,

Their speed is brink-ward, save Thy Mercy stay;

For all is precipice, except Thy way.

Help, Lord, for here is heightening surge of strife;

Here, clouds turn floods, coasts are wind-whirled, like spray,

And lightenings, hurling back thy light, are rife.

Religion is Ascension. 'Tis the flights

Of souls to summits of the true and wise.

One, witnessing the generations rise,

Sees them a shine at countless, different heights,

Where they, responding to their inner lights,

Glow, like the clouds at morn, with graded dyes.

If summits, there are depths; if virtue, vice;

Hence, 'tis life's rise from falls, that judgment sights.

Witnessed, or not, there is no age, nor climb,

But souls arise as bloom, where earth is treed;

As warm, red rays, where cold from mountaining need;

As burst and spread of planets, where dark crime;

Nay, rise to poise above the star's top speed

To God, like larks, in praise for life and time.

How thy Half Century shines over head!

'Tis an unfading rain-bow, one whose dyes

Are richer and more numerous to the eyes

Of Angels, than to ours. Its rays, if spread

Above a flood of sin and world of dead,

Give to the drowned, new life, new earth, new skies.

Night counts her stars, but falters, when souls rise

Bright with the Grace which God's annointed shed.

Belov'd Irene, how great our joy to see

Thine arch, aglow with virtue's every hue!

Oh, how much more must they rejoice, who view

From inner Heaven, the arch that is for thee,

Triumphal! for than vows like thine, lived true,

No grander arch from earth to heaven could be.

The "Church Triumphant" shines in lives like thine,

Calista! 'Tis the Saints' procession, shown

In Dante's vision, near Lord Jesus' throne,

In greatening splendor, never to decline.

Ah, if our minds grow dark, our hearts repine,

How, from sweet lives, dear Sister, like thine own,

Be-Mothering with mercy all who moan,

A light comes, and a warmth is in its shine.

We shade our eyes, as when we face the Sun

On level with the earth, at lives all love—

The Church Triumphant, as in Heaven above!

Aye, lives all love for Christ, in every one

Who suffers wrong, or any pain thereof,

As on His Throne—such lives as thine, dear Nun.

Once, blindness was a burning ship at sea,

With panic-stricken souls on every deck.

The flame blew inward on that awful wreck,

Burning the hopes that make life glad and free.

Ah! then, through thee, it was, Philanthropy,

Who trains her searchlight on the smallest speck

And Speed out boats, like horses, neck to neck,

Reached the dark hulk and thrilled its crew with glee.

The flame is quenched, that burned out heart and brain.

The ship where woe was mute, is loud with joy.

Hark! hear the cheer on board, and cry, "Ahoy!"

As fast the sails are hoisted, and the main

Tides back toward hope for every girl and boy,

Who, else, might reach no star of night's whole train.

Above and under life, eternally,

A subtle light and dark run parallel.

One prompts men to build Beauty, cell by cell,

In Home, Religion, State, Society;

The other, to destroy the fair they see.

Like Spring, wilt thou roof Earth with bloom and dwell

Thereunder? or, with Scalping Winter's yell,

Scour grove and bush? Choose—how else art thou free?

If Freedom is the gift of the all-wise,

It is because he will not have a slave

To serve Him. Which wilt thou be, base or brave?

With Morn, climb, or, with Night, skulk down the skies

To grope in caverns, or beneath the wave,

Creep, till aghast at monsters that arise?

All luminaries have one source, one trend.

The stars that calm the sailor, long sea-swirled,

And canopy fond lovers from the World,

And those that lead the heart and spirit, blend.

Lo, only in the things and thoughts that tend

Toward Love's High Harmony, is truth unfurled;

All else are lies, whence heart, soul, mind are hurled

Back to the Right—to Progress without end.

The stars all chant as one. My soaring song

Catches their flame and these few sparks reach earth:

"As soon the shells forget their Ocean birth,

As men forget the Right, where they belong

By reason and by soul of deathless worth;

Address the God in man, wouldst thou grow strong."

America! from out the depths thy coast

Was lifted skyward for Humanity.

Thy Life, once finny circlings in the sea,

Is now the orbits of the starry host,

Encircling God with trust. Be this thy boast,

When the long line of Ages, passing thee,

Lifts each his heart and soul, and shouts with glee,

"That Trust in Him was Sentinel on post."

Night, that once boa-like hung from thy trees,

Gorged with crushed tribes—with pottery, or mound,

Or print of foot for trace—slinks underground;

For lo, the forests, like the mist on seas,

Clears, ere the Sun, at earth's edge, glows half-round,

And life takes cloud-hues with the arts of Peace.

On toward the Senate scuds a thunder-rack—

Nay, cyclone—and the columns—all star-straight—

Of Freedom's Temple sway with the roof's flood-weight.

Ye Stalwarts who scorn off a fate, pitch-black,

Holding the columns, let no sinew slack.

A crash and through the roof, what floods of hate!

Still, ye budge not, for "Freedom," your teeth grate,

"Shall lie no wreck along the cyclone's track."

Oh, not for you was dark the time to slumber,

But to hold Freedom's columns all star-plumb!

Yours was a watery grave, but Martyrdom

And, hence, your resurrection with the number,

Whose greatness greatens, as the Ages come

To know why their pathway, no wrecks encumber.

O Bastile Builder! Nature, when she shaped

Thy soul, was stricken, with a long attack

Of sleeping sickness; nor till wheel and rack

Had rusted, and man spirit had escaped

The bolsted, loathesome tomb where right was raped,

Did she awaken and, alack! alack!

Deliver thee, who, put on Freedom's back,

Would'st grab all things, at which thy Past-eyes gaped.

Freedom would humor thee; so, down he flopped

On Justice's floor to watch thee build with blocks.

Great was thy skill with walls and dungeon locks,

And with the trap, down which poor Freedom dropped

To be steel-masked, or, else, put in the stocks,

To writhe, then, with his tongue and ears, both lopped.

O Harvard of the Norton wreath of gold

And pearled, Longfellow purple! wherefore frown?

If Eliott is a speck upon your gown,

It will wash off; it is no stain to hold,

For you had let him go for being old.

Your wisdom was confirmed when to the crown,

A'gainst good folks who, like Elisha Brown,

Fought for their homes, he gave his name's renown.

Come, Agassiz! for, from the smallest bone,

You reconstruct the creature, tongue to tail.

Tell us what Eliott is. Phew! What! a Whale?

No; tis the prehistoric monster, known

As Tory, that devoured young Nathan Hale

And, where it crawled, spread horror's crimson zone.

Your heart is not a traitor to your mind.

Who, knowing innocence in danger, dares

Not turn his eye, for fear of smirk, or stares,

By other courts, is Justice's statue blind,

That to the wall, not Bench, should be assigned.

Oft, Precedent is Folly with gray hairs;

So you, recalling Junius, heard the prayers

Of friendless Stilow; then, what did you find?

A fellow man doomed wrongfully to die

A felon's death. If such was Stilow's fate,

You saw, the felon would have been the State;

Hence, turned from Precedent, demanding "Why?"

Justice, asleep in marble, woke and straight

Unroofed the courthouse to let down the sky.

A Dukedom, and not one the worse for wear,

Has Sims well earned by service to the King.

'Tis said at court, Howe's spirit following

The ocean still, found Sims his natural heir

And said: "Swap souls; and, that the swap be fair,

Give me to boot, the bone of Freedom's wing,

To make the skyey bird a hobbling thing

In marshes, where the ignisfatus flare."

The Eagle with his eye and pinion, trained

For mateship with the sun, twitched at a sting.

Amazed to find a "cootie" on his wing,

And that the insect dreamed, it was ordained

By race heredity to serve the King—

He shook his plume and azured, unprofained.

In English nature, did Saint George prevail

Over the Dragon? Maybe in the time

When England knew not poverty, nor crime,

Described by Cobbett, who would not go bail

For falsehood, nor let truth remain in jail.

It must, then, have renewed life from its slime,

For, oh! through deeds, that turn the blood to chyme

And eyes white inward, see him ride the gale.

In English nature—oh, where now the saint—

The spirit, to sublime conceptions, true?

Has good Saint George, too woundful to renew

His conflict with the dragon of base taint,

Been caught up by Elias from earth's view?

How, else, the dragon's rage in irrestraint?

The dragon is grim greed. The Saint's long spear,

That once transfixed it, can no longer touch.

No land is safe from its sting, blood-drain, or clutch—

For it takes Protean shapes; 'tis, therefore, clear,

Since good Saint George has failed to re-appear

To mortal sight, save in the King's escutch—

Worn off at edge and blurred with Tudor smudge—

Freedom must drive the Dragon off this sphere.

The Dragon's soarings cause the sun's eclypse.—

Hark! is that thunder, God's collapsing skys?

No; 'tis the Eagle, with un-hooded eyes

And lightening flash from beak to pinion tips,

Seizing the Dragon that, despite its slips

From form to form—craft, gold and false sunrise—

Can not elude his eye and talon grips.

A conflict, this, refracted, cloud to cloud!

Where a white summit? Under crimson seas,

And these still hightening. Through far azure, Peace

Listens and, eager, peeps; then, turns headbowed.

The conflict circling earth, all plains are ploughed

New rows of gulches. God! can aught appease

The Dragon with fiend thirst's eternities

For tongue! The sun might, if it were well sloughed.

The Dragon, mounting, draws aloft earth's slime

With which to dim the all-producing Sun

From broadening light and warmth for every one;

But, look! The Eagle, with the thirst sublime

Of Justice, that the right on earth be done—

Flashes and—hark! 'Tis earth's Te-Deum chime!

Oh, yea, the Earth's Te Deums, visibling

As well as voicing forth the joy of Nations,

Fill up the vastest Heaven—that of God's Patience

With Human Will most grossly reptiling

In insincerities, worse than negations;

And for what blessing are the earth's laudations?

The grace to soul to scorn to be mere thing.

Oh, of this grace was born the Eagle's vim

To dash the Dragon down in hell so deep,

It is a maggot there, which can but creep;

And draw Elias' chariot to Earth's rim,

Wherein Saint George stands with his heart a-leap—

As, now, in labor, we catch glimpse of him.