0:^®''%''^'' 
 
 HIBRARY OF CONGRESS, I 
 
 I ^ ^-t*^* ; I 
 
 I UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. | 
 
Ijifri;a3;T;d.&ijTiL a.riii)togia.-pD- -C-T xl ^ 
 
THE 
 
 Poetical and Prose Writings 
 
 OF 
 
 Charles Sprague. 
 
 NEW EDITION. 
 
 m,iX\i ilortrait anil a Bfoffrapfjical ^feetcfr. 
 
 o'i^a 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 A. WILLIAMS AND CO. 
 
 1876. 
 
 /">^ 
 7 
 
7^3 5.^0 
 
 '^\t^^ 
 
 Copyright, 
 
 By C. J. Sprague. 
 
 1876. 
 
 Cambridge : 
 Press of John Wilson and Son. 
 
The first edition of Mr. Speague's writings 
 was published by Charles S. Francis of New 
 York, in 1841. The second edition, with addi- 
 tional matter, was issued by the same firm in 
 1850, with a portrait of the author engraved by 
 G. Parker from a painting by Harding. In 1851, 
 Messrs. Ticknor, Reed, & Fields of Boston pub- 
 lished an edition, with a portrait engraved by 
 J. Andrews from a daguerrotype. Since that 
 time no other edition of Mr. Spr ague's works has 
 been issued, and all of these are entirely out of 
 print. 
 
 The present edition has received but small 
 addition of matter, as Mr. Sprague ceased writ- 
 ing early in life ; but it has a portrait of him 
 far superior to either of the others, and contains 
 a memoir of liis life. 
 
Chahles Speague was born in Boston, Oct. 26, 
 1791. His father was Samuel Sprague, a descend- 
 ant from William Sprague, one of the original set- 
 tlers in Hingham, in 1628 : he was one of the famous 
 Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773 ; was in the Continental 
 Army when it besieged Boston, and afterwards in 
 the battles of Trenton and Princeton. His mother, 
 Joanna Thayer, was directly descended from Pere- 
 grine White, the first child born after the arrival of 
 the Mayflower at Plymouth. 
 
 When ten years old, Mr. Sprague entered the 
 Franklin School, and was under the tuition of Dr. 
 Asa Bullard and also of Lemuel Shaw, afterwards, 
 Chief Justice of the Commonwealth. He left school 
 in 1805, at the age of thirteen, and the education he 
 received during the few years of his stay there was 
 the sole basis of all his subsequent- learning and 
 
VI 
 
 accomplishments, which were the results of his own 
 patient and unceasing labors. On leaving school, 
 he went into the counting room of Thayer and 
 Hunt, dry-goods merchants, where he remained 
 until 1810; when the business was much disturbed 
 by the war measures of the day, and he formed a 
 co-partnership with "William B. Callender in the 
 grocery business. In their little store in Scollay's 
 Building, now destroyed, he continued until 1815 ; 
 when the return of peace having restored the pros- 
 perity of trade, he formed a connection with his 
 former employer, Matthew M. Hunt, in the dry- 
 goods importing business. But the littlenesses of 
 trade became distasteful to him, and he quitted it in 
 1819 for the position of Teller in the State Bank, 
 which office he retained until 1824 ; when he accepted 
 the Cashiership of the Globe Bank, a new institu- 
 tion chartered in that year. He continued as the 
 manager of this Bank until 1864, a period of forty 
 years ; during which time his integrity, sagacity, and 
 fidelity gave him a high position among the finan- 
 cial leaders of the money world. When seventy- 
 three years old, the growing infirmities of age, and 
 the disinclination to undertake the labors of a new 
 regime of banking under national laws, induced him 
 
Vll 
 
 to resign the position he had held so long with 
 honor and ability, and to retire to the peace and 
 quiet of his home. There he remained, a recluse 
 from the world without, scarcely crossing its thresh- 
 old half-a-dozen times, surrounded by his books, 
 visited by his friends, until Jan. 22, 1875 ; when, 
 after a short and painless illness, he quietly passed 
 away in the eighty-fourth year of his age. 
 
 Mr. Sprague was married in 1814 to Elizabeth 
 Eand, whom he survived thirteen years. They had 
 four children. One, the " Charles James " of one of 
 his sweetest poems, died in infancy. Their eldest 
 daughter died in 1851. Two children, a son and 
 daughter, still remain. 
 
 Such are the simple circumstances of Mr. 
 Sprague's uneventful life. They are of little in- 
 terest to that world which knows him from the 
 creations of his genius, the outward evidences of an 
 inner life very different from the associations of 
 dry-goods, groceries, and bank-notes. For co-exist- 
 ent with his fidelity to the positions he occupied in 
 the world of business was a devotion to literature, 
 a cultivation of a mind naturally ardent and roman- 
 tic, and an outpouring of the deep emotions of his 
 nature in verse which will long outlive all memory 
 
Vlll 
 
 of his other occupations in life. His first printed 
 efforts were contributed to the cohimns of the 
 " Centinel," the " Boston Gazette," and the " Even- 
 ing Gazette," as early as 1811, when he was twenty 
 years old. The only one of these which he consid- 
 ered worthy of later acknowledgment was the lines 
 " To my Cigar." Some of these earliest verses were 
 patriotic odes written on the occasion of public 
 festivities in honor of our victories in the war of 
 1812. Almost all of them were written to com- 
 memorate events public and private. Neither then 
 nor throughout his literary career was there evidence 
 of an irrepressible utterance of thoughts which he 
 could not restrain, an impulse to express an over- 
 flow of ideas which must find egress ; almost all of 
 them were written to mark some passing event. 
 In many of these immature productions runs a 
 thread of j:)hilosophic melancholy which was char- 
 acteristic of his nature, and which found its tender- 
 est outbursts in his later elegiac poems. Although 
 he had produced numerous minor poems, he had 
 scarcely achieved any thing more than a very local 
 reputation, when in 1821 he leaped at once into the 
 foremost rank of celebrity, by writing the Prologue 
 for the opening of the Park Theatre in New 
 
IX 
 
 York ; followed by a second in 1822, written for the 
 Philadelphia Theatre. He won both of the prizes 
 offered on these occasions. The newspapers of the 
 whole country were filled with eulogiums, and Mr. 
 Sprague was universally conceded to be the leading 
 poet of America. He subsequently gained three 
 other i^rizes for similar productions. In 1823 ap- 
 peared the Shakspeare Prize Ode, which was 
 delivered in the Boston Theatre at a pageant in 
 honor of the " monarch bard." This poem, elevated 
 in style, terse and stately in language, and sparkling 
 with fancy, was received with enthusiastic admira- 
 tion, and raised him to the pinnacle of his fame. 
 He was then thirty-two years old, and his assiduous 
 study of the older writers, his close familiarity with 
 the poets of the past century, had educated him to 
 a skilful use of those stately pentameters which he 
 loved to read. Pope, Gray, and Goldsmith were 
 the favorites of his youth. Johnson's " Vanity 
 of Human Wishes" was the last thing he read 
 before his death. " Art," the most condensed and 
 graphic of all his verses, was written in 1824. 
 
 In 1825 he appeared as a prose writer in an Ora- 
 tion delivered on Independence Day. The celebrity 
 which this work achieved was due to his novel 
 
treatment of the subject. The orations until then 
 were didactic, statistical, political. He infused 
 poetic ardor into the theme, and, as a prose poem, 
 his oration has been read by a much larger public 
 than is wont to be interested in productions of this 
 character. 
 
 His longest and most elaborate work is " Curios- 
 ity," a poem delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa 
 Society of Harvard University, in 1829. It is a 
 mingling of fancy and philosophy, satire and senti- 
 ment. The subject itself, happily chosen, led the 
 writer over the whole field of human life, and his 
 portraitures of character are photographic in truth 
 and vigor. Its versification is easy and graceful, 
 never degenerating into dulness, but abounding in 
 pungent points and vivid pictures. This was fol- 
 lowed in 1830 by the " Centennial Ode," i^ronounced 
 at the centennial celebration of the settlement of 
 Boston. It is a glowing tribute to our pilgrim 
 fathers, and a requiem over the red men they sup- 
 planted. The brave, steadfast band of exiles is 
 nobly, touchingly, and vigorously portrayed ; while 
 the story of the Indian is imbued with a melancholy 
 romance which awakens sympathy, born perhaps of 
 the poet's fancy, yet none the less real. 
 
XI 
 
 But the poems which more than all others have 
 endeared Mr. Sj^rague to the public are his shorter 
 pieces, written mostly upon domestic subjects. 
 The longer, more sustained and lyrical pieces were 
 all written between the ages of thirty and forty. 
 Their vigorous description, bold imagery, and dra- 
 matic fire characterize the efforts of his young man- 
 hood, when the buoyancy of his ardent nature found 
 expression in ideal fancies. But his later verses 
 were the expressions of profound emotion springing 
 from the events they commemorate ; and they are 
 conveyed with a tenderness, delicacy, and truthful- 
 ness which find an echo in all sensitive natures. 
 They are still vital with meaning ; they still express 
 the sentiment which is eternal in all human hearts 
 that love and lose, and are as real to-day as when 
 they were written half a century ago. 
 
 Mr. Sprfigue's writings are descriptive of emotions 
 rather than things. Though containing many pict- 
 ures of vivid coloring, they portray the manners 
 and sensations of men rather than the beauties of 
 Nature. His own life was one of thought and feel- 
 ing rather than of incident, and the emotional part 
 of his nature was more largely developed than the 
 imaginative. As is generally the case, his writings 
 
Xll 
 
 feebly portrayed the man. His large, generous 
 heart, active sympathy, iron will, and unbroken 
 spirit ; his wit, wisdom, geniality, and individuality 
 were known only to those who shared the intimacy 
 of his social life. 
 
 C. J. S. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 POETRY. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 CURIOSITY 1 
 
 SHAKSPEARE ODE ........ 35 
 
 CENTENNIAL ODE 47 
 
 TRIENNIAL ODE 70 
 
 ART 72 
 
 FIFTY YEARS AGO 74 
 
 ODE FOURTH OF JULY, 1827 , 76 
 
 SONG FANEUIL HALL FESTIVAL . 78 
 
 SONG LAFAYETTE DINNER . . 80 
 
 ODE WASHINGTON LIGHT INFANTRY . 82 
 
 PRIZE PROLOGUE PARK THEATRE, 1821 . . 84 
 
 PRIZE PROLOGUE PHILADELPHIA THEATRE, 1822 . 87 
 
 PRIZE ADDRESS SALEM THEATRE, 1828 . . 92 
 
 PRIZE ADDRESS PHILADELPHIA THEATRE, 1828 . 95 
 
 PRIZE ADDRESS PORTSMOUTH THEATRE, 1830 . 98 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 dedication hymn 101 
 
 ordination hymn 103 
 
 installation hymn 105 
 
 children's hymn 107 
 
 the family meeting 108 
 
 LINES ON THE DEATH OF M. S. C. . , . . Ill 
 
 LOOK ON THIS PICTURE 114 
 
 I SEE THEE STILL 117 
 
 THE TOMB OF EMMELINE 120 
 
 THE FUNERAL 123 
 
 CHARLES JAMES 125 
 
 DEATH OF AN INFANT 128 
 
 LINES TO A YOUNG MOTHER 129 
 
 EDWIN BUCKINGHAM . 130 
 
 MOUNT AUBURN 132 
 
 THE BROTHERS ........ 134 
 
 THE WINGED WORSHIPPERS 136 
 
 TO MY CIGAR ........ 138 
 
 TO MONTAGUE 141 
 
 THE MEMORY OF BYRON 144 
 
 WELCOME, LAFAYETTE . 145 
 
 PROSE WRITINGS. 
 
 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE AN ORATION, 1825 . .149 
 
 ON INTEMPERANCE AN ADDRESS, 1827 • 178 
 
POEMS. 
 
CURIOSITY. 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE PHT BETA KAPPA SOCIETY 
 OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 1829. 
 
CURIOSITY. 
 
 It came from Heaven — its power archangels knew, 
 When this fair globe first rounded to their view ; 
 When" the young sun revealed each glorious scene 
 Where oceans gathered and where lands grew green ; 
 When earth's dead dust in joyful myriads swarmed, 
 And the first man with God's own breath was warmed 
 It reigned in Eden — when that man first woke, 
 Its kindling influence from his eye-balls spoke ; 
 No roving childhood, no exploring youth, 
 Lured him along, till wonder chilled to truth ; 
 Full-formed at once, his subject world he trod, 
 And gazed upon the labors of his God ; 
 On all, by turns, his chartered glance was cast. 
 While each pleased best as each appeared the last ; 
 But when She came, in nature's blameless pride. 
 Bone of his bone, his heaven-anointed bride. 
 All meaner objects faded from his sight. 
 And sense turned giddy with the new delight ; 
 Those charmed his eye, but this entranced his soul, 
 Another self, queen-wonder of the whole ! 
 
2 CURIOSITV. 
 
 Kapt at the view, in ecstacy he stood, 
 And, like his Maker, saw that all was good. 
 
 It reigned in Eden — in that heavy hour 
 When the arch-tempter sought our mother's bower, 
 Its thrilling charm her yielding heart assailed, 
 And even o'er dread Jehovah's word prevailed. 
 There the fair tree in fatal beauty grew. 
 And hung its mystic apples to her view ; 
 " Eat," breathed the fiend, beneath his serpent guise ; 
 " Ye shall know all things, gather, and be wise ! " 
 Sweet on her ear the wily falsehood stole, 
 And roused the ruling passion of her soul. 
 " Ye shall become like God," — transcendent fate ! 
 That God's command forgot, she plucked and ate ; 
 Ate, and her partner wooed to share the crime, 
 Whose doom, the legend saith, must live through time. 
 For this they shrank before the Avenger's face, 
 For this He drove them from the sacred place ; 
 For this came down the universal lot. 
 To weep, to wander, die, and be forgot. 
 
 It came from Heaven — it reigned in Eden's shades - 
 It roves on earth — and every walk invades : 
 Childhood and age alike its influence own, 
 It haunts the beggar's nook, the monarch's throne ; 
 
CURIOSITY. 
 
 Hangs o'er the cradle, leans above the bier, 
 Gazed on old Babel's tower — and lingers here. 
 
 To all that 's lofty, all that 's low, it turns, 
 With terror curdles and with rapture burns ; 
 NoAV feels a seraph's throb, now, less than man's, 
 A reptile tortures and a planet scans ; 
 Now idly joins in life's poor, passing jars, 
 Now shakes creation off, and soars beyond the stars. 
 
 'T is Curiosity — who hath not felt 
 Its spirit, and before its altar knelt ? 
 In the pleased infant see its power expand. 
 When first the coral fills his little hand ; 
 Throned in his mother's lap, it dries each tear, 
 As the quaint ballad falls upon his ear ; 
 Next it assails him in his top's strange hum. 
 Breathes in his whistle, echoes in his drum; 
 Each gilded toy, that doting \o^e bestows. 
 He longs to break and every spfing expose. 
 Placed by your hearth, with what delight he pores 
 O'er the bright pages of his pictured stores ! 
 How oft he steals upon your graver task. 
 Of this to tell you and of that to ask ! 
 And, v/hen the waning hour to-bedward bids, 
 Though gentle sleep sit waiting on his lids, 
 
4 CURIOSITY. 
 
 How winningly he pleads to gain you o'er, 
 That he may read one little story more. 
 
 Nor yet alone to toys and tales confined, 
 It sits, dark brooding, o'er his embryo mind : 
 Take him between your knees, peruse his face, 
 While all you know, or think you know, you trace ; 
 Tell him who spoke creation into birth, 
 Arched the broad heavens, and spread the rolling earth ; 
 Who formed a pathway for the obedient sun, 
 And bade the seasons in their circles run ; 
 Who filled the air, the forest, and the flood, 
 And gave man all, for comfort, or for food ; 
 Tell him they sprang at God's creating nod — 
 He stops you short with, " Father, who made God ? " 
 
 Thus through life's stages may we mark the power 
 That masters man in every changing hour. 
 It tempts him from the blandishments of home. 
 Mountains to climb and frozen seas to roam ; 
 By air-blown bubbles buoyed, it bids him rise, 
 And hang, an atom, in the vaulted skies ; 
 Lured by its charm, he sits and learns to trace 
 The midnight wanderings of the orbs of space ; 
 Boldly he knocks at wisdom's inmost gate. 
 With nature counsels, and communes with fate ; 
 
CURIOSITY. 
 
 Below, above, o'er all he dares to rove, 
 
 In all finds God, and finds that God all love. 
 
 Turn to the world — its curious dwellers view 
 Like Paul's Athenians, seeking something new. 
 Be it a bonfire's or a city's blaze, 
 The gibbet's victim, or the nation's gaze, 
 A female atheist, or a learned dog, 
 Siam's twin boys, or Brighton's mammoth hog, 
 A murder, or a muster, 't is the same. 
 Life's follies, glories, griefs, all feed the flame. 
 Hark, where the martial trumpet fills the air, 
 How the roused multitude come round to stare ; 
 Sport drops his ball, Toil throws his hammer by, 
 Thrift breaks a bargain ofl', to please his eye ; 
 Up fly the windows, — even fair mistress cook, 
 Though dinner burn, must run to take a look. 
 In the thronged court the ruling passion read. 
 Where Story dooms, where Wirt and Webster plead ; 
 Yet kindred minds alone their flights shall trace, 
 The herd press on to see a cut-throat's face. 
 Around the gallows' foot behold them draw. 
 When the lost villain answers to the law ; 
 Soft souls, how anxious on his pangs to gloat. 
 When the vile cord shall tighten round his throat ! 
 
6 CURIOSITY. 
 
 And ah ! each hard-bought stand to quit how grieved, 
 
 As the sad rumor runs — " The man 's reprieved ! " 
 
 See to the church the pious myriads pour, 
 
 Squeeze through the aisles and jostle round the door ; 
 
 Does Langdon preach ? — (I veil his quiet name, 
 
 Who serves his God and cannot stoop to fame ;) — 
 
 No, 't is some reverend mime, the latest rage. 
 
 Who thumps the desk, that should have trod the stage ; 
 
 Cant's veriest ranter crams a house if new. 
 
 When Paul himself, oft heard, would hardly fill a pew. 
 
 Lo, where the Stage, the poor, degraded Stage, 
 Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age ! 
 There, where, to raise the drama's moral tone, 
 Fool Harlequin usurps Apollo's throne ; 
 There, where grown children gather round, to praise 
 The new-vamped fables of their nursery days ; 
 Where one loose scene shall turn more souls to shame 
 Than ten of Channing's lectures can reclaim ; 
 There, where in idiot rapture we adore 
 The herded vagabonds of every shore ; 
 Women unsexed, who, lost to woman's pride, 
 Feign the sot's stagger and the bully's stride ; 
 Pert lisping girls, who, still in childhood's fetters. 
 Babble of love, yet barely know their letters ; 
 
CURIOSITY 
 
 Neat-jointed mummers, mocking nature's shape, 
 To prove how nearly man can match an ape ; 
 Vaulters, who, rightly served at home, perchance 
 Had dangled from the rope on which they dance ; 
 Dwarfs, mimics, jugglers, all that yield content, 
 Where Sin holds carnival and Wit keeps lent ; 
 There, when in shoals the modest million msh, 
 One sex to laugh, and one to try to blush. 
 When mincing Ravenot sports tight pantalettes. 
 And turns fops' heads while turning pirouettes ; 
 There, at each ribald sally, where we hear 
 The knowing giggle and the scurrile jeer, 
 While from the intellectual gallery first 
 Rolls the base plaudit, loudest at the worst. 
 
 Gods ! who can grace yon desecrated dome, 
 When he may turn his Shakspeare o'er at home ? 
 Who there can group the pure ones of his race, 
 To see and hear what bids him veil his face ? 
 Ask ye who can ? why I, and you, and you ; 
 No matter what the nonsense, if 'tis new. 
 To Doctor Logic's wit our sons give ear ; 
 They have no time for Hamlet, or for Lear ; 
 Our daughters turn from gentle Juliet's woe, 
 To count the twirls of Almaviva's toe. 
 
 2 
 
8 CURIOSITY. 
 
 Not 'theirs the blame who furnish forth the treat, 
 But ours, who throng the board and grossly eat : 
 We laud, indeed, the virtue-kindling Stage, 
 And prate of Shakspeare and his deathless page ; 
 But go, announce his best ; on Cooper call, 
 Cooper, " the noblest Koman of them all ;" 
 Where are the crowds so wont to choke the door ? 
 'T is an old thing, they 've seen it all before. 
 
 Pray Heaven, if yet indeed the Stage must stand 
 With guiltless mirth it may delight the land ; 
 Far better else each scenic temple fall. 
 And one approving silence curtain all. 
 Despots to shame may yield their rising youth. 
 But freedom dwells with purity and truth ; 
 Then make the effort, ye who rule the Stage, — 
 With novel decency surprise the age ; 
 Even wit, so long forgot, may play its part, 
 And nature yet have power to melt the heart ; 
 Perchance the listeners, to their instinct true. 
 May fancy common sense — as something new. 
 
 \/ Turn to the Press — its teeming sheets survey, 
 
 Big with the wonders of each passing day ; 
 Births, deaths and weddings, forgeries, fires and wrecks, 
 Harangues and hail-storms, brawls and broken necks ; 
 
CURIOSITY. 9 
 
 Where half-fledged bards on feeble pinions seek 
 
 An immortality of near a week ; 
 
 Where cruel eulogists the dead restore, 
 
 In maudlin praise to martyr them once more ; 
 
 Where ruffian slanderers wreak their coward spite, 
 
 And need no venomed dagger while they write : 
 
 There, (with a quill, so noisy and so vain, 
 
 We almost hear the goose it clothed complain,) 
 
 Where each hack scribe, as hate or interest burns. 
 
 Toad or toad-eater, stains the page by turns ; 
 
 Enacts virtu, usurps the critic's chair. 
 
 Lauds a mock Guido, or a mouthing player ; ^^'. 
 
 Viceroys it o'er the realms of prose and rhyme. 
 
 Now puffs pert " Pelham," now " The Course of Time ;" 
 
 And, though ere Christmas both may be forgot. 
 
 Vows this beats Milton, and that Walter Scott : 
 
 With Samson's vigor feels his nerves expand. 
 
 To overthrow the nobles of the land ; 
 
 Soils the green garlands that for Otis bloom. 
 
 And plants a brier even on Cabot's tomb ; 
 
 As turn the party coppers, heads or tails. 
 
 And now this faction and now that prevails. 
 
 Applauds to-day what yesterday he cursed. 
 
 Lampoons the wisest and extols the worst ; 
 
 While hard to tell, so coarse a daub he lays, 
 
 Which sullies most, the slander or the praise. 
 
10 CTTRIOSI-n'. 
 
 Yet, sweet or bitter, hence what fountains burst, 
 While still the more we drink the more we thirst : 
 Trade hardly deems the busy day begun, 
 Till his keen eye along the page has run ; 
 The blooming daughter throws her needle by, 
 And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh ; 
 While the grave mother puts her glasses on. 
 And gives a tear to some old crony gone ; 
 The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays do\vn. 
 To know what last new folly fills the town : 
 Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things, 
 The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings ; 
 Nought comes amiss, we take the nauseous stuff, 
 Verjuice or oil, a libel or a pufT. 
 
 'T is this sustains that coarse, licentious tribe 
 Of tenth-rate type-men, gaping for a bribe ; 
 That reptile race, with all that 's good at strife. 
 Who trail their slime through every walk of life ; 
 Stain the white tablet where a great man's name 
 Stands proudly chiseled by the hand of fame. 
 Nor round the sacred fireside fear to crawl. 
 But drop their venom there, and poison all. 
 
 'T is Curiosity — though, in its round. 
 No one poor dupe the calumny has found, 
 
CURIOSITY. 11 
 
 Still shall it live, and still new slanders breed ; 
 
 What though we ne'er believe, — we buy and read ; 
 
 Like Scotland's war-cross, thrown from hand to hand, 
 
 To rouse the angry passions of the land. 
 
 So the black falsehood flies from ear to ear. 
 
 While goodness grieves, but, grieving, still must hear. 
 
 All are not such ? no ; there are, thank Heaven ! 
 A nobler troop to whom this trust is given ; 
 Who, all unbribed, on freedom's ramparts stand, 
 Faithful and firm, bright warders of the land. 
 By them still lifts the Press its arm abroad. 
 To guide all-curious man along life's road ; 
 To cheer young Genius, Pity's tear to start, 
 In Truth's bold cause to rouse each fearless heart ; 
 O'er male and female quacks to shake the rod, 
 And scourge the unsexed thing that scorns her God ; 
 To hunt corruption from his secret den. 
 And show the monster up, the gaze of wondering men. 
 
 How swells my theme ! how vain my power I find, 
 To track the windings of the curious mind ! 
 Let aught be hid, though useless, nothing boots, 
 Straightway it must be plucked up by the roots. 
 How oft we lay the volume down to ask 
 Of him, the victim in the Iron Mask ; 
 
12 CURIOSITY. 
 
 The crusted medal rub with painful care, 
 
 To spell the legend out — that is not there ; 
 
 With dubious gaze o'er moss-grown tombstones bend, 
 
 To find a name — the herald never penned ; 
 
 Dig through the lava-deluged city's breast, 
 
 Learn all we can, and wisely guess the rest : 
 
 Ancient or modern, sacred or profane, 
 
 All must be known, and all obscure made plain ; 
 
 If 'twas a pippin tempted Eve to sin, 
 
 If glorious Byron drugged his muse with gin ; 
 
 If Troy e'er stood, if Shakspeare stole a deer, 
 
 If Israel's missing tribes found refuge here ; 
 
 If like a villain Captain Henry lied, 
 
 If like a martyr Captain Morgan died. 
 
 Its aim oft idle, lovely in its end, 
 We turn to look, then linger to befriend ; 
 The maid of Egypt thus was led to save 
 A nation's future leader from the wave : 
 New things to hear, when erst the Gentiles ran. 
 Truth closed what Curiosity began. 
 How many a noble art, now widely known, 
 Owes its young impulse to this power alone ! 
 Even in its slightest working we may trace 
 A deed that changed the fortunes of a race ; 
 
CURIOSITY. 13 
 
 Bruce, banned and hunted on his native soil, 
 
 With curious eye surveyed a spider's toil : 
 
 Six times the little climber strove and failed ; 
 
 Six times the chief before his foes had quailed ; 
 
 " Once more," he cried, — " in thine my doom I read, — 
 
 Once more I dare the fight, if thou succeed ; " 
 
 'Twas done — the insect's fate he made his own, 
 
 Once more the battle waged, and gained a throne. 
 
 Behold the sick man in his easy-chair ; 
 Barred from the busy crowd and bracing air, 
 How every passing trifle proves its power 
 To while away the long, dull, lazy hour ! 
 As down the pane the rival rain-drops chase, 
 Curious he '11 watch to see which wins the race j "h ^'' 
 And let two dogs beneath his window fight, 
 He '11 shut his Bible to enjoy the sight. 
 So with each new-born nothing rolls the day. 
 Till some kind neighbor, stumbling in his way, 
 Draws up his chair, the sufferer to amuse, 
 And makes him happy while he tells — The News 
 
 The News ! our morning, noon, and evening cry ; 
 Day unto day repeats it, till we die. 
 For this the cit, the critic, and the fop, 
 Dally the hour away in Tensor's shop ; 
 
14 CURIOSITY. 
 
 For this the gossip takes her daily route, 
 
 And wears your threshold and your patience out ; 
 
 For this we leave the parson in the lurch, 
 
 And pause to prattle on the way to church ; 
 
 Even when some coffined friend we gather round. 
 
 We ask, " What news ?" then lay him in the ground ; 
 
 To this the breakfast owes its sweetest zest, 
 
 For this the dinner cools, the bed remains unpressed. 
 
 What gives each tale of scandal to the street, 
 The kitchen's wonder and the parlor's treat ? 
 See the pert housemaid to the key-hole fly, 
 When husband storms, wife frets, or lovers sigh ; 
 See Tom your pockets ransack for each note. 
 And read your secrets while he cleans your coat ; 
 See, — yes, to listen, see even Madam deign. 
 When the smug sempstress pours her ready strain. 
 This wings the lie that malice breeds in fear, 
 No tongue so vile but finds a kindred ear ; 
 Swift flies each tale of laughter, shame, or folly, 
 Caught by Paul Pry and carried home to Polly 
 On this each foul calumniator leans. 
 And nods, and hints the villany he means ; 
 Full well he knows what latent wildfire lies 
 In the close whisper and the dark surmise ; 
 
CURIOSITY. 15 
 
 A muffled word, a wordless wink, has woke 
 A warmer throb than if a Dexter spoke ; 
 And he, o'er Everett's periods who would nod, 
 To track a secret half the town has trod. 
 
 O Thou, from whose rank breath nor sex can save, 
 Nor sacred virtue, nor the powerless grave. 
 Felon unwhipped ! than whom in yonder cells 
 Full many a groaning wretch less guilty dwells, 
 Blush — if of honest blood a drop remains, 
 To steal its lonely way along thy veins ! 
 Blush — if the bronze, long hardened on thy cheek, 
 Has left a spot where that poor drop can speak ! 
 Blush to be branded with the Slanderer's name. 
 And though thou dread'st not sin, at least dread shame ! 
 We hear, indeed, but shudder while we hear 
 The insidious falsehood and the heartless jeer ; 
 For each dark libel that thou lick'st to shape, 
 Thou may'st from law, but not from scorn escap*^ ; 
 The pointed finger, cold, averted eye. 
 Insulted virtue's hiss — thou canst not fly. 
 
 The churl, who holds it heresy to thinks 
 Who loves no music but the dollar's clink. 
 Who laughs to scorn the wisdom of the schools, 
 And deems the first of poets first of fools. 
 
16 CURIOSITY. 
 
 Who never found what good from science grew, 
 Save the grand truth, that one and one are two, 
 And marvels Bowditch o'er a book should pore, 
 Unless to make those two turn into four ; 
 Who, placed where Catskill's forehead greets the sky, 
 Grieves that such quarries all unhewn should lie ; 
 Or, gazing where Niagara's torrents thrill. 
 Exclaims, " A monstrous stream — to turn a mill ;" 
 Who loves to feel the blessed winds of heaven. 
 But as his freighted barks are portward driven ; 
 Even he, across whose brain scarce dares to creep 
 Aught but thrift's parent pair — to get, to keep ; 
 Who never learned life's real bliss to know — 
 With Curiosity even he can glow. 
 
 Go, seek him out on yon dear Gotham's walk. 
 Where traffic's venturers meet to trade and talk ; 
 Where Mammon's votaries bend, of each degree, 
 The hard-eyed lender, and the pale lendee ; 
 Where rogues, insolvent, strut in whitewashed pride, 
 And shove the dupes, who trusted them, aside. 
 How through the buzzing crowd he threads his way. 
 To catch the flying rumors of the day ; 
 To learn of changing stocks, of bargains crossed, 
 Of breaking merchants, and of cargoes lost ; 
 
CURIOSITY. 17 
 
 The thousand ills that traffic's walks invade, 
 
 And give the heart-ache to the sons of trade. 
 
 How cold he hearkens to some banlvrupt's woe ; 
 
 Nods his wise head, and cries — "I told you so ; 
 
 The thriftless fellow lived beyond his means, 
 
 He must buy brants — I make my folks eat beans ; 
 
 What cares he for the knave, the knave's sad wife, 
 
 The blighted prospects of an anxious hfe ? 
 
 The kindly throbs that other men control 
 
 Ne'er melt the iron of the miser's soul ; 
 
 Through fife's dark road his sordid way he wends. 
 
 An incarnation of fat dividends : 
 
 But when to death he sinks, ungrieved, unsung. 
 
 Buoyed by the blessing of no mortal tongue ; 
 
 No worth rewarded and no want redressed, 
 
 To scatter fragrance round his place of rest, 
 
 What shah that hallowed epitaph supply — 
 
 The universal woe when good men die ? 
 
 Cold Curiosity shall linger there, 
 
 To guess the wealth he leaves his tearless heir ; 
 
 Perchance to wonder what must be his doom, 
 
 In the far land that lies beyond the tomb ; — 
 
 Alas ! for him, if, in its awful plan, 
 
 Heaven deal with him as he hath dealt with man 
 
18 CURIOSITY. 
 
 Child of romance, these work-day scenes you spurn, 
 For loftier things your finer pulses burn ; 
 Through nature's walks your curious way you take, 
 Gaze on her glowing bow, her glittering flake, 
 Her spring's first cheerful green, her autumn's last, 
 Born in the breeze, or dying in the blast ; 
 You climb the mountain's everlasting wall. 
 You linger where the thunder- waters fall, 
 You love to wander by old ocean's side, 
 And hold communion with its sullen tide ; 
 Washed to your foot some fragment of a wreck, 
 Fancy shall build again the crowded deck 
 That trod the waves, till mid the tempest's frown 
 The sepulchre of living men went down. 
 Yet Fancy, with her milder, tenderer glow. 
 But dreams what Curiosity would know ;' 
 Ye would stand listening, as the booming gun 
 Proclaimed the work of agony half done ; 
 There would ye drink each drowning seaman's cry, 
 As wild to Heaven he cast his frantic eye ; 
 Though vain all aid, though Pity's blood ran cold. 
 The mortal havoc ye would dare behold ; 
 Still Curiosity would wait and weep, 
 Till all sank down to slumber in the deep. 
 
CURIOSITY. 
 
 19 
 
 Nor yet appeased the spirit's restless glow, 
 Ye ivould explore the gloomy waste below ; 
 There, where the joyful sunbeams never fell, 
 Where ocean's unrecorded monsters dwell ; 
 Where sleep earth's precious things, — her rifled gold, 
 Bones bleached by ages, bodies hardly cold. 
 Of those who bowed to fate in every form, 
 By battle-strife, by pirate, or by storm ; 
 The sailor-chief, who freedom's foes defied, 
 Wrapped in the sacred flag for which he died ; 
 The ^vretch, thrown over to the midnight foam. 
 Stabbed in his blessed dreams of love and home ; 
 The mother, with her fleshless arms still clasped 
 Round the scared infant that in death she grasped ; — 
 On these,. and sights like these, ye long to gaze, 
 The mournful trophies of uncounted days ; 
 All that the miser deep has brooded o'er. 
 Since its first billow rolled to find a shore. 
 
 Once more the Press — not that which daily flings 
 Its fleeting ray across life's fleeting things — 
 See tomes on tomes of fancy and of power, 
 To cheer man's heaviest, warm his holiest hour. 
 Now Fiction's groves we tread, where young Romance 
 Laps the glad senses in her sweetest trance ; 
 
20 CURIOSITY. 
 
 Now through earth's cold, unpeopled realms we range, 
 And mark each rolling century's awful change ; 
 Turn back the tide of ages to its head, 
 And hoard the wisdom of the honored dead. 
 
 'T was heaven to lounge upon a couch, said Gray, 
 And read new novels through a rainy day : 
 Add but the Spanish weed, the bard was right ; 
 'T is heaven, the upper heaven of calm delight ; 
 The world forgot, to sit at ease reclined, 
 While round one's head the smoky perfumes wind, 
 Firm in one hand the ivory folder grasped, 
 Scott's uncut latest by the other clasped, 
 'T is heaven, the glowing, graphic page to turn, 
 And feel within the ruling passion burn ; 
 Now through the dingles of his own bleak isle, 
 And now through lands that wear a sunnier smile, 
 To follow him, that all-creative one, 
 Who never found a " brother near his throne." 
 
 Look now, directed by yon candle's blaze. 
 Where the false shutter half its trust betrays — 
 Mark that fair girl, reclining in her bed, 
 Its curtain round her polished shoulders spread : 
 Dark midnight reigns, the storm is up in power ; 
 What keeps her waking in that dreary hour ? 
 
CURIOSITY. 
 
 See where the volume on her pillow lies — 
 Claims Radcliffe or Chapone those frequent sighs ? 
 'T is some wild legend — now her kind eye fills, 
 And now cold terror every fibre chills ; 
 Still she reads on — in fiction's labyrinth lost, 
 Of tyrant fathers, and of true love crossed ; 
 Of clanking fetters, low, mysterious groans, 
 Blood-crusted daggers, and uncoffined bones, 
 Pale, gliding ghosts, with fingers dropping gore, 
 And blue flames dancing round a dungeon door ; — 
 Still she reads on — even though to read she fears, 
 And in each key-hole moan strange voices hears, 
 AVhile every shadow that withdraws her look 
 Glares in her face, the goblin of her book ; 
 Still o'er the leaves her craving eye is cast. 
 On all she feasts, yet hungers for the last ; 
 Counts what remain, now sighs there are no more. 
 And now even those half tempted to skip o'er ; 
 At length, the bad all killed, the good all pleased. 
 Her thirsting Curiosity appeased. 
 She shuts the dear, dear book, that made her weep, 
 Puts out her light, and turns away to sleep. 
 
 Her bright, her bloody records to unroll. 
 See History come, and wake the inquiring soul : 
 
 21 
 
22 CURIOSITY. 
 
 How bounds the bosom at each wondrous deed 
 
 Of those who founded, and of those who freed ! 
 
 The good, the vahant of our own loved clime, 
 
 Whose names shall brighten through the clouds of time. 
 
 How rapt we linger o'er the volumed lore 
 
 That tracks the glories of each distant shore ! 
 
 In all their grandeur and in all their gloom, 
 
 The throned, the thralled, rise dimly from the tomb; 
 
 Chiefs, sages, bards, the giants of their race, 
 
 Earth's monarch men, her greatness and her grace ; 
 
 Warmed as we read, the penman's page we spurn, 
 
 And to^each near, each far arena turn ; 
 
 Here, where the Pilgrim's altar first was built. 
 
 Here, where the patriot's life-blood first was spilt; 
 
 There, where new empires spread along each spot 
 
 Where old ones flourished, but to be forgot, 
 
 Or, direr judgment, spared to fill a page. 
 
 And with their errors warn an after age. 
 
 And where is he, upon that Rock can stand, 
 Nor with their firmness feel his heart expand, 
 Who a new empire planted where they trod, 
 And gave it to their children and their God ? 
 Who yon immortal mountain-shrine hath pressed. 
 With saintlier relics stored than priest e'er blessed, 
 
CURIOSITY. » 
 
 But felt each grateful pulse more warmly glow, 
 
 In voiceless reverence for the dead below ? 
 
 Who, too, by Curiosity led on, 
 
 To tread the shores of kingdoms come and gone, 
 
 Where faith her martyrs to the fagot led, 
 
 Where freedom's champions on the scaffold bled, 
 
 Where ancient power, though stripped of ancient fame, 
 
 Curbed, but not crushed, still lives for guilt and shame, 
 
 But prouder, happier, turns on home to gaze. 
 
 And thanks his God who gave him better days ? 
 
 Withdraw yon curtain, look within that room. 
 Where all is splendor, yet where all is gloom : 
 Why weeps that mother ? why, in pensive mood, 
 Group noiseless round, that little, lovely brood ? 
 The battledoor is still, laid by each book, 
 And the harp slumbers in its customed nook. 
 Who hath done this ? what cold, unpitying foe 
 Hath made this house the dweUing-place of woe ? 
 'T is he, the husband, father, lost in care. 
 O'er that sweet fellow in his cradle there : 
 The gallant bark that rides by yonder strand 
 Bears him to-morrow from his native land. 
 Why turns he, half unwilling, from his home. 
 To tempt the ocean, and the earth to roam ? 
 3 
 
24 CURIOSITY. 
 
 Wealth he can boast a miser's sigh would hush, 
 And health is laughing in that ruddy blush ; 
 Friends spring to greet him, and he has no foe — 
 So honored and so blessed, what bids him go ? — 
 His eye must see, his foot each spot must tread, 
 Where sleeps the dust of earth's recorded dead ; 
 Where rise the monuments of ancient time. 
 Pillar and pyramid in age sublime ; 
 The Pagan's temple and the Churchman's tower. 
 War's bloodiest plain and Wisdom's greenest bower ; 
 All that his wonder woke in school-boy themes, 
 All that his fancy fired in youthful dreams : 
 Where Socrates once taught he thirsts to stray, 
 Where Homer poured his everlasting lay ; 
 From Virgil's tomb he longs to pluck one flower. 
 By Avon's stream to live one moonlight hour ; 
 To pause where England " garners up " her great, 
 And drop a patriot's tear to Milton's fate : 
 Fame's living masters, too, he must behold. 
 Whose deeds shall blazon with the best of old ; 
 Nations compare, their laws and customs scan. 
 And read, wherever spread, the book of Man ; 
 For these he goes, self-banished from his hearth. 
 And wrings the hearts of all he loves on earth. 
 
CURIOSITY. 25 
 
 Yet say, shall not new joy those hearts inspire, 
 When, grouping round the future winter fire, 
 To hear the wonders of the world they burn. 
 And lose his absence in his glad return ? — 
 Return ? — alas ! he shall return no more, 
 To bless his owm sweet home, his own proud shore. 
 Look once again — cold in his cabin now, 
 Death's finger-mark is on his pallid brow ; 
 No wife stood by, her patient watch to keep. 
 To smile on him, then turn away to weep ; 
 Kind woman's place rough mariners supplied. 
 And shared the wanderer's blessing when he died. 
 Wrapped in the raiment that it long must wear, 
 His body to the deck they slowly bear ; 
 Even there the spirit that I sing is true, 
 The crew look on with sad, but curious view; 
 The setting sun flings round his farewell rays, 
 O'er the broad ocean not a ripple plays ; 
 How eloquent, how awful, in its power. 
 The silent lecture of death's sabbath-hour ! 
 One voice that silence breaks — the prayer is said, 
 And the last rite man pays to man is paid ; 
 The plashing waters mark his resting-place, 
 And fold him round in one long, cold embrace ; 
 
26 
 
 CURIOSITY. 
 
 Bright bubbles' for a moment sparlde o'er, 
 Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more ; 
 Down, countless fathoms down, he sinks to sleep, 
 With all the nameless shapes that haunt the deep. 
 
 " Alps rise on Alps " — in vain my muse essays 
 To lay the spirit that she dared to raise : 
 What spreading scenes of rapture and of woe, 
 With rose and cypress lure me as I go ! 
 In every question and in every glance, 
 In folly's wonder and in wisdom's trance, 
 In all of life, nor yet of life alone. 
 In all beyond, this mighty power we own. 
 We would unclasp the mystic book of fate, 
 And trace the paths of all we love and hate ; 
 The father's heart would learn his children's doom, 
 Even when that heart is crumbling in the tomb ; 
 If they must sink in guilt, or soar to fame. 
 And leave a hated or a hallowed name ; 
 By hope elated, or depressed by doubt, 
 Even in the death-pang he would find it out. 
 
 What boots it to your dust, your son were born 
 An empire's idol or a rabble's scorn ? 
 Think ye the franchised spirit shall return, 
 To share his triumph, his disgrace to mourn ? 
 
CURIOSITY. 27 
 
 Ah ! Curiosity, by thee inspired, 
 
 This truth to know how oft has man inquired ! 
 
 And is it fancy all ? can reason say 
 
 Earth's loves must moulder with earth's mouldering clay 
 
 That death can chill the father's sacred glow, 
 
 And hush the throb that none but mothers know ? 
 
 Must we believe those tones of dear delight, 
 
 The morning welcome and the sweet good-night, 
 
 The kind monition and the well-earned praise, 
 
 That won and warmed us in our earlier days. 
 
 Turned, as they fell, to cold and common air ? — 
 
 Speak, proud Philosophy, the truth declare. 
 
 Yet no ! the fond delusion, if no more. 
 We would not yield for wisdom's cheerless lore ; 
 A tender creed they hold, who dare believe 
 The dead return, with them to joy or grieve. 
 How sweet, while lingering slow on shore or hill, 
 When all the pleasant sounds of earth are still, 
 When the round moon rolls through the unpillared skies. 
 And stars look down as they were angels' eyes. 
 How sweet to deem our lost, adored ones nigfh, 
 And hear their voices in the night wind's sigh ! 
 Full many an idle dream that hope had broke, 
 And the awed heart to holy goodness woke ; 
 
28 CURIOSITY. 
 
 Full many a felon's guilt in thought had died, 
 
 Feared he his father's spirit by his side ; — 
 
 Then let that fear, that hope, control the mind, 
 
 Still let us question, still no answer find ; 
 
 Let Curiosity of Heaven inquire, 
 
 Nor earth's cold dogmas quench the ethereal fire. 
 
 Nor even to life, nor death, nor time confined - 
 The dread hereafter fills the exploring mind ; 
 We burst the grave, profane the coffin's lid, 
 Unwisely ask of all so wisely hid ; 
 Eternity's dark record we would read, 
 Mysteries unravelled yet by mortal creed ; 
 Of life to come, unending joy and woe, 
 And all that holy wranglers dream below ; 
 To find their jarring dogmas out we long, 
 Or which is right, or whether all be wrong ; 
 Things of an hour, we would invade His throne. 
 And find out Him, the Everlasting One ! 
 Faith we may boast, undarkened by a doubt. 
 We thirst to find each awful secret out ; 
 Hope may sustain, and innocence impart 
 Her sweet specific to the fearless heart. 
 The inquiring spirit will not be controlled, 
 We would make certain all, and all behold. 
 
CURIOSITY. 29 
 
 Unfathomed well-head of the boundless soul ! 
 Whose living waters lure us as they roll, 
 From thy pure wave one cheering hope we draw — 
 Man, man, at least, shall spurn proud nature's law. 
 All that have breath, but he, lie down content. 
 Life's purpose served, indeed, when life is spent ; 
 All as in Paradise the same are found ; 
 The beast, whose footstep shakes the solid ground, 
 The insect living on a summer spire. 
 The bird, whose pinion courts the sunbeam's fire ; 
 In lair and nest, in way and want, the same 
 As when their sires sought Adam for a name : 
 Their be-all and their end-all here below, 
 They nothing need beyond, nor need to know ; 
 Earth and her hoards their every want supply, 
 They revel, rest, then fearless, hopeless, die ! 
 But Man, his Maker's likeness, lord of earth, 
 Who owes to nature little but his birth, 
 Shakes down her puny chains, her wants, and woes. 
 One world subdues, and for another glows. 
 See him, the feeblest, in his cradle laid; 
 See him, the mightiest, in his mind arrayed ! 
 How wide the gulf he clears, how bold the flight. 
 That bears him upward to the realms of light ! 
 
30 CURIOSITY. 
 
 By restless Curiosity inspired, 
 
 Through all his subject world he roves untired ; 
 
 Looks back and scans the infant days of yore, 
 
 On to the time when time shall be no more ; 
 
 Even in life's parting throb its spirit burns. 
 
 And, shut from earth, to heaven more warmly turns. 
 
 Shall he alone, of mortal dwellers here, 
 Thus soar aloft to sink in mid-career ? 
 Less favored than a worm, shall his stern doom 
 Lock up these seraph longings in the 'tomb? — 
 O Thou, whose fingers raised us from the dust, 
 Till there we sleep again, be this our trust : 
 This sacred hunger marks the immortal mind. 
 By Thee 't was given, for Thee, for Heaven, designed ; 
 There the rapt spirit, from earth's grossness freed, 
 Shall see, and know, and be like Thee indeed. 
 
 Here let me pause — no further I rehearse 
 What claims a loftier souL a nobler verse ; 
 The mountain's foot I have but loitered round, 
 Nor dared to scale its highest, holiest ground ; 
 But ventured on the pebbly shore to stray, 
 While the broad ocean all before me lay ; — 
 How bright the boundless prospect there on high ! 
 How rich the pearls that here all hidden lie ! 
 
CURIOSITY. 31 
 
 But not for me — to life's coarse service sold, 
 
 Where thought lies barren and nought breeds but gold — 
 
 'T is yours, ye favored ones, at whose command, 
 
 From the cold world I ventured, here to stand : 
 
 Ye who were lapped in Wisdom's murmuring bowers, 
 
 Who still to bright improvement yield your hours ; 
 
 To you the privilege and the power belong, 
 
 To give my theme the grace of living song ; 
 
 Yours he the flapping of the eagle's wing. 
 
 To dare the loftiest crag and heavenward spring; 
 
 Mine the light task to hop from spray to spray, 
 
 Blessed if I charm one summer hour away. 
 
 One summer hour — its golden sands have run, 
 And the poor labor of the bard is done — 
 Yet, ere I fling aside my humble lyre. 
 Let one fond wish its trembling strings inspire ; 
 Fancy the task to Feeling shall resign. 
 And the heart prompt the warm, untutored line. 
 Peace to this ancient spot ! here, as of old. 
 May learning dwell and all her stores unfold ; 
 Still may her priests around these altars stand, 
 And train to truth the children of the land ; 
 Bright be their paths within these shades who rest, 
 These brother-bands — beneath his guidance blessed, 
 
32 CURIOSITY. 
 
 Who, with their fathers, here turned wisdom's page, 
 
 Who comes to them the Statesman and the Sage. 
 
 Praise be his portion in his labors here. 
 
 The praise that cheered a Kirkland's mild career ; 
 
 The love that finds in every breast a shrine, 
 
 When zeal and gentleness with wisdom join. 
 
 Here may he sit, while race succeeding race 
 
 Go proudly forth his parent care to grace ; 
 
 In head and heart by him prepared to rise, 
 
 To take their stations with the good and wise : 
 
 This crowning recompense to him be given, 
 
 To see them guard on earth and guide to heaven ; 
 
 Thus in their talents, in their virtues blessed, 
 
 O be his ripest years his happiest and his best ! 
 
SHAKSPEARE ODE. 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE BOSTON THEATRE IN 1S23, AT THE EXHIBITION OF A 
 PAGEANT IN HONOR OP SHAKSPEARE. 
 
SHAKSPEARE ODE, 
 
 God of the glorious Lyre ! 
 Whose notes of old on lofty Pindus rang, 
 
 While Jove's exulting choir 
 Caught the glad echoes and responsive sang — 
 Come ! bless the service and the shrine 
 We consecrate to thee and thine. 
 
 Fierce from the frozen north, 
 When Havoc led his legions forth, 
 O'er Learning's sunny groves the dark destroyers spread: 
 In dust the sacred statue slept, 
 Fair Science round her altars wept, 
 And Wisdom cowled his head. 
 
 At length, Olympian lord of morn. 
 The raven veil of night was torn. 
 
 When, through golden clouds descending, 
 Thou didst hold thy radiant flight. 
 
 O'er Nature's lovely pageant bending. 
 Till Avon rolled, all-sparkling, to thy sight ! 
 
36 SHAKSPEARE ODE. 
 
 There, on its bank, beneath the mulberry's shade, 
 Wrapped in young dreams, a wild-eyed minstrel strayed. ' 
 
 Lighting there, and lingering long, ; 
 
 Thou didst teach the bard his song ; 
 
 Thy fingers strung his sleeping shell, i 
 
 And round his brows a garland curled ; I 
 
 On his lips thy spirit fell. 
 
 And bade him wake and warm the world ! : 
 
 J 
 
 Then Shakspeare rose ! 
 Across the trembling strings 
 
 His daring hand he flings, J 
 
 And lo ! a new creation glows ! '. 
 
 There, clustering round, submissive to his will, ; 
 
 Fate's vassal train his high commands fulfil. j 
 
 Madness, with his frightful scream, 
 
 Vengeance, leaning on his lance, ■ 
 
 Avarice, with his blade and beam, ; 
 
 Hatred, blasting with a glance, I 
 
 Remorse that weeps, and Rage that roars, ] 
 
 And Jealousy that dotes, but dooms, and murders, yet 
 
 adores. . : 
 
SHAKSPEARE ODE. O i 
 
 Mirth, his face with sunbeams lit, 
 Walnng laughter's merry swell, 
 Arm in arm with fresh-eyed Wit, 
 That waves his tingling lash, while Folly shakes his bell 
 
 Despair, that haunts the gurgling stream, 
 Kissed by the virgin moon's cold beam, 
 Where some lost maid wild chaplets wreathes, 
 •And, swan-like, there her own dirge breathes, 
 Then, broken-hearted, sinks to rest. 
 Beneath the bubbling wave, that shrouds her maniac 
 breast. 
 
 Young Love, with eye of tender gloom, 
 Now drooping o'er the hallowed tomb 
 Where his plighted victims lie — 
 Where they met, but met to die ; 
 And now, when crimson buds are sleeping, 
 Through the dewy arbor peeping. 
 Where Beauty's child, the frowning world forgot. 
 To Youth's devoted tale is listening. 
 Rapture on her dark lash glistening. 
 While fairies leave their cowslip cells and guard the 
 happy spot. 
 
38 SHAKSPEARE ODE. 
 
 Thus rise the phantom throng, 
 Obedient to their Master's song, 
 
 And lead in willing chains the wondering soul along. 
 For other worlds war's Great One sighed in vain — 
 O'er other worlds see Shakspeare rove and reign I 
 The rapt magician of his own wild lay, 
 Earth and her tribes his mystic wand obey. 
 Old Ocean trembles. Thunder cracks the skies, 
 Air teems with shapes, and telltale spectres rise ; 
 Night's paltering hags their fearful orgies keep, 
 And faithless Guilt unseals the lip of Sleep ; 
 Time yields his trophies up, and Death restores 
 The mouldered victims of his voiceless shores. 
 The fireside legend and the faded page. 
 The crime that cursed, the deed that blessed an age, 
 All, all come forth — the good to charm and cheer. 
 To scourge bold Vice, and start the generous tear ; 
 With pictured Folly gazing fools to shame. 
 
 And guide young Glory's foot along the path of fame. 
 
 Lo ! hand in hand. 
 Hell's juggling sisters stand. 
 To greet their victim from the fight ; 
 
 Grouped on the blasted heath, 
 They tempt him to the work of death, 
 Then melt in air, and mock his wondering sight. 
 
SHAKSPEARE ODE. 39 
 
 In midnight's hallowed hour 
 He seeks the fatal tower, 
 Where the lone raven, perched on high, 
 Pours to the sullen gale 
 Her hoarse, prophetic wail. 
 And croaks the dreadful moment nigh. 
 See, by the phantom dagger led, 
 Pale, guilty thing ! 
 ■ Slowly he steals, with silent tread, 
 And grasps his coward steel to smite his sleeping king ! 
 Hark ! 't is the signal bell. 
 Struck by that bold and unsexed one 
 Whose milk is gall, whose heart is stone ; 
 His ear hath caught the knell — 
 'T is done ! 't is done ! 
 Behold him from the chamber rushing 
 Where his dead monarch's blood is gushing ! 
 Look where he trembling stands, 
 Sad gazing there. 
 Life's smoking crimson on his hands, 
 And in his felon heart the worm of wild despair ! 
 
 Mark the sceptred traitor slumbering ! 
 
 There flit the slaves of conscience round, 
 With boding tongue foul murders numbering ; 
 
 Sleep's leaden portals catch the sound. 
 
 4 
 
40 SHAKSPEARE ODE. 
 
 In his dream of blood for mercy quaking, 
 At his own dull scream behold him waking ! 
 Soon that dream to fate shall turn, 
 For him the living furies bum ; 
 For him the vulture sits on yonder misty peak, 
 And chides the lagging night, and whets her hungry 
 beak. 
 Hark ! the trumpet's warning breath 
 Echoes round the vale of death. 
 Unhorsed, unhelmed, disdaining shield. 
 The panting tyrant scours the field. 
 Vengeance I he meets thy dooming blade ! 
 The scourge of earth, the scorn of Heaven, 
 He falls ! unwept and unforgiven, 
 And all his guilty glories fade. 
 Like a crushed reptile in the dust he lies. 
 And Hate's last lightning quivers from his eyes ! 
 
 Behold yon crownless king — 
 
 Yon white-locked, weeping sire — 
 Where heaven's unpillared chambers ring, 
 And burst their streams of flood and fire ! 
 He gave them all — the daughters of his love ; 
 That recreant pair ! they drive him forth to rove ; 
 
SHAKSPEARE ODE. 41 
 
 In such a night of woe, 
 The cubless regent of the wood 
 Forgets to bathe her fangs in blood, 
 And caverns with her foe ! 
 Yet one was ever kind ; 
 Why lingers she behind ? 
 O pity ! — view him by her dead form kneeling, 
 Even in wild frenzy holy nature feeling. 
 His aching eye-balls strain 
 To see those curtained orbs unfold, 
 That beauteous bosom heave again ; 
 
 But all is dark and cold. 
 In agony the father shakes ; 
 Grief's choking note 
 Swells in his throat, 
 Each withered heart-string tugs and breaks ! 
 Round her pale neck his dying arms he wreathes, 
 And on her marble lips his last, his death-kiss breathes. 
 
 Down, trembling wing ! — shall insect weakness keep 
 
 The sun-defying eagle's sweep ? 
 
 A mortal strike celestial strings, 
 And feebly echo what a seraph sings ? 
 
 Who now shall grace the glowing throne, 
 
 Where, all unrivalled, all alone. 
 
42 SHAKSPEARE ODE. 
 
 Bold Shakspeare sat, and looked creation through, 
 The minstrel monarch of the worlds he drew ? 
 
 That throne is cold — that lyre in death unstrung 
 On whose proud note delighted Wonder hung. 
 Yet old Oblivion, as in wrath he sweeps, 
 One spot shall spare — the grave where Shakspeare sleeps. 
 Rulers and ruled in common gloom may lie. 
 But Nature's laureate bards shall never die. 
 Art's chiseled boast and Glory's trophied shore 
 Must live in numbers, or can live no more. 
 While sculptured Jove some nameless waste may claim, 
 Still rolls the Olympic car in Pindar's fame ; 
 Troy's doubtful walls in ashes passed away, 
 Yet frown on Greece in Homer's deathless lay ; 
 Rome, slowly sinking in her crumbling fanes. 
 Stands all immortal in her Maro's strains ; 
 So, too, yon giant empress of the isles, 
 On whose broad sway the sun forever smiles. 
 To Time's unsparing rage one day must bend, 
 And all her triumphs in her Shakspeare end ! 
 
 O thou ! to whose creative powei 
 We dedicate the festal hour. 
 While Grace and Goodness round the altar stand, 
 Learning's anointed train, and Beauty's rose-lipped 
 band — 
 
SHAKSPEARE ODE. 43 
 
 Realms yet unbom, in accents now unknown, 
 Thy song shall learn, and bless it for their own. 
 Deep in the West as Independence roves, 
 His banners planting round the land he loves, 
 Where Nature sleeps in Eden's infant grace, 
 In time's full hour shall spring a glorious race. 
 Thy name, thy verse, thy language, shall they bear, 
 And deck for thee the vaulted temple there. 
 ■ Our Roman-hearted fathers broke 
 Thy parent empire's galling yoke ; 
 But thou, harmonious master of the mind, 
 Around their sons a gentler chain shalt bind ; 
 Once more in thee shall Albion's sceptre wave. 
 And what her Monarch lost her Monarch-Bard shall 
 save. 
 
ODE 
 
 PRONOUNCED AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE SETTLEMENT 
 OF BOSTON, SEPTEMBER, 1830. 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE 
 
 L 
 
 Not to the Pagan's mount I turn 
 
 For inspiration now ; 
 Olympus and its gods I spurn — 
 
 Pure One, be with me, Thou ! 
 
 Thou, in whose awful name, 
 
 From suffering and from shame. 
 Our fathers fled, and braved a pathless sea ; 
 
 Thou, in whose holy fear, 
 
 They fixed an empire here. 
 And gave it to their children and to Thee. 
 
 II. 
 
 And you ! ye bright ascended Dead, 
 
 Who scorned the bigot's yoke, 
 Come, round this place your influence shed ; 
 
 Your spirits I invoke. 
 
 Come, as ye came of yore. 
 
 When on an unknown shore 
 
48 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 Your daring hands the flag of faith unfurled, 
 
 To float sublime, 
 
 Through future time, 
 The beacon-banner of another world. 
 
 III. 
 
 Behold! they come — those sainted forms, 
 Unshaken through the strife of storms ; 
 Heaven's winter cloud hangs coldly down. 
 And earth puts on its rudest frown ; 
 But colder, ruder was the hand 
 That drove them from their own fair land ; 
 Their own fair land — Refinement's chosen seat. 
 Art's trophied dwelling, Learning's green retreat ; 
 By valor guarded, and by victory crowned. 
 For all, but gentle Charity, renowned. 
 
 With streaming eye, yet steadfast heart. 
 Even from that land they dared to part, 
 
 And burst each tender tie ; 
 Haunts, where their sunny youth was passed, 
 Homes, where they fondly hoped at last 
 
 In peaceful age to die. 
 Friends, kindred, comfort, all they spumed. 
 
 Their fathers' hallowed graves. 
 And to a world of darkness turned. 
 Beyond a world of waves 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE. 49 
 
 IV. 
 
 "When Israel's race from bondage fled, 
 Signs from on high the wanderers led ; 
 But here — Heaven hung no symbol here, 
 Their steps to guide, their souls to cheer ; 
 They saw, through sorrow's lengthening night, 
 Nought but the fagot's guilty light ; 
 The cloud they gazed at was the smoke 
 That round their murdered brethren broke. 
 Nor power above, nor power below, 
 Sustained them in their hour of woe ; 
 A fearful path they trod. 
 
 And dared a fearful doom ; 
 To build an altar to their God, 
 
 And find a quiet tomb. 
 
 V. 
 
 But not alone, not all unblessed, 
 The exile sought a place of rest ; 
 One dared with him to burst the knot 
 That bound her to her native spot ; 
 Her low, sweet voice in comfort spoke. 
 As round their bark the billows broke ; 
 She through the midnight watch was there. 
 With him to bend her knees in prayer ; 
 
50 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 She trod the shore with girded heart, 
 Through good and ill to claim her part ; 
 In life, in death, with him to seal 
 Her kindred love, her kindred zeal. 
 
 n. 
 
 They come ; — that coming who shall tell ? 
 The eye may weep, the heart may swell, 
 But the poor tongue in vain essays 
 A fitting note for them to raise. 
 We hear the after-shout that rings 
 For them who smote the power of kings ; 
 The swelling triumph all would share. 
 But who the dark defeat would dare. 
 And boldly meet the wrath and woe 
 That wait the unsuccessful blow ? 
 It were an envied fate, we deem. 
 To live a land's recorded theme. 
 
 When we are in the tomb ; 
 We, too, might yield the joys of home, 
 And waves of winter darkness roam, 
 
 And tread a shore of gloom — 
 Knew we those waves, through coming time, 
 Should roll our names to every clime ; 
 
CENTENNUL ODE. 51 
 
 Felt we that millions on that shore 
 
 Should stand, our memory to adore. 
 
 But no glad vision burst in light 
 
 Upon the Pilgrims' aching sight ; 
 
 Their hearts no proud hereafter swelled ; 
 
 Deep shadows veiled the way they held ; 
 The yell of vengeance was their trump of fame ; 
 Their monument, a grave without a name. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Yet, strong in weakness, there they stand, 
 
 On yonder ice-bound rock. 
 Stern and resolved, that faithful band, 
 
 To meet Fate's rudest shock. 
 Though anguish rends the father's breast, 
 For them, his dearest and his best. 
 
 With him the waste who trod — 
 Though tears that freeze the mother sheds 
 Upon her children's houseless heads — 
 
 The Christian turns to God ! 
 
 vin. 
 
 In grateful adoration now. 
 Upon the barren sands they bow. 
 What tongue of joy e'er woke such prayer 
 As bursts in desolation there ? 
 
52 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 What arm of strength e'er wrought such power 
 As waits to crown that feeble hour ? 
 There into life an infant empire springs ! 
 There falls the iron from the soul ; 
 There Liberty's young accents roll 
 Up to the King of kings ! 
 
 To fair creation's farthest bound 
 That thrilling summons yet shall sound ; 
 The dreaming nations shall awake, 
 And to their centre earth's old kingdoms shake. 
 Pontiff and prince, your sway 
 Must crumble from that day ; 
 Before the loftier throne of Heaven 
 The hand is raised, the pledge is given, 
 One monarch to obey, one creed to own, — 
 That monarch, God ; that creed, His word alone. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Spread out earth's holiest records here, 
 Of days and deeds to reverence dear ; 
 A zeal like this what pious legends tell ? 
 On kingdoms built 
 In blood and guilt. 
 The worshippers of vulgar triumph dwell — 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE. 53 
 
 But what exploit with theirs shall page, 
 
 Who rose to bless their kind — 
 Who left their nation and their age, 
 Man's spirit to unbind ? 
 
 Who boundless seas passed o'er, 
 And boldly met, in every path. 
 Famine, and frost, and heathen wrath, 
 To dedicate a shore. 
 Where" Piety's meek train might breathe their vow. 
 And seek their Maker with an unshamed brow ; 
 Where Liberty's glad race might proudly come, 
 And set up there an everlasting home ? 
 
 X. 
 
 O, many a time it hath been told, 
 The story of those men of old. 
 
 For this fair Poetry hath wreathed 
 
 Her sweetest, purest flower ; 
 For this proud Eloquence hath breathed 
 His strain of loftiest power ; 
 Devotion, too, hath lingered round 
 Each spot of consecrated ground, 
 And hill and valley blessed ; 
 There, where our banished fathers strayed, 
 There, where they loved, and wept, and prayed, 
 There, where their ashes rest. 
 
64 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 XI. ; 
 
 And never may they rest unsung, 
 While liberty can find a tongue. 
 Twine, Gratitude, a wreath for them 
 More deathless than the diadem, 
 
 Who, to life's noblest end, i 
 
 Gave up life's noblest powers, | 
 
 And bade the legacy descend : 
 
 Down, down to us and ours. ', 
 
 I 
 
 xn. 
 
 By centuries now the glorious hour we mark, 
 
 When to these shores they steered their shattered bark ; •. 
 
 And still, as other centuries melt away, 
 
 Shall other ages come to keep the day. ' 
 
 When we are dust, who gather round this spot, ■ 
 
 Our joys, our griefs, our very names forgot. 
 
 Here shall the dwellers of the land be seen, 
 
 To keep the memory of the Pilgrims green. 
 
 Nor here alone their praises shall go round, i 
 
 Nor here alone their virtues shall abound ; | 
 
 Broad as the empire of the free shall spread, ; 
 
 Far as the foot of man shall dare to tread, '■. 
 
 Where oar hath never dipped, where human tongue | 
 
 Hath never through the woods of ages rung, — J 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE. 55 
 
 There, where the eagle's scream and wild wolf's cry- 
 Keep ceaseless day and night through earth and sky, — 
 Even there, in after time, as toil and taste 
 Go forth in gladness to redeem the waste, — 
 Even there shall rise, as grateful myriads throng, 
 Faith's holy prayer and Freedom's joyful song; 
 There shall the flame that flashed from yonder Rock 
 Light up the land, till nature's final shock. 
 
 xin. 
 
 Yet while, by life's endearments crowned, 
 
 To mark this day we gather round, 
 
 And to our nation's founders raise 
 
 The voice of gratitude and praise, 
 Shall not one line lament that lion race. 
 For us struck out from sweet creation's face ? 
 Alas ! alas ! for them — those fated bands. 
 Whose monarch tread was on these broad, green lands ; 
 Our fathers called them savage — them, whose bread. 
 In the dark hour, those famished fathers fed ; 
 
 We call them savage, we, 
 
 Who hail the struggling free, 
 Of every clime and hue ; 
 
 We, who would save 
 
 The branded slave. 
 And give him liberty he never knew; 
 
 5 
 
56 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 We, who but now have caught the tale 
 That turns each listening tyrant pale, 
 And blessed the winds and waves that bore 
 The tidings to our kindred shore ; 
 The triumph-tidings pealing from that land 
 Where up in arms insulted legions stand ; 
 
 There, gathering round his bold compeers, 
 Where He, our own, our welcomed One, 
 Riper in glory than in years, 
 Down from his forfeit throne 
 A craven monarch hurled. 
 And spurned him forth, a proverb to the world ! 
 
 XIV. 
 
 We call them savage ; — 0, be just ! 
 
 Their outraged feelings scan ; 
 A voice comes forth — 't is from the dust — 
 
 The savage was a man ! 
 Think ye he loved not ? Who stood by, 
 
 And in his toils took part ? 
 Woman was there to bless his eye — 
 
 The savage had a heart ! 
 Think ye he prayed not ? When on high 
 
 He heard the thunders roll. 
 What bade him look beyond the sky ? 
 
 The savaofe had a soul ! 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE. 57 
 
 XV. 
 
 I venerate the Pilgrim's cause, 
 Yet for the red man dare to plead — 
 We bow to Heaven's recorded laws, 
 He turned to nature for a creed ; 
 Beneath the pillared dome, 
 We seek our God in prayer ; 
 Through boundless woods he loved to roam, 
 And the Great Spirit worshipped there. 
 But one, one fellow-throb with us he felt ; 
 To one divinity with us he knelt ; 
 Freedom, the self-same freedom we adore, 
 Bade him defend his violated shore. 
 
 He saw the cloud, ordained to grow, 
 And burst upon his hills in woe ; 
 He saw his people withering by. 
 Beneath the invader's evil eye ; 
 Strange feet were trampling on his fathers' bones r 
 At midnight hour he woke to gaze 
 Upon his happy cabin's blaze. 
 And listen to his children's dying groans. 
 He saw — and, maddening at the sight. 
 Gave his bold bosom to the fight ; 
 To tiger rage his soul was driven ; 
 Mercy was not — nor sought nor given ; 
 
58 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 The pale man from his lands must fly ; 
 He would be free — or he would die. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 And was this savage ? say, 
 Ye ancient few, 
 Who struggled through 
 Young Freedom's trial-day — 
 What first your sleeping wrath awoke ? 
 On your own shores war's larum broke ; 
 What turned to gall even kindred blood ? 
 Round your own homes the oppressor stood ; 
 This every warm affection chilled, 
 This every heart with vengeance thrilled, 
 And strengthened every hand ; 
 From mound to mound. 
 The word went round — 
 " Death for our native land ! " 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Ye mothers, too, breathe ye no sigh 
 For them who thus could dare to die ? 
 Are all your own dark hours forgot. 
 Of soul-sick suffering here ? 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE. 59 
 
 Your pangs, as from yon mountain spot, 
 Death spoke in every booming shot, 
 That knelled upon your ear ? 
 How oft that gloomy, glorious tale ye tell. 
 As round your knees your children's children hang, 
 Of them, the gallant ones, ye loved so well, 
 Who to the conflict for their country sprang ! 
 In pride, in all the pride of woe. 
 Ye tell of them, the brave laid low, 
 
 Who for their birthplace bled ; 
 In pride, the pride of triumph,^ then, 
 Ye tell of them, the matchless men, 
 From whom the invaders fled. » 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 And ye, this holy place who throng, 
 The annual theme to hear, 
 And bid the exulting song 
 Sound their great names from year to year j 
 Ye, who invoke the chisel's breathing grace, 
 In marble majesty their forms to trace ; 
 
 Ye, who the sleeping rocks would raise. 
 To guard their dust and speak their praise; 
 Ye, who, should some other band 
 With hostile foot defile the land, 
 
60 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 Feel that ye like them would wake, 
 Like them the yoke of bondage break, 
 Nor leave a battle-blade undrawn, 
 Though every hill a sepulchre should yawn — - 
 Say, have not ye one line for those, 
 
 One brother-line to spare, 
 Who rose but as your fathers rose, 
 And dared as ye would dare ? 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Alas ! for them — their day is o'er, 
 Their fires are out from hill and shore ; 
 No more for them the wild deer bounds ; 
 The plough is on their hunting-grounds ; 
 The pale man's axe rings through their woods, 
 The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods. 
 
 Their pleasant springs are dry ; 
 Their children — look ! by power oppressed, 
 Beyond the mountains of the west. 
 
 Their children go — to die. 
 
 XX. 
 
 O doubly lost ! Oblivion's shadows close 
 Around their triumphs and their woes. 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 On other realms, whose suns have set, 
 
 Reflected radiance lingers yet ; 
 
 There sage and bard have shed a light 
 
 That never shall go down in night ; 
 
 There time-crowned columns stand on high, 
 
 To tell of them who cannot die ; 
 
 Even we, who then were nothing, kneel 
 In homage there, and join earth's general peal. 
 But the doomed Indian leaves behind no trace, 
 To save his own, or serve another race ; 
 With his frail breath his power has passed away. 
 His deeds, his thoughts, are buried with his clay ; 
 
 Nor lofty pile, nor glowing page. 
 
 Shall link him to a future age. 
 
 Or give him with the past a rank ; 
 His heraldry is but a broken bow. 
 His history but a tale of wrong and woe. 
 
 His very name must be a blank. 
 
 XXL 
 
 Cold, with the beast he slew, he sleeps; 
 
 O'er him no filial spirit weeps ; 
 No crowds throng round, no anthem-notes ascend, 
 To bless his coming and embalm his end ; 
 
 61 
 
62 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 Even that he lived, is for his conqueror's tongue ; 
 By foes alone his death-song must be sung ; 
 No chronicles but theirs shall tell 
 
 His mournful doom to future times ; 
 May these upon his virtues dwell, 
 And in his fate forget his crimes. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Peace to the mingling dead ! 
 Beneath the turf we tread. 
 
 Chief, Pilgrim, Patriot, sleep — 
 All gone ! How changed ! and yet the same 
 As when Faith's herald-bark first came 
 In sorrow o'er the deep. 
 Still from his noonday height 
 The sun looks down in light ; 
 Along the trackless realms of space 
 The stars still run their midnight race ; 
 The same green valleys smile, the same rough shore 
 Still echoes to the same wild ocean's roar ; — 
 But where the bristling night-wolf sprang 
 
 Upon his startled prey. 
 Where the fierce Indian's war-cry rang 
 Through many a bloody fray, 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE. 63 
 
 And where the stern old Pilgrim prayed 
 
 In solitude and gloom, 
 Where the bold Patriot drew his blade, 
 And dared a patriot's doom — 
 Behold ! in Liberty's unclouded blaze 
 We lift our heads, a race of other days. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 All gone ! The wild beast's lair is trodden out ; 
 Proud temples stand in beauty there ; 
 Our children raise their merry shout 
 Where once the death-whoop vexed the air ; 
 
 The Pilgrim — seek yon ancient place of graves, 
 Beneath that chapel's holy shade ; 
 Ask, where the breeze the long grass waves, 
 Who, who within that spot are laid ; — 
 
 The Patriot — go, to Fame's proud mount repair ; 
 The tardy pile, slow rising there, 
 With tongueless eloquence shall tell 
 Of them who for their country fell. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 All gone ! 'T is ours, the goodly land ; 
 Look round — the heritage behold ; 
 Go forth — upon the mountains stand, 
 Then, if ye can, be cold. 
 
64 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 See living vales by living waters blessed, 
 
 Their wealth see earth's dark caverns yield, 
 See ocean roll, in glory dressed, 
 For all a treasure, and round all a shield. 
 Hark to the shouts of praise 
 Eejoicing millions raise ; 
 Gaze on the spires that rise 
 To point them to the skies, 
 Unfearing and unfeared ; 
 Then, if ye can, O then forget 
 To whom ye owe the sacred debt — 
 
 The Pilgrim race revered ! 
 The men who set Faith's burning lights 
 Upon these everlasting heights, 
 To guide their children through the years of time j 
 The men that glorious law who taught, 
 Unshrinking liberty of thought. 
 And roused the nations with the truth sublime. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Forget? No, never — ne'er shall die 
 Those names to memory dear ; 
 
 I read the promise in each eye 
 That beams upon me here. 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 Descendants of a twice-recorded race, 
 Long may ye here your lofty lineage grace ; 
 'T is not for you home's tender tie 
 To rend, and brave the waste of waves ; 
 'T is not for you to rouse and die, 
 Or yield and live a line of slaves : 
 The deeds of danger and of death are done ; 
 Upheld by inward power alone, 
 Unhonored by the world's loud tongue, 
 'T is yours to do imknown, 
 And then to die unsung. 
 To other days, to other men, belong 
 The penman's plaudit and the poet's song; 
 Enough for glory has been wrought ; 
 By you be humbler praises sought ; 
 In peace and truth life's journey run. 
 And keep unsullied what your fathers won. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Take then my prayer, ye dwellers of this spot — 
 Be yours a noiseless and a guiltless lot. 
 I plead not that ye bask 
 In the rank beams of vulgar fame ; 
 
 To light your steps I ask 
 A purer and a holier flame. 
 
 65 
 
66 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 No bloated growth I supplicate for you, 
 No pining multitude, no pampered few ; 
 'T is not alone to coffer gold, 
 Nor spreading borders to behold ; 
 'T is not fast swelling crowds to win, 
 The refuse-ranks of want and sin ; — 
 This be the kind decree : 
 Be ye by goodness crowned. 
 Revered, though not renowned; 
 Poor, if Heaven will, but free ! 
 Free from the tyrants of the hour, 
 The clans of wealth, the clans of power, 
 The coarse, cold scorners of their God ; 
 
 Free from the taint of sin, 
 
 The leprosy that feeds within. 
 
 And free, in mercy, from the bigot's rod. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 The sceptre's might, the crosier's pride, 
 
 Ye do not fear ; 
 No conquest blade, in life-blood dyed, 
 
 Drops terror here — 
 Let there not lurk a subtler snare. 
 For wisdom's footsteps to beware. 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE, 
 
 The shackle and the stake, 
 
 Our fathers fled ; 
 
 Ne'er may their children wake 
 A fouler wrath, a deeper dread : 
 Ne'er may the craft that fears the flesh to bind 
 Lock its hard fetters on the mind ; 
 
 Quenched be the fiercer flame 
 
 That kindles with a name ; 
 The Pilgrim's faith, the Pilgrim's zeal, 
 Let more than Pilgrim kindness seal ; 
 Be purity of life the test, 
 Leave to the heart, to Heaven, the rest. 
 
 XXVIIL 
 
 So, when our children turn the page, 
 To ask what triumphs marked our age, — 
 What we achieved to challenge praise. 
 Through the long line of future days, — 
 
 This let them read, and hence instruction draw : - 
 " Here were the many blessed. 
 Here found the virtues rest, 
 
 Faith linked with love, and liberty with law; 
 Here Industry to comfort led, 
 Her book of light here Learning spread ; 
 
 Here the warm heart of youth 
 Was wooed to Temperance and to Truth ; 
 
 67 
 
68 
 
 CENTENNIAL ODE. 
 
 Here hoary age was found, 
 By wisdom and by reverence crowned. 
 No great but guilty fame 
 Here kindled pride, that should have kindled shame ; 
 These chose the better, happier part, 
 That poured its sunlight o'er the heart ; 
 That crowned their homes with peace and health, 
 And weighed Heaven's smile beyond earth's wealth ; 
 
 Far from the thorny paths of strife 
 They stood, a living lesson to their race. 
 
 Rich in the charities of life, 
 Man in his strength, and Woman in her grace ; 
 In purity and love their pilgrim road they trod, 
 And when they served their neighbor, felt they served 
 their God." 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 This may not wake the poet's verse. 
 
 This souls of fire may ne'er rehearse 
 
 In crowd-delighting voice ; 
 
 Yet o'er the record shall the patriot bend, 
 
 His quiet praise the moralist shall lend, 
 
 And all the good rejoice. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 This be our story, then, in that far day, 
 When others come their kindred debt to pay. 
 
CENTENNIAL ODE. 69 
 
 In that far day ? — 0, what shall be, 
 In this dominion of the free, 
 When we and ours have rendered up our trust, 
 And men unborn shall tread above our dust ? 
 O, what shall be ? — He, He alone, 
 
 The dread response can make. 
 Who sitteth on the only throne 
 
 That time shall never shake ; 
 Before whose all-beholding eyes 
 Ages sweep on, and empires sink and rise. 
 Then let the song, to Him begun, 
 
 To Him in reverence end ; 
 Look doAvn in love. Eternal One, 
 
 And Thy good cause defend ! 
 Here, late and long, put forth Thy hand, 
 To guard and guide the Pilgrim's land ! 
 
ODE. 
 
 WRITTEN FOR THE FOURTH TRIENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE 
 MASSACHUSETTS CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION, 1818. 
 
 When, from the mitred churchman's power, 
 
 Pilgrims sought a land of rest, 
 Here proudly rose, in blissful hour, | 
 
 Freedom's empire in the west. 
 To Him who saved, the God most high. 
 
 Sweet Piety her altar raised ; 
 Invention came, with eagle eye. 
 
 And Science smiled where savage war-fires blazed. 
 
 Here, where the tawny Indian roved. 
 
 Tenant of a flowerless waste, 
 A magic power bright Genius proved, J 
 
 Forests bowed to Art and Taste. ^ 
 
 Toil swung the sledge with sturdy hand. 
 
 In chiseled grace fair domes arose ; 
 Improvement moved upon the land, ■ 
 
 And Freedom's Press saved all from Freedom's foes. | 
 
TRIENNIAL ODE. 71 
 
 Mechanic skill ! the tar by thee 
 
 Stems the wave, and mocks the gale ; 
 By thee the yeoman, blithe and free, 
 
 Plenty reaps from every vale. 
 Earth vainly hides her caverned ores ; 
 
 To thee the treasured hoard is given ; 
 And elements obey thy powers, 
 
 And Science grasps the quivering flash of heaven. 
 
 Nor yet alone in peaceful toil 
 
 Genius here shall be renowned ; 
 Should bold invasion tread the soil. 
 
 Art's firm sons shall rally round. 
 Great Archimedes on the foe 
 
 Drew burning vengeance from the sun ; 
 And they, at Franklin's name who glow, 
 
 Shall rouse at thine, immortal Washington ! 
 
 0, favored land ! the exile's rest. 
 
 Charity's long-hallowed seat ; 
 By science, worth, and valor blest, 
 
 All that 's good in thee shall meet. 
 " Be just, and fear not " ^ earth combined ; 
 
 The scale and blade, the test and doom, 
 Thy sons shall bear to all mankind. 
 
 And clustering glories round their names shall bloom. 
 
 * Motto of the Society. 
 
ART. 
 
 AN ODE WRITTEN FOR THE SIXTH TRIENNIAL FESTIVAL OF THE 
 MASSACHUSETTS CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION, 1824. 
 
 When, from the sacred garden driven, 
 
 Man fled before his Maker's wrath, 
 An angel left her place in heaven, 
 
 And crossed the wanderer's sunless path. 
 'T was Art ! bright Art ! new radiance broke 
 
 Where her light foot flew o'er the ground, 
 And thus with seraph voice she spoke — 
 
 "The Curse a Blessing shall be found." 
 
 She led him through the trackless wild. 
 
 Where noontide sunbeam never blazed ; 
 The thistle shrunk, the harvest smiled, 
 
 And Nature gladdened as she gazed. 
 Earth's thousand tribes of living things, 
 
 At Art's command, to him are given ; 
 The village grows, the city springs, 
 
 And point their spires of faith to heaven. 
 
ART. 
 
 He rends the oak — and bids it ride, 
 
 To guard the shores its beauty graced ; 
 He smites the rock — upheaved in pride, 
 
 See towers of strength and domes of taste. 
 Earth's teeming caves their weakh reveal, 
 
 Fire bears his banner on the wave, 
 He bids the mortal poison heal, 
 
 And leaps triumphant o'er the grave. 
 
 He plucks the pearls that stud the deep. 
 
 Admiring Beauty's lap to fill; 
 He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep, 
 
 And mocks his own' Creator's skill. 
 With thoughts that swell his glowing soul, 
 
 He bids the ore illume the page. 
 And, proudly scorning Time's control, 
 
 Commerces with an unborn age. 
 
 In fields of air he writes his name, 
 
 And treads the chambers of the sky ; 
 He reads the stars, and grasps the flame 
 
 That quivers round the Throne on high. 
 In war renowned, in peace sublime. 
 
 He moves in greatness and in grace ; 
 His power, subduing space and time. 
 
 Links realm to realm, and race to race. 
 
 73 
 
FIFTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1826. 
 
 Fifty years have rolled away, 
 Since that high, heroic day, 
 When our fathers, in the fray. 
 
 Struck the conquering blow ! 
 Praise to them — the bold who spoke ; — 
 Praise to them — the brave who broke 
 Stern oppression's galling yoke, 
 
 Fifty years ago I 
 
 Pour the wine of sacrifice. 
 
 Let the grateful anthem rise, — 
 
 Shall we e'er resign the prize ? — 
 
 Never — never — no ! 
 Hearts and hands shall guard those rights. 
 Bought on Freedom's battle heights. 
 Where he fixed his signal lights. 
 
 Fifty years ago! 
 
FIFTY YEARS AGO. 75 
 
 Swear it ! — by the mighty dead, — 
 Those who counselled, those who led ; — 
 By the blood your fathers shed, 
 
 By your mothers' woe ; — 
 Swear it ! — by the living few, — 
 Those whose breasts were scarred for you, 
 When to freedom's ranks they flew. 
 
 Fifty years ago! 
 
 By the joys that cluster round, 
 By our vales with plenty crowned. 
 By our hill-tops — holy ground, 
 
 Kescued from the foe, — 
 Where of old the Indian strayed, 
 Where of old the Pilgrim prayed, 
 Where the patriot drew his blade, 
 
 Fifty years ago ! 
 
 Should again the war- trump peal, 
 There shall Indian firmness seal 
 Pilgrim faith and patriot zeal, 
 
 Prompt to strike the blow ; — 
 There shall valor's work be done ; 
 Like the sire shall be the son. 
 Where the fight was waged and won, 
 
 Fifty years ago! 
 
ODE. 
 
 FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1827. 
 
 To the Sages who spoke — to the Heroes who bled — 
 To the day, and the deed — strike the harp-strings of 
 glory ! 
 Let the song of the ransomed remember the dead, 
 And the tongue of the eloquent hallow the story. 
 O'er the bones of the bold 
 Be that story long told. 
 And on Fame's golden tablets their triumphs enrolled, 
 Who on Freedom's green hills Freedom's banner unfurled, 
 And the beacon-fire raised that gave light to the world. 
 
 They are gone — mighty men ! — and they sleep in their 
 fame ; 
 Shall we ever forget them ? — never ! — no, never ! — 
 Let our sons learn from us to embalm each great name. 
 And the anthem send down — "Independence for- 
 ever."^ 
 
 ♦The dying words of the venerable John Adams, whose decease was 
 on July 4. 
 
ODE. 77 
 
 Wake, wake, heart and tongue ! 
 
 Keep the theme ever young — 
 Let their deeds through* the long line of ages be sung, 
 Who on Freedom's green hills Freedom's banner unfurled, 
 And the beacon-fire raised that gave light to the world. 
 
I 
 
 SONG. 
 
 I 
 
 FOR A FESTIVAL IN FANEUIL HALL. Auld Lang Syne. 
 
 Fill, brothers, fill ! — the brightest pour - 
 To them, the great and good, 
 
 Who thronged this hall, in days of yore, 
 And firm for Freedom stood — 
 And firm, &c. 
 
 Not then the festive board v^ras spread, 
 Those gallant men to cheer ; 
 
 Not then its charm the wine-cup shed, 
 Like that which sparkles here — 
 Like that, &c. 
 
 From them went up no merry song. 
 When they this temple filled ; 
 
 But bold " rebellion " fired each tongue, 
 And " war" each bosom thrilled — 
 And war, &c. 
 
SONG. 79 
 
 'T was for a prouder deed they met, 
 That should their names adorn ; 
 
 They came a glorious feast to set 
 For ages yet unborn — 
 For ages, &c. 
 
 And nobly through their work they went, 
 
 In wisdom and in power. 
 And down to us the blessing sent 
 
 That crowns this happy hour — 
 That crowns, &c. 
 
 Then, brothers, fill ! — the brightest pour- 
 To them, the great and good. 
 
 Who round this hall, in days of yore. 
 For us and Freedom stood — 
 For us, &c. 
 
SONG. 
 
 WRITTEN FOR THE PARTING DINNER GIVEN TO LAFAYETTE BY 
 
 THE MASSACHUSETTS CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION. 
 
 Scots wha hoe. 
 
 Wake a deed of other days ; 
 Swell the song of lofty praise ; 
 Gratitude's bright goblet raise, — 
 
 Pledge to Lafayette ! — 
 Him, who left his own fair land. 
 By your fathers' sides to stand. 
 When Oppression's guilty brand 
 
 In their blood was wet : — 
 
 Him, who shared their hour of woe ; 
 Him, who dealt with them each blow, 
 Till young Freedom's beaten foe 
 
 Turned his back and fled. 
 Lo ! again behold him here ! 
 He, who came the sires to cheer, 
 Joins their sons the pile to rear 
 
 O'er the mighty dead. 
 
SONG. 81 
 
 That gray pile shall melt away, 
 Tomb and tablet shall decay, 
 Yet shall glory's deed and day 
 
 Never set in night. 
 Where your martyred heroes sleep. 
 Children's children long shall weep ; 
 There shall pilgrim warriors keep 
 
 Vigils, ever bright. 
 
 Sons of Art ! the table throng ; — 
 Swell your glad and grateful song ; 
 Let its echoes, loud and long. 
 
 Up to Heaven ascend ! 
 Never may your hearts forget 
 Freeman's duty — freeman's debt: 
 Fill the cup to Lafayette ; — 
 
 Pledge your fathers' friend I 
 
ODE. 
 
 FOR THE ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL OF THE WASHINGTON LIGHT 
 INFANTRY. — Adams and Liberty. 
 
 The bugle is hushed, and the war-blade is sheathed, 
 Whose flash in the sunbeam to triumph directed ; 
 The olive's green branch with the laurel is wreathed, 
 And Content tills the valley that Courage protected. 
 Go on, lovely Peace, 
 Bid the war-tempest cease. 
 Till the isles of the ocean thy kingdom increase, 
 And the ends of the earth swell thy chorus sublime — 
 " Sleep, red-armed Destroyer, the slumber of Time ! " 
 
 Round the festival board with full hearts we unite. 
 
 And pour to our fathers Fame's purest libation ; — 
 The brave ones who grappled the foe in the fight. 
 
 The bold ones who spoke and gave name to a nation ! 
 To the great and the good. 
 Who for Liberty stood, 
 And traced her proud charter in letters of blood ; — 
 Then raised their glad notes in the chorus sublime — 
 " Sleep, red-armed Destroyer, the slumber of Time ! " 
 
83 
 
 O Washington ! dearest and best of our race ! 
 
 Thy deeds through the night-cloud of ages shall lighten ! 
 Thy name on his banner the soldier shall trace, 
 
 To hallow his death, or his triumph to brighten ! — 
 Nor thee, Lafayette ! 
 Shall our anthem forget, 
 Whose arm hurled the bolt where the battle-clouds met ; 
 Then who joined with our sires in the chorus sublime — . 
 " Sleep, red-armed Destroyer, the slumber of Time ! " 
 
 Now the bumper-pledge drain — for ourselves let it flow ! 
 May no arm the bright links of our brotherhood sever ; 
 With a heart for each friend, and a blade for each foe, 
 Front face ! to the board and the battle forever ! 
 In mirth and in might, 
 Fellow-soldiers, unite — 
 Hand to hand at the feast, hand to hand in the fight ! 
 In freedom and peace swell the chorus sublime — 
 " Sleep, Spoiler of nations, the slumber of Time ! " 
 
PRIZE PROLOGUE. 
 
 RECITED AT THE OPENING OF THE PARK THEATRE, NEW YORK, 
 
 1821. I 
 
 i 
 
 When mitred Zeal, in wild, unholy days. 
 Bared his red arm, and bade the fagot blaze, 
 Our patriot sires the pilgrim sail unfurled, 
 And Freedom pointed to a rival world. 
 
 Where prowled the wolT, and where the hunter roved, 
 Faith raised her altars to the God she loved ; 
 Toil, linked with Art, explored each savage wild. 
 The lofty forest bowed, the desert smiled ; 
 The startled Indian o'er the mountains flew. 
 The wigwam vanished, and the village grew ; 
 Taste reared her domes, fair Science spread her page. 
 And Wit and Genius gathered round the Stage ! 
 
 The Stage ! where Fancy sits, creative queen, 
 And waves her sceptre o'er life's mimic scene ; 
 Where young-eyed Wonder comes to feast his sight, 
 And quaff instruction while he drinks delight. — 
 
PRIZE PROLOGUE. 85 
 
 The Stage ! — that threads each labyrinth of the soul, 
 Wakes laughter's peal, and bids the tear-drop roll ; 
 That hoots at Folly, mocks proud Fashion's slave, 
 Uncloaks the hypocrite, and brands the knave. 
 
 The child of Genius, catering for the Stage, 
 Rifles the wealth of every clime and age. 
 He speaks ! the sepulchre resigns its prey, 
 And crimson life runs through the sleeping clay. 
 The "wave, the gibbet, and the battle-field, 
 At his command, their festering tenants yield. 
 Pale, bleeding Love comes weeping from the tomb, 
 That kindred softness may bewail her doom ; 
 Murder's dry bones, reclothed, desert the dust, 
 That after times may own his sentence just ; 
 Forgotten Wisdom, freed from death's embrace. 
 Reads awful lessons to another race ; 
 And the mad tyrant of some ancient shore 
 Here warns a world that he can curse no more. 
 
 May this fair dome, in classic beauty reared, 
 By Worth be honored, and by Vice be feared ; 
 May chastened Wit here bend to Virtue's cause, 
 Reflect her image, and repeat her laws ; 
 And Guilt, that slumbers o'er the sacred page, 
 Hate his own likeness, shadowed from the Stage ! 
 
86 PRIZE PROLOGUE. 
 
 Here let the Guardian of the Drama sit, 
 In righteous judgment o'er the realms of wit. 
 Not his the shame, with servile pen to wait 
 On private friendship, or on private hate ; 
 To flatter fools, or Satire's javelin dart. 
 Tipped with a lie, at proud Ambition's heart : 
 His be the nobler task to herald forth 
 Young, blushing Merit, and neglected Worth ; 
 To brand the page where Goodness finds a sneer, 
 And lash the wretch that breathes the treason here ! 
 
 Here shall bright Genius wing his eagle flight, 
 Rich dew-drops shaking from his plumes o( light, 
 Till high in mental worlds, from vulgar ken 
 He soars, the wonder and the pride of men. 
 Cold Censure here to decent Mirth shall bow. 
 And Bigotry unbend his monldsh brow. 
 Here Toil shall pause, his ponderous sledge thrown by, 
 And Beauty bless each strain with melting eye ; 
 Grief, too, in fiction lost, shall cease to weep. 
 And all the world's rude cares be laid to sleep. 
 Each polished scene shall Taste and Truth approve, 
 And the Stage triumph in the people's love. 
 
PRIZE PROLOGUE. 
 
 RECITED AT THE OPENING OF THE NEW PHILADELPHIA 
 THEATRE, IS22. 
 
 When Learning slumbered in the convent's shade, 
 And holy craft the groping nations swayed, 
 By dulness banned, the Muses wandered long, 
 Each lyre neglected, and forgot each song ; 
 Till Heaven's bright halo wreathed the Drama's dome. 
 And great Apollo called the pilgrims home. 
 Then their glad harps, that charmed old Greece, they 
 
 swept, 
 Their altars thronged, and Joy's high Sabbath kept. 
 Young Genius there his glorious banners reared. 
 To float forever loved, forever feared. 
 The cowl's device, the cloister's legend known, 
 Old Superstition tumbled from his throne ; 
 Back to his cell the king of gloom retired. 
 The buskin triumphed, and the world admired I 
 
88 
 
 PRIZE PROLOGUE. 
 
 Since that proud hour, through each unfettered age, 
 The sons of light have clustered round the Stage. 
 From Fiction's realms her richest spoils they bring, 
 And Pleasure's walls with Rapture's echoes ring. 
 Here hermit Wisdom lays his mantle down, 
 To win with smiles the heart that fears his frown ; 
 In Mirth's gay robe he talks to wondering youth, 
 And Grandeur listens to the stranger, Truth. 
 Beauty, with bounding heart and tingling ear. 
 Melts at the tale to Love and Feeling dear. 
 Their sacred bowers the sons of Learning quit, 
 To rove with Fancy, and to feast with Wit. 
 All come to gaze, the valiant and the vain. 
 Virtue's bright troop, and Fashion's glittering train ; 
 Here Labor rests, pale Grief forgets her woe, 
 And Vice, that prints his slime on all below, 
 Even Vice looks on ! — For this the Stage was reared, 
 To scourge the fiend, so scorned and yet so feared. 
 The halls of judgment, as the moral school. 
 His foot defiles, the bronzed and reckless fool ; 
 God's lovely temple shall behold him there, 
 With eye upturned, and aspect false as fair ; 
 Even at the altar's very horns he stands, 
 And breaks and blesses with polluted hands. 
 
PRIZE PROLOGUE. b9 
 
 Then hither let the unblushing villain roam ; 
 Satire shall knot its whip and strike it home. 
 The Stage one groan from his dark soul shall draw, 
 That mocks religion, and that laughs at law ! 
 
 To grace the Stage, the bard's careering mind 
 Seeks other worlds, and leaves his own behind : 
 He lures from air its bright, unprisoned forms, 
 Breaks through the tomb, and Death's dull region storms. 
 O'er ruined realms he pours creative day, 
 And slumbering kings his mighty voice obey. 
 From its damp shroud the long-laid spirit walks. 
 And round the murderer's bed in vengeance stalks. 
 Poor maniac Beauty brings her cypress wreath. 
 Her smile a moonbeam o'er a blasted heath ; 
 Round some cold grave she comes, sweet flowers to 
 
 strew, 
 And, lost to Reason, still to Love is true. 
 Hate shuts his soul when dove-eyed Mercy pleads ; 
 Power lifts the axe, and Truth's bold servant bleeds; 
 Remorse drops anguish from his burning eyes. 
 Feels hell's eternal worm, and, shuddering, dies ; 
 War's trophied minion, too, forsakes the dust. 
 Grasps his worn shield, and waves his sword of rust, 
 
90 
 
 PRIZE PROLOGUE. 
 
 Springs to the slaughter at the trumpet's call, 
 Again to conquer, or again to fall. 
 
 With heads to censure, yet with souls to feel, 
 Friends of the Stage ! receive our frank appeal. 
 No suppliant lay we frame ; acquit your trust ; 
 The Drama guard ; be gentle, but be just ! 
 Within her courts, unbribed, unslumbering, stand : 
 Scourge lawless Wit, and leaden Dulness brand ; 
 Lash pert Pretence, but bashful Merit spare. 
 His firstlings hail, and speak the trembler fair ; 
 Yet shall he cast his cloud, and proudly claim 
 The loftiest station and the brightest fame. 
 So from his perch, through seas of golden light. 
 Our mountain eagle takes his glorious flight ; 
 To heaven the monarch-bird exulting springs. 
 And shakes the night-fog from his mighty wings. 
 Bards all our own shall yet enchant their age, 
 And pour redeeming splendor o'er the Stage. 
 For them, for you. Truth hoards a nobler theme 
 Than ever blessed young Fancy's sweetest dream. 
 Bold hearts shall kindle, and bright eyes shall gaze, 
 When Genius wakes the tale of other days, 
 Sheds life's own lustre o'er each holy deed, 
 Of Him who planted, and of Him who freed. 
 
PRIZE PROLOGUE. 91 
 
 And now, fair pile, thou chaste and glorious shrine, 
 Our fondest wish, our warmest smile, be thine ; 
 The home of Genius and the court of Taste, 
 In beauty raised, be thou by beauty graced. 
 Within thy walls may Wit's adorers throng, 
 To drink the magic of the poet's song ; 
 Within thy walls may youth and goodness draw 
 From every scene a lecture or a law. 
 So bright the fane, be priest and offering pure. 
 And friends shall bless, and bigot foes endure ; 
 Long, long be spared to echo truths sublime, 
 And lift thy pillars through the storms of Time. 
 
PRIZE ADDRESS. 
 
 SPOKEN AT THE OPENING OF THE SALEM THEATRE, 1828. 
 
 To call past ages from the sleep of time, 
 To rouse the dwellers of each voiceless clime, 
 And bid them stand as once on Earth they stood. 
 To shake the guilty, and to charm the good ; — 
 
 To catch the wonders of the present hour, 
 New grace to fiction give, to truth new power. 
 With mirth to cheer, with grief to melt the soul, 
 And hold each passion in sublime control ; — 
 
 For these the Drama rose in ancient days. 
 And taught her bards undying strains to raise ; 
 Bade them unlock the treasures of the mind, 
 And spread a new creation to mankind. 
 
 'T was glorious all ! the Muses blessed the hour. 
 And poured their sweetest songs in dome and bower ; 
 But night at length "came down" — the night of doom, 
 That wrapped Earth's brightest realm in starless gloom. 
 
PRIZE ADDRESS. 93 
 
 Round Wisdom's haunts the raven shadows swept, 
 Art's lovely daughters veiled their heads, and wept ; 
 From their cold groves the Drama's minstrels fled, 
 And dulness brooded o'er the living dead. 
 
 So tuneless ages rolled — when, lo ! once more 
 Redeeming Genius sought a happier shore. 
 Like Mercy's dove for one green spot he flew. 
 Nor paused till Ocean's empress caught his view ; 
 There his bold eye beheld the promised rest, 
 And Shakspeare's Albion wooed him to her breast. 
 
 Then sang The Bard ! in greatness and in grace, 
 The matchless one — the anointed of his race. 
 At his command once more the Drama rose. 
 To shield fair Virtue, and to shame her foes. 
 Time bowed before him, Death resigned his trust, 
 Kingdoms came back, and monarchs left the dust : 
 All, at his bidding, burst Oblivion's grave. 
 To warn, to win, to chasten, and to save. 
 
 Proud was the lyre beneath its master's hand, 
 And rapt the listeners of our father-land. 
 Soon from the Old the New World caught the strain, 
 And hailed on Freedom's shores the Drama's reign ; 
 
94 PRIZE ADDRESS, 
 
 From spot to spot the inspiration flew, 
 
 And reared at last this vaulted dome — for you ! 
 
 For you, ye glad-eyed throngs, who cluster round 
 Where a new home the Drama's sons have found, — 
 For you, for you and yours, our fane is dressed — 
 By you and yours, may our rites be blessed ! 
 Pure be the verse that lingers on each tongue, 
 Meet for the wise, the beauteous and the young ; 
 So parent love shall smile upon the place, 
 And gather here the fond ones of his race ; 
 So all, in pleasure lapped, or lost in woe. 
 Shall gaze unfearing, and untainted go. 
 
 Come, then, to us and to yourselves be just. 
 And bid the Stage fulfil its glorious trust. 
 To this fair temple as your feet ye turn, 
 Let no strange fire to shame its altar burn : 
 On you the cherub voice of goodness calls ; 
 Rise up her champions, and protect these walls ! 
 So shall their echoes wake and warm each heart, 
 All ill subdue, and all that 's good impart ; — 
 So shall they stand, to holy Virtue dear. 
 Above all hatred, and above all fear. 
 
PRIZE ADDRESS. 
 
 RECITED AT THE OPENING OF THE PHILADELPHIA THEATRE 
 
 1828. 
 
 It came from Heaven ! the realms of time to tread, 
 And summon forth the long-forgotten dead ; 
 Their deeds of guilt and goodness to unfold, 
 The garnered glories of the days of old. 
 
 It came from Heaven ! to soar where Fancy reigns, 
 And rouse the phantoms of her bright domains ; 
 Their wildest haunts, their loftiest heights explore, 
 And lead man on, to wonder and adore. 
 
 Genius ! these gifts are thine ; 't is thine, sweet power 
 With these to soothe and sway life's shifting hour ; 
 To nerve the soul, to wake young Virtue's glow. 
 And bid the tears of grief and rapture flow ; 
 'T is thine, with these, to rule each clime and age. 
 Mankind thy subjects, and thy throne the Stage ! 
 
96 PHILADELPHIA ADDRESS. 
 
 The pencil's boast, the chisel's skill, decay, 
 And Wisdom's noblest record fades away ; 
 But here, untouched by Time's devouring tooth, 
 The pictured group puts on immortal youth ; 
 Here the bold deed, that in the marble spoke, 
 Again revives, new plaudits to provoke ; 
 And the proud truth, that graced the mouldering page, 
 Still pleads triumphant, echoed from the Stage. 
 
 Here gathering round in long-departed days, 
 Earth's master minstrels poured their deathless lays ; 
 Descending down, through each descending race, 
 Still came the gifted to adorn the place ; 
 With Love to soften, and with Wit to charm. 
 To mock with Folly, and with Guilt alarm ; 
 While o'er each scene, to sacred feeling dear, 
 Taste smiled applause, and Beauty dropped a tear. 
 
 Long, long for these may this fair temple stand, 
 The pride and promise of our happier land. 
 Our happier land ! — forever live that claim 
 On Virtue's rolls, as in the blast of Fame ; 
 So rival shores, while, saddening, they behold 
 Our young orb rising to eclipse the old. 
 May with our greatness find our goodness page, 
 To mark indeed a new, a better age. 
 
PHILADELPHIA ADDRESS. 97 
 
 Within these walls, in some inspiring day, 
 May native bards our native deeds portray. 
 Shall foreign legends still go brightening down. 
 And cold Oblivion's night-cloud veil our own ? 
 Look round the spot, to faith and firmness dear ; 
 Finds no rapt spirit fit incitement here ? 
 Here, where the Indian roved in nature's pride, 
 And built his fires, and loved, and warred, and died ? 
 Here, where his holy fane the pilgrim reared, 
 And gave an empire to the God he feared ? 
 Here, for that empire where the patriot bled ? 
 Here, where the foul invader turned and fled ? 
 These are the themes to stir your rising youth, 
 Their fathers' valor, and their fathers' truth ; 
 These be the themes to grace this swelling dome ; 
 In Pleasure's courts let Freedom find a home ; 
 While Virtue sits all radiant in her light. 
 The guiding priestess of each glorious rite. 
 
 And O, when ye, who now enraptured gaze, 
 Shall yield to other throngs and other days, 
 Still may this altar beam its purest fires. 
 To charm the children as they charmed the sires ! 
 
PRIZE ADDRESS. 
 
 RECITED AT THE OPENING OF THE PORTSMOUTH THEATRE, 1830 
 
 'TwAS Fancy's hour — uplifted on the blast, 
 O'er lands and seas my chartered spirit passed, 
 Till, all in Eden's ancient beauty dressed, 
 A fair, strange clime my wondering vision blessed. 
 
 There, as I gazed, in nature's strength and grace 
 Roamed the red warriors of a nameless race ; 
 Swift flew their barks along the rocky shore. 
 Bright blazed their fires, loud rose their battle roar ; 
 Rude love and ruder hate controlled the spot, 
 Tribes conquered tribes, and were in turn forgot. 
 
 Years seemed to roll — then all went fading by, 
 And where they stood, beneath the same blue sky, 
 Lo ! a new race — an iron-hearted band. 
 The banished wanderers from a distant land ; 
 These sweet Religion's sacred flag unfurled, 
 And bade it float to bless another world. 
 
PORTSMOUTH ADDRESS. 99 
 
 Soon from each startled vale the axe rang loud, 
 And the old monarchs of the forest bowed ; 
 Art built her domes in Nature's silent bowers, 
 And peace and gladness crowned the Pilgrim's hours. 
 
 So ages passed — till, at Oppression's call, 
 Bold legions thronged, their brethren to enthrall; 
 Then from each cliff the cry to battle rang, 
 Then from each hill to arms the patriot sprang; 
 Then shouts and shrieks rolled mingling to the sky, 
 As wronged and wrongers met, and met to die. 
 
 I looked again — the avenging deed was done ; 
 Freedom's undaunted host the fight had won ; 
 War's withering demon stayed his bloody hand, 
 And one glad anthem shook the ransomed land. 
 
 Behold the vision's bright fulfilment here ! 
 This is the clime to Faith and Valor dear ; 
 Among these hills the red man's arrow flew. 
 Along these shores he steered his light canoe ; 
 These are the vales the exiled Christian trod. 
 Here rose his altar to the living God ; 
 'T was here, for you, his blood the patriot gave ; 
 Here Freedom found a home, and Freedom's foes a grave. 
 
100 
 
 PORTSMOUTH ADDRESS. 
 
 Here, too, as bland Refinement marked the age, 
 Immortal Genius spoke, and reared the Stage. 
 See, where, to work their master's high behest, 
 His vassals throng, and thrill the human breast; — 
 Love, cherub watcher of the murmuring shade ; 
 Dark, scowling Hate ; Ambition, with his blade ; 
 Envy, coarse churl ; Joy, chanting to the gale ; 
 Pale Horror, quaking at his own wild tale ; 
 Hope, that in every cloud a rainbow sees, 
 And coward Fear, that starts at every breeze ; 
 Ruthless Revenge; Remorse, with smothered sigh; 
 Anger uncurbed, and Grief, with streaming eye ; — 
 All, all bring offerings at their lord's command. 
 To cheer, and charm, and humanize the land. 
 
 0, ne'er this place while youth and beauty tread. 
 May Shame demand one sacred tear they shed ; 
 Scorn track the footpath of each traitor here. 
 Who dares defile what Genius dared to rear. 
 Their kindred powers let Wit and Mirth unite, 
 To wake and warm the hearts they would delight. 
 Thus shall the good and wise approve the strain. 
 And all the graces bless the Drama's reign. 
 
DEDICATION HYMN. 
 
 God of wisdom, God of might, 
 
 Father ! dearest name of all, 
 Bov thy throne and bless our rite ; 
 
 'T is thy children on Thee call. 
 Glorious One ! look down from heaven, 
 
 Warm each heart and wake each vow ; 
 Unto Thee this house is given ; 
 
 With thy presence fill it now. 
 
 Fill it now ! on every soul 
 
 Shed the incense of thy grace, 
 While our anthem-echoes roll 
 
 Round the consecrated place ; 
 While thy holy page we read. 
 
 While the prayers Thou lov'st ascend, 
 While thy cause thy servants plead, — 
 
 Fill this house, our God, our friend. 
 
102 DEDICATION HYMN. 
 
 Fill it now — O, jBll it long ! 
 
 So, when death shall call us home, 
 Still to Thee, in many a throng, 
 
 May our children's children come. 
 Bless them, Father, long and late. 
 
 Blot their sins, their sorrows dry ; 
 Make this place to them the gate 
 
 Leading to thy courts on high. 
 
 There, when time shall be no more, 
 
 When the feuds of earth are past, 
 May the tribes of every shore 
 
 Congregate in peace at last ! 
 Then to Thee, thou One all-wise, 
 
 Shall the gathered millions sing, 
 Till the arches of the skies 
 
 With their hallelujahs ring. 
 
ORDINATION HYMN. 
 
 Our fathers, Lord, to seek a spot. 
 Where they might kneel to thee, 
 
 Their own fair heritage forgot, 
 And braved an unknown sea 
 
 Here found their pilgrim souls repose, 
 Where long the heathen roved, 
 
 And here their humble anthems rose, 
 To bless the Power they loved. 
 
 They sleep in dust — but where they trod, 
 
 A feeble, fainting band, 
 Glad millions catch the strain, O God, 
 
 And sound it through the land. 
 
 Come, Lord, to this new temple now. 
 
 Thy servant here behold ; 
 In thy dread name he breathes his vow. 
 
 To o-uard this little fold. 
 
104 
 
 ORDINATION HYMN. 
 
 Long may he stand thy herald here, 
 
 Thy lessons to impart ; 
 From every eye to wipe the tear, 
 
 The stain from every heart ; — 
 
 In paths of peace to bid them tread, 
 
 Where no vain feuds arise, 
 And from his life a lustre shed, 
 
 To light them to the skies. 
 
 So, when the last, long night shall go, 
 The last, glad morning break. 
 
 When all that walked in truth below 
 In joy above shall wake, — • 
 
 There may thy servant, Lord, be found, 
 
 The chosen of thy Son, 
 And hear from him the glorious sound, 
 
 " Well done, beloved one ! " 
 
INSTALLATION HYMN. 
 
 Thou lofty One ! whose name is Love, 
 Whose praise all nations swell, — 
 
 Bend from thy glorious throne above, 
 And in this temple dwell. 
 
 Father, 't is thine — this sacred hour, 
 
 Thine let its spirit be ; 
 And while each tongue proclaims thy powerj 
 
 turn each heart to thee. 
 
 Bless him, thy servant — bid him here 
 
 Thy faithful shepherd stand. 
 To fold for thee, through many a year, ■ 
 
 This little, gathering band. 
 
 Bless him with grace their steps to lead, 
 
 Where no dark tests divide. 
 To make the name of Christ their creed. 
 
 His life and law their guide. 
 
106 INSTALLATION HYIMN. 
 
 Bless theniy thy children — them and theirs, 
 
 In all their ways below ; 
 Be with them, Father, in their prayers. 
 
 And with them in their woe. 
 
 Be with them when they come to die, 
 And make the summons blest ; 
 
 Then, in a better world on high. 
 Receive them to thy rest. 
 
CHILDREN'S HYMN 
 
 Thou ! at whose dread name we bend, 
 To whom our purest vows we pay, 
 
 God over all ! in love descend, 
 And bless the labors of this day. 
 
 Our fathers here, a pilgrim band, 
 Fixed the proud empire of the free ; 
 
 Art moved in gladness o'er the land, 
 And Faith her altars reared to thee. 
 
 Here, too, to guard, through every age, 
 The sacred rights their valor won. 
 
 They bade Instruction spread her page. 
 And send down truth from sire to son. 
 
 Here, still, through all succeeding time. 
 
 Their stores may Worth and Wisdom bring, 
 
 And still the anthem-note sublime 
 To thee from children's children ring. 
 
THE FAMILY MEETING.* 
 
 We are all here ! 
 
 Father, mother, 
 
 Sister, brother. 
 All who hold each other dear. 
 Each chair is filled — we 're all at home ; 
 To-night let no cold stranger come ; 
 It is not often thus around 
 Our old familiar hearth we 're found. 
 Bless, then, the meeting and the spot ; 
 For once be every care forgot ; 
 Let gentle Peace assert her power, 
 And kind Affection rule the hour ; 
 
 We 're all — all here. 
 
 We 're not all here ! 
 Some are away — the dead ones dear, 
 
 * These lines were written on occasion of the accidental meeting of 
 all the surviving members of a family, the father and mother of which, 
 one eighty-two, the other eighty years old, have lived in the same 
 house fifty-three years. 
 
THE FAMILY MEETING. 109 
 
 Who thronged with us this ancient hearth, 
 And gave the hour to guiltless mirth. 
 Fate, with a stern, relentless hand. 
 Looked in and thinned our little band ; 
 Some like a night-flash passed away, 
 And some sank, lingering, day by day ; 
 The quiet graveyard — some lie there — 
 And cruel Ocean has his share — 
 We 're not all here. 
 
 We are all here ! 
 Even they — the dead — though dead, so dear. 
 Fond Memory, to her duty true, 
 Brings back their faded forms to view. 
 How life-like, through the mist of years, 
 Each well-remembered face appears ! 
 We see them as in times long past ; 
 From each to each kind looks are cast ; 
 We hear their words, their smiles behold. 
 They 're round us as they were of old — 
 
 We are all here. 
 
 We are all here ! 
 Father, mother. 
 Sister, brother, 
 You that I love with love so dear. 
 
110 THE FAMILY MEETING. 
 
 This may not long of us be said ; 
 Soon must we join the gathered dead ; 
 And by the hearth we now sit round 
 Some other circle will be found. 
 O, then, that wisdom may we know, 
 Which yields a life of peace below ! 
 So, in the world to follow this, 
 May each repeat, in words of bliss, 
 We *re all — all luere ! 
 
LINES ON THE DEATH OF M. S. C 
 
 1 KNEW that we must part — day after day, 
 I saw. the dread Destroyer win his way ; 
 That hollow cough first rang the fatal knell, 
 As on my ear its prophet-warning fell ; 
 Feeble and slow thy once light footstep grew, 
 Thy wasting cheek put on death's pallid hue. 
 Thy thin, hot hand to mine more weakly clung. 
 Each sweet "Good-night" fell fainter from thy tongue ; 
 I knev7 that we must part — no power could save 
 Thy quiet goodness from an early grave ; 
 Those eyes so dull, though kind each glance they cast, 
 Looking a sister's fondness to the last ; 
 Thy lips so pale, that gently pressed my cheek. 
 Thy voice — alas ! thou couldst but try to speak ; — 
 All told thy doom ; I felt it at my heart, 
 The shaft had struck — I knew that we must part. 
 
 And we have parted, Mary — thou art gone ! 
 Gone in thine innocence, meek, suffering one. 
 
112 ON THE DEATH OF M. S. C. 
 
 Thy weary spirit breathed itself to sleep 
 So peacefully, it seemed a sin to weep, 
 In those fond watchers who around thee stood. 
 And felt, even then, that God, even then, was good. 
 Like stars that struggle through the clouds of night, 
 Thine eyes one moment caught a glorious light. 
 As if to thee, in that dread hour, 't were given 
 To know on earth what faith believes of heaven ; 
 Then like tired breezes didst thou sink to rest. 
 Nor one, one pang the awful change confessed. 
 Death stole in softness o'er that lovely face. 
 And touched each feature with a new-born grace ; 
 On cheek and brow unearthly beauty lay. 
 And told that life's poor cares had passed away. 
 In my last hour be Heaven so kind to me ! 
 I ask no more than this — to die like thee. 
 
 But we have parted, Mary — thou art dead ! 
 On its last resting-place I laid thy head. 
 Then by thy coffin-side knelt down, and took 
 A brother's farewell kiss and farewell look : 
 Those marble lips no kindred kiss returned ; 
 From those veiled orbs no glance responsive burned ; 
 Ah ! then I felt that thou hadst passed away, 
 That the sweet face I gazed on was but clay ; 
 
ON THE DEATH OF M. S. C. 113 
 
 And then came Memory, with her busy throng 
 Of tender images, forgotten long ; 
 Years hurried back, and as they swiftly rolled, 
 I saw thee, heard thee, as in days of old ; 
 Sad and more sad each sacred feeling grew, 
 Manhood was moved, and Sorrow claimed her due ; 
 Thick, thick and fast, the burning tear-drops started ; 
 I turned away — and felt that we had parted. 
 
 But not forever — in the silent tomb, 
 Where thou art laid, thy kindred shall find room ; 
 A little while, a few short years of pain. 
 And, one by one, we '11 come to thee again ; 
 The kind old father shall seek out the place. 
 And rest with thee, the youngest of his race ; 
 The dear, dear mother, bent with age and grief. 
 Shall lay her head by thine, in sweet relief ; 
 Sister and brother, and that faithful friend. 
 True from the first, and tender to the end, — 
 All, all, in His good time, who placed us here, 
 To live, to love, to die and disappear, 
 Shall come and make their quiet bed with thee, 
 Beneath the shadow of that spreading tree ; 
 With thee to sleep through death's long, dreamless night, 
 With thee rise up and bless the morning light. 
 
"LOOK ON THIS PICTURE. 
 
 O, IT is life ! departed days 
 Fling back their brightness while I gaze ; 
 'T is Emma's self — this brow so fair, 
 Half curtained in this glossy hair, 
 These eyes, the very home of love, 
 The dark twin arches traced above, 
 These red-ripe lips that almost speak. 
 The fainter blush of this pure cheek, 
 The rose and lily's beauteous strife — 
 It is — ah no ! — 't is all but life. 
 
 'T is all hut life — art could not save 
 Thy graces, Emma, from the grave ; 
 Thy cheek is pale, thy smile is past. 
 Thy love-lit eyes have looked their last ; 
 Mouldering beneath the coffin's lid, 
 All we adored of thee is hid ; 
 Thy heart, where goodness loved to dwell. 
 Is throbless in the narrow cell ; 
 
LOOK ON THIS PICTURE. 115 
 
 Thy gentle voice shall charm no more ; 
 Its last, last, joyful note is o'er. 
 
 Oft, oft, indeed, it hath been sung, 
 The requiem of the fair and young ; 
 The theme is old, alas ! how old, 
 Of grief that will not be controlled. 
 Of sighs that speak a father's woe, 
 •Of pangs that none but mothers know, 
 Of friendship with its bursting heart. 
 Doomed from the idol-one to part — 
 Still its sad debt must feeling pay, 
 Till feeling, too, shall pass away. 
 
 O say, why age, and grief, and pain, 
 Shall long to go, but long in vain ; 
 Why vice is left to mock at time. 
 And, gray in years, grow gray in crime ; 
 While youth, that every eye makes glad, 
 And beauty, all in radiance clad. 
 And goodness, cheering every heart, 
 Come, but come only to depart ; 
 Sunbeams, to cheer life's wintry day, 
 Sunbeams, to flash, then fade away. 
 
116 LOOK ON THIS PICTURE. 
 
 'T is darkness all ! black banners wave 
 
 Round the cold borders of the grave ; 
 
 There when in agony we bend 
 
 O'er the fresh sod that hides a friend, 
 
 One only comfort then we know — 
 
 We, too, shall quit this world of woe ; 
 
 We,^too, shall find a quiet place 
 
 With the dear lost ones of our race ; 
 
 Our crumbling bones with theirs shall blend, 
 
 And life's sad story find an end. 
 
 And w this all — this mournful doom ? 
 Beams no glad light beyond the tomb ? 
 Mark where yon clouds in darkness ride ; 
 They do not quench the orb they hide ; 
 Still there it wheels — the tempest o'er, 
 In a bright sky to bum once more : 
 So, far above the clouds of time. 
 Faith can behold a world sublime — 
 There, when the storms of life are past, 
 The light beyond shall break at last. 
 
I SEE THEE STILL. 
 
 I rocked her ia the cradle, 
 And laid her in the tomb. She was the youngest. 
 What fireside circle hath not felt the charm 
 Of that sweet tie ? The youngest ne'er grow old. 
 The fond endearments of our earlier days 
 We keep alive in them, and when they die 
 Our youthful joys we bury with them. 
 
 I SEE thee still ; 
 Remembrance, faithful to her trust, 
 Calls thee in beauty from the dust ; 
 Thou comest in the morning light. 
 Thou 'rt with me through the gloomy night 
 In dreams I meet thee as of old ; 
 Then thy soft arms my neck enfold, 
 And thy sweet voice is in my ear ; 
 In every scene to memory dear, 
 
 I see thee still. 
 
118 I SEE THEE STILL. 
 
 I see thee still, 
 In every hallowed token round ; 
 This little ring thy finger bound, 
 This lock of hair thy forehead shaded, 
 This silken chain by thee was braided, 
 These flowers, all withered now, like thee, 
 Sweet Sister, thou didst cull for me ; 
 This book was thine ; here didst thou read ; 
 This picture — ah ! yes, here, indeed, 
 
 I see thee still. 
 
 I see thee still ; 
 Here was thy summer noon's retreat, 
 Here was thy favorite fireside seat ; 
 This was thy chamber — here, each day, 
 I sat and watched thy sad decay ; 
 Here, on this bed. thou last didst lie ; 
 Here, on this pillow — thou didst die. 
 Dark hour ! once more its woes unfold ; 
 As then I saw thee, pale and cold, 
 
 I see thee still. 
 
 I see thee still ; 
 Thou art not in the grave confined — 
 Death cannot claim the immortal Mind ; 
 
I SEE THEE STILL. 119 
 
 Let Earth close o'er its sacred trust, 
 But Goodness dies not in the dust ; 
 Thee, my Sister ! 't is not thee 
 Beneath the coffin's lid I see ; 
 Thou to a fairer land art gone ; 
 There, let me hope, my journey done, 
 To see thee still ! 
 
THE TOMB OF EMMELINE 
 
 Spirit of sadness ! gently breathe 
 
 Thy holiest spell around, 
 While Friendship trims its minstrel wreath, 
 For her who coldly rests beneath 
 
 This little, silent mound. 
 
 Daughters of goodness and of grace, 
 
 O come with me and weep ! 
 In this pale form Death's havoc trace. 
 Pillowed in life's dark resting-place. 
 
 Wrapped in the long, last sleep. 
 
 Come, and the lovely ruin view. 
 Cold in its kindred mould ; 
 Here throbbed a heart to feeling true. 
 And pure as Heaven's bright pearl of dew, 
 
 That gems the lily's fold. j 
 
THE TOMB OF EMMELINE. 121 
 
 Here beamed an eye of life and light ; 
 
 Here Health's rich crimson blushed : 
 That crimson fades before the blight, 
 That eye's sweet ray is quenched in night, 
 
 That heart's warm throb is hushed. 
 
 Dark is the dwelling of her sire, 
 
 His soul is veiled in gloom ; 
 No more his Emma sweeps the lyre ; 
 The tongue that kindled music's fire 
 
 Is silent in the tomb. 
 
 Grief on his wounded spirit preys ; 
 
 That grief, O " who can bear ? " 
 Each hallowed relic meets his gaze, 
 Of Emma's taste in brighter days, 
 
 But Emma is not there. 
 
 To thee, fond mother, mute with woe, 
 
 O, what shall Friendship say ? 
 It cannot bid thee grief forego, 
 Even while its own warm tear-drops flow, 
 
 For beauty cold in clay. 
 
 No, no ! away the tutored strain ; 
 It boasts an idle power : 
 
122 THE TOMB OF EMMELINE. 
 
 Like thee, I 've felt how poor, how vain 
 The kindest voice to soothe the pain 
 Of Sorrow's aching hour. 
 
 She, the beloved, has passed away. 
 
 Her blameless life is o'er ; 
 And grief must hold its mournful sway, 
 Till, in a fairer, happier day. 
 
 Friends meet to part no more. 
 
THE FUNERAL. 
 
 Against the wall a lovely picture hung, 
 
 So true to life, it wanted but a tongue ; 
 
 'T was a young girl's — the face, though passing fair, 
 
 Spoke more of goodness than of beauty there. 
 
 Years, years had vanished since the limner's power, 
 
 Stealing the sweetness of a passing hour, 
 
 Had stamped it there, a little circle's gaze. 
 
 The fond memorial of departed days. 
 
 Years, years had vanished — where was she whose face 
 Still from that canvass smiled in girlhood's grace ? 
 A coffin stood beside — I raised the lid — 
 Alas ! another picture there was hid ; 
 What hard, stern hand those pallid features drew ? 
 That cheek, that brow — so false, and yet so true ? 
 'T was she — the same — there in her maiden bloom, 
 Here cold in death, and waiting for the tomb. 
 
 A gray-haired man leaned o'er her where she slept, 
 Then to the living likeness turned — and wept; 
 
124 THE FUNERAL. 
 
 Children, fond, grieving children, looked within, 
 As if their love one answering look might win ; 
 Vain hope ! the eye was dark, and dull the ear 
 That never, till that hour, refused to hear ; 
 Hushed, even to them, forever hushed the tongue. 
 On whose sweet lessons they so long had hung. 
 
 Turn, mourners, from that face ; it tells of gloom ; 
 Around it draw the curtain of the tomb ; 
 Look on this breathing picture of her youth, 
 See where it smiles, in beauty and in truth ; 
 Like this she lives in her eternal home. 
 That bright abode where sorrow ne'er can come ; 
 There, in the likeness that her Maker drew, 
 Ye weeping ones, she waits to welcome you. 
 
CHARLES JAMES. 
 
 ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH. 
 
 Thou cam'st — what pleasures new and bright 
 
 Thy coming gave ! 
 Thou 'rt gone — and every young delight 
 ' Is laid in thy dark grave ! 
 
 There is a spot — 't is holy ground 
 
 To those who weep, 
 Where, hushed beneath each lonely mound, 
 Death's mouldering victims sleep. 
 
 Friend, sister, brother, there are laid, 
 
 From sorrows free ; 
 And there a clay-cold bed is made 
 
 For thee. Sweet Boy ! for thee. 
 
 Those little hands thou 'It raise no more 
 
 To meet my arms ; 
 Thou 'rt gone ! the bitter wind passed o'er. 
 And withered all thy charms. 
 
126 
 
 CHARLES JAMES. 
 
 Forever gone life's active spark, 
 
 The blood's warm thrill ; 
 Thy bright blue eyes are closed and dark, 
 Thy merry laugh is still. 
 
 I 've sate me by thy cradle's side, 
 
 And joyed to trace. 
 Blind fool ! with all a father's pride. 
 Thy future earthly race. 
 
 Fancy beheld thee good and wise, 
 
 Honor's proud theme. 
 
 Truth's sturdy prop, Fame's noble prize — 
 
 But 0, 't was all a dream. 
 
 There came an hour — with me 't will live 
 
 Till life depart ; 
 Time's vaunted skill no balm can give. 
 Remembrance wrings my heart. 
 
 'T was when I watched, with curdling blood, 
 
 Each stifled breath ; 
 *T was when on that pale forehead stood 
 The boding damp of death. 
 
CHARLES JAMES. 127 
 
 'T was when the tyrant's grasp, so cold, 
 
 Chilled life's young tide ; 
 'T was when those eyes that last glance rolled — 
 'T was when my poor boy died. 
 
 The sigh will rise, in manhood's spite, 
 
 The tears will roll ; 
 Grief round me draws her mental night. 
 And desolates my soul. 
 
 Yet let my stricken heart be taught 
 
 That thou 'rt in peace ; 
 That lesson, with true wisdom fraught, 
 Should bid each anguish cease. 
 
 If there 's a refuge-place at last, 
 
 For man V enjoy. 
 There may I meet, earth's trials past, 
 My Charles, my cherub boy ! 
 
DEATH or AN INFANT 
 
 One little bud adorned my bower, 
 
 And shed sweet fragrance round ; 
 It grew in beauty, hour by hour. 
 Till, ah ! the Spoiler came in power, 
 And crushed it to the ground. 
 
 Yet not forever in the dust 
 
 That beauteous bud shall lie ; 
 No ! — in the garden of the just, 
 Beneath God's glorious eye, we trust, 
 'T will bloom again on high. 
 
LINES TO A YOUNG MOTHER 
 
 Young mother ! what can feeble friendship say, 
 To soothe the anguish of this mournful day ? 
 They, they alone whose hearts like thine have bled, 
 Know how the living sorrow for the dead ; 
 Each" tutored voice, that seeks such grief to cheer. 
 Strikes cold upon the weeping parent's ear ; 
 I 've felt it all — alas ! too well I know 
 How vain all earthly power to hush thy woe ! 
 God cheer thee, childless mother ! 't is not given 
 For man to ward the blow that falls from Heaven. 
 
 I 've felt it all — as thou art feeling now ; 
 Like thee, with stricken heart and aching brow, 
 I 've sat and watched by dying Beauty's bed. 
 And burning tears of hopeless anguish shed ; 
 I 've gazed upon the sweet, but pallid face, 
 And vainly tried some comfort there to trace ; 
 I 've listened to the short and struggling breath ; 
 I 've seen the cherub eye grow dim in death ; 
 Like thee, 1 've veiled my head in speechless gloom, 
 And laid my first-bom in the silent tomb. 
 
EDWIN BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 Spare him one little week, Almighty Power ! 
 Yield to his father's house his dying hour ; 
 Once more, once more let them, who held him dear, 
 But see his face, his faltering voice but hear ; 
 We know, alas ! that he is marked for death, 
 But let his mother watch his parting breath ; 
 0, let him die at home ! 
 
 It could not be ! 
 At midnight, on a dark and stormy sea, 
 Far from his kindred and his native land, 
 His pangs unsoothed by tender woman's hand, 
 The patient victim in his cabin lay, 
 And meekly breathed his blameless life away. 
 
 " Wrapped in the raiment that it long must wear, 
 His body to the deck they slowly bear ; 
 
EDWIN BUCKINGHAM. 131 
 
 How eloquent, how awful in its power, 
 
 The silent lecture of death's sabbath-hour ! 
 
 One voice that silence breaks — the prayer is said, 
 
 And the last rite man pays to man is paid ; 
 
 The plashing waters mark his resting-place. 
 
 And fold him round in one long, cold embrace ; 
 
 Bright bubbles for a moment sparkle o'er, 
 
 Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more ; 
 
 Down, countless fathoms down, he sinks to sleep, 
 
 With aU the nameless shapes that haunt the deep." =^ 
 
 Kestf'Loved One, rest — beneath the billow's swell, 
 Where tongue ne'er spoke, where sunlight never fell ; 
 Rest — till the God who gave thee to the deep 
 Rouse thee, triumphant, from the long, long sleep. 
 And You, whose hearts are bleeding, who deplore 
 That ye must see the wanderer's face no more, 
 Weep — he was worthy of the purest grief ; 
 Weep — in such sorrow ye shall find relief ; 
 While o'er his doom the bitter tear ye shed, 
 Memory shall trace the virtues of the dead ; 
 These cannot die — for you, for him, they bloom, 
 And scatter fragrance round his ocean-tomb. 
 
 * Curiosity. 
 
MOUNT AUBURN. 
 
 " THERE WAS A GARDEN, AND IN THE GARDEN A NEW 
 SEPULCHRE." 
 
 What myriads throng, in proud array, 
 With songs of joy, and flags unfurled, 
 
 To consecrate the glorious day, "* 
 
 That gave a nation to the world ! 
 
 We raise no shout, no trumpet sound. 
 No banner to the breeze we spread ; 
 
 Children of clay ! bend humbly round ; 
 We plant a city to the dead. 
 
 For man a garden rose in bloom. 
 When yon glad sun began to burn ; 
 
 He fell — and heard the awful doom — 
 " Of dust thou art — to dust return ! " 
 
MOUNT AUBURN. 133 
 
 But He, in whose pure faith we come, 
 
 Who in a gloomier garden lay, 
 Assured us of a brighter home, 
 
 And rose, and led the glorious way. 
 
 His word we trust ! When life shall end, 
 Here be our long, long slumber passed ; 
 To thejirst garden's doom we bend, 
 . And bless the promise of the last. 
 
THE BROTHERS 
 
 We are but two — the others sleep 
 Through Death's untroubled night ; 
 
 We are but two — O, let us keep 
 The link that binds us bright ! 
 
 Heart leaps to heart — the sacred flood 
 That warms us is the same ; 
 
 That good old man — his honest blood 
 Alike we fondly claim. 
 
 We in one mother's arms were locked — 
 
 Long be her love repaid ; 
 In the same cradle we were rocked, 
 
 Round the same hearth we played. 
 
 Our boyish sports were all the same, 
 
 Each little joy and woe ; — 
 Let manhood keep alive the flame, 
 
 Lit up so long ago. 
 
THE BROTHERS. 135 
 
 We are but two — be that the band 
 
 To hold us till we die ; 
 Shoulder to shoulder let us stand, 
 
 Till side by side we lie, 
 
 10 
 
THE WINGED WORSHIPPERS. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO TWO SWALLOWS THAT FLEW INTO CHAUNCEY 
 PLACE CHURCH DURING DIVINE SERVICE. 
 
 Gay, guiltless pair, 
 What seek ye from the fields of heaven ? 
 
 Ye have no need of prayer. 
 Ye have no sins to be forgiven. 
 
 Why perch ye here, 
 Where mortals to their Maker bend ? 
 
 Can your pure spirits fear 
 The God ye never could offend ? 
 
 Ye never knew 
 The crimes for which we come to weep. 
 
 Penance is not for you. 
 Blessed wanderers of the upper deep. 
 
 To you 't is given 
 To wake sweet Nature's untaught lays ; 
 
 Beneath the arch of heaven 
 To chirp away a life of praise. 
 
THE WINGED WORSHIPPERS. 137 
 
 Then spread each wing, 
 Far, far above, o'er lakes and lands, 
 
 And join the choirs that sing 
 In yon blue dome not reared with hands. 
 
 Or, if ye stay, 
 To note the consecrated hour, 
 Teach me the airy way, 
 And let me try your envied power. 
 
 Above the crowd, 
 On upward wings could I but fly, 
 I 'd bathe in yon bright cloud, 
 And seek the stars that gem the sky. 
 
 'T were Heaven indeed 
 Through fields of trackless light to soar, 
 
 On Nature's charms to feed, 
 And Nature's own g'reat God adore. 
 
TO MY CIGAR. 
 
 Yes, social friend, I love thee well, 
 
 In learned doctors* spite ; 
 Thy clouds all other clouds dispel, 
 
 And lap me in delight. 
 
 By thee, they cry, with phizzes long, 
 
 My years are sooner passed ; 
 Well, take my answer, right or wrong, 
 
 They 're sweeter while they last. 
 
 And oft, mild friend, to me thou art 
 
 A monitor, though still ; 
 Thou speak'st a lesson to my heart 
 
 Beyond the preacher's skill. 
 
 Thou 'rt like the man of worth, who gives 
 
 To goodness every day. 
 The odor of whose virtue lives 
 
 When he has passed away. 
 
TO MY CIGAR. 
 
 When, in the lonely evening hour, 
 
 Attended but by thee, 
 O'er history's varied page I pore, 
 
 Man's fate in thine 1 see. 
 
 Oft as thy snowy column grows, 
 
 Then breaks and falls away, 
 I trace how mighty realms thus rose, 
 
 Thus tumbled to decay. 
 
 Awhile like thee the hero bums. 
 And smokes and fumes around, 
 
 And then, like thee, to ashes turns. 
 And mingles with the ground. 
 
 Life 's but a leaf adroitly rolled. 
 
 And time 's the wasting breath, 
 That late or early, we behold. 
 
 Gives all to dusty death. 
 
 From, beggar's frieze to monarch's robe. 
 One common doom is passed ; 
 
 Sweet Nature's works, the swelling globe, 
 Must all burn out at last. 
 
 139 
 
140 TO MY CIGAR. 
 
 And what is he who smokes thee now ? — 
 
 A little moving heap, 
 That soon like thee to fate must bow, 
 
 With thee in dust must sleep. 
 
 But though thy ashes downward go. 
 
 Thy essence rolls on high ; 
 Thus, when my body must lie low, 
 
 My soul shall cleave the sky. 
 
TO MONTAGUE, 
 
 AT THIRTY-THREE. 
 
 O, NO, I '11 not forget the day,— 
 It claims, at least, a hallowed hour, 
 
 A sparkling cup, an honest lay. 
 
 Sacred to Friendship's soothing power. 
 
 'T is not all ice, this heart of mine, — 
 One throb is warm and youthful still ; 
 
 That throb, dear Montague, is thine, 
 Nor age nor grief that throb can chill. 
 
 How often sung, and yet how sweet 
 
 To dwell upon the days of old ! 
 Our guiltless pleasures to repeat, 
 
 Ere in the world our hearts grew cold ! 
 
 Fond memory wakes ! each pulse beats high ; 
 
 Like some sweet tale past joys come o'er. 
 The years of ruin backward fly. 
 
 And I am young and gay once more. 
 
142 TO MONTAGUE, 
 
 Friend of my soul ! in this poor verse 
 Let one untutored tribute live ; 
 
 Here let my tongue my love rehearse ; 
 'T is all, alas ! I have to give. 
 
 0, if, from time's wide-yawning grave, 
 There 's aught of mine that I could free, 
 
 One line from dull oblivion save, 
 
 'T would be the line that tells of thee. 
 
 Though to the busy world unknown 
 Each noble act that shrinks from fame, 
 
 Goodness its favorite son shall own. 
 And orphan lips shall bless his name. 
 
 Thou 'rt the small stream, that silent goes, 
 By earth's cold, plodding crowd unseen, — 
 
 Yet, all unnoticed though it flows. 
 Its banks are clothed in living green. 
 
 We met in that bright, sunny time, 
 When every scene was fresh around, 
 
 And youth's warm hour and manhood's prime 
 Have blessed the tie that boyhood bound. 
 
TO MONTAGUE. 143 
 
 Though oft of valued friends bereft, 
 
 I bend, submissive, to the doom ; 
 For thou, the best, the best, art left, 
 
 To cheer my journey to the tomb. 
 
 And now, the dear ones of our race 
 Have come to live our pleasures o'er; 
 
 A lovely troop, to fill our place. 
 
 And weep for us when we 're no more. 
 
 Ever, ever may they keep 
 
 The holy chain of friendship bright, 
 
 Till, rich in all that's good, they sleep 
 
 With us through death's long, dreamless night. 
 
THE MEMORY OF BYRON. 
 
 A TOAST GIVEN AT A FOURTH OF JULY PUBLIC 
 DINJSTER. 
 
 O'er the heart of Childe Harold Greek maidens 
 
 shall weep ; 
 In his own native island his body shall sleep 
 
 With the bones of the bravest and best : 
 But his Song shall go down to the latest of time ; 
 Fame tell how he rose for earth's loveliest clime, 
 
 And Mercy shall blot out the rest. 
 
 Among Mr. Sprague's papers was found the following 
 memorandum : " This was written impromptu on hearing that 
 the heart of Lord Byron was to be inurned in Greece, and his 
 body sent home for burial in Westminster Abbey." 
 
Inscription upon an arch erected over Boston Neck on the 
 occasion of Lafayette's visit to the city, Aug. 24, 1824 : — 
 
 WELCOME, LAFAYETTE ! 
 
 The fathers in glory shall sleep, 
 
 That gathered with thee in the fight ; 
 But the sons will eternally keep 
 The tablet of gratitude bright. 
 We bow not the neck, and we bend not the knee ; 
 But our hearts, Lafayette, we surrender to thee. 
 
PROSE WRITINGS. 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 AN ORATION PRONOUNCED BEFORE THE INHABITANTS OF 
 BOSTON, JULY 4, 1825. 
 
 "Why, on this day, lingers along these sacred walls 
 the spirit-kindling anthem ? Why, on this day, waits 
 the herald of God at the altar, to utter forth his holy 
 prayer ? Why, on this day, congregate here the wise, 
 and the good, and the beautiful of the land ? — Fathers ! 
 Friends ! it is the Sabbath-day of Freedom ! The race 
 of the ransomed, with grateful hearts and exulting voices, 
 have again come up, in the sunlight of peace, to the 
 Jubilee of their Independence ! 
 
 The story of our country's sufferings, our country's 
 triumphs, though often and eloquently told, is still a 
 story that cannot tire, and must not be forgotten. You 
 will listen to its recital, however unadorned ; and I shall 
 not fear, therefore, even from the place where your 
 chosen ones have so long stood to delight and enlighten, 
 — 1 shall not fear to address you. Though I tell you 
 
150 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 no new thing, I speak of that which can never fall coldly 
 on your ears. You will listen, for you are the sons and 
 daughters of the heroic men who lighted the beacon of 
 " rebellion," and unfurled, by its blaze, the triumphant 
 banner of liberty ; your own blood will speak for me. A 
 feeble few of that intrepid band are now among you, yet 
 spared by the grave for your veneration ; they will speak 
 for me. Their sinking forms, their bleached locks, their 
 honorable scars ; — these will, indeed, speak for me. 
 Undaunted men ! how must their dim eyes brighten and 
 their old hearts grow young with rapture, as they look 
 round on the happiness of their own creation! Long 
 may they remain, our glad and grateful gaze, to teach 
 us all, that we may treasure all, of the hour of doubt and 
 danger ; and when their God shall summon them to a 
 glorious rest, may they bear to their departed comrades 
 the confirmation of their country's renown and their 
 children's felicity ! 
 
 We meet to indulge in pleasing reminiscences. One 
 happy household, we have come round the table of mem- 
 ory to banquet on the good deeds of others, and to grow 
 good ourselves, by that on which we feed. Our hope 
 for remembrance, our desire to remember friends and 
 benefactors, are among the warmest and purest senti- 
 ments of our nature. To the former we cling stronger, 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 151 
 
 as life itself grows weaker. We know that we shall 
 forget, but the thought of being forgotten is the death- 
 knell to the spirit. Though our bodies moulder, we 
 would have our memories live. When we are gone, we 
 shall not hear the murmuring voice of affection, the 
 grateful tribute of praise ; still, we love to believe that 
 that voice wdll be raised, and that tribute paid. Few so 
 humble that they sink below, none so exalted that they 
 rise above, this common feeling of humanity. The ship- 
 wrecked sailor, thrown on a shore where human eye 
 never lightened, before he scoops in the burning sand his 
 last, sad resting-place, scratches on a fragment of his 
 shattered bark the record of his fate, in the melancholy 
 hope that it may some day be repeated to the dear ones 
 who had long looked out in vain for his coming. The 
 laureled warrior, whose foot has trodden on crowns, 
 whose hand has divided empires, when he sinks on vic- 
 tory's red field, and life flies hunted from each quivering 
 vein, turns his last mortal thought on that life to come, 
 his country's brightest page. 
 
 The remembrance we so ardently desire, we render 
 unto others. To those who are dear, we pay our dearest 
 tribute. It is exhibited in the most simple, in the most 
 sublime forms. We behold it in the child, digging a 
 little grave for its dead favorite, and marking the spot 
 
152 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 with a willow twig and a tear. We behold it in the 
 congregated nation, setting up on high its monumental 
 pile to the mighty. We beheld it, lately, on that green 
 plain, dyed with Freedom's first blood ; ^ on that proud 
 hill, ennobled as Freedom's first fortress ; t when the 
 tongues of the eloquent, touched with creative fire, 
 seemed to bid the dust beneath them live, and the long- 
 buried come forth. We behold it now, here, in this con- 
 secrated temple, where we have assembled to pay our 
 annual debt of gratitude, to talk of the bold deeds of our 
 ancestors, from the day of peril, when they wrestled with 
 the savage for his birthright, to the day of glory, when 
 they proclaimed a new charter to man, and gave a new 
 nation to the world. 
 
 Roll back the tide of time : how powerfully to us 
 applies the promise — "I will give thee the heathen for 
 an inheritance ! " Not many generations ago, where 
 you now sit, circled with all that exalts and embellishes 
 civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and 
 the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and 
 loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun 
 that rolls over your heads, the Indian hunter pursued the 
 
 * Concord Celebration, April 19. 
 t Bunker Hill Celebration. June 17. 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 153 
 
 panting deer ; gazing on the same moon that smiles for 
 you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here the 
 wig\vam blaze beamed on the tender and the helpless, 
 the council-fire glared on the wise and the daring. Now 
 they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and 
 now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky 
 shores. Here they warred ; the echoing whoop, the 
 bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here ; 
 and, when the tiger strife was over, here curled the 
 smoke of peace. Here, too, they worshipped ; and from 
 many a dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great 
 Spirit. He had not written His lavvs for them on tables 
 of stone, but He had traced them on the tables of their 
 hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of 
 revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged 
 in everything around. He beheld him in the star that 
 sank in beauty behind his lowly dwelling, in the sacred 
 orb that flamed on him from his mid-day throne ; — in 
 the flower that snapped in the morning breeze, in the 
 lofty pine that had defied a thousand whirlwinds ; — in 
 the timid warbler that never left its native grove, in the 
 fearless eagle whose untired pinion was wet in clouds ; 
 — in the worm that crawled at his foot, and in his own 
 matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to 
 
 u 
 
l54 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 whose mysterious source he bent, in humble though 
 blind adoration. 
 
 And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came 
 a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The 
 former were sown for you, the latter sprang up in the 
 path of the simple native. Two hundred years have 
 changed the character of a great continent, and blotted 
 forever from its face a whole, peculiar people. Art has 
 usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children 
 of education hove been too pov/erful for the tribes of the 
 ignorant. Here and there, a stricken few remain ; but 
 how unlike their bold, untamed, untamable progenitors ! 
 The Indian, of falcon glance, and lion bearing, the 
 theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic 
 tale, is gone ! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the 
 soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how mis- 
 erable is man when the foot of the conqueror is on his 
 neck. 
 
 As a race, they have withered from the land. Their 
 arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins 
 are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone 
 out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying away to 
 the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the 
 distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting 
 sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 155 
 
 is pressing them away ; they must soon hear the roar of 
 the last wave, which will settle over them forever. Ages 
 hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some 
 growing city, will ponder on the structure of their dis- 
 turbed remains, and wonder to what manner of person 
 they belonged. They will live only in the songs and 
 chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful 
 to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their 
 unhappy fate as a people. 
 
 To the pious, who, in this desert region, built a city 
 of refuge, little less than to the brave, who round that 
 city reared an impregnable wall of safety, we owe the 
 blessings of this day. To enjoy and to perpetuate reli- 
 gious freedom, the sacred herald of civil liberty, they 
 deserted their native land, where the foul spirit of perse- 
 cution was up in its fury, and where mercy had long 
 wept at the enormities perpetrated in the abused names 
 of Jehovah and Jesus. "Resist unto blood!" blind 
 zealots had found in the Bible ; and lamentably, indeed, 
 did they fulfil the command. With " Thus saith the 
 Lord," the engines of cruelty were set in motion ; and 
 many a martyr spirit, Hke the ascending prophet from 
 Jordan's bank, escaped in fire to heaven. 
 
 It was in this night of time, when the incubus of big- 
 otry sat heavy on the human soul ; — 
 
156 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 When crown and crosier ruled a coward world, 
 
 And mental darkness o'er the nations curled, — 
 
 When, wrapped in sleep, earth's torpid children lay, 
 
 Hugged their vile chains, and dreamed their age away, — 
 
 'T was then, by faith impelled, by freedom fired, 
 
 By hope supported, and by God inspired, — 
 
 »T was then the Pilgrims left their fathers' graves. 
 
 To seek a home beyond the waste of waves ; 
 
 And where it rose, all rough and wintry, here. 
 
 They swelled devotion's song, and dropped devotion's tear. 
 
 Can we sufficiently admire the firmness of this little 
 brotherhood, thus self-banished from their country ? — 
 unkind and cruel, it was true, but still their country ! 
 There they were born, and there, where the lamp of life 
 was lighted, they had hoped it would go out. There a 
 father's hand had led them, a mother's smile had warmed 
 them. There were the sunny haunts of their boyish 
 days, their kinsfolk, their friends, their recollections, 
 their all. Yet all was left; even while their heart-strings 
 bled at the parting, all was left ; and a stormy sea, a 
 savage waste, and a fearful destiny, were encountered — 
 for Heaven, and for you. 
 
 It is easy enough to praise when success has sancti- 
 fied the act ; and to fancy that we, too, could endure a 
 heavy trial, which is to be followed by a rich reward. 
 But before the deed is crowned, while the doers are yet 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 157 
 
 about US, bearing like ourselves the common infirmities 
 of the flesh, we stand aloof, and are not always ready to 
 discern the spirit that sustains and exalts them. When 
 centuries of experience have rolled away, we laud the 
 exploit on which we might have frowned, if we had 
 lived with those who left their age behind to achieve it. 
 We read of empires founded and people redeemed, of 
 actions embalmed by time and hallowed by romance ; 
 and our hearts leap at the lofty recital ; we feel it would 
 be a glorious thing to snatch the laurels of immortal 
 fame. But it is in the day of doubt, when the result is 
 hidden in clouds, when danger stands in every path, and 
 death is lurking in every corner ; — it is then, that the 
 men who are born for great occasions start boldly from 
 the world's trembling multitude, and swear to "do or 
 die ! " 
 
 Such men were they who peopled these shores. Such 
 men, too, were they who preserved them. Of these 
 latter giant spirits, who battled for independence, and to 
 the remembrance of whose deeds this day is peculiarly 
 devoted, we are to recollect that destruction awaited 
 defeat. They were " rebels," obnoxious to the fate of 
 "rebels." They were tearing asunder the ties of loy- 
 alty, and hazarding all the sweet endearments of social 
 
158 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 and domestic life. They were unfriended, weak and 
 wanting. Going thus forth against a powerful and vin- 
 dictive foe, what could they dare to hope ? What had 
 they not to dread ? They could not tell but that ven- 
 geance would hunt them down, and infamy hang its 
 black scutcheon over their graves. They did not know 
 that the angel of the Lord would go forth with them, 
 and smite the invaders of their sanctuary. They did not 
 know that generation after generation would on this day 
 rise up and call them blessed ; that the sleeping quarry 
 would leap forth to pay them voiceless homage ; that 
 their names would be handed down, from father to son, 
 the penman's theme and the poet's inspiration; chal- 
 lenging, through countless years, the gratitude of an 
 emancipated people, and the plaudits of an admiring 
 world! No! They knew only that the arm which 
 should protect was oppressing them, — and they shook 
 it oif ; that the chalice presented to their lips was a poi- 
 soned one, — and they dashed it away. They knew 
 only that a rod was stretched over them for their audac- 
 ity ; and beneath this they vowed never to bend, while a 
 single pulse could beat the larum to " rebellion." That 
 rod must be broken, or they must bleed. And it was 
 broken ! Led on by their Washington, the heroes went 
 forth. Clothed in the panoply of a righteous cause, 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 159 
 
 they went forth boldly. Guided and guarded by a good 
 Providence, they went forth triumphantly. They labored 
 that we might find rest ; they fought that we might 
 enjoy peace ; they conquered that we might inherit free- 
 dom ! 
 
 You will not now expect a detail of the actions of that 
 eventful struggle. To the annalists of your country 
 belongs the pleasing task of tracing the progress of a 
 revolution, the purest in its origin, and the most stupen- 
 dous in its consequences, that ever gladdened the world. 
 To their fidelity we commit the wisdom which planned, 
 and the valor which accomplished it. The dust of every 
 contested mound, of every rescued plain, will whisper to 
 them their duty, for it is dust that breathed and bled ; 
 the hallowed dust of men who would be free, or nothing. 
 
 There, in the sweet hour of eventide, the child of 
 sentiment will linger, and conjure up their martyr 
 forms. Heroes, with their garments rolled in blood, will 
 marshal round him. The thrilling fife-note, the drum's 
 heart-kindling beat, will again run down the shadowy 
 ranks ; the short, commanding word, the fatal volley, 
 the dull death-groan, the glad hurrah ! again will break 
 on his cheated ear. The battle that sealed his country's 
 fate, his country's freedom, will rage before him in all 
 
160 
 
 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 its dreadful splendor. And when the airy pageant of 
 his fancy fades in the gathering mists, he will turn his 
 footsteps from the sacred field, with a warmer gratitude 
 and a deeper reverence for the gallant spirits who re- 
 signed dear life in defence of life's dearest blessing. 
 
 The " feelings, manners, and principles," which led to 
 the Declaration of the Fourth of July, '76, shine forth in 
 the memorable language of its great author. He and 
 his bold brethren proclaimed that all men were created 
 equal, and endowed by their Creator with the right of 
 liberty; that, for the security of this right, government 
 was instituted, and that, when it violated its trust, the 
 governed might abolish it. That crisis, they declared, 
 had arrived ; and the injuries and usurpations of the 
 parent country were no longer to be endured. Recount- 
 ing the dark catalogue of abuses which they had suf- 
 fered, and appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world 
 for the rectitude of their intentions, in the name and by 
 the authority of the People, the only fountain of legiti- 
 mate power, they shook off forever their allegiance to 
 the British crown, and pronounced the united colonies 
 an independent nation ! 
 
 What their "feelings, manners and principles," led 
 them to publish, their wisdom, valor and perseverance, 
 
AMERICAN mDErENDENCE. 161 
 
 enabled them to establish. The blessings secured by 
 the Pilgrims and the Patriots have descended to us. In 
 the virtue and intelligence of the inheritors we confide 
 for their duration. They who attained them have left 
 us their example, and bequeathed us their blood. We 
 shall never forget the one, unless we prove recreant to 
 the other. On the Doric columns of religious and civil 
 liberty a majestic temple has been reared, and they who 
 dwell within its walls will never bow in bondage to man, 
 till they forget to bend in reverence to God. 
 
 The achievement of American independence was not 
 merely the separation of a few obscure colonies from 
 their parent realm ; it was the practical annunciation to 
 created man that he was created free ! and it will stand 
 in history the epoch from which to compute the real 
 duration of political liberty. Intolerance and tyranny 
 had for ages leagued to keep their victim down. While 
 the former could remain the pious guardian of his con- 
 science, the latter knew it had nothing to fear from his 
 courage. He was theirs, soul and body. His intellect- 
 ual energies were paralyzed, that he might not behold 
 the corruptions of the church ; and his physical powers 
 were fettered, that he should not rise up against the 
 abuses of the state. Thus centuries of darkness rolled 
 
]62 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 away. Light, indeed, broke from time to time ; but it 
 only served to show the surrounding clouds ; — bright 
 stars, here and there, looked out ; but they were the 
 stars of a gloomy night. At length, the morning 
 dawned, when one generation of your ancestors willed 
 that none but their Maker should guide them in their 
 duty as Christians ; and the perfect day shone forth, 
 when another declared that from none but their Maker 
 would they derive their immunities as men. 
 
 If, in remembering the oppressed, you think the 
 oppressors ought not to be forgotten, I might urge that 
 the splendid result of the great struggle should fully 
 reconcile us to the madness of those who rendered that 
 struggle necessary. We may forgive the presumption 
 which " declared " its right " to bind the American Col- 
 onies," for it was wofully expiated by the humiliation 
 which "acknowledged" those same "American Colo- 
 nies " to be " Sovereign and Independent States." The 
 immediate workers, too, of that political iniquity have 
 passed away. The mildew of shame will forever feed 
 upon their memories ; — a brand has been set upon their 
 deeds, that even Time's all-gnawing tooth can never 
 destroy. But they Imve passed away ; and of all the 
 millions they misruled, the millions they would have 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 1G3 
 
 misruled, how few remain ! Another race is there to 
 lament the folly, another here to magnify the wisdom, 
 that cut the knot of empire. Shall these inherit and 
 entail everlasting enmity ? Like the Carthaginian Ham- 
 ilcar, shall we come up hither with our children, and on 
 this holy altar swear the pagan oath of undying hate ? 
 Even our goaded fathers disdained this. Let us fulfil 
 their words, and prove to the people of England, that, 
 " in peace," we know how to treat them " as friends." 
 They have been twice told that, " in war," we know how 
 to meet them " as enemies ;" and they will hardly ask 
 another lesson, for it may be, that, when the third trum- 
 pet shall sound, a voice will echo along their sea-girt 
 cliffs — " The Glory has departed ! " 
 
 Some few of their degenerate ones, tainting the bowers 
 where they sit, decry the growing greatness of a land 
 they will not love ; and others, after eating from our 
 basket, and drinking from our cup, go home to pour forth 
 the senseless libel against a people at whose firesides 
 they were warmed. But a few pens dipped in gall will 
 not retard our progress ; let not a few tongues, festering 
 in falsehood, disturb our repose. We have those among 
 us who are able both to pare the talons of the kite and 
 pull out the fangs of the viper; who can lay bare, for the 
 disgust of all good men, the gangrene of the insolent 
 
164 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 reviewer, and inflict such a cruel mark on the back of 
 the mortified runaway, as will long take from him the 
 blessed privilege of being forgotten. 
 
 These rude detractors speak not, we trust, the feelings 
 of their nation. Time, the great corrector, is there fast 
 enlightening both ruler and ruled. They are treading 
 in our steps, even ours, and are gradually, though 
 slowly, pulling up their ancient religious and political 
 landmarks. Yielding to the liberal spirit of the age, — 
 a spirit born and fostered here, — they are not only 
 loosening their own long-riveted shackles, but are raising 
 the voice of encouragement, and extending the hand of 
 assistance, to the "rebels" of other climes. 
 
 In spite of all that has passed, we owe England much ; 
 and even on this occasion, standing in the midst of my 
 generous-minded countrymen, I may fearlessly, willingly, 
 acknowledge the debt. We owe England much ; — 
 nothing for her martyrdoms ; nothing for her proscrip- 
 tions ; nothing for the innocent blood with which she 
 has stained the white robes of religion and liberty ; — 
 these claims our fathers cancelled, and her monarch 
 rendered them and theirs a full acquittance forever. 
 But for the living treasures of her mind, garnered up 
 and spread abroad for centuries by her great and gifted, 
 who that has drank at the sparkling streams of her 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 165 
 
 poetry, who that has drawn from the deep fountains of 
 her wisdom, who that speaks, and reads, and thinks her 
 language, will be slow to own his obligation ? One of 
 your purest ascended patriots, he who compassed sea 
 and land for Liberty ; whose early voice for her echoed 
 round yonder consecrated hall ; whose dying accents for 
 her went up in solitude and suffering from the ocean ; — 
 when he sat down to bless, with the last token of a 
 father's remembrance, the son, who wears his mantle 
 with his name, — bequeathed him the recorded lessons 
 of England's best and wisest, and sealed the legacy of 
 love with a prayer, whose full accomplishment we live 
 to witness — " that the spirit of Liberty might rest upon 
 him."=^ 
 
 While we bring our offerings for the mighty of our 
 own land, shall we not remember the chivalrous spirits 
 of other shores, who shared with them the hour of weak- 
 ness and woe ? Pile to the clouds the majestic columns 
 of glory; let the lips of those who can "speak well" 
 hallow each spot where the bones of your bold repose ; 
 but forget not those who with your bold went out to 
 battle. 
 
 ♦See Life of Josiah Quiucy, Jr., by his son, Josiah Q,uincy, Mayor 
 of Boston. 
 
I(i6 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 Among these men of noble daring, there was one, a 
 young and gallant stranger, who left the blushing vine- 
 hills of his delightful France. The people whom he 
 came to succor were not his people ; — he knew them 
 only in the wicked story of their wrongs. He was no 
 mercenary adventurer, striving for the spoil of the van- 
 quished ; — the palace acknowledged him for its lord, and 
 the valley yielded him its increase. He was no name- 
 less man, staking life for reputation ; — he ranked among 
 nobles, and looked unawed upon kings. He was no 
 friendless outcast, seeking for a grave to hide a broken 
 heart ; — he was girdled by the companions of his child- 
 hood ; his kinsmen were about him ; his wife was before 
 him ! 
 
 Yet from all these he turned away. Like a lofty tree, 
 that shakes down its green glories, to battle with the 
 winter storm, he flung aside the trappings of place and 
 pride, to crusade for Freedom, in Freedom's holy land. 
 He came — but not in the day of successful " rebellion ;" 
 not when the new-risen sun of independence had burst 
 the cloud of time, and careered to its place in the 
 heavens. He came when darkness curtained the hills, 
 and the tempest was abroad in its anger ; — when the 
 plough stood still in the field of promise, and briers cum- 
 bered the garden of beauty. He came when fathers 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 167 
 
 were dying, and mothers were weeping over them ; — 
 when the wife was binding up the gashed bosom of her 
 husband, and the maiden was wiping the death-damp 
 from the brow of her lover. He came when the brave 
 began to fear the power of man, and the pious to doubt 
 the favor of God. 
 
 It was then that this one joined the ranks of a revoked 
 people. Freedom's little phalanx bade him a grateful 
 welcome. With them he courted the battle's rage ; with 
 theirs his arm was lifted, with theirs his blood was shed. 
 Long and doubtful was the conflict. At length, kind 
 Heaven smiled on the good cause, and the beaten in- 
 vaders fled. The profane were driven from the temple 
 of Liberty ; and at her pure shrine the Pilgrim warrior, 
 with his adored commander, knelt and worshipped. 
 Leaving there his offering, the incense of an uncorrupted 
 spirit, he at length rose up, and, crowned with benedic- 
 tions, turned his happy feet towards his long-deserted 
 home. 
 
 After nearly fifty years, that one has come again. 
 Can mortal tongue tell, can mortal heart feel, the sub- 
 Hmity of that coming ? Exulting millions rejoice in it, 
 and their loud, long, transporting shout, like the mingling 
 of many winds, rolls on, undying, to Freedom's farthest 
 mountains. A congregated nation comes round him. 
 
168 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 Old men bless him, and children reverence him. The 
 lovely come out to look upon him, the learned deck their 
 halls to greet him, the rulers of the land rise up to do 
 him homage. How his full heart labors ! He views the 
 rusting trophies of departed days, he treads the high 
 places where his brethren moulder, he bends before the 
 tomb of his "Father;" — his words are tears — the 
 speech of sad remembrance. But he looks round upon a 
 ransomed land and a joyous race ; he beholds the bless- 
 ings those trophies secured, for which those brethren 
 died, for which that "Father" lived; — and again his 
 words are tears — the eloquence of gratitude and joy. 
 
 Spread forth creation like a map; bid earth's dead 
 multitudes revive ; — and of all the pageant splendors 
 that ever glittered to the sun, when looked his burning 
 eye on a sight like this ? Of all the myriads that have 
 come and gone, what cherished minion ever ruled an 
 hour like this ? Many have struck the redeeming blow 
 for their own freedom ; but who, like this man, has 
 bared his bosom in the cause of strangers ? Others have 
 lived in the love of their own people ; but who, like this 
 man, has drank his sweetest cup of welcome with 
 another? Matchless chief ! of glory's immortal tablets, 
 there is one for him, for him alone ! Oblivion shall 
 never shroud its splendor ; the everlasting flame of lib- 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 169 
 
 erty shall guard it, that the generations of men may 
 repeat the name recorded there, the beloved name of 
 Lafayette ! 
 
 They who endured the burden of the conflict are fast 
 going to their rest. Every passing gale sighs over 
 another veteran's grave ; and, ere long, the last sage, and 
 the last old soldier of the revolution, will be seen no 
 more. Soon, too sooU; will you seek in vain for even 
 one, who can tell you of that day of stout hearts and 
 strong hands. You lately beheld, on yonder glorious 
 hill, a group of ancient men, baring their gray heads 
 beneath the blaze of heaven ; but never more at such a 
 sight will your grateful hearts grow soft. These will 
 never again assemble on earth. They have stood 
 together in war, they have congregated in peace ; their 
 next meeting will be in the fields of eternity. They 
 must shortly sleep in the bosom of the land they re- 
 deemed, and in that land's renown will alone be their 
 remembrance. 
 
 Let us cherish those who remain to link the living 
 with the dead. Of these, let one thought, to-day, rest 
 on him, whose pen and fame this day has rendered 
 immortal. With him, too, now that the bitter feuds of a 
 bitter hour are forgotten, we may associate another, the 
 venerable successor of our Washington. Here broke his 
 
 12 
 
170 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 morning radiance, and here yet linger his evening 
 beams. 
 
 " Sure the last end of the good man is peace ! 
 Night dews fall not more gently to the ground, 
 Nor weary, worn-out winds expire so soft. 
 Behold him, in the even-tide of life, 
 A life well spent ! 
 
 By unperceived degrees he wears away, 
 Yet, like the sun, seems larger at his setting !" 
 
 I look round in vain for two of your exalted patriots, 
 who, on your last festival-day, sat here in the midst of 
 you; — for him, who then worthily wore the highest 
 honors you could bestow, who in your name greeted 
 your nation's guest, and took him by the hand and 
 wept ; for him, too, who devoted to your service a youth 
 of courage, and an age of counsel; who long ruled over 
 you in purity and wisdom, and then, gently shaking off 
 his dignities, retired to his native shades, laden with 
 your love. They have both passed away, and the 
 tongues that bade the "Apostle of Liberty" welcome, 
 will never bid him farewell. 
 
 In the place of the fathers shall be the children. To 
 the seat which Eustis and Brooks adorned, the people of 
 this state have united to elevate one, whom they have 
 often delighted to honor. He sits where they sat, who 
 were laboring in the vineyard even before he was born. 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 171 
 
 His name adds another bright stud to the golden scutch- 
 eon of the commonweakh. While his heart warms with 
 honest pride at the confidence so flatteringly reposed in 
 him, he will wisely remember what that confidence ex- 
 pects from him, in the discharge of his high trust. 
 Chosen by all, he will govern for all ; and, thus sustain- 
 ing his well-earned reputation, may he live long in the 
 affection of a generous people ! 
 
 I shall not omit, on this occasion, to congratulate you 
 on the result of an election, which has recently raised to 
 the highest station in your republic one of your most 
 distinguished citizens. While, however, the ardent 
 wishes of so many have been crowned by this gratifying 
 event, it is not to be forgotten, that there are those among 
 us, men of pure and patriotic minds, who responded not 
 Amen to the general voice. I should be ashamed of the 
 feelings which would insult theirs by an unworthy exul- 
 tation. The illustrious individual, whom the represent- 
 atives of the nation have pronounced "most worthy," 
 would be the first to frown upon it, as he has ever been 
 among the first to acknowledge the merits of his exalted 
 competitors. To the high-minded friends of these, in 
 common with us all, this day and its rites belong ; and 
 I cannot violate the trust confided to me, I will not sub- 
 ject myself to a pang of regret, by the indulgence of Ian- 
 
172 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 guage which should send a single being from this place 
 with a less joyous spirit than he entered it. It is safer 
 to be dull than bitter ; and I would rather you should all 
 be willing to forget the labor of this hour in charity, than 
 that one among you should feel compelled to remember 
 it in unkindness. 
 
 I have alluded to this event, not merely for the pur- 
 pose of obtruding upon you the expression of personal 
 gratification, but because it offers another striking proof 
 of the stability of our free institutions. Since the strife 
 of 1800, we have not witnessed so violent a contest as 
 this through which we have lately passed; yet now, 
 how quiet are become the elements of discord ! With a 
 praiseworthy forbearance, all, or nearly all, have bowed 
 to the expression of the public will, and seem determined, 
 in the words of one of his accomplished rivals, to judge 
 the ruler of the nation " by his measures." 
 
 While this spirit triumphs, we have nothing to dread 
 from the animosities of party. However turbulent, they 
 will be harmless. Like the commotions of the physical 
 world, they will be necessary. Far distant be the day, 
 when it must be said of this country, that it has no par- 
 ties ; for it must be also said, if any one be bold enough 
 to say it, that it has no liberties. Let hawk-eyed jeal- 
 ousy be forever on the alert, to watch the footsteps of 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 173 
 
 power. Let it be courteous in language, but stern and 
 unbending in principle. Whoever he may be, wher- 
 ever he may be, that would strike at the people's rights, 
 let him hear the people's voice, proclaiming that " whom 
 it will, it can set up, and whom it will, it can set down." 
 Fear not party zeal — it is the salt of your existence. 
 There are no parties under a despotism. There, no man 
 lingers round a ballot-box ; no man drinks the poison of 
 a licentious press ; no man plots treason at a debating 
 society ; no man distracts his head about the science of 
 government. All there is a calm, unruffled sea ; — even 
 a dead sea of black and bitter waters. But we move 
 upon a living stream, forever pure, forever rolling. Its 
 mighty tide sometimes flows higher, and rushes faster, 
 than its wont, and as it bounds, and foams, and dashes 
 along in sparkling violence, it now and then throws up 
 its fleecy cloud ; but this rises only to disappear, and, as 
 it fades away before the outbreaking sunbeams of patri- 
 otism, you behold upon its bosom the rainbow signal of 
 returning peace, arching up to declare that the danger 
 is over. 
 
 And now, it is no vain speech to say, the eyes of the 
 world have been long upon us. For nearly fifty years 
 we have run the glorious race of empire. Friends have 
 
174 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 gazed in fear, and foes in scorn ; but fear is lost in joy, 
 and scorn is turning to wonder. The great experiment 
 has succeeded. Mankind behold the spectacle of a land, 
 whose crown is wisdom, whose mitre is purity, whose 
 heraldry is talent ; a land, where public sentiment is 
 supreme, aud where every man may erect the pyramid 
 of his own fair fame. They behold, they believe, and 
 they will imitate. The day is coming, when thrones 
 can no longer be supported by parchment rolls. It is 
 not a leaf of writing, signed and sealed by three frail, 
 mortal men, that can forever keep down suffering mil- 
 lions : these will rise ; they will point to another scroll ; 
 to that, of whose bold signers our Three ^ remain ; our 
 three, whose "alliance" was, indeed, a "holy" one, for 
 it met the approving smile of a Holy God ! 
 
 Many must suffer defeat, and many must taste of 
 death, but Freedom's battle will yet be fought and won. 
 As Heaven unbinds the intellect of man, his own right 
 arm will rescue his body. Liberty will yet walk abroad 
 in the gardens of Europe. Her hand will pluck the 
 grapes of the south, her eye will warm the snow-drifts 
 of the north. The crescent will go down in blood, from 
 that " bright clime of battle and of song," for which he 
 
 * John Adams, Charles Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, — the surviving 
 signers of the Declaration of Independence. 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 175 
 
 died, that noble Briton, that warrior bard, who, like the 
 youthful Lafayette, uplifted his generous arm in defence 
 of a people not his own. 
 
 And to this young land will belong the praise. The 
 struggling nations point to our example, and in their 
 own tongues repeat the cheering language of our sjTn- 
 pathy. Already, when a master-spirit towers among 
 them, they call him — their Washington. Along the 
 foot of the Andes, they breathe in gratitude the name of 
 Clay ; — by the ivy -buried ruins of the Parthenon, they 
 bless the eloquence of Webster ! 
 
 Fellow-citizens, my imperfect task is ended. I have 
 told you an old tale ; but you will forgive that, for it is 
 one of your country's glory. You will forgive me that I 
 have spoken of the simple creatures who were here from 
 the beginning, for it was to tell you how much had been 
 wrought for you by piety ; you will forgive me that I 
 have lingered round the green graves of the dead, for it 
 was to remind you how much had been achieved for you 
 by patriotism. Forgive me, did I say ? Would you 
 have forgiven me, if I had not done this ? Could I, 
 ought I, to have wasted this happy hour in cold and 
 doubtful speculation, while your bosoms were bounding 
 with the holy throb of gratitude ? no — it was not for 
 
176 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 that you came up hither. The groves of learning, 
 the halls of wisdom, you have deserted — the crowded 
 mart, the chambers of beauty, you have made solitary — 
 that here, with free, exulting voices, before the only 
 throne at which the free can bend, your hearts might 
 pour forth their full, gushing tribute to the benefactors 
 of your country. 
 
 On that country Heaven's highest blessings are de- 
 scending. I would not, for I need not, use the language 
 of inflation ; but the decree has gone forth, and as sure 
 as the blue arch of creation is in beauty above us, so 
 sure will it span the mightiest dominion that ever shook 
 the earth. Imagination cannot outstrip reality, when it 
 contemplates our destinies as a people. Where Nature 
 slept in her solitary loveliness, villages, and cities, and 
 states, have smiled into being. A gigantic nation has 
 been bom. Labor and art are adorning, and science is 
 exalting, the land that religion sanctified, and liberty 
 redeemed. From the shores to the mountains, from the 
 regions of frost to the valleys of eternal spring, myriads 
 of bold and understanding men are uniting to strengthen 
 a government of their own choice, and perpetuate the 
 institutions of their own creation. 
 
 The germ wafted over the ocean has struck its deep 
 root in the earth, and raised its high head to the clouds. 
 
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 177 
 
 Man looked in scorn, but Heaven beheld, and blessed 
 
 Its branchy glories, spreading o'er the West. 
 
 No summer gaude, the wonder of a day, 
 
 Born but to bloom, and then to fade away, — 
 
 A giant oak, it lifts its lofty form, 
 
 Greens in the sun, and strengthens in the storm. 
 
 Long in its shade shall children's children come, 
 
 And welcome earth's poor wanderers to a home. 
 
 Long shall it live, and every blast defy, 
 
 Till Time's last whirlwind sweep the vaulted sky. 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY 
 FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF INTEMPERANCE. 1827. 
 
 In discharging the duty which has been confided to 
 me, I shall use great plainness of speech. The themes 
 that lead to the pleasant fields of poetry, and tempt the 
 wanderer to linger among the beautiful creations of 
 fancy, are for other and happier seasons. The purpose 
 for which we have assembled, awakening, as it does, so 
 many painful associations, holds no communion with the 
 bright regions of romance — we tread the cold, gray 
 waste of reality. The hour before us is one of severe 
 and fearful reflection ; and it becomes him who has been 
 selected to occupy it, to speak the words of truth and 
 soberness. 
 
 We have met to mourn over a calamity which, like 
 one of the plagues sent to curse ancient Egypt, has come 
 " upon us, and upon our people, and into our houses, and 
 into our bed-chambers," and is desolating the land. We 
 have met to bear our testimony against drunkenness — 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 179 
 
 and we call upon all good men to stand forth, and cheer 
 us with their influence and example. We implore them 
 as Christians, as patriots, as philanthropists, to join in 
 the labor and the praise of extirpating a vice that has 
 taken deep root in our nation, spreading to its remotest 
 borders, and dropping in its loveliest paths the seeds of 
 misery, disease, and death. 
 
 The spectacle before us is indeed appalling. The vic- 
 tims of intemperance are wasting around us in frightful 
 numbers. Neither sex, nor age, nor rank, nor talent, is 
 unsubdued by the subtle destroyer. Man falls away 
 from his glorious destiny, and woman is degraded from 
 her angel station; the young bow their faces in the 
 beauty of their promise, the mature are arrested in the 
 pride of their usefulness, and the white locks of the old 
 seek the tomb in disgrace ; the rich are overcome in 
 their splendid mansions, the poor in their dreary hovels ; 
 the arm of labor is paralyzed, the light of learning is 
 extinguished ; genius is struck down in his eagle career, 
 and the holy functions of piety are defiled in the dust. 
 
 Friends — we may not sit in silence, while this devas- 
 tation is going on. We have a duty to perform ; and 
 what we would do effectually, we must do unitedly. It 
 is time for us to speak ; — the ear that would be deaf to 
 the kind whisper of individual remonstrance must hear 
 
180 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 the congregated voices of an alarmed community. 
 Above all, it is time for us to act ; — the sin that shrouds 
 itself in the broad mantle of custom, custom must expose 
 and destroy. A vast proportion of the cases of confirmed 
 intemperance may be traced, not so much to any innate 
 depravedness, as to the crafty workings of the unreproved 
 usages of society; and we, who continue to follow these 
 usages, even while we laugh at them, are ourselves more 
 or less chargeable with the evils we lament over, and are 
 bound to exert our efforts for the alleviation of them. 
 I say, our efforts — not merely those which are exhausted 
 in assembling to hear admonitory addresses, too often 
 only criticised and forgotten ; in showering abroad tracts, 
 " that seem to pass off like a thick flight of snow, leaving 
 no trace of their passage, and disappearing where they 
 fall ;" — these things, certainly, are not to be left undone ; 
 but if we would have them of any avail, something more 
 must be done also. Least of all, can we rely on the 
 unassisted arm of authority. We may invoke the laws, 
 but we may as well invoke the dead. Laws can only 
 operate when the mischief is done. Prevention is what 
 we want — remedy utterly loses its character. Indeed, 
 though we very properly punish the thief and the mur- 
 derer, for crimes against which we all set our faces, with 
 what consistency can we punish the drunkard, for an 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 181 
 
 offence to which our own daily practices naturally lead 
 him ? We do all but the deed ourselves — we tread on 
 the borders of the forbidden ground, and then angrily 
 cry out for justice on him who goes one step further. 
 " Enforce the laws ! " exclaims some virtuously-indignant 
 citizen, as he beholds the low-born drunkard shaming the 
 fair face of day — - " enforce the laws ! " and with these 
 words on his lips, he coolly arranges the evening club, 
 from the carousings of which if he retires unexposed, it 
 is because the shades of night do more for him than his 
 own prudence. " Suppress drinking-houses and soda 
 establishments ! " cries the anxious father, who shudders 
 lest his son may drink there of the waters of death, 
 which, however, he is not at all afraid to press upon his 
 friends at home. " Why does not government impose a 
 tax on domestic spirits ? " is the inquiry of one, who sits 
 at his loaded table, boasting of the age of his foreign 
 liquors, and recounting the various voyages that have 
 rendered them so exquisite. Truly, there is a little 
 absurdity in these things. Besides, we may fine and 
 imprison a poor wTetch, now and then, for intoxication ; 
 but it will go only a little way to reduce the evil — it 
 will not teach him temperance. We may lessen the 
 number of dram-shops that pour forth their steams of 
 abomination from every hole and corner; but we all 
 
182 
 
 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 know that many a man becomes a drunkard before he 
 sets his foot within one — it will not teach him temper- 
 ance. We may call upon our rulers to lay heavy duties 
 on imported and domestic liquors ; but, should they even 
 be courageous enough to do so, it would only tempt the 
 importer to become a smuggler, and instruct the distiller 
 to outwit the exciseman ; — perhaps it might put money 
 into the public treasury, but it would not teach men 
 temperance. No! we must go beyond all this — we 
 must first minister to ourselves. Before we revive old 
 laws, we must abolish old customs. Before we appeal to 
 the government, we must prove our sincerity by becom- 
 ing our own legislators. The law we need is that which 
 must speak in the unwritten majesty'of public opinion. 
 The people's virtue must enact it, and the people's prac- 
 tice must be its enforcement. 
 
 But it may be said that much which the friends of 
 Temperance would abolish is harmless; and that we 
 need not debar ourselves from the innocent recreations 
 of social and convivial life, simply because some are 
 weak enough to pervert them. It is undoubtedly true, 
 that we are not required to copy the macerating austeri- 
 ties of the monk's cell, for fear men should become 
 gluttons, nor to dip our cup only in the hermit's spring, 
 lest they should turn drunkards. Our Creator has not 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 183 
 
 spread before us a bounteous table, merely to forbid our 
 approach to it. Still, if we behold that there are many 
 weak enough to abuse these innocent recreations, and to 
 whom an indulgence in them is Twt harmless — if our 
 example serves to encourage in others practices which, 
 we cannot deny, inevitably tend to their destruction — 
 we have not the right, the moral right, to make them 
 constant stumbling-blocks in the path of those who have 
 more feeling and less philosophy than ourselves. It 
 becomes us, if not, in common charity, to set them 
 entirely aside, at least, as well-wishers to society, to 
 inquire how far we are justified in making them, as too 
 many of us do, the daily test of hospitality, the unerring 
 touchstone of friendship, the universal accompaniment 
 of all social intercourse. 
 
 It is truly astonishing to behold how completely the 
 habit of unnecessaiy drinking pervades the various 
 classes of our community. In one way or another, it is 
 their morning and evening devotion, their noonday and 
 midnight sacrifice. From the highest grade to the 
 lowest, from the drawing-room to the kitchen, from the 
 gentleman to the laborer, down descends the universal 
 custom; — from those who sit long at the wine that has 
 been rocked upon the ocean, and ripened beneath an 
 Indian sky, down to those who solace themselves with 
 
184 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 the fiery liquor that has cursed no other shores than our 
 own — do\Ani, till it reaches the miserable abode, where 
 the father and mother will have rum, though the chil- 
 dren cry for bread — down to the bottom, even to the 
 prison-house, the forlorn inmate of which hails him his 
 best friend, who is cunning enough to convey to him, 
 undiscovered, the all-consoling, the all-corroding poison. 
 Young men must express the warmth of their mutual 
 regard, by daily and nightly libations at some fashionable 
 hotel — it is the custom. The more advanced take turns 
 in flinging open their own doors to each other, and the 
 purity of their esteem is testified by the number of bot- 
 tles they can empty together — it is the custom. The 
 husband deems it but civil to commemorate the acciden- 
 tal visit of his acquaintance by a glass of ancient spirit, 
 and the wife holds it a duty to celebrate the flying call 
 of her companion with a taste of the latest liqueur — for 
 this, also, is the custom. The interesting gossipry of 
 every little evening coterie must be enlivened with the 
 customary cordial. Custom demands that idle quarrels, 
 perhaps generated over a friendly cup, another friendly 
 cup must drown. Foolish wagers are laid, to be adjusted 
 in foolish drinking — the rich citizen stakes a dozen, the 
 poor one a dram. " The brisk minor panting for twenty- 
 one" baptizes his new-born manhood in the strong drink 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 185 
 
 to which he intends training it up. Births, marriages, 
 and burials, are all hallowed by strong drink. Anniver- 
 saries, civic festivities, military displays, municipal elec- 
 tions, and even religious ceremonials, are nothing with- 
 out strong drink. The political ephemera of a little 
 noisy day, and the colossus whose footsteps millions wait 
 upon, must alike be apotheosised in liquor. A rough- 
 hewn statesman is toasted at, and drank at, to his face 
 in one place, while his boisterous adversary sits through 
 the same mummery in another. Here, in their brim- 
 ming glasses, the adherents of some successful candidate 
 mingle their congratulations ; and there, in like manner, 
 the partisans of his defeated rival forget their chagrin. 
 Even the great day of national emancipation is, with too 
 many, only a great day of drinking ; and the proud song 
 of deliverance is trolled from the lips of those who are 
 bending body and soul to a viler thraldom than that from 
 which their fathers rescued them. 
 
 I need not swell the catalogue — it were a shorter task 
 to tell where liquors do not abound, than where they do. 
 And all these things would only wake a smile, but that 
 their consequences make us sad, and ought to make us 
 wise. Is it not here that the mischief we mourn over 
 begins ? — and if so, ought not the reformation to begin 
 here also ? Look back to the days of childhood. Call 
 
 13 
 
186 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 up round you the little groups that made your young 
 hours happy. Follow them along, from year to year, as 
 you and they grew older. Remember how this one and 
 that one, the generous and the gifted, dropped off from 
 your sides into the grave. Did not intemperance drag 
 them down ? — and was it not amid the innocent recrea- 
 tions of society that they were first ensnared ? Cannot 
 many a parent, many a wife, many a husband, here find 
 the source of days and nights of anguish ? May we not 
 select some youthful victim of excess, and trace him back, 
 step by step, to these harmless indulgences — these inno- 
 cent recreations ? Have we not seen 
 
 " The young disease, that must subdue at length, 
 Grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength ? " 
 
 Could he repeat — alas! he cannot — his mind is sunk 
 in his body's defilement — but could he for a moment 
 shake off his lethargy, and repeat to us the story of his 
 errors, as faithfully as he looks their odious consequences, 
 he would tell us that to the innocent enjoyments of hos- 
 pitality and festivity he owes his ruin — that the war- 
 ranted indulgences of convivial life led the way to the 
 habitual debauch, which has finally set upon him the 
 seal whereby all men may know the drunkard. He 
 would tell us that he was once worthy of a happier des- 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 187 
 
 tiny — that he stepped on life's pathway, rejoicing in 
 purity and hope — that he was blessed with a frame for 
 vigorous action, and a heart for the world's endearing 
 charities — that his eye loved the beauties of nature, and 
 his spirit adored the goodness of nature's God. But he 
 would tell us, that, in an evil hour, he found he had 
 fallen, even before he knew he was in danger; — that the 
 customs of society had first enticed him, and then un- 
 fitted him for its duties — that the wreaths they had 
 insidiously flung round him hardened to fetters, and he 
 could not shake them off. He would tell us, that over 
 the first discovery of his fatal lapse his alarmed parents 
 wept, and he mingled his tears with theirs — that as he 
 grew more unguarded in his offence, they raised the 
 angry voice of reproof, and he braved it in sullen silence 
 — that as he became still more vile and brutish, kindred 
 and friend turned their cold eyes away from him, and 
 his expiring shame felt a guilty relief. He would tell us 
 that, at length, just not hated, he has reached the lowest 
 point of living degradation — that in his hours of frenzy 
 he is locked up in the receptacle for the infamous, and in 
 his lucid intervals let out, a moving beacon to warn the 
 virtuous. Could he anticipate the end of his unhappy 
 story, he might tell us that yet a little while, and his 
 short and wretched career will be ended — that the father 
 
188 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 who hung over his cradle, weaving bright visions of his 
 
 son's future greatness, will feel a dreadful satisfaction as 
 
 he gazes upon him in his coffin — that the mother who 
 
 lulled him to sleep on her bosom, and joyed to watch his 
 
 waking, will not dare to murmur that the sleep has come 
 
 upon him out of which on earth he will never awake — 
 
 that the grave will be gladly made ready to receive him 
 
 — that as, " while living," he forfeited " fair renown," so, 
 
 " doubly dying," he must 
 
 " Gc down 
 To the vile dust, from whence he sprang, 
 Unwept, unhonored, and unsung." 
 
 But, deplorably as the frivolous usages of society show, 
 in their effects upon the young, the prospect is doubly 
 terrific, when we behold their ravages among the more 
 mature. The common calamities of life may be endured. 
 Poverty, sickness, and even death, maybe met — but 
 there is that which, while it brings all these with it, is 
 worse than all these together. When the husband and 
 father forgets the duties he once delighted to fulfil, and 
 by slow degrees becomes the creature of intemperance, 
 there enters into his house the sorrow that rends the 
 spirit — that cannot be alleviated, that will not be com- 
 forted. 
 
 It is here, above all, where she, who has ventured 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 1S9 
 
 everything, feels that everything is lost. Woman, silent- 
 suffering, devoted woman, here bends to her direst afflic- 
 tion. The measure of her woe is, in truth, fuU, whose 
 husband is a drunkard. Who shall protect her, when 
 he is her insulter, her oppressor ? What shall delight 
 her, when she shrinks from the sight of his face, and 
 trembles at the sound of his voice ? The hearth is 
 indeed dark, that he has made desolate. There, through 
 the dull midnight hour, her griefs are whispered to her- 
 self, her bruised heart bleeds in secret. There, while 
 the cruel author of her distress is drowned in distant 
 revelry, she holds her solitary vigil, waiting, yet dread- 
 ing his return, that will only wring from her, by his 
 unkindness, tears even more scalding than those she 
 sheds over his transgression. To fling a deeper gloom 
 across the present, memoiy turns back, and broods upon 
 the past. Like the recollection to the sun-stricken pil- 
 grim, of the cool spring that he drank at in the morning, 
 the joys of other days come over her, as if only to mock 
 her parched and weary spirit. She recalls the ardent 
 lover, whose graces won her from the home of her in- 
 fancy — the enraptured father, who bent with such 
 delight over his new-born children ; and she asks if this 
 can really be he — this sunken being, who has now 
 nothing for her but the sot's disgusting brutality — noth- 
 
190 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 ing for those abashed and trembling children, but the 
 sot's disgusting example ! Can we wonder, that, amid 
 these a'gonizing moments, the tender cords of violated 
 affection should snap asunder? that the scorned and 
 deserted wife should confess, " there is no killing like 
 that which kills the heart ? " that though it would have 
 been hard for her to kiss for the last time the cold lips 
 of her dead husband, and lay his body forever in the 
 dust, it is harder to behold him so debasing life, that 
 even his death would be greeted in mercy ? Had he 
 died in the light of his goodness, bequeathing to his 
 family the inheritance of an untarnished name, the ex- 
 ample of virtues that should blossom for his sons and 
 daughters from the tomb — though she would have wept 
 bittejly indeed, the tears of grief would not have been 
 also the tears of shame. But to behold him, fallen away 
 from the station he once adorned, degraded from emi- 
 nence to ignominy — at home, turning his dwelling to 
 darkness, and its holy endearments to mockery — abroad, 
 thrust from the companionship of the worthy, a self- 
 branded outlaw — this is the woe that the wife feels is 
 more dreadful than death, — that she mourns over as 
 worse than widowhood. 
 
 There is yet another picture behind, from the exhibi- 
 tion of which I would willingly be spared. I have ven- 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 191 
 
 tured to point to those who daily force themselves before 
 the world ; but there is one whom the world does not 
 know of — who hides herself from prying eyes, even in 
 the innermost sanctuary of the domestic temple. Shall 
 I dare to rend the veil that hangs between, and draw her 
 forth? — the priestess dying amid her unholy rites — 
 the sacrificer and the sacrifice ? O, we compass sea and 
 land, we brave danger and death, to snatch the poor vic- 
 tim of heathen superstition from the burning pile —and 
 it is well ; but shall we not also save the lovely ones of 
 our own household, from immolating on this foul altar, 
 not alone the perishing body, but all the worshipped 
 graces of her sex — the glorious attributes of hallowed 
 womanhood ? 
 
 Imagination's gloomiest reverie never conceived of a 
 more revolting object than that of a wife and mother 
 defiling in her own person the fairest work of her God, 
 and setting at nought the holy engagements for which 
 He created her. Her husband — who shall heighten his 
 joys, and dissipate his cares, and alleviate his sorrows ? 
 She, who has robbed him of all joy, who is the source of 
 his deepest care, who lives his sharpest sorrow ? These 
 are indeed the wife's delights — but they are not hers. 
 Her children — who shall watch over their budding vir- 
 tues, and pluck up the young weeds of passion and vice ? 
 
192 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 She, in whose owii bosom everything beautiful has with- 
 ered, everything vile grows rank? Who shall teach 
 them to bend their little knees in devotion, and repeat 
 their Saviour's prayer against " temptation ?" She, who 
 is herself temptation's fettered slave ? These are truly 
 the mother's labors — but they are not hers. Connubial 
 love and maternal tenderness bloom no longer for her. 
 A worm has gnawed into her heart, that dies only with 
 its prey — the worm Intemperance. 
 
 These are not the imaginings of a heated fancy — you 
 who hear me know that they are not. Nor are they dis- 
 torted illustrations of rare and solitary cases, which cross 
 us so seldom that they are wondered at, even more than 
 they are deplored. Your own observation will bear me 
 witness, that they are drawn at random, from the too 
 numerous classes, whose talents and virtues are annually 
 lost to their friends by the basilisk charm of the social 
 cup. You behold them at every turn; — happy are you, 
 if you do not discover in them once valued companions 
 — thrice happy, if you have never been called to lament 
 over them by your own firesides. 
 
 But why are these odious portraits hung up to the 
 sickening gaze ? Have the originals come hither to look 
 upon them, and grow ashamed of their own deformity ? 
 Can all the homilies of the pulpit startle him who has 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 193 
 
 been blind to the tears of affection, and deaf to the prayer 
 of friendship, and shrunk not from the burning touch of 
 shame ? No — we dare not hope to reclaim the drunk- 
 ard — his reformation "comes unlooked for, if it comes 
 at all." The mortal taint is upon him, — in his blood, 
 on his brain, — and if he will, he must die, even in his 
 drunkenness. But though many an ill-fated vessel goes 
 to the bottom, men do not forbear to light up the beacon 
 of safety — there are yet gallant barks in the offing, and 
 for them the signal-fire must be set on high. There are 
 those about us, now vibrating between right and wrong 
 — they may be snatched from the woe that threatens 
 them ; there are those now happy in the sunshine of 
 temperance — they may live to crown our exertions ; 
 there are the multitudes, not yet fallen, because not as- 
 sailed ; the strong toilers by the wayside, the busy crafts- 
 men of life's middle walks, the loftier aspirants for wealth 
 and distinction ; parents, yet the centre of domestic bliss ; 
 children, still the pride of the paternal board ; there are 
 the generations springing up around us, with passions 
 uncurbed, and principles unestablished — those who are 
 to come after us, and fill our places, and hand down to 
 their posterity the virtues and vices they learn of us — 
 these call aloud for our untiring labors, and, by the 
 blessing of Heaven, for some of these our labors shall 
 not be in vain. 
 
194 ON LNTEMPERANCE. 
 
 Although I have not particularly alluded to the 
 effects of intemperance on the lower orders of society, it 
 is by no means because the intemperate with them are 
 less numerous than may be found among the higher 
 classes — we know that the reverse is the case. Per- 
 sonal observation and well-authenticated documents too 
 plainly prove, that, to the poor, drunkenness is verily the 
 pestilence walking in darkness, and the destruction wast- 
 mg at noonday. If they can find money for nothing 
 else, they can find it for the liquid fire that destroys 
 them. He who is so destitute that he can neither clothe 
 nor feed his ragged and famishing children, is rarely so 
 reduced that he cannot pay for the guilty indulgences of 
 the dram-shop. " I have seen," says one of my prede- 
 cessors in this duty — "I have seen ardent spirits, more 
 than once, form, with a scanty allowance of bread and 
 meat, the only meal of an almost perishing family. I 
 have seen a mother and her children, hovering in the 
 depth of winter over a few dying embers, half naked and 
 half starved, bread and water the only nourishment of 
 the children, bread and rum of the parents. I have seen 
 a little child, squalid and filthy, pinched with cold and 
 want, covered, but not protected from the inclemency of 
 winter, by a few tattered garments, her bare feet on the 
 frozen earth, stealing along with a broken pitcher, to 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 195 
 
 bring to her parents the liquor which was to serve for 
 the morning's repast — whilst within their comfortless 
 dwelling, gladdened by no blazing hearth, they were 
 waiting in bed, with a drunkard's longing, for that which 
 was to them better than food, clothing, or fire." 
 
 I might warn the poor man of the inevitable conse- 
 quences of these besotting habits. I might tell him that 
 they will steal away all his homely comforts, load him 
 with debts, lead him to the jail, stretch him on the bed 
 of sickness, and finally press him down to an untimely 
 grave, while his wife and children must be left behind, 
 the shivering pensioners of a grudging world's cold 
 bounty. But I am not now addressing the poor. I 
 speak to you, whom the poor are proud to copy. By 
 portraying some of the evils that are thinning your own 
 ranks, by tracing them to what I believe is their origin, 
 and pointing to what I think is the only certain relief 
 for them, I would incite you to a reformation, that shall 
 not only reach those around you, but descend to those 
 below. If the present race is too far gone, you may at 
 least save some of that which is to come. Man has 
 been truly termed the creature of imitation, and it is 
 equally true, that his disposition to imitate is somewhat 
 aspiring. He will ape a lofty vice, rather than emulate 
 a lowly virtue. This inclination, strong enough every- 
 
196 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 where, is peculiarly powerful in a country the very insti- 
 tutions of which serve to feed it. The pleasant doctrine 
 that all men are free and equal is thoroughly understood, 
 at least in one sense, by those whom its exciting spirit 
 never roused to great and noble action. 
 
 In this view our subject assumes a fearful political 
 importance. The ruinous consequences of wide-spread 
 intemperance to a people governing themselves, can 
 hardly be overrated. If there be on earth one nation 
 more than another, whose institutions must draw their 
 life-blood from the individual purity of its citizens, that 
 nation is our own. Eulers by divine right, and nobles 
 by hereditary succession, may, perhaps, tolerate with 
 impunity those depraving indulgences which keep the 
 great mass abject. Where the many enjoy little or no 
 power, it were a trick of policy to wink at those ener- 
 vating vices which would rob them of both the ability 
 and the inclination to enjoy it. But in our country, 
 where almost every man, however humble, bears to the 
 omnipotent ballot-box his full portion of the sovereignty 
 — where, at regular periods, the ministers of authority, 
 who went forth to rule, return to be ruled, and lay down 
 their dignities at the feet of the monarch multitude — 
 where, in short, public sentiment is the absolute lever 
 that moves the political world — the purity of the people 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 197 
 
 is the rock of political safety. We may boast, if we 
 please, of our exalted privileges, and fondly imagine that 
 they will be eternal — but whenever those vices shall 
 abound which undeniably tend to debasement, steeping 
 the poor and the ignorant still lower in poverty and igno- 
 rance, and thereby destroying that wholesome mental 
 equality which can alone sustain a self-ruled people — it 
 will be found, by woful experience, that our happy sys- 
 tem of government, the best ever devised for the intelli- 
 gent and good, is the very worst to be intrusted to the 
 degraded and vicious. The great majority will then 
 truly become a many-headed monster, to be tamed and 
 led at will. The tremendous power of suffrage, like the 
 strength of the eyeless Nazarite, so far from being their 
 protection, will but serve to pull down upon their heads 
 the temple their ancestors reared for them. Caballers 
 and demagogues will find it an easy task to delude those 
 who have deluded themselves ; and the freedom of the 
 people will finally be buried in the grave of their virtues. 
 National greatness may survive — splendid talents and 
 brilliant victories may fling their delusive lustre abroad ; 
 — these can illumine the darkness that hangs round the 
 throne of a despot — but their light will be like the bale- 
 ful flame that hovers over decaying mortality, and tells 
 of the corruption that festers beneath. The immortal 
 
198 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 spirit will have gone ; and along our shores, and among 
 our hills — those shores made sacred by the sepulchre 
 of the Pilgrim, those hills hallowed by the uncoffined 
 bones of the Patriot — even there, in the ears of their 
 degenerate descendants, shall ring the last knell of 
 departed Liberty. 
 
 I would not, even in anticipation, do my country 
 injustice. I glory in my citizenship. With the excep- 
 tion of the one hateful vice, which is spreading its rav- 
 ages far and wide, we may proudly challenge a compar- 
 ison with the dominions of the earth. The present, 
 however, is not a time for the silken phrases of self-com- 
 mendation. This gross and besetting sin, the parent of 
 so many others, is a national blot ; and if it shows the 
 darker on our scutcheon, that it pollutes so fair a surface, 
 it becomes more imperiously the duty of every patriotic 
 citizen to assist in removing it. Let not our glory and 
 disgrace go hand in hand. When we exultingly pro- 
 claim to the decrepit communities of the old world, how 
 far we have outstripped them in liberty, let them not be 
 able to tell us that we have also outstripped them in a 
 vice which is liberty's most deadly foe. If that be true, 
 which we have been told, let it teach us humility, and 
 excite us to amendment — that though but two hundred 
 years a people, but fifty years a nation, we have already, 
 
ON INTEBIPERANCE. 199 
 
 in this particular, attained a wicked preeminence over 
 kingdoms that had seen centuries come and depart, long 
 before the white sail of Columbus caught the inspiring 
 winds of our western sky. 
 
 I have thus imperfectly touched upon some of the 
 evils of intemperance, as they affect man in the life that 
 is • — but how much more unspeakable do they become, 
 when we consider him as a being born to live forever ! 
 It has been remarked of other sins, that, as we grow old, 
 if we do not leave them, at least they leave us. Time 
 cools the hot blood of youth, afid philosophy assumes the 
 reins that passion has resigned. But this vampyre 
 vice clings the closer as it draws its captive nearer to the 
 grave; and, when it has destroyed the body, sends the 
 stupefied soul to its dread account, all reeking in its 
 unrepented-of enormity. 
 
 Is it not wonderful, that a creature glowing with the 
 divinity of his Creator — endowed with energies to con- 
 trol the things of one« world, and with attributes that 
 capacitate him for the joys of another — able to bind to 
 his will the elements that surround him, making the 
 winds and the waters the ministers of his pleasure — 
 rifling the caverns of the earth of their unsunned wealth 
 — tracing the stars as they circle away to their hiding- 
 places — exploring the unbounded realms of creation, till 
 
200 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 he Stands in speechless homage at the footstool of crea- 
 tion's awful Founder — is it not indeed wonderful, that 
 such a being, so rarely endowed, should dare to quench 
 the sabred fire that has descended upon him — cumber- 
 ing the earth he was born to subdue, and forfeiting the 
 heaven he was ordained to enjoy ? 
 
 But I am here invading the holy province of others. 
 This is your field, ye anointed ministers of Him who 
 went about doing good. Ye have the privilege, ye have 
 the command, to speak to man of his immortal destiny. 
 Is it glorious to sway the hum.an mind, and is it not 
 more glorious to render it worth being swayed? Is it 
 important to make men believe right, and is it not still 
 more important to make them act well? Is it your duty 
 to point them to heaven, and is it not doubly your duty 
 to fit them for heaven's enjoyments ? Ye would throw 
 light on the page that Infinite Wisdom has shrouded in 
 darkness — enforce that, also, which he who runs can 
 comprehend. Ye can sharpen and burnish your weapons, 
 and set yourselves in battle-array against each other, in 
 defence of your various creeds — unite your conflicting 
 powers, and overthrow the giant sin that wars with every 
 cree.d. Ye would open the eyes of the blind heathen, 
 and snatch him from the blood-dripping car of his idol — 
 strive also to convert the Christian idolater, and save 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 201 
 
 him from the wrath of a demon whose touch is worse 
 than death. Warn him of the vice that eats into the 
 soul. Declare unto him the doom pronounced upon the 
 drunkard. With you are the hearts of the old and the 
 young. On you men look with love, for you are asso- 
 ciated with their joys and their sorrows ; to you they 
 listen with reverence, for you bear the delegated majesty 
 of the Most High. Be ye, then, faithful and fearless in 
 this thing — in what ye say — in what ye do. " Take 
 the censer of fire in your hands, and go forth into the 
 camp, and stand between the living and the dead, and 
 stay this plague which rages among the people." 
 
 And, now, is it a hard thing that we ask each other to 
 perform ? There are those who never fear to do that 
 which they are conscious is wrong — shall we be afraid 
 to do that which we know to be right ? Martyrs have 
 calmly laid their heads on the block, for opinions the 
 truth of which many will always deny — shall we hesi- 
 tate to protest against habits, the baneful consequences 
 of which all acknowledge ? Men waste time, and talent, 
 and money, in schemes which, though successful, end in 
 vexation and vanity — are we unwilling to make an 
 eflbrt for the happiness of those about us, which, even if 
 unsuccessful, will bring us the reward of self-approba- 
 
 14 
 
202 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 tion ? We love to remember what our fathers did and 
 suffered, in the ages gone by, and we extol the holy and 
 the bold achievements which secured to us a lovely 
 heritage — shall our children look back to our day, and 
 find nothing to reverence in us ? Shall we not at least 
 bequeath them lessons of purity, examples of temper- 
 ance ? These may not win for us the page of history — 
 the orator may not sound our praise in high places — 
 nor the poet remember us in his glowing anthem ; — but 
 the small, sweet voice of the moralist will testify of us — 
 the blessings of them that were ready to perish may rest 
 upon us — we shall have that within " which passeth 
 show." 
 
 Let me, then, again press you to the enforcement of the 
 only remedy for this destroying sin. If we would really 
 banish intemperance, we must close the hundred secret 
 avenues through which it winds its way. We must 
 turn our eyes from the pleasant shapes it assumes in its 
 infancy, if we would not look upon it in all its full-grown 
 bloatedness. We must, in a word, give up drinking as 
 a necessary fashion, if we would get rid of drunkenness 
 as a necessary vice. This, too, unlike some good deeds, 
 must be done before men — in the sight of our families, 
 our friends, and the world. Our children, who seldom 
 think that can be wrong which their parents indulge in, 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 203 
 
 must no longer behold the strange fire an every-day 
 household sacrifice. Our neighbors, who are anxiou-s to 
 interchange with us the courtesies of hospitality, must 
 from us learn moral boldness enough to thrust the insin- 
 uating foe from their tables and firesides. Wherever 
 our influence can be felt, it must be judiciously exerted. 
 It must reach the young — who enter upon life with a 
 blind deference for their seniors, and imbibe their habits 
 long before they are able to weigh the tendency of them. 
 It must descend to the poor — who are ever ready to copy 
 the manners and practices of those above them. It must 
 spread round to the crowds of imitators, whose most 
 anxious care is, to live like other people — and who deem 
 it a very important study to find out what is customary, 
 without ever troubling themselves to ask whether it be 
 right. In this way, in this way alone, can the good 
 work commence — and if then there be anything left for 
 the law, let those who sit in the seats of authority look 
 to it. They will not fear to follow where we dare to 
 lead. 
 
 Every man is a member of some little brotherhood, in 
 which his influence will be felt, his actions imitated. It 
 is here that even the humblest may do much ; — not by 
 ill-timed and boisterous denunciations against all who 
 may feel the importance of the subject less deeply than 
 
204 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 himself — but by a meek and unostentatious, yet firm 
 and consistent rejection of those daily and nightly indul- 
 gences which lead to the misery we deplore. He must 
 remember that they whom he would gain over are not 
 so wicked as they are weak ; and that it is not in the 
 sever-e capacity of a judge that his labors are required, 
 but in the more endearing character of a friend. His 
 strongest persuasions must be those of practice. There 
 is " no lecture so eloquent as the silent lesson of a spot- 
 less example." He may not witness sudden and mirac- 
 ulous conversions to his faith — he may even sometimes 
 hear the coarse taunt of the scorner, against both his 
 faith and his works. They who are unwilling to do 
 anything, will tell him that nothing can be done. They 
 who fold up their arms in contented apathy, because the 
 viper has not crawled into their bowers, will assure him 
 that nothing need be done. They who deem that the 
 sum of human duty is merely to provide for one's own 
 household, and respect the laws of the land, will try to 
 convince him that nothing ought to be done. But let 
 not all this shake the lover of temperance from his pur- 
 pose — there is much that should be done, and if he will 
 persevere, at length much may be done. By time and 
 patience, it has been beautifully observed, the leaf of the 
 mulberry-tree becomes satin. In good season he will 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 205 
 
 behold the harvest of his labors ripening around him. 
 His gentle entreaties, his mild and judicious zeal, 
 
 "Each virtuous mind will wake, 
 As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake. 
 The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds. 
 Another still, and still another spreads ; 
 Friend, kindred, neighbor, first it will embrace, 
 His country next, and next all human race." 
 
 My friends, be this laudable enterprise ours. Against 
 the common destroyer let us stand boldly forth, in word 
 and in work. It is these, that, like the prophet's prayer 
 and the warrior's valor, must achieve the victory together. 
 If there be any here who are disposed to look coldly 
 upon our object, as unattainable, let them ask themselves 
 if all the various exhortations of the pulpit are not 
 obnoxious to the same objection. We admJt that there 
 will ever be drunkards; but if, because we may not hope 
 to keep all men temperate, we must not therefore strive 
 to preserve any, then no longer let the temples of the 
 Most High echo to the voices of his servants — close up 
 the doors of the sacred desk, for there are those who 
 would slumber in their sins beneath, though an arch- 
 angel should denounce them. All human efforts, how- 
 ever praiseworthy, must be marked by imperfection. It 
 is the badge of earth, and of everything earthly. It is 
 
206 ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 hung round the neck of man before his first repose on his 
 mother's lap, and it must remain there till his last sleep 
 on the lap of the common mother of all. We cannot 
 entirely get rid of drunkenness — but we can make it so 
 rare a crime, that the guilty ones shall stand out, like 
 dark pillars on the road of life, to remind the innocent 
 how far, how very far, they have left them behind. 
 
 To you, whose call I have obeyed in coming hither, I 
 say — Go on, as you have begun. The health and hap- 
 piness of individuals, the comfort of families, and the 
 welfare of society, call upon you. The fiery serpents of 
 intemperance are abroad in the land — let your example 
 be the symbol of healing, to which the afilicted may look 
 up and live. What ye say and do, others will imitate. 
 They are now imitating you. Already there is a rus- 
 tling among the leaves of the forest, and it foretells the 
 rising wind, that shall come in its purity, to cleanse the 
 suffocating atmosphere. Reformation is beginning in the 
 right place — even in public opinion. Win but that to 
 your side, and it will do more for you than all the laws 
 that slumber in the dust of your public archives. 
 
 Go on — and may the prayers of good men accompany 
 you, and the blessing of Heaven seal your honorable 
 labors. And when that hour, which must come to us 
 all, shall come to each of you — when, lingering on the 
 
ON INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 207 
 
 confines of life and death, the awed and subdued spirit 
 looks back to the scenes that have long faded in the dis- 
 tance — when the hollow applause of the world dies 
 away from the ear, and nothing rises up but the recollec- 
 tion of good and evil deeds — when the weedy garlands 
 of ambition have no freshness for the burning brow, no 
 perfume for the fainting soul — in that hour, if you can 
 remember one fellow-traveller turned from destruction by 
 your influence — the image of that one shall hover round 
 your pillow of suffering, and be to you a ministering 
 seraph.