University of California Berkeley From the library of JAMES D. HART POEMS ON MAN, IN HIS VARIOUS ASPECTS UNDER THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. BY CORNELIUS MATHEWS, AUTHOK OF "THE MOTLEY BOOK," "BEHEMOTH," "PUFFER HOPKINS," ETC., ETC. NEW-YORK. WILEY AND PUTNAM. MDCCCXLIII. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by COR.VELIUS MATHEws,inthe Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New -York. Press of C. R. Lincoln, Flushing, L. I. SIMPLE POEMS ARE DEDICATED TO THE HOPEFUL FRIENDS OF HUMANITY, EY THEIR SERVANT, THE AUTHOR. New-York, My, 1843. CONTENTS. I. THE CHILD 7 II. THE FATHER IS IIL THE TEACHER 21 IV. THE CITIZEN 27 V. THE FARMER 31 VI. THE MECHANIC , 37 VII. THE MERCHANT 43 VIII. THE SOLDIER 48 IX. THE STATESMAN 53 X. THE FRIEND 59 XI. THE PAINTER 63 XII. THE SCULPTOR 69 XIII. THE JOURNALIST 75 XIV. THE MASSES 81 XV. THE REFORMER 85 XVI. THE POOR MAN 91 XVII. THE SCHOLAR 97 XVIII. THE PREACHER 105 XIX. THE POET 109 I. THE CHILD. l* THE CHILD. CALM, in thy cradle lie, thou little Child, Thy white limbs smoothing in a patient sleep, Or, gambolling when thou wakest at the peep Of the young day as clear and undefiled As thou ! Around thy fresh and lowly bed Look up and see, how reverent men are gathered, In wonder at a babe so greatly fathered Into life, and so by influence fed. $ THE CHILD. They watch the quiet of thy deep blue eye Where all the outward world is born anew, Where habit, figure, form, complexion, hue Rise up and live again in that pure sky ; At every lifting of thine arms, they feel The ribbed and vasty bulk of Empire shake, And from the fashion of thy features take The hope and image of the common-weal. See ! through the white skin beats the ruddy tide ! The pulses of thine heart, that come and go, Like the great circles of the ocean-flow, And dash a continent at either side. Thou wield 'st a hopeful Empire, large and fair, With sceptred strength : about thy brow is set A fresh glad crown, with dewy morning wet, And noon-day lingers in thy flaxen hair ! THE CHILD. Kingdom, authority and power to thee Belong ; the hand that frees, the chain that thralls Each attribute on various man that falls, Strides he the globe, or canvass-tents the sea : The sword, the staff, the judge's cap of death, The ruler's robe, the treasurer's key of gold, All growths the world-wide scope of life may hold, Are formed in thee and people in thy breath. Be stirred or still, as prompts thy beating heart ! Out of thy slumbering calmness there shall climb, Spirits serene and true against the Time That trumpets men to an heroic part ; And motion shall confirm thee, rough or mild For the full sway that unto thee belongs, In the still house or 'mid the massy throngs Of life thou gentle and thou sovereign Child ! 8 THE CHILD. They watch the quiet of thy deep blue eye Where all the outward world is born anew, Where habit, figure, form, complexion, hue Rise up and live again in that pure sky ; At every lifting of thine arms, they feel The ribbed and vasty bulk of Empire shake, And from the fashion of thy features take The hope and image of the common-weal. See ! through the white skin beats the ruddy tide ! The pulses of thine heart, that come and go, Like the great circles of the ocean-flow, And dash a continent at either side. Thou wield'st a hopeful Empire, large and fair, With sceptred strength : about thy brow is set A fresh glad crown, with dewy morning wet, And noon-day lingers in thy flaxen hair ! THE CHILD. Kingdom, authority and power to thee Belong ; the hand that frees, the chain that thralls Each attribute on various man that falls, Strides he the globe, or canvass-tents the sea : The sword, the staff, the judge's cap of death, The ruler's robe, the treasurer's key of gold, All growths the world-wide scope of life may hold, Are formed in thee and people in thy breath. \ Be stirred or still, as prompts thy beating heart ! Out of thy slumbering calmness there shall climb, Spirits serene and true against the Time That trumpets men to an heroic part ; And motion shall confirm thee, rough or mild For the full sway that unto thee belongs, In the still house or 'mid the massy throngs Of life thou gentle and thou sovereign Child ! II. THE FATHER. II. THE FATHER, - THE FATHER, See, rather, from the little lids looks out A soul distinct and sphered, its own true star, Shining and axled for a separate way, Be its young orbit's courses near or far. His little hands uplifted for his right To have an individual life allowed Implore of men, of men, from thee the first, The freedom by his birth-right hour bestowed. Check not, nor hamper with an idle chain,. With customs harsh, of a loose leisure grown. With habitudes of craft, of health or pain The youngling life that asks to be its own : His early friend, his helper and his guide To stay his hold upon the rugged way Turn not that life-branch from the sun or shade aside, But in heaven's breezes, rather, let it go astray. THE FATHER. 17 Be thou a Heaven of truth and cheerful hope, Clear as the clear, round midnight at its full ; And he, the Earth beneath that elder cope And each 'gainst each for highest mastery pull : The child and father, each shall fitly be Hope in the evening vanward paling down, The one the other younger Hope upspringing, With the glancing morning for its crown. There is no tyranny in truest love, Nor rightful mastery in triumphant force ; And gentleness at hearth and board will prove Felicity is born of their divorce : Father and Child, the after and before, Latest or first, whatever matters it ? Of mutual hopes, of mutual fears and loves, ^ Rounded and firm, their strands of life are knit. 2* III. THE TEACHER. THE TEACHER. WITH reverent steps approach the soul that lies Before thee, rude, unformed and full of life ; A chaos shrouding up a future world To order born yet with itself at strife. Peer for a while within the dark domain, And see how temples mighty spring to sight, Arks, palaces all dead or living things Doomed to climb up into the Heaven's light> 22 THE TEACHER. To heap the Earth or sail the outward Sea ; The giant mass of things to come at large, Hovering about and shaping silently Within that baby soul's unquiet marge.* In beauty shall that fresh-girt spirit build ? Shall harmony through all its chambers sing While rising day by day, and pile on pile, Its topless worlds of heaven-ward wonders spring ? Say thou that broodest on its infant breast ! Whose eyes cry light through all its dawning void Or, with a double darkness would invest Young thoughts, on labor without hope employed. 'T is there the truest work Earth knows is done Each hour, each instant buys the world an age With glory bright ; knits up its golden peace, Or rends the web of time with endless rage. * And in such indexes .... there is seen The "baby figure of the giant mass Of things to come at large. Troil. and Cressid. THE TEACHER. 23 Bend to the Teacher, bend, oh world, thy knees ! li &>**& And pray him, blessed God's name,"=te:be true ! Leist he forever break that spirit's-prceious'peace, And following millions in its fall undo. A consecrated man thou man of thought Keep clear thy master -soul in every act, \nd be thy features pure as early light Crossing in power that spirit's undimmed tract The world's dust ever shake from off thy feet, When drawest thou to that white temple near, .Nor vex its amber cope with words unmeet Of hate, or anger harsh, or unblest fear. Listen the way the spirit seeks to go And watch its sacred steps, or firm or frail ; Haste not its pace, nor hinder it the path Smiling or sad, in changeful mirth or wail, Remember, thou art standing by thy God ! Ere Earth has soiled his beauty, touched his strength \ 'T is there th ' Almighty makes his sweet abode ; 24 TBS TEACHER. And there, if undisturbed, would Heaven at length Take up and fix its everlasting rest : Yea, Heaven with these, its children, fain would dwell, And, far-withdrawn within their stainless breast, Deliver thence, at times, a blessed oracle IV. THE CITIZEN. THE CITIZEN. WITH plainess in thy daily pathway walk And disencumbered of excess : no other Jostling, servile to none, none overstalk, For, right and left, who passes is thy brother. Let him who in thy countenance looks, Find there in meek and softened majesty, Thy Country writ, thy Brother and thy God ; And be each motion, forthright, calm and free. 28 THE CITIZEN.- Feel well with the poised ballot in thy hand, Thine unmatched sovreignty of right and wrong- *T is thine to bless, or blast the waiting land, To shorten up its life- or make it long Who looks on thee, not hopeless, should behold, A self-delivered, self-supported Man ; True to his being's mighty purpose true To a wisdom-blessed a god-given plan. No where within the great globe's skyey round Cans't thou escape thy duty, grand and high, A man unbadged, unbonneted, unbound Walk to the Tropic to the Desert fly. A full-fraught Hope upon thy shoulder leans, And beats with thine, the heart of half the world ; Ever behind thee walks the shining Past, Before thee burns the star-stripe, high unfurled. V. THE FARMER. 3 THE FARMER. FULL master of the liberal soil he treads, With none to tithe, to crop, to third his beds Of ripely-glowing fruit or yellow grain He knows what freedom is ; undulled of pain Looks on the sun and on the wheatfield looks, Each glad and golden in the other's view ; Or, on the meadow listening to the sky That bids its grasses thrive with starry dew 32 THE FARMER. To him there come in such still places, Undimmed, majestical and fresh as life, The elder forms, the antique mighty faces Which shone in council, stood aloft in strife When went the battle, billowy, past ; When high the standard to the sky was raised ; When rushed the horseman with the rushing blast, And the red sword through shrouded valleys blazed. When Cities rising shake th' Atlantic shore Thou mighty Inland, calm with plenteous peace, Oh temper and assuage the wild uproar, And bring the sick, vexed masses balmy ease. On their red vision like an angel gleam, And angel-like be heard amid their cries Till they are stilled as is the summer's stream^ Majestical and still as summer skies* THE FARMER, 33 When cloud-like whirling through the stormy State Fierce Revolutions rush in wild-orbed haste, On the still highway stay their darkling course, And soothe with gentle airs their fiery breast ; Slaking the anger of their chariot-wheels In the cool flowings of the mountain brook, While from the cloud the heavenward prophet casts His mantle's peace, and shines his better look. Better to watch the live-long day The clouds that come and go Wearying the heaven they idle through, And fretting out its everlasting blue Than prowl through streets and sleep in hungry dens : The beast should own, though known and named as men's Though sadness on the woods may often lie, And, wither to a waste the meadowy land Pure blows the air and purer shines the sky, For nearer always to Heaven's gate ye stand I VI. THE MECHANIC. THE MECHANIC. O, when thou walkest by the river's brink, Thy bulky figure outlined in the wave, Or, on thine adze-staff resting, 'neath the ship Thy strokes have shaped, or hear'st thou loud and brave The clangor of the boastful forge Think not To strength of limb, to sinews large and tough, Are given rights masterless and vantage -proof, The sad, pale scholar and his puny hand Idling his thoughts upon the idle sand, May not possess as full^: oh, maddened, drink not With greedy ear what selfish Passion pours : His a sway peculiar is, no less than yours. 4 38 THE MECHANIC. The inner world is his ; the outer thine (And both are God's) a world, maiden and new, To shape and finish forth, of iron and wood, Of rock and brass, to fashion, mould and hew In countless cunning forms to re-create Till the great God of order shall proclaim it " Good ! Proportioned fair, as in its first estate. Let consecrate, whatever it strikes, each blow From the small whisper of the tinkling smith, Up to the big-voiced sledge that heaving slow Roars 'gainst the massy bar, and tears Its entrail, glowing, as with angry teeth Anchors that hold a world should thus-wise grow. In the First Builder's gracious spirit work, Through hall, through enginery, and temples meek, In grandeur towered, or lapsing, beauty -sleek, Let order and creative fitness shine : THE MECHANIC. 39 Though mountains are no more to rear, Though woods may rise again no more ; The noble task to re-produce is thine ! The spreading branch the firm-set peak may live With thee, and in thy well sped labors thrive. The untried forces of the air, the earth, the sea Wait at thy bidding : oh, compel their powers To uses holy ! Let them ever be Servants to tend and bless these new-found bowers ; And make them household workers, free and swift, On daily use on daily service bent : Her face again old Eden may uplift, And God look down the open firmament. VII THE MERCHANT, THE MERCHANT. WHO gathers income in the narrow street, Or, climbing, reaps it from the roughening sea His anchor Truth should fix should fill his flowing sheet, His weapon, helm and staff the Truth should be. Wrought out with lies each rafter of thine house, Black with the falsehood every thread thou wearest A subtle ruin, sudden overthrow, For all thy household's fortune thou preparest. 43 THE MERCHANT* Undimmed the man should through the trader shine, And show the soul unabied by his craft : Slight duties may not lessen but adorn, The cedar's berries round the cedar's shaft. The pettiest act will lift the doer up, The mightiest cast him swift and headlong down ;, If one forget the spirit of his deed, The other wears it as a living crown. A grace, be sure, in all true duty dwells ; Humble or high, you always know it thus, For beautiful in act, the foregone thought Confirms its truth though seeming-ominous. Pure hands and just, may therefore, well be laid On duties daily as the air we breathe ; And Heaven amid the thorns of harshest Trade The laurel of its gentlest love may wreathe* VIII. THE SOLDIER. THE SOLDIER. With grounded arms, and silent as the mountains, Pause for thy quarrel at the marbled sea : And, when comes the ship o'er the curled wave bounding, Remember that a brother in a foe may be. Thy battles are not wars but self-defences, Girding this Universal Home about Least lion-wrong and subtle-fanged pretences Pierce to its heart and let the life-hope out THE SOLDIER. 49 Though sleeps the war-blade in the amorous sheath, And the dumb cannon stretches at his leisure When strikes the shore a hostile foot out-breathe Ye grim, loud guns ye fierce swords work your pleasure ! And sternly, in your stubborn socket set, For life or death your hilt upon the steadfast land, Your glance upon the foe, thou sure-set bayonet, Firm 'gainst a world's shock in your fastness stand ! This, this, remember still, thou son of war The child of peace within his doorway seated Thine equal is though beats the luring drum afar, Or flies the meteor column, battle-heated. Lo, in the calmness of that silent man, And in the peaceful sky-arch o'er him bending, A pure repose a more triumphal span Than sees the death-field 'mid its storms ascending. 5 IX. THE STATESMAN THE STATESMAN. UP to the Capitol who goes, a heart Should bear, state tyranny may not subdue : Wakening at dawn to fill its ample part, It, ever, day by day, grows fresh and new, Nor sleeps through the mid-watches of the night, Though there the thankless world has left its smart- Without some visions, beckoning and bright, That make him gladly to his bedside start. 5* 4 THE STATESMAN. Accursed who on the Mount of Rulers sits Nor gains some glimpses of a fairer day ! Who knows not there, what there his soul befits, Thoughts that leap up and kindle far away The coming time ! Who rather dulls the ear With brawling discord and a cloud of words ; Owning no hopeful object, far or near, Save what the universal self affords. He that with sway of empire would control The various millions, parted or amassed, Should hold in bounteous fee, an ample soul Equal the first to know, nor less the last. At once whose general eye surveys as well The rank or desert waste the golden field ; Whose feet the mountain and the valley tread, Nor ever to the trials of the way will yield. THE STATESMAN. 55 Deeper to feel, than quickly to express And then alone in the consummate act- Reaps not the ocean, nor the free air tills, But keeps within his own peculiar tract : Confirms the State in all its needful right, Nor strives to draw within its general hound For gain or loss, for glory or distress, The rich man's hoard, the poor man's patchy ground. Strip from the trunk that props the empire up, All weeds, all flowers that hide the simple shaft : Plain as the heavens and pure as mid-day light Swell up its ample cope : nor there ingraft A single leaf nor draw a single line To daze the eye, to coax the grasper's hand 5 Simple it rose so simple let it rise Forever, changeless simple let it stand ! X. THE FRIEND. THE FRIEND. IN fortune, quality and temper mated Let spirit, spirit choose each suited best To th' other's moving mind or mind at rest ; In kinship nearer than red blood related. No castled shadow falls upon the heart, Darkening two faces each turned unto the other, No lowly roof shuts in or out the heart's true brother : Life deals to each, with equal chance, an equal part, THE FRIEND. With mutual talk of kingdoms past and gone, Of Rome republic-strong, and emperored Rome, Of Venice in her heart-struck days of doom Old Israel pure, and scarlet Babylon ; Of muniments to guard a free-born State, And ships built proof against the world's worst shock, Of battles won, white-handed peace to rock The coming age, they share a mutual fate. Sweet is the counsel of two noble souls ! Where sleeps no lie of thought with art concealed Beneath the blood, nor in the face revealed : Friendship goes oftenest down on secret shoals ! XI. THE PAINTER. THE PAINTER. A spirit moving through the Universe, On Heaven's errand or his own Nature's pure behest, Would feed the beauty of his living wings On the free air, and on the sunset bright And on the dawning morn ; should a later quest Detain him far through the heart of night, Some darker tints might creep across the light, Or a chill splendor, of the moonbeams born, Dying in gloom or wakening into morn. 64 THE PAINTER- Lighting by chance amid the haunts of men Though yearning to get purely forth again Their dusty shouts would not sully, but renew Rather, the glory when it had wandered through. To pause beneath a mountain, should he choose, Its shadows would be portion of the many hues : And, up returning to his hearth-sky post, a- And, dwelling, once again, within his native ctfost, The mountain and the sea, the setting sun, The storm, the face of men, and the calm moon Would live again upon the pictured vans and in the glowing crest Of that High Spirit, moving or at rest. Be, thou, oh Painter, various, pure and free, As Heaven's boundless and wide-winged minister : Moving abroad, thy spirit let confer With whispering beauty, born of Earth, of Air or Sea. Look on the earth that breaks about thy feet, In valleys and in mountains starry : THE PAINTER. J65 Look on the woods, amid whose colored bowers, The dark bright seasons, else departed, tarry. See Heaven shining through the pale blue sky On some fair day of dreamy summer, Smiling upon a gentle hour just dead, Or kindling welcome for a gentler comer. Are there no spirits, kin to light and beauty, Springing to cheer these sweet and suited haunts ? Faces of love and forms of eldest duty, Which, unexpressed, the soul thereafter pants-? Fill thou, the mansion of thy Father-land With hues to gladden in its hours of need, With glancing shapes that every fairness breed, And pour a larger life from thy creative hand ! 6* XII. THE SCULPTOR THE SCULPTOR. _^ Leap up into the light, ye living Forms ! And plant amid men your birthright feet ; Angry and fierce as the maned thunder's storms, And as the lightning beautiful and fleet. Of quick and thoughtful souls the truest thoughts, Born of the marble at Heaven's happy hour Ye blessed Realities ! who strike the doubts Begot of speech, dumb, with your better power. 70 THE SCULPTOR. Human and life-like with no sense of pain, Come forth, crowned heroes of the early age, Chieftain and soldier, senator and sage Benignant, wise and brave again ! Would the soul clothe itself in elder gloom Let stand upon the cliff and in the shadowy grove, The tawny ancient of the warrior race, With dusky limb and flushing face, Diffusing Autumn through the stilly place For battle stern, or soothed for love. Or should a spirit of a larger scope Seek to express itself in sacred stone : Cast, life-long, on the mountain-slope Or seat upon the starry mountain-cone, Colossal and resigned, the gloomy gods Eying at large their lost abodes, Towering and swart and knit in every limb, With brows on which the tempest lives, With eyes wherein the past survives ; Gloomy and battailous and grim. THE SCULPTOR. 71 Think not too much what other climes have done, What other ages : with painful following, weary Each step thou takest darkens thy natural sun, And makes thy coming course, thy by-gone, dreary. Let the soul in thee lift its awful front, Facing the Universe that stands before it ; Beaten by day and night and tempests' brunt, All shapes all glorious passions shall cross o'er it. Forth from their midst some forms will leap That other souls have never disencumbered, And up shall spring through all the broad-set land, The fair white people of thy love unnumbered. XIII. THE JOURNALIST. THE JOURNALIST. As shakes the canvass of a thousand ships, Struck by a heavy land-breeze, far at sea Ruffle the thousand broad-sheets of the land, Filled with the people's breath of potency A thousand images the hour will take, From him who strikes, who rules, who speaks, who sings ; Many within the hour their grave to make Many to live, far in the heart of things. 76 THE JOURNALIST- A dark-dyed spirit he who coins the time, To virtue's wrong, in base disloyal lies Who makes the morning's breath, the evening's tide ? The utterer of his blighting forgeries. How beautiful who scatters, wide and free, The gold-bright seeds of loved and loving truth ! By whose perpetual hand, each day, supplied Leaps to new life the empire's heart of youth. To know the instant and to speak it true, Its passing lights of joy, its dark, sad cloud, To fix upon the unnumbered gazers' view, Is to thy ready hand's broad strength allowed. There is an in-wrought life in every hour, . Fit to be chronicled at large and told 'T is thine to pluck to light its secret power, And on the air its many-colored heart unfold. THE JOURNALIST. 77 The angel that in sand-dropped minutes lives, Demands a message cautious as the ages Who stuns, with dusk-red words of hate, his ear, That mighty power to boundless wrath enrages. Hell not the quiet of a Chosen Land, Thou grimy man over thine engine bending ; The spirit pent that breathes the life into its limbs, Docile for love is tyrannous in rending. Obey, Rhinoceros ! an infant's hand, Leviathan ! obey the fisher mild and young, Vexed Ocean ! smile, for on thy broad-beat sand The little curlew pipes his shrilly song. XIV. THE MASSES THE MASSES. WHEN, wild and high, the uproar swells From crowds that gather at the set of day ; When square and market roar in stormy play, And fields of men, like lions, shake their fells Of savage hair ; when, quick and deep, call out the bells Through all the lower Heaven ringing, As if an earthquake's shock The city's base should rock, And set its troubled turrets singing : 80 THE MASSES. Remember, Men ! on massy strength relying, There is a heart of right Not always open to the light, Secret and still and force-defying. In vast assemblies calm, let order rule, And, every shout a cadence owning, Make musical the vexed wind's moaning, And be as little children at a singing-school. But, when, thick as night, the sky is crusted o'er, Stifling life's pulse and making Heaven an idle dream, Arise ! and cry, up through the dark, to God's own throne : Your faces in a furnace glow, Your arms uplifted for the death-ward blow Fiery and prompt as angry angels show : Then draw the brand and fire the thunder-gun ! Be nothing said and all things donB ! Till every cobwebbed corner of the common-weal Is shaken free, and, creeping to its scabbard back the steel, Let's shine again God's rightful sun ! XV. THE REFORMER- THE REFORMER. of the Future ! on the eager headland standing, Gazing far off into the outer sea, Thine eye, the darkness and the billows rough commanding, Beholds a shore, bright as the Heaven itself may be ; Where temples, cities, homes and haunts of men, Orchards and fields spread out in orderly array, Invite the yearning soul to thither flee, And there to spend in boundless peace its happier dajr% 8 86 THE REFORMER. * By passion and the force of earnest thought, Borne up and platformed at a height, Where 'gainst thy feet the force of earth and heaven^are brought ; Yet, so into the frame of empire wrought, Thou, stout man, can'st not thence be severed, Till ruled and rulers, fiends or men, are taught And feel the truths by thee delivered. Seize by its horns the shaggy Past, Full of uncleanness ; Heave with mountain cast ? Its carcase down the black and wide abyss That opens day and night its gulfy precipice, By faded empires, projects old and dead Forever in its noisy hunger fed : But rush not, therefore, with a brutish blindness Against the 'stablished bulwarks of the world ; Kind be thyself although unkindness Thy race to ruin dark and suffering long, has hurled. THE REFORMER. 87 \fjjfc"' For many days of light, and smooth repose, Twixt storm and wea thery sadness intervene Thy course is Nature's ; on thy triumph flows, Assured, like hers, though noiseless and serene. Wake not at midnight and proclaim the day, When lightning only flashes o'er the way : Pauses and starts and strivings towards an end, Are not a birth, although a god's birth they portend. Be patient therefore like the old broad earth That bears the guilty up, and through the night Conducts them gently to the dawning light Thy silent hours shall have as great a birth ! XVI. THE POOR MAN. 8* THE POOR MAN . , FREE paths and open tracts about us lie, 'Gainst Fortune's spite, though deadliest to undo : On him who droops beneath the saddest sky, Hopes of a better time must flicker through. No yoke that evil hours would on him lay, Can bow to earth his unreturning look ; The ample fields through which he plods his way Are but his better Fortune's open book. THE POOR MAN. Though the dark smithy's stains becloud his brow, His limbs the dank and sallow dungeon claim j The forge's light may take the halo's glow, An angel knock the fetters from his frame., In deepest needs he never should forget The patient Triumph that beside him walks, Waiting the hour, to earnest labor set, When, face to face, his merrier Fortune talks. Plant in thy breast a measureless content, Thou Poor Man, cramped with want or racked with pain, Good Providence, on no harsh purpose bent, Hsa brought thee there, to lead thee back again. No other bondage is upon thee cast Save that wrought out by thine own erring hand ; By thine own act, alone, thine image placed Poorest or President, choose thou to stand. THE POOR MAN. 93 A man a man through all thy trials show ! Thy feet against a soil that never yielded Other than life, to him that struck a rightful blow In shop or street, warring or peaceful-fielded I XVII. THE SCHOLAR. THE SCHOLAR. BOSOMED in peace and far apart from crowds Who sits till hands grow wan and eyes grow dim, Pausing his pulse and stirring not a limb, Though paling fast toward the dead man's shrouds ? 'T is thou, 't is thou thou foolish scholar's heart- Forgetting round thee what a world there flows, How, ever in and out, its mighty eddy goes And yet thou sittest on its edge, so still, apart. 9 98 THE SCHOLAR. Who thinks that dull dead books have deepest life. Calls them by names of awed delight or gladness, With one or other argues with a joyful madness, And with the tidiest pillows for a wife ? Oh ; thou poor, idle moon-struck heart of youth Has the keen air no better wit brought to thee ; This folly in this land will sure undo thee In spite of nobleness and worth, of gentlest truth ! Go cast these follies in the barren sea : Seal up, forever seal, the hateful leaves, And turn thine eyes where light no more bereaves Their orbs, and lift thine arms up strong and free. Away, away all gentle thoughts shall glide, All happiest fancies, nigfct or morning born ; It may be thou wil't feel awhile forlorn, And drop, one day, unmissed, beneath the hurrying tide ! XVIII. THE PREACHER.. THE PREACHER. <, : V-' EVER aslant the sky behold a shape, Leaning at length upon the mastered air ! Man-like in form and yet divinely fair, About his head a golden glory glpws, And fair as morning every feature shows. His feet are toward the earth, and upward thrown His stretched and yearning arms appeal to God ; With God he talks at that far height with God alone. 9* 102 THE PREACHER* Athwart all troubles of the day or night or clouds, Athwart eclipse of sun or moon, or the dun tempest's shrouds Behold that radiant figure streaming, 'Twixt Earth and Heaven, and Heaven and Earth, An angel mighty meek as the swathed infant at ite birth, " All the mid-region from its gloom redeeming. 'T is Christ, H is sacred Christ who there is beaming. Oh, ye who sentried stand upon the temple-wall Holy, and nearer to the glory's golden fall Moon-like possess and shed at large its rays The wide world knitting in a web of light, Whose every thread the gladd'ning truth makes bright " f Peace, love and universal brotherhood, Good will to man and faith in God the good. Withered be he, the false one of the brood, Who, husbandman of evil, scatters strife, Brambling and harsh, upon the field of life : THE PREACHER. 103 But deeper cursed whose secret hand Plucks on to doom the safeguards of the land, Freedom, and civil forms and sacred Rights That conscience owns : he, conscience-stung, who plights His voice 'gainst these, should sheer-down fall From off the glory of the temple-w r all, Smitten by God as false to truth and love And all the sacred links that bind the heavens above And man beneath : a withered Paul, Apostleless, beyond recall ! Rather, with blessings and the bonds of life Let Heaven's good workman bind together The house that roofs us on this dear, dear plot of earth, An arbor in the genial sun, A stronghold in the tyrannous weather : Kindly and loving brethren every one, All equal all alike who thither tend, Where all may dwell together without end And as our course must be, so let it be begun. 104 THE PREACHER* But shrink not, therefore, from the coward age, That shows, in mockery shows, its hideous face at times, And crosses with its cursed din the very sabbath-chimes ; 0, smite and buffet with a holy rage Its brassy cheeks and brow of icy coldness Dash and confound it with the storm-cloud's boldness That frowns and speaks till every house-roof trembles, And face to face no more dissembles The God -fear coiled within the crusted heart ! Brandish the truth and let its four-edged dart Cut to the quick, and, cut through every armor, Unbosom to the light the Satan -charmer ! Ye holy Voices sphered in middle air ! Lower than angels, nor as they so fair, Yet quiring God's behest with truth and power Pitch your blest speech, or high or low, That angels may its language own and know, Through the round Heaven to which it rises, And ever on the earth may fall in glad surprises, THE PREACHER. 105 ,/* i The spring-sweet music of a sudden shower. Heaven shall bless thee and the earth shall bless, And up through the close, dark death-hour thou shalt spring With fragrant parting, and heaven-cleaving wing To ask, nor ask in vain, thy Christ's caress ! XIX. THE POET. THE POET. THE mighty heart that holds the world at full, Lodging in one embrace the father and the child, The toiler, reaper, sufferer, rough or mild] All kin of earth, can rightly ne'er grow dull ; For on it tasks, in this late age, are laid That stir its pulses at a thousand points ; Its ruddy haunts a thousand hopes invade, And Fear runs close to smutch what Hope anoints. On tbee, the mount, the valley and the sea, The forge, the field, the household call on thee. 10 110 THE POET. Men bountiful as trees in every field, Men striving each, a separate billow, to be seen, Men to whose eyes a later truth revealed Dazzling, cry out in anguish quick and keen, Ask to be championed in their new-born thoughts. To have an utterance adequate and bold Ask that the age's dull sepulchral stone Back from their Saviour's burial-place be rolled : All pressing to be heard all lay on thee Their cause, and make their love the joyful fee. There sits not in the wildernesses' edge, In the dusk lodges of the wintry North, Nor crouches in the rice-field's slimy sedge Nor on the cold, wide waters ventures forth Who waits not in the pauses of his toil, With hope that spirits in the air may sing ; Who upward turns not, at propitious times, Breathless, his silent features listening : In desert and in lodge, on marsh and main, To feed his hungry heart and conquer pain. THE POET. Ill To strike or bear, to conquer or to yield, Teach thou ! O, topmost crown of duty, teach What fancy whispers to the listening ear, At hours, when tongue nor taint of care impeach The fruitful calm of greatly silent hearts ; When all the stars for happy thought are set, And, in the secret chambers of the soul, All blessed powers of joyful truth are met. Though calm and garlandless thou may'st appear, The world shall know thee for its crowned seer. Mirth in an open eye may sit as well, As sadness in a close and sober face : In thy broad welcome both may fitly dwell, Nor jostle either from its nestling-place. Tears, free as showers, to thee may come as blessed, As smiling, of the happy sunshine born > And cloaked-up trouble, in his turn, caressed Be taught to look a little less forlorn, Thy heart-gates, mighty, open either way, Come they to feast or go they forth to pray. 112 THE POET. Gather all kindreds of this boundless realm To speak a common tongue in thee ! Be thou Heart, pulse and voice, whether pent hate o'erwhelm The stormy speech or young love whisper low. Cheer them, immitigable battle-drum ! Forth, truth-mailed, to the old unconquered field And lure them gently to a laurelled home, In notes softer than lutes or viols yield. Fill all the stops of life with tuneful breath, Closing their lids, bestow a dirge-like death I THE END. BY THE SAME AUTHOR, IU A HANDSOME OCTAVO VOLUME : I. YtnH HTL!EY H@[!C a A SERIES OF TALES AND SKETCHES. 3 A LEGEND OF^THE MOUND-BUILDERS. A COMEDY. IV. WAKONDAH, THE MASTER OF LIFE, AND OTHER POEMS. V. THE CAREER OF PUFFER HOPKINS. With Selections from "Arcturus." READY IBT NOVEMBER.