Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;

One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,

Not lured by any cheat of birth,

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

They knew that outward grace is dust; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,

A sea-mark now, now lost in vapor's blind; Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of lofti

est stars.

Nothing of Europe here,

Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,

Ere any names of Serf and Peer
Could Nature's equal scheme deface
And thwart her genial will;

Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate.

So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.
Great captains, with their guns and
drums,

Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,

Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,

New birth of our new soil, the first Ameri

can.

VII

Long as man's hope insatiate can discern
Or only guess some more inspiring goal
Outside of Self, enduring as the pole,
Along whose course the flying axles burn
Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier
brood;

Long as below we cannot find
The meed that stills the inexorable mind;
So long this faith to some ideal Good,
Under whatever mortal names it masks,
Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood
That thanks the Fates for their severer
tasks,

Feeling its challenged pulses leap, While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,

Shall win man's praise and woman's love, Shall be a wisdom that we set above All other skills and gifts to culture dear, A virtue round whose forehead we in

Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;

No bar of endless night exiles the brave; And to the saner mind

We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack:

I see them muster in a gleaming row, With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; We find in our dull road their shining track;

In every nobler mood

We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life's unalterable good,
Of all our saintlier aspiration;

They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,

Beautiful evermore, and with the rays
Of morn on their white Shields of Expec-

tation !

IX

But is there hope to save
Even this ethereal essence from the grave?
What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong
Save a few clarion names, or golden threads
of song?

Before my musing eye
The mighty ones of old sweep by,
Disvoiced now and insubstantial things,

As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings,
Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust,
And many races, nameless long ago,
To darkness driven by that imperious gust
Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow:
O visionary world, condition strange,
Where naught abiding is but only Change,
Where the deep-bolted stars themselves
still shift and range!

Shall we to more continuance make pretence?

Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit; And, bit by bit,

The cunning years steal all from us but woe;

Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest

She claims a more divine investiture
Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents;
Whate'er she touches doth her nature
share;

Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air,
Gives eyes to mountains blind,
Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,
And her clear trump sings succor every-
where

By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind;
For soul inherits all that soul could dare:
Yea, Manhood hath a wider span
And larger privilege of life than man.
The single deed, the private sacrifice,
So radiant now through proudly-hidden
tears,

Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years;

But that high privilege that makes all men peers,

That leap of heart whereby a people rise
Up to a noble anger's height,
And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but
grow more bright,

That swift validity in noble veins,

Of choosing danger and disdaining shame, Of being set on flame

By the pure fire that flies all contact base
But wraps its chosen with angelic might,
These are imperishable gains,

Sure as the sun, medicinal as light,
These hold great futures in their lusty reins
And certify to earth a new imperial race.

X

Who now shall sneer?

Who dare again to say we trace
Our lines to a plebeian race?

Roundhead and Cavalier!

Dumb are those names erewhile in battle

loud;

Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud,

They flit across the ear:

That is best blood that hath most iron in 't
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint
For what makes manhood dear.
Tell us not of Plantagenets,
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods

crawl

Down from some victor in a border-brawl! How poor their outworn coronets, Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath

Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears With vain resentments and more vain regrets!

XI

Not in anger, not in pride,
Pure from passion's mixture rude
Ever to base earth allied,
But with far-heard gratitude,
Still with heart and voice renewed,
To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,
The strain should close that consecrates
our brave.

Lift the heart and lift the head!
Lofty be its mood and grave,
Not without a martial ring,
Not without a prouder tread
And a peal of exultation:
Little right has he to sing
Through whose heart in such an hour
Beats no march of conscious power,
Sweeps no tumult of elation !

T'is no Man we celebrate,

By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is her dower!

How could poet ever tower,

If his passions, hopes, and fears,
If his triumphs and his tears,

Kept not measure with his people? Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and

waves !

Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple !

Banners, a-dance with triumph, bend your staves!

And from every mountain-peak Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, And so leap on in light from sea to sea, 'Till the glad news be sent Across a kindling continent, Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:

"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!

She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,
She of the open soul and open door,
With room about her hearth for all man-
kind!

The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;
From her bold front the helm she doth un-

bind,

XII

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!

Thy God, in these distempered days, Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His

ways,

And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!

Bow down in prayer and praise! No poorest in thy borders but may now Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.

0 Beautiful! my Country! ours once

more !

Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair

O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips,

Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know

it, Among the Nations bright beyond compare?

What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare!

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL

THE Snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock

Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara

Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?"
And I told of the good All-father

Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snow-fall,

And thought of the leaden sky That arched o'er our first great sorrow, When that mound was heaped so high.

I remembered the gradual patience

That fell from that cloud like snow, Flake by flake, healing and hiding

The scar that renewed our woe.

And again to the child I whispered,
"The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall!"

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;

And she, kissing back, could not know That my kiss was given to her sister, Folded close under deepening snow.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

IN vain we call old notions fudge,

And bend our conscience to our dealing;

The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.

IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYẨM

THESE pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,

Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,

Fitzgerald strung them on an English

thread.

Fit rosary for a queen, in shape and hue,

When Contemplation tells her pensive beads

The loath gate swings with rusty creak;
Once, parting there, we played at pain;
There came a parting, when the weak
And fading lips essayed to speak
Vainly, "Auf wiedersehen!"

Somewhere is comfort, somewhere faith,
Though thou in outer dark remain;
One sweet sad voice ennobles death,
And still, for eighteen centuries saith
Softly,-"Auf wiedersehen!"

If earth another grave must bear,

Yet heaven hath won a sweeter strain, And something whispers my despair, That, from an orient chamber there, Floats down,-"Auf wiedersehen!"

AFTER THE BURIAL

YES, faith is a goodly anchor;
When skies are sweet as a psalm,
At the bows it lolls so stalwart,

In its bluff, broad-shouldered calm.

And when over breakers to leeward
The tattered surges are hurled,
It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world.
But, after the shipwreck, tell me
What help in its iron thews,
Still true to the broken hawser,

Deep down among sea-weed and ooze ?

In the breaking gulfs of sorrow,
When the helpless feet stretch out
And find in the deeps of darkness
No footing so solid as doubt,

Then better one spar of Memory,

One broken plank of the Past,
That our human heart may cling to,
Though hopeless of shore at last!

To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
To the flesh its sweet despair,