While now you wait for the impending fight, With gentle eye and stately head all hoary, And o'er the mountains gleams the morning's glory,— You fear the people? 'Tis your own that rally, For genius shares the soul of what shall be. You were a foreman with the gift of leading, But what new growths the ancient fields have filled, And what foretells the dawning reckoning-day,— You fail to understand and find but madness In our young nation's fairest growth and gladness. You answer: Poet's deeming is but dreaming, And in the statesman's art most unbeseeming. I answer: None has might men's life to sway, If impotent the worth of dreams to weigh. From cravings, powers that seek their form, ascending, They fill the air, their right to be defending, Till all men wakened to one goal are tending. His nation's dreams are all the statesman's life, Create his might, direct his aim in strife, And if he this forgets, the next dreams blooming Bring forth another, unto death him dooming. The tempest-clouds that mount afresh and thicken Cannot so dense before the morn's light hover That we may not through cloud-rifts clear discover Great thoughts that new-born victories shall quicken. Such thoughts are radiant over me to-day, The war-horns soon beneath the woods shall bray, Through dewy night th' assailing columns dash, Amid the sudden gleams of shot and slash The fog dissolve before our new-born day. Soon, though you threaten, will the heights be taken For future ages, and our nation's soul Can thence o'erlook the land in might unshaken, It soon shall roll war's billows on to battle, O aged man, look round you where you stand, For soon you But when you fall defeated on the field, WITH ON A WIFE'S DEATH ITH death's dark eye acquainted she had been made ere this, When to her son, her first-born, she gave the farewell kiss, And when afar she hastened beside her mother's bed, She said with sorrow stricken: “I knew that it would come!" AT THE BIER OF PRECENTOR A. REITAN 163 She thought that he was chosen by God from earth to go, Would check, her hands upthrusting, the harsh behest of woe; And with her slender body, too weak for such a strife, Would ward her gallant consort,-and gave for him her life. She smiled, serene and blissful, as death's dark eye she braved; Her sacrifice was given, her heart's proud hero saved. Our love and admiration lifted a starry dome Of happiness above her in life's last hour of gloam, And snow-white pure she passed then to her eternal home. Such tender love and holy to heaven's bounds can bear The souls that it embraces in sacrifice and prayer. AT THE BIER OF PRECENTOR A. REITAN (1872) WITH Smiles his soft eyes ever gleamed, When God and country thinking; Like springs flowed strong; They fruitful made the valley long, And quickened all there drinking. Poor people and poor homes among In Sunday's choir he always sung, It turns about, Falls not the poorest home without, With sickness came a heavy year As soft notes soar When winds o'er hidden harp-strings pour, His song his soul was winging. His life foretold us that erelong And church, home, school, awaken, In gladness' song, In glory of the Lord's own song, From life's low squalor taken. |