Ivy and amaranth, in a graceful sheaf, Twined with the laurel's fair, imperial leaf.

A simple name alone,

To the great world unknown,

Is graven here, and wild-flowers, rising round,

Meek meadow-sweet and violets of the ground,

Lean lovingly against the humble stone.

Here, in the quiet earth, they laid apart No man of iron mould and bloody hands, Who sought to wreak upon the cowering lands

The passions that consumed his restless heart;

But one of tender spirit and delicate frame,
Gentlest, in mien and mind,
Of gentle womankind,

Timidly shrinking from the breath of blame: One in whose eyes the smile of kindness made

Its haunts, like flowers by sunny brooks in May,

Yet, at the thought of others' pain, a shade Of sweeter sadness chased the smile away.

Her glory is not of this shadowy state,

Glory that with the fleeting season dies; But when she entered at the sapphire gate

What joy was radiant in celestial eyes! How heaven's bright depths with sounding welcomes rung,

And flowers of heaven by shining hands were flung !

And He who, long before,

Pain, scorn, and sorrow bore,

The Mighty Sufferer, with aspect sweet, Smiled on the timid stranger from his seat; He who returning, glorious, from the grave, Dragged Death, disarmed, in chains, a crouching slave.

See, as I linger here, the sun grows low; Cool airs are murmuring that the night

is near.

Oh, gentle sleeper, from thy grave I go Consoled though sad, in hope and yet in fear.

Brief is the time, I know,

The warfare scarce begun;

Yet all may win the triumphs thou hast

won.

Still flows the fount whose waters strengthened thee,

The victors' names are yet too few to fill

Heaven's mighty roll; the glorious armory, That ministered to thee, is open still.

THE POET

THOU, who wouldst wear the name
Of poet mid thy brethren of mankind,
And clothe in words of flame

Thoughts that shall live within the general mind!

Deem not the framing of a deathless lay The pastime of a drowsy summer day.

But gather all thy powers,

And wreak them on the verse that thou dost weave,

And in thy lonely hours,

At silent morning or at wakeful eve, While the warm current tingles through thy veins,

Set forth the burning words in fluent strains.

No smooth array of phrase,

Artfully sought and ordered though it be,

Which the cold rhymer lays

Upon his page with languid industry, Can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed,

Or fill with sudden tears the eyes that read.

The secret wouldst thou know

To touch the heart or fire the blood at will?

Let thine own eyes o'erflow;

Let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill;

Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past,

And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast.

Then should thy verse appear

Halting and harsh, and all unaptly wrought,

Touch the crude line with fear,

Save in the moment of impassioned thought;

Then summon back the original glow, and mend

The strain with rapture that with fire was penned.

Yet let no empty gust

Of passion find an utterance in thy lay, A blast that whirls the dust

Along the howling street and dies away; But feelings of calm power and mighty

sweep,

Like currents journeying through the windless deep.

Seek'st thou, in living lays,

To limn the beauty of the earth and sky? Before thine inner gaze

Let all that beauty in clear vision lie; Look on it with exceeding love, and write The words inspired by wonder and delight.

-

Of tempests wouldst thou sing,
Or tell of battles make thyself a part
Of the great tumult; cling

To the tossed wreck with terror in thy heart;

Scale, with the assaulting host, the rampart's height,

And strike and struggle in the thickest fight. So shalt thou frame a lay

That haply may endure from age to age, And they who read shall say:

"What witchery hangs upon this poet's page!

What art is his the written spells to find That sway from mood to mood the willing mind!"

MY AUTUMN WALK

ON woodlands ruddy with autumn The amber sunshine lies;

I look on the beauty round me,

And tears come into my eyes.

For the wind that sweeps the meadows Blows out of the far Southwest, Where our gallant men are fighting, And the gallant dead are at rest.

The golden-rod is leaning,

And the purple aster waves,
In a breeze from the land of battles,
A breath from the land of graves.

Full fast the leaves are dropping

Before that wandering breath; As fast, on the field of battle,

Our brethren fall in death.

Beautiful over my pathway

The forest spoils are shed;
They are spotting the grassy hillocks
With purple and gold and red.

Beautiful is the death-sleep
Of those who bravely fight
In their country's holy quarrel,
And perish for the Right.

But who shall comfort the living,

The light of whose homes is gone : The bride that, early widowed, Lives broken-hearted on;

And turn a stony gaze on human tears,

Thy cruel reign is o'er;

Thy bondmen crouch no more In terror at the menace of thine eye; For He who marks the bounds of guilty

power, Long-suffering, hath heard the captive's cry, And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,

And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled

Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.

A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent; Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;

Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks Send up hosannas to the firmament ! Fields where the bondman's toil No more shall trench the soil, Seem now to bask in a serener day; The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs

Of heaven with more caressing softness play,

Welcoming man to liberty like theirs. A glory clothes the land from sea to sea, For the great land and all its coasts are free.

Within that land wert thou enthroned of late,

And they by whom the nation's laws were made,

And they who filled its judgment-seats,
obeyed

Thy mandate, rigid as the will of Fate.
Fierce men at thy right hand,
With gesture of command,
Gave forth the word that none might dare
gainsay;

And grave and reverend ones, who loved

thee not,

Thou sitt'st a ghastly shadow; by thy side Thy once strong arms hang nerveless ever

more.

And they who quailed but now
Before thy lowering brow,

Devote thy memory to scorn and shame, And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou art.

And they who ruled in thine imperial name,

Subdued, and standing sullenly apart, Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign, And shattered at a blow the prisoner's chain.

Well was thy doom deserved; thou didst not spare

Life's tenderest ties, but cruelly didst part

Husband and wife, and from the mother's heart

Didst wrest her children, deaf to shriek and prayer;

Thy inner lair became

The haunt of guilty shame;

Thy lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy side,

Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance due.

Thou didst sow earth with crimes, and, far and wide,

A harvest of uncounted miseries grew, Until the measure of thy sins at last

Was full, and then the avenging bolt was cast!

Go now, accursed of God, and take thy place

With hateful memories of the elder time, With many a wasting plague, and nameless crime,

And bloody war that thinned the human race;

With the Black Death, whose way
Through wailing cities lay,

Worship of Moloch, tyrannies that built The Pyramids, and cruel creeds that taught

To avenge a fancied guilt by deeper guiltDeath at the stake to those that held them not.

Lo! the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom Of the flown ages, part to yield thee room.

I see the better years that hasten by

Carry thee back into that shadowy past,

A funeral-train- the torrent sweeps away Bearers and bier and mourners. By the bed Of one who dies men gather sorrowing, And women weep aloud; the flood rolls on; The wail is stifled and the sobbing group Borne under. Hark to that shrill, sudden shout,

The cry of an applauding multitude, Swayed by some loud-voiced orator who wields

The living mass as if he were its soul!

The waters choke the shout and all is still. Lo! next a kneeling crowd, and one who spreads

The hands in prayer - the engulfing wave o'ertakes

And swallows them and him. A sculptor wields

The chisel, and the stricken marble grows
To beauty; at his easel, eager-eyed,

A painter stands, and sunshine at his touch
Gathers upon his canvas, and life glows;
A poet, as he paces to and fro,

Murmurs his sounding lines. Awhile they ride

The advancing billow, till its tossing crest Strikes them and flings them under, while their tasks

Are yet unfinished. See a mother smile
On her young babe that smiles to her again;
The torrent wrests it from her arms; she
shrieks

And weeps, and midst her tears is carried down.

A beam like that of moonlight turns the spray

To glistening pearls; two lovers, hand in hand,

Rise on the billowy swell and fondly look Into each other's eyes. The rushing flood Flings them apart: the youth goes down; the maid

With hands outstretched in vain, and streaming eyes,

Waits for the next high wave to follow him. An aged man succeeds; his bending form Sinks slowly. Mingling with the sullen