If but that will we can arrive to know,

Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

So he went forth to battle, on the side

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,

As in his peasant boyhood he had plied

His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights, —

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,

The iron-bark, that turns the lumberer's axe,

The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil,

The prairie, hiding the mazed wan

derer's tracks,

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear;

Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train:

Rough culture,- but such trees large fruit may bear,

If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.

So he grew up, a destined work to do,

And lived to do it: four long-suffering years'

Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through,

And then he heard the hisses change to cheers,

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,

And took both with the same un

wavering mood:

Till, as he came on light, from darkling days,

And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,

A felon hand, between the goal and him,

Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest,

And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!