Her last noble is ruined,

Her last poet mute:

Straight, into double band

The victors divide;

Half for freedom strike and stand;

The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side.

ASTREA.

HIMSELF it was who wrote

His rank, and quartered his own coat. There is no king nor sovereign state That can fix a hero's rate;

Each to all is venerable,

Cap-a-pie invulnerable,

Until he write, where all eyes rest,

Slave or master on his breast.

I saw men go up and down,

In the country and the town,

With this prayer upon their neck, 'Judgment and a judge we seek.'

Not to monarchs they repair,

Nor to learned jurist's chair;

But they hurry to their peers,

To their kinsfolk and their dears;

Louder than with speech they pray,What am I? companion, say.'

And the friend not hesitates

To assign just place and mates;
Answers not in word or letter,
Yet is understood the better;
Is to his friend a looking-glass,
Reflects his figure that doth pass.
Every wayfarer he meets

What himself declared repeats,
What himself confessed records,
Sentences him in his words;

The form is his own corporal form,
And his thought the penal worm.

Yet shine forever virgin minds,
Loved by stars and purest winds,
Which, o'er passion throned sedate,
Have not hazarded their state;
Disconcert the searching spy,

Rendering to a curious eye

The durance of a granite ledge

To those who gaze from the sea's edge.
It is there for benefit;

It is there for purging light;
There for purifying storms;
And its depths reflect all forms;
It cannot parley with the mean,
Pure by impure is not seen.

For there's no sequestered grot,

Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot,

But Justice, journeying in the sphere,
Daily stoops to harbor there.

ETIENNE DE LA BOÉCE.

I SERVE you not, if you I follow,
Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow;
And bend my fancy to your leading,
All too nimble for my treading.
When the pilgrimage is done,
And we've the landscape overrun,
I am bitter, vacant, thwarted,
And your heart is unsupported.

Vainly valiant, you have missed

The manhood that should yours resist,

Its complement; but if I could,

In severe or cordial mood,

Lead you rightly to my altar,

Where the wisest Muses falter,

And worship that world-warming spark Which dazzles me in midnight dark,