Would rushing life forget her laws,
Fate's glowing revolution pause?

High omens ask diviner guess;

Not to be conned to tediousness.

And know my higher gifts unbind

The zone that girds the incarnate mind.

When the scanty shores are full

With Thought's perilous, whirling pool;

When frail Nature can no more,

Then the Spirit strikes the hour:

My servant Death, with solving rite,

Pours finite into infinite.

'Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,

Whose streams through nature circling go?

Nail the wild star to its track

On the half-climbed zodiac?

Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,

Life is life which generates,

And many-seeming life is one,

Wilt thou transfix and make it none?

Its onward force too starkly pent
In figure, bone, and lineament?
Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate,
Talker! the unreplying Fate?
Nor see the genius of the whole
Ascendant in the private soul,

Beckon it when to go and come,
Self-announced its hour of doom?
Fair the soul's recess and shrine,
Magic-built to last a season;
Masterpiece of love benign;

Fairer that expansive reason

Whose omen 'tis, and sign.

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know

What rainbows teach, and sunsets show?

Verdict which accumulates

From lengthening scroll of human fates,

Voice of earth to earth returned,

Saying, What is excellent,

As God lives, is permanent;

Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;

Heart's love will meet thee again.
Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye

Up to his style, and manners of the sky.
Not of adamant and gold

Built he heaven stark and cold;

No, but a nest of bending reeds,
Flowering grass, and scented weeds;
Or like a traveller's fleeing tent,
Or bow above the tempest bent;
Built of tears and sacred flames,
And virtue reaching to its aims;
Built of furtherance and pursuing,
Not of spent deeds, but of doing.
Silent rushes the swift Lord

Through ruined systems still restored,
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness;
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found.'

HYMN:

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT,

April 19, 1836.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set to-day a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, or leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.