Along whose course the flying axles burn Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood;

Long as below we cannot find

The meed that stills the inexorable mind; So long this faith to some ideal Good, Under whatever mortal names it masks, Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood

That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,

220

Feeling its challenged pulses leap, While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,

Shall win man's praise and woman's love, Shall be a wisdom that we set above

All other skills and gifts to culture dear, A virtue round whose forehead we inwreathe

Laurels that with a living passion breathe When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear.

What brings us thronging these high rites to pay,

And seal these hours the noblest of our year, Save that our brothers found this better way ?

VIII

231

Not in anger, not in pride,

Pure from passion's mixture rude 350
Ever to base earth allied,

But with far-heard gratitude,

Still with heart and voice renewed,
To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,
The strain should close that consecrates
our brave.

Lift the heart and lift the head!
Lofty be its mood and grave,
Not without a martial ring,
Not without a prouder tread
And a peal of exultation:
Little right has he to sing
Through whose heart in such an hour
Beats no march of conscious power,
Sweeps no tumult of elation!

"T is no Man we celebrate,
By his country's victories great,

360

A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,
But the pith and marrow of a Nation
Drawing force from all her men,
Highest, humblest, weakest, all,
For her time of need, and then
Pulsing it again through them,

370

Till the basest can no longer cower,
Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,
Touched but in passing by her mantle-
hem.

Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is
her dower!

How could poet ever tower,

If his passions, hopes, and fears,
If his triumphs and his tears,

Kept not measure with his people? 380 Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves !

Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple !

Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves!

And from every mountain-peak

Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,

Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface
he,

And so leap on in light from sea to sea,
Till the glad news be sent
Across a kindling continent,
Making earth feel more firm and air breathe

braver:

399

Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!

She that lifts up the manhood of the

XII

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!

Thy God, in these distempered days, Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,

And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!

410

Bow down in prayer and praise ! No poorest in thy borders but may now Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.

O Beautiful! my country! ours once more!

Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips,

Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,
What words divine of lover or of poet
Could tell our love and make thee know it,
Among the Nations bright beyond com-
pare?

What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee,

421

Down 'mid the tangled roots of things
That coil about the central fire,
I seek for that which giveth wings
To stoop, not soar, to my desire.

Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh, The sea's deep yearning far above, 'Thou hast the secret not,' I cry,

'In deeper deeps is hid my Love.'

They think I burrow from the sun, In darkness, all alone, and weak; Such loss were gain if He were won, For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek.

'The earth,' they murmur, 'is the tomb
That vainly sought his life to prison;
Why grovel longer in the gloom?
He is not here; he hath arisen.'

More life for me where he hath lain

Hidden while ye believed him dead,

ΤΟ

1 See Lowell's letter sent with these verses, February 27, 1867, in the Letters, vol. i, pp. 378, 379. In this letter a stanza was added to the poem :

A gift of symbol-flowers I meant to bring.
White for thy candor, for thy kindness red;
But Nature here denies them to the Spring,
And in forced blooms an odorous warmth will eling
Not artless: take this bunch of verse instead.

(Life of Longfellow, vol. iil, p. 84.)

'COME forth!' my catbird calls to me,

'And hear me sing a cavatina

1 I have not felt in the mood to do much during my imprisonment. One little poem I have written, The Nightingale in the Study.' 'Tis a dialogue between my catbird and me-he calling me out of doors, I giv ing my better reasons for staying within. Of course my nightingale is Calderon. (LOWELL, in a letter to Professor C. E. Norton, July 8, 1867. Lowell's Letters, Harper and Brothers, vol. i, p. 390.)

By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing
Till all the alder-coverts dark
Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.

'Come out beneath the unmastered sky,
With its emancipating spaces,
And learn to sing as well as I,
Without premeditated graces.

'What boot your many-volumed gains, Those withered leaves forever turning, To win, at best, for all your pains,

10

A nature mummy-wrapt in learning? 20 'The leaves wherein true wisdom lies

On living trees the sun are drinking; Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies,

Grew not so beautiful by thinking.

"Come out!" with me the oriole cries,
Escape the demon that pursues you!
And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise,
Still hiding farther onward, wooes you.'

'Alas, dear friend, that, all my days,
Hast poured from that syringa thicket 30
The quaintly discontinuous lays

To which I hold a season-ticket,
'A season-ticket cheaply bought
With a dessert of pilfered berries,
And who so oft my soul hast caught
With morn and evening voluntaries,

'Deem me not faithless, if all day
Among my dusty books I linger,
No pipe, like thee, for June to play
With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 40

A bird is singing in my brain

And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances.

'I ask no ampler skies than those

His magic music rears above me,