So call not waste that barren cone

Above the floral zone,

Where forests starve:

It is pure use;

What sheaves like those which here we glean

and bind

Of a celestial Ceres and the Muse?

Ages are thy days,

Thou grand affirmer of the present tense,

And type of permanence!

Firm ensign of the fatal Being,

Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief,

That will not bide the seeing!

Hither we bring

Our insect miseries to thy rocks;

And the whole flight, with folded wing,
Vanish, and end their murmuring,-
Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,

Which who can tell what mason laid?
Spoils of a front none need restore,

Replacing frieze and architrave ;

Where flowers each stone rosette and metope

brave;

Still is the haughty pile erect

Of the old building Intellect.

Complement of human kind,
Holding us at vantage still,
Our sumptuous indigence,

O barren mound, thy plenties fill!
We fool and prate;

Thou art silent and sedate.
To myriad kinds and times one sense
The constant mountain doth dispense;
Shedding on all its snows and leaves,
One joy it joys, one grief it grieves.
Thou seest, O watchman tall,
Our towns and races grow and fall,
And imagest the stable good
For which we all our lifetime grope,
In shifting form the formless mind,
And though the substance us elude,
We in thee the shadow find.

Thou, in our astronomy

An opaker star,

Seen haply from afar,

Above the horizon's hoop,

A moment, by the railway troop,

As o'er some bolder height they speed,By circumspect ambition,

By errant gain,

By feasters and the frivolous,

Recallest us,

And makest sane.

Mute orator! well skilled to plead,

And send conviction without phrase,
Thou dost succor and remede
The shortness of our days,

And promise, on thy Founder's truth,
Long morrow to this mortal youth.

FABLE.

THE mountain and the squirrel

Had a quarrel,

And the former called the latter Little Prig;'

Bun replied,

'You are doubtless very big;

But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,

To make up a year
And a sphere.

And I think it no disgrace

To occupy my place.

If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.

I'll not deny you make

A very pretty squirrel track;

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;

If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.'

ODE.

INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING.

THOUGH loath to grieve

The evil time's sole patriot,

I cannot leave

My honied thought

For the priest's cant,

Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse

My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse

Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,

Behold the famous States

Harrying Mexico

With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent bolder,

Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer? I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook! And in thy valleys, Agiochook!

The jackals of the negro-holder.

The God who made New Hampshire

Taunted the lofty land

With little men;

Small bat and wren

House in the oak:

If earth-fire cleave

The upheaved land, and bury the folk,
The southern crocodile would grieve.
Virtue palters; Right is hence;

Freedom praised, but hid;

Funeral eloquence

Rattles the coffin-lid.

What boots thy zeal,

O glowing friend,

That would indignant rend

The northland from the south?
Wherefore? to what good end?
Boston Bay and Bunker Hill
Would serve things still; -
Things are of the snake.

The horseman serves the horse,
The neatherd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat;
'Tis the day of the chattel,

Web to weave, and corn to grind;
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.

Law for man, and law for thing;

The last builds town and fleet,

But it runs wild,

And doth the man unking.

'Tis fit the forest fall,

The steep be graded,

The mountain tunnelled,
The sand shaded,
The orchard planted,

The glebe tilled,

The prairie granted,

The steamer built.