Before the Curfew | Page 5

Dons at fault,?Or if his virtue was a strange surprise,?Or if his wit flung star-dust in their eyes,--?Like honest Yankees we can simply guess;?But that he did it all must needs confess.?England herself without a blush may claim?Her only conqueror since the Norman came.?Eight years an exile! What a weary while?Since first our herald sought the mother isle!?His snow-white flag no churlish wrong has soiled,---?He left unchallenged, he returns unspoiled.
Here let us keep him, here he saw the light,--?His genius, wisdom, wit, are ours by right;?And if we lose him our lament will be?We have "five hundred"--not "as good as he."
TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
1887
FRIEND, whom thy fourscore winters leave more dear?Than when life's roseate summer on thy cheek?Burned in the flush of manhood's manliest year,?Lonely, how lonely! is the snowy peak?Thy feet have reached, and mine have climbed so near!?Close on thy footsteps 'mid the landscape drear?I stretch my hand thine answering grasp to seek,?Warm with the love no rippling rhymes can speak!?Look backward! From thy lofty height survey?Thy years of toil, of peaceful victories won,?Of dreams made real, largest hopes outrun!?Look forward! Brighter than earth's morning ray?Streams the pure light of Heaven's unsetting sun,?The unclouded dawn of life's immortal day!
PRELUDE TO A VOLUME PRINTED IN?RAISED LETTERS FOR THE BLIND
DEAR friends, left darkling in the long eclipse?That veils the noonday,--you whose finger-tips?A meaning in these ridgy leaves can find?Where ours go stumbling, senseless, helpless, blind.?This wreath of verse how dare I offer you?To whom the garden's choicest gifts are due??The hues of all its glowing beds are ours,?Shall you not claim its sweetest-smelling flowers?
Nay, those I have I bring you,--at their birth?Life's cheerful sunshine warmed the grateful earth;?If my rash boyhood dropped some idle seeds,?And here and there you light on saucy weeds?Among the fairer growths, remember still?Song comes of grace, and not of human will:?We get a jarring note when most we try,?Then strike the chord we know not how or why;?Our stately verse with too aspiring art?Oft overshoots and fails to reach the heart,?While the rude rhyme one human throb endears?Turns grief to smiles, and softens mirth to tears.?Kindest of critics, ye whose fingers read,?From Nature's lesson learn the poet's creed;?The queenly tulip flaunts in robes of flame,?The wayside seedling scarce a tint may claim,?Yet may the lowliest leaflets that unfold?A dewdrop fresh from heaven's own chalice hold.
BOSTON TO FLORENCE
Sent to "The Philological Circle" of Florence for its?meeting in commemoration of Dante, January 27, 1881,?the anniversary of his first condemnation.
PROUD of her clustering spires, her new-built towers,?Our Venice, stolen from the slumbering sea,?A sister's kindliest greeting wafts to thee,?Rose of Val d' Arno, queen of all its flowers!?Thine exile's shrine thy sorrowing love embowers,?Yet none with truer homage bends the knee,?Or stronger pledge of fealty brings, than we,?Whose poets make thy dead Immortal ours.?Lonely the height, but ah, to heaven how near!?Dante, whence flowed that solemn verse of thine?Like the stern river from its Apennine?Whose name the far-off Scythian thrilled with fear:?Now to all lands thy deep-toned voice is dear,?And every language knows the Song Divine!
AT THE UNITARIAN FESTIVAL
MARCH 8, 1882
THE waves unbuild the wasting shore;?Where mountains towered the billows sweep,?Yet still their borrowed spoils restore,?And build new empires from the deep.?So while the floods of thought lay waste?The proud domain of priestly creeds,?Its heaven-appointed tides will haste?To plant new homes for human needs.?Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled?The change an outworn church deplores;?The legend sinks, but Faith shall build?A fairer throne on new-found shores.
POEM
FOR THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY?OF THE FOUNDING OF HARVARD COLLEGE
TWICE had the mellowing sun of autumn crowned?The hundredth circle of his yearly round,?When, as we meet to-day, our fathers met:?That joyous gathering who can e'er forget,?When Harvard's nurslings, scattered far and wide,?Through mart and village, lake's and ocean's side,?Came, with one impulse, one fraternal throng,?And crowned the hours with banquet, speech, and song?
Once more revived in fancy's magic glass,?I see in state the long procession pass?Tall, courtly, leader as by right divine,?Winthrop, our Winthrop, rules the marshalled line,?Still seen in front, as on that far-off day?His ribboned baton showed the column's way.?Not all are gone who marched in manly pride?And waved their truncheons at their leader's side;?Gray, Lowell, Dixwell, who his empire shared,?These to be with us envious Time has spared.
Few are the faces, so familiar then,?Our eyes still meet amid the haunts of men;?Scarce one of all the living gathered there,?Whose unthinned locks betrayed a silver hair,?Greets us to-day, and yet we seem the same?As our own sires and grandsires, save in name.?There are the patriarchs, looking vaguely round?For classmates' faces, hardly known if found;?See the cold brow that rules the busy mart;?Close at its side the pallid son of art,?Whose purchased skill with borrowed meaning clothes,?And stolen hues, the smirking face he loathes.?Here is the patient