Before the Curfew | Page 5

joy-bells ring,--the tear-stained cheeks unveil,
While, as the
playwright shifts his pictured scene,
The royal mourner crowns his
second queen.

From Spain to Britain is a goodly stride,--
Madrid and London
long-stretched leagues divide.
What if I send him, "Uncle S., says
he,"
To my good cousin whom he calls "J. B."?
A nation's servants
go where they are sent,--
He heard his Uncle's orders, and he went.

By what enchantments, what alluring arts,
Our truthful James led
captive British hearts,--
Whether his shrewdness made their
statesmen halt,
Or if his learning found their 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