Before the Curfew | Page 8

walls enshrine a
banker's name,
That hallowed chapel hides a miser's shame;
Their
wealth they left,--their memory cannot fade
Though age shall
crumble every stone they laid.
Great lord of millions,--let me call thee great,
Since countless
servants at thy bidding wait,--
Richesse oblige: no mortal must be
blind
To all but self, or look at human kind
Laboring and
suffering,--all its want and woe,--
Through sheets of crystal, as a
pleasing show
That makes life happier for the chosen few
Duty for
whom is something not to do.
When thy last page of life at length is
filled,

What shall thine heirs to keep thy memory build?
Will piles
of stone in Auburn's mournful shade
Save from neglect the spot

where thou art laid?
Nay, deem not thus; the sauntering stranger's eye

Will pass unmoved thy columned tombstone by,
No memory
wakened, not a teardrop shed,
Thy name uncared for and thy date
unread.
But if thy record thou indeed dost prize,
Bid from the soil
some stately temple rise,--
Some hall of learning, some memorial
shrine,
With names long honored to associate thine:
So shall thy
fame outlive thy shattered bust
When all around thee slumber in the
dust.
Thus England's Henry lives in Eton's towers,
Saved from the
spoil oblivion's gulf devours;
Our later records with as fair a fame

Have wreathed each uncrowned benefactor's name;
The walls they
reared the memories still retain
That churchyard marbles try to keep
in vain.
In vain the delving antiquary tries
To find the tomb where
generous Harvard lies
Here, here, his lasting monument is found,

Where every spot is consecrated ground!
O'er Stoughton's dust the
crumbling stone decays,
Fast fade its lines of lapidary praise;
There
the wild bramble weaves its ragged nets,
There the dry lichen spreads
its gray rosettes;
Still in yon walls his memory lives unspent,
Nor
asks a braver, nobler monument.
Thus Hollis lives, and Holden,
honored, praised,
And good Sir Matthew, in the halls they raised;

Thus live the worthies of these later times,
Who shine in deeds, less
brilliant, grouped in rhymes.
Say, shall the Muse with faltering steps
retreat,
Or dare these names in rhythmic form repeat?
Why not as
boldly as from Homer's lips
The long array, of Argive battle-ships?

When o'er our graves a thousand years have past
(If to such date our
threatened globe shall last)
These classic precincts, myriad feet have
pressed,
Will show on high, in beauteous garlands dressed,
Those
honored names that grace our later day,--

Weld, Matthews, Sever,
Thayer, Austin, Gray,
Sears, Phillips, Lawrence, Hemenway,--to the
list
Add Sanders, Sibley,--all the Muse has missed.
Once more I turn to read the pictured page
Bright with the promise of
the coming age.
Ye unborn sons of children yet unborn,
Whose
youthful eyes shall greet that far-off morn,
Blest are those eyes that

all undimmed behold
The sights so longed for by the wise of old.

From high-arched alcoves, through resounding halls,
Clad in full
robes majestic Science calls,
Tireless, unsleeping, still at Nature's feet,

Whate'er she utters fearless to repeat,
Her lips at last from every
cramp released
That Israel's prophet caught from Egypt's priest.
I
see the statesman, firm, sagacious, bold,
For life's long conflict cast in
amplest mould;
Not his to clamor with the senseless throng
That
shouts unshamed, "Our party, right or wrong,"
But in the patriot's
never-ending fight
To side with Truth, who changes wrong to right.

I see the scholar; in that wondrous time
Men, women, children, all
can write in rhyme.
These four brief lines addressed to youth inclined

To idle rhyming in his notes I find:
Who writes in verse that should have writ in prose
Is like a traveller
walking on his toes;
Happy the rhymester who in time has found

The heels he lifts were made to touch the ground.
I see gray teachers,--on their work intent,
Their lavished lives, in
endless labor spent,
Had closed at last in age and penury wrecked,

Martyrs, not burned, but frozen in neglect,
Save for the generous
hands that stretched in aid
Of worn-out servants left to die half paid.

Ah, many a year will pass, I thought, ere we
Such kindly
forethought shall rejoice to see,--
Monarchs are mindful of the sacred
debt
That cold republics hasten to forget.
I see the priest,--if such a
name he bears
Who without pride his sacred vestment wears;
And
while the symbols of his tribe I seek
Thus my first impulse bids me
think and speak:
Let not the mitre England's prelate wears
Next to the crown whose
regal pomp it shares,
Though low before it courtly Christians bow,

Leave its red mark on Younger England's brow.
We love, we honor,
the maternal dame,
But let her priesthood wear a modest name,

While through the waters of the Pilgrim's bay
A new-born Mayflower
shows her keels the way.
Too old grew Britain for her mother's

beads,--
Must we be necklaced with her children's creeds?

Welcome alike in surplice or in gown
The loyal lieges of the
Heavenly Crown!
We greet with cheerful, not submissive, mien
A
sister church, but not a mitred Queen!
A few brief flutters, and the unwilling Muse,
Who feared the flight
she hated to refuse,
Shall fold the wings whose gayer plumes are shed,

Here where at first her half-fledged pinions spread.
Well I
remember in the long ago
How in the forest shades of Fontainebleau,

Strained through a fissure in a rocky