Before the Curfew | Page 8

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 cell,?One crystal drop with measured cadence fell.?Still, as of old, forever bright and clear,?The fissured cavern drops its wonted tear,?And wondrous virtue, simple folk aver,?Lies in that teardrop of la roche qui pleure.
Of old I wandered by the river's side?Between whose banks the mighty waters glide,?Where vast Niagara, hurrying to its fall,?Builds and unbuilds its ever-tumbling wall;?Oft in my dreams I hear the rush and roar?Of battling floods, and feel the trembling shore,?As the huge torrent, girded for its leap,?With bellowing thunders plunges down the steep.?Not less distinct, from memory's pictured urn,?The gray old rock, the leafy woods, return;?Robed in their pride the lofty oaks appear,?And once again with quickened sense I hear,?Through