James Russell Lowell
¶[1819-1891]
805 the Present Crisis
¶WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's achingbreastRuns a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climbTo the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublimeOf a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.
¶Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro;At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future'sheart.
¶So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with GodIn hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.
¶For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;[1371]Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frameThrough its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;—In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.
¶Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
¶Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong,And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throngTroops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.
¶Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see,That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea;Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cryOf those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaffmust fly;Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.
¶Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but recordOne death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
¶We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,—'They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.'
¶Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood,Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth withblood,Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;—Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play ?[1372]Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just;Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.
¶Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,—they were souls that stood alone,While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam inclineTo the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.
¶By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track,Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learnedOne new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burnedSince the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heavenupturned.
¶For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands,On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe returnTo glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.
¶'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slavesOf a legendary virtue carved upon our father's graves,Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;—Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind theirtime?Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rocksublime?
¶They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's;But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits fleeThe rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.
¶They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires;Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,
p. 1373¶From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away
¶To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day ?
¶New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.
806 the Pious Editor's Creed
¶I DU believe in Freedom's cause,Ez fur away ez Payris is;I love to see her stick her clawsIn them infarnal Phayrisees;It's wal enough agin a kingTo dror resolves an' triggers,—But libbaty's a kind o' thingThet don't agree with niggers.
¶I du believe the people wantA tax on teas an' coffees,Thet nothin' aint extravygunt,—Purvidin' I'm in office;Fer I hev loved my country senceMy eye-teeth filled their sockets,An' Uncle Sam I reverence,Partic'larly his pockets.
¶I du believe in any planO' levyin' the taxes,Ez long ez, like a lumberman,I git jest wut I axes;I go free-trade thru thick an' thin,Because it kind o' rousesThe folks to vote,—an' keeps us inOur quiet custom-houses.
¶I du believe it's wise an' goodTo sen' out furrin missions,Thet is, on sartin understoodAn' orthydox conditions;—[1374]I mean nine thousan' dolls, per ann.,Nine thousan' more fer outfit,An' me to recommend a manThe place 'ould jest about fit.
¶I du believe in special waysO' prayin' an' convartin';The bread comes back in many days,An' buttered, tu, fer sartin;I mean in preyin' till one bustsOn wut the party chooses,An' in convartin' public trustsTo very privit uses.
¶I du believe hard coin the stuffFer 'lectioneers to spout on;The people's oilers soft enoughTo make hard money out on;Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his,An' gives a good-sized junk to all,—I don't care how hard money is,Ez long ez mine's paid punctooal.
¶I du believe with all my soulIn the gret Press's freedom,To pint the people to the goalAn' in the traces lead 'em;Palsied the arm thet forges yokesAt my fat contracts squintin',An' withered be the nose thet pokesInter the gov'ment printin'!
¶I du believe thet I should giveWut's his'n unto Caesar,Fer it's by him I move an' live,Frum him my bread an' cheese air;I du believe thet all o' meDoth bear his superscription,—Will, conscience, honor, honesty,An' things o' thet description.[1375]I du believe in prayer an' praiseTo him thet hez the grantin'O' jobs,—in every thin' thet pays,But most of all in CANTIN';This doth my cup with marcies fill,This lays all thought o' sin to rest,I don't believe in princerple,But oh, I du in interest.
¶I du believe in bein' thisOr thet, ez it may happenOne way or't other hendiest isTo ketch the people nappin';It aint by princerples nor menMy preudunt course is steadied,—I scent wich pays the best, an' thenGo into it baldheaded.
¶I du believe thet holdin' slavesComes nat'ral to a Presidunt,Let 'lone the rowdedow it savesTo hev a wal-broke precedunt;Fer any office, small or gret,I couldn't ax with no face,'uthout I'd ben, thru dry an' wet,Th' unrizzest kind o' doughface.
¶I du believe wutever trash'11 keep the people in blindness,Thet we the Mexicuns can thrashRight inter brotherly kindness,Thet bombshells, grape, an' powder 'n' ballAir good-will's strongest magnets,Thet peace, to make it stick at all,Must be druv in with bagnets.
¶In short, I firmly du believeIn Humbug generally,Fer it's a thing thet I perceiveTo hev a solid vally;[1376]This heth my faithful shepherd ben,In pasturs sweet heth led me,An' this '11 keep the people greenTo feed ez they hev fed me.
The Courtin'
¶GOD makes sech nights, all white an' stillFur 'z you can look or listen,Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,All silence an' all glisten.
¶Zekle crep' up quite unbeknownAn' peeked in thru' the winder,An' there sot Huldy all alone,'ith no one nigh to hender.
¶A fireplace filled the room's one sideWith half a cord o' wood in—There war n't no stoves (tell comfort died)To bake ye to a puddin'.
¶The wa'nut logs shot sparkles outTowards the pootiest, bless her,An' leetle flames danced all aboutThe chiny on the dresser.
¶Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung,An' in amongst 'em rustedThe ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther YoungFetched back f'om Concord busted.
¶The very room, coz she was in,Seemed warm f'om floor to ceilin',An' she looked full ez rosy aginEz the apples she was peelin'.
¶'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to lookOn sech a blessed cretur,A dogrose blushin' to a brookAin't modester nor sweeter.[1377]He was six foot o' man, A i,Clear grit an' human natur',None couldn't quicker pitch a tonNor dror a furrer straighter.
¶He'd sparked it with full twenty gals,Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em,Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells—All is, he couldn't love 'em.
¶But long o' her his veins 'ould runAll crinkly like curled maple,The side she breshed felt full o' sunEz a south slope in Ap'il.
¶She thought no v'ice hed sech a swingEz hisn in the choir;My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring,She l{nowed the Lord was nigher.
¶An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer,When her new meetin'-bunnetFelt somehow thru' its crown a pairO' blue eyes sot upun it.
¶Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!She seemed to've gut a new soul,For she felt sartin-sure he'd come,Down to her very shoe-sole.
¶She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu,A-raspin' on the scraper,—All ways to once her feelins flewLike sparks in burnt-up paper.
¶He kin' o' l'itered on the mat,Some doubtfle o' the sekle,His heart kep' goin' pity-pat,But hern went pity Zekle.[1378]An' yit she gin her cheer a jerkEz though she wished him furder,An' on her apples kep' to work,Parin' away like murder.
¶' You want to see my Pa, Is'pose?'' Wal . . . no . . . I come dasignin''—'To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'esAgin to-morror's i'nin'.'
¶To say why gals acts so or so,Or don't, 'ould be persumin';Mebby to mean yes an' say noComes nateral to women.
¶He stood a spell on one foot fust,Then stood a spell on t'other,An' on which one he felt the wustHe couldn't ha' told ye nuther.
¶Says he, ' I'd better call agin;'Says she,' Think likely, Mister:'Thet last word pricked him like a pin,An' . . . Wal, he up an' kist her.
¶When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips,Huldy sot pale ez ashes,All kin' o' smily roun' the lipsAn' teary roun' the lashes.
¶For she was jes' the quiet kindWhose naturs never vary,Like streams that keep a summer mindSnowhid in Jenooary.
¶The blood dost roun' her heart felt gluedToo tight for all expressin',Tell mother see how metters stood,An' gin 'em both her blessin'.[1379]Then her red come back like the tideDown to the Bay o' Fundy,An' all I know is they was criedIn meetin' come nex' Sunday.
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration
¶July 21, 1865
I
¶WEAK-WINGED is song,
¶Nor aims at that clear-ethered heightWhither the brave deed climbs for light:We seem to do them wrong,Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearseWho in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,Our trivial song to honor those who comeWith ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,A gracious memory to buoy up and saveFrom Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common graveOf the unventurous throng.
¶11
¶To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes backHer wisest Scholars, those who understoodThe deeper teaching of her mystic tome,And offered their fresh lives to make it good:No lore of Greece or Rome,No science peddling with the names of things,Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,Can lift our life with wingsFar from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits,And lengthen out our datesWith that clear fame whose memory singsIn manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates:Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!Not such the trumpet-callOf thy diviner mood,That could thy sons entice[1380]From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nestOf those half-virtues which the world calls best,Into War's tumult rude;But rather far that stern deviceThe sponsors chose that round thy cradle stoodIn the dim, unventured wood,The VERITAS1 that lurks beneathThe letter's unprolific sheath,Life of whate'er makes life worth living,Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food,One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.
Hi
¶Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oilAmid the dust of books to find her,Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.Many in sad faith sought for her,Many with crossed hands sighed for her;But these, our brothers, fought for her,At life's dear peril wrought for her,So loved her that they died for her,Tasting the raptured fleetnessOf her divine completeness:Their higher instinct knewThose love her best who to themselves are true,And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;They followed her and found herWhere all may hope to find,Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.Where faith made whole with deedBreathes its awakening breathInto the lifeless creed,They saw her plumed and mailed,With sweet, stern face unveiled,And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.[1381]rvOur slender life runs rippling by, and glidesInto the silent hollow of the past;What is there that abidesTo make the next age better for the last?Is earth too poor to give usSomething to live for here that shall outlive us?Some more substantial boonThan such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?The little that we seeFrom doubt is never free;The little that we doIs but half-nobly true;With our laborious hivingWhat men call treasure, and the gods call dross,Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,Only secure in every one's conniving,A long account of nothings paid with loss,Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,After our little hour of strut and rave,With all our pasteboard passions and desires,Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.But stay! no age was e'er degenerate,Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,For in our likeness still we shape our fate.Ah, there is something hereUnfathomed by the cynic's sneer,Something that gives our feeble lightA high immunity from Night,Something that leaps life's narrow barsTo claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;A seed of sunshine that can leavenOur earthly dullness with the beams of stars,And glorify our clayWith light from fountains elder than the Day;A conscience more divine than we,A gladness fed with secret tears,A vexing, forward-reaching sense[1382]Of some more noble permanence;A light across the sea,Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years.
p. 1382¶vWhither leads the pathTo ampler fates that leads?Not down through flowery meads,To reap an aftermathOf youth's vainglorious weeds,But up the steep, amid the wrathAnd shock of deadly-hostile creeds,Where the world's best hope and stayBy battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,Ere yet the sharp, decisive wordLight the black lips of cannon, and the swordDreams in its easeful sheath;But some day the live coal behind the thought,Whether from Baal's stone obscene,Or from the shrine sereneOf God's pure altar brought,Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and penLearns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:Some day the soft Ideal that we wooedConfronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,And cries reproachful: ' Was it, then, my praise,And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,The victim of thy genius, not its mate!'Life may be given in many ways,And loyalty to Truth be sealedAs bravely in the closet as the field,So bountiful is Fate;[1383]But then to stand beside her,When craven churls deride her,To front a lie in arms and not to yield,This shows, methinks, God's planAnd measure of a stalwart man,Limbed like the old heroic breeds,Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,Fed from within with all the strength he needs.
VI
¶Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,Whom late the Nation he had led,With ashes on her head,Wept with the passion of an angry grief:Forgive me, if from present things I turnTo speak what in my heart will beat and burn,And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.Nature, they say, doth dote,And cannot make a manSave on some worn-out plan,Repeating us by rote:For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,And choosing sweet clay from the breastOf the unexhausted West,With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.How beautiful to seeOnce more a shepherd of mankind indeed,Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,Not lured by any cheat of birth,But by his clear-grained human worth,And brave old wisdom of sincerity!They knew that outward grace is dust;They could not choose but trustIn that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,And supple-tempered willThat bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.[1384]His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.Nothing of Europe here,Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,Ere any names of Serf and PeerCould Nature's equal scheme defaceAnd thwart her genial will;Here was a type of the true elder race,And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.I praise him not; it were too late;And some innative weakness there must beIn him who condescends to victorySuch as the Present gives, and cannot wait,Safe in himself as in a fate.So always firmly he:He knew to bide his time,And can his fame abide,Still patient in his simple faith sublime,Till the wise years decide.Great captains, with their guns and drums,Disturb our judgment for the hour,But at last silence comes;These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,Our children shall behold his fame.The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,New birth of our new soil, the first American.
¶vnLong as man's hope insatiate can discernOr only guess some more inspiring goalOutside of Self, enduring as the pole,Along whose course the flying axles burnOf spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood;Long as below we cannot findThe meed that stills the inexorable mind;[1385]So long this faith to some ideal Good,Under whatever mortal names it masks,Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal moodThat thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,Feeling its challenged pulses leap,While others skulk in subterfuges cheap,And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,Shall win man's praise and woman's love,Shall be a wisdom that we set aboveAll other skills and gifts to culture dear,A virtue round whose forehead we inwreatheLaurels that with a living passion breatheWhen other crowns grow, while we twine them, searWhat brings us thronging these high rites to pay,And seal these hours the noblest of our year,Save that our brothers found this better way?
VIII
¶We sit here in the Promised LandThat flows with Freedom's honey and milk;But 'twas they won it, sword in hand,Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.We welcome back our bravest and our best;—Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest,Who went forth brave and bright as any here!I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,But the sad strings complain,And will not please the ear:I sweep them for a pa^an, but they waneAgain and yet againInto a dirge, and die away, in pain.In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:Fidier may others greet the living,For me the past is unforgiving;I with uncovered headSalute the sacred dead,Who went, and who return not.—Say not so!'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,[1386]But the high faith that failed not by the way;Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;No ban of endless night exiles the brave;And to the saner mindWe rather seem the dead that stayed behind.Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!For never shall their aureoled presence lack:I see them muster in a gleaming row,With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;We find in our dull road their shining track;In every nobler moodWe feel the orient of their spirit glow,Part of our life's unalterable good,Of all our saintlier aspiration;They come transfigured back,Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,Beautiful evermore, and with the raysOf morn on their white Shields of Expectation!
IX
¶But is there hope to saveEven this ethereal essence from the grave ?What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrongSave a few clarion names, or golden threads of song?Before my musing eyeThe mighty ones of old sweep by,Disvoiced now and insubstantial things,As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings,Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust,And many races, nameless long ago,To darkness driven by that imperious gustOf ever-rushing Time that here doth blow:O visionary world, condition strange,Where naught abiding is but only Change,Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range!Shall we to more continuance make pretence?Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit;And, bit by bit,The cunning years steal all from us but woe;Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow.[1387]But, when we vanish hence,Shall they lie forceless in the dark below„Save to make green their little length of sods,Or deepen pansies for a year or two,Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods?Was dying all they had the skill to do?That were not fruitless: but the Soul resentsSuch short-lived service, as if blind eventsRuled without her, or earth could so endure;She claims a more divine investitureOf longer tenure than Fame's airy rents;Whate'er she touches doth her nature share;Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air,Gives eyes to mountains blind,Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,And her clear trump sings succor everywhereBy lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind;For soul inherits all that soul could dare:Yea, Manhood hath a wider spanAnd larger privilege of life than man.The single deed, the private sacrifice,So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears,Is covered up erelong from mortal eyesWith thoughdess drift of the deciduous years;But that high privilege that makes all men peers,That leap of heart whereby a people riseUp to a noble anger's height,And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow moreThat swift validity in noble veins, [bright,Of choosing danger and disdaining shame,Of being set on flameBy the pure fire that flies all contact baseBut wraps its chosen with angelic might,These are imperishable gains,Sure as the sun, medicinal as light,These hold great futures in their lusty reinsAnd certify to earth a new imperial race.[1388]x
¶Who now shall sneer?Who dare again to say we traceOur lines to a plebeian race?Roundhead and Cavalier!Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud;Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud,They flit across the ear:That is best blood that hath most iron in't,To edge resolve with, pouring without stintFor what makes manhood dear.Tell us not of Plantagenets,Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawlDown from some victor in a border-brawl!How poor their outworn coronets,Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreathOur brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath,Through whose desert a rescued Nation setsHer heel on treason, and the trumpet hearsShout victory, tingling Europe's sullen earsWith vain resentments and more vain regrets I
XI
¶Not in anger, not in pride,Pure from passion's mixture rudeEver to base earth allied,But with far-heard gratitude,Still with heart and voice renewed,To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,The strain should close that consecrates our brave!Lift the heart and lift the head!Lofty be its mood and grave,Not without a martial ring,Not without a prouder treadAnd a peal of exultation:Little right has he to singThrough whose heart in such an hourBeats no march of conscious power,Sweeps no tumult of elation![1389]Tis no Man we celebrate,By his country's victories great,A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,But the pith and marrow of a NationDrawing force from all her men,Highest, humblest, weakest, all,For her time of need, and thenPulsing it again through them,Till the basest can no longer cower,Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem.Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dowerlHow could poet ever tower,If his passions, hopes, and fears,If his triumphs and his tears,Kept not measure with his people?Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!Banners, advance with triumph, bend your staves!And from every mountain-peakLet beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,And so leap on in light from sea to sea,Till the glad news be sentAcross a kindling continent,Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:'Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,She of the open soul and open door,With room about her hearth for all mankind!The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,And bids her navies, that so lately hurledTheir crashing battle, hold their thunders in,Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore.No challenge sends she to the elder world,That looked askance and hated; a light scornPlays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty kneesShe calls her children back, and waits the mornOf nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas.'
XII
¶Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!Thy God, in these distempered days,Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!Bow down in prayer and praise!No poorest in thy borders but may nowLift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.O Beautiful! my country! ours once more!Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hairO'er such sweet brows as never other wore,And letting thy set lips,Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,What words divine of lover or of poetCould tell our love and make thee know it,Among the Nations bright beyond compare?What were our lives without thee?What all our lives to save thee?We reck not what we gave thee;We will not dare to doubt thee,But ask whatever else, and we will dare!