VII.

1.

NEVER to see a nation born
Hath been given to mortal man,
Unless to those who, on that summer
morn,

Gazed silent when the great Virginian
Unsheathed the sword whose fatal flash
Shot union through the incoherent clash
Of our loose atoms, crystallizing them
Around a single will's unpliant stem,
And making purpose of emotion rash.
Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its
womb,

Nebulous at first but hardening to a star, Through mutual share of sunburst and of gloom,

The common faith that made us what we are.

Yet drew not back his hand, but gravely chose

The seeming-desperate task whence our new nation rose.

3.

A noble choice and of immortal seed! Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance

Or easy were as in a boy's romance: The man's whole life preludes the single deed

That shall decide if his inheritance Be with the sifted few of matchless breed,

Our race's sap and sustenance, Or with the unmotived herd that only sleep and feed.

Choice seems a thing indifferent; thus

or so,

What matters it? The Fates with mocking face

Look on inexorable, nor seem to know Where the lot lurks that gives life's foremost place.

Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it still, And but two ways are offered to our will, Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace,

The problem still for us and all of bu

Across more recent graves,

Where unresentful Nature waves Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod,

Proclaiming the sweet Truce of God, We from this consecrated plain stretch out

Our hands as free from afterthought or doubt

As here the united North

Poured her embrowned manhood forth In welcome of our savior and thy son. Through battle we have better learned thy worth,

The long-breathed valor and undaunted will,

Which, like his own, the day's disaster done,

Could, safe in manhood, suffer and be

AN ODE

FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1876.

I.

I.

ENTRANCED I saw a vision in the cloud That loitered dreaming in yon sunset sky,

Full of fair shapes, half creatures of the

eye,

Half chance-evoked by the wind's fantasy

In golden mist, an ever-shifting crowd: There, mid unreal forms that came and went

In robes air-spun, of evanescent dye, A woman's semblance shone pre-emi

nent;

Not armed like Pallas, not like Hera proud,

But, as on household diligence intent, Beside her visionary wheel she bent Like Arete or Bertha, nor than they Less queenly in her port: about her knee

Glad children clustered confident in play:

Placid her pose, the calm of energy; And over her broad brow in many a round

(That loosened would have gilt her garment's hem),

Succinct, as toil prescribes, the hair was wound

In lustrous coils, a natural diadem. The cloud changed shape, obsequious to the whim

Of some transmuting influence felt in

me,

And, looking now, a wolf I seemed to

see

Limned in that vapor, gaunt and hunger-bold,

Threatening her charge: resolve in every limb,

Erect she flamed in mail of sun-wove gold,

Penthesilea's self for battle dight;
One arm uplifted braced a flickering

spear,

And one her adamantine shield made light;

Crash of navies and wave-borne thun der;

Then drifted the cloud-rack a-lee,
And new stars were seen, a world's
wonder;

Each by her sisters made bright,
All binding all to their stations,
Cluster of manifold light
Startling the old constellations:
Men looked up and grew pale:
Was it a comet or star,
Omen of blessing or bale,
Hung o'er the ocean afar?

4.

Stormy the day of her birth:
Was she not born of the strong,
She, the last ripeness of earth,
Beautiful, prophesied long?
Stormy the days of her prime :
Hers are the pulses that beat
Higher for perils sublime,
Making them fawn at her feet.
Was she not born of the strong?
Was she not born of the wise?
Daring and counsel belong

Of right to her confident eyes:
Human and motherly they,
Careless of station or race:
Hearken her children to-day
Shout for the joy of her face.

II.

I.

No praises of the past are hers,
No fanes by hallowing time caressed,
No broken arch that ministers
To some sad instinct in the breast:
She has not gathered from the years
Grandeur of tragedies and tears,
Nor from long leisure the unrest
That finds repose in forms of classic

grace:

These may delight the coming race Who haply shall not count it to our

crime

That we who fain would sing are here before our time.

She also hath her monuments;
Not such as stand decrepitly resigned
To ruin-mark the path of dead events

peaceful air

through

Rise lost in heaven, the household's silent prayer;

What architect hath bettered these? With softened eye the westward traveller sees

A thousand miles of neighbors side by side,

Holding by toil-won titles fresh from God

The lands no serf or seigneur ever trod, With manhood latent in the very sod, Where the long billow of the wheatfield's tide

Flows to the sky across the prairie wide,

A sweeter vision than the castled Rhine,

Kindly with thoughts of Ruth and Bible-days benign.

2.

ancient commonwealths, that we

revere

Haply because we could not know you

near,

Your deeds like statues down the aisles of Time

Shine peerless in memorial calm sublime,

And Athens is a trumpet still, and Rome;

Yet which of your achievements is not foam Weighed with this one of hers (below you far

In fame, and born beneath a milder star),

That to Earth's orphans, far as curves the dome,

Of death-deaf sky, the bounteous West means home,

With dear precedency of natural ties That stretch from roof to root and make men gently wise?

And if the nobler passions wane, Distorted to base use, if the near goal Of insubstantial gain

Tempt from the proper race-course of the soul

That crowns their patient breath Whose feet, song-pinioned, are too fleet for Death,

Yet may she claim one privilege urbane And haply first upon the civic roll, That none can breathe her air nor grow humane.

POETS, as their heads grow gray,
Look from too far behind the eyes,
Too long-experienced to be wise
In guileless youth's diviner way;
Life sings not now, but prophesies;
Time's shadows they no more behold,
But, under them, the riddle old
That mocks, bewilders, and defies:
In childhood's face the seed of shame,
In the green tree an ambushed flame,
In Phosphor a vaunt-guard of Night,
They, though against their will, divine,
And dread the care-dispelling wine
Stored from the Muse's vintage bright,
By age
imbued with second-sight.
From Faith's own eyelids there peeps
out,

Even as they look, the leer of doubt;
The festal wreath their fancy loads
With care that whispers and forebodes:
Nor this our triumph-day can blunt
Megæra's goads.

2.

Murmur of many voices in the air Denounces us degenerate,

Unfaithful guardians of a noble fate, And prompts indifference or despair: Is this the country that we dreamed in youth,

Where wisdom and not numbers should have weight,

Seed-field of simpler manners, braver truth,

Where shams should cease to dominate
In household, church, and state?
Is this Atlantis? This the unpoisoned
soil,

Sea-whelmed for ages and recovered late,

Where parasitic greed no more should coil

Round Freedom's stem to bend awry and blight

What grew so fair, sole plant of love and light?

Who sit where once in crowned seclusion sate

The long-proved athletes of debate Trained from their youth, as none thinks needful now?

Is this debating-club where boys dispute,

And wrangle o'er their stolen fruit, The Senate, erewhile cloister of the few,

Where Clay once Aashed and Webster's cloudy brow

Brooded those bolts of thought that all the horizon knew?