This conscious life, is it the same
Which thrills the universal frame,
Whereby the caverned crystal shoots,
And mounts the sap from forest roots,
Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells
When Spring makes green her native
dells?

How feels the stone the pang of birth,
Which brings its sparkling prism forth?
The forest-tree the throb which gives
The life-blood to its new-born leaves?
Do bird and blossom feel, like me,
Life's many-folded mystery,
The wonder which it is TO BE?
Or stand I severed and distinct,
From Nature's chain of life unlinked?
Allied to all, yet not the less
Prisoned in separate consciousness,
Alone o'erburdened with a sense
Of life, and cause, and consequence?

In vain to me the Sphinx propounds
The riddle of her sights and sounds;
Back still the vaulted mystery gives
The echoed question it receives.
What sings the brook? What oracle
Is in the pine-tree's organ swell?
What may the wind's low burden
be?

The meaning of the moaning sea ?
The hieroglyphics of the stars?
Or clouded sunset's crimson bars?
I vainly ask, for mocks my skill
The trick of Nature's cipher still.

I turn from Nature unto men, I ask the stylus and the pen;

What sang the bards of old? What

meant

The prophets of the Orient?
The rolls of buried Egypt, hid
In painted tomb and pyramid?
What mean Idúmea's arrowy lines,
Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs?
How speaks the primal thought of man
From the grim carvings of Copan ?
Where rests the secret? Where the keys
Of the old death-bolted mysteries?
Alas! the dead retain their trust;
Dust hath no answer from the dust.

The great enigma still unguessed,
Unanswered the eternal quest ;
I gather up the scattered rays
Of wisdom in the early days,
Faint gleams and broken, like the light
Of meteors in a northern night,
Betraying to the darkling earth
The unseen sun which gave them birth
I listen to the sibyl's chant,
The voice of priest and hierophant ;
I know what Indian Kreeshna saith,
And what of life and what of death
The demon taught to Socrates;
And what, beneath his garden-trees
Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread,
The solemn-thoughted Plato said;
Nor lack I tokens, great or small,
Of God's clear light in each and all,
While holding with more dear regard
The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard,
The starry pages promise-lit
With Christ's Evangel over-writ,
Thy miracle of life and death,
O holy one of Nazareth!

On Aztec ruins, gray and lone,
The circling serpent coils in stone,
Type of the endless and unknown;
Whereof we seek the clew to find,
With groping fingers of the blind!
Forever sought, and never found,
We trace that serpent-symbol round
Our resting-place, our starting bound!
O thriftlessness of dream and guess!
O wisdom which is foolishness!
Why idly seek from outward things
The answer inward silence brings;
Why stretch beyond our proper sphere
And age, for that which lies so near?
Why climb the far-off hills with pain,
A nearer view of heaven to gain?
In lowliest depths of bosky dells
The hermit Contemplation dwells,

;

A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat,
And lotus-twined his silent feet,
Whence, piercing heaven, with screenéd
sight,

He sees at noon the stars, whose light
Shall glorify the coming night.

Here let me pause, my quest forego;
Enough for me to feel and know
That He in whom the cause and end,
The past and future, meet and blend, -
Who, girt with his immensities,
Our vast and star-hung system sees,
Small as the clustered Pleiades,
Moves not alone the heavenly quires,
But waves the spring-time's grassy

spires,

Guards not archangel feet alone,

But deigns to guide and keep my own;
Speaks not alone the words of fate
Which worlds destroy, and worlds
create,

But whispers in my spirit's ear,
In tones of love, or warning fear,
A language none beside may hear.

To Him, from wanderings long and

wild,

I come, an over-wearied child,

In cool and shade his peace to find,
Like dew-fall settling on my mind.
Assured that all I know is best,
And humbly trusting for the rest,
I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme,
Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream
Of power, impersonal and cold,
Controlling all, itself controlled,
Maker and slave of iron laws,
Alike the subject and the cause;
From vain philosophies, that try
The sevenfold gates of mystery,
And, baffled ever, babble still,
Word-prodigal of fate and will;
From Nature, and her mockery, Art,
And book and speech of men apart,
To the still witness in my heart;
With reverence waiting to behold
His Avatar of love untold,
The Eternal Beauty new and old!

THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES.

I HAVE been thinking of the victims

bound

In Naples, dying for the lack of air

159

Appeals against the torture and the chain !

Unfortunates! whose crime it was to share

Our common love of freedoin, and to dare,

In its behalf, Rome's harlot triplecrowned,

And her base pander, the most hateful thing Who upon

ground

Christian or on Pagan

Makes vile the old heroic name of king. O God most merciful! Father just and kind!

Whom man hath bound let thy right hand unbind.

Or, if thy purposes of good behind Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers find

Strong consolations; leave them not to doubt

Thy providential care, nor yet without The hope which all thy attributes inspire,

That not in vain the martyr's robe of fire

Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting chain;

Since all who suffer for thy truth send forth,

Electrical, with every throb of pain, Unquenchable sparks, thy own baptismal rain

Of fire and spirit over all the earth, Making the dead in slavery live again. Let this great hope be with them, as they lie

Shut from the light, the greenness, and the sky,

From the cool waters and the pleasant

breeze,

The smell of flowers, and shade of summer trees;

Bound with the felon lepers, whom disease

And sins abhorred make loathsome; let them share

Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to bear Years of unutterable torment, stern and still,

As the chained Titan victor through his will!

Comfort them with thy future; let them

see

The day-dawn of Italian liberty; For that, with all good things, is hid with Thee,

And, perfect in thy thought, awaits its time to be!

I, who have spoken for freedom at the cost Of some weak friendships, or some paltry prize

Of name or place, and more than I have lost

Have gained in wider reach of sympathies,

And free communion with the good and wise,

May God forbid that I should ever boast

Such easy self-denial, or repine

That the strong pulse of health no more is mine;

That, overworn at noonday, I must yield

To other hands the gleaning of the field,

A tired on-looker through the day's decline.

For blest beyond deserving still, and knowing

That kindly Providence its care is showing

In the withdrawal as in the bestowing, Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray. Beautiful yet for me this autumn day Melts on its sunset hills; and, far away, For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm, To me the pine-woods whisper; and for me

Yon river, winding through its vales of calm,

By greenest banks, with asters purplestarred,

And gentian bloom and golden-rod

made gay,

Flows down in silent gladness to the sea, Like a pure spirit to its great reward!

Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near and dear,

Whose love is round me like this atmosphere,

Warm, soft, and golden. For such gifts

to me

What shall I render, O my God, to thee? Let me not dwell upon my lighter share Of pain and ill that human life must bear ;

What! know ye not the gains of Crime
Are dust and dross;

Its ventures on the waves of time
Foredoomed to loss!

And still the Pilgrim State remains
What she hath been;

Her inland hills, her seaward plains,
Still nurture men!

Nor wholly lost the fallen mart, -
Her olden blood

Through many a free and generous heart
Still pours its flood.

161

Go lay to earth a listening ear;
The tramp of measured marches hear,
The rolling of the cannon's wheel,
The shotted musket's murderous peal,
The night alarm, the sentry's call,
The quick-eared spy in hut and
hall!

From Polar sea and tropic fen
The dying-groans of exiled men!
The bolted cell, the galley's chains,
The scaffold smoking with its stains!
Order, the hush of brooding slaves!
Peace, in the dungeon-vaults and
graves!

O Fisher of the world-wide net,
With meshes in all waters set,
Whose fabled keys of heaven and
hell

Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell,
And open wide the banquet-hall,
Where kings and priests hold carni-
val!

Weak vassal tricked in royal guise,
Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies;
Base gambler for Napoleon's crown,
Barnacle on his dead renown!
Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan,
Crowned scandal, loathed of God and

man;

Shall know no check,

Till a free people's foot is set

On Slavery's neck.

Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and

Czar!

If this be Peace, pray what is War?

White Angel of the Lord! unmeet
That soil accursed for thy pure feet.
Never in Slavery's desert flows
The fountain of thy charmed repose;
No tyrant's hand thy chaplet weaves
Of lilies and of olive-leaves;

Not with the wicked shalt thou dwell,
Thus saith the Eternal Oracle ;
Thy home is with the pure and free!
Stern herald of thy better day,
Before thee, to prepare thy way,
The Baptist Shade of Liberty,
Gray, scarred and hairy-robed, must

press

WORDSWORTH.

WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS MEMOIRS.

DEAR friends, who read the world aright,
And in its common forms discern
A beauty and a harmony

The many never learn!

Kindred in soul of him who found
In simple flower and leaf and stone
The impulse of the sweetest lays
Our Saxon tongue has known, -

Accept this record of a life

Varied as varying Nature's ways, Sprites of the river, woodland fays,

Or mountain nymphs, ye seem; Free-limbed Dianas on the green, Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine,

Upon your favorite stream.

The forms of which the poets told, The fair benignities of old,

Were doubtless such as you; What more than Artichoke the rill Of Helicon? Than Pipe-stave hill Arcadia's mountain-view?

No sweeter bowers the bee delayed,

As a long day of blandest June

In green field and in wood.

How welcome to our ears, long pained

By strife of sect and party noise, The brook-like murmur of his song Of nature's simple joys!

The violet by its mossy stone,

The primrose by the river's brim, And chance-sown daffodil, have found Immortal life through him.

The sunrise on his breezy lake,

The rosy tints his sunset brought, World-seen, are gladdening all the vales And mountain-peaks of thought.

Art builds on sand; the works of pride And human passion change and fall; But that which shares the life of God With him surviveth all.

Than those you dwell among; Snow-flowered azalias, intertwined With roses, over banks inclined

With trembling harebells hung!