Draw the mouths of bigots down, Plague ambition's dream, and sit Heavy on the hypocrite,

173

Haunt the rich man's door, and ride
In the gilded coach of pride ;-.
Let the fiend pass! - what can he
Find to do with such as thee?
Seldom comes that evil guest
Where the conscience lies at rest,
And brown health and quiet wit
Smiling on the threshold sit.

I, the urchin unto whom,
In that smoked and dingy room,
Where the district gave thee rule
O'er its ragged winter school,
Thou didst teach the mysteries
Of those weary A B C's,
Where, to fill the every pause
Of thy wise and learned saws,
Through the cracked and crazy wall
Came the cradle-rock and squall,
And the goodman's voice, at strife
With his shrill and tipsy wife,
Luring us by stories old,
With a comic unction told,
More than by the eloquence
Of terse birchen arguments
(Doubtful gain, I fear), to look
With complacence on a book!
Where the genial pedagogue
Half forgot his rogues to flog,
Citing tale or apologue,
Wise and merry in its drift
As oldPhædrus' twofold gift,
Had the little rebels known it,
Risum et prudentiam monet !

I,

the man of middle years, In whose sable locks appears Many a warning fleck of gray, Looking back to that far day, And thy primal lessons, feel Grateful smiles my lips unseal, As, remembering thee, I blend Olden teacher, present friend, Wise with antiquarian search, In the scrolls of State and Church: Named on history's title-page, Parish-clerk and justice sage; For the ferule's wholesome awe Wielding now the sword of law.

Threshing Time's neglected sheaves, Gathering up the scattered leaves Which the wrinkled sibyl cast Careless from her as she passed, Twofold citizen art thou,

Freeman of the past and now. He who bore thy name of old Midway in the heavens did hold Over Gibeon moon and sun;

Thou hast bidden them backward run;
Of to-day the present ray
Flinging over yesterday !

Let the busy ones deride
What I deem of right thy pride:
Let the fools their tread-mills grind,
Look not forward nor behind,
Shuffle in and wriggle out,
Veer with every breeze about,
Turning like a windmill sail,
Or a dog that seeks his tail;
Let them laugh to see thee fast
Tabernacled in the Past,
Working out with eye and lip,
Riddles of old penmanship,
Patient as Belzoni there
Sorting out, with loving care,
Mummies of dead questions stripped
From their sevenfold manuscript !

Dabbling, in their noisy way, In the puddles of to-day, Little know they of that vast Solemn ocean of the past,

-

On whose margin, wreck-bespread,
Thou art walking with the dead,
Questioning the stranded years,
Waking smiles, by turns, and tears,
As thou callest up again
Shapes the dust has long o'erlain,
Fair-haired woman, bearded man,
Cavalier and Puritan ;
In an age whose cager view
Seeks but present things, and new,
Mad for party, sect and gold,
Teaching reverence for the old.

On that shore, with fowler's tact,
Coolly bagging fact on fact,
Naught amiss to thee can float,
Tale, or song, or anecdote ;
Village gossip, centuries old,
Scandals by our grandams told,
What the pilgrim's table spread,
Where he lived, and whom he wed,
Long-drawn bill of wine and beer
For his ordination cheer,

Or the flip that wellnigh made
Glad his funeral cavalcade;
Weary prose, and poet's lines,
Flavored by their age, like wines,
Eulogistic of some quaint,

Doubtful, puritanic saint;
Lays that quickened husking jigs,
Jests that shook grave periwigs,
When the parson had his jokes
And his glass, like other folks ;
Sermons that, for mortal hours,
Taxed our fathers' vital powers,
As the long nineteenthlies poured
Downward from the sounding-board,
And, for fire of Pentecost,

Touched their beards December's frost.

Time is hastening on, and we
What our father's are shall be,
Shadow-shapes of memory!
Joined to that vast multitude
Where the great are but the good,
And the mind of strength shall prove
Weaker than the heart of love;
Pride of graybeard wisdom less
Than the infant's guilelessness,
And his song of sorrow more
Than the crown the Psalmist wore!
Who shall then, with pious zeal,
At our moss-grown thresholds kneel,
From a stained and stony page
Reading to a careless age,
With a patient eye like thine,
Prosing tale and limping line,
Names and words the hoary rime
Of the Past has made sublime ?
Who shall work for us as well
The antiquarian's miracle?
Who to seeming life recall
Teacher grave and pupil small?
Who shall give to thee and me
Freeholds in futurity?

Well, whatever lot be mine,
Long and happy days be thine,
Ere thy full and honored age
Dates of time its latest page!
Squire for master, State for school,
Wisely lenient, live and rule;
Over grown-up knave and rogue
Play the watchful pedagogue;
Or, while pleasure smiles on duty,
At the call of youth and beauty,
Speak for them the spell of law
Which shall bar and bolt withdraw,
And the flaming sword remove
From the Paradise of Love.
Still, with undimmed eyesight, pore
Ancient tome and record o'er;
Still thy week-day lyrics croon,
Pitch in church the Sunday tune,
Showing something, in thy part,

THROUGH the long hall the shuttered windows shed

A dubious light on every upturned head,

On locks like those of Absalom the fair, On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair,

On blank indifference and on curious stare;

On the pale Showman reading from his stage

The hieroglyphics of that facial page; Half sad, half scornful, listening to the bruit

Of restless cane-tap and impatient foot, And the shrill call, across the general din,

"Roll up your curtain! Let the show begin!

At length a murmur like the winds that break

Into green waves the prairie's grassy lake,

Deepened and swelled to music clear and loud,

And, as the west-wind lifts a summer cloud,

The curtain rose, disclosing wide and far A green land stretching to the evening star, Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees And flowers hummed over by the desert bees,

Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of

greenness show

Fantastic outcrops of the rock below, The slow result of patient Nature's pains, And plastic fingering of her sun and rains,

Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely windowed hall,

And long escarpment of half-crumbled wall,

Huger than those which, from steep hills of vine,

Stare through their loopholes on the travelled Rhine;

Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's mind
A fancy, idle as the prairie wind,
Of the land's dwellers in an age un-
guessed,

The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West.

Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells

"Is the new Canaan of our Israel, The land of promise to the swarming North,

Which, hive-like, sends its annual surplus forth,

To the poor Southron on his worn-out soil,

Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil; To Europe's exiles seeking home and rest,

And the lank nomads of the wandering West,

Who, asking neither, in their love of change

And the free bison's amplitude of range, Rear the log-hut, for present shelter meant,

Not future comfort, like an Arab's tent."

Then spake a shrewd on-looker, "Sir," said he,

"I like your picture, but I fain would

see

A sketch of what your promised land will be

When, with electric nerve, and fierybrained,

With Nature's forces to its chariot chained,

The future grasping, by the past obeyed, The twentieth century rounds a new decade."

we sow;

That present time is but the mould wherein

We cast the shapes of holiness and sin. A painful watcher of the passing hour, Its lust of gold, its strife for place and power;

Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, truth,

Wise-thoughted age, and generoushearted youth;

Nor yet unmindful of each better sign, The low, far lights, which on th' horizon shine,

Like those which sometimes tremble on the rim

Of clouded skies when day is closing dim,

Flashing athwart the purple spears of rain

The hope of sunshine on the hills again:

I need no prophet's word, nor shapes that pass

Like clouding shadows o'er a magic glass;

For now, as ever, passionless and cold, Doth the dread angel of the future hold Evil and good before us, with no voice Or warning look to guide us in our choice;

With spectral hands outreaching through the gloom

The shadowy contrasts of the coming doom.

Transferred from these, it now remains to give

The sun and shade of Fate's alternative.”