O MOTHER STATE!- the winds of

March

Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of
God,

Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch
Of sky, thy mourning children trod.

And now, with all thy woods in leaf, Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead Thou sittest, in thy robes of grief,

A Rachel yet uncomforted!

And once again the organ swells,
Once more the flag is half-way hung,
And yet again the mournful bells

In all thy steeple-towers are rung.

And I, obedient to thy will,

Have come a simple wreath to lay, Superfluous, on a grave that still Is sweet with all the flowers of May.

I take, with awe, the task assigned;

It may be that my friend might miss, In his new sphere of heart and mind,

Some token from my hand in this.

By many a tender memory moved, Along the past my thought I send; The record of the cause he loved

Is the best record of its friend.

No trumpet sounded in his ear,

He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame, But never yet to Hebrew seer

A clearer voice of duty came.

God said: "Break thou these yokes; undo

These heavy burdens. I ordain A work to last thy whole life through, A ministry of strife and pain.

"Forego thy dreams of lettered ease, Put thou the scholar's promise by,

The rights of man are more than these." He heard, and answered: "Here

am I!"

He set his face against the blast,

His feet against the flinty shard, Till the hard service grew, at last,

Its own exceeding great reward. Lifted like Saul's above the crowd, Upon his kingly forehead fell The first, sharp bolt of Slavery's cloud, Launched at the truth he urged so well.

Ah! never yet, at rack or stake,

Was sorer loss made Freedom's gain, Than his, who suffered for her sake

The beak-torn Titan's lingering pain! The fixed star of his faith, through all Loss, doubt, and peril, shone the

same;

As through a night of storm, some tall, Strong lighthouse lifts its steady flame.

Beyond the dust and smoke he saw The sheaves of freedom's large in

crease,

The holy fanes of equal law,

The New Jerusalem of peace.

The weak might fear, the worldling mock,

The faint and blind of heart regret ; All knew at last th' eternal rock

On which his forward feet were set.

The subtlest scheme of compromise
Was folly to his purpose bold;
The strongest mesh of party lies

Weak to the simplest truth he told. One language held his heart and lip, Straight onward to his goal he trod,

And proved the highest statesmanship Obedience to the voice of God.

No wail was in his voice, -none heard,

When treason's storm-cloud blackest grew,

The weakness of a doubtful word;
His duty, and the end, he knew.

The first to smite, the first to spare; When once the hostile ensigns fell, He stretched out hands of generous

care

To lift the foe he fought so well.

For there was nothing base or small Or craven in his soul's broad plan; Forgiving all things personal,

He hated only wrong to man.

The old traditions of his State,

The memories of her great and good, Took from his life a fresher date,

And in himself embodied stood.

How felt the greed of gold and place, The venal crew that schemed and planned,

The fine scorn of that haughty face,
The spurning of that bribeless hand!

If than Rome's tribunes statelier
He wore his senatorial robe,
His lofty port was all for her,

The one dear spot on all the globe.

gave

If to the master's plea he
The vast contempt his manhood felt,
He saw a brother in the slave,-

With man as equal man he dealt. Proud was he? If his presence kept Its grandeur wheresoe'er he trod, As if from Plutarch's gallery stepped The hero and the demigod,

None failed, at least, to reach his ear,
Nor want nor woe appealed in vain ;
The homesick soldier knew his cheer,
And blessed him from his ward of
pain.

Safely his dearest friends may own
The slight defects he never hid,

The surface-blemish in the stone Of the tall, stately pyramid. Suffice it that he never brought

469

His conscience to the public mart; But lived himself the truth he taught, White-souled, clean-handed, pure of heart.

What if he felt the natural pride

Of power in noble use, too true With thin humilities to hide

The work he did, the lore he knew?

Was he not just? Was any wronged
By that assured self-estimate?
He took but what to him belonged,
Unenvious of another's state.

Well might he heed the words he spake,

And scan with care the written page Through which he still shall warm and wake

The hearts of men from age to age.

Ah! who shall blame him now because He solaced thus his hours of pain! Should not the o'erworn thresher pause,

And hold to light his golden grain?

No sense of humor dropped its oil
On the hard ways his purpose went;
Small play of fancy lightened toil;

He spake alone the thing he meant.
He loved his books, the Art that hints
A beauty veiled behind its own,
The graver's line, the pencil's tints,
The chisel's shape evoked from

stone.

He cherished, void of selfish ends,

The social courtesies that bless And sweeten life, and loved his friends

With most unworldly tenderness.

But still his tired eyes rarely learned

The glad relief by Nature brought; Her mountain ranges never turned

His current of persistent thought. The sea rolled chorus to his speech Three-banked like Latium's tall tri

reme,

471

THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ.

On the isle of Penikese,
Ringed about by sapphire seas,
Fanned by breezes salt and cool,
Stood the Master with his school.
Over sails that not in vain

Wooed the west-wind's steady strain,
Line of coast that low and far
Stretched its undulating bar,
Wings aslant along the rim

Of the waves they stooped to skim,
Rock and isle and glistening bay,
Fell the beautiful white day.

Said the Master to the youth:
"We have come in search of truth,
Trying with uncertain key
Door by door of mystery;
We are reaching, through His laws,
To the garment-hem of Cause,
Him, the endless, unbegun,
The Unnamable, the One
Light of all our light the Source,
Life of life, and Force of force.
As with fingers of the blind,
We are groping here to find
What the hieroglyphics mean
Of the Unseen in the seen,
What the Thought which underlies
Nature's masking and disguise,
What it is that hides beneath
Blight and bloom and birth and death.
By past efforts unavailing,
Doubt and error, loss and failing,
Of our weakness made aware,
On the threshold of our task
Let us light and guidance ask,
Let us pause in silent prayer !"

Then the Master in his place
Bowed his head a little space,
And the leaves by soft airs stirred,
Lapse of wave and cry of bird
Left the solemn hush unbroken
Of that wordless prayer unspoken,
While its wish, on earth unsaid,
Rose to heaven interpreted.

As, in life's best hours, we hear
By the spirit's finer ear
His low voice within us, thus
The All-Father heareth us;
And his holy ear we pain
With our noisy words and vain.
Not for Him our violence
Storming at the gates of sense,
His the primal language, his
The eternal silences!

Even the careless heart was moved,
And the doubting gave assent,
With a gesture reverent,
To the Master well-beloved.
As thin mists are glorified
By the light they cannot hide,
All who gazed upon him saw,
Through its veil of tender awe,
How his face was still uplit
By the old sweet look of it,
Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer,
And the love that casts out fear.
Who the secret may declare
Of that brief, unuttered prayer?
Did the shade before him come
Of th' inevitable doom,
Of the end of earth so near,
And Eternity's new year?

In the lap of sheltering seas
Rests the isle of Penikese;
But the lord of the domain
Comes not to his own again :
Where the eyes that follow fail,
On a vaster sea his sail
Drifts beyond our beck and hail.
Other lips within its bound
Shall the laws of life expound;
Other eyes from rock and shell
Read the world's old riddles well:
But when breezes light and bland
Blow from Summer's blossomed land,
When the air is glad with wings,
And the blithe song-sparrow sings,
Many an eye with his still face
Shall the living ones displace,
Many an ear the word shall seek