i love the old melodious lays Which softly melt the ages through, The songs of Spenser’s golden days, Arcadian Sidney’s silvery phrase, Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew. Yet, vainly in my quiet hours To breathe their marvellous notes I try; I feel them, as the leaves and flowers In silence feel the dewy showers, And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky. The rigor of a frozen clime, The harshness of an untaught ear, The jarring words of one whose rhyme Beat often Labor’s hurried time, Or Duty’s rugged march through storm and strife, are here. Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, No rounded art the lack supplies; Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, Or softer shades of Nature’s face, I view her common forms with unanointed eyes. Nor mine the seer-like power to show The secrets of the heart and mind; To drop the plummet-line below Our common world of joy and woe, A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. Yet here at least an earnest sense Of human right and weal is shown; A hate of tyranny intense, And hearty in its vehemence, As if my brother’s pain and sorrow were my own. O Freedom! if to me belong Nor mighty Milton’s gift divine, Nor Marvell’s wit and graceful song, Still with a love as deep and strong As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine!
Proem
More from Poet
-
[1876] our fathers’ God! from out whose hand The centuries fall like grains of sand, We meet to-day, united, free, And loyal to our land and Thee, To thank Thee for the era done, And trust Thee for the opening one. Here, where of old, by Thy design, The fathers spake that word of Thine Whose...
-
“put up the sword!” the voice of Christ once more Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon’s roar, O’er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped With nameless dead; o’er cities starving slow Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe Down which a groaning...
-
Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn, The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. Round about them orchards sweep, Apple and peach trees fruited deep, Fair as a garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde, On that...
-
[On hearing the bells ring on the passage of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery.] IT is done! Clang of bell and roar of gun Send the tidings up and down. How the belfries rock and reel! How the great guns, peal on peal, Fling the joy from town to town! Ring, O...
-
THY 1 error, Frémont, simply was to act A brave man’s part, without the statesman’s tact, And, taking counsel but of common sense, To strike at cause as well as consequence. O, never yet since Roland wound his horn At Roncesvalles has a blast been blown Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine...