From the French from Fraser’s Magazine
“Tu domines notre âge; ange ou démon, qu’importe!”
ANGEL or demon! thou—whether of light
The minister, or darkness—still dost sway
This age of ours; thine eagle’s soaring flight
Bears us, all breathless, after it away.
The eye that from thy presence fain would stray
Shuns thee in...
From “Childe Harold,” Canto III.
THERE sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men,
Whose spirit antithetically mixed
One moment of the mightiest, and again
On little objects with like firmness fixed,
Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt,
Thy throne had still been thine, or never been;
For daring made thy rise as fall:...
Italia, mother of the souls of men,
Mother divine,
Of all that served thee best with sword or pen,
All sons of thine,
Thou knowest that here the likeness of the best
Before thee stands:
The head most high, the heart found faithfulest,
The purest hands.
Above the fume and foam of...
By broad Potomac’s silent shore
Better than Trajan lowly lies,
Gilding her green declivities
With glory now and evermore;
Art to his fame no aid hath lent;
His country is his monument.
[From “Under the Elm,” read at Cambridge, July 3, 1875, on the Hundredth Anniversary of Washington’s taking Command of the American Army.]
BENEATH our consecrated elm
A century ago he stood,
Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood,
Which redly foamèd round him but could not overwhelm
The life foredoomed to wield our rough-hewn helm.
From...
When, stricken by the freezing blast,
A nation’s living pillars fall,
How rich the storied page, how vast,
A word, a whisper, can recall!
No medal lifts its fretted face,
Nor speaking marble cheats your eye;
Yet, while these pictured lines I trace,
A living image passes by:
A roof beneath the mountain pines;
...
“Some time afterward, it was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors.”
—Letter of H. G. OTIS.
IN a small chamber, friendless and unseen,
Toiled o’er his types one poor,...
His tongue was touched with sacred fire,
He could not rest, he must speak out,
When Liberty lay stabbed, and doubt
Stalked through the night in vestments dire,—
When slaves uplifted manacled hands,
Praying in agony and despair,
And answer came not anywhere,
But gloom through all the stricken lands,—
His voice for...
Foully Assassinated April 14, 1865 1
YOU lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln’s bier,
You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace,
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer,
His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,
His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair,
His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease,
His lack of all...
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,...
