all hail! thou noble land,
Our Fathers’ native soil!
Oh, stretch thy mighty hand,
Gigantic grown by toil,
O’er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore!
For thou with magic might
Canst reach to where the light
Of Phœbus travels bright
The world o’er!
The Genius of our clime,...
Fallen? how fallen? States and empires fall;
O’er towers and rock-built walls,
And perished nations, floods to tempests call
With hollow sound along the sea of time:
The great man never falls.
He lives, he towers aloft, he stands sublime:
They fall who give him not
The honor here that suits his future name,—
They...
That sovereign thought obscured? That vision clear
Dimmed in the shadow of the sable wing,
And fainter grown the fine interpreting
Which as an oracle was ours to hear!
Nay, but the Gods reclaim not from the seer
Their gift,—although he ceases here to sing,
And, like the antique sage, a covering
Draws round his head, knowing what...
I served in a great cause:
Long had I doubted the call I heard, wantoning the seasons dead;
The opportune days were deserts, the sunlight fell on a waste,
But the dawn brought me face to face with itself, with the opening flowers:
I looked upon my sea casting its wrecks down the shore in the storm,
The wrecks, my useless volitions, disordered, missent,...
To eastward ringing, to westward winging, o’er mapless miles of sea,
On winds and tides the gospel rides that the furthermost isles are free,
And the furthermost isles make answer, harbor, and height, and hill,
Breaker and beach cry each to each, “’T is the Mother who calls! Be still!”
Mother! new-found, beloved, and strong to hold from harm,
Stretching...
From the Greek by Leigh Hunt
I DREAMT I saw great Venus by me stand,
Leading a nodding infant by the hand;
And that she said to me familiarly—
“Take Love, and teach him how to play to me.”
She vanished then. And I, poor fool, must turn
To teach the boy, as if he wished to learn.
I taught him all the pastoral songs I knew
And used...
How seldom, Friend! a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits.
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
For shame, dear Friend; renounce this canting strain!
What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain?
Place—titles—...
ALL hail; thou noble land,
Our Fathers’ native soil!
O, stretch thy mighty hand,
Gigantic grown by toil,
O’er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore!
For thou with magic might
Canst reach to where the light
Of Phœbus travels bright
The world o’er!
The genius of our...
Great Nature is an army gay,
Resistless marching on its way;
I hear the bugles clear and sweet,
I hear the tread of million feet.
Across the plain I see it pour;
It tramples down the waving grass;
Within the echoing mountain-pass
I hear a thousand cannon roar.
It swarms within my garden gate;...
The Maid, as by the papers doth appear,
Whom fifty thousand dollars made so dear,
To test Lothario’s passion, simply said:
“Forego the weed before we go to wed.
For smoke take flame; I ’ll be that flame’s bright fanner:
To have your Anna, give up your Havana.”
But he, when thus she brought him to the scratch,
Lit his cigar and threw away...
