God sends his teachers unto every age,
To every clime, and every race of men,
With revelations fitted to their growth
And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of truth,
Into the selfish rule of one sole race.
Therefore each form of worship that hath swayed
The life of man, and given it to grasp
The master-key of knowledge, reverence,...
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A Stranger came one night to Yussouf’s tent,
Saying, “Behold one outcast and in dread,
Against whose life the bow of power is bent,
Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head;
I come to thee for shelter and for food,
To Yussouf, called through all our tribes ‘The Good.’”“This tent is mine,” said Yussouf, “but no more
Than it is God’... -
O’er the wet sands an insect crept
Ages ere man on earth was known—
And patient Time, while Nature slept,
The slender tracing turned to stone.’T was the first autograph: and ours?
Prithee, how much of prose or song,
In league with the creative powers,
Shall ’scape Oblivion’s broom so long? -
From the Harvard Commemoration Ode, July 21, 1865
LIFE may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So bountiful is Fate;
But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a line in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God’s plan... -
These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.Fit rosary for a queen, in shape and hue,
When Contemplation tells her pensive beads
Of mortal thoughts, forever old and new.
Fit for a queen? Why, surely then... -
From “a Fable for Critics”
THERE is Lowell, who ’s striving Parnassus to climb
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme.
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
But he can’t with that bundle he has on his shoulders.
The top of the hill he will ne’er come nigh reaching
Till he learns the distinction ’twixt singing and... -
On His Birthday, 27th February, 1867
I NEED not praise the sweetness of his song,
Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds
Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong
The new moon’s mirrored skiff, he slides along,
Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.With loving breath of all the winds his name
Is blown about... -
When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth’s aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.Through the walls of hut and...
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It don’t seem hardly right, John,
When both my hands was full,
To stump me to a fight, John,—
Your cousin, tu, John Bull!
Old Uncle S., sez he, “I guess
We know it now,” sez he,
“The Lion’s paw is all the law,
Accordin’ to J. B.,
Thet ’s fit for you and me!”You wonder why we ’re hot, John?
Your mark... -
[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...