dumb, And let our gushing songs befit the dawn | Though loud Niagara were to-day struck Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing day! Never had poets such high call before, Never can poets hope for higher one, And, if they be but faithful to their trust, Earth will remember them with love and joy, And O, far better, God will not forget. For he who settles Freedom's principles Writes the death-warrant of all tyranny; Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart, And his mere word makes despots tremble more Than ever Brutus with his dagger could. Wait for no hints from waterfalls or woods, Nor dream that tales of red men, brute and fierce, Repay the finding of this Western World, Or needed half the globe to give them birth: Spirit supreme of Freedom! not for this Did great Columbus tame his eagle soul To jostle with the daws that perch in courts; Not for this, friendless, on an unknown sea, nous spirits, Yet would this cataract of boiling life Rush plunging on and on to endless deeps, And utter thunder till the world shall cease, A thunder worthy of the poet's song, And which alone can fill it with true life. The high evangel to our country granted Could make apostles, yea, with tongues of fire, Of hearts half-darkened back again to clay! 'T is the soul only that is national, And he who pays true loyalty to that Alone can claim the wreath of patriotism. Beloved if I wander far and oft From that which I believe, and feel, and know, Thou wilt forgive, not with a sorrowing heart, But with a strengthened hope of better things; Knowing that I, though often blind and false To those I love, and O, more false than all Unto myself, have been most true to thee, And that whoso in one thing hath been true Coping with mad waves and more muti-Can be as true in all. Therefore thy hope May yet not prove unfruitful, and thy love Meet, day by day, with less unworthy thanks, Battled he with the dreadful ache at heart Which tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt, The hermit of that loneliest solitude, The silent desert of a great New Thought; Whether, as now, we journey hand in hand, Or, parted in the body, yet are one Who saw him alway wished to know him more, As if he were some fate's defiant thrall And nursed a dreaded secret at his core; Little he loved, but power the most of all, And that he seemed to scorn, as one who knew By what foul paths men choose to crawl thereto. XVIII. XXI. Deep in the forest was a little dell A slender rill that sung itself to sleep Where its continuous toil had scooped a well To please the fairy folk; breathlessly deep The stillness was, save when the dreaming brook He had been noble, but some great de- From its small urn a drizzly murmu ceit shook. Till after countless centuries it grew Into this dell, the haunt of noontide dew. XXIII. Dim vistas, sprinkled o'er with sunflecked green, Wound through the thickset trunks on every side, And, toward the west, in fancy might be seen A gothic window in its blazing pride, When the low sun, two arching elms between, Lit up the leaves beyond, which, autumn-dyed With lavish hues, would into splendor start, Shaming the labored panes of richest art. XXIV. Here, leaning once against the old oak's trunk, Mordred, for such was the young Templar's name, Saw Margaret come; unseen, the falcon Made him forget that he was vowed a monk, |