THE CATHEDRAL.

Who loved their city and thought gold
well spent

To make her beautiful with piety;
I pause, transfigured by some stripe of
bloom,

And my mind throngs with shining
auguries,

Circle on circle, bright as seraphim,
With golden trumpets, silent, that await
The signal to blow news of good to men.

Then the revulsion came that always

comes

After these dizzy elations of the mind: And with a passionate pang of doubt I cried,

"O mountain-born, sweet with snow-
filtered air

From uncontaminate wells of ether drawn
And never-broken secrecies of sky,
Freedom, with anguish won, misprized
till lost,

They keep thee not who from thy sacred

In fortresses of solitary thought

And private virtue strong in self-restraint.

Must we too forfeit thee misunderstood, Content with names, nor inly wise to know

That best things perish of their own ex

417

| Tonic, it may be, not delectable,
And turned, reluctant, for a parting look
At those old weather-pitted images
Of bygone struggle, now so sternly calm.
About their shoulders sparrows had
built nests,

And fluttered, chirping, from gray perch
to perch,

Now on a mitre poising, now a crown,
Irreverently happy. While I thought
How confident they were, what, careless
hearts

Flew on those lightsome wings and
shared the sun,

A larger shadow crossed; and looking

up,

I saw where, nesting in the hoary towers,
The sparrow-hawk slid forth on noise-
less air,

With sidelong head that watched the
joy below,

Grim Norman baron o'er this clan of
Kelts.

Enduring Nature, force conservative,
Indifferent to our noisy whims! Men
prate

Of all heads to an equal grade cashiered
On level with the dullest, and expect
(Sick of no worse distemper than them-
selves)

A wondrous cure-all in equality;
They reason that To-morrow must be
wise

Because To-day was not, nor Yesterday,
As if good days were shapen of them-
selves,

Not of the very lifeblood of men's souls;
Meanwhile, long-suffering, imperturb-
able,

Thou quietly complet'st thy syllogism,
And from the premise sparrow here below

Draw'st sure conclusion of the hawk

!

THREE MEMORIAL POEMS.

If I let fall a word of bitter mirth

When public shames more shameful pardon won,
Some have misjudged me, and my service done,
If small, yet faithful, deemed of little worth:
Through veins that drew their life from Western earth
Two hundred years and more my blood hath run
In no polluted course from sire to son;
And thus was I predestined ere my birth
To love the soil wherewith my fibres own
Instinctive sympathies; yet love it so
As honor would, nor lightly to dethrone
Judgment, the stamp of manhood, nor forego
The son's right to a mother dearer grown

With growing knowledge and more chaste than snow.

THREE MEMORIAL POEMS.

ΤΟ

E. L. GODKIN,

IN CORDIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS EMINENT SERVICE
IN HEIGHTENING AND PURIFYING THE TONE

OF OUR POLITICAL THOUGHT,

These Three Poems

ARE DEDICATED.

Readers, it is hoped, will remember that, by his Ode at the Harvard Commemoration, the author had precluded himself from many of the natural outlets of thought and feeling cominon to such occasions as are celebrated in these poems.