ΤΟ

ODE

READ AT THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIGHT AT CONCORD

BRIDGE.

19TH APRIL, 1875.

I.

WHO Cometh over the hills,
Her garments with morning sweet,
The dance of a thousand rills
Making music before her feet?
Her presence freshens the air;
Sunshine steals light from her face;
The leaden footstep of Care
Leaps to the tune of her pace,
Fairness of all that is fair,
Grace at the heart of all grace,
Sweetener of hut and of hall,
Bringer of life out of naught,
Freedom, O, fairest of all

The daughters of Time and Thought!

II.

She cometh, cometh to-day:
Hark! hear ye not her tread,
Sending a thrill through your clay,
Under the sod there, ye dead,
Her nurslings and champions?
Do ye not hear, as she comes,
The bay of the deep-mouthed guns,

The gathering buzz of the drums?
The bells that called ye to prayer,
How wildly they clamor on her,
Crying, "She cometh! prepare
Her to praise and her to honor,
That a hundred years ago

Scattered here in blood and tears
Potent seeds wherefrom should grow
Gladness for a hundred years!

III.

Tell me, young men, have ye seen,
Creature of diviner mien

For true hearts to long and cry for,
Manly hearts to live and die for?
What hath she that others want?
Brows that all endearments haunt,
Eyes that make it sweet to dare,
Smiles that cheer untimely death
Looks that fortify despair,

Tones more brave than trumpet's breath;
Tell me, maidens, have ye known
Household charm more sweetly rare,
Grace of woman ampler blown,
Modesty more debonair,

Younger heart with wit full grown?
O for an hour of my prime,

The pulse of my hotter years,
That I might praise her in rhyme
Would tingle your eyelids to tears,

Our sweetness, our strength, and our star,

Our hope, our joy, and our trust, Who lifted us out of the dust, And made us whatever we are!

IV.

Whiter than moonshine upon snow
Her raiment is, but round the hem
Crimson stained; and, as to and fro
Her sandals flash, we see on them,
And on her instep veined with blue,
Flecks of crimson, on those fair feet,
High-arched, Diana-like, and fleet,
Fit for no grosser stain than dew:
O, call them rather chrisms than stains,
Sacred and from heroic veins !
For, in the glory-guarded pass,
Her haughty and far-shining head
She bowed to shrive Leonidas
With his imperishable dead;
Her, too, Morgarten saw,
Where the Swiss lion fleshed his icy paw;
She followed Cromwell's quenchless star
Where the grim Puritan tread
Shook Marston, Naseby, and Dunbar :
Yea, on her feet are dearer dyes
Yet fresh, nor looked on with untearful

eyes.

V.

Our fathers found her in the woods
Where Nature meditates and broods,
The seeds of unexampled things
Which Time to consummation brings
Through life and death and man's un-
stable moods;

They met her here, not recognized,
A sylvan huntress clothed in furs,
To whose chaste wants her bow sufficed,
Nor dreamed what destinies were hers:
She taught them bee-like to create
Their simpler forms of Church and State;
She taught them to endue

The past with other functions than it knew,

And turn in channels strange the uncertain stream of Fate; Better than all, she fenced them in their need

With iron-handed Duty's sternest creed, 'Gainst Self's lean wolf that ravens word and deed.

Why cometh she? She was not far away.
Since the soul touched it, not in vain,
With pathos of immortal gain,
'Tis here her fondest memories stay.
She loves yon pine-bemurmured ridge
Where now our broad-browed poet sleeps,
Dear to both Englands; near him he
Who wore the ring of Canace;
But most her heart to rapture leaps
Where stood that era-parting bridge,
O'er which, with footfall still as dew,
The Old Time passed into the New;
Where, as your stealthy river creeps,
He whispers to his listening weeds
Tales of sublimest homespun deeds.
Here English law and English thought
'Gainst the self-will of England fought;
And here were men (coequal with their
fate),

Who did great things, unconscious they were great.

They dreamed not what a die was cast With that first answering shot; what then?

There was their duty; they were men
Schooled the soul's inward gospel to obey,
Though leading to the lion's den.
They felt the habit-hallowed world give
way

Beneath their lives, and on went they,
Unhappy who was last.

When Buttrick gave the word,
That awful idol of the unchallenged Past,
Strong in their love, and in their lineage

strong,

Fell crashing: if they heard it not,
Yet the earth heard,
Nor ever hath forgot,

As on from startled throne to throne,
Where Superstition sate or conscious
Wrong,

A shudder ran of some dread birth unknown.

Thrice venerable spot!
River more fateful than the Rubicon!
O'er those red planks, to snatch her dia-
dem,

Man's Hope, star-girdled, sprang with them,

And over ways untried the feet of Doom

strode on.

VII.

Think you these felt no charms In their gray homesteads and embowered farms?

In household faces waiting at the door

Where discrowned empires o'er their ruins brood,

And many a thwarted hope wrings its weak hands and weeps,

I hear the voice as of a mighty wind From all heaven's caverns rushing unconfined,

"I, Freedom, dwell with Knowledge: I abide

With men whom dust of faction cannot blind

To the slow tracings of the Eternal Mind;

With men by culture trained and fortified,

Who bitter duty to sweet lusts prefer,
Fearless to counsel and obey.
Conscience my sceptre is, and law my
sword,

Not to be drawn in passion or in play,
But terrible to punish and deter;
Implacable as God's word,
Like it, a shepherd's crook to them that
blindly err.

Your firm-pulsed sires, my martyrs and my saints,

Offshoots of that one stock whose patient