Not without a martial ring,
Not without a prouder tread
And a peal of exultation:
Little right has he to sing
Through whose heart in such an
hour

Beats no march of conscious
power,

Sweeps no tumult of elation !
'Tis no Man we celebrate,

By his country's victories great,
A hero half, and half the whim of
Fate,

But the pith and marrow of a
Nation

Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then Pulsing it again through them, Til the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle

hem.

Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is her dower!

How could poet ever tower,
If his passions, hopes, and fears,
If his triumphs and his tears,
Kept not measure with his peo-
ple?

Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves !

Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!

Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves!

And from every mountain-peak Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,

Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,

And so leap on in light from sea to sea, Till the glad news be sent Across a kindling continent, Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:

'Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her! She that lifts up the manhood of

the poor,

She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all

mankind!

The fire is dreadful in her eyes no

more;

From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,

Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,

And bids her navies, that so lately hurled

Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in,

Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore.

No challenge sends she to the elder world,

That looked askance and hated; a light scorn

Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees

She calls her children back, and waits the morn

Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas."

WHITHER? Albeit I follow fast,
In all life's circuit I but find,

Not where thou art, but where thou wast,

Sweet beckoner, more fleet than wind!

I haunt the pine-dark solitudes,

With soft brown silence carpeted, And plot to snare thee in the woods:

Peace I o'ertake, but thou art fled ! I find the rock where thou didst rest, The moss thy skimming foot hath prest;

All Nature with thy parting thrills, Like branches after birds new-flown; Thy passage hill and hollow fills With hints of virtue not their own; In dimples still the water slips Where thou hast dipt thy finger-tips; Just, just beyond, forever burn Gleams of a grace without return; Upon thy shade I plant my foot, And through my frame strange raptures shoot;

All of thee but thyself I grasp;

I seem to fold thy luring shape,
And vague air to my bosom clasp,
Thou lithe, perpetual Escape!

One mask and then another drops,
And thou art secret as before:

Sometimes with flooded ear I list,
And hear thee, wondrous organist,
From mighty continental stops
A thunder of new music pour;
Through pipes of earth and air and

From Maine to utmost Oregon;
The factory-wheels in cadence hum,
From brawling parties concords come;
All this I hear, or seem to hear,
But when,, enchanted, I draw near
To mate with words the various theme,
Life seems a whiff of kitchen steam,
History an organ-grinder's thrum,

For thou hast slipt from it and me
And all thine organ-pipes left dumb,
Most mutable Perversity !

Not weary yet, I still must seek,
And hope for luck next day, next week;
I go to see the great man ride,
Shiplike, the swelling human tide
That floods to bear him into port,
Trophied from Senate-hall and Court;
Thy magnetism, I feel it there,
Thy rhythmic presence fleet and rare,
Making the Mob a moment fine
With glimpses of their own Divine,
As in their demigod they see

Their cramped ideal soaring free; 'T was thou didst bear the fire about,

That, like the springing of a mine Sent up to heaven the street-long shout;

Full well I know that thou wast here, It was thy breath that brushed my ear; But vainly in the stress and whirl

I dive for thee, the moment's pearl.

Afar its silent Alpine kin:

I track thee over carpets deep
To wealth's and beauty's inmost keep;
Across the sand of bar-room floors
'Mid the stale reek of boosing boors;
Where drowse the hay-field's fragrant
heats,

Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats;
I dog thee through the market's throngs
To where the sea with myriad tongues
Laps the green edges of the pier,
And the tall ships that eastward steer,
Curtsey their farewells to the town,
O'er the curved distance lessening
down;

I follow allwhere for thy sake.
Touch thy robe's hem, but ne'er o'er-

take,

Find where, scarce yet unmoving, lies, Warm from thy limbs, thy last disguise; But thou another shape hast donned, And lurest still just, just beyond!

But here a voice, I know not whence, Thrills clearly through my inward sense, Saying: "See where she sits at home While thou in search of her dost roam ! All summer long her ancient wheel

Whirls humming by the open door, Or, when the hickory's social zeal

Sets the wide chimney in a roar, Close-nestled by the tinkling hearth, It modulates the household mirth With that sweet serious undertone Of duty, music all her own; Still as of old she sits and spins Our hopes, our sorrows, and our sins; With equal care she twines the fates Of cottages and mighty states; She spins the earth, the air, the sea, The maiden's unschooled fancy free, The boy's first love, the man's first grief, The budding and the fall o' the leaf;

The piping west-wind's snowy care
For her their cloudy fleeces spare,
Or from the thorns of evil times.
She can glean wool to twist her rhymes;
Morning and noon and eve supply
To her their fairest tints for dye,
But ever through her twirling thread
There spires one line of warmest red,
Tinged from the homestead's genial
heart,

The stamp and warrant of her art;
With this Time's sickle she outwears,
And blunts the Sisters' baffled shears.

"Harass her not: thy heat and stir
But greater coyness breed in her;
Yet thou mayst find, ere Age's frost,
Thy long apprenticeship not lost,
Learning at last that Stygian Fate
Unbends to him that knows to wait.
The Muse is womanish, nor deigns
Her love to him that pules and plains;
With proud, averted face she stands
To him that wooes with empty hands.
Make thyself free of Manhood's guild;
Pull down thy barns and greater build;
The wood, the mountain, and the plain
Wave breast-deep with the poet's grain;
Pluck thou the sunset's fruit of gold,
Glean from the heavens and ocean old;
From fireside lone and trampling street
Let thy life garner daily wheat;
The epic of a man rehearse,
Be something better than thy verse;
Make thyself rich, and then the Muse
Shall court thy precious interviews,
Shall take thy head upon her knee,
And such enchantment lilt to thee,
That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow
From farthest stars to grass-blades
low,

And find the Listener's science still
Transcends the Singer's deepest skill!"