Long sleeps the darkling seed below,
The seasons come, and change, and go,
And all the fields are deep with grain.

Although our brother lie asleep,

Man's heart still struggles, still aspires;
His grave shall quiver yet, while deep
Through the brave Bay State's pulses leap
Her ancient energies and fires.

When hours like this the senses' gush
Have stilled, and left the spirit room,
It hears amid the eternal hush

The swooping pinions' dreadful rush,

That brings the vengeance and the doom;

Not man's brute vengeance, such as rends
What rivets man to man apart,
God doth not so bring round his ends,
But waits the ripened time, and sends
His mercy to the oppressor's heart.

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING.

I Do not come to weep above thy pall,

And mourn the dying-out of noble powers;

The poet's clearer eye should see, in all

Earth's seeming woe, the seed of Heaven's flowers.

Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep
Of everlasting Soul her strength abides,

From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap,

Through Nature's veins her strength, undying, tides.

Peace is more strong than war, and gentleness,

Where force were vain, makes conquest o'er the wave;
And love lives on and hath a power to bless,
When they who loved are hidden in the grave.

The sculptured marble brags of death-strewn fields,
And Glory's epitaph is writ in blood;

But Alexander now to Plato yields,

Clarkson will stand where Wellington hath stood.

I watch the circle of the eternal years,
And read forever in the storied page

One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears,
One onward step of Truth from age to age.

The poor are crushed; the tyrants link their chain;
The poet sings through narrow dungeon-grates;
Man's hope lies quenched; and, lo! with steadfast
gain

Freedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates.

Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and cross
Make up the groaning record of the past;
But Evil's triumphs are her endless loss,

And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at last.

No power can die that ever wrought for Truth;
Thereby a law of Nature it became,

And lives unwithered in its sinewy youth,

When he who called it forth is but a name.

Therefore I cannot think thee wholly gone;
The better part of thee is with us still;
Thy soul its hampering clay aside hath thrown,
And only freer wrestles with the Ill.

Thou livest in the life of all good things;

What words thou spak'st for Freedom shall not die; Thou sleepest not, for now thy Love hath wings To soar where hence thy Hope could hardly fly.

And often, from that other world, on this

Some gleams from great souls gone before may shine, To shed on struggling hearts a clearer bliss,

And clothe the Right with lustre more divine.

Thou art not idle: in thy higher sphere
Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks,

And strength, to perfect what it dreamed of here
Is all the crown and glory that it asks.

For sure, in Heaven's wide chambers, there is room
For love and pity, and for helpful deeds;

Else were our summons thither but a doom
To life more vain than this in clayey weeds.

From off the starry mountain peak of song,
Thy spirit shows me, in the coming time,
An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong,
A race revering its own soul sublime.

What wars, what martyrdoms, what crimes, may come,
Thou knowest not, nor I; but God will lead
The prodigal soul from want and sorrow home,
And Eden ope her gates to Adam's seed.

Farewell! good man, good angel now! this hand
Soon, like thine own, shall lose its cunning, too;
Soon shall this soul, like thine, bewildered stand,
Then leap to thread the free, unfathomed blue:

When that day comes, O, may this hand grow cold,
Busy, like thine, for Freedom and the Right;
O, may this soul, like thine, be ever bold

To face dark Slavery's encroaching blight!

This laurel-leaf I cast upon thy bier;

Let worthier hands than these thy wreath entwine; Upon thy hearse I shed no useless tear, For us weep rather thou in calm divine.

1842.

TO THE MEMORY OF HOOD.

ANOTHER star 'neath Time's horizon dropped,
To gleam o'er unknown lands and seas;
Another heart that beat for freedom stopped,
What mournful words are these!

O Love Divine, that claspest our tired earth,
And lullest it upon thy heart,

Thou knowest how much a gentle soul is worth
To teach men what thou art!

His was a spirit that to all thy poor

Was kind as slumber after pain:

Why ope so soon thy heaven-deep Quiet's door
And call him home again?

Freedom needs all her poets: it is they
Who give her aspirations wings,
And to the wiser law of music sway
Her wild imaginings.

Yet thou hast called him, nor art thou unkind,
O Love Divine, for 't is thy will

That gracious natures leave their love behind
To work for Freedom still.

Let laurelled marbles weigh on other tombs,
Let anthems peal for other dead,

Rustling the bannered depth of minster-glooms
With their exulting spread.

His epitaph shall mock the short-lived stone,
No lichen shall its lines efface,

He needs these few and simple lines alone
To mark his resting-place:-

"Here lies a Poet.

Stranger, if to thee

His claim to memory be obscure,

If thou wouldst learn how truly great was he,
Go, ask it of the poor."

SONNETS.

I.

TO A. C. L.

THROUGH Suffering and sorrow thou hast passed
To show us what a woman true may be:
They have not taken sympathy from thee,
Nor made thee any other than thou wast,
Save as some tree, which, in a sudden blast,
Sheddeth those blossoms, that are weakly grown,
Upon the air, but keepeth every one

Whose strength gives warrant of good fruit at last:
So thou hast shed some blooms of gayety,

But never one of steadfast cheerfulness;
Nor hath thy knowledge of adversity

Robbed thee of any faith in happiness,
But rather cleared thy inner eyes to see
How many simple ways there are to bless.

1840.

II.

What were I, Love, if I were stripped of thee,
If thine eyes shut me out whereby I live,
Thou, who unto my calmer soul dost give
Knowledge, and Truth, and holy Mystery,
Wherein Truth mainly lies for those who see
Beyond the earthly and the fugitive,
Who in the grandeur of the soul believe,
And only in the Infinite are free ?

Without thee I were naked, bleak, and bare
As yon dead cedar on the sea-cliff's brow;
And Nature's teachings, which come to me now,
Common and beautiful as light and air,

Would be as fruitless as a stream which still
Slips through the wheel of some old ruined mill.

1841.

III.

I would not have this perfect love of ours
Grow from a single root, a single stem,
Bearing no goodly fruit, but only flowers.
That idly hide life's iron diadem:

It should grow alway like that eastern tree

Whose limbs take root and spread forth constantly; That love for one, from which there doth not spring Wide love for all, it is but a worthless thing.

Not in another world, as poets prate,

Dwell we apart above the tide of things,

High floating o'er earth's clouds on faery wings;
But our pure love doth ever elevate

Into a holy bond of brotherhood

All earthly things, making them pure and good.

1840.

IV.

"For this true nobleness I seek in vain,

In woman and in man I find it not;

I almost weary of my earthly lot,