The sky-like spirit of God; a hope begun
In doubt and darkness 'neath a fairer sun
Cometh to fruitage, if it be of Truth;

And to the law of meekness, faith, and ruth,

By inward sympathy, shall all be won:

This thou shouldst know, who, from the painted feature. Of shifting Fashion, couldst thy brethren turn

Unto the love of ever-youthful Nature,

And of a beauty fadeless and eterne;
And always 't is the saddest sight to see
An old man faithless in Humanity.

XVII.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

A poet cannot strive for despotism;
His harp falls shattered; for it still must be
The instinct of great spirits to be free,
And the sworn foes of cunning barbarism :
He, who has deepest searched the wide abysm
Of that life-giving Soul which men call fate,
Knows that to put more faith in lies and hate
Than truth and love is the true atheism :
Upward the soul forever turns her eyes;
The next hour always shames the hour before;
One beauty, at its highest, prophesies

That by whose side it shall seem mean and poor;
No God-like thing knows aught of less and less,
But widens to the boundless Perfectness.

XVIII.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

Therefore think not the Past is wise alone,
For Yesterday knows nothing of the Best,
And thou shalt love it only as the nest

Whence glory-wingèd things to Heaven have flown:
To the great Soul alone are all things known;

Present and future are to her as past,

While she in glorious madness doth forecast
That perfect bud, which seems a flower full-blown
To each new Prophet, and yet always opes
Fuller and fuller with each day and hour,
Heartening the soul with odor of fresh hopes,

And longings high, and gushings of wide power,
Yet never is or shall be fully blown
Save in the forethought of the Eternal One.

XIX.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

Far 'yond this narrow parapet of Time,
With eyes uplift, the poet's soul should look
Into the Endless Promise, nor should brook
One prying doubt to shake his faith sublime;
To him the earth is ever in her prime
And dewiness of morning; he can see
Good lying hid, from all eternity,
Within the teeming womb of sin and crime;
His soul should not be cramped by any bar,
His nobleness should be so God-like high,
That his least deed is perfect as a star,
His common look majestic as the sky,
And all o'erflooded with a light from far,
Undimmed by clouds of weak mortality.

Mary, since first I knew thee, to this hour,
My love hath deepened, with my wiser sense
Of what in Woman is to reverence;

Thy clear heart, fresh as e'er was forest-flower,
Still opens more to me its beauteous dower;
But let praise hush, - Love asks no evidence
To prove itself well-placed; we know not whence
It gleans the straws that thatch its humble bower:
We can but say we found it in the heart,

Spring of all sweetest thoughts, arch foe of blame,
Sower of flowers in the dusty mart,

Pure vestal of the poet's holy flame,

This is enough, and we have done our part
If we but keep it spotless as it came.

1842.

XXI.

Our love is not a fading, earthly flower:
Its winged seed dropped down from Paradise,

And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower, Doth momently to fresher beauty rise:

To us the leafless autumn is not bare,

Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green.
Our summer hearts make summer's fulness, where
No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen:
For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie,
Love, whose forgetfulness is beauty's death,
Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I
Into the infinite freedom openeth,

And makes the body's dark and narrow grate
The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate.

1842.

XXII.

IN ABSENCE.

These rugged, wintry days I scarce could bear,
Did I not know, that, in the early spring,
When wild March winds upon their errands sing,
Thou wouldst return, bursting on this still air,
Like those same winds, when, startled from their
lair,

They hunt up violets, and free swift brooks,
From icy cares, even as thy clear looks

Bid my heart bloom, and sing, and break all care:
When drops with welcome rain the April day,
My flowers shall find their April in thine eyes,
Save there the rain in dreamy clouds doth stay,
As loath to fall out of those happy skies;
Yet sure, my love, thou art most like to May,
That comes with steady sun when April dies.
1843.

XXIII.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide
The din of battle and of slaughter rose;

He saw God stand upon the weaker side,
That sank in seeming loss before its foes;

Many there were who made great haste and sold
Unto the cunning enemy their swords,

He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold,

And, underneath their soft and flowery words,
Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went
And humbly joined him to the weaker part,
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content
So he could be the nearer to God's heart,
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood
Through all the wide-spread veins of endless good.

XXIV.

THE STREET.

They pass me by like shadows, crowds on crowds, Dim ghosts of men, that hover to and fro,

Hugging their bodies round them, like thin shrouds Wherein their souls were buried long ago:

They trampled on their youth, and faith, and love,
They cast their hope of human-kind away,

With Heaven's clear messages they madly strove,
And conquered, and their spirits turned to clay:
Lo! how they wander round the world, their grave,
Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed,
Gibbering at living men, and idly rave,
"We, only, truly live, but ye are dead."
Alas! poor fools, the anointed eye may trace
A dead soul's epitaph in every face!

XXV.

I grieve not that ripe Knowledge takes away
The charm that Nature to my childhood wore,
For, with that insight, cometh, day by day,
A greater bliss than wonder was before;
The real doth not clip the poet's wings,
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart
Reveals some clue to spiritual things,
And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art:
Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes,
Their beauty thrills him by an inward sense;
He knows that outward seemings are but lies,
Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence
The soul that looks within for truth may guess
The presence of some wondrous heavenliness.

XXVI.

TO J. R. GIDDINGS.

Giddings, far rougher names than thine have grown
Smoother than honey on the lips of men;
And thou shalt aye be honorably known,
As one who bravely used his tongue and pen,
As best befits a freeman, even for those,
To whom our Law's unblushing front denies
A right to plead against the life-long woes.
Which are the Negro's glimpse of Freedom's skies.
Fear nothing, and hope all things, as the Right
Alone may do securely; every hour

The thrones of Ignorance and ancient Night
Lose somewhat of their long-usurpèd power,

And Freedom's lightest word can make them shiver
With a base dread that clings to them forever.

XXVII.

I thought our love at full, but I did err;

Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not see
That sorrow in our happy world must be

Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter;
But, as a mother feels her child first stir
Under her heart, so felt I instantly
Deep in my soul another bond to thee
Thrill with that life we saw depart from her;
O mother of our angel-child! twice dear!
Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis,
Her tender radiance shall enfold us here,
Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss,
Threads the void glooms of space without a fear,
To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss.

L'ENVOI.

WHETHER my heart hath wiser grown or not,
In these three years, since I to thee inscribed,
Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my muse,
Poor windfalls of unripe experience,

Young buds plucked hastily by childish hands

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