And a heart-treinble quivers through the deep;

Give me that growth which some perchance deem sleep,

Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems uprise,

Which, by the toil of gathering energies, Their upward way into clear sunshine keep,

Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences, Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green

Into a pleasant island in the seas, Where, mid tall palms, the cane-roofed home is seen,

And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour,

Hearing the leaves and loving God's dear power.

VIII.

TO M. W., ON HER BIRTHDAY. MAIDEN, when such a soul as thine is born,

The morning-stars their ancient music

make,

And, joyful, once again their song awake, Long silent now with melancholy scorn; And thou, not mindless of so blest a morn,

By no least deed its harmony shalt break, But shalt to that high chime thy footsteps take,

Through life's most darksome passes unforlorn;

Therefore from thy pure faith thou shalt not fall,

Therefore shalt thou be ever fair and free,

And in thine every motion musical
As summer air, majestic as the sea,
A mystery to those who creep and crawl
Through Time, and part it from Eternity.

XII.

SUB PONDERE CRESCIT.

THE hope of Truth grows stronger, day by day;

I hear the soul of Man around me waking,

Like a great sea, its frozen fetters break

ing,

And flinging up to heaven its sunlit spray, Tossing huge continents in scornful play,

And crushing them, with din of grinding thunder,

That makes old emptinesses stare in wonder;

The memory of a glory passed away Lingers in every heart, as, in the shell, Resounds the bygone freedom of the sea, And every hour new signs of promise tell,

That the great soul shall once again be free,

For high, and yet more high, the murmurs swell

Of inward strife for truth and liberty.

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 flowerv 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.

Young buds plucked hastily by childish hands

Not patient to await more full-blown

flowers,

At least it hath seen more of life and men,

And pondered more, and grown a shade more sad;

Yet with no loss of hope or settled trust In the benignness of that Providence Which shapes from out our elements awry

The grace and order that we wonder at, The mystic harmony of right and wrong, Both working out His wisdom and our good:

A trust, Beloved, chiefly learned of thee, Who hast that gift of patient tenderness, The instinctive wisdom of a woman's heart.

They tell us that our land was made for song,

With its huge rivers and sky-piercing

peaks,

Its sealike lakes and mighty cataracts, Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide,

And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes

Between the frozen deserts of the poles. All nations have their message from on high,

Each the messiah of some central thought,
For the fulfilment and delight of Man:
One has to teach that labor is divine;
Another Freedom; and another Mind;
And all, that God is open-eyed and just,
The happy centre and calm heart of all.

Are, then, our woods, our mountains,
and our streams,
Needful to teach our poets how to sing?
O maiden rare, far other thoughts were

Of outward Nature, be they ne'er so grand,

Seem small, and worthless, and contemptible.

These are the mountain-summits for our bards,

Which stretch far upward into heaven itself,

And give such wide-spread and exulting view

Of hope, and faith, and onward destiny, That shrunk Parnassus to a molehill dwindles.

Our new Atlantis, like a morning-star, Silvers the mirk face of slow-yielding Night,

The herald of a fuller truth than yet Hath gleamed upon the upraised face of

Man