How many subtlest influences unite,
With spiritual touch of joy or pain,
Invisible as air and soft as light,
To body forth that image of the brain
We call our Country, visionary shape,
Loved more than woman, fuller of fire
than wine,

Whose charm can none define,

Nor any, though he flee it, can escape! All party-colored threads the weaver Time

Sets in his web, now trivial, now sublime,

All memories, all forebodings, hopes and fears,

Mountain and river, forest, prairie, sea, A hill, a rock, a homestead, field, or tree, The casual gleanings of unreckoned years,

Take goddess-shape at last and there is She,

Old at our birth, new as the springing hours,

Shrine of our weakness, fortress of our powers,

Consoler, kindler, peerless mid her peers, A force that 'neath our conscious being stirs,

A life to give ours permanence, when we Are borne to mingle our poor earth with hers,

And all this glowing world goes with us on our biers.

In right, or, as may chance, in wrong ; Whose force by figures may be summed

and told,

So many soldiers, ships, and dollars strong,

And we but drops that bear compulsory part

In the dumb throb of a mechanic heart; But Country is a shape of each man's mind

Sacred from definition, unconfined
By the cramped walls where daily drudg-
eries grind ;

An inward vision, yet an outward birth
Of sweet familiar heaven and earth;
A brooding Presence that stirs motions
blind

Of wings within our embryo being's shell
That wait but her completer spell
To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare
Life's nobler spaces and untarnished air.

Still holds in place the massy blocks he laid

'Neath our new frame, enforcing soberly The self-control that makes and keeps a people free.

4.

1.

O, FOR a drop of that Cornelian ink Which gave Agricola dateless length of days,

To celebrate him fitly, neither swerve To phrase unkempt, nor pass discretion's brink,

With him so statue-like in sad reserve, So diffident to claim, so forward to deserve!

Nor need I shun due influence of his fame

Who, mortal among mortals, seemed as

now

The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow,

That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim.

2.

What figure more immovably august Than that grave strength so patient and so pure,

Calm in good fortune, when it wavered,

sure,

That mind serene, impenetrably just, Modelled on classic lines so simple they

endure?

That soul so softly radiant and so white The track it left seems less of fire than light,

Cold but to such as love distemperature? And if pure light, as some deem, be the force

That drives rejoicing planets on their

course,

Why for his power benign seek an impurer source?

His was the true enthusiasm that burns long,

Domestically bright,

Fed from itself and shy of human sight, The hidden force that makes a lifetime strong,

And not the short-lived fuel of a song. Passionless, say you? What is passion for

But to sublime our natures and control To front heroic toils with late return, Or none, or such as shames the conqueror?

That fire was fed with substance of the soul

And not with holiday stubble, that could burn,

Unpraised of men who after bonfires run, Through seven slow years of unadvancing

Nor a soul great that made so little noise.

They feel no force in that calm-cadenced phrase,

The habitual full-dress of his well-bred mind,

That seems to pace the minuet's courtly

maze

And tell of ampler leisures, roomier length of days.

His firm-based brain, to self so little kind

That no tumultuary blood could blind, Formed to control men, not amaze, Looms not like those that borrow height of haze :

It was a world of statelier movement then

Than this we fret in, he a denizen

Of that ideal Rome that made a man for

men.

VI. 1.

THE longer on this earth we live
And weigh the various qualities of men,
Seeing how most are fugitive,

Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then, Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of the fen,

The more we feel the high stern-featured beauty

Of plain devotedness to duty,
Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal
praise,

But finding amplest recompense
For life's ungarlanded expense

In work done squarely and unwasted days.

For this we honor him, that he could know

How sweet the service and how free

Of her, God's eldest daughter here below,

And choose in meanest raiment which was she.

Not armed like Pallas, not like Hera proud,

But, as on household diligence intent, Beside her visionary wheel she bent Like Arete or Bertha, nor than they Less queenly in her port: about her knee

Glad children clustered confident in play: Placid her pose, the calm of energy; And over her broad brow in many a round

(That loosened would have gilt her garment's hem), Succinct, as toil prescribes, the hair was wound

In lustrous coils, a natural diadem. The cloud changed shape, obsequious to the whim

What shape by exile dreamed elates the mind

Like hers whose hand, a fortress of the poor,

No blood in vengeance spilt, though law. ful, stains?

Who never turned a suppliant from her door?

Whose conquests are the gains of all mankind?

To-day her thanks shall fly on every wind,

Unstinted, unrebuked, from shore to shore,

One love, one hope, and not a doubt behind!

Cannon to cannon shall repeat her praise, Banner to banner flap it forth in flame; Her children shall rise up to bless her

Human and motherly they, Careless of station or race : Hearken! her children to-day Shout for the joy of her face.

II.

1.

No praises of the past are hers,
No fanes by hallowing time caressed,
No broken arch that ministers
To Time's sad instinct in the breast:
She has not gathered from the years
Grandeur of tragedies and tears,
Nor from long leisure the unrest
That finds repose in forms of classic
grace:

These may delight the coming race
Who haply shall not count it to our
crime

That we who fain would sing are here before our time.

She also hath her monuments;
Not such as stand decrepitly resigned
To ruin-mark the path of dead events
That left no seed of better days be-

hind,