Toward making, than repose on aught All men ignored in me, found made; So, better, age, exempt From strife, should know, than tempt Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor be afraid! Enough now, if the Right This I was worth to God, whose wheel Ay, note that Potter's wheel, Why time spins fast, why passive lies our Thou, to whom fools propound, Be named here, as thou callest thy hand When the wine makes its round, thine own, With knowledge absolute, Subject to no dispute "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!" From fools that crowded youth, nor let Fool! All that is, at all, thee feel alone. Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, Announced to each his station in the That was, is, and shall be: Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure. Right? Let age speak the truth and He fixed thee mid this dance give us peace at last! Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest: Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Shun what I follow, slight what I re- Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently ceive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, impressed. What though the earlier grooves They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall Which ran the laughing loves Look not thou down, but up! Found straightway to its mind, could To uses of a cup, value in a trice: But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal, The new wine's foaming flow, The Master's lips aglow! So passed in making up the main account; Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, needst thou with earth's wheel? That weighed not as his work, yet swelled But I need, now as then, Fancies that broke through language and With shapes and colors rife, escaped; All I could never be, Bound dizzily - mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst: HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. So, take and use Thy work! My times be in Thy hand! THE LOST LEADER. JUST for a handful of silver he left us; Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat, Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote. They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed. How all our copper had gone for his service! Rags were they purple, his heart had been proud! We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him our pattern to live and to die! Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us, - they watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freemen; He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! We shall march prospering, not through his presence; Songs may inspirit us, - not from his lyre; Deeds will be done, while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. Blot out his name, then, - record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's night begins; let him never come back to us! 207 PAUL REVERE'S RIDE. LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear Hardly a man is now alive He said to his friend, "If the British march By land or sea from the town to-night, One, if by land, and two, if by sea; For the country folk to be up and to arm. Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears, Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed the tower of the Old By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, Masses and moving shapes of shade, Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, dread Of the lonely belfry and the dead; On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Re vere. Now he patted his horse's side, But mostly he watched with eager search But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns! In the world's broad field of battle, Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate, Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. RESIGNATION. THERE is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there! There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair! The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mournings for the dead; The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, Will not be comforted! Let us be patient! These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise, But oftentimes celestial benedictions We Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death. She is not dead, — the child of our affection, But gone unto that school Where she no longer needs our poor protection, And Christ himself doth rule. In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom we call dead. Day after day we think what she is doing In those bright realms of air; Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Behold her grown more fair. Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken The bond which nature gives, Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, May reach her where she lives. Not as a child shall we again behold her: In our embraces we again enfold her, But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, Clothed with celestial grace; And beautiful with all the soul's expan sion Shall we behold her face. And though at times impetuous with emotion And anguish long suppressed, We see but dimly through the mists and The swelling heart heaves moaning like |