ON THE DEATH OF C. T. TORREY.Woe worth the hour when it is crimeTo plead the poor dumb bondman's cause,When all that makes the heart sublime,The glorious throbs that conquer time,Are traitors to our cruel laws!He strove among God's suffering poorOne gleam of brotherhood to send;The dungeon oped its hungry doorTo give the truth one martyr more,Then shut,—and here behold the end!O Mother State! when this was done,No pitying throe thy bosom gave;Silent thou saw'st the death-shroud spun,And now thou givest to thy sonThe stranger's charity—a grave.Must it be thus forever? No!The hand of God sows not in vain;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 deepThrough the brave Bay State's pulses leapHer ancient energies and fires.When hours like this the senses' gushHave stilled, and left the spirit room,It hears amid the eternal hushThe swooping pinions' dreadful rush,That brings the vengeance and the doom;—Not man's brute vengeance, such as rendsWhat rivets man to man apart,—God doth not so bring round his ends,But waits the ripened time, and sendsHis 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 allEarth's seeming woe, the seed of Heaven's flowers.Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deepOf 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 pageOne 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 gainFreedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates.Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and crossMake 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 wingsTo soar where hence thy Hope could hardly fly.And often, from that other world, on thisSome 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 sphereThy spirit bends itself to loving tasks,And strength, to perfect what it dreamed of hereIs all the crown and glory that it asks.For sure, in Heaven's wide chambers, there is roomFor love and pity, and for helpful deeds;Else were our summons thither but a doomTo 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 leadThe prodigal soul from want and sorrow home,And Eden ope her gates to Adam's seed.Farewell! good man, good angel now! this handSoon, 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 boldTo 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 worthTo teach men what thou art!His was a spirit that to all thy poorWas kind as slumber after pain:Why ope so soon thy heaven-deep Quiet's doorAnd call him home again?Freedom needs all her poets: it is theyWho give her aspirations wings,And to the wiser law of music swayHer wild imaginings.Yet thou hast called him, nor art thou unkind,O Love Divine, for 'tis thy willThat gracious natures leave their love behindTo work for Freedom still.Let laurelled marbles weigh on other tombs,Let anthems peal for other dead,Rustling the bannered depth of minster-gloomsWith their exulting spread.His epitaph shall mock the short-lived stone,No lichen shall its lines efface,He needs these few and simple lines aloneTo mark his resting-place:—"Here lies a Poet. Stranger, if to theeHis claim to memory be obscure,If thou wouldst learn how truly great was he,Go, ask it of the poor."
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I.TO A. C. L.Through suffering and sorrow thou hast passedTo 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 oneWhose strength gives warrant of good fruit at lastSo thou hast shed some blooms of gayety,But never one of steadfast cheerfulness;Nor hath thy knowledge of adversityRobbed thee of any faith in happiness,But rather cleared thy inner eyes to seeHow 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 giveKnowledge, and Truth, and holy Mystery,Wherein Truth mainly lies for those who seeBeyond 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 bareAs 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 stillSlips through the wheel of some old ruined mill.1841.III.I would not have this perfect love of oursGrow from a single root, a single stem,Bearing no goodly fruit, but only flowersThat idly hide life's iron diadem:It should grow alway like that eastern treeWhose limbs take root and spread forth constantly;That love for one, from which there doth not springWide 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 elevateInto a holy bond of brotherhoodAll 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,My life-springs are dried up with burning pain."Thou find'st it not? I pray thee look again,Lookinwardthrough the depths of thine own soul.How is it with thee? Art thou sound and whole?Doth narrow search show thee no earthly stain?Be noble! and the nobleness that liesIn other men, sleeping, but never dead,Will rise in majesty to meet thine own:Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes,Then will pure light around thy path be shed,And thou wilt never more be sad and lone.1840.V.TO THE SPIRIT OF KEATS.Great soul, thou sittest with me in my room,Uplifting me with thy vast, quiet eyes,On whose full orbs, with kindly lustre, liesThe twilight warmth of ruddy ember-gloom:Thy clear, strong tones will oft bring sudden bloomOf hope secure, to him who lonely cries,Wrestling with the young poet's agonies,Neglect and scorn, which seem a certain doom:Yes! the few words which, like great thunderdrops,Thy large heart down to earth shook doubtfully,Thrilled by the inward lightning of its might,Serene and pure, like gushing joy of light,Shall track the eternal chords of Destiny,After the moon-led pulse of ocean stops.1841.VI.Great Truths are portions of the soul of man;Great souls are portions of Eternity;Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ranWith lofty message, ran for thee and me;For God's law, since the starry song began,Hath been, and still for evermore must be,That every deed which shall outlast Time's spanMust goad the soul to be erect and free;Slave is no word of deathless lineage sprung,—Too many noble souls have thought and died,Too many mighty poets have lived and sung,And our good Saxon, from lips purifiedWith martyr-fire, throughout the world hath rungToo long to have God's holy cause denied.1841.VII.I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leapFrom being's sea, like the isle-seeming Kraken,With whose great rise the ocean all is shakenAnd a heart-tremble 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 greenInto 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.1841.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 musicalAs summer air, majestic as the sea,A mystery to those who creep and crawlThrough Time, and part it from Eternity.1841.IX.My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die;Albeit I ask no fairer life than this,Whose numbering-clock is still thy gentle kiss,While Time and Peace with hands enlockèd fly,—Yet care I not where in EternityWe live and love, well knowing that there isNo backward step for those who feel the blissOf Faith as their most lofty yearnings high:Love hath so purified my being's core,Meseems I scarcely should be startled, even,To find, some morn, that thou hadst gone before;Since, with thy love, this knowledge too was given,Which each calm day doth strengthen more and more,That they who love are but one step from Heaven.1841.X.I cannot think that thou shouldst pass away,Whose life to mine is an eternal law,A piece of nature that can have no flaw,A new and certain sunrise every day;But, if thou art to be another rayAbout the Sun of Life, and art to liveFree from all of thee that was fugitive,The debt of Love I will more fully pay,Not downcast with the thought of thee so high,But rather raised to be a nobler man,And more divine in my humanity,As knowing that the waiting eyes which scanMy life are lighted by a purer being,And ask meek, calm-browed deeds, with it agreeing.1841.XI.There never yet was flower fair in vain,Let classic poets rhyme it as they will;The seasons toil that it may blow again,And summer's heart doth feel its every ill;Nor is a true soul ever born for naught;Wherever any such hath lived and died,There hath been something for true freedom wrought,Some bulwark levelled on the evil side:Toil on, then, Greatness! thou art in the right,However narrow souls may call thee wrong;Be as thou wouldst be in thine own clear sight,And so thou wilt in all the world's ere long;For worldlings cannot, struggle as they may,From man's great soul one great thought hide away.1841.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 breaking,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 awayLingers in every heart, as, in the shell,Resounds the bygone freedom of the sea,And, every hour new signs of promise tellThat the great soul shall once again be free,For high, and yet more high, the murmurs swellOf inward strife for truth and liberty.1841.XIII.Belovèd, in the noisy city here,The thought of thee can make all turmoil cease;Around my spirit, folds thy spirit clearIts still, soft arms, and circles it with peace;There is no room for any doubt or fearIn souls so overfilled with love's increase,There is no memory of the bygone yearBut growth in heart's and spirit's perfect ease;How hath our love, half nebulous at first,Rounded itself into a full-orbed sun!How have our lives and wills (as haply erstThey were, ere this forgetfulness begun,)Through all their earthly distantness outburst,And melted, like two rays of light, in one!1842.XIV.ON READING WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS IN DEFENCE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.As the broad ocean endlessly upheaveth,With the majestic beating of his heart,The mighty tides, whereof its rightful partEach sea-wide bay and little weed receiveth,—So, through his soul who earnestly believeth,Life from the universal Heart doth flow,Whereby some conquest of the eternal Woe,By instinct of God's nature, he achieveth:A fuller pulse of this all-powerful beautyInto the poet's gulf-like heart doth tide,And he more keenly feels the glorious dutyOf serving Truth, despised and crucified,—Happy, unknowing sect or creed, to restAnd feel God flow forever through his breast.1842.XV.THE SAME CONTINUED.Once hardly in a cycle blossomethA flower-like soul ripe with the seeds of song,A spirit fore-ordained to cope with wrong,Whose divine thoughts are natural as breath,Who the old Darkness thickly scatterethWith starry words, that shoot prevailing lightInto the deeps, and wither, with the blightOf serene Truth, the coward heart of Death:Woe, if such spirit thwart its errand high,And mock with lies the longing soul of man!Yet one age longer must true Culture lie,Soothing her bitter fetters as she can,Until new messages of love outstartAt the next beating of the infinite Heart.XVI.THE SAME CONTINUED.The love of all things springs from love of one;Wider the soul's horizon hourly grows,And over it with fuller glory flowsThe sky-like spirit of God; a hope begunIn doubt and darkness 'neath a fairer sunCometh 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 featureOf shifting Fashion, couldst thy brethren turnUnto the love of ever-youthful Nature,And of a beauty fadeless and eterne;And always 'tis the saddest sight to seeAn old man faithless in Humanity.XVII.THE SAME CONTINUED.A poet cannot strive for despotism;His harp falls shattered; for it still must beThe instinct of great spirits to be free,And the sworn foes of cunning barbarism:He, who has deepest searched the wide abysmOf that life-giving Soul which men call fate,Knows that to put more faith in lies and hateThan 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, prophesiesThat 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 nestWhence 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 forecastThat perfect bud, which seems a flower full-blownTo each new Prophet, and yet always opesFuller 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 blownSave 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 lookInto the Endless Promise, nor should brookOne prying doubt to shake his faith sublime;To him the earth is ever in her primeAnd dewiness of morning; he can seeGood 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.XX.TO M. O. S.Mary, since first I knew thee, to this hour,My love hath deepened, with my wiser senseOf 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 evidenceTo prove itself well-placed; we know not whenceIt 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 partIf we but keep it spotless as it came.1842.XXI.Our love is not a fading, earthly flower:Its wingèd 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, whereNo 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 IInto the infinite freedom openeth,And makes the body's dark and narrow grateThe 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 looksBid 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; wideThe 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 soldUnto 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 wentAnd humbly joined him to the weaker part,Fanatic named, and fool, yet well contentSo he could be the nearer to God's heart,And feel its solemn pulses sending bloodThrough 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 shroudsWherein 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 traceA dead soul's epitaph in every face!XXV.I grieve not that ripe Knowledge takes awayThe 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 heartReveals 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, whenceThe soul that looks within for truth may guessThe presence of some wondrous heavenliness.XXVI.TO J. R. GIDDINGS.Giddings, far rougher names than thine have grownSmoother 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 deniesA right to plead against the life-long woesWhich are the Negro's glimpse of Freedom's skies.Fear nothing, and hope all things, as the RightAlone may do securely; every hourThe thrones of Ignorance and ancient NightLose somewhat of their long-usurpèd power,And Freedom's lightest word can make them shiverWith 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 seeThat sorrow in our happy world must beLove's deepest spokesman and interpreter;But, as a mother feels her child first stirUnder her heart, so felt I instantlyDeep in my soul another bond to theeThrill 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 handsNot 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 trustIn the benignness of that Providence,Which shapes from out our elements awryThe 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 sea-like lakes and mighty cataracts,Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide,And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes extinct.But Poesy springs not from rocks and woods;Her womb and cradle are the human heart,And she can find a nobler theme for songIn the most loathsome man that blasts the sight,Than in the broad expanse of sea and shoreBetween 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 ours,When we have sat by ocean's foaming marge,And watched the waves leap roaring on the rocks,Than young Leander and his Hero had,Gazing from Sestos to the other shore.The moon looks down and ocean worships her,Stars rise and set, and seasons come and goEven as they did in Homer's elder time,But we behold them not with Grecian eyes:Then they were types of beauty and of strength,But now of freedom, unconfined and pure,Subject alone to Order's higher law.What cares the Russian serf or Southern slaveThough we should speak as man spake never yetOf gleaming Hudson's broad magnificence,Or green Niagara's never-ending roar?Our country hath a gospel of her ownTo preach and practise before all the world,—The freedom and divinity of man,The glorious claims of human brotherhood,—Which to pay nobly, as a freeman should,Gains the sole wealth that will not fly away,—And the soul's fealty to none but God.These are realities, which make the showsOf 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 viewOf hope, and faith, and onward destiny,That shrunk Parnassus to a molehill dwindles.Our new Atlantis, like a morning-star,Silvers the murk face of slow-yielding Night,The herald of a fuller truth than yetHath gleamed upon the upraisèd face of ManSince the earth glittered in her stainless prime,—Of a more glorious sunrise than of oldDrew wondrous melodies from Memnon huge,Yea, draws them still, though now he sits waist-deepIn the engulfing flood of whirling sand,And looks across the wastes of endless gray,Sole wreck, where once his hundred-gated ThebesPained with her mighty hum the calm, blue heaven.Shall the dull stone pay grateful orisons,And we till noonday bar the splendor out,Lest it reproach and chide our sluggard hearts,Warm-nestled in the down of Prejudice,And be content, though clad with angel-wings,Close-clipped, to hop about from perch to perch,In paltry cages of dead men's dead thoughts?O, rather like the sky-lark, soar and sing,And let our gushing songs befit the dawnAnd sunrise, and the yet unshaken dewBrimming the chalice of each full-blown hope,Whose blithe front turns to greet the growing day.Never had poets such high call before,Never can poets hope for higher one,And, if they be but faithful to their trust,Earth will remember them with love and joy,And O, far better, God will not forget.For he who settles Freedom's principlesWrites the death-warrant of all tyranny;Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart,And his mere word makes despots tremble moreThan ever Brutus with his dagger could.Wait for no hints from waterfalls or woods,Nor dream that tales of red men, brute and fierce,Repay the finding of this Western World,Or needed half the globe to give them birth:Spirit supreme of Freedom! not for thisDid great Columbus tame his eagle soulTo jostle with the daws that perch in courts;Not for this, friendless, on an unknown sea,Coping with mad waves and more mutinous spirits,Battled he with the dreadful ache at heartWhich tempts, with devilish subtleties of doubt,The hermit of that loneliest solitude,The silent desert of a great New Thought;Though loud Niagara were to-day struck dumb,Yet would this cataract of boiling life,Rush plunging on and on to endless deepsAnd utter thunder till the world shall cease,—A thunder worthy of the poet's song,And which alone can fill it with true life.The high evangel to our country grantedCould make apostles, yea, with tongues of fire,Of hearts half-darkened back again to clay!'Tis the soul only that is national,And he who pays true loyalty to thatAlone can claim the wreath of patriotism.Beloved! if I wander far and oftFrom that which I believe, and feel, and know,Thou wilt forgive, not with a sorrowing heart,But with a strengthened hope of better things;Knowing that I, though often blind and falseTo those I love, and O, more false than allUnto myself, have been most true to thee,And that whoso in one thing hath been trueCan be as true in all. Therefore thy hopeMay yet not prove unfruitful, and thy loveMeet, day by day, with less unworthy thanksWhether, as now, we journey hand in handOr, parted in the body, yet are oneIn spirit and the love of holy things.