JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

 

*

The Barefoot Boy

 

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,—

I was once a harefoot boy!
Prince thou art,—the grown-up mu
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side.
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,—
Outward sunshine, inward joy:

Blessings on thee, barefoot hoy!

 

Oh for boyhood’s painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day.
Health that mocks the doctor’s rules.
Knowledge never learned of schools.
Of the wild bee’s morning chase.
Of the wild-flower’s time and place.
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise hears his shell.
How the woodchuck digs his cell.
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young.
How the oriole’s nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow.
Where the freshest berries grow.
Where the ground-nut trails its vine.
Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;
Of the black wasp’s cunning war,
Mason of his walls of day,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing hooks and tasks.
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks.
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy,—
Blessings on the barefoot hoy!

 

Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon.
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees.
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played.
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall.
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond.
Mine the walnut slopes beyond.
Mine, on bending orchard trees,

Apples of Hesperides!

Still as my horizon grew,

Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

 

O for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread, —
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O’er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs’ orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!

 

Cheerily, then, my little man,

Live and laugh, as boyhood can!

Though the flinty slopes be hard,

Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,

Every morn shall lead thee through

Fresh baptisms of the dew;

Every evening from thy feet

Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:

All too soon these feet must hide

In the prison cells of pride,

Lose the freedom of the sod,

Like a colt’s for work be shod,

Made to tread the mills of toil,

Up and down in ceaseless moil:

Happy if their track be found

Never on forbidden ground;

Happy if they sink not in

Quick and treacherous sands of sin.

Ah ! that thou couldst know thy joy.

Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

 

*

Barbara Frietchie

 

Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,

The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

 

Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,

 

Fair as the garden of the Lord

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

 

On that pleasant morn of the early fall

When Lee marched over the mountainwall,—

 

Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

 

Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,

 

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

 

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,

Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

 

Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;

 

In her attic window the staff she set,

To show that one heart was loyal yet.

 

Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

 

Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced: the old flag met his sight.

 

“Halt!”—the dust-brown ranks stood fast.

“Fire !”—out blazed the rifle-blast.

 

It shivered the window, pane and sash;

It rent the banner with seam and gash.

 

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.

 

She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.

 

“Shoot, if yon must, this old gray head.

But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

 

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,

Over the face of the leader came;

 

The nobler nature within him stirred

To life at that woman’s deed and word:

 

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head

Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.

 

All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:

 

All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.

 

Ever its torn folds rose and fell

On the loyal winds that loved it well;

 

And through the hill-gaps sunset light

Shone over it with a warm good-night.

 

Barbara Frietehie’s work is o’er,

And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

 

Honor to her! and let a tear

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.

 

Over Barbara Frietehie’s grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

 

Peace and order and heauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;

 

And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!

 

*

What the Birds Said

 

The birds against the April wind
Flew northward, singing as they flew;

They sang, “The land we leave behind

Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew.”

 

“O wild-birds, flying from the South,

What saw and heardye, gazingdown?”

“We saw the mortar’s upturned mouth,

The sickened camp, the blazing town!

 

“Beneath the bivouac’s starry lamps,

We saw your march-worn children die;

In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,

We saw your dead uncoffined lie.

 

“We heard the starving prisoner’s sighs,

And saw, from line and trench, your sons

Follow our flight with home-sick eyes

Beyond the battery’s smoking guns.”

 

“And heard and saw ye only wrong

And pain,” I cried, “O wing-worn flocks?”

“We heard,” they sang, “the freedman’s song,

The crash of Slavery’s broken locks!

 

“We saw from new, uprising States

The treason-nursing mischief spurned,

As, crowding Freedom’s ample gates,

The long-estranged and lost returned.

 

“O’er dusky faces, seamed and old,

And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,

With hope in every rustling fold,
We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.

 

“And struggling up through sounds accursed,
A grateful murmur clomb the air;
A whisper scarcely heard at first,

It filled the listening heavens with prayer.

 

“And sweet and far, as from a star,

Replied a voice which shall not cease,

Till, drowning all the noise of war,
It sings the blessed song of peace!”

 

So to me, in a doubtful day

Of chill and slowly greening spring,

Low stooping from the cloudy gray,

The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing.

 

They vanished in the misty air,

The song went with them in their flight;

But lo! they left the sunset fair,
And in the evening there was light.

 

*

Skipper Ireson’s Ride

 

Of all the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme,—
On Apuleius’s Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calendar’s horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human back,
Islam’s prophet on Al-Borak,—
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson’s, out from Marblehead!
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

 

Body of turkey, head of owl,
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,
Feathered and ruffled in every part,
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
Scores of women, old and young,
Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue,
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain:
“Here’s Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr’d an’ futherr’d an’ corr’d in a corrt

By the women o’ Morble’ead!”

 

Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,
With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns’ twang,
Over and over the Maenads sang:

“Here’s Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr’d an’ futherr’d an’ corr’d in a corrt

By the women o’ Morble’ead!”

 

Small pity for him !—He sailed away
From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,—
Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
With his own town’s-people on her deck!
“Lay by! lay by !” they called to him.
Back he answered, “Sink or swim!
Brag of your catch of fish again!”
And off he sailed through the fog and rain!

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

 

Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
That wreck shall lie forevermore.
Mother and sister, wife and maid,
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
Over the moaning and rainy sea,—
Looked for the coming that might not be!

What did the winds and the sea-birds say

Of the cruel captain who sailed away?—

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

 

Through the street, on either side,
Up flew windows, doors swung wide;
Sharp-tongucd spinsters, old wives gray,
Treble lent the fish-horn’s bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,
And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain:

“Here’s Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr’d an’ futherr’d an’ corr’d in a corrt

By the women o’ Morble’ead!”

 

Sweetly along the Salem road
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.
Little the wicked skipper knew
Of the fields so green and the sky so blue.

Riding there in his sorry trim,
Like an Indian idol glum and grim,
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
Of voices shouting, far and near:

“Here’s Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr’d an’ futherr’d an’ corr’d in a corrt

By the women o’ Morble’ead!”

 

“Hear me, neighbors!” at last hecried,—

“What to me is this noisy ride?

What is the shame that clothes the skin

To the nameless horror that lives within?

Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,

And hear a cry from a reeling deck!

Hate me and curse me,—I only dread

The hand of God and the face of the dead!”

Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

 

Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea

Said, “God has touched him!—why should we?”

Said an old wife mourning her only son,

“Cut the rogue’s tether and let him run!”

So with soft relentings and rude excuse,

Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,

And gave him a cloak to hide him in,

And left him alone with his shame and sin.

Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

 

*

Telling the Bees

 

Here is the place; right over the hill

Runs the path I took;

You can see the gap in the old wall still,

And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

 

There is the house, with the gate red-barred,

And the poplars tall;

And the barn’s brown length, and the cattle-yard,

And the white horns tossing above the wall.

 

There are the beehives ranged in the sun;

And down by the brink

Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed, o’errun,

Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

 

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,

Heavy and slow;

And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows,

And the same brook sings of a year ago.

 

There’s the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;

And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,

Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.

 

I mind me how with a lover’s care

From my Sunday coat

I brushed off the burrs, and smooth’d my my hair,

And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat.

 

Since we parted, a month had passed,—

To love, a year;

Down through the beeches I looked at last

On the little red gate and the wellsweep near.

I can see it all now,—the slantwise rain

Of light through the leaves,

The sundown’s blaze on her windowpane,

The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

 

Just the same as a month before,—

The house and the trees,

The barn’s brown gable, the vine by the door,—

Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

 

Before them, under the garden wall,

Forward and back,

Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,

Draping each hive with a shred of black.

 

Trembling, I listened: the summer sun

Had the chill of snow;

For I knew she was telling the bees of one

Gone on the journey we all must go!

 

Then I said to myself, “My Mary weeps

For the dead to-day:

Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps

The fret and the pain of his age away.”

 

But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,

With his cane to his chin,

The old man sat; and the chore-girl still

Sung to the bees stealing out and in.

 

And the song she was singing ever since

In my ear sounds on:—,

“Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!

Mistress Mary is dead and gone!”

 

*

The Sycamores

 

In the outskirts of the village,
On the river’s winding shores,

Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
Stand the ancient sycamores.

One long century hath been numbered,

And another half-way told,

Since the rustic Irish gleeman

Broke for them the virgin mould.

 

Deftly set to Celtic music,
At his violin’s sound they grew,

Through the moonlit eves of summer,
Making Amphion’s fable true.

 

Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant!

Pass in jerkin green along,
With thy eyes brimful of laughter,

And thy mouth as full of song.

 

Pioneer of Erin’s outcasts,
With his fiddle and his pack;

Little dreamed the village Saxons
Of the myriads at his back.

 

How he wrought with spade and fiddle,
Delved by day and sang by night,

With a hand that never wearied,
And a heart forever light,—

 

Still the gay tradition mingles
With a record grave and drear,

Like the rolic air of Cluny,

With the solemn march of Mear.

 

When the box-tree, white with blossoms,
Made the sweet May woodlands glad,

And the Aronia by the river
Lighted up the swarming shad,

 

And the bulging nets swept shoreward,
With their silver-sided haul,

Midst the shouts of dripping fishers,
He was merriest of them all.

 

When, among the jovial huskers,
Love stole in at Labor’s side

With the lusty airs of England,
Soft his Celtic measures vied.

 

Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake,
And the merry fair’s carouse;

Of the wild Red Fox of Erin
And the Woman of Three Cows,

 

By the blazing hearths of winter,
Pleasant seemed his simple tales,

Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends
And the mountain myths of Wales.

 

How the souls in Purgatory
Scrambled up from fate forlorn,

On St. Keven’s sackcloth ladder,
Slyly hitched to Satan’s horn.

 

Of the fiddler who at Tara

Played all night to ghosts of kings;

Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies

Dancing in their moorland rings!

 

Jolliest of our birds of singing,
Best he loved the Bob-o-link.

“Hush !” he’d say, “the tipsy fairies!

Hear the little folks in drink!”

 

Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle,
Singing through the ancient town,

Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant,
Hath Tradition handed down.

 

Not a stone his grave discloses;

But if yet his spirit walks,
’T is beneath the trees he planted,

And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks;

Green memorials of the gleeman!

Linking still the river-shores,

With their shadows cast by sunset,

Stand Hugh Tallant’s sycamores!

 

When the Father of his Country

Through the north-land riding came,

And the roofs were starred with banners,
And the steeples rang acclaim,—

 

When each war-scarred Continental,
Leaving smithy, mill, and farm,

Waved his rasted sword in welcome,
And shot off his old king’s arm,—

 

Slowly passed that august Presence
Down the thronged and shouting street;

Village girls as white as angels,
Scattering flowers around his feet.

 

Midway, where the plane-tree’s shadow
Deepest fell, his rein he drew:

On his stately head, uncovered,
Cool and soft the west-wind blew.

 

And he stood up in his stirrups,
Looking up and looking down

On the hills of Gold and Silver
Rimming round the little town,—

 

On the river, full of sunshine,

To the lap of greenest vales

Winding down from wooded headlands,

Willow-skirted, white with sails.

 

And he said, the landscape sweeping
Slowly with his ungloved hand,

“I have seen no prospect fairer
In this goodly Eastern land.”

 

Then the bugles of his escort
Stirred to life the cavalcade:

And that head, so bare and stately,
Vanished down the depths of shade.

 

Ever since, in town and farm-house,

Life has had its ebb and flow;

Thrice hath passed the human harvest

To its garner green and low.

 

But the trees the gleeman planted,

Through the changes, changeless stand;

As the marble calm of Tadmor
Marks the desert’s shifting sand.

 

Still the level moon at rising
Silvers o’er each stately shaft;

Still beneath them, half in shadow,
Singing, glides the pleasure craft.

 

Still beneath them, arm-enfolded,
Love and Youth together stray;

While, as heart to heart beats faster,
More and more their feet delay.

 

Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar,
On the open hillside wrought,

Singing, as he drew his stitches,

Songs his German masters taught,—

 

Singing, with his gray hair floating
Round his rosy ample face,—

Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen
Stitch and hammer in his place.

 

All the pastoral lanes so grassy
Now are Traffic’s dusty streets;

From the village, grown a city,
Fast the rural grace retreats.

 

But, still green, and tall, and stately,
On the river’s winding shores,

Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
Stand Hugh Tallant’s sycamores.

 

*

My Playmate

 

The pines were dark on Kamoth hill,

Their song was soft and low;

The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.

 

The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;

The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year.

 

For, more to me than birds or flowers,

My playmate left her home,

And took with her the laughing spring,

The music and the bloom.

 

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,

She laid her hand in mine:

What more could ask the bashful boy

Who fed her father’s kine?

 

She left us in the bloom of May:
The constant years told o’er

Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.

 

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round

Of uneventful years;
Still o’er and o’er I sow the spring

And reap the autumn ears.

 

She lives where all the golden year

Her summer roses blow;

The dusky children of the sun

Before her come and go.

 

There haply with her jewelled hands
She smooths her silken gown,—

No more the honrfcspun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down.

 

The wild grapes wait us by the brook,

The brown nuts on the hill,

And still the May-day flowers make sweet

The woods of Follymill.

 

The lilies blossom in the pond,

The bird builds in the tree,
The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill

The slow song of the sea.

 

I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems,—

If ever the pines of Kamoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.

 

I see her face, I hear her voice:

Does she remember mine?

And what to her is now the boy

Who fed her father’s kine?

 

What cares she that the orioles build

For other eyes than ours,—.
That other hands with nuts are filled,

And other laps with flowers?

 

O playmate in the golden time!

Our mossy seat is green,

Its fringing violets blossom yet,

The old tree o’er it lean.

 

The wind so sweet with birch and fern

A sweeter memory blow;

And there in spring the veeries sing

The song of long ago.

 

And still the pines of Ramoth wood—

Are moaning like the sea,—

The moaning of the sea of change

Between myself and thee!~

 

*

Maud Muller

 

Maud Muller, on a summer’s day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

 

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.

 

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee

The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

 

But when she glanced to the far-off town,

White from its hill-slope looking down,

 

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest

And a nameless longing filled her breast,—

 

A wish, that she hardly dared to own.

For something better than she had known.

 

The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse’s chestnut mane.

 

He drew his bridle in the shade

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,

 

And asked a draught from the spring that flowed

Through the meadow across the road.

 

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,

And filled for him her small tin cup,

 

And blushed as she gave it, looking down

On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.

 

“Thanks!” said the Judge; “a sweeter draught

From a fairer hand was never quaffed.”

 

He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,

Of the singing birds and the humming

 

Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether

The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.

 

And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,

And her graceful ankles bare and brown;

 

And listened, while a pleased surprise

Loked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.

 

At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.

 

Maud Muller looked and sighed: “Ah me!

That I the Judge’s bride might be!

 

“He would dress me up in silks so fine,

And praise and toast me at his wine.

 

“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;

My brother should sail a painted boat.

 

“I’d dress my mother so grand and gay.

And the baby should have a new toy each day.

 

“And I’d feed the hungry and clothe the poor,

And all should bless me who left our door.”

 

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,

And saw Maud Muller standing still.

 

“A form more fair, a face more sweet,

Ne’er hath it been my lot to meet.

 

“And her modest answer and graceful air

Show her wise and good as she is fair.

 

“Would she were mine, and I to-day,

Like her, a harvester of hay:

 

“No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,

Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,

 

“But low of cattle and song of birds,

And health and quiet and loving words.”

 

But he thought of his sisters proud and cold,

And his mother Vain of her rank and gold.

 

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,

And Maud was left in the field alone.

 

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,

When he hummed in court an old lovetune;

 

And the young girl mused beside the well

Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.

 

He wedded a wife of richest dower,

Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

 

Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow,

He watched a picture come and go;

 

And sweet Maud Muller’s hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.

 

Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,

He longed for the wayside well instead;

 

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms

To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.

 

And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,

“Ah, that I were free again!

 

“Free as when I rode that day,

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”

 

She wedded a man unlearned and poor,

And many children played round her door.

 

But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,

Left their traces on heart and brain.

 

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot

On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,

 

And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,

 

In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein.

 

And, gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.

 

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;

 

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned,

 

And for him who sat by the chimney lug.

Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug,

 

A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.

 

Then she took up her burden of life again,

Saying only, “It might have been.”

 

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,

For rich repiner and household drudge!

 

God pity them both! and pity us all,

Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

 

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

 

Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies

Deeply buried from human eyes;

 

And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!

 

*

My Triumph

 

The autumn-time has come;
On woods that dream of bloom,
And over purpling vines,
The low sun fainter shines.

 

The aster-flower is failing,
The hazel’s gold is paling;

Yet overhead more near
The eternal stars appear!

 

And present gratitude
Insures the future’s good,
And for the things I see
I trust the things to be;

 

That in the paths untrod,
And the long days of God,
My feet shall still be led,
My heart be comforted.

 

O living friends who love me!

O dear ones gone above me!
Careless of other fame,

I leave to you my name.

 

Hide it from idle praises,

Save it from evil phrases:

Why, when dear lips that spake it

Are dumb, should strangers wake it?

 

Let the thick curtain fall;
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.

 

Not by the page word-painted
Let life be banned or sainted:
Deeper than written scroll
The colors of the soul.

 

Sweeter than any sung

My songs that found no tongue;

Nobler than any fact

My wish that failed of act.

 

Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong,—
Finish what I begin,
And all l fail of win.

 

What matter, I or they?
Mine or another’s day,
So the right word be said
And life the sweeter made!

 

Hail to the coming singers!
Hail to the brave light-bringers!
Forward I reach and share
All that they sing and dare.

 

The airs of heaven blow o’er me;
A glory shines before me
Of what mankind shall be,—
Pure, generous, brave, and free.

 

A dream of man and woman

Diviner but still human,
Solving the riddle old,
Shaping the Age of Gold!

The love of God and neighbor;
An equal-handed labor;
The richer life, where beauty
Walks hand in hand with duty.

 

King, bells in unreared steeples,
The joy of unborn peoples!
Sound, trumpets far off blown,
Your triumph is my own I

 

Parcel and part of all,
I keep the festival,
Fore-reach the good to be,
And share the victory.

 

I feel the earth move sunward,
I join the great march onward,
And take, by faith, while living,
My freehold of thanksgiving.