Ah, there is something here
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer,
Something that gives our feeble light
A high immunity from Night,
Something that leaps life's narrow bars
To claim its birthright with the hosts of
heaven;

A seed of sunshine that can leaven
Our earthly dullness with the beams of
stars,

And glorify our clay

With light from fountains elder than the
Day;

A conscience more divine than we,
A gladness fed with secret tears,
A vexing, forward-reaching sense
Of some more noble permanence;
A light across the sea,

100

Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,

Still beaconing from the heights of unde

220

Feeling its challenged pulses leap, While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,

Shall win man's praise and woman's love, Shall be a wisdom that we set above All other skills and gifts to culture dear, A virtue round whose forehead we inwreathe

Laurels that with a living passion breathe When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear.

What brings us thronging these high rites to pay,

And seal these hours the noblest of our year, Save that our brothers found this better way?

VIII

231

360

Lofty be its mood and grave,
Not without a martial ring,
Not without a prouder tread
And a peal of exultation:
Little right has he to sing
Through whose heart in such an hour
Beats no march of conscious power,
Sweeps no tumult of elation!

'T is no Man we celebrate,
By his country's victories great,

A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,
But the pith and marrow of a Nation
Drawing force from all her men,
Highest, humblest, weakest, all,
For her time of need, and then
Pulsing it again through them,

370

Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantlehem.

Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is her dower!

How could poet ever tower,

If his passions, hopes, and fears,
If his triumphs and his tears,

Kept not measure with his people? 380 Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!

Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple !

Banners, adance with triumph, bend your

THE MINER

1865.

Down 'mid the tangled roots of things
That coil about the central fire,
I seek for that which giveth wings
To stoop, not soar, to my desire.

Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh,
The sea's deep yearning far above,
Thou hast the secret not,' I cry,
'In deeper deeps is hid my Love.'

They think I burrow from the sun,
In darkness, all alone, and weak;
Such loss were gain if He were won,
For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek.

'The earth,' they murmur, is the tomb That vainly sought his life to prison; Why grovel longer in the gloom?

He is not here; he hath arisen.'

More life for me where he hath lain

Hidden while ye believed him dead,

10

1 See Lowell's letter sent with these verses, Febru ary 27, 1867, in the Letters, vol. i, pp. 378, 379. In this letter a stanza was added to the poem:

A gift of symbol-flowers I meant to bring.
White for thy candor, for thy kindness red:
But Nature here denies them to the Spring,
And in forced blooms an odorous warmth will cling
Not artless: take this bunch of verse instead.

(Life of Longfellow, vol. iii, p. 84.)