But is there hope to save Even this ethereal essence from the grave?

What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong

Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song?

Before my musing eye

The mighty ones of old sweep by, Disvoiced now and insubstantial things, As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings, Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust, And many races, nameless long ago, 281 To darkness driven by that imperious gust

Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow:

O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only Change, Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range!

Shall we to more continuance make pretence?

Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit; And, bit by bit,

The cunning years steal all from us but woe;

But that high privilege that makes all men peers,

That leap of heart whereby a people rise Up to a noble anger's height, And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright,

That swift validity in noble veins, 320 Of choosing danger and disdaining shame,

Of being set on flame

By the pure fire that flies all contact

base

Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!

She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,

She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind!

The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;

From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,

Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,

And bids her navies, that so lately hurled

Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in,

Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore.

400

No challenge sends she to the elder world,

That looked askance and hated; a light

scorn

Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees

She calls her children back, and waits the morn

Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas.'

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,

ΤΟ

1 See Lowell's letter sent with these verses, February 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.)

'COME forth!' my catbird calls to me, "And hear me sing a cavatina

1 I have not felt in the mood to do much during my imprisonment. One little poem I have written, The Nightingale in the Study.' "T is a dialogue between my catbird and me-he calling me out of doors, I giving my better reasons for staying within. Of course my nightingale is Calderon. (LOWELL, in a letter to Professor C. E. Norton, July 8, 1867. Lowell's Letters, Harper and Brothers, vol. i, p. 390.)

By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing
Till all the alder-coverts dark
Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.

'Come out beneath the unmastered sky,
With its emancipating spaces,
And learn to sing as well as I,
Without premeditated graces.

What boot your many-volumed gains, Those withered leaves forever turning, To win, at best, for all your pains,

A nature mummy-wrapt in learning? 20

'The leaves wherein true wisdom lies

On living trees the sun are drinking; Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies,

Grew not so beautiful by thinking.

"Come out!" with me the oriole cries,
Escape the demon that pursues you!
And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise,
Still hiding farther onward, wooes you.'

'Alas, dear friend, that, all my days,
Hast poured from that syringa thicket 30
The quaintly discontinuous lays

To which I hold a season-ticket,

'A season-ticket cheaply bought With a dessert of pilfered berries, And who so oft my soul hast caught With morn and evening voluntaries, 'Deem me not faithless, if all day Among my dusty books I linger, No pipe, like thee, for June to play With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 40 'A bird is singing in my brain

And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances.

'I ask no ampler skies than those

His magic music rears above me,