SLOW toiling upward from the misty vale,
I leave the bright enamelled zones below;
No more for me their beauteous bloom shall
glow,

Their lingering sweetness load the morning gale;

Few are the slender flowerets, scentless, pale, That on their ice-clad stems all trembling blow

Along the margin of unmelting snow;

Yet with unsaddened voice thy verge I hail, White realm of peace above the flowering line;

Welcome thy frozen domes, thy rocky spires!

O'er thee undimmed the moon-girt planets shine,

On thy majestic altars fade the fires

That filled the air with smoke of vain desires,

And all the unclouded blue of heaven is thine!

30

O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
Strange is the gift that I owe to you ;
Such a gift as never a king
Save to daughter or son might bring,
All my tenure of heart and hand,
All my title to house and land;
Mother and sister and child and wife
And joy and sorrow and death and life! 40

Dorothy was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the niece of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot and orator who died just before the American Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent and effective promoters. The son of the latter, Josiah Quincy, the first mayor of Boston bearing that name, lived to a great age, one of the most useful and honored citizens of his time.

The canvas of the painting was so much decayed that it had to be replaced by a new one, in doing which the rapier thrust was of course filled up. (HOLMES.)

See Morse's Life of Holmes, vol. i, pp. 17 and 231

232.

For a reproduction of the portrait, see Scribner's Magazine, May, 1879.

I

say not this to cry him down;

find my Shakespeare in his clown, His rogues the selfsame parent own; Nay! Satan talks in Milton's tone! Where'er the ocean inlet strays, The salt sea wave its source betrays; Where'er the queen of summer blows, She tells the zephyr, I'm the rose !' And his is not the playwright's page; His table does not ape the stage; What matter if the figures seen Are only shadows on a screen, He finds in them his lurking thought, And on their lips the words he sought, Like one who sits before the keys And plays a tune himself to please.

20

30

40

And was he noted in his day?
Read, flattered, honored? Who shall say ?
Poor wreck of time the wave has cast 51
To find a peaceful shore at last,

Could I smile his scars away I would blot the bitter lay,

Written with a knitted brow,
Read with placid wonder now.
Throbbed such passion in my heart?
Did his wounds once really smart?

Here are varied strains that sing
All the changes life can bring,
Songs when joyous friends have met,
Songs the mourner's tears have wet.

See the banquet's dead bouquet,
Fair and fragrant in its day;
Do they read the selfsame lines, -
He that fasts and he that dines?

Year by year, like milestones placed,
Mark the record Friendship traced.
Prisoned in the walls of time
Life has notched itself in rhyme:

As its seasons slid along,
Every year a notch of song,
From the June of long ago,
When the rose was full in blow,

Till the scarlet sage has come And the cold chrysanthemum. Read, but not to praise or blame; Are not all our hearts the same?

24

30

For the rest, they take their chance, —
Some may pay a passing glance;
Others, well, they served a turn, -
Wherefore written, would you learn? c

Not for glory, not for pelf,
Not, be sure, to please myself,
Not for any meaner ends, -
Always by request of friends.'

Here's the cousin of a king, —
Would I do the civil thing?
Here's the first-born of a queen:
Here's a slant-eyed Mandarin.

Would I polish off Japan?

---

Would I greet this famous man,
Prince or Prelate, Sheik or Shah? --
Figaro çi and Figaro là !

Would I just this once comply?
So they teased and teased till I

50

'Tis like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembers

All the achings and the quakings of 'the times that tried men's souls;'*

1 The story of Bunker Hill battle is told as literally in accordance with the best authorities as it would have been if it had been written in prose instead of in verse. I have often been asked what steeple it was from which the little group I speak of looked upon the conflict. To this I answer that I am not prepared to speak authoritatively, but that the reader may take his choice among all the steeples standing at that time in the northern part of the city. Christ Church in Salem Street is the one I always think of, but I do not insist upon its claim. As to the personages who made up the small company that followed the old corporal, it would be hard to identify them, but by ascertaining where the portrait by Copley is now to be found, some light may be thrown on their personality.

Daniel Malcolm's gravestone, splintered by British bullets, may be seen in the Copp's Hill burial-ground. (HOLMES.)

This poem was first published in 1875, in connection with the centenary of the battle of Bunker Hill. The belfry could hardly have been that of Christ Church, since tradition says that General Gage was stationed there watching the battle, and we may make it to be what was known as the New Brick Church, built in 1721, on Hanover, corner of Richmond Street, Boston, rebuilt of stone in 1845, and pulled down at the widening of Hanover Street in 1871. There are many narratives of the battle of Bunker Hill. Frothingham's History of the Siege of Boston is one of the most com

prehensive accounts, and has furnished material for many popular narratives. (Riverside Literature Series.) 2 In December, 1776, Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense had so remarkable a popularity as the first homely expression of public opinion on Independence, began issuing a series of tracts called The Crisis, eighteen numbers of which appeared. The familiar words quoted by the grandmother must often have been heard and used by her. They begin the first number of The Crisis: These are the times that try men's souls: the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it Now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.' (Riverside Literature Series.)