Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street

I hear the drummers makin' riot, An' I set thinkin' o' the feet

Thet follered once an' now are quiet, White feet ez snowdrops innercent,

Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan, Whose comin' step ther's ears thet won't, No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'.

Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee?
Didn't I love to see 'em growin',
Three likely lads ez wal could be,

Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'? I set an' look into the blaze

Whose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps climbin',

Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways,
An' half despise myself for rhymin'.

Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth
On War's red techstone rang true metal,
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle ?

To him who, deadly hurt, agen
Flashed on afore the charge's thunder,
Tippin' with fire the bolt of men

Thet rived the Rebel line asunder?

"Tain't right to hev the young go fust, All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust

To try an' make b'lieve fill their places: Nothin' but tells us wut we miss,

Ther's gaps our lives can't never fay in, An' thet world seems so fur from this Lef' for us loafers to grow gray in !

My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners; I pity mothers, tu, down South,

For all they sot among the scorners: I'd sooner take my chance to stan' At Jedgment where your meanest slave is, Than at God's bar hol' up a han'

Ez drippin' red ez yourn, Jeff Davis !

Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, But proud, to meet a people proud,

With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted!
Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt,
An' step thet proves ye Victory's
daughter!

Longin' for you, our sperits wilt
Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for

water.

Come, while our country feels the lift
Of a gret instinct shoutin' " Forwards!"
An' knows thet freedom ain't a gift

Thet tarries long in han's o' cowards! Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered,

An' bring fair wages for brave men,
A nation saved, a race delivered!

ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION JULY 21, 1865

I

WEAK-WINGED is song,

Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Whither the brave deed climbs for light: We seem to do them wrong,

Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.

III

Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil

Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.

Many in sad faith sought for her,
Many with crossed hands sighed for
her;

But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her,
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness:

Their higher instinct knew
Those love her best who to themselves are

true,

And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;

They followed her and found her
Where all may hope to find,

Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.

Where faith made whole with deed
Breathes its awakening breath
Into the lifeless creed,

They saw her plumed and mailed,
With sweet, stern face unveiled,

And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.

IV

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides

Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides

To make the next age better for the
last?

Is earth too poor to give us Something to live for here that shall outlive us?

Some more substantial boon

Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?

The little that we see

From doubt is never free;
The little that we do

Is but half-nobly true;
With our laborious hiving

What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,

Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,

After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires,

Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,
Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.
But stay! no age was e'er degenerate,
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,
For in our likeness still we shape our fate.
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,

Which haunts the soul and will not let it

be,

Still beaconing from the heights of unde

generate years.

V

Whither leads the path

To ampler fates that leads?

Not down through flowery meads,
To reap an aftermath

Of youth's vainglorious weeds,
But up the steep, amid the wrath
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds,
Where the world's best hope and stay
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,
And every turf the fierce foot clings to

bleeds.

Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, Ere yet the sharp, decisive word

Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword

Dreams in its easeful sheath;

But some day the live coal behind the thought,

Whether from Baäl's stone obscene,
Or from the shrine serene

Of God's pure altar brought, Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen

Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,

And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:

Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise,

And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;

I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,
The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"
Life may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So bountiful is Fate;

But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God's plan
And measure of a stalwart man,
Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
Who stand self-poised on manhood's solid
earth,

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

VI

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,
Whom late the Nation he had led,
With ashes on her head,

Wept with the passion of an angry grief:
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
To speak what in my heart will beat and
burn,

And hang my wreath on his world-honored

urn.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote:

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;

One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,

Not lured by any cheat of birth,

But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity!

They knew that outward grace is dust; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,

A sea-mark now, now lost in vapor's blind; Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of lofti

Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,

New birth of our new soil, the first Ameri

can.

VII

Long as man's hope insatiate can discern Or only guess some more inspiring goal Outside of Self, enduring as the pole, Along whose course the flying axles burn Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood;

Long as below we cannot find The meed that stills the inexorable mind; So long this faith to some ideal Good, Under whatever mortal names it masks, Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,

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 in

I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,

But the sad strings complain,
And will not please the ear:

I sweep them for a pæan, but they wane
Again and yet again

Into a dirge, and die away, in pain.
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf
wraps,

Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:

Fitlier may others greet the living,
For me the past is unforgiving;

I with uncovered head

Salute the sacred dead,

Who went, and who return not.

so!

Say not

'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay, But the high faith that failed not by the way;

Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;

No bar of endless night exiles the brave; And to the saner mind

We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack:

I see them muster in a gleaming row,
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;
We find in our dull road their shining
track;

In every nobler mood

We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life's unalterable good,
Of all our saintlier aspiration;

They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted

As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings,
Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust,
And many races, nameless long ago,
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;

Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest

SOW.

But, when we vanish hence,
Shall they lie forceless in the dark below,
Save to make green their little length of
sods,

Or deepen pansies for a year or two,
Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods?
Was dying all they had the skill to do?
That were not fruitless: but the Soul re-
sents

Such short-lived service, as if blind events
Ruled without her, or earth could so en-

dure;

She claims a more divine investiture
Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents;
Whate'er she touches doth her nature
share;

Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air,
Gives eyes to mountains blind,
Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,
And her clear trump sings succor every-
where

By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind;
For soul inherits all that soul could dare:
Yea, Manhood hath a wider span
And larger privilege of life than man.
The single deed, the private sacrifice,
So radiant now through proudly-hidden
tears,

Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years;

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,