We fool and prate; Thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense Our towns and races grow and fall, An opaquer star, Seen haply from afar, Above the horizon's hoop, A moment, by the railway troop, As o'er some bolder height they speed,- By errant gain, By feasters and the frivolous, Recallest us, And makest sane. Mute orator! well skilled to plead, And send conviction without phrase, And promise, on thy Founder's truth, FABLE. HE mountain and the squirrel TH And the former called the latter "Little Prig." Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And I think it no disgrace If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, I'll not deny you make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut." T ODE, INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING. HOUGH loth to grieve The evil time's sole patriot, I cannot leave My honied thought For the priest's cant, If I refuse My study for their politique, Puts confusion in my brain. But who is he that prates With rifle and with knife! Or who, with accent bolder, Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer ? The jackals of the negro-holder. The God who made New Hampshire With little men ; Small bat and wren House in the oak:- The upheaved land, and bury the folk, Funeral eloquence Rattles the coffin lid. What boots thy zeal, That would indignant rend The northland from the south? The horseman serves the horse, 'Tis the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind; Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind. There are two laws discrete, Not reconciled,— Law for man, and law for thing; The last builds town and fleet, But it runs wild, And doth the man unking. 'Tis fit the forest fall, The prairie granted, Let man serve law for man; Yet do not I implore The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods, Nor bid the unwilling senator Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes. Every one to his chosen work ;- Who marries Right to Might, The Cossack eats Poland, Her last noble is ruined, Her last poet mute: Straight, into double band The victors divide; Half for freedom strike and stand ; The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side. E ASTRÆEA. ACH the herald is who wrote His rank, and quartered his own coat. There is no king nor sovereign state Until he write, where all eyes rest, |