We fool and prate;

Thou art silent and sedate.

To myriad kinds and times one sense
The constant mountain doth dispense;
Shedding on all its snows and leaves,
One joy it joys, one grief it grieves..
Thou seest, O watchman tall,

Our towns and races grow and fall,
And imagest the stable good
For which we all our lifetime grope,
In shifting form the formless mind,
And though the substance us elude,
We in thee the shadow find.
Thou, in our astronomy

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 circumspect ambition,

By errant gain,

By feasters and the frivolous,

Recallest us,

And makest sane.

Mute orator! well skilled to plead,

And send conviction without phrase,
Thou dost succour and remede
The shortness of our days,

And promise, on thy Founder's truth,
Long morrow to this mortal youth.

FABLE.

HE mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel;

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 a sphere.

And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.

If I'm not so large as you,

You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.

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,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse

My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse

Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico

With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent bolder,

Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer ?
I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
And in thy valleys, Agiochook!

The jackals of the negro-holder.

The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land

With little men ;

Small bat and wren

House in the oak:-
If earth-fire cleave

The upheaved land, and bury the folk,
The southern crocodile would grieve.
Virtue palters; Right is hence;
Freedom praised, but hid;

Funeral eloquence

Rattles the coffin lid.

What boots thy zeal,
O glowing friend,

That would indignant rend

The northland from the south?
Wherefore? to what good end?
Boston Bay and Bunker Hill
Would serve things still ;-
Things are of the snake.

The horseman serves the horse,
The neatherd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat;

'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 steep be graded,
The mountain tunnelled,
The sand shaded,
The orchard planted,
The glebe tilled,

The prairie granted,
The steamer built.

Let man serve law for man;
Live for friendship, live for love,
For truth's and harmony's behoof;
The state may follow how it can,
As Olympus follows Jove.

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 ;-
Foolish hands may mix and mar;
Wise and sure the issues are.
Round they roll till dark is light,
Sex to sex, and even to odd ;-
The over-god

Who marries Right to Might,
Who peoples, unpeoples,—
He who exterminates
Races by stronger races,
Black by white faces,-
Knows to bring honey
Out of the lion;
Grafts gentlest scion
On pirate and Turk.

The Cossack eats Poland,
Like stolen fruit;

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
That can fix a hero's rate;
Each to all is venerable,
Cap-a-pie invulnerable,

Until he write, where all eyes rest,
Slave or master on his breast.
I saw men go up and down,
In the country and the town,
With this tablet on their neck,-
"Judgment and a judge we seek."
Not to monarchs they repair,
Nor to learned jurist's chair;
But they hurry to their peers,
To their kinsfolk and their dears;
Louder than with speech they pray,—
"What am I? companion, say."
And the friend not hesitates
To assign just place and mates;
Answers not in word or letter,
Yet is understood the better;
Each to each a looking-glass,
Reflects his figure that doth pass.
Every wayfarer he meets
What himself declared repeats,
What himself confessed records,
Sentences him in his words;
The form is his own corporal form,
And his thought the penal worm.