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Sage and hero, side by side,
Building for their sons the State,
Which they shall rule with pride.
They forbore to break the chain
Which bound the dusky tribe,
Checked by the owners' fierce disdain,
Lured by "Union" as the bribe.
Destiny sat by, and said,

'Pang for pang your seed shall pay,
Hide in false peace your coward head,
I bring round the harvest-day.'

II.

FREEDOM all winged expands,
Nor perches in a narrow place;
Her broad van seeks unplanted lands;
She loves a poor and virtuous race.
Clinging to a colder zone

Whose dark sky sheds the snow-flake down,

The snow-flake is her banner's star,

Her stripes the boreal streamers are.
Long she loved the Northman well;
Now the iron age is done,

She will not refuse to dwell
With the offspring of the Sun;
Foundling of the desert far,

Where palms plume, siroccos blaze,
He roves unhurt the burning ways
In climates of the summer star.
He has avenues to God

Hid from men of Northern brain,

Far beholding, without cloud,

What these with slowest steps attain.
If once the generous chief arrive
To lead him willing to be led,

For freedom he will strike and strive,
And drain his heart till he be dead.

III.

In an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right,
Who shall nerve heroic boys
To hazard all in Freedom's fight,
Break sharply off their jolly games,

Forsake their comrades gay,

And quit proud homes and youthful dames,

For famine, toil, and fray?

Yet on the nimble air benign

Speed nimbler messages,

That waft the breath of grace divine

To hearts in sloth and ease.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, Thou must,

The youth replies, I can.

IV.

O, WELL for the fortunate soul
Which Music's wings infold,

Stealing away the memory

Of sorrows new and old!

Yet happier he whose inward sight,

Stayed on his subtile thought,
Shuts his sense on toys of time,
To vacant bosoms brought.

But best befriended of the God
He who, in evil times,

Warned by an inward voice,

Heeds not the darkness and the dread,

Biding by his rule and choice,

Feeling only the fiery thread.

Leading over heroic ground,

Walled with mortal terror round,
To the aim which him allures,

And the sweet heaven his deed secures.
Peril around all else appalling,
Cannon in front and leaden rain,

Him Duty through the clarion calling
To the van called not in vain.

Stainless soldier on the walls, Knowing this, and knows no more, Whoever fights, whoever falls,

Justice conquers evermore,

Justice after as before,

And he who battles on her side,
God, though he were ten times slain,
Crowns him victor glorified,

Victor over death and pain;
Forever: but his erring foe,
Self-assured that he prevails,
Looks from his victim lying low,
And sees aloft the red right arm

Redress the eternal scales.

He, the poor foe, whom angels foil,
Blind with pride, and fooled by hate,
Writhes within the dragon coil,

Reserved to a speechless fate.

V.

BLOOMS the laurel which belongs
To the valiant chief who fights;
I see the wreath, I hear the songs
Lauding the Eternal Rights,
Victors over daily wrongs:
Awful victors, they misguide
Whom they will destroy,
And their coming triumph hide
In our downfall, or our joy:

They reach no term, they never sleep,

In equal strength through space abide;

Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep,
The strong they slay, the swift outstride:
Fate's grass grows rank in valley clods,

And rankly on the castled steep,

Speak it firmly, these are gods,
All are ghosts beside.

BOSTON.

Sicut patribus, sit Deus nobis.

READ IN FANEUIL HALL, ON DECEMBER 16, 1873, ON THE
CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE
TEA IN BOSTON HARBOR.

THE rocky nook with hill-tops three
Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea
Took Boston in its arms;

The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore.

And where they went on trade intent
They did what freemen can,

Their dauntless ways did all men praise,
The merchant was a man.

The world was made for honest trade, –
To plant and eat be none afraid.

The waves that rocked them on the deep
To them their secret told;

Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,
"Like us be free and bold!"

The honest waves refuse to slaves

The empire of the ocean caves.

Old Europe groans with palaces,
Has lords enough and more;·

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