A LAY OF OLD TIME "Beside our fierce Black Eagle The sea-bird make her nest. "For Finland, looking seaward, Shall ring, ‘Good-will to man !’ "Then row thy boat, oh, fisher! "Sit down, old men, together, Is the brother of the Finn ! 285 A LAY OF OLD TIME. WRITTEN FOR THE ESSEX CO. AGRICULTURAL FAIR ONE morning of the first sad Fall, Poor Adam and his bride She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit Behind them, smiling in the morn, Before them, wild with rock and thor、, The desert stretched away. They heard the air above them fanned, And lo! they saw before them stand "Arise," he said, "why look behind, And patient hand and willing mind, "I leave with you a spell whose power Can make the desert glad, And call around you fruit and flower "I clothe your hands with power to lift "Go, cheerful as yon humming-bees, White glimmering over Eden's trees The pilgrims of the world went forth And found where'er they tilled the earth The thorn-tree cast its evil fruit And blushed with plum and pear; And seeded grass and trodden root Grew sweet beneath their care. We share our primal parents' fate, WHAT OF THE DAY? But still for us his native skies The pitying Angel leaves, And leads through Toil to Paradise 287 WHAT OF THE DAY? A SOUND of tumult troubles all the air, Treading the dark with challenge and reply. It breaks in thunder and the whirlwind's roar ! Even so, Father! Let thy will be doneTurn and o'erturn, end what thou hast begun In judgment or in mercy: as for me, If but the least and frailest, let me be Evermore numbered with the truly free Who find thy service perfect liberty ! I fain would thank Thee that my mortal life Ias reached the hour, (albeit through care and pain) When Good and Evil, as for final strife, Close dim and vast on Armageddon's plain ; See Truth's white banner floating on before; See Peace with Freedom make to Time amends, And, through its cloud of dust, the threshing-floor, Flailed by thy thunder, heaped with chaffless grain ! 1857. THE FIRST FLOWERS. For ages on our river borders, For ages have the unbound waters But never yet from smiling river, They break the spell of cold and darkness. Thanks, Mary! for this wild-wood token It is as if the pine-trees called me From ceiled room and silent books, MY NAMESAKE. As in the old Teutonic ballad Live singing bird and flowering tree, I blend in song thy flowers and thee. Earth's rocky tablets bear forever The dint of rain and small bird's track: The bird that trod the mellow layers Of the young earth is sought in vain; So, when this fluid age we live in Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, And, following out their dim suggestions, And maidens in the far-off twilights, MY NAMESAKE. You scarcely need my tardy thanks, 289 |