"GREAT peace in Europe! Order reigns
From Tiber's hills to Danube's plains!"
So say her kings and priests; so say
The lying prophets of our day.

Go lay to earth a listening ear;
The tramp of measured marches hear,
The rolling of the cannon's wheel,
The shotted musket's murderous peal,
The night alarm, the sentry's call,
The quick-eared spy in hut and hall!
From Polar sea and tropic fen
The dying-groans of exiled men!
The bolted cell, the galley's chains,
The scaffold smoking with its stains!
Order, the hush of brooding slaves!
Peace, - in the dungeon-vaults and
graves!

O Fisher! of the world-wide net,
With meshes in all waters set,
Whose fabled keys of heaven and hell
Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell,
And open wide the banquet-hall,
Where kings and priests hold carnival!
Weak vassal tricked in royal guise,
Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies;
Base gambler for Napoleon's crown,
Barnacle on his dead renown!
Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan,
Crowned scandal, loathed of God and

man;

And thou, fell Spider of the North!
Stretching thy giant feelers forth,
Within whose web the freedom dies
Of nations eaten up like flies!
Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and
Czar!

If this be Peace, pray what is War?

White Angel of the Lord! unmeet
That soil accursed for thy pure feet.

Accept this record of a life

As sweet and pure, as calm and good As a long day of blandest June In green field and in wood.

How welcome to our ears, long pained
By strife of sect and party noise,
The brook-like murmur of his song
Of nature's simple joys!

The violet by its mossy stone,

The primrose by the river's brim, And chance-sown daffodil, have four d Immortal life through him.

The sunrise on his breezy lake,

The rosy tints his sunset brought, World-seen, are gladdening all the vales And mountain-peaks of thought.

WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER
DAY'S EXCURSION.

FAIR Nature's priestesses! to whom,
In hieroglyph of bud and bloom,

Her mysteries are told; Who, wise in lore of wood and mead, The seasons' pictured scrolls can read, In lessons manifold!

Thanks for the courtesy, and gay
Good-humor, which on Washing Day
Our ill-timed visit bore;
Thanks for your graceful oars, which
broke

The morning dreams of Artichoke,
Along his wooded shore !

Varied as varying Nature's ways,
Sprites of the river, woodland fays,

Or mountain nymphs, ye seem;
Free limbed Dianas on the green,
Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine,

Upon your favorite stream.

The forms of which the poets told,
The fair benignities of old,

Were doubtless such as you;
What more than Artichoke the rill
Of Helicon? Than Pipe-stave hill
Arcadia's mountain-view?

IN PEACE.

A TRACK of moonlight on a quiet lake, Whose small waves on a silver-sanded shore

Whisper of peace, and with the low winds make

Such harmonies as keep the woods awake,

And listening all night long for their sweet sake

A green-waved slope of meadow, hovered o'er

By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light On viewless stems, with folded wings of white;

A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, far seen

Where the low westering day, with gold and green,

Purple and amber, softly blended, fills The wooded vales, and melts among the hills;

A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest On the calm bosom of a stormless sea, Bearing alike upon its placid breast, With earthly flowers and heavenly stars impressed,

The hues of time and of eternity: Such are the pictures which the thought of thee,

O friend, awakeneth, charming the keen pain

Of thy departure, and our sense of loss Requiting with the fulness of thy gain. Lo! on the quiet grave thy life-borne

A treasured lock of whose soft hair Now wakes some sorrowing mother's prayer;

Or, worn upon some maiden breast,
Stirs with the loving heart's unrest!

A bitter cup each life must drain,
The groaning earth is cursed with pain,
And, like the scroll the angel bore
The shuddering Hebrew seer before,
O'erwrit alike, without, within,
With all the woes which follow sin;
But, bitterest of the ills beneath
Whose load man totters down to death,
Is that which plucks the regal crown
Of Freedom from his forehead down,
And snatches from his powerless hand
The sceptred sign of self-command,
Effacing with the chain and rod
The image and the seal of God;
Till from his nature, day by day,
The manly virtues fall away,
And leave him naked, blind and mute,
The godlike merging in the brute !

Why mourn the quiet ones who die
Beneath affection's tender eye,
Unto their household and their kin
Like ripened corn-sheaves gathered in?
O weeper, from that tranquil sod,
That holy harvest-home of God,
Turn to the quick and suffering,
Thy tears upon the living dead!
Thank God above thy dear ones' graves,
They sleep with Him, - they are not
slaves.

-shed

The rush of men, the musket's peal. The short, sharp clang of meeting steel!

Vain, Moslem, vain thy lifeblood poured
So freely on thy foeman's sword!
Not to the swift nor to the strong
The battles of the right belong;
For he who strikes for Freedom wears
The armor of the captive's prayers,
And Nature proffers to his cause
The strength of her eternal laws;
While he whose arm essays to bind
And herd with common brutes his kind
Strives evermore at fearful odds
With Nature and the jealous gods,
And dares the dread recoil which late
Or soon their right shall vindicate.

'Tis done, -the hornéd crescent falls!
The star-flag flouts the broken walls!
Joy to the captive husband! joy
To thy sick heart, O brown-locked boy!
In sullen wrath the conquered Moor
Wide open flings your dungeon-door,
And leaves ye free from cell and chain,
The owners of yourselves again.
Dark as his allies desert-born,
Soiled with the battle's stain, and worn
With the long marches of his band
Through hottest wastes of rock and
sand,

Scorched by the sun and furnace-breath
Of the red desert's wind of death,
With welcome words and grasping
hands,

The victor and deliverer stands!

The tale is one of distant skier;
The dust of half a century lies
Upon it; yet its hero's name
Still lingers on the lips of Fame.
Men speak the praise of him who gave
Deliverance to the Moorman's slave,
Yet dare to brand with shame and crime
The heroes of our land and time, -
The self-forgetful ones, who stake
Home, name, and life for Freedom's
sake.

God mend his heart who cannot feel
The impulse of a holy zeal.
And sees not, with his sordid eyes,
The beauty of self-sacrifice!