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Come out, then, from the old thoughts and old

ways,

Before you harden to a crystal cold

Which the new life can shatter, but not mould;

Freedom for you still waits, still, looking backward,

stays,

But widens still the irretrievable space.

LONGING.

Of all the myriad moods of mind
That through the soul come thronging,
Which one was e'er so dear, so kind,
So beautiful as Longing?

The thing we long for, that we are
For one transcendent moment,
Before the Present poor and bare
Can make its sneering comment.

Still, through our paltry stir and strife,
Glows down the wished Ideal,
And Longing moulds in clay what Life
Carves in the marble Real;
To let the new life in, we know,
Desire must ope the portal ;-

Perhaps the longing to be so

Helps make the soul immortal.

Longing is God's fresh heavenward will
With our poor earthward striving;
We quench it that we may be still
Content with merely living;

But, would we learn that heart's full scope
Which we are hourly wronging,

Our lives must climb from hope to hope
And realize our longing.

Ah! let us hope that to our praise
Good God not only reckons

The moments when we tread his ways,

But when the spirit beckons,—

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That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction,

When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we fail in action.

ODE TO FRANCE.

FEBRUARY, 1848.

I.

As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches

Build up their imminent crags of noiseless

snow,

Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches
And the blind havoc leaps unwarned below,
So grew and gathered through the silent years
The madness of a People, wrong by wrong.
There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's
tears,-

No strength in suffering;-but the Past was strong:

The brute despair of trampled centuries

Leaped up with one hoarse yell and snapped its bands,

Groped for its right with horny, callous hands,
And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes.
What wonder if those palms were all too hard
For nice distinctions,-if that mænad throng-
They whose thick atmosphere no bard
Had shivered with the lightning of his song,
Brutes with the memories and desires of men,
Whose chronicles were writ with iron pen,
In the crooked shoulder and the forehead
low-

Set wrong to balance wrong,
And physicked woe with woe?

II.

They did as they were taught; not theirs the blame,

If men who scattered firebrands reaped the flame : They trampled Peace beneath their savage feet,

And by her golden tresses drew

Mercy along the pavement of the street. O, Freedom! Freedom! is thy morning-dew So gory red? Alas, thy light had ne'er Shone in upon the chaos of their lair! They reared to thee such symbol as they knew, And worshipped it with flame and blood, A Vengeance, axe in hand, that stood Holding a tyrant's head up by the clotted

hair.

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Their grinding centuries,-what Muse had those? Though hall and palace had nor eyes nor ears,

Hardening a people's heart to senseless stone, Thou knowest them, O Earth, that drank their tears,

O Heaven, that heard their inarticulate moan! They noted down their fetters, link by link; Coarse was the hand that scrawled, and red the

ink;

Rude was their score, as suits unlettered

men,

Notched with a headsman's axe upon a block:

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