Pricked the effeminate palate with surprise 320 Oh, benediction of the higher mood And human-kindness of the lower! for both I will be grateful while I live, nor question The wisdom that hath made us what we are, With such large range as from the ale-house bench 125 Can reach the stars and be with both at home. They tell us we have fallen on prosy days, Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's feast Where gods and heroes took delight of old; But though our lives, moving in one dull round 330 Of repetition infinite, become Stale as a newspaper once read, and though History herself, seen in her workshop, seem To have lost the art that dyed those glorious panes, Rich with memorial shapes of saint and sage, 335 That pave with splendor the Past's dusky aisles, Panes that enchant the light of common day With colors costly as the blood of kings, Till with ideal hues it edge our thought, Yet while the world is left, while nature lasts, 340 And man the best of nature, there shall be Somewhere contentment for these human hearts, Some freshness, some unused material For wonder and for song. I lose myself In other ways where solemn guide-posts say, 345 This way to Knowledge, This way to Repose, But here, here only, I am ne'er betrayed, For every by-path leads me to my love. God's passionless reformers, influences, That purify and heal and are not seen, 350 Shall man say whence your virtue is, or how Ye make medicinal the wayside weed? I know that sunshine, through whatever rift How shaped it matters not, upon my walls Paints discs as perfect-rounded as its source, 355 And, like its antitype, the ray divine, However finding entrance, perfect still, Repeats the image unimpaired of God. We, who by shipwreck only find the shores 360 Can but exult to feel beneath our feet, That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps, The shock and sustenance of solid earth; Through immemorial stems of sacred groves, So mused I once within my willow-tent One brave June morning, when the bluff north west, 370 Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day That made us bitter at our neighbors' sins, cheer And roared a lusty stave; the sliding Charles, 375 Living and lustrous as a woman's eyes Look once and look no more, with southward curve Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen's hair 380 The bobolink tinkled; the deep meadows flowed With multitudinous pulse of light and shade Against the bases of the southern hills, While here and there a drowsy island rick Slept and its shadow slept; the wooden bridge 385 Thundered, and then was silent; on the roofs The sun-warped shingles rippled with the heat; Summer on field and hill, in heart and brain, All life washed clean in this high tide of June. 66 III. UNDER THE OLD ELM. [NEAR Cambridge Common stands an old elm, having at its base a stone with the inscription, "Under this tree Washington first took command of the American Army, July 3d, 1775." Upon the one hundredth anniversary of this day the citizens of Cambridge held a celebration under the tree, and Mr. Lowell read the following poem.] I. 1. WORDS pass as wind, but where great deeds were done A power abides transfused from sire to son: The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his ear, That tingling through his pulse life-long shall run, 5 With sure impulsion to keep honor clear, When, pointing down, his father whispers, "Here, 10 Historic town, thou holdest sacred dust, 2. Of our swift passage through this scenery Of life and death, more durable than we, 20 What landmark so congenial as a tree Repeating its green legend every spring, And, with a yearly ring, Recording the fair seasons as they flee, Type of our brief but still-renewed mortality? 25 We fall as leaves: the immortal trunk remains, Builded with costly juice of hearts and brains Gone to the mould now, whither all that be Vanish returnless, yet are procreant still In human lives to come of good or ill, 3 And feed unseen the roots of Destiny. 12. Memorial Hall, built by the alumni of Harvard, in memory of those who fell in the war for union, a building of more serious thought than any in Cambridge, and among the few in the country built to endure. II. 1. Men's monuments, grown old, forget their names Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace 35 Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace, Pungent, pathetic, sad with nobler aims, That penetrates our lives and heightens them or shames. This insubstantial world and fleet Seems solid for a moment when we stand 40 On dust ennobled by heroic feet Once mighty to sustain a tottering land, And mighty still such burthen to upbear, Nor doomed to tread the path of things that merely were: Our sense, refined with virtue of the spot, 2. Our grosser minds need this terrestial hint 50 To raise long-buried days from tombs of print: "Here stood he," softly we repeat, And lo, the statue shrined and still In that gray minster-front we call the Past, 55 Breathes living air and mocks at Death's deceit. It warms, it stirs, comes down to us at last, |