320 Here was the doom fixed: here is marked the date
When the New World awoke to man's estate,
Burnt its last ship and ceased to look behind:
Nor thoughtless was the choice; no love or hate
Could from its poise move that deliberate mind,
325 Weighing between too early and too late

Those pitfalls of the man refused by Fate:
His was the impartial vision of the great
Who see not as they wish, but as they find.
He saw the dangers of defeat, nor less

330 The incomputable perils of success;

The sacred past thrown by, an empty rind;
The future, cloud-land, snare of prophets blind;
The waste of war, the ignominy of peace;
On either hand a sullen rear of woes,

335 Whose garnered lightnings none could guess,
Piling its thunder-heads and muttering "Cease!"
Yet drew not back his hand, but bravely chose
The seeming-desperate task whence our new nation

rose.

3.

A noble choice and of immortal seed!

340 Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance

Or easy were as in a boy's romance;

The man's whole life preludes the single deed
That shall decide if his inheritance

Be with the sifted few of matchless breed,

345 Our race's sap and sustenance,

Or with the unmotived herd that only sleep and

feed.

Choice seems a thing indifferent; thus or so,
What matters it? The Fates with mocking face
Look on inexorable, nor seem to know

350 Where the lot lurks that gives life s foremost

place.

Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it still,

And but two ways are offered to our will,

Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, The problem still for us and all of human race. 355 He chose, as men choose, where most danger showed,

Nor ever faltered 'neath the load

Of petty cares, that gall great hearts the most, But kept right on the strenuous up-hill road, Strong to the end, above complaint or boast: 360 The popular tempest on his rock-mailed coast Wasted its wind-borne spray,

The noisy marvel of a day;

His soul sate still in its unstormed abode.

VIII.

Virginia gave us this imperial man

365 Cast in the massive mould

Of those high-statured ages old

Which into grander forms our mortal metal ran;
She gave us this unblemished gentleman:

What shall we give her back but love and praise

370 As in the dear old unestrangèd days

Before the inevitable wrong began?

Mother of States and undiminished men,
Thou gavest us a country, giving him,

And we owe alway what we owed thee then:

375 The boon thou wouldst have snatched from us

again

Shines as before with no abatement dim.

A great man's memory is the only thing

351. See Shakspere's play of The Merchant of Venice with ts three caskets of gold, silver, and lead, from which the suitor of Portia were to choose fate.

With influence to outlast the present whim

And bind us as when here he knit our golden ring.

380 All of him that was subject to the hours

Lies in thy soil and makes it part of ours:

Across more recent graves,

Where unresentful Nature waves

Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod,

385 Proclaiming the sweet Truce of God,

We from this consecrated plain stretch out
Our hands as free from afterthought or doubt
As here the united North

Poured her embrownèd manhood forth 390 In welcome of our saviour and thy son.

Through battle we have better learned thy worth, The long-breathed valor and undaunted will, Which, like his own, the day's disaster done, Could, safe in manhood, suffer and be still. 395 Both thine and ours the victory hardly won; If ever with distempered voice or pen We have misdeemed thee, here we take it back, And for the dead of both don common black.

Be to us evermore as thou wast then,

400 As we forget thou hast not always been, Mother of States and unpolluted men,

Virginia, fitly named from England's manly queen! 385. See note to p. 216 1. 741.

IV.

AGASSIZ.

[LOUIS JOHN RUDOLPH AGASSIZ was of Swiss birth, having been born in Canton Vaud, Switzerland, in 1807 (see Longfellow's pleasing poem, The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz), and had already made a name as a naturalist, when he came to this country to pursue investigations in 1846. Here he was persuaded to remain, and after that identified himself with American life and learning. He was a masterly teacher, and by his personal enthusiasm and influence did more than any one man in America to stimulate study in natural history. Through his name a great institution, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, was established at Cambridge, in association with Harvard University, and he remained at the head of it until his death in 1874. His home was in Cambridge, and he endeared himself to all with whom he was associated by the unselfishness of his ambition, the generosity of his affection, and the liberality of his nature. Lowell was in Florence at the time of Agassiz's death, and sent home this poem, which was published in the Atlantic Monthly for May, 1874. Longfellow, besides in the poem mentioned above, has written of Agassiz in his sonnets, Three Friends of Mine, III.,

1 See Appendix.

and Whittier also wrote The Prayer of Agassiz These poems are well worth comparing, as indicat ing characteristic strains of the three poets.]

THE electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill
Makes next-door gossips of the antipodes,
Confutes poor Hope's last fallacy of ease,
The distance that divided her from ill:
5 Earth sentient seems again as when of old
The horny foot of Pan

Stamped, and the conscious horror ran

Beneath men's feet through all her fibres cold: Space's blue walls are mined; we feel the throe o From underground of our night-mantled foe: The flame-winged feet

Of Trade's new Mercury, that dry-shod run
Through briny abysses dreamless of the sun,
Are mercilessly fleet,

6. Since Pan was the deity supposed to pervade all nature, the mysterious noises which issued from rocks or caves in mountainous regions were ascribed to him, and an unreasonable fear springing from sudden or unexplained causes came to be called a panic.

12 Mercury, he messenger of the gods, and fabled to have