Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breech'd philosopher!
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care,

Leave the chaff and take the wheat.
When the fierce north-western blast
Cools sea and land so far and fast,
Thou already slumberest deep:
Woe and want thou canst outsleep;
Want and woe, which torture us,
Thy sleep makes ridiculous.

BOSTON HYMN.

THE word of the Lord by night
To the watching Pilgrims came,

As they sat by the seaside,

And fill'd their hearts with flame.

God said,-I am tired of kings,
I suffer them no more;

Up to my ear the morning brings
The outrage of the poor.

Think ye I made this ball

A field of havoc and war,

Where tyrants great and tyrants small
Might harry the weak and poor?

My angel, his name is Freedom,-
Choose him to be your king;
He shall cut pathways east and west,
And fend you with his wing.

Lo! I uncover the land

Which I hid of old time in the West, As the sculptor uncovers the statue When he has wrought his best;

I show Columbia, of the rocks
Which dip their foot in the seas,
And soar to the air-borne flocks

Of clouds, and the boreal fleece.

I will divide my goods;

Call in the wretch and slave: None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have.

I will have never a noble,

No lineage counted great; Fishers and choppers and ploughmen Shall constitute a State.

Go! cut down trees in the forest, And trim the straightest boughs;

Cut down trees in the forest,

And build me a wooden house.

Call the people together,

The young men and the sires,
The digger in the harvest field,
Hireling, and him that hires;

And here in a pine state-house
They shall choose men to rule
In every needful faculty,

In church, and state, and school.

Lo, now! if these poor men
Can govern the land and sea,
And make just laws below the sun,
As planets faithful be.

And ye shall succour men;

'Tis nobleness to serve;

Help them who can not help again: Beware from right to swerve.

I break your bonds and masterships, And I unchain the slave:

Free be his heart and hand henceforth
As wind and wandering wave.

I cause from every creature
His proper good to flow :
As much as he is and doeth,

So much he shall bestow.

But, laying hands on another
To coin his labour and sweat,
in pawn to his victim
For eternal years in debt.

He goes

To-day unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound ;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!

Pay ransom to the owner,

And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him!

O North! give him beauty for rags,

And honour, O South! for his shame; Nevada coin thy golden crags

With Freedom's image and name.

Up! and the dusky race

That sat in darkness long,-
Be swift their feet as antelopes, *
And as behemoth strong.

Come, East and West and North,
By races, as snow-flakes,

And carry my purpose forth,

Which neither halts nor shakes!

My will fulfill'd shall be,

For, in daylight or in dark,

My thunderbolt has eyes to see
His way home to the mark.

SONG OF NATURE.

MINE are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.

I hide in the solar glory,

I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;

And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers
My apples ripen'd well;
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.

I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,—
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew;
And out of spent and agèd things
I form'd the world anew;

What time the gods kept carnival,
Trick'd out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors,-
They laid their courses well,
They boil'd the sea, and baked the layers
Of granite, marl, and shell.

But he, the man-child glorious,-
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide forever run?

Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And satellites have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing,

Too slow the rainbow fades,

I weary of my

robe of snow,

My leaves and my cascades;

I tire of globes and races,

Too long the game is play'd; What without him is summer's

Or winter's frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him,

My creatures travail and wait; His couriers come by squadrons, He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image,

pomp,

And thrice outstretch'd my hand, Made one of day, and one of night, And one of the salt sea-sand.

One in a Judæan manger,

And one by Avon stream,

One over against the mouths of Nile,

And one in the Academe.