On A Picture Of Harvey Birch

I know not if thy noble worth
My country's annals claim,
For in her brief, bright history
I have not read thy name.

I know not if thou e'er didst live;
Save in the vivid thought
Of him who chronicled thy life
With silent suffering fraught.

Yet, in thy history I see
Full many a great soul's lot;
Who joins that martyr-army's ranks,
That the world knoweth not; —

Who cannot weep 'melodious tears,'
For fame or sympathy;
But who, in silence, bear their doom
To suffer and to die; —

For whom no poet's harp is struck,
No laurel wreath is twined;
Who pass unheard — unknown, away,
And leave no trace behind; —

Who, but for their unwavering trust
In Justice, Truth, and God,
Would faint upon their weary way,
And perish by the road.

Truth, Justice, God! Oh mighty faith,
To bear us up unharmed;
The gates of Hell may not prevail
Against a soul so armed.

On The Death Of An Infant

Why should we weep for thee,
Since thou hast gone unsullied back to heaven,
No stain upon thy spirit's purity,
No sin to be forgiven?

Love watched thee from thy birth,
Fond hearts around thee tireless vigils kept;
And o'er thy tender soul the storms of earth
Had never rudely swept.

Thou art spared a fearful lore -
A knowledge all attain who linger here;
The changed, the cold, the dead, were words that bore
No import to thine ear.

Methought I saw in thee,
Thus early as I marked by many a token,
A soul that might not war with Destiny,
A heart that could be broken.

But sinless, tearless, gone,
Undimmed, unstained, who would not thus have died!
For thee then let these vain regrets be done,
These selfish tears be dried.

Go to thy little bed!
The verdant turf is springing fresh and fair,
The flowers thou lovedst shall blossom o'er thy head,
The spring birds warble there.

And while to shapeless dust
Thy cherub form is gently mouldering back,
Our thoughts shall upward soar, in hopeful trust,
On thy freed spirit's track.

A Farewell To Ole Bull

There was a fountain in my heart
Whose deeps had not been stirred;
A thirst for music in my soul
My ear had never heard; -

A feeling of the incomplete
To all bright things allied;
A sense of something beautiful,
Unfilled, unsatisfied.

But, waked beneath thy master-hand,
Those trembling chords have given
A foretaste of that deep, full life
That I shall know in Heaven.

In that resistless spell, for once,
The vulture of Unrest,
That whets its beak upon my heart,
Lies, charmed, within my breast.

Pale Memory and flushed Hope forget;
Ambition sinks to sleep;
And o'er my spirit falls a bliss
So perfect that I weep.

Oh, Stranger! though thy Farewell notes
Now on the breeze may sigh,
Yet, treasured in our thrilling hearts,
Their echo shall not die.

Thou'st brought us from thy Northern home
Old Norway's forest tones,
Wild melodies from ancient lands,
Of palaces and thrones.

Take back the 'Prairie's Solitude,'
The voice of that dry sea,
Whose billowy breast is dyed with flowers,
Made audible by thee.

Take back with thee what ne'er before
To Music's voice was given,
The anthem that 'Niagara' chaunts
Unceasingly to Heaven; -

The spirit of a People waked
By Freedom's battle cry;
The 'Memory of their Washington,'
Their song of victory.

Take back with thee a loftier Fame,
A prouder niche in Art,
Fresh laurels from our virgin soil,
And - take a Nation's heart!

Lines To Frederika Bremer

'Hereafter, when I no more belong to earth, I should love to return to
it as a spirit, and impart to men the deepest of that which I have
suffered and enjoyed, lived and loved. And no one need fear me; should
I come in the midnight hour to a striving and unquiet spirit, it would
be only to make it more quiet, its night-lamp burn more brightly, and
myself its friend and sister.' - _Miss Bremmer's Letter. _

Hereafter! - nay, thou has thy wish e'en here;
To many a striving spirit dost thou come,
Sweet lady, from thy far-off northern home,
Like a blest presence from another sphere,
And love and faith, the night-lamps of the soul,
Have burned with brighter flame at thy control.

A friend and sister art thou now to those
Who weep o'erburdened with life's weary load,
And faint and toil-worn tread the desert road;
To them thou beckonest from thy high repose:
Thou'st gained that steep where endless day appears,
That faith whose followers are baptized with tears.

There came no voices from thy distant shore;
We heard no echo of thy country's lyres,
We saw no gleaming of her household fires;
A cloud had hung thy land and language o'er,
Until thy pictured thoughts broke on our eyes
Like an Aurora of thy native skies.

Thy name is loved through all our fair wide land:
Where the log-cabins of our western woods
Are scattered through the dim old solitudes,
Where, glowing with young life, our cities stand,
There go thy white-winged messengers, as went
Of old the angels to the patriarch's tent.

My harp is tuneless and unknown to fame;
A few weak chords, alas! chance-strung and frail,
O'er which sweeps fitfully the passing gale.
Would it indeed were worthier of its theme,
That it might bear across the distant sea
The homage of unnumbered hearts to thee.

Day-Dawn In Italy

Italia! in thy bleeding heart,
I thought, e'en hope was dead;
That from thy scarred and prostrate form,
The spark of life had fled.

I thought, as Memory's sunset glow
Its radiance o'er thee cast,
That all thy glory and thy fame
Were buried in the past.

Twice Mistress of the world! I thought
Thy star had set in gloom;
That all thy shrines and monuments
Were but thy spirit's tomb.

The mausoleum of the world,
Where Art her spoils might keep;
Where pilgrims from all shrines might come,
To wonder and to weep.

The thunders of the Vatican
Had long since died away;
Saint Peter's chair seemed tottering,
And crumbling to decay.

Thy ancient line of Pontiff Kings
Was to the past allied;
And oft in Freedom's holy wars
They fought not on her side.

The sacred banner of the Cross
Was trailing, soiled and torn;
And often had the hostile ranks
That blessed ensign borne.

But from her death-like slumber now,
  The seven-hilled city wakes:
Italia! on thy shrouded sky,
A gleam of morning breaks.

Along the Alps and Appenines
Runs an electric thrill;
A golden splendor lights once more
The Capitolian hill.

And hopes, bright as thy sunny skies,
Are o'er thy future cast;
The future that upon thee beams,
As glorious as thy past.

The laurels that thy Caesars wore,
Were dyed with crimson stains;
Their triumphs glittered with the spoil
Won on thy battle plains.

But for thy Pontiff Prince, to-day,
A laurel might'st thou twine,
Unsullied as the spotless life
He lays upon thy shrine.

For him might the triumphal car
Ascend the hill again;
No slaves, bound to the chariot wheels,
Should swell the lengthened train: -

Such train, as in her proudest days,
Was never seen in Rome, -
Of captives from the dungeon freed, -
Of exiles welcomed home.

When, gazing on the doubtful strife,
The Hebrew leader prayed,
The friends of Israel gathered round,
His drooping hands they staid.

And thus around the Patriarch's chair,
The friends of Freedom stand, -
All eager, though it falters not,
To stay his lifted hand.

And in a clearer, firmer tone,
Is heard their rallying cry;
From AEtna to the Alps it sounds:
'For God and Liberty!'

Byron Among The Ruins Of Greece

On what sweet shore the blue AEgean laves,
Where loveliness is wedded to decay, -
Beauty to desolation, - 'mid the graves
Of an immortal race, and ruins, gray
With the dim veil of years, a sleeper lay; -
And in his dream, Time's never-ebbing tide
Rolled back, and bore him to that earlier day,
When Greece was decked in beauty, like a bride,
Glory upon her path and freedom by her side.

Against the radiance of her azure sky,
Rose many a pillared fane, divinely wrought,
Whose marble forms defied mortality; -
There pale Philosophy unveiled, and taught
Her mystic lore, and waged her war of thought,
And all her bright and baseless visions wove; -
There Art her never-dying treasures brought:
He saw Apelles' glowing canvas move,
And at Pygmalion's prayer the statue wake to love.

Then came her bards, her orators and sages; -
Once more he heard those voices that had rung
Down through the vista of succeeding ages:
'The blind old bard of Scio's isle' there strung
His matchless lyre, and breathed the earliest song:
And now Demosthenes before him stood,
Pouring his tide of eloquence, that strong,
Deep and o'erwhelming, swayed the multitude,
As the invisible wind sways the wild ocean's flood.

Armed warriors too were there, their helmets gleaming
On deathless Marathon's green, sea-girt plain,
That now with Persia's choicest blood was streaming:
Thermopylae's 'three hundred' fought again;
Again its pass was piled with countless slain,
From the invader's host, as on that day
When Sparta's bravest sons had vowed to drain
Their heart's best blood for her. There, as he lay,
These glorious visions passed, in beautiful array.

The dreamer woke, - he rested there alone,
By that high temple whence had Pallas fled:
Where once she lingered, now the crescent shone,
And round him wandered many a turbanned head,
Treading in mockery o'er the immortal dead;
And conscious Nature there, as if to screen
The nakedness of Ruin, had ouspread
Her gayest flowers to deck her saddest scene,
And hung, o'er mouldering walls, her tapestry of green.

And many a Grecian slave to Turkish foe
In hopeless bondage bowed the unwilling knee,
And, all too weak to strike the avenging blow,
To rend the galling chains of slavery,
And write their names once more among the free,
But humbled in despair, unmoved behold
Their shrine defaced, their altars borne away,
By every plunderer, even the hallowed mould
Of Marathon itself, exchanged for foreign gold.

And as he mused upon her buried worth,
'Mid her fallen columns and her ruined fanes, -
That none were there to lead her children forth;
To strike with them, and burst their servile chains,
And with their blood to wash away the stains
That their great name on Freedom's record dyed, -
He touched his harp, and the enchanting strains,
The world was hushed to hear - and then aside
Bade Poesy retire, and made sad Greece his bride.

A fitting bride for one like him, who stood
On that high steep, where few have dared their flight;
Against whose name Time's all resistless flood
Shall dash in vain; who, through decay and blight
And desolation, dazzled with the light
That fast consumed him, where he stood on high,
Like a lone star on the dark brow of night: -
He sleeps upon that shore - a Grecian sky,
For a high soul like his, were fitting canopy.

Rest, warrior bard! Above thy head shall bloom
The greenest laurel of Peneus' tide; -
Genius shall come a pilgrim to thy tomb,
And for her champion Freedom turn aside,
To weep the bitter tears she may not hide;
And thy young handmaid, Poesy, shall shed
Her brightest halo there; and Greece, thy bride,
Shall give to thee (and oh, can more be said!)
A name to live with hers - a home among her Dead.