RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

Out from the heart of Nature rolled

The burdens of the Bible old.

The Problem.

The hand that rounded Peter's dome,

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;

Ibid.

He builded better than he knew ;

The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home :
Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.

Good-Bye.

What are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?

Ibid.

If eyes were made for seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.

The silent organ loudest chants

The master's requiem.

The Rhodora.

Dirge.

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

Hymn, sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument.

Strike

Strike

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

for your altars and your fires;

for the green graves of your sires; God, and your native land! Marco Bozzaris.

Come to the bridal chamber, Death!

Come to the mother's, when she feels,
For the first time, her first-born's breath;
Come when the blessed seals

That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm,

With banquet song, and dance, and wine; And thou art terrible, the tear,

The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,

And all we know, or dream, or fear

Of agony are thine.

Ibid.

But to the hero, when his sword

Has won the battle for the free,

Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
And in its hollow tones are heard

The thanks of millions yet to be.

One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.

Green be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days;

Ibid.

Ibid.

Halleck continued.]

None knew thee but to love thee,1
Nor named thee but to praise.

On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake.

Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined,
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,

The Meccas of the mind.

Burns.

They love their land, because it is their own, And scorn to give aught other reason why; Would shake hands with a king upon his throne, And think it kindness to his majesty.

Connecticut.

ALEXANDER SMITH. 1830 - 1867.

Like a pale martyr in his shirt of fire.

A Life Drama. Se. ii.

In winter when the dismal rain

Came down in slanting lines,

And Wind, that grand old harper, smote
His thunder-harp of pines.

Ibid.

A poem round and perfect as a star. Ibid.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Look, then, into thine heart, and write!
Voices of the Night. Prelude.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
A Psalm of Life.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,'
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

Ibid.

There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,

And, with his sickle keen,

He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,

And the flowers that grow between.

The Reaper and the Flowers.

1 Ars longa, vita brevis. - Hippocrates, Aphorism i.

The star of the unconquered will.

The Light of Stars.

O, fear not in a world like this,

And thou shalt know erelong,
Know how sublime a thing it is

To suffer and be strong.

Ibid.

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.

No one is so accursed by fate,

No one so utterly desolate,

But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.

Endymion.

For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year's nest!
It is not always May.

This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,

And summon from the shadowy Past

The forms that once have been.

A Gleam of Sunshine.