Stood serene and down the future saw the golden beam incline

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track,

Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,

And these mounts of anguish number how each generation

learned

One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned

Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr

stands,

On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his

hands;

Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots

burn,

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves

Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves; Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;

Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?

Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, Unconvinced by ax or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's:

But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath

made us free,

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires ; Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps

away

To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

FAR

To a Pine-Tree.

AR away on Katahdin thou towerest,
Purple-blue with the distance, and vast;
Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lowerest,
That hangs poised on a lull in the blast,
To its fall leaning awful.

In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened,
Thou singest, and tossest thy branches;
Thy heart with the terror is gladdened,
Thou forebodest the dread avalanches,

When whole mountains swoop valeward.

In the calm, thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace When his people to battle are pouring From the city beneath him.

To the lumberer asleep 'neath thy glooming Thou dost sing of wild billows in motion, Till he longs to be swung 'mid their booming In the tents of the Arabs of Ocean,

Whose finned isles are their castle.

For the storm snatches thee for his lyre,
With mad hand crashing melody frantic,
While he pours forth his mighty desire
To leap down on the eager Atlantic,

Whose arms stretch to his playmate.

Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory,
Lusty father of Titans past number ;
The snow-flakes alone make thee hoary,
Nestling close to thy branches in slumber,
And thee mantling with silence.

Thou alone know'st the splendor of winter
'Mid thy snow-silvered, hushed precipices,
Hearing crags of green ice groan and splinter,
And then plunge down the muffled abysses
In the quiet of midnight.

Thou alone know'st the grandeur of summer, Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest,

On thy subjects, that send a proud murmur
Up to thee, to their Sachem, who towerest
From thy bleak throne to heaven.

The wild storm makes his lair in thy branches,
And thence preys on the continent under;
Like a lion, crouched close on his haunches,
There awaiteth his leap the fierce thunder,
Growling low with impatience.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire.

(1571.)

HE old mayor climbed the belfry tower,

THE

The ringers rang by two, by three ;
Pull, if ye never pulled before;

Good ringers, pull your best," quoth he.
Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!
Ply all your changes, all your swells,

Play uppe 'The Brides of Enderby.'”

Men say it was a stolen tyde

The Lord that sent it, He knows all;

But in myne ears doth still abide

The message that the bells let fall :
And there was nought of strange, beside
The flights of mews and peewits pied

By millions crouched on the old sea wall.

I sat and spun within the doore,

My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes;
The level sun, like ruddy ore,

Lay sinking in the barren skies;

And dark against day's golden death
She moved where Lindis wandereth,
My sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth.

"Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
Ere the early dews were falling,
Farre away I heard her song.
'Cusha! Cusha!" all along ;
Where the reedy Lindis floweth,
Floweth, floweth,

From the meads where melick groweth
Faintly came her milking song.—

"Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling,
"For the dews will soone be falling;
Leave your meadow grasses mellow,
Mellow, mellow;

Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;

Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot, Quit the stalks of parsley hollow,

Hollow, hollow;

Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow,

From the clovers lift your head;

Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot,

Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow,

Jetty, to the milking shed."

If it be long, aye, long ago,

When I beginne to think howe long,

Againe I hear the Lindis flow,

Swift as an arrowe, sharpe and strong;

And all the aire it seemeth mee

Bin full of floating bells (sayth shee),
That ring the tune of Enderby.

Alle fresh the level pasture lay,

And not a shadowe mote be seene,

Save where, full fyve good miles away,

The steeple towered from out the greene—