From those who seize in sensual haste
Life's best of fruitage, day by day,
Who eat with greed, revile the taste,
Then cast the empty rind away;

From those who crave the moment's ease
To miss the lifetime's larger cheer,
How false, how tame, from such as these,
How slight of worth, the ironic sneer!

Off grave philosophy they steal
The classic robe her stature vaunts,
Dress her anew and praise with zeal
The bells and motley that she flaunts.

They carp at wisdom's gathered lore;
They call her humblest maxims vain;

None sang of love more nobly; few as well;
Of friendship none with pathos so profound;
Of duty sternliest-proved when myrtle-crowned;
Of English grove and rivulet, mead and dell;
Great Arthur's Legend he alone dared tell;
Milton and Dryden feared to tread that ground;
For him alone o'er Camelot's faery bound
The “horns of Elf-land” blew their magic spell.
Since Shakespeare and since Wordsworth none hath sung
So well his England's greatness; none hath given
Reproof more fearless or advice more sage:

Me shalt thou quicken unto life renewed,
Thou living brightness, falling on dead faith;
Scattering my patient gloom, as one returned
From golden travels his glad lesson saith,
And, telling of far climes, and faery pleasures,
Makes rich the hearer's heart with fancied treasures.

A circling star that comes with counted years,
Bringing the heavens unnumbered to our sight,
Startling our twilight with immortal joys
For which we wrestle with the spell of night,
Fling off the measured burthen of our sleeping,

WRITTEN FOR THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF THE STATE OF NEW
YORK, AND SUNG THE TWENTY FIRST DECEMBER , 1805, AT THE
CELEBRATION OF THE ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FIFTH
ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST LANDING OF THE COLONISTS AT
PLYMOUTH.

Tune Anacreon in Heaven.
While round the full board, in festivity's glee
The sons of New England all joyous assemble,
Let us swear to live ever united and free,
That our friends may rejoice, and our enemies tremble;
For friendship carest
In each patriot breast,

Somebody sent Dean Swift
An ounce of strychnine as a gift.
He took about thirty-five minims
While writing about the Houyhnhms.

A GREAT grieved heart, an iron will,
As fearless blood as ever ran;
A form elate with nervous strength
And fibrous vigour, — all all man.

A gallant rein, a restless spur,
The hand to wield a biting scourge;
Small patience for the tasks of Time,
Unmeasured power to speed and urge.

He rides the errands of the hour,
But sends no herald on his ways;
The world would thank the service done,
He cannot stay for gold or praise.

Not lavishly he casts abroad
The glances of an eye intense,
And, did he smile but once a year,

I

At times I lift mine eyes unto " the hills
Whence my salvation cometh " — aye, and higher —
And, the mind kindling with the heart's desire,
Mount to that realm nor blight nor shadow chills:
With concourse of bright forms that region thrills:
I see the lost one midmost in the choir:
From heaven to heaven, on wings that ne'er can tire,
I soar; and God Himself my spirit fills.

IN THE WHIM OF THE MOMENT .

To look upon dress, upon shew, upon birth,
As the noblest distinction of life,
On riches as all that give pleasure on earth,
And that only cure sorrow and strife;

And though to these maxims one might say quoi bon ,
Yet this is the life of a lady of ton.

II.

Stale virtue and vice to erase from their list,
Those of life make a pitiful part,

She was just sixteen, that night, as she stood
In her ragged dress and her rusty hood.

She had swept the crossing the same old way
You have seen the beggars do, any day,

With first a rush to the passer's side,
Then a dash ahead, and the broom well plied,

And then, as she gained the curb, you know,
The ancient professional moan of woe.

But now she is tired; the night grows late;
She leaves the crossing with laggard gait.

And as she passes the street lamp's glare,
You catch the sheen of her unkempt hair,

Mr. Philip Snowden
Was rarely mistaken for Woden.
People as a rule were much more
Apt to mistake him for Thor.