Ah, there is something here

Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer,
Something that gives our feeble light
A high immunity from Night,
Something that leaps life's narrow bars

To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;

A seed of sunshine that can leaven

Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars,

And glorify our clay
With light from fountains elder than the
Day;

A conscience more divine than we,
A gladness fed with secret tears,
A vexing, forward-reaching sense
Of some more noble permanence;
A light across the sea,

100

Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,

Still beaconing from the heights of unde

Along whose course the flying axles burn Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood;

Long as below we cannot find

The meed that stills the inexorable mind; So long this faith to some ideal Good, Under whatever mortal names it masks, Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood

That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,

220

Feeling its challenged pulses leap, While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,

Shall win man's praise and woman's love, Shall be a wisdom that we set above All other skills and gifts to culture dear, A virtue round whose forehead we inwreathe

Laurels that with a living passion breathe When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear.

What brings us thronging these high rites to pay,

And seal these hours the noblest of our year, Save that our brothers found this better way ?

VIII

231

Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air, Gives eyes to mountains blind, Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,

And her clear trump sings succor everywhere

By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind;
For soul inherits all that soul could dare:
Yea, Manhood hath a wider span
And larger privilege of life than man. 311
The single deed, the private sacrifice,
So radiant now through proudly-hidden
tears,

Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years;

But that high privilege that makes all men peers,

That leap of heart whereby a people rise Up to a noble anger's height, And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright,

That swift validity in noble veins, 320 Of choosing danger and disdaining shame,

Of being set on flame

By the pure fire that flies all contact

360

Lofty be its mood and grave,
Not without a martial ring,
Not without a prouder tread
And a peal of exultation:
Little right has he to sing
Through whose heart in such an hour
Beats no march of conscious power,
Sweeps no tumult of elation !

'T is no Man we celebrate,
By his country's victories great,

A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,
But the pith and marrow of a Nation
Drawing force from all her men,
Highest, humblest, weakest, all,
For her time of need, and then
Pulsing it again through them,

370

XII

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!

Thy God, in these distempered days, Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,

And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!

410

Bow down in prayer and praise ! No poorest in thy borders but may now Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.

O Beautiful! my country! ours once more !

Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips,

Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it, Among the Nations bright beyond compare? What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee,

421

Down 'mid the tangled roots of things
That coil about the central fire,
I seek for that which giveth wings
To stoop, not soar, to my desire.

Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh,
The sea's deep yearning far above,
Thou hast the secret not,' I cry,

In deeper deeps is hid my Love.'

They think I burrow from the sun,

In darkness, all alone, and weak; Such loss were gain if He were won, For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek.

10

'The earth,' they murmur, is the tomb
That vainly sought his life to prison;
Why grovel longer in the gloom?
He is not here; he hath arisen.'

More life for me where he hath lain

Hidden while ye believed him dead,

1 See Lowell's letter sent with these verses, February 27, 1867, in the Letters, vol. i, pp. 378, 379. In this letter a stanza was added to the poem :

A gift of symbol-flowers I meant to bring,
White for thy candor, for thy kindness red;
But Nature here denies them to the Spring,
And in forced blooms an odorous warmth will cling
Not artless: take this bunch of verse instead.

(Life of Longfellow, vol. iii, p. 84.)