And now bid hope that Heaven will interecede

To violate its laws in her sore need,

She would find comfort in their opiates. 175 Mother of Reason! can she cheat the Fates? Would she, the champion of the open mind,

The Omnipotent's first gift-the gift of growth

Consent even for a night-time to be blind,
And sink her soul on the delusive sloth 180
For fruits ethereal and material, both,
In peril of her place among mankind?
The Mother of the many Laughters might
Call one poor shade of laughter in the light

Albeit a pang of dissolution rounds
Each new discernment of the undying Ones,
Stoop to these graves here scattered thick
and wide

Along thy fields, as sunless billows roll;
These ashes have the lesson for the soul. 325
"Die to thy Vanity, and to thy Pride,
And to thy Luxury: that thou may'st
live,

Die to thyself," they say, "as we have died

From dear existence, and the foe forgive, Nor pray for aught save in our little space To warm good seed to greet the fair earth's face."

331

AMERICA

SIDNEY DOBELL

Men say, Columbia, we shall hear thy guns. But in what tongue shall be thy battle-cry? Not that our sires did love in years gone by, When all the Pilgrim Fathers were little

sons

In merrie homes of Englaunde? Back, and

see

Thy satchel'd ancestor! Behold, he runs To mine, and, clasp'd, they tread the equal lea

To the same village-school, where side by side

They spell "our Father." Hard by, the twin-pride

Of that gray hall whose ancient oriel gleams Thro' yon baronial pines, with looks of light Our sister-mothers sit beneath one tree. Meanwhile our Shakespeare wanders past and dreams

His Helena and Hermia. Shall we fight?

Nor force nor fraud shall sunder us! O ye Who north or south, on east or western land,

Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth,
Freedom for freedom, love for love, and
God

For God; O ye who in eternal youth
Speak with a living and creative flood
This universal English, and do stand
Its breathing book; live worthy of that
grand

Heroic utterance-parted, yet a whole,
Far, yet unsevered, children brave and free
Of the great Mother-tongue, and ye shall be
Lords of an Empire wide as Shakespeare's
soul,

Sublime as Milton's immemorial theme,
And rich as Chaucer's speech, and fair as
Spenser's dream.
(1855)

TO WALT WHITMAN IN AMERICA

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us

More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,

With no light but the twilight of terror; Send us a song oversea!

Sweet-smelling of pine leaves and grasses, And blown as a tree through and through

With the winds of the keen mountain

passes,

And tender as sun-smitten dew; Sharp-tongued as the winter that shakes The wastes of your limitless lakes, Wide-eyed as the sea-line's blue.

O strong-winged soul with prophetic Lips hot with the bloodbeats of song, With tremor of heartstrings magnetic,

With thoughts as thunders in throng, With consonant ardors of chords That pierce men's souls as with swords And hale them hearing along,

Make us, too, music, to be with us

As a word from a world's heart warm, To sail the dark as a sea with us,

Full-sailed, outsinging the storm, A song to put fire in our ears Whose burning shall burn up tears, Whose sign bid battle reform;

A note in the ranks of a clarion,
A word in the wind of cheer,
To consume as with lightning the carrion
That makes time foul for us here;
In the air that our dead things infest
A blast of the breath of the west,

Till east way as west way is clear.

Out of the sun beyond sunset,

From the evening whence morning shall be, With the rollers in measureless onset,

With the van of the storming sea, With the world-wide wind, with the breath That breaks ships driven upon death,

With the passion of all things free,

With the sea-steeds footless and frantic,
White myriads for death to bestride
In the charge of the ruining Atlantic,
Where deaths by regiments ride,
With clouds and clamors of waters,
With a long note shriller than slaughter's
On the furrowless fields world-wide,

With terror, with ardor and wonder,

With the soul of the season that wakes When the weight of a whole year's thunder In the tidestream of autumn breaks, Let the flight of the wide-winged word Come over, come in and be heard,

Take form and fire for our sakes.

For a continent bloodless with travail Here toils and brawls as it can,