The weary mill-girl lingers
                      Beside the charmed stream,
                    And the sky and the golden water
                      Shape and color her dream.

                    Fair wave the sunset gardens,
                      The rosy signals fly;
                    Her homestead beckons from the cloud,
                      And love goes sailing by!

               Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars,
                 And nursed by winter gales,
               With petals of the sleeted spars,
                 And leaves of frozen sails

               What had she in those dreary hours,
                 Within her ice-rimmed bay,
               In common with the wild-wood flowers,
                 The first sweet smiles of May?

               Yet, "God be praised!" the Pilgrim said,
                 Who saw the blossoms peer
               Above the brown leaves, dry anal dead
                 "Behold our Mayflower here!"

               "God wills it: here our rest shall be
                 Our years of wandering o'er;
               For us the Mayflower of the sea,
                 Shall spread her sails no more."

               O sacred flowers of faith and hope,
                 As sweetly now as then
               Ye bloom on many a birchen slope,
                 In many a pine-dark glen.

               Behind the sea-wall's rugged length,
                 Unchanged, your, leaves unfold
               Like love behind the manly strength
                 Of the brave hearts of old.

               So live the fathers in their sons,
                 Their sturdy faith be ours,
               And ours the love that overruns
                 Its rocky strength with flowers.

               The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day
                 Its shadow round us draws;
               The Mayflower of his stormy bay,
                 Our Freedom's struggling cause.

               But warmer suns erelong shall bring
                 To life the frozen sod;
               And, through dead leaves of hope, shall spring
                 Afresh the flowers of Cod!

          Good-bye, proud world!  I'm going home
           Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.
            Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
              A river-ark on the ocean brine,
             Long I've been tossed like the driven foam;
            But now, proud world!  I'm going home.

          Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face;
           To Grandeur with his wise grimace;
            To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
             To supple Office, low and high;
              To crowded halls, to court and street;
             To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
            To those who go, and those who come;
           Good-bye, proud world!  I'm going home.

          I am going to my own hearth-stone,
           Bosomed in yon green hills alone,—
            A secret nook in a pleasant land,
             Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;
              Where arches green, the livelong day,
             Echo the blackbird's roundelay,
            And vulgar feet have never trod
           A spot that is sacred to thought and Cod.

          O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
           I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
            And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
             Where the evening star so holy shines,
              I laugh at the lore and the pride of man
             At the sophist schools and the learned clan;
            For what are they all, in their high conceit,
           Where man in the bush with God may meet?

               Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown
               Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
               The heifer that lows in the upland faun,
               Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
               The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
               Deems not that great Napoleon
               Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
               Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
               Nor knowest thou what argument
               Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
               All are needed by each one;
               Nothing is fair or good alone.
               I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
               Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
               I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
               He sings the song, but it cheers not now,
               For I did not bring home the river and sky;—
               He sang to my ear,—they sang to my eye.
               The delicate shells lay on the shore;
               The bubbles of the latest wave
               Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
               And the bellowing of the savage sea
               Greeted their safe escape to me.
               I wiped away the weeds and foam,
               I fetched my sea-born treasures home,
               But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
               Had left their beauty on the shore
               With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
               The lover watched his graceful maid,
               As 'mid the virgin train she strayed,
               Nor knew her beauty's best attire
               Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
               At last she came to his hermitage,
               Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;—
               The gay enchantment was undone,
               A gentle wife, but fairy none.
               Then I said, "I covet truth;
               Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
               I leave it behind with the games of youth:—
               As I spoke, beneath my feet
               The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
               Running over the club-moss burrs;
               I inhaled the violet's breath;
               Around me stood the oaks and firs;
               Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
               Over me soared the eternal sky,
               Full of light and of deity;
               Again I saw, again I heard,
               The rolling river, the morning bird;—
               Beauty through my senses stole;
               I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

               I like a church; I like a cowl;
               I love a prophet of the soul;
               And on my heart monastic aisles
               Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;
               Yet not for all his faith can see
               Would I that cowled churchman be.

               Why should the vest on him allure,
               Which I could not on me endure?

               Not from a vain or shallow thought
               His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
               Never from lips of cunning fell
               The thrilling Delphic oracle;
               Out from the heart of nature rolled
               The burdens of the Bible old;
               The litanies of nations came,
               Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
               Up from the burning core below,—
               The canticles of love and woe
               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;
               He budded better than he knew;—
               The conscious stone to beauty grew.

               Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
               Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?

               Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
               Painting with morn each annual cell?
               Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
               To her old leaves new myriads?
               Such and so grew these holy piles,
               Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
               Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
               As the best gem upon her zone,
               And Morning opes with haste her lids
               To gaze upon the Pyramids;
               O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
               As on its friends, with kindred eye;
               For out of Thought's interior sphere
               These wonders rose to upper air;
               And Nature gladly gave them place,
               Adopted them into her race,
               And granted them an equal date
               With Andes and With Ararat.

               These temples grew as grows the grasses
               Art might obey, but not surpass.
               The passive Master lent his hand
               To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
               And the same power that reared the shrine
               Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
               Ever the fiery Pentecost
               Girds with one flame the countless host,
               Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
               And through the priest the mind inspires.
               The word unto the prophet spoken
               Was writ on tables yet unbroken;

               The word by seers or sibyls told,
               In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
               Still floats upon the morning wind,
               Still whispers to the willing mind.
               One accent of the Holy Ghost
               The heedless world hath never lost.
               I know what say the fathers wise,
               The book itself before me lies,
               Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
               And he who blent both in his line,
               The younger Golden Lips or mines,
               Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines.
               His words are music in my ear,
               I see his cowled portrait dear;
               And yet, for all his faith could see,
               I would not the good bishop be.

          In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
          I found the fresh Rhodora in the Woods,
          Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
          To please the desert and the sluggish brook,
          The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
          Made the black water with their beauty gay;
          Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
          And court the flower that cheapens his array.
          Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
          This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
          Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
          Then Beauty is its own excuse for being
          Why thou went there, O rival of the rose!
          I never thought to ask, I never knew:
          But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
          The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

                    Burly, dozing humble-bee,
                    Where thou art is clime for me.
                    Let them sail for Porto Rique,
                    Far-off heats through seas to seek;
                    I will follow thee alone,
                    Thou animated torrid-zone!
                    Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
                    Let me chase thy waving lines;
                    Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
                    Singing over shrubs and vines.

                    Insect lover of the sun,
                    Joy of thy dominion
                    Sailor of the atmosphere;
                    Swimmer through the waves of air;
                    Voyager of light and noon;
                    Epicurean of June;
                    Wait, I prithee, till I come
                    Within earshot of thy hum,—
                    All without is martyrdom.

                    When the south wind, in May days,
                    With a net of shining haze
                    Silvers the horizon wall,
                    And with softness touching all,
                    Tints the human countenance
                    With a color of romance,
                    And infusing subtle heats,
                    Turns the sod to violets,
                    Thou, in sunny solitudes,
                    Rover of the underwoods,
                    The green silence dolt displace
                    With thy mellow, breezy bass.

                    Hot midsummer's petted crone,
                    Sweet to me thy drowsy tone
                    Tells of countless sunny hours,
                    Long days, and solid banks of flowers;
                    Of gulfs of sweetness without bound
                    In Indian wildernesses found;
                    Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,
                    Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.

                    Aught unsavory or unclean
                    Hath my insect never seen;
                    But violets and bilberry bells,
                    Maple-sap and daffodels,
                    Grass with green flag half-mast high,
                    Succory to match the sky,
                    Columbine with horn of honey,
                    Scented fern, and agrimony,
                    Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue
                    And brier-roses, dwelt among;
                    All beside was unknown waste,
                    All was picture as he passed.

                    Wiser far than human seer,
                    Yellow-breeched philosopher
                    Seeing only what is fair,
                    Sipping only what is sweet,
                    Thou dost mock at fate and care,
                    Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.
                    When the fierce northwestern blast,
                    Cools sea and land so far and fast,
                    Thou already slumberest deep;
                    Woe and want thou canst outsleep;
                    Want and woe, which torture us,
                    Thy sleep makes ridiculous.

          Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
          Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
          Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
          Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
          And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
          The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
          Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
          Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
          In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

          Come and see the north wind's masonry.
          Out of an unseen quarry evermore
          Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
          Curves his white bastions with projected roof
          Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
          Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
          So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
          For number or proportion.  Mockingly,
          On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
          A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
          Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
          Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
          A tapering turret overtops the work.
          And when his hours are numbered, and the world
          Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
          Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
          To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
          Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
          The frolic architecture of the snow.

                    The mountain and the squirrel
                    Had a quarrel,
                    And the former called the latter "Little Prig";
                    Bun replied,
                    "You are doubtless very big;
                    But all sorts of things and weather
                    Must be taken in together,
                    To make up a year
                    And a sphere.
                    And I think it no disgrace
                    To occupy my place.
                    If I'm not so large as you,
                    You are not so small as I,
                    And not half so spry.
                    I'll snot deny you make
                    A very pretty squirrel track;
                    Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
                    If I cannot carry forests on my back,
                    Neither can you crack a nut."

               Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
               Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?
               At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?
               Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?
               And loved so well a high behavior,
               In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
               Nobility more nobly to repay?
               O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!

                    By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
                    Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
                    Here once the embattled farmers stood
                    And fired the shot heard round the world.

                    The foe long since in silence slept;
                    Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
                    And Time the ruined bridge has swept
                    Down the dark stream which seaward creep.

                    On this green bank, by this soft stream,
                    We set to-day a votive stone;
                    That memory may their deed redeem,
                    When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

                    Spirit, that made those heroes dare
                    To die, and leave their children free,
                    Time and Nature gently spare
                    The shaft we raise to them and thee.

                    The word of the Lord by night
                    To the watching Pilgrims came,
                    As they sat beside the seaside,
                    And filled their hearts with flame.

                    Cod said, I am tired of kings,
                    I suffer them no more;
                    Up to my ear the morning brings
                    The outrage of the poor.

                    Think ve I made this ball
                    A field of havoc and war,
                    Where tyrants great and tyrants small
                    Might harry the weak and poor?

                    My angel,—his name is Freedom,
                    Choose him to be your king;
                    He shall cut pathways east and west
                    And fend you with his wing.

                    Lo! I uncover the land
                    Which I hid of old time in the West,
                    As the sculptor uncovers the statue
                    When he has wrought his best;

                    I show Columbia, of the rocks
                    Which dip their foot in the seas
                    And soar to the air-borne flocks
                    Of clouds and the boreal fleece.

                    I will divide my goods;
                    Call in the wretch and slave
                    None shall rule but the humble,
                    And none but Toil shall have.

                    I will have never a noble,
                    No lineage counted great;
                    Fishers and choppers and ploughmen
                    Shall constitute a state.

                    Go, cut down trees in the forest
                    And trim the straightest boughs;
                    Cut down trees in the forest
                    And build me a wooden house.

                    Call the people together,
                    The young men and the sires,
                    The digger in the harvest-field,
                    Hireling and him that hires;

                    And here in a pine state-house
                    They shall choose men to rule
                    In every needful faculty,
                    In church and state and school.

                    Lo, now! if these poor men
                    Can govern the land and the sea
                    And make just laws below the sun,
                    As planets faithful be.

                    And ye shall succor men;
                    'Tis nobleness to serve;
                    Help them who cannot help again
                    Beware from right to swerve.

                    I break your bonds and masterships,
                    And I unchain the slave
                    Free be his heart and hand henceforth
                    As wind and wandering wave.

                    I cause from every creature
                    His proper good to flow
                    As much as he is and doeth,
                    So much he shall bestow.

                    But, laying hands on another
                    To coin his labor and sweat,
                    He goes in pawn to his victim
                    For eternal years in debt.

                    To-day unbind the captive,
                    So only are ye unbound;
                    Lift up a people from the dust,
                    Trump of their rescue, sound!

                    Pay ransom to the owner
                    And fill the bag to the brim.
                    Who is the owner?  The slave is owner,
                    And ever was.  Pay him.

                    O North! give him beauty for rags,
                    And honor, O South! for his shame;
                    Nevada! coin thy golden crags
                    With Freedom's image and name.

                    Up! and the dusky race
                    That sat in darkness long,—
                    Be swift their feet as antelopes,
                    And as behemoth strong.

                    Come, East and West and North,
                    By races, as snow-flakes,
                    And carry my purpose forth,
                    Which neither halts nor shakes.

                    My will fulfilled shall be,
                    For, in daylight or in dark,
                    My thunderbolt has eyes to see
                    His way home to the mark.

                    You shall not be overbold
                    When you deal with arctic cold,
                    As late I found my lukewarm blood
                    Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood.

                    How should I fight? my foeman fine
                    Has million arms to one of mine
                    East, west, for aid I looked in vain,
                    East, west, north, south, are his domain,
                    Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home;
                    Must borrow his winds who there would come.
                    Up and away for life! be fleet!—
                    The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
                    Sings in my ears, my hands are stones
                    Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
                    Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,
                    And hems in life with narrowing fence.
                    Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,—
                    The punctual stars will vigil keep,—
                    Embalmed by purifying cold;
                    The winds shall sing their dead-march old,
                    The snow is no ignoble shroud,
                    The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.

                    Softly—but this way fate was pointing,
                    'Twas coming fast to such anointing,
                    When piped a tiny voice hard by,
                    Gay and polite, a cheerful cry,
                    Chic-chic-a-dee-dee! saucy note
                    Out of sound heart and merry throat,
                    As if it said, "Good day, good sir!
                    Fine afternoon, old passenger!
                    Happy to meet you in these places
                    Where January brings few faces."

                    This poet, though he lived apart,
                    Moved by his hospitable heart,
                    Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort,
                    To do the honors of his court,
                    As fits a feathered lord of land;
                    Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand,
                    Hopped on the bough, then, darting low,
                    Prints his small impress on the snow,
                    Shows feats of his gymnastic play,
                    Head downward, clinging to the spray.

                    Here was this atom in full breath,
                    Hurling defiance at vast death;
                    This scrap of valor just for play
                    Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray,
                    As if to shame my weak behavior;
                    I greeted loud my little savior,
                    "You pet! what dost here? and what for?
                    In these woods, thy small Labrador,
                    At this pinch, wee San Salvador!
                    What fire burns in that little chest
                    So frolic, stout and self-possest?
                    Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine;
                    Ashes and jet all hues outshine.
                    Why are not diamonds black and gray,
                    To ape thy dare-devil array?
                    And I affirm, the spacious North
                    Exists to draw thy virtue forth.
                    I think no virtue goes with size;
                    The reason of all cowardice
                    Is, that men are overgrown,
                    And, to be valiant, must come down
                    To the titmouse dimension."

                    'Tis good will makes intelligence,
                    And I began to catch the sense
                    Of my bird's song: "Live out of doors
                    In the great woods, on prairie floors.
                    I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea,
                    I too have a hole in a hollow tree;
                    And I like less when Summer beats
                    With stifling beams on these retreats,
                    Than noontide twilights which snow makes
                    With tempest of the blinding flakes.
                    For well the soul, if stout within,
                    Can arm impregnably the skin;
                    And polar frost my frame defied,
                    Made of the air that blows outside."

                    With glad remembrance of my debt,
                    I homeward turn; farewell, my pet!
                    When here again thy pilgrim comes,
                    He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs,
                    Doubt not, so long as earth has bread,
                    Thou first and foremost shah be fed;
                    The Providence that is most large
                    Takes hearts like throe in special charge,
                    Helps who for their own need are strong,
                    And the sky dotes on cheerful song.
                    Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant
                    O'er all that mass and minster vaunt;
                    For men mis-hear thy call in Spring,
                    As 'twould accost some frivolous wing,
                    Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be!
                    And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee!
                    I think old Caesar must have heard
                    In northern Gaul my dauntless bird,
                    And, echoed in some frosty wold,
                    Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold.
                    And I will write our annals new,
                    And thank thee for a better clew,
                    I, who dreamed not when I came her
                    To find the antidote of fear,
                    Now hear thee say in Roman key.
                    Paean!  Veni, vidi, vici.

               Then Thorstein looked at Hakon, where he sate,
               Mute as a cloud amid the stormy hall,
               And said: "O Skald, sing now an olden song,
               Such as our fathers heard who led great lives;
               And, as the bravest on a shield is borne
               Along the waving host that shouts him king,
               So rode their thrones upon the thronging seas!"

               Then the old man arose; white-haired he stood,
               White-bearded with eyes that looked afar
               From their still region of perpetual snow,
               Over the little smokes and stirs of men:
               His head was bowed with gathered flakes of years,
               As winter bends the sea-foreboding pine,
               But something triumphed in his brow and eye,
               Which whoso saw it, could not see and crouch:
               Loud rang the emptied beakers as he mused,
               Brooding his eyried thoughts; then, as an eagle
               Circles smooth-winged above the wind-vexed woods,
               So wheeled his soul into the air of song
               High o'er the stormy hall; and thus he sang:

               "The fletcher for his arrow-shaft picks out
               Wood closest-grained, long-seasoned, straight as light;
               And, from a quiver full of such as these,
               The wary bow-man, matched against his peers,
               Long doubting, singles yet once more the best.
               Who is it that can make such shafts as Fate?
               What archer of his arrows is so choice,
               Or hits the white so surely?  They are men,
               The chosen of her quiver; nor for her
               Will every reed suffice, or cross-grained stick
               At random from life's vulgar fagot plucked:
               Such answer household ends; but she will have
               Souls straight and clear, of toughest fibre, sound
               Down to the heart of heart; from these she strips
               All needless stuff, all sapwood; hardens them;
               From circumstance untoward feathers plucks
               Crumpled and cheap; and barbs with iron will:
               The hour that passes is her quiver-boy;
               When she draws bow, 'tis not across the wind,
               Nor 'gainst the sun, her haste-snatched arrow sings,
               For sun and wind have plighted faith to her
               Ere men have heard the sinew twang, behold,
               In the butt's heart her trembling messenger!

               "The song is old and simple that I sing;
               Good were the days of yore, when men were tried
               By ring of shields, as now by ring of gold;
               But, while the gods are left, and hearts of men,
               And the free ocean, still the days are good;
               Through the broad Earth roams Opportunity
               And knocks at every door of but or hall,
               Until she finds the brave soul that she wants."

               He ceased, and instantly the frothy tide
               Of interrupted wassail roared along;
               But Leif, the son of Eric, sat apart
               Musing, and, with his eyes upon the fire,
               Saw shapes of arrows, lost as soon as seen;
               lint then with that resolve his heart was bent,
               Which, like a humming shaft, through many a stripe
               Of day and night across the unventured seas,
               Shot the brave prow to cut on Vinland sands
               The first rune in the Saga of the West.

               O poet! above all men blest,
               Take heed that thus thou store them;
               Love, Hope, and Faith shall ever rest,
               Sweet birds (upon how sweet a nest!)
               Watchfully brooding o'er them.
               And from those flowers of Paradise
               Scatter thou many a blessed seed,
               Wherefrom an offspring may arise
               To cheer the hearts and light the eyes
               Of after-voyagers in their need.
               They shall not fall on stony ground,
               But, yielding all their hundred-fold,
               Shall shed a peacefulness around,
               Whose strengthening joy may not be told!
               So shall thy name be blest of all,
               And thy remembrance never die;
               For of that seed shall surely fall
               In the fair garden of Eternity,
               Exult then m the nobleness
               Of this thy work so holy,
               Yet be not thou one jot the less
               Humble and meek and lowly,
               But let throe exultation be
               The reverence of a bended knee;
               And by thy life a poem write,
               Built strongly day by day—
               on the rock of Truth and Right
               Its deep foundations lay.