He knew to bide his time,

And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,

Till the wise years decide.
Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,

But at last silence comes;
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.

- Lowell. TO A SKYLARK

Hail to thee, blithe spirit !

Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated arto

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,
O’er which clouds are bright’ving,

Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,

In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bowgro

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy wingèd thieves

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh thy music doth surpass:

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thina !
I have never heard

Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus Hymeneal,

Or triumphant chaunt,
Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt.
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden wanto

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain ?
What iiclds, or waves, or mountains ?

What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain ?

With thy clear, keen joyance

Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:
Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate and pride and fear ;
If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

- Shelley.

GRADATIM 1

Heaven is not gained at a single bound;

But we build the ladder by which we rise

From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.

I count this thing to be grandly true,

That a noble deed is a step toward God,

Lifting the soul from the common sod

To purer air and a broader view. 1 From “The Complete Poetical Writings of J. G. Holland," copy. right, 1879, 1881, by Charles Scribner's Sous.

We rise by things that are 'neath our feet;

By what we have mastered of good and gain;

By the pride deposed, and the passion slain, And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet.

We hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust,

When the morning calls us to life and light,

But our hearts grow weary, and, ere the night, Our lives are trailing the sordid dust.

We hope, we resolve, we aspire, we pray,

And we think that we mount the air on wings

Beyond the recall of sensual things, While our feet still cling to the heavy clay.

Wings for the angels, but feet for the men !

We may borrow the wings to find the way

We may hope and resolve and aspire and pray, But our feet must rise, or we fall again.

Only in dreams is a ladder thrown

From the weary earth to the sapphire walls;

But the dreams depart, and the vision falls, And the sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone.

Heaven is not reached at a single bound;

But we build the ladder by which we rise

From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And we mount to its summit round by round.

-Holland

ON HIS BLINDNESS

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which it is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present