WRITINGS OF CHARLES SPRAGUE, ff NOW FIRST COLLECTED, NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY CHARLES S. FRANCIS 252 Broadway. 1841. ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1841, BY C. S. FRANCIS, Ilf THE CLERK S OFFICE OF THE SPUTHEHN DISTRICT OF NEW-YORK. BOSTON: PRINTED BT MUNROE AND FRANCIS. PREFACE. IN presenting here together, so far as they could be found, the writings of one of the most estima ble poets and men among us, the Publisher feels that he is meeting a wish, that has been for a long time, and on all sides, loudly expressed. He commenced his undertaking, partly in order that the public might be no longer withheld from their desire, and partly also with the view of anticipating a similar design from another quar ter, which he learned to be already entertained, and which was not likely to be accomplished in a manner to satisfy the friends of so favorite an Author. He has carried it through, only not forbidden by the Author himself; who, he hopes, will look with some complacency on the task, which he would do nothing to promote. 4 PREFACE. In one respect only can he seem censurable to any. It may be thought that he is thus pre cluding the hope of receiving a more copious col lection, some time hence, from the original hand. If such an objection should occur, he would reply to it by saying, that, on the contrary, he thinks he may thus draw his Author out a little from his rather shy retirement, and, by representing thus much of him, provoke him to show more. At least, he will give utterance to the hope, in which multitudes join, that the Writer may live long enough to make this volume but a small part of the productions of his graceful and earnest pen. CONTENTS. POEMS. Pag*. CURIOSITY, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard Uni versity, 1829 9 Prize Ode, delivered at the Boston Theatre in 1823, at the Exhibition of a Pageant in Honor of Shakspeare 36 Ode, pronounced at the Centennial Celebration of the Settlement of Boston, September, 183D 44 Ode, written for the Fourth Triennial Celebration of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1818 64 Art, an Ode written for the Sixth Triennial Festival of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1824 66 Lines on the Death of M. S. C 68 1 see thee still 71 The Family Meeting 73 To my Cigar 75 "Look on this Picture" 77 The Winged Worshippers. Addressed to two Swallows that flew into Chauncy Place Church during divine Service , 80 The Funeral 82 Dedication Hymn 84 Fifty Years Ago. For the Fourth of July, 1825 86 / The Brothers 88 "l i* 6 CONTENTS. Page. Linos to a You:ig Mother . . . 89 Ordination Hymn 90 Edwin Buckingham D2 Mount Auburn 94 Prize Prologue, recited at the Opening of the P,.rk Theatre, New York, 1821 95 Prize Prologue, recited at the Opening of the new Philadelphia Theatre, 1822 98 Prize Address, spoken at the Opening of the Salem Theatre, 1828 K>2 Prize Address, recited at the Opening of the Philadelphia Theatre, 1828 . 105 Prize Address, recited at the Opening of the Portsmouth Theatre, 1830.. 108 Address, intended for the Opening of the Theatre at New Orleans Ill Ode, for the Fourth of July, 1827 114 Song, written for the Purling Dinner given to Lafayette by the Massachu setts Charitable Mechanic Association 115 Song, for a Festival in Faueuil Hall 117 Ode, for the Anniversary Festival of the YV.ishingUm Light Infantry 119 Death of an Infant 121 To Montague, at thirty-three 122 ORATIONS. American Independence. An Oration pronounced before the Inhabitants of Boston, July 4, 1825 3 On Intemperance. An Address delivered before the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, 1827 31 POEMS POEMS. CURIOSITY. Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University. 1829. IT came from Heaven its power archangels knew When this fair globe first rounded to their view ; When the young sun revealed the glorious scene Where oceans gathered and where lands grew green ; When the dead dust in joyful myriads swarmed, And man, the clod, with God s own breath was warmed. It reigned in Eden when that man first woke, Its kindling influence from his eye-balls spoke ; No roving childhood, no exploring youth Led him along, till wonder chilled to truth ; Full-formed at once, his subject world he trod, And gazed upon the labors of his God ; On all, by turns, his chartered glance was cast, While each pleased best as each appeared the last ; But when She came, in nature s blameless pride, Bone of his bone, his Heaven-anointed bride, All meaner objects faded from his sight, And sense turned giddy with the new delight ; 10 CUKIOSITY. Those charmed his eye, but this entranced his soul, Another self, queen- wonder of the whole ! Rapt at the view, in ecstasy he stood, And, like his Maker, saw that all was good. It reigned in Eden in that heavy hour When the arch-tempter sought our mother s bower, Its thrilling charm her yielding heart assailed, And even o er dread Jehovah s word prevailed. There the fair tree in fatal beauty grew, And hung its mystic apples to her view : " Eat," breathed the fiend beneath his serpent guise, " Ye shall know all things ; gather, and be wise ! " Sweet on her ear the wily falsehood stole, And roused the Ruling Passion of her soul. "Ye shall become like God," transcendent fate ! That God s command forgot, she plucked and ate ; Ate, and her partner lured to share the crime, Whose woe, the legend saith, must live through time. For this they shrank before the Avenger s face ; For this He drove them from the sacred place ; For this came down the universal lot, To weep, to wander, die, and be forgot. It came from Heaven it reigned in Eden s shades- It roves on earth and every walk invades ; Childhood and age alike its influence own ; It haunts the beggar s nook, the monarch s throne ; Hangs o er the cradle, leans above the bier, Gazed on old Babel s tower and lingers here. CURIOSITY. 11 To all that s lofty, all that s low it turns, With terror curdles, and with rapture burns ; Now feels a seraph s throb, now less than man s, A reptile tortures and a planet scans ; Now idly joins in life s poor, passing jars, Now shakes creation off, and soars beyond the stars. Tis CURIOSITY who hath not felt Its spirit, and before its altar knelt ? In the pleased infant see its power expand, When first the coral fills his little hand ; Throned in his mother s lap, it dries each tear, As her sweet legend falls upon his ear ; Next it assails him in his top s strange hum, Breathes in his whistle, echoes in his drum ; Each gilded toy, that doting love bestows, He longs to break and every spring expose. Placed by your hearth, with what delight he pores O er the bright pages of his pictured stores ! How oft he steals upon your graver task, Of this to tell you, and of that to ask ! And, when the waning hour to-bedward bids, Though gentle sleep sit waiting on his lids, How winningly he pleads to gain you o er, That he may read one little story more ! Nor yet alone to toys and tales confined, It sits, dark brooding, o er his embryo mind : Take him between your knees, peruse his face, While all you know, or think you know, you trace ; 12 CURIOSITY. Tell him who spoke creation into birth, Arched the broad heavens, and spread the rolling earth, Who formed a pathway for the obedient sun, And bade the seasons in their circles run, Who filled the air, the forest, and the flood, And gave man all, for comfort, or for food ; Tell him they sprang at God s creating nod He stops you short with, " Father, who made God ? " Thus through life s stages may we mark the powei That masters man in every changing hour. It tempts him from the blandishments of home, Mountains to climb, and frozen seas to roam ; By air-blown bubbles buoyed, it bids him rise, And hang, an atom in the vaulted skies ; Lured by its charm, he sits and learns to trace The midnight wanderings of the orbs of space ; Boldly he knocks at wisdom s inmost gate, With nature counsels, and communes with fate ; Below, above, o er all he dares to rove, In all finds God, and finds that God all love. Turn to the world its curious dwellers view, Like Paul s Athenians, seeking Something New. Be it a bonfire s or a city s blaze, The gibbet s victim, or the nation s gaze, A female atheist, or a learned dog, A monstrous pumpkin, or a mammoth hog, A murder, or a muster, tis the same, Life s follies, glories, griefs, all feed the flame. CURIOSITY. 13 Hark, where the martial trumpet fills the air, How the roused multitude come round to stare ! Sport drops his ball, Toil throws his hammer by, Thrift breaks a bargain off, to please his eye ; Up fly the windows, even fair mistress cook, Though dinner burn, must run to take a look. In the thronged court the ruling passion read, Where Story dooms, where Wirt and Webster plead ; Yet kindred minds alone their flights shall trace, The herd press on to see a cut- throat s face. Around the gallows foot behold them draw, When the lost villain answers to the law ; Soft souls, how anxious on his pangs to gloat, When the vile cord shall tighten round his throat ! And ah ! each hard-bought stand to quit how grieved, As the sad rumor runs " The man s reprieved ! " See to the church the pious myriads pour, Squeeze through the aisles, and jostle round the door ; Does Langdon preach ? (I veil his quiet name, Who serves "his God, and cannot stoop to fame ;) No, tis some reverend mime, the latest rage, Who thumps the desk, that should have trod the stage ; Cant s veriest ranter crams a house, if new, When Paul himself, oft heard, would hardly fill a pew. Lo, where the Stage, the poor, degraded Stage, Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age ; There, where to raise the drama s moral tone Fool Harlequin usurps Apollo s throne ; There, where grown children gather round to praise The new-vamped legends of their nursery days ; 2 14 CURIOSITY. Where one loose scene shall turn more souls to shame, Than ten of Channing s lectures can reclaim ; There, where in idiot rapture we adore The herded vagabonds of every shore ; Women unsexed, who, lost to woman s pride, The drunkard s stagger ape, the bully s stride ; Pert, lisping girls, who, still in childhood s fetters, Babble of love, yet barely know their letters ; Neat-jointed mummers, mocking nature s shape, To prove how nearly man can match an ape ; Vaulters, who, rightly served at home, perchance Had dangled from the rope on which they dance ; Dwarfs, mimics, jugglers, all that yield content, Where Sin holds carnival, and Wit keeps lent ; Where, shoals on shoals, the modest million rush, One sex to laugh, and one to try to blush, When mincing Ravenot sports tight pantalettes, And turns fops heads while turning pirouettes ; There, at each ribald sally, where we hear The knowing giggle and the scurrile jeer, While from the intellectual gallery first Rolls the base plaudit, loudest at the worst. Gods ! who can grace yon desecrated dome, When he may turn his Shakspeare o er at home ? Who there can group the pure ones of his race, To see and hear what bids him veil his face ? Ask ye who can ? why, I, and you, and you ; No matter what the nonsense, if tis new. To Doctor Logic s wit our sons give ear ; They have no time for Hamlet, or for Lear ; CURIOSITY. 15 Our daughters turn from gentle Juliet s woe, To count the twirls of Almaviva s toe. Not theirs the blame who furnish forth the treat, But ours, who throng the board and grossly eat. We laud, indeed, the virtue-kindling Stage, And prate of Shakspeare and his deathless page ; But go, announce his best, on Cooper call, Cooper, 4 the noblest Roman of them all ; Where are the crowds so wont to choke the door ? Tis an old thing, they ve seen it all before. Pray Heaven, if yet indeed the Stage must stand, With guiltless mirth it may delight the land ; Far better else each scenic temple fall, And one approving silence curtain all. Despots to shame may yield their rising youth, But Freedom dwells with purity and truth ; Then make the effort, ye who rule the Stage With novel decency surprise the age ; Even Wit, so long forgot, may play its part, And Nature yet have power to melt the heart ; Perchance the listeners, to their instinct true, May fancy common sense twere surely Something New. Turn to the Press its teeming sheets survey, Big with the wonders of each passing day ; Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and wrecks, Harangues and hail-storms, brawls and broken necks ; Where half-fledged bards on feeble pinions seek An immortality of near a week ; 16 CURIOSITY. Where cruel eulogists the dead restore, In maudlin praise to martyr them once more ; Where ruffian slanderers wreak their coward spite, And need no venomed dagger while they write. There, (with a quill so noisy and so vain We almost hear the goose it clothed complain,) Where each hack scribe, as hate or interest burns, Toad or toad-eater, stains the page by turns ; Enacts virtu, usurps the critic s chair, Lauds a mock Guido, or a mouthing player ; Viceroys it o er the realms of prose and rhyme, Now puffs pert Pelham, now The Course of Time ; And, though ere Christmas both may be forgot, Vows this beats Milton, and that Walter Scott ; With Samson s vigor feels his nerves expand, To overthrow the nobles of the land ; Soils the green garlands that for Otis bloom, And plants a brier even on Cabot s tomb ; As turn the party coppers, heads or tails, And now this faction and now that prevails, Applauds to-day what yesterday he cursed, Lampoons the wisest, and extols the worst ; While hard to tell, so coarse a daub he lays, Which sullies most, the slander or the praise. Yet, sweet or bitter, hence what fountains burst, While still the more we drink the more we thirst ! Trade hardly deems the busy day begun, Till his keen eye along the page has run ; The blooming daughter throws her needle by, And reads her schoolmate s marriage with a sigh ; CURIOSITY. 17 While the grave mother puts her glasses on, And gives a tear to some old crony gone ; The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down, To know what last new folly fills the town : Lively or sad, life s meanest, mightiest things, The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings ; Nought comes amiss, we take the nauseous stuff, Verjuice or oil, a libel or a puff. Tis this sustains that coarse, licentious tribe Of tenth-rate type-men, gaping for a bribe ; That reptile race, with all that s good at strife, Who trail their slime through every walk of life ; Stain the white tablet where a great man s name Stands proudly chiseled by the hand of fame, Nor round the sacred fireside fear to crawl, But drop their venom there, and poison all. Tis Curiosity though in its round, Not one poor dupe the calumny has found, Still shall it live, and still new slanders breed ; What though we ne er believe, we buy and read : Like Scotland s war-cross, thrown from hand to hand, To rouse the angry passions of the land, So the black falsehood flies from ear to ear, While goodness grieves, but, grieving, still must hear. All are not such ? O no ; there are, thank Heaven, A nobler troop to whom this trust is given ; Who, all unbribed, on Freedom s ramparts stand, Faithful and firm, bright warders of the land. 2* 18 CURIOSITY. By them still lifts the Press its arm abroad, To guide all-curious man along life s road ; To cheer young Genius, Pity s tear to start, In truth s bold cause to rouse each fearless heart ; O er male and female quacks to shake the rod, And scourge the unsexed thing that scorns her God ; To hunt Corruption from his secret den, And show the monster up, the gaze of wondering men. How swells my theme ! how vain my power, I find, To track the windings of the curious mind ! Let aught be hid, though useless, nothing boots, Straightway it must be plucked up by the roots. How oft we lay the volume down to ask Of him, the victim in the Iron Mask ! The crusted medal rub with painful care, To spell the legend out that is not there ! With dubious gaze o er mossgrown tombstones bend To find a name the herald never penned ! Dig through the lava-deluged city s breast, Learn all we can, and wisely guess the rest ! Ancient or modern, sacred or profane, All must be known, and all obscure made plain ; If twas a pippin tempted Eve to sin, If glorious Byron drugged his muse with gin ; If Troy e er stood, if Shakspeare stole a deer, If Israel s missing tribes found refuge here ; If like a villain Captain Henry lied, If like a martyr Captain Morgan died. CURIOSITY. 19 Its aim oft idle, lovely in its end, We turn to look, then linger to befriend ; The maid of Egypt thus was led to save A nation s future leader from the wave : New things to hear when erst the Gentiles ran, Truth closed what Curiosity began. How many a noble art, now widely known, Owes its young impulse to this power alone ! Even in its slightest working we may trace A deed that changed the fortunes of a race ; Bruce, banned and hunted on his native soil, With curious eye surveyed a spider s toil ; Six times the little climber strove and failed ; Six times the chief before his foes had quailed ; " Once more," he cried, " in thine my doom I read, Once more I dare the fight, if thou succeed ; " Twas done the insect s fate he made his own, Once more the battle waged, and gained a throne. Behold the sick man in his easy chair ; Barred from the busy crowd and bracing air, How every passing trifle proves its power To while away the long, dull, lazy hour ! As down the pane the rival rain-drops chase, Curious he ll watch to see which wins the race ; And let two dogs beneath his window fight, He ll shut his Bible to enjoy the sight. So with each new-born nothing rolls the day, Till some kind neighbor, stumbling in his way, Draws up his chair, the sufferer to amuse, And makes him happy while he tells The News. 20 CURIOSITY. The News ! our morning, noon, and evening cry ; Day unto day repeats it till we die. For this the cit, the critic, and the fop Dally the hour away in Tonsor s shop ; For this the gossip takes her daily route, And wears your threshold and your patience out ; For this we leave the parson in the lurch, And pause to prattle on the way to church ; Even when some coffined friend we gather round, We ask, " What news ? " then lay him in the ground ; To this the breakfast owes its sweetest zest, For this the dinner cools, the bed remains unpressed. What gives each tale of scandal to the street, The kitchen s wonder and the parlor s treat ? See the pert housemaid to the keyhole fly, When husband storms, wife frets, or lovers sigh ; See Tom your pockets ransack for each note, And read your secrets while he cleans your coat ; See, yes, to listen, see even Madam deign, W T hen the smug sempstress pours her ready strain. This wings the lie that malice breeds in fear, No tongue so vile but finds a kindred ear ; Swift flies each tale of laughter, shame, or folly, Caught by Paul Pry and carried home to Polly ; On this each foul calumniator leans, And nods and hints the villany he means ; Full well he knows what latent wildfire lies In the close whisper and the dark surmise ; A muffled word, a wordless wink, has woke A warmer throb than if a Dexter spoke ; CURIOSITY. 21 And he, o er Everett s periods who would nod, To track a secret half the town has trod. O Thou, from whose rank breath nor sex can save, Nor sacred virtue, nor the powerless grave, Felon unwhipped ! than whom in yonder cells, Full many a groaning wretch less guilty dwells, Blush if of honest blood a drop remains, To steal its lonely way along thy veins ; Blush if the bronze, long hardened on thy cheek, Has left a spot where that poor drop can speak ; Blush to be branded with the Slanderer s name, And though thou dread st not sin, at least dread shame. We hear, indeed, but shudder while we hear The insidious falsehood and the heartless jeer ; For each dark libel that thou lick st to shape, Thou mayst from law, but not from scorn escape ; The pointed finger, cold, averted eye, Insulted virtue s hiss thou canst not fly. The churl, who holds it heresy to think, Who loves no music but the dollar s clink, Who laughs to scorn the wisdom of the schools, And deems the first of poets first of fools, Who never found what good from science grew, Save the grand truth, that one and one are two, And marvels Bowditch o er a book should pore, Unless to make those two turn into four ; Who, placed where CatskilPs forehead greets the sky, Grieves that such quarries all unhewn should lie ; 22 CURIOSITY. Or, gazing where Niagara s torrents thrill, Exclaims, " A monstrous stream to turn a mill ; " Who loves to feel the blessed winds of heaven But as his freighted barks are portward driven ; Even he, across whose brain scarce dares to creep Aught but thrift s parent pair to get, to keep ; Who never learned life s real bliss to know With Curiosity even he can glow. Go, seek him out on yon dear Gotham s walk, Where traffic s venturers meet to trade and talk ; Where Mammon s votaries bend, of each degree, The hard-eyed lender, and the pale lendee ; Where rogues insolvent strut in white-washed pride, And shove the dupes who trusted them aside. How through the buzzing crowd he threads his way, To catch the flying rumors of the day ; To learn of changing stocks, of bargains crossed, Of breaking merchants, and of cargoes lost ; The thousand ills that traffic s walks invade, And give the heartache to the sons of trade ! How cold he hearkens to some bankrupt s woe, Nods his wise head, and cries "I told you so ; " The thriftless fellow lived beyond his means ; " He must buy brants I make my folks eat beans ; " What cares he for the knave, the knave s sad wife, The blighted prospects of an anxious life ? The kindly throbs that other men control, Ne er melt the iron of the miser s soul ; Through life s dark road his sordid way he wends, An incarnation of fat dividends ; CURIOSITY. 23 But when to death he sinks, ungrieved, unsung, Buoyed by the blessing of no mortal tongue, No worth rewarded and no want redressed, To scatter fragrance round his place of rest, What shall that hallowed epitaph supply The universal woe when good men die ? Cold Curiosity shall linger there, To guess the wealth he leaves his tearless heir ; Perchance to wonder what must be his doom, In the far land that lies beyond the tomb ; Alas ! for him, if, in its awful plan, Heaven deal with him as he hath dealt with man. Child of romance, these work-day scenes you spurn, For loftier things your finer pulses burn ; Through nature s walks your curious way you take, Gaze on her glowing bow, her glittering flake, Her spring s first cheerful green, her autumn s last, Born in the breeze, or dying in the blast; You climb the mountain s everlasting wall, You linger where the thunder-waters fall, You love to wander by old ocean s side, And hold communion with its sullen tide ; Washed to your foot some fragment of a wreck, Fancy shall build again the crowded deck That trod the waves, till mid the tempest s frown The sepulchre of living men went down. Yet Fancy, with her milder, tenderer glow, But dreams what Curiosity would know ; Ye would stand listening, as the booming gun Proclaimed the work of agony half done ; 24 CURIOSITY. There would you drink each drowning seaman s cry, As wild to Heaven he cast his frantic eye ; Though vain all aid, though pity s blood ran cold, The mortal havoc ye would dare behold ; Still Curiosity would wait and weep, Till all sank down to slumber in the deep. Nor yet appeased the spirit s restless glow, Ye would explore the gloomy waste below ; There, where the joyful sunbeams never fell, Where ocean s unrecorded monsters dwell ; Where sleep earth s precious things, her rifled gold, Bones bleached by ages, bodies hardly cold, Of those who bowed to fate in every form, By battle -strife, by pirate, or by storm ; The sailor-chief, who freedom s foes defied, Wrapped in the sacred flag for which he died ; The wretch, thrown over to the midnight foam, Stabbed in his blessed dreams of love and home ; The mother, with her fleshless arms still clasped Round the scared infant that in death she grasped ; On these, and sights like these, ye long to gaze, The mournful trophies of uncounted days ; All that the miser deep has brooded o er, Since its first billow rolled to find a shore. Once more the Press not that which daily flings Its fleeting ray across life s fleeting things See tomes on tomes of fancy and of power, To cheer man s heaviest, warm his holiest hour. CURIOSITY. 25 Now Fiction s groves we tread, where young Romance Laps the glad senses in her sweetest trance ; Now through earth s cold, unpeopled realms we range, And mark each rolling century s awful change ; Turn back the tide of ages to its head, And hoard the wisdom of the honored dead. Twas heaven to lounge upon a couch, said Gray, And read new novels through a rainy day. Add but the Spanish weed, the bard was right ; Tis heaven, the upper heaven of calm delight, The world forgot, to sit at ease reclined, While round one s head the smoky perfumes wind, Firm in one hand the ivory folder grasped, Scott s uncut latest by the other clasped, Tis heaven, the glowing, graphic page to turn, And feel within the ruling passion burn ; Now through the dingles of his own bleak isle, And now through lands that wear a sunnier smile, To follow him, that all-creative one, Who never found a " brother near his throne." Look now, directed by yon candle s blaze, Where the false shutter half its trust betrays Mark that fair girl reclining in her bed, Its curtain round her polished shoulders spread. Dark midnight reigns, the storm is up in power ; What keeps her waking in that dreary hour ? See where the volume on her pillow lies Claims RadclhTe or Chapone those frequent sighs ? 3 26 CURIOSITY. Tis some wild legend now her kind eye fills, And now cold terror every fibre chills ; Still she reads on in Fiction s labyrinth lost, Of tyrant fathers, and of true love crossed ; Of clanking fetters, low, mysterious groans, Blood-crusted daggers, and uncoffined bones, Pale, gliding ghosts, with fingers dropping gore, And blue flames dancing round a dungeon door ; Still she reads on even though to read she fears, And in each key-hole moan strange voices hears, While every shadow that withdraws her look, Glares in her face, the goblin of her book ; Still o er the leaves her craving eye is cast, On all she feasts, yet hungers for the last ; Counts what remain, now sighs there are no more, And now even those half tempted to skip o er ; At length, the bad all killed, the good all pleased, Her thirsting Curiosity appeased, She shuts the dear, dear book, that made her weep, Puts out her light, and turns away to sleep. Her bright, her bloody records to unroll, See History come, and wake the inquiring soul. How bounds the bosom at each wondrous deed Of those who founded, and of those who freed ; The good, the valiant of our own loved clime, Whose names shall brighten through the clouds of time ! How rapt we linger o er the volumed lore That tracks the glories of each distant shore ! CURIOSITY. 27 In all their grandeur and in all their gloom, The throned, the thralled, rise dimly from the tomb ; Chiefs, sages, bards, the giants of their race, Earth s monarch men, her greatness and her grace. Warmed as we read, the penman s page we spurn, And to each near, each far arena turn ; Here, where the Pilgrim s altar first was built, Here, where the patriot s life-blood first was spilt ; There, where new empires spread along each spot Where old ones flourished but to be forgot, Or, direr judgment, spared to fill a page, And with their errors warn an after age. And where is he, upon that Rock can stand, Nor with their firmness feel his heart expand, Who a new empire planted where they trod, And gave it to their children and their God ? Who yon immortal mountain-shrine hath pressed, With saintlier relics stored than priest e er blessed, But felt each grateful pulse more warmly glow, In voiceless reverence for the dead below ? Who, too, by Curiosity led on, To tread the shores of kingdoms come and gone, Where Faith her martyrs to the fagot led, Where Freedom s champions on the scaffold bled, Where ancient Power, though stripped of ancient fame, Curbed, but not crushed, still lives for guilt and shame, But prouder, happier, turns on home to gaze, And thanks his God who gave him better days ? 28 CURIOSITY. Undraw yon curtain, look within that room, Where all is splendor, yet where all is gloom. Why weeps that mother ? Why, in pensive mood, Group noiseless round, that little, lovely brood ? The battledoor is still, laid by each book, And the harp slumbers in its customed nook. Who hath done this ? What cold, unpitying foe Hath made this house the dwelling-place of woe ? Tis he, the husband, father, lost in care O er that sweet fellow in his cradle there. The gallant bark that rides by yonder strand, Bears him to-morrow from his native land. Why turns he, half unwilling, from his home, To tempt the ocean, and the earth to roam ? Wealth he can boast a miser s sigh would hush, And health is laughing in that ruddy blush ; Friends spring to greet him, and he has no foe So honored and so blessed, what bids him go ? His eye must see, his foot each spot must tread, Where sleeps the dust of earth s recorded dead ; Where rise the monuments of ancient time, Pillar and pyramid in age sublime ; Tlie pagan s temple and the churchman s tower, War s bloodiest plain and wisdom s greenest bower ; All that his wonder woke in school-boy themes, All that his fancy fired in youthful dreams. Where Socrates once taught he thirsts to stray, Where Homer poured his everlasting lay ; From Virgil s tomb he longs to pluck one flower, By Avon s stream to live one moonlight hour ; CURIOSITY. 29 To pause "where England " garners up " her great, And drop a patriot s tear to Milton s fate. Fame s living masters, too, he must behold, Whose deeds shall blazon with the best of old ; Nations compare, their laws and customs scan, And read, wherever spread, the book of Man. For these he goes, self-banished from his hearth, And wrings the hearts of all he loves on earth. Yet say, shall not new joy those hearts inspire, When grouping round the future winter fire, To hear the wonders of the world they burn, And lose his absence in his glad return ? Return ? alas ! he shall return no more, To bless his own sweet home, his own proud shore. Look once again cold in his cabin now, Death s finger-mark is on his pallid brow ; No wife stood by, her patient watch to keep, To smile on him, then turn away to weep ; Kind woman s place rough mariners supplied, And shared the wanderer s blessing when he died. Wrapped in the raiment that it long must wear, His body to the deck they slowly bear. Even there the spirit that I sing is true ; The crew look on with sad, but curious view ; The setting sun flings round his farewell rays, O er the broad ocean not a ripple plays ; How eloquent, how awful in its power, The silent lecture of death s Sabbath-hour ! 3* 30 CURIOSITY. One voice that silence breaks the prayer is said, And the last rite man pays to man is paid ; The plashing waters mark his resting-place, And fold him round in one long, cold embrace ; Bright bubbles for a moment sparkle o er, Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more ; Down, countless fathoms down, he sinks to sleep, With all the nameless shapes that haunt the deep. " Alps rise on Alps " in vain my muse essays To lay the spirit that she dared to raise. What spreading scenes of rapture and of woe, With rose and cypress, lure me as I go ! In every question and in every glance, In folly s wonder and in wisdom s trance, In all of life, nor yet of life alone, In all beyond, this mighty power we own. We would unclasp the mystic book of fate, And trace the paths of all we love and hate ; The father s heart would learn his children s doom, Even when that heart is crumbling in the tomb ; If they must sink in guilt, or soar to fame, And leave a hated or a hallowed name ; By hope elated, or depressed by doubt, Even in the death-pang he would find it out What boots it to your dust, your son were born An empire s idol or a rabble s scorn ? Think ye the franchised spirit shall return, To share his triumph, his disgrace to mourn ? CURIOSITY. 31 Ah, Curiosity ! by thee inspired, This truth to know how oft has man inquired ! And is it fancy all ? can reason say Earth s loves must moulder with earth s mouldering clay ? That death can chill the father s sacred glow, And hush the throb that none but mothers know ? Must we believe those tones of dear delight, The morning welcome and the sweet good-night, The kind monition and the well-earned praise, That won and warmed us in our earlier days, Turned, as they fell, to cold and common air ? Speak, proud Philosophy ! the truth declare ! Yet no ; the fond delusion, if no more, We would not yield for wisdom s cheerless lore ; A tender creed they hold, who dare believe The dead return, with them to joy or grieve. How sweet, while lingering slow on shore or hill, When all the pleasant sounds of earth are still, When the round moon rolls through the unpillared skies, And stars look down as they were angels eyes, How sweet to deem our lost, adored ones nigh, And hear their voices in the night wind s sigh ! Full many an idle dream that hope had broke, And the awed heart to holy goodness woke ; Full many a felon s guilt in thought had died, Feared he his father s spirit by his side ; Then let that fear, that hope, control the rnind, Still let us question, still no answer find ; Let Curiosity of Heaven inquire, Nor earth s cold dogmas quench the ethereal fire. 32 . CURIOSITY. Nor even to life, nor death, nor time confined The dread Hereafter fills the exploring mind ; We burst the grave, profane the coffin s lid, Unwisely ask of all so wisely hid ; Eternity s dark record we would read, Mysteries, unravelled yet by mortal creed ; Of life to come, unending joy and woe, And all that holy wranglers dream below ; To find their jarring dogmas out we long, Or which is right, or whether all be wrong ; Things of an hour, we would invade His throne, And find out Him, the Everlasting One ! Faith we may boast, undarkcned by a doubt, We thirst to find each awful secret out ; Hope may sustain, and innocence impart Her sweet specific to the fearless heart, The inquiring spirit will not be controlled, We would make certain all, and all behold. Unfathomed well-head of the boundless soul ! Whose living waters lure us as they roll, From thy pure wave one cheering hope we draw Man, man, at least, shall spurn proud Nature s law. All that have breath, but he, lie down content, Life s purpose served, indeed, when life is spent ; All as in Paradise the same are found ; The beast, whose footstep shakes the solid ground, The insect, living on a summer spire, The bird, whose pinion courts the sunbeam s fire ; In lair and nest, in way and want, the same As when their sires sought Adam for a name ; CURIOSITY. 33 Their be-all and their end-all here below, They nothing need beyond, nor need to know ; Earth and her hoards their every want supply, They revel, rest, then fearless, hopeless, die. But Man, his Maker s likeness, lord of earth, Who owes to Nature little but his birth. Shakes down, her puny chains, her wants, and woes, One world subdues, and for another glows. See him, the feeblest, in his cradle laid ; See him, the mightiest, in his mind arrayed ! How wide tfcfe gulf he clears, how bold the flight That bears him upward to the realms of light ! By restless (Curiosity inspired, Through all his subject world he roves untired ; Looks back and scans the infant days of yore, On to the time when time shall be no more ; Even in life s parting throb its spirit burns, And, shut from earth, to heaven more warmly turns. Shall he alone, of mortal dwellers here, . Thus soar aloft, to sink in mid-career ? Less favored than a worm, shall his stern doom Lock up these seraph longings in the tomb ? O Thou, whose fingers raised us from the dust, Till there we .sleep again, be this our trust: This sacred hunger marks the immortal mind ; By Thee twas given, for Thee, for Heaven designed : There the rapt spirit, from earth s grossness freed, Shall see, and know, and be like Thee indeed. 34 CURIOSITY. Here let me pause no further I rehearse What claims a loftier soul, a nobler verse ; The mountain s foot I have but loitered round, Not dared to scale its highest, holiest ground ; But ventured on the pebbly shore to stray, While the broad ocean all before me lay ; How bright the boundless prospect there on high ! How rich the pearls that here all hidden lie ! But not for me to life s coarse service sold, Where thought lies barren, and nought breeds but gold - 1 Tis yours, ye favored ones, at whose command, From the cold world I ventured, here to stand : Ye who were lapped in Wisdom s murmuring bowers, Who still to bright improvement yield your hours ; To you the privilege and the power belong To give my theme the grace of living song ; Yours be the flapping of the eagle s wing, To dare the loftiest crag, and heavenward spring ; Mine the light task to hop from spray to spray, Blest if I charm one summer hour away. One summer hour its golden sands have run, And the poor labor of the bard is done Yet, ere I fling aside my humble lyre, Let one fond wish its trembling strings inspire ; Fancy the task to Feeling shall resign, And the heart prompt the warm, untutored line. Peace to this ancient spot ! here, as of old, May Learning dwell, and all her stores unfold ; CURIOSITY. 35 Still may her priests around these altars stand, And train to truth the children of the land ; Bright be their paths, within these shades who rest, These brother-bands beneath his guidance blessed, Who, with their fathers, here turned wisdom s page, Who comes to them the Statesman and the Sage. Praise be his portion in his labors here, The praise that cheered a Kirklarid s mild career ; The love that finds in every breast a shrine, When zeal and gentleness with wisdom join. Here may he sit, while race succeeding race Go proudly forth his parent care to grace ; In head and heart by him prepared to rise, To take their stations with the good and wise : This crowning recompense to him be given, To see them guard on earth and guide to heaven. Thus in their talents, in their virtues blessed, O be his ripest years his happiest and his best ! SHAKSPEARE ODE, Delivered at the Boston Theatre in 1823, at the Exhibition of a Pageant in Honor of Shakspeare. GOD of the glorious Lyre ! Whose notes of old on lofty Pindus rang, While Jove s exulting choir Caught the glad echoes and responsive sang Come ! bless the service and the shrine We consecrate to thee and thine. Fierce from the frozen north, When Havoc led his legions forth, O er Learning s sunny groves the dark destroyers spread ; In dust the sacred statue slept, Fair Science round her altars wept, And Wisdom cowled his head. At length, Olympian lord of morn, The raven veil of night was torn, When, through golden clouds descending, Thou didst hold thy radiant flight, O er Nature s lovely pageant bending, Till Avon rolled, all-sparkling, to thy sight ! SHAKSPEAREODE. 37 There, on its bank, beneath the mulberry s shade, Wrapped in young dreams, a wild-eyed minstrel strayed. Lighting there, and lingering long, Thou didst teach the bard his song ; Thy fingers strung his sleeping shell, And round his brows a garland curled ; On his lips thy spirit fell, And bade him wake and warm the world ! Then Shakspeare rose ! Across the trembling strings His daring hand he flings, And lo ! a new creation glows ! There, clustering round, submissive to his will, Fate s vassal train his high commands fulfil. Madness, with his frightful scream, Vengeance, leaning on his lance, Avarice, with his blade and beam, Hatred, blasting with a glance, Remorse that weeps, and Rage that roars, And Jealousy that dotes, but dooms, and murders, yet adores. Mirth, his face with sunbeams lit, Waking laughter s merry swell, Arm in arm with fresh-eyed Wit, That waves his tingling lash, while Folly shakes his bell. Despair, that haunts the gurgling stream, Kissed by the virgin moon s cold beam, 4 38 SHAKSPEAREODE. Where some lost maid wild chaplets wreathes, And, swan-like, there her own dirge breathes, Then, broken-hearted, sinks to rest, Beneath the bubbling wave, that shrouds her maniac breast. Young Love, with, eye of tender gloom, Now drooping o er the hallowed tomb Where his plighted victims lie Where they met, but met to die ; And now, when crimson buds are sleeping, Through the dewy arbor peeping, Where Beauty s child, the frowning world forgot, To Youth s devoted tale is listening, Rapture on her dark lash glistening, While fairies leave their cowslip cells and guard the happy spot. Thus rise the phantom throng, Obedient to their Master s song, And lead in willing chain the wondering soul along. For other worlds war s Great One sighed in vain O er other worlds see Shakspeare rove and reign ! The rapt magician of his own wild lay, Earth and her tribes his mystic wand obey. Old Ocean trembles, Thunder cracks the skies, Air teems with shapes, and telltale spectres rise ; Night s paltering hags their fearful orgies keep, And faithless Guilt unseals the lip of Sleep ; Time yields his trophies up, and Death restores The mouldered victims of his voiceless shores. SHAKSPEAREODE. 39 The fireside legend and the faded page, The crime that cursed, the deed that blessed an age, All, all come forth the good to charm and cheer, To scourge bold Vice, and start the generous tear ; With pictured Folly gazing fools to shame, And guide young Glory s foot along the path of fame. Lo ! hand in hand, Hell s juggling sisters stand To greet their victim from the fight ; Grouped on the blasted heath, They tempt him to the work of death, Then melt in air, and mock his wondering sight. In midnight s hallowed hour He seeks the fatal tower, Where the lone raven, perched on high, Pours to the sullen gale Her hoarse, prophetic wail, And croaks the dreadful moment nigh. See, by the phantom dagger led, Pale, guilty thing, Slowly he steals with silent tread, And grasps his coward steel to smite his sleeping king. Hark ! tis the signal bell, Struck by that bold and unsexed one Whose milk is gall, whose heart is stone ; His ear hath caught the knell Tis done ! tis done ! Behold him from, the chamber rushing Where his dead monarch s blood is gushing ; 40 SHAKSPEAREODE. Look where he trembling stands, Sad gazing there, Life s smoking crimson on his hands, And in his felon heart the worm of wild despair. Mark the sceptred traitor slumbering ! There flit the slaves of conscience round, With boding tongue foul murderers numbering ; Sleep s leaden portals catch the sound. In his dream of blood for mercy quaking, At his own dull scream behold him waking ! Soon that dream to fate shall turn, For him the living furies burn ; For him the vulture sits on yonder misty peak, And chides the lagging night, and whets her hungry beak. Hark ! the trumpet s warning breath Echoes round the vale of death. Unhorsed, unhelmed, disdaining shield, The panting tyrant scours the field. Vengeance ! he meets thy dooming blade ! The scourge of earth, the scorn of Heaven, He falls ! unwept and unforgiven, And all his guilty glories fade. Like a crushed reptile in the dust he lies, And Hate s last lightning quivers from his eyes ! Behold yon crownless king Yon white-locked, weeping sire Where heaven s unpillared chambers ring, And burst their streams of flood and fire ! SHAKSPEAREODE. 41 He gave them all the daughters of his love ; That recreant pair ! they drive him forth to rove ; In such a night of woe, The cubless regent of the wood Forgets to bathe her fangs in blood, And caverns with her foe ! Yet one was ever kind ; Why lingers she behind ? O pity ! view him by her dead form kneeling, Even in wild frenzy holy nature feeling. His aching eye -balls strain To see those curtained orbs unfold, That beauteous bosom heave again ; But all is dark and cold. In agony the father shakes ; Grief s choking note Swells in his throat, Each withered heart-string tugs and breaks ! Round her pale neck his dying arms he wreathes, And on her marble lips his last, his death-kiss breathes. Down, trembling wing ! shall insect weakness keep The sun-defying eagle s sweep ? A mortal strike celestial strings, And feebly echo what a seraph sings ? Who now shall grace the glowing throne, Where, all unrivaled, all alone, Bold Shakspeare sat, and looked creation through, The minstrel monarch of the worlds he drew ? 4* 42 SHAKSPEARE ODE. That throne is cold that lyre in death unstrung, On whose proud note delighted Wonder hung. Yet old Oblivion, as in wrath he sweeps, One spot shall spare the grave where Shakspeare sleeps. Rulers and ruled in common gloom may lie, But Nature s laureate bards shall never die. Art s chiseled boast and Glory s trophied shore Must live in numbers, or can live no more. While sculptured Jove some nameless waste may claim, Still rolls the Olympic car in Pindar s fame ; Troy s doubtful walls in ashes passed away, . Yet frown on Greece in Homer s deathless lay ; Rome, slowly sinking in her crumbling fanes, Stands all immortal in her Maro s strains ; So, too, yon giant empress of the isles, On whose broad sway the sun forever smiles, To Time s unsparing rage one day must bend, And all her triumphs in her Shakspeare end ! O thou ! to whose creative power We dedicate the festal hour, While Grace and Goodness round the altar stand, Learning s anointed train, and Beauty s rose-lipped band Realms yet unborn, in accents now unknown, Thy song shall learn, and bless it for their own. Deep in the West, as Independence roves, His banners planting round the land he loves, Where Nature sleeps in Eden s infant grace, In time s full hour shall spring a glorious race. SHAKSPEARE ODE. 43 Thy name, thy verse, thy language shall they bear, And deck for thee the vaulted temple there. Our Roman-hearted fathers broke Thy parent empire s galling yoke ; But thou, harmonious master of the mind, Around their sons a gentler chain shalt bind ; Once more in thee shall Albion s sceptre wave, And what her Monarch lost, her Monarch-Bard shall save. ODE, Pronounced at the Centennial Celebration of the Settlement of Boston, September, 1830. I. NOT to the Pagan s mount I turn For inspiration now ; Olympus and its gods I spurn Pure One, be with me, Thou ! Thou, in whose awful name, From suffering and from shame, Our Fathers fled, and braved a pathless sea ; Thou, in whose holy fear, They fixed an empire here, And gave it to their Children and to Thee. II. And You ! ye bright ascended Dead, Who scorned the bigot s yoke, Come, round this place your influence shed ; Your spirits I invoke. Come, as ye came of yore, When on an unknown shore CENTENNIAL ODE. 45 Your daring hands the flag of faith unfurled, To float sublime, Through future time The beacon-banner of another world. III. Behold ! they come those sainted forms, Unshaken through the strife of storms ; Heaven s winter cloud hangs coldly down, And earth puts on its rudest frown ; But colder, ruder was the hand That drove them from their own fair land ; Their own fair land refinement s chosen seat, Art s trophied dwelling, learning s green retreat ; By valor guarded, and by victory crowned, For all, but gentle charity, renowned. With streaming eye, yet steadfast heart, Even from that land they dared to part, And burst each tender tie ; Haunts, where their sunny youth was passed, Homes, where they fondly hoped at last In peaceful age to die. Friends, kindred, comfort, all they spurned ; Their fathers hallowed graves ; And to a world of darkness turned, Beyond a world of waves. IV. When Israel s race from bondage fled, Signs from on high the wanderers led ; 46 CENTENNIAL ODE. But here Heaven hung no symbol here, Their steps to guide, their souls to cheer ; They saw, through sorrow s lengthening night, Nought but the fagot s guilty light ; The cloud they gazed at was the smoke That round their murdered brethren broke. Nor power above, nor power below, Sustained them in their hour of woe ; A fearful path they trod, And dared a fearful doom ; To build an altar to their God, And find a quiet tomb. V. But not alone, not all unblessed, The exile sought a place of rest ; ONE dared with him to burst the knot That bound her to her native spot ; Her low, sweet voice in comfort spoke, As round their bark the billows broke ; She through the midnight watch was there, With him to bend her knees in prayer ; She trod the shore with girded heart, Through good and ill to claim her part ; In life, in death, with him to seal Her kindred love, her kindred zeal. VI. They come ; that coming who shall tell ? The eye may weep, the heart may swell, CENTENNIALODE. 47 But the poor tongue in vain essays A fitting note for them to raise. We hear the after-shout that rings For them who smote the power of kings ; The swelling triumph all would share, But who the dark defeat would dare, And boldly meet the wrath and woe, That wait the unsuccessful blow ? It were an envied fate, we deem, To live a land s recorded theme, When we are in the tomb ; We, too, might yield the joys of home, And waves of winter darkness roam, And tread a shore of gloom Knew we those waves, through coming time, Should roll our names to every clime ; Felt we that millions on that shore Should stand, our memory to adore. But no glad vision burst in light Upon the Pilgrims aching sight ; Their hearts no proud hereafter swelled ; Deep shadows veiled the way they held ; The yell of vengeance was their trump of fame, Their monument, a grave without a name. VII. Yet, strong in weakness, there they stand, On yonder ice-bound rock, Stern and resolved, that faithful band, To meet fate s rudest shock. 48 CENTENNIAL ODE. Though anguish rends the father s breast, For them, his dearest and his best, With him the waste who trod Though tears that freeze, the mother sheds Upon her children s houseless heads The Christian turns to God ! VIII. In grateful adoration now, Upon the barren sands they bow. What tongue of joy e er woke such prayer As bursts in desolation there ? What arm of strength e er wrought such power, As waits to crown that feeble hour ? There into life an infant empire springs ! There falls the iron from the soul ; There liberty s young accents roll Up to the King of kings ! To fair creation s farthest bound That thrilling summons yet shall sound ; The dreaming nations shall awake, And to their centre earth s old kingdoms shake. Pontiff and prince, your sway Must crumble from that day ; Before the loftier throne of Heaven The hand is raised, the pledge is given One monarch to obey, one creed to own, That monarch, God ; that creed, His word alone. CENTENNIALODE. 49 IX. Spread out earth s holiest records here, Of days and deeds to reverence dear ; A zeal like this what pious legends tell ? On kingdoms built In blood and guilt, The worshippers of vulgar triumph dwell But what exploit with theirs shall page, Who rose to bless their kind Who left their nation and their age, Man s spirit to unbind ? Who boundless seas passed o er, And boldly met, in every path, Famiue, and frost, and heathen wrath, To dedicate a shore, Where piety s meek train might breathe their vow, And seek their Maker with an unshamed brow ; Where liberty s glad race might proudly come, And set up there an everlasting home ? X. O, many a time it hath been told, The story of those men of old. For this fair Poetry hath wreathed Her sweetest, purest flower ; For this proud Eloquence hath breathed His strain of loftiest power ; Devotion, too, hath lingered round Each spot of consecrated ground, 5 50 CENTENNIAL ODE. And hill and valley blessed ; There, where our banished Fathers strayed, There, where they loved, and wept, and prayed, There, where their ashes rest. XI. And never may they rest unsung, While liberty can find a tongue. Twine, Gratitude, a wreath for them More deathless than the diadem, Who, to life s noblest end, Gave up life s noblest powers, And bade the legacy descend Down, down to us and ours. XII. By centuries now the glorious hour we mark, When to these shores they steered their shattered bark ; And still, as other centuries melt away, Shall other ages come to keep the day. When we are dust, who gather round this spot, Our joys, our griefs, our very names forgot, Here shall the dwellers of the land be seen, To keep the memory of the Pilgrims green. Nor here alone their praises shall go round, Nor here alone their virtues shall abound Broad as the empire of the free shall spread, Far as the foot of man shall dare to tread, Where oar hath never dipped, where human tongue Hath never through the woods of ages rung, CENTENNIALODE. 51 There, where the eagle s scream and wild wolfs cry Keep ceaseless day and night through earth and sky, Even there, in after time, as toil and taste Go forth in gladness to redeem the waste, Even there shall rise, as grateful myriads throng, Faith s holy prayer and freedom s joyful song ; There shall the flame that flashed from yonder ROCK, Light up the land, till nature s final shock. XIII. Yet while, by life s endearments crowned, To mark this day we gather round, And to our nation s founders raise The voice of gratitude and praise, Shall not one line lament that lion race, For us struck out from sweet creation s face ? Alas ! alas ! for them those fated bands, Whose monarch tread was on these broad, green lands ; Our Fathers called them savage them, whose bread, In the dark hour, those famished Fathers fed ; We call them savage, we, Who hail the struggling free, Of every clime and hue ; We, who would save The branded slave, And give him liberty he never knew ; We, who but now have caught the tale That turns each listening tyrant pale, And blessed the winds and waves that bore The tidings to our kindred shore ; 52 CENTENNIAL^ODE. The triumph-tidings pealing from that land Where up in arms insulted legions stand ; There, gathering round his bold compeers, Where He, our own, our welcomed One, Riper in glory than in years, Down from his forfeit throne A craven monarch hurled, And spurned him forth, a proverb to the world ! XIV. We call them savage O, be just ! Their outraged feelings scan ; A voice comes forth, tis from the dust The savage was a man ! Think ye he loved not ? Who stood by, And in his toils took part ? Woman was there to bless his eye The savage had a heart ! Think ye he prayed not ? When on high He heard the thunders roll, What bade him look beyond the sky ? The savage had a soul ! XV. I venerate the Pilgrim s cause, Yet for the red man dare to plead We bow to Heaven s recorded laws, He turned to nature for a creed ; Beneath the pillared dome, We seek our God in prayer ; CENTENNIAL OI>E. 53 Through boundless woods he loved to roam. And the Great Spirit worshipped there. But one, one fellow-throb with us he felt ; To one divinity with us he knelt ; Freedom, the self-same freedom we adore, Bade him defend his violated shore. He saw the cloud, ordained to grow, And burst upon his hills in woe ; He saw his people withering by, Beneath the invader s evil eye ; Strange feet were trampling on his fathers bones ; At midnight hour he woke to gaze Upon his happy cabin s blaze, And listen to his children s dying groans. He saw and maddening at the sight, Gave his bold bosom to the fight ; To tiger rage his soul was driven ; Mercy was not nor sought nor given ; The pale man from his lands must fly ; He would be free or he would die. XVI. And was this savage ? say, Ye ancient few, Who struggled through Young freedom s trial-day What first your sleeping wrath awoke ? On your own shores war s larum broke ; What turned to gall even kindred blood ? Round your own homes the oppressor stood ; 5* 54 CENTENNIALODE. This every warm affection chilled, This every heart with vengeance thrilled, And strengthened eveiy hand ; From mound to mound The word went round " Death for our native land ! " XVII. Ye mothers, too, breathe ye no sigh For them who thus could dare to die ? Are all your own dark hours forgot, Of soul-sick suffering here ? Your pangs, as from yon mountain spot, Death spoke in every booming shot, That knelled upon your ear ? How oft that gloomy, glorious tale ye tell, As round your knees your children s children hang, Of them, the gallant Ones, ye loved so well, Who to the conflict for their country sprang ! In pride, in all the pride of woe, Ye tell of them, the brave laid low, Who for their birthplace bled ; In pride, the pride of triumph then, Ye tell of them, the matchless men, From whom the invaders fled. XVIII. And ye, this holy place who throng, The annual theme to hear, And bid the exulting song Sound their great names from year to yea, CENTENNIAL ODE. 55 Ye, who invoke the chisel s breathing grace, In marble majesty their forms to trace ; Ye, who the sleeping rocks would raise, To guard their dust and speak their praise ; Ye, who, should some other band With hostile foot defile the land, Feel that ye like them would wake, Like them the yoke of bondage break, Nor leave a battle-blade undrawn, Though every hill a sepulchre should yawn Say, have not ye one line for those, One brother-line to spare, Who rose but as your Fathers rose, And dared as ye would dare ? XIX. Alas ! for them their day is o er, Their fires are out from hill and shore ; No more for them the wild deer bounds ; The plough is on their hunting-grounds ; The pale man s axe rings through their woods, The pale man s sail skims o er their floods, Their pleasant springs are dry ; Their children look, by power oppressed, Beyond the mountains of the west, Their children go to die. XX. doubly lost ! oblivion s shadows close Around their triumphs and their woes. 56 CENTENNIAL ODE. On other realms, whose suns have set, Reflected radiance lingers yet ; There sage and bard have shed a light That never shall go down in night ; There time-crowned columns stand on high, To tell of them who cannot die ; Even we, who then were nothing, kneel In homage there, and join earth s general peal. But the doomed Indian leaves behind no trace, To save his own, or serve another race ; With his frail breath his power has passed away, His deeds, his thoughts are buried with his clay ; Nor lofty pile, nor glowing page Shall link him to a future age, Or give him with the past a rank ; His heraldry is but a broken bow, His history but a tale of wrong and woe, His very name must be a blank. XXI. Cold, with the beast he slew, he sleeps ; O er him no filial spirit weeps ; No crowds throng round, no anthem-notes ascend, To bless his coming and embalm his end ; Even that he lived, is for his conqueror s tongue ; By foes alone his death-song must be sung ; No chronicles but theirs shall tell His mournful doom to future times ; May these upon his virtues dwell, And in his fate forget his crimes. CENTENNIALODE. 57 XXII. Peace to the mingling dead ! Beneath the turf we tread, Chief, Pilgrim, Patriot sleep All gone ! .How changed ! and yet the same As when faith s herald-bark first came In sorrow o er the deep. Still from his noonday height The sun looks down in light ; Along the trackless realms of space The stars still run their midnight race ; The same green valleys smile, the same rough shore Still echoes to the same wild ocean s roar ; But where the bristling night- wolf sprang Upon his startled prey, Where the fierce Indian s war-cry, rang Through many a bloody fray, And where the stern old Pilgrim prayed In solitude and gloom, Where the bold Patriot drew his blade And dared a patriot s doom Behold ! in liberty s unclouded blaze We lift our heads, a race of other days. XXIII. All gone ! The wild beast s lair is trodden out ; Proud temples stand in beauty there ; Our children raise their merry shout Where once the death- whoop vexed the air ; 58 CENTENNIALODE. The Pilgrim seek yon ancient place of graves Beneath that chapel s holy shade ; Ask, where the breeze the long grass waves, Who, who within that spot are laid ; The Patriot go, to fame s proud mount repair ; The tardy pile, slow rising there,. With tongueless eloquence shall tell Of them who for their country fell. XXIV. All gone ! Tis ours the goodly land Look round the heritage behold ; Go forth upon the mountains stand, Then, if ye can, be cold. See living vales by living waters blessed, Their wealth see earth s dark caverns yield, See ocean roll, in glory dressed, For all a treasure, and round all a shield. Hark to the shouts of praise Rejoicing millions raise ; Gaze on the spires that rise To point them to the skies, Unfearing and unfeared ; Then, if ye can, O then forget To whom ye owe the sacred debt The Pilgrim race revered ! The men who set faith s burning lights Upon these everlasting heights, To guide their children through the years of time ; CENTENNIALODE. 59 The men that glorious law who taught, Unshrinking liberty of thought, And roused the nations with the truth sublime. XXV. Forget ? No, never ne er shall die Those names to memory dear ; I read the promise in each eye That beams upon me here. Descendants of a twice-recorded race, Long may ye hene your lofty lineage grace ; Tis not for you home s tender tie To rend, and brave the waste of waves ; Tis not for you to rouse and die, Or yield and live a line of slaves ; The deeds of danger and of death are done ; Upheld by inward power alone, Unhonored by the world s loud tongue, Tis yours to do unknown, And then to die unsung. To other days, to other men, belong The penman s plaudit and the poet s song ; Enough for glory has been wrought ; By you be humbler praises sought ; In peace and truth life s journey run, And keep unsullied what your Fathers won. XXVI. Take then my prayer, Ye dwellers of this spot Be yours a noiseless and a guiltless lot. 60 CENTENNIALODE. I plead not that ye bask In the rank beams of vulgar fame ; To light your steps I ask A purer and a holier flame. No bloated growth I supplicate for you, No pining multitude, no pampered few ; Tis not alone to coffer gold, Nor spreading borders to behold ; Tis not fast swelling crowds to win, The refuse-ranks of want and sin This be the kind decree ; Be ye by goodness crowned, Revered, though not renowned ; Poor, if Heaven will, but Free ! Free from the tyrants of the hour, The clans of wealth, the clans of power, The coarse, cold scorners of their God ; Free from the taint of sin, The leprosy that feeds within, And free, in mercy, from the bigot s rod. XXVII. The sceptre s might, the crosier s pride, Ye do not fear ; No conquest blade, in life-blood dyed, Drops terror here Let there not lurk a subtler snare, For wisdom s footsteps to beware. The shackle and the stake, Our Fathers fled ; CENTENNIAL ODE. 61 Ne er may their children wake A fouler wrath, a deeper dread ; Ne er may the craft that fears the flesh to bind, Lock its hard fetters on the mind ; Quenched be the fiercer flame That kindles with a name ; The pilgrim s faith, the pilgrim s zeal, Let more than pilgrim kindness seal ; Be purity of life the test, Leave to the heart, to Heaven, the rest. XXVIII. So, when our children turn the page, To ask what triumphs marked our age, What we achieved to challenge praise, Through the long line of future days, This let them read, and hence instruction draw ; " Here were the Many blessed, Here found the virtues rest, Faith linked with love, and liberty with law ; Here industry to comfort led, Her book of light here learning spread ; Here the warm heart of youth Was wooed to temperance and to truth ; Here hoary age was found, By wisdom and by reverence crowned. No great, but guilty fame Here kindled pride, that should have kindled shame ; THESE chose the better, happier part, That poured its sunlight o er the heart ; 6 62 CENTENNIAL ODE. That crowned their homes with peace and health, And weighed Heaven s smile beyond earth s wealth ; Far from the thorny paths of strife They stood, a living lesson to their race, Rich in the charities of life, Man in his strength, and Woman in her grace ; In purity and love THEIR pilgrim road they trod, And when they served their neighbor, felt they served their God." XXIX. This may not wake the poet s verse, This souls of fire may ne er rehearse In crowd-delighting voice ; Yet o er the record shall the patriot bend, His quiet praise the moralist shall lend, And all the good rejoice. XXX. This be our story then, in that far day, When others come their kindred debt to pay. In that far day ? O, what shall be, In this dominion of the free, When we and ours have rendered up our trust, And men unborn shall tread above our dust ? O, what shall be ? He, He alone, The dread response can make, Who sitteth on the only throne That time shall never shake ; CENTENNIAL ODE. 63 Before whose all-beholding eyes Ages sweep on, and empires sink and rise. Then let the song, to Him begun, To Him in reverence end ; Look down in love, Eternal One, And Thy good cause defend ; Here, late and long, put forth Thy hand, To guard and guide the Pilgrim s land. ODE, Written for the Fourth Triennial Celebration of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1818. WHEN, from the mitred churchman s power, Pilgrims sought a land of rest, Here proudly rose, in blissful hour, Freedom s empire in the west. To Him who saved, the God most high, Sweet Piety her altar raised ; Invention came, with eagle eye, And Science smiled where savage war-fires blazed. o Here, where the tawny Indian roved, Tenant of a flowerless waste, A magic power bright Genius proved, Forests bowed to Art and Taste. Toil swung the sledge with sturdy hand, In chiseled grace fair domes arose, Improvement moved upon the land, And Freedom s Press saved all from freedom s foes. Mechanic skill ! the tar by thee Stems the wave, and mocks the gale ; TRIENNIALODE. 65 By thee the yeoman, blithe and free, Plenty reaps from every vale. Earth vainly hides her caverned ores ; To thee the treasured hoard is given ; And elements obey thy powers, And Science grasps the quivering flash of heaven. Nor yet alone in peaceful toil Genius here shall be renowned ; Should bold invasion tread the soil, Art s firm sons shall rally round. Great Archimedes on the foe Drew burning vengeance from the sun ; And they, at Franklin s name who glow, Shall rouse at thine, immortal Washington ! O, favored land ! the exile s rest, Charity s long-hallowed seat ; By science, worth, and valor blest, All that s good in thee shall meet. " BE JUST, AND FEAR NOT " * earth combined ; The seale and blade, the test and doom, Thy sons shall bear to all mankind, And clustering glories round their names shall bloom. * Motto of the Society. ART. An Ode written for the Sixth Triennial Festival of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1824. WHEN, from the sacred garden driven, Man fled before his Maker s wrath, An Angel left her place in heaven, And crossed the wanderer s sunless path. Twas Art ! sweet Art ! new radiance broke Where her light foot flew o er the ground, And thus with seraph voice she spoke " The Curse a Blessing shall be found." She led him through the trackless wild, Where noontide sunbeam never blazed ; The thistle shrunk, the harvest smiled,. And Nature gladdened as she gazed. Earth s thousand tribes of living things, At Art s command, to him are given ; The village grows, the city springs, And point their spires of faith to heaven. He rends the oak and bids it ride, To guard the shores its beauty graced ; ART. He smites the rock upheaved in pride, See towers of strength and domes of taste. Earth s teeming caves their wealth reveal, Fire bears his banner on the wave, He bids the mortal poison heal, And leaps triumphant o er the grave. He plucks the pearls that stud the deep, Admiring Beauty s lap to fill ; He breaks the stubborn marble s sleep, And mocks his own Creator s skill. With thoughts that swell his glowing soul, He bids the ore illume the page, And proudly scorning Time s control, Commerces with an unborn age. In fields of air he writes his name, And treads the chambers of the sky ; He reads the stars, and grasps the flame That quivers round the Throne on high. In war renowned, in peace sublime, He moves in greatness and in grace ; His power, subduing space and time, Links realm to realm, and race to race. 67 LINES ON THE DEATH OF M.S.C. I KNEW that we must part day after day, I saw the dread Destroyer win his way ; That hollow cough first rang the fatal knell, As on my ear its prophet-warning fell ; Feeble and slow thy once light footstep grew, Thy wasting cheek put on death s pallid hue, Thy thin, hot hand to mine more weakly clung, Each sweet " Good night " fell fainter from thy tongue ; I knew that we must part no power could save Thy quiet goodness from an early grave ; Those eyes so dull, though kind each glance they casl, Looking a sister s fondness to the last ; Thy lips so pale, that gently pressed my cheek, Thy voice alas ! thou couldst but try to speak ; All told thy doom ; I felt it at my heart, The shaft had struck I knew that we must part. And we have parted, MARY thou art gone ! Gone in thine innocence, meek, suffering one. Thy weary spirit breathed itself to sleep So peacefully, it seemed a sin to weep, In those fond watchers who around thee stood, And felt, even then, that God, even then, was good. ON THE DEATH OF M. S. C. Like stars that struggle through the clouds of night, Thine eyes one moment caught a glorious light, As if to thee, in that dread hour, twere given To know on earth what faith believes of heaven ; Then like tired breezes didst thou sink to rest, Nor one, one pang the awful change confessed. Death stole in softness o er that lovely face, And touched each feature with a new-born grace ; On cheek and brow unearthly beauty lay, And told that life s poor cares had passed away. In my last hour be Heaven so kind to me ! I ask no more than this to die like thee. But we have parted, MARY thou art dead ! On its last resting-place I laid thy head, Then by thy coffin-side knelt down, and took A brother s farewell kiss and farewell look ; Those marble lips no kindred kiss returned ; From those veiled orbs no glance responsive burned ; Ah ! then I felt that thou hadst passed away, That the sweet face I gazed on was but clay ; And then came Memory with her busy throng Of tender images, forgotten long ; Years hurried back, and as they swiftly rolled, I saw thee, heard thee, as in days of old ; Sad and more sad each sacred feeling grew, Manhood was moved, and sorrow claimed her due ; Thick, thick and fast the burning tear-drops started ; I turned away and felt that we had parted. TO ON THE DEATH OF M. S. C. But not forever in the silent tomb, Where thou art laid, thy kindred shall find room ; A little while, a few short years of pain, And, one by one, we ll come to thee again ; The kind old Father shall seek out the place, And rest with thee, the youngest of his race ; The dear, dear Mother, bent with age and grief, Shall lay her head by thine, in sweet relief; Sister and Brother, and that faithful Friend, True from the first and tender to the end, All, all, in His good time, who placed us here, To live, to love, to die and disappear, Shall come and make their quiet bed with thee, Beneath the shadow of that spreading tree ; With thee to sleep through death s long, dreamless night, With thee rise up and bless the morning light. I SEE THEE STILL. " 1 rocked her in the cradle, And laid her in the tomb. She was the youngest, What fireside circle hath not felt the charm Of that sweet tie ? The youngest ne er grow old. The fond endearments of our earlier days We keep alive in them, and when they die Our youthful joys we bury with them." I SEE thee still ; Remembrance, faithful to her trust, Calls thee in beauty from the dust ; Thou comest in the morning light, Thou rt with me through the gloomy night- In dreams I meet thee as of old ; Then thy soft arms my neck enfold, And thy sweet voice is in my ear ; In every scene to memory dear, I see thee still. I see thee still, In every hallowed token round ; This little ring thy finger bound, This lock of hair thy forehead shaded, This silken chain by thee was braided, 72 ISEETHEESTILL. These flowers, all withered now, like thee, Sweet SISTER, thou didst cull for me ; This book was thine ; here didst thou read ; This picture, ah ! yes, here, indeed, I see thee still. I see thee still ; Here was thy summer noon s retreat, Here was thy favorite fireside seat ; This was thy chamber here, each day, I sat and watched thy sad decay ; Here, on this bed, thou last didst lie, Here, on this pillow thou didst die. Dark hour ! once more its woes unfold ; As then I saw thee, pale and cold, I see thee still. I see thee still ; Thou art not in the grave confined Death cannot claim the immortal Mind ; Let Earth close o er its sacred trust, But goodness dies not in the dust ; Thee, O my SISTER, tis not thee Beneath the coffin s lid I see ; Thou to a fairer land art gone ; There, let me hope, my journey done, To see thee still ! THE FAMILY MEETING. [These lines were written on occasion of the accidental meeting of all the survi ving members of a family, the father and mother of which, one eighty-two, the other eighty years olJ, have lived in the same house fifty-three years.] WE are all here ! Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, All who hold each other dear. Each chair is filled we re all at home ; To-night let no cold stranger come ; It is not often thus around Our old familiar hearth we re found. Bless, then, the meeting and the spot ; For once be every care forgot ; Let gentle Peace assert her power, And kind Affection rule the hour ; We re all all here. We re not all here ! Some are away the dead ones dear, Who thronged with us this ancient hearth, And gave the hour to guiltless mirth. Fate, with a stern, relentless hand, Looked in and thinned our little band ; 7 74 THE FAMILY MEETING. Some like a night-flash passed away, And some sank, lingering, day by day ; The quiet graveyard some lie there And cruel Ocean has his share We re not all here. We are all here ! Even they the dead though dead, so dear. Fond Memory, to her duty true, Brings back their faded forms to view. How life-like, through the mist of years, Each well-remembered face appears ! We see them as in times long past ; From each to each kind looks are cast ; We hear their words, their smiles behold, They re round us as they were of old We are all here. We are all here ! Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, You that I love with love so dear. This may not long of us be said ; Soon must we join the gathered dead ; And by the hearth we now sit round, Some other circle will be found. 0, then, that wisdom may we know, Which yields a life of peace below ! So, in the world to follow this, May each repeat, in words of bliss, We re all all here! TO MY CIGAR. YES, social friend, I love thee well, In learned doctors spite ; Thy clouds all other clouds dispel, And lap me in delight. What though they tell, with phizzes long, My years are sooner passed ? I would reply, with reason strong, They re sweeter while they last. And oft, mild friend, to me thou art A monitor, though still ; Thou speak st a lesson to my heart Beyond the preacher s skill. Thou rt like the man of worth, who gives To goodness every day, The odor of whose virtues lives When he has passed away. When in the lonely evening hour, Attended but by thee, O er history s varied page I pore, Man s fate in thine I see. "76 TO MY CIGAR. Oft as thy snowy column grows, Then breaks and falls away, I trace how mighty realms thus rose, Thus tumbled to decay. Awhile like thee earth s masters burn, And smoke and fume around, And then like thee to ashes turn, And mingle with the ground. Life s but a leaf adroitly rolled, And time s the wasting breath, That late or early, we behold, Gives all to dusty death. From beggar s frieze to monarch s robe, One common doom is passed ; Sweet nature s works, the swelling globe, Must all burn out at last. And what is he who smokes thee now ? A little moving heap, That soon like thee to fate must bow, With thee in dust must sleep. But though thy ashes downward go, Thy essence rolls on high ; Thus, when my body must lie low, My soul shall cleave the sky. "LOOK ON THIS PICTURE. 1 O, IT is life ! departed days Fling back their brightness while I gaze Tis Emma s self this brow so fair, Half curtained in this glossy hair, These eyes, the very home of love, The dark twin arches traced above, These red-ripe lips that almost speak, The fainter blush of this pure cheek, The rose and lily s beauteous strife It is ah no ! tis all but life. Tis all but life art could not save Thy graces, Emma, from the grave ; Thy cheek is pale, thy smile is past, Thy love-lit eyes have looked their last ; Mouldering beneath the coffin s lid, All we adored of thee is hid ; Thy heart, where goodness loved to dwell, Is throbless in the narrow cell ; Thy gentle voice shall charm no more ; Its last, last, joyful note is o er. Oft, oft, indeed, it hath been sung, The requiem of the fair and young ; 7* 78 LOOK ON THIS PICTURE. The theme is old, alas ! how old, Of grief that will not be controlled, Of sighs that speak a father s woe, Of pangs that none but mothers know, Of friendship with its bursting heart, Doomed from the idol-one to part Still its sad debt must feeling pay, Till feeling, too, shall pass away. O say, why age, and grief, and pain, Shall long to go, but long in vain ; Why vice is left to mock at time, And gray in years, grow gray in crime ; While youth, that every eye makes glad, And beauty, all in radiance clad, And goodness, cheering every heart, Come, but come only to depart ; Sunbeams, to cheer life s wintry day, Sunbeams, to flash, then fade away. Tis darkness all ! black banners wave Round the cold borders of the grave ; There when in agony we bend O er the fresh sod that hides a friend, One only comfort then we know We, too, shall quit this world of woe ; We, too, shall find a quiet place With the dear lost ones of our race ; Our crumbling bones with theirs shall blend, And life s sad story find an end. LOOK ON THIS PICTURE. 79 And is this all this mournful doom ? Beams no glad light beyond the tomb ? Mark how yon clouds in darkness ride ; They do not quench the orb they hide ; Still there it wheels the tempest o er, In a bright sky to burn once more ; So, far above the clouds of time, Faith can behold a world sublime There, when the storms of life are past, The light beyond shall break at last. THE WINGED WORSHIPPERS. Addressed to two Swallows that flew into Chauncy Place churcli during divine service. GAY, guiltless pair, What seek ye from the fields of heaven ? Ye have no need of prayer, Ye have no sins to be forgiven. Why perch ye here, Where mortals to their Maker bend ? Can your pure spirits fear The God ye never could offend ? Ye never knew The crimes for which we come to weep. Penance is not for you, Blessed wanderers of the upper deep. To you tis given To wake sweet nature s untaught lays ; Beneath the arch of heaven To chirp away a life of praise. THE WINGED WORSHIPPERS. 81 Then spread each wing, Far, far above, o er lakes and lands, And join the choirs that sing In yon blue dome not reared with hands. Or, if ye stay, To note the consecrated hour, Teach me the airy way, And let me try your envied power. Above the crowd, On upward wings could I but fly, I d bathe in yon bright cloud, And seek the stars that gem the sky. Twere Heaven indeed Through fields of trackless light to soar, On Nature s charms to feed, And Nature s own great God adore. THE FUNERAL. AGAINST the wall a lovely picture hung, So true to life, it wanted but a tongue ; Twas a young girl s the face, though passing fair, Spoke more of goodness than of beauty there. Years, years had vanished since the limner s power, Stealing the sweetness of a passing hour, Had stamped it there, a little circle s gaze, The fond memorial of departed days. Years, years had vanished where was she whose face Still from that canvass smiled in girlhood s grace ? A coffin stood beside I raised the lid Alas ! another picture there was hid ; What hard, stern hand those pallid features drew ? That cheek, that brow so false, and yet so true ? Twas she the same there in her maiden bloom, Here cold in death, and waiting for the tomb. A gray-haired man leaned o er her where she slept, Then to the living likeness turned and wept ; Children, fond, grieving children, looked within, As if their love one answering look might win ; THE FUNERAL. 83 Vain hope ! the eye was dark, and dull the ear That never, till that hour, refused to hear ; Hushed, even to them, forever hushed the tongue, On whose sweet lessons they so long had hung. Turn, mourners, from that face ; it tells of gloom ; Around it draw the curtain of the tomb ; Look on this breathing picture of her youth, See where it smiles, in beauty and in truth ; Like this she lives in her eternal home, That bright abode where sorrow ne er can come ; There, in the likeness that her Maker drew, Ye weeping ones, she waits to welcome you. DEDICATION HYMN. GOD of wisdom, God of might, Father ! dearest name of all, Bow thy throne and bless our rite ; Tis thy children on Thee call. Glorious ONE ! look down from heaven, Warm each heart and wake each vow ; Unto Thee this House is given ; With thy presence fill it now. Fill it now ! on every soul Shed the incense of thy grace, While our anthem-echoes roll Round the consecrated place ; While thy holy page we read, While the prayers Thou lov st ascend, While thy cause thy servants plead, Fill this House, our God, our Friend. Fill it now O, fill it long ! So when death shall call us home, Still to Thee, in many a throng, May our children s children come. DEDICATION HYMN. 85 Bless them, Father, long and late, Blot their sins, their sorrows dry ; Make this place to them the gate, Leading to thy courts on high. There, when time shall be no more, When the feuds of earth are past, May the tribes of every shore Congregate in peace at last ! Then to Thee, thou ONE all-wise, Shall the gathered millions sing, Till the arches of the skies With their hallelujahs ring. FIFTY YEARS AGO. For the Fourth of July, 1826. FIFTY years have rolled away, Since that high, heroic day, When our Fathers, in the fray, Struck the conquering blow ! Praise to them the Bold who spoke ; Praise to them the Brave who broke Stern Oppression s galling yoke, FIFTY YEARS AGO ! Pour the wine of sacrifice, Let the grateful anthem rise , Shall we e er resign the prize ? Never never no ! Hearts and hands shall guard those rights, Bought on Freedom s battle heights, Where he fixed his signal lights, FIFTY YEARS AGO ! Swear it! by the Mighty Dead, Those who counselled, those who led ; By the blood your Fathers shed, By your Mothers woe ; FIFTY YEARS AGO. 87 Swear it ! by the living Few, Those whose breasts were scarred for you, When to Freedom s ranks they flew, FIFTY YEARS AGO ! By the joys that cluster round, By our vales with plenty crowned, By our hill-tops holy ground, Rescued from the foe, Where of old the Indian strayed, Where of old the Pilgrim prayed, Where the Patriot drew his blade, FIFTY YEARS AGO ! Should again the war-trump peal, There shall Indian firmness seal Pilgrim faith and Patriot zeal, Prompt to strike the blow ; There shall valor s work be done ; Like the Sire shall be the Son, Where the fight was waged and won, FIFTY YEARS AGO ! THE BROTHERS. WE ARE BUT TWO the others sleep Through death s untroubled night ; We are but two O, let us keep The link that binds us bright. Heart leaps to heart the sacred flood That warms us is the same ; That good old man his honest blood Alike we fondly claim. We in one mother s arms were locked Long be her love repaid ; In the same cradle we were rocked, Round the same hearth we played. Our boyish sports were all the same, Each little joy and woe ; Let manhood keep alive the flame, Lit up so long ago. WE ARE BUT TWO be that the band To hold us till we die ; Shoulder to shoulder let us stand, Till side by side we lie. LINES TO A YOUNG MOTHER. YOUNG mother ! what can feeble friendship say, To soothe the anguish of this mournful day ? They, they alone whose hearts like thine have bled, Know how the living sorrow for the dead ; Each tutored voice, that seeks such grief to cheer, Strikes cold upon the weeping parent s ear ; I ve felt it all alas ! too well I know How vain all earthly power to hush thy woe ! God cheer thee, childless mother ! tis not given For man to ward the blow that falls from Heaven. I ve felt it all as thou art feeling now ; Like thee, with stricken heart and aching brow, I ve sat and watched by dying beauty s bed, And burning tears of hopeless anguish shed ; I ve gazed upon the sweet, but pallid face, And vainly tried some comfort there to trace ; I ve listened to the short and struggling breath ; I ve seen the cherub eye grow dim in death ; Like thee I ve veiled my head in speechless gloom, And laid my first-born in the silent tomb. 8 ORDINATION HYMN. OUR fathers, Lord, to seek a spot, Where they might kneel to thee, Their own fair heritage forgot, And braved an unknown sea. Here found their pilgrim souls repose, Where long the heathen roved, And here their humble anthems rose, To bless the Power they loved. They sleep in dust but where they trod, A feeble, fainting band, Glad millions catch the strain, O God, And sound it through the land. Come, Lord, to this new temple now, Thy servant here behold ; In thy dread name he breathes his vow, To guard this little fold. Long may he stand thy herald here, Thy lessons to impart ; From every eye to wipe the tear, The stain from every heart ; ORDINATION HYMN. 91 In paths of peace to bid them tread, Where no vain feuds arise, And from his life a lustre shed, To light them to the skies. So, when the last, long night shall go, The last, glad morning break, When all that walked in truth below, In joy above shall wake, There may thy servant, Lord, be found The chosen of thy Son, And hear from him the glorious sound, " Well done, beloved one ! " EDWIN BUCKINGHAM. SPARE him one little week, Almighty Power! Yield to his Father s house his dying hour ; Once more, once more let them, who held him dear, But see his face, his faltering voice but hear ; We know, alas ! that he is marked for death, But let his Mother watch his parting breath ; O, let him die at home ! It could not oe ; At midnight, on a dark and stormy sea, Far from his kindred and his native land, His pangs unsoothed by tender Woman s hand, The patient victim in his cabin lay, And meekly breathed his blameless life away. " Wrapped in the raiment that it long must wear, His body to the deck they slowly bear ; How eloquent, how awful in its power, The silent lecture of death s Sabbath-hour ! One voice that silence breaks the prayer is said, And the last rite man pays to man is paid ; EDWIN BUCKINGHAM. 93 The plashing waters mark his resting-place, And fold him round in one long, cold embrace ; Bright bubbles for a momeut sparkle o er, Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more ; Down, countless fathoms down, he sinks to sleep, With all the nameless shapes that haunt the deep." * Rest, Loved One, rest beneath the billow s swell, Where tongue ne er spoke, where sunlight never fell ; Rest till the God who gave thee to the deep, Rouse thee, triumphant, from the long, long sleep. And You, whose hearts are bleeding, who deplore That ye must see the Wanderer s face no more, Weep he was worthy of the purest grief; Weep in such sorrow ye shall find relief; While o er his doom the bitter tear ye shed, Memory shall trace the virtues of the dead ; These cannot die for you, for him, they bloom, And scatter fragrance round his ocean-tomb. * Curiosity. MOUNT AUBURN. " There was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulchre." WHAT myriads throng, in proud array, With songs of joy, and flags unfurled, To consecrate the glorious day, That gave a nation to the world ! We raise no shout, no trumpet sound, No banner to the breeze we spread ; Children of clay ! bend humbly round ; We plant a City to the Dead. For man a garden rose in bloom, When yon glad sun began to burn ; He fell and heard the awful doom " Of dust thou art to dust return ! " But HE, in whose pure faith we come, Who in a gloomier garden lay, Assured us of a brighter home, And rose, and led the glorious way. His word we trust ! When life shall end, Here be our long, long slumber passed ; To ihe first garden s doom we bend, And bless tlie promise of the last. PRIZE PROLOGUE. Recited at the Opening of the Park Theatre, New York, 1821. WHEN mitred Zeal, in wild, unholy days, Bared his red arm, and bade the fagot blaze, Our patriot sires the pilgrim sail unfurled, And Freedom pointed to a rival world. Where prowled the wolf, and where the hunter roved, Faith raised her altars to the God she loved ; Toil, linked with Art, explored each savage wild, The lofty forest bowed, the desert smiled ; The startled Indian o er the mountains flew, The wigwam vanished, and the village grew ; Taste reared her domes, fair Science spread her page, And Wit and Genius gathered round the Stage ! The Stage ! where Fancy sits, creative queen, And waves her sceptre o er life s mimic scene ; Where young-eyed Wonder comes to feast his sight, And quaff instruction while he drinks delight. The Stage ! that threads each labyrinth of the soul, Wakes laughter s peal, and bids the tear-drop roll ; That hoots at folly, mocks proud fashion s slave, Uncloaks the hypocrite, and brands the knave. 96 PRIZE PROLOGUE. The child of Genius, catering for the Stage, Rifles the wealth of every clime and age. He speaks ! the sepulchre resigns its prey, And crimson life runs through the sleeping clay. The wave, the gibbet, and the battle-field, At his command, their festering tenants yield. Pale, bleeding Love comes weeping from the tomb, That kindred softness may bewail her doom ; Murder s dry bones, reclothed, desert the dust, That after times may own his sentence just ; Forgotten Wisdom, freed from death s embrace, Reads awful lessons to another race ; And the mad tyrant of some ancient shore Here warns a world that he can curse no more. May this fair Dome, in classic beauty reared, By Worth be honored, and by Vice be feared ; May chastened Wit here bend to Virtue s cause, Reflect her image, and repeat her laws ; And Guilt, that slumbers o er the sacred page, Hate his own likeness, shadowed from the Stage. Here let the Guardian of the Drama sit, In righteous judgment o er the realms of wit. Not his the shame, with servile pen to wait On private friendship, or on private hate ; To flatter fools, or Satire s javelin dart, Tipped with a lie, at proud Ambition s heart ; His be the nobler task to herald forth Young, blushing Merit, and neglected Worth ; To brand the page where goodness finds a sneer, And lash the wretch that breathes the treason here. PRIZEPROLOGUE. 97 Here shall bright Genius wing his eagle flight, Rich dew-drops shaking from his plumes of light, Till high in mental worlds, from vulgar ken He soars, the wonder and the pride of men. Cold Censure here to decent Mirth shall bow, And Bigotry unbend his monkish brow. Here Toil shall pause, his ponderous sledge thrown by, And Beauty bless each strain with melting eye ; Grief, too, in fiction lost, shall cease to weep, And all the world s rude cares be laid to sleep. Each polished scene shall Taste and Truth approve, And the Stage triumph in the people s love. PRIZE PROLOGUE, Recited at the Opening of the new Philadelphia Theatre, 1822. WHEN learning slumbered in the convent s shade, And holy craft the groping nations swayed, By dulness banned, the Muses wandered long, Each lyre neglected, and forgot each song ; Till Heaven s bright halo wreathed the Drama s dome, And great Apollo called the pilgrims home. Then their glad harps, that charmed old Greece, they swept, Their altars thronged, and joy s high Sabbath kept. Young Genius there his glorious banners reared, To float forever loved, forever feared. The cowl s device, the cloister s legend known, Old Superstition tumbled from his throne ; Back to his cell the king of gloom retired, The buskin triumphed, and the world admired ! Since that proud hour, through each unfettered age, The sons of light have clustered round the Stage. From Fiction s realms her richest spoils they bring, And Pleasure s walls with Rapture s echoes ring. Here hermit Wisdom lays his mantle down, To win with smiles the heart that fears his frown ; PRIZE PROLOGUE. 99 In mirth s gay robe he talks to wondering youth, And Grandeur listens to the stranger, Truth. Beauty, with bounding heart and tingling ear, Melts at the tale to love and feeling dear. Their sacred bowers the sons of learning quit, To rove with fancy, and to feast with wit. All come to gaze, the valiant and the vain, Virtue s bright troop, and Fashion s glittering train ; Here Labor rests, pale Grief forgets her woe, And Vice, that prints his slime on all below, Even Vice looks on! For this the Stage was reared; To scourge the fiend, so scorned and yet so feared. The halls of judgment, as the moral school, His foot defiles, the bronzed and reckless fool ; God s lovely temple shall behold him there, With eye upturned, and aspect false as fair ; Even at the altar s very horns he stands, And breaks and blesses with polluted hands. Then hither let the unblushing villain roam, Satire shall knot its whip and strike it home. The Stage one groan from his dark soul shall draw, That mocks religion, and that laughs at law ! To grace the Stage, the Bard s careering mind Seeks other worlds, and leaves his own behind ; He lures from air its bright, imprisoned forms, Breaks through the tomb, and Death s dull region storms. O er ruined realms he pours creative day, And slumbering kings his mighty voice obey. From its damp shroud the long-laid spirit walks, And round the murderer s bed in vengeance stalks. 100 PRIZE PROLOGUE. Poor maniac Beauty brings her cypress wreath, Her smile a moonbeam o er a blasted heath ; Round some cold grave she comes, sweet flowers to strew, And lost to Reason, still to Love is true. Hate shuts his soul when dove-eyed Mercy pleads ; Power lifts the axe, and Truth s bold servant bleeds ; Remorse drops anguish from his burning eyes, Feels hell s eternal worm, and, shuddering, dies ; War s trophied minion, too, forsakes the dust, Grasps his worn shield, and waves his sword of rust, Springs to the slaughter at the trumpet s call, Again to conquer, or again to fall. With heads to censure, yet with souls to feel, Friends of the Stage ! receive our frank appeal. No suppliant lay we frame ; acquit your trust ; The Drama guard ; be gentle, but be just ! Within her courts, unbribed, unslumbering stand ; Scourge lawless Wit, and leaden Dulness brand ; Lash pert Pretence, but bashful Merit spare ; His firstlings hail, and speak the trembler fair ; Yet shall he cast his cloud, and proudly claim The loftiest station and the brightest fame. So from his perch, through seas of golden light, Our mountain eagle takes his glorious flight. To heaven the monarch-bird exulting springs, And shakes the night-fog from his mighty wings. Bards all our own shall yet enchant their age, And pour redeeming splendor o er the Stage. For them, for you, Truth hoards a nobler theme, Than ever blessed young Fancy s sweetest dream. PRIZE PROLOGUE. 101 Bold hearts shall kindle, and bright eyes shall gaze, When Genius wakes the tale of other days, Sheds life s own lustre o er each holy deed Of Him who planted, and of Him who freed. And now, Fair Pile, thou chaste and glorious shrine, Our fondest wish, our warmest smile be thine ; The home of Genius and the court of Taste, In beauty raised, be thou by beauty graced. Within thy walls may Wit s adorers throng, To drink the magic of the poet s song ; Within thy walls may youth and goodness draw From every scene a lecture or a law. So bright the fane, be priest and offering pure, And friends shall bless, and bigot foes endure ; Long, long be spared to echo truths sublime, And lift thy pillars through the storms of Time. PRIZE ADDRESS, Spoken at the Opening of the Salem Theatre, 1828. To call past ages from the sleep of time, To rouse the dwellers of each voiceless clime, And bid them stand as once on Earth they stood, To shake the guilty, and to charm the good ; To catch the wonders of the present hour, New grace to fiction give^ to truth new power, With mirth to cheer, with grief to melt the soul, And hold each passion in sublime control ; For these the Drama rose in ancient days, And taught her Bards undying strains to raise ; Bade them unlock the treasures of the mind, And spread a new creation to mankind. Twas glorious all ! the Muses blessed the hour, A.nd poured their sweetest songs in dome and bower; But night at length " came down " the night of doom, That wrapped Earth s brightest realm in starless gloom. Round Wisdom s haunts the raven shadows swept, Art s lovely daughters veiled their heads, and wept ; From their cold groves the Drama s minstrels fled, And Dulness brooded o er the living dead. PRIZE ADDRESS. 103 So tuneless ages rolled when, lo ! once more Redeeming Genius sought a happier shore. Like Mercy s dove for one green spot he flew, Nor paused till Ocean s empress caught his view ; There his bold eye beheld the promised rest, And Shakspeare s Albion wooed him to her breast. Then sang The Bard ! in greatness and in grace, The matchless One th anointed of his race. At his command once more the Drama rose, To shield fair Virtue, and to shame her foes. Time bowed before him, Death resigned his trust, Kingdoms came back, and Monarchs left the dust; All, at his bidding, burst Oblivion s grave, To warn, to win, to chasten, and to save. Proud was the lyre beneath its master s hand, And rapt the listeners of our Father-land. Soon from the Old the New World caught the strain, And hailed on Freedom s shores the Drama s reign ; From spot to spot the inspiration flew, And reared at last This vaulted Dome for You ! For you, ye glad-eyed throngs, who cluster round Where a new home the Drama s sons have found, For you, for you and yours, our fane is dressed By you and yours, O may our rites be blessed ! Pure be the verse that lingers on each tongue, Meet for the wise, the beauteous, and the young ; 104 PRIZE ADDRESS. So parent love shall srnile upon the place, And gather here the fond ones of his race ; So all, in pleasure lapped, or lost in woe, Shall gaze unfearing, and untainted go. Come, then, to us and to yourselves be just, And bid the Stage fulfil its glorious trust. To this fair Temple as your feet ye turn, Let no strange fire to shame its altar burn ; On you the cherub voice of goodness calls ; Rise up her champions, and protect these walls ! So shall their echoes wake and warm each heart, All ill subdue, and all that s good impart ; So shall they stand, to holy Virtue dear, Above all hatred, and above all fear. PRIZE ADDRESS, Recited at the Opening of the Philadelphia Theatre, 1828. IT came from Heaven ! the realms of time to tread, Arid summon forth the long-forgotten dead ; Their deeds of guilt and goodness to unfold, The garnered glories of the days of old. It came from Heaven ! to soar where fancy reigns, And rouse the phantoms of her bright domains ; Their wildest haunts, their loftiest heights explore, And lead man on, to wonder and adore. Genius ! these gifts are thine ; tis thine, sweet Power, With these to soothe and sway life s shifting hour; To nerve the soul, to wake young Virtue s glow, And bid the tears of Grief and Rapture flow ; Tis thine, with these, to rule each clime and age, Mankind thy subjects, and thy throne the Stage ! The Pencil s boast, the Chisel s skill, decay, And Wisdom s noblest record fades away ; But here, untouched by Time s devouring tooth, The pictured group puts on immortal youth ; 108 PHILADELPHIA ADDRESS. Here the bold deed that in the marble spoke, Again revives, new plaudits to provoke ; And the proud truth that graced the mouldering page, Still pleads triumphant, echoed from the Stage. Here gathering round in long-departed days, Earth s master minstrels poured their deathless lays ; Descending down, through each descending race, Still came the gifted to adorn the place ; With Love to soften, and with Wit to charm, To mock with Folly, and with Guilt alarm ; While o er each scene, to sacred feeling dear, Taste smiled applause, and Beauty dropped a tear. Long, long for these may this fair temple stand, The pride and promise of our happier land. Our happier land ! forever live that claim On Virtue s rolls, as in the blast of Fame ; So rival shores, while, saddening, they behold Our young orb rising to eclipse the old, May with our greatness find our goodness page, To mark indeed a new, a better age. Within these walls, in some inspiring day, May native bards our native deeds portray. Shall foreign legends still go brightening down, And cold Oblivion s night-cloud veil our own ? Look round the spot, to faith and firmness dear ; Finds no rapt spirit fit incitement here ? Here, where the Indian roved in nature s pride, And built his fires, and loved, and warred, and died ? PHILADELPHIA ADDRESS. 107 Here, where his holy fane the pilgrim reared, And gave an empire to the God he feared ? Here, for that empire where the patriot bled ? Here, where the foul invader turned and fled ? These are the themes to stir your rising youth, Their fathers valor, and their fathers truth ; These be the themes to grace this swelling dome ; In Pleasure s courts let Freedom find a home ; While Virtue sits all radiant in her light, The guiding priestess of each glorious rite. And O, when ye who now enraptured gaze, Shall yield to other throngs and other days, Still may this altar beam its purest fires, To charm the children as they charmed the sires ! PRIZE ADDRESS, Recited at the Opening of the Portsmouth Theatre, 1830. TwAs Fancy s hour uplifted on the blast, O er lands and seas my chartered spirit passed, Till all in Eden s ancient beauty dressed, A fair, strange clime my wondering vision blessed. There, as I gazed, in nature s strength and grace Roamed the red warriors of a nameless race ; Swift flew their barks along the rocky shore, Bright blazed their fires, loud rose their battle roar ; Rude love and ruder hate controlled the spot, Tribes conquered tribes, and were in turn forgot. Years seemed to roll then all went fading by, And where they stood, beneath the same blue sky, Lo ! a new race an iron-hearted band, The banished wanderers from a distant land ; These sweet Religion s sacred flag unfurled, And bade it float to bless another world. Soon from each startled vale the axe rang loud, And the old monarchs of the forest bowed ; PORTSMOUTH ADDRESS. , 109 Art built her domes in Nature s silent bowers, And peace and gladness crowned the pilgrim s hours. So ages passed till, at oppression s call, Bold legions thronged, their brethren to irithrall ; Then from each cliff the cry to battle rang, Then from each hill to arms the patriot sprang ; Then shouts and shrieks rolled mingling to the sky, As wronged and wrorigers met, and met to die. I looked again the avenging deed was done ; Freedom s undaunted host the fight had won ; War s withering demon stayed his bloody hand, And one glad anthem shook the ransomed land. Behold the vision s bright fulfilment here ! This is the clime to faith and valor dear ; Among these hills the red man s arrow flew, Along these shores he steered his light canoe ; These are the vales the exiled Christian trod, Here rose his altar to the living God ; Twas here, for you, his blood the patriot gave ; Here Freedom found a home, and Freedom s foes a grave. Here, too, as bland Refinement marked the age, Immortal Genius spoke, and reared the Stage. See, where, to work their master s high behest, His vassals throng, and thrill the human breast ; Love, cherub watcher of the murmuring shade ; Dark, scowling Hate ; Ambition with his blade ; 10 110 PORTSMOUTH ADDRESS. Envy, coarse churl ; Joy, chanting to the gale ; Pale Horror, quaking at his own wild tale ; Hope, that in every cloud a rainbow sees, And coward Fear, that starts at every breeze ; Ruthless Revenge ; Remorse with smothered sigh ; Anger uncurbed, and Grief with streaming eye ; All, all bring offerings at their lord s command, To cheer, and charm, and humanize the land. O, ne er this place while youth and beauty tread, May shame demand one sacred tear they shed ; Scorn track the footpath of each traitor here, Who dares defile what Genius dared to rear. Their kindred powers let Wit and Mirth unite, To wake and warm the hearts they would delight. Thus shall the good and wise approve the strain, And all the graces bless the Drama * " ADDRESS, Intended for the Opening of the Theatre at New-Orleans. WHEN Gothic fury spoiled the realms of taste, And Ruin sat, cold raven of the waste ; The Drama s minstrels bade their shrines farewell, The canvass mouldered, and the marble fell ; Believing man confessed the crosier s sway, And holy darkness round creation lay. At length, bright Genius, starting from his sleep, Morn s herald angel, swept the mantling deep. Then shrank the flood! again the Stage was reared, And Dulness fled, to curse the foe he feared. From shore to shore the scenic dayspring played, Illumed the court, and flashed along the shade ; Sweetly it glanced o er Arno s tuneful stream, And Gallia s laughing vine-hills caught the beam ; Round Albion s cliffs it poured undying fire, And Nature s Bard bade Nature s sons admire ! Time shook his plumes yet sighed the Muse to grace A prouder empire, and a purer race. Lo ! from a fettered world she comes in light, And earth s young realm puts off its heathen night. 112 NEW -ORLEANS ADDRESS. For Freedom s ear the maiden strikes her notes, And steps in beauty where his banner floats. Still to the glowing West she moves to sing, Where Rome s exploring bird ne er bathed his wing, Till, snow-crowned hills and sun-kissed valleys past, Here, Gallia s offspring hails her sight at last ! Child of Renown ! before whose infant hand The wreathed invader withered from the land, Thy Deed shall freshen on the penman s page, The shame and glory of a wondering age, And still reviving in the poet s lay, Thrill the young warrior of some distant day. In arms supreme, come forth to greatness dear, Protect the Pilgrim and the Patriot cheer; Thy slumbering shield with olive garlands dressed, Rise ! crowned by Science, Monarch of the West ! And thou, inspiring Dome ! to greet thy reign, The Muse, exulting, pours her prophet strain. For thee the bard shall draw, from every clime, The swelling triumph, and the curtained crime ; Death s moss-grown gates unbar, the sleepers wake, To charm the good, and bid the guilty quake ; Love s moonlight scene, War s crimson deed unfold, And all the legends of the days of old. Wisdom and Wit thy guardian priests shall stand, And Taste refine, as Truth reforms the land ; Rapture and Grief their rose and cypress twine, And every heart go mended from thy shrine. NEW-ORLEANS ADDRESS. 113 Here pranking youth shall learn, in Pleasure s school, To hate the folly, and to shun the fool ; Vice, saddening here, shall live for purer days, And Goodness sanction, while her children gaze ; Learning shall close his page for thy white hour, And love-lipped Beauty leave her evening bower, With soul all gladness, and with eye all light, To hail thy altar, and to bless thy rite. Here, too, O kindling thought ! when Time shall shed His holy incense o er the mighty dead, For thee the Sage shall burst his sacred grave, To guide in death the realm he lived to save ; For thee the Chief revive the battle s roar, And wake the sons, whose sires he led before. Thus shalt thou triumph, decked with every grace, To charm another and another race ; And, one long day of quenchless splendor past, Blessed by the beamy god, in glory go at last ! 10 ODE, For the Fourth of July, 1827. To the Sages who spoke to the Heroes who bled To the Day, and the Deed strike the harp-strings of glory ! Let the song of the Ransomed remember the Dead, And the tongue of the Eloquent hallow the story. O er the bones of the Bold Be that story long told, And on Fame s golden tablets their triumphs enrolled, Who on Freedom s green hills Freedom s banner unfurled, And the beacon-fire raised that gave light to the world. They are gone Mighty Men ! and they sleep in their fame ; Shall we ever forget them ? O never ! no, never ! Let our Sons learn from us to embalm each great name, And the anthem send down " Independence forever." * Wake, wake, heart and tongue ! Keep the theme ever young Let their deeds through the long line of ages be sung, Who on Freedom s green hills Freedom s banner unfurled, And the beacon-fire raised that gave light to the world. * The dying words of the venerable John Adams, whose decease was on July 4. SONG, Written for the Parting Dinner given to Lafayette by the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. Scots who, hue. WAKE a deed of other days ; Swell the song of lofty praise ; Gratitude s bright goblet raise, Pledge to LAFAYETTE ! Him, who left his own fair land, By your fathers sides to stand, When Oppression s guilty brand In their blood was wet : Him, who shared their hour of woe; Him, who dealt with them each blow, Till young freedom s beaten foe Turned his back and fled. Lo ! again behold him here ! He, who came the sires to cheer, Joins their sons the Pile to rear O er the mighty dead. That gray Pile shall melt away, Tomb and tablet shall decay, Yet shall glory s deed and day Never set in night. SONG. Where your martyred heroes sleep, Children s children long shall weep ; There shall pilgrim warriors keep Vigils, ever bright. Sons of Art ! the table throng ; Swell your glad and grateful song ; Let its echoes, loud and long, Up to Heaven ascend ! Never may your hearts forget Freeman s duty Freeman s debt : Fill the cup to LAFAYETTE ; Pledge your Fathers Friend ! SONG, For a Festival in Faneuil HM. AvU Lang Syne. FILL, brothers, fill ! the brightest pour To them, the Great and Good, Who thronged this Hall, in days of yore, And firm for Freedom stood And firm, &c. Not then the festive board was spread, Those gallant men to cheer ; Not then its charm the wine-cup shed Like that which sparkles here Like that, &c. From them went up no merry song, When they this temple filled ; But bold c rebellion fired each tongue, And war each bosom thrilled And war, &c. Twas for a prouder deed they met, That should their names adorn ; They came a glorious feast to set For ages yet unborn For ages, &c. 118 SONG. And nobly through their work they went, In wisdom and in power, And down to us the blessing sent That crowns this happy hour That crowns, &c. Then, brothers, fill ! the brightest pour To them, the Great and Good, Who round this Hall, in days of yore, For us and Freedom stood For us, &c. ODE, For the Anniversary Festival of the Washington Light Infantry. Mains and Liberty THE bugle is hushed, and the war-blade is sheathed Whose flash in the sunbeam to triumph directed ; The olive s green branch with the laurel is wreathed, And Content tills the valley that Courage protected. Go on, lovely Peace, Bid the war-tempest cease, Till the isles of the ocean thy kingdom increase, And the ends of the earth swell thy chorus sublime 4 Sleep, red-armed Destroyer, the slumber of Time ! Round the festival board with full hearts we unite, And pour to our fathers fame s purest libation ; The brave ones who grappled the foe in the fight, The bold ones who spoke, and gave name to a nation ! To the great and the good, Who for Liberty stood, And traced her proud charter in letters of blood ; Then raised their glad notes in the chorus sublime 1 Sleep, red-armed Destroyer, the slumber of Time ! 120 ODE. O Washington ! dearest and best of our race ! Thy deeds through the night-cloud of ages shall lighten ! Thy name on his banner the soldier shall trace, To hallow his death, or his triumph to brighten ! Nor thee, Lafayette ! Shall our anthem forget, Whose arm hurled the bolt where the battle-clouds met ; Then who joined with our sires in the chorus sublime 4 Sleep, red-armed Destroyer, the slumber of Time ! Now the bumper-pledge drain for ourselves let it flow! May no arm the bright links of our brotherhood sever , With a heart for each friend, and a blade for each foe, Front face ! to the board and the battle forever ! In mirth and in might, Fellow-soldiers, unite Hand to hand at the feast, hand to hand in the fight ! In freedom and peace swell the chorus sublime Sleep, Spoiler of nations, the slumber of Time ! DEATH OF AN INFANT ONE little bud adorned my bower, And shed sweet fragrance round ; It grew in beauty, hour by hour, Till, ah ! the Spoiler came in power, And crushed it to the ground. Yet not forever in the dust That beauteous bud shall lie ; No ! in the garden of the just, Beneath God s glorious eye, I trust, Twill bloom again on high. 11 TO MONTAGUE, At Thirry-three. O, NO, I ll not forget the day, It claims, at least, a hallowed hour, A sparkling cup, an honest lay, Sacred to friendship s soothing power. Tis not all ice, this heart of mine, One throb is warm and youthful still ; That throb, dear MONTAGUE, is thine, Nor age nor grief that throb can chill. How often sung, and yet how sweet To dwell upon the days of old ! Our guiltless pleasures to repeat, Ere in the world our hearts grew cold ! Fond memory wakes ! each pulse beats high ; Like some sweet tale past joys come o er The years of ruin backward fly, And I am young and gay once more. TO MONTAGUE. 123 Friend of my soul, in this poor verse Let one untutored tribute live ; Here let my tongue my love rehearse ; Tis all, alas ! I have to give. O, if, from time s wide-yawning grave, There s aught of mine that I could free, One line from dull oblivion save, Twould be the line that tells of thee. Though to the busy world unknown Each noble act that shrinks from fame, Goodness its favorite son shall own, And orphan lips shall bless his name. Thou rt the small stream that silent goes, By earth s cold, plodding crowd unseen, Yet, all unnoticed though it flows, Its banks are clothed in living green. We met in that bright, sunny time, When every scene was fresh around, And youth s warm hour and manhood s prime Have blessed the tie that boyhood bound. Though oft of valued friends bereft, I bend, submissive, to the doom ; For thou, the best, the best, art left, To cheer my journey to the tomb. 124 TO MONTAGUE. And now, the dear ones of our race Have come to live our pleasures o er ; A lovely troop, to fill our place, And weep for us when we re no more. Ever, O ever may they keep The holy chain of friendship bright, Till, rich in all that s good, they sleep With us through death s long, dreamless night. ORATIONS. AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. An Oration pronounced before the Inhabitants of Boston, July 4, 1825. WHY, on THIS day, lingers along these sacred walls the spirit-kindling anthem ? Why, on THIS day, waits the herald of God at the altar, to utter forth his holy prayer ? Why, on THIS day, congregate here the Wise, and the Good, and the Beautiful of the land ? Fathers ! Friends ! it is the SABBATH DAY OF FREEDOM ! The race of the ransomed, with grateful hearts and exulting voices, have again come up, in the sunlight of peace, to the Jubilee of their Independence ! The story of our country s sufferings, our country s triumphs, though often and eloquently told, is still a story that cannot tire, and must not be forgotten. You will listen to its recital, however unadorned ; and I shall not fear, therefore, even from the place where your chosen ones have so long stood to delight and enlighten, I shall not fear to address you. Though I tell you no new thing, 4 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. I speak of that which can never fall coldly on your ears. You will listen, for you are the sons and daughters of the heroic men who lighted the beacon of ; rebellion, and unfurled, by its blaze, the triumphant banner of liberty; your own blood will speak for me. A feeble few of that intrepid band are now among you, yet spared by the grave for your veneration ; they will speak for me. Their sink ing forms, their bleached locks, their honorable scars ; these will, indeed, speak for me. Undaunted men ! how must their dim eyes brighten and their old hearts grow young with rapture, as they look round on the happiness of their own creation ! Long may they remain, our glad and grateful gaze, to teach us all, that we may treasure all, of the hour of doubt and danger ; and when their God shall summon them to a glorious rest, may they bear to their de parted comrades the confirmation of their country s renown and their children s felicity ! We meet to indulge in pleasing reminiscences. One happy household, we have come round the table of memory to banquet on the good deeds of others, and to grow good ourselves, by that on which we feed. Our hope for remembrance, our desire to remember friends and benefactors, are among the warmest and purest sentiments of our nature. To the former we cling stronger, as life itself grows weaker. We know that we shall forget, but the thought of being forgotten, is the AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 5 death-knell to the spirit. Though our bodies moulder, we would have our memories live. When we are gone, we shall not hear the murmuring voice of affection, the grateful tribute of praise ; still, we love to believe that that voice will be raised, and that tribute paid. Few so humble, that they sink below, none so exalted, that they rise above, this common feeling of humanity. The shipwrecked sailor, thrown on a shore where human eye never lightened, before he scoops in the burning sand his last, sad resting-place, scratches on a fragment of his shattered bark the record of his fate, in the melancholy hope that it may some day be repeated to the dear ones, who had long looked out in vain for his coming. The laureled warrior, whose foot has trodden on crowns, whose hand has divided empires, when he sinks on victory s red field, and life flies hunted from each quiver ing vein, turns his last mortal thought on that life to come, his country s brightest page. The remembrance we so ardently desire, we render unto others. To those who are dear, we pay our dearest tribute. It is exhibited in the most simple, in the most sublime forms. We behold it in the child, digging a little grave for its dead favorite, and marking the spot with a willow twig and a tear. We behold it in the con gregated nation, setting up on high its monumental pile to the mighty. We beheld it, lately, on that green plain, 1* 6 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. dyed with freedom s first blood ; * on that proud hill, ennobled as freedom s first fortress ; t when the tongues of the eloquent, touched with creative fire, seemed to bid the dust beneath them live, and the long-buried come forth. We behold it now, here, in this consecrated temple, where we have assembled to pay our annual debt of gratitude, to talk of the bold deeds of our ances tors, from the day of peril, when they wrestled with the savage for his birthright, to the day of glory, when they proclaimed a new charter to man, and gave a new nation to the world. ROLL back the tide of time : how powerfully to us applies the promise "I will give thee the heathen for an inheritance " ! Not many generations ago, where you now sit, circled with all that exalts and embellishes civ ilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your heads, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer ; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and the helpless, the council- fire glared on the wise and the daring. Now they dipped * Concord Celebration, April 19. f Bunker Hill Celebration, June 17. AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 7 their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred ; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here; and, when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace. Here, too, they worshipped; and from many a dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written His laws for them on tables of stone, but He had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in every thing around. He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lowly dwelling, in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his mid-day throne ; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze, in the lofty pine that had defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid war bler that never left its native grove, in the fearless eagle whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his foot, and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose myste rious Source he bent, in humble, though blind adoration. And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you, the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted 8 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. forever from its face a whole, peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and there, a stricken few remain ; but how unlike their bold, untamed, untameable progenitors ! The Indian ! of falcon glance, and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone ! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man, when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck. As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying away to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is press ing them away ; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of person they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chroni cles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people. AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 9 To the Pious, who, in this desert region, built a city of refuge, little less than to the Brave, who round that city reared an impregnable wall of safety, we owe the blessings of this day. To enjoy and to perpetuate religious free dom, the sacred herald of civil liberty, they deserted their native land, where the foul spirit of persecution was up in its fury, and where mercy had long wept at the enor mities perpetrated in the abused names of Jehovah and Jesus. " Resist unto blood ! " blind zealots had found in the Bible ; and lamentably, indeed, did they fulfil the command. With "Thus saith the Lord," the engines of cruelty were set in motion ; and many a martyr spirit, like the ascending prophet from Jordan s bank, escaped in fire to heaven. It was in this night of time, when the incubus of bigotry sat heavy on the human soul ; When crown and crosier ruled a coward world, And mental darkness o er the nations curled, When, wrapped in sleep, earth s torpid children lay, Hugged their vile chains, and dreamed their ago away, Twas then, by faith impelled, by freedom fired, By hope supported, and by God inspired, Twas then the Pilgrims left their fathers graves, To seek a Home beyond the waste of waves ; And where it rose, all rough and wintry, Here, They swelled devotion s song, and dropped devotion s tear. Can we sufficiently admire the firmness of this little brotherhood, thus self-banished from their country ? un- 10 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. kind and cruel, it was true, but still their country ! There they were born, and there, where the lamp of life was lighted, they had hoped it would go out. There a father s hand had led them, a mother s smile had warmed them. There were the sunny haunts of their boyish days, their kinsfolk, their friends, their recollections, their all. Yet all was left ; even while their heartstrings bled at the part ing, all was left ; and a stormy sea, a savage waste, and a fearful destiny were encountered for Heaven, and for You. It is easy enough to praise when success has sanctified the act ; and to fancy that we, too, could endure a heavy trial, which is to be followed by a rich reward. But before the deed is crowned, while the doers are yet about us, bearing like ourselves the common infirmities of the flesh, we stand aloof, and are not always ready to discern the spirit that sustains and exalts them. When centuries of experience have rolled away, we laud the exploit on which we might have frowned, if we had lived with those who left their age behind to achieve it. We read of empires founded, and people redeemed, of actions embalmed by time and hallowed by romance ; and our hearts leap at the lofty recital ; we feel it would be a glorious thing to snatch the laurels of immortal fame. But it is in the day of doubt, when the result is hidden in clouds, when danger stands in every path, and death is lurking in every corner ; AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 11 it is then, that the men who are born for great occa sions start boldly from the world s trembling multitude, and swear to do, or die ! SUCH men were they who peopled these shores. Such men, too, were they who preserved them. Of these latter giant spirits, who battled for independence, and to the re membrance of whose deeds this day is peculiarly devoted, we are to recollect that destruction awaited defeat. They were rebels, obnoxious to the fate of rebels. They were tearing asunder the ties of loyalty, and hazarding all the sweet endearments of social and domestic life. They were unfriended, weak, and wanting. Going thus forth against a powerful and vindictive foe, what could they dare to hope ? What had they not to dread ? They could not tell, but that vengeance would hunt them down, and infamy hang its black scutcheon over their graves. They did not know that the angel of the Lord would go forth with them, and smite the invaders of their sanctuary. They did not know that generation after generation would, on this day, rise up and call them blessed ; that the sleeping quarry would leap forth to pay them voiceless homage ; that their names would be handed down, from father to son, the penman s theme, and the poet s inspiration; challenging, through countless years, the gratitude of an emancipated people, and the plaudits of an admiring world! No!. t 12 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. They knew, only, that the arm which should protect was oppressing them, arid they shook it off; that the chalice presented to their lips was a poisoned one, and they dashed it away. They knew, only, that a rod was stretched over them for their audacity ; and beneath this they vowed never to bend, while a single pulse could beat the larum to rebellion. That rod must be broken, or they must bleed ! And it was broken ! Led on by their Washing ton, the heroes went forth. Clothed in the panoply of a righteous cause, they went forth boldly. Guided and guarded by a good Providence, they went forth triumph antly. They labored, that we might find rest; they fought, that we might enjoy peace ; they conquered, that we might inherit freedom ! You will not now expect a detail of the actions of that eventful struggle. To the annalists of your country belongs the pleasing task of tracing the progress of a revo lution, the purest in its origin, and the most stupendous in its consequences, that ever gladdened the world. To their fidelity we commit the wisdom which planned, and the valor which accomplished it. The dust of every contested mound, of every rescued plain, will whisper to them their duty, for it is dust that breathed and bled ; the hallowed dust of men who would be free, or nothing. There, in the sweet hour of eventide, the child of senti- AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 13 ment will linger, and conjure up their martyr forms. Heroes, with their garments rolled in blood, will marshal round him. The thrilling fife-note, the drum s heart-kindling beat, will again run down the shadowy ranks; the short, commanding word, the fatal volley, the dull death-groan, the glad hurrah ! again will break on his cheated ear. The battle that sealed his country s fate, his country s freedom, will rage before him in all its dreadful splendor. And when the airy pageant of his fancy fades in the gathering mists, he will turn his footsteps from the sacred field, with a warmer gratitude, and a deeper reverence for the gallant spirits who resigned dear life in defence of life s dearest blessing. THE l feelings, manners, and principles, which led to the Declaration of the Fourth of July 76, shine forth in the memorable language of its great author. He and his bold brethren proclaimed that all men were created equal, and endowed by -their Creator with the right of liberty ; that, for the security of this right, government was instituted, and that, when it violated its trust, the governed might abolish it. That crisis, they declared, had arrived; and the injuries and usurpations of the parent country were no longer to be endured. Recounting the dark catalogue of abuses which they had suffered, and appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of their in- 2 14 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. tentions ; in the name and by the authority of the People, the only fountain of legitimate power, they shook off for ever their allegiance to the British crown, and pronounced the united colonies an Independent Nation ! What their feelings, manners, and principles, led them to publish, their wisdom, valor, and perseverance, enabled them to establish. The blessings secured by the Pilgrims and the Patriots have descended to us. In the virtue and intelligence of the inheritors we confide for their duration. They who attained them have left us their ex ample, and bequeathed us their blood. We shall never forget the one, unless we prove recreant to the other. On the Doric columns of religious and civil liberty a ma jestic temple has been reared, and they who dwell within its walls will never bow in bondage to man, till they forget to bend in reverence to God. THE achievement of American Independence was not merely the separation of a few obscure Colonies from their parent realm ; it was the practical annunciation to created man, that he was created free ! and it will stand in history the epoch, from which to compute the real duration of polit ical liberty. Intolerance and tyranny had for ages leagued to keep their victim down. While the former could re main the pious guardian of his conscience, the latter knew it had nothing to fear from his courage. He was theirs, AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 15 soul and body. His intellectual energies were paralyzed^ that he might not behold the corruptions of the church ; and his physical powers were fettered, that he should not rise up against the abuses of the state. Thus centuries of darkness rolled away. Light, indeed, broke from time to time ; but it only served to show the surrounding clouds ; bright stars, here and there, looked out ; but they were the stars of a gloomy night. At length, the morning dawned, when one generation of your ancestors willed that none but their Maker should guide them in their duty as Christians ; and the perfect day shone forth, when another declared that from none but their Maker would they derive their immunities as Men. IF, in remembering the oppressed, you think the op pressors ought not to be forgotten, I might urge that the splendid result of the great struggle should fully reconcile us to the madness of those who rendered that struggle necessary. We may forgive the presumption which de clared its right to bind the American Colonies, for it was wofully expiated by the humiliation which acknowl edged those same American Colonies to be Sover eign and Independent States. The immediate workers, too, of that political iniquity have passed away. The mildew of shame will forever feed upon their memories ; a brand has been set upon their deeds, that even Time s all- 16 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. gnawing tooth can never destroy. But they have passed away ; and of all the millions they misruled, the millions they would have misruled, how few remain ! Another race is there M lament the folly, another here to magnify the wisdom, that cut the knot of empire. Shall these inherit and entail everlasting enmity? Like the Cartha ginian Hamilcar, shall we come up hither with our chil dren, and on this holy altar swear the pagan oath of undying hate ? Even our goaded fathers disdained this. Let us fulfil their words, and prove to the people of Eng land, that, 4 in peace, we know how to treat them as friends. 1 They have been twice told that, in war, we know how to meet them as enemies ; and they will hardly ask another lesson, for it may be, that, when the third trumpet shall sound, a voice will echo along their sea-girt cliffs 4 The Glory has departed ! Some few of their degenerate ones, tainting the bowers where they sit, decry the growing greatness of a land they will not love ; and others, after eating from our basket, and drinking from our cup, go home to pour forth the senseless libel against a people at whose firesides they were warmed. But a few pens dipped in gall will not retard our progress ; let not a few tongues, festering in falsehood, disturb our repose. We have those among us, who are able both to pare the talons of the kite and pull out the fangs of the viper ; who can lay bare, for the dis- AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 17 gust of all good men, the gangrene of the insolent reviewer, and inflict such a cruel mark on the back of the mortified runaway, as will long take from him the blessed privilege of being forgotten. These rude detractors speak not, we trust, the feelings of their nation. Time, the great corrector, is there fast en lightening both ruler and ruled. They are treading in our steps, even ours, and are gradually, though slowly, pulling up their ancient religious and political landmarks. Yielding to the liberal spirit of the age, a spirit born and fostered here, they are not only loosening their own long-riveted shackles, but are raising the voice of encouragement, and extending the hand of assistance, to the rebels of other climes. In spite of all that has passed, we owe England much ; and even on this occasion, standing in the midst of my generous-minded countrymen, I may fearlessly, willingly, acknowledge the debt. We owe England much ; noth ing for her martyrdoms ; nothing for her proscriptions ; nothing for the innocent blood with which she has stained the white robes of religion and liberty ; these claims our fathers cancelled, and her monarch rendered them and theirs a full acquittance forever. But for the living treas ures of her mind, garnered up and spread abroad for cen turies by her great and gifted, who that has drank at the sparkling streams of her poetry, who that has drawn from 2* 18 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. the deep fountains of her wisdom, who that speaks, and reads, and thinks her language, will be slow to own his ob ligation ? One of your purest ascended patriots, he who compassed sea and land for Liberty ; whose early voice for her echoed round yonder consecrated hall ; whose dying accents for her went up in solitude and suffering from the ocean ; when he sat down to bless, with the last token of a father s remembrance, the son, who wears his mantle with his name, bequeathed him the recorded lessons of England s best and wisest, and sealed the legacy of love with a prayer, whose full accomplishment we live to wit ness t that the spirit of Liberty might rest upon him. * WHILE we bring our offerings for the mighty of our own land, shall we not remember the chivalrous spirits of other shores, who shared with them the hour of weakness and woe ? Pile to the clouds the majestic columns of glory ; let the lips of those who can speak well, hallow each spot where the bones of your Bold repose ; but forget not those who with your Bold went out to battle. Among these men of noble daring, there was One, a young and gallant stranger, who left the blushing vine-hills of his delightful France. The people whom he came to succor were not his people ; he knew them only in the * See Life of Josiah Quincy, jr., by his son, Josiah Quincy, Mayor of Boston. AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 19 wicked story of their wrongs. He was no mercenary ad venturer, striving for the spoil of the vanquished ; the palace acknowledged him for its lord, and the valley yield ed him its increase. He was no nameless man, staking life for reputation ; he ranked among nobles, and looked unawed upon kings. He was no friendless outcast, seeking for a grave to hide a broken heart ; he was girdled by the companions of his childhood ; his kinsmen were about him ; his wife was before him ! Yet from all these he turned away. Like a lofty tree, that shakes down its green glories, to battle with the winter storm, he flung aside the trappings of place and pride, to crusade for freedom, in freedom s holy land. He came but not in the day of successful l rebellion ; not when the new-risen sun of independence had burst the cloud of time, and careered to its place in the heavens. He came when darkness curtained the hills, and the tempest was abroad in its anger; when the plough stood still in the field of promise, and briers cumbered the garden of beauty. He came when fathers were dying, and mothers were weeping over them ; when the wife was binding up the gashed bosom of her husband, and the maiden was wiping the death damp from the brow of her lover. He came when the brave began to fear the power of man, and the pious to doubt the favor of God. It was then that this One joined the ranks of a revolted 20 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. people. Freedom s little phalanx bade him a grateful wel come. With them he courted the battle s rage ; with theirs his arm was lifted, with theirs his blood was shed. Long and doubtful was the conflict. At length, kind Heaven smiled on the good cause, and the beaten invaders fled. The profane were driven from the temple of Liberty ; and at her pure shrine the pilgrim warrior, with his adored Commander, knelt and worshipped. Leaving there his offering, the incense of an uncorrupted spirit, he at length rose up, and, crowned with benedictions, turned his happy feet towards his long-deserted home. After nearly fifty years, that One has come again. Can mortal tongue tell, can mortal heart feel, the sublimity of that coming ? Exulting millions rejoice in it, and their loud, long, transporting shout, like the mingling of many winds, rolls on, undying, to freedom s farthest mountains. A con gregated nation comes round him. Old men bless him, and children reverence him. The lovely come out to look upon him, the learned deck their halls to greet him, the rulers of the land rise up to do him homage. How his full heart labors ! He views the rusting trophies of departed days, he treads the high places where his brethren moulder, he bends before the tomb of his Father ; his words are tears the speech of sad remembrance. But he looks round upon a ransomed land and a joyous race ; he beholds the blessings those trophies secured, for which those brethren AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 21 died, for which that Father lived ; and again his words are tears the eloquence of gratitude and joy. Spread forth creation like a map ; bid earth s dead mul titudes revive ; and of all the pageant splendors that ever glittered to the sun, when looked his burning eye on a sight like this ? Of all the myriads that have come and gone, what cherished minion ever ruled an hour like this ? Many have struck the redeeming blow for their own free dom ; but who, like this man, has bared his bosom in the cause of strangers ? Others have lived in the love of their own people ; but who, like this man, has drank his sweetest cup of welcome with another ? Matchless chief! of glory s immortal tablets, there is one for him, for him alone ! Ob livion shall never shroud its splendor ; the everlasting flame of libert) shall guard it, that the generations of men may repeat the name recorded there, the beloved name of Lafayette ! THEY who endured the burden of the conflict are fast going to their rest. Every passing gale sighs over another veteran s grave ; and, ere long, the last sage, and the last old soldier of the revolution, will be seen no more. Soon, too soon, will you seek in vain for even one, who can tell you of that day of stout hearts and strong hands. You lately beheld, on yonder glorious hill, a group of ancient men, baring their gray heads beneath the blaze of heaven ; 22 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. but never more at such a sight will your grateful hearts grow soft. These will never again assemble on earth. They have stood together in war, they have congregated in peace ; their next meeting will be in the fields of eternity. They must shortly sleep in the bosom of the land they redeemed, and in that land s renown will alone be their remembrance. Let us cherish those who remain to link the living with the dead. Of these, let one thought, to-day, rest on Him, whose pen and fame this day has rendered immortal. With him, too, now that the bitter feuds of a bitter hour are forgotten, we may associate Another, the venerable successor of our Washington. Here broke his morning radiance, and here yet linger his evening beams. " Sure the last end of the good man is peace ! Night dews fall not more gently to the ground, Nor weary, worn-out winds expire so soft. Behold him, in the even-tide of life, A life well spent ! By unperceived degrees he wears away, Yet, like the sun, seems larger at his setting ! " I look round in vain for two of your exalted patriots, who, on your last festival-day, sat here in the midst of you ; for him, who then worthily wore the highest honors you could bestow, who in your name greeted your Nation s Guest, and took him by the hand and wept; for him, too, AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 23 who devoted to your service a youth of courage, and an age of counsel ; who long ruled over you in purity and wisdom, and then, gently shaking off his dignities, retired to his native shades, laden with your love. They have both passed away, and the tongues th^t bade the Apostle of liberty welcome, will never bid him farewell. In the place of the Fathers shall be the children. To the seat which Eustis and Brooks adorned, the people of this state have united to elevate one, whom they have often delighted to honor. He sits where they sat, who were laboring in the vineyard even before he was born. His name adds another bright stud to the golden scutcheon of the Commonwealth. While his heart warms with honest pride at the confidence so flatteringly reposed in him, he will wisely remember what that confidence expects from him, in the discharge of his high trust. Chosen by all, he will govern for all ; and, thus sustaining his well-earned reputation, may he live long in the affection of a generous people ! I shall not omit, on this occasion, to congratulate you on the result of an election, which has recently raised to the highest station in your republic one of your most distinguished citizens. While, however, the ardent wishes of so many have been crowned by this gratifying event, it is not to be forgotten, that there are those among us, men of pure and patriotic minds, who responded not 24 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. Amen to the general voice. I should be ashamed of the feelings which would insult theirs by an unworthy exulta tion. The illustrious individual, whom the representa tives of the nation have pronounced most worthy, would be the first to frown upon it, as he has ever been among the first to acknowledge the merits of his exalted competi tors. To the high-minded friends of these, in common with us all, this day and its rites belong; and I cannot violate the trust confided to me, I will not subject myself to a pang of regret, by the indulgence of language, which should send a single being from this place, with a less joy ous spirit than he entered it. It is safer to be dull than bitter ; and I would rather you should all be willing to forget the labor of this hour in charity, than that one among you should feel compelled to remember it in unkindness. I have alluded to this event, not merely for the purpose of obtruding upon you the expression of personal gratifica tion, but because it offers another striking proof of the sta bility of our free institutions. Since the strife of 1800, we have not witnessed so violent a contest as this, through which we have lately passed ; yet now, how quiet are be come the elements of discord ! With a praiseworthy for bearance, all, or nearly all, have bowed to the expression of the public will, and seem determined, in the words of one of his accomplished rivals, to judge the ruler of the nation l by his measures. AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 25 While this spirit triumphs, we have nothing to dread from the animosities of party. However turbulent, they will be harmless. Like the commotions of the physical world, they will be necessary. Far distant be the day, when it must be said of this country, that it has no parties ; for it must be also said, if any one be bold enough to say it, that it has no liberties. Let hawk-eyed jealousy be for ever on the alert, to watch the footsteps of power. Let it be courteous in language, but stern and unbending in prin ciple. Whoever he may be, wherever he may be, that would strike at the people s rights, let him hear the people s voice, proclaiming that l whom it will, it can set up, and whom it will, it can set down. Fear not party zeal it is the salt of your existence. There are no parties under a despotism. There, no man lingers round a ballot-box ; no man drinks the poison of a licentious press; no man plots treason at a debating society; no man distracts his head about the science of government. All there is a calm, unruffled sea ; even a dead sea of black and bitter waters. But we move upon a living stream, forever pure, forever rolling. Its mighty tide sometimes flows higher, and rushes faster, than its wont, and as it bounds, and foams, and dashes along in sparkling vio lence, it now and then throws up its fleecy cloud ; but this rises only to disappear, and, as it fades away before the out breaking sunbeams of patriotism, you behold upon its bosom 3 26 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. the rainbow signal of returning peace, arching up to declare that the danger is over. AND now, it is no vain speech to say, the eyes of the world have been long upon us. For nearly fifty years we have run the glorious race of empire. Friends have gazed in fear, and foes in scorn ; but fear is lost in joy, and scorn is turning to wonder. The great experiment has succeeded. Mankind behold the spectacle of a land, whose crown is wisdom, whose mitre is purity, whose heraldry is talent ; a land, where public sentiment is supreme, and where every man may erect the pyramid of his own fair fame. They behold, they believe, and they will imitate. The day is coming, when thrones can no longer be supported by parchment rolls. It is not a leaf of writing, signed and sealed by three frail, mortal men, that can forever keep down suffering millions : these will rise ; they will point to another scroll ; to that, of whose bold signers our Three * remain; our Three, whose alliance was, indeed, a holy one, for it met the approving smile of a Holy God! Many must suffer defeat, and many must taste of death , but freedom s battle will yet be fought and won. As Heaven unbinds the intellect of man, his own right arm will rescue * John Adams, Charles Carroll, Thomas Jefferson the surviving signers of the Declaration of Independence. AIM ERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 27 his body. Liberty will yet walk abroad in the gardens of Europe. Her hand will pluck the grapes of the south, her eye will warm the snow-drifts of the north. The crescent will go down in blood, from that bright clime of battle and of song, for which He died, that noble Briton, that warrior bard, who, like the youthful Lafayette, uplifted his gener ous arm in defence of a people not his own. And to this young land will belong the praise. The struggling nations point to our example, and in their own tongues repeat the cheering language of our sympathy. Already, when a master-spirit towers among them, they call him their Washington. Along the foot of the Andes, they breathe in gratitude the name of Clay ; by the ivy- buried ruins of the Parthenon, they bless the eloquence of Webster ! FELLOW-CITIZENS, my imperfect task is ended. I have told you an old tale ; but you will forgive that, for it is one of your country s glory. You will forgive me that I have spoken of the simple creatures who were here from the beginning, for it was to tell you how much had been wrought for you by Piety ; you will forgive me that I have lingered round the green graves of the dead, for it was to remind you how much had been achieved for you by Pa triotism. Forgive me, did I say ? Would you have for- 28 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. given me, if I had not done this? Could I, ought I, to have wasted this happy hour in cold and doubtful specula tion, while your bosoms were bounding with the holy throb of gratitude ? O no it was not for that you came up hither. The groves of learning, the halls of wisdom, you have deserted ; the crowded mart, the chambers of beauty, you have made solitary that here, with free, exulting voices, before the only throne at which the free can bend, your hearts might pour forth their full, gushing tribute to the benefactors of your country. On that country Heaven s highest blessings are descend ing. I would not, for I need not, use the language of inflation ; but the decree has gone forth, and as sure as the blue arch of creation is in beauty above us, so sure will it span the mightiest dominion that ever shook the earth. Imagination cannot outstrip reality, when it contemplates our destinies as a people. Where Nature slept in her soli tary loveliness, villages, and cities, and states, have smiled into being. A gigantic nation has been born. Labor and art are adorning, and science is exalting, the land that re ligion sanctified, and liberty redeemed. From the shores to the mountains, from the regions of frost to the valleys of eternal spring, myriads of bold and understanding men are uniting to strengthen a government of their own choice, and perpetuate the institutions of their own creation. AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 29 The germe wafted over the ocean has struck its deep root in the earth, and raised its high head to the clouds. Man looked in scorn, but Heaven beheld, and blessed Its branchy glories, spreading o er the West. No summer gaude, the wonder of a day, Born but to bloom, and then to fade away, A giant Oak, it lifts its lofty form, Greens in the sun, and strengthens in the storm. Long in its shade shall children s children come, And welcome earth s poor wanderers to a home. Long shall it live, and every blast defy, Till time s last whirlwind sweep the vaulted sky. 3* ON INTEMPERANCE. An Address delivered before the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance. 1827. IN discharging the duty which has been confided to me, I shall use great plainness of speech. The themes that lead to the pleasant fields of poetry, and tempt the wan derer to linger among the beautiful creations of fancy, are for other and happier seasons. The purpose for which we have assembled, awakening, as it does, so many painful associations, holds no communion with the bright regions of romance we tread the cold, gray waste of reality. The hour before us is one of severe and fearful reflection ; and it becomes him who has been selected to occupy it, to speak the words of truth and soberness. We have met to mourn over a calamity which, like one of the plagues sent to curse ancient Egypt, has come upon us, and upon our people, and into our houses, and into our bed-chambers, and is desolating the land. We have met to bear our testimony against Drunkenness and we call upon all good men to stand forth, and cheer us with their influence and example. We implore them as Christians, as Patriots, as Philanthropists, to join in the labor and 32 ON INTEMPERANCE. the praise of extirpating a vice that has taken deep root in our nation, spreading to its remotest borders, and dropping in its loveliest paths the seeds of misery, disease, and death. The spectacle before us is indeed appalling. The vic tims of intemperance are wasting around us in frightful numbers. Neither sex, nor age, nor rank, nor talent, is unsubdued by the subtle destroyer. Man falls away from his glorious destiny, and woman is degraded from her angel station ; the young bow their faces in the beauty of their promise, the mature are arrested in the pride of their usefulness, and the white locks of the old seek the tomb in disgrace ; the rich are overcome in their splendid mansions, the poor in their dreary hovels ; the arm of labor is para lyzed, the light of learning is extinguished ; genius is struck down in his eagle career, and the holy functions of piety are defiled in the dust. Friends we may not sit in silence, while this devasta tion is going on. We have a duty to perform ; and what we would do effectually, we must do unitedly. It is time for us to speak ; the ear that would be deaf to the kind whisper of individual remonstrance, must hear the congre gated voices of an alarmed community. Above all, it is time for us to act ; the sin that shrouds itself in the broad mantle of custom, custom must expose and destroy. A vast proportion of the cases of confirmed intemperance may be traced, not so much to any innate depravedness, as to ON INTEMPERANCE. dd the crafty workings of the unreproved usages of society ; and we, who continue to follow these usages, even while we laugh at them, are ourselves more or less chargeable with the evils we lament over, and are bound to exert our efforts for the alleviation of them. I say, our efforts not merely those which are exhausted in assembling to hear admonitory addresses, too often only criticised and forgotten in showering abroad tracts, that seem to pass off like a thick flight of snow, leaving no trace of their passage, and disappearing where they fall ; these things, cer tainly, are not to be left undone ; but if we would have them of any avail, something more must be done also. Least of all can we rely on the unassisted arm of au thority. We may invoke the laws, but we may as well in voke the dead. Laws can only operate when the mischief is done. Prevention is what we want remedy utterly loses its character. Indeed, though we very properly punish the thief and the murderer, for crimes against which we all set our faces, with what consistency can we punish the drunkard, for an offence to which our own daily prac tices naturally lead him? We do all but the deed our selves we tread on the borders of the forbidden ground, and then angrily cry out for justice on him who goes one step farther. Enforce the laws ! exclaims some virtu ously-indignant citizen, as he beholds the low-born drunk ard shaming the fair face of day enforce the laws! 34 ON INTEMPERANCE. and with these words on his lips, he coolly arranges the evening club, from the carousings of which if he retires unexposed, it is because the shades of night do more for him than his own prudence. Suppress drinking-houses and soda establishments ! cries the anxious father, who shudders lest his son may drink there of the waters of death, which, however, he is not at all afraid to press upon his friends at home. Why does not government impose a tax on domestic spirits ? is the inquiry of one, who sits at his loaded table, boasting of the age of his foreign liquors, and recounting the various voyages that have rendered them so exquisite. Truly, there is a little absurdity in these things. Besides, we may fine and imprison a poor wretch, now and then, for intoxication ; but it will go only a little way to reduce the evil it will not teach him tem perance. We may lessen the number of dram-shops that pour forth their steams of abomination from every hole and corner ; bat we all know that many a man becomes a drunkard before he sets his foot within one it will not teach him temperance. We may call upon our rulers to lay heavy duties on imported and domestic liquors ; but, should they even be courageous enough to do so, it would only tempt the importer to become a smuggler, and instruct the distiller to outwit the exciseman perhaps it might put money into the public treasury but it would not teach men temperance. No ! we must go beyond all this we ON INTEMPERANCE. 35 must first minister to ourselves. Before we revive old laws, we must abolish old customs. Before we appeal to the government, we must prove our sincerity by becoming our own legislators. The law we need is that which must speak in the unwritten majesty of Public Opinion. The people s virtue must enact it, and the people s practice must be its enforcement. But it may be said that much which the friends of Tem perance would abolish, is harmless ; and that we need not debar ourselves from the innocent recreations of social and convivial life, simply because some are weak enough to pervert them. It is undoubtedly true, that we are not re quired to copy the macerating austerities of the monk s cell, for fear men should become gluttons, nor to dip our cup only in the hermit s spring, lest they should turn drunkards. Our Creator has not spread before us a boun teous table, merely to forbid our approach to it. Still, if we behold that there are many, weak enough to abuse these innocent recreations, and to whom an indulgence in them is not, harmless if our example serves to encourage in others practices which, we cannot deny, inevitably tend to their destruction we have not the right, the moral right, to make them constant stumbling-blocks in the path of those who have more feeling and less philosophy than ourselves. It becomes us, if not, in common charity, to set them entirely aside, at least, as well-wishers to society, to 36 ON INTEMPERANCE. inquire how far we are justified in making thern, as too many of us do, the daily test of hospitality, the unerring touchstone of friendship, the universal accompaniment of all social intercourse. It is truly astonishing to behold how completely the habit of unnecessary drinking pervades the various classes of our community. In one way or another, it is their morning and evening devotion, their noonday and midnight sacrifice. From the highest grade to the lowest, from the drawing- room to the kitchen, from the gentleman to the laborer, down descends the universal custom ; from those who sit long at the wine that has been rocked upon the ocean, and ripened beneath an Indian sky, down to those who solace themselves with the fiery liquor that has cursed no other shores than our own down, till it reaches the miserable abode, where the father and mother will have rum, though the children cry for bread down to the bottom, even to the prison-house, the forlorn inmate of which hails him his best friend, who is cunning enough to convey to him, undis covered, the alt-consoling, the all-corroding poison. Young men must express the warmth of their mutual regard, by daily and nightly libations at some fashionable hotel it is the custom. The more advanced take turns in flinging open their own doors to each other, and the purity of their esteem is testified by the number of bottles they can empty together it is the custom. The husband ON INTEMPE-RANCE. 37 deems it but civil to commemorate the accidental visit of his acquaintance .by a glass of ancient spirit, and the wife holds it a duty to celebrate the flying call of her companion with a taste of the .latest liqueur for this, also, is the custom. The interesting gossipry of every little evening coterie must be enlivened with the customary cordial. Custom demands that idle quarrels, perhaps generated over a friendly -cup, another friendly cup must drown. Foolish wagers are laid, to be adjusted in foolish drinking the rich citizen stakes a dozen, the poor one a dram. The brisk minor panting for twenty-one, baptizes his new-born manhood in the strong drink to which he intends training it up. Births, marriages, and burials, are all hallowed by strong drink. Anniversaries, civic festivities, military dis plays, municipal elections, and even religious ceremonials, are nothing without strong drink. The political ephemera of a little noisy day, and the colossus whose footsteps mil lions wait upon, must alike be apotheosised in liquor. A rough-hewn statesman is toasted at, and drank at, to his face in one place, while his boisterous adversary sits through the same mummery in another. Here, in their brimming glasses, the adherents of some successful candi date mingle their congratulations ; and there, in like man ner, the partisans of his defeated rival forget their chagrin. Even the great day of national emancipation is, with too many, only a great day of drinking; and the proud song of 4 38 ON INTEMPERANCE. deliverance is trolled from the lips of those, who are bend ing body and soul to a viler thraldom than that from which their fathers rescued them. I need not swell the catalogue it were a shorter task to tell where liquors do not abound, than where they do. And all these things would only wake a smile, but that their consequences make us sad, and ought to make us wise. Is it not here that the mischief we mourn over begins ? and if so, ought not the reformation to begin here also ? Look back to the days of childhood. Call up round you the little groups that made your young hours happy. Follow them along, from year to year, as you and they grew older. Remember how this one and that one, the generous and the gifted, dropped off from your sides into the grave. Did not intemperance drag them down ? and was it not amid the innocent recreations of society that they were first ensnared ? Cannot many a parent, many a wife, many a husband, here find the source of days and nights of anguish ? May we not select some youthful victim of excess, and trace him back, step by step, to these harmless indulgences these innocent recreations ? Have we not seen The young disease, that must subdue at length, Grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength ? Could he repeat alas ! he cannot his mind is sunk in his body s defilement but could he for a moment shake ONINTEMPERANCE. 39 off his lethargy, and repeat to us the story of his errors, as faithfully as he looks their odious consequences, he would tell us that to the innocent enjoyments of hospitality and festivity he owes his ruin that the warranted indulgences of convivial life led the way to the habitual debauch, which has finally set upon him the seal whereby all men may know the drunkard. He would tell us that he was once worthy of a happier destiny that he stepped on life s pathway, rejoicing in purity and hope that he was blessed with a frame for vigorous action, and a heart for the world s endearing charities that his eye loved the beauties of nature, and his spirit adored the goodness of nature s God. But he would tell us, that, in an evil hour, he found he had fallen, even before he knew he was in danger that the customs of society had first enticed him, and then unfitted him for its duties that the wreaths they had insidiously flung round him hardened to fetters, and he could not shake them off. He would tell us that over the first discovery of his fatal lapse his alarmed parents wept, and he mingled his tears with theirs that as he grew more unguarded in his offence, they raised the angry voice of reproof, and he braved it in sullen silence that as he became still more vile and brutish, kindred and friend turned their cold eyes away from him, and his expiring shame felt a guilty relief. He would tell us, that, at length, just not hated, he has reached the lowest point of living 40 O N I N T E M P E R A N C E . degradation that in his hours of frenzy he is locked up in the receptacle for the infamous, and in his lucid intervals let out, a moving beacon to warn the virtuous. Could he anticipate the end of his unhappy story, he might tell us that yet a little while, and his short and wretched career will be ended that the father who hung over his cradle, weaving bright visions of his son s future greatness, will feel a dreadful satisfaction as he gazes upon him in his coffin that the mother who lulled him to sleep on her bosom, and joyed to watch his waking, will not dare to murmur that the sleep has come upon him, out of which on earth he will never awake that the grave will be gladly made ready to receive him that as, while living, he forfeited c fair re nown, so, doubly dying, he must Go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. But, deplorably as the frivolous usages of society show, in their effects upon the young, the prospect is doubly terrific, when we behold their ravages among the more mature. The common calamities of life may be endured. Poverty, sickness, and even death, may be met but there is that which, while it brings all these with it, is worse than all these together. When the husband and father forgets the duties he once delighted to fulfil, and bv slow degrees be comes the creature of intemperance, there enters into his ON INTEMPERANCE. 41 house the sorrow that rends the spirit that cannot be alleviated, that will not be comforted. It is here, above all, where she, who has ventured every thing, feels that every thing is lost. Woman, silent-suffer ing, devoted woman, here bends to her direst affliction. The measure of her woe is, in truth, full, whose husband is a drunkard. Who shall protect her, when he is her in- sulter, her oppressor ? What shall delight her, when she shrinks from the sight of his face, and trembles at the sound of his voice ? The hearth is indeed dark, that he has made desolate. There, through the dull midnight hour, her griefs are whispered to herself, her bruised heart bleeds in secret. There, while the cruel author of her distress is drowned in distant revelry, she holds her solitary vigil, waiting, yet dreading his return, that will only wring from her, by his unkindness, tears even more scalding than those she sheds over his transgression. To fling a deeper gloom across the present, memory turns back, and broods upon the past. Like the recollection to the sun-stricken pilgrim, of the cool spring that he drank at in the morning, the joys of other days come over her, as if only to mock her parched and weary spirit. She recalls the ardent lover, whose graces won her from the home of her infancy the enraptured father, who bent with such delight over his new-born children ; and she asks if this can really be he this sunken being, who has now nothing for her but 4* 42 ON INTEMPERANCE. the sot s disgusting brutality nothing for those abashed and trembling children, but the sot s disgusting example ! Can we wonder, that, amid these agonizing moments, the tender cords of violated affection should snap asunder ? that the scorned and deserted wife should confess, there is no killing like that which kills the heart ? that though it would have been hard for her to kiss for the last time the cold lips of her dead husband, and lay his body forever in the dust, it is harder to behold him so debasing life, that even his death would be greeted in mercy ? Had he died in the light of his goodness, bequeathing to his family the inherit ance of an untarnished name, the example of virtues that should blossom for his sons and daughters from the tomb though she would have wept bitterly indeed, the tears of grief would not have been also the tears of shame. But to behold him, fallen away from the station he once adorned, degraded from eminence to ignominy at home, turning his dwelling to darkness, and its holy endearments to mockery abroad, thrust from the companionship of the worthy, a self-branded outlaw this is the woe that the wife feels is more dreadful than death, that she mourns over as worse than widowhood. There is yet another picture behind, from the exhibition of which I would willingly be spared. I have ventured to point to those who daily force themselves before the world ; but there is one whom the world does not know ON INTEMPERANCE. 43 of w ho hides herself from prying eyes, even in the in nermost sanctuary of the domestic temple. Shall I dare to rend the veil that hangs between, and draw her forth ? the priestess dying amid her unholy rites the sacrificer and the sacrifice ? O, we compass sea and land, we brave danger and death, to snatch the poor victim of heathen superstition from the burning pile and it is well but shall we not also save the lovely ones of our own house hold, from immolating on this foul altar, not alone the perishing body, but all the worshipped graces of her sex the glorious attributes of hallowed womanhood ? Imagination s gloomiest reverie never conceived of a more revolting object, than that of a wife and mother, de filing in her own person the fairest work of her God, and setting at nought the holy engagements for which he created her. Her husband who shall heighten his joys, and dissipate his cares, and alleviate his sorrows ? She, who has robbed him of all joy, who is the source of his deepest care, who lives his sharpest sorrow ? These are indeed the wife s delights but they are not hers. Her children who shall watch over their budding virtues, and pluck up the young weeds of passion and vice ? She, in whose own bosom every thing beautiful has withered, every thing vile grows rank ? Who shall teach them to bend their little knees in devotion, and repeat their Saviour s prayer against temptation ? She, who is herself temp- 44 ON INTEMPERANCE. tation s fettered slave ? These are truly the mother s labors but they are not hers. Connubial love and maternal tenderness bloom no longer for her. A worm has gnawed into her heart, that dies only with its prey the worm Intemperance. These are riot the imaginings of a heated fancy you who hear me know that they are not. Nor are they dis torted illustrations of rare and solitary cases, which cross us so seldom that they are wondered at, even more than they are deplored. Your own observation will bear me witness, that they are drawn at random, from the too numerous classes, whose talents and virtues are annually lost to their friends by the basilisk charm of the social cup. You behold them at every turn happy are you, if you do not discover in them once valued companions thrice happy, if you have never been called to lament over them by your own firesides. But why are these odious portraits hung up to the sick ening gaze ? Have the originals come hither to look upon them, and grow ashamed of their own deformity ? Can all the homilies of the pulpit startle him who has been blind to the tears of affection, arid deaf to the prayer of friendship, and shrunk not from the burning touch of shame ? No we dare not hope to reclaim the drunk ard his reformation comes unlocked for, if it comes at all. The mortal taint is upon him, in his blood, on ONINTEMPERANCE. 45 his brain and if he will, he must die, even in his drunk enness. But though many an ill-fated vessel goes to the bottom, men do not forbear to light up the beacon of safety there are yet gallant barks in the offing, arid for them the signal-fire must be set on high. There are those about us, now vibrating between right and wrong they may be snatched from the woe that threatens them ; there are those now happy in the sunshine of temperance they may live to crown our exertions ; there are the multitudes, not yet fallen, because not assailed ; the strong toilers by the wayside, the busy craftsmen of life s middle walks, the loftier aspirants for wealth and distinction ; parents, yet the centre of domestic bliss ; children, still the pride of the paternal board ; there are the generations springing up around us, with passions uncurbed, and principles un- established those who are to come after us, and fill our places, and hand down to their posterity the virtues and vices they learn of us these call aloud for our untiring labors, and, by the blessing of Heaven, for some of these our labors shall not be in vain. ALTHOUGH I have not particularly alluded to the effects of intemperance on the lower orders of society, it is by no means because the intemperate with them are less numer ous than may be found among the higher classes we know that the reverse is the case. Personal observation 46 ON INTEMPERANCE. and well -authenticated documents too plainly prove, that, to the poor, drunkenness is verily the pestilence walking in darkness, and the destruction wasting at noon-day. If they can find money for nothing else, they can find it for the liquid fire that destroys them. He who is so destitute that he can neither clothe nor feed his ragged and famish ing children, is rarely so reduced that he cannot pay for the guilty indulgences of the dram-shop. 4 I have seen, 1 says one of my predecessors in this duty I have seen ardent spirits, more than once, form, with a scanty allow ance of bread and meat, the only meal of an almost per ishing family. I have seen a mother and her children, hovering in the depth of winter over a few dying embers, half naked and half starved, bread and water the only nourishment of the children, bread and rum of the parents. I have seen a little child, squalid and filthy, pinched with cold and want, covered, but not protected from the inclem ency of winter, by a few tattered garments, her bare feet on the frozen earth, stealing along with a broken pitcher, to bring to her parents the liquor which was to serve for the morning s repast whilst within their comfortless dwelling, gladdened by no blazing hearth, they were waiting in bed, with a drunkard s longing, for that which was to them better than food, clothing, or fire. I might warn the poor man of the inevitable conse quences of these besotting habits. I might tell him that ON INTEMPERANCE. 47 they will steal away all his homely comforts, load him with debts, lead him to the jail, stretch him on the bed of sickness, and finally press him down to an untimely grave, while his wife and children must be left behind, the shivering pensioners of a grudging world s cold bounty. But I am not now addressing the poor. I speak to you, whom the poor are proud to copy. By portraying some of the evils that are thinning your own ranks, by tracing them to what I believe is their origin, and pointing to what I think is the only certain relief for them, I would incite you to a reformation, that shall not only reach those around you, but descend to those below. If the present race is too far gone, you may at least save some of that which is to come. Man has been truly termed the creature of imita tion, and it is equally true, that his disposition to imitate is somewhat aspiring. He will ape a lofty vice, rather than emulate a lowly virtue. This inclination, strong enough every where, is peculiarly powerful in a country the very institutions of which serve to feed it. The pleasant doc trine that all men are free and equal, is thoroughly under stood, at least in one sense, by those whom its exciting spirit never roused to great and noble action. In this view our subject assumes a fearful political im portance. The ruinous consequences of wide-spread in temperance to a people governing themselves, can hardly be overrated. If there be on earth one nation more than 48 ON INTEMPERANCE. another, whose institutions must draw their life-blood from the individual purity of its citizens, that nation is our own. Rulers by divine right, and nobles by hereditary succession, may, perhaps, tolerate with impunity those depraving in dulgences which keep the great mass abject. Where the many enjoy little or no power, it were a trick of policy to wink at those enervating vices, which would rob them of both the ability and the inclination to enjoy it. But in our country, where almost every man, however humble, bears to the omnipotent ballot-box his full portion of the sover eignty where, at regular periods, the ministers of author ity, who went forth to rule, return to be ruled, and lay down their dignities at the feet of the monarch multitude where, in short, public sentiment is the absolute lever that moves the political world the purity of the people is the rock of political safety. We may boast, if we please, of our exalted privileges, and fondly imagine that they will be eternal but whenever those vices shall abound, which undeniably tend to debasement, steeping the poor and the ignorant still lower in poverty and ignorance, and thereby destroying that wholesome mental equality, which can alone sustain a self-ruled people it will be found, by woful experience, that our happy system of government, the best ever devised for the intelligent and good, is the very worst to be intrusted to the degraded and vicious. The great majority will then truly become a many-headed ON INTEMPERANCE. 49 monster, to be tamed and led at will. The tremendous power of suffrage, like the strength of the eyeless Nazarite, so far from being their protection, will but serve to pull down upon their heads the temple their ancestors reared for them. Caballers and demagogues will find it an easy task to delude those who have deluded themselves ; and the freedom of the people will finally be buried in the grave of their virtues. National greatness may survive splendid talents and brilliant victories may fling their delusive lustre abroad ; these can illumine the darkness that hangs round the throne of a despot but their light will be like the baleful flame that hovers over decaying mortality, and tells of the corruption that festers beneath. The immortal spirit will have gone and along our shores, and among our hills those shores made sacred by the sepulchre of the Pilgrim, those hills hallowed by the uncoffined bones of the Patriot even there, in the ears of their degenerate descendants, shall ring the last knell of departed Liberty. I would not, even in anticipation, do my country injus tice. I glory in my citizenship. With the exception of the one hateful vice, which is spreading its ravages far and wide, we may proudly challenge a comparison with the dominions of the earth. The present, however, is not a time for the silken phrases of self-commendation. This gross and besetting sin, the parent of so many others, is a national blot ; and if it shows the darker on our scutcheon, 5 50 ON INTEMPERANCE. that it pollutes so fair a surface, it becomes more imperi ously the duty of every patriotic citizen to assist in remov ing it. Let not our glory and disgrace go hand in hand. When we exultingly proclaim to the decrepit communities of the old world, how far we have outstripped them in liberty, let them not be able to tell us that we have also outstripped them in a vice which is liberty s most deadly foe. If that be true, which we have been told, let it teach .us humility, and excite us to amendment that though but two hundred years a people, but fifty years a nation, we have already, in this particular, attained a wicked preemi nence over kingdoms that had seen centuries come and de part, long before the white sail of Columbus caught the inspiring winds of our western sky. I have thus imperfectly touched upon some of the evils of intemperance, as they affect man in the life that is but how much more unspeakable do they become, when we con sider him as a being born to live forever ! It has been re marked of other sins, that, as we grow old, if we do not leave them, at least they leave us. Time cools the hot blood of youth, and philosophy assumes the reins that passion has resigned. But this vampyre vice clings the closer as it draws its captive nearer to the grave ; and, when it has destroyed the body, sends the stupefied soul to its dread account, all reeking in its unrepented-of enormity. Is it not wonderful, that a creature, glowing with the ON INTEMPERANCE. 51 divinity of his Creator endowed with energies to control the things of one world, and with attributes that capacitate him for the joys of another able to bind to his will the elements that surround him t making the winds and the waters the ministers of his pleasure rifling the caverns of the earth of their unsunned wealth tracing the stars as they circle away to their hiding-places exploring the un bounded realms of creation, till he stands in speechless homage at the footstool of creation s Awful Founder is it not indeed wonderful, that such a being, so rarely endowed, should dare to quench the sacred fire that has descended upon him cumbering the earth he was born to subdue, and forfeiting the heaven he was ordained to enjoy? But I am here invading the holy province of others. This is your field, ye anointed ministers of Him who went about doing good. Ye have the privilege, ye have the com mand, to speak to man of his immortal destiny. Is it glori ous to sway the human mind, and is it not more glorious to render it worth being swayed ? Is it important to make men believe right, and is it not still more important to make them act well? Is it your duty to point them to heaven, and is it not doubly your duty to fit them for heaven s en joyments ? Ye would throw light on the page that Infinite Wisdom has shrouded in darkness enforce that, also, which he who runs can comprehend. Ye can sharpen and burnish your weapons, and set yourselves in battle-array 52 ON INTEMPERANCE. against each other, in defence of your various creeds unite your conflicting powers, and overthrow the giant sin that wars with every creed. Ye would open the eyes of the blind heathen, and snatch,him from the blood-dripping car of his idol strive also to convert the Christian idolater, and save him from the wrath of a demon whose touch is worse than death. Warn him of the vice that eats into the soul. Declare unto him the doom pronounced upon the drunkard. With you are the hearts of the old and the young. On you men look with love, for you are associated with their joys and their sorrows to you they listen with reverence, for you bear the delegated majesty of the Most High. Be ye, then, faithful and fearless in this thing in what ye say in what ye do. ; Take the censer of fire in your hands, and go forth into the camp, and stand between the living and the dead, and stay this plague which rages among the people. AND, now, is it a hard thing that we ask each other to perform? There are those who never fear to do that which they are conscious is wrong shall we be afraid to do that which we know to be right ? Martyrs have calmly laid their heads on the block, for opinions the truth of which many will always deny shall we hesitate to protest against habits, the baneful consequences of which all ac knowledge ? Men waste time, and talent, and money, in ON INTEMPERANCE. 53 schemes which, though successful, end in vexation and vanity are we unwilling to make an effort for the happi ness of those about us, which, even if unsuccessful, will bring us the reward of self-approbation ? We love to re member what our Fathers did and suffered, in the ages gone by, and we extol the holy and the bold achievements which secured to us a lovely heritage shall our children look back to our day, and find nothing to reverence in us ? Shall we not at least bequeath them lessons of purity, ex amples of temperance ? These may not win for us the page of history the orator may not sound our praise in high places nor the poet remember us in his glowing an them ; but the small, sweet voice of the moralist will testify of us the blessings of them that were ready to perish may rest upon us we shall have that within which passeth show. Let me then again press you to the enforcement of the only remedy for this destroying sin. If we would really banish intemperance, we must close the hundred secret avenues through which it winds its way. We must turn our eyes from the pleasant shapes it assumes in its infancy, if we would not look upon it in all its full-grown bloatedness. We must, in a word, give up drinking as a necessary fashion, if we would get rid of drunkenness as a necessary vice. This, too, unlike some good deeds, must be done 5* 54 ON INTEMPERANCE. before men in the sight of our families, our friends, and the world. Our children, who seldom think that can be wrong which their parents indulge in, must no longer behold the strange fire an every-day household sacrifice. Our neighbors, who are anxious to interchange with us the courtesies of hospitality, must from us learn moral boldness enough to thrust the insinuating foe from their tables and firesides. Wherever our influence can be felt, it must be judiciously exerted. It must reach the young who en ter upon life with a blind deference for their seniors, and imbibe their habits long before they are able to weigh the tendency of them. It must descend to the poor -who are ever ready to copy the manners and practices of those above them. It must spread round to the crowds of imita tors, whose most anxious care is, to live like other people and who deem it a very important study to find out what is customary, without ever troubling themselves to ask whether it be right. In this way, in this way alone, can the good work commence and if then there be any thing left for the law, let those who sit in the seats of authority look to it. They will not fear to fpllow where we dare to lead. Every man is a member of some little brotherhood, in which his influence will be felt, his actions imitated. It is here that even the humblest may do much ; not by ill- timed and boisterous denunciations against all who may ON INTEMPERANCE. 55 feel the importance of the subject less deeply than himself but by a meek and unostentatious, yet firm and con sistent rejection of those daily and nightly indulgences, which lead to the misery we deplore. He must remember that they, whom he would gain over, are not so wicked as they are weak ; and that it is not in the severe capacity of a judge that his labors are required, but in the more endearing character of a friend. His strongest persuasions must be those of practice. There is no lecture so elo quent as the silent lesson of a spotless example. He may not witness sudden and miraculous conversions to his faith he may even sometimes hear the coarse taunt of the scorner, against both his faith and his works. They who are unwilling to do any thing, will tell him that nothing can be done. They who fold up their arms in contented apathy, because the viper has not crawled into their bowers, will assure him that nothing need be done. They who deem that the sum of human duty is merely to pro vide for one s own household, and respect the laws of the land, will try to convince him that nothing ought to be done. But let not all this shake the lover of temperance from his purpose there is much that should be done, and if he will persevere, at length much may be done. By time and patience, it has been beautifully observed, the leaf of the mulberry-tree becomes satin. In good season he will behold the harvest of his labors ripening 56 ON INTEMPERANCE. around him. His gentle entreaties, his mild and judi cious zeal Each virtuous mind will wake, Ai the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake. The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds, Another still, and still another spreads ; Friend, kindred, neighbor, first it will embrace, His country next, and next all human race. My friends, be this laudable enterprise ours. Against the common destroyer let us stand boldly forth, in word and in work. It is these, that, like the prophet s prayer and the warrior s valor, must achieve the victory together. If there be any here, who are disposed to look coldly upon our object, as unattainable, let them ask themselves if all the various exhortations of the pulpit are not obnoxious to the same objection. We admit that there will ever be drunkards ; but if, because we may not hope to keep all men temperate, we must not therefore strive to preserve any, then no longer let the temples of the Most High echo to the voices of his servants close up the doors of the sacred desk, for there are those who would slumber in their sins beneath, though an archangel should denounce them. All human efforts, however praiseworthy, must be marked by imperfection. It is the badge of earth, and of every thing earthly. It is hung round the neck of man before his first repose on his mother s lap, and it must remain there ON INTEMPERANCE. 57 till his last sleep on the lap of the common mother of all. We cannot entirely, get rid of drunkenness but we can make it so rare a crime, that the guilty ones shall stand out, like dark pillars on the road of life, to remind the innocent how far, how very far, they have left them behind. To you, whose call I have obeyed in coming hither, I say Go on, as you have begun. The health and happi ness of individuals, the comfort of families, and the welfare of society, call upon you. The fiery serpents of intemper ance are abroad in the land let your example be the symbol of healing, to which the afflicted may look up and live. What ye say and do, others will imitate. They are now imitating you. Already there is a rustling among the leaves of the forest, and it foretells the rising wind, that shall come in its purity, to cleanse the suffocating atmos phere. Reformation is beginning in the right place even in Public Opinion. Win but that to your side, and it will do more for you than all the laws that slumber in the dust of your public archives. Go on and may the prayers of good men accompany you, and the blessing of Heaven seal your honorable labors. And when that hour, which must come to us all, shall come to each of you when, lingering on the confines of life and death, the awed and subdued spirit looks back to the scenes that have long faded in the distance when the hollow applause of the world dies away from the ear, and 58 ON INTEMPERANCE. nothing rises up but the recollection of good and evil deeds when the weedy garlands of ambition have no freshness for the burning brow, no perfume for the fainting soul in that hour, if you can remember one fellow-traveller turned from destruction by your influence the image of that one shall hover round your pillow of suffering, and be to you a ministering seraph. 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