better years?
Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall ours in
shadow turn,
A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through outer
darkness borne?
Where the far nations looked for light, a black-
ness in the air?
Where for words of hope they listened, the long
wail of despair?

The Crisis presses on us; face to face with us it
stands,
With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in
Egypt's sands!
This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we
spin;
This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or
sin;
Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy
crown,
We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing
down!

By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and
shame;
By all the warning words of truth with which the
prophets came;
By the Future which awaits us; by all the hopes
which cast
Their faint and trembling beams across the black-
ness of the Past;
And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's
freedom died,
O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the
righteous side.

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his
way;
To wed Penobseot's waters to San Francisco's bay;
To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the
vales with grain;
And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his
train
The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall
answer sea,
And mountain unto mountain call, Praise God, for
we are free

1845.

LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER.

A pleasant print to peddle out
In lands of rice and cotton;
The model of that face in dough
Would make the artist's fortune.
For Fame to thee has come unsought,
While others vainly woo her,
In proof how mean a thing can make
A great man of its doer.

To whom shall men thyself compare,
Since common models fail 'em,
Save classic goose of ancient Rome,
Or sacred ass of Balaam?
The gabble of that wakeful goose
Saved Rome from sack of Brennus;
The braying of the prophet's ass
Betrayed the angel's menace!

So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats,
And azure-tinted hose oil,
Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets
The slow-match of explosion--
An earthquake blast that would have tossed
The