from where prejudice is mentor.

THE BLIGHT TO SPRING

Hark, 'tis the sea! How leonine its roar!
But, oh, how more the lion on a height,
As there he glares and listens for the night,
Having devoured day's clouds from shore to shore!
Now grows his mane of billows, high and hoar.
What scents he? Potencies escaping sight,
Till, like the cold, they icily alight
Upon a land where all was spring before.

The sun darts under earth and east again,
What sees he? First the lion at earth's brink
With head down to the stream of stars to drink;
And then, arising to his zenith ken,
Sees that which makes his high, warm spirit sink--
The blight to spring, blown here from England's fen.

THE SCORN OF HUMAN RIGHTS

What is the blight to spring that kills the seed
And raises spectres, so that stars cry "See!"
Aghast at forests, white or shadowy?
The scorn of human rights, that can but lead
The world from doom to doom! and for what mead?
A bronze for rain and rust, or effigy
For nibbling minutes--ah, not hours!--these flee
To life's progression--truth and kindly deed.

Look! How this scorn holds freemen in the dark,
Except for a flare at will that, then, the throng,
Reduced to dust, may rise and whirl along
The lift and drop of glitter, without spark
To set the spring a-crackling with bird song,
Till bud and angel both come out to hark!

NOT THIS OUR COUNTRY'S GLORY

O Country of the Sun's warm plenteous hand
To every germ of virtue, how below
Thy progress, mope Gold Mongers to and fro,
Who think they're vaulting from sunlight so grand,
It forms thy chiefest glory. Closely scanned,
They are gross worms, each with the thought to grow
"The Conqueror," as staged by Edgar Poe
For darking planets and a world, Last Manned.

Those worms that, moving, think they move the earth,
Or, under Growth's equestrian statue, think
They hold the horse and hero from the brink,
Are pitifully not a glance's worth,
As of thy glory; they but foul the chink,
If not of thee in warming Good to birth.

AMERICA'S GLORY NO FUGITIVE

I

How weird a whisper! 'tis from Wallabout.
'Tis glory hoarse with calling: "Raise those hulks
Where writhe my faithful." See! the tory skulks
Behind the sun who, stooping to fill out
Their throats