mong the daisies wet with morning's dew;
To leave awhile the daylight of the real,
Led by the guidance of the master's hand,
For the strange radiance of the far ideal,--
"The light that never was on sea or land."
Well, Time alone can lift the future's curtain,--
Science may teach our children all she knows,
But Love will kindle fresh young hearts, 't is certain,
And June will not forget her blushing rose.
And so, in spite of all that Time is bringing,--
Treasures of truth and miracles of art,
Beauty and Love will keep the poet singing,
And song still live, the science of the heart.
IN RESPONSE
Breakfast at the Century Club, New York, May, 1879.
SUCH kindness! the scowl of a cynic would soften,
His pulse beat its way to some eloquent words,
Alas! my poor accents have echoed too often,
Like that Pinafore music you've some of you heard.
Do you know me, dear strangers--the hundredth time comer
At banquets and feasts since the days of my Spring?
Ah! would I could borrow one rose of my Summer,
But this is a leaf of my Autumn I bring.
I look at your faces,--I'm sure there are some from
The three-breasted mother I count as my own;
You think you remember the place you have come from,
But how it has changed in the years that have flown!
Unaltered, 't is true, is the hall we call "Funnel,"
Still fights the "Old South" in the battle for life,
But we've opened our door to the West through the tunnel,
And we've cut off Fort Hill with our Amazon knife.
You should see the new Westminster Boston has builded,--
Its mansions, its spires, its museums of arts,--
You should see the great dome we have gorgeously gilded,--
'T is the light of our eyes, 't is the joy of our hearts.
When first in his path a young asteroid found it,
As he sailed through the skies with the stars in his wake,
He thought 't was the sun, and kept circling around it
Till Edison signalled, "You've made a mistake."
We are proud of our city,--her fast-growing figure,
The warp and the woof of her brain and her hands,--
But we're proudest of all that her heart has grown bigger,
And warms with fresh blood as her girdle expands.
One lesson the rubric of conflict has taught her
Though parted awhile by war's earth-rending shock,
The lines that divide us are written in water,
The love that unites us cut deep in the rock.
As well might the Judas of treason endeavor
To write his black name on the disk of the sun
As try the bright s
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