A WELCOME TO LOWELL
Take our hands, James Russell Lowell, Our hearts are all thy own; To-day we bid thee welcome Not for ourselves alone.
In the long years of thy absence Some of us have grown old, And some have passed the portals Of the Mystery untold;
For the hands that cannot clasp thee, For the voices that are dumb, For each and all I bid thee A grateful welcome home!
For Cedarcroft's sweet singer To the nine-fold Muses dear; For the Seer the winding Concord Paused by his door to hear;
For him, our guide and Nestor, Who the march of song began, The white locks of his ninety years Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann!
For him who, to the music Her pines and hemlocks played, Set the old and tender story Of the lorn Acadian maid;
For him, whose voice for freedom Swayed friend and foe at will, Hushed is the tongue of silver, The golden lips are still!
For her whose life of duty At scoff and menace smiled, Brave as the wife of Roland, Yet gentle as a Child.
And for him the three-hilled city Shall hold in memory long, Those name is the hint and token Of the pleasant Fields of Song!
For the old friends unforgotten, For the young thou hast not known, I speak their heart-warm greeting; Come back and take thy own!
From England's royal farewells, And honors fitly paid, Come back, dear Russell Lowell, To Elmwood's waiting shade!
Come home with all the garlands That crown of right thy head.
I speak for comrades living, I speak for comrades dead!
AMESBURY, 6th mo., 1885.
AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL. GEORGE FULLER
Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve! How passing fair Her shapes took color in thy homestead air!
How on thy canvas even her dreams were truth!
Magician! who from commonest elements Called up divine ideals, clothed upon By mystic lights soft blending into one Womanly grace and child-like innocence.
Teacher I thy lesson was not given in vain.
Beauty is goodness; ugliness is sin; Art's place is sacred: nothing foul therein May crawl or tread with bestial feet profane.
If rightly choosing is the painter's test, Thy choice, O master, ever was the best.
1885.
MULFORD.
Author of The Nation and The Republic of God.
Unnoted as the setting of a star He passed; and sect and party scarcely knew When from their midst a sage and seer withdrew To fitter audience, where the great dead are In God's republic of the heart and mind, Leaving no purer, nobler soul behind.
1886.
TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER
Luck to the craft that bears this name of mine, Good fortune follow with her golden spoon The glazed hat and tarry pantaloon; And wheresoe'er her keel shall cut the brine, Cod, hake and haddock quarrel for her line.
Shipped with her crew, whatever wind may blow, Or tides delay, my wish with her shall go, Fishing by proxy. Would that it might show At need her course, in lack of sun and star, Where icebergs threaten, and the sharp reefs are; Lift the blind fog on Anticosti's lee And Avalon's rock; make populous the sea Round Grand Manan with eager finny swarms, Break the long calms, and charm away the storms.
OAK KNOLL, 23 3rd mo., 1886.
SAMUEL J. TILDEN.
GREYSTONE, AUG. 4, 1886.
Once more, O all-adjusting Death!
The nation's Pantheon opens wide; Once more a common sorrow saith A strong, wise man has died.
Faults doubtless had he. Had we not Our own, to question and asperse The worth we doubted or forgot Until beside his hearse?
Ambitious, cautious, yet the man To strike down fraud with resolute hand; A patriot, if a partisan, He loved his native land.
So let the mourning bells be rung, The banner droop its folds half way, And while the public pen and tongue Their fitting tribute pay,
Shall we not vow above his bier To set our feet on party lies, And wound no more a living ear With words that Death denies?
1886
OCCASIONAL POEMS
EVA
Suggested by Mrs. Stowe's tale of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and written when the characters in the tale were realities by the fireside of countless American homes.
Dry the tears for holy Eva, With the blessed angels leave her; Of the form so soft and fair Give to earth the tender care.