To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote,

And cannot make a man

Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old-World moulds aside he threw,
And choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
How beautiful to see

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,

Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
Not lured by any cheat of birth,

But by his clear-grained human worth,
And brave old wisdom of sincerity!
They knew that outward grace is dust;
They could not choose but trust

In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,
And supple tempered will

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.
Nothing of Europe here,

Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,
Ere any names of Serf and Peer

Could Nature's equal scheme deface;

Here was a type of the true elder race,

And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to

face.

I praise him not; it were too late;

And some innative weakness there must be

In him who condescends to victory

Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,

Safe in himself as in a fate.

So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,

And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.

Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

ALBERT, PRINCE CONSORT OF ENGLAND. 66 FROM IDYLS OF THE KING."

DEDICATION.

THESE to His Memory-since he held them dear,
Perchance as finding there unconsciously
Some image of himself-I dedicate,

I dedicate, I consecrate with tears-
These Idyls.

And indeed He seems to me

Scarce other than my own ideal knight,
"Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;
Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it;
Who loved one only and who clave to her—”
Her-over all whose realms to their last isle,
Commingled with the gloom of imminent war,
The shadow of His loss moved like eclipse,
Darkening the world. We have lost him: he is
gone:

We know him now: all narrow jealousies
Are silent; and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself,
And in what limits, and how tenderly;
Not swaying to this faction or to that:
Not making his high place the lawless perch
Of winged ambitions, nor a vantage-ground
For pleasure; but through all this tract of years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses,

In that fierce light which beats upon a throne,
And blackens every blot: for where is he,
Who dares foreshadow for an only son
A lovelier life, a more unstained, than his?
Or how should England dreaming of his sons
Hope more for these than some inheritance
Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine,
Thou noble Father of her Kings to be,
Laborious for her people and her poor-
Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day-
Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste

To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace-
Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam
Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art,
Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed,
Beyond all titles, and a household name,
Hereafter, through all times, Albert the Good!

Break not, O woman's-heart, but still endure; Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure, Remembering all the beauty of that star Which shone so close beside Thee, That ye made One light together, but has passed and left The Crown of lonely splendor.

May all love, His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow Thee. The love of all Thy sons encompass Thee, The love of all Thy daughters cherish Thee, The love of all Thy people comfort Thee, Till God's love set Thee at his side again!

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

I.

PERSONAL: GREAT WRITERS.

TO VIRGIL.

[Written at the request of the Mantuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil's death, B. C. 19.]

I.

ROMAN Virgil, thou that singest

Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,

Ilion falling, Rome arising,

wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;

II.

Landscape-lover, lord of language

more than he that sang the Works and Days,

All the chosen coin of fancy

flashing out from many a golden phrase;

III.

Thou that singest wheat and woodland,

tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;

All the charm of all the Muses

often flowering in a lonely word;