LONGING

Of all the myriad moods of mind
  That through the soul come thronging,
Which one was e’er so dear, so kind,
  So beautiful as Longing? 
The thing we long for, that we are
  For one transcendent moment,
Before the Present poor and bare
  Can make its sneering comment.

Still, through our paltry stir and strife,
  Glows down the wished ideal,
And Longing moulds in clay what Life
  Carves in the marble Real;
To let the new life in, we know,
  Desire must ope the portal;
Perhaps the longing to be so
  Helps make the soul immortal.

Longing is God’s fresh heavenward will. 
  With our poor earthward striving;
We quench it that we may be still
  Content with merely living;
But, would we learn that heart’s full scope
  Which we are hourly wronging,
Our lives must climb from hope to hope
  And realize our longing.

Ah! let us hope that to our praise
  Good God not only reckons
The moments when we tread his ways,
  But when the spirit beckons,—­
That some slight good is also wrought
  Beyond self-satisfaction,
When we are simply good in thought,
  Howe’er we fail in action.

ODE TO FRANCE

FEBRUARY, 1848

I

As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches
  Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow,
Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches
  In unwarned havoc on the roofs below,
So grew and gathered through the silent years
  The madness of a People, wrong by wrong. 
There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler’s tears,
  No strength in suffering; but the Past was strong: 
The brute despair of trampled centuries
  Leaped up with one hoarse yell and snapped its bands, 10
  Groped for its right with horny, callous hands,
And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes. 
  What wonder if those palms were all too hard
For nice distinctions,—­if that maenad throng—­
  They whose thick atmosphere no bard
Had shivered with the lightning of his song,
  Brutes with the memories and desires of men,
  Whose chronicles were writ with iron pen,
    In the crooked shoulder and the forehead low,
    Set wrong to balance wrong, 20
    And physicked woe with woe?

II

They did as they were taught; not theirs the blame,
If men who scattered firebrands reaped the flame: 
  They trampled Peace beneath their savage feet,
    And by her golden tresses drew
  Mercy along the pavement of the street. 
O Freedom!  Freedom! is thy morning-dew
    So gory red?  Alas, thy light had ne’er
    Shone in upon the chaos of their lair! 
They reared to thee such symbol as they knew, 30
    And worshipped it with flame and blood,
    A Vengeance, axe in hand, that stood
Holding a tyrant’s head up by the clotted hair.