Slowly the Bible of the race is writ,
And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone;
Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it,
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. 
While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,
While thunder’s surges burst on cliffs and cloud,
Still at the prophets’ feet the nations sit.

BEAVER BROOK

Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill,
  And, minuting the long day’s loss,
The cedar’s shadow, slow and still,
  Creeps o’er its dial of gray moss.

Warm noon brims full the valley’s cup,
  The aspen’s leaves are scarce astir;
Only the little mill sends up
  Its busy, never-ceasing burr.

Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems
  The road along the mill-pond’s brink,
From ’neath the arching barberry-stems,
  My footstep scares the shy chewink.

Beneath a bony buttonwood
  The mill’s red door lets forth the din;
The whitened miller, dust-imbued,
  Flits past the square of dark within.

No mountain torrent’s strength is here;
  Sweet Beaver, child of forest still,
Heaps its small pitcher to the ear,
  And gently waits the miller’s will.

Swift slips Undine along the race
  Unheard, and then, with flashing bound,
Floods the dull wheel with light and grace,
  And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round.

The miller dreams not at what cost
  The quivering millstones hum and whirl,
Nor how for every turn are tost
  Armfuls of diamond and of pearl.

But Summer cleared my happier eyes
  With drops of some celestial juice,
To see how Beauty underlies
  Forevermore each form of use.

And more; methought I saw that flood,
  Which now so dull and darkling steals,
Thick, here and there, with human blood,
  To turn the world’s laborious wheels.

No more than doth the miller there,
  Shut in our several cells, do we
Know with what waste of beauty rare
  Moves every day’s machinery.

Surely the wiser time shall come
  When this fine overplus of might,
No longer sullen, slow, and dumb,
  Shall leap to music and to light.

In that new childhood of the Earth
  Life of itself shall dance and play,
Fresh blood in Time’s shrunk veins make mirth,
  And labor meet delight halfway.

MEMORIAL VERSES

KOSSUTH

A race of nobles may die out,
  A royal line may leave no heir;
Wise Nature sets no guards about
  Her pewter plate and wooden ware.

But they fail not, the kinglier breed,
  Who starry diadems attain;
To dungeon, axe, and stake succeed
  Heirs of the old heroic strain.

The zeal of Nature never cools,
  Nor is she thwarted of her ends;
When gapped and dulled her cheaper tools,
  Then she a saint and prophet spends.