No fitting metewand hath To-day
    For measuring spirits of thy stature;
Only the Future can reach up to lay
    The laurel on that lofty nature,
  Bard, who with some diviner art
Hast touched the bard’s true lyre, a nation’s heart.

Swept by thy hand, the gladdened chords,
    Crashed now in discords fierce by others,
Gave forth one note beyond all skill of words,
    And chimed together, We are brothers. 
  O poem unsurpassed! it ran
All round the world, unlocking man to man.

France is too poor to pay alone
    The service of that ample spirit;
Paltry seem low dictatorship and throne,
    Weighed with thy self-renouncing merit;
  They had to thee been rust and loss;
Thy aim was higher,—­thou hast climbed a Cross!

TO JOHN GORHAM PALFREY

  There are who triumph in a losing cause,
Who can put on defeat, as ’twere a wreath
Unwithering in the adverse popular breath,
  Safe from the blasting demagogue’s applause;
’Tis they who stand for Freedom and God’s laws.

And so stands Palfrey now, as Marvell stood,
Loyal to Truth dethroned, nor could be wooed
  To trust the playful tiger’s velvet paws: 
And if the second Charles brought in decay
  Of ancient virtue, if it well might wring
Souls that had broadened ’neath a nobler day,
  To see a losel, marketable king
Fearfully watering with his realm’s best blood
  Cromwell’s quenched bolts, that erst had cracked and flamed,
Scaring, through all their depths of courtier mud,
  Europe’s crowned bloodsuckers,—­how more ashamed
Ought we to be, who see Corruption’s flood
  Still rise o’er last year’s mark, to mine away
  Our brazen idol’s feet of treacherous clay!

O utter degradation!  Freedom turned
  Slavery’s vile bawd, to cozen and betray
  To the old lecher’s clutch a maiden prey,
If so a loathsome pander’s fee be earned! 
  And we are silent,—­we who daily tread
A soil sublime, at least, with heroes’ graves!—­
  Beckon no more, shades of the noble dead! 
Be dumb, ye heaven-touched lips of winds and waves! 
  Or hope to rouse some Coptic dullard, hid
Ages ago, wrapt stiffly, fold on fold,
With cerements close, to wither in the cold,
  Forever hushed, and sunless pyramid!

  Beauty and Truth, and all that these contain,
Drop not like ripened fruit about our feet;
  We climb to them through years of sweat and pain;
  Without long struggle, none did e’er attain
The downward look from Quiet’s blissful seat: 
  Though present loss may be the hero’s part,
  Yet none can rob him of the victor heart
Whereby the broad-realmed future is subdued,
  And Wrong, which now insults from triumph’s car,
  Sending her vulture hope to raven far,
Is made unwilling tributary of Good.