An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830 | Page 4

burning lights?Upon these everlasting heights,?To guide their children through the years of time;
The men that glorious law who taught,?Unshrinking liberty of thought,?And roused the nations with the truth sublime.
XXV.
Forget? no, never--ne'er shall die,?Those names to memory dear;?I read the promise in each eye?That beams upon me here.?Descendants of a twice-recorded race,?Long may ye here your lofty lineage grace;
'Tis not for you home's tender tie?To rend, and brave the waste of waves;?'Tis not for you to rouse and die,?Or yield and live a line of slaves;?The deeds of danger and of death are done:
Upheld by inward power alone,?Unhonoured by the world's loud tongue,?'Tis yours to do unknown,?And then to die unsung.?To other days, to other men belong?The penman's plaudit and the poet's song;
Enough for glory has been wrought,?By you be humbler praises sought;?In peace and truth life's journey run,?And keep unsullied what your Fathers won.
XXVI.
Take then my prayer, Ye dwellers of this spot--?Be yours a noiseless and a guiltless lot.
I plead not that ye bask?In the rank beams of vulgar fame;?To light your steps I ask?A purer and a holier flame.?No bloated growth I supplicate for you,?No pining multitude, no pampered few;
'Tis not alone to coffer gold,?Nor spreading borders to behold;?'Tis not fast-swelling crowds to win,?The refuse-ranks of want and sin--?This be the kind decree:?Be ye by goodness crowned,?Revered, though not renowned;?Poor, if Heaven will, but Free!?Free from the tyrants of the hour,?The clans of wealth, the clans of power,?The coarse, cold scorners of their God;?Free from the taint of sin,?The leprosy that feeds within,?And free, in mercy, from the bigot's rod.
XXVII.
The sceptre's might, the crosier's pride,
Ye do not fear;?No conquest blade, in life-blood dyed,
Drops terror here--?Let there not lurk a subtler snare,?For wisdom's footsteps to beware;?The shackle and the stake,?Our Fathers fled;?Ne'er may their children wake?A fouler wrath, a deeper dread;?Ne'er may the craft that fears the flesh to bind,
Lock its hard fetters on the mind;?Quenched be the fiercer flame?That kindles with a name;?The pilgrim's faith, the pilgrim's zeal,?Let more than pilgrim kindness seal;?Be purity of life the test,?Leave to the heart, to Heaven, the rest.
XXVIII.
So, when our children turn the page,?To ask what triumphs marked our age,?What we achieved to challenge praise,?Through the long line of future days,?This let them read, and hence instruction draw:
"Here were the Many blessed,?Here found the virtues rest,?Faith linked with love and liberty with law;
Here industry to comfort led,?Her book of light here learning spread;?Here the warm heart of youth?Was wooed to temperance and to truth;?Here hoary age was found,?By wisdom and by reverence crowned.?No great, but guilty fame?Here kindled pride, that should have kindled shame;
THESE chose the better, happier part,?That poured its sunlight o'er the heart;?That crowned their homes with peace and health,?And weighed Heaven's smile beyond earth's wealth;?Far from the thorny paths of life?They stood, a living lesson to their race,
Rich in the charities of life,?Man in his strength, and Woman in her grace;?In purity and love THEIR pilgrim road they trod,?And when they served their neighbor felt they served their God."
XXIX.
This may not wake the poet's verse,?This souls of fire may ne'er rehearse
In crowd-delighting voice;?Yet o'er the record shall the patriot bend,?His quiet praise the moralist shall lend,
And all the good rejoice.
XXX.
This be our story then, in that far day,?When others come their kindred debt to pay:
In that far day?--O what shall be,?In this dominion of the free,?When we and ours have rendered up our trust,?And men unborn shall tread above our dust?
O what shall be?--He, He alone,?The dread response can make,?Who sitteth on the only throne,?That time shall never shake;?Before whose all-beholding eyes?Ages sweep on, and empires sink and rise.
Then let the song to Him begun,?To Him in reverence end:?Look down in love, Eternal One,?And Thy good cause defend;?Here, late and long, put forth Thy hand,?To guard and guide the Pilgrim's land.
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