Vol. XXI.

No. 5.

I.

IF Honesty, Humanity, and Truth

Have laid the solid stepping-stones of Youth,
If they have smiled upon a summer-time,
And strewed with flowers the pathway of a
prime,

If tenderly they have bent down and kissed
A toil-worn brow amid the Autumn mist,
If they have decked, with e'er-increasing glow,
Unsullied drifts of Manhood's purest snow,
If every action Memory leads to mind,
Has been a free help-offering to mankind,
Until the good man's very form and face
Becomes a benediction to his race,

Then let the world take cheer;

But when into that life of goodly fame
Creeps Genius, with its ne'er extinguished flame,
Till every thought reverberates afar,

And every word throws radiance like a star,
And Honor's torch lights up his every hour,
And the whole world admits a master's power,
When every moon has listened, fondly long,
To the sweet cadence of another song,
And each sun's golden finger has thrown bare
The mighty thoughts that made their ambush

there,

Then reverence must appear;

Then the proud earth its wrinkled hand must raise,

And crown the singer with its choicest bays; And so, today, we ask the world to praise Our good and grand Whittier.

II.

Sing, Merrimac; lift thy sweet voice above All other streams; thou wast his river-love.

Through thy green valleys crept the unclad feet That soon should walk Fame's palace-bordered street;

Upon thy banks first flashed the dreams in view,
That brightened all the world in coming true;
He loved the gallant words and deeds to praise,
Of thy advance-guard of Colonial days;
He loved upon Fame's canvas high to lift
Thy brilliant present, with its scenes of thrift;
He strove to make thy future doubly sure,
With precepts, which like diamonds will endure;
His spirit lingers here!

Thou wast his teacher: from thy lips he learned
Lessons that lesser men had lost or spurned:
As thou couldst smile at sky and cloud and tree,
And pave with song thy pathway to the sea,
And still couldst pause, in needful time and

place,

To toil and struggle for the human race,
So he could court the zephyr or the flower
That helped to pass a sweetly idle hour,
Then fly away from pleasures, when he ought,
To turn the massive enginery of thought,
For bringing Heaven more near!

So this, O river, let thy burden be,
And sing it from the mountain to the sea;
There was no grander man on earth than he-
The sweet-the strong Whittier!

III.

You mountains, write his name, in letters high
Upon the tinted pages of the sky!

He used upon thy granite roofs to stand,
And fondly gaze across his Fatherland;
To trace the checkered cloaks, in shifting
crowds,