Best Famous Labors Poems

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Written by Walt Whitman | American Feuillage AMERICA always! Always our own feuillage! Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New Mexico! Always soft-breath’d Cuba! Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes drain’d by the Eastern and Western Seas; The area the eighty-third year of These States—the three and a half millions of square miles; The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main—the thirty thousand miles of river navigation, The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings—Always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches; Always the free range and diversity! always the continent of Democracy! Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers, Kanada, the snows; Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes; Always the West, with strong native persons—the increasing density there—the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders; All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times, All characters, movements, growths—a few noticed, myriads unnoticed, Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering; On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up; Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware; In their northerly wilds, beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks, the hills—or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink; In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking silently; In farmers’ barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done—they rest standing—they are too tired; Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around; The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail’d—the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes; White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the tempest dashes; On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike midnight together; In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding—the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk; In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake—in summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming; In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating slowly, high beyond the tree tops, Below, the red cedar, festoon’d with tylandria—the pines and cypresses, growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat; Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing plants, parasites, with color’d flowers and berries, enveloping huge trees, The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind; The camp of Georgia wagoners, just after dark—the supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by whites and *******, Thirty or forty great wagons—the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs, The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees—the flames—with the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising; Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and inlets of North Carolina’s coast—the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery—the large sweep-seines—the windlasses on shore work’d by horses—the clearing, curing, and packing-houses; Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the trees—There are the turpentine works, There are the ******* at work, in good health—the ground in all directions is cover’d with pine straw: —In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking; In Virginia, the planter’s son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcom’d and kiss’d by the aged mulatto nurse; On rivers, boatmen safely moor’d at night-fall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon, the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp—there are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the cypress tree, and the juniper tree; —Northward, young men of Mannahatta—the target company from an excursion returning home at evening—the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; Children at play—or on his father’s lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!) The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi—he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eye around; California life—the miner, bearded, dress’d in his rude costume—the stanch California friendship—the sweet air—the graves one, in passing, meets, solitary, just aside the horsepath; Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the *****-cabins—drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts—cotton bales piled on banks and wharves; Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal hemispheres—one Love, one Dilation or Pride; —In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines—the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and indorsement, The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth, The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations, The setting out of the war-party—the long and stealthy march, The single-file—the swinging hatchets—the surprise and slaughter of enemies; —All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of These States—reminiscences, all institutions, All These States, compact—Every square mile of These States, without excepting a particle—you also—me also, Me pleas’d, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok’s fields, Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air; The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the fall traveler southward, but returning northward early in the spring; The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the road-side; The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco, The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan; —Evening—me in my room—the setting sun, The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall, where the shine is; The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners; Males, females, immigrants, combinations—the copiousness—the individuality of The States, each for itself—the money-makers; Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass, lever, pulley—All certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, In space, the sporades, the scatter’d islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands; O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I become a part of that, whatever it is; Southward there, I screaming, with wings slowly flapping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida—or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding; Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchawan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running; Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants; Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill, for amusement—And I triumphantly twittering; The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves—the body of the flock feed—the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time reliev’d by other sentinels—And I feeding and taking turns with the rest; In Kanadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, corner’d by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives—And I, plunging at the hunters, corner’d and desperate; In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in the shops, And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof—and no less in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself, Singing the song of These, my ever united lands—my body no more inevitably united, part to part, and made one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united, and made ONE IDENTITY; Nativities, climates, the grass of the great Pastoral Plains; Cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and evil—these me, These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to America, how can I do less than pass the clew of the union of them, to afford the like to you? Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as I am? How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of These States?

Written by Friedrich von Schiller | The Ideal And The Actual Life Forever fair, forever calm and bright, Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light, For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice-- Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb, And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom The rosy days of Gods--With man, the choice, Timid and anxious, hesitates between The sense's pleasure and the soul's content; While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen, The beams of both are blent. Seekest thou on earth the life of gods to share, Safe in the realm of death?--beware To pluck the fruits that glitter to thine eye; Content thyself with gazing on their glow-- Short are the joys possession can bestow, And in possession sweet desire will die. 'Twas not the ninefold chain of waves that bound Thy daughter, Ceres, to the Stygian river-- She plucked the fruit of the unholy ground, And so--was hell's forever! The weavers of the web--the fates--but sway The matter and the things of clay; Safe from change that time to matter gives, Nature's blest playmate, free at will to stray With gods a god, amidst the fields of day, The form, the archetype [39], serenely lives. Would'st thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing? Cast from thee, earth, the bitter and the real, High from this cramped and dungeon being, spring Into the realm of the ideal! Here, bathed, perfection, in thy purest ray, Free from the clogs and taints of clay, Hovers divine the archetypal man! Dim as those phantom ghosts of life that gleam And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream,-- Fair as it stands in fields Elysian, Ere down to flesh the immortal doth descend:-- If doubtful ever in the actual life Each contest--here a victory crowns the end Of every nobler strife. Not from the strife itself to set thee free, But more to nerve--doth victory Wave her rich garland from the ideal clime. Whate'er thy wish, the earth has no repose-- Life still must drag thee onward as it flows, Whirling thee down the dancing surge of time. But when the courage sinks beneath the dull Sense of its narrow limits--on the soul, Bright from the hill-tops of the beautiful, Bursts the attained goal! If worth thy while the glory and the strife Which fire the lists of actual life-- The ardent rush to fortune or to fame, In the hot field where strength and valor are, And rolls the whirling thunder of the car, And the world, breathless, eyes the glorious game-- Then dare and strive--the prize can but belong To him whose valor o'er his tribe prevails; In life the victory only crowns the strong-- He who is feeble fails. But life, whose source, by crags around it piled, Chafed while confined, foams fierce and wild, Glides soft and smooth when once its streams expand, When its waves, glassing in their silver play, Aurora blent with Hesper's milder ray, Gain the still beautiful--that shadow-land! Here, contest grows but interchange of love, All curb is but the bondage of the grace; Gone is each foe,--peace folds her wings above Her native dwelling-place. When, through dead stone to breathe a soul of light, With the dull matter to unite The kindling genius, some great sculptor glows; Behold him straining, every nerve intent-- Behold how, o'er the subject element, The stately thought its march laborious goes! For never, save to toil untiring, spoke The unwilling truth from her mysterious well-- The statue only to the chisel's stroke Wakes from its marble cell. But onward to the sphere of beauty--go Onward, O child of art! and, lo! Out of the matter which thy pains control The statue springs!--not as with labor wrung From the hard block, but as from nothing sprung-- Airy and light--the offspring of the soul! The pangs, the cares, the weary toils it cost Leave not a trace when once the work is done-- The Artist's human frailty merged and lost In art's great victory won! [40] If human sin confronts the rigid law Of perfect truth and virtue [41], awe Seizes and saddens thee to see how far Beyond thy reach, perfection;--if we test By the ideal of the good, the best, How mean our efforts and our actions are! This space between the ideal of man's soul And man's achievement, who hath ever past? An ocean spreads between us and that goal, Where anchor ne'er was cast! But fly the boundary of the senses--live The ideal life free thought can give; And, lo, the gulf shall vanish, and the chill Of the soul's impotent despair be gone! And with divinity thou sharest the throne, Let but divinity become thy will! Scorn not the law--permit its iron band The sense (it cannot chain the soul) to thrall. Let man no more the will of Jove withstand [42], And Jove the bolt lets fall! If, in the woes of actual human life-- If thou could'st see the serpent strife Which the Greek art has made divine in stone-- Could'st see the writhing limbs, the livid cheek, Note every pang, and hearken every shriek, Of some despairing lost Laocoon, The human nature would thyself subdue To share the human woe before thine eye-- Thy cheek would pale, and all thy soul be true To man's great sympathy. But in the ideal realm, aloof and far, Where the calm art's pure dwellers are, Lo, the Laocoon writhes, but does not groan. Here, no sharp grief the high emotion knows-- Here, suffering's self is made divine, and shows The brave resolve of the firm soul alone: Here, lovely as the rainbow on the dew Of the spent thunder-cloud, to art is given, Gleaming through grief's dark veil, the peaceful blue Of the sweet moral heaven. So, in the glorious parable, behold How, bowed to mortal bonds, of old Life's dreary path divine Alcides trod: The hydra and the lion were his prey, And to restore the friend he loved to-day, He went undaunted to the black-browed god; And all the torments and the labors sore Wroth Juno sent--the meek majestic one, With patient spirit and unquailing, bore, Until the course was run-- Until the god cast down his garb of clay, And rent in hallowing flame away The mortal part from the divine--to soar To the empyreal air! Behold him spring Blithe in the pride of the unwonted wing, And the dull matter that confined before Sinks downward, downward, downward as a dream! Olympian hymns receive the escaping soul, And smiling Hebe, from the ambrosial stream, Fills for a god the bowl!

Written by Walt Whitman | As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days AS I walk these broad, majestic days of peace, (For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal! Against vast odds, having gloriously won, Now thou stridest on—yet perhaps in time toward denser wars, Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers, Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others; —As I walk solitary, unattended, Around me I hear that eclat of the world—politics, produce, The announcements of recognized things—science, The approved growth of cities, and the spread of inventions. I see the ships, (they will last a few years,) The vast factories, with their foremen and workmen, And here the indorsement of all, and do not object to it. But I too announce solid things; Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing—I watch them, Like a grand procession, to music of distant bugles, pouring, triumphantly moving—and grander heaving in sight; They stand for realities—all is as it should be. Then my realities; What else is so real as mine? Libertad, and the divine average—Freedom to every slave on the face of the earth, The rapt promises and luminé of seers—the spiritual world—these centuries lasting songs, And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any. For we support all, fuse all, After the rest is done and gone, we remain; There is no final reliance but upon us; Democracy rests finally upon us (I, my brethren, begin it,) And our visions sweep through eternity.

Written by Walt Whitman | Apostroph O MATER! O fils! O brood continental! O flowers of the prairies! O space boundless! O hum of mighty products! O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent, proud! O race of the future! O women! O fathers! O you men of passion and the storm! O native power only! O beauty! O yourself! O God! O divine average! O you bearded roughs! O bards! O all those slumberers! O arouse! the dawn bird’s throat sounds shrill! Do you not hear the cock crowing? O, as I walk’d the beach, I heard the mournful notes foreboding a tempest—the low, oft-repeated shriek of the diver, the long-lived loon; O I heard, and yet hear, angry thunder;—O you sailors! O ships! make quick preparation! O from his masterful sweep, the warning cry of the eagle! (Give way there, all! It is useless! Give up your spoils;) O sarcasms! Propositions! (O if the whole world should prove indeed a sham, a sell!) O I believe there is nothing real but America and freedom! O to sternly reject all except Democracy! O imperator! O who dare confront you and me? O to promulgate our own! O to build for that which builds for mankind! O feuillage! O North! O the slope drained by the Mexican sea! O all, all inseparable—ages, ages, ages! O a curse on him that would dissever this Union for any reason whatever! O climates, labors! O good and evil! O death! O you strong with iron and wood! O Personality! O the village or place which has the greatest man or woman! even if it be only a few ragged huts; O the city where women walk in public processions in the streets, the same as the men; O a wan and terrible emblem, by me adopted! O shapes arising! shapes of the future centuries! O muscle and pluck forever for me! O workmen and workwomen forever for me! O farmers and sailors! O drivers of horses forever for me! O I will make the new bardic list of trades and tools! O you coarse and wilful! I love you! O South! O longings for my dear home! O soft and sunny airs! O pensive! O I must return where the palm grows and the mocking-bird sings, or else I die! O equality! O organic compacts! I am come to be your born poet! O whirl, contest, sounding and resounding! I am your poet, because I am part of you; O days by-gone! Enthusiasts! Antecedents! O vast preparations for These States! O years! O what is now being sent forward thousands of years to come! O mediums! O to teach! to convey the invisible faith! To promulge real things! to journey through all The States! O creation! O to-day! O laws! O unmitigated adoration! O for mightier broods of orators, artists, and singers! O for native songs! carpenter’s, boatman’s, ploughman’s songs! shoemaker’s songs! O haughtiest growth of time! O free and extatic! O what I, here, preparing, warble for! O you hastening light! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height—and you too will ascend; O so amazing and so broad! up there resplendent, darting and burning; O prophetic! O vision staggered with weight of light! with pouring glories! O copious! O hitherto unequalled! O Libertad! O compact! O union impossible to dissever! O my Soul! O lips becoming tremulous, powerless! O centuries, centuries yet ahead! O voices of greater orators! I pause—I listen for you O you States! Cities! defiant of all outside authority! I spring at once into your arms! you I most love! O you grand Presidentiads! I wait for you! New history! New heroes! I project you! Visions of poets! only you really last! O sweep on! sweep on! O Death! O you striding there! O I cannot yet! O heights! O infinitely too swift and dizzy yet! O purged lumine! you threaten me more than I can stand! O present! I return while yet I may to you! O poets to come, I depend upon you!

Written by James A Emanuel | Poet As Fisherman I fish for words to say what I fish for, half-catch sometimes. I have caught little pan fish flashing sunlight (yellow perch, crappies, blue-gills), lighthearted reeled them in, filed them on stringers on the shore. A nice mess, we called them, and ate with our fingers, laughing. Once, dreaming of fish in far-off waters, I hooked a two-foot carp in Michigan, on nylon line so fine a fellow-fisher shook his head: "He'll break it, sure; he'll roll on it and get away. " A quarter-hour it took to bring him in; back-and-forth toward my net, syllable by syllable I let him have his way till he lay flopping on the grass— beside no other, himself enough in size: he fed the three of us (each differently) new strategies of hook, leader, line, and rod. Working well, I am a deep-water man, a "Daredevil" silver wobbler my lure for lake trout in midsummer. Oh, I have tried the moon, thermometers— the bait and time and place all by the rule— fishing for the masterpiece, the imperial muskellunge in Minnesota, the peerless pike in Canada. I have propped a well-thumbed book against the butt of my favorite rod and fished from my heart. Yet, for my labors, all I have to show are tactics, lore— so little I know of that pea-sized brain I am casting for, to think it could swim with the phantom-words that lure me to this shore.

Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | The Unforgiven When he, who is the unforgiven, Beheld her first, he found her fair: No promise ever dreamt in heaven Could have lured him anywhere That would have nbeen away from there; And all his wits had lightly striven, Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair. There's nothing in the saints and sages To meet the shafts her glances had, Or such as hers have had for ages To blind a man till he be glad, And humble him till he be mad. The story would have many pages, And would be neither good nor bad. And, having followed, you would find him Where properly the play begins; But look for no red light behind him-- No fumes of many-colored sins, Fanned high by screaming violins. God knows what good it was to blind him Or whether man or woman wins. And by the same eternal token, Who knows just how it will all end?-- This drama of hard words unspoken, This fireside farce without a friend Or enemy to comprehend What augurs when two lives are broken, And fear finds nothing left to mend. He stares in vain for what awaits him, And sees in Love a coin to toss; He smiles, and her cold hush berates him Beneath his hard half of the cross; They wonder why it ever was; And she, the unforgiving, hates him More for her lack than for her loss. He feeds with pride his indecision, And shrinks from what wil not occur, Bequeathing with infirm derision His ashes to the days that were, Before she made him prisoner; And labors to retrieve the vision That he must once have had of her. He waits, and there awaits an ending, And he knows neither what nor when; But no magicians are attending To make him see as he saw then, And he will never find again The face that once had been the rending Of all his purpose among men. He blames her not, nor does he chide her, And she has nothing new to say; If he was Bluebeard he could hide her, But that's not written in the play, And there will be no change to-day; Although, to the serene outsider, There still would seem to be a way.

Written by William Cullen Bryant | The Past THOU unrelenting Past! Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain And fetters sure and fast Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. Far in thy realm withdrawn 5 Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom And glorious ages gone Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. Childhood with all its mirth Youth Manhood Age that draws us to the ground 10 And last Man's Life on earth Glide to thy dim dominions and are bound. Thou hast my better years; Thou hast my earlier friends the good the kind Yielded to thee with tears¡ª 15 The venerable form the exalted mind. My spirit yearns to bring The lost ones back¡ªyearns with desire intense And struggles hard to wring Thy bolts apart and pluck thy captives thence. 20 In vain; thy gates deny All passage save to those who hence depart; Nor to the streaming eye Thou giv'st them back¡ªnor to the broken heart. In thy abysses hide 25 Beauty and excellence unknown; to thee Earth's wonder and her pride Are gathered as the waters to the sea; Labors of good to man Unpublished charity unbroken faith 30 Love that midst grief began And grew with years and faltered not in death. Full many a mighty name Lurks in thy depths unuttered unrevered; With thee are silent fame 35 Forgotten arts and wisdom disappeared. Thine for a space are they¡ª Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last: Thy gates shall yet give way Thy bolts shall fall inexorable Past! 40 All that of good and fair Has gone into thy womb from earliest time Shall then come forth to wear The glory and the beauty of its prime. They have not perished¡ªno! 45 Kind words remembered voices once so sweet Smiles radiant long ago And features the great soul's apparent seat. All shall come back; each tie Of pure affection shall be knit again; 50 Alone shall Evil die And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. And then shall I behold Him by whose kind paternal side I sprung And her who still and cold 55 Fills the next grave¡ªthe beautiful and young.

Written by Alexander Pushkin | Solitude He's blessed, who lives in peace, that's distant From the ignorant fobs with calls, Who can provide his every instance With dreams, or labors, or recalls; To whom the fate sends friends in score, Who hides himself by Savior's back From bashful fools, which lull and bore, And from the impudent ones, which wake.

Written by Billy Collins | Tomes There is a section in my library for death and another for Irish history, a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan, and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books, the ones you can turn to anytime, when the night is going wrong or when the day is full of empty promise. I have nothing against the thin monograph, the odd query, a note on the identity of Chekhov's dentist, but what I prefer on days like these is to get up from the couch, pull down The History of the World, and hold in my hands a book containing nearly everything and weighing no more than a sack of potatoes, eleven pounds, I discovered one day when I placed it on the black, iron scale my mother used to keep in her kitchen, the device on which she would place a certain amount of flour, a certain amount of fish. Open flat on my lap under a halo of lamplight, a book like this always has a way of soothing the nerves, quieting the riotous surf of information that foams around my waist even though it never mentions the silent labors of the poor, the daydreams of grocers and tailors, or the faces of men and women alone in single rooms- even though it never mentions my mother, now that I think of her again, who only last year rolled off the edge of the earth in her electric bed, in her smooth pink nightgown the bones of her fingers interlocked, her sunken eyes staring upward beyond all knowledge, beyond the tiny figures of history, some in uniform, some not, marching onto the pages of this incredibly heavy book.

Written by Oliver Wendell Holmes | The Iron Gate WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting? Not unfamiliar to my ear his name, Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting In days long vanished,-- is he still the same, Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting, Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought, Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting, Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it ought? Old age, the graybeard! Well, indeed, I know him,-- Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey; In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem, Oft have I met him from my earliest day: In my old Aesop, toiling with his bundle,-- His load of sticks,-- politely asking Death, Who comes when called for,-- would he lug or trundle His fagot for him?-- he was scant of breath. And sad "Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher,"-- Has he not stamped tbe image on my soul, In that last chapter, where the worn-out Teacher Sighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken bowl? Yes, long, indeed, I 've known him at a distance, And now my lifted door-latch shows him here; I take his shrivelled hand without resistance, And find him smiling as his step draws near. What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us, Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's prime; Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he leaves us, The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time! Altars once flaming, still with incense fragrant, Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep, Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less vagrant, Life's flow less noisy, but the stream how deep! Still as the silver cord gets worn and slender, Its lightened task-work tugs with lessening strain, Hands get more helpful, voices, grown more tender, Soothe with their softened tones the slumberous brain. Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers, Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past, Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers That warm its creeping life-blood till the last. Dear to its heart is every loving token That comes unbidden era its pulse grows cold, Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken, Its labors ended and its story told. Ah, while around us rosy youth rejoices, For us the sorrow-laden breezes sigh, And through the chorus of its jocund voices Throbs the sharp note of misery's hopeless cry. As on the gauzy wings of fancy flying From some far orb I track our watery sphere, Home of the struggling, suffering, doubting, dying, The silvered globule seems a glistening tear. But Nature lends her mirror of illusion To win from saddening scenes our age-dimmed eyes, And misty day-dreams blend in sweet confusion The wintry landscape and the summer skies. So when the iron portal shuts behind us, And life forgets us in its noise and whirl, Visions that shunned the glaring noonday find us, And glimmering starlight shows the gates of pearl. I come not here your morning hour to sadden, A limping pilgrim, leaning on his staff,-- I, who have never deemed it sin to gladden This vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh. If word of mine another's gloom has brightened, Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came; If hand of mine another's task has lightened, It felt the guidance that it dares not claim. But, O my gentle sisters, O my brothers, These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of toil's release; These feebler pulses bid me leave to others The tasks once welcome; evening asks for peace. Time claims his tribute; silence now golden; Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre; Though to your love untiring still beholden, The curfew tells me-- cover up the fire. And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful, And warmer heart than look or word can tell, In simplest phrase-- these traitorous eyes are tearful-- Thanks, Brothers, Sisters,-- Children,-- and farewell!