A love that marries lands to lands,

The passion of two title-deeds,

That loosely rivets two cold hands,
And idler heirs to idlers breeds.

Large-limbed, the friend of sun and air,
Its sinewy arms with labor brown,

With glad, strong soul, that seemed to wear
Its human nature like a crown,

Such was the love from which we sprang,
A love clear-hearted as the morn,

Which through life's toils and troubles sang
Like a tall reaper 'mid the corn.

Life lay before us bare and broad,

To conquer with two hands alone,

But we had faith in man and God,

And proudly claimed our Father's throne;

We made our vassal of the Now,

And, from its want and woe and wrong,

Our hearts rose lightly as a bough

From which a bird hath soared in song.

Among our sires no high-born chief
Freckled his hands with peasant-gore,
No spurred and coroneted thief

Set his mailed heel upon the poor;
No, we are come of nobler line,

With larger heart within the breast, Large heart by suffering made divine,We draw our lineage from the Oppressed:

Not from the sceptred brutes who reigned, But from the humble souls who bore, And so a godlike patience gained,

Which, suffering much, could suffer more, Which learned forgiveness, and the grace

That cometh of a bended knee,·

From martyrs such as these we trace

Our royal genealogy.

There's not a great soul gone before
That is not numbered in our clan,

Who, when the world took side with power,
Stood boldly on the side of Man;

All hero-spirits plain and grand,
That for the Ages ope the door,
All Labor's dusty monarchs, stand
Among the children of the poor.

Let others boast of ancestors

Who handed down some idle right
To stand beside their tyrant's horse,
Or buckle his spurs before the fight;
We, too, have our ancestral claim

Of marching ever in the van,

Of giving ourselves to steel and flame, Where aught 's to be achieved for man.

And is not this a family-tree

Worth keeping fair from age to age? Was ever such an ancestry

Gold-blazoned on the herald's page? In dear New England let us still

Maintain our race and title pure,

The men and women of heart and will,

The monarchs who ENDURE.

ABOVE AND BELOW.

I.

O DWELLERS in the valley-land,

Who in deep twilight grope and cower,

Till the slow mountain's dial-hand

Shortens to noon's triumphal hour,

While sit idle, ye

do ye think

The Lord's great work sits idle too?

That light dare not o'erleap the brink

Of morn, because 't is dark with you?

Though yet your valleys skulk in night, In God's ripe fields the day is cried,

And reapers, with their sickles bright,
Troop, singing, down the mountain-side :
Come up, and feel what health there is
In the frank Dawn's delighted eyes,
As, bending with a pitying kiss,

The night-shed tears of Earth she dries!

The Lord wants reapers: O, mount up,

Before night comes, and

says,

"Too late!"

Stay not for taking scrip or cup,

The Master hungers while ye wait : "T is from these heights alone your eyes

The advancing spears of day can see, Which o'er the eastern hill-tops rise,

To break your long captivity.

II.

Lone watcher on the mountain-height!
It is right precious to behold

The first long surf of climbing light

Flood all the thirsty east with gold;