Let the busy ones deride What I deem of right thy pride Let the fools their treadmills grind, Look not forward nor behind, Shuffle in and wriggle out, Veer with every breeze about, Turning like a windmill sail, Or a dog that seeks his tail; Let them laugh to see thee fast Tabernacled in the Past, Working out with eye and lip, Riddles of old penmanship, Patient as Belzoni there Sorting out, with loving care, Mummies of dead questions stripped From their sevenfold manuscript. Dabbling, in their noisy way, In the puddles of to-day, Little know they of that vast Solemn ocean of the past, On whose margin, wreck-bespread, Thou art walking with the dead, Questioning the stranded years, Waking smiles, by turns, and tears, As thou callest up again Shapes the dust has long o'erlain,-- Fair-haired woman, bearded man, Cavalier and Puritan; In an age whose eager view Seeks but present things, and new, Mad for party, sect and gold, Teaching reverence for the old. On that shore, with fowler's tact, Coolly bagging fact on fact, Naught amiss to thee can float, Tale, or song, or anecdote; Village gossip, centuries old, Scandals by our grandams told, What the pilgrim's table spread, Where he lived, and whom he wed, Long-drawn bill of wine and beer For his ordination cheer, Or the flip that wellnigh made Glad his funeral cavalcade; Weary prose, and poet's lines, Flavored by their age, like wines, Eulogistic of some quaint, Doubtful, puritanic saint; Lays that quickened husking jigs, Jests that shook grave periwigs, When the parson had his jokes And his glass, like other folks; Sermons that, for mortal hours, Taxed our fathers' vital powers, As the long nineteenthlies poured Downward from the sounding-board, And, for fire of Pentecost, Touched their beards December's frost. Time is hastening on, and we What our fathers are shall be,-- Shadow-shapes of memory! Joined to that vast multitude Where the great are but the good, And the mind of strength shall prove Weaker than the heart of love; Pride of graybeard wisdom less Than the infant's guilelessness, And his song of sorrow more Than the crown the Psalmist wore Who shall then, with pious zeal, At our moss-grown thresholds kneel, From a stained and stony page Reading to a careless age, With a patient eye like thine, Prosing tale and limping line, Names and words the hoary rime Of the Past has made sublime? Who shall work for us as well The antiquarian's miracle? Who to seeming life recall Teacher grave and pupil small? Who shall give to thee and me Freeholds in futurity?