Mr. Bryant's seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, was celebrated by a festival to which these verses were sent. We praise not now the poet's art, The rounded beauty of his song; Who weighs him from his life apart Must do his nobler nature wrong. Not for the eye, familiar grown With charms to common sight denied, The marvellous gift he shares alone With him who walked on Rydal-side; Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears; We speak his praise who wears to-day The glory of his seventy years. When Peace brings Freedom in her train, Let happy lips his songs rehearse; His life is now his noblest strain, His manhood better than his verse! Thank God! his hand on Nature's keys Its cunning keeps at life's full span; But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these, The poet seems beside the man! So be it! let the garlands die, The singer's wreath, the painter's meed, Let our names perish, if thereby Our country may be saved and freed! 1864. THOMAS STARR KING Published originally as a prelude to the posthumous volume of selections edited by Richard Frothingham. The great work laid upon his twoscore years Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears, Who loved him as few men were ever loved, We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan With him whose life stands rounded and approved In the full growth and stature of a man. Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope, With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope! Wave cheerily still, O banner, half-way down, From thousand-masted bay and steepled town! Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell That the brave sower saw his ripened grain. O East and West! O morn and sunset twain No more forever!--has he lived in vain Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told Your bridal service from his lips of gold? 1864. LINES ON A FLY-LEAF. I need not ask thee, for my sake, To read a book which well may make Its way by native force of wit Without my manual sign to it. Its piquant writer needs from me No gravely masculine guaranty, And well might laugh her merriest laugh At broken spears in her behalf; Yet, spite of all the critics tell, I frankly own I like her well. It may be that she wields a pen Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned men, That her keen arrows search and try The armor joints of dignity, And, though alone for error meant, Sing through the air irreverent. I blame her not, the young athlete Who plants her woman's tiny feet, And dares the chances of debate Where bearded men might hesitate, Who, deeply earnest, seeing well The ludicrous and laughable, Mingling in eloquent excess Her anger and her tenderness, And, chiding with a half-caress, Strives, less for her own sex than ours, With principalities and powers, And points us upward to the clear Sunned heights of her new atmosphere.