In dried-up fountains--like a stricken dawn Where sudden tempests sweep. I hear the bolts around us falling, And cloud to cloud forever calling: Yet WE must nor despair nor weep. Did WE this evil bring? Or from our fellows did the torture spring? Titans! forgive, forgive! Oh, know ye not 'tis victory but to live? Therefore I say, rejoice with harp and voice! I know not what our fate may be: I only know that he who hath a time Must also have eternity: One billow proves and gives a whole wide sea. On this I build my trust, And not on mountain-dust, Or murmuring woods, or starlit clime, Or ocean with melodious chime, Or sunset glories in the western sky: Enough, I _am_, and shall not choose to die. No matter what my future fate may be: To live is in itself a majesty! Oh! there I may again create Fair worlds as in my youthful state; Or Wo may build for me a fiery tomb Like Farinata's in the nether gloom: Even then I will not lose the name of man By idle moan or coward groan, But say, "It was so written in the mighty plan!" The next poem is in a vein of lofty contemplation, and the rhetoric is eminently appropriate and well sustained. It is one of the most striking pieces in the book. THE MOUNDS OF AMERICA. Come to the mounds of death with me. They stretch From deep to deep, sad, venerable, vast, Graves of gone empires--gone without a sighn, Like clouds from heaven. They stretch'd from deep to deep Before the Roman smote his mailéd hand On the gold portals of the dreaming East; Before the Pleiad, in white trance of song, Beyond her choir of stars went wandering. The great old Trees, rank'd on these hills of death, Have melancholy hymns about all this; And when the moon walks her inheritance With slow, imperial pace, the Trees look up And chant in solemn cadence. Come and hear. "Oh patient Moon! go not behind a cloud, But listen to our words. We, too, are old, Though not so old as thou. The ancient towns, The cities throned far apart like queens, The shadowy domes, the realms majestical, Slept in thy younger beams. In every leaf We hold their dust, a king in every trunk. We, too, are very old: the wind that wails In our broad branches, from swart Ethiop come But now, wail'd in our branches long ago, Then come from darken'd Calvary. The Hills Lean'd ghastly at the tale that wan Wind told; The Streams crept shuddering through the tremulous dark; The Torrent of the North, from morn till eve, On his steep ledge hung pausing; and o'er all Such silence fell, we heard the conscious Rills Drip slowly in the caves of central Earth. So were the continents by His crownéd grief Together bound, before that Genoese Flamed on the dim Atlantic: so have we, Whose aspect faced the scene, unchallenged right