“Shame” I said, “upon the craven who can rest, content to save Paltry handfuls of the riches that his guardian-angel gave! Shame upon all listless dreamers early hiding from the strife, Sated with some little gleaning of the harvest-fields of life! Shame upon God’s toiling thinkers, who make profit of their brains, Getting store of scornful pittance for their slow-decaying pains! Give me purpose, steadfast purpose, and the grandeur of a soul Born to lead the van of armies or a people to control. Let me float away and ever, from this shore of bog and mire, On the mounting waves of effort, buoyed by the soul’s desire! Would that it were mine to govern yon large wonder of our time: Such a life were worth the living! thus to sail through every clime, From a hundred spicy shorelands bearing treasures manifold; Foremost to achieve discovery of the peerless lands of gold; Or to thrid the crashing hummocks for the silent Northern Pole, And those solemn open waters that beyond the ice-plains roll,— Cold and shining sea of ages! like a silver fillet set On the Earth’s eternal forehead, for her bridal coronet. Or to close with some tall frigate, for my country and the right, Gunwale grinding into gunwale through the rolling cloud of fight. When the din of cannonading and the jarring war should cease, From the lion’s mouth of battle there should flow the sweets of peace. I should count repose in cities from my seventy years a loss,— Resting only on the waters, like the dusk-winged albatross. I should lay the wire-wrought cable—a ghostly depth below— Along the marly summit of the plummet-found plateau; To the old Antipodes with the olive branch should roam, Joining swart Mongolian races to the ranks of Christendom. Oftentimes our stately presence in a tyrant’s port should save Captives, rash in freedom-loving, from the dungeon and the grave; And a hymn should greet our coming, far across the orient sea, Like the glad apostles’ anthem, when an angel set them free. Such the nobler life heroic! life which ancient Homer sung Of the sinewy Grecian worthies, when the blithesome Earth was young, And a hundred marvellous legends lay about the misty land Where the wanton Sirens carolled and the cliffs of Scylla stand. How their lusty strokes made answer, when Ulysses held the helm, And with subtle words of wisdom spake of many a wondrous realm! Neither Circè, nor the languor of enchanted nights and days Soothed their eager-eyed disquiet,—tamed their venturous, epic ways; And the dread Sicilian monster, in his cavern by the shore, Felt the shadow of their coming, and was blind for evermore.