For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. 70 'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;-- Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time? Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime? 75 [Footnote 31: The creed is so named from the first word in the Latin form, _credo_, I believe.] They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's; But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free, Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea. 80 They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires, Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires; Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day? 85 New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth; Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be. Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key. 90 AL FRESCO. The dandelions and buttercups Gild all the lawn; the drowsy bee Stumbles among the clover-tops, And summer sweetens all but me: Away, unfruitful lore of books, 5 For whose vain idiom we reject The soul's more native dialect, Aliens among the birds and brooks, Dull to interpret or conceive What gospels lost the woods retrieve! 10 Away, ye critics, city-bred, Who springes set of thus and so, And in the first man's footsteps tread, Like those who toil through drifted snow! Away, my poets, whose sweet spell[32] 15 Can make a garden of a cell! I need ye not, for I to-day Will make one long sweet verse of play. [Footnote 32: There is a delightful pair of poems by Wordsworth, _Expostulation and Reply_, and _The Tables Turned_, which show how another poet treats books and nature.]