“So, after gazing, homeward turn, and mount
  To that long chamber in the roof; there tell
Your heart the laid-up lore it holds to count
      And prize and ponder well.

“The lookings onward of the race before
  It had a past to make it look behind;
Its reverent wonder, and its doubting sore,
      Its adoration blind.

“The thunder of its war-songs, and the glow
  Of chants to freedom by the old world sung;
The sweet love cadences that long ago
      Dropped from the old-world tongue.

“And then this new-world lore that takes account
  Of tangled star-dust; maps the triple whirl
Of blue and red and argent worlds that mount
      And greet the Irish Earl;

“Or float across the tube that Herschel sways,
  Like pale-rose chaplets, or like sapphire mist;
Or hang or droop along the heavenly ways,
      Like scarves of amethyst.

“O strange it is and wide the new-world lore,
  For next it treateth of our native dust! 
Must dig out buried monsters, and explore
      The green earth’s fruitful crust;

“Must write the story of her seething youth—­
  How lizards paddled in her lukewarm seas;
Must show the cones she ripened, and forsooth
      Count seasons on her trees;

“Must know her weight, and pry into her age,
  Count her old beach lines by their tidal swell;
Her sunken mountains name, her craters gauge,
      Her cold volcanoes tell;

“And treat her as a ball, that one might pass
  From this hand to the other—­such a ball
As he could measure with a blade of grass,
      And say it was but small!

“Honors!  O friend, I pray you bear with me: 
  The grass hath time to grow in meadow lands,
And leisurely the opal murmuring sea
      Breaks on her yellow sands;

“And leisurely the ring-dove on her nest
  Broods till her tender chick will peck the shell
And leisurely down fall from ferny crest
      The dew-drops on the well;

“And leisurely your life and spirit grew,
  With yet the time to grow and ripen free: 
No judgment past withdraws that boon from you,
      Nor granteth it to me.

“Still must I plod, and still in cities moil;
  From precious leisure, learned leisure far,
Dull my best self with handling common soil;
      Yet mine those honors are.

“Mine they are called; they are a name which means,
  ’This man had steady pulses, tranquil nerves: 
Here, as in other fields, the most he gleans
      Who works and never swerves.

“We measure not his mind; we cannot tell
  What lieth under, over, or beside
The test we put him to; he doth excel,
    We know, where he is tried;

“But, if he boast some farther excellence—­
  Mind to create as well as to attain;
To sway his peers by golden eloquence,
    As wind doth shift a fane;