Will a woman’s fan the ocean smooth? 
Or prayers the stony Parcae sooth,
Or coax the thunder from its mark? 
Or tapers light the chaos dark? 
In spite of Virtue and the Muse,
Nemesis will have her dues,
And all our struggles and our toils
Tighter wind the giant coils.

FATE.

Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes mean or great: 
Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell’s measure or degree;
Unknown to him, as to his horse,
If he than his groom be better or worse. 
He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs,
With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares,
Till late he learned, through doubt and fear,
Broad England harboured not his peer: 
Obeying Time, the last to own
The Genius from its cloudy throne. 
For the prevision is allied
Unto the thing so signified;
Or say, the foresight that awaits
Is the same Genius that creates.

FREEDOM.

Once I wished I might rehearse
Freedom’s paean in my verse,
That the slave who caught the strain
Should throb until he snapped his chain. 
But the Spirit said, ’Not so;
Speak it not, or speak it low;
Name not lightly to be said,
Gift too precious to be prayed,
Passion not to be expressed
But by heaving of the breast: 
Yet,—­wouldst thou the mountain find
Where this deity is shrined,
Who gives to seas and sunset skies
Their unspent beauty of surprise,
And, when it lists him, waken can
Brute or savage into man;
Or, if in thy heart he shine,
Blends the starry fates with thine,
Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee,
And makes thy thoughts archangels be;
Freedom’s secret wilt thou know?—­
Counsel not with flesh and blood;
Loiter not for cloak or food;
Right thou feelest, rush to do.’

ODE SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, CONCORD, JULY 4, 1857.

O tenderly the haughty day
  Fills his blue urn with fire;
One morn is in the mighty heaven,
  And one in our desire.

The cannon booms from town to town,
  Our pulses are not less,
The joy-bells chime their tidings down,
  Which children’s voices bless.

For He that flung the broad blue fold
  O’er-mantling land and sea,
One third part of the sky unrolled
  For the banner of the free.

The men are ripe of Saxon kind
  To build an equal state,—­
To take the statute from the mind,
  And make of duty fate.

United States! the ages plead,—­
  Present and Past in under-song,—­
Go put your creed into your deed,
  Nor speak with double tongue.

For sea and land don’t understand,
  Nor skies without a frown
See rights for which the one hand fights
  By the other cloven down.

Be just at home; then write your scroll
  Of honour o’er the sea,
And bid the broad Atlantic roll,
  A ferry of the free.