''Let there be Liberty!' God said, and, lo! The red skies all were luminous. The glow Struck first Columbia's kindling mountain peaks One hundred and eleven years ago!' So sang a patriot whom once I saw Descending Bunker's holy hill. With awe I noted that he shone with sacred light, Like Moses with the tables of the Law. One hundred and eleven years? O small And paltry period compared with all The tide of centuries that flowed and ebbed To etch Yosemite's divided wall! Ah, Liberty, they sing you always young Whose harps are in your adoration strung (Each swears you are his countrywoman, too, And speak no language but his mother tongue). And truly, lass, although with shout and horn Man has all-hailed you from creation's morn, I cannot think you old—I think, indeed, You are by twenty centuries unborn.1886.
THE PASSING OF 'BOSS' SHEPHERD.
The sullen church-bell's intermittent moan, The dirge's melancholy monotone, The measured march, the drooping flags, attest A great man's progress to his place of rest. Along broad avenues himself decreed To serve his fellow men's disputed need— Past parks he raped away from robbers' thrift And gave to poverty, wherein to lift Its voice to curse the giver and the gift— Past noble structures that he reared for men To meet in and revile him, tongue and pen, Draws the long retinue of death to show The fit credentials of a proper woe. 'Boss' Shepherd, you are dead. Your hand no more Throws largess to the mobs that ramp and roar For blood of benefactors who disdain Their purity of purpose to explain, Their righteous motive and their scorn of gain. Your period of dream—'twas but a breath— Is closed in the indifference of death. Sealed in your silences, to you alike If hands are lifted to applaud or strike. No more to your dull, inattentive ear Praise of to-day than curse of yesteryear. From the same lips the honied phrases fall That still are bitter from cascades of gall. We note the shame; you in your depth of dark The red-writ testimony cannot mark On every honest cheek; your senses all Locked, incommunicado, in your pall, Know not who sit and blush, who stand and bawl. 'Seven Grecian cities claim great Homer dead, Through which the living Homer begged his bread.' So sang, as if the thought had been his own, An unknown bard, improving on a known. 'Neglected genius!'—that is sad indeed, But malice better would ignore than heed, And Shepherd's soul, we rightly may suspect, Prayed often for the mercy of neglect When hardly did he dare to leave his door Without a guard behind him and before To save him from the gentlemen that now In cheap and easy reparation bow Their corrigible heads above his corse To counterfeit a grief that's half remorse. The pageant passes and the exile sleeps, And well his tongue the solemn secret keeps Of the great peace he found afar, until, Death's writ of extradition to fulfill, They brought him, helpless, from that friendly zone To be a show and pastime in his own— A final opportunity to those Who fling with equal aim the stone and rose; That at the living till his soul is freed, This at the body to conceal the deed! Lone on his hill he's lying to await What added honors may befit his state— The monument, the statue, or the arch (Where knaves may come to weep and dupes to march) Builded by clowns to brutalize the scenes His genius beautified. To get the means, His newly good traducers all are dunned For contributions to the conscience fund. If each subscribe (and pay) one cent 'twill rear
