Shall flock to you and tarry by your side,
And comfort you with their high company.
Virtue alone is sweet society,

It keeps the key to all heroic hearts,
And opens you a welcome in them all.
You must be like them if you desire them,
Scorn trifles and embrace a better aim
Than wine or sleep or praise;

Hunt knowledge as the lover wooes a maid,
And ever in the strife of your own thoughts
Obey the nobler impulse; that is Rome :
That shall command a senate to your side;
For there is no might in the universe

That can contend with love. It reigns forever.
Wait then, sad friend, wait in majestic peace
The hour of heaven. Generously trust
Thy fortune's web to the beneficent hand
That until now has put his world in fee
To thee. He watches for thee still. His love
Broods over thee, and as God lives in heaven,
However long thou walkest solitary,

The hour of heaven shall come, the man appear. 1833.

WEBSTER

1831

LET Webster's lofty face

Ever on thousands shine,

A beacon set that Freedom's race

Might gather omens from that radiant sign.

FROM THE PHI BETA KAPPA POEM

1834

ILL fits the abstemious Muse a crown to weave
For living brows; ill fits them to receive:
And yet, if virtue abrogate the law,

One portrait-fact or fancy - we may draw ;
A form which Nature cast in the heroic mould
Of them who rescued liberty of old;

He, when the rising storm of party roared,
Brought his great forehead to the council board,
There, while hot heads perplexed with fears the state,
Calm as the morn the manly patriot sate;

Seemed, when at last his clarion accents broke,

As if the conscience of the country spoke.

Not on its base Monadnoc surer stood,

Than he to common sense and common good:
No mimic; from his breast his counsel drew,
Believed the eloquent was aye the true;

He bridged the gulf from th' alway good and wise To that within the vision of small eyes.

Self-centred; when he launched the genuine word It shook or captivated all who heard,

Ran from his mouth to mountains and the sea, And burned in noble hearts proverb and prophecy.

1854

WHY did all manly gifts in Webster fail?
He wrote on Nature's grandest brow, For Sale.

NOTES