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XXXIII.

I GRIEVE not that ripe Knowledge takes away
The charm that Nature to my childhood wore,
For, with that insight, cometh, day by day,
A greater bliss than wonder was before;
The real doth not clip the poet's wings, -

To win the secret of a weed's plain heart
Reveals some clue to spiritual things,

And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art:
Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes,
Their beauty thrills him by an inward sense;
He knows that outward seemings are but lies,
Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence
The soul that looks within for truth may guess
The presence of some wondrous heavenliness.

XXXIV.

YE who behold the body of my thought,
Whose minds can surfeit on an outward grace,
Ye learn but half the lesson that is taught,
Looking no deeper down than Nature's face;
Two meanings have our lightest fantasies,
One of the flesh, and of the spirit one,
And he who skips the latter only sees

The painter's colors and the sculptor's stone:
Unfathomably deep are all good things,

Each day therefrom the soul may drink its fill, 'And straight a clearer truth to being springs, The self-renewing fount o'errunneth still;

For the unconscious poet can but write

What is foretold him by the Infinite.

XXXV.

O, HAPPY childhood! dear, unthoughtful years
When life flowed onward like a rover wind,
Why did I leave your peace of heart behind
To plunge me in this sea of doubts and fears?
Down, foolish sigh! have not my manhood's tears
Washed off the scales that made my nature blind,
Letting Truth's growing light sure passage find
Into my soul, where now the sky half-clears?
Thank God that I am numbered now with men,
That there are hearts that need my love and me,
That I have sorrows now to make me ken

My strength and weakness, and my right to be
Brother to those, the outcast and the poor,

Driven back to darkness from the world's proud door!

XXXVI.

ON MY TWENTY-FOURTH BIRTH-DAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1843.

Now have I quite passed by that cloudy If
That darkened the wild hope of boyish days,
When first I launched my slender-sided skiff
Upon the wide sea's dim, unsounded ways;
Now doth Love's sun my soul with splendor fill,
And Hope hath struggled upward into Power,
Soft Wish is hardened into sinewy Will,

And Longing into Certainty doth tower:

The love of beauty knoweth no despair;
My heart would break, if I should dare to doubt,
That from the Wrong, which makes its dragon's lair
Here on the Earth, fair Truth shall wander out,
Teaching mankind, that Freedom 's held in fee
Only by those who labor to set free.

XXXVII.

TO J. R. GIDDINGS.

GIDDINGS, far rougher names than thine have grown Smoother than honey on the lips of men;

And thou shalt aye be honorably known,

As one who bravely used his tongue and pen,

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To whom our Law's unblushing front denies

A right to plead against the life-long woes
Which are the Negro's glimpse of Freedom's skies:
Fear nothing and hope all things, as the Right

Alone may do securely; every hour

The thrones of Ignorance and ancient Night

Lose somewhat of their long-usurped power,

And Freedom's lightest word can make them shiver With a base dread that clings to them forever.

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