The wide land has a million streams
That babble as they flow,
And sweet the plaint of local themes
The thousand valleys know;
They tell their tales just as they were,
Not as they ought to be,
And in humanity lay bare
Our truer history.

In every place a lady fair
Had lovers thrilled by her,
Love's pastoral was tender there
And rare with character;
Some Helen, Menelaus wed
And Paris stole upon,
And in their small republics bred
The wars of Ilion.

Out steps a man in public strife—
Twenty as good remain;
The weakling drew the famous life,
Homes drew the men of brain;
They give his nursing starhood sup,
They fix his astrolabe,
And local kindness holds him up
As if he were their babe.

Up to their priest the hearers look;
So purely shaved and friared,
They hear him read his holy book
And think he is inspired;
Heaven's love he macerates at length,
But while his pleadings roll,
The congregation is his strength,
Some lady there, his soul.

The suave historian portrays
As he would have it seem,
And straightens out a nation's maze
Like Joseph, Pharaoh's dream:
Not miracles can make us see
Beyond convincing sense,
Their local probability
Supports the Testaments.

The criminal of an era starts
Beside some loved hearthstone,
And tramples over kindred hearts
To infamy alone;
But neither in the hell below
Nor in the heavens above
Can they the million outlaws know,
Saved by the fireside love.

The silent boy has memories strong,
Though he seems not to look,
He wins the cup inscribed erelong:
“For Loving of a Book.”
And all his life the local things
Men marvel where he found;
His genius drank the haunted springs
Wherein Narcissus drowned.

Yon miser note, who guards less well
His lady than his hoard!
She is not true; a silent yell
Goes from his broken board.
On other lands at his decease
Great wealth he showers free,
The flower of local injuries,
Some World's philanthropy.

The terror of the village goes
To its long, glad relief,
And from some savage border grows
To be the Nation's chief;
No clue to his high soul they find
In his extraction rude;
His isolation was his mind,
His virtue Fortitude.

A life that failure has pursued
Till but its honest grit
To some volcano's altitude
In splendor carries it,
The Magi of the East go round,
Their touchstones to employ,
And nothing but a nugget found,—
His father's country boy.

A millionaire some goddess fair
To his protection draws,
And thinks she fell into his snare,—
Himself the great first cause;
But all his joys, the vagrant boys,
Her idle townsmen had;
From huts they stray their wanton way,
Who make the monarchs glad.

Not palaces these sweets enclose
That every hamlet keeps—
The perfume of the wild, wild rose,
The laborer who sleeps,
The young heart that its mate has caught,
The tears poor mothers shed,
The Self in only second thought,
The baby and the dead.