A STATELY river like a silent aisle,
Led through the cliffs of limestone mile on mile,
And far inland a green and cool retreat,
Lay all embowered and hid from human feet.
The laurel grew to arbors for repose,
The long blue grass was dyed by many a rose,
The high gray walls with oaks were corniced o'er
And dropped their creepers to the crystal shore;
And there were walks in groves where silence grew
Profounder for the note of the cuckoo,
Where they, the philosophic few, could walk
In high Arcadian fellowship and talk;
Who climbed each step but one of power's ascent,
And, losing that, were doomed to banishment:
A little handful driven from the sun
Of power to a lonelier Pantheon,
Here they discussed the empire they resigned
And nobler empires of the human mind.

One year in four the wafted vessel sped;
A wounded eagle guided it o'erhead.
The beaten hero who had lost a realm
Blew onward without mariner or helm.
Fate filled the wind, nor foe nor friend pursued,
But grander nature gave her solitude.
No more the world its censure or applause
Heaped on his head, his memory, or his cause.
Grave and respectful was his welcome made,
And immemorial in this high arcade
He kept converse with statesmen as they came,
And felt how Time was kinder still than Fame.

Once on the strand they who the sceptre lost,
Waited at four years' close him to accost
Whose boat was due. And oldest of them all
Was one of figure soldierly and tall;
At Bemis Heights an army back he bore
And took the sword their sullen General wore.
For this he sought to pierce the splendid sun
Where steadier fortune set her Washington.
Cast down for such presumption, he abides
The oldest exile on these silent tides.

In stature less, but not in spirit so,
Stand two who once were mortal foe and foe:
One fell before the other's deadly aim,
But all the winds of Heaven blew his fame;
The other sought in various empires place,
And lived a long and solitary race.
Still, as they meet in this sequestered spot,
Where mind is mind and rivalry is not,
The victim knows, perchance, their fate reversed,
Had made the martyr of the man accursed.
Again in talk old York's redoubt they storm,
And at Quebec the ranks of Arnold form;
The Senate's head and the Exchequer's source
Twinkle with themes for luminous discourse.
Rivière du Sel! What Lethe flows in thee
Where such as Burr and Hamilton agree?

Who comes with this judicial, searching face—
Scotch in his nature, Southern in his grace?
'Tis he a Congress chose to lead the crowd,
But to the spite of rancorous faction bowed.
Two exiled here and two who might have been
Poured on his head their jealousy and spleen;
Since then, tumultuous assemblies make
Rulers, or exiles to this lonely lake.
Yet serving well through good or ill report,
None fear in fame with Crawford to consort.
No, nor that trio yonder in the glen,
With heads of gods on bodies like to men;
The one whose eyes like diamonds in a vault
Might lead the mind high heaven to assault,
And prove that God's intention was at fault:
None lost the sceptre with so deep regret,
No mind on power was so divinely set,
None in its fulness was more fit to rule,
None in its loss to play the graver fool.
Still in the wildness of his whitened hair
There lies the pallor of a long despair.
Rejected from his kingdom like a Saul,
He raised a prophet and foreboded all.
Yet all he saw by logic came to pass:
A nervous giant in a house of glass,
Debate and hate, revolt, contention, gore—
The slave a freeman and the master poor.
Though in the mart his wasted ashes lie,
Here in Valhalla walks Calhoun for aye.

Earnest as he, but lighted like a star,
Shines there the visage of an orator:
Ithuriel's stature and a trumpet's tone:
Where'er he walks he leads, and he alone.
Thrice in the lists he rode to take the crown,
Thrice in the dust his princely head went down.
But though defeated, all the world agree
He had the plenitude of chivalry.
Still in his smile this twilight turns to day,
And nature brightens at the name of Clay.

Austere, revered, voluptuous, endowed
With fire and darkness like a thunder cloud,
Roves he whose eyes with tender greatness shine!
Who stood like Moses on the mountain line,
Worthy to take God's tablets of the law
And break them to a multitude in awe;
But not to pass into the promised state,
To die unmurmuring, even at the gate,
And leave the name of Webster to the land,
One just too human to be wholly grand.

Here stands but one who wore the crown awhile
And lost it with a wrinkle and a smile—
The live Van Buren, greater in defeat
Than blandly minist'ring in Cæsar's seat.
The torch he wielded better than the sword;
In his revolt reeled down the feudal lord.
He tarried long behind his time and went
To exile like a veteran to his tent.

Yet there is one whom death bequeathed the throne,
And sought to win it, living, for his own:
The gracious Fillmore, fashioned best for love,
To play Apollo at the fall of Jove:
He saw, like Seward, an invader sail
To conquest, though himself had raised the gale,
And both recite in this enshrined retreat
Their country's glory in their own defeat.

So also he who found the mountain path—
Fremont—but not the road that glory hath,—
And martial Scott, whose many cubits bring
The office of the Guardsman, not the King.
Together these the limpid ripples glass:
The subtle Douglas and the timid Cass;
The yearning Chase, with ermine on his breast,
Over a heart sick in a sceptre's quest;
High-mettled Breckinridge by exile bowed;
And young McClellan, Hamlet of the crowd;
With cautious Seymour in the whirlwind spent,
That threw a soldier forward from his tent.
They speak together, hearty and unvexed,
“Who spies the shallop? Who is coming next?”