At the Grave of Samuel Adams: Old Granary Burying-Ground, Boston

THEY knew the patriot rebel’s soul,
Who set his grave upon the verge
Of Boston’s busy street, where roll
The vans of traffic and the surge
Of hasting footsteps: not for him
A cedar’d churchyard’s blank repose,
Nor tomb in some cathedral dim
Where no bird flies nor free wind blows.

Sam Adams never ask’d to rest:
I cannot think he slumbers here,
But watches with unjaded zest
The stream rush on and disappear;
He longs to rise and join the strife,
As in the seasons when his breath
Kindled a nation into life ;
He scorns the palsying sloth of death.

Fain would he hear which faction rules,
What men precede in town and state,
And if we guard our public schools,
And keep our courts inviolate.
He whispers, “ We for Freedom fought,
Have you the love of Freedom still ?
Has Wealth not pauperiz’d your thought,
Nor Power bred the wolfish will ?

“You hurry by — what errands call?
Service to heart, or head, or purse ?
Shed you a freeman’s boon on all,
Or shape a subtler tyrant’s curse ?
We number’d but a little clan
Beside your million-teeming press,
Yet wrought the general good of Man, —
Woe be your meed, if you do less ! ”