Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/434

 WEBSTER

1831

FROM THE PHI BETA KAPPA POEM

1834

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.