GIFT OF
A. F. Morrison
COMPLETE POETICAL AND PROSE WORKS. River
side Edition. With Notes by Mr. Whittier, Table of
First Lines, Chronological List of Poems, etc., etc. With
five Portraits. The set, 7 vols. (Poetical Works, 4 vols.,
Prose Works, 3 vols.), crown 8vo, gilt top, $10.50.
POETICAL WORKS. Riverside Edition. With four Por
traits, Appendix containing Early and Uncollected Verses,
Chronological List of Poems, Table of First Lines, etc.
Ine set, 4 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $6.00.
1. Narrative and Legendary Poems.
2. Poems of Nature ; Poems Subjective and Reminiscent ;
Religious Poems.
3. Anti-Slavery ; Songs of Labor and Reform.
4. Personal Poems; Occasional Poems; Tent on the
Beach; Appendix.
PROSE WORKS. Riverside Edition. With Notes by the
Author, and Etched Portrait. The set, 3 vols. crown 8vo
gilt top, $4-50.
1. Margaret Smith's Journal; Tales and Sketches.
2. Old Portraits and Modern Sketches ; Personal Sketches
and Tributes ; Historical Papers.
3. The Conflict with Slavery; Politics and Reform; The
Inner Life ; Criticism.
COMPLETE WORKS, including PICKARD'S LIFE OF
WHITTIER (2 vols.). 9 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $14.50.
COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS. Cambridge Edition.
With a Biographical Sketch, Notes, Index to Titles and
First Lines, a Portrait, and an Engraving of Whittier 's
Amesbury Home. Large crown Svo, $2.00.
Household Edition. With Portrait and Illustrations. Crown
Svo, $1.50.
Cabinet Edition. i8mo, $1.00.
For the numerous single volumes by Mr. Whittier, see
Catalogue.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO
THE COMPLETE
POETICAL WORKS
OF
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Coition
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
(grfee fitoersi&e
/),
GIFT OF
o R R ''Sd/
Copyright, 1848, 1850, 1853, 1856, 1857, 1860, 1863, 1865, 1866, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1870, 1872,
1874, 1875, 1876, 1878, 1881, 1883, 1884, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1890, and 1891,
BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, TICKNOR & FIELDS, JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO
AND HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
Copyright, 1892,
BY GEORGE F. BAGLEY AND GEORGE W. CATE, EXECUTORS AND TRUSTEES.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Klectrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
R5 3:2-50
PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
THE first attempt at a complete collection of Mr. Whittier's poet
ical writings was made in 1857. During the next thirty years addi
tional small volumes were issued from time to time, and in 1888 the
author supervised the preparation of a collective edition of his works,
both poetry and prose, including everything written previous to that
time, which he wished to preserve. During the remaining years of
his life he continued to send out poems occasionally, and after his
death, in 1892, these were gathered under the title, " At Sundown."
The present Household Edition contains all the poems that were
preserved in the Riverside Edition of 1888, together with the pieces
included in " At Sundown," and a few that were collected still later
and first used by Mr. S. T. Pickard in the authorized " Life and Let
ters of John Greenleaf Whittier."
M105029
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, of Quaker birth in Puritan surround
ings, was born at the homestead near Haverhill, Massachusetts, De
cember 17, 1807. Until his eighteenth year he lived at home, work
ing upon the farm and in the little shoemaker's shop which nearly
every farm then had as a resource in the otherwise idle hours of winter.
The manual, homely labor upon which he was employed was in part
the foundation of that deep interest which the poet never has ceased
to take in the toil and plain fortunes of the people. Throughout his
poetry runs this golden thread of sympathy with honorable labor and
enforced poverty, and many poems are directly inspired by it. While
at work with his father he sent poems to the Haverhill Gazette, and
that he was not in subjection to his work is very evident by the fact
that he translated it and similar occupations into Songs of Labor.
He had two years' academic training, and in 1829 became editor in
Boston of the American Manufacturer, a paper published in the in
terest of the tariff. In 1831 he published his Legends of New Eng
land, prose sketches in a department of literature which always had
strong claims upon his interest. No American writer, unless Irving
be excepted, has done so much to throw a graceful veil of poetry and
legend over the country of his daily life. Essex County, in Mas
sachusetts, and the beaches lying between Newburyport and Ports
mouth, blossom with flowers of Whittier's planting. He made rare
use of the homely stories which he had heard in his childhood, and
learned afterward from familiar intercourse with country people, and
he used invention delicately and in harmony with the spirit of the
New England coast. Although he came of a body of men who in
earlier clays had been persecuted by the Puritans of New England,
his generous mind did not fail to detect all the good that was in the
stern creed and life of the persecutors, and to bring it forward into
the light of his poetry.
vi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
In 1836 he published Mogg Megone, a poem which stood first in
the collected edition of his poems issued in 1857, and was admitted
there with some reluctance, apparently, by the author. In that and
The Bridal of Pennacook he draws his material from the relation held
between the Indians and the settlers. His sympathy was always with
the persecuted and oppressed, and while historically he found an ob
ject of pity and self-reproach in the Indian, his profoundest compas
sion and most stirring indignation were called out by African slavery.
From the earliest he was upon the side of the abolition party. Year
after year poems fell from his pen in which with all the eloquence of
his nature he sought to enlist his countrymen upon the side of emanci
pation and freedom. It is not too much to say that in the slow devel
opment of public sentiment Whittier's steady song was one of the most
powerful advocates that the slave had, all the more powerful that it
was free from malignity or unjust accusation.
Besides the poems already indicated, there are a number which owe
their origin to Whittier's tender regard for domestic life and the simple
experience of the men and women about him. Of these Snow-Sound
is the most memorable. Then his fondness for a story led him to use
the ballad form in many cases, and Mabel Martin is one of a number,
in which the narrative is blended with a fine and strong charity. His
catholic mind and his instinct for discovering the pure moral in hu
man action are disclosed by a number of poems, drawn from a wide
range of historical fact, dealing with a great variety of religious faiths
and circumstances of life, but always pointing to some sweet and
strong truth of the divine life. Of such are The Brother of Mercy,
The Gift of Tritemius, The Two Rabbis, and others. Whittier's
Prose Works are comprised in three volumes, and consist mainly of
his contributions to journals and of Margaret Smith's Journal, a
fictitious diary of a visitor to New England in 1678.
Mr. Whittier died at Hampton Falls, N. H., September 7, 1892.
His life has been written by his literary executor, Samuel T. Pickard,
under the title Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier.
CONTENTS
LEGENDARY.
The Merrimack
MOGG MEGONE.
Parti ................. *
Part II. . - . . • ' .......... '
Part III ............
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK ..... - ......
18
I. The Merrimack .....•••• *
II. TheBashaba . ........ ^~ ' ' ' 20
m. The Daughter .......... •
IV. The Wedding ....... ..... *
v. The New Home .... ...... *
vi. At Pennacook ..........
vn. The Departure • ....... '
via. Song of Indian Women ............
27
The Norsemen • • «
Cassandra Southwick ...•••
Funeral Tree of the Sokokis *
St. John
Pentucket
The Familist's Hymn
The Fountain
TheExiles ™
The New Wife and the Old . .
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Toussaint L'Ouverture 4
The Slave-Ships . ™
Stanzas. Our Countrymen in Chains *
The Yankee Girl • 46
To William Lloyd Garrison ... *^
Song of the Free
The Hunters of Men * ' 4
Clerical Oppressors
The Christian Slave ' JJ
Stanzas for the Times
Lines, written on reading the Message of Governor Ritner, of Pennsylvania, 18!
The Pastoral Letter
Lines, written for the Meeting of the Antislavery Society, at Chatham Street Chapel,
N. Y.,1834 M
Vlll CONTENTS.
Lines, written for the Celebration of the Third Anniversary of British Emancipation, 1837 56
Lines, written for the Anniversary of the First of August, at Milton, 1846 ... 55
The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to her Daughters sold into Southern Bondage . 56
The Moral Warfare 57
The World's Convention 57
New Hampshire 59
The New Year : addressed to the Patrons of the Pennsylvania Freeman ... 60
Massachusetts to Virginia ... ... ... 62
The Relic .... . 64
The Branded Hand . 65
Texas 66
To Faneuil Hall 67
To Massachusetts 67
The Pine-Tree 68
Lines, suggested by a Visit to the City of Washington in the 12th month of 1845 . 68
Lines, from a Letter to a young Clerical Friend 70
Yorktown . . 70
Lines, written in the Book of a Friend ' 71
Paean 73
To the Memory of Thomas Shipley 74
To a Southern Statesman . . 74
Lines, on the Adoption of Pinckney's Resolutions 75
The Curse of the Charter-Breakers 76
The Slaves of Martinique 77
The Crisis . 79
MISCELLANEOUS.
The Knight of St. John 81
The Holy Land . 81
Palestine 82
Ezekiel 83
The Wife of Manoah to her Husband 85
The Cities of the Plain 86
The Crucifixion 86
The Star of Bethlehem 87
Hymns 88
The Female Martyr 90
The Frost Spirit . 91
The Vaudois Teacher .... 91
The Call of the Christian 92
My Soul and I 92
To a Friend, on her Return from Europe . 95
The Angel of Patience 96
Follen ... . . 96
To the Reformers of England 9''
The Quaker of the Olden Time 98
The Reformer
The Prisoner for Debt 99
Lines, written on reading Pamphlets published by Clergymen against the Abolition of
the Gallows 100
The Human Sacrifice . . 102
Randolph of Roanoke 104
Democracy . 105
To Ronge 106
ChalkleyHall ... 107
CONTENTS. IX
ToJ.P 108
The Cypress-Tree of Ceylon 108
A Dream of Summer 109
To 109
Leggett's Monument ... Ill
Songs OF LABOR, AND OTHER POEMS.
Dedication ... 112
The Ship-Builders
The Shoemakers . . . 113
The Drovers ....... = .
The Fishermen . . 115
The Huskers • . • . . .116
The Corn Song . . 117
The Lumbermen ...... * 11*
MISCELLANEOUS.
The Angels of Buena Vista .... 11&
Forgiveness 121
Barclay of Ury . . . . . 121
What the Voice said 122
To Delaware . b. .... 123
Worship 123
The Demon of the Study 124
The Pumpkin 126
Extract from " A New England Legend " 127
Hampton Beach 127
Lines, written on hearing of the Death of Silas Wright of New York . . . .128
Lines, accompanying Manuscripts presented to a Friend ...... 129
The Reward 130
Kaphael *
Lucy Hooper • 1
Channing 132
To the Memory of Charles B. Storrs 133
Lines on the Death of S. 0. Torrey 134
A Lament 135
Daniel Wheeler 136
Daniel Neall • .... 137
To my Friend on the Death of his Sister 138
Gone 139
The Lake-side 139
The Hill-top 140
On receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake Superior
Memories 341
The Legend of St. Mark 142
The Well of Loch Maree • 143
To my Sister . 144
Autumn Thoughts ,144
Calef in Boston. — 1692 144
To Pius IX • 145
Elliott 146
Ichabod! .... ...
The Christian Tourists .147
The Men of Old
The Peace Convention at Brussels ••••»»'« . - • 141
X CONTENTS.
The Wish of To-Day ... 150
Our State 150
All 's well , 151
Seed-Time and Harvest . 151
To Avis Keene i •.'.........., 151
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS, AND OTHER POEMS.
The Chapel of the Hermits i5P
MISCELLANEOUS.
Questions of Life 157
The Prisoners of Naples • 159
Moloch in State Street . 160
The Peace of Europe. — 1852 .161
Wordsworth o 162
To 162
In Peace . 162
Benedict 163
Pictures 163
Derne 164
Astraea 165
Invocation ........ ... 166
The Cross ...*.».... . 166
Eva 166
To Fredrika P.remer 167
April . . 167
Stanzas for the Times. — 1850 168
A Sabbath Scene ... 168
Pemembrance ... 170
The Poor Voter on Election Day 170
Trust 170
Kathleen . 171
First-day Thoughts 172
Kossuth 172
To my old Schoolmaster .173
!"HE PANORAMA, AND OTHER POEMS.
The Panorama 175
MISCELLANEOUS.
Summer by the Lakeside . , 18S
The Hermit of the Thebaid 185
Burns . , 186
William Forster „ 187
Rantoul 18g
The Dream of PioNono 189
Tauler , ]90
Lines „ ... 192
The Voices .192
The Hero 193
My Dream ... 195
The Barefoot Boy 195
Flowers in Winter . 196
The Rendition ,197
Lines. - ... 198
CONTENTS. Xl
fne Fruifr-GKft , • •
AMemory ...........
To Charles Sumner ........ £ **
The Kansas Emigrants ......
Song of Slaves in the Deaert
'
The New Exodus ....•• ~
TheHaschish ... • ....••••
BALLADS.
9A9
MaryGarvin .............
MaudMuller ........ .....
The Ranger
LATER POEMS.
The Last Walk in Autumn
The Mayflowers ...........
Burial of Barber ........... "
To Pennsylvania .............. *
The Pass of the Sierra ............. jj*
The Conquest of Finland ............ jj°
A Lay of Old Time ......... ' * ' ' 9ll
What of the Day? .............. ~4
The First Flowers ......... ....
My Namesake •
HOME BALLADS.
The Witch's Daughter . . . * . 2M
The Garrison of Cape Ann *•,.'••* ' t
The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall ....«••••
Skipper Ireson's Ride
Telling the Bees 22^
The Sycamores '
The Double-Headed Snake of Newbury . . . . • • « - • .228
The Swan Song of Parson Avery .... » .... 229
The Truce of Piscataqua .... . . 2
My Playmate 233
POEMS AND LYRICS.
The Shadow and the Light ... n ••••-•
The Gift of Tritemius
The Eve of Election
The Over- Heart
In Remembrance of Joseph Sturge * 2
Trinitas 239|
The Old Burying-Ground
The Pipes at Lucknow . 2^
My Psalm .
Le Marais du Cygne
" The Rock " in El Ghor ... 244
On a Prayer-Book •
To James T. Fields ...
The Palm-Tree
Lines for the Burns Festival
The Red River Voyageur
245
246
xii CONTENTS.
To George B. Cheever . •••••••. 248
The Sisters . . .- „ : . . . •••••• 249
Lines for an Agricultural Exhibition •«..... 4 „ ^9
The Preacher 249
The Quaker Alumni >••••••« ••» 264
Brown of Ossawatomie •«••....,. 258
From ferugia • •••.., 26£
For an Autumn Festival 26C
IN WAR TIME.
Thy Will be done . 261
A Word for the Hour .. 261
"Ein feste Burg ist unsei Gott" ,262
To John C. Fremont ••....... . . 263
The Watchers < 263
To Englishmen 264
Astraea at the Capitol 265
The Battle Autumn of 1862 265
Mithridates at Chios . .266
The Proclamation . 266
Anniversary Poem . 267
At Port Royal 268
Barbara Frietchie 269
BALLADS.
Cobbler Keezar's Vision 270
Amy Wentworth 273
The Countess 276
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
Naples. — 1860 277
The Summons 278
The Waiting , 278
Mountain Pictures.
I. Franconia from the Pemigewasset . 278
ii. MoTadnock from Wachuset . . 279
Our River 280
Andrew Rykman's Prayer 281
The Cry of a Lost Soul 283
Italy 283
The River Path 284
A Memorial. M. A. C • ,284
Hymn sung at Christmas by the Scholars of St. Helena's Island, S. C. . . . 28t
SNOWBOUND 286
THH TENT ON THE BEACH, AND OTHER POEMS.
The Tent on the Beach 294
The Wreck of Rivermouth 297
The Grave by the Lake .... 299
The Brother of Mercy QOi;
The Changeling .... , 304
f he Maids of Attitash . .... .... 305
Kallundboig Church ... . ... 307
CONTENTS. xill
The Dead Ship of Harpswell • 309
The Palatine 310
Abraham Davenport 312
NATIONAL LYRICS.
The Mantle of St. Joha De Matha , 314
What the Birds said . • 315
LausDeo! 316
The Peace Autumn „ 317
To the Thirty-Ninth Congress .317
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
The Eternal Goodness " f 318
Our Master ....... . 319
The Vanishers 321
Revisited 321
The Common Question 322
Bryant on his Birthday 323
Hymn for the Opening of Thomas Starr King's House of Worship, 1864 . . .323
Thomas Starr King 324
A.MONG THE HlLLS, AND OTHER POEMS.
Prelude 325
Among the Hills 327
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
The Clear Vision . < . . 331
The Dole of Jarl Thorkell 332
The Two Rabbis . . .333
The Meeting 334
The Answer 337
George L. Stearns 338
Freedom in Brazil 338
Divine Compassion . 339
Lines on a Fly-Leaf • 339
Hymn for the House of Worship at Georgetovm 340
MIRIAM, AND OTHER POEMS.
To Frederick A. P. Barnard 341
Miriam ........ 341
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
Norembega 347
Nauhaught, the Deacon e 348
In School-Days 350
Garibaldi 350
After Election 351
My Triumph 351
The Hive at. Gettysburg 352
Howard at Atlanta 353
To Lydia Maria Child .353
The Prayer-Seeker 354
POEMS FOR PUBLIC OCCASIONS.
A Spiritual Manifestation . .
"The Laurels" . - ,356
Hymn .... 357
XIV CONTENTS.
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM, AND OTHER POEMS.
Francis Daniel Pastorius f • •••« 868
Prelude '••••'••»., . 369
The Pennsylvania Pilgrim • • r ««.,.»,.<, 360
MISCELLANEOUS.
The Pageant ...'.. o , 369
The Singer , . 371
Chicago o 372
My Birthday 372
The Brewing of Soma . 373
A Woman . 374
Disarmament . ...... 374
The Robin . . . 375
The Sisters 375
Marguerite . c 37^
King Volmer and Elsie 377
The Three Bells . 379
MA/KL HLOSSOMS.
SDMNER . 38\
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
The Prayer of Agassis 383
The Friend's Burial 384
John Underbill . 335
In Quest 387
A Sea Dream .... 388
A Mystery .....* . . 389
Conductor Bradley . . 390
Child-Songs 391
The Golden Wedding of Longwood 391
Kinsman 392
Vesta 392
The Healer . 393
A Christmas Carmen 393
Hymn 394
POEMS BY ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER.
The Dream of Argyle 394
Lines written on the Departure of Joseph Sturge 395
John Quincy Adams 396
Dr. Kane in Cuba 396
- Lady Franklin 396
Night and Death 397
The Meeting Waters . 397
The Wedding Veil 398
Charity 398
THE VISION OF ECHARD, AND OTHER POEMS.
The Vision of Echard .399
The Witch of Wenham »..». 40A
Sunset on the Bearcamp • . , 404
The Seeking of the Waterfall 404
June on the Merrimac . 40'j
CONTENTS. xv
Hymn of the Bunkers
In the " Old South "
Lexington. . .
Centennial Hymn .
ers .... .......
Fitz-Greene Halleck . -•
William Francis Bartlett . ..... •
The Two Angels . ....
The Library . . . • • • • .....
The Henchman . • ......
King Solomon and the Ants ......
Red Riding-Hood ... • .......
The Pressed Gentian . . ......
414
Overruled ..... .....
415
Hymn ..... ...
Giving and Taking ..... .... «"
" I was a Strangex, and ye took me in " . . . .......
At School-Close ... .......... *
At Eventide ... ... • I .....
The Problem. ... ....... ™'J
Response ...... ...»§<*•«•
THE .KING'S MISSIVE, AND OTHER POEMS
The Prelude ....
The King's Missive ...
St. Martin's Summer . .
The Dead Feast of the Kol-Foik
The Lost Occasion . .........
The Emancipation Group . . .....".••••
The Jubilee Singers ......••• .••••••
Within the Gate . . . . . • • «
. 424
The Khan's Devil .
Abram Morrison
Voyage of the Jettie
Our Autocrat
INSCRIPTIONS.
On a Sun-Dial
On a Fountain
425
428
428
Garrison . . . • • «
Bayard Taylor . . . . . . . .
A Name
The Minister's Daughter ...........
My Trust
Trailing Arbutus . . . « • - •
By their Works . ... .....
The Word . . . . . . . . . , .
The Book
Requirement ..»..«
Help
Utterance . •• ^
433
XVI CONTENTS.
ORIENTAL MAXIMS.
The Inward Judge „ 488
Laying up Treasure 434
Conduct 434
THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS
To Harriet Prescott Spoff ord 434
The Bay of Seven Islands <> 435
How the Women went from Dover . 437
A Summer Pilgrimage 439
The Rock-Tomb of Bradore . 440
Storm on Lake Asquam <>. 441
The Wishing Bridge . 441
The Mystic's Christmas 442
What the Traveler said at Sunset 442
A Greeting 443
Wilson 444
In Memory 444
The Poet and the Children ... . 445
Rabbi Ishmael . 445
Valuation ... 446
Winter Roses 446
Hymn 446
Godspeed , .447
At Last 447
Our Country 448
The " Story of Ida " .449
An Autograph .449
SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST AND RECENT POEMS.
Saint Gregory's Guest • 450
Revelation 451
Adjustment . 452
The Wood Giant 452
The Homestead 453
Birchbrook Mill .454
How the Kobin came 455
Sweet Fern .... 455
Banished from Massachusetts 456
The Two Elizabeths 457
The Reunion 459
Requital 459
The Light that is felt 460
The Two Loves 460
An Easter Flower Gift
Mulford 460
An Artist of the Beautiful 461
Hymns of the Brahmo Scrnaj • » 461
\T SUNDOWN.
To E. C. S. . . , ....,.,.. 462
The Christmas of 1888 462
The Vow of Washington . ' 462
The Captain's Well ..... 464
An Outdoor Reception ... 465
R. S. S., At Deer Island on tne Merrimac . 4C>7
Burning Drift-Wood . 467
O. W. Holmes on his Eightieth Birthday . . ... .468
James Russell. Lowell . ........ ... 468
Haverhill . ... 468
CONTENTS. XVll
To G. G. ............... ... 470
Preston Powers, Inscription for Bass-Relief ......... 470
Lydia H. Sigourney, Inscription on Tablet .......... 471
Milton, Inscription on Memorial Window .......... 471
The Birthday Wreath ............ •
The Wind of March .............. 4J*
To Oliver Wendell Holmes ....•......••• 472
Between the Gates ...... ..... 472
The Last Eve of Summer ....... ...«..• 473
THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN AND OTHKR POEMS.
The Brown Dwarf of RAigen ..... . • • • • • • 474
A Day .....'....'••'• ..... 4_'6
How Mary Grew . . . . • • • • - • • •'. •
A Welcome to Lowell . . . . . • • ........ • -476
To a Cape Ann Schooner ....... ...... 477
Samuel J. Tilden . . . . • ... . . ..... 4JJ[
The Landmarks ,....•..• ....... ^}
Norumbega Hall ............... 4J9
The Bartholdi Statue ......... ..... 479
One of the Signers ........... • •
Pennsylvania Hall ....... . ...
The Sentence of John L. Brown ..... ..••••
A Letter ......... . - ^ •
Lines on the Portrait of a Celebrated Publisher .......
Letter from a Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, in Kansas, to a Distin
guished Politician ....... ... . .' . • 486
A Song for the Time
187
A Song. Inscribed to the Fremont Clubs . . . . . . . ... . 48R
To William H. Seward . . . . . . . . . , . . . . 488
The Disenthralled . .... . . . . 488
On the Big Horn 489
A Legacy , . > . .... 489
APPENDIX.
I. EARLY AND UNCOLLKCTED VERSES.
The Exile's Departure 491
The Deity 492
The Vale of the Merrimac 492
Benevolence 493
Ocean 494
The Sicilian Vespers 494
The Spirit of the North 49;">
The Earthquake 495
Judith at the Tent of Holofernes 496
Metacom ............»••• 496
Mount Agiochook 498
The Drunkard to His Bottle 498
The Fair Quakeress 499
Bolivar 499
Isabella of Austria 50°
The Fratricide 501
Isabel 502
Stanzas 603
The Past and Coming Year 503
The Missionary
Evening in Burmah 506
Massachusetts 507
xvill CONTENTS.
II. POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE OP WHITTIER."
The Hoine-Coming of the Bride gQy
The Song of the Vermonters, 1779 . . * 608
To a Poetical Trio in the City of Gotham r^g
Album Verses cji
What State Street said to South Carolina, and what South Carolina said to'state
Str«et • • 511
A Fremont Campaign Song .......
The Quakers are Out '."."." 512
A Legend of the Lake ........
Letter to Lucy Larconi . .
Lines on Leaving Appledore 514
Mrs. Choate's House- Warm ing
An Autograph . .... K14
To Lucy Larcom . 515
A Farewell
515
On a Fly -Leaf of Longfellow's Poems 515
Samuel E. Sewall
Lines Written in an Album 515
A Day's Journey 51g
A Fragment 516
III. MABEL MARTIN. A HARVEST IDYL 516
NOTES 521
INDEX OF FIRST LINES a 537
INDEX OF TITLES ...cc oooc 543
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PORTRAIT OF JOHN G. WHITTIER »- . . Frontispiece
" The solemn pines along its shore *'........ . 31
" And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem yet " . . . . 8b
" Down the wild March flood shall bear them "... . . 118
Wordsworth's Grave . . . . . . . . . . 162
The last walk in autumn . 208
Snow-Bound 286
" And the cloud of her soul was lifted " . . 305
" On woods that dream of bloom " . . 351
" A jewelled elm-tree avenue ?' 369
" And still the water sang the sweet
Glad song " 405
Edwin P. Whipple • , . 434
MOGG MEGONE.
[The story of Moos MEGONE has been considered by the author only as a framework for sketches
of the aceuery of New England, and of its early inhabitants. In portraying the Indian character,
be has followed, as closely as his story would admit, the rough but natural delineations of Church,
May hew, Charlevoix, and Roger Williams ; and in so doing he has necessarily discarded much of
the romance which poets and novelists have thrown around the ill-fated red man.]
PAKT I.
WHO stands on that cliff, like a figure
of stone,
TJnmoving and tall in the light of the
sky,
Where the spray of the cataract spar
kles on high,
Lonely and sternly, save Mogg Me-
gone ? l
Close to the verge of the rock is he,
While beneath him the Saco its work
is doing,
Harrying down to its grave, the sea,
And slow through the rock its path
way hewing !
Far down, through the mist of the fall
ing river,
Which rises up like an incense ever,
The splintered points of the crags are
seen,
With water howling and vexed between,
While the scooping whirl of the pool be
neath
Seems an open 'throat, with its granite
teeth !
But Mogg Megone nerer trembled yet
Wherever his eye or his foot was set.
He is watchful : each form in the moon
light dim,
Of rock or of tree, is seen of him :
He listens ; each sound from afar is
caught,
The faintest shiver of leaf and limb :
But he sees not the waters, which foam
and fret,
Whose moonlit spray has his moccasin
wet, —
And the rpar of their rushing, he hears
it not.
The moonlight, through the open bough
Of the gnarl'd beech, whose naked
root
Coils like a serpent at his foot,
Falls, checkered, on the Indian's brow.
His head is bare, save only where
Waves in the wind one lock of hair,
Reserved for him, whoe'er he be,
More mighty than Megone in strife,
When breast to breast and knee to
knee,
Above the fallen warrior's life
Gleams, quick and keen, the scalping-
knife.
Megone hath his knife and hatchet and
gun,
And his gaudy and tasselled blanket
on :
His knife hath a handle with gold inlaid,
And magic words on its polished blade, —
'T was the gift of Castine 2 to Mogg Me
gone,
For a scalp or twain from the Yengees
torn :
His gun was the gift of the Tarrantine,
And Modocawando's wives had strung
The brass and the beads, wrhich tinkle
and shine
On the polished breach, and broad bright
line
Of beaded wampum around it hung.
MOGG MEGONE.
What ceoks Megona " His foes are
near, —
G*ey Jocsl/r's8 eye is never sleeping,
And ;ht gamson lights are burning
clear,
Where Phillips' 4 men their watch are
keeping.
Let him hie him away through the dank
river fog,
Never rustling the boughs nor dis
placing the rocks,
For the eyes and the ears which are
watching for Mogg
Are keener than those of the wolf or
the fox.
He starts, — there 's a rustle among the
leaves :
Another, — the click of his gun is
heard !
A footstep, — is it the step of Cleaves,
With Indian blood on his English
sword ?
Steals Harmon 5 down from the sands of
York,
With hand of iron and foot of cork ?
Has Scamman, versed in Indian wile,
For vengeance left his vine-hung isle ? 6
Hark ! at that whistle, soft and low,
How lights the eye of Mogg Megoue !
A smile gleams o'er his dusky brow, —
" Boon welcome, Johnny Bonython ! "
Out steps, with cautious foot and slow,
And quick, keen glances to and fro,
The hunted outlaw, Bonython ! 7
A low, lean, swarthy man is he,
With blanket-garb and buskined knee,
And naught of English fashion on ;
For he hates the race from whence he
sprung,
And he couches his words in the Indian
tongue.
" Hush, — let the Sachem's voice be
weak ;
The water-rat shall hear him speak, —
The owl shall whoop in the white man's
ear,
That Mogg Megone, with his scalps, is
here ! "
He pauses, — dark, over cheek and
brow,
A flush, as of shame, is stealing now :
"Sachem ! " he says, " let me have the
land,
Which stretches away upon either hand,
As far about as uiy feet can stray
In the half of a gentle summer's day,
From the leaping brook 8 to the Saco
river, —
And the fair-haired girl, thou hast sought
of me,
Shall sit in the Sachem's wigwam, and be
The wife of Mogg Megone forever."
There 's a sudden light in the Indian's
glance,
A moment's trace of powerful feeling,
Of love or triumph, or both perchance,
Over his proud, calm features steal
ing.
" The words of my father are very good ;
He shall have the land, and water, and
wood ;
And he who harms the Sagamore John,
Shall feel the knife of Mogg Megone ;
But the fawn of the Yengees shall sleep
on my breast,
And the bird of the clearing shall sing
in my nest."
"But, father ! " — and the Indian's hand
Falls gently on the white man's arm,
And with a smile as shrewdly bland
As the deep voice is slow and calm, —
" Where is my father's singing-bird, —
The sunny eye, and sunset hair ?
I know I have my father's word,
And that his word is good and fair ;
But will my father tell me where
Megone shall go and look for his
bride ?-
For he sees her not by her father's side."
The dark, stern eye of Bonython
Flashes over the features of Mogg Me
gone,
In one of those glances which search
within ;
But the stolid calm of the Indian alone
Eeanains where the trace of emotion
has been.
Does the Sachem doubt ? Let him
go with me,
And the eyes of the Sachem his bride
shall see."
Cautious and slow, with pauses oft,
And watchful eyes and whispers soft,
The twain are stealing through the wood,
Leaving the downward-rushing flood,
Whose deep and solemn roar behind
Grows fainter on the evening wind.
MOGG MEGONE.
Hark ! — is that the angry howl
Of the wolf, the hills among ? —
Or the hooting of the owl,
On his leafy cradle swung ? —
Quickly glancing, to and fro,
Listening to each sound they go
Hound the columns of the pine,
Indistinct, in shadow, seeming
Like some old and pillared shrine ;
With the soft and white moonshine,
Round the foliage-tracery shed
Of each column's branching head,
For its lamps of worship gleaming !
And the sounds awakened there,
In the pine-leaves fine and small,
Soft and sweetly musical,
By the fingers of the air,
For the anthem's dying fall
Lingering round some temple's wall !
Niche and cornice round and round
Wailing like the ghost of sound !
Is not Nature's worship thus,
Ceaseless ever, going on ?
Hath it not a voice for us
In the thunder, or the tone
Of the leaf- harp faint and small,
Speaking to the unsealed ear
Words of blended love and fear,
Of the mighty Soul of all ?
Naught had the twain of thoughts like
these
As they wound along through the
crowded trees,
Where never had rung the axeman's stroke
On the gnarled trunk of the rough -barked
oak ; —
Climbing the dead tree's mossy log,
Breaking the mesh of the bramble fine,
Turning aside the wild grapevine,
And lightly crossing the quaking bog
Whose surface shakes at the leap of the
frog,
And out of whose pools the ghostly fog
Creeps into the chill moonshine !
Vet, even that Indian's ear had heard
The preaching of the Holy Word :
Sanchekantacket's isle of sand
Was once his father's hunting land,
Where zealous Hiacoomes 9 stood, —
The wild apostle of the wood,
Shook from his soul the fear of harm,
And trampled on the Powwaw's charm ;
Until the wizard's curses hung
Suspended on his palsying tongue,
And the fierce warrior, grim and tall,
Trembled before the forest Paul !
A cottage hidden in the wood, —
Red through its seams a light is glowing,
On rock and bough and tree-trunk rude,
A narrow lustre throwing.
"Who's there?" a clear, firm voice
demands ;
"Hold, Ruth, —'tis I, the Saga-
more ! "
Quick, at the summons, hasty hands
Unclose the bolted door ;
And on the outlaw's daughter shine
The flashes of the kindled pine.
Tall and erect the maiden stands,
Like some young priestess of the wood,
The freeborn child of Solitude,
And bearing still the wild and rude,
Yet noble trace of Nature's hands.
Her dark brown cheek has caught its stain
More from the sunshine than the rain ;
Yet, where her long fair hair is parting,
A pure white brow into light is starting ;
And, where the folds of her blanket sever,
Are a neck and bosom as white as ever
The foam- wreaths rise on the leaping river.
But in the convulsive quiver and grip
Of the muscles around her bloodless lip,
There is something painful and sad to
see ;
And her eye has a glance more sternly
wild
Than even that of a forest child
In its fearless and untamed freedom
should be.
Yet, seldom in hall or court are seen
So queenly a form and so noble a mien,
As freely and smiling she welcomes
them there, —
Her outlawed sire and Mogg Megone :
" Pray, father, how does thy hunting
fare?
And, Sachem, say, — does Scamman
wear,
In spite of thy promise, a scalp of his
own ? "
Hurried and light is the maiden's tone ;
But a fearful meaning lurks within
Her glance, as it questions the eye of
Megone, —
An awful meaning of guilt and sin ! —
The Indian hath opened his blanket, and
there
Hangs a human scalp by its long damp
hair !
With hand upraised, with quick drawn
breath,
She meets that ghastly sign of death.
4
MOGG MEGONE.
In one long, glassy, spectral stare
The enlarging eye' is fastened there,
As if that mesh of pale brown hair
Had power to change at sight alone,
Even as the fearful locks which wound
Medusa's fatal forehead round,
The gazer into stone.
With such a look Herodias read
The features of the bleeding head,
So looked the mad Moor on his dead,
Or the young Cenci as she stood,
O'er-dabbled with a father's blood !
Look ! — feeling melts that frozen glance,
It moves that marble countenance,
As if at once within her strove
Pity with shame, and hate with love.
The Past recalls its joy and pain,
Old memories rise before her brain, —
The lips which love's embraces met,
The hand her tears of parting wet,
The voice whose pleading tones beguiled
The pleased ear of the forest-child, —
And tears she may no more repress
Reveal her lingering tenderness.
0, woman wronged can cherish hate
More deep and dark than manhood may ;
But when the mockery of Fate
Hath left Revenge its chosen way,
And the fell curse, which years have
nursed,
Full on the spoiler's head hath burst, —
When all her wrong, and shame, and pain,
Burns fiercely on his heart and brain, —
Still lingers something of the spell
Which bound her to the traitor's
bosom, —
Still, midst the vengeful fires of hell,
Some flowers of old affection blossom.
John Bonython's eyebrows together are
drawn
With a fierce expression of wrath and
scorn, —
He hoarsely whispers, " Ruth, beware !
Is this the time to be playing the fool, —
Crying over a paltry lock of hair,
Like a love-sick girl at school ? —
Curse on it ! — an Indian can see and
hear :
Away, — and prepare our evening cheer ! "
How keenly the Indian is watching now
Her tearful eyt and her varying brow, —
With a serpent eye, which kindles
and burns,
Like a fiery star in the upper air :
On sire and daughter his fierce glance
turns : —
" Has my old white father a scalp to
spare ?
For his young one loves the pale
brown hair
Of the scalp of an English dog far more
Than Mogg Megone, or his wigwam floor ;
Go, — Mogg is wise : he will keep his
land, —
And Sagamore John, when he feels
with his hand,
Shall miss his scalp where it grew before/
The moment's gust of grief is gone, —
The lip is clenched, — the tears are
still, -
God pity thee, Ruth Bonython !
With what a strength of will
Are nature's feelings in thy breast,
As with an iron hand, repressed !
And how, upon that nameless woe,
Quick as the pulse can come and go,
While shakes the unsteadfast knee, and
yet
The bosom heaves, — the eye is wet, —
Has thy dark spirit power to stay
The heart's wild current on its way ?
And whence that baleful strength of
guile,
Which over that still working brow
And tearful eye and cheek can throw
The mockery of a smile ?
Warned by her father's blackening frown,
With one strong effort crushing down
Grief, hate, remorse, she meets again
The savage murderer's sullen gaze,
And scarcely look or tone betrays
How the heart strives beneath its chain.
" Is the Sachem angry, — angry with
Ruth,
Because she cries with an ache in her
tooth,10
Which would make a Sagamore jump
and cry,
And look about with a woman's eye ?
No, — Ruth will sit in the Sachem's
door
And braid the mats for his wigwam floor,
And broil his fish and tender fawn,
And weave his wampum, and grind his
corn, —
For she loves the brave and the wise,
and none
Are braver and wiser than Mogg Megone ' "
MOGG MEGONE.
The Indian's brow is clear once more :
With grave, calm face, and half-shut
eye,
He sits upon the wigwam floor,
And watches Ruth go by,
Intent upon her household care ;
And ever and anon, the while,
Or on the maiden, or her fare,
Which smokes in grateful promise there,
Bestows his quiet smile.
Ah, Mogg Megone ! — what dreams are
thine,
But those which love's own fancies
dress, —
The sum of Indian happiness { —
A wigwam, where the warm sunshine
Looks in among the groves of pine, —
A stream, where, round thy light canoe,
The trout and salmon dart in view,
And the fair girl, before thee now,
Spreading thy mat with hand of snow,
Or plying, in the dews of morn,
Her hoe amidst thy patch of corn,
Or offering up, at eve, to thee,
Thy birchen dish of hominy !
From the rude board of Bonython,
Venison and succotash have gone, —
For long these dwellers of the wood
Have felt the gnawing want of food.
But untasted of Ruth is the frugal cheer, —
With head averted, yet ready ear,
She stands by the side of her austere
sire,
Feeding, at times, the unequal fire
With the yellow knots of the pitch-pine
tree,
Whose flaring light, as they kindle, falls
On the cottage-roof, and its black log
walls,
A.nd over its inmates three.
From Sagamore Bonython's hunting flask
The fire-water burns at the lip of Me
gone :
" Will the Sachem hear what his father
shall ask ?
Will he make his mark, that it may
be known,
On the speaking-leaf, that he gives the
land,
From the Sachem's own, to his father's
hand ? "
The fire- water shines in the Indian's eyes,
As he riBes, the white man's bidding
to do :
1 " Wuttamuttata — weekan ! n Mogg is
wise, —
For the water he drinks is strong and
new, —
Mogg's heart is great ! — will he shut his
hand,
i When his father asks for a little land ?" —
With unsteady fingers, the Indian has
drawn
On the parchment the shape of a
hunter's bow,
" Boon water, — boon water, — Saga
more John !
Wuttamuttata, — weekan ! our hearts
will grow ! "
He drinks yet deeper, — he mutters
low, —
He reels on his bear-skin to and fro, —
His head falls down on his naked
breast, —
He struggles, and sinks to a drunken rest.
" Humph — drunk as a beast ! " — and
Bonython's brow
Is darker than ever with evil thought —
" The fool has signed his warrant ; but
how
And when shall the deed be wrought ?
Speak, Ruth ! why, what the devil is
there,
To fix thy gaze in that empty air ? —
Speak, Ruth ! by my soul, if I thought
that tear,
Which shames thyself and our purpose
here,
Were shed for that cursed and pale-
faced dog,
Whose green scalp hangs from the belt
of Mogg,
And whose beastly soul is in Satan's
keeping, —
This — this!" — he dashes his hand
upon
The rattling stock of his loaded gun, —
"Should send thee with him to do
thy weeping ! "
" Father ! " — the eye of Bonython
Sinks at that low, sepulchral tone,
Hollow and deep, as it were spoken
By the unmoving tongue of death, —
Or from some statue's lips had broken, —
A sound without a breath !
" Father ! — my life I value less
Than yonder fool his gaudy dress ;
And how it ends it matters not,
By heart-break or by rifle-shot ;
MOGG MEGONE.
But spare awhile the scoff and threat, —
Our business is not finished yet."
" True, true, my girl, — I only meant
To draw up again the bow unbent.
Harm thee, my Kuth ! I only sought
To frighten off thy gloomy thought ;
Come, — let 's be friends ! " He seeks
to clasp
His daughter's cold, damp hand in his.
Ruth startles from her father's grasp,
As if each nerve and muscle felt,
Instinctively, the touch of guilt,
Through all their subtle sympathies.
He points her to the sleeping Mogg :
'* What shall be done with yonder dog ?
Scamman is dead, and revenge is thine, —
The deed is signed and the land is mine
And this drunken fool is of use no more,
Save as thy hopeful bridegroom, and
sooth,
T were Christian mercy to finish him,
Ruth,
Now, while he lies like a beast on our
floor, —
If not for thine, at least for his sake,
Rather than let the poor dog awake
To drain my flask, and claim as his bride
Such a forest devil to run by his side, —
Such a Wetuomanit 12 as thou wouldst
make ! "
He laughs at his jest. Hush — what is
there ? —
The sleeping Indian is striving to rise,
With his knife in his hand, and glar
ing eyes ! —
" Wagh ! — Mogg will have the pale
face's hair,
For his knife is sharp, and his fingers
can help
The hair to pull and the skin to peel, —
Let him cry like a woman and twist like
an eel,
The great Captain Scamman must lose
his scalp !
And Ruth, when she sees it, shall dance
with Mogg."
His eyes are fixed, — but his lips draw
in, —
With a low, hoarse chuckle, and fiendish
grin, —
And he sinks again, like a senseless log.
Ruth does not speak, — she does not stir ;
But she gazes down on the murderer,
Whose broken and dreamful slumbers tell
Too much for her ear of that deed of hell.
She sees the knife, with its slaughter red,
And the dark fingers clenching the bear-
skin bed !
What thoughts of horror and madness
whirl
Through the burning brain of that fallen
girl!
John Bonython lifts his gun to his eye,
Its muzzle is close to the Indian's ear, —
But he drops it again. " Some one may
be nigh,
And I would not that even the wolves
should hear."
He draws his knife from its deer-skin
belt, -
Its edge with his fingers is slowly felt ; —
Kneeling down on one knee, by the In
dian's side,
From his throat he opens the blanket
wide ;
And twice or thrice he feebly essays
A trembling hand with the knife to raise.
" I cannot," — he mutters, — " did he
not save
My life from a cold and wintry grave,
When the storm came down from Agioo-
chook,
And the north-wind howled, and the
tree-tops shook, —
And I strove, in the drifts of the rush
ing snow,
Till my knees grew weak and I could
not go,
And I felt the cold to my vitals creep,
Aiid my heart's blood stiffen, and pulses
sleep !
t cannot strike him — Ruth Bonython 1
~n the Devil's name, tell me — what 's
to be done ?"
), when the soul, once pure and high,
s stricken down from Virtue's sky,
As, with the downcast star of morn,
Some gems of light are with it drawn, —
Vnd, through its night of darkness, play
Some tokens of its primal day, —
Some lofty feelings linger still, —
The strength to dare, the nerve to meet
Whatever threatens with defeat
Its all-indomitable will ! —
But lacks the mean of mind and heart,
Though eager for the gains of crime,
Oft, at his chosen place and time,
MOGG MEGONE.
The strength to bear his evil part ;
And, shielded by his very Vice,
Escapes from Crime by Cowardice.
Ruth starts erect, — with bloodshot eye,
And lips drawn tight across her teeth,
Showing their locked embrace beneath,
In the red firelight : — "Mogg must die !
Give me the knife ! " — The outlaw turns,
Shuddering in heart and limb, away, —
But, fitfully there, the hearth-fire burns,
And he sees on the wall strange shad
ows play.
A lifted arm, a tremulous blade.
Are dimly pictured in light and shade,
Plunging down in the darkness! Hark,
that cry
Again — and again — he sees it fall, —
That shadowy arm down the lighted wall !
He hears quick footsteps — a shape
flits by —
The door on its rusted hinges creaks : —
"Ruth— daughter Ruth !" the outlaw
shrieks.
But no sound comes back, — he is stand
ing alone
By the mangled corse of Mogg Megone !
PART II.
T is morning over Norridgewock, —
On tree and wigwam, wave and rock.
Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred
At intervals by breeze and bird,
And wearing all the hues which glow
In heaven's own pure and perfect bow,
That glorious picture of the air,
Which summer's light-robed angel forms
On the dark ground of fading storms,
With pencil dipped in sunbeams
there, —
And, stretching out, on either hand,
O'er all that wide and unshorn land,
Till, weary of its gorgeousness,
The aching and the dazzled eye
Rests, gladdened, on the calm blue sky, —
Slumbers the mighty wilderness !
The oak, upon the windy hill,
Its dark green burthen upward
heaves —
The hemlock broods above its rill,
Its cone -like foliage darker still,
Against the birch's graceful stem,
And the rough walnut-bough receives
The sun upon its crowded leaves,
Each colored like a topaz gem ,
And the tall maple wears with them
The coronal, which autumn gives,
The brief, bright sign of ruin near,
The hectic of a dying year !
The hermit priest, who lingers now
On the Bald Mountain's shrubless brow.
The gray and thunder-smitten pile
Which marks afar the Desert Isle,13
While gazing on the scene below,
May half forget the dreams of home,
That nightly with hisslumbers come, -^.
The tranquil skies of sunny France,
The peasant's harvest song and dance.
The vines around the hillsides wreathing
The soft airs midst their clusters breath
ing,
The wings which dipped, the stars which
shone
Within thy bosom, blue Garonne !
And round the Abbey's shadowed wall,
At morning spring and even-fall,
Sweet voices in the still air singing, —
The chant of many a holy hymn, —
The solemn bell of vespers ringing, —
And hallowed torchlight falling dim
On pictured saint and seraphim !
For here beneath him lies unrolled,
Bathed deep in morning's flood of gold,
A vision gorgeous as the dream
Of the beatified may seem,
When, as his Church's legends say,
Borne upward in ecstatic bliss,
The rapt enthusiast soars away
Unto a brighter world than this ,:
A mortal's glimpse beyond the pale, — •
A moment's lifting of the veil !
Far eastward o'er the lovely bay,
Penobscot's clustered wigwams lay ;
And gently from that Indian town
The verdant hillside slopes adown,
To where the sparkling waters play
Upon the yellow sands below ;
And shooting round the winding shores
Of narrow capes, and isles which lie
Slumbering to ocean's lullaby, —
With birchen boat and glancing oars,
The red men to their fishing go ;
While from their planting ground is borne
The treasure of the golden corn,
By laughing girls, whose dark eyes glow
Wild through the locks which o'er them
flow.
The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is done,
Sits on her bear-skin in the sun,
Watching the huskers, with a smile
MOGG MEGONE.
For each full ear which swells the pile ;
And the old chief, who nevermore
May bend the bow or pull the oar,
Smokes gravely in his wigwam door,
Or slowly shapes, with axe of stone,
The arrow-head from flint and bone.
Beneath the westward turning eye
A thousand wooded islands lie, —
Gems of the waters ! — with each hue
Of brightness set in ocean's blue.
Each bears aloft its tuft of trees
Touched by the pencil of the frost,
And, with the motion of each breeze,
A moment seen, — a moment lost, —
Changing and blent, confused and
tossed,
The brighter with the darker crossed,
Their thousand tints of beauty glow
Down in the restless waves below,
And tremble in the sunny skies,
As if, from waving bough to bough,
Flitted the birds of paradise.
There sleep Placentia's group, — and
there
Pere Breteaux marks the hour of prayer ;
And there, beneath the sea-worn cliff,
On which the Father's hut is seen,
The Indian stays his rocking skiff,
And peers the hemlock-boughs be
tween,
Half trembling, as he seeks to look
Upon the Jesuit's Cross and Book.14
There, gloomily against the sky
The Dark Isles rear their summits high ;
And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare,
Lifts its gray turrets in the air, —
Seen from afar, like some stronghold
Built by the ocean kings of old ;
And, faint as smoke-wreath white and
thin,
Swells in the north vast Katahdin :
And, wandering from its marshy feet,
The broad Penobscot comes to meet
And mingle with his own bright bay.
Slow sweep his dark and gathering Hoods,
Arched over by the ancient woods,
Which Time, in those dim solitudes,
Wielding the dull axe of Decay,
Alone hath ever shorn away.
Not thus, within the woods which hide
The beauty of thy azure tide,
And with their falling timbers block
Thy broken currents, Kennebec !
Gazes the white man on the wreck
Of the down-trodden Norridgewock, —
In one lone village hemmed at length,
In battle shorn of half their strength,
Turned, like the panther in his lair,
With his fast-flowing life-blood wet,
For one last struggle of despair,
Wounded and faint, but tameless yet i
Unreaped, upon the planting lands,
The scant, neglected harvest stands :
No shout is there, — no dance, — no
song:
The aspect of the very child
Scowls with a meaning sad and wild
Of bitterness and wrong.
The almost infant Norridgewock
Essays to lift the tomahawk ;
And plucks his father's knife away,
To mimic, in his frightful play,
The scalping of an English foe :
Wreathes on his lip a horrid smile,
Burns, like a snake's, his small eye, while
Some bough or sapling meets his blow.
The fisher, as he drops his line,
Starts, when he sees the hazels quiver
Along the margin of the river,
Looks up and down the rippling tide,
And grasps the firelock at his side.
For Bomazeen 15 from Tacconock
Has sent his runners to Norridgewock,
With tidings that Moulton and Harmon
of York
Far up the river have come :
They have left their boats, — they have
entered the wood,
And filled the depths of the solitude
With the sound of the ranger's drum.
On the brow of a hill, which slopes to
meet
The flowing river, and bathe its feet, —
The bare-washed rock, and the drooping
grass,
And the creeping vine, as the waters
pass, -
A rude and unshapely chapel stands,
Built up in that wild by unskilled hands,
Yet the traveller knows it a place of
prayer,
For the holy sign of the cross is there :
And should he chance at that place to be,
Of a Sabbath morn, or some hallowed
day,
When prayers are made and masses are
said,
Some for the living and some for the dead,
Well might that traveller start to see
The tall dark forms, that take their way
From the birch canoe, on the river-shore,
MOGG MEGONE.
g
And the forest paths, to that chapel door :
And marvel to mark the naked knees
And the dusky foreheads bending there,
While, in coarse white vesture, over these
In blessing or in prayer,
Stretching abroad his thin pale hands,
Like a shrouded ghost, the Jesuit 16 stands.
Two forms are now in that chapel dim,
The Jesuit, silent and sad and pale,
Anxiously heeding some fearful tale,
Which a stranger is telling him.
That stranger's garb is soiled and torn,
And wet with dew and loosely worn ;
Her fair neglected hair falls down
O'er cheeks with wind and sunshine
brown ;
Yet still, in that disordered face,
The Jesuit's cautious eye can trace
Those elements of former grace
Which, half effaced, seem scarcely less,
Even now, than perfect loveliness.
With drooping head, and voice so low
That scarce it meets the Jesuit's ears, —
While through her clasped fingers flow,
From the heart's fountain, hot and slow,
Her penitential tears, —
She tells the story of the woe
And evil of her years.
" O father, bear with me ; my heart
Is sick and death-like, and my brain
Seems girdled with a fiery chain,
Whose scorching links will never part,
And never cool again.
Bear with me while I speak, — but turn
Away that gentle eye, the while, —
The fires of guilt more fiercely burn
Beneath its holy smile ;
For half I fancy I can see
My mother's sainted look in thee.
" My dear lost mother ! sad and pale,
Mournfully sinking day by day,
And with a hold on life as frail
As frosted leaves, that, thin and gray,
Hang feebly on their parent spray,
And tremble in the gale ;
Yet watching o'er my childishness
With patient fondness, — not the less
For all the agony which kept
Her blue eye wakeful, while I slept ;
And checking every tear and groan
That haply might have waked my own,
And bearing still, without offence,
My idle words, and petulance ;
Reproving with a tear, — and, while
The tooth of pain was keenly preying
Upon her very heart, repaying
My brief repentance with a smile.
" 0, in her meek, forgiving eye
There was a brightness not of mirth?
A light whose clear intensity
Was borrowed not of earth.
Along her cheek a deepening red
Told where the feverish hectic fed ;
And yet, each fatal token gave
To the mild beauty of her face
A newer and a dearer grace,
Unwarning of the grave.
'T was like the hue which Autumn gives
To yonder changed and dying leaves,
Breathed over by his frosty breath ;
Scarce can the gazer feel that this
Is but the spoiler's treacherous kiss,
The mocking-smile of Death !
"Sweet were the tales she used to tell
When summer's eve was dear to us,
And, fading from the darkening dell,
The glory of the sunset fell
On wooded Agamenticus, —
When, sitting by our cottage Avail,
The murmur of the Saco's fall,
And the south -wind's expiring sighs,
Came, softly blending, on my ear,
With the low tones I loved to hear :
Tales of the pure, — the good, — the
wise, —
The holy men and maids of old,
In the all-sacred pages told ; —
Of Rachel, stooped at Haran's fount
ains,
Amid her father's thirsty flock,
Beautiful to her kinsman seeming
As the bright angels of his dreaming,
On Padan-aran's holy rock ;
Of gentle Ruth, — and her who kept
Her awful vigil on the mountains,
By Israel's virgin daughters wept ;
Of Miriam, with her maidens, singing
The song for grateful Israel meet,
While every crimson wave was bringing
The spoils of Egypt at her feet ;
Of her, — Samaria's humble daughter,
Who paused to hear, beside her well,
Lessons of love and truth, which fell
Softly as Shiloh's flowing water ;
And saw, beneath his pilgrim guise,
The Promised One, so long foretold
By holy seer and bard of old,
Revealed before her wondering eyes f
10
MOGG MEGONE.
" Slowly she faded. Day by day
Her step grew weaker in our hall,
And fainter, at each even-fall,
Her sad voice died away.
Yet on her thin, pale lip, the while,
Sat Resignation's holy smile :
And even my father checked his tread,
And hushed his voice, beside her bed :
Beneath the calm and sad rebuke
Of her meek eye's imploring look,
The scowl of hate his brow forsook,
, And in his stern and gloomy eye,
At times, a few unwonted tears
Wet the dark lashes, which for years
. Hatred and pride had kept so dry.
" Calm as a child to slumber soothed,
As if an angel's hand had smoothed
The still, white features into rest,
Silent and cold, without a breath
To stir the drapery on her breast,
Pain, with its keen and poisoned fang,
The horror of the mortal pang,
The suffering look her brow had worn,
The fear, the strife, the anguish gone, —
She slept at last in death !
•' 0, tell me, father, can the dead
Walk on the earth, and look on us,
And lay upon the living's head
Their blessing or their curse ?
For, 0, last night she stood by me,
As I lay beneath the woodland tree ! "
The Jesuit crosses himself in awe, —
" Jesu ! what was it my daughter saw ? "
" She came to me last night.
The dried, leaves did not feel her
tread ;
She stood by me in the wan moonlight,
In the white robes of the dead !
Pale, and very mournfully
She bent her light form over me.
I heard no sound, I felt no breath
Breathe o'er me from that face of death :
Its blue eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone ;
Yet, in their fixed, unchanging gaze,
Something, which spoke of early days, —
A sadness in their quiet glare,
As if love's smile were frozen there, —
Came o'er me with an icy thrill ;
0 God ! I feel its presence still ! "
The Jesuit makes the holy sign, —
"How passed the vision, daughter mine ?"
" All dimly in the wan moonshine,
As a wreath of mist will twist and twine
And scatter, and melt into the light, —
So scattering, — melting on my sight,
The pale, cold vision passed ;
But those sad eyes were fixed on mine
Mournfully to the last."
" God help thee, daughter, tell me why
That spirit passed before thine eye ! "
" Father, I know not, save it be
That deeds of mine have summoned hei
From the unbreathing sepulchre,
To leave her last rebuke with me.
Ah, woe for me ! my mother died
Just at the moment when I stood
Close on the verge of womanhood,
A child in everything beside ;
And when my wild heart needed most
Her gentle counsels, they were lost.
" My father lived a stormy life,
Of frequent change and daily strife ;
And — God forgive him ! — left his child
To feel, like him, a freedom wild ;
To love the red man's dwelling-place^
The birch boat on his shaded floods.
The wild excitement of the chase
Sweeping the ancient woods,
The camp-fire, blazing on the shore
Of the still lakes, the clear stream whert
The idle fisher sets his wear,
Or angles in the shade, far more
Than that restraining awe I felt
Beneath my gentle mother's care,
When nightly at her knee I knelt,
With childhood's simple prayer.
" There came a change. The wild, glad
mood
Of unchecked freedom passed.
Amid the ancient solitude
Of unshorn grass and waving wood,
And waters glancing bright and fast,
A softened voice was in my ear,
Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine
~he hunter lifts his head to hear,
row far and faint, now full and near —
The murmur of the wind-swept pine.
manly form was ever nigh,
bold, free hunter, with an eye
Whose dark, keen glance had powei
to wake
Joth fear and love, — to awe and charm,
'T was as the wizard rattlesnake,
,Vhose evil glances lure to harm —
MOGG MEGONE.
11
Whose cold and small and glittering
eye,
And brilliant coil, and changing dye,
Draw, step by step, the gazer near,
With drooping wing and cry of fear,
Yet powerless all to turn away,
A conscious, but a willing prey !
"Fear, clonbt, thought, life itself, erelong
Merged in one feeling deep and strong.
Faded the world which I had known,
A poor vain shadow, cold and waste ;
In the warm present bliss alone
Seemed I of actual life to taste.
Fond longings dimly understood,
The glow of passion's quickening blood,
And cherished fantasies which press
The young lip with a dream's caress, —
The heart's forecast and prophecy
Took form and life before my eye,
Seen in the glance which met my own,
Heard in the soft and pleading tone,
Felt in the arms around me cast,
And warm heart-pulses beating fast.
Ah ! scarcely yet to God above
With deeper trust, with stronger love,
Has prayerful saint his meek heart
lent,
Or cloistered nun at twilight bent,
Than I, before a human shrine,
As mortal and as frail as mine,
With heart, and soul, and mind, and form,
Knelt madly to a fellow-worm.
" Full soon, upon that dream of sin,
An awful light came bursting in.
The shrine was cold at which I knelt,
The idol of that shrine was gone ;
A humbled thing of shame and guilt,
Outcast, and spurned and lone,
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime,
With withering heart and burning
brain,
And tears that fell like fiery rain,
I passed a fearful time.
"There came a voice — it checked the
tear —
In heart and soul it wrought a change ; —
My father's voice was in my ear •,
It whispered of revenge !
A new and fiercer feeling swept
All lingering tenderness away ;
And tiger passions, which had slept
In childhood's better day,
Unknown, unfelt, arose at length
In all their own demoniac strength.
" A youthful warrior of the wild,
By words deceived, by smiles beguiled,
Of crime the cheated instrument,
Upon our fatal errands went.
Through camp and town and wilderness
He tracked his victim ; and, at last,
Just when the tide of hate had passed,
And milder thoughts came warm and fast,
Exulting, at my feet he cast
The bloody token of success.
"0 God ! with what an awful power
I saw the buried past uprise,
And gather, in a single hour,
Its ghost-like memories !
And then I felt — alas ! too late —
That underneath the mask of hate,
That shame and guilt and wrong had
thrown
O'er feelings which they might not own,
The heart's wild love had known no
change ;
And still that deep and hidden love,
With its first fondness, wept above
The victim of its own revenge !
There lay the fearful scalp, and there
The blood was on its pale brown hair !
I thought not of the victim's scorn,
I thought not of his baleful guile,
My deadly wrong, my outcast name,
The characters of sin and shame
On heart and forehead drawn ;
I only saw that victim's smile, —
The still, green places where we met, —
The moonlit branches, dewy wet ;
I only felt, I only heard
The greeting and the parting word, —
The smile, — the embrace, — the tone,
which made
An Eden of the forest shade.
" And oh, with what a loathing eye,
With what a deadly hate, and deep,
I saw that Indian murderer lie
Before me, in his drunken sleep !
What though for me the deed was done.
And words of mine had sped him on !
Yet when he murmured, as he slept,
The horrors of that deed of blood,
The tide of utter madness swept
O'er brain and bosom, like a flood.
And, father, with this hand of mine — "
" Ha ! what didst thou ? " the Jesuit
cries,
Shuddering, as smitten with sudden pain,
And shading, with one thin hand, his
eyes,
12
MOGG MEGONE.
With the other he makes the holy sign.
" — I smote him as I would a worm ; —
With heart as steeled, with nerves as
firm :
He never woke again ! "
" Woman of sin and blood and shame,
Speak, — I would know that victim's
name."
"Father," she gasped, "a chieftain,
known
As Saco's Sachem, — MOGG MEGONE ! "
Pale priest ! What proud and lofty
dreams,
What keen desires, what cherished
schemes,
What hopes, that time may not recall,
Are darkened by that chieftain's fall !
Was he not pledged, by cross and vow,
To lift the hatchet of his sire,
And, round his own, the Church's foe,
To light the avenging fire ?
Who now the Tarrantine shall wake,
For thine and for the Church's sake ?
Who summon to the scene
Of conquest and unsparing strife,
And vengeance dearer than his life,
The fiery-souled Castine ? 17
Three backward steps the Jesuit takes, —
His long, thin frame as ague shakes ;
And loathing hate is in his eye,
As from his lips these w^ords of fear
Fall hoarsely on the maiden's ear, —
"The soul that sinneth shall surely
die!"
She stands, as stands the stricken deer,
Checked midway in the fearful chase,
When bursts, upon his eye and ear,
The gaunt, gray robber, baying near,
Between him and his hiding-place ;
While still behind, with yell and blow,
Sweeps, like a storm, the coming foe.
" Save me, 0 holy man ! " — her cry
Fills all the void, as if a tongue,
Unseen, from rib and rafter hung,
Thrilling with mortal agony ;
Her hands are clasping the Jesuit's
knee,
And her eye looks fearfully into his
own ; —
" Off, woman of sin ! — nay, touch not
me
With those fingers of blood ; — be
gone ! "
With a gesture of horror, he spurns the
form
That writhes at his feet like a trodden
worm.
Ever thus the spirit must,
Guilty in the sight of Heaven,
With a keener woe be riven,
For its weak and sinful trust
In the strength of human dust r
And its anguish thrill afresh/
For each vain reliance given
To the failing arm of flesh.
PART III.
AH, weary Priest ! — with pale hands
pressed
On thy throbbing brow of pain.
Baffled in thy life-long quest,
Overworn with toiling vain,
How ill thy troubled musings fit
The holy quiet of a breast
With the Dove of Peace at rest,
Sweetly brooding over it.
Thoughts are thine which have no part
With the meek and pure of heart,
Undisturbed by outward things,
Resting in the heavenly shade,
By the overspreading wings
Of the Blessed Spirit made.
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong
Sweep thy heated brain along,
Fading hopes for whose success
It were sin to breathe a prayer ; —
Schemes which Heaven may never
bless, -
Fears which darken to despair.
Hoary priest ! thy dream is done
Of a hundred red tribes won
To the pale of Holy Church ;
And the heretic o'erthrown,
And his name no longer known,
And thy weary brethren turning,
Joyful from their years of mourning,,
'Twixt the altar and the porch.
Hark ! what sudden sound is heard
In the wood and in the sky,
Shriller than the scream of bird, —
Than the trumpet's clang more
high !
very wolf-cave of the hills, —
Forest arch and mountain gorge,
Rock and dell, and river verge, —
With an answering echo thrills.
Well does the Jesuit know that cry,
MOGG MEGONE.
13
Which summons the Norridgewock to
die,
And tells that the foe of his flock is nigh.
He listens, and hears the rangers come,
With loud hurrah, and jar of drum,
Ard hurrying feet (for the chase is hot),
And the short, sharp sound of rifle shot,
And taunt and menace, — answered well
By the Indians' mocking cry and yell, —
The bark of dogs, — the squaw's mad
scream, —
The dash of paddles along the stream, —
The whistle of shot as it cuts the leaves
Of the maples around the church's
eaves, —
And the glide of hatchets fiercely
thrown,
On wigwam-log and tree and stone.
Black with the grime of paint and dust,
Spotted and streaked with human
gore,
A grim and naked head is thrust
Within the chapel-door.
"Ha — Bomazeen ! — In God's name say.
"What mean these sounds of bloody fray ?
Silent, the Indian points his hand
To where across the echoing glen
Sweep Harmon's dreaded ranger-band,
And Moulton with his men.
" Where are thy warriors, Bomazeen ?
Where are De Rouville 18 and Castine,
And where the braves of Sawga's queen ?"
" Let my father find the winter snow
Which the sun drank up long moons ago !
Under the falls of Tacconock,
The wolves are eating the Norridgewock ;
Castine with his wives lies closely hid
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid !
On Sawga's banks the man of war
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw, —
Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone,
Struck by the knife of Sagamore John,
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone."
Fearfully over the Jesuit's face,
Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace,
Like swift cloud-shadows, each other
chase.
One instant, his fingers grasp his knife,
For a last vain struggle for cherished
life, —
The next, he hurls the blade away,
And kneels at his altar's foot to pray ;
Over his beads his fingers stray,
And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud
On the Virgin and her Son ;
For terrible thoughts his memory crowd
Of evil seen and done, —
Of scalps brought home by his savage
flock
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock
In the Church's service won.
No shrift the gloomy savage brooks,
As scowling on the priest he looks :
" Cowesass — cowesass — tawhich wessa
seen ?19
Let my father look upon Bomazeen, —
My father's heart is the heart of a squaw,
But mine is so hard that it does not thaw ;
Let my father ask his God to make
A dance and a feast for a great saga
more,
When he paddles across the western lake,
With his dogs and his squaws to the
spirit's shore.
"Cowesass — cowesass — tawhich wessa-
seen ?
Let my father die like Bomazeen ! "
Through the chapel's narrow doors,
And through each window in the walls,
Round the priest and warrior pours
The deadly shower of English balls.
Low on his cross the Jesuit falls ;
While at his side the Norridgewock,
With failing breath, essays to mock
And menace yet the hated foe, —
Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro
Exultingly before their eyes, —
Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow,
Defiant still, he dies.
" So fare all eaters of the frog !
Death to the Babylonish dog !
Down with the beast of Rome ! "
With shouts like these, around the dead,
Unconscious on his bloody bed,
The rangers crowding come.
Brave men ! the dead priest cannot hear
The unfeeling taunt, — the brutal jeer ;—
Spurn — for he sees ye not — in wrath,
The symbol of your Saviour's death ;
Tear from his death -grasp, in your zeal,
And trample, as a thing accursed,
The cross he cherished in the dust :
The dead man cannot feel !
Brutal alike in deed and word,
With callous heart and hand of strife,
\ How like a fiend may man be made,
Plying the foul and monstrous trade
Whose harvest-field is hum&n life,
Whose sickle is the reeking sword J
14
MOGG MEGGNE.
Quenching, with reckless hand in blood,
Sparks kindled by the breath of God ;
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven,
Of open guilt or secret sin,
Before the bar of that pure Heaven
The holy only enter in !
0, by the widow's sore distress,
The orphan's wailing wretchedness,
By Virtue struggling in the accursed
Embraces of polluting Lust,
By the fell discord of the Pit,
And the pained souls that people it,
And by the blessed peace which fills
The Paradise of God forever,
Besting on all its holy hills,
And flowing with its crystal- river, —
Let Christian hands no longer bear
In triumph on his crimson car
The foul and idol god of war ;
No more the purple wreaths prepare
To bind amid his snaky hair ;
Nor Christian bards his glories tell,
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell.
Through the gun-smoke wreathing white,
Glimpses on the soldiers' sight
A thing of human shape I ween,
For a moment only seen,
With its loose hair backward streaming,
And its eyeballs madly gleaming,
Shrieking, like a soul in pain,
From the world of light and breath,
Hurrying to its place again,
Spectre -like it vanisheth !
Wretched girl ! one eye alone
Notes the way which thou hast gone.
That great Eye, which slumbers never,
Watching o'er a lost world ever,
Tracks thee over vale and mountain^
By the gushing forest-fountain,
Plucking from the vine its fruit,
Searching for the ground-nut's root,
Peering in the she- wolfs den,
Wading through the marshy fen,
Where the sluggish water-snake
Basks beside the sunny brake,
Coiling in his slimy bed,
Smooth and cold against thy tread, —
Purposeless, thy mazy way
Threading through the lingering day.
And at night securely sleeping
Where the dogwood's dews are weeping !
Still, though earth and man discard thefe,
Doth thy Heavenly Father guard thee •
He who spared the guilty Cain,
Even when a brother's blood,
Crying in the ear of God,
Gave the earth its primal stain, —
He whose mercy ever liveth,
Who repenting guilt forgiveth,
And the broken heart receiveth, —
Wanderer of the wilderness,
Haunted, guilty, crazed, and wild,
He regardeth thy distress,
And careth for his sinful child !
'T is springtime on the eastern hills !
Like torrents gush the summer rills ;
Through winter's moss and dry dead
leaves
The bladed grass revives and lives,
Pushes the mouldering waste away,
And glimpses to the April day.
In kindly shower and sunshine bud
The branches of the dull gray wood ;
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks ;
The south west wind is warmly blowing.
And odors from the springing grass,
The pine-tree and the sassafras,
Are with it on its errands going.
A band is marching through the wood
Where rolls the Kennebec his flood, —
The warriors of the wilderness,
Painted, and in their battle dress ;
And with them one whose bearded cheek,
And white and wrinkled brow, bespeak
A wanderer from the shores of France.
A few long locks of scattering snow
Beneath a battered morion flow,
And from the rivets of the vest
Which girds in steel his ample breast,
The slanted sunbeams glance.
In the harsh outlines of his face
Passion and sin have left their trace ;
Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair,
No signs of weary age are there.
His step is firm, his eye is keen,
Nor years in broil and battle spent,
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have beni
The lordly frame of old Castine.
No purpose now of strife and blood
Urges the hoary veteran on :
The fire of conquest and the mood
Of chivalry have gone.
A mournful task is his, — to lay
Within the earth the bones of thos&
Who perished in that fearful day,
When Norridgewock became the prey
Of all unsparing foes.
Sadly and still, dark thoughts between,
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
15
Of coming vengeance mused Castine,
Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen,
Who bade for him the Norridgewocks
Dig up their buried tomahawks
For firm defence or swift attack ;
And him whose friendship formed the tie
Which held the stern self-exile back
From lapsing into savagery ;
Whose garb and tone and kindly glance
Recalled a younger, happier day,
And prompted memory's fond essay,
To bridge the mighty waste which lay
Between his wild home and that gray,
Tall chateau of his native France,
Whose chapel bell, with far-heard din,
Ushered his birth-hour gayly in,
&nd counted with its solemn toll
The masses for his father's soul.
Hark ! from the foremost of the band
Suddenly bursts the Indian yell ;
For now on the very spot they stand
Where the Norridgewocks fighting fell.
Xo wigwam smoke is curling there ;
The very earth is scorched and bare :
And they pause and listen to catch a sound
Of breathing life, — but there comes
not one,
Save the fox'sbark and the rabbit's bound ;
But here and there, on the blackened
ground,
White bones are glistening in the sun.
And where the house of prayer arose,
And the holy hymn, at daylight's close,
And the aged priest stood up tc bless
The children of the wilderness,
There is naught save ashes sodden and
dank ;
And the birchen boats of the Nor-
ridgewock,
Tethered to tree and stump and rock
Eotting along the river bank !
Blessed Mary ! who is she
Leaning against that maple-tree ?
The sun upon her face burns hot,
But the fixed eyelid moveth not ;
The squirrel's chirp is shrill and clear
From the dry bough above her ear ;
Dashing from rock and root its spray,
Close at her feet the river rushes ;
The blackbird's wing against her
brushes,
And sweetly through the hazel-bushes
The robin's mellow music gushes ; —
God save her ! will she sleep alway ?
Castine hath bent him over the sleeper :
" Wake, daughter, — wake ! " — but
she stirs no limb :
The eye that looks on him is fixed and
dim;
And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no
deeper,
Until the angel's oath is said,
And the final blast of the trump goes forth
To the graves of the sea and the graves
of earth.
E.UTH BONYTHON IS DEAD !
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.20
WE had been wandering for many days
Through the rough northern country.
We had seen
The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud,
Like a new heaven, shine upward from
the lake
Of Winnepiseogee ; and had felt
The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles
Which stoop their summer beauty to the
lips
Of the bright waters. We had checked
our steeds,
Silent with wonder, where the mountain
wall
Is piled to heaven ; and, through the
narrow rift
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged
feet
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar,
Where noonday is as twilight, and the
wind
Comes burdened with the everlasting
moan
Of forests and of far-off waterfalls,
16
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
We had looked upward where the sum
mer sky,
Tasselled with clouds light-woven by
the sun,
Sprung its blue arch above the abutting
crags
O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land
Beyond the wall of mountains. W^ had
The high source of the Saco ; and be
wildered
In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal
Hills,
Had heard above us, like a voice in the
clpud,
The horn of Fabyan sounding ; and atop
Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains
Piled to the northward, shagged with
wood, and thick
As meadow mole-hills, — the far sea of
Casco,
A white gleam on the horizon of the east ;
Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods
and hills ;
Moosehillock's mountain range, and
Kearsarge
lifting his Titan forehead to the sun !
And we had rested underneath the oaks
Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires
are shaken
By the perpetual beating of the falls
Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had
tracked
The winding Pemigewasset, overhung
By beechen shadows, whitening down
its rocks,
Or lazily gliding through its intervals,
From waving rye-fields sending up the
gleam
Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon
Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines,
Like a great Indian camp-fire ; and its
beams
At midnight spanning with a bridge of
silver
The Merrimack by Uncanoonuc's falls.
There were five souls of us whom trav
el's chance
Had thrown together in these wild
north hills : —
A city lawyer, for a month escaping
From his dull office, where the weary eye
Saw only hot brick walls and close
thronged streets, —
Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see
Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to
take
Its chances all as godsends ; and his
brother,
Pale from long pulpit studies, yet re
taining
The warmth and freshness of a genial
heart,
Whose mirror of the beautiful and true.
In Man and Nature, was as yet un-
dimmed
By dust of theologic strife, or breath
Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore ;
Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking
The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers,
Sweet human faces, white clouds of the
noon,
Slant starlight glimpses through the
dewy leaves,
And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in
truth, a study,
To mark his spirit, alternating between
A decent and professional gravity
And an irreverent mirthfulness, which
often
Laughed in the face of his divinity,
Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite un-
shrined
The oracle, and for the pattern priest
Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious
merchant,
To whom the soiled sheet found in
Crawford's inn,
Giving the latest news of city stocks
And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning
Than the great presence of the awful
mountains
Glorified by the sunset ; — and his
daughter
A delicate flower on whom had blown
too long
Those evil winds, which, sweeping from
the ice
And winnowing the fogs of Labrador,
Shed their cold blight round Massachu
setts Bay,
With the same breath which stirs
Spring's opening leaves
And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on
its stem,
Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.
It chanced
That as we turned upon our homeward way,
A drear northeastern storm came howl.
ing up
The valley of the Saco ; and that girl
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
17
Who had stood with us upon Mount
Washington,
Her brown locks ruffled by the wind
which whirled
In gusts around its sharp cold pinnacle,
Who had joined our gay trout fishing in
the streams
Which lave that giant's feet ; whose
laugh was heard
Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze
Which swelled our sail amidst the lake's
green islands,
Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and
visibly drooped
Like a flower in the frost. So, in that
quiet inn
Which looks from Con way on the moun
tains piled
Heavily against the horizon of the north,
Like summer thunder-clouds, we made
our home :
And while the mist hung over dripping
hills,
And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all
day long
Beat their sad music upon roof and pane,
We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.
The lawyer in the pauses of the storm
Went angling down the Saco, and, re
turning,
Recounted his adventures and mishaps ;
Gave us the history of his scaly clients,
Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations
Of barbarous law Latin, passages
From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and
fresh
A.S the flower-skirted streams of Stafford
shire,
Where, under aged trees, the southwest
wind
Of soft June mornings fanned the thin,
white hair
Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told,
Our youthful candidate forsook his ser
mons,
His commentaries, articles and creeds,
For the fair page of human loveliness, —
The missal of young hearts, whose sa
cred text
Is music, its illumining sweet smiles.
He sang the songs she loved ; and in
his low,
Deep, earnest voice, recited many a page
Of poetry, — the holiest, tenderest lines
Of the sad bard of Olney, — the sweet
songs,
Simple and beautiful as Truth and Na.
ture,
Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal
Mount
Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing
From thegreen hills, immortal in his lays.
And for myself, obedient to her wish,
j I searched our landlord's proffered li
brary, —
A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice
wood pictures
Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike
them, —
Watts' unmelodious psalms, — Astrol.
ogy's
Last home, a musty pile of almanacs,
And an old chronicle of border wars
And Indian history. And, as I read
A story of the marriage of the Chief
Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,
Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt
In the old time upon the Merrimack,
Our fair one, in the playful exercise
Of her prerogative, — the right divine
Of youth and beauty, — bade us versify
The legend, and with ready pencil
sketched
Its plan and outlines, laughingly as
signing
To each his part, and barring our excuses
With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers
Whose voices still are heard in the Ro-
mance
Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks
Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling
The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled
From stately Florence, we rehearsed our
rhymes
To their fair auditor, and shared by turns
Her kind approval and her playful cen-
It may be that these fragments owe alone
To the fair setting of their circum-
stances, —
The associations of time, scene, and
audience, —
Their place amid the pictures which
fill up
The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust
That some, who sigh, while wandering
in thought,
Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world,
That our broad land, — our sea-like
lakes and mountains
Piled to the clouds, — our rivers over
hung
18
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
By forests which have known no other
change
For ages, than the budding and the fall
Of leaves, — our valleys lovelier than
those
Which the old poets sang of, — should
but figure
On the apocryphal chart of speculation
As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with
the privileges,
Rights, and appurtenances, which make
up
A Yankee Paradise, — unsung, unknown,
To beautiful tradition ; even their names,
Whose melody yet lingers like the last
Vibration of the red man's requiem,
Exchanged for syllables significant
Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look
kindly
Upon this effort to call up the ghost
Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased
ear
To the responses of the questioned Shade.
I. THE MERRIMACK.
0 CHILD of that white-crested mountain
whose springs
Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's
wings,
Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy
wild waters shine,
Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing
through the dwarf pine.
From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold
and so lone,
From the arms of that wintry-locked
mother of stone,
By hills hung with forests, through
vales wide and free,
Thy mountain-born brightness glanced
down to the sea !
No bridge arched thy waters save that
where the trees
Stretched their long arms above thee
and kissed in the breeze :
No sound save the lapse of the waves on
thy shores,
The plunging of otters, the light dip of
Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amos-
keag's fall
Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately and
tall,
Thy Nashua meadows lay green and un.
shorn,
And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled
with corn.
But thy Pennacook valley was fairer
than these,
And greener its grasses and taller its trees,
Ere the sound of an axe in the forest
had rung,
Or the mower his scythe in the meadows
had swung.
In their sheltered repose looking out
from the wood
The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook
stood,
There glided the corn-dance, the coun
cil-fire shone,
And against the red war-post the hatchet
was thrown.
There the old smoked in silence their
pipes, and the young
To the pike and the white-perch their
baited lines flung ;
There the boy shaped his arrows, and
there the shy maid
Wove her many-hued baskets and bright
wampum braid.
0 Stream of the Mountains ! if answer
of thine
Could rise from thy waters to question
of mine,
Methinks through the din of thy
thronged banks a moan
Of sorrow would swell for the days which
have gone.
Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and
the wheel,
The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of
steel ;
But that old voice of waters, of bird and
of breeze,
The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of
trees !
II. THE BASHABA.21
LIFT we the twilight curtains of the Past,
And, turning from familiar sight and
sound,
Sadly and full of reverence let us cast
A glance upon Tradition's shadowy
ground,
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
19
Led by the few pale lights which, glim
mering round
That dim, strange land of Eld, seem
dying fast ;
And that which history gives not to the
eye,
The faded coloring of Time's tapestry,
Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush,
supply.
Roof of bark and walls of pine,
Through whose chinks the sunbeams
shine,
Tracing many a golden line
On the ample floor within ;
Where, upon that earth-floor stark,
Lay the gaudy mats of bark,
With the bear's hide, rough and dark,
And the red-deer's skin.
Window-tracery, small and slight,
Woven of the willow white,
Lent a dimly checkered light,
And the night- stars glimmered down,
Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke,
Slowly through an opening broke,
In the low roof, ribbed with oak,
Sheathed with hemlock brown.
Gloomed behind the changeless shade,
By the solemn pine-wood made ;
Through the rugged palisade,
In the open foreground planted,
Glimpses came of rowers rowing,
Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blow
ing.
Steel-like gleams of water flowing,
In the sunlight slanted.
Here the mighty Bashaba
Held his long-unquestioned sway,
From the White Hills, far away,
To the great sea's sounding shore ;
Chief of chiefs, his regal word
All the river Sachems heard,
At his call the war-dance stirred,
Or was still once more.
There his spoils of chase and war,
Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw,
Panther's skin and eagle's claw,
Lay beside his axe and bow ;
And, adown the roof-pole hung,
Loosely on a snake-skin strung,
In the smoke his scalp-looks swung
Grimly to and fro.
Nightly down the river going,
Swifter was the hunter's rowing,
When he saw that lodge-fire glowing
O'er the waters still and red ;
And the squaw's dark eye burned brighter,
And she drew her blanket tighter,
As, with quicker step and lighter,
From that door she fled.
For that chief had magic skill,
And a Panisee's dark will,
Over powers of good and ill,
Powers which bless and powers which
ban, —
Wizard lord of Pennacook,
Chiefs upon their war-path shook,
When they met the steady look
Of that wise dark man.
Tales of him the gray squaw told,
When the winter night-wind cold
Pierced her blanket's thickest fold,
And her fire burned low and small,
Till the very child abed,
Drew its bear-skin over head,
Shrinking from the pale lights shed
On the trembling wall.
All the subtle spirits hiding
Under earth or wave, abiding
In the caverned rock, or riding
Misty clouds or morning breeze ;
Every dark intelligence,
Secret soul, and influence
Of all things which outward sense
Feels, or hears, or sees, —
These the wizard's skill confessed,
At his bidding banned or blessed,
Stormful woke or lulled to rest
Wind and cloud, and fire and flood ;
Burned for him the drifted snow,
Bade through ice fresh lilies blow.
And the leaves of summer grow
Over winter's wood !
Not untrue that tale of old !
Now, as then, the wise and bold
All the powers of Nature hold
Subject to their kingly will ;
From the wondering crowds ashore.
Treading life's wild waters o'er,
As upon a marble floor,
Moves the strong man still.
Still, to such, life's elements
With their sterner laws dispense,
20
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
And the chain of consequence
Broken in their pathway lies ;
Time and change their vassals making,
Flowers from icy pillows waking,
Tresses of the sunrise shaking
Over midnight skies.
Still, to th' earnest soul, the sun
Kests oii towered Gibeon,
And the moon of Ajalon
Lights the battle-grounds of life ;
To his aid the strong reverses
Hidden powers and giant forces,
And the high stars, in their courses,
Mingle in his strife !
III. THE DAUGHTER.
THE soot-black brows of men, — the
yell
Of women thronginground the bed, —
The tinkling charm of ring and shell, —
The Powah whispering o'er the
dead ! —
AH these the Sachem's home had
known,
"When, on her journey long and wild
To the dim World of Souls, alone,
In her young beauty passed the mother
of his child.
Three bow-shots from the Sachem's
dwelling
They laid her in the walnut shade,
Where a green hillock gently swelling
Her fitting mound of burial made.
There trailed the vine in summer hours,
The tree-perched squirrel dropped
his shell, —
On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers,
Woven with leaf and spray, the softened
sunshine fell !
The Indian's heart is hard and cold, —
It closes darkly o'er its care,
Anaformed in Nature'ssternestmould,
Is slow to feel, and strong to bear.
The war-paint on the Sachem's face,
Unwet with tears, shone fierce and
red,
And, still in battle or in chase,
Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath
His foremost tread.
Yet when her name was heard no more,
And when the robe her mother gave,
And small, light moccasin she wore,
Had slowly wasted on her grave,
Unmarked of him the dark maids sped
Their sunset dance and moonlit play;
No other shared his lonely bed,
No other fair young head upon hi»
bosom lay.
A lone, stem man. Yet, as sometimes
The tempest-smitten tree receives
From one small root the sap which
climbs
Its topmost spray and crowning
leaves,
So from his child the Sachem drew
A life of Love and Hope, and felt
His cold and rugged nature through
The softness and the warmth of her
young being melt.
A laughnvhich in the woodland rang
Bemocking April's gladdest bird, —
A light and graceful form which sprang
To meet him when his step was
heard, —
Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark,
Small fingers stringing bead and shell
Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark, —
With these the household-god 22 had
graced his wigwam well.
Child of the forest ! — strong and free,
Sh'ght-robed, with loosely flowing
hair,
She swam the lake or climbed the tree,
Or struck the flying bird in air.
O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon
Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's
way;
And dazzling in the summer noon
The blade of her light oar threw off its
shower of spray !
Unknown to her the rigid rule,
The dull restraint, the chiding frown,
The weary torture of the school,
The taming of wild nature down.
Her only lore, the legends told
Around the hunter's fire at night ;
Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled,
Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell,
unquestioned in her sight.
Unknown to her the subtle skill
With which the artist-eye can trace
In rock and tree and lake and hill
The outlines of d'Vinest grace ;
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
21
Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest,
Which sees, admires, yet yearns
alway ;
Too closely on her mother's breast
To note her smiles of love the child of
Nature lay !
It is enough for such to be
Of common, natural things a part,
To feel, with bird and stream and tree,
The pulses of the same great heart ;
But we, from Nature long exiled
In our cold homes of Art and
Thought,
Grieve like the stranger-tended child,
Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees
but feels them not.
The garden rose may richly bloom
In cultured soil and genial air
To cloud the light of Fashion's room
Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair,
In lonelier grace, to sun and dew
The sweetbrier on the hillside shows
Its single leaf and fainter hue,
Untrained and wildly free, yet still a
sister rose !
Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo
Their mingling shades of joy and ill
The instincts of her nature threw, —
The savage was a woman still.
Midstoutlines dim of maiden schemes,
Heart-colored prophecies of life,
Rose on the ground of her young dreams
The light of a new home, — ^he lover
and the wife.
IV. THE WEDDING.
COOL and dark fell the autumn night,
But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with
light,
For down from its roof by green withes
hung
Flaring and smoking the pine-knots
swung.
And along the river great wood-fires
Shot into the night their long red spires,
Showing behind the tall, dark wood,
Flashing before on the sweeping flood.
On tree-leaves wet with evening dews,
On gliding water and still canoes.
The trapper that night on Turee's brook
And the weary fisher on Contoocook,
Saw over the marshes and through the
pine,
And down on the river the dance-lights
shine.
For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo
The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo,
And laid at her father's feet that night
His softest furs and wampum white.
From the Crystal Hills to the far south
east
The river Sagamores came to the feast ;
And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds
shook,
Sat down on the mats of Pennacook.
They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,
From the snowy sources of Snooganock,
And from rough Coos whose thick woods
shake
Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake.
From Aminonoosuc's mountain pass,
Wild as his home, came Chepewass ;
And the Keenomps of the hills which
throw
Their shade on the Smile of Manito.
With pipes of peace and bows unstrung,
Glowing with paint came old and young,
In wampum andfursandfeathers arrayed,
To the dance and feast the Bashaba made.
Bird of the air and beast of the field,
All which the woods and waters yield.
On dishes of birch and hemlock piled,
Garnished and graced that banquet wild.
Steaks of the brown bear fat and large
From the rocky si opes of the Kearsarge ;
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,
And salmon speared in the Contoocook ;
Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick
In the gravelly bed of the Otternic ;
And small wild-hens in reed-snares caught
From the banks of Sondagardee brought ;
In the changeful wind, with shimmer Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,
and shade,
tfow high, now low, that firelight played,
Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills
shaken,
29,
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog,
And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog :
And, drawn from that great stone vase
which stands
In the river scooped by a spirit's hands,23
Garnished with spoons of shell and horn,
Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn.
Thus bird of the air and beast of the field,
All which the woods and the waters yield,
Furnished in that olden day
The bridal feast of the Bashaba.
And merrily when that feast was done
On the fire-lit green the dance begun,
"With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum
Of old men beating the Indian drum.
Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks
flowing,
And red arms tossing and black eyes
_ glowing,
Now in the light and now in the shade
•Around the fires the dancers played.
The step was quicker, the song more shrill,
And the beat of the small drums louder still
Whenever within the circle drew
The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo.
The moons of forty winters had shed
Their snow upon that chieftain's head,
And toil and care, and battle's chance
Had seamed his hard dark countenance.
A fawn beside the bison grim, —
Why turns the bride's fond eye on him,
In whose cold look is naught beside
The triumph of a sullen pride ?
A'sk why the graceful grape entwines
The rough oak with her arm of vines ;
And why the gray rock's rugged cheek
The soft lips of the mosses seek :
Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems
To harmonize her wide extremes,
Linking the stronger with the weak,
The haughty with the soft and meek !
V. THE NEW HOME.
A WILD and broken landscape, spiked
with firs,
Roughening the bleak horizon's north
ern edge,
Steep, cavernous hillsides, where black
hemlock spurs
And sharp, gray splinters of the wind
swept ledge
Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling
rose,
Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down
upon the snows.
And eastward cold, wide marshes:
stretched away,
Dull, dreary flats without a bush or
tree,
O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a
day
Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck
sea ;
And faint with distance came the stifled
roar,
The melancholy lapse of waves on that
low shore.
No cheerful village with its mingling
smokes,
No laugh of children wrestling in the
snow,
No camp-fire blazing through the hill
side oaks,
No fishers kneeling on the ice below ;
Yet midst all desolate things of sound
and view,
Through the long winter moons smiled
dark-eyed Weetamoo.
Her heart had found a home ; and freshly
all
Its beautiful affections overgrew
Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite
wall
Soft vine-leaves open to the moisten
ing dew
And warm bright sun, the love of that
young wife
Found on a hard cold breast the dew
and warmth of life.
The steep bleak hills, the melancholy
shore,
The long dead level of the marsh be
tween,
A coloring of unreal beauty wore
Through the soft golden mist of young
love seen.
For o'er those hills and from that dreary
plain,
Nightly she welcomed home her himter
chief again.
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
No warmth of heart, no passionate burst
of feeling,
Repaid her welcoming smile and part
ing kiss,
No fond and playful dalliance half con
cealing,
Under the guise of mirth, its tender
ness ;
But, in their stead, the warrior's settled
pride,
A.nd vanity's pleased smile with homage
satisfied.
Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone
Sat on his mat, and slumbered at his
side ;
That he whose fame to her young ear
had flown
Now looked upon her proudly as his
bride :
That he whose name the Mohawk trem
bling heard
Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look
or word.
For she had learned the maxims of her
race,
Which teach the woman to become a
slave
And feel herself the pardonless disgrace
Of love's fond weakness in the wise
and bravey —
The scandal and the shame which they
incur,
Who give to woman all which man re
quires of her.
So passed the winter moons. The sun
at last
Broke link by link the frost chain of
the rills,
And the warm breathings of the south
west passed
Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills,
The gray and desolate marsh grew green
once more,
&.nd the birch-tree's tremulous shade fell
round the Sachem's door.
Then from far Pennacook swift runners
came,
With gift and greeting for the Saugus
chief ;
Beseeching him in the great Sachem's
name,
That, with the coming of the flower
and leaf,
The song of birds, the warm breeze and
the rain,
Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely
sire again.
And Winnepurkit called his chiefs to
gether,
And a grave council in his wigwarr
met,
Solemn and brief in words, considering
whether
The rigid rules of forest etiquette
Permitted Weetamoo once more to look
Upon her father's face and green-banked
Pennacook .
With interludes of pipe-smoke and
strong water,
The forest sages pondered, and at
length,
Concluded in a body to escort her
Up to her father's home of pride and
strength,
Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense
Of Winnepurkit's power and regal con
sequence.
So through old woods which Aukeeta-
mit's 24 hand,
A soft and many-shaded greenness lent,
Over high breezy hills, and meadow land
Yellow with flowers, the wild proces
sion went,
Till, rolling down its wooded banks be
tween,
A broad, clear, mountain stream, tin
Merrimack was seen.
The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn,
The fisher lounging on the pebbled
shores,
Squaws in the clearing dropping the
seed-corn,
Young children peering through the
wigwam doors,
Saw with delight, surrounded by her
train
Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo
again.
VI. AT PENNACOOK.
THE hills are dearest which our childish
feet
Have climbed the earliest ; and tilt
streams most sweet
THE BKIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
Are ever those at which our young lips
drank,
Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy
bank :
Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home's
hearth -light
Shines round the helmsman plunging
through the night ;
And still, with inward eye, the traveller
sees
In close, dark, stranger streets his native
trees.
The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly
fanned
By breezes whispering of his native land,
And on the stranger's dim and dying
eye
The soft, sweet pictures of his child
hood lie.
Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once more
A child upon her father's wigwam floor !
Once more with her old fondness to be
guile
From his cold eye the strange light of a
smile.
The long bright days of summer swiftly
passed,
The dry leaves whirled in autumn's ris
ing blast,
And evening cloud and whitening sun
rise rime
Told of the coining of the winter- time.
But vainly looked, the while, young
Weetamoo,
Down the dark river for her chief's canoe ;
No dusky messenger from Saugus brought
The grateful tidings which the young
wife sought.
At length a runner from her father sent,
To Winnepurkit' s sea-cooled wigwam
went :
" Eagle of Saugus, — in the woods the
dove
Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of
love."
But the dark chief of Saugus turned aside
Jn the grim anger of hard-hearted pride ;
" I bore her as became a chieftain's
daughter,
Up to her home beside the gliding water.
" If now no more a mat for her is found
Of all which line her father's wigwam
round,
Let Pennacook call out his warrior train,
And serd her back with wampum gifts
again."
The baffled runner turned upon his track,
Bearing the words of Winnepurkit back.
"Dog of the Marsh," cried Pennacook,
" no more
Shall child of mine sit on his wigwam
floor.
" Go, — let him seek some meanersquaw
to spread
The stolen bear-skin of his beggar's bed :
Son of a fish-hawk ! — let him dig his
clams
For some vile daughter of the Agawams,
"Or coward Nipmucks ! — may his scalp
dry black
In Mohawk smoke, before I send her
back."
He shook his clenched hand towards the
ocean wave,
While hoarse assent his listening coun
cil gave.
Alas poor bride ! — can thy grim sire
impart
His iron hardness to thy woman's heart ?
Or cold self-torturing pride like his atone
For love denied and life's warm beauty
flown ?
On Autumn's gray and mournful grave
the snow
Hung its white wreaths ; with stifled
voice and low
The river crept, by one vast bridge o'er-
crossed,
Built by the hoar-locked artisan of Frost.
And many a Moon in beauty newly born
Pierced the red sunset with her silver
horn,
Or, from the east, across her azure field
Rolled the wide brightness of her full-
orbed shield.
Yet Winnepurkit came not, — on the mat
Of the scorned wife her dusky rival sat ;
And he, the while, in Western woods afar,
Urged the long chase, or trod the path
of war.
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK
25
Dry up thy tears, young daughter of a
chief !
Waste not on him the sacredness of grief ;
Be the fierce spirit of thy sire thine own,
His lips of scorning, and his heart of stone.
What heeds the warrior of a hundred
fights,
The storm-worn watcher through long
hunting nights,
Cold, crafty, proud of woman's weak
distress,
Her home-bound grief and pining lone
liness ?
VII. THE DEPARTURE.
THE wild March Tains had fallen fast and
long
The snowy mountains of the North among,
Making each vale a watercourse, — each
hill
Bright with the cascade of some new-
made rill.
Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by
the rain,
Heaved underneath by the swollen cur
rent's strain,
The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merri-
mack
Bore the huge ruin crashing down its
track.
On that strong turbid water, a small boat
Guided by one weak hand was seen to
float;
Evil the fate which loosed it from the
shore,
Too early voyager with too frail an oar !
Down the vexed centre of that rushing
tide,
The thick huge ice-blocks threatening
either side,
The foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in
view,
With arrowy swiftness sped that light
canoe.
The trapper, moistening his moose's meat
On the wet bank by Uncanoonuc's feet,
Saw the swift boat flash down the trou
bled stream —
Slept he, or waked he ? — was it truth
o dream ?
The straining eye bent fearfully before,
The small hand clenching on the useless
oar,
The bead-wrought blanket trailing o'er
the water —
He knew them all — woe for the Sachem's
daughter !
Sick and aweary of her lonely life,
Heedless of peril the still faithful wife
Had left her mother's grave, her fatherV
door,
To seek the wigwam of her chief once
more.
Down the white rapids like a sear leaf
whirled,
On the sharp rocks and piled-up icea
hurled,
Empty and broken, circled the canoe
In the vexed pool below — but, where
was Weetamoo ?
VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN.
THE Dark eye has left us,
The Spring-bird has flown ;
On the pathway of spirits
She wanders alone.
The song of the wood-dove has died on
our shore, —
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! ^ — We hear
it no more !
0 dark water Spirit !
We cast on thy wave
These furs which may never
Hang over her grave ;
Bear down to the lost one the robes that
she wore, —
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! — We see hei
no more !
Of the strange land she walks in
No Powah has told :
It may burn with the sunshine,
Or freeze with the cold.
Let us give to o .u lost one the robes that
she wore,
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! — We see her
no more !
The path shd is treading
Shall soot! be our own ;
Each gliding in shadow
lTnseeu and alone ! —
26
LEGENDARY.
In vain shall we call on the souls gone
before, —
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! — They hear
us no more !
0 mighty Sowanna ! 26
Thy gateways unfold,
From thy wigwam of sunset
Lift curtains of gold !
Take home the poor Spirit whose journey
is o'er, —
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! — We see her
no more !
So sang the Children of the Leaves besidt»
The broad, dark river's coldly flowing tide,
Now low, now harsh, with sob-like
pause and swell,
On the high wind their voices rose and fell .
Nature's wild music, — sounds of wind
swept trees,
The scream of birds, the wailing of the
breeze,
The roar of waters, steady, deep, and
strong, —
Mingled and murmured in that farewell
song.
LEGENDARY.
THE MERRIMACK.
[" The Indians speak of a beautiful river, far
to the south, which they call Merrimack." —
SIEUR DE MONTS : 1604.]
STREAM of my fathers ! sweetly still
The sunset rays thy valley fill ;
Poured slantwise down the long defile,
Wave, wood, and spire beneath them
smilje.
I see the winding Powow fold
The green hill in its belt of gold,
And following down its wavy line,
Its sparkling waters blend with thine.
There 's not a tree upon thy side,
Nor rock, which thy returning tide
As yet hath left abrupt and stark
Above thy evening water-mark ;
No calm cove with its rocky hem,
No isle whose emerald swells begem
Thy broad, smooth current ; not a sail
Bowed to the freshening ocean gale ;
No small boat with its busy oars,
Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores ;
Nor farm-house with its maple shade,
Or rigid poplar colonnade.
But lies distinct and full in sight,
Beneath this gush of sunset light.
Centuries ago, that harbor-bar,
Stretching its length of foam afar,
And Salisbury's beach of shining sand,
And yonder island's wave-smoothed
strand,
Saw the adventurer's tiny sail,
Flit, stooping from the eastern gale ; 27
And o'er these woods and waters broke
The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak,
As brightly on the voyager's eye,
Weary of forest, sea, and sky,
Breaking the dull continuous wood,
The Merrimack rolled down his flood ;
Mingling that clear pellucid brook,
Which channels vast Agioochook
When spring-time's sun and shower un
lock
The frozen fountains of the rock,
And more abundant waters given
From that pure lake, "The Smile of
Heaven,"28
Tributes from vale and mountain-side, —
With ocean's dark, eternal tide !
On yonder rocky cape, which braves
The stormy challenge of the waves,
Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood,
The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood,
Planting upon the topmost crag
The staff of England's battle-flag ;
And, while from out its heavy fold
Saint George's crimson cross unrolled,
Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare,
And weapons brandishing in air,
He gave to that lone promontory
The sweetest name in all his story ; w
Of her, the flower of Islam's daughters,
Whose harems look on Stamboul's
waters, —
Who, when the chance of war had bound
THE NORSEMEN.
The Moslem chain his limbs around,
Wreathed o'er with silk that iron chain,
Soothed with her smiles his hours of
pain,
And fondly to her youthful slave
A dearer gift than freedom gave.
But look ! — the yellow light no more
Streams down on wave and verdant
shore ;
And clearly on the calm air swells
The twilight voice of distant bells.
From Ocean's bosom, white and thin,
The mists come slowly rolling in ;
Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim,
Amidst the sea-like vapor swim,
While yonder lonely coast-light, set
Within its wave-washed minaret,
Half quenched, a beamless star and pale,
Shines dimly through its cloudy veil !
Home of my fathers ! — I have stood
Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood :
Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade
Along his frowning Palisade ;
Looked down the Apalachian peak
On Juniata's silver streak;
Have seen along his valley gleam
The Mohawk's softly winding stream ;
The level light of sunset shine
Through broad Potomac's hem of pine ;
And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner
Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna ;
Yet wheresoe'er his step might be,
Thy wandering child looked back to
thee !
Heard in his dreams thy river's sound
Of murmuring on its pebbly bound,
The unforgotten swell and roar
Of waves on thy familiar shore ;
And saw, amidst the curtained gloom
And quiet of his lonely room,
Thy sunset scenes before him pass ;
&s, in Agrippa's magic glass,
The loved and lost arose to view,-
Remembered groves in greenness grew,
Bathed still in childhood's morning
dew,
Along whose bowers of beauty swept
Whatever Memory's mourners wept,
Sweet faces, which the charnel kept,
Young, gentle eyes, which long had
slept ;
And while the gazer leaned to trace,
More near, some dear familiar face,
He wept to find the vision flown, —
A phantom and a dream alone !
THE NORSEMEN.80
GIFT from the cold and silent Past !
A relic to the present cast ;
Left on the ever-changing strand
Of shifting and unstable sand,
Which wastes beneath the steady chime
And beating of the waves of Time !
Who from its bed of primal rock
First wrenched thy dark, unshapely
block ?
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,
Thy rude and savage outline wrought ?
The waters of my native stream
Are glancing in the sun's warm beam :
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar
The circles widen to its shore :
And cultured field and peopled town
Slope to its willowed margin down.
Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing
The home-life sound of school-bells ring
ing,
And rolling wheel, and rapid jar
Of the fire-winged and steedless car,
And voices from the wayside near
Come quick and blended on my ear,
A spell is in this old gray stone, —
My thoughts are with the Past alone !
A change ! — The steepled town no more
Stretches along the sail-thronged shore :
Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud,
Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud :
Spectrally rising where they stood,
I see the old, primeval wood :
Dark, shadow-like, on either hand
I see its solemn waste expand :
It climbs the green and cultured hill,
It arches o'er the valley's rill ;
And leans from cliff and crag, to throv
Its wild arms o'er the stream below.
Unchanged, alone, the same bright river
Flows on, as it will flow forever !
I listen, and I hear the low
Soft ripple where its waters go ;
I hear behind the panther's cry,
The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by,
And shyly on the river's brink
The deer is stooping down to drink.
But hark ! — from wood and rock flung
back,
What sound comes up the Merrimack ?
What sea-worn barks are those which
throw
The light spray from each rushing prow •
28
LEGENDARY.
Have they not in the North Sea's blast
Bowed to the waves the straining mast ?
Their frozen sails the low, pale sun
Of Thuie's night has shone upon ;
Flapped by the sea- wind's gusty sweep •
Round icy drift, and headland steep.
Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's
daughters
Have watched them fading o'er the waters,
Lesseningthroughdrivingmistandspray,
Like white- winged sea-birds on their way !
Onward they glide, — and now I view
Their iron-armed and stalwart crew ;
Joy glistens in each wild blue eye,
Turned to green earth and summer sky :
Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside
Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide ;
Bared to the sun and soft warm air,
Streamsback the Norsemen's yellow hair.
I see the gleam of axe and spear,
The sound of smitten shields 1 hear,
Keeping a harsh and fitting time
To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme ;
Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung,
His gray and naked isles among ;
Or muttered low at midnight hour
Round Odin's mossy stone of power.
The wolf beneath the Arctic moon
Has answered to that startling rune ;
The Gael has heard its stormy swell,
The light Frankknows its summons well ;
lona's sable-stoled Culdee
Has heard it sounding o'er the sea,
And swept, with hoary beard and hair,
His altar's foot in trembling prayer !
T is past, — the 'wildering vision dies
In darkness on my dreaming eyes !
The forest vanishes in air, —
Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare ;
I hear the common tread of men,
And hum of work -day life again :
The mystic relic seems alone
A broken mass of common stone ;
And if it be the chiselled limb
Of Berserker or idol grim, —
A fragment of Valhalla's Thor,
The stormy Viking's god of War>
Or Praga of the Runic lay,
Or love-awakening Siona,
I know not, — for no graven line,
Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign,
Is left rne here, by which to trace
Its name, or origin, or place.
Yet, for this vision of the Past,
T"hie glance upon its darkness cast,
My spirit bows in gratitude
Before the Give*- of all good,
Who fashioned so the human mind,
That, from the waste of Time behind
A simple stone, or mound of earth,
Can summon the departed forth ;
Quicken the Past to life again, —
The Present lose in what hath been»
And in their primal freshness show
The buried forms of long ago.
As if a portion of that Thought
By which the Eternal will is wrought
Whose impulse fills u,new with breath
The frozen solitude of Death,
To mortal mind were sometimes lent.
To mortal musings sometimes sent,
To whisper --even when it seems
But Memory's fantasy of dreams —
Through the mind's waste of woe and
sin,
Of an immortal origin !
CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK.
1658.
To the God of all sure mercies let my
blessing rise to-day,
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath
plucked the spoil away, —
Yea, He who cooled the furnace around
the faithful three,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set
his handmaid free !
Last night I saw the sunset melt through
my prison bars,
Last night across my damp earth-floor
fell the pale gleam of stars ;
In the coldness and the darkness all
through the long night-time,
My grated casement whitened with au
tumn's early rime.
Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour aftei
hour crept by ;
Star after star looked palely in and sank
adown the sky ;
No sound amid night's stillness, save thav
which seemed to be
The dull and heavy beating of the pulses
of the sea ;
All night I sat unsleeping, for 1 knew
that on the morrow
The ruler and the cruel priest would moch
me in my sorrow,
CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK.
29
Dragged to their place of market, and
bargained for and sold,
Like a lamb before the shambles, like a
neifer from the fold !
O, the weakness of the flesh was there, —
the shrinking and the shame ;
And the low voice of the Tempter like
whispers to me came :
:" Why sit'st thou thus forlornly ! " the
wicked murmur said,
" Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold
earth thy maiden bed ?
'•'J Where be the smiling faces, and voices
soft and sweet,
Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in
the pleasant street ?
Where be the youths whose glances, the
summer Sabbath through,
Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy
father's pew ?
" Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra ? —
Bethink thee with what mirth
Thy happy schoolmates gather around the
warm bright hearth ;
How the crimson shadows tremble on
foreheads white and fair,
On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in
golden hair.
" Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens,
not for thee kind words are spoken,
Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods
by laughing boys are broken,
No first-fruits of the orchard within thy
lap are laid,
For thee no flowers of autumn the youth
ful hunters braid.
" 0, weak, deluded maiden ! — by crazy
fancies led,
With wild and raving railers an evil path
to tread ;
To leave a wholesome worship, and teach
ing pure and sound ;
And mate with maniac women, loose -
haired and sackcloth bound.
" Mad scoffers of the priesthood, who
mock at things divine,
Who rail against the pulpit, and holy
bread and wine ;
Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and
from the pillory lame,
Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and
glorying in their shame.
" And what a fate awaits tnee ?— a sadly
toiling slave,
Dragging the slowly lengthening chain
of bondage to the grave !
Think of thy woman's nature, subdued
in hopeless thrall,
The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn
of all ! "
0, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble
Nature's fears
Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow
of unavailing tears,
I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and
strove in silent prayer,
To feel, 0 Helper of the weak ! that
Thou indeed wert there I
I thought of Paul and Silas, within
Philippi's cell,
And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the
prison-shackles fell,
Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an
angel's robe of white,
And to feel a blessed presence invisible
to sight
Bless the Lord for all his mercies ! — for
the peace and love I felt,
Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon
my spirit melt ;
When "Get behind me, Satan!" was
the language of my heart,
And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his
doubts depart.
Slow broke the gray cold morning ; again
the sunshine fell,
Flecked with the shade of bar and grate
within my lonely cell ;
The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and
upward from the street
Came careless laugh and idle word, and
tread of passing feet.
At length the heavy bolts fell back, my
door was open cast,
And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the
long street I passed ;
I heard the murmur round me, and felt,
but dared not see,
How, from every door and window, the
people gazed on me.
And doubt and fear fell on me, shame
burned upon my cheek,
Swam earth and sky around me, my
trembling limbs grew weak :
30
LEGEKDARtf.
" 0 Lord . support thy handmaid ; and
from her soul cast out
The fear of man, which brings a snare, —
the weakness and the doubt."
Then the dreary shadows scattered, like
a cloud in morning's breeze,
And a low deep voice within me seemec
whispering words like these :
" Though thy earth be as the iron, and
thy heaven a brazen wall,
Trust still His loving-kindness whose
power is over all."
We paused at length, where at my feet
the sunlit waters broke
On glaring reach of shining beach, and
shingly wall of rock ;
The merchant-ships lay idly there, in
hard clear lines on high,
Tracing with rope and slender spar their
network on the sky.
And there were ancient citizens, cloak-
wrapped and grave and cold,
And grim and stout sea-captains with
faces bronzed and old,
And on his horse, with Kawson, his cruel
clerk at hand,
Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the
ruler of the land.
And poisoning with his evil words the
ruler's ready ear,
The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with
laugh and scoff and jeer ;
It stirred my soul, and from my lips the
seal of silence broke,
As if through woman's weakness a warn
ing spirit spoke.
I cried, "The Lord rebuke thee, thou
smiter of the meek,
Thou robber of the righteous, thou tram-
pier of the weak !
Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones, —
go turn the prison lock
Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou
wolf amid the flock ! "
Dark lowered the brows of Endicott,
and with a deeper red
O'er Rawson's wine-empuvpled cheek the
flush of anger spread ;
" Good people," quoth the white-lipped
priest, " heed not her words so wild,
Her Master speaks within her, — the !
Devil owns his child ! ''
But gray heads shook, and young brows
knit, the while the sheriff read
That law the wicked rulers against the
poor have made,
Who to their house of Rimmon and idol
priesthood bring
No bended knee of worship, nor gainful
offering.
Then to the stout sea-captains the sher
iff, turning, said, —
" Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take
this Quaker maid ?
In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Vir
ginia's shore,
You may hold her at a highei price than
Indian girl or Moor."
Grim and silent stood the captains ; and
when again he cried,
" Speak out, my worthy seamen ! " — no
voice, no sign replied ;
But I felt a hard hand press my own,
and kind words met my ear, —
' ' God bless thee, and preserve thee, my
gentle girl and dear ! "
A weight seemed lifted from my heart, —
a pitying friend was nigh,
I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw
it in his eye ;
And when again the sheriff spoke, that
voice, so kind to me,
Growled back its stormy answer like the
roaring of the sea, —
' Pile my ship with bars of silver, — pack
with coins of Spanish gold,
From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the
room age of her hold,
By the living God who made me ! — I
would sooner in your bay
Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear
this child away ! "
' ' Well answered, worthy captain, shame
on their cruel laws ! "
Ran through the crowd in murmurs loucl
the people's just applause.
Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel
of old,
Shall we see the poor and righteous again
for silver sold ? "
looked on haughty Endicott ; with
weapon half-way drawn,
Swept round the throng his lion glare of
bitter hate and scorn ;
The solemn pines along its shore." Page 31.
FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS.
31
Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and
turned in silence back,
And sneering priest and baffled clerk
rode murmuring in his track.
Hard after them the sheriff looked, in
bitterness of soul ;
Thrice smote his staff upon the ground,
and crushed his parchment roll.
" Good friends," he said, *' since both
have fled, the ruler and the priest,
Judge ye, if from their further work I
be not well released."
Loud was the cheer which, full and
clear, swept round the silent' bay,
As, with kind words and kinder looks,
he bade me go my way ;
For He who turns the courses of the
streamlet of the glen,
And the river of great waters, had
turned the hearts of men.
0, at that hour the very earth seemed
changed beneath my eye,
A holier wonder round me rose the blue
walls of the sky,
A lovelier light on rock and hill and
stream and woodland lay,
And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the
waters of the bay.
Thanksgiving to the Lord of life! — to
Him all praises be,
Who from the hands of evil men hath
set his handmaid free ;
All praise to Him before whose power
the mighty are afraid ,
Who takes the crafty in the snare
which for the poor is laid !
Sing, 0 my soul, rejoicingly, on even
ing's twilight calm
Uplift the loud thanksgiving, — pour
forth the grateful psalm;
Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as
did the saints of old,
When of the Lord's good angel the
rescued Peter told.
And weep and howl, ye evil priests and
mighty men of wrong,
The Lord shall smite the proud, and
lay his hand upon the strong.
Woe to the wicked rulers in his aveng
ing hour !
Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks
to raven and devour !
But let the humble ones arise, — the poor
in heart be glad,
And let the mourning ones again with
robes of praise be clad,
For He who cooled the furnace, and
smoothed the stormy wave,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty
still to save !
FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS,
1756.
AROUND Sebago's lonely lake
There lingers not a breeze to break
The mirror which its waters make.
The solemn pines along its shore,
The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er,
Are painted on its glassy floor.
The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye,
The snowy mountain-tops which lie
Piled coldly up against the sky.
Dazzling and white ! save where the bleak,
Wild winds have bared some splintering
peak,
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.
Yet green are Saco?s banks below,
And belts of spruce and cedar show,
Dark fringing round those cones of snow.
The earth hath felt the breath of spring,
Though yet on her deliverer's wing
The lingering frosts of winter cling.
Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,
And mildly from its sunny nooks
The blue e'ye of the violet looks.
And odors from the springing grass,
The sweet birch and the >assafras,
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass.
Her tokens of renewing care
Hath Nature scattered everywhere,
In bud and flower, and warmer air.
But in their hour of bitterness;
What reck the broken Sokokis,
Beside their slaughtered chief, of this?
The turf's red stain is yet undried, —
Scarce have the death-shot echoes died
Along Sebago's wooded side :
82
LEGENDARY.
And silent now the hunters stand,
Grouped darkly, where a swell of land
Slopes upward from the lake's white
sand.
Fire and the axe have swept it bare,
Save one lone beech, unclosing there
Its light leaves in the vernal air.
With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute,
They break the damp turf at its foot,
And bare its coiled and twisted root.
They heave the stubborn trunk aside,
The firm roots from the earth divide, —
The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.
And there the fallen chief is laid,
In tasselled garbs of skins arrayed,
And girded with his wampum-braid.
The silver cross he loved is pressed
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest
Upon his scarred and naked breast.
'Tis done : the roots are backward sent,
The beechen-tree stands up unbent, —
The Indian's fitting monument !
When of that sleeper's broken race
Their green and pleasant dwelling-place
Which knew them once, retains no trace ;
0, long may sunset's light be shed
As now upon that beech's head, —
A green memorial of the dead !
There shall his fitting requiem be,
In northern winds, that, cold and free,
Howl nightly in that funeral tree.
To their wild wail the waves which break
Forever round that lonely lake
A solemn undertone shall make !
And who shall deem the spot unblest,
Where Nature's younger children rest,
Lulled on their sorrowing mother's breast ?
Deem ye that mother loveth less
These bronzed forms of the wilderness
She foldeth in her long caress ?
As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers
blow
As if with fairer hair and brow
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.
What though the places of their rest
No priestly knee hath ever pressed, —
No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed!
What though the bigot's ban be there,
And thoughts of wailing and despair,
And cursing in the place of prayer !
Yet Heaven hath angels watching round
The Indian's lowliest forest-mound, — -
And they have made it holy ground.
There ceases man's frail judgment ; all
His powerless bolts of cursing fall
Unheeded on that grassy pall.
0, peeled, and hunted, and reviled,
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild !
Great Nature owns her simple child !
And Nature's God, to whom alone
The secret of the heart is known, —
The hidden language traced thereon ;
Who from its many cumberings
Of form and creed, and outward things,
To light the naked spirit brings ;
Not with our partial eye shall scan,
Not with our pride and scorn shall
ban,
The spirit of our brother man !
ST. JOHN.
1647.
" To the winds give our banner !
Bear homeward again ! "
Cried the Lord of Acadia,
Cried Charles of Estienne ;
From the prow of his shallop
He gazed, as the sun,
From its bed in the ocean,
Streamed up the St. John.
O'er the blue western waters
That shallop had passed,
Where the mists of Penobscot
Clung damp on her mast.
St. Saviour had looked
On the heretic sail,
As the songs of the Huguenot
Rose on the gale.
The pale, ghostly fathers
Remembered her well,
ST. JOHN.
33
And had cursed her while passing,
With taper and bell,
But the men of Monhegan,
Of Papists abhorred,
Had welcomed and feasted
The heretic Lord.
They had loaded his shallop
With dun-fish and ball,
With stores for his larder,
And steel for his wall.
Pemequid, from her bastions
And turrets of stone,
Had welcomed his coming
With banner and gun.
And the prayers of the elders
Had followed his way,
As homeward he glided,
Down Pentecost Bay.
0, well sped La Tour !
For, in peril and pain,
His lady kept watch,
For his coming again.
O'er the Isle of the Pheasant
The morning sun shone,
On the plane-trees which shaded
The shores of St. John.
"Now, why from yon battlements
Speaks not my love !
Why waves there no banner
My fortress above ? "
Dark and wild, from his deck
St. Estienne gazed about,
On fire-wasted dwellings,
And silent redoubt ;
From the low, shattered walls
Which the flame had o'errun,
There floated no banner,
There thundered no gun !
But beneath the low arch
Of its doorway there stood
A pale priest of Rome,
In his cloak and his hood.
With the bound of a lion,
La Tour sprang to land,
On the throat of the Papist
He fastened his hand.
"Speak, son of the Woman
Of scarlet and sin !
What wolf has been prowling
My castle within ? "
From the grasp of the soldier
The Jesuit broke,
Half in scorn, half in sorrow,
He smiled as he spoke :
" No wolf, Lord of Estienne,
Has ravaged thy hall,
But thy red-handed rival,
With tire, steel, and ball !
On an errand of mercy
I hitherward came,
While the walls of thy castle
Yet spouted with flame.
" Pentagoet's dark vessels
Were moored in the bay,
Grim sea-lions, roaring
Aloud for their prey."
" But what of my lady ? "
Cried Charles of Estienne :
" On the shot-crumbled turret
Thy lady was seen :
" Half- veiled in the smoke-cloud^
Her hand grasped thy pennon,
While her dark tresses swayed
In the hot breath of cannon !
But woe to the heretic,
Evermore woe !
When the son of the church
And the cross is his foe !
" In the track of the shell,
In the path of the ball,
Peritagoet swept over
The breach of the wall !
Steel to steel, gun to gun,
One moment, — and then
Alone stood the victor,
Alone with his men !
" Of its sturdy defenders,
Thy lady alone
Saw the cross-blazoned banner
Float over St. John."
" Let the dastard look to it ! "
Cried fiery Estienne,
"Were D'Aulney King Louis,
I 'd free her again ! "
" Alas for thy lady !
No service from thee
Is needed by her
Whom the Lord hath set free :
Nine days, in stern silence,
Her thraldom she bore,
34
LEGENDARY.
But the tenth morning came,
And Death opened her door ! "
As if suddenly smitten
La Tour staggered back ;
His hand grasped his sword-hilt,
His forehead grew black.
He sprang on the deck
Of his shallop again.
" We cruise now for vengeance !
Give way ! " cried Estienne.
" Massachusetts shall hear
Of the Huguenot's wrong,
And from island and creekside
Her fishers shall throng !
Pentagoet shall rue
"What his Papists have done,
When his palisades echo
The Puritan's gun ! "
0, the loveliest of heavens
Hung tenderly o'er him,
There were waves in the sunshine,
And green isles before him :
But a pale hand was beckoning
The Huguenot on ;
And in blackness and ashes
Behind was St. John !
PENTUCKET.
1708.
How sweetly on the wood-girt town
The mellow light of sunset shone !
Each small, bright lake, whose waters still
Mirror the forest and the hill,
Reflected from its waveless breast
The beauty of a cloudless west,
Glorious as if a glimpse were given
Within the western gates of heaven,
Left, by the spirit of the star
Of sunset's holy hour, ajar !
Beside the river's tranquil flood
The dark and low- walled. dwellings stood,
Where many a rood of open land
Stretched up and down on either hand,
With corn -leaves waving freshly green
The thick and blackened stumps between.
Behind, unbroken, deep and dread,
The wild, untravelled forest spread,
Back to those mountain-?, white and cold,
Of which the Indian trapper told,
Upon whose summits never yet
Was mortal foot in safety set.
Quiet and calm, without a fear
Of danger darkly lurking near,
The weary laborer left his plough, —
The milkmaid carolled by her cow, —
From cottage door and household hearth
Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth.
At length the murmur died away,
And silence on that village lay, —
So slept Pompeii, tower and hall,
Ere the quick earthquake swallowed all,
Undreaming of the fiery fate
Which made its dwellings desolate !
Hours passed away. By moonlight sped
The Merrimack along his bed.
Bathed in the pallid lustre, stood
Dark cottage-wall and rock and wood,
Silent, beneath that tranquil beam,
As the hushed grouping of a dream.
Yet on the still air crept a sound, —
No bark of fox, nor rabbit's bound,
Nor stir of wings, nor waters flowing,
Nor leaves in midnight breezes blowing
Was that the tread of many feet,
Which downward from the hillside beat ?
What forms were those which darkly
stood
Just on the margin of the wood ? —
Charred tree-stumps in the moonlight
dim,
Or paling rude, or leafless limb ?
No, — through the trees fierce eyeballs
glowed,
Darkhuman forms in moonshine showed,
Wild from their native wilderness,
With painted limbs and battle-dress !
A yell the dead might wake to hear
Swelled on the night air, far and clear, —
Then smote the Indian tomahawk
On crashing door and shattering lock, —
Then rang the rifle-shot, - - and then
The shrill death-scream of stricken
men, —
Sank the red axe in woman's brain,
And childhood's cry arose in vain, —
Burstingthrough roof and window came,
Red, fast, and fierce, the kindled flame ;
And blended fire and moonlight glared
On still dead men and weapons bared.
Themorningsun looked brightly through
The river willows, wet with dew.
No sound of combat filled the air, —
Noshout was heard, — nor gunshot there:
Yet still the thick and sullen smoke
THE FAMILIST'S HYMN.
From smouldering ruins slowly broke ;
And on the greensward many a stain^
And, here and there, the mangled slain,
Told how that midnight bolt had sped
Pentucket, on thy fated head !
Even now the villager can tell
Where Rolfe beside his hearthstone fell,
Still show the door of wasting oak,
Through which the fatal death-shot broke,
And point the curious stranger where
De Rouville's corse lay grim and bare, —
Whose hideous head, in death still feared,
Bore not a trace of hair or beard, —
And still, within the churchyard ground,
Heaves darkly up- the ancient mound,
Whose grass-grown surface overlies
The victims of that sacrifice.
THE FAMILIST'S HYMN.
FATHER ! to thy suffering poor
Strength and grace •, vnd faith impart,
And with thy own love restore
Comfort to the broken heart !
0, the failing ones confirm
With a holier strength of zeal ! —
Give thou not the feeble worm
Helpless to the spoiler's heel !
Father ! for thy holy sake
We are spoiled and hunted thus ;
Joyful, for thy truth we take
Bonds and burthens unto us :
Poor, and weak, and robbed of all,
Weary with our daily task,
That thy truth may never fall
Through our weakness, Lord, we ask.
Round our fired and wasted homes
Flits the forest-bird unscared,
And at noon the wild beast comes
Where our frugal meal was shared ;
For the song of praises there
Shrieks the crow the livelong day ;
For the sound of evening prayer
Howls the evil beast of prey !
Sweet the songs we loved to sing
Underneath thy holy sky, —
Words and tones that used to bring
Tears of joy in every eye, —
Dear the wrestling hours of prayer,
When we gathered knee to knee,
Blameless youth and hoary hair,
Bowed. 0 God. alone to thee.
As thine early children, Lord,
Shared their wealth and daily bread,
Even so, with one accord,
We, in love, each other fed.
Not with us the miser's hoard,
Not with us his grasping hand ;
Equal round a common board,
Drew our meek and brother band !
Safe our quiet Eden lay
When the war-whoop stirred the
land
And the Indian turned away
From our home his bloody hand.
Well that forest-ranger saw,
That the burthen and the curse
Of the white man's cruel law
Rested also upon us.
Torn apart, and driven forth
To our toiling hard and long,
Father ! from the dust of earth
Lift we still our grateful song !
Grateful, — that in bonds we share
In thy love which maketh free ;
Joyful, — that the wrongs we bear,
Draw us nearer, Lord, to thee !
Gratefui '. — that where'er we toil, —
By Wachuset's wooded side,
On Nantucket's sea-worn isle,
Or by wild Neponset's tide, —
Still, in spirit, we are near,
And our evening hymns, which rise
Separate and discordant here.
Meet and mingle in the skies !
Let the scoffer scorn and mock,
Let the proud and evil priest
Rob the needy of his flock,
For his wine-cup and his feast, — •
Redden not thy bolts in store
Through the blackness of thy skies ?
For the sighing of the poor
Wilt Thou not, at length, arise ?
Worn and wasted, oh ! how long
Shall thy trodden poor complain ?
In thy name they bear the wrong,
In thy cause the bonds of pain !
Melt oppression's heart of steel,
Let the haughty priesthood see,
And their blinded followers feel,
That in us they mock at Thee !
In thy time, 0 Lord of hosts,
Stretch abroad that hand to save
LEGENDARY.
Which of old, on Egypt's coasts,
Smote apart the Red Sea's wave !
Lead us from this evil land,
From the spoiler set us free,
A.nd once more our gathered band,
Heart to heart, shall worship thee !
THE FOUNTAIN.
TRAVELLER ! on thy journey toiling
By the swift Powow,
With the summer sunshine falling
On thy heated brow,
Listen, while all else is still,
To the brooklet from the hill.
Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing
By that streamlet's side,
And a greener verdure showing
Where its waters glide, —
Down the hill-slope murmuring on,
Over root and mossy stone.
Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth
O'er the sloping hill,
Beautiful and freshly springeth
That soft-flowing rill,
Through its dark roots wreathed and
bare,
Gushing up to sun and air.
Brighter waters sparkled never
In that magic well,
Of whose gift of life forever
Ancient legends tell, —
In the lonely desert wasted,
And by mortal lip untasted.
Waters which the proud Castilian 81
Sought with longing eyes,
Underneath the bright pavilion
Of the Indian skies ;
Where his forest pathway lay
Through the blooms of Florida.
¥"ears ago a lonely stranger,
With, the dusky brow
Of the outcast forest-ranger,
Crossed the swift Powow ;
And betook him to the rill
And the oak upon the hill.
O'er his face of moody sadness
For an instant shone
Something like a gleam of gladness,
As he stooped him down
To the fountain's grassy side,
And his eager thirst supplied.
With the oak its shadow throwing
O'er his mossy seat,
And the cool, sweet waters flowing
Softly at his feet,
Closely by the fountain's rim
That lone Indian seated him.
Autumn's earliest frost had given
To the woods below
Hues of beauty, such as heaven
Lendeth to its bow ;
And the soft breeze from the west
Scarcely broke their dreamy rest.
Far behind was Ocean striving
With his chains of sand ;
Southward, sunny glimpses giving,
'Twixt the swells of land,
Of its calm and silvery track,
Rolled the tranquil Merrimack.
Over village, wood, and meadow
Gazed that stranger man,
Sadly, till the twilight shadow
Over all things ran,
Save where spire and westward pane
Flashed the sunset back again.
Gazing thus upon the dwelling
Of his warrior sires,
Where no lingering trace was telling
Of their wigwam fires,
Who the gloomy thoughts might know
Of that wandering child of woe ?
Naked lay, in sunshine glowing,
Hills that once had stood
Down their sides the shadows throw
ing
Of a mighty wood,
Where the deer his covert kept,
And the eagle's pinion swept !
Where the birch canoe had glided
Down the swift Powow,
Dark and gloomy bridges strided
Those clear waters now ;
And where once the beaver swam,
Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam
For the wood-bird's merry tinging
And the hunter's cheer,
Iron clang and hammer's ringing
Smote upon his ear ;
THE EXILES.
37
And the thick and sullen smoke
From the blackened forges broke.
Could it be his fathers ever
Loved to linger here ?
These bare hills, this conquered river,
Could they hold them dear,
With their native loveliness
Tamed and tortured into this ?
Sadly, as the shades of even
Gathered o'er the hill,
While the western half of heaven
Blushed with sunset still,
From the fountain's mossy seat
Turned the Indian's weary feet.
Year on year hath flown forever,
But he came no more
To the hillside or the river
Where he came before.
But the villager can tell
Of that strange man's visit well.
And the merry children, laden
With their fruits or flowers, —
Roving boy and laughing maiden,
In their school-day hours,
Love the simple tale to tell
Of the Indian and his well.
THE EXILES.
1660.
THE goodman sat beside his door
One sultry afternoon,
With his young wife singing at his side
An old and goodly tune.
A glimmer of heat was in the air ;
The dark green woods were still ;
And the skirts of a heavy thunder-cloud
Hung over the western hill.
Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud
Above the wilderness,
As some dark world from upper air
Were stooping over this.
At times the solemn thunder pealed,
And all was still again,
Save a low murmur in the air
Of coming wind and rain.
Just as the first big rain -drop fell,
A weary stranger came,
And stood before the farmer's door,
With travel soiled and lame.
Sad seemed he, yet sustaining hope
Was in his quiet glance,
And peace, like autumn's moonlight,
clothed
His tranquil countenance.
A look, like that his Master wore
In Pilate's council-hall :
It told of wrongs, — but of a love
Meekly forgiving all.
"Friend! wilt thou give me shelter
here ? "
The stranger meekly said ;
And, leaning on his oaken staff,
The goodman's features read.
" My life is hunted, — evil men
Are following in my track ;
The traces of the torturer's whip
Are on my aged back.
"And much, I fear, 't will peril thee
Within thy doors to take
A hunted seeker of the Truth,
Oppressed for conscience' sake."
0, kindly spoke the goodman's wife, —
" Come in, old man ! " quoth she, —
" We will not leave thee to the storm,
Whoever thou mayst be."
Then came the aged wanderer in,
And silent sat him down ;
While all within grew dark as night
Beneath the storm-cloud's frown.
But while the sudden lightning's blaze
Filled every cottage nook,
And with the jarring thunder-roll
The loosened casements shook,
A heavy tramp of horses' feet
Came sounding up the lane,
And half a score of horse, or more,
Came plunging through the rain.
"Now, Goodman Macey, ope thy door,—
We would not be house-breakers ;
A rueful deed thou 'st done this day,
In harboring banished Quakers."
Out looked the cautious goodman then,
With much of fear and awe,
38
LEGENDARY.
For there, with broad wig drenched with
rain,
The parish priest he saw.
" Open thy door, thou wicked man,
And let thy pastor in,
And give God thanks, if forty stripes
Eepay thy deadly sin."
"What .seek ye ? " quoth the goodman, —
" The stranger is my guest :
He is worn with toil and grievous
wrong, —
Pray let the old man rest."
" Now, out upon thee, canting knave ! "
And strong hands shook the door.
" Believe me, Macey," quoth the
priest, —
" Thou 'It rue thy conduct sore."
Then kindled Macey 's eye of fire :
" No priest who walks the earth,
Shall pluck away the stranger-guest
Made welcome to my hearth."
Down from his cottage wall he caught
The matchlock, hotly tried
At Preston -pans and Marston-moor,
By fiery Ireton's side ;
Where Puritan, and Cavalier,
With shout and psalm contended ;
And Eupert's oath, and Cromwell's
prayer,
With battle-thunder blended.
Up rose the ancient stranger then :
' ' My spirit is not free
To bring the wrath and violence
Of evil men on thee :
" And for thyself, I pray forbear, —
Bethink thee of thy Lord,
Who healed again the smitten ear,
And sheathed his follower's sword.
" I go, as to the slaughter led :
Friends of the poor, farewell ! "
Beneath his hand the oaken door
Back on its hinges fell.
:' Come forth, old graybeard, yea and
nay,"
The reckless scoffers cried,
A.S to a horseman's saddle-bow
The old man's arms were tied.
And of his bondage hard and long
In Boston's crowded jail,
Where suffering woman's prayer was
heard,
With sickening childhood's wail,
It suits not with our tale to tell :
Those scenes have passed away, —
Let the dim shadows of the past
Brood o'er that evil day.
"Ho, sheriff!" quoth the ardent
priest, —
" Take Goodman Macey too ;
The sin of this day's heresy
His back or purse shall rue."
"Now, goodwife, haste thee!" Macey
cried,
She caught his manly arm : —
Behind, the parson urged pursuit,
With outcry and alarm.
Ho ! speed the Maceys, neck or naught, —
The river-course was near : —
The plashing on its pebbled shore
Was music to their ear.
A gray rock, tasselled o'er with birch,
Above the waters hung,
And at its base, with every wave,
A small light wherry swung.
A leap — they gain the boat — and there
The goodman wields his oar :
* ' 111 luck betide them all, " — he cried, —
" The laggards upon the shore."
Down through the crashing underwood,
The burly sheriff came : —
"Stand, Goodman Macey, — yield thy
self;
Yield in the King's own name."
" Now out upon thy hangman's face ! "
Bold Macey answered then, —
"Whip women, on the village green,
But meddle not with men."
The priest came panting to the shore, —
His grave cocked hat was gone ;
Behind him, like some owl's nest, hung
His wig upon a thorn.
" Come back, — come back ! " the par.
• son cried,
"The church's curse beware."
THE EXILES.
39
"Curse, an' thouwilt," said Macey, :'but
Thy blessing prithee spare."
" Vile scoffer ! " cried the baffled priest, —
" Thou 'It yet the gallows see."
" Who 's born to be hanged, will not be
drowned,"
Quoth Macey, merrily ;
' ' And so, sir sheriff and priest, good by ! "
He bent him to his oar,
And the small boat glided quietly
From the twain upon the shore.
Now in the west, the heavy clouds
Scattered and fell asunder,
While feebler came the rush of rain,
And fainter growled the thunder.
And through the broken clouds, the sun
Looked out serene and warm>
Painting its holy symbol-light
Upon the passing storm.
0, beautiful ! that rainbow span,
O'er dim Crane-neck was bended ; —
One bright foot touched the eastern hills,
And one with ocean blended.
By green Pentucket's southern slope
The small boat glided fast, —
The watchers of "the Block-house " saw
The strangers as they passed.
That night a stalwart garrison
Sat shaking in their shoes,
To hear the dip of Indian oars, —
The glide of birch canoes.
The fisher- wives of Salisbury,
(The men were all away,)
Looked out to see the stranger oar
Upon their waters play.
Deer-Island's rocks and fir-trees threw
Their sunset-shadows o'er them,
And Newbury's spire and weathercock
Peered o'er the pines before them.
Around the Black Rocks, on their left,
The marsh lay broad and green ;
And on their right, with dwarf shrubs
crowned,
Plum Island's hills were seen.
With skilful hand and wary eye
The harbor-bar was crossed ; —
A plaything of the restless wave,
The boat on ocean tossed.
The glory of the sunset heaven
On land and water lay, —
On the steep hills of Agawam,
On cape, and bluff, and bay.
They passed the gray rocks of Cape Ann,
And Gloucester's harbor-bar ;
The watch-fire of the garrison
Shone like a setting star.
How brightly broke the morning
On Massachusetts Bay !
Blue wave, and bright green island,
Rejoicing in the day.
On passed the bark in safety
Round isle and headland steep, —
No tempest broke above them,
No fog-cloud veiled the deep.
Far round the bleak and stormy Cape
The vent'rous Macey passed,
And on Nantucket's naked isle
Drew up his boat at last.
And how, in log-built cabin,
They braved the rough sea- weather ;
And there, in peace and quietness,
Went down life's vale together :
How others drew around them,
And how their fishing sped,
Until to every wind of heaven
Nantucket's sails were spread ;
How pale Want alternated
With Plenty's golden smile ;
Behold, is it not written
In the annals of the isle ?
And yet that isle remaineth
A refuge of the free,
As when true-hearted Macey
Beheld it from the sea.
Free as the winds that winnow
Her shrubless hills of sand, —
Free as the waves that batter
Along her yielding land.
Than hers, at duty's summons,
No loftier spirit stirs, —
For falls o'er human suffering
A readier tear than hers.
40
LEGENDARY,
God bless the sea-beat island ! —
And grant forevermore,
That charity and freedom dwell
As now upon her shore !
THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD.
DARK the halls, and cold the feast, —
Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest :
All is over, — all is done,
Twain of yesterday are one !
Blooming girl and manhood gray,
Autumn in the arms of May !
Hushed within and hushed without,
Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout ;
Dies the bonfire on the hill ;
All is dark and all is still,
Save the starlight, save the breeze
Moaning through the graveyard trees ;
And the great sea-waves below,
Pulse of the midnight beating slow.
From the brief dream of a bride
She hath wakened, at his side.
With half-uttered shriek and start, —
Feels she not his beating heart ?
And the pressure of his arm,
And his breathing near and warm ?
Lightly from the bridal bed
Springs that fair dishevelled head,
And a feeling, new, intense,
Half of shame, half innocence,
Maiden fear and wonder speaks
Through her lips and changing cheeks.
From the oaken mantel glowing
Faintest light the lamp is throwing
On the mirror's antique mould,
High-backed chair, and wainscot old,
And, through faded curtains stealing,
His dark sleeping face revealing.
Listless lies the strong man there,
Silver-streaked his careless hair ;
Lips of love have left no trace
On that hard and haughty face ;
And that forehead's knitted thought
Love's soft hand hath not unwrought.
"Yet," she sighs, " he loves me well,
More than these calm lips will tell.
Stooping to my lowly state,
He hath made me rich and great,
And I bless him, though he be
Hard and stern to all save me ! "
While she speaketh, falls the light
O'er her fingers small and white ;
Gold and gem, and costly ring
Back the timid lustre fling, —
Love's selectest gifts, and rare,
His proud hand had fastened there.
Gratefully she marks the glow
From those tapering lines of snow ;
Fondly o'er the sleeper bending
His black hair with golden blending,
In her soft and light caress,
Cheek and lip together press.
Ha ! — that start of horror ! — Why
That wild stare and wilder cry,
Full of terror, full of pain ?
Is there madness in her brain ?
Hark ! that gasping, hoarse and low,
" Spare me, — spare me, — let me
go ! "
God have mercy ! — Icy cold
Spectral hands her own enfold,
Drawing silently from them
Love's fair gifts of gold and gem,
"Waken ! save me ! " still as death
At her side he slumbereth.
Ring and bracelet all are gone,
And that ice-cold hand withdrawn ;.
But she hears a murmur low,
Full of sweetness, full of woe,
Half a sigh and half a moan :
" Fear not ! give the dead her own ! "
Ah ! — the dead wife's voice she knows !
That cold hand, whose pressure froze,
Once in warmest life had borne
Gem and band her own hath worn.
"Wake thee! wake thee!" Lo, his
eyes
Open with a dull surprise.
In his arms the strong man folds her,
Closer to his breast he holds her ;
Trembling limbs his own are meeting,
And he feels her heart's quick beating :
" Nay, my dearest, why this fear ? "
"Hush!" shesaith, "the dead is here!"
" Nay, a dream, — an idle dream."
But before the lamp's pale gleam
Tremblingly her hand she raises, —
There no more the diamond blazes,
Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold, —
"Ah!" she sighs, " her hand was cold .'*
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.
41
Broken words of cheer lie saith,
But his dark lip quivereth,
And as o'er the past he thinketh,
From his young wife's arms he shrinketh
Can those soft arms round him lie,
Underneath his dead wife's eye ?
She her fair young head can rest
Soothed and childlike on his breast,
And in trustful innocence
Draw new strength and courage thence
He, the proud man, feels within
But the cowardice of sin !
She can murmur in her thought
Simple prayers her mother taught,
And His blessed angels call,
Whose great love is over all ;
He, alone, in prayerless pride,
Meets the dark Past at her side !
One, who living shrank with dread
From his look, or word, or tread,
Unto whom her early grave
Was as freedom to the slave,
Moves him at this midnight hour,
With the dead's unconscious ;power !
Ah, the dead, the unforgot !
From their solemn homes of thought,
Where the cypress shadows blend
Darkly over foe and friend,
Or in love or sad rebuke,
Back upon the living look.
And the tenderest ones and weakest,
Who their wrongs have borne the meekest,
Lifting from those dark, still places,
Sweet and sad-remembered faces,
O'er the guilty hearts behind
An unwitting triumph find.
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.*2
'T WAS night. The tranquil moonlight
smile
With which Heaven dreams of Earth,
shed down
Its beauty on the Indian isle, —
On broad green field and white-walled
town ;
And inland waste of rock and wood,
In searching sunshine, wild and rude,
Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam,
Soft as the landscape of a dream,
All motionless and dewy wet,
Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met :
The myrtle with its snowy bloom,
Crossing the nightshade's solemn
gloom, —
The white cecropia's silver rind
Relieved by deeper green behind, —
The orange with its fruit of gold, —
The lithe paullinia's verdant fold, —
The passion-flower, with symbol holy,
Twining its tendrils long and lowly, —
The rhexias dark, and cassia tall,
And proudly rising over all,
The kingly palm's imperial stem,
Crowned with its leafy diadem,
Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade,
The fiery-winged cucullo played !
Yes, — lovely was thine aspect, then,
Fair island of the Western Sea !
Lavish of beauty, even when
Thy brutes were happier than thy men,
For they, at least, were free !
Regardless of thy glorious clime,
Unmindful of thy soil of flowers,
The toiling negro sighed, that Time
No faster sped his hours.
For, by the dewy moonlight still,
He fed the weary-turning mill,
Or bent him in the chill morass,
To pluck the long and tangled grass,
And hear above his scar-worn back
The heavy slave-whip's frequent crack :
While in his heart one evil thought
In solitary madness wrought,
One baleful fire surviving still
The quenching of the immortal mind,
One sterner passion of his kind,
Which even fetters could not kill, —
The savage hope, to deal, erelong,
A vengeance bitterer than his wrong 1
Hark to that cry ! — long, loud, and shrill,
From field and forest, rock and hill,
42
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Thrilling and horrible it rang,
Around, beneath, above ; —
The wild beast from his cavern sprang,
The wild bird from her grove !
Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony
Were mingled in that midnight cry ;
But like the lion's growl of wrath,
When falls that hunter in his path
Whose barbed arrow, deeply set,
Is rankling in his bosom yet,
It told of hate, full, deep, and strong,
Of vengeance kindling out of wrong ;
It was as if the crimes of years —
The unrequited toil, the tears,
The shame and hate, which liken well
Earth's garden to the nether hell —
Had found in nature's self a tongue,
On which the gathered horror hung ;
As if from cliff, and stream, and glen
Burst on the startled ears of men
That voice which rises unto God,
Solemn and stern, — the cry of blood !
It ceased, — and all was still once more,
Save ocean chafing on his shore,
The sighing of the wind between
The broad banana's leaves of green,
Or bough by restless plumage shook,
Or murmuring voice of mountain brook.
Brief was the silence. Once again
Pealed to the skies that frantic yell,
Glowed on the heavens a fiery stain,
And flashes rose and fell ;
And painted on the blood -red sky,
Dark, naked arms were tossed on high ;
And, round the white man's lordly hall,
Trod, fierce and free, the brute he made ;
And those who crept along the wall,
And answered to his lightest call
With more than spaniel dread, —
The creatures of his lawless beck, —
Were trampling on his very neck !
And on the night-air, wild and clear,
Rose woman's shriek of more than fear ;
For bloodied arms were round her thrown,
And dark cheeks pressed against her own !
Then, injured Afric ! — for the shame
Of thy own daughters, vengeance came
Full on the scornful hearts of those,
Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes,
And to thy hapless children gave
One choice, — pollution or the grave !
Where then was he whose fiery zeal
Had taught the trampled heart to feel,
Until despair itself grew strong,
And vengeance fed its torch from wrong ?
Now, when the thunderbolt is speeding ;
Now, when oppression's heart is bleed
ing ;
Now, when the latent curse of Time
Is raining down in fire and blood, —
That curse which, through long years of
crime,
Has gathered, drop by drop, its flood, —
Why strikes he not, the foremost one,
Where murder's sternest deeds are done ',
He stood the aged palms beneath,
That shadowed o'er his humble door;
Listening, with half-suspended breath,
To the wild sounds of fear and death,
Toussaint 1'Ouverture .
What marvel that his heart beat high !
The blow for freedom had been given,
And blood had answered to the cry
Which Earth sent up to Heaven !
What marvel that a fierce delight
Smiled grimly o'er his brow of night, —
As groan and shout and bursting flame
Told where the midnight tempest came,
With blood and fire along its van,
And death behind ! — he was a Man !
Yes, dark-souled chieftain ! — if the light
Of mild Religion's heavenly ray
Unveiled not to thy mental sight
The lowlier and the purer way,
In which the Holy Sufferer trod,
Meekly amidst the sons of crime, —
That calm reliance upon God
For justice in his own good time, —
That gentleness to which belongs
Forgiveness for its many wrongs,
Even as the primal martyr, kneeling
For mercy on the evil -dealing, —
Let not the favored white man name
Thy stern appeal, with words of blame.
Has he not, with the light of heaven
Broadly around him, made the same ?
Yea, on his thousand war-fields striven,
And gloried in his ghastly shame ? —
Kneeling amidst his brother's blood,
To offer mockery unto God,
As if the High and Holy One
Could smile on deeds of murder done ! —
As if a human sacrifice
Were purer in his Holy eyes,
Though offered up by Christian hands,
Than the foul rites of Pagan lands !
Sternly, amidst his household band,
His carbine grasped within his hand.
THE SLAVE-SHIPS.
43
The white man stood, prepared and still,
Waiting the shock of maddened men,
Unchained, and fierce as tigers, when
The horn winds through their caverned
hill.
And one was weeping in his sight, —
The sweetest flower of all the isle, —
The bride who seemed but yesternight
Love's fair embodied smile.
And, clinging to her trembling knee,
Looked up the form of infancy,
With tearful glance in either face
The secret of its fear to trace.
" Ha ! stand or die ! " The white man's
eye
His steady musket gleamed along,
As a tall Negro hastened nigh,
With fearless step and strong.
"What, ho, Toussaint!" A moment
more,
His shadow crossed the lighted floor.
"Away!" he shouted; "fly with me, —
The white man's bark is on the sea ; —
Her sails must catch the seaward wind,
For sudden vengeance sweeps behind.
Our brethren from their graves have
spoken,
The yoke is spurned, — the chain is
broken ;
On all the hills our fires are glowing, —
Through all the vales red blood is flowing!
No more the mocking White shall rest
His foot upon the Negro's breast ;
No more, at morn or eve, shall drip
The warm blood from the driver's whip:
Yet, though Toussaint has vengeance
sworn
For all the wrongs his race have borne, —
Though for each drop of Negro blood
The white man's veins shall pour a flood ;
Not all alone the sense of ill
Around his heart is lingering still,
Nor deeper can the white man feel
The generous warmth of grateful zeal.
Friends of the Negro ! fly with me, —
The path is open to the sea :
Away, for life !" — He spoke, and pressed
The young child to his manly breast,
As, headlong, through the cracking cane,
Down swept the dark insurgent train, —
Drunken and grim, with shout and yell
Howled through the dark, like sounds
from hell.
Far out, in peace, the white man's sail
Swayed free before the sunrise gale.
Cloud-like that island hung afar,
Along the bright horizon's verge,
O'er which the curse of servile war
Rolled its red torrent, surge on surge ;
And he — the Negro champion — where
In the fierce tumult struggled he ?
Go trace him by the fiery glare
Of dwellings in the midnight air, —
The yells of triumph and despair, —
The streams that crimson to the sea !
Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb,
Beneath Besai^on's alien sky,
Dark Haytien ! — for the time shall come,
Yea, even now is nigh, —
When, everywhere, thy name shall be
Redeemed from color's infamy ;
And \uen shall learn to speak of thee,
As one of earth's great spirits, born
In servitude, and nursed in scorn,
Casting aside the weary weight
And fetters of its low estate,
In that strong majesty of soul
Which knows no color, tongue, or
clime, —
Which still hath spurned the base control
Of tyrants through all time !
Far other hands than mine may wreathe
The laurel round thy brow of death,
And speak thy praise, as one whose word
A thousand fiery spirits stirred, —
Who crushed his foeman as a worm, —
Whose step on human hearts fell firm : — ^
Be mine the better task to find
A tribute for thy lofty mind,
Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shont)
Some milder virtues all thine own, —
Some gleams of feeling pure and warm,
Like sunshine on a sky of storm, —
Proofs that the Negro's heart retains
Some nobleness amidst its chains, —
That kindness to the wronged is never
Without its excellent reward, —
Holy to human -kind and ever
Acceptable to God.
THE SLAVE-SHIPS.34
" That fatal aud perfidious bark,
Built i' the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark.1
Milton's Lycidas-
" ALL ready ? " cried the captain ;
" Ay, ay ! " the seamen said ;
" Heave up the worthless lubbers, —
The dying and the dead."
Up from the slave-ship's prison
Fierce, bearded heads were thrust :
44
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
" Now let the sharks look to it, —
Toss up the dead ones first ! "
Corpse after corpse came up, —
Death had been busy there ;
Where every blow is mercy,
Why should the spoiler spare ?
Corpse after corpse they cast
Sullenly from the ship,
Yet bloody with the traces
Of fetter-link and whip.
Gloomily stood the captain,
With his arms upon his breast,
With his cold brow sternly knotted,
And his iron lip compressed.
"Are all the dead dogs over ?"
Growled through that matted lip, -
" The blind ones are no better,
Let 's lighten the good ship. "
Hark ! from the ship's dark bosom,
The very sounds of hell !
The ringing clank of iron, —
The maniac's short, sharp yell ! —
The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled,
The starving infant's moan, —
The horror of a breaking heart
Poured through a mother's groan.
Up from that loathsome prison
The stricken blind ones came :
Below, had all been darkness, —
Above, was still the same.
Yet the holy breath of heaven
Was sweetly breathing there,
And the heated brow of fever
Cooled in the soft sea air.
" Overboard with them, shipmates ! '
Cutlass and dirk were plied ;
Fettered and blind, one after one,
Plunged down the vessel's side.
The sabre smote above, —
Beneath, the lean shark lay,
Waiting with wide and bloody jaw
His quick and human prey.
God of the earth ! what cries
Rang upward unto thee ?
Voices of agony and blood,
From ship-deck and from sea.
The last dull plunge was heard, —
The last wave caught its stain, —
And the unsated shark looked up
For human hearts in vain.
Red glowed the western waters, —
The setting sun was there,
Scattering alike on wave and cloud
His fiery mesh of hair.
Amidst a group in blindness,
A solitary eye
Gazed, from the burdened slaver's decV,
Into that burning sky.
" A storm," spoke out the gazer,
" Is gathering and at hand, —
Curse on 't — 1 'd give my other eye
For one firm rood of land."
And then he laughed, — but only
His echoed laugh replied, —
For the blinded and the suffering
Alone were at his side.
Night settled on the waters,
And on a stormy heaven,
While fiercely on that lone ship's track
The thunder-gust was driven.
" A sail ! — thank God, a sail ! "
And as the helmsman spoke,
Up through the stormy murmur
A shout of gladness "broke.
Down came the stranger vessel,
Unheeding on her way,
So near that on the slaver's deck
Fell off her driven spray.
" Ho ! for the love of mercy, —
We 're perishing and blind ! "
A wail of utter agony
Came back upon the wind :
" Help us ! for we are stricken
With blindness every one ;
Ten days we 've floated fearfully,
Unnoting star or sun.
Our ship 's the slaver Leon, —
We 've but a score on board, —
Our slaves are all gone over, —
Help, — for the love of God ! "
On livid brows of agony
The broad red lightning shone, —
But the roar of wind and thunder
Stifled the answering groan ;
Wailed from the broken waters
A last despairing cry,
As, kindling in the stormy light,
The stranger ship went by.
In the sunny Guadaloupe
A dark-hulled vessel lay, —
STANZAS.
45
With a crew who noted never
The nightfall or the day.
The blossom of the orange
Was white by every stream,
And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird
Were in the warm sunbeam.
And the sky was bright as ever,
And the moonlight slept as well,
On the palm-trees by the hillside,
And the streamlet of the dell :
And the glances of the Creole
Were still as archly deep,
And her smiles as full as ever
Of passion and of sleep.
But vain were bird and blossom,
The green earth and the sky,
And the smile of human faces,
To the slaver's darkened eye ;
At the breaking of the morning,
At the star-lit evening time,
O'er a world of light and beauty
Fell the blackness of his crime.
STANZAS.
[" The despotism which our fathers could not
bear in their native country is expiring, and the
sword of justice in her reformed iiands has ap
plied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall
the United States — the free United States,
which could not bear the bonds of a king —
cradle the bondage which a king is aboh'shing ?
Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy ?
Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our
manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than
a kingdom in its age ? " — Dr. Fallen? s Address.
" Genius of America ! — Spirit of our free in
stitutions ! — where art thou ? — How art thou
fallen, 0 Lucifer ! son of the morning, — how
art thou fallen from Heaven ! Hell from beneath
is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming!
— The kings of the earth cry out to thee, Aha !
Aha!— ART THOU BECOME LIKE UNTO US?" —
Speech of Samuel J. May.]
OUR fellow-countrymen in chains !
Slaves — in a land of light and law !
Slaves — crouching on' the very plains
Where rolled the storm of Freedom's
war !
A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood, —
A wail where Camden's martyrs fell, —
By every shrine of patriot blood,
From Moultrie's wall and Jaspar's well !
By storied hill and hallowed grot,
By mossy wood and marshy glen,
Whence rang of old the rifle-shot,
And hurrying shout of Marion's men I
The groan of breaking hearts is there, —
The falling lash, — the fetter's clank !
Slaves, — SLAVES are breathing in that
air,
Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank \
What, ho ! — our countrymen in chains !
The whip on WOMAN'S shrinking flesh !
Our soil yet reddening with the stains
Caught from her scourging, warm and
fresh !
What ! mothers from their children
riven !
What ! God's own image bought and
sold!
AMERICANS to market driven,
And bartered as the brute for gold !
Speak ! shall their agony of prayer
Come thrilling to our hearts in vain ?
To us whose fathers scorned to bear
The paltry menace of a chain ;
To us, whose boast is loud and long
Of holy Liberty and Light, —
Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong
Plead vainly for their plundered Eight 1
What ! shall we send, with lavish breath,
Our sympathies across the wave,
Where Manhood, on the field of death,
Strikes for his freedom or a grave ?
Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung
For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning,
And millions hail with pen and tongue
Our light on all her altars burning ?
Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France,
By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's
wall,
And Poland, gasping on her lance,
The impulse of our cheering call ?
And shall the SLAVE, beneath our eye,
Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain ?
And toss his fettered arms on high,
And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain !
0, say, shall Prussia's banner be
A refuge for the stricken slave ?
And shall the Russian serf go free
By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave ?
And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane
Relax the iron hand of pride,
And bid his bondmen cast the chain,
From fettered soul and limb, aside ?
j Shall every flap of England's flag
( Proclaim that all around are free,
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
From " farthest Ind " to each blue crag
That beetles o'er the Western Sea ?
And shall we scoff at Europe's kings,
When Freedom's tire is dim with us,
And round our country's altar clings
The damning shade of Slavery's curse ?
Go — let us ask of Constantino
To loose his grasp on Poland's throat ;
And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line
To spare the struggling Suliote, —
Will not the scorching answer come
From airbaned Turk, and scornful
Russ :
" Go, loose your fettered slaves at home,
Then turn, and ask the like of us ! "
Just God ! and shall we calmly rest,
The Christian's scorn, — the heathen's
mirth, —
Content to live the lingering jest
And by- word of a mocking Earth ?
Shall our own glorious land retain
That curse which Europe scorns to bear ?
Shall our own brethren drag the chain
Which not even Russia's menials wear ?
Up, then, in Freedom's manly part,
From graybeard eld to fiery youth,
And on the nation's naked heart
Scatter the living coals of Truth !
Up, — while ye slumber, deeper yet
The shadow of our fame is growing !
Up, — while ye pause, our sun may set
In blood, around our altars flowing !
Oh ! rouse ye, ere the storm comes
forth, —
The gathered wrath of God and man, —
Like that which wasted Egypt's earth,
When hail and fire above it ran.
Hear ye no warnings in the air ?
Feel ye no earthquake underneath ?
Up, — - up ! why will ye slumber where
The sleeper only wakes in death ?
Up now for Freedom ! — not in strife
Like that your sterner fathers saw, —
The awful waste of human life, —
The glory and the guilt of war :
But break the chain, — the yoke remove,
And smite to earth Oppression's rod,
With those mild arms of Truth and Love,
Made mighty through the living God !
Down let the shrine of Moloch sink,
And leave no traces where it stood ;
Nor longer let its idol drink
His daily cup of human blood ;
But rear another altar there,
To Truth and Love and Mercy given,
And Freedom'sgift, and Freedom sprayer,
Shall call an answer down from
Heaven !
THE YANKEE. GIRL.
SHE sings by her wheel at that low cot
tage-door,
Which the long evening shadow is
stretching before,
With a music as sweet as the music
which seems
Breathed softly and faint in the ear of
our dreams !
How brilliant and mirthful the light of
her eye,
Like a star glancing out from the blue
of the sky !
And lightly and freely her dark tresses
play
O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they \
Who comes in his pride to that low cot
tage-door, —
The haughty and rich to the humble and
poor ?
'T is the great Southern planter, — the
master who waves
His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of
slaves.
" Nay, Ellen, — for shame ! Let those
Yankee fools spin,
Who would pass for our slaves with a
change of their skin ;
Let them toil as they will at the loom
or the wheel,
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to
feel !
" But thou art too lovely and precious a
gem
To be bound to their burdens and sul
lied by them, —
For shame, Ellen, shame, — cast thy
bondage aside,
And away to the Sonth, as my blessing
and pride.
" 0, come where no winter thy footsteps
can wrong,
SONG OF THE FREE.
47
But where flowers are blossoming all the
year long,
Where the shade of the palm-tree is
over my home,
And the lemon and orange are white in
their bloom !
" 0, come to my home, where my ser
vants shall all
Depart at thy bidding and come at thy
call ;
They shall heed thee as mistress with
trembling and awe,
And each wish of thy heart shall be felt
as a law."
0, could ye have seen her — that pride
of our girl's —
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of
her curls,
With a scorn in her eye which the gazer
could feel,
And a glance like the sunshine that
flashes on steel !
"Go back, haughty Southron! thy
treasures of gold
Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou
hast sold ;
Thy home may be lovely, but round it
I hear
The crack of the whip and the footsteps
of fear !
"And the sky of thy South may be
brighter than ours,
And greener thy landscapes, and fairer
thy flowers ;
But dearer the blast round our moun
tains which raves,
Than the sweet summer zephyr which
breathes over slaves !
"Full low at thy bidding thy negroes
may kneel,
With the iron of bondage on spirit and
heel;
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner
would be
In fetters with them, than in freedom
with thee ! "
TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
CHAMPION of those who groan beneath
Oppression's iron hand :
In view of penury, hate, and death,
I see thee fearless stand.
Still bearing up thy lofty brow,
In the steadfast strength of truth,
In manhood sealing well the vow
And promise of thy youth.
Go on, — for thou hast chosen well ;
On in the strength of God !
Long as one human heart shall swell
Beneath the tyrant's rod.
Speak in a slumbering nation's ear,
As thou hast ever spoken,
Until the dead in sin shall hear, —
The fetter's link be broken !
I love thee with a brother's love,
I feel my pulses thrill,
To mark thy spirit soar above
The cloud of human ill.
My heart hath leaped to answer thine,
And echo back thy words,
As leaps the warrior's at the shine
And flash of kindred swords !
They tell me thou art rash and vain, —
A searcher after fame ;
That thou art striving but to gain
A long-enduring name ;
That thou hast nerved the Af lie's hand
And steeled the Afric's heart,
To shake aloft his vengeful brand,
And rend his chain apart.
Have I not known thee well, and read
Thy mighty purpose long ?
And watched the trials which have made
Thy human spirit strong ?
And shall the slanderer's demon breath
Avail with one like me,
To dim the sunshine of my faith
And earnest trust in thee ?
Go on, — the dagger's point may glare
Amid thy pathway's gloom, —
The fate which sternly threatens there
Is glorious martyrdom !
Then onward with a martyr's zeal ;
And wait thy sure reward
When man to man no more shall kneel,
And God alone be Lord !
SONG OF THE FREE.
PRIDE of New England !
Soul of our fathers !
Shrink we all craven -like,
When the storm gathers ?
48
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
What though the tempest be
Over us lowering,
Where 's the New-Englander
Shamefully cowering ?
Graves green and holy
Around us are lying, —
Free were the sleepers all,
Living and dying !
Back with the Southerner's
Padlocks and scourges !
Go, — let him fetter down
Ocean's free surges !
Go, — let him silence
Winds, clouds, and waters, —
Never New England's own
Free sons and daughters !
Free as our rivers are
Ocean-ward going, —
Free as the breezes are
Over us blowing.
Up to our altars, then,
Haste we, and summon
Courage and loveliness,
Manhood and woman !
Deep let our pledges be :
Freedom forever !
Truce with oppression,
Never, 0, never !
By our own birthright-gift,
Granted of Heaven, —
Freedom for heart and lip,
Be the pledge given !
If we have whispered truth,
Whisper no longer ;
Speak as the tempest does,
Sterner and stronger ;
Still be the tones of truth
Louder and firmer,
Startling the haughty South
With the deep murmur ;
God and our charter's right,
Freedom forever !
Truce with oppression,
Never, 0, never !
1886.
THE HUNTERS OF MEN.
HAVE ye heard of our hunting, o'er
mountain and glen,
Through cane-brake and forest, — the
hunting of men ?
The lords of our land to this hunting
have gone,
As the fox-hunter follows the sound of
the horn ;
Hark ! — the cheer and the hallo ! — the
crack of the whip,
And the yell of the hound as he fastens
his grip !
All blithe are our hunters, and noble
their match, —
Though hundreds are caught, there are
millions to catch.
So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain
and glen,
Through cane-brake and forest, — the
hunting of men !
Gay luck to our hunters ! — how nobly
they ride
In the glow of their zeal, and the strength
of their pride ! —
The priest with his cassock flung back
on the wind,
Just screening the politic statesman be
hind, —
The saint and the sinner, with cursing
and prayer,
The drunk and the sober, ride merrily
there.
And woman, — kind woman, — wife,
widow, and maid,
For the good of the hunted, is lending
her aid :
Her foot 's in the stirrup, her hand on
the rein,
How blithely she rides to the hunting of
men !
0, goodly and grand is our hunting to
see,
In this "land of the brave and this
home of the free."
Priest, warrior, and statesman, from
Georgia to Maine,
All mounting the saddle, — all grasping
the rein, —
Right merrily hunting the black man,
whose sin
Is the curl of his hair and the hue of
his skin !
Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him
at bay !
Will our hunters be turned from their
purpose and prey ?
Will their hearts fail within them ? —
their nerves tremble, when
All roughly they ride to the hunting of
men ?
CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.
49
Ho ! — ALMS for our hunters ! all weary
and faint,
Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer
of the saint.
The horn is wound faintly, — the echoes
are still,
Over cane-brake and river, and forest
and hill.
Haste, — alms for our hunters ! the
hunted once more
Have turned from their flight with their
backs to the shore :
What right have they here in the home
of the white,
Shadowed o'er by our banner of Free
dom and Right ?
Ho ! — alms for the hunters ! or never
again
Will they ride in their pomp to the
hunting of men !
ALMS, — ALMS for our hunters ! why
will ye delay,
When their pride and their glory are
melting away ?
The parson has turned ; for, on charge
of his own,
Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone ?
The politic statesman looks back with a
sigh, —
There is doubt in his heart, — there is
fear in his eye.
0, haste, lest that doubting and fear
shall prevail,
And the head of his steed take the place
of the tail.
0, haste, ere he leave us ! for who will
ride then,
For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of
men ?
1835.
CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.
[In the report of the celebrated proslavery
meeting in Charlestown, S. C., on the 4th of
the 9th month, 1835, published in the Courier
of that city, it is stated : " The CLERGY of all
denominations attended in a body, LENDING THEIR
SANCTION TO THE PROCEEDINGS, and adding by
their presence to the impressive character of the
JUST God ! — and these are they
Who minister at thine altar, God of Right !
Men who their hands with prayer and
blessing lay
On Israel's Ark of light !
What ! preach and kidnap men ?
Give thanks, — and rob thy own af
flicted poor ?
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
Bolt hard the captive's door ?
What ! servants of thy own
Merciful Son, who came to seek and
save
The homeless and the outcast, — fetter
ing down
The tasked and plundered slave !
Pilate and Herod, friends !
Chief priests and rulers, as of old, com
bine !
Just God and holy ! is that church,
which lends
Strength to the spoiler, thine ?
Paid hypocrites, who turn
Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book
Of those high words of truth which
search and burn
In warning and rebuke ;
Feed fat, ye locusts, feed !
And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank
the Lord
That, from the toiling bondman's uttei
need,
Ye pile your own full board.
How long, 0 Lord ! how long
Shall such a priesthood barter truth away,
And in thy name, for robbery and wrong
At thy own altars pray ?
Is not thy hand stretched forth
Visibly in the heavens, to awe and smite n
Shall not the living God of all the
earth,
And heaven above, do right ?
Woe, then, to all who grind
Their brethren of a common Fathe:
down !
To all who plunder from the immortal
mind
Its bright and glorious crown !
Woe to the priesthood ! woe
To those whose hire is with the price o
blood, —
Perverting, darkening, changing, as the}
g°>
The searching truths of God !
50
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Their glory and their might
Shall perish ; and their very names
shall be
Vile before all the people, in the light
Of a world's liberty.
0, speed the moment on
When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty
and Love
And Truth and Eight throughout the
earth be known
As in their home above.
THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.
Si a late publication of L. P. Tasistro —
ndom Shots and Southern Breezes " — is a
description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at
which the auctioneer recommended the woman
on the stand as " A GOOD CHRISTIAN ! " ]
A CHRISTIAN ! going, gone !
Who bids for God's own image ? — for
his grace,
Which that poor victim of the market
place
Hath in her suffering won ?
My God ! can such things be ?
Hast thou not said that whatsoe'er is done
Unto thy weakest and thy humblest one
Is even done to thee ?
In that sad victim, then,
Child of thy pitying love, I see thee
stand, —
Once more the jest-word of a mocking
band,
Bound, sold, and scourged again !
A Christian up for sale !
Wet with her blood your whips, o'er-
task her frame,
Make her life loathsome with your wrong
and shame,
Her patience shall not fail !
A heathen hand might deal
Back on your heads the gathered wrong
of years :
But her low, broken prayer and nightly
tears,
Ye neither heed nor feel.
Con well thy lesson o'er,
Thou prudent teacher, — tell the toiling
slave
No dangerous tale of Him who came to
save
The outcast and the poor.
But wisely shut the ray
Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart,
And to her darkened mind alone impart
One stern command, — OBEY !
So shalt thou deft]y raise
The market price of human flesh ; and
while
On thee, their pampered guest, the
planters smile,
Thy church shall praise.
Grave, reverend men shall tell
From Northern pulpits how thy work
was blest,
While in that vile South Sodom first
and best,
Thy poor disciples sell.
0, shame ! the Moslem thrall,
Who, with his master, to the Prophet
kneels,
While turning to the sacred Kebla feels
His fetters break and fall.
Cheers for the turbaned Bey
Of robber-peopled Tunis ! he hath torn
The dark slave -dungeons open, and hath
borne
Their inmates into day :
But our poor slave in vain
Turns to the Christian shrine his aching
eyes, —
Its rites will only swell his market price,
And rivet on his chain.
God of all right ! how long
Shall priestly robbers at thine altarstand.
Lifting in prayer to thee, the bloody hand
And haughty brow of wrong ?
0, from the fields of cane,
From the low rice-swamp, from the
trader's cell, —
From the black slave-ship's foul and
loathsome hell,
And coffle's weary chain, —
Hoarse, horrible, and strong,
Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,
Filling the arches of the hollow sky,
HOW LONG, 0 GOD, HOW LONG ?
STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.
51
STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.
[s this the land our fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win ?
Is this the soil whereon they moved ?
Are these the graves they slumber in ?
Are we the sons by whom are borne
The mantles which the dead have worn ?
And shall we crouch above these graves,
With craven soul and fettered lip ?
Yoke in with marked and branded slaves,
And tremble at the driver's whip ?
Bend to the earth our pliant knees,
And speak — but as our masters please ?
Shall outraged Nature cease to feel ?
Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow ?
Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel, —
The dungeon's gloom, — the assas
sin's blow,
Turn back the spirit roused to save
The Truth, our Country, and the Slave ?
Of human skulls that shrine was made,
Round which the priests of Mexico
Before their loathsome idol prayed ; —
Is Freedom's altar fashioned so ?
And must we yield to Freedom's God,
As offering meet, the negro's blood ?
Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are
wrought
Which well might shame extremest
hell?
Shall freemen lock the indignan t thought ?
Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell ?
Shall Honor bleed? — shall Truth suc
cumb ?
Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb ?
No ; — by each spot of haunted ground,
Where Freedom weeps her children's
fall, —
By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's
mound, —
By Griswold s stained and shattered
wall, -
By Warren's ghost, — by Langdon's
shade, —
By all the memories of our dead !
By tbo.ir enlarging souls, which burst
The bands and fetters round them
set, —
By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed
Within our inmost boscms, yet, —
By all above, around, below,
Be ours the indignant answer, — NO !
No ; — guided by our country's laws,
For truth, and right, and suffering man,
Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause,
As Christians may, — as freemen can !
Still pouring on unwilling ears
That truth oppression only fears.
What ! shall we guard our neighbor still>
While woman shrieks beneath his rod,
And while he tramples down at will
The image of a common God !
Shall watch and ward be round him set,
Of Northern nerve and bayonet ?
And shall we know and share with him
The danger and the growing shame ?
And see our Freedom's light grow dim,
Which should have filled the world
with flame ?
And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn,
A world's reproach around us burn ?
Is 't not enough that this is borne ?
And asks our haughty neighbor more ?
Must fetters which his slaves have worn
Clank round the Yankee farmer's door?
Must he be told, beside his plough,
What he must speak, and when, and
how?
Must he be told his freedom stands
On Slavery's dark foundations
strong, —
On breaking hearts and fettered hands,
On robbery, and crime, and wrong ?
That all his fathers taught is vain, —
That Freedom's emblem is the chain ?
Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn ?
False, foul, profane ! Go, — teach a
well
Of holy Truth from Falsehood born !
Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell !
Of Virtue in the arms of Vice !
Of Demons planting Paradise !
Rail on, then, " brethren of the
South," -
Ye shall not hear the truth the less ; — •
No seal is on the Yankee's mouth,
No fetter on the Yankee's press !
From our Green Mountains to the sea,
One voice shall thunder, — WE ARB
FREE !
52
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
LINES,
WRITTEN ON READING THE MESSAGE
OF GOVERNOR RITNER, OF PENN
SYLVANIA, 1836.
THANK God for the token ! — one lip is
still free, —
One spirit untrammelled, — unbending
one knee !
Like the oak of the mountain, deep-
rooted and firm,
Erect, when the multitude bends to the
storm ;
When traitors to Freedom, and Honor,
and God,
Are bowed at an Idol polluted with
blood ;
When the recreant North has forgotten
her trust,
And the lip of her honor is low in the
dust, —
Thank God, that one arm from the
shackle has broken !
Thank God, that one man as a freeman
has spoken !
O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has
been blown !
Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the mur
mur has gone !
To the land of the South, — of the char
ter and chain, —
Of Liberty sweetened with Slavery's
pain ;
Where the cant of Democracy dwells on
the lips
Of the forgers of fetters, and wielders of
whips !
Where "chivalric" honor means really
no more
Than scourging of women, and robbing
the poor !
Where the Moloch of Slavery sitteth on
high,
And the words which he utters, are —
WORSHIP, OR DIE !
Right onward, 0 speed it ! Wherever
the blood
Of the wronged and the guiltless is cry
ing to God ;
Wherever a slave in his fetters is pining ;
Wherever the lash of the driver is twin
ing ;
Wherever from kindred, torn rudely
apart,
Comes the sorrowful wail of the broken
of heart ;
Wherever the shackles of tyranny bind,
In silence and darkness, the God-given
mind ;
There, God speed it onward ! — its truth
will be felt, —
The bonds shall be loosened, — the iron
shall melt !
And 0, will the land where the free soul
of PENN
Still lingers and breathes over mountain
and glen, —
Will the land where a BENEZET'S spirit
went forth
To the peeled and the meted, and outcast
of Earth, -
Where the words of the Charter of Lib
erty first
From the soul of the sage and the pa
triot burst, —
Where first for the wronged and the weak
of their kind,
The Christian and statesman their efforts
combined, —
Will that land of the free and the good
wear a chain ?
Will the call to the rescue of Freedom
be vain ?
No, RITNER ! — her "Friends" at thy
warning shall stand
Erect for the truth, like their ancestral
band ;
Forgetting the feuds and the strife of
past time,
Counting coldness injustice, and silence
a crime ;
Turning back from the cavil of creeds,
to unite
Once again for the poor in defence of the
Right ;
Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full
tide of Wrong,
Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges
along ;
Unappalled by the danger, the shame,
and the pain,
And counting each trial for Truth as
their gain !
And that bold-hearted yeomanry, hon
est and true,
Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due;
Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert
with thins,
THE PASTORAL LETTER.
53
On the banks of Swetara, the songs of
the Rhine, —
The German-born pilgrims, who first
dared to brave
The scorn of the proud in the cause of
the slave : —
Will the sons of such men yield the
lords of the South
One brow for the brand, — for the pad
lock one mouth ?
They cater to tyrants ? — They rivet the
chain,
Which their fathers smote off, on the
negro again ?
No, never ! — one voice, like the sound
in the cloud,
When the roar of the storm waxes loud
and more loud,
Wherever the foot of the freeman hath
pressed
From the Delaware's marge to the Lake
of the West,
On the South-going breezes shall deepen
and grow
Till the land it sweeps over shall tremble
below !
The voice of a PEOPLE, — uprisen, —
awake, —
Pennsylvania's watchword, with Free
dom at stake,
Thrilling up from each valley, flung
down from each height,
" OUR COUNTRY AND LIBERTY ! — GOD
FOR THE RIGHT ! "
THE PASTORAL LETTER.
So, this is all, — the utmost reach
Of priestly power the mind to fetter !
When laymen think — when women
preach —
A war of words — a "Pastoral Let
ter ! "
Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes !
Was it thus with those, your prede
cessors,
Who sealed with racks, and fire, and
ropes
Their loving-kindness to transgressors ?
A " Pastoral Letter," grave and dull —
Alas ! in hoof and horns and features,
How different is your Brookfield bull,
From him who bellows from St. Pe
ter's !
Your pastoral rights and powers from
harm,
Think ye, can words alone preserve
them ?
Your wiser fathers taught the arm
And sword of temporal power to serve
them.
0, glorious days, — when Church and
State
Were wedded by your spiritual fathers !
And on submissive shoulders sat
Your Wilsons and your Cotton Ma
thers.
No vile ' ' itinerant " then could mar
The beauty of your tranquil Zion,
But at his peril of the scar
Of hangman's whip and branding-iron.
Then, wholesome laws relieved the Church
Of heretic and mischief-maker,
And priest and bailiff joined in search,
By turns, of Papist, witch, and Qua
ker !
The stocks were at each church's door,
The gallows stood on Boston Common,
A Papist's ears the pillory bore, —
The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman !
Your fathers dealt not as ye deal
With " n on -professing " frantic teach
ers ;
They bored the tongue with red-hot steel,
And flayed the backs of "female
preachers."
Old Newbury, had her fields a tongue,
And Salem' s streets could tell their
story,
Of fainting woman dragged along,
Gashed by the whip, accursed and
gory!
And will ye ask me, why this taunt
Of memories sacred from the scorner !
And why with reckless hand I plant
A nettle on the graves ye honor ?
Not to reproach New England's dead
This record from the past I summon,
Of manhood to the scaffold led,
And suffering and heroic woman.
No, — for yourselves alone, I turn
The pages of intolerance over,
That, in their spirit, dark and stern,
Ye haply may your own discover !
For, if ye claim the " pastoral right,"
To silence Freedom's voice of warning,
54
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Ajid from your precincts shut the light
Of Freedom's day around ye dawn
ing ;
If when an earthquake voice of power,
And signs in earth and heaven, are
showing
That forth, in its appointed hour,
The Spirit of the Lord is going !
And, with that Spirit, Freedom's light
On kindred, tongue, and people break
ing*
"Whose slumbering millions, at the sight,
In glory and in strength are waking !
When for the sighing of the poor,
And for the needy, God hath risen,
And chains are breaking, and a door
Is opening for the souls in prison !
If then ye would, with puny hands,
Arrest the very work of Heaven,
And bind anew the evil bands
Which God's right arm of power hath
riven, —
What marvel that, in many a mind,
Those darker deeds of bigot madness
Are closely with your own combined,
Yet " less in anger than in sadness " ?
What marvel, if the people learn
To claim the right of free opinion ?
What marvel, if at times they spurn
The ancient yoke of your dominion ?
A glorious remnant linger yet,
Whose lips are wet at Freedom's foun
tains,
The coming of whose welcome feet
Is beautiful upon our mountains !
Men, who the gospel tidings bring
Of Liberty and Love forever,
Whose joy is an abiding spring,
Whose peace is as a gentle river \
But ye, who scorn the thrilling tale
Of Carolina's high-souled daughters,
Which echoes here the mournful wail
Of sorrow from Edisto's waters,
Close while ye may the public ear, —
With malice vex, with slander wround
them, —
The pure and good shall throng to hear,
And tried and manly hearts surround
them.
0, ever may the power which led
Their way to such a fiery trial,
And strengthened womanhood to tread
The wine-press of such self-denial,
Be round them in an evil land,
With wisdom and with strength from
Heaven,
With Miriam's voice, and Judith's hand,
And Deborah's song, for triumph given !
And what are ye who strive with God
Against the ark of his salvation,
Moved by the breath of prayer abroad,
With blessings for a dying nation ?
What, but the stubble and the hay
To perish, even as flax consuming,
With all that bars his glorious way,
Before the brightness of his coming ?
And thou, sad Angel, who so long
Hast waited for the glorious token,
That Earth irom all her bonds of wrong
To liberty and light has broken, —
Angel of Freedom ! soon to thee
The sounding trumpet shall be given,
And over Earth's full jubilee
Shall deeper joy be felt in Heaven !
LINES,
WRITTEN FOE. THE MEETING OF THE
ANTISLAVERY SOCIETY, AT CHAT>
HAM STREET CHAPEL, JST. Y., HELD
ON THE 4TH OF THE ?TH MONTH.
1834.
0 THOU, whose presence went before
Our fathers in their weary way,
As with thy chosen moved of yore
The fire by night, the cloud by day t
When from each temple of the free,
A nation's song ascends to Heaven,
Most Holy Father ! unto thee
May not our humble prayer be given ?
Thy children all, — though hue and forra
Are varied in thine own good will, —
With thy own holy breathings warm,
And fashioned in thine image still.
We thank thee, Father ! — hill and plain
Around us wave their fruits once more,
And clustered vine, and blossomed grain,
Are bending round each cottage door.
And peace is here ; and hope and love
Are round us as a mantle thrown,
LINES.
55
And unto Thee, supreme above,
The knee of prayer is bowed alone.
But 0, for those this day can bring,
As unto us, no joyful thrill, —
For those who, under Freedom's wing,
Are bound in Slavery's fetters still :
For Ihose to whom thy living word
Of light and love is never given, —
For those whose ears have never heard
The promise and the hope of Heaven !
For broken heart, and clouded mind,
Whereon no human mercies fall, : —
0, be thy gracious' love inclined,
Who, as a Father, pitiest all !
And* grant, 0 Father ! that the time
Of Earth's deliverance may be near,
When every land and tongue and clime
Th-e message of thy love shall hear, —
When, smitten as with fire from heaven,
The captive's chain shall sink in dust,
And to his fettered soul be given
The glorious freedom of the just !
LINES,
WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF
THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF BRIT
ISH EMANCIPATION AT THE BROAD
WAY TABERNACLE, N. Y., "FIRST OF
AUGUST," 1837.
0 HOLY FATHER ! — just and true
Are all thy works and words and ways,
And unto thee alone are due
Thanksgiving and eternal praise !
^.s children of thy gracious care,
We veil the eye, we bend the knee,
With broken words of praise and prayer,
Father and God, we come to thee.
For thou hast heard, 0 God of Right,
The sighing of the island slave ;
And stretched for him the arm of might,
Not shortened that it could riot save.
The laborer sits beneath his vine,
The shackled soul and hand are free, —
Thanksgiving ! — for the work is thine !
Praise ! — for the blessing is of thee !
And 0, we feel thy presence here, —
Thy awful arm in judgment bare !
Thine eye hath seen the bondman's tear, —
Thine ear hath heard the bondman's
prayer.
Praise ! — for the pride of man is low,
The counsels of the wise are naught,
The fountains of repentance flow ;
What hath our God in mercy wrought ?
Speed on thy work, Lord God of Hosts !
And when the bondman's chain is
riven,
And swells from all our guilty coasts
The anthem of the free to Heaven,
0, not to those whom thou hast led,
As with thy cloud and tire before,
But unto thee, in fear and dread,
Be praise and glory evermore.
••• LINES,
WRITTEN FOR THE ANNIVERSARY CEL
EBRATION OF THE FIRST OF AUGUST,
AT MILTON, 1846.
A FEW brief years have passed away
Since Britain drove her million slaves
Beneath the tropic's fiery ray :
God willed their freedom ; and to-day
Life blooms above those island graves !
He spoke ! across the Carib Sea,
We heard the clash of breaking chains,
And felt the heart-throb of the free,
The first, strong pulse of liberty
Which thrilled along the bondman's
veins.
Though long delayed, and far, and slow,
The Briton's triumph shall be ours :
Wears slavery here a prouder brow
Than that which twelve short years ago
Scowled darkly from her island bow
ers ?
Mighty alike for good or ill
With mother-land, we fully share
The Saxon strength, — the nerve of
steel, —
The tireless energy of will, —
The power to do, the pride to dare.
What she has done can we not do ?
Our hour and men are both at hand ;
The blast which Freedom's angel blew
O'er her green islands, echoes through
Each valley of our forest land.
56
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Hear it, old Europe ! we have sworn
The death of slavery. — When it falls,
Look to your vassals in their turn,
Your poor dumb millions, crushed and
worn,
Your prisons and your palace walls !
0 kingly mockers ! — scoffing show
What deeds in Freedom's name we do ;
Yet know that every taunt ye throw
Across the waters, goads our slow
Progression towards the right and
true.
Not always shall your outraged poor,
Appalled by democratic crime,
Grind as their fathers ground before, —
The hour which sees our prison door
Swing wide shall be their triumph time.
On then, my brothers ! every blow
Ye deal is felt the wide earth through ;
Whatever here uplifts the low
Or humbles Freedom's hateful foe,
Blesses the Old World through the
New.
Take heart ! The promised hour draAvs
near, —
I hear the downward beat of wings,
And Freedom's trumpet sounding clear :
" Joy to the people ! — woe and fear
To new-world tyrants, old-world
kings ! "
THE FAREWELL
OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER
DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN
BONDAGE.
GONE, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air, —
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, —
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them ;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash,
Shall a mother's kindness bless them,
Or a mother's arms caress them.
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, —
Woe is me, my stolen daughters i
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
0, when weary, sad, and slow,
From the fields at night they go,
Faint with toil, and racked with pain,
To their cheerless homes again,
There no brother's voice shall greet
them, —
There no father's welcome meet them.
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, —
Woe is me, rny stolen daughters !
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
From the tree whose shadow lay
On their childhood's place of play, —
From the cool spring where they drank, —
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank, —
From the solemn house of prayer,
And the holy counsels there, —
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, —
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, —
Toiling through the weary day,
And at night the spoiler's prey.
0 that they had earlier died,
Sleeping calmly, side by side,
Where the tyrant's power is o'er,
And the fetter galls no more !
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, —
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
By the holy love He beareth, —
By the bruised reed He spareth —
0, may He, to whom alone
All their cruel wrongs are known,
THE WORLD'S CONVENTION.
57
Still their hope and refuge prove,
With a more than mother's love.
Gone, gone, — sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters, —
Woe is me, my stolen daughters !
THE MORAL WARFARE.
WHEN Freedom, on her natal day,
Within her war-rocked cradle lay,
An iron race around her stood,
Baptized her infant brow in blood ;
And, through the storm which round her
swept,
Their constant ward and watching kept.
Then, where our quiet herds repose,
The roar of baleful battle rose,
And brethren of a common tongue
To mortal strife as tigers sprung,
And every gift on Freedom's shrine
Was man for beast, and blood for wine !
Our fathers to their graves have gone ;
Their strife is past, — their triumph won ;
But sterner trials wait the race
Which rises in their honored place, —
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time.
So let it be. In God's own might
We gird us for the coming fight,
And, strong in Him whose cause is ours
In conflict with unholy powers,
We grasp the weapons He has given, —
The Light, and Truth, and Love of
Heaven.
THE WORLD'S CONVENTION
OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANCIPATION,
HELD IN LONDON IN 1840.
YES, let them gather ! — Summon forth
The pledged philanthropy of Earth,
From every land, whose hills have heard
The bugle blast of Freedom waking ;
Or shrieking of her symbol-bird
From out his cloudy eyrie breaking :
Where Justice hath one worshipper,
Or truth one altar built to her ;
Where'er a human eye is weeping
O'er wrongs which Earth's sad chil
dren know, —
Where'er a single heart is keeping
Its prayerful watch with human woe :
Thence let them come, and greet each
other,
And know in each a friend and brother !
Yes, let them come ! from each green vale
Where England's old baronial halls
Still bear upon their storied walls
The grim crusader's rusted mail,
Battered by Paynim spear and brand
On Malta's rock or Syria's sand !
And mouldering pennon-staves once set
Within the soil of Palestine,
By Jordan and Genesaret ;
Or, borne with England's battle line,
O'er Acre's shattered turrets stooping,
Or, midst the camp their banners droop-
ing,
With dews from hallowed Hermon wet,
A holier summons now is given
Than that gray hermit's voice of old,
Which unto all the winds of heaven
The banners of the Cross unrolled !
Not for the long-deserted shrine, —
Not for the dull unconscious sod,
Which tells not by one lingering sign
That there the hope of Israel trod ; —
But for that TRUTH, for which alone
In pilgrim eyes are sanctified
The garden moss, the mountain stone,
Whereon his holy sandals pressed, —
The fountain which his lip hath
blessed, —
Whate'er hath touched his garment's hem
At Bethany or Bethlehem,
Or Jordan's river-side.
For FREEDOM, in the name of Him
Who came to raise Earth's drooping
poor,
To break the chain from every limb,
The bolt from every prison door !
For thpse, o'er all the earth hath passed
An ever-deepening trumpet blast,
As if an angel's breath had lent
Its vigor to the instrument.
And Wales, from Snowden's mountain
wall,
| Shall startle at that thrilling call,
As if she heard her bards again ;
And Erin's " harp on Tara's wall "
Give out its ancient strain,
; Mirthful and sweet, yet sad withal, —
The melody which Erin loves,
, When o'er that harp, 'mid bursts of glad-
58
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
And slogan cries and lyke-wake sadness,
The hand of her O'Connell moves !
Scotland, from lake and tarn and rill,
And mountain hold, and heathery hill,
Shall catch and echo back the note,
As if she heard upon her air
Once more her Cameronian's prayer
And song of Freedom float.
And cheering echoes shall reply
From each remote dependency,
Where Britain's mighty sway is known,
In tropic sea or frozen zone ;
Where'er her sunset flag is furling,
Or morning gun-fire's smoke is curling ;
From Indian Bengal's groves of palm
And rosy fields and gales of balm,
Where Eastern pomp and power are rolled
Through regal Ava's gates of gold ;
And from the lakes and ancient woods
And dim Canadian solitudes,
Whence, sternly from her rocky throne,
Queen of the North, Quebec looks down ;
And from those bright and ransomed
Isles
Where all unwonted Freedom smiles,
And the dark laborer still retains
The scar of slavery's broken chains !
From the hoar Alps, which sentinel
The gateways of the land of Tell,
Where morning's keen and earliest glance
On Jura's rocky wall is thrown,
And from the olive bowers of France
And vine groves garlanding the
Rhone, —
"Friends of the Blacks," as true and
tried
As those who stood by Oge's side,
And heard the Haytien's tale of wrong,
Shall gather at that summons strong, —
Broglie, Passy, and him whose song
Breathed over Syria's holy sod,
And in the paths which Jesus trod.
And murmured midst the hills which hem
Crownless and sad Jerusalem,
Hath echoes whereso'er the tone
Of Israel's prophet-lyre is known.
Still let them come, — from Quito's
walls,
And from the Orinoco's tide,
From Lima's Inca-haunted halls,
From Santa Fe and Yucatan, —
Men who by swart Guerrero's side
Proclaimed the deathless RIGHTS OF MAN,
Broke every bond and fetter off,
And hailed in every sable serf
A free and brother Mexican !
Chiefs who across the Andes' chain
Have followed Freedom's flowing
pennon,
And seen on Junin's fearful plain,
Glare o'er the broken ranks of Spain
The fire-burst of Bolivar's cannon !
And Hayti, from her mountain land,
Shall send the sons of those who hurled
Defiance from her blazing strand, —
The war-gage from her Petion's hand,
Alone against a hostile world.
Nor all unmindful, thou, the while,
Land of the dark and mystic Nile ! —
Thy Moslem mercy yet may shame
All tyrants of a Christian name, —
When in the shade of Gizeh's pile,
Or, where from Abyssinian hills
El Gerek's upper fountain fills,
Or where from Mountains of the Moon
El Abiad bears his watery boon,
Where'er thy lotus blossoms swim
Within their ancient hallowed wa
ters, —
Where'er is heard the Coptic hymn,
Or song of Nubia's sable daughters, —
The curse of SLAVERY and the crime,
Thy bequest from remotest time,
At thy dark Mehemet's decree
Forevermore shall pass from thee ;
And chains forsake each captive's limb
Of all those tribes, whose hills around
Have echoed back the cymbal sound
And victor horn of Ibrahim.
And thou whose glory and whose crime
To earth's remotest bound and clime,
In mingled tones of awe and scorn,
The echoes of a world have borne,
My country ! glorious at thy birth,
A day-star flashing brightly forth, —
The herald-sign of Freedom's dawn !
0, who could dream that saw thee then,
And watched thy rising from afar,
That vapors from oppression's fen
Would cloud the upward tending star ?
Or, that earth's tyrant powers, which
heard,
Awe-struck, the shout which hailed
thy dawning,
Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and
king,
To mock thee with their welcoming,
Like Hades when her thrones were stirred
To greet the down -cast Star of Morn
ing !
HEW HAMPSHIKE.
59
" Aha ! and art thou fallen thus ?
Art THOU become as one of us ? "
Land of my fathers ! — there will stand,
Amidst that world-assembled band,
Those owning thy maternal claim
Unweakened by thy crime and shame, —
The sad reprovers of thy wrong, —
The children thou hast spurned so long.
Still with affection's fondest yearning
To their unnatural mother turning.
No traitors they ! — but tried and leal,
Whose own is but thy general weal,
Still blending with the patriot's zeal
The Christian's love for human kind,
To caste and climate uncontined.
A holy gathering ! — peaceful all :
No threat of war, — no savage call
For vengeance on an erring brother !
But in their stead the godlike plan
To teach the brotherhood of man
To love and reverence one another,
As sharers of a common blood,
The children of a common God ! —
Yet, even at its lightest word,
Shall Slavery's darkest depths be stirred :
Spain, watching from her Moro's keep
Her slave-ships traversing the deep,
And Rio, in her strength and pride,
Lifting, along her mountain-side,
Her snowy battlements and towers, —
Her lemon-groves and tropic bowers,
With bitter hate and sullen fear
Its freedom-giving voice shall hear ;
And where my country's flag is flow
ing,
On breezes from Mount Vernon blowing
Above the Nation's council halls,
Where Freedom's praise is loud and long,
While close beneath the outward walls
The driver plies his reeking thong, —
The hammer of the man-thief falls,
O'er hypocritic cheek and brow
The crimson flush of shame shall glow :
And all who for their native land
Are pledging life and heart and hand, —
Worn watchers o'er her changing weal,
Who for her tarnished honor i'eel, —
Through cottage door and council-hall
Shall thunder an awakening call.
The pen along its page shall burn
With all intolerable scorn, —
An eloquent rebuke shall go
On all the winds that Southward blow, —
From priestly lips, now sealed and dumb,
Warning and dread appeal shall come,
Like those which Israel heard from him,
The Prophet of the Cherubim, —
Or those which sad Esaias hurled
Against a sin -accursed world !
Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling
Unceasing from its iron wing,
With characters inscribed thereon,
As fearful in the despot's hall
As to the pomp of Babylon
The tire-sign on the palace wall !
And, from her dark iniquities,
Methinks I see my country rise :
Not challenging the nations round
To note her tardy justice done, —
Her captives from their chains unbound,
Her prisons opening to the sun : —
But tearfully her arms extending
Over the poor and unoffending ;
Her regal emblem now no longer
A bird of prey, with talons reeking,
Above the dying captive shrieking,
But, spreading out her ample wing, —
A broad, impartial covering, —
The weaker sheltered by the stron
ger ! —
0, then to Faith's anointed eyes
The promised token shall be given ;
And on a nation's sacrifice,
Atoning for the sin of years,
And. wet with penitential tears, —
The fire shall fall from Heaven !
1889.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.
1845.
GOD bless New Hampshire ! — from her
granite peaks
Once more the voice of Stark and
Langdon speaks.
The long-bound vassal of the exulting
South
For very shame her self- forged chain
has broken, —
Torn the black seal of slavery from her
mouth,
And in the clear tones of her old time
spoken !
0, all undreamed-of, all unhoped-for
changes ! —
The tyrant's ally proves his sternest
foe ;
To all his biddings, from her mountain
ranges,
New Hampshire thunders an indig
nant No !
60
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Who is it now despairs ? 0, faint of heart,
Look upward to those Northern moun
tains cold,
Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag un
rolled,
And gather strength to bear a manlier
part !
All is not lost. The angel of God's
blessing
Encamps with Freedom on the field
of fight ;
Still to her banner, day by day, are
pressing,
Unlooked-for allies, striking for the
right !
Courage, then, Northern hearts ! — Be
firm, be true :
What one brave State hath done, can ye
not also do ?
THE NEW YEAR:
ADDRESSED TO THE PATRONS OF THE
PENNSYLVANIA FREEMAN.
THE wave is breaking on the shore, —
The echo fading from the chime,
Again the shadow moveth o'er
The dial-plate of time !
O, seer-seen Angel ! waiting now
With weary feet on sea and shore,
Impatient for the last dread vow
That time shall be no more !
Once more across thy sleepless eye
The semblance of a smile has passed :
The year departing leaves more nigh
Time's fearfullest and last.
0, in that dying year hath been
The sum of all since time began, —
The birth and death, the joy and pain,
Of Nature and of Man.
Spring, with her change of sun and
shower,
And streams released from Winter's
chain,
And bursting bud, and opening flower,
And greenly growing grain ;
And Summer's shade, and sunshine warm,
And rainbows o'er her hill-tops bowed,
And voices in her rising storm, —
God speaking from his cloud ! —
And Autumn's fruits and clustering
sheaves,
And soft, warm days of golden light,
The glory of her forest leaves,
And harvest-moon at night ;
And Winter with her leafless grove,
And prisoned stream, and drifting
snow,
The brilliance of her heaven above
And of her earth below : —
And man, — in whom an angel's mind
With earth's low instincts finds
abode, —
The highest of the links which bind
Brute nature to her God ;
His infant eye hath seen the light,
His childhood's merriest laughter rung,
And active sports to manlier might
The nerves of boyhood strung !
And quiet love, and passion's fires,
Have soothed or burned in manhood's
breast,
And lofty aims and low desires
By turns disturbed his rest.
The wailing of the newly-born
Has mingled with the funeral knell ;
And o'er the dying's ear has gone
The merry marriage-bell.
And Wealth has filled his halls with
mirth,
While AVant, in many a humble shed,
Toiled, shivering by her cheerless hearth,
The live -long night for bread.
And worse than all, — the human
slave, —
The sport of lust, and pride, and
scorn !
Plucked off the crown his Maker gave, —
His regal manhood gone !
0, still, my country ! o'er thy plains,
Blackened with slavery's blight and
ban,
That human chattel drags his chains, —
An uncreated man !
And still, where'er to sun and breeze,
My country, is thy flag unrolled,
With scorn, the gazing stranger sees
A stain on every fold.
THE NEW YEAR.
61
0, tear the gorgeous emblem down !
It gathers scorn from every eye,
And despots smile and good men frown
Whene'er it passes by.
Shame ! shame ! its starry splendors
glow
Above the slaver's loathsome jail, —
Its folds. are ruffling even now
His crimson flag of sale.
Still round our country's proudest hall
The trade in human flesh is driven,
And at each careless hammer-fall
A human heart is riven.
And this, too, sanctioned by the men
Vested with power to shield the right,
And throw each vile and robber den
Wide open to the light.
Yet, shame upon them ! — there they sit,
Men of the North, subdued and still ;
Meek, pliant poltroons, only fit
To work a master's will.
Sold, — bargained off for Southern
votes, —
A passive herd of Northern mules,
Just braying through their purchased
throats
Whate'er their owner rules.
And he,35 — the basest of the base,
The vilest of the vile, — whose name,
Embalmed in infinite disgrace,
Is deathless in its shame ! —
A tool, — to bolt the people's door
Against the people clamoring there,
An ass, — to trample on their floor
A people's right of prayer !
Nailed to his self-made gibbet fast,
Self-pilloried to the public view, —
A. mark for every passing blast
Of scorn to whistle through ;
There let him hang, and hear the boast
Of Southrons o'er their pliant tool, —
A new Stylites on his post,
" Sacred to ridicule ! "
Look we at home ! — our noble hall,
To Freedom's holy purpose given,
Now rears its black and ruined wall,
Beneath the wintry heaven, —
Telling the story of its doom, —
The fiendish mob, — the prostrate
law, —
The fiery jet through midnight's gloom,
Our gazing thousands saw.
Look to our State, — the poor man's right
Torn from him : — and the sons of
those
Whose blood in Freedom's sternest fight
Sprinkled the Jersey snows,
Outlawed within the land of Penn,
That Slavery's guilty fears might cease,
And those whom God created men
Toil on as brutes in peace.
Yet o'er the blackness of the storm
A bow of promise bends on high,
And gleams of sunshine, soft and warm,
Break through our clouded sky.
East, West, and North, the shout is
heard,
Of freemen rising for the right :
Each valley hath its rallying word, —
Each hill its signal light.
O'er Massachusetts' rocks of gray,
The strengthening light of freedom
shines,
Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay, —
And Vermont's snow-hung pines !
From Hudson's frowning palisades
To Alleghany's laurelled crest,
O'er lakes and prairies, streams and glades,
It shines upon the West
Speed on the light to those wrho dwell
In Slavery's land of woe and "in,
And through the blackness of that hell,
Let Heaven's own light break in.
So shall the Southern conscience quake
Before that light poured full and
strong,
So shall the Southern heart awake
To all the bondman's wrong.
And from that rich and sunny land
The song of grateful millions rise,
Like that of Israel's ransomed band
Beneath Arabia's skies :
And all who now are bound beneath
Our banner's shade, our eagle's wing,
62
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
From Slavery's night of moral death
To light and lii'e shall spring.
Broken the bondman's chain, and gone
The master's guilt, and hate, and fear,
And unto both alike shall dawn
A New and Happy Year.
MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.
[Written on reading an account of the pro
ceedings of the citizeus of Norfolk, Va., in refer
ence to GEORGE LATIM..R, the alleged fugitive
slave, the result of whose case in Massachusetts
will probably be similar to that of the negro
SOMERSET in England, in 1772.]
THE blast from Freedom's Northern
hills, upon its Southern way,
Bears greeting to Virginia from Massa
chusetts Bay : —
No word of haughty challenging, nor
battle bugle's peal,
Nor steady tread of marching files, nor
clang of horsemen's steel.
No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along
our highways go, —
Around our silent arsenals untrodden
lies the snow ;
And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon
their errands far,
A thousand sails of commerce swell, but
none are spread for war.
We hear thy threats, Virginia ! thy
stormy words and high,
Swell harshly on the Southern winds
which melt along our sky ;
Yet, not one brown, hard hand foregoes
its honest labor here,
No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends
his axe in fear.
Wild are the waves \vhich lash the reefs
along St. George's bank, —
Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog
lies white and dank ;
Through storm, and wave, and blinding
mist, stout are the hearts which man
The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the
sea-boats of Cape Ann.
The cold north light and wintry sun
glare on their icy forms,
Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or
wrestling with the storms ;
Free as the winds +hey drive belore,
rough as the waves they roam,
They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat
against their rocky home.
What means the Old Dominion ? Hath
she forgot the day
When o'er her conquered valleys swept
the Briton's steel array ?
How side by side, with sons of hers, the
Massachusetts men
Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire,
and stout Cornwallis, then ?
Forgets she how the Bay State, in an
swer to the call
Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out
from Faneuil Hall ?
When, echoing back her Henry's cry,
came pulsing on each breath
Of Northern winds, the thrilling sounds
of " LIBERTY ou DEATH ! "
What asks the Old Dominion ? If now
her sons have proved
False to their fathers' memory, — false
to the faith they loved,
If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great
charter spurn,
Must we of Massachusetts from truth
and duty turn ?
We hunt your bondmen, flying from
Slavery's hateful hell, —
Our voices, at your bidding, take up the
bloodhound's yell, —
We gather, at your summons, above our
fathers' graves,
From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear
your wretched slaves !
Thank God ! not yet so vilely can Massa
chusetts bow ;
The spirit of her early time is with her
even now ;
Dream not because her Pilgrim blood
moves slow and calm and cool,
She thus can stoop her chainless neck,
a sister's slave and tool !
All that a sister State should do, all that
fifree State may,
Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in
our early day ;
But that one dark loathsome burden ye
must stagger with alone,
And reap the bitter harvest which ye
yourselves have sown !
MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.
63
Hold, while ye may, your straggling
slaves, and burden God's free air
With woman's shriek beneath the lash,
and manhood's wild despair ;
Cling closer to the " cleaving curse " that
writes upon your plains
The blasting of Almighty wrath against
a land of chains.
Still shame your gallant ancestry, the
cavaliers of old,
By watching round the shambles where
human flesh is sold, —
Gloat o'er the new-born child, and count
his market value, when
The maddened mother's cry of woe-shall
pierce the slaver's den !
Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the
Virginia name ;
Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves
with rankest weeds of shame ;
Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair
universe, —
We wash our hands forever of your sin
and shame and curse.
A voice from lips whereon the coal from
Freedom's shrine hath been,
Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of
Berkshire's mountain men :
The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly
lingering still
In all our sunny valleys, on every wind
swept hill.
And when the prowling man-thief came
hunting for his prey
Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's
shaft of gray,
How, through the free lips of the son,
the father's warning spoke ;
How, from its bonds of trade and sect,
the Pilgrim city broke !
A hundred tho^^sand right arms were
lifted up on high, —
A hundred thousand voices, sent back
their loud reply ;
Through the thronged towns of Essex
the startling summons rang,
And up from bench anl loom and wheel
her young mechanics sprang !
The voice of free, broad Middlesex, — 01
thousands as of one, —
The shaft of Bunker calling to that of
Lexington, —
From Norfolk's ancient villages, from
Plymouth's rocky bound
To where Nantucket feels the arms of
ocean close her round ; —
From rich and rural Worcester, where
through the calm repose
Of cultured vales and fringing woods the
gentle Nashua flows,
To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the
mountain larches stir,
Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry
of "God save Latimer ! "
And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with
the salt sea spray, —
And Bristol sent her answering shout
down Narragansett Bay !
Along the broad Connecticut old Hamp-
den felt the thrill,
And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen
swept down from Holyoke Hill.
The voice of Massachusetts ! Of her free
sons and daughters, —
Deep calling unto deep aloud, — the
sound of many waters !
Against the burden of that voice what
tyrant power shall stand ?
No fetters in the Bay State I No slave
upon her land !
Look to it well, Virginians ! In calm.
ness we have borne,
In answer to our faith and trust, your
insult and your scorn ;
You 've spurned our kindest counsels, —
you Ve hunted for our lives, —
And shaken round our hearths and
homes your manacles and gyves !
We wage no war, — we lift no arm, —
we fling no t^rch within
The fire-damps of the quaking mine be
neath your soil of sin ;
We leave ye with your bondmen, to
wrestle, while ye can,
With the strong upward tendencies and
godlike soul of man !
But for us and for our children, the voi»
which we have given
For freedom and humanity is registered
in heaven ;
No slave-hunt in our borders, — no pirate
on our strand !
No fetters in the Bay State, — no slave
upon our land !
64
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
THE RELIC.
[PENNSYLVANIA HALL, dedicated to Free Discus
sion and the cause of human liberty, was de
stroyed by a mob in 1838. The following was
written on receiving a cane wrought from a frag
ment of the wood-work which the fire had
spared.]
TOKEN of friendship true and tried,
From one whose fiery heart of youth
With mine has beaten, side by side,
For Liberty and Truth ;
With honest pride the gift I take,
And prize it for the giver's sake.
But not alone because it tells
Of generous hand and heart sincere ;
Around that gift of friendship dwells
A memory doubly dear, —
Earth's noblest aim, — man's holiest
thought,
With that memorial frail inwrought !
Pure thoughts and sweet, like flowers
unfold,
And precious memories round it cling,
Even as the Prophet's rod of old
In beauty blossoming :
And buds of feeling pure and good
Spring from its cold unconscious wood.
Relic of Freedom's shrine ! — a brand
Plucked from its burning ! — let it be
Dear as a jewel from the hand
Of a lost friend to me ! —
Flower of a perished garland left,
Of life and beauty unbereft !
0, if the young enthusiast bears,
O'er weary waste and sea, the stone
Which crumbled from the Forum's stairs,
Or round the Parthenon ;
Or olive-bough from some wild tree
Hung over old Thermopylae :
If leaflets from some hero's tomb,
, Or moss- wreath torn from ruins
hoary, —
Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom
On fields renowned in story, —
Or fragment from the Alhambra's crest,
Or the gray rock by Druids blessed ;
Sad Erin's shamrock greenly growing
Where Freedom led her stalwart kern,
Or Scotia's " rough bur thistle " blowing
On Bruce's Bannockburn, —
Or Runnymede's wild English rose,
Or lichen plucked from Sempach s
snows . —
If it be true that things like these
To heart and eye bright visions bring.
Shall not far holier memories
To this memorial cling ?
Which needs no mellowing mist of
time
To hide the crimson stains of crime !
Wreck of a temple, unprofaned, —
Of courts where Peace with Freedom
trod,
Lifting on high, with hands unstained,
Thanksgiving unto God ;
Where Mercy's voice of love was plead
ing
For human hearts in bondage bleeding ! —
Where, midst the sound of rushing feet
And curses on the night-air flung,
That pleading voice rose calm and sweet
From woman's earnest tongue ;
And Riot turned his scowling glance,
Awed, from her tranquil countenance !
That temple now in ruin lies ! —
The fire-stain on its shattered wall,
And open to the changing skies
Its black and roofless hall,
It stands before a nation's sight,
A gravestone over buried Right !
But from that ruin, as of old,
The fire-scorched stones themselves
are crying,
And from their ashes white and cold
Its timbers are replying !
A voice which slavery cannot kill
Speaks from the crumbling arches still !
And even this relic from thy shrine,
0 holy Freedom ! hath to me
A potent power, a voice and sign
To testify of thee ;
And, grasping it, methinks I feel
A deeper faith, a stronger zeal.
And not unlike that mystic rod,
Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian
wave,
Which opened, in the strength of God,
A pathway for the slave,
It yet may point the bondman's way,
And turn the spoiler from his prey.
THE BRANDED HAND.
65
THE BRANDED HAND.
1846.
WELCOME home again, brave seaman !
with thy thoughtful brow and gray,
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier,
better day, —
With that front of calm endurance, on
whose steady nerve in vain
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the
fiery shafts of pain !
Is the tyrant's brand upon thee ? Did
the brutal cravens aim
To make God's truth thy falsehood, 'his
holiest work thy shame ?
When, all blood-quenched, from the tor
ture the iron was withdrawn,
How laughed their evil angel the baffled
fools to scorn !
They change to wrong the duty which
God hath written out
On the great heart of humanity, too
legible for doubt !
They, the loathsome moral lepers,
blotched from footsole up to crown,
Give to shame what God hath given unto
honor and renown !
Why, that brand is highest honor ! —
than its traces never yet
Upon old armorial hatchments was a
prouder blazon set ;
And thy unborn generations, as they
tread our rocky strand,
Shall tell with pride the story of their
father's BRANDED HAND !
As the Templar home was welcome, bear
ing back from Syrian wars
The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim
scymitars,
The pallor of the prison, and the shackle's
crimson span,
So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest
friend of God and man.
He suffered for the ransom of the dear
Redeemer's grave,
Thou for his living presence in the bound
and bleeding slave ;
He for a soil no longer by the feet of an
gels trod,
Thou for the true Shechinah, the pres
ent home of God !
For, while the jurist, sitting with the
slave-whip o'er him swung,
From the tortured truths of freedom the
lie of slavery wrung,
And the solemn priest to Moloch, on
each God-deserted shrine,
Broke the bondman's heart for bread,
poured the bondman's blood for
wine, —
While the multitude in blindness to a
far-off Saviour knelt,
And spurned, the while, the temple
where a present Saviour dwelt ;
Thou beheld' st him in the task-field, in
the prison shadows dim,
And thy mercy to the bondman, it was
mercy unto him !
In thy lone and long night-watches, sky
above and wave below,
Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than
the babbling schoolmen know ;
God's stars and silence taught thee, as
his angels only can,
That the one sole sacred thing beneath
the cope of heaven is Man !
That he who treads profanely on the
scrolls of law and creed,
In the depth of God's great goodness
may find mercy in his need ;
But woe to him who crushes the SOUL
with chain and rod,
And herds with lower natures the awful
form of God !
Then lift that manly right-hand, bold
ploughman of the wave !
Its branded palm shall prophesy, " SAL
VATION TO THE SLAVE ! "
Hold up its fire-wrought language, that
whoso reads may feel
His heart swell strong within him, his
sinews change to steel.
Hold it up before our sunshine, up
against our Northern air, —
Ho ! men of Massachusetts, for the love
of God, look there !
Take it henceforth for your standard,
like the Bruce's heart of yore,
In the dark strife closing round ye, let
that hand be seen before !
And the tyrants of the slave-land shall
tremble at that sign.
66
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
When it points its finger Southward
along the Puritan line :
Woe to the State-gorged leeches and the
Church's locust band,
"When they look from slavery's ramparts
on the coming of that hand !
TEXAS.
VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND.
UP the hillside, down the glen,
Rouse the sleeping citizen ;
Summon out the might of men !
Like a lion growling low, —
Like a night-storm rising slow, —
Like the tread of unseen foe, —
It is coming, — it is nigh !
Stand your homes and altars by ;
On your own free thresholds die.
Clang the bells in all your spires ;
On the gray hills of your sires
Fling to heaven your signal-tires.
From Wachuset, lone and bleak,
Unto Berkshire's tallest peak,
Let the flame-tongued heralds speak.
0, for God and duty stand,
Heart to heart and hand to hand,
Round the old graves of the land.
Whoso shrinks or falters now,
Whoso to the yoke would bow,
Ikand the craven on his brow !
Freedom's soil hath only place
For a free and fearless race, —
None for traitors false and base.
Perish party, — perish clan ;
Strike together while ye can,
Like the arm of one strong man.
Like that angel's voice sublime,
Heard above a world of crime,
Crying of the end of time, —
With one heart and with one mouth,
Let the North unto the South
Speak the word befitting both :
"What though Issachar be strong !
Ye may load his back with wrong
Overmuch and over long :
" Patience with her cup o'errun,
With her weary thread outspun,
Murmurs that her work is done.
"Make our Union-bond a chain,
Weak as tow in Freedom's strain
Link by link shall snap in twain.
' ' Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope
Bind the starry cluster up,
Shattered over heaven's blue cope !
" Give us bright though broken rays,
Rather than eternal haze,
Clouding o'er the full -orbed blaze.
" Take your land of sun and bloom ;
Only leave to Freedom room
For her plough, and forge, and loom ;
" Take your slavery-blackened vales ;
Leave us but our own free gales,
Blowing on our thousand sails.
" Boldly, or with treacherous art,
Strike the blood-wrought chain apart ;
Break the Union's mighty heart ;
" Work the ruin, if ye will ;
Pluck upon your heads an ill
Which shall grow and deepen still.
"With your bondman's right arm bare,
With his heart of black despair,
Stand alone, if stand ye dare !
"Onward with your fell design ;
Dig the gulf and draw the line :
Fiie beneath your feet the mine :
"Deeply, when the wide abyss
Yawns between your land and this,
Shall ye feel your helplessness.
" By the hearth, and in the bed,
Shaken by a look or tread,
Ye shall own a guilty dread.
" And the curse of unpaid toil,
Downward through your generous soil
Like a fire shall burn and spoil.
" Our bleak hills shall bud and blow,
Vines our rocks shall overgrow,
Plenty in our valleys now ; —
" And when vengeance clouds your skies,
Hither shall ye turn your eyes,
f As the lost on Paradise 1
TO MASSACHUSETTS.
67
" We but ask our rocky strand,
Freedom's true and brother band,
Freedom's strong and honest hand,
"Valleys by the slave untrod,
And the Pilgrim's mountain sod,
Blessed of our fathers' God ! "
TO FANEUIL HALL.
1844.
MEN ! — if manhood still ye claim,
If the Northern pulse can thrill,
Roused by wrong or stung by sham'e,
Freely, strongly still, —
Let the sounds of traffic die :
Shut the mill-gate, — leave the stall, —
Fling the axe and hammer by, —
Throng to Faneuil Hall !
Wrongs which freemen never brooked, —
Dangers grim and fierce as they,
Which, like couching lions, looked
On your fathers' way, —
These your instant zeal demand,
Shaking with their earthquake-call
Every rood of Pilgrim land,
Ho, to Faneuil Hall !
From your capes and sandy bars, —
From your mountain-ridges cold,
Through whose pines the westering stars
Stoop their crowns of gold, —
Come, and with your footsteps wake
Echoes from that holy wall ;
Once again, for Freedom's sake,
Rock your fathers' hall !
dp, and tread beneath your feet
Every cord by party spun :
Let your hearts together beat
As the heart of one.
Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade,
Let them rise or let them fall :
Freedom asks your common aid, —
Up, to Faneuil Hall !
Up, and let each voice that speaks
Ring from thence to Southern plains,
Sharply as the blow which breaks
Prison-bolts and chains !
Speak as well becomes the free •.
Dreaded more thaa steel or balL
Shall your calmest utterance be,
Heard from Faneuil Hall !
Have they wronged us ? Let us then
Render back nor threats nor prayers ?
Have they chained our free-born men ?
LET US UNCHAIN THEIRS !
Up, your banner leads the van,
Blazoned, " Liberty for all ! "
Finish what your sires began !
Up, to Faneuil Hall !
TO MASSACHUSETTS,
1844.
WHAT though around thee blazes
No fiery rallying sign ?
From all thy own high places,
Give heaven the light of thine !
What though unthrilled, unmoving,
The statesman stand apart,
And comes no warm approving
From Mammon's crowded mart ?
Still, let the land be shaken
By a summons of thine own !
By all save truth forsaken,
Why, stand with that alone !
Shrink not from strife unequal !
With the best is always hope ;
And ever in the sequel
God holds the right side up !
But when, with thine uniting,
Come voices long and loud,
And far-off hills are writing
Thy fire-words on the cloud ;
When from Penobscot's fountains
A deep response is heard,
And across the Western mountain*
Rolls back thy rallying word :
Shall thy line of battle falter,
With its allies just in view ?
0, by hearth and holy altar,
My fatherland, be true !
Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom !
Speed them onward far and fast !
Over hill and valley speed them,
Like the sibyl's on the blast !
Lo ! the Empire State is shaking
The shackles from her hand ;
With the rugged North is waking
The level sunset land !
On they come, — the free battalions !
East and West and North they come.
And the heart-beat of the millions
Is the beat of Freedom's drum.
68
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
" To the tyrant's plot no favor !
No heed to place-fed knaves !
Bar and bolt the door forever
Against the land of slaves ! "
Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it,
The Heavens above us spread !
The land is roused, — its spirit
Was sleeping, but not dead .'
THE PINE-TREE.
1846.
LIFT again the stately emblem on the
Bay State's rusted shield,
Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree
on our banner's tattered field.
Sons of men who sat in council with their
Bibles round the board,
Answering England's royal missive with
aiirm, " THUS SAITH THE LORD !"
Rise again for home and freedom ! — set
the battle in array ! —
What the fathers did of old time we
their sons must do to-day.
Tell us not of banks and tariffs, — cease
your paltry pedler cries, —
Shall the good State sink her honor that
your gambling stocks may rise ?
Would ye barter man for cotton ? — That
your gains may sum up higher,
Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass
our children through the fire ?
Is the dollar only real ? — God and truth
and right a dream ?
Weighed against your lying ledgers must
our manhood kick the beam ?
0 my God ! — for that free spirit, which
of old in Boston town
Smote the Province House with terror,
struck the crest of Andros down ! —
For another strong- voiced Adams in the
city's streets to cry,
" Up for God and Massachusetts ! — Set
your feet on Mammon's lie !
Perish banks and perish traffic, — spin
your cotton's latest pound, —
Butin Heaven's namekeepyour honor, —
keep the heart o' the Bay State
sound ! "
Where 's the MAN for Massachusetts ? —
Where's the voice to speak her
free ? —
Where 's the hand to light up bonfires
from her mountains to the sea <
Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer ?--
Sits she dumb in her despair ? —
Has she none to break the silence ? —
Has she none to do and dare ?
0 my God ! for one right worthy to lift
up her rusted shield,
And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her
banner's tattered field !
LINES,
SUGGESTED BY A VISIT TO THE CITY OF
WASHINGTON, IN THE 12TH MONTH
OF 1845.
WITH a cold and wintry noon-light,
On its roofs and steeples shed,
Shadows weaving with the sunlight
From the gray sky overhead,
Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the
half-built town outspread.
Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river ;
Wealth and fashion side by side •
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the
same quick current glide.
Underneath yon dome, whose coping
Springs above them, vast and tall,
Grave men in the dust are groping
For the largess, base and small,
Which the hand of Power is scattering,
crumbs which from its table fall.
Base of heart ! They vilely barter
Honor's wealth fo.' party's place :
Step by step on Freedom's charter
Leaving footprints of disgrace ;
For to-day's poor pittance turning from
the great hope of their race.
Yet, where festal lamps are throwing
Glory round the dancer's hair,
Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flowing
Backward on the sunset air ;
And the low quick pulse of music beats
its measure sweet and rare :
There to-night shall woman's glances,
Star-like, welcome give to them,
Fawning fools with shy advances
Seek to touch their garments' hem,
With the tongue of flattery glozing deedc
which God and Truth condemn
LINES.
69
From this glittering lie my vision
Takes a broader, sadder range,
Full before me have arisen
Other pictures dark and strange ;
From the parlor to the prison must the
scene and witness change.
Hark ! the heavy gate is swinging
On its hinges, harsh and slow ;
One pale prison lamp is flinging
On a fearful group below
Such a light as leaves to terror whatso
e'er it does not show.
Pitying God ! — Is that a WOMAN
On whose wrist the shackles clash ?
Is that shriek she utters human,
Underneath the stinging lash ?
^.re they MEN whose eyes of madness
from that sad procession flash ?
Still the dance goes gayly onward !
What is it to Wealth and Pride
That without the stars are looking
On a scene which earth should hide ?
That the SLAVE-SHIP lies in waiting,
rocking on Potomac's tide !
Vainly to that mean Ambition
Which, upon a rival's fall,
Winds above its old condition,
With a reptile's slimy crawl,
Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall
the slave in anguish call.
Vainly to the child of Fashion,
Giving to ideal woe
Graceful luxury of compassion,
Shall the stricken mourner go ;
Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beau
tiful the hollow show !
Nay, my words are all too sweeping :
In this crowded human mart,
Feeling is not dead, but sleeping ;
Man'sstrong will and woman's heart,
In the coming strife for Freedom, yet
shall bear their generous part.
And from yonder sunny valleys,
Southward in the distance lost,
Freedom yet shall summon allies
Worthier than the North can boast,
With the Evil by their hearth-stones
grappling at severer cost.
Now, the soul alone is willing :
Faint the heart and weak the knee ;
And as yet no lip is thrilling
With the mighty words, " BE FREE !"
Tarrieth long the land's Good Angel,
but his advent is to be !
Meanwhile, turning from the revel
To the prison -cell my sight,
For intenser hate of evil,
For a keener sense of right,
Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, City
of the Slaves, to-night !
" To thy duty now and ever J
Dream no more of rest or stay ;
Give to Freedom's great endeavor
All thou art and hast to-day " : —
Thus, above the city's murmur, saith n
Voice, or seems to say.
Ye with heart and vision gifted
To discern and love the right,
Whose worn faces have been lifted
To the slowly -growing light,
Where from Freedom's sunrise drifted
slowly back the murk of night ! —
Ye who through long years of trial
Still have held your purpose fast,
While a lengthening shade the dial
From the westering sunshine cast,
And of hope each hour's denial seemed
an echo of the last ! —
0 my brothers ! 0 my sisters !
Would to God that ye were near,
Gazing with me down the vistas
Of a sorrow strange and drear ;
Would to God that ye were listeners to
the Voice I seem to hear !
With the storm above us driving,
With the false earth mined below, —
Who shall marvel if thus striving
We have counted friend as foe ;
Unto one another giving in the darkness
blow for blow.
Well it may be that our natures
Have grown sterner and more hard,
And the freshness of their features
Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred,
And their harmonies of feeling over
tasked and rudely jarred.
Be it so. It should not swerve us
From a purpose true and brave ;
70
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Dearer Freedom's rugged service
Than the pastime of the slave ;
Better is the storm above it than the
quiet of the grave.
Let us then, uniting, bury
All our idle feuds in dust,
And to future conflicts carry
Mutual faith and common trust ;
Always he who most forgiveth in his
brother is most just.
From the eternal shadow rounding
All our sun and starlight here,
Voices of our lost ones sounding
Bid us be of heart and cheer,
Through the silence, down the spaces,
falling on the inward ear.
Know we not our dead are looking
Downward with a sad surprise,
All our strife of words rebuking
With their mild and loving eyes ?
Shall we grieve the holy angels ? Shall
we cloud their blessed skies ?
Let us draw their mantles o'er us
W Inch have fallen in our way ;
Let us do the work before us,
Cheerly, bravely, while we may,
Ere the long night-silence cometh, and
with us it is not day !
LINES,
FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERI
CAL FRIEND.
A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire, —
A faith which doubt can never dim, —
A heart of love, a lip of the, —
O Freedom's God ! be thou to him !
Speak through him words of power and
fear,
As through thy prophet bards of old,
And let a scornful people hear
Once more thy Sinai-thunders rolled.
For lying lips thy blessing seek,
And hands of blood are raised to Thee,
And on thy children, crushed and weak,
The oppressor plants his kneeling knee.
Let then, 0 God ! thy servant dare
Thy truth in all its power to tell,
Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear
The Bible from the grasp of hell !
From hollow rite and narrow span
Of law and sect by Thee released,
0, teach him that the Christian man
Is holier than the Jewish priest.
Chase back the shadows, gray and old,
Of the dead ages, from his way,
And let his hopeful eyes behold
The dawn of thy millennial day ; —
That day when fettered limb and mind
Shall know the truth which maketh
free,
And he alone who loves his kind
Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee !
YORKTOWN.36
FROM Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still,
Two lines stretch far o'er vale and hill :
Who curbs his steed at head of one ?
Hark ! the low murmur : Washington !
Who bends his keen, approving glance
Where down the gorgeous line of France
Shine knightly star and plume of snow ?
Thou too art victor, Rochambeau !
The earth which bears this calm array
Shook with the war-charge yesterday,
Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and
wheel,
Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel ;
October's clear and noonday sun
Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun,
And down night's double blackness fell,
Like a dropped star, the blazing shell.
Now all is hushed : the gleaming lines
Stand moveless as the neighboring pines ;
While through them, sullen, grim, and
slow,
The conquered hosts of England go :
O'Hara's brow belies his dress,
Gay Tarleton's troop rides bannerless :
Shout, from thy fired and wasted homes,
Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes !
Nor thou alone : with one glad voice
Let all thy sister States rejoice ;
Let Freedom, in whatever clime
She waits with sleepless eye her time,
Shouting from cave and mountain wood
Make glad her desert solitude,
LINES.
71
While they who hunt her quail with fear ;
The New World's chain lies broken here !
But who are they, who, cowering, wait
Within the shattered fortress gate ?
Dark tillers of Virginia's soil,
Classed with the battle's common spoil,
With household stuffs, and fowl, and
swine,
With Indian weed and planters' wine,
With stolen beeves, and foraged corn, —
Are they not men, Virginian born ?
0, veil your faces, young and brave !
Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier grave !
Sons of the Northland, ye who set
Stout hearts against the bayonet,
And pressed with steady footfall near
The moated battery's blazing tier,
Turn your scarred faces from the sight,
Let shame do homage to the right !
Lo ! threescore years have passed ; and
where
The Gallic timbrel stirred the air,
With Northern drum-roll, and the clear,
Wild horn-blow of the mountaineer,
While Britain grounded on that plain
The arms she might not lift again,
As abject as in that old day
The slave still toils his life away.
0, fields still green and fresh in story,
Old days of pride, old names of glory,
Old marvels of the tongue and pen,
Old thoughts which stirred the hearts
of men,
Ye spared the wrong ; and over all
Behold the avenging shadow fall !
Your world-wide honor stained with
shame, —
Your freedom's self a hollow name !
Where 's now the flag of that old war ?
Where flows its stripe ? Where burns
its star ?
Bear witness, Palo Alto's day,
Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey,
Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak,
Fleshes the Northern eagle's beak ;
Symbol of terror and despair,
Of chains and slaves, go seek it there !
Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranks !
Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva's banks !
Brave sport to see the fledgling born
Of Freedom by its parent toro '
Safe now is Speilberg's dungeon cell,
Safe drear Siberia's frozen hell :
With Slavery's flag o'er both unrolled,
What of the New World fears the Old 1
LINES,
WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF A FRIEND,
ON page of thine I cannot trace
The cold and heartless commonplace, —
A statue's lixed and marble grace.
For ever as these lines I penned,
Still with the thought of thee will blend
That of some loved and common friend, —
Who in life's desert track lias made
His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed
Beneath the same remembered shade.
And hence my pen unfettered moves
In freedom which the heart approves, —
The negligence which friendship loves.
And wilt thou prize my poor gift less
For simple air and rustic dress,
And sign of haste and carelessness ? —
0, more than specious counterfeit
Of sentiment or studied wit,
A heart like thine should value it.
Yet half I fear my gift will be
Unto thy book, if not to thee,
Of more than doubtful courtesy.
A banished name from fashion's sphere,
A lay unheard of Beauty's ear,
Forbid, disowned, — what do they
here ? —
Upon my ear not all in vain
Came the sad captive's clanking chain, —
The groaning from his bed of pain.
And sadder still, I saw the woe
Which only wounded spirits know
When Pride's strong footsteps o'er then:
go.
Spurned not alone in walks abroad,
But from the " temples of the Lord"
Thrust out apart, like things abhorred.
Deep as I felt, and stern and strong,
In words which Prudence smothered long,
My soul spoke out against the wrong ;
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Not mine alone the task to speak
Of comfort to the poor and weak,
And dry the tear on Sorrow's cheek j
But, mingled in the conflict warm,
To pour the fiery breath of storm
Through the harsh trumpet of Reform ;
To brave Opinion's settled frown,
From ermined robe and saintly gown,
While wrestling reverenced Error down.
Founts gushed beside my pilgrim way,
Cool shadows on the greensward lay,
Flowers swung upon the bending spray.
And, broad and bright, on either hand,
Stretched the green slopes of Fairy-land,
With Hope's eternal sunbow spanned ;
Whence voices called me like the flow,
Which on the listener's ear will grow,
Of forest streamlets soft and low.
And gentle eyes, which still retain
Their picture on the heart and brain,
Smiled, beckoning from that path of
pain.
In vain ! — nor dream, nor rest, nor
pause
Remain for him who round him draws
The battered mail of Freedom's cause.
From youthful hopes, — from each green
spot
Gf young Romance, and gentle Thought,
Where storm and tumult enter not, —
From each fair altar, where belong
The offerings Love requires of Song
In homage to her bright-eyed throng, —
With soul and strength, with heart and
hand,
I turned to Freedom's struggling band, —
To the sad Helots of our land.
What marvel then that Fame should
turn
Her notes of praise to those of scorn, —
Her gifts reclaimed, — her smiles with
drawn ?
What matters it ! — a few years more,
life's surge so restless heretofore
Shall break upon the unknown shore !
In that far land shall disappear
The shadows which we follow here, —
The mist-wreaths of our atmosphere !
Before no work of mortal hand,
Of human will or strength expand
The pearl gates of the Better Land ;
Alone in that great love which gave
Life to the sleeper of the grave,
Resteth the power to "seek and save."
Yet, if the spirit gazing through
The vista of the past can view
One deed to Heaven and virtue true, — •
If through the wreck of wasted powers,
Of garlands wreathed from Folly's
bowers,
Of idle aims and misspent hours, —
The eye can note one sacred spot
By Pride and Self profaned not, —
A green place in the waste of thought, —
Where deed or word hath rendered less
"The sum of human wretchedness,"
And Gratitude looks forth to bless, —
The simple burst of tenderest feeling
From sad hearts worn by evil -dealing,
For blessing on the hand of healing, —
Better than Glory's pomp will be
That green and blessed spot to me,
A palm-shade in Eternity ! —
Something of Time which may invite
The purified and spiritual sight
To rest on with a calm delight.
And when the summer winds shall
sweep
With their light wings my place of sleep,
And mosses round my headstone creep, —
If still, as Freedom's rallying sign,
Upon the young heart's altars shine
The very fires they caught from mine, —
If words my lips once uttered still,
In the calm faith and steadfast will
Of other hearts, their work fulfil, —
Perchance with joy the soul may learn
These tokens, and its eye discern
The fires which on those altars burn, —
P^EAN.
73
A marvellous joy that even then,
The spirit hath its life again,
In the strong hearts of mortal men.
Take, lady, then, the gift I bring,
No gay and graceful offering, —
No flower-smile of the laughing spring.
Midst the green buds of Youth's fresh
May,
With Fancy's leaf-enwoven bay,
My sad and sombre gift I lay.
And if it deepens in thy mind
A sense of suffering human-kind, —
The outcast and the spirit-blind :
Oppressed and spoiled on every side,
By Prejudice, and Scorn, and Pride,
Life's common courtesies denied ;
Sad mothers mourning o'er their trust,
Children by want and misery nursed,
Tasting life's bitter cup at first ;
If to their strong appeals which come
From fireless hearth, and crowded room,
And the close alley's noisome gloom, —
Though dark the hands upraised to thee
In mute beseeching agony,
Thou lend'st thy woman's sympathy, —
Not vainly on thy gentle shrine,
Where Love, and Mirth, and Friendship
twine
Their varied gifts, I offer mine.
P.EAN.
1848.
Now, joy and thanks forevermore I
The dreary night has wellnigh passed,
The slumbers of the North are o'er,
The Giant stands erect at last !
More than we hoped in that dark time
When, faint with watching, few and
worn,
We saw no welcome day-star climb
The cold gray pathway of the morn !
0 weary hours ! 0 night of years \
What storms our darkling pathway
swept,
Where, beating back our thronging fears,
By Faith alone our march we kept.
How jeered the scoffing crowd behind,
How mocked before the tyrant train,
As, one by one, the true and kind
Fell fainting in our path of pain !
They died, — their brave hearts breaking
slow, —
But, self-forgetful to the last,
In words of cheer and bugle blow
Their breath upon the darkness passed,
A mighty host, on either hand,
Stood waiting for the dawn of day
To crush like reeds our feeble band ;
The morn has come, — and where are
they?
Troop after troop their line forsakes ;
With peace-white banners waving
free,
And from our own the glad shout breaks,
Of Freedom and Fraternity !
Like mist before the growing light,
The hostile cohorts melt away ;
Our frowning foemen of the night
Are brothers at the dawn, of day !
As unto these repentant ones
We open wide our toil-worn ranks,
Along our line a murmur runs
Of song, and praise, and grateful
thanks.
Sound for the onset ! — Blast on blast !
Till Slavery's minions cower and
quail ;
One charge of fire shall drive them fast
Like chaff before our Northern gale !
0 prisoners in your house of pain,
Dumb, toiling millions, bound and
sold,
Look ! stretched o'er Southern vale a\>d
plain,
The Lord's delivering hand behold !
Above the tyrant's pride of power,
His iron gates and guarded wall,
The bolts Avhich shattered Shinar's
tower
Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall.
Awake ! awake ! my Fatherland !
It is thy Northern light that shines ;
j This stirring march of Freedom's band
^ The storm-song of thy mountain pines.
74
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Wake, dwellers where the day expires !
And hear, in winds that sweep your
lakes
And fan your prairies' roaring fires,
The signal-call that Freedom makes !
TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS
SHIPLEY.
GONE to thy Heavenly Father's rest !
The flowers of Eden round thee blow
ing,
And on thine ear the murmurs blest
Of Siloa's waters softly flowing !
Beneath that Tree of Life which gives
To all the earth its healing leaves
In the white robe of angels clad,
And wandering by that sacred river,
Whose streams of holiness make glad
The city of our God forever !
Gentlest of spirits ! — not for thee
Our tears are shed, our sighs are given ;
Why mourn to know thou art a free
Partaker of the joys of Heaven ?
Finished thy work, and kept thy faith
In Christian firmness unto death ;
And beautiful as sky and earth,
When autumn's sun is downward go
ing,
The blessed memory of thy worth
Around thy place of slumber glowing !
But woe for us ! who linger still
With feebler strength and hearts less
lowly,
And minds less steadfast to the will
Of Him whose every work is holy.
For not like thine, is crucified
The spirit of our human pride :
And at the bondman's tale of woe,
And for the outcast and forsaken,
Not warm like thine, but cold and slow,
Our weaker sympathies awaken.
Darkly upon our struggling way
The storm of human hate is sweeping ;
Hunted and branded, and a prey,
Our watch amidst the darkness keep
ing*
0 for that hidden strength which can
Nerve unto death the inner man !
0 for thy spirit, tried and true,
And constant in the hour of trial,
Prepared to suffer, or to do,
In meekness and in self-denial.
0 for that spirit, meek and mild,
Derided, spurned, yet uncomplain
ing, —
By man deserted and reviled,
Yet faithful to its trust remaining.
Still prompt and resolute to save
From scourge and chain the hunted
slave ;
Unwavering in the Truth's defence,
Even where the fires of Hate were
burning,
The unquailing eye of innocence
Alone upon the oppressor turning !
0 loved of thousands ! to thy grave,
Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore
thee.
The poor man and the rescued slave
Wept as the broken earth closed o'er
thee;
And grateful tears, like summer rain,
Quickened i*s dying grass again !
And there, as to some pilgrim -shrine,
Shall come th^ outcast and the lowly,
Of gentle deeds and void** of thine
Recalling memorias sweet and holy !
0 for the death the righteous die !
An end, like autumn's day declining,
On human hearts, as on the sky,
With holier, tenderer beauty shining j
As to the parting soul were given
The radiance of an opening Heaven !
As if that pure and blessed light,
From oft' the Eternal altar flowing,
Were bathing, in its upward flight,
The spirit to its worship going !
TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN.
1846.
Is this thy voice, whose treble notes of
fear
Wail in the wind ? And dost thou shake
to hear,
Actseon-like, the bay of thine own
hounds,
Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er
their bounds ?
Sore-baffled statesman ! when thy eager
hand,
With game afoot, unslipped the hungry
pack,
To hunt down Freedom in her chosen
land,
LINES.
75
Radst them no fear, that, erelong,
doubling back,
These doge of thine might snuff on
Slavery's track ?
Where 's now the boast, which even thy
guarded tongue,
Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o'
the Senate flung,
O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan,
Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man ?
How stood'st thou then, thy feet on
Freedom planting,
And pointing to the lurid heaven afar,
Whence all could see, through the south
windows slanting,
Crimson as blood, the beams of that
Lone Star !
The Fates are just ; they give us but our
own ;
Nemesis ripens what our hands have
sown.
There is an Eastern story, not unknown,
Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic
skill
Called demons up his water-jars to fill ;
Deftly and silently, they did his will,
But, when the task was done, kept
pouring still.
In vain with spell and charm the wizard
wrought,
Faster and faster were the buckets
brought,
Higher and higher rose the flood around,
Till the fiends clapped their hands above
their master drowned !
So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee.
For God still overrules man's schemes,
and takes
Craftiness in its self-set snare, and
makes
The wrath of man to praise Him. It
may be,
That the roused spirits of Democracy
May leave to freer States the same wide
door
Through which thy slave-cursed T xas
entered in,
From out the blood and fire, the wrong
and sin,
Of the stormed city and the ghastly
plain,
Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody
rain,
A myriad -handed Aztec host may pour,
And swarthy South with pallid North
combine
Back on thyself to turn thy dark design.
LINES,
WRITTEN ON THE ADOPTION OF PINCK-
NEY'S RESOLUTIONS, IN THE HOUSE
OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND THE DB-
• BATE ON CALHOUN'S "BILL FOR
EXCLUDING PAPERS WRITTEN OR
PRINTED, TOUCHING THE SUBJECT
OF SLAVERY, FROM THE U. S. POST-
OFFICE," IN THE SENATE OF THE
UNITED STATES.
MEN of the North-land ! where 's the
manly spirit
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled
gone ?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit
Their names alone ?
Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched with
in us,
Stoops the strong manhood ot our
souls so low,
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can
win us
To silence now ?
Now, when our land to ruin's brink is
verging,
In God's name, let us speak while
there is time !
Now, when the padlocks for our lips
are forging,
Silence is crime J
What ! shall we henceforth humbly ask
as favors
Eights all our own ? In madness
shall we barter,
For treacherous peace, the freedom
Nature gave us,
G^d and our charter ?
Here shall the statesman forge his hu«
man fetters,
Here the false jurist human rights
deny,
And, in the church, their proud and
skilled abettors
Make truth a lie ?
Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,
To sanction crime, and robbery, and
blood ?
And, in Oppression's hateful service,
libel
Both man and God ?
76
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Shall our New England stand erect no
longer,
But stoop in chains upon her down
ward way,
Thicker to gather on her limbs and
stronger
Day after day ?
0 no ; methinks from all her wild, green
mountains, —
From valleys where her slumbering
fathers lie, —
From her blue rivers and her welling
fountains,
And clear, cold sky, —
From her rough coast, and isles, which
hungry Ocean
Gnaws with his surges, — from the
fisher's skiff,
With white sail swaying to the billows'
motion
Eound rock and cliff, —
From the free fireside of her unbought
farmer, —
From her free laborer at his loom and
wheel, —
From the brown smith-shop, where, be
neath the hammer,
Kings the red steel, —
From each and all, if God hath not
forsaken
Our land, and left us to an evil choice,
Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall
waken
A People's voice
Startling and stern ! the Northern winds
shall bear it
Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave ;
And buried Freedom shall awake to
hear it
Within her grave.
0, let that voice go forth ! The bond
man sighing
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's
cane,
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom
dying,
Revive again.
Let it go forth ! The millions who are
gazing
Sadly upon us from afar, shall smile, i
And unto God devout thanksgiving
raising,
Bless us the while.
0 for your ancient freedom, pure and
holy,
For the deliverance of a groaning earth,
For the wronged captive, bleeding,
crushed, and lowly,
Let it go forth !
Sons of the best of fathers ! will ye faltei
With all they left ye perilled and at
stake ?
Ho ! once again on Freedom's holy altai
The fire awake !
Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come
together,
Put on the harness for the moral fight,
And, with the blessing of your Heav
enly Father,
MAINTAIN THE RIGHT !
THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-^
BREAKERS.**
IN Westminster's royal halls,
Robed in their pontificals,
England's ancient prelates stood
For the people's right and good.
Closed around the waiting crowd,
Dark and still, like winter's cloud ;
King and council, lord and knight,
Squire and yeoman, stood in sight, -^
Stood to hear the priest rehearse,
In God's name, the Church's curse,
By the tapers round them lit,
Slowly, sternly uttering it.
" Right of voice in framing laws,
Right of peers to try each cause ;
Peasant homestead, mean and small,
Sacred as the monarch's hall, —
" Whoso lays his hand on these,
England's ancient liberties, —
Whoso breaks, by word or deed,
England's vow at Runnymede, —
"Be he Prince or belted knight,
Whatsoe'er his rank or might,
If the highest, then the worst,
Let him live and die accursed.
THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.
77
' ' Thou, who to thy Church hast given
Keys alike, of hell and heaven,
Make our word and witness sure,
Let the curse we speak endure ! "
Silent, while that curse was said,
Every bare and listening head
Bowed in reverent awe, and then
All the people said, Amen !
Seven times the bells have tolled,
For the centuries gray and old,
Since that stoled and mitred band
Cursed the tyrants of their land.
Since the priesthood, like a tower,
Stood between the poor and power ;
And the wronged and trodden down
Blessed the abbot's shaven crown.
Gone, thank God, their wizard spell,
Lost, their keys of heaven and hell ;
Yet I sigh for men as bold
As those bearded priests of old.
Now, too oft the priesthood wait
At the threshold of the state, —
Waiting for the beck and nod
Of its power as law and God.
Fraud exults, while solemn words
Sanctify his stolen hoards ;
Slavery laughs, while ghostly lips
Bless his manacles and whips.
Not on them the poor rely,
Not to them looks liberty,
Who with fawning falsehood cower
To the wrong, when clothed with power.
0, to see them meanly cling,
Round the master, round the king,
Sported with, and sold and bought, —
Pitifuller sight is not !
•
Tell me not that this must be :
God's true priest is always free ;
Free, the needed truth to speak,
Right the wronged, and raise the weak.
Not to fawn on wealth and state,
Leaving Lazarus at the gate, —
Not to peddle creeds like wares, —
Not to mutter hireling prayers, —
Nor to paint the new life's bliss
On the sable ground of this, —
Golden streets for idle knave,
Sabbath rest for weary slave !
Not for words and works like these,
Priest of God, thy mission is ;
But to make earth's desert glad,
In its Eden greenness clad ;
And to level manhood bring
Lord and peasant, serf and king ;
And the Christ of God to find
In the humblest of thy kind !
Thine to work as well as pray,
Clearing thorny wrongs away ;
Plucking up the weeds of sin,
Letting heaven's warm sunshine in, -
Watching on the hills of Faith ;
Listening what the spirit saith,
Of the dim- seen light afar,
Growing like a nearing star.
God's interpreter art thou,
To the waiting ones below ;
'Twixt them and its light midway
Heralding the better day, —
Catching gleams of temple spires,
Hearing notes of angel choirs,
Where, as yet unseen of them,
Comes the New Jerusalem !
Like the seer of Patmos gazing,
On the glory downward blazing ;
Till upon Earth's grateful sod
Rests the City of our God !
THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.
SUGGESTED BY A DAGUERREOTYPE FROM
A FRENCH ENGRAVING.
BEAMS of noon, like burning lances,
through the tree-tops flash and
glisten,
As she stands before her lover, with raised
face to look and listen.
Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the
ancient Jewish song :
Scarcely has the toil of task -fields done
her graceful beauty wrong.
He, the strong one and the manly, with,
the vassal's garb and hue.
78
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Holding still his spirit's birthright, to
his higher iiature true ;
Hiding deep the strengthening purpose
of a freeman in his heart,
As the greegree holds his Fetich from
the white man's gaze apart.
Ever foremost of his comrades, when the
driver's morning horn
Calls away to Stirling mill-house, to the
fields of cane and corn :
Fall the keen and burning lashes never
on his back or limb ;
Scarce with look or word of censure, turns
the driver unto him.
Yat, his brow is always thoughtful, and
his eye is hard and stern ;
Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has
never deigned to learn.
1 And, at evening, when his comrades
dance before their master's door,
Folding arms and knitting forehead,
stands he silent evermore.
God be praised for every instinct which
rebels against a lot
Where the brute survives the human, and
man's upright form is not !
As the serpent-like bejuco winds his
spiral fold on fold
Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it
withers in his hold ; —
Slow decays the forest monarch, closer
girds the fell embrace,
Till the tree is' seen no longer, and the
vine is in its place, —
So a base and bestial nature round the
vassal's manhood twines,
And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the
ceiba choked with vines.
God is Love, saith the Evangel ; and our
world of woe and sin
Is made light and happy only when a
Love is shining in.
Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, find
ing, wheresoe'er ye roam,
Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness,
making all the world like home
In the veins of whose affections kindred
blood is but a part,
Of one kindly current throbbing from the
universal heart ;
Can ye know the deeper meaning of a
love in Slavery nursed,
flower of a lost Eden, blooming in
that Soil accursed ?
Love of Home, and Love of Woman ! —
dear to all, but doubly dear
To the heart whose pulses elsewhere
measure only hate and fear.
All around the desert circles, underneath
a brazen sky,
Only one green spot remaining where the
dew is never dry !
From the horror of that desert, from its
atmosphere of hell,
Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the
diver seeks his bell.
T is the fervid tropic noontime ; faint
and low the sea-waves beat ;
Hazy rise the inland mountains through
the glimmer of the heat, —
Where, through mingled leaves and blos
soms, arrowy sunbeams flash and
glisten,
Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and she
lifts her head to listen : —
"We shall live as slaves no longer!
Freedom's hour is close at hand !
Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests the
boat upon the strand !
" I have seen the Haytien Captain ; 1
have seen his swarthy crew,
Haters of the pallid faces, to their race
and color true.
' ' They have sworn to wait our coming
till the night has passed its noon,
And the gray and darkening waters roll
above the sunken moon ! "
0 the blessed hope of freedom ! how with
joy and glad surprise,
For an instant throbs her bosom, for an
instant beam her eyes 1
THE CRISIS.
79
But she looks across the valley, where
her mother's hut is seen,
Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and
the lemon-leaves so green.
And she answers, sad and earnest : " It
were wrong for thee to stay ;
God hath heard thy prayer for freedom,
and his finger points the way.
* Well I know with what endurance, for
the sake of me and mine,
Thou hast borne too long a burden never
meant for souls like thine.
" Go ; and at the hour of midnight, when
our last farewell is o'er,
Kneeling on our place of parting, I will
bless thee from the shore.
" But for me, my mother, lying on her
sick-bed all the day,
Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming
through the twilight gray.
"Should I leavehersick and helpless, even
freedom, shared with thee,
Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely
toil, and stripes to me.
" For my heart would die within me, and
my brain would soon be wild ;
I should hear my mother calling through
the twilight for her child ! "
Blazing upward from the ocean, shines
the sun of morning-time,
Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and
green hedges of the lime.
Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil
the lover and the maid ;
Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, lean
ing forward on his spade ?
Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he : 't is the
Haytien's sail he sees,
Like a white cloud of the mountains,
driven seaward by the breeze !
But his arm a light hand presses, and he
hears a low voice call :
Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love
is mightier than all.
THE CRISIS.
WRITTEN ON LEARNING THE TERMS OF
THE TREATY WITH MEXICO.
ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the
desert's drouth and sand,
The circles of our empire touch the West
ern Ocean's strand ;
From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila,
wild and free,
Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to Cali
fornia's sea ;
And from the mountains of the East, to
Santa Rosa's shore,
The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air
no more.
0 Vale of Rio Bravo ! Let thy simple
children weep ;
Close watch about their holy fire let maids
of Pecos keep ;
Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's
pines,
Jj8
And Algodones toll her bells amidst her
corn and vines ;
For lo ! the pale land-seekers come, with
eager eyes of gain,
Wide scattering, like the bison herds on
broad Salada's plain.
Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what
sound the winds bring down
Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from
cold Nevada's crown !
Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with
rein of travel slack,
And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the
sunrise at his back ;
By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir
and pine,
On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly
camp-fires shine.
0 countrymen and brothers ! that land
of lake and plain,
Of salt wastes alternating with valleys
fat with grain ;
Of mountains white with winter, looking
downward, cold, serene,
On their feet with spring- vines tangled
and lapped in softest green ;
Swift through whose black volcanic gates,
o'er many a sunny vale,
Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bi
son's dusty trail !
VOICES OF FREEDOM.
Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes
whose mystic shores
The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of
Saxon oars ;
Great herds that wander all unwatched,
wild steeds that none have tamed,
Strange fish in unknown streams, and
birds the Saxon never named ;
Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles,
where Nature's chemic powers
Work out the Great Designer's will ; —
all these ye say are ours !
Forever ours ! for good or ill, on us the
burden lies ;
God's balance, watched by angels, is hung
across the skies.
Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn
the poised and trembling scale ?
Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber
Wrong prevail ?
Shall the broad land o'er which our flag
in starry splendor waves,
Forego through us its freedom, and bear
the tread of slaves ?
The day is breaking in the East of which
the prophets told,
A.nd brightens up the sky of Time the
Christian Age of Gold ;
Old Might to Right is yielding, battle
blade to clerkly pen,
Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and
her serfs stand up as men ;
The isles rejoice together, in a day are
nations born,
And the slave walks free in Tunis, and
by Stamboul's Golden Horn !
Is this, 0 countrymen of mine ! a day for
us to sow
The soil of new-gained empire with
slavery's seeds of woe ?
To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old
World's cast-off crime,
Dropped, like some monstrous early birth,
from the tired lap of Time ?
To run anew the evil race the old lost
nations ran,
And die like them of unbelief of God, and
wrong of man ?
Great Heaven ! Is this our mission ?
End in this the prayers and tears,
The toil, the strife, the watchings of our
younger, better years ?
Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall
ours in shadow turn,
A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through
outer darkness borne ?
Where the far nations looked for light, a
blackness in the air ?
Where for words of hope they listened
the long wail of despair ?
The Crisis presses on us ; face to face
with us it stands,
With solemn lips of question, like the
Sphinx in Egypt's sands !
This day we fashion Destiny, our web
of Fate we spin ;
This day for all hereafter choose we
holiness or sin ;
Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's
cloudy crown,
We call the dews of blessing or the bolts
of cursing down !
By all for which the martyrs bore their
agony and shame ;
By all the warning words of truth with
which the prophets came ;
By the Future which awaits us ; by all
the hopes which cast
Their faint and trembling beams across
the blackness of the Past ;
And by the blessed thought of Him who
for Earth's freedom died,
0 my people ! 0 my brothers ! let us
choose the righteous side.
So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful
on his way ;
To wed Penobscot's waters to San Fran-
Cisco's bay ;
To make the rugged places smooth, and
sow the vales with grain ;
And bear, with Liberty and Law, the
Bible in his train :
The mighty West shall bless the East,
and sea shall answer sea,
And mountain unto mountain call,
PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE FREE !
THE HOLY LAND.
81
MISCELLANEOUS.
THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN.
ERE down yon blue Carpathian hills
The sun shall sink again.
Farewell to life and all its ills,
Farewell to cell and chain.
These prison shades are dark and cold, —
But, darker far than they,
The shadow of a sorrow old
Is on my heart alway.
For since the day when Warkworth wood
Closed o'er my steed and I,
An alien from my name and blood,
A weed cast out to die, —
When, looking back in sunset light,
I saw her turret gleam,
And from its casement, far and white,
Her sign of farewell stream,
Like one who, from some desert shore,
Doth home's green isles descry,
And, vainly longing, gazes o'er
The waste of wave and sky ;
So from the desert of my fate
I gaze across the past ;
Forever on life's dial-plate
The shade is backward cast !
I 've wandered wide from shore to shore,
I 've knelt at many a shrine ;
And bowed me to the rocky floor
Where Bethlehem's tapers shine ;
And by the Holy Sepulchre
I 've pledged my knightly sword
To Christ, his blessed Church, and her,
The Mother of our Lord.
0, vain the vow, and vain the strife !
How vain do all things seem !
My soul is in the past, and life
To-day is but a dream !
In vain the penance strange and long,
And hard for flesh to bear ;
The prayer, the fasting, and the thong
And sackcloth shirt of hair.
£
The eyes of memory will not sleep, -
Its ears are open still ;
And vigils with the past they keep
Against my feeble will.
And still the loves and joys of old
Do evermore uprise ;
I see the flow of locks of gold,
The shine of loving eyes !
Ah me ! upon another's breast
Those golden locks recline ;
I see upon another rest
The glance that once was mine.
' ' 0 faithless priest ! 0 perj ured knight !"
I hear the Master cry ;
" Shut out the vision from thy sight,
Let Earth and Nature die.
" The Church of God is now thy spouse,
And thou the bridegroom art ;
Then let the burden of thy vows
Crush down thy human heart !
In vain ! This heart its grief must
know,
Till life itself hath ceased,
And falls beneath the self-same blow
The lover and the priest !
0 pitying Mother ! souls of light,
And saints, and martyrs old !
Pray for a weak and sinful knighk
A suffering man uphold.
Then let the Paynim work his will.
And death unbind my chain,
Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill
The sun shall fall again.
THE HOLY LAND.
FROM LAMARTINE.
I HAVE not felt, o'er seas of sand,
The rocking of the desert bark ;
Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand,
By Hebron's palm-trees cool and
dark ;
82
MISCELLANEOUS.
Nor pitched my tent at even -fall,
On dust where Job of old has lain,
Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall,
The dream of Jacob o'er again.
One vast world-page remains unread ;
How shine the stars in Chaldea's
sky,
How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread,
How beats the heart with God so
nigh ! —
How round gray arch and column lone
The spirit of the old time broods,
And sighs in all the winds that moan
Along the sandy solitudes !
In thy tall cedars, Lebanon,
1 have not heard the nations' cries,
Nor seen thy eagles stooping down
Where buried Tyre in ruin lies.
The Christian's prayer I have not said
In Tadmor's temples of decay,
Nor startled, with my dreary tread,
The waste where Memnon's empire lay.
Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide,
0 Jordan ! heard the low lament,
Like that sad wail along thy side
Which Israel's mournful prophet sent !
Nor thrilled within that grotto lone
Where, deep in night, the Bard of
Kings
Felt hands of fire direct his own,
And sweep for God the conscious
strings.
I have not climbed to Olivet,
Nor laid me where my Saviour lay,
And left his trace of tears as yet
By angel eyes unwept away ;
Nor watched, at midnight's solemn time,
The garden where his prayer and
groan,
Wrung by his sorrow and our crime,
Rose to One listening ear alone.
I have not kissed the rock-hewn grot
Where in his Mother's arms he lay,
Nor knelt upon the sacred spot
Where last his footsteps pressed the
clay ;
Nor looked on that sad mountain head,
Nor smote my sinful breast, where
wide
H's arms to fold the world he spread,
And bowed his head to bless — and
diedl
PALESTINE.
BLEST land of Judaea ! thrice hallowed
of song,
Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-
like throng ;
In the shade of thy palms, by the shores
of thy sea,
On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is
with thee.
With the eye of a spirit I look on that
shore,
Where pilgrim and prophet have lin
gered before ;
With the glide of a spirit I traverse the
sod
Made bright by the steps of the angels
of God.
Blue sea of the hills ! — in my spirit I
hear
Thy waters, Genesaret, chime on my ear ;
Where the Lowly and Just with the peo
ple sat down,
And thy spray on the dust of his san
dals was thrown.
Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of
green,
And the desolate hills of the wild Gad-
arene ;
And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor
to see
The gleam of thy waters, 0 dark Galilee !
Hark, a sound in the valley ! where,
swollen and strong,
Thy river, 0 Kishon, is sweeping along ;
Where the Canaanite strove with Je
hovah in vain,
And thy torrent grew dark with the
blood of the slain.
There down from his mountains stern
Zebulon came,
And Naphtali's stag, with his eyeballs
of flame,
And the chariots of Jabin rolled harm
lessly on,
For the arm of the Lord was Abinoam's
son !
There sleep the still rocks and the cav-
erns which rang
To the song which the beautiful proph
etess sang,
EZEKIEL.
83
When the princes of Issachar stood by
her side,
And the shout of a host in its triumph
replied.
Lo, Bethlehem's hill-site before me is
seen,
With the mountains around, and the
valleys between ;
There rested the shepherds of Judah,
and there
The song of the angels rose sweet on
the air.
And Bethany's palm-trees in beauty still
throw
Their shadows at noon on the ruins
below ;
But where are the sisters who hastened
to greet
The lowly Redeemer, and sit at his feet ?
I tread where the TWELVE in their way
faring trod ;
I stand where they stood with the
CHOSEN OF GOD, —
Where his blessing was heard and his
lessons were taught,
Where the blind were restored and the
healing was wrought.
0, here with his flock the sad Wanderer
came, —
These hills he toiled over in grief are
the same, —
The founts where he drank by the way
side still flow,
And the same airs are blowing which
breathed on his brow !
And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem
yet,
But with dust on her forehead, and
chains on her feet ;
For the crown of her pride to the mocker
hath gone,
And the holy Shechinah is dark where
it shone.
But wherefore this dream of the earthly
abode
Of Humanity clothed in the brightness
of God ?
Were my spirit but turned from the
outward and dim,
It could gaze, even now, on the presence
of Him !
Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle
as when,
In love and in meekness, He moved
among men ;
And the voice which breathed peace to
the waves of the sea
In the hush of my spirit would whisper
to me !
And what if my feet may not tread
where He stood,
Nor my ears hear the dashing of Gal-
ilee's flood,
Nor my eyes see the cross which He
bowed him to bear,
Nor my knees press Gethsemane's gar
den of prayer.
Yet, Loved of the Father, thy Spirit is
near
To the meek, and the lowly, and peni
tent here ;
And the voice of thy love is the same
even now
As. at Bethany's tomb or on Olivet's
brow.
0, the outward hath gone ! — but in
glory and power,
The SPIRIT surviveth the things of an
hour ;
Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost
flame
On the heart's secret altar is burning
the same !
EZEKIEL.
CHAPTER XXXIII. 30-33.
THEY hear thee not, 0 God ! nor see ;
Beneath thy rod they mock at thee ;
The princes of our ancient line
Lie drunken with Assyrian wine ;
The priests around thy altar speak
The false words which their hearers seek ;
And hymns which Chaldea's wanton
maids
Have sung in Dura's idol-shades
Are with the Levites' chant ascending,
With Zion's holiest anthems blending !
On Israel's bleeding bosom set,
The heathen heel is crushing yet ;
The towers upon our holy hill
Echo Chaldean footsteps still.
84
MISCELLANEOUS.
Our wasted shrines, — who weeps for
them ?
Who mourneth for Jerusalem ?
Who turneth from his gains away ?
Whose knee with mine is bowed to pray ?
Who, leaving feast and purpling cup,
Takes Zion's lamentation up ?
A sad and thoughtful youth, I went
With Israel's early banishment ;
And where the sullen Chebar crept,
The ritual of my fathers kept.
The water for the trench I drew,
The firstling of the flock I slew,
And, standing at the altar's side,
I shared the Levites' lingering pride,
That still, amidst her mocking foes,
The smoke of Zion's offering rose.
In sudden whirlwind, cloud and flame,
The Spirit of the Highest came !
Before mine eyes a vision passed,
A glory terrible and vast ;
With dreadful eyes of living things,
' And sounding sweep of angel wings,
With circling light and sapphire throne,
And flame-like form of One thereon,
And voice of that dread Likeness sent
Down from the crystal firmament !
The burden of a prophet's power
Fell on me in that fearful hour ;
From off unutterable woes
The curtain of the future rose ;
I saw far down the coming time
The fiery chastisement of crime ;
With noise of mingling hosts, and jar
Of falling towers and shouts of war,
I saw the nations rise and fall,
Like fire-gleams on my tent's white
wall.
In dream and trance, I saw the slain
Of Egypt heaped like harvest grain.
I saw the walls of sea-born Tyre
Swept over by the spoiler's fire ;
And heard the low, expiring moan
Of Edom on his rocky throne ;
And, woe is me ! the wild lament
From Zion's desolation sent ;
And felt within my heart each blow
Which laid her holy places low.
In bonds and sorrow, day by day,
Before the pictured tile I lay ;
And there, as in a mirror, saw
The coming of Assyria's war, —
Her swarthy lines of spearmen pass
Like locusts through Bethhoron's grass ;
I saw them draw their stormy hem
Of battle round Jerusalem ;
And, listening, heard the Hebrew wail
Blend with the victor- tramp of Baal !
Who trembled at my warning word ?
Who owned the prophet of the Lord ?
How mocked the rude, — how scoffed
the vile, —
How stung the Levites' scornful smile,
As o'er my spirit, dark and slow,
The shadow crept of Israel's woe
As if the angel's mournful roll
Had left its record on my soul,
And traced in lines- of darkness there
The picture of its great despair !
Yet *ver at the hour I feel
My lips in prophecy unseal.
Prince, priest, and Levite gather near,
And Salem's daughters haste to hear,
On Chebar's waste and alien shore,
The harp of Judah swept once more.
They listen, as in Babel's throng
The Chaldeans to the dancer's song,
Or wild sabbeka's nightly play,
As careless and as vain as they.
And thus, 0 Prophet-bard of old,
Hast thou thy tale of sorrow told !
The same which earth's unwelcome seers
Have felt in all succeeding years.
Sport of the changeful multitude,
Nor calmly heard nor understood,
Their song has seemed a trick of art,
Their warnings but the actor's part.
With bonds, and scorn, and evil will,
The world requites its prophets still.
So was it when the Holy One
The garments of the flesh put on !
Men followed where the Highest led
For common gifts of daily bread,
And gross of ear, of vision dim,
Owned not the godlike power of him.
Vain as a dreamer's words to them
His wail above Jerusalem,
And meaningless the watch he kept
Through which his weak disciples slept
Yet shrink not thou, whoe'er thou art,
For God's great purpose set apart,
Before whose far-discerning eyes,
The Future as the Present lies !
THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND.
85
Beyond a narrow-bounded age
Stretches thy prophet-heritage,
Through Heaven's dim spaces angel-trod,
Through arches round the throne of
God!
Thy audience, worlds ! — all Time to be
The witness of the Truth in thee !
THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER
HUSBAND.
AGAINST the sunset's glowing wall
The city towers rise black and tall,
Where Zorah, on its rocky height,
Stands like an armed man in the light.
Down Eshtaol's vales of ripened grain
Falls like a cloud the night amain,
And up the hillsides climbing slow
The barley reapers homeward go.
Look, dearest ! how our fair child's head
The sunset light hath hallowed,
Where at this olive's foot he lies,
Uplooking to the tranquil skies.
0, while beneath the fervent heat
Thy sickle swept the bearded wheat,
I've watched, with mingled joy and
dread,
Our child upon his grassy bed.
Joy, which the mother feels alone
Whose morning hope like mine had
flown,
When to her bosom, over-blessed,
A dearer life than hers is pressed.
Dread, for the future dark and still,
Which shapes our dear one to its will ;
Forever in his large calm eyes,
I read a tale of sacrifice. —
The same foreboding awe I felt
When at the altar's side we knelt,
And he, who as a pilgrim came,
Rose, winged and glorious, through the
flame.
I slept not, though the wild bees made
A dreamlike murmuring in the shade,
And on me the warm-fingered hours
Pressed with the drowsy smell of flowers.
Before me, in a vision, rose
The hosts of Israel's scornful foes, —
Rank over rank, helm, shield, and spear,
Glittered in noon's hot atmosphere.
I heard their boast, and bitter word,
Their mockery of the Hebrew's Lord,
I saw their hands his ark assail,
Their feet profane his holy veil.
No angel down the blue space spoke,
No thunder from the still sky broke ;
But in their midst, in power and awe,
Like God's waked wrath, OUR CHILD I
A child no more ! — harsh-browed and
strong,
He towered a giant in the throng,
And down his shoulders, broad and bare,
Swept the black terror of his hair.
He raised his arm ; he smote amain ;
As round the reaper falls the grain,
So the dark host around him fell,
So sank the foes of Israel !
Again I looked. In sunlight shone
The towers and domes of Askelon.
Priest, warrior, slave, a mighty crowd,
Within her idol temple bowed.
Yet one knelt not ; stark, gaunt, and
blind,
His arms the massive pillars twined, — -
An eyeless captive, strong with hate,
He stood there like an evil Fate.
The red shrines smoked, — the trumpets
pealed :
He stooped, — the giant columns
reeled, —
Reeled tower and fane, sank arch and
wall,
And the thick dust-cloud closed o'er
all!
Above the shriek, the crash, the groan
Of the fallen pride of Askelon,
I heard, sheer down the echoing sky,
A voice as of an angel cry, —
The voice of him, who at our side
Sat through the golden eventide, —
Of him who, on thy altar's blaze,
Rose fire-winged, with his song of praise.
" Rejoice o'er Israel's broken chain,
Gray mother of the mighty slain !
86
MISCELLANEOUS.
Rejoice !" it cried, "he vanquisheth !
The strong in life is strong in death !
" To him shall Zorah's daughters raise
Through coming years their hymns of
praise,
And gray old men at evening tell
Of all he wrought for Israel.
"And they who sing and they who
hear
Alike shall hold thy memory dear,
And pour their blessings on thy head,
0 mother of the mighty dead ! "
It ceased ; and though a sound I heard
As if great wings the still air stirred,
1 only saw the barley sheaves
And hills half hid by olive leaves.
I bowed my face, in awe and fear,
On the dear child who slumbered near.
" With me, as with my only son,
O God," I said, "THY WILL BE DONE ! "
THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.
"GET ye up from the wrath of God's
terrible day !
Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away !
'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the ful
ness of time,
And vengeance shall gather the harvest
of crime ! "
The warning was spoken ; the righteous
had gone,
And the proud ones of Sodom were
feasting alone ;
All gay was the banquet ; the revel was
long,
With the pouring of wine and the
breathing of song.
T was an evening of beauty ; the air was
perfume,
The earth was all greenness, the trees
were all bloom ;
And softly the delicate viol was heard,
Like the murmur of love or the notes of
a bird.
And beautiful maidens moved down in
the dance,
With the magic of motion and sunshine
of glance ;
And white amis wreathed lightly, ar"i
tresses fell free
As the plumage of birds in some tropical
tree.
Where the shrines of foul idols were
lighted on high,
And wantonness tempted the lust of the
eye;
Midst rites of obsceneness, strange,
loathsome, abhorred,
The blasphemer scoffed at the name of
the Lord.
Hark ! the growl of the thunder, — the
quaking of earth !
Woe, woe to the worship, and woe to
the mirth !
The black sky has opened, — there 's
flame in the air, —
The red arm of vengeance is lifted and
bare!
Then the shriek of the dying rose wild
where the song
And the low tone of love had been whis
pered along ;
For the fierce flames went lightly o'er
palace and bower,
Like the red tongues of demons, to blast
and devour !
Down, — down on the fallen the red
ruin rained,
And the reveller sank with his wine-cup
undrained ;
The foot of the dancer, the music's loved
thrill,
And the shout and the laughter grew
suddenly still.
The last throb of anguish was fearfully
given ;
The last eye glared forth in its madness
on Heaven !
The last groan of horror rose wildly and
vain,
And death brooded over the pride of the
Plain !
THE CRUCIFIXION.
SUNLIGHT upon Judaea's hills !
And on the waves of Galilee, —
On Jordan's stream, and on the rills
That feed the dead and sleeping sea !
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM.
87
Most freshly from the green wood springs
The light breeze on its scented wings ;
And gayly quiver in the sun
The cedar tops of Lebanon !
A few more hours, — a 'change hath
come !
The sky is dark without a cloud !
The shouts of wrath and joy are dumb,
And proud knees unto earth are
bowed.
A change is on the hill of Death,
The helmed watchers pant for breath,
And turn with wild and maniac eyes
From the dark scene of sacrifice !
That Sacrifice ! —the death of Him, —
The High and ever Holy One !
Well may the conscious Heaven grow
dim,
And blacken the beholding Sun.
The wonted light hath fled away,
Night settles on the middle day,
And earthquake from his caverned bed
Is waking with a thrill of dread !
The dead are waking underneath !
Their prison door is rent away !
And, ghastly with the seal of death,
They wander in the eye of day !
The temple of the Cherubim,
The House of God is cold and dim ;
A. curse is on its trembling walls,
Its mighty veil asunder falls !
Well may the cavern-depths of Earth
Be shaken, and her mountains nod ;
Well may the sheeted dead come forth
To gaze upon a suffering God !
Well may the temple-shrine grow dim,
knd shadows veil the Cherubim,
When He, the chosen one of Heaven,
A sacrifice for guilt is given !
And shall the sinful heart, alone,
Behold unmoved the atoning hour,
When Nature trembles on her throne,
And Death resigns his iron power ?
0, shall the heart — whose sinfulness
l^ave keenness to his sore distress,
And added to his tears of blood —
Refuse its trembling gratitude !
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM.
WHERE Time the measure of his hours
"By changeful bud and blossom keeps,
And, like a young bride crowned with
flowers,
Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps ;
"Where, to her poet's turban stone,
The Spring her gift of flowers imparts,
Less sweet than those his thoughts have
sown
In the warm soil of Persian hearts :
There sat the stranger, where the shade
Of scattered date-trees thinly lay,
While in the hot clear heaven delayed
The long and still and weary day.
Strange trees and fruits above him hung,
Strange odors filled the sultry air,
Strange birds upon the branches swung,
Strange insect voices murmured there.
And strange bright blossoms shone
around,
Turned sunward from the shadowy
bowers,
As if the Gheber's soul had found
A fitting home in Iran's flowers.
Whate'er he saw, whate'er he heard,
Awakened feelings new and sad, —
No Christian garb, nor Christian word,
Nor church with Sabbath-bell chimes
glad,
But Moslem graves, with turban stones,
And mosque-spires gleaming white, in
view,
And graybeard Mollahs in low tones
Chanting their Koran service through.
The flowers which smiled on either
hand,
Like tempting fiends, were such as
they
Which once, o'er all that Eastern land,
As gifts on demon altars lay.
As if the burning eye of Baal
The servant of his Conqueror knew,
From skies which knew no cloudy veil,
The Sun's hot glances smote him
through.
"Ah me ! " the lonely stranger said,
' ' The hope which led my footsteps on,
And light from heaven around them
shed,
O'er weary wave and waste, is gone J
88
MISCELLANEOUS.
"Where are the harvest fields al
white,
For Truth to thrust her sickle in ?
Where flock the souls, like doves ii
flight,
From the dark hiding-place of sin ?
" A silent horror broods o'er all, —
The burden of a hateful spell, —
The very flowers around recall
The hoary magi's rites of hell !
" And what am I, o'er such a land
The banner of the Cross to bear ?
Dear Lord, uphold me with thy hand,
Thy strength with human 'weakness
share ! "
He ceased ; for at his very feet
In mild rebuke a floweret smiled, —
How thrilled his sinking heart to greet
The Star-flower of the Virgin's child
Sown by some wandering Frank, i
drew
Its life from alien air and earth,
And told to Paynim sun and dew
The story of the Saviour's birth.
From scorching beams, in kindly mood,
The Persian plants its beauty screened,
And on its pagan sisterhood,
In love, the Christian floweret leaned.
With tears of joy the wanderer felt
The darkness of his long despair
Before that hallowed symbol melt,
Which God's dear love had nurtured
there.
From Nature's face, that simple flower
The lines of sin and sadness swept ;
And Magian pile and Paynim bower
In peace like that of Eden slept.
Each Moslem tomb, and cypress old,
Looked holy through the sunset air ;
And, angel-like, the Muezzin told
From tower and mosque the hour of
prayer.
With cheerful steps, the morrow's dawn
From Shiraz saw the stranger part ;
The Star-flower of the Virgin-Born
Still blooming in his hopeful heart !
HYMNS.
FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMAKTINE.
ONE hymn more, 0 my lyre !
Praise to the God above,
Of joy and life and love,
Sweeping its strings of tire !
0, who the speed of bird and wind
And sunbeam's glance will lend to me,
That, soaring upward, I may find
My resting-place and home in Thee ? — •
Thou, whom my soul, midst doubt and
gloom,
Adoreth with a fervent flame, —
Mysterious spirit ! unto whom
Pertain nor sign nor name !
Swiftly my lyre's soft murmurs go,
Up from the cold and joyless earth,
Back to the God who bade them flow,
Whose moving spirit sent them forth.
But as for me, 0 God ! for me,
The lowly creature of thy will,
Lingering and sad, I sigh to thee,
An earth-bound pilgrim still !
Was not my spirit born to shine
Where yonder stars and suns are glow
ing ?
To breathe with them the light divine
From God's own holy altar flowing ?
To be, indeed, whate'er the soul
In dreams hath thirsted for so long, —
A portion of Heaven's glorious whole
Of loveliness and song ?
0, watchers of the stars at night,
Who breathe their fire, as we the air, —
Suns, thunders, stars, and rays of light,
0, say, is He, the Eternal, there ?
Bend there around his awful throne
The seraph's glance, the angel's knee »
Or are thy inmost depths his own,
0 wild and mighty sea ?
Thoughts of my soul, how swift ye go J
Swift as the eagle's glance of fire,
arrows from the archer's bow,
To the far aim of your desire !
Thought after thought, ye 'thronging
rise,
Like spring-doves from the startled
wood,
bearing like them your sacrifice
Of music unto God 1
HYMNS.
89
And shall these thoughts of joy and love
Come bacfc again no more to me ? —
Returning like the Patriarch's dove
Wing-weary from the eternal sea,
To bear within my longing arms
The promise-bough of kindlier skies,
Plucked from the green, immortal palms
Which shadow Paradise ?
All-moving spirit ! — freely forth
At thy command the strong wind
goes :
Its errand to the passive earth,
Nor art can stay, nor strength oppose,
Until it folds its weary wing
Once more within the hand divine ;
So, weary from its wandering,
My spirit turns to thine !
Child of the sea, the mountain stream,
From its dark caverns, hurries on,
Ceaseless, by night and morning's beam,
By evening's star and noontide's sun,
Until at last it sinks to rest,
O'erwearied, in the waiting sea,
And moans upon its mother's breast, —
So turns my soul to Thee !
0 Thou who bidd'st the torrent flow,
Who lendest wings unto the wind, —
Mover of all things ! where art thou ?
0, whither shall I go to find
The secret of thy resting-place ?
Is there no holy wing for me,
That, soaring, I may search the space
Of highest heaven for Thee ?
0, would I were as free to rise
As leaves on autumn's whirlwind
borne, —
The arrowy light of sunset skies,
Or sound, or ray, or star of morn,
Which melts in heaven at twilight's
close,
Or aught which soars unchecked and
free
Through Earth and Heaven ; that I
might lose
Myself in finding Thee !
WHEN the BREATH DIVINE is flowing,
Zephyr-like o'er all things going,
And, as the touch of viewless fingers,
Softly on my soul it lingers,
Open to a breath the lightest,
Conscious of a touch the slightest, —
As some calm, still lake, whereon
Sinks the snowy-bosomed swan,
And the glistening water-rings
Circle round her moving wings :
When my upward gaze is turning
Where the stars of heaven are burning
Through the deep and dark abyss, —
Flowers of midnight's wilderness,
Blowing with the evening's breath
Sweetly in their Maker's path :
When the breaking day is flushing
All the east, and light is gushing
Upward through the horizon's haze,
Sheaf-like, with its thousand rays,
Spreading, until all above
Overflows with joy and love,
And below, on earth's green bosom,
All is changed to light and blossom :
When my waking fancies over
Forms of brightness flit and hover,
Holy as the seraphs are,
Who by Zion's fountains wear
On their foreheads, white and broad,
" HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD ! "
When, inspired with rapture high.
It would seem a single sigh
Could a world of love create, —
That my life could know no date,
And my eager thoughts could fill
Heaven and Earth, o'erflowing still ! —
Then, 0 Father ! thou alone,
From the shadow of thy throne,
To the sighing of my breast
And its rapture answerest.
All my thoughts, which, upward wing
ing,
Bathe where thy own light is spring
ing, —
All my yearnings to be free
Are as echoes answering thee 1
Seldom upon lips of mine,
Father ! rests that name of thine, —
Deep within my inmost breast,
In the secret place of mind,
Like an awful presence shrined,
Doth the dread idea rest !
Hushed and holy dwells it there, —
Prompter of the silent prayer,
Lifting up my spirit's eye
And its faint, but earnest cry,
From its dark and cold abode,
Unto thee, my Guide and God !
90
MISCELLANEOUS.
THE FEMALE MARTYR.
[MART G , aged 18, a " SISTER OF CHARITY,"
died in one of our Atlantic cities, during the
prevalence of the Indian cholera, while in volun
tary attendance upon the sick.]
"BRING out your dead!" The mid
night street
Heard and gave back the hoarse, low
call;
Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet, —
Glanced through the dark the coarse
white sheet, —
Her coffin and her pall.
" What — only one ! " the brutal hack-
man said,
As, with an oath, he spurned away the
dead.
How sunk the inmost hearts of all,
As rolled that dead-cart slowly by,
With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-
fall !
The dying turned him to the wall,
To hear it and to die ! —
Onward "it rolled ; while oft its driver
stayed,
And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! — bring
out your dead."
It paused beside the burial-place ;
"Toss in your load ! " — and it was
done. —
With quick hand and averted face,
Hastily to the grave's embrace
They cast them, one by one, —
Stranger and friend, — the evil and the
just,
Together trodden in the church yard dust !
And thou, young martyr ! — thou wast
there, —
No white-robed sisters round thee
trod, —
Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer
Rose through the damp and noisome air,
Giving thee to thy God ;
Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper
gave
Grace to the dead, and beauty to the
grave !
Yet, gentle sufferer ! there shall be,
In every heart of kindly feeling,
A rite as holy paid to thee
As if beneath the convent-tree
Thy sisterhood were kneeling,
At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels,
keeping
Their tearful watch around thy place of
sleeping.
For thou wast one in whom the light
Of Heaven's own love was kindled
well.
Enduring with a martyr's might,
Through weary day and wakeful night
Far more than words may tell :
Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and un
known, —
Thy mercies measured by thy God alone !
Where manly hearts were failing, —
where
The throngful street grew foul with
death,
0 high-souled martyr ! — thou wast
there,
Inhaling, from the loathsome air,
Poison with every breath.
Yet shrinking not from offices of dread
For the wrung dying, and the uncon
scious dead.
And, where the sickly taper shed
Its light through vapors, damp, con
fined,
Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread, —
A new Electra by the bed
Of suffering human -kind !
Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,
To that pure hope which fadeth not away.
Innocent teacher of the high
And holy mysteries of Heaven !
How turned to thee each glazing eye,
In mute and awful sympathy,
As thy low prayers were given ;
And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the
while,
An angel's features, — a deliverer's
smile !
A blessed task ! — and worthy one
Who, turning from the world, as thou,
Before life's pathway had begun
To leave its spring-time flower and sun,
Had sealed her early vow ;
Giving to God her beauty and her youth,
Her pure affections and her guileless
truth.
Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here
Could be for thee a meet reward :
THE VAUDOIS TEACHER.
91
Thine is a treasure far more dear, —
Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear
Of living mortal heard, —
The joys prepared, — the promised bliss
above, —
The holy presence of Eternal Love !
Sleep on in peace. The earth has not
A nobler name than thine shall be.
The deeds by martial manhood wrought,
The lofty energies of thought,
The fire of poesy, —
These have but frail and fading hon
ors ; — thine
Shall Time unto Eternity consign.
Yea, and when thrones shall crumble
down,
And human pride and grandeur fall, —
The herald's line of long renown, —
The mitre and the kingly crown, —
Perishing glories all !
The pure devotion of thy generous heart
Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a
part.
THE FROST SPIRIT.
HE comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit
comes ! You may trace his foot
steps now
On the naked woods and the blasted fields
and the brown hill's withered brow.
He has smitten the leaves of the gray
old trees where their pleasant
green came forth,
And the winds, which follow wherever
he goes, have shaken them down
to earth.
He comes, — he comes, — the Frost
Spirit comes ! — from the frozen
Labrador, —
From the icy bridge of the Northern
seas, which the white bear wan
ders o'er, —
Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with
ice, and the luckless forms below
In the sunless cold of the lingering night
into marble statues grow !
He comes, — he comes, — the Frost
Spirit comes ! — on the rushing
Northern blast,
And the dark Norwegian pines have
bowed as his fearful breath went
With an unscorched wing he has hur
ried on, where the fires of Hecla
glow
On the darkly beautiful sky above and
the ancient ice below.
He comes, — he comes, — the Frost
Spirit comes ! — and the quiet
lake shall feel
The torpid touch of his glazing breath,
and ring to the skater's heel ;
And the streams which danced on the
broken rocks, or sang to the lean
ing grass,
Shall bow again to their winter chain,
and in mournful silence pass.
He comes, — he comes, — the Frost
Spirit comes ! — let us meet him
as we may,
And turn with the light of the parlor-
fire his evil power away ;
And gather closer the circle round, when
that firelight dances high,
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled
Fiend as his sounding wing goes
by .'
THE VAUDOIS TEACHER.88
" 0 LADY fair, these silks of mine are
beautiful and rare, —
The richest web of the Indian loom,
which beauty's queen might wear ;
And my pearls are pure as thy own fair
neck, with whose radiant light
they vie ;
I have brought them with me a weary
way, — will my gentle lady buy ? "
And the lady smiled on the worn old man
through the dark and clustering
curls
Which veiled her brow as she bent to
viewhissilksandglitteringpearls;
And she placed their price in the old
man's hand, and lightly turned
away,
But she paused at the wanderer's earnest
call, — " My gentle lady, stay ! "
" 0 lady fair, I have yet a gem which a
purer lustre flings,
Than the diamond flash of the jewelled
crown on the lofty brow of
kings, —
92
MISCELLANEOUS.
A wonderful pearl of exceeding price,
whose virtue shall not decay,
Whose light shall be as a spell to thee
and a blessing on thy way ! "
The lady glanced at the mirroring steel
where her form of grace was seen,
Where her eye shone clear, and her dark
locks waved their clasping pearls
between ;
'"Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding
worth, thou traveller gray and
old, —
And name the price of thy precious gem,
and my page shall count thy gold."
The cloud went off from the pilgrim's
brow, as a small and meagre book,
Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from
his folding robe he took !
" Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price,
may it prove as such to thee !
Nay — keep thy gold — I ask it not, for
the word of God is free ! "
'fhe hoary traveller went his way, but
the gift he left behind
Hath had its pure and perfect work on
that high-born maiden's mind,
And she hath turned from the pride of
sin to the lowliness of truth,
And given her human heart to God in
its beautiful hour of youth !
And she hath left the gray old halls,
where an evil faith had power,
The courtly knights of her father's train,
and the maidens of her bower ;
And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales
by lordly feet untrod,
Where the poor and needy of earth are
rich in the perfect love of God !
THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN.
NOT always as the whirlwind's rush
On Horeb's mount of fear,
Not always as the burning bush
To Midian's shepherd seer,
Nor as the awful voice which came
To Israel's prophet bards,
Nor as the tongues of cloven flame,
Nor gift of fearful words, —
Not always thus, with outward sign
Of fire or voice from Heaven,
The message of a truth divine,
The call of God is given !
Awaking in the human heart
Love for the true and right, —
Zeal for the Christian's better part,
Strength for the Christian's fight.
Nor unto manhood's heart alone
The holy influence steals :
Warm with a rapture not its own,
The heart of woman feels !
As she who by Samaria's wall
The Saviour's errand sought, —
As those who with the fervent Paul
And meek Aquila wrought :
Or those meek ones whose martyrdom
Rome's gathered grandeur saw :
Or those who in their Alpine home
Braved the Crusader's war,
When the green Vaudois, trembling,
heard,
Through all its vales of death,
The martyr's song of triumph poured
From woman's failing breath.
And gently, by a thousand things
Which o'er our spirits pass,
Like breezes o'er the harp's fine strings,
Or vapors o'er a glass,
Leaving their token strange and new
Of music or of shade,
The summons to the right and true
And merciful is made.
0, then, if gleams of truth and light
Flash o'er thy waiting mind,
Unfolding to thy mental sight
The wants of human-kind ;
If, brooding over human grief,
The earnest wish is known
To soothe and gladden with relief
An anguish not thine own ;
Though heralded with naught of fear,
Or outward sign or show ;
Though only to the inward ear
It whispers soft and low ;
Though dropping, as the manna fell,
Unseen, yet from above,
Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well, —
Thy Father's call of love !
MY SOUL AND I.
STAND still, my soul, in the silent dark
I would question thee,
MY SOUL AN1> I.
93
Alone in the shadow drear and stark
With God and me !
What, my soul, was thy errand here ?
Was it mirth or ease,
Or heaping up dust from year to year ?
" Nay, none of these I "
Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight
Whose eye looks still
And steadily on thee through the night :
"To do his will !"
What hast thou done, 0 soul of mine,
That thou tremblest so ? —
Hast thou wrought his task, and kept
the line
He bade thee go ?
What, silent all ! — art sad of cheer ?
Art fearful now ?
When God seemed far and men were near,
How brave wert thou !
A.ha ! thou tremblest ! — well I see
Thou 'rt craven grown.
Is it so hard with God and me
To stand alone ? —
Summon thy sunshine bravery back,
0 wretched sprite !
Let me hear thy voice through this deep
and black
Abysmal night.
What hast thou wrought for Right and
Truth,
For God and Man,
From the golden hours of bright-eyed
youth
To life's mid span ?
Ah, soul of mine, thy tones I hear,
But weak and low,
Like far sad murmurs on my ear
They come and go.
" I have wrestled stoutly with the
Wrong,
And borne the Right
From beneath the footfall of the throng
To life and light.
" Wherever Freedom shivered a chain,
God speed, quoth I ;
To Error amidst her shouting train
I gave the lie."
Ah, soul of mine ? ah, soul of mine !
Thy deeds are well :
Were they wrought for Truth's sake o*
for thine ?
My soul, pray tell.
" Of all the work my hand hath wrought
Beneath the sky,
Save a place in kindly human thought.
No gain have I."
Go to, go to ! — for thy very self
Thy deeds were done :
Thou for fame, the miser for pelf,
Your end is one !
And where art thou going, soul of mine ?
Canst see the end ?
And whither this troubled life of thine
Evermore doth tend ?
What daunts thee now ? — what shake*
thee so ?
My sad soul say.
" I see a cloud like a curtain low
Hang o'er my way.
" Whither I go I cannot tell :
That cloud hangs black,
High as the heaven and deep as hell
Across my track.
" I see its shadow coldly enwrap
The souls before.
Sadly they enter it, step by step,
To return no more.
" They shrink, they shudder, dear God!
they kneel
•fo thee in prayer.
They shut their eyes on the cloud, but
feel
That it still is there.
"In vain they turn from the dread Before
To the Known and Gone ;
For while gazing behind them evermore
Their feet glide on.
"Yet, at times, I see upon sweet pale
faces
A light begin
To tremble, as if from holy places
And shrines within.
" And at times methinks their cold lips
move
With hymn and prayer.
94
MISCELLANEOUS.
As if somewhat of awe, but more of love
A.nd hope were there.
" I call on the souls who have left the
light
To reveal their lot ;
I bend mine ear to that wall of night,
And they answer not.
" But I hear around me sighs of pain
And the cry of fear,
And a sound like the slow sad dropping
of rain,
Each drop a tear !
" Ah, the cloud is dark, and day by day
1 am moving thither :
I must pass beneath it on my way —
God pity me ! — WHITHER ? "
Ah, soul of mine ! so brave and wise
In the life-storm loud,
Fronting so calmly all human eyes
In the sunlit crowd !
Now standing apart with God and me
Thou art weakness all,
Gazing vainly after the things to be
Through Death's dread wall.
But never for this, never for this
Was thy being lent ;
For the craven's fear is but selfishness,
Like his merriment.
Folly and Fear are sisters twain :
One closing her eyes,
The other peopling the dark inane
With spectral lies.
Know well, my soul, God's hand controls
Whate'er thou fearest ;
Round him in calmest music rolls
Whate'er thou hearest.
What to thee is shadow, to him is day,
And the end he knoweth,
And not on a blind and aimless way
The spirit goeth.
Man sees no future, — a phantom show
Is alone before him :
Past Time is dead, and the grasses grow,
And flowers bloom o'er him.
Nothing before, nothing behind ;
The steps of Faith
Fall on the seeming void, and find
The rock beneath.
The Present, the Present is all thou hasf
For thy sure possessing ;
Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast
Till it gives its blessing.
Why fear the night ? why shrink from
Death,
That phantom wan ?
There is nothing in heaven or earth be
neath
Save God and man.
Peopling the shadows we turn from Him
And from one another ;
All is spectral and vague and dim
Save God and our brother !
Like warp and woof all destinies
Are woven fast,
Linked in sympathy like the keys
Of an organ vast.
Pluck one thread, and the web ye inar •
Break but one
Of a thousand keys, a,nd the paining jai
Through all will run.
0 restless spirit ! wherefore strain
Beyond thy sphere ?
Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain,
Are now and here.
Back to thyself is measured well
All thou hast given ;
Thy neighbor's wrong is thy present hell,
His bliss, thy heaven.
And in life, in death, in dark and light.
All are in God's care :
Sound the black abyss, pierce the deep
of night,
And he is there !
All which is real now remaineth,
And fadeth never :
The hand which upholds it nowsustaineth
The soul forever.
Leaning on him, make with reverent
meekness
His own thy will,
And with strength from Him shall thy
utter weakness
Life's task fulfil ;
TO A FRIEND.
95
And that cloud itself, which now befon
thee
Lies dark in view,
Shall with beams of light from the inne
glory
Be stricken through.
And like meadow mist through autumn';
dawn
Uprolling thin,
Its thickest folds when about thee drawn
Let sunlight in.
Then of what is to be, and of whatis done
Why queriest thou ? —
The past and the time to be are one,
And both are NOW !
TO A FRIEND,
ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE.
How smiled the land of France
Under thy blue eye's glance,
Light-hearted rover !
Old walls of chateaux gray,
Towers of an early day,
Which the Three Colors play
Flauntingly over.
Now midst the brilliant train
Thronging the banks of Seine :
Now midst the splendor
Of the wild Alpine range,
Waking with change on change
Thoughts in thy young heart strange,
Lovely, and tender.
Vales, soft Elysian,
Like those in the vision
Of Mirza, when, dreaming,
He saw the long hollow dell,
Touched by the prophet's spell,
Into an ocean swell
With its isles teeming.
Cliffs wrapped in snows of years,
Splintering with icy spears
Autumn's blue heaven :
Loose rock and frozen slide,
Hung on the mountain-side,
Waiting their hour to glide
Downward, storm-driven !
Rhine- stream, by castle old,
Baron's and robber's hold,
Peacefully flowing ;
Sweeping through vineyards green,
Or where the cliffs are seen
O'er the broad wave between
Grim shadows throwing.
Or, where St. Peter's dome
Swells o'er eternal Rome,
Vast, dim, and solemn, — >
Hymns ever chanting low, —
Censers swung to and fro, — •
Sable stoles sweeping slow
Cornice and column !
0, as from each and all
Will there not voices call
Evermore back again ?
In the mind's gallery
Wilt thou not always see
Dim phantoms beckon thee
O'er that old track again ?
New forms thy presence haunt, -»
New voices softly chant, —
New faces greet thee ! —
Pilgrims from many a shrine
Hallowed by poet's line,
At memory's magic sign,
Rising to meet thee.
And when such visions come
Unto thy olden home,
Will they not waken
Deep thoughts of Him whose hand
Led thee o'er sea and land
Back to the household band
Whence thou wast taken ?
While, at the sunset time,
Swells the cathedral's chime,
Yet, in thy dreaming,
While to thy spirit's eye
Yet the vast mountains lie
Piled in the Switzer's sky,
Icy and gleaming :
Prompter of silent prayer,
Be the wild picture there
In the mind's chamber,
And, through each coming day
Him who, as staff and stay,
Watched o'er thy wandering way,
Freshly remember.
So, when the call shall be
Soon or late unto thee,
As to all given,
96
MISCELLANEOUS.
Still may that picture live,
All its fair forms survive,
And to thy spirit give
Gladness in Heaven !
THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE.
A FREE PARAPHRASE OF THE GERMAN.
To weary hearts, to mourning homes,
God's meekest Angel gently comes :
No power has he to banish pain,
Or give us back our lost again ;
And yet in tenderest love, our dear
And Heavenly Father sends him here.
There 's quiet in that Angel's glance,
There 's rest in his still countenance !
He mocks no grief with idle cheer,
Nor wounds with words themourner'sear ;
But ills and woes he may not cure
He kindly trains us to endure.
Angel of Patience ! sent to calm
Our feverish brows with cooling palm ;
To lay the storms of hope and fear,
And reconcile life's smile and tear ;
The throbs of wounded pride to still,
And make our own our Father's will !
0 thou who mournest on thy way,
With longings for the close of day ;
He walks with thee, that Angel kind,
And gently whispers, " Be resigned :
Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell
The dear Lord ordereth all things well ! "
FOLLEN.
ON READING HIS ESSAY ON THE "FU
TURE STATE."
FRIEND of my soul ! — as with moist eye
I look up from this page of thine,
Is it a dream that thou art nigh,
Thy mild face gazing into mine ?
That presence seems before me now,
A placid heaven of sweet moonrise,
When, dew-like, on the earth below
Descends the quiet of the skies.
The calm brow through the parted hair,
The gentle lips which knew no guile,
Softening the blue eye's thoughtful care
With the bland beauty of their smile.
Ah me ! — at times that last dread scent
Of Frost and Fire and moaning Sea,
Will cast its shade of doubt between
The failing eyes of Faith and thee.
Yet, lingering o'er thy charmed page,
Where through the twilight air of earth:
Alike enthusiast and sage,
Prophet and bard, thou gazest forth j
Lifting the Future's solemn veil ;
The reaching of a mortal hand
To put aside the cold and pale
| Cloud-curtains of the Unseen Land ;
In thoughts which answer to my own,
In words which reach my inward ear,
Like whispers from the void Unknown,
I feel thy living presence here.
The waves which lull thy body's rest,
The dust thy pilgrim footsteps trod,
Unwasted, through each change, attest
The fixed economy of God.
Shall these poor elements outlive
The mind whose kingly will they
wrought ?
Their gross unconsciousness survive
Thy godlike energy of thought ?
THOU LIVEST, FOLLEN ! — not in vain
Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne
The burthen of Life's cross of pain,
And the thorned crown of suffering
worn.
0, while Life's solemn mystery glooms
Around us like a dungeon's wall, —
Silent earth's pale and crowded tombs,
Silent the heaven which bends o'er
all! —
While day by day our loved ones glide
In spectral silence, hushed and lone,
To the cold shadows which divide
The living from the dread Unknown ;
While even on the closing eye,
And on the lip which moves in vain,
The seals of that stern mystery
Their undiscovered trust retain ; —
And only midst the gloom of death,
Its mournful doubts and haunting
fears,
Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith,
Smile dimly on us through their tears ;
tO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND.
97
"T is something to a heart like mine
To think of thee as living yet ;
To feel that such a light as thine
Could not in utter darkness set.
Less dreary seems the untried way
Since thou hast left thy footprints there,
And beams of mournful beauty play
Round the sad Angel's sable hair.
Oh ! — at this hour when half the sky
Is glorious with its evening light,
And fair broad fields of summer lie
Hung o'er with greenness in my sight ;
While through these elm-boughs w'et with
rain
The sunset's golden walls are seen,
With clover-bloom and yellow grain
And wood-draped hill and stream be
tween ;
( long to know if scenes like this
Are hidden from an angel's eyes ;
If earth's familiar loveliness
Haunts not thy heaven's serener skies.
For sweetly here upon thee grew
The lesson which that beauty gave,
The ideal of the Pure and True
In earth and sky and gliding wave.
And it may be that all which lends
The soul an upward impulse here,
With a diviner beauty blends,
And greets us in a holier sphere.
Through groves where blightingneverfell
The humbler flowers of earth may
twine ;
And simple draughts from childhood's
well
Blend with the angel-tasted wine.
But be the prying vision veiled,
And let the seeking lips be dumb, —
Where even seraph eyes have failed
.Shall mortal blindness seek to come ?
We only know that thou hast gone,
And that the same returnless tide
Which bore thee from us still glides on,
And we who mourn thee with it glide.
On all thou lookest we shall look,
And to our gaze erelong shall turn
That page of God's mysterious book
We so much wish, yet dread to learn.
With Him, before whose awful power
Thy spirit bent its trembling knee ; —
Who, in the silent greeting flower,
And forest leaf, looked out on thee, —
We leave thee, with » trust serene,
Which Time, nor Change, nor Death
can move,
While with thy childlike faith we lean
On Him whose dearest name is Love 1
TO THE
REFORMERS
LAND.
OF ENG~
GOD bless ye, brothers ! — in the fight
Ye 're waging now, ye cannot fail,
For better is your sense of right
Than king-craft's triple mail.
Than tyrant's law, or bigot's ban,
More mighty is your simplest word ;
The free heart of an honest man
Than crosier or the sword.
Go, — let your bloated Church rehearse
The lesson it has learned so well ;
It moves not with its prayer or curse
The gates of heaven or hell.
Let the State scaffold rise again, —
Did Freedom die when Russell died ?
Forget ye how the blood of Vane
From earth's green bosom cried ?
The great hearts of your olden time
Are beating with you, full and strong
All holy memories and sublime
And glorious round ye throng.
The bluff, bold men of Runnymede
Are with ye still in times like these ;
The shades of England's mighty dead,
Your cloud of -witnesses !
The truths ye urge are borne abroad
By every wind and every tide ;
The voice of Nature and of God
Speaks out upon your side.
The weapons which your hands have
found
Are those which Heaven itself has
1 wrought,
Light, Truth, and Love ; — your battle-
j ground
I The free, broad field of Thought.
98
MISCELLANEOUS.
No partial, selfish purpose breaks
The simple beauty of your plan,
Nor lie from throne or altar shakes
Your steady faith in man.
The languid pulse of England starts
And bounds beneath your words of
power,
The beating of her million hearts
Is with you at this hour !
0 ye who, with undoubting eyes,
Through present cloud and gathering
storm,
Behold the span of Freedom's skies,
And sunshine soft and warm, —
Press bravely onward ! — not in vain
Your generous trust in human-kind ;
The good which bloodshed could not gain
Your peaceful zeal shall find.
Press on ! — the triumph shall be won
Of common rights and equal laws,
The glorious dream of Harrington,
And Sidney's good old cause.
Blessing the cotter and the crown,
Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup ;
And, plucking not the highest down,
Lifting the lowest up.
Press on ! — and we who may not share
The toil or glory of your fight
May ask, at least, in earnest prayer,
God's blessing on the right !
THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN
TIME.
THE Quaker of the olden time ! —
How calm and firm and true,
Unspotted by its wrong and crime,
He walked the dark earth through.
Thf lust of power, the love of gain,
The thousand lures of sin
Around him, had no power to stain
The purity within.
With that deep insight which detects
All great things in the small,
And knows how each man's life affects
The spiritual lite of all,
He walked by faith and not by sight,
By love and not by law ;
The presence of the wrong or right
He rather felt than saw.
He felt that wrong with wrong partake^
That nothing stands alone,
That whoso gives the motive, makes
His brother's sin his own.
And, pausing not for doubtful choice
Of evils great or small,
He listened to that inward voice
Which called away from all.
0 Spirit of that early day,
So pure and strong and true,
Be with us in the narrow way
Our faithful fathers knew.
Give strength the evil to forsake,
The cross of Truth to bear,
And love and reverent fear to make
Our daily lives a prayer !
THE REFORMER.
ALL grim and soiled and brown with
tan,
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
Smiting the godless shrines of man
Along his path.
The Church, beneath her trembling dome,
Essayed in vain her ghostly charm :
Wealth shook within his gilded home
With strange alarm.
Fraud from his secret chambers fled
Before the sunlight bursting in :
Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head
To drown the din.
" Spare," Art implored, " yon holy pile ;
That grand, old, time-worn turret
spare " ;
Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,
Cried out, " Forbear ! "
Gray -bearded Use, who, deaf and blind.
Groped for his old accustomed stone,
Leaned on his staff, and wept to find
His seat o'erthrown.
Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes
O'erhung with paly locks of gold, —
" Why smite," he asked in sad surprise,
" The fair, the old?"
Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke^
Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam ;
Shuddering and sick of heart I woke.
As from a dream.
THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.
99
t looked : aside the dust-cloud rolled, —
The Waster seemed the Builder too ;
tip springing from the ruined Old
I saw the New.
'T was but the ruin of the had, —
The wasting of the wrong and ill ;
Whate'er of good the old time had
Was 'iviug still.
Calm grew the bro^s of him I feared ;
The frown which awed me passed away,
And left behind a smile which cheered
Like breaking day.
The grain grew green on battle-plains,
O'er swarded war-mounds grazed the
cow ;
The slave stood forging from his chains
The spade and plough.
Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay
And cottage windows, flower-entwined,
Looked out upon the peaceful bay
And hills behind.
Through vine-wreathed cups with wine
once red,
The lights on brimming crystal fell,
Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet head
And mossy well.
Through prison Walls, like Heaven-sent
hope,
Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams
strayed,
And with the idle gallows-rope
The young child played.
Where the doomed victim in his cell
Had counted o'er the weary hours,
Glad school-girls, answering to the bell,
Came crowned with flowers.
Grown wiser for the lesson given,
I fear no longer, for I know
That, where the sh?re is deepest driven,
The best fruits grow.
The outworn rite, the old abuse,
The pious fraud transparent grown,
The good held captive in the use
Of wrong alone, - •
These wait their doom, from that great law
Which makes the past time serve to
day ;
And fresher life the world shall dravr
From their decay.
0, backward-looking son of time !
The new is old, the old is new,
The cycle of a change sublime
Still sweeping through.
So wisely taught the Indian seer ;
Destroying Seva, forming Brahm,
Who wake by turns Earth's love and
fear,
Are one, the same.
Idly as thou, in that old day
Thou mournest, did thy sire repine j
So, in his time, thy child grown gray
Shall sigh for thine.
But life shall on and upward go ;
Th' eternal step of Progress beats
To that great anthem, calm and slow,
Which God repeats.
Take heart ! — the Waster builds again, —
A charmed life old Goodness hath ;
The tares may perish, — but the grain
Is not for death.
God works in all things ; all obey
His first propulsion from the night :
Wake thou and watch ! — the world is
gray
With morning light !
THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.
LOOK on him ! — through his dungeon
grate
Feebly and cold, the morning light
Comes stealing round him, dim and
late,
As if it loathed the sight.
Reclining on his strawy bed,
His hand upholds his drooping head, — •
His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard,
Unshorn his gray, neglected beard ;
And o'er his bony fingers flow
His long, dishevelled locks of snow.
No grateful fire before him glows,
And yet the winter's breath is chill ;
And o'er his half-clad person goes
The frequent ague thrill !
Silent, save ever and anon,
A sound, half murmur and half groan,
100
MISCELLANEOUS.
Forces apart the painful grip
Of the old sufferer's bearded lip ;
O sad and crushing is the fate
Of old age chained and desolate !
Just God ! why lies that old man there ?
A murderer shares his prison bed,
Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,
Gleam on him, fierce and red ;
And the rude oath and heartless jeer
Fall ever on his loathing ear,
And, or in wakefulness or sleep,
Nerve, flesh, and pulses thrill and creep
Whene'er that ruffian's tossing limb,
Crimson with murder, touches him !
What has the gray -haired prisoner done ?
Has murder stained his hands with
gore ?
Not so ; his crime 's a fouler one ;
GOD MADE THE OLD MAN POOR !
For this he shares a felon's cell, — -
The fittest earthly type of hell !
For this, the boon for which he poured
His young blood on the invader's sword,
And counted light the fearful cost, —
His blood-gained liberty is lost !
And so, for such a place of rest,
Old prisoner, dropped thy blood as
rain
On Concord's field, and Bunker's crest,
And Saratoga's plain ?
Look forth, thou man of many scars,
Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars ;
It must be joy, in sooth, to see
Von monument upreared to thee, —
Piled granite and a prison cell, —
The land repays thy service well !
Go, ring the bells and fire the guns,
And fling the starry banner out ;
Shout "Freedom!" till your lisping
ones
Give back their cradle-shout ;
Let boastful eloquence declaim
Of honor, liberty, and fame ;
Still let the poet's strain be heard,
With glory for each second word,
And everything with breath agree
To praise "our glorious liberty ! ''
But when the patron cannon jars
That prison's cold and gloomy wall,
A.nd through its grates the stripes and
stars
Rise on the wind, and fall, —
Think ye that prisoner's aged ear
Rejoices in the general cheer ?
Think ye his dim and failing eye
Is kindled at your pageantry ?
Sorrowing of soul, and chained of limb,
What is your carnival to him ?
Down with the LAW that binds him
thus !
Unworthy freemen, let it find
No refuge from the withering curse
Of God and human kind !
Open the prison's living tomb,
And usher from its brooding gloom
The victims of your savage code
To the free sun and air of God ;
No longer dare as crime to brand
The chastening of the Almighty's hand.
. LINES,
WRITTEN ON READING PAMPHLETS
PUBLISHED BY CLERGYMEN AGAINST
THE ABOLITION OF THE GALLOWS.
I.
THE suns of eighteen centuries have
shone
Since the Redeemer walked with man,
and made
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of
stone,
And mountain moss, a pillow for his
head ;
And He, who wandered with the peas
ant Jew,
And broke with publicans the bread
of shame,
And drank, with blessings in his Fa
ther's name,
The water which Samaria's outcast drew,
Hath now his temples upon every shore,
Altar and shrine and priest, — and in
cense dim
Evermore rising, with low prayer and
hymn,
From lips which press the temple's mar
ble floor,
Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread
Cross He bore.
n.
Yet as of old, when, meekly "doing
good,"
He fed a blind and selfish multitude
LINES.
101
And even the poor companions of his lot
With their dim earthly vision knew him
not,
How ill are his high teachings under
stood !
Where He hath spoken Liberty, the
priest
At his own altar binds the chain
anew ;
Where He hath bidden to Life's equal
feast,
The starving many wait upon the few ;
Where He hath spoken Peace, his name
hath been
The loudest war-cry of contending men ;
Priests, pale with vigils, in his name
have blessed
The unsheathed sword, and laid the
spear in rest,
Wet the war-banner with their sacred
wine,
And crossed its blazon with the holy
sign;
Yea, in his name who bade the erring
live,
And daily taught his lesson, — to for
give ! —
Twisted the cord and edged the mui -
derous steel ;
A.nd, with his words of mercy on their
lips,
Hung gloating o'er the pincer's burning
grips,
And the grim horror of the straining
wheel ;
Fed the slow flame which gnawed the
victim's limb,
Who saw before his searing eyeballs
swim
The image of tJieir Christ in cruel
zeal,
Through the black torment-smoke, held
mockingly to him !
The blood which mingled with the des
ert sand,
And beaded with its red and ghastly
dew
The vines and olives of the Holy Land, —
The shrieking curses of the hunted
Jew, —
The white-sown bones of heretics,
where'er
They sank beneath the Crusade's holy
spear, —
Goa's dark dungeons, — Malta's sea*
washed cell,
Where with the hymns the ghostly
fathers sung
Mingled the groans by subtle torture
wrung,
Heaven's anthem blending with the
shriek of hell !
The midnight of Bartholomew, — the
stake
Of Smithfield, and that thrice-ac
cursed name
Which Calvin kindled by Geneva's
lake, -
New England's scaffold, and the priestly
sneer
Which mocked its victims in that hour
of fear,
When guilt itself a human tear might
claim, —
Bear witness, 0 thou wronged and mer
ciful One !
That Earth's most hateful crimes have
in thy name been done !
IV.
Thank God ! that I have lived to see
the time
When the great truth begins at last to
find
An utterance from the deep heart of
mankind,
Earnest and clear, that ALL REVENGE is
CRIME !
That man is holier than a creed, — that
all
Restraint upon him must consult his
good,
Hope's sunshine linger on his prison
wall,
And Love look in upon his soli*
tude.
The beautiful lesson which our Savioiu1
taught
Through long, dark centuries its way
hath wrought
Into the common mind and popular
thought ;
And words, to which by Galilee's lake
shore
The humble fishers listened with hushed
oar,
Have found an echo in the general
heart,
And of the public faith become a living
part.
102
MISCELLANEOUS.
v.
Who shall arrest this tendency ? — - Bring
back
The cells of Venice and the bigot's rack ?
Harden the softening human heart again
To cold indifference to a brother's pain ?
Ye most unhappy men ! — who, turned
away
From the mild sunshine of the Gospel
day,
Grope in the shadows of Man's twi
light time,
What mean ye, that with ghoul-like
zest ye brood,
O'er those foul altars streaming with
warm blood,
Permitted in another age and clime ?
Why cite that law with which the bigot
Jew
Rebuked the Pagan's mercy, when he
knew
No evil in the Just One ? — Wherefore
turn
To the dark cruel past ? — Can ye not
learn
From the pure Teacher's life, how mildly
free
Is the great Gospel of Humanity ?
The Flamen's knife is bloodless, and no
more
Mexitli's altars soak with huToan gore,
No more the ghastly sacrifices smoke
Through the green arches of the Druid's
oak ;
And ye of milder faith, with your high
claim
Of prophet-utterance in the Holiest
name,
Will ye oecome the Druids of our time !
Set up your scaffold-altars in our land,
And, consecrators of Law's darkest
crime,
Urge to its loathsome work the hang
man's hand '
Beware, — lest human nature, roused at
last,
From its peeled shoulder your encum
brance cast,
And, sick to loathing of your cry for
blood,
Rank ye with those who led their vic
tims round
The Celt's red altar and the Indian's
mound,
Abhorred of Earth and Heaven, — a
pagan brotherhood !
THE HUMAN SACRIFICE.
FAR from his close and noisome cell
By grassy lane and sunny scream,
Blown clover field and strawberry dell,
And green and meadow freshness, fell
The footsteps of his dream.
Again from careless feet the dew
Of summer's misty morn he shook ;
Again with merry heart he threw
His light line in the rippling brook.
Back crowded all his school-day joys, —
He urged the ball and quoit again,
And heard the shout of laughing boys
Come ringing down the walnut glen.
Again he felt the western breeze,
With scent of flowers and crisping
hay ;
And down again through wind-stirred
trees
He saw the quivering sunlight play.
An angel in home's vine-hung door,
He saw his sister smile once more ;
Once more the truant's brown-locked
head
Upon his mother's knees was laid,
And sweetly lulled to slumber there,
With evening's holy hymn and prayer J
He woke. At once on heart and brain
The present Terror rushed again, —
Clanked on his limbs the felon's chain !
Pie woke, to hear the church-tower tell
Time's footfall on the conscious bell,
And, shuddering, feel that clanging din
His life's LAST HOUR had ushered in ;
To see within his prison -yard,
Through the small window, iron barred,
The gallows shadow rising dim
Between the sunrise heaven and him, —
A horror in God's blessed air, —
A blackness in his morning light, —
Like some foul devil -altar there
Built up by demon hands at night.
And, maddened by that evil sight,
Dark, horrible, confused, and strange,
A chaos of wild, weltering change,
All power of check and guidance gone,
Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on.
In vain he strove to breathe a prayer,
In vain he turned the Holy Book,
He only heard the gallows-stair
Creak as the wind its timbers shook.
No dream for him of sin forgiven,
While still that baleful spectre stood,
THE HUMAN SACRIFICE.
102
With its hoarse murmur, " Blood for
Blood I "
Between him and the pitying Heaven !
Low on his dungeon floor he knelt,
And smote his breast, and on his
chain,
Whose iron clasp he always felt,
His hot tears fell like rain ;
And near him, with the cold, calm look
And tone of one whose formal part,
Un warmed, unsoftened of the heart,
Is measured out by rule and book,
With placid lip and tranquil blood,
The hangman's ghostly ally stood,
Blessing with solemn text and word
The gallows-drop and strangling cord ;
Lending the sacred Gospel's awe
And sanction to the crime of Law.
IV.
He saw the victim's tortured brow, —
The sweat of anguish starting there, —
The record of a nameless woe
In the dim eye's imploring stare,
Seen hideous through the long, damp
hair, —
Fingers of ghastly skin and bone
Working and writhing on the stone ! —
And heard, by mortal terror wrung
From heaving'breast and stiffened tongue,
The choking sob and low hoarse prayer ;
As o'er his half-crazed fancy came
A vision of the eternal flame, —
Its smoking cloud of agonies, —
Its demon-worm that never dies, —
The everlasting rise and fall
Of fire-waves round the infernal wall ;
While high above that dark red flood,
Black, giant- like, the gallows stood ;
Two busy fiends attending there :
One with cold mocking rite and prayer,
The other with impatient grasp,
Tightening the death-rope's strangling
clasp.
v.
The unfelt rite at length was done, —
The prayer unheard at length was
said, —
An hour had passed : — the noonday sun
Smote on the features of the dead !
And he who stood the doomed beside,
Calm gauger of the swelling tide
Of mortal agony and fear,
Heeding with curious eye and ear
Whate'er revealed the keen excess
Of man's extremest wretchedness !
And who in that dark anguish saw
An earnest of the victim's fate,
The vengeful terrors of God's law,
The kindlings of Eternal hate, —
The first drops of that fiery rain
Which beats the dark red realm of pain,
Did he uplift his earnest cries
Against the crime of Law, which gave
His brother to that fearful grave,
Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies,
And Faith's white blossoms never wave
To the soft breath of Memory's sighs ; —
Which sent a spirit marred and stained,
By fiends of sin possessed, profaned,
In madness and in blindness stark,
Into the silent, unknown dark ?
No, — from the wild and shrinking dread
With which he saw the victim led
Beneath the dark veil which divides
Ever the living from the dead,
And Nature's solemn secret hides,
The man of prayer can only draw
New reasons for his bloody law ;
New faith in staying Murder's hand
By murder at that Law's command ;
New reverence for the gallows-rope,
As human nature's latest hope ;
Last relic of the good old time,
When Power found license for its crime,
And held a writhing world in check
By that fell cord about its neck ;
Stifled Sedition's rising shout,
Choked the young breath of Freedom out,
And timely checked the words whiclj
sprung
From Heresy's forbidden tongue ;
While in its noose of terror bound,
The Church its cherished union found,
Conforming, on the Moslem plan,
The motley -colored mind of man,
Not by the Koran and the Sword,
But by the Bible and the Cord .'
VI.
0 Thou ! at whose rebuke the grave
Back to warm life its sleeper gave,
Beneath whose sad and tearful glance
The cold and changed countenance
Broke the still horror of its trance,
And, waking, saw with joy above,
A brother's race of tenderest love ,
Thou, unto whom the blind and lainej
The sorrowing and the sin-sick came.
And from thy very garment's hem
Drew life and healing unto them.
104
MISCELLANEOUS.
The burden of thy holy faith
Was love and life, not hate and death,
Man's demon ministers of pain,
The Mends of his revenge were sent
From thy pure Gospel's element
To their dark home again.
Thy name is Love ! What, then, is he,
Who in that name the gallows rears,
An awful altar built to thee,
With sacrifice of blood and tears ?
O, once again thy healing lay
On the blind eyes which knew thee not,
And let the light of thy pure day
Melt in upon his darkened thought.
Soften his hard, cold heart, and show
The power which in forbearance lies,
And let him feel that mercy now
Is better than old sacrifice !
VII.
As on the White Sea's charmed shore,
The Parsee sees his holy hill
With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained
o'er,
Yet knows beneath them, evermore,
The low, pale fire is quivering still ;
So, underneath its clouds of sin,
The heart of man retaineth yet
Gleams of its holy origin ;
And half-quenched stars that never set,
Dim colors of its faded bow,
And early beauty, linger there,
And o'er its wasted desert blow
Faint breathings of its morning air,
O, never yet upon the scroll
Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul,
Hath Heaven inscribed " DESPAIR ! "
Cast not the clouded gem away,
Quench not the dim but living ray, —
My brother man, Beware !
With that deep voice which from the
skies
Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice,
God's angel cries, FORBEAR !
RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE.
O MOTHER EARTH ! upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And o'er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
Fold softly in thy long embrace
That heart so worn and broken,
And cool its pulse of fire beneath
Thy shadows old and oaken.
Shut out from him the bitter word
And serpent hiss of scorning ;
Nor let the storms of yesterday
Disturb his quiet morning.
Breathe over him forgetfulness
Of all save deeds of kindness,
And, save to smiles of grateful eyes,
Press down his lids in blindness.
There, where with living ear and eye
He heard Potomac's flowing,
And, through his tall ancestral trees,
Saw autumn's sunset glowing,
He sleeps, — still looking to the west,
Bereath the dark wood shadow,
As i' he still would see the sun
Sink down on wave and meadow.
Bard, Sage, and Tribune ! — in himself
All moods of mind contrasting, —
The tenderest wail of human woe,
The scorn-like lightning blasting ;
The pathos which from rival eyes
Unwilling tears could summon,
The stinging taunt, the fiery burst
Of hatred scarcely human !
Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower,
From lips of life-long sadness ;
Clear picturings of majestic thought
Upon a ground of madness ;
And over all Romance and Song
A classic beauty throwing,
And laurelled Clio at his side
Her storied pages showing.
All parties feared him : each in turn
Beheld its schemes disjointed,
As right or left his fatal glance
And spectral finger pointed.
Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it down
With trenchant wit uns] taring,
And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand
The robe Pretence was wearing.
Too honest or too proud to feign
A love he never cherished,
Beyond Virginia's border line
His patriotism perished.
While others hailed in distant skies
Our eagle's dusky pinion,
He only saw the mountain bird
Stoop o'er his Old Dominion !
Still through each change of fortune
strange,
Racked nerve, and brain all burning,
DEMOCRACY.
105
His loving faith in Mother-land
Knew never shade of turning ;
By Britain's lakes, by Neva's wave,
Whatever sky was o'er him,
He heard her rivers' rushing sound,
Her blue peaks rose before him.
He held his slaves, yet made withal
No false and vain pretences,
Nor paid a lying priest to seek
For Scriptural defences.
His harshest words of proud rebuke,
His bitterest taunt and scorning,
Fell fire-like on the Northern brow
That bent to him in fawning..
He held his slaves ; yet kept the while
His reverence for the Human ;
In the dark vassals of his will
He saw but Man and Woman !
No hunter of God's outraged poor
His Roanoke valley entered ;
No trader in the souls of men
Across his threshold ventured.
And when the old and wearied man
Lay down for his last sleeping,
And at his side, a slave no more,
His brother-man stood weeping,
His latest thought, his latest breath,
To Freedom's duty giving,
With failing tongue and trembling hand
The dying blest the living.
0, never bore his ancient State
A truer son or braver !
None trampling with a calmer scorn
On foreign hate or favor.
He knew her faults, yet never stooped
His proud and manly feeling
To poor excuses of the wrong
Or meanness of concealing.
But none beheld with clearer eye
The plague-spot o'er her spreading,
None heard more sure the steps of
Doom
Along her future treading.
For her as for himself he spake,
When, his gaunt frame upbracing,
He traced with dying hand ' ' REMORSE ' "
And perished in the tracing.
As from the grave where Henry sleeps,
From Vernon's weeping willow,
&nd from the grassy pall which hides
The Sage of Monticello,
So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone
Of Randolph's lowly dwelling,
Virginia ! o'er thy land of slaves
A warning voice is swelling !
And hark ! from thy deserted fields
Are sadder warnings spoken,
From quenched hearths, where thy ex
iled sons
Their household gods have broken.
The curse is on thee, — wolves for me/4,
And briers for corn -sheaves giving I
0, more than all thy dead renown
Were now one hero living !
DEMOCRACY.
All things whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them. —
Matthew vii. 12.
BEARER of Freedom's holy light,
Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod,
The foe of all which pains the sight,
Or wounds the generous ear of God !
Beautiful yet thy temples rise,
Though there profaning gifts aro
thrown ;
And fires unkindled of the skies
Are glaring round thy altar-stone.
Still sacred, — though thy name be
breathed
By those whose hearts thy truth de
ride ;
And garlands, plucked from thee, are
wreathed
Around the haughty brows of Pride.
0, ideal of my boyhood's time !
The faith in which my father stood,
Even when the sons of Lust and Crime
Had stained thy peaceful courts with
blood !
Still to those courts my footsteps turn,
For through the mists which darken
there,
I see the flame of Freedom burn, —
The Kebla of the patriot's prayer !
The generous feeling, pure and warm,
Which owns the rights of all divine, —
I The pitying heart, — the helping arm, — •=
The prompt self-sacrifice, — are thine.
106
MISCELLANEOUS.
Beneath thy broad, impartial eye,
How fade the lines of caste and birth !
How equal in their suffering lie
The groaning multitudes of earth !
Still to a stricken brother true,
Whatever clime hath nurtured him ;
As stooped to heal the wounded Jew
The worshipper of Geriziin.
By misery unrepelled, unawed
By pomp or power, thou seest a MAN
In prince or peasant, — slave or lord, —
Pale priest, or swarthy artisan.
Through all disguise, form, place, or
name,
Beneath the flaunting robes of sin,
Through poverty and squalid shame,
Thou lookest on the man within.
On man, as man, retaining yet,
Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim,
The crown upon his forehead set, —
The immortal gift of God to him.
A.nd there is reverence in thy look ;
For that frail form which mortals wear
The Spirit of the Holiest took,
And veiled his perfect brightness there.
Xot from the shallow babbling fount
Of vain philosophy thou art ;
He who of old on Syria's mount
Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the lis
tener's heart,
In holy words which cannot die;
In thoughts which angels leaned to
know,
Proclaimed thy message from on high, —
Thy mission to a world of woe.
That voice's echo hath not died !
From the blue lake of Galilee,
A.nd Tabor's lonely mountain-side,
It calls a struggling world to thee.
Thy name and watchword o'er this land
I hear in every breeze that stirs,
And round a thousand altars stand
Thy banded party worshippers.
Not to these altars of a day,
At party's call, my gift I bring ;
But on thy olden shrine I lay
A freeman's dearest offering :
The voiceless utterance of his will, —
His pledge to Freedom and to Truth,
That manhood's heart remembers still
The homage of his generous youth.
Election Day, 1843.
TO RONGE.
STRIKE home, strong - hearted man >
Down to the root
Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel.
Thy work is to hew down. In God's
name then
Put nerve into th}*" task. Let other men
Plant, as they may, that better tree
whose fruit
The wounded bosom of the Church shall
heal.
Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy
blows
Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand,
On crown or crosier, which shall inter-
pose
Between thee and the weal of Father
land.
Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of
all,
Shake thou all German dream-land with
the fall
Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk
"Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart
monk.
Fight not with ghosts and shadows.
Let us hear
The snap of chain-links. Let our glad
dened ear
Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as
the light
Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell
of night.
Be faithful to both worlds ; nor think to
feed
Earth's starving millions with the husk.s
of creed.
Servant of Him whose mission high and
holy
Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and
the lowly,
Thrust not his Eden promise from OUT
sphere,
Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's
span ;
Like him of Patmos, see it, now and
here, —
The New Jerusalem comes down to
man !
CHALKLEY HALL.
107
Be warned by Luther's error. Nor like
him,
When the roused Teuton dashes from his
limb
The rusted chain of ages, help to bind
His hands for whom thou claim'st the
freedom of the mind !
CHALKLEY HALL.89
How bland and sweet the greeting of
this breeze
To him who flies
From crowded street and red wall's
weary gleam,
Till far behind him like a hideous dream
The close dark city lies !
Here, while the market murmurs, while
men throng
The marble floor
Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and
din
Of the world's madness let me gather* in
My better thoughts once more.
0, once again revive, while on my ear
The cry of Gain
And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away,
Ye blessed memories of my early day
Like sere grass wet with rain ! —
Once more let God's green earth and
sunset air
Old feelings waken ;
Through weary years of toil and strife
and ill,
0, let me feel that my good angel still
Hath not his trust forsaken.
And well do time and place befit my
mood :
Beneath the arms
Of this embracing wood, a good man
made
His home, like Abraham resting in the
shade
Of Mamre's lonely palms.
Here, rich with autumn gifts of count
less years,
The virgin soil
Turned from the share he guided, and
in rain
A.nd summer sunshine throve the fruits
and grain
Which blessed his honest toil.
Here, from his voyages on the stornry
seas,
Weary and worn,
He came to meet his children and to
bless
The Giver of all good in thankfulness
And praise for his return.
And here his neighbors gathered in to
greet
Their friend again,
Safe from the wave and the destroying
Which reap untimely green Bermuda's
vales,
And vex the Carib main.
To hear the good man tell of simple truth,
Sown in an hour
Of weakness in some far-off Indian isle,
From the parched bosom of a barren
soil,
Raised up in life and power :
How at those gatherings in Barbadian
vales,
A tendering love
Came o'er him, like the gentle rain from
heaven,
And words of fitness to his lips were
given,
And strength as from above :
How the sad captive listened to the
Word,
Until his chain
Grew lighter, and his wounded spirit
felt
The healing balm of consolation melt
Upon its life-long pain :
How the armed warrior sat him down to
hear
Of Peace and Truth,
And the proud ruler and his Creole
dame,
Jewelled and gorgeous in her beauty
came,
And fair and bright-eyed youth.
0, far away beneath New England's
sky,
Even when a boy,
Following my plough by Merrimack's
green shore,
His simple record I have pondered o'er
With deep and quiet joy.
108
MISCELLANEOUS.
And hence this scene, in sunset glory
warm, —
Its woods around,
Its still stream winding on in light and
shade,
Its soft, green meadows and its upland
glade, —
To me is holy ground.
And dearer far than haunts where
Genius keeps
His vigils still ;
Than that where Avon's son of song is
laid,
Of Vaucluse hallowed by its Petrarch's
shade,
Or Virgil's laurelled hill.
To the gray walls of fallen Paraclete,
To Juliet's urn,
Fair Arno and Sorrento's orange-grove,
Where Tasso sang, let young Romance
and Love
Like brother pilgrims turn.
But here a deeper and serener charm
To all is given ;
And blessed memories of the faithful
dead
O'er wood and vale and meadow-stream
have shed
The holy hues of Heaven !
TO J. P.
NOT as a poor requital of the joy
With which my childhood heard that
lay of thine,
Which, like an echo of the song divine
At Bethlehem breathed above the Holy
Boy,
Bore to my ear the Airs of Palestine, —
Not to the poet, but the man I bring
In friendship's fearless ^mst my offering :
How much it lacks I feel, and thou wilt
see,
Yet well I know that thpu hast deemed
with me
Life all too earnest, and its time too
short
For dreamy ease and Fancy's graceful
sport ;
And girded for thy constant strife with
wrong,
Like Nehemian fighting while he
wrought
The broken walls of Zion, even thy
song
Hath a rude martial tone, a blow in
every thought !
THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON.
[IBN BATUTA, the celebrated Mussulman trav
eller of the fourteenth century , speaks of a cy
press-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by
the natives, the leaves of which were said to lall
only at certain intervals, and he who had the
happiness to find and eat one of them was re
stored, at once, to youth and vigor. The trav
eller saw several venerable J OGEES, or saints, sit
ting silent and motionless under the tree, pa
tiently -Baiting the ialliug of a leaf.]
THEY sat in silent watchfulness
The sacred cypress-tree about,
And, from beneath old wrinkled brows,
Their failing eyes looked out.
Gray Age and Sickness waiting there
. Through weary night and lingering
day, —
Grim as the idols at their side,
And motionless as they.
Unheeded in the boughs above
The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet ;
Unseen of them the island flowers
Bloomed brightly at their feet.
O'er them the tropic night-storm swept,
The thunder crashed on rock and hill ;
The cloud-fire on their eyeballs blazed,
Yet there they waited still !
What was the world without to them ?
The Moslem's sunset-call, — the dance
Of Ceylon's maids, — the passing gleam
Of battle-flag and lance ?
They waited for that falling leaf
Of which the wandering Jogees sing :
Which lends once more to wintry age
The greenness of its spring.
0, if these poor and blinded ones
In trustful patience wait to feel
O'er torpid pulse and failing limb
A youthful freshness steal ;
Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree
Whose healing leaves of life are shed,
In answer to the breath of prayer,
Upon the waiting head ;
TO
109
Not to restore our failing forms,
And build the spirit's broken shrine,
But on the fainting SOUL to shed
A light and life divine ;
Shall we grow weary in our watch,
And murmur at the long delay ?
Impatient of our Father's time
And his appointed way ?
Or shall the stir of outward things
Allure and claim the Christian's eye,
When on the heathen watcher's ear
Their powerless murmurs die ?
Alas ! a deeper test of faith
Than prison cell or martyr's stake,
The self-abasing watchfulness
Of silent prayer may make.
We gird us bravely to rebuke
Our erring brother in the wrong, —
And in the ear of Pride and Power
Our warning voice is strong.
Easier to smite with Peter's sword
Than "watch one hour " in humbling
prayer.
Life's "great things," like the Syrian
lord,
Our hearts can do and dare.
But oh ! we shrink from Jordan's side,
From waters which alone can save ;
And murmur for Abana's banks
And Pharpar's brighter wave.
0 Thou, who in the garden's shade
Didst wake thy weary ones again,
Who slumbered at that fearful hour
Forgetful of thy pain ;
Bend o'er us now, as over them,
And set our sleep-bound spirits free,
Nor leave us slumbering in the watch
Our souls should keep with Thee !
A DREAM OF SUMMER.
BLAND as the morning breath of June
The southwest breezes play ;
And, through its haze, the winter noon
Seems warm as summer's day.
The snow-plumed Angel of the North
Has dropped his icy spear ;
Again the mossy earth looks forth,
Again the streams gush clear.
The fox his hillside cell forsakes,
The muskrat leaves his nook,
The bluebird in the meadow brakes
Is singing with the brook.
" Bear up, 0 Mother Nature ! " cry
.Bird, breeze, and streamlet free ;
" Our winter voices prophesy
Of summer days to thee ! "
So, in those winters of the soul,
By bitter blasts and drear
O'erswept from Memory's frozen pole.
Will sunny days appear.
Reviving Hope and Faith, they show
The soul its living powers,
And how beneath the winter's snow
Lie germs of summer flowers !
The Night is mother of the Day,
The Winter of the Spring,
And ever upon old Decay
The greenest mosses cling.
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks,
Through showers the sunbeams fall ;
For God, who loveth all his works,
Has left his Hope with all !
itfi 1st month, 1847.
TO ,
WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN's JOURNAL.
" Get the writings of John Woolman bi
heart." — Essays of Elia.
MAIDEN ! with the fair brown tresses
Shading o'er thy dreamy eye,
Floating on thy thoughtful forehead
Cloud wreaths of its sky.
Youthful years and maiden beauty,
Joy with them should still abide, — • -
Instinct take the piace of Duty,
Love, not Reason, guide.
Ever in the New rejoicing,
Kindly beckoning back the Old,
Turning, with the gift of Midas,
All things into gold.
And the passing shades of sadness
Wearing even a welcome guise,
As, when some bright lake lies open
To the sunny skies,
Every wing of bird above it,
Every light cloud floating on.
11U
MISCELLANEOUS.
Glitters like that flashing mirror
In the self-same sun.
But upon thy youthful forehead
Something like a shadow lies ;
And a serious soul is looking
From thy earnest eyes.
With an early introversion,
Through the forms of outward things,
Seeking for the subtle essence,
And the hidden springs.
Deeper than the gilded surface
Hr.th thy wakeful vision seen,
Farther than the narrow present
Have thy journeyings been.
Thou hast midst Life's empty noises
Heard the solemn steps of Time,
A.nd the low mysterious voices
Of another clime.
All the mystery of Being
Hath upon thy spirit pressed, —
Thoughts which, like the Deluge wan
derer,
Find no place of rest :
That which mystic Plato pondered,
That which Zeiio heard with awe,
And the star-rapt Zoroaster
In his night-watch saw.
From the doubt and darkness springing
Of the dim, uncertain Past,
Moving to the dark still shadows
O'er the Future cast,
Early hath Life's mighty question
Thrilled within thy heart of youth,
With a deep and strong beseeching :
WHAT and WHERE is TRUTH ?
Hollow creed and ceremonial,
Whence the ancient life hath fled,
Idle faith unknown to action,
Dull and cold and dead. €
Oracles, whose wire-worked meanings
Only wake a quiet scorn, —
Not from these thy seeking spirit
Hath its answer drawn.
But, like some tired child at even,
On thy mother Nature's breast,
Thou, methinks, art vainly seeking
Truth, and peace, and rest.
O'er that mother's rugged features
Thou art throwing Fancy's veil,
Light and soft as woven moonbeams,
Beautiful and frail !
O'er the rough chart of Existence,
Kocks of sin and wastes of woe,
Soft airs breathe, and green leaves tremble,
And cool fountains flow.
And to thee an answer cometh
From the earth and from the sky,
And to thee the hills and waters
And the stars reply.
But a soul-sufficing answer
Hath no outward origin ;
More than Nature's many voices
May be heard within.
Even as the great Augustine
Questioned earth and sea and sky,40
And the dusty tomes of learning
And old poesy.
But his earnest spirit needed
More than outward Nature taught, —
More than blest the poet's vision
Or the sage's thought.
Only in the gathered silence
Of a calm and waiting frame
Light and wisdom as from Heaven
To the seeker came.
Not to ease and aimless quiet
Doth that inward answer tend,
But to works of love and duty
As our being's end, —
Not to idle dreams and trances,
Length of face, and solemn tone^
But to Faith, in daily striving
And performance shown.
Earnest toil and strong endeavor
Of a spirit wrhich within
Wrestles with familiar evil
And besetting sin ;
And without, with tireless vigor,
Steady heart, and wreapon strong,
In the power of truth assailing
Every form of wrong.
Guided thus, how passing lovely
Is the track of WOOLMAN'S feet J
LEGGETT'S MONUMENT.
Ill
A.nd his brief and simple record
How serenely sweet !
O'er life's humblest duties throwing
Light the earthling never knew,
Freshening all its dark waste places
As with Hermon's dew.
All which glows in Pascal's pages, —
All which sainted Guion sought,
Or the blue-eyed German Rahel
Half-unconscious taught : —
Beauty, such as Goethe pictured,
Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed
Living warmth and starry brightness
Round that poor man's head.
Not a vain and cold ideal,
Not a poet's dream alone,
But a presence warm and real,
Seen and felt and known.
When the red right-hand of slaughter
Moulders with the steel it swung,
When the name of seer and poet
Dies on Memory's tongue,
All bright thoughts and pure shall gather
Round that meek and suffering one, —
Glorious, like the seer- seen angel
Standing in the sun !
Take the good man's book and ponder
What its pages say to thee, —
Blessed as the hand of healing
May its lesson be.
If it only serves to strengthen
Yearnings for a higher good,
For the fount of living waters
And diviner food ;
If the pride of human reason
Feels its meek and still rebuke,
Quailing like the eye of Peter
From the Just One's look ! —
If with readier ear thou heedest
What the Inward Teacher saith,
Listening with a willing spirit
And a childlike faith, —
Thou mayst live to bless the giver,
Who, himself but frail and weak5
Would at least the highest welfare
Of another seek ;
And his gift, though poor and lowly
It may seem to other eyes,
Yet may prove an angel holy
In a pilgrim's guise.
LEGGETT'S MONUMENT.
" Ye build the tombs of the prophets."
Holy Writ
YES, — pile the marble o'er him ! It is
well
That ye who mocked him in his long
stern strife,
And planted in the pathway of his life
The ploughshares of your hatred hot
from hell,
Who clamored down the bold reformer
when
He pleaded for his captive fellow-men,
Who spurned him in the market-place,
and sought
Within thy walls, St.. Tammany, to
bind
In party chains the free and honest
thought,
The angel utterance of an upright mind,
Well is it now that o'er his grave ye rais«
The stony tribute of your tardy praise,
For not alone that pile shall tell to Fame
Of the brave heart beneath, but of the
builders' shame !
112
&ONGS OF LABOK.
SONGS OF LABOR,
AND OTHER POEMS.
DEDICATION.
I WOULD the gift I offer here
Might graces from thy favor take,
And, seen through Friendship's at
mosphere,
On softened lines and coloring, wear
The unaccustomed light of beauty, for
thy sake.
Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain :
But what I have I give to thee, —
The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's
plain,
And paler flowers, the latter rain
Cally from the westering slope of life's
autumnal lea.
Above the fallen groves of green,
Where youth's enchanted forest
stood,
Dry root and mossed trunk between,
A sober after-growth is seen,
A.S springs the pine where falls the gay-
leafed maple wood !
Yet birds will sing, and breezes play
Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree ;
And through the bleak and wintry day
It keeps its steady green alway, —
3o, even my after-thoughts may have a
charm for thee.
Art's perfect forms no moral need,
And beauty is its own excuse ; 41
But for the dull and flowerless weed
Some healing virtue still must plead,
And the rough ore must find its honors
in its use.
So haply these, my simple lays
Of homely toil, may serve to show
The orchard bloom and tasselled maize
That skirt and gladden duty's ways,
The unsung beauty hid life's common
things below.
Haply from them the toiler, bent
Above his forge or plough, may gain,
A manlier spirit of content,
And feel that life is wisest spent
Where the strong working hand makes
strong the working brain.
The doom which to the guilty pair
Without the walls of Eden came,
Transforming sinless ease to care
And rugged toil, no more shall bear
The burden of old crime, or mark of
primal shame.
A blessing now, — a curse no more ;
Since He, whose name we breathe
with awe,
The coarse mechanic vesture wore, —
A poor man toiling with the poor,
In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the sam«
law.
THE SHIP-BUILDERS.
THE sky is ruddy in the east,
The earth is gray below,
And, spectral in the river-mist,
The ship's white timbers show.
Then let the sounds of measured stroke
And grating saw begin ;
The broad-axe to the gnarled oak,
The mallet to the pin !
Hark ! — roars the bellows, blast on blast,
The sooty smithy jars,
And fire-sparks, rising far and fast,
Are fading with the stars.
All day for us the smith shall stand
Beside that flashing forge ;
All day for us his heavy hand
The groaning anvil scourge.
From far-off hills, the panting team
For us is toiling near ;
For us the raftsmen down the stream
Their island barges steer.
Rings out for us the axe-man's stroke
In forests old and still, —
For us the century-circled oak
Falls crashing down his hill.
THE SHOEMAKERS.
113
tip ! — up \ — in nobler toil than ours
No craftsmen bear a part :
We make of Nature's giant powers
The slaves of human Art.
Lay rib to rib and beam to beam,
And drive the treenails free ;
Nor faithless joint nor yawning seam
Shall tempt the searching sea !
Where'er the keel of our good ship
The sea's rough field shall plough, —
Where'er her tossing spars shall drip
With salt-spray caught below, —
That ship must heed her master's beck,
Her helm obey his hand.
And seamen tread her reeling deck
As if they trod the land.
Her oaken ribs the vulture-beak
Of Northern ice may peel ;
The sunken rock and coral peak
May grate along her keel ;
And know we well the painted shell
We give to wind and wave,
Must float, the sailor's citadel,
Or sink, the sailor's grave !
Ho ! — strike away the bars and blocks,
And set the good ship free !
Why lingers on these dusty rocks
The young bride of the sea ?
Look ! how she moves adown the grooves,
In graceful beauty now !
How lowly on the breast she loves
Sinks down her virgin prow !
God bless her ! wheresoe'er the breeze
Her snowy wing shall fan,
Aside the frozen Hebrides,
Or sultry Hindostan !
Where'er, in mart or on the main,
With peaceful flag unfurled,
She helps to wind the silken chain
Of commerce round the world !
Speed on the ship ! — But let her bear
No merchandise of sin,
No groaning cargo of despair
Her roomy hold within ;
No Lethean drug for Eastern lands,
Nor poison-draught for ours ;
But honest fruits of toiling hands
And Nature's sun and showers.
Be hers the Prairie' s golden grain,
The Desert's golden sand,
The clustered fruits of sunny Spain,
The spice of Morning-land !
1 Her pathway on the open mair
May blessings follow free,
And glad hearts welcome back again
Her white sails from the sea !
THE SHOEMAKERS.
Ho ! workers of the old time styled
The Gentle Craft of Leather !
Young brothers of the ancient guild.
Stand forth once more together !
Call out again your long array,
In the olden merry manner !
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day,
Fling out your blazoned banner !
Rap, rap ! upon the well-worn stone
How falls the polished hammer !
Rap, rap ! the measured sound has grown
A quick and merry clamor.
Now shape the sole ! nt>w deftly curl
The glossy vamp around it,
And bless the while the bright-eyed girl
Whose gentle fingers bound it !
For you, along the Spanish main
A hundred keels are ploughing ;
For you, the Indian on the plain
His lasso-coil is throwing ;
For you, deep glens with hemlock dark
The woodman's fire is lighting ;
For you, upon the oak's gray bark,
The woodman's axe is smiting.
For you, from Carolina's pine
The rosin-gum is stealing ;
For you, the dark-eyed Florentine
Her silken skein is reeling ;
For you, the dizzy goatherd roams
His rugged Alpine ledges ;
For you, round all her shepherd homes,.
Bloom England's thorny hedges.
The foremost still, by day or night,
On moated mound or heather,
Where'er the need of trampled right
Brought toiling men together ;
Where the free burghers from the wall
Defied the mail-clad master,
Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet-call,
No craftsmen rallied faster.
Let foplings sneer, let fools deride, —
Ye heed no idle scorn er ;
Free hands and hearts are still your pride.
And duty done, your honor.
114
SONGS OF LABOR.
Ye dare to trust, for honest fame,
The jury Time empanels,
And leave to truth each noble name
Which glorifies your annals.
Thy songs, Han Sachs, are living yet,
In strong and hearty German ;
And Bloomfield's lay, and Gilford's wit,
And patriot fame of Sherman ;
Still from his book, a mystic seer,
The soul of Behmen teaches,
And England's priestcraft shakes to hear
Of Fox's leathern breeches.
The foot is yours ; where'er it falls,
It treads your well-wrought leather,
On earthen floor, in marble halls,
On carpet, or on heather.
Still there the sweetest charm is found
Of matron grace or vestal's,
As Hebe's foot bore nectar round
Among the old celestials !
Rap, rap ! — your stout and bluff brogan,
With footsteps slow and weary,
May wander where the sky's blue span
Shuts down upon the prairie.
On Beauty's foot your slippers glance,
By Saratoga's fountains,
Or twinkle down the summer dance
Beneath the Crystal Mountains !
The red brick to the mason's hand,
The brown earth to the tiller's,
The shoe in yours shall wealth command,
Like fairy Cinderella's !
As they who shunned the household maid
Beheld the crown upon her,
So all shall see your toil repaid
With hearth and home and honor.
Then let the toast be freely quaffed,
In water cool and brimming, —
" All honor to the good old Craft,
Its merry men and women ! "
Call out again your long array,
In the old time's pleasant manner :
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day,
Fling out his blazoned banner !
THE DROVERS.
THROUGH heat and cold, and sho\ver
and sun,
Still onward cheerly driving !
There 's life alone in duty done,
And rest alone in striving.
But see ! the day is closing cool,
The woods are dim before us ;
The white fog of the wayside pool
Is creeping slowly o'er us.
The night is falling, comrades mine,
Our footsore beasts are weary,
And through yon elms the tavern sign
Looks out upon us cheery.
The landlord beckons from his door,
His beechen fire is glowing ;
These ample barns, with feed in store,
Are filled to overflowing.
From many a valley frowned across
By brows of rugged mountains ;
From hillsides where, through spongjl
moss,
Gush out the river fountains ;
From quiet farm-fields, green and low,
And bright with blooming clover ;
From vales of corn the wandering crow
No richer hovers over ;
Day after day our way has been,
O'er many a hill and hollow ;
By lake and stream, by wood and glen,
Our stately drove we follow.
Through dust- clouds rising thick and dun,
As smoke of battle o'er us,
Their white horns glisten in the sun,
Like plumes and crests before us.
We see them slowly climb the hill,
As slow behind it sinking ;
Or, thronging close, from roadside rill,
Or sunny lakelet, drinking.
Now crowding in the narrow road,
In thick and struggling masses,
They glare upon the teamster's load,
Or rattling coach that passes.
Anon, with toss of horn and tail,
And paw of hoof, and bellow,
They leap some farmer's broken pale,
O'er meadow-close or fallow.
Forth comes the startled goodman ; forth
Wife, children, house-dog, sally,
Till once more on their dusty path
The baffled truants rally.
We drive no starvelings, scraggy grown,
Loose-legged, and ribbed and bony,
Like those who grind their noses down
On pastures bare and stony, —
Lank oxen, rough as Indian dogs,
And cows too lean for shadows,
THE FISHERMEN.
115
Disputing feebly with the frogs
The crop of saw-grass meadows !
In our good drove, so sleek and fair,
No bones of leanness rattle ;
No tottering hide-bound ghosts are there,
Or Pharaoh's evil cattle.
Each stately beeve bespeaks the hand
That fed him unrepining ;
The fatness of a goodly land
In each dun hide is shining.
We 've sought them where, in warmest
nooks,
The freshest feed is growing,
By sweetest springs and clearest' brooks
Through honeysuckle flowing ;
Wherever hillsides, sloping south,
Are bright with early grasses,
Or, tracking green the lowland's drouth,
The mountain streamlet passes.
But now the day is closing cool,
The woods are dim before us,
The white fog of the wayside pool
Is creeping slowly o'er us.
The cricket to the frog's bassoon
His shrillest time is keeping ;
The sickle of yon setting moon
The meadow-mist is reaping.
The night is falling, comrades mine,
Our footsore beasts are weary,
And through yon elms the tavern sign
Looks out upon us cheery.
To-morrow, eastward with our charge
We '11 go to meet the dawning,
Ere yet the pines of Kearsarge
Have seen the sun of morning.
When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth,
Instead of birds, are flitting ;
When children throng the glowing
hearth,
And quiet wives are knitting ;
While in the fire-light strong and clear
Young eyes of pleasure glisten,
To tales of all we see and hear
The ears of home shall listen.
By many a Northern lake and hill,
From many a mountain pasture,
Shall Fancy play the Drover still,
And speed the long night faster.
Then let us on, through shower and sun,
And heat and cold, be driving ;
There 's life alone in duty done,
And rest alone in striving.
THE FISHERMEN.
HURRAH ! the seaward breezes
Sweep down the bay amain ;
Heave up, my lads, the anchor !
Run up the sail again !
Leave to the lubber landsmen
The rail- car and the steed ;
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed.
From the hill-top looks the steeple,
And the lighthouse from the sand ;
And the scattered pines are waving
Their farewell from the land.
One glance, my lads, behind us,
For the homes we leave one sigh,
Ere we take the change and chances
Of the ocean and the sky.
Now, brothers, for the icebergs
Of frozen Labrador,
Floating spectral in the moonshine,
Along the low, black shore !
Where like snow the gannet's feathers
On Brador's rocks are shed,
And the noisy murr are flying,
Like black scuds, overhead ;
Where in mist the rock is hiding,
And the sharp reef lurks below,
And the white squall smites in sun*
mer,
And the autumn tempests blow ;
Where, through gray and rolling vapor.
From evening unto morn,
A thousand boats are hailing,
Horn answering unto horn.
Hurrah ! for the Red Island,
With the white cross on its crown !
Hurrah ! for Meccatina,
And its mountains bare and brown !
Where the Caribou's tall antlers
O'er the dwarf- wood freely toss,
And the footstep of the Mick mack
Has no sound upon the moss.
There we '11 drop our lines, and gather
Old Ocean's treasures in,
Where'er the mottled mackerel
Turns up a steel-dark fin.
The sea 's our field of harvest,
Its scaly tribes our grain ;
We '11 reap the teeming waters
As at home they reap the plain !
116
SONGS OF LABOR.
Our wet hands spread the carpet,
And light the hearth of home ;
From our fish, as in the old time,
The silver coin shall come.
As the demon fled the chamber
Where the fish of Tobit lay,
So ours from all our dwellings
Shall frighten Want away.
Though the mist upon our jackets
In the bitter air congeals,
And our lines wind stiff and slowly
From off the frozen reels ;
Though the fog be dark around us,
And the storm blow high and loud,
We will whistle down the wild wind,
And laugh beneath the cloud !
In the darkness as in daylight,
On the water as on land,
God's eye is looking on us,
And beneath us is his hand !
. Death will find us soon or later,
On the deck or in the cot ;
And we cannot meet him better
Than in working out our lot.
Hurrah ! — hurrah ! — the west-wind
Comes freshening down the bay,
The rising sails are filling, —
Give way, my lads, give way !
Leave the coward landsman clinging
To the dull earth, like a weed, —
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed !
THE HUSKERS.
IT was late in mild October, and the
long autumnal rain
Had left the summer harvest-fields all
green with grass again ;
The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving
all the woodlands gay
With the hues of summer's rainbow, or
the meadow-flowers of May.
Through a thin, dry mist, that morning,
the sun rose broad and red,
At first a rayless disk of fire, he bright
ened as he sped ;
Y"et, even his noontide glory fell chas
tened and subdued,
On the cornfields and the orchards, and
softly pictured wood.
And all that quiet afternoon, slow slop.
ing to the night,
He wove with golden shuttle the haze
with yellow light ;
Slanting through the painted beeches,
he glorified the hill ;
And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay
brighter, greener still.
And shouting boys in woodland haunts
caught glimpses of that sky,
Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and
laughed, they knew not why ;
And school-girls, gay with aster-flowers,
beside the meadow brooks,
Mingled the glow of autumn with the
sunshine of sweet looks.
From spire and barn looked westerly the
patient weathercocks ;
But even the birches on the hill stood
motionless as rocks.
No sound was in the woodlands, save the
squirrel's dropping shell,
And the yellow leaves among the boughs,
low rustling as they fell.
The summer grains were harvested ; the
stubble-fields lay dry,
Where June winds rolled, in light and
shade, the pale green waves of rye ;
But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys
fringed with wood,
Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the
heavy corn crop stood.
Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain,
through husks that, dry and sere,
Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone
out the yellow ear ;
Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in
many a verdant fold,
And glistened in the slanting light the
pumpkin's sphere of gold.
There wrought the busy harvesters ; and
many a creaking wain
Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load
of husk and grain ;
Till broad and red, as when he rose, the
sun sank down, at last,
And like a merry guest's farewell, the
day in brightness passed.
And lo ! as through the western pines, on
meadow, stream, and pond,
Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all
afire beyond,
THE LUMBERMEN.
117
Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder
glory shone,
And the sunset and the moonrise were
mingled into one !
As thus into the quiet night the twilight
lapsed away,
And deeper in the brightening moon the
tranquil shadows lay ;
From many a brown old farm-house, and
hamlet without; name,
Their milking and their home-tasks done,
the merry huskers came.
Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from
pitchforks in the mow,
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the
pleasant scene below ;
The growing pile of husks behind, the
golden ears before,
And laughing eyes and busy hands and
brown cheeks glimmering o'er.
Half hidden in a quiet nook, serene of
look and heart,
Talking their old times over, the old men
sat apart ;
While, up and down the unhusked pile,
or nestling in its shade,
At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout,
the happy children played.
Urged by the good host's daughter, a
maiden young and fair,
Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and
pride of soft brown hair,
The master of the village school, sleek of
hair and smooth of tongue,
To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a
husking-ballad sung.
THE CORN-SONG.
HEAP high the farmer's wintry hoard
Heap high the golden corn !
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn !
Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine ;
We better love the hardy gift
Our nigged vales bestow,
To cheer us when the storm shall drift
Our harvest-fields with snow.
Through vales of grass and meads of
flowers,
Our ploughs their furrows made,
While on the hills the sun and show-
ers
Of changeful April played.
We dropped the seed o'er hill and
plain,
Beneath the sun of May,
And frightened from our sprouting
grain
The robber crows away.
All through the long, bright days of
June
Its leaves grew green and fair,
And waved in hot midsummer's noon
Its soft and yellow hair.
And now, with autumn's moonlit eves,
Its harvest-time has come,
We pluck away the frosted leaves,
And bear the treasure home.
There, richer than the fabled gift
Apollo showered of old,
Fair hands the broken grain shall silt,
And knead its meal of gold.
Let vapid idlers loll in silk
Around their costly board ;
Give us the bowl of samp and milk,
By homespun beauty poured !
Where'er the wide old kitchsn hearth
Sends up its smoky curls,
Who will not thank the kindly earth,
And bless our farmer girls !
Then shame on all the proud and vain,
Whose folly laughs to scorn
The blessing of our hardy grain,
Our wealth of golden corn !
Let earth withhold her goodly root,
Let mildew blight the rye,
Give to the worm the orchard's fruit,
The wheat-field to the fly :
But let the good old crop adorn
The hills our fathers trod ;
Still let us, for his golden corn,
Send up our thanks to God t
118
SONGS OF LABOR.
THE LUMBERMEN.
WlLDLT round our woodland quarters,
Sad-voiced Autumn grieves ;
Thickly down these swelling waters
Float his fallen leaves.
Through the tall and naked timber,
Column-like and old,
Gleam the sunsets of November,
From their skies of gold.
O'er us, to the southland heading,
Screams the gray wild-goose ;
On the night-frost sounds the treading
Of the brindled moose.
Noiseless creeping, while we 're sleeping,
Frost his task-work plies ;
Soon, his icy bridges heaping,
Shall our log-piles rise.
When, with sounds of smothered thun
der,
On some night of rain,
Lake and river break asunder
Winter's weakened chain,
Down the wild March flood shall bear
them
To the saw-mill's wheel,
Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear
them
With his teeth of steel.
Be it starlight, be it moonlight,
In these vales below,
When the earliest beams of sunlight
Streak the mountain's snow,
Crisps the hoar-frost, keen and early,
To our hurrying feet,
And the forest echoes clearly
All our blows repeat.
Where the crystal Ambijejis
Stretches broad and clear,
(Vnd Millnoket's pine-black ridges
Hide the browsing deer :
Where, through lakes and wide morasses,
Or through rocky walls,
Swift and strong, Peno-bscot passes
White with foamy falls ;
Where, through clouds, are glimpses
given
Of Katahdin's sides, —
Hock and forest piled to heaven,
Torn and ploughed by slides !
Far below, the Indian trapping,
In the sunshine warm j
Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping
Half the peak in storm !
Where are mossy carpets better
Than the Persian weaves,
And than Eastern perfumes sweeter
Seem the fading leaves ;
And a music wild and solemn,
From the pine-tree's height,
Rolls its vast and sea-like volume
On the wind of night ;
Make we here our camp of winter ;
And, through sleet and snow,
Pitchy knot and beechen splinter
On our hearth shall glow.
Here, with mirth to lighten duty,
We shall lack alone
Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty,
Childhood's lisping tone.
But their hearth is brighter burning
For our toil to-day ;
And the welcome of returning
Shall our loss repay,
When, like seamen from the waters,
From the woods we come,
Greeting sisters, wives, and daughters,
Angels of our home !
Not for us the measured ringing
From the village spire,
Not for us the Sabbath singing
Of the sweet-voiced choir :
Ours the old, majestic temple,
Where God's brightness shines
Down the dome so grand and ample,
Propped by lofty pines !
Through each branch -en woven skylight,
Speaks He in the breeze,
As of old beneath the twilight
Of lost Eden's trees !
For his ear, the inward feeling
Needs no outward tongue ;
He can see the spirit kneeling
While the axe is swung.
Heeding truth alone, and turning
From the false and dim,
Lamp of toil or altar burning
Are alike to Him.
Strike, then, comrades ! — Trade is
waiting
On our rugged toil ;
Far sldps waiting for the freighting
Of our woodland spoil i
" Down the wild March flood shall bear them." Page 118.
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA.
119
Ships, whose traffic links these highlands,
Bleak and cold, of ours,
With the citron-planted islands
Of a clime of flowers ;
To our frosts the tribute bringing
Of eternal heats ;
In our lap of winter flinging
Tropic fruits and sweets.
Cheerly, on the axe of labor,
Let the sunbeams dance,
Better than the flash of sabre
Or the gleam of lance !
Strike ! — With every blow is given
Freer sun and sky,
And the long-hid earth to heaven
Looks, with wondering eye !
Loud behind us grow the murmurs
Of the age to come ;
Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers,
Bearing harvest home !
Here her virgin lap with treasures
Shall the green earth fill ;
Waving wheat and golden maize-ears
Crown each beechen hill.
Keep who will the city's alleys,
Take the smooth-shorn plain, —
Give to us the cedar valleys,
Rocks and hills of Maine !
In our North-land, wild and woody.
Let us still have part :
Rugged nurse and mother sturdy,
Hold us to thy heart !
0, our free hearts beat the warmer
For thy breath of snow ;
And our tread is all the firmer
For thy rocks below.
Freedom, hand in hand with Iabor5
Walketh strong and brave ;
On the forehead of his neighbor
No man writeth Slave !
Lo, the day breaks ! old Katahdin's
Pine-trees show its fires,
While from these dim forest gardens
Rise their blackened spires.
Up, my comrades ! up and doing !
Manhood's rugged play
Still renewing, bravely hewing
Through the world our way !
MISCELLANEOUS.
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA.
SPEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking
northward far away,
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the
Mexican array,
Who is losing ? who is winning ? are they
far or come they near ?
Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither
rolls the storm we hear.
" Down the hills of Angostura still the
storm of battle rolls ;
Blood is flowing, men are dying ; God
have mercy on their souls ! "
Who is losing ? who is winning ? —
" Over hill and over plain,
I see but smoke of cannon clouding
through the mountain rain."
Holy Mother ! keep our brothers ! Look,
Ximena, look once more.
'•' Still I see the fearful whirl wind rolling
darkly as before,
Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend
and foeman, foot and horse,
Like some wild and troubled torrent
sweeping down its mountain
course."
Look forth once more, Ximena f "Ah t
the smoke has rolled away ;
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming
down the ranks of gray.
Hark ! that sudden blast of bugles ! there
the troop of Minon wheels ;
There the Northern horses thunder, with
the cannon at their heels.
" Jesu, pity ! how it thickens ! now re
treat and now advance !
Right against the blazing cannon shivers
Puebla's charging lance !
Down they go, the brave young riders ;
horse and foot together fall ;
Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through
them ploughs the Northern ball."
120
MISCELLANEOUS.
Nearer came the storm and nearer, roll
ing fast and frightful on !
Speak, Xinifiua, speak and tell us, who
has lost, and who has won ?
" Alas' aLis ! I know not; friend and foe
together fall,
O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my
sisters, for them all !
" Lo ! the wind the smoke is lifting :
Blessed Mother, save my brain !
I can see the wounded crawling slowly
out from heaps of slain.
Now thev stagger, blind and bleeding ;
now they fall, and strive to rise ;
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest
they die before our eyes !
" O my heart's love ! O my dear one !
lay thy poor head on my knee :
Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee ?
Canst thou hear me ? canst thou
see?
0 my husband, brave and gentle ! 0 my
Berual, look once more
On the blessed cross before thee ! Mercy !
mercy ! all is o'er ! "
Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena ; lay thy
dear one down to rest ;
Let his hands he meekly folded, lay the
cross upon his breast ;
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his
funeral masses said :
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the
living ask thy aid.
Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair
and young, a soldier lav,
Torn with shot and pierced with lances,
bleeding slow his life away ;
But, as tenderly before him the lorn
Ximena knelt,
She saw the Northern eagle shining on
his pistol-belt.
With a stifled cry of horror straight she
turned away her head ;
With a sad and bitter freling looked she
back upon her dead;
Hut she heard the youth's low moaning,
and his struggling breath of pain,
And she raised the cooling water to his
parching lips again
Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed
her hand and faintly smiled :
Was that pitying face his mother's ? did
she watch beside her child ?
All his stranger words with meaning her
woman's heart supplied ;
With her kiss upon his forehead,
" Mother ! " murmured he, and
died !
"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy,
who led thee forth,
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother,
weeping, lonely, in the North ! "
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as
she laid him with her dead,
And turned to soothe the living, and
bind the wounds which bled.
Look forth once more, Ximena ! " Like
a cloud before the wind
Rolls the battle down the mountains,
leaving blood and death behind ;
Ah ! they plead in vain for mercy ; in
the dust the wounded strive ;
Hide your faces, holy angels ! O thou
'Christ of God, forgive I"
Sink, 0 Night, among thy mountains !
let the cool, gray shadows fall ;
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop
thy curtain over all !
Through the thickening winter twilight,
wide apart the battle rolled,
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the
cannon's lips grew cold.
But the noble Mexic women still their
holy task pursued,
Through that lon<r, dark night of sorrow,
worn and faint and lacking food.
Over weak and suffering brothers, with
a tender care they hung,
And the dying foeman blessed them in
a strange and Northern tongue.
Not wholly lost, 0 Father ! is this evil
world of ours ;
Upward, through its blood and ashes,
spring afresh the Kden flowers ;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love
and Pity send their prayer,
And still thy white-winged angels hovei
dimly in our air !
BARCLAY OF URY,
121
FORGIVENESS.
MY heart was heavy, for its trust had been
Abused, its kindness answered with
foul wrong ;
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-
men,
One summer Sabbath day I strolled
among
The green mounds of the village burial-
place ;
Where, pondering how all human love
and hate
Find one sad level ; and how, soon or
late,
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with
meekened face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,
Pass the green threshold of our common
grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence
none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race,
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
Swept all my pride away, and trembling
I forgave !
BARCLAY OF URY.42
UP the streets of Aberdeen,
By the kirk and college green,
Rode the Laird of Ury ;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,
Prompt to please her master ;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
Cursed him as he passed her.
Yet, with calm and stately mien,
Up the streets of Aberdeen
Came he slowly riding •
And, to all he saw and heard,
Answering not with bitter word,
Turning not for chiding.
Came a troop with broadswords swinging,
Bits and bridles marply ringing,
Loose and free and froward ;
Quoth the foremost, " Ride him down !
Push him ! prick him ! through the town
Drive the Quaker coward ! "
But from out the thickening crowd
Cried a sudden voice and loud :
" Barclay ! Ho ! a Barclay ! "
And the old man at his side
Saw a comrade, battle tried,
Scarred and sunburned darkly ;
Who with ready weapon bare,
Fronting to the troopers there,
Cried aloud : " God save us,
Call ye coward him who stood
Ankle deep in Lut/en's blood,
With the brave Gustavus ? "
' ' 1ST ay, I do not need thy sword,
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord ;
" Put it up, I pray thee :
Passive to his holy will,
Trust I in my Master still,
Even though he slay me.
" Pledges of thy love and faith,
Proved on many a field cf death,
Not by me are needed."
Marvelled much that henchman bold,
That his laird, so stout of old,
Now so meekly pleaded.
" Woe 's the day ! " he sadly said,
With a slowly shaking head,
And a look of pity ;
" Ury's honest lord reviled,
Mock of knave and sport of child,
In his own good city !
"Speak the word, and, master mine,
As we charged on Tilly's line,
And his Walloon lancers,
Smiting through their midst we '11 teach
Civil look and decent speech
To these boyish prancers ! "
" Marvel not, mine ancient friend,
Like beginning, like the end " ;
Quoth the Laird of Ury, *
" Is the sinful servant more
Than his gracious Lord who bore
Bonds and stripes in Jewry ?
" Give me joy that in his name
I can bear, with patient frame,
All these vain ones offer ;
While for them He suffereth long,
Shall! answer wrong with wrong,
Scoffing with the scoffer ?
122
MISCELLANEOUS.
" Happier I, with loss of all,
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
With few friends to greet me,
Than when reeve and squire were seen,
Riding out from Aberdeen,
With bared heads to meet me.
"When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,
Blessed me as I passed her door ;
And the snooded daughter,
Through her casement glancing down,
Smiled on him who bore renown
From red fields of slaughter.
" Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
Hard the old friend's falling off,
Hard to learn forgiving :
But the Lord his own rewards,
And his love with theirs accords,
Warm and fresh and liviiig.
" Through this dark and stormy night
Faith beholds a feeble light
Up the blackness streaking ;
•Knowing God's own time is best,
In a patient hope 1 rest
For the full day-breaking ! "
So the Laird of Ury said,
Turning slow his horse's head
Towards the Tolbooth prison,
Where, through iron grates, he heard
Poor disciples of the Word
Preach of Christ arisen !
Not in vain, Confessor old,
Unto us the tale is told
Of thy day of trial ;
Every age on him, who strays
From its broad and beaten ways,
Pours its sevenfold vial.
Happy he whose inward ear
Angel comfortings can hear,
O'er the rabble's laughter ;
And while Hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter.
Knowing this, that never yet
Share of Truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow ;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
•Reap the harvests yellow.
Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,
Must the moral pioneer
From the Future borrow ;
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And, on midnight's sky of rain,
Paint the golden morrow !
WHAT THE VOICE SAID.
MADDENED by Earth's wrong and evil,
" Lord ! " 1 cried in sudden ire,
" From thy right hand, clothed with
thunder,
Shake the bolted fire !
' ' Love is lost, and Faith is dying ;
With the brute the man is sold ;
And the dropping blood of labor
Hardens into gold.
"Here the dying wail of Famine,
There the battle's groan of pain ;
And, in silence, smooth-faced Mammon
Reaping men like grain.
" 'Where is God, that we should fear
Him?'
Thus the earth-born Titans say ;
' God ! if thou art living, hear us ! '
Thus the weak ones pray."
"Thou, the patient Heaven upbraid
ing,"
Spake a solemn Voice within ;
" Weary of our Lord's forbearance,
Art thou free from sin ?
" Fearless brow to Him uplifting,
Canst thou for his thunders call,
Knowing that to guilt's attraction
Evermore they fall ?
" Know'st thou not all germs of evil
In thy heart await their time ?
jSTot thyself, but God's restraining,
Stays their growth of crime.
" Couldst thou boast, 0 child of weak
ness !
O'er the sons of wrong and strife,
Were their strong temptations planted
In thy path of life ?
; Thou hast seen two streamlets gush.
ing
From one fountain, clear and free,
But by widely varying channels
Searching for the sea.
WORSHIP.
123
" Glideth one through, greenest valleys,
Kissing them with lips still sweet ;
One, mad roaring down the mountains,
Stagnates at their feet.
" Is it choice whereby the Parsee
Kneels before his mother's fire ?
In his black tent did the Tartar
Choose his wandering sire ?
" He alone, whose hand is bounding
Human power and human will,
Looking through each soul's surrounding,
Knows its good or ill.
" For thyself, while wrong and sorrow
Make to thee their strong appeal,
Coward wert thou not to utter
What the heart must feel.
" Earnest words must needs be spoken
When the warm heart bleeds or burns
With its scorn of wrong, or pity
For the wronged, by turns.
" But, by all thy nature's weakness,
Hidden faults and follies known,
Be thou, in rebuking evil,
Conscious of thine own.
" Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty
To thy lips her trumpet set,
But with harsher blasts shall mingle
Wailings of regret."
Cease not, Voice of holy speaking,
Teacher sent of God, be near,
Whispering through the day's cool silence,
Let my spirit hear !
So, when thoughts of evil-doers
Waken scorn, or hatred move,
Shall a mournful fellow-feeling
Tamper all with love.
TO DELAWARE.
[Written during the discussion in the Legisla
ture of that State, in the winter of 1846 - 47, of a
bill for the abolition of slavery.]
THRICE welcome to thy sisters of the East,
To the strong tillers of a rugged home,
With spray- wet locks to Northern winds
released,
hardy feet o'erswept by oceaM s
foair> :
And to the young nymphs of the golden
West,
Whose harvest mantles, fringed with
prairie bloom,
Trail in the sunset, — 0 redeemed and
blest,
To the warm welcome of thy sisters
come !
Broad Pennsylvania, down her sail-white
bay
Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from
her plains,
And the great lakes, where echo, free
alway,
Moaned never shoreward with the
clank of chains,
Shall weave new sun-bows in their toss
ing spray,
And all their waves keep grateful holiday.
And, smiling on thee through her moun
tain rains,
Vermont shall bless thee ; and the
Granite peaks,
And vast Katahclm o'er his woods, shall
wear
Their snow-crowns brighter in the cold
keen air ;
And Massachusetts, with her rugged
cheeks
O'errun with grateful tears, shall turn
to thee,
When, at thy bidding, the electric wire
Shall tremble northward with its words
of fire ;
Glory and praise to God ! another State
is free !
WORSHIP.
" Pure religion, and undefiled, before God and
the Father is this : To visit the widows and the
fatherless in their affliction, and to keep himself
unspotted from the world." — James i. 27-
THE Pagan's myths through marble lips
are spoken,
And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and
moan
Round fane and altar overthrown and
broken,
O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring
of stone.
Blind Faith had martyrs in those old
high places,
The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's
wood.
124
VVith mother's offering, to the Fiend
embraces,
Bone of their bone, and blood of the
own blood.
Red altars, kindling through that nigl
of error,
Smoked with warm blood beneath th
cruel eye
Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror
Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky
Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcast
ing
All heaven above, and blighting eartJ
below,
The scourge grew red, the lip grew pal
with fasting,
And man's oblation was his fear an(
woe !
Then through great temples swelled th
dismal moaning
Of dirge-like music and sepulchra
prayer ;
Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols
droning,
Swung their white censers in the bur
dened air :
As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor
Of gums and spices could the Unseen
One please ;
A-s if his ear could bend, with childish
favor,
To the poor flattery of the organ keys !
Feet red from war-fields trod the church
aisles holy,
With trembling reverence : and the
oppressor there,
Kneeling before his priest, abased and
lowly,
Crushed human hearts beneath his
knee of prayer.
Not such the service the benignant Father
Requireth at his earthly children's
hands :
Kot the poor offering of vain rites, but
rather
The simple duty man from man de
mands.
For Earth he asks it : the full joy of
Heaven
Knoweth no change of waning or in
crease ;
MISCELLANEOUS.
The great heart of the Infinite beats even,
Untroubled flows the river of his peace
He asks no taper lights, on high sur.
rounding
The priestly altar and the saintly grave,
No dolorous chant nor organ music sound-
Nor incense clouding up the twilight
nave.
For he whom Jesus loved hath truly
spoken :
The holier worship which he deigns tc
bless
Restores the lost, and binds the spirit
broken,
And feeds the widow and the fatherless J
Types of our human weakness and our
sorrow !
Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones
dead ? t
Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to
borrow
From stranger eyes the home lights
which l?ave fled ?
0 brother man ! fold to thy heart thj-
brother ;
Where pity dwells, the peace of God
is there ;
To worship rightly is to love each other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed
a prayer.
follow with reverent steps the great ex
ample
Of Him whose holy work was "doing
good " ;
So shall the wide earth seem our Father's
temple,
Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.
'hen shall all shackles fall ; the stormy
clangor
Of wild war music o'er the earth shall
cease ;
jove shall tread out the baleful fire of
anger,
And in its ashes plant the tree of peace \
THE DEMON OF THE STUDY.
HE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's
room,
And eats his meat and drinks his ale,
THE DEMON OF THE STUDY.
125
And beats the maid with her unused
broom,
And the lazy lout with his idle flail,
But he sweeps the floor and threshes the
corn,
And hies him away ere the break of
dawn.
The shade of Denmark fled from the sun,
And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-
loft cheer,
The fiend of Faust was a faithful one,
Agrippa's demon wrought in fear,
And the devil of Martin Luther sat
By the stout monk's side in social chat.
The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of
him
Who seven times crossed the deep,
Twined closely each lean and withered
limb,
Like the nightmare in one's sleep.
But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad cast
The evil weight from his back at last.
But the demon that cometh day by day
To my quiet room and fireside nook,
Where the casement light falls dim and
On faded painting and ancient book,
Is a sorrier one than any whose names
Are chronicled well by good King James.
No bearer of burdens like Caliban,
No runner of errands like Ariel,
He comes in the shape of a fat old man,
Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell ;
And whence he comes, or whither he goes,
1 know as I do of the wind which blows.
A- stout old man with a greasy hat
Slouched heavily down to his dark,
red nose,
Arid two gray eyes enveloped in fat,
Looking through glasses with iron
bows.
Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can,
Guard well your doors from that old
man !
He comes with a careless ' ' How d' ye do ? "
And seats himself in my elbow-chair ;
And my morning paper and pamphlet new
Fall forthwith under his special care
And he wipes his glasses and clears nis
throat,
And, button by button, unfolds his coat.
And then he reads from paper and book,
In a low and husky asthmatic tone,
With the stolid sameness of posture and
look
Of one who reads to himself alone ;
And hour after hour on my senses come
That husky wheeze and that dolorous
hum.
The price of stocks, the auction sales,
The poet's song and the lover's glee,
The horrible murders, the seaboard gales,
The marriage list, and the jeu d' esprit,
All reach my ear in the self-same tone, —
1 shudder at each, but the fiend reads on !
0, sweet as the lapse of water at noon
O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree,
The sigh of the wind in the woods of June,
Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea,
Or the low soft music, perchance, which
seems
To float through the slumbering singer's
dreams,
So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone,
Of her in whose features I sometimes
look,
As I sit at eve by her side alone,
And we read by turns from the self
same book, —
Some tale perhaps of the olden time,
Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme.
Then when the story is one of woe, —
Some prisoner's plaint through his dun
geon-bar,
Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low
Her voice sinks down like a moan afar ;
And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail,
And his face looks on me worn and pale,
And when she reads some merrier song,
Her voice is glad as an April bird's,
And when the tale is of war and wrong,
A trumpet's summons is in her words,
And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear,
And see the tossing of plume and spear ! — •
0, pity me then, when, day by day,
The stout fiend darkens myparlordoor ;
And reads me perchance the self-same lay
Which melted in music, the night be-
fore,
From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet,
And moved like twin roses which zephyrs
meet !
126
MISCELLANEOUS.
I cross my floor with a nervous tread,
I whistle and laugh and sing and shout,
I flourish my cane above his head,
And stir up the fire to roast him out ;
I topple the chairs, and drum on the pane,
And press my hands on my ears, in vain !
I 've studied Glanville and James the wise,
And wizard black-letter tomes which
treat
Of demons of every name and size,
Which a Christian man is presumed to
meet,
But never a hint and never a line
Can I find of a reading fiend like mine.
I 've crossed the Psalter with Brady and
Tate,
And laid the Primer above them all,
I 've nailed a horseshoe over the grate,
And hung a wig to my parlor wall
Once worn by a learned Judge, they
say,
At Salem court in the witchcraft day !
" Conjuro te, sceleraf.issime,
Abire ad tuum locum ! " — still
Like a visible nightmare he sits by me, —
The exorcism has lost its skill ;
And I hear again in my haunted room
The husky wheeze and the dolorous hum !
Ah ! — commend me to Mary Magdalen
With her sevenfold plagues, — to the
wandering Jew,
To the terrors which haunted Orestes
when
The furies his midnight curtains drew,
But charm him off, ye who charm him
can,
That reading demon, that fat old man !
THE PUMPKIN.
0, GREENLY and fair in the lands of the
sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich
melon run,
And the rock and the tree and the cot
tage enfold,
With broad leaves all greenness and
blossoms all gold,
Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet
once grew,
While he waited to know that his warn
ing was true,
And longed for the storm-cloud, and
listened in vain
For the rush of the whirlwind and red
fire-rain.
On the banks of the Xenil the dark
Spanish maiden
Comes up with the fruit of the tangled
vine laden ;
And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to
behold
Through orange-leaves shining the broad
spheres of gold ;
Yet with dearer delight from his home
in the North,
On the fields of his harvest the Yankee
looks forth,
Where crook-necks are coiling and yel
low fruit shines,
And the sun of September melts down
on his vines.
Ah ! on Thanksgiving day, when from
East and from West,
From North and from South come the
pilgrim and guest,
When the gray-haired New-Englander
sees round his board
The old broken links of affection re
stored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his
mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the
girl smiled before,
What moistens the lip and what bright
ens the eye ?
What calls back the past, like the rich
Pumpkin pie ?
0, — fruit loved of boyhood ! — the old
days recalling,
When wood-grapes were purpling and
brown nuts were falling !
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its
skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a
candle within !
When we laughed round the corn-heap,
with hearts all in tune,
Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our lan«
tern the moon,
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled
like steam,
In a pumpkin-shell coach, w'th two rats
for her team !
HAMPTON BEACH.
127
Then thanks for thy present ! — none
sweeter or better
E'er smoked from an oven or circled a
platter !
Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry
more fine,
Brighter ey^s never watched o'er its
baking, than thine !
And the prayer, which my mouth is too
full to expresss
Swells my heart that thy shadow may
never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be length
ened below,
And the fame of thy worth like -a pump
kin-vine grow,
And thy life be as sweet, and its last
sunset sky
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own
Pumpkin pie i
EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENG
LAND LEGEND."
How has New England's romance fled,
Even as a vision of the morning !
Its rites foredone, — its guardians dead,—
Its priestesses, bereft of dread,
Waking the veriest urchin's scorning !
Gone like the Indian wizard's yell
And fire-dance round the magic rock,
Forgotten like the Druid's spell
At moonrise by his holy oak 1
No more along the shadowy glen,
Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men ;
N"o more the unquiet churchyard dead
Glimpse upward from their turfy bed,
Startling the traveller, late and lone ;
As, on some night of starless weather,
They silently commune together,
Each sitting on his own head- stone !
The roofless house, decayed, deserted,
Its living tenants all departed,
No longer rings with midnight revel
Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil ;
No pale blue flame sends out its flashes
Through creviced roof and shattered
sashes ! —
The witch-grass round the hazel spring
May sharply to the night-an sing,
But there no more shall withered hags
Refresh at ease their broomstick nags,
Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters
As beverage meet for Satan's daughters ;
No more their mimic tones be heard, —
Yhe mew of cat, — the chirp of bird, —
Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter
Of the fell demon following after !
The cautious goodman nails no more
A horseshoe on his outer door,
Lest some unseemly hag should fit
To his own mouth her bridle-bit, —
The goodwife's churn no more refuses
Its wonted culinary uses
Until, with heated needle burned,
The witch has to her place returned 1
Our witches are no longer old
And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold,
But young ana gay and laughing ere
tures,
With the heart's sunshine on their fea
tures, —
Their sorcery — the light which danceo
Where the raised lid unveils its glances;
Or that low-breathed and gentle tone,
The music of Love's twilight hours,
Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan
Above her nightly closing flowers,
Sweeter than that which sighed of yore,
Along the charmed Ausonian shore I
Even she, our own weird heroine,
Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,
Sleeps calmly where thelivinglaid her ;
And the wide realm of sorcery,
Left by its latest mistress free,
Hath found no gray and skilled in-
vader :
So perished Albion's "glammarye,"
With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping,
His charmed torch beside his knee,
That even the dead himself might see
The magic scroll within his keeping.
And now our modern Yankee sees
Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries ;
And naught above, below, around,
Of life or death, of sight or sound,
Whate'er its nature, form, or look,
Excites his terror or surprise, —
All seeming to his knowing eyes
Familiar as his " catechize,"
Or " Webster's Spelling-Book."
HAMPTON BEACH.
THE sunlight glitters keen and bright,
Where, miles away,
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight
A luminous belt, a misty light,
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes
of sandy gray.
The tremulous shadow of the Sea !
Against its ground
MISCELLANEOUS.
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree,
Still as a picture, clear and free,
IVlth varying outline mark the coast for
miles around.
On — on — we tread with loose-flung
rein
Our seaward way,
Through dark -green fields and blos
soming grain,
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the
lane,
And bends above our heads the flowering
locust spray.
Ha ! like a kind hand on my brow
Comes this fresh breeze,
Cooling its dull and feverish glow,
While through my being seems to flow
The breath of a new life, — the healing
of the seas 1
Now rest we, where this grassy mound
His feet hath set
In the great waters, which have bound
His granite ankles greenly round
With long and tangled moss, and weeds
with cool spray wet.
Good by to pain and care ! I take
Mine ease to-day :
Here where these sunny waters break,
And ripples this keen breeze, I shake
All burdens from the heart, all weary
thoughts away.
I draw a freer breath — I seem
Like all I see —
Waves in the sun — the white- winged
gleam
Of sea-birds in the slanting beam —
And far-off sails which flit before the
south-wind free.
So when Time's veil shall fall asunder,
The soul may know
No fearful change, nor sudden wonder,
Nor sink the weight of mystery under,
But with the upward rise, and with the
vastness grow.
And all we shrink from now may seem
No new revealing ;
Familiar as our childhood's stream,
Or pleasant memory of a dream
fhe loved and cherished Past upon the
new life stealing.
Serene and mild the untried light
May have its dawning ;
And, as in summer's northern night
The evening and the dawn unite,
The sunset hues of Time blend with the
soul's new morning.
I sit alone ; in foam and spray
Wave after wave
Breaks on the rocks which, stern and
Shoulder the broken tide away,
Or murmurs hoarse and strong through
mossy cleft and cave.
What heed I of the dusty land
And noisy town ?
I see the mighty deep expand
From its white line of glimmering sanA
To where the blue of heaven on bluet
waves shuts down !
In listless quietude of mind,
I yield to all
The change of cloud and wave and
wind
And passive on the flood reclined,
I wander with the waves, and with them
rise and fall.
But look, thou dreamer ! — wave and
shore
In shadow lie ;
The night- wind warns me back once
more
To where, my native hill-tops o'er,
Bends like an arch of fire the glowing
sunset sky.
So then, beach, bluff", and wave, fare.
well !
I bear with me
No token stone nor glittering shell,
But long and oft shall Memory tell
Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing
by the Sea.
LINES,
WRITTEN ON HEARING OF THE DEATH
OF SILAS WRIGHT OF NEW YORK.
As they who, tossing midst the storm at
night,
While turning shoreward, where 3
beacon shone,
LINES.
129
Meet the walled blackness of the
heaven alone,
So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed,
In gloom and tempest, men have seen
thy light
Quenched in the darkness. At thy
hour of noon,
While life was pleasant to thy undimmed
sight,
And, day by day, within thy spirit grew
A holier hope than young Ambition knew,
As through thy rural quiet, not in vain,
Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry
of pain,
Man of the millions, thou art lost too
soon !
Portents at which the bravest stand
aghast, —
The birth-throes of a Future, strange
and vast,
Alarm the land ; yet thou, so wise
and strong,
Suddenly summoned to the burial bed,
Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever
long,
Hear'st not the tumult surging overhead.
Who now shall rally Freedom's scatter
ing host ?
Who wear the mantle of the leader lost ?
Who stay the march of slavery ? He
whose voice
Hath called thee from thy task-field
shall not lack
Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely
back
The wrong which, through his poor ones,
reaches Him :
Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torch
lights trim,
And wave them high across the abys
mal black,
Till bound, dumb millions there shall
see them and rejoice.
lOtAmo.,1847.
LINES,
ACCOMPANYING MANUSCRIPTS PRESENT
ED TO A FRIEND.
:T is said that in the Holy Land
The angels of the place have blessed
The pilgrim's bed of desert sand,
Like Jacob's stone of rest.
That down the hush of Syrian skies
Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight
sings
9
The song whose holy symphonies
Are beat by unseen wings ;
Till starting from his sandy bed,
The wayworn wanderer looks to see
The halo of an angel's head
Shine through the tamarisk-tree.
So through the shadows of my way
Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear,
So at the weary close of day
Hath seemed thy voice of cheer.
That pilgrim pressing to his goal
May pause not for the vision's sake,
Yet all fair things within his soul
The thought of it shall wake :
The graceful palm-tree by the well,
Seen on the far horizon's rim ;
The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle,
Bent timidly on him ;
Each pictured saint, whose golden hair
Streams sunlike through the convent's
gloom ;
Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair,
And loving Mary's tomb ;
And thus each tint or shade which falls,
From sunset cloud or waving tree,
Along my pilgrim path, recalls
The pleasant thought of thee.
Of one in sun and shade the same,
In weal and woe my steady friend,
Whatever by that holy name
The angels comprehend.
Not blind to faults and follies, thou
Hast never failed the good to see,
Nor judged by one unseemly bough
The upward-struggling tree.
These light leaves at thy feet I lay, —
Poor common thoughts on common
things,
Which time is shaking, day by day,
Like feathers from his wings, —
Chance shootings from a frail life-tree,
To nurturing care but little known,
Their good was partly learned of thee,
Their folly is my own.
That tree still clasps the kindly mould,
Its leaves still drink the twilight dew,
130
MISCELLANEOUS.
And weaving its pale green with gold,
Still shines the sunlight through.
There still the morning zephyrs play,
And there at times the spring bird
sings,
And mossy trunk and fading spray
Are flowered with glossy wings.
Yet, even in genial sun and rain,
Root, branch, and leaflet fail arid fade ;
The wanderer on its lonely plain
Erelong shall miss its shade.
0 friend beloved, whose curious skill
Keeps bright the last year's leaves
and flowers,
With warm, glad summer thoughts to
fill
The cold, dark, winter hours !
Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring
May well defy the wintry cold,
Until, in Heaven's eternal spring,
Life's fairer ones unfold.
THE REWARD.
WHO, looking backward from his man
hood's prime,
Sees not the spectre of his misspent time ?
And, through the shade
Of funeral cypress planted thick behind,
Hears no reproachful whisper on the
wind
From his loved dead ?
Who bears no trace of passion's evil
force ?
Who shuns thy sting, 0 terrible Re
morse ? —
Who does not cast
On the thronged pages of his memory's
book,
At times, a sad and half-reluctant look,
Regretful of the past ?
Aks ! — the evil which we fain would
shun
We do, and leave the wished-for good
undone :
Our strength to-day
Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to
fall;
Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all
Are we alway.
Yet who, thus looking backward o'ei
his years,
Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful
tears,
If he hath been
Permitted, weak and sinful as he was,
To cheer and aid, in some ennobling
cause,
His fellow-men ?
If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in
A ray of sunshine to the cell of sin, —
If he hath lent
Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of
need,
Over the suffering, mindless of his creed
Or home, hath bent,
He has not lived in vain, and while he
gives
The praise to Him, in whom he moves
and lives,
With thankful heart ;
He gazes backward, and with hope
before,
Knowing that from his works he never«
more
Can henceforth part.
RAPHAEL.
I SHALL not soon forget that sight :
The glow of autumn's westering day
A hazy warmth, a dreamy light,
On Raphael's picture lay.
It was a simple print I saw,
The fair face of a musing boy ;
Yet, while 'I gazed, a sense of awe
Seemed blending with my joy.
A simple print :— the graceful flow
Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair,
And fresh young lip and cheek, and
brow
Unmarked and clear, were there.
Yet through its sweet and calm repose
I saw the inward spirit shine ;
It was as if before me rose
The white veil of a shrine.
As if, as Gothland's sage has told,
The hidden life, the man within,
Dissevered from its frame and mould.
By mortal eye were seen.
LUCY HOOPJER.
133
Was it the lifting of that eye,
The Waving of that pictured hand ?
Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky,
I saw the walls expand.
The narrow room had vanished, — space,
Broad, luminous, remained alone,
Through which all hues and shapes of
grace
And beauty looked or shone.
Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil wrought,
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought. •
There drooped thy more than mortal
face,
0 Mother, beautiful and mild !
Enfolding in one dear embrace
Thy Saviour and thy Child !
The rapt brow of the Desert John ;
The awful glory of that day
When all the Father's brightness shone
Through manhood's veil of clay .
And, midst gray prophet forms, and
wild
Dark visions of the days of old,
How sweetly woman's beauty smiled
Through locks of brown and gold !
There Fornarina's fair young face
Once more upon her lover shone,
Whose model of an angel's grace
He borrowed from her own.
Slow passed that vision from my view,
But not the lesson which it taught ;
The soft, calm shadows which it threw
Still rested on my thought :
The truth, that painter, bard, and sage,
Even in Eartli's cold and changeful
clime,
Plant for their deathless heritage
The fruits and flowers of time.
We shape ourselves the joy or fear
Of which the coming life is made,
^nd fill our Future's atmosphere
With sunshine or with shade.
fhe tissue of the Life to be
We weave with colors all our own,
And in the field of Destiny
We reap as we have sown.
Still shall the soul around it call
The shadows which it gathered hene,
And, painted on the eternal wall,
The Past shall reappear.
Think ye the notes of holy song
On Milton's tuneful ear have died ?
Think ye that Raphael's angel throng
Has vanished from his side ?
0 no ! — We live our life again ;
Or warmly touched, or coldly dim,
The pictures of the Past remain, — .
Man's works shall follow him i
LUCY HOOPER.43
THEY tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, —
That all of thee we loved and cher
ished
Has with thy summer roses per
ished ;
And left, as its young beauty fied,
An ashen memory in its stead, —
The twilight of a parted day
Whose fading light is cold and vain.;
The heart's faint echo of a strain
Of low, sweet music passed away.
That true and loving heart, — that gift
Of a mind, earnest, clear, profound,
Bestowing, with a glad unthrift,
Its sunny light on all around,
Affinities which only could
Cleave to the pure, the true, and good $
And sympathies which found no rest,
Save with the loveliest and best.
Of them — of thee — remains there
naught
But sorrow in the mourner's breast 2 —
A shadow in the land of thought ?
No ! — Even my weak and trembling
faith
Can lift for thee the veil which doubt
And human fear have drawn about
The all-awaiting scene of death.
Even as thou wast I see thee still ;
And, save the absence of all ill
And pain and weariness, which here
Summoned the sigh or wrung the tear,
The same as when, two summers back,
Beside our childhood's Merrimack,
I saw thy dark eye wander o'er
132
MISCELLANEOUS.
Stream, sunny upland, rorcy shore,
And heard thy low, soft voice alone
Midst lapse of waters, and the tone
Of pine-leaves by the west- wind blown,
There 's not a charm of soul or brow, —
Of all we knew and loved in thee, —
But lives in holier beauty now,
Baptized in immortality !
Not mine the sad and freezing dream
Of souls that, with their earthly mould,
Cast off the loves and joys of old, —
Unbodied, — like a pale moonbeam,
As pure, as passionless, and cold ;
Nor mine the hope of Indra's son,
Of slumbering in oblivion's rest,
Life's myriads blending into one, —
In blank annihilation blest ;
Dust-atoms of the infinite, —
Sparks scattered from the central light,
And winning back through mortal pain
Their old unconsciousness again.
No ! — I have FRIENDS in Spirit Land, —
Not shadows in a shadowy band,
Not others, but themselves are they.
And still I think of them the same
As when the Master's summons came ;
Their change, — the holy morn-light
breaking
Upon the dream-worn sleeper, waking, —
A change from twilight into day.
They Ve laid thee midst the household
graves,
"Where father, brother, sister lie ;
Below thee sweep the dark blue waves,
Above thee bends the summer sky.
Thy own loved church in sadness read
Her solemn ritual o'er thy head,
And blessed and hallowed with her
prayer
The turf laid lightly o'er thee there.
That church, whose rites and liturgy,
Sublime and old, were truth to thee,
Undoubted to thy bosom taken,
As symbols of a faith unshaken.
Even I, of simpler views, could feel
The beauty of thy trust and zeal ;
And, owning not thy creed, could see
How deep a truth it seemed to thee,
And how thy fervent heart had thrown
O er all, a coloring of its own,
And kindled up, intense and warm,
A life in every rite and form,
As, when on Chebar's banks of old,
The Hebrew's gorgeous vision rolled,
A spirit filled the vast machine, —
A life " within the wheels " was seen.
Farewell ! A little time, and we
Who knew thee well, and loted thee
here,
One after one shall follow thee
As pilgrims through the gate of fear,
Which opens on eternity.
Yet shall we cherish not the less
All that is left our hearts meanwhile 5
The memory of thy loveliness
Shall round our weary pathway smile,
Like moonlight when the sun has set, —
A sweet and tender radiance yet.
Thoughts of thy clear-eyed sense of
duty,
Thy generous scorn of all things
wrong, —
The truth, the strength, the graceful
beauty
Which blended in thy song.
All lovely things, by thee beloved,
Shall whisper to our hearts of thee ;
These green hills, where thy childhood
roved, —
Yon river winding to the sea, —
The sunset light of autumn eves
Reflecting on the deep, still floods,
Cloud, crimson sky, and trembling
leaves
Of rainbow-tinted woods, —
These, in our view, shall henceforth take
A tenderer meaning for thy sake ;
And all thou lovedst of earth and sky,
Seem sacred to thy memory.
CHANNING.44
NOT vainly did old poets tell,
Nor vainly did old genius paint
God's great and crowning miracle, - -
The hero and the saint !
For even in a faithless day
Can we our sainted ones discern ;
And feel, while with them on the way,
Our hearts within us burn.
And thus the common tongue and pen
Which, world-wide, echo CHANNING'S
fame,
As one of Heaven's anointed men,
Have sanctified his name.
In vain shall Rome her portals bar,
And shut from him her saintly prize,
Whom, in the world's great calendar,
All men shall canonize.
TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS.
133
By Narragansett's sunny bay,
Beneath his green embowering wood,
f o me it seems but yesterday
Since at his side I stood.
The slopes lay green with summer rains,
The western wind blew fresh and
free,
And glimmered down the orchard lanes
The white surf of the sea.
With us was one, who, calm and true,
Life's highest purpose understood,
And, like his blessed Master, knew
The joy of doing good.
Unlearned, unknown to lettered fame,
Yet on the lips of England's poor
And toiling millions dwelt his name,
With blessings evermore.
Unknown to power or place, yet where
The sun looks o'er the Carib sea,
It blended with the freeman's prayer
And song of jubilee.
Ke told of England's sin and wrong, —
The ills her suffering children know, —
The squalor of the city's throng, —
The green field's want and woe.
O'er Channing's face the tenderness
Of sympathetic sorrow stole,
Like a still shadow, passionless, —
The sorrow of the soul.
But when the generous Briton told
How hearts were answering to his
own,
And Freedom's rising murmur rolled
Up to the dull-eared throne,
I saw, methought, a glad surprise
Thrill through that frail and pain-
worn frame,
And, kindling in those deep, calm eyes,
A still and earnest flame.
His few, brief words were such as move
The human heart, — the Faith-sown
seeds
Which ripen in the soil of love
To high heroic deeds.
$o bars of sect or clime were felt, —
The Babel strife of tongues had
ceased, —
And at one common altar knelt
The Quaker and the priest.
And not in vain : with strength renewer^
And zeal refreshed, and hope less din:.,
For that brief meeting, each pursued
The path allotted him.
How echoes yet each Western hill
And vale with Channing's dyinij
word !
How are the hearts of freemen still
By that great warning stirred I
The stranger treads his native soil,
And pleads, with zeal unfelt before
The honest right of British toil,
The claim of England's poor.
Before him time-wrought barriers fall,
Old fears subside, old hatreds melt,
And, stretching o'er the sea's blue wall,
The Saxon greets the Celt.
The yeoman on the Scottish lines,
The Sheffield grinder, worn and grhn,
The delver in the Cornwall mines,
Look up with hope to him.
Swart smiters of the glowing steel,
Dark feeders of the forge's flame,
PaU watchers at the loom and wheel,
Eepeat his honored name.
And thus the influence of that hour
Of converse on Rhode Island's strand1
Lives in the calm, resistless power
Which moves our father-land.
God blesses still the generous thought*
And still the fitting word He speeds
And Truth, at his requiring taught,
He quickens into deeds.
Where is the victory of the grave ?
What dust upon the spirit lies ?
God keeps the sacred life he gave, —
The prophet never dies !
TO THE MEMORY OF
CHARLES B. STORRS,
LATE PRESIDENT OF WESTERN RESERVE
COLLEGE.
THOU hast fallen in thine armor,
Thou martyr of the Lord !
134
MISCELLANEOUS.
With thy last breath crying, — "On
ward ! "
And thy hand upon the sword.
The haughty heart derideth,
And the sinful lip reviles,
But the blessing of the perishing
Around thy pillow smiles !
When to our cup of trembling
The added drop is given,
And the long-suspended thunder
Falls terribly from Heaven, —
When a new and fearful freedom
Is proffered of the Lord
To the slow-consuming Famine, —
The Pestilence and Sword ! —
When the refuges of Falsehood
Shall be swept away fn wrath,
And the temple shall be shaken,
With its idol, to the earth, —
Shall not thy words of warning
. Be all remembered then ?
And thy now unheeded message
Burn in the hearts of men ?
Oppression's hand may scatter
Its nettles on thy tomb,
And even Christian bosoms
Deny thy memory room ;
For lying lips shall torture
Thy mercy into crime,
And the slanderer shall flourish
As the bay-tree for a time.
But where the south -wind lingers
On Carolina's pines,
Or falls the careless sunbeam
Down Georgia's golden mines, —
Where now beneath his burthen
The toiling slave is driven, —
Where now a tyrant's mockery
Is offered unto Heaven, —
Where Mammon hath its altars
Wet o'er with human blood,
And pride and lust debases
The workmanship of God, — •
There shall thy praise be spoken,
Redeemed from Falsehood's ban,
When the fetters shall be broken,
And the slave, shall be a man !
Joy to thy spirit, brother !
A thousand hearts are warm, —
A. thousand kindred bosoms
Are baring to the storm.
What though red-handed Violence
With secret Fraud combine ?
The wall of lire is round us, —
Our Present Help was thine.
Lo, — the waking up of nations,
From Slavery's fatal sleep, —
The murmur of a Universe, —
Deep calling unto Deep.!
Joy to thy spirit, brother !
On every wind of heaven
The onward cheer and summons
Of FREEDOM'S VOICE is giver !
Glory to God forever !
Beyond the despot's will
The soul of Freedom liveth
Imperishable still.
The words which thou hast uttered
Are of that soul a part,
And the good seed thou hast scattered
Is springing from the heart.
In the evil days before us,
And the trials yet to come, ~-
In the shadow of the prison,
Or the cruel martyrdom, —
We will think of thee, 0 brother !
And thy sainted name shall be
In the blessing of the captive,
And the anthem of the free.
1834.
LINES,
ON THE DEATH OF S. O. TORREY.
GONE before us, 0 our brother,
To the spirit-land !
Vainly look we for another
In thy place to stand.
Who shall offer youth and beauty
On the wasting shrine
Of a stern and lofty duty,
With a faith like thine ?
0, thy gentle smile of greeting
Who again shall see ?
Who amidst the solemn meeting
Gaze again on thee ? —
Who, when peril gathers o'er us,
AY ear so calm a brow ?
Who, with evil men before us,
So serene as thou ?
Early hath the spoiler found thee.
Brother of our love !
A LAMENT.
135
Autumn's faded earth around thee,
And its storms above !
Evermore that turf lie lightly,
And, with future showers,
O'er thy slumbers fresh and brightly
Blow* the summer flowers !
In the locks thy forehead gracing,
Not a silvery streak ;
Nor a line of sorrow's tracing
On thy fair young cheek ;
Eyes of light and lips of roses,
Such as Hylas wore, —
Over all that curtain closes,
Which shall rise no more !
Will the vigil Love is keeping
Round that grave of thine,
Mournfully, like Jazer weeping
Over Sibmah's vine,45 —
Will the pleasant memories, swelling
Gentle hearts, of thee,
In the spirit's distant dwelling
All unheeded be ?
If the spirit ever gazes,
From its journeyings, back ;
If the immortal ever traces
O'er its mortal track ;
Wilt thou not, 0 brother, meet us
Sometimes on our way,
And, in hours of sadness, greet us
As a spirit may ?
Peace be with thee, 0 our brother,
In the spirit-land !
Vainly look we for another
In thy place to stand.
Unto Truth and Freedom giving
All thy early powers,
Be thy virtues with the living,
And thy spirit ours !
A LAMENT.
" The parted spirit,
Knoweth it not our sorrow ? Answereth not
Its blessing to our tears ? " .
THE circle is broken, — one seat is for
saken, —
One bud from the tree of our friendship
is shaken, —
One heart from among us no longer
shall thrill
With ioy in our gladness, or grief in our
ill.
! — lonely and lowly are slumber-
ing now
The light of her glances, the pride of her
brow,
Weep ! — sadly and long shall we listen
in vain
To hear the soft tones of her welcome
again.
ive our tears to the dead ! For human*
ity's claim
From its silence and darkness is ever the
same ;
The hope of that World whose existence
is bliss
May not stifle the tears of the mourners
of this.
For, oh ! if one glance the freed spirit
can throw
On the scene of its troubled probation
below,
Than the pride of the marble, the pomp
of the dead,
To that glance will be dearer the tears
which we shed.
0, who can forget the mild light of her
smile,
Over lips moved with music and feeling
the while —
The eye's deep enchantment, dark,
dream-like, and clear,
In the glow of its gladness, the shade of
its tear.
And the charm of her features, while
over the whole
Played the hues of the heart and the
sunshine of soul, —
And the tones of her voice, like the mu«
sic which seems
Murmured low in our ears by the Angel
of dreams !
But holier and dearer our memories hold
Those treasures of feeling, more precious
than gold, —
The love and the -kindness and pity
which gave
Fresh flowers for the bridal, green
wreaths for the grave J
The heart ever open to Charity's claim,
Unmoved from its purpose by censure
and blame,
136
MISCELLANEOUS.
While vainly alike on her eye and her
ear
Fell the scorn of the heartless, the jest
ing and jeer.
How true to our hearts was that beauti
ful sleeper !
With smiles for the joyful, with tears
for the weeper ! —
Yet, evermore prompt, whether mourn
ful or gay,
With warnings in love to the passing
astray.
For, though spotless herself, she could
sorrow for them
Who sullied with evil the spirit's pure
gem ;
And a sigh or a tear could the erring re
prove,
And the sting of reproof was still tem
pered by love.
As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting
in heaven,
As a star that is lost when the daylight
is given,
As a glad dream of slumber, which
wakens in bliss,
8he hath passed to the world of the
holy from this.
DANIEL WHEELER.
[DANIEL WHEELER, a minister of the Society of
Friends, and who had labored in the cause of his
Divine Master in Great Britain, Russia, and the
islands of the Pacific, died in New York in the
spring of 1840, while on a religious visit to this
country.]
0 DEARLY loved !
And worthy of our love ! — No more
Thy aged form shall rise before
The hushed and waiting worshipper,
In meek obedience utterance giving
To words of truth, so fresh and living,
That, even to the inward sense,
They bore unquestioned evidence
Of an anointed Messenger !
Or, bowing down thy silver hair
In reverent awfulness of prayer, —
The world, its time and sense, shut
out, —
The brightness of Faith's holy trance
Gathered upon thy countenance,
As if each lingering cloud of doubt, —
The cold, dark shadows resting here
In Time's unluminous atmosphere, -~
Were lifted by an ange/s hand,
And through them on thy spiritual eye
Shone down the blessedness on high,
The glory of the Better Land !
The oak has fallen !
While, meet for no good work, the vine '
May yet its worthless branches twine.
Who knoweth not that with thee fell
A great man in our Israel ?
Fallen, while thy loins were girded still,
Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet,
And in thy hand retaining yet
The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell !
Unharmed and safe, where, wild and
free,
Across the Neva's cold morass
The breezes from the Frozen Sea
With winter's arrowy keenness pass ;
Or where the unwarning tropic gale
Smote to the waves thy tattered sail,
Or where the noon-hour's fervid heat
Against Tahiti's mountains beat ;
The same mysterious Hand which
gave
Deliverance upon land and wave,
Tempered for thee the blasts which
blew
Ladaga's frozen surface o'er,
And blessed for thee the baleful dew
Of evening upon Eimeo's shore,
Beneath this sunny heaven of ours,
Midst our soft airs and opening flowers
Hath given thee a grave !
His will be done,
Who seeth not as man, whose Avay
Is not as ours ! — 'T is well with
thee!
Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay
Disquieted thy closing day,
But, evermore, thy soul could say,
" My Father careth still for me ! "
Called from thy hearth and home, -=•
from her,
The last bud on thy household tree,
The last dear one to minister
In duty and in love to thee,
From all which nature holdeth dear,
Feeble with years and worn with
pain,
To seek our distant land again,
Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing
The things which should befall thea
here,
Whether for labor or for death.
DANIEL NEALL.
137
to childlike trust serenely going
To that last trial of thy faith }
0, far away,
Where never shines our Northern star
On that dark waste which Balboa saw
From Darien's mountains stretching far,
So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that
there,
With forehead to its damp wind bare,
He bent his mailed knee in awe ;
In many an isle whose cora,! feet
The surges of that ocean beat,
In thy palm shadows, Oahu,
And Honolulu's silver bay, -
Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue,
And taro-plains of Tooboonai,
Are gentle hearts, which long shall be
Sad as our own at thought of thee, —
Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed,
Whose souls in weariness and need
Were strengthened and refreshed by
thine.
For blessed by our Father's hand
Was thy deep love and tender care,
Thy ministry and fervent prayer, —
Grateful as Eschol's clustered vine
To Israel in a weary land !
And they who drew
By thousands round thee, in the hour
Of prayerful waiting, hushed and
deep,
That He who bade the islands keep
Silence before him, might renew
Their strength with his unslumbering
power,
They too shall mourn that thou art gone,
That nevermore thy aged lip
Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn,
Of those who first, rejoicing, heard
Through thee the Gospel's glorious
word, —
Seals of thy true apostleship.
And, if the brightest diadem,
Whose gems of glory purely burn
Around the ransomed ones in bliss,
Be evermore reserved for them
Who here, through toil and sorrow,
turn
Many to righteousness, —
May we not think of thee as wearing
That star-like crown of light, and bear
ing,
Amidst Heaven's white and blissful
band,
The fadeless palm-branch in thy hand ;
And joining with a seraph's tongue
In that new song the elders sung,
Ascribing to its blessed Giver
Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever !
Farewell !
And though the ways of Zion mourn
When her strong ones are called away,
Who like thyself have calmly borne
The heat and burden of the day,
Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleep-
eth
His ancient watch around us keepeth ;
Still, sent from his creating hand,
New witnesses for Truth shall stand, —
New instruments to sound abroad
The Gospel of a risen Lord ;
To gather to the fold once more
The desolate and gone astray,
The scattered of a cloudy day,
And Zion's broken walls restore ;
And, through the travail and the toil
Of true obedience, minister
Beauty for ashes, and the oil
Of joy for mourning, unto her !
So shall her holy bounds increase
With walls of praise and gates of peace :
So shall the Vine, which martyr tears
And blood sustained in other years,
With fresher life be clothed upon ;
And to the world in beauty show
Like the rose-plant of Jericho,
And glorious as Lebanon !
DANIEL NEALL.
FRIEND of the Slave, and yet the friend
of all ;
Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when
The need of battling Freedom called
for men
To plant the banner on the outer wall ;
Gentle and kindly, ever at distress
Melted to more than woman's tender
ness,
Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post
Fronting the violence of a maddened
host,
Like some gray rock from which the
waves are tossed !
Knowing his deeds of love, men ques
tioned not
The faith of one whose walk snd word
were right, —
138
MISCELLANEOUS.
Who tranquilly in Life's great task-
field wrought,
And, side by side with evil, scarcely
caught
A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white :
Prompt to redress another's wrong, his
own
Leaving to Time and Truth and Peni
tence alone.
Such was our friend. Formed on the
good old plan,
A true and brave and downright honest
man ! —
He blew no trumpet in the market-place,
Nor in the church with hypocritic face
Supplied with cant the lack of Christian
grace ;
Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful
will
What others talked of while their hands
were still ;
And, while " Lord, Lord ! " the pious
tyrants cried,
Who, in the poor, their Master crucified,
His daily prayer, far better understood
In acts than words, was simply DOING
GOOD.
So calm, so constant was his rectitude,
That by his loss alone we know its
worth,
A'nd feel how true a man has walked with
us on earth.
$th 6th month, 1846.
TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH
OF HIS SISTER.46
THINE is a grief, the depth of which
another
May never know ;
Yet, o'er the waters, 0 my stricken
brother !
To thee I go.
I lean my heart unto thee, sadly folding
Thy hand in mine ;
With even the weakness of my soul up
holding
The strength of thine.
I never knew, like thee, the dear de
parted ;
I stood not by
When, in calm trust, the pure and tran
quil-hearted
Lay down to die.
And on thy ears my words of weak ccm«
doling
Must vainly fall :
The funeral bell which in thy heart is
tolling,
Sounds over all !
I will not mock thee with the poor
world's common
And heartless phrase,
N"or wrong the memory of a sainted
woman
With idle praise.
With silence only as their benediction,
God's angels come
Where, in the shadow of a great afflic
tion,
The soul sits dumb !
Yet, would I say what thy own heart
approveth :
Our Father's will,
Calling to Him the dear one whom He
loveth,
Is mercy still.
Not upon thee or thine the solemn an
gel
Hath evil wrought :
Her funeral anthem is a glad evangel, —
The good die not !
God calls our loved ones, but we lose
not wholly
What He hath given ;
They live on earth, in thought and
deed, as truly
As in his heaven.
And she is with thee ; in thy path of
trial
She walketh yet ;
Still with the baptism of thy self-denial
Her locks are wet.
Up, then, my brother ! Lo, the fields
of harvest
Lie white in view !
She lives and loves thee, and the God
thou servest
To both is true.
THE LAKE-SIPE.
139
Thrust in thy sickle .' — England's toil-
worn peasants
Thy call abide ;
And she thou mourn' st, a pure and holy
presence,
Shall glean beside !
GONE.
ANOTHER hand is beckoning us,
Another call is given ;
And glows once more with Angel-steps
The path which reaches Heaven.
Our young and gentle friend, whose
smile
Made brighter summer hours,
Amid the frosts of autumn time
Has left us with the flowers.
No paling of the cheek of bloom
Forewarned us of decay ;
No shadow from the Silent Land
Fell round our sister's way.
The light of her young life went down,
As sinks behind the hill
The glory of a setting star, —-
Clear, suddenly, and still.
As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed
Eternal as the sky ;
And like the brook's low song, her
voice, — •
A sound which could not die.
And half we deemed she needed not
The changing of her sphere,
To give to Heaven a Shining One,
Who walked an Angel here.
^he blessing of her quiet life
Fell on us like the dew ;
k.nd good thoughts, where her footsteps
pressed
Like fairy blossoms grew.
Sweet promptings unto kindest f\eeds
Were in her very look ;
We read her face, as one who reads
A true and holy book:
The measure of a blessed hymn,
To which our hearts could move ;
The breathing of an inward psalm ;
A canticle of love.
We miss her in the place of prayer,
And by the hearth-tire's light ;
We pause beside her door to hear
Once more her sweet " Good-night ! "
There seems a shadow on the day,
Her smile no longer cheers ;
A dimness on the stars of night,
Like eyes that look through tears.
Alone unto our Father's will
One thought ha,th reconciled ;
That He whose love exceedeth ours
Hath taken home his child.
Fold her, 0 Father ! in thine anus,
And let her henceforth be
A messenger of love between
Our human hearts and thee.
Still let her mild rebuking stand
Between us and the wrong,
And her dear memory serve to make
Our faith in Goodness strong.
And grant that she who, trembling, here
Distrusted all her powers,
May welcome to her holier home
The well-beloved of ours.
THE LAKE-SIDE.
THE shadows round the inland sea
Are deepening into night ;
Slow up the slopes of Ossipee
They chase the lessening light._
Tired of the long day's blinding heat,
I rest my languid eye,
Lake of the Hills ! where, cool and
sweet,
Thy sunset waters lie !
Along the sky, in wavy lines,,
O'er isle and reach and bay,
Green-belted with eternal pines,
The mountains stretch away.
Below, the maple masses sleep
Where shore with water blends,
While midway on the tranquil deep
The evening light descends.
So seemed it when yon hill's red crown,
Of old, the Indian trod,
And, through the sunset air, looked
down
Upon the Smile of God.4?
140
MISCELLANEOUS.
To him of light and shade the laws
No forest sceptic taught ;
Their living and eternal Cause
His truer instinct sought.
He saw these mountains in the light
Which now across them shines ;
This lake, in summer sunset bright,
Walled round with sombering pines.
Uod near him seemed ; from earth and
skies
His loving voice he neard,
As, face to face, in Paradise,
Man stood before the Lord.
Thanks, 0 our Father ! that, like him,
Thy tender love I see,
In radiant hill and woodland dim,
And tinted sunset sea.
For not in mockery dost thou fill
Our earth with light and grace ;
Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will
Behind thy smiling face !
THE HILL-TOP.
THE burly driver at my side,
We slowly climbed the hill,
Whose summit, in the hot noontide,
Seemed rising, rising still.
At last, our short noon-shadows hid
The top-stone, bare and brown,
From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid,
The rough mass slanted down.
I felt the cool breath of the North ;
Between me and the sun,
O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth,
I saw the cloud-shades run.
Before me, stretched for glistening miles,
Lay mountain-girdled Squam ;
Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles
Upon its bosom swam.
And, glimmering through the sun-haze
warm,
Far as the eye could roam,
Dark billows of an earthquake storm
Beflecked with clouds like foam,
Their vales in misty shadow deep,
Their rugged peaks in shine,
I saw the mountain ranges sweep
The horizon's northern line.
There towered Chocorua's peak ; and
west,
Moosehillock's woods were seen,
With many a nameless slide-scarred
crest
And pine-dark gorge between.
Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud,
The great Notch mountains shone,
Watched over by the solemn-browed
And awful fac& of stone !
" A good look-off ! " the driver spake :
" About this time, last year,
1 drove a party to the Lake,
And stopped, at evening, here.
'T was duskish down below ; but all
_ These hills stood in the sun,
Till, dipped behind yon purple wall,
He left them, one by one.
"A lady, who, from Thornton hill,
Had held her place outside,
And, as a pleasant woman will,
Had cheered the long, dull ride,
Besought me, with so sweet a smile,
That — though I hate delays —
I could not choose but rest awhile, —
(These women have such ways !)
" On yonder mossy ledge she sat,
Her sketch upon her knees,
A stray brown lock beneath her hat
Unrolling in the breeze ;
Her sweet face, in the sunset light
Upraised and glorified, —
I never saw a prettier sight
In all rny mountain ride.
" As good as fair ; it seemed her joy
To comfort and to give ;
My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy,
Will bless her while they live ! "
The tremor in the driver's tone
His manhood did not shame :
"I dare say, sir, you may have kn own —*
He named a well-known name.
Then sank the pyramidal mounds,
The blue lake lied away ;
For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds
A lighted hearth for day 1
From lonely years and weary miles
The shadows fell apart ;
Kind voices cheered, sweet huma»
smiles
Shone warm into my heart.
We journeyed on ; but earth and sky
Had power to charm no more ;
Still dreamed my inward-turning eye
The dream of memory o'er.
MEMORIES.
141
Ah ! human kindness, human love, —
To few who seek denied, —
Too late we learn to prize above
The whole round world beside !
ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S
QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR.
ALL day the darkness and the cold
Upon my heart have lain,
Like shadows on the winter sky,
Like frost upon the pane ;
But now my torpid fancy wakes,
And, on thy Eagle's plume,
Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird,
Or witch upon her broom !
Below me roar the rocking pines,
Before me spreads the lake
Whose long and solemn-sounding waves
Against the sunset break.
I hear the wild Rice-Eater thresh
The grain he has not sown ;
1 see, with flashing scythe of fire,
The prairie harvest mown !
I hear the far-off voyager's horn ;
I see the Yankee's trail, —
His foot on every mountain-pass,
On every stream his sail.
By forest, lake, and waterfall,
I see his pedler show ;
The mighty mingling with the mean,
The lofty with the low.
He 's whittling by St. Mary's Falls,
Upon his loaded wain ;
He 's measuring o'er the Pictured Rocks,
With eager eyes of gain.
I hear the mattock in the mine,
The axe-stroke in the dell,
The clamor from the Indian lodge,
The Jesuit chapel bell !
I see the swarthy trappers come
From Mississippi's springs ;
And war-chiefs with their painted brows,
And crests of eagle wings.
Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe,
The steamer smokes and raves ;
And city lots are staked for sale
Above old Indian graves.
I hear the tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be ;
The iirst low wash of waves, where soon
Shall roll a human sea.
The rudiments cf empire here
Are plastic yet and warm ;
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form !
Each rude and jostling fragment soon
Its fitting place shall find, —
The raw material of a State,
Its muscle and its mind !
And, westering still, the star which leads
The New World in its train
Has tipped with fire the icy spears
Of many a mountain chain.
The snowy cones of Oregon
Are kindling on its way ;
And California's golden sands
Gleam brighter in its ray !
Then blessings on thy eagle quill,
As, wandering far and wide,
I thank thee for this twilight dream
And Fancy's airy ride !
Yet, welcomer than regal plumes,
Which Western trappers find,
Thy free and pleasant thoughts, chance
sown,
Like feathers on the wind.
Thy symbol be the mountain -bird,
Whose glistening quill I hold ;
Thy home the ample air of hope, '
And memory's sunset gold !
In thee, let joy with duty join,
And strength unite with love,
The eagle's pinions folding round
The warm heart of the dove !
So, when in darkness sleeps the vale
Where still the blind bird clings,
The sunshine of the upper sky
Shall glitter on thy wings !
MEMORIES.
A BEAUTIFUL and happy girl,
With step as light as summer air,
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl,
Shadowed by many a careless curl
Of unconfined and flowing hair ;
142
MISCELLANEOUS.
A seeming child in everything,
Save thoughtful brow and ripening
charms,
As Nature wears the smile of Spring
When sinking into Summer's arms.
A mind rejoicing in the light
"Which melted through its graceful
bower,
Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright,
And stainless in its holy white,
Unfolding like a morning flower :
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute,
With every breath of feeling woke,
And, even when the tongue was mute,
From eye and lip in music spoke.
How thrills once more the lengthening
chain
Of memory, at the thought of thee !
Old hopes which long in dust have lain
Old dreams, come thronging back again,
And boyhood lives again in me ;
-I feel its glow upon my cheek,
Its fulness of the heart is mine,
As when I leaned to hear thee speak,
Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.
I hear again thy low replies,
I feel thy arm within my own,
And timidly again uprise
The fringed lids of hazel eyes,
With soft brown tresses overblown.
Ah ! memories of sweet summer eves,
Of moonlit wave and willowy way,
Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves,
And smiles and tones more dear than
• they !
Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smued
My picture of thy youth to see,
When, half a woman, half a child,
Thy very artlessness beguiled,
And folly's self seemed wise in thee ;
I too can smile, when o'er that hour
The 1 ights of men i ory back ward stream ,
Vet feel the while that manhood's power
Is vainer than my boyhood's dream.
Years have passed on, and left their trace,
Of graver care and deeper thought ;
And unto me the calm, cold face
Of manhood, and to thee the grace
Of woman's pensive beauty brought.
More wide, perchance, for blame than
praise,
The school-boy's humble name has
flown ;
Thine, in the green and quiet ways
Of unobtrusive goodness known.
And wider yet in thought and deed
Diverge our pathways, one in youth j
Thine the Genevan's sternest creed,
While answers to my spirit's need
The Derby dalesman's simple truth.
For thee, the priestly rite and prayer,
And holy day, and solemn psalm ;
For me, the silent reverent where
My brethren gather, slow and calm.
Yet hath thy spirit left on me
An impress Time has worn not out,
And something of myself in thee,
A shadow from the past, I see,
Lingering, even yet, thy way about ;
Not wholly can the heart unlearn
That lesson of its better hours,
Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn
To common dust that path of flowers.
Thus, while at times before our eyes
The shadows melt, and fall apart,
And, smiling through them, round us
lies
The warm light of our morning skies, —
The Indian Summer of the heart ! —
In secret sympathies of mind,
In founts of feeling which retain
Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may
find
Our early dreams not wholly vain !
THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK.48
THE day is closing dark and cold,
With roaring blast and sleety showers ;
And through the dusk the lilacs wear
The bloom of snow, instead of flowers.
I turn me from the gloom without,
To ponder o'er a tale of old,
A legend of the age of Faith,
By dreaming monk or abbess told.
On Tintoretto's canvas lives
That fancy of a loving heart,
In graceful lines and shapes of power,
And hues immortal as his art.
In Provence (so the story runs)
There lived a lord, to whom, as slave,
A peasant-boy of tender years
The chance of trade or conquest gave.
THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE.
143
Forth-looking from the castle tower,
Beyond the hills with almonds dark,
The straining eye could scarce discern
The chapel of the good St. Mark.
And there, when bitter word or fare
The service of the youth repaid,
By stealth, before that holy shrine,
For grace to bear his wrong, he prayed.
The steed stamped at the castle gate,
The boar-hunt sounded on the hill ;
Why stayed the Baron from the chase,
With looks so stern, and words so
ill ?
" Go, bind yon slave ! and let him learn,
By scath of fire and strain of cord,
How ill they speed who give dead saints
The homage due their living lord ! "
They bound him on the fearful rack,
When, through the dungeon's vaulted
dark,
He saw the light of shining robes,
And knew the face of good St. Mark.
Then sank the iron rack apart,
The cords released their cruel clasp,
The pincers, with their teeth of fire,
Fell broken from the torturer's grasp.
And lo ! before the Youth and Saint,
Barred door and wall of stone gave way ;
And up from bondage and the nighv.
They passed to freedom and the
day !
0 dreaming monk ! thy tale is true ; —
0 painter ! true thy pencil's art ;
In tones of hope and prophecy,
Ye whisper to my listening heart !
Unheard no burdened heart's appeal
Moans up to God's inclining ear ;
Unheeded by his tender eye,
Falls to the earth no sufferer's tear.
For still the Lord alone is God !
The pomp and power of tyrant man
Are scattered at his lightest breath,
Like chaff before the winnower's fan.
Not always shall the slave uplift
His heavy hands to Heaven in vain.
God's angel, like the good St. Mark,
Comes shining down to break his chain !
0 weary ones ! ye may not see
Your helpers in their downward flight ;
Nor hear the sound of silver wings
Slow beating through the hush ot'night !
But not the less gray Dothan shone,
With sunbright watchers bending low,
That Fear's dim eye beheld alone
The spear-heads of the Syrian foe.
There are, who, like the Seer of old,
Can see the helpers God has sent,
And how life's rugged mountain-side
Is white with many an angel tent t
They hear the heralds whom our Lord
Sends down his pathway to prepare ;
And light, from others hidden, shines
On their high place o,f faith and prayer.
Let such, for earth's despairing ones,
Hopeless, yet longing to be free,
Breathe once again the Prophet's prayer :
'*Lord, ope their eyes, that they may
THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE.49
CALM on the breast of Loch Maree
A little isle reposes ;
A shadow woven of the oak
And willow o'er it closes.
Within, a Druid's mound is seen,
Set round with stony warders ;
A fountain, gushing through the turf,
Flows o'er its grassy borders.
And whoso bathes therein his brow,
With care or madness burning,
Feels once again his healthful thought
And sense of peace returning.
0 restless heart and fevered brain,
Unquiet and unstable,
That holy well of Loch Maree
Is more than idle fable !
Life's changes vex, its discords stun,
Its glaring sunshine blindeth,
And blest is he who on his way
That fount of healing findeth !
The shadows of a humbled will
And contrite heart are o'er it ;
Go read its legend — " TRUST IN GOD "
On Faith's white stones before it.
144
MISCELLANEOUS.
TO MY SISTER;
WITH A COPY OF " SUPERNATURALISM
OF NEW ENGLAND."
DEAR SISTER ! — while the wise and sage
Turn coldly from my playful page,
And count it strange that ripened age
Should stoop to boyhood's folly ;
I know that thou wilt judge aright
Of all which makes the heart more light,
Or lends one star-gleam to the night
Of clouded Melancholy.
Away with weary cares and themes ! —
Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams !
Leave free once more the land which teems
With wonders and romances !
Where thou, with clear discerning eyes,
Shalt rightly read the truth which lies
Beneath the quaintly masking guise
Of wild and wizard fancies.
Lo ! once again our feet we set
On still green wood-paths, twilight wet,
By lonely brooks, whose waters fret
The roots of spectral beeches ;
Again the hearth-lire glimmers o'er
Home's whitewashed wall and painted
floor,
And young eyes widening to the lore
Of faery-folks and witches.
Pear heart ! — the legend is not vain
Which lights that holy hearth again,
And calling back from care and pain,
And death's funereal sadness,
Draws round its old familiar blaze
The clustering groups of happier days,
And lends to sober manhood's gaze
A glimpse of childish gladness.
Afld, knowing how my life hath been
A weary work of tongue and pen,
A long, harsh strife with strong-willed
men,
Thou wilt not chide my turning
To con, at times, an idle rhyme,
To pluck a flower from childhood's clime,
Or listen, at Life's noonday chime,
For the sweet bells of Morning !
AUTUMN THOUGHTS.
FEOM "MARGARET SMITH'S JOURNAL."
GONE hath the Spring, with all its flow
ers,
And gonethe Summer'spomp and show,
And Autiimn, in his leafless bowers,
Is waiting for the Winter's snow.
I said to Earth, so cold and gray,
" An emblem of myself thou art " ;
" Not so," the Earth did seem to say,
' ' For Spring shall warm my frozen
heart."
I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams
Of warmer sun and softer rain,
And wait to hear the sound of streams
And songs of merry birds again.
But thou, from whom the Spring hath
gone,
For whom the flowers no longer blow,
Who standest blighted and forlorn,
Like Autumn waiting for the snow :
No hope is thine of sunnier hours,
Thy Winter shall no more depart ;
No Spring revive thy wasted flowers,
Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart.
CALEF IN BOSTON.
1692.
IN the solemn days of old,
Two men met in Boston town,
One a tradesman frank and bold,
One a preacher of renowrn.
Cried the last, in bitter tone, —
" Poisoner of the wells of truth !
Satan's hireling, thou hast sown
With his tares the heart of youth ! :
Spake the simple tradesman then, —
" God be judge 'twixt thou and I ;
All thou knowest of truth hath been
Unto men like thee a lie.
" Falsehoods which we spuni to-day
Were the truths of long ago ;
Let the dead boughs fall away,
Fresher shall the living grow.
" God is good and God is light,
In this faith I rest secure ;
Evil can but serve the right,
Over all shall love endure.
" Of your spectral puppet play
I have traced the cunning wires ;
TO PIUS IX.
145
Come what will, I needs must say,
God is true, and ye are liars."
When the thought of man is free,
Error fears its lightest tones ;
So the priest cried, " Sadducee ! "
And the people took up stones.
In the ancient burying-ground,
Side by side the twain now lie, —
One with humble grassy mound,
One with marbles pale and high.
But the Lord hath blest the seed
Which that 'tradesman scattered then,
And the preacher's spectral creed
Chills no more the blood of men.
Let us trust, to one is known
Perfect love which casts out fear,
While the other's joys atone
For the wrong he suffered here.
TO PIUS IX."
THE cannon's brazen lips are cold ;
No red shell blazes down the air ;
And street and tower, and temple old,
Are silent as despair.
The Lombard stands no more at bay, —
Rome's fresh young life has bled in
vain ;
The ravens scattered by the day
Come back with night again.
Now, while the fratricides of France
Are treading on the neck of Rome,
Hider at Gaeta, — seize thy chance !
Coward and cruel, come !
Creep now from Naples' bloody skirt ;
Thy mummer's part was acted well,
While Rome, with steel and fire begirt,
Before thy crusade fell !
Her death-groans answered to thy prayer ;
Thy chant, the drum and bugle-
call ;
Thy lights, the burning villa's glare ;
Thy beads, the shell and ball !
Let Austria clear thy way, with hands
Foul from Ancona's cruel sack,
&nd Naples, with his dastard bands
Of murderers, lead thee back I
10
Rome's lips are dumb ; the orphan's wail,
The mother's shriek, thou mayst not
hear
Above the faithless Frenchman's hail,
The unsexed shaveling's cheer !
Go, bind on Rome her cast-off weight,
The double curse of crook and crown^
Though woman's scorn and manhood's
hate
From wall and roof flash down !
Nor heed those blood-stains on the wall,
Not Tiber's flood can wash away,
Where, in thy stately Quirinal,
Thy mangled victims lay !
Let the world murmur ; let its cry
Of horror and disgust be heard ; —
Truth stands alone ; thy coward lie
Is backed by lance and sword <
The cannon of St. Angelo,
And chanting priest and clanging bell.
And beat of drum and bugle blow,
Shall greet thy coming well !
Let lips of iron and tongues of slaves
Fit welcome give thee ; — for her part,
Rome, frowning o'er her new-made
graves,
Shall curse thee from her heart !
No wreaths of sad Campagna's flowers
Shall childhood in thy pathway fling ;
No garlands from their ravaged bowers
Shall Terni's maidens bring ;
But, hateful as that tyrant old,
The mocking witness of his crime,
In thee shall loathing eyes behold
The Nero of our time !
Stand where Rome's blood was freest shed,
Mock Heaven with impious thanks,
and call
Its curses on the patriot dead,
Its blessings on the Gaul !
Or sit upon thy throne of lies,
A poor, mean idol, blood-besmeared,
Whom even its worshippers despise, —
Unhonored, unrevered !
Yet, Scandal of the World ! from thee
One needful truth mankind shall
learn, —
146
MISCELLANEOUS.
That kings and priests to Liberty
And God are false in turn.
Earth wearies of them ; and the long
Meek sufferance of the Heavens doth
fail ;
Woe for weak tyrants, when the strong
Wake, struggle, and prevail !
Not vainly Roman hearts have bled
To feed the Crozier and the Crown,
If, roused thereby, the world shall tread
The twin-born vampires down !
ELLIOTT."
HANDS off ! thou tithe-fat plunderer !
play
No trick of priestcraft here !
Back, puny lordling ! darest thou lay
A hand on Elliott's bier ?
Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust,
Beneath his feet he trod :
He knew the locust swarm that cursed
The harvest-fields of God.
On these pale lips, the smothered
thought
Which England's millions feel,
A fierce and fearful splendor caught,
As from his forge the steel.
Strong-armed as Thor, — a shower of fire
His smitten anvil flung ;
God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hun
ger's ire, —
He gave them all a tongue !
Then let the poor man's horny hands
Bear up the mighty dead,
And labor's swart and stalwart bands
Behind as mourners tread.
Leave cant and craft their baptized
bounds,
Leave rank its minster floor ;
Give England's green and daisied
grounds
The poet of the poor !
Lay down upon his Sheaf's green verge
That brave old heart of oak,
With fitting dirge from sounding forge,
And pall of furnace smoke !
Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds,
And axe and sledge are swung,
fl.nd, timing to their stormy sounds,
His stormy lays are sung.
There let the peasant's step be heard,
The grinder chant his rhyme ;
Nor patron's praise nor dainty word
Befits the man or time.
No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh
For him whose words were bread, ~-»
The Runic rhyme and spell whereby
The foodless poor were fed !
Pile up thy tombs of rank and pride,
O England, as thou wilt !
With pomp to nameless worth denied,
Emblazon titled guilt !
No part or lot in these we claim ;
But, o'er the sounding wave,
A common right to Elliott's name,
A freehold in his grave !
ICHABOD !
So fallen ! so lost ! the light with,
drawn
Which once he wore !
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore !
Revile him not, — the Tempter hath
A snare for all ;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall !
0, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age,
Falls back in night.
Scorn ! would the angels laugh, to
mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope arid heaven !
Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains, —
A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still ^trong in chains.
THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.
147
A.11 else is gone •, from those great eyes
The soul has fled :
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead !
Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame ;
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame !
THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.52
No aimless wanderers, by the fiend
Unrest .
Goaded from shore to shore ;
"No schoolmen, turning, in their classic
quest,
The leaves of empire o'er.
Simple of faith, and bearing in their
hearts
The love of man and God,
Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient
marts,
And Scythia's steppes, they trod.
Where thelong shadows of the fir and pine
In the night sun are cast,
And the deep heart of many a Norland
mine
Quakes at each riving blast ;
Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa
stands,
A baptized Scythian queen,
With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled
hands,
The North and East between !
Where still, through vales of Grecian
fable, stray
The classic forms of yore,
And beauty smiles, new risen from the
spray,
And Dian weeps once more ;
Where every tongue in ' Smyrna's mart
resounds ;
And Stamboul from the sea
Lifts her tall minarets over burial-
grounds
Black with the cypress-tree !
From Malta's temples to the gates of
Rome,
Following the track of Paul,
&.nd where the Alps gird round the
Switzer's home
Their vast, eternal wall ;
They paused not by the ruins of old
time,
They scanned no pictures rare,
Nor lingered where the snow-locked
mountains climb
The cold abyss of air !
But unto prisons, where men lay in
chains,
To haunts where Hunger pined,
To kings and courts forgetful of the
pains
And wants of human -kind,
Scattering sweet words, and quiet deeds
cf good,
Along their way, like flowers,
Or pleading, as Christ's freemen only
could,
With princes and with powers ;
Their single aim the purpose to ful
fil
Of Truth, from day to day,
Simply obedient to its guiding will,
They held their pilgrim way.
Yet dream not, hence, the beautiful and
old
Were wasted on their sight,
Who in the school of Christ had learned
to hold
All outward things aright.
Not less to them the breath of vineyards
blown
From off the Cyprian shore,
Not less for them the Alps in sunset
shone,
That man they valued more.
A life of beauty lends to all it sees
The beauty of its thought ;
And fairest forms and sweetest harmo
nies
Make glad its way, unsought.
In sweet accordancy of praise and
love,
The singing waters run ;
And sunset mountains wear in light
above
The smile of duty done ;
Sure stands the promise, — ever to the
meek
A heritage is given ;
Nor lose they Earth who, single-hearted,
seek
The righteousness of Heaven J
148
MISCELLANEOUS.
THE MEN OF OLD.
WELL speed thy mission, bold Icono
clast !
Yet all unworthy of its trust thou
art,
If, with dry eye, and cold, unloving
heart,
Thou tread'st the solemn Pantheon of
the Past,
By the great Future's dazzling hope
made blind
To all the beauty, power, and truth
behind.
Not without reverent awe shouldst thou
put by
The cypress branches and the ama
ranth blooms,
Where, with clasped hands of prayer,
upon their tombs
The effigies of old confessors lie,
God's witnesses ; the voices of his will,
•Heard in the slow inarch of the cen
turies still !
Such were the men at whose rebuking
frown,
Dark with God's wrath, the tyrant's
knee went down ;
Such from the terrors of the guilty drew
The vassal's freedom and the poor man's
due.
St. Anselm (may he rest forevermore
In Heaven's sweet peace !) forbade,
of old, the sale
Of men as slaves, and from the sacred
pale
Hurled the Northumbrian buyers of the
poor.
To ransom souls from bonds and evil
fate
St. Ambrose melted down the sacred
plate, —
Image of saint, the chalice, and the pix,
Crosses of gold, and silver candlesticks.
55 MAN IS WORTH MORE THAN TEM
PLES ! " he replied
To such as came his holy work to chide.
And brave Cesarius, stripping altars bare,
And coining from the Abbey's golden
hoard
The captive's freedom, answered to the
prayer
Or threat of those whose fierce zeal for
the Lord
Stifled their love of man, — " An earth
en dish
The last sad supper of the Master bore-.
Most miserable sinners ! do ye wish
More than your Lord, and grudge his
dying poor
What your own pride and not his need
requires ?
Souls, than these shining gauds, He
values more ;
Mercy, not sacrifice, his heart desires ! "
0 faithful worthies ! resting far behind
In your dark ages, since ye fell asleep,
Much has been done for truth and hu
man-kind, —
Shadows are scattered wherein ye groped
blind ;
Man claims his birthright, freer pulses
leap
Through peoples driven in your day like
sheep ;
Yet, like your own, our age's sphere of
light,
Though widening still, is walled around
by night ;
With slow, reluctant eye, the Church has
read,
Sceptic at heart, the lessons of its Head ;
Counting, too oft, its living members
less
Than the wrall's garnish and the pulpit's
dress ;
World-moving zeal, with power to bless
and feed
Life's fainting pilgrims, to their utter
need,
Instead of bread, holds out the stone of »
creed ;
Sect builds and worships where its
wealth and pride
And vanity stand shrined and deified,
Careless that in the shadow of its walls
God's living temple into ruin falls.
We need, methinks, the prophet-hero
still,
Saints true of life, and martyrs strong of
will,
To tread the land, even now, as Xavier
trod
The streets of Goa, barefoot, with his
bell,
Proclaiming freedom in the name of God,
And startling tyrants with the fear o!
hell !
Soft words, smooth prophecies, are
doubtless well ;
But to rebuke the age's popular crime,
We need the souls of fire, the hearts of
that old time !
THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS.
149
THE PEACE CONVENTION AT
BRUSSELS.
The bull-dog Briton, yielding but with
life,
mew,
The Yankee swaggering with his bowie-
STILL in thy streets, 0 Paris ! doth the I knife,
stain j.The Russ, from banquets with the vul-
Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain; ture shared,
Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins The blood still dripping from his amber
through, beard,
And Naples mourns that new Bartholo- ; Quitting their mad Berserker dance to
hear
The dull, meek droning of a drab-coat
seer ;
Leaving the sport of Presidents and
Kings,
Where men for dice each titled gambler
flings,
To meet alternate on the Seine and
Thames,
For tea and gossip, like old country
dames !
No ! let the cravens plead the weakling's
cant,
Let Cobden cipher, and let Vincent rant,
Let Sturge preach peace to democratic
When squalid beggary, for a dole of oread,
At a crowned murderer's beck of license,
fed
The yawning trenches with her noble
dead ; -
Still, doomed Vienna, through thy stately
halls
The shell goes crashing and the red shot
falls,
And, leagued to crush thee, on the Dan
ube's side,
The bearded Croat and Bosniak spear
man ride ;
Still in that vale where Himalaya's snow
Melts round the cornfields and the vines
below,
The Sikh's hot cannon, answering ball
for ball,
Flames in the breach of Moultan's shat
tered wall ;
On Chenab's side the vulture seeks the
slain,
And Sutlej paints with blood its banks
again.
"What folly, then," the faithless critic
cries,
With sneering lip, and wise world-know
ing eyes,
"While fort to fort, and post to post,
repeat
The ceaseless challenge of the war-drum's
beat,
And round the green earth, to the church-
bell's chime,
The morning drum -roll of the camp
keeps time,
To dream of peace amidst a world in arms,
Of swords to ploughshares changed by
Scriptural charms,
Of nations, drunken with the wine of
blood,
Staggering to take the Pledge of Broth
erhood,
Like tipplers answering Father Mathew's
call, —
The sullen Spaniard, and the mad-cap
Gaul,
throngs,
And Burritt, stammering through his
hundred tongues,
Repeat, in all, his ghostly lessons o'er,
Timed to the pauses of the battery's rear;
Check Ban or Kaiser with the barricade
Of " Olive-leaves" and Resolutions made,
Spike guns with pointed Scripture-texts,
and hope
To capsize navies with a windy trope ;
Still shall the glory and the pomp of War
Along their train the shouting millions
draw ; •
Still dusty Labor to the passing Brave
His cap shall doff, and Beauty's kerchief
wave ;
Still shall the bard to Valor tune his song*
Still Hero-worship kneel before th«?
Strong ;
Rosy and sleek, the sable-gowned divine,
O'er his third bottle of suggestive wine.
To plumed and sworded auditors, shal)
prove
Their trade accordant with the Law of
Love ;
And Church for State, and State for
Church, shall fight,
And both agree, that Might alone is
Right ! "
Despite of sneers like these, 0 faithful
few,
Who dare to hold God's word and wit
ness true.
150
MISCELLANEOUS.
Whose clear-eyed faith transcends our
evil time,
And o'er the present wilderness of crime
Sees the cairn future, with its robes of
green,
Its fleece-flecked mountains, and soft
streams between, —
Still keep the path which duty bids ye
tread,
Though worldly wisdom shake the cau
tious head ;
No truth from Heaven descends upon
our sphere,
"Without the greeting of uie sceptic's
sneer ;
Denied and mocked at, till its blessing
fall,
Common as dew and sunshine, over all.
Then, o'er Earth's war-field, till the
strife shall cease,
Like Morven's harpers, sing your song
of peace ;
As in old fable rang the Thracian's lyre,
Midst howl of fiends and roar of penal fire,
Till the fierce din to pleasing murmurs
fell,
And love subdued the maddened hearl
of hell.
Lend, once again, that holy song
tongue,
Which the glad angels of the Advent
sung,
Their cradle-anthem for the Saviour's
birth,
Glory to God, and peace unto the earth !
Through the mad discord send that
calming word
Which wind and wave on wild Genesa-
reth heard,
Lift in Christ's name his Cross against
the Sword !
Not vain the vision which the prophets
saw,
Skirting with green the fiery waste of war,
Through the hot sand-gleam, looming
soft and calm
On the sky's rim, the fountain-shading
palm.
Still lives for Earth, which fiends so long
have trod,
The great hope resting on the truth of
God, —
Evil shall cease and Violence pass away,
And the tired world breathe free through
a long Sabbath day.
llth mo., 1848.
THE WISH OF TO-DAY.
I ASK not now for gold to gild
With mocking shine a weary frame ;
The yearning of the mind is stilled, —
I ask not now for Fame.
A rose-cloud, dimly seen above,
Melting in heaven's blue depths
away, —
0, sweet, fond dream of human Love !
f For thee 1 may not pray.
But, bowed in lowliness of mind,
I make my humble wishes knojvn, —
I only ask a will resigned,
0 Father, to thine own !
To-day, beneath thy chastening eye
1 crave alone for peace and rest,
Submissive in thy hand to lie,
And feel that it is best.
A marvel seems the Universe,
A miracle our Life and Death ;
A mystery which I cannot pierce,
Around, above, beneath.
In vain I task my aching brain,
In vain the sage's thought I scan,
I only feel how weak and vain,
How poor and blind, is man.
And now my spirit sighs for home,
And longs for light whereby to see,
And, like a weary child, would come,
0 Father, unto thee !
Though oft, like letters traced on sand,
My weak resolves have passed away,
[n mercy lend thy helping hand
Unto my prayer to-day !
OUK STATE.
THE South-land boasts its teeming cane,
The prairied West its heavy grain,
And sunset's radiant gates unfold
On rising marts and sands of gold !
lough, bleak, and hard, our little State
s scant of soil, of limits strait ;
ler yellow sands are sands alone,
Her only mines are ice and stone 1
TO AVIS KEENE.
151
From Autumn frost to April rain,
Too long her winter woods complain ;
From budding flower to falling leaf,
Her summer time is all too brief.
Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands,
And wintry hills, the school-house stands,
And what her rugged soil denies,
The harvest of the mind supplies.
The riches of the Commonwealth
Are free, strong minds, and hearts of
health ;
And more to her than gold or grain,
The cunning hand and cultured "brain.
For well she keeps her ancient stock,
The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock ;
And still maintains, with milder laws,
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause !
Nor heeds the sceptic's puny hands,
While near her school the church-spire
stands ;
Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule,
While near her church-spire stands the
school.
ALL'S WELL.
THE clouds, which rise with thunder,
Our thirsty souls with rain ;
The blow most dreaded falls to break
From off our limbs a chain ;
And wrongs of man to man but make
The love of God more plain.
As through the shadowy lens of even
The eye looks farthest into heaven
On gleams of star and depths of blue
The glaring sunshine never knew !
SEED-TIME AND HARVEST.
As o'er his furrowed fields which lie
Beneath a coldly-dropping sky,
Yet chill with winter's melted snow,
The husbandman goes forth to sow,
Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast
The ventures of thy seed we cast,
And trust to warmer sun and rain
To swell the germs and fill the grain.
Who calls thy glorious service hard ?
Who deems it not its own reward ?
Who, for its trials, counts it less
A cause of praise and thankfulness ?
It may not be our lot to wield
The sickle in the" ripened field ;
Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,
The reaper's song among the sheaves.
Yet where our duty's task is wrought
In unison with God's great thought,
The near and future blend in one,
And whatsoe'er is willed, is done !
And ours the grateful service whence
Comes, day by day, the recompense ;
The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed,
The fountain and the noonday shade.
And were this life the utmost span,
The only end and aim of man,
Better the toil of fields like these
Than waking dream and slothful ease.
But life, though falling like our grain,
Like that revives and springs again ;
And, early called, how blest are they
Who wait in heaven their harvest-day !
TO AVIS KEENE.
ON KECEIVING A BASKET OF SEA-MOSSES.
THANKS for thy gift
Of ocean flowers,
Born wThere the golden drift
Of the slant sunshine falls
Down the green, tremulous walls
Of water, to the cool still coral bowers,
Where, under rainbows of perpetual
showers,
God's gardens of the deep
His patient angels keep ;
Gladdening the dim, strange solitude
With fairest forms and hues, and
thus
Forever teaching us
The lesson which the many-colored skies,
The flowers, and leaves, and painted
butterflies,
The deer's branched antlers, the gay
bird that flings
The tropic sunshine from its golden
wings,
The brightness of the human counte
nance,
Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance,
152
MISCELLANEOUS.
Forevermore repeat,
In varied tones and sweet,
That beauty, in and of itself, is good.
0 kind and generous friend, o'er whom
The sunset hues of Time are cast,
Painting, upon the overpast
And scattered clouds of noonday
sorrow
The promise of a fairer morrow,
An earnest of the better life to come ;
The binding of the spirit broken,
The warning to the erring spoken,
The comfort of the sad,
The eye to see, the hand to cull
Of common things the beautiful,
The absent heart made glad
By simple gift or graceful token
Of love it needs as daily food,
All own one Source, and all are good !
Hence, tracking sunny cove and
reach,
Where spent waves glimmer up the
beach,
And toss their gifts of weed and shell
From foamy curve and combing swell,
No unbefitting task was thine
To weave these flowers so soft and
fair
In unison with His design
Who loveth beauty everywhere ;
And makes in every zone and clime,
In ocean and in upper air,
" All things beautiful in their time. "
For not alone in tones of awe and
power
He speaks to man ;
The cloudy horror of the thunder-
shower
His rainbows span ;
And where the caravan
Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in
air
The crane-flock leaves, no trace of pas
sage there,
He gives the weary eye
The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon
hours,
And on its branches dry
Calls out the acacia's flowers ;
And where the dark shaft pierces
down
Beneath the mountain roots,
Seen by the miner's lamp alone,
The star-like crystal shoots ;
So, where, the winds and waves
below,
The coral-branched gardens grow,
His climbing weeds and mosses
show,
Like foliage, on each stony bough,
Of varied hues more strangely gay
Than forest leaves in autumn's
day ; —
Thus evermore,
On sky, and wave, and shore,
An all-pervading beauty seems to
say :
God's love and power are one ; and
they,
Who, like the thunder of a sultry
day,
Smite to restore,
And they, who, like the gentle wind,
uplift
The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and
drift
Their perfume on the air,
Alike may serve Him, each, with their
own gift,
Making their lives a pra}er I
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS.
153
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS,
AND OTHER POEMS.
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS.
" I DO believe, and yet, in grief,
I pray for help to unbelief ;
For needful strength aside to lay
The daily cumberings of my way.
" I 'm sick at heart of craft and cant,
Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant,
Profession's smooth hypocrisies,
And creeds of iron, and lives of ease.
" I ponder o'er the sacred word,
I read the record of our Lord ;
And, weak and troubled, envy them
Who touched his seamless garment's
hem ; —
" Who saw the tears of love he wept
Above the grave where Lazarus slept ;
And heard, amidst the shadows dim
Of Olivet, his evening hymn.
•'How blessed the swineherd's low
estate,
The beggar crouching at the gate,
The leper loathly and abhorred,
Whose eyes of flesh beheld the Lord !
"0 sacred soil his sandals pressed !
Sweet fountains of his noonday rest !
0 light and air of Palestine,
Impregnate with his life divine !
"0, bear me thither ! Let me look
On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook, —
Kneel at Getlisemane, and by
Gennesaret walk, before I die !
" Methinks this cold and northern, night
Would melt before that Orient light ;
And, wet by Hermon's dew and rain,
My childhood's faith revive again ! "
So spake my friend, one autumn day,
Where the still river slid away
Beneath us, and above the brown
Red curtains of the woods shut down.
Then said I, — for I could not brook
The mute appealing of his look, —
" I, too, am weak, and faith is small
And blindness happeneth unto all.
" Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight,
Through present wrong, the eternal
right ;
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man ;
" That all of good the past hath had
Remains to make our own time glad, —
Our common daily life divine,
And every land a Palestine.
' ' Thou weariest of thy present state ;
What gain to thee time's holiest date ?
The doubter now perchance had been
As High Priest or as Pilate then !
"What thought Chorazin's scribes'
What faith
In Him had Nain and Nazareth ?
Of the few followers whom He led
One sold him, — all forsook and fled.
" 0 friend ! we need nor rock nor sand,
Nor storied stream of Morning- Land ;
The heavens are glassed in Merri-
mack, —
What more could Jordan render back ?
" We lack but open eye and ear
To find the Orient's marvels here ; —
The still small voice in autumn's hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush.
" For still the new transcends the old.
In signs and tokens manifold ; —
Slaves rise up men ; the olive waves,
With roots deep set in battle graves !
" Through the harsh noises of our day
A low, sweet prelude finds its way ;
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of
fear,
A light is breaking, calm and clear.
154
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS.
" That song of Love, now low and far,
Erelong shall swell from star to star !
That light, the breaking day, which tips
The golden-spired Apocalypse ! "
Then, when my good friend shook his
head,
And, sighing, sadly smiled, I said :
" Thou mind'st me of a story told
In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold." ^
And while the slanted sunbeams wove
The shadows of the frost-stained grove.
And, picturing all, the river ran
O'er cloud and wood, I thus began :
In Mount Valerien's chestnut wood
The Chapel of the Hermits stood ;
And thither, at the close of day,
Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray.
One, whose impetuous youth defied
The storms of Baikal's wintry side,
A-nd mused and dreamed where tropic
day
Flamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay.
His simple tale of love and woe
All hearts had melted, high or low ; —
A blissful pain, a sweet distress,
Immortal in its tenderness.
Yet, while above his charmed page
Beat quick the young heart of his age,
He walked amidst the crowd unknown,
A. sorrowing old man, strange and lone.
A homeless, troubled age, — the gray
Pale setting of a weary day ;
Too dull his ear for voice of praise,
Too sadly worn his brow for bays.
Pride, lust of power and glory, slept ;
Yet still his heart its young dream kept,
And, wandering like the deluge-dove,
Still cough t the resting-place of love.
And, mateless, childless, envied more
The peasant's welcome from his door
By smiling eyes at eventide,
Than kingly gifts or lettered pride.
Until, in place of wife and child-
A.H-pitying Nature on him smiled,
A.nd gave to him the golden keys
Jo all her inmost sanctities.
Mild Druid of her wood-paths dim \
She laid her great heart bare to him,
Its loves and sweet accords ; — he saw
The beauty of her perfect law.
The language of her signs he knew,
What notes her cloudy clarion blew ;
The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes,
The hymn of sunset's painted skies.
And thus he seemed to hear the song
Which swept, of old, the stars along ;
And to his eyes the earth once more
Its fresh and primal beauty wore.
Who sought with him, from summej
air,
And field and wood, a balm for care ;
And bathed in light of sunset skies
His tortured nerves and weary eyes ?
His fame on all the winds had flown ;
His words had shaken crypt and throne ;
Like fire, on camp and court and cell
They dropped, and kindled as tnej
fell.
Beneath the pomps of state, below
The mitred juggler's masque and show,
A prophecy — a vague hope — ran
His burning thought from man to man.
For peace or rest too well he saw
The fraud of priests, the wrong of law,
And felt how hard, between the two,
Their breath of pain the millions drew.
A prophet-utterance, strong and wild,
The weakness of an unwearied child,
A sun-bright hope for human-kind,
And self-despair, in him combined.
He loathed the false, yet lived not
time
To half the glorious truths he knew ;
The doubt, the discord, and the sin,
He mourned without, he felt within.
Untrod by him the path he showed,
Sweet pictures on his easel glowed
Of simple faith, and loves of home,
And virtue's golden days to come.
But weakness, shame, and folly made
The foil to all his pen portrayed ;
Still, where his dreamy splendors shone
The shadow of himself was thrown.
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS.
155
Lord, what is man, whose thought, at
times,
Up to thy sevenfold "brightness climbs,
While still his grosser instinct clings
To earth, like other creeping things !
So rich in words, in acts so mean ;
So high, so low ; chance- swung between
The foulness of the penal pit
And Truth's clear .sky, millennium-
lit !
Vain pride of star-lent genius ! — vain
Quick fancy and creative brain,
IJnblest by prayerful sacrifice,
Absurdly great, or weakly wise !
Midst yearnings for a truer life,
Without were fears, within was strife ;
And still his wayward act denied
The perfect good for which he sighed.
The love he sent forth void returned ;
The fame that crowned him scorched
and burned,
Burning, yet cold and drear and lone, —
A fire-mount in a frozen zone !
Like that the gray-haired sea-king
passed,54
Seen southward from his sleety mast,
About whose brows of changeless frost
A wreath of flame the wild winds tossed.
Far round the mournful beauty played
Of lambent light and purple shade,
Lost on the fixed and dumb despair
Of frozen earth and sea and air !
A man apart, unknown, unloved
By those whose wrongs his soul had
moved,
He bore the ban of Church and State,
The good man's fear, the bigot's hate !
Forth from the city's noise and throng,
Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong,
The twain that summer day had strayed
To Mount Valerien's chestnut shade.
To them the green fields and the wood
Lent something of their quietude,
And golden-tinted sunset seemed
Prophetical of all they dreamed.
The hermits from their simple cares
The bell was calling home to prayers,
And, listening to its sound, the twain
Seemed lapped in childhood's trust
again.
Wide open stood the chapel door ;
A sweet old music, swelling o'er
Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence, —
The Litanies of Providence !
Then Rousseau spake : "Where two or
three
In His name meet, He there will be ! '"
And then, in silence, on their knees
They sank beneath the chestnut-trees.
As to the blind returning light,
As daybreak to the Arctic night,
Old faith revived : the doubts of years
Dissolved in reverential tears.
That gush of feeling overpast,
" Ah me ! " Bernardin sighed at last,
" I would thy bitterest foes could see
Thy heart as it is seen of me !
" No church of God hast thou denied ;
Thou hast but spurned in scorn aside
A base and hollow counterfeit,
Profaning the pure name of it !
" With dry dead moss and marish weeds
His fire the western herdsman feeds,
And greener from the ashen plain
The sweet spring grasses rise again.
" Nor thunder-peal nor mighty wind
Disturb the solid sky behind ;
And through the cloud the red bolt rends
The calm, still smile of Heaven descends 1
" Thus through the world, like bolt and
blast,
And scourging fire, thy words have
passed.
Clouds break, — the steadfast heavens
remain ;
Weeds burn, — the ashes feed the grain !
" But whoso strives with wrong may find
Its touch pollute, its darkness blind ;
And learn, as latent fraud is shown
In others' faith, to doubt his own.
" With dream and falsehood, simple trust
And pious hope we tread in dust ;
Lost the calm faith in goodness, — lost
The baptism of the Pentecost !
156
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS.
" Alas ! — the blows for error meant
Too oft on truth itself are spent,
As through the-false and vile and base
Looks forth her sad, rebuking face.
" Not ours the Theban's charmed life ;
We come not scathless from the strife !
The Python's coil about us clings,
The trampled Hydra bites and stings !
" Meanwhile, the sport of seeming
chance,
The plastic shapes of circumstance,
What might have been we fondly guess,
If earlier born, or tempted less.
"And thou, in these wild, troubled
days,
Misjudged alike in blame and praise,
Unsought and undeserved the same
The sceptic's praise, the bigot's blame ; —
" I cannot doubt, if thou hadst been
Among the highly favored men
Who walked on earth with Fen el on,
He would have owned thee as his son ;
"And, bright with wings of cherubim
Visibly waving over him,
Seen through his life, the Church had
seemed
All that its old confessors dreamed.
" I would have been," Jean Jaques re
plied,
' ' The humblest servant at his side,
Obscure, unknown, content to see
How beautiful man's life may be !
"0, more than thrice-blest relic, more
Than solemn rite or sacred lore,
The holy life of one who trod
The foot-marks of the Christ of God !
" Amidst a blinded world he saw
The oneness of the Dual law ;
That Heaven's sweet peace on Earth
began,
And God was loved through love of
"He lived the Truth which reconciled
The strong man Reason, Faith the child
In him belief and act were one,
The homilies of duty done ! "
So speaking, through the twilight gray
The two old pilgrims went their way.
What seeds of life that day were sown,
The heavenly watchers knew alone.
Time passed, and Autumn came to fold
Green Summer in her brown and gold ;
Time passed, and Winter's tears of snow
Dropped on the grave-mound of Rous
' ' The tree remaineth where it fell,
The pained on earth is pained in hell ! "
So priestcraft from its altars cursed
The mournful doubts its falsehood
nursed.
Ah ! well of old the Psalmist prayed,
" Thy hand, not man's, on me be laid ! "
Earth frowns below, Heaven weeps above,
And man is hate, but God is love !
No Hermits noAv the wanderer sees,
Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees ;
A morning dream, a tale that 's told,
The wave of change o'er all has rolled.
Yet lives the lesson of that day ;
And from its twilight cool and gray
Comes up a low, sad whisper, " Make
The truth thine own, for truth's own
sake.
"Why wait to see in thy brief span
Its perfect flower and fruit in man ?
No saintly touch can save ; no balm
Of healing hath the martyr's palm.
"Midst soulless forms, and false pre
tence
Of spiritual pride and pampered sense,
A voice saith, ' What is that to thee ?
Be true thyself, and follow Me ! '
" In days when throne and altar heard
The wanton's wish, the bigot's word,
And pomp of state and ritual show
Scarce hid the loathsome death be
low, —
"Midst fawning priests and courtiers
foul,
The losel swarm of crown and cowl,
White-robed walked Francois Fenelon,
Stainless as Uriel in the sun !
" Yet in his time the stake blazed red,
The poor were eaten up like bread :
Men knew him not : his garment's hem
No healing virtue had for them.
QUESTIONS OF LIFE.
157
•' Alas ! no present saint we find ;
The white cymar gleams far behind,
Revealed in outline vague, sublime,
Through telescopic mists of time I
41 Trust not in man with passing breath,
But in the Lord, old Scripture saith ;
The truth which saves thou mayst not
blend
With false professor, faithless friend.
" Search thine own heart. What pain-
eth thee
In others in thyself may be ;
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak ;
Be thou the true man thou dost seek !
' ' Where now with pain thou treadest, trod
Thf whitest of the saints of God !
To show thee where their feet were set,
The light which led them shineth yet.
" The footprints of the life divine,
Which marked their path, remain in
thine ;
And that great Life, transfused in theirs.
Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers ! "
A lesson which I well may heed,
A word of fitness to my need ;
So from that twilight cool and gray
Still saith a voice, or seems to say.
We rose, and slowly homeward turned,
While down the west the sunset burned;
And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide,
And human forms seemed glorified.
The village homes transfigured stood,
And purple bluffs, whose belting wood
Across the waters leaned to hold
The yellow leaves like lamps of gold.
Then spake my friend : ' ' Thy words are
true ;
Forever old, forever new,
These home-seen splendors are the same
Which over Eden's sunsets came.
" To these bowed heavens let wood and
hill
Lift voiceless praise and anthem still ;
Fall, warm with blessing, over them,
Light of the New Jerusalem !
" Flow on, sweet river, like the stream
Of John's Apocalyptic dream !
This mapled ridge shall Horeb be,
Yon green-banked lake our Galilee !
"Henceforth my heart shall sigh no
more
For olden time and holier shore ;
God's love and blessing, then and there,
Are now and here and everywhere."
MISCELLANEOUS.
QUESTIONS OF LIFE.
&nd the angel that was sent unto me, whose
name was Uriel, gave me an answer and said,
" Thy heart hath gone too far in this world,
and thinkest thou to comprehend the way of the
Most High?"
Then said I, " Yea, my Lord."
Then said he unto me, " Go thy way , weigh me
the weight of the fire or measure me the blast
of the wind, or call me again the day that is
past." — 2 Esdras, chap. iv.
A BENDING staff' I would not break,
A feeble faith I would not shake,
Nor even rashly pluck away
The error which some truth may stay,
Whose loss might leave the soul without
A shield against the shafts of doubt.
And yet, at times, when over all
A darker mystery seems to fall,
(May God forgive the child of dust,
Who seeks to know, where Faith shoiii
trust ! )
I raise the questions, old and dark,
Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch,
And, speech-confounded, build again
The baffled tower of Shinar's plain.
I am : how little more I know !
Whence came I ? Whither do I go ?
A centred self, which feels and is ;
A cry between the silences ;
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife
With sunshine on the hills of life ;
158
MISCELLANEOUS.
A. shaft from Nature's quiver cast
Into the Future from the Past ;
Between the cradle and the shroud,
A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud.
Thorough the vastness, arching all,
I see the great stars rise and fall,
The rounding seasons come and go,
The tided oceans ebb and flow ;
The tokens of a central force,
Whose circles, in their widening course,
O'erlap and move the universe ;
The workings of the lawr whence springs
The rhythmic harmony of things,
Which shapes in earth the darkling
spar,
And orbs in heaven the morning star.
Of all I see, in earth and sky, —
Star, flower, beast, bird, — what part
have I ?
This conscious life, — is it the same
Which thrills the universal frame,
Whereby the caverned crystal shoots,
And mounts the sap from forest roots,
Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells
When Spring makes green her native
dells?
How feels the stone the pang of birth,
Which brings its sparkling prism forth ?
The forest-tree the throb which gives
The life-blood to its new-born leaves ?
Do bird and blossom feel, like me,
Life's many-folded mystery, —
The wonder which it is TO BE ?
Or stand I severed and distinct,
From Nature's chain of life unlinked ?
Allied to all, yet not the less
Prisoned in separate consciousness,
Alone o'erburdened with a sense
Of life, and cause, and consequence ?
In vain to me the Sphinx propounds
The riddle of her sights and sounds ;
Back still the vaulted mystery gives
The echoed question it receives.
What sings the brook ? What oracle
}s in the pine-tree's organ swell ?
What may the wind's low burden
be?
The meaning of the moaning sea ?
The hieroglyphics of the stars ?
Or clouded sunset's crimson bars ?
I vainly ask, for mocks my skill
The trick of Nature's cipher still
I turn from Nature unto men,
I ask the stylus and the pen ;
What sang the bards of old? What
meant
The prophets of the Orient ?
The rolls of buried Egypt, hid
In painted tomb and pyramid ?
What mean Idumea's arrowy lines,
Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs ?
How speaks the primal thought of man
From the grim carvings of Copan ?
Where rests the secret ? Where the keys
Of the old death-bolted mysteries ?
Alas ! the dead retain their trust ;
Dust hath no answer from the dust.
The great enigma still unguessed,
Unanswered the eternal quest ;
I gather up the scattered rays
Of wisdom in the early days,
Faint gleams and broken, like the light
Of meteors in a northern night,
Betraying to the darkling earth
The unseen sun which gave them birth ;
1 listen to the sibyl's chant,
The voice of priest and hierophant ;
I know what Indian Kreeshna saith,
And what of life and what of death
The demon taught to Socrates ;
And what, beneath his garden-trees
Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread,
The solemn-thoughted Plato said ;
Nor lack I tokens, great or small,
Of God's clear light in each and all,
While holding with more dear regard
The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard,
The starry pages promise-lit
With Christ's Evangel over-writ,
Thy miracle of life and death,
0 holy one of Nazareth !
On Aztec ruins, gray and lone,
The circling serpent coils in stone, —
Type of the endless and unknown ;
Whereof we seek the clew to find,
With groping fingers of the blind !
Forever sought, and never found,
We trace that serpent-symbol round
Our resting-place, our starting bound !
0 thriftlessness of dream and guess !
0 wisdom which is foolishness !
Why idly seek from outward things
The answer inward silence brings ;
Why stretch beyond our proper sphere
And age, for that which lies so near ?
Why climb the far-off hills with pain,
A nearer view of heaven to gain ?
In lowliest depths of bosky dells
The hermit Contemplation dwells.
THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES.
159
A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat,
And lotus-twined his silent feet,
Whence, piercing heaven, with screened
sight,
He sees at noon the stars, whose light
Shall glorify the coming night.
Here let me pause, my quest forego ;
Enough for me to feel and know
That He in whom the cause and end,
The past and future, meet and blend, —
Who, girt with his immensities,
Our vast and star-hung system sees,
Small as the clustered Pleiades, —
Moves not alone the heavenly quires,
But waves the spring-time's grassy
spires,
Guards not archangel feet alone,
But deigns to guide and keep my own ;
Speaks not alone the words of fate
Which worlds destroy, and worlds
create,
But whispers in my spirit's ear,
In tones of love, or warning fear,
A language none beside may hear.
To Him, from wanderings long and
wild,
I come, an over- wearied child,
In cool and shade his peace to find,
Like dew-fall settling on my mind.
Assured that all I know is best,
And humbly trusting for the rest,
I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme,
Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream
Of power, impersonal and cold,
Controlling all, itself controlled,
Maker and slave of iron laws,
Alike the subject and the cause ;
From vain philosophies, that try
The sevenfold gates of mystery,
And, baffled ever, babble still,
Word-prodigal of fate and will ;
From Nature, and her mockery, Art,
And book and speech of men apart,
To the still witness in my heart ;
With reverence waiting to behold
His Avatar of love untold,
The Eternal Beauty new and old !
THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES.
I HAVE been thinking of the victims
bound
In Naples, dying for the lack of air
And sunshine, in their close, damp
cells of pain,
Where hope is not, and innocence in
vain
Appeals against the torture and the
chain !
Unfortunates ! whose crime it was to
share
Our common love of freedom, and to
dare,
In its behalf, Rome's harlot triple-
crowned,
And her base pander, the most hateful
thing
Who upon Christian or on Pagan
ground
Makes vile the old heroic name of king.
0 God most merciful ! Father just and
kind!
Whom man hath bound let thy right
hand unbind.
Or, if thy purposes of good behind
Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers
find
Strong consolations ; leave them not to
doubt
Thy providential care, nor yet without
The hope which all thy attributes in
spire,
That not in vain the martyr's robe of
fire
Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting
chain ;
Since all who suffer for thy truth send
forth,
Electrical, with every throb of pain,
Unquenchable sparks, thy own bap
tismal rain
Of fire and spirit over all the earth,
Making the dead in slavery live again.
Let this great hope be with them, as
they lie
Shut from the light, the greenness, and
the sky, —
From the cool waters and the pleasant
breeze,
The smell of flowers, and shade of sum
mer trees ;
Bound with the felon lepers, whom
disease
And sins abhorred make loathsome ,-
let them share
Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to bear
Years of unutterable torment, stern and
still,
As the chained Titan victor through his*
will!
160
MISCELLANEOUS.
Comfort them with thy future ; let them
see
The day-dawn of Italian liberty ;
For that, with all good things, is hid
with Thee,
And, perfect in thy thought, awaits its
time to be !
I, who have spoken for freedom at the cost
Of some weak friendships, or some pal
try prize
Of name or place, and more than I have
lost
Have gained in wider reach of sym
pathies,
And free communion with the good and
wise, —
May God forbid that I should ever
boast
Such easy self-denial, or repine
That the strong pulse of health no more
is mine ;
That, overworn at noonday, I must
yield
To other hands the gleaning of the
field, -
A tired on-looker through the day's
decline.
For blest beyond deserving still, and
knowing
That kindly Providence its care is
showing
In the withdrawal as in the bestowing,
Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray.
Beautiful yet for me this autumn day
Melts on its sunset hills ; and, far away,
For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm,
To me the pine-woods whisper ; and
for me
Yon river, winding through its vales of
calm,
By greenest banks, with asters purple-
starred,
And gentian bloom and golden-rod
made gay,
Flows down in silent gladness to the sea,
Like a pure spirit to its great reward !
Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near
and dear,
Whose love is round me like this atmos
phere,
Warm, soft, and golden. For such gifts
to me
What shall I render, 0 my God, to thee ?
Let me not dwell upon my lighter share
Of pain and ill that human 'life must bear ;
Save me from selfish pining : let my heart,
Drawn from itself in sympathy, 1'orget
The' bitter longings of a vain regret,
The anguish of its own peculiar smart.
Remembering others, as 1 have to-day,
In their great sorrows, let me live alway
Not for myself alone, but have a part,
Such as a frail and erring spirit may,
In love which is of Thee, and which in
deed Thou art i
MOLOCH IN STATE STREET.
THE moon has set : while yet the dawn
Breaks cold and gray,
Between the midnight and the morn
Bear off your prey !
On, swift and still ! — the conscious street
Is panged and stirred ;
Tread light ! — that fall of serried feet
The dead have heard !
The first drawn blood of Freedom's veins
Gushed where ye tread ;
Lo ! through the dusk the martyr-stains
Blush darkly red !
Beneath the slowly waning stars
And whitening day,
What stern and awful presence bars
That sacred way ?
What faces frown upon ye, dark
With shame and pain ?
Come these from Plymouth'.* Pilgrim
bark ?
Is that young Vane ?
Who, dimly beckoning, speed ye on
With mocking cheer ?
Lo ! spectral Andros, Hutchinson,
And Gage are here !
For ready mart or favoring blast
Through Moloch's fire
Flesh of his flesh, unsparing, passed
The Tyrian sire.
Ye make that ancient sacrifice
Of Man to Gain,
Your traffic thrives, where Fretdom dies
Beneath the chain.
Ye sow to-day, your harvest, scorn
And hate, is near ;
THE PEACE OF EUROPE'.
101
How think ye freemen, mountain-born,
The tale will hear ?
Thank God ! our mother State can yet
Her fame retrieve ;
To you and to your children let
The scandal cleave.
Chain Hall and Pulpit, Court and Press,
Make gods of gold ;
Let honor, truth, and manliness
Like wares be sold.
Your hoards are great, your walls are
strong,
But God is just ;
The gilded chambers built by wrong
Invite the rust.
What ! know ye not the gains of Crime
Are dust and dross ;
Its ventures on the waves of time.
Foredoomed to loss !
And still the Pilgrim State remains
What she hath been ;
Her inland hills, her seaward plains,
Still nurture men !
Nor wholly lost the fallen mart, —
Her olden blood
Through many a free and generous heart
Still pours its flood.
That brave old blood, quick-flowing yet,
Shall know no check,
Till a free people's foot is set
On Slavery's neck.
Even now, the peal of bell and gun,
And hills aflame,
Tell of the first great triumph won
In Freedom's name.65
The long night dies : the welcome gray
Of dawn AVC see ;
Speed up the heavens thy perfect day,
God of the free !
1851.
THE PEACE OF EUROPE.
1852.
" GREAT peace in Europe ! Order reigns
From Tiber's hills to Danube's plains !"
So say her kings and priests ; so say
The lying prophets of our day.
Go lay to earth a listening ear ;
The tramp of measured marches hear, —
The rolling of the cannon's wheel,
The shotted musket's murderous peal,
The night alarm, the sentry's call,
The quick-eared spy in hut and
hall !
From Polar sea and tropic fen
The dying-groans of exiled men !
The bolted cell, the galley's chains,
The scaffold smoking with its stains !
Order, — the hush of brooding slaves !
Peace, — in the dungeon - vaults and
graves !
0 Fisher ! of the world-wide net,
With meshes in all waters set,
Whose fabled keys of heaven and
hell
Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell,
And open wide the banquet-hall,
Where kings and priests hold carni
val !
Weak vassal tricked in royal guise,
Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies ;
Base gambler for Napoleon's crown,
Barnacle on his dead renown !
Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan,
Crowned scandal, loathed of God and
man;
And thou, fell Spider of the North !
Stretching thy giant feelers forth.
Within whose web the freedom dies
Of nations eaten up like flies !
Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and
Czar!
If this be Peace, pray what is War ?
White Angel of the Lord ! unmeet
That soil accursed for thy pure feet.
Never in Slavery's desert flows
The fountain of thy charmed repose ;
No tyrant's hand thy chaplet weaves
Of lilies and of olive-leaves ;
Not with the wicked shalt thou dwell,
Thus saith the Eternal Oracle ;
Thy home is with the pure and free !
Stern herald of thy better day,
Before thee, to prepare thy way,
The Baptist Shade of Liberty,
Gray, scarred and hairy-robed, must
press
With bleeding feet the wilderness !
0 that its voice might pierce the ear
Of princes, trembling while they hear
A cry as of the Hebrew seer :
Repent ! God's kingdom draweth near !
162
MISCELLANEOUS.
WORDSWORTH.
WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS
MEMOIRS.
DEAR friends, who read the world aright,
And in its common forms discern
A beauty and a harmony
The many never learn !
Kindred in soul of him who found
In simple flower and leaf and stone
The impulse of the sweetest lays
Our Saxon tongue has known, —
Accept this record of a life
As sweet and pure, as calm and good,
As a long day of blandest June
In green field and in wood.
How welcome to our ears, long pained
By strife of sect and party noise,
The brook-like murmur of his song
. Of nature's simple joys !
The violet by its mossy stone,
The primrose by the river's brim,
And chance-sown daffodil, have found
Immortal life through him.
The sunrise on his breezy lake,
The rosy tints his sunset brought,
World-seen, are gladdening all the vales
And mountain-peaks of thought.
Art builds on sand ; the works of pride
And human passion change and fall ;
But that which shares the life of God
With him surviveth all.
TO
LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER
DAY'S EXCURSION.
FAIR Nature's priestesses ! to whom,
Tn hieroglyph of bud and bloom,
Her mysteries are told ;
Who, wise in lore of wood and mead,
The seasons' pictured scrolls can read,
In lessons manifold !
Thanks for the courtesy, and gay
Good-humor, which on Washing Day
Our ill-timed visit bore ;
Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke
The morning dreams of Artichoke,
Along his wooded shore !
Varied as varying Nature's ways,
Sprites of the river, woodland fays,
Or mountain nymphs, ye seem ;
Free-limbed Dianas on the green,
Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine,
Upon your favorite stream.
The forms of which the poets told,
The fair benignities of old,
Were doubtless such as you ;
What more than Artichoke the rill
Of Helicon ? Than Pipe-stave hill
Arcadia's mountain-view ?
No sweeter bowers the bee delayed,
In wild Hymettus' scented shade,
Than those you dwell among ;
Snow-flowered azalias, intertwined
With roses, over banks inclined
With trembling harebells hung !
A charmed life unknown to death,
Immortal freshness Nature hath ;
Her fabled fount and glen
Are now and here : Dodona's shrine
Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine, —
All is that e'er hath been.
The Beauty which old Greece or Rome
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at
home ;
We need but eye and ear
In all our daily walks to trace
The outlines of incarnate grace,
The hymns of gods to hear !
IN PEACE.
A TRACK of moonlight on a quiet lake,
Whose small waves on a silver-sanded
shore
Whisper of peace, and with the low winds
make
Such harmonies as keep the woods awake,
And listening all night long for their sweet
sake ;
A green-waved slope of meadow, hov
ered o'er
By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light
On viewless stems, with folded wings of
white ;
A slumberous stretch of mountain -land,
far seen
Where the low westering day, with gold
and green,
Purple and amber, softly blended, fills
WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE. Page 162.
PICTURES.
163
The wooded vales, and melts among the
hills ;
A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest
On the calm bosom of a stormless sea,
Bearing alike upon its placid breast,
With earthly flowers and heavenly stars
impressed,
The hues of time and of eternity :
Such are the pictures which the thought
of thee,
0 friend, awakeneth, — charming the
keen pain
Of thy departure, and our sense of loss
Requiting with the fulness of thy gain.
Lo ! on the quiet grave thy life-borne
cross,
Dropped only at its side, methinks doth
shine,
Of thy beatitude the radiant sign !
No sob of grief, no wild lament be there,
To break the Sabbath of the holy air ;
But, in their stead, the silent-breathing
prayer
Of hearts still waiting for a rest like thine.
0 spirit redeemed ! Forgive us, if hence
forth,
With sweet and pure similitudes of earth,
We keep thy pleasant memory freshly
green, "
Of love's inheritance a priceless part,
Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is
seen
To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art,
With pencil dipped alone in colors of
the heart.
BENEDICITE.
GOD'S love and peace be with thee, where
Soe'er this soft autumnal air
Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair !
Whether through city casements comes
Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms,
Or, out among the woodland blooms,
It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face,
Imparting, in its glad embrace,
Beauty to beauty, grace to grace !
Fair Nature's book together read,
The old wood-paths that knew our tread,
The maple shadows overhead, —
The hills we climbed, the river seen
By gleams along its deep ravine, —
All keep thy memory fresh and green.
Where'er I look, where'er I stray,
Thy thought goes with me on my way,
And hence the prayer I breathe to-day ;
O'er lapse of time and change of scene.
The weary waste which lies between
Thyself and me, my heart 1 lean.
Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word,
nor
The half-unconscious power to draw
All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law.
With these good gifts of God is cast
Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast
To hold the blessed angels fast.
If, then, a fervent wish for thee
The gracious heavens will heed from me,
What should, dear heart, its burden be r(
The sighing of a shaken reed, —
What can I more than meekly plead
The greatness of our common need ?
God's love, — unchanging, pure, and
true, —
The Paraclete white-shining through
His peace, — the fall of Hermon's dew (
With such a prayer, on this sweet day,
As thou mayst hear and I may say,
I greet thee, dearest, far away !
PICTURES.
LIGHT, warmth, and sprouting greenness,
and o'er all
Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, rain
ing down
Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed
town,
The freshening meadows, and the hill
sides brown ;
Voice of the west-wind from the hills
of pine,
And the brimmed river from its distant
fall,
Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude
Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting
wood, —
Heralds and prophecies of sound and
sight,
Blessed forerunners of the warmth and
light,
164
MISCELLANEOUS.
Attendant angels to the house of prayer,
With reverent footsteps keeping pace
with mine, —
Once more, through God's great love, with
you 1 share
A morn of resurrection sweet and fair
As that which saw, of old, in Pales
tine,
Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom
From the dark night and winter of
the tomb !
D*A mo , Id, 1852.
Vhite with its sun -bleached dust, the
pathway winds
Before me ; dust is on the shrunken
And on the trees beneath whose
boughs I pass ;
Frail screen against the Hunter of the
sky,
Who, glaring on mewithhislidlesseye,
While mounting with his dog-star
high and higher
Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds
The burnished quiver of his shafts
of fire.
Between me and the hot fields of his
South
A tremulous glow, as from a furnace-
mouth,
Glimmers and swims before my daz
zled sight,
As if the burning arrows of his ire
Broke as they fell, and shattered into
light ;
Yet on my cheek I feel the western wind,
And hear it telling to the orchard
trees,
And to the faint and flower-forsaken
bees,
Tales of fair meadows, green with con
stant streams,
And mountains rising blue and cool
behind,
Where in moist dells the purple or
chis gleams,
And starred with white the virgin's
bower is twined.
So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares
Along life's summer waste, at times is
fanned,
Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs
Of a serener and a holier land,
Fresh as the morn, and as the dew-
fall bland.
Breath of the blessed Heaven for whirh
we pray,
Blow from the eternal hills ! — make
glad our earthly way !
8f*«t0.,186&
DERNE.«
NIGHT on the city of the Moor !
On mosque and tomb, and white-walled
shore,
On sea- waves, to whose ceaseless knock
The narrow harbor-gates unlock,
On corsair's galley, carack tall,
And plundered Christian caraval !
The sounds of Moslem life are still ;
No mule-bell tinkles down the hill ;
Stretched in the broad court of the
khan,
The dusty Bornou caravan
Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man
The Sheik is dreaming in his tent,
His noisy Arab tongue o'erspent ;
The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone,
The merchant with his wares with
drawn ;
Rough pillowed on some pirate breast,
The dancing-girl has sunk to rest :
And, save where measured footsteps
fall
Along the Bashaw's guarded wall,
Or where, like some bad dream, the
Jew
Creeps stealthily his quarter through,
Or counts with fear his golden heaps,
The City of the Corsair sleeps !
But where yon prison long and low
Stands black against the pale star-glow,
Chafed by the ceaseless wash of waves,
There watch and pine the Christian
slaves ; —
Rough-bearded men, whose far-off wives
Wear out with grief their lonely lives ;
And youth, still flashing from his eyes
The clear blue of New England skies,
A treasured lock of whose soft hair
Now wakes some sorrowing mother's
prayer ;
Or,- worn upon some maiden breast,
Stirs with the loving heart's unrest !
A bitter cup each life must drain,
The groaning earth is cursed with pain,
And, like the scroll the angel bore
The shuddering Hebrew seer before,
ASTHMA.
O'erwrit alike, without, within,
With all the woes which follow sin ;
But, bitterest of the ills beneath
Whose load man totters down to death,
Is that which plucks the regal crown
Of Freedom from his forehead down,
And snatches from his powerless hand
The sceptred sign of self-command,
Effacing with the chain and rod
The image and the seal of God ;
Till from his nature, day by day,
The manly virtues fall away,
And leave him naked, blind and mute,
The godlike merging in the brute !
Why mourn the quiet ones who die
Beneath affection's tender eye,
Unto their household and their kin
Like ripened corn-sheaves gathered in ?
0 weeper, from that tranquil sod,
That holy harvest-home of God,
Turn to the quick and suffering, — shed
Thy tears upon the living dead !
Thank God above thy dear ones' graves,
They sleep with Him, — they are not
slaves.
What dark mass, down the mountain
sides
Swift-pouring, like a stream divides ? —
A long, loose, straggling caravan,
Camel and horse and armed man.
The moon's low crescent, glimmering
o'er
Its grave of waters to the shore,
Lights up that mountain cavalcade,
And glints from gun and spear and
blade
Near and more near ! — now o'er them
falls
The shadow of the city walls.
Hark to the sentry's challenge, drowned
In the fierce trumpet's charging
sound ! —
The rush of men, the musket's peal,
The short, sharp clang of meeting steel !
Vain, Moslem, vain thy lifeblood poured
So freely on thy foeman's sword !
Not to the swift nor to the strong
The battles of the right belong ;
For he who strikes for Freedom wears
The armor of the captive's prayers,
And Nature proffers to his cause
The strength of her eternal laws ;
While he whose arm essays to bind
And herd with common brutes his kind
Strives evermore at fearful odds
With Nature and the jealous gods,
And dares the dread recoil which late
Or soon their right shall vindicate.
'T is done, — the horned crescent falls !
The star- flag flouts the broken walls !
Joy to the captive husband ! joy
To thy sick heart, 0 brown-locked boy
In sullen wrath the conquered Moor
Wide open flings your dungeon-door,
And leaves ye free from cell and chain,
The owners of yourselves again.
Dark as his allies desert-born,
Soiled with the battle's stain, and worn
With the long marches of his band
Through hottest wastes of rock and
sand, —
Scorched by the sun and furnace-breath
Of the red desert's wind of death,
With welcome words and grasping
hands,
The victor and deliverer stands !
The tale is one of distant skies ;
The dust of half a century lies
Upon it ; yet its hero's name
Still lingers on the lips of Fame.
Men speak the praise of him who gave
Deliverance to the Moorman's slave,
Yet dare to brand with shame and crime
The heroes of our land and time, —
The self -forgetful ones, who stake
Home, name, and life for Freedom's
sake.
God mend his heart who cannot feel
The impulse of a holy zeal,
And sees not, with his sordid eyes,
The beauty of self-sacrifice !
Though in the sacred place he stands,
Uplifting consecrated hands,
Unworthy are his lips to tell
Of Jesus' martyr-miracle,
Or name aright that dread embrace
Of suffering for a fallen race !
ASTE^A.
settle
" Jove means to
Astrasa in her seat again ,
And let down from his golden chain
An age of better metal."
BEN JoxsoN; 1615
0 POET rare and old !
Thy words are prophecies ;
Forward the age of gold,
The new Saturnian lies.
166
MISCELLANEOUS.
The universal prayer
And hope are not in vain ;
Rise, brothers ! and prepare
The way for Saturn's reign.
Perish shall all which takes
From labor's board and can ;
Perish shall all which makes
A spaniel of the man !
Free from its bonds the mind,
The body from the rod ;
Broken all chains that bind
The image of our God.
Just men no longer pine
Behind their prison-bars ;
Through the rent dungeon shine
The free sun and the stars.
Earth own, at last, untrod
By sect, or caste, or clan,
The fatherhood of God,
The brotherhood of man !
Fraud fail, craft perish, forth
The money-changers driven,
And God's will done on earth,
As now in heaven !
INVOCATION.
THROUGH thy clear spaces, Lord, of
old,
Formless and void the dead earth rolled ;
Deaf to thy heaven's sweet music, blind
To the great lights which o'er it shined ;
No sound, no ray, no warmth, no
breath, —
A dumb despair, a wandering death.
To that dark, weltering horror came
Thy spirit, like a subtle flame, —
A breath of life electrical,
Awakening and transforming all,
Till beat and thrilled in every part
The pulses of a living heart.
Then knew their bounds the land and
sea ;
Then smiled the bloom of mead and
tree ;
From flower to moth, from beast to man,
The quick creative impulse ran ;
And earth, with life from thee renewed,
Was in thy holy eyesight good.
As lost and void, as dark and cold
And formless as that earth of old, —
A wandering waste of storm and night,
Midst spheres of song and realms of
light, -
A blot upon thy holy sky,
Untouched, unwarned of thee, am I.
0 thou who movest on the deep
Of spirits, wake my own from sleep !
Its darkness melt, its coldness warm,
The lost restore, the ill transform,
That flower and fruit henceforth may be
Its grateful offering, worthy thee.
THE CROSS.
ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD DILLTNG.
HAM, IN THE NASHVILLE PENITEN
TIARY.
"TiiE cross, if rightly borne, shall be
No burden, but support to thee" ;*
So, moved of old time for our sake,
The holy monk of Kempen spake.
Thou brave and true one ! upon Avhom
Was laid the cross of martyrdom,
How didst thou, in thy generous yonth,
Bear witness to this blessed truth !
Thy cross of suffering and of shame
A staff within thy hands became,
In paths where faith alone could see
The Master's steps supporting thee.
Thine was the seed-time ; God alone
Beholds the end of what is sown ;
Beyond our vision, weak and dim,
The harvest-time is hid with Him.
Yet, unforgotten where it lies,
That seed of generous sacrifice,
Though seeming on the desert cast,
Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last.
EVA.
DRY the tears for holy Eva,
With the blessed angels leave her j
Of the form so soft and fair
Give to earth the tender care.
For the golden locks of Eva
Let the sunny south-land give her
* Thomas k Kempis. Imit. Christ.
APRIL.
167
Flowery pillow of repose, —
Orange-bloom and budding rose.
In the better home of Eva
Let the shining ones receive her,
With the welcome-voiced psalm,
Harp of gold and waving palm !
All is light and peace with Eva ;
There the darkness cometh never •,
Tears are wiped, and fetters fall,
And the Lord is all in all.
Weep no more for happy Eva,
Wrong and sin no more shall grieve
her ;
Care and pain and weariness
Lost in love so measureless.
Gentle Eva, loving Eva,
Child confessor, true believer,
Listener at the Master's knee,
" Suffer such to come to me."
0, for faith like thine, sweet Eva,
Lighting all the solemn river,
And the blessings of the poor
Wafting to the heavenly shore !
TO FREDRIKA BREMER.5?
SEERESS of the misty Norland,
Daughter of the Vikings bold,
Welcome to the sunny Vineland,
Which thy fathers sought of old !
Soft as flow of Silja's waters,
When the moon of summer shines,
Strong as Winter from his mountains
Roaring through the sleeted pines.
Heart and ear, we long have listened
To thy saga, rune, and song,
As a household joy and presence
We have known and loved thee long.
By the mansion's marble mantel,
Round the log- walled cabin's hearth,
Thy sweet thoughts and northern fan
cies
Meet and mingle with our mirth.
And o'er weary spirits keeping
Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill,
Shine they like thy sun of summer
Over midnight vale and hill.
We alone to thee are strangers,
Thou our friend and teacher art ;
Come, and know us as we know thee ;
Let us meet thee heart to heart !
To our homes and household altars
We, in turn, thy steps would lead
As thy loving hand has led us
O'er the threshold of the Swede.
APRIL.
" The spring comes slowly up this way."
Christabel
'T is the noon of the spring-time, yet
never a bird
In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is
heard ;
For green meadow-grasses wide levels of
snow,
And blowing of drifts where the crocus
should blow ;
Where wind-flower and violet, amber
and white,
On south - sloping brook sides should
smile in the light,
O'er the cold winter-beds of their late-
waking roots
The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal
shoots ;
And, longing for light, under wind-
driven heaps,
Round the boles of the pine -wood the
ground-laurel creeps,
Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of
showers,
With buds scarcely swelled, which
should burst into flowers !
We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of
the south !
For the touch of thy light wings, the
kiss of thy mouth ;
For the yearly evangel thou bearest from
God,
Resurrection and life to the graves of the
sod !
Up our long river- valley, for days, have
not ceased
The wail and the shriek of the bitter
northeast, —
Raw and chill, as if winnowed through
ices and snow,
All the way from the land of the wile]
Esquimau, —
Until all our dreams of the land of the
blest,
168
MISCELLANEOUS.
Like that red hunter's, turn to the sunn}
southwest.
0 soul of the spring-time, its light and
its breath,
Bring warmth to this coldness, bring
life to this death ;
Renew the great miracle ; let us behold
The stone from the mouth of the sepul
chre rolled,
And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of
old!
Let our faith, which in darkness and
coldness has lain,
Revive with the warmth and the bright
ness again,
And in blooming of flower and budding
of tree
The symbols and types of our destiny
see ;
The life of the spring-time, the life of
the whole,
And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love
to the soul !
STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.
1850.
THE evil days have come, — the poor
Are made a prey ;
Bar up the hospitable door,
Put out the fire-lights, point no more
The wanderer's way.
For Pity now is crime ; the chain
Which binds our States
Is melted at her hearth in twain,
Is rusted by her tears' soft rain :
Close up her gates.
Our Union, like a glacier stirred
By voice below,
Or bell of kine, or wing of bird,
A beggar's crust, a kindly word
May overthrow !
Poor, whispering tremblers ! — yet we
boast
Our blood and name ;
Bursting its century-bolted frost,
Each gray cairn on the Northman's
coast
Cries out for shame !
0 for the open firmament,
The prairie free,
The desert hillside, cavern-rent,
The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent,
The Bushman's tree !
Than web of Persian loom most rare,
Or soft divan,
Better the rough rock, bleak and bare,
Or hollow tree, which man may share.
With suffering man.
I hear a voice : " Thus saith the Law,
Let Love be dumb ;
Clasping her liberal hands in awe,
Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw
From hearth and home."
I hear another voice : " The poor
Are thine to feed ;
Turn not the outcast from thy door,
Nor give to bonds and wrong once mo/
Whom God hath freed."
Dear Lord ! between that law and theo
No choice remains ;
Yet not untrue to man's decree,
Though spurning its rewards, is lie
Who bears its pains.
Not mine Sedition's trumpet-blast
And threatening word ;
I read the lesson of the Past,
That firm endiirance wins at last
More than the sword.
0 clear-eyed Faith, and Patience, thou
So calm and strong !
Lend strength to weakness, teach us how
The sleepless eyes of God look through
This night of wrong !
A SABBATH SCENE.
SCARCE had the solemn Sabbath-bell
Ceased quivering in the steeple,
Scarce had the parson to his desk
Walked stately through his people,
When down the summer-shaded street
A wasted female figure,
With dusky brow and naked feet,
Came rushing wild and eager.
She saw the white spire through the
trees,
She heard the sweet hymn swelling :
0 pitying Christ ! a refuge give
That poor one in thy dwelling !
A SABBATH SCENE.
169
Like a scared fawn before the hounds,
Right up the aisle she glided,
While close behind her, whip in hand,
A lank-haired hunter strided.
She raised a keen and bitter cry,
To Heaven and Earth appealing ; —
Were manhood's generous pulses dead ?
Had woman's heart no feeling ?
1 score of stout hands rose between
The hunter and the flying :
Age clenched his staff, and maiden eyes
Flashed tearful, yet defying.
"Who dares profane this house and
day ? "
Cried out the angry pastor.
" Why, bless your soul, the wench 's a
slave,
And I 'm her lord and master !
" I 've law and gospel on my side,
And who shall dare refuse me ? "
Down came the parson, bowing low,
" My good sir, pray excuse me !
" Of course I know your right divine
To own and work and whip her ;
Quick, deacon, throw that Polyglott
Before the wench, and trip her ! "
Plump dropped the holy tome, and
o'er
Its sacred pages stumbling,
Bound hand arid foot, a slave once more,
The hapless wretch lay trembling.
1 saw the parson tie the knots,
The while his flock addressing,
The Scriptural claims of slavery
With text on text impressing.
" Although," said he, " on Sabbath day
All secular occupations
Are deadly sins, we must fulfil
Our moral obligations :
" And this commends itself as one
To every conscience tender ;
As Paul sent back Onesimus,
My Christian friends, we send her ! '
Shriek rose on shriek, — the Sabbath air
, Her wild cries tore asunder ;
i listened, with hushed breath, to hear
God answering with his thunder !
All still ! — the very altar's cloth
Had smothered down her shrieking,
And, dumb, she turned from face to
face,
For human pity seeking !
I saw her dragged along the aisle,
Her shackles harshly clanking ;
I heard the parson, over all,
The Lord devoutly thanking !
My brain took fire : " Is this," I cried,
" The end of prayer and preach
ing ?
Then down with pulpit, down with
priest,
And give us Nature's teaching !
' ' Foul shame and scorn be on ye all
Who turn the good to evil,
And steal the Bible from the Lord,
To give it to the Devil !
" Than garbled text or parchment law
I own a statute higher ;
And God is true, though every book
And every man's a liar ! "
Just then I felt the deacon's hand
In wrath my coat-tail seize on ;
I heard the priest cry, " Infidel ! "
The lawyer mutter, " Treason ! "
I started up, — where now were church.
Slave, master, priest, and people ?
I only heard the supper-bell,
Instead of clanging steeple.
But, on the open window's sill,
O'er which the white blooms drifted,
The pages of a good old Book
The wind of summer lifted,
And flower and vine, like angel wings
Around the Holy Mother,
Waved softly there, as if God's truth
And Mercy kissed each other.
And freely from the cherry-bough
Above the casement swinging,
With golden bosom to the sun,
The oriole was singing.
As bird and flower made plain of old
The lesson of the Teacher,
So now I heard the written Word
Interpreted by Nature !
170
MISCELLANEOUS.
For to my ear methought the breeze
Bore Freedom's blessed word on ;
THUS SAITH THE LORD : BREAK EVERY
YOKE,
UNDO THE HEAVY BURDEN !
REMEMBRANCE.
WITH COPIES OF THE AUTHOR'S WRIT
INGS.
FRIEND of mine ! whose lot was cast
With me in the distant past, —
Where, like shadows flitting fast,
Fact and fancy, thought and theme,
Word and work, begin to seem
Like a half-remembered dream !
Touched by change have all things
been,
Yet I think of thee as when
We had speech of lip and pen.
For the calm thy kindness lent
To a path of discontent.
Rough with trial and dissent ;
Gentle words where such were few,
Softening blame where blame was
true,
Praising where small praise was due ;
For a waking dream made good,
For an ideal understood,
For thy Christian womanhood ;
For thy marvellous gift to cull
From our common life and dull
Whatsoe'er is beautiful ;
Thoughts and fancies, Hybla's bees
Dropping sweetness ; true heart's-ease
Of congenial sympathies ; —
Still for these I own my debt ;
Memory, with her eyelids wet,
Fain would thank thee even yet !
And as one who scatters flowers
Where the Queen of May's sweet hours
Sits, o'ertwined with blossomed bowers,
In superfluous zeal bestowing
Gifts where gifts are overflowing,
80 I pay the debt I "m owing.
To thy full thoughts, gay or sad,
Sunny-hued or sober clad,
Something of my own I add ;
Well assured that thou wilt take
Even the offering which I make
Kindly for the giver's sake.
THE POOR VOTER
TION DAY.
ON ELEC-
THE proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high ;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I .
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known ;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne !
Who serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand ;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand !
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day ;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide ;
I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
To-day shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land ;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand !
While there 's a grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon's vilest dust, —
While there 's a right to need my vote,
A wrong to sweep away,
Up ! clouted knee and ragged coat !
A man 's a man to-day !
TRUST.
THE same old baffling questions ! 0 my
friend,
I cannot answer them. In vain I send
My soul into the dark, where never burn
The lamps of science, nor the natural
light
KATHLEEN.
Of Keason's sun and stars ! I cannot
learn
Their great and solemn meanings, nor
discern
The awful secrets of the eyes which turn
Evermore on us through the day and
night
With silent challenge and a dumb
demand,
Proffering the riddles of the dread un
known,
Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes
of stone,
Questioning the centuries from their
veils of sand !
I have no answer for myself or thee,
Save that I learned beside my mother's
knee ;
" All is of God that is, and is to be ;
And God is good." Let this suffice
us still,
Resting in childlike trust upon his
will
Who moves to his great ends unthwarted
by the ill.
KATHLEEK58
0 NORAH, lay your basket down,
And rest your weary hand,
And come and hear me sing a song
Of our old Ireland.
There was a lord of Galaway,
A mighty lord was he ;
And he did wed a second wife,
A maid of low degree.
But he was old, and she was young,
And so, in evil spite,
She baked the black bread for his kin,
And fed her own with white.
She whipped the maids and starved the
kern,
And drove away the poor ;
"Ah, woe is me ! " the old lord said,
" I rue my bargain sore ! "
This lord he had a daughter fair,
Beloved of old and young,
And nightly round the shealing-fires
Of her the gleeman sung.
if As sweet and good is young Kathleen
As Eve before her fall " ;
So sang the harper at the fair,
So harped he in the hall.
' ' 0 come to me, my daughter dear !
Come sit upon my knee,
For looking in your face, Kathleen,
Your mother's own I see ! "
He smoothed and smoothed her hair away,
He kissed her forehead fair ;
" It is my darling Mary's brow,
It is my darling's hair ! "
0, then spake up the angry dame,
"Get up, get up," quoth she,
" I '11 sell ye over Ireland,
I '11 sell ye o'er the sea ! "
She clipped her glossy hair away,
That none her rank might know,
She took away her gown of silk,
And gave her one of tow,
And sent her down to Limerick town
And to a seaman sold
This daughter of an Irish lord
For ten good pounds in gold.
The lord he smote upon his breast,
And tore his beard so gray ;
But he was old, and she was young,
And so she had her way.
Sure that same night the Banshee howler
To fright the evil dame,
And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen,
With funeral torches came.
She watched them glancing through the
trees,
And glimmering down the hill ;
They crept before the dead-vault door,
And there they all stood still !
" Get up, old man ! the wake-lights
shine ! "
"Ye murthering witch," quoth he,
"So I 'm rid of your tongue, I little care
If they shine for you or me."
" 0, whoso brings my daughter back,
My gold and land shall have ! "
O, then spake up his handsome page,
" No gold nor land I crave !
' ' But give to me your daughter dear,
Give sweet Kathleen to me.
172
MISCELLANEOUS.
Be she on sea or be she on land,
I '11 bring her back to thee."
" My daughter is a lady born,
And you of low degree,
But she shall be your bride the day
You bring her back to me."
He sailed east, he sailed west,
And far and long sailed he,
Until he came to Boston town,
Across the great salt sea.
'•'0, have ye seen the young Kathleen,
The flower of Ireland ?
Ye '11 know her by her eyes so blue,
And by her snow-white hand ! "
Out spake an ancient man, " I know
The maiden whom ye mean ;
I bought her of a Limerick man,
And she is called Kathleen.
*" No skill hath she in household work,
Her hands are soft and white,
Yet well by loving looks and ways
She. doth her cost requite."
So up they walked through Boston town,
And met a maiden fair,
A little basket on her arm
So snowy-white and bare.
" Come hither, child, and say hast thou
This young man ever seen ?"
They wept within each other's aims,
The page and young Kathleen.
" 0 give to me this darling child,
And take my purse of gold."
" Nay, not by me," her master said,
" Shall sweet Kathleen be sold.
J{ We loved her in the place of one
The Lord hath early ta'en ;
But, since her heart 's in Ireland,
We give her back again ! "
0, for that same the saints in heaven
For his poor soul shall pray,
And Mary Mother wash with tears
His heresies away.
Sure now they dwell in Ireland,
As you go up Claremore
Ye '11 see their castle looking down
The pleasant Oahvay shore.
And the old lord's wife is dead and gone,
And a happy man is he,
For he -sits beside his own Kathleen,
With her darling on his knee.
FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS.
IN calm and cool and silence, once again
I iind my old accustomed place among
My brethren, where, perchance, no
human tongue
Shall utter words ; where never hymn
is sung,
Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor cen
ser swung,
Nor dim light falling through the pic
tured pane !
There, syllabled by silence, let me hear
The still small voice which reached the
prophet's ear ;
Read in my heart a still diviner law
Than Israel's leader on his tables saw !
There let me strive with each besetting
sin,
Recall my wandering fancies, and re
strain
The sore disquiet of a restless brain ;
And, as the path of duty is made plain,
May grace be given that I may walk
therein,
Not like the hireling, for his selfish
gain,
With backward glances and reluctant
tread,
Making a merit of his coward dread, —
But, cheerful, in the light around me
thrown,
Walking as one to pleasant service
led ;
Doing God's will as if it were my own,
Yet trusting not in mine, but in his
strength alone !
KOSSUTH.69
TYPE of two mighty continents ! — com
bining
The strength of Europe with the
warmth and glow
Of Asian song and prophecy, — the shin
ing
Of Orient splendors over Northern
snow !
Who shall receive him ? Who, unblush
ing, speak
TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER.
173
Welcome to him, who, while he strove
to break
The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks,
smote off
At the same blow the fetters of the
serf, —
Rearing the altar of his Father-land
On the firm base of freedom, and
thereby
Lifting to Heaven a patriot's stainless
hand,
Mocked not the God of Justice with a
lie!
Who shall be Freedom's mouth-piece ?
Who shall give
Her welcoming cheer to the great fugi
tive ?
Not he who, all her sacred trusts betray
ing,
Is scourging back to slavery's hell of
pain
The swarthy Kossuths of our land
again !
Not he whose utterance now from lips
designed
The bugle-march of Liberty to wind,
And call her hosts beneath the breaking
light, -
The keen reveille of her morn of fight, —
Is but the hoarse note of the blood
hound's baying,
The wolfs long howl behind the bond
man's flight !
U for the tongue of him who lies at rest
In Quincy's shade of patrimonial
trees, —
Last of the Puritan tribunes and the
best, —
To lend a voice to Freedom's sympa
thies,
And hail the coming of the noblest guest
The Old World's wrong has given the
New World of the West !
TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER.
AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER
OF HORACE.
OLD friend, kind friend ! lightly down
Drop time's snow-flakes on thy crown !
Never be thy shadow less,
Never fail thy cheerfulness ;
Care, that kills the cat, may plough
Wrinkles in the miser's brow,
Deepen envy's spiteful frown,
Draw the mouths of bigots down,
Plague ambition's dream, and sit
Heavy on the hypocrite,
Haunt the rich man's door, and ride
In the gilded coach of pride ; —
Let the fiend pass ! — what can he
Find to do with such as thee ?
Seldom comes that evil guest
Where the conscience lies at rest,
And brown health and quiet wit
Smiling on the threshold sit.
I, the urchin unto whom,
In that smoked and dingy room,
Where the district gave thee rule
O'er its ragged winter school,
Thou didst teach the mysteries
Of those weary A B C's, —
Where, to fill the every pause
Of thy wise and learned saws,
Through the cracked and crazy wall
Came the cradle-rock and squall,
And the goodman's voice, at strife
With his shrill and tipsy wife, —
Luring us by stories old,
With a comic unction told,
More than by the eloquence
Of terse birchen arguments
(Doubtful gain, I fear), to look
With complacence on a book ! —
Where the genial pedagogue
Half forgot his rogues to flog,
Citing tale or apologue,
Wise and merry in its drift
As oldPhreclrus' twofold gift,
Had the little rebels known it,
Risam et prudcntiam monct !
I, — the man of middle years,
In whose sable locks appears
Many a warning fleck of gray, — *
Looking back to that far day,
And thy primal lessons, feel
Grateful smiles my lips unseal,
As, remembering thee, I blend
Olden teacher, present friend,
Wise with antiquarian search,
In the scrolls of State and Church :
Named on history's title-page,
Parish-clerk and justice sage ;
For the ferule's wholesome awe
Wielding now the sword of law.
Threshing Time's neglected sheaves,
Gathering up the scattered leaves
Which the wrinkled sibyl cast
Careless from her as she passed, —
Twofold citizen art thou,
174
MISCELLANEOUS.
Freeman of the past and now.
He who bore thy name of old
Midway in the heavens did hold
Over Gibeon moon and sun ;
Thou hast bidden them backward run
Of to-day the present ray
Flinging over yesterday !
Let the busy ones deride
What I deem of right thy pride :
Let the fools their tread-nulls grind,
Look not forward nor behind,
Shuffle in and wriggle out,
Veer with every breeze about,
Turning like a windmill sail,
Or a dog that seeks his tail ;
Let them laugh to see thee fast
Tabernacled in the Past,
Working out with eye and lip,
Riddles of old penmanship,
Patient as Belzoni there
Sorting out, with loving care,
Mummies of dead (questions stripped
'From their sevenfold manuscript !
Dabbling, in their noisy way,
1 n the puddles of to-day,
Little know they of that vast
Solemn ocean of the past,
On whose margin, wreck-bespread,
Thou art walking with the dead,
Questioning the stranded years,
Waking smiles, by turns, and tears,
As thou callest up again
Shapes the dust has long o'erlain, —
Fair-haired woman, bearded man,
Cavalier and Puritan ;
In an age whose eager view
Seeks but present things, and new,
Mad for party, sect and gold,
Teaching reverence for the old.
On that shore, with fowler's tact,
Coolly bagging fact on fact,
Naught amiss to thee can float,
Tale, or song, or anecdote ;
Village gossip, centuries old.
Scandals by our gran dams told,
What the pilgrim's table spread,
Where he lived, and whom he wed,
Long-drawn bill of wine and beer
For his ordination cheer,
Or the flip that wellnigh made
Glad his funeral cavalcade ;
Weary prose, and poet's lines,
Flavored by their age, like wines,
Eulogistic of some quaint,
Doubtful, puritanic saint ;
Lays that quickened husking jigs,
Jests that shook grave periwigs,
When the parson had his jokes
And his glass, like other folks ;
Sermons that, for mortal hours,
Taxed our fathers' vital powers,
As the long nineteenthlies poured
Downward from the sounding-board,
And, for tire of Pentecost,
Touched their beards December's frost
Time is hastening on, and we
What our father's are shall be, —
Shadow-shapes of memory !
Joined to that vast multitude
Where the great are but the good,
And the mind of strength shall prove
Weaker than the heart of love ;
Pride of graybeard wisdom less
Than the infant's guilelessness,
And his song of sorrow more
Than the crown the Psalmist wore !
Who shall then, with pious zeal,
At our moss-grown thresholds kneel,
From a stained and stony page
Reading to a careless age,
With a patient eye like thine,
Prosing tale and limping line,
Names and words the hoary rime
Of the Past has made sublime ?
Who shall work for us as well
The antiquarian's miracle ?
Who to seeming life recall
Teacher grave and pupil small ?
Who shall give to thee and me
Freeholds in futurity ?
Well, whatever lot be mine,
Long and happy days be thine,
Ere thy full and honored age
Dates of time its latest page !
Squire for master, State for school,
Wisely lenient, live and rule ;
Over grown-up knave and rogue
Play the watchful pedagogue ;
j Or, while pleasure smiles on duty,
At the call of youth and beauty,
Speak for them the spell of law
Which shall bar and bolt withdraw.
And the flaming sword remove
From the Paradise of Love.
Still, with undimmed eyesight, pore
Ancient tome and record o'er ;
Still thy week-day lyrics croon,
Pitch in church the Sunday tune,
Showing something, in thy part,
THE PANORAMA.
175
Of the old Puritanic art,
Singer after Sternhold's heart !
In thy pew, for many a year,
Homilies from Oldbug hear,60
Who to wit like that of South,
And the Syrian's golden month,
Doth the homely pathos add
Which the pilgrim preachers had ;
Breaking, like a child at play,
Gilded idols of the day,
Cant of knave and pomp of fool
Tossing with his ridicule,
Yet, in earnest or in jest,
Ever keeping truth abreast.
And, when thou art called, at last
To thy townsmen of the past,
Not as stranger shalt thou come ;
Thou shalt find thyself at home !
With the little and the big,
Woollen cap and periwig,
Madam in her high-laced ruff,
Goody in her home-made stuff, —
Wise and simple, rich and poor,
Thou hast known them all before !
THE PANORAMA,
AND OTHER POEMS.
THE PANORAMA.
" A ! fredome is a nobill thing !
Fredome mayse man to haif liking.
Yredome all solace to man giffls :
He levys at ese that frely levys !
A nobil hart may haif nane ese
Na ellys nocht that may him plese
Gyff Fredome failythe."
ARCHDEACON BARBOUR.
THROUGH the long hall the shuttered
windows shed
A dubious light on every upturned
head, —
On locks like those of Absalom the fair,
On the bald apex ringed with scanty
hair,
On blank indifference and on curious
stare ;
<)n the pale Showman reading from his
stage
The hieroglyphics of that facial page ;
Half sad, half scornful, listening to the
bruit
Of restless cane-tap and impatient foot,
And the shrill call, across the general
din,
" RoH up your curtain ! Let the show
begin ! "
At length a murmur like the winds
that break
Intc *;reen waves the prairie's grassy
lake,
Deepened and swelled to music clear
and loud,
And, as the west-wind lifts a summer
cloud,
The curtain rose, disclosing wide and far
A green land stretching to the evening star,
Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees
And flowers hummed over by the desert
bees,
Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of
greenness show
Fantastic outcrops of the rock below, —
The slow result of patient Nature's pains,
And plastic fingering of her sun and
rains, —
Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely win
dowed hall,
And long escarpment of half-crumbled
wall,
Huger than those which, from stee];
hills of vine,
Stare through their loopholes on the
travelled Rhine ;
Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's mind
A fancy, idle as the prairie wind,
Of the land's dwellers in an age un-
guessed, —
The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West.
Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells
surpass
The Tartar's marvels of his Land of
Grass,
176
THE PANORAMA.
Vast as the sky against whose sunset
shores
Wave after wave the billowy greenness
pours ;
And, onward still, like islands in that
main
Loom the rough peaks of many a moun
tain chain,
Whence east and west a thousand waters
run
From winter lingering under summer's
sun.
And, still beyond, long lines of foam
and sand
Tell where Pacific rolls his waves a-
land,
From many a wide-lapped port and
land-locked bay,
Opening with thunderous pomp the
world's highway
To Indian isles of spice, and marts of far
Cathay.
** Such," said the Showman, as the
curtain fell,
"Is the new Canaan of our Israel, —
The land of promise to the swarming
North,
Which, hive-like, sends its annual sur
plus forth,
To the poor Southron on his worn-out
soil,
Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil ;
To Europe's exiles seeking home and
rest,
And the lank nomads of the wandering
West,
Who, asking neither, in their love of
change
And the free bison's amplitude of range,
Rear the log-hut, for present shelter
meant,
Not future comfort, like an Arab's tent."
Then spake a shrewd on -looker, ' ' Sir, "
said he,
" I like your picture, but I fain would
see
A sketch of what your promised land
will be
When, with electric nerve, and licry-
brained,
With Nature's forces to its chariot
chained,
The future grasping, by the past obeyed,
The twentieth century rounds a 'new
decade."
Then said the Showman, sadly : ' ' Ha
who grieves
Over the scattering of the sibyl's leaves
Unwisely mourns. Suffice it, that we
know
What needs must ripen from the seed
we sow ;
That present time is but the mould
wherein
We cast the shapes of holiness and sin.
A painful watcher of the passing hour,
Its lust of gold, its strife for place and
rwer ;
of manhood, honor, reverence,
truth,
Wise-thoughted age, and generous-
hearted youth ;
Nor yet unmindful of each better sign, —
The low, far lights, which on th' horizon
shine,
Like those which sometimes tremble on
the rim
Of clouded skies when day is closing
dim,
Flashing athwart the purple spears of
rain
The hope of sunshine on the hills
again : —
I need no prophet's word, nor shapes
that pass
Like clouding shadows o'er a magic
glass ;,.
For now, as ever, passionless and cold,
Doth the dread angel of the future hold
Evil and good before us, with no voice
Or warning look to guide us in our
choice ;
With spectral hands outreaching through
the gloom
The shadowy contrasts of the coming
doom.
Transferred from these, it now remains
to give
The sun and shade of Fate's alternative.''
Then, with a burst of music, touching
all
The keys of thrifty life, — the mill-
stream's fall,
The engine's pant along its quivering
rails,
The anvil's ring, the measured beat of
flails,
The sweep of scythes, the reaper's
whistled tune,
Answering the summons of the bells of
noon,
THE PANORAMA.
177
Fh« woodman's hail along the river
shores,
The steamboat's signal, and the dip of
oars, —
Slowly the curtain rose from off a land
Fair as God's garden. Broad on either
hand
The golden wheat-fields glimmered in
the sun,
And the tall maize its yellow tassels
spun.
Smooth highways set with hedge-rows
living green,
With steepled towns through shaded
vistas seen,
The school-house murmuring with its
hive-like swarm,
The brook-bank whitening in the grist-
mill's storm,
The painted farm-house shining through
the leaves
Of fruited orchards bending at its eaves,
Where live again, around the Western
hearth,
The homely old-time virtues of the
North ;
Where the blithe housewife rises with
the day,
And well-paid labor counts his task a
play.
And, grateful tokens of a Bible free,
And the free Gospel of Humanity,
Of diverse sects and differing names the
shrines,
One in their faith, whate'er their out
ward signs,
Like varying strophes of the same sweet
hymn
From many a prairie's swell and river's
brim,
A thousand church-spires sanctify the
air
Of the calm Sabbath, with their sign of
prayer.
Like sudden nightfall over bloom and
green
The curtain dropped : and, momently,
between
The clank of fetter and the crack of
thong,
Half sob, half laughter, music swept
along, —
A strange refrain, whose idle words and
low,
Like drunken mourners, kept the time
of woe ;
As if the revellers at a masquerade
Heard in the distance funeral marches
played.
Such music, dashing all his smiles with
tears,
The thoughtful voyager on Po.ichartrain
hears,
Where, through the noonday dusk oi
wooded shores
The negro boatman, singing to his oars,
With a wild pathos borrowed of his
wrong
Redeems the jargon of his senseless song.
'Look," said the Showman, sternly,
as he rolled
His curtain upward ; ' ' Fate's reverse
behold ! "
A village straggling in loose disarray
Of vulgar newness, premature decay ;
A tavern, crazy with its whiskey brawls,
With " Slaves at Auction!" garnishing
its walls.
Without, surrounded by a motley crowd,
The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulous
and loud,
A squire or colonel in his pride of p?nce,
Known at free fights, the caucus, and
the race,
Prompt to proclaim his honor without
blot,
And silence doubters with a ten-pace
shot,
Mingling the negro-driving bully's rant
With pious phrase and democratic cant,
Yet never scrupling, with a filthy jest,
To sell the infant from its mother's
breast,
Break through all ties of wedlock, home,
and kin,
Yield shrinking girlhood up to gray-
beard sin ;
Sell all the virtues with his human stock,
The Christian graces on his auction-
block,
And coolly count on shrewdest bargains
driven
In hearts regenerate, and in souls for
given !
Look once again ! The moving can
vas shows
A slave plantation's slovenly repose,
Where, in rude cabins rotting midst
their weeds,
The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and
breeds ;
178
THE fANOKAMA.
And, held a brute, in practice, as in law,
Becomes in fact the thing he 's taken for.
There, early summoned to the hemp and
corn,
The nursing mother leaves her child
new-born ;
There haggard sickness, weak and
deathly faint,
Crawls to his task, and fears to make
complaint ;
And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in de
cay,
Weep for their lost ones sold and torn
away !
Of ampler size the master's dAvelling
stands,
in shabby keeping with his half-tilled
lands, —
The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds
unclean,
The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean.
Without, loose-scattered like a wreck
adrift,
Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift ;
Within, profusion to discomfort joined,
The listless body and the vacant mind ;
The fear, the hate, the theft and false
hood, born
Jri menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and
scorn !
There, all the vices, which, like birds
obscene,
Batten on slavery loathsome and un
clean,
From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise,
Pollute the nursery where the child-heir
lies,
Taint infant lips beyond all after cure,
With the fell poison of a breast impure ;
Touch boyhood's passions with the
breath of flame,
From girlhood's instincts steal the blush
of shame.
So swells, from low to high, from weak
to strong,
The tragic chorus of the baleful wrong ;
Guilty or guiltless, all within its range
Feel the blind justice of its sure revenge.
Still scenes like these the moving
chart reveals.
Up the long western steppes the blight
ing steals ;
Down the Pacific slope the evil Fate
Glides like a shadow to the Golden Gate :
From sea to sea the drear eclipse is
thrown.
From sea to sea the JIauvaises Terra
have grown,
A belt of curses on the New World's
zone !
The curtain fell. All drew a freer
breath,
As men are wont to do when mournful
death
Is covered from their sight. The Show
man stood
With drooping brow in sorrow's attitude
One moment, then with sudden gesture
shook
His loose hair back, and with the air
and look
Of one who felt, beyond the narrow stage
And listening group, the presence of the
age,
And heard the footsteps of the tilings to
be,
Poured out his soul in earnest words and
free.
" 0 friends !" he said, " in this poor
trick of paint
You see the semblance, incomplete j:nd
faint,
Of the two-fronted Future, which, to
day,
Stands dim and silent, waiting in your
way.
To-day, your servant, subject to your
will ;
To-morrow, master, or for good or ill.
If the dark face of Slavery on you turns,
If the mad curse its paper barrier spurns,
If the world granary of the West is made,
The last foul market of the slaver's trade,
Why rail at fate ? The mischief is your
own.
Why hate your neighbor ? Blame your
selves alone !
" Men of the North ! The South you
charge with wrong
Is weak and poor, while you are rich
and strong.
If questions, • — idle and absurd as those
The old-time monks and Padtian doctors
chose, —
Mere ghosts of questions, tariffs, and
dead banks,
And scarecrow pontiffs, never broke
your ranks,
Your thews united could, at once, roll
back
THE PANORAMA.
179
fhe jostled nation to its primal track.
Nay, were you simply steadfast, manly,
just,
True to the faith your fathers left in trust,
If stainless honor outweighed in your
scale
A codfish quintal or a factory bale,
Full many a noble heart, (and such remain
In all the South, like Lot in Siddim's
plain,
Who watch and wait, and from the
wrong's control
Keep white and pure their chastity of
soul,)
Now sick to loathing of your weak com
plaints, -
Your tricks as sinners, and your prayers
as saints,
Would half-way meet the frankness of
your tone,
And feel their pulses beating with your
own.
"The North! the South! no geo
graphic line
Can fix the boundary or the point define,
Since each with each so closely inter-
blends,
Where Slavery rises, and where Freedom
ends.
Beneath your rocks the roots, far-reach
ing, hide
Of the fell Upas on the Southern side ;
The tree whose branches in your north-
winds wave
Dropped its young blossoms on Mount
Vernon's grave ;
The nursling growth of Montieello's crest
Is now the glory of the free Northwest ;
To the wise maxims of her olden school
Virginia listened from thy lips, Rantoul ;
Seward's words of power, and Simmer's
fresh renown,
Flow from the pen that Jefferson laid
down !
And when, at length, her years of mad
ness o'er,
Like the crowned grazer on Euphrates'
shore,
From her long lapse to savagery, her
mouth
Bitter with baneful herbage, turns the
South,
Resumes her old attire, and seeks to
smooth
Her unkempt tresses at the glass of truth,
Her earlj faith shall find a tongue again.
New Wythes and Pinckneys swell that
old refrain,
Her sons with yours renew the ancient
pact,
The myth of Union prove at last a fact !
Then, if one murmur mars the wide con
tent,
Some Northern lip will drawl the lasi
dissent,
Some Union-saving patriot of your own
Lament to find his occupation gone.
"Grant that the North's insulted^
scorned, betrayed,
O'erreached in bargains with her neigh
bor made,
When selfish thrift and party held the
scales
For peddling dicker, not for honest
sales, —
Whom shall we strike ? Who most de
serves our blame ?
The braggart Southron, open in his
aim,
And bold as wicked, crashing straight
through all
That bars his purpose, like a cannon-ball ?
Or the mean traitor, breathing northern
air,
With nasal speech and puritanic hair,
Whose cant the loss of principle survives,
As the mud-turtle e'en its head outlives ;
Who, caught, chin-buried in some foul
offence,
Puts on a look of injured innocence,
And consecrates his baseness to the cause
Of constitution, union, and the laws ?
" Praise to the place-man who can hold
aloof
His still unpurchased manhood, office-
proof ;
Who on his round of duty walks erect,
And leaves it only rich in self-respect, —
! As MORE maintained his virtue's lofty
port
I In the Eighth Henry's base and bloody
court.
But, if exceptions here and there are
found,
Who tread thus safely on enchanted
ground,
I The normal type, the fitting symbol still
Of those who fatten at the public mill,
Is the chained dog beside his master's
door,
Or CIRCE'S victim, feeding on n'] four !
180
THE PANO AMA.
" Give me fche heroes who, at tuck of
drum,
Salute thy staff, immortal Quattlebum !
Or they who, doubly armed with vote
and
Following
i;un,
ly lead, illustrious Atchison,
Their drunken franchise shift from scene
to scene.
As tile-beard Jourdan did his guillo
tine ! —
" Such are the men who, with instinc
tive dread,
Whenever Freedom lifts her drooping
head,
Make prophet - tripods of their office-
stools,
And scare the nurseries and the village
schools
With dire presage of ruin grim and great,
A broken Union and a foundered State !
Rather than him who, bora beneath our Such are the patriots, self-bound to the
skies,
To Slavery's hand its supplest tool sup
plies, —
The party felon whose unblushing face
Looks from the pillory of his bribe of
place,
And coolly makes a merit of disgrace, —
Points to the footmarks of indignant
scorn,
Shows the deep scars of satire's tossing
horn ;
And passes to his credit side the sum
Of all that makes a scoundrel's martyr
dom !
" Bane of the North, its canker and
its moth ! —
These modern Esaus, bartering rights for
broth !
Taxing our justice, with their double
claim,
As fools for pity, and as knaves for
blame ;
Who, urged by party, sect, or trad,?,
within
The fell embrace of Slavery's sphere of
sin,
Part at the outset with their moral sense,
The watchful angel set for Truth's de
fence ;
Confound all contrasts, good and ill ;
reverse
The poles of life, its blessing and its
curse ;
And lose thenceforth from their perverted
sight
The eternal difference 'twixt the wrong
and right ;
To them the Law is but the iron span
That girds the ankles of irnbruted man ;
To them the Gospel has no higher aim
Than simple sanction of the master's
claim,
Dragged in the slirne of Slavery's loath
some trail,
Like Chalier's Bible at his ass's tail !
stake
Of office, martyrs for their country's sake :
Who fill themselves the hungry jaws of
Fate,
And by their loss of manhood save the
State.
In the wide gulf themselves like Curtius
throw,
And test the virtues of cohesive dough ;
As tropic monkeys, linking heads and
tails,
Bridge o'er some torrent of Ecuador's
vales !
"Such are the men who in your church
es rave
To swearing-point, at mention of the
slave !
When some poor parson, haply unawares.
Stammers of freedom in his timid prayers ;
Who, if some foot-sore negro through the
town
Steals northward, volunteer to hunt him
down.
Or, if some neighbor, flying from disease,
Courts the mild balsam of the Southern
breeze,
With hue and cry pursue him on 1m
track,
And write Free-soiler on the poor man's
back.
Such are the men who leave the pedler's
cart,
While faring South, to learn the driver's
art,
Or, in white neckcloth, soothe with pious
aim
The graceful sorrows of some languid
dame,
Who, from the wreck of her bereavement,
saves
The double charm of widowhood and
slaves ! —
Pliant and apt, they lose no chance to
show
To what base depths apostasy can go ;
THE PANOKAMA.
181
tfutdo the natives in their readiness
To roast a negro, or to mob a press ;
Poise a tarred schoolmate on the lynch-
er's rail,
Or make a bonfire of their birthplace
mail !
" So some poor wretch, whose lips no
longer bear
The sacred burden of his mother's prayer,
By fear impelled, or lust of gold enticed,
Turns to the Crescent from the Cross of
Christ,
And, over-acting in superfluous zeal,
Crawls prostrate where the faithful only
kneel, -
Out-howls the Dervish, hugs his rags to
court
The squalid Santon's sanctity of dirt ;
And, when beneath the city gateway's
span
Files slow and long the Meccan caravan,
And through its midst, pursued by Islam's
prayers,
The prophet's Word some favored camel
bears,
The marked apostate has his place as
signed
The Koran-bearer's sacred rump behind,
With brush and pitcher following, grave
and mute,
In meek attendance on the holy brute !
" Men of the North ! beneath your
very eyes,
By hearth and home, your real danger
lies.
Still day by day some hold of freedom
falls,
Through home-bred traitors fed within
its walls. —
Men whom yourselves with vote and
purse sustain,
At posts of honor, influence, and gain ;
The right of Slavery to your sons to
teach,
And " South-side " Gospels in your pul
pits preach,
Transfix the Law to ancient freedom dear
On the sharp point of her subverted spear,
And imitate upon her cushion plump
The mad Missourian lynching from his
stump ;
Or, in your name, upon the Senate's floor
Yield up to Slavery all it asks, aid more ;
And, ere your dull eyes open to the
cheat,
Sell your old homestead underneath your
feet !
While such as these your loftiest outlooks
hold,
While truth and conscience with youl
wares are sold,
While grave-browed merchants baud
themselves to aid
An annual man-hunt for their Southern
trade,
What moral power within your grasp
remains
To stay the mischief on Nebraska's
plains ? —
High as the tides of generous impulse
flow,
As far rolls back the selfish undertow ;
And all your brave resolves, though
aimed as true
As the horse-pistol Balmawhapple drew,
To Slavery's bastions lend as slight a
shock
As the poor trooper's shot to Stirling
rock I
"Yet, while the need of Freedom's
cause demands
The earnest efforts of your hearts and
hands,
Urged by all motives that can prompt
the heart
To prayer and toil and manhood's man
liest part ;
Though to the soul's deep tocsin Nature
joins
The warning whisper of her Orphic pines,
The north-wind's anger, and the south-
wind's sigh,
The midnight sword-dance of the north*
ern sky,
And, to the ear that bends above the
sod
Of the green grave-mounds in the Fields
of God,
In low, deep murmurs of rebuke or cheer,
The land's dead fathers speak their hope
or fear,
Yet let not Passion wrest from Reason's
hand
The guiding rein and symbol of com
mand.
Blame not tli3 caution proffering to your
zeal
A well-meant drag upon its hurrying
wheel ;
N"or chide the man whose honest doubt
extends
182
THE PANORAMA.
To the means only, not the righteous j Her natural home-bom right to Freedom
ends ; give,
Nor fail to weigh the scruples and the
fears
Of milder natures and serener years.
In the long strife with evil which began
With the first lapse of new-created man,
Wisely and well has Providence assignee
To each his part, — some forward, som
behind ;
And they, too, serve who temper anc
restrain
The o'erwarm heart that sets on fire the
brain.
True to yourselves, feed Freedom's altar-
flame
With what you have ; let others do the
same.
Spare timid doubters ; set like flint youi
face
Against the self-sold knaves of gain and
place :
Pity the weak ; but with unsparing hand
Cast out the traitors who infest the
land, —
From bar, press, pulpit, cast them every
where,
By dint of fasting, if you fail by prayer.
And in their place bring men of antique
mould,
Like the grave fathers of your Age of
Gold, —
Statesmen like those who sought the
primal fount
Of righteous law, the Sermon on the
Mount ;
Lawyers who prize, like Quincy, (to 0111
day
Still spared, Heaven bless him !) honoi
more than pay,
And Christian jurists, starry-pure, like
Jay ;
Preachers like Woolman, or like them
who bore
The faith of Wesley to our Western shore,
And held no convert genuine till he broke
Alike IT'S servants' and the Devil's yoke ;
And priests like him who Newport's mar
ket trod,
And o'er its slave-ships shook the bolts
of God !
So shall your power, with a wise prudence
used,
Strong but forbearing, firm hut not
abused,
In kindly keeping with the good of all,
The nobler maxims of the past recall,
And leave her foe his robber-right, — tc
live .
Live, as the snake does in his noisome
fen !
Live, as the wolf does in his bone-strewn
den !
Live, clothed with cursing like a robe ot
flame,
The focal point of million -fingered
shame !
Live, till the Southron, who, withal! his
faults,
Has manly instincts, in his pride re
volts,
Dashes from off him, midst the glad
world's cheers,
The hideous nightmare of his dream of
years,
And lifts, self-prompted, with his own
right hand,
The vile encumbrance from his glorious
land !
" So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends
forth
Its widening circles to the South or
North,
Where'er our banner flaunts beneath
the stars
Its mimic splendors and its cloudliko
bars,
There shall Free Labor's hardy children
stand
The equal sovereigns of a slaveless land.
e,p
wl
And when at last the hunted bison tires,
And dies o'ertaken by the squatter's
fires ;
And westward, wave on wave, the living
flood
Breaks on the snow-line of majestic
Hood;
And lonely Shasta listening hears the
tread
Of Europe's fair-haired children, Hes-
per-led ;
And, gazing downward through his
hoar-locks, sees
The tawny Asian climb his giant knees,
The Eastern sea shall hush his waves to
hear
'aeific's surf-beat answer Freedom's
cheer,
And one long rolling lire of triumph
run
Between thesunriseandthe sunset <mn !'
SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE.
183
My task is done. The Showman and
his show,
Themselves but shadows, into shadows
And, if no song of idlesse I have sung,
Nor tints of beauty on the canvas
flung, —
If the harsh numbers grate on tender
ears,
And the rough picture overwrought ap
pears, —
With deeper coloring, with a sterner
blast,
Before my soul a voice and vision passed,
Such as migh.t Milton's jarring trump
require,
Or glooms of Dante fringed with lurid
fire.
0, not of choice, for themes of public
wrong
1 leave the green and pleasant paths of
song, —
The mild, sweet words which soften and
adorn,
For griding taunt and bitter laugh of
scorn.
More dear to me some song of private
worth,
Soni3 homely idyl of my native North,
Some summer pastoral of her inland
vales
Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside
tales
Haunted by ghosts oi unreturnmg
sails, —
Lost barks at parting hung from stein
to helm
With prayers of love like dreams on
Virgil's elm.
Nor private grief nor malice holds mj
pen;
I owe but kindness to my fellow-men ;
And, South or North, wherever hearts
of prayer
Their woes and weakness to our Father
bear,
Wherever fruits of Christian love are
found
In holy lives, to me is holy ground.
But the time passes. It were vain to
crave
A late indulgence. What I had I
gave.
Forget the poet, but his warning heed,
And shame his poor word with your
nobler deed.
MISCELLANEOUS.
SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE.
I. NOON.
WHITE clouds, whose shadows haunt
the deep,
Light mists, whose soft embraces keep
The sunshine on the hills asleep !
0 isles of calm ! — 0 dark, still wood !
A.nd stiller skies that overbrood
Your rest with deeper quietude !
$ shapes and hues, dim beckoning,
through
Yon mountain gaps, my longing view
Beyond the purple and the blue,
To stiller sea and greener land,
\nd softer lights and airs more bland,
&.nd skies, — the hollow of God's hand 1
Transfused through you, 0 mountain
friends !
With mine your solemn spirit blends,
And life no more hath separate ends.
I read each misty mountain sign,
I know the voice of wave and pine,
And 1 am yours, and ye are mine.
Life's burdens fall, its discords cease,
I lapse into the glad release
Of Nature's own exceeding peace.
0, welcome calm of heart and mind ?
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind
To leave a tenderer growth behind,
So fall the weary years away ;
A child again, my head 1 lay
Upon the lap of this sweet day.
184
MISCELLANEOUS.
This western wind hath Lethean powers,
Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers,
The lake is white with lotus-flowers !
Even Duty's voice is faint and low,
And slumberous Conscience, waking
slow,
Forgets her blotted scroll to show.
The Shadow which pursues us all,
Whose ever-nearing steps appall,
Whose voice we hear behind us call, —
That Shadow blends with mountain
gray,
It speaks but what the light waves say, —
Death walks apart from Fear to-day !
Rocked on her breast, these pines and 1
Alike on Nature's love rely ;
And equal seems to live or die.
Assured that He whose presence fills
With light the spaces of these hills
No evil to his creatures wills,
The simple faith remains, that He
Will do, whatever that may be,
The best alike for man and* tree.
What mosses over one shall grow,
What light and life the other know,
Unanxious, leaving Him to show.
II. EVENING.
Von mountain's side is black with night,
While, broad-orbed, o'er its gleaming
crown
The moon, slow-rounding into sight,
On the hushed inland sea looks down.
How start to light the clustering isles,
Each silver-hemmed ! How sharply
show
The shadows of their rocky piles,
And tree-tops in the wave below !
How far and strange the mountains
seem,
Dim-looming through the pale, still
light !
The vague, vast grouping of a dream,
They stretch into the solemn night.
Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale,
Hushed by that presence grand and
grave.
Are silent, save the cricket's wail,
And low response of leaf and wave.
Fair scenes ! whereto the Day and Night
Make rival love, 1 leave ye soon,
What time before the eastern light
The pale ghost of the setting moon
Shall hide behind yon rocky spines,
And the young archer/ Morn, shall
break
His arrows on the mountain pines,
And, golden-sandalled, v/alk the lake :
Farewell ! around this smiling bay
Gay-hearted Health, and Life in
bloom,
With lighter steps than mine, may stray
In radiant summers yet to come.
But none shall more regretful leave
These waters and these hills than I :
Or, distant, fonder dream how eve
Or dawn is painting wave and sky ;
How rising moons shine sad and mild
On wooded isle and silvering bay •
Or setting suns beyond the piled
And purple mountains lead the day ;
Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy,
Nor full-pulsed manhood, lingering
here,
Shall add, to life's abounding joy,
The charmed repose to suffering dear.
Still waits kind Nature to impart
Her choicest gifts to such as gain
An entrance to her loving heart
Through the sharp discipline of pain.
Forever from the Hand that takes
One blessing from us others fall ;
And, soon or late, our Father makes
His perfect recompense to all !
0, watched by Silence and the Night, ,
And folded in the strong embrace
Of the great mountains, with the light
Of the sweet heavens upon thy face,
Lake of the Northland ! keep thy dower
Of beauty still, and while above
Thy solemn mountains speak of power,
Be thou the mirror of God's love.
THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID.
185
THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID.
0 STRONG, upwelling prayers of faith,
From inmost founts of life ye start, —
The spirit's pulse, the vital breath
Of soul and heart !
From pastoral toil, from traffic's din,
Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad,
Unheard of man, ye enter in
The ear of God.
Ye brook no forced and measured tusks,
Nor weary rote, nor formal chains ;
The simple heart, that freely asks
In love, obtains.
For man the living temple is :
The mercy-seat and cherubim,
And all the holy mysteries,
He bears with him.
And most avails the prayer of love,
Which, wordless, shapes itself in
deeds,
And wearies Heaven for naught above
Our common needs.
Which brings to God's all-perfect will
That trust of his undoubting child
Whereby all seeming good and ill
Are reconciled.
<Ynd, seeking not for special signs
Of favor, is content to fall
Within the providence which shines
And rains on all.
Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned
At noontime o'er the sacred word.
Was it an angel or a fiend
Whose voice he heard ?
It broke the desert's hush of awe,
A human utterance, sweet and mild ;
.Ind, looking up, the hermit saw
A little child.
A child, with wonder-widened eyes,
O'erawed and troubled by the sight
Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies,
And anchorite.
"What dost thou here, poor man ? No
shade
Of cool, green doums, nor grass, nor
well,
Nor corn, nor vines." The henml
said :
" With God I dwell.
" Alone with Him in this great cakn,
I live not by the outward sense ;
My Nile his love, my sheltering palm
His providence."
The child gazed round him. "Does
God live
Here only ? — where the desert's rim
Is green with corn, at morn and eve,
We pray to Him.
"My brother tills beside the Nile
His little field : beneath the leaves
My sisters sit and spin the while,
My mother weaves.
"And when the millet's ripe heads fall,
And all the bean- field hangs in pod,
My mother smiles, and says that all
Are gifts from God.
" And when to share our evening meal,
She calls the stranger at the door,
She says God fills the hands that deal
Food to the poor."
Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks
Glistened the flow of human tears ;
"Dear Lord!" he said, "thy angel
speaks,
Thy servant hears."
Within his arms the child he took,
And thought of home and life with
men ;
And all his pilgrim feet forsook
Returned again.
The palmy shadows cool and long,
The eyes that smiled through lavish
locks,
Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song,
And bleat of flocks.
" O child ! " he said, " thou teachest mt
There is 110 place where God is not ;
That love will make, where'er it be,
A holy spot."
He rose from off the desert sand,
And, leaning on his staff of thorn,
Went, with the young child, hand-in
hand,
Like night with morn.
186
MISCELLANEOUS.
They crossed the desert's burning line,
And heard the palm-tree's rustling
fan,
The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine,
And voice of man.
Unquestioning, his childish guide
He followed as the small hand led
To where a woman, gentle-eyed,
Her distaff fed.
She rose, she clasped her truant boy,
She thanked the stranger with her
eyes.
The hermit gazed in doubt and joy
And dumb surprise.
And lo ! — with sudden warmth and
light
A tender memory thrilled his frame ;
New-born, the world-lost anchorite
A man became.
" 0 sister of El Zara's race,
Behold me ! — had we not one moth
er ?"
She gazed into the stranger's face ; —
"Thou art my brother ? "
* 0 kin of blood ! — Thy life of use
And patient trust is more than mine ;
And wiser than the gray recluse
This child of thine.
"For, taught of him whom God hath
sent,
That toil is praise, and love is prayer,
I come, life's cares and pains content
With thee to share."
Even as his foot the threshold crossed,
The hermit's better life began ;
Its holiest saint theThebaid lost,
And found a man !
BURNS.
ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER
IN BLOSSOM.
No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover ;
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.
Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns !
The moorland flower and peasant !
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant !
The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,
And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning.
The dews that washed the dust and
soil
From off the wings of pleasure,
The sky, that flecked the ground of
toil
With golden threads of leisure.
I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing, "
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
1 hear the blackbird in the corn,
The locust in the haying ;
And, like the fabled hunter's horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.
How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow !
Bees hummed, birds twittered, over
head
1 heard the squirrels leaping,
The good dog listened while 1 read,
And wagged his tail in keeping.
1 watched him while in sportive mood
I read " The Twa Dogs " story,
And half believed he understood
The poet's allegory.
Sweet day, sweet songs ! — The golden
hours
Grew brighter for that singing,
From brook and bird and meadow
flowers
A dearer welcome bringing.
New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
New glory over Woman ;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.
WILLIAM FORSTER.
187
I woke to iind the simple truth
Of fact and feeling better
Than all the dreams that held my youth
A still repining debtor :
That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
The themes of sweet discoursing ;
The tender idyls of the heart
In every tongue rehearsing.
Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
Of loving knight and lady,
When farmer boy and barefoot girl
Were wandering there already ?
I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying ;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.
I saw the same blithe day return,
The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
And sank on crystal Devon.
J matched with Scotland's heathery hills
The sweetbrier and the clover ;
With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
Their wood-hymns chanting over.
O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
I saw the Man uprising ;
No longer common or unclean,
The child of God's baptizing !
With clearer eyes I saw the worth
Of life among the lowly ;
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth
Had made my own more holy.
And if at times an evil strain,
To lawless love appealing,
Broke in upon the sweet refrain
Of pure and healthful feeling,
It died upon the eye and ear,
No inward answer gaining ;
No heart had I to see or hear
The discord and the staining.
Let those who never erred forget
His worth, in vain bewailings ;
Sweet Soul of Song ! — I own my debt
Uncancelled oy his failings !
Lament who will the r'bald line
Which tells his lapse from duty
How kissed the maddening lips of wine
Or wanton ones of beauty ;
But think, while falls that shade be-
tween
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalen,
Like her may be forgiven.
Not his the song whose thunderous
chime
Eternal echoes render, —
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
And Milton's starry splendor !
But who his human heart has laid
To Nature's bosom nearer ?
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
To love a tribute dearer ?
Through all his tuneful art, how strong
The human feeling gushes !
The very moonlight of his song
Is warm with smiles and blushes !
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
So " Bonnie Doon " but tarry ;
Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
But spare his Highland Mary J
WILLIAM FORSTER.61
THE years are many since his hand
Was laid upon my head,
Too weak and young to understand
The serious words he said.
Yet often now the good man's look
Before' me seems to swim,
As if some inward feeling took
The outward guise of him.
As if, in passion's heated war,
Or near temptation's charm,
Through him the low-voiced monitor
Forewarned me of the harm.
Stranger and pilgrim ! — from that daj
Of meeting, first and last,
Wherever Duty's pathway lay,
His reverent steps have passed.
The poor to feed, the lost to seek,
To proffer life to death,
Hope to the erring, — to the weak
Th^ strength of his own faith.
MISCELLANEOUS.
To plead the captive's right ; remove
The sting of hate from Law ;
And soften in the fire of love
The hardened steel of War.
He walked the dark world, in the mild,
Still guidance of the Light ;
In tearful tenderness a child,
A strong man in the right.
From what great perils, on his way,
He found, in prayer, release ;
Through what abysmal shadows lay
His pathway unto peace,
God knoweth : we could only see
The tran quil strength he gained ;
The bondage lost in liberty,
The fear in love unfeigned.
And I, — my youthful fancies grown
The habit of the man,
'Whose field of life by angels sown
The wilding vines o'erran, —
Low bowed in silent gratitude,
My manhood's heart enjoys
That reverence for the pure and good
Which blessed the dreaming boy's.
Still shines the light of holy lives
Like star-beams over doubt ;
Each sainted memory, Christlike, drives
Some dark possession out.
O friend ! 0 brother ! not in vain
Thy life so calm and true,
The silver dropping of the rain,
The fall of summer dew !
How many burdened hearts have prayed
Their lives like thine might be !
But more shall pray henceforth for aid
To lay them down like thee.
With Areary hand, yet steadfast will,
In old age as in youth,
Thy Master found thee sowing still
The good seed of his truth.
As on thy task -field closed the day
In golden-skied decline,
His angel met thee on the way,
And lent his arm to thine.
fhy latest care for man, — thy last
Of earthly thought a prayer, —
0, who thy mantle, backward cast,
Is worthy now to wear ?
Methinks the mound which marks t'lrt
bed
Might bless our land and save,
As rose, of old, to life the dead
Who toujhed the prophet's grave !
RANTOUL.62
ONE day, along the electric wire
His manly word for Freedom sped ;
We came next morn : that tongue of fire
Said only, " He who spake is dead ! '
Dead ! while his voice was living yet,
In echoes round the pillared dome !
Dead ! while his blotted page lay wet
With themes of state and loves ol
home !
Dead ! in that crowning grace of time,
That triumph of life's zenith hour !
Dead ! while we watched his manhood'*
prime
Break from the slow bud into flower !
Dead ! he so great, and strong, and wise,
While the mean thousands yet dre\«
breath ;
How deepened, through that dread sur
prise,
The mystery and the awe of death !
From the high place whereon our votes
Had borne him, clear, calm, earnest
fell
His first words, like the prelude notes
Of some gi-eat anthem yet to swell.
We seemed to see our flag unfurled,
Our champion waiting in his place
For the last battle of the world, —
The Armageddon of the race.
Through him we hoped to speak the
word
Which wins the freedom of a land ;
And lift, for human right, the sword
Which dropped from Hampden's dy
ing hand.
For he had sat at Sidney's feet,
And walked with Pym and Vane
apart ;
fHE DKEAM OF PIO NONO.
189
A.nd, through the centuries, felt the beat
Of Freedom's march in Cromwell's
heart.
He knew the paths the worthies held,
Where England's best and wisest trod ;
And, lingering, drank the springs that
welled
Beneath the touch of Milton's rod.
No wild enthusiast of the right,
Self-poised and clear, he showed alway
The coolness of his northern night,
The ripe repose of autumn's day.
His steps were. slow, yet forward still
He pressed where others paused or
failed ;
The calm star clomb with constant will, —
The restless meteor flashed and paled !
Skilled in its subtlest wile, he knew
And owned the higher ends of Law ;
Still rose majestic on his view
The awful Shape the schoolman saw.
Her home the heart of God ; her voice
The choral harmonies whereby
The stars, through all their spheres, re
joice,
The rhythmic rule of earth and sky !
We saw his great powers misapplied
To poor ambitions ; yet, through all,
We saw him take the weaker side,
And right the wronged, and free the
thrall.
Now, looking o'er the frozen North,
For one like him in word and act,
To call her old, free spirit forth,
And give her faith the life of
fact, —
To break her party bonds of shame,
And labor with the zeal of him
To make the Democratic name
Of Liberty the synonyme, —
We sweep the land from hilL to strand,
We seek the strong, the wise, the
brave,
And, sad of heart, return to stand
In silence by a new-made grave !
There, where his breezy hills of home
Look out upon his sail-white seas,
The sounds of winds and waters come,
And shape themselves to words like
these :
"Why, murmuring, mourn that he,
whose power
Was lent to Party over-long,
Heard the still whisper at the hour
He set his foot on Party wrong ?
" The human life that closed so well
No lapse of folly now can stain :
The lips whence Freedom's protest fell
No meaner thought can now profane.
' ' Mightier than living voice his grave
That lofty protest utters o'er ;
Through roaring wind and smiting wave
It speaks his hate of wrong once
' ' Men of the North ! your weak regret
Is wasted here ; arise and pay
To freedom and to him your debt,
By following where he led the way !'*
THE DREAM OF PIO NONO.
IT chanced, that while the pious
troops of France
Fought in the crusade Pio Nono
preached,
What time the holy Bourbons stayed
his hands
(The Hur and Aaron meet for such a
Moses),
Stretched forth from Naples towards
rebellious Rome
To bless the ministry of Ondinot,
And sanctify his iron homilies
And sharp persuasions of the bayonet,
That the great pontiff fell asleep, and
dreamed.
He stood by Lake Tiberias, in the
sun
Of the bright Orient ; and beheld the
lame,
The sick, and blind, kneel at the Mas
ter's feet,
And rise up whole. And, sweetly over
all,
Dropping the ladder of their hymn of
praise
From heaven to earth, iu silver rounds
of song,
190
MISCELLANEOUS.
He heard the blessed angels sing of
peace,
Good-will to man, and glory to the
Lord.
Then one, with feet unshod, and
leathern face
Hardened and darkened by fierce sum
mer suns
And hot winds of the desert, closer drew
His fisher's haick, and girded up his
loins,
Ard spake, as one who had authority :
" Come thou with me."
Lakeside and eastern sky
And the sweet song of angels passed
away,
And, with a dream's alacrity of change,
The priest, and the swart fisher by his
side,
Beheld the Eternal City lift its domes
And solemn fanes and monumental
pomp
Above the waste Campacma. On the
hills
The blaze of burning villas rose and
fell,
And momently the mortar's iron throat
Uoared from the trenches ; and, within
the walls,
Sharp crash of shells, low groans of hu
man pain,
Shout, drum beat, and the clanging
larum-bell,
And tramp of hosts, sent up a mingled
sound,
Half wail and half defiance. As they
passed
The gate of San Pancrazio, human blood
Flowed ankle-high about them, and
dead men
Choked the long street with gashed and
gory piles, —
A ghastly barricade of mangled flesh,
From which, at times, quivered a living
hand,
And white lips moved and moaned. A
father tore
His gray hairs, by the body of his son,
In frenzy ; and his fair young daughter
wept
On his old bosom. Suddenly a flash
Clove the thick sulphurous air, and
man and maid
Sank, crushed and mangled by the
shattering shell.
Then spake the Galilean : " Thou hast
seen
The blessed Master and his works of
love ;
Look now on thine ! Hear'st thou the
angels sing
Above this open hell? Thou God's
high-priest !
Thou the Vicegerent of the Prince of
Peace !
Thou the successor of his chosen ones !
1, Peter, fisherman of Galilee,
lu the dear Master's name, and for the
love
j Of his true Church, proclaim thee Anti
christ,
Alien and separate from his holy faith,
Wide as the difference between death
and life,
The hate of man and the greai love of
God!
Hence, and repent ! "
Thereat the pontiff woke,
Trembling, and muttering o'er his fear
ful dream.
" What means he ? " cried the Bourbon.
" Nothing more
Than that your majesty hath all too
well
Catered for your poor guests, and that,
in sooth,
The Holy Father's supper troubleth
him,"
Said Cardinal Antonelli, with a smile.
TAULER.
TAULEH, the preacher, walked, on3
autumn day,
Without the walls of Strasbum, bv the
Rhine,
Pondering the solemn Miracle of Lite ;
As one who, wandering in a starless
night,
Feels, momently, the jar of unseen
waves,
And hears the thunder of an unknown
sea,
Breaking along an unimagined shore
And as he walked he prayed. Even
the same
Old prayer with which, for half a scor<-
of years,
TAULER.
191
Morning, and noon, and evening, lip
and heart
Had groaned : " Have pity upon me,
Lord!
Thou seest, while teaching others, I am
blind.
Send me a man who can direct my
st.p.ns '
Then, as he mused, he heard along
his path
A. sound as of an old man's staff among
The dry, dead linden-leaves ; and, look
ing up,
He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, and
old.
" Peace be unto thee, father ! " Tau-
ler said,
" God give thee a good day ! " The old
man raised
Slowly his calm blue eyes. "I thank
thee, son ;
But all my days are good, and none are
ill."
Wondering thereat, the preacher spake
again,
"God give thee happy life." The old
man smiled,
" I never am unhappy."
Tauler laid
Eis hand upon the stranger's coarse gray
sleeve :
"Tell me, 0 father, what thy strange
words mean.
Surely man's days are evil, and his
life
Sad as the grave it leads to." "Nay,
my son,
Our times are in God's hands, and all
our days
Are as our needs : for shadow as for
sun,
For cold as heat, for want as wealth,
alike
Our thanks are due, since that is best
which is ;
And that which is not, sharing not his
life,
Is evil only as devoid of good.
And for the happiness of which I spake,
I find it in submission to his will,
And calm trust in the holy Trinity
Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Al
mighty Power."
Silently wondering, for a little space,
Stood the great preacher ; then he spake
as one
Who, suddenly grappling with a haunt
ing thought
Which long has followed, whispering
through the dark
Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into
light :
" What if God's will consign thee hence
to Hell?"
"Then," said the stranger, cheerily,
"be it so.
What Hell may be I know not ; this I
know, —
I cannot lose the presence of the Lord :
One arm, Humility, takes hold upon
His dear Humanity ; the other, Love,
Clasps his Divinity. So where 1 go
He goes ; and better fire-walled Hell
with Him
Than golden-gated Paradise without."
Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes. A
sudden light,
Like the first ray which fell on chaos,
clove
Apart the shadow wherein he "had walked
Darkly at noon. And, as tne strange
old man
Went his slow way, until his silver
haii-
Set like the white moon where the hills
of vine
Slope to the Rhine,*he bowed his head
and said :
' ' My prayer is answered. God hath
sent the man
Long sought, to teach me, by his simple
trust,
Wisdom the weary schoolmen never
knew."
So, entering with a changed and
cheerful step
The city gates, he saw, far down tha
street,
A mighty shadow break the light of
noon,
Which tracing backward till its aiiy
lines
Hardened to stony plinths, he raised hif.
eyes
O'er broad facade and lofty pediment,
O'er architrave and frieze and sainted
nichn,
192
MISCELLANEOUS.
Up the stone lace-work chiselled by the
wise
Erwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to where
In the noon-brightness the great Min
ster's tower,
Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural
crown,
Rose like a visible prayer. " Behold. ! "
he said,
"The stranger's faith made plain be
fore mine eyes.
As yonder tower outstretches to the
earth
The dark triangle of its shade alone
When the clear day is shining on its
top,
So, darkness in the pathway of Man's
life
Is but the shadow of God's providence,
By the great Sun of Wisdom cast there
on ;
And what is dark below is light in
Heaven."
LINES,
SUGGESTED BY READING A STATE PA
PER, WHEREIN THE HIGHER LAW IS
INVOKED TO SUSTAIN THE LOWER
ONE.
A PIOUS magistrate ! sound his praise
throughout
The wondering churches. Who shall
henceforth doubt
That the long-wished millennium
draweth nigh ?
Sin in high places has become devout,
Tithes mint, goes painful-faced, and
prays its lie
Straight up to Heaven, and calls it
piety !
The pirate, watching from his bloody
deck
The weltering galleon, heavy with the
gold
Of Acapulco, holding death in check
While prayers are said, brows crossed,
and beads are told, —
The robber, kneeling where the wayside
cross
On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread loss
From his own carbine, glancing still
abroad
For some new victim, offering thanks to
Godi —
Rome, listening at her altars to the
cry
Of midnight Murder, while her hounds
of hell
Scour France, from baptized cannon and
holy bell
And thousand-throated priesthood,
loud and high,
Pealing Te Deums to the shuddering
sky,
"Thanks to the Lord, who giveth
victory ! "
What prove these, but that crime was
ne'er so black
As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to
lack ?
Satan is modest. At Heaven's door he
lays
His evil offspring, and, in Scriptural
phrase
And saintly posture, gives to God the
praise
And honor of the monstrous progeny.
What marvel, then, in our own time to
see
His old devices, smoothly acted o'er. —
Official piety, locking fast the door
Of Hope against three million souls of
men, —
Brothers, God's children, Christ's re
deemed, — and then,
With uprolled eyeballs and on bended
knee,
Whining a prayer for help to hide the
key!
THE VOICES.
"WHY urge the long, unequal fight,
Since Truth has fallen in the street,
Or lift anew the trampled light,
Quenched by the heedless million's
feet ?
' ' Give o'er the thankless task ; forsake
The fools who know not ill from good ;
Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, ar.d take
Thine ease among the multitude.
" Live out thyseir ; with others share
Thy proper life no more ; assume
The unconcern of sun and air,
For life or death, or blight or bloom.
"The mountain pine looks calmly on
The fires that scourge the plains below.
THE HEEO.
Nor heeds the eagle in the sun
The small birds piping in the snow !
" The world is God's, not thine •, let him
Work out a change, if change must be :
The hand that planted best can trim
And nurse the old unfruitful tree."
So spake the Tempter, when the light
Of sun and stars had left the sky,
I listened, through the cloud and night,
And heard, methought, a voice reply :
" Thy task may well seem over-hard,
Who scatterest in a thankless «soil
Thy life as seed, with no reward
Save that which Duty gives to Toil.
" Not wholly is thy heart resigned
To Heaven's benign and just decree,
Which, linking thee with all thy kind,
Transmits their joys and griefs to
thee.
tc Break off that sacred cham, and turn
Back on thyself thy love and care ;
Be thou thine own mean idol, burn
Faith, Hope, and Trust, thy children,
there.
" Released from that fraternal law
Which shares the common bale and
bliss,
No sadder lot could Folly draw,
Or Sin provoke from Fate, than this.
" The meal unshared is food unblest :
Thou hoard'st in vain what love
should spend ;
Self-ease is pain ; thy only rest
Is labor for a worthy end.
" A toil that gains with what it yields,
And scatters to its own increase^
A.nd hears, while sowing outward fields,
The harvest-song of inward peace.
'' Free-lipped the liberal streamlets run,
Free shines for all the healthful ray ;
The still pool stagnates in the sun,
The lorid earth-fire haunts decay !
'What is it that the crowd requite
Thy love with hate, thy truth with
lies ?
And but to faith, and not to sight.
The wails of Freedom's temple rise ?
13
" Yet do thy work ; it shall succeed
In thine or in another's day ;
And, if denied the victor's meed,
Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay.
'"Faith shares the future's promise',
Love's
Self-offering is a triumph won ;
And each good thought or action moves
The dark world nearer to the sun.
' ' Then faint not, falter not, nor plead
Thy weakness ; truth itself is strong -,
The lion's strength, the eagle's speed,
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong.
" Thy nature, which, through fire and
flood,
To place or gain finds out its way,
Hath power to seek the highest good,
And duty's holiest call obey !
"Strivest thou in darkness ?— Foes
without
In league with traitor thoughts with
in ;
Thy night-watch kept with trembling
Doubt
And pale Remorse the ghost of
Sin? —
Hast thou not, on some week of storm,
Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair,
And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form
The curtains of its tent of prayer ?
" So, haply, when thy task shall end,
The wrong shall lose itself in right,
And all thy week-day darkness blend
With the long Sabbath of the light 1 *
THE HERO.
" 0 FOR a knight like Bayard*
Without reproach or fear ;
My light glove on his casque of steel,
My love-knot on his spear !
" 0 for the white plume floating
Sad Zutphen's field above, —
The lion heart in battle,
The woman's heart in love !
" 0 that man once more were manly,
Woman's pride, and not her scorn «
That once more the pale young mother
Darud to boast ' a man is bora ' 1
194
MISCELLANEOUS.
" But, now life's slumberous current
No sun-bowed cascade wakes ;
KO tall, heroic manhood
The level dulness breaks.
'* 0 for a knight like Bayard,
Without reproach or fear !
My light glove on his casque of steel,
My love-knot on his spear ! "
Then I said, my own heart throbbinf
To the time her proud pulse beat,
" Life hath its regal natures yet, —
True, tender, brave, and sweet !
u Smile not, fair unbeliever !
One man, at least, I know,
Who might wear the crest of Bayard
Or Sidney's plume of snow.
'* Once, when over purple mountains
Died away the Grecian sun,
And the far Cyllenian ranges
Paled and darkened, one by one, —
" Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder,
Cleaving all the quiet sky,
A.nd against his sharp steel lightnings
Stood the Suliote but to die.
"Woe for the weak and halting f
The crescent blazed behind
A curving line of sabres,
Like fire before the wind !
" Last to fly, and first to rally,
Rode he of whom I speak,
When, groaning in his bridle-path,
Sank down a wounded Greek.
" With the rich Albanian costume
Wet with many a ghastly stain,
Gazing on earth and sky as one
Who might not gaze again !
:t He looked forward to the mountains,
Back on foes that never spare,
Then flung him from his saddle,
And placed the stranger there.
" ' Allah ! hu ! ' Through flashing sa
bres,
Through a stormy hail of lead,
The good Thessalian charger
Up the slopes of olives sped.
" Hot spurred the turbaned riders ,
He almost felt iheir breath,
Where a mountain stream rolled darkly
down
Between the hills and death.
" On« brave and manful straggle, —
He gained the solid land,
And the cover of the mountains,
And the carbines of his band ! >r
" It was very great and noble,"
Said the moist-eyed listener then,
" But one brave deed makes no hero ;
Tell me what he since hath been ! "
"Still a brave and generous manhood.
Still an honor without stain,
In the prison of the Kaiser,
By the barricades of Seine.
" But dream not helm and harness
The sign of valor true ;
Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.
"Wouldst know him now? Behold
him,
The Cadmus of the blind,
Giving the dumb lip language,
The idiot clay a mind.
" Walking his round of duty
Serenely day by day,
With the strong man's hand of labor
And childhood's heart of play.
"True as the knights of story,
Sir Lancelot and his peers,
Brave in his calm endurance
As Ihey in tilt of spears.
"As waves in stillest waters,
As stars in noonday skies,
All that wakes to noble action
In his noon of calmness lies.
* Wherever outraged Nature
Asks word or action brave,
Wherever struggles labor,
Wherever groans a slave, —
" Wherever rise the peoples,
Wherever siiJcs a throne,
The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
An answer in his own
THE BAREFOOT BOY.
195
" Knight of a better era,
Without reproach or fear !
Said I not well that Bayards
And Sidneys still are here ? '
MY DREAM.
IN iny dream, methought I trod,
Yesternight, a mountain road ;
Narrow as Al Sirat's span,
High as eagle's flight, it ran.
Overhead, a roof of cloud
With its weight of thunder bowed ;
Underneath, to left and right,
Blank ness and abysmal night.
Here and there a wild-flower blushed,
Now and then a bird-song gushed ;
Now and then, through rifts of shade,
Stars shone out, and sunbeams played.
But the goodly company,
Walking in that path with me,
One by one the brink o'erslid,
One by one the darkness hid.
Some with wailing and lament,
Some with cheerful courage went ;
But, of all who smiled or mourned,
Never one to us returned.
Anxiously, with eye and ear,
Questioning that shadow drear,
Never hand in token stirred,
Never answering voice I heard !
Steeper, darker ! — lo 1 I felt
From my feet the pathway melt.
Swallowed by the black despair,
A-nd the hungry jaws of air,
Past the stony-throated caves,
Strangled by the wash of waves,
Past the splintered crags, I sank
On a green and flowery bank, —
Soft as fall of thistle-down,
Lightly as a cloud Hs blown,
Soothingly as childhood pressed
To the bosom of its rest.
Of the sharp-horned rocks instead,
Green the grassy meadows spread,
Bright with waters singing by
Frees that propped a golden sky.
Painless, trustful, sorrow-free,
Old lost faces welcomed me,
With whose sweetness of content
Still expectant hope was blent.
Waking while the dawning gray
Slowly brightened into day,
Pondering that vision fled,
Thus unto myself 1 said : —
" Steep, and hung with clouds o* strife
Is our narrow path of life ;
And our death the dreaded fall
Through the dark, awaiting all.
"So, with painful steps we climb
Up the dizzy ways of time,
Ever in the shadow shed
By the forecast of our dread.
' ' Dread of mystery solved alone,
Of the untried and unknown ;
Yet the end thereof may seem
Like the falling of my dream.
" And this heart-consuming care,
All our fears of here or there,
Change and absence, loss and death,
Prove but simple lack of faith."
Thou, 0 Most Compassionate !
Who didst stoop to our estate,
Drinking of the cup we drain,
Treading in our path of pain, —
Through the doubt and mystery,
Grant to us thy steps to see,
And the grace to draw from thence
Larger hope and confidence.
Show thy vacant tomb, and let,
As of old, the angels sit,
Whispering, by its open door :
" Fear not ! He hath gone before ! '
THE BAREFOOT BOY,
BLESSINGS on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan !
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes ;
Witli thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill ;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty <rrace,
From my heart I give thee joy, —
196
MISCELLANEOUS.
I was once a barefoot boy !
Prince tliou art, — the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride !
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye, —
Outward sunshine, inward joy :
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy !
0 for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild-flower's time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood ;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well ;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung ;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the groundnut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine ;
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans ! —
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks ;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy, —
Blessings on the barefoot boy t
0 for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
W"hen all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees ;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade ;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone ;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall ;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond.
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides !
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too ,
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy !
0 for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread, ~
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude !
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung 'ibid .-
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra ;
Ard, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch : pomp and joy
Wpited on the barefoot boy !
Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live arid laugh, as boyhood can !
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward.
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew ;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat :
All too soon these feet must hide
In the piisori cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil :
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground ;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah ! that thou couldst know thy joy.
Ere it passes, barefoot boy !
FLOWERS IN WINTER.
PAINTED UPON A POIITE LIVRE.
How strange to greet, this frosty morn,
In graceful counterfeit of flowers,
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of showers !
How well the conscious wood retains
The pictures of its flower - sown
home, —
The lights and snades, the purple
stains,
And golden hues of bloom !
THE RENDITION.
197
It was a happy thought to bring
To the dark season's frost and rime
This painted memory of spring,
This dream of summer-time.
Our hearts are lighter for its sake,
Our fancy's age renews its youth,
And dim-remembered fictions take
The guise of present truth.
A wizard of the Merrimack, —
So old ancestral legends say, —
Could call green leaf and blossom back
To frosted stem and spray.
The dry logs of the cottage wall,
Beneath his touch, put out their
leaves ;
The clay-bound swallow, at his call,
Played round the icy eaves.
The settler saw his oaken flail
Take bud, and bloom before his eyes ;
From frozen pools he saw the pale,
Sweet summer lilies rise.
To their old homes, by man profaned,
Came the sad dryads, exiled long,
And through their leafy tongues com
plained
Of household use and wrong.
The beechen platter sprouted wild,
The pipkin wore its old-time green ;
The cradle o'er the sleeping child
Becamp a leafy screen.
•
Haply our gentle friend hath met,
While wandering in her sylvan quest,
Haunting his native woodlands yet,
That Druid of the West ; —
And, while the dew on leaf and flower
Glistened in moonlight clear and
still,
Learned the dusk wizard's spell of
power,
And caught his trick of skill.
But welcome, be it new or old,
The gift which makes the day more
bright,
And paints, upon the ground of cold
And darkness, warmth and light .'
Without is neither gold nor green ;
Within, for birds, the birch-logs sing;
Yet, summer-like, we sit between
The autumn and the spring.
The one, with bridal blush of rose,
And sweetest breath of woodland
balm,
And one whose matron lips unclose
In smiles of saintly calm.
Fill soft and deep, 0 winter snow !
The sweet azalia's oaken dells,
And hide the bank where roses blow,
And swing the azure bells !
O'erlay the amber violet's leaves,
The purple aster's brookside home,
Guard all the flowers her pencil gives
A life beyond their bloom.
And she, when spring comes round again,
By greening slope and singing flood
Shall wander, seeking, not in vain,
Her darlings of the wood.
THE RENDITION.
I HEART) the train's shrill whistle call,
I saw an earnest look beseech,
And rather by that look than speech
My neighbor told me all.
And, as I thought of Liberty
Marched handcuffed do,wn* that
sworded street,
The solid earth beneath my feet
Reeled fluid as the sea.
I felt a sense of bitter loss, —
Shame, tearless grief, and stifling
wrath,
And loathing fear, as if my path
A serpent stretched across.
All love of home, all pride of place,
All generous confidence and trust.
Sank smothering in that deep disgust
And anguish of disgrace.
Down on my native hills of June,
And home's green quiet, hiding all
Fell sudden darkness like 'the fall
Of midnight upon noon !
And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong,
Blood-drunken, through the blackness
trod,
198
MISCELLANEOUS.
Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God
The blasphemy of wrong.
" 0 Mother, from thy memories proud,
Thy old renown, dear Commonwealth,
Lend this dead air a breeze of health,
And smite with stars this cloud.
" Mother of Freedom, wise and brave,
Rise awful in thy strength," I said ;
Ah me ! I spake but to the dead ;
1 stood upon her grave !
Qth mo., 1854.
LINES,
ON THE PASSAGE OF THE BILL TO PRO
TECT THE RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES OF
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE AGAINST
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT.
L SAID I stood upon thy grave,
My Mother State, when last the moon
Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.
And, scattering ashes on my head,
I wore, undreaming of relief,
The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.
Again that moon of blossoms shines
On leaf and flower and folded wing,
And thou hast risen with the spring !
•
Once more thy strong maternal arms
Are round about thy children flung, —
A lioness that guards her young !
No threat is on thy closed lips,
But in thine eye a power to smite
The mad wolf backward from its light.
Southward the baffled robber's track
Henceforth runs only ; hereaway,
The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.
Henceforth, within thy sacred gates,
His first low howl shall downward draw
The thunder of thy righteous law.
Not mindless of thy trade and gain,
But, acting on the wiser plan,
Thou 'rt grown conservative of man.
Bo shalt thou clothe with life the hope,
Dream-painted on the sightless eyes
Of him who sang of Paradise, —
The vision of a Christian man,
In virtue as in stature great,
Embodied in a Christian State.
And thou, amidst thy sisterhood
Forbearing long, yet standing fast,
Shalt win their grateful thanks at last j
When North and South shall strive no
more,
And all their feuds arid fears be lost
In Freedom's holy Pentecost.
THE FRUIT-GIFT.
LAST night, just as the tints of autumn's
sky
Of sunset faded from our hills and
streams,
I sat, vague listening, lapped in twi
light dreams,
To the leaf's rustle, and the cricket's cry.
Then, like that basket, flush with sum
mer fruit,
Dropped by the angels at the Prophet's
foot,
Came, unannounced, a gift of clustered
sweetness,
Full -orbed, and glowing with the
prisoned beams
Of summery suns, and rounded to com
pleteness
By kisses of the south-wind and the
dew.
Thrilled with a glad surprise, methought
I knew
The pleasure of the homeward-turning
Jew,
When Eschol's clusters on his shoulders
lay,
Dropping their sweetness on his desert
way.
I said, " This fruit beseems no world of
sin.
Its parent vine, rooted in Paradise,
O'ercrept the wall, and never paid the
price
Of the great mischief, — an ambrosial
tree,
Eden's exotic, somehow smuggled in,
To keep the thorns and thistles com.
pany."
Perchance our frail, sad mother plucked
in haste
TO CHARLES SUMNEft.
199
A single vine- slip as she passed the
gate,
Where the dread sword alternate paled
and burned,
And the stern angel, pitying her fate,
Forgave the lovely trespasser, and turned
Aside his face of tire ; and thus the waste
And fallen world hath yet its annual
taste
Of primal good, to prove of sin the cost,
And show by one gleaned ear the
mighty harvest lost.
A, MEMORY. %
HERE, while the loom of Winter weaves
The shroud of flowers and fountains,
I think of thee and summer eves
Among the Northern mountains.
When thunder tolled the twilight's close,
And winds the lake were rude on,
And thou wert singing, Ca' the Yams,
The bonny yowes of Cluden !
When, close and closer, hushing breath,
Our circle narrowed round thee,
And smiles and tears made up the wreath
Wherewith our silence crowned thee ;
And, strangers all, we felt the ties
Of sisters and of brothers ;
Ah ! whose of all those kindly eyes
Now smile upon another's ?
The sport of Time, who still apart
The waifs of life is flinging ;
0, nevermore shall heart to heart
Draw nearer for that singing !
Yet when the panes are frosty-starred,
And twilight's lire is gleaming,
1 hear the songs of Scotland's bard
Sound softly through my dreaming !
A song that lends to winter snows
The glow of summer weather, —
A.gain I hear thee ca' the yowes
To Cluden's hills of heather !
TO CHARLES SUMNER.
IF I have seemed mote prompt to cen
sure wrong
Than praise the right ; if seldom to
thine ear
My voice hath mingled with the ex
ultant cheer
Borne upon all our Northern winds
along ;
f I have failed to join the fickle throng
n wide-eyed wonder, that thou standest
strong
n victory, surprised in thee to find
Brougham's scathing power with Can
ning's grace combined ;
That he, for whom the ninefold Muses
sang,
From their twined arms a giant athlete
sprang,
Barbing the arrows of his native tongue
With the spent shafts Latona's archer
flung,
To smite the Python of our land and
time,
Fell as the monster born of Crissa's slime,
Like the blind bard who in Castalian
springs
Tempered the steel that clove the crest
of kings,
And on the shrine of England's freedom
laid
The gifts of Cunwe and of Delphi's
shade, —
Small need hast thou of words of praise
from me.
Thou knowest my heart, dear friend,
and well canst guess
That, even though silent, I have not
the less
Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree
With the large future which I shaped for
thee,
When, years ago, beside the summer sea,
White 'in the moon, we saw the long
waves fall
Baffled and broken from the rocky wall,
That, to the menace of the brawling flood,
Opposed alone its massive quietude,
Calm as a fate ; with not a leaf nor
vine
Nor birch-spray trembling in the still
moonshine,
Crowning it like God's peace. I some-
times think
That night-scene by the sea prophet
ical, —
(For Nature speaks in symbols and in
signs,
And through her pictures human fate
divines), —
That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows
sink
2UO
MISCELLANEOUS.
In miii muring rout, uprising- clear and
tall
In the white light of heaven, the type
of one
Who, momently by Error's host assailed,
Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of
granite mailed ;
And, tranquil-fronted, listening over
all
The tumult, hears the angels say, Well
done !
THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS.
WE cross the prairie as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free !
We go to rear a wall of men
On Freedom's southern line,
And plant beside the cotton-tree
The ragged Northern pine !
We 're flowing from our native lulls
As our free rivers flow ;
The blessing of our Mother-land
Is on us as we go.
We go to plant her common school-
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.
Upbearing, like the Ark of old,
The Bible in our van,
We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.
No pause, nor rest, save where the
streams
That feed the Kansas run,
Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun !
We '11 tread the prairie as of old
Our fathers sailed the sea,
And make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free !
SONG OF SLAVES IN THE
DESERT.68
WHERE are we going ? where are we go
ing,
Where are we going, Rubee ?
Lord of peoples, lord of lauds,
Look across these shining sands,
Through the furnace of the noon,
Through the white light of the moon.
Strong the Ghiblee wind is blowing,
Strange and large the world is growing
Speak and tell us where we are going,
Where are we going, Rubee ?
Bornou land was rich and good,
Wells of water, fields of food,
Dourra fields, and bloom of bean,
And the palm-tree cool and green :
Bornou laud we see no longer.
Here we thirst and here we hunger,
Here the Moor-man smites in anger :
Where are we going, Rubee ?
When we went from Bornou land,
We were like the leaves and sand,
We were many, we are few ;
Life has one, and death has two :
Whitened bones our path are showing,
Thou All-seeing, thou All-knowing !
Hear us, tell us, where are we going,
Where are we going, Rubee ?
Moons of marches from our eyes
Bornou land behind us lies ;
Stranger round us day by day
Bends the desert circle gray ;
Wild the waves of sand are flowing,
Hot the winds above them blowing, —
Lord of all things ! — where are we go
ing?
Where are we going, Rubee ?
We arc weak, but Thou art strong ;
,Si>ort our lives, but Thine is long ;
Vfc are blind, but Thou hast eyes ;
Wt, ui.'e fools, but Thou ait wise !
Thou, our morrow's pathway knowing
Through the strange world round iu
growing,
Hear us, tell as where are we going,
Where are we going, Rubee ?
LINES,
INSCRIBED TO FRIENDS UNDER ARREST
FOR TREASON AGAINST THE SLAVK
POWER.
THE age is dull and mean. Men creep,
Not walk ; with blopd too pale ami
tame
THE HASCHISH.
201
To pay the debt they owe to shame ;
Buy cheap, sell dear ; eat, drink, and
sleep
Lo, God is great ! " the simple Mos
lem says.
We seek the ancient date,
sleep W e seek tne ancient date,
Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want; ' Turn the dry scroll, and make that liv.
Pay tithes for soul -insurance ; keep ing phrase
C«; ,]..,..-. 4-rt. "HTr»w-»-»-fc-* ^vi-» ,rt.-»-k,r*. 4-f*. f^n-**4- A /Itiorl rvnn • ** flrwl 4/?/yo rfvont* t "
Six days to Mammon, one to Cant.
In such a time, give thanks to God,
That somewhat of the holy rage
With which the prophets in their
age
On all its decent seemings trod,
Has set your feet upon the lie,
That man and ox and soul and clod
Are market, stock to sell and 'buy !
The hot words from your lips, my own,
To caution trained, might not repeat ;
But if some tares among the wheat
Of generous thought and deed were
sown,
No common wrong provoked your
zeal ;
The silken gauntlet that is thrown
In such a quarrel rings like steel.
The brave old strife the fathers saw
For Freedom calls for men again
Like those who battled riot in vain
for England's Charter, Alfred's law ;
And right of speech and trial just
Wage in your name their ancient war
With venal courts and perjured trust.
'.jod's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
They touch the shining hills of day ;
The evil cannot brook delay,
The good can well afford to wait.
Give ermined knaves their hour of
crime ;
Ye have the future grand and great,
The safe appeal of Truth to Time !
THE NEW EXODUS.64
BY
fire and cloud, across the desert
sand,
And through the parted waves,
From their long bondage, with au. out
stretched hand,
God led the Hebrew slaves !
Dead as the letter of the Pentateuch,
As Egypt's statues cold,
In the adytum of the sacred book
Now stands that marvel old.
A dead one : " God was great !
And, like the Coptic monks by Mousa'g
wells,
We dream of wonders past,
Vague as the tales the wandering Aral
tells,
Each drowsier than the last.
0 fools and blind ! Above the Pyramids
Stretches once more that hand,
And tranced Egypt, from her stony lids,
Flings back Tier veil of sand.
And morning-smitten Memnon, singing,
wakes ;
And, listening by his Nile,
O'er Ammon's grave and awful visage
breaks
A sweet and human smile.
Not, as before, with hail and fire, and
call
Of death for midnight graves,
But in the stillness of the noonday,
fall
The fetters of the slaves.
No longer through the Red Sea, as of
old,
The bondmen walk dry shod ;
Through human hearts, by love of Him
controlled,
Runs now that path of God !
THE HASCHISH.
OF all that Orient lands can vaunt
Of marvels with our own competing,
The strangest is the Haschish plant,
And what will follow on its eating.
What pictures to the taster rise,
Of Dervish or of Almeh dances !
Of Eblis, or of Paradise,
Set all aglow with Houri glances !
The poppy visions of Cathay,
The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian ,'
The wizard lights and demon play
Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian 1
202
BALLADS.
The Mollah and the Christian dog
Change place in mad metempsycho
sis ;
The Muezzin climbs the synagogue,
The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses !
The Arab by his desert well
Sits choosing from some Caliph's
daughters,
And hears his single camel's bell
Sound welcome to his regal quarters.
The Koran's reader makes complaint
Of Shitan dancing on and oft' it ;
The robber offers alms, the saint
Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the
Prophet.
Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes ;
But we have one ordained to beat it,
The Haschish of the West, which makes
Or fools or knaves of all who eat it.
The preacher eats, and straight appears
His Bible in a new translation :
i Its angels negro overseers,
And Heaven itself
tion !
a snug plan to
The man of peace, about whose dreams
The sweet millennial angels cluster,
Tastes the mad weed, and plots and
schemes,
A raving Cuban filibuster !
The noisiest Democrat, with ease,
It turns to Slavery's parish beadle ;
The shrewdest statesman eats and sees
Due southward point the polar needle
The Judge partakes, and sits erelong
Upon his bench a railing blackguard ;
Decides off-hand that right is wrong,
And reads the ten commandments
backward.
0 potent plant ! so rare a taste
Has never Turk or Gen too gotten ;
The hempen Haschish of the East
Is powerless to our Western Cotton !
BALLADS.
MARY GARVIN.
FROM the heart of Waumbek Methna,
from the lake that never fails,
Falls the Saco in the green lap of Con-
way's intervales ;
There, in wild and virgin freshness, its
waters foam and flow,
As when Darby Field first saw them,
two hundred years ago.
But, vexed in all its seaward course with
bridges, dams, and mills,
How changed is Saco's stream, how lost
its freedom of the hills,
Since travelled Jocelyn, factor Vines,
and stately Champernoon
Heard on its banks the gray wolfs howl,
the trumpet of the loon !
With smoking axle hot with speed, with
steeds of fire and steam,
Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday
behind him like a dream.
Still, from the hunting train of Life,
fly backward far and fast
The milestones of the fathers, the land
marks of the past.
But human hearts remain unchanged :
the sorrow and the sin,
The loves and hopes and fears of old, are
to our own akin ;
And if, in tales our fathers told, the
songs our mothers sung,
Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance
is always young.
0 sharp-lined man of traffic, on Saco's
banks to-day !
0 mill-girl watching late and long the
shuttle's restless play !
Let, for the once, a listening ear the
working hand beguile,
And lend my old Provincial tale, as
suits, a tear or smile !
MAKY GARVIN.
203
The evening gun had sounded from gray
Fort Mary's walls ;
Through the forest, like a wild beast,
roared and plunged the Saco's falls.
And westward on the sea-wind, that
damp and gusty grew,
Over cedars darkening inland the smokes
of Spurwink blew.
On the hearth of Farmer Garvin blazed
the crackling walnut log ;
Right and left sat dame and goodmau,
and between them lay the dog,
Head on paws, and tail slow wagging,
and beside him on her mat,
Sitting drowsy in the fire-light, winked
and purred the mottled cat.
"Twenty years!" said Goodman Gar
vin, speaking sadly, under breath,
And his gray head slowly shaking, as
one who speaks of death.
The goodwife dropped her needles : "It
is twenty years to-day,
Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole
our child away "
Then they sank into the silence, for
each knew the other's thought,
Of a great and common sorrow, and
words were needed not.
" Whoknocks?" cried Goodman Garviii.
The door was open thrown ;
On two strangers, man and maiden, cloaked
and furred, the fire-light shone.
One with courteous gesture lifted the
bear-skin from his head ;
" Lives here Elkanah Garvin?" "I
am he," the goodman said.
" Sit ye down, and dry and warm ye,
for the night is chill with rain."
And the goodwife drew the settle, and
stirred the fire amain.
The maid unclasped her cloak-hood, the
fire-light glistened fail-
In her large, moist eyes, and over soft
folds of dark brown hair.
Dame Garvin looked upon her : " It is
Mary's self 1 see !
Dear heart ! " she cried, " now tell me,
has my child come back to me ? "
"My name indeed is Mary," said the
stranger, sobbing wild ;
' ' Will you be to me a mother ? I am
Mary Garvin's child !
" She sleeps by wooded Simcoe, but on
her dying -day
She bade my father take me to her kins
folk far away.
"And when the priest besought her to
do me no such wrong,
She said, ' May God forgive me ! I have
closed my heart too long.
" ' When I hid me from my father, and
shut out my mother's call,
I sinned against those dear ones, and
the Father of us all.
" 'Christ's love rebukes no home-love,
breaks no tie of kin apart ;
Better heresy in doctrine, than heresy
of heart.
" 'Tell me not the Church must censure :
she who wept the Cross beside
Never made her own flesh strangers, nor
the claims of blood denied ;
" ' And if she who wronged her parents,
with her child atones to them,
Earthly daughter, Heavenly mother !
thou at least wilt not condemn ! '
' ' So, upon her death-bed lying, my
blessed mother spake ;
As we come to do her bidding, so receive
us for her sake."
" God be praised ! " said Goodwife Gar
vin, " He taketh, and he gives ;
He woundeth, but he healeth ; in her
child our daughter lives ! "
" Amen ! " the old man answered, as he
brushed a tear away,
And, kneeling by his hearthstone, said,
with reverence, " Let us pray."
All its Oriental symbols, and its Hebrew
paraphrase,
Warm with earnest life and feeling, rose
his prayer of love and praise.
204
BALLADS.
But lie started at beholding, as he rose
froip otf his knee,
The stranger cross his forehead with the
sign of Papistrie.
" "What is this ? " cried Farmer Garvin.
" Is an English Christian's home
A chapel or a mass-house, that you make
the sign of Rome ? "
Then the young girl knelt beside him,
kissed his trembling hand, and
cried :
" O, forbear to chide my father ; in that
faith my mother died !
" On her wooden cross at Simcoe the
dews and sunshine fall,
As they fall on Spurwink's graveyard ;
and the dear God watches all ! "
The old man stroked the fair head that
rested on his knee ;
-" Your words, dear child," he answered,
" are God's rebuke to me.
"Creed and rite perchance may differ,
yet our faith and hope be one.
Let me be your father's father, let him
be to me a son."
When the horn, on Sabbath morning,
through the still and frosty air,
From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point,
called to sermon and to prayer,
To the goodly house of worship, where,
in order due and fit,
As by public vote directed, classed and
ranked the people sit ;
•
Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly
squire before the clown,
From the brave coat, lace-embroidered,
to the gray frock, shading down ;
From the pulpit read the preacher, —
" Goodman Garvin and his wife
Fain would thank the Lord, whose kind
ness has followed them through
life,
" For the great and crowning mercy,
that their daughter, from the
wild,
Where she rests (they hope in God's
peace), has sent to them her child ;
"And the prayers of all God's people
they ask, that they may prove
Not unworthy, through their weakness,
of such special proof of love."
As the preacher prayed, uprising, the
aged couple stood,
And the fair Canadian also, in her mod
est maidenhood.
Thought the elders, grave and doubting,
" She is Papist born and bred " ;
Thought the young men, " T is an
angel in Mary Garvin's stead ! "
MAUD MULLER.
MAUD MULLER, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet witli hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But when she glanced to the far-off
town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her
breast, —
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had
known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
And asked a draught from the spring that
flowed
Through the meadow across the road.
She stooped where the cool spring bub
bled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,
And blushed as ehe gave it, looking
down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered
gown.
MAUD MULLER.
205
" Thanks ! " said the Judge ; "a sweeter
drau ght
From a fairer hand was never quaffed."
He spoke of the grass and flowers and
trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming
bees ;
Then talked of the haying, and won
dered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul
weather.
And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,
And her graceful ankles bare and brown ;
And listened, while a pleased surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
Maud Muller looked and sighed : "Ah
me !
That I the Judge's bride might be !
" He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
"My father should wear a broadcloth
coat ;
My brother should sail a painted boat.
' * I 'd dress my mother so grand and
gay>
And the baby should have a new toy
each day.
" And I'd feed the hungry and clothe
the poor,
And all should bless me who left our
door."
The Judge looked back as he climbed
the hill
And saw Maud Muller standing still.
"A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
"And her modest answer and graceful
air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.
" Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay :
No doubtful balance of rights and
wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
But low of cattle and song of birds,
And health and quiet and loving words."
But he thought of his sisters proud and
cold,
And his mother vain of her rank and
gold.
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode
on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-
tune ;
And the young girl mused beside the
well
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright
glow,
He watched a picture come and go ;
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.
Oft, when the wine in his glass was
red,
He longed for the wayside well instead ;
And closed his eyes on his garnished
rooms
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, wj'th a se
cret pain,
" Ah, that I were free again !
" Free as when I rode that day,
Where the barefoot maiden raked her
hay."
She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her
door.
But care and sorrow, and childbirth
pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.
BALLADS.
And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow
lot,
And she heard
Over the
teard the little spring brook lal
roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein.
And, gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls ;
The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned,
And for him who sat by the chimney
!ug,
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and
mug,
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life
again,
Saying only, " It might have been."
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge !
God pity them both ! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these : "It might have
been ! "
Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hone
i .
lies
Deeply buried from human eyes ;
And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away '
THE RANGER.
KOBEIIT RAWLIN ! — Frosts were falling
When the ranger's horn was calling
Through the woods to Canada.
Gone the winter's sleet and snowing,
Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing,
Gone the summer's harvest .mowing,
And again the fields are gray.
Yet away, he 's away !
Faint and fainter hope is growing
In the hearts that mourn his stay.
Where the lion, crouching high on
Abraham's rock with teeth of iron,
Glares o'er wood and wave away,
Faintly thence, as pines far sighing,
Or as thunder spent and dying,
Come the challenge and replying,
Come the sounds of flight and fray.
Well-a-day ! Hope and pray !
Some are living, some are lying
In their red graves far away.
Straggling rangers, worn with dangers.
Homeward faring, weary strangers
Pass the farm -gate on their way.;
Tidings of the dead and living,
Forest march and ambush, giving,
Till the maidens leave their weaving,
And the lads forget their play.
' ' Still away, still away ! "
Sighs a sad one, sick with grieving,
"Why does Robert still delay ! "
Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer,
Dees the golden-locked fruit-bearer
Through his painted woodlands stray,
Than where hillside oaks and beeches
Overlook the long, blue reaches,
Silver coves and pebbled beaches,
And green isles of Casco Bay ;
Nowhere day, for delay,
With a tenderer look beseeches,
"Let me with my charmed earth
stay."
On the grain-lands of the mainlands
Stands the serried corn like train-bands,
Plume and pennon rustling gay ;
Out at sea, the islands wooded,
Silver birches, golden -hooded,
Set with maples, crimson-blooded,
White sea-foam and sand-hills gray.
Stretch away, far away.
Dim and dreamy, over-brooded
By the hazy autumn day.
Gayly chattering to the clattering
Of the brown nuts downward pattering
Leap the squirrels, red and gray.
On the grass-land, on the fallow,
Drop the apples, red and yellow ;
Drop the russet pears and mellow,
Drop the red leaves all the day.
And away, swift away.
THE RANGER.
207
Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow
Chasing, weave their web of play.
"Martha Mason, Martha Mason,
Prithee tell us of the reason
Why you mope at home to-day :
Surely smiling is not sinning ;
Leave your quilling, leave your spinning ;
What is all your store of linen,
If your heart is never gay ?
Come away, come away !
Never yet did sad beginning
Make the task of life a play."
Overbending, -till she 's blending
With the flaxen skein she 's tending
Pale brown tresses smoothed away
From her face of patient sorrow,
Sits she, seeking but to borrow,
From the trembling hope of morrow,
Solace for the weary day.
" Go your way, laugh and play ;
Unto Him who heeds the sparrow
And the lily, let me pray."
" With our rally, rings the valley, —
Join us ! " cried the blue-eyed Nelly ;
" Join us ! " cried the laughing
May,
' ' To the beach we all are going,
And, to save the task of rowing,
West by north the wind is blowing,
Blowing briskly down the bay !
Come away, come away !
Time and tide are swiftly flowing,
Let us take them while we may !
" Never tell us that you '11 fail us,
Where the purple beach-plum mellows
On the bluffs so wild and gray.
Hasten, for the oars are falling ;
Hark, our merry mates are calling :
Time it is that we were all in,
Singing tideward down the bay ! "
" Nay, nay, let me stay ;
Sore and sad for Robert Rawlin
Is my heart," she said, "to-day."
" Vain your calling for Rob Rawlin !
Some red squaw his moose-meat 's broil
ing,
Or some French lass, singing gay ;
Just forget as he 's forgetting ;
What avails a life of fretting ?
If some stars must needs be setting,
Others rise as good as they."
" Cease, I pray ; go your way ! "
Martha cries, her eyelids wetting ;
" Foul and false the words you say ! "*
"Martha Mason, hear to reason !
Prithee, put a kinder face on ! "
" Cease to vex me," did she say ;
j " Better at his side be lying,
i With the mournful pine-trees sighing;
! And the wild birds o'er us crying,
Than to doubt like mine a prey ;
While away, far away,
Turns my heart, forever trying
Some new hope for each new day.
"When the shadows veil the meadows,
And the sunset's golden ladders
Sink from twilight's walls of gray, — •
From the window of my dreaming,
I can see his sickle gleaming,
Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming
Down the locust-shaded way ;
But away, swift away,
Fades the fond, delusive seeming,
And I kneel again to pray.
" When the growing dawn is showing,
And the barn-yard cock is crowing,
And the horned moon pales away :
From a dream of him awaking,
Every sound my heart is making
Seems a footstep of his taking ;
Then I hush the thought, and say,
' Nay, nay, he 's away ! '
Ah ! my heart, my heart is breaking
For the dear one far away."
Look up, Martha ! worn and swarthy
Glows a face of manhood worthy :
" Robert ! " "Martha ! " all they saj
O'er went wheel and reel together,
Little cared the owner whither ;
Heart of lead is heart of feather,
Noon of night is noon of day !
Come away, come away !
When such lovers meet each other,
Why should prying idlers stay ?
i Quench the timber's fallen embers,
j Quench the red leaves in December's
Hoary rime and chilly spray.
But the hearth shall kindle clearer,
j Household welcomes sound sincerer,
! Heart to loving heart draw nearer,
When the bridal bells shall say :
I "Hope and pray, trust alway ;
• Life is sweeter, love is dearer,
For the trial and delay ! "
208
LATER POEMS.
LATER POEMS.
THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN.
O'ER the bare woods, whose out
stretched hands
Plead with the leaden heavens in
vain,
I see, beyond the valley lands,
The sea's long level dim with rain.
Around me all things, stark and dumb,
Seem praying for the snows to come,
And, for the summer bloom and green
ness gone,
With winter's sunset lights and dazzling
morn atone.
Along the river's summer walk,
The withered tufts of asters nod ;
And trembles on its arid stalk
The hoar plume of the golden-rod.
And on a ground of sombre fir,
And azure-studded juniper,
The silver birch its buds of purple shows,
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed
the sweet wild-rose !
With mingled sound of horns and bells,
A far-heard clang, the wild geese
%,
Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and
fells,
Like a great arrow through the sky,
Two dusky lines converged in one,
Chasing the southward-flying sun ;
While the brave snow-bird and the hardy
JaY
Uall to them from the pines, as if to bid
them stay.
1 passed this way a year ago :
The wind blew south ; the noon of
day
Was warm as June's ; and save that
snow
Flecked the low mountains far away,
And that the venial-seaming breeze
Mocked faded grass and leaiiess trees,
I might have dreamed of summer as I layi
Watching the fallen leaves with the soft
wind at play.
Since then, the winter blasts have piled
The white pagodas of the snow
On these rough slopes, and, strong and
Avild,
Yon river, in its overflow
Of spring-time rain and sun, set free,
Crashed Avith its ices to the sea ;
And over these gray fields, th«n green
and gold,
The summer corn has waved, the thun
der's organ rolled.
Eich gift of God ! A year of time !
What pomp of rise and shut of day,
What hues wherewith our Northern
clime
Makes autumn's dropping woodlands
say»
What airs outblown from ferny dells,
And clover - bloom and sweetbriei
smells,
What songs of brooks and birds, what
fruits and flowers,
Green woods and moonlit snows, have in
its round been ours !
VII.
I know not how, in other lands,
The changing seasons come and go ;
What splendors fall on Syrian sands,
What purple lights on Alpine snow I
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits
On Venice at her watery gates ;
A dream alone to me is Arno's vale,
And the Alhambra's halls are but a trav-
eller's tale.
VIII.
Yet, on life's current, he who drifts
Is one with him who rows or sails ;
THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN.
209
And he who wanders widest lifts
No more of beauty's jealous veils
Than he who from his doorway sees
The miracle of flowers and trees,
Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air,
And from cloud minarets hears the sun
set call to prayer !
XIII.
Methinks, 0 friend, I hear thee say,
"In vain the human heart we mock j
Bring living guests who love the day,
Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock !
The herbs we share with flesh and blood,
Are better than ambrosial food,
With laurelled shades." 1 grant it,
nothing loath,
The eye may well be glad, that looks j ftut doubly blest is he who can partake
Where Pharpar's fountains rise and
fall;
But he who sees his native brooks
Laugh in the sun, has seen them all.
The marble palaces of Ind
Rise round him in the snow and wind ;
From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hatiz
smiles,
And Rome's cathedral awe is in his
woodland aisles.
And thus it is my fancy blends
The near at hand and far and rare ;
And while the same horizon bends
Above the silver-sprinkled hair
Which flashed the light of morning
skies
On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes,
Within its round of sea and sky and field,
Earth wheels with all her zones, the
Kosmos stands revealed.
And thus the sick man on his bed,
The toiler to his task-work bound,
Behold their prison-walls outspread,
Their clipped horizon widen round !
While freedom-giving fancy waits,
Like Peter's angel at the gates,
The power is theirs to baffle care and pain,
To bring the lost world back, and make
it theirs again !
What lack of goodly company,
When masters of the ancient lyre
Obey my call, and trace for me
Their words of mingled tears and
fire !
I talk with Bacon, grave and wise,
I read the world with Pascal's eyes ;
And priest and sage, with solemn brows
austere,
A.nd poets, garland -bound, the Lords of i
Thought, draw near.
He who might Plato's banquet grace,
Have I not seen before me sit,
And watched his puritanic face,
With more than Eastern wisdom lit ?
Shrewd mystic ! who, upon the back
Of his Poor Richard's Almanack,
Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's
dream,
Links Menu's age of thought to Fulton's
age of steam !
xv.
Here too, of answering love secure,
Have I not welcomed to my hearth
The gentle pilgrim troubadour,
Whose songs have girdled half the
earth ;
Whose pages, like the magic mat
Whereon the Eastern lover sat,
Have borne me over Rhine-land's purple
vines,
And Nubia's tawny sands, and PhrygiaV
mountain pines !
And he, who to the lettered wealth
Of ages adds the lore unpriced,
The wisdom and the moral health,
The ethics of the school of Christ ;
The statesman to his holy trust,
As the Athenian archon, just.
Struck down, exiled like him for truth
alone,
Has he not graced my home with beau I y
all his own ?
What greetings smile, what farewells
wave,
What loved ones enter and depart !
The good, the beautiful, the brave,
The Heaven -lent treasures of tb>
heart !
210
LATEK POEMS.
How conscious seems the frozen sod
And beechen slope whereon they trod !
The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass
bends
Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or ab
sent friends.
Then ask not why to these bleak hills
I cling, as clings the tufted moss,
To bear the winter's lingering chills,
The mocking spring's perpetual loss.
I dream of lands where summer smiles,
And soft winds blow from spicy isles,
But scarce would Ceylon's breath of
flowers be sweet,
Could 1 not feel thy soil, New England,
at my feet !
At times I long for gentler skies,
And bathe in dreams of softer air,
• But homesick tears would fill the eyes
That saw the Cross without the Bear.
The pine must whisper to the palm,
The north-wind break the tropic calm ;
And with the dreamy languor of the Line,
The North's keen virtue blend, and
strength to beauty join.
Better to stem with heart and hand
The roaring tide of life, than lie,
Unmindful, on its flowery strand,
Of God's occasions drifting by !
Better with naked nerve to bear
The needles of this goading air,
Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego
The godlike power to do, the godlike
aim to know.
Home of my heart ! to me more fair
Than gay Versailles or Windsor's
halls,
The painted, shingly town-house where
The freeman's vote for Freedom falls !
The simple roof where prayer is made,
Than Gothic groin and colonnade ;
The living temple of the heart of man,
Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or
many-spired Milan !
XXII.
More dear thy equal village schools,
Where rich and poor the Bible read,
Than classic halls where Priestcraft
rules,
And Learning wears the chains of
Creed ;
Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in
The scattered sheaves of home and kin,
Than the mad license following Lenten
pains,
Or holidays of slaves who laugh and
dance in chains.
XXIII.
And sweet homes nestle in these dales.
And perch along these wooded
swells ;
And, blest beyond Arcadian vales,
They hear the sound of Sabbath
bells !
Here dwells no perfect man sublime,
Nor woman winged before her time,
But with the faults and follies of tlie
race,
Old home-bred virtues hold their not
unhonored place.
Here manhood struggles for the sake
Of mother, sister, daughter, wife,
The graces and the loves which make
The music of the march of life ;
And woman, in her daily round
Of duty, Avalks on holy ground.
No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here
Is the bad lesson learned at human rights
to sneer.
Then let the icy north -wind blow
The trumpets of the coming storm,
To arrowy sleet and blinding snow
Yon slanting lines of rain transform.
Young hearts shall hail the drifted
cold,
As gayly as I did of old ;
And I, who watch them through the
frosty pane,
Unenvious, live in them my boyhood
o'er again.
And I will trust that He who heeds
The life that hides in mead and
wold,
Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads,
And stains these »nosses green and
gold/
BURIAL OF BARBOUR.
211
Will still, as He hath done, incline
His gracious care to me and mine ;
Grant what we ask aright, from wrong
debar,
And, as the earth grows dark, make
brighter every star !
XXVII.
I have not seen, I may not see,
My hopes for man take form in
fact,
But God will give the victory
In due time ; in that faith 1 act.
And he who. sees the future sure,
The baffling present may endure,
(Vnd bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand
that leads
The heart's desires beyond the halting
step of deeds.
XXVIII.
And thou, my song, I send thee forth,
Where harsher songs of mine have
flown ;
Go, find a place at home and hearth
Where'er thy singer's name is known ;
Kevive for him the kindly thought
Of friends ; and they who love him
not,
Touched by some strain of thine, per
chance may take
The hand he proffers all, and thank him
for thy sake.
THE MAYFLOWERS.
The trailing arbutus, or mayflower, grows
abundantly in the vicinity of Plymouth, and
was the first flower that greeted the Pilgrims
after their fearful winter.
SAD Mayflower ! watched by winter stars,
And nursed- by winter gales,
With petals of the sleeted spars,
And leaves of frozen sails !
What had she in those dreary hours,
Within her ice -rimmed bay,
In common with the wild-wood flowers,
The first sweet smiles of May ?
Yet, " God be praised ! " the Pilgrim
said,
Who saw the blossoms peer
\bove the brown leaves, dry ?md dead,
" Behold our Mayflowi here ! "
" God wills it : here our rest shall be,
Our years of wandering o'er,
For us the Mayflower of the sea
Shall spread her sails no more."
0 sacred flowers of faith and hope,
As sweetly now as then
Ye bloom on many a birchen slope,
In many a pine-dark glen.
Behind the sea- wall's rugged length,
Unchanged, your leaves unfold,
Like love behind the manly strength
Of the brave hearts of old.
So live the fathers in their sons,
Their sturdy faith be ours,
And ours the love that overruns
Its rocky strength with flowers.
The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day
Its shadow round us draws ;
The Mayflower of his stormy bay,
Our Freedom's struggling cause.
But warmer suns erelong shall bring
To life the frozen sod ;
And, through dead leaves of hope, shall
spring
Afresh the flowers of God !
BURIAL OF BARBER.
BEAR him, comrades, to his grave ;
Never over one more brave
Shall the prairie grasses weep,
In the ages yet to come,
When the millions in our room,
What we sow in tears, shall reap.
Bear him up the icy hill,
With the Kansas, frozen still
As his noble heart, below,
And the land he came to till
With a freeman's thews and will,
And his poor hut roofed with snow i
One more look of that dead face,
Of his murder's ghastly trace !
One more kiss, 0 widowed one !
Lay your left hands on his brow,
Lift your right hands up, and vow
That his work shall yet be done.
Patience, friends ! The eye of God
Every path by Murder trod
212
LATER POEMS.
Watches, lidless, day and night ;
And the dead man in his shroud,
And his widow weeding loud,
And our hearts, are in his sight.
Every deadly threat that swells
With the roar of gambling hells,
Every brutal jest and jeer,
Every wicked thought and plan
Of the cruel heart of man,
Though but whispered, He can hear !
We in suffering, they in crime,
Wait the just award of time,
Wait the vengeance that is due ;
Not in vain a heart shall break,
Not a tear for Freedom's sake
Fall unheeded : God is true.
While the flag with stars bedecked
Threatens where it should protect,
And the Law shakes hands with
Crime,
What is left us but to wait,
Match our patience to our fate,
And abide the better time ?
Patience, friends ! The human heart
Everywhere shall take our part,
Everywhere for us shall pray ;
On our side are nature's laws,
And God's life is in the cause
That we suffer for to-day.
Well to suffer is divine ;
Pass the watchword down the line,
Pass the countersign : "ENDURE."
Not to him who rashly dares,
But to him who nobly bears,
Is the victor's garland sure.
Frozen earth to frozen breast,
Lay our slain one down to rest ;
Lay him down in hope and faith,
And above the broken sod,
Once again, to Freedom's God,
Pledge ourselves for life or death,
That the State whose walls we lay,
In our blood and tears, to-day,
Shall be free from bonds of shame
And our goodly land untrod
By the feet of Slavery, shod
With cursing as with flame !
Plant the Buckeye on his grave,
For the hunter of the slave
In its shadow cannot rest ;
And let martyr mound and tree
Be our pledge and guaranty
Of the freedom of the West !
TO PENNSYLVANIA.
0 STATE prayer-founded ! never hung
Such choice upon a people's tongue,
Such power to bless or ban,
As that which makes thy whisper Fate,
For which on thee the centuries wait,
And destinies of man !
Across thy Alleghanian chain,
With groan ings from a land in pain,
The west-wind finds its way :
Wild-wailing from Missouri's flood
The crying of thy children's blood
Is in thy ears to-day !
And unto thee in Freedom's hour
Of sorest need God gives the power
To ruin or to save ;
To wound or heal, to blight or bless
With fertile field or wilderness,
A free home or a grave !
Then let thy virtue match the crime,
Rise to a level with the time ;
And, if a son of thine
Betray or tempt thee, Brutus-like
For Fatherland and Freedom strike
As Justice gives the sign.
Wuke, sleeper, from thy dream of ease.
The great occasion's forelock seize ;
And, let the north-wind strong,
And golden leaves of autumn, be
Thy coronal of Victory
And thy triumphal song.
10*A mo., 1856.
THE PASS OF THE SIERRA.
ALL night above their rocky bed
They saw the stars march slow ;
The wild Sierra overhead,
The desert's death below.
The Indian from his lodge of bark,
The gray bear from his den,
Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark
Glai-ed on the mrvintain men.
THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND.
213
Still upward turned, with anxious strain,
Their leader's sleepless eye,
Where splinters of the mountain chain
Stood black against the sky.
The night waned slow : at last, a glow,
A gleam of sudden fire,
Shot up behind the walls of snow,
And tipped each icy spire.
A bark is sailing in the track
Of England's battle-line.
No wares hath she to barter
For Bothnia's fish and grain ,
She saileth not for pleasure,
She saileth not for gain.
But still by isle or mainland
She drops her anchor down,
he cried, " yon rocky j Where'er the British cannon
Rained fire on tower and town.
" Up, men
cone,
To-day, please God, we '11 pass,
And look from Winter's frozen throne
On Summer's flowers and grass ! "
They set their faces to the blast,
They trod the eternal snow,
And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last
The promised land below.
Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed
By many an icy horn ;
Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed,
And green with vines and corn.
They left the Winter at their backs
To flap his baffled wing,
And downward, with the cataracts,
Leaped to the lap of Spring.
Strong leader of that mountain band,
Another task remains,
To break from Slavery's desert land
A path to Freedom's plains.
The winds are wild, the way is drear,
Yet, flashing through the night,
Lo ! icy ridge and rocky spear
Blaze out in morning light !
Rise up, FREMONT ! and go before ;
The Hour must have its Man ;
Put on the hunting-shirt once more,
And lead in Freedom's van !
bk mo., 1856.
THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND.*
ACROSS the frozen marshes
The winds of autumn blow,
And the fen-lands of the Wetter
Are white with early snow.
But where the low, gray headlands
Look o'er the Baltic brine,
Outspake the ancient Amtman,
At the gate of Helsingfors :
" Why comes this ship a-spying
In the track of England's wars ? "
"God bless her," said the coast-guard,-
" God bless the ship, I say.
The holy angels trim the sails
That speed her on her way !
" Where'er she drops her anchor,
The peasant's heart is glad ;
Where'er she spreads her parting sail,,
The peasant's heart is sad.
" Each wasted town and hamlet
She visits to restore ;
To roof the shattered cabin,
And feed the starving poor.
" The sunken boats of fishers,
The foraged beeves and grain,
The spoil of flake and storehouse,
The good ship brings again.
" And so to Finland's sorrow
The sweet amend is made,
; As if the healing hand of Christ
Upon her wounds were laid ! "
! Then said the gray old Amtman,
" The will of God be done !
The battle lost by England's hate,
By England's love is won !
"We braved the iron tempest
That thundered on our shore ;
But when did kindness fail to find
The key to Finland's door ?
" No more from Aland's ramparts
Shall warning signal come,
Nor startled Sweaborg hear again
The roll of midnight drum.
214
LATER POEMS.
" Beside our fierce Black Eagle
The Dove of Peace shall rest ;
And in the mouths of cannon
The sea-bird make her nest.
' ' For Finland, looking seaward,
No coming foe shall scan ;
And the holy bells of Abo
Shall ring, « Good-will to man ! '
"Then row thy boat, 0 fisher !
In peace on lake and bay ;
And thou, young maiden, dance again
Around the pales of May !
" Sit down, old men, together,
Old wives, in quiet spin ;
Henceforth the Anglo-Saxon
Is the brother of the Finn J "
A LAY OF OLD TIME.
WRITTEN FOR THE ESSEX COUNTY
AGRICULTURAL FAIR.
ONE morning of the first sad Fall,
Poor Adam and his bride
Sat in the shade of Eden's wall —
But on the outer side.
She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit
For the chaste garb of old ;
He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit
For Eden's drupes of gold.
Behind them, smiling in the morn,
Their forfeit garden lay,
Before them, wild with rock and thorn,
The desert stretched away.
'/hey heard the air above them fanned,
A light step on the sward,
And lo ! they saw before them stand
The angel of the Lord !
"Arise," he said, "why look behind,
When hope is all before,
And patient hand and willing mind,
Your loss may yet restore ?
" 1 leave with you a spell whose power
Can make the desert glad,
A.nd call around you fruit and flower
As fair as Eden had.
•' I clothe your hands with power to lift
The curse from off your soil ;
Your very doom shall seem a gift,
Your loss a gain through Toil.
"Go, cheerful as yon humming-bees.
To labor as to play."
White glimmering over Eden's trees
The angel passed away.
The pilgrims of the world went forth
Obedient to the word,
And found where'er they tilled the earth
A garden of the Lord !
The thorn-tree cast its evil fruit
And blushed with plum and pear,
And seeded grass and trodden root
Grew sweet beneath their care.
We share our primal parents' fate,
And in our turn and day,
Look back on Eden's sworded gate
As sad and lost as they.
But still for us his native skies
The pitying Angel leaves,
And leads through Toil to Paradise
New Adams and new Eves !
WHAT OF THE DAY?
A SOUND of tumult troubles all the air,
Like the low thunders of a sultry sky
Far-rolling ere the downright lightning?,
glare ;
The hills blaze red with warnings ;
foes draw nigh,
Treading the dark with challenge and
reply.
Behold the burden of the prophet's
vision, —
The gathering hosts, — the Valley of
Decision,
Dusk with the wings of eagles Avheel-
ing o'er.
Day of the Lord, of darkness and not
light !
It breaks in thunder and the whirl
wind's roar !
Even so, Father ! Let thy will b
done, —
I Turn and o'erturn, end what thou hast
begun
In judgment or in mercy : as for ine,
If but the least and frailest, let me be
Evermore numbered with the truly five
Who find thy service perfect liberty !
MY NAMESAKE.
215
I fain would thank Thee that my mor
tal life
Has reached the hour (albeit through
care and pain)
When Good and Evil, as for final strife,
Close dim and vast on Armageddon's
plain ;
And Michael and his angels once again
Drive howling back the Spirits of the
Night.
0 for the faith to read the signs aright
And, from the angle of thy perfect sight,
See Truth's white banner floating on
before. ;
And the Good Cause, despite of vim!
friends,
And base expedients, move tr, noble
ends ;
See Peace with Freedom make to Time
amends,
;Vnd, through its cloud of dust, tin;
threshing-floor,
Flailed by the thunder, heaped with
chaffless grain !
19&7.
THE FIRST FLOWERS.
FOR ages on our river borders,
These tassels in their tawny bloom,
And willowy' studs of downy silver,
Have prophesied of Spring to come.
For ages have the unbound waters
Smiled on them from their pebbly hem,
And the clear carol of the robin
And song of bluebird welcomed them.
But never yet from smiling river,
Or song of early bird, have they
Been greeted with a gladder welcome
Than whispers from my heart to-day.
They break the spell of cold and dark
ness,
The weary watch of sleepless pain ;
And from my heart, as from the river,
The ice of winter melts again.
Thanks, Mary ! for this wild-wood token
Of Freya's footsteps drawing near ;
Almost, as in the rune of Asgard,
The growing of the grass I hear.
It is as if the pine-trees called me
From ceiled room and silent books,
To see the dance of woodland shadows,
And hear the song of April brooks !
As in the old Teutonic ballad
Live singing bird and flowering tree,
Together live in bloom and music,
i blend in song thy flowers and thee
Earth's rocky tablets bear forever
The dint of rain and small bird's track
Who knows but that my idle verses
May leave some trace by Merrimack !
The bird that trod the mellow layers
Of the young earth is sought in vain ;
The cloud is gone that wove the sand
stone,
From God's design, with threads of
So, when this fluid age we live in
Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme,
Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle
The savans of the coming time :
And, following out their dim suggestions,
Some idly-curious hand may draw
My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier
Drew fish and bird from fin and claw.
And maidens in the far-off twilights,
Singing my words to breeze and stream,
Shall wonder if the old-time Mary
Were real, or the rhymer's dream !
1st fylmo., 1857.
MY NAMESAKE.
You scarcely need my tardy thanks,
Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend —
A green leaf on your own Green Banks —
The memory of your friend.
j For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, hides
The sobered brow and lessening hair :
For aught I know, the myrtled sides
Of Helicon are bare.
Their scallop-shells so many bring
The fabled founts of song to try,
They've drained, for aught I know, the
spring
Of Aganippe dry.
Ah well ! — The wreath the Muses braid
Proves often Folly's cap and bell ;
216
LATER POEMS.
Methinks, my ample beaver's shade
May serve my turn as well.
Let Love's and Friendship's tender debt
Be paid by those I love in life.
Why should the unborn critic whet
For me his Bcalping-knife ?
Why should the stranger peer and pry
One's vacant house of life about,
And drag for curious ear and eye
His faults and follies out ? —
Why stuff, for fools to gaze upon,
With chaff of words, the garb he wore,
As corn-husks when the ear is gone
Are rustled all the more ?
Let kindly Silence close again,
The picture vanish from the eye,
And on the dim and misty main
Let the small ripple die.
Yet not the less I own your claim
To grateful thanks, dear friends of
mine.
Hang, if it please you so, my name
Upon your household line.
Let Fame from brazen lips blow wide
Her chosen names, I envy none :
A mother's love, a father's pride,
Shall keep alive my own !
Still shall that name as now recall
The young leaf wet with morning
dew,
The glory where the sunbeams fall
The breezy woodlands through.
That name shall be a household word,
A spell to waken smile or sigh ;
In many an evening prayer be heard
And cradle lullaby.
And thou, dear child, in riper days
When asked the reason of thy name,
Shalt answer: "One 't were vain to
praise
Or censure bore the same.
" Some blamed him, some believed him
good, —
The truth lay doubtless 'twixt the
two, —
He reconciled as best he could
Old faith and fancies new.
" In him the grave and playful mixed,
And wisdom held with folly truce,
And Nature compromised betwixt
Good fellow and recluse.
" He loved his friends, forgave his foes ;
And, if his words were harsh at times,
He spared his fellow-men, — his HOAVS
Fell only on their crimes.
" He loved the good and wise, but found
His human heart to all akin
Who met him on the common ground
Of suffering and of sin.
" Whate'er his neighbors might endure
Of pain or grief his own became ;
For all the ills he could not cure
He held himself to blame.
" His good was mainly an intent,
His evil not of forethought done ;
The work he wrought was rarely meant
Or finished as begun.
"Ill served his tides of feeling strong
To turn the common mills of use ;
And, over restless wings of song,
His birthright garb hung loose !
" His eye was beauty's powerless slave,
And his the ear which discord pains •
Few guessed beneath his aspect grave
What passions strove in chains.
" He had his share of care and pain,
No holiday was life to him ;
Still in the heirloom cup we drain
The bitter drop will swim.
" Yet Heaven was kind, and here a bini
And there a flower beguiled his way ;
And, cool, in summer noons, he heard
The fountains plash and play.
' ' On all his sad or restless moods
The patient peace* of Nature stole ;
The quiet of the fields and woods
Sank deep into his soul.
" He worshipped as his fathers did,
Ant! kept the faith of childish days,
And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid,
He loved the good old ways.
" The simple tastes, the kindly traits,
The tranquil air, and gentle speech,
MY NAMESAKE.
217
The silence of the soul that waits
For more than man to teach.
"The cant of party, school, and sect,
Provoked at times his honest scorn,
And Folly, in its gray respect,
He tossed on satire's horn.
" But still his heart was full of awe
And reverence for all sacred things ;
And, brooding over form and law,
He saw the Spirit's wings !
' ' Life's mystery wrapt him like a cloud ;
He heard far-voices mock his own,
The sweep of wings unseen, the loud,
Long roll of waves unknown.
" The arrows of his straining sight
Fell quenched in darkness ; priest and
sage,
Like lost guides calling left and right,
Perplexed his doubtful age.
" Like childhood, listening for the sound
Of its dropped pebbles in the well,
All vainly down the dark profound
His brief-lined plummet fell.
" So, scattering flowers with pious pains
On old beliefs, of later creeds,
Which claimed a place in Truth's do
mains,
He asked the title-deeds.
"He saw the old-time's groves and
shrines
In the long distance fair and dim ;
A.nd heard, like sound of far-off pines,
The century-mellowed hymn !
" He dared not mock the Dervish whirl,
The Brahmin's rite, the Lama s spell ;
f>od knew the heart ; Devotion's pearl
Might sanctify the shell.
'•' While others trod the altar stairs
He faltered like the publican ;
And, while they praised as saints, his
prayers
Were those of sinful man.
." For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law,
The trembling faith alone sufficed,
That, through its cloud and flame, he
saw
The sweet, sad face of Christ ! —
" And listening, with his forehead bowed,
Heard the Divine compassion fill
The pauses of the trump and cloud
With whispers small and still.
" The words he spake, the thoughts he
penned,
Are mortal as his hand and brain,
But, if they served the Master's end,
He has not lived in vain ! "
Heaven make thee better than thy
name,
Child of my friends ! — For thee I
crave
What riches never bought, nor fame
To mortal longing gave.
1 pray the prayer of Plato old :
God make thee beautiful within,
And let thine eyes the good behold
In everything save sin !
Imagination held in check
To serve, not rule, thy poised mind ;
Thy Reason, at the frown or beck
Of Conscience, loose or bind.
No dreamer thou, but real all, —
Strong manhood crowning vigorous
youth ;
Life made by duty epical
And rhythmic with the truth.
So shall that life the fruitage yield
Which trees of healing only give,
And green-leafed in the Eternal field
Of God, forever live !
218
HU.MK HALL ADS.
HOME BALLADS.
I CALL the old time back : I bring these
lays
To thee, in memory of the summer
days
When, by our native streams and forest
ways,
We dreamed them over ; while the rivu
lets made
Songs of their own, and the great pine-
trees laid
On warm noon-lights the masses of their
shade.
And she was with us, living o'er again
-Her life in ours, despite of years and
pain, —
The autumn's brightness after latter
rain.
Beautiful in her holy peace as one
Who stands, at evening, when the work
is done,
Glorified in the setting of the sun !
Her memory makes our common land
scape seem
Fairer than any of which painters
dream,
Lights the brown hills and sings in
every stream ;
For she whose speech was always truth's
pure gold
Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends
told,
And loved with us the beautiful and
old.
THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER.
IT was the pleasant harvest time,
When cellar-bins are closely stowed,
And garrets bend beneath their load,
4nd the old swallow-haunted barns —
Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams
Through which the moted sunlight
streams,
And winds blow freshly in, to shake
The red plumes of the roosted cocks.
And the loose hay-mow's scented
locks —
Are filled with summer's ripened stores,
Its odorous grass and barley sheaves.
From their low scaffolds to their eave«.
On Esek Harden's oaken floor,
With many an autumn threshing
worn,
Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn.
And thither came young men and maids,
Beneath a moon that, large and low,
Lit that sweet eve of long ago.
They took their places ; some by chance,
And others by a merry voice
Or sweet smile guided to their choice.
How pleasantly the rising moon,
Between the shadow of the mows,
Looked on them through the great
elm-boughs ! —
On sturdy boyhood sun -embrowned,
On girlhood with its solid curves
Of healthful strength and painless
nerves !
And jests went round, and laughs that
made
The house-dog answer with his howl,
And kept astir the barn-yard fowl ;
And quaint old songs their father,-;
sung,
In Derby dales arid Yorkshire moors,
Ere Norman William trod theii
shores ;
And tales, whose merry license shook
The fat sides of the Saxon thane,
Forgetful of the hovering Dane !
But still the sweetest voice was mute
That river- valley ever heard
From lip of maid or throat of bird ;
THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER.
219
For Mabel Martin sat apart,
And let the hay-mow's shadow fall
Upon the loveliest face of all.
She sat apart, as one forbid,
Who knew that none would conde
scend
To own the Witch-wife's child a
friend.
The seasons scarce had gone their round,
Since curious thousands thronged to
see
Her mother on the gallows-tree ;
And mocked the palsied limbs of age,
That faltered on the fatal stairs,
And wan lip trembling with its
prayers !
Few questioned of the sorrowing child,
Or, when they saw the mother die,
Dreamed of the daughter's agony.
They went up to their homes that day,
As men and Christians justified :
God willed it, and the wretch had
died !
Dear God and Father of us all,
Forgive our faith in cruel lies, —
Forgive the blindness that denies !
forgive thy creature when he takes,
For the all-perfect love thou art,
Some grim creation of his heart.
'Jast down our idols, overturn
Our bloody altars ; let us see
Thyself in thy humanity !
Poor Mabel from her mother's grave
Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,
And wrestled with her fate alone ;
With love, and anger, and despair,
The phantoms of disordered sense,
The awful doubts of Providence !
The school-boys jeered her as they
passed,
And, when she sought the house of
prayer,
Her mother's curse pursued her there.
And still o'er many a neighboring door
She saw the horseshoe's curved charm,
To guard against her mother's harm ; —
That mother, poor, and sick, anh
lame,
Who daily, by the old arm-chair.
Folded her withered hands in pray
er ; —
Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail,
Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er,
When her dim eyes could read no
more !
Sore tried and pained, the poor gir!
kept
Her faith, and trusted that hei
way,
So dark, would somewhere meet the
day.
And still her weary wheel went round
Day after day, with no relief ;
Small leisure have the poor for grief.
So in the shadow Mabel sits ;
Untouched by mirth she sees and
hears,
Her smile is sadder than her tears.
But cruel eyes have found her out,
And cruel lips repeat her name,
And taunt her with her mothei'r
shame.
She answered not with railing words,
But drew her apron o'er her face,
And, sobbing, glided from the place.
And only pausing at the door,
Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze
Of one who, in her better days,
Had been her warm and steady friend,
lire yet her mother's doom had made
Even Esek Harden half afraid.
He felt that mute appeal of tears,
And, starting, with an angry frown
Hushed all the wicked murmurs
down.
" Good neighbors mine," he sternly
said,
"This passes harmless mirth or jest ;
1 brook no insult to my guest.
" She is indeed her mother's child ;
Hut God's sweet pity ministers
Unto no whiter soul than hers.
220
HOME BALLADS.
" Let Goody Martin rest in peace ;
I never knew her harm a fly,
And witch or not, God knows, — not I .
" I know who swore her life away ;
And, as God lives, I 'd not condemn
An Indian dog on word of them."
The broadest lands in all the town,
The skill to guide, the power to awe,
Were Harden 's ; and his word was
law.
None dared withstand him to his face,
But one sly maiden spake aside :
" The little witch is evil-eyed !
" Her mother only killed a cow,
Or witched a churn or dairy-pan ;
But she, forsooth, must chann a
man ! "
Poor Mabel, in her lonely home,
Sat by the window's narrow pane,
White in the moonlight's silver r&m.
The river, on its pebbled rim,
Made music such as childhood knew ,-
The door-yard tree was whispered
through
By voices such as childhood's ear
Had heard in moonlights long ago ;
And through the willow-boughs below
She saw the rippled waters shine ;
Beyond, in waves of shade and light
The hills rolled off into the night.
Sweet sounds arid pictures mocking so
The sadness of her human lot,
She saw and heard, but heeded not.
She strove to drown her sense of wrong,
And, in her old and simple way,
To teach her bitter heart to pray.
Poor child ! the prayer, begun in faith,
Grew to a low, despairing cry
Of utter misery : " Let me die !
" Oh ! take me from the scornful eyes,
And hide me where the cruel speech
And mocking linger may not reach !
" I dare not breathe my mother's name :
A daughter's right I dare not crave
To weep above her unblest grave !
" Let me not live until my heart,
With few to pity, and with none
To love me, hardens into stone.
' 0 God ! have mercy on thy child,
Whose faith in thee grows weak ami
small,
And take me ere I lose it all ! "
A shadow on the moonlight fell,
And murmuring wind and wave be
came
A voice whose burden was her name.
Had then God heard her ? Had ho
sent
His angel down ? In flesh and blood,
Before her Esek Harden stood !
He laid his hand upon her arm :
"Dear Mabel, this no more shall
be;
Who scoffs at you, must scoff at
me.
"You know rough Esek Harden well ;
And if he seems no suitor gay,
And if his hair is touched with gray,
" The maiden grown shall never find
His heart less warm than when she
smiled,
Upon his knees, a little child ! "
Her tears of grief were tears of joy,
As, folded in his strong embrace,
She looked in Esek Harden's face.
" 0 truest friend of all ! " she said,
"God bless you for your kindly
thought,
And make me worthy of my lot ! "
He led her through his dewy fields,
To where the swinging lanterns
glowed,
And through the doors the huskers
showed.
"Good friends and neighbors !" Esek
said,
" I 'm weary of this lonely life ;
In Mabel see my chosen wife !
"She greets you kindly, one and all ;
The past is past, and all oil'ence
Falls harmless from her innocence.
THE GARRISON OF CAPi ANN.
221
•* Henceforth she stands no more alone ;
You know what Esek Harden is : —
He brooks no wrong to him or his."
Now let the merriest tales be told,
And let the sweetest songs be sung
That ever made the old heart young !
For now the lost has found a home ;
And a lone hearth shall brighter burn,
As all the household joys return !
0, pleasantly the harvest-moon,
Between the shadow of the mows,
Looked on .them through the great
elm-boughs !
On Mabel's curls of golden hair,
On Esek's shaggy strength it fell ;
And the wind whispered, "It is
well ! "
THE GARRISON" OF CAPE ANN.
FROM the hills of home forth looking,
far beneath the tent-like span
Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the
headland of Cape Ann.
Well I know its coves and beaches to the
ebb-tide glimmering down,
And the white-- walled hamlet children of
its ancient fishing-town.
Long has passed the summer morning,
and its memory waxes old,
When along yon breezy headlands with
a pleasant friend I strolled.
Ah ! the autumn sun is shining, and the
ocean wind blows cool,
And the golden-rod and aster bloom
around thy grave, Rantoul !
With the memory of that morning by the
summer sea I blend
A wild and wondrous story, by the
younger Mather penned,
(n that quaint Magnalia Christi, with
all strange and marvellous things,
Heaped up huge and undigested, like
the chaos Ovid sings.
Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of
the dual life of old,
Inward, grand with awe and reverence ;
outward, mean and coarse and
cold;
Gleams of mystic beauty playing over
dull and vulgar clay,
Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a
web of hodden gray.
The great eventful Present hides the
Past ; but through the din
Of its loud life hints and echoes from
the life behind steal in ;
And the lore of home and fireside, and
the legendary rhyme,
Make the task of duty lighter which the
true man owes his time.
So, with something of the feeling which
the Covenanter knew,
When with pious chisel wandering Scot
land's moorland graveyards
through,
From the graves of old traditions I part
the blackberry-vines,
Wipe the moss from off the headstones,
and retouch the faded lines.
Where the sea- waves back and forward,
hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran,
The garrison-house stood watching on
the gray rocks of Cape Ann ;
On its windy site uplifting gabled roof
and palisade,
And rough walls of unhewn timber with
the moonlight overlaid.
On his slow round walked the sentry,
south and eastward looking forth
O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white
with breakers stretching north, — •
Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift,
jagged capes, with bush and tree,
Leaning inland from the smiting of the
wild and gusty sea.
Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dim
ly lit by dying brands,
Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with
their muskets in their hands ;
On the rough-hewn oaken table the veni
son haunch was shared,
And the pewter tankard circled slowly
round from beard to beard.
Long they sat and talked together, —
talked of wizards Satan -sold ;
Of all ghostly sights and noises, — signs
and wonders manifold ;
222
HOME BALLADS.
Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the
dead men in her shrouds,
Sailing sheer above the water, in the
loom of morning clouds ;
Of the marvellous valley hidden in the j
depths of Gloucester woods,
Full of plants that love the summer, —
blooms of warmer latitudes ;
Where the Arctic birch is braided by
the tropic's flowery vines,
And the white magnolia-blossoms star
the twilight of the pines !
But their voices sank yet lower, sank to
husky tones of fear,
As they spake of present tokens of the
powers of evil near ;
Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel
and aim of gun ;
Never yet was ball to slay them in the
mould of mortals inn !
Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-
locks, from the midnight wood
they came, —
Thrice around the block -house marching,
met, unharmed, its volleyed flame ;
Then, with mocking laugh and gesture,
sunk in earth or lost in air,
All the ghostly wonder vanished, and
the moonlit sands lay bare.
Midnight came ; from out the forest
moved a dusky mass that soon
Grew to warriors, plumed and painted,
grimly marching in the moon.
" Ghosts or witches," said the captain,
" thus I foil the Evil One ! "
And he rammed a silver button, from
his doublet, down his gun.
Once again the spectral horror moved
the guarded wall about ;
Once again the levelled muskets through
the palisades flashed out,
With that deadly aim the squirrel on his
tree-top might not shun,
Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with
his slant wing to the sun.
Like the idle rain of summer sped the
harmless shower of lead.
With a laugh of fierce derision, once
again the phantoms fled ;
Once again, without a shadow on the
sands the moonlight lay,
And the white smoke curling through it
drifted slowly down the bay !
" God preserve us ! " said the captain ;
' ' never mortal foes were there ;
They have vanished with their leader,
Prince and Power of the air !
Lay aside your useless weapons ; skill
and prowess naught avail ;
They who do the Devil's service wear
their master's coat of mail ! "
So the night grew near to cock-crow,
when again a warning call
Roused the score of weary soldiers watch
ing round the dusky hall :
And they looked to flint and priming,
and they longed for break of day ;
But the captain closed his Bible : "Let
us cease from man, and pray ! "
To the men who went before us, all the
unseen powers seemed near,
And their steadfast strength of courage
struck its roots in holy fear.
Every hand forsook the musket, every
head was bowed and bare,
Every stout knee pressed the flag-stores,
as the captain led in prayer.
Ceased thereat the mystic marching of
the spectres round the wall,
But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote
the ears and hearts of all, —
Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish !
Never after mortal man
Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round
the block-house of Cape Ann.
So to us who walk in summer through
the cool and sea-blown town,
From the childhood of its people comes
the solemn legend down.
Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whos*
moral lives the youth
And the fitness and the freshness of an
undecaying truth.
Soon or late to all our dwellings come
the spectres of the mind,
Doubts and foars and dread forebodings,
In the darkness undefined ;
Round us throng the grim projections
of the heart and of the brain,
And our pride of strength is weakness,
aud the cunning hand is vain.
THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL.
223
fn the dark we cry like children ; and
no answer from on high
Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and
no white wings downward fly ;
But the heavenly help we pray for comes
to faith, and not to sight,
A.nd our prayers themselves drive back
ward all the spirits of the night !
THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL
SEWALL.
1697.
Up and down -the village streets
Strange are the forms my fancy pjeete,
For the thoughts and things of to-d?.y
are hid,
,\nd through the veil of a closed lid
The ancient worthies I see again :
I hear the tap of the elder's cane,
And his awful periwig I see,
And the silver buckles of shoe and knee.
Stately and slow, with thoughtful air,
His black cap hiding his whitened hair,
Walks the Judge of the great Assize,
Samuel Sewall the good and wise.
His face with lines of firmness wrought,
He wears the look of a man unbought,
Who swears to his hurt and changes
not ;
Yet, touched and softened nevertheless
With the grace of Christian gentleness,
The face that a child would climb to
kiss !
True and tender and brave and just,
That man might honor and woman trust.
Touching and sad, a tale is told,
Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist
old,
Of the fast which the good man lifelong
kept
With a haunting sorrow that never slept,
As the circling year brought round the
time
Of an error that left the sting of crime,
When he sat on the bench of the witch
craft courts,
With the laws of Moses and Hale's Re
ports,
And spake, in the name of both, the
word
That gave the witch's neck to the
cord,
And piled the oaken planks that pressed
The feeble life from the warlock's breast !
All the day long, from dawn to dawn,
His door was bolted, his curtain drawn ;
No foot on his silent threshold trod,
No eye looked on him save that of God,
As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with
charms
Of penitent tears, and prayers, and
psalms,
And, with precious proofs from the sacred
word
Of the boundless pity and love of the
Lord,
His faith confirmed and his trust re
newed
That the sin of his ignorance, sorely
rued,
Might be washed away in the mingled
flood
Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear
blood !
Green forever the memory be
Of the Judge of the old Theocracy,
Whom even his errors glorified,
Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side
By the cloudy shadows which o'er it
glide !
Honor and praise to the Puritan
Who the halting step of his age outran,
And, seeing the infinite worth of man
In the priceless gift the Father gave,
In the infinite love that stooped to save,
Dared not brand his brother a slave !
" Who doth such wrong," he was wont
to say,
In his own quaint, picture-loving way,
" Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade
Which God shall cast down upon his
head ! "
Widely as heaven and hell, contrast
That brave old jurist of the past
And the cunning trickster and knave of
courts
Who the holy features of Truth dis
torts, —
Ruling as right the will of the strong,
Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong ;
Wide-eared to power, to the wronged
and weak
Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek ;
Scoffing aside at party's nod
Order of nature and law of God •,
For whose dabbled ermine respect were
waste,
Reverence folly, and awe misplaced ;
1 Justice of whom 't were vain to seek
224
HOME BALLADS.
As from Koordish robber or Syrian
Sheik !
0, leave the wretch to his bribes and
sins ;
Let him rot in the web of lies he spins !
To the saintly soul of the early day,
To the Christian judge, let us turn and
say:
" Praise and thanks for an honest
man ! —
Glory to God for the Puritan ! "
I see, far southward, this quiet day,
The hills of New bury rolling away,
With the many tints of the season gay,
Dreamily blending in autumn mist
Crimson, and gold, and amethyst.
Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,
Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,
A stone's toss over the narrow sound.
Inland, as far as the eye can go,
The hills curve round like a bended
bow ;
A silver arrow from out them sprung,
I see the shine of the Quasycung ;
And, round and round, over valley and
hill,
Old roads winding, as old roads will,
Here to a ferry, and there to a mill ;
And glimpses of chimneys and gabled
eaves,
Through green elm arches and maple
leaves, —
Old homesteads sacred to all that can
Glauden or sadden the heart of man, —
Over whose thresholds of oak and stone
Life and Death have come and gone !
There pictured tiles in the fireplace
show,
Great beams sag from the ceiling low,
The dresser glitters with polished wares,
The long clock ticks on the foot-worn
stairs,
And the low, broad chimney shows the
crack
By the earthquake made a century
back.
Up from their midst springs the village
spire
With the crest of its cock in the sun
afire ;
Beyond are orchards and planting lands,
And great salt marshes and glimmering
sands,
And, where north and south the coast
lines run,
The blink of the sea in breeze and sun !
I see it all like a chart unrolled,
But my thoughts are full of the past
and old,
I hear the tales of my boyhood told ;
And the shadows and shapes of early
days
Flit dimly by in the veiling haze,
With measured movement and rhythmic
chime
Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme.
I think of the old man wise and good
Who once on yon misty hillsides stood,
(A poet who never measured rhyme,
A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,)
And, propped on his staff of age, looked
down,
With his boyhood's love, on his native
town,
Where, written, as if on its hills and
plains,
His burden of prophecy yet remains,
For the voices of wood, and wave, and
wind
To read in the ear of the musingmind : —
"As long as Plum Island, to guard
the coast
As God appointed, shall keep its post ;
As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep
Of Merrimack River, or sturgeon leap ;
As long as pickerel swift and slim,
Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim ;
As long as the annual sea-fowl know
Their time to come and their time to go ;
As long as cattle shall roam at will
The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill ;
As long as sheep shall look from the -side
Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide,
And Parker River, and salt-sea tide ;
As long as a wandering pigeon shall search
The fields below from his white-oak perch,
When the barley-harvest is ripe an4
shorn,
And the dry husks i'all from the stand
ing corn ;
As long as Nature shall not grow old,
Nor drop her work from her doting hold,
And her care for the Indian corn forget,
And the yellow rows in pairs to set ; —
So long shall Christians here be born,
Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn ! —
By the beak of bird, by the breath of
frost,
Shall never a holy ear be lost,
But, husked by Death in the PlanterV
sight,
Be eown again in the fields of light ! "
SKIPPER IRESON'b RIDE.
225
The Island still is purple with plums,
Up the river the salmon comes,
The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl
feeds
On hillside berries and marish seeds, —
All the beautiful signs remain,
From spring-time sowing to autumn rain
The good man's vision returns again!
And let us hope, as well we can,
That the Silent Angel who garners man
May find some grain as of old he found
In the human cornfield ripe and sound,
And the Lord of the Harvest deign to
own
The precious seed by the fathers sown !
SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE.
OF all the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme, —
On Apuleius's Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human back,
Islam's prophet on Al-Borak, —
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead !
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a
cart
By the women of Marblehead !
Body of turkey, head of owl,
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,
Feathered and ruffled in every part,
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
Scores of women, old and young,
Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue,
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain :
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd
horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a
corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead ! "
Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,
With conch-shells blowing and fish-
horns' twang,
Over and over the Maenads sang :
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd
horrt,
15
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a
corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead ! "
Small pity for him ! — He sailed away
From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay, —
Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
With his own town's-people on her deck !
" Lay by ! lay by ! " they called to him.
Back he answered, " Sink or swim !
Brag of your catch of fish again ! "
And off he sailed through the fog and
rain !
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a
cart
By the women of Marblehead !
Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
That wreck shall lie forevermore.
Mother and sister, wife and maid,
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
Over the moaning and rainy sea, —
Looked for the coming that might not
be!
What did the winds and the sea-birds
say
Of the cruel captain who sailed away ? —
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in u
cart
By the women of Marblehead !
Through the street, on either side,
Up flew windows, doors swung wide ;
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane,
And cracked with curses the hoarse re
frain :
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd
horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in u
corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead ! "
Sweetly along the Salem road
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.
Little the wicked skipper knew
Of the fields so green and the sky so
blue.
Riding there in his sorry trim,
Like an Indian idol glum and grim,
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
Of voices shouting, far and uear :
226
HOME BALLADS.
" Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd
horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' eorr'd in a
corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead ! "
" Hear me, neighbors ! " at last he
cried, —
" What to me is this noisy ride ?
What is the shame that clothes the skin
To the nameless horror that lives within ?
Waking or sleeping, 1 see a wreck,
And hear a cry from a reeling deck !
Hate rue and curse me, — 1 only dread
The hand of God and the face of the
dead ! "
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard
heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a
cart
By the women of Marblehead !
Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea
Said, " God has touched him ! — why
should we ? "
Said an old wife mourning her only son,
" Cut the rogue's tether and let him
run ! "
So with soft relentings and rude excuse,
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,
And gave him a cloak to hide him in,
And left him alone with his shame and
sin.
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a
cart
By the women of Marblehead !
TELLING THE BEES.66
HERE is the place ; right over the hill
Runs the path I took ;
You can see the gap in the old wall still,
And the stepping-stones in the shal
low brook.
There is the house, with the gate red-
barred,
And the poplars tall ;
And the barn's brown length, and the
cattle-yard,
And the white horns tossing above the
wall.
There are the beehives ranged in the sun ;
And down by the brink
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed
o'errun,
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.
A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
Heavy and slow ;
And the same rose blows, and the same
sun glows,
And the same brook sings of a year
ago.
There 's the same sweet clover-smell in
the breeze ;
And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.
I mind me how with a lover's care
From my Sunday coat
I brushed off the burrs, and smooth ,,d
my hair,
And cooled at the brookside my brow
and throat.
Since we parted, a month had passed, —
To love, a year ;
Down through the beeches I looked at
last
On the little red gate and the well-
sweep near.
I can see it all now, — the slantwise rain
Of light through the leaves,
The sundown's blaze on her window-
Sme,
oorn of her roses under the eaves.
Just the same as a month before, —
The house and the trees,
The barn's brown gable, the vine by the
door, —
Nothing changed but the hives of bees.
Before them, under the garden wall,
Forward and back,
Went drearily singing the chore-girl
small,
Draping each hive with a shred of
black.
Trembling, I listened : the summer sun
Had the chill of snow ;
For I knew she was telling the bees of
one
Gone on the journey we all must go !
Then I said to myself, " My Mary weeps
For the dead to-day :
THE SYCAMORES.
227
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps
The fret and the pain of his age away."
But her dog whined low ; on the door
way sill,
With his cane to his chin,
The old man sat ; and the chore-girl still
Sung to the bees stealing out and in.
And the song she was singing ever since
In my ear sounds on : —
"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not
hence !
Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! "
THE SYCAMORES.
IN the outskirts of the village,
On the river's winding shores,
Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
Stand the ancient sycamores.
One long century hath been numbered,
And another half-way told,
Since the rustic Irish gleeman
Broke for them the virgin mould.
Deftly set to Celtic music,
At his violin's sound they grew,
Through the moonlit eves of summer,
Making Amphion's fable true.
Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant !
Pass in jerkin green along,
With thy eyes brimful of laughter,
And thy mouth as full of song.
Pioneer of Erin's outcasts,
With his fiddle and his pack ;
Little dreamed the village Saxons
Of the myriads at his back.
How he wrought with spade and fiddle,
Delved by day and sang by night,
With a hand that never wearied,
And a heart forever light, —
Still the gay tradition mingles
With a record grave and drear,
Like the rolic air of Cluny,
With the solemn march of Mear.
When the box-tree, white with blossoms,
Made the sweet May woodlands glad,
And the Aronia by the river
Lighted up the swarming shad,
And the bulging nets swept shoreward.
With their silver-sided haul,
Midst the shouts of dripping fishers,
He was merriest of them all.
When, among the jovial huskers,
Love stole in at Labor's side
With the lusty airs of England,
Soft his Celtic measures vied.
Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake,
And the merry fair's carouse ;
Of the wild Red Fox of Erin
And the Woman of Three Cows,
By the blazing hearths of winter,
Pleasant seemed his simple tales,
Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends
And the mountain myths of Wales.
How the souls in Purgatory
Scrambled up from fate forlorn,
On St. Keven's sackcloth ladder,
Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.
Of the fiddler who at Tara
Played all night to ghosts of kings ;
Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies
Dancing in their moorland rings !
Jolliest of our birds of singing, •
Best he loved the Bob-o-link.
" Hush ! " he 'd say, "the tipsy fairiei!
Hear the little folks in drink ! "
Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle,
Singing through the ancient town,
Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant,
Hath Tradition handed down.
Not a stone his grave discloses ;
But if yet his spirit walks,
'T is beneath the trees he planted,
And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks ;
Green memorials of the gleeman !
Linking still the river-shores,
With their shadows cast by sunset,
Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores !
When the Father of his Country
Through the north -land riding came*
And the roofs were starred with banners,
And the steeples rang acclaim, —
When each war-scarred Continental,
Leaving smithy, mill, and farm,.
228
HOME BALLADS.
Waved his rusted sword in welcome,
And shot off his old king's arm, —
Slowly passed that august Presence
Down the thronged and shouting street
Village girls as white as angels,
Scattering flowers around his feet.
Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow
Deepest fell, his rein he drew :
On his stately head, uncovered,
Cool and soft the west-wind blew.
And he stood up in his stirrups,
Looking up and looking down
On the hills of Gold and Silver
Rimming round the little town, —
On the river, full of sunshine,
To the lap of greenest vales
Winding down from wooded headlands,
Willow-skirted, white with sails.
And he said, the landscape sweeping
Slowly with his ungloved hand,
*' I have seen no prospect fairer
In this goodly Eastern land."
Then the bugles of his escort
Stirred to life the cavalcade :
And that head, so bare and stately,
Vanished down the depths of shade.
Ever since, in town and farm-house,
Life has had its ebb and flow ;
thrice hath passed the human har
vest
To its garner green and low.
But the trees the gleeman planted,
Through the changes, changeless
stand ;
As the marble calm of Tadmor
Marks the desert's shifting sand.
Still the level moon at rising
Silvers o'er each stately shaft ;
Still beneath them, half in shadow,
Singing, glides the pleasure craft.
Still beneath them, arm-enfolded,
Love and Youth together stray ;
While, as heart to heart beats faster,
More and more their feet delay.
Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar,
On the open hillside wrought,
Singing, as he drew his stitches,
Songs his German masters taught,
Singing, with his gray hair floating
Round his rosy ample face, —
Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen
Stitch and hammer in his place.
All the pastoral lanes so grassy
Now are Traffic's dusty streets ;
From the village, grown a city,
Fast the rural grace retreats.
But, still green, and tall, and stately,
On the river's winding shores,
Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores.
THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE
OF NEWBURY.
" Concerning y« Amphisbaena, as soon as I re
ceived your commands, I made diligent inquiry :
.... he assures me y' it had really two heads,
one at each end ; two mouths, two stings or
tongues." —REV. CHRISTOPHER TOPPAN to COT
TON MATHER.
FAR away in the twilight time
Of every people, in every clime,
Dragons and griffins and monsters dire,
Born of water, and air, and fire,
Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud
And ooze of the old Deucalion flood,
Jrawl and wriggle and foam with rage,
Through dusk tradition and ballad age.
So from the childhood of Newbury town
And its time of fable the tale comes
down
Of a terror which haunted hush and
brake,
The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake !
Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,
Consider that strip of Christian earth
)n the desolate shore of a sailless sea,
?ull of terror and mystery,
Talf redeemed from the evil hold
)f the wood so dreary, and dark, and old,
Which drank with its lips of leaves the
dew
When Time was young, and the world
was new,
And wove its shadows with sun and
moon,
Ere the stones of Cheops were squared
and hewn.
Think of the sea's dread monotone,
THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERT.
229
Of the mournful wail from the pine- wood
blown,
Of the strange, vast splendors that lit
the North,
Of the troubled throes of the quaking
earth,
And the dismal tales the Indian told,
Till the settler's heart at his hearth
grew cold,
And he shrank from the tawny wizard's
boasts,
And the hovering shadows seemed full of
And above, below, and on every side,
The fear of his-creed seemed verified ; —
And think, if his lot were now thine
own,
To grope with terrors nor named nor
known,
How laxer muscle and weaker nerve
And a feebler faith thy need might
serve ;
And own to thyself the wonder more
That the snake had two heads, and not
a score !
Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen
Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den,
Or swam in the wooded Artichoke,
Or coiled by the Northman's Written
Rock,
Nothing on record is left to show ;
Only the fact that he lived, we know,
And left the cast of a double head
In the scaly mask which he yearly shed.
For he carried a head where his tail
should be,
And the two, of course, could never
agree,
But wriggled about with main and might,
Now to the left and now to the right ;
Pulling and twisting this way and that,
Neither knew what the other was at.
A snake with two heads, lurking so
near ! —
Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear !
Think what ancient gossips might say,
Shaking their heads in their dreary way,
Between the meetings on Sabbath-day !
How urchins, searching at day's decline
The Common Pasture for sheep or kine,
The terrible double-ganger heard
In leafy rustle or whir of bird '
Think what a zest it gave to the sport,
In berry-time, of the younger sort,
As over pastures blackberry-twined,
Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind,
And closer and closer, for fear of harm,
The maiden clung to her lover's arm ;
And how the spark, who was forced to
stay,
By his sweetheart's fears, till the break o<
day,
Thanked the snake for the fond delay !
Far and wide the tale was told,
Like a snowball growing while it rolled
The nurse hushed with it the baby's-.
cry ;
And it served, in the worthy minister's
eye,
To paint the primitive serpent by.
Cotton Mather came galloping down
All the way to Newbury town,
With his 'eyes agog and his ears set
wide,
And his marvellous inkhorn at his side ;
Stirring the while in the shallow pool
Of his brains for the lore he learned at
school,
To garnish the story, with here a
streak
Of Latin, and there another of Greek :
And the tales he heard and the notes he
took,
Behold ! are they not in his Wonder-
Book?
Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill.
If the snake does not, the tale runs
still
In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill.
And still, whenever husband and wife
Publish the shame of their daily strife,
And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and
strain
At either end of the marriage-chain,
The gossips say, with a knowing shake
Of their gray heads, " Look at the
Double Snake !
One in body and two in will,
The Amphisbsena is living still ! r
THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON
AVERY.
WHEN the reaper's task was ended, and
the summer wearing late,
Parson A very sailed from Newbury, witr
his wife and children eight,
Dropping down the river-harbor ID thi
^ shallop "Watch and Wait."
230
HOME BALLADS.
Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mel
low summer-morn,
With the newly planted orchards drop
ping their fruits first-born,
And the homesteads like green islands
amid a sea of corn.
Broad meadows reached out seaward the
tided creeks between,
And hills rolled wave-like inland, with
oaks and walnuts green ; —
A fairer home, a goodlier land, his eyes
had never seen.
Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away
where duty led,
And the voice of God seemed calling,
to break the living bread
A'O the souls of fishers starving on the
rocks of Marblehead.
All day they sailed : at nightfall the
pleasant land-breeze died,
The blackening sky, at midnight, its
starry lights denied,
And far and low the thunder of tempest
prophesied !
Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone
were rock, and wood, and sand ;
Grimly anxious stood the skipper with
the rudder in his hand,
And questioned of the darkness what
was sea and what was land.
And the preacher heard his dear ones,
nestled round him, weeping sore :
" Never heed, my little children ! Christ
is walking on before
To the pleasant land of heaven, where
the sea shall be no more."
All at once the great cloud parted, like
a curtain drawn aside,
To let down the torch of lightning on
the terror far and wide ;
(\nd the thunder and the whirlwind
together smote the tide.
There was wailing in the shallop, wo
man's wail and man's despair,
A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks
so sharp and bare,
And, through it all, the murmur of
Father Avery's prayer.
From his struggle in the darkness with
the wild waves and the blast,
On a rock, where every billow broke
above him as it passed,
Alone, of all his household, the man of
God was cast.
There a comrade heard him praying, in
the pause of wave and wind :
" All my own have gone before me, and
I linger just behind;
Not for life I ask, but only for the iv^
thy ransomed find !
" In this night of death 1 challenge the
promise of thy word ! —
Let me see the great salvation of which
mine ears have heard ! —
Let me pass from hence forgiven, through
the grace of Christ, our Lord !
"In the baptism of these waters wash
white my every sin,
And let me follow up to thee my house
hold and my kin !
Open the sea -gate of thy heaven, and
let me enter in!"
When the Christian sings his death-
song, all the listening heaven-,
draw near,
And the angels, leaning over the walls
of crystal, hear
How the notes so faint and broken swell
to music in God's ear.
The ear of God was open to his servant's
last request ;
As the strong wave swept him downward
the sweet hymn upward pressed,
And the soul of Father Avery went,
singing, to its rest.
There was wailing on the mainland,
from the rocks of Marblehead ;
In the stricken church of Newbury the
notes of prayer were read ;
And long, by board and hearthstone, the
living mourned the dead.
And still the fishers outbound, or scud
ding from the squall,
With grave and reverent faces, the an
cient tale recall,
When they see the white waves break
ing on the Rock of Avery's
Fall !.
THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA.
231
THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA.
1675.
RAZE these long blocks of brick and
stone,
These huge mill-monsters overgrown ;
Blot out the humbler piles as well,
Where, moved like living shuttles,
dwell
The weaving genii of the bell ;
Tear from the wild Cocheco's track
The dams that hold its torrents back ;
And let the loud-rejoicing fall
?lunge, roaring, down its rocky wall ;
And let the Indian's paddle play
On the unbridged Piscataqua !
Wide over hill and valley spread
Once more the forest, dusk and dread,
With here and there a clearing cut
From the walled shadows round it shut ;
Each with its farm-house builded rude,
By English yeoman squared and hewed,
And the grim, flankered block-house
bound
With bristling palisades around.
So, haply shall before thine eyes
The dusty veil of centuries rise,
The old, strange scenery overlay
The tamer pictures of to-day,
While, like the actors in a play,
Pass in their ancient guise along
The figures of my border song :
What time beside Cocheco's flood
The white man and the red man stood,
With words of peace and brotherhood ;
When passed the sacred calumet
From lip to lip with h're-draught wet,
And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's
smoke
Through the gray beard of Waldron broke,
And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea
For mercy, struck the haughty key
Of one who held, in any fate,
His native pride inviolate !
" Let your ears be opened wide !
He who speaks has never lied.
Waldron of Piscataqua,
Hear what Squando has to say !
" Squando shuts his eyes and sees,
Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.
In his wigwam, still as stone,
Sits a woman all alone,
" Wampum beads and birchen strands
Dropping from her careless hands,
Listening ever for the fleet
Patter of a dead child's feet !
" When the moon a year ago
Told the flowers the time to blow,
In that lonely wigwam smiled
Menewee, our little child.
" Ere that moon grew thin and old,
He was lying still and cold ;
Sent before us, weak and small,
When the Master did not call !
"On his little grave I lay ;
Three times went and came the day I
Thrice above me blazed the noon,
Thrice upon me wept the moon.
" In the third night-watch 1 heard,
Far and low, a spirit-bird ;
Very mournful, very wild,
Sang the totem of my child.
" ' Menewee, poor Menewee,
Walks a path he cannot see :
Let the white man's wigwam light
With its blaze his steps aright. -
All-uncaned, he dares not show
Empty hands to Manito :
Better gifts he cannot bear
Than the scalps his slayers wear.*
All the while the totem sang,
Lightning blazed and thunder rang ;
And a black cloud, reaching high,
Pulled the white moon from the sky.
" I, the medicine-man, whose ear
All that spirits hear can hear, —
I, whose eyes are wide to see
All the things that are to be, —
" Well I knew the dreadful signs
In the whispers of the pines,
In the river roaring loud,
In the mutter of the cloud.
"At the breaking of the clay,
From the grave I passed away ;
Flowers bloomed round me, birds snng
glad,
But my heart was hot and mad.
" There is rust on Squando's knife,
From the warm, red springs of life ?
232
HOME BALLADS.
On the funeral hemlock-trees
Many a scalp the totem sees.
"Blood for blood ! But evermore
Squando's heart is sad and sore ;
And his poor squaw waits at home
For the feet that never come !
" Waidron of Cocheco, hear !
Squando speaks, who laughs at fear ;
Take the captives he has ta'en ;
Let the land have peace again ! "
As the words died on his tongue,
Wide apart his warriors swung ;
Parted, at the sign he gave,
Eight and left, like Egypt's wave.
And, like Israel passing free-
Through the prophet- charmed sea,
Captive mother, wife, and child
Through the dusky terror tiled.
One alone, a little maid,
Middleway her steps delayed,
Glancing, with quick, troubled sight,
Round about from red to white.
Then his hand the Indian laid
On the little maiden's head,
Lightly from her torehead fail-
Smoothing back her yellow hair.
' ' Gift or favor ask I none ;
What I have is all my own :
Never yet the birds have sung,
* Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'
" Yet for her who waits at home,
For the dead who cannot come,
Let the little Gold-hair be
In the place of Menewee !
•' Mishanock, my little star !
Come to Saco's pines afar ;
Where the sad one waits at home,
Wequashim, my moonlight, come ! "
"What!" quoth Waidron, "leave a
child
Christian -born to heathens wild ?
As God lives, from Satan's hand
I will pluck her as a brand !"
*' Hear me, white man
cried ;
" Let the little one decide.
Squando
Wequashim, my moonlight, say.
Wilt thou go with me> or stay ? "
Slowly, sadly, half afraid,
Half regretfully, the maid
Owned the ties of blood and race, —
Turned from Squando's pleading face.
Not a word the Indian spoke,
But his wampum chain he broke,
And the beaded wonder hung
On that neck so fair and young.
Silence-shod, as phantoms seem
In the marches of a dream,
Single-filed, the grim array
Through the pine-trees wound away.
Doubting, trembling, sore amazed,
Through her tears the young child gaze.l
" God preserve her ' " Waidron said ;
"Satan hath bewitched the maid ! ''
Years went and came. At close of day
Singing carne a child from play,
Tossing from her loose-locked head
Gold in sunshine, brown in shade.
Pride was in the mother's look,
But her head she gravely shook,
And with lips that fondly smiled
Feigned to chide her truant child.
Unabashed, the maid began :
" Up and down the brook I ran,
Where, beneath the bank so steep,
Lie the spotted trout asleep.
" ' Chip ! ' went squirrel on the wall,
After me I heard him call,
And the cat- bird on the tree
Tried his best to mimic me.
" Where the hemlocks grew so dark
That I stopped to look and hark,
On a log, with feather-hat,
By the path, an Indian sat.
" Then I cried, and ran away ;
But he called, and bade me stay ;
And his voice was good and mild
As my mother's to her child.
" And he took my wampum chain,
Looked and looked it o'er again ;
Gave me berries, and, beside,
On my neck a plaything tied-"
MY PLAYMATE.
233
Straight the mother stooped to see
What the Indian's gift might be.
On the braid of wampum hung,
Lo ! a cross of silver swung.
Well she knew its graven sign,
Squando's bird and totem pine ;
And, a mirage of the brain.
Flowed her childhood back again.
Flashed the roof the sunshine through,
Into space the Avails outgrew ;
On the Indian's wigwam-mat,
Blossom-crowned, again she sat.
Cool she felt the west-wind blow,
In her ear the pines sang low,
And, like links from out a chain,
Dropped the years of care and pain.
From the outward toil and din,
From the griefs that gnaw within,
To the freedom of the woods
Called the birds, and winds, and floods.
Well, 0 painful minister !
Watch thy flock, but blame not her,
If her ear grew sharp to hear
All their voices whispering near.
Blame her not, as to her soul
All the desert's glamour stole,
That a tear for childhood's loss
Dropped upon the Indian's cross.
When, that night, the Book was read,
And she bowed her widowed.head,
And a prayer for each loved name
Rose like incense from a flame.
To the listening ear of Heaven,
Lo ! another name was given :
" Father, give the Indian rest !
Bless him ! for his love has blest ! "
MY PLAYMATE.
THE pines were dark on Eamoth hill,
Their song was soft and low ;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.
The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear ;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year.
For, more to me than birds or flowers,
My playmate left her home,
And took with her the laughing spring,
The music and the bloom.
She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine :
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father's kine ?
She left us in the bloom of May :
The constant years told o'er
Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.
I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
Of uneventful years ;
Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring
And reap the autumn ears.
She lives where all the golden year
Her summer roses blow ;
The dusky children of the sun
Before her come and go.
There haply with her jewelled hands
She smooths her silken gown, —
No more the homespun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down.
The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
The brown nuts on the hill,
And still the May-day flowers make
sweet
The woods of Follymill.
The lilies blossom in the pond,
The bird builds in the tree,
The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill
The slow song of the sea.
I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems, —
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.
I see her face, I hear her voice :
Does she remember mine ?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her father's kine ?
What cares she that the orioles build
For other eyes than ours, —
That other hands with nuts are filled,
And other laps with flowers ?
234
POEMS AND LYRICS.
0 playmate in the golden time !
Our mossy seat is green,
Its fringing violets blossom yet,
The old trees o'er it lean.
The winds so sweet with birch and fern
A sweeter memory blow ;
'eerie s sing
And there in spring the v
The song of long ago.
And still the pines of Ramoth wood
^ Are moaning like the sea, —
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee !
POEMS AND LYRICS.
THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT.
" And I sought, whence is Evil : I set before
the eye of my spirit the whole creation ; what
soever we see therein, — sea, earth, air, stars,
trees, moral creatures, — yea, whatsoever there is
we do not see, — angels and spiritual powers.
Where is evil, and whence comes it, since God
the Good hath created all things ? Why made
He anything at all of evil, and not rather by His
^Almightiness cause it not to be ? These thoughts
T turned in my miserable heart, overcharged with
most gnawing cares." " And, admonished to re
turn to myself, I entered even into my inmost
soul, Thou being my guide, and beheld even be
yond my soul and mind the Light unchangeable
He who knows the Truth knows what that Light
is, and he that knows it knows Eternity ! O
Truth, who art Eternity ! Love, who art Truth !
Eternity , who art Love ! And I beheld that Thou
madest all things good, and to Thee is nothing
whatsoever evil. From the angel to the worm,
from the first motion to the last, Thou settest
each in its place, and everything is good in its
kind. Woe is me ! — how high art Thou in the
highest, how deep in the deepest1 and Thou
never departest from us and we scarcely return
to Thee." —Augustine's Soliloquies, Book VII.
THE fourteen centuries fall away
Between us and the Afric saint,
And at his side we urge, to-day,
The immemorial quest and old complaint.
No outward sign to us is given, —
From sea or earth comes no reply ;
Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven
He vainly questioned bends our frozen
sky.
No victory comes of all our strife, —
From all we grasp the meaning slips ;
The Sphinx sits at the gate of life,
With the old question on her awful lips.
In paths unknown we hear the feet
Of fear before, and guilt behind ;
We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat
\shes and dust beneath its golden rind.
From age to age descends unchecked
The sad bequest of sire to son,
The body's taint, the mind's defect, —
Through every web of life the dark
threads run.
0, why and whither?— God knows
all ;
I only know that he is good,
And that whatever may befall
Or here or there, must be the best thai
could.
Between the dreadful cherubim
A Father's face I still discern,
As Moses looked of old on him,
And saw his glory into goodness turn !
For he is merciful as just;
And so, by faith correcting sight,
I bow before his will, and trust
Howe'er they seem he doeth all things
right.
hope
that he will
doubtful
And dare to
make
The rugged smooth, the
plain ;
His mercy never quite forsake ;
His healing visit every realm of pain ;
That suffering is not his revenge
Upon his creatures weak and frail,
Sent on a pathway new and strange
With feet that wander and with eyes
that fail ;
That, o'er the crucible of pain,
Watches the tender eye of Love
The slow transmuting of the chain
Whose links are iron below to goM
above !
THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.
235
Ah me ! we doubt the shining skies,
Seen through our shadows of offence,
And drown with our poor childish
cries
The cradle-hymn of kindly Providence.
And still we love the evil cause.
And of the just effect complain :
We tread upon life's broken laws,
And murmur at our self-inflicted pain ;
We turn us from the light, and find
Our spectral shapes before us
thrown,
As they who leave the sun behind
Walk in the shadows of themselves
alone.
And scarce by will or strength of ours
We set our faces to the day ;
Weak, wavering, blind, the Eternal
Powers
Alone can turn us from ourselves away.
Our weakness is the strength of sin,
But love must needs be stronger far,
Outreaching all and gathering in
The erring spirit and the wandering star.
A Voice grows with the growing years ;
Earth, hushing down her bitter cry,
Looks upward from her graves, and
hears,
'• The Resurrection and the Life am I."
0 Love Divine ! — whose constant
beam
Shines on the eyes that will not see,
And waits to bless us, while we dream
Thou leavest us because we turn from
thee!
All souls that struggle and aspire,
All hearts of prayer by thee are lit ;
And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire
On dusky tribes and twilight centuries
sit.
Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou
know'st,
Wide as our need thy favors fall ;
The white wings of the Holy Ghost
Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of
all.
O Beauty, old yet ever new ! 67
Eternal Voice, an 1 Inward Word,
The Logos of the Greek and Jew,
The old sphere-music which the Samian
. heard !
Truth which the sage and prophet
saw,
Long sought without, but found
within,
The Law of Love beyond all law,
The Life o'erflooding mortal death and
sin !
Shine on us with the light which
glowed
Upon the trance-bound shepherd's
way,
Who saw the Darkness overflowed
And drowned by tides of everlasting
Day.68
Shine, light of God ! — make broad
thy scope
To all who sin and suffer ; more
And better than we dare to hope
With Heaven's compassion make our
longings poor !
THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.
TRITEMIUS OF HERBIPOLIS, one day,
While kneeling at the altar's foot to
pray,
Alone with God, as was his pious choice,
Heard from without a miserable voice,
A sound which seemed of all sad things
to tell,
As of a lost soul crying out of hell.
Thereat the Abbot paused ; the chain
whereby
His thoughts went upward broken by
that cry ;
And, looking from the casement, saw
below
A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow,
And withered hands held up to him,
who cried
For alms as one who might not be
denied.
She cried, "For the dear love of Him
who gave
His life for ours, my child from bondage
save, —
My beautiful, brave first-born, chained
with slaves
236
POEMS AND LYRICS.
In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit
waves
Lap the white walls of Tunis. ! " —
" What I can
I give," Tritemius said : " my prayers."
— " 0 man
Of God ! " she cried, for grief had made
her bold,
" Mock me not thus ; I ask not prayers,
but gold.
Words will not serve me, alms alone
suffice ;
Even while 1 speak perchance my first
born dies."
" Woman ! ' Tritemius answered, " from
our door
None go unfed ; hence are we always
poor,
A single soldo is our only store.
Thou hast our prayers ; — what can we
give thee more ? " —
"Give me," she said, "the silver can
dlesticks
On either side of the great crucifix.
God well may spare them on his errands
sped,
Or he can give you golden ones instead."
Then spake Tritemius, "Even as thy
word,
Woman, so be it ! (Our most gracious
Lord,
Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice,
Pardon me if a human soul I prize
Above the gifts upon his altar piled !)
Take what thou askest, and redeem thy
child."
But his hand trembled as the holy
alms
He placed within the beggar's eager
palms ;
And as she vanished down the linden
shade,
He bowed his head and for forgiveness
prayed.
So the day passed, and when the twi
light came
He woke to find the chapel all aflame,
And, dumb with grateful wonder, to be
hold
Upon the altar candlesticks of gold !
THE EVE OF ELECTION.
FROM gold to gray
Our mild sweet day
Of Indian Summer fades too soon ;
But tenderly
Above the sea
Hangs, white and calm, the hunter*
moon.
In its pale fire,
The village spire
Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance ;
The painted walls
Whereon it falls
Transfigured stand in marble trance !
O'er fallen leaves
The west- wind grieves,
Yet comes a seed-time round again ;
And morn shall see
The State sown free
With baleful tares or healthful grain.
Along the street
The shadows meet
Of Destiny., whose hands conceal
The moulds of fate
That shape the State,
And make or mar the common weal.
Around I see
The powers that be ;
I stand by Empire's primal springs ;
And princes meet,
In every street,
And hear the tread of uncrowned kings !
Hark ! through the crowd
The laugh runs loud,
Beneath the sad, rebuking moon.
God save the land
A careless hand
May shake or swerve ere morrow's noon J
No jest is this ;
One cast amiss
May blast the hope of Freedom's year.
0, take me where
Are hearts of prayer,
And foreheads bowed in reverent fear J
Not lightly fall
Beyond recall
The written scrolls a breath can float ;
The crowning fact
The kingliest act
Of Freedom is the freeman's vote !
THE OVER-HEART.
237
For pearls that gem
A diadem
The diver in the deep sea dies ;
The regal right
We boast to-night
Is ours through costlier sacrifice ;
The blood of Vane,
His prison pain
Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod,
And hers whose faith
Drew strength from death,
And prayed her Russell up to God !
Our hearts grow cold,
We lightly hold
A right which brave men died to gain ;
The stake, the cord,
The axe, the sword,
Grim nurses at its birth of pain.
The shadow rend,
And o'er us bend,
O martyrs, with your crowns and
palms, —
Breathe through these throngs
Your battle songs,
Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon
psalms !
Look from the sky,
Like God's great eye,
Thou solemn noon, with searching beam,
Till in the sight
Of thy pure light
Our mean self-seekings meaner seem.
Shame from our hearts
Unworthy arts,
The fraud designed, the purpose dark ;
And smite away
The hands we lay
Profanely on the sacred ark.
To party claims
And private aims,
Keveal that august face of Truth,
Whereto are given
The age of heaven,
The beauty of immortal youth.
So shall our voice
Of sovereign choice
Swell the deep bass of duty done,
And strike the key
Of time to be,
When God and man shall speak as one :
THE OVER-HEART.
" For of Him, and through Him, and to Him
are all things, to whom be glory forever ! " — PAUL
ABOVE, below, in sky and sod,
In leaf and spar, in star and man,
Well might the wise Athenian scan
I The geometric signs of God,
The measured order of his plan.
And India's mystics sang aright
Of the One Life pervading all, —
One Being's tidal rise and fall
In soul and form, in sound and sight, — -
Eternal outflow and recall.
God is : and man in guilt and fear
The central fact of Nature owns ; —
Kneels, trembling, by his altar-stones,.
And darkly drecns the ghastly smear
Of blood appeases and atones.
Guilt shapes the Terror : deep within
The human heart the secret lies
Of all the hideous deities ;
And, painted on a ground of sin,
The fabled gods of torment rise !
And what is He ? — The ripe grain nods,
The sweet dews fall, the sweet flowers
blow ;
But darker signs his presence show :
The earthquake and the storm are God's,
And good and evil interfloAV.
0 hearts of love ! 0 souls that turn
Like sunflowers to the pure and best !
To you the truth is manifest :
For they the mind of Christ discern
Who lean like John upon his breast !
In him of whom the sibyl told,
For whom the prophet's harp was
toned,
Whose need the sage and magian
owned,
The loving heart of God behold, •
The hope for which the ages groaned .'
Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery
Wherewith mankind have deified
Their hate, and selfishness, and pride !
Let the scared dreamer wake to see
The Christ of Nazareth at his side !
What doth that holy Guide require ? — '
No rite of pain, nor gift of blood,
But man a kindly brotherhood,
238
POEMS AND LYRICS.
Looking, where duty is desire,
To him, the beautiful and good.
Gone be the faithlessness of fear,
And let the pitying heaven's sweel
rain
Wash out the altar's bloody stain ;
The law of Hatred disappear,
The law of Love alone remain.
How fall the idols false and grim ! —
And lo ! their hideous wreck above
The emblems of the Lamb and Dove !
Man turns from God, not God from
him ;
And guilt, in suffering, whispers
Love !
The world sits at the feet of Christ,
Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled ;
It yet shall touch his garment's fold,
And feel the heavenly Alchemist
Transform its very dust to gold.
The theme befitting angel tongues
Beyond a mortal's scope has grown.
0 heart of mine ! with reverence own
The fulness which to it belongs,
And trust the unknown for the known.
IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH
STURGE.
IN the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's
mountains,
Across the charmed bay
Whose blue waves keep with Capri's sil
ver fountains
Perpetual holiday,
A king lies dead, his wafer duly eaten,
His gold-bought masses given ;
And Rome's great altar smokes with
gums to sweeten
Her foulest gift to Heaven.
And while all Naples thrills with mute
thanksgiving,
The court of England's queen
For the dead monster so abhorred while
living
In mourning garb is seen.
With a true sorrow God rebukes that
feigning ;
By lone Edgbaston's side
i Stands a great city in the sky's sad
raining,
Bareheaded arid wet-eyed !
Silent for once the restless hive of labor,
Save the low funeral tread,
Or voice of craftsman whispering to his
neighbor
The good deeds of the dead.
For him no minster's chant of the im
mortals
Rose from the lips of sin ;
No mitred priest swung back the heav
enly portals
To let the white soul in.
But Age and Sickness framed their tear.
ful faces
In the low hovel's door,
And prayers went up from all the dark
by-places
^And Ghettos of the poor.
The pallid toiler and the negro chattel,
The vagrant of the street,
The human dice wherewith in games of
battle
The lords of earth compete,
Touched with a grief that needs no out
ward draping,
All swelled the long lament,
Of grateful hearts, instead of marble,
shaping
His viewless monument !
For never yet, with ritual pomp and
splendor,
In the long heretofore,
A heart more loyal, warm, and true,
and tender,
Has England's turf closed o'er.
And if there fell from out her grand old
steeples
No crash of brazen wail,
The murmurous woe of kindreds,
tongues, and peoples
Swept in on every gale.
t came from Holstein's birchen-belted
meadows,
And from the tropic calms
Df Indian islands in the sun-smit shad.
ows
Of Occidental palms ;
TRINITAS.
239
From the locked roadsteads of the
Bothnian peasants,
And harbors of the Finn,
Where war'e worn victims saw his gentle
presence
Come sailing, Christ -like, in,
To seek the lost, to build the old waste
places,
To link the hostile shores
Of severing seas, and sow with Eng
land's daisies
The moss of Finland's moors.
Thanks for th.e good man's beautiful
example,
Who in the vilest saw
Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple
Still vocal with God's law ;
And heard with tender ear the spirit
sighing
As from its prison cell,
Praying for pity, like the mournful cry
ing
Of Jonah out of hell.
Not his the golden pen's or lip's per
suasion,
But a fine sense of right,
And Truth's directness, meeting each
occasion
Straight as a line of light.
His faith and works, like streams that
intermingle,
In the same channel ran :
The, crystal clearness of an eye kept
single
Shamed all the frauds of man.
The very gentlest of all human natures
He joined to courage strong,
And love outreaching unto all God's
creatures
With sturdy hate of wrong.
Tender as woman ; manliness and
meekness
In him were so allied
That they who judged him by his
strength or weakness
Saw but a single side.
M^n failed, betrayed him, but his zeal
seemed nourished
By failure and by fall ;
Still a large faith in human-kind he
cherished,
And in God's love for all.
And now he rests : his greatness and his
sweetness
No more shall seem at strife ;
And death has moulded into calm com
pleteness
The statue of his life.
Where the dews glisten and the song
birds warble,
His dust to dust is laid,
In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of
marble
To shame his modest shade.
The forges glow, the hammers all are
ringing ;
Beneath its smoky veil,
Hard by, the city of his love is swing
ing
Its clamorous iron flail.
But round his grave are quietude and!
beauty,
And the sweet heaven above, —
The fitting symbols of a life of duty
Transfigured into love !
TRINITAS.
AT morn I prayed, " I fain would see
How Three are One, and One is Three ;
Read the dark riddle unto me."
I wandered forth, the sun and air
I saw bestowed with equal care
On good and evil, foul and fair.
No partial favor dropped the rain ; —
Alike the righteous and profane
Rejoiced above their heading grain.
And my heart murmured, " Is it, meet
That blindfold Nature thus should treat
With equal hand the tares and wheat ? "
A presence melted through my mood, — -
A warmth, a light, a sense of good,
Like sunshine through a winter wood.
I saw that presence, mailed complete
In her white innocence, pause to greet
A fallen sister of the street.
240
POEMS AND LYRICS.
Upon her bosom snowy pure
The lost one clung, as if secure
From inward guilt or outward lure.
" Beware ! " I said ; "in this I see
No gain to her, but loss to thee :
Who touches pitch defiled must be."
J passed the haunts of shame and sin,
And a voice whispered, ' ' Who therein
Shall these lost souls to Heaven's peace
win ?
" Who there shall hope and health dis
pense,
And lift the ladder up from thence
Whose rounds are prayers of penitence ?"
I said, " No higher life they know ;
These earth-worms love to have it so.
Who stoops to raise them sinks as low."
That night with painful care I read
What Hippo's saint and Calvin said, —
The living seeking to the dead !
In vain I turned, in weary quest,
Old pages, where (God give them rest !)
The poor creed-mongers dreamed and
And still I prayed, ' ' Lord, let me see
How Three are One, and One is Three ;
Read the dark riddle unto me ! "
Then something whispered, " Dost thou
pray
For what thou hast ? This very day
The Holy Three have crossed thy way.
" Did not the gifts of sun and air
To good and ill alike declare
The all-compassionate Father's care ?
" In the white soul that stooped to
raise
The lost one from her evil ways,
Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels
praise !
" A bodiless Divinity,
The still small Voice that spake to thee
Was the Holy Spirit's mystery !
" 0 blind of sight, of faith how small !
Father, and Son, and Holy Call ; —
This day thou hast denied them all !
" Eevealed in love and sacrifice,
The Holiest passed before thine eyes,
One and the same, in threefold guise.
" The equal Father in rain and sun,
His Christ in the good to evil done,
His Voice in thy soul ; — and the Three
are One ! "
I shut my grave Aquinas fast ;
The monkish gloss of ages past,
The schoolman's creed aside I cast.
And my heart answered, " Lord, I see
How Three are One, and One is Three ;
Thy riddle hath been read to me '! "
THE OLD BURYING-GROUND.
OUR vales are sweet with fern and
rose,
Our hills are maple-crowned ;
But not from them our fathers chose
The village bury ing-ground.
The dreariest spot in all the land
To Death they set apart ;
With scanty grace from Nature's hand,
And none from that of Art.
A winding wall of mossy stone,
Frost-flung and broken, lines
A lonesome acre thinly grown
With grass and wandering vines.
Without the wall a birch-tree shows
Its drooped and tasselled head ;
Within, a stag-horned sumach grows,
Fern-leafed, with spikes of red.
There, sheep that graze the neighboring
plain
Like white ghosts come and go,
The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain,
The cow-bell tinkles slow.
Low moans the river from its bed,
The distant pines reply ;
Like mourners shrinking from the dead,
They stand apart and sigh.
Unshaded smites the summer sun,
Unchecked the winter blast ;
The school-girl learns the place to
shun,
With glances backward cast.
THE HPES AT LUCKNOW.
241
For thus our fathers testified, —
That he might read who ran, —
The emptiness of human pride,
The nothingness of man.
They dared not plant the grave with
flowers,
Nor dress the funeral sod,
Where, with a love as deep as ours,
They left their dead with God.
The hard and thorny path they kept
From beauty turned aside ;
Nor missed they over those who slept
The grace to life denied.
Yet still the wilding flowers would
blow,
The golden leaves would fall,
The seasons come, the seasons go,
And God be good to all.
Above the graves the blackberry hung
In bloom and green its wreath,
And harebells swung as if they rung
The chimes of peace beneath.
The beauty Nature loves to share,
The gifts she hath for all,
The common light, the common air,
0' ercrept the graveyard's wall.
It knew the glow of eventide,
The sunrise and the noon,
And glorified and sanctified
It slept beneath the moon.
With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod,
Around the seasons ran,
And evermore the love of God
Rebuked the fear of man.
We dwell with fears on either hand,
Within a daily strife,
And spectral problems waiting stand
Before the gates of life.
The doubts we vainly seek to solve,
The truths we know, are one ;
The known and nameless stars ?'evolve
Around the Central Sun.
And if we reap as we have sown
And take the dole we deal,
The law of pain is love alone,
The wounding is to heal.
16
Unharmed from change to change we
glide,
We fall as in our dreams ;
The far-off terror at our side
A smiling angel seems.
Secure on God's all-tender heart
Alike rest great and small ;
Why fear to lose our little part,
When he is pledged for all ?
0 fearful heart and troubled brain !
Take hope and strength from this, — •
That Nature never hints in vain,
Nor prophesies amiss.
Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave,
Her lights and airs are given
Alike to playground and the grave ;
And over both is Heaven.
THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW.
PIPES of the misty moorlands,
Voice of the glens and hills ;
The droning of the torrents,
The treble of the rills !
Not the braes of broom and heather,
Nor the mountains dark with rain,
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
Have heard your sweetest strain !
Dear to the Lowland reaper,
And plaided mountaineer, —
To the cottage and the castle
The Scottish pipes are dear ; —
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
O'er mountain, loch, and glade ;
But the sweetest of all music
The pipes at Lucknow played.
Day by day the Indian tiger
Louder yelled, and nearer crept ;
Round and round the jungle-serpent
Near and nearer circles swept.
" Pray for rescue, wives and mothers, -
Pray to-day ! " the soldier said ;
" To-morrow, death 's between us
And the wrong and shame we dread.
0, they listened, looked, and waited,
Till their hope became despair ;
And the sobs of low bewailing
Filled the pauses of their prayer.
Then up spake a Scottish maiden,
With her ear unto the ground :
242
POEMS AND LYRICS.
" Dinna ye hear it ? — dinna ye hear it ?
The pipes o' Havelock sound ! "
Hushed the wounded man his groaning ;
Hushed the wife her little ones ;
Alone they heard the drum-roll
And the roar of Sepoy guns.
But to sounds of home and childhood
The Highland ear was true ; —
As her mother's cradle-crooning
The mountain pipes she knew.
Like the march of soundless music
Through the vision of the seer,
More of feeling than of hearing.
Of the heart than of the ear,
She knew the droning pibroch,
She knew the Campbell's call :
'•' Hark ! hear ye no' MacGregor's, —
The grandest o' them all ! "
O, they listened, dumb and breathless,
And they caught the sound at last ;
faint and far beyond the Goomtee
Rose and fell the piper's blast !
Then a burst of wild thanksgiving
Mingled woman's voice and man's ;
" God be praised ! — the march of Have-
lock !
The piping of the clans ! "
Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance,
Sharp and shrill as swords at strife,
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call,
Stinging all the air to life.
But when the far-off dust-cloud
To plaided legions grew,
Full tenderly and blithesomely
The pipes of rescue blew !
Round the silver domes of Lucknow,
Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine,
Breathed the air to Britons dearest,
The air of Auld Lang Syne.
O'er the cruel roll of war-drums
Rose that sweet and homelike strain ;
A.nd the tartan clove the turban,
As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.
Dear to the corn-land reaper
And plaided mountaineer, —
To the cottage and the castle
The piper's song is dear.
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch
O'er mountain, glen, and glade ;
But the sweetest of all music
The Pipes at Lucknow played !
MY PSALM.
I MOURN no more my vanished years :
Beneath a tender rain,
An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.
The west-winds blow, and, singing low,
I hear the glad streams run ;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear ;
But, grateful, take the good I Kind,
The best of now and here.
I plough no more a desert land,
To harvest weed and tare ;
The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.
I break my pilgrim staff, — I lay
Aside the toiling oar ;
The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.
The airs of spring may never play
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the autumn morn ;
Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
Through fringed lids to heaven,
And the pale aster in the brook
Shall see its image given ; —
The woods shall wear their robes of
praise,
The south-wind softly sigh,
And sweet, calm days in golden haze
Melt down the amber sky.
Not less shall manly deed and word
Rebuke an age of wrong ;
The graven flowers that wreathe the
sv/ord
Make not the blade less strong.
But smiting hands shall learn to heal,—
To build as to destroy ;
Nor less my heart for others feel
That I the more enjoy.
All as God wills, who wisely heeds
To give or to withhold,
LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.
243
And knoweth more of all my needs
Than all my prayers have told !
Enough that blessings undeserved
Have marked my erring track ; —
That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved,
His chastening turned me back ; —
That more and more a Providence
Of love is understood,
Making the springs of time and sense
Sweet with eternal good ; —
That death seems but a covered way
Which opens into light,
Wherein no blinded child can stray
Beyond the Father's sight ; —
That care and trial seem at last.
Through Memory's sunset air,
Like mountain-ranges overpast,
In purple distance fair ; —
That all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
Slow rounding into calm.
And so the shadows fall apart,
And so the west-winds play ;
And all the windows of my heart
I open to the day.
LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.69
A BLUSH as of roses
Where rose never grew !
Great drops on the bunch-grass,
But not of the dew !
A taint in the sweet air
For wild bees to shun !
A stain that shall never
Bleach out in the sun !
Back, steed of the prairies !
Sweet song-bird, fly back !
Wheel hither, bald vulture !
Gray wolf, call thy pack !
The foul human vultures
Have feasted and fled ;
The wolves of the Border
Have crept from the dead.
From the hearths of their cabins,
The fields of their corn,
Unwarned and unweaponed,
The victims were torn, —
By the whirlwind of murder
Swooped up and swept on
To the low, reedy fen-lands,
The Marsh of the Swan.
With a vain plea for mercy
No stout knee was crooked ;
In the mouths of the rifles
Right manly they looked.
How paled the May sunshine,
0 Marais du Cygne !
On death for the strong life,
On red grass for green !
In the homes of their rearing,
Yet warm with their lives,
Ye wait the dead only,
Poor children and wives !
Put out the red forge-fire,
The smith shall not come ;
Unyoke the brown oxen,
The ploughman lies dumb.
Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh
0 dreary death-train,
With pressed lips as bloodless
As lips of the slain !
Kiss down the young eyelids,
Smooth down the gray hairs ;
Let tears quench the curses
That burn through your prayers
Strong man of the prairies,
Mourn bitter and wild !
Wail, desolate woman !
Weep, fatherless child !
But the grain of God springs up
From ashes beneath,
And the crown of his harvest
Is life out of death.
Not in vain on the dial
The shade moves along,
To point the great contrasts
Of right and of wrong :
Free homes and free altars,
Free prairie and flood, —
The reeds of the Swan's Marsh,
Whose bloom is of blood !
On the lintels of Kansas
That blood shall not dry ;
Henceforth the Bad Angel
Shall harmless go by ;
244
POEMS AND LYRICS.
Henceforth to the sunset,
Unchecked on her way,
Shall Liberty follow
The march of the day.
"THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR.
DEAD Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps,
Her stones of emptiness remain ;
Around her sculptured mystery sweeps
The lonely waste of Edom's plain.
From the doomed dwellers in the cleft
The bow of vengeance turns not back ;
Of all her myriads none are left
Along the Wady Mousa's track.
Clear in the hot Arabian day
Her arches spring, her statues climb ;
Unchanged, the graven wonders pay
No tribute to the spoiler, Time !
Unchanged the awful lithograph
Of power and glory undertrod, —
Of nations scattered like the chaff
Blown from the threshing-floor of God.
Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn
From Petra's gates, with deeper awe
To mark afar the burial urn
Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor ;
And where upon its ancient guard
Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing yet,—
Looks from its turrets desertward,
And keeps the watch that God has
set.
The same as when in thunders loud
It heard the voice of God to man, —
As when it saw in fire and cloud
The angels walk in Israel's van !
Or when from Ezion-Geber's way
It saw the long procession file,
A.nd heard the Hebrew timbrels play
The music of the lordly Nile ;
Or saw the tabernacle pause,
Cloud-bound, by Kadesh Barnea's
wells,
While Moses graved the sacred laws,
And Aaron swung his golden bells.
Rock of the desert, prophet-sung !
How grew its shadowing pile at length,
A symbol, in the Hebrew tongue,
Of God's eternal love and strength.
On lip of bard and scroll of seer,
From age to age went down the name,
Until the Shiloh's promised year,
And Christ, the Rock of Ages, eaiiu- !
The path of life we walk to-day
Is strange as that the Hebrews trod ;
We need the shadowing rock, as they,—
We need, like them, the guides of God.
God send his angels, Cloud and Fire,
To lead us o'er the desert sand !
God give our hearts their long desire,
His shadow in a weary land !
ON A PRAYER-BOOK,
WITH ^ ITS FRONTISPIECE, ARY SC'HKF-
FER'S " CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR,"
AMERICANIZED BY THE OMISSION OF
THE BLACK MAN.
0 ARY SCHEFFER ! when beneath thine
eye,
Touched with the light that cometh
from above,
Grew the sweet picture of the dear
Lord's love,
No dream hadst thou that Christian
hands would tear
Therefrom the token of his equal care,
And make thy symbol of his truth a
lie !
The poor, dumb slave whose shackles
fall away
In his compassionate gaze, grubbed
smoothly out,
To mar no more the exercise devout
Of sleek oppression kneeling down to
pray
Where the great oriel stains the Sabbath
day !
Let whoso can before such praying-books
Kneel on his velvet cushion ; I, for
one,
"Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the
sun,
Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetar
brooks,
Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple.
floor.
No falser idol man has bowed before,
In Indian groves or islands of the sea,
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
245
Than that which through the q.uaint-
carved Gothic door
Looks forth, — a Church without hu
manity !
Patron of pride, and prejudice, and
wrong, —
The rich man's charm and fetish of
the strong,
The Eternal -Fulness meted, clipped, and
shorn,
The seamless robe of equal mercy torn,
The dear Christ hidden from his kindred
flesh,
And, in his poor ones, crucified afresh !
Better the simple Lama scattering wide,
Where sweeps the storm Alechan's
steppes along,
His paper horses for the lost to ride,
And wearying Buddha with his prayers
to make
The figures living for the traveller's sake,
Than he who hopes with cheap praise to
beguile
The ear of God, dishonoring man the
while ;
Who dreams the pearl gate's hinges,
rusty grown,
Are moved by flattery's oil of tongue
alone ;
That in the scale Eternal Justice bears
The generous deed weighs less than self
ish prayers,
And words intoned with graceful unction
move
The Eternal Goodness more than lives
of truth and love.
Alas, the Church ! — The reverend head
of Jay,
Enhaloed with its saintly silvered hair,
Adorns no more the places of her
prayer ;
And brave young Tyng, too early called
away,
Troubles the Haman of her courts no
more
Like the just Hebrew at the Assyrian's
door ;
And her sweet ritual, beautiful but
dead
As the dry husk from which the grain
is shed,
And holy hymns from which the life
devout
Of saints and martyrs has wellnigh
gone out,
Like candles dying in exhausted
air,
For Sabbath use in measured grists are
ground ;
And, ever while the spiritual mill goes
round,
Between the upper and the nether
stones,
Unseen, unheard, the wretched bond
man groans,
And urges his vain plea, prayer-smoth
ered, anthem-drowned !
0 heart of mine, keep patience ! — Look
ing forth,
As from the Mount of Vision, I behold,
Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ
on earth, —
The martyr's dream, the golden age
foretold !
And found, at last, the mystic Graal I
see,
Brimmed with His blessing, pass from
lip to lip
In sacred pledge of human fellowship ;
And over all the songs of angels hear, —
Songs of the love that casteth out all
fear, —
Songs of the Gospel of Humanity !
Lo ! in the midst, with the same look
he wore,
Healing and blessing on Genesaret's
shore,
Folding together, with the all-tender
might
Of his great love, the dark hands and
the white,
Stands the Consoler, soothing every
pain,
Making all burdens light, and breaking
every chain.
TO JAMES T. FIELDS.
ON A BLANK LEAF OF " POEMS PRINT
ED, NOT PUBLISHED."
WELL thought ! who would not rather
hear
The songs to Love and Friendship sung
Than those which move the stranger's
tongue,
And feed his unselected ear ?
Our social joys are more than fame •
Life withers in the public look.
Why mount the pillory of a book.
Or barter comfort for a name ?
246
POEMS AND LYRICS.
Who in a house of glass would dwell,
With curious eyes at every pane ?
To ring him in and out again,
Who wants the public crier's bell ?
To see the angel in one's way,
Who wants to play the ass's part, —
Bear on his back the wizard Art,
And in his service speak or bray ?
And who his manly locks would shave,
And quench the eyes of common sense,
To share the noisy recompense
That mocked the shorn and blinded
slave ?
The heart has needs beyond the head,
And, starving in the plenitude
Of strange gifts, craves its common
food, —
Our human nature's daily bread.
We are but men : no gods are we,
To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak,
Each separate, on his painful peak,
Thin-cloaked in self-complacency !
Better his lot whose axe is swung
In Wartburg woods, or that poor girl's
Who by the Ilm her spindle whirls
And sings the songs that Luther sung,
Than his who, old, and cold, and vain,
At Weimar sat, a demigod,
And bowed with Jove's imperial nod
His votaries in and out again !
Ply, Vanity, thy winged feet !
Ambition, hew thy rocky stair !
Who envies him who feeds on air
The icy splendor of his seat ?
I see your Alps, above me, cut
The dark, cold sky ; and dim and lone
I see ye sitting, — stone on stone, —
With human senses dulled, and shut.
I could not reach you, if I would,
Nor sit among your cloudy shapes ;
And (spare the fable of the grapes
And fox) I would not if I could.
Keep to your lofty pedestals !
The safer plain below I choose :
Who never wins can rarely lose,
Who never climbs as rarely falls.
Let such as love the eagle's scream
Divide with him his home of ice :
For me shall gentler notes suffice, —
The valley-song of bird and stream ;
The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees,
The flail-beat chiming far away,
The cattle-low, at shut of day,
The voice of God in leaf and breeze !
Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend,
And help me to the vales below,
(In truth, I have not far to go,)
Where sweet with flowers the fields ex
tend.
THE PALM-TREE.
Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm,
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of bahnl
Or is it a ship in the breezeless cairn ?
A ship whose keel is of palm beneath,
Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark
sheath,
And a rudder of palm it steereth with.
Branches of palm are its spars and
Fibres of palm are its woven sails,
And the rope is of palm that idly trails !
What does the good .ship bearso well ?
The cocoa-nut with its stony shell,
And the milky sap of its inner cell.
What are its jars, so smooth and fine,
But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and
wine,
And the cabbage that ripens under the
Line ?
Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm ?
The master, whose cunning and skill
could charm
Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm.
In the ca,bin he sits on a palm-mat soft,
From a beaker of palm his drink is
quaffed,
And a palm-thatch shields from the sun
aloft !
His dress is woven of palmy strands,
And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his
hands,
Traced with the Prophet's wise com
mands !
THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR.
247
The turban folded about his head
Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf
braid,
And the fan that cools him of palm was
made.
Of threads of palm was the carpet spun
Whereon he kneels when the day is done,
And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as
one !
To him the palm is a gift divine,
'Wherein all uses of man combine, —
House, and raiment, and food, and wine !
And, in the hour of his great release,
His need of the palm shall only cease
With the shroud wherein he lieth in
peace.
" Allah il Allah ! " he sings his psalm,
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm ;
" Thanks to Allah who gives the palm ! "
LINES,
HEAD AT THE BOSTON CELEBRATION OF
THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF
THE BIRTH OF ROBERT BURNS, 25TH
1ST MO., 1859.
How sweetly come the holy psalms
From saints and martyrs down,
The waving of triumphal palms
Above the thorny crown !
The choral praise, the chanted prayers
From harps by angels strung,
The hunted Cameron's mountain airs,
The hymns that Luther sung !
Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes,
The sounds of earth are heard,
A.S through the open minster floats
The song of breeze and bird !
Not less the wonder of the sky
That daisies bloom below ;
The brook sings on, though loud and
high
The cloudy organs blow !
And, if the tender ear be jarred
That, haply, hears by turns
The saintly harp of Olney's bard,
The pastoral pipe of Burns,
No discord mars His perfect plan
Who gave them both a tongue;
For he who sings the love of man
The love of God hath sung 1
To-day be every fault forgiven
Of him in whom we joy !
We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven
And leave the earth's alloy.
Be ours his music as of spring,
His sweetness as of flowers,
The songs the bard himself might sing
In holier ears than ours.
Sweet airs of love and home, the hum
• Of household melodies,
Come singing, as the robins come
To sing in door-yard trees.
And, heart to heart, two nations lean,
No rival wreaths to twine,
But blending in eternal green
The holly and the pine !
THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR.
OUT and in the river is winding
The links of its long, red chain
Through belts of dusky pine-land
And gusty leagues of plain.
Only, at times, a smoke-wreath
With the drifting cloud-rack joins, —
The smoke of the hunting-lodges
Of the wild Assiniboins !
Drearily blows the north-wind
From the land of ice and snow ;
The eyes that look are weary,
And heavy the hands that row.
And with one foot on the water,
And one upon the shore,
The Angel of Shadow gives warning
That day shall be no more.
Is it the clang of wild-geese ?
Is it the Indian's yell,
That lends to the voice of the north*
wind
The tones of a far-off bell ?
The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace ;
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.
The bells of the Roman Mission,
That call from their turrets twain.
248
POEMS AND LYK1CS.
To the boatman on the river,
To the hunter on the plain !
Even so in our mortal journey
The bitter north-winds blow,
And thus upon life's Red River
Our hearts, as oarsmen, row.
And when the Angel of Shadow
Rests his feet on wave and shore,
And our eyes grow dim with watching
And our hearts faint at the oar,
Happy is he who heareth
' < The signal of his release
In the bells of the Holy City,
The chimes of eternal peace !
KENOZA LAKE.
As Adam did in Paradise,
To-day the primal right we claim :
Fair mirror of the woods and skies,
"We give to thee a name.
Lake of the pickerel ! — let no more
The echoes answerback, ' ' Great Pond, "
But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore
And watching hills beyond,
Let Indian ghosts, if such there be
Who ply unseen their shadowy lines,
Call back the ancient name to thee,
As with the voice of pines.
The shores we trod as barefoot boys,
The nutted woods we wandered
through,
To friendship, love, and social joys
We consecrate anew.
Here shall the tender song be sung,
And memory's dirges soft and low,
And wit shall sparkle on the tongue,
And mirth shall overflow,
Harmless as summer lightning plays
From a low, hidden cloud by night,
A light to set the hills ablaze,
But not a bolt to smite.
In sunny South and prairied West
Are exiled hearts remembering still,
As bees their hive, as birds their nest,
The homes of Haverhill.
They join us in our rites to-day ;
And, listening, we may hear, ere
long,
From inland lake and ocean bay,
The echoes of our song.
Kenoza ! o'er no sweeter lake
Shall morning break or noon -cloud
sail, —
No fairer face than thine shall take
The sunset's golden veil.
Long be it ere the tide of trade
Shall break with harsh-resounding
din
The quiet of thy banks of shade,
And hills that fold thee in.
Still let thy woodlands hide the hare,
The shy loon sound his trumpet-note,
Wing- weary from his fields of air,
The wild-goose on thee float.
Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir,
Thy beauty our deforming strife ;
Thy woods and waters minister
The healing of their life.
And sinless Mirth, from care released.
Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky,
Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast
The Master's loving eye.
And when the summer day grows dim,
And light mists walk thy mimic soa,
Revive in us the thought of Him
Who walked on Galilee !
TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER.
So spake Esaias : so, in words of flame,
Tekoa's prophet-herdsman smote with
blame
The traffickers in men, and put to shame,
All earth and heaven before,
The sacerdotal robbers of the poor.
All the dread Scripture lives for thee
again,
To smite like lightning on the hsjida
profane
Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the
chain.
THE PREACHER.
249
Once more the old Hebrew tongue
Bends with the shafts of God a bow
new-strung !
Take up the mantle which the prophets
wore ;
Warn with their warnings, — show the
Christ once more
Bound, scourged, and crucified in his
blameless poor ;
And shake above our land
The unquenched bolts that blazed in
Hosea's hand !
Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our
years
The solemn burdens of the Orient seers,
And smite with truth a guilty nation's
ears.
Mightier was Luther's word
Than Seckingen's mailed arm or Hut-
ton's sword !
THE SISTERS.
A PICTURE BY BARRY.
THE shade for me, but over thee
The lingering sunshine still ;
As, smiling, to the silent stream
Comes down the singing rill.
So come to me, my little one, —
My years with thee I share,
And mingle with a sister's love
A mother's tender care.
But keep the smile upon thy lip,
The trust upon thy brow ;
Since for the dear one God hath called
We have an angel now.
Our mother from the fields of heaven
Shall still her ear incline ;
Nor need we fear her human love
Is less for love divine.
The songs are sweet they sing beneath
The trees of life so fair,
But sweetest of the songs of heaven
Shall be her children's prayer.
Then, darling, rest upon my breast,
And teach my heart to lean
With thy sweet trust upon the arm
Which folds us both unseen I
LINES,
FOR THE AGRICULTURAL AND HORTI
CULTURAL EXHIBITION AT AMESBURY
AND SALISBURY, SEPT. 28, 1858.
THIS day, two hundred years* ago,
The wild grape by the river's side.
And tasteless groundnut trailing low.
The table of the woods supplied.
Unknown the apple's red and gold,
The blushing tint of peach and pear r
The mirror of the Powow told
No tale of orchards ripe and rare.
Wild as the fruits he scorned to till,
These vales the idle Indian trod ;
Nor knew the glad, creative skill, —
The joy of him who toils with God.
0 Painter of the fruits and flowers !
We thank thee for thy wise design
Whereby these human hands of ours
In Nature's garden work with thine.
And thanks that from our daily need
The joy of simple faith is born ;
That he who smites the summer weed,
May trust thee for the autumn corn.
Give fools their gold, and knaves their
power ;
Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall ;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
Or plants a tree, is more than all.
For he who blesses most is blest ;
And God and man shall own his worth
Who toils to leave as his bequest
An added beauty to the earth.
And, soon or late, to all that sow,
The time of harvest shall be given ;
The flower shall bloom, the fruit sha?J
grow,
If not on earth, at last in heaven
THE PREACHER.
ITS windows flashing to the sky,
Beneath a thousand roofs of brown,
Far down the vale, my friend and I
Beheld the old and quiet town ;
The ghostly sails that out at sea
Flapped their white wings of mystery
250
POEMS AND LYRICS.
The beaches glimmering in the sun,
And the low wooded capes that run
Into tKe sea-mist north and south ;
The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth ;
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar,
The foam-line of the harbor-bar.
Over the woods and meadow-lands
A crimson-tinted shadow lay
Of clouds through which the setting
day
Flung a slant glory far away.
It glittered on the wet sea-sands,
It flamed upon the city's panes,
Smote the white sails of ships that wore
Outward or in, and glided o'er
The steeples with their veering vanes !
Awhile my friend with rapid search
O'erran the landscape. ' ' Yonder spire
Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire ;
What is it," pray ?" — " The Whiteneld
Church !
Walled about by its basement stones,
There rest the marvellous prophet's
bones."
Then as our homeward way we walked,
Of the great preacher's life we talked ;
And through the mystery of our theme
The outward glory seemed to stream,
And Nature's self interpreted
The doubtful record of the dead ;
And every level beam that smote
The sails upon the dark afloat
A symbol of the light became
Which touched the shadows of our
blame
With tongues of Pentecostal flame.
Over the roofs of the pioneers
Gathers the moss of a hundred years ;
On man and his works has passed the
change
Which needs must be in a century's
range.
The land lies open and warm in the sun,
Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run, —
Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the
plain,
The wilderness gladdened with fruit and
grain !
But the living faith of the settlers old
A dead profession their children hold ;
To the lust of office and greed of trade
A stepping-stone is the altar made.
The Church, to place and power the
door,
Rebukes the sin of the world no more,
Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor.
Everywhere is the grasping hand,
And eager adding of land to land ;
And earth, which seemed to the fathers
meant
But as a pilgrim's wayside tent, —
A nightly shelter to fold away
When the Lord should call at the break
of day, —
Solid and steadfast seems to be,
And Time has forgotten Eternity !
But fresh and green from the rotting
roots
Of primal forests the young growth
shoots ;
From the death of the old the new pro*
ceeds,
And the life of truth from the rot of
creeds :
On the ladder of God, which upward leads,
The steps of progress are human needs.
For his judgments still are a mighty
deep,
And the eyes of his providence nevei
sleep :
When the night is darkest he gives the
morn :
When the famine is sorest, the wine
and corn !
In the church of the wilderness Edwards
wrought,
Shaping his creed at the forge of
thought ;
And with Thor's own hammer welded
and bent
The iron links of his argument,
Which strove to grasp in its mighty span
The purpose of God and the fate of man !
Yet faithful still, in his daily round
To the weak, and the poor, and sin -sick
found,
The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art
Drew warmth and life from his fervent
heart.
Had he not seen in the solitudes
Of his deep and dark Northampton
woods
A vision of love about him fall ?
Not the blinding splendor which fell on
Saul,
But the tenderer glory that rests on them
Who walk in the New Jerusalem,
Where never the sun nor moon ar«
known,
THE PREACHER.
251
But the Lord and his love are the light
alone !
And watching the sweet, still countenance
Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance,
Had he not treasured each broken word
Of the mystical wonder seen and heard ;
And loved the beautiful dreamer more
That thus to the desert of earth she bore
Clusters of Eschol from Canaan's shore ?
As the barley-winnower, holding with
pain
Aloft in waiting his chaff and grain,
Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze
Sounding the pine-tree's slender keys,
So he who had waited long to hear
The sound of the Spirit drawing near,
Like that which the son of Iddo heard
When the feet of angels the myrtles
stirred,
Felt the answer of prayer, at last,
As over his church the afflatus passed,
Breaking its sleep as breezes break
To sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake.
At first a tremor of silent fear,
The creep of the flesh at danger near,
A vague foreboding arid discontent,
Over the hearts of the people went.
All nature warned in sounds and signs :
The wind in the tops of the forest pines
In the name of the Highest called to
prayer,
As the muezzin calls from the minaret
stair.
Through ceiled chambers of secret sin
Sudden and strong the light shone in ;
A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs
Startled the man of title-deeds ;
The trembling hand of the worldling
shook
The dust of years from the Holy Book ;
And the psalms of David, forgotten long,
Took the place of the scoffer's song.
The impulse spread like the outward
course
Of waters moved by a central force :
The tide of spiritual life rolled down
From inland mountains to seaboard
town.
Hearts are like wax in the furnace, who
Shall mould, and shape, and cast them
anew ?
Lo ! by the Merrimack WHITEFIELD
stands
In the temple that never was made by
hands, —
Curtains of azure, and crystal wall,
And dome of the sunshine over all ! —
A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name
Blown about on the winds of fame ;
Now as an angel of blessing classed,
And now as a mad enthusiast.
Called in his youth to sound and gauge
The moral lapse of his race and age,
And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw
Of human frailty and perfect law ;
Possessed by the one dread thought that
lent
Its goad to his fiery temperament,
Up and down the world he went,
A John the Baptist crying, —Repent !
No perfect whole can our nature make :
Here or there the circle will break ;
The orb of life as it takes the light
On one side leaves the other in niglii,.
Never was saint so good and great
As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate
For the plea of the Devil's advocate.
So, incomplete by his being's law,
The marvellous preacher had his flaw :
With step unequal, and lame with faults,
His shade on the path of History halts.
Wisely and well said the Eastern bard :
Fear is easy, but love is hard, —
Easy to glow with the Santon's rage,
And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage ;
But he is greatest and best who can
Worship Allah by loving man.
Thus he, — to whom, in the painful
stress
Of zeal on fire from its own excess,
Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small
That man was nothing, since God was
all,—
Forgot, as the best at times have done,
That the love of the Lord and of man
are one.
Prepared and ready the altar stands Little to him whose feet unshod
Waiting the prophet's outstretched j The thorny path of the desert trod,
hands Careless of pain, so it led to God,
And prayer availing, to downward call
The fiery answer in view of all.
Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor
man's wrong,
252
POEMS AND LYRICS.
The weak ones trodden beneath the
strong.
Should the worm be chooser ? — the
clay withstand
The shaping will of the potter's hand ?
In the Indian fable Arjoqn hears
The scorn of a god rebuke his fears :
"Spare thy pity ! " Krishna saith ;
" Not in thy sword is the power of
death !
All is illusion, — loss but seems ;
Pleasure and pain are only dreams ;
Who deems he slayeth doth not kill ;
Who counts as slain is living still.
Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime ;
Nothing dies but the cheats of time ;
Slain or slayer, small the odds
To each, immortal as Indra's gods ! "
So by Savannah's banks of shade,
The stones of his mission the preacher
laid
On the heart of the negro crushed and
rent,
And made of his blood the wall's cement ;
Bade the slave-ship speed from coast to
coast
Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost ;
And begged, for the love of Christ, the
gold
Coined from the hearts in its groaning
hold.
What could it matter, more or less
Of stripes, and hunger, and weariness ?
Living or dying, bond or free,
What was time to eternity ?
Alas for the preacher's cherished schemes !
Mission and church are now but dreams ;
Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan
To honor God through the wrong of
man.
Of all his labors no trace remains
Save the bondman lifting his hands in
chains.
The woof he wove in the righteous warp
Of freedom -loving Oglethorpe,
Clothes with curses the goodly land,
Changes its greenness and bloom to sand ;
And a century's lapse reveals once more
The slave-ship stealing to Georgia's
shore.
Father of Light ! how blind is he
Who sprinkles the altar he rears to Thee
With tne blood and tears of human
ity ;
He erred : Shall we count his gifts as
naught ?
Was the work of God in him unwrought ?
The servant may through his deafness
err,
And blind may be God's messenger ;
But the errand is sure they go upon, —
The word is spoken, the deed is done.
Was the Hebrew temple less fair and
good
That Solomon bowed to gods of wood ?
For his tempted heart and wandering
feet,
Were the songs of David less pure and
sweet ?
So in light and shadow the preacher
went,
God's erring and human instrument ;
And the hearts of the people where he
passed
Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast,
Under the spell of a voice which took
In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook,
And the mystical chime of the bells of
gold
On the ephod's hem of the priest of old, —
Now the rcllof thunder, and now the awe
Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of
Law.
A solemn fear on the listening crowd
Fell like the shadow of a cloud.
The sailor reeling from out the ships
Whose masts stood thick in the river-
si ips
Felt the jest and the curse die on his
lips.
Listened the fisherman rude and hard,
The calker rough from the builder's,
yard,
The man of the market left his load,
The teamster leaned on his bending goad,
The maiden, and youth beside her, felt
Their hearts in a closer union melt,
And saw the flowers of their love in
bloom
Down the endless vistas of life to come.
Old age sat feebly brushing away
From his ears the scanty locks of gray ;
And careless boyhood, living the free
Unconscious life of bird arid tree,
Suddenly wakened to a sense
Of sin and its guilty consequence.
It was as if an angel's voice
Called the listeners up for their final
choice ;
As if a strong hand rent apart
THE PREACHER.
253
The veils of sense from soul and heart,
Showing in light ineffable
The joys of heaven and woes of hell !
All about in the misty air
The hills seemed kneeling in silent
prayer ;
The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge,
The water's lap on its gravelled edge,
The wailing pines, and, far and faint,
The wood-dove's note of sad com
plaint, —
To the solemn voice of the preacher
lent
An undertone as of low lament ;
And the rote of the sea from its sandy
coast,
On the easterly wind, now heard, now
lost,
Seemed the murmurous sound of the
judgment host.
Yet wise men doubted, and good men
wept,
As that storm of passion above them
swept,
And, comet-like, adding flame to flame,
The priests of the new Evangel came, —
Davenport, flashing upon the crowd,
Charged like summer's electric cloud,
Now holding the listener still as death
With terrible warnings under breath,
Now shouting for joy, as if he viewed
The vision of Heaven's beatitude !
And Celtic Tennant, his long coat
bound
Like a monk's with leathern girdle
round,
Wild with the toss of unshorn hair,
And wringing of hands, and eyes aglare,
Groaning under the world's despair !
Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to
lose,
Prophesied to the empty pews
That gourds would wither, and mush
rooms die,
And noisiest fountains run soonest dry,
Like the spring that gushed in New-
bury Street,
Under the tramp of the earthquake's
feet,
A silver shaft in the air and light,
For a single day, then lost in night,
Leaving only, its place to tell,
Bandy fissure and sulphurous smell.
With zeal wing-clipped and white-heat
cool,
Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule,
No longer harried, and cropped, and
fleeced,
Flogged by sheriff and cursed by priest,
But by wiser counsels left at ease
To settle quietly on his lees,
And, self-concentred, to count as done
The work which his fathers scarce begun,
In silent protest of letting alone,
The Quaker kept the way of his own, —
A non-conductor among the wires,
With coat of asbestos proof to fires.
And quite unable to mend his pace
To catch the falling manna of grace,
He hugged the closer his little store
Of faith, and silently prayed for more.
And vague of creed and barren of rite,
But holding, as in his Master's sight,
Act and thought to the inner light,
The round of his simple duties walked,
And strove to live what the others talked,
And who shall marvel if evil went
Step by step with the good intent,
And with love and meekness, side by
side,
Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride ? —
That passionate longings and fancies
vain
Set the heart on fire and crazed the
brain ? —
That over the holy oracles
Folly sported with cap and bells ?—
That goodly women and learned men
Marvelling told with tongue and pen
How unweaned children chirped like
birds
Texts of Scripture and solemn words,
Like the infant seers of the rocky glens
In the Puy de Dome of wild Cevennes :
Or baby Lamas Avho pray and preach
From Tartar cradles in Buddha's
speech ?
In the war which Truth or Freedom
wages
With impious fraud and the wrong of
ages,
Hate and malice and self-love mar
The notes of triumph with painful jar,
And the helping angels turn aside
Their sorrowing faces the shame to hide.
Never on custom's oiled grooves
The world to a higher level moves,
But grates and grinds with friction hard
On granite boulder and flinty shard.
The heart must bleed before it feels,
The pool be troubled before it heals ;
254
POEMS AND LYRICS.
Ever by losses the right must gain,
Every good have its birth of pain ;
The active Virtues blush to find
The Vices wearing their badge behind,
And Graces and Charities feel the fire
Wherein the sins of the age expire :
The fiend still rends as of old he rent
The tortured body from which he went.
But Time tests all. In the over-drift
And flow of the Nile, with its annual
gift,
Who cares for the Hadji's relics sunk ?
Who thinks of the drowned-out Coptic
monk ?
The tide that loosens the temple's
stones,
And scatters the sacred ibis-bones,
Drives away from the valley-land
That Arab robber, the wandering sand,
Moistens the fields that know no rain,
Fringes the desert with belts of grain,
And bread to the sower brings again.
So the flood of emotion deep and strong
Troubled the land as it swept along,
But left a result of holier lives,
Tenderer mothers and worthier wives.
The husband and father whose children
fled
And sad wife wept when his drunken
tread
Frightened peace from his roof-tree's
shade,
And a rock of offence his hearthstone
made,
In a strength that was not his own, be
gan
To rise from the brute's to the plane of
man.
Old friends embraced, long held apart
By evil counsel and pride of heart ;
And penitence saw through misty tears,
In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears,
The promise of Heaven's eternal
years, —
The peace of God for the world's an
noy,—
Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy !
Under the church of Federal Street,
Under the tread of its Sabbath feet,
Walled about by its basement stones,
Lie the marvellous preacher's bones.
No saintly honors to them are shown,
No sign nor miracle have they known ;
But he who passes the ancient church
Stops in the shade of its belfry-porch,
And ponders the wonderful life of him
Who lies at rest in that charnel dim.
Long shall the traveller strain his eye
From the railroad car, as it plunges by,
And the vanishing town behind him
search
For the slender spire of the Whitefield
Church ;
And feel for one moment the ghosts of
trade,
And fashion, and folly, and pleasure
laid,
By the thought of that life of pure in
tent,
That voice of warning yet eloquent,
Of one on the errands of angels sent.
And if where he labored the flood of sin
Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in,
And over a life of time and sense
The church-spires lift their vain de
fence,
As if to scatter the bolts of God
With the points of Calvin's thunder-
rod, —
Still, as the gem of its civic crown,
Precious beyond the world's renown,
His memory hallows the ancient town J
THE QUAKER ALUMNI.*0
FROM the well-springs of Hudson, the
sea -cliff's of Maine,
Grave men, sober matrons, you gather
again ;
And, with hearts warmer grown as
your heads grow more cool.
Play over the old game of going to
school.
All your strifes and vexations, your
whims and complaints,
(You were not saints yourselves, if the
children of saints !)
All your petty self-seekings and rival
ries done,
Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts
beat as one !
How widely soe'er you have strayed
from the fold,
Though your " thee " has grown " you,"
and your drab blue and gold,
To the old friendly speech and the
garb's sober form,
Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan,
you warm.
THE QUAKER ALUMNI.
255
But, the first greetings over, you glance For the wounds of rebuke, when love
round the hall ; tempered its edge ;
Your hearts call the roll, but they an- ) For the household's restraint, and the
swer not all : /Ua^ii™',, v^ri™ .
Through the turf green above them the
dead cannot hear ;
Name by name, in the silence, falls sad
as a tear !
In love, let us trust, they were sum
moned so soon
From the morning of life, while we toil
through its noon ;
They were frail like ourselves, they had
needs like our own,
And they rest as we rest in God's mercy
alone.
Unchanged by our changes of spirit and
frame,
Past, now, and henceforward the Lord
is the same ;
Though we sink in the darkness, his
arms break our fall,
And In death as in life, he is Father of
all!
We are older : our footsteps, so light in
the play
Of the far-away school-time, move slower
to-day ; —
Here a beard touched with frost, there a
bald, shining crown,
And beneath the cap's border gray min
gles with brown.
But faith should be cheerful, and trust
should be glad,
And our follies and sins, not our years,
make us sad.
Should the heart closer shut as the
bonnet grows prim,
And the face grow in length as the hat
grows in brim ?
Life is brief, duty grave ; but, with rain-
folded wings,
Of yesterday's sunshine the grateful
heart sings ;
And we, of all others, have reason to
PaY
The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on
* our way ;
For the counsels that turned from the
follies of youth ;
For the beauty of patience, the white
ness of truth ;
discipline's hedge ;
For the lessons of kindness vouchsafed
to the least
Of the creatures of God, whether humari
or beast,
Bringing hope to the poor, lending
strength to the frail,
In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut,
and jail ;
For a womanhood higher and holier, by
all
Her knowledge of good, than was Eve
ere her fall, —
Whose task- work of duty moves lightly
as play,
Serene as the moonlight and warm as
the day ;
And, yet more, for the faith which em
braces the whole,
Of the creeds of the ages the life and thx*
soul,
Wherein letter and spirit the same
channel run,
And man has not severed what God ha;:
made one !
For a sense of the Goodness revealed
everywhere,
As sunshine impartial, and free as th
air ;
For a trust in humanity, Heathen ot
Jew,
And a hope for all darkness The Light
shineth through.
Who scoffs at our birthright ? — tht
words of the seers,
And the songs of the bards in the twi
light of years,
All the foregletvms of wisdom in santon
and sage,
In prophet and priest, are our true
The Word which the reason of Plato
discerned ;
The truth, as whose symbol the Mithra-
fire burned ;
The soul of the world which the Stoic
but guessed,
Jn the Light Universal the Quaker con
fessed !
256
POEMS AND LYRICS.
Ho honors of war to our worthies be
long ;
Their plain stem of life never flowered
into song ;
But the fountains they opened still gush
by the way,
And the world for their healing is better
to-day.
He who lies where the minster's groined
arches curve down
,To the tomb-crowded transept of Eng
land's renown,
The glorious essayist, by genius en
throned,
Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all
owned, —
Who through the world's pantheon
walked in his pride,
Setting new statues up, thrusting old
ones aside,
And in fiction the pencils of history
dipped,
To gild o'er or blacken each saint in his
crypt, —
How vainly he labored to sully with
blame
The white bust of Perm, in the niche of
his fame !
Self-will is self-wounding, perversity
blind :
On himself fell the stain for the Quaker
designed !
For the sake of his true-hearted father
before him ;
For the sake of the dear Quaker mother
that bore him ;
For the sake of his gifts, and the works
that outlive him,
And his brave words for freedom, we
freely forgive him !
There are those who take note that our
numbers are small, —
New Gibbons who write our decline and
our fall ;
But the Lord of the seed -field takes care
of his own,
&nd the world shall yet reap what our
sowers have sown.
The last of the sect to his fathers may go,
Leaving only his coat for some Barnum
to show ;
But the truth will outlive him, and
broaden with years,
Till the false dies away, and the wrong
disappears.
Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight
sinks the stone,
In the deep sea of time, but the circles
sweep on,
Till the low-rippled murmurs along the
shores run,
And the dark and dead waters leap glad
in the sun.
Meanwhile shall we learn, in our ease,
to forget
To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom
our debt ? —
Hide their words out of sight, like the
garb that they wore,
And for Barclay's Apology offer one
Shall we fawn round the priestcraft that
glutted the shears,
And festooned the stocks with our grand
fathers' ears ? —
Talk of Woolman'sunsoundness ? — count
Penn heterodox ?
And take Cotton Mather in place of
George Fox ? —
Make our preachers war-chaplains ? —
quote Scripture to take
The hunted slave back, for Onesimus'
sake ? —
Goto burning church-candles, and chant
ing in choir,
And on the old meeting-house stick up
a spire ?
No ! the old paths we '11 keep until bet
ter are shown,
Credit good where we find it, abroad cr
our own ;
And while " Lo here " and " Lo there "
the multitude call,
Be true to ourselves, and do justice to
all.
The good round about us we need not
refuse,
Nor talk of our Zion as if we were Jews ;
But why shirk the badge which oui
fathers have worn,
Or beg the world's pardon for having
been born ?
THE QUAKER ALUMNI.
257
We need not pray over the Pharisee's
prayer,
Nor claim that our wisdom is Benjamin's
share.
Truth to us and to others is equal and
one :
Shall we bottle the free air, or hoard up
the sun ?
Well know we our birthright may serve
but to show
How the meanest of weeds in the richest
soil grow ;
Bat we need not disparage the good
which we hold ;
Though the vessels be earthen, the treas
ure is gold !
Enough and too much of the sect and
the name.
What matters our label, so truth be our
aim ?
The creed may be wrong, but the life
may be true,
ind hearts beat the same under drab
coats or blue.
So the man be a man, let him worship,
at will,
In Jerusalem's courts, or on Gerizim's
hill.
When she makes up her jewels, what
cares yon good town
For the Baptist of WAYLAND, the Quaker
of BROWN ?
And this green, favored island, so fresh
and sea-blown,
When she counts up the worthies her
annals have known,
Never waits for the pitiful gangers o
sect
To measure her love, and mete out he
respect.
Three shades at this moment seem walk
ing her strand,
Each with head halo-crowned, and witl
palms in his hand, —
Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smil
ing serene
On prelate and puritan, Channing i
One holy name bearing, no longer the
need
Credentials of party, and pass-words (
creed :
17
new song they sing hath a threefold
accord,
hid they own one baptism, one faith,
and one Lord !
Jut the golden sands run out : occasions
like these
>lide swift into shadow, like sails on
the seas :
Awhile we sport with the mosses and
pebbles ashore,
They lessen and fade, and we see them
Forgive me, dear friends, if my vagrant
thoughts seem
,ike a school-boy's who idles and plays
with his theme.
Forgive the light measure whose changes
display
The sunshine and rain of our brief April
day.
There are moments in life when the lip
and the eye
Try the question of whether to smile or
to cry ;
And scenes and reunions that prompt
like our own
The tender in feeling, the playful in
tone.
I, who never sat down with the boys and
the girls
At the feet of your Slocums, and Cart-
lands, and Earles, —
By courtesy only permitted to lay
On your festival's altar my poor gift, to
day, —
I would joy in your joy : let me have a
friend's part
In the warmth of your welcome of hai d
and of heart, —
On your play -ground of boyhood unbend,
the brow's care,
And shift the old burdens our shouldeis
must bear.
Long live the good School ! giving out
year by year
Eecruits to true manhood and woman
hood dear :
Brave boys, modest maidens, in beauty
sent forth,
The living epistles and proof of its worth I
258
POEMS AND LYRICS.
In and out let the young life as steadily
flow
As in broad Narragansett the tides come
and go ;
And its sons and its daughters in prairie
and town
Remember its honor, and guard its re
nown.
Not vainly the gift of its founder was
made ;
Not prayerless the stones of its cornel
were laid :
The blessing of Him whom in secret they
sought
Has owned the good work which the
fathers have wrought.
To Him be the glory forever ! — We bear
To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat
with the tare.
What we lack in our work may He rind
in our will,
And winnow in mercy our good from the
ill !
BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE.
TOHN BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE spake
on his dying day :
" I will not have to shrive my soul a
priest in Slavery's pay.
But let some poor slave-mother whom 1
have striven to free,
With her children, from the gallows-
stair put up a prayer for me ! "
John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led
him out to die ;
And lo ! a poor slave-mother with her
little child pressed nigh.
Then the bold, blue eye grew tender,
and the old harsh face grew mild,
As he stooped between the jeering ranks
and kissed the negro's child !
The shadows of his stormy life that mo
ment fell apart ;
And they who blamed the bloody hand
forgave the loving heart.
That kiss from all its guilty means re
deemed the good intent,
&nd round the grisly fighter's hair the
martyr's aureole bent !
Perish with him the folly that seeks
through evil good !
Long live the generous purpose unstained
with human blood !
Not the raid of midnight terror, but the
thought which underlies ;.
Not the borderer's pride of daring, but
the Christian's sacrifice.
Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the
Northern rifle hear,
Nor see the light of blazing homes flash
on the negro's spear.
But let the free-winged angel Truth
their guarded passes scale,
To teach that right is more than might,
and justice more than mail !
So vainly shall Virginia set her battle
in array ;
In vain her trampling squadrons knead
the winter snow with clay.
She may strike the pouncing eagle, but
she dares not harm the dove ;
And every gate she bars to Hate shall
open wide to Love !
FROM PERUGIA.
" The thing which has the most dissevered the
people from the Pope, — the unforgivable thing.
— the breaking point between him and them, —
has been the encouragement and promotion he
gave to the officer under whom were executed
the slaughters of Perugia. That made the break
ing point in many honest hearts that had clung
to him before." — Harriet JBeecher Stoive's "Let
ters from Italy."
THE tall, sallow guardsmen their horse
tails have spread,
Flaming out in their violet, yellow, and
red;
And behind go the lackeys in crimson
and buff',
And the chamberlains gorgeous in velvet
and ruff ;
Next, in red-legged pomp, come the
cardinals forth,
Each a lord of the churcii and a prince
of the earth.
What 's this squeak of the fife, and this
batter of drum ?
Lo ! the Swiss of the Church from Pe-
rugia come, —
The militant angels, whose sabres drive
home
To the hearts of the malcontents, cursec]
and abhorred,
FROM PERUGIA.
259
The good Father's missives, and " Thus
saith the Lord ! "
And lend to his logic the point of the
sword !
0 maids of Etmria, gazing forlorn
O'er dark Thrasymenus, dishevelled and
torn!
0 fathers, who pluck at your gray beards
for shame !
0 mothers, struck dumb by a woe with
out name !
Well ye know how the Holy Church
hireling behaves,
And his tender compassion of .prisons
and graves !
There they stand, the hired stabbers,
the blood-stains yet fresh,
That splashed like red wine from the
vintage of flesh, —
Grim instruments, careless as pincers
and rack
How the joints tear apart, and the
strained sinews crack ;
But the hate that glares on them is
sharp as their swords,
And the sneer and the scowl print the
air with fierce words !
Off with hats, down with knees, shout
your vivas like mad !
Here's the Pope in his holiday right
eousness clad,
From shorn crown to toe-nail, kiss-worn
to the quick,
Of sainthood in purple the pattern and
pick,
Who the rdle of the priest and the sol
dier unites,
And, praying like Aaron, like Joshua
fights !
Is this Pio Nono the gracious, for whom
We sang our hosannas and lighted all
Kome ;
With whose advent we dreamed the new
era began
When the priest should be human, the
monk be a man ?
Ah, the wolf 's with the sheep, and the
fox with the fowl,
When freedom we trust to the croziei
and cowl !
Btand aside, men of Rome ! Here 's a
hangman-faced Swiss —
A blessing for him surely can't go
amiss) —
Would kneel down the sanctified slippei
to kiss.
Short shrift will suffice him, — he 's
blest beyond doubt ;
But there 's blood on his hands which.
would scarcely wash out,
Though Peter himself held the baptismal
spout !
Make way for the next ! Here 's anothei
sweet son !
What 's this mastiff-jawed rascal in epau
lets done ?
He did, whispers rumor, (its truth God
forbid!)
At Perugia what Herod at Bethlehem did.
And the mothers ? — Don't name them !
— these humors of war
They who keep him in service must par
don him for.
Hist ! here 's the arch-knave in a car
dinal's hat,
With the heart of a wolf, and the stealth
of a cat
(As if Judas and Herod together were
rolled),
Who keeps, all as one, the Pope's con
science and gold,
Mounts guard on the altar, and pilfers
from thence,
And flatters St. Peter while stealing his
pence !
Who doubts Antonelli ? Have miracles
ceased
When robbers say mass, and Barabbas is
priest ?
When the Church eats and drinks, at its
mystical board,
The true flesh and blood carved and
shed by its sword,
When its martyr, unsinged, claps the
crown on his head,
And roasts, as his proxy, his neighboi
instead !
There ! the bells jow and jangle the
same blessed way
That they did when they rang for Bar
tholomew's day.
Hark ! the tallow-faced monsters, nor
women nor boys,
Vex the air with a shrill, sexless horroi
of noise.
260
POEMS AND LYEICS.
Te Deum laudamus ! — All round with
out stint
The incense-pot swings with a taint of
blood in 't !
And now for the blessing ! Of little
account,
You know, is the old one they heard on
the Mount.
Its giver was landless, his raiment was
poor,
No jewelled tiara his fishermen wore ;
No incense, no lackeys, no riches, no
home,
No Swiss guards ! — We order things
better at Home.
So bless us the strong hand, and curse
us the weak ;
Let Austria's vulture have food for her
beak ;
Let the wolf-whelp of Naples play
Bomba again,
With his death-cap of silence, and
halter, and chain ;
Put reason, and justice, and truth under
ban ;
For the sin unforgiven is freedom for
man !
FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL.
THE Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine
Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more ;
The woven wreaths of oak and pine
Are dust along the Isthmian shore.
But beauty hath its homage still,
And nature holds us still in debt ;
And woman's grace and household skill,
And manhood's toil, are honored
yet.
And we, to-day, amidst our flowers
And fruits, have come to own again
The blessings of the summer hours,
Ths early and the latter rain ;
To see our Father's hand once more
Eeverse for us the plenteous horn
Of autumn, filled and running o'er
With fruit, and flower, and goldeo
corn !
Once more the liberal year laughs out
O'er richer stores than gems or gold ;
Once more with harvest-song and shout
Is Nature's bloodless triumph told.
Our common mother rests and sings,
Like Ruth, among her garnered
sheaves ;
Her lap is full of goodly things,
Her brow is bright with autumn
leaves.
0 favors every year made new !
0 gifts with rain and sunshine sent !
The bounty overruns our due,
The fulness shames our discontent.
We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on :
We murmur, but the corn-ears fill ;
We choose the shadow, but the sun
That casts it shines behind us still.
God gives us with our rugged soil
The power to make it Eden-fair,
And richer fruits to crown our toil
Than summer-wedded islands bear.
Who murmurs at his lot to-day ?
AVho scorns his native fruit and bloom 1
Or sighs for dainties far away,
Beside the bounteous board of home ?
Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom's
arm
Can change a rocky soil to gold, • —
That brave and generous lives can warm
A clime with northern ices cold.
And let these altars, wreathed with
flowers
And piled with fruits, awake again
Thanksgivings for the golden hours,
aihe early and the latter rain !
A WORD FOR THE HOUR.
261
IN WAR TIME.
TO SAMUEL E. SEW ALL
AND
HARRIET W. SEWALL,
OF MELROSE.
OLOK ISCANUS, queries: "Why should
we
Vex at the land's ridiculous miserie ? "
So on his Usk banks, in the blood-red
dawn
Of England's civil strife, did careless
Vaughan
Bemock his times. 0 friends of many
years !
Though faith and trust are stronger
than our fears,
And the signs promise peace with liberty,
Not thus we trifle with our country's
tears
And sweat of agony. The future's gain
Is certain as God's truth ; but, mean
while, pain
Is bitter and tears are salt : our voices
take
A sober tone ; our very household songs
Are heavy with a nation's griefs and
wrongs ;
&.nd innocent mirth is chastened for the
sake
Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall
beat,
The eyes that smile no more, the unre-
turning feet !
THY WILL BE DONE.
WE see not, know not ; all our way
Is night, — with Thee alone is day •
From out the torrent's troubled drift,
Above the storm our prayers we lift,
Thy will be done !
The flesh may fail, the heart may faint,
But who are we to make complaint,
Or dare to plead, in times like these,
The weakness of our love of ease ?
Thy will be done !
We take with solemn thankfulness
Our burden up, nor ask it less,
And coant it joy that even we
May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee,
Whose will be done !
Though dim as yet in tint and line,
We trace Thy picture's wise design,
And thank Thee that our age supplies
Its dark relief of sacrifice.
Thy will be done !
And if, in our unworthiness,
Thy sacrificial wine we press ;
If from Thy ordeal's heated bars
Our feet are seamed with crimson scars,
Thy will be done !
If, for the age to come, this hour
Of trial hath vicarious power,
And, blest by Thee, our present pain,
Be Liberty's eternal gain,
Thy will be done !
Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys,
The anthem of the destinies !
The minor of Thy loftier s train,
Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain,
Thy will be done !
A WORD FOR THE HOUR.
THE firmament breaks up. In Hack
eclipse
Light after light goes out. One evil
star,
Luridly glaring through the smoke of
war,
As in the dream of the Apocalypse,
Drags others down. Let us not weakly
weep
Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to
keep
Our faith and patience ; wherefore
should we leap
On one hand into fratricidal fight,
Or, on the other, yield eternal right,
Frame lies of law, and good and ill cow-
found ?
262
IN WAR TIME.
What fear we ? Safe on freedom's van
tage-ground
Our feet are planted : let us there remain
In unrevengeful calm, no means untried
Which truth can sanction, no just claim
denied,
The sad spectators of a suicide !
They break the links of Union : shall
we light
The fires of hell to weld anew the chain
On that red anvil where each blow is
pain ?
Draw we not even now a freer breath,
As from our shoulders falls a load of
death
Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim
bore
When keen with life to a dead horror
bound ?
Why take we up the accursed thing
again ?
Pity, forgive, but urge them back no
more
Who, drunk with passion, flaunt dis
union's rag
With its vile reptile-blazon. Let us press
The golden cluster on our brave old flag
In closer union, and, if numbering less,
Brighter shall shine the stars which still
remain.
lQthlstmo.,1861.
"EIN FESTE BURG 1ST UNSER
GOTT."
(LUTHER'S HYMN.)
WE wait beneath the furnace-blast
The pangs of transformation ;
Not painlessly doth God recast
And mould anew the nation.
Hot burns the fire
Where wrongs expire ;
Nor spares the hand
That from the land
Uproots the ancient evil.
The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared
Its bloody rain is dropping ;
The poison plant the fathers spared
All else is overtopping.
East, West, South, North,
It curses the earth ;
All justice dies,
And fraud and lies
Live only in its shadow.
What gives the wheat-field blades of
steel ?
What points the rebel cannon ?
What sets the roaring rabble's heel
On the old star-spangled pennon ?
What breaks the oath
Of the men o' the South ?
What whets the knife
For the Union's life ? —
Hark to the answer : Slavery !
Then waste no blows on lesser foes
In strife unworthy freemen.
God lifts to-day the veil, and shows
The features of the demon !
0 North and South,
Its victims both,
Can ye not cry,
"Let slavery die !"
And union find in freedom ?
What though the cast-out spirit tear
The nation in his going ?
We who have shared the guilt mus\
share
The pang of his o'erthrowing !
Whate'er the loss,
Whate'er the cross,
Shall they complain
Of present pain
Who trust in God's hereafter ?
For who that leans on His right arm
Was ever yet forsaken ?
What righteous cause can suffer harm
If He its part has taken ?
Though wild and loud,
And dark the cloud,
Behind its folds
His hand upholds
The calm sky of to-morrow !
Above the maddening cry for blood,
Above the wild war-drumming,
Let Freedom's voice be heard, with
good
The evil overcoming.
Give prayer and purse
To stay the Curse
Whose wrong we share,
Whose shame we bear,
Whose end shall gladden Heaven !
In vain the bells of war shall ring
Of triumphs and revenges,
THE WATCHERS.
263
While still is spared the evil thing
That severs and estranges.
But blest the ear
That yet shall hear
The jubilant bell
That rings the knell
Of Slavery forever !
Then let the selfish lip be dumb,
And hushed the breath of sighing ;
Before the joy of peace must corne
The pains of purifying.
God give us grace
Each in his place
To bear his lot,
And, murmuring not,
Endure and wait and labor !
TO JOHN C. FREMONT.
THY error, Fremont, simply was to act
A brave man's part, without the states
man's tact,
And, taking counsel but of common
sense,
To strike at cause as well as consequence.
0, never yet since .Roland wound his
horn
At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown
Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as
thine own,
Heard from the van of freedom's hope
forlorn !
It had been safer, doubtless, for the time,
To flatter treason, and avoid offence
To that Dark Power whose underlying
crime
Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence.
But if thine be the fate of all who break
The ground for truth's seed, or forerun
their years
Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts
make
A lane for freedom through the level
spears,
Still take thou courage ! God has spoken
through thee,
Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free '.
The land shakes with them, and the
slave's dull ear
Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to
hear.
Who would recall them now must first
arrest
The winds that blow down from the free
Northwest,
Ruffling the Gulf ; or like a scroll roll
back
The Mississippi to its upper springs.
Such words fulfil their prophecy, and
lack
But the full time to harden into things.
THE WATCHERS.
BESIDE a stricken field I stood ;
On the torn turf, on grass and wood
Hung heavily the dew of blood.
Still in their fresh mounds lay the
slain,
But all the air was quick with pain
And gusty sighs and tearful rain.
Two angels, each with drooping head
And folded wings and noiseless tread,
Watched by that valley of the dead.
The one, with forehead saintly bland
And lips of blessing, not command,
Leaned, weeping, on her olive wand.
The other's brows were scarred and knit,
His restless eyes were watch-fires lit,
His hands for battle-gauntlets fit.
" How long ! " — I knew the voice of
Peace, —
" Is there no respite ? — no release ? —
When shall the hopeless quarrel cease ?
" 0 Lord, how long ! — One human soul
Is more than any parchment scroll,
Or any flag thy winds unroll.
"What price was Ellsworth's, young
and brave ?
How weigh the gift that Lyon gave,
Or count the cost of Winthrop's grave ?
" 0 brother ! if thine eye can see,
Tell how and when the end shall be,
What hope remains for thee and me."
Then Freedom sternly said : "I shun
No strife nor pang beneath the sun,
When human rights are staked and
won.
" I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock,
I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock,
I walked with Sidney to the block.
264
IN WAR TIME.
" The moor of Marston felt my tread,
Through Jersey snows the march I led,
My voice Magenta's charges sped.
' ' But now, through weary day and night,
I watch a vague and aimless fight
For leave to strike one blow aright.
" On either side my foe they own :
One guards through love his ghastly
throne,
And one through fear to reverence
grown.
" Why wait we longer, mocked, be
trayed,
By open foes, or those afraid
To speed thy coming through my aid ?
" Why watch to see who win or fall ? —
I shake the dust against them all,
I leave them to their senseless brawl."
". Nay," Peace implored: "yet longer
wait ;
The doom is near, the stake is great :
God knoweth if it be too late.
" Still wrait and watch ; the way prepare
Where I with folded wings of prayer
May follow, weaponless and bare."
"Too late !" the stern, sad voice re
plied,
" Too late ! " its mournful echo sighed,
In low lament the answer died.
A rustling as of wings in flight,
An upward gleam of lessening white,
So passed the vision, sound and sight.
But round me, like a silver bell
Rung down the listening sky to tell
Of holy help, a sweet voice fell.
"Still hope and trust," it sang ; "the
rod
Must fall, the wine-press must be trod,
But all is possible with God ! "
TO ENGLISHMEN.
STou flung your taunt across the -wave
We bore it as became us,
Well knowing that the fettered slave
Left friendly lips no option save
To pity or to blame us.
You scoffed our plea, " Mere lack of
will,
Not lack of power," you told us :
We showed our free-state records ; still
You mocked, confounding good and ill,
Slave-haters and slaveholders.
We struck at Slavery ; to the verge
Of power and means we checked it ;
Lo ! — presto, change ! its claims you
urge,
Send greetings to it o'er the surge.
And comfort and protect it.
But yesterday you scarce could shake,
In slave-abhorring rigor,
Our Northern palms for conscience' sake :
To-day you clasp the hands that ache
With "walloping the nigger ! " 71
0 Englishmen ! — in hope and creed,
In blood and tongue our brothers !
We too are heirs of Runnymede ;
And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's
deed
Are not alone our mother's.
'•' Thicker than water," in one rill
Through centuries of story
Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still
We share with you its good and ill,
The shadow and the glory.
Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wav*
Nor length of years can part us :
Your right is ours to shrine and grave,
The common freehold of the brave,
The gift of saints and martyrs.
Our very sins and follies teach
Our kindred frail and human :
We carp at faults with bitter speech,
The while, for one unshared by each,
We have a score in common.
We bowed the heart, if not the knee,
To England's Queen, God bless her !
We praised you when your slaves went
free:
We seek to unchain ours. Will ye
Join hands with the oppressor ?
And is it Christian England cheers
The bruiser, not the bruised ?
And must she run, despite the tears
And prayers of eighteen hundred years,
Amuck in Slavery's crusade ?
THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.
S65
0 black disgrace ! 0 shame and loss
Too deep for tongue to phrase on !
Tear from your flag its holy cross,
And in your van of battle toss
The pirate's skull-bone blazon !
ASTR^IA AT THE CAPITOL.
ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DIS
TRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1862.
WHEN first I saw our banner wave
Above the nation's council-hall,
I heard beneath its marble wall
The clanking fetters of the slave !
In the foul market-place I stood,
And saw the Christian mother sold,
And childhood with its locks of gold,
Blue-eyed and fair with Saxon blood.
I shut my eyes, I held my breath,
And, smothering down the wrath and
shame
That set my Northern blood aflame,
Stood silent, — where to speak was
death.
Beside me gloomed the prison-cell
Where wasted one in slow decline
For uttering simple words of mine,
And loving freedom all too well.
The flag that floated from the dome
Flapped menace in the morning air ;
I stood a perilled stranger where
The human broker made his home.
For crime was virtue : Gown and Sword
And Law their threefold sanction gave,
And to the quarry of the slave
Went hawking with our symbol-bird.
On the oppressor's side was power ;
And yet I knew that every wrong,
However old, however strong,
But waited God's avenging hour.
I knew that truth would crush the lie, —
Somehow, some time, the end would
be;
Yet scarcely dared I hope to see
The triumph with my mortal eye.
But now I see it ! In the sun
A free flag floats from yonder dome,
And at the nation's hearth and home
The justice long delayed is done.
Not as we hoped, in calm of prayer,
The message of deliverance comes,
But heralded by roll of drums
On waves of battle- troubled air ! —
Midst sounds that madden and appall,
The song that Bethlehem's shepherd::
knew !
The harp of David melting through
The demon-agonies of Saul !
Not as we hoped ; — but what are we ?
Above our broken dreams and plans
God lays, with wiser hand than man's.
The corner-stones of liberty.
I cavil not with Him : the voice
That freedom's blessed gospel tells
Is sweet to me as silver bells,
Rejoicing ! — yea, I will rejoice !
Dear friends still toiling in the sun, —
Ye dearer ones who, gone before,
Are watching from the eternal shore
The slow work by your hands begun, —
Rejoice with me ! The chastening rod
Blossoms with love ; the furnace heat
Grows cool beneath His blessed feet
Whose form is as the Son of God !
Rejoice ! Our Marah's bitter springs
Are sweetened ; on our ground of grief
Rise day by day in strong relief
The prophecies of better things.
Rejoice in hope ! The day and night
Are one with God, and one with tnem
Who see by faith the cloudy hem
Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light !
THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.
THE flags of war like storm-birds fly,
The charging trumpets blow ;
Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,
No earthquake strives below-
And, calm and patient, Nature keeps
Her ancient promise well,
Though o'er her bloom and greenness
sweeps
The battle's breath of hell.
266
IN WAR TIME.
And still she walks in golden hours
Through harvest-happy farms,
And still she wears her fruits and flowers
Like jewels on her arms.
What mean the gladness of the plain,
This joy of eve and morn,
The mirth that shakes the beard of grain
And yellow locks of corn ?
Ah ! eyes may well be full of tears,
And hearts with hate are hot ;
But even-paced come round the years,
And Nature changes not.
She meets with smiles our bitter grief,
With songs our groans of pain ;
She mocks with tint of flower and leaf
The war-field's crimson stain.
Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear
Her sweet thanksgiving-psalm ;
Too near to God for doubt or fear,
' She shares the eternal calm.
She knows the seed lies safe below
The fires that blast and burn ;
For all the tears of blood we sow
She waits the rich return.
She sees with clearer eye than ours
The good of suffering born, —
The hearts that blossom like her flowers,
And ripen like her corn.
O, give to us, in times like these,
The vision of her eyes ;
And make her fields and fruited trees
Our golden prophecies !
0, give .to us her finer ear !
Above this stormy din,
We too would hear the bells of cheer
Ring peace and freedom in.
MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS.72
KNOW'ST thou, 0 slave-cursed land !
flow, when the Chian's cup of guilt
Was full to overflow, there came
God's justice in the sword of flame
That, red with slaughter to its hilt,
Blazed in the Cappadocian victor's hand ?
The heavens are still and far ;
But, not unheard of awful Jove,
The sighing of the island slave
Was answered, when the JEgean
wave
The keels of Mithridates clove,
And the vines shrivelled in the breath of
" Robbers of Chios ! hark,"
The victor cried, " to Heaven's de
cree !
Pluck your last cluster from the
vine,
Drain your last cup of Chian wine .
Slaves of your slaves, your doom shall
be,
In Colchian mines by Phasis rolling
dark."
Then rose the long lament
From the hoar sea-god's dusky caves :
The priestess rent her hair and
cried,
"AVoe ! woe ! The gods are sleep
less-eyed ! "
And, chained and scourged, the slaves
of slaves,
The lords of Chios into exile went.
" The gods at last pay well,"
So Hellas sang her taunting song,
" The fisher in his net is caught,
The Chian hath his master bought" ;
And isle from isle, with laughter long,
Took up and sped the mocking parable.
Once more the slow, dumb years
Bring their avenging cycle round,
And, more than Hellas taught of old,
Our wiser lesson shall be told,
Of slaves uprising, freedom-crowned,
To break, not wield, the scourge wet
with their blood and tears.
THE PROCLAMATION.
SAINT PATRICK, slave to Milcho of the
herds
Of Ballymena, wakened with these
words :
•" Arise, and flee
Out from the land of bondage, and be
free ! "
Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from
heaven
The angels singing of his sins forgiven,
ANNIVERSARY POEM.
267
And, wondering, sees
His prison opening to their golden keys,
He rose a man who laid him down a
slave,
Shook from his locks the ashes of the
grave,
And outward trod
Into the glorious liberty of God.
He cast the symbols of his shame away ;
And, passing where the sleeping Milcho
lay,
Though back and limb
Smarted with wrong, he prayed, " God
pardon him ! "
So went he forth ; but in God's time he
carne
To light on Uilline's hills a holy flame ;
And, dying, gave
The land a saint that lost him as a
slave.
0 dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb
Waiting for God, your hour, at last, has
come,
And freedom's song
Breaks the long silence of your night of
wrong !
Arise and flee ! shake off the vile re
straint
Of ages ; but, like Ballymena's saint,
The oppressor spare,
Heap only on his head the coals of
prayer.
Go forth, like him ! like him return
again,
To bless the land whereon in bitter pain
Ye toiled at first,
And heal with freedom what your slav
ery cursed.
ANNIVERSARY POEM.
[Read before the Alumni of the Friends' Yearly
Meeting School, at the Annual Meeting at New
port, R. I., 15th 6th mo., 1863.]
ONCE more, dear friends, you meet be
neath
A clouded sky :
Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
A.nd on the sweet spring airs the breath
Of war floats by.
Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
Nor pain from chance ;
The Eternal orders circles round,
And wave and storm find mete and
bound
In Providence.
Full long our feet the flowery ways
Of peace have trod,
Content with creed and garb and phrase •
A harder path in earlier days
Led up to God.
Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear?
Are made our own ;
Too long the world has smiled to hear
Our boast of full corn in the ear
By others sown ;
To see us stir the martyr fires
Of long ago,
And wrap our satisfied desires
In the singed mantles that our siree
Have dropped below.
But now the cross our worthies bore
On us is laid ;
Profession's quiet sleep is o'er,
And in the scale of truth once more
Our faith is weighed.
The cry of innocent blood at last
Is calling down
An answer in the whirlwind-blast,
The thunder and the shadow cast
From Heaven's dark frown.
The land is red with judgments. Who
Stands guiltless forth ?
Have we been faithful as we knew,
To God and to our brother true,
To Heaven and Earth ?
How faint, through din of merchandise
And count of gain,
Have seemed to us the captive's cries J
How far away the tears and sighs
Of souls in pain !
This day the fearful reckoning comes
To each and all ;
We hear amidst our peaceful homes
The summons of the conscript drums,
The bugle's call.
Our path is plain ; the war-net draws
Round us in vain,
268
IN AVAR TIME.
While, faithful to the Higher Cause,
We keep our fealty to the laws
Through patient pain.
The levelled gun, the battle-brand,
We may not take :
But, calmly loyal, we can stand
And suffer with our suffering land
For conscience' sake.
Why ask for ease where all is pain ?
Shall we alone
Be left to add our gain to gain,
When over Armageddon's plain
The trump is blown ?
To suffer well is well to serve ;
Safe in our Lord
The rigid lines of law shall curve
To spare us ; from our heads shall swerve
Its smiting sword.
And light is mingled with the gloom,
And joy with grief ;
Divinest compensations come,
Through thorns of judgment mercies
bloom
In sweet relief.
Thanks for our privilege to bless,
By word and deed,
The widow in her keen distress,
The childless and the fatherless,
The hearts that bleed !
For fields of duty, opening wide,
Where all our powers
Are tasked the eager steps to guide
Of millions on a path untried :
THE SLAVE is OURS !
Ours by traditions dear and old,
Which make the race
Our wards to cherish and uphold,
And cast their freedom in the mould
Of Christian grace.
And we may tread the sick-bed floors
Where strong men pine,
And, down the groaning corridors,
Pour freely from our liberal stores
The oil and wine.
Who murmurs that in these dark days
His lot is cast ?
God's hand within the shadow lays
The stones whereon His gates of praise
Shall rise at last.
Turn and o'erturn, 0 outstretched Hand}
Nor stint, nor stay ;
The years have never dropped their
sand
On mortal issue vast and grand
As ours to-day.
Already, on the sable ground
Of man's despair
Is Freedom's glorious picture found,
With all its dusky hands unbound
Upraised in prayer.
0, small shall seem all sacrifice
And pain and loss,
When God shall wipe the weeping eyes,
For suffering give the victor's prize,
The crown for cross !
AT POET ROYAL.
THE tent-lights glimmer on the land,
The ship-lights on the sea ;
The night -wind smooths with drifting
sand
Our track on lone Tybee.
At last our grating keels outslide,
Our good boats forward swing ;
And while we ride the land-locked tide,
Our negroes row and sing.
For dear the bondman holds his gifts
Of music and of song :
The gold that kindly Nature sifts
Among his sands of wrong ;
The power to make his toiling days
And poor home-comforts please ;
The quaint relief of mirth that plays
With sorrow's minor keys.
Another glow than sunset's fire
Has filled the West with light,
Where field arid garner, born and
Are blazing through the night.
The land is wild with fear and hate.,
The rout runs mad and fast ;
From hand to hand, from gate to gata
The flaming brand is passed.
The lurid glow falls strong across
Dark faces broad with smiles :
Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss
That fire yen blazing piles.
BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
269
With oar-strokes timing to their song,
They weave in simple lays
The pathos of remembered wrong,
The hope of better days, —
The triumph-note that Miriam sung,
The joy of uncaged birds :
Softening with Afric's mellow tongue
Their broken Saxon words.
SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN.
0, praise an' tanks ! De Lord he come
To set de people free ;
An' massa tink it day ob doom,
An' we ob jubilee.
De Lord dat heap de Eed Sea waves
He jus' as 'trong as den ;
He say de word : we las' night slaves ;
To-day, de Lord's freemen.
De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
We'll hab de rice an' corn ;
0 nebber you fear, if nebber you
hear
De driver blow his horn !
Ole massa on he trabbels gone ;
He leaf de land behind :
De Lord's breff blow him furder on,
Like corn-shuck in de wind.
We own de hoe, we own de plough,
We own de hands dat hold ;
We sell de pig, we sell de cow,
But nebber chile be sold.
De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
We '11 hab de rice an' corn ;
0 nebber you fear, if nebber you
hear
De driver blow his horn !
We pray de Lord : he gib us signs
Dat some day we be free ;
De norf-wind tell it to de pines,
De wild-duck to de sea ;
We tink it when de church-bell ring,
We dream it in de dream ;
De rice-bird mean it when he sing,
De eagle when he scream.
De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
We '11 hab de rice an' corn :
0 nebber you fear, if nebber you
hear
De driver blow his horn !
We know de promise nebber fail,
An' uebber lie de word ;
So like de 'postles in de jail,
We waited for de Lord :
An' now he open ebery door,
An' trow away de key ;
He tink we lub him so before,
We lub him better free .
De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
He '11 gib de rice an' corn ;
0 nebber you fear, if nebber you
hear
De driver blow his horn !
So sing our dusky gondoliers ;
And with a secret pain,
And smiles that seem akin to tears,
We hear the wild refrain.
We dare not share the negro's trust,
Nor yet his hope deny ;
We only know that God is just,
And every wrong shall die.
Rude seems the song ; each swarthy face,
Flame-lighted, ruder still :
We start to think that hapless race
Must shape our good or ill ;
That laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed ;
And, close as sin and suffering joined,
We march to Fate abreast.
Sing on, poor hearts ! your chant shall
be
Our sign of blight or bloom, —
The Vala-song of Liberty,
Or death-rune of our doom !
BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
UP from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,
On that pleasant morn of the early fail
When Lee marched over the mountain-
wall,—
270
BALLADS.
Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind : the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten ;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled
down;
In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced : the old flag met his sight.
" Halt ! " — the dust-brown ranks stood
fast.
" Fire ! " — out blazed the rifle-blast.
It shivered the window, pane and sash ;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
" Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag," she said,
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came ;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word :
" Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog ! March on ! " he said.
All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet :
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well ;
And through the hill-p;aps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.
Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids no
Honor to her ! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wrve !
Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law ;
And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town !
BALLADS.
COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION.?8
THE beaver cut his timber
With patient teeth that day,
The minks were fish-wards, and the
crows
Surveyors of highway, —
When Keezar sat on the hillside
Upon his cobbler's form,
With a pan of coals on either hand
To keep his waxed-ends warm.
And there, in the golden weather,
He stitched and hammered and sung;
In the brook he moistened his leather,
In the pewter mug his tongue.
Well knew the tough old Teuton
Who brewed the stoutest ale,
And he paid the goodwife's reckoning
In the coin of song and tale.
The songs they still are singing
Who dress the hills of vine,
COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION.
271
The tales that haunt the Brocken
And whisper down the Khine.
Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
The swift stream wound away,
Through birches and scarlet maples
Flashing in foam and spray, —
Down on the sharp-horned ledges
Plunging in steep cascade,
Tossing its white-maned waters
Against the hemlock's shade.
Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
East and west and north and south ;
Only the village of Ushers
Down at the river's mouth ;
Only here and there a clearing,
With its farm-house rude and new,
And tree-stumps, swart as Indians,
Where the scanty harvest grew.
No shout of home-bound reapers,
No vintage-song he heard,
And on the green no dancing feet
The merry violin stirred.
" Why should folk be glum," said Kee-
zar,
" When Nature herself is glad,
And the painted woods are laughing
At the faces so sour and sad ? "
Small heed had the careless cobbler
What sorrow of heart was theirs
Who travailed in pain with the births
of God,
And planted a state with prayers, —
Hunting of witches and warlocks,
Smiting the heathen horde, —
One hand on the mason's trowel,
And one on the soldier's sword !
But give him his ale and cider,
Give him his pipe and song,
Little he cared for Church or State,
Or the balance of right and wrong.
"'Tis work, work, work," he mut
tered, —
" And for rest a snuffle of psalms ! "
He smote on his leathern apron
With his brown and waxen palms
" 0 for the purple harvests
Of the days when I was young !
For the merry grape-stained maidens,
And the pleasant songs they sung !
"0 for the breath of vineyards,
Of apples and nuts and wine !
For an oar to row and a breeze to blow
Down the grand old river Rhine ! "
A tear in his blue eye glistened,
And dropped on his beard so gray.
"Old, old am I," said Keezar,
" And the Rhine flows far away ! "
But a cunning man was the cobbler ;
He could call the birds from the trees.
Charm the black snake out of the ledgess
And bring back the swarming bees.
All the virtues of herbs and metals,
All the lore of the woods, he knew,
And the arts of the Old World mingled
With the marvels of the New.
Well he knew the tricks of magic,
And the lapstone on his knee
Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles
Or the stone of Doctor Dee.
For the mighty master Agrippa
Wrought it with spell and rhyme
From a fragment of mystic moonstone ,
In the tower of Nettesheim.
To a cobbler Minnesinger
The marvellous stone gave he, —
And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar,
Who brought it over the sea.
He held up that mystic lapstone,
He held it up like a lens,
And he counted the long years coining
By twenties and by tens.
"One hundred years," quoth Keezar,
".And fifty have I told :
Now open the new before me,
And shut me out the old ! "
Like a cloud of mist, the blackness
Rolled from the magic stone,
And a marvellous picture mingled
The unknown and the known.
Still ran the stream to the river,
And river and ocean joined ;
And there were the bluffs and the blue
sea-line,
And cold north hills behind.
272
BALLADS.
But the mighty forest was broken
By many a steepled town,
By many a white-walled farni-house,
And many a garner brown.
Turning a score of mill-wheels,
The stream no more ran free ;
White sails on the winding river,
White sails on the far-off sea.
Below in the noisy village
The flags wrere floating gay,
And shone on a thousand faces
The light of a holiday.
Swiftly the rival ploughmen
Turned the brown earth from their
shares ;
Here were the farmer's treasures,
There were the craftsman's wares.
Golden the goodwife's butter,
Euby her currant-wine ;
Grand were the strutting turkeys,
Fat were the beeves and swine.
Yellow and red were the apples,
And the ripe pears russet-brown,
And the peaches had stolen blushes
From the girls who shook them
down.
And with blooms of hill and wild-
wood,
That shame the toil of art,
Mingled the gorgeous blossoms
Of the garden's tropic heart.
" What is it I see ? " said Keezar :
" Am I here, or am I there ?
Is it a fete at Bingen ?
Do I look on Frankfort fair ?
" But where are the clowns and pup
pets,
And imps with horns and tail ?
And where are the Rhenish flagons ?
And where is the foaming ale ?
" Strange things, I know, will hap
pen, —
Strange things the Lord permits ;
But that droughty folk should be jolly
Puzzles my poor old wits.
" Here are smiling manly faces,
And the maiden's step is gay ;
Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drink
ing,
Nor mopes, nor fools, are they.
" Here 's pleasure without regretting.
And good without abuse,
The holiday and the bridal
Of beauty and of use.
' ' Here 's a priest and there is a Qua
ker, —
Do the cat and dog agree ?
Have they burned the stocks for oven-
wood ?
Have they cut down the gallows-tree ?
" Would the old folk know their chil
dren ?
Would they own the graceless town.
With never a ranter to worry
And never a witch to drown ? "
Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar,
Laughed like a school-boy gay ;
Tossing his arms above him,
The lapstone rolled away.
It rolled down the rugged hillside,
It spun like a wheel bewitched,
It plunged through the leaning willows,
And into the river pitched.
There, in the deepy dark water,
The magic stone lies still,
Under the leaning willows
In th<; shadow of the hill.
But oft the idle fisher
Sits on the shadowy bank,
And his dreams make marvellous pic
tures
Where the wizard's lapstone sank.
And still, in the summer twilights,
When the river seems to run
Out from the inner glory,
Warm with the melted sun,
The weary mill-girl lingers
Beside the charmed stream,
And the sky and the golden water
Shape and color her dream.
Fair wave the sunset gardens,
The rosy signals fly ;
Her homestead beckons from the cloud,
And love goe^ sailing by .
AMY WENTWORTH.
AMY WENTWORTH.
TO W. B.
273
A.S they who watch "by sick-beds find
relief
Unwittingly from the great stress of
grief
And anxious care in fantasies out-
wrought
From the hearth's embers flickering low,
or caught
From whispering wind, or tread of pass
ing feet,
Or vagrant memory calling up some
sweet
Snatch of old song or romance, whence
or why
They scarcely know or ask, — so, thou
and I,
Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is
strong
In the endurance which outwearies
Wrong,
With meek persistence baffling brutal
force,
And trusting God against the universe, —
We, doomed to watch a strife we may
not share
With other weapons than the patriot's
prayer,
Yet owning, with full hearts and moist
ened eyes,
The awful beauty of self-sacrifice,
And wrung by keenest sympathy for all
Who give their loved ones for the living
wall
'Twixt law and treason, — in this evil
day
May haply find, through automatic play
Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain,
And hearten others with the strength we
gain.
I know it has been said our times re
quire.
No play of art, nor dalliance with the
ay 01
lyre,
No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform
To calm the hot, mad pulses of the
storm,
But the stern war-blast rather, such as
sets
The battle's teeth of serried bayonets,
And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet
with these
Some softer tints may blend, and milder
keys
18
Relieve the storm-stunned ear. Let v.s
keep sweet,
Tf so we may, our hearts, even while we
eat
The bitter harvest of our own device
And half a century's moral cowardice.
As Nurnberg sang while Wittenberg
defied,
And Kranach painted by his Luther's
side,
And through the war-march of the Pu
ritan
The silver stream of Mar veil's music
ran,
So let the household melodies be sung,
The pleasant pictures on the wall be
hung, —
So let us hold against the hosts of night
And slavery all our vantage-ground of
light.
Let Treason boast its savagery, and
shake
From its flag-folds its symbol rattle
snake,
Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in
tan,
And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones
of man,
And make the tale of Fijian banquets
dull
By drinking whiskey from a loyal
skull, —
But let us guard, till this sad war shall
cease,
(God grant it soon !) the graceful arts
of peace :
No foes are conquered who the victors
teach
Their vandal manners and barbaric
speech.
And while, with hearts of thankfulness,
we bear
Of the great common burden our full
share,
Let none upbraid us that the waves
entice
Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint
device,
Rhythmic and sweet, beguiles my pen
away
From the sharp strifes and sorrows of
to-day.
Thus, while the east-wind keen from
Labrador
Sings in the leafless elms, and from the
shore
274
BALLADS.
Of the great sea comes the monotonous
roar
Of the long-breaking surf, and all the
sky
Is gray with cloud, home -bound and
dull, I try
To time a simple legend to the sounds
Of winds in the woods, and waves on
pebbled bounds, —
A. song for oars to chime with, such as
might
Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at
night
Look from their hemlock camps, by
quiet cove
Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves
they love.
(So hast thou looked, when level sunset
lay
On the calm bosom of some Eastern
bay,
And all the spray -moist rocks and waves
that rolled
Op the white sand-slopes flashed with
ruddy gold.)
Something it has — a flavor of the
sea,
And the sea's freedom — which reminds
of thee.
Its faded picture, dimly smiling down
From the blurred fresco of the ancient
town,
I have not touched with warmer tints in
vain,
If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one
thought from pain.
HER fingers shame the ivory keys
They dance so light along ;
The bloom upon her parted lips
Is sweeter than the song.
0 perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles !
Her thoughts are not of thee ;
She better loves the salted wind,
The voices of the sea.
Her heart is like an outbound ship
That at its anchor swings ;
The murmur of the stranded shell
Is in the song she sings.
She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise,
But dreams the while of one
Who watches from his sea-blown deck
The icebergs in the sun.
She questions all the winds that blow,
And every fog- wreath dim,
And bids the sea-birds flying north
Bear messages to him.
She speeds them with the thanks of men
He perilled life to save,
And grateful prayers like holy oil
To smooth for him the wave.
Brown Viking of the fishing-smack !
Fair toast of all the town ! —
The skipper's jerkin ill beseems
The lady's silken gown !
But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear
For him the blush of shame
Who dares to set his manly gifts
Against her ancient name.
The stream is brightest at its spring,
And blood is not like wine ;
Nor honored less than he who heirs
Is he who founds a line.
Full lightly shall the prize be won,
If love be Fortune's spur ;
And never maiden stoops to him
Who lifts himself to her.
Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street,
With stately stairways worn
By feet of old Colonial knights
And ladies gentle-born.
Still green about its ample porch
The English ivy twines,
Trained back to show in English oak
The herald's carven signs.
And on her, from the wainscot old,
Ancestral faces frown, —
And this has worn the soldier's sword,.
And that the judge's gown.
But, strong of will and proud as they,
She walks the gallery floor
As if she trod her sailor's deck
By stormy Labrador !
The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side,
And green are Elliot's bowers ;
Her garden is the pebbled beach,
The mosses are her flowers.
She looks across the harbor-bar
To see the white gulls fly ;
THE COUNTESS.
275
His greeting from the Northern sea
Is in their clanging cry.
She hums a song, and dreams that he,
As in its romance old,
Shall homeward ride with silken sails
And masts of beaten gold !
0, rank is good, and gold is fair,
And high and low mate ill ;
But love has never known a law
Beyond its own sweet will !
THE COUNTESS.
TO E. W.
I KNOW not, Time anci Space so inter
vene,
Whether, still waiting with a trust se
rene,
Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and
ten,
Or, called at last, art now Heaven's cit
izen ;
But, here or there, a pleasant thought
of thee,
Like an old friend, all day has been
with me.
The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly
hand
Smoothed his hard pathway to the won
der-land
Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood
yet
Keeps green the memory of his early
debt.
To-day, when truth and falsehood speak
their words
Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth
of swords,
Listening with quickened heart and ear
intent
To each sharp clause of that stern argu
ment,
I still can hear at times a softer note
Of the old pastoral music round me float,
While through the hot gleam of our
civil strife
Looms the green mirage of a simpler
life.
A.S, at his alien post, the sentinel
Props the old bucket in the homestead
well,
A.nd hears old voices in the winds that
toss
Above his head the live-oak's beard of
moss,
So, in our trial-time, and under skies
Shadowed by swords like Islam's para
dise,
I wait and watch, and let my fancy
stray
To milder scenes and youth's Arcadian
day;
And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in
dreams
Shades the brown woods or tints the
sunset streams,
The country doctor in the foreground
seems,
Whose ancient sulky down the village
lanes
Dragged, like a war- car, captive ills and
pains.
I could not paint the scenery of ray
song,
Mindless of one who looked thereon so
long ;
Who, night and day, on duty's lonely
round,
Made friends o' the woods and rocks,
and knew the sound
Of each small brook, and what the hill
side trees
Said to the winds that touched their
leafy keys ;
Who saw "so keenly and so well could
paint
The village-folk, with all their humors
quaint, —
The parson ambling on his wall-eyed
roan,
Grave and erect, with white hair back
ward blown ;
The tough old boatman, half amphibious
grown ;
The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's
tale,
And the loud straggler levying his black
mail, —
Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears,
All that lies buried under fifty years.
To thee, as is most fit, I bring my
lay,
And, grateful, own the debt I cannot
pay-
the wooded northern ridge,
Between its houses brown,
To the dark tunnel of the bridge
The street comes straggling down.
276
BALLADS.
You catch a glimpse, through birch and
pine,
Of gable, roof, and porch,
The tavern with its swinging sign,
The sharp horn of the church.
The river's steel-blue crescent curves
To meet, in ebb and flow,
The single broken wharf that serves
For sloop and gundelow.
With salt sea-scents along its shores
The heavy hay-boats crawl,
The long antennae of their oars
In lazy rise and fall.
Along the gray abutment's wall
The idle shad-net dries ;
The toll-man in his cobbler's stall
Sits smoking with closed eyes.
You hear the pier's low undertone
Of waves that chafe and gnaw ;
You start, — a skipper's horn is blown
To raise the creaking draw.
At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds
With slow and sluggard beat,
Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds
Wakes up the staring street.
A place for idle eyes and ears,
A cobwebbed nook of dreams ;
Left by the stream whose waves are
years
The stranded village seems.
And there, like other moss and rust,
The native dweller clings,
And keeps, in uninquiring trust,
The old, dull round of things.
The fisher drops his patient lines,
The farmer sows his grain,
Content to hear the murmuring pines
Instead of railroad-train.
Go where, along the tangled steep
That slopes against the west,
The hamlet's buried idlers sleep
In still profounder rest.
Throw back the locust's flowery plume,
The birch's pale-green scarf,
And break the web of brier and bloom
From name and epitaph.
A simple muster-roll of death,
Of pomp and romance shorn,
The dry, old names that common breath
Has cheapened and outworn.
Yet pause by one low mound, and part
The wild vines o'er it laced,
And read the Avords by rustic a,rt
Upon its headstone traced.
Haply yon white-haired villager
Of fourscore years can say
What means the noble name of her
Who sleeps with common clay
An exile from the Gascon land
Found refuge here and rest,
And loved, of all the village band,
Its fairest and its best.
He knelt with her on Sabbath morns,
He worshipped through her eyes,
And on the pride that doubts and scorns
Stole in her faith's surprise.
Her simple daily life he saw
By homeliest duties tried,
In all things by an untaught law
Of fitness justified.
For her his rank aside he laid ;
He took the hue and tone
Of lowly life and toil, and made
Her simple ways his own.
Yet still, in gay and careless ease,
To harvest-field or dance
He brought the gentle courtesies,
The nameless grace of France.
And she who taught him love not less
From him she loved in turn
Caught in her sweet unconsciousness
What love is quick to learn.
Each grew to each in pleased accord,
Nor knew the gazing town
If she looked upward to her lord
Or he to her looked down.
How sweet, when summer's day was o'er,
His violin's mirth and wail,
The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore,
The river's moonlit sail !
Ah ! life is brief, though love be long ;
The altar and the bier,
The burial hymn and bridal song,
Were both in one short year !
NAPLES.
277
Her rest is quiet on the hill,
Beneath the locust's bloom :
Far off her lover sleeps as still
Within his scutcheoned tomb.
The Gascon lord, the village maid,
In death still clasp their hands ;
The love that levels rank and grade
Unites their severed lands.
What matter whose the hillside grave,
Or whose the blazoned stone ?
Forever to her western wave
Shall whisper blue Garonne !
0 Love ! — so hallowing every soil
That gives thy sweet flower room,
Wherever, nursed by ease or toil,
The human heart takes bloom ! —
Plant of lost Eden, from the sod
Of sinful earth unriven,
White blossom of the trees of God
Dropped down to us from heaven ! —
This tangled waste of mound and stone
Is holy for thy sake ;
A sweetness which is all thy own
Breathes out from fern and brake.
And while ancestral pride shall twine
The Gascon's tomb with flowers,
Fall sweetly here, 0 song of mine,
With summer's bloom and showers !
And let the lines that severed seem
Unite again in thee,
As western wave and Gallic stream
Are mingled in one sea !
OCCASIONAL POEMS
NAPLES.
1860.
INSCRIBED TO ROBERT C. WATERSTON,
OF BOSTON.
I GIVE thee joy ! — I know to thee
The dearest spot on earth must
be
Where sleeps thy loved one by the sum
mer sea ;
Where, near her sweetest poet's
tomb,
The land of Virgil gave thee room
To lay thy flower with her perpetual
bloom.
I know that when the sky shut
down
Behind thee on the gleaming town,
On Baise's baths and Posilippo's crown ;
And, through thy tears, the mock
ing day
Burned Ischia's mountain lines
away,
And Capri melted in its sunny bay, —
Through thy great farewell sorrow
shot
The sharp pang of a bitter thought
That slaves must tread around that holy
spot.
Thou knewest not the land was
blest
In giving thy beloved rest,
Holding the fond hope closer to her
breast
That every sweet and saintly grave
Was freedom's prophecy, and gave
The pledge of Heaven to sanctify and
That pledge is answered. To thy ear
The unchained city sends its cheer,
And, tuued to joy, the muffled bells of
fear
Ring Victor in. The land sits free
And happy by the summer sea,
And Bourbon Naples now is Italy !
She smiles above her broken chain
The languid smile that follows pain,
Stretching her cramped limbs to the sua
again.
278
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
0, joy for all, who hear her call
From gray Camaldoli's convent-wall
And Elmo's towers to freedom's carni
val !
A new life breathes among her vines
And olives, like the breath of pines
Blown downward from the breezy Apen
nines.
Lean, 0, my friend, to meet tha
breath,
Rejoice as one who witnesseth
Beauty from ashes rise, and life from
death !
Thy sorrow shall no more be pain,
Its tears shall fall in sunlit rain,
Writing the grave with flowers : "Arisen
again ! "
THE SUMMONS.
My ear is full of summer sounds,
Of summer sights my languid eye ;
Beyond the dusty village bounds "
1 loiter in my daily rounds,
And in the noon-time shadows lie.
I hear the wild bee wind his horn,
The bird swings on the ripened wheat,
The long green lances of the corn
Are tilting in the winds of morn,
The locust shrills his song of heat.
Another sound my spirit hears,
A deeper sound that drowns them
alf-
A voice of pleading choked with tears,
The call of human hopes and fears,
The Macedonian cry to Paul !
The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows ;
I know the word and countersign ;
"Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes,
Where stand or fall her friends or foes,
I know the place that should be mine.
Shamed be the hands that idly fold,
And lips that woo the reed's accord,
When laggard Time the hour has tolled
For true with false and new with old
To fight the battles of the Lord !
0 brothers ! blest by partial Fate
With power to match the will and
deed,
To him your summons comes too late
Who sinks beneath his armor's weight,
And has no answer but God-speed !
THE WAITING.
I WAIT and watch : before my eyes
Methinks the night grows thin
gray ;
I wait and watch the eastern skies
To see the golden spears uprise
Beneath the oriflamme of day !
one whose limbs are bound in
trance
I hear the day-sounds swell and grow,
And see across the twilight glance,
Troop after troop, in swift advance,
The shining ones with plumes of
snow !
I know the errand of their feet,
I know what mighty work is theirs ;
I can but lift up hands unmeet,
The threshing-floors of God to beat,
And speed them with unworthy
prayers.
I will not dream in vain despair
The steps of progress wait for me :
The puny leverage of a hair
The planet's impulse well may spare,
A drop of dew the tided sea.
The loss, if loss there be, is mine,
And yet not mine if understood ;
For one shall grasp and one resign,
One drink life's rue, and one its wine,
And God shall make the balance*
0 power to do ! 0 baffled will !
0 prayer and action ! ye are one.
Who may not strive, may yet fulfil
The harder task of standing still,
And good but wished with God is
done !
MOUNTAIN PICTURES.
I.
FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET.
ONCE more, 0 Mountains of the North,
unveil
Your brows, and lay your cloudy
mantles by !
MOUNTAIN PICTURES.
279
And once more, ere the eyes that seek
ye fail,
Uplift against the blue walls of the sky
Your mighty shapes, and let the sun
shine weave
Its golden net-work in your belting
woods,
Smile down in rainbows from your
falling floods,
And on your kingly brows at morn and eve
Set crowns of fire ! So shall my soul
receive
Haply the secret of your calm and
strength,
Your unforgotten beauty interfuse
My common life, your glorious shapes
and hues
And sun-dropped splendors at my
bidding come,
Loom vast through dreams, and
stretch in billowy length
From the sea-level of my lowland home !
They rise before me ! Last night's
thunder-gust
Eoared not in vain : for where its
lightnings thrust
Their tongues of fire, the great peaks
seem so near,
Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold
and clear,
I almost pause the wind in the pines to
hear,
The loose rock's fall, the steps of brows
ing deer.
The clouds that shattered on yon slide-
worn walls
And splintered on the rocks their
spears of rain
Have set in play a thousand waterfalls,
Making the dusk and silence of the wood
Glad with the laughter of the chasing
floods,
And luminous with blown spray anc
silver gleams,
While, in the vales below, the dry
lipped streams
Sing to the freshened meadow-lands
again.
So, let me hope, the battle-storm tha
beats
The land with hail and fire may pass
away
"With its spent thunders at the break o
day,
Like last night's clouds, and leave, as it !
A greener earth and fairer sky be
hind,
Blown crystal-clear by Freedom's
Northern wind !
II.
MONADNOCK FROM WACHTJSETo
i WOULD I were a painter, for the sake
Of a sweet picture, and of her who led,
A fitting guide, with reverential tread,
[nto that mountain mystery. First a
lake
Tinted with sunset ; next the wavy
lines
Of far receding hills ; and yet more
far,
Monadnock lifting from his night of
pines
His rosy forehead to the evening star.
Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid
His head against the West, whose
warm light made
His aureole ; and o'er him, sharp
and clear,
Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launch
ing stayed,
A single level cloud-line, shone upon
By the fierce glances of the sunken sun,
Menaced the darkness with its gold
en spear !
So twilight deepened round us. Still
and black
The great woods climbed the mountain
at our back ;
And on tneir skirts, where yet the linger
ing day
On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay,
The brown old farm-house like a
bird's-nest hung.
With home-life sounds the desert air was
stirred :
The bleat of sheep along the hill we
heard,
retreats,
The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet
well,
The pasture-bars that clattered as they
fell;
Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle
lowed ; the gate
Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the
merry weight
Of sun-brown children, listening,
while they swung,
280
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
The welcome sound of supper-call
to hear ;
And down the shadowy lane, in
tinklings clear,
The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell
rung.
Thus soothed and pleased, our backward
path we took,
Praising the farmer's home. He only
spake,
Looking into the sunset o'er the lake,
Like one to whom the far-off is
most near :
1 'Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant
look ;
I love it for my good old mother's sake,
Who lived and died here in the
peace of God ! "
The lesson of his words we pondered
o'er,
Arf silently we turned the eastern flank
Of the mountain, where its shadow
deepest sank,
Doubling the night along our rugged
road :
We felt that man was more than his
abode, —
The inward life than Nature's rai
ment more ;
And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted
hill,
The forest and the lake, seemed
dwarfed and dim
Before the saintly soul, whose human
will
Meekly in the Eternal footsteps
trod,
Making her homely toil and household
ways
An earthly echo of the song of praise
Swelling from angel lips and harps of
seraphim.
OUR EIVER.
FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT "THE
LAURELS" ON THE MERRIMACK.
ONCE more on yonder laurelled height
The summer flowers have budded ;
Once more with summer's golden light
The vales of home are flooded ;
And once more, by the grace of Him
Of every good the Giver,
We sing upon its wooded rim
The praises of our river :
Its pines above, its waves below,
The west- wind down it blowing,
As fair as when the young Brissot
Beheld it seaward flowing, —
And bore its memory o'er the deep,
To soothe a martyr's sadness,
And fresco, in his troubled sleep,
His prison-walls with gladness.
We know the world is rich with streams
Renowned in song and story,
Whose music murmurs through om
dreams
Of human love and glory :
We know that Arno's banks are fair,
And Rhine has castled shadows,
And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr
Go singing down their meadows.
But while, unpictured and unsung
By painter or by poet,
Our river waits the tuneful tongue
And cunning hand to show it, —
We only know the fond skies lean
Above it, warm with blessing,
And the sweet soul of our Undine
Awakes to our caressing.
No fickle sun-god holds the flocks
That graze its shores in keeping ;
No icy kiss of Dian mocks
The youth beside it sleeping :
Our Christian river loveth most
The beautiful and human ;
The heathen streams of Naiads boast,
But ours of man and woman.
The miner in his cabin hears
The ripple we are hearing ;
It whispers soft to homesick ears
Around the settler's clearing :
In Sacramento's vales of corn,
Or Santee's bloom of cotton,
Our river by its valley-born
Was never yet forgotten.
The drum rolls loud, — the bugle fills
The summer air with clangor ;
The war-storm shakes the solid hills
Beneath its tread of anger ;
Young eyes that last year smiled in
ours
Now point the rifle's barrel,
And hands then stained with fruits and
flowers
Bear redder stains of quarrel.
ANDREW RYKMANVS PRAYER.
281
But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom
on,
And rivers still keep flowing, —
The dear God still his rain and sun
On good and ill bestowing.
His pine-trees whisper, "Trust and
wait ! "
His flowers are prophesying
That all we dread of change or fall
His love is underlying.
And thou, 0 Mountain-born ! — no more
We ask the wise Allotter
Than for the firmness of thy shore,
The calmness of thy water, .
The cheerful lights that overlay
Thy rugged slopes with beauty,
To match our spirits to our day
And make a joy of duty.
ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER.
ANDREW RYKMAN 's dead and gone ;
You can see his leaning slate
In the graveyard, and thereon
Read his name and date.
" Trust is truer than our fears "
Runs the legend through the moss,
" Gain is not in added years,
Nor in death is loss."
Still the feet that thither trod,
All the friendly eyes are dim ;
Only Nature, now, and God
Have a care for him.
There the dews of quiet fall,
Singing birds and soft winds stray ;
Shall the tender Heart of all
Be less kind than they ?
What he was and what he is
They who ask may haply find,
If they read this prayer of his
Which he left behind.
Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare
Shape in words a mortal's prayer !
Prayer, that, when my day is done,
And I see its setting sun,
Shorn and beamless, cold and dim,
Sink beneath the horizon's rim, —
When this ball of rock and clay
Crumbles from my feet away,
nd the solid shores of sense
lelt into the vague immense,
ather ! I may come to Thee
ven with the beggar's plea,
s the poorest of Thy poor,
Vith my needs, and nothing more..
ot as one who seeks his home
Vith a step assured I come ;
till behind the tread I hear
)f my life-companion, Fear ;
till a shadow deep and vast
om my westering feet is cast,
Vavering, doubtful, undefined,
^"ever shapen nor outlined :
>om myself the fear has grown,
Lnd the shadow is my own.
et, 0 Lord, through all a sense
)f Thy tender p evidence
tays my failing heart on Thee,
\.nd confirms tn J, feeble knee ;
nd, at times, my worn feet press
paces of cool quietness,
jlied whiteness shone upon
'Tot by light of moon or sun.
lours there be of inmost calm,
Broken but by grateful psalm,
When I love Thee more than fear Thee,
A.nd Thy blessed Christ seems near me,
With forgiving look, as when
le beheld the Magdalen.
Well I know that all things move
To the spheral rhythm of love, —
That to Thee, 0 Lord of all !
Nothing can of chance befall :
hild and seraph, mote and star,
Well Thou knowest what we are ?
Through Thy vast creative plan
Looking, from the worm to man,
There is pity in Thine eyes,
But no hatred nor surprise.
Not in blind caprice of will,
Not in cunning sleight of skill,
Not for show of power, was wrought
Nature's marvel in Thy thought.
Never careless hand and vain
Smites these chords of joy and pain :
No immortal selfishness
Plays the game of curse and bless ;
Heaven and earth are witnesses
That Thy glory goodness is.
Not for sport of mind and force
Hast Thou made Thy universe,
But as atmosphere and zone
Of Thy loving heart alone.
Man, who walketh in a show,
Sees before him, to and fro,
282
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
Shadow and illusion go ;
All things flow and fluctuate,
Now contract and now dilate.
In the welter of this sea,
Nothing stable is but Thee ;
In this whirl of swooning trance,
Thou alone art permanence ;
All without Thee only seems,
All beside is choice of dreams.
Never yet in darkest mood
Doubted I that Thou wast good,
Nor mistook my will for fate,
Pain of sin for heavenly hate, —
N"ever dreamed the gates of pearl
Rise from out the burning marl,
Or that good can only live
Of the bad conservative,
And through counterpoise of hell
Heaven alone be possible.
For myself alone I doubt ;
All is well, I know, without ;
I alone the beauty mar,
I alone the music jar.
Yet, with hands by evil stained,
And an ear by discord pained,
I am groping for the keys
Of the heavenly harmonies ;
Still within my heart I bear
Love for all things good and fair.
Hands of want or souls in pain
Have not sought my door in vain ;
I have kept my fealty good
To the human brotherhood ;
Scarcely have I asked in prayer
That which others might not share.
I, who hear with secret shame
Praise that paineth more than blame,
Rich alone in favors lent,
Virtuous by accident,
Doubtful where I fain would rest,
Frailest where I seem the best,
Only strong for lack of test, —
AVhat am 1, that I should press
Special pleas of selfishness,
Coolly mounting into heaven
On my neighbor unforgiven ?
"Ne'er to me, howe'er disguised,
Comes a saint unrecognized ;
Never fails my heart to greet
Noble deed with warmer beat ;
Halt and maimed, I own not less
All the grace of holiness ;
Nor, through shame or self-distrust,
Less I love the pure and just.
Lord, forgive these words of mine :
What have I that is not Thine ? —
"Whatsoe'er I fain would boast
Needs Thy pitying pardon most.
Thou, 0 Elder Brother ! who
In Thy flesh our trial knew,
Thou, who hast been touched by these
Our most sad infirmities,
Thou alone the gulf canst span
In the dual heart of man,
And between the soul and sense
Reconcile all difference,
Change the dream of me and mine
For the truth of Thee and Thine,
And, through chaos, doubt, and strife,
Interfuse Thy calm of life.
Haply, thus by Thee renewed,
In Thy borrowed goodness good,
Some sweet morning yet in God's
Dim, seonian periods,
Joyful I shall wake to see
Those I love who rest in Thee,
And to them in Thee allied
Shall my soul be satisfied.
Scarcely Hope hath shaped for me
What the future life may be.
Other lips may well be bold ;
Like the publican of old,
I can only urge the plea,
" Lord, be merciful to me ! "
Nothing of desert I claim,
Unto me belongeth shame.
Not for me the crowns of gold,
Palms, and harpings manifold ;
Not for erring eye and feet
Jasper wall and golden street.
What thou wilt, 0 Father, give J
All is gain that I receive.
If my voice •! may not raise
In the elders' song of praise,
If I may not, sin-defiled,
Claim rny birthright as a child,
Suffer it that I to Thee
As an hired servant be ;
Let the lowliest task be mine,
Grateful, so the work be Thine ;
Let me find the humblest place
In the shadow of Thy grace :
Blest to me were any spot
Where temptation whispers not.
If there be some weaker one,
Give me strength to help him on ;
If a blinder soul there be,
Let me guide him nearer Thee.
Make my mortal dreams come true
With the work I fain would do ;
Clothe with life the weak intent,
Let me be the thing I meant ;
Let me find in Thy employ
ITALY.
283
Peace that dearer is than joy ;
Out of self to love be led
And to heaven acclimated,
Until all things sweet and good
Seem my natural habitude.
So we read the prayer of him
Who, with John of Labadie,
Trod, of old, the oozy rim
Of the Zuyder Zee.
Thus did Andrew Rykman pray.
Are we wiser, better grown,
That we may not, in our day,
Make his prayer our own ?
THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL.74
IN that black forest, where, when day is
done,
With a snake's stillness glides the
Amazon
Darkly from sunset to the rising sun,
A cry, as of the pained heart of the wood,
The long, despairing moan of solitude
And darkness and the absence of all good,
Startles the traveller, with a sound so
drear,
So full of hopeless agony and fear,
His heart stands still and listens like
his ear.
The guide, as if he heard a dead-bell toll,
Starts, drops his oar against the gun
wale's thole,
Crosses himself, and whispers, "A lost
soul ! "
" No, Senor, not a bird. I know it well, —
It is the pained soul of some infidel
Or cursed heretic that cries from hell.
"Poor fool! with hope still mocking
his despair,
He wanders, shrieking on the midnight
air
For human pity and for Christian prayer.
"Saints strike him dumb I Our Holyj
Mother hath
No prayer for him who, sinning unto
death,
Burns always in the furnace of God's
wrath ! "
Thus to the baptized pagan's cruel lie,
Lending new horror to that mournful
cry,
The voyager listens, making no reply.
Dim burns the boat-lamp : shadows
deepen round,
From giant trees with snake-like creep
ers wound,
And the black water glides without a
sound.
But in the traveller's heart a secret sense
Of nature plastic to benign intents,
And an eternal good m Providence,
Lifts to the starry calm of heaven his
eyes ;
And lo ! rebuking all earth's ominous
cries,
The Cross of pardon lights the tropic
skies !
Father of all ! " he urges his strong
plea,
Thou lovest all : thy erring child may
be
Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee !
All souls are Thine ; the wings of
morning bear
None from that Presence which is every
where,
Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art
there.
"Through sins of sense, perversities of
will,
Through doubt and pain, through guilt
and shame and ill,
Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature
still.
"Wilt thou not make, Eternal Source
and Goal !
In thy long years, life's broken circle
whole,
And change to praise the cry of a lost*
soul ? "
ITALY.
ACROSS the sea I heard the groans
Of nations in the intervals
Of wind and wave. Their blood and
bones
Cried out in torture, crushed by thrones,
And sucked by priestly cannibals.
284
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
I dreamed of Freedom slowly gained
By martyr meekness, patience, faith,
And lo ! an athlete grimly stained,
With corded muscles battle-strained,
Shouting it from the fields of death !
I turn me, awe-struck, from the sight,
Among the clamoring thousands mute,
only know that God is right,
And that the children of the light
Shall tread the darkness under foot.
I know the pent fire heaves its crust,
That sultry skies the bolt will form
To smite them clear ; that Nature must
The balance of her powers adjust,
Though with the earthquake and the
storm.
God reigns, and let the earth rejoice !
I bow before His sterner plan.
Dumb are the organs of my choice ;
He speaks in battle's stormy voice,
- His praise is in the wrath of man !
Yet, surely as He lives, the day
Of peace He promised shall be ours,
To fold the flags of war, and lay
Its sword and spear to rust away,
And sow its ghastly fields with flowers !
THE RIVER PATH.
No bird-song floated down the hill,
The tangled bank below was still ;
No rustle from the birchen stem,
No ripple from the water's hem.
The dusk of twilight round us grew,
We felt the falling of the dew ;
For, from us, ere the day was done,
The wooded hills shut out the sun.
But on the river's farther side
We saw the hill-tops glorified, —
A tender glow, exceeding fair,
A dream of day without its glare.
With us the damp, the chill, the gloom :
With them the sunset's rosy bloom ;
While dark, through willowy vistas seen,
The river rolled in shade between.
From out the darkness where we trod,
We gazed upon those hills of God,
Whose light seemed not of moon or
sun.
We spake not, but our thought was ona
We paused, as if from that bright shcre
Beckoned our dear ones gone before ;
And stilled our beating hearts to hear
The voices lost to mortal ear !
Sudden our pathway turned from night ;
The hills swung open to the light ;
Through their green gates the sunshine
showed,
A long, slant splendor downward flowed.
Down glade and glen and bank it rolled ;
It bridged the shaded stream with gold ;
And, borne on piers of mist, allied
The shadowy with the sunlit side !
"So," prayed we, " when our feet draw
near
The river dark, with mortal fear,
" And the night cometh chill with dew,
0 Father ! let thy light break through I
" So let the hills of doubt divide,
So bridge with faith the sunless tide !
" So let the eyes that fail on earth
On thy eternal hills look forth ;
"And in thy beckoning angels know
The dear ones whom we loved below ! "
A MEMORIAL.
0, THICKER, deeper, darker growing,
The solemn vista to the tomb
Must know henceforth another shadow,
And give another cypress room.
In love surpassing that of brothers,
We walked, 0 friend, from childhood's
day ;
And, looking back o'er fifty summers,
Our footprints track a common way.
HYMN.
285
One in our faith, and one our longing
To make th e world within our reach
Somewhat the better for our living,
And gladder for our human speech.
Thou heard'st with me the far-off voices,
The old beguiling song of fame,
But life to thee was warm and present,
And love was better than a name.
To homely joys and loves and friendships
Thy genial nature fondly clung ;
And so the shadow on the dial
Ran back and left thee always young.
And who could blame the generous
weakness
Which, only to thyself unjust,
So overprized the worth of others,
And dwarfed thy own with self- dis
trust ?
All hearts grew warmer in the presence
Of one who, seeking not his own,
G ave freely for the love of giving,
Nor reaped for self the harvest sown.
Thy greeting smile was pledge and prel
ude
Of generous deeds and kindly words ;
In thy large heart were fair guest-cham
bers,
Open to sunrise and the birds !
The task was thine to mould and fashion
Life's plastic newness into grace :
To make the boyish heart heroic,
And light with thought the maiden's
face.
O'er all the land, in town and prairie,
With bended heads of mourning,
stand
The living forms that owe their beauty
And fitness to thy shaping hand.
Thy call has come in ripened manhood,
The noonday calm of heart and mind,
While I, who dreamed of thy remaining
To mourn me, linger still behind :
Live on, to own, with self-upbraiding,
A debt of love still due from me, —
The vain remembrance of occasions,
Forever lost, of serving thee.
It was not mine among thy kindred
To join the silent funeral prayers,
But all that long sad day of summer
My tears of mourning dropped with
theirs.
All day the sea-waves sobbed with sor
row,
The birds forgot their merry trills :
All day I heard the pines lamenting
With thine upon thy homestead hill
Green be those hillside pines forever,
And green the meadowy lowlands be,
And green the old memorial beeches,
Name-carven in the woods of Lee !
Still let them greet thy life companions
Who thither turn their pilgrim feet,
In every mossy line recalling
A tender memory sadly sweet.
0 friend ! if thought and sense avail not
To know thee henceforth as thou art,
That all is well with thee forever
I trust the instincts of my heart.
Thine be the quiet habitations,
Thine the green pastures, blossom-
sown,
And smiles of saintly recognition,
As sweet and tender as thy own.
Thou com'st not from the hush and
shadow
To meet us, but to thee we come ;
With thee we never can be strangers,
And where thou art must still be home.
HYMN,
SUNG AT CHRISTMAS BY THE SCHOfr
ARS OF ST. HELENA'S ISLAND, s. c.
0 NONE in all the world before
Were ever glad as we J
We 're free on Carolina's shore,
We 're all at home and free.
Thou Friend and Helper of the poor,
Who suffered for our sake,
To open every prison door,
And every yoke to break !
Bend low thy pitying face and mild,
And help us sing and pray ;
The hand that blessed the little child,
Upon our foreheads lay.
286
SNOW-BOUND.
We hear no more the driver's horn,
No more the whip we fear,
This holy day that saw thee born
Was never half so dear.
The very oaks are greener clad,
The waters brighter smile ;
O never shone a day so glad
On sweet St. Helen's Isle.
We praise thee in our songs to-day,
To thee in prayer we call,
Make sAvift the feet and straight the \Vaj
Of freedom unto all.
Come once again, 0 blessed Lord !
Come walking on the sea !
And let the mainlands hea* the word
That sets the islands free !
SNOW-BOUND.
A WINTER IDYL.
TO THE MEMORY
OF
THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES,
THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
" As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the
'lark, so Good Spirits which be Angels of Light
are augmented not only by the Divine light of
the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire:
and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits,
so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same."
— COR. AGRIPPA, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v.
u Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow ; and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight ; the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heav
en
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's
feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates
sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm."
EMERSON.
THE sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon .
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling
race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east ; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,—
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's-grass for the
cows :
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn :
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows ;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent
"SNOW-BOUND." Page 286.
SNOW-BOUND.
287
rfr.warmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm,
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag wavering to and fro
Crossed and recrossed the winged snow :
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line
posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
So all night long the storm roared on :
The morning broke without a sun ;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature's geometric signs,
in starry flake, and pellicle,
All day the hoary meteor fell ;
And, when the second morning shone,
\Vo looked upon a world unknown,
( )ii nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below, —
A universe of sky and snow !
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes ; strange domes
and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden -wall, or belt of wood ;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile
showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road ;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked
hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof ;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
Tn its slant splendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa's leaning miracle.
A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted : " Boys, a path ! "
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy ?j
Our buskins on our feet wre drew ;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn
low,
To guard our necks and ears from
snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.
And, where the drift wTas deepest, made
A. tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal : we had read
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
Witii many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp's supernal powers.
We reached the barn with merry din,
And roused the prisoned brutes within.
The old horse thrust his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about ;
The cock his lusty greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led ;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked ;
The horned patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep,
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.
All day the gusty north-wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before ;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist
shone.
No church-bell lent its Christian tone
To the savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary- voiced elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind, ^
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone.
As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow -blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering
bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back, -
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back -stick ;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art
The ragged brush ; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the
gleam
I On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
| Until the old, rude-furnished room
\ Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom ;
288
SNOW-BOUND.
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing
free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed ;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme : " Under the
tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are 'making tea."
The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp
ravine
Took shadow, or the sombre green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where'er it fell
To make the coldness visible.
Shut in from all the world Avithout,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat ;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed,
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close et hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood.
What mattev how the night behaved ?
What matter how the north- wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy
glow.
O Time and Change ! — with hair as
gray
As was my sire s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much
gone
Of life and love, to still live on !
Ah, brother ! only 1 and thou
Are left of all that circle now, —
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and show-.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still ;
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the paths their feet have worn.
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the biaded corn ;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o'er,
But in tire sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor !
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will
trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we
must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-
trees !
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day .
Across the mournful marbles play !
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own !
We sped the time with stories old,
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,
Or stammered from our school-book lore
" The Chief of Gambia's golden shore.'
How often since, when all the land
Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand,
As if a far-blown trumpet stirred
The languorous, sin-sick air, I heard :
' ' Does not the voice of reason cry,
Claim, the first right which Nature gav<:,
From the red scourge of bondage fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave / "
Our father rode again his ride
On Memphremagog's wooded side ;
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper's hut and Indian camp ;
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease
Beneath St. Francois' hemlock -trees ;
Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone ;
Again he heard the violii* play
SNOW-BOUND.
289
Which led the village dance away,
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl.
Or, nearer home, our steps he led
Where Salisbury's level marshes spread
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee ;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths
along
The low green prairies of the sea.
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head,
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
The hake-broil on the drift-wood
coals ;
Tin- chowder- on the sand-beach made,
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,
With spoons of clam-shell from the
pot.
We heard the tales of witchcraft old,
And dream and sign and marvel told
To sleepy listeners as they lay
Stretched idly on the salted hay,
Adrift along the winding shores,
When favoring breezes deigned to blow
The square sail of the gundelow
And idle lay the useless oars.
Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Cochecho town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free,
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days, —
She made us welcome to her home ;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room ;
We stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book,
The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple country side ;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
The loon's weird laughter far away ;
We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
f>he climbed to shake the ripe nuts
down,
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay
The ducks' black squadron anchored
lay,
And heard the wild geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.
19
/ Then, haply, with a look more grave,
I And soberer tone, some tale she gave
I From painful Sewel's ancient tome,
i Beloved in every Quaker home,
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,
Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, —
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint ! —
Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,
And water-butt and bread-cask failed,
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued
His portly presence mad for food,
With dark hints muttered under breath
Of casting lots for life or death,
Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
To be himself the sacrifice.
Then, suddenly, as if to save
The good man from his living grave,
A ripple on the water grew,
A school of porpoise flashed in view.
" Take, eat," he said, " and be content;
These fishes in my stead are sent
By Him who gave the tangled ram
To spare the child of Abraham."
Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,
By many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning- warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries ;
Himself to Nature's heart so near
That all her voices in his ear
Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
Like Apollonius of old,
Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
Or Hermes who interpreted
What the sage cranes of Nilus said ;
A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began ;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
Whereof his fondly partial pride
The common features magnified,
As Surrey hills to mountains grew
In White of Selborne's loving view, —
He told how teal and loon he shot,
And how the eagle's eggs he got,
The feats on pond and river done,
The prodigies of rod and gun ;
Till, warming with the tales he told,
Forgotten was the outside cold,
The bitter wind unheeded blew,
290
SNOW-BOUND.
From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
The partridge drummed i' the wood, the
mink
Went fishing down the river-brink.
In fields with bean or clover gay,
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,
Peered from the doorway of his cell ;
The muskrat plied the mason's trade,
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid ;
And from the shagbark overhead
The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.
Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of
cheer
And voice in dreams I see and hear, —
The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love's unselfishness,
And welcome wheresoe'er she went,
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweet in
come
And womanly atmosphere of home, —
Called up her girlhood memories,
The huskings and the apple-bees,
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,
Weaving through all the poor details
And homespun warp of circumstance
A golden woof- thread of romance.
For well she kept her genial mood
And simple faith of maidenhood ;
Before her still a cloud-land lay,
The mirage loomed across her way ;
The morning dew, that dries so soon
With others, glistened at her noon ;
Through years of toil and soil and care,
From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
All unprofaned she held apart
The virgin fancies of the heart.
Be shame to him of woman born
Who hath for such but thought of scorn.
There, too, our elder sister plied
Her evening task the stand beside ;
A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a
fact.
Keeping with^many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice.
0 heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best
That Heaven itself could give thee, —
rest,
Rest from all bitter thoughts and tilings !
How many a poor one's blessing went
With thee beneath the low green
tent
Whose curtain never outward swings !
As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household bosom lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed within the fadeless gm^
And holy peace of Paradise.
0, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still ?
With me one little year ago : —
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain ;
And now, when summer south-winds
blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where'er I went
With dark eyes full of love's content.
The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills •
The air with sweetness ; all the hills
Stretch green to June's unclouded
sky ;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should btj
nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that
sings.
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old ?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I
hold ?
What chance can mar the pearl and
gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me ?
And while in life's late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows
grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are ;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand ?
SNOW-BOUND.
291
Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
The master of the district school
Held at the fire his favored place,
Its warm glow lit a laughing face
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce apr
peared •
The uncertain prophecy of beard.
He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat,
Sang songs, and told us what befalls
In classic Dartmouth's college halls.
Born the wild Northern hills among,
From whence his yeoman father wrung
By patient toil subsistence scant,
JSfot competence and yet not want,
He early gained the power to pay
His cheerful, self-reliant way ;
Could doff at ease his scholar's gown
To peddle wares from town to town ;
Or through the long vacation's reach
In lonely lowland districts teach,
Where all the droll experience found
At stranger hearths in boarding round,
The moonlit skater's keen delight,
The sleigh - drive through the frosty
night,
The rustic party, with its rough
Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff,
And whirling plate, and forfeits paid,
His winter task a pastime made.
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein
He tuned his merry violin,
Or played the athlete in the barn,
Or held the good dame's winding-yarn,
Or mirth-provoking versions told
Of classic legends rare and old,
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome
Had all the commonplace of home,
And little seemed at best the odds
Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods ;
Where Pindus-born Araxes took
The guise of any grist-mill brook,
And dread Olympus at his will
Became a huckleberry hill.
A careless boy that night he seemed ;
But at his desk he had the look
And air of one who wisely schemed,
And hostage from the future took
In trained thought and lore of book.
Large-brained, clear-eyed, — of such as
he
Shall Freedom's young apostles be,
Who, following in War's bloody trail,
Shall every lingering wrong assail ;
All chains from limb and sp'irit strike,
Uplift the black and white alike ;
| Scatter before their swift advance
The darkness and the ignorance,
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
Which nurtured Treason's monstrous
growth,
Made murder pastime, and the hell
Of prison-torture possible ;
The cruel lie of caste refute,
Old forms remould, and substitute
For Slavery's lash the freeman's will,
For blind routine, wise-handed skill ;
A school-house plant on every hill,
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
The quick wires of intelligence ;
Till North and South together brought
Shall own the same electric thought,
In peace a common flag salute,
And, side by side in labor's free
And unresentful rivalry,
Harvest the fields wherein they fought.
Another guest that winter night
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the
light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature passionate and bold,
Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
Its milder features dwarfed beside
Her unbent will's majestic pride.
She sat among us, at the best,
A not unfeared, half- welcome guest,
Rebuking with her cultured phrase
Our homeliness of words and ways.
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped
the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling
flash;
And under low brows, black with
night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous light ;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like degree
The vixen and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak or feint
The temper of Petruchio's Kate,
The raptures of Siena's saint.
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
Had facile power to form a fist ;
The warm, dark languish of her eyes
Was never safe from wrath's surprise.
292
SNOW-BOUND.
Brows saintly calm and lips devout
Knew every change of scowl and pout ;
And the sveet voice had notes more
high
And shrill for social battle-cry.
Since then what old cathedral town
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,
What convent-gate has held its lock
Against the challenge of her knock !
Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thor
oughfares,
Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs,
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
Or startling on her desert throne
The crazy Queen of Lebanon
W7ith claims fantastic as her own,
Her tireless feet have held their way ;
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray,
She watches under Eastern skies,
With hope each day renewed and
fresh,
. The Lord's quick coming in the flesh,
Whereof she dreams and prophesies !
Where'er her troubled path may be,
The Lord's sweet pity with her go \
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun,
Through what ancestral years has
run
The sorrow with the woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods, '
What set her feet in solitudes,
And held the love within her mute,
What mingled madness in the blood,
A life-long discord and annoy,
Water of tears with oil of joy,
And hid within the folded bud
Perversities of flower and fruit.
It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate,
To show what metes and bounds should
stand
Vpon the soul's debatable land,
And between choice and Providence
Divide the circle of events ;
But He who knows our frame is just,
Merciful and compassionate,
And full of sweet assurances
And hope for all the language is,
That He remembereth we are dust !
At last the great logs, crumbling low,
Bent out a dull and duller glow,
The bull's-eye watch that hung in view
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke :
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray,
And laid it tenderly away,
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and
health,
And love's contentment more than
wealth,
With simple wishes (not the weak,
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and
light.
Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost ;
And on us, through the unplastered
wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new ;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Next morn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and clear ;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider-mug, their
jokes
From lip to lip ; the younger folks
SNOW-BOUND.
293
Down tte loose snow-banks, wrestling,
rolled,
then toiled again the cavalcade
O'er windy hill, through clogged ra
vine,
And woodland paths that wound be
tween
Lovf drooping pine - boughs winter-
weighed.
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious- eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defence
Against the snow-ball's compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells'
sound ;
And, following where the teamsters
.led,
The wise old Doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to- say,
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call,
Was free to urge her claim on all,
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother's aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer's^ sight
The Quaker matron's inward light,
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity !
So days went on : a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from
last.
The Almanac we studied o'er,
Read and reread our little store,
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score ;
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry, (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had, )
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted
Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine.
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
Lo ! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread ;
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvek that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
And daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica's everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow !
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding bell and dirge of death ;
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail ;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat ;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow ;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more !
Clasp, Angel of the backward look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book ;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past ;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe ;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that slope to death,
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees
Shade off to mournful cypresses
With the white amaranths underneath.
Even while I look, I can but heed
The restless sands' incessant fall,
Importunate hours that hours succeed,
Each clamorous with its own sharp
need,
And duty keeping pace with all.
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids ;
I hear again the voice that bids
The dreamer leave his dream midway
For larger hopes and graver fears :
Life greatens in these later years,
The century's aloe flowers to-day !
Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its
strife,
294
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew ;
And dear and early friends — the few
Who yet remain — shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days ;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze !
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Or lilies floating in some pond,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond ;
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.
THE TENT ON THE BEACH,
AND OTHER POEMS.
I WOULD not sin, in this half-playful
strain, —
Too light perhaps for serious years,
though born
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain, —
Against the pure ideal which has
drawn
My feet to follow its far-shining gleam.
A simple plot is mine : legends and
runes
Of credulous days, old fancies that have
lain
Silent from boyhood taking voice again,
Warmed into life once more, even as the
tunes
That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,
Thawed into sound : — a winter fireside
dream
Of dawns and sunsets by the summer
sea,
Whose sands are traversed by a silent
throng
Of voyagers from that vaster mystery
Of which it is an emblem ; — and the
dear
Memory of one who might have tuned
my song
To sweeter music by her delicate ear.
1st wo., 1867.
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
WHEN heats as of a tropic clime
Burned all our inland valleys
through,
Three friends, the guests of summer
time,
Pitched their white tent where sea-
winds blew.
Behind them, marshes, seamed and
crossed
With narrow creeks, and flower-em
bossed,
Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose
leafy arms
Screened from the stormy East the
pleasant inland farms.
At full of tide their bolder shore
Of sun-bleached sand the waters
beat ;
At ebb, a smooth and glistening
floor
They touched with light, receding
feet.
Northward a green bluff broke the
chain
Of sand-hills ; southward stretched a
plain
Of salt grass, with a river winding
down,
Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples
of the town,
Whence sometimes, when the wind
was light
And dull the thunder of the beach,
They heard the bells of morn and
night •
Swing, miles away, their silver
speech.
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
295
Above low scarp and turf-grown
wall
They saw the fort-flag rise and fall ;
And, the first star to signal twilight's
hour,
The lamp-fire glimmer down from the
tall lighthouse tower.
They rested there, escaped awhile
From cares that wear the life away,
To eat the lotus of the Nile
And drink the poppies of Cathay, —
To fling their loads of custom down,
Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes
brown,
And in the sea waves drown the restless
pack
Of duties, claims, and needs that barked
upon their track.
One, with his beard scarce silvered,
bore
A ready credence in his looks,
A lettered magnate, lording o'er
An ever- widening realm of books.
In him brain - currents, near and
far,
Converged as in a Leyden jar ;
The old, dead authors thronged him
round about,
And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern
graves looked out.
He knew each living pundit well,
Could weigh the gifts of him or
her,
And well the market value tell
Of poet and philosopher.
But if he lost, the scenes behind,
Somewhat of reverence vague and
blind,
Finding the actors human at the best,
No readier lips than his the good he
saw confessed.
His boyhood fancies not outgrown,
He loved himself the singer's art ;
Tenderly, gently, by his own
He knew and judged an author's
heart.
No Rhadamanthine brow of doom
Bowed the dazed pedant from his
room ;
And bards, whose name is legion, if
denied,
Bore off alike intact their verses and
their pride.
Pleasant it was to roam about
The lettered world as he had done,
And see the lords of song without
Their singing robes and garlands
on.
With Wordsworth paddle Rydal
mere,
Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed
beer,
And with the ears of Rogers, at four
score,
Hear Garrick's buskined tread and
Walpole's wit once more.
And one there was, a dreamer born,
Who, with a mission to fulfil,
Had left the Muses' haunts to turn
The crank of an opinion -mill,
Making his rustic reed of song
A weapon in the war with wrong,
Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough
That beam-deep turned the soil for truth
to spring and grow.
Too quiet seemed the man to ride
The winged Hippogriff Reform ;
Was his a voice from side to side
To pierce the tumult of the storm ?
A silent, shy, peace-loving man,
He seemed no fiery partisan
To hold his way against the public
frown,
The ban of Church and State, the fierce
mob's hounding down.
For while he wrought with strenuous
will
The work his hands had found to
do,
He heard the fitful music still
Of winds that out of dream-land
blew.
The din about him could not drown
What the strange voices whispered
down ;
Along his task-field weird processions
swept,
The visionary pomp of stately phantoms
stepped.
The common air was thick with
dreams, —
He told them to the toiling crowd ;
Such music as the woods and streamy
Sang in his ear he sang aloud ;
In still, shut bays, on windy capes,
He heard the call of beckoning shapes,
296
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
And, as the gray old shadows promptec
him,
To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped
their legends grim.
He rested now his weary hands,
And lightly moralized and laughed,
As, tracing on the shifting sands
A burlesque of his paper-craft,
He saw the careless waves o'emm
His words, as time before had done,
Each day's tide-water washing clean
away,
Like letters from the sand, the work of
yesterday.
And one, whose Arab face was tanned
By tropic sun and boreal frost,
So travelled there was scarce a land
Or people left him to exhaust,
In idling mood had from him hurled
The poor squeezed orange of the
world,
And in the tent-shade, as beneath a
palm,
fcmoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in
Oriental calm.
The very waves that washed the
sand
Below him, he had seen before
Whitening the Scandinavian strand
And sultry Mauritanian shore.
From ice-rimmed isles, from summer
seas
Palm-fringed, they bore him messages ;
He heard the plaintive Nubian songs
again,
(Vnd mule-bells tinkling down the moun
tain-paths of Spain.
His memory round the ransacked
earth
On Puck's long girdle slid at ease ;
And, instant, to the valley's girth
Of mountains, spice .isles of the
seas,
Faith flowered in minster stones,
Art's guess
At truth arid beauty, found access ;
Vet loved the while, that free cosmopo
lite,
Old friends, old ways, and kept his boy
hood's dreams in sight.
Untouched as yet by wealth and pride,
That virgin innocence of beach :
No shingly monster, hundred-eyed,
Stared its gray sand-birds out of
reach ;
Unhoused, save where, at intervals,
The white tents showed their canvas
walls,
Where brief sojourners, in the cool,
soft air,
Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and
year-long care.
Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand
A one-horse wagon slowly crawled,
Deep laden with a youthful band,
Whose look some homestead old
recalled ;
Brother perchance, and sisters twain,
And one whose blue eyes told, more
plain
Than the free language of her rosy lip,
Of the still dearer claim of love's rela
tionship.
With cheeks of russet-orchard tint,
The light laugh of their native rills,
The perfume of their garden's mint,
The breezy freedom of the hills,
They bore, in unrestrained delight,
The motto of the Garter's knight,
Careless as if from every gazing thing
Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by
his ring.
The clanging sea-fowl came and went,
The hunter's gun in the marshes
rang ;
At nightfall from a neighboring tent
A flute- voiced woman sweetly sang.
Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in-
hand,
Young girls went tripping down the
sand ;
And youths and maidens, sitting in the
moon,
Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from
which we wake too soon.
At times their fishing-lines they plied,
With an old Triton at the oar,
Salt as the sea-wind, tough and dried
As a lean cusk from Labrador.
Strange tales he told of wreck and
storm, —
Had seen the sea-snake's awful form,
And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle
complain,
Speak him off shore, and beg a passage
to old Spain 1
THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH.
297
And there, on breezy morns, they saw
The fishing- schooners outward run,
Their 15w-beiit sails in tack and flaw
Turned white or dark to shade and
sun.
Sometimes, in calms of closing day,
They watched the spectral mirage
Saw low, far islands looming tall and
nigh,
And ships, with upturned keels, sail like
a sea the sky.
Sometimes a cloud, with thunder
black,
Stooped low upon the darkening
main,
Piercing the waves along its track
With the slant javelins of rain.
And when west-wind and sunshine
warm
Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm,
They saw the prism y hues in thin spray
showers
Where the green buds of waves burst
into white froth flowers.
And when along the line of shore
The mists crept upward chill and
damp,
Stretched, careless, on their sandy
floor
Beneath the flaring lantern lamp,
They talked of all things old and
new,
Eead, slept, and dreamed as idlers
do ;
And in the unquestioned freedom of the
tent,
Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful
ease unbent.
Once, when the sunset splendors died,
And, trampling up the sloping sand,
In lines outreaching far and wide,
The white-maned billows swept to
land,
Dim seen across the gathering shade,
A vast and ghostly cavalcade,
They sat around their lighted kerosene,
Hearing the deep bass roar their every
pause between.
Then, urged thereto, the Editor
Within his full portfolio dipped,
Feigning excuse while searching for
(With secret pride) his manuscript.
His pale face flushed from eye to
beard,
With nervous cough his throat he
cleared,
And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayed
The anxious fondness of an author's
heart, he read :
THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH,
RIVERMOUTH Rocks are fair to see,
By dawn or sunset shone across,
When the ebb of the sea has left them
free,
To dry their fringes of gold-green
moss :
For there the river comes winding down
From salt sea-meadows and uplands
brown,
And waves on the outer rocks afoam
Shout to its waters, * ' Welcome home ! "
And fair are the sunny isles in view
East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
And Agamenticus lifts its blue
Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er ;
And southerly, when the tide is down,
'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills
brown,
The beach-birds dance and the gray
gulls wheel
Over a floor of burnished steel.
Once, in the old Colonial days,
Two hundred years ago and more,
A boat sailed down through the wind
ing ways
Of Hampton River to that low shore,
Full of a goodly company
Sailing out on the summer sea,
Veering to catch the land-breeze light,
With the Boar to left and the Rocks to
right.
In Hampton meadows, where mowers
laid
Their scythes to the swaths of salted
grass,
"Ah, well-a-day ! our hay must be
made ! "
A young man sighed, who saw them
pass.
Loud laughed his fellows to see him
stand
Whetting his scythe Avith a listless hand,
Hearing a voice in a far-off song,
Watching a white hand beckoning long
298
THE TENT OX THE BEACH.
"Fie on the witch!" cried a merry
girl,
As they rounded the point where
Goody Cole
Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl,
A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul.
"Oho!" she muttered, "ye 're brave
to-day !
But I hear the little waves laugh and
say,
'The broth will be cold that waits at
home ;
For it's one to go, but another to
come ! ' "
"She's cursed," said the skipper;
"speak her fair :
I 'm scary always to see her shake
Her wicked head, with its wild gray
hair,
And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a
snake."
But merrily still, with laugh and shout,
From Hampton River the boat sailed
out,
Till the huts and the flakes on Star
seemed nigh,
And they lost the scent of the pines of
Rye.
They dropped their lines in the lazy
tide,
Drawing up haddock and mottled
cod ;
They saw not the Shadow that walked
beside,
They heard not the feet with silence
shod.
But thicker and thicker a hot mist
grew,
Shot by the lightnings through and
through ;
And muffled growls, like the growl of a
beast,
Ran along the sky from west to east.
Then the skipper looked from the dark
ening sea
Up to the dimmed and wading sun ;
But he spake like a brave man cheer-
ity,
" Yet there is time for our homeward
run."
Veering and tacking, they backward
wore ;
And just as a breath from the woods
ashore
Blew out to whisper of danger past,
The wrath of the storm came down at
last!
The skipper hauled at the heavy sail :
" God be our help ! " he only cried,
As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a
nail,
Smote the boat on its starboard side.
The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone
Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown,
Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's
glare,
The strife and torment of sea and air.
Goody Cole looked out from her door :
The Isles of Shoals were drowned and
gone,
sh
Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar
Toss the foam from tusks of stone.
She clasped her hands with a grip of
pain,
The tear on her cheek was not of rain :
"They are lost," she muttered, "boat
and crew !
Lord, forgive me ! my words were
true ! "
Suddenly seaward swept the squall ;
The low sun smote through cloudy
rack ;
The Shoals stood clear in the light, and
all
The trend of the coast lay hard and
black.
But far and wide as eye could reach,
No life was seen upon wave or beach ;
The boat that went out at morning
never
Sailed back again into Hampton River.
0 mower, lean on thy bended snath,
Look from the meadows green and
low :
The wind of the sea is a waft of death,
The waves are singing a song of woe !
By silent river, by moaning sea,
Long and vain shall thy watching be :
Never again shall the sweet voice call,
Never the white hand rise and fall !
O Riverrnouth Rocks, how sad a sight
Ye saw in the light of breaking
day !
Dead faces looking up cold and white
From sand and sea-weed where they
lay.
THE GUAVE BY THE LAKE.
296
The mad old witch-wife wailed and j
wept,
And cursed the tide as it backward
crept :
"Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-
snake !
Leave your dead for the hearts that
break ! "
Solemn it was in that old day
In Hampton town and its log-built
church,
Where side by side the coffins lay
And the mourners stood in aisle and
porch.'
In the singing-seats young eyes were
dim,
The voices faltered that raised the
hymn,
And Father Dalton, grave and stern,
Sobbed through his prayer and wept in
turn.
But his ancient colleague did not pray,
Because of his sin at fourscore years :
He stood apart, with the iron-gray
Of his strong brows knitted to hide
his tears.
And a wretched woman, holding her
breath
In the awful presence of sin and death,
Cowered and shrank, while her neigh
bors thronged
To look on the dead her shame had
wronged.
Apart with them, like them forbid,
Old Goody Cole looked drearily
round,
A.S, two by two, with their faces hid,
The mourners walked to the burying-
ground,
She let the staff from her clasped hands
fall:
" Lord, forgive us ! we 're sinners all ! "
And the voice of the old man answered
her :
"Amen ! " said Father Bachiler.
So, as I sat upon Appledore
In the calm of a closing summer day,
Vnd the broken lines of Hampton shore
In purple mist of cloudland lay,
i'he Bivermouth Rocks their story told ;
And waves aglow with sunset gold,
Rising and breaking in steady chime,
Beat the rhythm and kept the time.
And the sunset paled, and warmed once
more
With a softer, tenderer after-glow ;
In the east was moon-rise, with boati
off-shore
And sails in the distance drifting
slow.
The beacon glimmered from Porta-
mouth bar,
The White Isle kindled its great red
star ;
And life and death in my old-time lay
Mingled in peace like the night and
day !
"Well!" said the Man of Books,
"your story
Is really not ill told in verse.
As the Celt said of purgatory,
One might go farther and fare worse.'1
The Reader smiled ; and once again
With steadier voice took up his
strain,
While the fair singer from the neighbor
ing tent
Drew near, and at his side a graceful
listener bent.
THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE.
WHERE the Great Lake's sunny smiles
Dimple round its hundred isles,
And the mountain's granite ledge
Cleaves the water like a wedge,
Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,
Rest the giant's mighty bones.
Close beside, in shade and gleam,
Laughs and ripples Melvin stream ;
Melvin water, mountain-born,
All fair flowers its banks adorn ;
All the woodland's voices meet,
Mingling with its murmurs sweet.
Over lowlands forest-grown,
Over waters island-strown,
Over silver-sanded beach,
Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,
Melvin stream and burial-heap,
Watch and ward the mountains keep.
Who that Titan cromlech fills ?
Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills ?
Knight who on the birchen tree
Carved his savage heraldry ?
300
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
Priest o1 the pine-\vood temples dim,
Prophet, sage, or wizard grim ?
Rugged type of primal man,
Grim utilitarian,
Loving woods for hunt and prowl,
Lake and hill for fish and fowl,
As the brown bear blind and dull
To the grand and beautiful :
Not for him the lesson drawn
From the mountains smit with dawn.
Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of Mayt
Sunset's purple bloom of day, —
Took his life no hue from thence,
Poor amid such affluence ?
Haply unto hill and tree
All too near akin was he :
Unto him who stands afar
Nature's marvels greatest are ;
Who the mountain purple seeks
Must not climb the higher peaks.
Yet who knows in winter tramp,
Or the midnight of the camp,
What revealings faint and far,
Stealing down from moon and star,
Kindled in that human clod
Thought of destiny and God ?
Stateliest forest patriarch,
Grand in robes of skin and bark,
What sepulchral mysteries,
What weird funeral -rites, were his ?
What sharp wail, what drear lament,
Back scared wolf and eagle sent ?
Now, whate'er he may have been,
Low he lies as other men ;
On his mound the partridge drums,
There the noisy blue-jay comes ;
Rank nor name nor pomp has he
In the grave's democracy.
Part thy blue lips, Northern lake !
Moss-grown rocks, your silence break !
Tell the tale, thou ancient tree !
Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee !
Speak, and tell us how and when
Lived and died this king of men !
Wordless moans the ancient pine ;
Lake and mountain give no sign ;
Vain to trace this ring of stones ;
Vain the search of crumbling bones :
Deepest of all mysteries,
And the saddest, silence is.
Nameless, noteless, clay with clay
Mingles slowly day by day ;
But somewhere, for good or ill,
That dark soul is living still ;
Somewhere yet that atom's force
Moves the light-poised universe.
Strange that on his burial-sod
Harebells bloom, and golden-rod.
While the soul's dark horoscope
Holds no starry sign of hope !
Is the Unseen with sight at odds f
Nature's pity more than God's ?
Thus I mused by Melvin's side,
While the summer eventide
Made the woods and inland sea
And the mountains mystery ;
And the hush of earth and air
Seemed the pause before a prayer, —
Prayer for him, for all who rest,
Mother Earth, upon thy breast, —
Lapped on Christian turf, or hid
In rock-cave or pyramid :
All who sleep, as all who live,
Well may need the prayer, " Forgive 1"
Desert-smothered caravan,
Knee-deep dust that once was man,
Battle-trenches ghastly piled,
Ocean-floors with white bones tiled,
Crowded tomb and mounded sod,
Dumbly crave that prayer to God.
0 the generations old
Over whom no church-bells tolled,
Christless, lifting up blind eyes
To the silence of the skies !
For the innumerable dead
Is my soul disquieted.
Where be now these silent hosts ?
Where the camping-ground of ghosts ?
Where the spectral conscripts led
To the white tents of the dead ?
What strange shore or chartless sep,
Holds the awful mystery ?
Then the warm sky stooped to make
3ouble sunset in the lake ;
While above I saw with it,
lange on range, the mountains lit ;
And the calm and splendor stole
e an answer to my soul.
iear'st thou, 0 of little faith,
What to thee the mountain Haith,
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
301
What is whispered by the trees ? —
" Cast on God thy care for these ;
Trust him, if thy sight be dim :
Doubt for them is doubt of Him.
" Blind must be their close-shut eyes
Where like night the sunshine lies,
Fiery-linked the self-forged chain
Binding ever sin to pain,
Strong their prison-house of will,
But without He waiteth still.
" Not with hatred's undertow
Doth the Love Eternal flow ;
Every chain that spirits wear
Crumbles in the breath of prayer ;
And the penitent's desire
Opens every gate of fire.
" Still Thy love, 0 Christ arisen,
Yearns to reach these souls in prison !
Through all depths of sin and loss
Drops the plummet of Thy cross !
Never yet abyss was found
Deeper than that cross could sound I"
Therefore well may Nature keep
Equal faith with all who sleep,
Set her watch of hills around
Christian grave and heathen mound,
And to cairn and kirkyard send
Summer's flowery dividend.
Keep, 0 pleasant Melvin stream,
Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam !
On the Indian's grassy tomb
Swing, 0 flowers, your bells of bloom !
Deep below, as high above,
Sweeps the circle of God's love.
He paused and questioned with his
eye
The hearers' verdict on his song.
A low voice asked : Is 't well to pry
Into the secrets which belong
Only to God ?— The life to be
Is still the unguessed mystery :
Unsealed, unpierced the cloudy
remain,
We beat with dream and wish
soundless doors in vain.
11s I
From our free heritage of will,
The bitter springs of pain and ill
Flow only in all worlds. The perfect
day
Of God is shadowless, and love is love
alway."
" I know," she said, "the letter kills \
That on our arid fields of strife
And heat of clashing texts distils
The dew of spirit and of life.
But, searching still the written Word,
I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord,
A voucher for the hope I also feel
That sin can give no wound beyond
love's power to heal."
" Pray," said the Man of Books,
"give o'er
A theme too vast for time and place.
Go on, Sir Poet, ride once more
Your hobby at his old free pace.
But let him keep, with step discreet,
The solid earth beneath his feet.
In the great mystery which around us
lies,
The wisest is a fool, the fool Heaven-
helped is wise."
The Traveller said : "If songs have
creeds,
Their choice of them let singers
make ;
But Art no other sanction needs
Than beauty for its own fair sake.
It grinds not in the mill of use,
Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse ;
It makes the flexile laws it deigns to
own,
And gives its atmosphere its color and
its tone.
"Confess, old friend, your austere
school
Has left your fancy little chance ;
You square to reason's rigid rule
The flowing outlines of romance.
With conscience keen from exercise,
And chronic fear of compromise,
the
" But faith beyond our sight may go."
He said : " The gracious Fatherhood
Can only know above, below,
Eternal purposes of good.
| You check the free play of your rhymes,
to clap
A moral underneath, and spring it like
a trap."
The sweet voice answered : " Better so
Than bolder flights that know no
check ;
302
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
Better to use the bit, than throw
The reins all loose on fancy's neck.
The liberal range of Art should be
The breadth of Christian liberty,
Restrained alone by challenge and alarm
Where its charmed footsteps tread the
border land of harm.
" Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives
The eternal epic of the man.
He wisest is who only gives,
True to himself, the best he can ;
Who, drifting in the winds of praise,
The inward monitor obeys ;
And, with the boldness that, confesses fear,
Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his
conscience steer.
" Thanksforthe fitting word he speaks,
Nor less for doubtful word unspoken ;
For the false model that he breaks,
As for the moulded grace unbroken ;
For what is missed and what remains,
For losses which are truest gains,
For reverence conscious of the Eternal
eye,
And truth too fair to need the garnish
of a lie. ''
Laughing, the Critic bowed. " I
yield
The point without another word;
Who ever ytt a case appealed
Where beauty's judgment had been
heard ?
And you, my good friend, owe to me
Your warmest thanks for such a plea,
A.S true withal as sweet. For my offence
Of cavil, let her words be ample recom
pense."
Across the se*\ one lighthouse star,
With crimson ray that came and
went,
Revolving on its tower afar,
Looked through the doorway of the
tent.
While outward, over sand-slopes wet,
The lamp flashed down its yellow jet
On the long wash of waves, with red and
green
Tangles of weltering weed through the
white foam-wreaths seen.
" ' Sing while we may, — another day
May bring enough of sorrow ' ; —
thus
Our Traveller in his own sweet lav,
HisCrimean camp-&ong, hints to us,'1
The lady said. " So let it be ;
Sing us a song," exciaimed all three.
She smiled : " 1 can but marvel at your
choice
To hear our poet's words through my
poor borrowel voice."
Her window opens to the bay,
On glistening light or misty gray.
And there at dawn and set oi day
In prayer she kneels :
"Dear Lord!" she saith, "to many a
home
From wind and wave the wanderers
come ;
I only see the tossing foam
Of stranger keels.
" Blown out and in by summer gales,
The stately ships, with crowded sails,
And sailors leaning o'er their rails,
Before me glide ;
They come, they go, but nevermore,
Spice-laden from the Indian shore,
1 see his swift-winged Isidore
The waves divide.
" 0 Thou ! with whom the night is day
And one the near and far away,
Look out on yon gray waste, and say
Where lingers he.
Alive, perchance, on some lone beach
Or thirsty isle beyond the reach
Of man, he hears the mocking speech.
Of wind and sea.
"0 dread and cruel deep, reveal
The secret which thy waves conceal,
And, ye wild sea-bi.ds, hither wheel
And tell your tale.
Let winds that tossed his raven hair
A message from my lost one bear, —
Some thought of me, a last fond prayer
Or dying wail !
"Come, with your dreariest truth shut
out
The fears that haunt me round about ;
0 God ! I cannot bear this doubt
That stifles breath.
The worst is better than the dread ;
Give me but leave to mourn my dead
Asleep in trust and hope, instead
Of life in death ! "
THE BROTHER OF MERCY.
SOS
It might have been the evening breeze
That whispered in the garden trees,
It might have been the sound of seas
That rose and fell ;
But, with her heart, if not her ear,
The old loved voice she seemed to hear :
" I wait to meet thee : be of cheer,
For all is well ! "
The sweet voice into silence went,
A silence which was almost pain
As through it rolled the long lament,
The cadence of the mournful main.
Glancing his written pages o'er,
The Reader tried his part once more ;
Leaving the land of hackmatack and
pine
For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and
with vine.
THE BROTHER OF MERCY.
PTERO LTJCA, known of all the town
As the gray porter by the Pitti wall
Where the noon shadows of the gardens
fall,
Sick and in dolor, waited to lay down
His last sad burden, and beside his mat
The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat.
Unseen, in square and blossoming
garden drifted,
Soft siri.-spt lights through green Val
d' Arno sifted ;
(Jnheard, below the living shuttles
shifted
Backward and forth, and wove, in love
or strife,
In mirth or pain, the mottled web of
life:
But when at last came upward from the
street
Tinkle of bell and tread of measured feet,
The sick man &tarted, strove to rise in
vain,
Sinking back heavily with a moan of
pain.
And the monk said, "'Tis but the i
Brotherhood
Of Mercy going on some errand good :
Their black masks by the palace-wall I j
see."
Piero answered faintly, " Woe is me !
This day for the first time in forty
years
In vain the bell hath sounded in my
ears,
Calling me with my brethren of the
mask,
Beggar and prince alike, to some new
task
Of love or pity, — haply from the street
To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or,
with feet
Hushed to the quickened ear and feve
ish brain,
To tread the crowded lazaretto's floors,
Down the long twilight of the corridors,
Midst tossing arms and faces full of
pain.
I loved the work : it was its own reward.
I never counted on it to offset
My sins, which are many, or make less
my debt
To the free grace and mercy of our Lord ;
But somehow, father, it has come to be
In these long years so much a part of me,
I should not know myself, if lacking
it,
But with the work the worker too would
die,
And in my place some other self would
sit
Joyful or sad, — what matters, if not I ?
And now all's over. Woe is me ! " —
" My son,"
The monk said soothingly, "thy work
is done ;
And no more as a servant, but the guest
Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest.
No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the lost,
Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt
sit down
Clad in white robes, and wear a golden
crown
Forever and forever." — Piero tossed
On his sick-pillow : " Miserable me !
I am too poor for such grand company ;
The crown would be too heavy for this
gray
Old head ; and God forgive me if I say
It would be hard to sit there night and
day,
Like an image in the Tribune, doing
naught
With these hard hands, that all my life
have wrought,
Not for bread only, but for pity's sake.
I 'm dull at prayers : I could not keep
awake,
Counting my beads. Mine 's but a crazy
head,
304
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
Scarce worth the saving, if all else be
dead.
And if one goes to heaven without a
heart,
God knows he leaves behind his better
part.
I love my fellow-men : the worst I know
I would do good to. "Will death change
me so
That I shall sit among the lazy saints,
Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints
Of souls that suffer ? Why, I never yet
Left a poor dog in the strada hard beset,
Or ass o'erladen ! Must I rate man less
Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness ?
Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought
be sin !)
The world of pain were better, if therein
One's heart might still be human, and
desires
Of natural pity drop upon its fires
Some cooling tears."
Thereat the pale monk crossed
His brow, and, muttering, ' ' Madman !
thou art lost ! "
Took up his pyx and fled ; and, left alone,
The sick man closed his eyes v/ith a
great groan
That sank into a prayer, " Thy will be
done ! "
Then was he made aware, by soul or
ear,
Of somewhat pure and holy bending o'er
him,
And of a voice like that of her who bore
him,
Tender and most compassionate : "Never
fear !
For heaven is love, as God himself is
love ;
Thy work below shall be thy work
above.''
And when he looked, lo ! in the stern
monk's place
He saw the shining of an angel's face !
The Traveller broke the pause. " I've
seen
The Brothers down the long street
steal,
Black, silent, masked, the crowd be
tween,
And felt to doff my hat and kneel
With heart, if not with knee, in prayer,
For blessings on their pious care."
The Eeader wiped his glasses : ' ' Friends
of mine,
We'll try our home-brewed next, in
stead of foreign wine."
THE CHANGELING.
FOR the fairest maid in Hampton1
They needed not to search,
Who saw young Anna Favor
Come walking into church, —
Or bringing from the meadows,
At set of harvest-day,
The frolic of the blackbirds,
The sweetness of the hay.
Now the weariest of all mothers,
The saddest two-years bride,
She scowls in the face of her husband,
And spurns her child aside.
" Hake out the red coals, goodman, —
For there the child shall lie,
Till the black witch comes to fetch her
And both up chimney fly.
" It 's never my own little daughter,
It 's never my own," she said ;
"The witches have stolen my Anna,
And left me an imp instead.
" 0, fair and sweet was my baby,
Blue eyes, and hair of gold ;
But this is ugly and wrinkled,
Cross, and cunning, and old.
" I hate the touch of her fingers,
I hate the feel of her skin ;
It's not the milk from my bosom,
But my blood, that she sucks in.
" My face grows sharp with the torment1
Look ! my arms are skin and bone ! —
Rake open the red coals, goodman,
And the witch shall have her own.
' ' She '11 come when she hears it crying,
In the shape of an owl or bat,
And she '11 bring us our darling Anna
In place of her screeching brat.''
Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton,
Laid his hand upon her head :
" Thy sorrow is great, O woman !
I sorrow with thee," he said.
" And the cloud of her soul was lifted." Page 305.
THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH.
305
" The paths to trouble are many,
And never but one sure way
Leads out to the light beyond it :
My poor wife, let us pray."
Then he said to the great All-Father,
" Thy daughter is weak and blind ;
Let her sight come back, and clothe her
Once more in her right mind.
" Lead her out of this evil shadow,
Out of these fancies wild ;
Let the holy love of the mother
Turn again to her child.
" Make her lips like the lips of Mary
Kissing her blessed Son ;
Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus,
Rest on her little one.
" Comfort the soul of thy handmaid,
Open her prison-door,
And thine shall be all the glory
And praise forevermore. "
Then into the face of its mother
The baby looked up and smiled ;
And the cloud of her soul was lifted,
And she knew her little child.
A beam of the slant west sunshine
Made the wan face almost fair,
Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder,
And the rings of pale gold hair.
She kissed it on lip and forehead,
She kissed it on cheek and chin,
And she bared her snow-white bosom
To the lips so pale and thin.
0, fair on her bridal morning
Was the maid who blushed and smiled,
But fairer to Ezra Dalton
Looked the mother of his child.
With more than a lover's fondness
He stooped to her worn young face,
And the nursing child arid the mother
He folded in one embrace.
" Blessed be God ! " he murmured.
" Blessed be God ! " she said ;
* For I see, who once was blinded, — •
I live, who once was dead.
" Now mount and ride, my goodman,
As thou lovest thy own soul !
20
Woe 's me, if my wicked fancies
Be the death of Goody Cole ! '
His horse he saddled and bridled,
And into the night rode he, —
Now through the great black woodland.
Now by the white-beached sea.
He rode through the silent clearings,
He came to the ferry wide,
And thrice he called to the boatman
Asleep on the other side.
He set his horse to the river,
He swam to Newbury town,
And he called up Justice Sewall
In his nightcap and his gown
And the grave and worshipful justice
(Upon whose soul be peace !)
Set his name to the jailer's warrant
For Goodwife Cole's release.
Then through the night the hoof-beats
Went sounding like a flail ;
And Goody Cole at cockcrow
Came forth from Ipswich jail.
" Here is a rhyme : — I hardly dare
To venture on its theme worn out $
What seems so sweet by Doon and
Ayr
Sounds simply silly hereabout ;
And pipes by lips Arcadian blown
Are only tin horns at our own.
Yet still the muse of pastoral walks
with us,
While Hosea Biglow sings, our new
Theocritus."
THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH.
IN sky and wave the white clouds swam,
And the blue hills of Nottingham
Through gaps of leafy green
Across the lake were seen, —
When, in the shadow of the ash
That dreams its dream in Attitash,
In the warm summer weather,
Two maidens sat together.
They sat and watched in idle mood
The gleam and shade of lake and
wood, —
306
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
The beach the keen light smote,
The white sail of a boat, —
Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying,
In sweetness, not in music, dying, —
Hardback, and virgin's- bower,
Arid white-spiked clethra-liower.
With careless ears they heard the plash
And breezy wash of Attitash,
The wood-bird's plaintive cry,
The locust's sharp reply.
And teased the while, with playful hand,
The shaggy dog of Newfoundland,
Whose uncouth frolic spilled
Their baskets berry-filled.
Then one, the beauty of whose eyes
Was evermore a great surprise,
Tossed back her queenly head,
And, lightly laughing, said, —
" No bridegroom's hand be mine to hold
That is not lined with yellow gold ;
I tread no cottage-floor ;
I own no lover poor.
" My love must come on silken wings,
With bridal lights of diamond rings, —
Not foul with kitchen smirch,
With tallow-dip for torch."
The other, on whose modest head
Was lesser dower of beauty shed,
With look for home-hearths meet,
And voice exceeding sweet,
Answered, — •'' We will not rivals be ;
Take thou the gold, leave love to me ;
Mine be the cottage small,
And thine the rich man's hall.
" I know, indeed, that wealth is good ;
But lowly roof and simple food,
With love that hath no doubt,
Ate more than gold without."
Hard by a farmer hale and young
His cradle in the rye-field swung,
Tracking the yellow plain
With windrows of ripe grain.
And still, whene'er he paused to whet
His scythe, the sidelong glance he met
Of large dark eyes, where strove
False pride and secret love.
Be strong, young mower of the grain ;
That love shall overmatch uibdain,
Its instincts soon or late '
The heart shall vindicate.
In blouse of gray, with fishing-rod,
Half screened by leaves, a stranger trod
The margin of the pond,
Watching the group beyond.
The supreme hours unnoted come •,
Unfelt the turning tides of doom ;
And so the maids laughed on,
Nor dreamed what Fate had done, —
Nor knew the step was Destiny's
That rustled in the birchen trees,
As, with their lives forecast,
Fisher and mower passed.
Erelong by lake and rivulet side
The summer roses paled and died,
And Autumn's fingers shed
The maple's leaves of red.
Through the long gold-hazed afternoon,
Alone, but for the diving loon,
The partridge in the brake,
The black duck on the lake,
Beneath the shadow of the ash
Sat man and maid by Attitash ;
And earth and air made room
For human hearts to bloom.
Soft spread the carpets of the sod,
And scarlet-oak and golden-rod
With blushes and with smiles
Lit up the forest aisles.
The mellow light the lake aslant,
The pebbled margin's ripple-chant
Attempered and low-toned,
The tender mystery owned.
And through the dream the lovers
dreamed
Sweet sounds stole in and soft lights
streamed ;
The sunshine seemed to bless,
The air was a caress.
Not she who lightly laughed is there,
With scornful toss of midnight hair,
Her dark, disdainful eyes,
And proud lip worldly-wise.
KALLUNDBORG CHURCH.
307
Her haughty vow is still unsaid,
But all she dreamed and coveted
Wears, half to her surprise,
The youthful farmer's guise !
With more than all her old-time pride
She walks the rye-field at his side,
Careless of cot or hall,
Since love transfigures all.
Rich beyond dreams, the vantage-
ground
Of life is gained ; her hands have found
The talisman of old
That changes all to gold.
While she who could for love dispense
With all its glittering accidents,
And trust her heart alone,
Finds love and gold her own.
What wealth can buy or art can build
Awaits her ; but her cup is filled
Even now unto the brim ;
Her world is love and him !
The while he heard, the Book -man
drew
A length of make-believing face,
With smothered mischief laughing
through :
"Why, you shall sit in Ramsay's
place,
And, with his Gentle Shepherd, keep
On Yankee hills immortal sheep,
While lovelorn swains and maids the
seas beyond
Hold dreamy tryst around your huckle
berry-pond."
The Traveller laughed; "Sir Gala
had
Singing of love the Trouvere's lay !
How should he know the blindfold
lad
From one of Vulcan's forge-boys ? "
— " Nay,
He better sees who stands outside
Than they who in procession ride,"
The Reader answered : " selectmen and
squire
Miss, while they make, the show that
wayside folks admire.
" Here is a wild tale of the North,
Our travelled friend will own as
Fit for a Norland Christmas hearth
And lips of Christian Andersen.
They tell it in the valleys green
Of the fair island he has seen,
Low lying off the pleasant Swedish
shore,
Washed by the Baltic Sea, and watched
by Elsinore."
KALLUNDBORG CHURCH.
"Tie stille, barn min !
Imorgen kominer Fin,
Fa'er din,
Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares bine og hjerte at legg
med ! "
Zealand Rhyme.
BUILD at Kallundborg by the sea
A church as stately as church may be,
And there shalt thou wed my daughter
fair,"
Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern
Snare.
And the Baron laughed. But Esbern
said,
"Though 1 lose my soul, I will Helva
wed ! "
And off' he strode, in his pride of will,
To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill.
" Build, 0 Troll, a church for me
At Kallundborg by the mighty sea ;
Build it stately, and build it fair,
Build it quickly," said Esbern Snam
But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is
\v rough t
By Trolls of the Hills, 0 man, for
naught.
What wilt thou give for thy church so
fair ? "
"Set thy own price," quoth Esbern
Snare.
" When Kallundborg church is builded
well,
Thou must the name of its builder tell,
Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my
boon."
" Build," said Esbern, " and build it
soon."
By night and by day the Troll wrought
Ion ;
He hewed the timbers, he piled the
j stone ;
308
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
But day by day, as the wnlls rose fair,
Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare.
He listened by night, he watched by day,
He sought and thought, but he dared
not pray ;
In vain he called on the Elle-maids shy,
And the Neck and the Nis gave no
reply.
Of his evil bargain far and wide
A rumor ran through the country-side ;
And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair,
Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare.
And now the church was wellnigh done ;
One pillar it lacked, and one alone ;
And the grim Troll muttered, " Fool
thou art !
To-morrow gives me thy eyss and
heart ! "
By Kallundborg in black despair,
Through wood and meadow, walked
Esbern Snare,
Till, worn and weary, the strong man
sank
Under the birches on Ulshoi bank.
At his last day's work he heard the
Troll
Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole ;
Before him the church stood large and
fair :
" I have builded uy tomb," said Esbern
Snare.
And he closed his eyes the sight to hide,
When he heard a light step at his side :
" 0 Esbern Snare ! " a sweet voice said,
" Would I might die now in thy stead ! "
With a grasp by love and by fear made
strong,
He held her fast, and he held her long ;
With the beating heart of a bird afeard,
She hid her face in his flame-red beard.
"0 love ! " he cried, "let me look to
day
In thine eyes ere mine are plucked away ;
Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy
heart
Ere mine by the Troll is torn apart !
" I sinned, 0 Helva, for love of thee \
Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me ! "
But fast as she prayed, and faster still,
Hammered the Troll in Ulshol hill.
He knew, as he wrought, that a loving
heart
Was somehow bafliing his evil art ;
For more than spell of Elf or Troll
Is a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul.
And Esbern listened, and caught the
sound
Of a Troll-wife singing underground :
"To-morrow comes Fine, father thine :
Lie still and hush thee, baby mine !
" Lie still, my darling ! next sunrise
Thou 'It play with Esbern Snare's heart
and eyes !"
"Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that
your game ?
Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his
name ! "
The Troll he heard him, and hurried on
To Kallundborg church with the lack
ing stone.
" Too late, Gaffer Fine ! " cried Esbern
Snare ;
And Troll and pillar vanished in air !
That night the harvesters heard the
sound
Of a woman sobbing underground,
And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud
with blame
Of the careless singer who told his
name.
Of the Troll of the Church they sing the
rune
By the Northern Sea in the harvest
moon ;
And the fishers of Zealand hear him
still
Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill.
And seaward over its groves of birch
Still looks the tower of Kallundborg
church,
Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair,
Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern
Snare !
" What," asked the Traveller, " would
our sires,
The old Norse story-tellers, say
THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.
309
Of sun-graved pictures, ocean wires,
And smoking steamboats of to-day ?
And this, O lady, by your leave,
Recalls your song of yester eve :
Pray, let us have that Cable-hymn once
more."
" Hear, hear ! " the Book-man cried,
" the lady has the floor.
" These noisy waves below perhaps
To such a strain will lend their ear,
With softer voice and lighter lapse
Come stealing up the sands to hear,
And what they once refused to do
For old Kjing Knut accord to you.
Nay, even the fishes shall your listeners
be,
As once, the legend runs, they heard
St. Anthony."
0 lonely bay of Trinity,
0 dreary shores, give ear !
Lean down unto the white-lipped sea
The voice of God to hear !
From world to world his couriers fly,
Thought-winged and shod with fire ;
The angel of His stormy sky
Rides down the sunken wire.
What saith the herald of the Lord ?
" The world's long strife is done ;
Close wedded by that mystic cord,
Its continents are one.
" And one in heart, as one in blood,
Shall all her peoples be ;
The hands of human brotherhood
Are clasped beneath the sea.
"Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain
And Asian mountains borne,
The vigor of the Northern brain
Shall nerve the world outworn.
" From clime to clime, from shore to
shore,
Shall thrill the magic thread ;
The new Prometheus steals once more
The fire that wakes the dead."
Throb on, strong pulse of thunder !
beat
From answering beach to beact ;
Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
And melt the chains of each !
Wild terror of the sky above,
Glide tamed and dumb below !
Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove,
Thy errands to and fro.
Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
Beneath the deep so far,
The bridal robe of earth's accord,
The funeral shroud of war !
For lo ! the fall of Ocean's wall
Space mocked and time outrun ;
And round the world the thought of all
Is as the thought of one !
The poles unite, the zones agree,
The tongues of striving cease ;
As on the Sea of Galilee
The Christ is whispering, Peace !
" Glad prophecy ! to this at last,"
The Reader said, "shall all things
come.
Forgotten be the bugle's blast,
And battle-music of the drum.
A little while the world may run
Its old mad way, with needle-gun
And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall
reign :
The cradle-song of Christ was never sung
in vain ! "
Shifting his scattered papers, "Here,"
He said, as died the faint applause,
" Is something that I found last year
Down on the island known as Orr's.
I had it from a fair-haired girl
Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl,
(As if by some droll freak of circum
stance,)
Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet
Stowe's romance."
THE
DEAD SHIP OF HARPS-
WELL.
WHAT flecks the outer gray beyond
The sundown's golden trail ?
The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,
Or gleam of slanting sail ?
Let young eyes watch from Neck and
Point,
And sea-worn elders pray, —
The ghost of what was once a ship
Is sailing up the bay !
310
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
From peril and from pain,
The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
0 hundred-harbored Maine !
But many a keel shall seaward turn,
And many a sail outstand,
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship
looms
Against the dusk of land.
She rounds the headland's bristling
pines ;
She threads the isle-set bay ;
No spur of breeze can speed her on,
Nor ebb of tide delay.
Old men still walk the Isle of Orr
Who tell her date and name,
Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards
Who hewed her oaken frame.
What weary doom of baffled quest,
Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine ?
What makes thee in the haunts of
home
A wonder and a sign ?
No foot is on thy silent deck,
Upon thy helm no hand ;
No ripple hath the soundless wind
That smites thee from the land !
For never comes the ship to port,
Howe'er the breeze may be ;
Just when she nears the waiting shore
She drifts again to sea.
No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,
Nor sheer of veering side ;
Stern-fore she drives to sea and night,
Against the wind and tide.
In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star
Of evening guides her in ;
In vain for her the lamps are lit
Within thy tower, Seguin !
In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,
In vain the pilot call ;
No hand shall reef her spectral sail,
Or let her anchor fall.
Shake, brown old wives, with dreary
j°y.
Your gray -head hints of ill ;
And, over sick -beds whispering low,
Your prophecies fulfil.
Some home amid yon birchen trees
Shall drape its door with woe ;
And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,
The burial boat shall row !
From Wolf IS eck and trom Flying Point-
From island and from main,
From sheltered cove and tided creek,
Shall glide the funeral train.
The dead-boat with the bearers four,
The mourners at her stern, —
And one shall go the silent way
Who shall no more return !
And men shall sigh, and women weep,
Whose dear ones pale and pine,
And sadly over sunset seas
Await the ghostly sign.
They know not that its sails are filled
By pity's tender breath,
Nor see the Angel at the. helm
Who steers the Ship of Death !
"Chill as a down-east breeze should
be,"
The Book-man said. "A ghostly
touch
The legend has. I 'm glad to see
Your flying Yankee beat the Dutch."
"Well, here is something of the
sort
Which one midsummer day I caught
In Narragansett Bay, for lack offish."
" We wait," the Traveller said ; " serve
hot or cold your dish."
THE PALATINE.
LEAGUES north, as fly the gull and
auk,
Point Judith watches with eye of hawk ;
Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Mon-
tauk !
Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken,
With never a tree for Spring to waken,
For tryst of lovers or farewells taken,
Circled by waters that never freeze,
Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
Lieth the island of Manisees,
Sot at the mouth of the Sound to hold
The coast lights up on its turret old,
Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.
Dreary the land when gust and sleet
At its doors and windows howl and
beat,
And Winter laughs at its fires of peat J
THE PALATINE.
311
But in summer time, when pool and
pond,
Held in the laps of valleys fond,
Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond ;
When the hills are sweet with the brier-
rose,
And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose
Flowers the mainland rarely knows ;
When boats to their morning fishing go,
And, held to the wind and slanting low,
Whitening and darkening the small sails
show, —
Then is that lonely island fair ;
And the pale health-seeker findeth there
The wine of life in its pleasant air.
No greener valleys the sun invite,
On smoother beaches no sea-birds light,
No blue waves shatter to foam more
white !
There, circling ever their narrow range,
Quaint tradition and legend strange
Live on unchallenged, and know no
change.
Old wives spinning their webs of tow,
Or rocking weirdly to and fro
In and out of the 'peat's dull glow,
And old men mending their nets oi
twine,
Talk together of dream and sign,
Talk of the lost ship Palatine, —
The ship that, a hundred years before,
Freighted deep with its goodly store,
In the gales of the equinox went ashore,
The eager islanders one by one
Counted the shots of her signal gun,
And heard the crash when she drovi
right on !
Into the teeth of death she sped :
(May God forgive the hands that fed
The false lights over the rocky Head !)
0 men and brothers ! what sights wen
there !
White upturned faces, hands stretchet
in prayer !
Where waves had pity, oca' 4 ye no
spare ?
Down swooped the wreckers, like birds
of prey
bearing the heart of the ship away,
And the dead had never a word to say.
And then, with ghastly shimmer and
shine
Over the rocks and the seething brine,
They burned the wreck of the Palatine.
n their cruel hearts, as they homeward
sped,
* The sea and the rocks are dumb,'
they said :
' There '11 be no reckoning with the
dead. "
But the year went round, and when
once more
Along their foarn-white curves of shore
They heard the line-storm rave and roar,
Behold ! again, with shimmer and shine,
Over the rocks and the seething brine,
The flaming wreck of the Palatine !
So, haply in fitter words than these,
Mending their nets on their patient
knees
They tell the legend of Manisees.
Nor looks nor tones a doubt betray ;
"It is known to us all," they quietly
say :
" We too have seen it in our day."
Is there, then, no death for a word once
spoken ?
Was never a deed but left its token
Written on tables never broken ?
Do the elements subtle reflections give ?
Do pictures of all the ages live
On Nature's infinite negative,
Which, half in sport, in malice half,
She shows at times, with shudder or
laugh,
Phantom and shadow in photograph ?
For still, on many a moonless night,
From Kingston Head and from Montauk
light
The spectre kindles and burns in sight.
Now low and dim, now clear and higher,
Leaps up the terrible Ghost of Fire,
Then, slowly sinking, the flames expire-
312
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
And the wise Sound skippers, though
skies be fine,
Reef their sails when they see the sign
Of the blazing wreck of the Palatine !
" A fitter tale to scream than sing,"
The Book-man said. "Well, fan
cy, then,"
The Reader answered, " on the wing
The sea-birds shriek it, not for
men,
But in the ear of wave and breeze ! "
The Traveller mused: "Your Mani-
sees
Is fairy -land : off Narragansett shore
Who ever saw the isle or heard its name
before ?
" 'T is some strange land of Flyaway,
Whose dreamy shore the ship be
guiles,
St. Brandan's in its sea-mist gray,
Or sunset loom of Fortunate Isles ! "
" No ghost, but solid turf and rock
Is the good island known as Block,"
The Reader said. " For beauty and for
ease
I chose its Indian name, soft -flowing
Manisees !
' ' But let it pass ; here is a bit
Of unrhymed story, with a hint
Of the old preaching mood in it,
The sort of sidelong moral squint
Our friend objects to, which has
grown,
I fear, a habit of my own.
'T was written when the Asian plague
drew near,
And the land held its breath and paled
with sudden fear."
ABRAHAM DAVENPORT.
Ix the old days (a custom laid aside
With breeches and cocked hats) the peo
ple sent
Their wisest men to make the public
laws.
And so, from a brown homestead, where
the Sound
Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas,
Waved over by the woods of Rippowams,
And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil
deaths,
Stamford sent up to the councils of the
State
Wisdom and grace in Abraham Daven
port.
'T was on a May-day of the far old
year
Seventeen hundred eighty, that there
fell
Over the bloom and sweet life of the
Spring,
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of
noon, .
A horror of great darkness, like the
night
In day of which the Norland sagas
tell, —
The Twilight of the Gods. The low-
hung sky
Was black with ominous clouds, save
where its rim
Was fringed with a dull glow, like that
which climbs
The crater's sides from the red hell be
low.
Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn
yard fowls
Roosted ; the cattle at the pasture
bars
Lowed, and looked homeward ; bats on
leathern wings
Flitted abroad ; the sounds of labor
died;
Men prayed, and women wept ; all ears
grew sharp
To hear the doom -blast of the trumpet
shatter
The black sky, that the dreadful face of
Christ
Might look from the rent clouds, not as
he looked
A loving guest at Bethany, but stern
As Justice and inexorable Law.
Meanwhile in the old State House,
dim as ghosts,
Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut,
Trembling beneath their legislative
robes.
" It is the Lord's Great Day ! Let us
adjourn,"
Some said ; and then, as if with one
accord,
All eyes were turned to Abraham Daven
port.
He rose, slow cleaving with his steady
voice
THE TENT ON THE BEACH.
313
The intolerable hush. " This well may
be
The Day of Judgment which the world
awaits ;
But be it so or not. 1 only know
My present duty, and my Lord's com
mand
To occupy till he come. So at the post
Where he hath set me in his providence,
I choose, for one, to meet him face to
face, —
No faithless servant frightened from my
task,
But ready when the Lord of the harvest
calls-;
A.rd therefore, with all reverence, I
would say,
Let God do his work, we will see to
ours,
iring in the candles." And they
brought them in.
Then by the flaring lights the Speaker
read,
Albeit with husky voice and shaking
hands,
An act to amend an act to regulate
The shad and alewive fisheries. Where
upon
Wisely and well spake Abraham Daven
port,
Straight to the question, with no figures
of speech
Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without
The shrewd dry humor natural to the
man :
His awe-struck colleagues listening all
the while,
Between the pauses of his argument,
To hear the thunder of the wrath of
God
Break from the hollow trumpet of the
cloud.
And there he stands in memory to
this day,
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half
seen
Against the background of unnatural
dark,
A witness to the ages as they pass,
That simple duty hath no place for fear.
He ceased : just then the ocean
seemed
To lift a half-faced moon in sight ;
And, shore-ward, o'er the waters
gleamed,
From crest to crest, a line of light,
Such as of old, with solemn awe,
The fishers by Gennesaret saw,
When dry-shod o'er it walked the Son
of God,
Tracking the waves with light where'er
his sandals trod.
Silently for a epace each eye
Upon that sudden glory turned :
Cool from the land the breeze blew
by,
The tent-ropes flapped, the long
beach churned
Its waves to foam ; on either hand
Stretched, far as sight, the hills of
sand ;
With bays of marsh, and capes of bush
and tree,
The wood's black shore-line loomed be
yond the meadowy sea.
The lady rose to leave. " One song,
Or hymn," they urged, " before we
part."
And she, with lips to which belong
Sweet intuitions of all art,
Gave to the winds of night a strain
Which they who heard Avould hear
again ;
And to her voice the solemn ocean lent,
Touching its harp of sand, a deep ac
companiment.
The harp at Nature's advent strung
Has never ceased to play ;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away,,
And prayer is made, and praise is given,
By all things near and far ;
The ocean looketh up to heaven,
And mirrors every star.
Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
As kneels the human knee,
Their white locks bowing to the sand,
The priesthood of the sea !
They pour their glittering treasures
forth,
Their gifts of pearl they bring,
And all the listening hills of earth.
Take up the song they sing.
314
NATIONAL LYRICS.
The green earth sends her incense up
From many a mountain shrine ;
From folded leaf and dewy cup
She pours her sacred wine.
The mists above the morning rills
Rise white as wings of prayer ;
The altar- curtains of the hills
Are sunset's purple air.
The winds with hymns of praise are loud,
Or low with sobs of pain, —
The thunder-organ of the cloud,
The dropping tears of rain.
With drooping head and branches crossed
The twilight forest grieves,
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost
From all its sunlit leaves.
The blue sky is the temple's arch,
Its transept earth and air,
The music of its starry march
The chorus of a prayer.
So Nature keeps the reverent frame
With which her years began,
And all her signs and voices shame
The prayeiiess heart of man.
The singer ceased. The moon's white
rays
Fell on the rapt, 'still face of her.,
" Allah il AllaJiI He hath praise
From all things," said the Traveller
"Oft from the desert's silent nights.
And mountain hymns of sunset lights.
My heart has felt rebuke, as in his tent
The Moslem's prayer has shamed my
Christian knee unbent."
He paused, and lo ! far, faint, anfl slow
The* bells in N ewbury's steeples
tolled
The twelve dead hours.-; the lamp
burned low ;
The singer sought her canvas fold.
One sadly said, " At break of day
We strike our tent and go our way."
But one made answer cheerily, "Never
fear,
We'll pitch this tent of ours in type
another year."
NATIONAL LYRICS.
THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DE
MATHA.
A. LEGEND OF " THE RED, WHITE, AND
BLUE," A. D. 1154-1864.
A. STRONG and mighty Angel,
Calm, terrible, and bright,
The v^ross in blended red and blue
Upon his mantle white !
Two captives by him kneeling,
Each on his broken chain,
Sang praise to God who raiseth
The dead to life again !
Dropping his cross-wrought mantle,
" Wear this," the Angel said ;
'Take thou, 0 Freedom's priest, its
sign, —
The white, the blue, and red."
Then rose up John de Matha
In the strength the Lord Christ gave,
And begged through all the land of
France
The ransom of the slave.
The gates of tower and castle
Before him open flew,
The drawbridge at his coming fell,
The door-bolt backward drew.
For all men owned his errand,
And paid his righteous tax ;
And the hearts of lord and peasant
Were in his hands as wax.
At last, outbound from Tunis,
His bark her anchor weighed,
Freighted with seven-score Christian
souls
Whose ransom he had paid.
WHAT THE BIRDS SAID.
315
But, torn by Paynim hatied,
Her sails in tatters hung ;
And on the wild waves, rudderless,
A shattered hulk she swung.
" God save us !" cried the captain,
" For naught can man avail ;
0, woe betide the ship- that lacks
Her rudder and her sail !
" Behind us are the Moormen ;
At sea we sink or strand :
There's death upon the water,
There's death upon the land ! "
Then up spake John de Matha :
" God's errands never fail !
Take thou the mantle which I wear,
And make of it a sail."
They raised the cross-wrought mantle,
The blue, the white, the red ;
Arid straight before the wind off-shore
The ship of Freedom sped.
'God help us ! " cried the seamen,
" For vain is mortal skill :
The good ship on a stormy sea
Is drifting at its will."
Then up spake John de Matha :
" My mariners, never fear !
The Lord whose breath has filled her sail
May well our vessel steer ! "
So on through storm and darkness
They drove for weary hours ;
And lo ! the third gray morning shone
On Ostia's friendly towers.
And on the walls the watchers
The ship of mercy knew, —
They knew far off its holy cross,
The red, the white, and blue.
And the bePs in all the steeples
Rang out in glad accord,
To welcome home to Christian soil
The ransomed of the Lord.
So runs the ancient legend
By bard and painter told ;
And lo ! the cycle rounds again,
The new is as the old .'
With rudder foully broken,
And sails by traitors torn,
Our country on a midnight sea
Is waiting for the morn.
Before her, nameless terror ;
Behind, the pirate foe ;
The clouds are black above her,
The sea is white below.
The hope of all who suffer,
The dread of all who wrong,
She drifts in darkness and in storm,
How long, 0 Lord ! how long ?
But courage, 0 my mariners !
Ye shall not suffer wreck,
While up to God the freednian's prayers
Are rising from your deck.
Is not your sail the banner
Which God hath blest anew,
The mantle that De Matha wore,
The red, the white, the blue ?
Its hues are all of heaven, —
The red of sunset's dye,
The whiteness of the moon-lit cloud,
The blue of morning's sky.
Wait cheerily, then, 0 mariners,
For daylight and for land ;
The breath of God is in your sail,
Your rudder is His hand.
Sail on, sail on, deep-freighted
With blessings and with hopes ;
The saints of old with shadowy hands
Are pulling at your ropes.
Behind ye holy martyrs
Uplift the palm and crown ;
Before ye unborn ages send
Their benedictions down.
Take heart from John de Matha ! —
God's errands never fail !
Sweep on through storm and darkness,
The thunder and the hail !
Sail on ! The morning cometh,
The port ye yet shall win ;
And all the bells of God shall ring
The good ship bravely in !
WHAT THE BIRDS SAID.
THE birds against the April Avind
Flew northward, singing as they flew ;
316
NATIONAL LYKICS.
They sang, " The land we leave behind
Has swords for corn-blades, blood for
dew."
" 0 wild-birds, flying from the South,
What saw and heard ye, gazing down ?"
" We saw the mortar's upturned mouth,
The sickened camp, the blazing town !
" Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,
We saw your march- worn children
die;
In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,
We saw your dead uncoffined lie.
" We heard the starving prisoner's
sighs,
And saw, from line and trench, your
sons
Follow our flight with home-sick eyes
Beyond the battery's smoking guns."
-" And heard and saw ye only wrong
And pain," I cried, "0 wing- worn
flocks ?"
"We heard," they sang, "the freed-
man's song,
The crash of Slavery's broken locks !
"We saw from new, uprising States
The treason-nursing mischief spurned,
As, crowding Freedom's ample gates,
The long-estranged and lost returned.
" O'er dusky faces, seamed and old,
And hands horn-hard with unpaid
toil,
With hope in every rustling fold,
We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.
"And struggling up through sounds
accursed,
A grateful murmur clomb the air ;
A whisper scarcely heard at first,
It filled the listening heavens with
prayer.
"' And sweet and far, as from a star,
Replied a voice which shall not cease,
Till, drowning all the noise of war,
It sings the blessed song of peace !"
So to me, in a doubtful day
Of chill and slowly greening spring,
Low stooping from the cloudy gray,
The wild-birds sang or seemed to
sing.
They vanished in the misty air,
The song went with them in their
flight;
But lo ! they left the sunset fair,
And in the evening there was light.
LAUS DEO!
ON HEARING THE BELLS KING ON THE
PASSAGE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL
AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY.
IT is done !
Clang of bell and roar of gun
Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel !
How the great guns, peal on peal,
Fling the joy from town to town !
Ring, 0 bells !
Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial hour of crime.
Loud and long, that all may hear,
Ring for every listening ear
Of Eternity and Time !
Let us kneel :
God's own voice is in that peal,
And this spot is holy ground.
Lord, forgive us ! What are we,
That our eyes this glory see,
That our ears have heard the sound !
For the Lord
On the whirlwind is abroad ;
In the earthquake he has spoken ;
He has smitten with his thunder
The iron walls asunder,
And the gates of brass are broken !
Loud and long
Lift the old exulting song ;
Sing with Miriam by the sea
He has cast the mighty down ;
Horse and rider sink and drown ;
" He hath triumphed gloriously ! "
Did we dare,
In our agony of prayer, •
Ask for more than He has done ?
When was ever his right hand
Over any time or land
Stretched as now beneath the sun ?
How they pale,
Ancient myth and song and tale,
TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS.
317
In this wonder of our days,
When the cruel rod of war
Blossoms white with righteous law,
And the wrath of man is praise !
Blotted out !
All within and all about
Shall a fresher life begin ;
Freer breathe the universe
As it rolls its heavy curse
On the dead and buried sin !
It is done !
In the circuit of the sun
Shall the sound thereof go forth.
It shall bid the sad rejoice,
It shall give the dumb a voice,
It shall belt with joy the earth !
Eing and swing,
Bells of joy! On morning's wing
Send the song of praise abroad !
"With a sound of broken chains
Tell the nations that He reigns,
"Who alone is Lord and God !
THE PEACE AUTUMN.
WRITTEN FOR THE ESSEX COUNTY
AGRICULTURAL FESTIVAL, 1865.
THANK God for rest, where none molest,
And none can make afraid, —
For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest
Beneath the homestead shade !
Bring pike and gun, the sword's red
scourge,
The negro's broken chains,
And beat them at the blacksmith's
forge
To ploughshares for our plains.
Alike henceforth our hills of snow,
And vales where cotton flowers ;
All streams that flow, all winds that
blow,
Are Freedom's motive-powers.
Henceforth to Labor's chivalry
Be knightly honors paid ;
For nobler than the sword's shall be
The sickle's accolade.
Build up an altar to the Lord,
0 grateful hearts of ours !
And shape it of the greenest sward
That ever drank the showers.
Lay all the bloom of gardens there,
And there the orchard fruits ;
Bring golden grain from sun and air,
From ea-th her goodly roots.
There let our banners droop and flow.
The stars uprise and fall ;
Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow,
Let sighing breezes call.
Their names let hands of horn and tan
And rough-shod feet applaud,
Who died to make the slave a man,
And link with toil reward.
There let the common heart keep time
To such an anthem sung
As never swelled on poet's rhyme,
Or thrilled on singer's tongue.
Song of our burden and relief,
Of peace and long annoy ;
The passion of our mighty grief
And our exceeding joy !
A song of praise to Him who filled
The harvests sown in tears,
And gave each field' a double yield
To feed our battle-years !
A song of faith that trusts the end
To match the good begun,
Nor doubts the power of Love to blenfl
The hearts of men as one !
TO THE THIRTY-NINTH
CONGRESS.
0 PEOPLE-CHOSEN ! are ye not
Likewise the chosen of the Lord,
To do his will and speak his word ?
From the loud thunder-storm of war
Not man alone hath called ye forth,
I But he, the God of all the earth !
The torch of vengeance in your hands
He quenches ; unto Him belongs
The solemn recompense of wrongs.
Enough of blood the land has seen,
And not by cell or gallows-stair
Shall ye the way of God prepare.
318
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
Say to the pardon -seekers, — Keep
Your manhood, bend no suppliant
knees,
Nor palter with unworthy pleas.
Above your voices sounds the wail
Of starving men ; we shut in vain
Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain.
What words can drown that bitter
cry?
What tears wash out that stain of
death ?
What oaths confirm your broken faith ?
From you alone the guaranty
Of union, freedom, peace, we claim ;
We urge no conqueror's terms of
shame.
Alas ! no victor's pride is ours ;
We bend above our triumphs won
Like David o'er his rebel son.
Be men, not beggars. Cancel all
By one brave, generous action ; trust
Your better instincts, and be just 1
Make all men peers before the law,
Take hands from off the negro's throat,
Give black and white an equal vote.
Keep all your forfeit lives and lands,
But give the common law's redress
To labor's utter nakedness.
Eevive the old heroic will ;
Be in the right as brave and strong
As ye have proved yourselves in wrong.
Defeat shall then be victory,
Your loss the wealth of full amends,
And hate be love, and toes be friends.
Then buried be the dreadful past,
Its common slain be mourned, and let
All memories soften to regret.
Then shall the Union's mother-heart
Her lost and wandering ones recall,
Forgiving and restoring all, —
And Freedom break her marble trance
Above the Capitolian dome,
Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome
home 1
OCCASIONAL POEMS
THE ETERNAL GOODNESS.
0 FRIENDS ! with whom my feet have
trod
The quiet aisles of prayer,
Olad witness to your zeal for God
And love of man I bear.
1 trace your lines of argument ;
Your logic linked and strong
I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
And fears a doubt as wrong.
But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds :
Against the words ye bid me speak
My heart within me pleads.
Who fathoms the Eternal Tnought ?
Who talks of scheme and plan ?
The Lord is God ! He needeth not
The poor device of man.
I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod ;
I dare not fix with mete and bound
The love and power of God.
Ye praise His justice ; even such
His pitying love I deem :
Ye seek a king ; I fain would touch
The robe that hath no seam.
Ye see the curse which overbroods
A world of pain and loss ;
I hear our Lord's beatitudes
And prayer upon the cross.
More than your schoolmen teach, within
Myself, alas ! I know .-
OUR MASTER.
319
Too dark ye cannot paint the sin,
Too small the merit show.
I bow my forehead to the dust,
I veil mine eyes for shame,
And urge, in trembling self-distrust,
A prayer without a claim.
I see the wrong that round me lies,
I feel the guilt within ;
I hear, with groan and travail- cries,
The world confess its sin.
Yet, in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed -by storm and flood,
To one fixed trust my spirit clings ;
I know that uod is good !
Not mine to look where cherubim
And seraphs may not see,
But nothing can be good in Him
Which evil is in me.
The wrong that pains my soul below
I dare not throne above :
I know not of His hate, — I know
His goodness and His love.
I dimly guess from blessings known
Of greater out of sight,
And, with the chastened Psalmist, own
His judgments too are right.
I long for household voices gone,
For vanished smiles 1 long,
But God hath led my dear ones on,
And He can do no wrong.
I know not what the future hath •
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.
And if rny heart and flesh are weak
To bear an untried pain,
The bruised reed He will not break,
But strengthen and sustain.
No offering of my own I have,
Nor works my faith to prove ;
I can but give the gifts He gave,
And plead His love for love.
And so beside the Silent Sea
1 wait the muffled oar ;
No harm from Him can come to me
On ocean or on shore
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air ;
I only know 1 cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.
0 brothers ! if my faith }"s vain,
If hopes like these betray,
Pray for me that my feet may gain
The sure and safer way.
And Thou, 0 Lord ! by whom are seen
Thy creatures as they be,
Forgive me if too close I lean
My human heart on Thee !
OUR MASTER.
IMMORTAL Love, forever full,
Forever flowing free,
Forever shared, forever whole,
A never-ebbing sea !
Our outward lips confess the name
All other names above ;
Love only knoweth whence it came,
And comprehendeth love.
Blow, winds of God, awake and blo-w
The mists of earth away !
Shine out, 0 Light Divine, and show
How wide and far we stray !
Hush every lip, close every book,
The strife of tongues forbear ;
Why forward reach, or backward look.
For love that clasps like air ?
We may not climb the heavenly steeps
To bring the Lord Christ down :
In vain we search the lowest deeps>
For him no depths can drown.
Nor holy bread, nor blood of grape,
The lineaments restore
Of him we know in outward shape
And in the flesh no more.
He cometh not a king to reign ;
The world's long hope is dim ;
The weary centuries watch in vain
The clouds of heaven for him.
Death comes, life goes ; the asking eye
And ear are answerless ;
The grave is dumb, the hollow sky
Is sad with silentriess.
320
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
The letter fails, and systems fall,
And every symbol wanes ;
The Spirit over-brooding all
Eternal Love remains.
And not for signs in heaven above
Or earth below they look,
Who know with John his smile of
love,
With Peter his rebuke.
In joy of inward peace, or sense
Of sorrow over sin,
He is his own best evidence,
His witness is within.
No fable old, nor mythic lore,
Nor dream of bards and seers,
No dead fact stranded on the shore
Of the oblivious years ; —
But warm, sweet, tender, even yet
- A present help is he ;
And faith has still its Olivet,
And love its Galilee.
The healing of his seamless dress
Is by our beds of pain ;
We touch him in life's throng and
press,
And we are whole again.
Through him the first fond prayers are
said
Our lips of childhood frame,
The last low whispers of our dead
Are burdened with his name.
0 Lord and Master of us all !
Whate'er our name or sign,
We own thy sway, we hear thy call,
We test our lives by thine.
Thou judgest us ; thy purity
Doth all our lusts condemn ;
The love that dra^vs us nearer thee
Is hot with wrath to them.
Our thoughts lie open to thy sight ;
And, naked to thy glance,
Our secret sins are in the light
Of thy pure countenance.
Thy healing pains, a keen distress
Thy tender light shines in ;
Thy sweetness is the bitterness,
Thy grace the pang of sin.
Yet, weak and blinded though we be,
Thou dost our service own ;
We bring our varying gifts to thee,
And thou rejectest none.
To thee our full humanity,
Its joys and pains, belong ;
The wrong of man to man on thee
Inflicts a deeper wrong.
Who hates, hates thee, who loves be
comes
Therein to thee allied ;
All sweet accords of hearts and homes
In thee are multiplied.
Deep strike thy roots, 0 heavenly Vine,
Within our earthly sod,
Most human and yet most divine,
The flower of man and God !
0 Love ! 0 Life ! Our faith and
sight
Thy presence maketh one ;
As through transfigured clouds of
white
We trace the noon-day sun.
So, to our mortal eyes subdued,
Flesh-veiled, but not concealed,
We know in thee the fatherhood
And heart of God revealed.
We faintly hear, we dimly see,
In differing phrase we pray ;
But, dim or clear, we own in thee
The Light, the Truth, the Way !
The homage that we render thee
Is still our Father's own ;
Nor jealous claim or rivalry
Divides the Cross and Throne.
To do thy will is more than praise,
As words are less than deeds,
And simple trust can find thy ways
We miss with chart of creeds.
No pride of self thy service hath,
No place for me and mine ;
Our human strength is weakness, death
Our life, apart from thine.
Apart from thee all gain is loss,
All labor vainly done ;
The solemn shadow of thy Cross
Is better than the sun.
REVISITED.
321
Alone, 0 Love ineffable !
Thy saving name is given ;
To turn aside from thee is hell,
To walk with thee is heaven \
How vain, secure in all thou art,
Our noisy championship ! —
The sighing of the contrite heart
Is more than flattering lip.
Not thine the bigot's partial plea,
Nor thine the zealot's ban ;
Thou well canst spare a love of thee
Which ends in hate of man.
Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord,
What may thy service be ? —
Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word,
But simply following thee.
We bring no ghastly holocaust,
We pile no graven stone ;
He serves thee best who loveth most
His brothers and thy own.
Thy litanies, sweet offices
Of love and gratitude ;
Thy sacramental liturgies,
The joy of doing good.
In vain shall waves of incense drift
The vaulted nave around,
In vain the minster turret lift
Its brazen weights of sound.
The heart must ring thy Christmas
bells,
Thy inward altars raise ;
Its faith and hope thy canticles,
And its obedience praise !
THE VANISHERS.
SWEETEST of all childlike dreams
In the simple Indian lore
Still to me the legend seems
Of the shapes who flit before.
Flitting, passing, seen and gone,
Never reached nor found at rest,
Baffling search, but beckoning on
To the Sunset of the Blest.
From the clefts of mountain rocks,
Through the dark of lowland firs,
Flash the eyes and flow the locks
Of the mystic Vanishers !
21
And the fisher in his skiff,
And the hunter on the moss,
Hear their call from cape and cliff,
See their hands the birch-leaves toss.
Wistful, longing, through the green
Twilight of the clustered pines,
In their faces rarely seen
Beauty more than mortal shines.
Fringed with gold their mantles flow
On the slopes of westering knolls ;
In the wind they whisper low
Of the Sunset Land of Souls.
Doubt who may, 0 friend of mine !
Thou and I have seen them too ;
On before with beck and sign
Still they glide,, and we pursue.
More than cloads of purple trail
In the gold of setting day ;
More than gleams of wing or sail
Beckon from the sea-mist gray.
Glimpses of immortal youth,
Gleams and glories seen and flown,
Far-heard voices sweet with truth,
Airs from viewless Eden blown, —
Beauty that eludes our grasp,
Sweetness that transcends our taste,
Loving hands we may not clasp,
Shining feet that mock our haste, —
Gentle eyes we closed below,
Tender voices heard once more,
Smile and call us, as they go
On and onward, still before.
Guided thus, 0 friend of mine !
Let us walk our little way,
Knowing by each beckoning sign
That we are not quite astray.
Chase we still, with baffled feet,
Smiling eye and waving hand,
Sought and seeker soon shall meet,
Lost and found, in Sunset Land !
REVISITED.
READ AT THE "LAURELS," ON TIT
MERRIMACK, 6TH MONTH, 1865.
THE roll of drums and the bugle s wail
ing-
Vex the air of our vales no more ;
322
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
The spear is beaten to hooks of prun
ing,
The share is the sword the soldier
wore !
Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river,
Under thy banks of laurel bloom ;
Softly and sweet, as tbe hour bex emeth,
Sing us the songs of peace and home.
Let all the tenderer voices of nature
Temper the triumph and chasten
mirth,
Full of the infinite love and pity
For fallen martyr and darkened
hearth.
But to Him who gives us beauty for
ashes,
And the oil of joy for mourning long,
Let thy hills give "thanks, and all thy
waters
Break into jubilant waves of song!
Bring us the airs of hills and forests,
Tbe sweet aroma of birch and pine,
Give us a waft of the north-wind laden
With sweetbrier odors and breath of
kine!
Bring us the purple of mountain sunsets,
Shadows of clouds that rake the hills,
The green repose of thy Plymouth
meadows,
The gleam and ripple of Campton rills.
Lead us away in shadow and sunshine,
Slaves of fancy, through all thy miles,
The winding ways of Pemigewasser,
And VVinuipesaukee's hundred isles.
Shatter in sunshine over thy ledges,
Laugh in thy plunges from fall to
fall;
Play with thy fringes of elms, and diirken
Under the shade of the mountain wall.
The cradle-song of thy hillside fountains
Here in thy glory and strength repeat;
Give us a taste of thy upland music,
Show us the dance of thy silver feet.
Into thy dutiful life of uses
Pour the music and weave the flowers;
With the song of birds and bloom of
meadows
Lighten and gladden thy heart and
ours.
Sing on ! bring down, 0 lowland river,
The joy of the hills to the waiting
sea ;
The wealth of the vales, the pomp of
mountains,
The breath of the woodlands, bear
with thee.
Here, in the calm of thy seaward val
ley,
Mirth and labor shall hold their truce ;
Dance of water and mill of grinding,
Both are beauty and both are use.
Type of the Northland's strength and
glory,
Pride and hope of our home ane1
race, —
Freedom lending to rugged labor
Tints of beauty and lines of grace.
Once again, 0 beautiful river,
Hear our greetings and take oui
thanks ;
Hither we come, as Eastern pilgrims
Throng to the Jordan's sacred banks.
For though by the Master's feet un,
trodden,
Though never his word has stilled
thy waves,
Well for us may thy shores be holy.
With Christian altars and saintly
graves.
And well may we own thy hint and
token
Of fairer valleys and streams than
these,
Where the rivers of God are full of water.
And full of sap are his healing trees !
THE COMMON QUESTION.
BEHIND us at our evening meal
The gray bird ate his fill,
Swung downward by a single claw,
And wiped his hooked bill.
He shook his wings and crimson tail,
And set his head aslant,
And, in his sharp, impatient way,
Asked, " What does Charlie want ? '
" Fie, silly bird ! " I answered, " tuck
Your head beneath your wing,
HYMN.
323
And go to sleep " ; — but o'er and o'er
He asked the self -same thing.
Then, smiling, to myself I said : —
How like are men and birds !
We all are saying what he says,
In action or in words.
The boy with whip and top and drum,
The girl with hoop and doll,
And men with lands and houses, ask
The question of Poor Poll.
However full, with something more
We fain the- bag would cram ;
We sigh above our crowded nets
For fish that never swam.
No bounty of indulgent Heaven
The vague desire can stay ;
Self-love is still a Tartar mil]
For grinding prayers alway.
The dear God hears and pities all ;
He knoweth all our wants ; _
And what we blindly ask of him
His love withholds or grants.
And so I sometimes think our prayers
Might well be merged in one ;
And nest and perch and hearth and
church
Repeat, " Thy will be done."
BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY.
WE praise not now the poet's art,
The rounded beauty of his song ;
Who weighs him from his life apart
Must do his nobler nature wrong.
Not for the eye, familiar grown
With charms to common sight de
nied, —
The marvellous gift he shares alone
With him who walked on Rydal-side
Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay,
Too grave for smiles, too sweet fo
tears ;
We speak his praise who wears to-day
The glory of his seventy years.
When Peace brings Freedom in he
train,
Let happy lips his songs rehearse ;
His life is now his noblest strain,
His manhood better than his verse !
hank God ! his hand on Nature's
Its cunning keeps at life's full
span ;
,ut, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like
these,
The poet seems beside the man !
o be it ! let the garlands die,
The singer's wreath, the painters
meed,
t our names perish, if thereby
Our country may be, saved and freed !
HYMN
'OR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR
KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP, 1864.
AMIDST these glorious works of thine,
The solemn minarets of the pine,
And awful Shasta's icy shrine, —
Where swell thy hymns from wave and
gale,
And organ -thunders never fail,
3ehind the cataract's silver veil, —
Our puny walls to Thee we raise,
Dur poor reed-music sounds thy praise :
Forgive, 0 Lord, our childish ways !
For, kneeling on these altar-stairs,
We urge Thee not with selrish prayers,
Nor murmur at our daily cares.
Before Thee, in an evil day,
Our country's bleeding heart we lay,
And dare not ask thy hand to stay ;
But, through the war-cloud^ pray to
thee
For union, but a union free,
With peace that comes of purity !
That Thou wilt bare thy arm to
save
And, smiting through this Red Sea
wave,
Make broad a pathway for the slave !
324
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
For us, confessing all our need,
We trust nor rite nor word nor deed,
Nor yet the broken staff of creed.
Assured alone that Thou art good
To each, as to the multitude,
Eternal Love and Fatherhood, —
Weak, sinful, blind, to Thee we kneel,
Stretch dumbly forth our hands, and feel
Our weakness is our strong appeal.
So, by these Western gates of Even
We wait to see with thy forgiven
The opening Golden Gate of Heaven !
. »
Suffice it now. In time to be
Shall holier altars rise to thee, —
Thy Church our broad humanity !
White flowers of love its walls shall
climb,
Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime,
Its days shall all be holy time.
A sweeter song shall then be heard,
The music of the world's accord
Confessing Christ, the Inward Word !
That song shall swell from shore to
shore,
One hope, one faith, one love, restore
The seamless robe that Jesus wore.
THOMAS STARR KING.
THE great work laid upon his twoscore
years
Is done, and well done. If we drop our
tears,
Who loved him as few men were ever
loved,
We mourn no blighted hope nor bro
ken plan
With him whose life stands rounded
and approved
In the full growth and stature of a man.
Mingle, 0 bells, along the Western
slope,
With your deep toll a sound of faith and
hope !
Wave cheerily still, 0 banner, half-way
down,
From thousand-masted bay and stee-
pled town !
Let the strong organ with its loftiest
swell
Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and
tell
i'hat the brave sower saw his ripened
grain.
0 East and West ! 0 morn and sunset
twain
No more forever! — has he lived in
vain
Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one,
and told
Your bridal service from his lips of
gold?
AMONG THE HILLS.
325
AMONG THE HILLS,
AND OTHER POEMS.
TO AN NIE FIELDS
THIS LITTLE VOLUME,
DESCRIPTIVE OF SCENES WITH WHICH SHE IS FAMILIAR,
IS GRATEFULLY OFFERED.
PEELUDE.
ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of
gold
That tawny Incas for their gardens
wrought,
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-
rod,
And the red pennons of the cardinal-
flowers
Hang motionless upon their upright
staves.
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,
Wing-weary with its long flight from
the south,
Unfelt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple
leaf
With faintest motion, as one stirs in
dreams,
Confesses it. The locust by the wall
Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp
alarm.
A single hay-cart down the dusty road
Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep
On the load's top. Against the neigh
boring hill,
Huddled along the stone wall's shady
side,
The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift
still
Defied the dog-star. Through the open
door
A drowsy smell of flowers — gray helio
trope,
And white sweet clover, and shy /nigno-
nette —
Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends
To the pervading symphony of peace.
No time is this for hands long over
worn
To task their strength : and (unto Him
be praise
Who giveth quietness !) the stress and
strain
Of years that did the work of centuries
Have ceased, and we can draw our
breath once more
Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters
Make glad their nooning underneath the
elms
With tale and riddle and old snatch of
song,
I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn
The leaves of memory's sketch-book,
dreaming o'er
Old summer pictures of the quiet hills,
And human life, as quiet, at their feet.
And yet not idly all. A farmer's son,
Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and
feeling
All their fine possibilities, how rich
And restful even poverty and toil
Become when beauty, harmony, and love
Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat
At evening in the patriarch's tent, when
man
Makes labor noble, and his farmer's
frock
The symbol of a Christian chivalry
Tender and just and generous to her
326
AMONG THE HILLS.
Who clothes with grace all duty ; still,
1 know
Too well the picture has another side, —
How wearily the grind of toil goes on
Where love is wanting, how the eye and
ear
And heart are starved amidst the plen
itude
Of nature, and how hard and colorless
Is life without an atmosphere. 1 look
Across the lapse of half a century,
And call to mind old homesteads, where
no flower
Told that the spring had come, but evil
weeds,
Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock
in the place
Of the sweet doorway greeting of the
rose
And honeysuckle, where the house
walls seemed
Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine
To cast the tremulous shadow of its
leaves
Across the curtainless windows from
whose panes
Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness ;
Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, un
washed
(Broom -clean I think they called it) ;
the best room
Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the
air
In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless
Save the inevitable sampler hung
Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece,
A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked,
beneath
Impossible willows ; the wide-throated
hearth
Bristling with faded pine-boughs half
concealing
The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's
back ;
And, in sad keeping with all things
about them,
Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen
men,
Untidy, loveless, old before their time,
With scarce a human interest save their
own
Monotonous round of small economies,
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood ;
Blind to the beauty everywhere re
vealed,
Treading the May-flowers with regard
less feet ;
For them the song-sparrow and the
bobolink
Sang not, nor winds made music in the
leaves ;
For them in vain October's holocaust
Burned, gold and crimson, over all the
hills,
The sacramental mystery ot the woods.
Church-goers, fearful of the unseen
Powers,
But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-
rent,
Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls
And winter pork with the least possible
outlay
Of salt and sanctity ; in daily life
Showing as little actual comprehension
Of Christian chaiity and love and duty,
As if the Sermon on the Mount had been
Outdated like a last year's almanac :
llich in broad woodlands and in half-
tilled fields,
And yet so pinched and bare and com
fortless,
The veriest straggler limping on his
rounds,
The sun and air his sole inheritance,
Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes,
And hugged his rags in self-compla
cency !
Not such should be the homesteads of
a land
Where whoso wisely wills and acts mav
dwell
As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred
state,
With beauty, art, taste, culture, books,
to make
His hour of leisure richer than a life
Of fourscore to the barons of old time,
Our yeoman should be equal to his home
Set in the fair, green valleys, purple
walled,
A man to match his mountains, not to
creep
Dwarfed and abased below them. 1
would fain
In this light way (of which I needs must
own
With the knife-grinder of whom Can
ning sings,
" Story, God bless you ! I have none to
tell you ! ")
Invite the eye to see and heart to feel
The beauty and the joy within their
reach, —
AMONG THE HILLS.
327
Home, and home loves, and the beati
tudes
Of nature tree to all Hapiy 711 years
That wait to take the places of our
own,
Heard where some breezy balcony looks
down
On happy homes, or where the lake in
the moon
Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair
as Ruth,
in the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet
Of Bcaz, even this simple lay of mine
May seem the burden of a prophecy,
Finding its late fulfilment in a change
Slow as the oak's growth, lifting man
hood up
Through broader culture, finer manners,
love,
And reverence, to the level of the hills.
0 Golden Age, whose light is of the
dawn,
And not of sunset, forward, not behind,
Flood the new heavens and earth, and
with thee bring
All the old virtues, whatsoever things
Are pure and honest and of good repute,
But add thereto whatever bard has sung
Or seer has told of when in trance and
dream
They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy !
Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth
divide
Between the right and wrong ; but give
the heart
The freedom of its fair inheritance ;
Let the poor prisoner, cramped and
starved so long,
At Nature's table feast his ear and eye
With joy and wonder ; let all harmonies
Of sound, form, color, motion, wait
upon
The princely guest, whether in soft attire
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of
toil,
And, lending life to the dead form of
faith,
Give human nature reverence for the
Of One who bore it, making it divine
With the ineffable tenderness of God ;
Let common need, the brotherhood of
prayer,
The heirship of an unknown destiny,
The unsolved mystery round about us,
make
A man more precious than the gold of
Ophir.
Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things
Should minister, as outward types and
signs
Of the eternal beauty which fulfils
The one great purpose of creation, Love,
The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven !
AMONG THE HILLS.
FOR weeks the clouds had raked the
hills
And vexed the vales with raining,
And all the woods were sad with mist,
And all the brooks complaining.
At last, a sudden night-storm tor
The mountain veils asunder,
And swept the valleys clean before
The besom of the thunder.
Through Sandwich notch, the west-wind
sang
Good morrow to the cotter;
And once again Chocorua's horn
Of shadow pierced the water.
Above his broad lake Ossipee,
Once more the sunshine wearing,
Stooped, tracing on that silver shield
His grim armorial bearing.
Clear drawn against the hard blue sky
The peaks had winter's keenness ;
And, close on autumn's frost, the vales
Had more than June's fresh green
ness.
Again the sodden forest floors
With golden lights were checkered,
Once more rejoicing leaves in wind
And sunshine danced and flickered.
It was as if the summer's late
Atoning for its sadness
Had borrowed every season's charm
To end its days in gladness.
I call to mind those banded vales
Of shadow and of shining,
Through which, my hostess at my side,
I drove in day's declining.
We held our sideling way above
The liver's whitening shallows,
328
AMONG THE HILLS.
By homesteads old, with, wide-flung
barns
Swept through and througli by swal
lows, —
By maple orchards, belts of pine
And larches climbing darkly
The mountain slopes, and, over all,
The great peaks rising starkly.
You should have seen that long hill-
range
"With gaps of brightness riven, —
How through each pass and hollow
streamed
The purpling lights of heaven, —
Rivers of gold-mist flowing down
From far celestial fountains, —
The great sun flaming through the
rifts
Beyond the wall of mountains !
We paused at last where home-bound
cows
Brought down the pasture's treasure,
And in the barn the rhythmic flails
Beat out a harvest measure.
"We heard the night-hawk's sullen
plunge,
The crow his tree-mates calling :
The shadows lengthening down the
slopes
About our feet were falling.
And through them smote the level sun
In broken lines of splendor,
Touched the gray rocks and made the
green
Of the shorn grass more tender.
The maples bending o'er the gate,
Their arch of leaves just tinted
With yellow warmth, the golden glow
Of coming autumn hinted.
Keen white between the farm-house
showed,
And smiled on porch and trellis,
The fair democracy of flowers
That equals cot and palace.
And weaving garlands for her dog,
'Twixt chidings and caresses,
A human flower of childhood shook
The sunshine from her tresses.
On either hand we saw the signs
Of fancy and of shrewdness,
Where taste had wound its arms of vines
Round thrift's uncomely rudeness.
The sun -brown farmer in his frock
Shook hands, and called to Mary :
Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came,
White-aproned from her dairy.
Her air, her smile, her motions, told
Of womanly completeness ;
A music as of household songs
Was in her voice of sweetness.
Not fair alone in curve and line,
But something more and better,
The secret charm eluding art,
Its spirit, not its letter ; —
An inborn grace that nothing lacked
Of culture or appliance, —
The warmth of genial courtesy,
The calm of self-reliance.
Before her queenly womanhood
How dared our hostess utter
The paltry errand of her need
To buy her fresh-churned butter?
She led the way with housewife pride,
Her goodly store disclosing,
Full tenderly the golden balls
With practised hands disposing.
Then, while along the western hills
We watched the changeful glory
Of sunset, on our homeward way,
1 heard her simple story.
The early crickets sang ; the stream
Plashed through my friend'
tion :
Her rustic patois of the hills
Lost in my free translation.
"More wise," she said, "than those
who swarm
Our hills in middle summer,
She came, when June's first roses blow,
To greet the early comer.
" From school and ball and rout she
came,
The city's fair, pale daughter,
To drink the wine of mountain air
Beside the Bearcamp Water.
AMONG THE HiLLS.
329
" Her step grew firmer on the hills
That watch our homesteads over ;
On cheek and lip, from summer fields,
She caught the bloom of clover.
'' For health comes sparkling in the
streams
From cool Chocorua stealing :
There 's iron in our Northern winds ;
Our pines are trees of healing.
"She sat beneath the broad - armed
elms
That skirt the mowing-meadow,
And watched the gentle west-wind
weave
The grass with shine and shadow.
" Beside her, from the summer heat
To share her grateful screening,
With forehead bared, the farmer stood,
Upon his pitchfork leaning.
"Framed in its damp, dark locks, his
face
Had nothing mean or common, —
Strong, manly, true, the tenderness
And pride beloved of woman.
" She looked up, glowing with the
health
The country air had brought her,
And, laughing, said : ' You lack a
wife,
Your mother lacks a daughter.
'"To mend your frock and bake your
bread
You do not need a lady :
Be sure among these brown old homes
Is some one waiting ready, —
" ' Some fair, sweet girl with skilful
hand
And cheerful heart for treasure,
"Who never played with ivory keys,
Or danced the polka's measure.'
" Pie bent his black brows to a frown,
He set his white teeth tightly.
' 'T is well,' he said, ' for one like you
To choose for me so lightly.
u ' You think, because my life is rude
I take no note of sweetness :
I tell you love has naught to do
With meetness or unmeetness.
" ' Itself its best excuse, it asks
No leave of pride or fashion
When silken zone or homespun frock
It stirs with throbs of passion.
" 'You think me deaf and blind : you
bring
Your winning graces hither
As free as if from cradle-time
We two had played together.
" 'You tempt me with your laughing
eyes,
Your cheek of sundown's blushes,
A motion as of waving grain,
A music as of thrushes.
" ' The plaything of your summer sport.
The spells you weave around me
You cannot at your will undo,
Nor leave me as you found me.
" 'You go as lightly as you came,
Your life is well without me ;
What care you that these hills will close
Like prison-walls about me ?
'"No mood is mine to seek a wife,
Or daughter for my mother :
Who loves you loses in that love
All power to love another !
" ' I dare your pity or your scorn,
With pride your own exceeding ;
I fling my heart into your lap
Without a word of pleading.'
" She looked up in his face of pain
So archly, yet so tender :
' And if I lend you mine/ she said,
' Will you forgive the lender ?
"'Nor frock nor tan can hide the
man ;
And see you not, my farmer,
How weak and fond a woman waits
Behind this silken armor ?
" ' I love you : on that love alone,
And not my worth, presuming,
Will you not trust for summer fruit
The tree in May-day blooming ? '
" Alone the hangbird overhead,
His hair-swung cradle straining,
Looked down to see love's miracle, —
The giving that is gaining.
330
AMONG THE HILLS.
"And so the farmer found a wife,
His mother found a daughter :
There looks no happier home than hers
Oil pleasant Bearcamp Water.
" Flowers spring to blossom where she
walks
The careful ways of duty ;
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
Are flowing curves of beauty.
" Our homes are cheerier for her sake,
Our door-yards brighter blooming,
And all about the social air
Is sweeter for her coming.
" Unspoken homilies of peace
Her daily life is preaching ;
The still refreshment of the dew
Is her unconscious teaching.
" And never tenderer hand than hers
. Unknits the brow of ailing ;
Her garments to the sick man's ear
Have music in their trailing.
" And when, in pleasant harvest moons,
The youthful huskers gather,
Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways
Defy the winter weather, —
"In
when south and
sugar-camps,
warm
The winds of March are blowing,
And sweetly from its thawing veins
The maple's blood is flowing, —
' ' In summer, where some lilied pond
Its virgin zone is bearing,
Or where the ruddy autumn fire
Lights up the apple-paring, —
"' The coarseness of a ruder time
Her finer mirth displaces,
A subtler sense of pleasure fills
Each rustic sport she graces.
"Her presence lends its warmth and
health
To all who come before it.
If woman lost us Eden, such
As she alone restore it.
" For larger life and wiser aims
The farmer is her debtor ;
Who holds to his another's heart
Must needs be worse or better.
" Through her his civic service shews
A purer-toned ambition ;
No double consciousness divides
The man and politician.
" In party's doubtful ways he trusts
Her instincts to determine ;
At the loud polls, the thought ot
her
Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon.
" He owns her logic of the heart,
And wisdom of unreason,
Supplying, while he doubts and weighs,
The needed word in season.
" He sees with pride her richer thought,
Her fancy's freer ranges ;
And love thus deepened to respect
Is proof against all changes.
" And if she walks at ease in ways
His feet are slow to travel,
And if she reads with cultured eyes
What his may scarce unravel,
"Still clearer, for her keener sight
Of beauty and of wonder,
He learns the meaning of the hills
He dwelt from childhood under.
' ' And higher, warmed with summer
lights,
Or winter-crowned and hoary,
The ridged horizon lifts for him
Its inner veils of glory.
" He has his own free, bookless lore,
The lessons nature taught him,
The wisdom which the woods and
hills
And toiling men have brought him :
" The steady force of will whereby
Her flexile grace seems sweeter ;
The sturdy counterpoise which makes
Her woman's life completer :
" A latent fire of soul which lacks
No breath of love to fan it ;
And wit, that, like his native brooks,
Plays over solid granite.
" Plow dwarfed against his manliness
She sees the poor pretension,
The wants, the aims, the follies, born
Of fashion and convention 1
THE CLEAR VISION.
331
" How life behind its accidents
Stands strong and self-sustaining,
The human fact transcending all
The losing and the gaining.
"And so, in grateful interchange
Of teacher and of hearer,
Their lives theii- true distinctness keep
While daily drawing nearer.
" And if the husband or the wife
In home's strong light discovers
Such slight defaults as failed to meet
The blinded eyes of lovers,
"Why need we care to ask? — who
dreams
Without their thorns of roses,
Or wonders that the truest steel
The readiest spark discloses ?
" For still in mutual sufferance lies
The secret of true living :
Love scarce is love that never knows
The sweetness of forgiving.
" We send the Squire to General Court,
He takes his young wife thither ;
No prouder man election day
Rides through the sweet June weather.
" He sees with eyes of manly trust
All hearts to her inclining ;
Not less for him his household light
That others share its shining."
Thus, while my hostess spake, there
grew
Before me, warmet tinted
And outlined with a tenderei grace,
The picture that she hinted.
The sunset smouldered as we drove
Beneath the deep hill-shadows.
Below us wreaths of white fog walked
Like ghosts the haunted meadows.
Sounding the summer night, the stars
Dropped down their golden plum
mets ;
The pale arc of the Northern lights
Rose o'er the mountain summits, —
Until, at last, beneath its bridge,
We heard the Bearcamp flowing,
And saw across the mapled lawn
The welcome home-lights glowing ; —
And, musing on the tale I heard,
T were well, thought I, if often
To rugged farm -life came the gift
To harmonize and soften ; —
If more and more we found the troth
Of fact and fancy plighted,
And culture's charm and labor's strength
In rural homes united, —
The simple life, the homely hearth,
With beauty's sphere surrounding,
And blessing toil where toil abounds
With graces more abounding.
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
THE CLEAR VISION.
I DIP but dream. I never knew
What charms our sternest season
wore.
Was never yet the sky so blue,
Was never earth so white before
Till now I never saw the glow
Of sunset on yon hills of sn )w,
And never earned the bough' 3 designs
Of beauty in its leafless lines.
Did ever such a morning break
As that my eastern windows s 3e ?
and
Did ever such a moonlight take
Weird photographs of shrub
tree?
Rang ever bells so wild uid fleet
The music of the winter street ?
Was ever yet a sound by half
So merry as yon school-boy's laugh ?
0 Earth ! with gladness overfraught,
;> o added charm thy face hath found ;
Within my heart the change is wrought,
My footsteps make enchanted ground.
From couch of pain and curtained room
Forth to thy light and air I come,
332
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
To find in all that meets my eyes
The freshness of a glad surprise.
Fair seem these winter days, and soon
Shall blow the warm west- winds of
spring
To set the unbound rills in tune,
And hither urge the bluebird's wing.
The vales shall laugh in flowers, the
woods
Grow misty green with leafing buds,
And violets and wind-flowers sway,
Against the throbbing heart of May.
Break forth, my lips, in praise, and
own
The wiser love severely kind ;
Since, richer for its chastening grown,
I see, whereas I once was blind.
The world, 0 Father ! hath not wronged
"With loss the life by thee prolonged ;
But still, with every added year,
.More beautiful thy works appear !
As thou hast made thy world without,
Make thou more fair my world with
in ;
Shine through its lingering clouds of
doubt ;
Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin ;
Fill, brief or long, my granted span
Of life with love to thee and man ;
Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest,
But let my last days be my best !
2d mo , 1868.
THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL.
THE land was pale with famine
And racked with fever-pain ;
The frozen fiords were fishless,
The earth withheld her grain.
Men saw the boding Fylgja
Before them come and go,
And, through their dreams, the Urdar-
moon
From west to east sailed slow !
Jarl Thorkell of Thevera
At Yule-time made his vow ;
On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone
He slew to Frey his cow.
To bounteous Frey he slew her ;
To Skuld, the younger Norn,
Who watches over birth and death,
He gave her calf unborn.
And his little gold-haired daughter
Took up the sprinkling-rod,
And smeared with blood the temple
And the wide lips of the god.
Hoarse below, the winter water
Ground its ice-blocks o'er and o'er -,
Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves,,
Rose and fell along the shore.
The red torch of the Jokul,
Aloft in icy space,
Shone down on the bloody Horg-stonek
And the statue's carven face.
And closer round and grimmer
Beneath its baleful light
The Jotun shapes of mountains
Came crowding through the night.
The gray-haired Hersir trembled
As a flame by wind is blown ;
A weird power moved his white lips,
And their voice was not his own !
"The vEsir thirst ! " he muttered ;
" The gods must have more blood
Before the tun shall blossom
Or fish shall iill the flood.
" The JEsir thirst and hunger,
And hence our blight and ban ;
The mouths of the strong gods water
For the flesh and blood of man !
' ' Whom shall we give the strong ones *
Not warriors, sword on thigh ;
But let the nursling infant
And bedrid old man die."
" So be it !" cried the young men,
" There needs nor doubt nor parle " ;
But, knitting hard his red brows,
In silence stood the Jarl.
A sound of woman's weeping
At the temple door was heard,
But the old men bowed their whito
heads,
And answered not a word.
Then the Dream -wife of Thingvalla,
A Vala young and fair,
Sang softly, stirring with her breath
The veil of her loose hair.
THE TWO RABBIS.
333
;'lie sang : "The winds from Alfheim
Bring never sound of strife ;
The gifts for Frey the meetest
Are not of death, but life.
*' He loves the grass-green meadows,
The grazing kine's sweet breath ;
He loathes your bloody Horg-stones,
Your gifts that smell of death.
' ' No wrong by wrong is righted,
No pain is cured by pain ;
The blood that smokes from Doom-rings
Falls back in redder rain.
" The gods are what you make them,
As earth shall Asgard prove ;
And hate will come of hating,
And love will come of love.
" Make dole of skyr and black bread
That old and young may live ;
And look to Frey for favor
When first like Frey you give.
*' Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadows
The summer dawn begins :
The tun shall have its harvest,
The fiord its glancing fins."
Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell :
' ' By Gimli and by Hel,
0 Vala of Thingvalla,
Thou singest wise and well !
" Too dear the ^Esir's favors
Bought with our children's lives ;
Better die than shame in living
Our mothers and our wives.
" The full shall give his portion
To him who hath most need ;
Of curdled skyr and black bread,
Be daily dole decreed."
He broke from off his neck-chain
Three links of beaten gold ;
And each man, at his bidding,
Brought gifts for young and old.
Then mothers nursed their children,
And daughters fed their sires,
And Healtn sat down with Plenty
Before the next Yule fires.
The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal ;
The Doom-ring still remains ;
But the snows of a thousand winters
Have washed away the stains.
Christ ruleth now ; the
Have found their twilight dim ;
And, wiser than she dreamed, of old
The Vala sang of Him !
THE TWO RABBIS.
THE Kabbi Nathan, twoscore years anct
ten,
Walked blameless through the evil
world, and then,
Just as the almond blossomed in his
hair,
Met a temptation all too strong to bear,
And miserably sinned. So, adding not
Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and
taught
No more among the elders, but went out
From the great congregation girt about
With sackcloth, and with ashes on his
head,
Making his gray locks grayer. Long he
prayed,
Smiting his breast ; then, as the Book
he laid
Open before him for the Bath -Col's
choice,
Pausing to hear that Daughter of a
Voice,
Behold the royal preacher's words : "A
friend
Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end ;
And for the evil day thy brother lives."
Marvelling, he said : " It is the Lord
who gives
Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells
Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels
In righteousness and wisdom, as the
trees
Of Lebanon the small weeds that the
bees
Bow with their weight. I will arise,
and lay
My sins before him."
And he went his way
Barefooted, fasting long, with many
prayers ;
But even as one who. followed una
wares,
Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand
Thrill with its touch his own, and his
cheek fanned
334
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
By odors su btiy sweet, and whispers near
Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose
but hear,
So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting
low
The wail of David's penitential woe,
Before him still the old temptation came,
And mocked him with the motion and
the shame
Of such desires that, shuddering, he ab
horred
Himself ; and, crying mightily to the
Lord
To free his soul and cast the demon out,
Smote with his staff the blankness round
about.
At length, in the low light of a spent
day,
The towers of Ecbatana far away
"Rose on the desert's rim ; and Nathan,
faint
And footsore, pausing where for some
dead saint
The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb,
Saw some one kneeling in the shadow,
whom
He greeted kindly : " May the Holy
One
Answer thy prayers, 0 stranger ! "
Whereupon
The shape stood up with a loud cry, and
then,
Clasped in each other's arms, the two
gray men
Wept, praising Him whose gracious prov
idence
Made their paths one. But straightway,
as the sense
Of his transgression smote him, Nathan
tore
Himself away : "0 friend beloved, no
more
Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came,
Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my
shame.
Haply thy prayers, since naught availeth
mine,
May purge my soul, and make it white
like thine.
Pity me, 0 Ben Isaac, I have sinned ! "
Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The des
ert wind
Blew his long mantle backward, laying
bare
The mournful secret of his shirt of hair.
" I too, 0 friend, if not in act," he said,
" In thought have verily sinned. Hast
thou not read,
' Better the eye should see than that de
sire
Should wander ' ? Burning with a hid
den fire
That tears and prayers quench not, I
come to thee
For pity and for help, as thou to me.
Pray for me, 0 my friend ! " But Na
than cried,
" Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac ! "
Side by side
In the low sunshine by the tin-ban stone
They knelt ; each made his brother's woe
his own,
Forgetting, in the agony and stress
Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness ;
Peace, for his friend besought, his own
became ;
His prayers were answered in another's
name ;
And, when at last they rose up to em
brace,
Each saw God's pardon in his brother's
face !
Long after, when his headstone gathered
moss,
Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos
In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words
were read :
" Hope not the cure of sin till Self is
dead ;
Forget it, in love's service, and the debt
Thou canst not pay the angels shall for
get ;
Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes
alone ;
Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy
own ! "
THE MEETING.
THE elder folks shook hands at last,
Down seat by seat the signal passed.
To simple ways like ours unused,
Half solemnized and half amused,
With long-drawn breath and shrug, mj
guest
His sense of glad relief expressed.
Outside the hills lay warm in sun ;
The cattle in the meadow-run
Stood half-leg deep ; a single bird
THE MEETING.
335
The green repose above us stirred.
;* What part or lot have you," he said,
" In these dull rites of drowsy-head ?
Is silence worship ? Seek it where
It soothes with dreams the summer
air,
Not in this close and rude-benched hall,
But where soft lights and shadows
fall,
And all the slow, sleep-walKing hours
Glide soundless over grass and flowers !
From timj and place and form apart,
Its holy ground the human heart,
Nor ritual-bound nor templeward
Walks the free spirit of the Lord !
Our common Master did not pen
His followers up from other men ;
His service liberty indeed,
He built no church, he tramed no creed ;
But while the saintly Pharisee
Made broader his phylactery,
As from the synag >gue was seen
The dusty-sandalled Nazarene
Through ripening corn fields lead the way
Upon the awful Sabbath day,
His sermons were the healthful talk
That shorter made the mountain-walk,
His wayside texts were flowers anl birds,
Where mingled with His gracious words
The rustle of the tamarisk-tree
And ripple- wash of Galilee."
" Thy words are well, 0 friend," I said ;
" Unmeasured and unlimited,
With noiseless slide of stone to stone,
The mystic Church of God has grown.
Invisible and silent stands
The temple never made with hands,
Unheard the voices still and small
Of its unseen confessional.
He needs no special place of prayer
Whose hearing ear is everywhere ;
He brings not back the childish days
That ringed the earth with stones of
praise,
Eoofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid
The plinths of Philse's colonnade.
Still less He owns the selfish good
And sickly growth of solitude, —
The worthless grace that, out of sight,
Flowers in the desert anchorite ;
Dissevered from the suffering whole,
Love hath no power to save a soul.
Not out of Self, the origin
And native air and soil of sin,
The living waters spring and flow,
The trees with leaves of healing grow.
" Dream not, 0 friend, because I seek
This quiet shelter twice a week,
I better deem its pine-laid floor
Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore ;
But nature is not solitude :
She crowds us with her thronging wood i
Her many hands reach out to us,
Her many tongues are garrulous ;
Perpetual riddles of surprise
She otters to our ears and eyes ;
She will not leave our senses still,
But drags them captive at her will :
And, making earth too great for heaven.
She hides the Giver in the given.
' ' And so, I find it well to come
For deeper rest to this still room,
For here the habit of the soul
Feels less the outer world's control ;
The strength of mutual purpose pleads
More earnestly our common needs ;
And from the silence multiplied
By these still forms on either side,
The world that time and sense have
known
Falls off and leaves us God alone.
" Yet rarely through the charmed repose
Unmixed the stream of motive flows,
A flavor of its many springs,
Th • tints of earth and sky it brings ;
In the still waters needs must be
Some shade of haman sympathy ;
And here, in its accustomed place,
I look on memory's dearest face ;
The blind by- sitter guesseth not
What shadow haunts that vacant spot;
No eyes save mine alone can see
The love wherewith it welcomes me !
And still, with those alone my kin,
In doubt and weakness, want and sin,
I bow my head, my heart I bare
As when that face was living there,
And strive (too oft, alas ! in vain)
The peace of simple trust to gain,
Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay
The idols of my heart away.
" Welcome the silence all unbroken,
Nor less the words of fitness spoken, —
Such golden words as hers for whom
Our autumn flowers have just made
room ;
Whose hopeful utterance through and
through
The freshness of the morning blew ;
Who loved not less the earth that light
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
Fell on it from the heavens in sight,
But saw in all fair forms more fair
The Eternal beauty mirrored there.
Whose eighty years but added grace
And saintlier meaning to her face, —
The look of one who bore away
Glad tidings from the hills of day,
While all our hearts went forth to meet
The coming of her beautiful feet !
Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread
Is in the paths where Jesus led ;
Who dreams her childhood's sabbath
dream
By Jordan's willow-shaded stream,
And, of the hymns of hope and faith,
Sung by the monks of Nazareth,
Hears pious echoes, in the call
To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall,
Repeating where His works were w rought
The lesson that her Master taught,
Of whom an elder Sibyl gave,
The prophecies of Cumse's cave !
" I ask no organ's soulless breath
To drone the themes of life and death,
No altar candle-lit by day,
No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play,
N"o cool philosophy to teach
Its bland audacities of speech
To double-tasked idolaters
Themselves their gods and worshippers,
No pulpit hammered by the fist
Of loud-asserting dogmatist,
Who borrows from the hand of love
The smoking thunderbolts of Jove.
I know how well the fathers taught,
What work the later schoolmen
wrought ;
I reverence old-time faith and men,
But God is near us now as then ;
His force of love is s "ill unspent,
His hate of sin as im ninent ;
And still the measure of our needs
Outgrows the cramping bounds of
creeds ;
The manna gathered yesterday
Already savors of decay ;
Doubts to the world's child-heart un
known
xjuestion us now from star and stone ;
Too little or too much we know,
And sight is swift and faith is slow ;
The power is lost to self-deceive
With shallow forms of make-believe.
We walk at high noon, and the bells
Call to a thousand oracles,
But the sound deafens, and the light
Is stronger than our dazzled sight ;
The letters of the sacred Book
Glimmer and swim beneath our look ;
Still struggles in the Age's breast
With deepening agony of quest
The old entreaty : ' Art thou He,
Or look we for the Christ to be ? '
' ' God should be most where man is
least :
So, where is neither church nor priest,
And never rag of form or creed
To clothe the nakedness of need, —
Where farmer-folk in silence meet, —
I turn my bell -un summoned feet ;
I lay the critic's glass aside,
I tread upon my lettered pride.,
And, lowest-seated, testify
To the oneness of humanity ;
Confess the universal want,
And share whatever Heaven may grant.
He findeth not who seeks his own,
The soul is lost that 's saved alone.
Not on one favored forehead fell
Of old the fire-tongued miracle,
But flamed o'er all the thronging host
The baptism of the Holy Ghost ;'
Heart answers heart : in one desire
The blending lines of prayer aspire ;
'Where, in my name, meet two or
three,'
Our Lord hath said, ' I there will be ! '
"So sometimes comes to soul and
sense
The feeling which is evidence
That very near about us lies
The realm of spiritual mysteries.
The sphere of the supernal power?
Impinges on this world of ours.
The low and dark horizon lifts,
To light the scenic terror shifts ;
The breath of a diviner air
Blows down the answer of a prayer :
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt
A great compassion clasps about,
And law and goodness, love and force,
Are wedded fast beyond divorce.
Then duty leaves to love its task,
The beggar Self forgets to ask ;
With smile of trust and folded hands,
The passive soul in waiting stands
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew,
The One true Life its own renew.
" So, to the calmly gathered thought
The innermost of truth is taught,
THE ANSWER.
337
The mystery dimly understood,
That love of God is love of good,
And, chiefly, its divinest trace
In Him of Nazareth's holy face ;
That to be saved is only this, —
Salvation from our selfishness,
From more than elemental fire,
The soul's unsanctified desire,
From sin itself, and not the pain
That warns us of its chafing chain ;
That worship's deeper meaning lies
In mercy, and not sacrifice,
Not proud humilities of sense
And posturing of penitence,
But love's unforced obedience ;
That Book and Church and Day are
given
For man, not God, — for earth, not
heaven, —
The blessed means to holiest ends,
Not masters, but benignant friends ;
That the dear Christ dwells not afar,
The king of some remoter star,
Listening, at times, with flattered ear
To homage wrung from selfish fear,
But here, amidst the poor and blind,
The bound and suffering of our kind,
In works we do, in prayers we pray,
Life of our life, he lives to-day."
THE ANSWER.
SPARE me, dread angel of reproof,
And let the sunshine weave to-day
Its gold-threads in the warp and woof
Of life so poor and gray.
Spare me awhile ; the flesh is weak.
These lingering feet, that fain would
stray
Among the flowers, shall some day seek
The strait and narrow way.
Take off thy ever- watchful eye,
The awe of thy rebuking frown ;
The dullest slave at times must sigh
To fling his burdens down ;
To drop his galley's straining oar,
And press, in summer warmth and
calm,
The lap of some enchanted shore
Of blossom and of balm.
Grudge riot my life its hour of bloom,
My heart its taste of long desire ;
22
This day be mine : be those to come
As duty shall require.
The deep voice answered to my own,
Smiting my selfish prayers away ;
' ' To-morrow is with God alone,
And man hath but to-day.
" Say not, thy fond, vain heart within p
The Father's arm shall still be wide,
When from these pleasant ways of sin
Thou turn'st at eventide.
" ' Cast thyself down,' the tempter saith.,
' And angels shall thy feet upbear. '
He bids thee make a lie of faith,
And blasphemy of prayer.
"Though God be good and free he
Heaven,
No force divine can love compel ;
And, though the song of sins forgiven
May sound through lowest hell,
" The sweet persuasion of His voice
Respects thy sanctity of will.
He giveth day : thou hast thy choice
To walk in darkness still ;
" As one who, turning from the light,
Watches his own gray shadow fall,
Doubting, upon his path of night,
If there be day at all !
" No word of doom may shut th?e
out,
No wind of wrath may downward
whirl,
No swords of fire keep watch about
The open gates of pearl ;
"A tenderer light than moon or sun,
Than song of earth a sweeter hymn,
May shine and sound forever on,
And thou be deaf and dim.
"Forever round the Mercy-seat
The guiding lights of Love shall
burn ;
But what if, habit-bound, thy feet
Shall lack the will to turn ?
" What if thine eye refuse to see,
Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome
fail,
And thou a willing captive be,
Thyself thy own dark jail?
338
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
" 0 doom beyond the saddest guess,
As tne long years of God unroll
To make thy dreary selfishness
The prison of a soul !
"To doubt the love that fain would
break
The fetters from thy self-bound limb ;
And dream that God can thee forsake
As thou forsakest him ! "
GEORGE L. STEARNS.
HE has done the work of a true man, —
Crown him, honor him, love him.
Weep over him, tears of woman,
Stoop manliest brows above him !
0 dusky mothers and daughters,
Vigils of mourning keep for him !
Up in the mountains, and down by the
waters,
Lift up your voices and weep for him !
For the warmest of hearts is frozen,
The freest of hands is still ;
And the gap in our picked and chosen
The long years may not fill.
No duty could overtask him,
No need his will outrun ;
Or ever our lips could ask him,
His hands the work had done.
He forgot his own soul for others,
Himself to his neighbor lending ;
He found the Lord in his suffering
brothers,
And not in the clouds descending.
So the bed was sweet to die on,
Whence he saw the doors wide swung
Against whose bolted iron
The strength of his life was flung.
And he saw ere his eye was darkened
The sheaves of the harvest-bringing,
And knew while his ear yet hearkened
The voice of the reapers singing.
Ah, well ! — The world is discreet ;
There are plenty to pause and wait ;
But here was a man who set his feet
Sometimes in advance of fate, —
Plucked off the old bark when the inner
Was slow to renew it,
And put to the Lord's work the sinner
When saints failed to do it.
Never rode to the wrong's redressing
A worthier paladin.
Shall he not hear the blessing,
" Good and faithful, enter in ! "
FREEDOM IN BRAZIL.
WITH clearer light, Cross of the South,
shine forth
In blue Brazilian skies ;
And thou, 0 river, cleaving half the
earth
From sunset to sunrise,
From the great mountains to the At
lantic waves
Thy joy's long anthem pour.
Yet a few days (God make them less !)
and slaves
Shall shame thy pride no more.
No fettered feet thy shaded margins
press ;
But all men shall walk free
Where thou, the high-priest of the wil
derness,
Hast wedded sea to sea.
And thou, great-hearted ruler, through
whose mouth
The word of God is said,
Once more, "Let there be light!" —
Son of the South,
Lift up thy honored head,
Wear unashamed a crown by thy desert
More than by birth thy own,
Careless of watch and ward ; thou art
begirt
By grateful hearts alone.
The moated wall and battle-ship may
fail,
But safe shall justice prove ;
Stronger than greaves of brass or iron
mail
The panoply of love.
Crowned doubly by man's blessing and
God's grace,
Thy future is secure ;
Who frees a people makes 'his statue's
place
In Time's Valhalla sure.
Lo ! from his Neva's banks the Scythian
Czar
Stretches to thee his hand,
LINES ON A FLY-LEAF.
339
Who, with the pencil of the Northern
star,
Wrote freedom on his land.
And he whose grave is holy by our
calm
And prairied Sangamon,
From his gaunt hand shall drop the
martyr's palm
To greet thee with " Well done ! "
And thou, 0 Earth, with smiles thy
face make sweet,
And let thy wail be stilled,
To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat
Her promise half fulfilled.
The Voice that spake at Nazareth speaks
still,
No sound thereof hath died ;
Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal
will
Shall yet be satisfied.
The years are slow, the vision tarrieth
long,
And far the end may be ;
But, one by one, the fiends of ancient
wrong
Go out and leave thee free.
DIVINE COMPASSION.
LONG since, a dream of heaven I had,
And still the vision haunts me oft ;
I see the saints in white robes clad,
The martyrs with their palms aloft ;
But hearing still, in middle song,
The ceaseless dissonance of wrong ;
And shrinking, with hid faces, from the
strain
Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse
and pain.
The glad song falters to a wail,
The harping sinks to low lament ;
Before the still uplifted veil
I see the crowned foreheads bent,
Making more sweet the heavenly air,
With breathings of unselfish prayer ;
And a Voice saith : " 0 Pity which is
pain,
0 Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings
which remain !
" Shall souls redeemed by me refuse
To share my sorrow in their turn ?
Or, sin -forgiven, my gift abuse
. Of peace with selfish unconcern ?
Has saintly ease no pitying care ?
Has faith no work, and love no prayer 1
While sin remains, and souls in dark
ness dwell,
Can heaven itself be heaven, and look
unmoved on hell ? "
Then through the Gates of Pain, I dream;
A wind of heaven blows coolly in ;
Fainter the awful discords seem,
The smoke of torment grows more thin.,
Tears quench the burning soil, and
thence
Spring sweet, pale flowers of penitence ;
And through the dreary realm of man's
despair,
Star-crowned an angel walks, and lo »
God's hope is there !
Is it a dream ? Is heaven so high
That pity cannot breathe its air ?
Its happy eyes forever dry,
Its holy lips without a, prayer !
My God ! my God ! if thither led
By thy free grace unmerited,
No crown nor palm be mine, but let me
keep
A heart that still can feel, and eyes that
still can weep.
LINES ON A FLY-LEAF.
I NEED not ask thee, for my sake,
To read a book which well may make
Its way by native force of wit
Without my manual sign to it.
Its piquant writer needs from me
No gravely masculine guaranty,
And well might laugh her merriest laugh
At broken spears in her behalf;
Yet, spite of all the critics tell,
I frankly own I like her well.
It may be that she wields a pen
Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinneij
men,
That her keen arrows search and try
The armor joints of dignity,
And, though alone for error meant,
1 Sing through the air irreverent.
I blame her not, the young athlete
Who plants her woman's tiny feet,
And dares the chances of debate
Where bearded men might hesitate,
Who, deeply earnest, seeing well
The ludicrous and laughable,
Mingling in eloquent excess
340
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
Her anger and her tenderness,
And, chiding with a half-caress,
Strives, less for her own sex than ours,
"With principalities and powers,
And points us upward to the clear
Sunned heights of her new atmosphere.
Heaven mend her faults ! — I will not
pause
To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws,
Or waste my pity when some fool
Provokes her measureless ridicule.
Strong-minded is she ? Better so
Than dulness set for sale or show,
A household folly, capped and belled
In fashion's dance of puppets held,
Or poor pretence of womanhood,
Whose formal, flavorless platitude
Is warranted from all offence
Of robust meaning's violence.
Give me the wine of thought whose
bead
Sparkles along the page I read.
Electric words in which I find
The tonic of the northwest wind, —
The wisdom which itself allies
To sweet and pure humanities,
Where scorn of meanness, hate of
wrong,
Are underlaid by love as strong ;
The genial play of mirth that lights
Grave themes of thought, as, when on
nights
Of summer-time, the harmless blaze
Of thunderless heat-lightning plays,
And tree and hill-top resting dim
And doubtful on the sky's vague rim,
Touched by that soft and lambent gleam,
Start sharply outlined from their dream.
Talk not to me of woman's sphere,
Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer,
Nor wrong the manliest saint of all
By doubt, if he were here, that Paul
Would own the heroines who have lent
Grace to truth's stern arbitrament,
Foregone the praise to woman sweet,
A.nd cast their crowns at Duty's feet ;
Like her, who by her strong Appeal
Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel,
Who, earliest summoned to withstand
The color-madness of the land,
Counted her life-long losses gain, _
And made her own her sisters' pain ;
Or her who, in her greenwood shade,
Heard the sharp call that Freedom
made,
And, answering, struck from Sappho'g
lyre
Of love the Tyrtsean carmen's fire :
Or that young girl, — Domremy's maid
Revived a nobler cause to aid, —
Shaking from warning finger-tips
The doom of her apocalypse ;
Or her, who world-wide entrance gave
To the log-cabin of the slave,
Made all his want and sorrow knovrn,
And all earth's languages his own.
HYMN
FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT
GEORGETOWN.
ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A MOTHER.
THOU dwellest not, 0 Lord of all !
In temples which thy children raise ;
Our work to thine is mean and small,
And brief to thy eternal days.
Forgive the weakness and the pride,
If marred thereby our gift may be,
For love, at least, has sanctified
The altar that we rear to thee.
The heart and not the hand has wrought
From sunken base to tower above
The image of a tender thought,
The memory of a deathless love !
And though should never sound of
speech
Or organ echo from its wall,
Its stones would pious lessons teach,
Its shade in benedictions fall.
Here should the dove of peace be found.
And blessings and not curses given ;
Nor strife profane, nor hatred wound,
The mingled loves of earth and heaven.
Thou, who didst soothe with dying
breath
The dear one watching by thy cross,
Forgetful of the pains of death
In sorrow for her mighty loss,
In memory of that tender claim,
0 Mother-born, the offering take,
And make it worthy of thy name,
And bless it for a mother's sake !
MIRIAM.
341
MIRIAM,
AND OTHER POEMS.
TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD.
THE years are many since, in youth and
hope,
Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope
We drew thick-studded with all favor
ing stars.
Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed
with scars
From life's hard battle, meeting once
again,
We smile, half sadly, over dreams so
vain ;
Knowing, at last, that it is not in man
Who walketh to direct his steps, or plan
His permanent house of life. Alike we
loved
The muses' haunts, and all our fancies
moved
To measures of old song. How since
that day
Our feet have parted from the path that
lay
So fair before us ! Rich, from lifelong
search
Of truth, within thy Academic porch
Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact,
Thy servitors the sciences exact ;
Still listening with thy hand on Na
ture's keys,
To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies
And rhythm of law. I called from
dream and song,
Thank God ! so early to a strife so long,
That, ere it closed, the black, abundant
hair
Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare
On manhood's temples, now at sunset-
chime
Tread with fond feet the path of morn
ing time.
And if perchance too late I linger where
The flowers have ceased to blow, and
trees are bare,
Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely
blame
The friend who shields his folly with
thy name.
AMESBURT, 10<& mo., 1870.
MIRIAM.
ONE Sabbath day my friend and I
After the meeting, quietly
Passed from the crowded village lanes,
White with dry dust for lack of rains,
And climbed the neighboring slope,
with feet
Slackened and heavy from the heat,
Although the day was wellnigh done,
And the low angle of the sun
Along the naked hillside cast
Our shadows as of giants vast.
We reached, at length, the topmost
swell,
Whence, either way, the green turf
fell
In terraces of nature down
To fruit-hung orchards, and the town.
With white, pretenceless houses, tall
Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all,
Huge mills whose windows had the
look
Of eager eyes that ill could brook
The Sabbath rest. We traced the track
Of the sea-seeking river back
Glistening for miles above its mouth,
Through the long valley to the south,
And, looking eastward, cool to view,
Stretched the illimitable blue
Of ocean, from its curved coast-line ;
Sombred and still, the warm sunshine
Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach
Of slumberous woods from hill to
beach, —
Slanted on walls of thronged retreats
From city toil and dusty streets,
On grassy bluff, and dune of sand,
And rocky islands miles from land ;
Touched the far-glancing sails, and
showed
White lines of foam where long waves
flowed
Dumb in the distance. In the north,
Dim through their misty h-air, looked
forth
The space-dwarfed mountains to the
sea,
From mystery to mystery !
342
MIRIAM.
So, sitting on that green hill -slope,
We talked of human life, its hope
And fear, and unsolved doubts, and
what
It might have been, and yet was riot.
And, when at last the evening air
Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer
Kinging in steeples far below,
We watched the people churchward go,
Each to his place, as if thereon
The true shekinah only shone ;
And my friend queried how it came
To pass that they who owned the same
Great Master still could not agree
To worship Him in company.
Then, broadening in his thought, he
ran
Over the whole vast field of man, —
The varying forms of faith and creed
That somehow served the holders'
need ;
T.n which, unquestioned, undenied,
Uncounted millions lived and died ;
The bibles of the ancient folk,
Through which the heart of nations
spoke ;
The old moralities which lent
To home its sweetness and content,
And rendered possible to bear
The life of peoples everywhere :
And asked if we, who boast of light,
Claim not a too exclusive right
To truths which must for all be meant,
Like rain and sunshine freely sent.
In bondage to the letter still,
We give it power to cramp and kill, —
To tax God's fulness with a scheme
Narrower than Peter's house-top dream,
His wisdom and his love with plans
Poor and inadequate as man's.
It must be that He witnesses
Somehow to all men that He is :
That something of His saving grace
Reaches the lowest of the race,
Who, through strange creed and rite,
may draw
The hints of a diviner law.
We walk in clearer light ; — but then,
Is He not God ? — are they not men ?
Are His responsibilities
For us alone and not for these ?
And I made answer : "Truth is one ;
And, in all lands beneath the sun,
Whoso hath eyes to see may see
The tokens of its unity.
No scroll of creed 'ts fulness wraps,
We trace it not by school-boy maps,
Free as the sun and air it is
Of latitudes and boundaries.
In Vedic verse, in dull Koran,
Are messages of good to man ;
The angels to our Aryan sires
Talked by the earliest household fires •,
The prophets of the elder day,
The slant-eyed sages of Cathay,
Head not the riddle all amiss
Of higher life evolved from this.
" Nor doth it lessen what He taught
Or make the gospel Jesus brought
Less precious, that His lips retold
Some portion of that truth of old ;
Denying not the proven seers,
The tested wisdom of the years ;
Confirming with his own impress
The common law of righteousness.
We search the world for truth ; we cull
The good, the pure, the beautiful,
From graven stone and written scroll,
From all old flower-fields of the soul ;
And, weary seekers of the best,
We come back laden from our quest,
To find that all the sages said
Is in th.3 Book our mothers read,
And all our treasure of eld thought
In His harmonious fulness wrought
Who gathers in one sheaf complete
The scattered blades of God's sown
wheat,
The common growth that maketh good
His all-embracing Fatherhood.
"Wherever through the ages rise
The altars of self-sacrifice,
Where love its arms has opened wide,
Or man for man has calmly died,
I see the same white wings outspread
That hovered o'er the Master's head !
Up from undated time they come,
The martyr souls of heathendom,
And to His cross and passion bring
Their fellowship of suffering.
I trace His presence in the blind
Pathetic gropings of my kind, —
In prayers from 'sin and sorrow wrung,
In cradle-hymns of life they sung,
Each, in its measure, but a part
Of the unmeasured Over-Heart ;
And with a stronger faith confess
The greater that it owns the less.
Good cause it is for thankfulness
That the world-blessing of His life
With the long past is not at strife ;
MIRIAM.
' 343
That the great marvel of His death
To the one order witnesseth,
No doubt of changeless goodness wakes,
No link of cause and sequence breaks,
But, one with nature, rooted is
In the eternal verities ;
Whereby, while differing in degree
As finite from infinity,
The pain and loss for others borne,
Love's crown of suffering meekly worn,
The life mangiveth for his friend
Become vicarious in the end ;
Their healing place in nature take,
And make life sweeter for their sake.
"So welcome I from every source
The tokens of that primal Force,
Older than heaven itself, yet new
As the young heart it reaches to,
Beneath whose steady impulse rolls
The tidal wave of human souls ;
Guide, comforter, and inward word,
The eternal spirit of the Lord !
Nor fear 1 aught that science brings
From searching through material
things ;
Content to let its glasses prove,
Not by the letter's oklness move,
The myriad worlds on worlds that
course
The spaces of the universe ;
Since everywhere the Spirit walks
The garden of the heart, and talks
With man, as under Eden's trees,
In all his varied languages.
Why mourn above some hopeless flaw
In the stone tables of the law,
When scripture every day afresh
Is traced on tablets of the flesh?
By inward sense, by outward signs,,
God's presence still the heart divines ;
Through deepest joy of Him we learn,
In sorest grief to Him we turn,
And reason stoops its pride to share
The child- like instinct of a prayer."
And ihen, as is my wont, I told
A story of the days of old,
Not found in ' printed books, — in
sooth,
A fancy, with slight hint of truth,
Showing how differing faiths agree
In one sweet law of charity.
Meanwhile the sky had golden grown,
Our faces in its glory shone ;
But shadows down the valley swept.
And gray below the ocean slept,
As time and space I wandered o'er
To tread the Mogul's marble floor,
And see a fairer sunset fall
On Jumna's wave and Agra's wall.
THE good Shah Akbar (peace be his
alway ! )
Came forth from the Divan at close of
day
Bowed with the burden of his many
cares,
Worn with the hearing of unnumbered
prayers, —
Wild cries for justice, the importunate
Appeals of greed and jealousy arid hate,
And all the strife of sect and creed and
rite,
Santon and Gouroo waging holy fight :
For the wise monarch, claiming not to
be
Allah's avenger, left his people free,
With a faint hope, his Book scarce
justified,
That all the paths of faith, though sev
ered wide,
O'er which the feet of prayerful rever
ence passed,
Met at the gate of Paradise at last.
He sought an alcove of his cool
hareem,
Where, far beneath, he heard the
Jumna's stream
Lapse soft and low along his palace
wall,
And all about the cool sound of the fall
Of fountains, and of water circling free
Through marble ducts along the bal<
cony ;
The voice of women in the distance
sweet,
And, sweeter still, of one who, at his
feet.
Soothed his tired ear with songs of a
far land
Where Tagus shatters on the salt sea-
sand
The mirror of its cork-grown hills of
drouth
And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor-
mouth.
The date-palms rustled not ; the
peepul laid
Its topmost boughs against the balus
trade,
344
MIRIAM.
Motionless as the mimic leaves and
vines
That, light and graceful as the shawl-
designs
Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone ;
And the tired monarch, who aside had
thrown
The day's hard burden, sat from care
apart,
And let the quiet steal into his heart
From the still hour. Below him Agra
slept,
By the long light of sunset overswept :
The river flowing through a level land,
By mango-groves and banks of yellow
sand,
Skirted with lime and orange, gay
kiosks,
Fountains at play, tall minarets of
mosques,
Fair pleasure-gardens, with their flow
ering trees
Relieved against the mournful cypresses ;
And, air-poised lightly as the blown
sea-foam,
The marble wonder of some holy dome
Hung a white moonrise over the still
wood,
Classing its beauty in a stiller flood.
Silent the monarch gazed, until the
night
Swift-falling hid the city from his
sight,
Then to the woman at his feet he said :
"Tell me, 0 Miriam, something thou
hast read
In childhood of the Master of thy faith,
Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet
saith :
' He was a true apostle, yea, a Word
And Spirit sent before me from the
Lord.'
Thus the Book witnesseth ; and well I
know
By what thou art, 0 dearest, it is so.
As the lute's tone the maker's hand be
trays,
The sweet disciple speaks her Master's
praise."
Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in
some sort
She cherished in the Moslem's liberal
court
The sweet traditions of a Christian
child;
And, through her life of sense, the un.
denied
And chaste ideal of the sinless One
Gazed on her with an eye she might not
shun, —
The sad, reproachful look of pity, born
Of love that hath no part in wrath 01
scorn,)
Began, with low voice and moist eyes,
to tell
Of the all-loving Christ, and what befell
When the fierce zealots, thirsting foi
her blood,
Dragged to his feet a shame of woman
hood.
How, when his searching answer pierced
within
Each heart, and touched the secret of
its sin,
And her accusers fled his face before,
He bade the poor one go and sin no
more.
And Akbar said, after a moment's
thought,
"Wise is the lesson by thy prophet
taught ;
Woe unto him who judges and forgets
What hidden evil his own heart besets '.
Something of this large charity I find
In all the sects that sever human kind ;
I would to Allah that their lives agreed
More nearly with the lesson of their
creed !
Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray
By wind and water power, and love to
say :
' He who forgivcth not shall, unfor-
given,
Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who
. even
Spare the black gnat that stings them,
vex my ears
With the poor hates and jealousies and
fears
Nursed in their human hives. That
lean, fierce priest
Of thy own people, (be his heart in-
creased
By Allah's love ! ) his black robes
smelling yet
Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met
Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the
street
The saying of his prophet true and
sweet, —
'He who is merciful shall mercy
meet ! ' "
MIRIAM.
345
But, next day, so it chanced, as night
began
To fall, a murmur through the hareem
ran
That one, recalling in her dusky face
The full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a
race
Known as the blameless Ethiops of
Greek song,
Plotting to do her royal master wrong,
Watching, reproachful of the lingering
light,
The evening shadows deepen for her
flight,
Love-guided, to her home in a far land,
Now waited death at the great Shah's
command.
Shapely as that dark princess for
whose smile
A world was bartered, daughter of the
Nile
Herself, and veiling in her large, soft
eyes
The passion and the languor of her skies,
The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet
Of her stern lord: "0 king, if it be
meet,
And for thy honor's sake," she said,
"that I,
Who am the humblest of thy slaves,
should die,
I will not tax thy mercy to forgive.
Easier it is to die than to outlive
All that life gave me, — him whose
wrong of thee
Was but the outcome of his love for
me,
Cherished from childhood, when, be
neath the shade
Of templed Axum, side by side we
played.
Stolen from his arms, my lover followed
me
Through weary seasons over land and
sea ;
And two days since, sitting disconso
late
Within the shadow of the hareem gate,
Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky,
Down from the lattice of the balcony
Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cow
herds sung
In the old music of his native tongue.
He knew my voice, for love is quick of
ear,
Answering in song.
This night he waited neal
To fly with me. The fault was mine
alone :
He knew thee not, he did but seek his
own ;
Who, in the very shadow of thy throne,
Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou
art,
Greatest and best of men, and in her
heart
Grateful to tears for favor undeserved,
Turned ever homeward, nor one mo
ment swerved
From her young love. He looked into
my eyes,
He heard my voice, and could not
otherwise
Than he hath done ; yet, save one wild
embrace
When first we stood together face to
face,
And all that fate had done since last we
met
Seemed but a dream that left us chil
dren yet,
He hath not wronged thee nor thy royal
bed ;
Spare him, 0 king ! and slay me in his
stead ! "
But over Akbar's brows the frown
hung black,
And, turning to the eunuch at his back,
"Take them," he said, "and let the
Jumna's waves
Hide both my shame and these accursed
slaves !"
His loathly length the unsexed bond
man bowed :
" On my head be it ! "
Straightway from a cloud
Of dainty shawls and veils of woven
mist
The Christian Miriam rose, and, stoop-
ing, kissed
The monarch's hand. Loose down her
shoulders bare
Swept all the rippled darkness of her
hair,
Veiling the bosom that, with high, quick
swell
Of fear and pity, through it rose and fell.
"Alas!" she cried, "hast thou for
gotten quite
The words of Him we spake of yester<
night ?
'346
MIRIAM.
Or thy own prophet's, — ' Whoso doth
endure
And pardon, of eternal life is sure ' ?
0 great and good ! be thy revenge
alone
Felt in thy mercy to the erring shown ;
Let thwarted love and youth their par
don plead,
Who sinned but in intent, and not in
deed ! "
One moment the strong frame of Akbar
shook
With the great storm of passion. Then
his look
Softened to her uplifted face, that still
Pleaded more strongly than all words,
until
Its pride and anger seemed like over
blown,
Spent douds of thunder left to tell
alone
Of strife and overcoming. With bowed
head,
And smiting on his bosom : "God," he
said,
" Alone is great, and let His holy name
Be honored, even to His servant's
shame !
Well spake thy prophet, Miriam, — he
alone
Who hath not sinned is meet to cast a
stone
At such as these, who here their doom
await,
Held like myself in the strong grasp of
fate.
They sinned through love, as I through
love forgive ;
Take them beyond my realm, but let
them live ! "
And, like a chorus to the words of
grace,
i The ancient Fakir, sitting in his place,
Moti'mless as an idol and as grim,
In the pavilion Akbar built for him
Under the court-yard trees, (for he was
wise,
Knew Menu's laws, and through his
close-shut eyes
Saw things far off, and as an open book
Into the thoughts of other men could
look,)
Began, half chant, half howling, to re
hearse
The fragment of a holy Vedic verse ;
And thus it ran : " He who all things
forgives
Conquers himself and all things else,
and lives
Above the reach of wrong or hate or
fear,
Calm as the gods, to whom he is most
dear."
Two leagues from Agra still the trav
eller sees
The tomb of Akbar through its cypress-
trees ;
And, near at hand, the marble walls
that hide
The Christian Begum sleeping at his
side.
And o'er her vault of burial (who shall
tell
If it be chance alone or miracle ?)
The Mission ^ress with tireless hand
unrollo
The words of Jesus on its lettered
scrolls, —
Tells, in all tongues, the tale of mercy
o'er,
And bids the guilty, " Go and sin no
more ! "
It now was dew-fall ; very still
The night lay on the lonely hill,
Down which our homeward steps we
bent,
And, silent, through great silence
went,
Save that the tireless crickets played
Their long, monotonous serenade.
A young moon, at its narrowest,
Curved sharp against the darkening
west ;
And, momently, the beacon's star,
Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar,
From out the level darkness shot
One instant and again was not.
And then my friend spake quietly
The thought of both: "Yon crescent
see !
Like Islam's symbol -moon it gives
Hints of the light whereby it lives :
Somewhat of goodness, something true
From sun and spirit shining through
All faiths, all worlds, as through the
dark
Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark,
Attests the presence everywhere
Of love and providential care.
NOREMBEGA.
347
The faith the old Norse heart confessed
In one dear name, — the hopefulest'
And tendevest heard from mortal lips
In pangs of birth or death, from ships
Ice-bitten in the winter sea,
Or lisped beside a mother's knee, —
The wiser world hath not outgrown,
And the All-Father is onr own 1
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
NOREMBEGA.
[Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name given
by early French fishermen and explorers to a
fabulous country south of Cape Breton, first dis
covered by Verrazzani in 1524 It was supposed
to have a magnificent city of the same name on
a great river, probably the Penobscot. The site
of this barbaric city is laid down on a map pub
lished at Antwerp in 1570. In 1604 Champlain
sailed in search of the Northern Eldorado, twen
ty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle
Haute. He supposed the river to be that of
Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion
that those travellers who told of the great city
had never seen it. He saw no evUences of any
thing like civilization, but mentions the finding
of a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods.]
THE winding way the serpent takes
The mystic water took,
From where, to count its beaded lakes,
The forest sped its brook.
A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore,
For sun or stars to fall,
While evermore, behind, before,
Closed in the forest wall.
The dim wood hiding underneath
Wan flowers without a name ;
Life tangled with decay and death,
League after league the same.
Unbroken over swamp and hill
The rounding shadow lay,
Save where the river cut at will
A pathway to the day.
Beside that track of air and light,
Weak as a child unweaned,
At shut of day a Christian knight
Upon his henchman leaned.
The embers of the sunset's fires
Along the clouds burned down ;
" I see," he said, " the domes and spires
Of Norembega town."
" Alack ! the domes, 0 master mine,
Are golden clouds on high ;
Yon spire is but the branchless pine
That cuts the evening sky."
" 0 hush and hark ! What rounds are
these
But chants and hjly hymns ? "
" Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the
trees
Through all tl/eir leafy limbs."
" Is it a chapel bell that fills
The air with its low tone ? "
" Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills,
The insect's vesper drone."
" The Christ be praised !— He sets forme
A blessed cross in sight ! "
" Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree
With two gaunt arms outright ! "
" Be it wind so sad or tree so stark,
It matte reth not, my knave ;
Methinks to funeral hymns I hark,
The cross is for my grave !
" My life is sped ; I shall not see
My home-set sails asrain ;
The sweetest eyes of Nonnandie
Shall watch for me in vain.
" Yet onward still to ear and eye
The baffling marvel calls ;
I fain would look before I die
On Norembega's walls.
" So, haply, it shall be thy part
At Christian feet to lay
The mystery of the desert's heart
My dead hand plucked away.
' ' Leave me an hour of rest ; go thof
And look from yonder heights ;
Perchance the valley even now
Is starred with city lights."
The henchman climbed the nearest hill,
He saw nor tower nor town,
348
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
But, through the drear woods, lone and
still,
The river rolling down.
He heard the stealthy feet of things
Whose shapes he could not see,
A flutter as of evil wings,
The fall of a dead tree.
The pines stood black against the moon,
A sword of lire beyond ;
He heard the wolf howl, and the loon
Laugh from his reedy pond.
He turned him back : " 0 master dear,
We are but men misled ;
And thou hast sought a city here
To find a grave instead.
"As God shall will ! what matters where
A true man's cross may stand,
So Heaven be o'er it here as there
In pleasant Norman land ?
"These woods, perchance, no secret
hide
Of lordly tower and hall ;
Yon river in its wanderings wide
Has washed no city wall ;
" Yet mirrored in the sullen stream
The holy stars are given :
Is Norembega, then, a dream
Whose waking is in Heaven ?
" No builded wonder of these lands
My weary eyes shall see ;
A city never made with hands
Alone awaiteth me —
" ' Urbs Syon mystica ' ; I see
Its mansions passing fair,
' Condita ccelo ' ; let me be,
Dear Lord, a dweller there ! "
Above the dying exile hung
The vision of the bard,
As faltered on his failing tongue
The song of good Bernard.
The henchman dug at dawn a grave
Beneath the hemlocks brown,
And to the desert's keeping gave
The lord of fief and town.
Years after, when the Sieur Champlain
Sailed up the unknown stream,
And Norembega proved again
A shadow and a dream,
He found the Norman's nameless grave
Within the hemlock's shade,
And, stretching wide its arms to save,
The sign that God had made,
The cross-boughed tree that marked the
spot
And made it holy ground :
He needs the earthly city not
Who hath the heavenly found.
NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON.
NAUHATJGHT, the Indian deacon, who
of old
Dwelt, poor but blameless, where his
narrowing Cape
Stretches its shrunk arm out to all the
winds
And the relentless smiting of the waves,
Awoke one morning from a pleasant
dream
Of a good angel dropping in his hand
A fair, broad gold-piece, in the name of
God.
He rose and went forth with the early
day
Far inland, where the voices of the
waves
Mellowed and mingled with the whis'
pering leaves,
As, through the tangle of the low, thick
woods,
He searched his traps. Therein nor
beast nor bird
He found ; though meanwhile in the
reedy pools
The otter plashed, and underneath the
pines
The partridge drummed : and as hit
thoughts went back
To the sick wife and little child at
home,
What marvel that the poor man felt hi:*
faith
Too weak to bear its burden, — like a
rope
That, strand by strand uncoiling, breaks
above
The hand that grasps it. " Even now,
O Lord !
NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON.
349
Send me," he prayed, " the angel of my
dream !
Nauhaught is very poor; he cannot
wait."
Even as he spake he heard at his bare
feet
A low, metallic clink, and, looking
down,
He saw a dainty purse with disks of
gold
Crowding its silken net. Awhile he
held
The treasure up before his eyes, alone
With his great need, feeling the won
drous coins
Slide through his eager fingers, one by
one.
So then the dream was true. The angel
brought
One broad piece only; should he take
all these?
Who would be wiser, in the blind, dumb
woods ?
The loser, doubtless rich, would scarcely
miss
This dropped crumb from a table always
full.
Still, while he mused, he seemed to hear
the cry
Of a starved child ; the sick face of his
wife „
Tempted him. Heart and flesh in fierce
revolt
Urged the wild license of his savage
youth
Against his later scruples. Bitter toil,
Prayer, fasting, dread of blame, and pit
iless eyes
To watch his halting, — had he lost for
these
The freedom of the woods ; — the hunt
ing-grounds
Of happy spirits for a walled-in heaven
Of everlasting psalms ? One healed the
sick
Very far off thousands of moons ago :
Had he not prayed him night and day to
come
And cure his bed-bound wife? Was
there a hell ?
Were all his fathers' people writhing
there —
Like the poor shell-fish set to boil alive —
Forever, dying never ? If he kept
This gold, so needed, would the dread
ful God
Torment him like a Mohawk's captive
stuck
With slow-consuming splinters ? Would
the saints
And the white angels dance and laugh
to see him
Burn like a pitch-pine torch? His
Christian garb
Seemed falling from him ; with the fear
and shame
Of Adam naked at the cool of day,
He gazed around. A black snake lay in
coil
On the hot sand, a crow with sidelong
eye
Watched from a dead bough. All his
Indian lore
Of evil blending with a convert's faith
In the supernal terrors of the Book,
He saw the Tempter in the coiling
snake
And ominous, black-winged bird ; and
all the while
The low rebuking of the distant waves
Stole in upon him like the voice of
God
Among the trees of Eden. Girding
up
His soul's loins with a resolute hand, he
thrust
The base thought from him: " Nau-
haught, be a man !
Starve, if need be ; but, while you live,
look out
From honest eyes on all men, un
ashamed.
God help me ! I am deacon of the
church,
A baptized, praying Indian ! Should I
do
This secret meanness, even the barken
knots
Of the old trees would turn to eyes to
see it,
The birds would tell of it, and all the
leaves
Whisper above me : 'Nauhaught is a
thief ! '
The sun would know it, and the stars
that hide
Behind his light would watch me, and
at night
Follow me with their sharp, accusing
eyes.
Yea, thou, God, seest me ! " Then
Nauhaught drew
Closer his belt of leather, dulling thus
350
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
The pain of hunger, and walked bravely
hack
To the brown fishing-hamlet by the
sea ;
And, pausing at the inn-door, cheerily
asked :
" Who hath lost aught to-day ? "
" 1," said a voice ;
" Ten golden pieces, in a silken purse,
My daughter's handiwork. " He looked,
and lo !
One stood before him in a coat of frieze,
And the glazed hat of a seafaring man,
Shrewd-faced, broad-shouldered, with
no trace of wings.
Marvelling, he dropped within the
stranger's hand
The silken web, and turned to go his
waY-
But the man said : "A tithe at least is
yours ;
Take it in God's name as an honest
man."
"And as the deacon's dusky fingers closed
Over the golden gift, "Yea, in God's
name
I take it, with a poor man's thanks,"
he said.
So down the street that, like a river of
sand,
Ran, white in sunshine, to the summer
sea,
He sought his home, singing and prais
ing God ;
And when his neighbors in their careless
way
Spoke of the owner of the silken purse —
A Wellfleet skipper, known in every
port
That the Cape opens in its sandy wall —
He answered, with a wise smile, to him
self:
" I saw the angel where they see a man. "
IN SCHOOL-DAYS.
STILL sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sunning;
Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry- vines are running.
Within, the master's desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official ;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife's carved initial;
The charcoal frescos on its wall ;
Its door's worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing '
Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.
It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.
For near her stood the little boy
Her childish favor singled :
His cap pulled low upon a face
Where pride and sharne were mingled
Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he lingered ; —
As restlessly her tiny hands
The blue-checked apron fingered.
He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt
The soft hand's light caressing,
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.
" I'm sorry that I spelt the word :
I hate to go above you,
Because," •— the brown eyes lower
fell, -
" Because, you see, I love you ! "
Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing !
He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her, — because they love him.
GARIBALDI.
I.v
trance and dream of old. God's
prophet saw
The casting down of thrones,
watching lone
The hot Sardinian coast-liue, hazy-
hilled,
Thou,
"On woods that dream of bloom." Page 351.
MY TRIUMPH.
351
Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky
zone
With foam, the slow waves gather e,nd
withdraw,
Behold'st the vision of the seer ful
filled,
And hear'st the sea-winds burdened
with a sound
Of falling chains, as, one by one, un
bound,
The nations lift their right hands up
and swear
Their oath of freedom. From the
chalk-white wall
Of England, from the black Carpathian
range,
Along the Danube and the Theiss,
through all
The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees,
And from the Seine's thronged banks,
a murmur strange
And glad floats to thee o'er thy sum
mer seas
On the salt wind that stirs thy whiten
ing hair, —
The song of freedom's bloodless
victories !
Rejoice, 0 Garibaldi! Though thy
sword
Failed at Rome's gates, and blood
seemed vainly poured
Where, in Christ's name, the crowned
infidel
Of France wrought murder with the
arms of hell
On that sad mountain slope whose
ghostly dead,
Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban,
Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vat
ican,
And draw the curtains of Napoleon's
bed!
God 's providence is not blind, but, full
of eyes,
\t searches all the refuges of lies',
And in His time and way, the accursed
things
Before whose evil feet thy battle -
gage
Has clashed defiance from hot youth
to age
Shall perish. All men shall be priests
and kings, —
One royal brotherhood, one church
made free
By love, which is the law of liberty.'
AFTER ELECTION.
THE day's sharp strife is ended now,
Our work is done, God knoweth how!
As on the thronged, unrestful town
The patience of the moon looks down,
1 wait to hear, beside the wire,
The voices of its tongues of lire.
Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem at first
Be strong, my heart, to know the worst
Hark ! — there the Alleghanies spoke;
That sound from lake and prairie broke,
That sunset-gun of triumph rent
The silence of a continent !
That signal from Nebraska, sprung,
This, from Nevada's mountain tongue!
Is that thy answer, strong and free,
0 loyal heart of Tennessee ?
What strange, glad voice is that which
calls
From Wagner's grave and Sumter's
walls ?
From Mississippi's fountain-head
A sound as of the bison's tread !
There rustled freedom's Charter Oak !
In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke!
Ch^er answers cheer from rise to set
Of sun. We have a country yet !
The praise, 0 God, be thine alone ^
Thou' givest not for bread a stone ;
Thou hast not led us Ihrough the night
To blind us with returning light ;
Not through the furnace have we passed,
To perish at its mouth at last.
0 night of peace, thy flight restrain !
November's moon, be slow to wane !
Shine on the freed man's cabin floor,
On brows of prayer a blessing pour ;
And give, with full assurance blest,
The weary heart of Freedom rest !
1368.
MY TRIUMPH.
THE autumn-time has come ;
On woods that dream of bloom,
And over purpling vines,
The low sun fainter shines.
The aster-flower is failing,
The hazel's gold is paling;
352
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
Yet overhead more near
The eternal stars appear!
And present gratitude
Insures the future's good,
And for the things I see
I trust the things to be ;
That in the paths untrod,
And the long days of God,
My feet shall still be led,
My heart be comforted.
O living friends who love me !
0 dear ones gone above me !
Careless of other fame,
1 leave to you my name.
Hide it from idle praises,
Save it from evil phrases :
Why, when dear lips that spake it
Are dumb, should strangers \vake it ?
Let the thick curtain fall ;
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.
Not by the page word-painted
Let life be banned or sainted : ^
Deeper than written scroll
The colors of the soul.
Sweeter than any sung
My songs that found no tongue ;
IS obler than any fact
My wish that failed of act.
Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong, —
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of win.
What matter, I or they?
Mine or another's day,
So the right word be said
And life the sweeter made ?
Hail to the coming singers !
Hail to the brave light-bringers !
Forward I reach and share
All that they sing and dare.
The airs of heaven blow o'er me ;
4. glory shines before me
Of what mankind shall be, —
Pure, generous, brave, and free.
A dream of man and womna
Diviner but still human,
Solving the riddle old,
Shaping the Age of Gold !
The love of God and neighbor ;
An equal-handed labor ;
The richer life, where beauty
Walks hand in hand with duty,.
Ring, bells in unreared steeples,
The joy of unborn peoples !
Sound, trumpets far off blown,
Your triumph is my own !
Parcel and part of all,
I keep the festival,
Fore-reach the good to be,
And share the victory.
I feel the earth move sunward,
I join the great march onward,
And take, by faith, while living,
My freehold of thanksgiving.
THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG.
IN the old Hebrew myth the lion's
frame,
So terrible alive,
Bleached by the desert's sun and wind,
became
The \vandering wild bees' hive ;
And he who, lone and naked-handed,
tore
Those jaws of death apart,
In after time drew forth their honeyed
store
To strengthen his strong heart.
Dead seemed the legend : but it only
slept
To wake beneath our sky ;
Just on the spot whence ravening Trea
son crept
Back to its lair to die,
Bleeding and torn from Freedom's
mountain bounds,
A stained and shattered drum
Is now the hive where, on their flower}
rounds,
The wild bees go and come.
Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel,
They wander wide and far.
TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
353
Along green hillsides, sown with shot
and shell,
Through vales once choked with war.
The low reveille of their battle-drum
Disturbs no morning prayer ;
With deeper peace in summer noons
their hum
Fills all the drowsy air.
And Samson's riddle is our own to
day,
Of sweetness from the strong,
Of union, peace, and freedom plucked
away
From the rent jaws of wrong;
From Treason's death we draw a purer
life,
As. from the beast he slew,
A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strife
The old-time athlete drew !
HOWARD AT ATLANTA.
EIGHT in the track where Sherman
Ploughed his red furrow,
Out of the narrow cabin,
Up from the cellar's burrow,
Gathered the little black people,
With freedom newly dowered,
Where, beside their Northern teacher,
Stood the soldier, Howard.
He listened and heard the children
Of the poor and long-enslaved
Reading the words of Jesus,
Singing the songs of David.
Behold ! — the dumb lips speaking,
The blind eyes seeing !
Bones of the Prophet's vision .
Warmed into being !
Transformed he saw them passing
Their new life's portal !
Almost it seemed the mortal
Put on the immortal.
No more with the beasts of burden,
No more with stone and clod,
But crowned with glory and honor
In the image of God ! •
There was the human chattel
Its manhood taking ;
There, in each dark, brown statue
A soul was waking !
The man of many battles,
With tears his" eyelids pressing,
Stretched over those dusky foreheads
His one-armed blessing.
And he said : " Who hears can never
Fear for or doubt you ;
What shall I tell the children
Up North about you ? "
Then ran round a whisper, a murmur,.
Some answer devising ;
And a little boy stood up : " Massa,
Tell 'em we 're rising ! "
0 black boy of Atlanta !
But half was spoken :
The slave's chain and the master's
Alike are broken.
The one curse of the races
Held both in tether:
They are rising, — all are rising,
The black and white together !
0 brave men and fair women !
Ill comes of hate and scorning ;
Shall the dark faces only
Be turned to morning ? —
Make Time your sole avenger,
All-healing, all-redressing ;
Meet Fate half-way, and make it
A joy and blessing !
TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD,
ON READING HER POEM IN " THiS
STANDARD."
THE sweet spring day is glad with music,
But through it sounds a sadder strain ;
The worthiest of our narrowing circle
Sings Loring's dirges o'er again.
0 woman greatly loved ! I join thee
In tender memories of our friend ;
With thee across the awful spaces
The greeting of a soul I send !
What cheer hath he ? How is it with
him?
Where lingers he this weary while ?
Over what pleasant fields of Heaven _
Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile ?
Does he not know our feet are treading
The earth hard down on Slavery's
grave ?
That, in our crowning exultations,
We miss the charm his presence gave ?
354
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
Why on this spring air comes no whis
per
From him to tell us all is well ?
Why to our flower-time conies no token
Of lily and of asphodel ?
I feel the unutterable longing,
Thy hunger of the heart is mine ;
I reach and grope for hands in darkness,
My ear grows sharp for voice or sign.
Still on the lips of all we question
The finger of God's .silence lies;
Will the lost hands in ours be folded?
Will the shut eyelids ever rise ?
0 friend ! no proof beyond this yearning,
This outreach of our hearts, we need ;
God will not mock the hope He giveth,
No love He prompts shall vainly
plead.
Then let us stretch our hands in dark
ness,
And call our loved ones o'er and o'er;
Some day their arms shall close about
us,
And the old voices speak once more.
No dreary splendors wait our coming
Where rapt ghost sits from ghost
apart ;
Homeward we go to Heaven's thanks
giving,
The harvest-gathering of the heart.
THE PRAYER-SEEKER.
ALONG the aisle where prayer was made
A woman, all in black arrayed,
Close-veiled, between the kneeling host,
With gliding motion of a ghost,
Passed to the desk, and laid thereon
A scroll which bore these words alone,
Pray for me !
Back from the place of worshipping
She glided like a guilty thing:
The rustle of her draperies, stirred
By hurrying feet, alone was heard ;
While, full of awe, the preacher read,
As oul into the dark she sped :
"Pray for me J"
Back to the night from whence she
came,
To unimagined grief or shame !
Across the threshold of that door
None knew the burden that she bore ;
Alone she left the written scroll,
The legend of a troubled soul, —
Pray for me.'
Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin !
Thou leav'st a common need within ;
Each bears, like thee, some nameless
weight,
Some misery inarticulate,
Some secret sin, some hlnouded dread,
Some household sorrow all unsaid.
Pray for us !
Pass on ! The type of all thou art,
Sad witness to the common heart !
With face in veil and seal on lip,
In mute and strange companionship,
Like thee we wander to and fro,
Dumbly imploring as we go :
Pray for us !
Ah, who shall pray, since he who
pleads
Our want perchance hath greater needs ?
Yet they who make their loss the gain
Of others shall not ask in vain,
And Heaven bends low to hear the
prayer
Of love from lips of self-despair :
Pray for us I
In vain remorse and fear and hate
Beat with bruised hands against a fate
Whose walls of iron only move
And open to the touch of love.
He only feels his burdens fall
Who, taught by siifferirig, pities all.
Pray for us !
He prayeth best who leaves unguessed
The mystery of another's breast.
Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'er-
flow,
Or heads are white, thou need'st not
know.
Enough to note by many a sign
That every heart hath needs like thine.
Pray for us I
A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION.
355
POEMS FOR PUBLIC OCCASION'S,
A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION.
AT THE PRESIDENT'S LEVEE, BROWN
UNIVERSITY, 29TH 6TH MONTH, 1870.
TO-DAY the plant by Williams set
Its summer bloom discloses ;
The wilding sweethrier of his prayers
Is crowned with cultured roses.
Once more the Island State repeats
The lesson that he taught her,
And binds his pearl of charity
Upon her brown-locked daughter.
Is 't fancy that he watches still
His Providence plantations 9-
That still the careful Founder takes
A part on these occasions ?
Methinks I see that reverend f~rm,
Which all of us so well know :
He rises up to speak ; he jogs
The presidential elbow
"Good friends," he says, "you reap a
field
I sowed in self-denial,
For toleration had its griefs
And charity its trial.
"Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas
More,
To him must needs be given
Who heareth heresy and teaves
The heretic to Heaven !
"I hear again the snnffled tones,
I see in dreary vision
Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritua1 T)ores,
And prophets with a mission.
" Each zealot thrust before my eyos
His Scripture-garbled label ;
All creeds were shouted in my ears
As with the tongues of Babel.
"Scourged at one cart-tail, each, de
nied
The hope of every other ;
Each martyr shook his branded fist
At the conscience of his brother '
How cleft the dreary drone of man
The shriller pipe of woman,
As Gorton led his saints elect,
Who held all things in. common I
" Their gay robes trailed in ditch and
swamp,
And torn by thorn and thicket,
The dancing-girls of Merry Mount
Came dragging to my wicket.
' Shrill Anabaptists, shorn of ears ;
Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly ;
And Antinomians, free of law,
Whose very sins were holy.
"Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Mon
archists,
Of stripes and bondage braggarts,
Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics
snatched
From Puritanic fagots.
" And last, not least, the Quakers came,
With tongues still sore from burning,
The Bay State's dust from off theii
feet
Before my threshold spurning ;
A motley host, the Lord's debris,
Faith's odds and ends together ;
Well might I shrink from guests with
lungs
Tough as their breeches leather :
" If, when the hangman at their heels
Came, rope in hand to catch them,
I took the hunted outcasts hi,
I never sent to fetch them.
" I fed, but spared them not a whit;
I gave to all who walked in,
Not clams and succotash alone,
But stronger meat of doctrine.
" I proved the prophets false, I pricked
The bubble of perfection,
And clapped upon their inner light
The snuffers of election.
" And looking backward on my times-
This credit I am taking ;
356
POEMS FOR PUBLIC OCCASIONS.
I kept each sectary's dish apart,
No spiritual chowder making.
"Where now the blending signs ox sect
Would puzzle their assorter,
The dry-shod Quaker kept the land,
The Baptist held the water.
"* A common coat now serves for both,
The hat 's no more a fixture ;
And which was wet and which was
dry,
Who knows in such a mixture ?
"Well! He who fashioned Peter's
dream
To bless them all is able ;
And bird and beast and creeping thing
Make clean upon His table !
• ' T walked by my own light ; but when
The ways of faith divided,
Was I to force unwilling feet
To tread the path that I did ?
'* I touched the garment-hem of truth,
Yet saw not all its splendor ;
I knew enough of doubt to feel
For every conscience tender.
" God left men free of choice, as when
His Eden-trees were planted ;
Because they chose amiss, should I
Deny the gift He granted ?
u So, with a common sense of need,
Our common weakness feeling,
I left them with myself to God
And His all-gracious dealing !
" I kept His plan whose rain and sun
To tare and wheat are given ;
And if the ways to hell were free,
I left them free to heaven ! "
Take heart with us, 0 man of old,
Soul-freedom's brave confessor,
Bo love of God and man wax strong,
Let sect and creed be lesser.
The jarring discords of thy day
In ours one hymn are swelling ;
The wandering feet, the severed paths,
All seek our Father's dwelling.
&nd slowly learns the world the truth
That makes us all thy debtor, —
That holy life is more than rite,
And spirit more than letter ;
That they who differ pole-wide serve
Perchance the common Master,
And other sheep He hath than they
Who graze one narrow pasture !
For truth's worst foe is he who claims
To act as God's avenger,
And deems, beyond his sentry-beat,
The crystal walls in danger !
Who sets for heresy his traps
Of verbal quirk and quibble,
And weeds the garden of the Lord
With Satan's borrowed dibble.
To-day our hearts like organ keys
One Master's touch are feeling ;
The branches of a common Vine
Have only leaves of healing.
Co -workers, yet from varied fields,
We share this restful nooning ;
The Quaker with the Baptist here
Believes in close communing.
Forgive, dear saint, the playful tone,
Too light for thy deserving ;
Thanks for thy generous faith in man.
Thy trust in God unswerving.
Still echo in the hearts of men
The words that thou hast spoken ;
No forge of hell can weld again
The fetters thou hast broken.
The pilgrim needs a pass no more
From Roman or Genevan ;
Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps
Henceforth the road to Heaven !
••'THE LAUKELS."
AT THE TWENTIETH AND LAST ANNI
VERSARY.
FROM these wild rocks I look to-day
O'er leagues of dancing waves, and
see
The far, low coast-line stretch away
To where our river meets the sea.
The light wind blowing off the land
Is burdened with old voices ; through
HYMN.
357
Shut eyes I see how lip and hand
The greeting of old days renew.
0 friends whose hearts still keep their
prime,
Whose bright example warms and
cheers,
Ye teach us how to smile at Time,
And set to music all his years !
1 thank you for sweet summer days,
For pleasant memories lingering long,
For joyful meetings, fond delays,
And ties of friendship woven strong.
As for the last time, side by side,
You tread the paths familiar grown,
I reach across the severing tide,
And blend my farewells with your
own.
Make room, 0 river of our home !
For other feet in place of ours,
And in the summers yet to come,
Make glad another Feast of Flowers !
Hold in thy mirror, calm and deep,
The pleasant pictures thou hast seen ;
Forget thy lovers not, but keep
Our memory like thy laurels green.
ISLES OF SHOALS, 1th mo., 1870.
HYMN
FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPA
TION AT NEWBURYPORT.
NOT unto us who did but seek
The word that burned within to speak,
Not unto us this day belong
The triumph and exultant song.
Upon us fell in early youth
The burden of unwelcome truth,
And left us, weak and frail and few,
The censor's painful work to do.
Thenceforth our life a fight became,
The air we breathed was hot with
blame ;
For not with gauged and softened tone
We made the bondman's cause our
We bore, as Freedom's hope forlorn,
The private hate, the public scorn ;
Yet held through all the paths we trod
Our faith in man and trust in God.
We prayed and hoped ; but still, with
awe,
The coming of the sword we saw ;
We heard the nearing steps of doom,
We saw the shade of things to come
In grief which they alone can feel
Who from a mother's wrong appeal,
With blended lines of fear and hope
We cast our country's horoscope.
For still within her house of life
We marked the lurid sign of strife,
And, poisoning and imbittering all,
We saw the star of Wormwood fall.
Deep as our love for her became
Our hate of all that wrought her shame,
And if, thereby, with tongue and pen
We erred, — we were but mortal men.
We hoped for peace ; our eyes survey
The blood-red dawn of Freedom's day :
We prayed for love to loose the chain ;
'T is shorn by battle's axe in twain !
Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours
Has mined and heaved the hostile-
towers ;
Not by our hands is turned the key
That sets the sighing captives free.
A redder sea than Egypt's wave
Is piled and parted for the slave ;
A darker cloud moves on in light ;
A fiercer fire is guide by night !
The praise, 0 Lord ! is Thine alone,
In Thy own way Thy work is done !
Our poor gifts at Thy feet we cast,
To whom be glory, first and last !
1865
358
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM,
AND OTHER POEMS.
FRANCIS DANIEL PASTORIUS.
THE beginning of German emigration to Amer
ica may be traced to the personal influence of
William Penn, who in 1677 visited the Continent,
and made the acquaintance of an intelligent and
highly cultivated circle of Pietists, or Mystics,
who, reviving in the seventeenth century the
spiritual faith and worship of Taule" and the
" Friends of God'; in the fourteenth, gathered
about the pastor Spener, and the young and
beautiful Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau. In
this circle originated the Frankfort Land Com
pany, which bought of William Penn, the Gov
ernor of Pennsylvania, a tract of land near the
new city of Philadelphia.
The company's agent in the New World was a ris
ing young lawyer, Francis Daniel Pastorius, son of
Judge Pastorius, of Windsheitn , who, at the age ot
seventeen, entered the University of Altorf. He
studied law at Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and at
Ratisbon, the seat of the Imperial Government,
obtained a practical knowledge of international
polity. Successful in all his examinations and dis
putations, he received the degree of Doctor of Law
at Nuremberg in 1676. In 1679 he was a law-le-tur-
er at Frankfort, where he became deeply interested
in the teaching-i of Dr. Spener. In 1680 --81 he
travelled in France, England, Ireland, an'l Italy
with his friend Herr Von Rodeck. '• I was,'" he
says, " glad to enjoy again the company of my
Christian friends, rather than b^ with Von
Rodeck feasting and dancing/' In 1683. in com
pany with a small number of German Friends, he
emigrated to America, settling upon the Frank
fort Compauy's tract between the Schuylkill and
the Delawai^e Rivers. The township was di
vided into four hamlets, namely, German town,
Krisheim, Crefield, and Sommerhausen Soon
after his arrival he united himself with the Soci
ety of Friends, and became one of its most able
and devoted members, as well as the recognized
head and lawgiver of the settlement. He mar
ried, two years after his arrival, Anneke (Anna)
daughter of Dr. Klosterman, of Muhlheim.
In the year 1688 he drew up a memorial
against slaveholding, which was adopted bv the
Germantown Friends and sent up to the Montnly
Meeting, and thence to the Yearly Meeting at
•Philadelphia. It is noteworthy as the firs'- pro
test made by a religious body against Negro
Slavery. The original document was discovered
In 1844 by the Philadelphia antiquarian, Nathan
Kite, and published in " The Friend !1 (Vol.
XVIII No. 16). It is a bold and direct appeal
to the best instincts of the heart. " Have not,"
he asks, '' these negroes as much right to fight
for their freedom as you have to keep them
slaves?"
Under the wise direction of Pastorius, the
Gennantown settlement grew and prospered.
Tne inhabitants planted orchards and vineyards,
and surrounded themselves with souvenirs of
thoir old home. A large number of them were
linen-weavers, as well as small farmers The
Quakers were the principal sect, but men of all
religions were tolerated, and lived together in
harmony. In 1692 Richard Frame published, in
what he called verse, a " Description of Pennsyl
vania," in which he alludes to the settlement-' —
" The German town of which I spoke before,
Which is at least in length one mile or more,
Where lives High Get mini people and Low Dutch,
\Vhose trade in weaving linen cloth is much, —
There grows the fax. as also you niny know
That from the snn.e they do divide the tow.
Their trade suits well their habitation, -
We find convenience for their occupation."
Pastorius seems to have been on intimate
terms with William .Penn, Thomas Llo\d, Chief
Justice Logan, Thomas ?tory, and other leading
men in the Province belonging to his own re
ligious society, as also with Kelpius, the learned
Mystic of the Wissahickon, with the pastor of
the Swedes' church, and the leaders of the
Mennonites. He wrote a description of Penn
sylvania, which was published at Frankfort and
Leipfic in 1700 and I'.Ol. His " Lives of the
Faints," etc., written in German and dedicated
to Prof. Schurn.berg, his old teacher, was pub
lished in 1690. He left behind him many un
published manuscripts covering a very wide range
of subjects, most of which are now lost One
huge n anuscript folio, entitled '' Hive Beestock,
Melhotropheum Alucar, or Rusca Apirm," still
remains, containing one thousand pages with
about one hundred lines to a pnge. It is a med
ley of knowledge and fancy, history, philosophy,
and poetry, written in seven languages. A large
portion of his poetry is devoted to the pleasures
I of gardening, the description of flowers, and the
! care of bees. The following specimen of his
I punning Latin is addressed to an orchard-pil
ferer : —
" Quiequis in hacc furtim reptas viridaria nostra
Tongere f'ullaci poma caveto manu,
Si non obsequeris faxit Deus onme quod opto,
Cum malis nostris ut mala cuncta feras."
Professor Oswald Seidensticker, to *vhose pa
pers in Der Dmtsrhe Pioneer and that able peri
odical the " Penn Monthly," of Philadelphia, 1
am indebted for many uf the foregoing facts in
regard to the German pilgrims of the New World,
thus closes his notice o<~ Vastorius : —
" No tombstone, roc even a record of burial,
indicates where his remains have found their las<
resting-place, and the pardonable desire to asso
ciate the homage due to this distinguished man
with some visible memento cannot be gratified
There is no reason to suppose that he was in
terred in any other place than the Friends' old
bury ing-ground in Germantown, though the
fact is not attested by any definite source of in
formation. After all, this obliteration of the
last trace of his earthly existence is but typica,
of what ha* overtaken thp times which he repre
sents ; that Germantown which he founded, which
FRELUDE.
359
saw him live and move, is at present but a quaint
idyl of the past, almost a myth, barely remem
bered and little cared for by the keener race that
has succeeded."
The Pilgrims of Plymouth have not lacked
historian and pcet. Justice has been done to
their faith, courage, and self-sacritice, and to
the mighty influence of their endeavors to estab
lish righteousness on the earth. The Quaker
pilgrims of Pennsylvania, seeking the same ob
ject by different means, have not been equally
fortunate. The power of their testimony for
truth and holiness, peace and freedom, enforced
only by what Milton calls " theunresistible might
of meekness," has been felt through two centu
ries in the amelioration of penal severities, the
abolition of slavery, the reform of the erring, the
relief of the poor and suffering, — felt, in brief,
in every step of human progress. But of the
men themselves, 'with the single exception of
William Penn, scarcely anything is known.
Contrasted, from the outset, with the stern, ag
gressive Puritans of New England, they have
come to be regarded as " a feeble folk," with a
personality as doubtful as their unrecorded
graves. They were not soldiers, like Miles Stand-
ish ; they had no figure so picturesque as Vane,
no leader so rashly brave and haughty as Endi-
cott. No Cotton Mather wrote their Magnalia ;
they had no awful drama of supernaturalism in
which Sntan and his angels were actors; and the
only witch mentioned in their simple annals was
a poor old Swedish woman, who, on complaint
of her countrywomen, was tried and acquitted of
everything but imbecility and folly. Nothing but
commonplace offices of civility came to pass be
tween them and the Indians ; indeed, their ene
mies taunted them with the fact that the savages
did not regard them as Christims, but just such
men as themselves Yet it must be apparent to
every careful observer of the progress of Ameri
can civilization that its two principal currents
had their sources in the entirely opposite direc
tions of the Puritan and Quaker colonies. To
use the words of a late writer : * " The historical
forces, with which no others may be compared in
their influence on the people, have been those of
the Puritan and the Quaker. The strength of
the one was in the confession of an invisible
Presence, a righteous, eternal Will, which would
establish righteousness on earth ; and thence
arose the conviction of a direct personal respon
sibility, which could be tempted by no external
.splendor and could be shaken by no internal
agitation, and could not be evaded or transferred.
The strength of the other was the witness in the
human spirit to an eternal Word, an Inner Voice
which spoke to each alone, while yet it spoke to
every m in ; a Light which each was to follow,
and which yet was the light of the world ; and
all other voices were si'ent before this, arid the
solitary path whither it led was more sacred than
the worn ways of cathedral-aisles."
It will be sufficiently apparent to the reader
that, in the poem which follows, I have attempted
nothing beyond a study of the life and times of
the Pennsylvania colonist, — a simple picture of
a noteworthy man and his locality. The colors
of my sketch are all very sober, toned down to
the quiet and dreamy atmosphere through which
its subject is visible. Whether, in the glare
and tumult of the present time, such a picture
Mulford's Nation, pp. 267, :*».
will find favor may well be questioned. I onl$
know that it has beguiled for me some hours of
weariness, and that, whatever may be its meas
ure of public appreciation, it has been to me its
own reward.
J. G. W.
AMESBURY, 5th mo., 1872.
HAIL to posterity !
Hail, future men of Germanopolis !
Let the young generations yet to be
Look kindly upon this.
Think how your fathers left their native
land, —
Dear German -land ! 0 sacred
hearths and homes ! —
And, where the wild beast roams,
In patience planned
New forest-homes beyond the mighty
sea,
There undisturbed and free
To live as brothers of one family.
What pains and cares befell,
What trials and what fears,
Remember, and wherein we have done
well
Follow our footsteps, men of coming
years !
Where we have failed to do
Aright, or wisely live,
Be warned by us, the better way pur
sue,
And, knowing we were human, even as
you,
Pity us and forgive !
Farewell, Posterity!
Farewell, dear Germany !
Forevermore farewell !
From the Latin of FRANCIS DANIEL PASTOWOS
in the Germantown Records. 1688.
PEELUDE.
I SING the Pilgrim of a softer clime
And milder speech than those brave
men's who brought
To the ice and iron of our winter time
A will as firm, a creed as stern, and
wrought
With one mailed hand, and with the
other fought.
Simply, as fits my theme, in homely
rhyme
I sing the blue-eyed German Spener
taught,
360
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
Through whose veiled, mystic faith the
Inward Light,
Steady and still, an easy brightness,
shone,
Transfiguring all things in its radiance
white.
The garland which his meekness never
sought
I bring him ; over fields of harvest
sown
With seeds of blessing, now to ripe
ness grown,
I bid the sower pass before the reapers'
sight.
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
NEVER in tenderer quiet lapsed the
day
From Pennsylvania's vales of spring
away,
. Where, forest-walled, the scattered ham
lets lay
Along the wedded rivers. One long
bar
Of purple cloud, on which the evening
star
Shone like a jewel on a scimitar,
Held the sky's golden gateway. Through
the deep
Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to
creep,
The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of
sleep.
All else was still. The oxen from their
ploughs
Rested at last, and from their long day's
browse
Came the dun files of Krisheim's home-
bound cows.
And the young city, round whose virgin
zone
The rivers like two mighty arms were
thrown,
Marked by the smoke of evening fires
alone,
Lay in the distance, lovely even then
With its fair women and its stately
men
Gracing the forest court of William
Penn,
Urban yet sylvan; in its rough-hewn
frames
Of oak and pine the dryads held their
claims,
And lent its streets their pleasant wood
land names.
Anna Pastorius down the leafy lane
Looked city- ward, then stooped to prune
again
Her vines and simples, with a sigh of pain.
For fast the streaks of ruddy sunset paled
In the oak clearing, and, as dajdight
failed,
Slow, overhead, the dusky night-birds
sailed.
Again she looked: between green walls
of shade,
With low-bent head as if with sorrow
weighed,
Daniel Pastorius slowly came and said,
"God's peace be with thee, Anna!"
Then he stood
Silent beforeher, wrestlingwith themood
Of one who sees the evil and not good.
What is it, my Pastorius ? " As she
spoke,
A slow, faint smile across his features
broke,
Sadder than tears. "Dear heart," he
said, " our folk
"Are even as others. Yea, our good
liest Friends
Are frail ; our elders have their selfish
ends,
And few dare trust the Lord to make
amends
" For duty's loss. So even our feeble word
For the dumb slaves the startled meet
ing heard
As if a stone its quiet waters stirred ;
" And, as the clerk ceased reading, there
began
A ripple of dissent which downward ran
In widening circles, as from man to man.
' ' Somewhat was said of running before
sent,
Of tender fear that some their guide out
went,
Troublers of Israel. I was scarce intent
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
361
"On hearing, for behind the reverend
row
Of gallery Friends, in dumb and piteous
show,
I saw, methought, dark faces full of woe.
" And, in the spirit, I was taken where
They toiled and suffered ; I was made
aware
Of shame and wrath and anguish and
despair !
"And while the meeting smothered our
poor plea
With cautious phrase, a Voice there
seemed to
pin
be,
' As ye have done to these ye do to me !"
"So it all passed; and the old tithe
went on
Of anise, mint, and cumin, till the sun
Set, leaving still the weightier work
undone.
" Help, for the good man faileth ! Who
is strong,
If these be weak? Who shall rebuke
the wrong,
If these consent ? How long, 0 Lord !
how long ! "
He ceased ; and, bound in spirit with
the bound,
With folded arms, and eyes that sought
the ground,
Walked musingly his little garden round.
About him, beaded with the falling dew,
Rare plants of power and herbs of healing
grew,
Such as VanHelmont and Agrippaknew.
For, by the lore of Gorlitz' gentle sage,
With the mild mystics of his dreamy age
He read the herbal signs of nature's page,
As once he heard in sweet Von Merlau's75
bowers
Fair as herself, in boyhood's happy hours,
The pious Spener read his creed in
flowers.
" The dear Lord give us patience ! " said
his wife,
Touching with finger-tip an aloe, rife
With leaves sharp-pointed like an Aztec
knife
Or Carib spear, a gift to William Penn
From the rare gardens of John Evelyn,
Brought from the Spanish Main by
merchantmen.
"See this strange plant its steady pur
pose hold,
And, year by year, its patient leaves
unfold,
Till the young eyes that watched it first-
are old.
" But some time, thou hast told me,
there shall come
A sudden beauty, brightness, and per«
fume,
The century-moulded bud shall burst in
bloom.
" So may the seed which hath been sown
to-day
Grow with the years, and, after long
delay,
Break into bloom, and God's eternal Yea
" Answer at last the patient prayers of
them
Who now, br faith alone, behold its
stem
Crowned with the flowers of Freedom's
diadem.
" Meanwhile, to feel and suffer, work
and wait,
Remains for us. The wrong indeed i^
great,
But love and patience conquer soon 01
late."
' ' Well hast thou said, my Anna ! "
Tenderer
Than youth's caress upon the head of
her
Pastoriuslaid hishand. "Shall wedemur
' ' Because the vision tarrieth ? In an
hour
We dream not of the slow-grown bud
may flower,
And what was sown in weakness rise in
power ! "
Then through the vine-draped door whose
legend read,
" PROCUL ESTE PROPHANI ! " Anna led
To where their child upon his little
bed
362
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
Looked up and smiled. " Dear heart," I In God's name ; and the leaven of the
word
she said, "if we
Must bearers of a heavy burden be,
Our boy, God willing, yet the day shall see
j And a dead conscience in its grave-
" When, from the gallery to the farthest j clothes stirred
Wrought ever after in the souls who
heard,
seat,
Slave and slave-owner shall no longer
meet,
But all ait equal at the Master's feet."
On the stone hearth the blazing walnut
block
Set the low walls a-glimmer, showed the
cock
Rebuking Peter on the Van Wyck clock,
Shone on old tomes of law and physic,
side
By side with Fox and Behmen, played
at hide
And seek with Anna, midst her house
hold pride
Of flaxen webs, and on the table, bare
Of costly cloth or silver cup, but where,
Tasting the fat shads of the Delaware,
The courtly Penn had praised the good-
wife's cheer,
And quoted Horace o'er her home-brewed
beer,
Till even grave Pastorius smiled to hear.
In such a home, beside the Schuylkill's
wave,
He dwelt in peace with God and man,
and gave
Food to the poor and shelter to the slave.
For all too soon the New World's scan
dal shamed
The righteous code by Penn and Sidney
framed,
And meii withheld the human rights
they claimed.
And slowly wealth and station sanction
lent,
And hardened avarice, on its gains in
tent,
Stifled the inward whisper of dissent.
Yet all the while the burden rested sore
On tender hearts. At last Pastorius bore
Their warning message to the Church's
door
To troubled life, and urged the vain
excuse
Of Hebrew custom, patriarchal use,
Good in itself if evil in abuse.
Gravely Pastorius listened, not the less
Discerning through the decent fig-leaf
dress
Of the poor plea its shame of selfishness.
One Scripture rule, at least, was unfor-
got;
He hid the outcast, and bewrayed him
not;
And, when his prey the human hunter
sought,
He scrupled not, while Anna's wise delay
And proffered cheer prolonged the mas
ter's stay,
To speed the black guest safely on his way.
Yet, who shall guess his bitter grief who
lends
His life to some great cause, and finds
his friends
Shame or betray it for their private ends?
How felt the Master when his chosen
strove
In childish folly for their seats above ;
And that fond mother, blinded by her
love,
Besought him that her sons, beside his
throne,
Might sit on either hand? Amidst his
own
A stranger oft, companionless and lone,
The
God's priest and prophet stands.
martyr's pain
Is not alone from scourge and cell and
chain ;
Sharper the pang when, shouting in his
train,
His weak disciples by their lives deny
The loud hosaimas of their daily cry,
And make their echo of his truth a lie.
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM
363
His forest borne no hermit's cell he found,
Guests, motley-minded, drew his hearth
around,
And held armed truce upon its neutral
ground.
Their Indian chiefs with battle-bows un
strung,
Strong, hero-limbed, like those whom
Homer sung,
Pastorius fancied, when the world was
young,
Came with their tawny women, lithe and
tall,
Like bronzes in his friend Von Rodeck's
hall,
Comely, if black, and not unpleasing all.
There hungry folk in homespun drab and
gray
Drew round his board on Monthly Meet
ing day,
Genial, half merry in their friendly way.
Or, haply, pilgrims from the Fatherland,
Weak, timid, homesick, slow to under
stand
The New World's promise, sought his
helping hand.
Or painful Kelpius 76 from his hermit den
By Wissahickon, maddest of good men,
Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of
Petersen.
Deep in the woods, where the small
river sli'd
Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt
Mystic hid,
Weird as a wizard over arts forbid,
Reading the books of Daniel and of John,
And Belimen's Morning-Redness, through
the Stone
Of Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes alone,
Whereby he read what man ne'er read
before,
And saw the visions man shall see no
more,
Till the great angel, striding sea and
s"hore,
Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships,
The warning trump of the Apocalypse,
(Shattering the heavens before the
eclipse.
Or meek-eyed Mennonist his bearded chin
Leaned o'er the gate; or Ranter, pure
within,
Aired his perfection in a world of sin.
Or, talking of old home scenes, Op dei
Graaf
Teased the low back-log with his shod
den staff,
Till the red embers broke into a laugh
And dance of flame, as if they fain would
cheer
The rugged face, half tender, half aus
tere,
Touched with the pathos of a homesick
tear !
Or Sluyter,77 saintly familist, whose word
As law the Brethren of the Manor heard,
Announced the speedy terrors of the
Lord,
And turned, like Lot at Sodom, from
his race,
Above a wrecked world with complacent
face
Riding secure upon his plank ol grace !
Haply, from Finland's birchen groves
exiled,
Manly in thought, in simple ways a
child,
His white hair floating round his visage
mild,
The Swedish pastor sought the Quaker's
door,
Pleased from his neighbor's lips to hear
once more
His long-disused and half-forgotten lore
For both could baffle Babel's lingual
curse,
And speak in Bion's Doric, and rehearse
Cleanthes' hymn or Virgil's sounding
verse.
And oft Pastorius and the meek old man
Argued as Quaker and as Lutheran,
Ending in Christian love, as they began.
With lettered Lloyd on pleasant morns
he strayed
Where Somnierhausen over vales of shade
Looked miles away, by every flower
delayed,
,364
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
Or song of bird, happy and free with one
Who loved, likehim, to let his memory run
Over old fields of learning, and to sun
Himself in Plato's wise philosophies,
And dream with Philo over mysteries
Whereof the dreamer never finds the
keys;
To touch all themes of thought, nor
weakly stop
For doubt of truth, but let the buckets
drop
Deep down and bring the hidden waters
up. 78
For there was freedom in that wakening
time
Of tender souls ; to differ was not crime ;
The varying bells made up the perfect
chime.
On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal,
The white, clear light, tradition-colored,
stole
Through the stained oriel of each human
soul.
Gathered from many sects, the Quaker
brought
His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought
That moved his soul the creed his fathers
taught.
One faith alone, so broad that all man
kind
Within themselves its secret witness find,
The soul's communion with the Eternal
Mind,
The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and
Guide,
Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied,
The polished Penn and Cromwell's Iron
side.
As still in Hemskerck's Quaker Meet
ing,79 face
By face in Flemish detail, we may trace
How loose-mouthed boor and fine
ancestral grace
Sat in close contrast, — the clipt-headed
churl,
Broad market-dame, and simple serving-
girl
By skirt of silk and periwig in curl !
For soul touched soul; the spiritual
treasure-trove
Made all men equal, none could rise
above
Nor sink below that level of God's love.
So, with his rustic neighbors sitting
down,
The homespun frock beside the scholar's
gown,
Pastorius to the manners of the town
Added the freedom of the woods, and
sought
The bookless wisdom by experience
taught,
And learned to love his new-found home,
while not
Forgetful of the old ; the seasons went
Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit
lent
Of their own calm and measureless con
tent.
Glad even to tears, he heard the robin
sing
His song of welcome to the Western
spring,
And bluebird borrowing from the sky
his wing.
And when the miracle of autumn came,
And all the woods with many-colored
flame
Of splendor, making summer's greenness
tame,
Burned, unconsurned, a voice without a
sound
Spake to him from each kindled bush
around,
And made the strange, new landscape
holy ground !
And when the bitter north -wind, keen and
swift,
Swept the white street and piled the
dooryard drift,
He exercised, as Friends might say, his
gift
Of verse, Dutch, English, Latin, like
the hash
Of corn and beans in Indian succotash ;
Dull, doubtless, but with here and there
a flash
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
365
Of wit and fine conceit, — the good j Pastorius answered all : while seed and
man's play root
Of quiet fancies, meet to while away ; Sent from his new home grew to flower
The slow hours measuring off an idle day. and fruit
[ Along the Rhine and at the Spessarc's
At evening, while his wife put on her , foot ;
look
Of love's endurance, from its niche he , And, in return, the flowers his boyhood
took knew
The written pages of his ponderous book. I Smiled at his door, the same in form
and hue,
And read, in half the languages of man,
His "Rusca Apiurn," which with bees
began,
And through the gamut of creation ran.
Or, now and then, the missive of some
friend
In gray Altorf or storied Niirnberg
penned
Dropped in upon him like a guest to
The
spend
night beneath
Mystical
his roof-tree.
The fair Von Merlau spake as waters
fall
And voices sound in dreams, and yet
withal
Human and sweet, as if each far, low
tone,
Over the roses of her gardens blown
Brought the warm sense of beauty all
her own.
Wise Spener questioned what his friend
could trace
Of spiritual influx or of saving grace
In the wild natures of the Indian race.
And learned Schurmberg, fain, at times,
to look
From Talmud, Koran, Veds, and Penta
teuch,
Sought out his pupil in his far-off nook,
To query with him of climatic change,
Of bird, beast, reptile, in his forest range,
Of flowers and fruits and simples new
and strange.
And thus the Old and New World
reached their hands
Across the water, and the friendly lands
Talked with each other
severed strands.
from their
And on his vines the Rhenish clusters
grew.
No idler he ; whoever else might shirk,
He set his hand to every honest work, —
Farmer and teacher, court and meeting
clerk*
Still on the town seal his device- is found,
Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a tre
foil ground,
With " VlNUM, LlNUM ET TEXTRINUM "
wound.
One house sufficed for gospel and for law,
Where Paul and Grotius, Scripture text
and saw,
Assured the good, and held the rest in awe.
Whatever 1(
maze he wandered
legal
through,
He kept the Sermon on the Mount m
view,
And justice always into mercy grew.
No whipping-post he needed, stocks, noi
jail,
Nor ducking-stool ; the orchard-thief
grew pale
At his rebuke, the vixen ceased to rail,
The usurer's grasp released the forfeit
land ;
The slanderer faltered at the witness-
stand,
And all men took his counsel for com
mand.
Was it caressing air, the brooding love
Of tenderer skies than German land
knew of,
Green calm below, blue quietness abover
Still flow of water, deep repose of wood
That, with a sense of loving Fatherhood
And childlike trust in the Eternal Good,
366
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
Softened all hearts, and dulled the edge
of hate,
Hushed strife, and taught impatient zeal
to wait
The slow assurance of the better state ?
Who knows what goadings in their
sterner way
O'er jagged ice, relieved by granite gray,
Blew round the men of Massachusetts
Bay?
What hate of heresy the east-wind woke ?
What hints of pitiless power and terror
spoke
In waves that on their iron coast-line
broke ?
Be it as it may : within the Land of Penn
The sectary yielded to the citizen,
And peaceful dwelt the many-creeded
Peace brooded over all. No trumpet
stung
The air to madness, and no steeple flung
Alarums down from bells at midnight
rung.
The land slept well. The Indian from
his face
Washed all his war-paint off, and in the
place
Of battle -marches sped the peaceful
chase,
Or wought for wages at the white man's
side, —
Giving to kindness what his native piide
And lazy freedom to all else denied.
A.nd well the curious scholar loved the
old
Traditions that his swarthy neighbors
told
By wigwam-fires when nights were grow
ing cold,
Discerned the fact round which their
fancy drew
Its dreams, and held their childish faith
more true
To God and man than half the creeds he
knew.80
The desert blossomed round him ; wheat-
fields rolled
Beneath the warm wind waves of green
and gold ;
The planted ear returned its hundred
fold.
Great clusters ripened in a warmer sun
Than that which by the Rhine stream
shines upon
The purpling hillsides with low vines
o'errun.
About each rustic porch the humming
bird
Tried with light bill, that scarce a petal
stirred,
The Old World flowers to virgin soil
transferred ;
And the first-fruits of pear and apple,
bending
The young boughs down, their gold and
russet blending,
Made glad his heart, familiar odors lend
ing
To the fresh fragrance of the birch and
pine,
Life-everlasting, bay, and eglantine,
And all the subtle scents the woods com
bine.
Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in
summer calm
Warm, tender, restful, sweet with wood
land balm,
Came to him, like some mother-hallowed
psalm
To the tired grinder at the noisy wheel
Of labor, winding off from memory's reel
A golden thread of music. With no peal
Of bells to call them to the house of
praise,
The scattered settlers through green for
est-ways
Walked meeting - ward,
amaze
In reverent
The Indian trapper saw them, from the
dim
Shade of the alders on the rivulet's rim,
Seek the Great Spirit's house to talk
with Him.
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
367
There, through the gathered stillness
multiplied
And made intense by sympathy, outside
The sparrows sang, and the gold-robin
cried,
A-swing upon his elm. A faint per
fume
Breathed through the open windows of
the room
From locust-trees, heavy with clustered
bloom.
Thither, perchance, sore-tried confessors
came,
Whose fervor jail nor pillory could tame,
Proud of the cropped ears meant to be
their shame,
Men who had eaten slavery's bitter
bread
In Indian isles ; pale women who had
bled
Under the hangman's lash, and bravely
said
God's message through their prison's iron
bars;
And gray old soldier-converts, seamed
with scars
From every stricken field of England's
Lowly before the Unseen Presence knelt
Each waiting heart, till haply some one
felt
On his moved lips the seal of silence
melt.
Or, without spoken words, low breath
ings stole
Of a diviner life from soul to soul,
Baptizing in one tender thought the
whole.
When shaken hands announced the
meeting o'er,
The friendly group still lingered at the
door,
Greeting, inquiring, sharing all the store
Of weekly tidings. Meanwhile youth
and maid
Pown the green vistas of the woodland
strayed,
Whispered and smiled and oft their feet
delayed.
Did the boy's whistle answer back the
thrushes ?
Did light girl laughter ripple through
the bushes,
As brooks make merry over roots and
rushes ?
Unvexed the sweet air seemed. ^Without
a wound
The ear of silence heard, and every
sound
Its place in nature's fine accordant
found.
And solemn meeting, summer sky and
wood,
Old kindly faces, youth and maidenhood
Seemed, like God's new creation, very
good!
And, greeting all with quiet smile and
word,
Pastorius went his way. The unscared
bird
Sang at his side; scarcely the squirrel
stirred
At his hushed footstep on the mossy sod ;
And, wheresoe'er the good man looked
or trod,
He felt the peace of nature and of God.
His social life wore no ascetic form,
He loved all beauty, without fear of
harm,
And in his veins his Teuton blood ran
warm.
Strict to himself, of other men no spy,
He made his own no circuit-judge to try
The freer conscience of his neighbors by.
With love rebuking, by his life alone,
Gracious and sweet, the better way was
shown,
The joy of one, who, seeking not his own,
And faithful to all scruples, finds at last
The thorns and shards of duty overpast,
And daily life, beyond his hope's forecast,
Pleasant and -beautiful with sight and
sound,
And flowers upspringing in its narrow
round,
And all his days with quiet gladness
crowned.
368
THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.
He sang not ; but, if sometimes tempted
stron
He hummed what seemed like Altorf s
Burschen-song,
His good wife smiled, and did not count
it wrong.
For well he loved his boyhood's brother
band;
His Memory, while he trod the New
World's strand,
A double -ganger walked the Fatherland !
If, when on frosty Christmas eves the
light
Shone on his quiet hearth, he missed
the sight
Of Yule-log, Tree, and Christ-child all
in white
And closed his dyes, and listened to the
sweet
Old wait-songs sounding down his native
street,
And watched again the dancers' min
gling feet ;
Yet not the less, when once the vision
passed,
He held the plain and sober maxims fast
Of the dear Friends with whom his lot
was cast.
Still all attuned to nature's melodies,
He loved the bird's song in his dooryard
trees,
And the low hum of home-returning
bees ;
The blossomed flax, the tulip-trees in
bloom
Down the long street, the beauty and
perfume
Of apple-boughs, the mingling light and
gloom
Of Sommerhausen's woodlands, woven
through
With sun-threads; and the music the
wind drew,
Mournful and sweet, from leaves it over
blew.
And evermore, beneath this outward
sense,
And through the common sequence of
events,
He felt the guiding hand of Providence
Reach out of space. A Voice spake in
his ear,
And lo ! all other voices far and near
Died at that whisper, full of meanings
clear. *
The Light of Life shone round him ; one
by one
The wandering lights, that all-mislead
ing run,
"Went out like candles paling in the sun.
That Light he followed, step by step,
where'er
It led, as in the vision of the seer
The wheels moved as the spirit in the
clear
And terrible crystal moved, with all
their eyes
Watching the living splendor sink orrise,
Its will their will, knowing no otherwise.
Within himself he found the law of
right,
He walked by faith and not the letter's
sight,
And read his Bible by the Inward Light.
And if sometimes the slaves of form and
rule,
Frozen in their creeds like fish in win
ter's pool,
Tried the large tolerance of his liberal
school,
His door was free to men of every name,
He welcomed all the seeking souls who
came,
And no man's faith he made a cause of
blame.
But best he loved in leisure hours to see
His own dear Friends sit by him knee
to knee,
In social converse, genial, frank, and free.
There sometimes silence (it were hard to
tell
Who owned it first) upon the circle fell,
Hushed Anna's busy wheel, and laid its
spell
On the black boy who grimaced by the
hearth,
To solemnize his shining face of mirth ;
Only the old clock ticked amidst the
dearth
" A jewelled elm-tree avenue." Page 309.
THE PAGEANT.
S69
Of sound ; nor eye was raised nor hand
was stirred
In that soul-sabbath, till at last some
word
Of tender counsel or low prayer was
heard.
Then guests, who lingered but farewell
to say
And take love's message, went their
homeward way ;
So passed in peace the guileless Quaker's
day.
His was the Christian's unsung Age of
Gold,
A truer idyl than the bards have told
Of Arno's banks or Arcady of old.
Where still the Friends their place of
burial keep,
And century-rooted mosses o'er it creep,
The Niirnberg scholar and his helpmeet
sleep.
Arid Anna's aloe ? If it flowered at last
In Bartram's garden, did John Wool-
man cast
A glance upon it as he meekly passed ?
And did a secret sympathy possess
That tender soul, and for the slave's
redress
Lend hope, strength, patience ? It were
vain to guess.
Nay, were the plant itself but mythical,
Set in the fresco of tradition's wall
Like Jotham's bramble, mattereth not
at all.
Enough to know that, through the
winter's frost
And summer's heat, no seed of truth is
lost,
And every duty pays at last its cost.
For, ere Pastorius left the sun and air,
God sent the answer to his life-long
prayer ;
The child was born beside the Delaware,
Who, in the power a holy purpose
lends,
Guided his people unto nobler ends,
And left them worthier of the name of
Friends.
And lo ! the fulness of the time has
come,
And over all the exile's Western home,
From sea to sea the flowers of freedom
bloom !
And joy -bells ring, and silver trumpets
blow ;
But not for thee, Pastorius ! Even
so
The world forgets, but the wise angels
know.
MISCELLANEOUS.
THE PAGEANT.
A SOUND as if from bells of silver,
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
Through the frost-pictured panes I
hear.
A brightness which outshines the morn
ing.
A splendor brooking no delay,
Beckons and tempts my feet away.
I leave the trodden village highway
For virgin snow-paths glimmering
through
A jewelled elm -tree avenue ;
24
Where, keen against the walls of sap
phire,
The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-em
bossed,
Hold up their chandeliers of frost.
I tread in Orient halls enchanted,
I dream the Saga's dream of caves
Gem-lit beneath the North Sea
I walk the land of Eldorado,
I touch its mimic garden bowers,
Its silver leaves and diamond flow
ers !
370
MISCELLANEOUS.
The flora of the mystic mine-world
Around me lifts on crystal stems
The petals of its clustered gems !
What miracle of weird transforming
In this wild work of frost and
light,
This glimpse of glory infinite !
This foregleam of the Holy City
Like that to him of Patmos given,
The white bride coming down from
heaven !
How flash the ranked and mail-clad al
ders,
Through what sharp-glancing spears
of reeds
The brook its muffled water leads !
Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb,
Burns unconsumed : a white, cold
fire
Rays out from every grassy spire.
Each slender rush and spike of mullein,
Low laurel shrub and drooping fern,
Transfigured, blaze where'er I turn.
How yonder Ethiopian hemlock
Crowned with his glistening circlet
stands !
What jewels light his swarthy
hands !
Here, where the forest opens southward,
Between its hospitable pines,
As through a door, the warm sun
shines.
The jewels loosen on the branches,
And lightly, as the soft winds
blow,
Fall, tinkling, on the ice below.
And through the clashing of their cym
bals
I hear the old familiar fall
Of water down the rocky wall,
Where, from its wintry prison breaking,
In dark and silence hidden long,
The brook repeats its summer song.
One instant flashing in the sunshine,
Keen as a sabre from its sheath,
Then lost again the ice beneath.
1 hear the rabbit lightly leaping,
The foolish screaming of the jay,
The chopper's axe-stroke far away ;
The clamor of some neighboring barn
yard,
The lazy cock's belated crow,
Or cattle-tramp in crispy snow.
And, as in some enchanted forest
The lost knight hears his comrades
sing,
And, near at hand, their bridles
ring,
So welcome I these sounds and voices,
These airs from far-off summer
blown,
This life that leaves me not alone.
For the white glory overawes me ;
The crystal terror of the seer
Of Chebar's vision blinds me here.
Rebuke me not, 0 sapphire heaven !
Thou stainless earth, lay not on
me.
Thy keen reproach of purity,
If, in this august presence-chamber,
I sigh for summer's leaf-green
gloom
And warm airs thick with odorous
bloom !
Let the strange frost-work sink and
crumble,
And let the loosened tree-boughs
swing,
Till all their bells of silver ring.
Shine warmly down, thou sun of noon
time,
On this chill pageant, melt and
move
The winter's frozen heart with love.
And, soft a*nd low, thou wind south-
blowing,
Breathe through a veil of tenderest
haze
Thy prophecy of summer days.
Come with thy green relief of promise,
And to this dead, cold splendor
bring
Thp Uving jewels of the spring !
THE SINGER.
371
THE SINGER.
¥EARS since (but names to me before),
Two sisters sought at eve my door ;
Two song-birds wandering from their
nest,
A gray old farm-house in the West.
How fresh of life the younger one,
Half smiles, half tears, like rain in
sun !
Her gravest mood could scarce displace
The dimples of her nut-brown face.
Wit sparkled on her lips not legs
For quick and tremulous tenderness ;
And, following close her merriest glance,
Dreamed through her eyes the heart's
romance.
Timid and still, the elder had
Even then a smile too sweetly sad ;
The crown of pain that all must wear
Too early pressed her midnight hair.
Yet ere the summer eve grew long,
Her modest lips were sweet with song ;
A memory haunted all her words
Of clover-fields and singing birds.
Her dark, dilating eyes expressed
The broad horizons of the west ;
Her speech dropped prairie flowers ; the
gold
Of harvest wheat about her rolled.
Fore-doomed to song she seemed to
me :
I queried not with destiny:
f knew the trial and the need,
Yet, all the more, I said, God speed !
What could I other than I did ?
Could I a singing-bird forbid?
Deny the wind-stirred leaf ? Rebuke
The music of the forest brook ?
\ She went with morning from my door,
But left me richer than before ;
Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer,
The welcome of her partial ear.
Vears passed : through all the land her
name
A pleasant household word became:
All felt behind the singer stood
A. sweet and gracious womanhood.
Her life was earnest work, not play ;
Her tired feet climbed a weary way ;
And even through her lightest strain
We heard an undertone of pain.
Unseen of her her fair fame grew,
The good she did she rarely knew,
Unguessed of her in life the love
That rained its tears her grave above.
When last I saw her, full of peace,
She waited for her great release ;
And that old friend so sage and bland,
Our later Franklin, held her hand.
For all that patriot bosoms stirs
Had moved that woman's heart of
hers,
And men who toiled in storm and sun
Found her their meet companion.
Our converse, from her suffering bed
To healthful themes of life she led :
The out-door world of bud and bloom
And light and sweetness filled her
room.
Yet evermore an underbought
Of loss to come within us wrought,
And all the while we felt the strain
Of the strong will that conquered pain.
God giveth quietness at last !
The common way that all have passed
She went, with mortal yearnings fond,
To fuller life and love beyond.
Fold the rapt soul in your embrace,
My dear ones ! Give the singer place
To you, to her, — I know not where, -»
I lift the silence of a prayer.
For only thus our own we find ,'
The gone before, the left behind,
All mortal voices die between ;
The unheard reaches the unseen.
Again the blackbirds sing ; the streams
Wake, laughing, from their winter
dreams,
And tremble in the April showers
The tassels of the maple flowers.
But not for her has spring renewed
The sweet surprises of the wood ;
And bird and flower are lost to her
Who was their best interpreter !
372
MISCELLANEOUS.
What to shut eyes has God revealed ?
What hear the ears that death has sealed ?
What undreamed beauty passing show
Requites the loss of all we know ?
0 silent land, to which we move,
Enough if there alone be love,
And mortal need can ne'er outgrow
What it is waiting to bestow !
0 white soul ! from that far-off shore
Float some sweet song the waters o'er,
Our faith confirm, our fears dispel,
With the old voice we loved sc well t
CHICAGO.
MEN said at vespers : "All is well ! "
In one wild night the city fell ;
Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain
Before the fiery hurricane.
On threescore spires had sunset shone,
Where ghastly sunrise looked on none.
Men clasped each other's hands, and said :
" The City of the West is dead ! "
Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat,
The fiends of fire from street to street,
Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare,
The dumb defiance of despair.
A sudden impulse thrilled each wire
That signalled round that sea of fire ;
Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs
came;
In tears of pity died the flame !
From East, from West, from South and
North,
The messages of hope shot forth,
And, underneath the severing wave,
The world, full-handed, reached to save.
^air seemed the old ; but fairer still
The new, the dreary void shall fill
With dearer homes than those o'erthrown,
For love shall lay each corner-stone.
Rise, stricken city ! — from thee throw
The ashen sackcloth of thy woe ;
A.nd build, as to Amphion's strain,
To songs of cheer thy walls again !
Flow shrivelled in thy hot distress
The priinal sin of selfishness !
How instant rose, to take thy part,
The angel in the human heart J
Ah ! not in vain the flames that tossed
Above thy dreadful holocaust ;
The Christ again has preached through
thee
The Gospel of Humanity !
Then lift once more thy towers on
high,
And fret with spires the western sky,
To tell that God is yet with us,
And love is still miraculous !
MY BIRTHDAY.
BENEATH the moonlight and the snow
Lies dead my latest year ;
The winter winds are wailing low
Its dirges in my ear.
I grieve not with the moaning wind
As if a loss befell ;
Before me, even as behind,
God is, and all is well !
His light shines on me from above,
His low voice speaks within, —
The patience of immortal love
Out weary ing mortal sin.
Not mindless of the growing years
Of care and loss and pain,
My eyes are wet with thankful tears
For blessings which remain.
If dim the gold of life has grown,
I will not count it dross,
Nor turn from treasures still my own
To sigh for lack and loss.
The years no charm from Nature take ;
As sweet her voices call,
As beautiful her mornings break,
As fair her evenings fall.
Love watches o'er my quiet ways,
Kind voices speak my name,
And lips that find it hard to praise
Are slow, at least, to blame.
How softly ebb the tides of will !
How fields, once lost or won,
Now lie behind me green and StiU
Beneath a, level SUB !
THE BREWING OF SOMA.
373
How hushed the hiss of party hate,
The clamor of the throng !
How old, harsh voices of debate
Flow into rhythmic song !
Methinks the spirit's temper grows
Too soft in this still air ;
Somewhat the restful heart foregoes
Of needed watch and prayer.
The bark by tempest vainly tossed
May founder in the calm,
And he who braved the polar frost
Faint by the isles of balm.
Better than self-indulgent years
The outflung heart of youth,
Than pleasant songs in idle ears
The tumult of the truth.
Rest for the weary hands is good,
And love for hearts that pine,
But let the manly habitude
Of upright souls be mine.
Let winds that blow from heaven refresh,
Dear Lord, the languid air ;
And let the weakness of the flesh
Thy strength of spirit share.
And, if the eye must fail of light,
The ear forget to hear,
Make clearer still the spirit's sight,
More fine the inward ear !
Be near me in mine hours of need
To soothe, or cheer, or warn,
And down these slopes of sunset lead
As up the hills of morn !
THE BREWING OF SOMA.
"These libations mixed with milk have been
prepared for Indra : offer Soma to the drinker of
Soma." — VASHISTA, Trans, by MAX MULLER.
THE fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled ;
" Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.
And brewed they well or brewed they ill,
The priests thrust in their rods,
First tasted, and then drank their fill,
And shouted, with one voice and will,
" Behold the drink of gods ! "
They drank, and lo ! in heart and brain
A new, glad life began ;
The gray of hair grew young again,
The sick man laughed away his pain,
The cripple leaped and ran.
"Drink, mortals, what the gods have
sent,
Forget your long annoy."
So sang the priests. From tent to tent
The Soma's sacred madness went,
A storm of drunken joy.
Then knew each rapt inebriate
A winged and glorious birth,
Soared upward, with strange joy elate,
Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate,
And, sobered, sank to earth.
The land with Soma's praises rang ;
On Gihon's banks of shade
Its hymns the dusky maidens sang;
In joy of life or mortal pang
All men to Soma prayed.
The morning twilight of the race
Sends down these matin psalms ;
And still with wondering eyes we trace
The simple prayers to Soma's grace,
That Vedic verse embalms.
As in that child- world's early year,
Each after age has striven
By music, incense, vigils drear,
And trance, to bring the skies more near
Or lift men up to heaven ! —
Some fever of the blood and brain,
Some self-exalting spell,
The scourger's keen delight of pain,
The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain,
The wild-haired Bacchant's yell, —
The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk
The saner brute below ;
The naked Santon, hashish-drunk,
The cloister madness of the monk,
The fakir's torture-show !
And yet the past comes round again,
And new doth old fulfil ;
In sensual transports wild as vain
We brew in many a Christian fane
The heathen Soma still !
Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways !
374
MISCELLANEOUS.
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.
In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow thee.
0 Sabbath rest by Galilee !
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love !
With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of thy call,
As noiseless let thy blessing fall
As fell thy manna down.
Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease ;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and thy balm ;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire ;
Speak through the earthquake, wind,
and fire,
0 still, small voice of calm f
A WOMAN.
0, DWARFED and wronged, and stained
with ill,
Behold ! thou art a woman still !
And, by that sacred name and dear,
I bid thy better self appear.
Still, through thy foul disguise, I see
The rudirnental purity,
That, spite of change .and loss, makes
good
Thy birthright-claim of womanhood ;
An inward loathing, deep, intense ;
A shame that is half innocence.
Cast off the grave-clothes of thy sin !
Rise from the dust thou liest in,
As Mary rose at Jesus' word,
Redeemed and white before the Lord !
Reclaim thy lost soul ! In His name,
Rise up, and break thy bonds of
shame.
Art weak ? He 's strong. Art fearful 1
Hear
The world's O'ercomer : " Be of cheer !"
What lip shall judge when He approves ?
Who dare to scorn the child he loves ?
DISARMAMENT.
"PUT up the sword!" The voice of
Christ once more
Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's
roar,
O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
And left dry ashes ; over trenches heaped
With nameless dead ; o'er cities starving
slow
Under a rain of fire ; through wards of
woe
Down which a groaning diapason runs
From tortured brothers, husbands,
lovers, sons
Of desolate women in their far-off homes,
Waiting to hear the step that nevei
comes !
0 men and brothers ! let that voice be
heard.
War fails, try peace ; put up the useless
sword !
Fear not the end. There is a stoiy told
In Eastern tents, when autumn nights
grow cold,
And round the fire the Mongol shepherds
sit
With grave responses listening unto it :
Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,
Buddha, the holy and benevolent,
Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of
look,
Whose awful voice the hills and forests
shook.
"0 son of peace!" the giant cried,
"thy fate
Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to
hate."
The unarmed Buddha looking, with no
trace
Of fear or anger, in the monster's face,
In pity said : "Poor fiend, even thee I
love."
Lo ! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank
To hand-breadth size ; the huge abhor
rence shrank
Into the form and fashion of a dove ;
And where the thunder of its rage wag
heard,
THE SISTERS.
375
Circling above him sweetly sang the
bird :
"Hate hath no harm for love," so ran
the song ;
" And peace unweaponed conquers every
wrong ! "
THE ROBIN.
MY old Welch neighbor over the way
Crept slowly out in the sun of spring,
Pushed from her ears the locks of gray,
And listened to hear the robin sing.
Her grandson, playing at marbles,
stopped,
And, cruel in sport as boys will be,
Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped
From bough to bough in the apple-tree.
" Nay ! " said the grandmother ; " have
you not heard,
My poor, bad boy ! of the fiery pit,
And how, drop by drop, this merciful
bird
Carries the water that quenches it ?
" He brings cool dew in his little bill,
And lets it fall on the souls of sin :
You can see the mark on his red breast
still
Of fires that scorch as he drops it in.
" My poor Bron rhuddyn ! my breast-
burned bird,
Singing so sweetly from limb to limb,
Very dear to the heart of Our Lord
Is he who pities the lost like Him ! "
" Amen ! " I said to the beautiful myth ;
" Sing, bird of God, in my heart as
well :
Each good thought is a drop wherewith
To cool and lessen the fires of hell.
" Prayers of love like rain-drops fall,
Tears of pity are cooling dew,
And dear to the heart of Our Lord are all
Who surfer like Him in the good they
do !"
THE SISTERS.
ANNIE and Rhoda, sisters twain,
Woke in the night to the sound of ravn,
The rush of wind, the ramp and roar
Of great waves climbing a rocky shore.
Annie rose up in her bed-gown white,
And looked out into the storm and night
" Hush, and hearken ! " she cried in fear,
" Hearest thou nothing, sister dear ? "
" I hear the sea, and the plash of rain,
And roar of the northeast hurricane.
" Get thee back to the bed so warm,
No good comes of watching a storm.
"What is it to thee, I fain would know,
That waves are roaring and wild winds
blow ?
" No lover of thine 's afloat to miss
The harbor-lights on a night like this."
" But I heard a voice cry out my name.
Up from the sea on the wind it came !
"Twice and thrice have I heard it call,
And the voice is the voice of Estwick
Hall!"
On her pillow the sister tossed her head,
"Hall of the Heron is safe," she said.
"In the tautest schooner that ever swam
He rides at anchor in Anisquam.
"And, if in peril from swamping sea
Or lee shore rocks, would he call on
thee ? "
But the girl heard only the wind and
tide.
And wringing her small white hands she
cried :
"0 sister Rhoda, there's something
wrong ;
I hear it again, so loud and long.
" 'Annie ! Annie ! ' I hear it call,
And the voice is the voice of Estwick
Hall ! "
Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame,
"Thouliest! He never would call thy
name !
" If he did, I would pray the wind and
sea
To keep him forever from thee and me ! "
376
MISCELLANEOUS.
Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast ;
Like the cry of a dying man it passed.
The young girl hushed on her lips a
groan,
But through her tears a strange light
shone, —
The solemn joy of her heart's release
To own and cherish its love in peace.
"Dearest ! " she whispered, under breath,
' ' Life was a lie, but true is death.
' ' The love I hid from myself away
Shall crown rne now in the light of day.
" My ears shall never to wooer list,
Never by lover my lips be kissed.
"Sacred to thee am I henceforth,
Thou in heaven and I on earth ! "
She came and stood by her sister's bed :
" Hall of the Heron is dead ! " she said.
' ' The wind and the waves their work
have done,
Weshall see him no more beneath the sun.
" Little will reck that heart of thine,
It loved him not with a love like mine.
" I, for his sake, were he but here,
Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear,
" Though hands should tremble and eyes
be wet,
And stitch for stitch in my heart be set.
" But now my soul with his soul I wed ;
Thine the living, and mine the dead ! "
MAKGTJERITE.
MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1760.
THE robins sang in the orchard, the buds
into blossoms grew ;
Little of human sorrow the buds and the
robins knew !
Sick, in an alien household, the poor
French neutral lay ;
Into her lonesome garret fell the light of
the April day.
Through the dusty window, curtained
by the spider's warp and woof,
On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on
oaken ribs of roof.
The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the tea
cups on the stand,
The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it
dropped from her sick hand !
What to her was the song of the robin,
or warm morning light,
As she lay in the trance of the dying,
heedless of sound or sight ?
Done was the work of her hands, she
had eaten her bitter bread ;
The world of the alien people lay behind
her dim and dead.
But her soul went back to its child-time ;
she saw the sun o'erflow
With gold the basin of Minas, and set
over Gasperau ;
The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush
of the sea at flood,
Through inlet and creek and river, from
dike to upland wood ;
The gulls in the red of morning, the
fish-hawk's rise and fall,
The drift of the fog in moonshine, over
the dark coast-wall.
She saw the face of her mother, she
heard the song she sang ;
And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell foi
vespers rang !
By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat,
smoothing the wrinkled sheet,
Peering into the face, so helpless, and
feeling the ice-cold feet.
With a vague remorse atoning for her
greed and long abuse,
By care no longer heeded and pity too
late for use.
Up the stairs of the garret softly the son
of the mistress stepped,
Leaned over the head-board, covering
his face with his hands, and wept.
Outspake the mother, who watched him
sharply, with brow a-frown :
"What ! love you the Papist, the beg
gar, the charge of the town ?"
KING VOLMER AND ELSIE.
377
" Be she Papist 01 beggar who lies here,
I know and God knows
I love her, and fain would go with her
wherever she goes !
" 0 mother ! that sweet face came plead
ing, for love so athirst.
You saw but the town- charge^ I knew
her God's angel at lirst."
Shaking her gray head, the mistress
hushed down a bitter cry ;
And awed by the silence and shadow of
death drawing nigh,
She murmured a psalm of the Bible ; but
closer the young girl pressed,
With the last of her life in her fingers,
the cross to her breast.
" My son, come away," cried the mother,
her voice cruel grown.
" She is joined to her idols, like Eph-
raim ; let her alone ! "
But he knelt with his hand on her fore
head, his lips to her ear,
A.nd he called back the soul that was pass
ing : "Marguerite, do you hear ? "
She paused on the threshold of Heaven ;
love, pity, surprise,
Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the
cloud of her eyes.
With his heart on his lips he kissed her,
but never her cheek grew red,
And the words the living long for he
spake in the ear of the dead.
And the robins sang in the orchard,
where buds to blossoms grew ;
Of the folded hands and the still fac
never the robins knew !
KING VOLMER AND ELSIE.
AFTER THE
DANISH OF
WINTER.
CHRISTIA>
n merry mood King Volmer sat, for*
getful of his power,
ts idle as the Goose of Gold that brooded
on his tower.
Dut spake the King to Henrik, his young
and faithful squire :
Dar'st trust thy little Elsie, the mai^
of thy desire ? "
Of all the men in Denmark she loveth
only me :
As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to
thee."
oud laughed the king: "To-morrow
shall bring another day, *
When I myself will test her ; she will
not say me nay."
Thereat the lords and gallants, that
round about him stood,
Wagged all their heads in concert and
smiled as courtiers should.
The gray lark sings o'er Vordingborg,
and on the ancient town
From the tall tower of Valdemar the
Golden Goose looks down :
The yellow grain is waving in the pleas
ant wind of morn,
The wood resounds with cry of hounds
and blare of hunter's horn.
In the garden of her father little Elsie
sits and spins,
And, singing with the early birds, her
daily task begins.
Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls
around her garden -bower,
But she is sweeter than the mint and
fairer than the flower.
About her form her kirtle blue clings
lovingly, and, white
As snow, her loose sleeves only leave
her small, round wrists in sight ;
Below the modest petticoat can only half
conceal
The motion of the lightest foot that ever
turned a wheel.
The cat sits purring at her side, bees
sunshine warm ;
WHERE, over heathen doom-rings anc
gray stones of the Horg,
In its little Christian city stands the
church of Vordingborg,
But, look ! she starts, she lifts her face,
she shades it with her arm.
* A conhnon saying of Valdemar ; hence Ms
sobri<iuet Alterday.
378
MISCELLANEOUS.
And, hark ! a train of horsemen, with
sound of dog and horn,
Come leaping o'er the ditches, com
trampling down the corn !
Merrily rang the bridle-reins, and scarf
and plume streamed gay,
As fast beside her father's gate the riders
held their way ;
And one was brave in scarlet cloak, wit!
golden spur on heel,
And, as he checked his foaming steed
the maiden checked her wheel.
" All hail among thy roses, the fairest
rose to me !
For weary months in secret my hearl
has longed for thee ! "
What noble knight was this? What
words for modest maiden's ear ?
She dropped a lowly courtesy of bashful-
ness and fear.
'She lifted up her spinning-wheel; she
fain would seek the door,
Trembling in every limb, her cheek with
blushes crimsoned o'er.
" Nay, fear me not," the rider said, " I
offer heart and hand,
Bear witness these good Danish knights
who round about me stand.
" I grant you time to think of this, to
answer as you may,
For to-morrow, little Elsie, shall bring
another day."
He spake the old phrase slyly as, glan
cing round his train,
He saw his merry followers seek to hide
their smiles in vain.
" The snow of pearls I '11 scatter in your
curls of golden hair,
1 *11 line with furs the velvet of the kirtle
that you wear ;
&11 precious gems shall twine your neck ;
and in a chariot gay
You shall ride, my little Elsie, behind
four steeds of gray.
" And harps shall sound, and flutes shall
play, and brazen lamps shall glow ;
On marble floors your feet shall weave
the dances to and fro.
At frosty eventide for us the blazing
hearth shall shine,
While, at our ease, we play at draughts, ;
and drink the blood-red wine."
Then Elsie raised her head and met her
wooer face to face ;
A roguish smile shone in her eye and on
her lip found place.
Back from her low white forehead the
curls of gold she threw,
And lifted up her eyes to his steady and
clear and blue.
" I am a lowly peasant, and you a gal
lant knight ;
I will not trust a love that soon may
cool and turn to slight.
If you would wed me henceforth be a
peasant, not a lord ;
I bid you hang upon the wall your tried
and trusty sword."
"To please you, Elsie, I will lay keen
Dynadel away,
And in its place will swing the scythe
and mow your father's hay."
"Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak
my eyes can never bear ;
A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is all
that you must wear." '
"Well, Vadmal will I wear for you,"
the rider gayly spoke,
" And on the Lord's high altar I '11 lay
my scarlet cloak."
" But mark," she said, "no stately horse
my peasant love must ride,
A yoke of steers before the plough is all
that he must guide. "
The knight looked down upon his steed :
" Well, let him wander free:
S"o other man must ride the horse that
has been backed by me.
Henceforth I '11 tread the furrow and to
my oxen talk,
f only little Elsie beside my plough will
walk."
' You must take from out your cellar
cask of wine and flask and can ;
The homely mead I brew you may serve
a peasant- man."
' Most willingly, fair Elsie, I '11 drink
that mead of thine,
And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat
to drain my generous wine."
' Now break your shield asunder, and
shatter sign and boss,
Unmeet for peasant-wedded arms, youi
knightly knee across.
THE THREE BELLS.
379
And pull me down your castle from top
to basement wall,
And let your plough trace furrows in the
ruins of your hall ! "
Then smiled he with a lofty pride ;
right well at last he knew
The maiden of the spinning-wheel was
to her troth-plight true.
" Ah, roguish little Elsie ! you act your
part full well :
You know that I must bear my shield
and in my castle dwell !
"The lions ramping on that shield be
tween the hearts aflame
Keep watch o'er Denmark's honor, and
o-uard her ancient name.
For know that I am Volmer ; I dwell \n
yonder towers,
Who ploughs them ploughs up Denmark,
this goodly home of ours 1
" I tempt no more, fair Elsie! your heart
I know is true ;
Would God that all our maidens were
good and pure as you !
Well have you pleased your monarch,
and he shall well repay ;
God's peace ! Farewell ! To-morrow will
bring another day ! "
He lifted up his bridle hand, he spurred
his good steed then,
And like a whirl-blast swept away with
all his gallant men.
The steel hoofs beat the rocky path
again on winds of mom
The wood resounds with cry of hounds
and blare of hunter's horn.
"Thou true and ever faithful!" th
listening Henrik cried ;
And, leaping o'er the green hedge, he
stood by Elsie's side.
None saw the fond embracing, save
shining from afar,
The Golden Goose that watched then
from the tower of Valdemar.
0 darling girls of Denmark ! of all th
flowers that throng
Her vales of spring the fairest, I sing fo
you my song.
ro praise as yours so bravely rewards
the singer's skill ;
hank God ! of maids like Elsie the land
has plenty still!
THE THREE BELLS.
BENEATH the low-hung night cloud
That raked her splintering mast
The good ship settled slowly,
The cruel leak gained fast.
Over the awful ocean
Her signal guns pealed out.
Dear God ! was that thy answer
From the horror round about ?
A voice came down the wild wind,
" Ho ! ship ahoy ! " its cry :
" Our stout Three Bells of Glasgow
Shall lay till daylight by t "
Hour after hour crept slowly,
Yet on the heaving swells '
Tossed up and down the ship-lights,
The lights of the Three Bells !
And ship to ship made signals,
Man answered back to man,
While oft, to cheer and hearten,
The Three Bells nearer ran ;
And the captain from her taffrail
Sent down his hopeful cry.
" Take heart ! Hold on ! " he shouted
"The Three Bells shall lay by !"
All night across the waters
The tossing lights shone clear ;
All night from reeling taffrail
The Three Bells sent her cheer.
And when the dreary watches
Of storm and darkness passed,
Just as the wreck lurched under
All souls were saved at last.
Sail on, Three Bells, forever,
In grateful memory sail !
Ring on, Three Bells of rescue,
Above the wave and gale !
Type of the Love eternal,
Repeat the Master's cry,
As tossing through our darkness
The lights of God draw nigh !
380
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
NOTE. — I have ventured, in compliance with the desire of dear friends of my beloved
sister ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER, to add to this little volume the few poetical pieces which
she left behind her. As she was very distrustful of her own powers, and altogether with
out ambition for literary distinction, she shunned everything like publicity, and found
far greater happiness in generous appreciation of the gifts of her friends than in the
cultivation of her own. Yet it has always seemed to me, that had her health, sense
of duty and fitness, and her extreme self-distrust permitted, she might have taken a
high place among lyrical singers. These poems, with perhaps two or three exceptions,
afford but slight indications of the inward life of the writer, who had an almost morbid
dread of spiritual and intellectual egotism, or of her tenderness of sympathy, chastened
mirthfulness, and pleasant play of thought and fancy, when her shy, beautiful soul
opened like a flower in the warmth of social communion. In the lines on Dr. Kane
her friends will see something of her fine individuality, — the rare mingling of delicacy
and intensity of feeling which made her dear to them. This little poem reached Cuba
while the great explorer lay on his death- bed, and we are told that he liftened with
grateful tears while it was read to him by his mother.
I am tempted to say more, but I write as under the eye of her who, while with us,
shrank with painful deprecation from the praise or mention of performances which
seemed so far below her ideal of excellence. To those who best knew her, the beloved
circle of her intimate friends, I dedicate this slight memorial.
J. G. W.
AMESBURY, 9th mo., 1874.
THE summer warmth has left the sky,
The summer songs have died away ;
And, withered, in the footpaths lie
The fallen leaves, but yesterday
With ruby and with topaz gay.
The grass is browning on the hills ;
No pale, belated flowers recall
The astral fringes of the rills,
And drearily the dead vines fall,
Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall.
Yet through the gray and sombre wood,
Against the dusk of fir and pine,
Last of their floral sisterhood,
The hazel's yellow blossoms shine,
The tawny gold of Afric's mine !
Small beauty hath my unsung flower,
For spring to own or summer hail ;
But, in the season's saddest hour,
To skies that weep and winds that wail
Its glad surprisals never fail.
0 clays grown cold ! 0 life grown old !
No rose of June may bloom again ;
But, like the hazel's twisted gold,
Through early frost and latter rain
Shall hints of summer-time remain.
And as within the hazel's bough
A gift of mystic virtue dwells,
That points to golden ores below,
And in dry desert places tells
Where flow unseen the cool, sweet wells,
So, in the wise Diviner's hand,
Be mine the hazel's grateful part
To feel, beneath a thirsty land,
The living waters thrill and start,
The beating of the rivulet's heart !
Sufficeth me the gift to light
With latest bloom the dark, cold days ;
To call some hidden spring to sight
That, in these dry and dusty ways,
Shall sing its pleasant song of praise.
0 Love ! the hazel-wand may fail,
But thou canst lend the surer spell,
That, passing over Baca's vale,
Repeats the old-time miracle,
And makes the desert -land a well.
SUMNER.
381
SUMNER.
"I am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct, or the maxims
Df a freeman by the actions of a slave ; but, by the grace of God, I have kept my life unsullied."
— MILTON'S Defence of the People of England.
0 MOTHER STATE ! — the winds of March
Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of God,
Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch
Of sky, thy mourning children trod.
And now, with all thy woods in leaf,
Thy fields in flower,' beside thy dead
Thou sittest, in thy robes of grief,
A Rachel yet uncomforted !
And once again the organ swells,
Once more the flag is half-way hung,
And yet again the mournful bells
In all thy steeple-towers are rung.
And I, obedient to thy will,
Have come a simple wreath to lay,
.uperfluous, on a grave that still
Is sweet with all the flowers of May.
1 take, with awe, the task assigned ;
It may be that my friend might miss,
In his new sphere of heart and mind,
Some token from my hand in this.
By many a tender memory moved,
Along the past my thought I send ;
The record of the cause he loved
Is the best record of its friend.
No trumpet sounded in his ear,
He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame,
But never yet to Hebrew seer
A clearer voice of duty came.
God said : "Break thou these yokes ; undo
These heavy burdens. I ordain
A work to last thy whole, life through,
A ministry of strife and pain.
" Forego thy dreams of \ettered ease,
Put thou the scholar's promise by,
The rights of man are more than these."
He heard, and answered : "Here am 1 1 "
He set his face against the blast,
His feet against the flinty shard,
Till the hard service grew, at last,
Its own exceeding great reward.
Lifted like Saul's above the crowd,
Upon his kingly forehead fell
The first, sharp bolt of Slavery's cloud.
Launched at the truth he urged so well.
Ah ! never yet, at rack or stake,
Was sorer loss made Freedom's gain,
Than his, who suffered for her sake
The beak-torn Titan's lingering pain !
The fixed star of his faith, through all
Loss, doubt, and peril, shone the same ;
As through a night of storm, some tall,
Strong lighthouse lifts its steady flame.
Beyond the dust and -smoke he saw
The sheaves of freedom's large in
crease,
The holy fanes of equal law,
The New Jerusalem of peace.
The weak might fear, the worldling
mock,
The faint and blind of heart regret ;
All knew at last th' eternal rock
On which his forward feet were set.
The subtlest scheme of compromise
Was folly to his purpose bold ;
The strongest mesh of party lies
Weak to the simplest truth he told.
One language held his heart and lip,
Straight onward to his goal he trod,
And proved the highest statesmanship
Obedience to the voice of God.
No wail was in his voice, — none heard,
When treason's storm-cloud blackest
grew,
The weakness of a doubtful word ;
His duty, and the end, he knew.
The first to smite, the first to spare ;
When once the hostile ensigns fell,
382
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
He stretched out hands of generous care
To lift the foe he fought so well.
For there was nothing base or small
Or craven in his soul's broad plan ;
Forgiving all things personal,
He hated only wrong to man.
The old traditions of his State,
The memories of her great and good,
Took from his life a fresher date,
And in himself embodied stood.
How felt the greed of gold and place,
The venal crew that schemed and
planned,
The fine scorn of that haughty face,
The spurning of that bribeless hand !
If than Eome's tribunes statelier
He wore his senatorial robe,
His lofty port was all for her,
The one dear spot on all the globe.
If to the master's plea he gave
The vast contempt his manhood felt,
He saw a brother in the slave, —
With man as equal man he dealt.
Proud was he ? If his presence kept
Its grandeur wheresoe'er he trod,
As if from Plutarch's gallery stepped
The hero and the demigod,
None failed, at least, to reach his ear,
Nor want nor woe appealed in vain ;
The homesick soldier knew his cheer,
And blessed him from his ward of
pain.
Safely his dearest friends may own
The slight defects he never hid,
The surface-blemish in the stone
Of the tall, stately pyramid.
Suffice it that he never brought
His conscience to the public mart ;
But lived himself the truth he taught,
White-souled, clean-handed, pure of
heart.
What if he felt the natural pride
Of power in noble use, too true
With thin humilities to hide
The work he did, the lore he knew ?
Was he not just ? Was any wronged
By that assured self-estimate ?
He took but what to him belonged,
Unenvious of another's state.
Well might he heed the words he spake,
And scan with care the written page
Through which he still shall warm and
wake
The hearts of men from age to age.
Ah ! who shall blame him now because
He solaced thus his hours of pain !
Should not the o'erworn thresher pause,
And hold to light his golden grain ?
No sense of humor dropped its oil
On the hard ways his purpose went ;
Small play of fancy lightened toil ;
He spake alone the thing he meant.
He loved his books, the Art that hints
A beauty veiled behind its own,
The graver's line, the pencil's tints,
The chisel's shape evoked from stone.
He cherished, void of selfish ends,
The social courtesies that bless
And sweeten life, and loved his friends
With most unworldly tenderness.
But still his tired eyes rarely learned
The glad relief by Nature brought ;
Her mountain ranges never turned
His current of persistent thought.
The sea rolled chorus to his speech
Three-banked like Latium's tall tri
reme,
With laboring oars; the grove and
beach
Were Forum and the Academe.
The sensuous joy from all things fair
His strenuous bent of soul repressed,
And left from youth to silvered hair
Few hours for pleasure, none for rest.
For all his life was poor without,
0 Nature, make the last amends !
Train all thy flowers his grave about,
And make thy singing-birda his
friends !
Revive again, thou summer rain,
The broken turf upon his bed !
Breathe, summer wind, thy tenderest
strain
Of low, sweet music overhead !
THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ.
383
With calm and beauty symbolize
The peace which follows long annoy,
And lend our earth-bent, mourning eyes
Some hint of his diviner joy.
Fcr safe with right and truth he is,
As God lives he must live alway ;
There is no end for souls like his,
No night for children of the day !
Nor cant nor poor solicitudes
Made weak his life's great argument ;
Small leisure his for frames and moods
Who followed Duty where she went.
The broad, fair fields of God he saw
Beyond the bigot's narrow bound ;
The truths he moulded into law
In Christ's beatitudes he found.
His State-craft was the Golden Kule,
His right of vote a sacred trust ;
Clear, over threat and ridicule,
All heard his challenge : "Is it just?"
And when the hour supreme had come,
Not for himself a thought he gave ;
In that last pang of martyrdom,
His care was for the half-freed slave.
Not vainly dusky hands upbore,
In prayer, the passing soul to heaven
I Whose mercy to His suffering poor
Was service to the Master given.
Long shall the good State's annals tell,
Her children's children long be taught,
How, praised or blamed, he guarded well
The trust he neither shunned nor
sought.
If for one moment turned thy face,
0 Mother, from thy son, not long
He waited calmly in his place
The sure remorse which follows wrong.
Forgiven be the State he loved
The one brief lapse, the single blot ;
Forgotten be the stain removed,
Her righted record shows it not !
The lifted sword above her shield
With jealous care shall guard his fame ,-
The pine-tree on her ancient field
To all the winds shall speak his name.
The marble image of her son
Her loving hands shall yearly crown,
And from her pictured Pantheon
His grand, majestic face look down.
0 State so passing rich before,
Whonow shall doubtthyhighestclaim?
The world that counts thy jewels o'er
Shall longest pause at SUMNER'S name !
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ.
ON the isle of Penikese,
Ringed about by sapphire seas,
Fanned by breezes salt and cool,
Stood the Master with his school.
Over sails that not in vain
Wooed the west-wind's steady strain,
Line of coast that low and far
Stretched its undulating bar,
Wings aslant along the rim
Of the waves they stooped to skim,
Rock and isle and glistening bay,
Fell the beautiful white day.
Said the Master to the youth :
" We have come in search of truth,
Trying with uncertain key
Door by door of mystery ;
We are reaching, through His laws,
To the garment-hem of Cause,
Him, the endless, unbegun,
The Unnamable, the One
Light of all our light the Source,
Life of life, and Force of force.
As with fingers of the blind,
We are groping here to find
What the hieroglyphics mean
Of the Unseen in the seen,
What the Thought which underlies
Nature's masking and disguise,
What it is that hides beneath
Blight and bloom and birth and death.
384
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
By past efforts unavailing,
Doubt and error, loss and failing,
Of our weakness made aware,
On the threshold of our task
Let us light and guidance ask,
Let us pause in silent prayer ! "
Then the Master in his place
Bowed his head a little space,
And the leaves by soft airs stirred,
Lapse of wave and cry of bird
Left the solemn hush unbroken
Of that wordless prayer unspoken,
While its wish, on earth unsaid,
Rose to heaven interpreted.
As, in life's best hours, we hear
By the spirit's h'ner ear
His low voice within us, thus
The All-Father heareth us ;
And his holy ear we pain
With our noisy words and vain.
Not for Him our violence
Storming at the gates of sense,
His the primal language, his
The eternal silences !
Even the careless heart was moved,
And the doubting gave assent,
With a gesture reverent,
To the Master well-beloved.
As thin mists are glorified
By the light they cannot hide,
AH who gazed upon him saw,
Through its veil of tender awe,
How his face was still uplit
By the old sweet look of it,
Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer,
And the love that casts out fear.
Who the secret may declare
Of that brief, unuttered prayer?
Did the shade before him come
Of th' inevitable doom,
Of the end of earth so near,
And Eternity's new year ?
In the lap of sheltering seas
Rests the isle of Penikese ;
But the lord of the domain
Comes not to his own again :
Where the eyes that follow fail,
On a vaster sea his sail
Drifts beyond our beck and hail.
Other lips within its bound
Shall the laws of life expound ;
Other eyes from rock and shell
Read the world's old riddles well :
But when breezes light and bland
] Blow from Summer's blossomed land,
When the air is glad with wings,
And the blithe song-sparrow sings,
Many an eye with his still face
Shall the living ones displace,
Many an ear the word shall seek
He alone could fitly speak.
And one name ibrevermore
Shall be uttered o'er and o'er
By the waves that kiss the shore,
By the curlew's whistle sent
Down the cool, sea-scented air;
In all voices known to her,
Nature owns her worshipper,
Half in triumph, half lament.
Thither Love shall tearful turn,
Friendship pause uncovered there,
And the wisest reverence learn
From the Master's silent prayer.
THE FRIEND'S BURIAL.
MY thoughts are all in yonder town,
Where, wept by many tears,
To-day my mother's friend lays down
The burden of her years.
True as in life, no poor disguise
Of death with her is seen,
And on her simple casket lies
No wreath of bloom and green.
0, not for her the florist's art,
The mocking weeds of woe,
Dear memories in each mourner's heart
Like heaven's white lilies blow.
And all about the softening air
Of new-born sweetness tells,
And the ungathered May-flowers wear
The tints of ocean shells.
The old, assuring miracle
Is fresh as heietofore;
And earth takes up its parable
Of life from death once more.
Here organ-swell and church-bell toll
Methinks but discoixl were, —
The prayerful silence of the soul
Is best befitting her.
No sound should break the quietude
Alike of earth and sky ; —
0 wandering wind in Seabrook wood,
Breathe but a half-heard sigh !
JOHN UNDERBILL.
385
Sing softly, spring-bird, for her sake ;
And thou not distant sea,
Lapse lightly as if Jesus spake,
And thou wert Galilee !
For all her quiet life flowed on
As meadow streamlets flow,
"Where fresher green reveals alone
The noiseless ways they go.
From her loved place of prayer I see
The plain-robed mourners pass,
"With slow feet treading reverently
The graveyard's springing grass.
Make room, 0 mourning ones, for me,
Where, like, the friends of Paul,
That you no more her face shall see
You sorrow most of all.
Her path shall brighten more and more
Unto the perfect day ;
She cannot fail of peace who bore
Such peace with her away.
0 sweet, calm face that seemed to wear
The look of sins forgiven !
0 voice of prayer that seemed to bear
Our own needs up to heaven !
How reverent in our midst she stood,
Or knelt in grateful praise !
What grace of Christian womanhood
Was in her household ways !
For still her holy living meant
No duty left undone ;
The heavenly and the human blent
Their kindred loves in one.
And if her life small leisure found
For feasting ear and eye,
And Pleasure, on her daily round,
She passed unpausing by,
Yet with her went a secret sense
Of all things sweet and fair,
And Beauty's gracious providence
Refreshed her unaware.
She kept her line of rectitude
With love's unconscious ease ;
Her kindly instincts understood
All gentle courtesies.
An inborn charm of graciousness
Made sweet her smile and tone,
. 5
And glorified her farm-wife dress
With beauty not its own.
The dear Lord's best interpreters
Are humble human souls ;
The Gospel of a life like hers
Is more than books or scrolls.
From scheme and creed the light goes
out,
The saintly fact survives ;
The blessed Master none can doubt
Revealed in holy lives.
JOHN UNDERBILL,
A SCORE of years had come and gone
Since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth
stone,
When Captain Underbill, bearing scars
From Indian ambush and Flemish wars,
Left three-hilled Boston and wandered
down,
East by north, to Cocheco town.
With Vane the younger, in counsel
sweet
He had sat at Anna Hutchinson's feet,
And, when the bolt of banishment fell
On the head of his saintly oracle,
He had shared her ill as her good report,
And braved the wrath of the General
Court.
He shook from his feet as he rode away
The dust of the Massachusetts Bay.
The world might bless and the world
might ban,
Wbat did it matter the perfect man,
To whom the freedom of earth was
given,
Proof against sin, and sure of heaven ?
He cheered his heart as he rode along
With screed of Scripture and holy song,
Or thought how he "rode with his lances
free
By the Lower Rhine and the Zuyder-
Zee,
Till his wood-path grew to a trodden
road,
And Hilton Point in the distance
showed.
386
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
He saw the church with the block
house nigh,
The two fair rivers, the flakes thereby,
And, tacking to windward, low and
crank,
The little shallop from Strawberry
Bank;
And he rose in his stirrups and looked
abroad
Over land and water, and praised the
Lord.
Goodly and stately and grave to see,
Into the clearing's space rode he,
With the sun on the hilt of his sword
in sheath,
And his silver buckles and spurs be
neath,
And the settlers welcomed him, one and
all,
From swift Quampeagan to Gonic Fall.
And he said to the elders : " Lo, I come
As the way seemed open to seek a home.
Somewhat the Lord hath wrought by
my hands
In the Narragansett and Netherlands,
And if here ye have work for a Chris
tian man,
I will tarry, and serve ye as best I can.
"I boast not of gifts, but fain would
own
The wonderful favor God hath shown,
The special mercy vouchsafed one day
On the shore of Narragansett Bay,
As I sat, with my pipe, from the camp
aside,
And mused like Isaac at eventide.
"A sudden sweetness of peace I found,
A garment of gladness wrapped me
round ;
I felt from the law of works released,
The strife of the flesh and spirit ceased,
My faith to a full assurance grew,
And all I had hoped for myself I knew.
"Now, as God appointeth, I keep my
way,
I shall not stumble, I shall not stray ;
He hath taken away my fig-leaf dress,
I wear the robe of his righteousness ;
And the shafts of Satan no more avail
Than Pequot arrows on Christian mail. "
"Tarry with us," the settlers cried,
"Thou man of God, as our ruler and
guide."
And Captain Underbill bowed his head.
' ' The will of the Lord be done ! " he said.
And the morrow beheld him sitting down
In the ruler's seat in Cocheco town.
And he judged therein as a just man
should ;
His words were wise and his rule was
good;
He coveted not his neighbor's land,
From the holding of bribes he shook his
hand;
And through the camps of the heathen
ran
A wholesome fear of the valiant man.
But the heart is deceitful, the good Book
saith,
And life hath ever a savor of death.
Through hymns of triumph the tempter
calls,
And whoso thinketh he standeth falls.
Alas ! ere their round the seasons ran,
There was grief in the soul of the saintly
man.
The tempter's arrows that rarely fail
Had found the joints of his spiritual mail ;
And men took note of his gloomy air,
The shame in his eye, the halt in his
prayer,
The signs of a battle lost within,
The pain of a soul in the coils of sin.
Then a whisper of scandal linked his
name
With broken vows and a life of blame ;
And the people looked askance on him
As he walked among them sullen and
grim,
111 at ease, and bitter of word,
And prompt of quarrel with hand or
sword.
None knew how, with prayer and fasting
still,
He strove in the bonds of his evil will ;
But he shook himself like Samson at
length,
And girded anew his loins of strength,
And bade the crier go up and down
And call together the wondering town.
IN QUEST.
387
Jeer and murmur and shaking of head
Ceased as he rose in his place and said :
"Men, brethren, and fathers, well ye
know
How I came among you a year ago,
Strong in the faith that my soul was
freed
From sin of feeling, or thought, or deed.
" I have sinned, I own it with grief and
shame,
But not with a lie on my lips I came.
In my blindness I verily thought my
heart
Swept and garnished in every part.
He chargeth His angels with folly; He
sees
The heavens unclean. Was I more than
these ?
' ' I urge no plea. At your feet I lay
The trust you gave me, and go my way.
Hate me or pity me, as you will,
The Lord will have mercy on sinners
still ;
And I, who am chief est, say to all,
Watch and pray, lest ye also fall."
No voice made answer : a sob so low
That only his quickened ear could know
Smote his heart with a bitter pain,
As into the forest he rode again,
And the veil of its oaken leaves shut
down
On his latest glimpse of Cocheco town.
Crystal-clear on the man of sin
The streams flashed up, and the sky
shone in ;
On his cheek of fever the cool wind blew,
The leaves dropped on him their tears
of dew,
And angels of God, in the pure, sweet
guise
Of flowers, looked on him with sad sur
prise.
Was his ear at fault that brook and
breeze
Sang in their saddest of minor keys?
What was it the mournful wood-thrush
said ?
What whispered the pine-trees overhead
Did he hear the Voice on his lonely way
That Adam heard in the cool of day ?
Into the desert alone rode he,
Alone with the Infinite Purity ;
And, bowing his soul to its tender rebuke,
As Peter did to the Master's look,
He measured his path with prayers of
pain
For peace with God and nature again.
And in after years to Cocheco came
The bruit of a once familiar name ;
How among the Dutch of New Nether
lands,
From wild Danskamer to Haarlem sands,
A penitent soldier preached the Word,
And smote the heathen with Gideon's
sword !
And the heart of Boston was glad to hear
How he harried the foe on the long
frontier,
And heaped on the land against him
barred
The coals of his generous watch and ward.
Frailest and bravest ! the Bay State still
Counts with her worthies John Underbill.
IN QUEST.
HAVE I not voyaged, friend beloved,
with thee
On the great waters of the unsounded
sea,
Momently listening with suspended oar
For the low rote of waves upon a shore
Changeless as heaven, where never fog-
cloud drifts
Over its windless woods, nor mirage lifts
The steadfast hills; where never birds
of doubt
Sing to mislead, and every dream dies
out,
And the dark riddles which perplex us
here
In the sharp solvent of its light are clear?
Thou knowest how vain our quest ; how,
soon or late,
The baffling tides and circles of debate
Swept back our bark unto its starting-
place,
Where, looking forth upon the blank,
gray space,
And roundabout us seeing, with sad eyes,
The same old difficult hills and cloud-
cold skies,
We said. : ' ' This outward search availeth
not
388
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
To find Him. He is farther than we
thought,
Or, haply, nearer. To this very spot
Whereon we wait, this commonplace of
home,
As to the well of Jacob, He may come
And tell us all things." As I listened
there,
Through the expectant silences of prayer,
Somewhat I seemed to hear, which hath
to me
Been hope, strength, comfort, and I give
it thee.
"The riddle of the world is understood
Only by him who feels that God is good,
As only he can feel who makes his love
The ladder of his faith, and climbs above
On th' rounds of his best instincts;
draws no line
Between mere human goodness and di
vine,
But, judging God by what in him is best,
With a child's trust leans on a Father's
breast,
And hears unmoved the old creeds bab
ble still
Of kingly power and dread caprice of
will,
Chary of blessing, prodigal of <mrse.
The pitiless doomsman of the universe.
Can Hatred ask for love? Can Selfish
ness
Invite to self-denial ? Is He less
Than man in kindly dealing ? Can He
break
His own great law of fatherhood, forsake
And curse His children ? Not for earth
and heaven
Can separate tables of the law be given.
No rule can bind which He himself de
nies ;
The truths of time are not eternal lies."
So heard I ; and the chaos round me
spread
To light and order grew; and, "Lord,"
I said,
"Our sins are our tormentors, worst of
all
Felt in distrustful shame that dares not
call
Upon Thee as our Father. We have set
A strange god up, but Thou remain«st
yet.
All that I feel of pity Thou hast known
Before I was ; my best is all Thy owl.
From Thy great heart of goodness mine
but drew
Wishes and prayers ; but Thou, 0 Lord,
wilt do,
In Thy own time, by ways I cannot see,
All that I feel when I am nearest Thee ! "
A SEA DREAM.
WE saw the slow tides go and come,
The curving surf-lines lightly drawn,
The gray rocks touched with tender
bloom
Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn.
We saw in richer sunsets lost
The sombre pomp of showery noons ;
And signalled spectral sails that crossed
The weird, low light of rising moons.
On stormy eves from cliff and head
We saw the white spray tossed and
spurned ;
While over all, in gold and red,
Its face of fire the lighthouse turned.
The rail-car brought its daily crowds,
Half curious, half indifferent,
Like passing sails or floating clouds,
We saw them as they came and went.
But, one calm morning, as we lay
And watched the mirage-lifted wall
Of coast, across the dreamy bay,
And heard afar the curlew call,
And nearer voices, wild or tame, .
Of airy flock and childish throng,
Up from the water's edge there came
Faint snatches of familiar song.
Careless we heard the singer's choice
Of old and common airs ; at last
The tender pathos of his voice
In one low chanson held us fast.
A song that mingled joy and pain,
And memories old and sadly sweet ;
While, timing to its minor strain,
The waves in lapsing cadence beat.
The waves are glad in breeze and sun ;
The rocks are fringed with foam ;
A MYSTERY.
389
I walk once more a haunted shore,
A stranger, yet at home, —
A land of dreams 1 roam.
Is this the wind, the soft sea-wind
That stirred thy locks of brown ?
Are these the rocks whose mosses knew
The trail of thy light gown,
Where boy and girl sat down ?
I see the gray fort's broken wall,
The boats that rock below ;
And, out at sea, the passing sails
We saw so long ago
Eose-red in morning's glow.
The freshness of the early time
On every breeze is blown ;
As glad the sea, as blue the sky, —
The change is ours alone ;
The saddest is my own.
A stranger now, a world-worn man,
Is he who bears my name ;
But thou, methinks, whose mortal life
Immortal youth became,
Art evermore the same.
Thou art not here, thou art not there,
Thy place I cannot see ;
I only know that where thou art
The blessed angels be,
And heaven is glad for thee.
Forgive me if the evil years
Have left on me their sign ;
Wash out, 0 soul so beautiful,
The many stains of mine
In tears of love divine !
I could not look on thee and live,
If thou wert by my side ;
The vision of a shining one,
The white and heavenly bride,
Is well to me denied.
But turn to me thy dear girl-face
Without the angel's crown,
The wedded roses of thy lips,
Thy loose hair rippling down
In waves of golden brown.
Look forth once more through space and
time,
And let thy sweet shade fall
In tendeiest grace of soul and form
On memory's frescoed wall.
A shadow, and yet all !
Draw near, more near, forever dear !
Where'er I rest or roam,
Or in the city's crowded streets,
Or by the blown sea foam,
The thought of thee is home !
At breakfast hour the singer read
The city news, with comment wise,
Like one who felt the pulse of trade
Beneath his finger fall and rise.
His look, his air, his curt speech, told
The man of action, not of books,
To whom the corners made in gold
And stocks were more than seaside
nooks.
Of life beneath the life confessed
His song had hinted unawares ;
Of flowers in traffic's ledgers pressed,
Of human hearts in bulls and' bears.
But eyes in vain were turned to watch
That face so hard and shrewd and
strong ;
And ears in vain grew sharp to catch
The meaning of that morning song.
In vain some sweet-voiced querist sought
To sound him, leaving as she came ;
Her baited album only caught
A common, unromantic name.
No word betrayed the mystery fine,
That trembled on the singer's tongue ;
He came and went, and left no sign
Behind him save the song he sung.
A MYSTERY.
THE river hemmed with leaning trees
Wound through its meadows green ;
A low, blue line of mountains showed
The open pines between.
One sharp, tall peak above them all
Clear into sunlight sprang :
I saw the river of my dreams,
The mountains that I sang !
390
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
iSTo clew of memory led me on,
But well the ways I knew ;
A feeling of familiar things
With every footstep grew.
Not otherwise above its crag
Could lean the blasted pine ;
Not otherwise the maple hold
Aloft its red ensign.
So up the long and shorn foot-hills
The mountain road should creep ;
So, green and low, the meadow fold
Its red-haired kine asleep.
The river wound as it should wind ;
Their place the mountains took ;
The white torn fringes of their clouds
Wore no unwonted Look.
Yet ne'er before that river's rim
Was pressed by feet of mine,
Never before mine eyes had crossed
That broken mountain line.
A presence, strange at once and known,
Walked with me as my guide ;
The skirts of some forgotten life
Trailed noiseless at my side.
Was it a dim -remembered dream ?
Or glimpse through aeons old ?
The secret which the mountains kept
The river never told.
But from the vision ere it
A tender hope I drew,
And, pleasant as a dawn of spring,
The thought within me grew,
That love would temper every change,
And soften all surprise,
And, misty with the dreams of earth,
The hills of Heaven arise.
CONDUCTOR BRADLEY.
CONDUCTOR BRADLEY, (always may his
name
Be said with reverence !) as the swift
doom came,
Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled
frame,
Sank, with the brake he grasped just
where he stood
To do the utmost that a brave man
could,
And die, if needful, as a true man should.
Men stooped above him ; women dropped
their tears
On that poor wreck beyond all hopes or
fears,
Lost in the strength and glory of his
years.
What heard they ? Lo ! the ghastly lips
of pain,
to all
Dead to all thought save duty's, moved
again :
" Put out the signals for the other
train ! "
No nobler utterance since the world
began
From lips of saint or martyr ever ran,
Electric, through the sympathies of man.
Ah me ! how poor and noteless seem to
this
The sick-bed dramas of self-conscious
ness,
Our sensual fears of pain and hopes of
bliss !
0, grand, supreme endeavor ! Not in
vain
That last brave act of failing tongue and
brain !
Freighted with life the downward rush
ing train,
Following the wrecked one, as wave fol
lows wave,
Obeyed the warning which the dead lips
Others
gave.
he saved,
himself he could not
Nay, the lost life was saved. He is not
dead
Who in his record still the earth shall
tread
With God's clear aureole shining round
his head.
We bow as in the dust, with all our pride
Of virtue dwarfed the noble deed beside.
God give us grace to live as Bradley died !
THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD.
391
CHILD-SONGS.
STILL linger in our noon of time
And on our Saxon tongue
The echoes of the home-bom hymns
The Aryan mothers sung.
And childhood had its litanies
In every age and clime ;
The earliest cradles of the race
Were rocked to poet's rhyme.
Nor sky. nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,
Nor green earth's virgin sod,
So moved the singer's heart of old
As these small ones of God.
The mystery of unfolding life
Was more than dawning morn,
Than opening flower or crescent moon
The human soul new-born !
And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach
From lisping voices learns, —
The voices loved of him who sang,
Where Tweed and Teviot glide,
That sound to-day on all the winds
That blow from Rydal-side, —
Heard in the Teuton's household songs,
And folk-lore of the Finn,
Where'er to holy Christmas hearths
The Christ-child enters in !
Before life's sweetest mystery still
The heart in reverence kneels ;
The wonder of the primal birth
The latest mother feels.
We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can ;
God hath his small interpreters ;
The child must teach the man.
We wander wide through evil years,
Onr eyes of faith grow dim ;
But he is freshest from His hands
And nearest unto Him !
And haply, pleading long with Him
For sin-sick hearts and cold.
The angels of our childhood still
The Father's face behold.
Of such the kingdom ! — Teach thou us,
0 Master most divine,
To feel the deep significance
Of these wise words of thine !
The haughty eye shall seek in vain
What innocence beholds ;
No cunning finds the key of heaven,
No strength its gate unfolds.
Alone to guilelessness and love
That gate shall open fall ;
The mind of pride is nothingness,
The childlike heart is all !
THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF
LONGWOOD.
WTITH fifty years between you and your
well-kept wedding vow,
The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is
not a fable now.
And, sweet as has life's vintage been
through all your pleasant past,
Still, as at Cana's marriage -feast, the
best wine is the last !
Again "before me, with your names, fair
Chester's landscape comes,
Its meadows, woods, and ample barns,
and quaint, stone-builded homes.
The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten
slopes, the boscage green and soft,
Of which their poet sings so well from
towered Cedarcroft.
And lo ! from all the country-side come
neighbors, kith and kin ;
From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the
wedding guests come in.
And they who, without scrip or purse,
mob-hunted, travel- worn,
In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as
victors now return.
Older and slower, yet the same, files in
the long array,
And hearts are light and eyes are glad,
though heads are badger-gray.
The fire-tried men of Thirty-eight who
saw with me the fall,
Midst roaring flames and shouting mob,
of Pennsylvania Hall ;
392
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
And they of Lancaster who turned the
cheeks of tyrants pale,
Singing of freedom through the grates
of Moyamensing jail !
And haply with them, all unseen, old
comrades, gone before,
Pass, silently as shadows pass, within
your open door, —
The eagle face of Lindley Coates, brave
Garrett's daring zeal,
The Christian grace of Pennock, the
steadfast heart of Neal.
Ah me ! beyond all power to name, the
worthies tried and true,
Grave men, fair women, youth and maid,
pass by in hushed review.
Of varying faiths, a common cause fused
all their hearts in one.
God give them now, whate'er their
names, the peace of duty done !
How gladly would I tread again the old-
remembered places,
Sit down beside your hearth once more
and look in the dear old faces !
And thank you for the lessons your fifty
years are teaching,
For honest lives that louder speak than
half our noisy preaching ;
For your steady faith and courage in
that dark and evil time,
When the Golden Rule was treason, and
to feed the hungry, crime ;
For the poor slave's house of refuge when
the hounds were on his track,
And saint and sinner, church and state,
joined hands to send him back.
Blessings upon you ! — What you did
for each sad, suffering one,
So homeless, faint, and naked, unto our
Lord was done !
Fair fall on Kennett's pleasant vales and
Longwood's bowery ways
The mellow sunset of your lives, friends
of my early days.
May many more of quiet years be added
to your sum,
And, late at last, in tenderest love, the
beckoning angel come.
Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are
there, alike below, above ;
Our friends are now in either world, and
love is sure of love.
KINSMAN.
DIED AT THE ISLAND OF PANAY (PHI
LIPPINE GROUP), AGED 19 YEARS.
WHERE ceaseless Spring her garland
twines,
As sweetly shall the loved one rest,
As if beneath the whispering pines
And maple shadows of the West.
Ye mourn, 0 hearts of home ! for him,
But, haply, mourn ye not alone ;
For him shall far-off eyes be dim,
And pity speak in tongues unknown.
There needs no graven line to give
The story of his blameless youth ;
All hearts shall throb intuitive,
And nature guess the simple truth.
The very meaning of his name
Shall many a tender tribute win ;
The stranger own his sacred claim,
And all the world shall be his kin.
And there, as here, on main and isle,
The dews of holy peace shall fall,
The same sweet heavens above him
smile,
And God's dear love be over all !
VESTA.
0 CHRIST of God ! whose life and death
Our own have reconciled,
Most quietly, most tenderly
Take home thy star-named child !
Thy grace is in her patient eyes,
Thy words are on her tongue ;
The very silence round her seems
As if the angels sung.
A CHRISTMAS CARMEN.
393
Her smile is as a listening child's
Who hears its mother call ;
The lilies of Thy perfect peace
About her pillow fall.
She leans from out our clinging arms
To rest herself in Thine;
Alone to Thee, dear Lord, can we
Our well-beloved resign !
0, less for her than for ourselves
We bow our heads and pray ;
Her setting star, like Bethlehem's,
To Thee shall point the way !
THE HEALER.
TO A YOUNG PHYSICIAN, WITH BORE'S
PICTURE OF CHRIST HEALING THE
SICK.
So stood of old the holy Christ
Amidst the suffering throng ;
With whom his lightest touch sufficed
To make the weakest strong.
That healing gift he lends to them
Who use it in his name ;
The power that filled his garment's hem
Is evermore the same.
For lo ! in human hearts unseen
The Healer dwelleth still,
And they who make his temples clean
The best subserve his will.
The holiest task by Heaven decreed,
An errand all divine,
The burden of our common need
To render less is thine.
The paths of pain are thine. Go forth
With patience, trust, and hope ;
The sufferings of a sin -sick earth
Shall give thee ample scope.
Beside the unveiled mysteries
Of life and death go stand,
With guarded lips and reverent eyes
And pure of heart and hand.
So shalt thou be with power endued
From Him who went about
The Syrian hillsides doing good,
And casting demons out.
That Good Physician liveth yet
Thy friend and guide to be ;
The Healer by Geimesaret
Shall walk the rounds with thee.
A CHRISTMAS CARMEN.
SOUND over all waters, reach out from
all lands,
The chorus of voices, the clasping of
hands ;
Sing hymns that were sung by the stars
of the morn,
Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was
born !
With glad jubilations
Bring hope to the nations !
The dark night is ending and dawn has
begun :
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,
All speech flow to music, all hearts
beat as one !
Sing the bridal of nations ! with chorals
of love
Sing out the war- vulture and sing in the
dove,
Till the hearts of the peoples keep time
in accord,
And the voice of the world is the voice
of the Lord !
Clasp hands of the nations
In strong gratulations :
The dark night is ending and dawn has
begun ;
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,
All speech flow to music, all hearts
beat as one !
Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of
peace ;
East, wTest, north, and south let the long
quarrel cease :
Sing the song of great joy that the
angels began,
Sing of glory to God and of good-will to
man !
Hark ! joining in chorus
The heavens bend o'er us !
The dark night is ending and dawn has
begun ;
394
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the
sun,
All speech flow to music, all hearts
beat as one !
HYMN
FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH
CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA.
ALL things are Thine : no gift have we,
Lord of all gilts ! to offer Thee ;
And hence with grateful hearts to-day,
Thy own before Thy feet we lay.
Thy will was in the builders' thought ;
Thy hand unseen amidst us wrought ;
Through mortal motive, scheme and plan,
Thy wise eternal purpose ran.
No lack Thy perfect fulness knew ;
For human needs and longings grew
This house of prayer, this home of rest,
In the fair garden of the West.
In weakness and in want we call
On Thee for whom the heavens are small ;
Thy glory is Thy children's good,
Thy joy Thy tender Fatherhood.
0 Father ! deign these walls to bless .
Fill with Thy love their emptiness
And let their door a gateway be
To lead us from ourselves to Thee !
POEMS BY ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER.
THE DREAM OF ARGYLE.
EARTHLY arms no more uphold him
On his prison's stony floor ;
Waiting death in his last slumber,
Lies the doomed MacCallum More.
And he dreams a dream of boyhood;
Rise again his heathery hills,
Sound again the hound's long baying,
Cry of moor-fowl, laugh of rills.
Now he stands amidst his clansmen
In the low, long banquet-hall,
Over grim, ancestral armor
Sees the ruddy firelight fall.
Once again, with pulses beating,
Hears the wandering minstrel tell
How Montrose on Inverary
Thief-like from his mountains fell.
Down the glen, beyond the castle,
Where the linn's swift waters shine,
Round the youthful heir of Argyle
Shy feet glide and white arms twine.
Fairest of the rustic dancers,
Blue-eyed Effie smiles once more,
Bends to him her snooded tresses,
Treads with him the grassy floor.
Now he hears the pipes lamenting,
Harpers for his mother mourn,
Slow, with sable plume and pennon,
To her cairn of burial borne.
Then anon his dreams are darker,
Sounds of battle fill his eais,
And the pibroch's mournful wailing
For his father's fall he hears.
Wild Lochaber's mountain echoes
Wail in concert for the dead,
And Loch Awe's deep waters murmur
For the Campbell's glory fled !
Fierce and strong the godless tyrants
Trample the apostate land,
While her poor and faithful remnant
Wait for the Avenger's hand.
Once again at Inverary,
Years of weary exile o'er,
Armed to lead his scattered clansmen,
Stands the bold MacCallum More.
Once again to battle calling
Sound the war-pipes through the glen ;
And the court-yard of Dunstaff'nage
Rings with tread of armed men.
LINES.
395
All is lost ! The godless triumph,
And the faithful ones and true
From the scaffold and the prison
Covenant with God anew.
On the darkness of his dreaming
Great and sudden glory shone ;
Over bonds and death victorious
Stands he by the Father's throne !
From the radiant ranks of martyrs
Notes of joy and praise he hears,
Songs of his poor land's deliverance
Sounding from the future years.
Lo, he wakes ! but airs celestial
Bathe him in immortal rest,
And he sees with unsealed vision
Scotland's cause with victory blest.
Shining hosts attend and guard him
As he leaves his prison door ;
And to death as to a triumph
Walks the great MacCallum More !
LINES
WRITTEN ON THE DEPARTURE OF
JOSEPH STURGE, AFTER HIS VISIT
TO THE ABOLITIONISTS OF THE
UNITED STATES.
FAIR islands of the sunny sea ! midst
all rejoicing things,
No more the wailing of the slave a wild
discordance brings ;
On the lifted brows of freemen the tropic
breezes blow,
The mildew of the bondman's toil the
land no more shall know.
How swells from those green islands,
where bird and leaf and flower
Are praising in their own sweet way the
dawn of freedom's hour,
The glorious resurrection song from
hearts rejoicing poured,
Thanksgiving for the priceless gift, —
man's regal crown restored !
How beautiful through all the green and
tranquil summer land,
Uplifted, as by miracle, the solemn
churches stand !
The grass is trodden from the paths
where waiting freemen throng,
Athirst and fainting for the cup of life
denied so long.
0, blessed were the feet of him whose
generous errand here
Was to unloose the captive's chain and
dry the mourner's tear ;
To lift again the fallen ones a brother's
robber hand
Had left in pain and wretchedness by the
waysides of the land.
The islands of the sea rejoice ; the har
vest anthems rise ;
The sower of the seed must own 't is
marvellous in his eyes ;
The old waste places are rebuilt, — the
broken walls restored, —
And the wilderness is blooming like the
garden of the Lord !
Thanksgiving for the holy fruit ! should
not the laborer rest,
His earnest faith and works of love have
been so richly blest ?
The pride of all fair England shall her
ocean islands be,
And their peasantry with joyful hearts
keep ceaseless jubilee.
Rest, never ! while his countrymen have
trampled hearts to bleed,
The stifled murmur of their wrongs his
listening ear shall heed,
Where England's far dependencies her
might, not mercy, know,
To all the crushed and suffering there
his pitying love shall flow.
The friend of freedom everywhere, how
mourns he for our land,
The brand of whose hypocrisy burns on
her guilty hand !
Her thrift a theft, the robber's g^ed and
cunning in her eye,
Her glory shame, her flaunting flag on
all the winds a lie !
For us with steady strength of heart and
zeal forever true,
The champion of the island slave the
conflict doth renew,
His labor here hath been to point the
Pharisaic eye
Away from empty creed and form to
where the wounded lie.
396
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
How beautiful to us should seem the
coming feet of such !
Their garments of self-sacrifice have heal
ing in their touch ;
Their gospel mission none may doubt,
for they heed the Master's call,
Who here walked with the multitude,
and sat at meat with all !
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
HE rests with the immortals ; his jour
ney has been long :
For him no wail of sorrow, but a prean
full and strong !
So well and bravely has he done the
work he found to do,
To justice, freedom, duty, God, and man
forever true.
Strong to the end, a man of men, from
out the strife he passed ;
The grandest hour of ail his life was that
of earth the last.
Now midst his snowy hills of home to
the grave they bear him down,
The glory of his fourscore years resting
on him like a crown.
The mourning of the many bells, the
drooping flags, all seem
Like some dim, unreal pageant passing
onward in a dream ;
And following with the living to his last
and narrow bed,
Methinks I see a shadowy band, a train
of noble dead.
'T is a strange and weird procession that
is slowly moving on,
The phantom patriots gathered to the
funeral of their son !
In shadowy guise they move along, brave
Otis with hushed tread,
And Warren walking reverently by the
father of the dead.
Gliding foremost in the misty band a
gentle form is there,
In the white robes of the angels and
their glory round her hair.
She hovers near and bends above her
world-wide honored child,
And the joy that heaven alone can know
beams on her features mild.
And so they bear him to his grave in
the fulness of his years,
True sage and prophet, leaving us in a
time of many fears.
Nevermore amid the darkness of our
wild and evil day
Shall his voice be heard to cheer us,
shall his finger point the way.
DR. KANE IN CUBA.
A NOBLE life is in thy care,
A sacred trust to thee is given ;
Bright Island ! let thy healing air
Be to him as the breath of Heaven.
The marvel of his daring life —
The self-forgetting leader bold —
Stirs, like the trumpet's call to strife,
A million hearts of meaner mould.
Eyes that shall never meet his own
Look dim with tears across the sea,
Where from the dark and icy zone,
Sweet Isle of Flowers ! he comes to thee.
Fold him in rest, 0 pitying clime !
Give back his wasted strength again ;
Soothe, with thy endless summer time,
His winter-wearied heart and brain.
Sing soft and low, thou tropic bird,
From out the fragrant, flowery tree, —
The ear that hears thee now has heard
The ice-break of the winter sea.
Through his long watch of awful night,
He saw the Bear in Northern skies ;
Now, to the Southern Cross of light
He lifts in hope his weary eyes.
Prayers from the hearts that watched in
fear,
When the dark North no answer gave,
Rise, trembling, to the Father's ear,
That still His love may help and save.
LADY FRANKLIN.
FOLD thy hands, thy work is over ;
Cool thy watching eves with tears ;
Let thy poor heart, over-wearied,
Rest alike from hopes and fears. — •
THE MEETING WATERS.
397
Hopes, that saw with sleepless vision
One sad picture fading slow ;
Fears, that followed, vague and name
less,
Lifting back the veils of snow.
For thy brave one, for thy lost one,
Truest heart of woman, weep !
Owning still the love that granted
Unto thy beloved sleep.
Not for him that hour of terror
When, the long ice-battle o'er,
In the sunless day his comrades
Deathward trod the Polar shore.
Spared the cruel cold and famine,
Spared the fainting heart's despair,
What but that could mercy grant him ?
What but that has been thy prayer ?
Dear to thee that last memorial
From the cairn beside the sea ;
Evermore the month of roses
Shall be sacred time to thee.
Sad it is the mournful yew-tree
O'er his slumbers may not wave ;
Sad it is the English daisy
May not blossom on his grave.
But his tomb shall storm and winter
Shape and fashion year by year,
Pile his mighty mausoleum,
Block by block, and tier on tier.
Guardian of its gleaming portal
Shall his stainless honor be,
While thy love, a sweet immortal,
Hovers o'er the winter sea.
NIGHT AND DEATH.
THE storm-wind is howling
Through old pines afar ;
The drear night is falling
Without moon or star.
The roused sea is lashing
The bold shore behind,
And the moan of its ebbing
Keeps time with the wind.
On, on through the darkness,
A spectre, I pass
Where, like moaning of broken hearts,
Surges the grass !
I see her lone head-stone, —
'T is white as a shroud ;
Like a pall, hangs above it
The low drooping cloud.
Who speaks through the dark night
And lull of the wind ?
'T is the sound of the pine-leaves
And sea-waves behind.
The dead girl is silent, —
I stand by her now ;
And her pulse beats no quicker,
Nor crimsons her brow.
The small hand that trembled,
When last in my own,
Lies patient and folded,
And colder than stone.
Like the white blossoms falling
To-night in the gale,
So she in her beauty
Sank mournful and pale.
Yet I loved her ! I utter
Such words by her grave,
As I would not have spoken
Her last breath to save.
Of Tier love the angels
In heaven might tell,
While mine would be whispered
With shudders in hell !
'T was well that the white ones
Who bore her to bliss
Shut out from her new life
The vision of this.
Else, sure as I stand here,
And speak of my love,
She would leave for my darkness
Her glory above.
THE MEETING WATERS.
CLOSE beside the meeting waters.
Long I stood as in a dream,
Watching how the little river
Fell into the broader stream.
398
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
Calm and still the mingled current
Glided to the waiting sea ;
On its breast serenely pictured
Floating cloud and skirting tree.
And I thought, " 0 human spirit !
Strong and deep and pure and blest,
Let the stream of my existence
Blend with thine, and find its rest ! "
I could die as dies the river,
In that current deep and wide ;
I would live as live its waters,
Flashing from a stronger tide !
THE WEDDING VEIL.
DEAR Anna, when I brought her veil,
Her white veil, on her wedding night,
Threw o'er my thin brown hair its folds,
And, laughing, turned me to the light.
" See, Bessie, see ! you wear at last
The bridal veil, forsworn for years ! "
She saw my face, — her laugh was
hushed,
Her happy eyes were filled with tears.
"With kindly haste and trembling hand
She drew away the gauzy mist ;
" Forgive, dear heart ! " her sweet voice
said :
Her loving lips my forehead kissed.
We passed from out the searching light ;
The summer night was calm and fair :
I did not see her pitying eyes,
i felt her soft hand smooth my hair.
Her tender love unlocked my heart ;
Mid falling tears, at last I said,
" Forsworn indeed to me that veil
Because I only love the dead ! "
She stood one moment statue-still,
And, musing, spake in undertone,
" The living love may colder grow ;
The dead is safe with God alone ! "
CHARITY.
THE pilgrim and stranger who through
the day
Holds over the desert his trackless way,
Where the terrible sands no shade have
known,
No sound of life save his camel's moan,
Hears, at last, through the mercy of
Allah to all,
From his tent-door at evening the Be
douin's call :
" Whoever thou art whose need is great,
In the name of God, the Compassionate
And Merciful One, for thee I wait I "
For gifts in His name of food and rest
The tents of Islam of God are blest,
Thou who hast faith in the Christ above,
Shall the Koran teach thee the Law of
Love ? —
0 Christian ! — open thy heart and door,
Cry east and west to the wandering poor :
" Whoever thou art whose need is great,
In the name of Christ, the Compassionate.
And Merciful One, for thee I wait ! "
THE VISION OF ECHARD,
AND OTHEB POEMS.
THE VISION OF ECHARD.
THE Benedictine Echard
Sat, worn by wanderings far,
Where Marsberg sees the bridal
Of the Moselle and Sarre.
Fair with its sloping vineyards
And tawny chestnut bloom,
The happy vale Ausonius sung
For holy Treves made room.
On the shrine Helena builded
To keep the Christ coat well,
On minster tower and kloster cross,
The westering sunshine fell.
There, where the rock-hewn circles
O'eiiooked the Roman's game,
The veil of sleep fell on him,
And his thought a dream became.
He felt the heart of silence
Throb with a soundless word,
And by the inward ear alone
A spirit's voice he heard.
And the spoken word seemed written
On air and wave and sod,
And the bending walls of sapphire
Blazed with the thought of God :
" What lack I, 0 my children ?
All things are in my hand ;
The vast earth and the awful stars
I hold as grains of sand.
" Need I your alms ? The silver
And gold are mine alone ;
The gifts ye bring before me
Were evermore my own.
" Heed I the noise of viols,
Your pomp of masque and show ?
Have I not dawns and sunsets ?
Have I not winds that blow ?
" Do I smell your gums of incense ?
Is my ear with chantings fed ?
' Taste I your wine of worship,
Or eat your holy bread ?
' ' Of rank and name and honors
Am I vain as ye are vain ?
What can Eternal Fullness
From your lip-service gain ?
" Ye make me not your debtor
Who serve yourselves alone ;
Ye boast to me of homage
Whose gain is all your own.
" For you I gave the prophets,
For you the Psalmist's lay :
For you the law's stone tables,
And holy book and day.
"Ye change to weary burdens
The helps that should uplift ;
Ye lose in form the spirit,
The Giver in the gift.
11 Who called ye to self- torment,
To fast and penance vain ?
Dream ye Eternal Goodness
Has joy in mortal pain ?
" For the death in life of Nitria,
For your Chartreuse ever dumb,
What better is the neighbor,
Or happier the home ?
" Who counts his brother's welfare
As sacred as his own,
And loves, forgives, and pities,
He serveth me alone.
" I note each gracious purpose,
Each kindly word and deed ;
Are ye not all my children ?
Shall not the Father heed ?
" No prayer for light and guidance
Is lost upon mine ear :
The child's cry in the darkness
Shall not the Father hear ?
400
THE VISION OF ECHARD.
"I loathe your wrangling councils,
I tread upon your creeds ;
Who made ye mine avengers,
Or told ye of my needs ;
" I bless men and ye curse them,
I love them and ye hate ;
Ye bite and tear each other,
I suffer long and wait.
"Ye bow to ghastly symbols,
To cross and scourge and thorn ;
Ye seek his Syrian manger
Who in the heart is born.
' ' For the dead Christ, not the living,
Ye watch his empty grave
Whose life alone within you
Has power to bless and save.
" 0 blind ones, outward groping,
The idle quest forego ;
Who listens to his inward voice
Alone of him shall know.
*' His love all love exceeding
The heart must needs recall,
Its self- surrendering freedom,
Its loss that gaineth all.
"Climb not the holy mountains,
Their eagles know not me ;
Seek not the Blessed Islands,
I dwell not in the sea.
"The gods are gone for ever
From Zanskar's glacier sides,
And in the Buddha's footprints
The Ceylon serpent glides.
" No more from shaded Delphos
The weird responses come ;
Dodona's oaks are silent,
The Hebrew Bath-Col dumb !
" No more from rocky Horeb
The smitten waters gush :
Fallen is Bethel's ladder, <
Quenched is the burning bush.
" The jewels of the Urim
And Thummim all are dim ;
The fire has left the altar,
The sign the teraphim.
" No more in ark or hill grove
The Holiest abides ;
" Not in the scroll's dead letter
The eternal secret hides.
"The eye shall fail that searches
For me the hollow sky ;
The far is even as the near,
The low is as the high.
" What if the earth is hiding
Her old faiths, long outworn ?
What is it to the changeless truth
That yours shall fail in turn ?
"What if the o'erturned altar
Lays bare the ancient lie ?
What if the dreams and legends
Of the world's childhood die ?
' ' Have ye not still my witness
Within yourselves alway,
My hand that on the keys of life
For bliss or bale I lay ?
"Still, in perpetual judgment,
I hold assize within,
With sure reward of holiness,
And dread rebuke of sin.
" A light, a guide, a warning,
A presence ever near,
Through the deep silence of the flesh
I reach the inward ear..
" My Gerizim and Ebal
Are in each human soul,
The still, small voice of blessing,
And Sinai's thunder-roll.
"The stern behest of duty,
The doom-book open thrown,
The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear,
Are with yourselves alone."
A gold and purple sunset
Flowed down the broad Moselle ;
On hills of vine and meadow lands
The peace of twilight fell.
A slow, cool wind of evening
Blew over leaf and bloom ;
And, faint and far, the Angelus
Rang from Saint Matthew's tomb.
Then up rose Master Echard,
And marvelled : "Can it be
THE WITCH OF WENHAM.
401
"That here, in dream and vision,
The Lord hath talked with me 1 "
He went his way ; behind him
The shrines of saintly dead,
The holy coat and nail of cross,
He left un visited.
He sought the vale of Eltzbach
His burdened soul to free,
Where the foot-hills of the Eifel
Are glassed in Laachersee.
And, in his Order's kloster, •
He sat, in night-long parle,
With Tauler of the Friends of God,
And Nicolas of Basle.
And lo ! the twain made answer :
"Yea, brother, even thus
The Voice above all voices
Hath spoken unto us.
"The world will have its idols,
And flesh and sense their sign ;
But the blinded eyes shall open,
And the gross ear be fine.
" What if the vision tarry ?
God's time is always best ;
The true Light shall be witnessed,
The Christ within confessed.
" In mercy or in judgment
He shall turn and overturn,
Till the heart shall be his temple
Where all of Him shall learn."
THE WITCH OF WENHAM.
ALONG Crane River's sunny slopes,
Blew warm the winds of May,
And over Naumkeag's ancient oaks
The green outgrew the gray.
The grass was green on Eial-side,
The early birds at will
Waked up the violet in its dell,
The wind-flower on its hill.
'•' Where go you, in your Sunday coat
Son Andrew, tell me, praj."
" For striped perch in Wenham Lake
I go to fish to-day."
" Unharmed of thee in Wenham Lake
The mottled perch shall be :
A blue-eyed witch sits on the bank
And weaves her net for thee.
" She weaves her golden hair ; she sings
Her spell-song low and faint ;
The wickedest witch in Salem jail
Is to that girl a saint."
" Nay, mother, hold thy cruel tongue ;
God knows," the young man cried,
" He never made a whiter soul
Than hers by Wenham side.
" She tends her mother sick and blind,
And every want supplies :
To her above the blessed Book
She lends her soft blue eyes.
" Her voice is glad with holy songs,
Her lips are sweet with prayer ;
Go where you will, in ten miles round
Is none more good and fair."
" Son Andrew, for the love of God
And of thy mother, stay ! "
She clasped her hands, she wept aloud,
But Andrew rode away.
" 0 reverend sir, my Andrew's soul
The Wenham witch has caught ;
She holds him with the curled gold
Whereof her snare is wrought.
" She charms him with her great blue
eyes,
She binds him with her hair ;
Oh, break the spell with holy words,
Unbind him with a prayer ! "
" Take heart," the painful preacher said,
" This mischief shall not be ;
The witch shall perish in her sins
And Andrew shall go free.
" Our poor Ann Putnam testifies
She saw her weave a spell,
Bare-armed, loose-haired, at full of moon,
Around a dried-up well.
" ' Spring up, 0 well ! ' she softly sang
The Hebrew's old refrain
402
THE WITCH OF WENHAM.
(For Satan uses Bible words),
Till water flowed amain.
" And many a goodwife heard her speak
By Wenham water words
That made the buttercups take wings
And turn to yellow birds.
" They say that swarming wild bees seek
The hive at her command :
And fishes swim to take their food
From out her dainty hand.
"Meek as she sits in meeting-time,
The godly minister
Notes well the spell that doth compel
The young men's eyes to her.
" The mole upon her dimpled chin
Is Satan's seal and sign ;
Her lips are red with evil bread
And stain of unblest wine.
" For Tituba, my Indian, saith
At Quasycung she took
The Black Man's godless sacrament
And signed his dreadful book.
" Last night my sore-afflicted child
Against the young witch cried.
To take her Marshal Herrick rides
Even now to Wenham side."
The marshal in his saddle sat,
His daughter at his knee ;
" I go to fetch that arrant witch,
Thy fair playmate," quoth he.
" Her spectre walks the parsonage,
And haunts both hall and stair ;
They know her by the great blue eyes
And floating gold of hair. "
'"' They lie, they lie, my father dear !
No foul old witch is she,
But sweet and good and crystal-pure
As Wenham waters be."
" I tell thee, child, the Lord hath set
Before us good and ill,
knd woe to all whose carnal loves
Oppose his righteous will.
" Between Him and the powers of hell
Choose thou, my child, to-day :
No sparing hand, no pitying eye,
When God commands to slay ! "
He went his way ; the old wives shook
With fear as he drew nigh ;
The children in the dooryards held
Their breath as he passed by.
Too well they knew the gaunt gray horse
The grim witch-hunter rode —
The pale Apocalyptic beast
By grisly Death bestrode
n.
Oh, fair the face of Wenham Lake
Upon the young girl's shone,
Her tender mouth, her dreaming ey
Her yellow hair outblown.
By happy youth and love attuned
To natural harmonies,
The singing birds, the whispering wind,
She sat beneath the trees.
Sat shaping for her bridal dress
Her mother's wedding gown,
When lo ! the marshal, writ in hand.
From Alford hill rode down.
His face was hard with cruel fear,
He grasped the maiden's hands :
" Come with me unto Salem town,
For so the law commands ! "
" Oh, let me to my mother say
Farewell before I go ! "
He closer tied her little hands
Unto his saddle bow.
" Unhand me," cried she piteously,
"For thy sweet daughter's sake."
" I '11 keep my daughter safe," he said,
"From the witch of Wenham Lake."
" Oh, leave me for my mother's sake,
She needs my eyes to see."
" Those eyes, young witch, the crows
shall peck
From off the gallows-tree."
He bore her to a farm-house old,
And up its stairway long,
And closed on her the garret-door
With iron bolted strong.
The day died out, the night came
down :
Her evening prayer she said,
THE WITCH OF WENHAM.
403
While, through the dark, strange faces
seemed
To mock her as she prayed.
The present horror deepened all
The fears her childhood knew ;
The awe wherewith the air was filled
With every breath she drew.
And could it be, she trembling asked,
Some secret thought or sin
Had shut good angels from her heart
And let the bad ones in ?
Had she in some forgotten dream
Let go her hold on Heaven,
And sold herself unwittingly
To spirits unforgiven ?
Oh, weird and still the dark hours
No human sound she heard,
But up and down the chimney stack
The swallows moaned and stirred.
And o'er her, with a dread surmise
Of evil sight and sound,
The blind bats on their leathern wings
Went wheeling round and round.
Low hanging in the midnight sky
Looked in a half-faced moon.
Was it a dream, or did she hear
Her lover's whistled tune ?
She forced the oaken scuttle back ;
A whisper reached her ear :
" Slide down the roof to me," it said,
" So softly none may hear."
She slid along the sloping roof
Till from its eaves she hung,
And felt the loosened shingles yield
To which her fingers clung.
Below, her lover stretched his hands
And touched her feet so small ;
" Drop down to me, dear heart," he said,
" My arms shall break the fall."
He set her on his pillion soft,
Her arms about him twined ;
And, noiseless as if velvet-shod,
They left the house behind.
But when they reached the open way,
Full free the rein he cast ;
Oh, never through the mirk midnight
Rode man and maid more fast.
Along the wild wood-paths they sped,
The bridgeless streams they swam j
At set of moon they passed the Bass,
At sunrise Agawam.
At high noon on the Merrimac
The ancient ferryman
Forgot, at times, his idle oars,
So fair a freight to scan.
And when from off his grounded boat
He saw them mount and ride,
" God keep her from the evil eye,
And harm of witch ! " he cried.
The maiden laughed, as youth will
laugh
At all its fears gone by ;
' ' He does not know," she whispered low,
" A little witch am I."
All day he urged his weary horse,
And, in the red sundown,
Drew rein before a friendly door
In distant Berwick town.
A fellow-feeling for the wronged
The Quaker people felt ;
And safe beside their kindly hearths
The hunted maiden dwelt,
Until from off its breast the land
The haunting horror threw,
And hatred, born of ghastly dreams,
To shame and pity grew.
Sad were the year's spring morns, and
sad
Its golden summer day,
But blithe and glad its withered fields,
And skies of ashen gray ;
For spell and charm had power no more^
The spectres ceased to roam,
And scattered households knelt again
Around the hearths of home.
And when once more by Beaver Dam
The meadow-lark outsang.
And once again on all the hills
The early violets sprang,
And all the windy pasture slopes
Lay green within the arms
404
SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP.
Of creeks that bore the salted sea
To pleasant inland farms,
The smith filed off the chains he forged,
The jail-bolts backward fell ;
And youth and hoary age came forth
Like souls escaped from hell.
SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP.
A GOLD fringe on the purpling hem
Of hills the river runs
As down its long, green valley falls
The last of summer's suns.
Along its tawny gravel-bed
Broad-flowing, swift, and still,
As if its meadow levels felt
The hurry of the hill,
Noiseless between its banks of green
From curve to curve it slips ;
The drowsy maple-shadows rest
Like fingers on its lips.
A waif from Carroll's wildest hills,
Unstoried and unknown ;
The ursine legend of its name
Prowls on its banks alone, -
Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn
As ever Yarrow knew,
Or, under rainy Irish skies,
By Spenser's Mulla grew ;
And through the gaps of leaning trees
Its mountain cradle shows :
The gold against the amethyst,
The green against the rose.
Touched by a light that hath no name,
A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall
Are God's great pictures hung.
How changed the summits vast and old !
No longer granite-browed,
they melt in rosy mist ; the rock
Is softer than the cloud ;
The valley holds its breath ; no leaf
Of all its elms is twirled :
The silence of eternity
Seems falling on the world.
The pause before the breaking seals
Of mystery is this ;
Von miracle-play of night and day
Makes dumb its witnesses.
What unseen altar crowns the hills
That reach up stair on stair ?
"What eyes look through, what white
wings fan
These purple veils of air ?
What Presence from the heavenly
heights
To those of earth stoops down ?
Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods
On Ida's snowy crown !
Slow fades the vision of the sky,
The golden water pales,
And over all the valley-land
A gray-winged vapor sails.
I go the common way of all ;
The sunset fires will burn,
The flowers will blow, the river flow,
When I no more return.
No whisper from the mountain pine
Nor lapsing stream shall tell
The stranger, treading where I tread,
Of him who loved them well.
But beauty seen is never lost,
God's colors all are fast ;
The glory of this sunset heaven
Into my soul has passed, —
A sense of gladness unconfined
To mortal date or clime ;
As the soul liveth, it shall live
Beyond the years of time.
Beside the mystic asphodels
Shall bloom the home-born flowers,
And new horizons flush and glow
With sunset hues of ours.
Farewell ! these smiling hills must wear
Too soon their wintry frown,
And snow-cold winds from off them shake
The maple's red leaves down.
But I shall see a summer sun
Still setting broad and low ;
The mountain slopes shall blush and
bloom,
The golden water flow.
A lover's claim is mine on all
I see to have and hold, —
The rose-light of perpetual hills,
And sunsets never cold !
THE SEEKING OF THE WATER.
FALL.
THEY left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.
And still the water sang the sweet
Glad song." Page 405.
THE SEEKING OF THE WATEEFALL.
405
Some vague, faint rumor to the vale
Had crept — perchance a hunter's tale —
Of its wild mirth of waters lost
On the dark woods through which it
tossed.
Somewhere it laughed and sang ; some
where
Whirled in mad dance its misty hair ;
But who had raised its veil, or seen
The rainbow skirts of that Undfce ?
They sought it where the mountain brook
Its swift way to the valley took ; .
Along the rugged slope they clomb,
Their guide a thread of sound and foam.
Height after height they slowly won ;
The fiery javelins of the sun
Smote the bare ledge ; the tangled shade
With rock and vine their steps delayed.
But, through leaf-openings, now and
then
They saw the cheerful homes of men,
And the great mountains with their wall
Of misty purple girdling all.
The leaves through which the glad winds
blew
Shared the wild dance the waters knew ;
And where the shadows deepest fell
The wood-thrush rang his silver bell.
Fringing the stream, at every turn
Swung low the waving fronds of fern ;
From stony cleft and mossy sod
Pale asters sprang, and golden-rod.
And still the water sang the sweet,
Glad song that stirred its gliding feet,
And found in rock and root the keys
Of its beguiling melodies.
Beyond, above, its signals flew
Of tossing foam the birch-trees through ;
Now seen, now lost, but baffling still
The weary seekers' slackening will.
Each called to each : " Lo here ! Lo
there !
Its white scarf flutters in the air ! "
They climbed anew ; the vision fled,
To beckon higher overhead.
So toiled they up the mountain-slope
With faint and ever fainter hope ;
With faint and fainter voice the brook
Still bade them listen, pause, and look.
Meanwhile below the day was done ;
Above the tall peaks saw the sun
Sink, beam-shorn, to its misty set
Behind the hills of violet.
"Here ends our quest!" the seekers
cried,
' ' The brook and rumor both have lied !
The phantom of a waterfall
Has led us at its beck and call."
But one, with years grown wiser, said :
" So, always baffled, not misled,
We follow where before us runs
The vision of the shining ones.
" Not where they seem their signals fly,
Their voices while we listen die ;
We cannot keep, however fleet,
The quick time of their winged feet.
" From youth to age unresting stray
These kindly mockers in our way ;
Yet lead they not, the baffling elves,
To something better than themselves ?
"Here, though unreached the goal we
sought,
Its own reward our toil has brought :
The winding water's sounding rush,
The long note of the hermit thrush,
"The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of
pond
And river track, and, vast, beyond
Broad meadows belted round with pines,
The grand uplift of mountain lines !
" What matter though we seek with pair,
The garden of the gods in vain,
If lured thereby we climb to greet
Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet ?
' ' To seek is better than to gain,
The fond hope dies as we attain ;
Life's fairest things are those which seem,
The best is that of which we dream.
" Then let us trust our waterfall
Still flashes down its rocky wall,
With rainbow crescent curved across
Its sunlit spray from moss to moss.
406
JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC.
' ' And we, forgetful of our pain,
In thought shall seek it oft again ;
Shall see this aster-blossomed sod,
This sunshine of the golden-rod,
"And haply gain, through parting
boughs,
Grand glimpses of great mountain brows
Qloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel sheen
Of lakes deep set in valleys green.
" So failure wins ; the consequence
Of loss becomes its recompense ;
And evermore the end shall tell
The unreached ideal guided well.
" Our sweet illusions only die
Fulfilling love's sure prophecy ;
And every wish for better things
An undreamed beauty nearer brings.
' ' For fate is servitor of love ;
Desire and hope and longing prove
The secret of immortal youth,
And Nature cheats us into truth.
" 0 kind allurers, wisely sent,
Beguiling with benign intent,
Still move us, through divine unrest,
To seek the loveliest and the best !
" Go with us when our souls go free,
And, in the clear, white light to be,
Add unto Heaven's beatitude
The old delight of seeking good ! "
JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC.
0 DWELLERS in the stately towns,
What come ye out to see ?
This common earth, this common sky,
This water flowing free ?
As gayly as these kalmia flowers
Your door-yard blossoms spring ;
As sweetly as these wild wood birds
Your caged minstrels sing.
You find but common bloom and green,
The rippling river's rune,
The beauty which is everywhere
Beneath the skies of June ;
The Hawkswood oaks, the storm-torn
plumes
Of old pine-forest kings,
Beneath whose century-woven shade
Deer Island's mistress sings.
And here are pictured Artichoke,
And Curson's bowery mill ;
And Pleasant Valley smiles between
The river and the hill.
You know full well these banks of bloom,
The upland's wavy line,
And hoiv the sunshine tips with fire
.iiu. ii^v LUC buiisiime i/ipt
The " eedles of the pine.
Yet, like some old remembered psalm.,
Or sweet, familiar face,
Not less because of commonness
You love the day and place.
And not in vain in this soft air
Shall hard -strung nerves relax,
Not all in vain the o'erworn brain
Forego its daily tax.
The lust of power, the greed of gain
Have all the year their own ;
The -haunting demons well may let
Our one bright day alone.
Unheeded let the newsboy call,
Aside the ledger lay :
The world will keep its tread-mill step
Though we fall out to-day.
The truants of life's weary school,
Without excuse from thrift
We change for once the gains of toil
For God's unpurchased gift.
From ceiled rooms, from silent books,
From crowded car and town,
Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap,
We lay our tired heads down.
Cool, summer wind, our heated brows :
Blue river, through the green
Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes
Which all too much have seen.
For us these pleasant woodland ways
Are thronged with memories old,
Have felt the grasp of friendly hands
And heard love's story told.
A sacred presence overbroods
The earth whereon we meet ;
These winding forest-paths are trod
By more than mortal feet
HYMN OF THE BUNKERS.
407
Old friends called from us by the voice
Wliich they alone could hear,
From mystery to mystery,
From life to life, draw near.
More closely for the sake of them
Each other's hands we press ;
Our voices take from them a tone
Of deeper tenderness.
Our joy is theirs, their trust is ours,
Alike below, above,
Or here or there, about us fold
The arms of one great love !
We ask to-day no countersign,
No party names we own ;
Unlabelled, individual,
We bring ourselves alone.
What cares the unconventioned wood
For pass-words of the town ?
The sound of fashion's shibboleth
The laughing waters drown.
Here cant forgets his dreary tone,
And care his face forlorn ;
The liberal air and sunshine laugh
The bigot's zeal to scorn.
From manhood's weary shoulder falls
His load of selfish cares ;
And woman takes her rights as flowers
And brooks and birds take theirs.
The license of the happy woods,
The brook's release are ours ;
The freedom of the unshamed wind
Among the glad-eyed flowers.
Yet here no evil thought finds place,
Nor foot profane comes in ;
Our grove, like that of Samothrace,
Is set apart from sin.
We walk on holy ground ; above
A sky more holy smiles ;
The chant of the beatitudes
Swells down these leafy aisles.
Thanks to the gracious Providence
That brings us here once more ;
For memories of the good behind
And hopes of good before !
A.nd if, unknown to us, sweet days
Of June like this must come,
Unseen of us these laurels clothe
The river-banks, with bloom ;
And these green paths must soon be trod
By other feet than ours,
Full long may annual pilgrims come
To keep the Feast of Flowers ;
The matron be a girl once more,
The bearded man a boy,
And we, in heaven's eternal June,
Be glad for earthly joy !
HYMN OF THE BUNKERS.
KLOSTER KEDAR, EPHRATA, PENNSYL
VANIA (1738).
SISTER MARIA CHRISTIANA Sings.
WAKE, sisters, wake ! the day-star shine
Above Ephrata's eastern pines
The dawn is breaking, cool and calm.
Wake, sisters, wake to prayer and psalm
Praised be the Lord for shade and light
For toil by day, for rest by night !
Praised be His name who deigns to bless
Our Kedar of the wilderness ! —
Our refuge when the spoiler's hand
Was heavy on our native land ;
And freedom, to her children due,
The wolf and vulture only knew.
We praised Him when to prison led,
We owned Him when the stake blazed
red;
We knew, whatever might befall,
His love and power were over all.
He heard our prayers ; with outstretched
arm
He led us forth from cruel harm ;
Still, wheresoe'er our steps were bent,
His cloud and fire before us went !
The watch of faith and prayer He set,
We kept it then, we keep it yet.
At midnight, crow of cock, or noon,
He cometh sure, He cometh soon.
He comes to chasten, not destroy,
To purge the earth from sin's alloy.
At last, at last shall all confess
His mercy as His righteousness.
408
IN THE " OLD SOUTH.3
The dead shall live, the sick be whole,
The scarlet sin be white as wool ;
No discord mar below, above,
The music of eternal love !
Sound, welcome trump, the last alarm !
Lord God of hosts, make bare thine arm,
Fulfil this day our long desire,
Make sweet and clean the world with fire !
Sweep, flaming besom, sweep from sight
The lies of time ; be swift to smite,
Sharp sword of God, all idols down,
Genevan creed and Roman crown.
Quake, earth, through all thy zones, till
all
The fanes of pride and priestcraft fall ;
And lift thou up in place of them
Thy gates of pearl, Jerusalem !
Lo ! rising from baptismal flame,
Transfigured, glorious, yet the same,
Within the heavenly city's bound
Our Kloster Kedar shal^be found.
He cometh soon ! at dawn or noon
Or set of sun, He cometh soon.
Our prayers shall meet Him on his way ;
Wake, sisters, wake ! arise and pray !
IN THE "OLD SOUTH."
1677.
SHE came and stood in the Old South
Church,
A wonder and a sign,
With a look the old-time sibyls wore,
Half-crazed and half-divine.
Save the mournful sackcloth about her
wound
Unclothed as the primal mother,
With limbs that trembled and eyes that
blazed
With a fire she dared not smother.
Loose on her shoulders fell her hair
With sprinkled ashes gray,
She stood in the broad aisle strange and
weird
As a soul at the judgment day.
And the minister paused in his sermon's
midst,
And the people held their breath,
For these were the words the maiden
spoke
Through lips as pale as death :
" Thus saith the Lord, with equal feet
All men my courts shall tread,
And priest and ruler no more shall eat
My people up like bread !
"Repent! repent! ere the Lord shall
speak
In thunder and breaking seals !
Let all souls worship Him in the way
His light within reveals."
She shook the dust from her naked feet,
And her sackcloth closer drew,
And into the porch of the awe-hushed
church
She passed like a ghost from view.
They whipped her away at the tail o' the
cart
Through half the streets of the town,
But the words she uttered that day nor
fire
Could burn nor water drown.
And now the aisles of the ancient church
By equal feet are trod,
And the bell that swings in its belfry
rings
Freedom to worship God !
And now whenever a wrong is done
It thrills the conscious walls ;
The stone from the basement cries aloud
And the beam from the timber calls.
There are steeple-houses on every hand.
And pulpits that bless and ban,
And the Lord will not grudge the single
church
That is set apart for man.
For in two commandments are all the law
And the prophets under the sun,
And the first is last and the last is first,
And the twain are verily one.
So, long as Boston shall Boston be,
And her bay-tides rise and fall,
Shall freedom stand in the Old South
Church
And plead for the rights of all !
LEXINGTON. — CENTENNIAL HYMN.
409
LEXINGTON.
1775.
No Berserk thirst of blood had they,
No battle-joy was theirs, who set
Against the alien bayonet
Their homespun breasts in that old day.
Their feet had trodden peaceful ways ;
They loved not strife, they dreaded
pain;
They saw not, what to us is plain,
That God would make man's wrath his
praise.
No seers were they, but simple men ;
Its vast results the future hid :
The meaning of the work they did
Was strange and dark and doubtful then.
Swift as their summons came they left
The plow mid-furrow standing still.
The half-ground corn grist in the mill,
The spade in earth, the axe in cleft.
They went where duty seemed to call,
They scarcely asked the reason why ;
They only knew they could but die,
And death was not the worst of all !
Of man for man the sacrifice,
All that was theirs to give, they gave.
The flowers that blossomed from their
grave
Have sown themselves beneath all skies.
Their death-shot shook the feudal tower,
And shattered slavery's chain as well ;
On the sky's dome, as on a bell,
Its echo struck the world's great hour.
That fateful echo is not dumb :
The nations listening to its sound
"Wait, from acentury'svantage-ground,
The holier triumphs yet to come, —
The bridal time of Law and Love,
The gladness of the world's release,
"When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace
The hawk shall nestle with the dove ! —
The golden age of brotherhood
Unknown to other rivalries
Than of the mild humanities,
And .gracious interchange of good,
When closer strand shall lean to strand,
Till meet, beneath saluting flags,
The eagle of our mountain-crags.
The lion of our Motherland !
CENTENNIAL HYMN.
OUR fathers' God ! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and Thee,
To thank Thee for the era done,
And trust Thee for the opening one.
n.
Here, where of old, by Thy design,
The fathers spake that word of Thine
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time, from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.
ill.
Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun ;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.
IV.
Thou, who hast heie in concord furled
The war flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfil
The Orient's mission of good- will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back its Argonauts of peace.
For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank Thee ; but, withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought nor sold !
VI.
Oh make Thou us, through centuries
long,
In peace secure, in justice strong ;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of Thy righteous law :
And, cast in some diviner mould,
Let the new cycle shame the old !
410
TRIERS. — FITZ-GREEKE HALLECK.
THIERS.
I.
FATE summoned, in gray-bearded age,
to act
A history stranger than his written fact,
Him who portrayed the splendor and
the gloom
Of that great hour when throne and altar
fell
With long death-groan which still is
audible.
He, when around the walls of Paris
rung
The Prussian bugle like the blast of
doom,
And every ill which follows unblest war
Maddened all France from Finistere to
Var,
The weight of fourscore from his
shoulders flung,
And guided Freedom in the path he saw
Lead out of chaos into light and law,
Peace, not imperial, but republican,
And order pledged to all the Rights of
Man.
n.
Death called him from a need as immi
nent
As that from which the Silent William
went
When powers of evil, like the smiting
seas
On Holland's dikes, assailed her liberties.
Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance hung
The weal and woe of France, the bells
were rung
For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will,
Above his bier the hearts of men stood
still.
Then, as if set to his dead lips, the horn
Of Roland wound once more to rouse and
warn,
The old voice filled the air ! His last
brave word
Not vainly France to all her boundaries
stirred.
Strong as in life, he still for Freedom
wrought,
As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought.
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.
AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS STATUE.
AMONG their graven shapes to whom
Thy civic wreaths belong,
0 city of his love, make room
For one whose gift was song.
Not his the soldier's sword to wield,
Nor his the helm of state,
Nor glory of the stricken field,
Nor triumph of debate.
In common ways, with common men,
He served his race and time
As well as if his clerkly pen
Had never danced to rhyme.
If, in the thronged and noisy mart,
The Muses found their son,
Could any say his tuneful art
A duty left undone ?
He toiled and sang ; and year by year
Men found their homes more sweet,
And through a tenderer atmosphere
Looked down the brick-walled street.
The Greek's wild onset Wall Street
knew ;
The Red King walked Broadway ;
And Alnwick Castle's roses blew
From Palisades to Bay.
Fair City by the Sea 1 upraise
His veil with reverent hands ;
And mingle with thy own the praise
And pride of other lands.
Let Greece his fiery lyric breathe
Above her hero-urns ;
And Scotland, with her holly, wreathe
The flower he culled for Burns.
O, stately stand thy palace walls,
Thy tall ships ride the seas ;
To-day thy poet's name recalls
A prouder thought than these.
Not less thy pulse of trade shall beat,
Nor less thy tall fleets swim,
That shaded square and dusty street
Are classic ground through him.
WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT. — THE TWO ANGELS.
411
Alive,, lie loved, like all who sing,
The echoes of his song ;
Too late the tardy meed we bring,
The praise delayed so long.
Too late, alas ! Of all who knew
The living man, to-day
Before his unveiled face, how few
Make bare their locks of gray !
Our lips of praise must soon be dumb,
Our grateful eyes be dim ;
0 brothers of the days to come,
Take tender charge of him !
New hands the wires of song may sweep,
New voices challenge fame ;
But let no moss of years o'ercreep
The lines of Halleck's name.
WILLIAM FRANCIS BAETLETT.
O, WELL may Essex sit forlorn
Beside her sea-blown shore ;
Her well beloved, her noblest born,
Is hers in life no more !
No lapse of years can render less
Her memory's sacred claim ;
No fountain of forgetfulness
Can wet the lips of Fame.
A grief alike to wound and heal,
A thought to soothe and pain,
The sad, sweet pride that mothers feel
To her must still remain.
Good men and true she has not lacked,
1 And brave men yet shall be ;
The perfect flower, the crowning fact,
Of all her years was he !
As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage,
What worthier knight was found
To grace in Arthur's golden age
The fabled Table Round ?
A voice, the battle's trumpet-note,
To welcome and restore ;
A hand, that all unwilling smote,
To heal and build once more !
A soul of fire, a tender heart
Too warm for hate, he knew
The generous victor's graceful part
To sheathe the sword he drew.
When Earth, as if on evil dreams,
Looks back upon her wars,
And the white light of Christ outstreams
From the red disk of Mars,
His fame who led the stormy van
Of battle well may cease,
But never that which crowns the man
Whose victory was Peace.
Mourn, Essex, on thy sea-blown shore
Thy beautiful and brave,
Whose failing hand the olive bore,
Whose dying lips forgave !
Let age lament the youthful chief,
And tender eyes be dim ;
The tears are more of joy than grief
That fall for one like him !
THE TWO ANGELS.
GOD called the nearest angels who dwell
with Him above :
The tenderest one was Pity, the dearest
one was Love.
" Arise," He said, "my angels ! a wail
of woe and sin
Steals through the gates of heaven, and
saddens all within.
" My harps take up the mournful strain
that from a lost world swells,
The smoke of torment clouds the light
and blights the asphodels.
" Fly downward to that under world,
and on its souls of pain
Let Love drop smiles like sunshine, an<2
Pity tears like rain ! "
Two faces bowed before the Throne, veiled.
in their golden hair ;
Four white wings lessened swiftly down;
the dark abyss of air.
The way was strange, the flight was
long ; at last t&e angels came
Where swung the lost, and nether world,,
red- wrapped ia r.ayless flams.
412
THE LIBRARY. — THE HENCHMAN.
There Pity, shuddering, wept ; but Love,
with faith too strong for fear,
Took heart from God's almightiness and
smiled a smile of cheer.
And lo ! that tear of Pity quenched the
flame whereon it fell,
And, with the sunshine of that smile,
hope entered into hell !
Two unveiled faces full of joy looked up
ward to the Throne,
Four white wings folded at the feet of
Him who sat thereon !
And deeper than the sound of seas, more
soft than falling flake,
Amidst the hush of wing and song the
Voice Eternal spake :
" "Welcome, my angels ! ye have brought
a holier joy to heaven ;
Henceforth its sweetest song shall be the
song of sin forgiven 1 "
THE LIBRARY.
SUNG AT THE OPENING OF THE HAVER-
HILL LIBRARY.
"LET THERE BE LIGHT ! " God spake of
old,
And over chaos dark and cold,
And, through the dead and formless
frame
Of nature, life and order came.
Faint was the light at first that shone
On giant fern and mastodon,
On half-formed plant and beast of prey,
And man as rude and wild as they.
Age after age, like waves, o'erran
The sarth, uplifting brute and man ;
And mind, at length, in symbols dark
Its meanings traced on stone and bark.
On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll,
On plastic clay and leathern scroll,
Man wrote his'thoughts ; the ages passed,
And lo ! the Press was found at last !
Then dead souls woke ; the thoughts of
men
Whose bones were dust revived again ;
The cloister's silence found a tongue,
Old prophets spake, old poets sung.
And here, to-day, the dead look down.
The kings of mind again we crown ;
We hear the voices lost so long,
The sage's word, the sibyl s song.
Here Greek and Roman find themselves
Alive along these crowded shelves ;
And Shakespeare treads again his stage.
And Chaucer paints anew his age.
As if some Pantheon's marbles broke
Their stony trance, and lived and spoke.
Life thrills along the alcoved hall,
The lords of thought await our call !
THE HENCHMAN.
MY lady walks her morning round,
My lady's page her fleet greyhound
My lady's hair the fond winds stir,
And all the birds make songs for her.
Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bowers,
And Rathburn side is gay with flowers ;
But ne'er like hers, in flower or bird,
Was beauty seen or music heard.
The distance of the stars is hers ;
The least of all her worshippers,
The dust beneath her dainty heel,
She knows not that I see or feel.
0 proud and calm ! — she cannot know
Where'er she goes with her I go ;
0 cold and fair ! — she cannot guess
1 kneel to share her hound's caress !
Gay knights beside her hunt and hawk,
I rob their ears of her sweet talk ;
Her suitors come from east and west<
I steal her smiles from every guest.
Unheard of her, in loving words.
I greet her with the song of birds ;
I reach her with her green-armed bowers,
I kiss her with the lips of flowers.
The hound and I are on her trail,
The wind and I uplift her veil ;
As if the calm, cold moon she were.
And I the tide, I follow her.
KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS. — RED RIDING-HOOD. 413
As unrebuked as they, I share
The license of the sun and air,
And in a common homage hide
My worship from her scorn and pride.
World- wide apart, and yet so near,
J breathe her charmed atmosphere,
Wherein to her my service brings
The reverence due to holy things.
/Her maiden pride, her haughty name,
My dumb devotion shall not shame ;
The love that no return doth crave
To knightly levels lifts the slave.
No lance have I, in joust or fight,
To splinter in my lady's sight ;
But, at her feet, how blest were I
For any need of hers to die !
KING SOLOMON AND THE ANTS.
OUT from Jerusalem
The king rode with his great
War chiefs and lords of state,
And Sheba's queen with them,
Comely, but black withal,
To whom, perchance, belongs
That wondrous Song of songs,
Sensuous and mystical,
Whereto devout souls turn
In fond, ecstatic dream,
And through its earth-born theme
The Love of loves discern.
Proud in the Syrian sun,
In gold and purple sheen,
The dusky Ethiop queen
Smiled on King Solomon.
Wisest of men, he knew
The languages of all
The creatures great or small
That trod the earth or flew.
Across an ant-hill led
The king's path, and he heard
Its small folk, and their word
He thus interpreted :
" Here comes the king men greet
As wise and good and just,
To crush us in the dust
Under his heedless feet."
The great king bowed his head,
And saw the wide surprise
Of the Queen of Sheba's eyes
As he told her what they said.
" 0 king ! " she whispered sweet,
" Too happy fate have they
Who perish in thy way
Beneath thy gracious feet !
" Thou of the God-lent crown,
Shall these vile creatures dare
Murmur against thee where
The knees of kings kneel down ? "
" Nay," Solomon replied, .
" The wise and strong should seek
The welfare of the weak,"
And turned his horse aside.
His train, with quick alarm,
Curved with their leader round
The ant-hill's peopled mound,
And left it free from harm.
The jewelled head bent low ;
" 0 king ! " she said, " henceforth
The secret of thy worth
And wisdom well I know.
" Happy must be the State
Whose ruler heedeth more
The murmurs of the poor
Than flatteries of the great."
RED RIDING-HOOD.
ON the wide lawn the snow lay deep,
Ridged o'er with many a drifted heap ;
The wind that through the pine-trees
The
sung
naked
frosty-
elm-boughs tossed and
swung ;
While, through the window,
starred,
Against the sunset purple barred,
We saw the sombre crow flap by,
The hawk's gray neck along the sky,
The crested blue-jay flitting swift, '
The squirrel poising on the drift,
Erect, alert, his broad gray tail
Sot to the north wind like a sail.
414
THE PRESSED GENTIAN. — OVERRULED.
It ™me to pass, our little lass,
With flattened face against the glass,
And eyes in which the tender dew
Of pity shone, stood gazing through
The narrow space her rosy lips
Had melted from the frost's eclipse :
"Oh, see," she cried, "the poor blue-
jays !
What is it that the black crow says ?
The squirrel lifts his little legs
Because he has no hands, and begs ;
He 's asking for my nuts, I know :
May I not feed them on the snow ? "
Half lost within her boots, her head
Warm-sheltered in her hood of red,
Her plaid skirt close about her drawn,
She floundered down the wintry lawn ;
Now struggling through the misty veil
Blown round her by the shrieking gale ;
Now sinking in a drift so low
Her scarlet hood could scarcely show
Its dash of color on the snow.
She dropped for bird and beast forlorn
Her little store of nuts and corn,
And thus her timid guests bespoke :
"Come, squirrel, from your hollow
oak, —
Come, black old crow, — come, poor
blue-jay,
Before your supper 's blown away !
Don't be afraid, we all are good ;
And I 'm mamma's Red Riding-Hood ! "
0 Thou whose care is over all,
Who heedest even the sparrow's fall,
Keep in the little maiden's breast
The pity which is now its guest !
Let not her cultured years make less
The childhood charm of tenderness,
But let her feel as well as know,
Nor harder with her polish grow !
Unmoved by sentimental grief
That wails along some printed leaf,
But, prompt with kindly word and deed
To own the claims of all who need,
Let the grown woman's self make good
The promise of Red Riding-Hood !
THE PRESSED GENTIAN.
THE time of gifts has come again,
And, on my northern window-pane,
Outlined against the day's brief light,
A Christmas token hangs in sight.
The wayside travellers, as they pass,
Mark the gray disk of clouded glass ;
And the dull blankness seems, perchance,
Folly to their wise ignorance.
They cannot from their outlook see
The perfect grace it hath for me ;
For there the flower, whose fringes
through
The frosty breath of autumn blew,
Turns from without its face of bloom
To the warm tropic of my room,
As fair as when beside its brook
The hue of bending skies it took.
So from the trodden ways of earth,
Seem some sweet souls who veil their
worth,
And offer to the careless glance
The clouding gray of circumstance.
They blossom best where hearth-fires
burn,
To loving eyes alone they turn
The flowers of inward grace, that hide
Their beauty from the world outside.
But deeper meanings come to me,
My hair -immortal flower, from thee !
Man judges from a partial view,
None ever yet his brother knew ;
The Eternal Eye that sees the whole
May better read the darkened soul,
And find, to outward sense denied,
The flower upon its inmost side !
OVERRULED.
THE threads our hands in blindness spin
No self-determined plan weaves in ;
The shuttle of the unseen powers
Works out a pattern not as ours.
Ah ! small the choice of him who sings
What sound shall leave the smitten
strings ;
Fate holds and guides the hand of art ;
The singer's is the servant's part.
The wind-harp chooses not the tone
That through its trembling threads is
blown ;
The patient organ cannot guess
What hand its passive keys shall press.
I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN.*
415
Through wish, resolve, and act, onr will
\s moved by undreamed forces still ;
And no man measures in advance
His strength with untried circumstance.
As streams take hue from shade and sun,
As runs the life the song must run ;
But, glad or sad, to his good end
God grant the varying notes may tend !
HYMN.
SUNG AT THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE
CHILDREN'S MISSION, BOSTON (1878).
THINE are all the gifts, 0 God !
Thine the broken bread ;
Let the naked feet be shod,
And the starving fed.
Let Thy children, by Thy grace,
Give as they abound,
Till the poor have breathing-space,
And the lost are found.
Wiser than the miser's hoards
Is the giver's choice ;
Sweeter than the song of birds
Is the thankful voice.
Welcome smiles on faces sad
As the flowers of spring ;
Let the tender hearts be glad
With the joy they bring.
Happier for their pity's sake
Make their sports and plays,
And from lips of childhood take
Thy perfected praise !
GIVING AND TAKING.*
WHO gives and hides the giving hand,
Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise,
Shall find his smallest gift outweighs
The burden of the sea and land,
Who gives to whom hath naught been
given,
His gift in need, though small indeed
I have attempted to put in English verse a
e translation of a poem by Tinnevaluva a
iudoo poet of the third century of our era.
As is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed,
Is large as earth and rich as heaven.
Forget it not, 0 man, to whom
A gift shall fall, while yet on earth ;
Yea, even to thy seven-fold birth
Kecall it in the lives to come.
Who broods above a wrong in thought
Sins much ; but greater sin is his
Who, fed and clothed with kindnesses,
Shall count the holy alms as nought.
Who dares to curse the hands that bless
Shall know of sin the deadliest cost ;
The patience of the heavens is lost
Beholding man's unthankfulness.
For he who breaks all laws may still
In Sivain's mercy be forgiven ;
But none can save, in earth or heaven,
The wretch who answers good with ill.
"I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE
TOOK ME IN."
'NEATII skies that winter never knew
The air was full of light and balm,
And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew
Through orange bloom and groves of
palm.
A stranger from the frozen North,
Who sought the fount of health in
vain,
Sank homeless on the alien earth,
And breathed the languid air with
pain.
God's angel came ! The tender shade
Of pity made her blue eye dim ;
Against her woman's breast she laid
The drooping, fainting head of him.
She bore him to a pleasant room,
Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air,
And watched beside his bed, for whom
His far-off' sisters might not care.
She fanned his feverish brow and
smoothed
Its lines of pain with tenderest touch.
With holy hymn and prayer she soothed
The trembling soul that feared so much.
416
AT SCHOOL-CLOSE.
Through her the peace that passeth sight
Came to him, as he lapsed away
As one whose troubled dreams of night
Slide slowly into tranquil day.
The sweetness of the Land of Flowers
Upon his lonely grave she laid :
The jasmine dropped its golden showers,
The orange lent its bloom and shade.
And something whispered in her thought,
More sweet than mortal voices be :
" The service thou for him hast wrought
0 daughter ! hath been done for me."
AT SCHOOL-CLOSE.
BflWDOIN STREET (1877).
THE end has come, as come it must
To all things ; in these sweet June days
The teacher and the scholar trust
Their parting feet to separate ways.
ey pi
Shall pleasant memories cling to each,
As shells bear inland from the sea
The murmur of the rhythmic beach.
One knew the joy the sculptor knows
When, plastic to his lightest touch,
His clay-wrought model slowly grows
To that fine grace desired so much.
So daily grew before her eyes
The living shapes whereon she
wrought,
Strong, tender, innocently wise,
The child's heart with the woman's
thought.
And one shall never quite forget
The voice that called from dream and
l^y i
The firm but kindly hand that set
Her feet in learning's pleasant way, —
The joy of Undine soul-possessed,
The 'wakening sense, the strange de
light
That swelled the fabled statue's breast
And filled its clouded eyes with sight !
0 Youth and Beauty, loved of all !
Ye pass from girlhood's gate of dreams ;
In broader ways your footsteps fall,
Ye test the truth of all that seems.
Her little realm the teacher leaves,
She breaks her wand of power apart,
While, for your love and trust, she gives
The warm thanks of a grateful heart.
Hers is the sober summer noon
Contrasted with your morn of spring ,
The waning with the waxing moon,
The folded with the outspread wing.
Across the distance of the years
She sends her God-speed back to you ;
She has no thought of doubts or fears :
Be but yourselves, be pure, be true,
And prompt in duty ; heed the deep,
Low voice of conscience ; through the
ill
And discord round about you, keep
Your faith in human nature still.
Be gentle : unto griefs and needs,
Be pitiful as woman should,
And, spite of all the lies of creeds,
Hold fast the truth that God is good.
Give and receive ; go forth and bless
The world that needs the hand and
heart
Of Martha's helpful carefulness
No less than Mary's better part.
So shall the stream of time flow by
And leave each year a richer good,
And matron loveliness outvie
The nameless charm of maidenhood.
link
youi
And, when the world shall
names
With gracious lives and manners fine,
The teacher shall assert her claims,
And proudly whisper, "These were
mine ! "
AT EVENTIDE.
POOR and inadequate the shadow-play
Of gain and loss, of waking and ot
dream,
Against life's solemn background need*
must seem
At this late hour. Yet, not unthank-
fully,
THE PROBLEM. — RESPONSE.
417
I call to mind the fountains by the way,
The breath of flowers, the bird-song on
the spray,
Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy
of giving
And of receiving, the great boon of living
In grand historic years when Liberty
Had need of word and work, quick sym
pathies
For all who fail and suffer, song's relief,
Nature's uncloying loveliness ; and chief,
The kind restraining hand of Provi
dence,
The inward witness, the assuring sense
Of an Eternal -Good which overlies
The sorrow of the world, Love which out
lives
All sin and wrong, Compassion which
forgives
To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear
eyes
Through lapse and failure look to the
intent,
And judge our frailty by the life we
meant.
THE PROBLEM.
NOT without envy Wealth at times must
look
On their brown strength who wield the
reaping-hook
And scythe, or at the forge-fire shape
the plow
Or the steel harness of the steeds of
steam ; —
All who, by skill and patience, anyhow
Make service noble, and the earth redeem
From savageness. By kingly accolade
Than theirs was never worthier knight
hood made.
Well for them, if, while demagogues
their vain
And evil counsels proffer, they maintain
Their honest manhood unseduced, and
wage
No war with Labor's right to Labor's gain
Of sweet home-comfort, rest of hand and
brain,
And softer pillow for the head of Age.
TI.
And well for Gain if it ungrudging yields
Labor its just demand ; and well for
Ease
If in the uses of its own, it sees
No wrong to him who tills its pleasant
fields
And spreads the table of its luxuries.
The interests of the rich man and the
poor
Are one and same, inseparable evermore ;
And, when scant wage or labor fail to
give
Food, shelter, raiment, wherewithal to
live,
Need has its rights, necessity its claim.
Yea, even self- wrought misery and shame
Test well the charity suffering long and
kind.
The home-pressed question of the age can
find
No answer in the catch-words of the blind
Leaders of blind. Solution there is none
Save in the Golden Rule of Christ alone.
RESPONSE.
1877.
BESIDE that milestone where the level
sun,
Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low
rays
On word and work irrevocably done,
Life's blending threads of good and ill
outspun,
I hear, 0 friends ! your words of cheer
and praise,
Half doubtful if myself or otherwise.
Like him who, in the old Arabian joke,
A beggar slept and crowned Caliph
woke.
Thanks not the less. With not unglad
surprise
I see my life-work through your partial
eyes ;
Assured, in giving to my home-taught
songs
A higher value than of right belongs,
You do but read between the written
lines
The finer grace of unfulfilled designs.
THE KING'S MISSIVE,
AND OTHER POEMS.
THE PRELUDE.
I SPREAD a scanty board too late ; ^
The old-time guests for whom I wait
Come few and slow, methinks, to-day.
Ah ! who could hear my messages
Across the dim unsounded seas
On which so many have sailed away !
Come, then, old friends, who linger yet,
And let us meet, as we have met,
Once more beneath this low sunshine ;
-And grateful for the good we 've known,
The riddles solved, the ills outgrown,
Shake hands upon the border line.
The favor, asked too oft before,
From your indulgent ears, once more
I crave, and, if belated lays
To slower, feebler measures move,
The silent sympathy of love
To me is dearer now than praise.
And ye, 0 younger friends, for whom
My hearth and heart keep open room,
Come smiling through the shadows
long,
Be with me while the sun goes down,
And with your cheerful voices drown
The minor of my even-song.
For, equal through the day and night,.
The wise Eternal oversight
And love and power and righteous
will
Remain : the law of desHny
The best for each and all must be,
And life its promise shall fulfil.
THE KING'S MISSIVE.si
1661.
UNDER the great hill sloping bare
To cove and meadow and Common
lot,
In his council chamber and oaken chaii}
Sat the worshipful Governor Endi«
cott.
A grave, strong man, who knew no peer
In the pilgrim land, where he ruled in
fear
Of God, not man, and for good or ill
Held his trust with an iron will.
He had shorn with his sword the cross
from out
The flag, and cloven the May-pole
down,
Harried the heathen round about,
And whipped the Quakers from town
to town.
Earnest and honest, a man at need
To burn like a torch for his own harsh
creed,
He kept with the flaming brand of his
zeal
The gate of the holy common weal.
His brow was clouded, his eye was
stern,
With a look of mingled sorrow and
wrath ;
" Woe 's me ! " he murmured : " at every
turn
The pestilent Quakers are in my path !
Some we have scourged, and banished
some,
Some hanged, more doomed, and still
they come,
Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in,
Sowing their heresy's seed of sin.
" Did we count on this ? Did we leave
behind
The graves of our kin, the comfort
and ease
Of our English hearths and homes, to
find
Trou biers of Israel such as these ?
Shall I spare ? Shall I pity them ? Gob
forbid !
I will do as the prophet to Agag did :
THE KING'S MISSIVE.
419
They come to poison the wells of the
Word,
I will hew them in pieces before the
Lord ! "
The door swung open, and Rawson the
clerk
Entered, and whispered under breath,
u There waits below for the hangman's
work
A fellow banished on pain of death —
Shattuck, of Salem, unhealed of the
whip,
Brought over in Master Goldsmith's
ship
At anchor here' in a Christian port,
With freight of the devil and all his
sort ! "
Twice and thrice on the chamber floor
Striding fiercely from wall to wall,
" The Lord do so to me and more,"
The Governor cried, " if I hang not
all!
Bring hither the Quaker." Calm, se
date,
With the look of a man at ease with
fate,
Into that presence grim and dread
Came Samuel Shattuck, with hat on
head.
u Off with the knave's hat ! " An angry
hand
Smote down the offence ; but the
wearer said,
With a quiet smile, " By the king's com
mand
I bear his message and stand in his
stead."
)[n the Governor's hand a missive he laid
With the royal arms on its seal dis
played,
And the proud man spake as he gazed
thereat,
Uncovering, "Give Mr. Shattuck his
hat."
He turned to the Quaker, bowing low, —
" The king commandeth your friends'
release,
Doubt not he shall be obeyed, although
To his subjects' sorrow and sin's in
crease.
What he here enjoineth, John Endi-
cott,
His loyal servant, question eth not.
You are free ! God grant the spirit you
own
May take you from us to parts un
known."
So the door of the jail was open cast,
And, like Daniel, out of the lion's
den
Tender youth and girlhood passed,
With age-bowed women and gray-
locked men.
And the voice of one appointed to die
Was lifted in praise and thanks on high,
And the little maid from New Nether
lands
Kissed, in her joy, the doomed man's
hands.
And one, whose call was to minister
To the souls in prison, beside him
went,
An ancient woman, bearing with her
The linen shroud for his burial meant.
For she, not counting her own life
dear,
In the strength of a love that cast out
fear,
Had watched and served where hex
brethren died,
T-ike those who waited the cross be
side.
One moment they paused on their way
to look
On the martyr graves by the Common
side,
And much scourged Wharton of Salem
took
His burden of prophecy up and cried :
" Rest, souls of the valiant ! Not in
vain
Have ye borne the Master's cross of
pain ;
Ye have fought the fight, ye are victors
crowned,
With a fourfold chain ye have Satan
bound ! "
The autumn haze lay soft and still
On wood and meadow and upland
farms ;
On the brow of Snow Hill the great
windmill
Slowly and lazily swung its arms ;
Broad in the sunshine stretched away.
With its capes and islands, the turquoise
bay;
420
ST. MARTINS SUMMER.
And over water and dusk of pines
Blue hills lifted their faint outlines.
The topaz leaves of the walnut glowed,
The sumach added its crimson fleck,
And double in air and water showed
The tinted maples along the Neck ;
Through frost flower clusters of pale
star-mist,
And gentian fringes of amethyst,
And royal plumes of golden-rod,
The grazing cattle on Gentry trod.
But as they who see not, the Quakers
saw
The world about them ; they only
thought
With deep thanksgiving and pious awe
On the great deliverance God had
wrought.
Through lane and alley the gazing town
Noisily followed them up and down;
Some with scoffing and brutal jeer,
Some with pity and words of cheer.
One brave voice rose above the din.
Upsall, gray with his length of days,
Cried from the door of his Red Lion
Inn :
"Men of Boston, give God the praise !
No more shall innocent blood call down
The bolrs of wrarh on your guilty town.
The freedom of worship, dear to you,
Is dear to all, and to all is due.
" I see the vision of days to come,
When your beautiful City of the Bay
Shall be Christian liberty's chosen home,
And none shall his neighbor's rights
gainsay.
The varying notes of worship shall blend
And as one great prayer to God ascend,
And hands of mutual charity raise
Wails of salvation and gates of praise."
So passed the Quakers through Boston
town,
Whose painful ministers sighed to see
The walls of their sheep-fold falling
down,
And wolves of heresy prowling free.
But the years went on, and brought no
wrong ;
With milder counsels the State grew
strong,
As outward Letter and inward Light
the balance of truth aright.
The Puritan spirit perishing not,
To Concord's yeomen the signal sent,
And spake in the voice of the cannon-
shot
That severed the chains of a conti
nent.
With its gentler mission of peace and
good-will
The thought of the Quaker is living
still,
And the freedom of soul he prophesied
Is gospel and law where the martyrs
died.
ST. MARTIN'S SUMMERS
THOUGH flowers have perished at the
touch
Of Frost, the early comer,
I hail the season loved so much,
The good St. Martin's summer.
0 gracious morn, with rose-red dawn,
And thin moon curving o'er it !
The old year's darling, latest born,
More loved than all before it !
How flamed the sunrise through the
pines !
How stretched the birchen shadows,
Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines
The westward sloping meadows !
The sweet day, opening as a flower
Unfolds its'petals tender,
Renews for us at noontide's hour
The summer's tempered splendor.
The birds are hushed ; alone the wind,
That through the woodland searches,
The red-oak's lingering leaves can find,
And yellow plumes of larches.
But still the balsam-breathing pine
Invites no thought of sorrow,
No hint of loss from air like wine
The earth's content can borrow.
The summer and the winter here
Midway a truce are holding,
A soft, consenting atmosphere
Their tents of peace enfolding.
The silent woods, the lonely hills,
Rise solemn in their gladness ;
THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOL-FOLK.
421
The quiet that the valley fills
Is scarcely joy or sadness.
How strange ! The autumn yesterday
In winter's grasp seemed dying;
On whirling winds from skies of gray
The early snow was flying.
And now, while over Nature's mood
There steals a soft relenting,
[ will not mar the present good,
Forecasting or lamenting.
My autumn time and Nature's hold
A dreamy tryst together,
And, both grown old, about us fold
The golden-tissued weather.
I lean my heart against the day
To feel its bland caressing ;
I will not let it pass away
Before it leaves its blessing.
God's angels come not as of old
The Syrian shepherds knew them ;
In reddening dawns, in sunset gold,
And warm noon lights I view them.
Nor need there is, in times like this
When heaven to earth draws nearer,
Of wing or song as witnesses
To make their presence clearer.
O stream of life, whose swifter flow
Is of the end forewarning,
Methinks thy sundown afterglow
Seems less of night than morning !
Old cares grow light ; aside I lay
The doubrs and fears that troubled ;
The quiet of the happy day
Within my soul is doubled.
That clouds must veil this fair sunshine
Not less a joy I find it ;
Kor less yon warm horizon line
That winter lurks behind it.
The mystery of the untried days
I close my eyes from reading ;
His will be 'done whose darkest ways
To light and life are leading !
Less drear the winter night shall be,
If memory cheer and hearten
Us heavy hours with thoughts of thee
Sweet summer <K! St. Martin !
THE DEAD FEAST OF THE KOI/
FOLK.83
CHOTA NAGPOOR.
WE have opened the door,
Once, twice, thrict !
We have swept the loor,
We have boiled t.:e rice.
Come hither, come Hither !
Come from the far lands,
Come from the star lands,
Come as before !
We lived long together,
We loved one another ;
Come back to our life.
Come father, come mother,
Come sister and brother,
Child, husband, nnd wife,
For you we are sighing.
Come take your old places,
Come look in our faces,
The dead on the dying,
Come home !
We have opened the door,
Once, twice, thrice !
We have kindled the coals,
And we boil the rice
For the feast of souls.
Come hither, come hither !
Triiuk not we fear you,
"Whose hearts are so near yon,
Come tenderly thought on,
Come all un forgotten,
Come from the shadow-lands,
From the dim meadow-lands
Where the pale grasses bend
Low to our sighing.
Come father, come mother,
Come sister and brother,
Come husband and friend,
The dead to the dying,
Come home !
We have opened the door
You entered so oft ;
For the feast of souls
We have kindled the coals,
And we boil the rice soft.
Come you who are dearest
To us who are nearest,
Come hither, come hither,
From out the wild weather;
The st^rm clouds are flying,
The peepul is sighing;
Come in from the rain.
422
THE LOST OCCASION.
Come father, come mother,
Come sister and brother,
Come husband and lover,
Beneath our roof-cover.
Look on us again,
The dead oil the dying,
Come home !
We have opened the door !
For the feast of souls
We have kindled the coals
We may kindle no more !
Snake, fever, and famine,
The curse of the Brahmin,
The sun and the dew,
They burn us, they bite us,
They waste us and smite us :
Our davs are but few !
In strange lands far yonder
To wonder and wander
We hasten to you.
List then to our sighing,
While yet we are here :
Nor seeing nor hearing,
We wait without fearing,
To feel you draw near.
O dead to the dying
Come home !
THE LOST OCCASION.
SOME die too late and some too soon,
At early morning, heat of noon,
Or the chill evening twilight. Thou,
Whom the rich heavens did so endow
With eyes of power and Jove's own
brow,
With all the massive strength that fills
Thy home-horizon's granite hills,
Wi'th rarest gifts of heart and head
From manliest stock inherited,
New England's stateliest type of man,
In port and speech Olympian ;
Whom no one met, at'first, but took
A second awed and wondering look
( As turned, perchance, the eyesof Greece
On Phidias unveiled masterpiece) ;
Whose words in simplest home-spun clad,
The Saxon strength of Ccedmou's had,
With power reserved at need to reach
The Roman forum's loft;est speech,
Sweet with persuasion, eloquent
In passion, cool in argument,
Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes
As fell the Norse god's hammer blows,
Crushing as if with Talus' flail
Through Error's logic-woven mail,
And failing only when they tried
The adamant of the righteous side, —
Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved
Of old friends, by the new deceived,
Too soon for us, too soon for thee,
Beside thy lonely Northern sea,
Where long and low the marsh-lands
spread,
Laid wearily down thy august head.
Thou shouldst have lived to feel below
Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow, —
The late-sprung mine that underlaid
Thy sad concessions vainly made.
Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's
wall
The star-flag of the Union fall,
And armed rebellion pressing on
The broken lines of Washington !
No stronger voice than thine had then
Called out the utmost might of men,
To make the Union's charter free
And strengthen law by liberty.
How had that stern arbitrament
To thy gray age youth's vigor lent,
Shaming ambition's paltry prize
Before thy disillusioned eyes ;
Breaking the spell about thee wound
Like the green withes that Samson
bound ;
Redeeming in one effort grand,
Thyself and thy imperilled land !
Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee,
O sleeper by the Northern sea,
The gates of opportunity !
God fills the gaps of human need,
Each crisis brings its word and deed.
Wise men and strong we did not lack;
But still, with memory turning back,
In the dark hours we thought of thee,
And thy lone grave beside the sea.
Above that grave the east winds blow,
And from the marsh-lands drifting slow
The sea-fog comes, with evermore
The wave-wash of a lonely shore,
And sea-bird's melancholy cry,
As Nature fain would typify
The sadness of a closing scene,
The loss of that which should have been.
But, where thy native mountains bare
Their foreheads to diviner air,
Fit emblem of enduring fame,
One lofty summit keeps thy name.
For thee the cosmic forces did
The rearing of that pyramid,
WITHIN THE GATE.
423
The prescient ages shaping with
Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith.
Sunrise and sunset lay thereon
With hands of light their benison,
The stars of midnight pause to set
Their jewels in its coronet.
And evermore that mountain mass
Seems climbing from the shadowy pass
To light, as if to manifest
Thy nobler self, thy life at best !
THE EMANCIPATION GROUP.
BOSTON, 1879.
AMIDST thy sacred effigies
Of old renown give place,
O city, Freedom-loved ! to his
Whose hand unchained a race.
Take the worn frame, that rested not
Save in a martyr's grave —
The care-lined face, that none forgot,
Bent to the kneeling slave.
Let man be free ! The mighty word
He spake was not his own ;
An impulse from the Highest stirred
These chiselled lips alone.
The cloudy sign, the fiery guide,
Along his pathway ran,
And Nature, through his voice, denied
The ownership of man.
We rest in peace where these sad eyes
Saw peril, strife, and pain ;
His was the nation's sacrifice,
And ours the priceless gain.
O symbol of God's will on earth
As it is done above !
Bear witness to the cost and worth
Of justice and of love.
Stand in thy place and testify
To coming ages long,
That truth is stronger than a lie,
And righteousness than wrong.
THE JUBILEE SINGERS.
VOICE of a people suffering long,
The pathos of their mournful song,
The sorrow of their night of wrong
Their cry like that which Israel gave,
A prayer for one to guide and save,
Like Moses by the Red Sea's wave !
The stern accord her timbrel lent
To Miriam's note of triumph sent
O'er Egypt's sunken armament !
The tramp that startled camp and town,
And shook the walls of slavery down,
The spectral march of old John Brown!
The storm that swept through battle'
days,
The triumph after long delays,
The bondmen giving God the praise !
Voice of a ransomed race, sing on
Till Freedom's every right is won,
And Slavery's every wrong undone !
WITHIN THE GATE.
WE sat together, last May-day, and
talked
Of the dear friends who walked
Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears
Of five and forty years
Since first we met in Freedom's hope
forlorn,
And heard her battle-horn
Sound through the valleys of the sleep
ing North,
Calling her children forth,
And youth pressed forward with hope-
lighted eyes,
And age, with forecast wise
Of the long strife before the triumph won,
Girded his armor on.
Sadly, as name by name we called the
roll,
We heard the dead-bells toll
For the unanswering many, and we
knew
The living were the few.
And we, who waited our own call before
The inevitable door,
Listened and looked, as all have done,
to win
Some token from within.
424
THE KHAN'S DEVIL.
No sign we saw, we heard no voices
call ;
The impenetrable wall
Cast down its shadow, like an awful
doubt,
On all who sat without.
Of many a hint of life beyond the veil,
And many a ghostly tale
Wherewith the ages spanned the gulf
between
The seen and the unseen,
Seeking from omen, trance, and dream
to gain
Solace to doubtful pain,
And touch, with groping hands, the gar
ment hem
Of truth sufficing them,
We talked ; and, turning from the sore
unrest
Of an all -baffling quest,
We thought of holy lives that from us
passed
Hopeful unto the last,
As if they saw beyond the river of death,
Like him of "Nazareth,
The many mansions of the Eternal days
Lift up their gates of praise.
And, hushed to silence by a reverent
awe,
Methought, 0 friend, I saw
In thy true life of word, and work, and
thought
The proof of all we sought.
Did we not witness in the life of thee
Immortal prophecy ?
And feel, when with thee, that thy foot
steps trod
An everlasting road 1
Not for brief days thy generous sympa
thies,
Thy scorn of selfish ease ;
Not for the poor prize of an earthly
goal
Thy strong uplift of soul.
Than thine was never turned a fonder
heart
To nature and to art
In fair-formed Hellas in her golden prime,
Thy Philothea's time.
Yet, loving beauty, thou couldst pass it
by,
And for the poor deny
Thyself, and see thy fresh, sweet flower
of fame
Wither in blight and blame.
Sharing His love who holds in His em
brace
The lowliest of our race,
Sure the Divine economy must be
Conservative of thee !
For truth must live with truth, self-sac
rifice
Seek out its great allies ;
Good must find good by gravitation
sure,
And love with love endure.
And so, since thou hast passed within
the gate
Whereby awhile I wait,
I give blind grief and blinder sense the
lie :
Thou hast not lived to die ! '
THE KHAN'S DEVIL.
THE Khan came from Bokhara town
To Hamza, santou of renown.
" My head is sick, my hands are weak ;
Thy help, 0 holy man, I seek."
In silence marking for a space
The Khan's red eyes and purple face,
Thick voice, and loose, uncertain tread,
" Thou hast a devil ! " Hamza said.
" Allah forbid ! " exclaimed the Khan.
" Rid me of him at once, 0 man ! "
"Nay," Hamza said, "no spell of
mine
Can slay that cursed thing of thine.
" Leave feast and wine, c;o forth and
drink
Water of healing on the brink
" Where clear and cold from mountain
snows,
The Nahr el Zebeu downward flows.
ABRAM MORRISON.
425
* Six moons remain, then come to me ;
May Allah's pity go with thee ! "
Awe-struck, from feast and wine, the
Khan
Went forth where Nahr el Zebeu ran.
Roots were his food, the desert dust
His bed, the water quenched his thirst,
And when the sixth moon's scimetar
Curved sharp above the evening star,
He sought again the santon's door,
Not weak and trembling as before.
But strong of limb and clear of brain ;
"Behold," he said, " the fiend is slain."
" Nay," Hamza answered, " starved and
drowned,
The curst one lies in death-like swound.
" But evil breaks the strongest gyves,
And jins like him have charmed lives.
" One beaker of the juice of grape
May call him up in living shape.
" When the red wine of Badakshan
Sparkles for thee, beware, 0 Khan !
" With water quench the fire within,
And drown each day thy devilkin ! "
Thenceforth the great Khan shunned the
cup
As Sk'tan's own, though offered up,
With laughing eyes and jewelled hands,
By Yarkand's maids and Samarcand's.
And, in the lofty vestibule
Of the medress of Kaush Kodul,
The students of the holy law
A golden-lettered tablet saw,
With these words, by a cunning hand,
Graved on it at the Khan's command :
u In Allah's name, to him who hath
A devil, Khan el Hamed saith,
" Wisely our Prophet cursed the vine :
The fiend that loves the breath of
" No prayer can slay, no marabout
Nor Meccan dervis can drive out.
" I, Khan el Hamed, know the charm
That robs him of his power to harm.
" Drown him, 0 Islam's child ! the spell
To save thee lies in tank and well ! "
ABRAM MOKRISON.
'MIDST the men and things which wil>
Haunt an old man's memory still,
Drollest, quaintest of them all,
With a boy's laugh 1 recall
Good old Abrain Morrison.
When the Grist and Rolling Mill
Ground and rumbled by Po Hill,
And the old red school-house stood
Midway in the Powow's flood,
Here dwelt Abram Morrison.
From the Beach to far beyond
Bear-Hill, Lion's Mouth ami Pond,
Marvellous to our tough old stock,
Chips o' the Anglo-Saxon block,
Seemed the Celtic Morrison.
Mudknock, Balmawhistle, all
Only knew the Yankee drawl,
Never brogue was heard till when,
Foremost of his countrymen,
Hither came Friend Morrison ;
Yankee born, of alien blood,
Kin of his had well withstood
Pope and King with pike and ball
Under Derry's leaguered wall,
As became the Morrisons.
Wandering down from Nutfield woods
With his household and his goods,
Never was it clearlv told
How within our quiet fold
Came to be a Morrison.
Once a soldier, blame him not
That the Quaker he forgot,
When, to think of battles won,
And the red-coats on the run,
Laughed aloud Friend Morrison,
From gray Lewis over sea
Bore his sires their family tree3
i26
VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE.
On the rugged boughs of it
Grafting Irish mirth and wit,
And the brogue of Morrison.
Half a genius, quick to plan,
Blundering like an Irishman,
But with canny shrewdness lent
By his far-off Scotch descent,
Such was Abram Morrison.
Back and forth to daily meals,
Rode his cherished pig on wheels,
And to all who came to see :
" Aisier for the pig an' me,
Sure it is," said Morrison.
Simple-hearted, boy o'er-grown,
With a humor quire his own,
Of our sober-stepping ways,
Speech and look and cautious phrase,
Slow to learn was Morrison.
Much we loved his stories told
Of a country strange and old,
Where the fairies danced till dawn,
And the goblin Leprecaun
Looked, we thought, like Morrison.
Or wild tales of feud and fight,
Witch and troll and second sight
Whispered still where Stornoway
Looks across its stormy bay,
Once the home of Morrisons.
First was he to sing the praise
Of the Powow's winding ways;
And our straggling village took
City grandeur to the look
Of its poet Morrison.
All his words have perished. Shame
On the saddle-bags of Fame,
That they bring not to our time
One poor couplet of the rhyme
Made by Abram Morrison !
When, on calm and fair First Days,
Rattled down our one horse chaise
Through the blossomed apple-boughs
To the old, brown meeting-house,
There was Abram Morrison.
Underneath his hat's broad brim
Peered the queer old face of him ;
And with Irish jauntiness
Swung the coat-tails of the dress
Worn by Abram Morrison.
Still, in memory, on his feet,
Leaning o'er the elders' seat,
Mingling with a solemn drone,
Celtic accents all his own,
Rises Abram Morrison.
" Don't," he 's pleading, " don't ye go,
Dear young friends, to sight and show:
Don't run after elephants,
Learned pigs and presidents
And the likes ! " said Morrison.
On his well-worn theme intent,
Simple, child-like, innocent,
Heaven forgive the half-checked smile
Of our careless boyhood, while
Listening to Friend Morrison ^
We have learned in later days
{ Truth may speak in simplest phrase;
That the man is not the less
For quaint ways and home-spun dress,
Thanks to Abram Morrison !
Not to pander nor to please
Come the needed homilies,
With no lofty argument
Is the fitting message sent
Through such lips as Morrison's
Dead and gone ! But while its track
Powow keeps to Merrimack,
While Po Hill is still on guard,
Looking land and ocean ward.
They shall tell of Morrison !
After half a century's lapse,
We are wiser now, perhaps,
But we miss our streets amid
Something which the past has hid,
Lost with Abram Morrison.
Gone forever with the queer
Characters of that old year !
Now the many are as one ;
Broken is the mould that run
Men like Abram Morrison.
VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE. 8c
A SHALLOW stream, from fountains
Deep in the Sandwich mountains,
Ran lakeward Bearcamp River ;
And, between its flood-torn shores,
Sped by sail or urged by oars
No keel had vexed it ever.
VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE.
427
\lone the dead trees yielding
To the dull axe Time is wielding,
The shy mink and the otter,
And golden leaves and red,
By countless autumns shed,
Had floated down its water.
From the gray rocks of Cape Ann,
Came a skilled sea-faring man,
With his dory, to the right place ;
Over hill and plain he brought her,
Where the boatless Bearcamp water
Comes winding down from White-
Face.
Quoth the skipper : " Ere she floats fonth,
I'm sure my pretty boat 's worth,
At least, a name as pretty."
On her painted side he wrote it,
And the flag that o'er her floated
Bore aloft the name of Jettie.
On a radiant morn of summer,
Elder guest and latest comer
Saw her wed the Bearcamp water ;
Heard the name the skipper gave her.
And the answer to the favor
From the Bay State's graceful daugh
ter.
Then, a singer, richly gifted,
Her charmed voice uplifted ;
And the wood-thrush and song-sparrow
Listened, dumb with envious pain,
To the clear and sweet refrain
Whose notes they could not borrow.
Then the skipper plied his oar,
And from off the shelving shore,
Glided out the strange explorer ;
Floating on, she knew not whither, —
The tawny sands beneath her,
The great hills watching o'er her.
On, where the stream flows quiet
As the meadows' margins by it,
Or widens out to borrow a
New life from that wild water,
The mountain giant's daughter,
The pine-besung Chocorua
Or, mid the tangling cumber
And pack of mountain lumber
That spring floods downward force,
Over sunken snag, and bar
Where the grating shallows are,
The good boat held her course
Under the pine-dark highlands,
Around the vine-hung islands,
She ploughed her crooked furrow;
And her rippling and her lurches
Scared the river eels and perches,
And the musk-rat in his burrow.
Every sober clam below her,
Every sage and grave pearl-grower,
Shut his rusty valves the tighter ;
Crow called to crow complaining,
And old tortoises sat craning
Their leathern necks to sight her
So, to where the still lake glasses
The misty mountain masses
Rising dim and distant northward,
And, with faint-drawn shadow pictures,
Low shores, and dead pine spectres,
Blends the skyward and the earth
ward,
On she glided, overladen,
With merry man and maiden
Sending back their song and laugh
ter,—
While, perchance, a phantom crew,
In a ghostly birch canoe,
Paddled dumb and swiftly after !
And the bear on Ossipee
Climbed the topmost crag to see
The strange thing drifting under;
And, through the haze of August,
Passaconaway and Paugus
Looked down in sleepy wonder.
All the pines that o'er her hung
In mimic sea-tones snug
The song familiar to her;
And the maples leaned to screen her,
And the meadow-grass seemed greener,
And the breeze more soft to woo her
The lone stream mystery -haunted,
To her the freedom granted
To scan its every feature,
Till new and old were blended,
And round them both extended
The loving arms of Nature.
Of these hills the little vessel
Henceforth is part and parcel ;
And on Bearcamp shall her log
Be kept, as if by George's
Or Grand Menan, the surges
Tossed her skipper through the fog.
428
OUR AUTOCKAT.
And I, who, half in sadness,
Recall the morning gladness
Of life, at evening time,
By chance, onlookiug idly,
Apart from all so widely,
Have set her voyage to rhyme.
Dies now the gay persistence
Of song and lau»h, in distance;
Alone with me remaining
The stream, the quiet meadow,
The hills in shine and shadow,
The sombre pines complaining.
And, musing here, I dream
Of voyagers on a stream
From whence is no returning,
Under sealed orders <;'oiug,
Looking forward little knowing,
Looking back with idle yearning.
And I pray that every venture
The port of peace may enter,
That, safe from snag and fall
And siren-haunted islet,
And rock, the Unseen Pilot
May guide us one and all.
OUR AUTOCRAT.
BEAD AT DR. HOLMES* BREAKFAST.
His laurels fresh from song and lay,
Romance, art, science, rich in all,
And young of heart, how dare we say
We keep his seventieth festival 1
No sense is here of loss or lack ;
Before hi> sweetness and his light
The dial holds its shadow back,
The charmed hours delay their flight.
His still the keen analysis
Of men and moods, electric wit,
Free play of mirth, and tenderness
To heal the slightest wound from it.
And his the pathos touching all
Life's sins and sorrows and regrets,
Its hopes and fears, irs final call
And rest beneath the violets.
His sparkling surface scarce betrays
The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled,
The wisdom of the latter days,
And tender memories of the old.
What shapes and fancies, grave or gay,
Before us at his bidding come !
The Treadmill tramp, the One-Horse
Shay,
The dumb despair of Elsie's doom!
The tale of Avis and the Maid,
The plea for lips that cannot speak,
The holy kiss that Ins laid
On Little Boston's pallid cheek !
Long may he live to sing for us
His sweetest songs at evening time,
And, like his Chambered Nautilus,
To holier heights ol beauty climb !
Though now unnumbered guests sur
round
The table that he rules at will,
Its Autocrat, however crowned,
Is but our friend and comrade still.
The world may keep his honored name
The wealth of all his varied powers ;
A stronger claim has love than fame,
And lie himself is only ours !
GARRISON.
THE storm and peril overpast,
The hounding hatred shamed and
still,
Go, soul of freedom ! take at last
The place which thou alone canst
fill.
Confirm the lesson taught of old —
Life saved for self is lost, while they
Who lose it in His service hold
The lease of God's eternal day.
Not for thyself, but for the slave
Thy words of thunder shook the world;
No selfish griefs or hatred gave
The strength wherewith thy bolts were
hurled.
From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew
We heard a tender undersong ;
Thy very wrath from pity grew,
From love of man thy hate of wrong
Now past and present are as one ;
The life below is life above ;
Thy mortal years have but begun
The immortality of love.
BAYARD TAYLOB.
429
With somewhat of thy lofty faith
We lay thy outworn garrneut by,
Give death but what belongs to death,
And life the life that cannot die !
NTot for a soul like thine the calm
Of selfish ease and joys of sense ;
But duty, more th;iu crown or palm,
Its own exceeding recompense.
Go up and on ! thy day well done,
Its morning promise well fulfilled,
Arise to triumphs yet unwon,
To ho.ier tasks that God has willed.
Go, leave behind thee all that mars
The work below of man for man ;
With the white legions of the stars
Do service such as augels can.
Wherever wrong shall ruht deny
Or suffering spirits urge their plea,
Be thine a voice to smite the lie,
A hand to set the captive free !
BAYARD TAYLOR.
"A>'i> where now, Bayard, will thy foot
steps tend ? "
My sister asked our guest one winter's
day.
Smiling he answered in the Friends'
sweet way
Common to both : " Wherever thou shalt
send !
What wouldst thou have me see for
thee ? " She laughed,
Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-
fire's glow :
" Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the
low,
Unsetting sun on Finm ark's fishing-
craft."
* All these and more I soon shall see
for thee ! "
He answered cheerily : and he kept
his pledge
On Lapland snows, the North Cape's
windy wedge,
\nd Tromso freezing in its winter sea.
He went and came. But no man knows
the track
Of his last journey, and he comes not
back I
ii.
He brought us wonders of the new and
old;
We shared all climes with him. Tho
Arab's tent
To him its story-telling secret lent.
And, pleased, we listened to the tales he
told.
His task, beguiled with songs that shall
endure,
In manly, honest thoroughness he
wrought ;
From humble home-lays to the heights
of thought
Slowly he climbed, but every step was
sure.
How, with the generous pride that friend
ship hath,
We, who so loved him, saw at last the
crown
Of civic honor on his brows pressed
down,
Rejoiced, and knew not that the gift was
death.
And now for him, whose praise in
deafened ears
Two nations speak, we answer but
with tears 1
O Vale of Chester! trod by him ar
oft,
Green as thy June turf keep his mem
ory. Let
Nor wood, nor dell, nor storied stream
forget,
Nor winds that blow round lonely Cedar
croft ;
Let the home voices greet him in the
far,
Strange land that holds him ; let the
messages
Of love pursue him o'er the chartles*
seas
And unmapped vastness of his unknown
star!
Love's language, heard beyond the loud
discourse
Of perishable fame, in every sphere
Itself interprets ; and its utterance
here
Somewhere in God's unfolding uni
verse
Shall reach our traveller, softening the
surprise
Of his rapt gaze ou unfamiliar skies i
430
A NAME.
A NAME.
TO G. W. P.
THE name the Gallic exile bore,
St. Malo ! from thy ancient mart,
Became upon our Western shore
Greenleaf for Feuillevert.
A name to hear in soft accord
Of leaves by light winds overrun,
Or read, upon the greening' sward
Of May, in shade and sun.
The name mv infant ear first heard
Breathed softly with a mother's kiss ;
His mother's own, no tenderer word
My father spake than this.
No child have I to bear it on ;
Be thou its keeper; let it take
From gifts well used and duty done
New beauty for thy sake.
The fair ideals that outran
My halting footsteps seek and find —
The flawless symmetry of man,
The poise of heart and mind.
Stand firmly where I felt the sway
Of every wing that fancy flew,
See clearly where I groped my way,
Nor real from seeming knew.
And wisely choose, and bravely hold
Thy faith unswerved by cross or
crown,
Like the stoat Huguenot of old
Whose name to thee comes down.
As Marot's songs made glad the heart
Of that lone exile, haply mine
May in life's heavy hours impart
Some strength and hope to thine.
iret when did Age transfer to Youth
The hard-gained lessons of its day ?
Each lip must learn the taste of truth,
Each foot must feel its way.
We cannot hold the hands of choice
That touch or shun life's fateful keys;
The whisper of the inward voice
Is more than homilies.
Dear boy ! for whom the flowers are born,
Stars shine, and happy song-birds sing,
What can my evening give to morn,
My winter to thy spring !
A life not void of pure intent,
With small desert of praise or blame,
The love I felt, the good I meant,
I leave thee with my name.
THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER.
IN the minister's morning sermon
He had told of the primal fall,
And how thenceforth the wrath of God
Rested on each and all.
And how, of His will and pleasure,
All souls, save a chosen few,
Were doomed to the quenchless burn
ing.
And held in the way thereto.
Yet never by faith's unreason
A saintlier soul was tried,
And never the harsh old lesson
A tenderer heart belied.
And, after the painful service
On that pleasant Sabbath day,
He walked with his little daughter
Through the apple-bloom of May.
Sweet in the fresh green meadows
Sparrow and blackbird sung ;
Above him their tinted petals
The blossoming orchards hung.
Around on the wonderful glory
The minister looked and smiled ;
" How good is the Lord who gives us
These gifts from His hand, my child'
"Behold in the bloom of apples
And the violets in the sward
A hint of the old, lost beauty
Of the Garden of the Lord ! "
Then up spake the little maiden,
Treading on snow and pink :
O father! these pretty blossoms
Are very wicked, I think.
Had there been no Garden of Eden
There never had been a fall ;
And if never a tree had blossomed
God would have loved us all."
THE TRAILING ARBUTUS.
431
* Hush, child ! " the father answered,
" By His decree man fell ;
His ways are in clouds and darkness,
But He doeth all things well.
" And whether by His ordaining
To us cometh good or ill,
Joy or pain, or light or shadow,
We must fear and love Him still."
Oh, I fear Him!
ter,
said the daugh-
But I wish He was good and gentle,
Kind and loving as you."
The minister groaned in spirit
As the tremulous lips of paiiv
And wide, wet eyes uplifted
Questioned his own in vain.
Bowing his head he pondered
The words of the little one ;
Had he erred in his life-long teach
ing?
Had he wrong to his Master done ?
To what grim and dreadful idol
Had he lent the holiest name ?
Did his own heart, loving and human,
The God of his worship shame ?
green-
And lo ! from the bloom and
ness,
From the tender skies above,
And the face of his little daughter,
He read a lesson of love.
No more as the cloudy terror
Of Sinai's mount of law,
But as Christ in the Syrian lilies
The vision of God he saw.
And, as when, in the clefts of Horeb,
Of old was His presence known,
The dread Ineffable Glory
Was Infinite Goodness alone.
Thereafter his hearers noted
In his prayers a tenderer strain,
And never the gospel of hatred
Burned on his lips again.
And the scoffing tongue was prayerful,
And the blinded eyes found sight,
And hearts, as flint aforetime,
Grew soft in his warmth and light.
MY TRUST.
A PICTURE memory brings to me :
I look across the years and see
Myself beside my mother's knee.
I feel her gentle hand restrain
My selfish moods, and know again
A child's blind sense of wrong and pain.
But wiser now, a man gray grown,
My childhood's needs are better known,
My mother's chastening love I own.
Gray grown, but in our Father's sight
A child still groping for the light
To read His works and ways aright.
I wait, in His good time to see
That as my mother dealt with me
So with His children dealeth He.
I bow myself beneath His hand :
That pain itself was wisely planned
I feel, and partly understand.
The jov that comes in sorrow's guise,
The sweet pains of self-sacrifice,
I would not have them otherwise.
And what were life and death if sin
Knew not the dread rebuke within,
The pang of merciful discipline ?
Not with thy proud despair of old,
Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest mould !
Pleasure and pain alike I hold.
I suffer with no vain pretence
Of -triumph over flesh and sense,
Yet trust the grievous providence,
How dark soe'er it seems, may tend,
By ways I cannot comprehend,
To some unguessed benignant end;
That every loss and lapse may gain
The clear-aired heights by steps of pair;,
And never cross is borne "in vain.
THE TRAILING ARBUTUS.
I WANDERED lonely where the pine-
trees made
Against the bitter East their barricade,
And, guided by its sweet
432
BY THEIB WORKS.
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,
The trailing spring flower tinted like a
shell
Amid dry leaves and mosses at my
feet.
From under dead boughs, for whose loss
the pines
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossom
ing vines
Lifted their glad surprise,
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leaf
less trees
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-
breeze,
And snow-drifts lingered under April
skies.
As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I
bent,
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged
and pent,
Which yet find room,
Through cire and cumber, coldness and
decay,
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day
And make the sad earth happier for
their bloom.
BY THEIR WORKS.
CALL him not heretic whose works at
test
His faith in goodness by no creed con
fessed.
Whatever in love's name is truly done
To free the bound and lift the fallen
one
Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and
word
Is not against Him labors for our Lord.
When He, who, sad and weary, longing
sore
For love's sweet service, sought the sis
ters' door,
One saw the heavenly, one the human
guest,
But who shall say which loved the Mas
ter best ?
THE WORD.
VOICE of the Holy Spirit, making known
Man to himself, a witness swift and
sure,
Warning, approving, true and wise
and pure,
Counsel and guidance that misleadeth
none !
By thee the mystery of life is read ;
The picture-writing of the world's gray
seers,
The myths and parables of the primal
years,
Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted
Take healthful meanings fitted to our
needs,
And in the soul's vernacular express
The common law of simple righteous
ness.
Hatred of cant and doubt of human
creeds
May well be felt : tha unpardonable sin
Is to deny the Word of God within !
THE BOOK.
GALLERY of sacred pictures manifold,
A minster rich in holy effigies,
And bearing on entablature and frieze
The hieroglyphic oracles of old.
Along irs transept aureoled martyrs sit ;
And the low chancel side-lights half
acquaint
The eye with shrines of prophet, bard,
and saint,
Their age-dimmed tablets traced ?n
doubtful writ !
But only when on form and word obscure
Falls from above the white supernal
light
We read the mystic characters aright,
And life informs "the silent portraiture,
Until we pause at last, awe-held, before
The One ineffable Face, love, wonder,
and adore.
REQUIREMENT.
WE live by Faith ; but Faith is not the
slave
Of text and legend. Reason's voice
and God's,
Nature's and Duty's, never are at odda
What asks our Father of His children.
save
Justice and mercy and humility,
A reasonable service of good deeds,
Pure living, tenderness to humat
needs,
THE INWARD JUDGE.
483
Reverence and trust, and prayer for light
to see
The Master's footprints in our daily
ways 1
No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife,
But the calm beauty of an ordered life
Whose very breathing is unworded
praise ! —
A life that stands as all true lives have
stood,
Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.
HELP.
DREAM not, O Soul, that easy is the
task
Thus set before thee. If it proves at
length,
As well it may, beyond thy natural
strength,
Faint not, despair not. As a child may
ask
A father, pray the Everlasting Good
For light and guidance midst the subtle
snares
Of sin thick planted in life's thorough
fares,
For spiritual strength and moral hardi
hood ;
Still listening, through the noise of time
and sense,
To the still whisper of the Inward
Word ;
Bitter in blame, sweet in approval
heard,
Itself its own confirming evidence :
To health of soul a voice to cheer and
please,
To guilt the wrath of the Eumenides.
Thou mayst not hide what yet thou
shouldst not dare
To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine
The real seem false, the beauty un«
divine.
So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer,
Give what seems given thee. It may
prove a seed
Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds
of need.
INSCRIPTIONS.
ON A SUN-DIAL.
FOR DR. HKNRT 1. BOWDITCH.
WITH warning hand I mark Time'f.
rapid flight
life'! - -
j From life's glad morning to its solemn
night ;
Yet, through the dear God's love, I also
show
There 's Light above me by the Shade
below.
ON A FOUNTAIN.
FOK DOROTHEA L. DIX.
STRANGER and traveller
Drink freely, and bestow
A kindly thought on her
Who bade this fountain flow,
Yet hath no other claim
Than as the minister
Of blessing in Gods name.
Drink, and in His peace go!
UTTERANCE.
BDT what avail inadequate words to
reach
The innermost of .Truth ? Who shall
essn v,
Blinded and weak, to point aad lead
the way,
Or solve its mystery in familiar speech ?
Vet, if it be that something not thy own,
Some shadow of the Thought to which
our schemes.
Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but
dreams,
I* even to thy unworthiness made known,
27
ORIENTAL MAXIMS.
PARAPHRASE OF SANSCRIT TRANSLA
TIONS.
THE INWARD JUDGE.
FROM " INSTITUTES OF HAND."
THE soul itself its awful witness is.
Say not in evil doing, " No one sees,"
And so offend the conscious One withiu,
Whose ear can hear the silences of sin
4B4
THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS.
Ere they find voice, whose eyes unskep- r Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth tha*
•"— see kings
The secret motions of iniquity.
Nor in thy folly say, " I am alone."
For, seated in thy heart, as on a throne,
The ancient Judge and Witness liveth
still,
To note thy act and thought ; and as thy
ill
Or good goes from thee, far beyond thy
reach,
The solemn Doomsman's seal is set on
each.
LAYING UP TREASURE.
FROM THE "MAHABHARATA."
BEFORE the Ender comes, whose char
ioteer
Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each
year
Nor thieves can take away. When all
the things
Thou callest thine, goods, pleasures, hon
ors fall,
Thou in thy virtue shall survive them
all.
CONDUCT.
FROM THE " MAHABHARATA."
HEED how thou livest. Do no act by
day
Which from the night shall drive thy
peace away.
In months of sun so live that months of
rain
Shall still be happy. Evermore restrain
Evil and cherish good, so shall there
be
Another and a happier life for thee.
THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS,
AND OTHER POEMS.
TO EDWIN P. WHIPPLE,
ONE 01' THE FIRST TO WELCOME MY EARLIEST VOLUME, I OFFER THE
LATEST, AS A TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP NEVER INTERRUPTED,
AND WHICH YEARS HAVE ONLY STRENGTHENED.
TO HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOF-
FORD.
FROM the green Amesbury hill which
bears the name
Of that half mythic ancestor of mine
Who trod its slopes two hundred years
ago,
Down the long valley of the Merrimac
Midway between me and the river's
mouth,
I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest
Among Deer Island's immemorial pines,
Crowning the crag on which the sunset
breaks
Its last red arrow. Many a tale and
song,
Which thou hast told or sung, I call to
mind,
Softening with silvery mist the woods
and hills,
The out-thrust headlands and in reach
ing bays
Of our northeastern coast-line, trending
where
The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill
blockade
Of icebergs stranded at its northern
gate.
EDWIN P. WHIPPLE ,P%o 434.
THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS.
435
To thee the echoes of the Island Sound
Answer not vainly, nor in vain the
moan
Of the South Breaker prophesying
storm.
And thou hast listened, like myself, to
men
Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies
Like a fell spider in its web of fog1,
Or where the Grand Bank shallows with
the wrecks
Of sunken fishers ; and to whom strange
isles
And frost-rimmed bays and trading sta
tions seem
Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle
Cove,
Nubble and Boon, the common names of
home.
So let me offer thee this lay of mine,
Simple and homely, lacking much thy
play
Of color and of fancy. If its theme
And treatment seem to thee befitting
youth
Rather than age, let this be ray ex
cuse :
It has beguiled some heavy hours and
called
Some pleasant memories up; and, better
still,
Occasion lent me for a kindly word
To one who is my neighbor and my
friend.
THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS
THE skipper sailed out of the harbor
mouth,
Leaving the apple-bloom of the South
For the ice of the Eastern seas,
In his fishing schooner Breeze.
Handsome and brave and young wa
he,
And the maids of Newbury sighed to
see
His lessening white sail fall
Under the sea's blue wall.
Through the Northern Gulf and the
misty screen
Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine,
St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon,
The little Breeze sailed on,
Backward and forward, along the shore
Of lorn and desolate Labrador,
And found at last her way
To the Seven Islands Bay.
The little hamlet, nestling below
reat hills white with lingering snow,
With its tin-roofed chapel stood
Half hid in the dwarf spruce wood ',
Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last out
post
Of summer upon the dreary coast,
With its gardens small and spare,
Sad in the frosty air.
Hard by where the skipper's schooner
lay,
A fisherman's cottage looked away
Over isle and bay, and behind
On mountains dim-defined.
And there twin sisters, fair and young.
Laughed with*their stranger guest, and
sung
In their native tongue the lays
Of the old Provencal days.
Alike were they, save the faint out
line
Of a scar on Suzette's forehead fine ;
And both, it so befell,
Loved the heretic stranger well.
Both were pleasant to look upon,
But the heart of the skipper clave to
one;
Though less by his eye than heart
He knew the twain apart.
Despite of alien race and creed,
Well did his wooing of Marguerite
speed ;
And the mother's wrath was vain
As the sister's jealous pain.
The shrill-tongued mistress her house
forbade,
And solemn warning \vas sternly said
By the black-robed priest, whose
word
As law the hamlet heard.
But half by voice and half by signs
The skipper said, " A warm sun shine.
On the green -banked Merrimac ;
Wait, watch, till I come back.
486
THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS.
" And when you see, from mv mast
head, *
The signal fly of a kerchief red,
My boat on the *hore shall wait ;
Come, when the night is late."
Ah ! weighed with childhood's haunts
and friends,
And all that the home sky overbends,
Did ever young love fail
To turn the trembling scale ?
Under the night, on the wet sea sands,
Slowly unclasped their plighted hands :
One to the cottage hearth,
And one to his sailor's berth.
What was it the parting lovers heard ?
Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird,
But a listener's stealthy tread
On the rock-moss, crisp and dead.
He weighed his anchor, and fished once
more
By the black coast-line of Labrador ;
And by love and the north wind
driven,
Sailed back to the Islands Seven.
In the sunset's glow the sisters twain
Saw the Breeze come sailing in again;
Said Suzette, " Mother dear,
The heretic's sail is here."
'' Go, Marguerite, to your room, and
hide;
Your door shall be bolted ! " the mother
cried :
While Suzette, ill at ease,
Watched the red sign of the Breeze.
At midnight, down to the waiting skiff
She stole in the shadow of the cliff;
And out of the Bay's mouth ran
The schooner with maid and man.
And all night long, on a restless bed,
Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite
said ;
And thought of her lover's pain
Waiting for her in vain.
Did he pace the sands ? Did he pause
to hear
The sound of her light step drawing near (
And, as the slow hours passed,
Would he doubt her faitii at last ? '
But when she saw through the misty
pane,
The morning break on a sea of rain,
Could even her love avail
To follow his vanished sail ?
Meantime the Breeze, with favoring
wind,
Left the rugged Moisic hills behind,
And heard from an unseen shore
The falls of Manitou roar.
On the morrow's morn, in the thick
gray weather
They sat on the reeling deck together,
Lover and counterfeit,
Of hapless Marguerite.
With a lover's hand, from her forehead
fail-
He smoothed away her jet-black hair.
What was it his fond eyes met ?
The scar of the false Suzette !
Fiercely he shouted ; " Bear away
East by north for Seven Isles Bay ! "
The maiden wept and prayed,
But the ship her helm obeyed.
Once more the Bay of the Isles they
found :
They heard the bell of the chapel
sound,
And the chant of the dying sung
In the harsh, wild Indian tongue.
A feeling of mystery, change, and awe
Was in all they heard and all they saw •
Spell-bound the hamlet lay
In the hush of its lonely bay.
And when they came to the cottage
door,
The mother rose up from her weeping
sore,
And with angry gestures met
The scared lock of Suzette.
" Here is your daughter," the skipper
said ;
" Give me the one I love instead."
But the woman sternly spake ;
" Go, see if the dead will wake ! "
He looked. Her sweet face still ana
white
And strange in the noonday taper light,
HOW THE WOMEN WEN7T FROM DOVER.
437
She lay on her little bed,
With the cross at her feet and head.
In a passion of grief the strong man bent
Down to her face, and, kissing it, went
Back to the waiting Breeze,
Back to the mournful seas.
Never again to the Merrimac
And Newbury's homes that bark came
back.
Whether her fate she met
On the shores of Carraquette,
Miscou, or Tracadie, who can say ?
But even yet at Seven Isles Bay
Is told the ghostly tale
Of a weird, unspoken sail,
In the pale, sad light of the Northern
day
Seen by the blanketed Montagnais,
Or squaw, in her small kyack,
Crossing the spectre's track.
On the deck a maiden wrings her hands ;
Her likeness kneels on the gray coast
sands ;
One in her wild despair,
And one in the trance of prayer.
She flits before no earthly blast,
The red sign fluttering from her mast,
Over the solemn seas,
The ghost of the schooner Breeze !
THE WOMEN WENT FROM
DOVER.
1662.
THE tossing spray of Cocheco's fall
Hardened to ice on its rocky wall,
As through Dover town in the chill,
gray dawn,
Three women passed, at the cart-tail
drawn ! l
i The following is a copy of the warrant
issued by Major \Vaidron, of Dover, in 1662.
The Quakers, as was their wont, prophesied
against him, and saw, as they supposed, the
fulfillment of their prophecy when, many years
after, he was killed by the Indians.
To the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salis
bury, Neivbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham
Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Dednam, and until
Bared to the waist, for the north wind's
grip
And keener sting of the constable's
whip,
The blood that followed each hissing
blow
Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow-
Priest and ruler, boy and maid
Followed the dismal cavalcade ;
And from door and window, opei
thrown,
Looked and wondered gaffer and crone
" God is our witness," the victims cried,
" We suffer for Him who for all meo
died ;
The wrong ye do has been done be
fore,
We bear the stripes that the Master
bore !
" And thou, O Richard Waldron, for
whom
We hear the feet of a coming doom,
On thy cruel heart and thy hand of
wrong
Vengeance is sure, though it tarry long.
" In the light of the Lord, a flame we
see
Climb and kindle a proud roof- tree ;
And beneath it an old man lying dead,
With stains of blood on his hoary head."
these vagabond Quakers are carried out of this
jurisdiction.
You, and every one of you, are required, in
the King's Majesty's name, to take these vaga
bond Quakers, Anne Col man, Mary Tomkins,
and Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the
cart's tail, and driving the cart through your
several towns, to whip them upon their naked
backs not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each
of them, in each town; and so to convey them
from constable to constable till they are out of
this jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your
peril ; and this shall be your warrant.
RICHARD WALDRON.
Dated at Dover, December 22, 1662.
This warrant was executed only in Dover
and Hampton. At Salisbury the constable re»
fused to obey it. He was sustained by the
town's people, who were under, the influence
of Major Robert Pike, the leading man in the
lower valley of the Merrimac, who stood far in
advance of his time, as an advocate of religious
freedom, and an opponent of ecclesiastical au
thority. He had the moral courage to address
an able and manly letter to the court at Salem,
remonstrating against the witchcraft trials.
438
HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER.
" Smite, Goodman Hate-Evil ! — harder
stih ! "
The magistrate cried, "lay on with a
will !
Drive out of their bodies the Father of
Lies,
Who through them pleaches and proph
esies ! r'
So into the forest they held their way,
By winding river and frost - rimmed
bay,
Over wind-swept hills that felt the beat
Of the winter sea at their icy feet.
The Indian hunter, searching bis traps,
Peered stealthily through the forest
gaps ;
And the outlying settler shook his
head, —
" They 're witches going to jail," he said.
At last a meeting-house came in view ;
A blast on his horn the constable blew;
And the boys of Hampton cried up and
down,
" The Quakers have come ! " to the
wondering town.
From barn and woodpile the goodman
came ;
The goodwife quitted her quilting frame,
With her child at her breast ; aud, hob
bling slow,
The grandam followed to see the show
Once more the torturing whip was
swung,
Once more keen lashes the bare flesh
stung.
" Oh, spare ! they are bleeding ! " a lit
tle maid cried,
And covered her face the sight to hide.
A murmur ran round the crowd : " Good
folks,"
Quoth the constable, busy counting the
strokes,
" No pity to wretches like these is due,
They have beaten the gospel black and
blue!."
Then a pallid woman, in wild - eyed
fear,
With her wooden noggin of milk drew
near.
" Drink, poor hearts ! " a rude hand
smote
Her draught away from a parching
throat.
" Take heed," one whispered, " they '11
take your cow
For fines, as they took your hcrse and
plow,
And the bed from under you." " Even
so,"
She said. " They are cruel as death, I
know."
Then on they passed, in the waning
<%,
Through Seabrook woods, a weariful
way ;
By great salt meadows and sand-hills
bare,
And glimpses of blue sea here and there.
By the meeting-house in Salisbury
town,
The sufferers stood, in the red sun
down,
Bare for the lash ! O pitying Night,
Drop swift thy curtain and hide the
sight !
With shame in his eye and wrath on his
li
Sal
The Salisbury constable dropped his
whip.
" This warrant means murder foul and
red;
Cursed is he who serves it," he said.
" Show me the order, and meanwhile
strike
A blow at your peril ! " said Justice
Pike.
Of all the rulers the land possessed,
Wisest and boldest was he and best.
He scoffed at witchcraft ; the priest he
met
I As man meets man ; his feet he set
Beyond his dark age, standing up
right,
Soul-free, with his face to the morning
light.
He read the warrant : "These convey
From our precincts ; at every town on tht
way
A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE.
439
Give each ten lashes." " God judge the
brute !
I tread his order under my foot !
" Cut loose these poor ones and let them
go;
Come what will of it, all men shall know
No warrant is good, though backed by
the Crown,
*Tor whipping women in Salisbury
town ! "
The hearts of the villa gt-rs, half re
leased
From creed of terror and rule of priest,
By a primal instinct owned the right
Of human pity in law's despite.
For ruth and chivalry only slept,
His Saxon manhood the yeoman kept ;
Quicker or slower, the same blood ran
In the Cavalier and the Puritan.
The Quakers sank on their knees in
praise
And thanks. A last, low sunset blaze
Flashed out from under a cloud, and
shed
A golden glory on each bowed head.
The tale is one of an evil time,
When souls were fettered and thought
was crime,
And heresy's whisper above its breath
Meant shameful scourging and bonds
and death !
What marvel, that hunted and sorely
tried,
Even woman rebuked and prophesied,
And soft words rarely answered back
The grim persuasion of whip and rack.1
If her cry from the whipping-post and
jail
Pierced sharp as the Kenite's driven
nail,
O woman, at ease in these happier days,
Forbear to judge of thy sister's ways"!
How much thy beautiful life may owe
To her faith and courage thou canst not
know,
Nor how from the paths of thy calm re
treat
She smoothed the thorns with her bleed
ing feet.
A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE.
To kneel before some saintly shrine,
To breathe the health of airs divine,
Or bathe where sacred rivers flow,
The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go.
I too, a palmer, take, as they
With staff and scallop-shell, my way
To feel, from burdening cares and ills,
The strong uplifting of the hills.
The years are many since, at first,
For dreamed-of wonders all at hirst,
I saw on Winnepesaukee fall
The shadow of the mountain wall.
Ah ! where are they who sailed with me
The beautiful island studded sea?
And am I he whose keen surprise
Flashed out from such unclouded eyes 1
Still, when the sun of summer burns,
My longing for the hills returns ;
A\id northward, leaving at my back
The warm vale of the Merrimac,
I go to meet the winds of morn,
Blown down - the hill - gaps, mountain.
born,
Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy
The hunger of a lowland eye.
Again I see the day decline
Along a ridged horizon line ;
Touching the hill-tops, as a nun
Her beaded rosary, sinks the sun.
One lake lies golden, which shall soon
Be silver in the rising moon ;
And one, the crimson of the skies
And mountain purple multiplies.
With the untroubled quiet blends
The distance-softened voice of friends ;
The girl's light laugh no discord brings
To the low song the pine-tree sings ;
And, not unwelcome, comes the hail
Of boyhood from his nearing sail.
The human presence breaks no spell,
And sunset still is miracle !
Calm as the hour, methinks I feel
A sense of worship o'er me steal ;
Not that of satyr-charming Pan,
No cult of Nature shaming man,
Not Beauty's self, but that which lives
And shines through all the veils it
weaves, —
Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood,
] Their witness to the Eternal Good I
440
THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADOKK.
And if, by fond illusion, here
The earth to heaven seems drawing
near,
And yon outlying range invites
To other and'serener heights,
Scarce hid behind its topmost swell,
The shining Mounts Delectable !
A dream may hint of truth no less
Than the sharp light of wakefulness.
As through her veil of incense smoke
Of old the spell rapt priestess spoke,
More than her heathen oracle,
May not this trance of sunset tell
That Nature's forms of loveliness
Their heavenly archetypes confess,
Fashioned like Israel's ark alone
From patterns in the Mount made
known ?
A holier beauty overbroods
These fair and raint similitudes ;
Yet not unblest is he who sees
Shadows of God's realities,
And knows beyond this m tsquerade
Of shape and color, light ai«l shade,
And dawn and set, and wax and
wane,
Eternal verities remain.
O gems of sapphire, granite set !
0 hills that charmed horizons fret !
1 know how fair your morns can break,
In rosy light on isle and lake ;
How over wooded slopes can run
The noonday play of cloud and sun,
And evening droop her oriflamme
Of gold and red in still Asquarn.
The summer moons may round again,
And careless feet these hills profane ;
These sunsets waste on vacant eyes
The lavish splendor of the skies ;
Fashion and folly, misplaced here,
Sigh for their natural atmosphere,
And traveled pride the outlook scorn
< )f lesser heights than Matterhorn :
But let me dream that hill and sky
Of unseen beauty prophesy ;
And in these tinted lakes behold
The trailing of the raiment fold
Of that which, siill eluding gaze,
Allures to upward-tending ways,
Whose footprints make, wherever found,
Uur common earth a holy ground.
THE ROCK TOMB OF BRADOHE
A DREAR and desolate shore !
Where no tree unfolds its leaves,
And never the spring wind weaves
Green grass for the hunter's tread
A land forsaken and dead,
Where the ghostly icebergs go
And come with the ebb and flow
Of the waters of Bradore !
A wanderer, from a land
By summer breezes fanned,
Looked round him, awed, subdued,
By the dreadful solitude,
Hearing alone the cry
Of sea-birds clanging by,
The crash and grind of the floe,
Wail of wind and wash of tide.
" O wretched land ! " he cried,
" Luitl of all lands the worst,
God forsaken and curst !
Thy gates of rock should show
The words the Tuscan seer
Read in the Realm of Woe :
entereth not here ! "
Lo ! at his feet there stood
A block of smooth larch wood,
Waif of some wandering wave,
Beside a ruck-closed cave
By Nature fashioned for a grave>
Safe from tlie ravening hear
And fierce fowl of the air,
Wherein 10 rest was laid
A twenty summers' maid,
Whose blood had equal share
Of the lands of vine and snow,
Half French, half Eskimo.
In letters uneffaced,
Upon the block were traced
The grief and hope of man,
And thus the legend ran :
" Welored her!
Worth cannot tell how well !
We. loved her !
God loved tier !
And en lied her home to peace and resL
We love her ! "
The stranger paused and read.
" <) winter land ! " he said,
" Thy right to be I own ;
God leaves thee not alone.
And if thy fierce winds blow
Over drear wastes of rock and snow;
THE WISHING BRIDGE.
441
And at thy iron gates
The ghostly iceberg waits,
Thy homes and hearts are dear.
Thy sorrow o'er thy sacred dust
Is sanctified by hope and trust ;
God's love aud mau's are here.
And love where'er i.c goes
Makes its owu atmosphere ;
Its flowers of Paradise
Take root iu the eternal ice,
bloom through Polar snows ! "
STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM.
A. CLOUD, like that the old-time Hebrew
saw-
On Carrnel prophesying rain, be
gan
To lift itself o'er wooded Cardigan,
Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a
flaw
Of chill wind menaced ; then a strong
blast beat
Down the long valley's murmuring
pines, and woke
The noon-dream of the sleeping lake,
and broke
Its smooth steel mirror at the moun
tains' feet.
Thunderous and vast, a fire - veined
darkness swept
Over the rough pine-bearded Asqnam
range ;
A wraith of tempest, wonderful and
strange,
From peak to peak the cloudy giant
stepped.
One moment, as if challenging the
storm,
Chocorua's tall, defiant sentinel
Looked from his watch- tower; then
the shadow fell,
And the wild rain-drift blotted out his
form.
And over all the still unhidden sun,
Weaving its light through slant-
blown veils of rain,
Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles
on pain ;
when the tumult and the strife
were done,
With one foot on the lake and one on land,
Framing within his crescent's tinted
streak
A far-off p'icture of the Melvin peak,
Spent broken clouds the rainbow's an
gel spanned.
THE WISHING BRIDGE.
AMONG the legends sung or said
Along our rocky shore,
The W ishing Bridge of Marblehead
May well be sung once more.
An hundred years ago (so ran
The old-time story) all
Good wishes said above its span
Would, soon or late, befall.
If pure and earnest, never failed
The prayers of man or maid
For him who on the deep sea sailed,
For her at home who stayed.
Once thither came two girls from school.
And wished in childish glee :
And one would be a queen and rule,
And one the world would see.
Time passed ; with change of hopes and
fears,
And in the self-same place,
Two women, gray with middle years,
Stood, wondering, face to face.
With wakened memories, as they roet;
They queried what had been :
" A poor man's wife am I, and yet,"
Said one, " I am a queen.
" My realm a little homestead is,
Where, lacking crown and throne,
I rule by loving services
And patient toil alone."
The other said : *' The great world
lies
Reyond rne as it laid ;
O'er love's and duty's boundaries
My feet have never strayed.
" I see but common Bights of home,
Its common sounds 1 hear,
My widowed mother's sick-bed room
Sufficeth for my sphere.
442
THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS.
" I read to her some pleasant page
Of travel far and wide,
And in a dreamy pilgrimage
We wander side by side.
" And when, at last, she falls asleep,
My book becomes to me
A magic glass : my watch I keep,
But all the world I see.
" A farm-wife queen your place you fill,
While fancy's privilege
is mine to walk the earth at will,
Thanks to the Wishing Bridge."
"Nay, leave the legend for the truth,"
The other cried, " and say
God gives the wishes of our youth
But in His own best way ! "
THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS.
" ALL hail ! " the bells of Christmas
rang,
" All hail ! " the monks at Christmas
sang,
The merry monks who kept with cheer
The gladdest day of all their year.
But still apart, unmoved thereat,
A pious elder brother sat
Silent, in his accustomed place,
With God's sweet peace upon his face.
''Why sitt'st thou thus ? " his brethren
cried.
" It is the blessed Christmas-tide ;
The Christmas lights are all aglow,
The sacred lilies bud and blow.
" Above our heads the jov-bells ring,
Without the happy children sing,
And all God's creatures hail the morn
On Avhich the holy Christ was born !
" Rejoice with us ; no more rebuke
Our gladness with thy quiet look."
The gray monk answered : " Keep, I
pray,
Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday.
" Let heathen Yule fires flicker red
Where thronged refectory feasts are
spread ;
With mystery-play and masque and mime
And wait-songs speed the holy time !
" The blindest faith may haply save ;
The Lord accepts the things we have ;
And reverence, howsoe'er it strays,
May find at last the shining ways.
" They needs must grope who cannot
see,
The blade before the ear must be ;
As ve are feeling I have felt,
And where ye dwell I too have dwelt.
" But now, beyond the things of sense.
Beyond occasions and events,
I know, through God's exceeding grace,
Release from form and time and place.
*' I listen, from no mortal tongue,
To hear the song the angels sung ;
And wait within myself to know
The Christmas lilies bud and blow.
" The outward symbols disappear
From him whose inward sight is clear;
And small must be the choice of days
To him who fills them all with praise !
" Keep while you need it, brothers mine.
With honest zeal your Christmas sign,
But judge not him who every morn
Feels in his heart the Lord Christ
born ! "
WHAT THE TRAVELER SAID
AT SUNSET.
THE shadows grow and deepen round
me,
I feel the dew-fall in the air ;
The muezzin of the darkening thicket
I hear the night-thrush call to prayer.
The evening wind is sad with farewells.
And loving hands unclasp from mine :
Alone I go to meet the darkness
Across an awful boundary-line.
As from the lighted hearths behind me
I pass with slow, reluctant feet,
What waits me in the land of strange
ness ?
What face shall smile, what voice
sh?ll greet ?
What sp;tce shall awe, what brightness
blind me ?
What thunder-roll of music stun ?
A GREETING.
443
What vast processions sweep before me
Of shapes unknown beneath the sun ?
I shrink from unaccustomed glory,
I dread the myriad-voiced strain ;
Give me the unforgotteu faces,
And let my lose ones speak again.
He will not chide my mortal yearning
Who is our Brother and our Friend ;
In whose full life, divine and human,
The heavenly and the earthly blend.
Mine be the joy of soul-communion,
The sense of spiritual strength re
newed, '
The reverence for the pure and holy,
The dear delight of doing good.
No fitting ear is mine to listen
An endless anthem's rise and fall;
No curious eye is mine to measure
The pearl gate and the jasper wall.
For love must needs be more than knowl
edge :
What matter if I never know
Why Aldeharan's star is ruddy,
Or warmer Sirius white as snow !
Forgive my human words, O Father !
I go Thy larger truth to prove ;
Thy mercy shall transcend my longing :
I seek but love, and Thou art Love !
I go to find my lost and mourned for
Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still,
And all that hope and faith foreshadow
Made perfect in Thy holy will \
A GKEETING.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWfi'S SEVENTI
ETH ANNIVERSARY, 1882.
THRICE welcome from the Land of
Flowers
And golden-fruited orange bowers
To this sweet, green - turfed June of
ours !
To her who, in our evil time,
Dragged into light the nation's crime
With strength beyond the strength of
men,
And, mightier than their swords, her
.pen!
To her who world-wide entrance gave
To the log-cabin of the slave ;
Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,
And all earth's languages his own, —
North, South, and East and West, made
all
The common air electrical,
Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven*
Blazed down, and every chain was
riven !
Welcome from each and all to her
Whose Wooing of the Minister
Revealed the warm heart of the man
Beneath the creed-hound Puritan,
And taught the kinship of the love
Of man helow and God above ;
To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes
Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks, —
Whose fireside stories, grave or gay,
In quaint Sam La wson's vagrant way,
With old New England's flavor rife,
Waifs from her rude idyllic life,
Are racy as the legends old
By Chaucer or Boccaccio told ;
To her who keeps, through change of
place
And time, her native strength and grace,
Alike where warm Sorrento smiles,
Or where, by birchen-shaded isles,
Whose summer winds have shivered
o'er
The icy drift of Labrador,
She lifts to light the priceless Pearl
Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl !
To her at threescore years and ten
Be tributes of the tongue and pen ;
Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks given,
The loves of earth, the hopes of heaven !
Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs
The air to-day, our love is hers !
She needs no guaranty of fame
Whose own is linked with Freedom's
name.
Long ages after ours shall keep
Her memory living while we sleep ;
The waves that wash our gray coast
lines,
The winds that rock the Southern pines,
Shall sing of her ; the unending years
Shall tell her tale in unborn ears.
And when, with sins and follies past,
Are numbered color-hate and caste,
White, black, and red shall own as
one
The noblest work by woman done.
444
WILSON.
WILSON.*
THE lowliest born of all the land,
He wrung from Fate's reluctant hand
The t/ifts which happier boyhood
claims;
And, ta>tmir on a thankless soil
The bitter bread of unpaid toil,
He fed his soul with noble aims.
And Nature, kindly provident,
To him the future's promise lent ;
The powers that shape man's destinies,
Patience and faith and toil, he knew,
The close horizon round him grew,
Broad with great possibilities.
By the low hearth-fire's fitful blaze
He read of old heroic days,
'1 he sage's thought, the patriot's
speech ;
Unhelped, alone, himself he taught,
His school the craft at which he wrought,
His lore the book within his reach.
He felt his country's need ; he knew
The work her children had to do ;
And when, at last, he heard the call
In her behalf to serve and dare,
Beside his senatorial chair
He stood the unquestioned peer of all.
Beyond the accident of birth
He proved his simple manhood's worth ;
Ancestral pride and classic grace
Confessed the large brained artisan,
So clear of sight, so wise in plan
And counsel, equal to his place.
With glance intuitive he saw
Through all disguise of form and law,
And read men like an open book ;
Fearless and fkm, he never quailed
Nor turned aside for threats, nor failed
To do the thing he undertook.
How wise, how brave, he was, how well
He bore himself, let history tell
While waves our flag o'er land and
sea,
No black thread in its warp or weft ;
He found dissevered States, he left
A grateful Nation, strong and free !
1 Read at the Massachusetts Club on ihe sev
entieth anniversary of the birthday of Vice-
President ttilaon.
IN MEMORY.
J. T. F.
As a guest who may not stay
Long and sad farewells to say
Glides with smiling face away,
Of the sweetness and the zest
Of thy happy life possessed
Thou hast left us at thy best.
Warm of heart and clear of brain,
Of thy sun-bright spirit's wane
Thou hast spared us all the pain.
Now that thou hast gone away,
What is left of one to say
Who was open as the day ?
What is there to gloss or shun ?
Save with kindly voices none
Speak thy name beneath the sun.
Safe thou art on every side,
Friendship nothing finds to hide,
Love's demand is satisfied.
Over manly strength and worth,
At thy desk of toil, or hearth,
Played the lambent light of mirth, —
Mirth that lit, but never burned ;
All thy blame to pity turned ;
Hatred thou hadst never learned.
Every harsh and vexing thing
At thy home-fire lost its sting ;
Where thou wast was always spring.
And thy perfect trust in good,
Faith in man and womanhood,
Chance and change and time with
stood.
Small respect for cant and whine,
Bigot's zeal and hate malign,
Had that sunny soul of thine.
But to thee was duty's claim
Sacred, and thy lips became
Reverent with one holy Name.
Therefore, on thy unknown way,
Go in God's peace ! We who stay
But a little while delay.
RABBI ISHMAEL.
445
Keep for us, O friend, where'er
Thou art waiting, all that here
Made thy earthly presence dear ;
Something of thy pleasant past
On a ground of wonder cast,
In the stiller waters glassed !
Keep the human heart of thee ;
•Let the mortal only be
Clothed in immortality.
And when fall our feet as fell
Thine upon the asphodel,
Let thy old smile greet us well ;
Proving in a world of bliss
What we fondly dream in this, —
Love is one with holiness !
THE POET AND THE CHIL
DREN.
WITH a glory of winter sunshine
Over his locks of gray,
In the old historic mansion
He sat on his last birthday ;
With his books and his pleasant pic
tures,
And his household and his kin,
While a sound as of myriads singing
From far and near stole in.
It came from his own fair city,
From the prairie's boundless plain,
From the Golden Gate of sunset.
And the cedarn woods of Maine.
And his heart grew warm within him,
And his moistening ey9s grew dim,
For he knew that his country's chil
dren
Were singing the songs of him :
The lays of his life's glad morning,
The psalms of his evening time,
Whose echoes shall float forever
On the winds of every clime.
A.11 their beautiful consolations,
Sent forth like birds of cheer,
Came flocking back to his windows,
And sang in the Poet's ear.
Grateful, but solemn and tender,
The music rose and fell
With a joy akin to sadness
And a greeting like farewell.
With a sense of awe he listened
To the voices sweet and young ;
The last of earth and the first of heaven
Seemed in the songs they sung.
And waiting a little longer
For the wonderful change to come,
He heard the Summoning Angel,
Who calls God's children home !'
And to him in a holier welcome
Was the mystical meaning given
Of the word* of the blessed Master :
" Of such is the kingdom of heaven ! "
RABBI ISHMAEL.
THE Rabbi Tshmael.with the woe and sin
Of the world heavy upon him, entering
in
The Holy of Holies, saw an awful Face
With terrible splendor filling all the
place.
" O Tshmael Ben Elisha ! " said a voice,
" What seekest thou 1 What blessing
is thy choice ? "
And, knowing that he stood before the
Lord,
Within the shadow of the cherubim,
Wide-winged between the blinding light
and him,
He bowed himself, and uttered not a
word,
But in the silence of his soul was prayer :
" O Thou Eternal ! I am one of all,
And nothing ask that others may not
share.
Thou art almighty; we are weak and
small,
And yet thy children : let thy mercy
spare ! "
Trembling, he raised his eyes, and in the
place
Of the insufferable glory, lo ! a face
Of more than mortal tenderness, that
bent
Graciously down in token of assent,
And, srnilintr, vanished ! With strange
joy elate,
The wondering Rabbi sought the tem
ple's gate.
446
VALUATION.
Radiant as Moses from the Mount, he
stood
And cried aloud unto the multitude :
•' O Israel, hear ! The Lord our God is
good !
Mine eyes have seen his glory and his
grace ;
Beyond his judgments shall his love en
dure ;
The mercy of the All Merciful is sure ! "
VALUATION.
THE old Squire said, as he stood by his
gate,
And his neighbor, the Deacon, went
by,
"In spite of my bank stock and real
estate,
You are better off, Deacon, than I.
" We 're both growing old, and the end 'a
drawing near,
You have less of this world to resign ,
But in Heaven's appraisal your assets, I
fear,
Will reckon up greater than mine.
" They say I am rich, but I 'm feeling
so poor,
I wish I could swap with you even :
The pounds I have lived for and laid up
in store
For the shillings and pence you have
given."
" Well, Squire," said the Deacon, with
shrewd common sense,
While his eye had a twinkle of fun,
"Let your pounds take the way of my
shillings and pence,
And the thing can be easilv done ! "
WINTER ROSES.1
MY garden roses long ago
Have perished from the leaf-strewn
walks ;
Their pale, fair sisters smile no more
Upon the sweet-brier stalks.
1 In reply to a flower gift from Mrs. Putnam'-
school ar Jamaica Plaiu.
I Gone with the flower-time of my life,
Spring's viokts, summer's blooming
pride,
And Nature's winter and my own
Stand, flowerless, side by side.
So might I yefsterday have sung ;
To-day, in bleak December's noon,
Come sweetest fragrance, shapes, and
hues,
The rosy wealth of June !
Bless the young hands that culled the
Sift,
And bless the hearts that prompted it ;
If undeserved it comes, at least
It teems not all untit.
Of old my Quaker ancestors
Had gifts of forty stripes save one ;
To-day as many roses crown
The gray head of their son.
And with them, to my fancy's eye,
The fresh-faced givers smiling come,
And nine and thirty happy girls
Make glad a lonely room.
They bring the atmosphere of youth ;
The light and warmth of long ago
Are in my heart, and on my cheek
The airs of morning blow.
O buds of girlhood, yet unblown,
And fairer than the gift ye chose,
For you may years like leaves unfold
The heart of Sharon's rose !
HYMN.
(FOR THE AMERICAN HORTICDLTURAl
SCX3JETY.)
1882.
O PAINTER of the fruits and flowers,
We own Thy wise design,
Whereby these human hands of ours
May share the work of Thine !
Apart from Thee we plant in vain
The root and sow the seed;
Thy early and Thy later rain,
Thy sun and dew we need.
Our toil is sweet with thankfulness,
Our burden is our boon ;
AT LAST.
447
The curse of Earth's gray morning is
The blessing of its noon.
Why search the wide world everywhere
For Eden's unknown ground-1? —
That garden of the primal pair
May nevermore be found.
But, blest by Thee, our patient toil
May right the ancient wrong,
And give to every clime and soil
The beauty lost so long.
Our homestead flowers and fruited trees
May Eden's orchard shame ;
We taste the tempting sweets of these
Like Eve, without her blame.
And, North and South and East and West
The pride of every zone,
The fairest, rarest, and the best
May all be made our own.
Its earliest shrines the young world
sought
In hill-groves and in bowers,
The fittest offerings thither brought
W°re Thy own fruits and flowers.
And still with reverent hands we cull
Thy gifts each year renewed ;
The good is always beautiful,
The beautiful is good.
GODSPEED.
OUTBOUND, your bark awaits you.
Were I one
Whose prayer availefch much, my
wish should be
Your favoring trade-wind and con
senting sea.
By sail or steed was never love outrun,
And, here or there, love follows her in
whom
All graces and sweet charities unite,
The old Greek beauty set in holier
light ;
And her for whom New England's by
ways bloom,
Who walks among us welcome as the
Spring,
Calling up blossoms where her light
feet stray.
God keep you both, make beautiful
your way,
Comfort, console, and bless ; and safely
bring,
Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea
The unre turning voyage, my friends to
me.
AT LAST.
WHEN oil my day of life the night i?
falling,
And, in the winds from unsunned
spaces blown,
I hear far voices out of darkness calling
My feet to paths unknown,
Thou who hast made my home of life so
pleasant,
Leave not its tenant when its walls
decay ;
0 Love Divine, O Helper ever present,
Be Thou my strength and stay !
Be near me when all else is from me
drifting :
Earth, sky, home's pictures, days of
shade and sliiue,
And kindly faces to my own uplifting
The love which answers mine.
1 have but Thee, my Father ! let Thy
spirit
Be with me then to comfort and up
hold;
No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I
merit,
Nor street of shining gold.
Suffice it if — my good and ill unreck-
oned,
And both forgiven through Thy aboun
ding grace —
I find myself by hands familiar beck
oned
Unto my fitting place.
Some humble door among Thy many
mansions,
Some sheltering shade where sin and
striving cease,
And flows forever through heaven's
green expansions
The river of Thy peace.
There, from the music round about me
stealing,
I fain would learn the new and holy
song,
448
OUR COUNTRY.
And find at last, beneath Thy trees of
healing,
The life for which I long.
OUR COUNTRY.
READ AT WOODSTOCK, CONN., JULY
4, 1883.
WE give thy natal day to hope,
O Country of our love and prayer !
Thy way is down no fatal slope,
But up to freer sun and air.
Tried as by furnace fires, and yet
By God's grace only stronger made,
In future task before'thee set
Thou shalt not lack the old - time
aid.
The fathers sleep, but men remain
As wise, as true, and brave as they ;
Why count the loss and not thegaiu ? —
The best is that we have to-day.
Whate'er of folly, shame, or crime,
Wiihin tliy mighty bounds transpires,
With spted defying sp;ice and time
Comes to us on the accusing wires;
While of thy wealth of noble deeds,
Thy bomes of peace, thy votes un
sold,
The lo\e that pleads for human needs,
The wrong redressed, but half is
told!
We read each felon's chronicle,
His acts, his words, bis gallows-mood ;
We know the single sinner well
And not the nine and ninety good.
Yet if, on daily scandals fed,
We seem at times to doubt rhy worth,
We know thee still, when all is said,
The best and dearest spot on earth.
From the warm Mexic Gulf, or where
Belted with flowers Los Angeles
Basks in the semi tropic air,
To where Katahdiu's cedar trees
Are dwarfed and bent by Northern
winds,
Thy plenty's horn is yearly filled ;
Alone, the rounding century finds
Thy liberal soil by free hands tilled.
A refuge for tn« wronged and poor,
Thy generous heart has borne the
blame
That, with them, through thy open
door,
The old world's evil outcasts came.
But, with thy just and equal rule,
And labor's need and breadth of
lands,
Free press and rostrum, church and
school,
Thy sure, if slow, transforming hand>
Shall mould even them to thy design,
Making a blessing of the ban ;
And Freedom's chemistry combine
The alien elements of man.
The power that broke their prison bar
And set the dusk}7 millions free,
And welded in the flame of war
The Union fast to Liberty,
Shall it not deal with other ills,
Redress the red man's grievance,
break
The Circeau cup which shames and
kills,
And Labor full requital make ?
Alone to such as fitly bear
Thy civic honors bid them fall ?
And call thy daughters forth to share
Ihe rights and duties pledged to all ?
i Give every child his right of school,
Merge private greed in public good,
: And spare a treasury overfull
The tax upon a poor man's food ?
i No lack was in thy primal stock,
No weakling founders builded here ;
; Thine were the men of Plymouth Rock,
The Huguenot and Cavalier ;
And they whose firm endurance gained
The freedom of the souls of men,
I Whose hands, unstained with blood,
maintained,
The swordless commonwealth of
Pcnn.
And thine shall be the power of all
To do the work which duty bids.
And make the people's council hall
As Irstiug as the Pyramids !
AN AUTOGRAPH.
449
Well have thy later yeara made good
Thy brave-said word a century back,
The pledge of human brotherhood,
The equal claim of white and black.
That word still echoes round the world,
And all who hear it turn to thee,
And read upon thy flag unfurled
The prophecies of destiny.
Thy great world-lesson all shall learn,
The nations in thy school shall sit,
Earth's farthest mountain - tops shall
burn
With watch-fires from thy own1 uplit.
Great without seeking to be great
By fraud or conquest, rich in gold,
But richer in the large estate
Of virtue which thy children hold,
With peace that comes of purity
And strength to simple justice due,
So runs our IOVH! dream of thee ;
God of our fathers ! — make it true.
O Land of lands ! to thee we give
Our prayers, our hopes, our service
free ;
For thee thy sons shall nobly live,
And at thv need shall die for thee !
THE " STORY OF IDA."
WEARY of jangling noises never stilled,
The skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate,
the din
Of clashing texts, the webs of creed
men spin
Round simple truth, the children grown
who build
With gilded cards their new Jerusa
lem,
Busy, with sacerdotal tailorings
And tinsel gauds, bedizening holy
things
I turn, with glad and grateful heart, :
from them
To the sweet story of the Florentine
Immortal in her blameless maiden
hood,
Beautiful as God's angels and as
good ;
Feeling that life, even now, may be di
vine
With love no wrong can ever change to
hate,
No sin make less than all-compassion-
ate!
AN AUTOGRAPH.
I WRITE my name as one,
On sands by waves o'errun
Or winter's frosted pane,
Traces a record vain.
Oblivion's blankness claims
Wiser and better names,
And well my own may pass
As from the strand or glass.
Wash on, O waves of time !
Melt, noons, the frosty rime !
Welcome the shadow vast,
The silence that shall last!
When I and all who know
And love me vanish so,
What harm to them or me
Will the lost memory be?
If any words of mine,
Through right of life divine,
Remain, what matters it
Whose hand the message writ ?
Why should the " crowuer's quest
Sit on my worst or best ?
Why should the showman claim
The poor ghost of my name ?
Yet, as when dies a sound
Its spectre lingers round,
Haply my spent life will
Leave some faint echo still.
A whisper giving breath
Of praise or blame to death,
Soothing or SMtldening such
As loved the living much.
Therefore with yearnings vain
And fond I still would fain
A kindly judgment seek,
A tender thought bespeak.
And, while my words are read,
Let this at least be said :
' Whatever his life's defeatures,
He loved his fellow-creatures.
450
SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST.
1 If, of the Law's stone table,
To hold he scarce was able
The first great precept fast,
He kept for man the last.
'' Through mortal lapse aud dullness
What lacks the Eternal Fullness,
If still our weakness can
Love Him in loving man ?
Age brought him no despairing
Of the world's future faring;
In human nature still
He found more good than ill.
' To all who dumbly suffered,
His tongue and pen he offered ;
His life was not his own,
Nor lived for self alone.
( Hater of din and riot
He lived in days unquiet ;
And, lover of all beauty,
Trod the hard ways of duty.
He meant no wrong to any,
He sought the good of many,
Yet knew both sin and folly, —
May God forgive him wholly ! "
SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST,
AND RECENT POEMS.
TO GEN. S. C. ARMSTRONG, OF HAMPTON, VA.,
WHOSE GENEROUS AND SELF-DENYING LABORS FOR THE ELEVATION OF TWO RACES HAVE
ENLISTED MY SYMPATHIES AND COMMANDED MY ADMIRATION,
I OFFER THIS VOLUME.
SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST.
A TALE for Roman guides to tell
To careless, sight-worn travellers still,
Who pause beside the narrow cell
Of Gregory on the Crelian Hill.
One day before the monk's door came
A beggar, stretching empty palms,
Fainting and fast-sick, in the name
Of the Most Holy asking alms.
And the monk answered, " All I have
In this poor cell of mine I give,
The silver cup my mother gave;
In Christ's name take thou it, and
live."
Years passed ; and, called at last to bear
Pastoral crook and keys of Rome,
The poor monk, in Saint Peter's chair,
Sat the crowned lord of Christendom.
"Prepare a feast," Saint Gregory
cried,
" And let twelve beggars sit thereat."
The beggars came, and one beside,
An unknown stranger, with them
sat.
" I asked thee not," the Pontiff spake,
"O stranger; but if need be thine,
I bid thee welcome, for the sake
Of Him who is thy Lord and mine."
A grave, calm face the stranger raised,
Like His who on Gennesaret trod,
Or His on whom the Chaldeans gazed,
Whose form was as the Son of God.
" Know'st thou," he said, " thy gift of
old ? "
And in the hand he lifted up
The Pontiff marvelled to behold
Once more his mother's silver cup.
REVELATION.
451
"Thy prayers and alms have risen, and
bloom
Sweetly among the flowers of heaven.
I am The Wonderful, through whom
Whate'er thou askest shall be given."
He spake and vanished. Gregory fell
With his twelve guests in mute accord
Prone on their faces, knowing well
Their eyes of flesh had seen the Lord.
The old-time legend is not vain ;
Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul,
Telling it o'er and o'er again
On gray Vicenza's frescoed' wall.
Still wheresoever pity shares
Its bread with sorrow, want, and sin,
And love the beggar's feast prepares,
The uninvited Guest comes in.
Unheard, because our ears are dull,
Unseen, because our eyes are dim,
lie walks our earth, The Wonderful,
And all good deeds are done to Him.
REVELATION.
" And I went into the Vale of Beavor, and
as I went I preached repentance to the peo
ple. And one morning, sitting by the fire, a
great cloud came over me, and a temptation
beset me. And it was said : All things come
by Nature; and the Elements and the Stars
came over me. And as I sat still and let it
alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true
Voice which said : There is a living God who
mnde all things. And immediately the cloud
and the temptation vanished, and Life rose
over all, and my heart was glad and I praised
the Living God.'' — Journal of George Fox,
1690.
STILL as of old, in Beavor's Vale,
O man of God ! our hope and faith
The Elements and Stars assail,
And the awed spirit holds its breath,
Blown over by a wind of death.
Takes Nature thought for such as we,
What place her human atom fills,
The weed-drift of her careless sea,
The rnist on her unheeding hills?
What recks she of our helpless wills ?
Strange god of Force, with fear, nof
love,
Its trembling worshipper .' Can
prayer
Reach the shut ear of Fate, or move
Unpitying Energy to spare ?
What doth the cosmic Vastness care ?
In vain to this dread Unconcern
For the All- Father's love we look;
In vain, in quest of it, we turn
The stoned leaves of Nature's book
The prints her rocky tablets took,
I pray for faith, I long to trust;
I listen with my heart, and hear
A voice without a sound : " Be just,
Be true, be merciful, revere
The Word within thee : God is near!
" A light to sky and earth unknown
Pales all their lights : a mightier
force
Than theirs the powers of Nature own,
And, to its goal as at its source
His Spirit moves the Universe.
" Believe and trust. Through stars and
suns,
Through life and death, through soul
and sense,
His wise, paternal purpose runs ;
The darkness of His providence
Is star-lit with benign intents."
j 0 joy supreme ! I know the Voice,
Like none beside on earth or sea ;
; Yea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice,
By all that He requires of me,
I know what God himself must be.
No picture to my aid I call,
I shape no image in my prayer ;
I only know in Him is all
Of life, light, beauty, everywhere,
Eternal Goodness here and there!
I know He is/and what He is,
Whose one great purpose is the good
Of all. I rest my soul on His
Immortal Love and Fatherhood ;
And trust Him, as His children
should.
I fear no more. The clouded face
Of Nature smiles ; through all her
things
Of time and space and sense I trace
The moving of the Spirit's wings,
And hear the song of hope she sings.
THE WOOD GIANT.
ADJUSTMENT.
THE tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs
must shed
That nearer heaven the living ones
may climb;
The false must fail, though from our
shores of time
The old lament be heard, — " Great
Pan is dead ! "
That wail is Error's, from his high
place hurled ;
This sharp recoil is Evil undertrod ;
Our time's unrest, an angel sent of
God
Troubling with life the waters of the
world.
Even as they list the winds of the
Spirit blow
To turn or break our century -rusted
vanes ;
Sands shift and waste ; the rock
alone remains
Where, led of Heaven, the strong tides
come and go,
And storm-clouds, rent by thunderbolt
and wind,
I^eave, free of mist, the permanent stars
behind.
Therefore I trust, although to outward
sense
Both true and false seem shaken ; I
will hold
With newer light my reverence for
the old,
And calmly wait the births of Provi
dence.
No gain is lost ; the clear-eyed saints
look down
Untroubled on the wreck of schemes
and creeds ;
Love yet remains, its rosary of good
deeds
Counting in task-field and o'er peopled
town ;
Truth has charmed life ; the Inward
Word survives,
And, day by day, its revelation
brings ;
Faith, hope, and charity, whatsoever
things
Which c.'tnnot be shaken, stand. Still
holy lives
Reveal the Christ of whom the letter
told,
And the new gospel verifies the old.
THE WOOD GIANT.
FROM Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome,
From Mad to Saco river,
For patriarchs of the primal wood
We sought with vain endeavor
And then we said : " The giants old
Are lost beyond retrieval;
This pigmy growth the axe has spared
Js not the wood primeval.
" Look where we will o'er vale and hill,
How idle are our searches
For broad girthed maples, wide-limbed
oaks,
Centennial pines and birches !
" Their tortured limbs the axe and
saw
Have changed to beams and trestles ;
They rest in walls, they float on sens,
They rot in sunken vessels.
" This shorn and wasted mountain land
Of underbrush and boulder. —
Who thinks to see its full-grown tree
Must live a century older."
At last to us a woodland path,
To open sunset leading,
Revealed the Anakim of pines
Our wildest wisli exceeding.
Alone, the level sun before ;
Below, the lake's green islands;
Beyond, in misty distance dim,
The rugged Northern Highlands.
Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill
Of time and change defiant !
How dwarfed the common woodland
seemed,
Before the old-time giant!
What marvel that, in simpler days
Of the world's early childhood,
Men crowned with garlands, gifts, and
praise
Such monarchs of the wild-wood 7
That Tyrian maids with flower and
song
Danced through the hill grove's
spaces,
And hoary-bearded Druids found
In woods their holy places ?
THE HOMESTEAD.
453
With somewhat of that Pagan awe
With Christian reverence blending,
We saw our pine-tree's mighty arms
Above our heads extending.
We heard his needles' mystic rune,
Now rising, and now dying,
As erst Dodona's priestess heard
The oak leaves prophesying.
Was it the half-unconscious moan
Of one apart and mateless,
The weariness of unshared power,
The loneliness of greatness ?
O dawns and sunsets, lend to him
Your beauty and your wonder !
Blithe sparrow, sing thy summer song
His solemn shadow under !
Play lightly on his slender keys,
O wind of summer, waking"
For hills like these the sound of seas
On far-off benches breaking !
And let the eagle and the crow
Find shelter in his branches,
When winds shake down his winter
snow
In silver avalanches.
The brave are braver for their cheer,
The strongest need assurance,
The sigh of longing makes not less
The lesson of endurance.
THE HOMESTEAD.
AGAINST the wooded hills it stands,
Ghosts of a dead home, staring
through
Its broken lights on wasted lands
Where old-time harvests grew.
Unploughed, unsown, by scythe un
shorn,
The poor, forsaken farm-fields lie,
Once rich and rife with golden corn
And pale green breadths of rye.
Of healthful herb and flower bereft,
The garden plot no housewife keeps ;
Through weeds and tangle only left
The snake, its tenant, creeps
A lilac spray, once blossom-clad,
Sways bare before the empty rooms;
Beside the roofless porch a sad
Pathetic red rose blooms.
His track, in mould and dust of drouth.
On floor and hearth the squirrel
leaves,
And in the tireless chimney's mouth
His web the spider weaves.
The leaning barn, about to fall,
liesouuds no more on husking eves
No cattle low in yard or stall,
No thresher beats his sheaves.
So sad, so drear ! It seems almost
Some haunting Presence makes its
sign;
That down yon shadowy lane some
ghost
Might drive his spectral kine !
O home so desolate and lorn !
Did all thy memories die with
thee?
Were any wed, were any born,
Beneath this low roof-tree ?
Whose axe the wall of forest broke,
And let the waiting sunshine
through 1
What good-wife sent the earliest smoke
Up the great chimney flue ?
Did rustic lovers hither come ?
Did maidens, swaying back and forth
In rhvthmic grace, at wheel and loom,
Make light their toil with mirth ?
{ Did child feet patter on the stair ?
Did boyhood frolic in the snow ?
j Did gray'age, in her elbow chair,
Knit, rocking to and fro 1
The murmuring brook, the sighing
breeze,
The pine's slow whisper, cannot
tell;
Low mounds beneath the hemlock-trees
Keep the home secrets well.
Cease, mother-land, to fondly boast
Of sons far off who strive and thrive,
Forgetful that each swarming host
Must leave an emptier hive !
454
BIRCHBROOK MILL.
0 wanderers from ancestral soil,
Leave noisome mill and chaffering
store ;
Gird up your loins for sturdier toil,
And build the home once more !
Come back to bayberry-scented slopes,
And fragrant *fern, and ground-mat
vine ;
Breathe aii*s blown over holt and copse
Sweet with black birch and pine.
What matter if the gains are small
That life's essential wants supply ?
Your homestead's title gives you all
That idle wealth can buy.
All that the many-dollared crave,
The brick-walled slaves of Change i
and mart,
Lawns, trees, fresh air, and flowers, you
have,
More dear for lack of art.
Your own sole masters, freedom-willed,
With none to bid you go or stay,
Till the old fields your fathers tilled,
As manly men as they !
With skill that spares your toiling
hands,
And chemic aid that science brings,
Reclaim the waste and outworn lands,
And reign thereon as kings !
BIRCHBROOK MILL.
A NOTELESS stream, the Birchbrook
runs
Beneath its leaning trees ;
That low, soft ripple is its own,
That dull roar is the sea's.
Of human signs it sees alone
The distant church spire's tip,
And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray,
The white sail of a ship.
No more a toiler at the wheel,
It wanders at its will ;
Nor dam nor pond is left to tell
Where once was Birchbrook mill.
The timbers of that mill have fed
Long since a farmer's fires ;
His doorsteps are the stones that
ground
The harvest of his sires.
Man trespassed here ; but Nature lost
No right of her domain ;
She waited, and she brought the old
Wild beauty back agaiu.
By^day the sunlight through the leaves
Falls on its moist, green sod,
And wakes the violet bloom of spring
And autumn's golden rod.
Its birches whisper to the wind,
The swallow dips her wings
In the cool spray, and on its banks
The gray song-sparrow sings.
But from it, when the dark night falls,
The school-girl shrinks with dread ;
The farmer, home-bound from his
fields,
Goes by with quickened tread.
They dare not pause to hear the grind
Of shadowy stone on stone ;
The plashing of a water-wheel
Where wheel there now is none.
Has not a cry of pain been heard
Above the clattering mill ?
The pawing of an unseen horse,
Who waits his mistress still 1
Yet never to the listener's eye
Has sight confirmed the sound ;
A wavering birch line marks alone
The vacant pasture ground.
No ghostly arms fling up to heaven
The agony of prayer ;
No spectral steed impatient shakes
His white mane on the air.
The meaning of that common dread
No tongue has fitly told ;
The secret of the dark surmise
The brook and birches hold.
What nameless horror of the past
Broods here forever more ?
What ghost his unforgiven sin
Is grinding o'er and o'er ?
Does, then, immortal memory play
The actor's tragic part,
SWEET FERN,
455
Rehearsals of a mortal life
And unveiled human heart ?
God's pity spare a guilty soul
That drama of its ill,
And let the scenic curtain fall
On Birchbrook's haunted mill !
HOW THE ROBIN CAME.
AN ALGONQUIN LEGEND.
HAPPY young friends, sic by me,
Under May's blown apple-tree,
While these home-birds in and out
Through the blossoms flit about.
Hear a story, strange and old,
By the wild red Indians told,
How the robin came to be :
Once a great chief left his sou, —
Well-beloved, his only one, —
When the boy was well-nigh grown,
In the trial-lodge alone.
Left for tortures long and slow
Youths like him must undergo,
Who their pride of manhood test,
Lacking water, food, and rest.
Seven days the fast he kept,
Seven nights he never slept.
Then the young boy, wrung with pain,
Weak from nature's overstrain,
Faltering, moaned a low complaint :
" Spare me, father, for I faint ! "
But the chieftain, haughty-eyed,
Hid his pity in his pride.
" You shall be a hunter good,
Knowing never lack of food ;
You shall be a warrior great,
Wise as fox and strong as bear ;
Many scalps your belt shall wear,
If with patient heart you wait
Bravely till your task is done.
Better "you should starving die
Than that boy and squaw should cry
Shame upon your father's son ! "
When next morn the sun's first rays
Glistened on the hemlock sprays,
Straight that lodge the old chief sought,
And boiled samp and moose meat
brought.
" Rise and eat, my son \ " he said.
Lo, he found the poor boy dead !
As with grief his grave they made,
And his bow beside him laid,
Pipe, and knife, and wampum-braid,
On the lodge-top overhead,
Preening smooth its breast of red
And the brown coat that it wore,
Sat a bird, unknown before.
And as if with human tongue,
" Mourn me not," it said, or sung;
" I, a bird, am still your son,
Happier than if hunter fleet,
Or a brave, before your feet
Laying scalps in battle Avon.
Friend of man, my song shall cheer
Lodge and corn-laud ; hovering near,
To each wigwam 1 shall bring
Tidings of the coming spring ;
Every child my voice shall know
In the moon of melting snow,
When the maple's red bud swells,
And the wind-flower lifts its bells.
As their fond companion
Men shall henceforth own your son,
And my song shall testify
That of human kin am I."
Thus the Indian legend saith
How, at first, the robin came
With a sweeter life from death,
Bird for boy, and still the same.
If my young friends doubt that this
Is the robin's genesis,
Not in vain is still the myth
If a truth be found therewith :
Unto gentleness belong
Gifts unknown to pride and wrong ;
Happier far than hate is praise, —
He who sings than he who slays.
SWEET FERN.
THE subtle power in perfume found
Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned ;
On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound
No censer idly burned.
That power the old-time worships knew,
The Corvbantes' frenzied dance,
The Pythian priestess swooning through
The wonderland of trance.
And Nature holds, in wood and field,
Her thousand sunlit censers still ;
To spells of flower and shrub we yield
Against or with our will.
456
BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS.
I climbed a hill path strange and new
With slow feet, pausing at each turn;
A sudden waft of west wind blew
The breath of the sweet fern.
That fragrance from my vision swept
The alien landscape ; in its stead, '
Up fairer hills of youth^I stepped,
As light of heart as tread.
I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine
Once more through rif rs of woodland
shade ;
I knew my river's winding line
By morning mist betrayed.
With me June's freshness, lapsing
brook,
Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call
Of birds, and one in voice and look
In keeping with them all.
A fern beside the way we went
She plucked, and, smiling, held it up,
While from her hand the wild, sweet
scent
I drank as from a cup.
O potent witchery of smell !
The dust dry-leaves to life return,
And she who plucked them owns the
spell
And lifts her ghostly fern.
Or sense or spirit ? Who shall say
What touch the chord of memory
thrills ?
It passed, and left the August day
Ablaze on lonely hills.
BANISHED FROM MASSACHU
SETTS.
1660.
ON A PAINTING BY E. A. ABBEY.
OVER the threshold of his pleasant
home
Set in green clearings passed the ex
iled Friend,
In simple trust, misdoubting not the
end.
' Dear heart of mine ! " he said, " the
time has come
To trust the Lord for shelter." One
long giize
The good wife turned on each famil
iar thing, —
The lowing kiue, the orchard blos
soming,
The open door that showed the hearth
tire's blaze, —
And calmly answered, '•' Yes, He will
provide."
Silent and slow thev crossed the
homestead's bound,
Lingering the longest by their child's
grave-mound.
"Move on, or stay and hang!" the
sheriff cried.
They left behind them more than home
or land,
And set sad faces to an alien strand.
Safer with winds and waves than hu
man wrath,
With ravening wolves than those
whose zeal for God
Was cruelty to man, the exiles trod
Drear leagues of forest without guide
or path,
Or launching frail boats on the un
charted sea,
Round storm-vexed cape?, whose
teeth of granite ground
The waves to foam, their perilous
way they wound,
Enduring all things so their souls were
free.
Oh, true confessors, shaming them who
did
Anew the wrong their Pilgrim Fa
thers bore !
For you the Mayflower spread her
sail once more,
Freighted with souls, to all that duty bid
Faithful as they who sought an uu
known land,
O'er wintrv seas, from Holland's Hook
of Sand !
So from his lost home to the darkening
main,
Bodeful of storm, stout Macey held
his way,
And, when the green shore blended
with the gray,
His poor wife moaned: "Let us turn
back again."
"Nay, woman, weak of faith, kueti
down," aaid he,
THE TWO ELIZABETHS.
457
'* And say thy prayers : the Lord
himself will steer ;
And led by Him, nor man nor devils
I fear!"*6
So the gray Southwicks, from a rainy
sea,
Saw, far and faint, the loom of land,
and gave
With feeble voices thanks for friend
ly ground
Whereon to rest their weary feet, and
found
A peaceful death-bed and a quiet grave
Where, ocean-walled, and wiser than
his age, -
The lord of Shelter scorned the bigot's
rage.
Aquidneck's isle, Nantucket's lonely
shores,
And Indian-haunted Narragansett
saw
The way-worn travellers round their
camp-fire draw,
Or henrd the plashing of their weary
oars.
And every place whereon they rested
firew
Happier for pure and gracious wom
anhood,
And men whose names for stainless
honor stood,
Founders of States and rulers wise and
true.
The Muce of history yet shall make
amends
To those who freedom, peace, and
justice taught,
Beyond their dark age led the van of
thought,
And left unforfeited the name of
Friends.
Oh mother State, how foiled was thy
design !
The gain was theirs, the loss alone was
thine.
THE TWO ELIZABETHS.
Read at the unveiling of the bust of Eliza
beth Fry at the Friends' School, Providence,
A. D. 1209.
AMIDST Thuringia's wooded hills she
dwelt,
A high-born princess, servant of the
poor,
Sweetening with gracious words the
food she dealt
To starving throngs at Wartburg'e
blazoned door.
A blinded zealot held her soul in chains
Cramped the sweet nature that he
could not kill,
Scarred her fair body with his penance
pains,
And gauged her conscience by his
narrow will.
God gave her gifts of beauty and of
grace,
With fast and vigil she denied them
all;
Unquestioning, with sad, pathetic face,
She followed meekly at her stern
guide's call.
So drooped and died her home-blown
rose of bliss
In the chill rigor of a discipline
That turneil her fond lips from her
children's kiss,
And made her joy of motherhood a
sin.
To their sad level by compassion
led,
One with the low and vile herself she
made,
While thankless misery mocked the
hand that fed,
And laughed to scorn her piteous
masquerade.
But still, with patience that outwearied
hate
She gave her all while yet she had to
give ;
And then her empty hands, importu
nate,
In prayer she lifted that the pool
miyht live.
Sore pressed by grief, and wrongs more
hard to bear,
And dwarfed and stifled by a harsh
control,
She kept life fragrant with good deeds
and prayer,
And fresh and pure the white flower
of her souL
458
THE TWO ELIZABETHS.
Death found her busy at her task : one
word
Alone she uttered as she paused to
die,
" Silence ! " — then listened even as
one who heard
With song and wing the angels draw
ing nigh!
Now Fra Angelico's roses fill her hands,
And, on Murillo's canvas, Want and
Pain
Kneel at her feet. Her marble image
stands
Worshipped and crowned in Mar
burg's holy fane.
Yea, wheresoe'er her Church its cross
uprears,
Wide as the world her story still is
told;
In manhood's reverence, woman's pray
ers and tears
She lives again whose grave is cen
turies old.
And still, despite the weakness or the
blame
Of blind submission to the blind, she
hath
A tender place in hearts of every name,
And more than Rome owns Saint
Elizabeth !
A. D. 1780.
Slow ages passed: and lo! another
came,
An English matron, in whose simple
faith
Nor priestly rule nor ritual had claim,
A plain, uncanonized Elizabeth.
No sackcloth robe, nor ashen-sprinkled
hair,
Nor wasting fast, nor scourge, nor
vigil long,
Marred her calm presence. God had
made her fair,
And she could do His goodly work
no wrong.
Their yoke is easy and their burden
light
Whose sole confessor is the Christ of
God;
Her quiet trust and faith transcending
sight
Smoothed to her feet the difficult
paths she trod.
And there she walked, as duty bade her
g°,
Safe and unsullied as a cloistered
nun,
Shamed with her plainness Fashion's
gaudy show,
And overcame the world she did no'
shun.
In Earlham's bowers, in Plashet's lib
eral hall,
In the great city's restless crowd and
din,
Her ear was open to the Master's call,
And knew the summons of His voice
within.
Tender as mother, beautiful as wife,
Amidst the throngs of prisoned crime
she stood,
In modest raiment faultless as her life,
The type of England's worthiest
womanhood!
To melt the hearts that harshness
turned to stone
The sweet persuasion of her lips suf
ficed,
And guilt, which only hate and fear had
known,
Saw in her own the pitying love of
Christ.
So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit went
She followed, finding every prison cell
It opened for her sacred as a tent
Pitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob's
well.
And Pride and Fashion felt her strong
appeal,
And priest and ruler marvelled as
they saw
How hand in hand went wisdom with
her zeal,
And woman's pity kept the bounds
of law.
She rests in God's peace; but her mem.
ory stirs
The air of earth as with an angel's
wings,
REQUITAL.
459
And warms and moves the hearts of
men like hers,
The sainted daughter of Hungarian
kings.
United now, the Briton and the Hun,
Each, in her own time, faithful unto
death,
Live sister souls ! in name and spirit
one,
Thuriugia's saint and our Elizabeth !
THE REUNION.
Read September 10, 1885, to the surviving
students of llaverhill Academy in 1827-28.
THE gulf of seven and fifty years
We stretch our welcoming hands
across ;
The distance but a pebble's toss
Between u& and our youth appears.
For in life's school we linger on
The remnant of a once full list ;
Conning our lessons, undismissed,
With faces to the setting sun.
And some have gone the unknown
way,
And some await the call to rest ;
Who knoweth whether it is best
For those who went or those who stay ?
And yet despite of loss and ill,
If faith and love and hope remain,
Our length of days is not in vain,
And life is well worth living still.
Still to a gracious Providence
The thanks of grateful hearts are
due,
For blessings when our lives were
new,
For all the good vouchsafed us since.
The pain that spared us sorer hurt,
The wish denied, the purpose crossed,
And pleasure's fond occasions lost,
Were mercies to our small desert.
'T is something that we wander back,
Gray pilgrims, to our ancient ways,
And tender memories of old days
Walk with us by the Merrimac;
That even in life's afternoon
A sense of youth comes back again,
As through this cool September rain
The still green woodlands dream of
June.
The eyes grown dim to present things
Have keener sight for by -gone years,
And sweet and clear, in deafening
ears,
The bird that sang at morning sings.
Dear comrades, scattered wide and far,
Send from their homes their kindly
word,
And dearer ones, unseen, unheard,
Smile on us from some heavenly star.
For life and death with God are one,
Unchanged by seeming change His
care
And love are round us here and
there ;
He breaks no thread His hand has
spun.
Soul touches soul, the muster roll
Of life eternal has no gaps ;
And after half a century's lapse
Our school-day ranks are closed and
whole.
Hail and farewell ! We go our way ;
Where shadows end, we trust in
light ;
The star that ushers in the night
Is herald also of the day !
REQUITAL.
As Islam's Prophet, when his last day
drew
Nigh to its close, besought all men to
say
Whom he had wronged, to whom ha
then should pay
A debt forgotten, or for pardon sue,
And, through the silence of his weeping
friends,
A strange voice cried : " Thou owesfc
me a debt/'
" Allah be praised ! " he answered.
" Even yet
He gives me power to make to thee
amends.
460
MULFORD.
Oh, friend ! I thank thee for thy timely
word."
So runs the tale. Its lesson all mav
heed,
For all have sinned in thought, or
word, or deed,
Or, like the Prophet, through neglect
have erred.
All need forgiveness, all have debts to
pay
Ere the night cometh, while it still is
day.
THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT.
A TENDER child of summers three,
Seeking her little bed at night,
Paused on the dark stair timidly.
" Oh, mother ! Take my hand," said
she,
"And then the dark will all be
light."
We older children grope our way
From dark behind to dark before ;
And only when our hands we lay,
Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day,
And there is darkness nevermore.
Reach downward to the sunless days
Wherein our guides are blind as we,
And faith is small and hope delays ;
Take Thou the hands of prayer we
raise,
And let us feel the light of Thee !
THE TWO LOVES.
SMOOTHING soft the nestling head
Of a maiden fancy -led,
Thus a grave-eyed woman said :
"Richest gifts are those we make,
Dearer than the love we take
That we give for love's own sake.
" Well I know the heart's unrest ;
Mine has been the common quest
To be loved and therefore blest.
" Favors undeserved were
At my feet as on a shrine
Love has laid its gifts diviua
" Sweet the offerings seemed, and yet
With [heir sweetness came regret,
And a sense of unpaid debt.
" Heart of mine unsatisfied,
Was it vanity or pride
That a deeper jo) denied '(
" Hands thr.*. ope but to receive
Empty close; they only live
Richly who can richly give.
" Still," she sighed, with moistening
eyes,
" Love is sweet in any guise ;
But its best is sacrifice !
" He who, giving, does not crave
Likest is to Him who gave
Life itself the loved to save.
" Love, that self-forgetful gives,
Sows surpri.se of ripened sheaves,
Late or soon its own receives."
AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT.
O DEAREST bloom the seasons know,
Flowers of the Resurrection blow,
Our hope and faith restore ;
And through the bitterness of death
And loss and sorrow, breathe a breath
Of life forevermore !
The thought of Love Immortal blends
With fond remembrances of friends;
In you, O sacred flowers,
By human love made doubly sweet,
The heavenly and the earthly meet,
The heart'of Christ and ours !
MULFORD.
AUTHOR OF "THE NATION" AND "THK
REPUBLIC OF GOD."
UNNOTED as the setting of a star
He passed ; and sect and partj,
scarcely knew
When from their midst a sage and
seer withdrew
To fitter audience, where the great
dead are
In God's republic of the heart and mind,
Leaving no purer, uobler soul behind.
HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMA.T.
461
AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTI
FUL.
G. F.
HAUNTED of Beauty, like the marvel
lous youth
Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve.' How
passing fair
Her shapes took color in thy home
stead air !
How on thy canvas even her dreams
were truth !
Magician ! who from commonest ele
ments
Called up divine ideals, clothed upon
By mystic lights soft blending into
one
Womanly grace and child-like inno
cence.
Teacher ! thy lesson was not given in
vain.
Beauty is goodness ; ugliness is sin ;
Art's place is sacred : nothing foul
therein
May crawl or tread with bestial feet
profane.
If rightly choosing is the painter's test,
Thy choice, O master, ever was the
best.
HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO
SOMAJ.8r'
THE mercy, O Eternal One !
By man unmeasured yet,
In joy or grief, in shade or sun,
I never will forget.
I give the whole, and not a part,
Of all Thou gavest me ;
My goods, my life, my soul and hoart,
I yield them all to* Thee !
ii.
We fast and plead, we weep and pray,
From morning until even ;
We feel to find the holy way,
We knock at the gate of heaven !
And when in silent awe we wait,
And word and sign forbear,
The hinges of the golden gate
Move, soundless, to our prayer !
Who hears the eternal harmonies
Can heed no outward word ;
Blind to all else is he who sees
The vision of the Lord !
O soul, be patient, restrain thy tears,
Have hope, and not despair ;
As a tender mother heareth her child
God hears the penitent prayer.
And not forever shall j^rief be thine ;
On the Heavenly Mother's breast,
Washed clean and white in the waters
of joy
Shall His seeking child find rest.
Console thyself with His word of grace,
And cease thy wail of woe,
For His mercy never an equal hath,
And His love no bounds can know.
Lean close unto Him in faith and hope ;
How many like thee have found
In Him a shelter and home of peace,
By His mercy compassed round !
There, safe from sin and the sorrow i*
brings,
They sing their grateful psalms,
And rest, at noon, by the wells of God
In the shade of His holy palms !
AT SUNDOWN.
To E. C. S.
POET and friend of poets, if thy glass
Detects no flower in winter's tuft of
grass,
Let this slight token of the debt I owe
Outlive for thee December's frozen
day,
And, like the arbutus budding under
snow, .
Take bloom and fragrance from
some morn of May
When he who gives it shall have gone
the way
Where faith shall see and reverent
trust shall know.
THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888.
Low in the east, against a white, cold
dawn,
The black-lined silhouette of the woods
was drawn,
And on a wintry waste
Of frosted streams and hillsides bare
and brown,
Through thin cloud-films a pallid
ghost looked down,
The waning moon half -faced !
In that pale sky and sere, snow-wait
ing earth,
What sign was there of the immortal
birth ?
What herald of the One ?
Lo ! swift as thought the heavenly
radiance came,
A rose-red splendor swept the sky like
flame,
Up rolled the round, bright sun !
And all was changed. From a trans
figured world
The moon's ghost fled, the smoke of
home-hearths curled
Up the still air unblown.
In Orient warmth and brightness, did
that mom
O'er Nain and Nazareth, when the
Christ was born,
Break fairer than our own ?
The morning's promise noon and eve
fulfilled
In warm, soft sky and landscape hazy-
hilled
And sunset fair as they ;
A sweet reminder of His holiest time,
A summer-miracle in our winter clime,
God gave a perfect day.
The near was blended with the old and
far,
And Bethlehem's hillside and the
Magi's star
Seemed here, as there and then, —
Our homestead pine-tree was the Sy
rian palm,
Our heart's desire the angels' midnight
psalm,
Peace, and good-will to men !
THE VOW OF WASHINGTON.
Read in New York, April 30, 1889, at the
Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of
George Washington as the first President of
the United States.
THE sword was sheathed : in April's
sun
Lay green the fields by Freedom
won ;
And severed sections, weary of debates,
Joined hands at last and were United
States.
O City sitting by the Sea !
How proud the day that dawned on
thee,
When the new era, long desired, be
gan,
And, in its need, the hour had found
the man !
One thought the cannon salvos
spoke,
THE VOW OF WASHINGTON.
463
The resonant bell- tower's vibrant
stroke.
The voiceful streets, the plaudit-echo
ing halls,
&nd prayer and hymn borne heaven
ward from St. Paul's !
How felt the land in every part
The strong throb of a nation's
heart,
Ag its great leader gave, with reverent
awe,
His pledge to Union, Liberty, and
Law !
That pledge the heavens above him
heard,
That vow the sleep of centuries
stirred ;
In world-wide wonder listening peoples
bent
Their gaze on Freedom's great experi
ment.
Could it succeed ? Of honor sold
And hopes deceived all history told.
Above the wrecks that strewed the
mournful past,
Was the long dream of ages true at
last?
Thank God! the people's choice
was just,
The one man equal to his trust,
Wise beyond lore, and without weak
ness good,
Calm in the strength of flawless recti
tude!
His rule of justice, order, peace,
Made possible the world's release ;
Taught prince and serf that power is
but a trust,
And rule, alone, which serves the
ruled, is just ;
That Freedom generous is, but
strong
In hate of fraud and selfish wrong,
Pretence that turns her holy truths to
lies,
And lawless license masking in her
guise.
Land of his love ! with one glad
voice
Let thy great sisterhood rejoice ;
A centurv's suns o'er thee have risen
and set,
And, God be praised, we are one
nation yet.
And still we trust the years to be
Shall prove his hope was destiny,
Leaving our flag, with all its added
stars,
Unrent by faction and unstained by
wars.
Lo ! where with patient toil he
nursed
And trained the new-set plant at
first,
The widening branches of a stately
tree
Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset
sea.
And in its broad and sheltering
shade,
Sitting with none to make afraid,
Were we now silent, through each
mighty limb,
The winds of heaven would sing the
praise of him.
Our first and best ! — his ashes lie
Beneath his own Virginian sky.
Forgive, forget, O true and just and
brave,
The storm that swept above thy sacred
grave !
For, ever in the awful strife
And dark hours of the nation's
life,
Through the fierce tumult pierced his
warning word,
Their father's voice his erring children
heard !
The change for which he prayed
and sought
In that sharp agony was wrought ;
No partial interest draws its alien line
'Twixt North and South, the cypress
and the pine !
One people now, all doubt beyond,
His name shall be our Union-bond;
We lift our hands to Heaven, and here
and now.
Take on our lips the old Centennial
vow.
464
THE CAPTAIN S WELL.
For rule and trust must needs he
ours;
Chooser and chosen both are powers
Kqual in service as in rights ; the claim
Of J)utv rests on each and all the
Then let the sovereign millions,
where
Our banner floats in sun and air,
From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's
cold,
Repeat with us the pledge a century
THE CAPTAIN'S WELL.8?
FROM pain and peril, by land and
main,
The shipwrecked sailor came back
again ;
And like one from the dead, the thresh
old cross'd
Of his wondering home, that had
mourned him lost,
Where he sat once more with his kith
and kin,
And welcomed his neighbors throng-
ing in.
But when morning came he called for
his spade.
" I must pay my debt to the Lord," he
said.'
" Why dig you here ? " asked the
passer-by :
" Is there gold or silver the road so
nigh ? "
" No, friend," he answered : " but un
der this sod
Is the blessed water, the wine of God."
'•' Water ! the Powow is at your back.
And right before you the Merrimac,
' And look you up, or look you down.
There 's a well-sweep at every door in
town."
" True," he said, " we have wells of
our own ;
But this I dig for the Lord alone."
Said the other : " This soil is dry, you
know.
I doubt if a spring can be found below ;
" Yon had better consult, before you
dig,
Some water-witch, with a hazel twig."
" No, wet or dry, I will dig it here,
Shallow or deep, if it takes a year.
"In the Arab desert, where shade is
none,
The waterless land of sand and sun,
" Under the pitiless, brazen sky
Mv burning throat as the sand was
dry;
"My crazed brain listened in fever
dreams
For plash of buckets and ripple of
streams ;
"And opening rny eyes to the blinding
glare,
And my lips to the breath of the
blistering air,
" Tortured alike by the heavens and
earth,
I cursed, like Job, the day of my
birth.
" Then something tender, and sad, and
mild
As a mother's voice to her wandering
child,
" Rebuked my frenzy; and bowing my
head,
I prayed as I never before had prayed :
"' Pit i/ me, God ! for I die of thirst ;
T<ike me out of this land accurst ;
" And if ever I reach mi/ home (i</(ii»,
Where earth has springs, and the sky has
rain,
" I will dig a well for the passers-by,
And none shall suffer from thirst as /.
"I saw, as I prayed, my home once
more,
The house, the barn, the elms by the
door,
AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION.
465
*' The grass-lined road, that riverward
wound,
The tall slate stones of the burying-
ground,
" The belfry and steeple on meeting-
house hill,
The brook with its dam, and gray grist
mill,
" And I knew in that vision beyond the
sea,
The very place where my well must be.
" God heard my prayer in that evil j
day ;
H-- led my feet in their homeward way, |
" From false mirage and dried-up well,
And the hot sand storms of a land of
hell,
" Till I saw at last through the coast-
hill's gap,
A city held in its stony lap,
" The mosques and the domes of
scorched Muscat,
And my heart leaped up with joy
thereat ;
" For there was a ship at anchor lying,
A Christian flag at its mast-head flying,
" And sweetest of sounds to my home
sick ear
Was my native tongue in the sailor's
cheer.
" Now the Lord be thanked, I am back
again,
Where earth has springs, and the skies ;
have rain,
'' And the well I promised by Oman's j
Sea,
1 am digging for Him in Amesbury."
His kindred wept, and his neighbors
said :
" The poor old captain is out of his j
head."
But from morn to noon, and from
noon to night,
lie toiled at his task with main and
might ;
And when at last, from the loosened
earth,
Under his spade the stream gushed
forth,
And fast as he climbed to his deep
well's brim,
The water he dug for followed him,
He shouted for joy : " I have kept my
word,
And here is the well I promised the
Lord ! "
The long years came and the long
years went,
And he sat by his roadside well content ;
He watched the travellers, heat -op
pressed,
Pause by the way to drink and rest,
And the sweltering horses dip, as they
drank,
Their nostrils deep in the cool, sweet
tank ;
And grateful at heart, his memory
went
Back to that waterless Orient,
And the blessed answer of prayer,
which came
To the earth of iron and sky of flame.
And when a wayfarer weary and hot,
Kept to the mid-road, pausing not
For the well's refreshing, he shook his
head ;
" Pie don't know the value of water,"
he said ;
" Had he prayed for a drop, as I have
done,
In the desert circle of sand and sun,
" He would drink and rest, and go
home to tell
That God's host gift is the wayside
well ! "
AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION.8*
ON these green banks, where falls too
soon
The shade of Autumn's afternoon,
AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION.
The south wind blowing soft and
sweet,
The water gliding at my feet,
The distant northern range uplit
By the slant sunshine over it,
With changes of the mountain mist
From tender blush to amethyst,
The valley's stretch of shade and
gleam
Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream,
With glad young faces smiling near
And merry voices in my ear,
I sit, methinks, as Hah'z might
In Iran's Garden of Delight.
For Persian roses blushing red,
Aster and gentian bloom instead ;
For Shiraz wine, this mountain air ;
For feast, the blueberries which I
share
With one who proffers witli stained
hands
Her gleanings from yon pasture
lands.
Wild fruit that art and culture spoil,
The harvest of an untilled soil ;
And with her one whose tender eyes
Reflect the change of April skies/
Midway 'twixt child and maiden yet,
Fresh as Spring's earliest violet;
And one whose look and voice and
ways
Make where she goes idyllic days ;
And one whose sweet, still counte
nance
Seems dreamful of a child's romance ;
And others, welcome as are these,
Like and nnlike, varieties
Of pearls on nature's chaplet strung, —
And all are fair, for all are young.
Gathered from seaside cities old,
From midland prairie, lake, and wold,
From the great wheat-fields, which
might feed
The hunger of a world at need,
In healthful change of rest and play
Their school-vacations glide away.
No critics these : they only see
An old and kindly friend in me,
In whose amused, indulgent look
Their innocent mirth has no rebuke.
They scarce can know my rugged
rhymes,
The harsher songs of evil times,
Nor graver themes in minor keys
Of life's and death's solemnities;
But haply, as they bear in mind
Some verse of lighter, happier kind,—
Hints of the boyhood of the man,
Youth viewed from life's meridian,
Half seriously and half in play
My pleasant interviewers pay
Their visit with no fell intent
Of taking notes and publishment.
As yonder solitary pine
Is ringed below with flower and vine,
More favored than that lonely tree,
The bloom of girlhood circles me.
In such an atmosphere of youth
I half forget my age's truth ;
The shadow of my life's long date
Runs backward on the dial-plate,
Until it seems a step might span
The gulf between the boy and man.
My young friends smile, as if some jay
On bleak December's leafless spray
Essayed to sing the songs of May.
Well, let them smile, and live to know,
When their brown locks are flecked
with snow,
'T is tedious to be always sage
And pose the dignity of age,
While so much of our early lives
On memory's playground still survives,
And owns, as at the present hour,
The spell of youth's magnetic power.
But though I feel, with Solomon,
'T is pleasant to behold the sun,
I would not, if I could, repeat
A life which still is good and sweet ;
I keep in age, as in my prime,
A not tin cheerful step with time,
And, grateful for all blessings sent,
I go the common way, content
To make no new experiment.
On easy terms with lawr and fate,
For what must be I calmly wait,
And trust the path I cannot see, —
That God is good sufficeth me.
And when at last on life's strange play
The curtain falls, I only pray
That hope may lose itself in truth,
And age in Heaven's immortal youth,
And all our loves and longing prove
The foretaste of diviner love !
The day is done. Its afterglow
Along the west is burning low.
My visitors, like birds, have flown ;
I hear their voices, fainter grown,
And dimly through the dusk I see
Their 'kerchiefs wave good-night to
me, —
BURNING DRIFT-WOOD.
467
Light hearts of girlhood, knowing
nought
Of all the cheer their corning brought ;
And, in their going, unaware
Of silent-following feet of prayer :
Heaven make their budding promise
good
With flowers of gracious womanhood !
R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND
ON THE MERRIMAC.
MAKE, for he loved thee well, our
MerrimaCj
From wave and shore a low and
long lament
For him, whose last look sought thee,
as he went
The unknown way from which no step
comes back.
And ye, 0 ancient pine-trees, at whose
feet
He watched in life the sunset's red
dening glow,
Let the soft south wind through
your needles blow
A fitting requiem tenderly and sweet !
No fonder lover of all lovely things
Shall walk where once he walked,
no smile more glad
Greet friends than his who friends in
all men had,
Whose pleasant memory to that Island
clings,
Where a dear mourner in the home he
left
Of love's sweet solace cannot be bereft.
BURNING DRIFT-WOOD
BEFORE my drift-wood five I sit,
And see, with every waif I burn,
Old dreams and fancies coloring it,
And folly's unlaid ghosts return.
O .ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft
The enchanted sea on which they
sailed,
Are these poor fragments only left
Of vain desires and hopes that failed ?
Did I not watch from them the light
Of sunset on my towers in Spain,
And see, far off, uploom in sight
The Fortunate Isles 1 might not
gain?
Did sudden lift of fog reveal
Arcadia's vales of song and spring,
And did I pass, with grazing keel,
The rocks whereon the sirens
sing ?
Have I not drifted hard upon
The unmapped regions lost, to man,
The cloud - pitched tents of Prester
John,
The palace domes of Kubla Khan ?
Did land winds blow from jasmine
flowers,
Where Youth the ageless Fountain
fills?
Did Love make sign from rose blown
bowers,
And gold from Eldorado's hills ?
Alas ! the gallant ships, that sailed
On blind Adventure's errand sent,
Howe'er they laid their courses, failed
To reach the haven of Content.
And of my ventures, those alone
Which "Love had freighted, safely
sped,
Seeking a good beyond my own,
By clear-eyed Duty piloted.
(.) mariners, hoping still to meet
The luck Arabian voyagers met,
And find in Bagdad's moonlit street
Haroun al Raschid walking yet,
Take with you, on your Sea of
Dreams,
The fair, fond fancies dear to youth.
1 turn from all that only seems,
And seek the sober grounds of truth.
What matter that it is not May,
That birds have flown, and trees are
bare,
That darker grows the shortening
day,
And colder blows the wintry air !
The wrecks of passion and desire,
The castles I no more rebuild,
May fitly feed my drift-wood fire,
And warm the hands that age has
chilled.
Whatever perished with my ships,
I only know the best remains ;
468
0. W. HOLMES. — JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
A song of praise is on mv lips
For losses which are now my gains.
Heap high my hearth ! No worth is
lost ;
No wisdom with the folly dies.
Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust
Shall be my evening sacrifice !
Far more than all I dared to dream,
Unsought before my door I see ;
( hi wings of fire and steeds of steam
The world's great wonders come to
me,
And holier signs, unmarked before,
Of Love to seek and Power to
save, —
The ritrhting of the wronged and poor,
The man evolving from the slave ;
And life, no longer chance or fate,
Safe in the gracious Fatherhood.
I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait,
In full assurance of the good.
And well the waiting time must lie,
Though brief or long its granted
days,
If Faith and Hope and Charity
Sit by my evening hearth fire's blaze.
And with them, friends whom Heaven
has spared,
Whose love my heart has comforted,
And, sharing all my joys, has shared
My tender memories of the dead, —
Dear souls who left us lonely here,
Bound on their last, long voyage, to
whom
We, day by day, are drawing near,
Where ever/ bark has sailing room.
I know the solemn monotone
Of waters calling unto me ;
I know from whence the airs have
blown
That whisper of the Eternal Sea.
As low my fires of drift-wood burn,
I hear that sea's deep sounds in
crease,
And, fair in sunset light, discern
Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.
O. W. HOLMES ON HIS
EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY.
CLIMBING a path which leads back
never more
We heard behind his footsteps and
bis cheer ;
Now, face to face, we greet him stand
ing here
Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore '
Welcome to us, o'er Avhom the length
ened day
Is closing and the shadows colder
grow,
His genial presence, like an after
glow,
Following the one just vanishing away.
Long be it ere the table shall be set
For the last breakfast of the Autocrat
And love repeat with smiles and
tears thereat
His own sweet songs that time shall
not forget.
Waiting with us the call to come up
higher,
Life is not less, the heavens are only
nigher !
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
FROM purest wells of English undefiled
None deeper drank than he, the New
World's child,
Who in the language of their farm-
fields spoke
The wit and wisdom of New England
folk,
Shaming a monstrous wrong. The
world-wide laugh
Provoked thereby might well have
shaken half
The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the
ball
And mine of battle overthrew them all.
HAVERHILL.
KJ40-1890.
Read at the Celebration of the Two Hun
dred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the City, Julj
2, 1890.
O HIVEU winding to the sea !
We call the old time back to thee;
HAVERHTLL.
469
From forest paths :uul water-ways
The century-woven veil we raise.
The voices of to-day are dumb,
Unheard its sounds that go and corne ;
We listen, through long-lapsing years,
To footsteps of the pioneers.
Gone steepled town and cultured plain,
The wilderness returns again,
The drear, untrodden solitude,
The gloom and mystery of the wood !
Once more the bear and panther
prowl,
The wolf repeats his hungry howl,
And, peering through his leafy screen,
The Indian's copper face is seen.
We see, their rude-built huts beside,
Grave men and women anxious-eyed,
And wistful youth remembering still
Pear homes in England's Haverhill.
We summon forth to mortal view
Park Passaquo and Saggahew, —
Wild chiefs, who owned the mighty
sway
Of wizard Passaconaway.
Weird memories of the border town,
By old tradition handed down,
In chance and change before us pass
Like pictures in a magic glass, —
The terrors of the midnight raid,
The death-concealing ambuscade,
The winter march, through deserts
wild,
Of captive mother, wife, and child.
Ah ! bleeding hands alone subdued
And tamed the savage habitude
Of forests hiding beasts of prey,
And human shapes as fierce as they.
Slow from the plough the woods with
drew,
Slowly each year the corn-lands grew ;
Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill
The Saxon energy of will.
And never in the ham7et's bound
Was lack ot sturdy mnnhood found,
And never failed the kindred good
Of brave and helpful womanhood.
That hamlet now a city is,
Its log-built huts are palaces ;
The wood-path of the settler's cow
Is Traffic's crowded highway now.
And far and wide it stretches still,
Along its southward sloping hill,
And overlooks on either hand
A rich and many-watered land.
And, gladdening all the landscape, fair
As Pison was to Eden's pair,
Our river to its valley brings
The blessing of its mountain springs.
And Nature holds, with narrowing
space,
From mart and crowd, her old-time
grace,
And guards with fondly jealous arms
The wild growths of outlying farms.
Her sunsets on Kenoza fall,
Her autumn leaves by Saltonstall ;
No lavished gold can richer make
Her opulence of hill and lake.
Wise was the choice which led our
sires
To kindle here their household fires,
And share the large content of all
Whose lines in pleasant places fall.
More dear, as years on years advance,
We prize the old inheritance,
And feel, as far and wide we roam,
That all we seek' we leave at home.
Our palms are pines, our oranges
\re apples on our orchard trees;
thrushes are our nightingales,
Our
Our larks the blackbirds of our vales.
No incense Avhich the Orient burns
Is sweeter than our hillside ferns ;
What tropic splendor can outvie
Our autumn woods, our sunset sky 1
If, where the slow years came ami
went,
And left not affluence, but content,
Now Hashes in our dazzled eves
The electric light of enterprise ;
And if the old idyllic ease
Seems lost in keen activities,
470
TO G. G. — INSCRIPTION.
And crowded workshops now replace
The hearth's and farm-field's rustic
grace ;
No dull, mechanic round of toil
Life's morning charm can quite de
spoil ;
And youth and beauty, hand in hand,
Will always find enchanted land.
No task is ill w^here hand and brain
And skill and strength have equal
gain,
And each shall each in honor hold,
And simple manhood outweigh gold.
Earth shall be near to Heaven when
all
That severs man from man shall fall,
For, here or there, salvation's plan
Alone is love of God and man.
,O dwellers by the Merrimac,
The heirs of centuries at your back,
Still reaping where you have not
sown,
A broader field is now your own.
Hold fast your Puritan heritage,
But let the free thought of the age
Its light and hope and sweetness add
To the stern faith the fathers had.
Adrift on Time's returnless tide,
As waves that follow waves, we glide.
God grant we leave upon the shore
Some waif of good it lacked before ;
Some seed, or flower, or plant of
worth,
Some added beauty to the earth ;
Some larger hope, some thought to
make
The sad world happier for its sake.
As tenants of uncertain stay,
So may we live our little day
That only grateful hearts shall fill
The homes we leave in Haverhill.
The singer of a farewell rhyme,
Upon whose outmost verge of time
The shades of night are falling down,
I pray, God bless the good old town !
TO G. G.8»
AN AUTOGRAPH.
GRACEFUL in name and in thyself, our
river
None fairer saw in John Ward's
pilgrim flock,
Proof that upon their centurv-rooted
stock
The English roses bloom as fresh as
ever.
Take the warm welcome of new friends
with thee,
And listening to thy home's familiar
chime
Dream that thou hearest, with it
keeping time,
The bells on Merrimac sound across
the sea.
Think of our thrushes when the lark
sings clear,
Of our sweet Mayflowers when the
daisies bloom ;
And bear to our and thy ancestral
home
The kindly greeting of its children
here.
Say that our love survives the severing
strain ;
That the New England, with the
Old, holds fast
The proud, fond memories of a com
mon past :
Unbroken still the ties of blood remain J
INSCRIPTION
For the bass-relief by Preston Powers, carved
upon the huge boulder in Denver Park, Col.,
and representing the Last Indian and the Last
Bison.
THE eagle, stooping from yon snow-
blown peaks,
For the wild hunter and the bison
seeks,
In the changed world below; and finds
alone
Their graven semblance in the eternal
stone.
THE WIND OF MARCH.
471
LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.
Inscription on her Memorial Tablet in Christ
Church at Hartford, Conn.
SHE sang alone, ere womanhood had
known
The gift of song which fills the air
to-day,
Tender and sweet, a music all her own
May fitly linger where she knelt to
pray.
MILTON.
Inscription on the Memorial Window in St.
Margaret's Church, 'Westminster, the Gift of
George W. Childs, of America.
THE new world honors him whose lofty
plea
For England's freedom made her
own more sure,
Whose song, immortal as its theme,
shall be
Their common freehold while both
worlds endure.
THE BIRTHDAY WREATH.
DECEMBER 17, 1891.
BLOSSOM and greenness, making all
The winter birthday tropical,
And the plain Quaker parlors gay,
Have gone from bracket, stand, and
wall ;
We saw them fade, and droop, and
fall,
And laid them tenderly away.
White virgin lilies, mignonette,
Blown rose, and pink, and violet,
A breath of fragrance passing by ;
Visions of beauty and decay,
Colors and shapes that could not stay,
The fairest, sweetest, first to die.
But still this rustic wreath of mine,
Of acorned oak and needled pine,
And lighter growths of forest lands,
Woven and wound with careful pains,
And tender thoughts, and prayers, re
mains,
As when it dropped from love's dear
hands.
And not unfitly garlanded,
Is he, who, country-born and bred.
Welcomes the sylvan ring which
gives
A feeling of old summer days,
The wild delight of woodland ways,
, The glory of the autumn leaves.
And, if the flowery meed of song
To other bards may well belong,
Be his, who from the farm-field
spoke
A word for Freedom when her need
Was not of dulcimer and reed,
This Isthmian wreath of pine and
oak.
THE WIND OF MARCH.
UP from the sea, the wild north wind
is blowing
Under the sky's gray arch ;
Smiling, I watch the shaken elm
boughs, knowing
It is the wind of March.
Between the passing and the coming
season,
This stormy interlude
Gives to our winter-wearied -hearts a
reason
For trustful gratitude.
Welcome to waiting ears its harsh
forewarning
Of light and warmth to come,
The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter
morning,
The earth arisen in bloom !
In the loud tumult winter's strength is
breaking ;
I listen to the sound,
As to a voice of resurrection, waking
To life the dead, cold ground.
Between these gusts, to the soft lapse
I hearken
Of rivulets on their way ;
I see these tossed and naked tree-tops
darken
With the fresh leaves of May.
This roar of storm, this sky so gray
and lowering
Invite the airs of Spring,
A warmer sunshine over fields of
flowering,
The bluebird's song and wing.
472
TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
Closely behind, the Gulf's warm
breezes follow
This northern hurricane,
And, borne thereon, the bobolink and
swallow
Shall visit us again.
And, in green wood -paths, in the kine-
fed pasture
And by the whispering rills,
Shall flowers repeat the lesson of the
Master,
Taught on his Syrian hills.
Blow, then, wild wind ! thy roar shall
end in singing,
Thy chill in blossoming ;
Come, like Bethesda's troubling angel,
bringing
The healing of the Spring.
TO OLIVER WENDELL
HOLMES.
STH Mo. 29iH, 1892.
A.MOXG the thousands who with hail
and cheer
Will welcome thy new year,
How few of all have passed, as thou
and I,
So many milestones by !
We have grown old together ; we have
seen,
Our youth and age between,
Two generations leave us, and to-day
We with the third hold way,
Loving and loved. If thought must
backward run
To those who, one by one,
In the great silence and the dark be
yond
Vanished with farewells fond,
Unseen, not lost; our grateful memories-
still
Their vacant places fill,
And, with the full-voiced greeting of
new friends
A tenderer whisper blends.
Linked close in a pathetic brotherhood
Of mingled ill and good,
Of joy and grief, of grandeur and of
shame,
For pity more than blame, —
The gift is thine the weary world to
make
More cheerful for thy sake,
Soothing the ears its Miserere pains,
With the old Hellenic strains,
Lighting the sullen face of discontent
With smiles for blessings sent.
Enough of selfish wailing has been
had,
Thank God! for notes more glad.
Life is indeed no holiday ; therein
Are want, and woe, and sin,
Death and its nameless fears, and over
all
Our pitying tears must fall.
Sorrow is real ; but the counterfeit
Which folly brings to it,
We need thy wit and wisdom to re
sist,
O rarest Optimist !
Thy hand, old friend ! the service of
our days,
In differing moods and ways,
May prove to those who follow in our
train
Not valueless nor vain.
Far off, and faint as echoes of a dream,
The songs of boyhood seem,
Yet on our autumn boughs, unflown
with spring,
The evening thrushes sing.
The hour draws near, howe'er delayed
and late,
When at the Eternal Gate
We leave the words and works we call
our own,
And lift void hands alone
For love to fill. ( )ur nakedness of soul
Brings to that Gate no toll ;
Giftless we come to Him, who all
things gives,
And live because He lives.
BETWEEN THE GATES.
HKTWEEN the gates of birth and death
An old and saintly pilgrim passed,
With look of one who witnesseth
The long sought goal at last.
THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER.
473
w O thou whose reverent feet have
found
The Master's footprints in thy way,
And walked theivon as holy ground,
A boon of thee I pray.
" My lack would borrow thy excess,
My feeble faith the strength of
thine ;
I need thy soul's white saintliness
To hide the stains of mine.
" The grace and favor else denied
May well be granted for thy sake."
So, tempted, doubting, sorely tried,
A younger pilgrim spake.
uThv prayer, my son, transcends my
gift;
No power is mine," the sage replied,
' The burden of a soul to lift
Or stain of sin to hide.
"Howe'er the outward life may seem
For pardoning grace we all must
pray ;
No man his brother can redeem
Or a soul's ransom pay.
" Not always age is growth of good ;
Its years have losses with their gain ;
Against some evil youth withstood
Weak hands mav strive in vain.
" With deeper voice than any speech
Of mortal lips from rnan to man,
What earth's unwisdom may not teach
The Spirit only can.
" Make thou that holy guide thine own,
And following where it leads the
way,
The known shall lapse in the unknown
As twilight into day.
" The best of earth shall still remain,
And heaven's eternal years shall
prove
That life and death, and jov and pain,
Are ministers of Love."
THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER.
SUMMER'S last sun nigh unto setting
shines
Through you columnar pines,
And on the deepening shadows of the
lawn
Its golden lines are drawn.
Dreaming of long gone summer days
like this,
Feeling the wind's soft kiss,
Grateful and glad that failing ear and
sight
Have still their old delight,
I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet
day
Lapse tenderly away;
And, wistful, with a fueling of forecast,
I ask, " Is this the last ?
" Will nevermore for me the seasons
run
Their round, and will the sun
Of ardent summers yet to come forget
For me to rise and set ? "
Thou shouldst be here, or I should be
with thee
Wherever thou mayst be,
Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of
speech
Each answering unto each.
For this still hour, this sense of mystery
far
Beyond the evening star,
No words outworn suffice on lip or
scroll :
The soul would fain with soul
Wait, while these few swift -passing
days fulfil
The wise-disposing Will,
And, in the evening as at morning,
trust
The All-Merciful and Just.
The solemn joy that soul-communion
feels ' .
Immortal life reveals ;
And human love, its prophecy and sign,
Interprets love divine.
Come then, in thought, if that alone
may be,
O friend ! and brin* with thee
Thy calm assurance of transcendent
Spheres,
And the Eternal Years !
August 31, 1890.
474
THE BKOWN DWARF OF KUGEN.
THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN,
AND OTHER POEMS.
THE BROWN DWARF OF
RUGEN.
THE pleasant isle of Riigeu looks the
Baltic water o'er,
To the silver-sanded beaches of the
Pomeranian shore ;
And in the town of Rambiu a little boy
and maid
Plucked the meadow-flowers together
and in the sea-surf played.
Alike were they in beauty if not in
their degree :
He was the Amptman's first-born, the
miller's child was she.
Now of old the isle of Riigen was full
of Dwarfs and Trolls,
The brown-faced little Earth-men, the
people without souls ;
And for every man and woman in Rii-
gen's island found
Walking in air and sunshine, a Troll
was underground.
It chanced the little maiden, one morn
ing, strolled away
Among the haunted Nine Hills, where
the elves and goblins play.
That day, in barley fields below, the
harvesters had known
Of evil voices in the air, and heard the
small horns blown.
She came not back ; the search for her
in field and wood was vain :
They cried her east, they cried her
west, but she came not again.
" She 's down among the Brown
Dwarfs," said the dream-wives
wise and old,
And prayers were made, and masses
said, and Rambin's church bell
tolled.
Five years her father mourned her;
and then John Deitrich said :
"I will find my little playmate, be she
alive or dead."
He watched among the Nine Hills,
he heard the Brown Dwarfs
sing,
And saw them dance by moonlight
merrily in a ring.
And when their gay-robed leader
tossed up his cap of red,
Young Deitrich caught it as it fell, and
thrust it on his head.
The Troll came crouching at his feet
and wept for lack of it.
" Oh, give me back my magic cap, for
your great head unfit ! "
" Nay," Deitrich said ; " the Dwarf
who throws his charmed cap
away,
Must serve its finder at his will, and
for his folly pay.
" You stole my pretty Lisbeth, and hid
her in the earth ;
And you shall ope the door of glass
and let me lead her forth."
" She will not come ; she 's one of us ;
she 's mine ! " the Brown Dwarf
said;
" The day is set, the cake is baked, to
morrow we shall wed."
" The fell fiend fetch thee ! " Deitrich
cried, " and keep thy foul tongue
still.
Quick! open, to thy evil world, the
glass door of the hill ! "
The Dwarf obeyed ; and youth and
Troll down the long stairway
And saw in dim and sunless light a
country strange and vast.
Weird, rich, and wonderful, he saw the
elfin under-! and, —
Its palaces of precious stones, its streets
of gohleu sand.
THE BROWN DWARF OF RttGEN.
475
He came unto a banquet-hall with tables
richly spread,
Where a young maiden served to him
the red wine and the bread.
How fair she seemed among the Trolls
so ugly and so wild !
Yet pale and very sorrowful, like one
who never smiled !
Her low, sweet voice, her gold-brown
hair, her tender blue eyes seemed
Like something he had seen elsewhere
or something he had dreamed.
He looked; he clasped her m his
arms; he knew the long -lost
one ;
" O Lisbeth ! See thy playmate — I am
the Amptman's son ! "
She leaned her fair head on his breast,
and through her sobs she spoke :
" Oh, take me from this evil place, and
from the elfin folk !
" And let me tread the grass-green
fields and smell the flowers again,
And feel the soft wind on my cheek
and hear the dropping rain !
" And oh, to hear the singing bird, the
rastling of the tree,
The lowing cows, the bleat of sheep,
the voices of the sea ;
" And oh, upon my father's knee to sit
beside the door,
And hear the bell of vespers ring in
Rambin church once more ! "
He kissed her cheek, he kissed her
lips; the Brown Dwarf groaned
to see.
And tore his tangled hair and ground
his long teeth angrily.
But Deitrich said : " For five long years
this tender Christian maid
Has served you in your evil world, and
well must she be paid !
" Haste ! — hither bring me precious
gems, the richest in your store ;
Then when we pass the gate of glass,
you '11 take your cap once
more."
No choice was left the baffled Troll,
and, murmuring, he obeyed,
And filled the pockets of the youth and
apron of the maid.
They left the dreadful under-land and
passed the gate of glass ;
They felt the sunshine's warm caress,
they trod the soft, green grass.
And when, beneath, they saw the Dwarf
stretch up to them his brown
And crooked claw-like fingers, they
tossed his red cap down.
Oh, never shone so bright a sun, was
never sky so blue,
As hand in hand they homeward walked
the pleasant meadows through !
And never sang the birds so sweet in
Rambin's woods before,
And never washed the waves so soft
along the Baltic shore ;
And when beneath his door-yard trees
the father met his child,
The bells rung out their merriest peal,
the folks with joy ran wild.
And soon from Rambin's holy church
the twain came forth as one,
The Amptman kissed a daughter, the
miller blest a son.
John Deitrich's fame went far and
wide, and nurse and maid
crooned o'er
Their cradle song : " Sleep on, sleep
well, the Trolls shall come no
more ! "
For in the haunted Nine Hills he set k
cross of stone ;
And Elf and Brown Dwarf sought in
vain a door where door was
none.
The tower he built in Rambin, fair Rii-
gen's pride and boast,
Looked o'er the Baltic water to the
Pomeranian coast ;
And, for his worth ennobled, and rich
beyond compare,
Count Deitrich and his lovely bride
dwelt long and happy there.
476
A WELCOME TO LOWELL.
A DAY.
TALK not of sad November, when a day
Of warm, glad sunshine rills the sky
Of UOOU,
And a wind, borrowed from some
morn of June,
Stirs the brown grasses and the leaf
less spray.
On the unf rested pool the pillared pines
Lay their long shafts of shadow : ihe
small rill,
Singing a pleasant song of summer
still,
A line of silver, dowu the hill-slope
shines.
Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of
bees,
in the thin grass the crickets pipe no
more ;
But still the squirrel hoards his win
ter store,
And drops his nut-shells from the shag-
bark trees.
Softly the dark green hemlocks whis
per: hi^h
Above, tne spires of yellowing larches
show,
Where the woodpecker and home-
loving crow
And jav and nut-hatch winter's threat
defy.
O gracious beauty, ever new and old !
O sights and sounds of nature, doubly
dear
When the low sunshine warns the
closing year
Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arc
tic cold !
Close to myheart I fold each lovely thing
The sweet day yields ; and, not dis
consolate,
With the calm patience of the woods
I wait
For leaf and blossom when God gives
us Spring !
HOW MARY GREW.90
WITH wisdom far beyond her years,
And graver than her wondering peers,
So strong, so mild, combining still
The tender heart and queenly will,
To conscience and to duty true,
So, up from childhood, Alary Grew !
Then in her gracious womanhood
She gave her days to doing good.
She dared the scornful laugh of men,
The hounding mob, the slanderer's pen
She did the \\ork she found to do, —
A Christian heroine, Mary Grew !
The freed slave thanks her ; blessiu<>
comes
To her from women's weary homes ;
The wronged and erring rind in her
Their censor mild and comforier.
The world were safe if but a few
Could grow in grace as Mary Grew !
So, New Year's Eve, I sit and say,
By this low wood lire, ashen grav ;
Ju*t wishing, as the niijht shuts down,
'lhat I could hear in Boston town,
In pleasant Chestnut Avenue,
From her own lips, how Mary Grew !
And hear her graceful hostess tell
The silver-voiced oracle
Who lately through her parlors spoke,
As through Dodoua's sacred oak,
A wiser truth than any told
By Sappho's lips of ruddy gold, —
j The way to make the world anew
Is just to grow — as Mary Grew !
I A WELCOME TO LOWELL.
i TAKE our hands, James Russell Lowell.
Our hearts are all thy own ;
( To-day we bid thee welcome
Not for ourselves alone.
In the long years of thy absence
Some of us have grown old,
And some have passed the portals
Of the Mystery untold ;
For the hands that cannot clasp thee,
For the voices that are dumb,
For each and all I bid thee
A grateful welcome home !
For Cedarcroft's sweet singer
To the nine-fold Muses dear;
THE LANDMARKS.
477
For the Seer the winding Concord
Paused by his door to hear ;
For him, our guide and Nestor,
Who the inarch of song began,
The white locks of his ninety years
Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann !
For him who, to the music
Her pines and hemlocks played
Set the old and tender story
Of the lorn Acadian maid ;
For him, whose voice for freedom
Swayed friend, and foe at will, >
Hushed is' the tongue of silver,
The golden lips are still !
For her whose life of duty
At scoff and menace smiled,
Brave as the wife of Roland,
Yet gentle as a Child.
And for him the three-hilled city
Shall hold in memory long,
Whose name is the hint and token
Of the pleasant Fields of Song !
For the old friends unforgotten,
For the young thou hast not known,
I speak their heart-warm greeting;
Come back and take thy owu !
From England's royal farewells,
And honors fitly paid,
Come back, dear Russell Lowell,
To Elm wood's waiting shade !
Come home with all the garlands
That crown of right thy head.
I speak for comrades living,
I speak for comrades dead !
TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER.
LUCK to the craft that bears this name
of mine,
Good fortune follow with her golden
spoon
The glazed hat and tarry pantaloon ;
And whereso'er her keel shall cut the
brine,
Cod, hake and haddock quarrel for her
line.
Shipped with her crew, whatever wind
may blow,
Or tides delay, my wish with her shall
go,
Fishing by proxy. Would that it might
show
At need her course, in lack of sun and
star,
Where icebergs threaten, and the sharp
reefs are ;
Lift the blind fog on Anticosti's lee
And Avalou's rock ; make populous the
sea
Round Grand Manan with eager finny
swarms,
Break the long calms, and charm away
the storms.
SAMUEL J. TILDEN.
GREYSTONE, AUGUST 4, 1886.
ONCE more, O all-adjusting Death !
The nation's Pantheon opens wide ;
Once more a common sorrow saith
A strong, wise man has died.
Faults doubtless had he. Had we not
Our own, to question and asperse
The worth we doubted or forgot
Until beside his hearse ?
Ambitious, cautious, yet the man
To strike down fraud with resolute
hand ;
A patriot, if a partisan,
He loved his native land.
So let the mourning bells be rung,
The banner droop its folds half way;
And while the public pen and tongue
Their fitting tribute pay,
Shall we not vow above his bier
To set our feet on party lies,
And wound no more a living ear
With words that Death denies?
THE LANDMARKS.91
THROUGH the streets of Marblehead
Fast the red-winged terror sped ;
Blasting, withering, on it came,
With its hundred tongues of name,
478
THE LANDMARKS.
Where St. Michael's ou its way
Stood like chained Andromeda,
Waiting on the rock, like her,
Swift doom or deliverer !
Church that, after sea-moss grew
Over walls no longer new,
Counted generations five,
Four entombed and one alive;
Heard the martial thousand tread
Battleward from Marblehead ;
Saw within the rock-walled bay
Treville's lilied pennons play,
And the fisher's dory met
By the barge of Lafayette,
Telling good news in advance
Of the coming fleet of France !
Church to reverend memories dear,
Quaint in desk and chandelier;
Bell, whose century-rusted tongue
Burials tolled and bridals rung ;
Loft, whose tiny organ kept
Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept ;
Altar, o'er whose tablet old
Sinai's law its thunders rolled !
Suddenly the sharp cry came :
" Look f St. Michael's' is aflame ! "
Round the low tower wall the fire
Snake-like wound its coil of ire.
Sacred in its gray respect
From the jealousies of sect,
" Save it," seemed the thought of all,
" Save it, though our roof-trees fall ! "
Up the tower the young men sprung;
One, the bravest, outward swung
By the rope, whose kindling strands
Smoked beneath the holder's hands,
Smiting down with strokes of power
Burning- fragments from the tower.
Then the gazing crowd beneath
Broke the painful pause of breath ;
Brave men cheered from street to street,
With home's ashes at their feet ;
Houseless women kerchiefs waved :
"Thank the Lord! St. Michael's
saved ! "
In the heart of Boston town
Stands the church of old renown,
From Avhose walls the impulse went
Which set free a continent ;
From whose pulpit's oracle
Prophecies of freedom fell ;
And whose steeple-rocking din
Rang the nation's birth-day in !
Standing at this very hour
Perilled like St. Michael's tower,
Held not in the clasp of flame,
But by mammon's grasping claim.
Shall it be of Boston said
She is shamed by Marblehead ?
City of our pride ! as there,
Hast thou none to do and dare ?
Life was risked for Michael's shrine ;
Shall not wealth be staked for thine ?
Woe to thee. when men shall search
Vainly for the Old South Church ;
When from Neck to Boston Stone,
All thy pride of place is gone ;
When from Bay and railroad car,
Stretched before them wide and far,
Men shall only see a great
Wilderness of brick and slate,
Every holy spot o'erlaid
By the commonplace of trade !
City of our love ! to thee
Duty is but destiny.
ONE OF THE SIGNERS.
479
True to all thy record saith,
Keep with thy traditions faith ;
Ere occasion 's overpast,
Hold its flowing forelock fast ;
Honor still the precedents
Of a grand munificence ;
In thy old historic way
Give, as thtni didst yesterday
At the South-land's call, or on
Need's demand from fired St. John.
Set thy Church's muffled bell
Free the generous deed to tell.
Let thy loyal hearts rejoice
In the glad, sonorous voice,
Kinging from the brazen mouth
Of the bell of the Old South, —
Kinging clearly, with a will,
" What she was is Boston still ! "
NORUMBEGA HALL.92
NOT on Penobs,cot's wooded bank the
spires
Of the sought City rose, nor yet beside
The winding Charles, nor where the
daily tide
Of Naumkeag's haven rises and retires,
The vision tarried ; but somewhere we
knew
The beautiful gates must open to our
quest,
Somewhere that marvellous City of the
West
Would lift its towers and palace domes
in view,
And, lo ! at last its mystery is made
known —
Its only dwellers maidens fair and
young,
Its Princess such as England's Laureate
sung ;
And safe from capture, save by love
alone,
It lends its beauty to the lake's green
shore,
And Norumbega is a myth no more.
THE BARTHOLDI STATUE.
1886.
THE land, that, from the rule of kings,
In freeing us, itself made free,
Our Old World Sister, to us brings
Her sculptured Dream of Liberty :
Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sands
Uplifted by the toil-worn slave,
On Freedom's soil with freemen's hands
We rear the symbol free hands gave.
O France, the beautiful ! to thee
Once more a debt of love we owe :
In peace beneath thy Colors Three,
We hail a later Rochambeau !
Rise, stately Symbol ! holding forth
Thy light and hope to all who sit
In chains and darkness ! Belt the
earth
With watch-fires from thy torch
uplit !
Reveal the primal mandate still
Which Chaos heard and ceased to
be,
Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will
In signs of fire : " Let man be free ! "
Shine far, shine free, a guiding light
To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim,
A lightning-flash the wretch to smite
Who shields his license with thy
name!
ONE OF THE SIGNERS.93
j O STORIED vale of Merrimac,
Rejoice through all thy shade and
shine,
And from his century's sleep call back
A brave and honored son of thine.
Unveil his effigy between
The living and the dead to-day ;
The fathers of the Old Thirteen
Shall witness bear as spirits may.
Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers,
The shades of Lee and Jefferson,
Wise Franklin reverend with his years,
And Carroll, lord of Carrollton !
48U
PENNSYLVANIA HALL.
Be thine henceforth a pride of place
Beyond thy namesake's over-sea,
Where scarce a stone is left to trace
The Holy House of Amesbury.
A prouder memory lingers round
The birthplace of thy true man here
Than that which haunts the refuge
found
By Arthur's mythic Guinevere.
The plain deal table where he sat
And signed a nation's title-deed
Is dearer now to fame than that
Which bore the scroll of Runny-
mede.
Long as, on Freedom's natal morn,
Shall ring the Independence bells,
Give to thy dwellers yet unborn
The lesson which his image tells.
For in that hour of Destiny,
Which tried the men of bravest stock,
He knew the end alone must be
A free land or a traitor's block.
Among those picked and chosen men
Than his, who here first drew his
breath,
No firmer fingers held the pen
Which wrote for liberty or death.
Not for their hearths and homes alone,
But for the world their work was *
done ;
On all the winds their thought has
flown
Through all the circuit of the sun.
We trace its flight by broken chains,
By songs of grateful Labor still ;
To-day, in all her holy fanes,
It rings the bells of freed Bra/il.
O hills that watched his boyhood's
home,
O earth and air that nursed him,
give,
In this memorial semblance, room
To him who shall its bronze outlive ! !
And thou, O Laud he loved, rejoice
That in the countless years to come,
Whenever Freedom needs a voice,
These sculptured lips shall not be
dumb !
PENNSYLVANIA HALL.9"
NOT with the splendors of the days of
old,
The spoil of nations, and barbaric gold ;
No weapons Avrested from the fields of
blood,
Where dark and stern the unyielding
Roman stood,
And the proud eagles of his cohorts saw
A world, war-wasted, crouching to his
law ;
Nor blazoned car, nor banners floating
8W,
Like those which swept along the Ap-
pian Way,
When, to the welcome of imperial
Rome,
The victor warrior came in triumph
home,
And trumpet peal, and shoutings wild
and high,
Stirred the blue quiet of the Italian
sky ;
But calm and grateful, prayerful and
sincere,
As Christian freemen only, gathering
here,
We dedicate our fair and lofty Hall,
Pillar and arch, entablature and wall,
As Virtue's shrine, as Liberty's abode,
Sacred to Freedom, and to Freedom's
God !
Far statelier Halls/neath brighter skies
than these,
Stood darkly mirrored in the yEgean
seas,
Pillar and shrine, and life-like statues
seen,
Graceful and pure, the marble shafts
between ;
Where glorious Athens from her rockv
hill
Saw Art and Beauty subject to her
will ;
And the chaste temple, and the classic
grove,
The hall of sages, and the bowers of
love,
Arch, fane, and column, graced the
shores, and gave
Their shadows to the blue Saronic
wave ;
And statelier rose on Tiber's winding
side,
The Pantheon's dome, the Coliseum's
pride,
PENNSYLVANIA HALL. 481
The Capitol, whose arches backward Shall strong rebukings thrill on Free-
flung dom's tongue,
The deep, clear cadence of the Roman No partial justice hold thj unequal scale,
No pride of caste a brother's rights
assail,
No tv rant's mandates echo from this
" wall,
Holy to Freedom and the Rights of
Whence stern decrees, like words of
fate, went forth
To the awed nations of a conquered
earth,
Where the proud Ciesars in their glory I All !
came ^ut a ^r tield, where mind may close
And Brutus lightened from his lips of j with mind,
flame ! Free as the sunshine and the chaiuless
Yet in the porches of Athena's halls,
And in the shadow of her stately walls,
Lurked the sad bondman, and his tears
wind ;
Where the high trust is fixed on Truth
alone,
of Woe And bonds and fetters from the soul are
Wet the cold marble with unheeded i thrown ;
flow j Where wealth, and rank, and worldly
And fetters clanked beneath the silver j pomp, and might,
dome, : Yield to the presence of the True and
Of the proud Pantheon of imperious Right.
Rome.
Oh, not for him, the chained and stricken And fitting is it that this Hall should
slave, stand
By Tiber's shore, or blue vEgina's j Where Pennsylvania's Founder led his
wave, band,
In the thronged forum, or the sages' i From thy blue waters, Delaware ! — to
press
The virgin verdure of the wilderness.
Here, where all Europe with ama/e-
seat,
The bold lip pleaded, and the warm
heart beat ;
No soul of sorrovy melted at his pain, ment saw
No tear of pity rusted on his chain ! : The soul's high freedom trammelled by
no law ;
But this fair Hall to Truth and Free- j Here, where the fierce and warlike for-
dom given, esimen
Pledged to the Right before all Earth j Gathered, in peace, around the home of
and Heaven, Penn,
A free arena for the strife of mind, I Awed by the weapons Love alone had
To caste, or sect, or color unconfined, given
Shall thrill with echoes such as ne'er of [ Drawn from the holy armory of Hea-
old ven ;
From Roman hall or Grecian temple Where Nature's voice against the bond-
rolled ; man's wrong
Thoughts shall find utterance such as First found an earnest and indignant
never yet tongue ;
The Propylea or the Forum met. , Where Lay's bold message to the proud
Beneath its roof no gladiator's strife was borne ;
Shall win applauses with the waste of And Keith's rebuke, and Franklin's
life ; manly scorn !
No lordly lictor urge the barbarous Fitting it is that here, where Freedom
game, first
No wanton Lais glory in her shame. From her fair feet shook off the Old
But here the tear of sympathy shall World's dust,
flow, i Spread her white pinions to our West-
As the ear listens to the tale of woe ; ern blast,
Here in stern judgment of the op- \ And her free tresses to our sunshine
pressor's wrong I cast,
482
THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN.
One Hall should rise redeemed from
Slavery's ban,
One Temple "sacred to the Rights of ;
Man !
Oh ! if the spirits of the parted come,
Visiting angels, to their olden home ;
If the dead fathers of the land look j
forth
From their fair dwellings, to .the things ;
of earth,
Is it a dream, that with their eyes of love,
They gaze now on us from the bowers j
above ?
Lay's ardent soul, and Beuezet the l
mild,
Steadfast in faith, yet gentle as a child, i
Meek-hearted Woolmau, and that bro
ther-band,
The sorrowing exilesfrom their "Father- !
land,"
Leaving their homes in Krieshiem's
bowers of vine,
And the blue beauty of their glorious
Rhine,
To seek amidst our solemn depths of
wood
Freedom from man, and holy peace
with God ;
Who first of all their testimonial gave j
Against the oppressor, for the outcast
slave,
Is it a dream that such as these look
down,
And with their blessing our rejoicings j
crown ?
Let us rejoice, that while the pulpit's !
door
Is barred against the pleaders for the j
poor;
While the Church, wrangling upon j
points of faith,
Forgets her bondmen suffering unto '
death ;
While crafty Traffic and the lust of
Gain
Unite to forge Oppression's triple chain, i
One door is open, and one Temple free, i
As a resting-place for hunted Liberty ! j
Where men may speak, unshackled and
unawed,
High words of Truth, for Freedom and
for God.
And when that truth its perfect work
hath done,
And rich with blessings o'er our land
hath gone ;
When not a slave beneath his yoke
shall pine,
From broad Potomac to the far Sabine :
When unto angel lips at last is given
The silver trump of Jubilee in Heaven ;
Arid from Virginia's plains, Kentucky's
shades,
And through the dim Floridian ever
glades,
Rises, to meet that angel-trumpet's
sound,
The voice of millions from their chains
unbound ;
Then, though this Hall be crumbling in
decay,
Its strong walls blending with the com
mon clay,
Yet round the ruins of its strength shall
stand
The best and noblest of a ransomed
land —
Pilgrims, like these who throng around
the shrine
Of Mecca, or of holy Palestine !
A prouder glory shall that ruin own
Thau that which lingers round the Par
thenon.
Here shall the child of after years be
taught
The works of Freedom which his fa
thers wrought ;
Told of the trials of the present hour,
Our weary strife with prejudice and
power ;
How the high errand quickened wo
man's soul,
And touched her lip as with a living
coal ;
How Freedom's martyrs kept their lofty
faith
True and unwavering, unto bonds and
death ;
The pencil's art shall sketch the ruined
Hall,
The Muses' garland crown its aged
wall,
And History's pen for after times record
Its consecration unto Freedom's God !
THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L
BROWN.95
Ho ! thou who seekest late and long
A License from the Holy Book
For brutal lust and fiendish wrong,
Man of the Pulpit, look !
THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN.
483
Lift up those cold and s . icist eyes,
This ripe fruit of thy teaching see ;
Aud tell us how to heaven will rise
The incense of this sacrifice —
This blossom of the gallows tree !
Search out for slavery's hour of need
Some fitting text of sacred writ ;
Give heaven the credit of a deed
Which shames the nether pit.
Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him
Whose truth is on thy lips a lie ;
Ask that His bright winged cherubim
May bend around that scaffold grim
To guard and bless and sanctify-.
O champion of the people's cause !
Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke
Of foreign wrong and Old World's
laws,
Man of the Senate, look !
Was this the promise of the free,
The great hope of our early time,
That slavery's poison vine should be
Upborne by Freedom's prayer-nursed
tree
O'erclustered with such fruits of
crime?
Send out the summons East and West,
And South and North, let all be there
Where he who pitied the oppressed
Swings out in sun and air.
Let not a Democratic hand
The grisly hangman's task refuse ;
There let each loyal patriot stand,
Awaiting slavery's command,
To twist the rope and draw the noose !
But vain is irony — unmeet
Its cold rebuke for deeds which start
In fiery and indignant beat
The pulses of the heart.
Leave studied wit and guarded phrase
For those who think but do not feel ;
Let men speak out in words which raise
Where'er they fall, an answering blaze
Like flints which strike the fire from
steel.
Still let a mousing priesthood ply
Their garbled text and gloss of sin,
And make the lettered scroll deny
Its living soul within :
Still let the place-fed, titled knave
Plead robbery's right with purchased
lips,
And tell us that our fathers gave
For Freedom's pedestal, a slave,
The frieze and moulding, chains and
whips !
But ye who own that Higher Law
Whose tablets in the heart are set,
Speak out in words of power and awe
That God is living yet !
Breathe forth once more those tones
sublime
Which thrilled the burdened pro
phet's lyre,
I And in a dark and evil time
I Smote down on Israel's fast of crime
And gift of blood, a rain of fire !
Oh, not for us the graceful lay
To whose soft measures lightly move
| The footsteps of the faun and fay,
O'er-locked by mirth and love*!
But such a stern and startling strain
As Britain's hunted bards flung down
From Snowden to the conquered plain,
Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain'
On trampled field and smoking town.
By Liberty's dishonored name,
By man's lost hope and failing trust,
By words and deeds which bow with
shame
Our foreheads to the dust,
By the exulting strangers' sneer,
Borne to us from the Old World's
thrones,
And by their victims' grief who hoar,
In sunless mines and dungeons drear,
Hoiy Freedom's land her faith dis
owns!
Speak out in acts. The time for word
Has passed, and deeds suffice alone;
In vain against the clang of swords
The wailing pipe is blown ! ,
Act, act in God's name, while ye may !
Smite from the church her leprous
limb!
Throw open to the light of day
The bondman's cell, and break away
The chains the state has bound on
him !
Ho ! every true and living soul,
To Freedom's perilled aliaf bear
The Freeman's and the Christian's
whole
Tongue, pen, and vote, and prayer!
484
A LETTER.
One last, great battle for the right —
One short, sharp struggle to be free !
To do is to succeed — our fight
Is waged in Heaven's approving sight;
The smile of God is Victory.
A LETTER.96
'T is over, Moses ! all is lost !
I hear the bells a-rintring ;
Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea host
I hear the Free-Wills singing.97
We 're routed, Moses, horse and foot,
If there be truth in figures,
With Federal Whigs in hot pursuit,
And Hale, and all the " niggers."
Alack ! alas ! this month or more
We've felt a sad foreboding;
Our very dreams the burden bore
Of central cliques exploding;
Before our eyes a furnace shone,
Where heads of dough were roasting,
And one we took to be your own
The traitor Hale was toasting !
Our Belknnp brother heard with awe
The Congo minstrels playing; 9»
At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt saw
The ghost of Storrs a-praying ; "
And Carroll's woods were sad to see,
With black-winged crows a-darting;
And Black Snout looked on Ossipee,
New-glossed with Day and Martin.
We thought the " Old Man of the
Notch "
His face seemed changing wholly —
His lips seemed thick; his nose seemed
flat;
His misty hair looked woolly ;
And Coo's teamsters, shrieking, fled
From the metamorphosed figure.
" Look there ! " they said, " the Old
Stone Head
Himself is turning nigger! "'
The schoolhouse, out of Canaan
hauled,100
Seemed turning on its track again,
And like a great swamp-turtle crawled
To Canaan village back again,
Shook off the mud and settled flat
Upon its underpinning;
A nigger on its ridge-pole sat,
From ear to ear a-grinning.
Gray IT — — d heard o' nights the sound
Of rail-cars onward faring ;
Riiilit over Democratic ground
The iron horse came tearing.
A flag waved o'er that spectral train,
As high as Pittsfield steeple ;
Its emblem was a broken chain.
Its motto : " To the people ! "
I dreamed that Charley took his bed,
With Hale for his physician ;
His daily dose an old " unread
And unreferred " petition.
There Hayes and Tuck as nurses sat,
As near as near could be, man ;
They leeched him with the " Demo
crat ; "
They blistered with the "Free
man."
Ah ! grisly portents ! What avail
Your terrors of forewarning 1
We wake to find the nightmare Hale
Astride our breasts at morning!
From Portsmouth lights to Indian
stream
Our foes their throats are trying ;
i The very factory-spindles seem
To mock us while they 're flying.
The hills have bonfires ; in our streets
Flags flout us in our faces ;
; The newsboys, peddling off their sheets
Are hoarse with our disgraces.
In vain we turn, for gibing wit
And shoutings follow after,
! As if old Kearsarge had split
His granite sides with laughter !
What boots it that we pelted out
The anti-slavery women,101
And bravely strewed their hall about
With tattered lace and trimming ''.
\ Was it for such a sad reverse
Our mobs became peacemakers,
And kept their tar and wooden horse
For Englishmen and Quakers ?
For this did shifty Atherton l02
Make gag rules for the Great House 1
Wiped we for this our feet upon
Petitions in our State House?
Plied we for this our axe of doom.
No stubborn traitor sparing,
Who scoffed at our opinion loom,
And took to homespun wearing?
LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER. 485
Ah, Moses ! hard it is to scan
These crooked providences,
Deducing from the wisest plan
The saddest consequences!
Strange that, in trampling as was meet
The nigger-men's petition,
We sprung a mine beneath our feet
Which opened up perdition.
How goodly, Moses, was the game
In which we 've long been actors,
Supplying freedom with the name
And slavery with the practice !
Our smooth words fed the people's
mouth,
Their ears our party rattle ;
We kept them headed* to the South,
As drovers do their cattle.
But now our game of politics
The world at large is learning ;
And men grown gray in all our tricks
State's evidence are turning.
Votes and preambles subtly spun
They cram with meanings louder,
And load the Democratic gun
With abolition powder.
The ides of June ! Woe worth the
dav
When, turning all things over,
The traitor Hale shall make his hay
From Democratic clover !
Who then shall take him in the law,
Who punish crime so flagrant 7
Whose hand shall serve, whose pen
shall draw,
A writ against that " vagrant " ?
Alas ! no hope is left us here,
And one can onlv pine for
The envied place of overseer
Of slaves in Carolina !
Pr.iy, Moses, give Calhoun the wink,
And see what pay he 's giving !
We 've practised long enough, we think,
To know the art of driving.
And for the faithful rank and file,
Who know their proper stations,
Perhaps it may be worth their while
To try the rice plantations.
Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff,
To see us southward scamper ;
The slaves, we know, are " better off
Than laborers in New Hampshire ! "
LINES ON THE PORTRAIT
OF A CELEBRATED PUB
LISHER.118
A MOONY breadth of virgin face,
By thought unviolated ;
A patient mouth, to take from scorn
The hook with bank-notes baited !
Its self-complacent sleekness shows
How thrift goes with the fawner ;
An unctuous unconcern of all
Which nice folks call dishonor !
A pleasant print to peddle out
In lands of rice and cotton ;
The model of that face in dough
Would make the artist's fortune.
For Fume to thee has come unsought
While others vainly woo her,
In proof how mean a thing can make
A great man of its doer.
To whom shall men thyself compare,
Since common models fail 'em,
Save classic goose of ancient Home,
Or sacred ass of Balaam ?
The gabble of that wakeful goose
Saved Rome from sack of Brennus ;
The braying of the prophet's ass
Betrayed the angel's menace !
So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats,
And a/Aire-tinted hose on,
Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets
The slow-match of explosion —
An earthquake blast that would have
tossed
The Union as a feather,
Thy instinct saved a perilled land
And perilled purse together.
Just think of Carolina's sage
Sent whirling like a Dervis,
Of Quattlebum in middle air
Performing strange drill-service !
Doomed like Assyria's lord of old,
Who fell before the .Jewess,
Or sad Abimelech, to sigh,
" Alas ! a woman slew us ! "
Thou saw'st beneRth a fair disguise
The danger darkly lurking,
And maiden bodice dreaded more
Than warrior's steel-wrought jerkin
How keen to scent the hidden plot !
How prompt wert thou to balk it,
48(5
LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY
With patriot zeal and pedler thrift,
For country aud for pocket !
Thy likeness here is doubtless well,
But higher honor's due it;
On auction-block and negro-jail
Admiring eyes should view it.
Or, hung aloft, it well might grace
The nation's senate-chamber —
A greedy Northern bottle-fly
Preserved in Slavery's amber !
LETTER
FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METH
ODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH,
IN KANSAS, TO A DISTINGUISHED
POLITICIAN.
DOUGLAS MISSION, August, 1854.
LAST week — the Lord be praised for
all His mercies
To His unworthy servant ! — I arrived
Safe at the Mission, via Westport where
I tarried over night, to aid in forming
A Vigilance Committee, to send back,
In shirts of tar, and feather-doublets
quilted
With forty stripes save one, all Yankee
comers,
Uncircumcised and Gentile, aliens from
The Commonwealth of Israel, who de
spise
The prize of the high calling of the
saints,
Who plant amidst this heathen wilder
ness
Pure gospel institutions, sanctified
By patriarchal use. The meeting
opened
With prayer, as was most fitting. Half
an hour,
Or thereaway, I groaned, and strove,
and wrestled,
As Jacob did at Penuel, till the power
Fell on the people, and they cried
" Amen ! "
" Glory to God ! " and stamped and
clapped their hands ;
And the rough river boatmen wiped
their eyes ;
"Go it, old hoss!" they cried, and
cursed the niggers —
Fulfilling thus the word of prophecy,
" Cursed be Canaan." After prayer,
the meeting
Chose a committee — good and pious
men —
A Presbyterian Elder, Baptist deacon,
A local preacher, three or four class-
leaders,
Anxious inquirers, and renewed back
sliders,
A score in all — to watch the river
ferry,
(As they of old did watch the fords of
Jordan,)
And cut off all whose Yankee tongues
refuse
The Shibboleth of the Nebraska bill.
And then, in answer to repeated calls,
I gave a brief account of what I saw
In Washington ; and truly many hearts
Rejoiced to know the President, and you
And all the Cabinet regularly hear
The gospel message of a Sunday morn-
jng,
Drinking with thirsty souls of the sin
cere
Milk of the Word. Glory ! Amen,
and Selah !
Here, at the Mission, all things have
gone well :
The brother who, throughout my ab
sence, acted
As overseer, assures me that the crops
Never were better. I have lost one ne
gro,
A first-rate hand, but obstinate and
sullen.
He ran away some time last spring, and
hid
In the river timber. There my Indian
converts
Found him, and treed and shot him.
For the rest,
The heathens round about begin to feel
The influence of our pious ministrations
And works of love ; and some of them
already
Have purchased negroes, and are set
tling down
As sober Christians ! Bless the Lord
for this !
I know it will rejoice you. You, I
hear,
Are on the eve of visiting Chicago,
To fight with the wild beasts of Ephe-
A SONG FOR THE TIME.
487
Long John, aud Dutch Free-Soilers.
May your arm
Be clothed with strength, and on your
tongue be found
The sweet oil of persuasion. So desires
Your brother and co-laborer. Amen !
P. S. All 's lost. Even while I write
these lines,
The Yankee abolitionists are coining
Upon us like a flood — grim, stalwart
men,
Each face set like a flint of Plymouth
Keck
Against our institutions — staking out
Their farm lots on the wooded Waka-
rusa,
Or squatting by the mellow-bottomed
Kansas ;
The pioneers of mightier multitudes,
The small rain-patter, ere the thunder
shower
Drowns the dry prairies. Hope from
man is not.
Oh, for a quiet berth at Washington,
Snug naval chaplaincy, or clerkship,
where
These rumors of free labor and free soil
Might never meet me more. Better to
be
Door-keeper in the White House, than
to dwell
Amidst these Yankee tents, that, whiten
ing, show
On the green prairie like a fleet be
calmed.
Methinks I hear a voice come up the
river
From those far bayous where the
alligators
Mount sruard around the camping fili
busters :
" Shake off the dust of Kansas. Turn
to Cuba —
(That golden orange just about to fall,
O'er-ripe, into the Democratic lap :)
Keep pace Avith Providence, or, as we
say,
Manifest destiny. Go forth and follow
The message of our gospel, thither
borne
Upon the point of Quitman's bowie
knife,
And the persuasive lips of Colt's re
volvers.
There may'st thou, underneath thy
vine and fig-tree,
Watch thy increase of sugar cane and
negroes,
Calm as a patriarch in his eastern
tent ! "
Amen : So mote it be. So prays your
friend.
A SONG FOR THE TIME.1"*
UP, laggards of Freedom ! — our free
flag is cast
To the blaze of the sun and the wings
of the blast ;
Will ye turn from a struggle so bravely
begun,
' From a foe that is breaking, a field
that 's half won ?
Whoso loves not his kind, and who fears
not the Lord,
Let him join that foe's service, accursed
and abhorred !
Let him do his base will, as the slave
only can, —
Let him put on the bloodhound, and
put off the Man !
Let him go where the cold blood that
creeps in his veins
Shall stiffen the slave-whip, and rust on
his chains ;
; Where the black slave shall laugh in his
bonds, to behold
The White Slave beside him, self -fet
tered and sold !
But ye, who still boast of hearts beat
ing and warm.
Rise, from lake shore and ocean's, like
waves in a storm,
Come, throng round our banner in Lib
erty's name,
Like winds from your mountains, like
prairies aflame !
Our foe, bidden long in his ambush of
night.
Now, forced from his covert, stands
black in the light.
: Oh, the cruel to Man, and the hateful to
God,
Smite him down to the earth, that is
cursed where he irod !
For deeper than thunder of summer's
loud shower,
488
THE DISENTHRALLED.
Ou the dome of the sky God is striking
t he hour !
Shall we falter before what we've
prayed for so long,
When the Wrong is so weak, and the
Right is so strong ?
Come forth all together ! come old ami
come young,
Freedom's vote iu each hand, and her
song on each tongue;
Truth naked is stronger than False
hood iii mail ;
The Wrong cannot prosper, the Right
cannot fail !
Like leaves of the summer once num
bered the foe,
But the hoar-frost is falling, the north
ern winds blow;
Like leaves of November erelong shall
they fall,
For earth wearies of them, and God 's
over all !
A SONG.
INSCRIBED TO TIIK FREMONT
CLUBS.105
BENEATH thy skies, November!
Thy skies of cloud and rain,
Around our blazing camp-fires
We close our ranks again.
Then sound again the bugles,
Call the muster-roll anew ;
If months have well-nigh won the
field,
What may not four years do ?
For God be praised ! New England
Takes once more her ancient place ;
Again the Pilgrim's banner
Lends the vanguard of the race.
Then sound again the bugles, etc.
Along the lordly Hudson,
A shout of triumph breaks ;
The Empire State is speaking,
From the ocean to the lakes.
Then sound again the bugles, etc.
The Northern hills are blazing,
The Northern skies are bright ;
And the fair young West is turning
Her forehead to the light !
Then sound again the bugles, etc.
Push every outpost nearer,
Press hard the hostile towers '.
Another Balaklava,
And the Malakoff is ours !
Then sound again the bugles,
Call the muster-roll anew ;
If months have well-uigh won the
field,
What may not four years do '*
TO WILLIAM H. SEWTARI).10'J
STATESMAN, I thank thee ! and, if yet
dissent
Mingles, reluctant, with mv large con
tent,
I cannot censure what was nobly meant.
But, while constrained to hold even
Union less
Thau Liberty and Truth and Right
eousness,
I thank tine in the sweet and holy name
Of peace, for wise calm words that put
to shame
Passion and party. Courage may be
shown
Not in defiance of the wrong alone ;
He may be bravest who, uuweaponed,
bears
The olive branch, and, strong in justice,
spares
The rash wrong-doer, giving widest
scope
To Christian charity and generous hope.
If, without damage to the sacred cause
Of Freedom and the safeguard of its
laws —
If, without yielding that for which
alone
We prize the Union, thou canst save it
now
From a baptism of blood, upon thv brow
A wreath whose flowers no earthly soil
have known,
Woven of the beatitudes, shall rest,
And the peacemaker be forever blest !
THE DISENTHRALLED.
HE had bowed down to drunkenness,
An abject worshipper:
The pride of manhood's pulse had grown
Too faint and cold to stir ;
And he had given his spirit up
To the unblessed thrall,
A LEGACY.
489
And bowing to the poison cup,
He gloried in his fall !
There came a change — the cloud rolled
off,
And light fell on his brain —
And like the passing of a dream
That cometh not again,
The shadow of the spirit fled.
He saw the gulf before,
He shuddered at the waste behind,
And was a man once more.
He shook the serpent folds away,
That gathered ;'onnd his heart, -
As shakes the swaying forest-oak
Irs poison vine apart ;
He stood erect; returning pride
Grew terrible within,
And conscience sat in judgment, on
His most familiar sin.
The light of Intellect again
Along his pathway shone ;
And Reason like a monarch sat
Upon his olden throne.
The honored and the wise once more
Within his presence came ;
And lingered oft on lovely lips
His once forbidden name.
There may be glory in the might,
That treadeth nations down ;
Wreaths for the crimson conqueror,
Pride for the kingly crown ;
But nobler is that triumph hour,
The disenthralled shall find,
When evil passion boweth down
Unto the Godlike mind !
ON THE BIG HORN.107
THE years are but half a score,
And the war-whoop sounds no more
With the blast of bugles, where
Straight into a slaughter pen,
With his doomed three hundred men,
Rode the chief with the yellow hair.
0 Hampton, down by the sea !
What voice is beseeching thee
For the scholar's lowliest place ?
Can this be the voice of him
Who fought on the Big Horn's rim ?
Can this be Rain-in-the-Face ?
! His war-paint is washed away,
! His hands have forgotten to slay ;
He seeks for himself and his race
' The arts of peace and the lore
! That give to the skilled hand more
Than the spoils of war and chase.
O chief of the Christ-like school !
Can the zeal of thy heart grow cool
When the victor scarred Avith fight
Like a child for thy guidance craves,
And the faces of hunters and braves
Are turning to thee for light 1
The hatchet lies overgrown
With grass by the Yellowstone,
Wind River and Paw of Bear ;
And, in sign that foes are friends,
Each lodge like a peace-pipe sends
Its smoke in the quiet air.
The hands that have done the wrong
To right the wronged are strong,
And the voice of a nation saith :
" Enough of the war of swords,
Enough of the lying words
And shame of a broken faith ! "
The hills that have watched afar
The valleys ablaze with war
Shall look on the tasselled corn ;
And the dust of the grinded grain,
Instead of the blood of the slain.
Shall sprinkle thy banks, Big Horn !
The Ute and the wandering Crow
Shall know as the white men know,
And fare as the white men fare ;
The pale and the red shall be brothers,
One's rights shall be as another's,
Home, School, and House of Prayer !
0 mountains that climb to snow,
O river winding below,
Through meadows by war once trod.
0 wild, waste lands that await
The harvest exceeding great,
Break forth into praise of God !
A LEGACY.
FRIEND of my many years !
Whenthegreatsilencefalls,atlast,on me
Let me not leave, to pain and sadden
thee,
A memory of tears,
490
A LEGACY.
But pleasant thoughts alone
Of one who was thy friendship's hon
ored guest
And drank the wine of consolation
pressed
From sorrows of thy own.
I leave with thee a sense
Of hands upheld and trials rendered
less —
The unselfish joy which is to helpfulness
Its own great recompense ;
The knowledge that from thine,
As from the garments of the Master,
stole
Calmness and strength, the virtue which
makes whole
And heals without a sign ;
Yea more, the assurance strong
That love, which fails of perfect utter
ance here,
Lives on to fill the heavenly atmosphere
With its immortal song.
APPENDIX.
I. EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED
VERSES.
I AM yielding to what seems, under the
circumstances, almost a necessity, in add
ing to the pieces assigned for one reason
or another to the limbo of an appendix,
some of my very earliest attempts at verse,
which have been kept alive in the news
papers for the last half century. A few
of them have even been printed in book
form without my consent, and greatly to
my annoyance, with all their accumulated
errors of the press added to their original
defects and crudity. I suppose they should
have died a natural death long ago, but
their feline tenacity of life seems to con
tradict the theory of the "survival of the
fittest." I have consented, at my publish
ers' request, to take the poor" vagrants
home and give them a more presentable
appearance, in the hope that they may at
least be of some interest to those who are
curious enough to note the weak begin
nings of the graduate of a small country
district school, sixty years ago. That they
met with some degree of favor at that time
may be accounted for by the fact that the
makers of verse were then few in number,
with little competition in their unprofitable
vocation, and that the standard of criti
cism was not discouragingly high.
The earliest of the author's verses that
found their way into print were published
in the Newburyport Free Press, edited by
William Lloyd Garrison, in 182G. [The
poems here collected, with the exception
of the last, were written during the vears
1825-1833.]
THE EXILE'S DEPARTURE.
FOND scenes, which delighted my youth
ful existence,
With feelings of sorrow I bid ye adieu —
A lasting adieu! for now, dim in the dis
tance,
The shores of Hibernia recede from my
view.
Farewell to the cliffs, tempest-beaten and
gray,
Which guard the lov'd shores of my own
native land ;
Farewell to the village and sail-shadow'd
bay,
Tne foVest-crown'd hill and the water-
wash'd strand.
I ' ve fought for my country — I 've brav'd
all the dangers
That throng round the path of the war
rior in strife ;
I now must depart to a nation of strangers,
And pass in seclusion the remnant of life ;
Far, far from the friends to my bosom
most dear,
With none to support me in peril and
pain,
And none but the stranger to drop the sad
tear
On the grave where the heart-broken
Exile is lain.
Friends of my youth ! I must leave you
forever",
And hasten to dwell in a region un
known : —
Yet time cannot change, nor the broad
ocean sever,
Hearts firmly united and tried as our own.
Ah, no! though I wander, all sad and for
lorn,
In a far distant land, yet shall memory
trace,
When far o'er the ocean's white surges I 'm
borne,
The scene of past pleasures, — my own
• native place.
Farewell, shores of Erin, green land of my
fathers : —
Once more, and forever, a mournful
adieu !
For round thy dim headlands the ocean-
mist gathers,
And shrouds the fair isle I no longer can
view.
I go — but wherever my footsteps I bend,
For freedom and peace to my own na
tive isle,
And contentment and joy to each warm
hearted friend
Shall be the heart's praver of the lonely
Exile!
492 APPENDIX.
THE DEITY. Renowned in the records of love and ol
glory,
Where knighthood has ridden and min
strels have sung : —
Fair streams thro' more populous regions
are gliding,
Tower, temple, and palace their borders
THE Prophet stood
On the high mount, and saw the tempest
cloud
Pour the h'erce whirlwind from its reservoir
X)f congregated gloom. The mountain oak,
Torn from the earth, heaved high its roots adorning,
where once ' With tall-masted ships on their broad bos-
Its branches waved. The fir-tree's shapely i oms riding,
form. Their banners stretch'd out in the
Smote by the tempest, lashed the moiin- breezes of morning;
tain's side. And their vales may be lovely and pleas-
Yet, calm in conscious purity, the Seer ant — but never
Beheld the awful desolation, for Was skiff ever watted, or wav'd a white
The Eternal Spirit moved not in the sail
storm. i O'er a lovelier wave than my dear native
The tempest ceased. The caverned earth- river,
quake burst Or brighter tides roll'd than in Merri-
Forth from its prison, and the mountain | mac's vale!
rocked
Even to its base. The topmost crags were And fair streams may glide where the cli-
thrown, mate is milder,
With fearful crashing, down its shudder- Where winter ne'er gathers and spring
ing sides. ever blooms,
Unawed, the Prophet sa waiul heard ; he felt
Not in the earthquake mos'ed the God of
Heaven.
The murmur died away; and from the
height,
And others may roll where the region is
wilder,
Their dark waters hid in some forest's
deep gloom,
Where the thunder-scath'd peaks of Hel
vetia are frowning,
Torn by the storm and shattered by the
shock, And the Rhine's rapid waters encircle
Rose far and clear a pyramid of flame their bases,
Mighty and vast; the startled mountain I Where the snows of long years are the
deer hoary Alps crowning/
Shrank from its glare, and cowered within And the tempest-charg'd vapor their tall
the shade;
tops embraces: —
The wild fowl shrieked — but even then There sure might be fix'd, amid scenerv so
the Seer frightful,
Untrembling stood and marked the fearful j The region of romance and wild fairy-
glow, tale, —
For Israel's God came not within the But such scenes could not be to my heart
flame ! so delightful
As the home of my fathers, — fair Merri-
The tiery beacon sank. A still, small ! mac's vale ! *
voice,
Unlike to human sound, at once conveyed i There are streams where the bounty of
Deep awe and reverence to his pious heart. I Providence musters
Then bowed the holy man ; his face he \ The fairest of fruits by their warm
veiled sunny sides,
Within his mantle — and in meekness
owned
The presence of his God, discerned not in
The storm, the earthquake, or the mighty
flame.
THE VALE OF THE MERRIMAC.
The vine bending low with the grape's
heavy clusters,
And the orange-tree waving its fruit o'er
their tides: —
But I envy not him whose lot has been
cast there,
For oppression is there — and the hand
opi
of the spoiler,
PHEHK are streams which are famous in j Regardless of justice or mercy, has past
history's story, there,
Whose names are familiar to pen and to j And made him a wretched and indigent
tongue, toiler.
EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES.
493
No — dearer to me are the scenes of my
childhood,
The moss-cover'd bank and the breeze-
wafted sail,
The age-stinted oak and the green groves
of wild-wood
That wave round the borders of Merri-
mac's vale!
Oh, lovely the scene, when the gray misty
vapor
Of morning is lifted from Merrimac's
shore ;
When the tire-fly, lighting his wild gleam
ing taper,
Thy dimly seen, lowlands comes glim
mering o'er ;
When on thy calm surface the moonbeam
falls brightly,
And the dull bird of night is his covert
forsaking,
When the whippoorwill's notes from thy
margin sound lightly,
And break on the sound which thy small
waves are making.
O brightest of visions ! my heart shall for
ever,
Till memory shall perish and reason
shall fail,
Still preference give to my own native
river,
The name of my fathers, and Merrimac's
vale !
BENEVOLENCE.
HAIL, heavenh'- gift! within the human
breast,
Germ of unnumber'd virtues — by thy
aid
The fainting heart, with riving grief op-
prest,
Survives the ruin adverse scenes have
made:
Woes that have wrung the bosom, cares
that preyed
Long on the spirit, are dissolv'd by
thee —
Misfortune's frown, despair's disastrous
shade,
Ghastly disease, and pining poverty,
Thy influence dread, and at thv approach
they flee.
Thy spirit led th' immortal Howard on ;
Nurtur'd by thee, on many a foreign
shore
Imperishable fame, by virtue won,
Adorns his memory, tho' his course is
o'er;
Thv animating smile his aspect wore,
To cheer the sorrow-desolated soul,
Compassion's balm in grief-worn hearts to
pour,
And snatch the prisoner from despair's
control,
Steal half his woes away, and lighter make
the whole.
Green be the sod on Cherson's honor'd
field,
Where wraps the turf around his mould
ering clay;
There let the earth her choicest beauties
yield,
And" there the breeze in gentlest mur
murs play ;
There let the widow and the orphan stray,
To wet with tears their benefactor's
tomb ;
There let the rescued prisoner bend his
way,
And mourn o'er him, who in the dun
geon's gloom
Had sought him and averted misery's fear
ful doom. ^
His grave perfum'd with heartfelt sighs of
grief.
And moistened by the tear of grati
tude, —
Oh, how unlike the spot where war's grim
chief
Sinks on the field, in sanguine waves
imbrued !
Who mourns for him, whose footsteps can
be viewed
With reverential awe imprinted near
The monument rear'd o'er the man of
blood ?
Or who waste on it sorrow's balmy tear '?
None ! shame and misery rest alone upon
his bier.
Offspring of heaven! Benevolence, thy
pow'r
Bade Wilberforce its mighty champion
be,
And taught a Clarkson's ardent mind to
soar
O'er every obstacle, when serving
thee : —
Theirs was the task to set the sufferer free,
To break the bonds which bound th'
unwilling slave,
To shed abroad the light of liberty,
And leave to all the rights their Maker
gave,
To bid the world rejoice o'er hated slav
ery's grave.
Diffuse thy charms, Benevolence ! let thy
light
Pierce the dark clouds which ages past
have thrown
494
APPENDIX.
Before the beams of truth — and nature's
right,
Inborn, let every hardened tyrant own :
On our fair shore be thy mild presence
known;
And every portion of Columbia's land
lie as God's garden with thy blessings
sown ;
Yea, o'er Earth's regions let thy love
expand
Till all united are in friendship's sacred
band !
Then in that hour of joy will be fulfilled
The prophet's heart-consoling prophecy;
Vhen war's commotion shall on earth be
stilled,
And men their swords to other use ap-
pbr;
Then Afric'a injured sons no more shall
try
The bitterness of slavery's toil and pain,
Nor pride nor love of gain direct the eye
Of stern oppression to their homes again ;
Slit peace, a lasting peace, throughout the
world shall reign.
OCEAN.
DHFATHOMED deep, unfetter'd waste
Of never-silent waves,
Each by its rushing follower chas'd,
Through unillumin'd caves,
And o'er the rocks whose turrets rude,
E'en since the birth of time,
Have heard amid thy solitude
The billow's ceaseless chime.
O'er what recesses, depths unknown,
Dost thou thy waves impel,
Where never yet a sunbeam shone,
Or gleam of moonlight fell?
For never yet did mortal eyes ^
Thy gloom-wrapt deeps behold,
And naught of thy dread mysteries
The tongue of man hath told.
What, though proud man presume to hold
His course upon thy tide,
O'er thy dark billows uncontroll'd
His fragile bark to guide —
Yet who, upon thy mountain waves,
Can feel himself secure
While sweeping o'er thy yawning caves,
Deep, awful, and obscure?
But thou art mild and tranquil now —
Thy wrathful spirits sleep,
And gentle billows calm and slow,
Across thy bosom sweep.
Yet where the dim horizon's bound
Rests on thy sparkling bed,
The tempest-cloud, in gloom profound,
Prepares its wrath to shed.
Thus, mild and calm in youth's bright
hour
The tide of life appears,
When fancy paints, with magic spell,
The bliss of coming years;
But clouds will rise, and darkness bring
O'er life's deceitful way,
And cruel disappointment fling
Its shade on hope's dim ray.
THE SICILIAN VESPERS.
SILENCE o'er sea and earth
With the veil of evening fell,
Till the convent-tower sent deeply forth
The chime of its vesper bell.
One moment — and that solemn sound
Fell heavy on the ear;
But a sterner echo passed around,
And the boldest shook to hear.
The startled monks thronged up,
In the torchlight cold and dim;
And the priest let fall his incense-cup,
And the virgin hushed her hymn,
For a boding clash, and a clanging tramp,
And a summoning voice were heard,
And fretted wall, and dungeon damp,
To the fearful echo stirred.
The peasant heard the sound,
As he sat beside his hearth;
And the song and the dance were hushed
around,
With the fire-side tale of mirth.
The chieftain shook in his banner'd hall,
As the sound of fear drew nigh,
And the warder shrank from the castle
wall,
As the gleam of spears went by.
Woe ! woe ! to the stranger, then,
At the feast and flow of wine,
In the red array of mailed men,
Or bowed at" the holy shrine;
For the wakened pride of an injured land
Had burst its iron thrall,
From the plumed chief to the pilgrim
band ;
Woe ! woe ! to the sons of Gaul !
Proud beings fell that hour,
With the young and passing fair,
And the flame went up from dome and
tower,
The avenger's arm was there !
The stranger priest at the altar stood,
And clasped his beads in prayer,
EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES.
495
But the holy shrine grew dim with blood, j
The avenger found him there !
Woe ! woe ! to the sons of Gaul,
To the serf and mailed lord;
Thev were gathered darkly, one and all, '
To the harvest of the sword :
And the morning sun, with a quiet smile,
Shone out o'er hill and glen,
On ruined temple and smouldering pile,
And the ghastly forms of men.
Ay, the sunshine sweetly smiled,
As its early glance came forth,
It had no sympathy with the wild
And terrible things of earth.
And the man of ' blood that day might
read,
In a language freely given,
How ill his dark and midnight deed
Became the calm of Heaven.
THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH.
SPIRIT of the frozen North,
Where the wave is chained and still,
And the savage bear looks forth
Nightly from his caverned hill !
Down from thy eternal throne,
From thy land of cloud and storm,
Where the meeting icebergs groan,
Sweepeth on thy wrathful form.
Spirit of the frozen wing!
Dweller of a voiceless clime,
Where no coming on of spring
Gilds the weary course of time !
Monarch of a realm untrod
By the restless feet of men,
Where alone the hand of God
'Mid his mighty works hath been.'
Throned amid the ancient hills,
Piled with undecaying snow,
Flashing with the path of rills,
Frozen in their tirst glad flow;
Thou hast seen the gloomy north,
Gleaming with unearthly light,
Spreading its pale banners forth,
Checkered with the stars of night.
Thou hast gazed untrembling, where
Giant forms of flame were driven,
Like the spirits of the air,
Striding up the vault of heaven !
Thou hast seen that midnight glow,
Hiding moon and star and sky,
And. the icy hills below
Reddening to the fearful dve.
Dark and desolate and lone,
Curtained with the tempest-cloud,
Drawn around thy ancient throne
Like oblivion's moveless shroud,
Dim and distantly the sun
Glances on thy palace walls,
But a shadow co'ld and dun
Broods along its pillared halls.
Lord of sunless depths and cold!
Chainer of the northern sea!
At whose feet the storm is rolled,
Who hath power to humble thee?
Spirit of the stormy north !
Bow thee to thy Maker's nod;
Bend to him who sent thee forth,
Servant of the living God.
THE EARTHQUAKE.
CALMLY the night came down
O'er Scylla's shatter' d walls;
How desolate that silent town !
How tenantless the halls,
Where yesterday her thousands trod,
And princes graced their proud abode!
Low, on the wet sea sand,
Humbled in anguish now,
The despot, midst his menial band,
Bent down his kingl^v brow ;
And prince and peasant knelt in prayer,
For grief had made them equal there.
Again as at the morn,
The earthquake roll'd its car:
Lowly the castle-towers were borne,
That mock'd the storms of war;
The mountain reeled, its shiver'd brow
Went down among the waves below.
Up rose the kneelers then,
As the wave's rush was heard:
The horror of those fated men
Was uttered by no word.
But closer still the mother prest
The infant to her faithful breast.
One long, wild shriek went up,
Full mighty in despair;
As bow'd to drink death's bitter cup,
The thousands gathered there ;
And man's strong wail and woman's cry
Blent as the waters hurried by.
On swept the whelming sea;
The mountains felt its shock,
As the long cry of agony
Thrills thro'" their towers of rock ;
An echo round that fatal shore
The death wail of the sufferers bore.
The morning sun shed forth
Its light upon the scene,
496
APPENDIX.
Where tower and palace strew'd the earth
With wrecks of what had been.
But of the thousands who were gone,
No trace was left, no vestige shown.
JUDITH AT THE TENT OF HOLO-
FERNES.
NIGHT was down among the mountains,
In her dim and quiet manner,
Where Bethulia's silver fountains
Gushed beneath the Assyrian banner.
Moonlight, o'er her meek dominion,
As a mighty flag unfurled,
Like an angel's snowy pinion
Resting on a darkened world !
Faintly rose the city's murmur,
But the crowded camp was calm ;
Girded in their battle armor,
Each a falchion at his arm,
Lordly chief and weary vassal
In the arms of slumber fell ;
It had been a dav of wassail,
And the wine had circled well.
Underneath his proud pavilion
Lay Assyria's champion,
Where the ruby's rich vermilion
Shone beside the beryl-stone.
With imperial purple laden,
Breathing in the perfumed air,
Dreams he of the Jewish maiden,
With her dark and jewelled hair.
Who is she, the pale-browed stranger,
Bending o'er that son of slaughter?
God be with thee in thy danger,
Israel's lone and peerless daughter!
She hath bared her queenly beauty
To the dark Assyrian's glance ;
Now a high and sterner duty
Bids her to his couch advance.
Beautiful and pale she bendeth
In her earnest prayer to Heaven ;
Look again, that maiden standeth
In the strength her God has given !
Strangely is her dark eye kindled,
Hot blood through her cheek is poured ;
Lo, her every fear hath dwindled,
And her hand is on the sword !
Upward to the flashing curtain.
See, that mighty blade is driven,
And its fall ! — 't is swift and certain
As the cloud-fire's track in heaven !
Down, as with a power supernal,
Twice the lifted weapon fell;
Twice, his slumber is eternal — -
Who shall wake the infidel ?
Sunlight on the mountains streameth
Like an air-borne wave of gold;
And Bethulia's armor gleameth
Round Judea's banner-fold.
Down they go, the mailed warriors,
As the upper torrents sally
Headlong from their mountain-barriers
Down upon the sleeping valley.
Rouse thee from thy couch, Assyrian !
Dream no more of woman's smile ;
Fiercer than the leaguered Tyrian,
Or the dark-browed sons o"f Nile,
Foes are on thy slumber breaking,
Chieftain, to thy battle rise!
Vain the call — he will not waken —
Headless on his couch he lies.
Who hath dimmed your boasted glory V
What hath woman's weakness done ?
Whose dark brow is up before ye,
Blackening in the fierce-haired sun ?
Lo ! an eye that never slumbers
Looketh in its vengeance down ;
And the thronged and mailed numbers
Wither at Jehovah's frown!
METACOM.W8
RED as the banner which enshrouds
The warrior-dead, when strife is done,
A broken mass of crimson clouds
Hung over the departed sun.
The shadow of the western hill
Crept swiftly down, and darkly still,
As if a sullen wave of night
Were rushing on the pale twilight;
The forest-openings grew more dim,
As glimpses of the arching blue
And waking stars came softly through
The rifts of many a giant limb.
Above the wet and tangled swamp
White vapors gathered thick and damp,
And through their cloudy curtaining
Flapped many a brown and dusky wing —
Pinions that fan the moonless dun,
But fold them at the rising sun !
Beneath the closing veil of night,
And leafy bough and curling fog,
With his feV warriors ranged in sight —
Scarred relics of his latest fight —
Rested the fiery Wampanoag.
He leaned upon his loaded gun,
Warm with its recent work of death,
And, save the struggling of his breath,
That, slow and hard and long-repressed.
Shook the damp folds around his breast
An eye that was unused to scan
The sterner moods of that dark man
Had deemed his tall and silent form
With hidden passion fierce and warm,
EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES.
49?
With that fixed eye, as still and dark
As clouds which veil their lightning spark,
That of some forest-champion,
Whom sudden death had passed upon —
A giant frozen into stone !
Son of the throned Sachem ! — Thou,
The sternest of the forest kings, —
Shall the scorned pale-one trample now,
Unambtisned on thy mountain's brow,
Yea, drive his vile and hated plough
Among thy nation's holy things,
Crushing the warrior-skeleton
In scorn beneath his armed heel,
And not a hand be left to deal
A kindred vengeance fiercely back,
And cross in blood the Spoiler's track?
He turned him to his trustiest one,
The old and war-tried Annawon —
" Brother ! " — The favored warrior stood
In hushed and listening attitude —
" This night the Vision-Spirit hath
Unrolled the scroll of fate before me;
And ere the sunrise cometh, Death
Will wave his dusky pinion o'er me!
Nay, start not — well I know thy faith —
Thy weapon now may keep its sheath ;
But, when the bodeful morning breaks,
And the green forest widely wakes
Unto the roar of English thunder,
Then, trusted brother, be it thine
To burst upon the foeman's line,
And rend his serried strength asunder.
Perchance thyself and yet a few
Of faithful ones may struggle through,
And, rallying on the wooded plain,
Strike deep for vengeance once again,
And offer up in pale-face blood
An offering to the Indian's God."
A musket shot — a sharp, quick yell —
And then the stifled groan of pain,
Told that another red man fell, —
And blazed a sudden light again
Across that kingly brow and eve,
Like lightning on a clouded sky, —
And a low growl, like that which thrills
The hunter of the Eastern hills,
Burst through clenched teeth and rigid
lip —
And, when the great chief spoke again
His deep voice shook beneath its rein,
As wrath and grief held fellowship.
" Brother! methought when as but now
I pondered on my nation's wrong,
With sadness on his shadowy brow
My father's spirit passed along !
He pointed to the far south-west,
Where sunset's gold was growing dim,
And seemed to beckon me to him,
And to the forests of the blest ! —
My father loved the white men, when
They were but children, shelterless,
For 'his great spirit at distress
Melted to woman's tenderness —
Nor was it given him to know
That children whom he cherished then
Would rise at length, like armed men,
To work his people's overthrow.
Yet thus it is; — the God before
Whose awful shrine the pale ones bow
Hath frowned upon, and given o'er
The red man to the stranger now !
A few more moons, and there will be
No gathering to the council tree;
The scorched earth — the blackened log — •
The naked bones of warriors slain,
Be the sole relics which remain
Of the once mighty Wampanoag!
The forests of our "hunting-land,
With all their old and solemn green,
Will bow before the Spoiler's axe —
The plough displace the hunter's tracks,
And the tall prayer-house steeple stand
Where the Great Spirit's shrine hath
been !
"Yet, brother, from this awful hour
The dying curse of Metacom
Shall linger with abiding power
Upon the spoilers of my home.
The fearful veil of things to come,
By Kitchtan's hand is lifted from
The shadows of the embryo years ;
And I can see more clearly through
Than ever visioned Powwaw did,
For all the future comes unbid
Yet welcome to my tranced view,
As battle-yell to warrior-ears !
From stream and lake and hunting-hill
Our tribes may vanish like a dream,
And even my dark curse may seem
Like idle winds when Heaven is still,
No bodeful harbinger of ill ;
But, fiercer than the downright thunder,
When vawns the mountain-rock asun
der,
And riven pine and knotted oak
Are reeling to the fearful stroke,
That curse shall work its master's will !
The bed of yon blue mountain stream
Shall pour a darker tide than rain —
The sea shall catch its blood-red stain,
And broadly on its banks shall gleam
The steel of those who should be bro
thers ;
Yea, those whom one fond parent nursed
Shall meet in strife, like fiends accursed,
And trample down the once loved form,
While yet with breathing passion warm,
As fiercely as they would another's ! "
The morning star sat dimly on
The lighted eastern horizon —
The deadly glare of levelled gun
498
APPENDIX.
Came streaking through the twilight
haze
And naked to its reddest blaze,
A hundred warriors sprang in view ;
One dark red arm was tossed on high,
One giant shout came hoarsely through
The clangor and the charging cry,
Just as across the scattering gloom,
Red as the naked hand of Doom,
The English volley hurtled by —
The arm — the voice of Metacom ! —
One piercing shriek — one vengeful
yell,
Sent like an arrow to the sky,
Told when the hunter-monarch fell !
MOUNT AGIOCHOOK.i°9
GRAY searcher of the upper air,
There 's sunshine on thy ancient walls,
A crown upon thy forehead bare,
A flash upon thy waterfalls.
A rainbow glory in the cloud
Upon thine awful summit bowed,
The radiant ghost of a dead storm !
And music from the leafy shroud
Which swathes in green thy giant form,
Mellowed and softened from above
Steals downward to the lowland ear,
Sweet as the first, fond dream of love
That melts upon the maiden's ear.
The time has been, white giant, when
Thy shadows veiled the red man's
home,
And over crag and serpent den,
And wild gorge where the steps of men
In chase or battle might not come,
The mountain eagle bore on high
The emblem of the free of soul,
And, midway in the fearful sky,
Sent back the Indian battle cry,
And answered to the thunder's roll.
The wigwam fires have all burned out,
The moccasin has left no track;
Nor wolf nor panther roam about
The Saco and the Merrimac.
And thou, that liftest up on high
Thy mighty barriers to the sky,
Art not the haunted mount of old,
Where on each crag of blasted stone
Some dreadful spirit found his throne,
And hid within the thick cloud fold,
Heard only in the thunder's crash,
Seen only in the lightning's flash,
When crumbled rock and riven branch
Went down before the avalanche !
No more that spirit moveth there;
The dwellers of the vale are dead ;
| No hunter's arrow cleaves the air ;
No dry leaf rustles to his tread.
The pale-face climbs thy tallest rock,
His hands thy crystal gates unlock;
From steep to ste'ep his maidens call,
Light laughing, like the streams that fall
In music down thy rocky wall,
And only when their careless tread
Lays bare an Indian arrow-head,
Spent and forgetful of the deer,
Think of the race that perished here.
Oh, sacred to the Indian seer,
Gray altar of the men of old !
I Not vainly to the listening ear
The legends of thy past are told, —
! Tales of the downward sweeping flood,
j When bowed like reeds thy ancient wood;
Of armed hands, and spectral forms;
• Of giants in their leafy shroud,
I And voices calling long and loud
i In the dread pauses of thy storms.
: For still within their caverned home
Dwell the strange gods of heathendom!
THE DRUNKARD TO HIS BOTTLE.™'
HOOT ! — daur ye shaw ye' re face again,
Ye auld black thief o' purse an' brain?
For foul disgrace, for dool an' pain
An' shame I ban ye:
Wae 's me, that e'er my' lips have ta'en
Your kiss uncanny !
Nae mair, auld knave, without a shillin'
! To keep a starvin' wight frae stealin'
, Ye '11 sen' me hameward, blin' andreelin',
Frae nightly swagger,
By wall an' post my pathway feelin',
Wi' mony a stagger.
Nae mair o' fights that bruise an' mangle,
Nae mair o' nets my feet to tangle,
Nae mair o' senseless brawl an' wrangle,
Wi' frien' an' wife too,
' Nae mair o' deavin' din an' jangle
My feckless life through.
Ye thievin', cheatin' auld Cheap Jack,
Peddlin' your poison brose, I crack
Your banes against my ingle-back
Wi' meikle pleasure.
Deil mend ye i' his workshop black,
E'en at his leisure !
I '11 brak ye're neck, ye foul auld sinner,
I '11 spill ye're bluid, ye vile beginner
0' a' the ills an' aches that winna
Quat saul an' body !
Gie me hale breeks an' weel-spread din
ner —
Deil tak' ye're toddy !
EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES.
499
Nae mair wi' witches' broo gane gyte,
Gie me ance mair the auld delight
0' sittin' wi' my bairns in sight,
The gude wife near,
The weel-spent day, the peacefu' night,
The mornin' cheer !
Cock a' ye're heids, my bairns fu' gleg,
My winsome Robin, Je"an, an' Meg,
For food and claes ye shall na beg
A doited daddie.
Dance, auld wife, on your girl-day leg,
Ye 've foun' your laddie !
THE FAIR QUAKERESS,
SHE was a fair young girl, yet on her
brow
No pale pearl shone, a blemish on the
pure
And snowy lustre of its living light,
No radiant pern shone beautifully through
The shadowing of her tresses, as a star
Through the dark sky of midnight; and
no wreath
Of coral circled on her queenly neck,
In mockery of the glowing cheek and lip,
Whose hue the fairy guardian of the
flowers
Might never rival when her delicate touch
Tinges the rose of springtime.
Unadorned,
Save by her youthful charms, and with a
garb
Simple as Nature's self, why turn to her
The proud and gifted, and the versed in
all
The pageantry of fashion ?
She hath not
Moved down the dance to music, when the
hall
Is lighted up like sunshine, and the thrill
Of the light viol and the mellow flute,
And the deep tones of manhood, softened
down
To very music melt upon the ear. —
She has not mingled with the hollow
world
Nor tampered with its mockeries, until all
The delicate perceptions of the heart,
The innate modesty, the watchful sense
Of maiden dignity, are lost within
The maze of fashion and the din of crowds.
Yet Beauty hath its homage. Kings have
bowed
From the tall majesty of ancient thrones
With a prostrated knee, yea, cast aside
The awfulness of time-created power
For the regardful glances of a child.
Yea, the high ones and powerful of Earth,
The helmed sons of victory, the grave
And schooled philosophers, the giant men
Of overmastering intellect, have turned
Each from the separate idol of his high
And vehement ambition tor the low
Idolatry of human loveliness;
And bartered the sublimity of mind,
The godlike and commanding intellect
Which nations knelt to, for a woman's tear,
A soft-toned answer, or a wanton's smile.
And in the chastened beauty of that eye,
And in the beautiful play of that red lip,
And in the quiet smile, and in the voice
Sweet as the tuneful greeting of a bird
To the tirst flowers of springtime, there is
more
Than the perfection of the painter's skill
Or statuary's moulding. Mind is there,
The pure and holy attributes of soul,
The seal of virtue, the exceeding grace
Of meekness blended with a maiden pride ;
Nor deem ye that beneath the gentle
smile/
And the calm temper of a chastened mind
No warmth of passion kindles, and no tide
Of quick and earnest feeling courses on
From the warm heart's pulsations. There
are springs
Of deep and pure affection, hidden now,
"Within that quiet bosom, which but wait
The thrilling of some kindly touch, to flow
Like waters from the Desert-rock of old.
BOLIVAR.
I A DIRGK is wailing from the Gulf of storm-
vexed Mexico,
I To where through Pampas' solitudes the
mighty rivers flow ;
! The dark S'ierras hear the sound, and
from each mountain rift,
Where Andes and Cordilleras their awful
summits lift,
Where Cotopaxi's fiery eye glares redly
upon heaven,
And Chimborazo's shattered peak the
upper sky has riven;
From mount to mount, from wave to wave,
a wild and long lament,
j A sob that shakes like her earthquakes the
startled continent !
A light dies out, a life is sped — the hero's
at whose word
The nations started as from sleep, and
girded on the sword;
The victor of a hundred fields where
blood was poured like rain,
And Freedom's loosened avalanche hurled
down the hosts of Spain,
500
APPENDIX.
The eagle soul on Junin's slope who
showed his shouting men
A grander sight than Balboa saw from
wave-washed Darien,
As from the snows with battle red died
out the sinking sun,
And broad and vast beneath him lay a
world for freedom won.
How died that victor? In the field with
banners o'er him thrown,
With trumpets in his failing ear, by charg
ing squadrons blown,
With scattered foemen flying fast and
fearfully before him,
With shouts of triumph swelling round
and brave men bending o'eV him ?
Not on his fields of victory, nor in his coun
cil hall,
The worn and sorrowing leader heard the
inevitable call.
Alone he perished in the land he saved
from slavery's ban,
Maligned and doubted and denied, a bro
ken-hearted man !
Now let the New World's banners droop
above the fallen chief,
And let the mountaineer's dark eyes be
wet with tears of grief !
For slander's sting, for envy's hiss, for
friendship hatred grown,
Can funeral pomp, and tolling bell, and
priestly mass atone ?
Better to leave unmounted the dead than
wrong men while they live ;
What if the strong man failed or erred,
could not his own forgive ?
O people freed by him, repent above your
hero's bier:
The sole resource of late remorse is now
his tomb to rear !
ISABELLA OF AUSTRIAN
'MiDST the palace bowers of Hungary, im
perial Presburg's pride,
With the noble born and beautiful as
sembled at her side,
She stood beneath the summer heavens,
the soft wind sighing on,
Stirring the green and arching boughs like
dancers in the sun.
The beautiful pomegranate flower, the
snowy orange bloom,
The lotus and the trailing vine, the rose's
meek perfume,
The willow crossing with its green some
statue's marble hair,
All that might charm the fresh }roung
sense, or light the soul, was there !
But she, a monarch's treasured one, leaned
gloomily apart,
With her dark eyes tearfully cast down
and a shadow on her heart.
Young, beautiful, and dearly loved, what
sorrow hath she knowVi ?
Are not the hearts and swords of all held
sacred as her own ?
Is not her lord the kingliest in battle-field
or tower ?
The wisest in the council-hall, the gayest
in the bower?
Is not his love as full and deep as his own
Danube's tide ?
And wherefore in her princely home weeps
Isabel, his bride ?
She raised her jewelled hand, and flung
her veiling tresses back,
Bathing its snowy tapering within their
glossy black.
A tear fell on the orange leaves, rich gem
and mimic blossom,
And fringed robe shook fearfully upon
her sighing bosom.
" Smile on, smile on," she murmured low,
" for all is joy around,
Shadow and sunshine, stainless sky, soft
airs, and blossomed ground.
'T is meet the light of heart should smile,
when nature's smile is fair,
And melody and fragrance meet, twin sis
ters of the air.
u But ask me not to share with you the
beauty of the scene,
The fountain-fall, mosaic walk, and
breadths of tender green ;
And point not to the mild blue sky, or
glorious summer sun,
I know how very fair is all the hand of
God has done.
The hills, the sky, the sunlit cloud, the
waters leaping forth,
The swaying trees, the scented flowers, the
dark green robes of earth, —
I love them well, but I have learned to
turn aside them all,
And nevermore my heart must own their
sweet but fatal thrall.
" And I could love the noble one whose
might}7 name I bear,
And closer to my breaking heart his
princely image wear,
And I could love our sweet young flower,
unfolding day by day,
And taste of that unearthly joy which
mothers only may, —
But what am I to cling to these? — A
voice is in my ear,
A shadow lingers at my side, the death-
wail and the bier !
EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES.
501
The cold and starless night of Death where
day may never beam,
The silence and forgetful ness, the sleep
that hath no dream !
U0 God, to leave this fair bright world,
and more than all to know
The moment when the Spectral One shall
strike his fearful blow;
To know the day, the very hour, to feel
the tide roll on,
To shudder at the gloom before and weep
the sunshine gone;
To count the days, the few short days, of
light and love and breath
Between me and the noisome grave, the
voiceless home of death !
Alas ! — if feeling, knowing this, I mur
mur at my doom,
Let not thy frowning, O my God ! lend
darkness to the tomb.
U0h, I have borne my spirit up, and
smiled amidst the chill
Remembrance of my certain doom which
lingers with me still;
I would not cloud my fair child's brow,
nor let a tear-drop dim
The eye that met my wedded lord's, lest
it should sadden him ;
But there are moments when the strength
of feeling must have way;
That hidden tide of unnamed woe nor fear
nor love can stay.
Smile on, smile on, fight-hearted ones!
Your sun of joy is high :
Smile on, and leave the doomed of Heaven
alone to weep and die ! "
A funeral chant was wailing through Vi
enna's holy pile,
A coffin with its gorgeous pall was borne
along the aisle;
The drooping flags of many lands waved
slow above the dead,
A mighty band of mourners came, a king
wrs at its head, —
A youthful king, with mournful tread, and
dim and tearful eye;
He scarce had dreamed that one so pure
as his fair bride could die.
And sad and long above the throng the
funeral anthem rung:
"Mourn for the hope of Austria! Mourn
for the loved and young ! "
The wail went up from other lands, the
valleys of the Hun,
Fair Parma with its orange bowers, and
hills of vine and sun:
The lilies of imperial France drooped as
the sound went by,
The long lament of cloistered Spain was
mingled with the cry.
The dwellers in Colorno's halls, the Slowak
at his cave,
The bowed at the Escurial, the Magyar
stoutly brave,
All wept the early stricken flower; and
still the anthem rung:
"Mourn for the hope of Austria! Mourn
for the loved and young! "
THE FRATRICIDE.
HE stood on the brow of the well-known
hill,
Its few gray oaks moan'd over him still;
The last of that forest which cast the gloom
Of its shadow at eve o'er his childhood's
home ;
And the beautiful valley beneath him lay
With its quivering leaves, and its streams
at play,
And the sunshine over it all the while
Like the golden shower of the Eastern isle.
He knew the rock with its fingering vine,
And its gray top touch'd by the slant sun
shine",
And the delicate stream which crept be
neath
Soft as the flow of an infant's breath ;
And the flowers which lean'd to the West
wind's sigh,
Kissing each ripple which glided by;
And he knew every valley and wooded
swell,
For the visions of childhood are treasured
well.
Why shook the old man as his eye glanced
down
That narrow ravine where the rude cliffs
frown,
With their shaggy brows and their teeth
of stone,
And their grim shade back from the sun
light thrown?
What saw he there save the dreary glen,
Where the shy fox crept from the eye of
men,
And the great owl sat on the leafy limb
That the hateful sun might not look on
him V
Fix'd, glassy, and strange was that old
man's eye,
As if a spectre were stealing by>
And glared it still on that narrow dell
Where thicker and browner the twilight
fell;
Yet at every sigh of the fitful wind,
Or stirring of leaves in the wood behind,
502
APPENDIX.
His wild glance wander'd the landscape
o'er,
Then fix'd on that desolate dell once more.
Oh, who shall tell of the thoughts which
ran
Through the dizzied brain of that gray
old man?
His childhood's home, and his father's toil,
And his sister's kiss, and his mother's
smile,
A.nd his brother's laughter and gamesome
mirth,
At the village school and the winter hearth ;
The beautiful thoughts of his early time,
Ere his heart grew dark with its later
crime.
And darker and wilder his visions came
Of the deadly feud and the midnight
flame,
Of the Indian's knife with its slaughter red,
Of the ghastly forms of the scalpless dead,
Of his own "fierce deeds in that fearful
hour
When the terrible Brandt was forth in
power,
And he clasp'd his hands o'er his burning
eye
To shadow the vision which glided by.
It came with the rush of the battle-storm —
With a brother's shaken and kneeling
form,
And his prayer for life when a brother's
arm
Was lifted above him for mortal harm,
And the fiendish curse, and the groan of
death,
And the welling of blood, and the gur
gling breatli,
And the scalp torn off while each nerve
could feel
The wrenching hand and the jagged steel !
And the old man groan'd — for he saw,
again,
The mangled corse of his kinsman slain,
As it lay where his hand had hurl'd it
then,
At the shadow'd foot of that fearful glen !
And it rose erect, with the death-pang
grim,
And pointed its bloodied finger at him!
And his heart grew cold — and the curse
of Cain
Burn'd like a fire in the old man's brain.
Oh, had he not seen that spectre rise
On the blue of the cold Canadian skies?
From the lakes which sleep in the ancient
wood,
It had risen to whisper its tale of blood,
And follow'd his bark to the sombre shore,
And glared by night through the wigwam
door;
And here, on his own familiar hill,
It rose on his haunted vision still !
Whose corse was that which the morrow's
sun,
Through the opening boughs, look'd
calmly on?
There were those who bent o'er that rigid
face
Who well in its darken'd lines might trace
The features of him who, a traitor, fled
From a brother whose blood himself had
shed,
And there, on the spot where he strangely
died,
They made the grave of the Fratricide !
ISABEL.
I no not love thee, Isabel, and yet thou
art most fair!
I know the tempting of thy lips, the witch
craft of thy hair.
The winsome smile that might beguile the
shy bird from his tree ;
But from their spell I know so well, I shake
my manhood free.
I might have loved thee, Isabel ; I know
I should if aught
Of all thy words and ways had told of one
unselfish thought;
If through the cloud of fashion, the pic
tured veil of art,
One casual flash had broken warm, ear
nest from the heart.
But words are idle, Isabel, and if I praise
or blame,
Or cheer or warn, it matters not; thy life
will be the same;
Still free to use, and still abuse, unmind
ful of the harm,
The fatal gift of beauty, the power to
choose and charm/
Then go thy way, fair Isabel, nor heed
that from thy train
A doubtful follower falls away, enough
will still remain.
But what the long-rebuking years may
bring to them or thee
No prophet and no prophet's son am I to
guess or see.
I do not love thee, Isabel ; I would as soon
put on
A crown of slender frost-work beneath
the heated sun,
EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES.
503
Or chase the winds of summer, or trust
the sleeping sea,
Or lean upon a shadow as think of loving
thee.
STANZAS.
BIND up thy tresses, thou beautiful one,
Of brown in the shadow and gold in the
sun !
Free should their delicate lustre be thrown
O'er a forehead more pure than the Parian
stone;
Shaming the light of those Orient pearls
Which bind o'er its whiteness thy soft
wreathing curls.
Smile, for thy glance on the mirror is
thrown,
And the face of an angel is meeting thine
own !
Beautiful creature, I marvel not
That thy cheek a lovelier tint hath caught;
And the kindling light of thine eye hath
told
Of a dearer wealth than the miser's gold.
Away, away, there is danger here !
A terrible phantom is bending near:
Ghastly and sunken, his rayless eye
Scowls on thy loveliness scornfully,
With no human look, with no human
breath,
He stands beside thee, the haunter, Death !
Fly! but, alas! he will follow still,
Like a moonlight shadow, beyond thv
will;
In thy noonday walk, in thy midnight
'sleep,
Close at thy hand will that phantom keep;
Still in thine ear shall his whispers be;
Woe, that such phantom should follow
thee!
In the lighted hall where the dancers go,
Like beautiful spirits, to and fro;
When thy fair arms glance in their stain
less white,
Like ivory bathed in still moonlight
And not one star in the holy sky
Hath a clearer light than thine own blue
eye !
Oh, then, even then, he will follow thee,
As the ripple follows the bark at sea;
In the soften'd light, in the turning dance,
He will fix on thine his dead, cold glance;
The chill of his breath on thy cheek shall
linger,
And thy warm blood shrink from his icy
finger !
And yet there is hope. Embrace it now,
While thy soul is open as thy brow;
While thy heart is fresh, while its feel
ings still
Gush clear as the unsoil'd mountain-rill;
And thy smiles are free as the airs of
spring,
Greeting and blessing each breathing
thing.
When the after cares of thy life shall
come,
When the bud shall wither before its
bloom ;
When thy soul is sick of the emptiness
And changeful fashion of human bliss;
When the weary torpor of blighted feel
ing
Over thy heart as ice is stealing;
Then, when thy spirit is turn'd above,
By the mild rebuke of the Chastener's
love;
When the hope of that joy in thy heart is
stirr'd,
Which eye hath not seen, nor ear hath
heard,
Then will that phantom of darkness be
Gladness, and promise, and bliss to thee.
THE PAST AND COMING YEAR.
WAVE of an awful torrent, thronging
down,
With all the wealth of centuries, and the
cold
Embraces of eternity, o'erstrown
With the great wrecks of empire, and the
old
Magnificence of nations, who are gone;
Thy last, faint murmur — thy departing
sigh,
Along the shore of beingj like a tone
Thrilling on broken harp-strings, or the
swell
Of the chained winds' last whisper, hath
gone by,
And thou hast floated from the world of
breath
To the still guidance of overmastering
Death,
Thy pilot to eternity. Farewell !
Go, swell the throngful past. Go, blend
with all
The garnered things of Death ; and bear
with thee
The treasures of thy pilgrimage, the tall
And beautiful dreams of Hope, the minis
try
Of Love and high Ambition. Man re
mains
504
APPENDIX.
To dream again as idly ; and the stains
Of passion will be visible once more.
The winged spirit will not be confined
By the experience of thy journey. Mind
Will struggle in its prison-house, and
still,
With Earth's strong fetters binding it to
ill,
Unfurl the pinions fitted but to soar
In that pure atmosphere, where spirits
range —
The home of high existences — where
change
And blighting may not enter. Love again
Will bloom, a fickle flower, upon the
grave
Of old affections ; and Ambition wave
His eagle-plume most proudly, for the
rein
Of Conscience will be loosened from the
soul
To give his purpose freedom. The con
trol
Of reason will be changeful, and the ties
Which gather hearts together, and make
up
The romance of existence, will be rent:
Yea, poison will be poured in Friendship's
cup;
And for Earth's low familiar element,
Even Love itself forsake its kindred skies.
But not alone dark visions ! happier things
Will float above existence, like the wings
Of the starred bird of paradise; and Love
Will not be all a dream, or rather prove
A dream — a sweet forgetfulness — that
hath
No wakeful changes, ending but in Death.
Yea, pure hearts shall be pledged beneath
the eyes
Of the beholding heaven, and in the light :
Of the love-hallowed moon. The quiet I
Night
Shall hear that language underneath the
skies
Which whispereth above them, as the
prayer
And the deep vow are spoken. Passing
fair
And gifted creatures, with the light of
truth
And undebarred affection, as a crown,
Resting upon the beautiful brow of youth,
Shall smile on stately manhood, kneeling
down
Before them, as to Idols. Friendship's
hand
Shall clasp its brothers; and Affection's
tear
Be sanctified with sympathy. The bier
Of stricken love shall lose the fears, which
Death
Giveth his awful work, and earnest Faith
Shall look beyond the shadow of the clav,
The pulseless sepulchre, the cold decay;
And to the quiet of the spirit-land
Follow the mourned and lovely. Gifted
ones
Lighting the Heaven of Intellect, like
suns,
Shall wrestle well with circumstance, and
bear
The agony of scorn, the preying care,
Wedded to burning bosoms; and go down
In sorrow to the noteless sepulchre,
With one lone hope embracing like a
crown
The cold and death-like forehead of De
spair,
That after times shall treasure up their
fame
E%-en as a proud inheritance and high ;
And beautiful beings love to breathe their
name
With the recorded things that never die.
And thou, gray voyager to the breeze-
less sea
Of infinite Oblivion — speed thou on ;
Another gift of time succeedeth thee
Fresh from the hand of God; for thou
hast done
The errand of thy destin}' : and none
May dream of thy returning. Go, and
bear
Mortality's frail records to thy cold,
Eternal prison-house; the midnight prayer
Of suffering bosoms, and the fevered care
Of worldly hearts; the miser's dream of
gold;
Ambition's grasp at greatness ; the
quenched light
Of broken spirits ; the forgiven wrong
And the abiding curse — ay, bear along
These wrecks of thy own making. Lo,
thy knell
Gathers upon the windy breath of night,
Its last and faintest * echo. Fare thee
well !
THE MISSIONARY.*^
" SAY, whose is this fair picture, which
the light
From the unshutter'd window rests upon
Even as a lingering halo ? Beautiful !
The keen, fine eye of manhood, and a lip
Lovely as that of Hylas, and impressed
With the bright signet of some brillianf
thought;
That broad expanse of forehead, clear and
high,
Marked visibly with the characters of
mind,
EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED VERSES.
505
And the free locks around it, raven black,
Luxuriant and unsilver'd ! — who was
he?"
A friend, a more than brother. In the
spring
And glory of his being he went forth
From the' embraces of devoted friends,
From ease and quiet happiness, from
more —
From the warm heart that loved him with
a love
Holier than earthly passion, and to whom
The beauty of his spirit shone above
The charms of perishing nature. He went
forth
Strengthened to suffer, gifted to subdue
The might of human passion, to pass on
Quietly to the sacrifice of all
The lofty hopes of boyhood, and to turn
The high ambition written on that brow,
From its first dream of power and human
fame,
Unto a task of seeming lowliness,
Yet God-like in its purpose. He went
forth
To bind the broken spirit, to pluck back
The heathen from the wheel of Jugger
naut;
To place the spiritual image of a God
Holy and just and true, before the eye
Of the dark-minded Brahmin, and unseal
The holy pages of the Book of Life,
Fraught with sublimer mysteries than all
The sacred tomes of Vedas, to unbind
The widow from her sacrifice, and save
The perishing infant from the worshipped
river !
" And, ladv, where is he ? " He slumbers
welf
Beneath the shadow of an Indian palm.
There is no stone above his grave. The
wind,
Hot from the desert, as it stirs the leaves
Heavy and long above him, sighs alone
Over his place of slumber.
" God forbid
That he should die alone!" Nay, not
alone.
His God was with him in that last dread
hour;
His great arm underneath him, and His
smile
Melting into a spirit full of peace.
And one kind friend, a human friend, was
near —
One whom his teachings and his earnest
prayers
Had snatch' d as from the burning. He
alone
Felt the last pressui'e of his failing hand,
Caught the last glimpse of his closing eye,
And laid the green turf over him with
tears,
And left him with his God.
"And was it well,
Dear lady, that this noble mind should
cast
Its rich gifts on the waters ? That a heart
Full of all gentleness and truth and love
Should wither on the suicidal shrine
Of a mistaken duty ? If I read
Aright the fine intelligence which fills
That amplitude of brow, and gazes out
Like an indwelling spirit from that eye,
He might have borne him loftily among
The proudest of his land, and with a step
Unfaltering ever, steadfast and secure,
Gone up the paths of greatness, — bearing
still
A sister spirit with him, as some star,
Preeminent in Heaven, leads steadily up
A kindred watcher, with its fainter beams
Baptized in its great glory. Was it well
That all this promise of the heart and
mind
Should perish from the earth, and leave
no trace,
Unfolding like the Cereus of the clime
Which hath its sepulchre, but in the night
Of pagan desolation — was it well ? "
Thy will be done, O Father!— it was
well.
What are the honors of a perishing world
Grasp'd by a palsied finger ? the applause
Of the unthoughtful multitude which
greets
The dull ear of decay ? the wealth that
loads
The bier with costly drapery, and shines
In tinsel on the coffin, and builds up
The cold substantial monument? Can
these
Bpar up the sinking spirit in that hour
When heart and flesh are failing, and the
grave
Is opening under us ? Oh, dearer then
The memory of a kind deed done to him
Who was our enemy, one grateful tear
In the meek eye of virtuous suffering,
One smile call'd up by unseen charity
On the wan lips of hunger, or one prayer
Breathed from the bosom of the peni
tent —
The stain'd with crime and outcast, unto
whom
Our mild rebuke and tenderness of love
A merciful God hath bless'd.
"But, lady, say,
Did he not sometimes almost sink beneath
The burden of his toil, and turn aside
506
APPENDIX.
To weep above his sacrifice, and cast
A sorrowing glance upon his childhood's
home,
Still green in memory ? Clung not to his
heart
Something of earthly hope uncrucified,
Of earthly thought unchastened ? Did he
bring
Life's warm affections to the sacrifice —
Its loves, hopes, sorrows — and become as
one
Knowing no kindred but a perishing world,
No love but of the sin-endangered soul,
No hnpe but of the winning back to life
Of the dead nations, and no passing
thought
Save of the errand wherewith he was sent
As to a martyrdom ? "
Nay, though the heart
Be consecrated to the holiest work
Vouchsafed to mortal effort, there will be
Ties of the earth around it, and, through all
Its perilous devotion, it must keep
Its own humanity. And it is well.
Else why wept He, who with our nature
veiled
The spirit of a God, o'er lost Jerusalem
And the cold grave of Lazarus? And why
In the dim garden rose his earnest prayer,
That from his lips the cup of suffering
Might pass, if it were possible ?
My friend
Was of a gentle nature, and his heart
Gushed like a river-fountain of the hills,
Ceaseless and lavish, at a kindly smile,
A word of welcome, or a tone of love.
Freely his letters to his friends disclosed
His yearnings for the quiet haunts of home,
For love and its companionship, and all
The blessings left behind him ; yet above
Its sorrows and its clouds his spirit rose,
Tearful and yet triumphant, taking hold
Of the eternal promises of God,
And steadfast in its faith.
Here are some lines
Penned in his lonely mission-house and
sent
To a dear friend at home who even now
Lingers above them with a mournful joy,
Holding them well-nigh sacred as a leaf
Plucked from the record of a breaking
heart.
EVENING IN BURMAH.
A night of wonder! piled afar
With ebon feet and crests of snow,
Like Himalaya's peaks, which bar
The sunset and the sunset's star
From half the shadowed vale below,
Volumed and vast the dense clouds lie,
And over them, and down the sky,
Paled in the moon, the lightnings go.
And what a strength of light and shade
Is chequering all the earth below!
And, through the jungle's verdant braid,
Of tangled vine and wild reed made,
What blossoms in the moonlight glow !
The Indian rose's loveliness,
The ceiba with its crimson dress,
The twining myrtle dropped with snow.
And flitting in the fragrant air,
Or nestling in the shadowy trees,
A thousand bright-hued birds are there —
Strange plumage, quivering wild and
rare,'
With every faintly breathing breeze;
; And, wet with dew from roses shed,
I The bulbul droops her weary head,
Forgetful of her melodies.
Uprising from the orange-leaves,
The tall pagoda's turrets glow;
O'er graceful shaft and fretted eaves,
Its verdant web the myrtle weaves,
And hangs in flowering wreaths below;
i And where the clustered palms eclipse
I The moonbeams, from its marble lips
The fountain's silver waters flow.
] Strange beauty fills the earth and air,
The fragrant grove and flowering tree,
! And yet my thoughts are wandering where
My nativeVocks lie bleak and bare,
A weanr way beyond the sea.
: The yearning spirit is not here;
It lingers on a spot more dear
Than India's brightest bowers to me.
i Methinks I tread the well-known street —
The tree my childhood loved is there,
Its bare-worn roots are at my feet,
And through its open boughs I meet
White glimpses of the place of prayer;
And unforgotten eyes again
Are glancing through the cottage pane,
Than Asia's lustrous eyes more fair.
Oh, holv haunts! oh, childhood's home!
Where, now, my wandering heart, is
thine?
Here, where the dusky heathen come
To bow before the deaf and dumb,
Dead idols of their own design;
Where in their worshipped river's tide
The infant sinks, and on its side
The wiuow's funeral altars shine !
Here, where, mid light and song and
flowers,
The priceless soul in ruin lies-,
POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE OF WHITTIER."
507
Lost, dead to all those better powers
Which link this fallen world of ours
To God's clear-shining Paradise;
And wrong and shame and hideous crime
Are like the foliage of their clime,
The unshorn growth of centuries!
Turn, then, my heart; thy home is here;
No other now remains for thee:
The smile of love, and friendship's tear,
The tones that melted on thine ear,
The mutual thrill of sympathy,
The welcome of the household band,
The pressure of the lip and hand,
Thou mayest not hear, nor feel, nor
see.
God of my spirit ! Thou, alone,
Who watchest o'er my pillowed head,
Whose ear is open to the moan
And sorrowing of thy child, hast known
The grief which at my heart has fed ;
The struggle of my soul to rise
Above its earth-born sympathies;
The tears of many a sleepless bed !
Oh! be Thine arm, as it hath been,
In every test of heart and faith, —
The tempter's doubt, the wiles of men,
The heathen's scoff, the bosom sin,
A helper and a stay beneath;
A strength in weakness, through the
strife
And anguish of my wasting life —
My solace and my hope, in death !
MASSACHUSETTS.113
AND have they spurned thy word,
Thou of the old Thirteen !
Whose soil, where Freedom's blood first
poured,
Hath yet a darker green ?
To outworn patience suffering long
Is insult added to the wrong ?
And have they closed thy mouth,
And fixed the padlock fast?
Dumb as the black slave of the South !
Is this thy fate at last?
Oh shame! thy honored seal and sign
Trod under hoofs so asinine!
Call from the Capitol
Thy chosen ones again,
Unmeet for them the base control
Of Slavery's curbing rein !
Unmeet for men like them to feel
The spurring of a rider's heel.
When votes are things of trade
And force is argument,
Call back to Quincy's shade
Thy old man eloquent.
Why leave him longer striving thus
With the wild beasts of Ephesus !
Back from the Capitol —
It is no place for thee !
Beneath the arch of Heaven's blue wall,
Thy voice may still be free !
What power shall chain thy utterance
there,
In God's free sun and freer air?
A voice is calling thee,
From all the martyr graves
Of those stern men, in death made free,
Who could not live as slaves.
The slumberings of thy honored dead
Are for thy sake disquieted.
So let thy Faneuil Hall
By freemen's feet be trod,
And give the echoes of its wall
Once more to Freedom's God !
And in the midst unseen shall stand
The mighty fathers of thy land.
Thy gathered sons shall feel
The soul of Adams near,
And Otis with his fiery zeal,
And Warren's onward cheer;
And heart to heart shall thrill as when
They moved and spake as living men.
Not on Potomac's side,
With treason in thy rear,
Can Freedom's holy cause be tried:
Not there, my State, but here.
Here must thy ne'eded work be done,
The battle at "thy hearth-stone won.
Proclaim a new crusade
Against the foes within;
From bar and pulpit, press and trade,
Cast out the shame and sin.
Then speak thy now-unheeded word,
Its lightest whisper shall be heard.
II. POEMS PRINTED IN THE
"LIFE OF WHITTIER."
THE HOME-COMING OF THE
BRIDE.11*
SARAH GRKENLEAF, of eighteen years,
Stepped lightly her bridegroom's boat
within,
Waving mid-river, through smiles and
tears,
A farewell back to her kith and kin.
With her sweet blue eyes and her new
gold gown,
508
APPENDIX.
She sat by her stalwart lover's side —
Oh, never was brought to Haverhill town
By land or water so fair a bride.
Glad as the glad autumnal weather,
The Indian summer so soft and warm,
They walked through the golden woods
together,
His arm the girdle about her form.
They passed the dam and the gray grist
mill,
Whose walls with the jar of grinding
shook,
And crossed, for the moment awed and
still,
The haunted bridge of the Country
Brook.
The great oaks seemed on Job's Hill crown
To wave in welcome their branches
strong,
And an upland streamlet came rippling
down
Over root and rock, like a bridal song.
And lo ! in the midst of a clearing stood
The rough-built farmhouse, low and
lone,
While all about it the unhewn "wood
Seemed drawing closer to claim its own.
But the red apples dropped from orchard
trees,
The red cock crowed on the low fence
rail,
From the garden hives came the sound of
bees,
On the barn floor pealed the smiting
flail.
THE SONG OF THE VERMONTERS,
Ho — all to the borders ! Vermonters,
come down,
With your breeches of deerskin and jack
ets of brown ;
With your red woollen caps, and your
moccasins, come,
To the gathering summons of trumpet and
drum.
Come down with your rifles! Let gray
wolf and fox
Howl on in the shade of their primitive
rocks ;
Let the bear feed securely from pig-pen
and stall;
Here 's two-legged game for your powder
and ball.
On our south came the Dutchmen, envel
oped in grease;
! And arming for battle while canting of
peace ; %
On our east, crafty Meshech has gathered
his band
To hang up our leaders and eat up our
land.
! Ho — all to the rescue ! For Satan shall
work
j No gain for his legions of Hampshire and
York !
They claim our possessions — the pitiful
knaves —
The tribute we pay shall be prisons and
graves !
Let Clinton and Ten Broek, with bribes
in their hands,
Still seek to divide and parcel our lands;
We ' ve coats for our traitors, whoever they
are;
The warp is of feathers — the filling of
tar:
Does the "old Bay State" threaten?
Does Congress complain?
Swarms Hampshire in arms on our borders
again ?
Bark the war-dogs of Britain aloud on the
lake —
Let 'em come; what they can they are
welcome to take.
What seek they among us ? The pride of
our wealth
Is comfort, contentment, and labor, and
health,
And lands which, as Freemen, we only
have trod,
Independent of all, save the mercies of
God.
! Yet we owe no allegiance, we bow to no
throne,
Our ruler is law, and the law is our own;
Our leaders themselves are our own fel
low-men,
Who can handle the sword, or the scythe,
or the pen.
Our wives are all true, and our daughters
are fair,
With their blue eyes of smiles and their
light flowing hair,
All brisk at their wheels till the dark
even-fall,
Then blithe at the sleigh-ride, the husking,
and ball!
I
We 've sheep on the hillsides, we 've cows
on the plain,
And gay-tasselled corn-lields and rank'
growing grain ;
POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE OF WHITTIER.'
509
There are deer on the mountains, and
wood-pigeons fly
From the crack of 'our muskets, like
clouds on the sky.
And there 's fish in our streamlets and
rivers which take
Their course from the hills to our broad-
bosomed lake ;
Through rock-arched Winooski the sal
mon leaps free,
And the portly shad follows all fresh
from the sea.
Like a sunbeam the pickerel glides through
the pool, ,
And the spotted trout sleeps where the
water is cool,
Or darts from his shelter of rock and of
root
At the beaver's quick plunge, or the
angler's pursuit.
And ours are the mountains, which aw
fully rise,
Till they "rest their green heads on the
blue of the skies;
And ours are the forests unwasted, un
shorn,
Save where the Avild path of the tempest
is torn.
And though savage and wild be this cli
mate of ours,
And brief be our season of fruits and of
flowers,
Far dearer the blast round our mountains
which raves,
Than the sweet summer zephyr which
breathes over slaves !
Hurrah for Vermont ! For the land which
we till
Must have sons to defend her from valley
and hill;
Leave the harvest to rot on the fields
where it grows,
And the reaping of wheat for the reaping
of foes.
From far Michiscom's wild valley, to
where
Poosoonsuck steals down from his wood-
circled lair,
From Shocticook River to Lutterlock
town —
Ho — all to the rescue ! Vermonters,
come down !
Come York or come Hampshire, come
traitors or knaves,
If ye rule o'er our land, ye shall rule o'er
our graves ;
Our vow is recorded — our banner un
furled,
In the name of Vermont we def}' all the
world !
TO A POETICAL TRIO IN THE
CITY OF GOTHAM. H6
" Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl."
BARDS of the island city ! — where of old
The Dutchman smoked beneath his fa
vorite tree,
And the wild eves of Indian hunters
rolled
On Hudson plunging in the Tappaan
Zee,
Scene of Stuyvesant's might and chivalry,
And Knickerbocker's tame, — I have
made bold
To come before ye, at the present time,
And reason with ye in the way of rhyme.
Time was when poets kept the quiet tenor
Of their green pathway through th'
Arcadian vale, —
Chiming their music in the low sweet
manner
Of song-birds warbling to the " Soft
South " gale ;
Wooing the Muse where gentle zephyrs
fan her,
Where all is peace and earth may not
assail ;
Telling of lutes and flowers, of love and
fear,
Of shepherds, sheep and lambs, and "such
small deer."
But ye ! lost recreants — straying from
the green
And pleasant vista of your early time,
With broken lutes and cfownless skulls —
are seen
Spattering your neighbors with abhor
rent slime
Of the low world's pollution ! 1 Ye have
been
So long apostates from the Heaven of
rhyme,
That of the Muses,every mother's daughter
Blushes to own such graceless bards e'er
sought her.
" Hurrah for Jackson ! " is the music
now
Which your cracked lutes have learned
alone to utter,
1 Editors of the Mercantile Advertiser and
the Ecenins; Poxt in New York, — the present
organs of Jacksonism.
510
APPENDIX.
As, crouching in Corruption's shadow low,
Ye dailv sweep them for vour bread and
batter,!
Cheered by the applauses of the friends
who show
Their heads above the offal of the gut
ter,
A-nd, like the trees which Orpheus moved
at will,
Reel, as in token of your matchless skill!
Thou son of Scotia !2 — nursed beside the
grave
Of the proud peasant-minstrel, and to I
whom
The wild muse of thy mountain-dwelling
gave
A portion of its spirit, — if the tomb
Could burst its silence, o'er the Atlantic's
wave,
To thee his voice of stern rebuke would j
come,
Who dared to waken with a master's
hand
The lyre of freedom in a fettered land.
And thou ! — once treading firmly the
proud deck
O'er which thy country's honored flag
was sleeping,
Calmly in peace, or to the hostile beck
Of coming foes in starry splendor sweep
ing, —
Thv graphic tales of battle or of wreck,
Or lone night-watch in middle ocean
keeping,
Have made thy "Leisure Hours" more i
prized by far
Than those now spent in Party's wordy !
war. 3
And last, not least, thou ! — now nurtured
in the land
Where thy bold-hearted fathers long
ago
Rocked Freedom's cradle, till its infant
hand
Strangled the serpent fierceness of its i
foe, —
Thou, whose clear brow in early time was j
fanned
By the soft airs which from Castalia
flow! 4 —
Where art thou now ? feeding with hick
ory ladle
The curs of Faction with thy daily twad
dle!
Men have looked up to thee, as one to be
A portion of our glory ; and the light
And fairy hands of woman beckoned thee
On to thy laurel guerdon; and those
bright
And gifted spirits, whom the broad blue
sea
Hath shut from thy communion, bid
thee, " Write,"
Like John of Patmos. Is all this forgotten,
For Yankee brawls and Carolina cotton V
Are autumn's rainbow hues no longer
seen?
Flows the "Green River" through its
vale no more V
Steals not thy " Rivulet " by its banks of
green '?
Wheels upward from its dark and sedgy
shore
Thy "Water Fowl" no longer ? — that
the mean
And vulgar strife, the ranting and the
roar
Extempore, like Bottom's should be
thine, —
Thou feeblest truck-horse in the Hero's
line!
Lost trio ! — turn ye to the minstrel pride
Of classic Britain. Even effeminate
Moore
Has cast the wine-cup and the lute aside
For Erin and O'Connell ; and before
His country's altar, Bulwer breasts the
tide
Of old oppression. Sadly brooding o'er
The fate of heroes struggling to be free,
Even Campbell speaks for Poland . Where
are ye ?
Hirelings of traitors ! — know ye not that
men
Are rousing up around ye to retrieve
Our country's honor, which too long has
been
Debased by those for whom ye daily
weave
1 Perhaps, after 'all, they get something bet
ter ; inasmuch as the Heroites have for some
time had exclusive possession of the Hall of
St. Tammany, and we have the authority of
Halleck that
" There 's a barrel of porter in Tammany hall
And the Bucktails are swigging it all the night long."
2 James Lawson, Esq., of the Mercantile. A
fine, warmhearted Scotchman, who, having un
fortunately blundered into Jacksonism, is
wondering " how i' the Deil's name " he got
there. He is the author of a volume entitled
! Tales and Sketches, and of the tragedy of
'• Giordano.
3 William Leggett, Esq., of the Post, a gen
tleman of good talents, favorably known as the
j editor of the New York Critic, etc.
4 William 0. Bryant, Esq., well known to
the public at large as a poet of acknowledged
I excellence ; and as a very dull editor to the
! people of New York.
POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE OF WHITTIER."
511
Your web of fustian ; that from tongue
and pen
Of those who o'er our tarnished honor
grieve,
Of the pure-hearted and the gifted, come
Hourly the tokens of your master's doom ?
Turn from their ruin ! Dash your chains
aside !
Stand up like men for Libert}' and Law,
And free opinion. Check Corruption's
pride,
Soothe the loud storm of fratricidal
war, —
And the bright honors of your eventide
Shall share the glory which your morn
ing saw;
The patriot's heart shall gladden at your
name,
Ye shall be blessed with, and not " damned
to fame " !
ALBUM VERSES. I"
PARDON a stranger hand that gives
Its impress to these gilded leaves.
As one who graves in idle mood
An idler's name on rock or wood,
So in a careless hour I claim
A page to leave my humble name.
Accept it; and when o'er my head
A Pennsylvanian sky is spread,
And but in dreams my eye looks back
On broad and lovely Merrimac,
And on my ear no longer breaks
The murmuring music which it makes,
When but in dreams J look again
On Salisbury beach — Grasshopper
plain —
Or Powow stream — or Amesbury mills,
Or old Crane neck, or Pipestave hills,
Think of me then as one who keeps,
Where Delaware's broad current sweeps,
And down its rugged limestone-bed
The Schuylkill's arrowy flight is sped,
Deep in his heart the scenes which grace
And glorify his " native place ; "
Loves every spot to childhood dear,
And leaves his heart " untravelled "
here;
Longs, midst the Dutchman's kraut and
greens,
For pumpkin-pie and pork and beans,
And sighs to think when, sweetly near,
The soft piano greets his ear,
That the fair hands which, small and
white,
Glance on its ivory polished light,
Have ne'er an Indian pudding made,
Nor fashioned rye and Indian bread.
And oh! where'er his footsteps turn,
Whatever stars above him burn,
Though dwelling where a Yankee's name
Is coupled with reproach or shame,
Still true to his New England birth,
Still faithful to his home and hearth,
Even 'midst the scornful stranger band
His boast shall be of YANKEE LAND.
WHAT STATE STREET SAID TO
SOUTH CAROLINA, AND WHAT
SOUTH CAROLINA SAID TO
STATE STREET."?
MUTTERING "fine upland staple," " prime
Sea Island finer,"
With cotton bales pictured on either re
tina,
"Your pardon!" said State Street to
South Carolina;
" We feel and acknowledge your laws are
diviner
Than any promulgated by the thunders of
Sinai !
Sorely pricked in the sensitive conscience
of business
We own and repent of our sins of remiss-
ness:
Our honor we 've yielded, our words we
have swallowed :
And quenching the lights which our fore
fathers followed,
And turning from graves by their memo
ries hallowed,
With teeth on ball-cartridge, and finger
on trigger,
Reversed Boston Notions, and sent back
a nigger ! "
"Get away!" cried the Chivalry, busy
a-drumming,
And fifing and drilling, and such Quattle-
bumming;
u With your April-fool slave hunt ! Just
wait till December
i Shall see your new Senator stalk through
the" Chamber,
i And Puritan heresy prove neither dumb
nor
Blind in that pestilent Anakim. Sumner ! "
A FREMONT CAMPAIGN SONG.
SOUND now the trumpet warningly !
The storm is rolling nearer,
The hour is striking clearer,
In the dusk}' dome of sky.
If dark and wild the morning be,
A darker morn before us
Shall fling its shadows o'er us
If we let the hour go by.
Sound we then the trumpet chorus !
Sound the onset wild and high !
512
APPENDIX.
Country and Liberty !
Freedom and Victory !
These words shall be oiir cry, —
Fremont and Victory !
Sound, sound the trumpet fearlessly !
Each arm its vigor lending,
Bravely with wrong contending,
And shouting Freedom's cry!
The Kansas homes stand cheerlessly,
The sky with flame is ruddy,
The prairie turf is bloody,
Where the brave and gentle die.
Sound the trumpet stern and steady !
Sound the trumpet strong and high
Country and Liberty!
Freedom and Victory !
These words shall be o\ir cry, —
Fremont and Victory !
Sound now the trumpet cheerily!
Nor dream of Heaven's forsaking
The issue of its making,
That Right with Wrong must trv.
The cloud that hung so drearily
The Northern winds are breaking;
The Northern Lights are shaking
Their fire-flags in the sky.
Sound the signal of awaking;
Sound the onset wild and nigh !
Country and Liberty !
Freedom and Victory !
These words shall be our cry, —
Fremont and Victory !
THE QUAKERS ARE OUT.U9
NOT vainly we waited and counted the
hours,
The buds of our hope have all burst into i
flowers.
No room for misgiving — no loop-hole of ;
doubt, —
We've heard from the Keystone! The I
Quakers are out.
The plot has exploded — we 've found out
the trick ;
The bribe goes a-begging; the poison
won't stick.
When the Wide-awake lanterns are shin- |
ing about,
The rogues stay at home, and the true I
men are out !
The good State has broken the cords for
her spun;
Her oil-springs and water won't fuse into
one;
The Dutchman has seasoned with Free
dom his krout,
And slow, late, but certain, the Quakers
Give the flags to the winds ! set the hills
all aflame!
Make way for the man with the Patri
arch's name!
Away with misgiving — away with all
doubt,
For Lincoln goes in, when the Quakers
are out !
A LEGEND OF THE LAKE.i2'
SHOULD you go to Centre Harbor,
As haply you some time may,
Sailing up the Winnepesaukee"
From the hills of Alton Bav, —
Into the heart of the highlands,
Into the north wind free,
Through the rising and vanishing islands,
Over the mountain sea, —
To the little hamlet lying
White in its mountain fold,
Asleep by the lake and dreaming
A dream that is never told, —
And in the Red Hill's shadow
Your pilgrim home you make,
Where the chambers open to sunrise,
The mountains, and the lake, —
If the pleasant picture wearies,
As the fairest sometimes will,
And the weight of the hills lies on you
And the water is all too still, —
If in vain the peaks of Gunstock
Redden with sunrise fire,
And the sky and the purple mountains
And the sunset islands tire, —
If }TOU turn from in-door thrumming
And the clatter of bowls without,
And the folly that goes on its travels,
Bearing the city about, —
And the cares you left behind you
Come hunting along your track,
As Blue-Cap in German fable
Rode on the traveller's pack, —
Let me tell you a tender story
Of one who is now no more,
A tale to haunt like a spirit
The Winnepesaukee shore, —
Of one who was brave and gentle,
And strong for manly strife,
POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE OF WHITTIER.
518
Riding with cheering and music
Into the tourney of life.
Faltering and failing midway
In the'Tempter's subtle snare,
The chains of an evil habit
He bowed himself to bear.
Over his fresh young manhood
The bestial veil was flung, —
The curse of the wine of Circe,
The spell her weavers sung.
Yearlv did hill and lakeside
Their summer idyls frame;
Alone in his darkened dwelling
He hid his face for shame.
The music of life's great marches
Sounded for him in vain;
The voices of human duty
Smote on his ear like pain.
In vain over island and water
The curtains of sunset swung;
In vain on the beautiful mountains
The pictures of God were hung.
The wretched years crept onward,
Each sadder than the last;
All the bloom of life fell from him,
All the freshness and greenness past.
But deep in his heart forever
And unprofaned he kept
The love of his saintly mother,
Who in the graveyard slept.
His house had no pleasant pictures;
Its comfortless walls were bare:
But the riches of earth and ocean
Could not purchase his mother's chair.
The old chair, quaintly carven,
With oaken arms outspread,
Whereby, in the long gone twilights,
His childish prayers were said.
For thence in his long night watches,
By moon or starlight dim,
A face full of love and pity
And tenderness looked on him.
And oft, as the grieving presence
Sat in his mother's chair,
The groan of his self-upbraiding
Grew into wordless prayer.
At last, in the moonless midnight,
The summoning angel came,
Severe in his pity, touching
The house with fingers of flame
The red light flashed from its windows
And flared from its sinking roof;
And baffled and awed before it
The villagers stood aloof.
They shrank from the falling rafters,
They turned from the furnace glare;
But its tenant cried, "God help me!
I must save my mother's chair."
Under the blazing portal,
Over the floor of fire,
He seemed, in the terrible splendor,
A martyr on his pyre.
In his face the mad flames smote him,
And stung him on either side ;
But he clung to the sacred relic, —
By his mother's chair he died !
O mother, with human yearnings !
0 saint, by the alrar stairs !
Shall not the dear God give thee
The child of thy many prayers ?
O Christ ! by whom the loving,
Though erring, are forgiven,
Hast thou for him no refuge,
No quiet place in heaven ?
Give palms to thy strong martyrs,
And crown thy saints with gold,
But let the mother welcome
Her lost one to thy fold !
LETTER TO LUCY LARCOM.
25th 3d mo., 1866.
BELIEVE me, Lucy Larcom, it gives me
real sorrow
That I cannot take my carpet-bag and go
to town to-morrow;
But I'm "snow-bound," and cold on
cold, like layers of an onion,
Have piled my back and weighed me
down as with the pack of Bun-
yan.
The north-east wind is damper and the
north-west wind is colder,
Or else the matter simply is that I am
growing older.
And then I dare not trust a moon seen
over one's left shoulder,
As I saw this with slender horns caught
in a west hill-pine,
As on a Stamboul minaret curves the
arch-impostor's sign, —
So I must stay in Amesbury, and let you
go your way.
514
APPENDIX.
A-nd guess what colors greet your eyes,
what shapes your steps delay;
What pictured forms of heathen 'lore, of
god and goddess please you,
What idol graven images you" bend your
wicked knees to.
But why should I of evil dream, well i
knowing at }'our head goes
That flower of Christian womanhood, our
dear good Anna Meadows.
She'll be discreet, I'm sure, although •
once, in a freak romantic,
She flung the Doge's bridal ring, and
married " The Atlantic " !
And spite of all appearances, like the
woman in a shoe,
She 's got so many " Young Folks " now,
she don't know what to do.
But I must say I think it strange that
thee and Mrs. Spaulding,
Whose lives with Calvin's five-railed
creed have been so tightly walled
in,
Should quit your Puritan homes, and take
the pains to go
So far, with malice aforethought, to " walk
in a vain show " !
Did Emmons hunt for pictures ? Was
Jonathan Edwards peeping
Into the chambers of imagery, with maids
for Tammuz weeping?
Ah well ! the times are sadly changed,
and I myself am feeling"
The wicked world my Quaker coat from
shoulders peeling.
God grant that in the strange new sea of
change wherein we swim,
We still may keep the good old plank, of
simple faith in Him !
LINES ON LEAVING APPLEDORE.i21
UNDER the shadow of a cloud, the light
Died out upon the waters, like a smile
Chased from a face by grief. Following
the flight
Of a lone bird that, scudding with the
breeze,
Dipped its crank wing in leaden-colored
seas,
I saw in sunshine lifted, clear and bright,
On the horizon's rim the Fortunate Isle
That claims thee as its fair inhabitant,
And glad of heart I whispered, "Be to
her,
Bird of the summer sea, my messenger;
Tell her, if Heaven a fervent prayer will
grant,
This light that falls her island home above
Making its slopes of rock and greenness
gay,
A partial' glory midst surrounding gray,
Shall prove an earnest of our Father's love,
More and more shining to the perfect
dav."
MRS.
CHOATE'S HOUSE-WARM
ING.^
OF rights and of wrongs
Let the feminine tongues
Talk on — none forbid it.
Our hostess best knew
What her hands found to do,
Asked no questions, but DID IT.
Here the lesson of work,
Which so many folks shirk,
Is so plain all may learn it ;
Each brick in this dwelling,
Each timber is telling,
If you want a home, EARN IT.
The question of labor
Is solved by our neighbor,
The old fiddle guessed out :
The wisdom sore needed,
The truth long unheeded,
Her flat-iron 's pressed out !
Thanks, then, to Kate Choate !
Let the idle take note
What their fingers were made for;
She, cheerful and jolly,
Worked on late and early,
And bought — what she paid for!
Never vainly repining,
Nor begging, nor whining;
The morning-star twinkles
On no heart that 's lighter
As she makes the world whiter
And smooths out its wrinkles.
So, long life to Kate !
May her heirs have to wait
fill they're gray in attendance;
And her flat-iron press on,
Still teaching its lesson
Of brave independence !
AN AUTOGRAPH.^
THE years that since we met have flown
Leave as they found me, still alone:
No wife, nor child, nor grandchild dear.
Are mine the heart of age to cheer.
More favored thou, with hair less gray
Than mine, canst let thy fancy stray
To where thy little Constance sees
The prairie ripple in the breeze;
For one like her to lisp thy name
Is better than the voice of fame.
POEMS PRINTED IN THE "LIFE OF WHITTIER."
515
TO LUCY LARCOM.
3d mo., 1870.
PRAY give the " Atlantic "
A brief unpedantic
Review of Miss Phelps' book,
Which teaches and helps folk
To deal with the offenders
In love which surrenders
All pride unforgiving,
The lost one receiving
With truthful believfng
That sh-e like all others, '
Our sisters and brothers,
Is only a sinner
Whom God's love within her
Can change to the whiteness
Of heaven's own brightness.
For who shall see tarnish
If He sweep and garnish ?
When He is the cleanser
Shall we dare to censure?
Say to Fields, if he ask of it,
I can't take the task of it.
P. S. — For myself, if I 'm able,
And half comfortable,
I shall run for the seashore
To some place as before,
Where blunt we at least find
The teeth of the East wind,
And spring does not tarry
As it does at Amesbury ;
But where it will be to
I cannot vet see to.
A FAREWELL.124
WHAT shall I say, dear friends, to whom
I owe
The choicest blessings, dropping from
the hands
Of trustful love and friendship, as you
go
Forth on your journey to those older
lands,
Bv saint and sage and bard and hero
trod?
Scarcely the simple farewell of the
Friends
Sufficeth ; after you my full heart sends
Such benediction as the pilgrim hears
Where the Greek faith its golden dome
uprears,
From Crimea's roses to Archangel snows,
The fittest praver of parting: "Go with
God!"
ON A FLY-LEAF OF LONG
FELLOW'S POEMS.ra
HUSHED now the sweet consoling tongue
Of him whose lyre the Muses strung;
His last low swan-song has been sung !
His last ! And ours, dear friend, is near;
As clouds that rake the mountains here,
We too shall pass and disappear.
Yet howsoever changed or tost,
Not even a wreath of mist is lost,
No atom can itself exhaust.
So shall the soul's superior force
Live on and run its endless course
In God's unlimited universe.
And we, whose brief reflections seem
To fade like clouds from lake and stream,
Shall brighten in a holier beam.
SAMUEL E. SEWALL.126
LIKE that ancestral judge who bore his
name,
Faithful to Freedom and to Truth, he
gave,
When all the air was hot with wrath and
blame,
His youth and manhood to the fettered
slave.
And never Woman in her suffering saw
A helper tender, wise, and brave as he ;
Lifting her burden of unrighteous law,
He shamed the breast of ancient chivalry.
Noiseless as light that melts the darkness
is,
He wrought as duty led and honor bid,
No trumpet heralds victories like his, —
The unselfish worker in his work is hid.
LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM.127
WHAT shall I wish him? Strength and
health
May be abused, and so may wealth.
Even fame itself may come to be
But wearying notoriety.
What better can I ask than this ? —
A life of brave unselfishness,
Wisdom for council, eloquence
For Freedom's need, for Truth's defence,
The championship of all that 's good,
The manliest faith in womanhood,
516
APPENDIX.
The steadfast friendship changing not
With change of time or place or lot,
Hatred of sin, but not the less
A heart of pitying tenderness
And charity, that, suffering long,
Shames the wrong-doer from his wrong:
One wish expresses all — that he
May even as his grandsire be !
A DAY'S JOURNEY.1'28
AFTER your pleasant morning travel
You pause as at a wayside inn,
And take with grateful hearts your break
fast
Though served in dishes all of TIN.
Then go, while years as hours are counted,
Until the dial's hand at noon
Invites you to a dinner table
Garnished with SILVER fork and spoon.
And when the vesper bell to supper
Is calling, and the day is old,
May love transmute the tin of morning
And noondav's silver into GOLD.
A FRAGMENT. 129
THE dreadful burden of our sins we feel,
The pain of wounds which Thou alone
canst heal.
To whom our weakness is our strong ap
peal.
From the black depths, the ashes, and the
dross
Of our waste lives, we reach out to Thy
cross,
And by its fullness measure all our loss !
That holy sign reveals Thee: throned
above
No Moloch sits, no false, vindictive Jove —
Thou art our Father, and Thy name is
Love !
III. MABEL MARTIN.
A HARVEST IDYL.
[This poem was first published under the
name of The Witch's Daughtfr. On the occa
sion of the is«ue of an illustrated edition, Mr.
Whittier enlarged it, and otherwise altered it
to its present form. The reader can now com
pare this with the original version, which will
be found on page 218.]
PROEM.
I CALL the old time back : I bring my
lay
In tender memory of the summer day
When, where our native river lapsed
away,
We dreamed it over, while the thrushes
made
Songs of their own, and the great pine-
trees laid
On warm moonlights the masses of their
shade. .
And she was with us, living o'er again
Her life in ours, despite of years and
pain,—
The Autumn's brightness after latter
rain.
Beautiful in her holy peace as one
Who stands, at evening, when the work is
done,
Glorified in the setting of the sun !
Her memory makes our common land-
scape'seem
Fairer than an}' of which painters dream ;
Lights the brown hills and sings in every
stream ;
For she whose speech was always truth's
pure gold
Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends
told,
And loved with us the beautiful and old.
I. THE RIVKR VALLEY.
Across the level tableland,
A grassy, rarely trodden way,
With thinnest skirt of birchen spray
And stunted growth of cedar, leads
To where you see the dull plain fall
Sheer off," steep-slanted, ploughed by
all
The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink
The over-leaning harebells swing,
With roots half bare the pine-trees
cling ;
And, through the shadow looking west,
You see the wavering river flow
Along a vale, that far below
Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills
And glimmering water-line between,
Broad fields of corn and meadows green,
MABEL MARTIN.
517
And fruit-bent orchards grouped around
The low brown roofs and painted eaves,
And chimney-tops half hid in leaves.
No warmer valley hides behind
Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cola
and bleak ;
No fairer river comes to seek
The wave-sung welcome of the sea,
Or mark the northmost border line
Of sun-loved growths of nut and vine.
Here, ground-fast in their native fields,
Untempted by the city's gain,
The quiet farmer folk" remain
Who bear the pleasant name of Friends,
And keep their fathers' gentle ways
And simple speech of Bible days ;
In whose neat homesteads woman holds
With modest ease her equal place,
And wears upon her tranquil face
The look of one who, merging not
Her self-hood in another's will,
Is love's and duty's handmaid still.
Pass with me down the path that winds
Through birches to the open land,
Where, close upon the river strand
You mark a cellar, vine o'errun,
Above whose wall of loosened stones
The sumach lifts its reddening cones,
And the black nightshade's berries shine,
And broad, unsightly burdocks fold
The household ruin,' century-old.
Here, in the dim colonial time
Of sterner lives and gloomier faith,
A woman lived, tradition saith,
Who wrought her neighbors foul an
noy,
And witched and plagued the country
side,
Till at the hangman's hand she died.
Sit with me while the westering day
Falls slantwise down the quiet vale,
And, haply ere yon loitering sail,
That rounds the upper headland, falls
Below Deer Island's pines, or sees
Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees
Rise black against the sinking sun,
My idyl of its days of old,
The valley's legend, shall be told.
II. THE HUSKING.
It was the pleasant harvest-time,
When cellar-bins are closely stowed,
And garrets bend beneath their load,
And the old swallow-haunted barns, —
Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams
Through which the moted sunlight
streams,
And winds blow freshly in, to shake
The red plumes of the roosted cocks,
And the loose hay -mow's scented
locks, —
Are filled with summer's ripened stores,
Its odorous grass and barley sheaves,
From their low scaffolds to their eaves.
On Esek Harden's oaken floor,
With many an autumn threshing worn,
La}r the heaped ears of unhusked corn.
And thither came young men and maids,
Beneath a moon that, large and low,
Lit that sweet eve of long ago.
They took their places; some by chance,
And others by a merry voice
Or sweet smile guided to their choice.
How pleasantly the rising moon,
Between the" shadow of the mows,
Looked on them through the great elm-
boughs !
On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned,
On girlhood with its solid curves
Of healthful strength and painless
nerves !
And jests went round and laughs that made
The house-dog answer with his howl,
And kept astir the barn-yard fowl ;
And quaint old songs their fathers sung
In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors,
Ere Norman William trod their shores ;
And tales, whose merry license shook
The fat sides of the Saxon thane,
Forgetful of the hovering Dane, —
Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known,
The charms and riddles that beguiled •
On Oxus' banks the young world's
child, —
That primal picture-speech wherein
Have youth and maid the stonr told,
So new in each, so dateless old,
518
APPENDIX.
Recalling pastoral Ruth in her
Who waited, blushing and demure,
The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture.
III. THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER.
But still the sweetest voice was mute
That river- valley ever heard
From lips of maid or throat of bird ;
For Mabel Martin sat apart,
And let the hay-mow's shadow fall
Upon the loveliest face of all.
She sat apart, as one forbid.
Who knew that none would condescend
To own the Witch-wife's child a friend.
The seasons scarce had gone their round,
Since curious thousands thronged to see
Her mother at the gallows-tree;
And mocked the prison-palsied limbs
That faltered on the fatal stairs,
And wan lip trembling with its prayers !
Few questioned of the sorrowing child,
Or, when they saw the mother die.
Dreamed of the daughter's agony.
They went up to their homes that day,
As men and Christians justified:
God willed it, and the wretch had died !
Dear God and Father of us all,
Forgive our faith in cruel lies, —
Forgive the blindness that denies !
Forgive thy creature when he takes,
For the all-perfect love Thou art,
Some grim creation of his heart.
Cast down our idols, overturn
Our bloody altars; let us see
Thyself in Thy humanity !
Young Mabel from her mother's grave
Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,
And wrestled with her fate alone;
With love, and anger, and despair,
The phantoms of disordered sense,
The awful doubts of Providence !
Oh, dreary broke the winter days,
And dreary fell the winter nights
When, one by one, the neighboring
lights
Went out, and human sounds grew still,
And all the phantom-peopled dark
Closed round her hearth-fire's dying
spark .
And summer d&ys were sad and long,
And sad the uncompanioned eves,
And sadder sunset-tinted leaves,
And Indian Summer's airs of balm ;
She scarcely felt the soft caress,
The beauty died of loneliness !
The school-boys jeered her as they passed,
And, when she sought the house of
prayer,
Her mother's curse pursued her there.
And still o'er many a neighboring door
She saw the horseshoe's curved charm,
To guard against her mother's harm :
That mother, poor and sick and lame,
Who dailj*, by the old arm-chair,
Folded her withered hands in prayer; —
WTho turned, in Salem's dreary jail,
Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er,
When her dim eyes could read no more'.
Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept
Her faith, and trusted that her way,
So dark, would somewhere meet the
day.
And still her weary wheel went round
Day after day, with no relief:
Small leisure' have the poor for grief.
IV. THE CHAMPION.
So in the shadow Mabel sits;
Untouched by mirth she sees and hears,
Her smile is sadder than her tears.
But cruel eyes have found her out,
And cruel lips repeat her name,
And taunt her with her mother's shame.
She answered not with railing words,
But drew her apron o'er her face,
And, sobbing, glided from the place.
And only pausing at the door,
Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze
Of one who, in her better days,
Had been her warm and steady friend,
Ere yet her mother's doom had made
Even Esek Harden half afraid.
He felt that mute appeal of tears,
And, starting, with an angry frown,
Hushed all the wicked murmurs down.
"Good neighbors mine," he sternly said,
" This passes harmless mirth or 'jest ;
I brook no insult to my guest.
MABEL MARTIN.
519
;'She is indeed her mother's child,
But God's sweet pity ministers
Unto no whiter soul" than hers.
"Let Goody Martin rest in peace;
I never knew her harm a fly,
And witch or not, God knows — not I.
"I know who swore her life away;
And as God lives, I 'd not condemn
An Indian dog on word of them."
The broadest lands in all the town,
The skill to guide, the power to awe,
Were Harden's; and his word was law.
None dared withstand him to his face.
But one sly maiden spake aside :
"The little witch is evil-eyed!
" Her mother only killed a cow,
Or witched a churn or dairy-pan;
But she, forsooth, must charm a man ! "
V. IN THE SHADOW.
Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed
The nameless terrors of the wood,
And saw, as if a ghost pursued,
Her shadow gliding in the moon ;
The soft breath of the west-wind gave
A chill as from her mother's grave.
How dreary seemed the silent house !
Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly glare
Its windows had a dead man's stare !
And, like a gaunt and spectral hand,
The tremulous shadow of a birch
Reached out and touched the door's low
porch,
As if to lift its latch ; hard by,
A sudden warning call she heard,
The n-ight-cry of a boding bird.
She leaned against the door ; her face,
So fair, so young, so full of pain,
White in the moonlight's silver rain.
The river, on its pebbled rim,
Made music such as childhood knew;
The door - yard tree was whispered
through
By voices such as childhood's ear
Had heard in moonlights long ago ;
And through the willow-boughs below
She saw the rippled waters shine ;
Beyond, in waves of shade and light,
The hills rolled off into the night.
She saw and heard, but over all
A sense of some transforming spell,
The shadow of her sick heart fell.
And still across the wooded space
The harvest lights of Harden shone,
And song and jest and laugh went on.
And he so gentle, true, and strong,
Of men the bravest and the best,
Had he, too, scorned her with the rest?
She strove to drown her sense of wrong,
And, in her old and simple way,
To teach her bitter heart to praV.
Poor child! the prayer, begun in faith,
Grew to a low, despairing cry
Of utter misery : " Let me die !
" Oh ! take me from the scornful eyes,
And hide me where the cruel spe'ech
And mocking finger may not reach !
"I dare not breathe my mother's name:
A daughter's right f dare not crave
To weep above her unblest grave !
" Let me not live until my heart,
With few to pity, and with none
To love me, hardens into stone.
"O God ! have mercy on Thy child,
Whose faith in Thee grows weak and
small,
And take me ere I lose it all ! "
A shadow on the moonlight felt,
And murmuring wind and wave became
A voice whose burden was her name.
VI. THE BETROTHAL.
Had then God heard her? Had He sent
His angel down V In flesh and blood,
Before her Esek Harden stood !
He laid his hand upon her arm :
" Dear Mabel, this no more shall be;
Who scoffs at you must scoff at me.
"You know rough Esek Harden well;
And if he seems no suitor gay,
And if his hair is touched with gray,
" The maiden grown shall never find
His heart less warm than when she
smiled,
Upon his knees a little child! "
Her tears of grief were tears of joy,
As, folded in his strong embrace,
She looked in Esek Harden's face.
520
APPENDIX.
" O truest friend of all ! " she said,
" God bless you for your kindly thought,
And make me worthy of my lot ! "
He led her forth, and, blent in one,
Beside their happy pathway ran
The shadows oi the maid and man.
He led her through his dewy fields,
To where the swinging lanterns glowed,
And through the doors the huskers
showed.
" Good friends and neighbors !" Esek said,
"I 'm weary of this lonely life;
In Mabel see my chosen wife !
*She greets you kindly, one and all;
The past is past, and all offence
Falls harmless from her innocence.
" Henceforth she stands no more alone ;
You know what Esek Harden is ; —
He brooks no wrong to him or his.
" Now let the merriest tales be told,
And let the sweetest songs be sung
That ever made the old heart young!
"For now the lost has found a home ;
And a lone hearth shall brighter burn,
As all the household joys return! "
Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon,
Between the shadow of the mows,
Looked on them through the great elm-
boughs !
On Mabel's curls of golden hair,
On Esek's shaggy strength it fell ;
And the wind whispered, " It is well ! "
NOTES.
All the Notes which are not inclosed in brackets [ ] are by Mr. Whittier himself.
'NOTE I, page 1.
MOGG MEGONE, or Hegone, was a leader
among the Saco Indians, in the bloody war
of 1677. He attacked and captured the
garrison at Black Point, October 12th of
that year ; and cut off, at the same time, a
party of Englishmen near Saco River.
From a deed signed by this Indian in 1664,
and from other circumstances, it seems
that, previous to the war, he had mingled
much with the colonists. On this account,
he was probably selected by the principal
sachems as their agent in the treaty signed
in November, 1676.
NOTE 2, page 1.
Baron de St. Castine came to Canada in
1644. Leaving his civilized companions,
he plunged into the great wilderness and
settled among the Penobscot Indians, near
the mouth of their noble river. He here
took for his wives the daughters of the
great Modocawando, — the most powerful
sachem of the East. His castle was plun
dered by Governor Andros, during his
reckless administration ; and the enraged
Baron is supposed to have excited the In
dians into open hostility to the English.
NOTE 3, page 2.
The owner and commander of the garrison
at Black Point, which Mogg attacked and
plundered. He was an old man at the
period to which the tale relates.
NOTE 4, page 2.
Major Phillips, one of the principal men
of the Colony. His garrison sustained a
long and terrible siege by the savages. As
a magistrate and a gentleman, he exacted
of his plebeian neighbors a remarkable de
gree of deference. The Court Records of
the settlement inform us that an individual
was fined for the heinous offence of saying
that " Major Phillips's mare was as lean as
an Indian dog."
NOTE 5, page 2.
Captain Harmon, of Georgeana, nov)
York, was, for many years, the terror of the
Eastern Indians. In one of his expeditions
up the Kennebec River, at the head of a
party of rangers, he discovered twenty of
the savages asleep by a large fire. Cau
tiously creeping towards them until he
was certain of his aim, he ordered his men
to single out their objects. The first dis
charge killed or mortally wounded the
whole number of the unconscious sleepers.
NOTE 6, page 2.
Wood Island, near the mouth of the
Saco. It was visited by the Sieur de
Monts and Champlain, in 1603. The fol
lowing extract, from the journal of the
latter, relates to it : " Having left the
Kennebec, we ran along the coast to the
westward, and cast anchor under a small
island, near the mainland, where we saw
twenty or more natives. I here visited an
island, beautifully clothed with a fine
growth of forest trees, particularly of the
oak and walnut ; and overspread with
vines, that, in their season, produce excel
lent grapes. We named it the island oJ
Bacchus." — Les Voyages de Sieur Chan*
plain, Liv. 2, c. 8.
NOTE 7, page 2.
John Bonython was the son of Richard
Bonython, Gent., one of the most efficient
and able magistrates of the Colony. John
proved to be "a degenerate plant." In
1635, we find, by the Court Records, that,
for some offence, he was fined 40 s. In
1640, he was fined for abuse toward R.
Gibson, the minister, and Mary his wife.
Soon after he was fined for disorderly con
duct in the house of his father. In 1645,
the " Great and General Court adjudged
John Bonython outlawed, and incapable of
any of his Majesty's laws, and proclaimed
him a rebel. " (Com t Records of the Pro v
522
NOTES.
ince, 1645.) In 1651, he bade defiance to
the laws of Massachusetts, and was again
outlawed. He acted independently of all
law and authority ; and hence, doubtless,
his burlesque title of "The Sagamore
of Saco," which has come down to the
present generation in the following epi
taph : —
" Here lies Bonython, the Sagamore of Saco ;
He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went
to Hobomoko."
By some means or other, he obtained a
large estate. In this poem, I have taken
some liberties with him, not strictly war
ranted by historical facts, although the
conduct imputed to him is in keeping with
his general character. Over the last years
of his life lingers a deep obscurity. Even
the manner of his death is uncertain. He
was supposed to have been killed by the
Indians ; but this is doubted by the able
and indefatigable author of the History
of Saco and Biddeford. —Part I. p. 115.
NOTE 8, page 2.
Foxwell's Brook flows from a marsh or
bog, called the "Heath," in Saco, contain
ing thirteen hundred acres. On this brook,
and surrounded by wild and romantic
scenery, is a beautiful waterfallv of more
than sixty feet.
NOTE 9, page 3.
Hiacoomes, the first Christian preacher
»n Martha's Vineyard ; for a biography of
whom the reader is referred to Increase
Mayhew's account of the Praying Indians,
1726. The following is related of him :
"One Lord's day, after meeting, where
Hiacoomes had been preaching, there came
in a Powwaw very angry, and said, ' I know
all the meeting Indians are liars. You say
you don't care for the Powwaws ' : — then
calling two or three of them by name, he
railed at them, and told them they were
deceived, for the Powwaws could kill all
the meeting Indians, if they set about it.
But Hiacoomes told him that he would be
in the midst of all the Powwaws in the
island, and they should do the utmost they
could against him; and when they should
do their worst by their witchcraft to kill
him, he would without fear set himself
against them, by remembering Jehovah.
He told them also he did put all the Pow
waws under his heel. Such was the faith
tf this good man. Nor were these Pow
waws ever able to do these Christian In
dians any hurt, though others were fre
quently hurt and killed by them." —
ffayhew, pp. 6, 7, c. I .
NOTE 10, page 4.
"The tooth-ache," says Koger Williams
in his observations upon the language and
customs of the New England tribes " is
the only paine which will force their stoute
hearts to cry." He afterwards remarks
that even the Indian women never cry as
he has heard "some of their men in this
paiue."
NOTE 11, page 5.
Wuttamuttata, " Let us drink." Wee-
kan, "It is sweet." Vide Roger Wil-
liams's Key to the Indian Language, "in
that parte of America called New Eng
land." London, 1643, p. 35.
NOTE 12, page 6.
Wetuomanit, — a house god, or demon.
" They — the Indians — have given me th«
names of thirty-seven gods which I have,
all which in their solemne Worships
they invocate ! " K. Williams's Briefe
Observations of the Customs, Manners,
Worships, &c., of the Natives, in Peace and
Warre, in Life and Death: on all which
is added Spiritual Observations, General
and Particular, of Chiefe and Special use —
upon all occasions — to all the English in-
habiting these parts; yet Pleasant and
Profitable to the view of all Mene. — p.
110, c. 21.
NOTE 13, page 7.
Mt. Desert Island, the Bald Mountain
upon which overlooks Frenchman's and
Penobscot Bay. It was upon this island
that the Jesuits made their earliest settle
ment.
NOTE 14, page 8.
Father Hennepin, a missionary among
the Iroquois, mentions that the Indians
believed him to be a conjurer, and that they
were particularly afraid of a bright silver
chalice which he had in his possession.
" The Indians," says Pere Jerome Lalla-
mant, "fear us as the greatest sorcerers on
earth."
NOTE 15, page 8.
Bomazeen is spoken of by Penhallow as
the famous warrior and chieftain of Nor-
ridgewock. " He was killed in the attack
of the English upon Norridgewock, in
1724.
NOTE 16, page 9.
Pere Halle, or Rasles, was one of the
most zealous and indefatigable of that band
)f Jesuit missionaries who, at the begin-
ring of the seventeenth century, penetrated
;he forests of America, with the avowed
object of converting the heathen. The
NOTES.
523
first religious mission of the Jesuits, to the :
savages in North America, was in 1611.
The zeal of the fathers for the conversion
of the Indians to the Catholic faith knew
no bounds. For this, they plunged into
the depths of the wilderness ; habituated
themselves to all the hardships and priva
tions of the natives ; suffered cold, hunger,
and some of them death itself, by the ex-
;tremest tortures. Pere Brebeuf, after
'laboring in the cause of his mission for
twenty years, together with his companion,
Pere Lallamant, was burned alive. To
these might be added the names of those
Jesuits who were put to death by the
Iroquois, — Daniel, Gamier, Buteaux, La
Riborerde, GoupiL Constantin, and Lie-
geouis. " For bed," says Father Lalla
mant, in his Relation de ce qui s'est dans
le pays des Hurons, 1640, c. 3, "we have
nothing but a miserable piece of bark of a
tree ; for nourishment, a handful or two
of corn, either roasted or soaked in water,
which seldom satisfies our hunger ; and
after all, not venturing to perform even the
ceremonies of our religion, without being
considered as sorcerers." Their success
among the natives, however, by no means
eqiialled their exertions. Pere Lallamant
says : " With respect to adult persons, in
good health, there is little apparent suc
cess ; on the contrary, there have been noth
ing but storms and whirlwinds from that
quarter."
Sebastian Ralle established himself,
some time about the year 1670, at Nor-
ridgewock, where he continued more than
forty years. He was accused, and perhaps
not without justice, of exciting his praying
Indians against the English, whom he
looked upon as the enemies not only of his
king, but also of the Catholic religion. He
was killed by the English, in 1724, at the
foot of the cross which his own hands had
planted. This Indian church was broken
up, and its members either killed outright
or dispersed.
In a letter written by Ralle to his nephew
he gives the following account of his
church, and his own labors: "All my
converts repair to the church regularly
twice every day ; first, very early in the
morning, to attend mass, and again in the
evening, to assist in the prayers at sunset.
As it is necessary to fix the imagination of
savages, whose attention is easily dis
tracted, I have composed prayers, calcu
lated to inspire them with just sentiments
of the august sacrifice of our altars : they
chant, or at least recite them aloud, during
mass. Besides preaching to them on Sun
days and saints' days, I seldom let a work
ing-day pass, without making a concise
exhortation, for the purpose of inspiring
them with horror at those vices to which
they are most addicted, or to confirm them
in the practice of some particular virtue."
Vide Lettres Edifiantes et Cur., Vol. VL
p. 127.
NOTE 17, page 12.
The character of Ralle has probably
never been correctly delineated. By his
brethren of the Romish Church, he has
been nearly apotheosized. On the other
hand, our Puritan historians have repre
sented him as a demon in human form.
He was undoiibtedly sincere in his devotion
to the interests of his church, and not over
scrupulous as to the means of advancing
those interests. " The French," says the
author of the History of Saco and Bidde-
ford, "after the peace of 1713, secretly
promised to supply the Indians with arms
and ammunition, if they would renew hos
tilities. Their principal agent was the
celebrated Ralle, the French Jesuit." — p.
215.
NOTE 18, page 13.
Hertel de Rouville was an active and
unsparing enemy of the English. He was
the leader of the combined French and
Indian forces which destroyed Deerfield
and massacred its inhabitants, in 1703.
He was afterwards killed in the attack
upon Haverhill. Tradition says that, on
examining his dead body, his head and face
were found to be perfectly smooth, without
the slightest appearance of hair or beard.
NOTE 19, page 13.
Cowesass ? — tawhich wessaseen ? Are
you afraid ? — why fear you ?
NOTE 20, page 15.
Winnepurkit, otherwise called George,
Sachem of Saugus, married a daughter of
Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chief
tain, in 1662. The wedding took place at
Pennacook (now Concord, N. H. ), and the
ceremonies closed with a great feast. Ac
cording to the usages of the chiefs, Passa
conaway ordered a select number of his men
to accompany the newly-married couple
to the dwelling of the husband, where in
turn there was another great feast. Some
time after, the wife of Winnepurkit ex
pressing a desire to visit her father's house,
was permitted to go, accompanied by a
brave escort of her husband's chief men.
But when she wished to return, her father
sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her
husband, and asking him to come and take
her away. He returned for answer that
524
NOTES.
he had escorted his wife to her father's
house in a style that became a chief, and
that now if she wished to return, her
father must send her back in the same
way. This Passaconaway refused to do,
and it is said that here terminated the
connection of his daughter with the Saugus
chief. — Vide Morton's New Canaan.
NOTE 21, page 18.
This was the name which the Indians of
New England gave to two or three of their
principal chiefs, to whom all their inferioi
sagamores acknowledged allegiance. Pas
saconaway seems to have been one of
these chiefs. His residence was at Penna-
cook. (Mass. Hist. Coll., Vol. III. pp. 21,
22.) " He was regarded," says Hubbard,
"as a great sorcerer, and his fame was
widely spread. It was said of him that he
could cause a green leaf to grow in winter,
trees to dance, water to bum, &c. He was,
undoubtedly, one of those shrewd and pow
erful men whose achievements are always
regarded by a barbarous people as the re
sult of supernatural aid. The Indians gave
to such the names of Powahs or Panisees."
" The Panisees are men of great courage
and wisdom, and to these the Devill ap-
peareth more familiarly than to others." —
Winslow's Relation.
NOTE 22, page 20.
"The Indians," says Roger Williams,
" have a god whom they call Wetuomanit,
who presides over the household. "
NOTE 23, page 22.
There are rocks in the river at the Falls
of Amoskeag, in the cavities of which,
tradition says, the Indians formerly stored
and concealed their corn.
NOTE 24, page 23.
The Spring God. — See Roger Williams' s
Key, &c.
NOTE 25, page 25.
"Matwonck kunna-monee." We shall
see thee or her no more. — Vide Roger
Williams' 's Key to the Indian Language.
NOTE 26, page 26.
"The Great South West God." — See
Roger Williams 's Observations, &c.
NOTE 27, page 26.
The celebrated Captain Smith, after re
signing the government of the Colony in
Virginia, in his capacity of "Admiral of
New England," made a careful survey of
the coast from Penobscot to Cape Cod, in
the summer of 1614.
NOTE 28, page 26.
Lake Winnipiseogee, — The Smile of the
Great Spirit, — the source of one of the
branches of the Merrimack.
NOTE 29, page 26.
Captain Smith gave to the promontory,
now called Cape Ann, the name of Traga-
bizanda, in memory of his young and
beautiful mistress of that name, who,
while he was a captive at Constantinople,
like Desdemona, "loved him for the dan
gers he had passed."
NOTE 30, page 27.
Some three or four years since, a frag
ment of a statue, rudely chiselled from dark
gray stone, was found in the town of Brad
ford, on the Merrimack. Its origin must
be left entirely to conjecture. The fact
that the ancient Northmen visited New
England, some centuries before the dis
coveries of Columbus, is now very generally
admitted.
NOTE 31, page 36.
De Soto, in the sixteenth century, pene
trated into the wilds of the new world in
search of gold and the fountain of perpetual
youth.
NOTE 32, page 41.
TOUSSAINT L'OuvERTORE, the black
chieftain of Hayti, was a slave on the plan
tation "de Libertas," belonging to M.
BAYOU. When the rising of the negroes
took place, in 1791, TOUSSAINT refused to
join them until he had aided M. BAYOU
and his family to escape to Baltimore.
The white man had discovered in Toussaint
many noble qualities, and had instructed
him in some of the first branches of educa
tion ; and the preservation of his life was
owing to the negro's gratitude for this
kindness.
In 1797, Toussaint L'Ouverture was ap
pointed, by the French government, Gen
eral-in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo,
and, as such, signed the Convention with
eneral Maitland for the evacuation of the
island by the British. From this period,
until 1801, the island, under the govern
ment of Toussaint, was happy, tranquil,
and prosperous. The miserable attempt
of Napoleon to re-establish slavery in St.
Domingo, although it failed of its intended
object, proved fatal to the negro chieftain.
Treacherously seized by Leclerc, he was
lurried on board a vessel by night, and
conveyed to France, where he 'was confined
n a cold subterranean dungeon, at Besan-
con, where, in April, 1803, he died. The
treatment of Toussaint finds a parallel
NOTES.
525
only in the murder of the Duke D'Enghien.
It was the remark of Godwin, in his Lec
tures, that the West India Islands, since
their first discovery by Columbus, could
not boast of a single name which deserves
comparison with that of Toussaint L'Ouver-
ture.
NOTE 33, page 43.
The reader may, perhaps, call to mind
the beautiful sonnet of William Words
worth, addressed to Toussaint L'Ouverture,
during his confinement in France.
" Toussaint ! — thou most unhappy man of men !
Whether the whistling rustic tends his plough
Within thy hearing, or thou liest now
Buried in some deep dungeon's earless den ;
O miserable chieftain ! — where and when
Wilt thou find patience ? — Yet, die not, do
thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheeKful brow ;
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and
skies, —
There 's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee : thou hast great allies.
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind. "
NOTE 34, page 43.
The French ship LE RODEUR, with a
crew of twenty-two men, and with one
hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from
Bonny, in Africa, April, 1819. On ap
proaching the line, a terrible malady broke
out, — an obstinate disease of the eyes, —
contagious, and altogether beyond the
resources of medicine. It was aggravated
by the scarcity of water among the slaves
(only half a wineglass per day being al
lowed to an individual), and by the extreme
impurity of the air in which they breathed.
By the advice of the physician, they were
brought upon deck occasionally; but some
of the poor wretches, locking themselves
in each other's arms, leaped overboard, in
the hope, which so universally prevails
among them, of being swiftly transported
to their own homes in Africa. To check
this, the captain ordered several who were
stopped in the attempt to be 8 hot, or
hanged, before their companions. The
disease extended to the crew; and one
after another were smitten with it, until
only one remained unaffected. Yet even
this dreadful condition did not preclude
calculation: to save the expense of sup
porting slaves rendered unsalable, and to
obtain grounds for a claim against the un
derwriters, thirty -six of the negroes, having
become blind, were thrown into the sea and
droivned !
In the midst of their dreadful fears lest
the solitary individual, whose sight re
mained unaffected, should also be seized
with the malady, a sail was discovered. It
was the Spanish slaver, Leon. The same
disease had been there; and, horrible to
tell, all the crew had become blind ! Un
able to assist each other, the vessels parted.
The Spanish ship has never since been
heard of. The Rodeur reached Guada-
loupe on the 21st of June; the only man
who had escaped the disea.se, and had thus
been enabled to steer the slaver into port,
caught it in three days after its arrival. —
Speech of M. Benjamin Constant, in the
French Chamber of Deputies. June 17,
1820.
NOTE 35, page 61.
The Northern aiithor of the Congres
sional rule against receiving petitions of
the people on the subject of Slavery.
NOTE 36, page 70.
Dr. Thacher, surgeon in Scammel's regi
ment, in his description of the siege of
Yorktown, says: "The labor on the Vir
ginia plantations is performed altogether
by a species of the human race cruelly
wrested from their native country, and
doomed to perpetual bondage, while their
masters are manfully contending for free
dom and the natural rights of man. Such
is the inconsistency of human nature."
Eighteen hundred slaves were found at
Yorktown, after its surrender, and restored
to their masters. Well was it said by Dr
Barnes, in his late work on Slavery : " No
slave was any nearer his freedom after the
surrender of Yorktown than when Patrick
Henry first taught the notes of liberty to
echo among the hills and vales of Virginia. "
NOTE 37, page 76.
The rights and liberties affirmed by
MAGNA CHARTA were deemed of such im
portance in the thirteenth century, that
the Bishops, twice a year, with tapers
burning, and in their pontifical robes, pro
nounced, in the presence of the king and
the representatives of the estates of Eng
land, the greater excommunication against
the infringer of that instrument. The im
posing ceremony took place in the great
Hall of Westminster. A copy of the curse,
as pronounced in 1253, declares that, "by
the authority of Almighty God, and the
blessed Apostles and Martyrs, and all the
saints in heaven, all those who violate the
English liberties, and secretly or openly,
by deed, word, or counsel, do make stat
utes, or observe them being made, against
said liberties, are accursed and sequestered
from the company of heaven and the sacra
ments of the Holy Church."
526
NOTES.
WILLIAM PENN, in his admirable politi
cal pamphlet, " England's Present Interest
considered," alluding to the curse of the
Charter-breakers, says : " I am no Roman
Catholic, and little value their other curses ;
yet I declare I would not for the world in
cur this curse, as every man deservedly
doth, who offers violence to the funda
mental freedom thereby repeated and con-
rirmed. "
NOTE 38, page 91.
" The manner in which the Waldenses
and heretics disseminated their principles
among the Catholic gentry, was by carry
ing with them a box of trinkets, or articles
of dress. Having entered the houses of
the gentry and disposed of some of their
goods, they cautiously intimated that they
had commodities far more valuable than
these, — inestimable jewels, which they
would show if they could be protected
from the clergy. They would then give
their purchasers a Bible or Testament ; and
thereby many were deluded into heresy. " —
R. Saccho.
NOTE 39, page 107.
Chalkley Hall, near Frankford, Pa.,
the residence of THOMAS CHALKLEY. an
eminent minister of the Friends' denomi
nation. He was one of the early settlers of
the Colony, and his Journal, which was
published in 1749, presents a quaint but
beautiful picture of a life of unostentatious
and simple goodness. He was the master
of a merchant vessel, and, in his visits to
the West Indies and Great Britain, omitted
no opportunity to labor for the highest in
terests of his fellow-men. During a tem
porary residence in Philadelphia, in the
summer of 1838, the quiet and beautiful
scenery around the ancient village of
Frankford frequently attracted me from
the heat and bustle of the city.
NOTE 40, page 110.
August. Soliloq. cap. xxxi. " Interrogavi
Terrain," &c.
NOTE 41, page 112.
For the idea of this line, I am indebted
to Emerson, in his inimitable sonnet to the
Rhodora, —
" If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being."
NOTE 42, page 121.
Among the earliest converts to the
doctrines of Friends in Scotland was
Barclay of Ury, an old and distinguished
soldier, who had fought under Gustavus
tVdolphus, in Germany. As a Quaker, he
became the object of persecution and abuse
at the hands of the magistrates and the
populace. None bore the indignities of
the mob with greater patience and noble
ness of soul than this once proud gentle
man and soldier. One of his friends, on
an occasion of uncommon rudeness, lament
ed that he should be treated so harshly in
his old age who had been so honored be
fore. " I find more satisfaction," said
Barclay, " as well as honor, in being thus
insulted for my religious principles, than
when, a few years ago, it was usual for the
magistrates, as I passed the city of Aber
deen, to meet me on the road and conduct
me to public entertainment in their
hall, and then escort me out again, to gain
my favor."
NOTE 43, page 131.
Lucy Hooper died at Brooklyn, L. I.,
on the 1st of 8th mo., 1841, aged 24 years.
NOTE 44, page 132.
The last time I saw Dr. Channing was
in the summer of 1841, when, in company
Avith my English friend, Joseph Sturge, so
well known for his philanthropic labors
and liberal political opinions, I visited him
in his summer residence in Rhode Island.
In recalling the impressions of that visit,
it can scarcely be necessary to say, that I
have no reference to the peculiar religious
opinions of a man whose life, beautifully
and truly manifested above the atmos
phere of sect, is now the world's common
legacy.
NOTE 45, page 135.
" 0 vine of Sibmah ! I will weep for
thee with the weeping of Jazer ! " — Jere
miah xlviii. 32.
NOTE 46, page 138.
Sophia Sturge, sister of Joseph Sturge,
of Birmingham, the President of the British
Complete Suffrage Association, died in
the 6th month, 1845. She was the col
league, counsellor, and ever-ready helpmate
of her brother in all his vast designs of
beneficence. The Birmingham Pilot say£
of her : " Never, perhaps, were the active
and passive virtues of the human character
more harmoniously and beautifully blended
than in this excellent woman. "
NOTE 47, page 139.
Winnipiseogee : " Smile of the Great
Spirit."
NOTE 48, page 142.
This legend is the subject of a celebrated
picture by Tintoretto, of which Mr. Rogers
possesses *h° original sketch. The slave
NOTES.
lies en the ground, amid a crowd of spec
tators, who look on, animated by all the
various emotions of sympathy, rage, terror;
a woman, in front, with a child in her
arms, has always been admired for the
lifelike vivacity of her attitude and expres
sion. The executioner holds up the broken
implements ; St. Mark, with a headlong
movement, seems to rush down from
heaven in haste to save his worshipper.
The dramatic grouping in this picture is
wonderful ; the coloring, in its gorgeous
depth and harmony, is, in Mr. Rogers's
sketch, finer than in the picture. — Mrs.
Jamieson's Poetry of Sacred , and Legen
dary Art, Vol. I. p. 121.
NOTE 49, page 143.
Pennant, in his "Voyage to the Heb
rides," describes the holy well of Loch
Maree, the waters of which were supposed
to effect a miraculous cure of melancholy,
trouble, and insanity.
NOTE 50, page 145.
The writer of these lines is no enemy of
Catholics. He has, on more than one occa
sion, exposed himself to the censures of
his Protestant brethren, by his strenuous
endeavors to procure indemnification for
the owners of the convent destroyed near
Boston. He defended the cause of the
Irish patriots long before it had become
popular in this country ; and he was one
of the first to urge the most liberal aid to
the suffering and starving population of
the Catholic island. The severity of his
language finds its ample apology in the
reluctant confession of one of the most
eminent Romish priests, the eloquent and
devoted Father Ventura.
NOTE 51, page 146.
Ebenezer Elliott, the intelligence of whose
death has recently reached us, was, to the
artisans of England, what Burns was to the
peasantry of Scotland. His " Corn-law
Rhymes " contributed not a little to that
overwhelming tide of popxilar opinion and
feeling which resulted in the repeal of the
tax on bread. Well has the eloquent
author of " The Reforms and Reformers
of Great Britain " said of him, " Not corn-
law repealers alone, but all Britons who
moisten their scanty bread with the
sweat of the brow, are largely indebted to
his inspiring lay, for the mighty bound
which the laboring mind of England has
taken in our day."
NOTE 52, page 147.
The reader of the Biography ot the late
William Allen, the philanthropic associate
of Clarkson and Romilly, cannot fail to
admire his simple and beautiful record of
a tour through Europe, in the years 1818
and 1819, in the company of his American
friend, Stephen Grellett.
NOTE 53, page 154.
" Thou 'mind'st me of a story told
In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold."
The incident here referred to is related
in a note to Bernardin Henri Saint Pierre's
Etudes de la Nature.
"We arrived at the habitation of the
Hermits a little before they sat down to
their table, and while they were still at
church. J. J. Rousseau proposed to me
to offer up our devotions. The hermits
were reciting the Litanies of Providence,
which are remarkably beautiful. After we
had addressed our prayers to God, and the
hermits were proceeding to the refectory,
Rousseau said to me, with his heart over
flowing, 'At this moment I experience
what is said in the gospel : Where two or
three are gathered together in my name, there
am I in the midst of them. There is here a
feeling of peace and happiness which pene
trates the soul.' I said, 'If Fenelon had
lived, you would have been a Catholic.'
He exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, ' 0, if
Fenelon were alive, I would struggle to get
into his service, even as a lackey ! ' "
In my sketch of Saint Pierre, it will be
seen that I have somewhat antedated the
period of his old age. At that time he was
not probably more than fifty. In describ
ing him, I have by no means exaggerated
his own history of his mental condition
at the period of the story. In the fragmen
tary Sequel to his Studies of Nature, he
thus speaks of himself : " The ingratitude
of those of whom I had deserved kind
ness, unexpected family misfortunes, the
total loss of my small patrimony through
enterprises solely undertaken for the benefit
of my country, the debts under which I
lay oppressed, the blasting of all my hopes;.
— these combined calamities made dread
ful inroads upon my health and reason.
. . . . I found it impossible to continue
in a room where there was company, espe
cially if the doors were shut. I could not
even cross an alley in a public garden, if
several persons had got together in it.
When alone, my malady subsided. I felt
myself likewise at ease in places where I
saw children only. At the sight of any one
walking up to the place where I was, I felt
my whole frame agitated, and retired. I
often said to myself, ' My sole study has-
been to merit well of mankind ; why do I
fear them ? ' "
He attributes his improved health oC
528
NOTES.
mind and body to the counsels of his
friend, J. J. Rousseau. " I renounced,"
says he, " my books. I threw my eyes
upon the works of nature, which spake to
all my senses a language which neither
time nor nations have it in their power to
alter. Thenceforth my histories and my
journals were the herbage of the fields
and meadows. My thoughts did not go
forth painfully after them, as in the case
of human systems ; but their thoughts,
under a thousand engaging forms, quietly
sought me. In these I studied, without
effort, the laws of that Universal Wisdom
which had surrounded me from the cradle,
but on which heretofore I had bestowed
little attention."
Speaking of Rousseau, he says : " I de
rived inexpressible satisfaction from his
society. What I prized still more than his
genius, was his probity. He was one of
the few literary characters, tried in the
furnace of affliction, to whom you could,
with perfect security, confide your most
secret thoughts Even when he de
viated, and became the victim of himself
or of others, he could forget his own misery
in devotion to the welfare of mankind.
He was uniformly the advocate of the
miserable. There might be inscribed on
his tomb these affecting words from that
Book of which he carried always about
him some select passages, during the last
years of his life : His sins, which are many,
are forgiven, for he loved much. "
NOTE 54, page 155.
" Like that the gray-haired sea-king passed."
Dr. Hooker, who accompanied Sir James
Ross in his expedition of 1841, thus de
scribes the appearance of that unknown
land of frost and fire which was seen in
latitude 77° south, — a stupendous chain
of mountains, the whole mass of • ,vhich,
from its highest point to the ocean, was
covered with everlasting snow and ice : —
" The water and the sky were both as
blue, or rather more intensely blue, than I
have ever seen them in the tropics, and all
the coast was one mass of dazzlingly beau
tiful peaks of snow, which, when the sun
approached the horizon, reflected the most
brilliant tints of golden yellow and scarlet ;
and then, to see the dark cloud of smoke,
tinged with flame, rising from the volcano
in a perfect unbroken column, one side jet-
black, the other giving back the colors of
the sun, sometimes turning off at a right
angle by some current of wind, and
stretching many miles to leeward ! This
was a sight so surpassing everything that
can be imagined, and so heightened by the
consciousness that we had penetrated, un
der the guidance of our commander, into
regions far beyond what was ever deemed
practicable, that it caused a feeling of awe
to steal over us at the consideration of our
own comparative insignificance and help
lessness, and at the same time an indescrib
able feeling of the greatness of the Creator
in the works of his hand. "
NOTE 55, page 161.
The election of Charles Sumner to th^
U. S. Senate "followed hard upon" thn
rendition of the fugitive Sims by the U. S.
officials and the armed police of Boston.
NOTE 56, page 164.
The storming of the city of Derne, in
1805, by General Eaton, at the head of nine
Americans, forty Greeks, and a motley
array of Turks and Arabs, was one of those
feats of hardihood and daring which have
in all ages attracted the admiration of the
multitude. The higher and holier heroism
of Christian self-denial and sacrifice, in the
humble walks of private duty, is seldom so
well appreciated.
NOTE 57, page 167.
It is proper to say that these lines are
the joint impromptus of my sister and my
self. They are inserted here as an expres
sion of our admiration of the gifted
stranger whom we have since learned to
love as a friend.
NOTE 58, page 171.
This ballad was originally published in
a prose work of the author's, as the song
of a wandering Milesian schoolmaster.
In the seventeenth century, slavery in the
New World was by no means confined to
the natives of Africa. Political offenders
and criminals were transported by the
British government to the plantations of
Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were
sold like cattle in the market. Kidnap
ping of free and innocent white persons was
practised to a considerable extent in the
seaports of the United Kingdom.
NOTE 59, page 172.
It can scarcely be necessary to say that
there are elements in the character and
passages in the history of the great Hun
garian statesman and orator, which neces
sarily command the admiration of those,
even, who believe that no political revolu
tion was ever worth the price of human
blood.
NOTE 60, page 175.
" Homilies from Oldbug hear."
Dr. W , author of "The Puritan,"
under the name of Jonathan Oldbug.
NOTES.
NOTE 61, page 187.
William Forster, of Norwich, England,
died in East Tennessee, in the 1st month,
1854, while engaged in presenting to the
governors of the States of this Union the
address of his religious society on the evils
of slavery. He was the relative and coad
jutor of the Biixtons, Gurneys, and Frys ;
and his whole life, extending almost to
threescore and ten years, was a pure and
beautiful example of Christian benevolence.
He had travelled over Europe, and visited
most of its sovereigns, to plead against the
slave-trade and slavery ; and had twice
before made visits to this country, under
impressions of religious duty.
NOTE 62, page 188.
No more fitting inscription could "be
placed on the tombstone of Robert Rantoul
than this : " He died at his post in Con
gress, and his last words were a protest in
the name of Democracy against the Fugi
tive-Slave Law."
NOTE 63, page 200.
"Sebah, Oasis of Fezzan, 10th March,
1846. — This evening the female slaves
were unusually excited in singing, and I
had the curiosity to ask my negro servant,
Said, what they were singing about. As
many of them were natives of his own
country, he had no difficulty in translating
the Mandara or Bornou language. I had
often asked the Moors to translate their
songs for me, but got no satisfactory ac
count from them. Said at first said, ' 0,
they sing of Rubee ' (God). ' What do you
mean ? ' I replied, impatiently. ' O, don't
you know ? ' he continued, ' they asked God
to give them their Atka ?' (certificate of
freedom. ) I inquired, ' Is that all ? Said :
'No; they say, "Where are we going?
The world is large. 0 God ! Where are
we going ? 0 God ! " ' I inquired, ' What
else ? ' Said : ' They remember their coun
try, Bornou, and say, "Bornou was a
pleasant country, full of all good things ;
mi,t this is a bad country, and we are miser
able ! " ' ' Do they say anything else ? '
Said : ' No ; they repeat these words over
and over again, and add, " 0 God ! give us
our Atka, and let us return again to our
dear home" '
" I am not surprised I got little satisfac
tion when I asked the Moors about the
songs of their slaves. Who will say that
the above words are not a very appropriate
song ? What could have been more conge
nially adapted to their then woful condi
tion '> It is not to be wondered at that these
poor bondwomen cheer up their hearts, in
their long, lonely, and painful wanderings
over the desert, with words and sentiments
like these ; but I have often observed that
their fatigue and sufferings were too great
for them to strike up this melancholy dirge,
and many days their plaintive strains
never broke over the silence of the desert. "
— Richardson's Journal.
NOTE 64, page 201.
One of the latest and most interesting
items of Eastern news is the statement
that Slavery has been formally and totally
abolished in Egypt.
NOTE 65, page 213.
A letter from England, in the Friend?
Review, says : "Joseph Sturge, with a
companion, Thomas Harvey, has been
visiting the shores of Finland, to ascertain
the amount of mischief and loss to poor
and peaceable sufferers, occasioned by the
gunboats of the Allied squadrons in the
late war, with a view to obtaining relief
for them."
NOTE 66, page 226.
A remarkable custom, brought from th&
Old Country, formerly prevailed in the
rural districts of New England. On the
death of a member of the family, the bees
were at once informed of the event, and
their hives dressed in mourning. This
ceremonial was supposed to be necessary
to prevent the swarms from leaving their
hives and seeking a new home.
NOTE 67, page 235.
"Too late I loved Thee, 0 Beauty of
ancient days, yet ever new ! And lo !
Thou wert within, and I abroad searching
for'thee. Thou wert with me, but I was not
with Thee." — August. Soliloq., Book X.
NOTE 68, page 235.
" And I saw that there was an Ocean of
Darkness and Death : but an infinite
Ocean of Light and Love flowed over the
Ocean of Darkness : And in that I saw the
infinite Love of God." — George Fox's
Journal.
NOTE 69, page 243.
The massacre of unarmed and unoffend
ing men, in Southern Kansas, took place
near the Marais du Cygne of the French
voyageurs.
NOTE 70, page 254.
Read at the Friends' School Anniversary,
Providence, R. I., 6th mo., 1860.
NOTE 71, page 264.
See English caricatures of America.1
530
NOTES.
Slaveholder and cowhide, with the motto,
'•' Have n't I a right to wallop my nigger ? "
NOTE 72, page 266.
It is recorded that the Chians, when
subjugated by Mithridates of Cappadocia,
were delivered up to their own slaves, to
be carried away captive to Colchis.
A.thenaeus considers this a just punishment
for their wickedness in first introducing
the slave-trade into Greece. From this
ancient villany of the Chians the proverb
arose, "The Chian hath bought himself a
master."
NOTE 73, page 270.
This ballad was written on the occasion
of a Horticultural Festival. Cobbler Kee-
zar was a noted character among the first
settlers in the valley of the Merrimack.
NOTE 74, page 283.
Lieutenant Herndon's Keport of the
Exploration of the Amazon has a striking
description of the peculiar and melancholy
notes of a bird heard by night on the
shores of the river. The Indian guides
called it " The Cry of a Lost Soul " !
NOTE 75, page 361.
Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau, or, as
Sewall the Quaker Historian gives it, Von
Merlane, a noble young lady of Frankfort,
seems to have held among the Mystics of
that city very much such a position as
Annia Maria 'Schurmaus did among the
Labadists of Holland. William Penn
appears to have shared the admiration of
her own immediate circle for this accom
plished and gifted lady.
NOTE 76, page 363.
Magister Johann Kelpius, a graduate of
the University of Helmstadt, came to
Pennsylvania in 1694, with a company of
German Mystics. They made their home
In the woods on the Wissahickon, a little
west of the Quaker settlement of German-
town. Kelpius was a believer in the near
approach of the Millennium, and was a
devout student of the Book of Revelation,
and the Morgen-Rotlie of Jacob Behmen.
He called his settlement " The Woman in
the Wilderness" (Das Weib in der
Wueste). He was only twenty -four years
of age when he came to America, but his
gravity, learning, and devotion placed him
at the head of the settlement. He disliked
the Quakers, because he thought they were
too exclusive in the matter of ministers.
He was, like most of the Mystics, opposed
to the severe doctrinal views of Calvin and
even Luther, declaring " that he could as
little agree with the Damnamus of the
Augsburg Confession as with the Anathema
of the Council of Trent."
He died in 1704, sitting in his little garden
surrounded by his grieving disciples. Pre
vious to his death it is said that he cast
his famous " Stone of Wisdom" into the
river, where that mystic souvenir of the
times of Van Helmont, Paracelsus, and
Agrippa has lain ever since, undisturbed.
NOTE 77, page 363.
Peter Sluyter, or Schluter, a native of
Wesel, united himself with the sect of
Labadists, who believed in the Divine com
mission of John De Labadie, a Roman
Catholic priest converted to Protestantism,
enthusiastic, eloquent, and evidently sin
cere in his special calling and election to
separate the true and living members of
the Church of Christ from the formalism
and hypocrisy of the ruling sects. George
Keith and Robert Barclay visited him at
Amsterdam and afterward at the communi
ties of Herford and Wieward ; and, accord
ing to Gerard Croes, found him so near to
them on some points, that they offered to
take him into the Society of Friends. This
offer, if it was really made, which is cer
tainly doubtful, was, happily for the
Friends at least, declined. Invited to
Herford in Westphalia by Elizabeth,
daughter of the Elector Palatine, De
Labadie and his followers preached inces
santly, and succeeded in arousing a wild
enthusiasm among the people, who neg
lected their business and gave way to ex
citements and strange practices. Men and
women, it was said, at the Communion
drank and danced together, and private
marriages, or spiritual unions, were formed.
Labadie died in 1674 at Altona, in Den
mark, maintaining his testimonies to the
last. " Nothing remains for me," he said,
" except to go to my God. Death is
merely ascending from a lower and nar
rower chamber to one higher and holier."
In 1679, Peter Sluyter and Jasper Dan-
kers were sent to America by the commu
nity at the Castle of Wieward. Their
journal, translated from the Dutch and
edited by Henry C. Murphy, has been
recently published by the Long Island
Historical Society. They made some con
verts, and among them was the eldest son
of Hermanns, the proprietor of a rich traci
of land at the head of Chesapeake Bay,
known as Bohemia Manor. Sluyter ob
tained a grant of this tract, and established
upon it a community numbering at one
time a hundred souls. Very contradictory
statements are on record regarding his
headship of this spiritual family, the disci
pline of which seems to have bean of more
NOTES.
531
than monastic severity. Certain it is that
he bought and sold slaves, and manifested
more interest in the world's goods than
became a believer in the near Millennium.
He evinces in his journal an overweening
spiritual pride, and speaks contemptuoxisly
of other professors, especially the Quakers
whom he met in his travels. The latter,
on the contrary, seem to have looked
favorably upon the Labadists, and uni
formly speak of them courteously and
kindly. His journal shows him to have
been destitute of common gratitude and
Christian charity. He threw himself upon
the generous hospitality of. the Friends
wherever he went, and repaid their kind
ness by the coarsest abuse and misrepre
sentation.
NOTE 78, page 364.
Among the pioneer Friends were many
men of learning and broad and liberal
views. Perm was conversant with every
department of literature and philosophy.
Thomas Lloyd was a ripe and rare scholar.
The great Loganiau Library of Philadel
phia bears witness to the varied learning
and classical taste of its donor, James
Logan. Thomas Story, member of the
Council of State, Master of the Rolls, and
Commissioner of Claims under William
Penn, and an able minister of his Society,
took a deep interest in scientific questions,
and in a letter to his friend Logan, written
while on a religious visit to Great Britain,
seems to have anticipated the conclusion
of modern geologists. " I spent," he says,
" some months, especially at Scarborough,
during the season attending meetings, at
whose high cliffs and the variety of strata
therein and their several positions I further
learned and was confirmed in some things,
— that the earth is of much older date as
to the beginning of it than the time assigned
in the Holy Scriptures as commonly un
derstood, which is suited to the common
capacities of mankind, as to six days of
progressive work, by which I understand
certain long and competent periods of time,
and not natural days." It was sometimes
made a matter of reproach by the Anabap
tists and other sects, that the Quakers read
profane writings and philosophies, and
that they quoted heathen moralists in
support of their views. Sluyter and Ban
kers, in their journal of American travels,
visiting a Quaker preacher's house at
Burlington, on the Delaware, found " a
volume of Virgil lying on the window, as
if it were a common hand-book ; also Hel-
raont's bc>ok on Medicine (Ortus Medicines,
id est Initia Physica inaudita progressus
medecince novus in morborum ultionam ad
vitam longam), whom, in an introduction
they have made to it, they make to pass
for one of their own sect, although in his
lifetime he did not know anything about
Quakers." It would appear from this that
the half -mystical, half-scientific writings of
the alchemist and philosopher of Vilverde-
had not escaped the notice of Friends, and
that they had included him in their
broad eclecticism.
NOTE 79, page 364.
" The Quaker's Meeting," a painting by
E. Hemskerck (supposed to be Egbert
Hemskerck the younger, son of Egbert
Hemskerck the old), in which William
Penn and others — among them Charles
II., or the Duke of York — are represented
along with the rudest and most stolid class
of the British rural population at that
period. Hemskerck came to London from
Holland with King William in 1689. He
delighted in wild, grotesque subjects, such
as the nocturnal intercourse of witches and
the temptation of St. Anthony. What
ever was strange and uncommon attracted
his free pencil. Judging from the portrait
of Penn, he must have drawn his faces,
figures, and costiimes from life, although
there may be something of caricature in
the convulsed attitudes of two or three of
the figures.
NOTE 80, page 366.
In one of his letters addressed to his
friends in Germany he says : " These wild
men, who never in their life heard Christ's
teachings aboiit temperance and content
ment, herein far surpass the Christians.
They live far more contented and uncon
cerned for the morrow. They do not over
reach in trade. They know nothing of
our everlasting pomp and stylishness.
They neither curse nor swear, are temper
ate in food and drink, and if any of them
get drunk, the mouth-Christians are at
fault, who, for the sake of accursed lucre,
sell them strong drink."
Again he wrote in 1698 to his father that
he finds the Indians reasonable people,
willing to accept good teaching and man^
ners, evincing an inward piety toward God,
and more eager, in fact, to understand
things divine than many among you who
in the pulpit teach Christ in word, but by
ungodly life deny him.
"It is evident," says Professor Seideu-
stecker, " Pastorius holds up the Indian as
Nature's \mspoiled child to the eyes of the
' European Babel,' somewhat after the
same manner in which Tacitus *ised the
barbarian Germani to shame his degenerate
countrymen. "
532
NOTES.
As believers in the universality of the
Saving Light, the outlook of early Friends
upon the heathen was a very cheerful and
hopeful one. God was as near to them as
to Jew or Anglo-Saxon ; as accessible at
Timbuctoo as at Koine or Geneva. Not
the letter of Scripture, but the spirit which
dictated it, was of saving efficacy. Robert
Barclay is nowhere more powerful than in
his argument for the salvation of the
heathen, who live according to their light,
without knowing even the name of Christ.
William Penn thought Socrates as good a
Christian as Richard Baxter. Early Fa
thers of the Church, as Origen and Justin
Martyr, held bi-oader views on this point
than modern Evangelicals. Even Augus
tine, from whom Calvin borrowed his theol
ogy, admits that he has no controversy with
the admirable philosophers, Plato and
Plotinus. u Nor do I think," he says in
De Civ. Dei., lib. xviii., cap. 47, "that the
Jews dare affirm that none belonged unto
God but the Israelites."
NOTE 81, page 418.
This ballad, originally written for J. R.
Osgood & Co.'s Memorial History of Bos
ton, describes, with pardonable poetic li
cense, a memorable incident in the annals
of the city. The interview between Shat-
tuck and the Governor took place, I have
since learned, in the residence of the latter,
and not in the Council Chamber.
NOTE 82, page 420.
This name in some parts of Europe is
given to the season we call Indian Sum
mer, in honor of the good St. Martin. The
title of the poem was suggested by the fact
that the day it refers to was the exact date
l»f the Saint's birth, the llth of November.
NOTE 83, page 421.
See Tylor's Primitive Culture, vol. ii.
pp. 32, 33. Also Journal of Asiatic Society,
vol. iv. p. 795.
NOTE 84, page 426.
picturesquely situated Wayside Inn
sst Ossipee, N. H., is now in ashes;
The
at West . ,
and to its former guests these somewhat
careless rhvnies may be a not unwelcome
reminder of pleasant summers and autumns
on the banks of the Bearcamp and Cho-
corua. To the author himself they have a
special interest from the fact that they
Were written, or improvised, under the eye,
»nd for the amusement of a beloved inva
lid friend whose last earthly sunsets faded
from the n.ountain ranges of Ossipee and
Sandwich.
NOTE 85, page 457.
"He [Macey] shook the dust from off
his feet, and departed with all his worldly
goods and his family. He encountered a
severe storm, and his wife, influenced by
some omens of disaster, besought him to
Eut back. He told her not to fear, for his
lith was perfect. But she entreated him
again. Then the spirit that impelled him
broke forth: 'Woman, go below and seek
thy God. I fear not the witches on earth,
or" the devils in hell ! ' " •— Life of Robert
Pike page 55.
NOTE 86, page 461.
I have attempted this paraphrase of the
Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj of India, as
I find them in Mozoomdar's account of
the devotional exercise* of that remark
able religious development which has at
tracted far less attention and sympathy
from the Christian world than it deserves,
as a fresh revelation of the direct action oi
the Divine Spirit upon the human heart.
NOTE 87, page 464.
• The story of the shipwreck of Captain
Valentine Bagley, on the coast of Arabia,
and his Bufferings in the desert, has been
familiar from my childhood. It has been
partially told in the singularly beautiful
lines of my friend, Harriet Prescott
Spofford, on the occasion of a public
celebration, at the Newburyport Library.
To the charm and felicity of her verse, as
far as it goes, nothing can be added, but
I have endeavored to give a fuller detail
of the touching incident upon which it is
founded.
NOTE 88, page 465.
The substance of these lines, hastily
pencilled several years ago, I find among
such of my un printed scraps as have
escaped the waste-basket and the tire.
In transcribing it I have made some
changes, additions, and omissions.
NOTE 89, page 470.
The daughter of Daniel Gurteen, Esq.,
delegate from Haverhill, England, to the
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
celebration of Haverhill, Massachusetts.
The Rev. John Ward of the former place
and many of his old parishioners were the
pioneer settlers of the new town on the
Merrimac.
NOTES.
533
NOTE 90, page 476.
These lines were in answer to an invita
tion to hear a lecture of Mary Grew, of
Philadelphia, before the Boston Radical
Club. The reference in the last stanza is
to an essay on Sappho by T. W. Higgin-
son, read at the club the preceding month.
NOTE 91, page 477.
This poem was read at a meeting of citi
zens of Boston having for its object the
preservation of the Old South Church,
famous in Colonial and Revolutionary
history.
NOTE 92, page 479.
Norumbega Hall at Wellesley College,
named in honor of Eben Norton Horsford,
who was one of the most munificent patrons
of that noble institution, and who had just
published an essay claiming the discovery
of the site of the somewhat mythical city
of Norumbega, was opened with appropri
ate ceremonies, in April, 1886. The follow
ing sonnet was written for the occasion,
and was read by President Alice E. Free
man, to whom it was addressed.
NOTE 93, page 479.
Written for the unveiling of the statue
of Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury, Mass.,
July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was
a native of the town, was a signer of the
Declaration of Independence. Amesbury
or Ambresbury, so called from the*' anoin
ted stones " of the great Druidical temple
near it, was the seat of one of the earliest
religious houses in Britain. The tradition
that the guilty wife of King Arthur fled
thither for protection forms one of the
finest passages in Tennyson's Idylls of the
King.
NOTE 94, page 480.
Read at the dedication of Pennsylvania
Hall, Philadelphia, May 15, 1838. The
building was erected by an association of
gentlemen, irrespective of sect or party,
"that the citizens of Philadelphia should
possess a room wherein the principles of
Liberty, and Equality of Civil Rights,
could be freely discussed, and the evils of
slavery fearlessly portrayed." On the
evening of the 17th it was burned by a
mob, destroying the office of the Pennsyl
vania Freeman, of which I was editor, and
with it my books and papers.
NOTE 95, page 482.
John L. Brown, a young white man of
South Carolina, was "in 1844 sentenced to
death for aiding a young slave woman,
whom he loved and had married, to escape
from slavery. In pronouncing the sentence
Judge O'Neale addressed to the prisoner
words of appalling blasphemy [of which
the following passages give some notion]:
You are to die! . . . Of your past life I know
nothing, except what your trial furnished.
That told me that the crime for which you are
to suffer was the consequence of a want of at
tention on your part to the duties of life. The
strange woman snared you. She flattered you
with her words, and you became her victim.
The consequence was, that, led on by a desire
to serve her, you committed the offence of aid
ing a slave to run away and depart from her
master's service ; and now, for it you are to
die ! . . .
You are young ; quite too young to be where
j you are. If you had remembered your Creator
I in your past days, you would not now be in
: a felon's place to receive a felon's judgment.
I Still, it is not too late to remember your Cre-
j ator. He calls early, and He calls late. He
I stretches out the arms of a Father's love to you
1 — to the vilest sinner — and says: "Come
unto me and be saved."
No event in the history of the anti-slavery
struggle so stirred the two hemispheres as
did this dreadful sentence. A cry of hor
ror was heard from Europe. In the British
House of Lords Brougham and Denman
spoke of it with mingled pathos and in
dignation. Thirteen hundred clergymen
and church officers in Great Britain ad
dressed a memorial to the churches of South
Carolina against the atrocity. Indeed, so
strong was the pressure of the sentiment of
abhorrence and disgust that South Caro
lina yielded to it, and the sentence was
commuted to scourging and banishment.
NOTE 96, page 484.
Supposed to be written by the chairman
of the "Central Clique" at Concord, N.
H., to the Hon. M. N., Jr., at Washington,
giving the result of the election.
These verses were published in the
Boston Chronotype in 384(5. They refer
to the contest in New Hampshire, which
resulted in the defeat of the pro-slavery
Democracy, and in the election of John P.
Hale to the United States Senate. Al
though their authorship was not acknow
ledged, it was strongly suspected. They
furnish a specimen of the way, on the
whole rather good-natured, in which the
liberty-lovers of half a century ago an
swered the social and political outlawry
534
NOTES.
and mob violence to which they were sub
jected.
NOTE 97, page 484.
The book-establishment of the Free- Will
Baptists in Dover was refused the act of
incorporation by the New Hampshire
Legislature, for the reason that the news
paper organ of that sect and its leading
preachers favored abolition.
NOTE 98, page 484.
The senatorial editor of the Belknap
Gazette all along manifested a peculiar
horror of "niggers " and "nigger parties."
NOTE 99, page 484.
The justice before whom Elder Storrs
was brought for preaching abolition on a
writ drawn by Hon. M. N., Jr., of Pitts-
field. The sheriff served the writ while
the elder was praying.
NOTE 100, page 484.
The academy at Canaan, N. H., received
one or two colored scholars, and was in
consequence dragged off into a swamp by
Democratic teams.
NOTE 101, page 484.
The Female Anti-Slavery Society, at its
first meeting in Concord, was assailed with
stones and brickbats.
NOTE 102, page 484.
"Papers and memorials touching the
subject of slavery shall bo laid on the
table without reading, debate, or refer
ence." So read the gag-law, as it was
called, introduced into the House by Mr.
Atherton.
NOTE 103, page 485.
These lines were addressed to a magazine
publisher, who, alarmed for his Southern
circulation, not only dropped the name of
Grace Greenwood from his list of contribu
tors, but made an offensive parade of his
action, with the view of strengthening his
position among slaveholders and conserva
tives. By some coincidence his portrait
was issued about the same time.
NOTE 104, page 487.
Written in the summer of 1856, during
the political campaign of the Free Soil
party under the candidacy of John C.
Fre'mont.
NOTE 105, page 488.
Written after the election in 1856, which
showed the immense gains of the Free Soil
party, and insured its success in I860-
NOTE 106, page 488.
On the 12th of January, 1861, Mr.
Seward delivered in the Senate chamber a
speech on TheStuteofthe Union, in which
he urged the paramount duty of preserving
the Union, and went as far as it was possi
ble to go, without surrender of principles,
in concessions to the Southern party.
NOTE 107, page 489.
In the disastrous battle on the Big Horn
River, in which General Custer and his
entire force were slain, the chief Rain-in-
the-Face was one of the fiercest leaders
of the Indians. In Longfellow's poem on
the massacre, these lines will be remem
bered : —
"Revenge! '' cried Rain-in-the-Face,
" Revenge upon all the race
Of the White Chief with yellow hair ! "
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags reechoed the cry
Of his anger and despair.
He is now a man of peace ; and the agent
! at Standing Rock, Dakota, writes, Septem
ber 28, 1886: "Rain-in-the-Face is very
anxious to go to Hampton. I fear he is
too old, but he desires very much to go."
The Southern Workman, the organ of
General Armstrong's Industrial School at
Hampton, Va., savs in a late number: —
"Rain-in-the-Face has applied before to
come to Hampton, but his age would ex
clude him from the school as an ordinary
student. He has shown himself very much
in earnest about it, and is anxious, all say,
to learn the better ways of life. It is as
unusual as it is striking to see a man of
his age, and one who has had such an
experience, willing to give up the old way,
and put himself in the position of a boy
and a student."
NOTE 108, page 496.
Metacom, or Philip, the chief of the
Wampanoags, was the most powerful and
sagacious Sachem who ever made war
upon the English.
NOTES.
535
NOTE 109, page 498.
The Indians supposed the White Moun
tains were the residence of powerful spirits,
and in consequence rarely ascended them.
NOTE 110, page 498.
I was thinking of the temperance lyrics
the great poet of Scotland might have
written had he put his name to a pledge
of abstinence, a thing unhappily unknown
in his day. The result of my cogitation
was this poor imitation of his dialect.
NOTE 111, page 500..
Isabella, Infanta of Parma, and consort
of Joseph of Austria, predicted her own
death, immediately after her marriage
with the Emperor. Amidst the gayety
and splendor of Vienna and Presburg,
she was reserved and melancholy; she
believed that Heaven had given her a view
of the future, and that her child, the name
sake of the great Maria Theresa, would
perish with her. Her prediction was ful
filled.
NOTE 112, page 504.
"It is an awful, an arduous thing to
root out everv affection for earthly things,
so as to live only for another world. I am
now far, very far, from you all ; and as I
look around and see the Indian scenery, I
sigh to think of the distance which sepa
rates us." — Letters of Henry Martyn,
from India.
NOTE 113, page 507.
Written on hearing that the Resolutions
of the Legislature of Massachusetts on the
subject of Slavery, presented by Hon C.
Gushing to the House of Representatives
of the United States [in 1837] had been
laid on the table unread and unreferred
under the infamous rule of "Patton's Re
solution."
NOTE 114, page 507.
[The home of Sarah Greenleaf was upon
the Newbury shore of the Merrimac, nearly
opposite the home of the Whittiers. The
house was standing until a recent date.
Among Mr. Whittier's papers was found
this fragment of a ballad about the home
coming, as a bride, of his grandmother,
Sarah Greenleaf.]
NOTE 115, page 508.
[Written during school-days, and pub
lished anonymously in 1833. The secret
of authorship was not discovered for sixty
years.]
NOTE 116, page 509.
[This./ew d'esprit was written by Whit-
tier in 1832. The notes are his own. The
authorship was not discovered till after
his death.]
NOTE 117, page 511.
[Written in the album of May Pillsbury
of West Newbury, in the fall of 1838,
when Whittier was at home on a visit from
Philadelphia, where he was engaged in ed
itorial work.]
NOTE 118, page 511.
[Published in The National Era, Ma>
22, 1851.]
NOTE 119, page 512.
[A campaign song written to be sung
at a Republican Mass Meeting held in
Newburyport, Mass., October 11, I860.]
NOTE 120, page 512.
[This poem, originally printed in The
Atlantic Monthly, was withheld from pub
lication in his volumes by Mr. Whittier,
in deference to living relatives of the hero
of the poem. Death finally removed the
restriction.]
NOTE 121, page 514.
[Sent in a letter to Celia Thaxter.]
NOTE 122, page 514.
["His washerwoman, Mrs. Choate, by
industry and thrift had been enabled to
build for her family a comfortable house.
When it was ready for occupancy, there
was a house-warming, attended by all the
neighbors, who brought substantial tokens
! of their good-will, including all the furni-
[ ture needed in her new parlor. Mr. Whit-
! tier's hand was to be seen in the whole
! movement; he was present at the festiv-
1 ity, and made a little speech, congratulat-
i ing Mrs. Choate upon her well-deserved
| success in life, and said he would read a
i piece of machine poetry which had been
, intrusted to him for the occasion. Theae
536
NOTES.
are the lines, which were, of course, of his
own composition." — S. T. PICKARD, Life
and Letters of John Greenleaf \Vhittier.]
NOTE 123, page 514.
[Written for an old friend, Rev. S. H.
Emery, of Quincy, 111., who revisited
Whittier in 1868.]
NOTE 124, page 515.
[Written for Mr. and Mrs. Claflin as
they were about to sail for Europe.]
NOTE 125, page 515.
[Written at the Asquam House in the
summer of 1882.]
NOTE 126, page 515.
[An inscription for a marble bust, mod
eled by Anne Whitney, and placed in the
Gary Library, Lexington, Mass., M&y,
1884.]
NOTE 127, page 515.
[The album belonged to the grandson
of Whfttier's life-long friend, Theodore D.
Weld, and the lines were written in April,
1884.]
NOTE 128, page 516.
[Written in 1886, for the tenth anniver-
saiy of the wedding of his niece.]
NOTE 129, page 516.
[Found among Mr. Whittier's papers,
in his handwriting, but undated.]
INDEX OF FIRST LINES.
A BEAUTIFUL and Irappy girl, 141.
A bending staff J would not break, 157.
A blush as of rises, 243.
Above, below, in sky and sod, 237.
A Christian ! going, gone, 50.
A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw, 441.
Across the frozen marshes, 213.
Across the sea I heard the groans, 283.
Across the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's
drouth and sand, 79.
A dirge is wailing from the Gulf of storm-vexed
Mexico, 499.
A drear and desolate shore, 440.
A few brief years have passed away, 55.
After your pleasant morning travel, 516.
Against the sunset's glowing wall, 85.
Against the wooded hills it stands, 453.
A gold fringe on the purpling hem, 404.
All day the darkness and the cold, 141.
All grim and soiled and brown with tan, 98.
" All hail! " the bells of Christmas rang, 442.
All night above their rocky bed. 212.
" All ready ? " cried the captain, 43.
All things are Thine : no gift have we, 394.
Along Crane River's sunny slopes, 401.
Along the aisle where prayer was made, 354.
Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold, 325.
Amidst these glorious works of Thine, 323.
Amidst Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt, 457.
Amidst thy sacred effigies, 423.
Among their graven shapes to whom, 410.
Among the legends sung or said, 441.
Among the thousands who with hail and cheer,
A moony breadth of virgin face, 485.
And have they spurned thy word, 507.
Andrew Rykman's dead and gone, 281.
" And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps
tend, 429.
A night of wonder ! piled afar, 506.
Annie and Rhoda, sisters twain, 375.
A noble life is in thy care, 396.
A noteless stream, the Birchbrook runs, 454.
Another hand is beckoning us, 139.
A picture memory brings to me, 431.
A pious magistrate ! sound his praise through
out, 192.
Around Sebago's lonely lake, 31.
As Adam did in Paradise, 248.
As a guest who may not stay, 444.
A score of years had come and gone, 385.
A shallow stream, from fountains, 426.
As Islam's Prophet, when his last day drew,
459.
As o'er his furrowed fields which lie, 151.
A sound as if from bells of silver, 369.
A sound of tumult troubles all the air, 214.
As they who. tossing midst the storm at night,
128.
As they who watch by sick-beds find, relief,
273.
A strength Thy service cannot tire, 70.
A strong and mighty Angel, 314.
A tale for Roman guides to tell, 450.
A tender child of summers three, 460.
At morn I prayed, " I fain would see, 239.
A track of moonlight on a quiet lake, 162.
Bards of the island city '. — where of old, 509.
Beams of noon, like burning lances, through
the tree-tops flash and glisten, 77.
Bearer of Freedom's holy light, 105.
Bear him, comrades, to his grave, 211.
Before my drift-wood fire I sit, 467.
Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer, 434.
Behind us at our evening meal, 322.
Believe me, Lucy Larcom, it gives me real sor
row, 513.
Beneath the low-hung night cloud, 379.
Beneath the moonlight and the snow, 372.
Beneath thy skies, November, 488.
Beside a stricken field I stood, 263.
Beside that milestone, where the level sun, 417
Between the gates of birth and death, 472.
Bind up thy tresses, thou beautiful one, 503.
Bland as the morning breath of June, 109.
Blessings on thee, little man, 195.
Blest land of Judaea ! thrice hallowed of song,
82.
Blossom and greenness, making all, 471.
" Bring out your dead ! " The midnight
90.
"Build at Kallundborg by the sea, 307.
But what avail inadequate words to reach,
433.
By fire and cloud, across the desert sand, 201.
Call him not heretic whose works attest, 432.
Calm on the breast of Loch Maree, 143.
Calmly the night came down, 495.
Champion of those who groan beneath, 47.
Climbing a path which leads back nevermore,
468.
Close beside the meeting waters, 397.
Conductor Bradley, (always may his name.
390.
Dark the halls, and cold the feast, 40-
Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, 244.
Dear Anna, when I brought her veil, 398.
Dear friends, who read the world aright, 162.
Dear Sister ! — while the wise and sage, 144.
Dream not, 0 Soul, that easy is the task, 438.
Dry the tears for holy Eva, 166.
street,
538
INDEX OF FIRST LINES.
Earthly arms no more uphold him, 394.
Ere down yon blue Carpathian hills, 81.
Fair islands of the sunny sea ! midst all rejoi
cing things, 395.
Fair Nature's priestesses ' to whom, 162.
Far away in the twilight time, 228.
Far from his close and noisome cell, 102.
Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act,
410.
Father ' to thy suffering poor, 35.
Fold thy hands, thy work is over, 396.
Fond scenes, which delighted my youthful ex
istence, 491.
For ages on our river borders, 215.
For the fairest maid in Hampton, 304.
For weeks the clouds had raked the hills, 327.
Friend of mine ! whose lot was cast, 170.
Friend of my many years ! 489.
Friend of my soul ! — as with moist eye, 96.
Friend of the Slave, and yet the friend of all.
137.
From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome, 452.
From gold to gray, 236.
From pain and peril, by land and main, 464.
From purest wells of English undefined, 468.
From the green Amesbury hill which bears the
name, 434.
From the heart of Waumbek Methna, from the
lake that never fails, 202.
From the hills of home forth looking, far be
neath the tent-like span, 221.
From these wild rocks I look to-day, 356.
From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs
of Mame, 254.
From Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still, 70.
Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, 432.
" Get ye up from the wrath of God's terrible
day, 86.
Gift from the cold and silent past, 27.
God bless. New Hampshire ! — from her granite
peaks, 59.
God bless ye, brothers ! — in the fight, 97.
God called the nearest angels who dwell with
Him above, 411.
God's love and peace be with thee, where, 1G3.
Gone before us, 0 our brother, 134.
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 56.
Gone hath the spring, with all its flowers, 144
Gone to thy Heavenly Father's rest, 74.
Graceful in name and in thyself, our river, 470.
Gray searcher of the upper air, 498.
" Great peace in Europe ! Order reigns, 161.
Hail, heavenly gift! within the human breast,
493.
Hail to Posterity, 359.
Hands off ! thou tithe-fat plunderer ! play, 146.
Happy young friends, sit by me, 455.
Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth,
461.
Have I not voyaged, friend beloved, with thee,
387.
Have ye heard of our hunting, o'er mountain
and glen. 48.
Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard, 117.
He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit
comes, 91.
Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day, 434.
He had bowed down to drunkenness, 488.
He has done the work of a true man, 338.
Here is the place ; right over the hill, 226.
He rests with' the immortals ; his journey has
been long, 396.
Here, while the loom of Winter weaves, 199.
Her fingers shame the ivory keys, 274.
Her window opens to the bay, 302.
He stood on the brow of the well-known hill,
501.
His laurels fresh from song and lay, 428.
Ho — all to the borders! Vermonters, come
down, 508.
Ho ! thou who seekest late and long, 482.
Ho ! workers of the old time styled, 113.
Hoot ! — daur ye shaw ye're face again, 498.
How bland and sweet the greeting of this
breeze, 107.
How has New England's romance fled, 127 .
How smiled the land of France, 95.
How strange to greet, this frosty morn, 196.
How sweetly come the holy psalms, 247.
I low sweetly on the wood-girt town, 34.
Hurrah ! the seaward breezes, 115.
Hushed now the sweet consoling tongue, 515.
I ask not now for gold to gild, 150.
I call the old time back : 1 bring my lay, 516.
I call the old time back : I bring these lays,
218.
I did but dream. I never knew, 331.
"I do believe, and yet, in grief, 153.
I do not love thee, Isabel, and yet thou art
most fair ! 502.
If I have seemed more prompt to censure
wrong, 199.
I give thee joy ! — I know to thee, 277.
I have been thinking of the victims bound, 159.
I have not felt, o'er seas of sand, 81.
I heard the train's shrill whistle call, 197.
I know not, Time and Space so intervene, 275.
I love the old melodious lays, iv.
Immortal Love, forever full, 319.
I mourn no more my vanished years, 242.
In calm and cool and silence, once again, 172.
I need not ask thee, for my sake, 339.
In my dreain, methought I trod, 195.
In sky and wave the white clouds swam, 305.
In that black forest, where, when day is done.
283.
In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's moun
tains, 238.
In the minister's morning sermon, 430.
In the old days (a custom laid aside, 312.
In the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame, 352.
In the outskirts of the village, 227.
In the solemn days of old, 144
In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw,
350.
In Westminster's royal halls, 76.
I said 1 stood upon thy grave, 198.
I shall not soon forget that sight, 130.
I sing the Pilgrim of a softer clime, 359.
Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm, 246.
I spread a scanty board too late, 418.
Is this the land our fathers loved, 51.
Is this thy voice, whose treble notes of fear,
74.
It chanced that while the pious troops of
France, 189.
It is done, 316.
Its windows flashing to the sky, 249.
It was late in mild October, and the long au
tumnal rain, 116.
It was the pleasant harvest-time, 218.
I wait and watch . before my eyes, 278.
INDEX OF FIRST LINES.
539
I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made,
431.
I would I were a painter, for the sake, 279.
I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,
294.
I would the gift I offer here, 112.
I write my name as one, 449.
John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dy
ing day, 258.
Just God ! — and these are they, 49.
Know'st thou, 0 slave-cursed land, 266.
Last night, just as the tints of autumn's sky,
198.
Last week — the Lord he praised for all His
mercies, 486.
Leagues nortji, as fly the gull and auk, 310.
" Let there be light ! " God spake of old, 412.
Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay
State's rusted shield, 68.
Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and
o;er all, 163.
Like that ancestral judge who bore his name,
515.
Long since, a dream of heaven I had, 339.
Look on him ! — through his dungeon grate,
Low in the east, against a white, cold dawn,
462.
Luck to the craft that bears this name of
mine, 477.
Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil, 122.
Maiden ! with the fair brown tresses, 109.
Make, for he loved thee well, our Merrimac,
467.
Maud Muller on a summer's day, 204.
Men ! — if manhood still ye claim, 67.
Men of the North-Land ! where 's the manly
spirit, 75.
Men said at vespers : " All is well," 372.
'Midst the men .and things which will, 425.
'Midst the palace bowers of Hungary, imperial
Presburg's pride, 500.
Muttering "fine upland staple," " prime Sea-
Island finer," 511.
My ear is full of summer sounds, 278.
My garden roses long ago, 446.
My heart was heavy, for its trust had been,
121.
My lady walks her morning round, 412.
My old Welch neighbor over the way, 375.
My thoughts are all in yonder town, 384.
Nauhaught, the Indian deacon, who of old,
348
'Neath skies that winter never knew, 415.
Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the day, 360.
Night on the city of the Moor, 164.
Night was down among the mountains, 496.
No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest,
147.
No Berserk thirst of blood had they, 409.
No bird-song floated down the hill, 284.
No more these simple flowers belong, 186.
Not always as the whirlwind's rush, 92.
Not as a poor requital of the joy, 108
Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires,
479.
Not unto us who did but seek, 357.
Not vainly did old poets tell, 132.
trod, 318.
Not vainly we waited and counted the hours,
512.
Not. without envy Wealth at times must look,
417.
Not with the splendors of the days of old,
480.
Now, joy and thanks forevermore, 73.
O Ary Scheffer ! when beneath thine eye, 244.
0 Christ of God ' whose life and death, 392.
0 dearest bloom the seasons know, 460.
0 dearly loved, 136.
0, dwarfed and wronged, and stained with ill,
374.
O dwellers in the stately towns, 406.
O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched
hands, 208.
Of all that Orient lands can vaunt, 201.
Of all the rides since the birth of time, 225.
" 0 for a knight like Bayard, 193.
0 friends ! with whom my feet have
Of rights and of wrongs, 514.
0, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
126.
0 Holy Father ! — just and true, 55.
" 0 Lady fair, these silks of mine are beauti
ful and rare, 91.
Old friend, kind friend ! lightly down, 173.
Olor Iscanus queries : " Why should we, 261.
0 lonely bay of Trinity, 309.
0 Mother Earth ! upon thy lap, 104.
0 Mother State ! — the winds of March, 381.
Once more, dear friends, you meet beneath,
267.
Once more, 0 all-adjusting Death, 477.
Once more, 0 Mountains of the North, unveil,
278.
! Once more on yonder laurelled height, 280.
j One day, along the electric wire, 188.
\ One hymn more, 0 my lyre, 88.
! One morning of the first" sad Fall, 214.
One Sabbath day my Iriend and I, 341.
I O none in all the world before, 285.
j O Norah, lay your basket down, 171.
i On page of thine I cannot trace, 71.
I On the isle of Penikese, 383.
On these green banks, where falls too soon,
465.
On the wide lawn the snow lay deep, 413.
0 Painter of the fruits and flowers, 446.
0 people-chosen ' are ye not, 317.
O Poet rare and old, 165.
O praise an' tanks ! De Lord he come, 269.
0 river winding to the sea, 468.
0 State prayer-founded ! never hung, 212.
0 storied vale of Merrimac, 479.
0 strong, upwelling prayers of faith, 185.
0 thicker, deeper, darker growing, 284.
0 Thou, who^e presence went before, 54.
: Our fathers '\3od '. from out whose hand, 409.
Our fellow-countrymen in chains, 45.
Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, 240.
Out and in the river is winding, 247.
Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I
one, 447.
1 Out from Jerusalem, 413.
i Over the threshold of his pleasant home, 456.
Over the wooded northern ridge, 275.
1 O, well may Essex sit forlorn, 411.
Pardon a stranger hand that gives, 511.
Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare, 281.
Piero Luca, known of all the town, 303.
540
INDEX OF FIRST LINES.
Pipes of the misty moorlands, 241.
Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass, 462.
Poor and inadequate the shadow-play, 416.
Pray give the "Atlantic," 515.
" Put up the sword ! " The voice of Christ
once more, 374.
Raze these long blocks of brick and stone.
231.
Red as the banner which enshrouds, 496.
Right in the track where Sherman, 353.
llivermouth Rocks are fair to see, 297.
Robert Rawlin ! — Frosts were falling, 206.
Sad Mayflower ! watched by winter stars, 211.
Saint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the herds,
266.
Sarah Greenleaf, of eighteen years, 507.
Say, whose is this fair picture, which the
light, 504.
Scarce had the solemn Sabbath-bell, 168.
Seeress of the misty Norland, 167.
She came and stood in the Old South Church,
408.
She sang alone, ere womanhood had known,
She sings by her wheel at that low cottage-
door, 46.
She was a fair young girl, yet on her brow,
499.
Should you go to Centre Harbor, 512.
Silence o'er se;i and earth, 494.
Smoothing soft the nestling head, 460.
So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn, 146.
Some die too late and some too soon, 422.
So spake Esaias : so, in words of flame, 248.
So stood of old the holy Christ, 393.
So this is all, — the utmost reach, 53.
Sound now the trumpet warningly, 511.
Sound over all waters, reach out from all
lands, 393.
Spare me, dread angel of reproof, 337.
Speak and tell us, our Ximena, looking north
ward far away, 119.
Spirit of the frozen North, 495.
Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark, 92.
Statesman, I thank thee ! and, if yet dissent,
488.
Still, as of old, in Beavor's Vale, 451.
Still in thy streets, O Paris ! doth the stain,
149.
Still linger in our noon of time, 391.
Still sits the school-house by the road, 350.
Stranger and traveller, 433.
Stream of my fathers ! sweetly still, 26.
Strike home, strong-hearted man ! Down to
the root, 106.
Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines,
4/3.
Sunlight upon Judaea's hills, 86.
Sweetest of all childlike dreams, 321.
Take our hands, James Russell Lowell, 476.
Talk not of sad November, when a day, 476.
Tauler, the preacher, walked, one autumn
day, 190.
Thank God for rest, where none molest, 317.
Thank God for the token ! — one lip is still
free, 52.
Thanks for thy gift, 151.
The age is dull and mean. Men creep, 200.
The autumn-time has come, 351.
The beaver cut his timber, 270.
The Benedictine Echard, 399.
The birds against the April wind, 315.
The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon
its Southern way, 62.
The Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room,
124.
The burly driver at my side, 140.
The cannon's brazen lips are cold, 145.
The circle is broken, — one seat is forsaken,
135.
The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake,
151.
The cross, if rightly borne, shall be, 166.
The day is closing dark and cold, 142.
The day's sharp strife is ended now, 351.
The dreadful burden of our sins we feel, 516.
1 The eagle, stooping from yon snow -blown
peaks, 470.
j The elder folks shook hands at last, 334.
! The end has come, as come it must, 416.
The evil days have come, — the poor, 168.
The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke, 373.
The firmament breaks up. In black eclipsa,
261.
The flags of war like storm-birds fly, 265.
The fourteen centuries fall away, 234.
The goodman sat beside his door, 37.
The great work laid upon his twoscore years.
324.
The gulf of seven and fifty years, 459.
The harp at Nature's advent strung, 313.
The Khan came from Bokhara town, 424.
The land, that, from the rule of kings, 479.
The land was pale with famine, 332.
The lowliest born of all the land, 444.
The mercy, 0 Eternal One, 461.
The moon has set : while yet the dawn, 160.
The name the Gallic exile bore, 430.
The new world honors him whose lofty plea,
471.
The old Squire said, as he stood by his gate,
44o.
The Pagan's myths through marble lips are
spoken, 123.
The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine, 260.
The pilgrim and stranger who through the
day, 398.
The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 233.
The pleasant isle of Riigen looks the Baltic
water o'er, 474.
The prophet stood, 492.
The proudest now is but my peer, 170.
The Quaker of the olden time, 98.
The Rabbi Ishmael, with the woe and sin, 445.
The Rabbi Nathan, twoscore years and ten,
333.
There are streams which are famous in his
tory's story, 492.
The river hemmed with leaning trees, 389.
The robins sang in the orchard, the buds into
blossoms grew, 376.
The roll of drums and the bugle's wailing-, 321.
The same old baffling questions ! 0 my friend,
170.
The shade for me, but over thee, 249.
The shadows grow and deepen round me, 442.
The shadows round the inland sea, 139.
The skipper sailed out of the harbor TOOudi
435
The sky is ruddy in the east, 112.
The soul itself its awful witness is, 433.
The South-land boasts its teeming can.,, 150.
The storm and peril overpast, 428.
INDEX OF FIRST LINES.
541
The storm-wind is howling, 397.
The subtle power in perfume found, 455.
The summer wanntli has left the sky, 380.
The sunlight glitters keen and bright, 127.
The suns of eighteen centuries have shown, 100.
The sun that brief December day, 286.
The sweet spring day is glad with music, 353.
The sword was sheathed: in April's sun, 462.
The tall, sallow guardsmen their horsetails
have spread, 258.
The tent-lights glimmer on the land, 268.
The threads our hands in blindness spin, 414.
The time of gifts has come again, 414.
The tossing spray of Cocheco's fall, 437.
The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must
shed, 452.
The wave is breaking on the shore, 60.^
The winding way the serpent takes, 347.
The years are but half a score, 489.
The years are many since his hand, 187.
The years are many since, in youth and hope,
341.
The years that since we met have flown, 514.
They hear Thee not, 0 God ! nor see, 83.
They left their home of summer ease, 404.
They sat in silent watchfulness, 108.
They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, 137
Thine are all the gifts, 0 God, 415.
Thine is a grief, the depth of which another,
138.
This day, two hundred years ago, 249.
Thou dwellest not. 0 Lord of all, 340.
Though ftpwers have perished at the touch, 420.
Thou hast fallen in thine armor, 133.
Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers, 443.
Thrice welcome to thy sisters of the East, 123.
Through heat and cold, and shower and sun,
114.
Through the long hall the shuttered windows
shed, 175.
Through the streets of Marblehead, 477.
Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old, 166.
Thy error, Fremont, simply was to act, 263.
'T is over, Moses ! All is lost, 484.
'T is said that in the Holy Land, 129.
'T is the noon of the spring-time, yet never a
bird, 167.
To-day the plant by Williams set, 355.
Token of friendship, true and tried, 64.
To kneel before some saintly shrine, 439.
To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing
rise to-day, 128.
" To the winds give our banner ! 32.
To weary hearts, to mourning homes, 96.
Traveller ! on thy journey toiling, 30.
Tritcmius of Herbipolis, one day, 235.
'T was night. The tranquil moonlight smile,
41.
Twenty years have taken flight, 525.
Type of two mighty continents ! — combining,
"Under the great hill sloping bare, 418.
Under the shadow of a cloud, the light, 514.
Unfathomed deep, unfetter'd waste, 494.
Unnoted as the setting of a star, 460.
Up and down the village streets, 223.
Up from the meadows rich with corn, 269.
Up from the sea the wild north wind is blowing,
471.
"Up, laggards of Freedom! — our free flag is
cast, 487.
Up the hillside, down the glen, 66.
Up the streets of Aberdeen, 121.
Voice of a people suffering long, 423.
Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known, 432.
Wake, sisters, wake ! the day-star shines, 407.
Wave of an awful torrent, thronging down,
503.
Weary of jangling noises never stilled, 449.
We cross the prairie as of old, 200.
We give thy natal day to hope, 448.
We had been wandering for many days, 15.
We have opened the door, 421.
Welcome home again, brave seaman ! with thy
thoughtful brow and gray, 65.
We live by Faith ; but Faith is not the slave,
432.
Well speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast, 148.
Well thought! who would not rather hear,
245.
AVe praise not now the poet's art, 323.
We sat together, last May-day, and talked, 423.
We saw the slow tides go and come, 388.
We see not, know not ; all our way, 261.
We wait beneath the furnace-blast, 262.
What flecks the outer gray beyond, 309.
What shall I say, dear friends, to whom I owe,
515.
What shall I wish him ? Strength and health,
515.
What though around thee blazes, 67.
When firrit I saw our banner wave, 265.
When Freedom, on her natal day, 57.
When heats as of a tropic clime, 294.
When on my day of life the night is falling,
447.
When the Breath Divine is flowing, 89.
When the reaper's task was ended, and the
summer wearing late, 1-29.
Where are we going ? where are we going,
200.
Where ceaseless Spring her garland twines,
392.
Where, over heathen doom -rings and gray
stones of the Ilorg, 377.
Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles, 299.
Where Time the measure of his hours, 87.
White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep,
183.
Who gives and hides the giving hnnd, 415.
Who, looking backward from his manhood's
prime, 130.
Who stands on that cliff , like a figure of stone,!.
" Why urge the long, unequal tight, 192.
Wildly round our woodland quarters, 118.
With a cold and wintry noon-light, 68.
With a glory of winter sunshine, 445.
With clearer light, Cross of the South, shine
forth, 338.
With fifty years between you and your well-
kept wedding vow, 391.
With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight,
433.
With wisdom far beyond her years, 476.
Years since (but names to me before), 371.
Yes, let them gather! — Summon forth, 57.
Yes, — pile the marble o'er him ! It is well,
111.
You flung your taunt across the wave, 264.
You scarcely need my tardy thanks, 215.
INDEX OF TITLES.
ABRAHAM DAVENPORT, 312.
Abrain Morrison. 425.
Adams, John Quincy, 396.
Adjustment, 452.
After Election, 351.
Album Verses, 511.
All '8 Well, 151.
AMONG THE HILLS, 325, 327.
Amy Wentworth, 273.
Andrew llykman's Prayer, 281.
Angel of Patience, The, 96.
Angel of Buena Vista, The, 119.
Anniversary Poem, 267.
Answer, The, 337.
April, 167.
Arisen at Last. See Lines.
Artist of the Beautiful, An, 461.
Astrasa, 165.
Astraa at the Capitol, 265.
At Eventide, 416.
At Last, 447.
At Port Royal, 268.
At School-Close, 416.
AT SUNDOWN, 462.
At Washington. See Lines.
Autograph, An, 449.
Autograph, An, 514.
Autumn Thoughts, 144.
Banished from Massachusetts, 456.
Barbara Frietchie, 269.
Barclay of Ury, 121.
Barefoot Boy, The, 195.
Bartholdi Statue, The, 479.
Bartlett, William Francis. 411.
Battle Autumn of 1862, The, 265.
Bay of Seven Islands, The, 435.
Beneclicite, 163.
Benevolence, 493.
Between the Gates, 472.
Birchbrook Mill, 454.
Birthday Wreath, The, 471.
Bolivar, 499.
Book, The, 432.
Branded Hand, The, 65.
Brewing of Soma, The, 373.
BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK, THE, 15.
Brother of Mercy, The, 303.
Brown Dwarf of Riigen, The, 474.
Brown of Ossawatomie, 258. ^
Bryant on his Birthday, 323.
Burial of Barber, 211.
Burning Drift- Wood, 467.
Burns, 1S6.
By their Works, 432.
Cable Hymn, The. See 0 lonely bay of Trinity.
Calef in Boston, 144.
Call of the Christian, The, 92.
Captain's Well, The, 464.
Cassandra Southwick, 28.
Centennial Hymn, 409.
Chalkley Hall, 107.
Changeling, The, 304.
Channing, 132.
CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS, THE, 153.
Charity, 398.
Chicairo. 372.
Child-Songs, 391.
Christian Slave, The, 50.
Christian Tourists, The, 147.
Christmas Carmen, A, 393.
Christmas of 1888, The, 462.
Cities of the Plain, The, 86,
Clear Vision, The, 331.
Clerical Oppressors, 49.
Cobbler Keezar's Vision, 270.
Common Question, The, 322.
Conduct, 434.
Conductor Bradley, 390.
Conquest of Finland, The, 213.
Corn-Song, The, 117.
Countess, The, 275.
Crisis, The, 79.
Cross, The, 166.
Crucifixion, The, 86.
Cry of a Lost Soul, The, 283.
Curse of the Charter-Breakers, The, 76.
Cypress-Tree of Ceylon, The, 108.
Day, A, 476.
Day's Journey, A, 516.
Dead Feast of the Kol-Folk, The, 421.
Dead Ship of Harpswell, The, 309.
Dedication (to Songs of Labor), 112.
Dedication of a School-house. See Our Stat«
Deity, The, 492.
Democracy, 105.
Demon of "the Study, The, 124.
Derne, 164.
Disarmament, 374.
Disenthralled, The, 488.
Divine Compassion, 339.
Dr. Kane in Cuba, 396.
Dole of Jarl Thorkell, The, ?32.
Double-Ileaded Snake of Newbury, The, 228.
Dream of Arg.yle, The, 394.
Dream of Pio Nono, The, 189.
Dream of Summer, A, 109.
Drovers, The, 114.
Drunkard to his Bottle, The, 498.
Earthquake, The, 495.
Easter Flower Gift, An, 460.
Ego. See Lines written in the Book of a Friend.
"Ein feste Burg 1st unser Gott," 262.
544
INDEX OF TITLES.
Elliott, 146.
Emancipation Group, The, 423.
Eternal Goodness, The, 318.
Eva, 166.
Evening in Burmah, 506.
Eve of Election, The, 236.
Exile's Departure, The, 491.
Exiles, The, 37.
Expostulation. See Stanzas.
Extract from " A New England Legend," 127.
Ezekiel, 83.
Fair Quakeress, The, 499.
Familisf s Hymn, The, 35.
Farewell, A, 515.
Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother, The,
56.
Female Martyr, The, 90.
First-Day Thoughts, 172.
First Flowers, The, 215.
Fishermen, The, 115.
Flowers in Winter, 196.
Follen. See Stanzas.
Follen : on Reading his Essay on " The Future
State,'' 96.
For an Autumn Festival, 260.
Forgiveness, 121.
For Righteousness' Sake. See Lines.
Forster, William, 187.
Fountain, The, 36.
Fragment, A, 516.
Fratricide, The, 501.
Freed Islands, The. See Lines.
Freedom in Brazil, 338.
Fremont Campaign Song, A, 511.
Friend's Burial, The, 384.
From Perugia, 258.
Frost Spirit, The, 91.
Fruit-Gift, The, 198.
Funeral Tree of the Sokokis, 31.
Gallows, The. See Lines.
Garden. See Hymn for the American Horticul
tural Society.
Garibaldi, 350.
Garrison, 428.
Garrison of Cape Ann, The, 221.
Gift of Tritemius, The, 235.
Giving and Taking, 415.
Godspeed, 447.
Golden Wedding of Longwood, The, 391.
Gone, 139.
Grave by the Lake, The, 299.
Greeting. See Prelude to The King's Missive.
Greeting, A, 443.
Halleck, Fitz Greene, 410.
Hampton Beach, 127.
Haschish, The, 201.
HaverhiU, 468.
HAZEL BLOSSOMS, 380, 383.
Healer, The, 393.
Help, 433.
Henchman, The, 412.
Hermit of the Thebaid, The. 185.
Hero, The, 193.
Hill-Top, The, 140.
Hive at Gettysburg, The, 352.
Holmes, 0. W., on his Eightieth Birthday, 468.
Holy Land, The, 81.
HOME BALLADS, 218.
Home-Coming of the Bride, The, 507
Homestead, The, 453.
Hooper, Lucy, 131.
Howard at Atlanta, 353.
How Mary Grew, 476.
How the Robin Came, 455.
How the Women went from Dover, 437.
Human Sacrifice, The, 102.
Hunters of Men, The, 48.
Iluskers, The, 116.
Hymn for the American Horticultural Society
(aftenvards entitled Garden), 446.
Hymn for the Celebration of Emancipation at
Newburyport, 357.
Hymn for the House of Worship at George
town, 340.
Hymn for the Opening of Plymouth Church,
394.
Hymn for the Opening of Thomas Starr King's
House of Worship, 323.
Hymn of the Children, 415.
Hymn of the Dunkers, 407.
Hymn : " 0 Holy Father ! just and true." See
Lines.
Hymn : " 0 Thou whose presence went be
fore." See Lines.
Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj, 461.
Hymns from the French of Lamartine, 88.
Hymn sung at Christmas by the Scholars of
St. Helena's Island, S. C., 285.
Ichabod, 146.
In Memory, 441.
In Peace, 162.
In Quest, 387.
In Remembrance of Joseph Sturge, 238.
In School-Days, 350.
Inscriptions, 433.
In the Evil Days. See Stanzas for the Times
1850.
In the " Old South," 408.
Invocation, 166.
Inward Judge, The, 433.
Isabel, 502.
Isabella of Austria, 500.
Italy, 283.
" I was a Stranger, and ye took me in," 415.
John Underbill, 385.
Jubilee Singers, The, 423.
Judith at the Tent of Holof ernes, 496.
June on the Merrimac, 406.
Kallundborg Church, 307.
Kansas Emigrants, The, 200.
Kathleen, 171.
Kenoza Lake, 248.
Khan's Devil, The, 424.
King, Thomas Starr, 324.
KING'S MISSIVE, THE, 418.
King Solomon and the Ants, 413.
King Volmer and Elsie, 377.
Kinsman, 392.
Knight of St. John, The, 81.
Kossuth, 172.
Lady Franklin, 396.
Lake-side, The, 139.
Lament, A, 135.
Landmarks, The, 477.
Last Eve of Summer, The, 473.
Last Walk in Autumn, The, 208.
"Laurels, The," 356.
Laus Deo, 316.
Laying up Treasure, 434.
INDEX OF TITLES.
545
Lay of Old Time, A, 214.
Legacy, A, 489.
Legend of St. Mark, The, 142.
Legend of the Lake, A, 512.
Leggett's Monument, 111.
Letter from a Missionary of the Methodist
Episcopal Church South, in Kansas, to a
Distinguished Politician, 486.
Letter, A, supposed to be written by the Chair
man of the Central Clique, at Concord, N. H.,
484.
Letter to Lucy Larcom, 513.
Lexington, 409.
Library, The, 412.
Light that is felt, The, 460.
Lines (afterwards entitled Arisen at Last), 198.
Lines (afterwards entitled A Song of Harvest),
249.
Lines (afterwards entitled A Summons), 75.
Lines (afterwards entitled At Washington), 68.
Lines (afterwards entitled For Righteousness-
sake), 200.
Lines (afterwards entitled Hymn: "0 Holy
Father! — just and true r!), 55.
Lines (afterwards entitled Hymn: "0 Thou,
whose presence went before •'), 54.
Lines (afterwards entitled My Thanks), 129.
Lines (afterwards entitled Official Piety), 192.
Lines (afterwards entitled Ritner), 52.
Lines (afterwards entitled The Freed Islands),
55.
Lines (afterwards entitled The Gallows), 100.
Lines (afterwards entitled The Lost States
man), 128.
Lines (aftenvards entitled The Memory of
Burns), 247.
Lines from a Letter to a Young Clerical Friend,
70.
Lines on a Fly-Leaf. 339.
Lines on leaving Appledore, 514.
Lines on the Death of S. Oliver Torrey, 134.
Lines on the Portrait of a Celebrated Publisher,
485.
Lines written in an Album, 515.
Lines written in the Book of a Friend (after
wards entitled Ego), 71.
Lines, written on the Departure of Joseph
Sturge, 395.
Lost Occasion, The, 422.
Lost Statesman, The. See Lines.
Lowell, James Russell, 468.
Lumbermen, The, 118.
Mabel Martin : A Harvest Idyl, 516.
Maids of Attitash, The, 305.
Mantle of St. John de Matha, The, 314.
Marais du Cygne, Le, 243.
Marguerite, "376.
Mary Garvin, 202.
Massachusetts, 507.
Massachusetts to Virginia, 62.
Maud Muller, 204.
Mayflowers, The, 211.
Meeting, The, 334.
Meeting Waters, The, 397.
Memorial, A, 284.
Memories, 141.
Memory, A, 199.
Memory of Burns, The. See Lines.
Men of Old, The, 148.
Merrimack, The, 26.
Metacom, 496.
Milton, on Memorial Window, 471.
Minister's Daughter, The, 430.
MIRIAM, 341.
Missionary, The, 504.
Mithridates at Chios, 266.
MOGG MEGONE, 1.
Moloch in State Street, 160.
Moral Warfare, The, 57.
Mount Agiochook, 498.
Mountain Pictures, 278.
Mrs. Choate's House- Warming, 514.
Mulford, 460.
My Birthday, 372.
My Dream, 195.
My Namesake, 215.
My Playmate, 233.
My Psalm, 242.
My Soul and I, 92.
Mystery, A, 389.
Mvstic's Christmas, The, 442.
My Thanks. See Lines.
My Triumph, 351.
My Trust, 431.
Name, A, 430.
Naples, 277.
Nauhaught, the Deacon, 348.
Neall, Daniel, 137.
New Exodus, The, 201.
New Hampshire, 59.
New Wife and the Old, The, 40.
New Year, The, 60.
Night and Death, 397.
Norsemen, The, 27.
Norembega, 347.
Norumbega Hall, 479.
Ocean, 494.
Official Piety. See Lines.
Old Burying-Ground, The, 240.
" 0 lonely bay of Trinity '' (afterwards entitled
The Cable Hymn), 309.
On a Fly-Leaf of Longfellow's Poems, 515.
On a Prayer-Book, 244.
One of the Signers, 479.
On Receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake
Superior, 141.
On the Big Horn, 489.
Oriental Maxims, 433.
Our Autocrat, 428.
Our Country, 448.
Our Master, 319.
Our River, 280.
Our State, 150.
Outdoor Reception, An, 465.
Over-Heart, The, 237.
Overruled, 414.
Ouverture, Toussaint L', 41.
Psean, 73.
Pageant, The, 369.
Palatine, The, 310.
Palestine, 82.
Palm-Tree, The, 246.
Panorama, The, 175.
Pass of the Sierra, The, 212.
Past and Coming Year, The, 503.
Pastoral Letter, The, 53.
Peace Autumn, The, 317.
Peace Convention at Brussels, The, 149.
Peace of Europe, The, 161.
Pennsylvania Hall, 480.
PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM, THE, 358, 360.
Pentucket, 34.
546
INDEX OF TITLES.
Pictures, 163.
Pine-Tree, The, 68.
Pipes at Lucknow, The, 241.
Playmate, The. See My Playmate.
Poet and the Children, The, 445.
Poetical Trio in the City of Gotham, To a,
509.
Poor Voter on Election Day, The, 170.
Powers, Preston, Inscription for Bass-Relief,
470.
Prayer of Agassiz, The, 383.
Prayer-Seeker, The, 354.
Preacher, The, 249.
Prelude to The King's Missive, The, (after
wards entitle// Greeting), 418.
Pressed Gentian, The, 414.
Prisoner for Debt, The, 99.
Prisoners of Naples, The, 159.
Problem, The, 417.
Proclamation, The, 266.
Proem, iv.
Prophecy of Samuel Sewall, The, 223.
Puurffkin, The, 126.
Quaker Alumni, The, 254.
Quaker of the Olden Time, The, 98.
Quakers are out, The, 512.
Questions of Life, 157.
Rabbi Ishmael, 445.
Randolph of Roauoke, 104.
Ranger, The, 206.
Rantoul, 188.
Raphael, 130.
Red Riding-Hood, 413.
Red River Voyageur, The, 247.
Reformer, The, 98.
Relic, The, 64.
Remembrance, 170.
Rendition, The, 197.
Requirement, 432.
Requital, 459.
Response, 417.
Reunion, The, 459.
Revelation, 451.
Revisited, 321.
Reward, The, 130.
Ritner. Se.e Lines.
River Path, The, 284.
Robin, The, 375.
" Rock, The," in El Ghor, 244.
Rock-Tomb of Bradore, The, 440.
R. S. S., at Deer Island on the Merrimack, 467.
Sabbath Scene, A, 168.
Saint Gregory's Guest, 450.
Saint John, 32.
Saint Martin's Summer, 420.
Sea- Dream, A, 388.
Seed-Time and Harvest, 151.
Seeking of the Waterfall, The, 404.
Sentence of John L. Brown, The, 482.
Sewall, Samuel E., 515.
Shadow and the Light, The, 234.
Ship-Builders, The, 112.
Shoemakers, The, 113.
Sicilian Vespers, The, 494.
Sigourney, Lydia IL, Inscription on Tablet,
Singer, The, 371.
Sisters, The, 375.
Sisters, The : a Picture by Barry, 249.
Skipper Ireson's Ride, 225.
| Slave-Ships, The, 43.
Slaves of Martinique, The, 77.
SNOW-BOUNDJ 286.
Song for the Time, A, 487.
Song, A, inscribed to the Fremont Clubs, 488.
Song of Harvest, A. See Lines.
Song of Slaves in the Desert, 200.
Song of the Free, 47.
Song of the Negro Boatman, 269.
Song o.f the Vermontefs, The, 508.
Spirit of the North, The, 495.
Spiritual Manifestation, A, 355.
Stanzas, (afterwards entitled Follen and Ex
postulation), 45.
Stanzas : " Bind up thy tresses, thou beautiful
one," 503.
Stanzas for the Times, 51.
Stanzas for the Times, 1850 (afterwards en
titled In the Evil Days), 168.
Star of Bethlehem, The, 87.
Stearns, George L., 338.
Storm on Lake Asquam, 441.
" Story of Ida," The, 449.
Summer by the Lakeside, 183.
Summer Pilgrimage, A, 439.
Summons, A. See Lines.
Summons, The, 278.
SUMNER, 381.
Sunset on the Bearcamp, 404.
Swan Song of Parson Avery, The, 229.
Sweet Fern, 455.
Sycamores, The, 227.
Tauler, 190.
Taylor, Bayard, 429.
Telling the Bees, 226.
TENT ON THE BEACH, THE, 294.
Texas, 66.
"The Harp at Nature's Advent Strung," (af
terwards entitled The Worship of Nature)
313.
Thiers, 410.
Three Bells, The, 379.
Thy Will be Done, 261.
Tilden, Samuel J., 477.
To . Lines written after a Summer Day 's
Excursion, 162.
To , with a Copy of John Woolman's
Journal, 109.
To a Cape Ann Schooner, 477.
To a Friend, 95.
To a Poetical Trio in the City of Gotham, 509.
To a Southern Statesman, 74.
To Avis Keene, 151.
To Charles Sumner, 199.
To Delaware, 123.
ToE. C. S.,462.
To Englishmen, 264.
To Faneuil Hall, 67.
To Frederick A. P. Barnard, 341.
To Fredrika Bremer, 167.
To G. G., 470.
To George B. Cheever, 248.
To Harriet Prescott Spofford, 434.
To James T. Fields, 245.
To John C. Fre'mont, 263.
To J. P., 108.
To Lucy Larcom, 515.
To Lydia Maria Child, 353.
To Massachusetts, 67.
To my Friend on the Death of his Sister.
133.
To my old Schoolmaster, 173.
INDEX OF TITLES.
54?
To my Sister, 144.
To Oliver Wendell Holmes, 472.
To Pennsylvania, 212.
To Pius IX., 145.
To Ronge, In6.
To Samuel E. Sevvall and Harriet W. Sewall,
261.
To the Memory of Charles B. Storrs, 133.
To the Memory of Thomas Shipley, 74.
To the Reformers of England, 97.
To the Thirty-Ninth Congress, 317.
To William H. Sevvard, 488.
To William Lloyd Garrison, 47.
Trailing Arbutus, The, 431.
Trinitas, 239.
Truce of Piscataqua, The, 231.
Trust, 170.
Two Angels, The, 411.
Two Elizabeths, The, 457.
Two Loves; The, 460.
Two Rabbis, The, 333.
Utterance, 432.
Vale of the Merrimac, The, 492.
Valuation, 446.
Vanishers, The, 321.
Vaudois Teacher, The, 91.
Vermonters, The, Song of the, 508.
Vesta, 392.
Vision of Echard, The, 399.
Voices, The, 192.
Vow of Washington, The, 462.
Voyage of the Jettie, 426.
Waiting. The, 278.
Watchers, The, 263.
Wedding Veil, The, 398.
Welcome to Lowell, A, 476.
Well of Loch Maree, The, 143.
What of the Day, 214.
What State Street said, 511.
What the Birds said, 315.
What the Traveller said at Sunset, 442.
What the Voice said, 122.
Wheeler, Daniel, 13'i.
Wife of Manoah to her Husband, The, 85.
Wilson, 444.
Wind of March, The, 471.
Winter Roses, 446.
Wishing Bridge, The, 441.
Wish of To-Day, The, 150.
Witch of Wenham, The, 401.
Witch's Daughter, The, 218. See Mabel
Martin.
Within the Gate, 423.
Woman, A, 374.
Wood Giant, The, 452.
Word, The, 432.
Word for the Hour, A, 261.
Wordsworth, 162.
World's Convention, The, 57.
Worship, 123.
Worship of Nature, The. See " The Harp at
Nature's Advent strung.'1
Wreck of Rivermouth, The, 297.
Yankee Girl, The, 46.
Yorktown, 70.
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