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Title: Songs of Labor and Reform

Author: John Greenleaf Whittier

Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9579]

Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Credits: This eBook was produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM ***

This eBook was produced by David Widger

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM

BY

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM

CONTENTS:

THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME DEMOCRACY THE GALLOWS SEED-TIME AND HARVEST TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND THE HUMAN SACRIFICE SONGS OF LABOR DEDICATION THE SHOEMAKERS THE FISHERMEN THE LUMBERMEN THE SHIP-BUILDERS THE DROVERS THE HUSKERS THE REFORMER THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS THE PRISONER FOR DEBT THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS THE MEN OF OLD TO PIUS IX. CALEF IN BOSTON OUR STATE THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES THE PEACE OF EUROPE ASTRAEA THE DISENTHRALLED THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY THE DREAM OF PIO NONO THE VOICES THE NEW EXODUS THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND THE EVE OF ELECTION FROM PERUGIA ITALY FREEDOM IN BRAZIL AFTER ELECTION DISARMAMENT THE PROBLEM OUR COUNTRY ON THE BIG HORN

NOTES

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.

The 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 life 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 partakes,

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.

O 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!

1838.

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 are 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 deride;

And garlands, plucked from thee, are wreathed

Around the haughty brows of Pride.

Oh, 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 right of all divine;

The pitying heart, the helping arm,

The prompt self-sacrifice, are thine.

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 Gerizim.

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.

And 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.

Not from the shallow babbling fount

Of vain philosophy thou art;

He who of old on Syria's Mount

Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the listener'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,

And 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, 1841

THE GALLOWS.

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 peasant Jew,

And broke with publicans the bread of shame,

And drank with blessings, in His Father's name,

The water which Samaria's outcast drew,

Hath now His temples upon every shore,

Altar and shrine and priest; and incense dim

Evermore rising, with low prayer and hymn,

From lips which press the temple's marble floor,

Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross He bore.

II.

Yet as of old, when, meekly "doing good,"

He fed a blind and selfish multitude,

And even the poor companions of His lot

With their dim earthly vision knew Him not,

How ill are His high teachings understood

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 forgive!

Twisted the cord and edged the murderous steel;

And, 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 their Christ in cruel zeal,

Through the black torment-smoke, held mockingly to him!

III.

The blood which mingled with the desert 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-accursed flame

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, O Thou wronged and merciful 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 solitude.

The beautiful lesson which our Saviour 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.

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 twilight 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 human 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 become 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 hangman's hand?

Beware, lest human nature, roused at last,

From its peeled shoulder your encumbrance cast,

And, sick to loathing of your cry for blood,

Rank ye with those who led their victims round

The Celt's red altar and the Indian's mound,

Abhorred of Earth and Heaven, a pagan brotherhood!

1842.

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!

1843.

TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND. This poem was addressed to those who like Richard Cobden and John Bright were seeking the reform of political evils in Great Britain by peaceful and Christian means. It will be remembered that the Anti-Corn Law League was in the midst of its labors at this time.

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 blinded 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 wrought,

Light, Truth, and Love; your battle-ground

The free, broad field of Thought.

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!

O 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!

1843.

THE HUMAN SACRIFICE.

Some leading sectarian papers had lately published the letter of a clergyman, giving an account of his attendance upon a criminal (who had committed murder during a fit of intoxication), at the time of his execution, in western New York. The writer describes the agony of the wretched being, his abortive attempts at prayer, his appeal for life, his fear of a violent death; and, after declaring his belief that the poor victim died without hope of salvation, concludes with a warm eulogy upon the gallows, being more than ever convinced of its utility by the awful dread and horror which it inspired.

I.

FAR from his close and noisome cell,

By grassy lane and sunny stream,

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!

II.

He woke. At once on heart and brain

The present Terror rushed again;

Clanked on his limbs the felon's chain

He 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,

With its hoarse murmur, "Blood for Blood!"

Between him and the pitying Heaven.

III.

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,

Unwarmed, 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 be 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 which 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.

O 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 face of tenderest love;

Thou, unto whom the blind and lame,

The sorrowing and the sin-sick came,

And from Thy very garment's hem

Drew life and healing unto them,

The burden of Thy holy faith

Was love and life, not hate and death;

Man's demon ministers of pain,

The fiends 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?

Oh, 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 [10]

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.

Oh, 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

1843

SONGS OF LABOR.

DEDICATION.

Prefixed to the volume of which the group of six poems following this prelude constituted the first portion.

I WOULD the gift I offer here

Might graces from thy favor take,

And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere,

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

Calls 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,

As 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,—

So, even my after-thoughts may have a charm for thee.

Art's perfect forms no moral need,

And beauty is its own excuse;

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 same law.

1850.

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 I the measured sound has grown

A quick and merry clamor.

Now shape the sole! now 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 scorner;

Free hands and hearts are still your pride,

And duty done, your honor.

Ye dare to trust, for honest fame,

The jury Time empanels,

And leave to truth each noble name

Which glorifies your annals.

Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet,

In strong and hearty German;

And Bloomfield's lay, and Gifford'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!

1845.

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 tie rock is hiding,

And the sharp reef lurks below,

And the white squall smites in summer,

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 Mickmack

Has no sound upon the moss.

There we'll 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'll reap the teeming waters

As at home they reap the plain.

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!

1845.

THE LUMBERMEN.

WILDLY 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 thunder,

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 boar-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,

And Millnoket's pine-black ridges

Hide the browsing deer

Where, through lakes and wide morasses,

Or through rocky walls,

Swift and strong, Penobscot passes

White with foamy falls;

Where, through clouds, are glimpses given

Of Katahdin's sides,—

Rock and forest piled to heaven,

Torn and ploughed by slides!

Far below, the Indian trapping,

In the sunshine warm;

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-enwoven 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 ships waiting for the freighting

Of our woodland spoil.

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 cedarn 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!

Oh, 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 labor,

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!

1845.

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.

Up! 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!

Her pathway on the open main

May blessings follow free,

And glad hearts welcome back again

Her white sails from the sea

1846.

THE DROVERS.

THROUGH heat and cold, and shower 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 spongy 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,

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'll 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 bill,

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.

1847.

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 brightened as he sped;

Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued,

On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured wood.

And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping 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 to! as through the western pines, on meadow, stream, and pond,

Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire beyond,

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 rugged vales bestow,

To cheer us when the storm shall drift

Our harvest-fields with snow.

Through vales of grass and mends of flowers

Our ploughs their furrows made,

While on the hills the sun and showers

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, when the snows about us drift,

And winter winds are cold,

Fair hands the broken grain shall sift,

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 kitchen 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!

1847.

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.

I looked: aside the dust-cloud rolled,

The Waster seemed the Builder too;

Upspringing from the ruined Old

I saw the New.

'T was but the ruin of the bad,—

The wasting of the wrong and ill;

Whate'er of good the old time had

Was living still.

Calm grew the brows 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 share 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 draw

From their decay.

Oh, 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;

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 bath;

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!

1848.

THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS.

STILL in thy streets, O Paris! doth the stain

Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain;

Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins through,

And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew,

When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread,

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 Danube's side,

The bearded Croat and Bosniak spearman 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 shattered 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-knowing 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 Brotherhood,

Like tipplers answering Father Matthew's call;

The sullen Spaniard, and the mad-cap Gaul,

The bull-dog Briton, yielding but with life,

The Yankee swaggering with his bowie-knife,

The Russ, from banquets with the vulture shared,

The blood still dripping from his amber beard,

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 throngs,

And Burritt, stammering through his hundred tongues,

Repeat, in all, his ghostly lessons o'er,

Timed to the pauses of the battery's roar;

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 the Strong;

Rosy and sleek, the sable-gowned divine,

O'er his third bottle of suggestive wine,

To plumed and sworded auditors, shall 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, O faithful few,

Who dare to hold God's word and witness true,

Whose clear-eyed faith transcends our evil time,

And o'er the present wilderness of crime

Sees the calm 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 cautious head;

No truth from Heaven descends upon our sphere,

Without the greeting of the skeptic's sneer;

Denied and mocked at, till its blessings 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 heart of hell.

Lend, once again, that holy song a 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 Genesareth 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.

11th mo., 1848.

THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.

Before the law authorizing imprisonment for debt had been abolished in Massachusetts, a revolutionary pensioner was confined in Charlestown jail for a debt of fourteen dollars, and on the fourth of July was seen waving a handkerchief from the bars of his cell in honor of the day.

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,

Forces apart the painful grip

Of the old sufferer's bearded lip;

Oh, 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

Yon 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,

And 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.

1849.

THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.

The reader of the biography of 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.

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 the long 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,

And 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 of 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 fulfil

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 harmonies

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!

1849.

THE MEN OF OLD.

"WELL speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast!

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 amaranth 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 march of the centuries 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.

"Man is worth more than temples!" 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 earthen 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!"

O faithful worthies! resting far behind

In your dark ages, since ye fell asleep,

Much has been done for truth and human-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,

Skeptic at heart, the lessons of its Head;

Counting, too oft, its living members less

Than the wall'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 of 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!

1849.

TO PIUS IX.

The writer of these lines is no enemy of Catholics. He has, on more than one occasion, 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.

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,

And Naples, with his dastard bands

Of murderers, lead thee back!

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

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 Crosier and the Crown,

If, roused thereby, the world shall tread

The twin-born vampires down

1849.

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 renown.

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 thee and me;

All thou knowed of truth hath been

Once a lie to men like thee.

"Falsehoods which we spurn 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;

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.

1849.

OUR 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.

Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State

Is scant of soil, of limits strait;

Her yellow sands are sands alone,

Her only mines are ice and stone!

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 skeptic'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.

1549.

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.

O 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 inspire,

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 baptismal 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 summer 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!

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 paltry prize

Of name or place, and more than I have lost

Have gained in wider reach of sympathies,

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 atmosphere,

Warm, soft, and golden. For such gifts to me

What shall I render, O 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, forget

The bitter longings of a vain regret,

The anguish of its own peculiar smart.

Remembering others, as I 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 indeed Thou art!

1851.

THE PEACE OF EUROPE.

"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!

O 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 carnival!

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 I

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!

Oh that its voice might pierces the ear

Of princes, trembling while they hear

A cry as of the Hebrew seer

Repent! God's kingdom draweth near!

1852.

ASTRAEA.

"Jove means to settle

Astraea in her seat again,

And let down from his golden chain

An age of better metal."

BEN JONSON, 1615.

O POET rare and old!

Thy words are prophecies;

Forward the age of gold,

The new Saturnian lies.

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;

1852.

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,

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 round his heart,

As shakes the swaying forest-oak

Its 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.

THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY.

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

1848.

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 Hun and Aaron meet for such a Moses),

Stretched forth from Naples towards rebellious Rome

To bless the ministry of Oudinot,

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 bight Orient; and beheld the lame,

The sick, and blind, kneel at the Master's feet,

And rise up whole. And, sweetly over all,

Dropping the ladder of their hymn of praise

From heaven to earth, in silver rounds of song,

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 summer suns

And hot winds of the desert, closer drew

His fisher's haick, and girded up his loins,

And 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 Campagna. On the hills

The blaze of burning villas rose and fell,

And momently the mortar's iron throat

Roared from the trenches; and, within the walls,

Sharp crash of shells, low groans of human 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!

I, Peter, fisherman of Galilee,

In the dear Master's name, and for the love

Of His true Church, proclaim thee Antichrist,

Alien and separate from His holy faith,

Wide as the difference between death and life,

The hate of man and the great love of God!

Hence, and repent!"

Thereat the pontiff woke,

Trembling, and muttering o'er his fearful 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.

1853.

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, and take

Thine ease among the multitude.

"Live out thyself; 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,

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 beard, 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.

"Break off that sacred chain, 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,

And 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 lurid 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 walls of Freedom's temple rise?

"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 within;

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!"

1854.

THE NEW EXODUS.

Written upon hearing that slavery had been formally abolished in Egypt.

Unhappily, the professions and pledges of the vacillating government of

Egypt proved unreliable.

BY fire and cloud, across the desert sand,

And through the parted waves,

From their long bondage, with an outstretched 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.

"Lo, God is great!" the simple Moslem says.

We seek the ancient date,

Turn the dry scroll, and make that living phrase

A dead one: "God was great!"

And, like the Coptic monks by Mousa's wells,

We dream of wonders past,

Vague as the tales the wandering Arab tells,

Each drowsier than the last.

O fools and blind! Above the Pyramids

Stretches once more that hand,

And tranced Egypt, from her stony lids,

Flings back her 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

1856.

THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND.

"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 gun-boats of the allied squadrons in the late war, with a view to obtaining relief for them."— Friends' Review.

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,

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,

Where'er the British cannon

Rained fire on tower and town.

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.

"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, O fisher!

In peace on lake and bay;

And thou, young maiden, dance again

Around the poles of May!

"Sit down, old men, together,

Old wives, in quiet spin;

Henceforth the Anglo-Saxon

Is the brother of the Finn!"

1856.

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's 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!

No jest is this;

One cast amiss

May blast the hope of Freedom's year.

Oh, take me where

Are hearts of prayer,

And foreheads bowed in reverent fear!

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!

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 moon, 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,

Reveal 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!

1858.

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 breaking point in many honest hearts that had clung to him before."—HARRIET BEECHER STOWE'S Letters from Italy.

The tall, sallow guardsmen their horsetails 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 church 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 Perugia come;

The militant angels, whose sabres drive home

To the hearts of the malcontents, cursed and abhorred,

The good Father's missives, and "Thus saith the Lord!"

And lend to his logic the point of the sword!

O maids of Etruria, gazing forlorn

O'er dark Thrasymenus, dishevelled and torn!

O fathers, who pluck at your gray beards for shame!

O mothers, struck dumb by a woe without 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 righteousness clad,

From shorn crown to toe-nail, kiss-worn to the quick,

Of sainthood in purple the pattern and pick,

Who the role of the priest and the soldier unites,

And, praying like Aaron, like Joshua fights!

Is this Pio Nono the gracious, for whom

We sang our hosannas and lighted all Rome;

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 crosier and cowl!

Stand aside, men of Rome! Here's a hangman-faced Swiss—

(A blessing for him surely can't go amiss)—

Would kneel down the sanctified slipper 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 another sweet son

What's this mastiff-jawed rascal in epaulets 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 pardon him for.

Hist! here's the arch-knave in a cardinal'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 conscience 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 neighbor instead!

There! the bells jow and jangle the same blessed way

That they did when they rang for Bartholomew's day.

Hark! the tallow-faced monsters, nor women nor boys,

Vex the air with a shrill, sexless horror of noise.

Te Deum laudamus! All round without 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 Rome.

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!

1858.

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.

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,

I 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!

1860.

FREEDOM IN BRAZIL.

WITH clearer light, Cross of the South, shine forth

In blue Brazilian skies;

And thou, O river, cleaving half the earth

From sunset to sunrise,

From the great mountains to the Atlantic waves

Thy joy's long anthem pour.

Yet a few years (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 wilderness,

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,

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, O 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.

1867.

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,

I wait to hear, beside the wire,

The voices of its tongues of fire.

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,

O 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!

Cheer answers cheer from rise to set

Of sun. We have a country yet!

The praise, O God, be thine alone!

Thou givest not for bread a stone;

Thou hast not led us through the night

To blind us with returning light;

Not through the furnace have we passed,

To perish at its mouth at last.

O night of peace, thy flight restrain!

November's moon, be slow to wane!

Shine on the freedman's cabin floor,

On brows of prayer a blessing pour;

And give, with full assurance blest,

The weary heart of Freedom rest!

1868.

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 never comes!

O men and brothers! let that voice be heard.

War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword!

Fear not the end. There is a story 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.

"O 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 abhorrence shrank

Into the form and fashion of a dove;

And where the thunder of its rage was heard,

Circling above him sweetly sang the bird

"Hate hath no harm for love," so ran the song;

"And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!"

1871.

THE PROBLEM.

I.

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 plough

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 knighthood 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.

II.

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.

1877.

OUR COUNTRY.

Read at Woodstock, Conn., July 4,1883.

WE give thy natal day to hope,

O Country of our love and prayer I

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 tasks 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 the gain?

The best is that we have to-day.

Whate'er of folly, shame, or crime,

Within thy mighty bounds transpires,

With speed defying space and time

Comes to us on the accusing wires;

While of thy wealth of noble deeds,

Thy homes of peace, thy votes unsold,

The love that pleads for human needs,

The wrong redressed, but half is told!

We read each felon's chronicle,

His acts, his words, his 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 thy 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 Katahdin'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 the 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 hands

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 dusky 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 Circean 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

The rights and duties pledged to all?

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?

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,

Whose hands, unstained with blood, maintained

The swordless commonwealth of Penn.

And thine shall be the power of all

To do the work which duty bids,

And make the people's council hall

As lasting as the Pyramids!

Well have thy later years 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 own 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 loyal 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 thy need shall die for thee!

ON THE BIG HORN.

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 remembered:—

"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, September 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., says in a late number:—

"Rain-in-the-Face has applied before to come to Hampton, but his age would exclude 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."

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.

O 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 with fight

Like a child for thy guidance craves,

And the faces of hunters and braves

Are turning to thee for light?

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!

O mountains that climb to snow,

O river winding below,

Through meadows by war once trod,

O wild, waste lands that await

The harvest exceeding great,

Break forth into praise of God!

1887.

NOTES

Note 1, page 18. The reader may, perhaps, call to mind the beautiful sonnet of William Wordsworth, 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 cheerful 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 2, page 67. The Northern author of the Congressional rule against receiving petitions of the people on the subject of Slavery.

Note 3, page 88. There was at the time when this poem was written an Association in Liberty County, Georgia, for the religious instruction of negroes. One of their annual reports contains an address by the Rev. Josiah Spry Law, in which the following passage occurs: "There is a growing interest in this community in the religious instruction of negroes. There is a conviction that religious instruction promotes the quiet and order of the people, and the pecuniary interest of the owners."

Note 4, page 117. 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 newspaper organ of that sect and

its leading preachers favored abolition.

Note 5, page 118. The senatorial editor of the Belknap Gazette all along manifested a peculiar horror of "niggers" and "nigger parties."

Note 6, page 118. The justice before whom Elder Storrs was brought for preaching abolition on a writ drawn by Hon. M. N., Jr., of Pittsfield. The sheriff served the writ while the elder was praying.

Note 7, page 118. 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 8, page 119. "Papers and memorials touching the subject of slavery shall be laid on the table without reading, debate, or reference." So read the gag-law, as it was called, introduced in the House by Mr. Atherton.

Note 9, page 120. The Female Anti-Slavery Society, at its first meeting in Concord, was assailed with stones and brickbats.

Note 10, page 168. The election of Charles Sumner to the United States

Senate "followed bard upon" the rendition of the fugitive Sims by the

United States officials and the armed police of Boston.

Note 11, page 290. 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."

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Table of Contents

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM

CONTENTS:

THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN TIME.

DEMOCRACY.

THE GALLOWS.

SEED-TIME AND HARVEST.

THE HUMAN SACRIFICE.

SONGS OF LABOR.

THE SHOEMAKERS.

THE FISHERMEN.

THE LUMBERMEN.

THE SHIP-BUILDERS

THE DROVERS.

THE HUSKERS.

THE REFORMER.

THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS.

THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.

THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS.

THE MEN OF OLD.

TO PIUS IX.

CALEF IN BOSTON.

OUR STATE.

THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES.

THE PEACE OF EUROPE.

ASTRAEA.

THE DISENTHRALLED.

THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY.

THE DREAM OF PIO NONO.

THE NEW EXODUS.

THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND.

THE EVE OF ELECTION.

FROM PERUGIA.

ITALY.

FREEDOM IN BRAZIL.

AFTER ELECTION.

DISARMAMENT.

THE PROBLEM.

OUR COUNTRY.

ON THE BIG HORN.

NOTES

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