Oh, fields still green and fresh in story, Old days of pride, old names of glory, Old marvels of the tongue and pen, Old thoughts which stirred the hearts of men, Ye spared the wrong; and over all Behold the avenging shadow fall! Your world-wide honor stained with shame,— Your freedom's self a hollow name!

Where's now the flag of that old war? Where flows its stripe? Where burns its star? Bear witness, Palo Alto's day, Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey, Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak, Fleshes the Northern eagle's beak; Symbol of terror and despair, Of chains and slaves, go seek it there!

Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranks Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva's banks! Brave sport to see the fledgling born Of Freedom by its parent torn! Safe now is Speilberg's dungeon cell, Safe drear Siberia's frozen hell With Slavery's flag o'er both unrolled, What of the New World fears the Old?

1847.



RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE.

O MOTHER EARTH! upon thy lap Thy weary ones receiving, And o'er them, silent as a dream, Thy grassy mantle weaving, Fold softly in thy long embrace That heart so worn and broken, And cool its pulse of fire beneath Thy shadows old and oaken.

Shut out from him the bitter word And serpent hiss of scorning; Nor let the storms of yesterday Disturb his quiet morning. Breathe over him forgetfulness Of all save deeds of kindness, And, save to smiles of grateful eyes, Press down his lids in blindness.

There, where with living ear and eye He heard Potomac's flowing, And, through his tall ancestral trees, Saw autumn's sunset glowing, He sleeps, still looking to the west, Beneath the dark wood shadow, As if he still would see the sun Sink down on wave and meadow.

Bard, Sage, and Tribune! in himself All moods of mind contrasting,— The tenderest wail of human woe, The scorn like lightning blasting; The pathos which from rival eyes Unwilling tears could summon, The stinging taunt, the fiery burst Of hatred scarcely human!

Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower, From lips of life-long sadness; Clear picturings of majestic thought Upon a ground of madness; And over all Romance and Song A classic beauty throwing, And laurelled Clio at his side Her storied pages showing.

All parties feared him: each in turn Beheld its schemes disjointed, As right or left his fatal glance And spectral finger pointed. Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it down With trenchant wit unsparing, And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand The robe Pretence was wearing.

Too honest or too proud to feign A love he never cherished, Beyond Virginia's border line His patriotism perished. While others hailed in distant skies Our eagle's dusky pinion, He only saw the mountain bird Stoop o'er his Old Dominion!

Still through each change of fortune strange, Racked nerve, and brain all burning, His loving faith in Mother-land Knew never shade of turning; By Britain's lakes, by Neva's tide, Whatever sky was o'er him, He heard her rivers' rushing sound, Her blue peaks rose before him.

He held his slaves, yet made withal No false and vain pretences, Nor paid a lying priest to seek For Scriptural defences. His harshest words of proud rebuke, His bitterest taunt and scorning, Fell fire-like on the Northern brow That bent to him in fawning.

He held his slaves; yet kept the while His reverence for the Human; In the dark vassals of his will He saw but Man and Woman! No hunter of God's outraged poor His Roanoke valley entered; No trader in the souls of men Across his threshold ventured.

And when the old and wearied man Lay down for his last sleeping, And at his side, a slave no more, His brother-man stood weeping, His latest thought, his latest breath, To Freedom's duty giving, With failing tengue and trembling hand The dying blest the living.

Oh, never bore his ancient State A truer son or braver None trampling with a calmer scorn On foreign hate or favor. He knew her faults, yet never stooped His proud and manly feeling To poor excuses of the wrong Or meanness of concealing.

But none beheld with clearer eye The plague-spot o'er her spreading, None heard more sure the steps of Doom Along her future treading. For her as for himself he spake, When, his gaunt frame upbracing, He traced with dying hand "Remorse!" And perished in the tracing.

As from the grave where Henry sleeps, From Vernon's weeping willow, And from the grassy pall which hides The Sage of Monticello, So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone Of Randolph's lowly dwelling, Virginia! o'er thy land of slaves A warning voice is swelling!

And hark! from thy deserted fields Are sadder warnings spoken, From quenched hearths, where thy exiled sons Their household gods have broken. The curse is on thee,—wolves for men, And briers for corn-sheaves giving Oh, more than all thy dead renown Were now one hero living

1847.



THE LOST STATESMAN.

Written on hearing of the death of Silas Wright of New York.

As they who, tossing midst the storm at night, While turning shoreward, where a beacon shone, Meet the walled blackness of the heaven alone, So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed, In gloom and tempest, men have seen thy light Quenched in the darkness. At thy hour of noon, While life was pleasant to thy undimmed sight, And, day by day, within thy spirit grew A holier hope than young Ambition knew, As through thy rural quiet, not in vain, Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry of pain, Man of the millions, thou art lost too soon Portents at which the bravest stand aghast,— The birth-throes of a Future, strange and vast, Alarm the land; yet thou, so wise and strong, Suddenly summoned to the burial bed, Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long, Hear'st not the tumult surging overhead. Who now shall rally Freedom's scattering host? Who wear the mantle of the leader lost? Who stay the march of slavery? He whose voice Hath called thee from thy task-field shall not lack Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely back The wrong which, through his poor ones, reaches Him: Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torchlights trim, And wave them high across the abysmal black, Till bound, dumb millions there shall see them and rejoice.

10th mo., 1847.



THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE.

Suggested by a daguerreotype taken from a small French engraving of two negro figures, sent to the writer by Oliver Johnson.

BEAMS of noon, like burning lances, through the tree-tops flash and glisten, As she stands before her lover, with raised face to look and listen.

Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the ancient Jewish song Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done her graceful beauty wrong.

He, the strong one and the manly, with the vassal's garb and hue, Holding still his spirit's birthright, to his higher nature true;

Hiding deep the strengthening purpose of a freeman in his heart, As the gregree holds his Fetich from the white man's gaze apart.

Ever foremost of his comrades, when the driver's morning horn Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the fields of cane and corn.

Fall the keen and burning lashes never on his back or limb; Scarce with look or word of censure, turns the driver unto him.

Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and his eye is hard and stern; Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has never deigned to learn.

And, at evening, when his comrades dance before their master's door, Folding arms and knitting forehead, stands he silent evermore.

God be praised for every instinct which rebels against a lot Where the brute survives the human, and man's upright form is not!

As the serpent-like bejuco winds his spiral fold on fold Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it withers in his hold;

Slow decays the forest monarch, closer girds the fell embrace, Till the tree is seen no longer, and the vine is in its place;

So a base and bestial nature round the vassal's manhood twines, And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the ceiba choked with vines.

God is Love, saith the Evangel; and our world of woe and sin Is made light and happy only when a Love is shining in.

Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, finding, where- soe'er ye roam, Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, making all the world like home;

In the veins of whose affections kindred blood is but a part., Of one kindly current throbbing from the universal heart;

Can ye know the deeper meaning of a love in Slavery nursed, Last flower of a lost Eden, blooming in that Soil accursed?

Love of Home, and Love of Woman!—dear to all, but doubly dear To the heart whose pulses elsewhere measure only hate and fear.

All around the desert circles, underneath a brazen sky, Only one green spot remaining where the dew is never dry!

From the horror of that desert, from its atmosphere of hell, Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the diver seeks his bell.

'T is the fervid tropic noontime; faint and low the sea-waves beat; Hazy rise the inland mountains through the glimmer of the heat,—

Where, through mingled leaves and blossoms, arrowy sunbeams flash and glisten, Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and she lifts her head to listen:—

"We shall live as slaves no longer! Freedom's hour is close at hand! Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests the boat upon the strand!

"I have seen the Haytien Captain; I have seen his swarthy crew, Haters of the pallid faces, to their race and color true.

"They have sworn to wait our coming till the night has passed its noon, And the gray and darkening waters roll above the sunken moon!"

Oh, the blessed hope of freedom! how with joy and glad surprise, For an instant throbs her bosom, for an instant beam her eyes!

But she looks across the valley, where her mother's hut is seen, Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and the lemon- leaves so green.

And she answers, sad and earnest: "It were wrong for thee to stay; God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, and his finger points the way.

"Well I know with what endurance, for the sake of me and mine, Thou hast borne too long a burden never meant for souls like thine.

"Go; and at the hour of midnight, when our last farewell is o'er, Kneeling on our place of parting, I will bless thee from the shore.

"But for me, my mother, lying on her sick-bed all the day, Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming through the twilight gray.

"Should I leave her sick and helpless, even freedom, shared with thee, Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely toil, and stripes to me.

"For my heart would die within me, and my brain would soon be wild; I should hear my mother calling through the twilight for her child!"

Blazing upward from the ocean, shines the sun of morning-time, Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and green hedges of the lime.

Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil the lover and the maid; Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, leaning forward on his spade?

Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he: 't is the Haytien's sail he sees, Like a white cloud of the mountains, driven seaward by the breeze.

But his arm a light hand presses, and he hears a low voice call Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love is mightier than all.

1848.



THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS.

The rights and liberties affirmed by Magna Charta were deemed of such importance, in the thirteenth century, that the Bishops, twice a year, with tapers burning, and in their pontifical robes, pronounced, in the presence of the king and the representatives of the estates of England, the greater excommunication against the infringer of that instrument. The imposing ceremony took place in the great Hall of Westminster. A copy of the curse, as pronounced in 1253, declares that, "by the authority of Almighty God, and the blessed Apostles and Martyrs, and all the saints in heaven, all those who violate the English liberties, and secretly or openly, by deed, word, or counsel, do make statutes, or observe then being made, against said liberties, are accursed and sequestered from the company of heaven and the sacraments of the Holy Church."

William Penn, in his admirable political pamphlet, England's Present Interest Considered, alluding to the curse of the Charter- breakers, says: "I am no Roman Catholic, and little value their other curses; yet I declare I would not for the world incur this curse, as every man deservedly doth, who offers violence to the fundamental freedom thereby repeated and confirmed."

IN Westminster's royal halls, Robed in their pontificals, England's ancient prelates stood For the people's right and good. Closed around the waiting crowd, Dark and still, like winter's cloud; King and council, lord and knight, Squire and yeoman, stood in sight; Stood to hear the priest rehearse, In God's name, the Church's curse, By the tapers round them lit, Slowly, sternly uttering it.

"Right of voice in framing laws, Right of peers to try each cause; Peasant homestead, mean and small, Sacred as the monarch's hall,—

"Whoso lays his hand on these, England's ancient liberties; Whoso breaks, by word or deed, England's vow at Runnymede;

"Be he Prince or belted knight, Whatsoe'er his rank or might, If the highest, then the worst, Let him live and die accursed.

"Thou, who to Thy Church hast given Keys alike, of hell and heaven, Make our word and witness sure, Let the curse we speak endure!"

Silent, while that curse was said, Every bare and listening head Bowed in reverent awe, and then All the people said, Amen!

Seven times the bells have tolled, For the centuries gray and old, Since that stoled and mitred band Cursed the tyrants of their land.

Since the priesthood, like a tower, Stood between the poor and power; And the wronged and trodden down Blessed the abbot's shaven crown.

Gone, thank God, their wizard spell, Lost, their keys of heaven and hell; Yet I sigh for men as bold As those bearded priests of old.

Now, too oft the priesthood wait At the threshold of the state; Waiting for the beck and nod Of its power as law and God.

Fraud exults, while solemn words Sanctify his stolen hoards; Slavery laughs, while ghostly lips Bless his manacles and whips.

Not on them the poor rely, Not to them looks liberty, Who with fawning falsehood cower To the wrong, when clothed with power.

Oh, to see them meanly cling, Round the master, round the king, Sported with, and sold and bought,— Pitifuller sight is not!

Tell me not that this must be God's true priest is always free; Free, the needed truth to speak, Right the wronged, and raise the weak.

Not to fawn on wealth and state, Leaving Lazarus at the gate; Not to peddle creeds like wares; Not to mutter hireling prayers;

Nor to paint the new life's bliss On the sable ground of this; Golden streets for idle knave, Sabbath rest for weary slave!

Not for words and works like these, Priest of God, thy mission is; But to make earth's desert glad, In its Eden greenness clad;

And to level manhood bring Lord and peasant, serf and king; And the Christ of God to find In the humblest of thy kind!

Thine to work as well as pray, Clearing thorny wrongs away; Plucking up the weeds of sin, Letting heaven's warm sunshine in;

Watching on the hills of Faith; Listening what the spirit saith, Of the dim-seen light afar, Growing like a nearing star.

God's interpreter art thou, To the waiting ones below; 'Twixt them and its light midway Heralding the better day;

Catching gleams of temple spires, Hearing notes of angel choirs, Where, as yet unseen of them, Comes the New Jerusalem!

Like the seer of Patmos gazing, On the glory downward blazing; Till upon Earth's grateful sod Rests the City of our God!

1848.



PAEAN.

This poem indicates the exultation of the anti-slavery party in view of the revolt of the friends of Martin Van Buren in New York, from the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1848.

Now, joy and thanks forevermore! The dreary night has wellnigh passed, The slumbers of the North are o'er, The Giant stands erect at last!

More than we hoped in that dark time When, faint with watching, few and worn, We saw no welcome day-star climb The cold gray pathway of the morn!

O weary hours! O night of years! What storms our darkling pathway swept, Where, beating back our thronging fears, By Faith alone our march we kept.

How jeered the scoffing crowd behind, How mocked before the tyrant train, As, one by one, the true and kind Fell fainting in our path of pain!

They died, their brave hearts breaking slow, But, self-forgetful to the last, In words of cheer and bugle blow Their breath upon the darkness passed.

A mighty host, on either hand, Stood waiting for the dawn of day To crush like reeds our feeble band; The morn has come, and where are they?

Troop after troop their line forsakes; With peace-white banners waving free, And from our own the glad shout breaks, Of Freedom and Fraternity!

Like mist before the growing light, The hostile cohorts melt away; Our frowning foemen of the night Are brothers at the dawn of day.

As unto these repentant ones We open wide our toil-worn ranks, Along our line a murmur runs Of song, and praise, and grateful thanks.

Sound for the onset! Blast on blast! Till Slavery's minions cower and quail; One charge of fire shall drive them fast Like chaff before our Northern gale!

O prisoners in your house of pain, Dumb, toiling millions, bound and sold, Look! stretched o'er Southern vale and plain, The Lord's delivering hand behold!

Above the tyrant's pride of power, His iron gates and guarded wall, The bolts which shattered Shinar's tower Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall.

Awake! awake! my Fatherland! It is thy Northern light that shines; This stirring march of Freedom's band The storm-song of thy mountain pines.

Wake, dwellers where the day expires! And hear, in winds that sweep your lakes And fan your prairies' roaring fires, The signal-call that Freedom makes!

1848.



THE CRISIS.

Written on learning the terms of the treaty with Mexico.

ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's drouth and sand, The circles of our empire touch the western ocean's strand; From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and free, Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to California's sea; And from the mountains of the east, to Santa Rosa's shore, The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air no more.

O Vale of Rio Bravo! Let thy simple children weep; Close watch about their holy fire let maids of Pecos keep; Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's pines, And Santa Barbara toll her bells amidst her corn and vines; For lo! the pale land-seekers come, with eager eyes of gain, Wide scattering, like the bison herds on broad Salada's plain.

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what sound the winds bring down Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from cold Nevada's crown! Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with rein of travel slack, And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the sunrise at his back; By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir and pine, On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly camp-fires shine.

O countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and plain, Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat with grain; Of mountains white with winter, looking downward, cold, serene, On their feet with spring-vines tangled and lapped in softest green; Swift through whose black volcanic gates, o'er many a sunny vale, Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bison's dusty trail!

Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes whose mystic shores The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of Saxon oars; Great herds that wander all unwatched, wild steeds that none have tamed, Strange fish in unknown streams, and birds the Saxon never named; Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles, where Nature's chemic powers Work out the Great Designer's will; all these ye say are ours!

Forever ours! for good or ill, on us the burden lies; God's balance, watched by angels, is hung across the skies. Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn the poised and trembling scale? Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber Wrong prevail? Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in starry splendor waves, Forego through us its freedom, and bear the tread of slaves?

The day is breaking in the East of which the prophets told, And brightens up the sky of Time the Christian Age of Gold; Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to clerkly pen, Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and her serfs stand up as men;

The isles rejoice together, in a day are nations born, And the slave walks free in Tunis, and by Stamboul's Golden Horn!

Is this, O countrymen of mine! a day for us to sow The soil of new-gained empire with slavery's seeds of woe? To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old World's cast-off crime, Dropped, like some monstrous early birth, from the tired lap of Time? To run anew the evil race the old lost nations ran, And die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong of man?

Great Heaven! Is this our mission? End in this the prayers and tears, The toil, the strife, the watchings of our younger, better years? Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall ours in shadow turn, A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through outer darkness borne? Where the far nations looked for light, a black- ness in the air? Where for words of hope they listened, the long wail of despair?

The Crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands, With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands! This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin; This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin; Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown, We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down!

By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame; By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came; By the Future which awaits us; by all the hopes which cast Their faint and trembling beams across the black- ness of the Past; And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died, O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way; To wed Penobseot's waters to San Francisco's bay; To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain; And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea, And mountain unto mountain call, Praise God, for we are free

1845.



LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER.

A pleasant print to peddle out In lands of rice and cotton; The model of that face in dough Would make the artist's fortune. For Fame to thee has come unsought, While others vainly woo her, In proof how mean a thing can make A great man of its doer.

To whom shall men thyself compare, Since common models fail 'em, Save classic goose of ancient Rome, Or sacred ass of Balaam? The gabble of that wakeful goose Saved Rome from sack of Brennus; The braying of the prophet's ass Betrayed the angel's menace!

So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats, And azure-tinted hose oil, Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets The slow-match of explosion— An earthquake blast that would have tossed The Union as a feather, Thy instinct saved a perilled land And perilled purse together.

Just think of Carolina's sage Sent whirling like a Dervis, Of Quattlebum in middle air Performing strange drill-service! Doomed like Assyria's lord of old, Who fell before the Jewess, Or sad Abimelech, to sigh, "Alas! a woman slew us!"

Thou saw'st beneath a fair disguise The danger darkly lurking, And maiden bodice dreaded more Than warrior's steel-wrought jerkin. How keen to scent the hidden plot! How prompt wert thou to balk it, With patriot zeal and pedler thrift, For country and for pocket!

Thy likeness here is doubtless well, But higher honor's due it; On auction-block and negro-jail Admiring eyes should view it. Or, hung aloft, it well might grace The nation's senate-chamber— A greedy Northern bottle-fly Preserved in Slavery's amber!

1850.



DERNE.

The storming of the city of Derne, in 1805, by General Eaton, at the head of nine Americans, forty Greeks, and a motley array of Turks and Arabs, was one of those feats of hardihood and daring which have in all ages attracted the admiration of the multitude. The higher and holier heroism of Christian self-denial and sacrifice, in the humble walks of private duty, is seldom so well appreciated.

NIGHT on the city of the Moor! On mosque and tomb, and white-walled shore, On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock The narrow harbor-gates unlock, On corsair's galley, carack tall, And plundered Christian caraval! The sounds of Moslem life are still; No mule-bell tinkles down the hill; Stretched in the broad court of the khan, The dusty Bornou caravan Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man; The Sheik is dreaming in his tent, His noisy Arab tongue o'erspent; The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone, The merchant with his wares withdrawn; Rough pillowed on some pirate breast, The dancing-girl has sunk to rest; And, save where measured footsteps fall Along the Bashaw's guarded wall, Or where, like some bad dream, the Jew Creeps stealthily his quarter through, Or counts with fear his golden heaps, The City of the Corsair sleeps.

But where yon prison long and low Stands black against the pale star-glow, Chafed by the ceaseless wash of waves, There watch and pine the Christian slaves; Rough-bearded men, whose far-off wives Wear out with grief their lonely lives; And youth, still flashing from his eyes The clear blue of New England skies, A treasured lock of whose soft hair Now wakes some sorrowing mother's prayer; Or, worn upon some maiden breast, Stirs with the loving heart's unrest.

A bitter cup each life must drain, The groaning earth is cursed with pain, And, like the scroll the angel bore The shuddering Hebrew seer before, O'erwrit alike, without, within, With all the woes which follow sin; But, bitterest of the ills beneath Whose load man totters down to death, Is that which plucks the regal crown Of Freedom from his forehead down, And snatches from his powerless hand The sceptred sign of self-command, Effacing with the chain and rod The image and the seal of God; Till from his nature, day by day, The manly virtues fall away, And leave him naked, blind and mute, The godlike merging in the brute!

Why mourn the quiet ones who die Beneath affection's tender eye, Unto their household and their kin Like ripened corn-sheaves gathered in? O weeper, from that tranquil sod, That holy harvest-home of God, Turn to the quick and suffering, shed Thy tears upon the living dead Thank God above thy dear ones' graves, They sleep with Him, they are not slaves.

What dark mass, down the mountain-sides Swift-pouring, like a stream divides? A long, loose, straggling caravan, Camel and horse and armed man. The moon's low crescent, glimmering o'er Its grave of waters to the shore, Lights tip that mountain cavalcade, And gleams from gun and spear and blade Near and more near! now o'er them falls The shadow of the city walls. Hark to the sentry's challenge, drowned In the fierce trumpet's charging sound! The rush of men, the musket's peal, The short, sharp clang of meeting steel!

Vain, Moslem, vain thy lifeblood poured So freely on thy foeman's sword! Not to the swift nor to the strong The battles of the right belong; For he who strikes for Freedom wears The armor of the captive's prayers, And Nature proffers to his cause The strength of her eternal laws; While he whose arm essays to bind And herd with common brutes his kind Strives evermore at fearful odds With Nature and the jealous gods, And dares the dread recoil which late Or soon their right shall vindicate.

'T is done, the horned crescent falls The star-flag flouts the broken walls Joy to the captive husband! joy To thy sick heart, O brown-locked boy! In sullen wrath the conquered Moor Wide open flings your dungeon-door, And leaves ye free from cell and chain, The owners of yourselves again. Dark as his allies desert-born, Soiled with the battle's stain, and worn With the long marches of his band Through hottest wastes of rock and sand, Scorched by the sun and furnace-breath Of the red desert's wind of death, With welcome words and grasping hands, The victor and deliverer stands!

The tale is one of distant skies; The dust of half a century lies Upon it; yet its hero's name Still lingers on the lips of Fame. Men speak the praise of him who gave Deliverance to the Moorman's slave, Yet dare to brand with shame and crime The heroes of our land and time,— The self-forgetful ones, who stake Home, name, and life for Freedom's sake. God mend his heart who cannot feel The impulse of a holy zeal, And sees not, with his sordid eyes, The beauty of self-sacrifice Though in the sacred place he stands, Uplifting consecrated hands, Unworthy are his lips to tell Of Jesus' martyr-miracle, Or name aright that dread embrace Of suffering for a fallen race!

1850.



A SABBATH SCENE.

This poem finds its justification in the readiness with which, even in the North, clergymen urged the prompt execution of the Fugitive Slave Law as a Christian duty, and defended the system of slavery as a Bible institution.

SCARCE had the solemn Sabbath-bell Ceased quivering in the steeple, Scarce had the parson to his desk Walked stately through his people, When down the summer-shaded street A wasted female figure, With dusky brow and naked feet,

Came rushing wild and eager. She saw the white spire through the trees, She heard the sweet hymn swelling O pitying Christ! a refuge give That poor one in Thy dwelling!

Like a scared fawn before the hounds, Right up the aisle she glided, While close behind her, whip in hand, A lank-haired hunter strided.

She raised a keen and bitter cry, To Heaven and Earth appealing; Were manhood's generous pulses dead? Had woman's heart no feeling?

A score of stout hands rose between The hunter and the flying: Age clenched his staff, and maiden eyes Flashed tearful, yet defying.

"Who dares profane this house and day?" Cried out the angry pastor. "Why, bless your soul, the wench's a slave, And I'm her lord and master!

"I've law and gospel on my side, And who shall dare refuse me?" Down came the parson, bowing low, "My good sir, pray excuse me!

"Of course I know your right divine To own and work and whip her; Quick, deacon, throw that Polyglott Before the wench, and trip her!"

Plump dropped the holy tome, and o'er Its sacred pages stumbling, Bound hand and foot, a slave once more, The hapless wretch lay trembling.

I saw the parson tie the knots, The while his flock addressing, The Scriptural claims of slavery With text on text impressing.

"Although," said he, "on Sabbath day All secular occupations Are deadly sins, we must fulfil Our moral obligations:

"And this commends itself as one To every conscience tender; As Paul sent back Onesimus, My Christian friends, we send her!"

Shriek rose on shriek,—the Sabbath air Her wild cries tore asunder; I listened, with hushed breath, to hear God answering with his thunder!

All still! the very altar's cloth Had smothered down her shrieking, And, dumb, she turned from face to face, For human pity seeking!

I saw her dragged along the aisle, Her shackles harshly clanking; I heard the parson, over all, The Lord devoutly thanking!

My brain took fire: "Is this," I cried, "The end of prayer and preaching? Then down with pulpit, down with priest, And give us Nature's teaching!

"Foul shame and scorn be on ye all Who turn the good to evil, And steal the Bible, from the Lord, To give it to the Devil!

"Than garbled text or parchment law I own a statute higher; And God is true, though every book And every man's a liar!"

Just then I felt the deacon's hand In wrath my coattail seize on; I heard the priest cry, "Infidel!" The lawyer mutter, "Treason!"

I started up,—where now were church, Slave, master, priest, and people? I only heard the supper-bell, Instead of clanging steeple.

But, on the open window's sill, O'er which the white blooms drifted, The pages of a good old Book The wind of summer lifted,

And flower and vine, like angel wings Around the Holy Mother, Waved softly there, as if God's truth And Mercy kissed each other.

And freely from the cherry-bough Above the casement swinging, With golden bosom to the sun, The oriole was singing.

As bird and flower made plain of old The lesson of the Teacher, So now I heard the written Word Interpreted by Nature.

For to my ear methought the breeze Bore Freedom's blessed word on; Thus saith the Lord: Break every yoke, Undo the heavy burden

1850.



IN THE EVIL DAYS.

This and the four following poems have special reference to that darkest hour in the aggression of slavery which preceded the dawn of a better day, when the conscience of the people was roused to action.

THE evil days have come, the poor Are made a prey; Bar up the hospitable door, Put out the fire-lights, point no more The wanderer's way.

For Pity now is crime; the chain Which binds our States Is melted at her hearth in twain, Is rusted by her tears' soft rain Close up her gates.

Our Union, like a glacier stirred By voice below, Or bell of kine, or wing of bird, A beggar's crust, a kindly word May overthrow!

Poor, whispering tremblers! yet we boast Our blood and name; Bursting its century-bolted frost, Each gray cairn on the Northman's coast Cries out for shame!

Oh for the open firmament, The prairie free, The desert hillside, cavern-rent, The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent, The Bushman's tree!

Than web of Persian loom most rare, Or soft divan, Better the rough rock, bleak and bare, Or hollow tree, which man may share With suffering man.

I hear a voice: "Thus saith the Law, Let Love be dumb; Clasping her liberal hands in awe, Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw From hearth and home."

I hear another voice: "The poor Are thine to feed; Turn not the outcast from thy door, Nor give to bonds and wrong once more Whom God hath freed."

Dear Lord! between that law and Thee No choice remains; Yet not untrue to man's decree, Though spurning its rewards, is he Who bears its pains.

Not mine Sedition's trumpet-blast And threatening word; I read the lesson of the Past, That firm endurance wins at last More than the sword.

O clear-eyed Faith, and Patience thou So calm and strong! Lend strength to weakness, teach us how The sleepless eyes of God look through This night of wrong.

1850.



MOLOCH IN STATE STREET.

In a foot-note of the Report of the Senate of Massachusetts on the case of the arrest and return to bondage of the fugitive slave Thomas Sims it is stated that—"It would have been impossible for the U. S. marshal thus successfully to have resisted the law of the State, without the assistance of the municipal authorities of Boston, and the countenance and support of a numerous, wealthy, and powerful body of citizens. It was in evidence that 1500 of the most wealthy and respectable citizens-merchants, bankers, and others—volunteered their services to aid the marshal on this occasion. . . . No watch was kept upon the doings of the marshal, and while the State officers slept, after the moon had gone down, in the darkest hour before daybreak, the accused was taken out of our jurisdiction by the armed police of the city of Boston."

THE moon has set: while yet the dawn Breaks cold and gray, Between the midnight and the morn Bear off your prey!

On, swift and still! the conscious street Is panged and stirred; Tread light! that fall of serried feet The dead have heard!

The first drawn blood of Freedom's veins Gushed where ye tread; Lo! through the dusk the martyr-stains Blush darkly red!

Beneath the slowly waning stars And whitening day, What stern and awful presence bars That sacred way?

What faces frown upon ye, dark With shame and pain? Come these from Plymouth's Pilgrim bark? Is that young Vane?

Who, dimly beckoning, speed ye on With mocking cheer? Lo! spectral Andros, Hutchinson, And Gage are here!

For ready mart or favoring blast Through Moloch's fire, Flesh of his flesh, unsparing, passed The Tyrian sire.

Ye make that ancient sacrifice Of Mail to Gain, Your traffic thrives, where Freedom dies, Beneath the chain.

Ye sow to-day; your harvest, scorn And hate, is near; How think ye freemen, mountain-born, The tale will hear?

Thank God! our mother State can yet Her fame retrieve; To you and to your children let The scandal cleave.

Chain Hall and Pulpit, Court and Press, Make gods of gold; Let honor, truth, and manliness Like wares be sold.

Your hoards are great, your walls are strong, But God is just; The gilded chambers built by wrong Invite the rust.

What! know ye not the gains of Crime Are dust and dross; Its ventures on the waves of time Foredoomed to loss!

And still the Pilgrim State remains What she hath been; Her inland hills, her seaward plains, Still nurture men!

Nor wholly lost the fallen mart; Her olden blood Through many a free and generous heart Still pours its flood.

That brave old blood, quick-flowing yet, Shall know no check, Till a free people's foot is set On Slavery's neck.

Even now, the peal of bell and gun, And hills aflame, Tell of the first great triumph won In Freedom's name. (10)

The long night dies: the welcome gray Of dawn we see; Speed up the heavens thy perfect day, God of the free!

1851.



OFFICIAL PIETY.

Suggested by reading a state paper, wherein the higher law is invoked to sustain the lower one.

A Pious magistrate! sound his praise throughout The wondering churches. Who shall henceforth doubt That the long-wished millennium draweth nigh? Sin in high places has become devout, Tithes mint, goes painful-faced, and prays its lie Straight up to Heaven, and calls it piety! The pirate, watching from his bloody deck The weltering galleon, heavy with the gold Of Acapulco, holding death in check While prayers are said, brows crossed, and beads are told; The robber, kneeling where the wayside cross On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread loss From his own carbine, glancing still abroad For some new victim, offering thanks to God! Rome, listening at her altars to the cry Of midnight Murder, while her hounds of hell Scour France, from baptized cannon and holy bell And thousand-throated priesthood, loud and high, Pealing Te Deums to the shuddering sky, "Thanks to the Lord, who giveth victory!" What prove these, but that crime was ne'er so black As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to lack? Satan is modest. At Heaven's door he lays His evil offspring, and, in Scriptural phrase And saintly posture, gives to God the praise And honor of the monstrous progeny. What marvel, then, in our own time to see His old devices, smoothly acted o'er,— Official piety, locking fast the door Of Hope against three million soups of men,— Brothers, God's children, Christ's redeemed,—and then, With uprolled eyeballs and on bended knee, Whining a prayer for help to hide the key!

1853.



THE RENDITION.

On the 2d of June, 1854, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia, after being under arrest for ten days in the Boston Court House, was remanded to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act, and taken down State Street to a steamer chartered by the United States Government, under guard of United States troops and artillery, Massachusetts militia and Boston police. Public excitement ran high, a futile attempt to rescue Burns having been made during his confinement, and the streets were crowded with tens of thousands of people, of whom many came from other towns and cities of the State to witness the humiliating spectacle.

I HEARD the train's shrill whistle call, I saw an earnest look beseech, And rather by that look than speech My neighbor told me all.

And, as I thought of Liberty Marched handcuffed down that sworded street, The solid earth beneath my feet Reeled fluid as the sea.

I felt a sense of bitter loss,— Shame, tearless grief, and stifling wrath, And loathing fear, as if my path A serpent stretched across.

All love of home, all pride of place, All generous confidence and trust, Sank smothering in that deep disgust And anguish of disgrace.

Down on my native hills of June, And home's green quiet, hiding all, Fell sudden darkness like the fall Of midnight upon noon.

And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong, Blood-drunken, through the blackness trod, Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God The blasphemy of wrong.

"O Mother, from thy memories proud, Thy old renown, dear Commonwealth, Lend this dead air a breeze of health, And smite with stars this cloud.

"Mother of Freedom, wise and brave, Rise awful in thy strength," I said; Ah me! I spake but to the dead; I stood upon her grave!

6th mo., 1854.



ARISEN AT LAST.

On the passage of the bill to protect the rights and liberties of the people of the State against the Fugitive Slave Act.

I SAID I stood upon thy grave, My Mother State, when last the moon Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.

And, scattering ashes on my head, I wore, undreaming of relief, The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.

Again that moon of blossoms shines On leaf and flower and folded wing, And thou hast risen with the spring!

Once more thy strong maternal arms Are round about thy children flung,— A lioness that guards her young!

No threat is on thy closed lips, But in thine eye a power to smite The mad wolf backward from its light.

Southward the baffled robber's track Henceforth runs only; hereaway, The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.

Henceforth, within thy sacred gates, His first low howl shall downward draw The thunder of thy righteous law.

Not mindless of thy trade and gain, But, acting on the wiser plan, Thou'rt grown conservative of man.

So shalt thou clothe with life the hope, Dream-painted on the sightless eyes Of him who sang of Paradise,—

The vision of a Christian man, In virtue, as in stature great Embodied in a Christian State.

And thou, amidst thy sisterhood Forbearing long, yet standing fast, Shalt win their grateful thanks at last;

When North and South shall strive no more, And all their feuds and fears be lost In Freedom's holy Pentecost.

6th mo., 1855.



THE HASCHISH.

OF all that Orient lands can vaunt Of marvels with our own competing, The strangest is the Haschish plant, And what will follow on its eating.

What pictures to the taster rise, Of Dervish or of Almeh dances! Of Eblis, or of Paradise, Set all aglow with Houri glances!

The poppy visions of Cathay, The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian; The wizard lights and demon play Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!

The Mollah and the Christian dog Change place in mad metempsychosis; The Muezzin climbs the synagogue, The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses!

The Arab by his desert well Sits choosing from some Caliph's daughters, And hears his single camel's bell Sound welcome to his regal quarters.

The Koran's reader makes complaint Of Shitan dancing on and off it; The robber offers alms, the saint Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Prophet.

Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes; But we have one ordained to beat it, The Haschish of the West, which makes Or fools or knaves of all who eat it.

The preacher eats, and straight appears His Bible in a new translation; Its angels negro overseers, And Heaven itself a snug plantation!

The man of peace, about whose dreams The sweet millennial angels cluster, Tastes the mad weed, and plots and schemes, A raving Cuban filibuster!

The noisiest Democrat, with ease, It turns to Slavery's parish beadle; The shrewdest statesman eats and sees Due southward point the polar needle.

The Judge partakes, and sits erelong Upon his bench a railing blackguard; Decides off-hand that right is wrong, And reads the ten commandments backward.

O potent plant! so rare a taste Has never Turk or Gentoo gotten; The hempen Haschish of the East Is powerless to our Western Cotton!

1854.



FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE.

Inscribed to friends under arrest for treason against the slave power.

THE age is dull and mean. Men creep, Not walk; with blood too pale and tame To pay the debt they owe to shame; Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want; Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep Six days to Mammon, one to Cant.

In such a time, give thanks to God, That somewhat of the holy rage With which the prophets in their age On all its decent seemings trod, Has set your feet upon the lie, That man and ox and soul and clod Are market stock to sell and buy!

The hot words from your lips, my own, To caution trained, might not repeat; But if some tares among the wheat Of generous thought and deed were sown, No common wrong provoked your zeal; The silken gauntlet that is thrown In such a quarrel rings like steel.

The brave old strife the fathers saw For Freedom calls for men again Like those who battled not in vain For England's Charter, Alfred's law; And right of speech and trial just Wage in your name their ancient war With venal courts and perjured trust.

God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late, They touch the shining hills of day; The evil cannot brook delay, The good can well afford to wait. Give ermined knaves their hour of crime; Ye have the future grand and great, The safe appeal of Truth to Time!

1855.



THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS.

This poem and the three following were called out by the popular movement of Free State men to occupy the territory of Kansas, and by the use of the great democratic weapon—an over-powering majority—to settle the conflict on that ground between Freedom and Slavery. The opponents of the movement used another kind of weapon.

WE cross the prairie as of old The pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free!

We go to rear a wall of men On Freedom's southern line, And plant beside the cotton-tree The rugged Northern pine!

We're flowing from our native hills As our free rivers flow; The blessing of our Mother-land Is on us as we go.

We go to plant her common schools, On distant prairie swells, And give the Sabbaths of the wild The music of her bells.

Upbearing, like the Ark of old, The Bible in our van, We go to test the truth of God Against the fraud of man.

No pause, nor rest, save where the streams That feed the Kansas run, Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon Shall flout the setting sun.

We'll tread the prairie as of old Our fathers sailed the sea, And make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free!

1854.



LETTER FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH,

IN KANSAS, TO A DISTINGUISHED POLITICIAN.

DOUGLAS MISSION, August, 1854,

LAST week—the Lord be praised for all His mercies To His unworthy servant!—I arrived Safe at the Mission, via Westport; where I tarried over night, to aid in forming A Vigilance Committee, to send back, In shirts of tar, and feather-doublets quilted With forty stripes save one, all Yankee comers, Uncircumcised and Gentile, aliens from The Commonwealth of Israel, who despise The prize of the high calling of the saints, Who plant amidst this heathen wilderness Pure gospel institutions, sanctified By patriarchal use. The meeting opened With prayer, as was most fitting. Half an hour, Or thereaway, I groaned, and strove, and wrestled, As Jacob did at Penuel, till the power Fell on the people, and they cried 'Amen!' "Glory to God!" and stamped and clapped their hands; And the rough river boatmen wiped their eyes; "Go it, old hoss!" they cried, and cursed the niggers— Fulfilling thus the word of prophecy, "Cursed be Cannan." After prayer, the meeting Chose a committee—good and pious men— A Presbyterian Elder, Baptist deacon, A local preacher, three or four class-leaders, Anxious inquirers, and renewed backsliders, A score in all—to watch the river ferry, (As they of old did watch the fords of Jordan,) And cut off all whose Yankee tongues refuse The Shibboleth of the Nebraska bill. And then, in answer to repeated calls, I gave a brief account of what I saw In Washington; and truly many hearts Rejoiced to know the President, and you And all the Cabinet regularly hear The gospel message of a Sunday morning, Drinking with thirsty souls of the sincere Milk of the Word. Glory! Amen, and Selah!

Here, at the Mission, all things have gone well The brother who, throughout my absence, acted As overseer, assures me that the crops Never were better. I have lost one negro, A first-rate hand, but obstinate and sullen. He ran away some time last spring, and hid In the river timber. There my Indian converts Found him, and treed and shot him. For the rest, The heathens round about begin to feel The influence of our pious ministrations And works of love; and some of them already Have purchased negroes, and are settling down As sober Christians! Bless the Lord for this! I know it will rejoice you. You, I hear, Are on the eve of visiting Chicago, To fight with the wild beasts of Ephesus, Long John, and Dutch Free-Soilers. May your arm Be clothed with strength, and on your tongue be found The sweet oil of persuasion. So desires Your brother and co-laborer. Amen!

P.S. All's lost. Even while I write these lines, The Yankee abolitionists are coming Upon us like a flood—grim, stalwart men, Each face set like a flint of Plymouth Rock Against our institutions—staking out Their farm lots on the wooded Wakarusa, Or squatting by the mellow-bottomed Kansas; The pioneers of mightier multitudes, The small rain-patter, ere the thunder shower Drowns the dry prairies. Hope from man is not. Oh, for a quiet berth at Washington, Snug naval chaplaincy, or clerkship, where These rumors of free labor and free soil Might never meet me more. Better to be Door-keeper in the White House, than to dwell Amidst these Yankee tents, that, whitening, show On the green prairie like a fleet becalmed. Methinks I hear a voice come up the river From those far bayous, where the alligators Mount guard around the camping filibusters "Shake off the dust of Kansas. Turn to Cuba— (That golden orange just about to fall, O'er-ripe, into the Democratic lap;) Keep pace with Providence, or, as we say, Manifest destiny. Go forth and follow The message of our gospel, thither borne Upon the point of Quitman's bowie-knife, And the persuasive lips of Colt's revolvers. There may'st thou, underneath thy vine and figtree, Watch thy increase of sugar cane and negroes, Calm as a patriarch in his eastern tent!" Amen: So mote it be. So prays your friend.



BURIAL OF BARBER.

Thomas Barber was shot December 6, 1855, near Lawrence, Kansas.

BEAR him, comrades, to his grave; Never over one more brave Shall the prairie grasses weep, In the ages yet to come, When the millions in our room, What we sow in tears, shall reap.

Bear him up the icy hill, With the Kansas, frozen still As his noble heart, below, And the land he came to till With a freeman's thews and will, And his poor hut roofed with snow.

One more look of that dead face, Of his murder's ghastly trace! One more kiss, O widowed one Lay your left hands on his brow, Lift your right hands up, and vow That his work shall yet be done.

Patience, friends! The eye of God Every path by Murder trod Watches, lidless, day and night; And the dead man in his shroud, And his widow weeping loud, And our hearts, are in His sight.

Every deadly threat that swells With the roar of gambling hells, Every brutal jest and jeer, Every wicked thought and plan Of the cruel heart of man, Though but whispered, He can hear!

We in suffering, they in crime, Wait the just award of time, Wait the vengeance that is due; Not in vain a heart shall break, Not a tear for Freedom's sake Fall unheeded: God is true.

While the flag with stars bedecked Threatens where it should protect, And the Law shakes Hands with Crime, What is left us but to wait, Match our patience to our fate, And abide the better time?

Patience, friends! The human heart Everywhere shall take our part, Everywhere for us shall pray; On our side are nature's laws, And God's life is in the cause That we suffer for to-day.

Well to suffer is divine; Pass the watchword down the line, Pass the countersign: "Endure." Not to him who rashly dares, But to him who nobly bears, Is the victor's garland sure.

Frozen earth to frozen breast, Lay our slain one down to rest; Lay him down in hope and faith, And above the broken sod, Once again, to Freedom's God, Pledge ourselves for life or death,

That the State whose walls we lay, In our blood and tears, to-day, Shall be free from bonds of shame, And our goodly land untrod By the feet of Slavery, shod With cursing as with flame!

Plant the Buckeye on his grave, For the hunter of the slave In its shadow cannot rest; I And let martyr mound and tree Be our pledge and guaranty Of the freedom of the West!

1856.



TO PENNSYLVANIA.

O STATE prayer-founded! never hung Such choice upon a people's tongue, Such power to bless or ban, As that which makes thy whisper Fate, For which on thee the centuries wait, And destinies of man!

Across thy Alleghanian chain, With groanings from a land in pain, The west-wind finds its way: Wild-wailing from Missouri's flood The crying of thy children's blood Is in thy ears to-day!

And unto thee in Freedom's hour Of sorest need God gives the power To ruin or to save; To wound or heal, to blight or bless With fertile field or wilderness, A free home or a grave!

Then let thy virtue match the crime, Rise to a level with the time; And, if a son of thine Betray or tempt thee, Brutus-like For Fatherland and Freedom strike As Justice gives the sign.

Wake, sleeper, from thy dream of ease, The great occasion's forelock seize; And let the north-wind strong, And golden leaves of autumn, be Thy coronal of Victory And thy triumphal song.

10th me., 1856.



LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.

The massacre of unarmed and unoffending men, in Southern Kansas, in May, 1858, took place near the Marais du Cygne of the French voyageurs.

A BLUSH as of roses Where rose never grew! Great drops on the bunch-grass, But not of the dew! A taint in the sweet air For wild bees to shun! A stain that shall never Bleach out in the sun.

Back, steed of the prairies Sweet song-bird, fly back! Wheel hither, bald vulture! Gray wolf, call thy pack! The foul human vultures Have feasted and fled; The wolves of the Border Have crept from the dead.

From the hearths of their cabins, The fields of their corn, Unwarned and unweaponed, The victims were torn,— By the whirlwind of murder Swooped up and swept on To the low, reedy fen-lands, The Marsh of the Swan.

With a vain plea for mercy No stout knee was crooked; In the mouths of the rifles Right manly they looked. How paled the May sunshine, O Marais du Cygne! On death for the strong life, On red grass for green!

In the homes of their rearing, Yet warm with their lives, Ye wait the dead only, Poor children and wives! Put out the red forge-fire, The smith shall not come; Unyoke the brown oxen, The ploughman lies dumb.

Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh, O dreary death-train, With pressed lips as bloodless As lips of the slain! Kiss down the young eyelids, Smooth down the gray hairs; Let tears quench the curses That burn through your prayers.

Strong man of the prairies, Mourn bitter and wild! Wail, desolate woman! Weep, fatherless child! But the grain of God springs up From ashes beneath, And the crown of his harvest Is life out of death.

Not in vain on the dial The shade moves along, To point the great contrasts Of right and of wrong: Free homes and free altars, Free prairie and flood,— The reeds of the Swan's Marsh, Whose bloom is of blood!

On the lintels of Kansas That blood shall not dry; Henceforth the Bad Angel Shall harmless go by; Henceforth to the sunset, Unchecked on her way, Shall Liberty follow The march of the day.



THE PASS OF THE SIERRA.

ALL night above their rocky bed They saw the stars march slow; The wild Sierra overhead, The desert's death below.

The Indian from his lodge of bark, The gray bear from his den, Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark, Glared on the mountain men.

Still upward turned, with anxious strain, Their leader's sleepless eye, Where splinters of the mountain chain Stood black against the sky.

The night waned slow: at last, a glow, A gleam of sudden fire, Shot up behind the walls of snow, And tipped each icy spire.

"Up, men!" he cried, "yon rocky cone, To-day, please God, we'll pass, And look from Winter's frozen throne On Summer's flowers and grass!"

They set their faces to the blast, They trod the eternal snow, And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last The promised land below.

Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed By many an icy horn; Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed, And green with vines and corn.

They left the Winter at their backs To flap his baffled wing, And downward, with the cataracts, Leaped to the lap of Spring.

Strong leader of that mountain band, Another task remains, To break from Slavery's desert land A path to Freedom's plains.

The winds are wild, the way is drear, Yet, flashing through the night, Lo! icy ridge and rocky spear Blaze out in morning light!

Rise up, Fremont! and go before; The hour must have its Man; Put on the hunting-shirt once more, And lead in Freedom's van! 8th mo., 1856.



A SONG FOR THE TIME.

Written in the summer of 1856, during the political campaign of the Free Soil party under the candidacy of John C. Fremont.

Up, laggards of Freedom!—our free flag is cast To the blaze of the sun and the wings of the blast; Will ye turn from a struggle so bravely begun, From a foe that is breaking, a field that's half won?

Whoso loves not his kind, and who fears not the Lord, Let him join that foe's service, accursed and abhorred Let him do his base will, as the slave only can,— Let him put on the bloodhound, and put off the Man!

Let him go where the cold blood that creeps in his veins Shall stiffen the slave-whip, and rust on his chains; Where the black slave shall laugh in his bonds, to behold The White Slave beside him, self-fettered and sold!

But ye, who still boast of hearts beating and warm, Rise, from lake shore and ocean's, like waves in a storm, Come, throng round our banner in Liberty's name, Like winds from your mountains, like prairies aflame!

Our foe, hidden long in his ambush of night, Now, forced from his covert, stands black in the light. Oh, the cruel to Man, and the hateful to God, Smite him down to the earth, that is cursed where he trod!

For deeper than thunder of summer's loud shower, On the dome of the sky God is striking the hour! Shall we falter before what we've prayed for so long, When the Wrong is so weak, and the Right is so strong?

Come forth all together! come old and come young, Freedom's vote in each hand, and her song on each tongue; Truth naked is stronger than Falsehood in mail; The Wrong cannot prosper, the Right cannot fail.

Like leaves of the summer once numbered the foe, But the hoar-frost is falling, the northern winds blow; Like leaves of November erelong shall they fall, For earth wearies of them, and God's over all!



WHAT OF THE DAY?

Written during the stirring weeks when the great political battle for Freedom under Fremont's leadership was permitting strong hope of success,—a hope overshadowed and solemnized by a sense of the magnitude of the barbaric evil, and a forecast of the unscrupulous and desperate use of all its powers in the last and decisive struggle.

A SOUND of tumult troubles all the air, Like the low thunders of a sultry sky Far-rolling ere the downright lightnings glare; The hills blaze red with warnings; foes draw nigh, Treading the dark with challenge and reply. Behold the burden of the prophet's vision; The gathering hosts,—the Valley of Decision, Dusk with the wings of eagles wheeling o'er. Day of the Lord, of darkness and not light! It breaks in thunder and the whirlwind's roar Even so, Father! Let Thy will be done; Turn and o'erturn, end what Thou bast begun In judgment or in mercy: as for me, If but the least and frailest, let me be Evermore numbered with the truly free Who find Thy service perfect liberty! I fain would thank Thee that my mortal life Has reached the hour (albeit through care and pain) When Good and Evil, as for final strife, Close dim and vast on Armageddon's plain; And Michael and his angels once again Drive howling back the Spirits of the Night. Oh for the faith to read the signs aright And, from the angle of Thy perfect sight, See Truth's white banner floating on before; And the Good Cause, despite of venal friends, And base expedients, move to noble ends; See Peace with Freedom make to Time amends, And, through its cloud of dust, the threshing-floor, Flailed by the thunder, heaped with chaffless grain.

1856.



A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS.

Written after the election in 1586, which showed the immense gains of the Free Soil party, and insured its success in 1860.

BENEATH thy skies, November! Thy skies of cloud and rain, Around our blazing camp-fires We close our ranks again. Then sound again the bugles, Call the muster-roll anew; If months have well-nigh won the field, What may not four years do?

For God be praised! New England Takes once more her ancient place; Again the Pilgrim's banner Leads the vanguard of the race. Then sound again the bugles, etc.

Along the lordly Hudson, A shout of triumph breaks; The Empire State is speaking, From the ocean to the lakes. Then sound again the bugles, etc.

The Northern hills are blazing, The Northern skies are bright; And the fair young West is turning Her forehead to the light! Then sound again the bugles, etc.

Push every outpost nearer, Press hard the hostile towers! Another Balaklava, And the Malakoff is ours! Then sound again the bugles, Call the muster-roll anew; If months have well-nigh won the field, What may not four years do?



THE PANORAMA.

"A! fredome is a nobill thing! Fredome mayse man to haif liking. Fredome all solace to man giffis; He levys at ese that frely levys A nobil hart may haif nane ese Na ellvs nocht that may him plese Gyff Fredome failythe." ARCHDEACON BARBOUR.

THROUGH the long hall the shuttered windows shed A dubious light on every upturned head; On locks like those of Absalom the fair, On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair, On blank indifference and on curious stare; On the pale Showman reading from his stage The hieroglyphics of that facial page; Half sad, half scornful, listening to the bruit Of restless cane-tap and impatient foot, And the shrill call, across the general din, "Roll up your curtain! Let the show begin!"

At length a murmur like the winds that break Into green waves the prairie's grassy lake, Deepened and swelled to music clear and loud, And, as the west-wind lifts a summer cloud, The curtain rose, disclosing wide and far A green land stretching to the evening star, Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees And flowers hummed over by the desert bees, Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of greenness show Fantastic outcrops of the rock below; The slow result of patient Nature's pains, And plastic fingering of her sun and rains; Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely windowed hall, And long escarpment of half-crumbled wall, Huger than those which, from steep hills of vine, Stare through their loopholes on the travelled Rhine; Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's mind A fancy, idle as the prairie wind, Of the land's dwellers in an age unguessed; The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West.

Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells surpass The Tartar's marvels of his Land of Grass, Vast as the sky against whose sunset shores Wave after wave the billowy greenness pours; And, onward still, like islands in that main Loom the rough peaks of many a mountain chain, Whence east and west a thousand waters run From winter lingering under summer's sun. And, still beyond, long lines of foam and sand Tell where Pacific rolls his waves a-land, From many a wide-lapped port and land-locked bay, Opening with thunderous pomp the world's highway To Indian isles of spice, and marts of far Cathay.

"Such," said the Showman, as the curtain fell, "Is the new Canaan of our Israel; The land of promise to the swarming North, Which, hive-like, sends its annual surplus forth, To the poor Southron on his worn-out soil, Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil; To Europe's exiles seeking home and rest, And the lank nomads of the wandering West, Who, asking neither, in their love of change And the free bison's amplitude of range, Rear the log-hut, for present shelter meant, Not future comfort, like an Arab's tent."

Then spake a shrewd on-looker, "Sir," said he, "I like your picture, but I fain would see A sketch of what your promised land will be When, with electric nerve, and fiery-brained, With Nature's forces to its chariot chained, The future grasping, by the past obeyed, The twentieth century rounds a new decade."

Then said the Showman, sadly: "He who grieves Over the scattering of the sibyl's leaves Unwisely mourns. Suffice it, that we know What needs must ripen from the seed we sow; That present time is but the mould wherein We cast the shapes of holiness and sin. A painful watcher of the passing hour, Its lust of gold, its strife for place and power; Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, truth, Wise-thoughted age, and generous-hearted youth; Nor yet unmindful of each better sign, The low, far lights, which on th' horizon shine, Like those which sometimes tremble on the rim Of clouded skies when day is closing dim, Flashing athwart the purple spears of rain The hope of sunshine on the hills again I need no prophet's word, nor shapes that pass Like clouding shadows o'er a magic glass; For now, as ever, passionless and cold, Doth the dread angel of the future hold Evil and good before us, with no voice Or warning look to guide us in our choice; With spectral hands outreaching through the gloom The shadowy contrasts of the coming doom. Transferred from these, it now remains to give The sun and shade of Fate's alternative."

Then, with a burst of music, touching all The keys of thrifty life,—the mill-stream's fall, The engine's pant along its quivering rails, The anvil's ring, the measured beat of flails, The sweep of scythes, the reaper's whistled tune, Answering the summons of the bells of noon, The woodman's hail along the river shores, The steamboat's signal, and the dip of oars Slowly the curtain rose from off a land Fair as God's garden. Broad on either hand The golden wheat-fields glimmered in the sun, And the tall maize its yellow tassels spun. Smooth highways set with hedge-rows living green, With steepled towns through shaded vistas seen, The school-house murmuring with its hive-like swarm, The brook-bank whitening in the grist-mill's storm, The painted farm-house shining through the leaves Of fruited orchards bending at its eaves, Where live again, around the Western hearth, The homely old-time virtues of the North; Where the blithe housewife rises with the day, And well-paid labor counts his task a play. And, grateful tokens of a Bible free, And the free Gospel of Humanity, Of diverse-sects and differing names the shrines, One in their faith, whate'er their outward signs, Like varying strophes of the same sweet hymn From many a prairie's swell and river's brim, A thousand church-spires sanctify the air Of the calm Sabbath, with their sign of prayer.

Like sudden nightfall over bloom and green The curtain dropped: and, momently, between The clank of fetter and the crack of thong, Half sob, half laughter, music swept along; A strange refrain, whose idle words and low, Like drunken mourners, kept the time of woe; As if the revellers at a masquerade Heard in the distance funeral marches played. Such music, dashing all his smiles with tears, The thoughtful voyager on Ponchartrain hears, Where, through the noonday dusk of wooded shores The negro boatman, singing to his oars, With a wild pathos borrowed of his wrong Redeems the jargon of his senseless song. "Look," said the Showman, sternly, as he rolled His curtain upward. "Fate's reverse behold!"

A village straggling in loose disarray Of vulgar newness, premature decay; A tavern, crazy with its whiskey brawls, With "Slaves at Auction!" garnishing its walls; Without, surrounded by a motley crowd, The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulous and loud, A squire or colonel in his pride of place, Known at free fights, the caucus, and the race, Prompt to proclaim his honor without blot, And silence doubters with a ten-pace shot, Mingling the negro-driving bully's rant With pious phrase and democratic cant, Yet never scrupling, with a filthy jest, To sell the infant from its mother's breast, Break through all ties of wedlock, home, and kin, Yield shrinking girlhood up to graybeard sin; Sell all the virtues with his human stock, The Christian graces on his auction-block, And coolly count on shrewdest bargains driven In hearts regenerate, and in souls forgiven!

Look once again! The moving canvas shows A slave plantation's slovenly repose, Where, in rude cabins rotting midst their weeds, The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and breeds; And, held a brute, in practice, as in law, Becomes in fact the thing he's taken for. There, early summoned to the hemp and corn, The nursing mother leaves her child new-born; There haggard sickness, weak and deathly faint, Crawls to his task, and fears to make complaint; And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in decay, Weep for their lost ones sold and torn away! Of ampler size the master's dwelling stands, In shabby keeping with his half-tilled lands; The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds unclean, The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean. Without, loose-scattered like a wreck adrift, Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift; Within, profusion to discomfort joined, The listless body and the vacant mind; The fear, the hate, the theft and falsehood, born In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and scorn There, all the vices, which, like birds obscene, Batten on slavery loathsome and unclean, From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise, Pollute the nursery where the child-heir lies, Taint infant lips beyond all after cure, With the fell poison of a breast impure; Touch boyhood's passions with the breath of flame, From girlhood's instincts steal the blush of shame. So swells, from low to high, from weak to strong, The tragic chorus of the baleful wrong; Guilty or guiltless, all within its range Feel the blind justice of its sure revenge.

Still scenes like these the moving chart reveals. Up the long western steppes the blighting steals; Down the Pacific slope the evil Fate Glides like a shadow to the Golden Gate From sea to sea the drear eclipse is thrown, From sea to sea the Mauvaises Terres have grown, A belt of curses on the New World's zone!

The curtain fell. All drew a freer breath, As men are wont to do when mournful death Is covered from their sight. The Showman stood With drooping brow in sorrow's attitude One moment, then with sudden gesture shook His loose hair back, and with the air and look Of one who felt, beyond the narrow stage And listening group, the presence of the age, And heard the footsteps of the things to be, Poured out his soul in earnest words and free.

"O friends!" he said, "in this poor trick of paint You see the semblance, incomplete and faint, Of the two-fronted Future, which, to-day, Stands dim and silent, waiting in your way. To-day, your servant, subject to your will; To-morrow, master, or for good or ill. If the dark face of Slavery on you turns, If the mad curse its paper barrier spurns, If the world granary of the West is made The last foul market of the slaver's trade, Why rail at fate? The mischief is your own. Why hate your neighbor? Blame yourselves alone!

"Men of the North! The South you charge with wrong Is weak and poor, while you are rich and strong. If questions,—idle and absurd as those The old-time monks and Paduan doctors chose,— Mere ghosts of questions, tariffs, and dead banks, And scarecrow pontiffs, never broke your ranks, Your thews united could, at once, roll back The jostled nation to its primal track. Nay, were you simply steadfast, manly, just, True to the faith your fathers left in trust, If stainless honor outweighed in your scale A codfish quintal or a factory bale, Full many a noble heart, (and such remain In all the South, like Lot in Siddim's plain, Who watch and wait, and from the wrong's control Keep white and pure their chastity of soul,) Now sick to loathing of your weak complaints, Your tricks as sinners, and your prayers as saints, Would half-way meet the frankness of your tone, And feel their pulses beating with your own.

"The North! the South! no geographic line Can fix the boundary or the point define, Since each with each so closely interblends, Where Slavery rises, and where Freedom ends. Beneath your rocks the roots, far-reaching, hide Of the fell Upas on the Southern side; The tree whose branches in your northwinds wave Dropped its young blossoms on Mount Vernon's grave; The nursling growth of Monticello's crest Is now the glory of the free Northwest; To the wise maxims of her olden school Virginia listened from thy lips, Rantoul; Seward's words of power, and Sumner's fresh renown, Flow from the pen that Jefferson laid down! And when, at length, her years of madness o'er, Like the crowned grazer on Euphrates' shore, From her long lapse to savagery, her mouth Bitter with baneful herbage, turns the South, Resumes her old attire, and seeks to smooth Her unkempt tresses at the glass of truth, Her early faith shall find a tongue again, New Wythes and Pinckneys swell that old refrain, Her sons with yours renew the ancient pact, The myth of Union prove at last a fact! Then, if one murmur mars the wide content, Some Northern lip will drawl the last dissent, Some Union-saving patriot of your own Lament to find his occupation gone.

"Grant that the North 's insulted, scorned, betrayed, O'erreached in bargains with her neighbor made, When selfish thrift and party held the scales For peddling dicker, not for honest sales,— Whom shall we strike? Who most deserves our blame? The braggart Southron, open in his aim, And bold as wicked, crashing straight through all That bars his purpose, like a cannon-ball? Or the mean traitor, breathing northern air, With nasal speech and puritanic hair, Whose cant the loss of principle survives, As the mud-turtle e'en its head outlives; Who, caught, chin-buried in some foul offence, Puts on a look of injured innocence, And consecrates his baseness to the cause Of constitution, union, and the laws?

"Praise to the place-man who can hold aloof His still unpurchased manhood, office-proof; Who on his round of duty walks erect, And leaves it only rich in self-respect; As More maintained his virtue's lofty port In the Eighth Henry's base and bloody court. But, if exceptions here and there are found, Who tread thus safely on enchanted ground, The normal type, the fitting symbol still Of those who fatten at the public mill, Is the chained dog beside his master's door, Or Circe's victim, feeding on all four!

"Give me the heroes who, at tuck of drum, Salute thy staff, immortal Quattlebum! Or they who, doubly armed with vote and gun, Following thy lead, illustrious Atchison, Their drunken franchise shift from scene to scene, As tile-beard Jourdan did his guillotine! Rather than him who, born beneath our skies, To Slavery's hand its supplest tool supplies; The party felon whose unblushing face Looks from the pillory of his bribe of place, And coolly makes a merit of disgrace, Points to the footmarks of indignant scorn, Shows the deep scars of satire's tossing horn; And passes to his credit side the sum Of all that makes a scoundrel's martyrdom!

"Bane of the North, its canker and its moth! These modern Esaus, bartering rights for broth! Taxing our justice, with their double claim, As fools for pity, and as knaves for blame; Who, urged by party, sect, or trade, within The fell embrace of Slavery's sphere of sin, Part at the outset with their moral sense, The watchful angel set for Truth's defence; Confound all contrasts, good and ill; reverse The poles of life, its blessing and its curse; And lose thenceforth from their perverted sight The eternal difference 'twixt the wrong and right; To them the Law is but the iron span That girds the ankles of imbruted man; To them the Gospel has no higher aim Than simple sanction of the master's claim, Dragged in the slime of Slavery's loathsome trail, Like Chalier's Bible at his ass's tail!

"Such are the men who, with instinctive dread, Whenever Freedom lifts her drooping head, Make prophet-tripods of their office-stools, And scare the nurseries and the village schools With dire presage of ruin grim and great, A broken Union and a foundered State! Such are the patriots, self-bound to the stake Of office, martyrs for their country's sake Who fill themselves the hungry jaws of Fate; And by their loss of manhood save the State. In the wide gulf themselves like Cortius throw, And test the virtues of cohesive dough; As tropic monkeys, linking heads and tails, Bridge o'er some torrent of Ecuador's vales!

"Such are the men who in your churches rave To swearing-point, at mention of the slave! When some poor parson, haply unawares, Stammers of freedom in his timid prayers; Who, if some foot-sore negro through the town Steals northward, volunteer to hunt him down. Or, if some neighbor, flying from disease, Courts the mild balsam of the Southern breeze, With hue and cry pursue him on his track, And write Free-soiler on the poor man's back. Such are the men who leave the pedler's cart, While faring South, to learn the driver's art, Or, in white neckcloth, soothe with pious aim The graceful sorrows of some languid dame, Who, from the wreck of her bereavement, saves The double charm of widowhood and slaves Pliant and apt, they lose no chance to show To what base depths apostasy can go; Outdo the natives in their readiness To roast a negro, or to mob a press; Poise a tarred schoolmate on the lyncher's rail, Or make a bonfire of their birthplace mail!

"So some poor wretch, whose lips no longer bear The sacred burden of his mother's prayer, By fear impelled, or lust of gold enticed, Turns to the Crescent from the Cross of Christ, And, over-acting in superfluous zeal, Crawls prostrate where the faithful only kneel, Out-howls the Dervish, hugs his rags to court The squalid Santon's sanctity of dirt; And, when beneath the city gateway's span Files slow and long the Meccan caravan, And through its midst, pursued by Islam's prayers, The prophet's Word some favored camel bears, The marked apostate has his place assigned The Koran-bearer's sacred rump behind, With brush and pitcher following, grave and mute, In meek attendance on the holy brute!

"Men of the North! beneath your very eyes, By hearth and home, your real danger lies. Still day by day some hold of freedom falls Through home-bred traitors fed within its walls. Men whom yourselves with vote and purse sustain, At posts of honor, influence, and gain; The right of Slavery to your sons to teach, And 'South-side' Gospels in your pulpits preach, Transfix the Law to ancient freedom dear On the sharp point of her subverted spear, And imitate upon her cushion plump The mad Missourian lynching from his stump; Or, in your name, upon the Senate's floor Yield up to Slavery all it asks, and more; And, ere your dull eyes open to the cheat, Sell your old homestead underneath your feet While such as these your loftiest outlooks hold, While truth and conscience with your wares are sold, While grave-browed merchants band themselves to aid An annual man-hunt for their Southern trade, What moral power within your grasp remains To stay the mischief on Nebraska's plains? High as the tides of generous impulse flow, As far rolls back the selfish undertow; And all your brave resolves, though aimed as true As the horse-pistol Balmawhapple drew, To Slavery's bastions lend as slight a shock As the poor trooper's shot to Stirling rock!

"Yet, while the need of Freedom's cause demands The earnest efforts of your hearts and hands, Urged by all motives that can prompt the heart To prayer and toil and manhood's manliest part; Though to the soul's deep tocsin Nature joins The warning whisper of her Orphic pines, The north-wind's anger, and the south-wind's sigh, The midnight sword-dance of the northern sky, And, to the ear that bends above the sod Of the green grave-mounds in the Fields of God, In low, deep murmurs of rebuke or cheer, The land's dead fathers speak their hope or fear, Yet let not Passion wrest from Reason's hand The guiding rein and symbol of command. Blame not the caution proffering to your zeal A well-meant drag upon its hurrying wheel; Nor chide the man whose honest doubt extends To the means only, not the righteous ends; Nor fail to weigh the scruples and the fears Of milder natures and serener years. In the long strife with evil which began With the first lapse of new-created man, Wisely and well has Providence assigned To each his part,—some forward, some behind; And they, too, serve who temper and restrain The o'erwarm heart that sets on fire the brain. True to yourselves, feed Freedom's altar-flame With what you have; let others do the same.

"Spare timid doubters; set like flint your face Against the self-sold knaves of gain and place Pity the weak; but with unsparing hand Cast out the traitors who infest the land; From bar, press, pulpit, cast them everywhere, By dint of fasting, if you fail by prayer. And in their place bring men of antique mould, Like the grave fathers of your Age of Gold; Statesmen like those who sought the primal fount Of righteous law, the Sermon on the Mount; Lawyers who prize, like Quincy, (to our day Still spared, Heaven bless him!) honor more than pay, And Christian jurists, starry-pure, like Jay; Preachers like Woolman, or like them who bore The faith of Wesley to our Western shore, And held no convert genuine till he broke Alike his servants' and the Devil's yoke; And priests like him who Newport's market trod, And o'er its slave-ships shook the bolts of God! So shall your power, with a wise prudence used, Strong but forbearing, firm but not abused, In kindly keeping with the good of all, The nobler maxims of the past recall, Her natural home-born right to Freedom give, And leave her foe his robber-right,—to live. Live, as the snake does in his noisome fen! Live, as the wolf does in his bone-strewn den! Live, clothed with cursing like a robe of flame, The focal point of million-fingered shame! Live, till the Southron, who, with all his faults, Has manly instincts, in his pride revolts, Dashes from off him, midst the glad world's cheers, The hideous nightmare of his dream of years, And lifts, self-prompted, with his own right hand, The vile encumbrance from his glorious land!

"So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends forth Its widening circles to the South or North, Where'er our banner flaunts beneath the stars Its mimic splendors and its cloudlike bars, There shall Free Labor's hardy children stand The equal sovereigns of a slaveless land. And when at last the hunted bison tires, And dies o'ertaken by the squatter's fires; And westward, wave on wave, the living flood Breaks on the snow-line of majestic Hood; And lonely Shasta listening hears the tread Of Europe's fair-haired children, Hesper-led; And, gazing downward through his boar-locks, sees The tawny Asian climb his giant knees, The Eastern sea shall hush his waves to hear Pacific's surf-beat answer Freedom's cheer, And one long rolling fire of triumph run Between the sunrise and the sunset gun!"

. . . . . . . . . .

My task is done. The Showman and his show, Themselves but shadows, into shadows go; And, if no song of idlesse I have sung. Nor tints of beauty on the canvas flung; If the harsh numbers grate on tender ears, And the rough picture overwrought appears, With deeper coloring, with a sterner blast, Before my soul a voice and vision passed, Such as might Milton's jarring trump require, Or glooms of Dante fringed with lurid fire. Oh, not of choice, for themes of public wrong I leave the green and pleasant paths of song, The mild, sweet words which soften and adorn, For sharp rebuke and bitter laugh of scorn. More dear to me some song of private worth, Some homely idyl of my native North, Some summer pastoral of her inland vales, Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside tales Haunted by ghosts of unreturning sails, Lost barks at parting hung from stem to helm With prayers of love like dreams on Virgil's elm. Nor private grief nor malice holds my pen; I owe but kindness to my fellow-men; And, South or North, wherever hearts of prayer Their woes and weakness to our Father bear, Wherever fruits of Christian love are found In holy lives, to me is holy ground. But the time passes. It were vain to crave A late indulgence. What I had I gave. Forget the poet, but his warning heed, And shame his poor word with your nobler deed.

1856.



ON A PRAYER-BOOK,

WITH ITS FRONTISPIECE, ARY SCHEFFER'S "CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR," AMERICANIZED BY THE OMISSION OF THE BLACK MAN.

It is hardly to be credited, yet is true, that in the anxiety of the Northern merchant to conciliate his Southern customer, a publisher was found ready thus to mutilate Scheffer's picture. He intended his edition for use in the Southern States undoubtedly, but copies fell into the hands of those who believed literally in a gospel which was to preach liberty to the captive.

O ARY SCHEFFER! when beneath thine eye, Touched with the light that cometh from above, Grew the sweet picture of the dear Lord's love, No dream hadst thou that Christian hands would tear Therefrom the token of His equal care, And make thy symbol of His truth a lie The poor, dumb slave whose shackles fall away In His compassionate gaze, grubbed smoothly out, To mar no more the exercise devout Of sleek oppression kneeling down to pray Where the great oriel stains the Sabbath day! Let whoso can before such praying-books Kneel on his velvet cushion; I, for one, Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the sun, Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetar brooks, Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple-floor. No falser idol man has bowed before, In Indian groves or islands of the sea, Than that which through the quaint-carved Gothic door Looks forth,—a Church without humanity! Patron of pride, and prejudice, and wrong,— The rich man's charm and fetich of the strong, The Eternal Fulness meted, clipped, and shorn, The seamless robe of equal mercy torn, The dear Christ hidden from His kindred flesh, And, in His poor ones, crucified afresh! Better the simple Lama scattering wide, Where sweeps the storm Alechan's steppes along, His paper horses for the lost to ride, And wearying Buddha with his prayers to make The figures living for the traveller's sake, Than he who hopes with cheap praise to beguile The ear of God, dishonoring man the while; Who dreams the pearl gate's hinges, rusty grown, Are moved by flattery's oil of tongue alone; That in the scale Eternal Justice bears The generous deed weighs less than selfish prayers, And words intoned with graceful unction move The Eternal Goodness more than lives of truth and love. Alas, the Church! The reverend head of Jay, Enhaloed with its saintly silvered hair, Adorns no more the places of her prayer; And brave young Tyng, too early called away, Troubles the Haman of her courts no more Like the just Hebrew at the Assyrian's door; And her sweet ritual, beautiful but dead As the dry husk from which the grain is shed, And holy hymns from which the life devout Of saints and martyrs has wellnigh gone out, Like candles dying in exhausted air, For Sabbath use in measured grists are ground; And, ever while the spiritual mill goes round, Between the upper and the nether stones, Unseen, unheard, the wretched bondman groans, And urges his vain plea, prayer-smothered, anthem-drowned!

O heart of mine, keep patience! Looking forth, As from the Mount of Vision, I behold, Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ on earth; The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold! And found, at last, the mystic Graal I see, Brimmed with His blessing, pass from lip to lip In sacred pledge of human fellowship; And over all the songs of angels hear; Songs of the love that casteth out all fear; Songs of the Gospel of Humanity! Lo! in the midst, with the same look He wore, Healing and blessing on Genesaret's shore, Folding together, with the all-tender might Of His great love, the dark bands and the white, Stands the Consoler, soothing every pain, Making all burdens light, and breaking every chain.

1859.



THE SUMMONS.

MY ear is full of summer sounds, Of summer sights my languid eye; Beyond the dusty village bounds I loiter in my daily rounds, And in the noon-time shadows lie.

I hear the wild bee wind his horn, The bird swings on the ripened wheat, The long green lances of the corn Are tilting in the winds of morn, The locust shrills his song of heat.

Another sound my spirit hears, A deeper sound that drowns them all; A voice of pleading choked with tears, The call of human hopes and fears, The Macedonian cry to Paul!

The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows; I know the word and countersign; Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes, Where stand or fall her friends or foes, I know the place that should be mine.

Shamed be the hands that idly fold, And lips that woo the reed's accord, When laggard Time the hour has tolled For true with false and new with old To fight the battles of the Lord!

O brothers! blest by partial Fate With power to match the will and deed, To him your summons comes too late Who sinks beneath his armor's weight, And has no answer but God-speed! 1860.



TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

On the 12th of January, 1861, Mr. Seward delivered in the Senate chamber a speech on The State of the Union, in which he urged the paramount duty of preserving the Union, and went as far as it was possible to go, without surrender of principles, in concessions to the Southern party, concluding his argument with these words: "Having submitted my own opinions on this great crisis, it remains only to say, that I shall cheerfully lend to the government my best support in whatever prudent yet energetic efforts it shall make to preserve the public peace, and to maintain and preserve the Union; advising, only, that it practise, as far as possible, the utmost moderation, forbearance, and conciliation.

"This Union has not yet accomplished what good for mankind was manifestly designed by Him who appoints the seasons and prescribes the duties of states and empires. No; if it were cast down by faction to-day, it would rise again and re-appear in all its majestic proportions to-morrow. It is the only government that can stand here. Woe! woe! to the man that madly lifts his hand against it. It shall continue and endure; and men, in after times, shall declare that this generation, which saved the Union from such sudden and unlooked-for dangers, surpassed in magnanimity even that one which laid its foundations in the eternal principles of liberty, justice, and humanity."

STATESMAN, I thank thee! and, if yet dissent Mingles, reluctant, with my large content, I cannot censure what was nobly meant. But, while constrained to hold even Union less Than Liberty and Truth and Righteousness, I thank thee in the sweet and holy name Of peace, for wise calm words that put to shame Passion and party. Courage may be shown Not in defiance of the wrong alone; He may be bravest who, unweaponed, bears The olive branch, and, strong in justice, spares The rash wrong-doer, giving widest scope, To Christian charity and generous hope. If, without damage to the sacred cause Of Freedom and the safeguard of its laws— If, without yielding that for which alone We prize the Union, thou canst save it now From a baptism of blood, upon thy brow A wreath whose flowers no earthly soil have known; Woven of the beatitudes, shall rest, And the peacemaker be forever blest!

1861.



IN WAR TIME.

TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL AND HARRIET W. SEWAll, OF MELROSE.

These lines to my old friends stood as dedication in the volume which contained a collection of pieces under the general title of In War Time. The group belonging distinctly under that title I have retained here; the other pieces in the volume are distributed among the appropriate divisions.

OLOR ISCANUS queries: "Why should we Vex at the land's ridiculous miserie?" So on his Usk banks, in the blood-red dawn Of England's civil strife, did careless Vaughan Bemock his times. O friends of many years! Though faith and trust are stronger than our fears, And the signs promise peace with liberty, Not thus we trifle with our country's tears And sweat of agony. The future's gain Is certain as God's truth; but, meanwhile, pain Is bitter and tears are salt: our voices take A sober tone; our very household songs Are heavy with a nation's griefs and wrongs; And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall beat, The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning feet!

1863



THY WILL BE DONE.

WE see not, know not; all our way Is night,—with Thee alone is day From out the torrent's troubled drift, Above the storm our prayers we lift, Thy will be done!

The flesh may fail, the heart may faint, But who are we to make complaint, Or dare to plead, in times like these, The weakness of our love of ease? Thy will be done!

We take with solemn thankfulness Our burden up, nor ask it less, And count it joy that even we May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee, Whose will be done!

Though dim as yet in tint and line, We trace Thy picture's wise design, And thank Thee that our age supplies Its dark relief of sacrifice. Thy will be done!

And if, in our unworthiness, Thy sacrificial wine we press; If from Thy ordeal's heated bars Our feet are seamed with crimson scars, Thy will be done!

If, for the age to come, this hour Of trial hath vicarious power, And, blest by Thee, our present pain, Be Liberty's eternal gain, Thy will be done!

Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys, The anthem of the destinies! The minor of Thy loftier strain, Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain, Thy will be done! 1861.



A WORD FOR THE HOUR.

THE firmament breaks up. In black eclipse Light after light goes out. One evil star, Luridly glaring through the smoke of war, As in the dream of the Apocalypse, Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap On one hand into fratricidal fight, Or, on the other, yield eternal right, Frame lies of law, and good and ill confound? What fear we? Safe on freedom's vantage-ground Our feet are planted: let us there remain In unrevengeful calm, no means untried Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied, The sad spectators of a suicide! They break the links of Union: shall we light The fires of hell to weld anew the chain On that red anvil where each blow is pain? Draw we not even now a freer breath, As from our shoulders falls a load of death Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim bore When keen with life to a dead horror bound? Why take we up the accursed thing again? Pity, forgive, but urge them back no more Who, drunk with passion, flaunt disunion's rag With its vile reptile-blazon. Let us press The golden cluster on our brave old flag In closer union, and, if numbering less, Brighter shall shine the stars which still remain.

16th First mo., 1861.



"EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT."

LUTHER'S HYMN.

WE wait beneath the furnace-blast The pangs of transformation; Not painlessly doth God recast And mould anew the nation. Hot burns the fire Where wrongs expire; Nor spares the hand That from the land Uproots the ancient evil.

The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared Its bloody rain is dropping; The poison plant the fathers spared All else is overtopping. East, West, South, North, It curses the earth; All justice dies, And fraud and lies Live only in its shadow.

What gives the wheat-field blades of steel? What points the rebel cannon? What sets the roaring rabble's heel On the old star-spangled pennon? What breaks the oath Of the men o' the South? What whets the knife For the Union's life?— Hark to the answer: Slavery!

Then waste no blows on lesser foes In strife unworthy freemen. God lifts to-day the veil, and shows The features of the demon O North and South, Its victims both, Can ye not cry, "Let slavery die!" And union find in freedom?

What though the cast-out spirit tear The nation in his going? We who have shared the guilt must share The pang of his o'erthrowing! Whate'er the loss, Whate'er the cross, Shall they complain Of present pain Who trust in God's hereafter?

For who that leans on His right arm Was ever yet forsaken? What righteous cause can suffer harm If He its part has taken? Though wild and loud, And dark the cloud, Behind its folds His hand upholds The calm sky of to-morrow!