HOME BALLADS 
 
 AND 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TICK NOR AND FIELDS. 
 
 MDCCCLXI. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER, 
 In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the District of MassuchuscUd. 
 
I CALL the old time back : I bring these lays 
 To thee, in memory of the summer days 
 When, by our native streams and forest ways, 
 
 We dreamed them over ; while the rivulets made 
 Songs of their own, and the great pine-trees laid 
 On warm noon-lights the masses of their shade. 
 
 And she was with us, living o er again 
 
 Her life in ours, despite of years and pain, 
 
 The Autumn s brightness after latter rain. 
 
 Beautiful in her holy peace as one 
 
 Who stands, at evening, when the work is done, 
 
 Glorified in the setting of the sun i 
 
 Her memory makes our common landscape seem 
 
 Fairer than any of which painters dream, 
 
 Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream ; 
 
 For she whose speech was always truth s pure sold 
 Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told, 
 And loved with us the beautiful and old. 
 
 PS 
 
 3 2 SB- 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 BALLADS. 
 
 PACK 
 THE WITCH S DAUGHTER, 9 
 
 THE GARRISON OP CAPE ANN, 21 
 
 THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEW ALL, . , 31 
 
 SKIPPER IRESON S RIDE, 40 
 
 - TELLING THE BEES, 45 
 
 THE SYCAMORES, 49 
 
 THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY, < 56 
 
 * THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY, 61 
 
 THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA, 67 
 
 MY PLAYMATE, 78 
 
 POEMS AND LYRICS. 
 
 THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT,. ..*,.,.... 85 
 
 THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS, 92 
 
 THE EVE OF ELECTION, 95 
 
 1* 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOH 
 
 THE OVER-HEART, 101 
 
 IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE, 105 
 
 TRINITAS, Ill 
 
 THE OLD BCRYING-GROUND, 115 
 
 THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW, 120 
 
 MY PSALM 125 
 
 LE MARAIS DU CYGNE, 129 
 
 "THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR, 133 
 
 ON A PRAYER-BOOK, 136 
 
 TO J.T. F., 140 
 
 THE PALM-TREE, U4 
 
 LINES FOR THE BURNS FESTIVAL, 147 
 
 THE RED IUVJIR VOYAGEUR, 150 
 
 KENOZA LAKE, 153 
 
 TO G. B. C., 156 
 
 TH E SISTERS, 1 58 
 
 LINES FOR AN AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITION, 160 
 
 THE PREACHER, 102 
 
 THE QUAKER ALUMNI, 182 
 
 BKOWN OF OSSAWATOMIE, 195 
 
 FROM PERUGIA, 108 
 
 FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL, 204 
 
BALLADS. 
 
THE WITCH S DAUGHTER. 
 
 IT was the pleasant harvest time, 
 When cellar-bins are closely stowed, 
 And garrets bend beneath their load, 
 
 And the old swallow-haunted barns- 
 Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
 Through which the moted sunlight streams, 
 
 And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
 The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
 And the loose hay-mow s scented locks 
 
 Are filled with summer s ripened stores, 
 Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, 
 From their low scaffolds to their eaves. 
 
 On Esek Harden s oaken floor, 
 
 With many an autumn threshing worn, 
 Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn. 
 
10 T H L W 1 1 C 1 I S DAUGHTER. 
 
 And thither came young men and maids, 
 Beneath a moon that, large and low, 
 Lit that sweet eve of long ago. 
 
 They took their places : some by chance, 
 And others by a merry voice 
 Or sweet smile guided to their choice. 
 
 How pleasantly the rising moon, 
 Between the shadow of the mows, 
 Looked on them through the great elm boughs ! 
 
 On sturdy boyhood sun-embrowned, 
 On girlhood with its solid curves 
 Of healthful strength and painless nerves ! 
 
 And jests went round, and laughs that made 
 The house-dog answer with his howl, 
 And kept astir the barn-yard fowl ; 
 
 And quaint old songs their fathers sung, 
 In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors, 
 Ere Norman William trod their shores ; 
 
THE WITCH S DAUGHTER. 11 
 
 And tales, whose merry license shook 
 The fat sides of the Saxon thane, 
 Forgetful of the hovering Dane ! 
 
 But still the sweetest voice was mute 
 That river-valley ever heard, 
 Prom lip of maid or throat of bird; 
 
 For Mabel Martin sat apart, 
 
 And let the hay-mow s shadow fall 
 Upon the loveliest face of all. 
 
 She sat apart, as one forbid, 
 
 Who knew that none would condescend 
 To own the Witch-wife s child a friend. 
 
 The seasons scarce had gone their round, 
 Since curious thousands thronged to see 
 Her mother on the gallows-tree ; 
 
 And mocked the palsied limbs of age, 
 That faltered on the fatal stairs, 
 And wan lip trembling with its prayers ! 
 
12 THE WITCH S DAUGHTER. 
 
 Few questioned of the sorrowing child, 
 Or, when they saw the mother die, 
 Dreamed of the daughter s agony. 
 
 They went up to their homes that day, 
 As men and Christians justified : 
 God willed it, and the wretch had died! 
 
 Dear God and Father of us all, 
 Forgive our faith in cruel lies, 
 Forgive the blindness that denies ! 
 
 Forgive thy creature when he takes, 
 For the all-perfect love thou art, 
 Some grim creation of his heart. 
 
 Cast down our idols, overturn 
 Our bloody altars ; let us see 
 Thyself in thy humanity ! 
 
 Poor Mabel from her mother s grave 
 Crept to her desolate hearth-stone, 
 And wrestled with her fate alone ; 
 
THE WITCH S DAUGHTER. J3 
 
 With love, and anger, and despair, 
 The phantoms of disordered sense, 
 The awful doubts of Providence . 
 
 The school boys jeered her as they passed, 
 And, when she sought the house of pniyor, 
 Her mother s curse pursued her tnere 
 
 And still o er many a neighboring door 
 She saw the horsesnoe s curved charm, 
 To guard against her mother s harm ; 
 
 That mother, poor, and sick, and lame, 
 Who daily, by the old arm-chair, 
 Folded her withered hands in prayer ; 
 
 Who turned, in Salem s dreary jail, 
 Her worn old Bible o er and o er, 
 When her dim eyes could read no more ! 
 
 Sore tried arid pained, the poor girl kept 
 Her faith, and trusted that her way, 
 So dark, would somewhere meet the day. 
 2 
 
14 THE WITCH S P.U;<;HTEK. 
 
 And still her weary wheel went round 
 Day after day, with no relief; 
 Small leisure have the poor for grief. 
 
 So in the shadow Mabel sits ; 
 
 Untouched by mirth she sees and hears, 
 Her smile is sadder than her tears. 
 
 But cruel eyes have found her out, 
 And cruel lips repeat her name, 
 And taunt her with her mother s shume. 
 
 She answered not with railing words, 
 But drew her apron o er her face, 
 And, sobbing, glided from the place. 
 
 And only pausing at the door, 
 
 Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze 
 Of one who, in her better days, 
 
 Had been her warm and steady friend, 
 Ere yet her mother s doom had made 
 Kven Esek Harden half afraid. 
 
THE WITCHES DAUGHTER. 15 
 
 He felt that mute appeal of tears, 
 And, starting, with an angry frown 
 Hushed all the wicked murmurs down. 
 
 " Good neighbors mine/ 7 he sternly said, 
 " This passes harmless mirth or jest ; 
 I brook no insult to my guest. 
 
 " She is indeed her mother s child ; 
 But God s sweet pity ministers 
 Unto no whiter soul than hers. 
 
 " Let Goody Martin rest in peace ; 
 I never knew her harm a fly, 
 And witch or not, God knows not I. 
 
 " I know who swore her life away ; 
 And, as God lives, I d not condemn 
 An Indian dog on word of them. " 
 
 The broadest lands in all the town, 
 The skill to guide, the power to awe, 
 Were Harden s ; and his word was law. 
 
16 THE WITCH S DAUGHTER. 
 
 None dared withstand him to his face, 
 But one sly maiden spake aside : 
 " The little witch is evil eyed ! 
 
 " Her mother only killed a cow, 
 Or witched a churn or dairy-pan ; 
 But she, forsooth, must charm a man ! " 
 
 Poor Mabel, in her lonely home, 
 Sat by the window s narrow pane, 
 White in the moonlight s silver rain. 
 
 The river, on its pebbled rim, 
 
 Made music such as childhood knew ; 
 The door-yard tree was whispered through 
 
 By voices such as chilhood s ear 
 Had heard in moonlights long- ago ; 
 And through the willow boughs below 
 
 She saw the rippled water shine ; 
 Beyond, in waves of shade and light, 
 The hills rolled off into the night. 
 
Sweet sounds and pictures mocking so 
 The sadness of her human lot, 
 She saw and heard, but heeded not. 
 
 She strove to drown her sense of wrong, 
 And, in her old and simple way, 
 To teach her bitter heart to pray. 
 
 Poor child ! the prayer, begun in faith, 
 Grew to a low, despairing cry 
 Of utter misery : " Let me die ! 
 
 " Oh ! take me from the scornful eyes, 
 And hide me where the cruel speech 
 And mocking finger may not reach ! 
 
 " I dare not breathe my mother s name : 
 A daughter s right I dare not crave 
 To weep above her unblest grave ! 
 
 "Let me not live until my heart, 
 With few to pity, and with none 
 To love me, hardens into stone. 
 2* B 
 
18 THE WITCH S DAUGHTER. 
 
 " Oh God ! have mercy on thy child, 
 
 Whose faith in thee grows weak and small, 
 And take me ere I lose it all ! " 
 
 A shadow on the moonlight fell, 
 
 And murmuring wind and wave became 
 A voice whose burden was her name. 
 
 Had then God heard her? Had he sent 
 His angel down ? In flesh and blood, 
 Before her Esek Harden stood ! 
 
 He laid his hand upon her arm : 
 
 " Dear Mabel, this no more shall be ; 
 Who scoffs at you, must scoff at me. 
 
 " You know rough Esek Harden well ; 
 And if he seems no suitor gay, 
 And if his hair is touched with gray, 
 
 " The maiden grown shall never find 
 
 His heart less warm than when she smiled, 
 Upon his knees, a little child! " 
 
THE WITCH S DAUGHTER. 19 
 
 Her tears of grief were tears of joy, 
 As, folded in his strong embrace, 
 She looked in Esek Harden s face. 
 
 " Oh, truest friend of all ! " she said, 
 
 " God bless you for your kindly thought, 
 And make me worthy of my lot ! " 
 
 He led her through his dewy fields, 
 
 To where the swinging lanterns glowed, 
 And through the doors the huskers showed. 
 
 " Good friends and neighbors ! ;; Esek said, 
 " I m weary of this lonely life ; 
 In Mabel see my chosen wife ! 
 
 " She greets you kindly, one and all ; 
 The past is past, and all offence 
 Falls harmless from her innocence. 
 
 " Henceforth she stands no more alone ; 
 You know what Esek Harden is ; 
 He brooks no wrong to him or his. " 
 
20 THE WITCH S DAUGHTER. 
 
 Now let the merriest tales be told, 
 And let the sweetest songs be sung, 
 That ever made the old heart young I 
 
 For now the lost has found a home ; 
 And a lone hearth shall brighter burn, 
 As all the household joys return ! 
 
 Oh, pleasantly the harvest moon, 
 Between the shadow of the mows, 
 Looked on them through the great elm boughs ! 
 
 On Mabel s curls of golden hair, 
 On Esek s shaggy strength it fell ; 
 And the wind whispered, " It is well ! " 
 
THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. 
 
 FROM the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the 
 
 tent-like span 
 Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of 
 
 Cape Ann. 
 Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide 
 
 glimmering down, 
 And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient 
 
 fishing town. 
 
 Long has passed the summer morning, and its mem 
 ory waxes old, 
 
 When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant 
 friend I strolled. 
 
 Ah ! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind 
 blows cool, 
 
 And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy 
 grave, Rantoul ! 
 
 
22 THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. 
 
 With the memory of that morning by the summer 
 
 sea I blend 
 A wild and wondrous story, by the younger Mather 
 
 penned, 
 In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and 
 
 marvellous things, 
 Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid 
 
 Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual life 
 of old, 
 
 Inward, grand with awe and reverence ; outward, 
 mean and coarse and cold ; 
 
 Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and vul 
 gar clay, 
 
 Golden threads of romance weaving in a web of hod 
 den gray. 
 
 The great eventful Present hides the Past ; but 
 
 through the din 
 Of its loud life, hints and echoes from the life behind 
 
 steal in ; 
 
THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN, 23 
 
 And the lore of home and fireside, and the legendary 
 
 rhyme, 
 Make the task of duty lighter which the true man 
 
 owes his time. 
 
 So, with something of the feeling which the Cove 
 nanter knew, 
 
 When with pious chisel wandering Scotland s moor 
 land graveyards through, 
 
 From the graves of old traditions I part the black 
 berry vines, 
 
 Wipe the moss from off the head-stones, and retouch 
 the faded lines. 
 
 Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse with 
 rolling pebbles, ran, 
 
 The garrison-house stood watching on the gray 
 rocks of Cape Ann ; 
 
 On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and pali 
 sade 
 
 And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moon 
 light overlaid. 
 
24 THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. 
 
 On his slow round walked the sentry, south and 
 eastward looking forth 
 
 O er a rude and broken coastline, white with break 
 ers stretching north, 
 
 Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, jagged 
 capes, with bush and tree, 
 
 Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and 
 gusty sea. 
 
 Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly lit by 
 
 dying brands, 
 Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their muskets 
 
 in their hands ; 
 On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison haunch 
 
 was shared, 
 And the pewter tankard circled slowly round from 
 
 beard to beard. 
 
 Long they sat and talked together, talked of wiz 
 ards Satan-sold ; 
 
 Of all ghostly sights and noises, signs and won 
 ders manifold ; 
 
THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. 25 
 
 Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead men in 
 her shrouds, 
 
 Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morn 
 ing clouds ; 
 
 Of the marvellous valley hidden in the depth of 
 
 Gloucester woods, 
 Full of plants that love the summer blooms of 
 
 warmer latitudes ; 
 Where the Arctic birch is braided by the tropic s 
 
 flowery vines, 
 And the white magnolia blossoms star the twilight 
 
 of the pines 1 
 
 But their voices sank yet lower, sank to husky tones 
 
 of fear, 
 As they spake of present tokens of the powers of 
 
 evil near ; 
 Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel and aim 
 
 of gun ; 
 Never yet was ball to slay them in the mould of 
 
 mortals run ! 
 3 
 
26 THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. 
 
 Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, from 
 the midnight wood they came, 
 
 Thrice around the block-house marching, met, un 
 harmed, its volleyed flame ; 
 
 Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, sunk in 
 earth or lost in air, 
 
 All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the moon-lit 
 sands lay bare. 
 
 Midnight came ; from out the forest moved a dusky 
 
 mass, that soon 
 Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, grimly 
 
 marching in the moon. 
 "Ghosts or witches/ said the captain, "thus I foil 
 
 the Evil One ! " 
 And he rammed a silver button, from his doublet, 
 
 down his gun. 
 
 Once again the spectral horror moved the guarded 
 
 wall about ; 
 Once again the levelled muskets through the pali 
 
 sudes flashed out, 
 
THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. 27 
 
 With that deadly aim the squirrel on his tree-top 
 
 might not shun, 
 Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his slant 
 
 wing to the sun. 
 
 Like the idle rain of summer sped the harmless 
 shower of lead. 
 
 With a laugh of fierce derision, once again the phan 
 toms fled ; 
 
 Once again, without a shadow on the sands the 
 moonlight lay, 
 
 And the white smoke curling through it drifted 
 slowly down the bay ! 
 
 ,$". . 
 
 " God preserve us ! " said the captain ; " never mor 
 tal foes were there ; 
 
 They have vanished with their leader, Prince and 
 Power of the Air ! 
 
 Lay aside your useless weapons ; skill and prowess 
 naught avail ; 
 
 They who do the devil s service, wear their master s 
 coat of mail ! " 
 
28 THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. 
 
 So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again a 
 
 warning call 
 Roused the score of weary soldiers watching round 
 
 the dusky hall ; 
 And they looked to flint and priming, and they 
 
 longed for break of day ; 
 But the captain closed his Bible: "Let us cease 
 
 from man, and pray I " 
 
 To the men who went before us, all the unseen 
 powers seemed near, 
 
 And their steadfast strength of courage struck its 
 roots in holy fear. 
 
 Every hand forsook the musket, every head was 
 bowed and bare, 
 
 Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as the cap 
 tain led in prayer. 
 
 Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres 
 
 round the wall, 
 But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears 
 
 and hearts of all, 
 
THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. 29 
 
 Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish ! Never after 
 mortal man 
 
 Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the block 
 house of Cape Ann. 
 
 So to us who walk in summer through the cool and 
 
 sea-blown town, 
 From the childhood of its people comes the solemn 
 
 legend down. 
 Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives 
 
 the youth 
 And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying 
 
 truth. 
 
 Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres 
 of the mind, 
 
 Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the dark 
 ness undefined ; 
 
 Round us throng the grim projections of the heart 
 and of the brain, 
 
 And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cun 
 ning hand is vain. 
 
 a* 
 
80 THE GARRISON OK CAFE ANN . 
 
 In the dark we cry like children ; and no answer 
 
 from on high 
 Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white 
 
 wings downward fly ; 
 But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith, 
 
 and not to sight, 
 And our prayers themselves drive backward all the 
 
 spirits of the night 1 
 
THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEVVALL. 
 
 1697. 
 
 UP and down the village streets 
 
 Strange are the forms my fancy meets, 
 
 For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid, 
 
 And through the vail of a closed lid 
 
 The ancient worthies I see again : 
 
 I hear the tap of the elder s cane, 
 
 And his awful periwig I see, 
 
 And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. 
 
 Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, 
 
 His black cap hiding his whitened hair, 
 
 Walks the Judge of the Great Assize, 
 
 Samuel Sewall the good and wise. 
 
 His face with lines of firmness wrought, 
 
 He wears the look of a man unbought 
 
 Who swears to his hurt and changes not ; 
 
32 PROPHECY OF S A M U E L S E W A L L . 
 
 Yet, touched and softened nevertheless 
 With the grace of Christian gentleness, 
 The face that a child would climb to kiss I 
 True, and tender, and brave, and just, 
 That man might honor and woman trust 1 
 
 Touching and sad, a tale is told, 
 Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist old, 
 Of the fast which the good man life-long kept 
 With a haunting sorrow that never slept, 
 As the circling year brought round the time 
 Of an error that left the sting of crime, 
 When he sat on the bench of the witchcraft courts, 
 With the laws of Moses and Hale s Reports, 
 And spake, in the name of both, the word 
 That gave the witch s neck to the cord, 
 And piled the oaken planks that pressed 
 The feeble life from the warlock s breast 1 
 All the day long, from dawn to dawn, 
 His door was bolted, his curtain drawn ; 
 No foot on his silent threshold trod, 
 No eye looked on him save that of God, 
 
PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL. 33 
 
 As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with charms 
 Of penitent tears, and praj^ers, and psalrns, 
 And, with precious proofs from the sacred word 
 Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord, 
 His faith confirmed and his trust renewed 
 That the sin of his ignorance sorely rued, 
 Might be washed away in the mingled flood 
 Of his human sorrow and Christ s dear blood 1 
 
 Green forever the memory be 
 Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, 
 Whom even his errors glorified, 
 Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side 
 By the cloudy shadows which o er it glide ! 
 Honor and praise to the Puritan 
 Who the halting step of his age outran, 
 And, seeing the infinite worth of man 
 In the priceless gift the Father gave, 
 In the infinite love that stooped to save, 
 Dared not brand his brother a slave ! 
 " Who doth such wrong/ he was wont to say, 
 In his own quaint, picture-loving way, 
 
 c 
 
3t PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL. 
 
 " Flings up to Heaven a hand grenade 
 Which God shall cast down upon his head ! " 
 
 Widely as heaven and hell, contrast 
 That brave old jurist of the past 
 And the cunning trickster and knave of courts 
 Who the holy features of Truth distorts, 
 Ruling as right the will of the strong, 
 Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong ; 
 Wide-eared to power, to the wronged and weak 
 Deaf as Egypt s gods of leek ; 
 Scoffing aside at party s nod 
 Order of nature and law of God ; 
 For whose dabbled ermine respect were waste, 
 Reverence folly, and awe misplaced ; 
 Justice of whom twere vain to seek 
 As from Koordish robber or Syrian Sheik ! 
 Oh ! leave the wretch to his bribes and sins, 
 Let him rot in the web of lies he spins ! 
 To the saintly soul of the early day, 
 To the Christian judge, let us turn and say : 
 " Praise and thanks, for an honest man ! 
 Glory to God for the Puritan ! " 
 
PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL. 35 
 
 I see, far southward, this quiet day, 
 The hills of Newbury rolling away, 
 With the many tints of the season gay, 
 Dreamily blending in autumn mist 
 Crimson, and gold, and amethyst. 
 Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned, 
 Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, 
 A stone s toss over the narrow sound. 
 Inland, as far as the eye can go, 
 The hills curve round like a bended bow ; 
 A silver arrow from out them sprung, 
 I see the shine of the Quasycung ; 
 And, round and round, over valley and hill, 
 Old roads winding, as old roads will, 
 Here to a ferry, and there to a mill ; 
 And glimpses of chimneys and gabled eaves, 
 Through green elm arches and maple leaves, 
 Old homsteads sacred to all that can 
 Gladden or sadden the heart of man, 
 Over whose thresholds of oak and stone 
 Life and Death have come and gone ! 
 There pictured tiles in the fire-place show, 
 Great beams sag from the ceiling lo\v, 
 
36 PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL. 
 
 The dresser glitters with polished wares, 
 The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stuirs ; 
 And the low, broad chimney shows the crack 
 By the earthquake made a century back. 
 Up from their midst springs the village spire 
 With the crest of its cock in the sun afire ; 
 Beyond are orchards and planting lands, 
 And great salt marshes and glimmering sands, 
 And, where north and south the coast-lines run, 
 The blink of the sea in breeze and sun ! 
 
 I see it all like a chart unrolled, 
 But my thoughts are full of the past and old, 
 1 hear the tales of my boyhood told ; 
 And the shadows and shapes of early days 
 Flit dimly by in the vailing haze, 
 With measured movement and rhythmic chime 
 Weaving like shuttles, my web of rhyme. 
 I think of the old man wise and good 
 Who once on yon misty hillsides stood 
 (A poet who never measured rhyme, 
 A seer unknown to his dull-eared time), 
 
PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL 
 
 And, propped on his staff of age, looked down, 
 With his boyhood s love, on his native town, 
 Where, written, as if on its hills and plains, 
 His burden of prophecy yet remains, 
 For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind 
 To read in the ear of the musing mind : 
 
 " As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast 
 As God appointed, shall keep its post ; 
 As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep 
 Of Merrimac river, or sturgeon leap ; 
 As long as pickerel swift and slim, 
 Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim ; 
 As long as the annual sea-fowl know 
 Their time to come and their time to go ; 
 As long as cattle shall roam at will 
 The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill ; 
 As long as sheep shall look from the side 
 Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide, 
 And Parker River, and salt-sea tide ; 
 As long as a wandering pigeon shall search 
 The fields below from his white-oak perch, 
 4 
 
1 ROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL. 
 
 Wlien the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn 
 And the dry husks fall from the standing corn ; 
 As long as Nature shall not grow old, 
 Nur drop her work from her doting hold, 
 And her care for the Indian corn forget, 
 And the yellow rows in pairs to set : 
 So long shall Christians here be born, 
 Grow up and ripen as God s sweet corn ! 
 By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost 
 Shall never a holy ear be lost, 
 But, husked by Death in the Planter s sight, 
 Be sown again in the fields of light ! " 
 
 The Island still is purple with plums, 
 
 Up the river the salmon comes, 
 
 The sturgeon leaps, and the wild fowl feeds 
 
 On hill-side berries and marish seeds, 
 
 All the beautiful signs remain, 
 
 From spring-time sowing to autumn rain 
 
 The good man s vision returns again ! 
 
 And let us hope, as well we can, 
 
 That the Silent Angel who garners man 
 
PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL. 39 
 
 May find some grain as of old he found 
 In the human corn-field ripe and sound, 
 And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own 
 The precious seed by the fathers sown 1 
 
SKIPPER IRESON S RIDE. 
 
 OF all tlie ridea since the birth of time, 
 Told in story or sung in rhyme, 
 On Apuleius s Golden Ass, 
 Or one-eyed Calendar s horse of brass, 
 Witch astride of a human hack, 
 Islam s prophet on Al-Borak, 
 The strangest ride that ever was sped 
 Was Ireson s, out from Marblehead ! 
 
 Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
 Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
 By the women of Marblehead ! 
 
 Body of turkey, head of owl, 
 Wiuga a-droop like a rained-on fowl, 
 Feathered and* ruffled in every part, 
 Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. 
 Scores of women, old and young, 
 Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, 
 
41 
 
 Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, 
 Shouting and singing the shrill refrain : 
 
 " Here s Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
 Torr d an ; futherr d an corr d in a ct>rrt 
 By the women o Morble ead ! " 
 
 Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, 
 
 Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, 
 
 Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase 
 
 Bacchus round some antique vase, 
 
 Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, 
 
 Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, 
 
 With conch-shells blowing and fish-hopns twang, 
 
 Over and over the Msenads sang : 
 
 " Here s Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
 Torr d an futherr d an corr d in a corrt 
 By the women o Morble ead ! " 
 
 Small pity for him ! He sailed away 
 From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay, 
 Sailed away from a sinking wreck, 
 With his own town s-people on her deck ! 
 
42 
 
 " Lay by ! lay by ! " they called to him. 
 
 Back he answered, " Sink or swim ! 
 
 Brag of your catch offish again 1 " 
 
 Arid tiff he sailed through the fog and rain ! 
 Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
 Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
 By the women of Marblehead ! 
 
 Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur 
 That wreck shall lie forevermore. 
 Mother and sister, wife and maid, 
 Looked from the rocks of Marblehead 
 Over the moaning and rainy sea, 
 Looked for the coming that might not be I 
 What did the winds and the sea-birds say 
 Of the cruel captain who sailed away ? 
 
 Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
 Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
 By the women of Marblehead ! 
 
 Through the street, on either side, 
 t p flow windows, doors swung wide ; 
 
SKIPPER IRESON S HIDE. 43 
 
 Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray, 
 Treble lent the fish-horn s bray. 
 Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound, 
 Hulks of old sailors run aground, 
 Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane, 
 And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain : 
 
 " Here s Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
 Torr d an 7 futherr d an corr d in a corrt 
 By the women o Morble ead ! " 
 
 Sweetly along the Salem road 
 
 Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. 
 
 Little the wicked skipper knew 
 
 Of the fields so green and the sky so blue. 
 
 Riding there in his sorry trim, 
 
 Like an Indian idol glum and grim, 
 
 Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear 
 
 Of voices shouting far and near : 
 
 " Here s Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
 Torr d an futherr d an 7 corr d in a corrt 
 By the women o Morble ead ! " 
 
44 SKIPPER IRESON S RIDE. 
 
 " Hear me, neighbors I " at last he cried, 
 " What to me is this noisy ride ? 
 What is the shame that clothes the skin 
 To the nameless horror that lives within ? 
 Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, 
 And hear a cry from a reeling deck 1 
 Hate me and curse me, I only dread 
 The hand of God and the face of the dead ! " 
 
 Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
 Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
 By the women of Marblehead ! 
 
 Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea 
 Said, " God has touched him ! why should we ? 
 Said an old wife mourning her only son, 
 " Cut the rogue s tether and let him run ! " 
 So with soft relentings and rude excuse, 
 Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose, 
 And gave him a cloak to hide him in, 
 And left him alone with his shame and sin. 
 Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
 Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
 By the women of Marblehead ! 
 
TELLING THE BEES.* 
 
 HERE is the place ; right over the hill 
 
 Runs the path I took ; 
 You can see the gap in the old wall still, 
 
 And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. 
 
 There is the house, with the gate red-barred, 
 
 And the poplars tall ; 
 And the barn s brown length, and the cattle-yard, 
 
 And the white horns tossing above the wall 
 
 There are the bee-hives ranged in the sun ; 
 
 And down by the brink 
 Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o errun, 
 
 Pansy arid daffodil, rose and pink. 
 
 * A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country, for 
 merly prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the 
 death of a member of the family, the bees were at once informed 
 of the event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This cere 
 monial was supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from 
 leaving their hives and seeking a new home. 
 
46 TELLING THE BEES. 
 
 A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, 
 
 Heavy and slow ; 
 And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, 
 
 And the same brook sings of a year ago. 
 
 There s the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze ; 
 
 And the June sun warm 
 Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, 
 
 Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 
 
 I mind me how with a lover s care 
 
 From my Sunday coat 
 I brushed off the burs, and smoothed my hair, 
 
 And cooled at the brook-side my brow and throat. 
 
 Since we parted, a month had passed, 
 
 To love, a year ; 
 Down through the beeches I looked at last 
 
 On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. 
 
 I can see it all now, the slantwise rain 
 
 Of light through the leaves, 
 The sundown s blaze on her window-pane, 
 
 The bloom of IHT roses under the eaves. 
 
TELLING THE BEES, 
 
 Just the same as a month before, 
 
 The house and the trees, 
 The barn s brown gable, the vine by the door, 
 
 Nothing changed but the hives of bees. 
 
 Before them, under the garden wall, 
 
 Forward and back, 
 Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, 
 
 Draping each hive with a shred of black 
 
 Trembling, I listened : the summer sun 
 
 Had the chill of snow ; 
 For I knew she was telling the bees of one 
 
 Gone on the journey we all must go ! 
 
 Then I said to myself, " My Mary weeps 
 
 For the dead to-day : 
 Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps 
 
 The fret and the pain of his age away." 
 
 But her dog whined low ; on the doorway sill, 
 
 With his cane to his chin, 
 The old man sat ; and the chore-girl still 
 
 Sung to the bees stealing out and in. 
 
48 TELLING THE BEES 
 
 And the song she was sing-ing ever since 
 
 In my ear sounds on : 
 " Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence I 
 
 Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! " 
 
THE SYCAMORES. 
 
 IN the outskirts of the village, 
 On the river s winding shores, 
 
 Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
 Stand the ancient sycamores. 
 
 One long century hath been numbered, 
 
 And another half-way told, 
 Since the rustic Irish gleeman 
 
 Broke for them the virgin mould. 
 
 Deftly set to Celtic music, 
 
 At his violin s sound they grew, 
 
 Through the moonlit eves of summer, 
 Making Amphion s fable true. 
 
 Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant ! 
 
 Pass in jerkin green along, 
 With thy eyes brim full of laughter, 
 
 And thy mouth as full of song. 
 5 D 
 
50 THE SYCAMORES. 
 
 Pioneer of Erin s outcasts, 
 With his fiddle and his pack ; 
 
 Little dreamed the village Saxons 
 Of the myriads at his back. 
 
 How he wrought with spade and fiddle, 
 Delved by day and sang by night, 
 
 With a hand that never wearied, 
 And a heart forever light, 
 
 Still the gay tradition mingles 
 With a record grave and drear, 
 
 Like the rolic air of Cluny, 
 
 With the solemn march of Hear. 
 
 When the box-tree, white with blossoms, 
 Made the sweet May woodlands glad. 
 
 And the Aronia by the river 
 Lighted up the swarming shad, 
 
 And the bulging nets swept shoreward, 
 With their silver-sided haul, 
 
 Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, 
 He was merriest of them all. 
 
THE SYCAMORES. 51 
 
 When, among the jovial huskers, 
 
 Love stole in at Labor s side, 
 With the lusty airs of England, 
 
 Soft his Celtic measures vied. 
 
 Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake, 
 
 And the merry fair s carouse ; 
 Of the wild Red Fox of Erin 
 
 And the Woman of Three Cows, 
 
 By the blazing hearths of Winter, 
 Pleasant seemed his simple tales, 
 
 Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends, 
 And the mountain myths of Wales. 
 
 How the souls in Purgatory 
 
 Scrambled up from fate forlorn, 
 On St. Keven s sackcloth ladder, 
 
 Slyly hitched to Satan s horn. 
 
 Of the fiddler who at Tara 
 
 Played all night to ghosts of kings ; 
 Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies 
 
 Dancing in their moorland rings ! 
 
52 T II E S Y C A M R E S ; 
 
 Jolliest of our birds of singing, 
 Best he loved the Bob-o-link. 
 
 " Hush ! " he d say, " the tipsy fairies 1 
 Hear the little folks in drink ! " 
 
 Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle, 
 Singing through the ancient town, 
 
 Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant, 
 Hath Tradition handed down. 
 
 Not a stone his grave discloses ; 
 
 But if yet his spirit walks, 
 "Tis beneath the trees he planted, 
 
 And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks ! 
 
 Green memorials of the gleeman ! 
 
 Linking still the river shores, 
 With their shadows cast by sunset, 
 
 Stand Hugh Tallant s sycamores ! 
 
 When the Father of his Country 
 
 Through the north-land riding came, 
 
 And the roofs were starred with banners, 
 And the steeples rang acclaim, 
 
THE SYCAMORES. 53 
 
 When each war-scarred Continental, 
 
 Leaving smithy, mill, and farm, 
 Waved his rusted sword in welcome, 
 
 And shot off his old king s-arm, 
 
 Slowly passed that august Presence 
 
 Down the thronged and shouting street ; 
 
 Village girls, as white as angels, 
 Scattering flowers around his feet. 
 
 Midway, where the plane-tree s shadow 
 
 Deepest fell, his rein he drew : 
 On his stately head, uncovered, 
 
 Cool and soft the west wind blew. 
 
 And he stood up in his stirrups, 
 
 Looking up and looking down 
 On the hills of Gold and Silver 
 
 Rimming round the little town, 
 
 On the river, full of sunshine, 
 
 To the lap of greenest vales, 
 Winding down from wooded headlands, 
 
 Willow-skirted, white with .-sails 
 
54 THE SYCAMORES. 
 
 And he said, the landscape sweeping 
 Slowly with his ungloved hand, 
 
 " I have seen no prospect fairer 
 In this goodly Eastern land." 
 
 Then the bugles of his escort 
 Stirred to life the cavalcade : 
 
 And that head, so bare and stately, 
 Vanished down the depths of shade. 
 
 Ever since, in town and farm-house, 
 Life has had its ebb and flow ; 
 
 Thrice hath passed the human harvest 
 To its garner green and low. 
 
 But the trees the gleeman planted, 
 
 Through the changes, changeless stand ; 
 
 As the marble calm of Tadmor 
 Marks the desert s shifting sand. 
 
 Still the level moon at rising 
 Silvers o er each stately shaft ; 
 
 Still beneath them, half in shadow, 
 Singing, glides the pleasure craft. 
 
THESYCA MORES. 55 
 
 Still beneath them, arm-enfolded, 
 Love and Youth together stray ; 
 
 While, as heart to heart beats faster, 
 More and more their feet delay. 
 
 Where the ancient cobbler, Keczar, 
 
 On the open hill-side wrought, 
 Singing, as he drew his stitches, 
 
 Songs his German masters taught. 
 
 Singing, with his gray hair floating 
 
 Round his rosy ample face ; 
 Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen 
 
 Stitch and hammer in his place. 
 
 / 
 
 Al^ the pastoral lanes so grassy, 
 
 Now are Traffic s dusty streets ; 
 From the village, grown a city, 
 
 Fast the rural grace retreats. 
 
 But, still green, and tall, and stately, 
 
 On the river s winding shores, 
 Stand the Occidental plane-trees. 
 
 Stand Hugh Tallant s sycamores 
 
THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY. 
 
 " Concerning y Amphisba na, as soon as I received your commands, I made 
 
 diligent inquiry : he assures me y it had really two heads, one at each 
 
 end ; two mouths, two stings or tongues." 
 
 REV. CUIUSTUPHEK TOPPAN to COTTON MATHER. 
 
 FAR away in the twilight time 
 Of every people, in every clime, 
 Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, 
 Born of water, and air, and fire, 
 Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud * 
 And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, 
 Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, 
 Through dusk tradition and ballad age. 
 So from the childhood of Nowbury town 
 And its time of fable the tale comes down 
 Of a terror which haunted bush and brake, 
 The Amphisbeena, the Double Snake ! 
 
THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKK- 57 
 
 Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, 
 
 Consider that strip of Christian earth 
 
 On the desolate shore of a sailless se f a, 
 
 Full of terror and mystery, 
 
 Half-redeemed from the evil hold 
 
 Of the wo.od so dreary, and dark, and old, 
 
 Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew 
 
 When Time was young, and the world was new, 
 
 And wove its shadows with sun and moon, 
 
 Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn ; 
 
 Think of the sea s dread monotone, 
 
 Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown, 
 
 Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North, 
 
 Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth, 
 
 And the dismal tales the Indian told, 
 
 Till the settler s heart at his hearth grew cold, 
 
 And he shrank from the tawny wizard s boasts, 
 
 And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts, 
 
 And above, below, and on every side, 
 
 The fear of his creed seemed verified ; 
 
 And think, if his lot were now thine own, 
 
 To grope with terrors nor named nor known, 
 
8 THK DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE. 
 
 How laxer muscle and weaker nerve 
 
 And a feebler faith thy need might serve ; 
 
 And own to thyself the wonder more 
 
 That the snake had two heads, and not a score 
 
 Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen, 
 
 Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil s Den, 
 
 Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, 
 
 Or coiled by the Northman s Written Rock, 
 
 Nothing on record is left to show ; 
 
 Only the fact that he lived, we know, 
 
 And left the cast of a double head 
 
 In the scaly mask which he yearly shed. 
 
 For he carried a head where his tail should be, 
 
 And the two, of course, could never agree, 
 
 But wriggled about with main and might, 
 
 Now to the left and now to the right ; 
 
 Pulling and twisting this way and that, 
 
 Neither knew what the other was at. 
 
 ... ..." . -"-." 
 
 A snake with two heads, lurking so near ! 
 
 Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear! 
 
THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE. 59 
 
 Think what ancient gossips might say, 
 
 o 
 
 Shaking their heads in their dreary way, 
 
 Between the meetings on Sabbath-day ! 
 
 How urchins, searching at day s decline 
 
 The Common Pasture for sheep or kino, 
 
 The terrible double-ganger heard 
 
 In leafy rustle or whirr of bird ! 
 
 Think what a zest it gave to the sport, 
 
 In berry-time of the younger sort, 
 
 As over pastures blackberry-twined 
 
 Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind, 
 
 And closer and closer, for fear of harm, 
 
 The maiden clung to her lover s arm ; 
 
 And how the spark, who was forced to stay, 
 
 By his sweetheart s fears, till the break of day, 
 
 Thanked the snake for the fond delay ! 
 
 Far and wide the tale was told, 
 Like a snowball growing while it rolled. 
 The nurse hushed with it the bdbv s cry ; 
 And it served, in the worthy minister s eye, 
 To paint the primitive serpent by. 
 
60 THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE. 
 
 Cotton Mather came galloping down 
 
 All the way to Newbury town, 
 
 With his eyes agog and his ears set wide, 
 
 And his marvellous inkhorn at his side ; 
 
 Stirring the while in the shallow pool 
 
 Of his brains for the lore he learned at school, 
 
 To garnish the story, with here a streak 
 
 Of Latin, and there another of Greek : 
 
 And the tales he heard and the notes he took, 
 
 Behold ! are they not in his Wonder-Book ? 
 
 Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. 
 
 If the snake does not, the tale runs still 
 
 In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill. 
 
 And still, whenever husband and wife 
 
 Publish the shame of their daily strife, 
 
 And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain 
 
 At either end of the rnarriage-chain, 
 
 The gossips say, with a knowing shake 
 
 Of their gray heads, " Look at the Double Snake ! 
 
 One in body and two in will, 
 
 The AmphisbaBna is living 1 still ! " 
 
THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERT. 
 
 WHEN the reaper s task was ended,, and the summer 
 
 wearing late, 
 Parson A very sailed from Newbury, with his wife 
 
 and children eight, 
 Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop 
 
 " Watch and Wait." 
 
 Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer- 
 morn, 
 
 With the newly-planted orchards dropping their fruits 
 first-born, 
 
 And the homesteads like green islands amid a sea of 
 corn. 
 
62 THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY. 
 
 Broad meadows reached out seaward the tided 
 creeks between, 
 
 And hills rolled wave-like inland, with oaks and wal 
 nuts green ; 
 
 A fairer home, a goodlier land his eyes had never 
 seen. 
 
 Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty 
 
 led, 
 And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the 
 
 living bread 
 To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of 
 
 Marblehead. 
 
 All day they sailed : at nightfall the pleasant land- 
 breeze died, 
 
 The blackening sky, at midnight, its starry lights 
 denied, 
 
 And far and low the thunder of tempest prophe 
 sied ! 
 
THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVEKY. 63 
 
 Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone were rock, 
 
 and wood, and sand ; 
 Grimly anxious stood the skipper with the rudder in 
 
 his hand, 
 And questioned of the darkness what was sea and 
 
 what was land. 
 
 And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round 
 
 him, weeping sore : 
 " Never heed, my little children ! Christ is walking 
 
 on before 
 To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall 
 
 be no more." 
 
 All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain 
 
 drawn aside, 
 To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far 
 
 and wide ; 
 And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote 
 
 the tide. 
 
64 THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERT. 
 
 There was wailing in the shallop, woman s wail and 
 
 man s despair, 
 A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp 
 
 and bare, 
 And, through it all, the murmur of Father Avery s 
 
 prayer. 
 
 From his struggle in the darkness with the wild 
 
 waves and the blast, 
 On a rock, where every billow broke above him as 
 
 it passed, 
 Alone, of all his household, the man of God was 
 
 cast. 
 
 There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of 
 
 wave and wind : 
 " All my own have gone before me, and 1 linger just 
 
 behind ; 
 Not for life I ask, but only for the rest thy ransomed 
 
 find ! 
 
THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY. 65 
 
 " In this night of death I challenge the promise of 
 
 thy word ! 
 Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears 
 
 have heard ! 
 Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the grace 
 
 of Christ, our Lord ! 
 
 In the baptism of these waters wash white my every 
 
 sin, 
 And let me follow up to thee my household and my 
 
 kin! 
 Open the sea-gate of thy heaven, and let me enter 
 
 in!" 
 
 When the Christian sings his death-song, all the 
 
 listening heavens draw near, 
 And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal, 
 
 hear 
 How the notes so faint and broken swell to music in 
 
 God s ear. 
 
 6* B 
 
66 THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERT. 
 
 The ear of God was open to his servant s last re 
 quest ; 
 
 As the strong wave swept him downward the sweet 
 hymn upward pressed, 
 
 And the soul of Father Avery went, singing, to its 
 rest. 
 
 There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks 
 
 of Marblehead ; 
 In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of 
 
 prayer were read ; 
 And long, by board and hearth-stone, the living 
 
 mourned the dead. 
 
 And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from the 
 
 squall, 
 With grave and reverent faces, the ancient tale 
 
 recall, 
 When they see the white waves breaking on the 
 
 Rock of Avery s Fall! 
 
THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. 
 
 1675. 
 
 RAZE these long blocks of brick and stone, 
 These huge mill-monsters overgrown : 
 Blot out the humbler piles as well, 
 Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell 
 The weaving genii of the bell ; 
 Tear from the wild Cocheco s track 
 The dams that hold its torrents back ; 
 And let the loud-rejoicing fall 
 Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall ; 
 And let the Indian s paddle play 
 On the unbridged Piscataqua ! 
 Wide over hill arid valley spread 
 Once more the forest, dusk and dread, 
 With here and there a clearing cut 
 From the walled shadows round it shut ; 
 
68 THE TRUCK OF PISCATAQUA. 
 
 Each with its farm-house builded rude, 
 
 By English yeoman squared and hewed, 
 
 And the grim, flankered block-house bound 
 
 With bristling palisades around. 
 
 So, haply, shall before thine eyes 
 
 The dusty vail of centuries rise, 
 
 The old, strange scenery overlay 
 
 The tamer pictures of to-day, 
 
 While, like the actors in a play, 
 
 Pass in their ancient guise along 
 
 The figures of my border song : 
 
 What time beside Cocheco s flood 
 
 The white man and the red man stood, 
 
 With words of peace and brotherhood ; 
 
 When passed the sacred calumet 
 
 From lip to lip with fire-draught wet, 
 
 And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe s smoke 
 
 Through the gray beard of Waldron broke, 
 
 And Squando s voice, in suppliant plea 
 
 For mercy, struck the haughty key 
 
 Of one who held, in any fate, 
 
 Ilis native pride inviolate 1 
 
THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. 69 
 
 " Let your ears be opened wide I 
 He who speaks has never lied. 
 Waldron of Piscataqua, 
 Hear what Squando has to say ! 
 
 " Squando shuts his eyes and sees, 
 Far off, Saco s hemlock-trees. 
 In his wigwam, still as stone, 
 Sits a woman all alone, 
 
 " Wampum beads and birchen strands 
 Dropping from her careless hands, 
 Listening ever for the fleet 
 Patter of a dead child s feet ! 
 
 " When the moon a year ago 
 Told the flowers the time to blow, 
 In that lonely wigwam smiled 
 Menewee, our little child. 
 
 " Ere that moon grew thin and old, 
 He was lying still and cold ; 
 Sent before us, weak and small, 
 When the Master did not call ! 
 
70 THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. 
 
 " On his little grave I lay ; 
 Three times went and came the day ; 
 Thrice above me blazed the noon, 
 Thrice upon me wept the moon. 
 
 " In the third night watch I heard, 
 Far and low, a spirit-bird ; 
 Very mournful, very wild, 
 Sang the totem of my child. 
 
 " Menewee, poor Menewee, 
 Walks a path he cannot see : 
 Let the white man s wigwam light 
 With its blaze his steps aright. 
 
 " All-uncalled, he dares not show 
 Empty hands to Manito : 
 Better gifts he cannot bear 
 Than the scalps his slayers wear. 
 
 " All the while the totem sang, 
 Lightning blazed and thunder rang ; 
 And a black cloud, reaching high, 
 Pulled the white moon from the sky. 
 
THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. 71 
 
 " I, the medicine-man, whose ear 
 All that spirits hear can hear, 
 I, whose eyes are wide to see 
 All the things that are to be, 
 
 " Well I knew the dreadful signs 
 In the whispers of the pines, 
 In the river roaring loud, 
 In the mutter of the cloud. 
 
 " At the breaking of the day, 
 
 From the grave I passed away ; 
 
 Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad, 
 
 But my heart was hot and mad. 
 
 " There is rust on Squanders knife, 
 From the warm, red springs of life ; 
 On the funeral hemlock-trees 
 Many a scalp the totem sees. 
 
 " Blood for blood ! But evermore 
 Squando s heart is sad and sore ; 
 And his poor squaw waits at home 
 For the feet that never come ! 
 
72 THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. 
 
 " Waldroii of Cocheco, hear ! 
 Squando speaks, who laughs at fear : 
 Take the captives he has ta en ; 
 Let the land have peace again ! " 
 
 As the words died on his tongue, 
 Wide apart his warriors swung ; 
 Parted, at the sign he gave, 
 Right and left, like Egypt s wave. 
 
 And, like Israel passing free 
 Through the prophet-charmed sea, 
 Captive mother, wife, and child 
 Through the dusky terror filed. 
 
 One alone, a little maid, 
 Middleway her steps delayed, 
 Glancing, with quick, troubled sight, 
 Round about from red to white. 
 
 Then his hand the Indian laid 
 On the little maiden s head, 
 Lightly from her forehead fair 
 Smoothing back her yellow hair. 
 
THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. 
 
 " Gift or favor ask I none ; 
 What I have is all my own : 
 Never yet the birds have sung, 
 Squando hath a beggar s tongue. 
 
 " Yet, for her who waits at home 
 For the dead who cannot come, 
 Let the little Gold-hair be 
 In the place of Menewee 1 
 
 " Mishanock, my little star I 
 Come to Saco s pines afar ; 
 Where the sad one waits at home, 
 Wequashim, my moonlight, come 1 " 
 
 " What ! " quoth Waldron, " leave a child 
 Christian-born to heathens wild ? 
 As God lives, from Satan s hand 
 I will pluck her as a brand ! " 
 
 " Hear me, white man ! " Squando cried ; 
 " Let the little one decide. 
 Wequashim, my moonlight, say, 
 Wilt thou go with me, or stay ? " 
 7 
 
74 THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. 
 
 Slowly, sadly, half-afraid, 
 Half-regretfully, the maid 
 Owned the ties of blood and race, 
 Turned from Squando s pleading face. 
 
 Not a word the Indian spoke, 
 But his wampum chain he broke, 
 And the beaded wonder hung 
 On that neck so fair and young. 
 
 Silence-shod, as phantoms seem 
 In the marches of a dream, 
 Single-filed, the grim array 
 Through the pine-trees wound away. 
 
 Doubting, trembling, sore amazed, 
 Through her tears the young child gazed. 
 " God preserve her ! " Waldron said ; 
 " Satan hath bewitched the maid ! " 
 
 Years went and came. At close of day 
 Singing came a child from play, 
 Tossing from her loose-locked head 
 Gold in sunshine, brown in shade. 
 
THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. 76 
 
 Pride was in the mother s look, 
 But her head she gravely shook, 
 And with lips that fondly smiled 
 Feigned to chide her truant child. 
 
 
 Unabashed, the maid began : 
 
 " Up and down the brook I ran, 
 Where, beneath the bank so steep, 
 Lie the spotted trout asleep. 
 
 " Chip ! went squirrel on the wall, 
 After me I heard him call, 
 And the cat-bird on the tree 
 Tried his best to mimic me. 
 
 " Where the hemlocks grew so dark 
 That I stopped to look and hark, 
 On a log, with feather-hat, 
 By the path, an Indian sat. 
 
 " Then I cried, and ran away ; 
 But he called, and bade me stay ; 
 And his voice was good and mild 
 As my mother s to her child. 
 
76 THE TRUCE OF PI3CATAQUA. 
 
 " And he took my wampum chain, 
 Looked and looked it o er again ; 
 Gave me berries, and, beside, 
 On my neck a plaything tied." 
 
 
 Straight the mother stooped to see 
 
 What the Indian s gift might be. 
 On the braid of wampum hung, 
 Lo ! a cross of silver swung. 
 
 Well she knew its graven sign, 
 Squando s bird and totem pine ; 
 And, a mirage of the brain, 
 Flowed her childhood back again. 
 
 Flashed the roof the sunshine through, 
 Into space the walls outgrew ; 
 On the Indian s wigwam-mat, 
 Blossom-crowned, again she sat. 
 
 Cool she felt the west wind blow, 
 In her ear the pines sang low, 
 And, like links from out a chain, 
 Dropped the years of care and pain. 
 
THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. 77 
 
 From the outward toil and din, 
 From the griefs that gnaw within, 
 To the freedom of the woods 
 Called the birds, and winds, and floods. 
 
 Well, oh, painful minister ! 
 Watch thy flock, but blame not her, 
 If her ear grew sharp to hear 
 All their voices whispering near. 
 
 Blame her not, as to her soul 
 All the desert s glamour stole, 
 That a tear for childhood s loss 
 Dropped upon the Indian s cross. 
 
 When, that night, the Book was read, 
 And she bowed her widowed head, 
 And a prayer for each loved name 
 Ros"e like incense from a flame 
 
 To the listening ear of Heaven, 
 Lo ! another name was given : 
 " Father, give the Indian rest ! 
 Bless him ! for his love has blest ! " 
 
MY PLAYMATE. 
 
 THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 
 Their song was soft and low ; 
 
 The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
 Were falling like the snow. 
 
 The blossoms drifted at our feet, 
 The orchard birds sang clear ; 
 
 The sweetest and the saddest day 
 It seemed of all the year. 
 
 For, more to me than birds or flowers, 
 My playmate left her home, 
 
 And took with her the laughing spring, 
 The music and the bloom. 
 
 She kissed the lips of kith and kin, 
 
 She laid her hand in mine : 
 What more could ask the bashful boy 
 
 Who fed her father s kine ? 
 
MY PLAYMATE. 79 
 
 She left us in the bloom of May : 
 
 The constant years told o er 
 Their seasons with as sweet May morns, 
 
 But she came back no more. 
 
 I walk, with noiseless feet, the round 
 
 Of uneventful years ; 
 Still o er and o er I sow the spring 
 
 And reap the autumn ears. 
 
 She lives where all the golden year 
 
 Her summer roses blow ; 
 The dusky children of the sun 
 
 Before her come and go. 
 
 There haply with her jewelled hands 
 She smooths her silken gown, 
 
 No more the homespun lap wherein 
 I shook the walnuts down. 
 
 The wild grapes wait us by the brook, 
 
 The brown nuts on the hill, 
 And still the May-day flowers make sweet 
 
 The woods ofFollymill. 
 
80 MY PLAYMATE. 
 
 The lilies blossom in the pond, 
 The bird builds in the tree, 
 
 The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill 
 The slow song of the sea. 
 
 I wonder if she thinks of them, 
 And how the old time seems, 
 
 If ever the pines of Ramoth wood 
 Are sounding in her dreams. 
 
 I see her face, I hear her voice : 
 Does she remember mine ? 
 
 And what to her is now the boy 
 Who fed her father s kine ? 
 
 What cares she that the orioles build 
 For other eyes than ours, 
 
 That other hands with nuts are filled, 
 And other laps with flowers ? 
 
 playmate in the golden time I 
 Our mossy seat is green, 
 
 Its fringing violets blossom yet, 
 The old trees o er it lean. 
 
M Y P L A Y M ATE. 
 
 The winds so sweet with birch and feru 
 
 A sweeter memory blow ; 
 And there in spring the veeries sing 
 
 The song of long ago. 
 
 And still the pines of Ramoth wood 
 Are moaning like the sea, 
 
 The moaning of the sea of change 
 Between myself and thee 1 
 
POEMS AND LYRICS. 
 
THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT. 
 
 " And I sought whence is Evil : I set before the eye of my spirit the whola 
 creation ; whatsoever we see therein sea, earth, air, stars, trees, moral crea 
 tures, yea, whatsoever there is we do not see angels and spiritual powers. 
 Where is evil, and whence comes it, since God the Good hath created all things ? 
 Why made He anything at all of evil, and not rather by His All-mightiness 
 cause it not to be ? These thoughts I turned in my miserable heart, overcharged 
 with most gnawing cares." "And, admonished to return to myself, I entered 
 even into my inmost soul, Thou being my guide, and beheld even beyond my 
 soul and mind the Light unchangeable. He who knows the Truth knows what 
 that Light is, and he that knows it knows Eternity ! Truth, who art Eter 
 nity ! Love, who art Truth ! Eternity, who art Love ! And I beheld that 
 Thou madest all things good, and to Thee is nothing whatsoever evil. From the 
 angel to the worm, from the first motion to the last, Thou settest each in its place, 
 and everything is good in its kind. Woe is me ! how high art Thou in the 
 highest, how deep in the deepest ! and Thou never departest from us, and we 
 scarcely return to Thee." AUGUSTINE S SOLILOQUIES, Book vii. 
 
 THE fourteen centuries fall away 
 
 Between us and the Airic saint, 
 And at his side we urge, to-day, 
 The immemorial quest and old complaint, 
 8 
 
86 THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT. 
 
 ^ No outward sign to us is given, 
 
 From sea or earth comes no reply ; 
 
 Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven 
 
 He vainly questioned bends our frozen sky. 
 
 No victory comes of all our strife, 
 
 From all we grasp the meaning slips ; 
 The Sphinx sits at the gate of life, 
 With the old question on her awful lips. 
 
 In paths unknown we hear the feet 
 Of fear before, and guilt behind : 
 We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat 
 Ashes and dust beneath its golden rind. 
 
 From age to age descends unchecked 
 
 The sad bequest of sire to son, 
 The body s taint, the mind s defect 
 Through every web of life the dark threads rui 
 
 Oh ! why and whither ? God knows all : 
 I only know that he is good, 
 
THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT. 87 
 
 And that whatever may befall 
 Or here or there, must be the best that could. 
 
 Between the dreadful cherubim 
 
 A Father s face I still discern, 
 As Moses looked of old on him, 
 And saw his glory into goodness turn ! 
 
 For he is merciful as just : 
 
 And so, by faith correcting sight, 
 I bow before his will, and trust 
 Howe er they seem he doeth all things right. 
 
 And dare to hope that he will make 
 
 The rugged smooth, the doubtful plain ; 
 His mercy never quite forsake ; 
 His healing visit every realm of pain ; 
 
 That suffering is not his revenge 
 
 Upon his creatures weak and frail, 
 Sent on a pathway new and strange 
 With feet that wander and with eyes that fail ; 
 
THE SHADOW AND T il E LIGHT. 
 
 That, o er the crucible of pain, 
 
 Watches the tender eye of Love 
 The slow transmuting of the chain 
 Whose links are iron below to gold above ! 
 
 Ah, me ! we doubt the shining skies 
 
 Seen through our shadows of offence, 
 And drown with our poor childish cries 
 The cradle-hymn of kindly Providence. 
 
 And still we love the e^vil cause, 
 
 And of the just effect complain ; 
 We tread upon life s broken laws, 
 And murmur at our self-inflicted pain ; 
 
 We turn us from the light, and find 
 
 Our spectral shapes before us thrown, 
 As they who leave the sun behind 
 Walk in the shadows of themselves alone. 
 
 And scarce by will or strength of ours 
 
 We set our faces to the day ; 
 Weak, wavering, blind, the Eternal Powers 
 Alone can turn us from ourselves away. 
 
THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT. 89 
 
 Our weakness is the strength of sin, 
 
 But love must needs be stronger far, 
 Outreaching all and gathering in 
 The erring spirit and the wandering star. 
 
 A Voice grows with the growing years ; 
 
 Earth, hushing down her bitter cry, 
 Looks upward from her graves, and hears, 
 "The KeWrection and the Life am I." 
 
 Oh, Love Divine ! whose constant beam 
 
 Shines on the eyes that will not see, 
 And waits to bless us, while we dream 
 Thou leavest us because we turn from thee 1 
 
 All souls that struggle and aspire, 
 
 All hearts of prayer by thee are lit ; 
 Arid, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire ^ 
 
 On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. 
 
 Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know st, 
 
 Wide as our need thy favors Ml ; 
 The white wings of the Holy Ghost 
 Stoop, seen or unseen, o er the heads of all. 
 
 fi* 
 
90 THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT. 
 
 Oh, Beauty, old yet ever new ! * 
 
 Eternal Voice, and Inward Word. 
 The Logos of the Greek and Jew, 
 The old sphere-music which the Samian heard 1 
 
 Truth which the sage and prophet saw, 
 
 Long sought without but found within, 
 The Law of Love beyond all law, 
 The Life o erflooding mortal death and sin I 
 
 Shine on us with the light which glowed 
 
 Upon the trance-bound shepherd s way, 
 Who saw the Darkness overflowed 
 And drowned by tides of everlasting Day.f 
 
 * Too late I loved Thee, Beauty of ancient days, yet ever 
 new ! And lo ! Thou wert within, and I abroad searching for 
 Thee. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee." AUGUST. 
 SOLILOQ., Book x. 
 
 t "And I saw that there was an Ocean of Darkness and 
 Death : but an infinite Ocean of Light and Love flowed over the 
 Ocean of Darkness : And in that I saw the infinite Love of 
 God." GEORGE Fox s JOURNAL. 
 
THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT. 91 
 
 Shine, light of God ! make broad thy scope 
 
 To all who sin and suffer ; more 
 And better than we dare to hope 
 With Heaven s compassion make our longings poor! 
 
THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS. 
 
 TRITEMIUS OF HERBIPOLIS, one day, 
 
 While kneeling at the altar s foot to pray, 
 
 Alone with God, as was his pious choice, 
 
 Heard from without a miserable voice, 
 
 A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell, 
 
 As of a lost soul crying out of hell. 
 
 Thereat the Abbot paused ; the chain whereby 
 His thoughts went upward broken by that cry ; 
 And, looking from the casement, saw below 
 A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flo\v, 
 And withered hands held up to him, who cried 
 For alms as one who might not be denied. 
 
 She cried, " For the dear love of Him who gave 
 His life for ours, my child from bondage save, 
 
THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS. 93 
 
 My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves 
 In the Moor s galley, where the sun-smit waves 
 Lap the white walls of Tunis ! " " What I can 
 I give/ Tritemius said : "my prayers." " 0, man 
 Of God ! " she cried, for grief had made her bold, 
 " Mock me not thus ; I ask not prayers, but gold. 
 Words will not serve me, alms alone suffice ; 
 Even while I speak perchance my first-born dies." 
 
 " Woman ! " Tritemius answered, "from our door 
 None go unfed ; hence are we always poor : 
 A single soldo is our only store. 
 Thou hast our prayers ; what can we give thee 
 more ? " 
 
 " Give me," she said, " the silver candlesticks 
 On either side of the great crucifix. 
 God well may spare them on his errands sped, 
 Or he can give you golden ones instead." 
 
 Then spake Tritemius, " Even as thy word, 
 Woman, so be it! (Our most gracious Lord, 
 
94 THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS. 
 
 Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice, 
 
 Pardon me if a human soul I prize 
 
 Above the gifts upon his altar piled !) 
 
 Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child." 
 
 But his hand trembled as the holy alms 
 He placed within the beggar s eager palms ; 
 And as she vanished down the linden shade, 
 He bowed his head and for forgiveness prayed. 
 
 So the day passed, and when the twilight came 
 He woke to find the chapel all a-flame, 
 And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold 
 Upon the altar candlesticks of gold ! 
 
THE EVE OF ELECTION. 
 
 FROM gold to gray 
 
 Our mild sweet day 
 Of Indian Summer fades too soon; 
 
 But tenderly 
 
 Above the sea 
 Hangs, white and calm, the Hunter s moon. 
 
 In its pale fire, 
 
 The village spire 
 Shows like the zodiac s spectral lance ; 
 
 The painted walls 
 
 Whereon it falls 
 Transfigured stand in marble trance 1 
 
THE EVE OF ELECTION. 
 
 O er fallen leaves 
 
 The west wind grieves, 
 Yet conies a seed-time round again ; 
 
 And morn shall see 
 
 The State sown free 
 With baleful tares or healthful grain. 
 
 Along the street 
 
 The shadows meet 
 Of Destiny, whose hands conceal 
 
 The moulds of fate 
 
 That shape the State, 
 And make or mar the common weal. 
 
 Around I see 
 
 The powers that be ; 
 I stand by Empire s primal springs ; 
 
 And princes meet 
 
 In every street, 
 And hear the tread of uncrowned kinga ! 
 
THE EVE OF ELECTION. 97 
 
 Hark ! through the crowd 
 
 The laugh runs loud, 
 Beneath the sad, rebuking moon. 
 
 God save the land, 
 
 A careless hand 
 May shake or swerve ere morrow s noon ! 
 
 No jest is this ; 
 
 One cast amiss 
 May blast the hope of Freedom s year. 
 
 Oh, take me where 
 
 Are hearts of prayer, 
 And foreheads bowed in reverent fear ! 
 
 Not lightly fall 
 
 Beyond recall 
 The written scrolls a breath can float ; 
 
 The crowning fact, 
 
 The kingliest act 
 Of Freedom, is the freeman s vote I 
 
THE EVE OK I 
 
 For pearls that gem 
 
 A diadem 
 The diver in the deep sea dies : 
 
 The regal right 
 
 We boast to-night 
 Is ours through costlier sacrifice 
 
 The blood of Vane, 
 
 His prison pain 
 Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod, 
 
 And hers whose faith 
 
 Drew strength from death, 
 And prayed her Russell up to God ! 
 
 Our hearts grow cold, 
 
 We lightly hold 
 A right which brave men died to gain ; 
 
 The stake, the cord, 
 
 The axe, the sword, 
 Grim nurses at its birth of pain. 
 
THE EVE OF ELECTION. 99 
 
 The shadow rend, 
 
 And o er us bend, 
 Oh, martyrs, with your crowns and palms, 
 
 Breathe through these throngs 
 
 Your battle songs, 
 Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon psalms ! 
 
 Look from the sky, 
 
 Like God s great eye, 
 Thou solemn moon, with searching beam ; 
 
 Till in the sight 
 
 Of thy pure light 
 Our mean self-seekings meaner seem. 
 
 Shame from our hearts 
 
 Unworthy arts, 
 The fraud designed, the purpose dark ; 
 
 And smite away 
 
 The hands we lay 
 Profanely on the sacred ark. 
 
100 THE EVE OF ELECTION. 
 
 To party claims, 
 
 And private aims, 
 Reveal that august face of Truth, 
 
 Whereto are given 
 
 The age of heaven, 
 The beauty of immortal youth. 
 
 So shall our voice 
 
 Of sovereign choice 
 Swell the deep bass of duty done, 
 
 And strike the key 
 
 Of time to be, 
 When God and man shall speak as one ! 
 
THE OVER-HEART. 
 
 For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, to whom be glory 
 for ever ! PAUL. 
 
 ABOVE, below, in sky and sod, 
 In leaf and spar, in star and man, 
 Well might the wise Athenian scan 
 
 The geometric signs of God, 
 The measured order of his plan. 
 
 And India s mystics sang aright 
 Of the One Life pervading all, 
 One Being s tidal rise and fall 
 
 In soul and form, in sound and sight, 
 
 Eternal outflow and recall. 
 
 God is : and man in guilt and fear 
 The central fact of Nature owns ; 
 Kneels, trembling, by his altar-stones, 
 
 And darkly dreams the ghastly smear 
 Of blood appeases and atones. 
 o* 
 
* TJ!^ OVKR-HEART. 
 
 Guilt shapes the Terror: deep within 
 
 The human heart the secret lies 
 
 Of all the hideous deities ; 
 And, painted on a ground of sin, 
 
 The fabled gods of torment rise ! 
 
 And what is He? The ripe grain nods, 
 
 The sweet dews fall, the sweet flowers blow ; 
 But darker signs his presence show : 
 
 The earthquake and the storm are God s, 
 And good and evil interflow. 
 
 Oh, hearts of love ! Oh, souls that turn 
 Like sunflowers to the pure and best ! 
 To you the truth is manifest: 
 
 For they the mind of Christ discern 
 Who lean like John upon his breast ! 
 
 In him of whom the Sybil told, 
 
 For whom the prophet s harp was toned, 
 Whose need the sage and magian owned, 
 
 The loving heart of God behold, 
 
 The hope for which the ages groaned ! 
 
THE OVER-HEART. 103 
 
 Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery 
 Wherewith mankind have deified 
 Their hate, and selfishness, and pride I 
 
 Let the scared dreamer wake to see 
 The Christ of Nazareth at his side ! 
 
 What doth that holy Guide require ? 
 
 No rite of pain, nor gift of blood, 
 
 But man a kindly brotherhood, 
 Looking, where duty is desire, 
 
 To him, the beautiful and good. 
 
 Gone be the faithlessness of fear, 
 
 And let the pitying heaven s sweet rain 
 Wash out the altar s bloody stain ; 
 
 The law of Hatred disappear, 
 The law of Love alone remain. 
 
 How fall the idols false and grim ! 
 And lo ! their hideous wreck above 
 The emblems of the Lamb and Dove ! 
 
 Man turns from God, not God from him ; 
 And guilt, in suffering, whispers Love ! 
 
10-t THE OVER-HEART. 
 
 The world sits at the feet of Christ, 
 Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled ; 
 It yet shall touch his garment s fold, 
 
 And feel the heavenly Alchemist 
 Transform its very dust to gold. 
 
 The theme befitting angel tongues 
 Beyond a mortal s scope has grown. 
 Oh, heart of mine ! with reverence own 
 
 The fullness which to it belongs, 
 
 And trust the unknown for the known ! 
 
IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE. 
 
 IN the fair land o erwatched by Ischia s mountains, 
 
 Across the charmed bay 
 Whose blue waves keep with Capri s silver fountains 
 
 Perpetual holiday, 
 
 A king lies dead, his wafer duly eaten, 
 His gold-bought masses given ; 
 
 And Rome s great altar smokes with gums to sweeten 
 Her foulest gift to Heaven. 
 
 And while all Naples thrills with mute thanksgiving, 
 
 The court of England s queen 
 For the dead monster so abhorred while living 
 
 In mourning garb is seen. 
 
 With a true sorrow God rebukes that feigning : 
 
 By lone Edgbaston s side 
 Stands a great city in the sky s sad raining, 
 
 Bare-headed and wet-eyed ! 
 
106 IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH S T U R G E . 
 
 Silent for once the restless hive of labor, 
 
 Save the low funeral tread, 
 Or voice of craftsman whispering to his neighbor 
 
 The good deeds of the dead. 
 
 For him no minster s chant of the immortals 
 
 Rose from the lips of sin ; 
 No mitred priest swung back the heavenly portals 
 
 To let the white soul in. 
 
 But Age and Sickness framed their tearful faces 
 
 In the low hovel s door, 
 And prayers went up from all the dark by-places 
 
 And Ghettos of the poor. 
 
 The pallid toiler and the negro chattel, 
 
 The vagrant of the street, 
 The human dice wherewith in games of battle 
 
 The lords of earth compete, 
 
 Touched with a grief that needs no outward draping, 
 
 All swelled the long lament 
 Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping 
 
 His viewless monument ! 
 
IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE. 107 
 
 For never yet, with ritual pomp and splendor, 
 
 In the long- heretofore, 
 A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and tender, 
 
 Has England s turf closed o er. 
 
 And if there fell from out her grand old steeples 
 
 No crash of brazen wail, 
 The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and peoples 
 
 Swept in on every gale. 
 
 It came from Holstein s birchen-belted meadows, 
 
 And from the tropic calms 
 Of Indian islands in the sun-smit shadows 
 
 Of Occidental palms ; 
 
 From the locked roadsteads of the Bothnian peasants, 
 
 And harbors of the Finn, 
 Where war s worn victims saw his gentle presence 
 
 Come sailing, Christ-like, in, 
 
 To seek the lost, to build the old waste-places, 
 
 To link the hostile shores 
 Of severing seas, and sow with England s daisies 
 
 The moss of Finland s moors. 
 
108 IN REMEMBRANCE OF J O a E 1 U STUROE. 
 
 Thanks for the good man s beautiful example. 
 
 Who in the vilest saw 
 Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple 
 
 Still vocal with God s law ; 
 
 And heard with tender ear the spirit sighing 
 
 As from its prison cell, 
 Praying for pity, like the mournful crying 
 
 Of Jonah out of hell. 
 
 Not his the golden pen s or lip s persuasion, 
 
 But a fine sense of right, 
 And truth s directness, meeting each occasion 
 
 Straight as a line of light. 
 
 His faith and works, like streams that intermingle, 
 
 In the same channel ran : 
 The crystal clearness of an eye kept single 
 
 Shamed all the frauds of man. 
 
 The very gentlest of all human natures 
 
 He joined to courage strong, 
 And love outreaching unto all God s creatures 
 
 With sturdy hate of wrong 
 
IN REMEMBKAACE OF JOSEPH STURGE. 109 
 
 Tender as woman ; manliness and meekness 
 
 In him were so allied 
 That they who judged him by his strength or weakness 
 
 Saw but a single side. 
 
 Men failed, betrayed him, but his zeal seemed nourished 
 
 By failure and by fall ; 
 Still a large faith in human kind he cherished, 
 
 And in God s love for all. 
 
 And now he rests : his greatness arid his sweetness 
 
 No more shall seem at strife ; 
 And death has moulded into calm completeness 
 
 The statue of his life. 
 
 Where the dews glisten and the song-birds warble, 
 
 His dust to dust is laid, 
 In Nature s keeping, with no pomp of marble 
 
 To shame his modest shade. 
 
 The forges glow, the hammers all are ringing; 
 
 Beneath its smoky vail, 
 Hard by, the city of his love is swinging 
 
 Its clamorous iron flail. 
 10 
 
110 IN KK MEMBRA NCE OF JOSEPH S T U R G E . 
 
 But round his grave are quietude and beauty, 
 Arid the sweet heaven above, 
 
 The fitting symbols of a life of duty 
 Transfigured into love ! 
 
TRINITAS. 
 
 AT morn I prayed, " I fain would sec 
 How Three are One, and One is Three. 
 Read the dark riddle unto me. 77 
 
 I wandered forth, the sun and air 
 I saw bestowed with equal care 
 On good and evil, foul and fair. 
 
 No partial favor dropped the rain ; 
 Alike the righteous and profane 
 Rejoiced above their heading grain. 
 
 And rny heart murmured, " Is it meet 
 That blindfold Nature thus should treat 
 With equal hand the tares and wheat ? " 
 
 A presence melted through my mood, 
 A warmth, a light, a sense of good, 
 Like sunshine throug h a winter wood. 
 
T It I XI I A S . 
 
 1 saw that presence, mailed complete* 
 In her white innocence, pause to greet 
 A fallen sister of the street. 
 
 Upon her bosom snowy pure 
 The lost one clung, as if secure 
 From inward guilt or outward lure. 
 
 " Beware ! " I said ; " in this I see 
 No gain to her, but loss to thee : 
 Who touches pitcli defiled must be." 
 
 I passed the haunts of shame and sin, 
 
 And a voice whispered, " Who therein 
 
 Shall these lost souls to Heaven s peace win ? 
 
 "Who there shall hope and health dispense, 
 And lift the ladder up from thence 
 Whose rounds are prayers of penitence ? " 
 
 I said, " No higher life they know ; 
 These earth-worms love to have it so. 
 Who stoops to raise them sinks as low." 
 
TRINITAS. 113 
 
 That night with painful care I read 
 What Hippo s saint and Calvin said, 
 The living seeking to the dead ! 
 
 In vain I turned, in weary quest, 
 
 Old pages, where (God give them rest!) 
 
 The poor creed-mongers dreamed and guessed. 
 
 And still I prayed, " Lord, let me see 
 How Three are One, and One is Three ; 
 Read the dark riddle unto me ! " 
 
 Then something whispered, "Dost thou pray 
 For what thou hast ? This very day 
 The Holy Three have crossed thy way. 
 
 " Did not the gifts of sun and air 
 
 To good and ill alike declare 
 
 The all-compassionate Father s care ? 
 
 "In the white soul that stooped to raise 
 The lost one from her evil ways, 
 Thou saw st the Christ, whom angels praise ! 
 10* 
 
114 TK1XITAS. 
 
 " A bodiless Divinity, 
 
 The still, small Voice that spake to thee 
 
 Was the Holy Spirit s mystery ! 
 
 " Oh, blind of sight, of faith how small ! 
 Father, and Son, and Holy Call : 
 This day thou hast denied them all ! 
 
 "Revealed in love and sacrifice, 
 The Holiest passed before thine eyes, 
 One and the same, in threefold guise. 
 
 "The equal Father in rain and sun, 
 His Christ in the good to evil done, 
 His Voice in thy soul ; and the Three arc One ! " 
 
 I shut my grave Aquinas fast ; 
 The monkish gloss of ages past, 
 The schoolman s creed aside I cast. 
 
 And my heart answered, " Lord, I see 
 How Three arc One, and One is Three ; 
 Thy riddle hath been read to me ! " 
 
THE OLD BURYING-GROUND. 
 
 OUR vales are sweet with fern and rose, 
 Our hills are maple-crowned ; 
 
 But not from them our fathers chose 
 The village burying-ground. 
 
 The dreariest spot in all the land 
 
 To Death they set apart ; 
 With scanty grace from Nature s hand, 
 
 And none from that of Art. 
 
 A winding wall of mossy stone, 
 Frost-flung and broken, lines 
 
 A lonesome acre thinly grown 
 With grass and wandering vines. 
 
 Without the wall a birch-tree shows 
 Its drooped and tasselled head ; 
 
 Within, a stag-horned sumach grows, 
 Fern-leafed, with spikes of red. 
 
116 THE OLD BURYING-GUOUND. 
 
 There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain 
 Like white ghosts come and go, 
 
 The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain, 
 The cow-bell tinkles slow. 
 
 Low moans the river from its bed, 
 
 The distant pines reply ; 
 Liko mourners shrinking from the dead, 
 
 They stand apart and sigh. 
 
 Unshaded smites the summer sun, 
 
 Unchecked the winter blast ; 
 The school-girl learns the place to shun, 
 
 With glances backward cast. 
 
 For thus our fathers testified 
 That he might read who ran 
 
 The emptiness of human pride, 
 The nothingness of man. 
 
 They dared not plant the grave with flowers, 
 
 Nor dress the funeral sod, 
 Where, with a love as deep as ours, 
 
 They left their dead with God. 
 
THE 01, D BTIRYING-G ROUND. 117 
 
 The hard and thorny path they kept 
 
 From beanty turned aside ; 
 Nor missed they over those who slept 
 
 The grace to life denied. 
 
 Yet still the wilding flowers would blow, 
 
 The golden leaves would fall, 
 The seasons come, the seasons go, 
 
 And God be good to all. 
 
 Above the graves the blackberry hung, 
 
 In bloom and green its wreath, 
 And harebells swung as if they rung 
 
 The chimes of peace beneath. 
 
 The beauty Nature loves to share, 
 
 The gifts she hath for all, 
 The common light, the common air, 
 
 O ercrept the graveyard s wall. 
 
 It knew the glow of eventide, 
 
 The sunrise and the noon, 
 And glorified and sanctified 
 
 It slept beneath the moon. 
 
118 THE OLD BURYING-(; ROUND. 
 
 With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod, 
 
 Around the seasons ran, 
 And evermore the love of God 
 
 Rebuked the fear of man. 
 
 We dwell with fears on either hand, 
 
 Within a daily strife, 
 And spectral problems waiting stand 
 
 Before the gates of life. 
 
 The doubts we vainly seek to solve, 
 The truths we know, are one : 
 
 The known and nameless stars revolve 
 Around the Central Sun. 
 
 And if we reap as we have sown, 
 
 And take the dole we deal, 
 Tho law of pain is love alone, 
 
 The wounding is to heal. 
 
 Unharmed from change to change we glide, 
 
 We fall as in our dreams ; 
 The far-off terror at our side 
 
 A smiling angel seems. 
 
THE OLD BURYING-GKOUND. 119 
 
 Secure on God s all-tender heart 
 
 Alike rest great arid small ; 
 Why fear to lose our little part, 
 
 When he is pledged for all ? 
 
 fearful heart and troubled brain I 
 Take hope and strength from this, 
 
 That Nature never hints in vain, 
 Nor prophesies amiss. 
 
 Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave, 
 
 Her lights and airs are given 
 Alike to playground and the grave ; 
 
 And over both is Heaven. 
 
THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW. 
 
 PIPES of the misty moorlands, 
 
 Voice of the glens and hills ; 
 The droning of the torrents, 
 
 The treble of the rills! 
 Not the braes of broom and heather, 
 
 Nor the mountains dark with rain, 
 Nor maiden bovver, nor border tower 
 
 Ilave heard your sweetest strain 1 
 
 Dear to the Lowland reaper, 
 
 And plaided mountaineer, 
 To the cottage and the castle 
 
 The Scottish pipes are dear ; 
 Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch 
 
 O er mountain, loch, and glade ; 
 But the sweetest of all music 
 
 The Pipes at Lucknow played. 
 
THE PIPES AT LUCK NOW. 121 
 
 Day by day the Indian tiger 
 
 Louder yelled, and nearer crept ; 
 Round and round the jungle-serpent 
 
 Near and nearer circles swept. 
 "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers, 
 
 Pray to-day ! " the soldier said ; 
 " To-morrow, death s between us 
 
 And the wrong and shame we dread." 
 
 Oh ! they listened, looked, and waited, 
 
 Till their hope became despair ; 
 And the sobs of low bewailing 
 
 Filled the pauses of their prayer. 
 Then up spake a Scottish maiden, 
 
 With her ear unto the ground : 
 " Dinna ye hear it ? dinna ye hear it? 
 
 The pipes o Ilavelock sound ! " 
 
 Hushed the wounded man his groaning; 
 
 Hushed the wife her little ones ; 
 Alone they heard the drum-roll 
 
 And the roar of Sepoy guns. 
 11 
 
122 THE PIPES AT LUCK NOW. 
 
 But to sounds of home and childhood 
 The Highland ear was true ; 
 
 As her mother s cradle-crooning 
 The mountain pipes she knew. 
 
 Like the march of soundless music 
 
 Through the vision of the seer, 
 More of fueling than of hearing, 
 
 Of the heart than of the ear, 
 She knew the droning pibroch, 
 
 She knew the Campbell s call : 
 " llurk ! hear ye no MucGregor s, 
 
 The grandest o them all ! " 
 
 Oli ! they listened, dumb and breathless, 
 
 And they caught the sound at last : 
 Faint and far beyond the Groomtee 
 
 Rose and fell the piper s blast ! 
 Then a burst of wild thanksgiving 
 
 Mingled woman s voice and man s ; 
 " God be praised ! the march of Ilavelockl 
 
 The piping of the clans ! " 
 
THE PIPES AT LUCK NOW. 123 
 
 Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, 
 
 Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, 
 Came the wild MacGregor s clan-call, 
 
 Stinging all the air to life. 
 But when the far-off dust cloud 
 
 To plaided legions grew, 
 Full tenderly and blithesomely 
 
 The pipes of rescue blew 1 
 
 Round the silver domes of Lucknow, 
 
 Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, 
 Breathed the air to Britons dearest, 
 
 The air of Auld Lang Syne. 
 O er the cruel roll of war-drums 
 
 Rose that sweet and homelike strain ; 
 And the tartan clove the turban. 
 
 As the Goomtee cleaves the plain. 
 
 Dear to the corn-land reaper 
 
 And plaided mountaineer, 
 To the cottage and the castle 
 
 The piper s song is dear. 
 
124 THE PIPER AT LIT OK NOW. 
 
 Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch 
 O er mountain, glen, and glade, 
 
 But the sweetest of all music 
 The Pipes at Lucknow played ! 
 
MY PSALM. 
 
 I MOURN no more my vanished years : 
 
 Beneath a tender rain, 
 An April rain of smiles and tears, 
 
 My heart is young again. 
 
 The west winds blow, and, singing low, 
 I hear the glad streams run ; 
 
 The windows of my soul I throw 
 Wide open to the sun. 
 
 No longer forward nor behind 
 
 I look in hope or fear ; 
 But, grateful, take the good I find, 
 
 The best of now and here. 
 
 I plough no more a desert land, 
 To harvest weed and tare ; 
 
 The manna dropping from God s hand 
 Rebukes my painful care. 
 11* 
 
120 MY PSALM. 
 
 I break my pilgrim staff, I lay 
 
 Aside the toiling oar ; 
 The angel sought so far away 
 
 I welcome at my door. 
 
 The airs of Spring may never play 
 
 Among the ripening corn, 
 Nor freshness of the flowers of May 
 
 Blow through the Autumn morn ; 
 
 Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look 
 Through fringed lids to heaven, 
 
 And the pale aster in the brook 
 Shall see its image given ; 
 
 The woods shall wear their robes of praise, 
 The south wind softly sigh, 
 
 And sweet, calm days in golden haze 
 Melt down the amber sky. 
 
 Not less shall manly deed and word 
 
 Rebuke an age of wrong ; 
 The graven flowers that wreathe the sword 
 
 Make not the blade less strong. 
 
MY PSALM. 127 
 
 But smiting- hands shall learn to heal, 
 
 .To build as to destroy ; 
 Nor less my heart for others feel 
 
 That I the more enjoy. 
 
 All as God wills, who wisely heeds 
 
 To give or to withhold, 
 And knoweth more of all my needs 
 
 Than all my prayers have told ! 
 
 Enough that blessings undeserved 
 
 Have marked my erring track ; 
 
 That wheresoever my feet have swerved, 
 His chastening turned me back ; 
 
 < 
 That more and more a Providence 
 
 Of love is understood, 
 Making the springs of time and sense 
 Sweet with eternal good ; 
 
 That death seems but a covered way 
 
 Which opens into light, 
 Wherein no blinded child can stray 
 
 Beyond the Father s sight ; 
 
128 MY PSALM. 
 
 That care and trial seem at last, 
 Through Memory s sunset air, 
 
 Like mountain-ranges overpast, 
 In purple distance fair ; 
 
 That all the jarring notes of life 
 Seem blending in a psalm, 
 
 And all the angles of its strife 
 Slow rounding into calm. 
 
 And so the shadows fall apart, 
 And so the west winds play ; 
 
 And all the windows of rny heart 
 I open to the day. 
 
LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.* 
 
 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 I 
 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 massacre of unarmed and unoffending men, in Southern 
 Kansas, took place near the Marais du Cygne of the French 
 voyageurs. 
 
130 LE MARAIS DU CYGNE. 
 
 The foul human vultures 
 Have feasted and fled ; 
 
 The wolves of the Border 
 Have crept from the dead. 
 
 From the hearths of their cabins, 
 
 The fields of their corn, 
 Unwarned and unweaponed, 
 
 The victims were torn, 
 By the whirlwind of murder 
 
 Swooped up and swept on 
 To the low, reedy fen-lands, 
 
 The Marsh of the Swan. 
 
 With a vain plea for mercy 
 
 No stout knee was crooked ; 
 In the mouths of the rifles 
 
 Right manly they looked. 
 How paled the May sunshine, 
 
 0, Marais du Cygne ! 
 On death for the strong life, 
 
 On red grass for green I 
 
LE MARAIS DU CYGNE. 131 
 
 In the homes of their rearing, 
 
 Yet warm with their lives, 
 Ye wait the dead only, 
 
 Poor children and wives 1 
 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, 
 
 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 ! 
 
132 LE MARAIS DU CYGNE. 
 
 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 Hood, 
 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 ROCK" IN EL GHOR. 
 
 DEAD Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, 
 Her stones of emptiness remain ; 
 
 Around her sculptured mystery sweeps 
 The lonely waste of Edom s plain. 
 
 From the doomed dwellers in the cleft 
 The bow of vengeance turns not back ; 
 
 Of all her myriads none are left 
 Along the Wady Mousa s track. 
 
 Clear in the hot Arabian day 
 
 Her arches spring, her statues climb ; 
 Unchanged, the graven wonders pay 
 
 No tribute to the spoiler, Time ! 
 
 Unchanged the awful lithograph 
 Of power and glory undertrod, 
 
 Of nations scattered like the chaff 
 
 Blown from the threshing-floor of God. 
 12 
 
134 "THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR. 
 
 Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn 
 From Petra s gates, with deeper awe 
 
 To mark afar the burial urn 
 Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor ; 
 
 And where upon its ancient guard 
 
 Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing yet, 
 
 Looks from its turrets desertward, 
 
 And keeps the watch that God has set; 
 
 The same as when in thunders loud 
 It heard the voice of God to man, 
 
 As when it saw in fire and cloud 
 The angels walk in Israel s van ! 
 
 Or when from Ezion-Geber s way 
 It saw the long procession file, 
 
 And heard the Hebrew timbrels play 
 The music of the lordly Nile ; 
 
 Or saw the tabernacle pause, 
 
 Cloud-bound, by Kadesh Barncu s wells, 
 While Moses graved the sacred laws, 
 
 And Aaron swung his golden bells. 
 
THE ROCK 77 IN EL GHOR. 135 
 
 Rock of the desert, prophet-sung ! 
 
 How grew its shadowing pile at length, 
 A symbol, in the Hebrew tongue, 
 
 Of God s eternal love and strength. 
 
 On lip of bard and scroll of seer, 
 
 From age to age went down the name, 
 
 Until the Shiloh s promised year, 
 
 And Christ, the Rock of Ages, came ! 
 
 The path of life we walk to-day 
 
 Is strange as that the Hebrews trod ; 
 
 We need the shadowing rock, as the} 7 , 
 We need, like them, the guides of God. 
 
 God send his angels, Cloud and Fire, 
 To lead us o er the desert sand ! 
 
 God give our hearts their long desire, 
 His shadow in a weary land ! 
 
ON A PRAYER-BOOK, 
 
 WITH ITS FRONTISPIECE, ART SCHEFFER S "CHRISTCS COXSOLATOR," AMERICAX- 
 1ZED BY THE OMISSION OF THE BLACK MAN. 
 
 0, ARY SCIIEFFER ! 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 1 
 
 Let whoso can before such praying books 
 Kneel on his velvet cushions ; I, for one, 
 Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the sun, 
 
 Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetan brooks, 
 
ON A PRAYER-BOOK. 137 
 
 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 fetish of the strong, 
 The Eternal Fullness 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 I 
 Better the simple Lama scattering wide, 
 
 Where sweeps the storm Alechan s steppes along 1 , 
 His paper horses for the lost to ride, 
 And weary iag 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 
 12* 
 
138 ON A PRAYER-BOOK. 
 
 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 Harnaii of her courts no more 
 Like the just Hebrew at th Assyrian s door ; 
 And her sweet ritual, beautiful but dead 
 As the dry husk from which the grain is shed, 
 And holy hyrnns from which the life devout 
 Of saints and martyrs has well-nigh 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 ! 
 
ON A PRAYER-BOOK. 139 
 
 Oh, 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 hands and the white, 
 Stands the Consoler, soothing every pain, 
 
 Making all burdens light, and breaking every chain ! 
 
TO J. T. F. 
 
 (ON A. BLANK LEAF OF " POEMS PRINTED, NOT PUBLISHED.") 
 
 WELL thought ! who would not rather hear 
 The songs to Love and Friendship sung 
 Than those which move the stranger s tongue, 
 And feed his unselected ear? 
 
 Our social joys are more than fame ; 
 Life withers in the public look. 
 Why mount the pillory of a book, 
 Or barter comfort for a name ? 
 
 Who in a house of glass would dwell, 
 With curious eyes at every pane ? 
 To ring him in and out again, 
 Who wants the public crier s bell? 
 
 To see the angel in one s way, 
 Who wants to play the ass s part, 
 Bear on his back the wizard Art, 
 And in his service speak or bray ? 
 
TO J. T. P. 141 
 
 And who his manly locks would shave, 
 And quench the eyes of common sense, 
 To share the noisy recompense 
 That mocked the shorn and blinded slave ? 
 
 The heart has needs beyond the head, 
 And, starving in the plenitude 
 Of strange gifts, craves its common food, 
 Our human nature s daily bread. 
 
 We are but men : no gods are we, 
 To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak, 
 Each separate, on his painful peak, 
 Thin-cloaked in self-complacency ! 
 
 Better his lot whose axe is swung 
 In Wartburg woods ; or that poor girl s 
 Who by the Ilm her spindle whirls 
 And sings the songs that Luther sung, 
 
 Than his who, old, and cold, and vain, 
 At Weimar sat, a demigod, 
 And bowed with Jove s imperial nod 
 His votaries in and out again ! 
 
142 TO J. T. F. 
 
 Ply, Vanity, thy winged feet I * 
 Ambition, hew thy rocky stair I 
 Who envies him who feeds on air 
 The icy splendor of his seat? 
 
 I see your Alps, above me, cut 
 The dark, cold sky ; and dim and lone 
 1 see ye sitting stone on stone 
 With human senses dulled and shut. 
 
 I could not reach you, if I would, 
 Nor sit among your cloudy shapes ; 
 And (spare the fable of the grapes 
 And fox) I would not if I could. 
 
 Keep to your lofty pedestals ! 
 The safer plain below I choose : 
 Who never wins can rarely lose, 
 Who never climbs as rarely falls. 
 
 Let such as love the eagle s scream 
 Divide with him his home of ice : 
 For me shall gentler notes suffice, 
 The valley-song of bird and stream ; 
 
TO J. T. F. 143 
 
 The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees, 
 The flail-beat chiming far away, 
 The cattle-low, at shut of day, 
 The voice of God in leaf and breeze 1 
 
 Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend, 
 
 And help me to the vales below 
 
 (In truth, I have not far to go,) 
 
 Where sweet with flowers the fields extend. 
 
THE PALM-TREE. 
 
 Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm, 
 
 On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm? 
 
 Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm ? 
 
 A ship whose keel is of palm beneath, 
 Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark sheath, 
 And a rudder of palm it steereth with. 
 
 Branches of palm are its spars and rails, 
 Fibres of palm are its woven sails, 
 And the rope is of palm that idly trails ! 
 
 What does the good ship bear so well ? 
 The cocoa-nut with its stony shell, 
 And the milky sap of its inner cell. 
 
 What are its jars, so smooth and fine, 
 
 But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and wine, 
 
 And the cabbage that ripens under the Line I 
 
THE PALM-TREE. 145 
 
 Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm ? 
 
 The master, whose cunning and skill could charm 
 
 Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm. 
 
 In the cabin, he sits on a palm-mat soft, 
 From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed, 
 And a palm-thatch shields from the sun aloft ! 
 
 His dress is woven of palmy strands, 
 
 
 
 And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his hands, 
 Traced with the Prophet s wise commands ! 
 
 The turban folded about his head 
 
 Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf braid, 
 
 And the fan that cools him of palm was made. 
 
 Of threads of palm was the carpet spun 
 Whereon he kneels when the day is done, 
 And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as oue ! 
 
 To him the palm is a gift divine, 
 Wherein all uses of man combine, 
 House, and raiment, and food, and wine ! 
 
 13 j 
 
1 40 T H E P A L M - T K K R . 
 
 And, in the hour of his great release, 
 His need of the palm shall only cease 
 With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace. 
 
 " Allah il Allah ! " he sings his psalm, 
 On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm ; 
 " Thanks to Allah who gives the palm !" 
 
LINES 
 
 RBAD AT THK BOSTON CELEBRATION OF THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OK THK 
 BIRTH OF ROBERT BURNS, 25TH 1ST MO., 1859. 
 
 How sweetly come the holy psalms 
 
 From saints and martyrs down. 
 The waving of triumphal palms 
 
 Above the thorny crown I 
 The choral praise, the chanted prayers 
 
 From harps by angels strung, 
 The hunted Cameron s mountain airs, 
 
 The hymns that Luther sung 1 
 
 Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes, 
 
 The sounds of earth are heard, 
 As through the open minster floats 
 
 The song of breeze and bird ! 
 Not less the wonder of the sky 
 
 That daisies bloom below ; 
 The brook sings on, though loud and high 
 
 The cloudy organs blow ! 
 
148 LINES FOR THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 
 
 And, if the tender ear be jarred 
 
 That, fiaply, hears by turns 
 The saintly harp of Olney s bard, 
 
 The pastoral pipe of Burns, 
 No discord mars His perfect plan 
 
 Who gave them both a tongue ; 
 For he who. sings the love of man 
 
 The love of God hath sung ! 
 
 To-day be every fault forgiven 
 
 Of him in whom we joy ! 
 We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven 
 
 And leave the earth s alloy. 
 Be ours his music as of Spring, 
 
 His sweetness as of flowers, 
 The songs the bard himself might sing 
 
 In holier ears than ours. 
 
 Sweet airs of love and home, the hum 
 
 Of household melodies, 
 Come singing, as the robins come 
 
 To sing in door-yard trees. 
 
LINES FOR THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 149 
 
 And, heart to heart, two nations lean, 
 
 No rival wreaths to twine, 
 But blending in eternal green 
 
 The holly and the pine ! 
 
 13* 
 
THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR. 
 
 OUT and in the river is winding 
 The links of its long, red chain 
 
 Through belts of dusky pine-land 
 And gusty leagues of plain. 
 
 Only, at times, a smoke-wreath 
 
 With the drifting cloud-rack joins, - 
 
 The smoke of the hunting-lodges 
 Of the wild Assiniboins ! 
 
 Drearily blows the north wind 
 From the land of ice and snow ; 
 
 The eyes that look are weary, 
 And heavy the hands that row. 
 
 And with one foot on the water, 
 
 And one upon the shore, 
 The Angel of Shadow gives warning 
 
 That day shall be no more. 
 
THE RED RIVER YOYAGEUR. 151 
 
 Is it the clang of wild-geese ? 
 
 Is it the Indian s yell, 
 That lends to the voice of the north wind 
 
 The tones of a far-off bell ? 
 
 The voyageur smiles as he listens 
 To the sound that grows apace ; 
 
 Well he knows the vesper ringing 
 Of the bells of St. Boniface. 
 
 The bells of the Roman Mission, 
 That call from their turrets twain, 
 
 To the boatman on the river, 
 To the hunter on the plain ! 
 
 Even so in our mortal journey 
 
 The bitter north winds blow, 
 And thus upon life s Red River 
 
 Our hearts, as oarsmen, row. 
 
 And when the Angel of Shadow 
 Rests his feet on wave and shore, 
 
 And our eyes grow dim with watching 
 And our hearts faint at the oar, 
 
152 THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR. 
 
 Happy is he who heareth 
 The signal of his release 
 
 In the bells of the Holy City, 
 The chimes of eternal peace I 
 
KENOZA LAKE. 
 
 As Adam did in Paradise, 
 
 To-day the primal right we claim : 
 
 Fair mirror of the woods and skies, 
 We give to thee a name. 
 
 Lake of the pickerel ! let no more 
 
 The echoes answer back " Great Pond/ 
 
 But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore 
 And watching hills beyond, 
 
 Let Indian ghosts, if such there be 
 Who ply unseen their shadowy lines, 
 
 Call buck the ancient name to thee, 
 As with the voice of pines. 
 
 The shores we trod as barefoot boys, 
 
 The nutted woods we wandered through, 
 
 To friendship, love, and social joys 
 We consecrate anew. 
 
154 KKNOZA LAKE. 
 
 Here shall the tender song be sung, 
 And memory s dirges soft and low, 
 
 And wit shall sparkle on the tongue, 
 And mirth shall overflow, 
 
 Harmless as summer lightning plays 
 From a low, hidden cloud by night, 
 
 A light to set the hills ablaze, 
 But not a bolt to smite. 
 
 In sunny South and p rained West 
 Are exiled hearts remembering still, 
 
 As bees their hive, as birds their nest, 
 The homes of Haverhill. 
 
 They join us in our rites to-day ; 
 
 And, listening, we may hear, ere long, 
 From inland lake and ocean bay, 
 
 The echoes of our song. 
 
 Kenoza ! o er no sweeter lake 
 
 Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail, 
 No fairer face than thine shall take 
 
 The sunset s golden vail. 
 
KKXOZA LAKE. 156 
 
 Long be it ere the tide of trade 
 
 Shall break with harsh-resounding din 
 
 The quiet of thy banks of shade, 
 And hills that fold thee in. 
 
 Still let thy woodlands hide the hare, 
 The shy loon sound his trurnpet-note ; 
 
 Wing-weary from his fields of air, 
 The wild-goose on thee float. 
 
 Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir, 
 Thy beauty our deforming strife ; 
 
 Thy woods and waters minister 
 The healing of their life. 
 
 And sinless Mirth, from care released, 
 Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky, 
 
 Smiling as smiled on Cana s feast 
 The Master s loving eye. 
 
 And when the summer day grows dim, 
 And light mists walk thy mimic sea, 
 
 Revive in us the thought of Him 
 Who walked on Galilee ! 
 
TO G. B. C. 
 
 So spake Esaias : so, in words of flame, 
 Tekoa s prophet-herdsman smote with blame 
 The traffickers in men, and put to shame, 
 
 All earth and heaven before, 
 The sacerdotal robbers of the poor. 
 
 All the dread Scripture lives for thee again, 
 To smite like lightning on the hands profane 
 Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the chain. 
 
 Once more th old Hebrew tongue 
 Bends with the shafts of God a bow new strung I 
 
 Take up the mantle which the prophets wore ; 
 Warn with their warnings, show the Christ once 
 
 more 
 Bound, scourged, and crucified in his blameless poor; 
 
 And shake above our land 
 The unquenched bolts that blazed in Ilosea s hand! 
 
TO G. B. C. 157 
 
 Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our years 
 The solemn burdens of the Orient seers, 
 And smite with truth a guilty nation s ears. 
 
 Mightier was Luther s word 
 Than Seckingen s mailed arm or Button s sword ! 
 
 14 
 
THE SISTERS. 
 
 A PICTURE BY BARRT. 
 
 THE shade for me, but over thee 
 The lingering sunshine still ; 
 
 As, smiling, to the silent stream 
 Cornea down the singing rill, 
 
 So come to me, my little one, 
 My years with thee I share, 
 
 And mingle with a sister s love 
 A mother s tender care. 
 
 But keep the smile upon thy lip, 
 
 The trust upon thy brow ; 
 Since for the dear one God hath called 
 
 We have an angel now. 
 
 Our mother from the fields of heaven 
 
 Shall still her ear incline ; 
 Nor need we fear her human love 
 
 Is less for love divine. 
 
THE SISTERS. 159 
 
 The songs are sweet they sing beneath 
 
 The trees of life so fair, 
 But sweetest of the sounds of heaven 
 
 Shall be her children s prayer. 
 
 Then, darling, rest upon my breast, 
 
 Arid teach my heart to lean 
 With thy sweet trust upon the arm 
 
 Which folds us both unseen I 
 
LINES 
 
 FOR THK AGRICULTURAL AND HORTICULTURAL KXHIBITIOS AT AMKSBURT AND 
 SALISBURY, SEPT. 28, 1868. 
 
 THIS day, two hundred years ago, 
 The wild grape by the river s side, 
 
 And tasteless ground-nut trailing low, 
 The table of the woods supplied. 
 
 Unknown the apple s red and gold, 
 The blushing tint of peach and pear ; 
 
 The mirror of the Powow told 
 No tale of orchards ripe and rare. 
 
 Wild as the fruits he scorned to till, 
 These vales the idle Indian trod ; 
 
 Nor knew the glad, creative skill, 
 The joy of him who toils with God. 
 
 Painter of the fruits and flowers ! 
 
 We thank thee fur thy wise design 
 Whereby these human hands of ours 
 
 In Nature s garden work with thine. 
 
FOR AX AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITION. 161 
 
 And thanks that from our daily need 
 
 The joy of simple faith is born ; 
 That he who smites the summer weed, 
 
 May trust tliee for the autumn corn. 
 
 Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; 
 
 Let fortune s bubbles rise and fall ; 
 Who sows a field, or trains a flower, 
 
 Or plants a tree, is more than all. 
 
 For he who blesses most is blest ; 
 
 And God and man shall own his worth 
 Who toils to leave as his bequest 
 
 An added beauty to the earth. 
 
 And, soon or late, to all that sow, 
 The time of harvest shall be given ; 
 
 The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow, 
 If not on earth, at last in heaven I 
 
 14* 
 
THE PREACHER. 
 
 ITS windows flashing to the sky, 
 Beneath a thousand roofs of brown, 
 
 Far down the vale, ray friend and I 
 Beheld the old and quiet town ; 
 
 The ghostly sails that out at sea 
 
 Flapped their white wings of mystery ; 
 
 The beaches glimmering in the sun, 
 
 And the low wooded capes that run 
 
 Into the sea-mist north and south ; 
 
 The sand-bluffs at the river s mouth ; 
 
 The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar, 
 
 The foam-line of the harbor-bar. 
 
 Over the woods and meadow-lands 
 A crimson-tinted shadow lay 
 Of clouds through which the setting day 
 Flung a slant glory far away. 
 
THE PREACHER. 163 
 
 It glittered on the wet sea-sands, 
 
 It named upon the city s panes, 
 Smote the white sails of ships that wore 
 Outward or in, and gilded o er 
 
 The steeples with their veering vanes ! 
 
 Awhile my friend with rapid search 
 
 Overran the landscape. " Yonder spire 
 Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire ; 
 
 What is it, pray ? " " The Whitefield Church ! 
 Walled about by its basement stones, 
 There rest the marvellous prophet s bones. " 
 
 Then as our homeward way we walked, 
 Of the great preacher s life we talked ; 
 And through the mystery of our theme 
 The outward glory seemed to stream, 
 And Nature s self interpreted 
 The doubtful record of the dead ; 
 And every level beam that smote 
 The sails upon the dark afloat 
 
J64 THE PREACHER. 
 
 A symbol of the light became 
 
 Which touched the shadows of our blame 
 
 With tongues of Pentecostal flame. 
 
 Over the roofs of the pioneers 
 
 Gathers the moss of a hundred years ; 
 
 On man and his works has passed the change 
 
 Which needs must be in a century s range. 
 
 The land lies open and warm in the sun, 
 
 Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run, 
 
 Flocks on the hill-sides, herds on the plain, 
 
 The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain ! 
 
 But the living faith of the settlers old 
 
 A dead profession their children hold ; 
 
 To the lust of office and greed of trade 
 
 A stepping-stone is the altar made. 
 
 The church, to place and power the door, 
 
 Rebukes the sin of the world no more, 
 
 Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor. 
 
 Everywhere is the grasping hand, 
 
 And eager adding of land to land ; 
 
 And earth, which seemed to the fathers meant 
 
 But as a pilgrim s wayside tent, 
 
THE PREACHER. 105 
 
 A nightly shelter to fold away 
 
 When the Lord should call at the break of day, 
 
 Solid and steadfast seems to be, 
 
 And Time has forgotten Eternity ! 
 
 But fresh and green from the rotting roots 
 Of primal forests the young growth shoots ; 
 From the death of the old the new proceeds, 
 And the lile of truth from the rot of creeds : 
 On the ladder of God, which upward leads, 
 The steps of progress are human needs. 
 For his judgments still are a mighty deep, 
 And the eyes of his providence never sleep : 
 When the night is darkest he gives the morn ; 
 When the famine is sorest, the wine and corn ! 
 
 In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought, 
 
 Shaping his creed at the forge of thought; 
 
 And with Thor s own hammer welded and bent 
 
 The iron links of his argument, 
 
 Which strove to grasp in its mighty span 
 
 The purpose of God and the fate of man ! 
 
1G6 THE PREACHER. 
 
 Yet faithful still, in his daily round 
 
 To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found, 
 
 The schoolman s lore and the casuist s art 
 
 Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart. 
 
 Had he not seen in the solitudes 
 
 Of his deep and dark Northampton woods 
 
 A vision of love about him i all ? 
 
 Not the blinding splendor which fell on Saul, 
 
 But the tenderer glory that rests on them 
 
 Who walk in the New Jerusalem, 
 
 Where never the sun nor moon are known, 
 
 But the Lord and his love are the light alone ! 
 
 And watching the sweet, still countenance 
 
 Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance, 
 
 Had he not treasured each broken word 
 
 Of the mystical wonder seen and heard ; 
 
 And loved the beautiful dreamer more 
 
 That thus to the desert of earth she bore 
 
 Clusters of Eschol from Canaan s shore ! 
 
 As the barley-winnower, holding with pain 
 Aloft in waiting his chuff* and- grain, 
 
THE PREACHER. 1C7 
 
 Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze 
 Sounding the pine-tree s slender keys, 
 So he who had waited long to hear 
 The sound of the Spirit drawing near, 
 Like that which the son of Iddo heard 
 When the feet of angels the myrtles stirred, 
 Felt the answer of prayer, at last, 
 As over his church the afflatus passed, 
 Breaking its sleep as breezes break 
 To sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake. 
 
 At first a tremor of silent fear, 
 The creep of the flesh at danger near, 
 A vague foreboding and discontent, 
 Over the hearts of the people went. 
 All nature warned in sounds and signs : 
 The wind in the tops of the forest pines . 
 In the name of the Highest called to prnyor, 
 As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair. 
 Through ceiled chambers of secret sin 
 Sudden and strong the light shone in ; 
 A guilty sense of his neighbor s needs 
 Startled the man of title-deeds ; 
 
168 THE PREACHER 
 
 The trembling band of tbe worldling shook 
 The dust of years from the Holy Book ; 
 And the psalms of David, forgotten long, 
 Took the place of the scoffer s song. 
 
 The impulse spread like the outward course 
 Of waters moved by a central force : 
 The tide of spiritual life rolled down 
 From inland mountains to seaboard town. 
 
 Prepared and ready the altar stands 
 
 Waiting the prophet s outstretched hands 
 
 And prayer availing, to downward call 
 
 The fiery answer in view of all. 
 
 Hearts are like wax in the furnace, who 
 
 Shall mould, and shape, and cast them anew ? 
 
 Lo ! by the Merrimack WHITEFIELD stands 
 
 In the temple that never was made by hands, 
 
 Curtains of azure, and crystal wall, 
 
 And dome of the sunshine over all ! 
 
 A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name 
 
 Blown about on the winds of fame ; 
 
THE PREACHER. 169 
 
 Now as an angel of blessing classed, 
 
 And now as a mad enthusiast. 
 
 Called in his youth to sound and gauge 
 
 The moral lapse of his race and age, 
 
 And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw 
 
 Of human frailty and perfect law ; 
 
 Possessed by the one dread thought that lent 
 
 Its goad to his fiery temperament, 
 
 Up and down the world he went, 
 
 A John the Baptist crying Repent! 
 
 No perfect whole can our nature make ; 
 Here or there the circle will break ; 
 The orb of life as it takes the light 
 On one side leaves the other in night. 
 Never was saint so good and great 
 As to give no chance at St. Peter s gate 
 For the plea of the devil s advocate. 
 So, incomplete by his being s law, 
 The marvellous preacher had his flaw : 
 With step unequal, and lame with faults 
 His shade on the path of History halts. 
 To 
 
170 THE PREACHER. 
 
 Wisely and well said the Eastern bard : 
 Fear is easy, but love is hard, 
 Easy to glow with the Sauton s rage, 
 And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage ; 
 But he is greatest and best who can 
 AVorship Allah by loving man. 
 
 Tlius he to whom, in the painful stress 
 
 Of zeal on lire from its own excess, 
 
 Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small 
 
 That man was nothing, since God was all 
 
 Forgot, as the best at times have done, 
 
 That the love of the Lord and of man are one. 
 
 Little to him whose feet unshod 
 
 The thorny path of the desert trod, 
 
 Careless of pain, so it led to God, 
 
 Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor man s wrou^, 
 
 The weak ones trodden beneath the strong. 
 
 Should the worm be chooser? the clay withstand 
 
 The shaping will of the potter s hand? 
 
 In the Indian fable Arjoon hears 
 The scorn of a god rebuke his fears : 
 
THE PREACHER. 1 7 1 
 
 " Spare thy pity ! " Krishna saith ; 
 
 " Not in thy sword is the power of death ! 
 
 All is illusion, loss but seems ; 
 
 Pleasure and pain are only dreams ; 
 
 Who deems he slayeth doth not kill ; 
 
 Who counts as slain is living still. 
 
 Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime ; 
 
 Nothing dies but the cheats of time ; 
 
 Slain or slayer, small the odds 
 
 To each, immortal as Indra s gods I" 
 
 So by Savanna s banks of shade, 
 The stones of his mission the preacher laid 
 On the heart of the negro crushed and rent, 
 And made of his blood the wall s cement; 
 Bade the slave-ship speed from coast to coast 
 Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost ; 
 And begged, for the love of Christ, the gold 
 Coined from the hearts in its groaning hold. 
 What could it matter, more or less 
 Of stripes, and hunger, and weariness ? 
 Living or dying, bond or free, 
 What was time to eternity? 
 
172 THE PREACHER. 
 
 Alas for the preacher s cherished schemes 1 
 Mission and church are now but dreams ; 
 Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan 
 To honor God through the wrong of man. 
 Of all his labors no trace remains 
 Save the bondman lifting his hands in chains. 
 The woof he wove in the righteous warp 
 Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe, 
 Clothes with curses the goodly land, 
 Changes its greenness and bloom to sand ; 
 And a century s lapse reveals once more 
 The slave-ship stealing to Georgia s shore. 
 Father of Light ! how blind is he 
 Who sprinkles the altar he rears to Thee 
 With the blood and tears of humanity ! 
 
 lie erred : Shall we count his gifts as naught ? 
 Was the work of God in him an wrought? 
 The servant may through his deafness err, 
 And blind may be God s messenger ; 
 But the errand is sure they go upon. 
 The word is spoken, the deed is done. 
 
TPTE PREACHER. 173 
 
 Was the Hebrew temple less fair and good 
 That Solomon bowed to gods of wood ? 
 For his tempted heart and wandering feet, 
 Were the songs of David less pure and sweet? 
 So in light and shadow the preacher went, 
 God s erring and human instrument ; 
 And the hearts of the people where he passed 
 Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast, 
 Under the spell of a voice which took 
 In its compass the flow of Siloa s brook, 
 And the mystical chime of the bells of gold 
 On the ephod s hem of the priest of old, 
 Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe 
 Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of Law. 
 
 A solemn fear on the listening crowd 
 Fell like the shadow of a cloud. 
 The sailor reeling from out the ships 
 Whose masts stood thick in the river slips 
 Felt the jest and the curse die on his lips. 
 Listened the fisherman rude and hard, 
 The calker rough from the builder s yard, 
 15* 
 
174 THE PREACHER. 
 
 The man of the market left his load, 
 The teamster leaned on his bending goad, 
 The maiden, and youth beside her, felt 
 Their hearts in a closer union melt, 
 Arid saw the flowers of their love in bloom 
 Down the endless vistas of life to come. 
 Old age sat feebly brushing away 
 From his ears the scanty locks of gray ; 
 And careless boyhood, living the free 
 Unconscious life of bird and tree, 
 
 Suddenly wakened to a sense 
 Of sin and its guilty consequence. 
 
 It was as if an angel s voice 
 
 Called the listeners up for their final choice ; 
 As if a strong hand rent apart 
 
 The vails of sense from soul and heart, 
 
 Showing in light ineffable 
 
 The joys of heaven and woes of hell ! 
 
 All about in the misty air 
 
 The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer ; 
 
 The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge, 
 
 The water s lap on its gravelled edge, 
 
THE PREACHER. 175 
 
 The wailing- pines, and, far and faint, 
 
 The wood-dove s note of sad complaint, 
 
 To the solemn voice of the proucher lent 
 
 An undertone as of low lament; 
 
 And the rote of the sea from its sandy coast 
 
 On the easterly wind, now heard, now lost, 
 
 Seemed the murmurous sound of the judgment host. 
 
 Yet wise men doubted, and good men wept, 
 As that storm of passion above them swept, 
 And, comet-like, adding flame to flame, 
 The priests of the new Evangel came, 
 Davenport, flashing upon the crowd, 
 Charged like summer s electric cloud, 
 Now holding the listener still as death 
 With terrible warnings under breath, 
 Now shouting for joy, as if he viewed 
 The vision of Heaven s beatitude ! 
 And Celtic Tennant, his long coat bound 
 Like a monk s with leathern girdle round, 
 Wild with the toss of unshorn hair, 
 And wringing- of hands, and eyes aglare, 
 
176 THE PREACHER. 
 
 Groaning under the world s despair ! 
 
 Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to lose, 
 
 Prophesied to the empty pews 
 
 That gourds would wither, and mushrooms die, 
 
 And noisiest fountains run soonest dry, 
 
 Like the spring that gushed in Newbury street, 
 
 Under the tramp of the earthquake s feet, 
 
 A silver shaft in the air and light, 
 
 For a single day, then lost in night, 
 
 Leaving only, its place to tell, 
 
 Sandy fissure and sulphurous smell. 
 
 With zeal wing-clipped and white heat cool, 
 
 Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule, 
 
 No longer harried, and cropped, and fleeced, 
 
 Flogged by sheriff and cursed by priest, 
 
 But by wiser councils left at ease 
 
 To settle quietly on his lees, 
 
 And, self-concentred, to count as done 
 
 The work which his fathers scarce begun, 
 
 li silent protest of letting alone, 
 
 The Quaker kept the way of his own, 
 
 A non-conductor among the wires, 
 
 With coat of asbestos proof to fires, 
 
THE PREACHER. 177 
 
 And quite unable to mend his pace 
 To catch the falling manna of grace, 
 He hugged the closer his little store 
 Of faith, and silently prayed for more. 
 And vague of creed and barren of rite, 
 But holding, as in his Master s sight, 
 Act and thought to the inner light, 
 The round of his simple duties walked, 
 And strove to live what the others talked ! 
 
 And who shall marvel if evil went 
 
 Step by step with the good intent, 
 
 And with love and meekness, side by side, 
 
 Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride ? 
 
 That passionate longings and fancies vain 
 
 Set the heart on fire and crazed the brain ? 
 
 That over the holy oracles 
 
 Folly sported with cap and bells? 
 
 That goodly women and learned men 
 
 Marvelling told with tongue and pen 
 
 How unweaned children chirped like birds 
 
 Texts of Scripture and solemn words, 
 
178 THE PREACHER. 
 
 Like the infant seers of the rocky glens 
 In the Pny de Dome of wild Cevennes : 
 Or baby Lamas who pray and preach 
 From Tartar cradles in Buddha s speech ! 
 
 In the war which Truth or Freedom wages 
 With impious fraud and the wrong of ages, 
 Hate and malice and self-love mar 
 The notes of triumph with painful jar, 
 And the helping angels turn aside 
 Their sorrowing faces the shame to hide. 
 Never on custom s oiled grooves 
 The world to a higher level moves, 
 But grates and grinds with friction hard 
 On granite boulder and flinty shard. 
 The heart must bleed before it feels, 
 The pool be troubled before it heals ; 
 Ever by losses the right must gain, 
 Every good have its birth of pain : 
 The active Virtues blush to find 
 The Vices wearing their badge behind, 
 And Graces and Charities ieel the fire 
 Wherein the sins of the ncro 
 
THE PREACHER. 179 
 
 The fiend still rends as of old he rent 
 The tortured body from which he went. 
 
 But Time tests all. In the overdrift 
 
 And flow of the Nile, with its annual gift, 
 
 Who cares for the Hadji s relics sunk ? 
 
 Who thinks of the drowned-out Coptic monk? 
 
 The tide that loosens the temple s stones, 
 
 And scatters the sacred ibis bones, 
 
 Drives away from the valley-land 
 
 That Arab robber, the wandering sand, 
 
 Moistens the fields that know no rain, 
 
 Fringes the desert with belts of grain, 
 
 And bread to the sower brings again. 
 
 So the flood of emotion deep and strong 
 
 Troubled the land as it swept along, 
 
 But left a result of holier lives, 
 
 Tenderer mothers and worthier wives. 
 
 The husband and father whose children fled 
 
 And sad wife wept when his drunken tread 
 
 Frightened peace from his roof-tree s shade, 
 
 And a rock of offence his hearthstone made, 
 
180 THE PREACHER. 
 
 In a strength that was not his own, began 
 To rise from the brute s to the plane of man. 
 Old friends embraced, long held apart 
 By evil counsel and pride of heart ; 
 And penitence saw through misty tears, 
 In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears, 
 The prom; c of Heaven s eternal years, 
 The peace of God for the world s annoy, 
 Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy 1 
 
 Under the church of Federal-street, 
 Under the tread of its Sabbath feet, 
 Walled about by its basement stones, 
 Lie the marvellous preacher s bones. 
 No saintly honors to them are shown, 
 No sign nor miracle have they known ; 
 But he who passes the ancient church 
 Stops in the shade of its belfry-porch, 
 And ponders the wonderful life of him 
 Who lies at rest in that charnel dim. 
 Long shall the traveller strain his eye 
 From the railroad car, as it plunges by, 
 
THE PREACHER. 181 
 
 And the vanishing town behind him search 
 
 For the slender spire of the Whilefield Church; 
 
 And feel for one moment the ghosts of trade, 
 
 And fashion, and folly, and pleasure laid, 
 
 By the thought of that life of pure intent, 
 
 That voice of warning yet eloquent, 
 
 Of one on the errands of angels sent. 
 
 And if where he labored the flood of sin 
 
 Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in, 
 
 Arid over a life of time and sense 
 
 The church-spires lift their vain defence, 
 
 As if to scatter the bolts of God 
 
 With the points of Calvin s thunder-rod, - 
 
 Still, as the gem of its civic crown, 
 
 Precious beyond the world s renown, 
 
 His memory hallows the ancient town ! 
 
 16 
 
THE QUAKER ALUMNI.* 
 
 FROM the well-spring s of Hudson, the sea-clills of 
 
 Maine, 
 
 Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again ; 
 And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow 
 
 mure cool, 
 Play over the old game of going to school. 
 
 All your strifes and vexations, your whims and 
 
 complaints, 
 (You were not saints yourselves, if the children of 
 
 saints !) 
 
 All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done, 
 Kouud the dear Alma Mater your hearts beat as out* ! 
 
 How widely soe er you have strayed from the foil, 
 Though your "thee" has grown "you," and y ;;r 
 drab blue and gold, 
 
 * Read at the Friends School Anniversary, Providence, K. I., 
 6th mo.. IbtiO. 
 
THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 183 
 
 To the old friendly speech and the garb s sober form, 
 Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you warm. 
 
 But, the first greetings over, you glance round th 
 
 hall ; 
 
 Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all : 
 Thru ugh the turf green above them the dead cannot 
 
 hear ; 
 Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as a tear ! 
 
 In love, let us trust, they were summoned so soon 
 From the morning of life, while we toil through its 
 
 noon ; 
 They were frail like ourselves, they had needs like 
 
 our own, 
 And they rest as we rest in God s mercy alone. 
 
 Unchanged by our changes of spirit and frame, 
 Past, now, and henceforward the Lord is the same ; 
 Though we sink in the darkness, his arms break our 
 
 fall, 
 And in death as in life he is Father of all ! 
 
1 84 T I! K QUAKER ALUMNI. 
 
 We are older : our footsteps, so light in the play 
 Of the far-away schooltime, move slower today; 
 Here a beard touched with frost, there a bald, shin 
 ing crown, 
 
 And beneath the cap s border gray mingles with 
 brown. 
 
 But faith should be cheerful, and trust should be 
 
 glad, 
 
 And our follies and sins, not our years, make us sad. 
 Should the heart closer shut as the bonnet grows 
 
 prim, 
 And the face grow in length as the hat grows in 
 
 brim ? 
 
 Life is brief, duty grave; but, with rain-folded wings, 
 Of yesterday s sunshine the grateful heart sings ; 
 And we, of all others, have reason to pay 
 The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on our way, 
 
 For the counsels that turned from the follies of youth ; 
 For the beauty of patience, the whiteness of truth ; 
 
THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 185 
 
 For the wounds of rebuke, when love tempered itn 
 
 edge; 
 For the household s restraint, and the discipline s 
 
 hedge ; 
 
 For the lessons of kindness vouchsafed to the least 
 Of the creatures of God, whether human or beast, 
 Bringing hope to the poor, lending strength to the 
 
 frail 
 In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, and jail ; 
 
 For a womanhood higher and holier, by all 
 Her knowledge of good, than was Eve ere her fall, 
 Whose task-work of duty moves lightly as play, 
 Serene as the moonlight and warm as the day ; 
 
 And, yet more, for the faith which embraces the 
 
 whole, 
 
 Of the creeds of the ages the life and the soul, 
 Wherein letter and spirit the same channel run, 
 And man has not severed what God has made one ! 
 16* 
 
186 THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 
 
 For a sense of the Goodness revealed everywhere, 
 
 As sunshine impartial, and free as the air ; 
 
 For a trust in humanity, Heathen or Jew, 
 
 And a hope for all darkness The Light shineth through. 
 
 Who scofls at our birthright? the words of the 
 
 seers, 
 
 And the songs of the bards in the twilight of years. 
 All the fore-gleams of wisdom in santou and sage, 
 In prophet and priest, are our true heritage. 
 
 The Word which the reason of Plato discerned ; 
 The truth, as whose symbol the Mithra-tire burned; 
 The soul of the world which the Stoic but guessed, 
 In the Light Universal the Quaker confessed ! 
 
 No honors of war to our worthies belong; 
 
 Their plain stem of life never flowered into song ; 
 
 l>ut the fountains they opened still gush by iho 
 
 way, 
 And the world for their healing is better to-day. 
 
THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 187 
 
 lie who lies where the minster s groined arches 
 
 curve down 
 
 To the tomb-crowded transept of England s renown, 
 The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned, 
 Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all owned, 
 
 Who through the world s pantheon walked in his 
 
 pride, 
 
 Setting new statues up, thrusting old ones aside, 
 And in fiction the pencils of history dipped, 
 To gild o er or blacken each saint in his crypt, 
 
 How vainly he labored to sully with blame 
 
 The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his fame ! 
 
 Self-will is self-wounding, perversity blind : 
 
 On himself fell the stain for the Quaker designed ! 
 
 For the sake of his true-hearted father before him ; 
 For the sake of the dear Quaker mother that bore him ; 
 For the sake of his gifts, and the works that outlive 
 
 -him, 
 
 And his brave words for freedom, we freely forg-ive 
 him ! 
 
188 THE QUAKE It ALUMNI. 
 
 There are those who take note that our numbers are 
 
 small, 
 
 New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall ; 
 But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of his own, 
 And the world shall yet reap what our sowers have 
 
 sown. 
 
 The last of the sect to his fathers may go, 
 Leaving only his coat for some Barnum to show ; 
 But the truth will outlive him, and broaden with years, 
 Till the false dies away, and the wrong disappears. 
 
 Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight sinks the stone, 
 In the deep sea of time, but the circles sweep on, 
 Till the low-rippled murmurs along the shores run, 
 And the dark and dead waters leap glad in the sun. 
 
 Meanwhile shall we learn, in our ease, to forget 
 
 To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom our debt ! 
 
 Hide their words out of sight, like the irarb that they 
 
 wore, 
 And for Barclay s Apology offer one more? 
 
THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 189 
 
 Shall we fawn round the priestcraft that glutted the 
 
 shears, 
 And festooned the stocks with our grandfathers 
 
 ears ? 
 Talk of Woolman s unsoundness ? count Peim 
 
 heterodox ? 
 And take Cotton Mather in place of George Fox? 
 
 Make our preachers war-chaplains ? quote Scrip 
 ture to take 
 
 The hunted slave back, for Onesimus sake ? 
 Go to burning church-candles, and chanting in choir, 
 And on the old meeting-house stick up a spire ? 
 
 No! the old paths we ll keep until better are shown, 
 Credit good where we find it, abroad or our own ; 
 And while " Lo here " and " Lo there " the multitude 
 
 call, 
 Be true to ourselves, and do justice to all. 
 
 The good round about us we need not refuse, 
 Nor talk of our Zion as if we were Jews ; 
 
190 THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 
 
 But why shirk the badge which our fathers have 
 
 worn, 
 Or beg the world s pardon for having been born ? 
 
 We need not pray over the Pharisee s prayer, 
 Nor claim that our wisdom is Benjamin s share. 
 Truth to us and to others is equal and one : 
 Shall we bottle the free air, or hoard up the sun ? 
 
 Well know we our birthright may serve but to 
 
 show 
 
 How the meanest of weeds in the richest soil grow : 
 But we need not disparage the good which we hold : 
 Though the vessels be earthen, the treasure is gold ! 
 
 Enough and too much of the sect and the name. 
 What matters our label, so truth be our aim ? 
 The creed may be wrong, but the life may be true, 
 And hearts beat the same under drab coats or blue, 
 
 So the man be a man, let him worship at will, 
 In Jerusalem s courts, or on Gerizim s hill. 
 
THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 191 
 
 When she makes up her jewels, what cares the good 
 
 town 
 For the Baptist of WAYLAND, the Quaker of BROWN ? 
 
 And this green, favored island, so fresh and sea- 
 blown. 
 
 When she counts up the worthies her annals have 
 known, 
 
 Never waits for the pitiful gaugers of sect 
 
 To measure her love, and mete out her respect. 
 
 Three shades at this moment seem walking her 
 
 strand, 
 Each with head halo-crowned, and with palms in his 
 
 baud, 
 
 Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smiling serene 
 On prelate and puritan, Channing is seen. 
 
 One holy name bearing, no longer they need 
 Credentials of party, and pass-words of creed: 
 The new song they sing hath a three-fold accord, 
 And they own one baptism, one faith, and one Lord ! 
 
192 THE QCAKKR ALUMNI. 
 
 But the golden sands run out: Occasions like those 
 Glide swift into shadow, like sails on the seas : 
 While we sport with the mosses and pebbles ashore, 
 They lessen and lade, and we see them no more. 
 
 Forgive me, dear friends, if my vagrant thoughts 
 
 seem 
 Like a school-boy s who idles and plays with his 
 
 theme. 
 
 Forgive the light measure whose changes display 
 The sunshine and rain of our brief April day. 
 
 There are moments in life when the lip and the eye 
 Try the question of whether to smile or to cry ; 
 And scenes and reunions that prompt like our owa 
 The tender in feeling, the playful in tone. 
 
 I, who never sat down with the boys and the girls 
 At the feet of your Slocums, and Cartlands, and 
 
 Earles, 
 
 By courtesy only permitted to lay 
 On your festival s altar my poor gift, to day, 
 
THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 193 
 
 I would joy in your joy : let me have a friend s part 
 In the warmth of your welcome of hand and of 
 
 heart, 
 On your play-ground of boyhood unbend the brow s 
 
 care, 
 And shift the old burdens our shoulders must bear. 
 
 Long live the good School ! giving out year by year 
 Recruits to true manhood, and womanhood dear : 
 Brave boys, modest maidens, in beauty sent forth, 
 The living epistles and proof of its worth ! 
 
 In and out let the young life as steadily flow 
 As in broad Narraganset the tides come and go ; 
 Arid its sons and its daughters in prairie and town 
 Remember its honor, and guard its renown. 
 
 Not vainly the gift of its founder was made ; 
 Not prayerless the stones of its corner were laid : 
 The blessing of Him whom in secret they sought 
 Has owned the good work which the fathers have 
 wrought. 
 
 17 M 
 
194: THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 
 
 To Him be the glory forever ! We bear 
 To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat with the tare. 
 What we lack in our work may He find in our will, 
 And winnow in mercy our good from the ill . 
 
BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE. 
 
 JOHN BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE spake on his dying 
 
 day : 
 " I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in 
 
 Slavery s pay. 
 But let some poor slave-mother whom I have 
 
 striven to free, 
 With her children from the gallows-stair put up a 
 
 prayer for me ! " 
 
 John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to 
 
 die; 
 And lo ! a poor slave-mother with her little child 
 
 pressed nigh. 
 Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the old 
 
 harsh face grew mild, 
 As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed 
 
 the negro s child ! 
 
196 BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE. 
 
 The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell 
 
 apart ; 
 And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the 
 
 loving heart. 
 That kiss from all its guilty means redeemed the 
 
 good intent, 
 And round the grisly fighter s hair the martyr s 
 
 aureole bent ! 
 
 Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil 
 good! 
 
 Long live the generous purpose unstained with 
 human blood ! 
 
 Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought 
 which underlies ; 
 
 Not the borderer s pride of daring, but the Chris 
 tian s sacrifice. 
 
 Never more may yon Blue Ridges the Northern rifle 
 
 hear, 
 Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on the 
 
 negro s spear. 
 
BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE. 197 
 
 But let the free-winged angel Truth their guarded 
 
 passes scale, 
 To teach that right is more than might, and justice 
 
 more than mail ! 
 
 So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in array ; 
 In vain her trampling squadrons knead the winter 
 
 snow with clay. 
 
 She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she dares 
 
 not harm the dove ; 
 And every gate she bars to Hate shall open wide to 
 
 Love 
 
FROM PERUGIA. 
 
 "The thing which has the most dissevered the people from the Pope, the 
 unforgivable thing, the breaking point between him and them, has oeen 
 the encouragement and promotion he gave to the officer under whom were exe 
 cuted the slaughters of Perugia. That made the breaking point in many honest 
 hearts that had clung to him before." 
 
 HARRIET BEKCHKB STOWK S "LETTERS FROM ITALY." 
 
 THE tall, sallow guardsmen their horse-tails have 
 
 spread, 
 
 Flaming- out in their violet, yellow, and red ; 
 And behind go the lackeys in crimson and buff, 
 And the chamberlains gorgeous in velvet and ruff ; 
 Next, in red-legged pomp, come the cardinals forth, 
 Each a lord of the church and a prince of the earth. 
 
 What s this squeak of the fife, and this batter of 
 
 drum ? ^ 
 
 Lo I the Swiss of the Church from Perugia come, 
 The militant angels, whose sabres drive home 
 
FROM PERUGIA. 199 
 
 To the hearts of the malcontents, cursed and ab 
 horred 
 
 The good Father s missives, and "Thus saith the 
 Lord ! " 
 
 And lend to his logic the point of the sword! 
 
 maids of Etruria, gazing forlorn 
 
 O er dark Thrasymenus, dishevelled and torn I 
 
 fathers, who pluck at your gray beards for 
 
 shame ! 
 
 mothers, struck dumb by a woe without name ! 
 Well ye know how the Holy Church hireling be 
 haves, 
 And his tender compassion of prisons and graves 1 
 
 There they stand, the hired stabbers, the blood 
 stains yet fresh, 
 
 That splashed like red wine from the vintage of 
 flesh, - 
 
 Grim instruments, careless as pincers and rack 
 
 How the joints tear apart, and the strained sinews 
 crack ; 
 
200 FROM PERUGIA. 
 
 But the hate that glares on them is sharp as their 
 
 swords, 
 And the sneer and the scowl print the air with 
 
 fierce words ! 
 
 Off with hats, down with knees, shout your vivas 
 
 like mad ! 
 
 Here s the Pope in his holiday righteousness clad, 
 From shorn crown to toe-nail, kiss-worn to the 
 
 quick, 
 
 Of sainthood in purple the pattern and pick, 
 Who the role of the priest and the soldier unites, 
 And praying like Aaron, like Joshua fights! 
 
 Is this Pio Nono the gracious, for whom 
 We sang our hosannas and lighted all Rome ; 
 With whose advent we dreamed the new era began 
 When the priest should be human, the monk be a 
 
 mun ? 
 Ah, the wolf s with the sheep, and the fox with the 
 
 fowl, 
 When freedom we trust to the crozier and cowl ! 
 
FROM PERUGIA. 201 
 
 Stand aside, men of Rome ! Here s a hangman-faced 
 
 Swiss 
 
 (A blessing for him surely can t go amiss) 
 Would kneel down the sanctified slipper to kiss. 
 Short shrift will suffice him he s blest beyond 
 
 doubt ; 
 But there s blood on his hands which would scarcely 
 
 wash out, 
 Though Peter himself held the baptismal spout ! 
 
 Make way for the next I Here s another sweet 
 
 son! 
 
 What s this mastiff-jawed rascal in epaulettes done ? 
 lie did, whispers rumor (its truth God forbid!) 
 At Perugia what Herod at Bethlehem did. 
 And the mothers? Don t name them! these 
 
 humors of war 
 They who keep him in service must pardon him 
 
 for. 
 
 Hist ! here s the arch-knave in a cardinal s hat, 
 With the heart of a wolf, and the stealth of a cat 
 
202 FROM PERUGIA. 
 
 (As if Judas and Herod together were rolled^, 
 Who keeps, all as one, the Pope s conscience and 
 
 gold, 
 
 Mounts guard on the altar, and pilfers from thence, 
 And flatters St. Peter while stealing his pence ! 
 
 Who doubts Antonelli ? Have miracles ceased 
 When robbers say mass, and Barabbas is priest ? 
 When the Church eats and drinks, at its mystical 
 
 board, 
 The true flesh and blood carved and .shed by its 
 
 sword, 
 When its martyr, un singed, claps the crown on his 
 
 head, 
 And roasts, as his proxy, his neighbor instead ! 
 
 There ! the bells jow and jangle the same blessed 
 
 way 
 
 That they did when they rang for Bartholomew s day. 
 llark ! the tallow-faced monsters, nor women nor 
 
 boys, 
 Vex the air with a shrill, sexless horror of noise. 
 
FROM PERUGIA. 203 
 
 Te Deum laudamus! All round without stint 
 The incense-pot swings with a taint of blood in t ! 
 
 And now for the blessing ! Of little account, 
 You know, is the old one they heard on the Mount. 
 Its giver was landless, his raiment was poor, 
 No jewelled tiara his fishermen wore ; 
 No incense, no lackeys, no riches, no home, 
 No Swiss guards ! We order things better at 
 Rome. 
 
 So bless us the strong hand, and curse us the weak; 
 Let Austria s vulture have food for her beak ; 
 Let the wolf-whelp of Naples play Bomba again, 
 With his death-cap of silence, and halter, and chain ; 
 Put reason, and justice, and truth under ban ; 
 For the sin unforgiven is freedom for man ! 
 
FOK AX AUTUMN FESTIVAL. 
 
 THE Persian s flowery gifts, the shrine 
 Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more ; 
 
 The woven wreaths of oak and pine 
 Are dust along the Isthmian shore. 
 
 But beauty hath its homage still, 
 And nature holds us still in debt : 
 
 And woman s grace and household skill, 
 And manhood s toil, are honored yet. 
 
 And we, to-day, amidst our ilowers 
 And fruits, have come to own again 
 
 The blessing of the summer hours, 
 The early and the latter rain ; 
 
 To see our Father s hand once more 
 Reverse for us the plenteous horn 
 
 Of autumn, filled and running o er 
 
 With fruit, and flower, and golden corn ! 
 
FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL. 205 
 
 Once more the liberal year laughs out 
 O er richer stores than gems or gold ; 
 
 Once more with harvest-song and shout 
 Is Nature s bloodless triumph told. 
 
 Our common mother rests and sings, 
 
 Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves ; 
 
 Her lap is full of goodly things, 
 
 Her brow is bright with autumn leaves. 
 
 0, favors every year made new ! 
 
 0, gifts with rain and sunshine sent ! 
 The bounty overruns our due, 
 
 The fullness shames our discontent. 
 
 We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on ; 
 
 We murmur, but the corn-ears fill ; 
 We choose the shadow, but the sun 
 
 That casts it shines behind us still 
 
 God gives us with our rugged soil 
 
 The power to make it Eden-fair, 
 And richer fruits to crown our toil 
 
 Than summer-wedded islands bear. 
 
206 FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL. 
 
 Who murmurs at his lot to-day? 
 
 Who scorns his native frtiit and 
 Or sighs for dainties far away, 
 
 Beside the bounteous board of home ? 
 
 Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom s arm 
 Can change a rocky soil to gold, 
 
 That brave and generous lives can warm 
 A clime with northern ices cold. 
 
 And let these altars wreathed with flowers 
 And piled with fruits awake again 
 
 Thanksgiving for the golden hours, 
 The early and the latter rain ! 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $I.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 MAR 25 194 
 
 M 
 
 
 E3QJ 
 
3 OS 704- 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY