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